Politics and Piety

Studies in the History of

Christian Traditions

General Editor

Robert J. Bast (Knoxville, Tennessee)

Editorial Board

Paul C.H. Lim (Nashville, Tennessee)

Brad C. Pardue (Point Lookout, Missouri)
Eric Saak (Indianapolis)
Christine Shepardson (Knoxville, Tennessee)
Brian Tierney (Ithaca, New York)
John Van Engen (Notre Dame, Indiana)

Founding Editor

Heiko A. Oberman

VOLUME 186

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/shct



Politics and Piety

The Protestant Awakening in Prussia, 18161856

By

David L. Ellis

LEIDEN | BOSTON


Cover illustration: Caspar David Friedrich, Neubrandenburg at Dawn (Das brennende Neubrandenburg),
oil on canvas, ca. 1835, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, bpk, Berlin / Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Photo by Elke Walford / Art Resource, ny.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ellis, David L., author.

Title: Politics and piety : the Protestant awakening in Prussia, 1816-1856 /
by David L. Ellis.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Studies in the history of
Christian traditions, issn 1573-5664 ; volume 186 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2017000994 (print) | LCCN 2017011811 (ebook) |
ISBN 9789004337855 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004308084 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Protestantism--Prussia (Kingdom)--History--19th century. |
Prussia (Kingdom)--Church history--19th century. | Christianity and
politics--Prussia (Kingdom)--History--19th century. | Church and state--
Prussia (Kingdom)--History--19th century.
Classification: lcc bx4844 (ebook) | LCC BX4844 .E55 2017 (print) |
DDC 280/.4094309034--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000994

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: Brill. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 1573-5664
isbn 978-90-04-30808-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-33785-5 (e-book)

Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite
910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.



To my family

Contents

Acknowledgementsix
Abbreviationsxi

Introduction1
Problematics1
Common Characteristics of the Transatlantic Awakening5
Variations of the German Awakening10
Circumspection and Methodological Choices24
Agony and Ecstasy in Prussias Heartland29
Tying Together Politics and Religion 39
Chapter Outline43

1 Revival, Quietism, and Change47

The Stirring of Revival among Elites in Berlin47
Habitus and Social Reproduction50
Placing the Awakening in the Context of Prussias Sociopolitical
Order and Church Affairs56
Conventicles in Action in Brandenburg and Pomerania68
The Reform of Conventicle Policies88

2 Sects and Violence: The Politicization of the Awakening92

Awakened Journalism92
The Foundation of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung94
The 1830 Revolution and the Denunciation of Halle105
The Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt and the Cologne
Controversy111

3 The Failure of Reform125

The Failure of Reform in Church Governance and Politics
before 1848125
Bethmann-Hollweg and the Burgfrieden140
The Stillborn United Diet144

4 Opposition to Revolution as Cultural Warfare149

Locating the Prussian Revolution in German and Transnational
Contexts149
Initial Awakened Responses to the Revolution155
viii Contents

The Use and Abuse of Culture164

Premodern and Modern Responses of the Awakened by
July 1848170
The Camarilla179
The Octroyed Constitution of 1848186

5 Church Renewal196
The Wittenberg Church Congress of 1848 and the Foundation of the
Internal Mission196
Selected Constitutional Changes in the Role of the Church(es)212

6 The Debilitating Successes of Stndisch Structural Changes225

The Gemeindeordnung Controversy226
Organizing the First Chamber, Part i (1848 and 1850)230
From the Erfurt Union to the Olmtz Agreement234
The Provincial Estates and the Foundation of the Preuisches
Wochenblatt240
Foundational Principles of the Wochenblatt244
Revising the First Chamber, Part ii250

7 The Rhetorical War over the Crimean War260

Framing the Crimean War260
Realism and Idealism in 19th-Century Prussia?264
Keeping the Dogs of War Leashed265
The Centrality and Fragility of the Holy Alliance277

Conclusion290

Bibliography303
Unpublished Primary Sources303
Printed Primary Sources304
Secondary Sources308
Index332


Acknowledgements

My work on this book has been made possible by the generous support of
many friends and colleagues. I would especially like to thank my two Doktor-
vter at the University of Chicago, Michael Geyer and John W. Boyer, as well
as the other members of my dissertation committee, Martin Marty and David
Barclay, for their encouragement and many pieces of good advice. I would also
like to thank the many other colleagues who have provided me with advice on
this project, particularly Hartmut Lehmann, Alf Ldtke, Siegfried Weichlein,
Hans-Christof Kraus, Frank-Lothar Kroll, and Brills anonymous outside read-
ers. I am grateful to my colleagues, too numerous to list, who reviewed earlier
versions of my work in various conferences, including the German Studies
Association, the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, the Interdisciplinary
Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, the Conference on Religious Com-
munalization in the Age of Society/Religise Vergemeinschaftung im Zeitalter
der Gesellschaft, the Legacy of 1848 Conference at Wartburg College, the Wit-
tenberg International Symposium, and the American Society of Church His-
torians in conjunction with the American Historical Association. I would like
to thank Meredith McGroarty, the copy editor of the series of which my book
is a part, for her outstanding work. Similarly, I am indebted to Arjan van Dijk,
Ivo Romein, and Gera van Bedaf of Brill for their patient help in improving and
preparing the manuscript. Many useful parts of the text are the direct result of
constructive criticism from this wonderful and diverse community of scholars.
The errors are entirely my own.
I would also like to thank the many institutions that gave me financial sup-
port as I worked on this text: the University of Chicago for the fellowships it
granted me, the daad for a dissertation research grant, the Mellon Founda-
tion for a Mellon summer research grant, and, at Augustana College, its Faculty
Research Grant, the Freistat Center for Peaces research grant, and the Presi-
dential Research Fellowship. I would additionally like to thank the staff at the
various archives from which I have drawn much of my material, notably the
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem, the Bunde-
sarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde, both Staatsbibliotheken (Haus 1 and Haus 2) in
Berlin, the Bundeslandes Hauptarchiv in Potsdam, and the Gerlach-Archiv in
Erlangen. I am likewise grateful to the staff at the libraries and InterLibrary
Loan offices of the University of Chicago and at Augustana College.
Finally, my work on this book would have been impossible without the pa-
tient and constant support of my family: my parents, John and Dottie; my wife,
Marggy; and our children, Jack, Julia, and Gretchen. I thank them for their
x Acknowledgements

understanding for the many times that I went away to work on Saturdays and
that I missed after-school games or performances.
Some portions of this monograph have been previously published in other
venues. This text as a whole represents a development of and expansion on
my dissertation.1 Much of Chapter 1, which mainly deals with Awakened para-
church conventicles and the states response to them, was published in trans-
lation as a book chapter.2 A version of the foundation of the Neue Preuische
Zeitung, or Kreuzzeitung, and the response of the writers of that paper (as well
as those of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung) to the revolution of 1848, part of
which is addressed in Chapter 4, was also made into a book chapter.3 A version
of the Denunciation of Halle, a theme treated in Chapter 2 that concerned
the attack on a supposedly too rationalist approach to theological instruction
in Halle, has likewise been published.4 The publishers have granted the appro-
priate permissions concerning copyright.

1 David L. Ellis, Piety, Politics, and Paradox: The Protestant Awakening in Brandenburg and
Pomerania, 18161848, (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2002).
2 David L. Ellis, Erweckungsbewegung und Rationalismus im vormrzlichen Brandenburg
und Pommern, in Wunderwelten. Religise Ekstase und Magie in der Moderne, eds. Nils Frey-
tag and Diethard Sawicki Wilhelm, trans. Martina Luise Pachali (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,
2006), pp. 5382.
3 David L. Ellis, A War of Words: The Prussian Awakened in the Revolution of 1848, in Die
Gegenwart Gottes in der modernen Gesellschaft. Transendenz und religise Vergemeinschaf-
tung in Deutschland, eds. Lucian Hlscher and Michael Geyer (Gttingen: Wallstein, 2006),
pp. 86111.
4 David L. Ellis, Echoes of Halle: Halles Contested Legacy in Prussia and the United States
in the Nineteenth Century, in Halle Pietism, Colonial North America, and the Young United
States, ed. Hans-Jrgen Grabbe, USA-Studien 15 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008), pp. 27388.


Abbreviations

bpw Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt

ekz Evangelische Kirchenzeitung
ga Gerlach-Archiv
geku Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union
GStAPK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz
msa Ministry for Spiritual Affairs or Ministerium der geistlichen, Unterrichts-
und Medizinalangelegenheiten
npz Neue Preuische Zeitung or Kreuzzeitung
pw  Politisches Wochenblatt zur Besprechung politischer Tagesfragen
sp. (newspaper) column
Introduction

Problematics

This book is about the intersection of religion, politics, and culture among
Prussian Protestant revivalists, known as the Awakened, between 1816 and
1857. The Awakening was a movement of religious renewal that occurred in
both Catholic and Protestant areas across parts of the Atlantic world, a move-
ment whose adherents believed God had called them from spiritual slumber
to a closer relationship with Him. In the areas of Prussia on which this book fo-
cuses, particularly in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania, the Awak-
ening was primarily neo-Pietist in character. Its members mostly accepted the
orthodox Protestant theology of prior generations, overlaying this theology
with the emotional intensity associated with a deep sense of humanitys cor-
ruption and sinfulness and a still deeper sense of gratitude for the forgiveness,
redemption, and promise of eternal life brought by Christ to those who real-
ized the desperation of their unrepentant life and who turned to God for the
remittance of sins and for regeneration. Like earlier Pietists, adherents tended
to come from the lower and lower middle classes (peasants, artisans, etc.), with
highly literate and articulate leaders, many of whom were clergy; nobles; pro-
fessionals, such as jurists; or political leaders. Although initially as quietist as
earlier Pietists, some of the Awakened, and especially some of their leaders,
came increasingly to think by the 1820s and 1830s that a world of increasing
politicization, economic change, transformation in church governance, and
social disruption demanded their more active engagement.
This period, bookended by the 1815 Congress of Vienna and the 1858 start of
the New Era under William (later William i or Wilhelm i, king of Prussia and
after 1871 emperor of Germany) as prince regent, was indeed a turbulent one.
Growing capitalist economic changes and incipient industrialization, coupled
with economic and social dislocation occasioned also by the unfolding ef-
fects of the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, impacted the social place, status, and
livelihoods of those socioeconomic groups at the core of the Awakening. The
perception of a too rationalist approach among theologians and church lead-
ers led many Protestants, especially the Awakened, to seek out private group
meetings for prayer, or for reading the Bible or devotional literature, in ways
that often skirted or circumvented the law and the state church, earning them,
for a time, surveillance and a degree of persecution. In Prussia, the forced
merger of the separate Lutheran and the established Reformed (i.e. Calvinist)
denominations or churches into an established Union Church, complicated by

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_002

2 INTRODUCTION

territorial changes due to the Congress of Vienna, led both denominations to

greater structural unity and much discontentment. In politics, periodic revolu-
tions occurred in several German states (and elsewhere), including the 1848
revolution that deeply affected Prussia. As political liberals (and some others)
advocated a written constitution that would spell out limits on royal power,
among other things, some of the Awakened saw political issues as necessar-
ily intertwined with religious views, including questions about whether legiti-
mate power flowed to the king from God or from the people, whether nobility
was a God-created institution, whether mostly Protestant Prussia should defer
to mostly Catholic Austria in the matter of German unity, and whether the
Holy Alliance should determine Prussias stance in the Crimean War.
This book examines ways that the religious and political views of Awak-
ened leaders shaped and were shaped by their engagement with such
pressing changes and issues. The responses of the Awakened varied. Some
remained quietist or returned to quietism. Others, such as Moritz August von
Bethmann-Hollweg, broke away from other Awakened leaders to push for a
kind of constitutionalism that had much in common with political liberals.
This book concentrates on a group of Awakened leaders who, despite some
variance among the group members, responded with a generally cohesive set
of views. Political leaders among this group included the brothers Leopold and
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach as well as Friedrich Julius Stahl, who, fearing both a
Bonapartist or absolutist revolution from above and a Jacobin revolution from
below, argued that political legitimacy was derived from God and vested in
the king, but in a king checked in part by nobility, and a set of habits, customs,
institutions, and laws that had grown organically over time and thus were
uniquely suited to Prussia and not to be tampered with lightly. They also vigor-
ously promoted individual Christian revival as well as renewal of the church
through such efforts as the Internal Mission after 1848, a project that they con-
tinued to collaborate on with fellow Awakened, such as Bethmann-Hollweg,
even after their political split.
Put succinctly, this monograph attempts to explain the transition of reviv-
alist Prussian Protestants from pariahs to powerbrokers, examining their ef-
forts to win a cultural struggle against both religious and political liberals
between 1816 and 1856. My work therefore intersects with several interesting
trends in the scholarly analysis of German and European history. First, it fits
broadly with a reappraisal of the role of religion in modern Europe. An older
narrative of secularization portrayed the period after the Scientific Revolu-
tion and the Enlightenment as a time in which rational(istic) ways of viewing
the world fairly steadily but sometimes dramatically eroded the profoundly
religious worldview of Europeans, ultimately producing societies that were
Introduction 3

wealthier, more socially mobile, more egalitarian, more merit oriented, and
more individualistic in a word, more modern. There is much truth in this nar-
rative, but like a sizeable and growing group of scholars, I find the process of
secularization to have been non-linear (and not always progressive).1 In my pe-
riod, roughly the first half of the 19th century, tremendous evangelistic revivals
in religion occurred across the Atlantic world, reversing or challenging secu-
larization in many Protestant and Catholic states. I further argue that Prussias
religious revival, which intertwined with new forms of advocacy for political
conservatism, actually helped to create a more modern society. Through its
theological egalitarianism and its neo-Pietist emphasis on the individuals di-
rect experience of God, the Prussian Awakening was, however unintention-
ally, a powerfully transformative force which in practice enhanced individual
agency.
Second, my work connects with a powerful trope in scholarly analysis, us-
ing the lens of culture wars as a way to understand political developments
in 19th-century Europe. Like many other scholars, I contend that historical ac-
tors in Prussia sought to resolve the political stalemate between revolution-
aries and reactionaries in the post-Napoleonic era through a complex battle
carried out in the spheres of religion and culture. Their efforts might even be
compared, in a useful if inherently problematic fashion, to the later and literal
cultural struggle (Kulturkampf) carried out by Bismarck in the 1870s, as Bis-
marcks later policies were in some ways prefigured by the largely successful
efforts of Awakened Protestants to take control of the official state church and
implement religious and political policies that wrong-footed their politically
and religiously liberal opponents. I also seek to demonstrate that conserva-
tives did not (nor did liberals, for that matter) understand religion or politics
in a purely instrumental fashion. Rather, they saw religion and politics as inex-
tricably and usefully entwined.
Third, my work intersects with a trend, particularly evident in the last fifteen
years, of the rediscovery and reinterpretation of Prussias role in German his-
tory. For several decades after Prussias final dissolution in 1947, most scholars

1 Examples of the newer approach would include Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of
German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Helmut Walser Smith, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews
in Germany, 18001914 (Oxford: Berg, 2001); Christopher M. Clark, The Politics of Conversion:
Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 17281941 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995); and
Christopher M. Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 16001947 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press, 2006); and Michael J. Sauter, Visions of the Enlightenment: The Edict on
Religion of 1788 and the Politics of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century Prussia, Brills Stud-
ies in Intellectual History 177 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
4 INTRODUCTION

subscribed to the narrative of reactionary, militaristic, hegemonic, and oppres-

sive Prussia. Particularly since the collapse of East Germany, however, scholars
have begun to reassess Prussian history, generating new and exciting insights.2
In my telling, the Awakened Protestants who helped to crush the liberal revo-
lution of 1848 appear not as a mere component of larger, reactionary forces,
but as a unique and shifting faction that jostled problematically alongside
other factions. I do not dispute the contention that the Awakened helped to
squelch the liberal revolutionaries. Rather, I argue that in mobilizing to do so,
the Awakened helped to transform the justification for political conservatism,
relying less on an appeal to estate-based identities and more on an appeal to
the benefits to each individual in a Burkean world or rather, a world of po-
litical understanding devised by Karl Ludwig von Haller, who coined the term
restoration to describe the era of gradual renovations in tradition. I further
argue that the means of making their case the development of semiformal
political parties and of widely circulated newspapers established an addi-
tional dimension of modernization. In short, I contend that by contributing to
a different self-understanding of conservatives as well as the means they used
to mobilize support, the Awakened, ironically, more effectively undermined
the older model of conservatism and the prerevolutionary order than the lib-
eral revolutionaries of 1848. They used the ideological, rhetorical, and organi-
zational weapons of their perceived liberal enemies, not fully understanding
that the weapons were double-edged.
My work also indirectly contributes to the ongoing reassessment of German
conservatism in the decades before Bismarck, when the theoretical founda-
tions of Prussian conservatism were laid.3 My interpretation complements
the view of Matthew Levinger that

many historians have underestimated a key dimension of the movement

identified by Mannheim, namely, that German conservatives did not so
much restore old ways of life as create a convincing memory [emphasis
in original, de] of tradition. At heart, the project of conservatism was to

2 In addition to the work of Clark and Smith cited earlier, typical examples of this trend would
include Matthew Bernard Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian
Political Culture, 18061848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Eric Dorn Brose, The Poli-
tics of Technological Change in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of Antiquity, 18091848 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993); and William W. Hagen, Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg
Junkers and Villagers, 15001840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
3 Hermann Beck, The Changing Patterns of Prussian Conservatism, 18301914, in Modern
Prussian History, 18301947, ed. Philip G. Dwyer (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 87.
Introduction 5

retrieve the irretrievable, to construct the illusion that the present was
seamlessly bound to an organic past.4

This book, then, does not undermine the insights of the three great currents
of interpretation Levinger aptly outlines, one of which understands political
conservatism to be in large part a reaction to the rationalistic and egalitar-
ian impulses of 18th-century politics and philosophy, a second of which views
conservatism primarily as a response to the French Revolution, and a third
of which underlines that conservatism evolved in the context of the German
nobilitys struggle against the ambitions of the absolutist state.5 Rather, I seek
to integrate aspects of these currents in a synthesized whole, emphasizing
the contribution of Awakened leaders to creating a new kind of conservatism
through a reinvention of tradition.6

Common Characteristics of the Transatlantic Awakening

Many great movements of religious revival, such as the Reformation and the
Catholic Reformation, have not only received ample attention from specialist

4 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, p. 166.

5 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, p. 166. In his work, Levinger has in mind as representa-
tive of the first school Wilhelm Ribhegge, Konservative Politik in Deutschland. Von der franz-
sischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989);
of the second, Fritz Valjavec, Die Entstehung der politischen Strmungen in Deutschland,
17701815 (Munich: R Oldenbourg, 1951), Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), Martin Greiffenhagen, Das Dilemma des Kon-
servatismus in Deutschland (Munich: R Piper, 1967), and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Konservative
Erneuerung. Ideen zur deutschen Politik (Stuttgart: E Klett, 1958), p. 22; of the third, Panajo-
tis Kondylis, Konservatismus. Geschichtlicher Gehalt und Untergang (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1986), pp. 63206, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Politischer Wandel im Osten. Ost- und Westpreus-
sen von den alten Stnden zum Konstitutionalismus, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des
stlichen Europa (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1992), Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Das andere Preuen.
Konservative Gestalten und Probleme im Zeitalter Friedrich Wilhelms iv (Berlin: Haude &
Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1964), pp. 2845, Hans Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesell-
schaftsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1987), pp. 44057, and Christopher Clark, The
Politics of Revival: Pietists, Aristocrats, and the State Church in Early Nineteenth-Century
Prussia, in Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conser-
vatism from 1789 to 1945, eds. Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (Providence: Berg, 1993),
pp. 3160.
6 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, p. 167, referring to E.J. Hobsbawm and Terrence. O. Ranger,
eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
6 INTRODUCTION

scholars, but also have penetrated the level of popular consciousness. Most
observers would readily concede that these popular religious movements had
consequences that stretched beyond the realms of church history and theol-
ogy into politics, social order, the history of thought, and the like. It is a curious
fact, then, that far fewer observers as readily recognize the scale and impor-
tance of the Awakening a partially interconnected series of popular evangeli-
cal revivals (often described as neo-Pietist in German Protestant areas) that
began across much of the Atlantic world in the late 18th and early 19th centu-
ries. The comparative lack of attention paid to the Awakening is all the more
peculiar because eighteenth-century popular piety pales by comparison to
the scale of this Awakening.7 Yet, the kind of Christian evangelicalism found
in the Awakening is notable not merely because of its sheer numbers of adher-
ents or the intensity of their piety, but also for its forms of piety (some new and
some hybrid), its ecumenism, the separatist movements that accompanied it,
and its important implications for the reordering of the social, political, and in-
tellectual order of the transatlantic world. In other words, the Awakening, like
the era in which it occurred, was characterized by both strong elements of con-
tinuity and radical breaks with the past. Together with other great events and
movements of its era, the great evangelical revivals helped serve as a bridge
between premodern and modern Europe, connecting the two even as they
marked the divisions between them.8

7 Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 17001918, Oxford History of the
Christian Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), p. 354.
8 While I occasionally use the term modern in my text, I do not intend to devote much
space to the useful but probably impossible task of establishing an incontestable definition;
Imainly intend to explore the relationship between the religious and political views of the
Awakened, with particular reference to their context in Prussia. I am using the term mod-
ern to refer like many scholars, such as Jrgen Habermas, who have defined the term more
precisely than I to a complex and partly interrelated set of processes that proceeded by
fits and starts, each of which is also problematic to define and which in 19th-century Europe
included secularization, changes to sources of individual identity located in webs of com-
munity and society, historical consciousness with an emphasis on individual agency and its
limits, bureaucratization, and changes in the nature of the public sphere, as explored over
a longer period by Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought
(Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1989). For a compelling argument that the time between 1791
and 1848 marks a crucial historical moment of transition between the compellingly different
premodern and modern periods, see Reinhart Koselleck, Preuen zwischen Reform und Revo-
lution. Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Munich:
Klett-Cotta, 1989). His introduction, p. 13ff., is particularly useful.
Introduction 7

Generalizations about any movement as large and diverse as the Awaken-

ing are inherently problematic. And yet, common linkages have been stressed
by both those involved in its revivals and their subsequent scholars. Many of
the Awakened saw themselves as intimately connected across the boundar-
ies of time (hearkening back to earlier, and in their eyes more pious Christian
eras), space (expressing solidarity with fellow evangelicals in other nations
and states), confession (facilitating cooperation between Protestant confes-
sions, and in some cases even between Protestants and Catholics), and class
(emphasizing that spiritual equality before God was independent of social and
economic distinctions).
The Awakening could both unite previously divided groups and divide pre-
viously united ones. In one sense, these transnational (indeed transatlantic),
transhistorical, trans-confessional, and trans-class links were at odds with an
era that increasingly fostered opposition and conflict between other views
and sources of identity. While the world around them was seeking new and
superseding sources of identity, such as political ideology, nationalism, and
class, many evangelicals cultivated a worldview that emphasized an identity
centered on the individuals relationship with God and a sense of solidarity
with their like-minded brethren across any intervening boundaries. In effect,
evangelicals faith made them a self-selecting (or divinely called) international
caste of outsiders. And yet, the very things which bound evangelicals together
often tore asunder other bonds, threatening other modes of understanding the
individuals place in time, space, confession, and class. Some contemporary
critics regarded the Awakened as dividers, as holier-than-thou hypocrites, as
social misfits, and worse. On the one hand, then, the Awakening provided a
remedy to the disruptive ills of modernization, creating new communities and
voluntary societies. On the other hand, the Awakening could be seen as a cause
(and effect) of those disruptive ills.
It is difficult for scholars to explain exactly how 19th-century evangelicals
recognized each other across traditional boundaries, and to define the move-
ment as a whole. Perhaps no one comes closer to capturing the essence of Prot-
estant evangelicalism than Josef Altholz, who observed that it

represents a de-emphasis of the institutional and doctrinal aspects of

Christianity in favor of spiritual and moral transformation of the individ-
ual. It stresses a personal religious experience, often called conversion,
marked by consciousness of sin, awakening to grace, and commitment
to the Christian life. Evangelical Protestants are characterized by moral
earnestness, a rigorous standard of conduct, and frequent examination
of conscience; they emphasize Bible reading, private family and group
8 INTRODUCTION

prayers, and an active role for the laity. They have become known for
their organized efforts to influence and reform society, but the original
emphasis of the movement was on individuals and small groups. At a
time when the churches were failing to satisfy spiritual need and when
the traditional dogmatic approach was increasingly irrelevant to the in-
tellectual tendencies of the age, the new emphases of evangelicalism
were necessary to breathe fresh life into the Protestant churches.9

The more recent work of Brian Vick echoes this characterization. In his analy-
sis of the Congress of Vienna, Vick analysed religious and diplomatic networks,
noting that

[s]cholars of religious revival have shown how the awakened of various

denominations tended to self-identify and congregate, distinguishing
themselves from their more secular or less devout social surroundings. By
this measure, the crucial marker of difference was less Catholic or Prot-
estant, Lutheran or Calvinist, than heartfelt piety in thought and lifestyle
as opposed to worldly frivolity or theological rationalism. These links and
perceptions of like-mindedness developed not just within particular re-
ligious communities, confessions, or sects but also crossed confessional
lines. The recognition of devoutness and a strongly Christocentric religi-
osity (that is, deep acceptance of Christ as savior, and an effort to apply
that faith to ones inner spiritual and external worldly life), in whatever
Christian denomination, often sufficed to confirm ones bona fides as a
member of this transconfessional, transnational, even global community
of the faithful, sometimes called in these circles the invisible church
(that is, outside the institutional boundaries of existing churches).10

Yet, because evangelicalism was (and remains) a movement without a mani-

festo, and an amorphous religious grouping without a universally acclaimed
(human) leader, it is easier to recognize than to define precisely. A discussion
of Germans who were evangelical is especially problematic, since the usual
German term (evangelisch) has even more meanings than its English trans-
lation. At the time of the Reformation, evangelisch might have meant either

9 Josef L. Altholz, The Churches in the Nineteenth Century (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,

1967), pp. 2324.
10 Brian E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 13940.
Introduction 9

specifically Lutheran or generally Protestant,11 as followers of the various Re-

formers were keen to assert their fidelity to the good news (evangelium in Lat-
in, euangelion in Greek), i.e. the Gospel. The union of Reformed and Lutheran
denominations in Prussia into a single Evangelical Union Church beginning
in 1817 further expanded the definition of the word. By the 1820s or 1830s, evan-
gelisch might have referred to a person with specifically Lutheran convictions
(especially after the Old Lutherans began to resist the Union and apply the
word evangelisch to themselves), one inclined to support the Union,12 or sim-
ply a member of the Union church (however unenthusiastic). To make matters
more complex, King Frederick William iii [] ordered that the word Evan-
gelical, expressing subscription to Bible and Gospel, replace Protestant in offi-
cial correspondence in 1821, since he associated the adjective Protestant with
the Enlightenment and political representation.13
Because of the multiplicity of meanings of evangelical and evangelisch, I
have generally used the terms Awakening or Awakened to refer to the evan-
gelical movement described by Altholz, and I have rendered the original Ger-
man term where the proper English translation is unclear. Usage of the term
Awakening dates to around 1750 in the writings of Pietists and Moravians,
and as applied to a movement has served the scholarly world as a convenient
term since about 1800.14 However, even the terms Awakening (Erweckung or
Erweckungsbewegung) and Awakened (usually erweckt, although erwecklich
and aufgeweckt are not uncommon) are not without their difficulties.15 These
terms are at least as old as evangelisch indeed, the Bible occasionally uses
the term awakened to describe a spiritual state.16 But the great advantage of
Awakened and its variants over evangelical and its variants lies in the fact
that large numbers of common Germans did not refer to themselves or their
movement as Awakened until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This makes

11 Cf. Altholz, Churches, p. 23, footnote 1. The German term evangelikal is perhaps better
rendered as evangelizing.
12 Cf. Walter H. Conser, Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany, Eng-
land, and America, 18151866 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984), p. 35.
13 Nicholas Hope, Prussian Protestantism, in Dwyer, ed., Modern Prussian History, p. 191.
14 David Crowner and Gerald Christianson, The Spirituality of the German Awakening, Clas-
sics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), p. 6.
15 For a thoughtful discussion of the origin and use of these terms, see Gerhard Ruhbach,
Die Erweckungsbewegung und ihre kirchliche Formation in Die Geschichte der Evan-
gelischen Kirche der Union (geku), eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig:
Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), pp. 16266.
16 Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 162.
10 INTRODUCTION

it possible to avoid some of the historical layering that evangelical necessarily

entails.
One must also be careful that the heuristic advantages of the terms Awak-
ening and Awakened do not lead to an unfair privileging of similarities and
continuities over the dissimilarities and discontinuities of various regional in-
carnations of the Awakening. Indeed, although the Awakening is common-
ly accepted by scholars as a term to refer to the great transatlantic revival of
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, other words are sometimes employed,
and even the vernacular renditions of Awakening obscure the movements
universal characteristics. The movement was called, for example, the Second
Great Awakening in the United States; the Rveil among some Swiss, French
Protestant, and Dutch churches; the vckelse in Sweden; the Erweckung or Er-
weckungsbewegung in German-speaking lands; etc.17
An additional problem is that the similarities between the Awakening and
earlier revivals sometimes make it difficult to determine whether the former
is a new development building on the latter, or merely a continuation of it.
This book seeks to avoid some of these difficulties of geographical variation,
primarily by drawing particular attention to the Awakening in two of Prussias
core provinces, Brandenburg (including Berlin) and Pomerania.

Variations of the German Awakening

For now, Josef Moosers brief description of the Awakening in eastern West-
phalia serves as a useful introduction to some aspects common to the move-
ment in many German states:

Characteristic was a radical renunciation of the rationalistic theology

of the late 18th century, in which Enlightenment and religion, reason and
faith, bourgeois morality and Christian ethics [Gebot] appeared balanced
and reconciled with one another. The clergyman was to become or at
least was supposed to be a tutor of the people for appropriate social re-
forms, [and] to a certain extent a guide to modern society. In contrast to
Awakened theology based partly on earlier Pietism (H.A. Francke, the

17 I have generally used a variation of the phrase German-speaking lands rather than the
term Germany in the text, since there was no Germany in the sense of a unified state
prior to 1871. In those instances in which I have used the term Germany, I intend to
convey the notion by some 19th-century contemporaries of a cohesive set of cultures and
societies, regardless of whether such a cohesive set objectively existed.
Introduction 11

Herrnhuter Bretheren), partly on Luthers literal authority of the Bible

emphasized sola fide and the primacy of religious obligations, as opposed
to worldly morality. Sermons and piety were saturated by a pessimistic
view of humanity; hence the flaming call to repentance and conversion.
People should no longer, as they did in the Enlightenment, be improved
through education, but be saved by faith from Godless circumstances
and developments in the world. The path to this was made straight by
hope in divine salvation, especially the sudden, emotionally shaking,
and life-changing experience of sin and grace in rebirth or awakening,
which gave its name to the movement.18

Thus, the Awakening represented a type of religiosity whose practitioners per-

ceived themselves as fully in the tradition of the early church and early reform-
ers, and also in stark opposition to the rationalist legacy of the Enlightenment.
One of the many ironies associated with the Awakening is that despite its lack
of (or for some, rejection of) historical consciousness about forms of religios-
ity, the Awakening was a fundamentally modern and historically bound phe-
nomenon, both in that it partly defined itself against the Enlightenment and in
that, like the Romantics, the Awakened relied on experience (often connected
with or lived in part through emotion) to encounter or verify religious truths.
However, the largely common Awakened worldview one grounded in or-
thodox, traditional Protestant theology derived from Luther or Calvin but es-
sentially experientially acquired helped give the Awakened a shared sense

18 Bestimmend war eine radikale Absage an die rationalistische Theologie des spten 18.
Jahrhunderts, in der Aufklrung und Religion, Vernunft und Glaube, brgerliche Moral
und christliches Gebot ausgeglichen und miteinander vershnt schienen. Der Geistliche
war zu einem Volkserzieher fr mavolle soziale Reformen, gewissermaen zu einem
Wegweiser in die moderne Gesellschaft geworden oder sollte es wenigstens sein. Dage-
gen betonte die Erweckungstheologie, im Rckgriff teils auf den lteren Pietismus (H.A.
Francke, Herrnhuter Brdergemeinde), teils auf Luther die buchstbliche Authoritt der
Bibel, das sola fide und den Primat des religisen Gebotes gegenber der weltlichen
Moral. Predigt und Erbauung waren durchtrnkt von einem pessimistischen Menschen-
bild; daher der flammende Aufruf zu Bue und Bekehrung. Die Menschen sollten nicht
mehr, wie in der Aufklrung, durch Erziehung gebessert werden, sondern durch den
Glauben gerettet werden vor den gottlosen Zustnden und Entwicklungen in der Welt.
Den Weg dazu ebnete die Hoffnung auf die gttliche Erlsung, besonders das pltzliche,
emotional aufrttelnde und das Leben verndernde Erlebnis von Snde und Gnade in
der Wiedergeburt oder Erweckung, die der Bewegung ihren Namen gab. Josef Mooser,
Erweckungsbewegung und Gesellschaft, in Frommes Volk und Patrioten. Erweckungs-
bewegung und soziale Frage im stlichen Westfalen 1800 bis 1900, eds. Josef Mooser et al.
(Bielefeld: Verlag fr Regionalgeschichte, 1989), p. 11.
12 INTRODUCTION

of identity. Likewise, common devotional literature and prayer books, Bible

societies, internal and external mission societies, and charitable ventures also
helped to knit them together, creating both literal and imagined communi-
ties.19 The Awakening sometimes even connected Catholics and Protestants,
despite the confessional differences of the day.
Central to this ecumenism was the southern German Catholic theologian
Johann Michael Sailer (17511832). His warm, open-minded, moral and pasto-
ral theology which centered on the Early Church, the Catholic devotio moder-
na, and a modern vernacular rendering of the New Testament set the pattern
for many Catholic and Protestant revivals.20 Among the numerous examples
of Awakened Catholics helping to ignite or to cooperate with the Protestant
Awakening are Sailer in Wrttemberg, Alois Henhfer (17891862) in the Ba
denese Allgu, and Clemens Brentano (17781842) in Berlin. Vick underlines
that around 1815 the followers of Awakened leaders such as Sailer likewise
tended strongly toward ecumenism, observing that

The central Protestant revivalist Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling and the

revivalist Catholic Johann Michael Sailer not only corresponded with one
another across the confessional divide, but their works were read and
treasured on both sides as well, just as was the devotional poetry and
prose of the Lutheran Matthias Claudius (translator too of the Catholics
Saint-Martin and Fnelon).21

In consequence, the multifaceted Catholic Awakening, of which Sailer was such

an important part, had a profound effect on the spirituality and charitable
mission of the Lutheran awakening in Bavaria, Wrttemberg, and Prussia.22
In the German states the Awakening existed in interconnected but distinct
forms. These variations were often related to the heritage of Pietism and mysti-
cism, the power and charisma of local Awakeners, and the structure and con-
stitution of the state church. Over time, the Awakened increasingly shifted to
confessional identities, departing from their usually ecumenical beginnings.23

19 My use of the term imagined communities is based on the work of Benedict R. Ander-
son, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed.
(London: Verso, 1991).
20 Hope, Protestantism, p. 363.
21 Vick, Congress of Vienna, p. 140.
22 Vick, Congress of Vienna, p. 364.
23 Cf. Hope, Protestantism, pp. 38182.
Introduction 13

Revivals among Lutherans in southern and western German states []

were influenced by a simultaneous Reformed awakening in the new Dutch
and Swiss republics, and by the Catholic revival in Vienna, Munich, the Bavar-
ian Allgu, and Prussian Mnster.24 In the southwest, the influence of Pietists
and mystics, such as Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (17401817) and Johann Kas-
par Lavater (17411801), remained strong. Here, as in other regions, the Awak-
ened often read Pietist devotional literature of earlier eras, including that of
Johann Arndt (15551621), Philipp Jakob Spener (16351705), and Johann Al-
brecht Bengel (16871752). The region was characterized by biblicism, with
a corresponding theology based on belief in a thorough and experientially
corroborated study of the Bible.25 The Awakened faced difficult challenges in
this region. A growing population, shifting borders, and the rise of liberal (but
not religiously tolerant) politics induced thousands of Wrttembergers to emi-
grate (24,000 to Russia alone between 1812 and 1822).26 The Calwer Missions-
blatt, published by Christian Gottlob Barth (17991862), linked the missions
of Stuttgart and Basle, and turned Calw, like Basle, into a nineteenth-century
Halle. By the end of the first decade the association had sold 700,000 tracts
and 432,000 schoolbooks.27 Basles Protestant Awakened were highly success-
ful in using its Christianity Society (Christentumsgesellschaft) to promote their
views, too. The Society established forty branch societies [] in Germany and
the Netherlands in the fifty years up to 1830.28 The pro-monarchist Awakened
Wrttembergers after 1830 became an important middle-class interest next to
the Liberals in parliament and helped make the awakening respectable in the
eyes of Stuttgarts court and middle-class []29

24 Hope, Protestantism, p. 381. Some scholars have used other rubrics to analyse differences
among the Awakened. Hartmut Lehmann has identified five distinct thematic currents
after 1820: one in southern Germany and Switzerland concentrating on missions; another
current in the same areas devoted to establishing charitable institutions; the Internal Mis-
sion of Johann Hinrich Wichern and his supporters; Pietists who went to the Holy Land
to found a Protestant religious community; and the Prussian variety. Hartmut Lehmann,
Pietism and Nationalism: The Relationship of Protestant Revivalism and National Re-
newal in Nineteenth-Century Germany in Church History 51.1 (1982), 4647.
25 Conser, Church, p. 33.
26 Hope, Protestantism, p. 382.
27 Hope, Protestantism, p. 385.
28 Hope, Protestantism, p. 383.
29 Hope, Protestantism, pp. 38687. See also Hartmut Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ord-
nung in Wrttemberg vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1969),
esp. pp. 13550 and 188211.
14 INTRODUCTION

The Awakening in the lower Rhine area largely followed the pattern in Wrt-
temberg and Baden, so that one can therefore speak of a southwest-northwest
axis.30 These regional similarities included the activities of the Christianity
Society, interregional personal contacts, a similar appreciation for the impor-
tance of lay leadership, and comparable legacies of Pietism and sects such as
the Herrnhuter. Gottfried Daniel Krummacher (17741837), a Reformed minis-
ter, was the central figure in the Rhenish Awakening.31 Eventually appointed
to Elberfeld (18161837), the metropolis of church and spiritual life on the
lower Rhine,32 Krummacher staunchly defended the Reformed understand-
ing of predestination and fought to preserve the lay-led (presbyterial) church
structure of the Reformed tradition.33 For Krummacher, the Bible and all sorts
of devotional literature (especially Thomas Kempis and Tersteegen [the mys-
tical Pietist Gerhard Tersteegen, 16971769, de]) became the basis for his mes-
sage after his conversion in 1798.34
In mostly Lutheran Ravensburg, the pastor Johann Heinrich Volkening
(17961877) led a comparable Awakening.35 The revival there owed much to
the presbyterial church order and earlier activities of the Herrnhuter.36 Apart
from reviving souls, this regional Awakening also led to the foundation of the
Bertelsmann publishing firm in Gtersloh, new diaconates, and (through the
impulse of Count Adelbert von der Recke-Vollmarstein) a diaconal orphanage
and work center (Rettungswerk) in Dsselthal37 that was supported by the
Awakened throughout Germany.38

30 Man kann deshalb von einer Sdwest-Nordwest-Achse sprechen [] Friedrich Wilhelm

Kantzenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung. Studien zur Geschichte ihrer Enstehung und er-
sten Ausbreitung in Deutschland (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1957), p. 146.
31 [] ist die eigentliche Zentralgestalt der rheinischen Erweckung. Kantzenbach, Die Er-
weckungsbewegung, pp. 15152.
32 [] Elberfeld, der Metropole des niederrheinischen Kirchen- und Geisteslebens. Kant-
zenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung, p. 152.
33 Kantzenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung, pp. 15253.
34 Die Bibel und allerlei Erbauungsschriften (vor allem Thomas von Kempen und Terstee-
gen) wurden nach seiner Bekehrung 1798 zur Grundlage seiner Verkndigung [], Ger-
hard Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 173.
35 See Julius Roessle, Zeugen und Zeugnisse. Die Vter des rheinisch-westflischen Pietismus
(Konstanz: Christliche Verlagsanstalt, 1968).
36 Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 173.
37 See also Christopher Clark, 18151848: Restoration or Pre-March? in German History
since 1800, ed. Mary Fulbrook (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 56.
38 [] von Erweckten in ganz Deutschland mitgetragen wurde. This quote, as well as the
preceding information in the sentence, comes from Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung,
Introduction 15

A similar picture could be found in northwestern German areas, too. Gott-

fried Menken (17681831) in Bremen developed a highly Christological reading
of the Bible in opposition to rationalist and anthropocentric understandings.39
Political leaders were prominent among the Awakened. Hamburger Senator
Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker served as a lawyer for the Awakened newspa-
per Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, published in Berlin.40 The Reformed minister
Henri Merle dAuign found in the Hamburger Sieveking (17871847), the syn-
dic of the Senate after 1820, much understanding for his Awakened sermons
and his pastoral concerns.41
Protestant Bavarians benefited from a relatively tolerant government. Er-
langen and Nuremberg became centers of the Protestant Awakening, notably
producing Adolf von Harle (18061879), later chief administrator of Bavar-
ian Protestants, and the Lutheran theologian Wilhelm Lhe (18081872). The
Reformed theologian and minister Christian Krafft (17841845), who joined
the faculty at Erlangen in 1818, exerted a powerful influence there. Interconfes-
sional ferment also continued for some time. Friedrich Julius Stahl (18021861),
a convert from Judaism, became a leading jurist in Prussia. Johannes Evange-
lista Goner was Awakened by Catholics and later became a Protestant pastor
in Berlin (18291847).42 But, as in Wrttemberg and elsewhere, confessional
identity reasserted itself after about 1830.
In central German areas, the Awakening had a somewhat combative lay
leadership and a more confessional tone from early on. The physician Ernst
Josef de Valenti and a fellow layman named Pensel were chastised by Weimar
church administrators for giving catechetical instruction to children in Sulza.43
The recalcitrant Valenti eventually spent a fortnight in jail for his efforts. Later,
as the physician at Dsselthal, he shared a house with the Awakened theolo-
gian Frierich August Gottreu Tholuck (17991877). Valenti published a piece in
which he excoriated rationalist influences in the church, charging ministers
[] therefore preach in your churches above all the law and the Gospel, the
true word of God, not with clever words, but with proof of the spirit and of

p.174. See also Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, pp. 11415, for a list of some of the
more prominent Awakened supporters of the Dsselthal effort.
39 Cf. Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 156.
40 Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 158.
41 [] fand in dem Hamburger Karl Sieveking, ab 1820 Syndikus des Senats, viel Verstnd
nis fr seine Erweckungspredigt und seine Seelsorgerischen Anliegen. Kantzenbach,
Erweckungsbewegung, p. 159. Cf. Hope, Protestantism, p. 408.
42 Cf. Hope, Protestantism, p. 384.
43 Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 114.
16 INTRODUCTION

strength []44 He mischievously dedicated the work to Johann Friedrich Rhr

(17771848), the Weimar General Superintendent of the state church and one
of the best known rationalists of his time.45 Tholuck, who moved to the ratio-
nalist center of Halle in 1829, presented the Awakened case there. Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach (17951877), a jurist in Naumburg, encouraged the Awakened he
found there and remained in close contact with Tholuck and with his Awak-
ened friend Pastor Seegemund in Wernigerode.46
Many eastern German-speaking areas experienced a deepening confes-
sional split as a result of the Union church and its liturgical reforms.47 Indeed,
confessional tensions led to the foundation of a separate denomination of
Old Lutherans (Altlutheraner) under the Breslau theologian Johann Gottfried
Scheibel (17831843) in 1840.48 By 1840 there were around 10,000 Old Lutherans
in Prussia, and 2,000 had already left.49 Additional numbers of them would
later leave for North America and Canada, contributing to the 1.3 million Ger-
mans who left between 1845 and 1858.50 The existence of such polarization
even led Gerhard Ruhbach to assert that in Posen, East Prussia, Brandenburg,
and in the Province of Saxony there was no actual movement of the Awaken-
ing; there were only a few Awakened hotbeds (Erweckungsherde) there that
came about through Herrnhuter representatives or lay and pastors.51 This may
be putting the case too strongly, however.52 Most other observers have stopped
well short of suggesting that there was no actual Erweckungsbwegung in most
of East Elbian Prussia.

44 Darum predigt nur in euren Kirchen vor allen Dingen das Gesetz und das Evangelium,
das wahre Wort Gottes, nicht mit klugen Worten, sondern mit Beweisen des Geistes und
der Kraft [] Cited in Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 116.
45 [] einem der bekanntesten Rationalisten seiner Zeit. Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewe-
gung, p. 116.
46 Cf. Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 111.
47 Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung, p. 172.
48 Ruhbach rightly draws attention to the fact that in 1848 the Awakened leader Adolf
von Thadden, among others, embraced the Old Lutheran cause as well. Ruhbach, Er
weckungsbewegung, p. 172.
49 Clark, 18151848, p. 58.
50 David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 17801918 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 192.
51 In Posen, Ostpreuen, Brandenburg und in der Provinz Sachsen kam es zu keiner ei-
gentlichen Erweckungsbewegung; es blieb dort bei einzelnen Erweckungsherden, die
durch Herrnhuter Sendboten oder Laien und Pastoren zustande kamen. Ruhbach, Er-
weckungsbewegung, p. 172.
52 Cf. Hope, Protestantism, p. 367ff.; and Conser, Church, p. 35ff.
Introduction 17

Despite the Awakenings interconnections to major political, intellectual,

theological, and social developments in Prussia, until recently many studies
of the Awakening examined it within the topical confines of church history,
the history of theology, or the history of culture. Such treatment often down-
played or ignored its profound importance for other spheres of life (above all
politics). In more general histories, the Awakening was often summed up in
a fewparagraphs or a few pages, frequently in a long list of cultural or reli-
gious innovations. Such presentations frequently failed to take into account
the connections to religious revivals in German states and across the Atlan-
tic world, or neglected the unique and contingent features of the Awakenings
development.
The reasons for these scholarly shortcomings in the treatment of the Awak-
ening are not clear. The notions of secularization and dechristianization, how-
ever, are two probable causes. The historiography involving these historical
categories in German history has been growing at a gratifying pace, especially
in recent years, and many historians have also explored the connections of
these categories to politics. Particularly noteworthy53 are Werner K. Blessing,54
Dieter Breuer,55 Martin Greschat,56 Lucian Hlscher,57 Hartmut Lehmann,58

53 This is only as a selected list of some of the more outstanding works of these authors
directly relevant to the problematic issue of secularization and dechristianization or re-
christianization. Many other names and titles could be added, of course.
54 Werner K. Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft. Institutionelle Autoritt und men-
taler Wandel in Bayern whrend des 19. Jahrhunderts, eds. Helmut Berding, Jrgen Kocka,
and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 51 (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982).
55 Dieter Breuer, Frmmigkeit in der frhen Neuzeit Studien zur religisen Literatur des 17.
Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, Chloe, Beihefte zum Daphnis 2 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984).
56 See especially Martin Greschat, Das Zeitalter der Industriellen Revolution. Das Christentum
vor der Moderne, Christentum und Gesellschaft 11 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980); idem,
Religionspolitik in Deutschland: von der Frhen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Kohl-
hammer, 1999).
57 Lucian Hlscher, Weltgericht oder Revolution. Protestantische und sozialistische Zukunfts-
vorstellungen im deutschen Kaiserreich, Industrielle Welt 46 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989).
58 See especially Hartmut Lehmann, Protestantische Weltsichten. Transformationen seit dem
17. Jahrhundert (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998); idem, Protestantisches Chris-
tentum im Proze der Skularisierung (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001). Also
of particular value is the collection of essays by Hartmut Lehmann, Skularisierung, De-
christianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perpektiven der
Forschung, Verffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fr Geschichte 130 (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).
18 INTRODUCTION

Hermann Lbbe,59 Niklas Luhmann,60 Josef Mooser,61 Kurt Nowak,62 Wolf-

gang Schieder,63 Helmut Walser Smith,64 and Jonathan Sperber.65
But the explanatory power of the supposedly twin and mutually reinforc-
ing processes of secularization and dechristianization handmaidens, in the
still-dominant historical orthodoxy, to the even more problematic concept of
modernization remains attractive even to many modern scholars.66 In such
an environment, religious history suffers from a comparative lack of attention.
Indeed, despite the contributions of newer historiography, Hartmut Lehmann
observes that [] we know much less about the influence, importance, and
varieties of Christianity in modern era than about many other developments
and structures which have played a role in the great intellectual, political, so-
cial, economic, legal, and cultural transformations of the western world since
the seventeenth century.67
Given that secularization and dechristianization are still widely accept-
ed and too seldom problematized tropes, many historians examine religion

59 Hermann Lbbe, Skularisierung. Geschichte eines ideenpolitischen Begriffs (Freiburg: K.

Alber, 1965).
60 Niklas Luhmann, Religious Dogmatics and the Evolution of Societies, Studies in Religion
and Society 9 (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1984).
61 Mooser, Frommes Volk und Patrioten.
62 Kurt Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland. Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft
vom Ende der Aufklrung bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995).
63 Wolfgang Schieder, Volksreligiositt in der modernen Sozialgeschichte (Gttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1986); idem and Alfred Kube, Skularisation und Mediatisierung. Die
Verusserung der Nationalgter im Rhein-Mosel-Departement 18031813, Forschungen zur
deutschen Sozialgeschichte 4 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1987).
64 Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology,
Politics, 18701914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and idem, Protestants,
Catholics.
65 Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Prince
ton University Press, 1984) and idem, Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and
the Revolution of 18481849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
66 Cf. David Blackbourns appraisal of this school of thought: Two parallel processes are
normally seen as having pushed religious faith to the sidelines. One was the scholarly
and scientific challenge to revealed religion. [] Nietzsche [] was referring to a broader
dechristianization of society. That is the second process usually discussed by historians
charting the decline of religion. Blackbourn, Nineteenth Century, p. 284.
67 [] wissen wir aber ber Einflu, Bedeutung sowie Varianten des Christlichen in der
Neuzeit viel weniger als ber viele andere Entwicklungen und Strukturen, die bei den
groen geistigen, politischen, sozialen, wirtschaftlichen, rechtlichen und kulturellen
Transformationen der westlichen Welt seit dem 17. Jahrhundert eine Rolle gespielt ha-
ben. Lehmann, Skularisierung, p. 10.
Introduction 19

primarily for its contribution to the world of ideas and intellect, rather than as
an animus pervading and actively shaping nearly every part of life (as Awak-
ened leaders sought to make it). In historical terms, however, the Awakening
was important precisely because it was not merely a caesura but a temporary
and localized reversal of the long wave of dechristianization in the modern
era. The notion of secularization is undoubtedly still valuable as a heuristic
device, but that device has sometimes led to the oversight of the local varia-
tions, contingent developments, and contradictory evidence. The Awakening
is a very large collection of such evidence against prevailing historical accounts
of secularization.68
Indeed, one might even argue, as David Blackbourn does, that the sharp
conflicts between, among, and within various religious groups, including the
Awakened, testifies to the continuing power of religion. Despite concessions to
the theories of secularization and dechristianization, he insists that,

[] arguments about a steady, linear decline of faith or church-going are

misleading. It is often overlooked that many champions of modern bibli-
cal scholarship or the claims of science remained committed Christians.
Much contemporary debate was not concerned with revealed religion
versus [emphasis in original, de] science, but turned on disputes within
particular communities the arguments between broadly liberal and
conservative-orthodox that characterized Protestantism, Catholicism,
and Judaism. This is a reminder that religion continued to play an abso-
lutely central role in German public debate.69

Other factors may also contribute to the relative neglect of the Awakening. The
era of the Awakenings first flowering in the German states falls into something
of a black hole in German history. Until recently, comparatively little attention
was given to the period between the Napoleonic era and the revolution of 1848,
unless to explain more fully events at either end of that temporal spectrum.
The attention that has been devoted to the era reveals one reason why that
may be the case. An orderly narrative is hindered by the messy reality that
nearly every part of the social, political, and religious order was changing at
once, i.e. a premodern world was becoming modern. This era witnessed halt-
ing, confused, and only partly successful attempts to recover from the disor-
ders of the Napoleonic era. Liberal reforms, the project of Restoration, and the

68 For an excellent collection of essays on the problematic nature of secularization, see

Lehman, Skularisierung.
69 Blackbourn, Nineteenth Century, p. 285.
20 INTRODUCTION

causes and consequences of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 form a tangled
skein of political development. The era witnesses major economic and social
changes, including the relative decline of the rural and agricultural sphere, the
rise of the bourgeoisie, and the still later rise of the Industrial Revolution. This
epoch saw numerous simultaneous and often partly contradictory changes in
the organization and practice of religion, including unions of Lutheran and
Reformed churches, liturgical reforms, and ecumenical and confessionalist
movements. The sum of all these changes not to mention others, such as the
revolutions in philosophy and theology make this historical thicket particu-
larly daunting to disentangle.
Another reason for the lack of attention given to the Awakening may have
to do with the nature of history as a discipline. History is still arguably a child
of the Enlightenment in the sense that it has a large and sophisticated array of
tools to examine the rational and rationalist motivations of historical actors.
The tools for analysing non-rational motivations, however, are limited. This
may disadvantage historians when the subject matter, in this case Awakened
religion, necessarily involves a phenomenology that historical reasoning may
have difficulty penetrating.
This shortcoming might in some cases lead to further complications in-
volving the interference of the historians worldview with his or her objective
judgement. James J. Sheehan, looking at a similar problem in the history of
popular Catholicism, has observed that

Regionally diverse, chronologically uneven, difficult to interpret and easy

to distort, the evolution of popular religion will probably remain obscure,
its precise character lost with the private feelings of men and women we
cannot bring back to life. In the face of these evidentiary problems, it
is not surprising that historians interpret the history of popular religion
along ideological lines: those who identify with the Enlightenment regret
the return of cults, pilgrimages, and popular superstitions, while those
who remain sympathetic to ultramontane Catholicism view these phe-
nomena as expressions of authentic belief and true community.70

Such difficulties have not hindered recent historians from analysing the Awak-
ening. Their interpretations of the movement, however, have differed greatly.
Sheehan stresses the continuities between the neo-Pietist Awakening and ear-
lier Pietism, observing that Pietism, [] continued to be important during

70 James J. Sheehan, German History, 17701866, Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1989), p. 560.
Introduction 21

the first half of the nineteenth century.71 He says that, By the 1830s, many
Pietists in Prussia and elsewhere had made common cause with the orthodox
establishment against the forces of rationalism and reform.72 Likewise, for
Blackbourn, The Protestant church was also broadly divided into orthodox
and liberal wings, although the situation was complicated by the different his-
torical traditions (Lutheran, Calvinist, Pietist) [].73
Thomas Nipperdey and Hans-Joachim Schoeps portray the neo-Pietist
Awakening as a creative, innovative force, one of the periodic flows to coun-
terbalance the ebbs in the historical tides of Christian religiosity. Nipperdey
asserts that

This movement [the combined forces of the neo-Pietist Awakened and

the reinvigorated orthodox, de] is by no means, as the supporter of mo-
dernity is inclined to say, simply a relic of the preceding epoch, a collec-
tion of traditional forces, of conservatives; it is first and foremost in the
sense of the 19th century thoroughly new (and in so far modern). It for-
mulated its understanding of the theme of religion, or, we would like to
say, the sense of life in an entirely new fashion and successfully inscribed
it on the eras agenda, enlivened religion anew, and gathered new sup-
porters for itself; it established new force.74

Any account of scholars contributions will necessarily not be exhaustive, but

even a short list of the most essential works of those modern researchers who
have given insightful and detailed accounts of the Awakenings importance
for the development of Protestant theology and ecclesiastical history would

71 Sheehan, German History, p. 561.

72 Sheehan, German History, p. 562.
73 Blackbourn, Nineteenth Century, p. 291.
74 Diese Bewegung ist keineswegs, wie der Anhnger der Modernitat zu meinen geneigt ist,
einfach ein Relikt der Vorzeit, eine Zusammenfassung der Traditionskrfte, der Konser-
vativen; sie ist im Sinne des 19. Jahrhunderts zunchst durchaus neu (und insofern auch
modern). Sie hat ihr Verstndnis der Themas Religion, wir mgen sagen,: vom Sinn des
Lebens, ganz neu formuliert und mit Erfolg auf die Tagesordnung der Zeit gesetzt, hat
Religion neu belebt, sich selbst neue Anhnger geschaffen; sie hat neue Macht etabliert.
Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 18001866. Brgerwelt und starker Staat, 6th ed.
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1993), p. 425. Nipperdeys direct analysis of religious forces (42340)
covers only slightly more pages than Sheehans. However, Nipperdey not only emphasizes
the novel contributions of the neo-Pietist orthodox fusion, but also gives greater weight
to religious factors in his analysis of other topics, such as social movements and politics.
22 INTRODUCTION

include Erich Beyreuther,75 Robert Bigler,76 Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach,77

Karl Kupisch,78 Gerhard Ruhbach,79 and Walter Wendland.80 Their work
helped to recover interest in a topic which had undeservedly fallen out of most
researchers consideration. Other outstanding contributions have come from
scholars who have written about individual Awakened leaders, illuminating
the movement through monographs. Hans-Christof Krauss masterly exposi-
tion of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, for example, convincingly demonstrates
the religious motivations of the Awakened leaders contribution to the tran-
sition of early modern to modern conservatism.81 Hans-Joachim Schoepss
treatment of Gerlach and various other figures, and his tireless publication of
the correspondence of many in his circle, are lasting contributions.82 David E.
Barclays acclaimed work on Frederick William iv has shown how that mon-
archs religious views informed his political project of constructing a Christian
kingdom around a throne guaranteed by Gods grace.83 Anneliese Krieges

75 His most relevant works include Erich Beyreuther, Die Erweckungsbewegung, eds. Kurt
Dieter Schmidt and Ernst Wolf, vol. 4, Part 1, Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte. Ein Handbuch
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977); idem, Geschichte des Pietismus (Stuttgart: J.F.
Steinkopf, 1978).
76 Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church
Elite in Prussia, 18151848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
77 See especially Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbewegung.
78 Karl Kupisch, Die Deutschen Landeskirchen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Bernd Moeller,
2nd ed., vol. 4, part R (2nd portion), Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte. Ein Handbuch (Gttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975).
79 See especially Ruhbach, Erweckungsbewegung, pp. 15974.
80 Walter Wendland, Siebenhundert Jahre Kirchengeschichte, ed. Fritz Behrend, vol. 3, Ber-
linische Forschungen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1930); idem, Studien zur Geschichte der
Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin (18101830), Jahrbuch fr Brandenburgische Kirchenge-
schichte 19 (1924), 577. See also Wolfgang Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Juden-
tum. ber religis begrndete Gegenstze und nationalreligise Ideen in der Geschichte des
deutschen Nationalismus, Verffentlichungen der Kommission fr Zeitgeschichte, Reihe
B, Forschungen 59 (Mainz: M.-Grnewald-Verlag, 1992).
81 Hans-Christoph Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. Politisches Denken und Handeln eines
preuischen Altkonservativen, 2 vols., Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei
der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 53 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1994). Unless otherwise mentioned, all references in this text are to vol. 1.
82 Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Aus den Jahren preuischer Not und Erneuerung. Tagebcher
und Briefe der Gebrder Gerlach und ihres Kreises 18051820 (Berlin: Haude & Spenersche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), idem, Die lutherische Hochorthodoxie Preussens und der
Katholizismus, Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 4/1 (1952).
83 David E. Barclay, Frederick William iv and the Prussian Monarchy, 18401861 (New York:
Clarendon, 1995).
Introduction 23

dissertation explicates the religious mission Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg pur-

sued as the editor of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.84 Johannes Bachmanns
adulatory biography of Hengstenberg,85 while polemically critical of his en-
emies, provides a wealth of information and reproduces large excerpts from
some important sources since lost or destroyed, as does Fritz Fischers work
on Bethmann-Hollweg.86 Friedrich Wiegand has recovered the beginnings of
the Awakening among aristocratic literary circles in Berlin.87 There are a few
excellent works in English which have delved into the political implications of
the Awakening as a whole. Christopher Clark has written thoughtfully about
the political causes and consequences of the movement, and he has examined
the Awakenings missionary activities.88 Koppel S. Pinson89 and Gerhard Kai-
ser90 have both argued that the high regard Lutherans and Pietists placed on
obedience to authorities helped create the cultural mentality which made the
criminal and genocidal Nazi regime possible.
The interconnected nature of Awakened political and religious views has
allowed me to integrate the individual strengths of such works into a single
project, adopting an interdisciplinary approach which elucidates how Awak-
ened theological, intellectual, ideological, and political positions influenced
one another. Because I have drawn on a wide range of materials to address a
complex subject, my analysis does more than explain specifically why and how
the Awakened proved able to reconcile the tensions between those positions
and to reenter the mainstream of Prussian society. My book also casts a degree
of light on the transformation of modern conservatism and on the modern,
arationalist approach adopted by Awakened conservatives.

84 Anneliese Kriege, Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung unter der Redaktion Ernst-
Wilhelm Hengstenbergs (vom 1. Juli 1827 bis zum 1. Juni 1869). Ein Beitrag zur Kirchenge-
schichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1958.
85 Johannes Bachmann, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Sein Leben und Wirken nach gedruck-
ten und ungedruckten Quellen, 3 vols. (Gtersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1876, 1880, 1892).
86 Fritz Fischer, Mortiz August von Bethmann-Hollweg und der Protestantismus (Religion,
Rechts- und Staatsgedanke), ed. Emil Ebering, Historische Studien, Heft 338 (Berlin: Verlag
von Dr. Emil Ebering, 1938).
87 Friedrich Wiegand, Der Verein Der Maikfer in Berlin, Deutsche Rundschau 160 (1914),
27991.
88 See esp. Clark, Politics of Revival, pp. 3160; idem, Politics of Conversion.
89 Koppel S. Pinson, Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New York: Octa-
gon, 1934 and 1968).
90 Gerhard Kaiser, Pietismus und Patrotismus im literarischen Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zum
Problem der Skularisation, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenum, 1973).
24 INTRODUCTION

Circumspection and Methodological Choices

Since every choice to include some subject matter necessarily means other
matter has been excluded, a brief word is in order about the rationale, and the
costs, of this choice to examine the role of elites in Prussia and especially in the
East Elbian provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania. I am tempted to make
the case very briefly, by bluntly stating the truism that in early 19th-century
Prussia elites still mattered, and they still mattered inordinately. This study fo-
cuses on elites because of their traditional role of leadership in Prussia; their
traditional role in relation to a movement (Pietism) with a large peasant base;
and their unique role as liminal figures in an era of rapidly changing sociopo-
litical order. But a somewhat fuller explanation of the focus on elites may be
helpful for the reader.
The unusual class structure of the Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomera-
nia helps to explain why this study focuses on the leaders of the Awakening
rather than the followers, and particularly on aristocrats. The Awakening in
those provinces occurred mainly among peasants, artisans, and aristocrats
that is, the old Pietist base. But the old Pietist base was also in transition and
was affected not only by traditional sources of upheaval, such as periodic
agrarian crises, but also by forces foreign to 17th- and 18th-century Pietism,
including the French Revolution and its resulting wars (during or shortly after
which many young aristocrats became Awakened, for example), which caused
wrenching social, economic, and political changes. There was some, but com-
paratively limited, middle-class participation in the revival. Aristocrats and
other educated (i.e. generally clerical and/or wealthy) Awakened left far more
sources for the historian than the poor and sometimes illiterate broad masses
of the Awakened in places such as Brandenburg and Pomerania.
But there are reasons other than poverty and illiteracy for why elites left
more records, of course. Aristocrats, clergy, and the wealthy more often per-
ceived that their involvement in public things mattered. They wrote to each
other and expressed their views in public in part because they were used to
exercising a degree of influence. The traditional sociopolitical order in Bran-
denburg and Pomerania had been challenged, but not destroyed. It is there-
fore not surprising that some of these elites viewed themselves as shapers of
public opinion (although they would not have called it that), and that many
in the lower classes deferred. The power of Awakened aristocratic families
was amplified by their clannish nature. Families such as the Gerlachs, the
Oertzens, the Belows, the Kleist-Retzows, and the Senfft von Pilsachs often
maintained frequent and intimate correspondence, and many such families
intermarried.
Introduction 25

This study also largely concentrates on a single generation the one that
came of age in the early 19th century. Their successful ability to transform
themselves from outsiders to insiders is indeed remarkable, and this book
highlights their efforts to attain power. When I speak of a generation of the
Awakened, I do not necessarily mean those born within a specified span of
years, but rather those whose conscious and reflective lives were defined by a
watershed change so important that the whole of their lives was often divided
into portions of before and after the change.91 That still leaves the problem
of defining the change, and that problem is complex. In a spiritual sense, the
Awakened regarded their awakening as a transformation akin to conversion,
and both they and some non-Awakened sometimes even used that term (usu-
ally Bekehrung) to refer to the process. While the process of Awakening could
unfold slowly, many Awakened had electrifying road to Damascus experi-
ences to relate, and the proliferation of these in Awakened literature helped
to define such rapid transformations as a (if not the) normative experience
of spiritual awakening. Such Awakenings were always particular to the indi-
vidual, and it is difficult to gauge how many Awakenings occurred at any one
time. Yet, contemporaries (and agents of the state church) noted an upswing in
these conversions in the years during and following the Napoleonic Wars. This
process was doubtless aided by the fact that at about the same time, an older,
Enlightened generation of leaders was dying off, whose rationalism so irked
many of those who were or became Awakened. Yet, the Awakening continued
to grow not only during and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars (espe-
ciallythe so-called Wars of Liberation),92 but also through (at least) the 1840s.

91 I am borrowing this notion from Robert Wohls work on the generation of 1914 in Robert
Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
92 On occasion in the text I use the term Wars of Liberation as a shorthand method to
refer to that subset of conflicts in the Napoleonic Wars involving (shifting) coalitions of
German states and non-German states after about 1813. My use of the term is intended as
a time-saving device rather than as an endorsement of the historically freighted connota-
tions of the term. Karen Hagemann aptly describes competing master narratives about
the 18131815 conflict. She writes that in the tradition typified by Heinrich von Treitschke
(from whom Hagemann draws the following quotes), the monarchic-conservative Prus-
sian narrative spoke of Wars of Liberation (Befreiungskriege) fought by subjects who
were monarchical to their very marrow, followed the kings call to resist, and were led by
his generals. In a second master narrative tradition of the liberal German-national inter-
pretation, historians such as Karl von Rotteck spoke of Wars of Liberty (Freiheitskriege)
conducted by the German people (primarily understood as the educated classes) as a
free, autonomous movement and a struggle for liberty against external and internal
forces. Finally, Marxists such as Engels viewed the wars of 18131815 as peoples [sic]
26 INTRODUCTION

Relying on aggregate numbers of individual awakenings, therefore, would

seem to make it difficult to devise an unproblematic definition of a generation
of Awakened leaders.
Finally, a word should be said about the fact that this work concentrates on
those who were in more than one sense men of affairs. Awakened women who
left copious records about politics seem to have been comparatively scarce,
even among the elites. Notable exceptions might include Queen Louise, wife
to Frederick William iii, or perhaps Julie von Massow, whose literary talents
turned to religious themes. Baroness Julie von Krdener, a celebrity novelist
turned mystic-prophet who both served as the center of a salon andhelped
link evangelical circles in Switzerland with those in southwest Germany
(above all those surrounding Jung-Stilling with those in southwest Germany)
and in northeastern France (particularly those surrounding Frdric Oberlin
and Jean-Frdrick Fontaines), might be another.93 Yet, however admirable
such exceptional women were, they were even more unrepresentative of the
general population (especially Massow, who later converted to Catholicism)
than the disproportionately elite men surveyed here.
That is not to say that women were less involved in the Awakening, or in the
church more broadly. Rather, German urban Protestant women were general-
ly more involved than men in church life.94 Womens leadership could even be
acknowledged institutionally by the church. The Awakened Theodor Fliedner
formulated an Appeal of the charitable Deaconesses Institute at Kaiserswerth
(part of todays Dsseldorf) in 1853, commemorating the moment when the
deaconess office was reintroduced to our Evangelical Church in 1836 in such a
way that it was clearly authorized by the Provincial Synods of the Rhine Prov-
ince and Westphalia and by our other highest church authorities.95 Similarly,
the minister Friedrich von Bodelschwingh in 1900 created a pledge for deacon-
esses in the Bethel institutions (near Bielefeld) for the mentally challenged.96
Yet, I have so far found comparatively little that sheds light on the con-
nection for large numbers of women between their religious views and the
realm of high politics, which is the main focus of this book. (Naturally, the

wars, involving the active, autonomous conduct of the popular masses, including the
urban and rural poor. Karen Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars against Napoleon: His-
tory, Culture and Memory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 15.
93 Vick, Congress of Vienna, pp. 14243.
94 Hugh McLeod, Religion and the Peoples of Western Europe, 17891989 (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1981 and 1997), p. 101.
95 Reproduced and translated by Crowner and Christianson, Spirituality, pp. 19495.
96 Crowner and Christianson, Spirituality, p. 384.
Introduction 27

mind turns to grant applications for a future research project.) Womens com-
parative structural disadvantages in access to education, in control of wealth,
and, for some (though one suspects for few), in their self-conception as fig-
ures with a public role to play, may have contributed to the relative paucity of
such female sources. But perhaps those factors impact is too easily exagger-
ated. Recent scholarship on womens voluntary associations in northern Ger-
man states reveals how forceful and successful womens leadership could be.
Certainly, the neat line that some wished to draw between male and female
spheres was a good deal less neat in practice. For example, in examining the
impact of war, conquest by France, and integration into the Continental Sys-
tem in Hamburg, Katherine B. Aaslestad found that [t]he citys residents, men
and women alike, underwent an intense militarization and mobilization for
war in 1813.97 In her examination of the Battle of Leipzig, Karen Hagemann
documented the disturbing blurring of the partially gendered line between
soldier and civilian, that [f]amily networks were also important for survival
as numerous women were left without the support of a partner and thus more
in need of assistance from their families.98 Partly counterbalancing such de-
creased agency for women, however, was the flourishing of womens voluntary
organizations. Hagemann also observed that [t]he patriotic womens associa-
tions of the wars of 18131815 and their successor organizations continued in
a new institutional form to perform a large portion of the work soldiers wives
[]. Therefore, [t]he work of patriotic womens associations was largely per-
formed by aristocratic and bourgeois women.99

97 Katherine B. Aaslestad, War without Battles: Civilian Experiences of Economic Warfare

during the Napoleonic Era in Hamburg, in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences
and Perceptions of the Napoleonic Wars, 17901820, eds. Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann,
and Jane Rendall, War, Culture and Society, 17501850 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2009), p. 131.
98 Karen Hagemann, Unimaginable Horror and Misery: The Battle of Leipzig in October
1813 in Civilian Experience and Perception, in Forrest et al., eds., Soldiers, Citizens and
Civilians, p. 174.
99 Karen Hagemann, Military, War and the Mainstreams: Gendering Modern German Mili-
tary History, in Gendering Modern German History: Re-Writing Historiography, eds. Karen
Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert (New York: Berghahn, 2007), p. 69. As Hagemann notes,
her findings in this respect are consonant with those of Jean Quataert, Staging Philan-
thropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 18131916 (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001), and Dirk Reder, Frauenbewegung und Nation. Patrio-
tische Frauenvereine in Deutschland im frhen 19. Jahrhundert (18131830), Klner Beitrge
zur Nationsforschung 4 (Cologne: SH-Verlag, 1998).
28 INTRODUCTION

Another possible reason for the predominance of elite male sources is as-
sociated with occupation and churchgoing patterns in the German lands.
Many of the Awakened men in this book first came to prominence through
their success in professions, such as lawyers, jurists, politicians, clergy, and the
military, which were not open to women. And very broadly speaking, rural
populations were more likely to attend church than those in cities, and Hugh
McLeod found that there seemed to be a clear contrast between the secular-
ization of the cities and the piety of many peasant populations.100 At the same
time, although the mainstay of most city parishes seems to have been the lit-
tle men (die kleinen Leute): self-employed craftsmen, minor officials, clerks,
it still must be noted that aristocrats, higher officials, and the lower middle
class were much more church-oriented, even in urban German areas.101 The
socioeconomic classes among whom churchgoing best persisted mirrored the
socioeconomic composition of the Awakened, skewed toward the rural and
economically disadvantaged as well as toward church and political elites ev-
erywhere, and skewed somewhat away from the middle classes. With perhaps
the partial exception of those at the elite end of the spectrum, it is not clear
that men in the Awakened demographic welcomed the sustained engagement
of women in the realm of high politics. Awakened women who wished to leave
a record of such engagement would have had to overcome, like men, the initial
quietism of the movement, and, unlike men, social prejudice as well. This is
not to say Awakened women were passive. It is to say that Awakened women
would have had to have overcome powerful forces shaping public views about
the supposedly proper roles of women. Citing the Tageblatt fr Geschichte in
1815 and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Karen Hagemann eloquently describes some
of those forces in the post-Napoleonic Prussia:

Within the nation, the manly German national character was, further-
more, counterposed to the complementary model of a middle-class
female national character. The topical literature stylized the essential
characteristics of German women as solicitousness and charitableness,
domesticity, gracefulness, simplicity, depth of soul and piety, as well as
chastity and morality.102

Indeed, Hagemann finds that contemporaries valued as important the work

of women in building the nation through gendered labor, noting that [t]heir

100 McLeod, Religion, p. 102.

101 McLeod, Religion, p. 101.
102 Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars, p. 109.
Introduction 29

task was perform their duties as spouses, housewives and mothers in a manner
consistent with the honor, manners and culture of the German nation. Do-
mesticity was henceforth elevated to the foremost patriotic female duty of
German women.103 The Awakened women of Brandenburg and Pomerania,
or perhaps the northern German lands more broadly, thus seem to have had
a great deal in common with those female serious Christians that Leonore
Davidoff and Catherine Hall104 have analysed in the English middle class, who
idealized the domestic sphere and withdrew into it when economic circum-
stances allowed them to. The emerging cult of domesticity and the gendering
of spheres constituted additional hurdles to Awakened women who may have
wished to shape public discourse on the intersection of politics and religion.

Agony and Ecstasy in Prussias Heartland

The Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania shared many obvious charac-

teristics with earlier Pietist revivals and with the Awakening in other German
areas. Like Pietism, Prussias neo-Pietist Protestant Awakening was a largely
ecumenical movement which emphasized the authority of the Bible, the sin-
fulness of mankind, and the importance of the direct, personal experience of
Gods grace and redemption. Awakened Protestants in Prussia recognized as
their spiritual forebears the early church, the early Reformers (particularly
Luther and Calvin, depending on their degree of ecumenism and denomina-
tional affiliation), and the Lutheran Pietists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Like
the Pietists, who had stressed the value of private reflection and works of pi-
ety, the Awakened yearned for a practice of Christianity livelier than mere as-
sent to dogmas.105 They strove to awaken themselves and others from spiritual

103 Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars, p. 111. Here, she cites Betty Gleim, Was hat das wie-
dergeborene Deutschland von seinen Frauen zu fordern? Beantwortet durch eine Deutsche
(Bremen, 1814), pp. 1819.
104 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
Middle Class, 17801850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
105 The Awakening shared an aesthetic affinity with the literary movement of Storm and Stress
(Sturm und Drang) and with Romanticism, its more secular co-heir to the Pietist heritage
of interiority and subjectivity. The fact that many of the more intellectual Awakened ex-
amined in this book had eagerly read Storm and Stress poetry in their youth demonstrates
that there was a certain amount of overlap between the two. Like some Romantics, many
of the Awakened also developed a degree of nostalgia for the Middle Ages and expressed a
melancholic lament for the world lost in Prussias passage to modernity. Walter H. Conser
30 INTRODUCTION

slumber to a more rewarding, meditative, and vivacious faith. Like the earlier
Prussian Pietists, the Awakened were spread throughout the kingdom, but es-
pecially heavily concentrated in rural areas and in the small towns of Prussias
central and eastern provinces.
There were, however, significant differences between the Pietism and the
Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania.106 The Awakening differed in the-
ology by prefacing the old Pietist message of Gods grace and salvation with an
even stronger emphasis on the deadly power of sin and mankinds consequent
need for redemption. In terms of social composition, the Awakening augment-
ed Pietisms constituency of peasants, artisans, and lower-middle-class adher-
ents with an upper layer of aristocrats. Finally, while Pietism had advanced no
political program of its own, some of the aristocrats, clergy, and other leaders
of the Awakening eventually renounced their earlier eschewing of politics to
combat the forces of political and theological liberalism which they saw in
many cases literally as the tools of Satan.107 Since the rhetoric of their op-
ponents matched those of the Awakened in ferocity and implacable condem-
nation, the most dangerous place in early 19th-century Prussia was between
the immovable convictions of the Awakened and the (ultimately) irresistible
forces of liberalism.
The Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania also had many features
in common with the Awakening in other German-speaking areas. Like the
movement elsewhere, the Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania cre-
ated a community of like-believing individuals who combined the orthodox
Lutheran or Reformed theology (depending on denominational background)
with an intense individual piety characterized by emotion, subjectivity, intro-
spection, and charitable activities. The mainstream of these Awakened were

finds that [] romanticisms convergence with the Erweckungsbewegung [] set off this
latter movement from its earlier counterpart [of Pietism, de]. Conser, Church, p. 28.
106 A debate exists on the degree on continuity of Pietist influence. Rather than overem-
phasizing the differences between the Awakening and Pietism, however, one should see
both as specific manifestations of the recurrent desire to reform or revive a received tra-
dition and set of religious beliefs and practices. For a fuller discussion of the differences
and similarities between Pietism and the Awakening, see Kantzenbach, Erweckungsbe-
wegung; Clark, Politics of Revival, pp. 3160; and Lehmann, Pietism and Nationalism,
pp.3953.
107 Pietism may well have had important political implications, such as fostering the charac-
teristics frequently attributed to Prussians orderliness, punctuality, cleanliness, obedi-
ence to authorities, etc. Perhaps reflecting the nature of their age as much as the direction
of their movement, however, Pietist leaders did not advocate specific political stances or
a general political philosophy, as some Awakened leaders came to do.
Introduction 31

broadly ecumenical, often in strong tension with a state church they viewed
as too rationalistic. They often met in small circles outside of church for pious
reading, singing, and mutual edification. And the Awakened in Brandenburg
and Pomerania created the same kind of new identities, seeking to link new
groups across class, confession,108 geography, and even time.
Yet, the differences between the Awakening in East Elbian Prussia and else-
where were perhaps greater than the differences between other regions. These
differences reveal that the Awakening in Prussia served as an important ele-
ment in the transition between the premodern and modern worlds. To a great-
er degree than in other German regions, it was not only religious leaders but
nobles who served as a focal point for the Awakening in East Elbian Prussia.
These aristocrats were often able to gain access to the court by virtue of their
rank or personal ties, and after 1830 Awakened lay and clerical leaders were
more vocal and political than in many other regions.
These mostly conservative Awakened leaders109 helped establish newspapers
that were widely read even beyond Prussias borders, notably the political Neue
Preuische Zeitung, or Kreuzzeitung, and the religious Evangelische Kirchen
zeitung, edited by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (18021869). The former
became the de facto leading newspaper for conservatives, the latter for many
Awakened and others. Many of the same Awakened leaders who helped found
these publications also spoke out against the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.
Issues related to church-state relations also made the Prussian Awak-
ening unique. Not uniquely but arguably usually, both Frederick William
iii (reigned 17971840) and Frederick William iv (reigned 18401858/61)
took a deeply personal as well as political interest in issues of the church
and religion. Under Frederick William iv, leaders of the Awakening rose
to attain positions of great power and influence. The fact that Frederick
William iii forced the merger of Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia
into a Union church, begun in 1817 and accompanied by liturgical reforms,
made the merger an even more complex and controversial issue than in
most other states, where such unions sometimes voluntarily occurred.
This merger, in turn, made it unclear whether the episcopal or presbyte-
rial form of church government would prevail. Moreover, unlike many other

108 Eager to protect their confessional heritage and chafing under the heavy-handed coercion
of the Prussian state, however, an Awakened group called the Old Lutherans eventually
broke with the state church. The Awakened mainstream stayed in the state church and
retained its ecumenical, irenic character.
109 Cf. Robert Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative
Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
32 INTRODUCTION

states, in East Elbian Prussia, the Awakening involved large numbers of both
ecumenical Awakened and the Old Lutherans. Finally, two additional Prussian
religious conflicts occupied the attention of many other German states: the
massive pamphlet war between the Awakened and rationalists in Halle in the
early 1830s, and a contest between the Prussian state and the Catholic church
that began in Cologne but spread to much of Prussia.
The Prussian combination of political conservatism with orthodox (and
sometimes explicitly confessional) theology was not without precedent be-
fore the French Revolution. But there were radically modern elements, which
this book will highlight, in the Awakened appeal to religious truths essentially
verified through experience rather than reason, the use of mass (and often lay-
led) religious meetings, the publication of newspapers with large circulations,
and a form of reasoning that mixed subjective elements in with the suppos-
edly objective reasoning of the Enlightenment. As I will attempt to show, the
fact that aristocrats did so much to advance the Awakened cause is rich in
irony. These leaders helped to shape, after the revolution of 1848, a powerful
state that undermined that very world from which their titles and power were
derived. By reformulating the conservative values drawn from an estate-based
order in a largely liberal vocabulary that appealed to the individual, they de-
stroyed the basis of the old order more effectively than their opponents could
have.
Geography thrust on the Awakened of Brandenburg and Pomerania one
feature that distinguished them from many of the Awakened elsewhere.
To put it bluntly, the Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania mattered
greatly because it occurred in the heartland of a state that mattered more than
any other German state (except Austria). Prussias demographic, economic,
and political size meant that the Prussian Awakening occurred on a stage
which other Germans were more likely to observe. The fact that leading ac-
tors on the Prussian stage claimed to be Awakened including King Frederick
William iv and Otto von Bismarck (18151898) further strengthens this claim.
Likewise, the noble status of Awakened leaders, so unusually prominent in
Brandenburg and Pomerania, gave the movement valuable access to the court
and the kings ear.
Finally, one should note that there were differences in the ways that the
Awakening unfolded in Brandenburg and in Pomerania. One important dif-
ference was that Pomerania appears to have ultimately produced more people
who eventually left the mainstream of the ecumenical Awakening and have
become Old Lutherans. A second important difference was that Pomerania
also had more documented cases of conventicles attended by large numbers
of people, sometimes on the protected estate of a noble. As we have already
Introduction 33

seen in Moosers account of the Awakening in eastern Westphalia,110 conven-

ticles were the often emotionally charged, para-church assemblies in which
the Awakenings broad masses of peasants and artisans met. The size of con-
venticles ranged from a handful to hundreds of people, and the activities there
often breached the narrow range of activities allowed to lay people.
It is not clear why Pomerania was even more likely than Brandenburg to
have large gatherings of the Awakened in which aristocrats and the lower
classes of the Awakened mingled. Numerous factors might account for this
difference. The traditional patrimonial order may have remained more intact
in Pomerania, offering greater protection to the many conventicles held on
nobles estates.111 Aristocrats in Berlin or in the Brandenburg countryside may
have been more likely to view themselves as too sophisticated for such trans-
class meetings. Brandenburg and Berlin officials of the police and state church
may have been more effective at deterring conventicles. Very likely the Awak-
ening attracted more adherents in Pomerania. But because the files for Berlin
sustained heavy losses in World War ii, these claims are difficult to prove, and
their opposites might even be true. Perhaps the relative lack of such reports
indicates that leaders of mass conventicles in Pomerania were less successful
at allaying the fears of those officials, or at burying their reports than leaders
of such conventicles in Brandenburg and Berlin. Still, the first set of claims is
probably more plausible because Berlin, Prussias capital, likely radiated its so-
phisticated influence (and the governments power) more effectively into the
surrounding countryside of Brandenburg than into more distant Pomerania.
Despite (or perhaps because of) their ability to use shared religious views to
establish unconventional links between aristocrats and the lower classes, the
Awakened in East Elbian Prussia initially offered something to offend nearly
all of Prussias religious, political, and social leaders.112 Conventicles seemed
particularly threatening to many of Prussias leaders. Having just defeated the

110 Mooser, Frommes Volk und Patrioten, p. 16ff.

111 For the history of patrimonial courts in Prussia, see Monika Wienfort, Patrimonialgerichte
in Preussen. Lndliche Gesellschaft Und brgerliches Recht 17701848/49, Kritische Studien
zur Geschichtswissenschaft (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
112 Awakened identity, combining both a certain clannishness and dracin international
flavor, made it suspect to some Europeans for the same reasons that Hanna Arendt has
described as contributing towards later anti-Semitism in Europe. In Arendts analysis,
these characteristics proved unpopular partially because they represented the unsettling
effects of modernity. Ironically, however, it was the forces of modernity, such as rational-
izing state bureaucrats, Hegelians, liberals, etc., who most objected to the Awakening.
Perhaps the reason for this difference is that unlike Judaism, but like the Catholicism
much despised by some traditionalist Protestants, the Awakening had an aggressive
34 INTRODUCTION

French, government officials worried that the conventicles might turn excit-
able folk from the lower classes into Prussian sans-culottes. Clergymen fret-
ted that the conventicles might lead to the formation of a church within a
church.113 Awakened conventicles might undermine the episcopal hierarchy
of the Lutheran church. No longer overseen by clerical control, those who con-
sidered themselves to be Awakened (erweckt, or, less commonly, erwecklich)
might provoke a schism or slide into heresy. State bureaucrats feared that if the
Awakened undermined the church, the state (as the churchs protector) might
suffer along with it. Non-Awakened nobles dismissed Awakened aristocrats as
perfumed Pietists.114
The Awakenings neo-Pietist theology brought the movement into conflict
with influential rationalists among theologians and the ecclesiastical hierar-
chy. The Awakened scorned rationalist attempts to de-emphasize or even re-
ject those parts of the biblical account, such as miracles, which Enlightened
reason held to be impossible. Awakeners made a nuisance of themselves by
condemning such views and the influential bishops who articulated them
loudly and publicly. The Awakenings emotive, arational115 tone was at odds
with the aesthetic senses of traditional North German Protestantism, the bour-
geois middle class, and Enlightened public opinion. In short, in an era of politi-
cal, social, and religious upheaval in Prussia, many of Prussias elites regarded
the Awakening as yet another potentially destabilizing force.
Yet the Awakened did not remain a movement of pariahs forever. From
the 1830s to the 1850s they played pivotal roles in the reshaping of Prussias

proselytizing element. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Har-
court, Brace & World, 1966).
113 Count Zinzendorf, a leader of the Moravian Brethren, a group influenced by Pietism
which sought accommodation within the Lutheran church, had spoken approvingly of
the idea of an ecclesiola in ecclesia (a small church within the church) in the 18th century.
For most Prussian state bureaucrats and state church officials, the phrase had strongly
negative connotations, encompassing everything from unjustified criticism of the church
to schismatic tendencies.
114 This phrase comes from Arnold Ruge in the Hallesche Jahrbcher. Cited in Clark, Politics
of Revival, p. 54.
115 I have chosen to use the term arational to distinguish part of the Awakened worldview
from the modern, Enlightened conception of autonomous reason. The Awakened were
not non-rational, for they considered reason to be a gift of God. Like Luther, they dis-
trusted reason as the arbiter of truth, since reason was for them but a faculty exercised by
fallible humans and tainted by the Fall. For the Awakened, the divine truth of revelation
was reasonable, i.e. comprehensible to the mind, but reason reliably only justifies and ex-
plicates such truth after the fact. This supernaturalist stance obviously put them at odds
with the spirit of modernity.
Introduction 35

sociopolitical order and its religious life. They included the four sons of the
powerful Gerlach family: Leopold (17901861), indispensable advisor to Fred-
erick William iv; Wilhelm, cofounder of the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt
(born 1789); Otto (18011849), a Court Pastor (Hofprediger) and cofounder of
the Internal Mission;116 and Ernst Ludwig (17951877), who together with the
likewise Awakened Friedrich Julius Stahl (18021861) was a leading jurist, arch-
conservative politician, and cofounder of the Kreuzzeitung.117 Their numbers
further extended to Ernst Senfft von Pilsach (17951882), Chief President (Ober-
prsident) of Pomerania; Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg (17951877),
cofounder of the Conservative Party, honorary president of the Internal Mis-
sion (Innere Mission), and Minister for Religious Affairs (Kultusminister) from
1858 to 1862; Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (18021869), contentious editor of
the Awakened Evangelische Kirchenzeitung; Friedrich August Gottreu Tho-
luck (17991877), the most important Awakened theologian; Daniel Amadeus
Gottlieb Neander (17751869), a well-respected church historian; and Johann
Gottfried Scheibel (17831843), the leader of the breakaway Old Lutherans.118
King Frederick William iv had Awakened sensibilities,119 and even Bismarck
married into a prominent Pomeranian Awakened family and claimed to have
had his own religious awakening on a Pomeranian estate.120

116 The Internal Mission was a charitable religious organization established to minister to the
social and spiritual needs of the people within Germany just as other mission organiza-
tions ministered to those outside the home country. As such, the Internal Mission both
continued the Pietist (and Awakened) impulse toward social and evangelical outreach,
and also represented a first, if inadequate response to the social question (die soziale
Frage) forced on Prussia by the negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
117 Officially known as the Neue Preuische Zeitung, the Kreuzzeitung took its more popular
name from the logo prominently displayed on its cover page, a Prussian military cross
with the legend For God and the Fatherland (Fr Gott und Vaterland). Typically for the
many conservatives and Awakened, the symbol, suggested by Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
suggested both values which were at once universally Christian and specifically Prussian.
Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 411.
118 See Johannes Bachmann, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Sein Leben und Wirken nach ge-
druckten und ungedruckten Quellen, vol. 2, (Gtersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1880), pp. 74 and
76, and the Plan zu einer neuen evangelischen Zeitschrift und Kirchenzeitung, repro-
duced in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, Beilage I 2b and 3, pp. 713.
119 On the importance of Frederick Williams religion, see also Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Der
Erweckungschrist auf dem Thron. Friedrich Wilhelm iv, in Der verkannte Monarch. Fried-
rich Wilhelm iv. In seiner Zeit, eds. Julius H. Schoeps, Peter Krger, and Irene Diekmann,
Brandenburgische Historische Studien (Potsdam: Verlag fr Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997).
120 For an account of the consequences of Bismarcks purported conversion during his
courtship of Johanna von Puttkamer, and especially the influence of Marie von Thadden
36 INTRODUCTION

Already as Crown Prince, Frederick William iv had displayed obvious sym-

pathy for the Awakened; after he became king in 1840, the Awakened exer-
cised an influence on government out of proportion to their numbers. Some
Awakened churchmen had risen by the 1840s to become leaders of provincial
consistories of the state church. Especially after the failed liberal revolution
of 1848 the king appointed several Awakened aristocrats to high posts, such
as Interior Minister, Minister for Church Affairs (Kultusminister), and General-
Adjutant. In the months immediately after the revolution, Awakened figures
dominated the Camarilla, the coterie of conservative figures who according
to liberals dominated the king. The Kreuzzeitung, heavily influenced by Awak-
ened staff members, was the only paper the king read daily. One must be care-
ful not to read too much into the mere presence of Awakened figures near the
king, for Frederick William iv had a reputation for listening to everyones ad-
vice before deciding on a policy of undaunted vacillation. Yet, much of the
public perceived that the Awakened, and particularly the Kreuzzeitung, influ-
enced the government, and that mere perception lent them a certain amount
of power even as it created enemies. Otto von Manteuffel, the Interior Minister,
observed in 1856 that anti-liberal measures could lead people at home and
abroad to identify the government with one newspaper [the Kreuzzeitung],
whose unabashed tendency to replace the Prussian monarchy by the grace of
God by a government of Junkers and Pietists has gathered on itself all the scorn
and hatred of the nation.121 Even after many of the Awakened fell from power,
eventually displaced by their former protg Bismarck, Awakened individuals
continued to play an important role. Awakened aristocrats, such as Schlieffen
and the elder Moltke, had access to generals and emperors alike.
Given their ready access to power in the 1840s and 1850s, it may at first seem
surprising that many of Prussias leaders began their political lives with views
in opposition to Prussias power complex. But the truth is that some of the

and the Awakened circle of Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff, see Lothar Gall, Bismarck: The
White Revolutionary, trans. J.A. Underwood, 2 vols., vol. 1: 18511871 (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1986), pp. 2334. Gall himself questions the authenticity of the conversion but
still concludes that from this point on belief in a personal God and in immortality were
unquestionably among the basic components of his whole existence (p. 27), even if this
was Hegel in Christian guise; this was the agent of the World Spirit (p. 28). For an ap-
praisal of Bismarcks later efforts to reconcile his faith with the hard decisions of political
life, see Gordon A. Craig and Alexander George, The Christian Statesman: Bismarck and
Gladstone, in Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983).
121 Translated and cited in Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of
the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 196), p. 55.
Introduction 37

most important leaders of Prussias reaction against liberal and democratic

forces in the great Revolution of 1848 had their own dodgy pasts as religious
dissidents. Some, such as Pomeranian Chief President Senfft von Pilsach, had
endured considerable police harassment and fines. Closer inspection of the
political views of Awakened leaders belies the understandable generalizations
of older liberal histories that Prussian elites favored centralization of power in
the throne and bureaucracy as the only viable alternative to liberalism. Many
of Frederick William ivs closest Awakened friends, confidants, and advisors,
and not a few of the supposedly dirigiste, reactionary politicians, fought not to
extinguish liberty, but rather for what they saw as a superior path to achieve
it.122 Men such as Leopold von Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Ernst Senfft
von Pilsach, and Friedrich Julius Stahl once figured prominently in scholarly
literature as destroyers of liberty.123 The fact that Otto von Bismarck emerged
from their ranks seemed to strengthen this interpretation.
Yet, quite aside from the fact that Bismarck ultimately betrayed the prin-
ciples of his one-time mentors, recent scholarship on 19th-century Prussia has
stressed that some political conservatives around mid-century perceived the

122 This distinction rests on shifts in the definition of freedom itself. Older Christian teach-
ing, which Awakened political leaders endorsed, considered freedom to lie in obedience
to what was right, in submission to divinely ordained order. Growing out of (initially)
oppositional status, modern Enlightened and classical liberal views increasingly defined
freedom and liberty as meaning autonomy of the individual from rather than submission
to any externally derived or imposed concept of order. Reinhart Koselleck offers a still-
fascinating analysis of the philosophical and historical consequences of the liberal chal-
lenge to the Hobbesian solution of the war of all against all in Reinhart Koselleck, Critique
and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, 1st mit ed. (Cambridge,
Mass.: mit Press, 1988). Koselleck argues that by replacing the Hobbesian/absolutist para-
digm that might guarantees political right with the liberal paradigm that what is rational
should determine what is politically right, the Enlightenment and liberalism reopened
the possibility of a Hobbesian war of all against all, since this claim was essentially a
moral one and while conceptions of morality would differ and morality, unlike politics,
knows no compromise. Curiously, the Awakening paralleled the challenge of modern
liberalism by advocating that social and political order be based not on might, but on
divinely ordained institutions. Like morality, conceptions of what was divinely ordained
differed and excited anything but the spirit of compromise. While the Awakened were
in general profoundly non-violent, to at least some of its adherents, the older Christian
concept did imply the right to violent resistance. It was the intellectual heirs of this older
view (who were in many cases the spiritual and in some ways the physical descendants of
the Awakened) who attempted to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, and who had nebulous
plans for establishing a German-Christian state to replace the Nazi one.
123 Cf. Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism.
38 INTRODUCTION

centralization of royal or bureaucratic power to be as much a threat as liberalism

or democracy.124 The old dichotomy between liberals and conservatives has
begun to yield to a differentiated and initially fluid ideological spectrum.
In this more complex picture, it has emerged that Awakened political leaders
and their likeminded compatriots did not always go hand-in-glove with
centralizers like Manteuffel, but sometimes kicking and screaming, and some-
times not at all.
But if the false dichotomy of liberal/conservative has finally begun to dis-
solve, scholarly analyses still frequently treat secular and religious develop-
ments as though they took place in two hermetically sealed containers. While
such approaches fit nicely into a certain self-understanding of modernity, they
neglect important aspects of early modern Europe (and arguably the mod-
ern world in general). In early 19th-century Prussia, a dynamic existed which
forced together the sacred and the profane. Liberals, some of them avowedly
secular or suspected of heterodox religious beliefs, began to agitate for great-
er political power over a state which served as a protector and administrator
of the churches. Many Awakened leaders, viewing these efforts and the rise
of rationalist critiques of the Bible as unwarranted worldly incursions onto
their religious turf, responded in a similar political manner. They attacked the
principles of rationalism, criticized state patronage of rationalist theologians,
and smeared theological and political liberals as French-style revolutionaries.
Various political factions within the state, of course, sought to cooperate with,
exploit, or punish potential allies and foes in liberal and Awakened camps,
among others.
In other words, a cynical observer in Prussia might have answered Tertul-
lians famous rhetorical question of what Jerusalem had to do with Athens by
replying that they both had become competitors in the battle for Rome. The
Awakening would thus bring about important changes in relations between
church and state on the one hand, and state and the emerging civil society
on the other. I would suggest that these changes, while vital for understand-
ing Prussian history, also have implications far beyond central European his-
tory, for it uses the battle between the Awakened and their opponents to throw
some light onto this eras grand contest for the heart, mind, and if not the soul,
then at least the spirit of the post-Enlightenment era.

124 Cf. Barclay, Frederick William iv; Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach; and Frank-Lothar Kroll,
Friedrich Wilhelm iv. und das Staatsdenken der deutschen Romantik, Einzelverffentli
chungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, Forschungen zur preuischen
Geschichte 72 (Berlin: Colloquim, 1990).
Introduction 39

Precisely because it is enmeshed in a web of contemporaneous develop-

ments, the Awakening cannot easily be categorized. In terms of theology, the
Awakening neither embraced the dominant school of rationalist theology,
nor, as we have seen, did it simply continue the faith of Pietism. In terms of
politics, Awakened leaders opposed royal absolutism and the growing power
of bureaucrats as revolution from above, but they also condemned liberalism
and democracy as Jacobin revolutions from below. They instead crafted their
own brand of conservatism, a proto-Tocquevillean defense of aristocracy but-
tressed with the imperative of Christian piety and the elevation of the indi-
vidual over his estate. Awakeners managed to maneuver the movement from
semi-oppositional status to being a movement welcomed by many of the high-
est figures in the bureaucratic, political, and social circles which had previ-
ously opposed it.125 Awakened leaders endorsed a notion of organic law similar
to Edmund Burkes, championed the traditional rights of the provinces against
royal and bureaucratic power, idealized the Holy Alliance as a step towards
recreating Christendom, and promoted provincial and Prussian identity over
the pan-German nationalism of bourgeois liberals.

Tying Together Politics and Religion

What ties all these remarkable features together is the Awakenings ability to
reconcile its egalitarian theology with an increasingly rigid social and politi-
cal hierarchy. Exactly why and how the Awakened were able to do that, and
to persuade themselves that they still possessed a consistent worldview, are
the main analytical concerns of this book. This study explains that the ability
of the Awakened to defuse the tension between hierarchy and equality owes
much to the lasting power of Luthers theology of the Two Kingdoms.126
Offering a radicalized version of St. Augustines teachings on the City of God
and City of Man, Luther had told true Christians that they already possessed
citizenship in the perfect and spiritual Kingdom of God, but that they should
render obedience to the Kingdom of Man they were forced to live in by virtue

125 In my terminology, Awakeners and the Awakened comprise the same group. Because
the movement retained the Reformations belief in the priesthood of all believers and
evidenced a strong tendency to proselytize, it makes little sense in this context to draw a
distinction between an elite group of Awakeners and their passive Awakened followers.
126 See Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, trans. W.A. Lambert, revised by Harold
J. Grimm in Harold J. Grimm, ed., Luthers Works, American Edition, vol. 31 (Philadelphia:
Muhlenberg Press, 1957), pp. 32777.
40 INTRODUCTION

of their life on earth. The Kingdom of Man was doomed to fall short of perfec-
tion, since it relied on humans, whose only infallible characteristic was their
predisposition to sin and fail. Yet, Luthers exhortation for Christians to obey
secular authorities enabled his followers to live with the terrible contradiction
of owing loyalties to two separate kingdoms with widely varying conditions
and aims.
Luther had explained to Christians that through Gods grace they had be-
come literally new spiritual creatures, and they were therefore ultimately
subject to no laws or authority whatsoever but to the Law of Christ, meaning,
in this case the law of love or caritas. However, although Luthers Christians
had become conjoined with the invisible body of Christ, which had become
their true and ultimate calling, they still lived among their unjustified and
unredeemed colleagues, and remained enmeshed in unredeemed patterns of
mutual obligation with them.127 Luther had taught that Christians subject to
no human laws should nevertheless obey them for the sake of maintaining a
stable order for the vast majority of the unredeemed around them. His solu-
tion to the problem of how Christians should live in the world if they were no
longer part of it inaugurated a strong paradoxical and perhaps ironic way of
relating to the world shared by the neo-Pietist Awakened.
Yet, the repeated insistence of Luther and the Awakened that Christians had
become new spiritual creations entailed certain difficulties in the social repro-
duction of the true members of the body of Christ. Unlike natural or traditional
religions, mere acquiescence to or passive acceptance of religious tradition did
not suffice. Especially for the Awakened, spiritual rebirth implied experiencing
a decisive and often emotionally traumatic experience a despairing realiza-
tion that without God one was spiritually dead, and a joyous realization that
acceptance of the powerful transformation by Gods grace effected a spiritual
reanimation. This led to a literal revival. Such an experience was more akin to
a sudden conversion than a mere affirmation that what one had intellectually
learned about God through the church or ones parents was more than just
empty rhetoric after all. Going through such a long, dark night of the soul to a
spiritual dawn made one profoundly aware of the deadly consequences of sin
and the revivifying force of Gods grace. Such an experience also established
a deep bond with others who had come through their own dark nights. The
Awakened shared a covenant of redemption with God, and, through God, a
deep connection to other members of the same covenant.

127 For what is still the best explication of how this sense of paradox was worked out in cul-
ture, see Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1956).
Introduction 41

Yet the same conversion experience that gave the covenant its inner cohe-
sion also limited its popular appeal for two reasons. First, the covenant of the
Awakened was emotional, subjective, and arational; it was based on faith. This
type of bond seemed outmoded to many modern folk in Prussia. The heirs of
the Enlightenment, the proponents of modern bourgeois rationality, and the
strong forces of bureaucratic administration organized themselves (into sepa-
rate constituencies, of course) around a competing source of loyalty, namely
rationality. To borrow Max Webers analytical terms, the Awakened sought to
develop solidarity based on the subjective feelings of a communal relationship
(Vergemeinschaftung), while much of the rest of society relied on the rational
affinities of an associative relationship (Vergesellschaftung).128
Second, not everyone not even all those eagerly professing to be Chris-
tians recognized the need to endure a traumatic conversion; not everyone
recognized a need to be awakened from spiritual slumber. That meant that the
covenant of the Awakened was a powerfully cohesive but radically exclusion-
ary bond. It put them at odds with a competing theological model strongly
represented in the (primarily Lutheran) state church, the bond of a testa-
ment. Luther had asserted that salvation depended on the effort of God alone.
Like a party to a legal contract, like a beneficiary named in a testament, one
might accept or reject the contract as it stood, but one could not add or sub-
tract anything from it. While orthodox Lutherans had remained largely true to
this testamental model, many Calvinists (and otherwise Lutheran Pietists and
neo-Pietists) adhered to covenantal theology. Whereas the testamental model
connoted a legal contract binding for all time regardless of humans sinful vio-
lations of the contracts terms, the covenantal model implied that both parties,
human and divine, had to persevere in their commitments.129 If one were to

128 See Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, trans. Hans
Gerth, Ephraim Fischoff, A.M. Anderson, et al. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), pp.
4043. Translation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundri der verstehenden Soziologie,
based on the 4th German ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul
Siebeck], 1956), pp. 1550, 559822, as revised in the 1964 paperback edition (Cologne:
Kiepenhauer & Witsch), with appendices from idem, Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissen-
schaftslehre, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Sie-
beck], 1951), pp. 44167 (selected passages), and idem, Gesammelte politische Schriften,
2nd expanded ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck],
1958), pp. 294394.
129 This understanding of the distinction between testamental and covenantal theology rests
on Carter Lindbergs discussion of those categories in his work on the differences be-
tween Reformation and late medieval theology. See Carter Lindberg, The European Refor-
mations (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), p. 70.
42 INTRODUCTION

oversimplify for the sake of clarity, one could say that for testamental Chris-
tians actions were irrelevant to salvation, which depended entirely and ex-
clusively on faith, while for covenanted Christians, actions indicated whether
faith were genuine, and thus whether salvation had actually been secured. In
other words, the Calvinist and Pietist revaluation of human effort and inten-
tion meant a theological shift from Luthers because therefore to a position
closer to medieval Christianitys if therefore.130
The implications of such seemingly obscure theological distinctions proved
profound. Leaders of the Awakening, such as Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, ide-
alized and yearned for the supposed politicoreligious unity of Christendom
before the Reformation. Some wanted a new corpus christianum, albeit one
largely along Protestant lines. But in the first half of the 19th century, Luthers
secular and spiritual kingdoms were not just at odds, but at war.
To Awakened leaders, the radical, purportedly anti-Christian rationalism of
the post-Enlightenment era precluded cooperation or coexistence between the
two kingdoms. Old Enlightenment skepticism and the new historical-critical
biblical criticism attacked the literalist and traditionalist readings of the Bible
(to which the Awakened mostly subscribed), discounting many miracles and
other events not readily comprehensible within the framework of modern, i.e.
post-Enlightenment, reason. Modern rationalists, in effect, told the Awakened
they could not believe what they believed. Put differently, to the Awakened it
appeared as though the temporal kingdom, represented by the vanguard of
rationalist (and in Awakened eyes probably not truly Christian) theologians,
had invaded the spiritual kingdom.
In the first half of the century, the Awakened waged a defensive war, blunting
rationalist thrusts by reasserting traditional, supernaturalist interpretations of
the Bible and weakening rationalisms appeal by offering a more emotionally
engaged community. By the 1830s, they had begun to go on the offensive, seek-
ing to discredit the precepts of rationalism itself, and damning both theologi-
cal and political liberalism as the spawn of anti-Christian, post-Enlightenment
rationalism. For the Awakened, seeing themselves beleaguered within the
spiritual kingdoms fortress of faith, the stakes in this contest could not have
been higher. They began the century despairing that at best, half the lands of
the kingdom of God lay in slumber, and at worst, the non-Awakened portion
would be declared at the day of final judgement never to have belonged in the
first place, or to have deserted to the cause of rationalism. In the war between
absolutist supernaturalism and absolutist rationalism, there could be no pris-
oners, and indifference amounted to opposition.

130 These categories come from Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jensons discussion of Luthers
theological revolution. Cited in Lindberg, Reformations, p. 70.
Introduction 43

Yet, in spite of the fact that many leading political reactionaries in the 1840s
and 1850s were also leaders of the Awakening, relatively few scholars have ex-
plored the link between these figures religious and political views.131 Church
histories and analyses of theological development have tended to downplay or
even ignore the political views and influence of the Awakened. Political and
social histories, when they have seriously examined the influence of religious
views at all, have usually treated them in an instrumental fashion. Of course,
scholars cannot afford to underestimate the power of the link between ma-
terial interests and religious views. It is surely no accident, for instance, that
the mostly aristocratic Awakened leadership justified in religious terms a so-
cial and political model predicated on a strong aristocracy. Clearly not all the
Awakened were saints who took no notice of their material interests. Yet, the
correlation of material interests with political ideology or a spiritual world-
view does not establish causality. Sometimes people are persuaded for reasons
which the strict application of logic cannot allow. Sometimes people believe
simply because they believe. That is not Enlightened, but it is very human.
Historians must not risk compressing a range of motivations into an unaug-
mented materialist model. There are incalculable dangers in estimating the
non-material factors which unite in the first word of many important creeds:
credo, or I believe. But even an analysis based on purely material consider-
ations would reveal that some of the Awakened were at least partially moti-
vated by factors not easily explained by materialist categories. Before their
political and religious rehabilitation in the 1830s and 1840s, belonging to the
Awakening could actually endanger ones material interests. Yet some of those
with the most to lose Awakened aristocrats ranked among the movements
most dedicated adherents.

Chapter Outline

This book is organized in a roughly chronological fashion. The first chapter

looks at the origins of the Awakening and addresses the growing popularity
and repression of Awakened beliefs between the 1810s and the 1830s. I describe
the growth of the Awakening both among literary elites in Berlin (in the Mai-
kferkreis) and among common rural and urban dwellers, with an emphasis
on Brandenburg and Pomerania. An examination of the main mechanism for
spreading the Awakening para-church meetings called conventicles forms
the bulk of the chapter, and contains some of the most original research in the

131 An admirable exception and a valuable exposition of the intellectual, religious, and eco-
nomic factors that influenced Prussian conservatism in this era is Berdahl, Politics.
44 INTRODUCTION

book. Both state officials and representatives of the state church felt threat-
ened by the conventicles. I argue that the states repression of the illegal con-
venticles was but one manifestation of the Prussian states intrusion into the
private sphere and its restructuring of the public one. I also claim that the soli-
darity that Awakened aristocrats and peasants displayed for one another calls
into question the common assumption that the influence of liberals generally
led to liberating consequences while the influence of nobles led to oppressive,
reactionary ends. Furthermore, I assert that in the conflict between the Awak-
ened and officials of state and the state church, one can see evidence that a re-
enchantment of modernity was taking place, as the Awakened transformed
the notion of reason inherited from the Enlightenment, infusing it with what I
call arational elements.
The second chapter addresses the development of specifically Awakened
political opinions among the mainstream of the Awakened in the late 1820s
and 1830s. In the wake of the 1830 revolutions across Europe, Awakened lead-
ers fatefully linked religious liberalism to political liberalism. They condemned
the rationalism of both, believing that it would lead to the destruction of the
aristocratic sociopolitical order ordained by God and to the evisceration of
Christianitys spiritual message. For some Awakened leaders, liberalism was
not just anti-Christian, but a hydra-headed anti-Christ. The ecumenical lead-
ers of the Awakening even made common cause with conservative Catholics
against political liberalism until a disagreement led to the estrangement of
these two conservative forces in the late 1830s.
The failure of political and religious reform efforts in the 1840s is the sub-
ject of Chapter 3. Frederick William iv boldly proposed making the state
church more independent of the state, hoping the church would reconstitute
itself along the lines of the early Christian church. The king, strongly backed
by the Awakened, also summoned traditional elites to discuss Prussias post-
Napoleonic political order, aiming to incorporate elements of the romanti-
cized feudal era into Prussias semi-modern polity. Liberal forces, on the other
hand, pushed for greater lay leadership in the church, a written constitution,
and a measure of democratization through creating a greater role for the laity.
At roughly the same time, representatives discussed potential changes in Prus-
sias political order. When the United Diet met in Berlin in 1847, the king alien-
ated many reform-friendly subjects by proclaiming that he would never accept
a written constitution. Some of the delegates forged ahead anyway, trying to
gain for their gathering many of the rights that parliaments elsewhere had at-
tained. Although few concrete ecclesiastical or political reforms emerged from
either of these meetings, they both provide excellent barometers of public
opinion on the eve of the revolution. Both the Awakened and their opponents
Introduction 45

rehearsed arguments they would employ during the March revolution, and the
meetings gave them valuable experience.
In Chapter 4 I explain why and how the Awakened helped to suppress the
1848 revolution, working both through traditional channels of influence at
court and in the more modern venue of newspaper publications. Shortly af-
ter the revolution began, King Frederick William iv turned to a conservative
coterie of extra-parliamentary advisors known as the camarilla. Though the
camarilla existed for several years, the period during which it had the most influ-
ence was 18481849. Awakened leaders dominated the camarilla. Conservative
Awakened leaders, including Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Friedrich Julius Stahl,
and Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, also played a central role in estab-
lishing what became the most powerful newspaper of north German conser-
vatism: the Neue Preuische Zeitung, more commonly called the Kreuzzeitung.
The activities of the Awakened in the camarilla as well as with the Kreuzzeitung
further helped to politicize the movements leadership and to give a degree of
influence over the (Awakened) king if only through providing articulate ra-
tionales for positions he was already sympathetic to and outcomes in politics.
The chapter particularly looks at the beginning of a long-standing effort to re-
define concepts vital to revolutionaries, such as freedom and constitution in
ways more beneficial to the views of Awakened conservatives.
Chapter 5 focuses on renewal efforts in the state church and on changes in
the structural relationship between the church and the state. Awakened figures
played a vital role in promoting the Innere Mission (Internal Mission or Domes-
tic Mission). Building in part on the efforts of Wicherns Rauhes Haus, lay and
clerical leaders meeting in Wittenberg founded the Innere Mission, or perhaps
more accurately, coordinated the diffuse local and regional efforts to reach the
unchurched and to care for some of the marginalized in society, including or-
phans, widows, and the economically displaced. Even as Bethmann-Hollweg
began to move in a different political direction from his other colleagues at the
Kreuzzeitung, he and they cooperated in this common venture, evidence of
the continuing vitality of their common religious bond. At the same time that
Innere Mission impacted the church, the relationship of the church to the state
was changing. It changed formally with a series of revisions to the constitution
of 1848 that had been issued by Frederick William iv.
In Chapter 6, the focus is on the development of political tensions among
conservative Awakened elites, resulting in Bethmann-Hollwegs departure
from the Kreuzzeitung and his founding, with other supporters, both Awakened
and non-Awakened, of a rival newspaper, the Politisches Wochenblatt zur Be-
sprechung politischer Tagesfragen (18511861). Both papers became closely as-
sociated with influential political factions represented in Prussias parliament.
46 INTRODUCTION

Numerous issues contributed to the split; the emphasis in this chapter is on dis-
agreements of the precise meaning of organic law, the relevance (and meaning)
of Stnde for Prussias future political development, and on continuing changes
to the modes of political organization in Prussia. Both factions (and papers)
were deeply involved, usually at cross-purposes, on constitutional changes to
local government (notably the role of Provinziallandtage, or provincial legis-
latures) and the evolution of Prussias upper house into a House of Lords [Her-
renhaus] by 1855. The political differences among Awakened conservative
elites did not negate their religious connections. Those connections remained
quite strong, and the similarity of their religious views helps to explain the
bitter contestation of religiously informed political views expressed by these
two camps. Their differences helped other factions, including the ministerial-
bureaucratic one led by Otto von Manteuffel, by providing opportunities for
divide-and-conquer politics.
In Chapter 7 the main emphasis is on the domestic political debate about
Prussias response to the Crimean War. Embedded in the larger Eastern Ques-
tion lay the dilemma, for Prussia, of whether to side with the coalition of
(mainly) Western powers or with the more anti-liberal Russian empire. Alone
among the major powers of Europe, Prussia remained neutral for the entire
conflict. It did so for many reasons, but among the important factors were the
contributions of the two rival camps, the Kreuzzeitung faction and the Wochen-
blatt faction, each animated to a considerable degree by Awakened elites. Even
as they continued to disagree, with growing bitterness, over issues of domes-
tic politics, they took different stances toward the war. The Wochenblatt fac-
tion attracted some figures dedicated to the increase in Prussias influence
over German affairs, at the expense of Austria, and toward an understand-
ing of constitutionalism fairly closely aligned with the liberal influence in
Britain. By contrast, the Kreuzzeitung faction privileged the Holy Alliance, in
part because of apparently genuinely religious reasons, and in part because
neither Bonapartist France nor liberalizing Britain seemed like a natural ideo-
logical ally in comparison with Czarist Russia, which had been willing after
1848, like Prussia, to use troops to quell revolutionaries. The role of Frederick
Williams Awakened moral compass also played a powerful role, once he firmly
concluded, after entertaining other tempting interests and views, that Prussia
had to stay out of a fundamentally unjust war. The chapter concludes that, as
with their debate over domestic political changes, the Awakened leaders of
the Kreuzzeitung and Wochenblatt factions contributed to Prussias remaining
neutrality by holding each other in check. The detrimental effect for Awak-
ened politics of holding each other in check was to leave the Awakened camp
divided and exhausted just at the moment when generational change loomed,
exemplified by the rapidly declining health of the king after 1857.
 chapter 1

Revival, Quietism, and Change

The Stirring of Revival among Elites in Berlin

As early as 1810, the Christian-German Roundtable (Christlich-Deutsche

Tischgesellschaft) had brought together a group of young nobles opposed to
the ideas of the Enlightenment. Originally based on the idea of poets Achim
von Arnim (17811831) and Clemens Brentano (17781842), the group expanded
during and after the war to include young officers and newly cashiered offi-
cers, many of them later leaders of the Awakening. By 1816, these elites, calling
themselves The Junebug Circle (Maikferkreis),1 had begun to move beyond
Romantic-Germanic-patriotic poetry to discuss the ideas of the Swiss theorist
Carl Ludwig von Haller (17681854).
In Haller they found the long-sought coherent philosophy to combat
the concepts of reform from above and reform from below. Hallers proto-
Tocquevillean political philosophy claimed that the Revolution had come
about because French absolutist monarchs had undermined their aristocrats,
who were the traditional and only effective guardians of liberty.2 Hallers solu-
tion to modern social tensions was to reinvigorate the sort of bond that ex-
isted in his (idealized) vision of medieval lord-peasant relations. He champi-
oned the idea of benevolent protection from above and humble submission
from below. This social bond, in turn, rested on patriarchal familial authority,
which was the model for all social relations. From patriarchy came patrimony.
In contrast to more traditional conservative theorists, such as Ludwig von der
Marwitz (17771837), Haller rooted his thesis not in corporatist theories per
se, but rather in the individuals experience of corporatist society. Haller
thus forms a link between early modern corporatist theories and modern so-
cialcontract models. His theories had great appeal for many of the Awakened

1 The group took its name from Mai, the name of the owner of the tavern where they met.
Wiegand, Maikfer, p. 280. Cf. Clark, Politics of Revival, p. 35.
2 The core of his ideas in Carl Ludwig von Haller, Handbuch der allgemeinen Staatenkunde,
des darauf gegrndeten allgemeinen Staatsrechts und der allgemeinen Staatsklugheit nach
den Gesetzen der Natur (Winterthur: Steiner, 1808). His most famous work, however, was Res-
tauration der Staats-Wissenschaft oder Theorie des natrlich-geselligen Zustands der Chimre
des Knstlich-Brgerlichen entgegengesezt (Winterthur: Steiner, 18201834), whose title ulti-
mately gave a name to the effort of an entire generation of European rulers to undo much of
the French Revolution.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_003

48 chapter 1

aristocrats, who were to ruminate and expand upon them over the years, em-
bellishing and adjusting them where necessary with a Christian rationaliza-
tion.3 Haller provided many of the influential Awakened with the intellectual
weapons to resist revolution both from above and below.
Aside from giving intellectual sustenance to young harrumphers, the Mai-
kferkreis turned into an epicenter of the Awakening among young aristocrats.
The troubled Catholic Clemens Brentano experienced a spiritual awakening
on a trip to Bavaria and gave glowing descriptions of the spiritual develop-
ments there:

Religious affairs in Bavaria are truly as they have never been since the Ref-
ormation. [] A large number of priests and congregations have attained
an enthusiastic preaching and appreciation for the Gospel through mor-
ally pure lives and faith. [] A large number of possessed and those
who see spirits have appeared, and the most wonderful results from the
prayers of the pious. All of these live in discipline and unity and are ready
to die for the Gospel. The orthodox clergy rages thousandfold against the
pious people; but enmity of the government against the church doesnt
help them at all, and so, under the very scepter of Satan a Reformation
of Catholicism, or a pure Christianity, is being formed [...] It is the very
picture of apostolic times, and on the whole, in its inner mentality, very
obedient [furchtbar] towards Rome, even while they only think of Jesus,
who will lead them as He has called them.4

Apart from the specifically Catholic references, the sentences could equally
well describe the Protestant Awakening in the more charismatic parts of East

3 Berdahl, Politics, pp. 23246.

4 Die Religionssachen stehen in Bayern wirklich, wie seit der Reformation nie in Deutschland.
[Es, de] sind eine Masse von Priestern und Gemeinden zu einer begeisterten Verkndi-
gung und Betrachtung des Evangeliums gelangt durch sittenreines Leben und Glauben. []
Es zeigen sich eine Menge von Besessenen und Geistersehenden, und die wunderbarsten
Wirkungen durch das Gebet der Frommen. Alle diese leben in Zucht und Einfalt und sind be-
reit, fr das Evangelium zu sterben. Die orthodoxe Geistlichkeit wtet tausendfach gegen die
frommen Menschen; aber die Feindschaft der Regierung gegen die Kirche gibt ihnen keine
Hilfe, und so gestaltet sich eine Reformation des Katholizismus, oder ein reines Christentum
unter dem Zepter des Satans [...] Es ist ganz das Bild der apostolischen Zeiten, und im gan-
zen, in seiner inneren Gesinnung, dem rmischen Stuhl sehr furchtbar, wenn sie gleich nur
an Jesum denken, der sie fhren wird, wie er sie berufen. Cited at greater length in Wiegand,
Maikfer, p. 282.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 49

Elbian Prussia. The Prussian Protestant Awakened had or were soon to have
similar responses from most of the clergy, and from a hostile state bureaucracy.
Inspired by Brentanos accounts, Protestant Maikfer began to make the
trek to Bavaria. Visiting Protestant and Catholic Awakened there, many of
them likewise experienced their own awakenings. Several, including Adolf
von Thadden-Trieglaff (17961882),5 Carl Wilhelm von Lancizolle,6 Moritz Au-
gust von Bethmann-Hollweg (17951877),7 and Karl Wilhelm Moritz Snethlage
(17921871),8 returned as full-fledged Awakened.9 Even Friedrich Daniel Ernst
Schleiermacher (17681834), who many consider the most important Protes-
tant thinker of the 19th century, went on what was fast becoming a sort of
Protestant pilgrimage.
But what was good for the soul proved bad for art. Taking a more skeptical
view of the importance of poetry, philosophy, and artistic endeavors in gener-
al, many of the Awakened stopped frequenting the group after their dramatic
spiritual experiences. This, coupled with moves to their home estates or to new
bureaucratic posts, spelled the effective end of the Maikfer by 1819.10 The dis-
persal of the now fervently Awakened young elites into the provinces did not
cool their religious ardor. Linked by a deep religious bond and by their politi-
cally conservative views, many of them maintained contact over the years, or
in later years picked up where they had left off. In the meantime, their social
standing and polished articulation proved to be strengths for the growing com-
munity of Awakened folk in the provinces. This chapter focuses on the social
means by which the Awakening thrived and spread (with special attention to
conventicles in Pomerania and Brandenburg), resistance to it, and problems it
encountered through the 1820s, as well as how the relationship between Awak-
ened leaders and both the state and state church began to change by the end of
the 1820s and 1830s. The narrative is one of adherents of the Awakening mov-
ing from relative obscurity through surveillance and a degree of persecution to
a fundamental choice about whether to reform the state church (and society

5 Beginning in 1829, Thadden would host conferences of Awakened pastors on his estate at
Trieglaff, knitting together the community of the Awakened. Cf. Ruhbach, Erweckungs-
bewegung, p. 171, Hope, Protestantism, p. 395.
6 Lancizolle was later a professor at the university in Berlin. He studied under Friedrich
Karl von Savigny (17791861), an architect of the organic school of law. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach, p. 103.
7 Later a founder of the Internal Mission (Innere Mission).
8 Later Court Pastor and member of the high council (Oberkirchenrat) of the state church.
9 Wiegand, Maikfer, pp. 28385.
10 Wiegand, Maikfer, p. 291.
50 chapter 1

more broadly) by transforming it from within or by attempting to move out-

side of it.

Habitus and Social Reproduction

By the beginning of the 19th century, German Protestantism had divided into
three broad schools: orthodox, rationalists, and the neo-Pietist Awakened.11
Adherents of each school sometimes regarded the other two with a seem-
ingly willful lack of comprehension. Supporters of the rationalist school, for
instance, thought the other two represented outdated, partly superstitious
doctrines. The ideas of Hegel, who had portrayed classical Christianity as a
progressive if imperfect expression of Geists self-understanding, heavily influ-
enced this group. Both the orthodox and the Awakened, on the other hand,
considered themselves to be truly evangelisch in the sense that they were true
to the spirit of the original Reformers and their insistence on the primacy of
the spiritual and supernatural messages of the Gospel (or evangelium), as op-
posed to a legalist or rationalist reading of it. In the early part of the century
supporters of both the orthodox and the rationalists looked askance at the
Awakenings open display of emotion and emphasis on subjectivity. For them,
the Awakened were mystics (Mystiker), emotional swooners (Schwrmer),
goody-goodies (Frmmler), Pietists (Pietisten), or even Jesuits (Jesuiten).12
An excerpt from a speaker at a Gymnasium graduation ceremony in Pomera-
nia may suffice to illustrate the negative image of the Awakened approach. He
called for

[] a thorough and deep study of the New Testament as the only pure
source of Lutheran (Evangelisch) doctrine, and the highest possible edu-
cation of understanding, so that [it] may be able to work strongly against
the dark demon, which with impatient eagerness under the mask of
pious feelings of guilt through long antiquated dogmas, the misbirths
of a sick fantasy discourages the heart, confuses the conscience, and
threatens the spirit of true, living Christianity.13

11 Many historians use this division. For a good introduction, see Nipperdey, Deutsche
Geschichte, p. 423ff.
12 It is important to remember that the term Pietist originally had negative connotations,
implying a do-gooder mentality and possibly even semi-Pelagian leanings.
13 [] ein grndliches und tiefes Studium des Neuen Testaments, als der alleinigen lau
tern Quelle der Evangelischen Lehre, und die hchstmgliche Ausbildung des Verstandes,
Revival, Quietism, And Change 51

Yet, while suspicious of Awakened emphasis on subjectivity, the orthodox

broadly shared the same beliefs as the Awakened. This helps explain why,
when the orthodox came to see the rationalists as bordering on heresy, they
made common cause with the Awakened, and eventually melded with them.14
The Awakened (and most of the orthodox) rejected theology that showed
Enlightenment or Neo-Enlightenment traces, such as the Neologian school,
the developing historical-critical method, and most of the Mediatory theolo-
gians.15 One might say that what separated the Awakened from the orthodox
was a fierce interiorization of orthodox beliefs accompanied by an element of
subjectivity and a slight reprioritization of beliefs along the lines of earlier Pi-
etists. For many of the orthodox, the different priorities of the Awakened were
not an arcane matter of interior reflection. Rather, Awakened emotion went to
the heart of the identity and mission of the church, for it was usually stoked
in meetings outside the parish church building, and fanned by lay individuals
who believed the Spirit of God might not wait for the minister to deliver his
Sunday sermon.
Because Awakened beliefs generally met with skepticism or hostility in the
institutional church, dominated by rationalists and orthodox, the main mech-
anism for spreading the Awakening (other than through tracts and literature)
was in a meeting of like-minded Awakened, usually in a private home. The
host and attenders were typically all lay folk, although an Awakened clergy-
man might also host or visit the meetings. At these meetings there would typi-
cally be a reading from Scripture or from a devotional book (old Pietist works
were favorites), and singing of hymns. Frequently there was prayer as well, so
that contemporaries termed such a meeting Betstunde, Erbauungsstunde, Con-
ventikel, or Konventikel, whereby conventicle was often a more general term.

berhaupt und krftig im Stande seyn, dem finsteren Dmon entgegezuwirken, der mit
unduldsamen Eifer unter der Maske frommer Zerknirschung, mit lngst veralteten Dog-
men, den Ausgeburten einer kranken Phantasie, die Gewissen verwirret, die Herzen
entmuthigt, und den Geist des wahren lebendigen Christenthums zu vernichten droht.
GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv. Document from the Volksblatt of
29 August 1828.
14 Most of the Old Lutherans were also orthodox but broke with the mainstream orthodox
and the Awakened for confessional reasons, refusing to participate in the shotgun wed-
ding of Lutheran and Reformed churches in the states Union church after 1817.
15 For a brief overview of rationalist theologies and their influence in Prussia, see Joachim
Mehlshausen, Rationalismus und Vermittlungstheologie. Unionstheologie und Hege-
lianismus an den preuischen Fakultten, in geku, vol. 1, Die Anfnge der Union unter
landesherrlichem Kirchenregiment (18171850), eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992).
52 chapter 1

Tothe great consternation of the authorities, conventicle activities occasion-

ally went further.
In the 18th century, the state had forbidden Pietist conventicles, fear-
ing potential abuses. Such moves fit with broader efforts to establish greater
state control over the church, and to combat both the influence of Enlight-
enment rationalism and the fear of potential Pietist excesses. Michael Sauter
draws particular attention in this respect to the work of Johann Christoph
Woellner (17321800), a complex person much maligned by posterity as a
counter-enlightened zealot.16 Sauter notes that

Woellners most (in)famous contribution to Prussian history came in 1788

with the promulgation of two edicts, the Edict on Religion and the Edict
on Censorship; the former gave the state control over religious teachings
and the latter, in turn, authorized the state to censor works that were
critical of the former.17

I concur with Sauters view these two edicts are part of a body of evidence
that [] the Enlightenment in Prussia was not merely about the expansion of
human freedom, but also about the cultivation of effective measures of social
control.18 But perhaps more telling was the difficulty of executing such mea-
sures. Robert Bigler observed concerning the Edict on Religion that [] the
next king, Frederick William iii (17971840), soon found himself compelled
to allow the edict and the committee to fall quietly into desuetude a clear
indication of the strength of rationalism in the Lutheran church.19 As Bigler
further commented, the great scholar of German conservatism, Klaus Epstein,
saw that [] the ensuing controversy about its enforcement can be consid-
ered a milestone in the history of German Conservatism because it became
the first occasion when a conservative government felt it must argue its case
before the course of public opinion.20
In practice, as long as the conventicles were as quiescent as the proverbial
sleeping dog, the government had been content to let them lie. In the early
19th century, however, when conventicles began both to increase their num-
bers and to show new signs of radicalization, the government turned sharply

16 Sauter, Visions of Enlightenment, p. 1.

17 Sauter, Visions of Enlightenment, p. 5.
18 Sauter, Visions of Enlightenment, p. 7.
19 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, p. 17.
20 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 53

against all conventicles. Only in later years did the state regularly take care to
distinguish between more and less radical ones.
Nineteenth-century conventicles fell afoul of the authorities for several rea-
sons. First, eyeing the uncontrolled lay leadership of Awakened conventicles,
authorities in the state church and the state feared that Awakened conven-
ticles might become a church within a church. Conventicles very existence
implied a threat to the power structure of the church hierarchy, and perhaps
even to the principle of hierarchy itself.
Second, conventicles seemed like ideal vehicles for the spread of false doc-
trines which might then corrupt the church, or even lead separatist or sec-
tarian conventicles to break off and form their own church. Theoretically,
conventicles were remedial meetings for those whose spiritual needs were not
met by the regular church services. In practice, outsiders often suspected the
conventiclers of holier-than-thou attitudes. The fact that conventicles chose
to meet in private houses instead of church facilities raised suspicions of the
groups motives. These suspicions hardened and roused the ire of authorities
when the lay leaders21 of some conventicles began to perform some functions
clearly reserved only for ordained clergy, such as celebration of the sacraments
of baptism and Eucharist. The leaders also sometimes commented on or inter-
preted the Bible, something the Prussian government permitted only ministers
or fathers of households (Hausvter) to do.22 Church authorities consistently
held that, except for Hausvter, lay folk should not play a leadership role.23
Third, in an era just after the French Revolution, the existence of wide-
spread, unregistered, and popularly attended meetings made the government
nervous. After the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, the government tolerated small

21 Such Awakened lay leaders appear typically to have been men.

22 In Pomerania, as many historians have noted, some Hausvter simply invited the conven-
ticles to meet in their homes, creating room for lay leadership by stretching the definition
of Haus.
23 In his report to the Berlin Consistory, Bishop Eylert explained the dynamic the state
church feared: indem sie den [illegible] solchen Personen, welche zu den K[onventikeln]
gehren und weder die erforderliche Bildung noch den amtlichen Beruf haben, [Kehrer?]
des Christentums sein zu knnen, reitzen [sic], sich als Oberhupter und Fhrer solcher
Gesellschaften darzustellen [] Aus- und Abartung ist bei solchen religisen Gesell-
schaften unverwunderlich, und wie bald hier ein Fnkchen zur verderblichen Flamme
werden kann, lehrt die Erfahrung zu laut, also da mann ihre Warnung nicht beachten
sollten. Gestattet man den Layen, in dessen Zusammenknften Vortrge halten zu drfen,
macht man einen Unterschied, zwiwchen den Bundes-Brdern und den Zuhrern [].
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 12, Abt. xvi, No. 1,
Vol. ii, 38a39b.
54 chapter 1

civic groups, but only as long as they registered with the government and did
not seem to threaten the sociopolitical order. Yet even after the conventicles,
under pressure, began to register themselves with church and government offi-
cials, they still looked potentially threatening. After all, most of the East Elbian
Awakened in Prussia might be compared to the sans-culottes: artisans, (often
dispossessed) peasants, tradesmen, and the like. Thus, the Berlin Consistory
urgently requested the police and the Interior Ministry to refuse a presumed
religious dissident the right to stay in County (Kreis) Ruppin, as it is extremely
important to deter such sectarians, especially now in an era so disturbed by
so many things.24 Granted, the most articulate spokesmen of the Awaken-
ing were conservative rural aristocrats, and one nickname for the Awakened
was the still in the country (die Stillen im Lande). But in an era character-
ized by tremendous social, economic, and political upheaval, a government of
unelected elites was perhaps not unwise to look carefully at the spontaneous
organization of emotionally charged religious meetings of the lower classes.
The fact that the participants in these meetings had a reputation for leader-
ship outside established structures, for separatism, and for considering them-
selves better than others could only further worry the government. When one
considers that most government bureaucrats and some of the rationalist clergy
likely disdained the theology and worldviews of conventiclers, government
misunderstanding becomes quite comprehensible.
In sum, the authorities considered that negative consequences such as

[] separatism, disrespect for the preachers office, spiritual arrogance,

demonization of those who think differently, mysticism [Schwrmerey],
etc., must be principally attributed to two circumstances:
(a) misguided missions, in which fully unfit people, mostly from the
lower classes, either on their own initiative or moved by others, and per-
haps paid for it, wandered through the region, preaching repentance,
arousing mistrust against the pastors, and spreading all manner of un-
Lutheran [unevangelisch] teachings and strained principles;

24 Euer Excellenz benachrichtige ich, [] da ich [] das Staatsministeriums des Inneren

und der Polizei Herrn Freiherr v. Brenn Excellenz dringend ersucht habe, den gegenwrtig
in Ruppinischen Kreise sich aufhaltenden, wegen seinse Benehmens in Religionssachen
aus dem Groherzogthum Meclenburg [sic] Schwerin verwiesenen Herrn von Luecken-
den Aufenthalt in den Knig. Staaten von Polizei wegen nicht zu gestatten, das es be-
sonders in der jetzigen, so vielfach bewegten Zeit hchst wichtig ist, dergleichen Sektirer
abzuhalten. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 12, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, 62ab.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 55

(b) the abuse, in contradiction to the most proper churchly order

and spoiling the Lutheran [evangelisch] office of preacher, that in many
conventicles one is not satisfied with singing spiritual songs and read-
ing from a devotional book, but that in free speeches [freie Vortrge] lay
promoted themselves to teachers of the Gospel, and even administered
the sacraments.25

The governments response to conventicles was varied and not always con-
sistent. The government appears to have had at first a hostile attitude toward
nearly all conventicles. It did not distinguish between those which had peace-
fully existed for years, whose members were regular, enthusiastic churchgoers
and solid supporters of the system (as most were), and more radical groups, in
which the lay folk assumed leadership positions or celebrated sacraments, or
advocated a break with the state church. The harshness of the governments
response also varied substantially from one district to the next. This was par-
tially because bureaucrats always have some discretion in applying general or-
ders, and partially because the government issued different orders for different
provinces. One must remember here that despite the centralizing effects of
the Allgemeines Landrecht (alr), Prussia was still composed of widely vary-
ing territories. Parts of the Rhine province still operated under the Napoleonic
Civil Code and had a tradition of greater lay involvement, largely thanks to the
influence of the Reformed church. Even east of the Elbe, provincial law and
confessional composition varied widely.
With time, the government adopted a more relaxed approach to the less radi-
cal conventicles. But towards the separatist ones it continued to show its teeth,
even sending in troops to break up a meeting of the so-called Old Lutherans in
Silesia. In the 1840s, however, Frederick William iv set more tolerant, indeed
pluralistic policies, recognizing the right of the Old Lutherans and others to

25 [] Separatismus, Verachtung des Predigtamts, geistlicher Hochmut, Verketzerung der

anders Denkenden, Schwrmerey, u.s.w. hauptschlich zwey Umstnden zugeschrieben
werden mssen, a, dem Missionar-Unwesen, nach welchem vllig unberufene Leute,
meist niederen Standes, entweder aus eigenem Antriebe, oder von Anderen dazu bewo-
gen, vielleicht dafr besoldet, in der Umgegend umherzogen, Bue predigten, Mitrauen
gegen die Pfarrer erregten, und allerley unevangelische Lehren und berspannte Grund-
stze verbreiteten; b, de[r?] allerkirchlichen Ordnung widerstreitenden, und das evange-
lische Predigtamt beeintrchtenden Mibrauche, da man sich in vielen Konventikeln
nicht mit dem Singen Geistlicher Lieder und dem Vorlesen aus einem Erbauungs-Buche
begngte, sondern da Laien sich in freyen Vortrgen zu Lehrern des Evangeliums auf-
warfen, ja sogar die Sakramente verwalteten. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi,
No. 1, Bd. v, 26a.
56 chapter 1

form their own groups. Frederick William iv was himself a deeply pious, ecu-
menical king. Contemporaries debated whether to consider him Awakened or
not. His decisions owed much to his own faith and to his close friendships with
aristocratic leaders of the Awakening. But long before he ascended the throne,
the state had set its pattern of reaction to Awakened conventicles. An exami-
nation of those patterns in Berlin and in Awakened strongholds in Pomerania
will throw light on both the development of government policy and on the
life-world of Awakened conventicles.
To help contextualize that evidence, it will be helpful to note that the con-
troversy over the conventicles was connected to broader sets of transitions af-
fecting the state church and its adherents, including legal and sociopolitical
changes as well as changes in church governance, liturgical reform, and the
creation of the Union church.

Placing the Awakening in the Context of Prussias Sociopolitical

Order and Church Affairs

The Awakenings era witnessed repeated cycles of upheaval and consolidation

in Prussias social contract. Some of these changes are important for this book
because of their concrete effects and aftereffects. The 1794 General Law Code
(Allgemeines Landrecht) and the struggle for political reforms in the Stein-
Hardenberg era, for example, transformed the parameters of Prussias domes-
tic political and religious playing field. Many other events in this turbulent era
of Prussian history seem more important for the Awakening because of the
way the Awakeners chose to incorporate a certain interpretation of them into
their mental world. Prussias remarkable survival in the Seven Years War and
its eventual victory over Napoleon appeared to many of the Awakened as a
miraculous sign of Gods favor, just as Prussias defeats in 1806 and 1807 looked
like divine judgements against the land. Even more importantly, the Awakened
tended to see the French Revolution and its successor in liberalism as physical
manifestations of the sinfulness and arrogance of Enlightenment rationalism.
These fundamentally religious interpretations of contemporary events helped
shape the way they related to subsequent political debates.
The 1794 General Law Code had partially accomplished the project of codi-
fying and therefore modernizing Prussian laws, which had varied widely, at
once stripping away many of the early modern rights and privileges and yet
shoring up those that remained. Despite the retention of some elements of
feudal order, including many vestiges of patrimonial jurisdiction [which, de]
survived on noble landed estates, Philip G. Dwyer rightly characterizes Prussia
Revival, Quietism, And Change 57

as possessing, the advantages of the fairly progressive legal code (the Allge-
meines Landrecht) [] and an independent judiciary as well as a schooling
system [that, de] was one of the most advanced in Europe and an efficient
bureaucracy that went hand in hand with this educational system.26 And yet,
this top-down reform was incomplete and therefore somewhat fragile. In the
words of Matthew Levinger, the General Law Code juxtaposed a declaration
of universal human rights with the preservation of serfdom and aristocratic
privilege, providing evidence that Prussian enlightened absolutism must be
understood as an unstable governing project that sought to unite fundamen-
tally irreconcilable political and philosophical principles.27
The strength of French arms and the force of Revolutionary ideals plunged
Prussia into another bout of legal-political reforms in the Stein-Hardenberg
era, resulting in the purging of many of the feudal or early modern elements
still retained by the General Law Code. Between 1807 and 1816 Prussia expe-
rienced the (at least partially successful) emancipation of the peasants, the
creation of a free land market, the ending of legal class distinctions in occupa-
tions, the introduction of limited self-administration by property owners in
towns, the ending of guild restrictions and tax exemptions, and a partial re-
distribution of land from nobles to peasants.28 These outcomes were not the
product of a single agreed objective, but the product of many competing fac-
tors.29 More radical reformers, represented until his dismissal in 1808 by Baron
Karl vom und zum Stein, had hoped for, among other things, the elimination
of patrimonial courts in which nobles judged legal cases involving peasants,
even if the nobles were also a party to the proceedings, as well as the found-
ing of an organ of all-Prussian representation for the kingdom.30 More tradi-
tionalist forces, represented notably by Karl August von Hardenberg and his

26 Philip G. Dwyer, Introduction, in Philip G. Dwyer, ed., The Rise of Prussia, 17001830 (Har-
low, uk: Longman, 2001), pp. 2526.
27 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, p. 38.
28 Clive Emsley, The Longman Companion to Napoleonic Europe (London: Longman, 1993),
pp. 623. See also Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism; Paul Nolte, Staatsbildung als Gesell-
schaftsreform. Politische Reformen in Preuen und den sddeutschen Staaten, 18001820
(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1990); Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann, Die Rolle von Staat
und Monarchie bei der Modernisierung von oben. Ein Literaturbericht mit ergnzenden
Betrachtungen zur Person Knig Friedrich Wilhelms iii, in Gemeingeist und Brgersinn.
Die preuischen Reformen, ed. Bernd Ssemann (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993); and
idem, Knig in Preuens groer Zeit. Friedrich Wilhelm iii. der Melancholiker auf dem
Thron (Berlin: Siedler, 1992).
29 Clark, Iron Kingdom, p. 338.
30 Clark, Iron Kingdom, pp. 33840.
58 chapter 1

associate Altenstein, argued against such measures, and were aided especially
by the landed nobility.31 In the case of the 1812 Gendarmerie Edict which
would have (save for its seven most populous cities) created new administra-
tive areas for the whole of Prussia of even size with a uniform administration
incorporating an element of local representation the result was a storm of
protest and widespread civil disobedience from the rural nobility (especial-
ly in East Prussia) and from conservative members of the administration.32
Issues of patrimonial courts, local and provincial political representation, etc.,
would resurface strongly in following years leading to and beyond the revolu-
tion of1848.
Many historians have noted that the remarkable changes of the reform era
that took root meant that within a few years Prussian society saw many of the
gains of the French Revolution enshrined in its laws. Intended partly by Har
denberg, at least, to stabilize the foundering monarchical system and its state,
these reforms strengthened the hand of the bureaucracy that introduced them,
and probably forestalled further democratic reforms by stealing the thunder
from potential revolutionaries. But the reforms also had truly revolutionary
potential. They devolved considerable power onto a broader, more active pol-
ity (thereby contributing to the fusion of noble and bourgeois elites so elusive
in Revolutionary France); founded institutions that inculcated at least the ru-
diments of some liberal practices among those who participated in them; and
gave a measure of power to those elite elements in society which were best
placed to mount resistance to further encroachments by the central govern-
ment bureaucracy into their lives. The Prussian reforms also carried certain
costs, including the dismantling of many of the privileges and intermediate
corporations protecting the individual from the state. By clearing away many
of the vestiges of Prussias half-feudal, half-absolutist social order, the reforms
created more liberated and more vulnerable individuals. The state guaranteed
most Prussians greater (albeit still quite limited) legal rights than they had ever
known, but it also deprived them of the buffers that estates, guilds, and the like
had once, at least in theory, offered.
A Prussia reinvigorated in part by the Stein-Hardenberg reforms proved able
to win victory over France in coalition with numerous other European powers
in the so-called Wars of Liberation. This victory seemed to some, including
the Awakened, like Gods divine judgement against an atheistic French Revolu-
tion, and it is widely recognized as playing a transformative role in the shap-
ing of German as well as Prussian identity. Karen Hagemann, for instance, has

31 Clark, Iron Kingdom, p. 338.

32 Clark, Iron Kingdom, p. 340.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 59

written persuasively about the impact of the experience and memory of the
wars in the construction of a German national identity that was projected as a
male-connoted counterimage to the national enemy (France), while internal-
ly it was further differentiated by class, gender and race [].33 Citing the na-
tionalist proponent Turnvater Friedrich Ludwig Jahn as part of her evidence,
Hagemann argues that the constructed aspects of that character, [a]side from
the constantly repeated core qualities of patriotism, valor and Christian piety,
[] were vigor, moral uprightness, rectitude and an aversion to trickery as well
as fairness and earnest good intentions.34 Robert Bigler notes that most of the
state churchs ministers during the war had complied with governmental pres-
sure to help mobilize sentiment for war, stating that Protestant clergymen all
over Germany delivered hundreds of sermons in which they compared the war
against Napoleon to the Crusades and used such religious terms as redemp-
tion, rebirth, resurrection, revelation, and martyrdom to stir up enthusiasm.35
He specifically lists some of the names that appear in this chapter, writing that

[t]he court preacher R.F. Eylert in Potsdam, General Superintendent

Borowski in Knigsberg, the theology professor H.L. Heubner at the
University of Wittenberg, and the pastors Hanstein, Ribbeck, and most
others in Berlin and elsewhere in the country faithfully followed the in-
structions of the government during the war.36

The general trend to conflate righteous with patriotic or nationalist views

should not obscure those who resisted, however, including, notably, Schlei-
ermacher, who encouraged his colleagues to protest against identifying the
autocratic rule of the privileged classes with the religious crusade against the
French and whose courageous words were thunder and lightning aimed at
the aristocracy, to some contemporaries.37
Despite efforts to promote a sense of Christian victory of manly German vir-
tue over a godless French revolution among some political conservatives, for
some Romantics, and for many of the Awakenings aristocratic leaders, a sense
of loss and societal entropy refused to wholly dissipate, even as a movement of
religious renewal was underway. If the memory of the war enhanced a sense
of agency, the realities of sociopolitical and economic pressures diminished it.

33 Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars, p. 107.

34 Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars, p. 109.
35 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, pp. 2930.
36 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, p. 30.
37 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, p. 31.
60 chapter 1

After the war, grain prices plummeted, recovering only partially in the 1820s;
Prussias agriculturally backward provinces, including Pomerania, suffered
the most.38 When government compensation proved inadequate to cover the
debts of large numbers of landed estates, the economic crisis took on social
and political hues.39 Continuing their patrimonial model, many landed nobles
kept [] almost all other classes of citizens at the sacrifice of their own for-
tunes, through their own ruin [].40 In a further blow to the traditional role
of Prussias aristocrats, bourgeois often snapped up the lands of impoverished
nobles. Recurrent agrarian crises and the beginning pangs of industrialism (af-
ter about the 1840s) exacerbated resentment at the states intrusion into the
private sphere, and fed nostalgia for an irretrievable premodern order.
Given the large economic costs they bore in preserving East Elbian Prussias
patrimonial sociopolitical model, some nobles came to welcome the erosion
of that model through Prussias administrative reforms. Many other aristo-
crats, however, regretted the impending destruction of their Stand, or estate.41
The increased social mobility of Stein and Hardenbergs reforms joined with
the creative destruction of incipient capitalism to imperil Prussias intercon-
nected organic sociopolitical order. As the noble Ernst von Blow-Cummerow
(17751851) lamented (and as most of the Awakened aristocrats likely would
have agreed), If someone is a chimney sweep today, tomorrow a noble estate
owner, and the day after tomorrow appoints the village pastor, then something
is very wrong.42
After the wars against Napoleon, the Prussian government gradually lost its
willingness to further its subjects participatory rights, with the Stein-Hardenberg

38 Berdahl, Politics, p. 267. For an analysis of the connections between grain prices and revo-
lutionary outbreaks, see Helge Berger and Mark Spoerer, Economic Crises and the Euro-
pean Revolutions of 1848, Journal of Economic History, 61.2 (2001), 293326.
39 Berdahl, Politics, p. 267. See also Hanna Schissler, Preussische Agrargesellschaft im Wandel.
Wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und politische Transformationsprozesse von 1763 bis 1847.
Kritische Studien Zur Geschichtswissenschaft (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
1978).
40 Quote from the report of Prussian government official Borgstede, cited in Berdahl, Poli-
tics, p. 271.
41 The British example shows a greater degree of comfort than in Prussia with the embour-
geoisement of the nobility. In the end, though, the partial fusion of the nobility and the
bourgeoisie helped to entrench the political power of the now altered aristocracy. Speak-
ing of this marriage of interests, Berdahl maintains that, In the 1840s, the government
tried to encourage it; the revolution of 1848 strengthened it; and the depression of the
1870s and 1880s confirmed it. Berdahl, Politics, p. 279.
42 Cited in Berdahl, Politics, p. 278.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 61

reforms effectively over by 1822. Supported by Metternichs 1819 Carlsbad decrees,

the Prussian government became more interested in strengthening its position
by defending the status quo rather than continuing reforms. But while domes-
tic political reforms lost momentum, the struggle for reform within the church
began in earnest.
The first half of the 19th century witnessed protracted debates over three
reforms or proposed reforms in the state church. First, to the chagrin of die-
hard confessionalists and traditionalists, Frederick William iii, as summus
episcopus, began to force Lutheran and Calvinist churches into a single state
Union church (Unionskirche) in 1817.43 Second, for several years thereafter, the
king further antagonized these groups, as well as liberals, by gradually impos-
ing his own mixture of traditional Lutheran and Calvinist liturgical reforms on
the state church, the so-called new Agende. Third, the organizational form of
church government came under reconsideration, raising questions about the
extent of leadership from below and additional questions about the implica-
tions for possible political reforms.
The union of Reformed and Lutheran churches into the Union church, initi-
ated in 1817, was not a spontaneous fusion, as occurred in several other Ger-
man states, but an act of state ordered by King Frederick William iii.44 Timed
to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the Reformations origins,45 the move
was envisioned by the king to create a truly religious union of the two Prot-
estant churches separated only through external differences [], in which [,
de] both become a new, enlivened evangelical Christian church in the spirit
of their holy founder.46 This forceful move, as Nicholas Hope has pointed out,
amounted to a rejection of [] the plea for an up-to-date church proposed
by his enlightened senior clergy, [] as the novel idea of a constitutional

43 For a general account of the relationship of Protestant Prussian rulers to the state church,
see Georg Manten, Das Notbischofsrecht der preussischen Knige und die preussische
Landeskirche zwischen staatlicher Aufsicht und staatlicher Verwaltung. Unter besonderer
Bercksichtigung der Kirchen- und Religionspolitik Friedrich Wilhelms ii, Quellen und
Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte 32 (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 2007).
44 Hope, Prussian Protestantism, p. 190.
45 Manten, Notbischofsrecht, p. 290.
46 eine wahrhaft religise Vereinigung der beiden, nur noch durch uere Unterschiede
getrennten protestantischen Kirchen [], in welcher [, de] beide eine neue belebte,
evangelisch-christliche Kirche im Geiste ihres heiligen Stifters werden. Frederick Wil-
liam iii, cited in Manten, Notbischofsrecht, p. 291.
62 chapter 1

Union church with powers of self-government ventilated by clergy [] became

anathema to a pious family king [].47
Frederick William iii also forced on the church his own liturgy (Agende),
based on a fusion of various historical liturgies from the two churches, which
the Protestant state church was required to use (following introductions in
stages as well as some revisions) by 1834. Since [] only some 6 per cent of
Prussias clergy showed themselves ready to accept [] the new liturgy, Hope
calls the effort an ultimate disaster for the king.48 As Thomas Howard has
pointed out, [] between 1830 and 1834 many critics of the Agende were either
suspended from their duties or imprisoned; the army even occupied some of
the most recalcitrant churches!49 To implement the new liturgy, the king had
to resort to a variety of measures questioned by many contemporaries, act-
ing in different capacities in different settings.50 For example, as head of the
military, he had wide latitude to compel the military to use the liturgy, but it
was not clear that the General Law Code, which clearly allowed the state the
authority to accept or reject liturgies, empowered the king in general to create
his own, with some church ministers arguing that [] the right to decide lay
with the congregations or synods respectively.51
The resulting liturgical conflict (Agendenstreit) pitted the monarchy and
all those in favor of the supremacy of the central state government against a
formidable range of opponents: denominationalists or confessionalists jealous
for their churchs independence, identity, and traditions; conservatives fearful
of the central governments violation of old traditions and local privileges; and
liberals resentful of the governments intrusion into the private sphere. The
recriminations the king encountered in the Agendenstreit stung him so deeply
that he eventually withdrew from church politics.52
The Union so angered some traditionalist Lutherans that they sought to
form an independent church (Freikirche) to continue their forms of worship

47 Hope, Protestantism, p. 336.

48 Hope, Protestantism, p. 342.
49 Thomas A. Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 237.
50 A blow-by-blow account can be found in Wilhelm H. Neuser, Agende, Agendestreit und
Provinzialagenden, in geku, vol. 1, pp. 13459. See also Manten, Notbischofsrecht, pp.
29397.
51 [] das Beschlurecht lag bei den Gemeinden bzw. Synoden. Neuser, Agende, Agen-
destreit und Provinzialagenden, p. 153.
52 This view is represented in Die Religionspolitik Friedrich Wilhelm iii, in Bernd Moeller
and Gerhard Ruhbach, Bleibendes im Wandel der Kirchengeschichte (Tbingen: Mohr,
1973) and Stamm-Kuhlmann, Knig in Preuens groer Zeit.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 63

and church organization. The Old Lutherans cause became a rallying point
for opponents of the regime. Provoked by their perceived obstinacy, Frederick
William iii gradually ratcheted up the level of rhetorical violence and pres-
sure on the Old Lutherans, leading many to emigrate.53 Such a sharp depar-
ture from Prussias traditional religious toleration again alarmed many who
saw absolutism on the rise.54 Yet, significantly, some key Awakeners criticized
the Old Lutherans for deliberately allowing political troublemakers into their
movement.55
Partly, and perhaps mostly, due to his desire to carry through the Union and
liturgical reform, Frederick William iii also became embroiled in a debate over
church government. The central issue was whether the hierarchical structure
of episcopal government, which was more traditional for Lutheran churches,
should yield more to lay leadership with representation in synods, which was
more typical of Calvinist churches. Yet even this generalization covers over
tremendous variation. To add only two more layers of complexity, western
territories that Prussia had possessed prior to 1815 had greater lay leadership
among Protestants than those in the east, and newer territories acquired after
1815 in both east and west (especially Reformed areas, to set aside the role of
Catholics) had prior traditions and customs that the Prussian state had to as-
sess before attempting to create a greater degree of uniformity.
By 1835 Prussias western provinces generally operated on the synodal
model, while its eastern ones largely remained with the episcopal one. For our
purposes, noting that (temporary) outcome is more important than following
in detail the many twists of the highly complex process of Prussias alteration
after 1815 to its territorial and episcopal boundaries, as well as the changing na-
ture of its church governance.56 The debate over the church hierarchys power
in turn led to several contradictory reforms in the relation between the lead-
ers of the church and the Prussian administration. The state Ministry over-
seeing religion at first devolved power to an episcopal Consistory; later, the
power wasshared between the two; still later, the Consistory was integrated
into the revamped Ministry for Spiritual Affairs (the Ministerium fr Geistliche

53 For an excellent account of moves toward union that emphasizes the effects on the Old
Lutherans, see Christopher Clark, Confessional Policy and the Limits of State Action:
Frederick William iii and the Prussian Church, Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 9851005.
54 See Rudolf von Thadden, Fragen an Preuen. Zur Geschichte eines aufgehobenen Staates
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1981), p. 128.
55 Clark, Politics of Revival, p. 57.
56 For a very concise overview of this process, see J.F. Gerhard Goeters, Der Anschlu der
neuen Provinzen, in geku, vol. 1, especially pp. 8081. For greater detail, see Hope, Prot-
estantism, pp. 33640.
64 chapter 1

Angelegenheiten), which eventually gave way to the Ministry for Religion (Kul-
tusminsterium); and finally, there was a largely unsuccessful attempt to make
the church independent from the state altogether around the time of the 1848
revolution.
The issue of church governance may appear at first to be a red herring. As
Albrecht Geck has argued, at the latest with Frederick William iiis issuing a
Cabinet Order of 11 November 1825, it certainly became finally clear, that for
him constitutional reform [of the church, de] was ultimately only a means
toward the implementation of his liturgical plans.57 But even if one grants
that the king viewed the matter as a mere means toward an end, the issue still
matters because contemporaries took them seriously and perceived them as
linked to the continuing political debates over centralized versus local author-
ity, and of liberal-constitutional versus the monarchical-hierarchical state.
How did Awakened leaders respond to these great issues? On the issues of
a unified Protestant state church and liturgical reforms, Awakeners generally
opposed diehard confessionalists, who resisted moves which threatened their
denominations historic identity, and the former tended to accept (though of-
ten grudgingly) the liturgical innovations. On the other hand, many Awakeners
feared the unitary state church would squelch religious freedom in the name
of uniformity and authority. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, for example, reflecting
on an earlier diary notation, wrote that [i]t made a very unpleasant impres-
sion upon me as something soulless and external, as a division rather than a
union.58
In the end, ecumenical Awakened leaders achieved a partial resolution of
this tension by siding with the state over confessionalists, such as those in the
Old Lutheran movement, which arose in the 1820s.59 However, such state in-
tervention alarmed many of the Awakened aristocrats, who saw the creation
of the Union as the triumph of the absolutist state over the freedoms of the old

57 Freilich war nun endgltig geworden, da fr ihn die Verfassungsreform letztlich nur ein
Mittel zur Durchsetzung seiner liturgischen Plne war. Albrecht Geck, Die Synoden und
ihre Sistierung in der Reaktionszeit, in geku, pp. 13233.
58 Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken 17951877, ed.
J.von Gerlach (Schwerin: Fr. Bahn, 1903), p. 104, cited in and translated by Clark, Confes-
sional Policy, p. 988.
59 Since many Old Lutherans could be considered Awakened in the main points of their
theology, one might consider this a split in the Awakening. If, however, one stresses the
traditionalist or confessionalist elements in the Old Lutherans, one might contend that
they were distinct from the main body of the Awakened, whose leaders, at least in this
period, were more self-consciously ecumenical.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 65

order. While most Awakened leaders also favored an ecumenical Protestant

church, they resented its imposition by the monarch.
The debates on church government affected Prussian citizens not just as
members of the church, but as a potential political force. The issues engaged
the attention of the intensely religious Awakened. After the leaders of the
Awakened began to take political stances by the 1830s, the Awakening de-
veloped into a weak third force in the competition for power between those
who wanted administration from above and those who wanted liberal and/
or decentralizing reforms. Elements of the Awakened could appeal to either
side. Like Prussias bureaucrats and political establishment, Awakened noble
leaders who belonged to the ruling class or estate if not the actual ranks of
the ruling elites loathed the idea of revolution from below. On the other
hand, Awakened nobles also resented the reforms the Prussian state had im-
posed on them in the 1810s, seeing these as a revolution from above. The fact
that they favored restoration of local privileges made them a potential ally for
those political liberals wanting to check administrative rule by fiat. The (often
dispossessed) peasants, artisans, tradesmen, teachers, etc., who comprised the
bulk of the Awakening remained an uncertain factor. Might they forsake their
traditional non-political involvement to become a sort of radicalized Prussian
sans-culottes?
In the arena of church reform the Awakeners were the weak third force in
a triadic competition for power. On the first issue, the Awakeners generally
spoke for decentralization. They thereby ran afoul of the ecclesiastical hier-
archy, whose rationalist views the Awakeners distrusted. Some also opposed
most statist reformers, who wanted to supplant the traditional church govern-
ing institutions with a state-dominated system of synods and presbyteries. In
other words, many of the Awakened tended to favor greater decentralization of
power, less state control over church bodies, and more lay involvement.
Despite its experiments with reforms, the Prussian government had taken
care not to push nobles too far. Local nobles retained their rights of election
and appointment in church matters, and a national (i.e. all-Prussian) synod was
never seriously contemplated. This defense of old corporatist rights pleased
the conservative aristocratic leaders of the Awakening, who saw here a bul-
wark against the encroachments of the absolutist state. Successfully wedding
their own tradition of patriarchal benevolence and the pious sentiments of
recently emancipated peasants, the aristocratic Awakeners saw much benefit
in this interventionist reform, which had created a system of church govern-
ment devolving more power into the hands of local leaders than ever before.60

60 Thadden, Fragen an Preuen, pp. 12125.

66 chapter 1

Though the movement for synodial-presbyterian reform ultimately proved

unable to establish the churchs independence from the state or to carry
through substantial democratization of church governing bodies, under-
standing the movement for reform is crucial to grasping both the challenges
to Prussias sociopolitical order in this era and the place of the Awakening in
that struggle. Synodial-presbyterian reform threatened centralized power, at-
tempting to use revolution from above to institute some of the principles of
revolution from below.61 Through its advocacy of participatory governing bod-
ies parallel to state structures of control, synodial-presbyterian reform repre-
sented a clear threat both to the principle of hierarchical rule and to the power
of the rejuvenated Prussian state. It also represented a crisis of conscience to
many Awakeners. It forced many Awakened leaders to choose between their
theologys egalitarian emphasis and their own close ties to the established so-
cial and political order.
The proposed union of Reformed and Lutheran churches into a single state
church with a modified liturgy proved even more divisive than the fight over
synodial-presbyterian reform. While most Awakened leaders also favored an
ecumenical Protestant church, they resented its imposition by the monarch.
Frederick William iii even imposed his own liturgy, a mishmash of various
historical liturgies from the two churches. Although only a few congregations
actually used it, the liturgy became a rallying point for all those offended by
the kings high-handed actions. What followed was a bitter liturgical conflict
(Agendenstreit), which pitted the monarchy and all those in favor of the su-
premacy of the central state government against a formidable range of oppo-
nents: denominationalists jealous for their churchs independence, identity,
and traditions; conservatives fearful of the central governments violation of
old traditions and local privileges; and liberals resentful of the governments
intrusion into the private sphere. The recriminations the king encountered
in the Agendenstreit stung him so deeply that he eventually withdrew from
church politics.62
This conflict, which began to escalate around the time when the July rev-
olution in France worried many Prussian leaders, marked a crucial turning
point in the Awakening and in the course of Prussian reform in general. In the
Awakenings chief newspaper, the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, the theologian
Ernst Hengstenberg and his cohorts sided with the state and church hierarchy,
which until recently had opposed the Awakened. Using their newspaper as a

61 Clark also recognizes this. Clark, Politics of Revival, pp. 4248.

62 See, for example, Die Religionspolitik Freidrich Wilhelm iii, and Stamm-Kuhlmann,
Knig in Preuens groer Zeit.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 67

forum, such Awakeners launched an attack against the liberalism of rationalist

theologians, such as Wilhelm Gesenius (17861842) and Julius August Ludwig
Wegscheider (17711849).63 In subsequent debates, opponents and proponents
of liberalism in its theological as well as political form poured scorn on
one another, with the end result that most Awakeners came down on the side
of the crown and against liberal influences. The Kirchenzeitungs war against
liberalism, treated in the following chapter, helped to reorder the Awakenings
relation to both the government and the church hierarchy.
Given the dynamics of Prussias internal political development briefly out-
lined above, the Awakenings early years mostly gave its leaders an opportu-
nity to oppose the interventionist, absolutist tendencies of the state. After the
governments ardor for reform had cooled, however, the largely conservative
Awakeners could be and eventually were reabsorbed into a state system which
had turned to preservation of the status quo. No longer having to fend off at-
tacks from above, conservative Awakened leaders could now turn their atten-
tion to combating the equally pressing threat of revolution from below. In the
course of the 1830s and 1840s they developed this side of their conservative
ideology in publications such as the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung (published
from 1827 on), the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt (published 18311841), and,
later, in the Kreuzzeitung. Already by 1833 Awakened who had once been de-
rided as perfumed Pietists were themselves condemning the Pietists of
liberalism, whose neologian stance had thrust Awakeners back into the arms
of Protestant orthodoxy.64 Once in official favor, the Awakened continued to
articulate why they embraced the principle of monarchy (even though later on
some were uncertain about the monarch Frederick William iv) and rejected
liberalism and modernism in their many forms.
Concerning the Old Lutherans, the Awakeners appeared to have discov-
ered a limit in their opposition to the king and the growing absolutist state. As
the years went on, and as the crowns enthusiasm for reforming the old order
waned, Awakened leaders strengthened their ties to the crown. Awakened aris-
tocrats, such as Leopold von Gerlach, who had once supported, attended, and
publicly defended Awakened conventicles even when their members were
threatened with arrest came to regret their attacks on the established church.
In fact, most Awakened leaders became even more closely allied to the state
and to the monarch under Frederick William iv. His personal mysticism and
distaste for state absolutism made him largely acceptable to Awakened, though
his vacillation threatened to discredit the institution of the monarchy, which

63 Clark, Politics of Revival, p. 57.

64 Clark, Politics of Revival, pp. 54 and 57.
68 chapter 1

aristocratic Awakened were keen to promote.65 The political development of

the Awakening from the 1830s to 1849 is largely the story of how the Awaken-
ings leaders became ever more closely intertwined with the monarchy.66 Leo-
pold Gerlach, for instance, was to become an important member of the 1848
court camarilla. The Awakenings emphasis on emotion found great sympathy
at the court of Frederick William iv, who surrounded himself with Romantics
and artists who developed an aesthetics of mysticism to justify the Prussian
monarchy.67 In the meantime, Awakened theologians continued to denounce
rationalism, and the low and middling sorts, who comprised the majority of
the Awakened, still faithfully attended the conventicles. Far from being hot-
beds of subversion, however, the conventicles in the era after co-optation had
become such pillars of support for the status quo that none other than Otto
von Bismarck was able to proclaim his own reassuring religious conversion at
one Awakened conventicle. Bismarcks experience at this conventicle neatly
marks a key shift in the Awakenings political development. In its early years,
the East Elbian Awakening had at times opposed both reform from above and
reform from below. Its own Halleresque ethos, with one foot in an imagined
medieval past and the other in the individualistic future, however, was more
revolutionary than perhaps many of the Awakened themselves realized. When
the state turned away from interventionist reform, the Awakenings opposition
to liberalism came to the forefront.

Conventicles in Action in Brandenburg and Pomerania

The later turn by many Awakened toward strong support for the state might
have surprised many officials of the state and state church in the early 19th cen-
tury, surveying the activities of conventicles in both urban and rural settings.

65 For a close investigation of Frederick William ivs personality and his court, see David
Barclays Knig, Knigtum, Hof und preuische Gesellschaft in der Zeit Friedrich Wil-
helms iv. (18401861), in Friedrich Wilhelm iv. in seiner Zeit, eds. Otto Bsch and David E.
Barclay (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), and Frank-Lothar Krolls Friedrich Wilhelm iv.
66 The process of cooperation was not always smooth and uniform, however. Pomeranian
aristocrat Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaffs conferences for Awakened clergy, for instance,
attracted 72 people by 1842 (Kantzenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung, pp. 9496). These
conferences were often critical of the state and direction of the state church. Nonetheless,
one may well say that the bulk of the Awakened became reconciled with the government
after it abandoned its vigorously interventionist stance.
67 Barclay develops the concept of an aesthetics of mysticism for Frederick William iv. See
especially idem, Knigtum, pp. 917.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 69

The Awakened philanthropist Baron Hans Ernst von Kottwitz (17571843) had
noted as early as 1781 that the poor of Berlin, Prussias capital and its largest
metropolitan area, wanted more of a religious life, but that they had a hard
time satisfying those wishes.68 An anonymous denunciatory letter in 1807 of-
fers a more negative view of those yearnings. The letter complained about the
Erbauungsstunden of the schoolteacher Neuendorff.69 The author claimed
that such meetings had turned many a head from true Christianity and made
them crazy. Interestingly for a (supposedly) Protestant writer, the author fur-
ther reproached the authorities by claiming that if the Inquisition were still
around, it would have found that participants in such para-church meetings
belong in the madhouse or in prison.70 The author asserted that the pastor
Jnicke, and others like him, had made others mad, too.
The government appears to have agreed with the anonymous writer. One
file cites Neuendorff and the bookkeeper Roos for holding conventicles every
Friday from 78 pm attended by 30-odd persons. The report orders Neuendorff
to desist from holding such meetings completely, and to never host them again.
We also find a laconic testament to Neuendorffs dedication: he had already
been removed from his position as teacher (Schulamt) for his involvement in
just such meetings.71
The records of an 1825 investigation into the conventicle that was led by
the tailor Karbe and pastor Lindel in Berlin provide us with a fairly typical ac-
count of the proceedings of conventicles. The police investigator (Kommissa-
rius) Seydel reported that the conventicle had met on 23 February, and on 2, 9,
16, 23, and 30 March from about 7 to 9 pm. Seydel asserted that Karbe spoke
before the group, reading from and commenting on Gossners devotional book
Schatz Kstchen. He then had conventicle members sing Jesu deine tiefen Wun-
den and Jesu meines Lebens Leben. Together with Pastor Lindel, Karbe sat
at a table with the Bible and a book of hymns.72 Some participants sat, oth-
ers stood. Pastor Lindel read from the Bible and sang several paschal songs

68 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letter of 8 Septem-
ber 1836. Peter Maser, Hans Ernst von Kottwitz.Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung des fr
hen 19. Jahrhunderts in Schlesien und Berlin, Kirche im Osten 21 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1990), and Richard Weikart, Baron Hans Ernst von Kottwitz and Neo-Pietist
Social Reform and Politics in Prussia, 18991848, M.A. thesis, Texas Christian University,
1989, are valuable studies of Kottwitz.
69 Cf. GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, No. 521.
70 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letter of 8 August
1807.
71 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 521.
72 The Porstsche Gesangbuch, a hymnbook introduced into the churches in Brandenburg.
70 chapter 1

(Passionslieder) from the hymnbook, then blessed and dismissed the group.
Seydel recommended that authorities bring a citation (Anzeige) against any
further meetings. It is impossible to determine from Seydels report whether
Karbes group showed any separatist tendencies, but the lay co-leadership ap-
parently went beyond what was allowed. The Consistory ordered the police to
let them know if there were any further meetings.
An investigation into private-church gatherings in the Berlin quarters of
the weavers Siegmund and Wagner gives us more information on the partici-
pants. Most of them had common occupations, such as day laborer, linen mak-
er (Tuchmacher), school janitor (Schulwacher), foreman (Vorsteher), weaver
(Weber and Weberfrau), thresher (Drescher), wife (Ehefrau), and Concubine
(sic). Some lived in the same house as those who hosted the meetings, while
others came from other parts of the neighborhood. The report adds that most
of the participants enjoyed stainless (unbescholten) reputations. The final
decision in a report to the superintending administrator (Superintendurver-
weser), Pastor Schulz, faithfully gives the position of the church authorities.
He says that according to the confession (Bekenntnischriften) of our church,
only those who have been properly called to the task may function as teachers,
except for family devotionals. On this, and according to orders from higher up,
we must stand fast. The police were therefore to inform Siegmund and Wag-
ner that if the evening church services and church prayer services were insuf-
ficient for their spiritual needs, they had no alternative but to have devotionals
under the guidance of the clergy of their parish.73
By the mid-1830s, it appears that the government still looked with suspicion
on the conventicles, but had become considerably less nervous about them.
Thus, a document from the Royal Consistory of 10 June 1836 found it necessary
to restate that conventicles were not allowed until they were given concessions
or the rules were changed, so the police should take care to alert the conventi-
clers of that. In this phase of the conventicles development, many government
officials still worried about separatists, yet they tolerated other sorts of conven-
ticles. Thus, when he heard that the government would soon adopt a more tol-
erant stance, a conventicler of 13 years, F. Bauray, wrote to the Consistory to ask

73 Es ist nach den bekenntnischriften unserer Kirche nur dann gestattet, in christlichen
Versammlungen, auer den Familien Andachten, lehrend aufzutreten, welche dazu or-
dentlich berufen sind. Hierber soll, auch hheren Anordnungen zufolge, streng gehalten
werden. GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Report
from the Royal Consistorium of 23 August 1830. A police report from the Polizei-Prsidium
of 16 September 1830 says that they will undertake the necessary measures for the supervi-
sion (Beaufsichtigung) of the conventicle.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 71

leave to continue the Erbauungsstunden he hosted. Bauray, who claimed to at-

tend conventicles three to four times per week, emphasized the stable, reliable,
and pro-church nature of the Erbauungsstunden he attended. He said that the
other conventiclers attended church regularly, and that many who had had a
waning interest in the church went back because they heard about the impor-
tance of the Eucharist at the Erbauungsstunden. Interestingly, Bauray claimed
knowledge of a conventicle that had included prominent lay leadership by fa-
mous and well-born people, including aristocrats such as a Markgrafen. Until
separatists took it over, the late Baron Routenberg, Bank Director Herrmann,
and the teacher (Schullehrer) Schmidt used to read publicly in the meetings.
Although the separatists victory in that conventicle tends to undercut Baurays
position somewhat, the fact that people with everything to lose still engaged in
activities in the shadows of legality speaks of a profound spiritual need. Like-
wise, their withdrawal when separatists came in is consistent with the position
that most conventiclers were not radicals or separatists.74
Records from Berlin indicate that conventicles there generally involved
the poor.75 Perhaps because of the poverty of many conventiclers, a certain
stigma remained attached to the meetings even in a more tolerant era. The
Awakened pastor and later Hofprediger Otto von Gerlach found it necessary
to justify his involvement with poor conventiclers to the Consistory in 1840.
Soothing the Consistorys fears of lay involvement, Gerlach said that he or
a pastoral candidate often led the meetings. Gerlach sought to demonstrate
the conventicles usefulness by saying that it served the furthest and poorest
part of his parish, where people, because of their extreme need, often could
not come to church.76 As a pastor to some of Berlins poorest residents, Ger-
lach was aware of the social question, the plight of the growing numbers of
urban poor. Gerlachs concern that the poverty of parishioners would shame
them into not attending church touches on two other phenomena of 19th-
century Prussia: pauperization and the dechristianization of large parts of the
lower classes. Gerlachs conventicles were a feeble answer to the dynamics of
social and economic dislocation, but he at least attempted an answer when
many others denied or ignored the increasing social, economic, and religious
needs of a rapidly growing and increasingly miserable population. Like the

74 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letter of 8 June 1836.
75 The poor conventicles likely predominated, but they may be overrepresented in the
records because the police pursued them more vigorously than those with influential
members.
76 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letter of 24 March
1841.
72 chapter 1

government, however, Gerlach also feared the potential for separatism. When
some of the houses near the conventicle showed signs of separatism, he wrote
the Consistory about possibly taking over from the lay leaders as a precaution-
ary measure.77
Gerlach thus also exemplifies the mainstream of the Awakening in another
aspect: while eager to make every effort to reach out to others, his ecumenism
reached its limits when talk of separation from the state church arose. Many
other Awakened leaders responded likewise. Assistant pastor (Hilfsprediger)
H. Siedebrandt, leader of an Erbauungsstunde of 60 to 90 people, wrote that his
group was important precisely because it helped combat separatism.78 Thus,
in the eyes of some of the Awakened, proper conventicles were important pri-
marily because of the good they did in and of themselves, but also because
they served as a para-church bulwark against separatist tendencies.
Finally, it is important to remember that the Prussian Awakening was not
just about deepening the faith of believers in conventicles and reintegrating
lapsed church attenders; it was also about actively proselytizing others. When
this involved often poorly educated members of the lower classes spreading
their faith, the authorities became greatly concerned about potential heresies
and social disruption. When organizations undertook to propagate the faith,
and especially when they targeted groups the state church had not reached
such as Jews and non-Prussians important public figures sometimes lent their
moral and financial support. The Awakened founded several such societies, or
cooperated with others, including the Preuische Haupt-Bibel-Gesellschaft, Der
Hauptverein fr christliche Erbauungsschriften in den Preuischen Staaten, Die
Gesellschaft zur Befrderung des Christentums unter den Juden zu Berlin, and
Die Gesellschaft zur Befrderung der evangelischen Missionsgesellschaft unter
den Heiden.79 Much later, by the time Awakened figures began social and reli-
gious outreach to marginalized Prussians of a Protestant background, the cli-
mate had changed dramatically. The Awakening had become salonfhig, and

77 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letters of 24 March
and 16 April 1841.
78 GStAPK, ha x, Inspektionsregistratur, Rep. 40, Bezirk Berlin, No. 167, Letter of 29 May
1847.
79 For a thorough examination of the role of these organizations in the Awakening, see
Johannes Althausen, Kirchliche Gesellschaften in Berlin 1810 bis 1830. Ein Beitrag zur Ge-
schichte der Erweckungsbewegung und des Laienapostolats in den evangelischen Kirchen
des 19. Jahrhunderts, Dissertation, Theology, Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg,
1965, and for special attention to the Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung des Christentums unter den
Juden see Clark, Missionary Protestantism.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 73

the processes of industrialization and secularization made the state church

welcome para-church support.

Conventicles in Pomerania
Pomeranian conventicles seem to have been at least as plentiful and wide-
spread as those in Brandenburg, sometimes more radical and separatist, and
frequently protected by the right of a Hausvater to hold devotional services.
Heinrich von Belows explanation to the authorities serves as a typical justifi-
cation for this practice:

[] my house, as long as I am the Hausvater of it, will be open to every

person just as it always has been, and I would not neglect to declare the
Gospel of Jesus Christ there openly, since I see nothing at all punishable
in that; rather, it is all the more necessary, since nearly all the preachers
here in the area do not [emphasis in text, de] preach the Gospel, while
God has entrusted the same [i.e. the preaching of the Gospel, de] to me.80

Church and government officials found that nearly all their fears about Awak-
ened conventicles in general were realized in Pomerania. The Pomeranian
conventicles appear to have spread rapidly in the 1820s, with the number of
Superintendents reporting dioceses which have not remained entirely free of
Pietist conventicles rising from seven to ten just in the two years from 1819
to 1821.81 Inherent to the existence of religious meetings outside the church
lay the potential for the rapid spread of unorthodox opinions and separatism,
leading the Ministry for Spiritual Affairs (Ministerium fr Geistliche Angelegen-
heiten, or mga) to fret about how to brake their separatist tendencies.82
Even in areas where separatism was less in evidence, such as in the Su-
perintendature of Greiffenberg, reports to the mga had to [] regret that it
[conventicles (Conventicularwesen), de] had strengthened [emphasis in text,

80 [] wie mein Haus, solange ich darin Hausvater sey, nach wie vor einem jeden Men-
schen offen stehe, auch wrde ich keinesweges unterlassen das Evangelium von Jesu
Christo darin ffentlich zu verkndigen, da ich hierin durchaus nichts strafflliges erken-
ne, sondern [es?] um so nothwendigerweiser sey, da beinahe alle Prediger hiesiger Ge
gend des Evangelium nicht [emphasis in text, de] predigen, mir dasselbe aber von Gott
anvertraut wre. Unnumbered document containing Heinrich von Belows Erklrung of
17 October 1825. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii.
81 Diocsen von pietistischen Conventkeln nicht ganz frei gebleieben. GStAPK, ha i, Rep.
76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 3.
82 Dmpfung ihres separatistischen Hanges. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1,
Vol. i, 3.
74 chapter 1

de] itself recently.83 Indeed, the very size of Pomeranian conventicles must
have been particularly disquieting to officials surveying the materially and
apparently spiritually distressed countryside in the 1820s and 1830s. In 1822,
the number of people attending the conventicles sponsored by Below, for in-
stance, jumped from 400 to 700 in just a few weeks.84 The Below conventicles,
like some other large conventicles, brought in people from outlying villages
and emptied the churches.85
The long distances some conventicle-goers had to traverse also wore them
out, making them less fit for work the following day. Officials also feared that
conventicles intense emotional atmosphere might disturb the mental health
of some conventiclers. The Superintendent of the Cammin District, for in-
stance, claimed that, We [] believe, however, that we can rightly assert
that for those persons who tend towards melancholy, participation in Pietist
conventicle devotionals which set the imagination afire really brings great
danger.86 The Superintendent further warned that there might be unreported
or unrecognized psychological consequences attached to Pietist meetings,
such as with the case in Vanerow, Trieglaff parish, where a herd was left alone
and scattered because the shepherd was lost in his thoughts.87
There are many examples of Pomeranian conventicles in the records, in-
cluding others with ties to local aristocrats. For our purposes, it will be useful
to compare two models of noble leadership of Awakened conventicles which,
to judge by the volume of paperwork, weighed heavily on the minds of bureau-
crats at the Ministerium fr Geistliche Angelegenheiten: those associated with
Ernst Senfft von Pilsach and those with the brothers Heinrich, Gustav, and
Carl von Below.88 To varying degrees, each sought to satisfy his spiritual needs
outside the institutional church, but whereas the Below brothers tended to

83 [] hier das Conventicularwesen noch keinen Separatismus herbeigefhrt hat, mssen

wir doch bedauern, da es sich unlngst verstrkte [emphasis in text, de]. GStAPK, ha i,
Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 9b.
84 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 79.
85 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 90ab. Report by Bilfinger to Belowat
Reddenthin, explaining why Belows Erbauungsstunden are against the interest of the state.
86 Wir [] glauben aber mit recht behaupten zu knnen, da fr solche Personen, die zu
Melancholie geniegt sind, die Theilnahme an pietistischen, die Einbildungskraft in Gluth
setzenden Conventicular-Andachten wirklich mit groer Gefahr gebunden sei. GStAPK,
ha i, Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 11b.
87 psychologische Consequenz. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 11.
88 The records from the early 1820s mostly concern the activities of Heinrich, or of the three
brothers together. I will therefore concentrate on Heinrich more than the other two
brothers.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 75

increasingly reject the state church as a whole, Senfft gradually eased his way
back into the church, ultimately opting for reform from within the institutional
church. Heinrich von Below eventually broke with the state church, later (and
temporarily) associating himself with the Old Lutherans in the 1830s. Along
the way, his Old Lutheran followers further antagonized the state through their
repeated requests to be allowed to emigrate due to the states repression of
their religious liberties. Like Below, Senfft faced fines and police harassment in
the 1820s, but after his parish received a pastor more sympathetic to Awakened
sentiments and beliefs (and one must remember that the right of many nobles
to appoint local pastors figured largely in the Awakenings spread), he largely
reconciled himself to the state church and seemed unconcerned that his fel-
low conventiclers mostly left his conventicle for the church. Senffts decision,
in other words, was to cooperate with the church as an important and vocal
minority once he perceived the church to be reforming. Below, however, seems
to have regarded the state church as too corrupt to save, or perhaps too power-
ful for his voice to influence.
Interestingly, the paths of these two men illustrate the problem faced during
the early Protestant Reformation: whether to reform the church from within or
to begin again, whether in the pursuit of truth it is better to choose unity with
diversity or purity with plurality. These two mens stories will also illustrate
two further reasons why the Prussian Awakening may be termed a second Ref-
ormation, or a second Radical Reformation, depending on ones point of view.
First, like the Reformation, the effect of the Awakening was the worst splinter-
ing in Prussian Christianity since the Reformation. Second, like the Reforma-
tion, the Awakening introduced a discursive ploy which broke with what the
institutional church understood as church tradition. Whereas Catholics had
always understood the Bible as part of Church tradition, the early Reformers
maintained that the Bible was superior to church tradition. The Reformers
thereby introduced a discursive disjuncture which still hampers Protestant-
Catholic ecumenical efforts today. Similarly, whereas the Prussian state church
(and indeed centuries of Catholic and Protestant theology) had relied on logi-
cal proofs of propositional statements to persuade people of religious truths,
something else was at work in the Awakening. The Awakened emphasized the
individuals personal, emotional experience of God. In so doing, they did not
directly reject the power of logic, but they undermined it by making an appeal
to the heart at least as important.

The Below Model

Heinrich von Below, along with his brothers Gustav and Carl, aroused the ire
of church authorities by leading conventicles on or near estates in Reddenthin,
76 chapter 1

Seehof, and Gatz. Since the Belows conventicles attracted corrosive respect
(verderbliche Achtung), the church had already requested police surveillance
of them in 1821.89 According to the Vossische Zeitung, the Consistory had to
act against the Belowian conventicles, since conventiclers were neglecting the
church services, and had even celebrated the sacraments of baptism and the
Eucharist. These sacraments were supposed to be administered by the church
alone.90 As a bureaucrat explained to one of the Belows, emptying the church-
es and drawing people in from far outlying villages constituted a threat to the
state itself.91 In the eyes of the Prussian state, Belows attraction of hundreds
to his conventicles posed a threat to the state church, proper doctrine, social
order, and probably even the conventiclers ability to work well.92
The Prussian Minister of the Interior and Police regarded Belowian conven-
ticles with such alarm that he wanted a more vigorous means than the alr to
prosecute them. The minister argued that using the alrs provisions against
potential threats to order and security were insufficient, since the Belowian
meetings already have become dangerous to a high degree [emphasis in text,
de].93 Interestingly, he further maintained that the alrs restrictions applied
not just to secret meetings, but also to public ones, if they were dangerous.
Here we see Prussian state bureaucrats trying to put the genie of voluntary as-
sociations and the rudiments of civil society back in the bottle, and perhaps the
prescient fear of what changes mass politics would one day bring to Prussia.
In this document we also see the chilling foreshadowing of military force Fred-
erick William iii used against Lutheran dissidents in Silesia two decades later:
if measures against dissidents proved ineffective, then the royal government,

regardless of its protection of and respect for domestic [husliche] rela-

tions, in consideration of the overwhelming regard for the good of the

89 Document by Superintendent Tischmeyer of 26 September 1821. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76

iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 29a.
90 Handwritten excerpt of the Vossische Zeitung of 26 October 1822, GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76
iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 64ab.
91 Report of 31 November 1821. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 90ab.
92 Report of 8 January 1822. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 79.
93 The minister said one must not rely on provisions of the alr which nur voraussetzt, fr
die Ordnung und Sicherheit des Staates gefhrlich werden knnen, sondern in beiden
Beziehungen beriets in einem hohem Grade gefhrlich geworden sind [emphasis in text,
de]. Report of 12 December 1821. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. i.
See 128a129b.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 77

whole, must inevitably if reluctantly consider itself as obligated therefore

to issue appropriate measures and to comport itself with emphasis.94

The governments quarrel with Below took a radical turn in 1825 when the
Landrath von Bonin urged stronger action against Belows conventicle at Stolp.
Bonin laid the blame for four cases of mental devastation squarely on their
involvement with Belows conventicles.95 In the first case, the wife of Joachim
Albrecht in Schafstein, a usually quiet woman, had become disturbed.96
Herexaminers found her physical appearance reflected spiritual distress: []
body starved, her posture slack, her gaze sunken, her eyes [illegible] in shin-
ing with tears, her hands folded, the color of her face blanched, one often ob-
serves a generalized shaking, the expression an inner fear, [] great unease of
spirit.97
The womans spiritual condition was chilling. According to the report, she
said

[] that the spirit of trouble had set up his dwelling in her [], not only
that she was the greatest sinner, but also that the devil himself lived in
her flesh and her heart, that she could never attain blessedness. The
reasons for this assertion she doesnt go into. She is supposed to spend
her sleepless nights in great fear for her soul, she believes herself easily
endangered by the approach of unknown persons, shakes more strongly
then, becomes more uneasy, seeks to be alone, and no suggestion of her
otherwise reasonable spouse takes away from her the swelling concern
which devours her further every day. A usual [vorherrschend brgerliche]
illness is not responsible, all her thoughts revolve around the point of

94 [] ungeachtet ihrer Schonung und Achtung fr husliche Verhltnisse, durch ber-

wiegende Rcksicht auf das Wohl des Ganzen, sich zwar ungern, aber unvermeidlich
verpflichtet halten msse, gemessene Bestimmungen deshalb zu erlassen und mit Nach-
druck zu handhaben. Report of 12 December 1821. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt.
xvi, No. 1, Vol. i, 128a129b.
95 Geisteszerrttung. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, Abschrift of
a Schreiben from Landrath v. Bonin of 12 July 1825.
96 beunruhigt. Ibid.
97 Der Krper ist abgemagert, die Haltung schlaff, der Blick gesenkt, das Auge [illegible] in
Thrnen schimmernd, die Hnde gefalten, die Gesichtsfarbe erloschen, hufig bemerkt
man ein allgemeines Zittern, den Ausdruck einer innere Angst [in?] groer Gemthsun-
ruhe. Ibid.
78 chapter 1

temporal suffering and eternal damnation [] Reason tells us that the

married woman Albrecht suffers from religious Schwrmerei.98

Perhaps even more appalling, the womans own 23-year-old son also said that
the devil dwelt in his mother. Bonins other examples of victims of Belows
conventicles included the hunchback Martin Schulz, who also believed that
he was a great sinner incapable of attaining blessedness (Seeligkeit [sic]), and
wished to be physically bound so as to divert the pain of his soul, and Joachim
Schulz, who faithfully attended the conventicles in neighboring Seehof.99 Re-
garding this same Schultz, the report observed that, Four months ago he went
completely mad [], recited prayers, songs, sayings, and finally became so wild
that one had to bind him.100 Confronted with such cases, Bonin insisted that
[] it becomes ever more urgently necessary not just to work strongly against
the further spread of the conventicles rooted here, but also to utilize every-
thing in order to exterminate them wherever possible.101
Below, for his part, said he could not close his door to any Christian who
came to hear the pure Gospel. God had entrusted him with a mission to preach
this true Gospel and to draw the people away from false teaching in the church-
es. Interrogated by the government official Bilfinger, Below allegedly said that
as to the problem of making people mad, [] these people [] were engaged

98 [] da sie nicht nur die grte Snderin sei, sondern da auch der Teufel selbst in
ihrem Fleische und in ihrem Herzen wohne, da sie nimmer die Seeligkeit [sic] erlangen
knne. Auf Grnde dieser Behauptung geht sie nicht ein. Sie soll die Nchte schlaflos
in groer Seelenangst verbringen, glaubt sich durch die Annhrung [sic] unbekannter
Personen leicht gefhrdet, zittert dann heftiger, wird unruhiger, sucht die Einsamkeit,
und ist durch keine Vorstellung ihres sonst vernnftigen Gatten, von dem [sic] ragenden
Kummer, der sie tglich mehr verzehrt, und ihrer gewohnten Geschften entfremdet,
abzuziehen. Eine vorherrschend brgerliche Krankheit ist nicht zu ermitteln, alle ihre
Gedanken drehen sich um den Punkt der zeitlichen Qual und ewiger Verdammni, sonst
ward [sic] weder ihr Gedchtni noch Urtheilskraft zerrttet gefunden, noch in anderen
Punkten wie unerdenkliche Folgen und Verbindung der Gedanken wahrgenommen. Das
Verstand ergiebt gengend: da die verehelichte Albrecht an einer religisen Schwrme
rei leidet. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, Abschrift of a Sch-
reiben from Landrath v. Bonin of 12 July 1825.
99 [] besuchte fleiig die Conventickel in dem benachbarten Seehof []. Ibid.
100 Vor 4 Monaten wurde er vllig verrckt [], recitirte [sic] Gebete, Gesnge, Sprche,
wurde zuletzt so wild, da man ihn fesseln mute. Ibid.
101 [] es wird also immer dringender notwendig dem Weiterverbreiten des hier eingewur-
zelten Konventikeln Anwesens nicht nur krftig entgegen zu arbeiten, sondern alles an-
zuwenden um es wo mglich gnzlich auszurotten. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9,
Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, unnumbered document by Landrath von Bonin of 12 July 1825.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 79

in the fight with sin, and possessed by the Devil, who did not want to accept
that they had converted to true faith in Jesus.102 To the skeptical Bilfingers

[] observation, how teaching about the Devil and his violent possession
of Gods creations were reconcilable with the progress of human under-
standing and the education of the nineteenth century, Below expressed
that just as people had been possessed by the Devil in the time of Christ,
which, according to the Scripture, Jesus had driven out, that could also be
the case now, and no one could prove the case to the contrary.103

Here we see clearly two discourses scarcely coupled together. Neither the re-
ligious rebel Below nor the skeptical government bureaucrat Bilfinger could
understand the worldview of the person with whom he was speaking.
Given Belows intransigence and the inefficacy of measures elsewhere
against similar groups, Bilfinger perceived that continued government mea-
sures would in no way change the opinions of Belows followers at Seehof. He
therefore recommended that his superiors ban such meetings in Seehof and in
the Stolp area. He even suggested that, [] all [], even violent means, might
be used, although one cannot calculate the consequences, [illegible] and tu-
mult which [] are to be feared [].104
To Below, any opposition by the authorities in his preaching of the Gospel
on his estates seemed an unwarranted interference in his rights as a Gutsherr

102 [] diese Menschen [] wren im Snden Kampf [sic] begriffen, und vom Teufel bes-
sessen, der es nicht zugeben wollte, da sie sich zu dem Wahren Glauben [an?] Jesum
bekehrten. Ibid.
103 [] Bemerkung, wie die Lehre vom Teufel, und dessen gewaltsamen Besitzergreifung
in Gottesgeschpfen mit ihn [sic] Fortschritten des menschlichen Verstandes, und der
Ausbildung des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts nicht vereinbar sei, aerte der Below, da, so
gut wie zu den Zeiten Christi Menschen vom Teufel besessen gewesen, welche nach der
Schrift, Jesus ausgetrieben habe; eben so knne auch jetzt dies der Fall sein, und Niemand
das Gegenstheil zu beweisen. Unnumbered document by Bilfinger of 23 October 1823.
GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii.
104 [] jede [] selbst gewaltsamen Mittel anzuwenden sein drften, es jedoch nicht zu
berechnen ist, welche Folgen, [illegible] und Tumult [] zu befrchten sind []. GStAPK,
ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, Unnumbered document by Bilfinger of 23
October 1823. Bilfingers superiors opted for a more peaceful approach, telling Bilfinger
to remind Below that his actions were against the express wishes of the king, contrary to
the Cabinet Order of 16 August 1825, and to try fines of 1050 Thaler for those who held
conventicles, and 5 Thaler for those who attended. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt.
xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, unnumbered document of 9 November 1825 from the royal government
at Cslin to Bilfinger.
80 chapter 1

and as a Hausvater preaching the Gospel. When gendarmes arrived at another

mass conventicle, Below baited them. He told his followers gathered in the
courtyard that he could come down to them if they could not hear him well
enough (to annoy the police, implies Bilfinger), and demanded that the gen-
darmes arrest everyone at the meeting.105
The governments feud with Below dragged on for years, and government
officials split over how to deal with the problem. In the view of some, Belows
tendency towards radicalization was confirmed by his involvement with the
Old Lutheran movement. When the government at first refused to recognize
this movement as a legitimate church, many of his followers applied for per-
mission to emigrate. As the tone of these documents indicates, many officials
viewed Below as a religious fanatic stubbornly denying their churchs truth.106
Other officials, however, despite condemning Belows actions in particular,
came to a more nuanced appreciation of Awakened sentiment and the dynam-
ics of religious awakening. Instead of adopting an automatic suspicion of and
blanket condemnation of subjective, personal awakenings, some officials be-
gan to think there were thoroughly positive elements mixed in with bad ones.
The report of Superintendent Thym demonstrates this more complex ap-
proach. Thym, as Superintendent of Cslin, had every reason to resent Below,
for it was in Seehof that the first signs of separatism showed themselves in his
district. Not without sympathy for some of the separatists objections to the
state church, Thym had perhaps keener insight into the problem of separatism
than many other government officials. In his opinion, national differences led
to differences within the church, but the principal cause of schism was pride
(Hochmuth).107 Furthermore,

105 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, document of 1 December 1825.
106 Cf. an excerpt from a report of the Verwaltungsbericht of the Royal Consistory and Pro-
vincial School Collegium of the Province of Pomerania dated 29 June 1840 by Bonin.
The report asserts that one of the leaders of the few truly committed separatists is the
Gutsbesitzer von Below in Seehof, but that [] hiding behind the name of Old Lutheran
recently assumed by him is really his old separatism, which he wants to legitimate some-
what through that name. If one granted him all the demands that the Old Lutherans usu-
ally make, he wouldnt budge an inch from his former path. [] denn seit er dem in
neuerer Zeit angenommenen Namen eines Alt-Lutheraners verbirgt sich nur sein alter
Separatismus, den er durch jenen Namen nur einigermaen legitimiren will. Bewilligte
man ihm auch alle Forderungen, welche die Alt-Lutheraner zu machen pflegen, so wrde
er deshalb nicht um eine Linie von seiner bisherigen Bahn abweichen. See GStAPK, ha i,
Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. x, 109a114a.
107 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. viii, 34a39b.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 81

Truly awakened from indifference to Christian and church matters, one

should indeed at first see these spirits [die Gemther] as cheering docu-
mentation that the Holy Spirit, since the time of the apostles, has not
yet left the church. It is only that thereafter the Awakened soon think
themselves able to dispense with pillars and supports in the kingdom
of God;108 they forget that the Lord is the one who must do the calling,
depart from the words of the Gospels, and themselves fashion the prin-
ciples of their peculiarities.109

Thym also appreciated something which many other church or government

officials had not seen, or at least had not known how to react to: the discourse
of the Awakening was such that appeals to the heart, to subjective perceptions,
and perhaps to emotions, enjoyed at least as much of an effect as appeals to
rational propositions about God. Thym discussed those separatist Awakened
who [] err from the simplicity [Einfalt] of the word of God, and give them-
selves over to the multiplicity of human divisions and opinions. To haggle
with them in regards to the latter, he continued,

would mean stepping onto their own territory, which would be very dan-
gerous, because they are more at home in their own areas than an outsid-
er. In addition, a victory through the art of disputation would not bring
much, because at most their understanding would be defeated but their
hearts not convinced, which is probably the most important thing. From
my own perception I can confirm that [he who?] proclaims the divine art
of the Biblical word, apart from all tangents and polemics, but applied
to the interior and external Christian life in general, precisely through
which the sermon becomes practical, has a more penetrating and longer-
lasting effect than all other [approaches], no matter how well thought
through and executed.110

108 Cf. 1 Timothy 3:15 reb (Revised English Bible).

109 Wahrhaft aufgeweckt aus christlicher und kirchlicher Gleichgltigkeit sind die Gem
ther zuerst in der That als erfreuliche Documente zu betrachten, da der Heilige Geist
mit seinen Gnadenwirkungen seit der apostolischen Zeit noch nicht von der Kirche ge-
wichen. Allein darnach [sic] meinen gar bald die Aufgeweckten, sie seyen auch sofort
fhig, Pfeiler und Sulen in dem Reiche Gottes abzugeben; sie vergessen, der Herr unser
Gott mssen [sie?] dazu berufen gehen dem Worte des Evangelii ab, und machen sich
selbst ihre Eigenthmlichkeiten Grundstze. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi,
No. 1, Vol. viii, 34b.
110 Mit ihnen ber die letztern [hadern?] hiee auf ihr Gebiet hinberzutreten, was sehr
gefahrvoll, weil sie in ihren Bereichen besser zu Hause sind, als ein Fremdling. Auerdem
82 chapter 1

As we see, Thym recognized that in 19th-century theology, and especially with

the separatist branch of the Awakening, appeals to the heart were coming to
count for more than logical proofs and philosophical reflections. Thyms sepa-
ratists had altered their worldview so much from the one offered by the state
church that Thym found it counterproductive to venture into their world on
their terms. The best way to reach the separatists, claimed Thym, was to ap-
ply biblical authority to both the interior, subjective life, and to the actions or
external life of the separatists. The state was bound to fail if it used only such
external means of force as police, fines, and prison. It left the core of Awakened
faith untouched, and only hardened its resolve and confirmed it in its opposi-
tion by enabling it to adopt a martyr complex. The traditional state church,
which used either an Enlightened appeal to the rationalist element of spiritu-
ality, or the old appeals to the rational propositions of Protestant (in this case
largely Lutheran) orthodoxy, was also bound to fail. For the Awakened and for
many who eventually left the church, such methods either neglected the sub-
jective and perhaps emotional reasons of the heart, or appealed to a lifeless,
inactive orthodoxy which also left the heart unsatisfied and the hands idle.
With counsel fitting for a pastor, Thym suggested that it might be a good
idea for the state church to bend a little for the sake of unity, accepting the sep-
aratists as it had earlier accepted the Herrnhuter and Moravian Brethren (Br-
dergemeinden), or even following the example of the Catholic church, which
could absorb different ideas and yet unify them in brotherhood. Whether the
fault lay with the inability of the government or of Below to bend, Below and
many like him continued on the path of confrontation which was to lead to the
schism of the Old Lutherans in the 1840s.
It is difficult to generalize about the reactions of various officials to Awak-
ened conventicles. One might expect aggressive, stamp them out attitudes
from local officials. They were charged with solving a religious and social
problem with the entirely inadequate means of the Prussian bureaucracy, and
they had to see the problem (and hence their failure) every day. But their re-
sponses varied from implacable rejection to more sophisticated approaches

[frommt/stromt?] auch eine [Be?]siegung durch Disputirkunst [sic] nicht viel, weil hch-
stens der Verstand geschlagen, aber nicht das Herz berzeugt wird, worran gleichwol [sic]
das Meiste gelegen. Aus eigener Wahrnehmung kan ich das bekrftigen, die Gotteskunst
des Bibelwortes ohne alle Seitenblicke und Polemik verkndigt, wohl aber angewandt auf
das innere und uere Christenleben im Allgemeinen, wodurch eben die Predigt prac-
tisch wird, wirkt eindringlicher und nachhaltiger als alle noch so grndig durchdachten
und ausgefhrten Angrichtete [sic]. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol.
viii, 34a39b.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 83

like Bilfingers, and ultimately to toleration of non-separatist conventicles.

Distance and proximity to Awakened conventicles do not explain the reaction
to Awakened conventicles, for even higher officials in Berlin were capable of
splenetic, reflexive opposition. The Minister for Church and Educational Af-
fairs Karl Sigmund Franz vom Stein zum Altenstein (17701840) aggressively
insisted for several years on a legalistic ban on conventicle meetings. The doc-
uments do not show Altenstein differentiating between peaceable, old-style
Pietist conventicles and more radical versions like Belows for several years. In
the earlier documents, Altenstein seems to have been genuinely unaware that
some people could be loyal to the state church and yet feel that their needs were
not fully satisfied by it. Only in 1830 did Altenstein (in response to the request
of five pastors) ask three church officials Daniel Amadeus Gottlieb Neander,
whom we have already encountered; Rulemann Friedrich Eylert (17701852);
and Dr. Georg Carl Benjamin Ritschl (17831858) to inform him under what
conditions conventicles might be tolerated,111 and in 1830 he thought it neces-
sary to point out to the king that he considered some conventicles to actually
be harmless.112 Altenstein ultimately failed to gain mastery over the religious
dissent in the provinces. He first tried to quash conventicles through force,
then to contain them, and finally was forced to call a ceasefire with the reli-
gious and social revolution quietly accomplishing itself in the country.
It is also hard to generalize about differences in the way church as opposed
to secular officials responded to conventicles. Some local pastors, such as Zahn,
who preached in Belows area, could not help but feel insulted at the insinua-
tions that he was not preaching the Gospel and therefore left his parishioners
spiritually undernourished.113 On the other hand, pastors already sympathetic
to the Awakening, such as Dummert, fit well into Senffts area. Through their
preaching and concern, such ministers obviated much of the perceived need
for conventicles. And some fairly neutral observers, like Ritschl, had serious
reservations about Awakened conventicles, but extended their pastoral atti-
tude to tolerate the persons involved even while objecting to specific practices.
From the standpoint of those attending the conventicles, hard opposition usu-
ally confirmed their suspicions about the corruption of the church and the
need to seek solutions outside it. Softer opposition to Awakened conventi-
clers, such as that practiced by Ritschl, made some conventicle-goers appear

111 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, 11ab.
112 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, 20a23a, extract of Altensteins
report to Frederick William iii.
113 Cf. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, 11619, which contains a report
by Zahn of 24 March 1834 on Belows activities.
84 chapter 1

sheepish, and uncomfortable with their hard opposition to the church. It is

as though Prussian state and church officials of the 19th century farcically
repeated Catholic opposition to the Protestant Reformations of the 16th cen-
tury, with Altensteins instructions parodying the ham-fisted Edict of Worms,
Ritschls recognition of past church failings and rededication to the churchs
future mission echoing the Council of Trent, and those like Dummert adopting
the Jesuit role of recalling the faithful to reform within the church.

The Senfft Model

Ernst Senfft von Pilsach initially seemed to fit Belows pattern of separatism,
but his decisions over the course of the 1820s and 1830s showed he proceeded
from radically different presumptions than Below. Although Senffts conventi-
cles attracted considerably fewer adherents than Belows,114 officials found the
same questionable spirit at work. They disapprovingly noted that he and Adolf
von Thadden-Trieglaff represented Christian yet hyper-orthodox principles of
belief which animated young men possessed by a fever for conversion.115
The officials suspected that Senfft, like Thadden and Below, celebrated the Eu-
charist.116 They accused him of protecting the ministerial candidate Gerhard
(suspected of improper conventicle activity)117 and of using the special sta-
tus of his landed estate to resist police measures against his conventicles.118 In
short, he appeared to follow the same potentially dangerous path of increasing
separation from the state church and resistance to the directives of the hierar-
chy of both church and state.

114 While Below could draw hundreds, Senfft attracted around 80 conventiclers at one re-
corded conventicle in 1828 (GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv. Un-
numbered document of 18 January 1828). After a minister more sympathetic to Awakened
sensibilities arrived, Senfft said, apparently to his satisfaction, that it was rare for outsid-
ers to attend his house devotionals. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol.
iv, unnumbered document of 13 November 1829.
115 hyperorthodoxe Glaubensgrundstze and vom Bekehrungseifer beseelte junge Mn-
ner. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, unnumbered document of
27 September 1827 from the Pomeranian Consistorium to the mga.
116 Ritschl claimed Senfft indirectly confirmed his eucharistic activity in a personal inter-
view. See GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv, unnumbered document
of 5 July 1828 from Bishop Ritschl to Altenstein. On Thadden and Below, see, for example,
GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, unnumbered document of 6
October 1825.
117 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. ii, unnumbered document of 8
August 1825.
118 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv, unnumbered document of 19
September 1829.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 85

Senffts resistance was particularly irksome to the state because he had a

certain status and reputation that made it politically awkward for the state to
marginalize him. It was not just that, as a land-owning noble, Senfft belonged
by definition to Prussias ruling class. Senfft, like many Awakened nobles, also
enjoyed a certain amount of moral capital by virtue of his sterling record from
the period of the wars against France, which established his credentials as a pa-
triot, and as a servant of the Prussian state in its most dangerous hour. Another
factor that made Senfft a less convenient target than Below was that Senfft re-
peatedly tried to reason with authorities to allow his conventicles based on his
reading of the Allgemeines Landrecht. That is, rather than standing completely
apart from the system, Senfft tried to work within the system to establish new
room for needs he felt were not being met.
By early 1828 the government admitted that its measures against Senffts
conventicles were not effective.119 But while some in the government contin-
ued to reject all manifestations of the Awakening on principle, others, such as
Bishop Ritschl, began to see the movement as a differentiated group of forces,
some nearer the state church than officials had thought. This comes out very
clearly in his report of a personal interview with the Awakened Archdeacon
Dummert, who was active in a church in Cammin.
During the interview, Ritschl brought up the

frequently used terms believing and unbelieving, awakened and un-

awakened, converted and unconverted, and I expressed my alienation
from and disapproval of [the fact that] precisely [those] preachers and
lay who claimed to have a thorough knowledge of Holy Scripture were as
little acquainted with the former as with the decisions [?] of the human
heart, that in a quite unchristian fashion they linked peoples conversion
to certain, limited and unchanging forms, into which they wanted to
force everyone, despite their multisided individuality, and that they took
certain external, violent and contorted manifestations for indispensable
and inimitable signs of true repentance.120

119 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv, unnumbered document of 6 May
1828 from Bishop Ritschl to Altenstein.
120 [] hufig gebrauchten Benennungen von glubig und unglubig, erweckt und uner-
weckt, bekehrt und unbekeht, und uerte ich mein Befremden und meine Mibilligung,
wie Prediger und Laien, die sich gerade einer grndlichen Erkenntni der heiligen Schrift
rhmten, so wenig mit derselben so wie mit der Beschlossenheit des menschlichen Her-
zens bekannt wren, da sie die Bekehrung des Menschen ganz unchristlich an gewisse,
beschrnkte und unabnderliche Formen knpften, in welche sie Alle, trotz ihrer man-
nichfaltigen Individualitt zwingen wollten, und da sie gewisse uerliche, gewaltsame
86 chapter 1

Ritschl said that

to my amazement, Dummert fully applauded my words, and together

with me condemned this one-sided appreciation of the Gospel; [he, de]
added, however, something strange to this, that precisely these Pietists,
who presume the existence of such a normal model for peoples conver-
sion, and of whom there were many in Cammin, were those furthest from
separatism; rather, they proved themselves the most faithful church at-
tenders and communicants.121

Thus, it began to dawn on Ritschl that despite the Awakened model of con-
version, which he held to be false, the Awakened might actually support the
church in other ways. But Ritschls surprise was not yet over. Ritschl next turned
to conventicles, [] and I spoke of the dangers which these parachurch meet-
ings had already brought forth, and still could bring forth, especially if the laity
were allowed to preach, or even celebrate the holy Eucharist.122 Dummerts
reaction again confounded Ritschl:

Here, too, Dummert declared himself in agreement with me, which I did
not expect, and defended only those conventicles which either had ex-
isted for a long time, and had proven themselves innocent, or as tem-
porarily good for healing, and finally, where a congregation lacked a
perfectly good clergyman, and the public church services did not meet
the [congregations] needs. In Cammin, he said, probably six separate
conventicles had existed in the past several years. Most of them had dis-
solved themselves, however, except for two, which were of old origin, and
whose members restricted themselves to singing a few songs and reading

und krampfhafte Erscheinungen fr die unentbehrlichen und untrglichen Zeichen der

wahren Bue nhmen. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv, unnum-
bered document of 5 July 1828 from Bishop Ritschl to Altenstein.
121 Zu meiner Verwunderung gab der Dummert meinen Worten vollkommenen Beifall, und
beklagte mit mir diese Einseitigkeit in der Auffassung des Evangeliums, fgte aber als
etwas Merkwrdiges hierzu, da gerade diese Pietisten, welche fr die Bekehrung der
Menschen einen solchen Normaltypes annhmen, und deren es in Cammin viele gbe,
am allermeisten vom Separatismus entfernt wren, vielmehr sich als die fleiisgsten
Kirchgnger und Kommunikanten bewiesen. Ibid.
122 [] und sprach mich ber die Gefahren aus, welche diese auerkirchlichen Versamm
lungen bereits fervorgebracht hatten, und noch hervorbringen knnten, besonders,
wenn Laien sich erlaubten zu predigen, oder wohl gar das heilige Abendmahl auszu-
teilen. Ibid.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 87

from well-known devotional books. It was precisely these participants,

however, who were the most faithful church attenders, who, in addition
to their private meeting each Sunday, also attended the three-fold church
service and all public baptisms and weddings, and who were well-known
in their civic lives as the most innocent and peaceful of all. It would have
been an easy thing to force their closure, but he saw no sufficient reason
for that, especially since even in Berlin and in many other areas of the
Prussian state such associations were tolerated.123

This passage brings several important points to light. First, through Dummert,
Bishop Ritschl discovered (and subsequent documents show he broadly ac-
cepted Dummerts story) the existence of a type of conventicle which, far from
threatening the church, promoted healthy, intense individual spirituality and
seemed to reinforce the conventiclers devotion to the church proper. Second,
such healthy conventicles were apparently far more prevalent than previous
documents would indicate. In fact, nearly all the documents before this one
indicate that both church and state officials regarded all conventicles as es-
sentially dangerous. In their opinion, if conventicles were not hotbeds of her-
esy and potential social disorder already, it was probably just a matter of time
before they became so. Officials seem either not to have recognized that some
conventicles, such as Dummerts, could support the church and state, or to
have not mentioned them because they were so obviously harmless. The often
nearly hysterical tone decrying conventicles hints that the former was more
likely the case. In any event, one may infer from this document that the num-
ber of conventicles that either dissolved themselves peacefully after a short

123 Auch hierber erklrte sich der Dummert, was ich nicht erwartete, mit mir einverstan-
den, und nahm nur diejenigen Konvenikeln in Schutz, welche entweder schon lngere
Zeit bestanden, und sich als unschuldig bewhrt htten, oder sich als transitorisch heil-
sam erwiesen, und endlich, wo es einer Gemeinde an einem vollkommenen tchtigen
Geistlichen fehle, und der ffentliche Gottesdienst dem Bedrfnisse nicht genge. In
Cammin, sagte er, htte in den letzten Jahren wohl 6 besondere Konventikeln existiirt
[sic]; die [illegible] htten sich aber von selbst aufgelst, bis auf zwei, die alten Ursprungs
seien, und deren Mitglieder sich auf das Singen einiger Lieder und auf das Vorlesen aus
einem bekannten Erbauungsbuche beschrnkten; die Theilnehmer davon seien aber
gerade die fleiigsten Kirchgnger, welche an jedem Sonntage auer ihrem Privatver-
ein noch dem dreimaligen Gottesdienste und allen ffenliche Taufen und Trauungen
beiwohnten, und in ihrem brgerlichen Leben als die Unbescholtensten, Friedlichsten
bekannt wren; es wre ein Leichtes, ihre Auflsung zu bewirken, aber er sehe keinen
gengenden Grund dazu vorhanden, desonders, da ja auch in Berlin und an vielen an-
deren Orten des preuichen Staates solche Vereine geduldet wrden. Ibid.
88 chapter 1

time, or failed to arouse attention because they were so quietist, was likely con-
siderably greater than the documents otherwise indicate. Third, the Prussian
states policy towards conventicles was apparently applied quite unevenly. The
degree to which this difference was due to greater toleration in large urban
centers such as Berlin, or to local officials varying degrees of sympathy or an-
tipathy towards conventicles in general or the specific conventiclers, remains
unclear. When it later began to relax some of the strictures against conven-
ticles, the state exacerbated the unevenness of its approach, restricting some
rulings to certain provinces.
After seeing Dummert preach, Ritschl eventually decided he would be an
ideal candidate for the open pastoral position in Trieglaff, where Senfft en-
joyed patronal rights in the local church. Ritschl, for his part, advised Alten-
stein that under certain circumstances, he thought conventicles ought to be
tolerated. Those which just sang or read devotional literature of the famous
Pietists Arndt, Spener, and Francke, were probably harmless, Ritschl conclud-
ed. Indeed, officials should look anew at such conventicles, [] which do not
break with church order and often came into existence [] only because of
the natural need for a stronger nourishment than their preacher gives them
[].124 He stressed, however, that those conventicles in which the Eucharist
was celebrated, or which read separatist literature should be banned.

The Reform of Conventicle Policies

The impetus for reform, however, depended on the personal intervention of

the Crown Prince, the future Frederick William iv, in August 1828. Ritschl, in
response to a written request from two locals for a loosening of the restrictions
on conventicles, expounded his views to the Crown Prince. While he empha-
sized the danger of lay preaching, Ritschl essentially reiterated the position
articulated above.125 The Crown Prince, on reading Ritschls position, agreed
and asked Altenstein whether some changes in Pomerania might be possible

124 welche der kirchlichen Ordnung keinem Abbruch thun [], nur aus den so natrlichen
Bedrfnissen nach einer krftigeren Speise, als die ihnen von ihrer Prediger dargereicht
wird []. Ibid.
125 Ritschl did not unambiguously support religious freedoms, however, making them con-
ditional on whether [] the state may see itself forced under certain circumstances and
for reasons which lie outside the church sphere to forbid or at least to restrict conven-
ticles. The original German reads: [] da der Staat unter gewissen Umstnden und
aus Grnden, die auer dem kirchlichen Gebiete liegen sich genthigt sehen kann, auch
diese zu untersagen oder wenigstens zu beschrnken. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9,
Revival, Quietism, And Change 89

on this matter of great importance.126 In May 1830 Altenstein appointed a

commission, composed of Bishop Eylert, Dr. Ritschl, and Dr. Neander, to look
into [] whether and under what conditions extra-para-church devotion-
als may be permitted without disadvantage [], terming the affair a matter
of great importance.127 Since all three members of the commission were, to
varying degrees, open to the positive traits of Awakened spirituality, a reform
was clearly in the works.
Certainly not all high government officials could countenance greater toler-
ance for conventicles. Finance Minister von Motz refused to sign a report on
the matter, explaining that I consider this mysticism and these conventicles
as harmful for the state and harmful for the Lutheran [Evangelische] church.
Motz further declared that I consider these mystics to be Protestant Jesuits,
I consider that their teaching is quite contrary to the true Lutheran [evange-
lisch] spirit. Worse still, said Motz, I am convinced that the illegal, continuing
spread of this mysticism leads directly to entry into the Roman church [].128
He even tried to deny Altensteins jurisdiction over the matter, asserting that
this matter did not require specialized theological knowledge, but knowledge
about the law and about people.129
Despite such objections, the reform finally succeeded. The new government
policy was that [] permission for devotional meetings is henceforth to be
denied only if their participants separate themselves from the church or if
they later harbored separatists or separatist tendencies.130 Broadly speaking,

Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. iv, unnumbered document of 29 August 1828 from the Crown Prince
to Altenstein.
126 [] von groer Wichtigkeit. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v,
document of 20 May 1830, 11ab.
127 [] ob und unter welchen Bedingungen auerkirchlichen Erbauungen ohne Nachteil
gestattet werden knnen []. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v,
document of 20 May 1830 from the Crown Prince to Altenstein, including Altensteins
marginalia, 11ab.
128 Ich halte diesen Mysticismus und dieses Conventikelwesen fr verderblich fr den Staat
und fr verderblich fr die evangelische Kirche; Ich halte diese Mystiker fr protestan
tische Jesuiten, ich halte dafr, da ihre Lehre dem chten evangelischen Geiste ganz
entgegen ist; Ich habe die Ueberzeugung [sic], da die gesetzwidrig fortschreitende
Verbreitung dieses Mysticismus directe [sic] zum Uebergang [sic] in die rmische Kirche
fhrt und es lt sich diese Ueberzeugung [sic] durch Beispiele beweisen. GStAPK, ha i,
Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, document of 30 March 1830, 16a17b.
129 Motz cited an order of Friedrich i of 21 April 1711 denouncing conventicles. For a copy of
the original order, see GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, 18a19a.
130 Hiernach ist [] die Erlaubni zu auerkirchlichen Erbauungs-Versammlungen nur
dann zu versagen, wenn ihre Theilnehmer sich von der Kirche trennen. GStAPK, ha i,
90 chapter 1

the government decided to tolerate non-separatist conventicles at which there

was no lay preaching or celebration of sacraments. Those conventicles which
harbored separatists or separatist tendencies, or went beyond singing and
reading from well-recognized devotional books, remained forbidden.131 Even
so, the publication of this new policy was ordered only in those areas which
had had problems with conventicles in the past. The mga further admitted
that it could not [] render a ruling pretending to a complete treatment of
the matter. It did, however, lay down general guidelines for the consistories.
Clergy should not lead conventicles containing members from outside their
congregations. Overly large meetings should be moved to the church for reg-
ular, posted devotionals. If lay folk led the meeting, no free speeches (freie
Vortrge) were allowed, but only reading from the Bible, from approved devo-
tional literature, or singing from an approved hymnbook. While not intending
its guidelines to be firm rules, the Ministry nonetheless reserved the right to
impose still tighter restrictions.132
With this document, the Prussian government reversed decades of official
policy. Conventicles, born in 17th-century Pietism, had long worried the state
and the established church. By the beginning of the 19th century, toleration
by authorities for these para-church meetings had practically disappeared.
They seemed to threaten the social order, sound theological doctrines, and
church discipline by giving rise to new forms of lay leadership, by placing a
novel emphasis on emotional and subjective appeals, and by attracting Prus-
sias potential sans-culottes. The persistence and indeed the spread of forbid-
den conventicles demonstrated the difficulties of the Prussian states attempt
to regulate a sphere of personal, religious activity. Because of the close alli-
ance of the state and the state church, the project could not be abandoned.
But the widespread, deliberate civil disobedience of so many otherwise model
subjects eventually led the state to reexamine why its efforts met with so little
success. Some officials focused less on the need for the letter of the states laws
to apply even in remote Pomeranian households, and more on the question

Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, document of 31 March 1834 from Altenstein to the
Stettin Consistory, 114a. This document sums up the mgas approach, as based on several
cabinet orders, especially that of 9 March 1834.
131 The governments ruling was very similar in substance to an earlier recommendation by
the Stettin Consistory (signed by Ritschl, among others). See GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii,
Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No. 1, Vol. v, document of 2 March 1829.
132 Das Ministerium kann, indem hierbei auf Lokal und Personal Verhltnisse so sehr viel
ankommt, dem Knig. Consistorio eine auf vllige Erschpfung der Sache Anspruch ma-
chende, Instruktion nicht ertheilen []. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 76 iii, Sekt. 9, Abt. xvi, No.
1, Vol. v, document of 31 March 1834 from Altenstein to the Consistory, 114b115a.
Revival, Quietism, And Change 91

of what was most conducive to civil and religious order. They discovered that
conventiclers simply wanted to ensure that the Gospel message, as they under-
stood it, was clearly taught and faithfully handed on. The mainstream conven-
ticlers, to use a problematic term, still viewed the church as the ideal forum for
teaching and propagating that message. As soon as the church began to teach
that message in closer conformity with what the conventiclers viewed as tra-
ditional Christian doctrines (as opposed to doctrines perceived to be colored
by rationalist influence), the mainstream conventiclers seemed willing to let
their conventicles die away or serve as helpful auxiliaries to the church. Fur-
ther measures against those conventicles seemed, at best, supernumerary. For
more radical conventiclers, to use another problematic term, the state church
seemed so difficult to reform or so corrupt, that they would rather seek the
truth outside it. Like the mainstream conventiclers, they saw Gods commands
as being above the states; unlike the mainstream, they saw the states backing
of the state church as putting the state in contradiction with Gods commands.
For the state church and the state, these radical conventiclers were therefore
still renegades, whose position questioned the authority of the state church
and the state itself. Continued opposition to these radicals eventually contrib-
uted to the break-off of the Old Lutherans from the state church finalized in
the 1840s. First, however, another angle of the rehabilitation of the mainstream
Awakened must be analysed: how the emergence of the leaders of the main-
stream Awakened as anti-revolutionary and anti-liberal made them political
allies of the state in an era of political reaction.
 chapter 2

Sects and Violence: The Politicization of

the Awakening

Yes, let us all arise and hold fast to one another and fight a good fight.
Here is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon! we will shout, and we will
put to the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, all those who will
not submit to the yoke of the Merciful One who loved us first After all,
our cause is good and we must not be ashamed; we will defend it loudly
and publicly If it comes to that and it seems proper, let us not lack in
harsh German words. One cannot treat the knave Absolom daintily or
with kid gloves. Why has he risen against the Anointed One of the Lord
and why does he seek to cast Him from the throne?
karl bhr, on the foundation of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.1

Awakened Journalism

Grassroots conventicles, Awakened church services, tracts, devotional litera-

ture, and mission societies remained central to the Awakenings spread and
social reproduction. However, Awakened leaders also began to express their
religious and eventually political thoughts in two new and influential news-
papers. Awakened leaders established the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung in 1827

1 Ja, lassen Sie uns Alle aufstehen und uns fest an einander halten und einen guten Kampf
kmpfen. Hier Schwert des Herrn und Gideon! Wollen wir rufen und Alle, die sich nicht beu-
gen wollen unter das Joch des Sanftmthigen, der uns alle zuerst geliebet, ber die Klinge
des Schwertes des Geistes, welches ist das Wort Gottes, springen lassen Wir haben ja eine
gute Sache und drfen uns ihrer nicht schmen, wir wollen sie laut und ffentlich vertheidi-
gen An derben deutschen Worten darfs, wenn es darauf ankommt und wenn es gilt, nicht
fehlen. Man darf mit dem Knaben Absolom nicht so suberlich und fein umgehen; warum
hat et sich wider den Gesalbten des Herrn emprt und will Ihn vom Throne stoen! Cited in
Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 73.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_004

Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 93

as an organ established to defend Evangelical (evangelische) religious views.2

In a further sign of the ecumenical (or at least transdenominational) poten-
tial of the Awakening, several Protestant Awakened figures joined with politi-
cally like-minded Catholic conservatives, such as Joseph Maria von Radowitz
(17971853)3 and Karl Ernst Jarcke (18011852),4 to found the Berliner Politisches
Wochenblatt in 1831. Both journals proved useful to the Awakening for similar
reasons. Each provided cogently if often contentiously advanced apologias for
(respectively) Awakened theology (often with a specifically Lutheran inter-
pretation) and a brand of Restoration political philosophy which appealed to
many of the Awakened.
Both journals disseminated ideas in a more popular and popularized fash-
ion than either word-of-mouth or scholarly publications would have allowed.
They reached not just the reader in rural Brandenburg, but even Frederick Wil-
liam iii and the Crown Prince. By injecting ideas that were part of or at least
in sympathy with the Awakening, they helped the otherwise often provincial
Awakened to imagine themselves as part of a broader community and to be-
gin to piece together a positive program to address the various ills they (far
more readily) perceived. Controversial articles, such as the Kirchenzeitungs
famous Denunciation of Halle, provoked pamphlet wars that engaged public
opinion across all of Germany. The fact that the other, predominantly hostile
media tried to shout down such Awakened voices only made it clear that such

2 On top of all the difficulties associated with the words evangelical and evangelisch discussed
in the introduction, comes an additional one with Hengstenberg. He was a staunch Lutheran
but otherwise fairly positively disposed to cooperation, at least among Protestants. He may
therefore be called Evangelical in the modern sense. He also supported, albeit not without
reservation, the state Union church (die evangelische Kirche der Union). It is therefore some-
times very difficult to know whether Hengstenbergs use of the word evangelisch refers to the
Lutheran church, something generally Protestant, or to the Union church. In this chapter I
have left the German word in brackets and usually translated it as Evangelical.
3 Like most of the Protestant Awakened with whom he cooperated on the Wochenblatt, Ra-
dowitz approved of Hallers views. Official displeasure with this military officers involve-
ment in a political paper led to his transfer out of Berlin in 1835. Radowitz, the child of a
mixed Protestant-Catholic marriage and the Catholic husband of the Protestant Countess
Vo, likely found it easier than many other Catholics to contemplate close cooperation with
Protestants while still maintaining his own strong faith. In 1850, Radowitz would serve as
Frederick William ivs foreign minister. His promotion of Prussias interests led to tension
with Austria, and his eventual fall from power.
4 A convert to Catholicism in 1824, he came to the attention of Frederick William iv and his
circle by publishing a piece against the French revolution of 1830. The coming contest be-
tween the Prussian state and the Catholic church would break his ties with the Wochenblatts
Protestants.
94 chapter 2

Awakened voices represented a dynamic, growing force that challenged the

status quo of liberal opinion by rallying elements of public opinion hitherto
neglected or perhaps consciously ignored. Finally, the Kirchenzeitungs stances
on the politics of the state church, and of both papers on the July Revolution,
made the Awakened appear not as a potentially dangerous sect but as a main-
stream constituency of royal and aristocratic circles in Restoration Prussia. In
short, the Awakened began to undermine semi-established liberalism, which
itself had the potential to undermine traditional and orthodox religion on the
one hand, and the Prussian political order on the other. It did not take long
for representatives of this order and Awakened leaders (some of whom were
natural parts of this order) to calculate that the enemy of their enemy was their
friend.

The Foundation of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung

The Evangelische Kirchenzeitung made a unique contribution to the German

press. Most widely circulating newspapers and journals in the early 1800s were
arguably Enlightened or Hegelian publications, at least as seen through the
eyes of the Awakened. Such publications represented a style of rational dis-
course that was sometimes merely skeptical, sometimes straightforwardly hos-
tile to the claims of traditional, revealed religion. Yet, if the Enlightenment was
an established albeit waning force, its assertively secular tone still grated on
the ears of many Germans in the early 19th century. And despite Hegels suc-
cess, among academics and theologians in particular, most ordinary German
readers probably did not expect to see the owl of Minerva in flight anytime
soon. The Kirchenzeitungs aggressive reassertion of the old claims of revealed
religion against the pretension of reason (or, as they saw it, rationalism) there-
fore sounded a discordant note in the symphony of German publications, but
one which pleased many in the audience who had tired of the old performers.
Perhaps nothing symbolizes this conflict better than the comments of a
certain Dr. Heinroth in Leipzig. Upon learning of the Kirchenzeitungs advent
(incidentally the same year that the Hegelian Jahrbcher were begun), Hein-
roth thundered that the Kirchenzeitung would be a counterweight to the []
mighty lie of Hegelian madness. I see in it [Hegelianism, de] simply the latest
effort of human cleverness to erect a philosophical Tower of Babylon; bas la
philosophie!5 The backers of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung intended from

5 Schon die Soi-distante Kirchenzeitung verlangt ein solches Gegengewicht, wie die Evange-
lische Kirchenzeitung geben wird; und nicht minder verlangt ein solches die krftige Lge
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 95

the beginning that the paper should not only defend Awakened or real Chris-
tian views, but it also should go on the offensive against rationalist critiques.
Hence, the Bonn jurist Perthes endorsed the plan to found the Kirchenzeitung,
observing that

[] we have had need of a paper for decisive defense and for courageous
attack; Christianity ought not present itself shyly in the literature, like
someone merely tolerated, who is happy if one lets him live, but must
comport itself with vigor and strength in this field as well.6

Even the Awakened philanthropist Baron von Kottwitz noted in Berlin that it
was better that the paper create a stir through its strong stances than join the
ranks of wishy-washy religious publications.7
Bachmann found that even among Awakened or Pietist publications, the
Kirchenzeitung was unusual. Most of them addressed a very limited audience,
such as the Latest News from the Kingdom of God (Neueste Nachrichten aus
dem Reiche Gottes), which aimed at the supporters of a particular mission, or
the devotional Christian Magazine for Christians, for the Advancement of
Evangelical Faith and Life (Christliche Zeitschrift fr Christen, zur Frderung
Evangelischen Glaubens und Lebens).8 Only the Homiletical-Liturgical Corre-
spondent (Homiletisch-liturgsiche Correspondenz-Blatt) in Nuremberg provid-
ed a similar Protestant outlook. Yet, perhaps because of its sharply combative
tone or its narrow title, it found few readers outside Franconia.9
The nascent Kirchenzeitung soon assembled a prominent group of mostly
Awakened supporters and coworkers. We have already encountered many
of them Otto von Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Moritz August von
Bethmann-Hollweg, Gottfried Daniel Krummacher, Daniel Amadeus Gottlieb
Neander, Ernst Senfft von Pilsach, Johann Gottfried Scheibel (later a leader of
the Old Lutheran movement), and Friedrich Gottfried August Tholuck. Other

der Hegelschen Verrcktheit. Ich sehe in ihr nur die letzte Anstrengung des Menschenwitzes
zum philosophischen-babylonischen Thurmbau; bas la philosophie! Cited in Bachmann,
Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 72.
6 Der Plan ist vortrefflich schrieb Perthes : ein Blatt zur entschlossenen Vertheidigung und
zum muthigen Angriff war uns nthig; das Christenthum darf nicht wie ein nur Geduldeter,
der froh ist, wenn man ihm das Leben lt, schchtern in der Literatur dastehen, sondern
mu frisch und krftig auch auf diesem Gebiete sich bewegen. Bachmann, Hengstenberg,
vol. 2, p. 74.
7 See Maser, Kottwitz, and and Weikart, Baron Hans Ernst von Kottwitz.
8 Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 1, p. 73.
9 Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 1.
96 chapter 2

leading figures included Prussian Court Pastor (Hofprediger) Gerhard Friedrich

Abraham Strau (17861863), Karl Heinrich Sack (17891875), an Intermediary
theologian, and Carl Immanuel Nitzsch (17871868), a leading theologian of
the state Union church.10
The selection of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg as editor of the Kirchenzei-
tung guaranteed the paper ideological sharpness, but also conflict with ratio-
nalists both within the public arena and in the government.11 Hengstenberg
was an Awakened philologist who, as an ex-Hegelian, knew all the sore points
to prick in his war against the influence of rationalism.12 Hengstenbergs early
work on Semitic languages had originally won him the patronage of no less
than Altenstein, the Minister of Religious Affairs, who had procured for him
a position at the university in Berlin. But, alas for Altenstein, Hengstenbergs
prior appointment in Basle had begun his awakening in the neo-Pietist cir-
cles there.
Given this background, it is not surprising that Altenstein only grudgingly
gave permission for the journal to begin printing.13 Altenstein wrote that Heng-
stenbergs proposed publication for [] explanation and defense of Evangeli-
cal [evangelische] teachings, as they are found in the Holy Scripture and derived
from these in the confessions of the Evangelical [evangelische] church seemed
in itself very desirable.14 But, finding Hengstenbergs first official request for
permission to publish the paper troubling, Altenstein instructed Hengstenberg

10 See Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 1, pp. 74 and 76, and the Plan zu einer neuen evange-
lischen Zeitschrift und Kirchenzeitung, reproduced in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2,
Beilage i 2b and 3, pp. 713.
11 This is not to imply that Hengstenberg had no substantial differences with other Awak-
ened leaders. For example, notable tensions, not always unproductive ones, existed be-
tween the theology of Hengstenberg and that of Tholuck and Neander. See Matthias A.
Deuschle, Ernst Wilhelm von Hengstenberg. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des kirchlichen
Konservatismus im Preuen des 19. Jahrhunderts, Beitrge zur historischen Theologie 169
(Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), pp. 6073 and 11022, respectively.
12 Deuschle, Hengstenberg.
13 Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 1, 8083. Hengstenbergs two requests to Altenstein to pub-
lish (the first marked with Altensteins own marginalia), and Altensteins replies are repro-
duced in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, Beilage i 37, pp. 920.
14 An sich betrachtet ist es wol wnschenswerth, einer Zeitschrift die alleinige Bestimmung
zu geben, da sie aufnehmen solle, was zu einer dem Zeitbedrfnie entsprechenden Be-
grndung und Vertheidigung der evangelischen Lehre, wie sie in der heiligen Schrift ent-
halten und aus dieser in die Bekenntnischriften der evangelischen Kirche abgeleitet ist,
im strengen Sinne gehrt. Altensteins reply of 31 May 1827, citing the wording of Heng-
stenbergs first proposal, dated 19 May 1827. Reproduced in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol.
2, Beilage i 4 and 3, pp. 14 and 9, respectively.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 97

to draft a second. Altenstein apparently believed he saw dangerous tendencies

in the [] assertion you [Hengstenberg, de] expressed in general but with
an unmistakable intention that unbelievers shout down Evangelical [evan-
gelische] teachings and Evangelical life as mysticism, and separatism []15 In-
deed, when Hengstenbergs first proposal had declared that the paper should
belong to no party, Altenstein had commented acidly to the side: but clearly
the one which is accused of Pietism.16
Altenstein also warned that the paper must not adopt an overly confronta-
tional tone, as it might thereby make the fight ever more irreconcilable and
inadvertently even precipitate a schism in the state church.17 If, as the French
proverb says, the tone makes the music, then to Altenstein, Hengstenberg
seemed to be whistling a tune close to the holier-than-thou Jesuits, mystics,
and separatists who were causing Altenstein so much trouble in conventicles.
As Altenstein observed,

In several turns of phrase this announcement is too much lacking in

necessary caution, as, for example, in the assertion that in the long, pre-
ceding time of unbelief solid church tradition has disappeared, and that
many signs of the time have presaged a re-establishment [emphasis in the
original, de] of the Evangelical [evangelische] church.18

Although softened a bit at the edges, Hengstenbergs second proposal retained

much of the spirit of the first. Largely ignoring the thrust of Altensteins criti-
cisms, Hengstenberg changed his contention that the paper cannot avoid
polemics, for instance, to cannot quite avoid polemics.19 Yet, Altenstein
approved Hengstenbergs second proposal, urging him to reconsider the

15 [] der ganz ins Allgemeine aber mit unverkennbarer Absichtlichkeit geuerten Be-
hauptung, da die Unglubigen die evangelische Lehre and das evagelische Leben als
Mysitzismus, Pietismus und Separatismus zu verschreien pflegten [.] Ibid, Beilage i 4
and 3, pp. 14 and 10, respectively.
16 [] soll keiner Partei angehren []; [] doch wol deutlich der, welche des Pietismus
beschuldigt wird. Ibid., Beilage i 3, p. 10.
17 Kampf immer unvershnlicher Ibid., Beilage i 4, p. 14.
18 Ich vermi in dieser Ankndigung die nthige Vorsicht in einigen Wendungen zu sehr,
wie z.B. in der Behauptung, da in der langen vorhergegangenen Zeit des Unglaubens die
feste kirchliche Tradition geschwunden sei und da durch manche Zeichen der Zeit die
Wiederherstellung der evangelischen Kirche angekndigt worden. Ibid., Beilage i 4, p. 14.
19 [] die Polemik nicht vermeiden kann and [] die Polemik nicht ganz vermeiden
kann. Ibid., Beilage i 3 and 5, pp. 13 and 18.
98 chapter 2

potentially dire consequences for his academic career and to keep the paper
precisely within the boundaries placed on it by [the second proposal, de].20
It is not entirely clear why a man who seems to have regarded Hengsten-
bergs project with a mixture of contempt and foreboding approved it. Perhaps
Altenstein was motivated by a liberal dedication to allowing relatively unfet-
tered discourse in print (if not in conventicles). Perhaps he received pressure
from elsewhere. It seems unlikely that he would have endorsed the disdainful
appraisal of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, which upon hearing of Heng-
tenbergs proposal noted

that the Pietists are seeking an organ in a good development. As Pietism

otherwise lives only in the mysticism of the heart and in the colorful web
of feelings, it will have to disappear as soon as it goes into print, namely
in a paper, which, after all, cannot survive on sighs and tears.21

One cannot help but wonder whether Altensteins past disappointment with
Hengstenberg introduced a personal element into his strengthening suspicion
of the Kirchenzeitung. In subsequent years he took the unusual step of making
his own critical marginalia on copies of the paper.22 Hengstenberg, for his part,
viewed his editorship as a mission from God to combat rationalism. Consider-
ing himself to have a backer in heaven, Hengstenberg could easily slough off
Altensteins initial opposition to the founding of the paper. As Hengstenberg
observed, the Minister is very rude, but that doesnt bother me terribly much.
What God wants to happen will happen. What can such a weak creature as
Minister von Altenstein undertake against Him?23
Because Hengstenberg was a supporter of the cause of revealed Christian-
ity against rationalism, he made every effort to keep his readers united. But
he could hardly paper over every serious division. For example, the Union
church and the new liturgy (Agende) proved to be particularly thorny issues
which, despite Hengstenbergs deft writing, wounded the cause of Protestant
unity against rationalism and for revealed religion. Even the most ecumeni-
cally minded of the Awakened who favored the churches marriage in principle

20 Ibid., Beilage i 7, pp. 19 and 20.

21 Da die Pietisten ein Organ suchen, ist eine gute Erscheinung. Da der Pietusmus sonst
nur in der Mystik des Herzens und im bunten Gewebe der Gefhle lebt, so mu er ver-
schwinden, sobald er es wagt, sich drucken zu lassen, namentlich in einer Zeitung, die
nun einmal von Sehnen und Thrnen nicht leben kann. Cited in ibid., Beilage i 6, p. 19.
22 Ibid., p. 86.
23 Der Minister ist sehr ungndig [] doch da kmmert mich nicht so sehr. Was Gott will,
das geschieht doch. Was will eine so schwache Creatur, wie der Minister von Altenstein
gegen Ihn vornehmen. Ibid., p. 84.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 99

might object to the shotgun-nature ceremony. Those loath to give up confes-

sional identity, many of whom eventually became known to outsiders as Old
Lutherans, could never be reconciled to the project.
Bachmann reports that when torn between Eylerts demand that he sup-
port the new liturgy (Agende) of the church, and Scheibels insistence that he
denounce it, Hengstenberg refused to take sides, even though that further an-
tagonized the government. Hengstenbergs behavior becomes comprehensible
only when one considers his devotion to his overall mission:

Regarding the liturgy, I will have to abide by my previously observed

practice. The slightest hint of preference for the same [the liturgy, de]
would close the hearts of a large number of readers forever to the Kirch-
enzeitung, and I do not want to have that on my conscience. Seek first
the Kingdom of God, and everything else will come to you of its own
accord.24

Only after Scheibel and his supporters began to break with the state church
and form the Old Lutheran movement did Hengstenberg reluctantly come out
against him. Bachmann notes that this shift had the side effect of softening
some opposition to him by Ministry officials, but even then, currying favor
with bureaucrats was not Hengstenbergs intention.25 Deuschle observes that
Hengstenberg had no interest in speaking in concrete detail about the Prus-
sian Union until he finally took a stand with his 1844 open declaration in the
matter of the Union.26
Two things are noteworthy about Hengstenbergs quote. One is Hengsten-
bergs conscientious effort to keep all his potential Protestant allies together
for the mission to which he had committed himself. The other is Hengsten-
bergs reference to the Kingdom of God. Dovetailing with the scriptural ref-
erence and with both Augustine and Luthers teachings, Hengstenberg saw
the world as divided into the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man. The
implications of this division for Hengstenberg meant not a contemptus mundi
and a withdrawal from the world, but rather a contempt for the (rationalist)

24 Hinsichtlich der Liturgie mu ich bei dem bisher beobachten Verfahren bleiben. Die ge-
ringste Andeutung zum Vortheil derselben wrde der Kirchen-Zeitung die Herzen einer
Menge von Lesern fr immer verschlie, und das mchte ich nicht auf dem Gewissen
haben. Trachtet am Ersten nach dem Reiche Gottes, das Andre wird euch von selbst zu-
fallen. Cited in ibid., p. 86.
25 On Hengstenbergs relationship to the Old Lutheran movement, see Deuschle, Hengsten-
berg, pp. 30110.
26 kein Interesse hatte, ber die preuische Union in concreto zu reden and offene Erkl-
rung in der Unionssache. Deuschle, Hengstenberg, pp. 337 and 338.
100 chapter 2

rulers of the Kingdom of Man and a charge to redeem it through active en-
gagement with it. Hengstenberg did not want to turn his back on (what was
for him) the fallen, rationalist Kingdom of Man, nor did he even want to draw
a permanent boundary between the two. Perhaps strongly colored by the Cal-
vinist influences he had received at home and from the neo-Pietist Awakening,
the otherwise staunchly Lutheran Hengstenberg envisioned a reform of all the
institutions of the Kingdom of Man, or perhaps better a conquest of it by the
Kingdom ofGod.
Although Hengstenberg deliberately limited the Kirchenzeitungs pur-
view to spiritual matters, he did not do so because he accepted the eternal
bifurcation of the world into two kingdoms, but rather because the spiritual
transformation of the temporal world was the sine qua non for its external
transformation as well. Until that first transformation began, questions like
the Agende could only serve to divide the forces of the spiritual kingdom in
their struggle with the temporal one. Thus, Hengstenberg and at least some
of the Kirchenzeitungs supporters shared the vision, even before publication
officially began, that the paper would be part of a struggle over religious (and
perforce cultural) values. Senator Hudtwalcker of Hamburg, for example, had
cautioned that in order to keep the journals bite sharp, it should exclude any
poorly presented views which enemies could easily dismiss out of hand.

[] one cannot forget that it [the newspaper, de] will suffer from an
unbelievable enmity and opposition, since perhaps scarcely one-sixth
of all Protestant clergymen in Germany can really be called Evangelical.
The other people will offer up everything to combat this poison. If they
can bring forth specious reasons, then many well-minded people who
are sick of foul rationalism, but who cannot come to a decision because
of the brouhaha about Schwrmerei, mysticism, etc. and are looking
for instruction will join the ranks of shouters, and the paper will be
damned.27

27 Denn man darf nicht vergessen, da sie [the newspaper, de] eine unglaubliche Feind-
schaft und Anfechtung erleiden wird, da vielleicht kaum ein Sechstel aller protestan
tischen Geistlichen in Deutschland wirklich evangelisch zu nennen ist. Die andren Leute
werden Alles aufbieten, um diesen Gift entgegenzuarbeiten. Knnen sie nun specise
Grnde anfhren, so treten die vielen wolgesinnten Leute, die des seichten Rationalismus
berdrig sind, die aber wegen des Geschreies ber Schwrmerei, Mystizismus, u.s.w. zu
keinem Urtheile gelangen knnen und Belehrung suchen, gleich jenen Schreiern bei, und
die Zeitschrift wird verdammt. Cited in ibid., p. 77.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 101

The Kirchenzeitungs circulation numbers prove that quite a few (in the con-
text of the late 1820s) readers found the papers poison was obviously just the
antidote needed against rationalism. Within three months of its debut in July
of 1827, the biweekly Kirchenzeitung distributed 600 copies, and about three
months later the total had risen to 800. Still, the exact number of readers re-
mains uncertain, in part because of the nature of the reading public. On the
one hand, James M. Brophy refers to a range of estimates that in 1800 between
only 70,000 and 300,000 of the 20 million to 22 million people living in Ger-
many were fully functional readers.28 On the other hand, he rightly notes that
the great divide between extensive and traditional reading genres is not as
great as once thought, even though [w]hether or not pietistic enclaves [in
the Rhineland, de] had actually taken to reading newspapers is uncertain.29
When one remembers that in the early 19th century a single newspaper com-
monly passed through several readers, the initial number of reading consum-
ers (including readers of varying skill levels as well as listeners to those who
read the paper aloud or summarized it for others) of the Kirchenzeitung was
considerably larger than even these respectable circulation numbers indi-
cate.30 Published in Berlin, the paper spread throughout (mostly Protestant)
northern Germany.
Altensteins fear that the Kirchenzeitung might antagonize those who be-
lieved differently soon came to fruition. Hengstenberg had pledged the Kirchen-
zeitung to the defense of the Evangelical [Evangelische] truth, against both
unbelievers and the Roman Church in his first proposal.31 Altenstein had
thereupon reminded him that the paper should never [forget] that the [Cath-
olic church] is likewise accepted by the state and that attacks upon it would
play into the hands of Catholic opponents of the state church.32

28 James M. Brophy, Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 18001850 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 20. Here, he has in mind Erich Schn, Der
Verlust der Sinnlichkeit, oder, die Verwandlungen des Lesers. Mentalittswandel um 1800
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), pp. 45 and 56. Cf. also his citation of Sheehans evaluation of
the extent of the German reading public in Sheehan, German History, pp. 15758.
29 Brophy, Popular Culture, pp. 21 and 53.
30 Brophy, Popular Culture, p. 102ff. Bachmann notes that although the first paper is marked
4 July 1827, it was actually printed a day later, and distribution proper was to begin in
August. In later years, the paper reached a far wider circulation. Cf. Kriege, Geschichte der
Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung, p. 127.
31 Vertheidigung der Evangelischen Wahrheit, sowol gegen Unglubige als auch gegen die
Rmische Kirche, Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, Beilage i 3, p. 11.
32 The newspaper [] arbeitet auch noch der Beschuldigung, die in dieser Beziehung
der evangelischen Kirche von katholischen Gegnern gemacht wird, geradezu in die
102 chapter 2

Hengstenbergs second proposal promised only to report news about the

relations between the various religious parties,33 and the first six issues of the
Kirchenzeitung indeed featured a lengthy article, On the Inner Relationship
of the Evangelical [Evangelische] Church to the Roman.34 In this article Heng-
stenberg distinguished Lutheran positions from Catholic ones, but without
resorting to the cheap polemics one might have expected. Hengstenbergs mo-
tivation for choosing exactly this article for the premier issues is unclear. Such
an article almost certainly enjoyed a strong resonance among many German
Protestants, whose private letters and frequently even public writings show an
eager readiness to curse opponents as Catholics, Jesuits, papists and the
like for any variety of purported offenses ranging from legalism to devotion to
the hierarchical state church. The article likely provided Hengstenberg with
some much-needed credibility among the separatist followers of the Silesian
pastor Scheibel, who later informed Hengstenberg that many in Breslau con-
sidered Hengstenberg (in reality a convert from the Reformed tradition to the
Lutheran one) to be a secret Catholic.35 Perhaps Hengstenberg simply want-
ed to test the limits of his freedom with Altensteins censors.
Yet, some other leaders of the Awakening were quite willing to countenance
cooperation with conservative Catholics, as the foundation of the Berliner Poli-
tisches Wochenblatt clearly shows. Perhaps the more puzzling question is why,
three centuries after the Reformation, attacking Catholics still seemed like a
good strategy for uniting Protestants in general, and (at least some) Awakened
Protestants in particular. Had the rancor of the Reformation and Counter-
Reformation truly lasted so long, or were such gestures an empty rite signifying
nothing more than Protestant identity? Since the Catholic church faced simi-
lar tensions between those who emphasized the primacy of reason and the
adherents of the primacy of revelation, why did Hengstenberg seem unable

nde. Wenn sie zur Sprache bringt, was zur Vertheidigung des evangelsichen Glaubens
H
und Lebens der katholischen Kirche gegenber gesagt werden mu, so darf sie, nie ver-
gessend, da letztere eine ebenfalls vom Staate aufgenommene und unter seinen Schutz
gestellte Kirche ist, und weit entfernt, sich zu einem Sammelplatz fr leidenschaftli-
che und feindselige Ausflle gegen dieselbe herzugeben, die Grenzen einer edlen, den
Glauben und das Gewissen Andrer ehrenden Migung nicht berschreiten. Cited in
ibid., Beilage i, 4, pp. 1415.
33 [] ber die Verhltnie der verschiedenen Religionsparteien zu einander []. Ibid.,
Beilage i 5, p. 17.
34 Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, and 21 July 1827.
35 Hengstenberg, recalling Scheibels words, reported that Professor Scheibel schreibt mir
von Breslau, da dort allgemein fr einen geheimen Katholiken gehalten gelte, und wer
wei, fr was noch mehr. Cited in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 1, p. 89.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 103

to cooperate with those Catholics who likewise combated rationalism? In any

event, it was not the Kirchenzeitungs article on Catholics, who were an easy
target in Protestant-dominated Prussia anyway, which provoked the greatest
controversy, but an initially anonymous article by Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
savaging two theology professors in Halle.

Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs Growing Politicization

By the late 1820s, around the same time Hengstenberg began to contemplate
the aggressively Awakened Kirchenzeitung, another Awakened figure began to
become audible in the sphere of public opinion. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was
a self-declared Pomeranian conventicler36 who had become critical of retir-
ing Pietisms false relationship to the world.37 In earlier years Gerlach had
come to a deeper religious experience in Berlin, especially through his contact
with Schleiermacher, but he took sharp exception to the impermanence of
the so-soon cooling and disintegrating Christianity of feeling.38
Gerlachs invaluable biographer, Hans-Christof Kraus, judges the late 1820s
and early 1830s as a time of repoliticization39 (Repolitisierung) for Gerlach, an
era in which he realized that no matter how enlivening the subjective, interior
Pietist life was, it had to be anchored in an institutional church firmly engaged
with the world. For Gerlach, the institutional church without an Awakened,
interiorized vision of the Gospel was so much dead wood, but interiorized pi-
ety without roots in the nourishing soil of the institutional church was a plant
that would quickly wither. Summing up Gerlachs mature recollections, Kraus
explains that Gerlach viewed the church as a living and therefore corporeally
present organism, [] as an institution, which administers order in its ordi-
nances and law for the preservation of itself and its members.40 A far cry from
some of the woolier para-church conventicles, Gerlachs church was nonethe-
less, like them, called to a deeply lived spiritual life, and it was indebted to the

36 pommersch gebildeter Conventikelmensch [.] Cited in ibid., p. 179.

37 falsches Verhltni zur Welt ga, Utb, 13.7.1830. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
p. 139.
38 Haltlosigkeit des so bald erkaltenden und zerfallenden Gefhlschristenthums. ga, Utb,
9.12.1831. Cited in ibid., p. 139. On Hengstenbergs similar objection to Schleiermachers
subjectivity, see Deuschle, Hengstenberg, p. 132ff.
39 Ibid., p. 139.
40 [] eines lebendigen und darum leiblich erscheinenden Organismus, [] als einer In-
sitution, die ihre in Gesetz und Recht verfate Ordnung zu ihrer und ihrer Glieder Er-
haltung handhabt. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
p.140.
104 chapter 2

Kirchenzeitung for catalyzing the conversion of Pietism into churched Evan-

gelicalism (evangelischen Kirchenthum).41
Gerlachs move from Berlin to Halle in 1829 to take a position as Landge-
richtsdirketor came as a blow to Hengstenberg, his friend and collaborator.
Writing to a different friend, Hengstenberg, said the news made me sink down
onto my chair and laugh to heaven and ask: No! Is it true? It cannot be so!
And then I fell to my knees. O no, no, that is too much. Tell Ludwig G[erlach,
de] that I am beside myself.42 Still, Gerlach continued his cooperation with
the Kirchenzeitung and even urged Hengstenberg to adopt a certain direction
(using the politically freighted word Tendenz), and to take clearer stands on
the latest themes of the day. Settling comfortably into provincial life in Halle,
Gerlach established contact with other Awakened figures there, such as the
theologian August Tholuck and the church historian Ferdinand Guericke.43
Together with other Awakened, he also established a mission there, which met
monthly in his apartment.44
Gerlachs Awakened activities stood out in Halle, which had long since
ceased to be the epicenter of German Pietism and had become a bastion of
rationalist and Enlightened church forces. Halle had served as Franckes pub-
lishing headquarters during Pietisms heyday in the 18th century, and it still
housed such Pietist institutions as the famous orphanage he established. But
by the early 19th century, neo-Pietist Awakened such as Hengstenberg consid-
ered the city a center of harmful rationalism. Even Gerlachs Awakened views
could not let him overlook the sight of the university and city consumed by
unbelief and sin [].45 Predominant unbelief was especially worrisome in a
university that had nearly 900 theology students.
The theology faculty included two professors, Wilhelm Gesenius and Julius
August Wegscheider, who particularly irked Gerlach and some other Awak-
ened. Their championing of human reason led them to reinterpret the Bible
so as to explain most miraculous descriptions as myths or literary conceits
rather than literal historical accounts. Such views were comparatively new in
their day. True, the Enlightened thinkers dismissal of miracles had laid the

41 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach.

42 Nachricht, die macht, da ich auf den Stuhl niedersinke, zum Himmel emporlache und
frage: Nein, ist das wahr? Das kann ja nicht sein! Und dann gings auf die Kniee. O nein,
nein das ist zu viel. Sage Ludwig G., da ich ganz auer mir bin. Cited in Bachmann,
Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 180.
43 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 137.
44 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 13738. A fuller account of the mission is given in
Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 181.
45 Cited in Bachmann, Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 180.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 105

groundwork for Gesenius and Wegscheiders ideas, but the historical-critical

school of theology was only just coming into its own in the 19th century. The
first volume of David Friedrich Straus seminal Life of Jesus, which famously
(and for many in its day infamously) explained Christianitys central miracle
of the resurrection as Jesus recovery from a merely apparently mortal crucifix-
ion, appeared only in 1835.
For traditionalists, and for orthodox believers in historical Christianity (in-
cluding the Awakened), such novel views were not only unworthy of belief,
they were abominations. Yet it is worth noting that in their own way, the ef-
fort of Wegscheider and his compatriots to interpret Christianity by all means
possible so that it did not come into conflict with modern consciousness was
similar to the task of the Awakened.46 Both sought to re-enliven or make rel-
evant truths which they viewed as too encrusted with corrupting human tra-
ditions to remain vital. At the root of tensions between rationalism and the
Awakening lay a conflict between modern and premodern forms of conscious-
ness. Was the most reliable arbiter of truth mans autonomous reason, or Gods
revelation?

The 1830 Revolution and the Denunciation of Halle

This conflict became (literally) more than academic when Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlach submitted an article to the Kirchenzeitung decrying the rationalist
teachings of Professors Gesenius and Wegscheider in 1830. The ensuing debate
rapidly developed into a theological-political controversy encompassing all of
Germany.47 Based on students notes and oral reports provided by a nineteen-
year-old student named Hvernick,48 the two-part article entitled Rational-
ism at the University of Halle ran under the bland section heading News.49
The article asserted that both professors (who were alleged to be by far the

46 Karl Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag,
1960), p. 426. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 14041.
47 sich zu einer ganz Deutschland erfassenden theologisch-politischen Kontroverse ent-
wickelte [] Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 140.
48 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 141. In a footnote at the end of the second section of
his article, Gerlach openly stated that his knowledge was based on these sources, without
naming names, however. See Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 6, 20 January 1830, Sp. 47.
49 Der Rationalismus auf der Universitt Halle, Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 5, 16 Janu-
ary 1830, Sp. 3840, and No. 6, 20 January 1830.
106 chapter 2

most popular of the theological faculty) openly confess rationalism.50 A list

of specific accusations against Wegscheider then followed, detailing how he
explained away the accuracy of the biblical accounts of the annunciation of
John the Baptist and Jesuss births, Jesuss resurrection of a dead child at Nain,
his feeding of the five thousand, his walking on the water, and finally, as the
pice de rsistance, the resurrection of Jesus himself. The article does preserve
some of the nuances of Wegscheiders alleged treatment of these topics, such
as his contention that even though Jesus suffered only an apparent death
(Scheintod) instead of a real one, one can still view His death as a complete
one because without Gods leading (Leitung) He would have died anyway; be-
cause even if the death was incomplete, Jesuss willingness to sacrifice Himself
is what mattered;51 and because Jesuss apparent death was as much a death
as other (admittedly incorrectly diagnosed) deaths in the New Testament, and
still dependent on Gods leading (Leitung).52
But for Gerlach, it would never do to have a Christ who merely felt poorly
but got better later. The problem with Wegscheiders treatment of all these
topics was his unwillingness to accept a supernatural or miraculous explana-
tion, since his reason told him he could not. So, for instance, Wegscheider is
supposed to have rejected the angels annunciation of John the Baptists birth
because [] everything which appears in nature or in the world of the senses
[] we must judge by the laws known to us [].53 The result for those theol-
ogy students

must be disgusted with the Holy Scripture and with the miserable pro-
fession of seeking a few kernels in a bushel of chaff which are not worth
the search once one finds them since one can more easily find them ev-
erywhere namely in Wegscheiders lectures, which because they show
these kernels make the residue of the Bible itself superfluous.54

50 Bekanntlich bekennen sich Dr. Gesenius und Dr. Wegscheider offen zum Rationalismus
[]. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 5, 16 January 1830, Sp. 38.
51 Der Hauptzweck des Todes Jesu, seine Aufopferung des Lebens fr Wahrheit und Recht
und zur Besttigung seiner Lehre und die moralische Charakterstrke, mit welcher er sich
dem Tode weihte, bleibt unverndert, wenn man auch annimmt, da sein Tod nicht ganz
vollendet ist. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 5, 16 January 1830, Sp. 40.
52 Ibid.
53 [] Alles was in der Natur oder Sinnenwelt erscheint, [] nach den uns erkennbaren
Gesetzen derselben nothwendig burtheilt werden mu []. Ibid., Sp. 38.
54 [] mu ein Ekel an der heiligen Schrift und an der jmmerlichen Beschftigung seyn,
aus einem Scheffel Spreu einige Krner herauszusuchen, die, wenn man sie gefunden,
des Suchens nicht werth sind, da man sie berall leichter finden kann, und namentlich
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 107

In other words, Wegscheiders rationalist approach reduced the Bible to so

many literary turns of phrase, yarns, old wives tales, and a few mildly interest-
ing baubles that could be more easily attained by listening to Prof. Wegscheider.
Gerlach painted a bleak picture of the future once Wegscheiders students
reached the pulpits. Having already had the light turned into darkness, the
poor souls who did not give up on the ministry altogether would likely turn to
the pleasures of the world while they were young but later work with hard-
ened hearts towards the suppression of divine truth and the devastation of
the church [].55 To prevent this downward spiral of destruction, Gerlach ap-
pealed to those who are used to detesting rationalism as a system long pre-
sented in its flatness and nothingness, and as belonging more to the past than
the present, to consider the facts he had sketched out and to try to win []
the unbelievers for the Lord [].56
Gerlach handled Gesenius in much the same fashion as Wegscheider, dwell-
ing on Geseniuss alleged love for mocking proper doctrines and even the
Bible. Gerlach complained of ever recurring laughter directed against the
old, right-thinking teachers of the church and against even the content of
eternal Word itself [].57 Gerlach could not stand Geseniuss impugning holy
truths and the sacred text itself by his impious wit. Gerlach claimed that Ge-
senius had called [] the Psalmists old nurses and used Abrahams pleading
for God to spare Sodom as evidence that even then haggling was peculiar to
Jews [].58
For Gerlach, it was bad enough that such rationalist professors dominated
the Halle faculty; it was worse that the state aided them in their work of cor-
ruption. Gerlach pointed out that the state not only granted the professors the
freedom to teach, but paid them and even required theology students to sit

Wegscheiders [sic, emphasis in original] Vorlesungen, weil sie diese Krner heraus sich-
ten, dies Residuum der Bibel selbst berflig machen. Ibid., Sp. 40.
55 [] das Licht selbst in Finsterni verwandelt worden []; [] sich [] in der Weltlust
zu genieen trachten []; [] nachher aber mit verhrteten Herzen an der Unter
drckung der gttlichen Wahrheit und der Verwstung der Kirche []. Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung, No. 6, 20 January 1830, Sp. 46.
56 Diejenigen aber, welche gewohnt sind, den Rationalismus, als ein lngst in seiner Flach-
heit und Nichtigkeit dargestelltes System zu verachten, und als mehr der Vergangenheit
als der Gegenwart angehrend anzusehen []; [] zu erwgen []; [] die Unglubi-
gen [] fr den Herrn gewinnen []. Ibid.
57 [] immer wiederkehrendes Gelchter []; [] der alten rechtglubigen Kirchenleh-
rer []; [] der Inhalt des ewigen Wortes selbst []. Ibid.
58 [] die Psalmisten alte Betschwestern [] genannt []; [] das Schachern sey den
Juden schon damals eigen gwesen [] Ibid.
108 chapter 2

through their lectures.59 In Halle, furthermore, all but one of the twelve profes-
sors and two private instructors (Dozenten) sat on the commission that judged
students worthiness to be admitted as ministerial candidates.60 Having ob-
served that there were 880 theology students there, deluged with rationalist
influence, Gerlach pled for the

serious attention of all those concerned and on whose hearts the church
of Christ in our German Fatherland lies, [] to awaken their hearts, to
help heal the wounds through prayer, word and deed which unbelief has
struck [] and continues to strike.61

The public uproar over Gerlachs article was so great that a just month later
he was compelled to announce his authorship of it, and Tholuck (whom some
had suspected was the author), distanced himself from the affair.62
The more important fallout, however, was in the press and in the Ministry
for Religious Affairs. Gerlachs article upset Frederick William iii, who ordered
the Minister for Religious Affairs, Altenstein, to investigate the matter close-
ly. Given Altensteins Hegelian sympathies and his proven opposition to the
Awakening in general and to Hengstenberg in particular, the direction of the
investigation seemed foreordained.63 Altenstein named the Privy Counselor
(Geheimer Regierungsrat) Delbrck to conduct extensive interviews. Pressure
to clear up the affair came from below as well, when Gesenius and Wegscheider
lodged official complaints against Gerlach. They requested disciplinary mea-
sures against the Landgerichtsdirektors unseemly entry into political matters.
How could contemporaries view Gerlachs article as political, instead of pri-
marily religious in nature? In Prussian society, most individuals had, at least os-
tensibly and often far more than that, a religious affiliation, and they therefore
had a compelling interest in religion. Given the relative religious freedom and
lack of right to political expression, much of the eras political debate took the
veiled, albeit not merely instrumental, form of religious discourse. The Prus-
sian states self-proclaimed role as protector of the church(es), and the kings

59 Lehrfreiheit, ibid., Sp. 47.

60 Ibid. and Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 5, 16 January 1830, Sp. 38.
61 [] die ernste Aufmerksamkeit aller derer, die es angeht, und denen die Kirche Christi in
unserem Deutschen Vaterlande am Herzen liegt, [] ihre Herzen erwecken, durch Gebet,
Wort und That die Wunden heilen zu helfen, die der Unglaube [] geschlagen hat und zu
schlagen fortfhrt. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 5, 16 January 1830, Sp. 47.
62 Cf. Mehlhausen, Rationalismus und Vermittlungstheologie, pp. 18687.
63 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 144.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 109

status as head of the church further served to associate those spheres. Another
powerful explanation for why the two spheres were connected is that despite
the Reformations breach of the idea of a united Christendom (or for that mat-
ter, the older division between Catholicism and Orthodoxy), something of the
old idea persisted widely albeit not universally that the corpus christianum still
existed and ought to continue. Religion was not something one did in a speci-
fied parish building on Sunday, but the fundamental core of identity which
should pervade and inform all other areas of life. Religious disputes were per-
force political. Yet, traditionally, politics were not necessarily religious.
Gesenius and Wegscheider were not the only ones to accuse Gerlach of en-
tering politics. Hengstenberg, Gerlachs friend and publisher of his article, also
accused him of it. As we have seen, Hengstenberg wanted to keep the Kirchen-
zeitung out of politics, having the bigger fish of religious reform to fry. Instead
of denying the political implications of his article, Gerlach sought to justify
them. He wrote Hengstenberg saying, Surely you, too, dont consider me to be
involved in politics or a separatist? [] Regarding the first, I believe that the
devil has a wrong political direction, which can only be answered with the true
one, which the apostles had.64 Yet Gerlach had not meant to say that the poli-
tics (in the modern sense) was the salvation of the church or the proper path
to reform it. That idea he condemned as a corrupting madness.65 Gerlachs
article, he said, was meant not for public opinion as such, but for the church,
which is actually concerned with the matter.66 In sum, Gerlach maintained
that while his article was not meant as a contribution to secular politics, reli-
gious reform had an undeniable political connotation.
Delbrcks inquiry examined only the specific accusations of Gerlachs ar-
ticle. But it did not address Gerlachs position that, based on his secondhand
sources, he could not vouch for the literal correctness of every expression
of the professors, but indeed for the correctness of the presentation as a
whole.67 Despite the many diligent interviews with Gerlach, Gesenius, Weg-
scheider, and students of the professors, by asking not whether the professors
had said the sorts of things Gerlach had asserted, but whether Gesenius had

64 Sie halten mich doch nicht auch fr einen politicus oder Separatisten? [] Was aber
ersteren betrifft, so hat, glaub ich, der Teufel auch eine falsche politische Richtung, der
nur durch die wahre, welche die Apostel hatten, begegnet werden kann. Cited in Kraus,
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 143.
65 [] verderblichen Wahn [], ibid.
66 [] die ffentliche Meinung als solche [], sondern an die Kirche, welche die Sache
eigentlich angeht. Ibid.
67 [] die wrtliche Richtigkeit [];wohl aber fr die Richtigkeit der Darstellung im Gan-
zen []. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 6, 20 January 1830, Sp. 47.
110 chapter 2

said specifically that the Psalmists were old nurses, Delbrck was bound to
gather evidence more against Gerlach than against the professors.
Both Delbrcks report to Altenstein and Alteinsteins report to the king
stressed that Gerlachs contentions were not proven true, thereby calling into
question even the gist of Gerlachs article.68 Altenstein leadingly left open the
question to what extent the activity of the said person Gerlach [], in appear-
ing [] in public journals with personal polemics against other bureaucrats
and their official activities [] potentially compromised the impartial admin-
istration of justice.69 He also suggested the king issue a Cabinet Order or allow
an administrative decree in support of the professors. Altenstein spoke darkly
of the continuing threat of conventicles (Conventikel-Wesen) in Halle.70
The king was not amused. Obviously more disposed to believe the correct-
ness as a whole of Gerlachs article, the king stopped the governments pro-
ceedings and pointedly reminded Altenstein that he considered

the lectures of the teachers of the Evangelical church [evangelischen

Kirche], which substantially depart from dogma [] very troubling [sehr
bedenklich], and, given the receptivity of youthful spirits for religiosity,
the exclusive advancement and propagation of which is supposed to be
the task of young theologians, very dangerous [sehr gefahrvoll].71

The king had no reason to praise or to condemn the professors, he said, but
the monarch rapped Altenstein by advising him to pay due heed to these
principles more precisely than previously.72 The time-consuming nature
of Prussias sophisticated bureaucracy made it unlikely that the king would
closely monitor his ministries actions. The king ended the affair, however, by
having the government stop proceedings against Gerlach; even Wegscheider
and Gesenius had dropped their case by 1832. The public press treatment of

68 Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 148.

69 [] inwiefern das Verfahren des p. von Gerlach [], in ffentlichen Blttern mit persn-
licher Polemik gegen andere Beamte und deren amtliche Wirksamkeit aufzutreten [].
Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 148.
70 Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 148.
71 [] die Vortrge der Lehrer der evangelischen Kirche, die von den Dogmen [] wesent-
lich abweichen, fr sehr bedenklich und bei der Empfnglichkeit jugendlicher Gemther
fr die Religisitt, deren ausschlieliche Befrderung und Verbreitung das Ziel der Bil-
dung und die praktische Bestimmung junger Theologen sein soll, fr sehr gefahrvoll [].
Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 148.
72 [] genauer als bisher zu bercksichtigen. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
p. 148.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 111

the Kirchenzeitungs article was considerably less civil and subtle than Alten-
steins. Those siding with Gesenius and Wegscheider far outnumbered their
opponents. Gerlachs article had loosed one of the largest pamphlet wars of
the century. As with many publication and pamphlet wars, this one produced
more heat than light.
Since the debate involved religious and political questions but also issues
of academic freedom, Germanys serious intellectuals split along unpredict-
able lines.73 The writers Karl August von Varnhagen (17851858) and Ernst
Mortiz Arndt (17691860) condemned Gerlach most strongly; Friedrich Carl
von Savigny (17791861), Christian Carl Josias von Bunsen (17911860), and
Friedrich Schleiermacher stood more mildly against him; and Leopold von
Ranke (17951886) and the court poet Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqu
(17771843) decried Gesenius and Wegscheider.
Despite the thumping Gerlach took in public opinion, however, the future
augured well for the Awakened. The king had issued Altenstein a Cabinet Or-
der requiring him to pay closer attention to the concerns that had outraged
Gerlach. The Crown Prince stood by Hengstenberg and Gerlach, and would
continue to do so in the future. The enduring pamphlet war had brought un-
told publicity to the Awakened Kirchenzeitung. Gerlach had made a public is-
sue out of what had not been one before. And Gerlachs article had sent an
unmistakable message to the complacent rationalist establishment: at least
some of the still in the countryside would be still no longer. Gerlach and the
Kirchenzeitungs return to politics became even more radical as a result of the
1830 July Revolution, during which mainstream Awakened leaders came to see
liberal, heretical religion and liberal, revolutionary politics as necessarily
linked.

The Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt and the Cologne Controversy

The Kirchenzeitung was not the only journal fusing conservative religious and
political thought into a force to oppose religious and political liberalism. Actu-
ally, Hengstenberg still saw the Kirchenzeitung however inappropriately
as remaining true to its avowedly non-political religious mission. The Berliner
Politisches Wochenblatt, however, came into existence with clearly defined and
explicitly political goals: [] oppose the revolution in all its forms, to repulse
the attacks of foreign journalism, and to combat bad political teachings with

73 See Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 14950.

112 chapter 2

good ones.74 It is sometimes tempting, when examining the persistence of

revolutions in central Europe through the mid-19th century, to conjecture that
the opponents of the revolution failed because they had little positive to offer
in place of the revolution, only negative critiques of it. The Berliner Politisches
Wochenblatt provides evidence to the contrary, at least in terms of intent. Al-
though it did not succeed in undoing revolutionary sentiment, it was not for
lack of trying. The top of every issue of the paper bore a citation referencing
de Maistre: We do not want counterrevolution, but what is contrary to the
revolution.75 This motto clearly announced the papers intention not just to
react against the Revolution, but to put forth a positive program which, while
opposed to the Revolution, enjoyed its own independent existence.76
The founders and coworkers of the Wochenblatt perceived the various revo-
lutions of 1830 (which they saw as the latest incarnations of the Revolution)
as part of a broader anti-Christian phenomenon whose external characteris-
tics (liberalism, constitutionalism, etc.) had been attacked by Metternichian
repression, but whose animating cause (the disregard for the ultimately divine
basis of authority and Recht)77 remained intact. Although no revolution broke
out in Prussia, the papers writers viewed the revolution with growing alarm as
it spread from Italian states and France to several other German states, where
(in some cases only temporarily) some princes granted constitutional conces-
sions. In the view of the Wochenblatt writers, supporters of revolution dan-
gerously set up public opinion as the primary judge of good and evil, thereby
setting up themselves as shapers of public opinion, to judge monarchs and
nations. As one author commented in the Wochenblatt,

Calling on public opinion has famously served with all the latest revolu-
tions as a terrible, unfortunately all-too-effective weapon, and the organs

74 [] der Revolution in jeder ihrer Gestalten entgegenzutreten, die Angriffe des ausln-
dischen Journalismus zurckzuweisen, und die schlechten politischen Lehren durch die
guten zu bekmpfen. Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt (bpw), 8 October 1831 (inaugural
issue), 1.
75 Nous ne voulons pas la contrervolution, mais le contraire de la rvolution.
76 Cf. Wolfgang Scheel, Das Berliner politische Wochenblatt und die politische und soziale
Revolution in Frankreich und England. Ein Beitrag zur konservativen Zeitkritik in Deutsch-
land (Gttingen: Musterschmidt, 1964), p. 29, on the mottos meaning.
77 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 15758: berhaupt ist, sieht man sich dein
zehn Jahrgnge des Wochenblatts im einzelnen an, eine gewisse Heterogenitt der aus-
schlielich anonym erschienen Beitrge nicht zu verkennen. Allerdings gab es w enigstens
einen zentralen Gedanken, in dem sich alle Mitarbeiter einig waren: nmlich die ber-
zeugung von der Gttlichkeit des Rechts.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 113

of liberalism unceasingly proclaim that it [public opinion, de] is the high-

est tribunal and the sole lawgiver in all matters of public justice and the
common good, but at the same time, that, suffused through and through
with the principles of (false) freedom, all upheavals and destruction un-
dertaken in its name, are joyfully approved and held to be acceptable.78

Jolted by the July revolution to recognize that the Revolution had merely bided
its time since 1815, the Wochenblatt staff cobbled together a short-lived con-
servative group with multiple national influences. In line with their French
motto, they drew much of their philosophy from the Swiss migr Carl Ludwig
von Haller, and found supporters in scattered patches across sundry German
states, briefly uniting politically and religiously conservative Catholics and
(mostly Awakened) Protestant opinion-shapers. A list79 of those who helped
to establish, contribute to, or run the paper includes many leading names from
the public sphere. Several of these we have already encountered: Jarcke, the
papers brilliant editor until his move to Austria as a government official; Ra-
dowitz; the inevitable Gerlach contingent (Ernst Ludwig, Leo, and Wilhelm,
though not Otto, who narrowly objected to this sort of work with Catholics,
demonstrating the limits of Awakened ecumenism, even if his brothers signify
its potential); and Carl Ludwig von Haller himself. Others include Guido Grres
(18051852),80 August von Haxthausen (17801842),81 Moritz Joseph Josias Lie-
ber (17701860),82 and the Awakened historian Heinrich Leo (17991878).83

78 Die Berufung auf die ffentliche Meinung hat bei allen neuern Revolutionen bekanntlich
als eine furchtbare, leider zur zu wirksame Waffe gedient, und die Organe des Liberalis-
mus verknden unaufhrlich von ihr, das sie das hchste Tribunal und die alleinige Ge-
setzgeberin in allen Sachen des offentlichen Rechts und Gemeinwohls, zugleich aber
auch, da sie durch und durch von den Grundstzen der (falschen) Freiheit erfllt, alle
Umwlzungen und Zerstrungen, die in ihrem Namen unternommen worden, freudig
billige und genehm halte. bpw, Die ffentliche Meinung, 8 October 1831, 31, column 1.
79 Cf. Scheel, Wochenblatt, pp. 2425 and Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 15455.
80 The son of the famous Johann Joseph Grres, editor of the Historisch-politische Bltter,
who defended the rights of German Catholics, Guido Grress main job was working at
that publication.
81 Haxthausen was a Westphalian aristocrat and a collector of agrarian statistics for Prussia.
82 Lieber was the publisher of de Maistre and a Councillor of Legation, who had established
a reputation defending the rights of Catholics.
83 Leo, formerly a Hegelian, was now an ardently Awakened historian in Halle. Of particular
interest is his Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte des deutschen Volkes und Reiches (Halle: E.
Anton, 1854).
114 chapter 2

Count Carl Otto von Friedrich Vo-Buch later recounted how the paper had
come into being as a direct result of the revolution of 1830.84 He remembered
the stunned, depressed response, a kind of German silence, that unfolded as
Crown Prince Frederick William learned of the revolution through newspaper
accounts, refracted through the lens of both Berlin papers, which he described
as having a liberalist character.85 Those around the Crown Prince, including
Dr. Samuel Heinrich Spiker (17861858), editor and an owner of the Spener-
sche Zeitung (officially known as the Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und
gelehrten Sachen), quickly brought together Major Radowitz and Jarcke, fol-
lowed by the Gerlach brothers, [] in order to propagate important political
principles.86
The Wochenblatt reached an unexpectedly wide audience. Although its
founders had prepared themselves for chronic deficits, the paper soon estab-
lished a maximum circulation of about 900, appearing each Saturday, and usu-
ally comprising four to six pages.87 As Wolfgang Scheel has observed, its 900
subscriptions were especially impressive when compared to similar journals
in the same era. For example, a paper that Metternich had planned foresaw
a circulation of only about 300, and even the celebrated Rheinische Merkur of
Joseph Grres reached a maximum of around 3000 copies.88
In later years, however, the Wochenblatt declined in popularity. The depar-
ture of its brilliant editor Jarcke in late 1832 and Wilhelm von Gerlachs death
in 1834 certainly hurt the paper, but Scheel rightly concludes that two other
causes better explain the Wochenblatts waning strength. First, the failure of
the July Revolution to escalate into a new Terror made it seem less threatening
and more innocuously bourgeois.89 Second, and more importantly, a crisis in
the newly Prussian city of Cologne from 1836 to 1841 exacerbated differences
between Catholics and Protestants on the Wochenblatt staff, prompting the
Catholic staff and many readers to leave the paper, which finally folded in 1841.
Known variously as the Mixed-Marriage Controversy (Mischehenstreit), the
Cologne Church Conflict (Klner Kirchenstreit), or the Cologne Confusions
(Klner Wirren), the Cologne controversy began as a dispute over whether the

84 GStAPK, ha vi, Nachla Carl von Voss-Buch, No. 32. An archivist has labeled the pages as
having been dictated no earlier than 1861.
85 eine Art deutsches Stillschweigen and liberalistischen Charakter. Ibid.
86 [] um wichtige politische Grundstze [] zu verbreiten. Ibid.
87 Scheel, Wochenblatt, pp. 3031. A yearly subscription cost 6 and 1/3 Taler (Scheel, Wochen-
blatt, p. 30).
88 Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 31.
89 While the general public may have perceived the revolution as less dangerous, the staff of
the Wochenblatt did not. Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 36.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 115

Prussian state or the Catholic church should have the ultimate say over how
(meaning in which confession) the children of mixed Protestant-Catholic
marriages would be educated. The problem arose from Frederick William iiis
attempt to unify the varying mixed-marriage provisions of the General Law
(Allgemeines Landrecht) in Prussias core territories with the Napoleonic Code
Civil in the newly Prussian lands on the left bank of the Rhine. It appears that
Frederick William iii and Prussian state officials saw the main issues as involv-
ing the rationalization of law and the submission of newly assimilated lands
and populations to Prussias royal/bureaucratic power complex.90
Complicating the picture was the fact that Romes canonical law banned
mixed marriages altogether. Many Catholic clergy viewed attempts to alter
the mixed-marriage provisions not just as a matter of delineating boundaries
between Catholic and Prussian state administration, but as an assault on the
sacrament of marriage and on therefore on the Catholic church as the guaran-
tor of the sacrament. To such individuals, and especially to the supporters of
nascent ultramontanism, it looked as though the Prussian state were trying to
usurp the rights and privileges of the one true church. Frederick William iii
had not helped matters by issuing an 1825 cabinet order declaring that the
obligations previously entered into by engaged couples for this purpose are to
be regarded as nonbinding.91 Pope Pius viii, for his part, sent out a brief on 25
March 1830 reasserting the churchs authority in such matters. Without delving
too deeply into the details, the brief rejected mixed marriages as such, although
with the pastoral compromise that priests could offer passive assistance to
mixed marriages by recognizing them as valid in the non-sacramental sense.92
Frederick William iii reluctantly accepted this half loaf, and almost imme-
diately set about trying to obtain further concessions directly from the Prus-
sian clergy. It appeared he had successfully undermined parts of the papal
brief on 19 June 1834, when Colognes Archbishop August von Spiegel and his
Domkapitular Dr. Nicholas Mnchen signed another agreement. Spiegel and

90 For a recent view on the controversy, see Scott Berg, Seeing Prussia through Austrian Eyes:
The Klner Ereignis and Its Significance for Church and State in Central Europe, Catho-
lic Historical Review 101.1 (2015), pp. 4873. Berg argues that the shortcomings of Prussias
confessional politics become clearer when viewed through Austrian eyes, p. 73.
91 Die zeither von den Verlobten dieserhalb eingegangenen Verpflictungen sind als un-
verbindlich anzusehen. Reproduced in Ernst Rudolf Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsge-
schichte seit 1789, vol. 1, Reform und Restauration 1789 bis 1830 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1960), p. 312; Preuische Staatsschrift Beilage B, 4. Cited in Dietrich Meyer, Die Kraft-
probe des Staates mit der katholischen Kirche in der Mischehenfrage (1837) und die Rck-
wirkung auf den Protestantismus, in geku, vol. 1, p. 260.
92 passive Assiztenz, Meyer, Die Kraftprobe des Staates, p. 262.
116 chapter 2

Mnchen [] agreed [] to allow everything which was not expressly for-

bidden in the [papal, de] brief, or to observe that which has been certainly
indicated, in order thus to go as far as possible toward satisfying the kings
1825 Cabinet Order.93 But the kings victory was flawed. The Generalvikariat
was sent only a written instruction to restrict passive assistance and Rome and
the Catholic Prussian bishops received only a copy of the brief as a pastoral let-
ter. The Prussian government concealed the written text of the 1834 agreement
from Rome and the other Prussian clergy, although the bishops appear to have
been aware of the agreement.94
After Spiegels death in 1835, Clemens August von Droste-Vischering (1773
1845) became the archbishop of Cologne. Upon becoming archbishop, he de-
clared he had not known of the gentlemens agreement Spiegel had concluded
with the Prussian government, and he refused to honor it. Tensions mounted
when the general public became aware of the agreement,95 and when Droste-
Vischering tried to require seminarians to reject officially the rationalist the-
ology of Georg Hermes (17751831).96 When Frederick William iiis efforts to
bully Droste-Vischering into resigning failed, the king clapped the archbishop
in jail in 1837. Since the governments action was perceived by public opinion
as an act of the states caprice,97 the whole project of extending and rational-
izing state control over newly incorporated territories was in jeopardy. Worse
still, governments ham-fisted treatment of the affair threatened to undermine

93 alles das zuzulassen was in dem Breve nicht ausdrcklich untersagt, oder was, als zu
beachten, bestimmt angegeben worden sei []. Meyer, Die Kraftprobe des Staates,
p. 262. The brief is reproduced in Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1, pp. 32428
(here, p. 326).
94 Meyer, Die Kraftprobe des Staates, pp. 26063.
95 Through the Journal historique et littraire in Lige on 1 October 1835 and Trier Bishop
Joseph von Hommers repudiation of the agreement as he approached his death. Meyer,
Die Kraftprobe des Staates, p. 264.
96 In an interesting parallel to the shifting positions of power between Awakened and ra-
tionalist thinkers among Protestants, it was the Awakened Droste-Vischering who, at the
behest of ultramontanists, tried to root out the formerly ascendant professors accused of
being too rationalistic. Pope Gregory xvis Dum acerbissimas of 26 September 1835 had
taken positions against certain teachings by Hermes.
97 [] Vorgehen von der ffentlichkeit weithin als Akt staatlicher Wilkr empfunden.
Meyer, Die Kraftprobe des Staates, p. 266. Meyer also advises readers to cf. Friedrich
Keinemann, Das Klner Ereignis: sein Widerhall in der Rheinprovinz und in Westfalen, vol.
2, Quellen, Verffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission Westfalens xxii, Geschichtliche
Arbeiten zur westflischen Landesforschung (Mnster: Aschaffenburg, 1974), pp. 88108,
and Ernst Rudolf Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 2, Der Kampf um Einheit und
Freiheit 1830 bis 1850 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960), pp. 23639.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 117

the states dominance over the Catholic church in Prussias core territories. At
the height of the struggle in 1837, the Prussian state imprisoned the Catholic
archbishop of Cologne (Droste-Vischering) and prominent Silesian clerics (in-
cluding the Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen Martin von Dunin). Catholics
rioted in Cologne.
The Cologne controversy marks an important moment in the resurgence of
Catholic identity after 1830 and in the erosion of previous ecumenical gains.
The controversy polarized even most ecumenically minded Catholics and
Protestants, eventually destroyed the Wochenblatts big-tent conservatism, led
to the beginning of modern political Catholicism, and arguably presaged the
vicious cultural struggle (Kulturkampf) later pursued in the 1870s.
But for now it is more important to establish that before the Cologne con-
flict, the Wochenblatt brought politically and religiously conservative Catholics
and Protestants together in a joint project, one of the first serious, constructive
attempts at interconfessional cooperation since the Reformation. True, the
Cologne controversy ultimately severed most of the bonds that tied the two
groups together, so that after 1837 the Wochenblatt lost its Catholic staff and
many of its subscribers. Yet one must take care not to see the division among
Protestants and Catholics as inevitable, and their cooperation on the Wochen-
blatt as a mere aberration. The Cologne crisis happened to strike the Achil-
les heel of the Wochenblatt, worsening precisely the confessional tensions the
staff had labored to overcome, but that does not mean the paper was not a
redoubtable, formidable warrior before Paris lucky shot found its mark.
There are at least four good reasons to think that the Protestant-Catholic
alliance was not doomed from the outset but a victim of historical circum-
stances. First, the staff entered into the union with more or less open eyes,
knowing that confessional differences might potentially prove problematic
but choosing to cooperate with each other anyway. Joseph Grres had coun-
seled against the participation of his (Catholic) son, Guido, for instance, as
had Hengstenberg and Otto von Gerlach against (Protestant) Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlachs involvement.98 The Gerlachs had duly noted concerns about Jarcke,
whose conversion to Catholicism and whose successful persuasion of Phil-
lips to convert caused much murmuring in Protestant circles.99 But three of
the four Gerlachs still opted to write for the Wochenblatt. Granted, after the
honeymoon period was over, Leopold von Gerlach complained that Jarcke and

98 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 155, and Scheel, Wochenblatt, pp. 2223.
99 Scheel, Wochenblatt, pp. 2123 and 25.
118 chapter 2

Radowitz were very stubborn in their doctrine itself.100 But despite the po-
tential and actual problems of confessional differences, the Wochenblatt staff
proved willing to set aside minor irritations with one another until the Co-
logne controversy. As usual for this pack of highly articulate conservatives, the
participants have left us a far more gripping explanation of their priorities than
modern analysts can hope to match:

We [] are of the opinion that the time for inheritance struggles between
members of a family is not when a band of robbers stands before the
gates of the house and threatens both of the quarreling parties with vio-
lence and plunder.101

In other words, Catholic and Protestant branches of the same Christian family
ought to have suspended their competition over who truly represented Chris-
tendom when revolution threatened to smash what remained of Christendom
itself.
Second, the Wochenblatt staff was united in their loathing of revolution and
modernity. For them the 1830 revolution was but one manifestation of the Rev-
olution. Even if the passage of time might have made the July revolution seem
comparatively harmless to many members of the general public, Wochenblatt
supporters maintained their fierce vigilance. To them, the revolution had to
be destroyed by offensive means instead of mere containment.102 A central
means of defeating modernity was deemed to be the preservation of organi-
cally ordered estates as buffering groups that could guard against revolution
from below as well as revolution from above a theme that would return after
the 1848 revolution as a favorite of many writers in the Kreuzzeitung. For ex-
ample, one Wochenblatt author in 1836 contended that

One may indeed accept this sentence as established in the sense of a pre-
servative political science: that the true keystone of an existing order is
[] in the division of the people into different estates, and securing the

100 [] sehr stumpf in ihrer eigentlichen Doktrin. Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 26, citing a letter
of Leopold to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach in the Gerlach-Archiv, Fasz. cs, of 16.11.1831.
101 wir [] sind der Meinung, da es nicht die Zeit zu Erbstreitigkeiten zwischen den Glie-
dern einer Familie sey, wenn eine Ruberbande vor den Thoren des Hauses steht und
beide streitenden Theile gleichzeitig mit Gewalt und Plnderung bedroht. Kraus, who
cites this passage from Karl Ernst Jarcke Vermischte Schriften, vol. 1 (Munich: Literarisch-
Artistische Anstalt, 1839), p. 13, believes the author to be Radowitz. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach, p. 155.
102 Cf. Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 86ff.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 119

undisturbed life functions of these [.] Then one will be able to accept
as a particular requirement of a hereditary monarchy state that among
these estates are those namely those standing in an effective relation-
ship to the whole which have a close interest in the preservation of the
hereditary principle. Those have been from time immemorial in Germa-
ny the aristocratic estate and the peasant estate, quite apart from them
the admitted powers for co-governance or co-administration.103

Here we find the author referring to exactly those estates in which the Awak-
ened were most active in the peasantry and the aristocracy as the most
important elements in shoring up the principle of hereditary monarchy. To
this extent, the argument rather exactly prefigures what conservatives such as
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach would later argue in the pages of the Kreuzzeitung
and in the Prussian legislature. But in referring to the problem of their powers
to govern or administer along with the crown, the author touches on exactly
the point that would later contribute to a split among Awakened conservatives
after 1848 the question of whether the powers prior to 1848 had to be reintro-
duced faithfully after the revolution was defeated, or more freely adapted and
reinvented, with fidelity in spirit only.
Yet in any event, one ought not to underestimate the power of opposition
to the Revolution as an integrative force for conservatives in the 1830s. Because
the Revolution was an ideology capable of subtle guile and rapid adaptation,
it was a moving, transmorphing prey that drew the Wochenblatt members ever
further into the intellectual woods after it. As is usually the case with totalizing
theories, this led the papers supporters to see almost anything and everything
as embodying the revolution. With their all-too-facile explanation, the pa-
pers staff often conflated categories when scourging their great enemy, whom
eventhe Wochenblatt staff sometimes despaired of slaying. In the newspapers

103 Man darf im Sinne der erhaltenden Staatslehre wohl den Satz als feststehend annehmen:
da der wahre Grundpfeiler einer bestehenden Ordnung, die Vertheilung des Volks in
verschiedene Stnde, und Sicherung ungestrter Lebensfunctionen dieser [] sey. Dann
wird man als besonderes Bedrfni des erblich-monarchischen Staates annehmen dr-
fen, da unter diesen Stnden solche und zwar zum Ganzen in wirksamen Verhltnie
stehende seyen, die bei der Bewahrung des Erblichkeits-Princips ein nahe liegendes
Interesse haben. Solche waren zeither bei uns in Deutschland der Adels- und der Bau-
ernstand, ganz abgesehen von ihnen etwa eingerumten stndischen Befugnien zur
Mitregierung oder Mitverwaltung. bpw, Ueber den erblichen Adel, als nothwendien
Bestandtheil der erblichen Monarchie, 7 May 1836, No. 19, 112. column 2.
120 chapter 2

columns, words and concepts like revolutionary are often interchanged with
liberal, modern, and rational. One gets the impression that this represents
not intellectual slippage, but the bundling of all these things into the seem-
ingly irresistible juggernaut of a complex modernity. Thus, for instance, the
Wochenblatt proclaimed that

The Revolution appears as a gigantic force of nature, against which all

resistance is insufficient and everyone can only wait in painful submis-
sion for the fate which has been assigned to him. So arises a silent suffer-
ing, which consumes ones intellectual and physical strength; as with the
glance of the rattlesnake the Revolution robs its prey of will and move-
ment, until it is seized by it [the Revolution, de].104

Yet behind all this apparent resignation lay a powerful method for rallying
all the prey to a last stand against the Revolution. It was the deliberately pre-
mature death-cry of the Prussian Old Regime. By making into the bugbear of
Revolution nearly anything unpleasant in modernity, the Wochenblatt writers
could hope to summon enough supporters to slay the beast after all, and in
so doing unify disparate forces into a single impulse for the restoration of the
concept of divine Recht and authority which the actual French Revolution had
destroyed. One strategy of the writers of the Wochenblatt despite the papers
motto was to adopt a negative predicative theory, defining what they wanted
to restore as the opposite of the many facets of the Revolution. But the Wochen-
blatt staff this time in accordance with their motto saw themselves not as
reactionaries but as restorers, not as deniers of the latest political philosophy,
but as affirmers of eternal and ultimately divine truths.
A third reason to view the Wochenblatt alliance as a coalition not predes-
tined to failure is that the staff agreed on the central points of a positive pro-
gram building on the basis of commonly held religious and political truths.
As Radowitz observed (ironically just shortly before the Cologne controversy
erupted),

Since all of us recognized the religious truth only in the revelation of

Christ, [and, de] the political in the historical reflection of the divine
commandments in law [Recht], this common point of departure and re-
turn always remained certain for us, and the Protestant could counter the

104 Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach in the bpw, 1833, No. 38, ber die Notwendigkeit des Studiums
der Revolution. Cited in Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 87.
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 121

Catholic, the devotee of de Maistre [could counter, de] the student of

Haller, as sharply as he liked without harming love and unity.105

To the modern analyst, even the degree of divergence between the points of
departure and return did not seem terribly great. The devotees and students in
practice proved closer to each other in practice than their masters. De Mais-
tres theories stopped slightly short of a (Catholic) theocracy overlaid with
a king by divine right, while Hallers model invoked the natural family as a
mini-monarchy that supported and was supported by the real monarchy and
intervening aristocracy, all presided over not by de Maistres God of classical
Christianity, but by a God of nature almost Deist in his distance.106 But Awak-
ened students of Haller, such as Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, freely criticized
Haller for using rationalist categories to describe both the sociopolitical or-
der and God.107 Still, Scheel insightfully notes that Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
had shown Catholic tendencies for some time, while most of the Protestant
Wochenblatt writers were influenced [] by the patriarchal [gutsherrlich]-
Protestant spirit, while Pietism and Protestant orthodoxy were for them the
intermediaries to Catholic traditionalist philosophies of the state [Staatsleh-
ren] against the rationalist spirit of the Enlightened Prussian monarchy.108
Among the Protestant Wochenblatt staff, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach and
Heinrich Leo held opinions very sympathetic to some Catholic positions, not
least in their insistence that any legitimate (and therefore Legitimist) politi-
cal philosophy must rest squarely on the revelation of God rather than the ra-
tiocination of humans. Perhaps the conversion of several of Gerlachs friends
and close acquaintances made him more open to Catholicism. In any event,

105 Da wir smtlich die religise Wahrheit nur in der Offenbarung Chirsti, die politische in
der historischen Abspiegelung der gttlichen Gebote im Rechte anerkannten, so war uns
dieser gemeinsamer Ausgang und Endpunkt stets sicher, und der Protestant konnte dem
Katholiken, der Anhnger Maistres dem Schler Haller so scharf entgegentreten als er
wollte, unbeschadet der Liebe und Einigkeit. Reproduced in Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 27,
citing Paul Hassel, Joseph Maria von Radowitz, vol. 1, 17971848 (Berlin: E.S. Mittler und
Sohn, 1905), p. 24.
106 Most commentators have also recognized this. Cf., for instance, Scheel, Wochenblatt,
pp.2627.
107 See Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 27.
108 Im Gegensatz zu den beiden Katholiken, die ihre entscheidenden Eindrcke in den
westdeutschen Gebieten erhlaten hatten, waren die anderen Mitglieder des Redaktions-
komitees vom gutsherrlich-protesantischen Geiste beeinflut. Der Pietismus und die
protestantische Orthodoxie waren fr sie Vermittler zur katholisch tradtionalistischen
Staatslehre gegen den rationalistischen Geist der aufgeklrten preuischen Monarchie.
Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 26.
122 chapter 2

Gerlachs lifelong devotion to Legitimist ideals even led Hans-Joachim Schoeps

to declare him the only systematic theocrat in modern history.109 Scheel like-
wise concludes that

the Gerlachs had largely made Hallers philosophy of the state [Staatsleh-
re] their own, but at the same time they had added to it their church con-
victions, which for Ludwig von Gerlach reach so far into Catholic dogma,
that the step from the Protestant to the Protestant church lay very near.110

Despite his enthusiasm for Hallers Restauration der Staatwissenschaften, for

instance, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach criticized Hallers use of Enlightened, mod-
ern, and secular analytical categories111 and pointedly seconded the Catholic
Adam Mllers question, Why does this splendid book reckon almost more
according to the years of the world than the years of salvation [Erlsung] and
doesnt mention even once the fact of revelation?112
Gerlachs Awakened comrade Heinrich Leo also held proto-Catholic views
on the church which likely strengthened his affinity with Catholic Wochenblatt
staff. His most telling quotations on the topic come from long after the Cologne
controversy was over, but the discrepancy in time does not weaken them as
historical evidence. If anything, it strengthens them, for after Cologne and the
rise of ultramontanism, Leo had no obvious reason as a Protestant to remain
close to Catholic views. Yet instead we find his insistence that the church cre-
ated by the Reformation was only an emergency shelter (Notdach)113 and that

Since Luthers time a process of purification has taken place in the Ro-
man Catholic church, and if in Luthers era the church had been as the
Roman Catholic church of today really is in Germany, it would never have
occurred to him to push his opposition [Gegensatz] so energetically that
a separation would have followed.114

109 Cited in Manfred P. Fleischer, Deus Praesens in Jure: The Politics of Ludwig von Gerlach,
Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 39 (1987), p. 2.
110 Die Gerlachs hatten sich zwar wesentlich die Staatslehre Hallers zu eigen gemacht, aber
zugleich ergnzt durch ihre kirhcliche berzeugung, die bei Ludwig von Gerlach so weit
in die katholische Dogmatik bergriff, da der Schritt von der protestantischen Kirche in
die katholische Kirche sehr nahe lag. Scheel, Wochenblatt, p. 27.
111 Cf. Scheel, Wochenblatt, pp. 2627.
112 Gerlach, citing Mllers 1817 question, in Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken,
p.102.
113 In a letter to Hengstenberg in 1851. Cited in Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 315.
114 In der rmisch-katholischen Kirche hat seit Luthers Zeiten ein Reinigungs-Proze
stattgefunden, und wenn zu Luthers Zeit die Kirche gewesen wre, was heutzutage die
Sects And Violence: The Politicization Of The Awakening 123

Reflecting on the unfortunate division of the Reformation, Leo once asserted

even more startlingly that while Rome is [emphasis in original] a church, we
are only individuals or at best societies, but not a church any longer.115
While Leo represents the most Catholic-friendly end of the spectrum of
opinion within the Lutheran confession,116 he was by no means a solitary
voice. The statements of many of his fellow Awakened leaders made the once-
deserted wilderness of ecumenism a more populous spot in the 19th century.
Thus, Phillip Nathusius, editor of the Hallesches Volksblatt, claimed that the
Catholic church is not merely our friend, but flesh and blood separated from
us, half of our own self.117 Friedrich Julius Stahl, a former Jew converted to
Awakened Lutheranism, and by the late 1840s an influential reformer of the
state church, for instance, freely confessed the need to look beyond confes-
sional pride. He claimed that the Lutheran church is the church of proper
doctrine, but some gifts of grace are found more richly in other churches than
in it and none of the churches can describe itself as una sancta catholica.118
The Wochenblatt certainly found much to admire in Stahls work. For ex-
ample, in August 1837, even as the Cologne controversy unfolded, an article
half-approvingly cited Stahls views on monarchy and sovereignty. Asking who
possessed the actual power to constitute, who was the [] bearer of the om-
nipotence of the state [], the paper found [a]ccording to the false theory
of the state [] that the state was [] the aggregate of all of the individu-
als living in it, the prince the empowered servant and representative of the
commonwealth [], and consequently [t]he true sovereign is accordingly

rmisch-katholische Kirche in Deutschland wirklich ist, so wre es ihm nie eingefallen,

seinen Geensatz so energisch geltend zu machen, da eine Trennung erfolgt wre. Neue
Preuische Zeitung (npz), 27 September 1861. Cited in Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 315.
115 [] i s t eine Kirche, wir sind nur noch Einzelne oder allenfalls Gesellscahften, aber keine
Kirche mehr. In a letter to Rappard in the summer semester of 1851, reproduced in the
Allgemeine Konservative Monatsschrift 1893, 1285, and cited in Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie,
p. 315.
116 Schoeps was careful to note that within Prussian high orthodoxy Leo was condemned as
an extremist and an outsider (da innerhalb der preuischen Hochorthodoxie auch Leo
als Extremist und Auenseiter beurteilt worden ist) and advises readers to see his work Das
andere Preuen for a more detailed analysis of Leo. Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 315. Cf.
also p. 321.
117 Die kathol. [sic] Kirche ist nicht blo unser Freund, sondern das von uns abgetrennte
Fleisch und Blut, die Hlfte unseres eigenen Selbst. Philipp Nathusius in 1848. Cited in
Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 314, footnote 11.
118 Die lutherische Kirche ist die Kirche der wahren Lehre, aber manche Gnadengaben fin-
den sich in anderen Kirchen reicher als in ihr und keine der Kirchen kann als una sancta
catholica gelten. Stahl at the ninth Evangelical Congress (Evangelischer Kirchentag) in
Stuttgart, cited in Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 316.
124 chapter 2

the people.119 The paper found Stahl rejected the last point with great deci-
siveness, although it believed Stahl erred in not favoring the divine origin of
sovereignty.120
Even the Lutheran Hengstenberg found that

[w]e may never forget that our most dangerous enemy is not Rome
with its Jesuits, but rather unbelief, which pushes aside all foundations
[Fundamente] with negation. [] Until a richer outpouring of the Spirit
comes over it, [] [the Lutheran church] still needs coexistence with the
Catholic church.121

In short, even though most Lutherans (and Protestants in general) would have
looked askance at such statements, the Catholic-friendly views of Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach and Heinrich Leo, together with the ecumenism of Radowitz and
the presence of the Catholic convert Jarcke on the Wochenblatt staff, meant
that key figures possessed a substantial reserve of goodwill, or at least mutual
understanding for Protestant-Catholic cooperation. Other Awakened lead-
ers, such as Stahl and Hengstenberg, later made ecumenical overtures even in
the more confessionally charged era after the Cologne controversy. Yet, to the
dismay of Awakened ecumenists, not only did rapprochement with Catholics
prove unrealizable, but even the unity among Lutherans proved impossible
to maintain. The advent of the Old Lutherans as a separate religious society
marked the most severe split among Lutherans since the Reformation. In this
atmosphere, many observers from all parts of the political and religious spec-
trum hoped for a redefinition of the centuries-old alliance of throne and altar.

119 []Trger der Allmacht des Staates [], Nach der falschen Staatlehre [], [] das
Aggregat aller in demselben lebenden Individuen, der Frst bevollmchtigte Diener und
Repsentant dieses Gemeinwesens [], and Der wahre Souverain ist also hiernach das
Volk. bpw, Alter Irrthum in neuem Gewande, No. 30, 5 August 1837, 180, column 1.
120 mit aller Entschiedenheit, ibid.
121 Wir drfen nie vergessen, da unser gefhrlichster Feind nicht Rom mit seinen Jesu-
iten, da es vielmehr die alle Fundamente beseitigende Negation, der Unglaube, ist. []
Bis eine reichere Ausgieung des Geistes ber sie stattfindet, [bedarf die evangelische
Kirche] noch des Zusammenseins mit der katholischen Kirche. Hengstenberg at the Bre-
men Church Congress [Kirchentag] of 1852, reproduced in the Evangelische Kirchenzei-
tung 1852, No. 77, and cited in Schoeps, Hochorthodoxie, p. 314.
 chapter 3

The Failure of Reform

The Failure of Reform in Church Governance and Politics

before 1848

Over the course of the 1840s, there were various reform efforts to deal with the
challenges Prussia faced. Liberal reforms efforts concerning economics, trade,
and infrastructure might be deemed qualified successes, while liberal reform
efforts in church governance and politics were largely frustrated. Their frustra-
tion was dependent on many factors, but none were more important than the
ascent in 1840 of the Awakened monarch Frederick William iv.
In his study of technological change in Prussia leading to 1848, Eric Dorn
Brose credits Frederick William iii with supporting progressive ministers and
advisers at many critical moments.1 These include Hardenbergs agrarian and
rural-industrial reforms of the 1810s and the rejection of aristocratic efforts
to rescind them in the 1820s, to the implementation of the German Customs
Union and the acceptance of railroads in the 1830s.2 To take the example of
Prussias transportation networks, massive investments in roads (which ex-
panded by about 2800 km, adding a third to the exiting total), canals, and the
like significantly reduced transportation costs and therefore grew trade net-
works.3 Brose rightly found the monarch played an indispensable role in re-
form, writing that concerning the success of socioeconomic reforms, in the
face of well-connected opposition from conservative elites, ultimate respon-
sibility for the direction of change rested with the monarch.4 Offering advice
for his heir, Frederick William iii counseled him to [g]uard yourself against
unpractical theories and the zeal for innovation and a preference for the old
which, driven too far, is almost equally harmful.5
The death of Frederick William iii and the 1840 coronation of Frederick
William iv the latter of whom heeded the first part of his fathers advice
better than the second was decisive for the fate of liberal reforms and for the
influence of the Awakening. It is difficult to underestimate the importance for

1 Brose, Politics of Technological Change, p. 9.

2 Brose, Politics of Technological Change.
3 Brose, Politics of Technological Change, p. 68.
4 Brose, Politics of Technological Change, p. 69.
5 Cited and translated in Brose, Politics of Technological Change.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_005

126 chapter 3

the Awakening of an Awakened monarch ascending the throne, but two other
events in 1840 also significantly impacted the growth of Awakened influence:
the death of Altenstein and a set of proposals, advanced by Frederick William
iv, to change church governance once again. Liberal reform hopes were tied up
with potential changes in church governance, and, perhaps to a lesser extent,
with the local, provincial, and United Landtag. Yet, virtually none of the eccle-
siastical or political reforms discussed at the start of Frederick Williams reign
came into effect, and the practical effects of the revolution of 1848 mooted
much of the earlier discussion.
Why, then, should we bother with failed reform efforts? The discussions
are worth analysing because they reveal the ways in which vormrz Prussian
society was dynamically changing behind the faade of Restoration stability.
The ecclesiastical reform proposals merit particular attention. They were im-
portant not only in their own right, but also as a public stand-in for the more
radical political revisionism which one could not publicly discuss without the
threat of censorship and/or legal punishment. In other words, the failed reform
efforts of the early 1840s help us understand the March revolution of 1848 not
as a sudden, unexpected outburst, but as the culmination of long-simmering
disputes between increasingly polarized camps. In the unreformed stolidity
of the Vormrz regime, the opposite of the old adage is true: plus cest la mme
chose, plus a change.6 The responses of Awakened leaders to proposed reform
before 1848 demonstrates that they continued a cultural struggle against liber-
als in religion and in politics, and they anticipated some of their efforts (and
allies) after the 1848 revolution.
The death on 14 May of Karl von Altenstein, a man who had served Freder-
ick William iii as a minister in charge of religious affairs since 1817, removed
an old opponent of the mainstream Awakened and of the Old Lutherans. Al-
tenstein had served as the kings point man for the Union church, the reformed
liturgy, and in earlier church governance debates, and he had earned many
enemies in the process. Reading some of his direct and forceful directives, one
gets the sense that Altenstein felt besieged and therefore driven to give no
quarter to those who did not welcome the Union. In examining his response
to the Awakening in its earlier years, we found that Altenstein was slow to rec-
ognize that some of the Awakened objected to the supposedly rationalist tone
and theology they perceived in the state church more than to the Union itself.

6 Jean Pouillon, Plus cest la mme chose, plus a change, Nouvelle Revue de Psychoanalyse 15
(1977), 20311, cited in Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure
in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom, asao Special Publications No. 1 (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981), p. 7.
The Failure Of Reform 127

This may be because Altenstein, who was also responsible for having brought
prestigious followers of Hegel to the university in Berlin, had some sympathy
with rationalist viewpoints himself. Altenstein seems never to have lost his
suspicion of the Awakened, and both he and Frederick William iii continued
to suppress the Old Lutherans.
Replacing Altenstein was Johann Albrecht Friedrich Eichhorn (17791856),
who was decidedly friendlier to the Awakened (and perhaps was one of them
himself, depending on who does the defining). Eichhorn, Kultusminister from
1840 to 1848, made sure that Altensteins relatively moderate clerical advisors
continued to play an important role.7 They included figures such as Daniel
Amadeus Gottlieb Neander and Rulemann Friedrich Eylert (17701852), who
had helped persuade Altenstein to differentiate between the strictly confes-
sionalist Old Lutherans and the more moderate Awakened.8 Perhaps even
more important still, Eichhorn soon appointed Gerd Eilers (17881863) as the
Referent for the sensitive section for Agenda, the Union, and Separatism.9 The
appointment of Eilers, already known and trusted by the Awakened Frederick
William iv, [] meant a complete about-face in the treatment of the Old Lu-
therans [], just as the king had tried to encourage in 1839 even before begin-
ning to govern.10 Frederick William eventually abandoned state persecution
of the Old Lutherans, in 1845 granting tolerance to them and other dissenters
from the state church as long as they registered as a religious society (Reli-
gionsgesellschaft) rather than as a church. This new direction was a tolerant
solution by contemporary European standards and placed Prussian policy
broadly in line with the church/chapel distinction in Britain.
In Frederick William iv the Awakened found a champion who claimed to
be (and almost certainly was) one of their own.11 Although some contempo-
raries wondered whether Frederick William cynically used the language and
rhetoric of the Awakening to cloak other motives, most historians have con-
cluded that, as far as anyone can know such a thing, he was indeed Awakened.
Even a cursory glance at his correspondence and spiritual testament leads one

7 J.F. Gerhard Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen Knig Friedrich Wilhelms iv. und das
Ministerium Eichhorn in geku, vol. 1, p. 279.
8 Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 279.
9 Neander was Koreferent. Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 279.
10 [] bedeutete in der Behandlung der Altlutheraner eine vllige Kehrtwendung [],
wie sie der Knig schon vor seinem Regierungsantritt 1839 anzuregen sich bemht hat.
Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 279.
11 Cf. Herman von Petersdorff, Knig Friedrich Wilhelm der Vierte (Stuttgart: J.G. Cottache
Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1900), and Schoeps, Der Erweckungschrist auf dem Thron,
on the kings personal religious views.
128 chapter 3

to conclude that even if he was a clever deceiver, he had also deceived him-
self. Such records are replete with hallmarks of the Awakened, including self-
excoriating reflection, a sense of wonder and triumph in Gods love and mercy,
outbursts of effusive emotion (often punctuated by clumps of up to seven ex-
clamation marks), and an emphasis on theological orthodoxy and Christian
ecumenism. Those whose arguments he listened to and whom he admitted
into his close (if large) circle of intimates and sometime advisors included
many Awakened leaders, such as Friedrich Julius Stahl and Ernst Ludwig and
Leopold von Gerlach.
The king also subscribed to the same or similar conservative political prin-
ciples as these men, and he shared their Romantic aesthetics. A member of
their generation (he was born 15 October 1795), he had also experienced the
destruction of the Napoleonic wars and the ultimate German victory and
for that matter, the occurrences of everyday life as events that were part of
a broader divine morality play. Like many of the Awakened leaders who had
gotten their start in the Maikferkreis, the king reflected thoroughly Romantic
sensibilities. Indeed, it was virtually impossible to tell where his religion left
off and his Romanticism began. A few days after the start of the so-called Wars
of Liberation in 1813, for instance, the teenage prince visited his mothers grave
before leaving Berlin and later recalled the event in his diary:

I felt as though I were going on a crusade, for which I had received con-
secration at the grave of my mother; the inspiring sounds of Armide [an
opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck (17141787)] still rang in my ears, and
my Romantic mood was increased by reading la Motte Fouqus Magic
Ring12

Frank-Lothar Kroll explains this mixture of religious and patriotic motifs, so

typical of Frederick William, as indicative of the Crown Princes

intense encounter with the Pietist-inclined Awakening, which in time

brought nearly all representatives of Romanticism in Berlin under its spell

12 Mir war zu Muthe, als zge ich in einen Kreuzzug, zu dem ich am Grabe der Mutter die
Weihe empfangen; noch tnten mir begeisternd die Klnge der Armide nach, und meine
romantische Stimmung ward durch Lesung des Zauberrings von la Motte Fouqu ver-
mehrt. From a diary entry of 22 July 1813, Herman Granier, ed., Das Feldzugstagebuch des
Kronprinzen Friedrich Wilhelm von Preuen aus dem Jahre 1813, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch,
17 (1913), 100. Cited in Kroll, Friedrich Wilhelm iv, p. 30.
The Failure Of Reform 129

and which likewise was characterized by an interweaving of national and

Romantic Christianity strongly oriented towards emotional values.13

Frederick William ivs 1847 speech opening the Vereinigter Landtag offers an-
other example of his free admixture of Awakened, Romantic, and patriotic
sensibilities. The theme of his address was, As for me and my house, we will
serve the Lord.14 The king had taken his cue from a decisive passage of the Old
Testament. In the passage, Joshua, having conquered much of the promised
land, summoned the people of Israel together shortly before his death. As a
sort of last will and testament, he enjoined the people to discard their idols and
worship God alone. The people repeated their desire to obey only God, and the
covenant was renewed. Such religious imagery and the appeal to the righteous
to rally would prove emblematic for his entire reign.
While he had been Crown Prince, Frederick Williams tutors, first Friedrich
Delbrck and then Pierre Franois Ancillon, had sought with limited success
to graft discipline and concern for practical details onto the artistic princes
Romantic character. Ancillon, for instance, chided the prince that

I see you spending all your time with a sketching pencil in your hand. For
a Schinkel [Karl Friedrich Schinkel (17811841), one of Germanys greatest
architects in the 19th century, de] this would be a very useful application.
But for the sole reason that the state is not a Gothic temple and no people
has ever been ruled by means of Romantic pictures, this eternal sketch-
ing is for you a true waste of noble time.15

Despite his tutors warning, Frederick William continued to draw Romantic ar-
chitectural sketches all his life and to sponsor professional architects to refine

13 [] intensive Begegnung mit der pietistisch gesinnten Erweckungsbewegung, die zeit-

weise nahezu alle Reprsentanten der Berliner Romantik in ihren Bann zog und sich
gleichfalls durch ein Ineinanderflieenden nationaler und romatischer, stark an Gefhls-
werten orientierter Christlichkeit auszeichnete. Kroll, Friedrich Wilhelm iv, p. 31.
14 And if you be unwilling to serve the lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether
the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites
in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the lord (Joshua
24:1416, rsv).
15 Ich sehe Sie die ganze Zeit schon mit der Bleifeder in der Hand zubringen. Fr einen
knftigen Schinkel wre dieses eine sehr ntzliche Anwendung. Allein da der Staat nicht
in einem gotischen Tempel besteht und noch nie ein Volk vermittles romantischer Bilder
regiert worden ist, so wird dieses ewige Zeichnen fr Sie eine wahre Verschwendung der
edlen Zeit. Cited in Schoeps, Der Erweckungschrist auf dem Thron, p. 72.
130 chapter 3

and execute some of them. An excellent example of his eclectic neo-feudal

fusion of religion, politics, and art is the Peace Church (Friedenskirche), a
church at his private summer palace at Potsdam.
His most famous artistic legacy, however, was the resumption of work on
the now world-famous Cologne Cathedral. Walking beneath the soaring vaults
of the cathedral today, one gets the sense that Ancillon may have underesti-
mated the importance of art symbols as a complement to political power. The
neo-Gothic cathedral is not merely an interesting piece of art history, or a sin-
cerely ecumenical gesture by a Protestant king to the Catholics of Prussias new
western provinces. It was also a clever political bridge to a Catholic community
which the kings father, Frederick William iii, had alienated in the controversy
over mixed Protestant-Catholic marriages. Frederick William iv swiftly ended
the controversy in 1841, giving Catholics much of what they wanted.16
One should be careful in weighing the relative importance of religious and
political motivations behind such gestures. There are numerous indications
that Frederick William, like the mainstream Awakened, was while insistent
on the orthodoxy of the Union church more interested in stressing common-
alities among denominations and in building Christian unity. Furthermore, he
had married a Catholic Bavarian princess who made it quite clear he should
not count on her converting. (She later did, anyway.) In 1841 he began plans
that ultimately resulted in a joint Anglo-Prussian (Anglican/Union) bishopric
in Jerusalem. And the final departure of Old Lutherans and other dissidents
from the Union church grieved him deeply. But despite his sincere desire to
achieve greater Christian unity, it cannot be denied that there were also politi-
cal advantages to such unity. Ending a feud with Catholics and clarifying the
boundaries of the Catholic Church and Prussian law lay in the interest of the
state. Likewise, dynastic connections to Bavaria might turn out to be useful,
and the Jerusalem bishopric both fostered Anglo-Prussian relations and en-
hanced Prussias prestige in the Levant. And religious dissent threatened the
state by disturbing domestic tranquility and finally leading to a reduced tax
base through the emigration of productive subjects.
This same problematic that the king was apparently sincere in promot-
ing Christian reconciliation and unity and yet stood to benefit as a ruler from
these efforts is also evident in the third event of great importance for the

16 The most important part of the solution was that Das ppstliche Breve von 1830 []
galt also als uneingeschrnkt. Das faktische Ergebnis entsprach dem von Posen: Die
katholischen Geistlichen konnten die kirchliche Einsegnung einer Mishehe ablehnen,
erkannten aber die brgerliche Gesetzgebung Preuens an. Bei Ablehung blieb ihre Be-
teiligung auf passive Assistenz beschrnkt. Meyer, Die Kraftprobe des Staates, p. 287.
The Failure Of Reform 131

Awakening in 1840. In 1840 Frederick William drafted a long proposal17 for a

fundamental reform of both church government and church-state relations.
Frederick Williams proposals would have weakened royal prerogatives by
making the Union church more independent of the king and the Prussian
state. In the interest of brevity, I will flesh out his original 1840 proposal with
some specific details which he added in extensive qualifications over the years.
Frederick William iv envisioned a radical overhaul of Prussias church gov-
ernment to make the Union church more closely mirror his perceptions of the
1st-century church of the apostles.18 The king recognized that his proposals
were rather idealistic, calling them a summer nights dream.19 In spite of their
generally reactionary nature, they would have made the church somewhat less
dependent on the state. Such a development probably would have benefited
both entities and certainly would have opened the prospect of additional re-
forms later. The king also proposed to do away with the dual system of church
government, under which episcopal hierarchy prevailed in Prussias eastern
provinces and a lay-influenced synodal structure was obtained in its western
territories. The western structure was especially odious to the king. Its semi-
democratic order, under which lay elders had a large say in church govern-
ment, was closely associated in the kings mind with Revolutionary mob rule.
In place of this admixture of top-down government in the east and bottom-
up rule in the west, the king wanted a unified church government through-
out his provinces. The new church government was to be based on the local
congregation (Gemeinde). The church would be presided over by an ascending
hierarchy of deacons, elders, pastors, around 350 bishops, and around 10 met-
ropolitans, the last being named by the king. Those in this hierarchy would all
have to start as deacons; elders and bishops would be ordained through the
laying-on of hands by bishops. This patriarchal principle also applied to the

17 Thirty printed pages, reproduced in Leopold von Rankes Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich
Wilhelms iv. mit Bunsen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1873), pp. 4676. Cited in Hans-
Christof Brennecke, Eine heilige apostolische Kirche. Das Program Friedrich Wilhelms
iv. von Preuen zur Reform der Kirche, Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 4.2 (1987), p. 236.
18 Brennecke observes that Frederick William ivs view of the church, influenced by Ar-
nold and Gladstone through the kings correspondence with Bunsen, more closely cor-
responds to the church of the 3rd or 4th century rather than that of the 1st century. In
supporting his case, Brennecke argues persuasively that the king based much of his view
on the Bible and a 4th-century document (die Apostolischen Konstitutionen) which he,
like most of his contemporaries, mistakenly thought to be a 1st-century one. Brennecke,
Eine heilige apostolische Kirche, pp. 24551.
19 Sommernachtstraum, Ranke, Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms iv, p. 61, footnote
30. Cited in Brennecke, Eine heilige apostolische Kirche, p. 240.
132 chapter 3

lay members of the parish, who were represented by the head of the family.
Provisions for participation in the Eucharist and for church attendance would
ensure that only those who were regular and serious congregants would have a
say in choosing the elders.20
Frederick William also envisioned a fundamental redefinition of church-
state relations that altered the balance of power that had prevailed since the
Reformation. Since the Reformation era, the Protestant prince of a particular
territory had also been the head of the church and hence enjoyed consider-
able power over that church. Frederick William iv, however, [] wanted to
give back the [power over, de] sovereign church government [landesherrliche
Kirchenregiment], which [was, de] at the moment legitimate, but viewed by
him as unecclesiastical and unchristian.21 In other words, in the kings pro-
posed reforms the sovereign prince, as a crowned member of the church, does
not actually possess church authority [Kirchengewalt], only authority over the
church [Gewalt ber die Kirche].22 Indeed, for the king properly understood
church authority lay only in the individual church, higher authority in church
synods.23
Frederick William ivs proposed reforms amounted to a sort of Protestant
ultramontanism.24 Like Catholics, who placed their primary allegiance be-
yond the mountains in Rome rather than in their national state, the king had
offered a set of changes that would have strengthened the church at the extent
of the Prussian state and the Prussian monarchy. Like ultramontane measures,

20 Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, pp. 27475. Here Goeters also identifies a re-
form of the internal structure of the church and of the relationship between church and
state as the kings two most important considerations (Ausgangsprobleme) behind his
proposal.
21 [] das zwar im Moment juristisch legitme, von ihm aber als unkirchlich und unchrist-
lich empfundene landesherrliche Kirchenregiment zurckgeben wollte []. Brennecke,
Eine heilige apostolische Kirche, pp. 24041.
22 Der Landesfrst als gekrntes Mitglied der Kirche besitzt nicht eigentlich die Kirchenge-
walt, sondern nur Gewalt ber die Kirche. Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen,
p. 276. Goeters remarks that his comments here are based on Rankes work. Goeters,
Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, pp. 5960.
23 [] eine recht verstandene Kirchengewalt nur bei der einzelnen Kirche, die obere Ge-
walt bei kirchlichen Synoden liegt. Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 276.
24 In terms of French politics Ultramontanism, after the defeat of Lamennaiss radical
version of the doctrine, was heavily Legitimist. But the precise political location of the
party was a local accident. The essence of their creed was the combination of a highly
dogmatic and anti-rationalist theology with a warmly emotional piety, and a preference
for life within a Catholic ghetto, where the faith of the masses could be preserved from
Protestant or rationalist contamination. McLeod, Religion, p. 47.
The Failure Of Reform 133

the kings removal of the presbyterial order of his western provinces would
have placed the Prussian Union church under a uniform and more powerful
episcopal hierarchy. The political effect of promoting an episcopal hierarchy
rather than a strongly lay-influenced presbyterial order was to undergird the
Legitimist principle of rule from above. The ecclesiastical and theological ef-
fect of promoting an episcopal hierarchy whose metropolitans were named
by the Awakened king was to empower the Union church to enforce ortho-
doxy. By making lay influence on the selection of elders dependent on regular
church attendance and participation in the sacraments, the kings plan would
have reduced the role of the more radical, rationalist church members, who
were sometimes (albeit not uniformly) less frequent churchgoers. Rather than
an unimaginative return to the alliance between throne and altar as it had
been under the ancien rgime, the king, like the ultramontanes, had skillfully
combined elements of the prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary settlement.
Similarities to ultramontanism should not be exaggerated. The kings desire
to base the new church government on what he thought were the specific his-
torical structures of the presumably uncorrupted 1st-century church clearly
indicates a Protestant (indeed almost a Fundamentalist) rather than a Catholic
mind, which might have had a more positive evaluation for the churchs devel-
opment over time. Unlike ultramontanists, whose aim was to secure the ascen-
dancy of right-thinking Catholics within the ancient church, Frederick Wil-
liam hoped to secure the ascendancy of right-thinking Protestants from two
different backgrounds (Lutheran and Calvinist) within the new Union church
created by his father.25 Frederick William had the difficult task of seeking, as
Ranke pointed out, [] the union of two confessions under one constitution,
which, as a third [confession, de], combined the peculiarities of the two old
ones.26
Even more importantly, most scholars would agree with Hugh McLeod
that the net effect of the ultramontane strategy of full-scale resistance to the
modern world through resounding papal condemnations of liberalism in
an encyclical of 1832 and in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), the promulgation in
1854 of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and the
declaration of papal infallibility in 1870 was to create a preference for life

25 However, the later split of Old Catholics (who objected to ultramontane positions, such
as papal infallibility) does closely parallel the 1845 departure of Old Lutherans and others
from the Union church.
26 [] die Vereinigungder zwei Konfessionen in einer Verfassung zu suchen, die als eine
dritte die Eigentmlichkeiten der zwei alten vereinigte. Cited in Goeters, Die kirchli-
chen Vorstellungen, p. 274.
134 chapter 3

within a Catholic ghetto.27 Since the 1820s, however, the king had been []
saturated by the beliefs of Prussian Awakening, which had in mind not only
internal piety, but also the Christianization of the world.28 In other words,
like other members of the mainstream Awakened, the king aimed not to ghet-
toize an orthodox church reinvigorated by the Awakening, but to empower the
church to defeat modernizing liberalism in Prussian society. Reform of church
government was a desirable and necessary step for the king, but only a part of
a broader plan of the conversion of Prussian society. The fact that such a vic-
tory over rationalism and some elements of modernity would also strengthen
the Legitimist cause does highlight a self-interested element in the kings plan,
but it does not fatally compromise his faith-based motives for advocating such
a conversion. Put differently, the king stood to benefit from the changes he
proposed, but that does not mean that he was not really convinced that the
changes would be beneficial for Prussian society. One piece of evidence that
supports this notion is that the king himself would lose some power by relin-
quishing the royal power of Kirchengewalt that virtually no one else in Prussia
questioned. Even though Frederick William almost certainly did not envision
a separation of church and state, the fact remains that he himself advocated
giving the church more independence and power to govern itself when there
was no obvious political payoff to his proposal.29
Despite Kultusminister Eichhorns cautioning against any haste,30 in the
summer of 1843 the king gave orders to provincial synods to meet, opening
debate on how best to reform church government.31 It slowly became evident
that the synods were considering reforms different from Frederick Williams.
By the close of the General Synod in 1846, Minister Eichhorn appeared as the
driving force, while the king, under Gerlachs influence, had more and more

27 McLeod, Religion, p. 47.

28 [] von der Glubigkeit der preuischen Erweckungsbewegung durchdrungen wurde,
die nicht nur innere Frmmigkeit, sondern die Verchristlichung der Welt im Sinne hatte.
Schoeps, Der Erweckungschrist auf dem Thron, p. 72. Schoeps may have been a bit off
on the date. I concur with Brennecke and Schaper that Schon vor 1820 gehrte er dann
zum Kreis der von der Romantik beeinfluten Berliner Erweckungsbwegung. Brennecke,
Eine heilige apostolische Kirche, p. 234.
29 Brennecke, Eine heilige apostolische Kirche, p. 240. Under his proposals, the king still
would have maintained significant power over the church. Brennecke insists that Freder-
ick William iv never intended a separation of church and state.
30 [] jeder bereilung. Cited in Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 278.
31 Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 278.
The Failure Of Reform 135

reservations.32 Most of the controversial issues in the reform debate became

the province of the consistories, and few changes were actually undertaken
before the Revolution of 1848, apart from the establishment of the Oberkonsis-
torium as an administrative body responsible for the whole church.33
The western provinces, meeting separately from the eastern ones, could not
change the church order of 1835 without the kings permission.34 Frederick Wil-
liam asked them only in 1844 to make important decisions about the mutual
position of the state church authorities and the Provincial Synod.35 Although
the king did not specify exact changes, Wilhelm Neuser has concluded that
the desire for a hierarchical constitutional structure became clear. The provin-
cial synods, however, energetically rejected an episcopal order.36 Meanwhile,
in the eastern provinces synods, representatives discussed general principles
rather than specific reform proposals. They dealt primarily with two problems:
the church constitution and the Protestant Friends (Protestantische Freunde),
more popularly known as the Friends of Light (Lichtfreunde). The Friends of
Light were a group of theological liberals with a rationalist bent (who later left
the Union church in 1845).37
Public debate over the Friends of Light foreshadowed the divisions which
were to plague church and political reform efforts and presaged the camps
which formed in the 1848 Revolution. In 1844 and 1845 a large number of peo-
ple signed declarations, and often polemical articles against the Friends of
Light appeared in Hengstenbergs Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.38 As a result of

32 Sptestens seit der Generalsynode von 1846 erschien Minister Eichhorn als die aktive
Potenz, whrend der Knig unter Gerlachs Einflu mehr und mehr Bedenken fate.
Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 278.
33 Goeters, Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen, p. 278. Cf. Wilhelm H. Neuser, Landeskirchli-
che Reform-, Bekenntnis- und Verfassungsfragen. Die Provinzialsynoden und die Berliner
Generalsynode von 1846, in Die Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, vol. 1, Die
Anfnge der Union unter landesherrlichem Kirchenregiment (18171850), eds. J.F. Gerhard
Goeters and Joachim Rogge (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), p. 364.
34 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 345.
35 [] die gegenseitige Stellung der landesherrlichen Kirchenbehrden und der Provinzial-
Synode. Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 345.
36 Der Wunsch nach einer hierarchischen Verfassungsstruktur wird deutlich. Die Provin
zialsynoden haben jedoch eine bishfliche Ordnung energisch zurckgewiesen. Neuser,
Landeskirchliche, p. 345.
37 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 346.
38 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, pp. 34647. Here Neuser also adds (on p. 346) that in 1844
there were 20 declarations signed by around 150 pastors, superintendents, and deacons
published, and in 1845 came 13 additional declarations signed by around 250 pastors and
others.
136 chapter 3

the furor, the police even forbade the Friends of Light to hold their convention
in Berlin in 1845.39 In response, 87 figures from the greater Berlin area (includ-
ing Bishops Drseke and Eylert) published a denunciation of the Kirchenzei-
tung camp, which they claimed had unfortunately gone to the most extreme
opposing positions [Gegenbekenntnissen].40 Berliners, who have been known
to enjoy embarrassing public spectacles from time to time, devised untranslat-
able nicknames for these three groups. The moderates were irreverently tagged
as twilighters (Dmmerlinge) because they were neither conservative dark-
lings (Finsterlinge) nor liberal friends of light (Lichtfreunde).41
In this charged atmosphere the Magistrate of Berlin felt compelled to come
out against the Kirchenzeitung, which in turn led Frederick William to sum-
mon the magistrate for a tongue-lashing. The king protested that the mag-
istrate blames, although in a cloaked fashion, My government of favoring
a party when in reality the king claimed he only wanted to let the church
structure itself.42 Despite the efforts of Bishop Neander, who, as always, tried
to reconcile the parties by placing words of peace among opposing views
(Worte des Friedens unter den Gegenstzen), deep divisions with political im-
plications had already formed. Most of the Awakened leaders sided with the
Kirchenzeitungs Hengstenberg, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Stahl, but not
all. Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, who in personal religious matters
was Awakened, broke with Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach over the church constitu-
tion (Synodalverfassung) and academic freedom (Lehrfreiheit).43 Although this
division would later heal on a personal level, Bethmann-Hollweg would later
become one of the most formidable opponents of the Kreuzzeitung faction,
both in parliament and in the intellectually rigorous Preuisches Wochenblatt
(founded in 1851). If Awakened conservatives in the Kirchenzeitung camp were
waging a culture war in part by seeking to keep their liberal opponents from
meeting and speaking freely, Bethmann-Hollweg provides evidence of a more
tolerant version of the Awakening.
Thus divided before it ever began, General Synod convened in 1846. It was
comprised of 37 clergy and 38 laymen.44 The king had named only about

39 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 347.

40 [] leider zu den extremsten Gegenbekenntnissen gekommen. Neuser, Landeskirchli-
che, p. 347.
41 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 348.
42 [] beschuldigt, wenn auch versteckt, doch deutlich, Meine Regierung, eine Partei zu
begnstigen and die Kirche durch sie selbst sich gestalten zu lassen. Cited in Neuser,
Landeskirchliche, p. 348.
43 Cited in Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 349.
44 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 349.
The Failure Of Reform 137

one-third of the representatives; a considerable portion of the laymen, then,

had been elected by their respective synods.45 The delegates composition did
not favor the Awakened. As Karl von Hase observed, The orthodox-Pietist
party would have hardly allowed such a General Synod if it had not hoped
to secure a majority through restricting the elections.46 If the Awakened had
counted on the tactic of restricting the electorate, that choice had failed miser-
ably. Both left and right could count on famous figures to lead them.47 Con-
servatives included Consistory President Carl Friedrich Gschel (17811861),48
Professors Stahl and August Twesten (17891876),49 and General Superin-
tendants Carl Andreas Wilhelm Freymark, August Hahn, and Ernst Wilhelm
Christian Sartorius.50 Less well-known were Count zu Stolberg-Wernigerode
(17851854)51 and Adolf von Thadden (17961882).52 The forces of reform in-
cluded Professors Nitzsch, Julius Mller (18011878), and Isaak August Dorner
(18091884), Count Maximilian von Schwerin-Putzar (18041872),53 and the
Court Pastor (Hofprediger) Karl Leopold Adolf Sydow (18001882).54 Two del-
egates were self-acknowledged rationalists, but on the whole the General Syn-
od was the greatest success of Mediating Theology,55 a school which roughly
corresponded to the Dmmerlinge.

45 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 349.

46 Die orthodox-pietistische Partei hatte eine solche Generalsynode schwerlich zugelassen,
wenn sie nicht gehofft htte, durch Wahlbeschrnkung die Majoritt zu sichern. Karl von
Hase, Kirchengeschichte auf der Grundlage akademischer Vorlesungen, ed. Gustav Krger
(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1892). Cited in Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 349.
47 The following figures are cited in Neuser, Landeskirchliche, pp. 36667.
48 Gschel was a philosopher and an expert in church law.
49 Twesten had been appointed as Schleiermachers replacement.
50 Neuser Landeskirchliche, p. 350. Freymark was General Superintendent of Posen from
1828 to 1854, Hahn of Silesia from 1843 to 1863, and Sartorius of the Province of Prussia
(Provinz Preuen) from 1835 to 1859 (Hartmut Sander, Amtslisten in geku, vol. 1, pp.
41922.
51 Stolberg-Wernigerode was the President of the Silesian Provincial Consistory.
52 Thadden was a lay Pomeranian noble who regularly hosted retreats the famous Gnade-
nauer Konferenz for Awakened pastors.
53 Schwerin-Putzar would later serve as Kultusminister between March and June 1848.
54 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 350.
55 Die Generalsynode war der grte Erfolg der Vermittlungstheologie, Heinrich Herme-
link, Das Christentum in der Menschheitsgeschichte von der franzsischen Revolution bis
zur Gegenwart, vol. 2 (Tbingen: J.B. Metzler und R. Wunderlich, 1955), p. 338, footnote 2.
Cited in Neuser Landeskirchliche, p. 350.
138 chapter 3

The General Synod discussed two main topics: the problem of revising the
churchs constitution and the so-called Lehrunion.56 The latter dealt with vari-
ous aspects of overcoming past denominational differences in the education
provided under the auspices of the Union church. Despite considerable prog-
ress made in the discussions of both problems, the revolution in March pre-
empted concrete reforms, except for the creation of the Oberkonsistorium in
January 1848.57 On the issue of the Lehrunion, a special commission formed
by the General Synod achieved a surprising amount of consensus on both of
the general Protestant principles of the Union. The commission restated, for
instance, the doctrines of sola scriptura and justification through faith.58 It
also sought to transcend some differences in Luthers and Calvins theologies
(including such tricky issues as the nature of the Eucharist and sanctification)
through stressing the common source of their theologies, namely the means
of divine grace and salvation through Christ. The commission members com-
mon appreciation for the importance of Christian unity may explain this
consensus. However, finding a common enemy also helped. Representatives
of quite disparate viewpoints could almost openly agree that certain tensions
and problems in the Union were the result of the high-handed way in which
Frederick William iii had forced liturgical reform (Agendenreform) and pres-
sured congregations to declare themselves in favor of the Union.59 Perhaps a
still more important factor in consensus-building was the relatively amenable
position taken by the otherwise tendentious Kirchenzeitung. Anneliese Kriege
has argued that Kirchezeitung editor Hengstenberg continued to advocate the
advantages of the Union, turning against the Union only after the revolution.60
Although the issue of the Ordinationsbekenntnis proved somewhat prob-
lematic in the discussions of the full General Synod, those difficulties paled
in comparison to differences over revisions to the churchs constitution. In
those discussions one could distinguish broad types of religious motivations
that sometimes overlapped with, and at other times seemed to drift apart
from, political considerations. First came the politically conservative core of
the Awakened, represented by the chairman of the Synods commission on

56 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 350.

57 Cf. Gottlieb Lttgert, Evangelisches Kirchenrecht in Rheinland und Westfalen (Gtersloh: C.
Bertelsmann, 1905), p. 137, cited in Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 364, footnote 111.
58 Verhandlungen der ev. General-Synode zu Berlin v. 2. Juni bis zum 29. August 1846 (Berlin:
Amtl. Abdr., 1846), 94, (18 and 19) Anhang, cited in Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 351.
59 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 352.
60 Kriege, Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung, p. 389ff., and Neuser, Landeskirchli-
che, p. 351, footnote 34.
The Failure Of Reform 139

constitutional matters, the jurist Friedrich Julius Stahl. Stahl sought to draw
a distinction between congregations that used elections under the presbyte-
rial order, and the stabile part of power, meaning congregations under the
synodal order predicated on the recognition of higher-ups [Hhergegebenen],
historical continuity, and the recognition of human superiors, who have
[been] set above us.61 Here we see Stahl championing a hierarchical model
of church government. For Stahl, the direction of this flow from top to bottom
was natural in the sense that it reflected the general revelation of nature and
the specific revelation of ordination of bishops and other clergy through the
laying-on of hands. Put differently, Stahl, like the Gerlachs and most of the out-
spoken members of the Awakening, advocated hierarchy in its original sense.
Hierarchy was a sacred order, an order ordained by God Himself and, accord-
ing to Stahl, here buttressed through the practice of tradition.
It is no surprise to find Stahl taking this position, which essentially paral-
lels his support for the school of organic law as articulated by Haller and
others. However, it would be hasty to write off Stahls position on church gov-
ernment as one subordinated to his position on political hierarchy, for Stahl
(unlike Haller) justified the notion of organic law primarily through an appeal
to the divine order of hierarchy sanctioned by God. While one can choose to
read expedience into Stahls position on church government, the more elegant
and perhaps more compelling interpretation is that by endorsing synodal over
presbyterial church government Stahl was evincing the thoroughness one
might expect of a brilliant jurist (and a principled convert). He was being kon-
sequent in applying the general principle of hierarchy to two specific cases of
political and religious government.
And yet there is a sense in which Stahls words, regardless of his inten-
tions, might have been code words to those who valued religion chiefly as a
tool to serve the throne. At the very least, religion and politics were hard to
separate, as is evident in Stahls assertion that the Lutheran individuality is
one which submits to authorities which the members of the church have not
given themselves, but which have been set above them, if they only hold fast
to the Evangelium.62 It is hard to see how this Lutheran habit of submission

61 Der Gemeinde, die das Kirchenregiment durch Wahl bildet, stellte er den stabilen Theil
der Gewalt entgegen, die Anerkennung menschlicher Obern, die ber uns gesetzt sind.
Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 362, citing Verhandlungen, p. 359 (6 August 1846).
62 [] die lutherische Individualitt sei die, sich Obrigkeiten zu fgen, welche die Kirchen
glieder sich nicht selbst gegeben, sondern die ihr gesetzt seien, wenn sie nur das Evangeli-
um festhielten. Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 362, referring to Verhandlungen, pp. 43233
(13 August 1846).
140 chapter 3

to authorities God gave to the church could not carry over to submission to a
political authority God placed on the throne. A logical conclusion of Stahls
line of thought is that instead of causing trouble for authorities who remain
authorities irrespective of their subordinates actions, subordinates ought to
busy themselves with fulfilling their Christian duties. It is not difficult to imag-
ine a political corollary to this religious submission.
Court pastor Adolf Sydow, one of the leaders for reform, represented a sec-
ond position. Sydow countered Stahls aspersions against the presbyterial order
in words that must have appealed to those who disagreed both with the con-
tention that God had chosen an episcopal government for the church and that
one should defer to the human tradition of obeying hierarchy. Sydow claimed
that stability is won through the activity of the Holy Spirit, the abiding Word
of God, the symbols through the objective laws of science [Wissenschaft] and
reasonable German temperament [vernnftige deutsche Gesinnung].63 In oth-
er words, Sydow attempted to trump Stahls notion of tradition with science,
and of divinely ordained hierarchy with an appeal to the divine and dynamic
unfolding of the Holy Spirits inspiration. In an age and a country so strongly
stamped by the influence of Hegel and other Idealist philosophers, an appeal
to the workings of the Spirit may well have been coded language not for a pa-
tient, passive stance, but for an active reformist agenda driven by reason and
science.

Bethmann-Hollweg and the Burgfrieden

So far, we have found the two theological camps we expected: the liberal,
and the conservative or orthodox-Pietist camps, each arguing about church
government in a manner that was indeed primarily and sincerely religious but
which also carried strong political overtones and implications. But an intrigu-
ing third position emerged with a speech by the Awakened Rhineland aristo-
crat Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg. Bethmann-Hollweg had already
begun in the early 1840s to part ideological company with the dominant wing
of the Awakening, the Kirchenzeitung faction, best embodied by the papers
editor Hengstenberg, Stahl, and the Gerlach brothers. At the conference on
church reform, Bethmann-Hollweg objected to the line of reasoning taken by

63 [] das Stabile werde gewonnen durch das Wirken des Hl. Geistes, das bleibende Got-
teswort, die Symbole, durch die objektiven Gesetzte der Wissenschaft und die vernnf
tige deutsche Gesinnung. Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 362, citing Verhandlungen, 413
(12 August 1846).
The Failure Of Reform 141

Stahl. Hollweg, since 1830 a presbyter in Bonn, refused to back Stahls rejection
of the presbyterial order and endorsement of the principle of hierarchy. He
maintained that Stahl too boldly asserted everything which comes from above
is holy and brings blessings [heilbringend], whatever comes from below [is]
profane and dangerous for the church.64 Bethmann-Hollweg pleaded that one
should abandon all political analogies, whether royalist or democratic, and he
pointedly observed that naturalism and rationalism had also penetrated the
church from above.65 Here we see Bethmann-Hollweg calling attention to an
unpleasant fact: that the very rationalism whose perceived excesses had, in
effect, contributed to the genesis of the Awakening, had come through the
agency of supposedly divinely ordained authorities the Awakened Stahl now
exalted. Bethmann-Hollwegs obvious implication was that to praise obedi-
ence to authority without taking its past abuses into account was to be, in a
sense, disingenuous about the very origins of the Awakening itself.
Bethmann-Hollwegs public criticism of Stahls position dramatizes a prob-
lem that would soon become more serious for the Kirchenzeitung group of the
Awakened. In the coming years Hollweg, a cofounder of the anti-Kirchenzeitung
paper Preuisches Wochenblatt, would sharpen and refine his criticism of
that group. Bethmann-Hollwegs words carried great weight. The Kirchenzei-
tung group could not dismiss him because he was, essentially, one of them.
Bethmann-Hollweg was a man of indubitably sincere Awakened faith, politi-
cally conservative (he was one of the cofounders of the conservative party after
the revolution), and, like some of the Awakenings strongest proponents, an
aristocrat who had come of age in the Napoleonic era.
Bethmann-Hollweg was profoundly unlike liberal critics, who might goad or
outrage the Kirchenzeitung group but who also reinforced its unity. The Kirch-
enzeitung faction saw in liberalism and modernity forces that were either the
allies or the dupes of Satan, bent on destroying the church and the political
order ordained by God. The fight against them seemed daunting, but noble.
It was easy to identify the liberal enemy, and the existence of a well-defined
enemy in turn helped reinforce the Awakened sense of identity. As long as such
a dangerous enemy existed, it made sense for the Awakened to keep a Burgfrie-
den under which the theology of Hengstenberg and Tholuck predominated,
and Friedrich Julius Stahl, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Frederick William
ivs neo-feudal, organic notion of law and society prevailed.

64 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 362, citing Verhandlungen, 554 (25 August 1846). Alles, wa
von oben herab kommt, sei heilig und heilbringend, was von unten kommt, profan und
geahrbringend fr die Kirche.
65 Neuser, Landeskirchliche, p. 362, citing Verhandlungen, 554 (25 August 1846).
142 chapter 3

Bethmann-Hollweg, on the other hand, was not an enemy but an internal

dissident. By criticizing the movement from within, he threatened the Burg-
frieden, problematizing the Awakened sense of identity in at least two impor-
tant ways. First, by speaking out in favor of the presbyterial church order (and,
after the revolution, in favor of a written constitution), he demonstrated that it
was possible to be both Awakened and yet embrace elements of modernity and
even liberalism. Partly due to his powerful arguments, some members of the
Kirchenzeitung faction would eventually moderate its own views and become
reconciled to the constitution (albeit primarily as a means to enforce political
reaction from above). The leaders of the Awakened were not weltfremd people
who sought to live apart from the world. They accepted the Christian paradox
of living in the world but not being part of it.
But in practice, most of the Awakened had, after the cessation of persecu-
tion in the late 1820s, found it relatively easy to keep the world at arms length.
In Prussia, most of its followers were peasants or artisans, and many of its lead-
ers were aristocrats or clergy. Many of its followers still tended to live in rural
areas and small towns in fairly tightly knit communities, where premodern
patterns of life had undergone slower, less complete change. The Awaken-
ing was primarily composed, in other words, of almost habitually conserva-
tive members of the old estates who were (with the notable exception of the
clergy) not frequently in direct, involuntary contact with the state or the newly
forming liberal civil society. They possessed their own form of civil society in
which every member had his or her place in a social hierarchy, every member
shared not only common life experiences but common, often intense and pro-
found religious experiences, and a theology of historic Protestantism.
Such communities created a sense of belonging, community, and (religious)
equality. Most members of such communities must have perceived such an
order as both more comfortable and more liberating than what liberals had to
offer. Those advocating liberal changes had freed the peasants, but in prac-
tice left them even more destitute than before and now even without the pro-
tections of patriarchal provision that the pre-Napoleonic order had possessed.
Those advocating liberal changes had created economic freedom that de-
stroyed the guilds and other protective intermediary bodies of the old regime.
Now that those advocating liberal changes wanted to transform the church
and perhaps the political order, it was not surprising that their representatives
of the Awakening opposed them. But what was surprising and disquieting to
the Awakened was that some, such as Hollweg, thought the Awakened life was
perfectly compatible with some elements of the modern era which had other-
wise so damaged the interests of these Awakened communities. The presence
of such an internal dissident threatened the coherence of an anti-modern ele-
ment in Awakened identity.
The Failure Of Reform 143

A second way that Bethmann-Hollweg threatened the Burgfrieden of the

Awakened was that his advocacy of the presbyterial church order caught
the Awakening in a difficult moment of transition. Until the end of the 1820s,
the Prussian state persecuted Awakened as vigorously as its creaky machinery
would allow, employing fines, arrests, police surveillance, and the like. Even
after the 1830s, when the dominant Kirchenzeitung faction found itself toler-
ated, the more strictly confessionalist Awakened in the Old Lutheran move-
ment continued to be persecuted by the state. Now, the Awakening, in its
self-conception, was a movement neither from above or below, but movement
from within, generated by Gods renewal or awakening of individuals in an in-
terior experience or set of experiences. However, if we describe the movement
not phenomenologically but sociologically, the Awakening had clearly begun
as a movement from below.
By the late 1840s, though, this movement from below had become so reha-
bilitated that it was beginning to occupy high positions of power and influence.
An entire generation of Awakened clergymen, theologians, publishers, bureau-
crats, and aristocrats (not to mention Frederick William iv) had worked their
way through the ranks, rising to hold prominent positions from which they
could begin to set the tone in Prussian society. The generation of Enlightened
leaders who had so galled the Awakened in their youth had died away. Now
having access to the levers of power, some Awakened, such as Stahl, hoped
to use those levers to promote an Awakened and (in his view) therefore more
proper practice of Christianity. Bethmann-Hollwegs rejoinder to Stahl to re-
member that the Awakened had themselves once suffered at the hands of the
state was an awkward remark to a group of former outsiders who now had the
chance to become rule-setting insiders.
On the whole, then, the debates about church reform had revealed three
truths with potentially disturbing ramifications for the Awakened. First, those
who favored liberal reforms were at least as forceful as those who opposed
them or those who favored the more conservative, Awakened version of re-
form. In other words, the ecumenical mainstream of the Awakened had gam-
bled a great deal since the 1820s on reforming the church from within. That is
why they opted to return to the state church rather than to go fully outside its
structure. But at the end of the 1840s it appeared entirely uncertain whether the
Awakened or the foes of the Awakened, styled liberals or even rationalists,
would determine the future direction of the state church. Second, by decrying
theological and political liberals as two columns of a single hostile army, as
they had since at least the 1830s, the Awakened had not only united their own
forces but risked uniting those of an enemy they had helped to create. (Admit-
tedly, however, the same observation could be made about liberals, whose
portrayal of theological and political conservatives as a monolithic force also
144 chapter 3

created a self-fulfilling prophecy about their foes.) Third, one of the chief rea-
sons the Awakened leaders could counter or frustrate those who wanted the
sorts of reforms they opposed was their special influence as aristocrats and/or
intimates of the king. In other words, the Awakened depended partly on the
public status and institutional advantages that titles and ties to the king had
given them.
But these were at best rather fragile supports, which is why Bethmann-
Hollwegs rejoinder was so telling. Many of the Awakened would find that their
insider status shifted along with the boundaries of power in March 1848. Fur-
thermore, many Awakened hopes were penned on a king who, so far as one
could determine about a vacillating monarch, seemed to have his own agenda
of reform, one not necessarily identical to the ideas of other Awakened figures
and certainly not in step with the Zeitgeist of liberal reform. Perhaps at no time
before the revolution did the growing isolation of the king become more obvi-
ous than at the United Diet in 1847.

The Stillborn United Diet

The United Diet (Vereinigter Landtag) that gathered in Berlin on 11 April 1847
represented the last good opportunity to effect reforms before revolution
broke out in March 1848. As with the General Synod, few concrete decisions
of lasting importance were made in the United Diet, but its discussions serve
as a useful barometer of Prussian politics and particularly of the extent that
Frederick William iv would allow on the eve of the approaching revolution-
ary storm. The United Diet was the culmination of political reform efforts that
had begun around the start of Frederick William ivs reign. The Diet, with over
600 delegates, consisted of a lower house (the Curia of the Three Estates) and
an upper house (the Curia of Lords).66 In political terms, representatives could
be divided into camps quite similar to those that failed to enact substantive
church reform, camps largely critical of or comfortable with hierarchy.67 Even

66 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 127.

67 For an analysis of the significant differences among these camps, see Johannes Gerhardt,
Der erste Vereinigte Landtag in Preussen von 1847. Untersuchungen zu einer stndischen
Krperschaft im Vorfeld der Revolution von 1848/49, Quellen und Forschungen zur Branden-
burgischen und preussischen Geschichte (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007). Gerhardt
differentiates (pp. 7290), based in part on their responses to proposed amendments by
Vincke and Schwerin, among several kinds of conservatives, for example, including re-
actionaries, those satisfied with the status quo, neo-estatists, juste-milieu conservatives,
historical estatists, and pragmatic estatists.
The Failure Of Reform 145

before the representatives ever got a chance to stalemate each other, however,
Frederick William iv quashed the hopes of reformers at the opening ceremony.
At the opening ceremony, Frederick William was probably already taxed
by the lingering and serious illness of his wife, notes David Barclay, and he
had been further irritated by the fact that some had construed his Patent of
3 February, which had summoned the Diet, as an acquiescence to a kind of
constitutional charter, and they thus regarded the Diet itself as a kind of parlia-
mentary assembly.68 The king would not let them suffer under such a delusion
for long. After reaffirming the sovereign rights of the monarchy and scotching
the very notion of a constitution, he observed

that no power on earth will ever succeed in moving me to change the

natural [] relationship between prince and people into a conventional,
constitutional one, and that I shall not now or ever grant that between
the Lord our God in Heaven and this country a written piece of paper
should intervene, like some second Providence, in order to rule Us [the
royal plural de] with its paragraphs and through them to replace the
old, sacred loyalty.69

Thus, even with a fairly tame assembly of the estates with no legal power, Fred-
erick William would not contemplate change. Written constitutions, in his
view, were not only artificial and unnatural, they even bordered on the sac-
rilegious, threatening to usurp the role of Jesus as intermediary between God
and the king. Nor was the king open to the evolution of a more representative
system than the estates (Stnde). His convictions were essentially unchanged
since 1844, when he had reassured his Interior Minister Graf Adolf von Arnim-
Boitzenburg that he wanted to create through the series of Diets neither an
aristocratic-Germanic system nor a more democratic system.70 He inveighed

68 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 128.

69 [] da es keiner Macht der Erde je gelingen soll, Mich zu bewegen, das natrliche []
Verhltnis zwichen Frst und Volk in ein conventionelles, constitutionelles zu wandeln,
und da Ich es nun und nimmermehr zugeben werde, da zwischen Unsern Herr Gott
um Himmel und dieses Land ein beschriebenes Blatt, gleichsam als eine zweite Vorse-
hung eindrnge, um Uns mit seinen Paragraphen zu regieren und durch sie die alte, hei-
lige Treue zu ersetzen. Cited in Kroll, Friedrich Wilhelm iv, p. 52; Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlach, pp. 38485; Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 128.
70 aristokratisch-germanisches System. These and subsequent quotes come from a letter of
18 December 1844, blha, Pr. Br. Rep. 37, Herrschaft Boitzenburg, No. 3943, 13, reproduced
in Friedrich Beck, Gottesgnadentum und Nationalreprsentation. Unverffentlich
te Handschreiben Knig Friedrich Wilhelms iv. von Preuen an den Innenminister
146 chapter 3

especially strongly against the latter, insisting that a democratic-Germanic

system does not exist. Everything democratic is deeply un-German.71 In this
letter from 1844, one can see Frederick Williams fears about the 1847 United
Diet (and many of the actual demands of the March revolutionaries) rather
clearly anticipated. The king held that if parliamentarism were introduced in
Prussia only as leavening, it would quickly spoil the whole dough.

What the Zeitgeist and its stinking hunting dog, journalism, want, I can
tell you exactly: For starters 300 representatives of the people, elected
from the grubby soup of all the estates, given legislative competency, and
further, ministerial accountability, [control of, de] the annual budget, ab-
solute freedom of the press, and recognition by me that only by the grace
of the people will I sit on the throne. The rest, namely the abolition of the
nobility and the practical restriction of the elections to the middle class,
will naturally follow. Above all, however, instead of God in heaven, an as-
swipe of a Charter as Providence above us [] But I want a non-periodic
meeting of the Imperial Estates, but [sic] genuine, just, true, taken page
for page from the living former institutions, only when the truth of the
Germanic principle of estates commands it.72

Certainly in 1844 Frederick William explained his view far more colorfully
than he did at the opening of the United Diet. But his views which were
for him convictions rather than opinions remained unchanged. He held that

Graf Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg, Jahrbuch fr brandenburgische Landesgeschichte 46

(1995), 12939.
71 Ein demokratisch-g e r m a n i s c h e s System giebt es nicht. Alles demokratische ist ur-
unteutsch. Beck, Gottesgandentum, p. 136.
72 Was der Zeitgeist und sein stnkriger Riecher, der Journalismus will, kann ich Ihnen
genau sagen: Fr den Anfang etwa 300 Volksreprsentanten, aus der Sudelsuppe aller
Stnde gewhlt, mit legislativer Gewalt begabt, ferner: Verantwortlichkeit der Minister,
Budjet annuel, absolute Prefreyheit und von meiner Seite der Anerkennung: nur durch
die Gnade des Volkes, als sein Pensionair auf dem Throne zu sitzen. Das brige, nemlich
Abschafuung des Adels und practische Beschrnkung der Wahlen auf den Mittelstand,
findet sich dann von selbst. Vor Allem aber, statt Gott im Himmel, einen Arschwisch von
Charta als Vorsehung ber uns Wo ist nun der Unterschied meines und Ihres aritocra-
tischen Planes? (denn das ist er vis a vis dem Zeitgeist und der Sprachverwirrung). Darin,
da Sie periodische Reichsstnde in Klein-Octav, ich aber n i c h t p e r i o d i s c h e, aber
chte, rechte, wahre, aus dem Leben der dermaligen Instituzionen genommen in folio
will und zwar, n u r d a n n, wenn die Wahrheit des germanischen Stnde[]Prinzips es
gebiethet. Beck, Gottesgandentum, pp. 13637.
The Failure Of Reform 147

the heterogenous provinces of Prussia already had an organically developed

constitution a genuinely Germanic one that had existed before the Impe-
rial Estates had been abolished by Napoleon. (One wonders how Prussias
new western provinces, which it gained in the wars against France, fit into
his model, and whether the Napoleonic Code in some of them might at some
point have been accepted as organically grafted on, but that is another matter.)
Frederick William was adamant that altering the system to make its represen-
tation based more on the people and less on the estates would disastrously
lead to the dissolution of the estates and of the nobility itself, leaving the king
as a figurehead but only as long as the people graciously agreed to suffer
him. Especially remarkable is the kings prime concern: the threat to his Got-
tesgnadentum. In language that closely parallels his address to the United Diet
in 1847, Frederick William condemns the idea of a charter as an affront, an
attempt not merely to rob the king of his rights, but to usurp the throne of
the King of Kings. A charter (let alone a constitution) would not merely of-
fend against the historical rights of the king and his Germanic subjects, but it
would be, by definition, an act of supreme impiety.
Also noteworthy in the kings 1844 letter is his anticipation that some sub-
jects would demand the regular, required sessions of the Diet, or periodici-
ty. The prescient, Cassandra-like king was right on this score. For despite his
opening address in 1847 intended as a prophylactic against the movement
for genuine parliamentary power some delegates soon began to push for
Periodicitt.73 Although the king steadfastly refused for some time, mounting
discontent finally forced him to grant periodicity on 5 March 1848, just days
before revolution broke out in Berlin.74 Already before the revolution began,
therefore, one might argue that the kings will had been broken. In the mean-
time, leaders of the opposition in the Diet had gained valuable experience in
organizing themselves and exchanging views.75
In sum, we see a striking similarity between Frederick Williams plans for
reform of church government and of political institutions. It would be wrong
to say that the king opposed reform root and branch. He had concrete plans
for church reform, but he mistrusted the church representatives whose task
it was to deliberate changes. Nor was he alone in this matter. Apart from
Bethmann-Hollweg and his supporters, especially some in the newer prov-
inces, most of the Awakened (including the king), especially those from Prus-
sias core provinces in the east, generally remained suspicious of reform efforts

73 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 129.

74 Barclay, Frederick William iv, pp. 13637.
75 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 136.
148 chapter 3

that originated with suggestions from below. The problem was not only that a
more democratic form of church government would create the precedent for
similar reform; the deeper objection was that reform from below violated the
religious principle of authority and legitimacy flowing from God through the
divinely ordained institution of the church to the faithful.
The same principle was at work in the controversy over political reform. The
king did not oppose change; indeed, it was he who had summoned the local
diets, provincial diets, and finally the United Diet to consult over reform. The
king also had, as we saw in the letter of 1844, at least the nucleus of a specific
program in mind, an adaptation of the defunct Imperial Estates. The estates,
too, were part of the state structure and it is well to remember that the Awak-
ened and especially the king, following in the footsteps of Luther and Calvin,
regarded not only the monarchy but also the state as divinely ordained insti-
tutions. Reform, which the king was willing to contemplate, therefore had to
derive its authority and legitimacy from above. To introduce novel schemes
such as periodicity or, heaven (for the king, literally) forfend, a constitution
was to commit an act of gross impiety and hubris, for it sought to replace divine
Providence with a providence of merely human origin.
For Frederick William the principle that united these concerns about politi-
cal and religious reform could be summed up by his much beloved concept of
Gottesgnadentum. But, as we shall see, the king had a much more expansive
definition of his Gottesgnadentum than even many of his Awakened support-
ers. During the debate over religious reform, Friedrich Julius Stahl had seemed
to find a middle path between the most stalwart opponents of reform from
below, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and those Awakened who could more easily
contemplate some reform initiated below, such as Bethmann-Hollweg. After
the 1848 revolution, Stahl would likewise persuade even Gerlach that a monar-
chy could be constitutional and yet true to the divine principles and notion of
Germanic, organic law that many Awakened leaders so cherished.
 chapter 4

Opposition to Revolution as Cultural Warfare

Locating the Prussian Revolution in German and

Transnational Contexts

If Awakened conservative leaders had become politicized in the 1810s and

1820s in part as a response to the unwelcome overreach of the state and the
supposedly rationalist state church, and had moved toward engaging more
proactively in a cultural struggle against rationalist and liberal stirrings in the
1830s to the mid-1840s, then in 1848 Awakened conservative leaders became
confronted with their nightmare: a liberal revolution. After initially flounder-
ing, their response was to ramp up the cultural struggle using a mixture of
new and old-fashioned politics, especially at court and in the newly elected
assemblies, and to use new and old forms of cultural reproduction and advo-
cacy, including the foundation of the Kreuzzeitung and the written constitu-
tion promulgated by Frederick William iv. They achieved degrees of success
in this cultural struggle, although with the risk of compromising some of their
identity and message by using more modern means to fight for its preservation
and adaptation.
The 1848 revolution, with its many causes and consequences, was a poly-
semous event that has generated a tremendously large body of scholarship.
Since it has been described and analysed in great detail elsewhere, it will be
profitable for this study only to outline the course of the revolution and to con-
centrate on a few moments in the revolutionary process of great importance
for Prussia. However, any book would be incomplete if it did not at least indi-
cate some of the more notable recent contributions. An excellent introduction
to the historiography of the revolution was compiled by Rdiger Hachtmann
for its sesquicentennial.1 He has also written an important contribution to the

1 Rdiger Hachtmann, 150 Jahre Revolution von 1848, Part 1, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 39
(1999), pp. 44793, and ibid., Part 2, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 40 (2000), pp. 337401. A com-
prehensive update of literature since the sesquicentennial would fill a historiographical gap.
Still older works can be accessed through Theodore S. Hamerow, History and the German
Revolution of 1848, ahr, 60.1 (1954). Perhaps the best single study, extraordinarily rich in de-
tail, is still Veit Valentin, Geschichte der deutschen Revolution, 18481849, 2 vols. (Berlin: 1930
1931). Cf. Sheehan, German History, p. 656, and Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 395. Brian
E. Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity, Harvard

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_006

150 chapter 4

religious aspects of the revolution in Berlin.2 Among other valuable recent con-
tributions on the revolution are those of Christof Dipper and Ulrich Speck,3
Wolfgang Hardtwig,4 Dieter Langewiesche,5 Wolfgang J. Mommsen,6 Wolfram
Siemann,7 and Jonathan Sperber.8 Concerning the question of the relationship
of the constitution to the revolution, an impressive body of scholarship has
also emerged.9 The impressive body of literature, and the passions that still

Historical Studies (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002) also merits special
attention.
2 Rdiger Hachtmann, Berlin 1848. Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolution,
Verffentlichungen des Instituts dr Sozialgeschichte, ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn: Dietz, 1997),
and ein gerechtes Gericht Gottes. Der Protestantismus und die Revolution von 1848 das
Berliner Beispiel, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 36 (1996), pp. 20555.
3 Christof Dipper and Ulrich Speck, 1848. Revolution in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Insel, 1998).
4 Wolfgang Hardtwig, Revolution in Deutschland und Europa 184849, Sammlung Vandenhoeck
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
5 Dieter Langewiesche, Die Revolutionen von 1848 in der europischen Geschichte. Ergebnisse
und Nachwirkungen. Beitrge des Symposions in der Paulskirche vom 21. bis 23. Juni 1998,
Historische Zeitschrift Beiheft (Neue Folge) 29, ed. Lothar Gall (Munich: R. Oldenbourg,
2000); idem, Die Deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, Wege der Forschung 164 (Darmstadt: Wis-
senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983); and Dieter Dowe, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, and Dieter
Langewiesche, Europa 1848. Revolution und Reform, Reihe Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschich-
te 48 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz Nachf., 1998).
6 Wolfgang J. Mommsen, 1848. Die ungewollte Revolution. Die revolutionren Bewegungen in
Europa 18301849 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1998).
7 Wolfram Siemann, Die deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, Neue historische Bibliothek (Frank-
furt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985), and idem, Die Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/49 zwischen
demokratischem Liberalismus und konservativer Reform. Die Bedeutung der Juristendominanz
in den Verfassungsverhandlungen des Paulskirchenparlaments, Europische Hochschul-
schriften, Reihe iii, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 56 (Bern: Herbert Lang and
Peter Lang, 1976).
8 Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 18481851, 2nd ed., New Approaches to European
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Sperber frames his approach as part
of a new school of interpretations that departs from three prior schools of thought, which
viewed the revolution as romantic revolution, as a farce, or as a failure, in varying degrees
(pp. 12).
9 See especially Ernst Rudolf Huber and Gustav Schmidt, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit
1789, vol. 2, Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit 1830 bis 1850 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960),
and Ernst Rudolf Huber, ed., Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 18031850, Dokumente zur
deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961); Gnther Grnthal, Par-
lamentarismus in Preussen 1848/491857/58. Preussischer Konstitutionalismus, Parlament und
Regierung in der Reaktionsra, Handbuch der Geschichte des deutschen Parlamentarismus
(Dsseldorf: Droste, 1982); and Margaret Barber Crosby, The Making of a German Constitution
A Slow Revolution (Oxford: Berg, 2008).
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 151

sometimes emerge in it, testify to the power of the revolution to continue to

inspire scholars.
The revolution was an event of seismic proportions, presenting the most
serious challenges to European stability since 1789. The 1830 revolution had
been limited to France and several smaller states. With a few exceptions, the
revolution had in varying degrees merely restricted the power of monarchies in
those weak links of the Restoration order. The 1848 revolution, by contrast, top-
pledmonarchy altogether in France (until Napoleon iii proclaimed the Sec-
ond Empire in 1852), and it threatened to force radical political changes even
in Austria and Prussia, two Restoration stalwarts. In Prussia, forces opposed
to the revolution were able to gain the upper hand only after several fraught
months. Even then, it proved impossible to return to the status quo ante. In
Austria, defeating the revolution took nearly as long, and it required the help of
100,000 Russian troops to restore Austrian dominance over a restive Hungary.
After 1848, it became clear even to many observers on the political right that
the Restoration was a dead project. Parts of the past might be salvaged or even
melded with the new order, but the old world could never be fully restored. To
judge by their actions, Restoration advocates before 1848 seem to have believed
that physical measures, such as police surveillance of radicals, censorship of
publications, and harsh repression of revolutionary outbreaks, would suffice.
This was primarily a defensive strategy that relied on negating manifestations
of the revolutionary spirit. Apart from such works as Karl Ludwig von Hallers
Restauration der Staatswissenschaften, there were few systematic efforts to ad-
vance a positive argument for the Restoration in the public sphere. But 1848
demonstrated the futility of this defensive, negative approach, for although the
revolution could be defeated on the battlefield, it remained a constant danger
as long as it lived in hearts and minds.
The most visible leaders of the Awakening pursued two strategies in re-
sponding to the revolution. First, they used rhetorical force and advocated
physical force to repress the revolution in 1848, branding the revolution as un-
Christian and anti-Christian. Among Protestants, the religiously liberal like-
wise battled the more conservative, including the Awakened, for the banner of
Christianity. Such liberals claimed to represent the true spirit or essence ( la
Feuerbach, among others) of Christianity, unlike the Pharasaical, Jesuitical,
or Pietistic Awakened, or the sectarian Old Lutherans. In other words, many
(probably most) of those engaged with the events of 1848 would not have de-
nied that the revolution had religious and moral implications.
Awakened leaders did not content themselves with denunciations of their
opponents and hand-wringing over the calamitous revolution. They would
eventually offer a positive program, in part by contesting the meaning and
152 chapter 4

connotations of some of the key terms of liberals, including freedom or liberty

and legitimacy, in ways compatible with their Awakened understanding of a
sacred order on earth and also complementing some of the material and class
interests of those aristocrats and the king who were among their leaders. They
would offer what they termed a politics of principles (Politik der Prinzipien),
albeit one largely devoid of specifics, that they believed to be grounded in
Christianity. They would continue the struggle to define and occupy the moral
and ultimately political high ground.
Because the revolution took place in many states, neither revolutionaries
nor reactionaries were sure whether their aims could be best achieved locally,
at the national level (and even what the nation meant remained unclear),
or at the transnational level. Prussian revolutionaries, for instance, disagreed
over whether to pursue their goals primarily in Prussia or through the pan-
German parliament called in Frankfurt (differing also over whether to include
Austria, what to do about Germans in non-German states like Denmark,
etc.). Those opposed to liberal and/or bourgeois revolution likewise disagreed
about whether to concentrate their efforts in Prussia or in Frankfurt; whether
to oppose the revolution implacably or to wait to exploit its inevitable fissures;
whether to seek to divert revolutionary attention or to try to place themselves
at the head of its momentum; whether to continue Prussian deference to
Austrian leadership or to seize the chance to craft a northern German alliance;
etc. The relatively tidy order in this chapters narrative of the revolution should
not obscure the fact that most contemporaries surely perceived the crisis of
1848 as a bewildering series of wild fits and false starts.
From February to October 1848 the revolution seemed to spread almost
unchecked across Europe. The revolution that had forced the French mon-
arch Louis Philippe to abdicate in late February arrived in the German states
in March 1848. By mid-March, Metternich, the chief architect of the Resto-
ration, had been forced to quit Vienna. Prussia, another great pillar of the
Restoration, witnessed street battles on 18 and 19 March, and on 28 March a
frustrated, isolated, and despondent Frederick William iv was forced to ap-
point a cabinet of leading liberals, including Camphausen and Delbrck. In
March and April many smaller states, including some in Italy and in south-
ern and western Germany, had convulsed with popular unrest. Of the great
and mid-weight powers, only Russia remained an unshaken advocate of the
Restoration or, as it was already coming to be called by some, reaction. In the
German lands, a National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt began
in May to deliberate the future of Germany, claiming by the end of June to pos-
sess provisional imperial power (provisorische Reichsgewalt) under Austrian
Archduke Johann as the titular Imperial Administrator (Reichsverweser).
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 153

A similar body, confusingly known also as the National Assembly or the Prus-
sian Assembly (preuische Versammlung), began to draft a Prussian constitu-
tion as well.
Yet, despite these gains, the revolutions successes did not seem inevitable,
irresistible, or irreversible to many contemporaries. Within each country,
the revolutions opponents had metaphorically and in some cases literally
retreated from the field, but they had not been vanquished. The revolutions
opponents maintained many advantages, including their titles, status, wealth,
political savoir-faire, personal connections, and ties to the military. In Prus-
sia leading Awakened figures played a vital role in rallying these forces and
making them aware of their own strengths. Awakened writers for the Evange-
lische Kirchenzeitung and for the Kreuzzeitung, which they helped found, lent
respectability to the cause of opposing the revolution, and Awakened court
favorites encouraged the king to stiffen his resolve against the revolution.
Furthermore, the revolutions very successes opened cracks among its pro-
ponents, as moderates and radicals envisaged very different trajectories for the
future. Multiple divisions fractured the Assembly on every issue, from whether
to include all or part of Austria in a Greater German (grodeutsch) national
state to how to conduct the war with Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein.10 And
on the horizon lay the possibility of massive Russian intervention against the
revolution. In short, even to many contemporaries the gains of the revolu-
tion were less secure than the triumphalist rhetoric of some of its proponents
might have led one to believe.
Forces opposed to the revolution gradually regained the upper hand, blood-
ily suppressing insurrectionists in the June Days in France, and regaining con-
trol in Prague, in Vienna, and in most of the Italian states. Perhaps emboldened
by such examples, Frederick William iv and his supporters took a series of steps
to put down the revolution in Prussia. On 8 November the revolutionary Prus-
sian Assembly was moved from the capital to the more easily controlled pro-
vincial city of Brandenburg. Four days later Berliners discovered their city had
been placed under martial law, as Frederick William practiced what he would
later approvingly cite as a proverb: Only soldiers help against democrats.11

10 On the general problematic of defining, in the context of the Frankfurt National As-
sembly, what it meant to be a German citizen, see especially Vick, Defining Germany,
pp. 11038.
11 Gegen Demokraten helfen nur Soldaten. Thomas Nipperdey traced the origin of the
slogan to Lt. Col. Griesheim, Director of the War Department (Direktor des allgemeinen
Kriegsdepartements), who used the phrase in November 1848 as the title of the fourth
pamphlet he circulated. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, p. 632.
154 chapter 4

The king obviated the Assemblys raison dtre on 5 December, when he oc-
troyed, or granted as a retractable gift, a written constitution for Prussia. When
he issued the constitution by octroy, the king had simultaneously weakened
the revolution by granting one of its chief demands and strengthened his own
hand by making the document dependent on his own free gift rather than on
the approval of the peoples representatives.
Probably the most crushing blow for the revolution in the German lands,
however, came on 3 April 1849, when Frederick William rejected the Frank-
furt Assemblys offer to become emperor of the German states. The Assembly
had planned on a Lesser German (kleindeutsch) unification of German states
led by Prussia under a written, fairly liberal constitution. Clark notes the an-
gry response of the king toward his own foreign minister, Heinrich Alexander
von Arnim-Suckow, for having favored accepting the crown: Against my own
declared and well-motivated will, he complained to a conservative associate,
[Arnim-Suckow] wanted to present me!!!!!! with the imperial title I will
not accept the crown.12 Having excluded Austria and having been rejected
by Prussia, the Frankfurt Assembly was left with no credible alternative for
national German leadership. On 18 June 1849, the remainder of the Assem-
bly, further weakened by continuing revolts in the southwest German states,
was dissolved. Its demise meant that no liberal deliberative body remained to
contest the efforts of resurgent Austria and Prussia, backed by Russia, to quell
the revolution. On 30 May 1849, Prussia further ensured the ascendance of
forces opposed to the revolution by enacting the famous Three-Class Election
Law. The law provided the appearance of popular representation by granting
adult males the right to vote, but it skewed those votes according to the
amount of taxes each voter paid. Austria abolished its constitution altogether
on 31 December 1851, avoiding even the appearance of popular representa-
tion. Russian troops earned the long-lasting enmity of Hungarians by helping
Austria repress them, for instance, and Prussian and Austrian troops under-
took similar measures with similar results in several smaller German states.
Yet, just as the successes of the Revolution between February and October
1848 were fragmentary and contingent, the victory of Restoration regimes after
1848 was neither inevitable nor complete. Cooperation among the major Res-
toration powers to quash the revolution should not cloud the fact that these
remained traditional powers with traditional tensions among themselves. Act-
ing on the advice of Radowitz and others, for instance, Frederick William for a
time tried to exploit Austrias temporary weakness and the dissolution of the
Frankfurt National Assembly by forging new intra-German alliances (notably

12 Cited in Clark, Iron Kingdom, p. 491.

Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 155

the Three Kings Alliance [Dreiknigsbndnis] of 26 May 1849, with Saxony and
Hannover). Austria humiliatingly forced Prussia to abandon this politics of
union (Unionspolitik), which perhaps aimed at something like Lesser German
unification on Frederick Williams terms, with the Treaty of Olmtz on 29 No-
vember 1850. Traditional Great Power concerns can also be seen in Prussias
and Austrias wariness of growing Russian influence in Central Europe, despite
Austrias reliance on Russian troops in restoring Austrian rule in Hungary. Like-
wise, Prussias refusal in 1853 to include Austria in the renewal of its Customs
Union (Zollverein) underlined the continuing contest between these two states
over who would dominate the other German states. Finally, the Crimean War
(18531856) pitted the Great Powers against one another over how to settle the
Eastern Question. Austria ultimately sided with Britain and France against
Russia, while Prussia stayed neutral. Of course, the Eastern Question was fa-
mously linked to the German Question, for Prussias neutrality earned it the
gratitude of Russia, later giving Bismarck a free hand a decade later to win a
war with Austria in 1866 and with France in 1871 to unify Germany under Prus-
sian leadership.
Factors other than Great Power concerns made Restoration success after
1848 highly contingent on and often directly related to Awakened beliefs. To
prove this, however, we will have to examine events in Prussia on a level of de-
tail beyond the cursory treatment of the revolution given above. More specifi-
cally, we will need to examine the response of Awakened leaders to the early
successes of the revolution, with particular attention to their role in founding
the Kreuzzeitung, their participation in the camarilla, and their contributions
to the issue of Prussias constitution. Finally, we will need to explicate why,
since they played such an important role in defeating the revolution, they had
little practical influence on Prussias postrevolutionary order.

Initial Awakened Responses to the Revolution

The response of most Awakened leaders to the revolution was similar to the re-
sponse of most conservative figures of the old regime: many first lay low or left
town; they gradually regrouped and criticized the revolution; and then they co-
ordinated a ferocious and unrelenting rhetorical attack against it. However, in
any history of the conservative reaction to the revolution the Awakened merit
special attention because they were at the cutting edge of the conservative
response, providing some of the earliest, most vocal, and most credible op-
position to the revolution. Robert Bigler argued that [] the leaders of the
conservative Pietists decided to join and lead the forces of counterrevolution.
156 chapter 4

Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Hahn, Kahnis, the Gerlach brothers, Thadden, Kleist-

Retzow, and their pious associates in bureaucracy were determined to defend
their privileged positions in the Prussian state.13 Although it is perhaps prob-
lematic to describe their efforts as counterrevolutionary, as they saw them-
selves as doing more than merely reacting, Bigler rightly notes the confluence
of religious views and privilege. The religious beliefs of Awakened conservative
leaders, entwined with many of their leaders emphasis on the organic nature
of law, endowed them with a strong and coherent set of reasons to stand by
their unpopular, anti-revolutionary convictions in the face of danger. Together
with the moral capital of their earlier charitable activities, the non-materialist,
indeed at times anti-materialist stance of the Awakened made it difficult for
revolutionaries to claim that those who favored the Restoration were only in-
terested in protecting their own privileges. The clannish, covenantal sense of
belonging helped many of them to stand together against what seemed like
impossible odds. Finally, the Awakened played instrumental roles in founding
the Kreuzzeitung, which became the standard-bearer of conservatism in and
even beyond Prussia, and in advising the king through the camarilla.
However, in the days and weeks immediately before and after the March
revolution, many but not all Awakened leaders were paralyzed with resig-
nation or fear. After demonstrators smashed the windows of his government
office in Magdeburg on 15 March, Carl Friedrich Gschel advised Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach to leave the city and then set a fine example of the better part of
courage for him.14 Gerlach in fact stayed in Magdeburg until the new Minister
of Justice (Bornemann) ordered him to Berlin, where he found that a defeat-
ism similar to Gschels had set in among other conservative Awakened lead-
ers, including Count Carl Otto Friedrich von Vo-Buch (17861864),15 and even
his own brother Leopold, commander of the Spandau garrison.16 Those Awak-
ened stalwarts of political conservatism, Stahl, Hengstenberg, and Huber, had
all judiciously absented themselves from Berlin.17
There were exceptions, of course. Thadden-Trieglaff told his friend Senfft
von Pilsach that he had circulated words of encouragement to those stationed
in the Spandau garrison (on the outskirts of Berlin). Thadden-Trieglaff asked
that God might

13 Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, p. 263.

14 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 396.
15 Vo-Buch was a jurist and government official.
16 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 397.
17 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 398.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 157

heal our whole, dear Fatherland quite soon of the revolutions tarantula
bite and lead it toward its true political resurrection. Now my political
catechism has but one paragraph: Wherever the brave Prussian army
stands at its old flag, there is the throne of Prussia.18

This free mixture of political and religious language was typical of the Awak-
ened, although Thadden-Trieglaff here evinced more militaristic language
than some other Awakened figures did in April.
But while simple fear may explain part of the failure of many of the Awak-
ened to stand up to the revolution, Hans-Christof Kraus claims that it was pre-
cisely their religious background that made many Awakened leaders unlikely
to be among the first to resist the revolution.

Among other factors responsible for this stance was, however, a certain
quietism, whose religious roots, derived from Pietism, could not be de-
nied. Hengstenberg, for example, foresaw the heavy judgment of God
and was of the view that before that one could not consider a more com-
prehensive cooperation between church and state. Karl Ludwig von der
Schulenberg and Philipp Nathusius expressed themselves similarly. Oth-
ers saw demonic powers at work: Cajus zu Stolberg held the arrival of
the Antichrist possible, and his cousin, Anton zu Stolberg-Wernigerode,
thought that events had given Satan given an increased freedom to
inflict evil. Such thoughts were likewise not foreign to the Gerlachs: for
Leopold, too, the revolution represented the kingdom of Satan and also
Ernst Ludwig noted already on March 18 in his diary: In these horrors is
a moment of Gods Judgment.19

18 [] heile unser ganzes teures Vaterland recht bald von dem Tarantenstich der Revolu-
tion und fhre es seiner wahren politischen Auferstehung entgegen. Jetzt hat mein poli-
tischer Catechismus aber nur einen Paragraphen: Wo das tapfere Preuische Heer bei
seiner alten Fahne ist da ist der Thron von Preuen. GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 92, B11 (Nachla
Frhr. Senfft v. Pilsach), letter dated 21 April 1848.
19 Verantwortlich fr diese Haltung war allerdings, neben anderen Faktoren, auch ein gewis
ser Quietismus, der seine religisen, dem Pietismus entstammenden Wurzeln nicht
verleugnen konnte. Hengstenberg etwa sah schwere Gerichte Gottes voraus und war der
Ansicht, da vorher an eine umfassendere Wirksamkeit in Kirche und Staat nicht zu
denken sei; hnliches uerten auch Karl Ludwig von der Schulenberg und Philipp
Nathusius. Andere wiederum sahen teuflische Krfte am Werk: Cajus zu Stolberg hielt
die Ankunft des Antichristen fr mglich, und sein Vetter Anton zu Stolberg-Wernigerode
meinte, durch die Ereignisse sei dem Satan eine vermehrte Freiheit gegeben, um
Unheil anzurichten. Den Gerlachs waren solche Gedanken ebenfalls nicht fremd: auch
158 chapter 4

These words of Awakened leaders do not represent politics merely dressed

up with religious rhetoric; they reflect the fact that for these very outspoken
leaders of the Awakening, religion was the schema by which politics was in-
terpreted, the cognitive filter through which political events had to be sifted.
Certainly these men were not blind to the element of human initiative in
politics, but in their view all human behavior, whether that of individuals or
nations, was ultimately possible only if God allowed it. This confidence in
Gods sovereignty endowed them with a pragmatism that allowed them func-
tion in the real world of hurly-burly politics instead of merely contemplating
mystical verities from the mountaintop, or rather, from the sandy, semi-feudal
estates of Pomerania and Brandenburg. Even if they could not see a pattern in
the bewildering flurry of human activity around them, they had confidence
that God could, and that he could arrange untold numbers of individual de-
cisions into an order that served his ends. For them, then, there was no con-
tradiction between functioning in the world in a pragmatic way, while also
understanding human actions in the broader context of a sort of divine moral-
ity play. In their eyes, therefore, the revolutionaries were both political actors
in their own right and, though they might be unaware of it, agents of darker
spiritual forces whose misdeeds God nevertheless could bend to fit his plan.
For such Awakened leaders, what was at stake in revolution was more than
the preservation of a particular set of economic or social privileges of a class
(although those material interests must not be discounted as motives), more
so even than the supposedly centuries-old organic constitution of Prussia. The
revolution was another moment in the titanic struggle of good versus evil, with
the kingdom of Satan arrayed against the kingdom of God. This changing
perception of the spiritual dimension of political action made it difficult to
maintain the quietism of earlier years. Their interpretation of the Two King-
doms prior to 1848 had given the Awakened a comfortable paradox that as-
sured them of their salvation and made any personal involvement in politics
beyond obedience unnecessary. The state, Luther had told them, existed to
keep the unbelievers from lapsing into lawlessness. Believers should obey the
state for the sake of the unbelievers, therefore, even though they were not real-
ly required to do so under the law of Christ. But in the revolution, the state had
failed to keep the lawless in thrall; in the revolution lawlessness had triumphed
over the state, as the authorities legitimated by God (the representatives of the
state) gave way to mob pressure.

fr Leopold stellte die Revolution das Reich Satans dar, auch Ernst Ludwig notierte
schon am 18. Marz in seinem Tagebuch: In diesen Greuln ist ein Moment vom Gerichte
Gottes []. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 40102.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 159

This realization gave figures like Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach the courage to
declare [] I assert myself in my office against attacks from below and from
above, where one crawls before the mob. Yet I am prepared to fall and ask
theLord, that it occur without denial.20 Since the state could no longer ful-
fill the purpose for which God had ordained it, quietism was a less viable op-
tion.The quotes above reflect that dawning consciousness among increasing
numbers of the Awakened leaders. Their Christian consciences now required
them to do more than acquiesce to the state. The Awakened now had to act to
restore the state to its ordained function, and the beginning of that restoration
meant standing up to revolution. Otherwise, the state might itself become an
instrument of lawlessness. In the language of the Awakened, both the king-
dom of God and the kingdom of man were now threatened by the kingdom of
Satan. Religious truth, many Awakened held, should inform both the state and
the broader culture. The revolution seemed about to imperil all of these with a
demonic fury. Hence, Frederick Williams initial response when he learned the
revolution had broken out in France: Satan is on the loose again.21
Their perception of the spiritual stakes involved helps explain why some
Awakened leaders, despite their loathing and fear of the revolution, also
seemed to express a curious mixture of resignation and relief that it had come.
Already in early March, for example, Vo-Buch lamented that

The waves that have clapped above the heads of the liberals [Libera
listen] in France are already flooding over the Rhein into Germany, and
tomorrow or the day after we could have the rabbles storm here []
No one would have enough of a good conscience to provide resistance,
and where there is no resistance, little strength is certainly required. I see
the worst and long for an honest war.22

20 [] Ich behaupte mich in meinem Amte gegen Angriffe von unten und von oben, wo
man vor dem Pbel kriecht. Doch bin ich gefasst zu fallen und bitte den HErrn, da es
ohne Verleugnung geschehe. spk, Nl Hengstenberg (Gerlach to Hengstenberg, 27 March
1848), cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 399.
21 Cited in Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 134.
22 Die Wellen die den Liberalisten in Frankreich ber den Kopf zusammengeschlagen
sind, fluhten schon ber den Rhein nach Deutschland hinein, und morgen oder ue-
bermorgen knnen wir den Poebelsturm hier haben [] Kein Mensch htte genug gutes
Gewissen um Widerstand zu leisten, und wo kein Widerstand ist, ist freylich wenig Kraft
erforderlich. Ich sehe sehr schwarz, und sehne mich nach ehrlichem Kriege. ga, Faz. 3c
(Vo-Buch an Gerlach). Cited with a date of early March 1848 in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlach, p. 395.
160 chapter 4

In this quote we see several interesting linguistic elements with layers of mul-
tiple meaning typical for Awakened leaders. First, Vo refers to liberals be-
ing overwhelmed. The very obvious, literal meaning of liberals here refers
to the specific group of liberals who began a revolution in 1848 that swiftly
spiraled out of their control. But the term liberals may well also serve as a
kind of shorthand for a more general sense of liberals as the nemesis of the
restoration Awakened. This characterization would be entirely consistent with
the view of many Awakened by the 1830s, detailed in Chapter 2, that liberals
were the thin end of the revolutionary wedge, a group that introduced radi-
cal, rationalistic changes and then proved unable to control their revolution-
ary consequences. In Chapter 2 we also saw that many Awakened leaders
(and indeed many liberals) mentally linked political and theological liber-
alism. It is therefore possible that Vos use of the word liberals refers not
merely to those specific historical actors who toppled Louis Philippe, but to
liberals as a metaphor for all those who, more generally, destroyed political
and theological legitimacy and opened the door for revolution. If so, then the
same would apply to Vos reference to France, not merely as the place where
the revolution actually began in 1848, but a metaphor for the root of revolu-
tion per se (Edmund Burkes dark place). Such a use would also have mixed
political and religious overtones, for Awakened leaders of Vos generation had
fought France as the atheistic progenitor of Revolution after 1789, and the op-
pressive occupier of their self-conceived Christian-German nation.
Thus, the spread of the revolution from France that Vo mentions would
probably have evoked not only the cold political facts from the 1789 and 1830
revolutions, but also their spiritual implications. Vos text further appears to
confirm the extra-human element by describing the revolution as a destruc-
tive natural force, whose waves will flood German states under the rabbles
storm. The sheer power of this destructive force, however, does not entirely
explain its success. The revolution will succeed in part, implies Vo, because of
German moral failure, since no one would have enough of a good conscience,
to resist, presumably allowing even a weak storm to inflict damage. His conclu-
sion, however, makes it clear that this is no jeremiad. For Vo the revolution is
not Gods just use of an unjust enemy to punish wayward Germans, a divine
judgement one should not resist. Instead, Vo says he long[s] for an honest
war. Again, the literal meaning of Vos call for war is clear enough, but his
use of the word honest hints at additional levels of significance we might
find. It may be, for instance, that Vos call for war is a kind of echo of his
youthful experience of the Wars of Liberation against France (18131815), a
time when there was an honest confrontation of revolution. By calling for
a specifically honest war, Vo also seems to imply that a war between the
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 161

forces of revolution and restoration may already exist; he simply wants a clear
drawing of the battle lines instead of the current muddled pretension that the
revolution is not yet a threat to German states.
If this parsing of Vos words seems forced, consider those of Ernst Lud-
wig von Gerlach, who quite explicitly linked the religious and political issues
involved. On 18 March, the day street battles commenced in Berlin, Gerlach
explained the need to resist the revolution:

Flesh and the world, those radicals from Paris and Baden, from Darm-
stadt and Nassau, from Heidelberg and Leipzig [emphasis in original, de],
deny that God provides authority [Obrigkeit] for punishment of evildoers
and for the praise of the pious all the more joyfully do we acknowl-
edge [bekennen] this truth, [] so that it shall emerge from this struggle
[Kampf] with a new brilliance.23

For Gerlach, the revolutionaries in Paris and in various German cities are radi-
cals who represent flesh and the world, presumably as opposed to spirit and
the kingdom of God, with whom Gerlach by implication associates himself. In
pointing out the cardinal error of the worldly radicals, Gerlach claims that
radicals deny authority comes from God as a punishment for evildoers and
to the praise of the pious. Because it is so obvious, it may be unnecessary to
observe that Gerlachs words are essentially a restatement of Luthers teaching
of the Two Kingdoms, indicating the way some Awakened linked the religious
and political issues involved in the revolution.
Having then linked religion and politics in the quote above, Gerlach goes
on to insist that precisely in the midst of such conflict one should adhere to
this truth [] that authority [Obrigkeit] comes from God for punishment of
evildoers and for the praise of the pious. Why? Gerlachs justification might
recall either the suffering of the martyrs or something akin to medieval trial
by combat: so that it [the truth, de] proceeds from this struggle with a new
brilliance. Earlier in the article Gerlach shows a similar willingness to blend
the language of meek Christian suffering and muscular Christianity: Precisely
the fortress must be defended, the truth made known, which is attacked, whose

23 Fleisch und Welt, Pariser und Badische, und Darmstdtische und Nassauische, Heidel-
berger und Leipziger Radikale lugnen, da die Obrigkeit von Gott ist zur Strafe ber die
beltter und zum Lobe der Frommen, desto freudiger haben wir diese Wahrheit zu
bekennen, [] so da sie in neuem Glanze aus diesem Kampfe hervorgeht. Die Franz-
sische und die Deutsche Revolution, Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 23, 18 March 1848,
Sp. 210. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 402.
162 chapter 4

crown of thorns of Christs beautiful humiliation promises to press onto our

heads [emphasis in original, de].24
One will observe that both military vocabulary and the language of martyr-
dom mix easily in Gerlachs linguistic world. This peculiar combination must
have served as a useful rhetorical device, allowing those opposed to the revo-
lution both to see themselves as innocent victims and to steel themselves for
a possibly violent confrontation with the evildoers who had wronged them.
Certainly the cult of victimhood was not new. Nietzsche would later famously
assert that it was bound up with the very essence of the Christian religion.
But, unlike some past Christian manifestations of victimhood, there may be
a new, modern twist at play here. Gerlachs invocation of victimized status,
far from inducing a passive, quietist acceptance of suffering, here prepares
the reader for an active, unremitting, perhaps even aggressive defense. There
may well have been some periods of the Christian past, such as the medieval
Crusades, when self-perception as a victim enabled Christians to go on the
offensive (and create other victims). But there may also be something quint-
essentially modern at work here, for Gerlachs emphasis on spiritual victim-
hood is bound up with an expression of political truth. One wonders whether
Gerlach reflected on the fact that (certainly political and some religious)
liberals employed essentially the same tactic, using their victimhood at the
hand of absolutist or Restoration regimes to mobilize themselves for political
action.
Also noteworthy is Gerlachs call for a defense of the fortress, which may
signal a certain porosity unusual for a Protestant between the kingdom of
man and the kingdom of God when both were besieged by those who deny
God and the authority he gives the rulers of the kingdom of man. Indeed, the
overall tenor of this article gives the reader the sense that the kingdom of man
and the kingdom of God are not only allies against the revolution, but perhaps
even coterminous because they are both besieged in the fortress of truth. This
may well be a possible reading of Luther, but one wonders whether Gerlach
reflected on other examples in the Christian tradition. The article seems to
evoke an affinity for the state more typical of St. Ambrose, utterly distressed by
the decline of the Roman Empire, than of St. Augustine, already resigned to its
possible collapse and preparing for the survival of the faith in a post-imperial
world.

24 Grade die Festung mu vertheidigt werden, die Wahrheit bekannt werden, welche ange
griffen wird, deren Vertheidigung die Dornenkrone der schnen Schmach Christi uns
aufs Haupt zu drcken verspricht. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, No. 23, 18 March 1848,
Sp. 210. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 402.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 163

Also like Vo, Gerlach saw the revolution as something essentially French in
its nature, not German. His views revealed still deeper layers of meaning to the
terms French and France. He claimed

The radicals in Paris have remolded Germany. In everything, with the

large as well as the small, from atheism to primary elections [Urwahlen],
from the barricades to the tricolor, we copy the French pattern point for
point [] And this humiliation we call progress, greatness for Germany.25

Gerlach here makes explicit some of the criticism implicit in Vos complaints.
Gerlach not only describes France as the origin of atheism and elections,
but also links these two by placing them in close rhetorical proximity. Ger-
lach thus echoes Vo by emphasizing that the revolution from France had
both a political and a spiritual dimension. This linkage made Gerlachs com-
ments ideally suited to mobilize cultural conservatives who resented French
influence and religious conservatives who feared a dilution of orthodox and/
or Awakened Christianity. Having sharpened the rhetorical point of France,
Gerlach then plunges it into the heart of the revolutionaries. He maintains that
despite selling the revolution as a means to promote greatness for Germany,
revolutionaries were in reality forcing Germans into a foreign, French mold.
By characterizing the Revolution as French, Kraus observes, Gerlach could
accomplish multiple goals at once:

With this accusation one was trying to play Paris he was trying not
only to strike at the self-consciousness of many revolutionaries, who felt
they were thoroughly German patriots, but at the same time also to jux-
tapose un-German rowdies aping the French with true patriots [].26

Gerlach, in short, not only confronted the revolution, but also skillfully re-
versed the valence of some of its most popular language. Those in favor of the

25 Die Radikalen in Paris haben Deutschland umgestaltet. Im Allem, im Groen wie im

Kleinen, von dem Atheismus bis zu den Urwahlen, von den Barrikaden bis zur Trikolore,
kopieren wir pnktlich die Franzssischen Muster [] Und diese Schmach nennen wir:
Aufschwung, Gre von Deutschland. Ein Blick in die Zeit in the Evangelische Kirchen-
zeitung, No. 34, 26 April 1848, Sp. 313. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 403.
26 Mit diesem Vorwurf: Man mchte gerne Paris spielen, versuchte er nicht nur das Selbst-
bewusstsein vieler Revolutionre, die sich durchaus als deutsche Patrioten empfanden,
zu treffen, sondern zugleich den undeutschen, die Franzosen nachffenden Umstrzlern
die wahren Patrioten [] gegenberzustellen. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
p. 403.
164 chapter 4

revolution had tried to pose the issue in dichotomous terms to their advantage,
presenting themselves as true German nationalists and patriots, as opposed
to narrow-minded provincialists from Prussia, Hannover, or elsewhere. Ger-
lach tried to turn one of the revolutionaries greatest strengths, their appeal to
nationalism, against them by portraying revolutionaries not as Germans who
loved their fatherland, but as French lackeys.
Gerlachs writing was thus brilliantly designed to appeal to several groups
at once. If he could link the German revolutions to France, he might appeal
to divide the revolutionaries themselves over the issue of what nationalism
really meant. By appealing to lingering, popular anti-French sentiment among
those who were undecided, he might persuade them of the view of the revolu-
tion as dangerously foreign. Furthermore, Gerlachs reference to France could
communicate a coded religious message to his fellow-travelers, since for many
conservatives and the mainstream of the Awakening, the terms French and
revolution were already closely linked to the corrosive power of atheism and
rationalism on revelation, tradition, and piety.27

The Use and Abuse of Culture

At first glance, such passages seem to confirm a venerable interpretation of

the 1848 revolution in Germany, namely that its mainspring was the growth of
nationalism. However, without necessarily wishing to undermine this interpre-
tation, I would like to suggest that what we see here and throughout the revolu-
tionary era is more than a struggle over who could lay claim to representing the
nation in the public sphere or the realm of high politics. The Awakened had
joined a battle over something related to but ultimately deeper than the na-
tion: culture that system of symbols and meanings, of conscious definitions
and subconscious associations, from which concepts such as the nation draw
their very life. Gerlachs comments might even, with some latitude, be read as
part of a struggle for hegemony in German culture, a sort of dress rehearsal
or first version of the Kulturkampf. This was a struggle not only for control of

27 Gerlachs words strongly support Karen Hagemanns claims about the construction dur-
ing and following the anti-Napoleonic wars of a German identity that presupposed a
contrast with other identities, including a French national identity. Hagemann writes,
for example, that [t]he external counterimage to the good German men [] were the
French, who were described and devalued as sham, adroit and subtle, glib, false and su-
perficial, lascivious and unchaste that is, in terms of traits generally referred to as ef-
feminate and attributed to the court nobility. Hagemann, Revisiting Prussias Wars, p. 108.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 165

the language, but also for control of state institutions that would codify sets of
concepts and connotations in the concrete language of the law. The law would
help mold society, reinforcing sets of assumptions sympathetic to its rationale
and undermining radical departures from it.
I would contend that many of the main actors in the 1848 revolution
regardless of whether they were secular or religious; theologically radical, lib-
eral, or conservative; or politically radical, liberal, or conservative perceived
that the revolution involved a set of first principles from which other decisions
derived. Trying to determine whether these rested on reason or revelation is
a bit of a red herring, since the very terms one would have to use to answer that
would necessarily privilege one side or the other. From the perspective of, say,
the most radical secularists and the most radical political figures, people of re-
ligious faith were at best obscurantists out of touch with the modern age. From
the perspective of such people of religious faith, reason and revelation com-
plemented each other, and the problem lay with modernitys non-rationally
grounded faith in that truncated version of God-given reason, rationalism.
In 1848 a great number of people implicitly or explicitly understood that
behind the conflict over the form and content of state and church institutions
lay these first principles. That did not make church and state irrelevant; in-
stead, it made them more relevant than ever because they were the means for
enforcing a hegemonic interpretation of these first principles. Control of the
state (and for the liberal, orthodox, and Awakened faithful, the church) would
allow these first principles to be articulated and given concrete structure
through institutions and laws. But the precondition for control of institutions
was victory in the cultural struggle. Some historians have concluded that Ernst
Ludwig von Gerlach was a theocrat because he looked for the praesens deo in
jure.28 I contend that in 1848 nearly all parties were waging a cultural struggle
to convince the public that their God (in a literal or metaphorical sense, de-
pending on the party) was the one whose presence should be reflected in the
law. Parallel to the physical struggle in 1848 that was fought on the streets of
Berlin was a struggle in (and for) the hearts and minds of the people, and the
outcome of that struggle had the potential to determine the public meaning
of those killed in literal street battles, and to affect the motivations and deter-
mination of those on either side of the barricades. If the literal battles of the
revolution depended on superior tactics, the long-term success or failure of
the revolution rested to a great degree on the strategy of the cultural struggle,
a struggle to determine which camps set of first principles would trump the

28 See, for example, Fleischer, Deus Praesens in Jure, pp. 123.

166 chapter 4

other. Whichever camp emerged victorious would be able to occupy the state
and use its power to enforce that victory in law and institutions.
The geography of German peculiarities during the revolution played an im-
portant role here. In France and many western German states, I would argue,
the cultural answer to the question of what constituted the nation had al-
ready been or was increasingly framed in terms favorable to the revolution.
That is, forces sympathetic to the revolution had achieved a Gramscian hege-
mony over the cultural values by which the concept of the nation was evalu-
ated. Over the sometimes vigorous opposition of elements sympathetic to the
Old Regime, the nation in the public spheres of many western German states
had become closely associated with the Third Estate, and especially with the
bourgeois elements of the Third Estate. Many of the Enlightenment views on
which such judgements depended had become accepted by many (perhaps
most) spectators in the arena of public opinion. This generalization, however,
should not obscure profound differences between the French and western
German understanding of the nation, which we cannot underestimate. The
French nation conceived by the revolution, for instance, was essentially po-
litical; the variants even in many western German states were more defined by
ethnic and linguistic categories.
In the eastern provinces of Prussia, by contrast, revolutionary forces had
not been able to achieve this kind of hegemony. These provinces were in many
respects closer to Russia than to post-1789 France. The bourgeoisie enjoyed
less power and influence than in France, and, despite the Stein-Hardenberg
reforms, traditional aristocrats, the large landholders (Junker), still enjoyed a
great deal of real power over their peasants, as well as high social status and
profound cultural influence. Many peasants still needed persuading that lib-
eral notions of freedom would mean real improvements in their lives, and, for
that matter, that their lives needed improvements desperately enough to risk
revolution.29 Prussias powerful bureaucracy did include prominent liberals,
such as Camphausen and Hansemann, but also staunch defenders of the old
order, such as Otto von Manstein, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and, most impor-
tantly, Frederick William iii and iv.
As we have seen, peasants in central and eastern Prussia, although theo-
retically more free after the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, still faced daunting
practical challenges, including poverty, land scarcity, limited education, and
the lingering influence of the lords. Traditional patterns of political, social,
and cultural organization in Prussias east were also reinforced by its laws and
memory of recent history. Western German states had enjoyed a somewhat

29 Cf. Hagen, Ordinary Prussians.

Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 167

more positive experience of the revolution, partly due to the benefits derived
from the Napoleonic Civil Code. In the eastern provinces of Prussia, however,
the first French revolution was often associated with oppressive foreign occu-
pation and with patriotic Wars of Liberation to expel the French. The revolu-
tion of 1830, which had further weakened forces opposed to the revolution in
France and many western German states, had not come to Prussia at all.
In short, the old elites in Prussias eastern provinces still enjoyed a great
amount of power and influence that, though not unchallenged, remained part-
ly intact. Under such conditions, especially when combined with the power
of the state to surveille and to censor, it had been impossible before 1848 for
forces sympathetic to the revolution to win the cultural battle for the subcon-
scious set of connotations and assumed implications attached to elections and
to barricades, to German and to French, to patriot and to nation, and
indeed to liberalism and to the revolution itself. The stakes in this struggle for
connotations could hardly have been greater, for in general whoever success-
fully frames the terms of the debate has already gone a long way towards win-
ning it. Whoever won this particular debate in 1848 would have a chance to
establish cultural hegemony, and with it a built-in political advantage, for per-
haps a generation. What the liberal and conservative warriors in this cultural
struggle appear to have underestimated, however, was the extent to which real
power would still be wielded by those already occupying the state certain
elements in the bureaucracy and the military whose first principles were hard
to distinguish from whatever was expedient to aggrandizing the state itself.
Reading the 1848 revolution as a cultural struggle carried out in the politi-
cal arena offers some distinct advantages over interpretations that privilege
political, economic, or social analysis as a means to understand the revolution.
Focusing on cultural struggle preserves a sense of the complexity of contem-
poraries motives, which were for them then and still are for us now difficult
to segregate into discrete analytical categories, such as politics or religion.
We have already seen, for instance, that virtually every part of the public had
openly acknowledged that debates such as those over the structure of (epis-
copal or synodal) church government involved the question of how Prussias
politics should be organized. Few contemporaries viewed the religious debate
merely as a proxy for the political one; the two were related in an ambiguous
and often confusing way. It would be surprising, then, if the chaotic events
of the 1848 revolution managed to create a conceptual clarity that decades of
reflection and debate had failed to produce. Analysing the 1848 revolution as
a cultural struggle makes it easier for the observer to keep in mind similarly
complex and interrelated aspects of the revolution that might otherwise be
elided by considering the revolution under the rubric of politics, society, or
168 chapter 4

economics. Using cultural struggle as a category of analysis allows us to inte-

grate the insights of such studies in a fresh and, hopefully, provocative way.
Painting with a broad brush and somewhat unfairly to make a point, it allows
us, for instance, to analyse the revolution not only as a matter of barricading
streets, but also of controlling avenues of thought; not only as a struggleabout
who had physical access to the court or defined who could vote, but also
about shaping the intellectual parameters of debate; not only as a question
about who delivered the best speeches, but also about why rhetoric worked or
fell flat.
Furthermore, seeing the revolution as a cultural struggle allows us to deal
with both religious and non-religious historical actors, the latter of which
might be missed if one focuses on substituting religion for politics as an in-
terpretive filter. This is not to downplay the role of religious motivations in
the revolution. In the previous chapter, we saw how liberal Protestants on the
one hand and Awakened and orthodox Protestants on the other evinced in-
tertwined religious and political views. These continued to shape their experi-
ence and evaluation of the revolution after it was underway. Moreover, it is a
simple fact that rhetoric for or against the revolution was often articulated in
the language of religion or religiously justified ethics sometimes even those
for whom religion played little role in their personal lives. Viewing the revolu-
tion as a cultural struggle helps us to retain the rich ambiguity of religiously
motivated actors while not excluding the non-religious who also struggled
to define the culture in a religiously saturated era. Reinhart Koselleck has re-
minded us that behind the liberal rhetoric about representative government
lay a fundamentally moral claim that the might of the Old Regime alone did
not make right.30 One could also find among the defenders of the Old Regime,
notably in the ranks of the bureaucracy and the military, some whose world-
view was profoundly shaped by the more secular rhetoric of Edmund Burke
or Karl Ludwig von Haller than by Awakened or orthodox Protestant views.
Casting the revolution as a cultural struggle enables the historian to take seri-
ously their moral claims instead of dismissing their occasional use of religious
language as opportunism or hypocrisy.
Finally, portraying the revolution as a cultural struggle creates a sup-
ple heuristic device linking the revolution of 1848 to the earlier revolutions
of 1789/1830 and, though perhaps with some exaggeration, to the later Bis-
marckian Kulturkampf. Such a perspective restores some of the big picture
continuities that are otherwise easily lost in a study which focuses on the 1848

30 Koselleck, Critique and Crisis. See especially p. 138ff.

Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 169

revolution alone. Like the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 in France, and Bismarcks
Kulturkampf in Germany, the revolution of 1848 in Prussia involved a set of
cultural values and philosophical first principles such as whence derived
the legitimacy of government and what comprised the nation from which
other questions and values were derived. Using the 1848 cultural struggle as an
interpretive schema preserves the importance of these dealbreaking issues
in the revolution, preventing them from getting lost in the shuffle of political
tactics or otherworldly idealism. Indeed, seen in this light, the cultural struggle
motif intriguingly makes the Awakened and liberals appear as first cousins,
as idealists of different stripes, while Bismarck appears as an anomalously
pragmatic actor in the drama of the 19th century. And, despite his many ties
to the conservative Awakened leaders including a youthful experience of
conversion, marriage into a family of Awakened aristocrats, and early coop-
eration with them in 1848 I tend to see Bismarcks relationship with his erst-
while mentors as more characterized by discontinuities. While they advocated
the politics of principles, he later advocated Realpolitik. While Awakened
conservatives tended to defer to Austrian leadership in matters of German uni-
ty and pushed for Prussian neutrality during the Crimean War, Bismarck pro-
voked several wars to achieve unity against the objections of Austria (among
others).
On the whole, then, analysing the revolution of 1848 as a cultural struggle
has the merit of stressing continuity across the longue dure of the revolution-
ary 19th century. This makes it possible for us both to understand why contem-
poraries like Gerlach could have perceived the revolution of 1848 as a sort of
next installment of what had begun in 1789, and still take a critical distance
to the worldviews of such particular historical actors. And yet, one should
not lose sight of the peculiarities and discontinuities of the 1848 revolution.
In some ways it represents a radical departure from both the 1830s revolution
in western German states and from Prussias long struggle over the nature of
church government. One vitally important new development, for instance,
was that the revolution helped clarify and modernize the interests and the
underlying cultural values of the actors in those fights. One can detect hall-
marks of a truly modern response to the 1848 revolution even among its detrac-
tors in their participation in explicitly political debate in the public sphere, in
establishing new organs such as the Kreuzzeitung to carry on that debate, and
in forming (almost) unabashedly political parties. However, strong elements
of continuity with the Old Regime also persisted, especially in the revival of
court politics and the importance of the camarilla. Let us turn, then, to exam-
ine the hazy boundaries between modern and premodern responses among
the Awakened.
170 chapter 4

Premodern and Modern Responses of the Awakened by July 1848

By July 1848, one can observe among the conservative leaders of the Awak-
ening two very different but related responses. Even as a representative leg-
islature deliberated a constitution and other revolutionary changes, several
conservative leaders formed an extra-parliamentary kitchen cabinet, the so-
called camarilla, to advise the king. Since these court intimates comprised old
elites who were unaccountable under the law, they might be seen as repre-
senting a fundamentally premodern response to the revolution, an attempt to
influence events through the old channels of power. On the other hand, many
conservative leaders responded to the revolution in a thoroughly modern fash-
ion, by founding a new newspaper, the Neue Preuische Zeitung, more popu-
larly known as the Kreuzzeitung. The Kreuzzeitung became a rallying standard
for conservatives across Prussia, and indeed in many other German states as
well. The papers response was modern in at least two senses. First, it called
for the use of modern, revolutionary institutions like political parties to de-
feat the revolution. Second, the paper itself came to embody those modern
institutions, effectively functioning as the nucleus of a conservative party. The
Kreuzzeitung was also arguably modern in a third sense: its leadership proved
able not only to live with some of the apparently self-contradictory notions of
modern conservatism, but also to pretend that there were no irreconcilable
contradictions in using some aspects of modernity to combat others. There
is a strong parallel here with the Awakening itself, which, in its effort to style
itself as faithfully as possible after the early Church and the Reformation, was
by definition engaged in a very modern undertaking.
This parallel between the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung and the Kreuzzeitung
is also no accident, since many Awakened leaders including Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach, Heinrich Leo, Adolf von Thadden, Moritz August von Bethmann-
Hollweg, and Ernst Senfft von Pilsach were among the Kreuzzeitungs
founders and early supporters.31 But perhaps the best indication that the
Kreuzzeitungs project involved some degree of self-deception was that many
members of the camarilla and the Kreuzzeitung held that as long as they
were pursuing the same end (i.e. the suppression of revolution), employing
different means to achieve it could be seen as complementary rather than

31 Others included its editor Hermann Wagener, Prof. Pernice, Carl von Vo-Buch, and Carl
Graf von Finckenstein. Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 411 and 414. It is more dif-
ficult to determine whether to consider them Awakened or merely sympathetic to some
of the same concerns as the Awakened.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 171

contradictory.32 Because the motivations of those involved with the Kreuzzei-

tung are more difficult to summarize, let us turn to them first.
The Kreuzzeitungs leadership appears to have recognized early the need for
a broadly based conservative party. This fact is remarkable, given that the era
of mass politics was still decades in the future, and in 1848 the very notion of a
party was tainted with negative connotations. Parties were generally viewed as
collections of those who sought to promote their narrow interests over those of
the common good. Yet already by 31 August 1848, a Kreuzzeitung article (prob-
ably by Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach) recognized the apparent inevitability of a
written constitution for Prussia and sought to promote a conservative party as
a redeeming aspect of the new political order.33 As the article observed,

The greater the constitutionally allowed participation of the people [Volk]

in the leadership [Leitung] of governmental affairs, the more necessary
the grouping of citizens of the state in political directions [Richtungen];
in other words, the organization of political parties. The formation of a
party has the purpose of uniting all supporters of a political direction of
general principles for common action and hereby giving this direction
victory over dissenters.34

This citation reveals a great deal about the author, since its expedient real-
ism is carefully constructed around the unbending principles. At first glance,
it justifies the existence of parties through a kind of primer to on how they
should function. Many Prussian readers, and especially Prussian conservatives,
would certainly have in mind the disastrous role parties had played in France.
The tension (and at times de facto civil war) between the Jacobins and Giron-
dins had contributed to the radicalization of the revolution, the excesses of the
Terror, and to Frances exportation of the revolution to other parts of Europe.

32 The use of such terms as self-deception should not necessarily be read in a negative way,
since many mental devices, such as the use of paradox described below, can have positive
benefits.
33 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 428.
34 Je grer der verfassungsgeme Antheil des Volkes an der Leitung der Regierungs-
Angelegenheiten; desto nothwendiger ist die Gruppierung der Staatsbrger nach poli-
tischen Richtungen, mit anderen Worten die Organsation politischer Parteien. Die Bildung
einer Partei hat den Zweck, alle Anhnger einer allgemeingrundstzlichen politischen
Richtung zu gemeinsamen Wirken zu vereinigen und hierdurch dieser Richtung den Sieg
ber abweichende zu verschaffen. Die Bildung einer conservativen Partei und der Ver-
ein fr Knig und Vaterland, in the npz, 31 August 1848. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlach, pp. 42829. Kraus says that Gerlach is the presumed, but not definitive, author.
172 chapter 4

However, informed Prussian observers would also have been aware that parties
could function in a salutary fashion, as they did in Britain or the United States,
where they served as the extra-constitutional oil that helped the constitutions
machinery function. In any event, even in contemporary Britain and the United
States, the word party still sometimes carried a pejorative meaning.
The author of the citation neither condemns nor condones parties, but
takes for granted the fact that they are necessary when a larger proportion of
the population participates in politics. The citation may be read, therefore, as
an example of Machiavellian realism, or, again to anticipate Bismarck, as a pre-
cursor to Realpolitik. Those sympathetic to the revolution certainly read it in a
similar fashion. Heinrich von Sybel, for instance, recalled in 1851 that the suc-
cess of conservatives in suppressing the revolution depended on combatting
the revolution through revolutionary means.35 Indeed, given that the notion
of party would have aroused decidedly negative reactions among the papers
mostly conservative readers, the articles neutral depiction of parties amounts
to putting a positive spin on the term party.
If one looks more closely at the language of the text, however, one can find
firm principles underlying this seemingly opportunistic rehabilitation of par-
ties. The language of the text preserves the idea that parties are acceptable
only under the (by implication) unfortunate circumstances of the new consti-
tutional era. The author, for instance, refers to the peoples participation not
in the legitimate government (Regierung) of the state, but the peoples lead-
ership in the governments affairs (Leitung der Regierungs-Angelegenheiten).
In other words, the author has reluctantly accepted the de facto participation
of more of the people in politics, but he uses the language of de jure legitimacy
in reference to the government itself rather than the peoples participation
in it.
It is also noteworthy that the author does not refer to the politically active
part of the population as the nation (Nation) or as representatives of the
country (Land), as, say, many French or Americans in this era would have.
Rather, the author writes about the people (Volk), a term which (to many con-
servative ears) carried layers of meaning bound up with submission to legiti-
mate authorities and/or with an organic, slowly evolving, unique group. Such
language, then, denied the universal claims on which the revolution rested
and affirmed more classically conservative principles that could accommodate

35 die Bekmpfung der Revolution durch revolutionre Mittel. Heinrich von Sybel, Die
christlich-germanische Staatslehre, in Kleine Historische Schriften, ed. Heinrich von Sybel,
vol. 1 (Munich: J.G. Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1863), p. 364, cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach, p. 429.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 173

parties as a concession to the needs of the moment in the particular, peculiar

circumstances in which Prussia found itself.
Still, by availing himself of modern means (the conservative party, and even
the use of a widely circulated newspaper to help create a conservative party),
the author was perhaps unwittingly sealing the ascendancy of a modernitythat
would help to undermine the very principles so carefully preserved in his text.
With the benefits of hindsight, one can see that the fine qualifications and
implied meanings in the text faded over time. What was left from the dialecti-
cal process of opposing the revolution was the ultimately self-compromising
endorsement by conservatives of the means (such as parties and mass publi-
cations) that would help to undermine their principles. Conservatives proved
able to use modern, revolutionary tools of parties and newspapers to defeat
the revolution after 1848, but at the cost of weakening even in conservative
minds the stigma attached to using such tools. On 27 August 1848, just days be-
fore the article was published, many important conservative political leaders
had united their loose factions into a proto-party, or what Wolfgang Schwen-
tker has called an organizational union.36 Because some of these politicians
were more clearly interested in material gain than many of the Awakened, the
risk of tarnishing their rather clean image was not inconsiderable. Seen in this
light, the short-term and long-term damage caused by the Kreuzzeitungs clev-
er maneuver may have proved too clever by half.
In one sense, the Kreuzzeitung failed miserably. No properly organized con-
servative party arose until the 1860s.37 But the Kreuzzeitungs great success, as
many scholars have concluded, was to become a proxy conservative party it-
self. Contemporaries also recognized as much, after 1851 often referring to the
Kreuzzeitung Party (Kreuzzeitungspartei) to denote a particular political di-
rection within the broader conservative ralliement.38 As Kraus rightly observes,
[] the party was established as a political movement, and the Kreuzzeitung
functioned as its headquarters, where Hermann Wagener [chief editor of the
Kreuzzeitung, de], in whose hands the reins came together, formed a kind of
political General Staff.39

36 [] organisatorischen Zusammenschlu [], in Wolfgang Schwentker, Konservative

Vereine und Revolution in Preussen, 1848/49. Die Konstituierung des Konservatismus als
Partei, Beitrge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien 85
(Dsseldorf: Droste, 1988), p. 113.
37 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 429.
38 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 429.
39 [] Als lockere politische Bewegung war die Partei etabliert, und als ihr Hauptquartier
fungierte die Redaktion der Kreuzzeitung, wo sich so Hermann Wagener eine Art von
174 chapter 4

Of course, not all of the Awakened leaders fit into the rubric of the Kreuzzei-
tung Party, but most probably did. A very notable exception was Awakened
leader Bethmann-Hollweg, who in 1851 founded a competing paper, the
Preuisches Wochenblatt, to promote a more moderate brand of conservatism
called liberal conservative (liberalkonservativ). Bethmann-Hollwegs group-
ing, the Wochenblatt Party (Wochenblattpartei), also became known by its
papers title. In 1848, however, Bethmann-Hollweg was still a member of the
Kreuzzeitungs administrative committee, which also numbered Leopold and
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Carl von Vo-Buch, Count Carl von Finckenstein,
and Ernst Senfft von Pilsach.40
One might also argue that the Kreuzzeitung represented a blend of the pre-
modern and modern because of the consequences of its wide circulation. On
the one hand, the Kreuzzeitung reaped benefits from old-fashioned patterns
of readership. The Kreuzzeitung (like the Awakening) exercised an influence
greater even than its official numbers (already 995 subscriptions in July 1848)41
would indicate, precisely because old elites who already occupied positions of
power read its columns. As is famously known, for instance, the Kreuzzeitung
was the only publication Frederick William iv regularly read. The premodern
circulation habit of subscribers passing the newspaper around to a number of
non-subscribing friends also amplified the Kreuzzeitungs voice. On the other
hand, the comparatively rapid rise to profitability through paid subscriptions
to the paper represents an important modern step in the evolution towards a
mass-circulation paper. In other words, while the paper called for precursor to
mass politics, one might say the very circulation of the Kreuzzeitung created a
forerunner to mass publications.
Furthermore, like the liberal publications whose form it emulated, the
Kreuzzeitung even as it called for an affirmation of the personal values that
had bound together the rural communities (Gemeinschaften) of Prussia (and
which underpinned the Awakening) in practice contributed towards the for-
mation of a society (Gesellschaft) in the reading public. The (ironically) revo-
lutionary implications of this step, like those of the conservatives acceptance
of parties, would be realized only much later. But the result was similar: by
using one of the classical means of the bourgeois public sphere to try to kill a
bourgeois revolution, the staff of the Kreuzzeitung was in reality serving as a
midwife to the bourgeois orders birth, in which 1848 represents only the first

politischem Generalstab gebildet [hatte], in dessen Hnden die Fden zusammenliefen.

Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 429. Cited is Wagener, Erlebtes i, 36.
40 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 414.
41 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 416.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 175

painful birth pangs. One might also draw useful comparisons to the prolifera-
tion of religious free associations (Vereine) in the 1840s and 1850s. When even
many Old Lutherans or mainstream Awakened had resorted to forming such
free associations as a way to promote the revival of a more (in their view) au-
thentic version of Christianity, they also helped to promote the very bourgeois
and increasingly secular order that challenged that religion.
Here we clearly see a dialectical process at work. In their desire to resist
rationalism and political radicalism, many of the Awakened availed them-
selves of modern means such as widely circulated newspapers and religious
Vereine, not to mention their privileging of private spirituality and emotion-
alized interiority that reinforced the very process of modernization which
they wished to weaken. In a sense, the Awakened were like Hercules, who in
the myth only strengthened his wrestling opponent when he cast him against
his mother, the earth. To win decisively, the Awakened, like Hercules, would
have had to have defeated the revolution by cutting it off from its modernizing
sources of strength. Their use of modern means, however, ultimately gave ad-
ditional power to the very process they wished to check. By using such means
Awakened conservatives were able to propagate some elements of premo-
dernity, including many core elements of Christianity and a vision of society
and state that owed not a little to their interpretation of feudalism. But such
premodern conceptions were transmitted through and alloyed with modern
elements, including modern forms of communication and an emphasis on in-
dividual spiritual experience.
Of course, this was hardly the first time that new methods had been em-
ployed to propagate old perceived truths (the Awakened were certainly his-
torically indebted to the printing press for the assistance it lent the Reformers,
for example). It would also be problematic to argue that old truths, when re-
formulated and propagated through new means, cease to be true. Yet, it surely
would be specious to contend that the changing form of communication and
organization did not impact the way those truths were understood or expe-
rienced. One would also do well to recall that rather than merely republishing
old truths, the Awakened had already reimagined old truths in somewhat new
ways. Their orthodox Christian views were fused with a kind of neo-Pietism
that was highly individualized and strongly emotionalized, for example. Like-
wise, the sociopolitical program of Awakened conservatives, indeed the very
project of the Restoration, was predicated on an adaptation of the past to the
present.
The founders and staff of the Kreuzzeitung would have vigorously resisted
the idea that their efforts were merely reactionary or anti-revolutionary. Par-
ticularly important for Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was the motto borrowed
176 chapter 4

from de Maistre and earlier used for the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt: We
do not want counterrevolution, but what is contrary to the revolution.42 As
Gerlach explained in a commentary in November 1852,

The opposite of the revolution is not retreat from the revolutions terri-
tory. The opposite of the revolution is rather the conquering of the revolu-
tion on its own territory and where possible with its own cannons taken
from and turned against it.43

Gerlach reinforced his view in 1853 with the observation that those opposed
to the revolution had seized the artillery of the revolution and turned it
against the revolution itself, via public speeches, the free press and political
organization.44
These are brave words fully in keeping with Gerlachs love of paradox: use
the means of the revolution to defeat the revolution. What Gerlach and his
compatriots failed to perceive, however, was that by using the means of the
revolution conservatives could only win battles, but never the war, against rev-
olution. As Hans-Christof Kraus rightly notes,

However, a complete victory over the revolution would have had to have
meant not only taking these cannons away, but rendering these and other
weapons harmless and thereby making their future use impossible. But
the conservatives did not succeed at precisely that [] And the conserva-
tives had no other alternative, as their later history would show again and
again, than to always adapt themselves anew to givens or to disappear by
sinking into political irrelevance.45

42 Nous ne voulons pas la contrervolution, mais ce qui est le contraire de la rvolution.

43 Das Gegentheil der Revolution ist nicht der Rckzug von dem Gebiete der Revolution.
Das Gegentheil der Revolution ist vielmehr die Besiegung der Revolution auf ihrem ei-
genen Gebiete und wo mglich mit den ihr selbst abgenommenen und gegen sie gewen-
deten Kanonen. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 430.
44 Cited in Sperber, European Revolutions, p. 263.
45 Doch ein vollstndiger Sieg ber die Revolution htte darin bestehen mssen, ihr diese
Kanonen nicht nur abzunehmen, sondern diese und andere Waffen unschdlich und
damit deren knftigen Gebrauch unmglich zu machen. Aber gerade das gelang den Kon-
servativen nicht [] Und den Konservativen blieb wie ihre sptere Geschichte immer
wieder zeigen sollte nichts anderes als die Alternative brig, sich entweder stets erneut
den Gegebenheiten anzupassen oder in der Versenkung politischer Bedeutungslosigkeit
zu verschwinden. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 430.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 177

Gerlach and the other writers for the Kreuzzeitung did not seem to have re-
alized (or at least admitted) that by availing themselves of the means of the
revolution conservatives were themselves transformed. Conservatives like
Gerlach tried to limit the troubling implications of using revolutionary means
by invoking the mental trick of a paradox. This was doubtless an attractive op-
tion for Gerlach, since the convenient thing about a paradox is that it appears
to remove the explosive power of contradiction. A paradox does so, of course,
by bracketing that contradiction as an isolated and therefore interesting but
harmless case. A paradox, then, turns a potentially dangerous contradiction
into a source of rich irony of little practical consequence. The use of paradox
was useful for conservatives because it allowed them to overcome their dis-
taste for the weapons, the cannons of the revolution, in order to suppress it.
But such conservatives overestimated the power of their own intention and
underestimated the power of function. Conservatives were necessarily trans-
formed by using the revolutions weapons. Through using the weapons of the
revolution they had turned themselves into some hybrid, partly the product
of the old, estate-based conservative order, and partly the harbinger of the
brave new era of parties, constitutions, free associations, and mass-circulation
newspapers.
It may seem unfair and anachronistic to fault conservatives like Gerlach for
underestimating the problems of hybridity or the perils of intentionality ver-
sus functionality. But although those terms are the tools of modern historians,
the problems they describe were clearly present and recognized by some
conservatives in 1848. Gerlach himself had witnessed the reaction of Prussia
to its defeat in 1806 and 1807 at the hands of the revolutionary French state.
The French armies of the leve en masse with a merit-based officer corps had
crushed Prussias antiquated professional army led by aristocrats. Prussia re-
sponded by creating its own citizen army and enacting reform legislation that
granted Prussians some of the civil and economic gains of the French revolu-
tion. It thus defeated France by using the weapons of the revolution against
the revolution.
Throughout the 1830s, Gerlach and other conservatives had been critical
of the Prussian state for remaining hybrid, for not discarding the weapons of
the revolution once the revolution had been defeated. In their work with the
Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt in the 1830s, such conservatives even antici-
pated Krauss criticism by faulting Metternichian regimes for combating the
physical manifestations of revolution but not the liberal ideas that inspired
it. In 1848, however, we see the founders and staff of the Kreuzzeitung making
the same errors they had ascribed to the Prussian state. Conservatives such as
Gerlach failed to see or failed to admit that in calling for conservatives to use
178 chapter 4

the weapons of the revolution they were doing precisely what they had criti-
cized the post-1815 Prussian regime for doing.
Had conservative leaders looked to the world of philosophy they could also
have found a model that explained another way to view the reconciling of two
opposites not as a paradox, but as part of the dialectical process described by
their contemporary, Hegel. But the dialectical model must have been frighten-
ing for conservative and especially Awakened leaders to contemplate seriously.
Using the device of a paradox allowed Awakened conservatives like Gerlach to
reconcile contradictions as exceptions that proved the rule. The dialectic, how-
ever, allowed one to reconcile opposites in such a way that their very opposi-
tion was overcome by relativizing the contradiction in a new synthesis. Where
the paradox foreclosed the mental possibility of further development from
contradictions, the dialectic demanded it. Paradox limits the combustion of
opposing elements by preventing comparison or reflection. The dialectic cre-
ates a chain reaction by inviting such comparison and reflection. This is most
likely why the device of paradox must have held such attraction for Awakened
conservatives. It allowed them to defeat the revolution by using its own weap-
ons, and it relieved them of the burden of possible implications. It required no
significant changes in their principles, since these were unaffected by paradox.
There was a group, however, that proved willing to act in a dialectical fash-
ion, ruthlessly appropriating the means of opponents to advance their own
ends, and reevaluating those ends partly in terms of the success of their op-
ponents means. The members of this group were those whom Hegel had por-
trayed as the heirs and most advanced products of the dialectical process, the
bureaucrats of the Prussian state. The liberal and bourgeois proponents of the
revolution sought to modernize Prussia, and many Awakened leaders invested
their moral and political capital to stop them, using revolutionary means to
defeat the revolution. Their use of paradox helped open the door to moder-
nity for conservatives, but it also hindered them from fully entering into it. The
military and bureaucratic elites of Prussia, having cooperated with Awakened
conservatives, then fully capitalized, in a dialectical fashion, on their joint vic-
tory over the revolution. They helped to create a modern order in Prussia that
was liberal in its form, bourgeois and increasingly capitalist in its economic or-
der, possessing the patina of Awakened religion and aristocratic/monarchical
grandeur, but whose most important controlling element was the (ostensibly)
rational, efficient bureaucracy itself.
Yet, while Weber and others have referred to de-mystified modernity (ent-
zauberte Moderne), one might argue that in postrevolutionary Prussia there
was as yet no full demystification. First, the old mystery, or at least mystique, of
the Awakened, the aristocracy, and a monarch who was king by Gods grace
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 179

was vital to efforts to reestablish the control of the state. Second, the idea that
the state, and especially its bureaucrats, could successfully mediate between
Prussias neo-feudal sociopolitical order and modern, bourgeois, and capitalist
components relied on a different kind of Zauber: the mystery/mystique of that
hallmark of modernity, objective reason.

The Camarilla

The camarilla, created in the late spring or early summer of 1848, has aroused
great controversy. An older school of historiography attributed extraordinary
powers to these advisors to Frederick William iv, portraying them as powerful,
well-organized, conspiratorial Pietist-orthodox reactionaries eager to use the
military to defeat the revolution.46 What we know about some of its members
seemed to support this thesis. The very name for the group, which traced its
origins to a court cabal around the Spanish king (Ferdinand vii), found accep-
tance by some of the groups members, including Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach.
The first instance of his use of the term comes from a diary entry of 30 August
1848, in which he described a meeting of Adjutant General von Rauch, House
Minister von Massow, and Count (and Hofmarschall) Keller, as a camarilla.47
While it might appear that one cannot rule out a certain tongue-in-cheek tone
in his comments, Gerlachs more sober memoirs do not lend themselves to
an ironic interpretation of the term. He also later recalled that Colonel von
Natzmer, a close advisor to the king, likewise urged the creation of a secret
conservative center.48 Awakened stalwart Adolf von Thadden49 had advocat-
ed the use of troops to attack rebellious Berlin in the early days of the revolu-
tion, and decades later the Awakened camarilla member Gerlach recalled that
he had favored similar ideas.50
Some other scholars, while clearly accepting that the camarilla was a vital
player in the revolution, have questioned the influence, organization, and stay-
ing power of the camarilla. Thomas Nipperdey, for example, concluded that

46 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 431, footnotes 24849.

47 Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 444.
48 [] ein geheimes konservatives Zentrum [], cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
p. 444.
49 Thadden, although part of the Kreuzzeitungs advisory committee, was not a camarilla
member. He is included here to show that other Awakened members contemplated mili-
tary force to defeat the revolution.
50 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 396 and 399.
180 chapter 4

the group was far from well-organized: Church orthodoxy also stood in camp
of the counterrevolution. Especially important, of course, was the military; an
informal military party formed that wanted to make the army the instrument
of the counterrevolution.51 Hans-Christof Kraus concludes that, The camaril-
la became the most important even if not the only motor of counterrevolu-
tion in Prussia.52 Furthermore, contends Kraus, the camarillas influence was
of particular importance only for a little longer than the three months from
the end of August to the start of December 1848 apart from the camarillas
brief return to significance when it helped persuade the king not to accept the
crown proffered by the Frankfurt parliament.53
David Barclay sounds a similar note, arguing that [] the Prussian Cama-
rilla was not as sinister, powerful, or large as has sometimes been thought. It
was, rather, a loosely knit, informal association of like-minded individuals who
wanted to use their access to Frederick William iv in order to achieve certain
political ends.54 But whereas Barclay and Kraus see the king as [] too inde-
pendent some would say too erratic and unpredictable to let himself be
controlled or directed by one small group of individuals, one might interpret
Frederick Williams vacillating style as actually enhancing the importance of
groups like the camarilla. That appears to be the implication of Kraus agree-
ment with Walter Bumanns observation that the king had not [] been the
spiritus rector of counterrevolutionary politics up to the octroy, but he only
cleared the path for such a policy under the pressure of various advisors.55
In any event, even revised interpretations concede that for roughly three
months towards the end of 1848 the camarilla exercised an important and at
times perhaps decisive influence. One obvious reason why earlier historians
concluded that the camarilla wielded power deftly and effectively from behind
the scenes is that the actual course of events that helped defeat the revolution

51 Auch die kirchliche Orthodoxie stand im Lager der Gegenrevolution. Besonders wichtig
war natrlich das Militr; es bildete sich eine informelle Militrpartei, die die Armee zum
Instrument der Gegenrevolution machen wollte. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, p. 632.
52 Die Kamarilla wurde zum wesentlichen wenn auch nicht zum einzigen Motor der
Gegenrevolution in Preuen. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 444.
53 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 46667.
54 Barclay, Frederick William iv, pp. 15455.
55 nicht [] der spiritus rector einer gegenrevolutionren Politik bis zum Oktroi ge
wesen, sondern er hat nur unter dem Druck sehr verschiedener Ratgeber [] den Weg
fr eine solche Politik freigegeben. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 444, citing Walter
Bumann, Zwischen Preuen und Deutschland. Friedrich Wilhelm iv. Eine Biographie (Ber-
lin: Siedler, 1990), p. 232. My reading of Bumann differs from that of Kraus, who portrays
Bumanns comments as supporting his own position.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 181

was in fact remarkably similar to what camarilla members had urged. Ernst
Ludwig von Gerlach, for instance, had written his brother Leopold on 9 July
with a preliminary plan to achieve victory:

Dissolution of the Berliner Assembly which must not be rushed, but

which should be allowed still more time to discredit itself, an interim
support of the king by the army an independent, but by no means hos-
tile position towards the Frankfurt [delegates, de] [] and in the dis-
tant future the recall of the United Diet.56

Although there is no evidence that Frederick William ever saw this plan in
its written form, it is notable how closely the kings decisions and the flow of
history correspond to Gerlachs July proposal. Already by the end of July the
liberal government headed by Rudolf von Auerswald and David Hansemann
was in deep trouble, protesting the reactionary decisions of the Prussian
National Assembly and encountering opposition from the king to the gov-
ernments order that reactionary military officers should resign.57 In power
only since 25 June, the Auerswald-Hansemann regime came to an end on 8
September, giving testament to the division among pro-revolutionary forces
and to the fragility of parliamentary influence. Even more damaging to the
revolutionary cause, however, were the continuing fragmentation among
revolutionary forces, mounting unrest in Frankfurt, and civil war between
moderate liberals and radical republicans in Baden that erupted in Septem-
ber.58 Awakened conservatives and other conservatives had privately en-
couraged Frederick William iv in September to take a firm stand against the
revolution, as witnessed by a letter to him signed by such leading figures as
von Bethmann-Hollweg, Siegesmund, LEstocq, more than one member of
the extended von Arnim family, Reinhold von Thadden, Warnke, and Golz.59
They asserted [t]he crown of Your Majesty is in danger! Believing that
events (especially, presumably, those in the Assembly) would render [] any

56 Auflsung der Berliner Versammlung die nicht bereilt werden drfte, sondern der
noch mehr Zeit zum Sich blamieren zu lassen wre, eine interimistische Sttzung des
Knigs auf die Armee selbstndige keineswegs feindliche Stellung den Frankfurtern ge-
genber [] und in weiter Ferne: Wiederberufung des (vereinten) Landtags. Cited in
Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 432.
57 Reaktionsbeschlsse and reaktionre, cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 436.
58 Sheehan, German History, p. 695ff.
59 Letter to Frederick William iv dated 14 September 1848, GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, E ii, Nr. 5,
pp. 39a41b.
182 chapter 4

constitutional-monarchical government impossible [],60 they advised that

the country [das Land] would

[r]eceive with thanks from the hands of a strong, mighty ruler those free-
doms which are achievable with law and order it will trade those gladly
for the condition of so-called freedom, [characterized by, de] limit-
less measure a condition that must beget revolution after revolution
which abandons all justice and law to the terrorism of the masses, [and,
de] renders the existence of an ordered state impossible.61

The quote above, which drew a sharp contest between true liberties consistent
with law and order and those which necessarily lead to endless revolutions,
must have found a receptive audience in Frederick William iv. By 15 October
he drafted a crafty document entitled To My People, which laid claim to a
constitution which he not many months before had dismissed as a mere
scrap of paper as a worthy project.62 In it, he noted that the revolution had
shaken the whole German Fatherland [] but by Gods grace the throne
still stands upright [].63 He added that [t]he settlement of it [the constitu-
tion, de] will so I hope provide a secure foundation for the liberties of my
people and for the rights of my crown that are closely connected with them.64
Freely blending constitutionality (as he wished others to understand it) with
divine and royal sanction (as well as Prussian and German identities), he con-
tinued, May this important work succeed! May the King of Kings blessing rest

60 [] Die Krone Eurer Majestt ist in Gefahr! and [] jede konstitutionelle-monarchische

Regierung unmglich []. Ibid.
61 Mit Dankbarkeit wird es denn aus der Hand eines starken, krftigen Herrschers die
Freiheiten empfangen, welche mit Gesetz und Ordnung ausfhrbar, es wird sie gern
vertauschen gegen einen Zustand von sogenannter Freiheit, [] schrankenloses Maa
einen Zustand, der Revolutionen auf Revolutionen erzeugen mu der jedes Recht und
Gesetz dem Terrorismus der Maen preisgiebt, jedes Bestehen eines geordneten Staates
unmglich macht. Ibid. In this and subsequent notes, words originally underlined have
been italicized.
62 While the title An Mein Volk might have been chosen simply as a working draft without
further thought, it is hard not to notice the title is the same as one issued by Frederick
William iii that summoned Prussians to war against Napoleon in 1813, and that it was very
similar in its title but not in its message to An Mein Volk und die Deutsche Nation, issued
early in the revolution. Ibid., 56b.
63 [] das gesammte deutsche Vaterland erschttert [] Aber durch Gottes Gnade steht
der Thron noch aufrecht []. Ibid.
64 Die Vereinbarung darber wird so hoffe Ich eine sichere Grundlage bilden fr die
Freiheiten Meines Volkes und fr die damit eng verbundenen Rechte meiner Krone. Ibid.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 183

upon it, hoping that God would grant [] in the midst of difficult trials which
he has imposed on us, [] to My people faithfully enduring courage, but to
Me strength and wisdom for the salvation of our dear Prussian and German
Fatherland!65
It did not escape the kings officials, who declined to countersign his
words, that the kings views endorsed a variety of constitutionality at odds with
liberal notions of popular sovereignty and in harmony with absolutism. On 14
October 1848 the Staatsministerium problematized the kings view that

[] all authoritative [obrigkeitlich] power comes from God. The princi-

ple of divine appointment of authority is generally viewed as the basis
of absolute monarchy. Therefore, if Your Majestys address to the
people draws support exclusively from this principle, the land will un-
mistakably see therein the sign of the return to absolute monarchy, and
thereby the greatest dangers for the throne and the Fatherland will be
introduced [].66

In a one-page reaction, Frederick William firmly rejected their interpretation

of authority, couching his defense of monarchy as a holy duty to God that
could not be shirked, supported by the example of the English constitution.
He suggested his own officials were guilty of defeatist (and perhaps impious)
nonsense, stating that the principle of revolution par excellence which is to be
combatted is the first duty of a government that does not surrender itself And
I do not surrender neither I, nor my government, [] nor my holy duties.67
The vacillating king of March 1848 seemed to have been replaced by a more

65 Mge dieses wichtige Werk wohl gelingen! Mge auf ihm der Segen des Knigs der
Knige ruhen, der mitten in den schweren Prfungen die Er ber uns verhngt hat, Mei-
nem Volke treu ausharrende Muth, Mir aber Kraft und Weisheit verleihen wolle zum
Heile unseres theuren preuischen und deutschen Vaterlandes! Ibid., 57b.
66 alle obrigkeitliche Gewalt lediglich von Gott abgeleitet wird. Das Prinzip der gttli-
chen Einsetzung der Obrigkeit wird allgemein als die Basis der absoluten Monarchie
betrachtet. Wenn daher Er. Majestt Ansprache an das Volk sich ausschlieslich [sic] auf
dieses Prinzip sttzt, so wird das Land hierin unfehlbar die Abschrift der Rkkehr [sic]
zur absoluten Monarchie erblikken [sic] und es werden dadurch die grten Gefahren fr
Thron und Vaterland herbei gefhrt werden, []. Ibid., 58b.
67 [] das Prinzip der Revolution [the next two words are written in western/French rather
than German script, de] par excellence das eben zu bekmpfen ist die erste Pflicht einer
Regierung die sich nicht selbst aufgiebt [italicized words are underlined in original, de]
Und ich gebe, weder mich, noch meine Regierung, [] noch meine heiligen Pflichten
auf. Copy of the kings note, dated 16 October 1848, ibid., 59a.
184 chapter 4

intransigent version. Confronted by a resistant Staatsministerium but with his

views resting on the bedrock of his religious interpretation of origin of author-
ity, Frederick William had finally spoken as a king should speak.68
As the kings views moved forward and were presented to a delegation of the
National Assembly, members of Staatsministerium offered their resignations,
since they believed they had lost the kings trust. They noted that the views as
we anticipated, made a very unfavorable impression, which would necessar-
ily lead to great embarrassments for the Staatsministerium as a consequence
[].69 Frederick William declined the resignations, taking the opportunity to
reinforce his position that only a sense of God-given authority to the monarch
could underpin a constitution:

If my ministry has the courage, in union with its king, to recognize an un-
doubted truth, the following of which alone and exclusively makes it pos-
sible so to establish [emphasis in the original, de] the further and greater
liberties of the people, that those, the same protecting institutions, may
have permanence, it so fulfills only a holy and indubitable duty.70

However, if the ministry did [] not with its King [italicized words are under-
lined in the original, de] profess [] the recognized truth which I pronounced
yesterday and did not stand or fall with him before the Assembly, may His will
be done.71 Here we find that the king was indeed so certain that God was on
his side that it would be Gods will to allow the government to fall if it failed to
endorse the divine origin of the kings authority.
This division between the Pfuel ministry and the king was never fully
healed, leading ultimately to the ministrys dismissal. Gerlach, convinced that
all authority comes from God above rather than the people below, had con-
fidently expected that popularly elected assemblies would soon bring them-
selves into disrepute. It now indeed appeared to many conservative observers

68 [] geredet wie ein Knig reden soll. Copy of a letter from Frederick William, ibid., 64a.
69 die wir wie vorausgesehen, einen sehr ungnsitgen Eindruck gemacht hat and fr das
Staats-Ministerium groe Verlegenheiten zur Folge []. Ibid.
70 Wenn mein Ministerium den Muth hat, im Verein mit seinem Knige eine unbeweifelte
Wahrheit zu erkennen, durch deren Befolgung es allein und auschlielich mglich wird,
die weiten und groen Freiheiten eines Volke so zu grnden [italicized words are under-
lined in original], da die, die selben schtzenden Institutionen eine Dauer haben kn-
nen, so erfllt dasselbe nur eine heilige und unzweifelhafte Pflicht. Ibid., p. 64b.
71 Die [:] anerkannte Wahrheit die ich gestern ausgesprochen, nicht mit seinem Knige
[italicized words are underlined in original] zu bekennen und nicht mit ihm vor der
Versammlung zu stehen und zu fallen, so geschehe sein Wille. Ibid., pp. 65ab.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 185

as though debate over authority and the constitution might lead the revolution
to spiral out of control and into anarchy. On 2 November the king replaced the
short-lived ministry of the liberal General Pfuel with a government headed by
Count (and General) Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, a son of Frederick
William ii. Brandenburg was a devoted monarchist in general and possessed
undying loyalty to the Hohenzollern dynasty in particular. He also happened
to be the choice camarilla leaders had urged on Frederick William iv.72 On
4 November 1848, more than 40 conservative friends of the king, including
Thadden-Trieglaff, spoke strongly in favor of a Brandenburg ministry, though
it caused concerns in the state, and they recommended the king move the
Assembly out of Berlin.73 The signatories claimed that as men from many dif-
ferent places who knew the people quite well, they could say with confidence
that the whole land, as lively and thankful as it holds to the constitutional
liberties granted by Your Majesty [] looks with attention and desire toward
[] the restoration of order [].74
Consistent with the advice from such conservative friends, Frederick Wil-
liam on 8 November duly ordered the Prussian Assembly to move from Berlin
to the city of Brandenburg. Writing on 8 November, Frederick William estab-
lished his main reasons for ending the Pfuel ministry and beginning the Bran-
denburg ministry. The first and probably most important reason was to assert
[t]he sovereignty of my Crown against the sovereignty-cravings of the Prus-
sian so-called National Assembly decisively and victoriously [].75
Another major reason clearly echoed the desires of the Kreuzzeitung, name-
ly to see the March revolution decisively and victoriously overthrown and in
its place the opposite of revolution []. But what the king meant by the oppo-
site of the revolution was different from what some in the Kreuzzeitung meant.
He meant [] the legal realization of a truly free constitutional achievement
on the basis that alone can mean for it permanence and a living future, on the
basis of the received authority by Gods grace. We observe the kings aggressive
rhetorical attempt to seize ownership of the meaning of the term freedom.
He asserts that only a constitution based on authority derived from Gods grace
represents a rebuke to liberal conceptions of popular sovereignty so evident in

72 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 438.

73 Besorgnisse im Staate, GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50 E ii, Nr. 5, p. 99b.
74 das ganze Land, so lebhaft und dankbar es an den von Er. Majestt zugesicherten con-
stitutionellen Freiheiten festhlt, mit [] groer Spannung und Sehnsucht dem Augen-
blicke entgegensieht, [] Wiederherstellung der Ordnung []. Ibid.
75 Die Souvernitt Meiner Krone, gegen die Souvernitts-Gelste der preuischen soge-
nannten National-Versammlung entschieden und siegreich []. Ibid., pp. 107b108a.
186 chapter 4

the Assembly. But since the basis for a constitution had been a matter of de-
bate in Pfuels Staatsministerium, this reference might also be seen as a rebuke
to any remaining officials in his own government with liberal sympathies.76
This was not quite the dissolution of the Assembly Gerlach had advocated
in July, but the move substantially weakened the Assembly by relocating away
from the revolutionary center of Berlin to the more staid, provincial city of
Brandenburg. The move was announced on 9 November, and General Wrangel
marched Prussian troops to occupy Berlin the next day, effectively ending pow-
er of the citizen militia that had been exercised there for several months. By
12 November, martial law was declared in Berlin, and the king again appeared
to be master in his own house. For Frederick William, it had not been possible
to serve both God and the revolution, and he struck a mortal blow at the lat-
ter master on 5 December 1848 by octroying, or granting as a retractable gift, a
written constitution. Also in sync with Gerlachs July plan, the king studiously
avoided a break with the National Assembly until it forced his hand by offering
him the crown of a united Germany (minus Austria). When Frederick William
iv rejected the offer on 3 April 1849, the liberal revolution was all but dead.

The Octroyed Constitution of 1848

By octroying a constitution, Frederick William granted the form of representa-

tive government, but he made it clear that the king could revoke this gift at
any time, since authority flowed from God through the king to his people. This
was a significant departure from the plan Gerlach had imagined in July, and
both Gerlach and Adolf von Thadden strongly opposed it. They objected on
numerous grounds, but one of their deepest concerns was that the octroy itself
was a sort of Prussian ukase, whose very arbitrariness increased the revolution-
ary and lawless dangers it was supposed to circumvent.
Many other camarilla and/or Awakened leaders either favored or fairly eas-
ily acquiesced to the octroyed constitution. Yet, this should not obscure the
fact that there was actually a wide range of Awakened views about the very
idea of a written constitution. The king and Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach initially

76 [] die Mrz-Revolution entschieden und siegreich gestrzt und an ihre Stelle das Ge-
gentheil der Revolution aufkommen knne, nemlich [sic]: das gesetzmige Zustande
kommen eines in Wahrheit freier Verfassungs-Werkes auf der Grundlage die ihm allein
Dauer und lebendige Zukunft verheien kann auf der Grundlage der angestammten
Obrigkeit von Gottes Gnaden. All italicized words are underlined in the original, with
allein underlined twice. Ibid.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 187

rejected any delimitation of royal power through written law. Later, however,
they rather reluctantly accepted the necessity of using (as opposed to fully ac-
cepting) the document. A group of conservative monarchists, including the
leading jurist Friedrich Julius Stahl, argued that in the modern era constitu-
tions should be accepted as the best way to anchor royal power and to secure
as many of the positive aspects of the old regime as possible.77 More moderate
monarchists, such as Bethmann-Hollweg, clearly wanted to retain the mon-
archy but check royal power through mechanisms built into the constitution.
Their debates to some extent echoed the debates across the whole political
spectrum, even if they represented only a portion of it. As Matthias Pape has
argued, speaking of the central constitution issues confronting Prussia, The
principal focus in the Berlin debates was, put concisely, mediation between
monarchy and popular sovereignty, between a more strongly monarchically or
a more strongly democratically accentuated constitution.78
In the end, most Awakened leaders and most conservative politicians would
eventually reconcile themselves to the controversial octroyed constitution
that resulted from the 1848 revolution. Indeed, they would soon discover that
a written constitution could serve their political ends to undo as much of
the revolution as they could fairly well after certain judicious changes and
felicitous interpretations. Frederick William iv, however, never fundamentally
changed his view of the constitution as a monstrosity. He always loathed and
condemned the document and the liberal, rationalist values he thought under-
girded it. On the other hand, most democrats and even moderate liberals saw
the octroyed 1848 constitution as a reactionary bulwark.
We will examine in somewhat greater detail in the following chapters
some of the most salient aspects for the state church and for the (changing)
composition of the various levels of representative government. But a few re-
marks on the outlines of 1848s constitutional settlement, ephemeral as some
aspects proved to be, may be in order. The king did not summon the United
Diet as Gerlach had advocated, but the octroyed constitution created a two-
chambered body rather similar to it in some respects. The constitution, altered
over the 1850s, made several concessions to the revolution. The 1848 constitu-
tion created universal indirect male suffrage and a two-chambered legislature,

77 Cf. Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 419ff.

78 Im Brennpunkt der Berliner Debatten stand, kurz gesagt, die Vermittlung zwischen
Monarchie und Volksouvernitt, zwischen einer strker monarchisch oder strker de-
mokratisch akzentuierten Verfassung. Matthias Pape, Die Verfassunggebung in Preussen
1848/1850: Akteure, Spieler, Handlungsrume, Zeitschrift fr Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 22.2
(2000), p. 188.
188 chapter 4

for instance. It thus allowed the king and his supporters to practice the old
game of divide and conquer among the pro-revolutionary forces. Moderates
could contemplate acceptance of the constitution despite the octroy, since
that would allow them to consolidate some gains without risking an escala-
tion of conflict. More radical elements objected more vigorously to numerous
problems, including the loss of revolutionary dynamism, the nature of the oc-
troy, and the creation of an institutional bias against further reforms. In fact,
although the constitutions form gave Prussia a representative government, its
content generally favored anti-revolutionary forces in practice. For instance,
one of its most salient features was Prussias (in)famous three-class voting sys-
tem for the lower chamber, which heavily distorted political representation
according to the amount of taxes (male) citizens paid, in practice replicating
something not dissimilar to the old estates (Stnde). Yet, the fact that wealth,
rather than older markers of social standing, was the measure of the three
estates ran contrary to the principles advocated by Awakened conservatives
such as Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, who wished to privilege the aristocracy and
the peasants, in particular, and to disadvantage the middling classes, whose
supposedly increasingly materialistic worldview he (and Frederick William
iv) found highly suspect. In a change many camarilla members approved of,
Prussias upper chamber was eventually changed into the House of Lords (Her-
renhaus) after October 1854. At least three fourths of its members held seats
through office or inheritance, entrenching the power of middle-class bureau-
crats, the service nobility, and the Junker.79
Yet, just as superficial similarities to a liberal parliamentary order should
not be exaggerated, neither should apparent continuities with the estates
system. Arguably, the prime winner was the bureaucracy that dominated the
administrative form of government. Otto von Manteuffel, the Minister Presi-
dent who succeeded Brandenburg, certainly thought so. In December 1850 he
concluded that the Prussian state cannot be based on corporate institutions,
noting that it is essentially a bureaucratic and military system.80 Frederick
William would assuredly have disagreed. He certainly was dependent on the
bureaucracy and the military to administer his state. But for the king perhaps
the most important feature of the constitution, flawed though it was in his

79 Sheehan, German History, p. 719.

80 Cited in Gnther Grnthal, Zwischen Knig, Kabinett und Kamarilla. Der Verfassungsok-
troi in Preussen vom 5.12.1848, Jahrbuch fr die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands,
32 (1983), 21617; John Gillis, The Prussian Bureaucracy in Crisis, 18401860: Origins of an
Administrative Ethos, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), p. 132; Sheehan, German
History, p. 720.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 189

eyes, was that he had issued it as king by the grace of God. With the central
pillar of his political philosophy intact, the king could reconcile himself to the
idea that the constitution could be improved upon later.
Frederick Williams peculiar style of governing makes it difficult to deter-
mine the extent to which he was shaping events or merely reacting to them.
A correlation between the July plan that Gerlach proposed and many other
camarilla members backed in part or in whole by no means proves causa-
tion. David Barclay is closer to the mark when he claims that the king himself
could only be counted on to support it [the camarilla, de] when he had already
agreed with its views or when he had to be extricated from an otherwise im-
possible political situation.81 Frederick William iv neither slavishly followed
any plan spun out of the camarilla, nor acted as a decisive leader who inspired
confidence among monarchists and others opposed to the revolution. Freder-
ick William was a king who, one almost wishes to say, met very few dilemmas
he didnt like, as he preferred dramatic rhetoric over decisive action, and he
was fully capable of consulting any number of advisors with often conflicting
views until circumstances forced him to commit to a course of action.
One might also, of course, interpret his behavior more charitably as wise
patience that ultimately preserved his throne but virtually none of his con-
temporaries appear to have. In fact, his indecision had frustrated his support-
ers even before 1848, but after the revolution his risk-averse governing style
threatened to undo the monarchy itself. Leopold von Gerlach had remarked to
his brother Ernst Ludwig on 11 April 1848 that [] poor Butte [the kings nick-
name, de], he stands there completely isolated and others rule beside him.82
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, typically, had a much more pointed appraisal, re-
plying that Leopold should consider the possibility of another monarch.83 His
impatience with the king was evident when, after the Auerswald-Hansemann
ministry had ended and Gerlach yearned for a Brandenburg ministry, he ob-
served that one wanted [] heroic deeds [] everything is ready; only the
hero is missing.84

81 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 155.

82 [] der arme Butte, er steht ganz isoliert da und neben ihm wird regiert. From a letter
to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Von der Revolution zum Nord
deutschen Bund. Politik u. Ideengut der preussischen Hochkonservativen 18481866. Aus dem
Nachla, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 46 (Gttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), p. 506.
83 Eventualitt eines Thronwechsels, in a letter from April 24, 1848 in the Gerlach Archiv,
Nl. Leopold, vol. 18, 18. Cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 407.
84 [] Heldentaten tun [] and [] alles ist bereit, nur der Held fehlt. Diary entry of 10
September 1848. Cited in Grnthal, Zwischen Knig, Kabinett und Kamarilla, p. 137.
190 chapter 4

The narrative above also only hints at an important difference in the views
of the king on the one hand and many Awakened and/or camarilla leaders
on the other. Both agreed that legitimacy, authority, and power flowed from
God through the king to the people along the paths of Prussias organically de-
veloped institutions. They disagreed, however, about the concrete application
of that principle to two important and related issues: the precise nature and
meaning of the constitution and the precise role of the king.
The royal octroy had hardly been foreseeable when the revolution began in
March. Before issuing the constitution the king first had to regain momentum
from the revolutionaries, to move beyond his visceral, intellectual, and spiritu-
al objections to the very idea of a written constitution and then overcome the
objections of some conservative supporters that his octroy was merely another
revolution, this time from above. Although internecine struggles had already
weakened the pro-revolutionary forces by the fall of 1848, it then still was not
clear whether Frederick William could actually bring himself to countenance
a written constitution.
The king, along with some Awakened and conservative leaders, held that
Prussia already possessed a constitution an unwritten, organically developed
one, somewhat analogous to the British model. Still more importantly, the king
and such supporters viewed that unwritten constitution as one sanctioned by
God. Frederick William iv viewed himself a king by Gods grace (his Gottes-
gnadentum) in a nearly medieval sense. His intellectual justification for this
stance was closely related to the fact that Frederick William iv was, to all ap-
pearances and in the judgement of most contemporaries, a devoted member
of the Awakening. Indeed, like many figures on the left and right Frederick
Williams religious beliefs were so intertwined with his political convictions
that it was nearly impossible to separate the two. For Frederick William, being
king by Gods grace meant that God had not only divinely appointed him as a
person to rule Prussia, but also imbued him with mystical insight as the holder
of the divinely ordained office of kingship. He also saw Prussias estate (Stand)-
based order as the only order suitable for Prussia, given the organic nature of
its historical development. Like many conservative Awakened supporters, the
king not only held that God was the ultimate source of authority and legitima-
cy, but also perceived that the monarchy and the estate system were necessar-
ily manifestations of divine will. All this helps to explain why the very notion
of a written constitution for Prussia or for Germany was deeply repugnant to
Frederick William. A written constitution, for him, was a mechanical, rational
contraption that awkwardly and dangerously broke the personal and organic
connection of the king to his estates. Worse still, a written constitution gave the
wrong impression that authority and legitimacy came from the people below
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 191

instead of from God above. His views had arguably not fundamentally changed
since his opening address to the United Diet in 1847, when he had categorically
rejected the idea of a written constitution and asserted the sovereign rights
of the monarchy. Likewise, even in the heady days when others called for the
recognition of the revolution, Friedrich Julius Stahl had fully backed Frederick
William, claiming that the

[] king has not been dethroned, nor deprived of his sovereignty, neither
through his own concession, nor through a stronger physical force [] It
is the same authority on which the previous order and on which the pres-
ent order rests, the authority of the king.85

In other words, given the kings self-conception as king by Gods grace, his re-
ligious faith, and his political principles86 and the support in these positions
he found among such Awakened public leaders as Stahl and camarilla mem-
bers like Ernst Ludwig and Leopold von Gerlach his horror is understandable
when he learned that the Prussian National Assembly voted 217-134 on 12 Octo-
ber 1848 to drop the phrase of king by Gods grace (von Gottes Gnaden) from
its proposed constitution.87 His subsequent birthday address, whose chief au-
thor appears to have been Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, sharply rebuked the As-
sembly.88 The king asserted that all authority is from God and that it was he
from whom it [the Civil Militia or Brgerwehr, de] had its weapons.89
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach regarded this as the turning point in the
revolution,90 and it has been worthwhile to examine this moment in some
detail in order to see what provoked the king to take decisive action. Through-
out the revolution the king had endured many moments of humiliation. Some
were much more acutely embarrassing than this, such as when revolutionar-
ies forced him to ride through the streets of Berlin in mid-March carrying the

85 Knig ist nicht entthront, nicht seiner Souvernitt verlustig gemacht worden, weder
durch eigenes Zugestndni, noch durch irgend eine strkere physiche Gewalt [] Est ist
dieselbe Autoritt, auf welcher die frhere Ordnung und auf der die gegenwrtige Ord-
nung beruht, die Autoritt des Knigs. Cited in Gerhard Besier, Die Landeskriche und
die Revolution von 1848/49. Die Reichsverfassung und die preuische Verfassungsfrage,
in geku, vol. 1, p. 384.
86 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 449.
87 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach.
88 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, pp. 44950.
89 [] alle Obrigkeit ist von Gott [] and [] da er es sei, von dem sie ihre Waffen habe.
Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 450.
90 Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 449.
192 chapter 4

black-red-gold flag of the revolution. The king had previously been forced to
make painful concessions on matters of power and politics, such as when he
ordered nearly all his troops to evacuate Berlin, or when the Assembly had first
met to discuss the constitution. But the straw that broke the camels back for
the king was the Assemblys effort here to strip him of his most cherished title
of monarchy, the title of king by the grace of God.
Frederick William, an artist as well as a king, was keenly aware that sym-
bols are never merely symbols; they possess power, as well as represent it. The
Assemblys attempt to remove the kings title was fundamentally a cultural
struggle, a battle over who would set the terms of the debate by establishing a
hegemonic power to create, change, or destroy symbols and their interpreta-
tions. It was a struggle over the first principles from which the hard logic of
politics drew its power. It was a cultural struggle carried out in the political
arena and articulated with the language of religion. One might also argue that
is also why the backing of like-minded Awakened and camarilla figures mat-
tered so much to the struggle. They provided the king with an echo chamber
that repeated and strengthened his interpretation of those symbols, giving
him hope that the cultural hegemony in this case would not be determined by
sheer force of numbers or by violence on the streets those were allies of the
pro-revolutionary forces. By giving the king moral and a sort of communal sup-
port, Awakened conservative leaders and the camarilla were maximizing their
ability to resist liberal attempts to impose cultural hegemony.
A great irony, of course, is that by also arguing their case in the ways favored
by liberals in newspapers and in parliament itself they were strengthen-
ing the very modernizing, liberal, rational forces they hoped to weaken. The
greater irony still is that while these two camps were busy waging their cul-
tural struggle, the greatest beneficiaries were arguably certain elements in the
bureaucracy, exemplified by Otto von Manteuffel, who were able to play these
two sides off against one another. While liberals and the conservative Awak-
ened battled over first principles and powerful symbols, proto-Realpolitiker,
such as Count Brandenburg and Otto von Manteuffel, were able to secure their
agenda.
The constitution ultimately helped the king, the Brandenburg govern-
ment, and the camarilla to defeat the revolution. Yet, the camarilla had played
a rather small role in the reoccupation of Berlin, Brandenburgs dissolution
of the National Assembly, and in the kings octroying the constitution.91 In
fact, many Awakened conservatives, including Leopold and Ernst Ludwig von

91 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 180.

Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 193

Gerlach, opposed the dissolution and octroy as dangerous, lawless acts.92 This
was hardly surprising, since for decades they had inveighed against both revo-
lution from above and revolution from below.
But this does not mean that Awakened leaders had little influence on the
constitutional debate. In fact, during the summer of 1848 Awakened legal ex-
perts Friedrich Julius Stahl and Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach had carried on an
important public discussion in the pages of the Kreuzzeitung. Stahl had come
close to arguing that something like the British model of sovereignty lying
with the king-in-parliament should apply in Prussia. Gerlach gradually came
closer to Stahls pragmatic position, eventually even conceding the need to up-
date many of the traditional elements of political power. The Estates must
[emphasis in original, de] combine more and more with each other and with
the crown [] to a whole, to the state. Furthermore, he elaborated, This pro-
gression of the peculiar estates-based state [stndischer Staat] to a community
[] of its members crown, estates, and individuals [] one may call con-
stitutionalism or another name.93
In short, Gerlach and Stahl, as two highly public conservative figures and
two legal experts, had made the idea of constitutionalism acceptable to even
some of their friends and allies on the extreme right. Constitutionalism had
not been their first choice, of course, but both had come to realize that the
constitution could be used as a means for expressing much of their political
philosophy. In fact, once the constitution was in place, they would also play
a crucial role in organizing a political majority to achieve much of their pro-
gram. The camarilla, likewise, would be vital to strengthening the kings resolve
to press for changes in the document. So important was its role that Gnter
Grnthal argues that the camarilla, dominated by Awakened advisors, was one
of a troika of powers, along with the king and the Brandenburg government,
establishing the leading principles of the postrevolutionary order.94

92 Cf. Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 182.

93 Die Stnde mssen sich mehr und mehr untereinander und mit der Krone verbinden [],
zu einem Ganzen, zum Staate. and Diesen Fortschritt des sonderthmlich-stndisichen
Staats zur Gemeinschaft [] seiner Glieder der Krone, der Stnde, der Einzelnen []
mag man [] mit dem Namen Constitutionalismus oder mit einem anderen bezeich-
nen. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Das Gemeinschaftliche Banner der Conservativen, in
the npz, No. 42, 18 August 1848. Also cited in Kraus, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, p. 420.
94 Cf. Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 156, citing Grnthal, Zwischen Knig, Kabinett
und Kamarilla, pp. 16971: In short, the political system that emerged in Prussia after
December 1848 was the result of a compromise among the countrys most powerful lites:
the King, the Brandenburg government, and the Camarilla.
194 chapter 4

By the end of 1848 the accomplishments of the Awakened in the service of

those who wished to crush the revolution had been considerable. They had
been among the first to help rally conservative forces in the immediate after-
math of March. The camarilla provided a useful echo chamber for the king
when he wanted confirmation of counterrevolutionary plans. Their concur-
rence with some of his views about his Gottesgnadentum was particularly
useful. The Kreuzzeitung had begun to knit together conservatives across Prus-
sia and elsewhere in northern Germany. Stahl and Gerlach had helped make
the idea of a constitution salonfhig even for some on the far right wing of
conservatism.
After 1848 their services would continue, as they helped marshal parliamen-
tary majorities to revise the constitution along lines generally more favorable
to the king and the Manteuffel ministry. They provided a great deal of moral
capital for other counterrevolutionaries. However, it is not clear that they re-
ceived proportionate returns for that capital in politics, and even the reshap-
ing of the relationship between church and state yielded ambiguous gains for
Awakened conservative elites.
The linkage between church and state would become more complex and
problematic (especially after 1850), complicating what had been a fairly
straightforward linkage for Awakened conservatives of the interests of state
and church. The octroyed constitution of 1848 (in Articles 12 and 13) grant-
ed freedom of religion and officially separated church and state.95 Changes
elsewhere in the document, however, represented a substantial revision more
favorable to conservative Awakened leaders. The state regained a great deal
of influence over the appointment of individuals to particular posts, for in-
stance. The separation of church and state was at least partly undermined by
Article 14, which said that the Christian religion, without violating the free-
dom of religion guaranteed in Article 12, is laid as the foundation of those in-
stitutions of the state which are in connection with the practice of religion.96
This offered a sufficient starting point for the continuation of the contin-
ued connection of church and state and showed especially strongly that the
revised constitution represented a conservative correction of the octroyed

95 Hartmut Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung und die Errichtung des Evangelischen
Oberkirchenrats (1850), in geku, vol. 1, p. 413.
96 Die christliche Religion wird bei den jenigen Einrichtungen des Staats, welche mit
der Religionsausbung im Zusammenhang stehen, unbeschadet der im im Artikel 12
gewhrleisteten Religionsfreiheit, zugrunde gelegt. Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung,
p. 413.
Opposition To Revolution As Cultural Warfare 195

constitution.97 Perhaps of equal importance, the Prussian monarch remained

the summus episcopus.98 The influence of the Ministry for Spiritual Affairs
[Ministerium der geistlichen Angelegenheiten] steadily decreased, lessening the
bureaucracys grip in this area.99
Yet, the churchs relative freedom from the state did not necessarily mean
greater freedom within the church. In Ernst Rudolf Hubers view, these changes
added up to the strengthening of the authoritarian-official-church moment in
Prussian Protestantism. He further contends that the overcoming of state ab-
solutism through the modern constitutional state [went] immediately hand in
hand with the rise of church absolutism in the church government now com-
pletely freed from state control.100 For the Awakened, such developments pre-
sented an irony unwelcome for many. Awakened men would be appointed to
the Ministry for Spiritual Affairs that had once sent police to harass Awakened
conventicles. But Adalbert von Ladenberg, Karl Otto von Raumer, and Moritz
August von Bethmann-Hollweg had increasingly less power over decisions
made within the church. At the very moment when Awakened leaders gained
greater access than ever to positions of power, the channels of influence began
to shift, as multiple revisions to the constitution unfolded after 1848.

97 bot einen ausreichenden Anhaltspunkt fr die Fortfhrung der berlieferten Ver

bindungvon Kirche und Staat und zeigte im besonderen Mae, da die revidierte Ver
fassung eine konservative Korrektur der oktroyierten Verfassung darstellte. Sander, Die
oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 413. Cited is Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche im 19. und im 20.
Jahrhundert, vol. 2, p. 35.
98 Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 418.
99 Ibid.
100 Verstrkung des autoritr-behrden-kirchlichen Moments im preuischen Protestan
tismus and berwindung des staatlichen Absolutismus durch den modernen Verfas-
sungsstaat zunchst Hand in Hand mir der Aufrichtung des kirchlichen Absolutismus in
dem nun von der staatlichen Kontrolle gnzlich befreiten landesherrlichen Kirchenregi-
ment []. Ernst Rudolf Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 4, pp. 836 and 837. Cited in
Hartmut Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 418.
 chapter 5

Church Renewal

In the previous chapter, we saw that politicized conservative Awakened leaders

played an important role in stiffening resistance to the revolution of 1848 among
a broad coalition of conservative forces. The Awakened did so through a variety
of means, including their personal connections at court and in the camarilla,
as well as in the public sphere through their political work in the Prussian Na-
tional Assembly and in newspapers such as the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung
and the Kreuzzeitung. The vital common thread that bound these together
was the attempt to offer an alternative view of important concepts, challeng-
ing terms favored by liberals and other revolutionaries, such as constitution,
legality, monarchy, and revolution. They continued their efforts along
these lines through the mid-1850s, especially by contributing to the chang-
ing definition of the relationship between the church and state, the founda-
tion of the Internal Mission [Innere Mission], and constitutional revisions. For
Awakened conservatives project of winning a cultural war against revolu-
tionaries, few moves would have been as significant as these two: getting the
Union church to affirm their views on authority and the revolution, and hav-
ing a politically and culturally energized church so embedded in the structure
of the state that it could serve as an effective means to impose or spread these
notions, partly via state or state-affiliated institutions, throughout society.
Unfortunately for Awakened conservatives, they achieved only limited suc-
cess in the former, and what many of them viewed as a substantial reversal in
the latter.

The Wittenberg Church Congress of 1848 and the Foundation

of the Internal Mission

An endorsement of their position by the church certainly seems to have

been the goal of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach and Friedrich Julius Stahl,
whose conservative Awakened stances played such a powerful role in the
Kreuzzeitung. In September 1848, less than three months before the king
would octroy Prussias constitution, they met, together with about 500 oth-
er Protestants, in Wittenberg. Assembled at the famous door of the Castle
Church, the very church where Luther had once supposedly affixed his

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_007

Church Renewal 197

95 Theses,1 the self-appointed delegates gathered to consider what was neces-

sary to renew and reinvigorate the church.
On the second day of the congress, Stahl, that days chair, explained to the
delegates that two motions had been brought. The editor of the Evangelische
Kirchenzeitungs editor Hengstenberg urged a voluntary general day of atone-
ment, and Gerlach, co-founder of the Kreuzzeitung and president of the Ober
landesgericht at Magdeburg, proposed a testimonial against the revolution.2
Hengstenberg explained that a petition had been submitted to the king to de-
cree a day of repentance; Minister Ladenberg had expressed personal support
but officially demurred, stating that

[] in the present situation the relationships and the provisions of the

state decree of a day of atonement encountered resistance from many di-
rections, that one attributed ulterior motives and the observance, which
can only have meaning through voluntary action, would be viewed as
obligatory and compelled.3

Hengstenberg noted that Ladenbergs assessment was reasonable, and

claimed there was no doubt that a day of repentance and prayer was the
most pressing need of the time.4 Citing Luthers first thesis, he reminded his
audience that the whole life of believers on earth should be a continuous
and uninterrupted atonement. It was no surprise that the congress agreed by
acclamation to Hengstenbergs motion.5 As it happened, the day of repen-
tance and prayer, 5 November, would come only five days before troops under

1 die berhmte Tr der Schlokirche, Werner Kreft, Die Kirchentage von 18481872, Eu-
ropische Hochschulschriften, Reihe xxiii, Theologie, vol. 514 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994),
p. 76.
2 eines freiwilligen allgemeinen Butags and ein Zeugni gegen die Revolution. Kling, Die
Verhandlungen der Wittenberger Versammlung fr die Grndung eines deutschen evangeli
schen Kirchenbundes im September 1848 (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1848), p. 42. Kreft also reports
this: Kreft, Kirchentage, pp. 7980.
3 [] bei der gegenwrtigen Lage der Verhltnisse und der Stimmungen die staatliche Anord-
nung eines Buetages nach vielen Seiten hin auf Widerspruch stoen, da man ihm fremde
Motive unterlegen und die Feier, die nur also eine freiwillige Handlung Bedeutung haben
kann, als eine gebotene und erzwungene betrachten wrde. Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 43.
4 begrndet, kein Zweifel, and das dringenste Zeitbedrfnis. Kling, Verhandlungen,
pp. 4344.
5 das ganze Leben seiner Glubigen auf Erden eine stete oder unaufhrliche Bue sein soll.
mit Acclamation. Kling, Verhandlungen.
198 chapter 5

GeneralWrangel reoccupied Berlin, and precisely one month before the kings
octroyed constitution. Even granting the purest of spiritual motives behind
Hengstenbergs request, it is not difficult after the fact to discern the wisdom of
Ladenberg in trying to avoid the appearance of instrumentally using religion
for political gain.
Gerlach supported his motion to condemn the revolution, which, he said,
[] had sparked from Paris to the German Fatherland.6 He portrayed the
revolution as an immoral, foreign (i.e. French) influence that sought to corrupt
especially the middle and lower classes with the unethical idea that goodness
originates not with God but from mere humans. As he put it,

The crowd is duped by the absurd and sacrilegious teaching that author-
ity does not originate from above, where all good gifts come from, but
from below, from the flesh. The dissolute, wild character that proceeds
from this in all directions is used by conscience-less seducers, to preach
covetous longing for the property of others and the honor of others and
insolent Godlessness, and to poison with boundless demoralization es-
pecially the middle and the lower estates [Stnde].7

Perhaps even worse, for Gerlach, the rightful authorities seemed to have lost
their nerve and forgotten their holy duties, seriously considering a separation
of church and state, for

[] in the middle of attacks from unbound flesh the peoples representa-

tives long to desacralize the statesmen of the nation, to proclaim their
complete indifference toward everything that is called faith and religion,
to forbid for it, as a nation, every confession and every worship of God.8

6 [] von Paris auf das deutsche Vaterland entzndet hat. Kling, Verhandlungen, pp. 4546.
7 Die Menge wird bethrt durch die widersinnige und frevelhafte Lehre, da die Obrigkeit
nicht von oben, von wo alle gute Gabe kommt, sondern von unten aus dem Fleische entstehe.
Das wste, wilde Wesen, welches hieraus allenthalben hervorgeht, wird von gewissenlosen
Verfhrern benutzt, gieriges Trachten nach fremdem Gut und fremder Ehre und freche Gott
losigkeit zu predigen und mit zgelloser Demoralisation besonders die mittleren und nie-
deren Stnde zu vergiften. Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 46.
8 [] mitten unter diesen Strmen des entfesselten Fleisches trachten Volksvertreter und
Staatsmnner die Nation zu entweihen, ihre vllige Gleichgltigkeit gegen alles, was Glaube
und Religion heit, zu proklamiren, und ihr, als Nation, jedes Bekenntni und jede Anbetung
Gottes zu verbieten. Kling, Verhandlungen.
Church Renewal 199

In language reminiscent of a religious creed, Gerlach affirmed that

[w]e believe [] that all authority, ordered by Him as the highest Author-
ity and gifted with the rays of light and reflected glory of His majesty, [is]
for the work of His holy law among humans and, as the apostle teaches,
for the vengeance against the evildoers and for the praise of the pious.
We obey the sword-bearers of God and honor them, not as servants in
fear but as Christians for the sake of conscience. We know from Gods
word, that [] also true freedom is ours, namely not from the flesh but
from God and that therefore authority and freedom complement each
other and depend on each other. And this very word teaches us, that they
who teach the freedom of the flesh and are themselves servants of cor-
ruption do not make us free but can only plunge us into corruption.9

If Gerlachs plea fell on receptive ears, it also fell on unmoving hands. Ger-
lach had at first hoped for a unanimous vote in favor of his motion, and then
(according to the record of the proceedings) declared it would suffice if the
congress declared itself by majority to agree with the sense of the text. It is
difficult to gauge how much resonance Gerlachs motion found. On the one
hand, the proceedings note that [o]nly a small minority declared itself in the
vote for the motion by v. Gerlach, but the response to Stahls interpretation
that the rejection only concerned the suitability of the venue found general
agreement.10
Why had Gerlachs effort failed? Certainly his overreaching attempt to se-
cure a unanimous vote, followed by a backpedalling appeal for a majority, may

9 Wir glauben, [] da alle Obrigkeit, von Ihm als der hchsten Obrigkeit verordnet,
und mit einem Strahl und Abglanz Seiner Majestt begabt ist, zur Handhabung Seines
heiligen Gesetztes in der Menschheit und wie der Apostel lehrt, zur Rache ber die
belthter und zum Lob der Frommen. Wir gehorchen den Schwerdttrgern Gottes und
ehre sie, nicht als Knechte [in] der Furcht, sondern als Christen um des Gewissens willen.
Wir wissen aus Gottes Wort, da [] auch die wahre Freiheit uns zu Theil wird, nmlich
nicht aus dem Fleische, sondern aus Gott, [] und da daher Obrigkeit und Freiheit wohl
zusammenstimmen, und sich gegenseitig bedingen. Und eben dieses Wort lehrt uns, da
die uns nicht freimachen, sondern nur in Knechtschaft und Verderben strzen knnen,
welche Fleischesfreiheit predigen und selbst Knechte des Verderbens sind. Kling, Ver
handlungen, p. 46.
10 ihrer Majoritt nach mit dem Sinn des Antrages einverstanden, Nur eine geringe
Minoritt erklrt sich bei der Abstimmung fr den v. Gerlachschen Antrag, die Ableh-
nung betrfe blo die Angemessenheit der Kundgebung, and allgemeine Zustimmung.
Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 47.
200 chapter 5

have played a role. Perhaps many delegates worried about the way Stahl framed
Gerlachs motion. According to the protocol, Stahl asserted [] the motion
is by no means of a political nature, but from the field of Christian ethics,
[it, de] involves by no means a stepping beyond our territory. But the validated
consideration of the purpose is substantial, that public opinion not be need-
lessly challenged.11 Stahls concern about provoking a public backlash points
to his awareness of the intertextual connections between the ongoing religious
revival and the still unsettled outcome of the political revolution. It might be a
mistake to conclude that the delegates thought they had more rarified spiritual
and ecclesiastical issues to worry about than Gerlachs specific application of
Christian ethics to the revolution. Kreft, at least, notes the exaggerated sense
of fear of the uniquely revolutionary atmosphere that many delegates had in
1848, noting for example that the theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher
evoked a sense of impending suffering and even martyrdom:

[i]f the persecution becomes fierce, may it be certain for the weak spir-
ited to find roof and bread with secured brothers until the storm be over,
and may those fall on the field of battle who proceed toward a martyrs
death12 looking at wife and child be able to speak to all [].13

Given such an assessment, it is plausible that some delegates might not have
voted for Gerlachs motion out of a sense that its political bent might compro-
mise the more important spiritual and ecclesiastical mission. Another factor
for some may have been the simple and understandable concern to keep body
and soul together. Some may have also recalled Bethmann-Hollwegs words
from the previous day that [w]e are gathered here without legal power and
legal standing as individuals and concluded that there was little point in
a body without legal status passing a resolution sure to be controversial and
possibly very dangerous. Yet, when one compares the context of developments
in Catholic circles, Gerlachs failed motion seems less audacious than it may
first appear. While Gerlach failed to get a partly lay-led, Protestant movement

11 [] der Antrag sei keinesweges politischer Natur, sondern aus dem Gebiet der christ-
lichen Ethik, involvire also keinesweges eine Ueberschreitung unseres Bodens. Aber
gewichtig sei allerdings die geltend gemachte Rcksicht der Zweckmigkeit, da die
ffentliche Meinung nicht ohne Noth herausgefordert werde. Kling, Verhandlungen.
12 Wir sind hier versammelt ohne rechtliche Macht und rechtliches Ansehen als einzelne
[]. Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 1. Also cited in Kreft, Kirchtentage, p. 76.
13 wenn die Verfolgung hart wird, die in den kommenden Strmen Verzagten gewi sein
drften, bei den gesicherten Brdern Obdach und Brot zu finden, bis der Sturm vorber
wre, und die fallen auf dem Kampfplatz, die dem Mrtyrentode Entgegengehenden im
Blick auf Weib und Kind zu allen sprechen drften []. Cited in Kreft, Kirchtentage, p. 78.
Church Renewal 201

from below at Wittenberg to condemn the revolution, a conference of Cath-

olic bishops in Wrzburg, held just one month after Wittenberg, adopted a
stance similar to the one Gerlach advocated. Hellmut Diwald observes that in
a Catholic pastoral letter that built on the conference [] the bishops uncom-
promisingly committed themselves to the teaching of authority from God and
rejected all tendencies which implied a separation of church and state [].14
In the end, Gerlach had overreached, but the gamble was not irrational.
Perhaps the most famous result of the Wittenberg church congress of 1848
was beginning of what became the Internal Mission [Innere Mission]. It is
worth examining in detail the original call for the Internal Mission put forth by
Johann Hinrich Wichern. The Awakened Wichern, a theologian by training, was
already well known in northern Germany for his work with the Rauhes Haus in
Hamburg, which he had founded in 1833 and still administered, feeding, hous-
ing, and providing occupational instruction for desperately poor, orphaned
children in a Christian atmosphere. Wichern thus approached the rostrum in
Wittenberg in 1848 with a certain degree of moral gravitas. His impassioned
speech presented the Wittenberg congress with a pitiful picture of dechristian-
ization sweeping the German states (among others), leaving behind unmet
spiritual and social needs of vast and growing swathes of the population and
therefore setting the stage for the victory of Satan in the hearts of many, and
explaining the rapid outbreak and widespread nature of the revolution of 1848.
His solution was to build on the pure-hearted but scattered efforts of others to
rechristianize the population. For our purposes, the speech matters for at least
two reasons. First, it demonstrates, much in the way that remarks by Stahl,
Gerlach, and Hengstenberg did, how deeply many committed neo-Pietists saw
spiritual and political views as intertwined. Indeed, it is perhaps all the more
telling that even Wichern, who unlike Stahl and Gerlach attached little prior-
ity to seizing political momentum, nonetheless thought it vital to understand
the political causes and context of spiritual and ethical decline. Second, the
speech matters because it in fact led to the creation of an effectual, if not whol-
ly effective, answer to the pressing social question. It would be easier to dismiss
the political views of neo-Pietists if they had only expended rhetoric, but not
time and treasure, on the needs of the poor and the unchurched. The fact that
they were genuinely concerned with and made some considerable efforts to
meet those needs tells us something about the sincerity of their views. Even

14 [] bekannten sich die Bischfe rckhaltlos zu der Lehre von der Obrigkeit aus Gott und
lehten alle Tendenzen, die auf eine Trennung von Kirche und Staat hinausliefen, ab [].
Hellmut Diwald, Von der Revolution zum Norddeutschen Bund. Politik und Ideengut der
preuischen Hochkonservativen 18481866, vol. 1, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und
20. Jahrhunderts 46.1 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), p. 52.
202 chapter 5

though their conservative political views were self-interested, they were not
only self-interested, and their political views were only part, if an integral one,
of their holistic worldview.
Wicherns speech, like those of other participants such as Stahl and Gerlach,
was only recorded as part of a protocol. Since there was no word-for-word
stenographic record of the proceedings, we have only a mediated version of
Wicherns talk. Indeed, the issue of reliability is compounded in Wicherns case
by the fact that [t]he whole proposal of the speaker was improvised.15 Still,
the fact that the protocol keeper fretted that, The liveliness of the speech []
made it all the more difficult to reproduce it [the speech, de] in its original
form restores, ironically, a degree of trust in the reliability of the protocol.16
Wicherns remarks built on Bethmann-Hollwegs call for the Furthering of
Christian-social purposes, clubs, and institutions, in particular of the internal
Mission, in which he made clear that the popular Christianity belonged to the
internal Mission.17 Wichern argued that it was crucial [] that the church
undertake the internal Mission, not leaving the task to individuals, other
organizations, or scattered parishes acting alone.18 The proof, he said, lay in
the Revolution that had broken out in the meantime.19 We Germans had
become a nomadic people, as witnessed by the numberless throng of trav-
eling handworkers who had no home other than the hostels. As to the daily
existence of young, single men, whose mobility made them less familiar with
and less vulnerable to local controls and social norms, Wichern sketched a viv-
id picture of life in the hostels: Whoever knows the orgies of the heathens still
does not know what has happened and is happening. Here is prefigured the
essence of our modern revolutionary clubs in secret.20 As this quote hints, for
Wichern, as for Stahl, Gerlach, and other neo-Pietists, ethical, moral, and reli-
gious decline amounted to revolution against Gods expectations for humans,

15 Der ganze Vortrag des Redners war improvisirt. Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 68.
16 Die Lebendigkeit der Rede [] machte es um so schwieriger, sie in Protokoll in ihrer
ursprnglichen Gestalt wiederzugeben. Kling, Verhandlungen.
17 Frderung christlich-sozialer Zwecke, Vereine und Anstalten, insbesondere der inneren
Mission, indem er bemerklich macht, da das Volkschristenwesen in die innere Mission
gehre. Kling, Verhandlungen.
18 [] da die Kirche die innere Mission in die Hand nehmen mu. Kling, Verhandlungen.
19 inzwischen ausgebrochene Revolution, Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 69.
20 Wir Deutschen, ein nomadisches Volk, zahllose Menge, reisenden Handwerks-
burschen, and keine andere Heimath als die Herberge. Wer die Orgien des Heiden
thums kennt, kennt noch nicht, was da geschehen ist und geschieht. Hier ist das
Wesen unserer modernen revolutionren Klubs im Geheimen vorgebildet gewesen.
Kling, Verhandlungen.
Church Renewal 203

and such decline was in turn intertwined with political revolution, even to
what was characterized as the storm of the communist revolution of 1848.21
For Wichern, or at least Wichern as reported in the protocol, political revo-
lution was fundamentally and literally hellish. Describing what he saw as a
vast and partly secret conspiracy preceding the revolution, Wichern claimed
that [t]he seat of all of the more recent revolutionary endeavors, with their
execrable, Satanic agitations, are the workers clubs [Handwerkerklubs], whose
secret tendencies only the fewest recognized, even those among their board
members.22 Wicherns explanation of the origins of the revolution also ex-
tended to popular and elite culture. He cited what he identified as a popular
(and difficult to translate without loss) verse among Hamburg workers: Curse
God, the Dove,/To Whom we have in vain prayed in faith/In Whom we have in
vain hoped and abided,/He has tricked us and has stultified us.23 Likewise, he
assigned great blame to Young Germany [das junge Deutschland], which he
seems to have taken for a book rather than a broader literary movement, and
to philosophers such as Feuerbach: What newest development of philosophy
in Feuerbach, etc. brought to light with an ethical appendix our lowest rabble
had had and practiced for years. That is how one explains the revolution.24
In a word, then, the long ripened dechristianization of the people in all of its
classes helped explain why the revolutionary events could grow quickly as
though from long-prepared soil.25
Yet, Wichern felt called to love as well as condemn the revolutionary and de-
christianized rabble he described. Having already praised several parishes and
individuals for their work, Wichern also singled out the example of women as
a whole, the City Mission in London, and diverse efforts in the Netherlands,
France, and Switzerland.26 He further drew on the Pietist past for inspiration,

21 das Ungewitter der communistischen Revolution, Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 70.

22 Der Sitz aller neueren Revolutionsbestrebungen mit ihren fluchwrdigen satanischen
Whlereien sind die Handwerkerklubs, deren geheime Tendenzen die Wenigsten, selbst
unter den Vorstandsmitgliedern gekannt haben. Kling, Verhandlungen.
23 Fluch dem Gotte, dem Tauben,/Zu dem wir vergebens gebetet im Glauben,/Auf den wir
vergeblich gehofft und geharrt,/Er hat uns gesoppt und hat uns genarrt. Kling, Verhand
lungen, p. 70.
24 Was die neueste Entwickelung der Philosophie in Feuerbach, etc., ans Tageslicht ge-
bracht mit dem sittlichen Anhang, das hat unser unterster Pbel seit vielen Jahren gehabt
und ausgebt. Daraus erklrt sich die Revolution. Kling, Verhandlungen, p. 71.
25 der seit lange gereiften Entchristlichung des Volks in allen seinen Stnden and woraus
die revolutionren Ereignisse wie aus lang bereitetem Boden rasch hervorwachsen konn
ten. Kling, Verhandlungen.
26 Kling, Verhandlungen, pp. 7274.
204 chapter 5

reminding listeners of the heroic efforts of Spener and Francke. Yet, he was also
critical of the effect of these, his spiritual forebears, noting that [] it was a
misfortune that then and until the most recent days the activity of salvific love
has been thrown on the youth and the poor.27 Wichern called for a focus of all
members of society to combat the sin and injustice and the massive corrup-
tion that plagued the people.28
The numerous quotes above demonstrate the close interconnection that
Wichern saw between moral and ethical corruption on the one hand, and po-
litical revolution on the other. Of course, the protocol makes us qualify the
reliability of his words, but the fact that many more, similar quotes could be
excerpted from the text may give the reader some confidence that the protocol
successfully captures the gist of Wicherns speech. And yet, it is also clear that
Wichern recognized the necessity in the present of the church and state influ-
encing one another, and he therefore introduced an interesting reservation.
The protocol includes and in quotes, no less this telling passage:

Concerning the states relations he said, among other things: The Inter-
nal Mission absolutely has to deal with politics now and if it does not
work in this sense, the church will collapse with the state. Yet, it is not its
task to judge about the form of states nor to decide among political par-
ties, but that the citizens are filled with the Christian spirit, regardless of
the form of the state that must be one of its most serious concerns from
today onwards.29

The Wittenberg church congress of September 1848 led directly to the creation
of the Central Committee [Centralausschu] of the Internal Mission by Janu-
ary 1849. The Central Committees Program and Statutes, which explained its
purpose and organization, picked up where Wicherns nuanced note above had
left off. The program shows great fidelity to Wicherns protocoled speech at the

27 Aber ein Unglck war es, da damals und bis in die neueste Zeit die Thtigkeit der ret-
tenden Liebe vorzugsweise auf die Jugend und die Armen geworfen worden ist. Kling,
Verhandlungen, p. 75.
28 Snde und Ungerechtigkeit and massenhaften Verderben. Kling, Verhandlungen.
29 In Betreff der staatlichen Verhltnisse uerte er [Wichern, de] unter Anderem: Die in-
nere Mission hat es jetzt schlechterdings mit der Politik zu thun und arbeitet sie nicht in
diesem Sinne, so wird die Kirche mit dem Staate untergehen. Zwar ist ihre Aufgabe nicht
ber Staatsformen zu urtheilen und zwichen politischen Parteiungen als solche zu ent
scheiden, aber da die Staatsbrger mit dem christlichen Geiste erfllt werden, gleichviel
unter welcher Staatsform, das mu eine ihrer ernstesten Sorgen sein von heute an. Kling,
Verhandlungen.
Church Renewal 205

church congress, with one notable exception: there is a general lack of political
references, although these played a very important part in the church congress
speech. That is not to say that Program and Statutes is entirely devoid of politi-
cal speech. For instance, it begins by recalling [t]he world-shaking events of
the year 1848 and it portrays those left by the church as abandoned to the
worst influences of communism and atheism.30 But on the whole, writing for
a more general audience than the mostly like-minded who met in Wittenberg,
the Central Committee in presenting itself to the world portrayed its mission
in a much more purely spiritual light.
The Central Committee proclaimed its purpose as saving the Protestant
people [des evangelischen Volkes] from its spiritual and bodily need through
proclaiming the Gospel and reaching out a fraternal helping hand of Chris-
tian love.31 Far from intending to form a new church, the Central Committee
excluded from its mission converting the unbaptized or stealing sheep from
other confessions.32 Rather, its task encompasses only those areas of life that
the orderly offices of the Protestant [evangelischen] church is not in a position
to serve fully, so that it plays into their hands [].33 The Central Committee,
then, did not see itself as founding the Internal Mission, but rather that the
Internal Mission was experiencing through the coordinating work of the Cen-
tral Committee and its supporters a quite new awakening of life, that would
allow it to work on problems larger that the confines of individual parishes.34
The collaborative work for spiritual and physical regeneration in the whole
German Fatherland as well as in the German diaspora in Europe amounted to
what the Central Committee saw as a day [] of rebirth [].35
For our purposes, it is important to note two things about this rebirth. First,
the Central Committees leadership was stocked with the Awakened. Both its

30 Die welterschtternden Ereignisse des Jahres 1848, die kirchlich verlassenen, and den
schlimmsten Einflssen des Communismus und Atheismus ausgesetzt. Centralausschu
fr die innere Mission. Program und Statute (1849), 1 and 12, GStAPK, hai, Rep. 89, Nr.
23591, 3 and 7.
31 Zweck, die Rettung des evangelischen Volkes aus seiner geistlichen und leiblichen Noth
durch die Verkndigung des Evangeliums und die brderliche Handreichung der christli-
chen Liebe. Ibid., 10.
32 Ibid.
33 umfat nur diejenigen Lebensgebiete, welche die geordneten Aemter der evangelischen
Kirche mit ihrer Wirksamkeit ausreichend zu bedienen nicht im Stande sind, so da die
diesen in die Hnde arbeitet [], ibid.
34 Die innere Mission wird nicht erst heute geboren and eine ganz neue Erweckung des
Lebens, ibid., 3 and 4.
35 im gesammten deutschen Vaterlande and Ein [] Tag der Neugeburt, ibid., 9.
206 chapter 5

president (Bethmann-Hollweg) and its vice president (Stahl) were seasoned

neo-Pietists (other board members included Senfft von Pilsach and Wichern
himself, both prominent Awakened Protestants), and they were neo-Pietists of
a very particular political flavor. Both Bethmann-Hollweg and Stahl had helped
found the Kreuzzeitung the political split having not yet occurred between
them and we may reasonably infer that they saw no conflict between their
reactionary political intention to defeat the revolution and restore what they
saw as a healthy set of political views in the general population, and their reli-
gious intention to defeat the atheism and rationalism they saw as deeply wo-
ven into the most radical parts of the political revolution. There are elements
in this work that reflect the preoccupation evidenced in the Kreuzzeitung with
liberal ideology and rationalism. For example, the Program and Statutes re-
hashes much of the narrative about workers societies contributing to (as well
as being a victim of) the revolution. It illustratively references the masses of
the feared and yet for Christs sake to be loved proletariat [].36 This work
also shows a greater sensitivity to the context of massive urbanization and the
spread of new forms of labor, which overwhelmed and therefore robbed of
agency both the proletariat, namely in the big cities, and the individual par-
ishes that had tried and to a great extent failed to meet their needs (just think
of big cities!).37 In their political activity, the president and vice president of
the Central Committee never gave up judging and condemning the revolution-
ary attitudes and effect of certain groups, but here they also show the inten-
tion to reach out graciously and in Christian love to help meet the spiritual as
well as bodily needs of many of those they feared and condemned politically.
Nor were these spheres separate for them. Bethmann-Hollweg, for example,
writing to Hengstenberg in March 1849 could in one sentence both celebrate
his election to the First Chamber of the Prussian National Assembly and
discuss Wichern and an essay on the Internal Missions relationship to the
church [].38
A second point worth noticing is that the call by the numerous Awakened
figures on the Central Committee for an Awakening of life looks very familiar.
Who was better placed to critique the church for its failure to meet the needs
of large numbers of workers prior to 1848, in particular, than the neo-Pietists
who in large number had remonstrated against the church in the 1820s and

36 Ibid., 6.
37 die Masse des gefrchteten und doch um Christi willen zu liebenden Proletariats, na-
mentlich in den groen Stdten and man denke an groe Stdte! Ibid., 6 and 5.
38 ihr Verhltni zur Kirche []. Staatsbibliothek Berlin (Potsdamerstr.), Nachla Heng-
stenberg, Letter of 11 March 1849 from Bethmann-Hollweg.
Church Renewal 207

1830s for the churchs supposed failure to meet the spiritual needs of those in
spiritual slumber? There is an obvious parallel between the lives of the Awak-
ened (prior to the Awakening) and the lives of unchurched workers. This par-
allel might reasonably lead us to infer that when the leaders of the Central
Committee refer to feared workers as people they were still called to love for
Christs sake, they probably meant just that. Granted, the move was also in
their self-interest: helping workers refamiliarize themselves with the Gospel
and possibly even encouraging them to reenter the church would increase the
importance of the Union church that the once outcast Awakened now helped
lead, and it would likely decrease the support of workers for the revolution that
Awakened conservatives feared (and viewed as Satanic). But it is certainly a
plausible reading of the evidence that these Awakened leaders, once social and
political pariahs themselves, had a degree of genuine empathy for the socially
and politically marginalized in their era. Their religion allowed them to reach
out in ways their political ideology did not. There may be a vague reference to
this sort of interpenetration of religious and political spheres (and their con-
nections to still other spheres) in the Program and Statutes, which specifically
states that it [the Internal Mission, de] has as its peculiar field of work the
areas of life both in the state and immediately in the ecclesiastical and in the
generally ethical and social.39 An interpretation less sensitive to the expressed
intentions of the Awakened and to the dialectical influence of religion and
politics for many of them might come to a cruder conclusion, namely that the
charitable work of Internal Mission gave political reactionaries an ethical cam-
ouflage to conceal from some the primacy of crushing the revolution. I would
not support such a view. That arguably may have been the effect, but it the
Internal Mission reveals some praiseworthy motives of flawed, human leaders
rather than a more purely (and cynically) instrumentalized means to political
ends.
One might conceivably interpret the launching of this para-church organi-
zation as a parallel to and an improvement on the para-church conventicles.
The conventicles had arisen to meet the perceived need to deepen or awaken a
spirituality neglected population by a church with significant rationalist influ-
ence. Local responses to a larger problem, they had, as even many Awakened
had realized, led in some cases to unforeseen problems: conflict with orthodox
as well as rationalist elements in the state church, the Old Lutheran split, and
a generally defensive posture against the active elements of rationalist high

39 sowohl auf dem staatlichen und unmittelbar kirchlichen, als auf dem allgemein sittli-
chen und socialen Lebensgebiete hat sie [die innere Mission, de] ihr eigenthmliches
Arbeitsfeld. Ibid., 6.
208 chapter 5

culture and education. Having learned to think more globally, Awakened lead-
ers devised a larger para-church solution in the form of the Internal Mission.
To exaggerate a bit for effect, the Internal Mission might be seen as part of a
project to Pietize the Union church.
This is not to say that the Internal Mission met with universal acclaim in the
Union church, or even among Awakened leaders. Heinrich Leo, the historian,
camarilla member, and critical adherent of the Union church, who probably
represented a minority Awakened view, worried about the para-church nature
of the Internal Mission and its implied threat to the institutional authority of
the church. He observed that the root of the problem lay with the Reformation
itself, for in challenging the institutional authority of the church, Reformers
had tainted the well of institutional authority. As he put it, [] I perceive the
fundaments of the church as destroyed through the very way that the Refor-
mation carried out.40 In response to Hengstenbergs request for Leo to pen a
supportive article, then, he asked, How can I write something about the In-
ternal Mission, when on the one hand I am convinced it is a lost cause unless
the church makes it its own and on the other hand I have only half a heart for
this church which is supposed to take charge of it? That just wont do!41 Such
evidence provides a useful counterpoint to the strong support of the Prussian
government for the Internal Mission.
How did the Internal Mission function in practice? The Prussian govern-
ment provided some resources for the Internal Mission, but it depended to a
great extent on the efforts in individual parishes (and individuals and volun-
tary organizations within them), coordinated through the Central Committee.
In September 1849, Frederick William iv granted the sum of 20,000 Thaler for
the Internal Mission to work with, with the proviso that it use only the interest
and leave the corpus unmolested.42 The Internal Mission kept coming back
for more, as the files indicate repeated requests came to the king for a variety
of purposes. Bethmann-Hollweg, for example, noted that the king had been
in the habit of helping new and poor churches with the liturgy and other
objects devoted to the worship service, and he asked for similar support for

40 [] sehe ich doch gerade durch die art, wie die reformation in die hnde genommen
worden ist, den eigentlichen boden der kirche auch zerschlagen. Staatsbibliothek Berlin
(Potsdamerstr.), Nachla Hengstenberg, letter from Leo to Hengstenberg dated only 1851
by archivist. Leo rarely capitalized nouns in his letters.
41 Wie soll ich nun ber innere mission etwas schreiben, wenn ich einerseits die berzeu-
gung habe, sie sei eine verlorene sache auer die kirche bemchtige sich ihrer und an-
derer seits zu dieser kirche, die sich ihrer bemchtigen soll doch selbst nur ein halbes herz
habe? Das geht nicht! Ibid.
42 GStAPK, ha i, Rep. 89, Nr. 23591, 13a.
Church Renewal 209

a mission-affiliated minister for the workers at the great eastern rail station
[Ostbahn] in the region of Bromberg [].43 In Wittenberg itself, cradle of Lu-
ther and the Internal Mission, the Association for the Internal Mission wrote to
the king to report what they saw as good progress. They stated that [w]ith the
help of voluntary contributions of our fellow citizens we have almost eliminat-
ed begging of children and adults in the houses and streets by supporting the
truly poor with bread and money. A more sinister side was also in evidence:
The poor capable of work, however, we tried to find work for and therefore
have set up a compulsory plaiting and weaving workshop [Straf-Flechterei und
Weberei] with special help from the local city magistrate [].44
The case of the Parish Association [Parochial-Verein] for the Internal Mis-
sion at St. Peter-Paul in Stettin might serve as a good illustration of the kind
of work the Internal Mission carried out. In their first annual report (1853),
the Parish Association recalled the set of woes that had led to its founding.
These included homelessness, a lack of educational opportunities for children,
and a low rate of communion observance. A variety of charitable responses
was the result, many of which predated the 1848 Wittenberg church congress,
including the foundation of a school for small children in Grabow in 1846.45
The finances of the Association were divided into two categories, general char-
itable activities and the school. The general activities cost a little more than
186 Thaler. The lions share of the expenses went to cover the annual salary
of Br. Klemm (50 Thaler) and sundry expenses (33 Thaler) incurred by those
caring for others (Pfleger und Pflegerinnen). Most of what remained was spent
on help for rent and similar expenses (more than 14 Thaler), support for chil-
dren (more than 17 Thaler), the Rettungshaus for girls at Zachen (more than 8
Thaler), and establishing a knitting and sewing school at Kupfermhl (8 Thal-
er). Just 3 Thaler were spent on Christian publications [christliche Schriften].
Income to support these activities came from two sources: 50 Thaler came from
the citys administrators [Stadtverordnete], and 75 Thaler came from gifts and
contributions, mostly from monthly dues of the members of the association.

43 mit der Agende und andere dem Gottesdienste gewidmete Gegenstnde; Prediger fr
die Arbeiter an der groen Ostbahn [] in der Gegend von Bromberg [], ibid., 15a, let-
ter from Bethmann-Hollweg to Frederick William iv dated 31 March 1851.
44 Mit Hlfe freiwilliger Beitrge unserer Mitbrger haben wir die Haus- und Straenbett
lerei der Kinder und Erwachsenen fast gnzlich abgeschafft, indem wir die wirklich
Armen durch Brod und Geld untersttzen. Die arbeitsfhigen Armen aber suchten wir zu
beschftigen und haben deshalb eine Straf-Flechterei und Weberei unter besonderen Bei-
hlfe des hiesigen Stadtmagistrates errichtet []. Ibid., 19b, report of 9 December 1852.
45 Erster Bericht des Parochial-Vereins fr Innere Mission zu St. Peter-Paul in Stettin, 16
November 1853. Ibid., 37.
210 chapter 5

In addition, Dr. Bethe provided free medical care.46 Unfortunately, the expens-
es exceeded the income by more than 11 Thaler for this part of the budget.
On the other hand, there was a decent profit from the school for small chil-
dren. The expenses of the school for small children were a little more than
66 Thaler, of which 63 Thaler were the salary for the teacher and rent for the
facility, with the small remainder going to pay those providing wood and to
purchase toys. The income of more than 118 Thaler came overwhelmingly from
merchants in Stettin (106 Thaler), with most of the remainder coming from
a judges donation, collections from Bible study groups [Bibelstunden], and
donations collected from another voluntary society. Only a little more than
7 Thaler came from school fees successfully collected.47
Expenses are not necessarily a good proxy for time or effort invested, but the
expenses of the Parochial Association in Stettin indicate a preoccupation with
the perceived needs of the population to attain education, learn marketable
skills, and escape some of the most pressing problems of poverty, such as the
inability to pay rent. Relatively little money went into obviously spiritual activ-
ities, although one might safely assume that religion and spirituality were not
absent from any of the activities supported by the Association, such as the two
schools. The Central Committee itself certainly tried vigorously to promote a
revival of religious activities through the Internal Mission. For instance, in 1855
it sent instructions to its many sub-societies and agents to encourage reading
and reflecting on the Bible, identifying as an actual task of the Internal Mis-
sion of our German Protestant [evangelischen] church to work so that every-
where among us the habit of reflecting on and living the Bible again obtains
or is newly established []. It also encouraged the spread of other texts that
would help the general introduction of Biblical house devotionals.48
How successful was the Internal Mission? It certainly did not solve the so-
cial question; nor, for that matter, did it arrest and permanently reverse the
drift of many Germans, especially those in the working classes, away from
the church. It is even conceivable that the conservative political ideology and
Awakened religious fervor of some of its leaders may have made both the

46 Geschenke und Beitrge, grtentheils durch monatliche Gaben der Vereinsmitglieder

[]. Ibid., 38.
47 Ibid., 38b.
48 [] die Aufgabe der inneren Mission unserer deutschen evangelischen Kirche ist, da-
hin zu wirken, da berall unter uns Bibelsitte und Bibelleben wieder herrschend oder
neu gegrndet werde [] and [] fr die allgemeine Einfhrung der biblischen Haus-
Andachten diene. Acten des Centralausschusses fr die innere Mission in der deutschen
evangelischen Kirche. File: adw, ca, H 5 (Hausgottesdienste 1851/55). Document H5/1,
dated 20 February 1855.
Church Renewal 211

church and the Internal Mission less attractive to large numbers of workers
(and not only the very small but growing subset of socialist workers) and to
liberals alike. It would indeed have been shocking if the Internal Mission had
solved the social question, as no other regime, church, or group in industrializ-
ing Europe managed to do so. But in some ways, the Internal Mission could be
considered a success. Though it still failed to reach large parts of the masses
it aimed to reach, it did reach some although here one must hasten to add
that in some cases of aid to the working poor there could be a doubtlessly
unwelcome compulsory element, and even a coercive labor regime. In that all
voluntary charity is also good for (and in a metaphysical sense perhaps bet-
ter for) the donors, the Internal Mission benefited donors and volunteers as
well, keeping them engaged with individuals and social groups they otherwise
might have found it easy to neglect and become further alienated from. As
a concept, too, the Internal Mission was an interesting innovation. In an era
before the welfare state, it represented a blend of state, church, and individual
effort. It was a public-private venture that, while ultimately not successful in
solving the social question, may have contributed indirectly through its very
limitations and failures to the eventual emergence of the welfare states greater
ability to mobilize resources for social improvements.
As indicated earlier, I would not argue that the Internal Mission was merely
an instrumental means to the end of advancing the political agenda of those
Awakened conservative leaders such as Gerlach, Stahl, Bethmann-Hollweg,
and Hengstenberg. It was instead a further reflection of a worldview they re-
garded as unified, a worldview based on the notion that God had ordained
Christians to achieve complete, true freedom. It was a natural consequence
of that freedom to use it to glorify God in the political sphere by affirming the
supposedly God-given institutions and organically developed traditions and
laws that supported freedom, as well as in the religious sphere by voluntarily
striving toward a closer union of will with God, through private devotionals,
engaged participation in church, and active charity. With that said, the out-
come of these charitable activities organized through the Internal Mission did
serve their self-interest, too, since charity brought some closer to the orbit of
a church increasingly influenced by the Awakened, and it may have lessened
their affinity for different notions of freedom based on appeals to classical lib-
eral (or even democratic) ideas about the centrality of self-determination and
popular sovereignty.
The reformist sparks of Wittenberg had a chance to catch fire in an insti-
tutional reorganization of all German Protestants, but the sparks only pro-
duced smolder. Bethmann-Hollweg and Stahl had been authorized to chair a
standing committee that might advance the project of a Kirchenbund, and the
212 chapter 5

eventual result was the biannual Erfurt Conference [Erfurter Konferenz].49

But since the Landeskirchen insisted on the preservation of their traditional
independence, the conference was limited in its potential. As Ernst Rudolf
and Wolfgang Huber observed, the first meeting of the conference in 1852
(following a preparatory meeting in Eisenach in 1851) coincided with the wan-
ing of enthusiasm for political German unification.50 At least the creation of a
newspaper kept alive some momentum for greater cohesion and unity.

Selected Constitutional Changes in the Role of the Church(es)

Between 1847 and 1850, the relationship of the Union church to the Prussian
state was transformed. As we have seen in Chapter 2, prior to 1848 the Union
church was a state church. It was the official, established state church, and
it was also subordinated to the sovereign state, technically a subset of the
states bureaucratic organization with the king as its head. Perhaps the most
momentous change in this status was that by the end of 1850, the Union
church was now separated from the institutions of the state, but more im-
mediately than before connected with the king as the summus episcopus.51
As Ernst Rudolf Huber has noted, the result of the changes over these years
was that overcoming state absolutism through the modern constitutional state
initially [proceeded, de] hand in hand with establishing ecclesiastical absolut
ism in the landesherrlichen Kirchenregiment now completely freed from state
control [] (emphasis in original).52 This state of affairs lasted until a further
reform in 1873,53 and the path from 1847 state absolutism to the ecclesiastical

49 Ernst Rudolf Huber and Wolfgang Huber, eds., Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.
Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts, vol. 2 (Berlin: Duncker and
Humblot, 1976), p. 293.
50 Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche [1976], p. 294.
51 [] war jetzt zwar von den Staatseinrichtungen getrennt, aber unmittelbarer als bisher
mit dem Knig als Summus Episcopus verbunden. Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung,
p. 418.
52 berwindung des staatlichen Absolutismus durch den modernen Verfassungsstaat
zunchst Hand in Hand mir der Aufrichtung des kirchlichen Absolutismus in dem nun
von der staatlichen Kontrolle gnzlich befreiten landesherrlichen Kirchenregiment [].
Emphasis in original. Ernst Rudolf Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 4, pp. 836 and 837.
Cited in Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 418. The move toward absolutism paral-
leled developments in the governance of the Catholic church in roughly the same era.
53 See Theodor Woltersdorf, Zur Geschichte und Verfassung der evangelischen Landeskirche
in Preuen (Greifswald: L. Bamberg, 1891), pp. 199224.
Church Renewal 213

absolutismof 1850 was anything but direct. Like the larger Prussian constitu-
tional evolution of which it was a part, the Union churchs constitutional de-
velopment was a contested work-in-progress. Because Awakened leaders had a
large stake in the outcome of the churchs constitution and its relationship to
the state, it will be worth paying some attention to a few of the twists and turns
that led to the outcome of 1850.
As we will see, the discussion about the proper relationship of the Union
church to the state helped to cause a fracture among Awakened leaders. The
split occurred at about the same time as a controversy over other aspects of
constitutional and legal changes in Prussia. By 1851, at the latest, there was no
healing of the political rift. On one side stood several notable leaders, includ-
ing Stahl and Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, who continued to work together po-
litically (as the leaders of the Kreuzzeitung party) and in publishing, as well.
On the other side stood Moritz-August von Bethmann-Hollweg (who emerged
as a leader of the political Bethmann-Hollweg party or Wochenblatt party)
and others. Bethmann-Hollweg broke with the Kreuzzeitung he had helped
to found and, with the help of some fellow-travelers, eventually established
the Preuisches Wochenblatt in 1851. Yet, despite the very real political rift, we
should not overlook the fact that in more purely spiritual and religious matters,
these neo-Pietists still mostly saw eye-to-eye. Their deep ideological differenc-
es did not prevent Bethmann-Hollweg and Stahl, for example, from continuing
to play leading roles throughout the 1850s in the development of the Internal
Mission.
The interrelated questions of the best form of a relationship between the
Union church and the Prussian state, and of the best form of governance with-
in the Union church, remained contentious issues. As we found earlier, a fun-
damental fault line lay in the tension between the presbyterial form of church
organization prevalent in Prussias western provinces (especially in those it
gained after 1815) and the episcopal form of church governance prevalent in
its eastern (and mostly core historical territories) ones. This fault line cor-
responded loosely to the significant impact of Calvinist ideas about church
governance (even in predominantly Lutheran areas) in the west, and Lutheran
conceptions in the east. It also loosely corresponded to western areas in which
aristocrats were somewhat weaker, somewhat more likely to adopt capital-
ist approaches, had less sway over peasants control of their labor, and had
more influence from the French revolutions ideas and laws; and eastern areas
in which aristocrats (notably the Junker, but other sorts of aristocrats as well)
were politically stronger, less attracted to some capitalist reforms, had greater
sway over their peasants labor prior to the French revolution, and had served
as early centers of negative views about the French revolutions ideas and laws.
214 chapter 5

As we found earlier, the Prussian government had adopted a pragmatic

stance toward church governance, letting the mostly western areas have a
more presbyterial and the eastern areas a more episcopal governance struc-
ture, reflecting the fault lines described above. Yet, the episcopal structure re-
tained pride of place and influence in the overall church governance structure.
This pragmatic approach carried certain dangers, too. As we also found, many
pre-1848 liberals and conservatives saw a parallel between the presbyterial or-
der, with its greater scope for lay-led movement from below, and the episco-
pal order, with its greater emphasis on hierarchy. The issue of the best kind of
church governance was important for all sides for purely religious and spiritual
reasons, but also connected in obvious ways to the possibility of greater politi-
cal influence from below as well as the value and basis for hierarchy. As such,
issues of church governance also had implications for forging greater national
unity, as well, especially after 1837.54
These issues had lost none of the importance and hierarchy connected to
them immediately after the revolution of 1848. Faced with the introduction
of the presbyterial-synodal order and the establishment of an Oberkonsisto
rium (supreme consistory) as co-equal demands by the Berlin General Synod
of 1846, Frederick Willian iv chose a path of confrontation, decreeing on 28
January 1848 only the establishment of the Oberkonsistorium.55 But the revo-
lution superseded the kings plans. Following the March revolution, the new
Oberkonsistorium met precisely once, on 11 April. In those heady days when it
briefly appeared the king had capitulated to the revolution, the Oberkonsito
rium called for a constitution to be created through the churchs own deed,
and it promptly disbanded.56
The Evangelische Kirchenzeitung wasted little time responding to this call
for a new constitution, linking the call explicitly to the political revolution and
the presumably inevitable democratic constitution that would be drafted for
Prussia, and warning its readers of the dangers of betraying the divine mission
of the church. The day after the Oberkonsistoriums message, the Kirchenzei
tung advised readers about the best form of a political constitution, reminding
readers that It is clearly written, that authority has been ordained by God and

54 See J.F. Gerhard Goeters, Nationalkirchliche Tendenzen und Landeskirchen. Gustav

-Adolf-Verein und Berliner Kirchenkonferenz (1846), in geku, p. 334.
55 Einfhrung der presbyterial-synodalen Ordnung und die Errichtung eines Oberkonsisto-
riums als gleichberechtigte Forderungen and am 28. Januar 1848 nur die Errichtung des
Oberkonsistoriums. Sander, Die oktoyierte Verfassung, p. 402.
56 aus der eigenen That der Kirche []. Citation from the Allegemeine Preuische Zeitung,
Nr. 116, 27 April 1848, reproduced in Woltersdorf, p. 72ff., and cited by Sander, Die ok-
toyierte Verfassung, p. 405.
Church Renewal 215

has power over [its] subjects. The paper pointedly referred readers to the Bible:
Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what
God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.57
Four days after the Oberkonsistoriums call, the Kirchenzeitung weighed in on
the likely result of making a new constitution for the church. It announced
that the commission newly created by the Ministry was tasked with writing in
the shortest time the draft of a so-called presbyterial- and synodal order. The
paper claimed that to fill the seats on the commission,

[o]ne will drag the old rationalist remnants in the administrative bodies
into the light again, and these will develop all the more valor the longer
they have temporized. One will above all seek out the sparse students of
Schleiermacher [], and associate with them the leading voices of the
usual rationalism and, if there is a need to and the Gottesstimme of the
people, even an Uhlich.58

The Kirchenzeitung baited its readers by claiming that [i]t would be foolish if
we wanted to continue the fight against a democratic constitution because
that fight was based on the no longer valid foundation that the government
[Regiment] of the church was animated with a more ecclesiastical spirit than
the masses.59

57 Es steht klar geschriben, da die Obrigkeit von Gott verordnet ist und Gewalt ber die
Unterthanen hat and Wer sich nun wider die Obrigkeit setzet, der widerstrebet Gottes
Ordnung: die aber widerstreben, werden ber sich ein Urtheil empfangen in Die beste
Staatsverfassung, ekz, 12 April 1848, Nr. 31, col. 272. The biblical citation references
Romans 13:2. niv translation provided above.
58 in krzester Zeit den Entwurf einer sogenannten Presbyterial- und Synodalordnung.
Man wird die alten rationalistischen berbleibsel in den Behrden wieder ans Licht
hervorziehen und diese werden jetzt um so mehr Heldenmuth entwickeln, je mehr sie
bis hahin temporisirt hatten. Man wird vor Allem die wenig zahlreichen Schler Schlei-
ermachers von einiger Begabung aufsuchen, und ihnen die Stimmfhrer des gewhnli-
chen Rationalismus, wenn es seyn mu und die Gottesstimme des Volkes es gebietersich
verlangt, sogar einen Uhlich beigesellen. ekz, Zeitbetrachtungen, 15 April 1848, Nr. 31,
col. 273. Regarding Uhlich, see Heinrich Eltester, ber die amtlichen Verhandlungen betref
fend Prediger Uhlich zu Magdeburg (Berlin: Mller, 1847). Robert Bigler describes Uhlich
as the main representative of those rationalist pastors that still hoped that their aims
could be realized within the state church. Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, p. 222.
He points out (p. 223) that the ekz had already accused Uhlich in 1846 of not adhering
to his clerical oath because of his involvement with the Friends of Light [Lichtfreunde].
59 Es wre thricht, wenn wir diese Bekmpfung jetzt noch fortsetzen wollten, de-
mokratische Verfassung, and beruhte auf Grundlagen, die jetzt nicht mehr vorhanden
216 chapter 5

How could one combat a rationalist takeover of the church as part of a politi-
cized revolution? The Kirchenzeitung counseled its audience not to resign from
such a church, but to turn the rationalist-revolutionaries own weapons against
them. If the pious quit a church led by rationalist usurpers, [o]ne spares them
in this way the breakthrough they would otherwise have to achieve by remov-
als from office, which would cause them to deny the principle of equal rights
of different directions within the church so vigorously defended by them.60
The correct course of action, then, was to fight the rationalists politicization
of the church with active involvement of the pious in combatting the revolu-
tion. As the paper put it, [t]he members of the church in our time are not only
called to carry the actual affairs of the church in their hearts, [but] they should
also make those of the state the objects of their prayers and activities.61 To
dispel the misconception of separate religious and political spheres, the paper
argued that [i]t is obvious that the contrasts which now stand opposed to one
another have an ethical-religious root, that the victory of the bad party would
at the same time be a severe defeat for the church [].62
Stranger things have happened in revolutions, so one should perhaps not
entirely dismiss the Kirchenzeitungs fear of a rationalist cabal contriving
structures of church governance that the paper perceived as antithetical to
the churchs mission. But these fears seem rather overdone even for the rev-
olutionarily fluid days of March and April. Even if such a cabal had existed
and advanced the agenda feared by the Kirchenzeitung, it seems unlikely that
Adalbert von Ladenberg, who served as Kultusminister from 1848 through 1850,
would have allowed a rationalist takeover of the church. Ladenbergs views
were very similar to those of the Awakened Bethmann-Hollweg, both from a
religious standpoint and also from a political one. While the Kirchenzeitung
was skeptical of the political views of many from the western provinces, it
acknowledged many with such suspect politics otherwise had living, vibrant
faith. While Ladenberg assumed the role of Kultusminister only in July, and

sind, beruhte darauf, da das Regiment der Kirche von einem kirchlicheren Geiste beseelt
war als die Masse. ekz, Zeitbetrachtungen, 15 April 1848, Nr. 31, col. 274.
60 Man erspart ihnen auf diese Weise die berwindung, die es ihnen doch immer kosten
mu, durch Absetzungen das frher von ihnen so lebhaft vertheidigte Princip der glei-
chen Berechtigung der verschiedenen Richtungen zu verlugnen. Ibid., col. 275.
61 Die Glieder und Diener der Kirche sind in einer Zeit wie die unsrige nicht blo berufen,
die eigentlich kirchlichen Angelegenheiten auf dem Herzen zu tragen, sie sollen auch die
des Staates zum Gegenstande ihrer Gebete und Bemhungen machen. Ibid., col. 277.
62 Es liegt am Tage, da die Gegenstze, die sich dort jetzt gegenberstehen, eine sittlich re-
ligise Wurzel habe, da der Sieg der schlechten Partei zugleich eine schwere Niederlage
fr die Kirche sein wrde []. Ibid.
Church Renewal 217

even then only in an initially provisional fashion, he was a powerful voice in

the government, and one that would not have been easily fooled by radicals.
On the other hand, the fact that Ladenberg was known as an advocate of intel-
lectual openness and independence for precisely the sort of rationalist acade-
micians which the Kirchenzeitungs writers may have had in mind would have
made them quite uneasy.
In any event, Ladenberg ultimately adopted an approach toward the new
church governance first advocated in June by the Kirchenzeitung.63 On 10
June, the paper noted the absurdity of the fact that [] in the same moment,
in which without any preparation the separation of church and state is pro-
nounced, in glaring contradiction with this announcement a new connection
of the church administration with the state government is introduced [].64
The Kirchenzeitung therefore called for the

undiminished temporary continuation of the consistorial constitution,

for which as necessary to relieve the religious state minister of this func-
tion a supreme consistory as central agency belongs, which, independent
of the constitutional state government, on the one hand is in an immedi-
ate relationship with the king and on the other hand is superior to the
consistories in their ordered bounds.65

This proposal amounted to a fundamental change in the throne-altar alliance.

The king was to remain the head of the church, and the Kirchenzeitungs writ-
ers hoped mightily that he would remain the head of the Prussian government
as its God-given authority, but the proper links between the government and
the church administration would be severed. The result would break with
the practice of many decades. Since 1808, in the turmoil following Prussias
defeat and near dissolution at the hands of Napoleon, the Prussian state had

63 Cf. Sander, Die oktroyierte Vergassung, p. 407.

64 [] in demselben Momente, in welchem ohne alle Vorbereitung die Trennung der Kirche
vom Staate ausgesprochen wird, im grellsten Widerspruche mit dieser Ankndigung eine
neue Verbindung der Kirchenverwaltung mit der Staatsregierung praktisch eingefhrt
wird []. ekz, ber die Stellung der Kirchenbehrden in den preuischen Landen bis
zur neuen Kirchenverfassung, 10 June 1848, Nr. 47, col. 443.
65 [] ungeschmlerte einstweilige Fortdauer der Consistorialverfassung, wozu nothwen-
dig unter Entbindung des geistlichen Staatsministers von dieser Funktion ein Ober-
Consistoriumals Central-Instanz gehrt, ein Ober-Konsistorium, welches, unabhngig
von dem constitutionellen Staatsregimente, einerseits in unmittelbare Beziehung mit
dem Knige tritt, andererseits den Consistorien in den geordneten Schranken vorgesetzt
ist. Ibid., col. 444.
218 chapter 5

subordinatedthe church administration to the state. It had, in Fritz Fischers

words, in 1808 dissolved its institutions and completely absorbed it in the
states administration [].66
The octroyed constitution of December 1848, however, changed far more
than Awakened leaders had hoped for. Article 12 officially recognized two
churches and a host of religious associations, but the more important aspect
was that it guaranteed total religious freedom, establishing what contempo-
raries called the parity of all religions. It declared that [t]he Evangelical
[evangelische] and Roman Catholic church, as every other religious association,
orders and administers its affairs independently and remains in the possession
and enjoyment of the institutions, foundations, and funds for its cultural, edu-
cational, and charitable purposes. Article 14 set forth that [a] special law will
be passed concerning church patronage and the conditions under which the
same shall be rescinded. Article 15 added that [t]he right due to the state to
propose, elect, or confirm the allocation of church positions is rescinded.67
Article 12 presented a central challenge to Awakened leaders, with its bold
move to religious parity, which Bethmann-Hollweg tended to favor, while
Stahl, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Hengstenberg (and others in their fac-
tion) viewed it more critically. Articles 14 and 15 were a particular challenge
to those who during the early days of the Awakening had benefited from the
right of Awakened aristocrats to name the local church minister, a practice that
had contributed to the spread and institutionalization of the Awakening. They
were also a challenge to either those who hoped the king and aristocrats would
continue to play such a role, or those who were more concerned with shoring
up the privileges of the aristocratic estate [Stand] and/or the royal prerogative.
Awakened leaders responded in different ways to such challenges pre-
sented by the 1848 Prussian constitution. While Bethmann-Hollweg was more
positive about the constitution in general and the new role of the church in

66 [] ihre Organe aufgelst und sie gnzlich in die Staatsverwaltung eingegliedert [].
Fischer, Bethmann-Hollweg, p. 311.
67 Article 12: Die evangelische und die rmisch-katholische Kirche, so wie jede andere Re-
ligionsgemeinschaft, ordnet und verwaltet ihre Angelegenheiten selbststndig und bleibt
im Besitz und Genu der fr ihre Kultus-, Unterrichts- und Wohlttigkeitszwecke be
stimmten Anstalten, Stiftungen, und Fonds. Article 14: ber das Kirchenpatronat und
die Bedingungen, unter welchen dasselbe aufzuheben, wird ein besonderes Gesetz erge-
hen. Article 15: Das dem Staate zustehende Vorschlags-, Wahl- oder Besttigungsrecht
bei Besetzung kirchlicher Stellen ist aufgehoben. Reproduced in Ernst Rudolf Huber, ed.,
Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 18031850, 2nd ed. of Quellen zum Staatsrecht der Neuzeit,
vol. 1, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961),
p. 385.
Church Renewal 219

particular, many in the Kreuzzeitung faction worried. In his Kreuzzeitung

assessment of The 5th of December, referring to the 1848 constitution,
Gerlach recognized the dangers that arise from the measures of 5 December,
but he welcomed the fact that those dangers [] should rather awaken us to
the now unavoidable battles.68 He seized the chance to condemn [t]he false
teachings of pseudo-constitutionalism and the absurd principle of count-
ing heads. Pugnacious as always, Gerlach refused to complain [] that we
must wage war. For battles, external and internal, are masterclasses for the
nations.69
In private, however, Gerlach evidenced a more nuanced and a more nega-
tive view of the constitution. In a letter to his brother Leopold, Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach confided that

[m]y article The 5th of December is too fine written under your and
the general Potsdam influence, it reproduces my true, very gloomy and
torn sentiments very incompletely. Perhaps one has to write that way
now, but from that it does not follow that I [emphasis in the original, de]
have to write that way.70

A few days later, the nuance was gone, and the best defense he could muster
was [t]his constitutional charter is the legally issued constitution at hand, as
terrible as it is.71
Changes in the constitutional status of the church(es) in Prussia were
connected to similar changes for a future German state hammered out in

68 Gefahren, die aus den Maregeln des 5. Dezember hervorstehen and [] sollen uns
vielmehr aufwecken zu den nun unvermeidlichen Kmpfen. npz, Beilage, 10 Dec. 1848,
col. 2.
69 Die Irrlehren des Pseudo-Consitutionalismus, das absurde Princip der Kopfzahl, and
[] da wir Krieg fhren mssen. Denn Kmpfe, uere und innere, sind die Lehrstun-
den der Nationen. Ibid.
70 Mein Artikel Der 5. Dezember ist zu fein, unter Deinem und berhaput Potsdamer
Einflu geschrieben gibt er meine wahren, sehr gedrckten und zerrissenen Empfindun-
gen sehr unvollkommen wieder. Vielliecht mu jetzt so geschrieben werden, aber daraus
folgt noch nicht, da ich so schreibe. Letter to Leopold von Gerlach, dated Magdeburg, 11
December 1848. Reproduced in Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2, p. 614.
71 Diese Konstitutionsurkunde ist die vorhandene, gesetzlich vereinbarte Verfassung
des Landes, so scheulich sie auch ist. Letter to Leopold von Gerlach, dated Potsdam,
18December 1848. Reproduced in Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2, p. 616.
220 chapter 5

Frankfurt. Paragraphs 144151 of Article v of Section vi of the Frankfurt consti-

tution would have created a uniform and bold set of changes.72 These included
full freedom of faith and conscience (144) for the individual; full civil rights
regardless of religious confession (146); the provision that [e]very religious
association orders and administers its own affairs independently but remains
subject to the general laws of the state and that [n]o religious association en-
joys privileges from the state before others; moreover there is no state church
(147); and the sole legal validity of marriage is through the state rather than
the church (150). At the second church congress in Wittenberg in September
1849, Stahl and Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach weighed in. According to the Witten-
berg protocol, Stahl declared that the most recent constitutional charters, the
Prussian, the [one, de] intended for the German Reich, the newer legislation
of other individual German states [] amounted to a renunciation [Lossa
gung] of the state from Christianity.73 For Stahl, the church should view this

72 144. Jeder Deutsche hat volle Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit.

Niemand ist verpflichtet, seine religise berzeugung zu offenbaren.
145. Jeder Deutsche ist unbeschrnkt in der gemeinsamen huslichen und ffentli-
chen bung seiner Religion.
Verbrechen und Vergehen, welche bei Ausbung dieser Freiheit begangen werden,
sind nach dem Gesetze zu bestrafen.
146. Durch das religise Bekenntni wird der Genu der brgerlichen und staats-
brgerlichen Rechte weder bedingt noch beschrnkt. Den staatsbrgerlichen Pflichten
darf dasselbe keinen Abbruch thun.
147. Jede Religionsgesellschaft ordnet und verwaltet ihre Angelegenheiten selbst-
stndig, bleibt aber den allgemeinen Staatsgesetzen unterworfen.
Keine Religionsgesellschaft geniet vor andern Vorrechte durch den Staat; es besteht
fernerhin keine Staatskirche.
Neue Religionsgesellschaften drfen sich bilden; einer Anerkennung ihres Bekennt-
nisses durch den Staat bedarf es nicht.
148. Niemand soll zu einer kirchlichen Handlung oder Feierlichkeit gezwungen
werden.
149. Die Formel des Eides soll knftig lauten: So wahr mir Gott helfe.
150. Die brgerliche Gltigkeit der Ehe ist nur von der Vollziehung des Civilactes ab-
hngig; die kirchliche Trauung kann nur nach der Vollziehung des Civilactes stattfinden.
Die Religionsverschiedenheit ist kein brgerliches Ehehinderni.
151. Die Standesbcher werden von den brgerlichen Behrden gefhrt.
Reproduced in Ernst Rudolf Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte,
vol. 1, pp. 31920, and http://verfassungen.de/de/de06-66/verfassung48-i.htm. Download-
ed 12 November 2014.
73 [] die neuesten Verfassungsurkunden, die preuische, die fr das beabsichtigte
deutsche Reich, die neuere Gestezgebung andrer einzelner Staaten Deutschlands [].
Die Verhandlungen der zweiten Wittenberger Kirchensammlung fr Grndung einse
Church Renewal 221

renunciation, this Indifferentism, as an oppression of the Christian faith and

as a profanation of the state, [] as a calamity for the church and a grave debt
of the nation towards a Christian population.74 To forestall the revolutions
victory, Stahl recommended that the church restrict its promotion for the re-
tention of the Christian character in public institutions, and for now to make
no attempt to remove the personal equality of all citizens.75
Unsurprisingly, the protocol records that Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach mostly
supported Stahls position, but he reminded his listeners not to concede that
the revolution had already permanently and irrevocably accomplished a sepa-
ration of church and state. Writing five months after Frederick William had
rejected the offer of a crown from Frankfurt and just two months after revolu-
tionaries had surrendered the fortress at Rastatt, he asserted that the revolu-
tion is vanquished, the governments stand fast again on their own feet.76 Since
the revolution had been defeated, he urged the audience to call its bluff on the
issue of separation, saying the separation of state and church is such a sup-
posed fact which we cannot concede to the revolution. To do so would play
into the hands of Christianitys enemies, whose final goal was communism
and atheism.77
Such positions were echoed in the run-up to the revised constitution of
1850. As far as issues concerning the church, there were no further negative
revisions for the Kreuzzeitung faction. In fact, as Huber and Huber note,

[i]n important questions the revised constitution represented a conser-

vative corrective of the octroyed constitution. This can be seen especial-
ly in the guarantee of Christian state institutions (Art. 14 of the revised

Deutschen evangelischen Kurchenbundes im September 1849 (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1849),

pp. 1112.
74 Indifferentismus; Indifferentismus als eine Bedrckung fr den christlichen Glauben
und als eine Profanation fr den Staat, [] als eine Kalamitt fr die Kirche und einer
christlichen Bevlkerung gegenber als eine schwere Verschuldung der Nation. Ibid.,
pp. 16 and 14.
75 ihre Bewerbung auf die Erhaltung des christlichen Charakters in den ffentlichen In-
stitutionen zu beschrnken, und zunchst keinen Versuch zu machen, da auch jene
persnliche Gleichstellung aller Staatsbrger beseitigt werde. Ibid., p. 16.
76 Die Revolution sei besiegt, die Regierungen stnden wieder fest auf ihren Fen. Ibid.,
p. 17.
77 Trennung von Staat und Kirche sei eine solche angebliche Thatsache, die wir der Revolu-
tion nicht einrumen drfen and [] Kommunismus und Atheismus das Endziel der
Feinde des Christentums Ibid., p. 17.
222 chapter 5

constitution), which originated in the proposals of First Chamber repre-

sentatives Ferdinand Walter and Julius Stahl.78

For example, the controversial Article 12 from the 1848 constitution was ad-
opted unchanged (as Article 15) in the 1850 constitution. Of perhaps equal
importance for Awakened leaders were Articles 12 and 14 of the 1850 constitu-
tion. Article 12 of the 1850 constitution represented a slightly changed Article
11 of the constitution of 1848. That Article 11 had granted (in part) that The
freedom of religious confession, unification in religious societies (Art. 28 and
29) and the common public practice of religion is guaranteed. Enjoyment of
civic and civil rights is independent of religious confession [].79 But Article
12 of the 1850 constitution repeated these words and widened the freedom for
common domestic and public practice of religion [emphasis added, de].80
These articles only served to further divide church and state. Worse, still, for
conservatives was the practical legal application of Art. 12. Ernst Rudolf Huber
notes that notably the dominant teaching even understood Art. 12 as a limit
on legislation, while it recognized the other basic rights only as a limit on ad-
ministration and jurisdiction.81
While such an approach was consistent with Bethmann-Hollwegs views,
neither the king nor the Hengstenberg-Gerlach-Stahl faction found it easy to
accept the renunciation of the states responsibility to promote good religion
for the benefit of its citizens. Nor, it must be added, did conservatives in many

78 In wichtigen Fragen stellte die revidierte Verfassung eine conservative Korrektur der
oktroyieren Verfassung dar. Dies zeigte sich besonders in der Garantie der chirstlichen
Staatseinrichtungen (Art. 14 rev. Verfassung), die auf Vorschlge der Abgeordneten der Er-
sten Kammer Ferdinand Walter und Friedrich Juilius Stahl zurckging. Huber and Huber,
Staat und Kirche [1976], vol. 2, p. 35. Hartmut Sander also cites Huber and Hubers views in
Sander, Die oktoyierte Verfassung, p. 413.
79 Die Freiheit des religisen Bekenntnisses, der Vereinigung zu Religionsgesellschaften
(Art. 28 und 29) und der gemeinsamen ffentlichen Religions-bung wird gewhrleistet.
Der Genu der brgerlichen und staatsbrgerlichen Rechte ist unabhngig von dem
religisen Bekenntnisse []. Verfassungsurkunde fr den Preuischen Staat vom 5.
Dezember 1848, in Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche [1976], vol. 2, p. 36.
80 der gemeinsamen huslichen und ffentlichen Religionsausbung []. Verfassungs
urkunde fr den preuischen Staat vom 31. Januar 1850, ibid., p. 37.
81 Bemerkenswerterweise verstand die herrschende Lehre den Art. 12 sogar als eine Schran-
ke der Gesetzgebung, whrend sie die sonstigen Grundrechte nur als Schranken der Ver-
waltung und Rechtsprechung anerkannte. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3,
p. 106.
Church Renewal 223

other western European states. Such language was more in accord with the
(now defunct) constitution crafted by 1848 revolutionaries in Frankfurt, which
had stated that Every German has complete freedom of faith and conscience
[] (144) and that Every German is unrestricted in the common domestic
and public practice of his religion.82 Notwithstanding Sanders observation
that the constitutional changes strengthened the structural potential of the
king as an absolutist ruler over the church, such language also stood in conflict
with his deeply held and often expressed desire to revise the constitution of
1848 in a more stndisch direction.
Article 112 in the 1848 constitution called for the constitutions revision.83 If
one were to look for signs of legal or constitutional success in the project of a
specifically stndisch revision, one might point to a half success in Article 14 of
the constitution of 1850, and the ongoing revisions to the First Chamber, result-
ing in its final transformation into the House of Lords [Herrenhaus] in 1855, as
a substantial but politically costly victory. Article 14 of the 1850 constitution
stated that The Christian religion forms the foundation of those institutions
of the state which are connected with the practice of religion, irrespective of
the freedom of religion guaranteed in Art. 12.84 As Huber and Huber point
out, this provision, which originated in the First Chamber efforts of Stahl and
Ferdinand Walter, technically failed to meet Stahls goal of anchoring a Chris-
tian state in the constitution, but constitutional authorization for Christian
institutions of the state was the next best alternative.85
Yet, it was only a partial victory. On the one hand, liberals had to concede
that the state was bound to specifically Christian institutions through such
instantiations as Christian Sundays and holidays, the connection of all cer-
emonial acts of state with Christian rites, the establishment of theological
faculties at state universities, religious instruction and spiritual supervision

82 Jeder Deutsche hat volle Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit []. (144) and Jeder
Deutsche ist unbeschrnkt in der gemeinsamen huslichen und ffentlichen bung sei
ner Religion (145). Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches vom 28. Mrz 1849, in Huber and
Huber, Staat und Kirche [1976], vol. 2, p. 33.
83 Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche [1976], vol. 2, p. 34.
84 Die christliche Religion wird bei denjenigen Einrichtungen des Staats, welche mit der
Religionsbung im Zusammenhange stehen, unbeschadet der im Art. 12 gewhrleisteten
Religionsfreiheit, zum Grunde gelegt. Verfsssungsurkunde fr den preuischen Staat
vom 31. Januar 1850. Ibid., p. 37.
85 Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche [1976], vol. 2, p. 35. In Ernst Rudolf Huber, Deutsche
Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 3, Huber adds that Catholic allies had played an im-
portant role in achieving this change.
224 chapter 5

of the schools at state institutions of Volkshochschulen [].86 On the other

hand, conservatives thought Article 14 also necessarily entailed connections to
marriage, court competence (because of the requisite oaths), and (through the
involvement of chaplains) prisons and even the army.87 Conflict over precisely
these dividing lines unfolded over the coming years, although such matters lie
beyond our constitutional focus here.

86 die christliche Sonn- und Feiertagsheiligung, die Verbindung aller festlichen Stattsakte
mit christlichem Ritus, die Einrichtung der theologischen Fakultten an den Staatsuni-
versitten, den Religionsunterricht und die geistliche Schulaufsicht an den staatlichen
Volkshochschulen []. Ibid., p. 116.
87 Ibid.
 chapter 6

The Debilitating Successes of Stndisch

Structural Changes

The faction1 of Awakened conservatives centered around the Kreuzzeitung, as

part of their continuing attempt to win a cultural war against liberals, experi-
enced by the early 1850s mixed and costly successes in changes to the electoral
laws and the portions of the constitution that dealt with them. Such structural
changes would have been vital for any attempt to institutionalize their reli-
giously informed political worldview, with special emphasis on authority and
legitimacy derived from divine origin rather than popular sovereignty, and on
the intermediary role of supposedly organic, stndisch political structures. The
changes to Prussias means of political representation, ranging from the mostly
rural Gemeinden to the upper house of Prussias bicameral legislature, were
indeed in ways compatible with that Awakened worldview, but by a means and
at a cost that called into question the quality of those achievements. The po-
litical battles led to a debilitating split among Awakened conservatives, some
of whom launched a competing newspaper, the Preuisches Wochenblatt; to a
highly problematic relationship with kings ministerial bureaucracy; and to oc-
casionally powerful tensions with their most important Awakened supporter,
King Frederick William iv. Awakened conservatives who formed the core of
the Kreuzzeitung faction enjoyed notable successes on specific policy goals,
but the running feud with their former friends and colleagues in the Wochen
blatt faction prevented them from achieving the kind of political, cultural, and
to some extent religious regeneration of Prussia they envisioned. The rift with
those former allies would only be deepened by the Crimean War. Although
some of the political events in this chapter, such as the final transformation of
the First Chamber [erste Kammer] into a House of Lords in 1855, overlapped in
time with the Crimean War, for the sake of analytical clarity this chapter will
deal primarily with debates in Prussia about Prussian domestic politics, and
the next chapter will primarily address debates in Prussia about events beyond
Prussias borders.

1 Since something recognizably close to political parties emerged by the 1850s, but in a shifting
and discontinuous fashion, I will use the terms faction and party more or less interchange-
ably in the remainder of the text.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_008

226 chapter 6

The Gemeindeordnung Controversy

In looking for signs of Awakened conservatives success in reforming constitu-

tional and legal changes along stndisch lines that reflected their theologically
inflected politics, one might conceivably point to changes in the provision for
election to Gemeinden a difficult-to-translate term that came to refer to small-
er townships, villages, and predominantly rural communities in the so-called
Gemeindeordnung, sometimes called Gemeineordnung by contemporaries (al-
though, confusingly, the term Gemeindeordnung was often used to refer more
broadly to all levels of administration below the provincial level); or the estate-
based provincial legislatures (Provinziallandtage or Provinzialstnde); or even
the lower or Second Chamber of the bicameral system that Prussia possessed
from 1848 onwards. But there is a very large caveat. The general outcomes of
these reforms complemented the desire of many Awakened conservative lead-
ers to achieve stndisch reform, restoring, reinventing, or inventing the pre-
revolutionary, estate-based order, with a powerful role for the Junker and other
varieties of the Ritterschaft. However, the specific details of the outcomes were
sometimes at odds with their views, and the paths to change were so divisive
that they led to a permanent, debilitating rift among Awakened elites and
therefore in the Awakened camp more broadly.
From the perspective of the numerous political factions and for our pur-
poses, the dispositive aspects about the Gemeindeordnung were how it was to
be elected, and therefore of what groups or individuals it was to be composed.
Prior to 1850, there was no uniform method of representing political views of
entities below the level of provinces. Instead, regulations differed widely, with
different rules applying not only to cities and rural communities, but also vary-
ing according to the local historical custom and (therefore) the length of time
under control of the Prussian state. Article 105 of the 1850 constitution sought
to bring order to this historically conditioned multiplicity, describing the ad-
ministrative bodies to be created at all levels beneath the central Prussian
state, at the level of community [Gemeinde], county [Kreis], district [Bezirk],
and Province [Provinz]. At each of these levels, the king named the presiding
official [Vorsteher], except at the level of the Gemeinde. Each level was to be
subordinate to the state, yet otherwise largely left alone to administer its in-
ternal affairs, and with the constitution specifying that, [T]he Gemeinden in
particular have a right to the independent administration of their Gemeinde-
affairs, subject to lawfully ordered oversight by the state. The constitution
skirted the issue of elections in the Gemeinden, stating that the [] participa-
tion of the state in the appointment of the presiding official of the Gemeinde
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 227

and the conduct of election law for the Gemeinden will be determined by the
Gemeindeordnung.2
On 11 March 1850, a Gemeindeordnung was duly issued, generating fierce
criticism. Ultimately, criticism came not only from some portions of the right,
but from all who worried about a possible revolution from above, an imperious
bureaucracy, or an overly powerful monarch. But since this chapter addresses
in part the relationship of the Awakened to modern conservatism, we shall
simply note that its call for elections guaranteed stiff resistance from all those
on the right who opposed the principle of general elections, including notable
Awakened opinion shapers. Due to such criticism, this particular Gemeinde
ordnung never fully took effect. Rather, in the coming years there were a series
of public discussions about the Gemeindeordnung, which by 1851 had become
bound up with the rather problematic reordering of province-level governance
(a Provinzialordnung concerning the Provinzialstnde).
Large issues, then, were at stake in the debates about the Gemeindeordnung
and Provinzialordnung: nothing less than the nature of Prussia as a state of
law as well as the basis for legitimacy and authority in Prussias government.
When the Prussian state, by administrative fiat, reactivated or, better, (re)
invented the Provinzialstnde in 1851 and the Staatsrat in 1854, each action
amounted to what Huber calls a separate (but related) little coup.3 The non-
legislative means of reactivation as well as the extra-constitutional nature of
these bodies amounted to end runs around the constitution. Yet, in the heated
postrevolutionary atmosphere of Prussia, such specific (and therefore inher-
ently limited) constitutional violations amounted to a lesser evil, the great-
er evil being the threat of arbitrary, royal changes to the constitutions core.
Hence, Huber insists that [t]he restoration of the old Provincial Estates []
is only understandable in the context of the original great coup and its never
realized but often revisited plans for Frederick William to change the constitu-
tion unilaterally.4

2 Den Gemeinden insbesondere steht die selbststndige Verwaltung ihrer Gemeindeangele-

genheiten unter gesetzlich geordneter Oberaufsicht des Staats zu and Ueber die Betheili-
gung des Staats bei der Anstellung der Gemeindevorsteher und ber die Ausbung des den
Gemeinden zustehenden Wahlrechts wird die Gemeindeordnung das Nhere bestimmen.
Reproduced in Ernst Rudolf Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1,
p. 412 and http://www.documentarchiv.de/nzjh/verfpr1850.html.
3 kleine Staatsstreiche, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3, pp. 16566.
4 [d]ie Wiederherstellung der alten Provinzialstnde [] ist [] nur im Zusammenhang mit
dem ursprnglichen groen Staatsstreich verstndlich. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsge
schichte, vol. 3, p. 166.
228 chapter 6

Many Awakened leaders agreed on the outlines of a common goal: living

with the constitution because they had to, but reworking it and other legal
structures to ensure the actual basis for Prussias order was as faithful an adap-
tation of the prerevolutionary, organic system as could be managed. But this
hazy outline admitted numerous options to fulfill it. The different options they
explored tell us something valuable about which subgroups of conservatives
perceived their oxen to be gored as well as something about their conceptions
of organic law.
To return to the case of the Gemeindeordnung, introduced on 11 March 1850,
the various authors who wrote for the Kreuzzeitung saw the specter of Napo-
leon usually Napoleon iii, although Napoleon i would have done just as well,
since the general principle behind the term Napoleon was the concept of
revolution from above. For example, on 28 December 1851, in an article en-
titled Christian Monarchy, the author advanced the Kreuzzeitungs notion of
legitimacy, based on authority from above, and he excoriated the legitimate
governments [] when they lend equality of birth through their recognition
and sanction, by failing to condemn Louis Napoleons seizure of power.5 Only
a few columns later, in the Kreuzzeitungs December Rundschau, Ludwig von
Gerlach strongly implied a substantive connection, asserting the government
was in danger of losing its own sense of legitimacy through a Gemeindeord
nung that amounted to revolution from above, since it created out of thin air a
Gemeindeordnung that had never before existed in the organic history of Prus-
sias body politic. He thundered against short-sightedness that led to a foolish
embrace of constitutionalism, writing that in December 1848 it was supposed
to be practical to emanate the Charte Waldeck [a liberal document that served
as a basis for the octroyed constitution, de], in February 1849 the great ma-
jority of the First Chamber, including most of the conservatives, held it to be
practical to vote for this Gemeineordnung.6 A few days later, he put the point
even more sharply:

5 Obrigkeit von oben, and [] die legitimen Regierungen [] wenn sie die Revolution und
Usurpation durch ihre Anerkennung und Sanktion die Ebenbrtigkeit verleihen []. npz,
Die christliche Monarchie, 28 December 1851, col. 1.
6 Im Dezember 1848 sollte es practisch sein, die Charte Waldeck zu emaniren, im Februar
1849, mit einer grundrevolutionren Gemeine-Ordnung hervorzutreten, ja, noch im Dezem-
ber 1849 hielt es die groe Mehrheit der ersten Kammer, die meisten Conservativen mit
eingeschlossen, fr practisch, fr diese Gemeine-Ordnung zu stimmen. npz, Rundschau, 31
December 1851, col. 3.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 229

But what are the estates and organs among us in Prussia which we have to
thank for having survived the crisis of the year 1848 none the worse? Are
they not [] mainly the estate of the manor owners and peasants with
their historical, natural organs, and the army that springs from the major-
ity of them, which we along with God thank for our salvation, and which
even until today chiefly if not exclusively guarantee the solid basis of the
government? Then what kind of a cure can it be if we now consider de-
stroying precisely these estates through the Gemeindeordnung and simi-
lar experiments, and set in place of their natural organs the wooden leg
of bureaucracy? Or what sense can it make to sweep aside the relatively
healthy members in order to make room for the selfsame estate which
proved itself in the time of crisis to be the unhealthiest of all? We mean
the bureaucratic estate!7

One author, perhaps Gerlach again, even charged that the Gemeindeordnung
was tantamount to republicanism, and he suggested it would therefore ulti-
mately undermine the monarchy itself:

The Gemeindeordnung in its present form is nothing more than the intro-
duction of the republic in the smallest village community. Everything is
supposed to be organized according to one electoral system. The major-
ity is supposed to choose the local board and govern in the community
council. We ask [] whether it is conceivable that the monarchy at the
top, built exclusively on little republics, could maintain itself?8

7 Welches aber sind bei uns in Preuen die Stnde und Organe, denen wir es zu danken
haben, da wir die Krisis des Jahres 1848 glcklich berstanden haben? Sind es nicht []
hauptschlich der Stand der Rittergutsbesitzer und Bauern mit ihren historischen natrli-
chen Organen und die ihrer Mehrzahl nach aus beiden hervogehende Armee, denen wir
nchst Gott unsere Rettung verdanken, und die auch bis heute, wenn nicht ausschlielich,
doch vorzugsweise der Regierung eine feste Basis gewhrt haben? Was kann es also fr unsere
Heilung bedeuten, wenn wir jetzt damit umgehen, gerade diese Stnde durch die Gemeinde-
Ordnung und hnliche Experimente zu vernichten, und an die Stelle ihrer natrlichen Or-
gane das hlzerne Bein der Bureaukratie zu setzen? Oder welchen Sinn kann es haben, die
relativ gesunden Glieder zu beseitigen, um demjenigen Stande Platz zu machen, der sich in
der verhngnivollen Zeit der Krisis als der allerungesundeste erweisen? wir meinen den
Beamtenstand! Wer mchte es lugnen? 6 January 1852, cols. 12.
8 Die Gemeine-Ordnung in ihrer jetzigen Gestalt ist weiter nichts als die Einfhrung der Re-
publik in die kleinste Dorf-Gemeinde. Alles soll damit nach einem Wahlsystem organisirt
werden. Die Majoritt soll den Ortsvorstand whlen und im Gemeine-Rath regieren. Wir
fragen [] ob, wenn das wirklich durchgefhrt wrde, es denkbar ware, da die Monarchie
230 chapter 6

How had the Gemeindeordnung emerged as a consequence of the 1848 consti-

tution, which had called for a revision of the organization of administration
of cities and the countryside? Prior to 1848, Prussia had a bifurcated system
of administration. After the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, cities had the right to
self-administration (including some elective positions), while (with some ex-
ceptions) in the countryside traditional elites, notably including estate owners,
held sway under largely unreformed conditions, including the often resented
right (and expensive duty) to conduct such policing as existed. The govern-
ments ministers, led first by Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg9 and
then Otto von Manteuffel, aimed to simplify and unify the conditions. The aim
was to modernize them, creating a unified set of structures that encompassed
all levels of Prussia, even subjecting the estates of nobles to the jurisdiction of
such structures. But, as Gerlachs quote indicates, the Kreuzzeitung saw in such
modernization a broader potential political liberalization, a destruction of the
supposedly still healthy (or salvageable) organic conditions of Prussia for the
sake of intellectual and bureaucratic tidiness or hunger for power. Resist-
ing the passage of the Gemeindeordnung, Stahl had pointed out a problematic
dilemma that he perceived: the countrysides gain in liberality was balanced
against the cities potential loss of freedom.10 The resulting Gemeindeord
nung remained what Grnthal calls an incomplete torso of reform.11 In the
face of such resistance even (and especially) on the right, support for the Ge
meindeordnung withered. It was withdrawn on 24 May 1853. The reversion to
the historical means of political organization represented, by default, a victory
for traditionalists of all stripes, including Awakened conservatives.

Organizing the First Chamber, Part i (1848 and 1850)

If one is looking for a case of a more sweeping revision of the constitution

along stndisch lines, the best example would perhaps be the transforma-
tion of the First Chamber into the House of Lords [Herrenhaus] by 1855.

im Groen, erbaut auf lauter kleinen Republiken, sich halten knnte? Die Gemeinde-
Ordnung vom 11. Mrz 1850, npz, 8 January 1852, col. 1.
9 Brandenburg, the son of Friedrich Wilhelm ii, was Ministerprsident from 2 November
1848 until his death on 6 November 1850, and Otto Theodor Freiherr von Manteuffel from
19 December 1850 to 6 November 1858.
10 Zugewinn an Liberalitt and Verlust an Freiheit. Cited in Grnthal, Parlamentarismus,
p. 186.
11 Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, p. 187.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 231

Its origins lay in the 1848 constitution, which created the First Chamber as the
upper house in Prussias bicameral legislature. In its original configuration, it
had a fairly liberal method of election and considerable powers. Over eight
years, however, successive changes to the constitution, which were part of a
broader retrenchment against liberalism, almost completely eroded the liberal
(and potentially revolutionary) structure and potential of the First Chamber
through means that were not universally accepted as legal. In the original 1848
constitution, the upper chambers members (or Pairs) were chosen indirectly
through selection by electors (Wahlmnner), and any adult male who met
certain citizenship, residence, and wealth or tax provisions was qualified for
election. Yet, the constitutional changes of 1850 already introduced a mixed
electoral law, with some members still enjoying election, while others pos-
sessed hereditary membership or gained membership through appointment.
By 1853, there were no elected members at all. While some (mostly middle-
class) members were appointed, most members were nobles. In 1855, the First
Chamber was renamed the Herrenhaus, completing the transformation of the
upper legislative chamber.
This relentless and guided erosion of the liberal structure and potential of
the upper house occurred on at least three levels: through constitutional chang-
es to the method of determining the composition of the chamber, through a
more than merely symbolic change in the naming of the chamber, and through
ideological warfare in the public sphere that prepared the ground for the first
two. We will examine how that ideological contest gave historical meaning to
the first two. I will argue that the creation of the House of Lords demonstrates
a proactive rather than reactive character in postrevolutionary Awakened con-
servatism in Prussia, but one that divided those very conservatives, some of
whom embraced the reinvention of conservatism along supposedly authen-
tic, organic lines, while others for a variety of complex reasons rejected such
a move as a near betrayal of Prussias organicist model of government. The
changes to the upper chamber, or First Chamber, occurred through accepted
legal and constitutional means, even if the illiberal ends cast a shadow. We will
briefly address four phases that led to the creation of the House of Lords: the
background to 1852, the Heffter Proposition, the Koppe Proposition, and the
Westphalen/Stahl solution.12
Much like the issue of the Gemeindeordnung, a central problem concerning
the composition of the First Chamber was that the constitutions of 1848 and
1850 had opened a window for potentially mischievous revisions by laying out

12 This organizational scheme is indebted to Barclay, Frederick William iv, pp. 24550, and
Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, pp. 22660.
232 chapter 6

a specific scheme for its membership and delaying the implementation of that
scheme. The 1848 constitution established a chamber of 180 members (Article
62) that would meet for six years (Article 64), with its members to be indi-
rectly chosen by provincial, district, and county representatives (Provinzial-,
Bezirks- und Kreisvertretern, Article 63). However, Article 63 further specified
that

In the revision of the constitutional charter [Verfassungsurkunde] it

should be considered whether a portion of the members of the first
chamber are to be appointed by the king and whether the mayors of the
large cities as well as the representatives of the universities and acad-
emies of sciences and the arts should be granted a seat in the chamber.13

Any Prussian could be elected to the First Chamber as long as he was at least 40
years old, possessed full civil rights, and had been subject to the Prussian state
for five years or longer (Article 65). Since the First Chamber, like the Second
Chamber and the king, enjoyed the right to initiate legislative proposals, and
the king required the agreement of both houses for proposals to become law
(Articles 60 and 61), the First Chamber possessed considerable power.14
The 1850 constitution already made the powerful First Chamber a more ex-
clusive club. Only about half (90) of the members could be elected indirectly,
and they had to be chosen by those paying the highest amount in income
taxes (Article 65). A further 30 members were chosen by the large cities. Less
than half of these two combined categories could comprise hereditary, semi-
hereditary, or lifelong status: royal (adult) princes; the heads of noble families
formerly subject only to the Reich and the heads of families the king could
appoint to hereditary seats and tie to certain property; and those whom the
king named as members for life (Article 65). Such measures based on the kings
prerogative rather than election through voters were the proverbial camels
nose under the tent. They were also perceived in different ways by different
kinds of Awakened conservatives. To Bethmann-Hollweg and many of those
who followed him, such measures seemed appropriately conservative and

13 Bei der Revision der Verfassungsurkunde bleibt zu erwgen, ob ein Theil der Mitglieder
der ersten Kammer vom Knige zu ernennen und ob den Oberbrgermeistern der groen
Stdte, sowie den Vertretern der Universitten und Akademien der Wissenschaften und
der Knste ein Sitz in der Kammer einzurumen sein mchte. Reproduced in Huber,
Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1, p. 390, and http://www.document-
archiv.de/nzjh/verfpr1848.html, downloaded 14 November 2014.
14 Ibid.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 233

modernizingat the same time, with the result of tying into the formerly im-
portant estates and yet also centralizing the power of the king and therefore
the state in a useful way. To many Awakened in the conservative factions, such
as Stahl and Gerlach, these measures were more problematic, as they changed
the organic order of the Prussian body politic through rational (legislative)
means dependent on a monarch, centralizing his power and that of the state
in a way that might be consistent with absolutism, whether royal or bureau-
cratic. In a further move toward exclusivity, members of the First Chamber
were denied monies for costs or salaries (Article 68).15 The power of the First
Chamber was also somewhat diminished in that it could not initiate budget or
finance proposals, and it could only accept or reject rather than amend those
which originated in the Second Chamber (Article 60).16
Fatefully, Article 66 delayed implementation of the rules for filling the
First Chamber until 7 August 1852, leaving in place until then the method of
6 December 1848. The latter rules, as we have found, privileged wealth rather
than nobility per se. Such a First Chamber would be, as Ernst Rudolf Huber
described the First Chamber of 1849, in theory not an aristocratic body but a
propertied body,17 even though the high Zensus worked in practice in favor
of the estate-owning aristocracy.18 This theoretical difference mattered im-
mensely to the king. As David Barclay observes,

By the end of 1851 it [revision of the rules for filling the First Chamber,
de] had become a matter of consuming, almost obsessive importance to
him, the touchstone by which the restoration of the monarchical power
in Prussia could be assessed. How ironic, then, that this issue should tem-
porarily estrange him from his most conservative allies and lead to the
further fragmentation of the conservative camp!19

Yet, Frederick William iv remained dissatisfied with the 1850 constitutional

settlement of the First Chamber. Barclays reference to the kings sense of call-
ing as a king by Gods grace and therefore bound to deliver a divinely ordered

15 Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1, p. 408, and http://www

.documentarchiv.de/nzjh/verfpr1850.html, downloaded 14 November 2014.
16 See Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1, pp. 40708.
17 keine Adelskrperschaft sondern eine Besitzkrperschaft. Huber, Verfassungsgeschich
te, vol. 3, p. 81. Barclay also takes note of Hubers characterization, Barclay, Frederick
William iv, p. 246.
18 zugunsten des grundbesitzenden Adels, Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3, p. 81.
19 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 246.
234 chapter 6

system intact to the next generation is the obvious answer. An obvious objec-
tion might be that it was terribly convenient for the king and his conserva-
tive allies, some of whom were aristocrats or were bound up with them, to
try to reorder the First Chamber to their material benefit. And convenient it
was. Yet, before elevating the material over the ideological explanation, it is
worth entertaining the view of Marcus Niebuhr, an Awakened confidante of
Frederick William iv and an intimate advisor in the camarilla. On 10 January
1850, just days after the king swore an oath to the constitution (including the
provisions for the First Chamber), Niebuhr wrote to a Tribunal-Rath the fol-
lowing: You believe that for us now the material matters. But one could dish
this objection out to you and your friends a thousand fold. Niebuhr sought to
discredit an assumption behind a bourgeois critique, that it was not proper to
privilege aristocrats over other citizens in constituting a government. He con-
tinued, let us admit to ourselves that the aristocracy is unpopular only with
us, with the better off and better regarded citizenry, because we are jealous,
jealous of great trifles, but jealous nonetheless. Taking aim at the presumption
that the middle classes represented the people more legitimately because they
were more popular, he even averred, [a]nd if we drill down to the bottom of
the thing, we will find that the propertied and military-service nobility is more
popular than the larger part of the bourgeoisie, for whom property was just
merchandise.20 In such an understanding, it was not the newness of the riches,
but the supposedly materialist worldview behind them, that made Niebuhr,
like Frederick William iv, desire to have older, established aristocracy to bal-
ance out the newcomers.

From the Erfurt Union to the Olmtz Agreement

The kings desire to name at least a portion of the members of the First Cham-
ber should be put into context on at least two levels. First, as Barclay notes,
Frederick William iv was well aware that the sovereigns of Britain, Spain, Por-
tugal, and Greece, all [] had the right to name the members of their upper

20 Sie glauben, da uns fr jetzt das Material steht. Aber diesen Einwand kann man Ihnen
und Ihren Freunden tausendfach zurckgeben, [] gestehen wir uns da den Adel nur
bei uns bei dem wohlhabenderen und angeseheneren Brgerlichen unpopulair ist, weil
wir neidisch sind, neidisch auf groe Kleinigkeiten, aber darum nicht minder neidisch,
and Und gehen wir der Sache recht auf den Grund, so werden wir finden, da der grund-
besitzende und der im Militair dienende Adel populairer ist als der grte Theil der bour-
geoisie, GStAPK, ha I, Rep. 92 Nachla Markus Niebuhr, Abt. I, No. 2, pp. 222b223a.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 235

chambers.21 Seen in this arena of international affairs, the king had plenty of
company, broadly liberal in the case of Britain, at least. Secondly, the kings
push for a further revision of the First Chamber, which would play out in the
legislature and in public opinion initially in 1852, was connected to a context
of violence and the threat of violence in international and intra-German af-
fairs. The remnants of the 1848 revolution had been put down with consider-
able bloodshed in Hungary, where Austria depended on Russian troops to help
reestablish order and control by August 1849. Austria had already staged its
own auto-coup, renouncing the constitution its monarch had agreed to in 1848.
(France would soon follow suit with its own coup on 2 December 1851, when
Louis Napoleon, despite not being granted the constitutional authority to do
so, sent the National Assembly home.) Seen in the context of such coups, Fred-
erick Williams moves toward constitution revision rather than a coup which
he did contemplate from time to time almost, though not quite, looked mod-
erate. One should also bear in mind that on 6 February 1850, Frederick William
formally rendered an oath to the 1850 constitution, an oath that he always up-
held. It must be readily granted that he frequently regretted the oath and not
seldom contemplated breaking or obviating it, but the point is that he did not
act on those intentions. This is not to eulogize Frederick William iv, but it is to
point out that in terms of constitutional practice Prussia looked perhaps like
the least arbitrary rogue in the rogues gallery of liberal states.
Frederick Williams efforts in intra-German affairs, on the other hand,
looked anything but moderate. Swayed by Radowitz, among others, he thrust
Prussia into a leading role as a potential unifier of kleindeutsch states, and
thereby pushed Prussia to the brink of war, only narrowly averting an armed
conflict with multiple states, including Austria, in the Olmtz Agreement
(Olmtzer Punktation) on 29 November 1850. How did it come to what many
contemporariescalled the humiliation of Olmtz? The details are too rich
and convoluted to rehearse here, but a thumbnail sketch of a narrative might
include the following. As the Austrian leadership was distracted with its own
coup, with repressing nationalism everywhere, and with restoring order in
Hungary in particular, Prussia built on its existing ties with other states. On
top of shared ties with some states that had fought on the side of Prussia in
the Wars of Liberation and with some states based on Protestant commonali-
ties, these ties now included growing common interests based on economic
integration through the Customs Union (Zollverein), opportunistic appeals
to some liberals in particular who still pined for the German unity so nearly
achieved after the 1848 revolution, and plays on resentment against Austria.

21 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 246.

236 chapter 6

A twist to this policy of amalgamating German interests was that it was to be

based on the foundational agreement of the three kings of Prussia, Hannover,
and Saxony in the Three Kings Alliance (Dreiknigsbndnis), concluded 26
May 1849. This appeal to princely authority in 1849 (rather than popular sover-
eignty in 1848) sat well with many conservatives, such as Bethmann-Hollweg
and Bunsen, even if it alarmed others, such as the Gerlachs and Stahl, who
worried about a supposed break with the organic past as Prussia seemed to
usurp Austrias traditional role of leadership. Prussias push for greater Ger-
man unity could also appeal to liberals (self-considered liberals, anyway, but
perhaps bourgeois is a better term) and other nationalists, who still pined for
the kleindeutsch German unity so nearly achieved by the Frankfurt Assembly, a
fact which only strengthened the suspicions of those such as the Gerlachs and
Stahl. Thus, a parliament of the Erfurt Union states, which was called the Er-
furt Parliament and met from 20 March to 29 April 1850, was supposed to offer
a constitution that would come into effect once a proper Reichstag had been
elected to approve it. But despite some initial support from other states, plans
for a Prussian-led union fairly quickly fell apart.
They fell asunder in part because of factors outside of Prussia, and to some
degree because the Gerlachs, Stahl, and others began to push back against the
idea in public opinion inside Prussia. Among the factors outside of Prussia that
doomed the proposal was the fact that Austria, with strong Russian involve-
ment in Hungary, was able to reestablish order and turn its focus to German
affairs again, peeling away support for Prussias efforts. Although Radowitzs
star was already waning and Prussia had already decided not to introduce the
constitution for German states, growing military tensions between Austria and
Prussia hastened the demise of the union project. The most pressing point of
contention lay in electoral Hesse, which sat astride key roads that connected
Prussias western and eastern territories. The prince of electoral Hesse, Fred-
erick William, had granted a fairly liberal constitution in 1848, only to with-
draw it in 1850. The withdrawal provoked an internal crisis, as some liberals in
particular rallied to support the constitution, compelling Frederick William,
who fled to another city, to beg the German Diet to intervene. The status of
the German Diet (and the Confederation more broadly), however, was unclear
after the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848. Prussia, supported by many north Ger-
man states, mobilized troops on its own authority, while Austria, supported by
some middle-sized German states, dispatched its own troops, ostensibly in the
name of the confederation. To avoid war between his Prussian and Austrian
allies in reaction against the still troublesome revolutionary spirit of the times,
Czar Nicholas i summoned a conference of Prussia and Austria, with Russia
as mediator, in Warsaw. To the satisfaction of the Gerlachs and Stahl and the
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 237

dissatisfaction of Bunsen and Bethmann-Hollweg, as well as their respective

supporters, Russia largely backed up Austria. As result, Prussia stood down and
Austrian troops were among those of the Diet to restore order (and Frederick
William) in electoral Hesse. Its strategy in obvious tatters, Prussias humiliation
over Hesse was compounded by the Olmtz Agreement the following month,
in which Prussia backed down from its efforts to unify kleindeutsch Germany.
For our purposes, two things are notable about these efforts. First, in the
space of a few months, Russia intervened twice on behalf of its closest major
partner in suppressing the revolution, Austria, by using its troops to Austrias
advantage in Hungary and its diplomacy to Austrias advantage in Warsaw.
As we will see later in the chapter, the depth of Russias sense of betrayal by
Austria in the Crimean War corresponded to these interventions. Second, the
controversial efforts that led to Olmtz contributed strongly to disunity among
Prussian conservatives of all sorts, including Awakened conservatives.
To understand what was at stake in the disagreement among Awakened
conservatives about the efforts that led ignominiously to Olmtz, one might
examine the evolving positions taken by Moritz August von Bethmann-
Hollweg,who would eventually break with his friends at the Kreuzzeitung to
found the rival Preuisches Wochenblatt. His credentials as an Awakened con-
servative and supporter of Frederick William iv were irreproachable. He had
been among the original supporters of the Kreuzzeitung. Three months prior
to the kings octroying of the 1848 constitution, Bethmann-Hollweg had been
among a group of conservatives who signed a letter to the king urging him
to take a firm stand against the constitutionalist tendencies of the Prussian
Assembly.22 He had also been among those who urged Frederick William not
to accept the German crown offered by the representatives of the Frankfurt
National Assembly. In a letter dated 1 April 1849, two days before the crown
was actually offered, Bethmann-Hollweg urged Frederick William to not ac-
cept the crown offered in this moment and under the conditions presented,
but instead arrange an understanding [] above all with the other princes,
who deserve a decisive vote. Instead, Bethmann-Hollweg said that he asked
(God) to place what is right in your Majestys heart and mouth and, regardless
of what will come, give you the courage to speak on the spot on which [you
yourself, de] are bound by holy duty, to persevere manfully.23

22 Letter dated 14 September 1848 to Frederick William iv. Other signatories included Sie
gesmund, von der Marrwitz-Friedersdort, Bethmann-Hollweg, LEstocq, von Arnim, Rein-
hold von Thadden, Warnke, and Golz. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, E ii, No. 5.
23 In diesem Augenblick und unter den gestelleten Bedingungen die dargebotene Krone
nicht annehmen zu knnen-], [] vor Allem mit den brigen deutschen Frsten,
238 chapter 6

Deeply involved in efforts toward church renewal, Bethmann-Hollweg

found himself intensifying his focus on politics after his election to the First
Chamber. In his letter of 11 March 1849, he notified Hengstenberg, editor of the
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, that he would let Wichern write an essay clarify-
ing the role of the Internal Mission.24 As events began to move toward the
Three Kings Alliance, Bethmann-Hollweg began to establish an independent
line of thought from such fellow conservatives as Wagener, Stahl, and the Ger-
lach brothers. In a turning point in their relationship and in his own under-
standing, Bethmann-Hollweg wrote:

I have vacillated in my view of the most natural or best form of the de-
sired German unity; who hasnt in this vacillating course of events since
the previous March? I would return [] to the old Confederation with joy
if God had not broken this form, as a punishment that we diminished and
misused it [] So, something new!25

Therefore, he continued,

To attain the friendship and help of Austria for Germany seems so neces-
sary to me, as it is a matter of conscience for your Majesty. But no alli-
ance on earth, not even the Holy Alliance, but only the New Alliance that
comes from heaven, as the French Bible calls it, is to be maintained at any
price [italicized words are underlined in original, de].26

denen eine entscheidende Stimme zustehe, [] and [] Eure Majestt das Rechte in
Herz und Mund legen und, was auch kommen, den Muth sprechen wolle, auf der Stelle,
an welche Allerhchstdieselbe durch heilige Verpflichtung gebunden sein, mnnlich aus-
zuharren. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50J, No. 147 (Bethmann-Hollweg), p. 15b.
24 Nachla Hengstenberg, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Haus Potsdamerstrae. Letter from Beth-
mann-Hollweg to Frederick William iv dated 1 April 1849, p. 15a.
25 Ich habe viel geschwankt in meiner Ansicht von der naturgemten oder besten Form
der ersehnten Deutschen Einheit; er wer hatte es nicht gethan bei dem schwanken-
den Gang der Ereignisse seit vorigem Mrz? Ich wrde [] mit Freuden zu dem alten
Bunde zurckkehren, wenn nicht Gott diese Form, zur Strafe, da wir sie gering gemacht
und mibraucht, gebrochen htte [] Also Neues! GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50J, No. 147
(Bethmann-Hollweg), pp. 17b18a.
26 Die Freundschaft und Hlfe sterreichs Deutschland zu erhalten, erscheint mir so noth-
wendig, als es, wie ich wei, Eure Majestt Gewissenssache ist. Aber keine Allianz der
Erde, auch nicht die Sainte Alliance, sondern nur die vom Himmel stammende Nouvelle
Alliance, wie die franzsische Bibel sie nennt, ist um jeden Preis festzuhalten []. Ibid.,
pp. 18b19b.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 239

Turning on its head the principled rather than practical thinking typical of
other Kreuzzeitung faction members, Bethmann-Hollweg argued in effect that
principles arose from stubborn practical facts, that whoever would need []
honor and conscience as a sacrifice in connection with other duties, would lay
the foundations for their destruction. Hardly sounding like a vacillating man
any longer, Bethmann-Hollweg contended that Austria throughout its whole
history stood in a peculiar [italicized word is underlined in original, de], diffi-
cult relationship to Germany, whose just form has to be sought after and can be
found with correct insight in good will. Bethmann-Hollweg told the king that
he could pursue the calling of Prussia, the premier German power, which
included guaranteeing Germany justice and order and defeating the revolu-
tion [] with a pure conscience before God, so divine help is certain for you.
So, forwards with confidence and courage!27 By thus suggesting that his mon-
arch should jettison the Holy Alliance as no longer fitting with the changing
times, Bethmann-Hollweg chose the path of expedience, a path suggestively
similar to what the Kreuzzeitung protg Bismarck would later call Realpolitik.
In his emphasis on preserving/constructing a strong monarchy with a
vibrant organic political system, Bethmann-Hollwegs position evinces a com-
mon origin with the Awakened conservatives. But by moving toward an as-
sertion of Prussian leadership over Austrian leadership among the German
states, in seeing German disunity a primary threat, perhaps more primary
than and a cause of revolution, and in his willingness to jeopardize the Holy
Alliance, his views had begun to diverge on a fundamental point of what an
organic German order might mean. Such a divergence would become a for-
mal split in part in his negative response to the reactivation of the provincial
estates by royal/bureaucratic fiat. In January 1850 Bethmann-Hollweg was still
able to make common cause with Stahl, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and oth-
er Awakened conservatives.28 But by October 1851, Frederick William would

27 [] wer [] Ehre und Gewissen in Bezug auf andre Pflichten zum Opfer bruchte,
legte eben damit den Grund zu ihrer Zerstrung. sterreich stehe durch seine ganze
Geschichte [] in einem eigenthmlichen, schweren Verhltnis zu Deutschland, dessen
rechte Form gesucht werden mu und bei richtiger Einsicht in gutem Willen gefunden
werden kann []. Beruf, erste Deutsche Macht, Recht und Ordnung, die Revolu-
tion, and mit reinem Gewissen vor Gott die Aufgabe bernommen, so ist auch die gtt
liche Hlfe Ihrergewi. Also getrost und mthig vorwrts! Ibid., pp. 18b19b.
28 See, for example, an address to Frederick William iv signed by these and other (broadly
defined) conservative politicians, dated 18 January 1850, warning the monarch that the
crown was in danger of losing and the legislative chambers would gain power over the
states income under Article 108. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, E ii, No. 5, Acta betr. des Knigs
Friedrich Wilhelm iv. von Preuen Vereinbarung einer Staatsverfassung, pp. 237b240a.
240 chapter 6

even choose not to receive him at court, noting Bethmann-Hollwegs changing

views, including eventually his critique of the provincial estates reactivation.
The king found that [] you, my dearest Bethmann Hollweg, have decided if
possible to bring down my ministry, or at least to harm it as much as you can
[] You call that helping me. Your love for me (which I believe in) and your
Christianity allow you to do so (!!!) Therefore, added the king, your path nec-
essarily leads into the enemy camp.29

The Provincial Estates and the Foundation of the

Preuisches Wochenblatt

Another possible candidate for a successful revision of Prussias political order

along stndisch lines might be the reactivation of the Provincial Estates, usu-
ally called Provinzialstnde (Provincial Estates) or, somewhat less commonly,
Provinziallandtage (provincial legislatures) by contemporaries. The reactiva-
tion of the provincial estates, which had occurred by royal order on 18 May 1851,
was indeed a major factor in the estrangement of Bethmann-Hollweg from the
king and, to a lesser extent, from the Awakened conservatives associated with
the Kreuzzeitung. In one sense, the reactivation is a story fairly quickly and
easily told. The provincial legislatures did not have a terribly long history as an
organic component in Prussias history. They had been created in the 1820s,
and they had faded away with the failure of the United Diet (an amalgam of
the legislatures) to achieve meaningful reform in 1847. The disproportionate
influence of Prussias old elites in the provincial legislatures, and the highly
proscribed limits on their powers each power was almost entirely consulta-
tive in nature seemed out of step in the early days of the 1848 revolution.
In another sense, the story of the reactivation of the provincial legislatures
is rather more complicated, both because the royal order seemed even to
many Awakened conservatives to be royal overreach and because the provin-
cial legislatures came to be a kind of shorthand for a feared revolution from
above, whether from the king or the kings ministerial bureaucrats. Dagmar

29 [] so sind Sie, theuerster Bethmann Hollweg entschlossen mein Ministerium womglich

zu strzen, ihm wenigstens so viel Schaden zu thun als Sie vermgen denn also verlangt
es Ihre Ueberzeugung. Sie nennen das mir helfen Ihre Liebe zu mir (an die ich glaube)
u.Ihr Christenthum lassen das zu. (!!!) [] Ihr Weg nothwendig ins feindliche Lager fhrt
[]. Copy of a Schreiben from Frederick William iv to Bethmann-Holweg, dated Sans-
Souci, 17 October 1851. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50J, No. 147 (Bethmann-Hollweg), p. 28a.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 241

Bussiek rightly identifies the proximate cause of the factions break to be the
1851 decision of the Prussian government, under Ministerprsident Otto von
Manteuffel, to reactivate by administrative fiat Prussias provincial legislatures
[Provinziallandtage].30 Since precisely such a move was, in fact, a violation of
the legislation of 11 March 1850, Bussiek calls Manteuffels gambit a sign of the
governing classs unscrupulousness with the valid law, and she agrees with
Ernst Rudolf Hubers characterization of this scheme, already cited, as a little
coup dtat [], namely a violation of the valid constitutional system through
a one-sided government action.31
What did contemporaries see as being at stake in the restoration of the pro-
vincial estates? In a word, many contemporaries recognized that the govern-
ment was to some extent re-feudalizing Prussias political order, potentially
jeopardizing every gain from the 1848 revolution. Just days after the govern-
ment ordered the reactivation of the Provinzialstnde, some in the Kreuzzei
tung celebrated the political shift. It recalled the post-1848 moments when
its political allies had been a small group, without direct connection to the
government, fulfilling its holy duty to defend Recht as often against the lib-
eral opposition as against a vacillating government.32 But since the ministry
has broken with the revolution, it crowed, the party of our friends ceased to
have the exclusive character of a party of the Recht quand meme, it became at
the same time through the force of circumstances a ministerial [party].33 For
some in the Kreuzzeitung, Manteuffels move did not endanger the law; it re-
established the supposedly legitimate, i.e. stndisch, order that the revolution
had illegally disestablished.
Responding to his perception of Manteuffels administrative lawlessness
in reactivating the Provinzialstnde, Bethmann-Hollweg published a short
(25-page) pamphlet denouncing the means the government had chosen.
Bethmann-Hollweg wrote that he agreed with the goal the government is

30 Dagmar Bussiek, Mit Gott fr Knig und Vaterland! Die Neue Preuische Zeitung (Kreuzzei
tung) 18481892, Schriftenreihe der Stipendiatinnen und Stipendiaten der Friedrich Ebert-
Stiftung 15 (Mnster: lit, 2002), p. 138.
31 Skrupellosigkeit der Herrschenden im Umgang mit dem geltenden Recht and ein klei
ner Staatssreich [], nmlich ein durch einseitigen Regierungsakt vollzogener Einburch
in das geltende Verfassungssystem. Cited in Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 138.
32 ein kleines Huflein, ohne directe Verbindung mit der Regierung, gezwungen, die heilige
Pflicht, das Recht zu vertheidigen, eben so oft gegen die liberale Opposition, als gegen eine
schwankende Regierung auszben. npz, No. 128, 5 June 1851, col. 1, Zur Orientierung.
33 [] Seit das Ministerium mit der Revolution gebrochen and Die Partei unserer Freun-
de hrte auf, den exclusiven Charakter der Partei des Rechts quand meme zu fhren, sie
ward durch die Gewalt der Umstnde zugleich eine ministerielle. Ibid.
242 chapter 6

pursuing,and even with the intent to return to an ordered state constitution,

especially a stndisch order.34 Yet, he vehemently insisted on a more clearly
legal path to achieve this goal, asserting that

Lawfulness is for me not abstract, literal legality. Law as the precept of the
highest authority in the state obligates not only the subject in his con-
science, but also established above all for the authority itself the duty of
truthfulness and fidelity concerning its spoken word. Not just the open
break with this fidelity, but even the possible doubt of the same under-
mines the reputation of the authority and shakes the faith of the people
in ethics in public life.35

Approvingly quoting a friend, Bethmann-Hollweg added, I estimate the ethi-

cal impressions higher than the political arrangements, as the value of the lat-
ter are, in the judgment of all parties, very deceptive; they [the former, de]
are something certain.36 To adapt todays language, both Bethmann-Hollweg
and his erstwhile allies at the Kreuzzeitung agreed that culture trumped poli-
tics. The central disagreement between them was about which element of
historical-legal culture mattered more in the underpinning of authority
the rule of law per se, or the traditional role of the Stnde in securing law.
Bethmann-Hollwegs cri de coeur, his defense of the powerful tradition of the
rule of law in Prussia, soon attracted supporters, many of them of a very similar
background, who eventually founding the Wochenblatt toward the end of 1851.
I have already agreed with Bussieks emphasis on the attempt to reactivate
the Provinziallandtage as the proximate cause of the split, and I would fur-
ther grant Walter Schmidts claim that the failure of the Union project is the

34 das von der Regierung verfolgte Ziel and einer gegliederten Landesverfassung, ins-
besondere zur stndischen Gliederung, Bethmann-Hollweg, Die Reaktivirung der
Preuischen Provinziallandtage(Berlin: Verlag Wilhelm Hertz, 1851), p. 4.
35 Gesetzlichkeit ist mir nicht die abstrakte, buchstbische Legalitt. Das Gesetz als das
Gebot der hchsten Obrigkeit im Staate verpflichtet nicht blo den Unterthan in seinem
Gewissen, sondern begrndet vor Allem fr die Obrigkeit selbst die Pflicht der Wahrhaf
tigkeit und Treue in Bezug auf das von ihr ausgesprochene Wort. Nicht blo der offene
Bruch dieser Treue, schon der mgliche Zweifel an derselben untergrbt das Ansehen der
Obrigkeit und erschttert den Glauben des Volkes an Sittlichkeit im ffentlichen Leben.
Bethmann-Hollweg, Die Reaktivirung, pp. 45.
36 Die sittlichen Eindrcke schlage ich jetzt verhltnimig hher an, als die politischen
Einrichtungen; den ber den Werth der letzteren sind die Urtheile aller Parteien sehr
trglich; jene sind etwas Sicheres. Emphasis in original. Bethmann-Hollweg, Die Reakti-
virung, p. 5.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 243

deeper reason for the separation of the Wochenblatt party.37 But while I think
Schmidt is correct that foreign policy was also a powerful motivator for both
conservative factions, I would contend that the picture is more complex than
might be revealed in an analysis along the lines of Primat der Auenpolitik ver-
sus Primat der Innenpolitik. For both conservative factions, culture-ideology
undergirded considerations of foreign and domestic policy. At stake were cen-
tral questions such as those we saw Bethmann-Hollweg raising. What is lawful-
ness? What is authority? What is legitimacy? As Bethmann-Hollwegs quote
shows, there was a deeply ethical and religious element to his views. The fact
that he continued to work harmoniously in religious affairs with his political
opponents at the Kreuzzeitung indicates the value they both placed on reli-
gion as a high, and perhaps higher, priority. Bethmann-Hollweg, we recall, had
together with Stahl and others founded the Internal Mission [Innere Mission]
in 1848, and the two continued to be productively involved. A shared or simi-
lar religious worldview also helped keep Mathis connected to the implacably
ideological Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach.38 This is not to say that all Awakened
conservatives continued to hold Bethmann-Hollweg, and his religiously in-
flected views, in high regard. The court confidante and camarilla member Mar-
cus Niebuhr, for example, thought that Bethmann-Hollweg, animated in part
by ahatred of Manteuffel, had deserted the old Prussian order, and he asserted
that the original basis of such later moves could after the fact be discerned
to have their first seeds in the General Synod of 1846.39 It would be more ac-
curate, then, to say that the views of both factions were profoundly informed

37 das Scheitern der Unionspolitik als tieferen Grund fr die Abspaltung der Wochen-
blattpartei, Walter Schmidt, Die Parei Bethmann Hollweg und die Reaktion in Preuen,
185058 (Berlin: A. Duncker, 1910), p. 5 (footnote 587), cited in Bussiek, Neue Preuische
Zeitung, p. 141. The Union project was the attempt by Prussia to take a leading role in the
unification of the German states. It closely followed Frederick William ivs rejection of
a crown of a kleindeutsch Germany, and it differed in at least one crucial aspect: it was
a project initiated from above by the Prussian king rather than from below by elected,
popular representatives of the German people. Initially, Frederick William succeeded in
gathering support, but it ended in shambles in 1850 when Austria, backed by Russia, ef-
fectively threatened war with Prussia. In the Punctation of Olmtz, Prussia agreed to a
restoration of the status quo ante, including a revival of the German Bund. While most at
the Kreuzzeitung welcomed the restoration, many liberal-conservatives wished to undo
Prussias supposed humiliation and to reassert Prussian leadership over other German
states.
38 Bussiek even notes that the Kreuzzeitung allowed Mathis to publish articles in favor of
Unionspolitik, critiqued, naturally, by Gerlach. Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 593.
39 ihren ursprnglichen Ausgangspunkt and ersten Keim in a letter dated 8 December
1851, Bundesarchiv, Berlin, Nachla H. Wagener, 90WA3, No. 2.
244 chapter 6

by their theological views and religious experiences, to the extent that it was
impossible ever to fully disentangle the two.

Foundational Principles of the Wochenblatt

As Bussiek notes, Wochenblatt enthusiasts wanted a strong Prussian monarchy,

but one structured along British lines, in a strong constitutional order with a
representative parliament and in a kleindeutsch German state. In the Wochen
blatts inaugural issue of 6 December 1851, Ludwig Emil Mathis (17971874)40
had laid out the guiding principles of the paper in Ein Banner richten wir
auf. He posed a series of potential objections and questions one might direct
against the paper in order to contend that the Wochenblatts members were not
opponents of peace [Gegner des Friedens] in insisting on Prussias interest, not
less Prussian [weniger preuisch] in considering Prussias great duties [groe
Pflichten] towards Germany, not unwilling to change Prussias constitution, etc.
He argued that

We hold that the constitution, honestly applied, offers the very measure
of freedom by which a strong monarchy, which Prussia needs, can en-
dure. We will combat every attempt to widen the measure of freedom
through weakening of the monarchy, every attempt to reduce it. We also
hold, however, in view of the shining example of England, that healthy
conservative principles and principles of freedom do not exclude one
another, and that it would be not reduction but rather a strengthening
of freedom, a new and powerful guarantee for the preservation of our
constitution, if one could succeed, in the ordering of our communal or-
der [unseres Gemeindewesens] in particular in the eastern provinces
in the county and provincial representation, as well as for the electoral
law in all connections, to find an organic basis in place of a mechanical
one. However, we do not intend to resurrect that which has died, we are
not of the view that bygone rights can be re-established, but rather, that
the actual, present conditions and relations must be recognized with the
whole meaning and force, which lie in their distinctiveness, and that this
distinctiveness is to be given in the order to be established.41

40 President of the Oberkirchenrat in Berlin, 18651872.

41 Wir halten, dafr, da die Verfassung, ehrlich gehandhabt, dasjenige Maa von Freiheit
biete, bei welchem ein starkes Knigthum, wie Preuen dessen bedarf, bestehen kann.
Jeden Versuch unter Schwchung des Knigthums das Maa dieser Freiheit zu erweitern,
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 245

We note here that the Wochenblatt, in first presenting itself to the world, spoke
vigorously in favor of organic law, attempting to take this term away from its
opponents in the Kreuzzeitung, who also loved to invoke the term. Mathiss
view, typical of those of other contributors to the Wochenblatt, was to claim
that present conditions rather than traditions per se are the starting point
of organic principles. We also observe the appeal to England as a model that
shows principles of conservatism and freedom can be reconciled and strength-
en each other. In effect, the Wochenblatt was engaging in a kind of cultural
struggle with the Kreuzzeitung party (among others) for ownership of basic
terms such as free and conservative. The Wochenblatts founders realized
that those who control the definitions and connotations of key terms have all
but won the hearts and minds of an audience.
Three further points merit attention. First, the shorthand version of the
Wochenblatts answers to the pressing questions of the day, apparently listed
in order of descending importance, was our mighty God, the king, Prussia,
Germany, justice, and freedom. That is the watchword [Losung].42 Second, the
Wochenblatts authors also wished to avoid ceding the religious high ground
to the Kreuzzeitung (or others) in this cultural battle with political and legal
ramifications. Mathis wrote that

we set the fear of God at the apex; do we desire to carry the cross into
daily politics? Nothing of the sort! [] but we do not wish to desecrate
holy truths in distorting them ourselves in the din of the political mar-
ketplace. Neither do we wish to claim the fear of God as an exclusive

jeden Versuch es zu mindern, werden wir bekmpfen. Wir halten aber, im Hinblick auf das
leuchtende Beispiel Englands, dafr, da gesunde conservative Prinzipien und Prinzipien
der Freiheit sich nicht ausschlieen, und da es keine Minderung, sondern eine Strkung
der Freiheit, eine neue und krftige Gewhr fr die Erhaltung unserer Verfassung sein
wrde, wenn es gelnge, in der Ordnung unseres Gemeindewesens insbesondere in den
stlichen Provinzen , in der Kreis- und Provinzialvertretung, so wie fr das politische
Wahlrecht in allen Beziehungen, organische Grundlagen an Stelle der mechanischen zu
finden. Wir sind aber nicht gemeint, da das Erstorbene wieder belebt, nicht gemeint,
da an untergangene Rechte wieder angeknpft werden knne, wohl aber, da die
wirklich vorhandenen Zustnde und Verhltnisse mit der ganzen Bedeutung und Kraft,
welche in ihrer Verschiedenheit liegt, erkannt werden mssen, und da dieser Verschie-
denheit in den festzustellenden Ordnungen ihre volle Geltung zu geben sei. Wochenblatt,
6 December 1851, Ein Banner richten wir auf, p. 2.
42 Unser starker Gott, der Knig, Preuen, Deutschland, Recht und Freiheit! Das ist die
Losung. Ibid.
246 chapter 6

monopolyof our party and therefore deny it to others because they think
differently in politics than we do [].43

Tragically for the Wochenblatt, this move amounted to unilateral disarmament,

given that the Kreuzzeitung made no such concession, that the (Awakened)
king regarded himself as truly king by Gods grace, and that that it was com-
monplace for liberals as well as conservatives to see politics and religion as mu-
tually and legitimately interpenetrating spheres. In one sense, by ruling out the
religious card, the Wochenblatt was genuinely modern in effect, even if most
of its authors remained deeply traditional or even conservative in their own
religious beliefs and practices. In the context of its own day, the Wochenblatt
had hastily if high-mindedly cast its trump card aside. Third, as the seemingly
obscure reference to electoral laws and communal order in a statement of gen-
eral principles indicates, a spur to the formation of the Wochenblatt had been
the controversial revisions to the constitution of 1848.
The Wochenblatt had also addressed in its inaugural issue (in an article of
the same name) the solidarity of conservative interests as the guiding prin-
ciple of Prussian foreign policy.44 While published long before the outbreak
of the Crimean War in 1853, this article also merits attention, as the Wochen
blatt was nothing if not consistent, and it largely remained true throughout
the 1850s to its position accounted here. The crux of the Wochenblatts argu-
ment was a realist one. It asserted that the foreign policy of a government can
only reasonably serve the purpose of preserving, increasing, and protecting the
power, the reputation, and the influence of the state [] This is reachable only
by a legal path.45 The guiding principle, then, was above all, true to the motto
of its royal house, to respect justice [Recht], formal and material, foreign and

43 Wir setzen die Furcht Gottes an die Spitze; wollen wir etwa das Kreuz in die Tagespolitik
tragen? Mit nichten! [] aber wir wollen die heiligen Wahrheiten nicht entheiligen,
indem wir sie selbst in den Lrm des politischen Marktes zerren, noch wollen wir
Gottesfurcht als das ausschlieliche Monopol unserer Partei in Anspruch nehmen, und
sie Andern deshalb absprechen, weil sie in der Politik nicht denken wie wir. Wochenblatt,
6 December 1851, Ein Banner richten wir auf, p. 1.
44 Die Solidaritt der konservativen Interessen als leitendes Prinzip der preuischen
auswrtigen Politik. Wochenblatt, 6 December 1851, p. 2. The author was Albert Wilhelm
Robert von der Goltz (18111855).
45 Die auswrtige Politik einer Regierung kann vernnftigerweise nur den Zweck haben, die
Macht, das Ansehen und den Einflu des Staates innerhalb der Sphre, welche ihm durch
seine Lage und den Gang seiner Geschichte angewiesen ist, zu erhalten, zu vermehren
und zu befestigen. Dies ist nur auf rechtlichem Wege erreichbar. Ibid.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 247

ones own, and to advocate it to others.46 The author, Goltz, added to the pa-
pers program by explicating

that Prussia has to attach alliances to the only secure basis for preser-
vation of its independence and honor, not to traditional or abstract
principles for example, the principle of legitimacy or conservatism in
contrast to the revolution, but solely according to the measuring stick
of its lasting position in the world and its changing interests.47

In other words, the (inconsistently) realist, conservative Wochenblatt party

argued that the foundation of the Metternichean, post-Napoleonic order
namely legitimacy and advocacy of an ill-defined conservatism, juxtaposed
to (a likewise underspecified) revolution, were too vague, and therefore dan-
gerous. Foreign policy should be made according to Prussias shifting interests
and its more fixed position.
Such positions were body blows to the Kreuzzeitung. Its writers had labored
to create a viable conservative alternative to the revolution. For example, we
might recall that the address delivered by Friedrich Julius Stahl, What is the
Revolution? to the Evangelical Association for Ecclesiastical Aims, carefully
defined the term.48 On 8 March 1852, just months after the Wochenblatts pro-
vocative claims, Stahl declared that

Revolution is the establishment of the entire public condition on the will

of man rather than on Gods order and providence: that all governing au-
thority and power is not from God, but rather from human beings, from
the people; and that the entire social condition has as its goal not the ap-
plication of Gods holy commandments and the fulfillment of His world
plan, but solely the satisfaction and willful behavior of human beings.49

46 berall, dem Wahlspruch seines Knigshauses getreu, das Recht, formelles und materiel-
les, fremdes wie eigens, selbst zu achten und gegen Andere zu verteten. Ibid.
47 da Preuen auf der einzig sicheren Basis der Wahrung seiner Unabhngigkeit und Ehre
Allianzen nicht nach traditionellen oder abstrakten Prinzipien, z. B. dem Prinzip der Le-
gitimitt oder des Konservatismus im Gegensatze der Revolution, sondern lediglich nach
dem Maastabe seiner bleibenden Weltstellung und seiner wechselnden Interessen zu
knpfen habe. Ibid.
48 http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/deu/4_P_O_Stahl_Was%20ist%20die%20Revo-
lution.pdf. Downloaded 16 February 2015.
49 All translations and transcriptions of this original document by ghdi. Here, p. 2: Revolu-
tion ist die Grndung des ganzen ffentlichen Zustandes auf den Willen des Menschen
statt auf Gottes Ordnung und Fgung: da alle Obrigkeit und Gewalt nicht von Gott sei,
248 chapter 6

Stahl noted that revolution demands, among other things, popular sovereignty,
freedom, equality, the separation of church and state, and new distribution of
states according to nationalities contrary to international law: that all Germans
form a state for themselves [].50 In short, then, The revolution is therefore
the utmost sin in the political sphere, since it entails [] the fundamental
abolition of Gods order.51
How could one defeat the revolution? The Wochenblatt had argued that
combatting the revolution required different weapons.

The means to heal our epochs peculiar revolutionary ideas, which are
partly afterpains of the revolution, partly symptoms of threatening
newer convulsions, belong to domestic politics. They aim to withdraw
the revolutions nourishment and consist mainly in a gut, just, and hon-
est government, in solidifying authority, which is also shaken by a weak
bearing abroad, in healthy state institutions, a wise educational system,
elevating and spreading a true fear of God.52

Such an explanation was primarily realist in its emphasis on sound gover-

nance structures, which would take the wind out of revolutionaries sails.
While the Wochenblatt also mentions, as more than a mere afterthought but
not as the main focus, the spreading of a sound fear of God, religion was for
Stahl the main answer to the threat posed by the revolution. He asserted that

sondern von den Menschen, vom Volke; und da der ganze gesellschaftliche Zustand zu
seinem Ziele nicht die Handhabung der heiligen Gebote Gottes und die Erfllung seines
Weltplanes habe, sondern allein die Befriedigung und das willkrliche Gebahren der
Menschen.
50 eine neue Vertheilung der Staaten nach den Nationalitten wider das Vlkerrecht: da
alle Deutschen einen Staat bilden fr sich []. Ibid., p. 3.
51 Die Revolution ist deshalb die uerste Snde auf dem politischen Gebiete and die
grundstzliche Aufhebung von Gottes Ordnung. Ibid., p. 6
52 verschiedende Waffen and Die Mittel zur Heilung der unserer Zeitepoche eignethm-
lichen revolutionren Ideen, welche theils Nachwehen der Revolution, theils Symptome
drohender neuerer Erschtterungen sind, gehren der inneren Politik an. Sie gehen da-
hin, der Revolution den Nahrungsstoff zu entziehen und bestehen hauptschlich in einer
guten, gerechten und ehrlichen Reigierung, in Befestigung der Autoritt, welche auch
durch schwaches Auftreten nach Auen erschttert wird, in gesunden Staatseinrichtun-
gen, einem weisen Erziehungssystem, Hebung und Verbreitung wahrer Gottesfurcht.
Wochenblatt, 6 December 1851, Die Solidaritat der konservativen Interessen, p. 3.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 249

There is a power, but only one power, that shuts down revolution. This
is Christianity. [] Christianity is the most extreme opposite of the sins
of the revolution. For it bases all of human life on Gods order and provi-
dence. But Christianity is simultaneously the most profound satisfaction
of the impulses [otherwise leading to] revolution.53

What were the stakes in such disputes between writers of the two papers? The
commercial stakes were not terribly high, as the Wochenblatt never rivaled
the Kreuzzeitungs publication numbers. Dagmar Bussiek observes that the
Wochenblatt never published more than 1000 copies per run, and its low circu-
lation numbers were one factor in the decision to close the paper in 1861, after
ten years of publication. By contrast, she notes, the Kreuzzeitung increased its
numbers from about 5500 in 1852 to nearly 7000 in 1859.54 Even in an era in
which each paper might have been read by five or six readers, the total reading
public for the Wochenblatt was not very high. The Kreuzzeitung, while not a
mass-circulation paper, was nonetheless a widely circulated paper by the stan-
dards of its day.
The political stakes were higher. While neither paper had an overwhelm-
ing number of readers, the audience included some notable figures, including
Frederick William iv. The notoriety of the authors involved in each paper
including sitting politicians and lay leaders of state church also added heft
to the arguments. And the Wochenblatts authors included notable diplomatic
figures as well. Huber went as far as to claim that the leaders of the Wochen
blatt party had the character of a shadow cabinet, which hoped after the fall of
the Manteuffel government to step into its place.55 And, indeed, the influence
of the national liberal Wochenblatt would be felt keenly at the start of the
New Era, the honeymoon period in which it appeared William i might al-
low a greater liberalization of politics. But the highest of stakes were rhetorical
and ideological. As we have seen, for both the Wochenblatt and the Kreuzzei
tung, ownership of key terminology, such as what constituted the revolution,
was central to and necessarily preceded devising good policies to combat the

53 Es giebt eine Macht, aber auch nur Eine Macht, die Revolution zu schlieen. Dies ist
das Christenthum. Das Christenthum ist der uerste Gegensatz gegen die Snde der
Revolution. Denn es grndet das ganze Menschenleben auf Gottes Ordnung und Fgung.
Das Christenthum ist aber zugleich die tiefste Befriedigung der Impulse der Revolu-
tion. Friedrich Julius Stahl, Siebzehn parlamentarische Reden und drei Vortrge (Berlin:
Wilhelm Hertz, 1862), pp. 24243.
54 Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 140.
55 den Charakter eines Schattenkabinetts, das nach dem Sturz der Regierung Manteuffel an
ihre Stelle zu treten hoffte. Cited in Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 140.
250 chapter 6

revolution.Additionally, the non-negotiable religious views of its staff in-

formed and underpinned their politics, and their politics impacted their reli-
gion, even if the Kreuzzeitungs staff wore their religion more openly.

Revising the First Chamber, Part ii

The 1850 constitution had specified in great detail how members of the First
Chamber were to be elected, beginning in 1852, and Frederick William iv had
been dissatisfied with those plans. Therefore, they never came to fruition. As
the looming 1852 deadline approached, other proposals more in keeping with
the kings wishes as the political realities of the present First Chamber were
advanced, with two of the main contenders being named after the members
who originated them, Heffter and Koppe. The details of both proposals are
less important than the thrust of their direction, which was roughly in line
with Frederick Williams desire to be able to appoint members by royal pre-
rogative.56 Indeed, Frederick William was very blunt about his goal, at least
when communicating with his own government: I demand to be the one
and only orderer of the First Chamber.57 He noted that [a] great part of the
right in both Chambers is against me, and he expressed his frustration with
those on the political right, his usual allies, who opposed him for reasons he
regarded as not only wrong-headed but also misdirected at his person.58 He
noted that those who opposed the change because it conflicted with the 1850
constitution were in the wrong because he had originally wanted it to specify
different conditions for the composition of the First Chamber, and he further
contended that the right was afraid that the kings push would split the forces
of the right. Frederick William insisted he occupied the moral high ground,
since those who feared a breakup of the right-wing camp could only have in
mind something other than the honor and future of the crown, while he was
firmly decided [] to let only and nothing other than the honor, validity, and
future of the Prussian crown count, to use the offered chance trusting in God

56 Cf. Barclay on the Heffter Proposition, Frederick William iv, p. 247.

57 Ich verlange der einzige u Alleinige Anordner der I K. zu sein. Copy of a memorandum
dated 19 January 1852 and signed by fwiv. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50 E 2, No. 9, 31a. Cited also
(in English) in Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 247.
58 Ein groer Theil der Rechten beider K. ist mir darin entgegen. Barclay, Frederick
Williamiv.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 251

[] [emphasis in original, de].59 Invoking the same divine backing as his loyal
oppositional friends on the right, the king asserted that

In the first battle over these goods entrusted to me by God in 50 [] Iwas

beaten. Perhaps I shall be also in the second in [] 52 after Ltzen and
Bautzen however followed [] Culm, Leipzig, and Paris. And I will not
give up [italicized words are underlined three times in the original, de]
what God had entrusted to my hands.60

So important was the principle of royal prerogative to Frederick William that

we here see him painting the right-wing loyal opposition (on this issue) as
mere schemers, giving them a taste of the vituperative rhetoric he otherwise
dished out to the left. We also note the clear connections the king drew as
did so many conservatives formed by the Wars of Liberation between losses
on the battlefield against a Godless revolutionary and French foe being re-
deemed by later victories won by those who stayed the faithful course steered
by eternal and divinely inspired principles. It seems there was little room for
compromise.
The right-wing loyal opposition, of course, had another view of the matter.61
In private, Stahl fumed about the king, giving Gerlach [] the most repugnant
impression of the kings confusion and arrogance [].62 In the First Chamber
itself, Stahls rhetoric was more modulated. Four days earlier, responding to
the question in the First Chamber of getting rid of the constitution altogether,
Stahl had sought to invoke the moral authority that might have been in 1848:
If in the summer of the year 1848 a state had held high the banner of author-
ity and Obrigkeit by Gods grace, [] this state would have achieved ineffable
power and ineffable esteem.63 One might read this reference to Frederick

59 Ehre u Zukunft der Krone and fest entschlossen [], einzig u allein die Ehre, Geltung u
Zukunft der Preu. Krone u nichts Anders gelten zu lassen, die sich darbietenden Chancen
in Gott Vertrauen zu benutzen []. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50 E 2, No. 9, p. 31a.
60 In der 1. Schlacht um diese mir von Gott anvertrauten Gter anno 50 [] bin ich geschla-
gen. Vielleicht wer ich es auch in der 2ten im [] 52 Nach Ltzen u Bautzen folgten aber
Culm, Leipzig u Paris. Und ich gebe das nicht auf [italicized words are underlined three
times in original, de] was Gott meinen Hnden anvertraut hat. Ibid.
61 Cf. Barclay, Frederick William iv, pp. 24748.
62 [] den widrigsten Eindruck von des Knigs Konfusion und Arroganz []. Gerlach, Von
der Revolution zum Norddeutschen Bund, vol. 1, p. 301, diary entry of 30 January 1852. Also
noted also by Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 301.
63 Wenn im Sommer des Jahres 1848 ein Staat das Banner der Autoritt und der Obrig-
keit von Gottes Gnaden hoch emporgehalten htte, [] dieser Staat wrde unsgliche
252 chapter 6

Williams favored terms of authority and by Gods grace as a mild rebuke,

for that summer the king had sulked in Potsdam rather than having his state
take a firm stand. Since the hour to seize glory and ineffable authority was past,
Stahl counseled only reform rather than bold moves now, as Prussia was poised
between two non-sustainable alternatives, [] backwards to patriarchal gov-
ernment [] or [] forwards to absolutism.64 Yet, the king rejected Stahls
personal writing (in a Promemoria) and insisted, according to Gerlach, both on
remaining the sole orderer of the First Chamber and on the importance of the
role of the high aristocracy [dem hohen Adel] (as opposed to the longstanding
Junker).65 The Kreuzzeitung sprang into action against the Heffter proposition
(and others that followed), forcing the Preuisches Wochenblatt to rebuke the
Kreuzzeitung for implying that the real, hidden point of the proposition was
[] to bring about a split in the conservative party and to force a ministerial
crisis.66
Such rancor and disarray on the right was noted with delight elsewhere on
the political spectrum, as evidenced by an article in the liberal Vossische Zei
tung, which attacked the Kreuzzeitung faction with its usual vigor. The article
observed that the Kreuzzeitung party, which had claimed to be the most re-
liable friends of Manteuffels ministry, had now found they could no longer
use him as their tool.67 Furthermore, This party therefore does not want a
revision by the Manteuffel cabinet, but a revision by their party, or, rather,

Macht und unsgliches Ansehen errungen haben. Stahl, Siebzehn parlamentarische

Reden, p. 26.
64 [] rckwrts zur patrialchalischen Regierung [] or [] vorwrts zur absolutistischen
Regierung. Stahl, Siebzehn parlamentarische Reden.
65 Wilhelm Fl, Professor in der Politik, Friedrich Julius Stahl (18021861). Das monarchische
Prinzip und seine Umsetzung in die parlamentarische Praxis, Schriftenreihe der Histori
schen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Gttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), p. 320. Fl rightly reports Gerlachs take on Stahls Promemoria,
which has since gone missing, and on the kings response, in Leopold von Gerlach and
Ulrike Agnes von Gerlach, Denkwrdigkeiten aus dem Leben Leopold von Gerlachs (Berlin:
W. Hertz, 1891), vol. 1, p. 722.
66 [] Spaltung in der konservativen Partei zu bringen und eine Ministerkrisis herbei-
zufhren in Noch einmal die Bildung der ersten Kammer, Preuisches Wochenblatt, No.
10, 7 February 1852, col. 1.
67 zuverligsten Freunde, Werkzeug, and Diese Partei will daher auch keine Revi-
sion durch das Kabinet Manteuffel, sondern eine Revision durch ihre Partei, oder sie
will [] ein parlamentairsches Regiment, das gleichbedeutend mit Junkerregiment ist.
Ein Junker- und Pietistenregiment ist aber in dem protestantischen Preuen verhater,
als es selbst der Absolutismus eines Knigs je nur werden knnte. Article in the Knig
lich priviligirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen [i.e. Vossische
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 253

itcontinued, it wants a parliamentary government which is tantamount to a

Junker government. But a Junker and Pietist government is more hated in Prot
estant Prussia than even the absolutism of a king could ever be. This reference
to the Kreuzzeitung faction in parliament, tarred here as desirous of subverting
the constitution in the interests of the Junker and Pietists, serves as a reminder
that liberals, too, laid proud claim to the (overwhelmingly) Protestant charac-
ter of Prussia. In contrast to the narrower and still somewhat pejorative term
Pietist, especially when tied to the elitist label of Junker, the term Protestant
here connotes simultaneously a broader, mainstream movement and a move-
ment of protest from the more representative and authentic people below.
Writing in the Wochenblatt, Bethmann-Hollweg took issue with the con-
tention that it was wrong to create the First Chamber rather than seeking it,
finding it, and merely codifying in law how it should be represented. Rather,
[W]hat it is really about is the creation of a new institution, naturally from
available materials.68 As to the master idea that would inform such a creation,
he argued against the representation of specific interests:

We deem as defective the whole system, [which] lets the different inter-
est of the country be represented in different assemblies. If pursued con-
sistently, it leads back to the old estates principle, where each estate had
to make valid only its own interest, its right, which is no longer seen by
anyone as suitable.69

For Bethmann-Hollweg, the pre-1848 role of the estates, including the aristoc-
racy, could not be saved. It could only be reformed for modern uses and ac-
cording to practical principles that fit the actual age at hand, an age that was
for better or for worse past the revolution.

Zeitungs-Expedition], No. 17, Mittwoch den 21 January 1852. A copy of the article is in
GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50 E 2, No. 9, p. 34b.
68 Es kommt hier wirklich auf das Schaffen einer neuen Insitution an, natrlich aus vorhan-
denem Stoffe. Wochenblatt, 14 January 1852, No. 8, col. 1. Behnen identifies the author
as Bethmann-Hollweg; Michael Behnen, Das Preussische Wochenblatt (18511861). Natio
nalkonservative Publizistik gegen Stndestaat und Polizeistaat, Gttinger Bausteine zur Ge
schichtswissenschaft (Gttingen: Musterschmidt, 1971), p. 251.
69 Wir halten aber auch das ganze System, die verschiedene Interesssen des Landes in ver-
schiedenen Versammlungen vertreten zu lassen, fr fehlerhaft. Konsequent verfolgt fhrt
es auf das alte stndische Prinzip, wo jeder Stand nur sein Interesse, sein Recht geltend
zu machen hatte, welches Niemand mehr als zeitgem ansehen wird. Wochenblatt, 14
January 1852, No. 8, col. 2.
254 chapter 6

By contrast, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, writing in the Kreuzzeitung, held the
resuscitation of the estates, or rather, of the aristocracy, as being absolutely es-
sential for proper government, and in particular the First Chamber, which was
in this moment the burning question.70 The master idea that should inform the
creation of the First Chamber for Gerlach was saving and adapting the pre-1848
order, but in a way very different from the one favored by Bethmann-Hollweg
and the Wochenblatt faction a way that recognized the postrevolutionary age
as contingent and illegitimate in its very being. The task for Gerlach was

[] to find the genuine elements of a practically useful aristocracy. We

can dispense with none of these genuine elements, from the royal princ-
es, and the formerly reichsunmitttelbaren princes and estate lords; which
have been so unwisely and unjustly injured in their well-established
rights by revolutionary legislation, all the way down to the peasant [].

Prussia needed

The aristocratic phalanx, in which Prussia must continue to trust as it has

trusted it in war and revolution, this aristocratic phalanx is and remains
the portion of our knighthood old or new aristocracy or brgerlich;
there is still enough potency in our nobility that it generates in new aris-
tocratic or brgerlich knighthood noble morals and dispositions the
portion of our knighthood that holds its lands out of haggling.71

As these sources make clear, there were multiple points of contention between
the Wochenblatt and Kreuzzeitung factions, represented here by Bethmann-
Hollweg and Gerlach. We see here reflections of the dream of many in the

70 [] die in diesem Augenblicke brennende Frage, and [] die echten Elemente einer
practisch brauchbaren Aristokratie aufzufinden. Keines dieser echten Elemente knnen
wir uns entbehren, von den kniglichen Prinzen, und den vormals reichsunmittelbaren
Frsten und den Standesherren; welche von der revolutionren Gesetzgebung in ihrem
so fest verbrgten Rechten ebenso unweise als ungerecht verletzt worden sind, bis herab
zu dem Bauer []. January Rundschau of the npz, 29 January 1852, col. 3.
71 Die aristokratische Phalanx, auf welche Preuen auch ferner vertrauen mu, wie es
ihr bisher vertraut hat in Krieg und Revolution, diese aristokratische Phalanx ist und
bleibt der Theil unserer Ritterschaft alt- oder neu-adelig oder brgerlich; noch ist soviel
Zeugungskraft in unserm Adel, da er in der neuadeligen und brgerlichen Ritterschaft
adelige Sitte und Gesinnung erzeugt der Theil unserer Ritterschaftder seine Gter aus
dem Schacher frei hlt. Ibid., This article also contains an infamously disparaging anti-
Semitic reference to usurers and Jews [Wucherer und Juden]. Ibid.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 255

Kreuzzeitung faction of a genuinely autonomous aristocracy that was able to

mediate between the king and the people, and able to protect against a revolu-
tion from above and a revolution from below. For this group, the plan to turn
the king into the sole orderer of the First Chamber risked despotism from
above, and a semi-aristocratic chamber, watered down with elements that had
not had noble values generated in them, would render that dream impos-
sible. The king had great difficulty grasping why the two factions could not in
fact be drawn together by the revision of the First Chamber, and members of
both factions had difficulty understanding why the king could not understand
the distance that separated the two.72 Even a year later Leopold von Gerlach
confided to Carl von Vo-Buch his amazement that the king still thought a rap-
prochement was possible, writing that the king had again spoken of a fusion
of the right with Bethmann Hollweg!!73
Yet, if there was ideological purity in the Kreuzzeitung faction, there was
certainly flexibility (or perhaps hypocrisy) in its methods, as, in order to defeat
the kings wish to become the sole orderer, they [] defended the connection
of hereditary and electoral principle [].74 It looked for a brief time in 1852
as though that dream would indeed be shattered. Following the collapse of
the Heffter proposition and after it the Alvensleben proposition, the Koppe
proposition passed the First Chamber 82-56 on 5 March 1852, over the futile
opposition of Stahl, the Kreuzzeitung faction, and many others on the right.
Protesting against the kings strong hand in the revision process, in March
Manteuffel had pleaded with Frederick William not to take the possibility of
being effective from his ministers in the revision of 65.75
However, the bill narrowly failed the Second Chamber, 142-125, apparently
much as Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach had foreseen.76 By April, the kings bitter-
ness led to a declaration that opposition, especially by some government offi-
cials who had voted their consciences in voting against his ideas, represented a
betrayal. Underlining (here italicized, de) vigorously and repeatedly for effect,
he characterized the proposal as the expression of My will. Raising the stakes,
he added that in such opposing attitudes of his officials he saw a decision

72 Cf. Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 248.

73 Letter of Leopold von Gerlach to Carl von Vo-Buch, GStAPK, ha I, Rep. 92, Nachla Vo-
Buch, Karl, No. 16.
74 Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3, p. 83.
75 die Mglichkeit wirksam zu sein nicht nehmen. Letter of Manteuffel to Frederick Wil-
liam iv, GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, Abt. J, No. 797 (Freiherr von Mannteuffel), 108b.
76 Manteuffel to Frederick William iv, GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, Abt. J, No. 797 (Freiherr von
Mannteuffel), pp. 122a and b.
256 chapter 6

about the dignity and honor of my crown internally, about its prestige and worth
outwardly. Especially castigating justice officials, he stated that if some offi-
cials continued to absent themselves from votes, he would regard such behav-
ior as a request for dismissal.77
At least two elements changed the rules of the game. First, the king changed
tack, recruiting Otto von Bismarck, a stalwart Kreuzzeitung faction member
in the Second Chamber.78 Second, after another failed try to influence events
by Westphalen and Stahl, fellow Kreuzzeitung faction member Ernst Ludwig
von Gerlach eventually helped contribute to a compromise formula.79 Inte-
rior Minister Westphalen, an Awakened conservative closed to the Kreuzzei
tungs Awakened contingent, packed a commission tasked with proposing new
changes with many like-minded supporters, including Stahl. The commissions
guiding principle again involved an appeal to organic relationships that would
in effect secure importance for large and established property owners: The
electoral law does not have to connect to the [emphasis in the original, de]
stndische order that exists for county and provincial representative bodies,
but it should base [its] organic ordering on the recognition of those differ-
ences, which always make themselves known in the existing relationships, on
the difference of urban and rural life and the earnings and property relation-
ships based on them.80 Following the release of the commissions report on
29 October 1852, Manteuffel quickly isolated Westphalen and the commission
report in the cabinet, and the commissions recommendations were rejected.81
How was the Gordian knot of the First Chambers reform untied? The even-
tual parliamentary act, passed on 7 May 1853, eliminated 6568 altogether,
replacing them with a disarmingly simple provision, midwifed by Gerlach, that
The First Chamber is formed by royal decree, which can be changed only with

77 der Ausdruck Meines Willens [The italicized words are underlined in the original: the
whole phrase is underlined twice, and Meines is underlined three times and written
in extra-large letters], eine Entscheidung ber Wrde und Ehre Meiner Krone nach Innen,
ber ihr Ansehen und Geltung nach Auen. and als die Bitte um Entlassung. Ibid.
78 Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3, p. 83.
79 Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, pp. 30910.
80 Das Wahlgesetz hat sich nicht an die stndische Gliederung anzuschliessen, welche fr
die Kreis- und Provinzialvertretungen besteht, sondern es sollte seine organische Glie-
derung auf die Anerkennung derjenigen Unterschiede begrnden, welche sich stets in
den bestehenden Verhltnissen kundgeben, auf den Unterschied des stdtischen und
lndlichen Lebens und der darauf beruhenden Erwerbs- und Besitzverhltnisse. Cited
in Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, p. 308.
81 Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, pp. 30910.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 257

the agreement of a law to be passed by the Chambers, and The First Chamber
is composed of members whom the King appoints to hereditary right or for
life.82 The Chambers thus entirely eliminated the possibility of election to the
First Chamber. Such an elimination of electoral access to the First Chamber
would seem to be obviously bad for the development of liberal democracy.
Yet Grnthal argues, in a usefully provocative way, that this move should be
seen as a gain, for it both remained without direct consequences in the 1850s,
and by its very divisive and interminable nature the revisions concerning the
First Chamber put the right off from also revising the Second Chamber, paving
the way, through the retention of the three-class voting system, for majorities
for the liberal-progressive camp in the 1860s.83 I believe this part of Grn-
thals interpretation is correct, as far as it goes, although the period of liberal-
progressive ascendance was all too short. The ignominious accommodation
of nationalist liberals to the power of the royal government then led by Bis-
marck after the victory over Austria at Kniggrtz/Sadowa in their declara-
tion of anti-constitutional budgetary practices to be constitutional after the
fact, might give one pause in celebrating the liberal 1860s.
A more serious objection might be that the actual Decree Concern-
ing the Formation of the First Chamber [Verordnung wegen Bildung der Er
sten Kammer],84 issued on 12 October 1854, also sullied Prussias record as a
Rechtsstaat. Under the decree, the king could name certain individuals who
held offices or certain lands to the Chamber, and loss of either the office or
the land would then entail loss of membership in the First Chamber. Since
such provisions transgressed in so far the legally empowering framework
[], [they] were in this point anti-constitutional and legally inoperative.
Fortunately for the king and unfortunately for Prussias Rechtsstaat, only
the Chambers, which chose not to act on the matter, could challenge the

82 Die Erste Kammer wird durch Knigliche Anordnung gebildet, welche nur durch ein mit
Zustimmung der Kammern zu erlassendes Gesetz abgendert werden kann, and Die
Erste Kammer wird zusammengesetzt aus Mitgliedern, welche der Knig mit erblicher
Berechtigung oder auf Lebenszeit beruft. See http://www.verfassungen.de/de/preussen/
preussen50-index.htm, downloaded 15 November 2014. Gerlachs role is mentioned in
Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, p. 312.
83 ohne direkte Folgen and das liberal-fortschrittliche Lager, Grnthal, Parlamentaris
mus, p. 313.
84 See Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 1, pp. 41820 and http://
www.verfassungen.de/de/preussen/pekammer54.htm, downloaded 15 November 2014.
258 chapter 6

constitutionality of the Decree.85 To the discredit of a paper that frequently

raised the fear of despotism, the Kreuzzeitung ignored this problem.86
I would vigorously support Grnthals contention that a hidden benefit of
the revision of the First Chamber was the growth of a kind of constitutional-
ism on the right, and an important part of this chapter as well as the chapter
on 1848 is to make that creeping constitutionalism more evident. There may
be no better illustration of this tendency than a speech in the First Chamber
given by Stahl on 24 February 1853 in response to a proposal by Count von
Saurma-Jeltsch and Prince Reu that the whole constitution of 1850 be re-
scinded [] in the way prescribed by Art. 107.87 Although a vigorous oppo-
nent of revolution, Stahl put forth a highly nuanced case against rescinding
the constitution, a case that attracted repeated interjections of the left and
right (usually not on the same points, unsurprisingly). On the one hand he
granted that it was necessary, when speaking of the constitution, to bear in
mind the difficult case of Prussia, and that [] measured by a higher and
more holy law, [the constitution, de] in many respects does not exist.88 But,
examining the very nature of what it meant to live in a constitutional state,
he argued that Prussias variety of a representative house based on major-
ity voting a concept still very offensive to Gerlach and many others at the
Kreuzzeitung was in fact permissible. After all, parliament was still []
deeply subordinate to the authority of the king, [], and even the old Reich
structures had prior to 1848 used majority votes.89 Ever the organic legal theo-
rist, Stahl even channeled de Maistre to suggest that abolishing the constitu-
tion at this point might constitute a revolutionary act, for Prussias constitution
[] now has a history, after all, and to give up without further ado whatever
has a history, and on top of that without making certain suggestions about
substitution, I would not call that which is contrary to the revolution, but
counterrevolution.90 In fact, Stahl argued that the constitution had, despite its

85 [] berschritt insoweit den Rahmen der gesetzlichen Ermchtigung; sie war in diesem
Punkt verfassungswidrig und reschtsunwirksam. Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 3,
p. 83.
86 Grnthal, Parlamentarismus, p. 313.
87 Reproduction of the Stenographische Berichte in Stahl, Siebzehn parlamentarische Reden,
pp. 2736. Here, pp. 2728.
88 [] dem schweren Falle Preuens an einem hheren und heiligerem Gesetze gemes-
sen, [die Verfassung, de] in vieler Hinsicht nicht besteht. Ibid., p. 29.
89 Ibid., p. 30.
90 [] nun einmal eine Geschichte, und was eine Geschichte hat, ohne Weiteres aufzuge-
ben, dazu ohne bestimmte Vorschlge des Ersatzes, mchte ich nicht le contraire de la
revolution, sondern vielmehr die Contre-Revolution nennen. Ibid., p. 31.
THE DEBILITATING SUCCESSES OF STNDISCH STRUCTURAL CHANGES 259

deep fundamentalweaknesses, a positive value, and that is that it is a consti-

tution at all, i.e., that it contains guaranteed rights and a national representa-
tion [].91 In contrast to those states that had used only the army to restore
authority, in Prussia the restoration of authority rested not only on its army
but also on the people, which had coauthored this restoration spiritually and
morally. Stahl singled out Prussias contribution here as part of its Mission,
which gave the lie to those who saw absolutisms as the end and goal of world
history.92 These rich quotes give evidence of Stahls politically and intellectu-
ally powerful defense of Prussias constitution, with some elements, such as
the condemnation of absolutism and championing of individual agency in-
stead of historical determinism, that not only echoed familiar Kreuzzeitung
views but also here make the constitution itself seem compatible with that
worldview as a bulwark of rights and liberties. At the same time, justifying
the constitution in such individualist rather than corporative or estate-based
terms left the door open to liberals and others on the left to continue to contest
the meanings of such rights and liberties, as well as their foundation. It is no
wonder that the record notes approval from the left when Stahl argued that, It
is no less manly to give up on the archetype of freedom because the caricature
of freedom has been wrecked.93 But by 1853, when Stahl delivered this speech,
Prussia was becoming more absorbed with issues connected to the Crimean
War, issues that would demonstrate how a literal war impacted the cultural
war being waged by Awakened conservatives in Prussian domestic politics.

91 [] tief grundstzlichen Gebrechen [], positiven Werth,, und das ist der, da sie ber-
haupt eine Verfassung ist, d.h., da sie Rechtsgaratien und eine Landesvertretung enhlt
[]. Ibid., p. 32.
92 das Volk, geistig und moralisch diese Herstellung mitvollbracht, Mission, Absolutis-
mus, and das Ende und Ziel der Weltgeschichte. Ibid., p. 35.
93 Es ist noch weniger mnnlich, weil das Zerrbild der Freiheit zu Schanden geworden ist,
auch den Glauben an das Urbild der Freiheit aufzugeben. Ibid., p. 36.
 chapter 7

The Rhetorical War over the Crimean War

The debate about the Crimean War worsened the split among the Awakened
conservatives centered around the Kreuzzeitung and those centered around
the Preuisiches Wochenblatt, with both groups vying for political influence at
court and in the Prussian legislature. Their public struggle against each other
to own the meaning of key terms, such as organic and Prussian, markers
of their cultural war, became nearly as important to them as their attempt
to defeat liberals and revolutionaries. This internecine struggle between the
Gerlach/Stahl faction and the Bethmann-Hollweg faction left them mutually
exhausted. By the end of 1856, the advancing age and worsening health of the
generation of the Wars of Liberation, when added to the rhetorical stalemate
among Awakened conservatives, goes a considerable way toward explaining
the declining political fortunes of the Awakened conservatives.

Framing the Crimean War

The many twists and turns of foreign policy that led to the Crimean War are
both well known and too complicated to go into here. The wars short-term
causes included a dispute over which power was tasked with protecting Chris-
tian minorities and certain holy sites in the Ottoman Empire. Under Napo-
leon iii, France attempted to establish itself as that power, thereby creating
a contradiction with previous 18th-century agreements that Russia would
serve a similar function. France escalated tensions by sending a warship into
the Black Sea, which was forbidden under the London Straits Convention, and
Russia replied in July 1853 by occupying, without formally declaring war, the
Ottoman Empires principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia along the Danube.
This move threatened not only the Ottoman Empire, but also Austria. A threat
to Austria, in turn, potentially involved the other states in the German Con-
federation, including Prussia, as well as Austrias place in the Confederation
and broader concerns among major western powers about the possibility of
Russia upsetting the balance of power in Europe. Turkey declared war against
Russia on 4 October 1853. The war lasted until 1856, with a victory of the west-
ern powers over Russia.
Yet, while the importance of short-term diplomatic maneuvering should
not be underestimated, I am persuaded by Winfried Baumgarts insistence that

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_009

The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 261

the Crimean War is a direct outgrowth of the so-called Eastern question,

i.e. the problem of how to deal with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, par-
ticularly in regard to its European territory.1 The unpredictable nature of the
Ottoman Empires decay provided an opening for opportunistic powers, and
dangers for those vested in the status quo. Britain and France, in particular,
worried about the expansion of Russian power and prestige, while also hop-
ing to profit commercially from greater access to Eastern Mediterranean lands
markets.
Both Prussia and Austria were at a decided disadvantage compared to the
other three powers of the pentarchy. Britain and France could both project sig-
nificant military power, while Russia made up for its more antiquated military
technology through the sheer size of its military and its proximity to the battle-
fields. Austria and Prussia were much more fragile powers, less able to proj-
ect military power and strategically disadvantaged through their geographical
position, wedged between the two armed camps of Russia and the western
powers. They were also arguably more susceptible to revolution. Domestic
tranquility could not be taken for granted anywhere in Europe, as demonstrat-
ed by Britains recent experience with the Chartist movement, Napoleons 1851
coup, and the smoldering possibility of subversion in Russia. But contempo-
raries in Austria and Prussia perceived that the revolution of 1848, recently but
barely suppressed, might be reignited. The danger of liberal ideology was only
intensified by the potential of inflaming the resentments of restive minorities.
The possibility of national or ethnic revolts was especially acute in Austria,
where the martial law applied after 1848 was still in effect in some of its eastern
provinces, but it was also not unthinkable for Prussias Poles.
Eying Austrias ethnic fissures, Baumgart asserts that [i]f Austria and
Prussia had joined the war on either side, such a European war would have
kindled new revolutions in Hungary, in northern Italy and in Bohemia, and
would have dealt the final death-blow to the Habsburg monarchy.2 As Aus-
trias Foreign Minister, Count Buol,3 queried after the war had concluded,
Did you really believe that Austria could have risked joining the war without
risking universal war and revolution and thus the final ruin of her empire?4

1 Winfried Baumgart, The Crimean War: 18531856, Modern Wars (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 3.
2 Baumgart, Crimean War, p. 35.
3 Karl Ferdinand Graf von Buol-Schauenstein (17971865) had become Foreign Minister on
11 April 1852 after the unexpected death of Felix Frst zu Schwarzenberg, who had served
as Foreign Minister (as well as Ministerprsident) since November 1848. Buol would remain
Foreign Minister until 1859.
4 Buol, cited in Baumgart, Crimean War, pp. 3637.
262 chapter 7

Certainly to contemporaries, and to many subsequent historians, Austrias be-

havior seemed shrewdly, cynically aggressive. That is one explanation for its er-
ratic behavior: first pressing for a peace conference, then seeking to accommo-
date Russia, then edging towards the western powers, then finally abandoning
its armed neutrality and declaring war occupying the Danubian Principali-
ties vacated by Russia but not engaging in actual fighting. Baumgart dissents
from this long interpretive tradition, claiming that, in light of the threat to its
very existence that war posed, Austria could not have helped acting as she
did during the Crimean War unless she was willing to invite her own ruin.5
I would concur with his interpretation, but I would not see it as being incom-
patible with the longer interpretation. Baumgart differs from it mainly in as-
sessing the motives of decision-makers, portraying them as forced by the
threat of revolution inside and outside of Austria to concoct shifting, perhaps
even contradictory policies, in pursuit of the survival of the state and the frag-
ile domestic peace of Austria. Viewed from the outside, without privileging the
unstated but surely not unimagined goal of paying nearly any price to preserve
Austria, many non-Austrian contemporaries saw changes in policy as nakedly
opportunistic.
Regarding Prussias neutrality, Baumgart acknowledges many different fac-
tors playing a complex and interrelated role. Chief among them, naturally, was
the decision by King Frederick William iv of Prussia to hold to a policy of neu-
trality. But his decision was not made in a vacuum, and the duration of this
decision of an oft-vacillating king was very much open to pressure from foreign
and domestic players. As Baumgart puts it,

Prussia, too, was subject to the fear of revolution almost to the same
extent as Austria. But there are additional factors to explain her policy.
To begin with, the structure of foreign policy in Berlin at that time did not
permit any homogenous action. Prussian foreign policy was managed by
King Frederick William iv, by the foreign ministry under Otto von Man-
teuffel, by the pro-Russian camarilla at court, and at times by Prince Wil-
liam and the Party of the Wochenblatt [].6

Given the overdetermined nature of Prussias policy, and the precariousness

of its international position, it seems at first that the reasons for its neutrality
are self-evident: competing actors more or less canceled each other out, leav-
ing Prussia with much to lose and little to gain from irrevocably siding with

5 Baumgart, Crimean War, p. 37.

6 Baumgart, Crimean War.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 263

either Russia or its adversaries. This is a fair reading, although it is less satis-
factory in explaining why, as the fortunes of war shifted (and especially after
the British and French victory, however costly, at Sevastopol), Prussia did not
eventually bow to the tremendous pressure from Britain and France (and, at
times, Austria). Nor does such a view fully explain why conservatives with so
much in common disagreed so vituperatively with each other in the pages of
the Wochenblatt and the Kreuzzeitung. Baumgart rightly notes that the king,
who in theory had more freedom to impose his will on Prussian policy than all
the other actors put together, studiously avoided commitment.7 He remained
something of a trump card that declined to be played, and in so declining, re-
tained enormous potential power.
I would agree with Baumgarts point about Austrian neutrality, but also ex-
tend the same explanation to Prussia, and assert that Prussias stance in the
Crimean War can be explained by looking in several directions: forward, to-
wards the unfolding events and changing calculations of what was in Prussias
interests; backward, to the revolution of 1848 and the constitutional struggle it
had entailed, as well as the failed efforts at German unification; inward, to the
fundamental principles that animated the various factions in Prussia (with our
focus on the Wochenblattparteis Interessenpolitik and the Kreuzzeitungsparteis
Politik der Prinzipien); and upward, towards God, as expressed in the theologi-
cal politics (or perhaps theological politics) of these two factions. Baumgart
might also urge us to look downward, toward the material interests of Prussia,
which appears to have profited handsomely from supplying materiel to Russia,
in particular. Unfortunately, many of the relevant files on economic matters
were seized by the Red Army in 1945, and they have not surfaced since.8 Since
the events looking forward are well covered by other scholars, I will focus
mainly on the inward and to some extent backward aspects in this chapter,
with particular attention to two newspapers at the forefront of the battle for
public opinion, the Wochenblatt and the Kreuzzeitung.

7 Baumgart notes that Frederick William iv, having made up his mind to remain neutral, at
once felt the acute danger of his isolation. In order to soften it he offered an offensive and
defensive alliance to Austria. No sooner was it concluded, on 20 April 1854, than the King,
goaded by the camarilla under Leopold von Gerlach, tried to extricate himself from the far-
reaching obligations to which he had subscribed. These demanded he support Austria, if
need be by force of arms, in her impending summons to Russia to evacuate the Principalities.
[] This conduct was henceforth typical of the Prussian King: as soon as he had taken a step
in favour of one side [], he retracted in part or in full in order to appease the other side.
Baumgart, Crimean War, p. 39.
8 Baumgart, Crimean War, p. 41.
264 chapter 7

Realism and Idealism in 19th-Century Prussia?

In analysing the approaches of these two papers to the Eastern Question and
the Crimean War, it might be tempting to describe the Wochenblatt as taking a
realist and the Kreuzzeitung as evincing an idealist position. Indeed, there
is much in the language of both publications to support such an interpreta-
tion. As other observers have noted, no concern occupied the Wochenblatt
more from its founding in 1851 through the end of the Crimean War in 1856
than the issue of finding and implementing the most suitable state structural
arrangements for the German nation, or, in other words, a solution to the Ger-
man question. As rightly explained by Michael Behnen, the premier authority
on the Wochenblatt, the papers main contributors were animated by a fun-
damentally kleindeutsch nation-state idea, yearning for a monarchical form
of government coexisting with a constitutionally grounded form of parlia-
ment, along the lines of the British system.9 To achieve these ends, the papers
writers tended to oppose, on the one hand, Austria, the German Confedera-
tion, and France, all of which had reasons to be against their goal of a Prussian-
led Nationalstaat, and the revolution a term that encompassed much for
them, primarily signifying the revolution of 1848 but also evoking images of the
French revolution of 1789, and much else besides as this was a threat to their
anglophile notion of a monarchical Nationalstaat. Yet, in their nearly religious
faith in the good of the nation, and its need for a single state to represent it or,
more accurately, most of it, i.e. the non-Austrian majority of German states
there was a de facto idealistic trait: an undertheorized preference for the ideol-
ogy of nationalism. The Wochenblatts central area of concern namely, how
to answer the German question was complicated by an answer to the Eastern
question, pointing to an interpenetration of foreign and domestic concerns. It
is worth noting, however, that if one were to view the intra-German question
of unity as an affair that concerned mainly the German states rather than the
German nation, the Wochenblatts concerns may be fairly characterized as re-
vealing a primacy of foreign over domestic issues.
The Kreuzzeitungs writers also recognized the interpenetration of domestic
and foreign issues, but in general domestic concerns whether those of the
Prussian state (or even nation, or perhaps better, Volk) or the German nation
more broadly outweighed foreign concerns. Towards the beginning of the
Crimean War, their answer to the Eastern question was, in effect, to push for
a restoration of the Holy Alliance between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Asthe

9 prinzipiell kleindeutschen Nationalstaatsgedanken, Behnen, Preuische Wochenblatt,

p. 223.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 265

actual declaration of war and, later, Austrias occupation of the Danubian

principalities pushed this scenario ever more into the realm of fantasy, they
advocated for a kind of neutrality that amounted to a pro-Russian position.
This answer to the Eastern question was related to their answer to the Ger-
man question, which was, in general, to defer to Austrias traditional position
of leadership among the German states, while at the same time safeguarding
Prussias interests. Above all, they wished to avoid the evils of revolution from
below, as 1848 (with echoes of 1789) had seemed to them, or revolution from
above, in the form of an overweening monarchy, such as Bonapartist France.
And yet the still more important concerns that animated key contribu-
tors to both papers were otherworldly. Driven by their Awakened faith, many
Kreuzzeitung contributors genuinely believed in the holiness of an alliance
among Christian monarchs, in the inherently threatening secular nature of
revolution, and in the undeniably divine sanction given not only to the princes
of German states but also those traditional intermediary bodies, such as the ar-
istocracy, that were a part of Prussias unwritten constitutional tradition prior
to 1848. While they (and subsequent scholars) have often characterized their
foreign policy views as a politics of principle, it would be fair to say that ideol-
ogy and religious principles played a profound role in both. In short, both the
Wochenblatt and the Kreuzzeitung laid claim to the mantle of conservatism,
both were substantially inspired by religious views (albeit in somewhat differ-
ent ways), and both were animated by concerns of principle. The issue of the
Crimean War contributed to a kind of civil war among Prussian conservatives.
The great irony is that because their war of words was never fully resolved, and
Prussia in part as a consequence remained neutral, it garnered tremendous
gratitude from Russia. As we noted earlier, the protg of the Awakened cama-
rilla and Kreuzzeitung faction members, Otto von Bismarck, would later turn
this goodwill based on the politics of principle toward German unification
based on Realpolitik.

Keeping the Dogs of War Leashed

Once the Ottoman Empire declared war and the British and French warships
had entered the Black Sea, the Wochenblatt took stock of the issue of Prus-
sias continued neutrality. It found that Prussias neutrality was fundamentally
different from Austrias. The paper claimed that the war presented Austria
with the worst of all possible worlds. It appeared that the main war theater
would be the Danubian basin, which lay in Austrias natural sphere of power
[natrliche Machtsphre]. If the Russians gained permanent control of the
266 chapter 7

region,Austrias trade with the East depended on Russias favor. If the war pro-
duced a movement to free the captive nationalities in the Ottoman Empire,
the nationalities in question might unravel Austrias unity and produce the
danger of revolution [die Gefahr der Revolution], a revolution similar to 1848,
the outcome of which had made Austria dependent on Russia to restore its
authority over Hungary. If Austria sided against Britain and France, French
designs might extend into the German states. Austria, then, had direct, vital
interests concerned, and seemed doomed to inaction because the risk of any
action was too great.10
By contrast, the Wochenblatt found, Prussia had no direct interest [kein
direktes Interesse] and was free to act however it chose. Concerning the ear-
lier showdown with Denmark over control of Schleswig and Holstein, Brit-
ain, France, and especially Russia (in 1850, during the failed effort to create
a Prussian-dominated Union of German states, which ended humiliatingly in
the Punctation of Olmtz) had actively hurt Prussia. The paper also assert-
ed that Prussia owed Russia nothing for assistance in the revolution of 1848:
every Prussian knows that Prussia did not need such help, that this state
alone and exclusively with its own moral and material strength vanquished
its revolution.11 Given such statements, Bussiek interprets Gerlachs view as
meaning that

[a]t the end of 1853 it appeared as though the Wochenblatt party, which
now pursued rapprochement with the reactionary Manteuffel govern-
ment it had previously fought, would be able to draw the Ministerprsi
dent to its side. This was connected with the attempt to erase the shame
of Olmtz and to re-establish the Prussian Union politics, which the
Kreuzzeitung had so passionately rejected.12

While the Wochenblatt presented cold-blooded, realist assessments of Prussian

interests, albeit ones animated by a warmer-blooded desire to box out Austria

10 Wochenblatt, 1853, p. 427.

11 [] wei jeder Preue, da Preuen solcher Hlfe nichte bedurfte, da dieser Staat al-
lein und ausschlielich mit eigenen moralischen und materiellen Krften die Revolution
bei sich berwunden hat. Ibid., 428.
12 Ende 1853 schien es, als knne die Wochenblattpartei, die nun eine gezielte Annherung
an die bisher von ihr bekmpfte Regierung Manteuffel betreib, den Ministerprsiden-
ten auf ihre Seite ziehen. Damit verbunden war der Versuch, die Schmach von Olmtz
zu tilgen und noch einmal an jene preuische Unionspolitik anzuknpfen, die von der
Kreuzzeitung so leidenschaftlich abgelehnt worden war. Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zei
tung, p. 143.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 267

and pursue Union politics, the Kreuzzeitung stayed true to its more idealist and
religiously inspired views. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, for example, readily con-
ceded Prussia was not immediately touched in a purely political way. Precisely
its church relations call especially Prussia to more serious reflections.13 The
appeal to religion became even more evident as the war progressed. By January
1854 the Kreuzzeitung found that

The sublime political and ecclesiastical position of Czar Nicholas, his

firm stance that rests on noble moderation and his iron consistency
[Consequenz] that has stood the test of a quarter century of turmoil and
revolution on the other hand the Christian church suppressed by Is-
lam and in battle with Islam those are firing points, well worth it, that
gather the sympathies of our own. It is precisely the spark of inspiring
ideas [] They are in the decisive moment often more important than
raissonements and opinions [] Such a justified feeling is the compas-
sion towards the millions of Christians in Turkey and the disgust at the
powerless policies of the Occident [].14

Yet, in the same month that Gerlach made his appeal, the Prussian govern-
ment rejected Russias offer of a three-way defensive alliance of Russia, Prussia,
and Austria. That is not to say that the Wochenblatt party succeeded, for at
nearly the same time, Britain rejected a Prussian offer, conveyed by the
Wochenblatt writer and member of the Prussian diplomatic corps, Pourtals,
for Prussia to join the war on the side of Britain and France in exchange for

13 von der rein politischen Seite nicht unmittelbar berhrt. Zu desto ernsteren Betrachtun-
gen fordern ihre kirchlichen Beziehungen gerade Preuen auf. npz, 30 June 1853, No. 149,
cited in Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 143.
14 Die erhabene politische und kirchliche Stellung des Kaisers Nicolaus, sein auf edler
Migung fuende feste Haltung und seine durch ein Vierteljahrhundert voll Aufruhr
und Revolution bewhrte eiserne Consequenz, andererseits die christliche Kirche
unterdrckt durch den Islam und im Kampfe mit dem Islam, das sind Brennpunkte,
wohl werth, da darum die Sympathien der Unsrigen sich sammeln. Es ist ja gerade der
Funke begeisternder Ideen [] Sie sind im entscheidenden Momente oft wichtiger als
Raisonnements und Meinungen, und wer in das Labyrinth des Details von Fragen wie
diese einzudringen keinen Beruf hat, der thut nicht bel, wenn er von wohlgereinigten
Gefhlen vorlufig sich leiten lt. Ein solches berechtigtes Gefhl ist das Mitleid mit
den Millionen Christen in der Trkei [] und der Ekel an der kraftlosen Politik des
Abendlandes []. npz, No. 3, 4 Jan. 1854, cited also in Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung,
p.143.
268 chapter 7

certain concessions that would have let Prussia resume a more substantial
Union politics.15
The Kreuzzeitungs efforts to influence politics were complicated by, among
many other factors, the fact that its editor, Wagener, frequently generated fric-
tion, especially with the adept bureaucratic infighter Otto von Manteuffel. The
friction began to grind Wagener down, and some feared the papers survival
was at stake. In July 1852, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach had written to encourage
Wagener to remain [emphasis in the original] to fight against Mant[euffels,
de] bonapartism [sic] despite Manteuffels machinations against Wagener,
pointedly asking, have you been Manteuffels tool until now?16 On 20 Febru-
ary 1853, rising criticism motivated Ernst Senfft von Pilsach, by then an Ober
prsident of Pomerania, to write directly to Frederick William. An alarmed
Senfft told the king that if Wagener did not receive more support, he would
likely leave the paper, leading to the end of the Kreuzzeitung.17
Senfft was right to be fearful. On the very same day, 20 February 1853,
Marcus Niebuhr, who had earlier written that Bethmann-Hollwegs supposed
desertion from Old Prussia [Altpreuen] might be traced as far back as his
views regarding the General Synod of 1846, warned Wagener that his means
of expression had offended the king. Niebuhr recounted a conversation he
had with the king that evening, reporting that Frederick William had said
that Wagener has too deeply offended me personally [] This is not about
an insult against my person, but of the King of Prussia, and I cannot simply
pardon that.18 According to Niebuhr, Frederick William had told him that the
only way to rehabilitate Wagener was for Wagener to provide a confession.
Wagener would have to admit that the position of the Kreuzzeitung in
both matters would have had to have insulted the king, even if his intention
had been nothing other than the good of the nation [Land] in his (W[agener,
de]s) view []. Without such a confession, [] I as King can do nothing,

15 Cf. Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, pp. 14344.

16 bleiben [emphasis in the original], Mant. bonapartismus [sic] and Sind Sie denn bis
her ein Werkzeug Ms gewesen? Letter dated 22 July 1852 from Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
to Wagener, Bundesarchiv, Berlin, Nachla H. Wagener, 90 WA3, No. 1, p. 71b.
17 Letter of Senfft von Pilsach to Frederick William iv, dated 20 February 1853. GStAPK,
Brandenburg-Preuisches Hausarchiv, Rep. 50, Abt. J., No. 1352 (Senfft von Pilsach), p. 73b.
18 Wagener hat mich persnlich [] zu schwer beleidigt []. Es handelt sich hier nicht um
eine Beleidigung meiner Person, sondern des Knigs von Preussen, und die kann ich ohne
Weiteres nich verzeihen. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, Nachla H. Wagener, 90WA3, No. 2, copy
of a letter from Markus Carsten Nikolaus von Niebuhr to Wagener dated 20 February 1853.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 269

although I completely understand [ that] would mean the demise of the

Kreuzzeitung.19
By July 1853, Hinckeldeys police tried to summon Wagener for an interview
about his supposedly provocative comments about the Eastern Question. Ac-
cording to Rudloff, the Regierungsrath Dr. Gbler explained that since Prus-
sia was pursuing a course of neutrality, it had to rebuke papers that expressed
inflammatory rhetoric either for or against Russia. Wagener and the Kreuzzei
tung should therefore cease carrying on, although the paper was free to to
write for Russia.20 Like Senfft von Pilsach, Leopold von Gerlach worried such
moves heralded the end of the Kreuzzeitung. Shifting blame to Manteuffel and
other bureaucrats, the kings adjutant confided to him that The Kreuzzeitung,
through the repeated attacks of bureaucrats against it, is failing; it will scarcely
last another quarter.21 Gerlach claimed Wagener had even risked his life for
freedom. He further raised the prospect that while Wagener, the kings usually
reliable supporter at the Kreuzzeitung, might soon have to go to prison, the
king would have to name the liberal Pfuel as Geheimrath. Considering the dan-
ger of revolution from above still a potent one, Gerlach strongly denounced
what he saw as Manteuffels war against the Kreuzzeitung. From the perspec-
tive of the Kreuzzeitungs supporters, the timing could hardly have been worse
for the editor to have to think about pulling his verbal punches. As Gerlach put
it in September, Now that the Oriental Question is loosed, the position of old
Europe against the Revolution incarnated in France rises to the fore.22
Ironically, that was a view on which he and Manteuffel might have found
common ground, for both perceived that the destructive demon of revolution
might be loosed by a war with Russia. Manteuffel wrote a letter to General The-
odor von Rochow (Gesandter at St. Petersburg) on 13 December 1853 arguing

19 Bekenntnis, einsehen, dass die Haltung der + Zeitung [sic] in jenen beiden Sachen den
Knig habe beleidigen mssen, wenn auch seine Absicht wahrlich keine andere gewesen
sey, als das Wohl des Landes nach seiner (Ws) Ansicht, and kann Ich das als Knig nicht
thun, obwohl Ich vollkommen einsehe, was der Untergang der + Zeitung [sic] bedeuten
wrde. Ibid.
20 Schimpfereien and fr Ruland zu schreiben. GStAPK, ha vi, Nachla Otto von Man-
teuffel, Tit. ii, No. 48 (Hinckeldey), vol. 2, document 30 (p. 31ff.), copy.
21 Die Kreuzzeitung ist, durch die weiderholte Angriffe der Breaucraten [sic] gegen sie,
im Untergehen, schwerlich wird sie sich noch eine Vierteljahr halten. Letter from Leo-
pold von Gerlach to Frederick William iv, 20 October 1853, GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, Abt. J,
No. 455 (Leopold von Gerlach), p. 84b.
22 Jetzt wo die Orientalische Frage abgemacht ist, tritt die Stellung des alten Europa ge-
gen die in Frankreich incarnirte Revolution wieder hervor. GStAPK, bph, Rep. 50, Abt. J,
No. 455 (Leopold von Gerlach), p. 87a.
270 chapter 7

that Russia should welcome efforts at mediation. He contended that if the czar
truly wished for Russia to ensure the religious liberties of Christians in the Ot-
toman Empire, he should be able to see that this goal would be endangered
by initial Russian military triumphs, as these would only heighten the the
revolutionary-bellicose party in Paris and London about [the, de] rape of the
Porte [].23 The result might not only be an overthrow of the Sultan, which
would frustrate Russias plans in the Ottoman Empire, but also, far more men-
acing, the ascendancy of the revolution in Europe. The crisis, Manteuffel
asserted, threatens only temporarily from Constantinople, [] but it is per-
manent in Paris. Therefore, even more important than a (temporary) Russian
victory of arms would be cutting the close connection of revolutionary state
officials on the near and far side of the Channel [].24 Just three days later,
after the czar rejected the proposal of mediation with the four other great
powers (Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria), Manteuffel elaborated his fears.
The czars rejection would likely mean war with France and Britain, which in
turn would make it impossible to uphold our neutrality and bring great dam-
age to Prussia. Once war broke out, [] one would bring against us no less
than against the emperor and his government all the revolutionary forces to
the field of battle. For Manteuffel as well as for the Awakened figures in the
Kreuzzeitung faction, the stakes could hardly have been higher. By focusing on
the thoroughly local question in the Ottoman Empire, Manteuffel held that
the czar would inadvertently risk [] the fate of the world, the welfare and the
existence of both his faithful German allies, indeed even his own previously
extensive political and moral influence on central Europe [].25
Likewise, Frederick William iv feared that war would bring revolution. After
the British sent their ships into the Black Sea, he wrote to Albert, appealing to

23 das revolutionr-kriegersichen Parthei in Paris und London ber Vergewaltigung der

Pforte (274). Letter dated 15 December 1853, reproduced in Winifred Baumgart, Wolfgang
Elz, and Werner Zrrer, Preussische Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs, Akten zur Ge
schichte des Krimkriegs (Mnchen: R. Oldenbourg, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 26872.
24 Die Krisis droht nur vorbergehend von Konstantinopel; [] dagegen ist sie in Paris per-
manent. [] die enge Verbindung der revolutionren Staatsleute diesseits und jenseits
des Kanals []. (275). Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 271.
25 unsere Neutralitt [] aufrecht erhalten knnen, Dagegen wrde man nicht weni-
ger gegen uns, als gegen den Kaiser und seine Regierung alle revolutionairen Krfte auf
den Kampfplatz bringen, durchaus localen Frage, and [] das Schicksal der Welt, die
Wohlfahrt und die Existenz seiner beiden deutschen treuen Alliirten, ja seinen eingenen
bisherigen weitgreifenden politschen und moralischen Einflu auf Mittel-Europa [].
(275). Letter dated 16 December 1853, reproduced in Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1,
pp. 27376.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 271

Christian sentiment and state interest in the same letter. He freely admitted
that he condemned the clumsiness of the czars moves, even as he repeated
his view that the czar did not want war, let alone a European conflagration.26
Frederick William iv regretted that nothing embitters my pain about this
provocation to a higher degree than the worrying fact that all of this strength-
ening of the hereditary enemy of Christendom comes from a Christian empire,
whose head is a noble, true, and genuine Christian [Victoria, de].27 Anticipat-
ing the tigers lunge from the West, Frederick William pledged [] to protect
Germany from its claws a[nd, de] to combat the Godless, anti-Christian beast
of revolution, which the tigers lunge awakens in Hungary, Poland, Italy, and
Germany.28 To pursue every opportunity for peace, the king also dispatched
Count Pourtals on an unofficial mission, supposedly [] wholly dependent
on the advice of my faithful Bunsen.29
Pourtalss mission betokened ill for the Awakened supporters of the
Kreuzzeitung faction. Like nearly all of the Wochenblatt faction, his anti-Russian
(and anti-Kreuzzeitung faction) views were public knowledge. In June and July
1853 he had elaborated his position on the Eastern Question.30 He believed
the decision-makers in Russia aimed not for a quick conquest, but a gradual
expansion, [] to gather dependent, non-viable states around its powerfully
centralized empire.31 Pourtals claimed that in the Eastern Question, Prussia
had no immediate interest.32 Here he distanced himself from the Kreuzzei
tung, whose pro-Russian stance as a means to securing a Holy Alliance against
Godless revolution he portrayed as nave, betraying authentically Prussian

26 Europischen Conflagration, Letter dated 22 December 1853, reproduced in Baumgart et

al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 286.
27 Allein, nichts verbittert mienen Schmerz ber diese Provokazion in hherem Grade, als
die bedenkliche Thatsache, da das Alles zur Strkung des Erbfeindes der Christenheit
von einem christlichen Reiche geschieht, dessen Haupt eine edle, wahre, u. chte Christin
ist []. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1.
28 [] Deutschland vor seinen Krallen zu bewahren u das Gottlose, antichristliche Scheu
sal der Revolution zu bekmpfen, welches der Tigersprung in Ungarn, Polen, Italien u.
Deutschland weckt. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1.
29 [] ganz auf meines treuen Bunsens Rath angewiesen. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol.1,
p. 287.
30 Behnen names Pourtals as the author of the serial article Zur orientalischen Frage.
Behnen, Preuisches Wochenblatt, p. 253.
31 [] um das mchtig-centralisirte Reich abhngige, nicht lebensfhige Staaten zu sam-
meln. Wochenblatt, 18 June 1853, Zur orientalischen Frage, 268, col. 1.
32 kein unmittelbares Interesse. Wochenblatt, 25 June 1853, Zur orientalischen Frage,
p. 275, col. 1.
272 chapter 7

and German goals for the benefit of foreigners. Pourtals denounced the per-
manent Te Deum of the Kreuzzeitung, which, he averred, seemed as though
the organ of the New Prussian [i.e. the Kreuzzeitung faction, de] wanted to
exchange the just and proud slogan of Prussia, suum cuique, for the Iserve
of the blind Bohemian king, who, deserting land and people and deserted by
them, fell for foreign ends on foreign soil.33 But if Pourtals saw no imme-
diate interest of Prussia at stake, he did see at stake in the Eastern Question
European interests that concerned Prussia. In particular, when one state (Rus-
sia) enlarged itself disproportionately, it could threaten the balance of power
in Europe, and therefore every other state. Disturbing the balance of power
should matter because the postwar settlements, including the break with the
revolution, that is, with arbitrariness, must, if anywhere, be strictly preserved
as a principle in the international legal relationships among themselves.34
Pourtalss public words corresponded closely with the private exchange he
and Bunsen had with Clarendon.35
From Pourtalss perspective, Russias arbitrary actions threatened the
whole state order that suppressed revolution, while from the perspective of
Awakened Kreuzzeitung faction members, upholding the Holy Alliance as a
supposedly truly holy alliance, at nearly any cost, was central to the fight of the
Godly against the Godless revolution. Rochow, writing to Leopold von Gerlach
with the bitterness that only a Prussian aristocrat and state official could sum-
mon, conceded that he lived in the age of precise calculation of gain and loss
that granted the industrial enterprises such a great influence on the politics of
states.36 Yet, he contended, it was simply not in the interest of Prussia to give
up its old alliance with Russia and thereby risk losing both its newly gained
western provinces to France and many of its eastern provinces to Russia. Ac-
cording to Rochow, if Prussia were [] to reject the old alliance [] it would

33 permanenten tedeum der Kreuzzeitung and als wollte das Organ der Neupreuen
die gerechte und stolze Devise Preuens suum cuique gegen das Ich dien des blinden
Bhmenknigs vertauschen, der Land und Leute verlassend und von ihnen verlassen, fr
fremde Zwecke, auf fremden Boden fiel. Ibid.
34 sich unverhltnimig vergrere and der Bruch mit der Revolution, das heit mit
der Willkr, mu, wenn irgenwo, in den vlkerrechtlichen Beziehungen der Staaten un-
tereinander als Grundsatz streng gewahrt werden. Wochenblatt, 25 June 1853, Zur orien-
talischen Frage, p. 268, col. 2.
35 Cf. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, pp. 30205.
36 in der Zeit des genauen Abwgens von Gewinn und Verlust and die Industriellen
Unternehmungen einen so groen Einflu auf die Politik der Staaten. Letter dated
St. Petersburg, 31 December 1853. Reproduced in full in Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol.1,
p. 300, original in GStAPK, Rep. 92, Nachla Leopold von Gerlach, No. 22, pp. 29799.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 273

undermine our true interests, trample underfoot long-defended principles,

break our word, desecrate the memory of our fallen brothers, overlook the ad-
monition, holy to us, of the dearly blessed king.37
How deep was Frederick Williams commitment to the Holy Alliance at this
time? Leopold von Gerlach was convinced that the commitment was solid,
telling Count Mnster (the Military Plenipotentary for Prussia at the Russian
court in St. Petersburg) in January 1854 that I can however attest that it does
not occur to either the king or his princes to separate from the Holy Alliance
(I am very pleased that you give the alliance its proper name).38 But the kings
commitment to the Holy Alliance in fact had its limits, as illustrated by the
Neuchtel problem. Neuchtel, or Neuenburg in German, was a predominant-
ly French-speaking and Protestant Swiss canton ruled by the Hohenzollerns
since 1707 (apart from a Napoleonic interlude). However, in March 1848, repub-
licans seized power. But in 1854, in the midst of the Eastern Question and seri-
ous threats to the balance of power in Europe, Frederick William seemed quite
willing to risk those bigger stakes to resecure Neuchtel, seeing as at risk the
core principles of his status as the legitimate ruler chosen by God to rule not
only Prussia, but Neuchtel as well. Writing in January 1854 to Bunsen about
the negotiations he and Pourtals were conducting in London, Frederick Wil-
liam explored the possibility of siding with Britain in the conflict with Russia,
enjoining that [] should I provide service in these troubles to Great Britain,
the price, the conditio sine qua non, is the restoration of my authority over
and the legitimacy of my dear, faithful little land on the Jura [that has been,
de] trampled under the feet of the Godless.39 It seems unlikely that the king

37 Und sagten wir uns von der alten Allianz los, wrden wir nicht auf diesem Wege un-
sere wahren Interessen untergraben, die lange vertheidigten Prinzipein mit Fen treten,
wortbrchig werden, das Andenken unserer gefallnen Brder schnden, die uns heilige
Mahnung des hochseel. Knigs bersehen. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 299.
38 Ich kann aber versichern, da es weder dem Knige noch seinen Prinzen einfllt sich
von der heiligen Allianz zu trennen (Ich freue mich sehr da Sie das Bndni bei seinem
rechten Namen nennen) [...]. Copy of a letter dated Charlottenburg, 3 January 1854, re-
produced fully in Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 301, originally in GStAPK, Rep. 92,
Nachla Leopold von Gerlach, No. 24, p. 77.
39 [] soll ich Grobritannien in diesen Wirren Dienst leisten, so ist der Preis, die conditio
sine qua non die Wiederherstellung meiner Autoritt ber und der Legitimitt meines
lieben treuen, under die Fe der Gottlosen getretenen Lndchens am Jura. Heinrich
von Poschinger, ed., Preuens auswrtige Politik 1850 bis 1858. Unverffentlichte Dokumente
aus dem Nachlasse Ministerprsidenten Otto Frhrn. V. Manteuffel, vol. 2, 1852 bis 1854.
Die orientalische Frage bis zum Beginn des Krimkriegs. Vom 2. Dezember 1852 bis zum 14.
Dezember 1854 (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1902), p. 268.
274 chapter 7

raised the Neuchtel problem as a mere bargaining chip. Much later, during
the so-called Neuchtel Crisis of 18561857 provoked by a failed royalist upris-
ing, he clung tenaciously to his claims on Neuchtel until negotiations among
the pentarchy finally compelled Prussias renunciation of claims there. Rather,
the kings apparent willingness to risk his alliance with Russia makes sense
only if we understand the intensity of his Awakened, conservative sensibility
that associated republicanism with Godlessness, and legitimacy with God-
given authority.
Early 1854, then, signifies a low-water mark for the Kreuzzeitung faction and
its Awakened supporters. Their conservative, Wochenblatt opponents were as-
cendant during the Pourtals mission, the king himself contemplated siding
against Russia, and the Kreuzzeitungs editor remained under pressure from
Prussian officials. In fact, as the pressure on the paper increased, the govern-
ment confiscated some individual issues of the Kreuzzeitung. According to Di-
wald, in Ludwig von Gerlachs Rundschau in the 4 January 1854 edition of the
Rundschau, Gerlach, despite criticism (Diwald), supported the Catholic Arch-
bishop of Freiburg, Hermann von Vicari, against the government of Badens
church policies.40 Since Berlins police chief Hinckeldey objected, the issue
was confiscated, as was the next days, and there was a further confiscation on
16 February. As Diwald explains, Gerlach escaped a court proceeding thanks to
the personal intervention of the king.41 After the first round of trouble, Gerlach
noted in his diary on 9 January 1854 the likely upshot of such unwanted govern-
ment scrutiny: It fell hard upon me that I would again, as before 1848, have to
return to opposition and minority. Bethmanns party is drawing near to Man-
teuffel [].42 After a dinner with his Awakened, conservative allies Karl Rau
mer and Westphalen, Gerlach reported that they all expected one would have
to brace oneself for leftish majorities, expecting also the failure of Westpha-
lens proposals for Gemeine-, Kreis- und Provinz[ial-Ordnungen] [].43 (Here
one may glimpse how the declining fortunes of the Kreuzzeitung faction in for-
eign affairs were perhaps connected to their frustration in domestic matters.)
Such developments in the Gemeindeordnungs development, in the path
to the Crimean War, and in the intensifying opposition of the Wochenblatt and

40 bei aller Einzelkritik. Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 1, p. 337.

41 Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 1 .
42 Es trat mir sehr nahe, da ich wieder, wie vor 1848, in Opposition und Minoritt zurck-
msse. Die Partei Bethmann nhert sich Manteuffeln []. Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 1.
43 sich nur auf linke Mehrheiten gefat Machen [] and Vorlagen ber Gemeine-, Kreis-
und Provinz[ial-Ordnungen]. Diary entry of 14 January 1854; Diwald, Von der Revolution,
vol. 1, p. 338.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 275

Kreuzzeitung factions leave the impression of inexorably hardening fronts.

Yet, at least in early 1854, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach perceived, to his discom-
fort, that there actually was considerable fluidity between and within the
factions. In January, Gerlach confided to his diary that there were significant
differences between his historical constitutionalism and Stahls systematic
constitutionalism.44 Reinforcing this perception, Gerlach recounts that, in the
telling of his brother Leopold, Bethmann-Hollweg supposedly asserted in Feb-
ruary that

Stahl has much more in common with him, Bethmann-Hollweg, than

me; he, Bethmann-Hollweg, reproached Stahl with this: why he let me
rule in the party, to which Stahl [replied]: he was no party leader; the
right had adopted him and given him ethical guarantees [].45

Perhaps Leopold von Gerlach was right that the kings concerns seemed cohe-
sive only to the king, but actually evinced a dangerously muddled discontinu-
ity. In his memoirs, based on his retouched diary written at the time, Gerlach
reported the kings views as follows: 1. The Orient does not involve me, but I
will protect Russias back. 2. About the protection of Christians in the Turkish
Empire, I will side with England, 3. Concerning Neuchtel, with France. In his
published memoir Gerlach added laconically, That out of all this nothing will
come is clear, and that such is dangerous is also clear.46
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach certainly made strenuous, but mixed, efforts to
clarify matters and harden the fronts. For example, he complained that the
king supported Bethmann-Hollweg and Prince Hohenlohe, both leftists, and
he wrote a Mmoire that explained why he could never have a rapproche-
ment with him, which, Leopold reported, only made the king enraged.47

44 historisch and sytematisch. Diary entry dated 31 January 1854 in Diwald, Von der Revo
lution, vol. 1, p. 340.
45 Stahl sei mit ihm, Bethmann-Hollweg, viel einiger als mit mir; er, Bethmann-Hollweg,
habe dies Stahl vorgehahlten: warum er mich in der Partei regieren lasse, worauf Stahl
[entgegnet habe]: er sei kein Parteifhrer; die Rechten htten ihn aufgenommen und ihm
ethische Garantien gegeben [].Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 1.
46 1. Der Orient geht mich nichts an, aber ich werde Ruland den Rcken decken. 2. Handelt
es sich um den Schutz der Christen im Trkischen Reiche, so gehe ich mit England, 3. was
Neufchatel anbetrifft, mit Frankreich. Da aus diesem Allen nichts wird, ist klar, und da so
etwas gefhrlich, ist wiederum klar. Gerlach and Gerlach, Denkwrdigkeiten, vol. 2, p. 99.
47 Knig protegiert Bethmann-Hollweg und den Prinzen Hohenlohe, beide [] Linken
(diary entry of 8 February 1854), Verstndigung (diary entry of 9 February 1854), and
wtend (diary entry of 10 February 1854), Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 34041.
276 chapter 7

Partly counterbalancing such divisive moves, Gerlach made a clumsy if prob-

ably heartfelt attempt to reconcile on a personal albeit not political level with
Bethmann-Hollweg in matters concerning the church. In April, following this
holy Eastertide, Gerlach wrote Bethmann-Hollweg to emphasize that I hold
fast the awareness of our common ground, despite having given offense with
some of his criticism. The criticism, he insisted, arose from the Fatherlands
need. The split that runs through the church of God and splits it ever further,
just this split splits us. (catholicity-tolerance, etc.) [sic].48
For his part, Bethmann-Hollweg, while professing to be made of softer stuff
than you, told Gerlach he thought he had done you no injustice in seeing
an infelicitous spirit of contradiction in Gerlach.49 He cited and specifically
claimed to have followed the biblical injunction in Matthew 18:1517, which
urges Christians first to correct each other in private, and only in cases of con-
tinuing disagreement to draw in other witnesses and, eventually, the congre-
gation. In a passage notable for both its Christian spirit of love and its North
German frankness, Bethmann-Hollweg added that he might not follow Jesuss
final admonition,

[] as I recognize in your behavior only a deeply rooted and mutually

damaging bad habit whose deeper, sinful reason is still hidden from you,
but not a disingenuousness that would dissolve the bond of faith and love
that has connected us since 1819. As many of my best Christian friends
charge against you and demand of me the dissolution of this bond, I can
and must hold to my conscience and continue thereby to work publicly
towards you, as you toward me, according to ability.50

48 nach dieser heiligen Osterzeit, da ich das Bewutsein unseres gemeinschaftlichen

Grundes festhalte, and die Not des Vaterlandes. Die Spaltung, die durch die Kirche
Gottes geht und immer weiter und weiter spaltet, eben diese Spaltung spaltet auch uns.
(Katholizitt-Toleranz etc). Letter of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach to Bethmann-Hollweg,
dated 19 April 1854, reproduced in Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2, p. 860.
49 bekanntlich von weicherem Stoffe als Du gemacht and glaube Dir nicht Unrecht ge-
tan zu haben, and unseligen Widerspruchsgeist. Letter of Bethmann-Hollweg to Ernst
Ludwig von Gerlach dated 19 April 1854, reproduced in Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2,
p. 861.
50 [] da ich in Deinem Verhalten nur eine tiefeingewurzelte und gemeinschdigende Un-
art erkenne, deren tieferer sndiger Grund Dir noch verborgen ist, nicht aber eine das
seit 1819 uns verbindende Glaubens- und Liebesband aufhebende Unlauterkeit. So viele
meiner besten christlichen Freunde gegen Dich anstrmen und selbst die Lsung dieses
Bandes von mir fordern, so kann und mu ich es doch in meinem Gewissen festhalten
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 277

Both letters bear witness to the tangled Awakened threads of faith and politics,
of free choice and structural (as well as self-imposed or religiously inflected)
limits on human agency. Each writer perceived himself to be in the right and
the other in the wrong, both politically and morally. Yet, each tried however
imperfectly and with little rational prospect of success to let the filaments
of faith stretch across the rifts that separated their politics and personalities.
Tellingly clinging to the intimate form of you (du) in their address despite
their growing political alienation, they sought to maintain some common
ground regardless of their worsening polarization on issues ranging from the
Gemeindeordnung to the conflict with Russia.51

The Centrality and Fragility of the Holy Alliance

The Kreuzzeitungs position, its aspiration for a neutrality that might pre-
serve the option of a Holy Alliance, became ever more difficult to hold. In
the Kreuzzeitung of 4 April 1854, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach praised the post-
Napoleonicbalance of powers [Gleichgewicht]. He claimed it was the opposite
of the mechanical balance of powers theory of the 18th century because it
was animated by a higher principle or energy. Without the the fundamental
idea of the Holy Alliance Europe could not have held off materialism, lib-
eralism and the revolution [].52 Gerlach acknowledged the real condition
of the alliance as an alliance of three merely mortal kings, while chiding the
powers for not refuting the insolent slander [freche Verleumdung] that it was
really an unholy alliance of the despotism of princes against the freedom of
the peoples.53 He instead recalled that the alliance had been concluded by
monarchs who had spread out their victory palms and crowns as fiefs before

und dabei fortfahren, Dir, wie Du mir, nach Vermgen ffentlich entgegenzuarbeiten.
Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 86162.
51 For further comments by Bethmann-Hollweg on the personality of Ernst Ludwig von Ger-
lach, see Diwald, Von der Revolution, vol. 2, p. 864ff.
52 das Gegentheil der mechanischen Gleichgewichtstheorie des achtzehnten Jahrhun-
derts and [o]hne den Grundgedanken der Heiligen Allianz wrde die bloe Gesammt-
brgschaft der fnf Mchte den Besitzstand und den Frieden von Europa nicht von 1815
bis 1854 aufrecht gehalten haben. Sie wrde dem Materialismus, dem Liberalismus und
der Revolution nicht so lange die Spitze geboten []. npz, 20 April 1854, No. 92. Beilage.
53 eine unheilige Allianz des Despotismus der Frsten gegen die Freiheit der Vlker [].
Ibid.
278 chapter 7

the King of kings, Christ, and through that the source of all freedom, namely
the Kingdom of God [].54
For Gerlach and many others in the Kreuzzeitung party, the lens of religion
yielded a world of startling clarity. Those for God were against the revolution
and for the Holy Alliance, with the peace that surpasses all understanding
forming the basis for sustained peace among states. Those who were for revo-
lution (and therefore against the Holy Alliance) were evil spirits, advancing
the devils interests through the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.55 For those con-
servatives who let go of the essence of the Holy Alliance, the belief in justice
and freedom from God remains [] only conservatism in the negative sense
of the word, which clings to that which exists only because it exists, because in
the night of doubt the deeper truth goes missing.56 In another lengthy article
in the fall of 1855, the Kreuzzeitung again extolled the glorious history of the
Holy Alliance and, by implication, made the case for its future necessity.57
For the Kreuzzeitung party, then, there could be no compromise. The answer
to both the German question and the Eastern question was that no solution
was possible that would undermine the (truly) Holy Alliance. But once Austria,
with the backing of the German Confederation, compelled Russia to evacuate
and then in September 1854 (the same month that fighting on the Crimean
peninsula began) itself occupied the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and
Moldavia, it seemed impossible to speak of the Holy Alliance, the very basis of
the Kreuzzeitungs position.58
From a realist perspective, it was indeed nearly impossible to dream of a
meaningful continuation of the Holy Alliance. But while the Wochenblatt party
played realist checkers, the Kreuzzeitung aimed to play idealist chess, gambling
that its principles would in the end have a longer shelf life than the latest turn
in the fortunes of war and diplomacy. It was a bold gamble, but perhaps the
only one the Awakened conservatives could make, given the material they had

54 ihre Siegespalmen und ihre Kronen dem Knige der Knige, Christo, zu Lehn aufgetra-
gen und dadurch dem Urquell aller Freiheit, nmlich dem Reiche Gottes, []. Ibid.
55 Wurde doch jener heilige Name selbst zu den Zeiten von den drei Mchten nicht an-
gerufen, als die bsen Geister, gegen welche die heilige Allianz recht eigentlich gestiftet
war, ber Europa losgelassen wurden, nmlich 1830 und 1848. Ibid.
56 von dem Glauben an das Recht und die Freiheit aus Gott bleibt [] nur der Conser-
vatismus, im negativen Sinne des Wortes, brig, [] welcher, weil ihm in der Nacht des
Zweifels die tiefere Wahrheit abhanden gekommen ist, an das, was besteht, eben nur, weil
es besteht, mit gebrochenem Gewissen sich anklammert. Ibid.
57 See npz, 21 and 22 September 1854.
58 Although she does not quote the paper on this issue, Bussiek makes a similar point here
in her summary of its views. Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 146.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 279

to work with. In early 1854, it certainly appeared that the Wochenblatt party was
on the verge of winning the political battle against the Kreuzzeitung, and push-
ing Prussia even further from Russia and closer to France and Britain. For ex-
ample, writing from the Russian court in St. Petersburg, Mnster recounted to
Leopold von Gerlach that the czar complained that German states would end
up in the arms of France, stating Manteuffel is weak a[nd] vacillating a[nd]
therefore less reliable than ever, the Prince of Prussia [the future Wilhelm i,
brother of Friedrich Wilhelm iv, de] quite the same way a[nd] people like
Gr[a]f Pourtals a[nd] Mr. Bethmann now play main roles in Berlin59 Mnster
added that he responded by saying that Graf Pourtals, like his father-in-law
Bethmann Hollweg are, in my view, apostates, therefore unreliable.60 It is un-
clear whether Mnsters reference to apostasy referred to a religious or politi-
cal variety, or perhaps both, in his mind. By the end of February, Austria joined
with the French and the British in demanding a Russian withdrawal from the
Danubian principalities.
The following month, on 20 April, Prussia even joined with Austria in a
controversial alliance. The alliance bound each party in an offensive as well
as defensive alliance, confronting both papers with outcomes that met some
of their interests but placed others at risk. If Prussia and Austria eventually
declared war on Russia, the Kreuzzeitung party could find comfort in pre-
serving German unity but would give up its vital goal of preserving the Holy
Alliance. If Prussia and Austria declared war on Russia, the Wochenblatt party
could take solace in the isolation and perhaps defeat of a reactionary and anti-
constitutional Russia, but war on Austrian terms would likely mean having to
give up the prize of seizing the crisis to advance Prussian over Austrian leader-
ship among the German states. Perhaps fortunately for both papers, this seem-
ingly decisive shift away from Russia on 20 April never actually forced Prussia
into war with Russia, despite the vigorous efforts of Austria, which declared
war on Russia in the spring, to compel Prussia to follow its lead. By Decem-
ber 1854 Austria demanded that Prussia mobilize its troops, according to the
agreement of 20 April, to help counter a growing Russian presence in Poland.61
Prussia refused. The Wochenblatt observed that Austria had attempted since

59 Manteuffel ist schwach u schwandkend u darum unzuverliger denn je, der Prinz von
Preuen ganz in demselben Sinn u Leute wie Grf Pourtals u Herr Bethmann spielen jetzt
Hauptrollen in Berlin. Letter dated 23 February 1854, reproduced in full in Baumgart et
al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, pp. 42327. Here, pp. 42425.
60 Graf Pourtals wie sein Schwiegervater Bethmann Hollweg aber sind, meiner Ansicht
nach, Apostaten, darum unzuverlig []. Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 425.
61 Wochenblatt, 13 January 1855, Oesterreichs neueste Forderung, p. 11.
280 chapter 7

April to use the agreement to wrangle the other German states into a posi-
tion of support, while charging that Prussia had preferred the narrowest pos-
sible reading to avoid involvement.62 While continuing to wish Austria every
success against a reactionary Russia, the Wochenblatt nevertheless fretted that
Austrias most recent demand went too far:

And if the policy of the Prussian government unfortunately has often

awakened in us the worry that the April Treaty serves to hinder Austria
in its powerful performance, we can never see in the means to improve
Prussian policy that Prussias power is placed more and more at the dis-
posal of another state.63

Genuinely convinced that it served Prussian and German interests for an

anti-constitutional Russia to be weakened in war, the Wochenblatts writers still
worried that the latest twist in the war might compromise Prussias indepen-
dence of action, and therefore weaken it in its future endeavor to take a leading
role in the German states.
The very next day, the German Confederations Parliament [Bundestag],
egged on by the Kreuzzeitungs protg Bismarck, also refused Austrias request
to mobilize troops. The Wochenblatts response was unyielding. It argued that
Prussia would not be able to keep itself out of the war in the long run. [] The
choice that is left is whether it will wage war for its own interests and with self-
determination or as an auxiliary power to Austria.64 Ever seeking to discredit
its Kreuzzeitung rival which naturally returned the favor the Wochenblatt
mocked the Kreuzzeitung party as the Russian party, claiming that the party
which we call Russian at first showed a great ethical indignation at the names
misapprehension of its purely Prussian aspiration [] but with time this par-
ty now65 feels it itself pleased and sophisticated, if one calls it Russian in its

62 die engsten Grenzen. Ibid.

63 Und wenn die Politik der preuischen Regierung in uns leider die Besorgni oft erweckt
hat, da der Aprilvertrag in ihren Hnden dazu diene, Oesterreich in seinem krftigen
Auftreten zu hindern, so knnen wir doch nie das Mittel zur Besserung der preuischen
Politik darin suchen, da Preuens Macht mehr und mehr zur freien Verfgung eines
anderen Staates gestellt werde. Ibid.
64 Preuen wrde sich auf die Dauer nicht dem Kriege entzeihen knnen. [] Es bleibt
nur die Wahl ob es diesen Krieg fr seine eigenen Interessen und in eigener Selbstbestim
mung oder als Auxiliarmacht Oesterreichs fhren will. Wochenblatt, 20 January 1855,
p. 23.
65 Die Partei, welche wir die russische nennen, zeigte Anfangs [] eine groe sittliche Ent-
rstung ber die in diesem Namen liegende Verkennung ihres rein preuischen Strebens.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 281

convictions, wishes, and actions. While surely an exaggeration, there was

some truth here in terms of popular perceptions. Bussiek states that the favor-
able treatment given to the Russians had led some to speak mischievously of
the Neue Ruische Zeitung instead of the Neue Preuische Zeitung.66
How realistic was the chance of Prussia declaring war on Russia? On one
hand, it is undoubtedly true that Prussia, for its long-term economic benefit
and for diplomatic reasons, could have served its own interests well by going
to war against Russia on its own terms, just as the realist Wochenblatt faction
came to argue. As even Mnster had conceded to the czar in 1854 (when he
was still dangling the prospect that Prussia might side openly with Russia), If
one brings to mind Prussias industry, trade a[nd] merchant fleet, it is obvious
that a break with England is to be avoided as long as possible.67 On the one
hand, when one accounts for idealist motives, especially the religious and po-
litical views of Frederick William iv, views played to by the Wochenblatt and
Kreuzzeitung factions in rather different ways, it seems highly unlikely that
Prussia would have gone to war against Russia in 1854 or even in 1855, a year
which saw two decisive shifts: a political shift to the liberal left in Britain with
the rise of Palmerston, who looked in a broadly favorable way on the efforts
of liberal revolutionaries in 1848, to the prime ministers office in January; and
several poor outcomes for Russia on various battlefields, including the loss of
Sevastopol to its besiegers in September. The idealistic motives in play were
indeed quite strong for the king, and Awakened conservatives associated with
the Kreuzzeitung faction were far closer to the king on these deeply held values.
For an illustration of these values, one might turn to a position paper penned
by Frederick William on 27 February 1854, the same day that Austria joined its
western allies in demanding that Russia pull its troops out of the Danubian
principalities. The king wrote:

Prussia should persevere in neutrality [] in sovereign neutrality. Prus-

sias neutrality should be truly impartial [] It may give up this position
only under the unique condition that others wish to place it under duress

[] Aber mit der Zeit [] so fhlt sich diese Partei, welche sich ja auch als Retterin des
Vaterlandes betrachtet, jetzt sich erfreut und gehoben, wenn man sie russisch in ihren
berzeugungen, Wnschen und Handlungen nennt. Wochenblatt, 31 March 1855, No. 13,
Die russische Partei, p. 153.
66 Bussiek, Neue Preuische Zeitung, p. 141.
67 Wenn man aber Preussens Industrie, Handel, u Rhederei in Anschlag bringt, so liegt
es auf der Hand, da es einen Bruch mit England zu vermeiden sucht, solange es geht.
Letter from Mnster to Leopold von Gerlach dated St. Petersburg, 23 February 1854, in
Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, pp. 42526.
282 chapter 7

and want to threaten it toward this end with the power of fleets a[nd]
armies. [] If Prussia gave in to such duress, it would in this way be en
tangled in a war with the east or the west. But in both directions the war
that is breaking out is an unjust [war, de]. And I will not allow Prussia to
be forced into an unjust war.68

I would contend that, if one can pinpoint a moment at which Prussian neu-
trality became a fixed and immoveable point, the kings writing of the last
sentence above represents that irrevocable moment of casting the die. No de-
velopments inside Prussia or the German states, and no developments on the
battlefield, sufficed to move policy from this point onwards.
Frederick Williams description of the war as a fundamentally unjust one
reflected his religiously informed view, and his stance made it unlikely, though
not impossible, that Prussia would go to war in almost any circumstance ex-
cept that of being directly threatened. One must concede that the king had
sometimes explored the idea of breaking with firmly announced principles,
as witnessed by his entertaining the idea of an alliance with Britain if it sup-
ported his position on Neuchtel, or in his issuing of the 1848 constitution. But
in both of those instances a strong case could be made (and the king made
such cases to himself) that he was being true to what he saw as a still higher
principle in the first example, of being king by Gods grace trumping even
the Holy Alliance; or in the second example, of his having issued a constitu-
tion through the (arbitrary) power of a theoretically absolute monarch. But in
the end, he did not ally with Britain (or other western powers), and he did not
revoke the constitution (although, admittedly, he and his allies gutted its most
liberal aspects with reforms). In short, we find here a generally principled
king announcing a fundamental position that the war was unjust, and Prussia
would under almost no circumstances be drawn into it.
Nothing changed the kings view on the basic injustice of the war, and to
concerned observers he seemed to drift closer to the Kreuzzeitung camp over

68 Preuen soll in Neutralitat verharren [] in neutralit souveraine. Preuens Neutralitt

soll wirklich unbetheiligt [] Es darf diese Stellung nur unter der einzigen Bedingung auf-
geben, wenn man ihm Zwang anthun will u. zu dem Ende mit Flotten u. Heeres Macht
droht. [] Gbe Preuen solchem Zwang nach, so wrde es in einen Krieg nach Ost oder
West verwickelt werden. Nach beiden Richtungen hin ist aber der Krieg der ausbricht ein
ungerechter. Und zu ungerechtem Kriege la ich Preuen nicht zwingen. Promemoria, dat-
ed Berlin 27 February 1854, reproduced in Kurt Borries, Preuen im Krimkrieg (18531856)
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1930), p. 352, citing the original in GStAPK, Rep. 50 E, Ori-
entalia, vol. 1. Baumgart nicely summarizes but does not quote from this document in
Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 433.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 283

time. That sense of drift may offer the best explanation as to why Bunsen took
the extraordinary step of sending out feelers to Britain about possible terms for
Prussias potential move toward Britain. Such initiatives from Bunsen worked
against the Wochenblatt factions interest. In his diary, Leopold von Gerlach re-
counts that while Niebuhr wondered if Bunsen could be charged with treason,
[] that the king [] has by no means the intention of recalling Bunsen, who
has been his friend for 30 years. He calls his negotiations a betrayal [Verrat],
him, Bunsen, mad, and yet he is supposed to be retained in office for personal
reasons.69 (Eventually, however, Bunsen was in fact recalled because of this
scandal.)
Neither did a calculated tantrum by the kings brother, William (Wilhelm),
the Prince of Prussia, change Frederick Williams mind or his political reso-
lution about Prussias stance.70 William, increasingly edging away from his
brothers policies, noted that the shift away from the west understandably led
to the distancing of the state from those Bunsen, War Minister Bonin, and
Usedom who had advocated such moves for the last half year. He then com-
plained that

[t]he individuals who want this change, (General v. Gerlach practically

spelled it out to me in my chamber that he wants to lead Prussia into the
Russian camp!!) lie in wait for every opening that their adversaries give
them in order to force them to take their leave or seek to arrange their
departure.71

69 [] da der Knig [] keineswegs die Absicht habe Bunsen abzuberufen, der seit 30
Jahren sein Freund sei. Er nennt seinen Handlungen einen Verrat, ihn, Bunsen, verrckt,
und dennoch soll er aus persnlichen Grnden im Amte behalten werden. Diary of Leo-
pold von Gerlach, 1854, 3031, reprinted from an Abschrift in Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs,
vol. 1, pp. 45758.
70 Peter Rassow thoroughly documented the conflict in Der Konflikt Knig Friedrich Wilhelms
iv. mit dem Prinzen von Preuen im Jahre 1854. Eine Preuische Staatskrise. Akademie der
Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftli-
chen Klasse (1969: No. 9, pp. 684781).
71 Die Individuen, welche diesen Wechsel wollen, (der General v. Gerlach hat es mir in
meinem Zimmer geradezu ausgesprochen, da er Preuen ins russische Lager zu fh-
ren gedenkt!!) lauern auf jede Ble, die sich ihre adversairs geben, um sie [] zum Ab-
schiednehmen zu ntigen oder dahin zu trachten, da sie den Abschied erhalten. Ibid.,
p. 719. Baumgart summarizes but does not quote from this source in Krimkriegs, vol. 1,
p. 655.
284 chapter 7

Reminding the king that he had consulted William about every other instance
of appointing a new Minister of War since 1848, William claimed the lack of
consultation about Bonins dismissal evidenced unmistakably a lack of your
trust, and he demanded the reinstatement of Bonin, and [i]n case of refusal
he would return to his family in Baden, because my health and my nerves
have suffered so much through the whole time I have spent here since Janu-
ary [].72 Frederick William forgave him as a brother with his whole heart,
but he showed unusual resolve in refusing to forgive him as king and as com-
mander in chief until William actually apologized, since William had offend-
ed through his behavior nine-tenths of the army and caused disaster.73
Nor did a petty political scandal involving the theft of confidential diplomat-
ic correspondence perturb Frederick Williams course of sovereign neutrality
in the Crimean War. As David Barclay recounts the story, Wilhelm Stieber and
Friedrich Goldheim determined that in October 1855 certain private papers
belonging to Leopold von Gerlach and Marcus Niebuhr had been secretly tran-
scribed and their contents transmitted to third parties.74 In 1856, Carl Techen
confessed that Manteuffel was the man who had hired him for the job, and for
whom he had performed similar jobs for several years. Manteuffel denied any
involvement, but the scandal shed new light on his opposition to the Kreuzzei
tung, and it strained relations with Gerlach and his allies in the camarilla as
well as at the Kreuzzeitung for a very long time.75
As indicated by the Wochenblatts smears of the Kreuzzeitung as the New
Russian Newspaper (rather than the New Prussian Newspaper), the Wochenblatt
grew increasingly desperate. Its moment to set or seriously impact Prussian
policy regarding the Crimean War had gone, probably by fall of 1854 at the lat-
est. Its writers had believed and still believed that they had the right arguments
at the right moment to deal a humiliating setback to the anti-constitutional,
reactionary power of Russia and to seize a greater leadership role for Prus-
sia among German states, perhaps even demonstrating Austrias inability to
protect and advance German interests. With the decline of the Wochenblatt
in the mid-1850s (partly reversed in later years with the rise of the more
liberal-sounding Prince of Prussia), there is a palpable sense of tragedy in the

72 unverkennbar einen Mangel Deines Vertrauens, Im Verweigerungsfall, and weil meine

Gesundheit und meine Nerven durch die ganze hier verlebte Zeit seit dem Januar der-
maen gelitten hat []. Ibid., p. 720.
73 von ganzem Herzen, als Knig und als Kriegsherr, 9/10 der Armee, and Unheil. Ibid.,
p. 742. Also referred to but not quoted in Baumgart et al., Krimkriegs, vol. 1, p. 711.
74 Barclay, Frederick William iv, p. 252.
75 Barclay, Frederick William iv, pp. 25354.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 285

classical sense of hubris as well as events beyond the control of the protagonist,
bringing his well-intentioned efforts to naught. Events, and the Kreuzzeitung,
conspired against the Wochenblatt faction in what might otherwise have been
a moment of triumph for them, and (from their perspective) for Germany. Un-
able to change events, the writers of the Wochenblatt, already prone to calling
out the Kreuzzeitung in its pages, increased the frequency and sharpness of
their attacks. In 1855 alone, the Wochenblatt published nine major articles that
mainly attacked the Kreuzzeitung by name, and another article highly criti-
cal of a speech Kreuzzeitung mainstay Stahl had delivered on raising credits.
Readers might have been forgiven for thinking that the Wochenblatt perceived
the Kreuzzeitung as a greater danger than Prussias foreign rivals. None of
them, nor the similar articles in the Kreuzzeitung fewer in number but simi-
lar in the shrillness of tone proved edifying. For example, in February 1855
the Wochenblatt set out to defend itself against the Kreuzzeitungs calumni-
ous characterization of the Wochenblatts view as presumptuous phrases of
genteel reproach intended to be statesmanlike against the policy of the royal
government [].76 The Wochenblatt laid out a rational refutation that rejected
artifices [Kunstgriffe] against its view, aggressively defending its position: If
the Fatherland is threatened and in danger, if it stands there surrounded with
difficulties, isolated, deeply sunken in its influence and reputation before Eu-
rope and before Germany where does the blame lie? [] That is Prussian
patriotism, to point to the gaping wound [].77
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856 and based on an adaptation
of the Four Points Proposal first advanced by Russias opponents in August
1854, marked the official end of the Crimean War. The terms mostly restored
the status quo ante.78 Among the major points were these: Russia withdrew
from Ottoman territory it had occupied; the western allies and the Ottomans
withdrew from Crimea as well as all other Russian territory; and the Danubian
principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia ostensibly returned to (ineffectual)

76 Um unsere anmalichen, staatsmnnisch sein sollenden Phrasen vornhemen Tadels

gegen die Politik der kniglichen Regierung gebhrend abzufertigen, sehen wir die
preuische Korrespondenz mit der Kreuzzeitung um die Wette das preuische Wochen-
blatt der unpatriotischen Sympathien fr fremde Regierungen, besonders Oesterreich,
zeihen [sic]. Wochenblatt, 17 February 1855, No. 7, Preuischer Patriotismus, p. 69.
77 Ist das Vaterland bedroht und in Gefahr, steht es, von Schwierigkeiten umringt, verein-
samt da, in seinem Einflu und Ansehen vor Europa und vor Deutschland tief gesunken
wo liegt die Schuld? [] Das ist preuischer Patriotismus, offen auf die Wunde hinzu-
deuten []. Wochenblatt, 17 February 1855, No. 7, Preuischer Patriotismus, p. 70.
78 See Baumgart, Crimean War, pp. 20318, for an extended account of the peace and its
ramifications.
286 chapter 7

Ottoman control. There were significant changes, too, among which were Rus-
sia being compelled to demilitarize the Black Sea, and the pledge of signatory
powers to respect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
Unsurprisingly, the Wochenblatt and the Kreuzzeitung conservatives
had rather different interpretations of the peace and its consequences. The
Kreuzzeitung writers found a high degree of satisfaction in the cessation of war,
expressly thanking God for the peace. On the day after the peace was signed,
the paper reminded readers it had steadfastly inveighed against the absurdity
and disingenuousness of this whole war. The papers writers had been con-
stantly convinced [] that the motives of the same [war, de] just as its goals
were quite different from those which one sold on the market of publicity.
The paper had advocated that Prussia remain far from this fight, which could
only have been conducted against all justice and against all of its [Prussias,
de] interests which, by the way, were of secondary importance []. Here, in
particular, we find Frederick William ivs conviction about the unjust nature
of the war purposively strengthened. Lest anyone see in the victory of more
materially advanced powers over Russia a moral lesson, the paper intoned
that [] war is not the greatest evil: the greatest evil is when a people sinks
in Godlessness and the service of Mammon [].79 Far from finding that the
war proved the rotten nature of the Russian system, the Kreuzzeitung claimed
unconvincingly that Europe owes the restoration of peace primarily to Czar
Alexander [] He could without doubt have continued to prosecute the war.
Russia was not beaten; it confronted the enemy everywhere with strength and
with honor.80 At the same time, the Kreuzzeitung pointed proudly to the fa-
vorable election results for conservatives in both Prussian chambers as a sign
that conservatism contre la rvolution was as vibrant as ever, if not more so, in
Prussia proper. In the elections, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach naturally saw the
hand of history and hard work, stating that [t]he aristocratic estate [Stand der
Ritterschaft] has stepped forcefully into the foreground in the representation

79 den Widersinn und die Unlauterkeit dieses ganzen Krieges, stets berzeugt [] da die
Motive desselben ebenso wie seine Ziele ganz andere wren, als was man auf dem Markt
der Oeffentlichekeit dafr ausverkaufte, diesem Kampfe, den es nur gegen alles Recht
und auch nur gegen alle seine Interessen die stehen dabei brigens erst in zweiter Linie
htte fhren knnen [], and [] der Krieg ist nicht das grte Uebel: das grte
Uebel ist, wenn ein Volk in Gottlosigkeit und Mammonsdienst versinkt []. npz, No. 76,
1 April 1856, Der Friede ist geschlossen, col. 1.
80 [] Europa die Wiederherstellung des Friedens vornehmlich Kaiser Alexander verdankt
[] Unzweifelhaft htte er den Krieg noch lnger fortsetzen knnen. Ruland war nicht
besiegt, es hatte dem Feinde berall mit Kraft und mit Ehren gegenbergestanden. npz,
No. 83, 9 April 1856, Was Ruland betrifft, col. 1.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 287

of our country [Landesvertretung] as a consequence of the service which this

estate has provided in its close connection with the army and the institution of
Landrte in and since the reaction of November 1848.81
In contrast, the Wochenblatt set the stage the day before the peace became
official. As neutral Prussia awaited the result, the Wochenblatt pointedly fea-
tured on its front page a poem by Ernst Moritz Arndt praising German martial
accomplishments in the generation of the Wars of Liberation, singling out
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Boyen, Bcher, and Stein.82 It also took the opportu-
nity to attack the Kreuzzeitung for its recent coverage of the theft of diplomatic
correspondence, finding that the Kreuzzeitungs treatment of Manteuffel, in
particular, was a quite uncalled-for insolence.83 In its first edition after the
peace was signed, the Wochenblatts coverage of the peace commenced an ex-
tended attack on its opponents supposedly mistaken views and their disas-
trous consequences for Prussia. In a transparent reference to the Kreuzzeitung
party, the Wochenblatt observed that [t]he party [] wanted to protect Europe
from the superiority of Napoleonic imperialism and saw in sticking together
with Russia the Holy Alliance, the great bulwark of conservative Europe against
the revolution, permanently secured. But the recent war and peace now
revealed those assumptions as faulty, for [t]he conservative system, which was
supposed to have reached its fullest development in Russia, has proven itself
to be a rotten, untenable being.84 By May the paper asserted that neutrality
had led to a missed chance to pursue Prussias interests, since [t]he Prussian
policy of neutrality [] had no direct influence at all on the construction of
the peace.85 The cause of the blame for the calamitous outcome was clear for

81 Der Stand der Ritterschaft ist sehr in den Vordergrund getreten in unsrer Landesvertre-
tung in Folge des Dienstes, den dieser Stand, in seiner engen Verbindung mit der Armee
und mit der Institution der Landrthe, in und seit der Reaction des November 1848 dem
Vaterlande geleistet hat. npz, 3 April 1856, Oster-Rundschau 1856, col. 1.
82 Wochenblatt, No. 13, 29 March 1856, Erinnerungsbilder der Gegenwart, p. 153.
83 eine ganz unberufene Anmaung. Wochenblatt, No. 13, 29 March 1856, Die Neue
Preuische Zeitung, p. 155.
84 Die Partei [] wollte Europa vor der Uebergewalt des napoleonischen Imperalismus
wahren und sah durch das Zusammenhalten mit Ruland die heilige Allianz, das groe
Bollwerk des conservativen Europas gegen die Revolution, dauernd gesichert and Das
conservative System, das in Ruland zur hchsten Blthe gekommen sein sollte, hat sich
als ein verrottetes, unhaltbares Wesen gezeigt. Wochenblatt, No. 14, 5 April 1856, Der
Friede, p. 167.
85 Die preuische Neutralittspolitik dagegen hatte gar keinen directen Einflu auf die
Herstellung des Friedens. Wochenblatt, No. 19, 10 May 1856, Preuens Stellung zum Frie-
densvertrag und auf dem Pariser Congre, p. 255.
288 chapter 7

the Wochenblatt:a great, swindling conspiracy, at the heart of which lay the
Kreuzzeitung. As the paper put it,

[t]he Oriental Fairy Tale of the Kreuzzeitung party and its comrades
bound together with it for common goals of the warmongering desires of
the chamber opposition and from their attempts to plunge the country
[Land] into a general war was in its day undeniably cleverly invented,
then with accustomed affront repeated anew again and again, and at the
opportunity of the last general election exploited with much success.86

What, then, were the effects of this bitter feud between conservatives over the
war? Each party shaped public opinion and the opinions of policymakers to a
degree, but the effects these two newspapers had in arguing about the correct
policy for Prussia during the Crimean War are hard to pin down. Each paper
provided convenient arguments for the Manteuffel government the Wochen
blatt through 1853 and at least part of 1854, and the Kreuzzeitung thereafter,
as Prussia shifted from considering war against Russia to a studied if isolated
neutrality. In that Prussia remained neutral, the Kreuzzeitung was on the win-
ning side of the issue. A not entirely foreseeable consequence of Prussias neu-
trality was ultimately the isolation of Austria, since Russia neither forgave nor
forgot its role in the war. Prussias neutrality later proved convenient for those
who would later support Bismarck. And for the many thousands of Prussian
soldiers who did not have to fight and die, and for the Prussian taxpayers who
did not have to pay for an expensive war, the outcome of Prussian neutral-
ity was not without its benefits. As is famously known, Bismarck would later
conveniently use Austrias isolation and the lingering gratitude of Russia in his
bid to create a kleindeutsch German state. Bismarck, the erstwhile protg of
the Kreuzzeitung faction, thereby realized an end desired by the national con-
servatives at the Wochenblatt, having benefitted from the means pursued by
the Kreuzzeitung and Prussia during the Crimean War. Perhaps, then, the most
telling effect of this civil war among conservatives was the ascent of the more
Machiavellian Bismarck, whose Realpolitik offered a direct refutation of his

86 Das orientalische Mrchen der Kreuzzeitungspartei und der mit ihr fr nchste gemein-
same Zwecke verbundenen Genossen von den kriegerischen Gelsten der Kammerop-
position und von deren Versuchen, das Land in einen allgemeinen Krieg zu strzen, ist
seiner Zeit unleugbar geschickt erfunden, dann mit gewohnter Stirn immer und immer
wieder aufs Neue wiederholt und bei Gelegenheit der letzten allgemeinen Wahlen mit
vielem Glcke ausgebeutet worden. Wochenblatt, No. 20, 17 May 1856, Das oreintalische
Mrchen der Kreuzzeitungspartei, p. 283.
The Rhetorical War Over The Crimean War 289

mentors politics of principles. Neither the principled realists of the Wochen

blatt nor the principled idealists of the Kreuzzeitung could have known there
would be later under Bismarck such a cynical, if successful, exploitation of
their efforts. In their struggle, each of these principled camps held the other
in check, achieving a kind of exhausted rhetorical stalemate. Their generation
yielded to the next, and, as Bismarcks example indicates, there was a poor ver-
sion of the social reproduction of both camps views.
This mutually exhausting stalemate matches what we found in the trans
formation of Prussias constitution in the Gemeindeordnung, the Provinzial
ordnung, and the creation of the House of Lords. Although this account has
disentangled here for the sake of analytical clarity the transformations in
Prussias internal constitutional matters and the domestic effect of its role in
foreign affairs, contemporaries naturally experienced these sets of concerns
simultaneously. The ever more bitter rivalry between the Kreuzzeitung and
the Wochenblatt, and especially the Awakened conservatives involved in those
projects, fed in one field on developments in the other. It would be too facile
to say that disagreements over constitutional issues opened the rift between
them, and events connected to the Crimean War widened it. It would perhaps
be more accurate to say that at stake in both arenas of conflict were principles
each camp viewed as higher principles theological, philosophical, and ideo-
logical that were interconnected with each other as well as interconnected
with the arenas of conflict. The tangled skein of connections each camp drew
had the effect of tying down two principled combatants, each holding the oth-
er in check. In a parallel that one suspects they might have found apt, they, like
Jacob and Esau,87 the twin but competing camps of Awakened conservatives
were so bitter in their antagonism precisely because the tremendous amount
they shared in common made their differences seem both exaggerated and
profoundly mistaken to each.

87 I am indebted to Prof. Dennis Showalter of Colorado College for suggesting to me the

parallel to Jacob and Esau.
Conclusion

The 19th-century religious revival known as the Awakening had deep roots
in and profound consequences for religion and politics in Prussia. Awakened
leaders in Brandenburg and Pomerania, in particular, played vital roles in most
of the major conflicts of this pivotal era: the dissolution of a rural, estate-based
social and economic order; the growth of the modern, bureaucratic state; the
contest between liberals and conservatives over the nature of freedom, sover-
eignty, and the structures of political power; the claims of traditional, revealed
religion against rationalist critiques; differing interpretations of the legacy of
the Enlightenment and the French Revolution(s); the problems of urbaniza-
tion and secularization; the great revolution of 1848; the creation of and revi-
sions to Prussias constitutional order; and the Crimean War. Remarkably, the
Awakened were able to transform themselves from pariahs to powerbrokers in
a single generation. Perhaps even more interestingly, members of a group of re-
ligious dissidents who stressed radical religious egalitarianism ended up being
among the staunchest supporters of Prussias rigidly stratified sociopolitical
hierarchy. This study has attempted to answer how and why the Awakened in
Brandenburg and Pomerania were able to accomplish these tasks.
The Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania must be understood both as
part of a broader evangelical Awakening throughout much of the transatlantic
world and as a phenomenon with characteristics unique to these two Prus-
sian provinces. In common with the broader Awakening, the revival in Bran-
denburg and Pomerania combined orthodox, traditional theology with pious
works and quasi-Romantic elements of subjectivity, interiority, and emotion.
Many in the Awakening made new ties that transcended boundaries of con-
fession, geography, class, and even time. They were also keenly aware of the
need for Gods grace and mercy to deliver them from the power of sin; many
Awakened accepted this grace and mercy in an emotionally charged moment
of conversion.
Particularly in Brandenburg and Pomerania, the Awakening was a neo-
Pietistmovement. Its adherents were overwhelmingly peasants and artisans
who lived in the countryside or in small towns. Its noted leaders were mainly
aristocrats and clergy. The Awakened had experienced Prussias ultimate victo-
ry in the Napoleonic Wars as literally Gods divine rebuke to the atheist and
despotic Revolution and his reward for those who were loyal to king, country,
and the true faith. But after the wars they perceived themselves as being un-
der siege from the forces of theological rationalism and state centralization.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 7|doi 10.1163/9789004337855_010

Conclusion 291

The fusion of egalitarian theology and the regard for Prussias aristocrati-
cally dominated order in Brandenburg and Pomerania arguably owes much to
their understanding of covenantal theology and Luthers teaching of the Two
Kingdoms. The covenantal self-understanding of the Awakened created ties
primarily based on the arational association of faith and emotion, rather than
on rational calculation of interest. This self-appreciation was at odds with the
Zeitgeist, which increasingly stressed voluntary membership in groups based
on common interests. The covenantal approach therefore linked the Awak-
ened together as a tightly knit community, even as it estranged them from oth-
ers who were not part of the Awakened.
The Awakened appropriation (or perhaps misappropriation) of Luthers no-
tion of the Two Kingdoms helps explain how the Awakened could have reli-
gious experiences that sometimes bordered on the mystical and yet functioned
effectively in day-to-day affairs. As they understood it, God had redeemed cer-
tain individuals and fully regenerated them as new beings. Freed from bond-
age to sin, they were in theory compelled to obey only the laws of God, not
men. Yet, because most people were unredeemed, it was desirable for even
the redeemed to obey and uphold human laws, so that at least these would
keep the unredeemed from slipping into anarchy. This understanding allowed
the Awakened to feel free in a sense from restrictions of Prussias sociopoliti-
cal order, even though they externally conformed to it. In another sense, the
Awakened could even embrace that order as being God-ordained. Even though
it was not the highest good, it was a lesser good that God had, the Awakened
held, instituted for the protection of the redeemed and unredeemed alike.
The development of Awakened thought and practice also needs to be placed
in the context of the changes in the church and state in Prussia. The Awakened
had long been dissatisfied with the state church, which they viewed as too ra-
tionalist. Three additional changes would test their relationship to the church,
although the response of the Awakened was so varied as to defy easy gener-
alizations. Frederick William iii initiated a union of Reformed and Lutheran
denominations in the Union church in 1817. The king had not given the merger
a chance to develop spontaneously; he had forced it. Some resented the kings
high-handed action, and some who prized the theology or practice of their de-
nomination worried that the Union church would undermine these. Both con-
tributed to a degree of resentment against the Union church. An added strain
was the liturgical reform that accompanied the merger of denominations. This
brought the reality of change even into relatively homogenous local parishes.
A third major change was the possibility of reform in the government of the
church. In the end, churches in the western parts of Prussia received, by 1835,
292 CONCLUSION

approval for a greater role for lay leadership than Prussias eastern provinces.
In the mostly Lutheran East Elbian portions of Prussia, the more hierarchical
episcopal church constitution seems to have generated comparatively little re-
sistance among regular church-goers of conservative temperament. However,
because reforms about the church constitution also served as a proxy for a de-
bate about the merits of constitutional reform for the state, the decision on
church government helped to divide those who favored and those who op-
posed reforms in Prussias political government.
Pressure for constitutional reform of Prussias government continued before
the 1848 revolution. The government had begun sweeping changes in the wake
of Prussias initial defeat at the hands of Napoleon. The Stein-Hardenberg re-
forms had, among other things, emancipated the peasantry and allowed self-
administration (though not self-governance) for the larger cities. Such reforms,
while benefitting Awakened peasants in theory, also weakened the tradition-
al protection of aristocratic patrimony, such as it was, just as a crisis hit the
agrarian economy. The administrative reforms of the Prussian bureaucracy
destroyed many early modern intermediary bodies (such as guilds and aris-
tocratic corporations), stripping aristocrats of many traditional privileges and
leaving peasants vulnerable to the forces of an emerging market economy and
the enhanced power of the state. Many Awakened aristocrats and peasants saw
themselves as victims of these sociopolitical changes and of plummeting agri-
cultural prices. Partly rooted in the traditional urban/rural divide, some Awak-
ened resented the fact that the reforms had largely increased the power of the
central government at the expense of local customs and traditions.
In Berlin, several in a group of young elites, briefly united through their lit-
erary circle, the Maikferkreis, became Awakened. Many of these young men
would later become influential jurists, intimate advisors at the royal court, or
occupy other positions of authority and power. In both Berlin and the coun-
tryside, Awakened lay leaders some disdaining the state church often held
their own para-church services in conventicles. These moves prompted the
state church to condemn the Awakened and the states law officers to surveil,
fine, and arrest them. The Awakened responded in different ways to this pres-
sure. Some edged closer to a break with the state church, while others consid-
ered ways to reinvigorate the church from within.
Many Awakened leaders eventually abandoned their quietism and devel-
oped a specifically Awakened approach to politics based on their religious
convictions. In the 1830s and 1840s they championed a religiously justified no-
tion of organic evolution for societies and promoted a resurgent aristocracy
as the strongest bulwark against either a Jacobin-style revolution from below
or a Bonapartist-bureaucratic revolution from above. Mainstream Awakened
Conclusion 293

leaderscondemned the confessionalist separatism of some revivalists and

thus assuaged the fears of the state and the state church. Most fatefully of all,
in an era in which state bureaucrats feared a democratic revolution, Awakened
leaders demonized both political liberalism and theological liberalism as twin
products of Enlightenment rationalism. Seeking new supporters to bolster
the alliance of throne and altar, state bureaucrats eased repressive measures
against the non-separatist Awakened. The Awakened promoted their views in
several papers they founded or cofounded and by exploiting the ties of Awak-
ened aristocrats to the Prussian court. These notably included the political
newspaper the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt, and the religious Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung. Frederick William iv, who claimed to be Awakened himself,
appointed a number of the movements members to high positions. All these
factors help to explain the political rehabilitation of the Awakened.
Prior to 1848, Frederick William iv boldly proposed making the state church
more independent of the state, hoping the church would reconstitute itself
along the lines of the early Christian church. The king, strongly backed by
some Awakened, also summoned traditional elites to discuss Prussias post-
Napoleonicpolitical order, aiming to incorporate elements of the romanticized
feudal era into Prussias semi-modern polity. Liberal forces, on the other hand,
pushed for greater lay leadership in the church, a written constitution, and a
measure of democratization. The result was deadlock and further polarization.
The Awakened labored to suppress the 1848 revolution, and thereby contrib-
uted to a reshaping of the Prussian state. Awakened leaders both dominated
the camarilla, a coterie of extra-parliamentary advisors, and helped found the
Kreuzzeitung, the most powerful newspaper of conservatism in the northern
German states. These institutions, their personal ties, and their moral clout
gave them disproportionate influence at court and in the public sphere. This
influence undergirded a conservative revision of the constitution that incorpo-
rated many neo-feudal elements into the Prussian state.
The measures some Awakened leaders took to help combat the revolution
thus represented a mix of the premodern and the modern. They used papers
with broad (if not mass) circulation. This appeal to large numbers of people,
for instance, anticipates the development of mass politics. Many Awakened
leaders, including Friedrich Julius Stahl and even Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach,
used a modern diction of freedom and liberty that partly undermined older
Christian notions of these terms and paradoxically strengthened revolutionary
ones. And conservative Awakened leaders helped to strengthen Prussias cen-
tral state and its military-bureaucratic leadership. They ultimately even gave
legitimacy to the new written constitution by their very efforts to coopt and
reinterpret it for their own partly premodern goals.
294 CONCLUSION

Arguably, the sum of these efforts amounts to nothing less than a battle for
the control of culture. Awakened conservative elites were especially keen to
have control over or influence on the institutions, vocabulary, and symbols
that shaped the way their contemporaries defined their mental horizons.
These Awakened, in effect, attempted to occupy the culture and use it as a
vehicle for advancing their own worldview. I do not mean to promote the idea
that religion was secondary to culture, but rather that Awakened conservative
elites tried to use Prussias culture, to which all Prussians belonged, as a means
to further the religious goals that these Awakened held to be paramount.
Those goals were reflected in reform efforts in the church and in changes
to Prussias political representation after the 1848 constitution was issued. The
foundation of the Innere Mission served to unite Awakeners (and others, of
course) in their calling to evangelize as well as to help those marginalized by
ongoing socioeconomic changes. That the founding occurred after the revolu-
tion and was understood by some as a method of defeating a supposedly God-
less revolution fit the worldview of Awakeners such as Friedrich Julius Stahl,
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Bethmann-Hollweg. The reordering of church-
state relations generated some friction among the Awakened, but having an
Awakened monarch as head of the state as well as summus episcopus provided
a degree of assurance for them.
On the other hand, Awakeners views of other constitutional changes, es-
pecially those relating to the Gemeindeordnung, the provincial legislatures,
and Prussias upper legislative house, exposed political divisions. As the
Kreuzzeitung and Wochenblatt factions formed and critiqued each others po-
sitions on such matters, leading Awakeners, such as the Bethmann-Hollweg/
Gerlach/Stahl troika, increasingly contested the meaning of basic terms, such
as constitution and freedom, among themselves, resulting in an internecine
struggle. That struggle was worsened by the proposed answers to foreign pol-
icy questions, such as the German Question and the Eastern Question. Even
though, in the end, the Kreuzzeitung contributed to preserving Prussian neu-
trality, and the Awakened Frederick William iv rejected what he viewed as an
unjust war, the struggle between two sorts of Awakened conservatives left both
sides exhausted by the end of the Crimean War. At the same time, the icy hand
of generational change began to make itself felt, symbolized notably with the
kings illness in 1857, and his death in 1861.
By treating such themes, this study touches on issues beyond the two ques-
tions that gave focus to its research. The popularity of the Awakening supports
the idea that older notions of secularization need to be carefully qualified. Al-
though dropping rates of church attendance and a general decline in religious
observance may still be the best story on the whole to tell about 19th-century
Conclusion 295

religion, localized revivals like the Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania,

manifestations of a transatlantic movement, were capable of revitalizing the
church and even (at least temporarily) reversing some of the signs of secular-
ization. The fact that the Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania is linked
with many other localized religious revivals adds to the evidence that rechris-
tianization could occur at the same time (and sometimes even in the same
place) as secularization.
In a narrower sense, the Awakening is vital to comprehending German Prot-
estantisms ecclesiastical and theological development. It contributed directly
to both the revival of Protestant orthodoxy and (through the Old Lutherans)
a schism in Prussias state church. Likewise, studies that examine the forma-
tion of the Union church, liturgical reform, and changes in church government
should consider how the Awakened responded to these, and to what extent the
Awakened were a causative factor in such changes.
Another important implication is that the Awakening is crucial to under-
standing the reception of Prussias state-building efforts and post-Napoleonic
shift from reform to reaction not only in Prussia, but also throughout Germany.
The religious motivations behind some aristocrats opposition to state-building
efforts should be given their full weight, and the negative effects of the Stein-
Hardenberg reforms on peasants who formed the broad masses of the Awak-
ened qualify the real advances those reforms brought.
The Awakening also had an important influence on the redefinition of rea-
son in the post-Enlightenment era. The Awakened rejection of Enlightenment
reason led not to a denial or negation of rationality, but to an expansion of
the bounds of reason and rational discourse. The Awakened appealed to emo-
tion and morality, helping to shift the terms of public debate from Reason to
reasonableness.
Awakened arationalism, mysticism, reflective interiority, and private (as
well as public) religious devotion were integral components of modernization,
even in Hegels Prussia. Even while condemning some of the perceived excess-
es of modernization, proponents of these opposing practices accepted many
of the terms of the modernizers debate, including an appeal to the individual
over the corporate and a suspicion of unreflected tradition. They therefore hol-
lowed out traditional reasons for supporting the premodern order and helped
pave the way for a more thorough modernization.
Along with liberals, Awakened thinkers such as Friedrich Julius Stahl and
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach might be counted among the successful political
19th-century German innovators, despite their actual goal of ensuring con-
tinuity with Prussias supposedly organic past. Whether they intended it or
not, their actions contributed toward a goal common to liberals and (at least
296 CONCLUSION

some) ministerial bureaucrats: they weakened the intellectual respectability

of the estate-based values of paleo-conservatism by reformulating essentially
aristocratic ideas in modern and individualistic terms. They also helped to
create modern conservative ideology and thereby even transformed the self-
understanding of Prussian monarchs. Perhaps more importantly, however, by
employing essentially modern vocabulary and modern means of propaganda
warfare to defeat the 1848 revolution, the Awakened were beginning to hollow
out older conservative ideas and institutions.
If the Awakeners possessed the advantages of personal access to the
court of an Awakened monarch, a vigorous set of publications, and a strong
degree of influence among some in the church, why did they not play a still
larger role in shaping Prussias post-1848 settlement? Although they were well-
positioned,well-motivated, and well-connected, the Awakened also had sev-
eral disadvantages.
First, the crisis of 1848 nonplussed not only conservatives, but apparently
most policy-shapers in Prussia, and indeed in Europe as a whole. While the
old order teetered precariously, a host of different groups clamored for their
differing visions of the future. Both the form of any future sociopolitical or-
der and its geographical boundaries remained unclear for several years. To
name only several options in Prussia, some advocated a liberal republic, some
a parliament with a limited monarchy (as in Britain), some royal despotism
by Frederick William iv, some a Bonapartist solution, and some a revival of
the Holy Alliance. At least half a dozen other plans could be named. Because
the revolution took place across much of Europe, neither revolutionaries nor
reactionaries were sure whether their aims could be best achieved locally, at
the national level (and even what the nation meant remained unclear), or at
the transnational level. Prussian revolutionaries, for instance, disagreed over
whether to pursue their goals primarily in Prussia or through the pan-German
parliament called in Frankfurt (differing also over whether to include Austria,
what to do about Germans in non-German states like Denmark, etc.). Those
opposed to liberal and/or bourgeois revolution likewise disagreed on whether
to concentrate their efforts in Prussia or in Frankfurt; whether to oppose the
revolution implacably or to wait for its fissures to emerge, or try to place them-
selves at the head of its momentum; whether to continue Prussian deference
to Austrian leadership or to seize the chance to craft a northern German alli-
ance; etc. Different groups initiated competing solutions simultaneously or in
rapid succession. For several years it was unclear even to well-informed con-
temporaries which potential solution would find enough traction to become
actualized. With so many confusing and dangerous false starts, it was politi-
cally unwise to put all ones eggs into the basket of Awakened conservatism, no
matter how persuasive or attractive the idea seemed to some.
Conclusion 297

Second, while many viewed the Awakened as sincere, some also saw them
as too severe and too other. Their religious beliefs seemed wrongheaded, and
perhaps fanatical, to some rationalists, secularists, more staid and traditional
Christians, and others. The tendency of the Awakened to form clannish groups
that sometimes transcended class and social boundaries offended against both
traditional and bourgeois norms. And it was only recently that the state and
the state church had given up persecution of the last Awakened conventicles.
In 1845 Frederick William iv had allowed dissidents such as the Old Lutherans
to form separate confessionalist groups, though he and the law refused to ac-
knowledge them as churches. Many of the mainstream Awakened, who opted
to stay within the Lutheran-Calvinist state church, harbored more or less open
sympathy with their Old Lutheran brethren. One did not have to be a devoted
adherent of the state church to resent the Awakened for breaking yet another
bond that had held the old society together. From todays distance, we believe
we can distinguish between the various forces that were reshaping the old or-
der, but to many contemporaries the broader picture was simply one of whole-
sale social dissolution. The revivalist Awakened and the rationalist Friends of
Light (Lichtfreunde) appeared to many as merely different expressions of the
same social decomposition. What mattered was that the center could not hold,
not whether it was torn asunder from right or left.
Third, the Awakened faced a disturbing paradox. When they were unified,
or at least perceived to be, their otherness became correspondingly more
threatening to other groups. In other words, the greater their influence ap-
peared to become, the more the incentive grew for opposing groups to coop-
erate against them. Yet in reality, the Awakened were wholly unified neither
religiously nor politically. The Old Lutherans still rejected the state church, and
the mainstream Awakened in it were divided over how to view the Old Luther-
ans. Nor did these groups have a monopoly on the power of religious rhetoric.
Since politics and religion were intertwined in this era, nearly every group, in-
cluding many liberal democrats, explicitly or implicitly used religious themes
in their political appeals. Unsurprisingly, members of these groups tended to
think of themselves as sincere and the other groups as opportunistic exploiters
of religion. Meanwhile, within the politicized part of the Awakening, signifi-
cant differences over goals emerged. Frederick William iv clung tenaciously to
his concept of Gottesgnadentum, Friedrich Julius Stahl wanted a constitutional
but strong monarchy, Bethmann-Hollweg desired a weaker monarchy and a
stronger parliament, and for quite some time Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach (like
the king) resisted the idea of a written constitution at all. Such positions left
Gerlach in the position Barry Goldwater later held in American politics: an
almost iconic figure admired by allies for his perspicacity and respected for his
integrity, yet ultimately relegated even by them to the fringe right.
298 CONCLUSION

Fourth, the Awakened were slow to embrace the notion of party discipline.
Despite their political differences, most of the major Awakened political play-
ers (remarkably) maintained or eventually recovered cordial personal rela-
tions with each other. Neo-Pietists to the core, they ultimately acknowledged
that their religious amity took precedence over political views. But that did
not stop them from fighting each other vigorously in the political arena. They
thus divided their strength, though they in private admitted that their com-
mon enemies were graver threats. It may seem odd that the Awakened proved
unable to stop themselves from splintering over comparatively minor issues
when they commonly acknowledged more important ones. But in this respect
the Awakened were hardly exceptional. Democrats, monarchists, and social-
ists in most of the German states (and elsewhere) were often unable to escape
internecine warfare. One does well to remember, as many have noted, that no
feud is as fierce or perversely irresistible as a family dispute. Although Ernst
Ludwig von Gerlach reluctantly accepted the need for a conservative party
soon after the revolution began, many other contemporaries continued to con-
demn the very idea of party, associating it with rank partisanship. It seemed
far better to remain true to ones own principles, even at the cost of unity and
effectiveness, than to achieve political unity at the risk of becoming compro-
mised party hacks.
Fifth, the linkage between church and state became more complex and
problematic after 1850, complicating what had been a fairly straightforward
linkage for Awakened conservatives of the interests of state and church. The
octroyed constitution of 1848 (in Articles 12 and 13) had granted freedom of
religion and officially separated church and state.1 The states Kirchenpatronat
and its ability to determine who would fill individual posts were also abolished
(Articles 14 and 15).2 In the revised constitution, passed on 31 January 1850, the
old Articles 12 and 13 were adopted word for word as Articles 15 and 16 in the
new constitution. Changes elsewhere in the document, however, represented
a substantial revision. The state regained a great deal of influence over the ap-
pointment of individuals to particular posts, for instance. The wall separating
church and state was at least partly undermined by Article 14, which said that
the Christian religion, without violating the freedom of religion guaranteed in
Article 12, is laid as the foundation of those institutions of the state which are
in connection with the practice of religion.3 This offered a sufficient starting

1 Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 413.

2 Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung.
3 Die christliche Religion wird bei den jenigen Einrichtungen des Staats, welche mit der Re-
ligionsausbung im Zusammenhang stehen, unbeschadet der im Artikel 12 gewhrleisteten
Religionsfreiheit, zugrunde gelegt. Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung.
Conclusion 299

point for the continuation of the continued connection of church and state
and showed especially strongly that the revised constitution represented a
conservative correction of the octroyed constitution.4 Perhaps of equal impor-
tance, as noted above, the Prussian monarch remained the summus episcopus.5
The influence of the Ministry for Spiritual Affairs [Ministerium der geistlichen
Angelegenheiten] steadily decreased.6 Yet, the churchs freedom from the state
did not necessarily mean greater freedom within the church, which became
more highly centralized. In Ernst Rudolf Hubers view, these changes added up
to the strengthening of the authoritarian-official-church moment in Prussian
Protestantism.7
For the Awakened, then, such developments presented an irony unwelcome
for many. Awakened men were appointed to the Ministry for Spiritual Affairs
that had once sent police to harass Awakened conventicles. But Adalbert von
Ladenberg, Karl Otto von Raumer, and Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg
had increasingly less power over decisions made within the church. Having
finally gained access to the levers of power after 1848, the Awakened discov-
ered that the revolution had broken some of them off. While greater indepen-
dence from the state may have gladdened those Awakened who remembered
state persecution, the strengthened hierarchy still left other potential abuses
of power unaddressed. However, many of the Awakened, including most of
its conservative leaders, had become more confessionally oriented over the
years. For them, greater control by the church hierarchy offered the chance
to shape the church the way they wished. Although they failed to occupy the
state (apart from the monarchy), the Awakened and the orthodox certainly
took possession of the greater part of the church. At the same time, liberal dis-
senters could exit the church and start their own (or not) more easily and with
less stigma under a constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. In short,
within the church, if not necessarily in Prussian society as a whole, the Awak-
ened had largely won the cultural war. They not only set the tone of the de-
bate; they also had a great deal of influence over who was appointed to which
position. In another irony, the separation of the church from the state made it

4 bot einen ausreichenden Anhaltspunkt fr die Fortfhrung der berlieferten Verbindung

von Kirche und Staat und zeigte im besonderen Mae, da die revidierte Verfassung eine
konservative Korrektur der oktroyierten Verfassung darstellte. Sander, Die oktroyierte Ver-
fassung, citing in Huber and Huber, Staat und Kirche, vol. 2, p. 35.
5 Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung, p. 418.
6 Sander, Die oktroyierte Verfassung.
7 Verstrkung des autoritr-behrden-kirchlichen Moments im preuischen Protestantis-
mus, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 4, pp. 836 and 837. Cited in Sander, Die
oktroyierte Verfassung.
300 CONCLUSION

easier for many Awakened to return to a quietist attitude, as the stakes of who
controlled politics correspondingly decreased.
Sixth, many of the political goals of the more conservative Awakened cut
against the grain of the era, both in the eyes of some contemporaries and in
the nearly unanimous verdict of later observers. Awakened conservatives at-
tempted to reestablish or adapt prerevolutionary or even feudal institutions to
a postrevolutionary world. Awakened conservatives like Ludwig von Gerlach
and Ernst Senfft von Pilsach, for instance, rejoiced when the constitution was
revised in the 1850s to reintroduce many of the rights of local (land)lords over
their peasants and the lords obligations to them. Under the revised consti-
tution, for example, local lords again became the judges of many legal cases
involving their peasants, and the lords were partly reintegrated into the old
social welfare net for peasants. Thus, using the aristocracy as an intermedi-
ary body frustrated efforts to modernize, rationalize, and democratize Prus-
sia. Today, when democracy appears to have triumphed in many places over
various forms of paternalism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, such mea-
sures seem backward and hopelessly doomed. Yet, one ought to be circumspect
about using the term anachronistic for historical analysis, for it sometimes
conceals (even from its users) an interpretation of historical developments
as linear and progressive, or even inevitable. The genius of the term anach-
ronistic is that it enables us to polemically dismiss opposing views without
the trouble of actually examining them. But, of course, we have no certain
knowledge of future historical development that allows us to see which lines of
development in the past will continue, and which will become irrelevant.
We may well now recognize democracy as a superior way of organizing soci-
eties and governments, but it is also good to remember that between the re-
publics of the ancient world and anything approaching modern democracy,
various empires and kingdoms predominated in Europe for around two
thousand years. Labeling as anachronistic the efforts of the conservative
Awakened to reestablish parts of ancien rgime or Restoration regiment is
therefore teleological, tautological, or (more properly) both. In short, the criti-
cism that the conservative wing of the Awakening was anachronistic is itself
anachronistic.
This raises an interesting point about how modern historians should assess
the fact that the Awakened helped undermine the 1848 revolution. An older
school of historiography, keenly interested in explaining the rise of National
Socialism in Germany, portrayed the failure of liberalism in Germany as a
contributing cause to the later failure of Weimar democracy in the 1920s and
1930s and to the disastrous ascent of Nazism in 1933. A.J.P. Taylor, for instance,
famously claimed that in 1848 German history reached its turning-point and
Conclusion 301

failed to turn.8 Extreme examples of this school of thought draw lines con-
necting key figures in German history to the 1930s, from Luther to Bismarck
to Hitler. There is something to be learned from this approach. After all, the
failure of democracy in Weimar Germany did have long-standing as well as
immediate historical causes.
Yet the great danger of this school is to build in an unhistorical teleology, ne-
glecting all the contingencies and accidents of history. Furthermore, we must
remember that the 1848 revolution, after all, was rather imperfectly liberal and
hardly democratic. As David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley once reminded us,
one ought to distinguish between bourgeois and liberal values.9 Many of those
who supported the 1848 revolution represented elements of the upper middle
class who wanted access to power for bourgeois rather than liberal reasons.
Contemporary liberals and democrats discovered this to their chagrin when
certain bourgeois elements ultimately supported or at least acquiesced in the
crackdown on the revolution throughout the German states. If one interprets
the 1848 revolution as a primarily bourgeois revolution, albeit one with some
idealistically liberal elements, then its defeat appears less traumatic and its
opponents less villainous. Since human events are often contingent, it seems
somewhat problematic to blame historical actors for a string of consequences,
not all of them foreseeable, that resulted from their actions. As historians, we
clearly cannot draw a straight line from the Awakened to Bismarck to Hitler to
explain the necessary consequences of the revolutions failure; and yet even
drawing a crooked line of history smuggles in the concept of a readily recogniz-
able telos.
I think that a more productive approach would be to portray the Awakened
support for defeating the revolution in its immediate historical context. I have
sought to portray the Awakened political leadership as a group with an inter-
est in subverting the revolution and in recovering, if also adapting, as much of
the prerevolutionary order as possible. As such they were fellow-travelers with
more reactionary elements in the bureaucracy and military. But unlike those
elements, who wanted to and indeed largely succeeded in establishing a kind
of bureaucratic absolutism in Prussia, and unlike the king, who had a novel
interpretation of his Gottesgnadentum, the Awakened were just as opposed to
despotism as they were to liberal democracy. The Awakened leadership per-
ceived both as violations of Prussias organic body of law and tradition,and

8 A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of Germany Since 1815
(New York: Capricorn Books, 1961), p. 69.
9 David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and
Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
302 CONCLUSION

both as contrary to the aristocratically dominated order they believed God had
ordained for Prussia. I think it would also be a mischaracterization to describe
the Awakened as reactionary, at least in their intentions. Ernst Ludwigvon
Gerlach, ever sensitive to this point, valued the motto of the Berliner Politisches
Wochenblatt, which referenced the words of the French theorist de Maistre:
We do not want counterrevolution, but what is contrary to the revolution.
In sum, rather than seeing the Awakened as a linchpin of the reaction that
vanquished the revolutionary left in 1848, it makes more sense to interpret
Awakened conservatives as one of several forces competing with one another
for power in the very fluid situation following the 1848 revolution. Although
partially outmaneuvered by reactionary elements within the bureaucracy
and military, they should be viewed as a separate and partially autonomous
group that worked to defeat the revolution. Their ties to the Prussia court and
their unique social composition and cohesion gave the Awakened enormous
strength and helped them to use their moral capital to defeat the revolution.
But their divisions, poor organizational skills, and idealism smoothed the path
for more reactionary forces to outmaneuver them. While they and the lib-
erals were locked in a cultural war, certain elements of the military and the
bureaucracy found it easier to exploit their occupation of the state. And yet,
while digging the trenches of that culture war, the Awakened also opened the
possibility of transcending or at least critiquing both Prussias system of gover-
nance and their opponents version of modernity, for the Awakened took steps
to graft an element of arationality onto modernity that at once made modern
rationality less truncated than it had been and pointed to something beyond it.
Bibliography

Unpublished Primary Sources

A. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz (GStAPK)

Brandenburg-Preuisches Hausarchiv (BPH):
BPH Rep. 50 Knig Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (18401861) und Gemahlin
BPH Rep. 192 Nachle:
M Edwin von Manteuffel
Carl Wilhelm Saegert
I. Hauptabteilung: Preuische und neue Reposituren
I. Hauptabteilung Rep. 76 III:
Sekt. 1, 9, and 12 (Konventikelwesen)
I. Hauptabteilung Rep. 90: Staatsministerium
I. Hauptabteilung Rep. 92: Nachle:
Leopold von Gerlach
Karl Graf v.d Grben
Edwin von Manteuffel
Otto von Manteuffel
Familie von Massow
Ludwig von Massow
Markus Niebuhr
Ernst Freiherr Senfft von Pilsach
Graf Carl von Vo Buch
X. Hauptabteilung Inspektionsregistratur Rep. 40
Bezirk Berlin

B. Bundeslandes Hauptarchiv (Potsdam)

Pr. Br. Rep. 3B: Regierung Frankfurt (Oder)
Pr. Br. Rep. 2A: Regierung. Potsdam:
Abt. II Kirchen- und Schulwesen
Generalia
Pr. Br. Rep. 2A: Regierung Potsdam, Abt. II Kirchen- und Schulwesen
Generalia
G. Religion

C. Gerlach-Archiv am Institut fr politische Wissenschaft der Friedrich-

Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg (GA)
Fasz. I-XIX: Korrespondenz Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs
Fasz. 2/a: Ernst Freiherr Senfft von Pilsach and Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
304 Bibliography

Fasz. BF: Tagebuch Leopold von Gerlachs

Fasz. 3c: Korrespondenz Vo-Buch an Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach

D. Staatsbibliothek Preuischer Kulturbesitz Berlin,

Handschriftenabteilung
Nachla Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

E. Bundesarchiv-Berlin
Nachla H. Wagener

Printed Primary Sources (Correspondence, Government

Documents, Memoirs, Newspapers, etc.)

1846. Verhandlungen der ev. General-Synode zu Berlin v. 2. Juni bis zum 29. August 1846.
Berlin: Amtlicher Abdr.
18481857. Neue Preuische Zeitung. Berlin.
1849. Die Verhandlungen der zweiten Wittenberger Versammlung fr Grndung eines
deutschen evangelischen Kirchenbundes im September 1849. Berlin: W. Hertz.
1850. Aktenstcke aus der Verwaltung der Abtheilung des Ministeriums der geistlichen
Angelegenheiten fr die inneren evangelischen Kirchensachen vom 26. Januar 1849 bis
11. Juni 1850. Berlin: Amtlicher Abdr. ed.
18511861. Preuisches Wochenblatt zur Besprechung politischer Tagesfragen. Berlin:
Schade.
18511854. Aktenstcke aus der Verwaltung des evangelischen Oberkirchenraths. Berlin:
Wilhelm Hertz.
Arnim, Alexander Heinrich von. Zur Politik der Epigonen in Preussen. Zwei Reden in der
I. Kammer zu Berlin gehalten und nicht gehalten (Berlin: Besser, Schade, 1850).
Arnim, Bettina von. Dies Buch gehrt dem Knig, Smtliche Werke 6 (Berlin: Im
Propylen-Verlag, 1921).
Arnim, Hans von. Knigin Luise, 1st ed., Berlinische Reminiszenzen (Berlin: Haude &
Spener, 1969).
Arnim-Boitzenburg, Adolf Heinrich. Die Verheissungen des 22sten Mrz und die Ver-
fassung vom 5ten Dezember (Berlin: Verlag der Deckerschen Geheimen Ober-
Hofbuchdruckerei, 1849).
Baumgart, Winfried, Wolfgang Elz, and Werner Zrrer. Preussische Akten zur Geschich-
te des Krimkriegs, Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs (Mnchen: R. Oldenbourg,
1991).
Beard, J.R. Voices of the Church in Reply to Dr. D. F. Strauss, Author of Das Leben Jesu,
Comprising Essays in Defence of Christianity (London: Simpkin, 1845).
Bibliography 305

Bergstrsser, Ludwig, ed. Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches vom Jahre 1849, mit
Vorentwrfen, Gegenvorschlgen und Modifikationen bis zum Erfurter Parlament,
Kleine Texte fr Vorlesungen und bungen (Bonn: A. Marcus und E. Weber,
1913).
Bethmann-Hollweg, M.A. von. 1851. Die Reaktivirung der Preuischen Provinzial-
landtage (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1851). HathiTrust Digital Library, http://catalog
.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/79780095.html.
Bismarck, Otto, Hans Hugo von Kleist-Retzow, and Herman von Petersdorff. Bismarcks
Briefwechsel mit Kleist-Retzow, Cottasche Handbibliothek (Stuttgart: J.G. Cottasche
Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1919).
Bismarck, Otto, Hermann von Petersdorff, Willym Andreas, Wilhelm Schssler, and
Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Thimme. Die gesammelten Werke (Berlin: O. Stollberg,
1924).
Borries, Kurt. Preussen im Krimkrieg (18531856) (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1930).
Dronke, Ernst. Berlin, Sammlung Luchterhand (Darmstadt: Hermann Luchterhand,
1974).
Frederick, William. Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen (Leipzig:
Duncker & Humblot, 1873).
Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von. Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken, ed. Jakob
von Gerlach, vols. 1 and 2 (Schwerin: Fr. Bahn, 1903).
Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von. Von der Revolution zum Norddeutschen Bund. Politik u.
Ideengut der preussischen Hochkonservativen 18481866. Aus dem Nachlass, vols
1 and 2, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 46 (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970).
Gerlach, Leopold von, and Ulrike Agnes von Gerlach. Denkwrdigkeiten aus dem Leben
Leopold von Gerlachs (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1891).
Gerlach, Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von, and Otto von Bismarck. Briefwechsel des Ge
nerals Leopold von Gerlach mit dem Bundestagsgesandten Otto von Bismarck (Berlin:
W. Hertz, 1893).
Haller, Carl Ludwig von. Handbuch der allgemeinen Staatenkunde, des darauf gegrn-
deten allgemeinen Staatsrechts und der allgemeinen Staatsklugheit nach den Geset-
zen der Natur (Winterthur: Steiner, 1808).
Haller, Carl Ludwig von. Restauration der Staats-Wissenschaft oder Theorie des
natrlich-geselligen Zustands der Chimre des knstlich-brgerlichen entgegengesezt
(Winterthur: Steiner, 18201834).
Haller, Carl Ludwig von. Satan und die Revolution und andere Schriften (Vienna: Karo-
linger, 1991).
Hansemann, David Justus Ludwig. Das Preuische und Deutsche Verfassungswerk
mit Rcksicht auf mein politisches Wirken. (Berlin: Schneider, 1850). HathiTrust
Digital Library, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/46779164.html.
306 Bibliography

Hansen, Joseph. Rheinische Briefe und Akten zur Geschichte der politischen Bewegung
18301850, Publikationen der Gesellschaft fr Rheinische Geschichtskunde (Bonn:
P. Hanstein, 1942).
Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm, ed. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung (Berlin: 18271861).
Hermand, Jost. Der deutsche Vormrz. Texte und Dokumente, Universal-Bibliothek
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1967).
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfrst, Chlodwig Karl Viktor, Alexander Hohenlohe-Schillings-
frst, Friedrich Curtius, and George William Chrystal. Memoirs of Prince Chlodwig
of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst (London: W. Heinemann, 1907). HathiTrust Digital
Library, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/8751367.html.
Hohlfeld, Johannes, and Klaus Hohlfeld. Dokumente der deutschen Politik und Ge-
schichte von 1848 bis zur Gegenwart. Ein Quellenwerk fr die politische Bildung und
staatsbrgerliche Erziehung (Sonderausg. ed. Berlin: Dokumenten-Verlag; Alleinver-
trieb: Giersch; 1951).
Hubatsch, Walter. Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Ostpreussens, vol. 3, Dokumente
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1968).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, ed. Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 18031850, 2nd ed. of Quellen
zum Staatsrecht der Neuzeit, vol. 1, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, ed. Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 18511918, 2nd ed., Dokumente
zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, ed. Ernst Rudolf Huber (Stuttgart: Kohlham-
mer, 1964).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, and Wolfgang Huber. Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.
Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts, vol. 2, Staat und Kirche
im Zeitalter des Hochkonstitutionalismus und des Kulturkampfs, 18481890 (Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, 1976).
Humboldt, Alexander von, and Kurt R. Biermann. Vier Jahrzehnte Wissenschaftsfrde-
rung. Briefe an das preussische Kultusministerium 18181859, Beitrge zur Alexander-
von-Humboldt-Forschung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985).
Jarcke, Karl Ernst. Vermischte Schriften, 4 vols. (Munich: Literarisch-Artistische Anstalt,
18391854).
Jasmund, Julius von. Aktenstcke zur orientalischen Frage. Nebst chronologischer ber-
sicht zusammengestellt, 3 vols. (Berlin: F. Schneider, 18551859).
Keinemann, Friedrich. Das Klner Ereignis. Sein Widerhall in der Rheinprovinz und in
Westfalen, vol. 2, Quellen, Verffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission West-
falens XXII, Geschichtliche Arbeiten zur westflischen Landesforschung (Mnster:
Aschendorff, 1974).
Klein, Tim. 1848. Der Vorkampf deutscher Einheit und Freiheit. Erinnerungen, Urkun-
den, Berichte, Briefe, Lebensdokumente vergangener Jahrhunderte (Ebenhausen-
Mnchen: W. Langewische-Brandt, 1914).
Bibliography 307

Kling, Christian Friedrich. Die Verhandlungen der Wittenberger Versammlung fr

Grndung eines deutschen evangelischen Kirchenbundes im September 1848 (Berlin:
Hertz, 1848).
Leo, Heinrich. Herr Dr. Diesterweg und die deutschen Universitten (Leipzig: Brockhaus,
1836).
Leo, Heinrich. Lehrbuch der Geschichte des Mittelalters (Halle: E. Anton, 1830).
Leo, Heinrich. Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte des deutschen Volkes und Reiches (Halle:
E. Anton, 1854).
Manteuffel, Otto Freiherr von. Preuens auswrtige Politik 18501858. Unverffentlich
te Dokumente aus dem Nachlasse des Otto v. Manteuffel, ed. Heinrich Poschinger,
Preuens auswrtige Politik. Unverffentlichte Dokumente aus dem Nachlasse des
Ministerprsidenten Otto Frhrn Manteuffel (Berlin, 1902).
Manteuffel, Otto Freiherr von. Unter Friedrich Wilhelm dem Vierten. Denkwrdigkeiten
des Ministers Otto Frhrn. v. Manteuffel, vol. 1, 18481851 (Berlin: Mittler, 1901).
Manteuffel, Otto von, and Heinrich von Poschinger. Preuens auswrtige Politik 1850
1858. Unverffentlichte Dokumente aus dem Nachlasse des Otto v. Manteuffel, vol. 1,
Von Olmtz bis zur Errichtung des Zweiten franzsischen Kaiserreiches (Berlin: Mit-
tler, 1902).
Manteuffel, Otto von, and Heinrich von Poschinger. Unter Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Denk-
wrdigkeiten des Ministers Otto Freiherrn v. Manteuffel, vol. 2, 18541882 (Berlin: Mit-
tler, 1901).
Marwitz, Friedrich August Ludwig. Politische Schriften und Briefe, ed. Friedrich Meusel,
Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz. Ein mrkischer Edelmann im Zeitalter der
Befreiungskriege (Berlin, 1913).
Ministerium der geistlichen Angelegenheiten fr die innneren evangelischen Kirchen-
sachen. Aktenstcke aus der Verwaltung der Abtheilung des Ministeriums der geistli-
chen Angelegenheiten fr die inneren evangelischen Kirchensachen. Vom 26. Januar
1849 bis 11. Juni 1850 (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1850).
Neander, August. Dr. Neanders Erklrung in Beziehung auf einen ihn betreffenden Ar-
tikel der Allgemeinen Zeitung nebst dem auf hhere Veranlassung von ihm verfaten
Gutachten ber das Buch des Dr. Strau: Leben Jesu. (Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1836).
Poschinger, Heinrich von, ed. Preuens auswrtige politik 1850 bis 1858. Unverffentlichte
Dokumente aus dem Nachlae des Ministerprsidenten Otto Frhrn. v. Manteuffel, 3
vols. (Berlin: E S Mittler und Sohn, 1902).
Prittwitz, Karl Ludwig, and Gerd Heinrich. Berlin 1848. Das Erinnerungswerk des Gene
ralleutnants Karl Ludwig von Prittwitz und andere Quellen zur Berliner Mrzrevolution
und zur Geschichte Preussens um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Verffentlichungen
der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985).
Ranke, Leopold von, ed. Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen
(Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1873).
308 Bibliography

Ruge, Arnold. Der Patriotismus, ed. Peter Wende, Sammlung Insel (Frankfurt a.M.:
Insel-Verl, 1968).
Ruge, Arnold. Zensur, Revolution 1848, Patriotismus, ed. Hans-Martin Sass, Werke und
Briefe (Aalen: Scientia-Verl, 1998).
Savigny, Karl F. von. Briefe, Akten, Aufzeichnungen aus dem Nachla eines preuischen
Diplomaten der Reichsgrndungszeit, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20.
Jahrhunderts (Boppard a. Rh.: Boldt, 1981).
Spener, Philipp Jakob. Pia Desideria, ed. Kurt Aland (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1940).
Stahl, Friedrich Julius. Siebzehn parlamentarische Reden und drei Vortrge (Berlin: Wil-
helm Hertz, 1862).
Sybel, Heinrich von, ed. Kleine Historische Schriften, vol. 1 (Munich: J. G. Cottaschen
Buchhandlung, 1863).
Tholuck, August. Geschichte des Rationalismus. 1. Abt. Geschichte des Pietismus und der
ersten Stadiums der Aufklrung (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1970).
Vincke, Georg Ernst Friedrich Freiherr von. Gutachten der Abtheilung ber den Entwurf
eines Wahlgesetzes fr die zur Vereinbarung der Preuischen Staats-Verfassung zu
berufende Versammlung. Die Abtheilung hat zuvrderst die Aufgabe der auf Grund
des Wahlgesetzes zu berufenden Versammlung (Berlin, 1848). http://sammlungen
.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/2246818.
Wagener, Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann. Die kleine aber mchtige Partei. Nachtrag zu
Erlebtes. Meine Memoiren aus der Zeit von 1848 bis 1866 und von 1873 bis jetzt (Berlin:
Hirschberg i. Schl, 1885).
Wagener, Hermann. Erlebtes. Meine Memoiren aus der Zeit von 1848 bis 1866 und von 1873
bis jetzt (Berlin: R. Pohl, 1884).
Wichern, Johann Hinrich. Die innere Mission der deutschen evangelischen Kirche
eine Denkschrift an die deutsche Nation, im Auftrage des Centralausschusses fr
die innere Mission (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses zu Horn, 1849). Ha-
thiTrust Digital Library, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/34522152.
html.
Wichern, Johann Hinrich. Mittheilungen ber alle, dem Gebiete der innern Mission
angehrende Bestrebungen, Vereine, Anstalten u. zur Hebung der Nothstnde in-
nerhalb der Christenheit. Fliegende Bltter aus dem Rauhen Hause zu Horn bei
Hamburg (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 18481851).

Secondary Sources

Altgeld, Wolfgang. Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum. ber religis begrndete

Gegenstze und nationalreligise Ideen in der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalis-
mus, Verffentlichungen der Kommission fr Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B, Forschungen
59 (Mainz: M.-Grnewald-Verlag, 1992).
Bibliography 309

Althausen, Johannes. Kirchliche Gesellschaften in Berlin 1810 bis 1830. Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Erweckungsbewegung und des Laienapostolats in den evangelischen
Kirchen des 19. Jahrhunderts, Dissertation, Theology, Martin Luther University at
Halle-Wittenberg, 1965.
Altholz, Josef L. The Churches in the Nineteenth Century (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1967).
Alvarado, Ruben. Authority Not Majority: The Life and Times of Friedrich Julius Stahl
(Aalten: WordBridge, 2007).
Anderson, Benedict R. OG. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991).
Arnim, Bettina von. Dies Buch gehrt dem Knig (Berlin: Im Propylen-Verlag, 1921).
Arnim, Hans von. Knigin Luise, 1st ed., Berlinische Reminiszenzen 24 (Berlin: Haude
& Spener, 1969).
Arnim, Hans von, and Georg von Below, eds. Deutscher Aufstieg. Bilder aus der Ver-
gangenheit und Gegenwart der rechtsstehenden Parteien (Berlin: Franz Schneider,
1924).
Bachmann, Johannes. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Sein Leben und Wirken nach ge-
druckten und ung-edruckten Quellen, 3 vols, vol. 1 (Gtersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1876).
Bachmann, Johannes. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Sein Leben und Wirken nach ge-
druckten und ungedruckten Quellen, 3 vols., vol. 2 (Gtersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1880).
Barclay, David. Anarchie und guter Wille. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. und die preuische Mo
narchie, trans. Marion Mller (Berlin: Siedler, 1995).
Barclay, David. Frederick William IV and the Prussian Monarchy, 18401861 (Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1995).
Barclay, David. Knig, Knigtum, Hof und preuische Gesellschaft in der Zeit Fried
rich Wilhelms IV. (18401861), in Friedrich Wilhelm IV. in seiner Zeit, eds. Otto Bsch
and David E. Barclay (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987).
Baumgart, Peter, and Jrgen Schmdeke, eds. Stndetum und Staatsbildung in Bran-
denburg-Preussen. Ergebnisse einer internationalen Fachtagung, Studies Presented
to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary
Institutions/Etudes prsentes la Commission internationale pour lhistoire des
assembles dtats. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1983).
Baumgart, Winfried. The Crimean War, 18531856, Modern Wars (London: Arnold, 1999).
Baumgart, Winfried, and Wolfram Siemann. Restauration, Liberalismus und natio-
nale Bewegung 18151870. Akten, Urkunden und persnliche Quellen, ed. Winfried
Baumgart, Quellenkunde zur deutschen Geschichte der Neuzeit. Von 1500 bis zur
Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges, 1982).
Beck, Friedrich. Gottesgnadentum und Nationalreprsentation. Unverffentlichte
Handschreiben Knig Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preuen an den Innenminister
Graf Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg, Jahrbuch fr brandenburgische Landesge-
schichte 46 (1995), 12939.
310 Bibliography

Beck, Hermann.The Changing Patterns of Prussian Conservatism, 18301914, in Mod-

ern Prussian History, 18301947, ed. Philip G. Dwyer (Harlow: Longman, 2001).
Beck, Hermann. The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia: Conserva-
tives, Bureaucracy, and the Social Question, 181570, in Social History, Popular Cul-
ture, and Politics in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995).
Becker, Ernst Wolfgang. 1999. Zeit der Revolution! Revolution der Zeit? Zeiterfahrungen
in Deutschland in der ra der Revolutionen, 17891848/49, Kritische Studien zur Ge-
schichtswissenschaft 129 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999).
Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Heinz Schilling, Walter Sparn, Dieter Breuer, and Wolfen-
btteler Arbeitskreis fr Barockforschung. Jahrestreffen. Religion und Religiositt im
Zeitalter des Barock, Wolfenbtteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 25 (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1995).
Behnen, Michael. Das Preussische Wochenblatt (18511861). Nationalkonservative Publi
zistik gegen Stndestaat und Polizeistaat, Gttinger Bausteine zur Geschichtswissen-
schaft (Gttingen: Musterschmidt, 1971).
Berdahl, Robert. The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative
Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Berg, Scott. Seeing Prussia through Austrian Eyes: The Klner Ereignis and Its Sig-
nificance for Church and State in Central Europe, Catholic Historical Review 101.1
(2015), 4873.
Berger, Helge, and Mark Spoerer. Economic Crises and the European Revolutions of
1848, Journal of Economic History 61.2 (2001), 293326.
Besier, Gerhard. 1999. Trennung von Staat und Kirche, kirchlich-politische Krisen, Er-
neuerung kirchlicher Gemeinschaft: (19181992), Die Geschichte der Evangelischen
Kirche der Union (Leipzig: Evang. Verl.-Anst, 1999).
Beutin, Wolfgang, Wilfried Hoppe, and Franklin Kopitzsch. Die Deutsche Revolution von
1848/49 und Norddeutschland: Beitrge der Tagung vom 15. bis 17. Mai 1998 in Hamburg,
Bremer Beitrge zur Literatur- und Ideengeschicht (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1999).
Beyreuther, Erich. Die Erweckungsbewegung, eds. Kurt Dieter Schmidt and Ernst Wolf,
vol. 4, Part 1, Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte. Ein Handbuch (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1977).
Beyreuther, Erich. Geschichte des Pietismus (Stuttgart: J.F. Steinkopf, 1978).
Bigler, Robert M. The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church
Elite in Prussia, 18151848 (Berkeley: University of California, 1972).
Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 17801918 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois So-
ciety and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984).
Blasius, Dirk. Friedrich Wilhelm IV., 17951861: Psychopathologie und Geschichte (Gttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992).
Bibliography 311

Blasius, Dirk. Preussen in der deutschen Geschichte, Neue wissenschaftliche Bibliothek

(Knigstein/Ts.: Athenum-Hain-Scriptor-Hanstein, 1980).
Blessing, Werner K. Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft. Institutionelle Autoritt und
mentaler Wandel in Bayern whrend des 19. Jahrhunderts, eds. Jrgen Kocka, Helmut
Berding, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 51
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992).
Bckenfrde, Ernst Wolfgang. Der Staat als sittlicher Staat (Berlin: Duncker and Hum-
blot, 1978).
Bckenfrde, Ernst-Wolfgang, ed. Moderne deutsche Verfassungsgeshichte (18151914),
2nd ed., Neue Wisschenschaftliche Bibliothek (Knigstein/Ts.: Anton Hain Meisen-
heim, 1981).
Borries, Kurt. Preussen im Krimkrieg (18531856) (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1930).
Brandt, Peter, Thomas Hofmann, Reiner Zilkenat, and Martin-Gropius-Bau. Preussen,
zur Sozialgeschichte eines Staates. Eine Darstellung in Quellen, Preussen, Versuch
einer Bilanz (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981).
Brennecke, Hanns Christof. Eine heilige apostolische Kirche. Das Program Friedrich
Wilhelms IV. von Preuen zur Reform der Kirche, Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift
4.2 (1987), 23151.
Breuer, Dieter. Frmmigkeit in der frhen Neuzeit. Studien zur religisen Literatur des 17.
Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, Chloe, Beihefte zum Daphnis 2 (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1984).
Brophy, James M. Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 18301870, Historical
Perspectives on Business Enterprise Series (Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
1998).
Brophy, James M. Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 18001850
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Brose, Eric Dorn. The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of
Antiquity, 18091848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Brckner, Wolfgang. Volkserzhlung und Reformation. Ein Handbuch zur Tradierung
und Funktion von Erzhlstoffen und Erzhlliteratur im Protestantismus (Berlin: E.
Schmidt, 1974).
Brunner, Otto, Werner Conze, and Koselleck Reinhart, eds. Geschichtliche Grund-
begriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 1st ed.
(Stuttgart: E Klett, 1972).
Bsch, Otto, and David E. Barclay. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. in seiner Zeit. Beitrge eines Col-
loquiums (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987).
Bussiek, Dagmar. Mit Gott fr Knig und Vaterland! Die Neue Preuische Zeitung
(Kreuzzeitung) 18481892, Schriftenreihe der Stipendiatinnen und Stipendiaten der
Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung 15 (Mnster: LIT, 2002).
Bumann, Walter. Zwischen Preussen und Deutschland. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Eine Bio
graphie (Berlin: Siedler, 1990).
312 Bibliography

Cameron, Rondo E. A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to
the Present, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1997).
Chadwick, Owen. The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Chesterton, G.K. Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: Doubleday, 1956).
Clark, Christopher. 18151848: Restoration or Pre-March? in German History since
1800, ed. Mary Fulbrook (London: Arnold, 1997).
Clark, Christopher. After 1848: The European Revolution in Government, Transac-
tions of the Royal Historical Society 22 (2012), 17197.
Clark, Christopher. Confessional Policy and the Limits of State Action: Frederick Wil-
liam III and the Prussian Church, Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 9851005.
Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 16001947 (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2006).
Clark, Christopher. The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in
Prussia, 17281941 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
Clark, Christopher. The Politics of Revival: Pietists, Aristocrats, and the State Church
in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia, in Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance:
Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945, eds. Larry Eugene
Jones and James Retallack (Providence: Berg, 1993), 3160.
Clark, Christopher. Preussenbilder im Wandel, Historische Zeitschrift 293.2 (2011),
30721.
Clark, Christopher. The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the
Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany, Journal of Modern
History 68 (1996), 55077.
Cochlovius, Joachim, ed. Theologie und Erweckung, Theologie und Dienst (Giessen/Ba-
sel: Brunnen, 1985).
Conser, Walter H. Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany, Eng-
land, and America, 18151866 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984).
Conze, Werner, and Theodor Schieder. Staat und Gesellschaft im deutschen Vormrz,
18151848, Industrielle Welt; Schriftenreihe des Arbeitskreises fr Moderne Sozialge-
schichte 1 (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1962).
Craig, Gordon Alexander. The Politics of the Prussian Army, 16401945 (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1964).
Craig, Gordan, and Alexander George. The Christian Statesman: Bismarck and Glad-
stone, in Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983), 25560.
Crosby, Margaret Barber. The Making of a German Constitution: A Slow Revolution (Ox-
ford: Berg, 2008).
Crowner, David, and Gerald Christianson. The Spirituality of the German Awakening,
Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2003).
Bibliography 313

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
Middle Class, 17801850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Deuschle, Matthias A. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des
kirchlichen Konservatismus im Preussen des 19. Jahrhunderts, Beitrge zur historisch-
en Theologie 169 (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
Dipper, Christof, and Ulrich Speck. 1848: Revolution in Deutschland, 1st ed. (Frankfurt
am Main: Insel, 1998).
Dittmer, Lothar. Beamtenkonservatismus und Modernisierung Untersuchungen zur
Vorgeschichte der Konservativen Partei in Preussen 1810 1848/49, Studien zur moder
nen Geschichte 44 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989). Thesis/dissertation.
Diwald, Hellmut. Von der Revolution zum Norddeutschen Bund. Politik und Ideengut des
preuischen Hochkonservativen 18481866, vol. 1, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19.
und 20. Jahrhunderts 46.1 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970).
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground, trans. Jessie Coulson (New York: Pen-
guin, 1972).
Dowe, Dieter. Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform (New York: Berghahn, 2001).
Dowe, Dieter, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, and Dieter Langewiesche. Europa 1848. Revolu-
tion und Reform, Reihe Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte 48 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz
Nachf, 1998).
Dronke, Ernst. Berlin, Sammlung Luchterhand (Darmstadt: Hermann Luchterhand,
1974).
Dlmen, Richard van. Reformation als Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und religiser Ra-
dikalismus in der deutschen Reformation. Originalausgabe. ed, DTV Wissenschaftli-
che Reihe (Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1977).
Dlmen, Richard van. Die Utopie einer christlichen Gesellschaft. Johann Valentin An-
dreae (15861654), Kultur und Gesellschaft 2 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-
Holzboog, 1978).
Dwyer, Philip G, ed. Modern Prussian History, 18301947 (Harlow, UK Longman,
2001).
Echtermeyer, Ernst Theodor, Arnold Ruge, and Norbert Oellers, eds. Der Protestan
tismus und die Romantik. Zur Verstndigung ber die Zeit und ihre Gegenstze. Ein
Manifest Hallische Jahrbcher fr deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst (Hildesheim,
Gerstenberg, 1972).
Eddie, Scott McNeil. Landownership in Eastern Germany before the Great War: A Quan-
titative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Eichholtz, Dietrich. Junker und Bourgeoisie vor 1848 in der preussischen Eisenbahnge-
schichte, Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Schriften des Instituts fr Geschich-
te. Reihe 1: Allgemeine und deutsche Geschichte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962).
Emsley, Clive. The Longman Companion to Napoleonic Europe (London: Longman,
1993).
314 Bibliography

Enders, L. Die Altmark. Geschichte einer kurmrkischen Landschaft in der Frhneuzeit

(Ende des 15. bis Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts), Verffentlichungen des Brandenbur-
gischen Landeshauptarchivs (Berlin: BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2008).
Enders, L., Friedrich Beck, and Klaus Neitmann. Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte
und Archivwissenschaft. Festschrift fr Lieselott Enders zum 70. Geburtstag (Weimar:
H. Bhlaus Nachfolger, 1997).
Epstein, Klaus. The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1966).
Fenske, Hans. Quellen zur deutschen Revolution 18481849, Ausgewhlte Quellen zur
deutschen Geschichte der Neuzeit 24 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1996).
Fenske, Hans. Die Verwaltung Pommerns 18151945. Aufbau und Ertrag, Verffentlichun-
gen der Historischen Kommission fr Pommern. Reihe V, Forschungen zur pom-
merschen Geschichte 26 (Cologne: Bhlau, 1993).
Fenske, Hans. Vormrz und Revolution, 18401849, Quellen zum politischen Denken der
Deutschen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert 4 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft [Abt. Verl.], 1976).
Fischer, Fritz. Mortiz August von Bethmann-Hollweg und der Protestantismus (Religion,
Rechts- und Staatsgedanke), ed. Emil Ebering, Historische Studien, Heft 338 (Berlin:
Verlag von Dr. Emil Ebering, 1938).
Fleischer, Manfred P. Deus Praesens in Jure: The Politics of Ludwig von Gerlach,
Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 39 (1987), 123.
Fleischer, Manfred P. Lutheran and Catholic Reunionists in the Age of Bismarck,
Church History (Centennial Issue Supplement) 57 (1988), 89107.
Forrest, Alan I., Karen Hagemann, and Jane Rendall, eds. Soldiers, Citizens and Civil-
ians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790
1820, War, Culture and Society, 17501850 (Palgrave MacMillan: New York, 2009).
Friedeburg, Robert von. Lndliche Gesellschaft und Obrigkeit. Gemeindeprotest und
politische Mobilisierung im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Kritische Studien zur Geschichts
wissenschaft 117 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).
Fulbrook, Mary. Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Wrt-
temberg and Prussia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Fulbrook, Mary, and Martin Swales. Representing the German Nation: History and
Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000).
Fl, Wilhelm. Professor in der Politik, Friedrich Julius Stahl (18021861). Das monar-
chische Prinzip und seine Umsetzung in die parlamentarische Praxis, Schriftenreihe
der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988).
Gall, Lothar. Bismarck. Der weie Revolutionr (Frankfurt am Main: Propylen, 1980).
Bibliography 315

Gall, Lothar. Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, trans. J.A. Underwood, 2 vols. (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1986).
Gawthorp, Richard L. Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Gerhardt, Johannes. Der Erste Vereinigte Landtag in Preussen von 1847. Untersuchungen
zu einer stndischen Krperschaft im Vorfeld der Revolution von 1848/49, Quellen und
Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte (Berlin: Dun
cker & Humblot, 2007).
Gillis, John R. The Development of European Society, 17701870 (Boston: Houghton Miff
lin, 1977).
Gillis, John R. The Prussian Bureaucracy in Crisis, 18401860: Origins of an Administra-
tive Ethos (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971).
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Der Anschlu der neuen Provinzen, in Die Geschichte der Evan-
gelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig: Evan-
gelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 7782.
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Bekenntnis und Staatskirchenrecht, in Die Geschichte der Evan-
gelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig: Evan-
gelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 4653.
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Die kirchliche Reformdiskussion, in Die Geschichte der Evange-
lischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig: Evan-
gelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 8387.
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Die kirchlichen Vorstellungen Knig Friedrich Wilhelms IV. und
das Ministerium Eichhorn, in Die Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union,
eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt,
1992), 27183.
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Nationalkirchliche Tendenzen und Landeskirchen. Gustav-
Adolf-Verein und Berliner Kirchenkonferenz (1846), in Die Geschichte der Evange-
lischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig: Evan-
gelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 33241.
Goeters, J.F. Gerhard. Religisen Zge der vaterlndischen Erhebung 18131815, in Die
Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf
Mau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 6777.
Glz, Bernhard. Altstndischer Konservatismus und preuische Reformen. Ludwig
von der Marwitz, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 25b (1984), 35977.
Gonzlez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought, rev. [2nd English] ed. (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1987).
Grtemacher, Manfred, Kristina Hbener, Klaus Neitman, and Krstin Weirauch. Zwi
schen Knigtum und Volkssouvernitt. Die Revolution von 1848/49 in Brandenburg,
ed. Klaus Neitman, Quellen, Findbcher und Inventare des Brandenburgischen
Landeshauptarchivs (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1999).
316 Bibliography

Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm. Kritik und Pseudo-Spekulation. David Friedrich Strauss

als Dogmatiker im Kontext der positionellen Theologie seiner Zeit, Mnchener
Universitts-Schriften. Fachbereich Evangelische Theologie (Munich: Kaiser,

1982).
Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm. Die Politisierung des religisen Bewusstseins. Die brgerlichen
Religionsparteien im deutschen Vormrz. Das Beispiel des Deutschkatholizismus, 1st
ed, Neuzeit im Aufbau 5 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978).
Granier, Herman, ed. Das Feldzugstagebuch des Kronprinzen Friedrich Wilhelm von
Preuen aus dem Jahre 1813, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 17 (1913), 96104.
Gray, Marion W., and Peter Petschauer. German Historiography of the Revolutionary
Era: Innovative Social History of Half of Society, Proceedings of the Consortium on
the Revolutionary Era, 1987.
Greiffenhagen, Martin. Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland (Munich: R
Piper, 1971).
Greschat, Martin. Religionspolitik in Deutschland: von der Frhen Neuzeit bis zur Gegen-
wart (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999).
Greschat, Martin. Theologen des Protestantismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Urban-
Taschenbcher 284285 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1978).
Greschat, Martin. Das Zeitalter der Industriellen Revolution. Das Christentum vor der
Moderne, Christentum und Gesellschaft 11 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980).
Greschat, Martin. Zur neueren Pietismusforschung, Wege der Forschung 440 (Darm-
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977).
Greschat, Martin, Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, and Kurt Nowak. Religionspolitik in
Deutschland. Von der Frhen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Martin Greschat zum 65. Ge-
burtstag (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999).
Groh, John E. Nineteenth Century German Protestantism: The Church as Social Model
(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982).
Grnthal, Gnther. Bemerkungen zur Kamarilla Friedrich Wilhelms IV. im nachmrz
lichen Preussen, Jahrbuch fr die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 36 (1987),
3947.
Grnthal, Gnther. Crown and Parliament in Prussia, 18481866, Parliaments, Estates,
& Representation 5.2 (1985), 16574.
Grnthal, Gnther. Parlamentarismus in Preussen 1848/491857/58. Preussischer Kon-
stitutionalismus, Parlament und Regierung in der Reaktionsra, Handbuch der Ge-
schichte des deutschen Parlamentarismus (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1982).
Grnthal, Gnther. Das Preussische Dreiklassenwahlrecht. Ein Beitrag zur Genesis
und Funktion des Wahlrechtoktrois vom Mai 1849, Historische Zeitschrift 26.1
(1976), 1766.
Grnthal, Gnther. Zwischen Knig, Kabinett und Kamarilla. Der Verfassungsoktroi
in Preussen vom 5.12.1848, Jahrbuch fr die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands
32 (1983), 11974.
Bibliography 317

Haake, Paul. Ernst Frhr. Senfft v. Pilsach, 17951882, in Pommersche Lebensbilder, ed.
Walter Menn (Cologne: Bhlau, 1966), 32460.
Habermas, Jrgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into
a Category of Bourgeois Society, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).
Hachtmann, Rdiger. 150 Jahre Revolution von 1848, Part 1, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte
39 (1999), 44793, and Part 2, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 40 (2000), 337401.
Hachtmann, Rdiger. Berlin 1848. Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolu-
tion, Verffentlichungen des Instituts dr Sozialgeschichte, ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn:
Dietz, 1997).
Hachtmann, Rdiger. ein gerechtes Gericht Gottes. Der Protestantismus und die
Revolution von 1848 das Berliner Beispiel, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 36 (1996),
20555.
Haenchen, Karl, ed. Revolutionsbriefe 1848; Ungedrucktes aus dem Nachla Knig Fried
rich Wilhelms IV. von Preussen (Leipzig: Koehler, 1930).
Hagemann, Karen. Revisiting Prussias Wars Against Napoleon: History, Culture and
Memory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Hagemann, Karen, and Jean H. Quataert, eds. Gendering Modern German History: Re-
writing Historiography (New York: Berghahn, 2007).
Hagen, William W. Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 15001840,
New Studies in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Hahn, Alois. Religion und der Verlust der Sinngebung. Identittsprobleme in der mo
dernen Gesellschaft, Reihe Soziale Probleme (Frankfurt: Herder & Herder, 1974).
Hahn, Hans J. The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe, Themes in Modern
German History Series (Harlow: Longman, 2001).
Hansen, Joseph. Rheinische Briefe und Akten zur Geschichte der politischen Bewegung
18301850, Publikationen der Gesellschaft fr Rheinische Geschichtskunde (Bonn:
P. Hanstein, 1942).
Hardtwig, Wolfgang. Revolution in Deutschland und Europa 184849, Sammlung Van-
denhoeck (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).
Hardtwig, Wolfgang. Vormrz. Der monarchische Staat und das Brgertum (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985).
Hardtwig, Wolfgang, and Harm-Hinrich Brandt. Deutschlands Weg in die Moderne. Poli-
tik, Gesellschaft und Kultur im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1993).
Hase, Karl von, ed. Kirchengeschichte auf der Grundlage akademischer Vorlesungen, vol. 2
(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1892).
Hassel, Paul. Joseph Maria von Radowitz, vol. 1, 17971848 (Berlin: E.S. Mittler und Sohn,
1905).
Hassemer, Winfried, and Trutz Rendtorff. Politisches Mandat der Kirchen? Grundfragen
einer politischen Theologie [1. Aufl.] ed, Das theologische Interview 27 (Dsseldorf:
Patmos, 1972).
318 Bibliography

Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard, and Dieter Langewiesche. Nation und Religion in der deutschen
Geschichte (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001).
Heintze, Johannes. Die Grundlagen der heutigen preussischen Kirchenverfassung in
ihren Vorstadien seit der Generalsynode von 1846, Schriften der Pommerschen Gesell-
schaft zur Frderung Evangelisch-Theologischer Wissenschaft (Greifswald: L. Bam-
berg, 1931).
Hermelink, Heinrich. Das Christentum in der Menschheitsgeschichte von der franz-
sischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 2 (Tbingen: J.B. Metzler und R. Wun-
derlich, 1955).
Hewitson, Mark. Nationalism in Germany, 18481866: Revolutionary Nation, European
Studies Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Heyden, Hellmuth. Kirchengeschichte Pommerns, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Von der Annahme der
Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Cologne-Braunsfeld: Rudolf Mller, 1937).
Heyden, Hellmuth. Neue Aufstze zur Kirchengeschichte Pommerns, Verffentlichungen
der Historischen Kommission fr Pommern. Reihe V, Forschungen zur pommerschen
Geschichte (Cologne: Bhlau, 1965).
Heyne, Johann. Fragmente und Skizzen aus der Geschichte der katholischen Stadt-
pfarrkirche St. Peter und Paul zu Kben a. O. im Steinauer Kreise (aus original-
urkunden Aktenstcken [] lterer und neuerer Zeit). Ein Beitrag zur schlesischen
Kirchen-und Dizesan-Geschichte (Kben: A. Mller, 1853).
Hinrichs, Carl. Preussentum und Pietismus. Der Pietismus in Brandenburg-Preussen als
religis-soziale Reformbewegung (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).
Hinrichs, Carl, and Gerhard Oestreich. Preussen als historisches Problem. Gesammelte
Abhandlungen, vol. 10, Verffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin beim
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut der Freien Universitt Berlin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1964).
Hobsbawm, E.J., and Terrence O. Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Hodenberg, Christina von. Die Partei der Unparteiischen. Der Liberalismus der preus-
sischen Richterschaft 18151848/49, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996).
Hlscher, Lucian. Datenatlas zur religisen Geographie im protestantischen Deutsch-
land. Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2001).
Hlscher, Lucian. Weltgericht oder Revolution. Protestantische und sozialistische
Zukunftsvorstellungen im deutschen Kaiserreich, Industrielle Welt 46 (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1989).
Holtz, Brbel, and Hartwin Spenkuch. Preussens Weg in die politische Moderne.
Verfassung Verwaltung politische Kultur zwischen Reform und Reformblockade,
Berichte und Abhandlungen (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften). Sonderband (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001).
Bibliography 319

Holtz, Brbel, and Wolfgang Neugebauer. Acta Borussica. Neue Folge Reihe 2 Preussen
als Kulturstaat Abt. 1 Das preuische Kultusministerium als Staatsbehrde und gesell-
schaftliche Agentur (18171934) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012).
Hope, Nicholas. German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 17001918, Oxford History of
the Christian Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
Hope, Nicholas.Prussian Protestantism, in Modern Prussian History, 18301947, ed.
Philip G. Dwyer (Harlow: Pearson, 2001).
Howard, Thomas A. Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German Univer-
sity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Howard, Thomas A. Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W.M.L. de Wette, Jacob Burck-
hardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Hubatsch, Walter. Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Ostpreussens (Gttingen: Van-
denhoeck and Ruprecht, 1968).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, ed. Ernst Rudolf Huber,
vol. 1, Reform und Restauration 1789 bis 1830; vol. 2, Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit
1830 bis 1850; vol. 3, Bismarck und das Reich; vol. 4, Struktur und Krisen des Kaiser-
reichs (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960, 1960, 1963, 1978).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, and Gustav Schmidt. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789,
vol. 2, Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit 1830 bis 1850 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1960).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, and Gustav Schmidt. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 3,
Bismarck und das Reich (Stuttgart u.a.: Kohlhammer, 1963).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, and Wolfgang Huber. Staat und Kirche vom Ausgang des alten
Reichs bis zum Vorabend der brgerlichen Revolution, Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1973).
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, Wolfgang Huber, and Rupprecht Stiefel. Staat und Kirche im 19.
und 20. Jahrhundert. Dokumente zum Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts
(Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1973).
Hundeshagen, Karl Bernhard. Beitrge zur Kirchenverfassungsgeschichte und Kirchen-
politik, insbesondere des Protestantismus (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1963).
Kaiser, Gerhard. Pietismus und Patrotismus im literarischen Deutschland. Ein Beitrag
zum Problem der Skularisation, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Athenum, 1973).
Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus, ed. Rekonstruktion des Konservatismus, vol. 18, Sammlung
Rombach (Freiburg: Rombach, 1972).
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Die Erweckungsbewegung. Studien zur Geschichte
ihrer Enstehung und ersten Ausbreitung in Deutschland (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-
Verlag, 1957).
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Evangelischer Geist und Glaube im neuzeitlichen Bay-
ern, Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte (Mnich: Beck, 1980).
320 Bibliography

Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher in Selbstzeug-

nissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967).
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Gestalten und Typen des Neuluthertums. Beitrge zur
Erforschung des Neokonfessionalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. [1. Aufl.] ed. (Gtersloh:
Gtersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1968).
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Orthodoxie und Pietismus [1. Aufl.] ed., Evangelische
Enzyklopdie (Gtersloh: G. Mohn, 1966).
Koch, H.W. A Constitutional History of Germany (London: Longman, 1984).
Kondylis, Panajotis. Konservatismus. Geschichtlicher Gehalt und Untergang (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1986).
Kopsidis, Michael, and Nikolaus Wolf. Agricultural Productivity Across Prussia During
the Industrial Revolution: A Thunen Perspective, Journal of Economic History 72.3
(2012), 63470.
Koselleck, Reinhart. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern
Society, 1st MIT ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988).
Koselleck, Reinhart. Preuen zwischen Reform und Revolution. Allgemeines Landrecht,
Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Munich: Klett-Cotta, 1989). Origi-
nally published in 1967 as vol. 7 of Industrielle Welt for the Arbeitskreis fr moderne
Sozialgeschichte, ed. Werner Conze.
Kraus, Hans-Christof. Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. Politisches Denken und Handeln eines
preuischen Altkonservativen, 2 vols., Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission
bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 53 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1994).
Krau, Erich. Ernst von Blow-Cummerow, 17751851, in Pommersche Lebensbilder,
ed. Walter Menn (Cologne: Bhlau Verlag, 1966), 22840.
Kreft, Werner. Die Kirchentage von 18481872, Europische Hochschulschriften. Reihe
XXIII, Theologie, vol. 514 (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1994).
Kriege, Anneliese. Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung unter der Redaktion
Ernst-Wilhelm Hengstenbergs (vom 1. Juli 1827 bis zum 1. Juni 1869). Ein Beitrag zur Kir
chengeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Dissertation, Theology, University of Bonn, 1958.
Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1957, 1972).
Kroll, Frank-Lothar. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. und das Staatsdenken der Deutschen Roman-
tik Einzelverffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, Forschungen
zur Preuischen Geschichte 72 (Berlin: Colloquim, 1990).
Krger, Peter, Julius H. Schoeps, and Irene Diekmann. Der verkannte Monarch. Fried
rich Wilhelm IV. in seiner Zeit. 1. Aufl. ed., Brandenburgische historische Studien
(Potsdam: Verlag fr Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997).
Krumeich, Gerd, and Hartmut Lehmann. Gott mit uns. Nation, Religion und Gewalt im
19. und frhen 20. Jahrhundert, Verffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fr Ge-
schichte (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).
Bibliography 321

Krummacher, Friedrich Wilhelm. Gottfried Daniel Krummacher und die niederrhei

nische Erweckungsbewegung zu Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Kirchen
geschichte (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1935).
Kupisch, Karl. Die Deutschen Landeskirchen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Bernd
Moeller, 2nd ed., vol. 4, Part R (2nd portion), Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte. Ein
Handbuch (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975).
Langewiesche, Dieter. Die Deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, Wege der Forschung (Darm-
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983).
Langewiesche, Dieter. Europa zwischen Restauration und Revolution 18151849 (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1985).
Langewiesche, Dieter. Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europischen
Vergleich. Dreiig Beitrge, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988).
Langewiesche, Dieter. Die Revolutionen von 1848 in der europischen Geschichte. Ergeb-
nisse und Nachwirkungen. Beitrge des Symposions in der Paulskirche vom 21. bis 23.
Juni 1998, Historische Zeitschrift. Beiheft (Neue Folge) 29 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg,
2000).
Langewiesche, Dieter, and Christiane Banerji. Liberalism in Germany (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
Langewiesche, Dieter, and Georg Schmidt. Fderative Nation. Deutschlandkonzepte von
der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000).
Lehmann, Hartmut. Culture and Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany
(Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1992).
Lehmann, Hartmut. Pietism and Nationalism: The Relationship of Protestant Reviv-
alism and National Renewal in Nineteenth Century Germany, Church History 51.1
(1982), 3953.
Lehmann, Hartmut. Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Wrttemberg vom 17. bis zum
20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1969).
Lehmann, Hartmut. Protestantische Weltsichten. Transformationen seit dem 17. Jahrhun-
dert (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
Lehmann, Hartmut. Protestantisches Christentum im Proze der Skularisierung (Gt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
Lehmann, Hartmut. Skularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im
neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perpektiven der Forschung, Verffentlichungen
des Max-Planck-Instituts fr Geschichte 130 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1997).
Lerche, Otto. Die Berliner Synode von 1848/49, Jahrbuch fr Berlin-brandenburgische
Kirchengeschichte 38 (1963), 14276.
Levinger, Matthew Bernard. Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian
Political Culture, 18061848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Lindberg, Carter. The European Reformations (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996).
322 Bibliography

Lbbe, Hermann. Der Lebenssinn der Industriegesellschaft. ber die moralische Ver-
fassung der wissenschaftlich-technischen Zivilisation, Edition Sel-Stiftung (Berlin:
Springer, 1990).
Lbbe, Hermann. Skularisierung. Geschichte eines ideenpolitischen Begriffs (Freiburg:
K. Alber, 1965).
Luckmann, Thomas. The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society
(New York: Macmillan, 1967).
Luhmann, Niklas. Funktion der Religion. 4th ed., Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).
Luhmann, Niklas. Religious Dogmatics and the Evolution of Societies, Studies in Religion
and Society 9 (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1984).
Luther, Martin. The Freedom of a Christian, in Luthers Works, ed. Harold J. Grimm
(Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1957), 32777.
Lttgert, Gottlieb. Evangelisches Kirchenrecht in Rheinland und Westfalen (Gtersloh:
C. Bertelsmann, 1905).
Machtan, Lothar, and Milles Dietrich. Die Klassensymbiose von Junkertum und Bour-
geoisie. Zum Verhltnis von gesellschaftlicher und politischer Herrschaft im Preussen-
Deutschland 18501878/79. Orig.-Ausg. ed, Sozialgeschichtliche Bibliothek; Ullstein
Buch (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1980).
Mannheim, Karl. Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, International Library of So-
ciology and Social Reconstruction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953).
Manten, Georg. Das Notbischofsrecht der preussischen Knige und die preussische
Landeskirche zwischen staatlicher Aufsicht und staatlicher Verwaltung. Unter
besonderer Bercksichtigung der Kirchen- und Religionspolitik Friedrich Wilhelms II,
Quellen und Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007).
Maser, Peter. Hans Ernst von Kottwitz. Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung des frhen 19.
Jahrhunderts in Schlesien und Berlin, Kirche im Osten 21 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1990).
McDuffee, Michael B. Small-Town Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Liv-
ing Lost Faith, American University Studies. Series VII, Theology and Religion (New
York: Peter Lang, 2003).
McLeod, Hugh. Religion and the Peoples of Western Europe, 17891989 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1981, 1997).
McLeod, Hugh. Secularization in Western Europe, 18481914 (New York: St. Martins,
2000).
Mehlhausen, Joachim. Augustana-Jubilum und Julirevolution (1830), in Die Ge-
schichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Goeters and Rudolf Mau
(Leipzig: Evangelsiche Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 21019.
Mehlhausen, Joachim. Rationalismus und Vermittlungstheologie. Unionstheologie
und Hegelianismus an den preuischen Fakultten, in Die Geschichte der
Bibliography 323

Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau (Leipzig:
Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 175209.
Mettele, Gisela, and Andreas Schulz. Preussen als Kulturstaat im 19. Jahrhundert, Wis-
senschaftliche Reihe / Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung (Paderborn: Schningh, 2015).
Meyer, Dietrich. Die Kraftprobe des Staates mit der katholischen Kirche in der Misch-
ehenfrage (1837) und die Rckwirkung auf den Protestantismus, in Die Geschich-
te der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudof Mau
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 25669.
Modrow, Irina. Zur Politisierung der preuischen Erweckungsbewegung im 19. Jahr-
hundert, Jahrbuch fr brandenburgische Landesgeschichte 45 (1994), 14457.
Moeller, Bernd, and Gerhard Ruhbach. Bleibendes im Wandel der Kirchengeschichte.
Kirchenhistorische Studien (Tbingen: Mohr, 1973).
Moeller, Bernd, and Gottfried Arnold. Kirchengeschichte. Deutsche Texte, 16991927.
1. Aufl. ed., Bibliothek der Geschichte und Politik (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher
Klassiker, 1994).
Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 1848. Die ungewollte Revolution. Die revolutionren Bewegungen
in Europa 18301849, 2. Aufl., 810. Tausend. ed. (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1998).
Mooser, Josef. Frommes Volk und Patrioten. Erweckungsbewegung und soziale Frage im
stlichen Westfalen 1800 bis 1900, eds. Josef Mooser et al (Bielefeld: Verlag fr Regio
nalgeschichte, 1989).
Mooser, Josef. Konventikel, Unterschichten und Pastoren, in Frommes Volk und Pa-
trioten. Erweckungsbewegung und soziale Frage im stlichen Westfalen 1800 bis 1900,
eds. Josef Mooser et al (Bielefeld: Verlaf fr Regionalgeschichte, 1989).
Mooser, Josef. Lndliche Klassengesellschaft, 17701848. Bauern und Unterschichten,
Landwirtschaft und Gewerbe im stlichen Westfalen, Kritische Studien zur Geschichts
wissenschaft (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984).
Mller, Julius. Die Christliche Lehre von der Snde, 3., verm. und verb. Ausg. ed. (Breslau:
J. Max, 1849).
Neugebauer, Wolfgang. Politischer Wandel im Osten. Ost- und Westpreussen von den
alten Stnden zum Konstitutionalismus, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des
stlichen Europa (Wiesbaden: F Steiner, 1992).
Neugebauer, Wolfgang, and Brbel Holtz. Kulturstaat und Brgergesellschaft. Preus-
sen, Deutschland und Europa im 19. und frhen 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie,
2010).
Neuser, Wilhelm H. 1992. Agende, Agendenstreit und Provinzialagenden, in Die Ge-
schichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf
Mau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 13458.
Neuser, Wilhelm H. Landeskirchliche Reform-, Bekenntnis- und Verfassungsfragen.
Die Provinzialsynoden und die Berliner Generalsynode von 1846, in Die Geschich-
te der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf Mau
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 34266.
324 Bibliography

Nichols, David. Deity and Domination: Images of God and the State in the 19th and 20th
Centuries (London: Routledge, 1989).
Niebuhr, Richard. Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1956).
Nipperdey, Thomas. Deutsche Geschichte 18001866. Brgerwelt und starker Staat, 6th
ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1993).
Nixdorf, Wolfgang. Die lutherische Separation. Union und Bekenntnis (1834), in Die
Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Goeters and Rudolf Mau
(Leipzig: Evangelischen Kirchenanstalt, 1992), 22040.
Nolte, Paul. Staatsbildung als Gesellschaftsreform. Politische Reformen in Preussen und
den sddeutschen Staaten, 18001820, Historische Studien (Frankfurt am Main: Cam-
pus, 1990).
Nowak, Kurt. Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland. Religion, Politik und Gesell-
schaft vom Ende der Aufklrung bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C.H.
Beck, 1995).
Obermann, Karl. Einheit und Freiheit. Die deutsche Geschichte von 1815 bis 1849 in
zeitgenssischen Dokumenten dargest. und eingel. von Dr. K. Obermann (Berlin:
1950).
Obermann, Karl, Helmut Bleiber, Walter Schmidt, and Rolf Weber. Mnner der Revo
lution von 1848, vols. 7273, Schriften des Zentralinstituts fr Geschichte (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1987).
Pape, Matthias. Die Verfassungsgebung im Preuen 1848/50. Akteure Ziele
Handlungsspielrume, Zeitschrift fr Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 22.2 (2000), 188217.
Petersdorff, Herman von. Deutsche Mnner und Frauen. Biographische Skizzen
vornehmlich zur geschichte Preuens im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Reimar Hob-
bing, 1913).
Petersdorff, Herman von. Friedrich von Motz. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing,
1913).
Petersdorff, Herman von. General Johann Adolph Freiherr von Thielmann ein Charakter-
bild aus der napoleonischen Zeit (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1894).
Petersdorff, Herman von. Kleist-Retzow. Ein Lebensbild (Stuttgart: Cotta Nachfolger,
1907).
Petersdorff, Herman von. Knig Friedrich Wilhelm der Vierte (Stuttgart: J. G. Cottasche
Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1900).
Pflanze, Otto. Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification,
18151871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
Pinson, Koppel S. Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New York: Oc-
tagon, 1934, 1968).
Quataert, Jean H. Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination
in Dynastic Germany, 18131916, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Ger-
many (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).
Bibliography 325

Rassow, Peter. Der Konflikt Knig Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit dem Prinzen von Preussen
im Jahre 1854. Eine preussische Staatskrise, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der
Literatur. Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (Mainz:
Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur; in Kommission bei F. Steiner, 1961).
Reder, Dirk Alexander. Frauenbewegung und Nation. Patriotische Frauenvereine in
Deutschland im frhen 19. Jahrhundert (18131830), Klner Beitrge zur Nationsfor
schung 4 (Cologne: SH-Verlag, 1998).
Rmond, Ren. Religion and Society in Modern Europe, trans. Antonia Neville, The Mak-
ing of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
Rendtorff, Trutz. Christentum zwischen Revolution und Restauration. Polit. Wirkungen
neuzeitl. Theologie (Munich: Claudius, 1970).
Rendtorff, Trutz. 1972. Theorie des Christentums; historisch-theologische Studien zu sei
ner neuzeitlichen Verfassung (Gtersloh: G. Mohn, 1972).
Ribhegge, Wilhelm. Konservative Politik in Deutschland. Von der franzsischen Revolu-
tion bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989).
Richter, Gnter. 1987. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. und die Revolution von 1848, Jahrbuch fr
die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 36 (1987), 10731.
Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the
United States and Iran, trans. Don Reneau, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Comparative
Studies in Religion and Society 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Original title: Fundamentalismus als patriarchalische Protestbewegung (Tbingen:
J.C.B. Mohr).
Roensch, Manfred. Quellen zur Entstehung und Entwicklung selbstndiger evangelisch-
lutherischer Kirchen in Deutschland, Europische Hochschulschriften Reihe 23
(Frankfurt am Main u.a.: Lang, 1987).
Roessle, Julius. Von Bengel bis Blumhardt. Gestalten und Bilder aus der Geschichte des
schwbischen Pietismus (Metzingen: E. Franz, 1966).
Roessle, Julius. Zeugen und Zeugnisse. Die Vter des rheinisch-westflischen Pietismus
(Konstanz: Christliche Verlagsanstalt, 1968).
Rssler, Hellmuth. Zwischen Revolution und Reaktion ein Lebensbild des Reichsfreiherrn
Hans Christoph von Gagern, 17661852, Verffentlichungen der Historischen Kom-
mission fr Nassau (Gottingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag, 1958).
Ruhbach, Gerhard. Die Erweckungsbewegung und ihre kirchliche Formation, in Die
Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F. Gerhard Goeters and Rudolf
Mau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 15974.
Ruhbach, Gerhard. Kirchenunionen im 19. Jahrhundert. Texte zur Kirchen- und Theolo-
giegeschichte, Heft 6 (Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlaghaus, 1967).
Sahlins, Marshall. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early
History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom, ASAO Special Publications No. 1 (Ann Ar-
bor: University of Michigan Press, 1981).
326 Bibliography

Sander, Hartmut. Die oktroyierte Verfassung und die Errichtung des Evangelischen
Oberkirchenrats (1850), in Die Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, eds. J.F.
Gerhard Goeters and Rudof Mau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 40218.
Sauter, Michael J. Visions of the Enlightenment: The Edict on Religion of 1788 and the Poli-
tics of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century Prussia, Brills Studies in Intellectual
History 177 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Schaper, Ewald. Die geistespolitischen Voraussetzungen der Kirchenpolitik Friedrich Wil-
helms IV. von Preussen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938).
Scharfe, Martin. Evangelische Andachtsbilder. Studien zu Intention und Funktion des Bil-
des in der Frmmigkeitsgeschichte vornehmlich des schwbischen Raumes, Verffent
lichungen des Staatlichen Amtes fr Denkmalpflege Stuttgart. Reihe C: Volkskunde
(Stuttgart: Mller u. Grff, 1968).
Scheel, Wolfgang. Das Berliner politische Wochenblatt und die politische und soziale
Revolution in Frankreich und England. Ein Beitrag zur konservativen Zeitkritik in
Deutschland (Gttingen: Musterschmidt, 1964).
Schenda, Rudolf. Volk ohne Buch; Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populren Lese
stoffe 17701910, Studien zur Philosophie und Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts
(Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1970).
Schicketanz, Peter. Pietismus in Berlin-Brandenburg. Versuch eines Forschungsberich
tes, Pietismus und Neuzeit. Ein Jahrbuch zur Geschchte des neueren Protestantismus
13 (1987), 11534.
Schieder, Wolfgang. Liberalismus in der Gesellschaft des deutschen Vormrz, Geschichte
und Gesellschaft. Sonderheft (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983).
Schieder, Wolfgang. Religion und Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert, Industrielle Welt
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993).
Schieder, Wolfgang. Volksreligiositt in der modernen Sozialgeschichte (Gttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).
Schieder, Wolfgang, and Alfred Kube. Skularisation und Mediatisierung. Die Verusse-
rung der Nationalgter im Rhein-Mosel-Departement 18031813, Forschungen zur
deutschen Sozialgeschichte 4 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1987).
Schieder, Wolfgang, and Manfred Koltes. Skularisation und Mediatisierung in den vier
rheinischen Departements, 18031813. Edition des Datenmaterials der zu verussern-
den Nationalgter, Forschungen zur deutschen Sozialgeschichte (Boppard am Rhein:
H. Boldt, 1991).
Schiemann, Theodor. Kaiser Nikolaus vom Hhepunkt seiner Macht bis zum Zusammen-
bruch im Krimkriege. 18401855, Geschichte Rulands unter Kaiser Nikolaus I (Berlin:
Reimer, 1919).
Schissler, Hanna. Preussische Agrargesellschaft im Wandel. Wirtschaftliche, gesell-
schaftliche und politische Transformationsprozesse von 1763 bis 1847, Kritische
Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978).
Bibliography 327

Schlenke, Manfred. Preusen-Ploetz. Preuische Geschichte zum Nachschlagen (Freiburg:

Ploetz, 1987).
Schlgl, Rudolf. Glaube und Religion in der Skularisierung. Die katholische Stadt Kln,
Aachen, Mnster 17001840, Ancien rgime, Aufklrung und Revolution (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1995).
Schluchter, Wolfgang. Rationalism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
Schmidt, Walter. Demokratie, Liberalismus und Konterrevolution: Studien zur deutschen
Revolution von 1848/49 (Berlin: Fides, 1998).
Schmidt, Walter. Die Partei Bethmann Hollweg und die Reaktion in Preuen 185058
(Berlin: A. Duncker, 1910).
Schmidt, Walter. Waren die preuischen Reformen eine Revolution von oben? Zum
Verhltnis von Reform, Revolution von unten und Revolution von oben im Proze
der brgerlichen Umwlzung in Deutschland, Zeitschrift fr Geschichtswissenschaft
32.11 (1984), 9861001.
Schnabel, Franz. Die religisen Krfte, vol. 4, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert
(1937; repr. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Das andere Preuen. Konservative Gestalten und Probleme im
Zeitalter Friedrich Wilhelms IV (Berlin: Haude & Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1981).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Aus den Jahren preuischer Not und Erneuerung. Tagebcher
und Briefe der Gebrder Gerlach und ihres Kreises 18051820 (Berlin: Haude & Spe
nersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1996).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Der Erweckungschrist auf dem Thron. Friedrich Wilhelm IV,
in Der verkannte Monarch. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. in seiner Zeit, eds. Julius H. Schoeps,
Peter Krger, and Irene Diekmann, Brandenburgische Historische Studien (Pots-
dam: Verlag fr Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Konservative Erneuerung. Ideen zur deutschen Politik (Stutt-
gart: E Klett, 1958).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Die lutherische Hochorthodoxie Preussens und der
Katholizismus, Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 4.1 (1952), 31137.
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Neue Quellen zur Geschichte Preussens im 19. Jahrhundert, 1st
ed. (Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1968).
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Der Weg ins deutsche Kaiserreich (Berlin: Propylen,
1970).
Schorn-Schtte, Luise. Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frhneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der
Entfaltung frhmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft. Dargestellt am Beispiel des
Frstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenbttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der
Stadt Braunschweig, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (Gters
loh: Gtersloher Verlagshaus, 1996).
328 Bibliography

Schwentker, Wolfgang. Konservative Vereine und Revolution in Preussen, 1848/49. Die

Konstituierung des Konservatismus als Partei, Beitrge zur Geschichte des Parla-
mentarismus und der politischen Parteien 85 (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1988).
Sheehan, James J. German History, 17701866, Oxford History of Modern Europe (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1989).
Siemann, Wolfram. Die deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, Neue historische Bibliothek
(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985).
Siemann, Wolfram. Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung. Die Anfnge der poli-
tischen Polizei 18061866, Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur 14
(Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1985).
Siemann, Wolfram. Die Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/49 zwischen de-
mokratischem Liberalismus und konservativer Reform. Die Bedeutung der Juristendo-
minanz in den Verfassungsverhandlungen des Paulskirchenparlaments, Europische
Hochschulschriften, Reihe III, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 56 (Bern:
Herbert Lang and Peter Lang, 1976).
Siemann, Wolfram. The German Revolution of 184849 (New York: St. Martins, 1998).
Siemann, Wolfram. Gesellschaft im Aufbruch: Deutschland 18491871, 1. Aufl. ed, Neue
historische Bibliothek (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990).
Siemann, Wolfram. Restauration, Liberalismus und nationale Bewegung (18151870).
Akten, Urkunden und persnliche Quellen, Quellenkunde zur deutschen Geschichte
der Neuzeit von 1500 bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1982).
Sked, Alan. Austria, Prussia, and the Wars of Liberation, 18131814, Austrian History
Yearbook 45 (2014), 89114.
Smith, Helmut Walser. German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology,
Politics, 18701914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Smith, Helmut Walser. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, 18001914 (Oxford:
Berg, 2001).
Spener, Philipp Jakob. Pia Desideria, ed. Kurt Aland (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1940).
Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 18481851, 2nd ed., New Approaches to
European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Sperber, Jonathan. Germany, 18001870, The Short Oxford History of Germany (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004).
Sperber, Jonathan. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984).
Sperber, Jonathan. Revolutionary Europe, 17801850, Longman History of Modern Eu-
rope (Harlow: Longman, 2000).
Sperber, Jonathan. Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of
18481849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Bibliography 329

Stamm-Kuhlmann, Thomas. Die Rolle von Staat und Monarchie bei der Modernisie
rung von oben. Ein Literaturbericht mit ergnzenden Betrachtungen zur Person
Knig Friedrich Wilhelms III, in Gemeingeist und Brgersinn. Die preuischen Re-
formen, ed. Bernd Ssemann (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993).
Stamm-Kuhlmann, Thomas. Knig in Preussens grosser Zeit. Friedrich Wilhelm III., der
Melancholiker auf dem Thron (Berlin: Siedler, 1992).
Stamm-Kuhlmann, Thomas. Pommern im 19. Jahrhundert: staatliche und gesellschaftli-
che Entwicklung in vergleichender Perspektive, Verffentlichungen der Historischen
Kommission fr Pommern 5 (Cologne: Bhlau, 2007).
Steinmetz, Willibald. Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age: Comparing
Legal Cultures in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, Studies of the Ger-
man Historical Institute London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Steinmetz, Willibald, and German Historical Institute in London. Political Languages
in the Age of Extremes, Studies of the German Historical Institute London (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
Stoeffler, Ernst. Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1976).
Streckfuss, Adolf. Das freie Preussen! Geschichte des Berliner Freiheits-Kampfes vom 18.
Mrz 1848 und seiner Folgen (Berlin: Hbenthal, 1848).
Strom, Jonathan. Pietism and Community in Europe and North America, 16501850, Brills
Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
Taylor, A.J.P. The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of Germany
Since 1815 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961).
Thadden, Rudolf von. Fragen an Preuen. Zur Geschichte eines aufgehobenen Staates
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1981).
Tiesmeyer, Ludwig. Berlin und die Provinz Brandenburg, Die Erweckungsbewegung in
Deutschland whrend des XIX. Jahrhunderts von L. Tiesmeyer (Kassel: Rttger, 1909).
Tiesmeyer, Ludwig. Die Erweckungsbewegung in Deutschland whrend des XIX. Jahr-
hunderts, vol. 1 (Kassel: Rttger, 1903).
Tiesmeyer, Ludwig. Die Erweckungsbewegung in Deutschland whrend des XIX. Jahr-
hunderts / 11,3,3, Die Provinzen Pommern und Schleswig-Holstein (Kassel: Rttger,
1909).
Tiesmeyer, Ludwig. Die Erweckungsbewegung in Deutschland whrend des XIX. Jahr-
hunderts / 14 = Bd. 4, H. 2, Die Provinzen Posen und Westpreuen (Kassel: Rttger,
1910).
Ullmann, Hans-Peter, and Clemens Zimmermann, eds. Restaurationssystem und Re-
formpolitik. Sddeutschland und Preussen im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996).
330 Bibliography

Valjavec, Fritz. Die Entstehung der politischen Strmungen in Deutschland, 17701815

(Munich: R Oldenbourg, 1951).
Vanden Heuvel, Jon. A German Life in the Age of Revolution: Joseph Grres, 17761848
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2001).
Vick, Brian E. Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National
Identity, Harvard Historical Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2002).
Vick, Brian E. The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014).
Vogelin, Erich. Die politischen Religionen, Schriftenreiehe Ausblicke (Vienna: Bermann-
Fischer, 1938).
Volkmann, Heinrich, and Jrgen Bergmann. Sozialer Protest. Studien zu traditioneller
Resistenz und kollektiver Gewalt in Deutschland vom Vormrz bis zur Reichsgrndung
(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1984).
Wagner, Patrick. Bauern, Junker und Beamte. Lokale Herrschaft und Partizipation im
Ostelbien des 19. Jahrhunderts, Moderne Zeit (Gttingen: Wallstein, 2005).
Weber, Eugen Joseph. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France,
18701914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977).
Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, trans. Hans
Gerth, Ephraim Fischoff, A.M. Anderson, et al (New York: Bedminster, 1968). Trans-
lation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundri der verstehenden Soziologie, based on
the 4th German edition, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul
Siebeck], 1956), 1550, 559822, as revised in the 1964 paperback edition (Cologne:
Kiepenhauer & Witsch).
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons
(New York: Scribner, 1976).
Weber, Rolf. Revolutionsbriefe 1848/49, Rderberg Taschenbuch (Frankfurt am Main:
Roderberg, 1973).
Wehler, Hans Ulrich. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1987).
Weichert, Friedrich. Die Anfnge der Berliner Judenmission, Jahrbuch fr Berlin-
brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 38 (1963), 10641.
Weigelt, Horst. Erweckungsbewegung und konfessionelles Luthertum im 19. Jahrhundert.
Untersucht an Karl v. Raumer, Arbeiten zur Theologie 2, Reihe (Stuttgart: Calwer,
1968).
Weigelt, Horst. Geschichte des Pietismus in Bayern. Anfnge, Entwicklung, Beudeutung,
Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Pietismus (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
Weikart, Richard. Baron Hans Ernst von Kottwitz and Neo-Pietist Social Reform and Poli-
tics in Prussia, 18991848, M.A. thesis, History, Texas Christian University, 1989.
Welch, Claude. Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1972).
Bibliography 331

Wendland, Walter. Die Religiositt und die kirchenpolitischen Grundstze Friedrich Wil-
helms des Dritten, in ihrer Bedeutung fr die Geschichte der kirchlichen Restauration,
Studien zur Geschichte des neueren Protestantismus (Giessen: A. Tpelmann, 1909).
Wendland, Walter. Siebenhundert Jahre Kirchengeschichte, ed. Fritz Behrend, vol. 3,
Berlinische Forschungen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1930).
Wendland, Walter. Studien zur Geschichte der Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin (1810
1830), Jahrbuch fr Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 19 (1924), 577.
Wiegand, Friedrich. Der Verein der Maikfer in Berlin, Deutsche Rundschau 160 (1914),
27991.
Wienfort, Monika. Patrimonialgerichte in Preussen. Lndliche Gesellschaft und brgerli-
ches Recht 17701848/49, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
Wilson, A.N. Gods Funeral (New York: Norton, 1999).
Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
Woltersdorf, Theodor. Zur Geschichte und Verfassung der evangelischen Landeskirche in
Preuen (Greifswald: L. Bamberg, 1891).
Index
Aaslestad, Katherine B.27
Agende and Agendenstreit see liturgy reform
and liturgical controversy
Alexander II, Czar of Russia (r. 185581)286
Allgemeines Landrecht (ALR)6 n. 8, 5557,
85, 115
Altenstein, Karl Sigismund Franz vom Stein
zum58, 8390, 96102, 108111, 12627
Altholz, Josef L.79
Altlutheraner see Old Lutherans
Anderson, Benedict R.11 n. 19
anti-semitism
arational23, 34, 41, 44, 291, 295, 302
Arndt, Johann13, 88
Arndt, Ernst Moritz111, 287
Arnim, Achim von47
Arnim-Boitzenburg, Count Adolf
von145146
Arnim-Suckow, Heinrich Alexander von154
Auerswald, Rudolf von181, 189
Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung98
Augustine, Saint39, 99, 162
Austria
general rivalry and cooperation with
Prussia2, 32, 46, 113, 115, 169, 257
in 1848 Revolution and Union
politics15155, 186, 23539, 243 n. 37
in Crimean War26067, 270, 27881,
284, 288
Bachmann, Johannes23, 95, 99, 101 n. 29
Barclay, David E.22, 68 nn. 65, 67, 145, 180,
189, 231 n. 12, 23334, 284
Barth, Christian Gottlob13
Baumgart, Winfried260263, 285 n. 78
Beck, Hermann4 n. 3
Befreiungskriege see Wars of Liberation
Behnen, Michael253 n. 68, 264, 271
Below conventicles24, 73, 7480, 8285
Bengel, Johann Albrecht13
Berdahl, Robert31 n. 109, 43 n. 131
Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt zur Besprec-
hung politischer Tagesfragen (BPW)35,
67, 93, 102, 111112, 113 n. 78, 119 n. 78,
124 n. 119, 176, 177
Bethmann-Hollweg, Moritz August von
1848 Revolution and aftermath170, 174,
181, 187, 195
Crimean War260, 268, 27476, 277 n.
51, 279
post-1848 church renewal and Innere
Mission200, 202, 206, 208, 209 n. 43, 211,
213, 216, 218, 222
post-1848 constitution change and consti-
tutionalism232, 236, 237, 23840,
24143, 25355
general observations and before 1848 2,
23, 35, 45, 49, 95, 136, 14044, 14748
Bigler, Robert M.22, 52, 59, 155, 156, 215 n. 58
Bismarck, Otto von3, 4, 32, 35, 36, 37, 68,
155, 16869, 172, 239, 256, 257, 265, 280,
288, 289
Blackbourn, David18 n. 66, 19, 21, 301
Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von26
Bonapartist2, 46, 265, 292, 296
Brandenburg (province)1, 10, 16, 24, 2933,
43, 49, 68, 73, 93, 158, 290, 295
Brandenburg, Count Friedrich Wilhelm
von185, 188, 189, 192, 193, 230
Britain, Great46, 60 n. 41, 127, 155, 172,
190, 193, 234, 235, 244, 261, 26367,
270, 273, 279, 281, 28283, 296
Brentano, Clemens12, 47, 48, 49
Brose, Eric Dorn4 n. 2, 125
Blow-Cummerow, Ernst von60
Bunsen, Christian Carl Josias von111, 131 nn.
17, 18, 236, 237, 271, 272, 273, 283
Burke, Edmund4, 39, 160, 168
Bussiek, Dagmar24142, 243 n. 38, 244, 249,
266, 278 n. 58, 281
Calvinist Church see Reformed Church
Calwer Missionsblatt13
camarilla36, 45, 68, 155, 156, 169, 170,
17981, 18586, 188193, 196, 208,
234, 243, 262, 263 n. 7, 265,
284, 292
Camphausen, Gottfried Ludolf152, 166
Carlsbad Decrees61
Charte Waldeck228
Index
Christentumsgesellschaft see Christianity
Society
Christian-German Roundtable47
Christianity Society13, 14
Christliche Zeitschrift fr Christen, zur
Frderung Evangelischen Glaubens und
Lebens95
City of God and City of Man39
Clark, Christopher M.3 n. 1, 4 n. 2, 5 n.
5, 23, 30 n. 106, 34 n. 114, 47 n. 1, 63 n.
53, 66 n. 61, 72 n. 79, 154
Claudius, Matthias12
Code Civil115, 147
Congress of Vienna1, 2, 8
conventicles3234, 43, 44, 49, 5256,
6779, 8291, 92, 97, 98, 103, 110, 195,
297, 292, 297, 299
covenant, covenantal4042, 129, 156, 291
Crimean War2, 46, 155, 169, 225, 237, 246,
259, 260289
cultural struggle23, 61, 66, 100, 117, 126,
149195, 245, 260, 263, 289, 294
de Maistre, Joseph112, 113 n. 82, 121, 176,
258, 302
Denmark15253, 266, 296
Deuschle, Matthias A.96 n. 11, 99 n. 25, 103
n. 38
Diwald, Hellmut201, 274, 277 n. 51
Dreiknigsbndnissee Three Kings Alliance
Droste-Vischering, Clemens August
von11617
Dwyer, Philip G.4 n. 3, 13, 56
East Elbian Prussia16, 24, 3133, 49, 54, 60,
68, 292
Eastern Question see also Crimean War155,
261, 26465, 269, 27173, 278, 294
Edict of Worms84
Edict on Religion52
Eichhorn, Johann Albrecht Friedrich127,
134, 135 n. 32
Eilers, Gerd127
Eley, Geoff301
Enlightened, Enlightenment2, 9, 10, 11,
20, 25, 32, 34, 37 n. 122, 4143, 44, 47,
5152, 56, 57, 61, 82, 94, 104, 121, 122,
143, 166, 290, 293, 295
Epstein, Klaus5 n. 5, 52
333
Erfurt Union see Unionspolitik
Estate
in pre-1848 discourse4, 32, 33, 35, 39, 49,
56, 58, 60, 65, 75, 79, 84, 11819, 138, 142,
14448, 158
in post-1848 discourse166, 177, 188, 190,
193, 198, 218, 226, 233, 23941, 25354,
259, 28687
Eucharist53, 71, 76, 84, 86, 88, 132, 138
evangelical, issues in defining810
see also Awakened
evangelisch see evangelical
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung
1830 Revolution and Denunciation of
Halle105111
1848 Revolution and consequences153,
161 n. 23, 16264, 170
foundation31, 35, 92, 93, 94105
general remarks and other pre-1848
issues15, 23, 6667, 13536, 138,
14043
post-1848 19698, 201, 206, 208, 21418, 222,
238, 293
erweckt, Erweckungsbewegung see Awak-
ened, Awakening
Eylert, Rulemann Friedrich53 n. 23, 59, 83,
89, 99, 127, 136
Ferdinand VII, King of Spain (r. 1808 and
18131833)179
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas von151, 203
First Chamber (of Prussian Assembly)
reorganization in 18481850226, 228,
230234
reorganization after 1850223, 225,
250259
Fliedner, Theodor26
Fontaines, Jean-Frdrick26
Fouqu, Friedrich Baron de la Motte111, 128
France
geographical expression26, 166
perception of as a revolutionary
threat27, 46, 5859, 66, 85, 112, 147, 151,
153, 155, 15960, 16364, 167, 169, 171, 177,
203, 235
in Crimean War26061, 26367, 26972,
275, 279
Francke, August Hermann10, 11 n. 18, 88,
104, 204
334
Frankfurt National Assembly15254,
18081, 21923, 23637, 296
Frederick William (Friedrich Wilhelm) III,
King of Prussia (r. 17971840)9, 26, 31,
52, 6166, 76, 93, 108, 11516, 125127,
130, 138, 291
Frederick William (Friedrich Wilhelm) IV,
King of Prussia (r. 18401857/1861)
18401848 actions125, 127136, 14148,
29697
1848 Revolution149, 15255, 159, 166, 174,
17993
Crimean War262, 263, 26873, 281286,
294
general remarks22, 3132, 3538, 4446,
5556
post-1848 church renewal208209, 221
post-1848 constitutional changes225
227, 233240, 243, 24951, 255
Freymark, Carl Andreas Wilhelm137
Friends of Light13536, 215 n. 58, 297
Gemeindeordnung controversy226231, 274,
277, 289, 294
Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von
1848 Revolution and foundation of
NPZ45, 132, 140, 141, 148, 156, 159,
16163, 165, 166, 169, 17179, 18081,
18589, 191, 193
Crimean War263, 26669, 27478, 286,
29395, 297302
general remarks2, 16, 22, 24, 35, 37, 42,
64
politicization before 1848102105,
113114, 17, 121
post-1848 church renewal196202, 211,
213, 218222
post-1848 constitutional change228,
230, 232, 236, 23839, 243, 251252,
25458
pre-1848 involvement with the EKZ95,
103, 105111
Gerlach, Leopold von
1848 Revolution156
camarilla68, 191
conventicles67
Crimean War272273, 275, 279, 28384
general remarks2, 24, 35, 37
Index
Gerlach, Otto von24, 35, 71, 95
German Confederation236, 238, 260, 278,
280
Gesenius, Wilhelm67, 104111
Goeters, J. F. Gerhard63 n. 56, 132 nn. 20, 22
Grres, Joseph11314, 117
Gschel, Carl Friedrich137156
Goner, Johannes Evangelista15
Gottesgnadentum22, 36, 145 n. 70, 14748,
178, 182, 185, 18992, 194, 233, 246,
25152, 282, 297, 301
Grnthal, Gnther150 n. 9, 193, 230231,
257258
Guericke, Ferdinand104
Habermas, Jrgen6 n. 8
Hagemann, Karen25 n. 92, 2729, 5859,
164 n. 27
Hagen, William H.4 n. 2, 166 n. 29
Hahn, August137, 156
Halle, Denunciation of105110
Haller, Carl (Karl) Ludwig von see also
organicism4, 4748, 93 n. 3, 113, 12122,
139, 168
Hallesche Jahrbcher34 n. 114
Hallesches Volksblatt123
Hansemann, David166, 181, 189
Hardenberg, Karl August von5758
Harle, Adolf von15
Heerenhaus see House of Lords
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrichand
Hegelianism33 n. 112, 36 n. 120, 50, 51 n.
15, 94, 96, 108, 113 n. 83, 127, 140, 178, 295
Heilige Allianz see Holy Alliance
Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm
early years and involvement with the EKZ
to 184823, 31, 35, 66, 92 n. 1, 93 n. 2,
96104, 108111, 117, 124, 13536, 138
1848 Revolution14041, 15657
church renewal after 1848 197198, 201,
206, 208, 211, 218, 222, 238
Henhfer, Alois12
Hermes, Georg116
Herrnhuter Brethren11, 14, 16, 82
Hinckeldey, Karl Ludwig Friedrich von269,
274
Holy Alliance2, 39, 46, 23839, 264, 27172,
277289
Index
Homiletisch-liturgische
Correspondenz-Blatt95
Hope, Nicholas6 n. 7, 13 n. 24, 61, 62, 63 n.
56
House of Lords see First Chamber
Howard, Thomas A.62
Huber, Ernst Rudolf150 n. 9, 195, 212,
221223, 227, 233, 241, 249, 299
Huber, Wolfgang212, 221223, 299
Hudtwalcker, Martin Hieronymus15, 100
Hungary151, 155, 235, 236, 237, 261, 266, 271
Internal Mission2, 13 n. 24, 35, 45, 196212,
243294
Innere Mission see Internal Mission
Italian states112, 152, 261, 271
Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig28, 59
Jarcke, Karl Ernst93, 11314, 11818, 124
Jerusalem bishopric130
Jews and Judaism3 n. 1, 19, 72, 107
Anti-Semitism23 n. 112, 254 n. 71
Friedrich Julius Stahls conversion
from15, 123
Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich12, 13, 26
Junker36, 166, 188, 213, 226, 25253
Kamarilla see camarilla
Kniggrtz257
Konventikeln see conventicles
Koselleck, Reinhard6 n. 8, 37 n. 122, 168
Kottwitz, Baron Hans Ernst von69, 95
Krafft, Christian15
Kraus, Hans-Christoph22, 35 n. 117, 40 n. 6,
103, 118 n. 101, 157, 22, 163, 171 n. 34, 173,
176, 177, 180
Kreuzzeitung (Neue Preuische Zeitung, or
NPZ)
1848 Constitution185, 19394, 302
1848 Revolution and aftermath149, 153,
15556, 16979
Crimean War260, 26373, 275, 27794
general remarks31, 35, 36, 4546, 67,
11819, 136
post-1848 church renewal197, 198, 206,
213, 219, 221
post-1848 constitutional changes225,
228, 230, 237, 23950, 25259
335
Krdener, Julie von26, 95
Krummacher, Gottfried Daniel14
Ladenberg, Adalbert von195
Lehmann, Hartmut13 n. 24, 17, 18, 30 n. 106
Leo, Heinrich113, 12124, 170, 208
Levinger, Matthew Bernard4, 5, 57
Lhe, Wilhelm15
Louis Philippe, King of the French
(r. 18301848)152, 160
Kulturkampf3, 117, 164, 168, 169
Lancizolle, Carl Wilhelm von49
Lavater, Johann Kaspar13
Lichtfreunde see Friends of Light
liturgical reforms and liturgy
controversy6162, 66, 98100, 138, 209
Maikferkreis43, 4749, 128, 292
Manstein, Otto von166
Manten, Georg61 nn. 43, 45, 46, 62 n. 50
Manteuffel, Otto von36, 38, 46, 188, 192,
194, 230, 241, 243, 249, 252, 25556, 262,
26670, 27479, 284, 28788
Marwitz, Ludwig von der47
Massow, Julie von26
Mathis, Ludwig Emil24345
McLeod, Hugh28, 133
Mediating Theology51 n. 15, 137
Menken, Gottfried15
Metternich, Prince Klemens Wenzel von61,
112, 114, 152, 177, 247
Ministerium fr geistliche Angelegenheiten
(MGA) see Ministry for Spiritual Affairs
Ministry for Spiritual Affairs63, 7374, 195,
299
Mischehenstreitsee Mixed-Marriage
Controversy
Mixed-Marriage Controversy114117
Mooser, Josef1011, 18, 33
Moravians9, 82 see also Herrnhuter
Brethren
Motz, Friedrich von89
Mller, Adam122
Nathusius, Phillip123, 157
Nationalversammlung see Frankfurt,
National Assembly
Neander, Gottlieb35, 83, 95, 96 n. 11, 127
336
Neologians51, 67
Neuchtel problem27375, 282
Neuenburg problem see Neuchtel
Neue Preuische Zeitung see Kreuzzeitung
Neueste Nachrichten aus dem Reiche Gottes
Neugebauer, Wolfgang5 n. 5
Nicholas I, Czar of Russia (r. 18251855)46,
236, 267, 27071, 279, 281
Niebuhr, Marcus234, 243, 268, 283, 284
Nitzsch, Carl Immanuel96, 137
Oberlin, Frdric26
octroy of constitution of 1848 154, 180,
186195
Old Lutheranssee also Scheibel, Johann
Gottfried and Silesia9, 16, 32, 35, 51 n. 14,
55, 6364, 67, 75, 80, 82, 91, 95, 99,
12427, 130, 133 n. 25, 143, 151, 175,
207, 295, 297
Olmtz Agreementsee also Unionspoli-
tik155, 23435, 237, 243, 266
Oriental Questionsee Eastern Question
organicismsee also Savigny, Friedrich
Carl von and Haller, Carl (Karl) Ludwig
von2, 5, 39, 46, 60, 118, 13948, 156, 158,
172, 190, 211, 225, 228, 23033, 236,
23940, 240, 245, 256, 258, 292,
295, 301
Ottoman Empire26061, 26555, 270,
28586
Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd
Viscount281
Peasants1, 24, 28, 30, 33, 44, 47, 54, 65, 119,
142, 166, 188, 213, 229, 254, 290, 292,
295, 300
Pilsach, Ernst Senfft von24, 35, 37, 74, 84,
95, 15657, 170, 174, 206, 26869, 300
Pius VIII115
Pomerania1, 10, 24, 2933, 35, 37, 43, 49,
50, 53 n. 22, 56, 60, 68, 103, 158, 268,
290, 291, 295
conventicles in7390
Pourtals, Count Albert von267, 27174,
279
presbyterial order14, 31, 6566, 123, 139143,
213216
Provinziallandtage and Provinzialstnde46,
22630, 24042
Index
Radical Reformation75
Radowitz, Joseph Maria von9293, 112, 114,
118, 12021, 124, 154, 23536
Ranke, Leopold von111, 133
Raues Haus45, 201
Raumer, Karl Otto von195, 274, 299
Reformation5, 18, 39 n. 125, 42, 48, 61, 75,
84, 102, 109, 117, 12224, 132, 170, 208
Reformed Church1, 9, 1315, 20, 3031, 55,
61, 63, 66, 102, 291
Ritschl, Dr. Georg Carl Benjamin8390
Rochow, Theodor von269, 272
Rhr, Johann Friedrich16
Ruhbach, Gerhard9 n. 15, 16, 22, 49 n. 5,
62 n. 52
Russia
role in 1848 Revolution151155, 166,
235237
role in Union policy243 n. 37
role in Crimean War260277, 277288
Sack, Karl Heinrich96
Sadowa see Kniggrtz
Sailer, Johann Michael12
Sander, Hartmut137 n. 50, 217 n. 63, 222 n.
78, 223
Sartorius, Ernst Wilhelm Christian137
Savigny, Friedrich Carl von see also organi-
cism49 n. 6, 111
Sauter, Michael J.3 n. 1, 52
Scheel, Wolfgang112 n. 76, 113 n. 79, 114,
11722
Scheibel, Johann Gottfried see also Old Lu-
therans and Silesia16, 25, 95, 99, 102
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich129
Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst49,
59, 102103, 111, 137 n. 49, 215
Schmidt, Walter24243
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim5 n. 5, 21, 22, 35 n.
119, 122, 123 n. 116, 134 n. 28
Schwentker, Wolfgang173
secular8, 29 n. 105, 3842, 83, 94, 109, 122,
165, 168, 175, 265, 297
secularization23, 6 n. 8, 1719, 28, 73, 290,
29495
Seegemund, Johann Georg16
Seehof76, 7880
Sheehan, James J.`20, 21 n. 74, 101 n. 28, 149
n. 1
Index
Sieveking, Karl15
Silesia see also Old Lutherans and Scheibel,
Johann Gottfried55, 76, 102, 117, 137 nn.
5051
Smith, Helmut Walser3 n. 1, 4 n. 2, 18
Snethlage, Karl Wilhelm Moritz49
Spener, Philipp Jakob12, 88, 204
Sperber, Jonathan18, 150
Spinker, Samuel Heinrich114
Staatsministerium18384, 186
Stahl, Friedrich Julius
1848 revolution and foundation of the
NPZ34, 45, 156, 187, 191, 19394, 196202
Crimean War260, 275, 285, 29295, 297
general remarks and pre-1848 activity2,
15, 35, 37, 123, 124, 128, 136, 13743, 148
post-1848 church renewal124, 128, 206,
21113, 218, 22023
post-1848 constitutional changes230
233, 236, 23839, 243, 24752, 25556,
25859
Stand, Stnde see estate
Stein-Hardenberg Reforms1, 53, 56, 5758,
60, 125, 166, 230, 292, 295
Strau, David Friedrich105
Strau, Gerhard Friedrich Abraham96
Stolberg, Cajus zu157
Stolberg-Wernigerode, Count von127, 157
summus episcopus61, 195, 212, 294, 299
Sybel, Heinrich von172
synodial-presbyterial reform see presbyterial
order
Tersteegen, Gerhard14
Thadden-Trieglaff, Adolf von16, 36 n. 120,
49, 68 n. 65, 84, 137, 15657, 170, 179,
18586
Thadden, Marie von35 n. 120
Tholuck, Friedrich August Gottreu1516,
35, 9596, 104, 108, 141, 156
Three Kings Alliance155, 236, 238
Twesten, August137
Two Kingdoms3942, 100, 158, 161, 291
United Diet of 184744, 14448, 181, 187, 191,
240
Union Church1, 9, 16, 20, 31, 56, 6166, 93 n.
2, 96, 9899, 126127, 13035, 138, 196,
207208, 21213, 291, 295
337
Unionskirche see Union Church
Unionspolitik155, 23440, 24243, 26668
Valenti, Josef de15
Varnhagen, Karl August von111
Vergemeinschaftung and
Vergesellschaftung41
Vermittlungstheologie see Mediating Theology
Vicari, Hermann von274
Vick, Brian E.8, 12, 149 n. 1, 153 n. 10
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland
(r. 18371901)271
Volkening, Johann Heinrich14
Vo-Buch, Count Carl (Karl) Otto Friedrich
von156, 15961, 163, 174, 255
Vossische Zeitung76, 252
Wagener, Hermann170 n. 31, 173, 238,
26869
Wars of Liberation25, 58, 128, 160, 167, 164
n. 7, 235, 251, 260, 287, 290
terminological concerns25 n. 92
Weber, Max41, 178
Wegscheider, Julius August Ludwig67,
104111
Wehler, Hans Ulrich5 n. 5
Westphalen, Ferdinand Otto Wilhelm Hen-
ning von231, 256, 274
Wichern, Johann Hinrich13 n. 24, 45,
201206, 238
William (Wilhelm) I, Prince and later King of
Prussia and Emperor of Germany (r. (r.
1857/18611888)249, 28384
Wittenberg Church Congress of 1848
196212
Woellner, Johann Christoph52
Wrangel, Count Friedrich Heinrich Ernst
von186, 198
Zinzendorf, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von34
n. 113