Publicity
Friedrich Karl von Moser (1723-1798) served as a civil servant in several of the smaller German courts for many years. He became acquainted with the enlightened reformer Joseph II of Austria and was made an Imperial adviser. His Pietism, his experiences in small courts, and his admiration for Joseph made him a critic of arbitrary absolutism, his views informed by the backward-looking perspective of the seventeenth-century ideal of the patrimonial state.
Moser gained fame for Lord and Servant: Described with Patriotic Freedom (1759) and was the editor of the Patriotic Archive for Germany (1784-1790) and the New Patriotic Archive (1792-1794). In spite of his publishing activities, by the time of the French Revolution, Moser had become ambivalent about Publizität. This term, which translates literally as “publicity,” referred to the explosion of printed matter in periodicals, pamphlets, and books in late eighteenth-century Germany.
The essay translated here was written as a guide to the myriad books and pamphlets that appeared in German in response to the French Revolution. Moser regarded most of this literature as either flattery of princes or incitement to rebellion, and he sought to identify writings that argued for a middle way.
The torrent of publicity, in the good and bad senses, can no longer be stopped. It has been allowed to go too far. It should have been dammed up long ago and diverted onto another course. No one took the embers seriously because they were covered with ashes. The inner fire was disregarded because no one saw flames, or everyone thought they could be extinguished easily. All the lamentations, all the settlements of terms1 and committee resolutions with their demands, promises, and threats, come much, much too late. Given the entire constitution of the disharmonious system of the empire, given the laziness, selfishness, and powerlessness of so many greater and lesser estates, each so different in respect to abilities and intentions, given the whole character, politics, and independence of the book trade, the liberty and insolence of so many writers, and the insatiable lust to read of all estates, such lamentations and demands do exactly as much good as the well-known proposal of General von Kyau: that one should pave the meadows, so that moles could not harm them.2
First published as “Publizität” in Neues Patriotisches Archiv für Deutschland (Mannheim and Leipzig, 1792), 1:519-527. “Written in December, 1791” appeared in parentheses after the title of this piece.
The times have passed, and it is too late to try to shut out the light. The longer it goes on, the more it comes to this: whether this light should only illuminate and enlighten [leuchten und erleuchten] or ignite and inflame?
It is no longer a question of whether the citizen and the peasant should be allowed to know that which, according to God and to law, they ought to know. They know, in any event, how to find what they need, and they do find it. Rather, the question is whether the shepherds and fathers of the people can be and may be indifferent as to whether the people rightly know what they are allowed and entitled to know, or whether they weave what they know into a knot of superstition, that leads them out of truth into error, out of what appears in the beginning to be harmless error into an error with dangerous consequences, from the right way to the wrong way and to the abyss, in the end leading shepherds and herds to a common ruin.
Therefore it is strange enough that writings provoking uprisings are forbidden by imperial and district resolutions, and nothing better is provided in response. Surely, no blaze can be extinguished by mere commands, and just as little can subsequent cleverness make up for neglect. Certainly rulers would prefer that no fire ever burned in the first place or, if it did, that it suffocated itself. Since, however, this expectation is against experience and the nature of things, those at least who know that they are not safe in their houses and that they already have flammable materials around and near them, should possess enough love for themselves not to leave it to pure chance whether sparks will actually burst into flame. In such cases small homemade remedies generally work more safely, more rapidly, more certainly, than the most tumultuous counterforce.
It is precisely these apparently modest and inconspicuous homemade remedies that have been ignored, undervalued, and, indeed, despised by the rulers. They raise up and reward flatterers, yes-men, day laborers, and eye servers [Augendiener].3 Wise men who in seclusion lament the harm to their fatherland, who investigate the causes of decay, ponder them, and finally, out of the passion of their hearts, lift their voice of warning, are not called on, nor is their counsel solicited and encouraged. Rather, they are all the more despised, derided, and mocked as visionaries and dreamers. One can well say of them that the world does not deserve them. They certainly do not push themselves forward, but hold themselves back, find themselves happy in their seclusion, and are satisfied with quietly doing as much good as they can. One does not find them in the waiting rooms of courts, but they let themselves be sought and wait to be found. When they open their mouths, however, they do not have words of revolt, but of warning wisdom and love for humanity.
It is a blessing of the Almighty that such noble men, inflamed by the holy fire of patriotism, can still be found, men who raise their voices out of the purest and most disinterested desire to testify, whether or not they will be heard by those who should be most concerned with listening. As courageous volunteers, with disdain for their own dangers and hardships, they placed themselves before the rift in the sinking fatherland, for it they even sacrifice themselves, like the hero Curtius,4 to ingratitude, misunderstanding, and scorn.
How different is the worthy tone of such friends of humanity from the babble of political frogs, the chatter of wandering charlatans, disguised in the garb of patriots, whose scribbling one reads with disgust and throws away with ill humor?5 When there is a fire, the fire horn has only one sound, the alarm bell only one ring. This constant, unchanging repetition makes for a general attention and a greater agitation than all the tinkling of vacuous and spiritless declamations.
“The writer's public,” said Ewald so rightly, “is by no means the whole public.”6 It is true that it takes two to communicate, one who says something and one who understands and believes it. These words are especially applicable to those works, regardless of their difference in spirit, in plan, and in purpose, which appear from time to time for the instruction and warning of regents and for the reassurance and informing of the people.
Some of them are so abstractly philosophical that not only can the common man never understand them but also the higher classes will have trouble arriving at their deeper meaning, let alone be able to appreciate their full inner worth. This kind of writing might be called “little treasures” [Kleinodien], and be compared with a nest egg, on which one draws in times of need.7
Other writings take the middle road between a scholarly investigation and a practical treatment of their materials. They incline, however, more to the first category and are, to be sure, always valuable and useful. However, the too-strong mixture of theories and problems with practical truths diminishes the impression they would create if they were directed less to the understanding and more warmly to the heart, and if their authors had more living knowledge of the world and of humanity and knew the manifold needs and hardship of the lower classes more from their own experience.8
Still others are thoroughly practical, attack the evil at its root, call the sickness by its name, neither deceive the princes nor flatter the people. Everywhere they manifest impartiality, righteousness, love for humanity, a sensitive, compassionate heart, a thinking through and comprehending of their object. Dry, but true, in their presentation, they have little concern about embellishments, they call a spade a spade, and their words speak the language of felt conviction. Because they always preach the truth, that is, always give offense, they expect and receive no other reward than the awareness that they have been physicians, helpers, and saviors of the fatherland. They are satisfied to be recognized by Him, who will one day judge each according to his works.9
In the last, but certainly not the least, class belong those smaller pieces that are easily understood and which distinguish themselves by their popularity and sincerity. They truly are written for the instruction, reassurance, and correction of the so-called common man, to be distributed among the people at the lowest possible price and, if possible, to be given away. The shorter, the simpler, and the plainer they are, the better. They should all be cheap, as Luther, in his day, demanded of sermons, so that the man in the street gets the message.10
These so-called fliers11 cannot be forbidden, precisely because they are fliers. They might well be shot down in flight (to continue with this simile), but that is all, and then the shot might strike an innocent pigeon just as well as a bird of prey, if the censor executes it as frivolously and injudiciously as is actually the practice in many places.
NOTES
1. The German term is Wahlkapitulationen, the name for the terms that were imposed on the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire upon their assumption of office.—TRANS.
2. Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Kyau (1654-1723) was a general in the service of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, and was renowned for his rough jokes. See A. Wilhelm, Kyau's Leben und Schwanke (1800).—TRANS.
3. “Eye server” is the now archaic cousin of “lip server”: one who provides only the appearance of service to another.—TRANS.
4. Marcus Curtius was a legendary Roman soldier who supposedly sacrificed himself by riding fully armed into a cleft that had opened in front of the Forum; an oracle had stated that “the chief strength of Rome” must be thrown into the chasm before it would close.—TRANS.
5. To such impostors, one would like to apply the story of the possessed man (Acts of the Apostles, 19:13-16), who answered his exorcists: “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” threw them to the floor, and drove them away wounded and mangled.
6. Johann Ludwig Ewald (1748-1822), Über Volksaufklärung, ihre Grenzen und Vorteile: Den menschlichen Fürsten gewidmet (Berlin, 1790), 2.—TRANS.
7. The rich work, Über das Verhältnis der tätigen und leidenden Kraft im Staat zu der Aufklärung: Bei Veranlassung der neuesten Unruhen [On the Relation between the Active and Passive Powers in the State to Enlightenment: On the Occasion of the Latest Unrest] (Frankfurt, 1790), especially belongs in this group.
8. I believe that I can, without injustice, count in this class the otherwise excellent work Über den Freiheitssinn unserer Zeit [On the Taste for Freedom of our Times] (Altona, 1791), by J.L. Callisen [1738-1806], minister in Oldesloe.
9. I count here, ignoring some prolixity and some silliness, the following work, written with solid sense for truth and noble simplicity: Patrioten-Stimme eines freimütigen Deutschen über die damaligen Empörungen, Unruhen und Gärungen in- und außerhalb des Deutschen Reichs. Zur warnenden Beherzigung der Regenten und ihrer Untertanen [The Patriotic Voice of a Candid German on the Present Rebellions, Unrest, and Ferment Inside and Outside of the German Empire: For the Admonishment of Rulers and their Subjects], printed in the critical year 1790, quarto.
10. In this class is a small piece, one sheet long, but written with great simplicity, that appeared in the time of social unrest in the electorate of Saxony: Eines Sächsischen Patrioten Gedanken über das Verhältnis der Untertanen zu ihren Obrigkeiten [Thoughts of a Patriotic Saxon on the Relationship of Subjects to their Rulers], 1790, octavo. I cite only one example for each kind of writing, more to point out its particular character than as an ideal. [Note that when Moser refers to one sheet, this was folded over into eighths (octavo) and thus could have contained up to 16 pages.—TRANS.]
11. Flugschriften, literally “flying writings,” close to the English “fugitive pieces” and usually translated as “pamphlets.”—TRANS.