The Berlin Wednesday Society
The Society of Friends of Enlightenment, which existed in Berlin between 1783 and 1798 and was commonly known by the name “Wednesday Society,”1 was founded at the high point of the “society movement” of the Enlightenment.2 Organized as a circle of friends, it belonged to a common type of enlightened learned societies and had a special significance because of the official status and intellectual influence of the majority of its members. In his autobiography, the important Prussian jurist Ernst Ferdinand Klein characterized not the Royal Academy of Sciences (of which he was also a member) but rather the Wednesday Society as a society of “insightful men of affairs,” which had been and would remain “perhaps incomparable.” Klein considered it “the greatest happiness” in his life “to have been a member of this society.”3
Situated on the border between the private circle and the secret society, the Society required in the first sentence of its founding statute, written at the end of 1783, that “each member…on his honor hold in strict confidence everything discussed in the Society, even speaking little of its existence.”4 Although the maximum number of members was set at twentyfour, the frequent meetings held alternately in the members' homes hardly allowed the pledge of secrecy to be upheld: according to the bylaws the Society was to meet on the first and third Wednesday of each month from Michaelmas (29 September) until Easter; for the rest of the year it was to meet on the first Wednesday. The bylaws also provided the “external” name “Wednesday Society,” apparently in imitation of the Berlin Monday Club, a purely social organization that had been established in 1749.5 The “internal” name, “Society of Friends of Enlightenment,” corresponded to its enlightened program.
The rigorously ordered agenda bore out the eduçational goal of mutual and societal enlightenment.6 Meetings were to consist of a brief lecture followed by a disciplined discussion in which participants, whose responses [Vota] were to be entered into the minutes according to the founding statutes of 1783, spoke according to the seating arrangement. The meeting began at six o'clock, a dinner shared by all ended it at eight. With the exception of double memberships,7 this was the sole trait shared in common with the weekly Monday Club. Since the lectures and Vota circulated among the members in a set order—written Vota were soon adopted—there was opportunity for thorough discussion of the subject at hand. The spectrum of topics addressed was as multifaceted as the Enlightenment itself. The bylaws prohibited such narrowly scholarly subjects as “pure theology, jurisprudence, medicine, mathematics, philological criticism, and newspaper reports, but not the conclusions resulting from them for enlightenment and for the good of humanity.” Purely academic theorizing as well as entertaining conversation about events was to be avoided in favor of practically oriented enlightened reflection.
Members were bound together by a faith in the beneficial consequences of a correctly understood enlightenment and by a readiness to tear down existing barriers—insofar as this was possible and meaningful within the framework of existing social conditions—and to aid the propagation of the blessings of enlightenment in society and the state. Within their fundamental consensus, they were to voice freely the differing intellectual positions and individual values; further, they were to develop an understanding and a program for enlightenment as shaped by the precept of perfectibility, as well as to discuss freely under the protection of the strictest secrecy the relevant proposals for reform. Accordingly, one of the most active members of the Society, the royal physician Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen, in his lecture of 17 December 1783 with reference to the question “What is to be done toward the enlightenment of the citizenry?” made a series of proposals he thought especially appropriate to achieve the goal of the Society “to enlighten us and our fellow citizens.” Möhsen regarded as a first task that of “determining precisely” the concept of enlightenment; after that, the Society was to investigate the “deficiencies and infirmities in the direction of the understanding, in the manner of thinking, in the prejudices, and in the ethics of our nation—or at least of our immediate public” and the origins of these deficiencies. Further, “those prejudices and errors which are the most pernicious” were to be attacked and eradicated first, and “those truths, whose general recognition is most necessary,” were to be “further” developed and disseminated.8
The Vota, recorded in Möhsen's papers, on this and other lectures as well as other literary activities sponsored by the Wednesday Society, give an idea not only of the enlightened self-understanding of the Wednesday Society but also of the differing social and political positions of its members.
Following an overview of the composition of the Society (I), its understanding of enlightenment (II) and its concept of society and political ideals (III) will be sketched.
I. THE COMPOSITION OF THE SOCIETY
The statute establishing the Society contains a first list of members. Article 10 sets forth twelve names in numerical order, with the numbers indicating the order of presentations and Vota.9
The first named is Wilhelm Abraham Teller (b. 1734), Upper Consistory councillor [Oberkonsistorialrat] in the Berlin Consistory since 1767. Teller, who had previously taught as professor of theology in Helmstedt and had encountered strenuous orthodox opposition in 1764 with his textbook on Christian faith, followed the path of a theological rationalism that reinterpreted and ultimately abandoned revealed beliefs in favor of rational truths. During the era of Frederick the Great's reform absolutism, he displayed an enlightened activism within the Prussian ecclesiastical administration and for this reason came into conflict, under Frederick the Great's successor, Frederick William II, with Woellner's reactionary ecclesiastical policy.10
Johann Jacob Engel (b. 1741), professor of moral philosophy and fine arts at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin since 1776, was appointed director of the Royal National Theater in Berlin in 1787 by Frederick William II. He served the king as royal tutor, teaching the future King Frederick William III as well as Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt. He had become known to a wider public as theater director and erudite writer and, above all, as the editor of the three-volume collection Philosopher for the World, appearing from 1775 onward, which included writings by Moses Mendelssohn, Christian Garve, and others.
In the third place was Frederich Nicolai (b. 1733), the renowned publisher and bookseller, energetic writer, and tireless defender of a German enlightenment oriented toward “healthy reason.” From 1765 onward he was editor of the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, the most important literary forum of the German Enlightenment.
Following him as number four was the scholar and statesman Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (b. 1751), one of the most important figures among the men of letters in the enlightened Prussian bureaucracy and one of the most influential authors of the Enlightenment. A professor of statistics and cameral and fiscal sciences at the Carolinum at Kassel since 1776 and from 1779 onward a Prussian military councillor, Dohm had made a name for himself above all with his “On the Civil Improvement of the Jews,” whose first part appeared in 1781. The work was inspired by Moses Mendelssohn, and in it Dohm stepped forward as advocate of especially the poorer segment of Jews. Dohm was also an active member of the Monday Club but had already left Berlin in 1786 because of his responsibilities in the Prussian foreign service.
The previously mentioned Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen (b. 1722), physician to Frederick the Great since 1778 and renowned as one of the most learned doctors of his time, was a member of numerous learned societies, including the Parisian medical society. Möhsen embodied the very model of the polymath. Among other matters he dedicated himself to wide-ranging studies reaching far back into the history of the sciences in the Mark Brandenburg.
Following Möhsen in sixth place was Johann Samuel Diterich (b. 1721), pastor at the Marienkirche, who was appointed to the Upper Consistory [‘Oberkonsistorium] in 1770. Diterich was schooled in Wolff's teachings on natural law at Frankfurt/Oder and at Halle and was without doubt of a deep Christian piety. Nevertheless, his theological rationalism and natural law concept of duty left their mark not only on his Instruction on Attaining Bliss through Christ's Teachings, which had appeared in numerous editions since 1772, but also on his activities in the area of Protestant church song, as attested by his revisions and new compositions in the Hymnal for Use in Worship in the Royal Prussian Lands, on which he collaborated with Teller and Spalding in 1780.
Following Diterich on the list of members was Ernst Ferdinand Klein (b. 1744), who had been called to Berlin in the winter of 1781 by the chief chancellor [Großkanzler], Baron von Carmer, to collaborate on Prussian legal reform. Klein made his name not only through an important contribution to the codification of the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten (Prussian General Code), especially its penal statutes, but also as a teacher of law on the penal philosophy and jurisprudence of the late Enlightenment. With his essay “Freedom and Property” (1790)—fictitious dialogues concerning the resolutions of the French National Assembly—he presented a lifelike sketch of the dialogues occurring in the Wednesday Society. Klein left Berlin in 1791 after his appointment as director of the University at Halle, returning in 1800 as Upper Court Councillor [Obertribunalsrat].
In eighth place on the list of members in the founding statutes appeared Johann Friedrich Zöllner (b. 1748), at first pastor at the Charité,11 after 1782 deacon at the Marienkirche, and in 1788 Upper Consistory Councillor. As a broadly educated and enlightened writer, Zöllner had made popular education his central concern, as attested by his 1782 Reader for All Classes, which included generally accessible essays on various disciplines, as well as his work on national education, which appeared in 1804, one year before his death.
After the theologian Zöllner, Christian Gottlieb Selle (b. 1748), doctor at the Charité, is entered. Selle, the physician of Frederick the Great and Frederick William II, was regarded as an important philosophical thinker and polymath. He had published a series of natural scientific and medical studies, and his 1781 handbook of clinical medicine, Clinical Medicine, or Handbook of Medical Practice, which was translated into French and Latin, appeared in not less than eight editions. Seile was director of the philosophical section of the Royal Academy of Sciences from 1797. In addition to his works Philosophical Discourses (1780) and Foundations of Philosophy (1788), he wrote other philosophical treatises, which appeared in installments in the Berlinische Monatsschrift between 1783 and 1790. This journal's editors, Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, were entered as numbers ten and eleven in the Society's founding statutes.
Friedrich Gedike (b. 1754), trained in theology and classical philology at the University of Frankfurt/Od
r, became director of the Friedrich-Werder Gymnasium at the age of twenty-five. As a writer on education and a leading educator (in 1784 he became Upper Consistory Councillor and in 1787 councillor in the newly founded Upper Education Board [Oberschulkollegium]), he exercised a considerable influence on the development of Prussia's educational system. In Berlin he took the initiative of founding a teachers' college for prospective secondary school instructors and played a leading role in the introduction of graduation examinations (the Abitur) in 1788.
Johann Erich Biester (b. 1749) had been librarian of the Royal Library in Berlin since 1784. After studying law, literary history, and languages at the University of Göttingen and a brief stint teaching at the now-forgotten University of Bützow where he was awarded his doctorate in law, he became in 1777—through Nicolai's good offices—secretary to Baron von Zedlitz, the minister of justice responsible for the administration of educational affairs and the head of the Department for Ecclesiastical Affairs.12 Together with Gedike he founded the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1783 and, after 1791, edited it himself. The journal was the organ of the Berlin Enlightenment and, in the narrower sense, the public organ of the Wednesday Society of which Biester functioned as secretary.13
The Upper Consistory Councillor Karl Franz von Irwing (b. 1728)—like Gedike a lay member of the Upper Consistory and after 1797 president of the Upper Education Board—stood twelfth on the membership list of the founding statutes. Irwing was a trained jurist, but in the words of Minister von Massow, he was regarded “more as a scholar,” as “a practical Consistory councillor [Konsistorialrat] and public educator.” He published philosophical and psychological studies, among which were his Thoughts on Teaching Methods in Philosophy (1773) and Inquiries and Experiences on Mankind (published in four volumes between 1772 and 1785). He played a decisive role in the founding of the Society, as the letter of invitation of 3 October 1783 reprinted by Tholuck attests.14
Möhsen had entered eight additional names in the margins of the copy of the Society's founding statutes (written in Biester's handwriting) found among Möhsen's papers. Two were clergymen active as scholars and writers: the Lutheran pastor of the Church of the Royal Orphanage and Kalandshof, Gottlieb Ernst Schmid (b. 1727), and the Reformed pastor of the Jerusalem and New Church, Johann Georg Gebhard (b. 1743). Representatives of the enlightened bureaucracy were also listed: J. H. Wlömer (b. 1726), a member of the Jurisdictional Commission [Jurisdiktionskommission] in the General Directory, Friedrich Wilhelm von Beneke, Cameral Court Councillor [Kammergerichtsrai], and H. C. Siebman, councillor of the War and Territorial Chamber [Kriegs- und Domänenkammer].
We also find here the names of two of the more important representatives of Prussian reform absolutism: Privy Justice and Upper Tribunal Councillor [Geheimer Justiz- und Obertribunalsrat] Carl Gottlieb Svarez and Privy Finance Councillor [Geheimer Finanzrat] (later Minister) Karl August von Struensee. C. G. Svarez (b. 1746), the main author of the Prussian General Code of 1794, was schooled in Wolffian natural law by Darjes at Frankfurt/ Oder. From 1780 onward, he played a key role in the Prussian Law Commission under Justice Minister Baron von Carmer. His legislative and reform work along with his literary activities reveal him to have been at the height of the scholarship available in his day. His most important intellectual legacy, his lectures to the Crown Prince, allows us deep insight into the natural right and rational juridical foundations of Prussian reform legislation in the late Enlightenment.15
Karl August von Struensee (b. 1735), in addition to studying theology, devoted himself to mathematics and philosophy and at the age of twenty-two was engaged as professor of mathematics and philosophy at the academy for nobles [Ritterakademie] in Liegnitz. He made a name for himself with studies in military and fiscal science before entering the service of Denmark (1771-1777). In 1782 he became director of Prussian maritime trade, and in 1791 he succeeded Werder as Minister of Excise, Customs, Commerce, and Manufacturing. Among those of Struensee's writings most valuable for the historian are his periodic discussions in the Berlinische Monatsschrift of French fiscal administration in the crisis years of 1788-1790.
Finally, the last name written in the margins of the founding statutes was that of the prince's tutor, Franz von Leuchsenring (b. 1746), an enigmatic personality. For a brief period the teacher of the later Frederick William III and enthusiastic member of the Illuminati—with the Lodge name “Leveller”—he allied himself with the followers of the French Revolution. He was expelled from Berlin in 1792 because of his partisanship for the Revolution. He marked the extreme Left of the Wednesday Society and is possibly depicted as the pro-Republican “Menon” in Ernst Ferdinand Klein's discussion, cast in the form of a Platonic dialogue, of the resolutions of the French National Assembly of 1790. Klein's work has been regarded as a reconstruction of the debates within the Wednesday Society itself.16
On a second revised and expanded list of names that Biester dated “end of April 1784,” the name of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (b. 1729) is entered in the fifth position. He was honorary member of the Society, and important Vota by him from 1783-1784 can be found among Möhsen's papers.17 On this list is also found the name of Upper Consistory Councillor Johann Joachim Spalding (b. 1714) who adhered to the neological wing within Protestant theology. He had early on turned away from orthodoxy, and his numerous writings, among others, The Usefulness of the Clergy (1772), demonstrate that he placed enlightened efforts toward the improvement and perfection of humanity, not the preaching of the Gospel, at the center of his work.
Spalding was the oldest member of the Society. Numerically, the generation born in the 1740s was most strongly represented. It included Biester, Engel, Klein, Svarez, Leuchsenring, and Gebhard as well as some others still to be named who joined the Society later, such as Privy Finance Councillor Leopold Friedrich Günther von Göckingk (b. 1748), to whom we owe, among other writings, a biography of Friedrich Nicolai and Privy Upper Tribunal Councillor [Geheimer Obertribunalsrat] Johann Siegfried Mayer (b. 1747). Contrary to the accounts of Heinrich Meisner and Adolf Stölzel, Privy Councillor Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer, a physician and former professor of pharmacology at the University of Frankfurt/Oder, was not a member.18
The participants in the Society are thus almost all eminent writers and—with the exception of Nicolai and Mendelssohn—Prussian public servants. Still, we can further distinguish among three groups of participants. One prominent group comes from the higher reaches of the judiciary and the civil service: Svarez and Klein as well as Dohm and Struensee are from the highest level. A second group, including Teller and Spalding, consists of ecclesiastical officeholders and members of the Upper Consistory of the Lutheran church. A third group brings together philosophers, polymaths, and publicists. To this group belongs, above all, Moses Mendelssohn and the physician/scholars Möhsen and Selle. Finally, one can count among this group the publicist Friedrich Nicolai and Biester, the secretary of the Wednesday Society.
II. THE WEDNESDAY SOCIETY'S CONCEPT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The Society of Friends of Enlightenment met together with the conviction, expressed in Irwing's invitation, that “healthy reason will more and more ascend to the throne of all human affairs and will reign without limit over everything in the domain of human knowledge.”19 This basic consensus could not be equated with the clarification of the notion of enlightenment that was to be achieved through societal give-and-take; similarly, given the range of views among the Friends of Enlightenment, one could not count on homologous views concerning the limits and consequences of the strategies used to begin or accelerate “the process of setting reason free.”20 Conceptions of reason and enlightenment were here, as elsewhere, so bound together with established cultural and social systems that their contents and structures—with varied emphasis—permeated the concepts and strategies of enlightenment, a fact that was not first revealed by modern critics of ideology but was already apparent to the members of the Wednesday Society.
Thus Gedike, in the Society's internal discussion of the concept of enlightenment, not only put forth the common view that “enlightenment may be as relative a concept as truth”21 but also set enlightenment in relation to diverse geographic, historical, social, and personal conditions: “It varies, and it must vary, according to differences of place, time, social rank, sex, and several other subjective as well as objective relations.” Gedike approved of this social differentiation of enlightenment, and he wanted it conceived as the presupposition and foundation for strategies of enlightenment. “Thoroughgoing equality of enlightenment” was to him “just as little desirable as complete equality among the estates, and fortunately just as impossible.” As surely as “the notion of ‘enlightenment' seen historically and factually [presupposed] the idea of a Universal human reason' which [was] distributed among different subjects,”22 it was equally certain to the Friends of Enlightenment that this reason was very unequally apportioned in human society. The idea of universal human reason was a maxim that must live with the disruptions of the real world. This demonstrates the skeptical assumption that, according to Eckhart Hellmuth, predominated in the Wednesday Society. They believed that “the majority of the members of the political community lack sufficient reason and insight and that they are incapable of acting according to principles of reason.”23 This skepticism with regard to the capacity for enlightenment of their fellow man did not, of course, entail the renunciation of enlightened activities. For Möhsen, who here remained uncontradicted, it was the “intent” of the Society “to enlighten, insofar as it is possible, ourselves and our fellow man, from the highest to the lowest rank.” The professed goal here was to reduce the superstitions of the “common man”—and especially the “country folk”—and “to promote in them the capacity of thinking for themselves in their required spheres of activity.”24
Although Möhsen's call for a consensus on a clear definition of the concept of enlightenment did not bring with it a resolution, the majority of the members indicated in their Vota that enlightenment was a process in which not everyone could be granted the same sort of participation and which could not be driven forward heedlessly and at any cost. Indicative of this attitude is the question posed by Svarez: “What is enlightenment, and what level of it is desirable for each class of the nation?”25 Svarez thereby avoided answering the question of the essence of enlightenment. “In my opinion,” Klein wrote in an earlier Votum, “enlightenment exists in spreading such knowledge which will allow us to assess correctly the true value of things, and, taken in this sense, enlightenment must at all times have virtue and happiness as companions.”26 The uncertainty concerning what in fact enlightenment might be was only heightened by such conceptual circumlocutions. For Gedike, they sufficed to demonstrate his insight into the subjective and objective contingency of a concept of enlightenment that appeared to him to be just as relative as “truth” itself.27 And Wlömer added ominously in his Votum, “Perhaps truths can even be possible…whose belief or knowledge must be absolutely disadvantageous for every man in his earthly condition.”28 This was not the view of an enlightened theologian of Spalding's mettle who was “completely of the opinion that in abstracto all truth is useful and all error damaging.” Truth was, for him, always the other side of the common good. An opinion that brings “all in all more harm than utility” could “indeed not be true.”29 With this dovetailing of enlightenment, truth, happiness, and the public utility, he found himself in agreement with the majority of the Friends of Enlightenment, particularly his fellow clergymen among them. Diterich, without venturing to clarify the concept of enlightenment himself, warned against those “who burn away everything in the kingdom of Truth that does not please them” and seek to justify their demolition work by saying, “they wanted to enlighten the world.”30 He himself had introduced into hymns pleas for “truth,” “self-knowledge,” and an “active” faith that yields the “fruits of virtue.”31 And in his Instruction on Attaining Bliss through Christ's Teachings, he linked the aspiration to happiness with the commandment of brotherly love, which included in the service of our fellow man “responsibilities and duties…with regard to the social good.” If observing the duties required for the good of society demanded of the magistrates that they should “protect their subjects and govern them as fathers,” the “subjects are obliged to respect their magistrates, obey their laws, and loyally pay the required taxes.”32
For such issues as the living conditions in an enlightened state and corporate social order, the many-layered complex of political and social loyalties, educational policy, and questions of censorship, the critical touchstone for truth was the proper understanding of the common good.
Among these ecclesiastical and secular officeholders of the absolutist reform state the eudaemonist topos of an enlightened pursuit and dissemination of a truth that was oriented toward the public good ultimately broke down before the expediency of those prejudices that supported this good. In Svarez's opinion, “Commonly held prejudices may be attacked directly and without mercy only if there is clear evidence that the sum of the damaging consequence arising from them is greater than the sum of the good which would fortuitously arise from them.”33 A patrimonial-elitist concept of enlightenment thus committed itself to a strategy of enlightenment that subordinated claims of truth to public utility and thus, without serious internal resistance, could reconcile itself with the preservation of the censor's office.34
Such a multitiered conception of truth could not remain unopposed in an enlightenment society, which had been founded specifically with the goal of allowing “healthy reason” to rule over the entire domain of human knowledge. Thus the philosopher Mendelssohn, with the approval of Nicolai and Dohm as well in fundamental agreement with Irwing, did not wish to sacrifice the enlightened search for the truth to prejudice, even where it seemed necessary for reasons of public welfare and morality, to proceed with caution. Mendelssohn held that guardianship by censors was, in any case, “more harmful than unrestricted freedom,” and he maintained that balancing truth against the public good was certainly questionable: “Montgolfier's discovery will probably lead to enormous upheavals. Whether this will lead to the improvement of human society no one may venture to decide. Would one for this reason hesitate to promote progress? The discovery of eternal truths is in and for itself good; their dispensation is a matter for Providence.”35 This view was not shared by those members of the Wednesday Society who drew a distinction “between the enlightened elite and the rest who remained in need of guardianship.”36 The majority of the Friends of Enlightenment wished, like Svarez, that enlightenment reach a point of irreversibility through a gradual, state-controlled process of education. Participation in the ideal of a universal enlightened reason of which all men should partake as equally as possible was perhaps a general aim here, but by no means an urgent one. The educator Gedike—even though he, like the rest of the members of the Wednesday Society, was an advocate of freedom of thought37—wanted unequivocally to see the process of enlightenment channeled through the traditional corporate, estatist society: “The true point, from which enlightenment must begin, is the middle estate as the center of the nation, from which the rays of enlightenment only gradually spread to the two extremes, the upper and lower orders.” Gedike saw a limited capacity for enlightenment among both the “higher” and “lower” orders in distinction to the educable “middle estate.” Hence he was convinced that there might be truths “which could prove damaging in the hands of not-yet-sufficiently enlightened men or estates.”38 The Wednesday Society's comprehension of enlightenment thus leads to the question of the social and political values of its members.
III. ON THE WEDNESDAY SOCIETY'S VIEW OF STATE AND SOCIETY
Gedike's perspective is clearly determined by the sense of self-worth and consciousness of superiority stemming from the bourgeois intelligentsia, one that saw itself confirmed, not least of all, by its activities in the absolutist reform state. Gedike's standpoint brought to the fore points of tension with the traditional social order based on birth and privilege that were echoed in the broader debate on enlightenment transpiring in public as well as in the Wednesday Society.39 The interventions of the French Revolution into the legal relations in corporate society soon provided the opportunity of discussing the question of the justification of the nobility's privileges more intensively.
A lecture by Svarez before the Wednesday Society in December 1791, in which he concerned himself with the tax exemptions of the nobility, discussed the problem of tax equity with the clarity and precision of an enlightened officeholder in the Prussian reform judiciary against the backdrop of the experience of the Revolution. It seemed to Svarez that “justice, fairness, and interests of the state together require of a Sovereign that he eliminate all these exemption privileges and that he reestablish the principle of the greatest possible equity in tax contributions, even among the various classes of the state's citizens.”40 Svarez sought out the historical origins and the legitimation of a system experienced as unjust, which, with its preferential treatment of the nobility, made the burden on the lower orders all the heavier. He accurately saw the profounder historical cause to lie in the compensation given to the nobility for its defense burden. Consequently, in the late medieval and early modern corporate state, the possibility arose to shift the burden of tax payments onto those parts of the population who did not represent themselves in the territorial assemblies.
Although, in Svarez's view, the tax exemption was no longer applicable due to the changes in the constitution of the state and the military that occurred with the disappearance of the aristocratic duties of vassalage and the emergence of new aristocratic sources of income in the officer corps, he still insisted on the legal validity of dispensation from these contributions since these privileges were based on specific contracts between the nobles and their princes, contracts to whose integrity the monarch and his other subjects were now obligated: “Inequality of contribution” was to him “inequality of wealth. And inequality of wealth and circumstance,” grants “no right to demand the reestablishment of equality at the expense of others and their rights, in whose possession they are once located.”41 The disadvantage of the noble tax exemption for the other subjects of the state does not justify breaking the contract and intervening in the property rights of the nobility. Only in an emergency, “where it is truly necessary for the preservation of the existence of the state,”42 would an infringement on the privilege of exemption appear to be justified.
It is true that in his recommendations on tax policy Svarez opposed guarantees of further exemption privileges at the expense of the whole public. Instead, he pronounced himself in favor of a tax system graduated according to estates that would take into account proportional, social, and political-economic factors. But the higher goal of a comprehensive public law protecting property, including those rights flowing from the particular characteristics of the differing estates, made him a fierce advocate of the legal protection of existing rights.43 Svarez's concept of property, which here obviously revealed the traditional values of corporate society, in no way met with the general approval of his enlightened friends.
The royal physician Selle, who was free of the scholarly jurist's familiarity with and commitment to received legal perspectives, correctly recognized that the resolution of the exemption question depended mainly on a more exact determination of the concept of property. On this issue Selle took the side of the disadvantaged orders, and, with a view toward the future, he decided in favor of the state's reform efforts. A contract would be binding only “if those to whose expense it was charged…approved and agreed” to it. However, this had not happened “because the Third Estate had never been represented.” And even if the Third Estate had “freely entered” such a contract, it could “hold no moral sanction because it was opposed to the fundamental law of all social bonds.” “A state would be incapable of any improvements whatsoever, if not a single contract could be revoked.”44
But even the conservative Biester—who made a resolute declaration of loyalty to the corporate system and shared Justus Möser's view “that in all well-ordered states that we know from history, differences of social rank have always existed” and thought the changes in France should be viewed as a risky experiment—even he could not reconcile himself with Svarez's juridical perspective. He set his hopes on the historical proof of the illegitimate origins of exemptions and the invalidity of the one-sided advantage of the nobility in the territorial assemblies. At the very least, he hoped that current events in France would foster insight among the nobility: “Something should indeed be expected on the nobility's own initiative if one presents the issue to them from the perspective of the justice and the precariousness of their claims, and thus in part their patriotism and in part their fear could be brought into play.”45
Thus, despite his loyalty to corporate society, Biester stood by his divided assessment of the nobility, and he was not alone, as a series of additional comments from the circle of the Wednesday Society shows. Ernst Ferdinand Klein—who assumed his new office in Halle in 1791 and could no longer participate in the debate on noble tax exemption—took issue in Berlinische Monatsschrift with an essay by the Upper Appeals Court judge von Ramdohr on the claims of the nobility toward the highest offices of the state.46 Klein resolutely opposed von Ramdohr's case for the “special rights of the hereditary nobility to the highest positions of state service” and cited (albeit with a different emphasis from that of the Prussian General Code,47 which places the special entitlements of the nobility to honorary positions in the state on their qualifications) “industriousness, skill, and honesty” as virtues of office that qualify one to serve, independent of one's rank in society.48 Somewhat patronizingly, Klein acknowledged class privileges of the nobility based on “mere custom” and “long possession.” He conceded that “the order and happiness of human society could not exist…if one did not attribute a certain sacredness to custom and to long possession,” but “this certainly did not accrue to them because of pure reason alone.”49 What von Ramdohr praised as the nobility's “esprit de corps,”50 he saw, in contrast, as an “insidious, slow, deadly sickness of the state.” As to von Ramdohr's assumption that public opinion supported the privileges of the nobility, he countered with the sarcastic remark, “An opinion that three-quarters of the nation” opposes “in silence could hardly be called a public opinion.”51
In these critical attacks by Selle and Klein on the corporate privileges and prerogatives of the nobility, there appear to be indications of an ideal of the state that points beyond the existing unrestricted monarchy buttressed by the corporate social system. If we exclude the different political path of Leuchsenring—one that, however, cannot be traced from the surviving records of the Wednesday Society—nowhere is there to be found an explicit declaration in favor of constitutional monarchy. That goes for Klein's conversations on the resolutions of the French National Assembly themselves. At the conclusion, Klein (Kleon) lets the monarch of a people who have come to maturity through enlightenment say, “My laws should only serve to unite the freedom of all with the freedom of each. Examine them! Not my will but rather yours gives them binding force. And even your will obligates every individual only insofar as it serves to protect the common freedom.”52
The members of the Wednesday Society declared their support for “freedom of thought.” As is made clear in their discussions, they objected to the basic tendency of the Woellner Edict on Religion, which wished to bind the subjects through a restricted understanding of freedom of conscience in the sense of the protection of traditional beliefs. But the declaration of faith in inalienable human rights, as is witnessed by the example of Klein and Svarez, chief architects of the Prussian General Code, was confined within the limits of a loyalty to absolute monarchy. Here the historical experience of reform absolutism under Frederick the Great truly left its mark. Participation in the rational activities of the state, which had become possible for members of the reform bureaucracy, had the consequence of making political freedom appear to these trustees of the commonweal—in light of their conceptions of ethical duty and moral perfection—as if it were insignificant, or even the result of partisanship and self-interest, and thus unwelcome.
The Wednesday Society dissolved itself on the basis of the royal edict of 20 October 1798 “for the prevention and punishment of secret societies which could be detrimental to public security.” Although no danger to public security was forthcoming from the Society, the majority of members wanted to comply with the letter of the law, which in paragraph 2, section IV prohibited societies “which demand secrecy of membership or swearing oaths of secrecy.” Perhaps for the same reason, the members at this time also destroyed the collected papers and Vota, so that the few records of the Society that survive are due more to chance than to conscious preservation.53
On the basis of such meager sources, no final judgment on the impact of the Society can be made. Without a doubt, the Wednesday Society was the clearinghouse of Prussian late Enlightenment thought. A great many publications, which were either enlivened or enriched by the work of the Society, came forth from its members. But the extent to which the Wednesday Society influenced Prussian government policy is difficult to determine. Whether Prussian legislation or, especially, the General Code would have been different without the activity of the Wednesday Society is difficult to say in view of the broader public discussion and the numerous memoranda on the draft of the statute book. It does seem certain, for example, that Svarez was not moved to change his views by the criticism his ideas received within the Society.54 The exchange of ideas and their reciprocal strengthening in the spirit of enlightened reform remain the essential contribution of the Society.
NOTES
I am grateful to the staff of the German State Library in Berlin for having given me access to the papers of Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen, member of the Wednesday Society. For special advice in the interpretation of these papers, I am indebted to Walther Gose and Eckhart Hellmuth. I have dealt with the issue at hand earlier in a lecture delivered at the annual meeting of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Preußischen Geschichte, on 24 September 1984.
1. Among earlier writings on the Wednesday Society are (1) a partial edition of the Möhsen Papers with commentary by L. Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesell-schaft. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Geistesentwicklung Preussens am Ausgangedes 18. Jahrhunderts,” Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft 5 (1896): 67-94; (2) a first article based on the Möhsen Papers by their discoverer, H. Meisner, “Die Freundeder Aufklärung. Geschichte der Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft,” in Festschrift zur 50jährigen Doktorjubelfeier Karl Weinholds am 14 Januar 1896 (Strasburg, 1896), 43-54; (3) the announcement of a manuscript from the papers of Nicolai with remarks by the members of the Society in A. Stölzel, “Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft über Aufhebung oder Reform der Universitäten (1795),” Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte 2 (1889):201-222. An informative analysis of the discussions of the Wednesday Society on enlightenment and freedom of the press, based on the Möhsen Papers, from the point of view of a social-historically oriented critical history of ideas has been provided by E. Hellmuth, “Aufklärung und Pressefreiheit. Zur Debatte der Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft während der Jahre 1783 und 1784,” Zeitschrift fur historische Forschung 9 (1982):315-345. Supplementing the understanding of enlightenment of the Wednesday Society from a philosophical point of view, with reservations regarding Hellmuth's conclusions, is B. Nehren, “Selbstdenken und gesunde Vernunft. Über eine wiederentdeckte Quelle zur Mittwochsgesellschaft,” Aufklärung. Interdisziplinäre Halbjahresschrift zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts und seiner Wirkungsgeschichte 1 (1986):87-101. The contribution of the author lies in the evaluation of a neglected, but important, article with extracts from original sources on the establishment of the Wednesday Society and its discussion of religious matters: A. Tholuck, “Die Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufklärung in Berlin im Jahre 1783,” Litterarischer Anzeiger fur christliche Theologie und Wissenschaft überhaupt 1 (1830): cols. 57-64, 86-87 (published anonymously).
2. For an overview of the European “society movement” and its contribution to enlightened reform, see U. Im Hof, Das gesellige Jahrhundert. Gesellschaft und Gesellschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (München, 1982); on the nature of associations in enlightened states, see also M. Agethen, Geheimbund und Utopie. Illuminaten, Freimaurer und deutsche Aufklärung (Ancien Régime, Aufklärung und Revolution II) (München, 1984); with reference to the Wednesday Society, see R. van Dülmen, “Die Aufklärungsgesellschaft in Deutschland als Forschungsproblem,” Francia 5 (1977):251-275.
3. E. F. Klein, “Autobiographie,” in Bildnisse jetztlebender Berliner Gelehrten mit ihren Selbstbiographien, ed. M. S. Lowe (Berlin, 1806), 1-93; the citation is from pp. 53-54.
4. Möhsen, Nachlass, MS. boruss. fol. 443, sheet 1; for the establishment of the Society, see Nehren, “Selbstdenken und gesunde Vernunft.”
5. See “Der Montagsklub in Berlin, 1749-1899,” in Fest-und Gedenkschrift zu seiner 15Osten Jahresfeier (Berlin, 1899).
6. J. C. W. Möhsen, “Was ist zu thun zur Aufklärung der Mitbürger,” lecture of 17 December 1783, in Möhsen, Nachlass, sheets 117-120, and Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 73-76 (translated above, pp. 49-52).
7. About half of the members of the Wednesday Society were at least temporarily also participants in the older Monday Club, in which Biester and Nicolai played active roles.
8. Möhsen, Nachlass, sheet 117, and Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 71.
9. The circle of active members, which was soon expanded by eight participants, will be briefly characterized below. Numerous writings have been consulted but have not been individually listed here. Reference is due, however, to the customary biographical collections, such as the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1875) and the Neue Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1953) as well as older handbooks, among others, C.Ch. Hamberger and J. G. Meusel, Das gelehrte Teutschland (Lemgo, 1796-1834) and V. H. Schmidt and D. G. Mehring, Neuestes gelehrtes Berlin (Berlin, 1795) and to the Handbuch über den Königlich Preussischen Hof und Staat. Of the more recent literature on the subject, only the reflections on the Wednesday Society in the wide-ranging Nicolai biography of H. Möller, Aufklärung in Preussen. Der Verleger, Publizist und Geschichtsschreiber Friedrich Nicolai (Einzelveröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin 15) (Berlin, 1974), 229-238, will be mentioned here.
10. On the conflict over the Woellner Edict on Religion, see G. Birtsch, “Religions*** und Gewissensfreiheit in Preussen von 1780 bis 1817,” Zeitschrift fur historische Forschung 11 (1984): 177-204, esp. pp. 186-197.
11. The Charité was a famous Berlin hospital.—TRANS.
12. The “geistliche Departement” was a branch of the Prussian bureaucracy responsible for the administration of ecclesiastical and educational institutions. Although nominally independent, it was part of the Justice Department.—TRANS.
13. See U. Schulz, Die Berlinische Monatsschrift (1783-1786). Eine Bibliographie (Bremer Beiträge zur freien Volksbildung 11) (Bremen, 1968); further, see ?. Hinske, ed., Was ist Aufklärung? Beiträge aus der Berlinischen Monatsschrift (Darmstadt, 1981), xxff.
14. See Nehren, “Selbstdenken und gesunde Vernunft,” and Tholuck, “Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufklärung.”
15. On Svarez, compare my biographical sketch, “C.G. Svarez: Mitbegründer des preussischen Gesetzesstaates,” in Geschichte und politisches Handeln. Studien zum europäischen Denken der Neuzeit. Zum Gedenken an Theodor Schieder, 1908-1984, ed. P. Alter, W. J. Mommsen, and Th. Nipperdey (Stuttgart, 1985), 85-101.
16. E. F. Klein, Freyheit und Eigenthum, abgehandelt in acht Gesprächen über die Beschlüsse der Französischen Nationalversamlung (Berlin/Stettin, 1790). A subsequendy discovered copy of the dedication suggests identifying the interlocutors as members of the Wednesday Society without, admittedly, identifying them with certainty. See Stölzel, “Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft,” 202, with the incorrect citation of Lichtenberg instead of Leuchsenring for Menon. Klein himself, who provided the basis for this speculation, characterized the discussions as fictitious in both Freyheit und Eigenthum (pp. IV ff.) and on p. 55 of his autobiography of 1806 (see note 3, above).
17. See A. Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (London, 1973), 653ff.
18. From the Möhsen Papers (see note 1, above).
19. See Tholuck, “Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufklärung,” col. 57.
20. Cf. Hinske, Was ist Aufklärung? xix.
21. Gedike, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 85.
22. See Hinske, Was ist Aufklärung? xviii.
23. Hellmuth, “Aufklärung und Pressefreiheit,” 321. Hellmuth overemphasizes this viewpoint, but he does correctly recognize that the “immature” citizens should “approach the state of enlightenment through a long-term educational process” (P. 322). .
24. Möhsen, Nachlass, sheet 145.
25. Svarez, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 78.
26. Klein, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 77.
27. Gedike, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 85.
28. Wlömer, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 87.
29. Spalding, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 82.
30. Diterich, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 81.
31. Gesangbuch zum gottesdienstlichen Gebrauch in den Königlich-Preussischen Landen (Berlin, 1780). See especially song nos. 251 (plea for the love of truth), 250 (plea for self-knowledge and truth: “Grant, that I might speak the truth to myself, in order to see myself as I am”…“Here make me wise to heaven and free from vile self-deception”), 193 (“Grant, that my faith be active and bring forth the fruits of virtue”).
32. J. S. Diterich, Unterweisung zur Glückseligkeit nach der Lehre Jesu (Berlin, 1782). See nos. 199 and 204; pp. 98ff.
33. Svarez, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 79-80.
34. On the question of censorship, see Hellmuth, “Aufklärung und Pressefreiheit,” 325ff.
35. Mendelssohn, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 81.
36. Hellmuth, “Aufklärung und Pressefreiheit,” 322.
37. Friedrich Gedike, “Rede bei der Aufnahme in die Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften (4 February 1790),” Berlinische Monatsschrift 15 (1790):219-230, on p. 228.
38. Gedike, in Keller, “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft,” 85.
39. See J. Schultze, “Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Adel und Bürgertum in den deutschen Zeitschriften der letzten drei Jahrzehnte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Historische Studien 163 (1925).
40. C. G. Svarez, “Uber die Befreiung von Staats Abgaben insofern dieselbe als ein Privilegium gewisser Stände im Staat betrachtet wird,” in Möhsen, Nachlass, sheets 41-44; quote is from sheet 41a.
41. Ibid., sheet 42.
42. Ibid., sheet 43.
43. Cf. Birtsch, “Religions- und Gewissensfreiheit,” 97-98.
44. Selle, in Möhsen, Nachlass, sheet 44v. Selle's critical attitude toward the existing social and “governmental system” becomes clear elsewhere as well. Discussing Möhsen's contribution on the enlightenment of “the man in the street and particularly the country-man,” he put the blame for the extant lack of education on the constitutional conditions (ibid., 21 July 1786, sheet 153v).
45. Biester, in Möhsen, Nachlass, sheet 45.
46. E. F. Klein, “Anmerkungen eines Bürgerlichen über die Abhandlung des Herrn Oberappelationsrates von Ramdohr, die Ansprüche der Adlichen an die ersten Staatsbedienungen betreffend,” Berlinische Monatsschrift 17 (1791):460-474.
47. See Allgemeines Landrecht II, 9, par. 35: “The noble is preeminently entitled to an honored position in the state for which he has qualified himself.”
48. Klein, “Anmerkungen,” 467.
49. Ibid., 473.
50. Ibid., 472.
51. Ibid., 463.
52. Klein, Freyheit und Eigenthum, 183.
53. The Royal Library possibly acquired Möhsen's Papers after his death in 1795 but before the disbanding of the Wednesday Society in 1798.
54. Characteristic of this is the ongoing agreement between Svarez's views as expressed in the Wednesday Society and to the crown prince. This is certainly true of his reports on the question of the tax exemption for the nobility, which correspond (with only slight variation) to the appropriate passages in his lectures to the crown prince. See note 40, above, and G. G. Svarez, Vorträge über Recht und Staat, ed. H. Conrad and G. Kleinheyer [Wiss. Abhandlungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 10] (Köln/Opladen, 1960), 12Iff. Of course, Svarez knew how to use the Wednesday Society as a sounding board for his legislative activity, as he himself hinted in his lectures on the censorship question. See Möhsen, Nachlass, sheet 263v. On the whole, it seems to me too optimistic to claim that Svarez “amended many of his ideas” as a result of the judgment of the Wednesday Society. See L. F. G. v. Göckingk, Friedrich Nicolais Leben und literarischer Nachlass (Berlin, 1820), 91.
This essay was originally published as “Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft” in Über den Prozess der Aufklärung in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Erich Bödeker and Ulrich Henmann (Güttingen, 1987), 94-112.