16Varieties of Old Regime Europe: Thoughts and Details on the Reception of Burke’s Reflections in Germany
Paraphrasing another one of Burke’s writings from the revolutionary period, in this chapter I intend to approach the German reception of the Reflections on the Revolution in France from a new perspective. Since the publication of Frieda Braune’s work in 1917, there have been two main views about influence in the overall process of reception. According to one view, Burke’s ‘impact’ in Germany was more extensive, more profound and more variegated than elsewhere, even though the defence and preservation of existing conditions there was incompatible with Burke’s notions of political modernity, given the divergence of the German socio-cultural and political environment from Britain. Therefore, it has been suggested that one thrust of Burke’s ‘influence’ was the ‘liberal interpretation’ of Burke by the Hanoverian-Göttinger mediators Ernst Brandes and August Wilhelm Rehberg, who cultivated a ‘special relationship’ with England, and through this channel the infiltration of Burke’s ideas into the work of Prussian reformers like Freiherr von Stein.1 Among scholars who emphasize the profundity of Burke’s influence in Germany, it is also a widely held opinion that Burke – irrespective of his own intentions and political views – materially contributed to the shaping of German philosophy of history by conceiving of the Revolution in its historicity, as a ‘complete revolution’ and a break with the past unprecedented in its comprehensive ness.2 Relying on the same corpus of sources and problem areas, there is, however, also an alternative approach which relativizes Burke’s ‘influence’ in Germany. Representatives of this trend argue that, in spite of the apparently avid interest in Burke’s work, precisely because of the radical difference in the recipient cultural-political environment, whatever reception took place, it was inevitably superficial and partial (Preece 1980, 255–73).
Depending on one’s notion of what ‘reception’ in intellectual history means, either or even both approaches may have something in their favour. However, both avoid engagement with the dimension of the Reflections which can be most directly and generally associated with Burke’s authorial intentions and which, according to any logic, lends itself most readily to being caught up in discussion outside Britain. Examining reviews of the Reflections, the terminological solutions which Friedrich Gentz applied in his famous rendering of the work and other texts by Brandes, Rehberg and Gentz, I shall focus on the extent to which Burke’s use of eighteenth-century discourses of civilization reverberated (or failed to reverberate) among his German interlocutors, publishers and readers. For Burke himself, this layer of his thought was more important than any possible contribution to nineteenth-century German philosophy of history and, if not more important than the political convictions by means of which he defended the British and rejected the French system, it provided a supportive structure for those convictions, and was regarded by him as central to the argument of the Reflections.
France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choaked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear with us, or perhaps with any other nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important revolution, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. (Writings and Speeches, 8:131)
This passage is one among several which should serve as a reminder that Burke embraced the discourse of the Enlightenment about the progress of human civilization, and put it to a highly creative use in developing an interpretative framework of his own.3 Those who shaped this discourse, while generally not blind either to the moral hazards of progress or the risk of ‘falling back’ to earlier stages, asserted the outstanding merits of eighteenth-century European modernity on the grounds of the relative material welfare it afforded and the refinement of manners – the ethical and aesthetic standards of interpersonal intercourse – built upon such welfare. They also recognized a link between these achievements of Europe’s modern ancien régime and its capacity for taming the ‘violent passions’ of humanity and channelling them in the direction of more or less peaceful emulation. The chief passions concerned were the religious dispositions of superstition and enthusiasm, and the hubristic quest for power, which in the preceding centuries had played a paramount role in throwing Europe’s polities into endemic internal crises and international conflicts.4 With the ebbing away of the seventeeth-century strife, in view of the shared values brought to life and nurtured by the process of civilization, ancien régime Europe could plausibly be regarded as a ‘commonwealth’. However, as Burke concluded, this entire commonwealth now came under vital threat from the conduct of the French revolutionaries, which could be alternately described as ‘savage’ in the contemporary vocabulary of civilization and as ‘enthusiastic’ in that of the polemic against religious fanaticism.5 One could also invoke the categories of Burke’s aesthetics, with its fundamental distinction between the passions that relate to self-preservation and those of social life. In the Philosophical Enquiry, the sublime is associated with the former, while the beautiful with the latter; the experience of the sublime is evoked by the demonstration or the observation of force, even violence, while the beautiful is experienced through the contemplation of qualities to which we are attracted and which generate tenderness (1987, 38 ff., 64 ff.) The relationship between these two principles resembles that of checks and balances in the British constitution, so whichever becomes preponderant in the social dynamic puts the safety and sanity of the entire organism at risk.
No history of the reception of Burke’s political thought in Germany or elsewhere can be complete without exploring the extent to which these aspects had repercussions. This is all the more so because these topics were familiar across the continent for several decades prior to the publication of the Reflections (unlike the discussion of the ancient constitution based on common law, or the Anglican church establishment, which were also indispensable for the argument of the Reflections, but were largely of local concern). As they were predicated on the conviction of a shared European system of values, they had the potential to be exploited for sympathetic readers and repudiated for opponents. Strikingly enough, there was little trace of these layers of Burke’s thought in the German reactions to the Reflections before the appearance of Gentz on the stage. After this rather impressive entrée through the publication of his translation in 1793, it was virtually only in his later works that the above-mentioned themes continued to resonate in German political discourse. Gentz’s translation of the Reflections was published almost two years after the original (Burke 1793–94). During the intervening period, several reviews of the Reflections were published in the most prestigious German journals, some of them by authors who passionately admired Burke as well as the virtues of the English constitution. The same authors – Rehberg and Brandes – also published their own ‘reflections’ on the French Revolution, which in turn also evoked intensive debate and critical commentary among contemporaries. The most famous of the critiques was Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Beitrag zur Berechtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (Contribution to Judging the Opinions of the Public on the French Revolution), whose goal was to provide a philosophical refutation of Rehberg’s claim that under no circumstances can revolutions be legitimate.
The fact that Fichte was not concerned about the patterns borrowed from theories of stadial progress, from hunting-and-gathering through pasturing and agriculture to commercial society, and from the analyses of religious extremism in Burke’s argument is unsurprising. He was responding not to Burke, but to a position close to Burke’s on several or even most issues ‒ except the ones under consideration here, which are not discussed either in Brandes’s Politische Betrachtungen über die französische Revolution (Political Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790) or in Rehberg’s Untersuchungen über die französische Revolution (Inquiries into the French Revolution, 1793). As a matter of fact, it would make little sense to blame the latter for neglect: Burke, more than any other single contributor to the debate on the Revolution certainly set the tone for it, but not even he defined a mandatory agenda. What is more noteworthy is the failure of both Rehberg and Brandes to take notice in the reviews they published about the Reflections of the aspects which I identified above as salient. However closely they knew, even from personal meetings, Burke and his ‘spirit’ (Skalweit 1956), the accents of their accounts of the contents of the book are no different from the other contemporary reviews. The focus of interest is Burke’s polemic against the radical societies, particularly Richard Price’s hailing the Revolution and proposing it as an example for Britain to follow; the composition and the manner of procedure of the National Assembly, especially as it concerned the clergy; and the new financial and administrative system of France. They make just passing references (if at all) to the short but vivid account of the events of 6 October, without addressing their symbolic significance, which was so important for Burke in demonstrating the tendency of the Revolution to set back, rather than move forward, the process of civilization. Their accounts all revolve around a number of points which, while conceived in the spirit of heartfelt, deep respect for Burke, seem both to foreshadow and confirm the above-mentioned, sceptical view in modern scholarship of the German reception of Burke, stressing its rather limited possibility.
To one reviewer the significance of the Reflections consisted in its being the work of ‘a free Briton … accustomed to holding the existing order of things to be the best’.6 While for French and possibly German observers the conditions in pre-revolutionary France may have set things in a different light, for such a man it was only natural to be carried into ‘rhetorical excess’ by the sight of a return to Rousseau’s natural man on the initiative not of the mob but twelve hundred, presumably enlightened men elected by the entire nation.7 Brandes, while taking pains to vindicate Burke against charges of inconsistency with his earlier views, referring to his long-standing scorn for metaphysical systems based on cool reason, also dwells on Burke’s conveying of his argument through ebullient and emotional rhetoric, reminding the reader that profound thoughts should not be regarded as mere rhetorical flourish just because they are presented in captivating language. At the same time he predicts that in Germany the book will be found lacking in order.8
It is Rehberg who goes the farthest – paradoxically, in a review written in the tone of the highest appreciation – in relativizing the significance of the Reflections for a German audience. He also starts by referring to Burke’s experience as a practising politician, and the extraordinary qualities indispensable for being an able leader of the opposition in the House of Commons – only to remind readers that in Germany it is highly unusual for such ‘men of business’ to take to writing, while ‘men of letters are too much removed from business … What is called statistical knowledge, is extensively pursued in Germany. Political insight, on the other hand, is rare, and this is only understandable, since so little is publicly discussed in regard of the state.’9 This is already significant enough, for it largely accounts for the fact that the mode of presentation in the Reflections differs widely from the standards familiar for German readers. Duly, Burke’s ‘sublime’, ‘captivating eloquence’ is acknowledged – only to introduce the following thoughts:
Throughout it is the English patriot who speaks. And precisely on that account, it is impossible that this outstanding work should meet the approval it received in England … to the same extent outside Great Britain. A book that should achieve the same for Germany as Burke achieved for England, should use his remarks, but take from it what is local, and present it in a different way. The investigation probably ought to start with the system adopted by the National Assembly, and represent and refute it in all its parts and relations; because it is learned insight that the German public first and foremost appreciates; but precisely thereby a great and excellent part of the English work, the one that provides its peculiar character and greatest relish, will be lost.10
Finally, the gulf becomes truly unbridgeable because of the availability of an excellent constitution in England, and the entire lack of it in most of Germany (with ones in great need of improvement in the rest of it):
In Germany the refined sentiment of the higher classes and the perfection of the state administration is the only defence of personal freedom … The English writer might set the excellence of his country’s constitution against the disorderly lust for innovation. Elsewhere, it is the calling of all upright citizens, rather than thinking of new bulwarks for the old, which would do nothing but perpetuate the abuses which cause the indolence and pride of the higher estates, to awaken those estates from their deadly slumbering, and demonstrate to them that the only means to work against revolutions like the French is to reform from above, before the people gets involved. In this the great calling of German writers consists.11
As far as Brandes is concerned, by the time he published his review, the vitriolic criticism of Burke’s account of the events of 6 October 1789 by Thomas Paine and others was already known. This could have made Brandes less than enthusiastic to engage with the cluster of ideas associated with Burke’s lamentation. But the reasons are more deep-seated and general. In fact, despite all their admiration for Burke, the works of Rehberg and Brandes written in the revolutionary years, and their activity thereafter, demonstrate their strong motivation to live up to the requirements of the ‘calling’ outlined in Rehberg’s review. This involved a criticism of the status quo in Germany, at least to the extent of pointing out minimal improvements needed to make it capable of receiving English-style political wisdom and institutions. Burke’s logic – namely, that he is justified in recommending the British example to the French to follow not because it is different, but precisely because both nations are part of the same ‘system’, in which deep structures of society, manners and sentiments are shared across the continent from Poland to Spain and Scandinavia to Italy – was subtle indeed. However, it must have simply sounded false to the two German ‘Burkeans’ from their own perspective, provided that they understood it at all. On other issues they did not shy away from being critical of their master, so their silence on this one, given its centrality to the argument of the Reflections, is all the more perplexing. At this point I can offer no explanation but that, however sensitive they were to the nuances of the common law or the procedure of the House of Commons, they were not sufficiently equipped theoretically to grasp the importance of the civilizational discourse for Burke’s argument. It seems to contradict this assumption, and makes the puzzle all the more intriguing, that both Brandes and Rehberg authored works whose thematic choices, references and partly also argument reveal a great deal of sensitivity towards the idea of the ancien régime as a sophisticated, continent-wide civilization, evolved in a gradual historical process peculiar to it, and established on the complementary roles but unequal status of different estates (Brandes 1802, 1808; Rehberg 1803). Rehberg, even though harbouring doubts as to whether Burke could be made accessible to the German public at all, strongly argued in his review for a translation of the Reflections, and stressed that in order to succeed the translator needed to possess certain qualifications. However, it is telling that the qualifications he listed were familiarity with the English contitution and history – but not conjectural history and moral philosophy, or Burke’s own aesthetics, fields from which much of the vocabulary of centrally important passages of the Reflections derives.
In any case, perhaps exactly because they were committed to the defence of the civilization of the old regime, Brandes and Rehberg were in no position to turn a blind eye to the anomalies and deficiencies of the Ständestaat, a state and society based on distinction by estate, which was the German status quo of that civilization. Burke, from across the English Channel, could generously afford to disregard the differences between British and continental realities. For Burke’s German followers, however, these differences were all-important. It must be added that there were contemporaries, such as the distinguished professor of constitutional and legal history at the University of Helmstedt, Friedrich Dominic Häberlin (1793), who in the years of the swan song of the German imperial constitution argued that it was superior to the one possessed by the British – in other words, appreciated the difference between the two systems in exactly opposite terms. Rehberg, for his part, formulated the gulf between Burke and the German critics of the French Revolution with penetrating conciseness:
In its arrangements of private and public law, England possessed a huge asset, and Burke was able to make its preservation the first and last object of his exertions. But which part of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire or the territorial states could be the starting point for a German writer in addressing questions of national interest?12
For the German critics, unlike in the case of Burke, extolling the virtues of the British constitution was not only compatible with a more sceptical attitude to the institutions of the continental old regimes of which they had first-hand experience, but also depended on it.
True, they meticulously registered the shortcomings of German constitutions and pointed to the signs of growing demand for change in the German states during the pre-revolutionary years. Yet they also observed that this did nothing to shake loyalty to the princes, whom the people found likable, and even ‘men of letters’ acknowledged that governments took useful steps in the interest of slow and gradual improvement (Rehberg 1828, 2:7–15; Brandes 1792, 57 ff., 116). It is interesting, however, that it was mainly when they talked about these regimes in general terms that they emphasized the capacity of the German old regimes to reform themselves. But when it came to specific examples, such as the pre-1789 conditions of Hanover (in union with Britain), Hanoverian government officials regularly reported the inflexibility of the system. Rehberg’s account of the procedure of the Landstände of the tiny principality of Calenberg-Grubenhagen in 1793–94 is an illuminating encapsulation of his attitudes. Part of the reason why necessary reforms were not implemented was the character of King George III, who was bound to the land and its people by mutual love and respect, but his attempt at personal rule was doomed to failure, and thwarted progress.13 Even when, in the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1790s, amidst growing protest the Calenberg Landtag convened to consider petitions for reform, its procrastination only resulted in prorogations and some insignificant changes in the status quo. And yet, looking back to the above-mentioned Calenberg episode and the whole period preceding it from a distance of over thirty years, Rehberg wrote:
For one who daily experienced the collapse of ancient state edifices, the fall of kings and monarchies, the destruction of the inherited order, which was established on right as well as might and, as such, seemed to have been built on secure foundations; for such a person it may well be that everything done before in order to maintain, repair or improve the fabric of old arrangements will seem small and narrow. … And yet for that generation the conditions of that time constituted as much the reality; it felt its wants just as keenly, and the endeavour to satisfy these wants was just as dear for it as for everything done by and for those now living. The hardships were also merely different, but not less severe. Therefore, one may attribute just as great merit to the effort to avert such evil.14
While Brandes, and especially Rehberg made every effort to perpetuate the stability and predictability which they associated with the Ständestaat, its salient anachronisms and the contradictions between its arrangements and the requirements of socio-economic progress called for a serious consideration of the status enjoyed by the nobility in it. Burke thought that ‘[n]obility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society’ (1989, 188). Rehberg, who devoted a little treatise to this subject, was less eloquent, but he was also convinced that the nobility, even though ‘idle’ if measured by bourgeois standards, still had a service to render to the public:
Industry must be honoured if it is to flourish … But are we therefore to confound the honour of a nobleman with the honour of an artisan? He who earns is needed by the state more than he who merely spends. But must therefore everyone earn? And are there no vocations that are completely irreconcilable with the spirit of earning? The vocation in the highest esteem, service for the public good, requires cultivation of the spirit by learning, and a way of thinking diametrically opposed to the spirit of earning … If the nobles were formerly unable to read and write, and instead of signing their names they only scribbled some clumsy mark, nevertheless through reason, composure, indomitable courage, self-denial and sacrifice for the sake of the public good, or even for their own honour, they were able to assert their ascendancy over the other estates.15
Having acquired additional skills and attainments, Rehberg thought the nobility was entitled to keep its ascendancy. At the same time, he had a very acute sense of the segregation of the nobility within contemporary German society, which he correctly identified as one of the chief evils of the age (1803, 160 ff.).16 Specifically, he singled out anachronisms like seigneurial jurisdiction, or the tax exemption of nobles – issues in which British practices could be favourably contrasted with German ones (1803, 33 ff., 100 ff.). To a certain extent, this is a counterpart to Burke’s taking of the French revolutionaries to account for their neglectfulness: ‘You might, if you pleased, have profited from our example …’ (1989, 85). But their grounds for formulating the advice are different. From Burke’s vantage point, the example of Britain was there to follow for continental old regimes because its structures were fundamentally similar to theirs, the difference not being one of quality, just ‘quantity.’ By contrast, the Anglophilia of Brandes and Rehberg suggested its appeal to them because in practice, and regarding specific solutions, it was actually different from the continental experience.
Viewed from this angle, the French Revolution did not seem to be unwarranted, and even a measure of violence was deemed tolerable to bring about the adjustments needed. Germans, Rehberg reminded readers, actually had nothing against the abolition of the distinction between estates (though they had no taste for innovation and did not share the anti-monarchical and anti-clerical sentiments of the French, nor did the ‘exotic plant’ of republicanism, imported from America, fall upon fertile soil among them) (1828, 2:184–85). What Brandes and Rehberg criticized was the process of constitution-making in France: the fact that the constitutions solved none of the problems they were meant to solve because they did not correspond to the peculiar conditions and needs of the country. Despite some early excesses of the Revolution, it was only after October 1789 that ‘the ruling party’ started to reveal its real face and thwart the cause of true representative government (Brandes 1790, 19, 46, 49 ff.).
But there were different voices in Germany, too. At this point, we should return to Gentz, who met the requirements Rehberg set for the future translator of the Reflections most thoroughly. One reviewer of Gentz’s translation explicitly praised it as being ‘as good as the original’.17 Similarly positive was the assessment of Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer, one of the many fascinating dilettantes on the contemporary German literary scene. Meyer knew Burke from a visit in England a few years earlier, though his pompous allusion to the intimacy of this acquaintance (1793, 178), is somewhat doubtful. His relationship with Gentz, one of the editors of the Deutsche Monatsschrift, where the review was published, may have been closer than his relationship with Burke. Meyer had only one objection to Gentz’s choices as a translator: quite sensibly, he argued that ‘spirit of a gentleman’ would be better translated as Geist des Edelmuths than Geist des höheren Standes.18 One might add a few other instances in which the choice of terminology fails to convey the connotations of the original or blurs the boundaries of the semantic field in which Burke locates his message. Analogien der Vergangenheit,19 for example, is a compound too broadly drawn in comparison with ‘analogical precedent’, and refers to the authority of the past as a store of examples in general, rather than to common law, with its heavy reliance on procedural precedent as a specific interpretative framework. A similar dilution of meaning occurs with Burke’s ‘oeconomical politicians’ (Burke 1989, 130) who become, rather less poignantly, representatives of a neue Staatskunst (Burke 1967, 134), perhaps arising from the strong intertwining of ‘state sciences’ (Statistik, Staatswissenschaft) with ‘cameralist sciences’ (Kameralwissenschaft – the economic management of the resources of the state) in the contemporary German university world. Further, Gentz’s consistent use of Kultur to render ‘civilization’ might signal important intellectual allegiances: though it would be difficult to provide conclusive evidence, Gentz’s choice may reflect the traditional German distinction between Zivilisation, confined to external, custom-based forms of behaviour, and Kultur, understood as based on exertion, achievement and values.20 It is also noteworthy that at certain points Gentz, perhaps somewhat ironically in view of Burke’s reputation as an orator, decided to amplify the linguistic power of the original text. Not content with ‘a strong principle at work’ (namely, of liberty), Gentz spoke of a furchtbare Kraft (‘dreadful force’) and a ‘great crisis’ was also a fürchterliche Krise (‘terrible crisis’) for him (Burke 1989, 58, 60; Burke 1967, 34, 37). Such instances are especially numerous in the account of the events of 6 October : ‘that day’ as jene Schreckentage (‘day of horror’), ‘the triumph’ as der unmenschliche Triumph (‘the inhuman triumph’) and ‘she’ (the queen) as die göttliche Lichtgestalt (‘divine figure of light’). Similar examples occur in relation to the philosophes, where ‘a sophistry’ is rendered as verruchte Sophisterei (‘evil sophistry’), ‘modern letters’ as undankbare Wissenschaften (‘ungrateful letters/sciences’), or ‘selfish enlargement of the mind’ as der hinterlistige Aufklärungsgeist (‘the perfidious spirit of Enlightenment’). However, these solutions are not intended simply for greater effect: they belong to the domain of interpretation rather than strictly translation, however much they are justified by the context and, to say the least, not antithetical to what Burke himself thought.
Having said all of this, it must be added immediately that these observations do not necessarily detract from Gentz’s reputation for having produced the most outstanding rendering of the Reflections of all times. True, in addition to the above, some passages were translated by him rather freely, and there are also a number of short omissions, even though from this point of view he was far more ‘faithful’ to the original than many, even most, translators.21 Burke’s diction is rendered highly successfully, and the thrust of his argument is ultimately unimpaired by the irregularities of usage (and the few errors committed, inevitable in any translation). Importantly for my purpose, this is especially true for the passages in which discourses of civilization and superstition/enthusiasm come into play.
The impression that Gentz may indeed have grasped the full import of the Reflections better than all his German contemporaries, is confirmed by a survey of the themes relevant for my argument as they appear in Gentz’s numerous other contributions to the revolutionary debate. These contributions were thoroughly imbued with the idea of a European ‘commonwealth’, established on the ‘refinement’ brought about by material and cultural-spiritual progress in the internal conditions of smaller communities as well as in the standards of inter-state intercourse, but now forced to fight a ‘war of civilizations’ against the forces of savagery and fanaticism unleashed by the French Revolution. Given the excellence of the civilization of Europe, now under threat, Gentz, unlike Brandes and Rehberg, thought that on the eve of the Revolution any reasonable statesman would have burst out in laughter when asked if the improvement of the social condition of Europe required ‘a general and sudden dissolution of all existing relations’.22 The reason was that, according to Gentz, these relations represented a level of civilization higher than ever attained on earth. In a well-drawn sketch consisting of the clichés of stadial history, he argued that European nations had risen to this level in concert, as a result of the spontaneous growth of what he called the commercial and colonial system (Colonial- und Commerzial-System). This system was supposed by him to be one of the sprouts ‘that must of necessity germinate and grow ripe on the soil of society’,23 and even though the distribution of its benefits was rather uneven,
everywhere the state of society became more refined and improved; everywhere culture and the well-being of the individuals increased, as did the resources and the talents on which the authority of government is founded. All of the states rose; but all of them rose approximately in the same proportion. The whole became more civilized, more affluent and more powerful; but the relationship among its composite parts remained the same.24
It is not difficult to recognize, as a background to such statements, the vision of an all-European old regime civilization not unlike Burke’s – with the significant difference that Gentz had no taste for ‘chivalry’. Rather, similarly to the enlightened Scots also important for Burke, like Adam Smith or the historian William Robertson, he attributed its rise to the interrelated changes in the mode of subsistence and the institutions of European nations: the growth of national economies, and the gradual dismantling of feudalism which increased the efficacy of governments. Gentz argued that it was a mistake to credit only men of letters for the useful innovations of the age, as was often the case:
It is only where wealth has already created a high level of civilization; where the desire of more refined enjoyments is already awakened; and especially where governments have already been elevated to a certain degree of enlightenment, humanity and liberal disposition, that the goods of the mind can become a common pursuit of people and one of the most powerful driving forces of social progress.25
The contemporary balance of powers – a topic dear to Burke as well – is also described by Gentz as an outcome and an important achievement of this civilizing process.26 The very inspiration for his Von dem politischen Zustande von Europa vor und nach der Französischen Revolution (Of the Political State of Europe before and after the French Revolution, 1801) was his endeavour to refute the allegation that the French Revolution and its wars were necessary because when they broke out there were no solid principles of international law nor a system of balance based on them. Gentz drew his historical panorama in order to argue that, on the contrary, it was the French Revolution that pushed into anarchy a well-functioning international order firmly rooted in the structures nurtured by European social progress: ‘[F]ar from advancing the improvement of social and political relations, this revolution broke and impeded their progress in a moment when it promised extremely advantageous results.’27
Certain aspects of this growth – such as the exaggerated expectations and desires its horizons excited, and the inevitable difficulty of satisfying these new demands – contributed to an atmosphere in which revolutionary ferment started:
In the very same fertile environment, which provided rich and blissful nutriment to the noblest plants of social life and led them to a swift and exuberant growth, the seeds of storm and destruction were sown … [W]ealth fostered dissatisfaction, freedom fostered arrogance, enlightenment fostered an attraction to idle and unbridled speculation. The spirit of restlessness, discontent and cavil became the chief disease of society in all the great states of Europe.28
But this in no way implied that the Revolution was a necessary or inevitable consequence of the conditions either of Europe, which was at its zenith, or France, which was more prosperous than most European nations, and although its lawful monarchy was guilty of some abuses, it was by no means ruled in a despotic manner (Gentz 1801, 63; 1799–1800, 1:201–06).
In the same year as the work mentioned above, Gentz also published Ueber den Ursprung und Charakter des Krieges gegen die Französische Revoluzion (On the Origin and Character of the War against the French Revolution), whose motivation was very similar to that of Burke’s Letters on a Regicide Peace: to prevent making peace with revolutionary France. This was a complex task, as the coalition achieved relatively little success at the expense of much suffering to the whole continent. Gentz thus needed to show that the evil arising from the war was still smaller than what would have resulted from not resisting the revolutionary tide, and that the failure to contain the danger stemmed largely from an imperfect assessment of the forces let loose by the Revolution in France. All of this would have been insufficient without a demonstration that the war was just, from the point of view of the allied powers. Gentz, dispassionately and without the ‘rage’ of Burke, supplied the proofs from exactly the same sources as Burke did: the extrapolation of the maxim of neighbourhood from private law to the law of nations,29 examined in the context of the thoroughly interrelated nature of the European state system, and underlined by the unprecedented character of the revolutionary challenge.
While acknowledging the integrity and sovereignty of states taken by themselves, Gentz added that ‘as soon as several states exist side by side, this right can only be exercised under the limitation that none ought to decide what endangers the existence of another.’30 The absurdity of the non-interventionist position is illustrated by the metaphor of the neighbour setting fire to his own house (which Gentz might well have borrowed from Burke, and both of them from Emeric Crucé), before Gentz goes on to argue that geographical proximity, thousands of ties, the shared fabric of manners, laws, needs, culture and lifestyle made Europe a ‘great political league’ (einen großen politischen Bund), a ‘commonwealth’ (Republik, elsewhere Gemeinschaft), a ‘league of nations’ (Völkerbund) to an extent that ‘it is too little to say that they exist beside each other: if they are to exist at all, they must exist with and through each other.’31 By making ‘the subversion of all lawful relations a maxim’ France would have become an incendiary neighbour, even if it had not pushed this maxim beyond its frontiers.32
Moreover, Gentz went on to argue, this was precisely what the revolutionaries did: by declaring a ‘new law of nations’ which annulled the treaties made by ‘tyrants’ and by vindicating the right to export their pernicious maxims, the new leaders of France effectively placed their country outside the civilized community of European nations. By launching ‘the crusade for universal liberty’ in which ‘each soldier became a Peter or a Bernard,’ carrying ‘in his cartridge pouch not only powder and bullets, but also some small copies of the constitution, so as to disseminate the revolution,’33 they rendered themselves and their fatherland targets not merely of just but holy war, fought between nations belonging to different systems and by means falling outside the law of nations and the law of war among civilized nations. They were waging, in effect, a religious war, whose goal was to convert or to destroy. For Gentz, as for Burke, it followed that the allies ought to employ means similar in kind to those of their adversaries. In the face of the ‘French spirit of proselytism,’ whose seeds were ‘sown almost everywhere’ Burke suggested that the people ought to be brought ‘to a feeling, such a feeling I mean as tends to amendment or alteration of System,’ and also that this required ‘plan and management.’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:347),34 Strikingly similar is the antidote recommended by Gentz: to counter revolutionary enthusiasm, it was essential to exert
a happily calculated influence upon sentiments … It was not sufficient to have the revolutionary principle denounced as a product of madness and lunacy in isolated proclamations and ephemeral pamphlets; one must penetrate into the very fundaments, and the evil ought to be chased back relentlessly to its first spring.35
But both men agreed that destroying ‘the evil’ was not the same as destroying or enslaving France, nor imposing on it a new constitution more conformable to the European heritage, nor even, at least for Gentz, the simple restoration of the pre-revolutionary status quo. Neither of them thought that France should or could be eliminated or dismembered, and the reason for this was not France itself, but Europe. Gentz contended that France was ‘an essential and magnificent component part of the general political system of Europe’ which it was a duty of European statesmen to preserve;36 Burke went as far as suggesting that ‘the Liberties of Europe cannot possibly be preserved, but by [France’s] remaining a very great and preponderating power’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:489).37 Both of them expected that once the Revolution, the ‘violence of the fanatical factions’ and the ‘anarchy’ were confined within the frontiers of France, the return of religion, property and a well-organized monarchical government with intermediate bodies would follow (under the tutelage of the coalition powers in the case of Burke, and quite automatically in that of Gentz), an outcome which both of them would have regarded as ‘happy’. In this, the interests of France coincided with those of Europe whose well-being depended on the preservation of diversity in unity. In addition, very much like Vattel, and unlike the believers of utopian peace, Burke and Gentz were convinced that the establishment of equality among the states of Europe would be futile engineering in international relations. It was not peace but rather historic rivalries that were perpetual, which made international security dependent on the preservation of the historic forces of the balance of power. It might not be too far-fetched to recognize these perceptions, closely intertwined with the vision of a commonwealth of Europe which the ‘conservative Enlightenment’ bequeathed to Burke and Gentz, behind the conservative settlement of the Congress of Vienna, where Gentz who, as Austrian court councillor and right hand of State Chancellor Metternich, earned the nickname ‘the secretary of Europe’.
The history of the reception of Burke’s political message in Germany is highly diverse, and in this study only a narrow segment of it could be presented in a somewhat fragmented frame. Some lessons can, nevertheless, be drawn. Burke was not merely an outstanding britische Staatsmann, as he appeared to many German spectators, but a mind thinking in European dimensions. Brandes and Rehberg were intellectually up-to-date, politically well-informed and well-meaning public figures (the latter also a widely recognized contributor to contemporary philosophical debates). But a truly empathic engagement with Burke depended on abandoning their somewhat provincial intellectual habits, and on the adoption of a continental vantage point resembling his. This implied the awareness, acceptance and application of the discourse of (European) civilization which also served to a considerable extent as the cement of Burke’s thought. It is Gentz’s sharing of Burke’s ‘spirit’ on this particular point that provides the specific ground for the general opinion that he was Burke’s most authentic German follower and interpreter, in spite of the critical distance he occasionally endeavoured to keep from the British master in the essays appended to his translation and in his correspondence (Gentz 1909–10, 1:224 ff.).38
Not as a conclusion to this essay but as a new question to explore, one final issue could be raised. Burke died in 1797, and we can have no certain knowledge of ‘where’ he would have been located in the political and intellectual universe of Europe when the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars came to an end. His most sensitive German reader – perhaps the only one who shared his ‘continental horizon’ of public affairs – exercised his talents at that time as the right hand of Prince Metternich, and thus became one of the architects of the reactionary continental system marked by the Holy Alliance. One can certainly ask how this atmosphere might have affected the motive of ‘English liberty’ in Burke’s discourse or, in the usage of his German admirers, ‘britische Freiheit’. In the concluding sentence of the Reflections, as if predicting and precluding the later charges about his alleged volte-face, he described himself as one
who would secure his consistency by varying his means to secure the unity to this end; and, when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails, may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise. (Writings and Speeches, 8:293)
In the 1790s he thought that such ends could best be pursued on the side of William Pitt’s cabinet (which seemed to welcome his overtures), partly because he recoginzed the European implications of the French Revolution. However, just as the relationship of the Tory Party, and then the Conservative Party after the Pitt era, to Burke’s memory and legacy was ambivalent (mainly because of his political and polemical efforts on behalf of Irish Catholics and the subjects of imperial India during the last years of his life), it is also highly doubtful whether Burke would have voted in favour of the initiatives of the Liverpool administration, such as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, had he survived to see Britain’s short-lived and inglorious cooperation with the post-1815 European system.
Notes
1See the intellectual portraits of these two prominent German ‘Burkeans’: Vogel (1972) and Haase (1973).
2See Henrich (1967, Intro.).
3At the core of this framework was the idea of stadial history, namely, that societies undergo progress by stages defined in terms of their dominant mode of subsistence from hunting through stock-breeding and agriculture to commerce. This approach to interpreting civilizations and their development drew on antecedents in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural jurisprudence, as well as on several genres documenting the intercourse of Europeans with peoples and cultures of other continents. It was used extensively by the French Physiocrats (Turgot) and the major thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment (especially Smith, Kames, Robertson, Ferguson and Millar). For Burke’s use of it, see Pocock (1982/5 and 1987, Intro.).
4In his anti-revolutionary polemic, Burke relied extensively on the classics of international law. Specialists of international relations theory have always ‘treated Burke seriously’ as ‘[t]he only political philosopher who has turned wholly from political theory to international theory’; see Wight (1966, 20). However, students of intellectual history turned to a systematic exploration of this aspect of Burke’s thought only fairly recently. See Welsh (1995, 1996, 1999), Armitage (2000), Hampsher-Monk (2005); cf. Bourke (2007). For the present study, the main point of relevance is not Burke’s character as an international relations theorist (realist, rationalist or revolutionist), but the way he incorporated international theory into his concept of civilization in order to add further weight to his anti-revolutionary polemic.
5On Burke’s creative use of the enlightened ‘natural history of religion’ and parallels with Gentz in this respect, see Kontler (1999).
6‘ein freier Britte …, gewohnt der bestehende Ordnung der Dinge für die beste zu halten’ (Anon. 1791, 185–86).
7‘Ueberfluss der Beredsamkeit’ (Anon. 1791, 189).
8Brandes (1791, here 1899, 1901, 1906).
9‘Gelehrte … sind zu weit von den Geschäften entfernt … Was man statistische Kenntnisse nennt, ist in Deutschland sehr hoch getrieben. Politische Einsicht dagegen ist desto seltner, und dieses ist sehr begreiflich, denn in Rücksicht auf dem Staat wird so wenig öffentlich gehandelt’ (Rehberg 1791, 562–63).
10‘Es ist also durchaus der englische Patriot der redet. Und eben deswegen ist es unmöglich, dass dies vortreffliche Werkden Beyfall, das es in Englad gefunden hat … in gleicher Maasse auch äußerhalb Großbritannien allgemein erhalte. Eine Schrift, welche für Deutschland in Allgemeinem das leisten sollte, was Burke für England ist, müßte seine Bemerkungen nutzen, aber ihnen das Locale nehmen, und sie anders vortragen. Die Prüfung müßte vielleicht von dem Systeme ausgehen, welchers die Nationalversammlung adoptirt hat, und dasselbe in allen seinen Theilen und seinem Zusammenhange darstellen und widerlegen; denn wissenschaftliche Einsicht ist doch dasjenige, was den vorzüglichsten Theilen des deutschen Publicums am angemessensten und am meisten willkommen ist; aber eben dadurch würde wieder ein großer und vortrefflicher Theil der englischen Schrift, und das eigenthümliche, welches ihr den größten Reiz giebt, verloren gehen’ (Rehberg 1791, 565).
11‘In Deutschland sind die gebildete Gesinnung der höhern Classen, und die Vollkommenheit der Staatsverwaltung die einzige Schutzwehr der persönlichen Freyheit … Der englische Schriftsteller darf die Vortrefflichkeit der Verfassung seines Landes, der unordentliche Begierde nach Neuerung entgegenstellen. In manchen andern Laendern ist es der Beruf des rechtschaffenen Bürgers, nicht auf neue schutzwehren für das alte zu denken, welches nichts als die Verewigung der Missbraeuche seyn würde, die Indolenz und Hoffarth der höchsten Staende verursachen, sondern diese Staende aus ihrem Todteschlafe zu wecken, und ihnen zu zeigen, dass das einzige Mittel, Revolutionen, gleich der französischen, entgegen zu arbeiten, darinn besteht, wenn von oben herab reformirt wird, ehe das Volk anfingt, sich mit Nachdruck darein zu mischen. Hierinn liegt ein grosser Beruf für die deutsche Schriftsteller’ (Rehberg 1791, 566).
12‘England besaß in seinen öffentlichen und privatrechtlichen Anstalten ein großes Gut: und Burke konnte die Erhaltung desselben zu dem ersten und letzten Gegenstande aller seinen Bemühungen machen. Von welchem Punkte aber der Verfassung der heiligen römischen Reichs oder der Provinzialstaaten, hätte wohl ein deutscher Schriftsteller auszugehen können, um ein National-Interesse anzusprechen?’ (Rehberg 1828–31, 2:30).
13See Rehberg (1828, 2:158–60).
14‘Demjenigen, der täglich den Einsturz alter Staatsgebäude gesehen hat, den Fall von Königen und Monarchien, Zerstörung ererbter Ordnungen, die zugleich auf Recht und auf Gewalt gegründet und dadurch gesichert schienen: dem mag wohl Alles kleinlich scheinen, was vormals geschehen, um in dem Gewebe der alten Einrichtungen hie und da etwas zusammenzuhalten, Zerrissenes herzustellen, und zu verbessern … Doch hatten die Verhältnisse jener Zeit, für das ihr angehörige Geschlecht eben so viel Realität; dieser fühlte seine Bedürfnisse eben so lebhaft: das Bestreben sie zu befriedigen war denen, welche litten, eben so viel werth, als den Jetztlebenden Alles, was durch sie und für sie geschieht. Auch waren die Schwierigkeiten nur verschieden, nicht geringer. Das Bemühen dem Uebel abzuhelfen, darf sich daher wohl gleiches Verdienst zueignen’ (1828, 2:180).
15‘Das Gewerbe muß geehrt werden, wenn es blühen soll … Ist aber deswegen die Ehre des Adels mit der Ehre des Handwerks vereinbar? Der Erweber ist dem Staate nothwendiger als der bloße Verzehrer. Aber muß deswegen jener erwerben? und giebt es nicht Bestimmungen, die mit dem Geiste des Erwerbs durchaus unverträglich sind? Die ehrenvolleste Bestimmung, der Dienst des gemeinen Wesens erfordert eine Bildung des Geistes durch Kenntnisse, und eine Denkungsart, die dem Geiste des Erwerbs schlechterdings entgegengesetzt ist … Wenn der Adel vormals nicht lesen konnte, und statt der Namens-Unterschrift ein grobes Zeichen setzte, so konnte er demohneachtet durch Verstand, Gegenwart des Geistes, Muth, Unerschreckenheit, Selbstverleugnung und Aufopfrung für das gemeine Wesen, oder wenn auch für eigne Ehre, seine Ueberlegenheit über andre Stände behaupten’ (Rehberg 1803, 114 ff.). See also Rehberg (1793, 90), where the Abbé Sièyes’s Essai sur les privilèges (1788) is criticized for not contemplating the benefits the state can draw from the distinction of the estates, and especially the ways in which the nobility can be made useful.
16Cf. Vogel (1972, 144).
17‘so gut als das Original’ (Anon. 1794, 153).
18The latter term would translate back into English as ‘spirit of the higher estates/orders’. See Burke (1967, 134).
19‘Analogies of the past’ (Burke 1967, 66), cf. Burke (1989, 81).
20Cf. Elias (2000, 6 ff.).
21On standards and habits of translation in the eighteenth century, see Oz-Salzberger (2006), Kontler (2007, 2008).
22‘eine allgemeine und plötzliche Auflösung aller damals bestehenden Verhältnisse’ (Gentz 1801, 190).
23‘die auf dem Boden der Gesellschaft nothwendig erzeugt, und zur Reife gebracht werden mußten’ (Gentz 1801, 39 ff.).
24‘Allenthalben verfeinerte und verschönerte sich die gesellschaftliche Existenz; allenthalben nahmen mit der Cultur, und dem Wohlstande der Individuen, auch die Summe der Mittel und Fähigkeiten zu, aus welchen die Macht der Regierungen besteht. Die Staaten erhoben sich alle; aber alle ungefähr in gleicher Proporzion. Das Ganze wurde gebildeter, reicher und mächtiger; aber das Verhältnis zwischen den einzelnen Bestandtheilen blieb dasselbe’ (Gentz 1801, 42); cf. Gentz (1799–1800, 1:6–10).
25‘Nur da, wo der Reichthum schon zu einer großen Civilisazion geführt hat, wo das Bedürfniß eines höhern Genusses schon erwacht ist, wo besonders die Regierungen schon bis zu einen gewissen Grade von Aufklärung, von Humanität, von liberalen Denkart gestiegen sind, nur da können Geistes-Producte eine alltägliche Beschäftigung der Menschen, und eine von den mächtigsten Triebfedern des gesellschaftlichen Fortschritte werden’ (Gentz 1801, 65–66).
26On the relationship between theory and practice in Gentz’s preoccupation with the problem of the balance of power, see Kronenbitter (1994, 75 ff. and Ch. 12).
27‘[W]eit entfernt die Vervollkommnung der gesellschaftlichen und politischen Verhältnisse zu befördern, diese Revoluzion vielmehr den Fortgang derselben, in einem Augenblicke, wo er ganz vorzügliche Resultate versprach, unterbrochen und gehemmt hat …’ (Gentz, 1801, 63). It is also noteworthy that Gentz’s turns of phrase recall those of Adam Smith on the growing prosperity of the European lower classes, and of Joseph Addison on the dissemination of intellectual achievements to an ever-widening public – authorities congenial for Burke, too. See Gentz (1799–1800, 1:12, 15); cf. Smith (1981, bk.1:10); Addison (1965, no. 54).
28‘In eben der fruchtbaren Atmosphäre, die den edelsten Pflanzen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens, einen reichen gesegneten Nahrungsstoff, ein rasches üppiges Wachstum verlieh, entwickelten sich, wie in der physischen Welt, die Keime des Donners und der Verwüstung … Der Reichthum schaf die Ungenügsamkeit, die Freiheit den Uebermuth, die Aufklärung den Hang zu müßigen und ausschweifenden Spekulationen. Ein Geist der Unruhe, der Unzufriedenheit, und der Tadelsucht, wurde die herrschende Krankheit der Gesellschaft in allen großen Staaten von Europa.’ Gentz (1801, 68–69); cf. Gentz (1799, 1:12–23). This assessment forms an interesting parallel with the idea Brandes developed – in greater detail, but without a similarly profound or consistent historical analysis – about the ‘over-refinement’ and ‘excessive sociability’ that caused growing alienation and superficiality in human relationships in the eighteenth century, and led to the revolutionary disaster. See Brandes (1802, 1808, 1810), in which he blames these processes chiefly on women, the ‘managers’ of polite society.
29The themes mentioned were central both to Vattel and to important parts of the argument presented in Burke’s Thoughts on French Affairs (1791), Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791), Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793), and Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795–97). In the Appendix to the Three Memorials on French Affairs Burke commented at length on the standard work of the foremost eighteenth-century classic of the law of nations, Emeric de Vattel’s Le droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqué à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et souverains (1758), which Burke possessed in both French and English editions.
30‘Sobald aber mehrere Staaten neben einander bestehen sollen, kann dieses Recht nur unter der Beschränkung ausgeübt werden, daß jener das beschließe, was die Existenz der andern in Gefahr setzt.’ Gentz, Ueber den Ursprung und Charakter des Krieges gegen die französische Revoluzion, in Gentz (1837, 194).
31‘Es ist zu wenig gesagt, daß sie neben einander existiren: wenn sie bestehen sollen, müssen sie mit einander und durch einander bestehen’ (Gentz 1837, 195).
32‘die Umkerhung aller rechtlichen Verhältnisse zur Maxim.’
33‘Es eröfnet sich der Kreuzzug der allgemeinen Freiheit. Jeder Soldat wird ein Peter, ein Bernard … Der Soldat … wird in seinem Patrontasche nich bloß Pulver und Blei, sondern auch eine Anzahl kleiner Exemplare der Constitution führen, und damit die Revolution verbreiten’ (Gentz 1837, 231, 234). On the quasi-religious character of the Revolution and, by implication, the revolutionary wars, see also Gentz (1837, 2: esp. 25–29).
34In Thoughts on French Affairs (1791).
35‘Sie mußten dem Enthusiasmus der Revoluzion durch einen glücklich berechneten Einfluß an die Gemüther engegen wirken … Es war nicht genug, das revoluzionäre Prinzip in dieser oder jener isolirten Proclamation, in dieser oder jener ephemerischen Flugschrift, als ein Produkt des Wahnsinns und der Verrucktheit zurückgehen,und das Uebel unabläßig in seinen ersten Quellen verfolgen’ (Gentz 1837, 355–57, Ueber den Ursprung).
36‘ein wesentlicher und herrlicher Bestandtheil in dem allgemeinen politischen System von Europa’ (Gentz 1837, 271).
37In Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793).
38Cf. Vogel (1972, 97).