The Epochs of German History

J. Haller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000007800
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1930 this book discusses the critical moments in German history, with a view to surveying the development of the German nation and an attempt to understand the events of the 1920s with reference to significant chapters in Germany history from the past.

THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN HISTORY

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN REALM

FOR how long has Germany had a history? The true answer is—as long as there have been Germans or a German people. But how far back does that carry us? Very few people seem to ask themselves the question. In most accounts of German origins one is brought up against a gross error. The writers begin German history with the so-called Völkerwanderung (racial migrations), and go more or less fully into the story of Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and so on, without asking themselves what all this has to do with German history. So great even in science can the force of convention sometimes be, that the confusion of terms involved here goes entirely unnoticed: Germans and Germani (Teutons) are assumed to be one and the same. With what justification? The Scandinavian peoples unquestionably belong to the Teuton group, yet no one has dreamt of including in German history the history of the Scandinavian peoples. The English are also members of the Teuton group, whether they like it or not (and latterly they have not liked it at all, but that does not help them). To be honest one must even admit that the strongest of all representatives of Teutonism and those which have left the deepest mark in history are the English. Yet no one has yet dreamt of presenting English history or even that of the Anglo-Saxons as a section of German history. This is clearly illogical; if the Goths and the Lombards have a place in German history, why not the Danes and Anglo-Saxons?

The truth is that neither the one nor the other has any place in the story. Teutons and Germans are not the same. All Germans are Teutons but not all Teutons are Germans. Among the Teuton peoples the Germans form a special group, and—an important point for us—not originally an assembled group. They were not associated together from the first; quite on the contrary, they only came together and grew into a community in the course of time. In a word, the German people is not a natural group but the product of an historic process.

Not a little effort has been expended on the attempt to determine the degree of relationship between the various Teuton peoples, in the hope of establishing that some of them stood in a closer natural relationship to one another than the rest; especially has it been sought to show that the races out of whose union the German people proceeded had formed a naturally connected group, a special family. These efforts can only be dismissed as completely unsuccessful. There may have been closer and more distant degrees of relationship between the various stocks of the Teutons, but it is quite impossible to maintain that there was any natural relationship between the later German races as they appear in historic times—we are not concerned with prehistory. A very simple observation may make this clear to all. Anyone who has had the opportunity to compare the people of Hanover, Hamburg, or Bremen, with English people is aware that they are closely akin to them, extraordinarily similar in many respects, almost indistinguishable. Even Englishmen will admit it. I doubt if the same degree of kinship could be discovered from observations of appearance and manner of speech between men of Hamburg and Upper Swabia or of Oldenburg and Upper Bavaria. We may therefore lay it down that the German stocks did not coalesce into the German people because they were naturally akin but because they were brought together by the circumstances of their existence, that is by history.

Everyone knows which are the German stocks: they are with us still, in the flesh and very plainly recognizable: Franks, Swabians, Bavarians, Thuringians,Saxons,Frisians. Their common destinies and deeds are the substance of German history. Consequently, German history can only be regarded as beginning with the union of the six races into a single whole. This occurred in a relatively late period, and not all at once. The union was the work of one race, the Frankish. Frankish kings brought the other peoples successively under their domination. Chlodwig and his sons conquered the Swabians—then still called Alemanni—the Thuringians, and the Bavarians in the first half of the sixth century. That was the first stage. In the seventh century there was actually a reversion to the earlier conditions, the subjected peoples regaining their independence. Not until the eighth century did the new Frankish dynasty succeed in completing the interrupted task. Charles Martel subdued the Swabians, Thuringians, and Frisians; Charlemagne the Bavarians (788), and finally, after thirty years of struggle, the Saxons. In 804 the process of unification was completed.

Even in the ninth century, however, it is too early to speak of German history. The German stocks were united under a single overlordship, and thus shared a common fate, but they did not yet form a separate unit, they were only parts of the Frankish world dominion, which embraced also Burgundians, Goths, Lombards, and especially very large numbers of Romans. German history can thus only begin from the time when the united German stocks freed themselves from the Frankish empire and formed a separate unit.

This again, as everyone knows, only happened gradually. The repeated partitioning of their territories which the Frankish kings carried out from 840 onwards gradually liberated one part after another, so that first one territory, then a second, and then a third broke away from the empire and began an independent existence. The death or deposition of a ruler would be followed by a break with the Carolingian dynasty and the adoption of a territorial lord as an independent ruler. The last of all to do this were the German tribes who in 911, after the death of Louis the Child, refused to bow to the West Frankish—one might say French—Carolingian monarchy, and made Duke Conrad their king. This finally snapped the long slackened bond which had until then united the German peoples to the Empire. Germany had become a separate realm. Conrad I. is thus the first of the German kings, and one may count the first epoch in German history as beginning with the year 911—the year, if one asks for a definite figure (a method which, indeed, is bound to have something superficial about it), of the coming into existence of the German state.

No one at the time had any clear realization of the event. It was for a long time the general belief that this new German state was a Frankish state. For another century official language still spoke of a regnum Francorum, a kingdom of the Franks, and in constitutional theory this form was maintained right down to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At first the citizens of the new separate kingdom were entirely without a name for it. In the course of the ninth century men began to talk of a regnum theutonicum, referring to the eastern half of the kingdom. But this never became an official title, and, indeed, the word theutonicum, a pedantic refinement of theotiscum, the old German thiutisk, means no more than “indigenous,” that is, non-Roman, the part of the kingdom which spoke the native tongue and not Latin. The name lasted a very long time, until the generally accepted name of the Deutsches Reich could be formed from it; this name, moreover, as not everyone realizes, only acquired official and constitutional validity in 1870. The old Reich, formed in 911 and dissolved in 1806, never bore this name, but later, of course, took the title of a Roman Empire.

For nearly two hundred years after it came into existence the young German empire was an unnamed realm—a fact that gives to think. Its citizens and contemporaries, the people of 911 to about 1100, had no word by which to describe the new kingdom, no word to apply in common to its six peoples. We shall return to this point shortly. But first we must guard against an error which might creep in.

It might be very tempting to assume that it was the difference of language and popular tradition which had broken up the Frankish empire, with its greatly diversified national structure. Germans on the one side, it might be assumed, Romans and French on the other, were unable to go on living together under a single roof. So the result might be supposed to have come, following present-day ideas. The common German character of the six branches of the race would then have shown itself at least negatively, in the rejection of what all alike regarded as alien, and some such influence as a quite primitive, not even actually realized racial or national feeling could be assumed to have been operative in the first emergence of the German Reich.

But it was not so. It is demonstrable that differences of race or “nationality”—if we choose to apply this modern word to this early period—played no part in the disintegration of the Frankish empire. This is shown by various considerations into which it is not necessary to enter here. Suffice it to point to the fact which is decisive in itself, that the frontier line between the eastern and western, the German and French territories of the Frankish empire entirely ignored all questions of the speech, race or nationality of the population. The boundary line adhered to was drawn in 843 in order to mark off the territories ruled by the sons of Louis the Pious: it ran more or less parallel to the Scheldt, Meuse, Argonne and Saône and brought Romance speaking peoples in Lotharingia and. Burgundy into the German realm and the Frankish-speaking Flemings into the French. Still more unmistakable evidence is the fact that in 911, when the Germans seceded from the Carolingians, the population of the left bank of the Rhine, the so-called Lotharingia, did not join in the movement. These Lotharingians were largely Franks—Trier, Cologne, Aachen had, of course, long been Frankish capitals—and these Franks of the left bank, though they were at least as undeniably German as the Swabians and Bavarians, had not the slightest objection to association with the French under a common ruler They remained loyal to the hereditary line and only later joined the German kingdom, in 925, when the Carolingians were deposed and driven out of France also.

Here we have the most tangible proof that, so far as Germany is concerned, differences of nationality can have had no part in the break-up of the empire. Personal, dynastic considerations, enmities between ruling families, local vested interests of the dominant aristocracy, a growing tendency, after so long a succession of “partitions,” to pay more attention to matters closer home and less to the general affairs of the state, or on the other side devotion to the royal house and loyalty to traditions with a long past—these were the real influences at work in the final separation between east and west and the forming of a German realm.

We seem, therefore, to arrive at the very paradoxical fact—which, for all that, is not in the least startling to those who can see with the historic eye and do not carry modern preconceptions into the past—that the German Reich was brought into existence mainly through external influences, almost one might say chance events, as an incidental product of the conquests and partitions of the Frankish Empire. The German races were brought together by no inner necessity, no want felt by themselves, but by the external pressure of conquest and subjection. And they were equally free from any impulse to break away from their association with aliens. Here again the determining elements were external—it was the hereditary system of the royal house, which tended to partition, and the weakness of its representatives that loosened the bonds of union and finally snapped them.

Nor was there yet any impulse towards close association; far from it—the facts speak plainly in the opposite sense. Scarcely had the German Reich come into existence when it was on the point of dissolving into its component parts, its racial groups.

We must picture the races as very different in speech, customs, and character. The differences remain to this day very considerable; and they will certainly not have been less originally—apart from speech, for the dialectical differences have increased with the passage of time. In customs and character the races of old even had their thoroughly realized and recognized peculiarities: each of them had its own law, differing sometimes markedly from the laws of the others. Account was also taken where needed of differences in other respects: in the king’s army they fought in separate groups, Saxons, Franks, and so on The territories of the various races were themselves actually described as kingdoms, regna.

Under the later Carolingians these racial “kingdoms” grew fast in independence and importance. Certain great lords, helped by various external circumstances, came to their head, strong and respected leaders who took the title of Duke, a title implying nothing less than full vice-royalty. The dukes of Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony—the Saxon had brought the Thuringian under his dominion—stood over against the real king as kings uncrowned. They claimed unrestricted authority in ruling their own stock, they conducted their own foreign policy, and the proudest of them, the Bavarian, even called himself duke “by the grace of God,” which was nothing less than a claim to sovereignty.

The test had to come which would show which of the two, duke or king, would in the long run be the stronger. Conrad I. failed to establish his authority. All .his efforts came to nought, although he enjoyed the support of the Church. King and bishops united were not strong enough to break the independence of the dukes. At Conrad’s death (918) it looked as if the realm were already in dissolution. His successor, Henry I, formerly Duke of Saxony, was elevated to the throne by Saxony and Franconia alone. Only gradually did he gain recognition in Swabia and Bavaria, and even then only by capitulating before his rivals. He allowed the authority of the dukes to continue undiminished, thus abandoning all claim to the direct exercise of sovereign rule and contenting himself with simple overlordship, temporal and spiritual. Thus he was king in reality only in north Germany, and no more than a sort of titular king in the south. Only the big successes which he won abroad added something to his power in the course of time, through his increased prestige, and enabled him to leave to his son, Otto I, who succeeded him in 936, the inheritance of a recognition of his supremacy throughout the realm as a settled fact challenged by no one.

But the racial dukedoms were still there, as strong as ever. It was out of the question for Otto I to think of attempting to remove the dukes, even when they openly rose against him. He contented himself with making use of them by bringing them into close relationship with the royal house. Through an adroit policy of royal marriages he procured the dukedom of Bavaria for his brother, of Swabia for his son, and of Lotharingia for his son-in-law. Even this did not serve him: his son and son-in-law rose against him in 953–4 and were within very little of deposing him. Even after this experience the king made no attempt to suppress the dangerous institution of vice-royalty in the various parts of the realm. He has often been blamed for this, but one can scarcely say with justice. If a German king, even in the hour of victory, contented himself with the removal of the guilty duke and allowed the dukedom to continue, one must probably attribute his action to the pressure of necessity. It must have been impossible to rule the Germany of that period without the dukes, or Otto I would have been only too glad to do so.

This leads us to an observation of wide application: the sense of close solidarity, the sense of the state or the nation, was absent or existed only in embryo. The tribes were older than the nation, the dukedom and the duke more firmly established than the realm and the king. The former were the primordial element, the latter the new element which had still to be incorporated. German history begins under the aegis of particularism.

It was a different sort of particularism from to-day’s; it was based entirely on racial individuality, whereas present-day particularism has little to do with racial feeling and much more to do with regional dynastic traditions. But both have the common element of the exaltation of the particular at the expense of the general. Here we have to deal with a fundamental trait in the nature of the German people, which has to be reckoned with whether one likes it or not.

Beyond question the kingdom could neither have come into being nor continued in being under such circumstances had not a factor been present which worked against the particularism of the tribal dukes. This was the Church.

The Church in the earliest German nation was a state church, as it had been in the Frankish Empire. It was used to serving the king with its own forces, placing itself at the head of them even if it was not absolute master of them. It felt itself to be in alliance with the ruler, and found this association in harmony with its interests: it enabled it to exercise mastery over the people while serving the king. It stood, therefore, everywhere in opposition to the transition to a tribal state and to subordination to a duke. Bishops and abbots were determined to be the king’s bishops, national bishops, abbots of the realm, and to allow no one to intervene between themselves and the supreme authority. Their position, their rank, their influence, their independence would have suffered by the change, and they would also certainly have suffered material loss. For large parts of their property lay outside the racial areas, since the piety of founders was unconfined within the racial boundaries. Thus bishops and abbots were the natural representatives of the idea of the realm and of unification.

They were thoroughly imbued with political ways of thinking, for such education as existed was mainly to be found in their ranks. They were able to apprehend the idea of the state and to be guided by it in their policy. Thus everything, interests and ideals alike, tended to bring them over to the king’s side in the struggle between kingdom and dukedom; and, conversely, the king had to rely on their support if he was to win through at all. All that the king could expect from the layman was loyalty to his person; from the prelates he could count on more—on a belief in the idea of the realm. He was able especially to rely on them since he had the opportunity of choosing them individually for their qualities, their ability, their known views, and their character. Secular titles and offices were more or less hereditary; a bishop’s see or a great abbey was in the king’s gift whenever it fell vacant, the chosen successor received his office from the king’s own hands, and often there was not even an election, but a direct appointment by the king. Thus there was the most natural of ties between throne and altar in the old German state.

The tie stood the test of time. The first big success achieved by Otto I was in the wresting from the dukes, in the first years of his rule, of the disposal of all the churches of the realm, and securing it in his own hands. From that time onward the church was the main support of the kingdom. It was the bishops who formed the most effective counterweight to the particularism of the ducal powers. In 953 the dukes conspired to overthrow Otto; the bishops ranged themselves almost without exception on the king’s side, and it was they whom he had to thank for his preservation. The bond was finally riveted by this event; the bishops became once for all the adherents of the realm.

The Church brought to the service of king and country the great possessions in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I The Origin of the German Realm
• Chapter II The External Tasks of the Realm
• Chapter III The Struggle with the Church, and the Dissolution of the Old Empire
• Chapter IV The Territorial States
• Chapter V The Conquest of the North-East
• Chapter VI The Territorial States in the Fifteenth Century. The Rise of the Habsburgs
• Chapter VII The Reformation
• Chapter VIII The Thirty Years’ War
• Chapter IX The Louis XIV Era
• Chapter X Prussia in Triumph and in Eclipse
• Chapter XI The Growth of National Self-Consciousness
• Chapter XII Prussia’s Share in the Struggle for Unity
• Index