19 c Europe, Part 1, session 2; The Eastern Powers: Absolutism and its Limitations

Nineteenth Century Europe
PART 1
session 2
THE EASTERN POWERS: ABSOLUTISM
AND ITS LIMITATIONS

Major Themes of This Session
Absolutism and Its Apologists
The Russian Empire to 1848
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
LAST YEARS OF ALEXANDER I
THE DECEMBRIST REVOLT
REPRESSION UNDER NICHOLAS I
DOMESTIC POLICY AND TERRITORIAL
GROWTH
Prussia to 1848
THE RETURN TO REACTION
The Austrian Empire to 1848
THE COURSE OF DOMESTIC POLICY
DEVELOPMENTS IN HUNGARY BEFORE 1848
THE AUSTRIAN MISSION
Germany to 1848
THE GERMAN STATES AND THE
CONFEDERATION
LIBERALISM AND NATIONALISM IN
GERMANY
Religion and the Arts under
Absolutism
THRONE AND ALTAR
LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

This session offers an excellent historical description of the political philosophy of reaction.
We will learn how the governments of Central and Eastern Europe developed secret police to
combat the forces of modernity.
After examining the two largest German states, the Austrian empire and the Prussian monarchy,
Craig will describe “the Germanies,” the other thirty-six states of the German Confederation.
Finally, the occasionally tense relationship between autocracy and religion and the frequently
tense relationship between autocracy and the arts will be considered.
jbp

Absolutism and Its Apologists
Metternich Euro
2003

“When the exigencies of foreign policy required it, the members of the Holy Alliance
[Russia,• Prussia, and Austria] could compromise with liberalism and revolution, at least
to the extent of cooperating with the liberal powers, Britain and France, and even
accepting revolutionary faits accomplis, as in the case of Belgian independence. But
within their own national boundaries, or in areas that they effectively controlled, they
tolerated no compromise of any kind. The domestic policies of the Russian and Austrian
empires and the kingdom of Prussia were marked by inflexible opposition to revolution;
and a good part of the energies of their administrations was devoted to hunting down real
or suspected revolutionaries and imprisoning, exiling, or executing them. It was in the
eastern empires, for example, that secret police systems attained their fullest development
and their greatest influence, with chiefs who stood at the elbows of their sovereigns and
participated in the most intimate councils of state.
“But fear of revolution went further than persecution of rebels and conspirators. It
also involved reverence of existing institutions simply because they existed and
reprobation of novelty simply because it was new.…”
Gordon A. Craig, Europe Since 1815, Third Edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1971. p. 36.

“…It involved opposition to change because change subverted the established order, to
speculation because it led to change, and to learning because it led to speculation. ‘Too
much learning kills character,’ wrote the reactionary Prussian squire Marwitz. It was
responsible for
“Here is the true voice of reaction. Gone were the days when monarchs patronized
scholars and a Prussian king [Frederick the Great] was proud to be the friend of so
completely subversive a writer as Voltaire. To stand in the good graces of the courts and
ruling classes of the eastern empires, a writer had to compose elaborate justifications of
what he saw around him or fulsome panegyrics of the past.
“The modern reader will find little stimulation in the works of the men who wrote
under these conditions, with the possible exception of those of Joseph de Maistre.…”
Craig, op. cit., pp. 36-37.
the war of the have-nots against property, of industry against agriculture, of the mobile
against stability, of crass materialism against God’s established order, of [illusory] gain
against right, of the present against the past and the future, of the individual against the
family, of speculators and counting-desks against ﬁelds and trades, of science and puffed-
up talent against virtue and honorable character.

Joseph de Maistre
(1753-1821)
“ ...a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an
intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous
trinity composed of Pope, King and
Hangman…”

“…This talented writer was a Savoyard who served for fourteen years as a Sardinian
envoy to the court of St. Petersburg. His essays bear the hallmark of the romantic school
in their repudiation of reason, their respect for tradition, and their veneration of
established religion. But their most arresting characteristic is the passion that animates
them, as de Maistre pours vituperation on the presumption of men who seek to lay
impious hands on a civil order that he believes to have been sanctioned by God. To de
Maistre, opposition to constituted authority was not merely a political crime; it was an act
of blasphemy. The high incidence of civil disobedience convinced him that man was too
wicked for freedom and absolutism was the only means of holding sinful arrogance in
check. He did not hesitate to argue that the public executioner should be honored as the
protector of social order and that war should be accepted as a divine institution designed
to purge and punish the unregenerate.…”
op. cit., p. 37.

to purge and punish the unregenerate.
“In his own time de Maistre was probably admired less than…”
op. cit., p. 37.

to purge and punish the unregenerate.
“In his own time de Maistre was probably admired less than the Swiss theorist Karl
Ludwig von Haller (1768-1854),• whose Restoration of Political Science became a kind
of political bible in the German courts….”
op. cit., p. 37.

“…This dreary treatise had none the brilliance or fire that one finds in de Maistre, a fact
that probably enhanced its merit in the eyes of its readers. It expressed the political ideas
of the eastern courts perfectly by holding up as an ideal a state established on the basis of
romantic feudalism and Christian piety, with an absolute king as God’s ruling over
subjects who had no rights except those he gave them of his own free will, a state,
moreover, in which nothing new ever happened and nothing old was ever changed.
Haller’s perfect society, in short, was authoritarian and completely immobile; and
this was the goal of the ruling classes of the eastern empires.• But, in the long run, quieta
non movere [not to disturb what is settled, Lat.—a Roman legal principle] is not a very
practical principle of politics. Censorship, thought control, and police persecution cannot
successfully destroy all new ideas; and in the period from 1815 to 1848, there were lots
of new ideas and new forces at work beneath the surface in Russia, Prussia, and Austria.”
Ibid.

The Land and the People

“Thanks to the persistent policy of territorial expansion followed by every tsar since
the days of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian empire in 1815 stretched from Poland,
Courland, and Finland in the west to Siberia and the banks of the Amur in the Far East,
and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the shores of the Black, Caspian, and Aral seas
in the south. Even if Finland, annexed after the Russo-Swedish war of 1808-1809, and
the kingdom of Poland, as defined at Vienna in 1815, were excluded, this was a vast and
potentially powerful realm. Its population, which had remained relatively stable in the
first half of the eighteenth century, had begun to grow rapidly thereafter. In 1725, it had
stood at about fourteen million; at the turn of the nineteenth century, it had increased to
forty million; on the eve of the 1848 revolutions, it was close to seventy million.
“Of this population by far the greatest number lived off the land. As late as the
middle of the nineteenth century, only 3,500,000 persons were town dwellers. Thus, the
Russian economy was primarily agricultural. A thriving export trade was conducted
through the Baltic ports, the principal exports being grain, fats, flax, hemp, and furs, and
—later in the century—wool and timber; but its scale was not large and, like the import
trade, it was carried almost exclusively in foreign bottoms. Moreover, trade was
discouraged by the high protective tariffs maintained by the government throughout this
whole period.…”
op. cit., pp. 37-38.

“…As for industry, according to official statistics, there were 5261 manufacturing
enterprises in 1825, with a total of 210,600 workers; but machinery was virtually
unknown even in the most important firms, those manufacturing cotton, linen, and
woolen cloth; and a large part of what was called industrial production in the official
figures went on not in factories but in the homes of workers who were also engaged in
agriculture.
“The great majority of the population, then, was engaged in agriculture and lived on
the land; and this majority was divided into two classes, the landholding nobility and the
mass of serfs who worked their estates.
“The institution of serfdom dates from the middle of the sixteenth century. Before that
time the peasants were freed men with the right of transferring their labor from one
proprietor to another whenever they wished. After that time, the government began to
limit their freedom of movement; and by the seventeenth century, they were permanently
bound to the lords whose lands they occupied. Once this step had been taken, it was not
long before they lost other freedoms; serfdom began to be almost indistinguishable from
slavery. By the eighteenth century the landholders had received the right to punish their
serfs as they saw fit, to exile them to Siberia, even to sell them (although laws at the
beginning of the nineteenth century placed limitations on this last right, in order to
prevent the division of families by sale).”
op. cit., p. 38.

“Serfdom hung like a dead weight over Russian society in the first half of the
nineteenth century, stifling its vital energies. If the institution was the mainstay of
Russian agriculture, it was also themes important factor in keeping agriculture in a
chronic state of inefficiency, for this too plentiful supply of manual labor discouraged
efforts to find the capital that might have enabled landowners to buy machinery and
introduce scientific farming methods. At the same time, the execrable conditions in which
many serfs had to live and the oppressive treatment they received led to sporadic and
bloody risings; between 1825 and 1854 there were hundreds of agrarian revolts, all of
them violent, and some of them on such a scale that considerable force had to be exerted
to suppress them. Fear of a large-scale rising was never far from the minds of the ruling
classes of Russia, but only the most enlightened believed that the way to banish this
shadow was to emancipate the serfs. The nobility felt that their livelihood depended on
serfdom; the government had come to rely on the institution for recruits for the army and
for labor for those industries, like the metallurgical and clothing industries, in which, for
military reasons, it had an interest. Emancipation seeming impossible, repression
appeared to be the only safeguard against revolt; and thus the continued existence of
serfdom helped fasten a brutal authoritarianism on the country.”
op. cit., pp. 38-39.

“The political and social pyramids were identical in Russia. At the apex stood the tsar,
his ministers, and his military staff, and, immediately below them, the nobility, which
comprised the aristocratic landholders on their estates and all those who had been enabled
for military or civil service. This was the ruling class. It was often divided within itself,
for in a country whose history had been marked by frequent palace revolutions there was
inevitably tension between the tsar and the great nobles, and the landed nobility was
jealous of its traditional privileges and fearful lest they be curtailed. But tsar and nobility
generally presented a common front against the classes below them and against dissident
aristocrats and intellectuals who wanted to change the existing order.
“At the bottom of the triangle was the great mass of the peasantry; and between it and
the ruling class was the bourgeoisie, still hardly numerous to warrant attention..”
op. cit., pp. 39-40.

The Last Years of Alexander I

“When Alexander I came to the throne in 1801, there had been some expectation that
he would institute liberal political and social changes.These hopes were disappointed.
Alexander talked a good deal about reform; he surrounded himself with enlightened
advisors; and, in his first years, he actually promulgated laws that seemed to herald the
coming of a new age. But, in most cases, nothing came of these gestures. The
constitutional reforms of 1801 and 1809, which were supposed to temper tsarist
absolutism, were wholly ineffective; the law of February 1803, which provided for the
emancipation of serfs by voluntary agreement with their masters, resulted in the
liberation of only 37,000 serfs in the next twenty years; the ambitious educational statute
of 1803 broke down because of lack of funds and local interest.
“It is of course true true that the exertions required by the wars against France made it
difficult for Alexander to concentrate on internal policy; but this only a partial
explanation. More important was his volatile nature, which caused him to go haring off
after new enthusiasms before his old ones had assumed tangible form. By 1815 he was so
distracted by his international schemes and his plans for Poland that he had little time for
thoughts of domestic reforms.…”
op. cit., pp. 39-40.

Count Alexey
Andreyevich Arakcheyev
(1769-1834)
general, War Minister
“That which ceases to grow
begins to rot.”
military settlements
repression

“…In the years that followed, his concern over the rising tide of revolution in Western
Europe made him drift away from the muddled liberalism of his youth. He never broke
with it completely—as late as 1820 he was playing again with ideas of constitutional
reform—but in general the governmental methods of his last years showed an increasing
degree of the kind of arbitrariness he had deprecated earlier. His closest advisers were
reactionaries.• Arakcheyev, the chairman of the department of military affairs in the State
Council, a brutal, cynical, dissolute man, whose reprisals against his own serfs at Gruzino
when they rebelled and murdered his mistress shocked all Russia, encouraged him to
break all contact with progressive circles; and the Archimandrite Photius, a fanatical
cleric who was one of Arakcheyev’s protégés, overcame Alexander’s tendency to
religious mysticism and brought him back to a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy.
“In short, before he fell sick of fever and died at Taganrog in December 1825,
Alexander was reverting rapidly to the absolutism of his predecessors. This tendency was
to be carried further by the tsar who now came to the throne. ”
op. cit., p. 40.

The Decembrist Revolt

“Alexander’s presumptive successor was his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine,…”
op. cit., pp. 40-41.

“Alexander’s presumptive successor was his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, but
it had been decided with his permission that he should be passed over and the crown
given to the younger brother Nicholas….”
op. cit., pp. 40-41.

given to the younger brother Nicholas. Alexander’s sudden death, however, left the
question of succession in confusion, for each of the brothers protested that the other
should be tsar. Before the situation had been clarified and Nicholas persuaded to take
office, the pathetic incident known as the Decembrist revolt took place….”
op. cit., pp. 40-41.

given to the younger brother Nicholas. Alexander’s sudden death, however, left the
question of succession in confusion, for each of the brothers protested that the other
should be tsar. Before the situation had been clarified and Nicholas persuaded to take
office, the pathetic incident known as the Decembrist revolt took place.•
“The leaders of this unhappy rising were officers of noble birth, some of them related
to the most powerful families in Russia. Many of them had been members of the army
that had occupied France after Waterloo and had acquired from the experience political
and social ideas somewhat more enlightened than they found in their own country. They
were young, romantic, idealistic, and they hated the regime they found when they
returned home: the stagnant and corrupt administrative system, the censorship of opinion,
the rigid control of the university, the abuses of serfdom, and , worst of all, Arakcheyev’s
‘military colonies,’ instituted after 1815, in which soldiers and their families were ordered
to combine soldiering with agricultural labor—men, women, and children wearing
uniform and being subject to brutal discipline. ‘Is it for this that we liberated Europe?’
one of them wrote later. ‘We have bought with our blood the highest place among
nations, and at home we are humiliated.’ ”
op. cit., pp. 40-41.

“As early as 1816, officers were forming conspiratorial groups. After 1820, there were
three principal societies devoted to a change in existing conditions: the Society of the
North, led by Prince Trubetskoi and the poet Ryleev; the Southern Society, led by Serge
Murav’ev-Apostol, Bestuzhev-Riumin, and Colonel Paul Pestel; and a smaller group
known as the United Slavs. Among these groups there was little coordination; within any
one of them there was agreement only on the idea that things must be changed. Some of
the members were moved more by religious than by political motives; only Pestel had
taken the trouble to draw up a detailed program. Pestel was a radical republican who
knew what he wanted; most of the others had no clear idea of either their immediate or
their ultimate objectives.…”
op. cit., p. 41.

“As early as 1816, officers were forming conspiratorial groups. After 1820, there were
three principal societies devoted to a change in existing conditions: the Society of the
North, led by Prince Trubetskoi and the poet Ryleev; the Southern Society, led by Serge
Murav’ev-Apostol, Bestuzhev-Riumin, and Colonel Paul Pestel; and a smaller group
known as the United Slavs. Among these groups there was little coordination; within any
one of them there was agreement only on the idea that things must be changed. Some of
the members were moved more by religious than by political motives; only Pestel had
taken the trouble to draw up a detailed program. Pestel was a radical republican who
knew what he wanted; most of the others had no clear idea of either their immediate or
their ultimate objectives.
“Nevertheless, when the succession crisis came, they began feverishly to plan an
insurrection, and when the troops were summoned to take the oath of loyalty to the new
emperor, the leaders of the Northern Society spread the word among the garrisons of St.
Petersburg that Nicholas was a usurper and raised the cry, ‘Long live Constantine! Long
live the Constitution!’…”
op. cit., p. 41.

“…Some of the men doubtless believed that [‘Constitution’ was the name of
Constantine’s wife (Russian has no article, so the cheer was ‘Da zdrastvuyet Konstantine!
Da zdrastvuyet Konstitutseya!’)]; others, the fabricated story that Nicholas had
suppressed a decree of Alexander’s shortening the term of service. In any case, on
December 14, 1825, three thousand troops, including part of the Moscow Regiment, the
Life Guards, and the Marines, mutinied and marched to the Senate Square.
“It was at this point that the lack planning made itself felt. For four hours the troops
stood shivering in the square, while the leaders harangued them and each other—and did
nothing.…”
op. cit., pp. 41-42.

nothing. As darkness fell, government cavalry charged the rebel lines and were thrown
back. Four field pieces were then brought into the square and fired point-blank at the
mutineers. After the third volley they fled,…”
op. cit., pp. 41-42.

mutineers. After the third volley they fled,• and the revolt in the capital was over.
“The Southern Society had not moved on the 14th, perhaps because Pestel and others
had been arrested by General Diebitch the day before.…”
op. cit., pp. 41-42.

mutineers. After the third volley they fled,• and the revolt in the capital was over.
“The Southern Society had not moved on the 14th, perhaps because Pestel and others
had been arrested by General Diebitch the day before. But on December 30, Murav’ev-
Apostol and Bestuzhev incited troops in the Chernigov Regiment to mutiny and—after a
ceremony in which they solemnly proclaimed Jesus Christ King of the Universe—
advanced on Kiev….”
op. cit., pp. 41-42.

“…This ‘Christian army,’ however, was defeated in its first brush with government troops
and its officers taken.
“After the collapse, most of the leaders of the Decembrist revolt surrendered; and, in
the investigation that followed, they showed an enthusiasm about telling all that reminds
one of Russian trials in more recent [Stalinist] years. Only Pestel was immune to this
epidemic of repentance. The confessions were not answered with clemency. Although the
death penalty had been abolished by Empress Elizabeth in the middle of the eighteenth
century, Nicholas sentenced five of the ring-leaders—Pestel, Ryleev, Murav’ev,
Bestuzhev, and Kakhovsky—to death by hanging and handed over a hundred others to
penal servitude and exile in Siberia.1
“The Decembrist revolt created a legend that inspired future revolutionaries.
Immediately, however, it encouraged a deepening of government repression.
op. cit., pp. 41-42.
_______
1 The executions are to be explained by the gravity of the offense. For the rest of his reign Nicholas took
pride in the fact that the death penalty did not exist in Russia. This did not prevent him from sentencing
soldiers, as he did in one case in 1827, to run the gauntlet four times through a thousand men, which meant
almost certain death.

Repression under Nicholas I

“Until his accession to the throne Nicholas I had commanded a brigade of Guards and,
according to one critic, was hated by them because of ‘his cold cruelty, his petty
fussiness, and his vindictiveness.’ He was the kind of soldier who put a higher valuation
on discipline and drill than on initiative; and, as emperor, he soon showed that his ideal
was a disciplined state in which all subjects recognized that their first duty was to obey
authority. Like Metternich, Nicholas believed that change was reprehensible in itself;
therefore he opposed the reform even of institutions which he personally regarded as evil,
like serfdom. He feared the masses; he feared the Russian nobility (so much, indeed, that
he preferred to rely on German administrators); he feared intellectuals. His anxieties were
constantly heightened—by the Decembrist revolt, by the revolutions in Western Europe,
and in 1831 by the rising in his own kingdom of Poland—and they gradually narrowed
his view and encouraged the dictatorial strain in his character.
“The symbol of Nicholas’ reign is the secret police—the notorious Third Section of
the Imperial Chancery which was directed from 1826 until 1844, by Count Benckendorff,
who, in the words of Alexander Herzen,… ”
op. cit., pp. 42-43.

who, in the words of Alexander Herzen,
op. cit., pp. 42-43.

who, in the words of Alexander Herzen, stood ‘outside the law and above the law, having
a right to meddle in everything.’… ”
op. cit., pp. 42-43.

Count Alexander
von Benckendorff
(1783-1844)
warned of the Decembrists,
created the secret police called
the Third Section
(Третье Урок)

“…The Third Section operated through a uniformed gendarmerie and a vast network of
secret agents of every walk of life; its aim was to prevent another 14 of December; its
accomplishment was to make a whole generation live in fear of informers and arbitrary
police procedure. The intelligentsia of writers, journalists, and teachers were the
principal objects of scrutiny, as they were also the targets of government decrees that
forbade travel abroad without permission, prohibited the entry of subversive literature or
dangerous radicals, and censored [sic] newspapers, journals, and university lectures.
“The effects of all this were bitterly described by Alexander Herzen, himself an
intellectual who suffered five years detention at Perm because of his political views and
who finally, in 1848, succeeded in escaping to London. Herzen accused Nicholas of ‘the
moral destruction of a generation’ and the ‘spiritual depraving’ of Russian youth, of
frustrating their best impulses and made them ‘sick, deranged…inoculated with a sort of
spiritlessness, a sense of impotence, of fatigue before beginning work.’ Herzen wrote this
in his private diary and did not have to pay for it.…”
op. cit., p. 43.

“… It was different in the case of Peter Chaadayev, whose reflections on the existing
system in the first of his Philosophical Letters were published in the Moscow monthly
Teleskop in 1836. Chaadayev wrote:
Nicholas’ reaction was swift and brutal. He ordered the philosopher to be declared insane
and forbidden to write anything else.”
Ibid.
The experience of time is nothing to us; the ages and the generations have passed without any
profit for us. To look at us one might say that the general law of humanity had been repealed.
Alone in the world, we have given nothing to it and have taught it nothing; we have not given a
single idea to the total of human intelligence; we have contributed nothing to the progress of the
human spirit, and everything that has come to us from that progress we have disfigured. We have
an indefinable something in our blood that repulses all true progress….Russia’s past is empty, her
present insufferable, and there is no future at all, a terrible lesson given to the nations of the
plight to which a people can be brought by isolation and slavery.

Domestic Policy and Territorial Growth

“Given Nicholas’ suspicion of ideas and those who possessed them, it is
understandable that his reign was barren of domestic reforms. Indeed, the only notable
innovations before 1848 were the successful codification of Russian laws, completed
under the supervision of Speransky in 1833,…”
op. cit., p. 44.

“Given Nicholas’ suspicion of ideas and those who possessed them, it is
understandable that his reign was barren of domestic reforms. Indeed, the only notable
innovations before 1848 were the successful codification of Russian laws, completed
under the supervision of Speransky in 1833, and the stabilization of the currency and the
elimination of depreciated paper money by the finance minister Kankrin, a capable civil
servant of Hessian extraction. Both reforms were long overdue; unfortunately, Kankrin’s
achievement was of temporary duration, for, after his retirement in 1844, his successors
departed from his cautious policies and encouraged inflation and depreciation by issuing
new money whenever they suffered financial embarrassment.
“In other areas there was no sign of reform or improvement. The only change in
governmental structure was a steady growth of the executive department (His Majesty’s
Own Chancery), which, as Nicholas’ autocratic tendencies developed, continually
absorbed new functions and, by doing so, made the whole government top heavy. With
respect to serfdom, the tsar deferred to the wishes of the great landowners and studiously
avoided anything that resembled reform. In education—another field where improvement
was badly needed—conditions worsened, if anything, as a result of the policies of Count
S. S. Uvarov, minister of education from 1833 to 1849….”
op. cit., p. 44.

Sergei Sergeivich
Uvarov
(1765-1855)
Education Minister
(1833-1849)
ПРАВОСЛАВИЕ (pravoslavieye)
САМОДЕРЖАВИЕ (samoderzhavieye)
НАРОДНОСТЬ (narodnost)
Orthodoxy
Autocracy
Nationality
Golike, Vasily. Portrait of Count Sergey Uvarov (1833)

“…Uvarov believed that Russia’s educational system must be based on the principles of
‘orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality’—in other words, on piety, respect for the tsar, and
patriotism—and that it should serve to freeze the existing social system by discouraging
members of the lower classes from seeking higher education and, in the case of those
who refused to be discouraged, by making it impossible for them to acquire it. He was so
intent on these objectives that he paid rather too little attention to educational standards,
which, especially in the secondary schools, declined sharply.•
If Nicholas’ domestic accomplishments were unimpressive, he did achieve success
in his foreign policy. Russia’s international prestige was enhanced by the assistance given
to the Greeks, although this was somewhat dimmed by the excesses resorted to in Poland
and by Nicholas’ role in the two Egyptian crises of the 1830s. Russia’s territorial gains
under Nicholas were sufficiently great to indicate that the empire was not yet a sated
power. A shortsighted attack on Russia by Persian troops in 1826 led to a brief campaign
that left the northern provinces of Nakhichevan and Erivan in northern Persia in Russian
hands along with naval rights on the Caspian Sea; and, as we have already seen, the war
against Turkey in 1827 brought more of the Caucasus and the Black Sea coast into
Russia’s possession, while strengthening its position in Rumania. Attempts to extend
Russian influence in Afghanistan were less successful, and an expedition against Khiva in
1839 was a failure.”
Ibid.

Pavel Petrovich
Melnikov
(1804-1880)
Minister of Transport
Communications,
the St Petersburg-Moscow
Railroad
(1842-1851)

the myth of the Tsar’s ﬁnger
the railroad was constructed in an
almost straight line
through swamps, hills, valleys at
great cost in human (serf) life
lamented by Nekrasov in his poem
“The Railway”
the 17 km bend was [falsely]
attributed to the tsar drawing a
straight line with a ruler, the bump
was caused by his ﬁnger

Prussia to 1848

“The settlement at Vienna had wrought significant changes in the nature of the
Prussian state. When Prussia ceded most of its former Polish possessions to Russia and
received compensation in Saxony and in Rhineland-Westphalia, its center of interest
shifted from eastern Europe to central Europe and its population, hitherto predominantly
German, now became overwhelmingly so.
“Prussia was destined, before the century was over, to unite all Germany under its
control, but few would have guessed that in 1815. Of the Eastern Powers it was easily the
weakest, even in population, which stood at eleven million in 1815 and did not exceed
sixteen million in 1848. Moreover, although it had acquired new territories, they did not
form a solid mass, for Prussia’s Rhenish provinces were separated from the older ones—
and from the nation’s capital at Berlin—by the independent territories of Hanover,
Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel.…”
op. cit., pp. 44-45.

“The settlement at Vienna had wrought significant changes in the nature of the
Prussian state. When Prussia ceded most of its former Polish possessions to Russia and
received compensation in Saxony and in Rhineland-Westphalia, its center of interest
shifted from eastern Europe to central Europe and its population, hitherto predominantly
German, now became overwhelmingly so.
“Prussia was destined, before the century was over, to unite all Germany under its
control, but few would have guessed that in 1815. Of the Eastern Powers it was easily the
weakest, even in population, which stood at eleven million in 1815 and did not exceed
sixteen million in 1848. Moreover, although it had acquired new territories, they did not
form a solid mass, for Prussia’s Rhenish provinces were separated from the older ones—
and from the nation’s capital at Berlin—by the independent territories of Hanover,
Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel. The fact that so much of the population was composed of
new subjects was also a source of weakness. The inhabitants of the Polish districts had
always been recalcitrant and hard to manage. Now, to what remained of them were added
many resentful Saxons and thousands of Rhinelanders who differed in religion, historical
background, and temperament from their new overlords.”
op. cit., pp. 44-45.

“Economically, Prussia was still predominantly agricultural, although not to the same
extent as Russia and without Russia’s system of servile labor. During the period of reform
that followed Prussia’s defeat by France in 1807, the government abolished serfdom by
the emancipation edict of 1807, supplemented by later decrees. The serfs who were
affected by these laws had, however, to pay for their liberation by surrendering much of
their land to their former masters or by incurring heavy debts in order to acquire
ownership. The terms of emancipation helped the owners of the large estates (the so-
called Junker) to increase their holdings and transformed the mass of the peasantry into
landless agricultural workers who were so dependent on the landlords that their freedom
sometimes seemed illusory.
“The acquisition of the Rhineland made Prussia potentially the strongest industrial
power in Germany, for the rich mineral resources of that area, so happily wedded to coal
deposits and water power, were now added to those of Upper Silesia. The importance of
this was not widely appreciated in 1815, for industrial enterprise was still hardly existent.
Yet notable steps forward were taken in the next thirty years. The efforts of the
Westphalian manufacturer Friedrich Harkort…”
op. cit., p. 45.

“Economically, Prussia was still predominantly agricultural, although not to the same
extent as Russia and without Russia’s system of servile labor. During the period of reform
that followed Prussia’s defeat by France in 1807, the government abolished serfdom by
the emancipation edict of 1807, supplemented by later decrees. The serfs who were
affected by these laws had, however, to pay for their liberation by surrendering much of
their land to their former masters or by incurring heavy debts in order to acquire
ownership. The terms of emancipation helped the owners of the large estates (the so-
called Junker) to increase their holdings and transformed the mass of the peasantry into
landless agricultural workers who were so dependent on the landlords that their freedom
sometimes seemed illusory.
“The acquisition of the Rhineland made Prussia potentially the strongest industrial
power in Germany, for the rich mineral resources of that area, so happily wedded to coal
deposits and water power, were now added to those of Upper Silesia. The importance of
this was not widely appreciated in 1815, for industrial enterprise was still hardly existent.
Yet notable steps forward were taken in the next thirty years. The efforts of the
Westphalian manufacturer Friedrich Harkort to introduce English methods into textile
and iron production, to mechanize these industries, and to combine under one control all
the processes necessary for the transformation of the raw material into the finished
product were the first significant steps in building up German industry.…”
op. cit., p. 45.

“…Under Harkort’s influence, old small-scale family concerns—like the Stumm iron
works and the Hoesch puddling works (famous names in the later history of German
industry)—…”
op. cit., p. 45.

industry)— revolutionized their methods and entered the export trade. In the 1820s the
Borsig machine works were founded,..”
op. cit., p. 45.

Borsig machine works were founded, and the Haniel engineering works began to build
steamboats for the river trade;…”
op. cit., p. 45.

steamboats for the river trade; in the 1840s the Krupp concern was established at Essen.
…”
op. cit., p. 45.

steamboats for the river trade; in the 1840s the Krupp concern • was established at Essen.
In the same years the transformation of the textile industry began, with the mechanization
of the Mevissen linen mills at Krefeldt and the woolen mills of David Hansemann,
another notable Rhineland manufacturer. Too much should not be made of these
developments, of course. The industrial development of Prussia was still far behind that
of her western neighbors; and, despite the richness of the Silesian and Westphalian coal
deposits, the coal production of all Germany still lagged behind that of Belgium in 1846.
But these developments were pledges of future progress.”
op. cit., p. 45.

“Prussian trade was handicapped by the fact that the country had no direct access to
the North Sea and did not control the mouths of the Elbe,…”
op. cit., p. 46.

the North Sea and did not control the mouths of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine rivers.
…”
op. cit., p. 46.
Hamburg
Elbe and

Weser mouths
Rhine

river
Elbe

river

the North Sea and did not control the mouths of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine rivers.
Moreover, it has been estimated that, until 1818, Prussia had sixty-seven different tariff
areas within its borders, a fact that made the transit of goods from one part of the realm to
another complicated and costly. In that year, however, in order to make customs duties
uniform throughout the kingdom, to discourage smuggling, and to raise a reasonable
amount of revenue, the government introduced a new tariff law that abolished all internal
tolls, while imposing a moderate tariff on gods coming in from outside. This law was so
successful in achieving its purposes that it was emulated by other German states.
Moreover, since the latter wished to avoid having to pay heavy tolls for the privilege of
shipping goods across Prussian territory, they began to negotiate economic agreements
with the Prussian government. This led to the formation in 1834 of the Prussian Customs
Union (Zollverein),…”
op. cit., p. 46.
Hamburg
Elbe and

Weser mouths
Rhine

river
Elbe

river

“…which included all German states except Hanover, the Hanse towns Mecklenburg,
Oldenburg, Holstein, and Austria. The political importance of this union is obvious; it
made the member states increasingly dependent upon Prussia, gradually undermined
Austrian influence in Germany, and thus paved the way for the hegemony Prussia
achieved by force of arms in 1866. Immediately the tariff of 1818 and the trade
agreements between that date and 1834 enormously stimulated Prussian trade, which was
encouraged also in these years by new road building, the beginning of railroad
construction (1000 miles of new lines were laid on Prussian territory between 1844 and
1848 alone), and a treaty with Holland in 1831 which opened the lower Rhine to Prussian
goods.
“Prussia’s political and social hierarchy was, in its broadest outlines, similar to that
of Russia. The tie between crown and nobility was perhaps more intimate than in that
country; for, since the seventeenth century, Prussian kings had protected the economic
privileges of their landed nobles while the nobles had recognized their obligation to send
their sons into the service of the state. In the military establishment, although the war
against Napoleon had necessitated the commissioning of members of the middle class,
their advancement was not encouraged after 1815 and they were isolated, for the most
part, in the technical branches of the service. The nobility maintained its virtual
monopoly in the officer corps, and its influence was paramount also in the highest
councils of the state.”
Ibid.

“Because of Prussia’s more advanced economic development, the system of social
stratification differed from Russia in two respects. The industrial working class was
larger and growing faster than its Russian counterpart and, by the end of the period, was
already introducing an element of violence into the Prussian class system. In the second
place, the bourgeoisie was more numerous, wealthy, and self-confident than the Russian
merchant class. The Mevisens and Hansemanns of the Rhineland, seeking to imitate their
models in England and France, looked upon themselves as the progressive force that
would make the Germany of the future. They were both contemptuous of the stiff,
uncultivated, and sometimes penurious East Elbian squires and resentful of their social
political power. This attitude was strengthened by the political events of the postwar
period.”
op. cit., pp. 46-47.

Prussia to 1848
The Return to Reaction

“In the melancholy years that followed the Prussian defeat at Jena in 1806, when
the country lay under the heel of Napoleon and its status as a Great Power was in
question, a remarkable group of new leaders had come to the fore in Prussian politics.
These men, among whom Stein, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Humboldt were
outstanding,…”
op. cit., p. 47.

outstanding, wanted to arouse the patriotic spirit of the nation so that French rule could be
thrown off; and they believed that the best way to accomplish this was—in Gneisenau’s
words—was to make all Prussian subjects ‘free, noble, and independent so that they
believed that they are part of the whole.’…”
op. cit., p. 47.

outstanding, wanted to arouse the patriotic spirit of the nation so that French rule could be
thrown off; and they believed that the best way to accomplish this was—in Gneisenau’s
words—was to make all Prussian subjects ‘free, noble, and independent so that they
believed that they are part of the whole.’ In pursuit of these objects they persuaded the
king,• between 1807 and 1813, to approve a series of edicts abolishing serfdom,
broadening the powers of local government, increasing educational opportunity, opening
the officer corps to the bourgeoisie and making merit the test of promotion, reforming the
disciplinary code of the army, and making other fundamental changes in the structure of
the state and society. By 1815 it appeared also that Prussia was on its way to becoming a
state with liberal representative institutions; for on May 22, Frederick William III
promised to repay his subjects for their successful efforts in expelling the French by
granting them a written constitution.
“All of this was misleading. Frederick William was an honorable man, but not a
resolute one…”
op. cit., p. 47.

return to reaction
the period of resistance to Napoleon, 1807-1815, had
produced reforms: emancipation of the serfs, army
promotions by merit, promise of a written constitution
the inﬂuence of his fellow monarchs, Metternich, and the
conservative Prussian aristocrats moved Fredrick
William III to the right
liberal ministers were replaced by reactionary ones
Hegelianism replaced Humboldt’s educational reforms

“In Prussian education the influence of Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) now
reached its height. Both [the minister of education] and his supervisor of secondary
schools…were ardent Hegelians; and it was not therefore accidental that so many of
Hegel’s students began to fill teaching positions in the gymnasia and university chairs in
philosophy, education, and political economy. Through their efforts the more extreme
Hegelian doctrines—the personification of the state, the insistence that the life of the
individual attained meaning only when he was absorbed in the state, the belief that the
essence and the justification of the state was its power and that ‘what is rational is actual,
and what is actual is rational’—were drilled into students in the hope of persuading them
of the merits of the existing regime. This endeavor not without success….in Frederick
William III’s last years this kind of Hegelianism gave a cast to Prussian political thinking
that was to last a long time, since,…”
op. cit., p. 48.

“In Prussian education the influence of Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) now
reached its height. Both [the minister of education] and his supervisor of secondary
schools…were ardent Hegelians; and it was not therefore accidental that so many of
Hegel’s students began to fill teaching positions in the gymnasia and university chairs in
philosophy, education, and political economy. Through their efforts the more extreme
Hegelian doctrines—the personification of the state, the insistence that the life of the
individual attained meaning only when he was absorbed in the state, the belief that the
essence and the justification of the state was its power and that ‘what is rational is actual,
and what is actual is rational’—were drilled into students in the hope of persuading them
of the merits of the existing regime. This endeavor not without success….in Frederick
William III’s last years this kind of Hegelianism gave a cast to Prussian political thinking
that was to last a long time, since, as Hajo Holborn [1902, Berlin – 1969, Bonn, a German-
American historian and specialist in modern German history—Wikipedia] has written, it ‘fitted
exactly the situation of a people who were deeply convinced of the power of reason over
reality but wanted [once the hopes of the reform period had been disappointed] to be
persuaded that progress toward freedom was possible within an authorial order.”
op. cit., p. 48.

Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
German idealist philosopher
Volksgeist and Weltgeist
Hegelian dialectic: thesis vs. antithesis-->
synthesis
University of Berlin, 1818-1831
Right and Left (Young) Hegelians
“progress toward freedom was possible
within an authoritarian order”

“The reaction under Frederick William III had its ludicrous aspects. An incredible
amount of effort was expended in keeping members of the reform party under
surveillance in the hope of discovering plots against the government. Newspapers were
suppressed for reasons that were neither logical nor consistent; and journalists were apt,
on the slightest pretext, to be hauled into court and charged with disrespect for the royal
person, like the hapless publisher who had placed an advertisement for herring too close
to the court calendar.…Prussia, which in the years between 1807 and 1813 had seemed to
be in the vanguard of German liberalism, was now apparently what it had always been in
the past—an autocratic, militaristic state whose efficient administration did not redeem
the absence of freedom within its borders.
“Nor was the picture relieved when the king died in 1840 and was succeeded by his
son, under the title Frederick William IV….”
op. cit., p. 49.

Fredrick William IV (1795-1840-1861)
like his father, he ﬁrst inspired hope among the
liberal reformers
he was a romantic, perhaps the last true
believer in divine right of kings
“devious methods and a habit of indecision in
moments of crisis” —Craig
“wanted to appear a wise and magnanimous
ruler”--- Ibid.
“No power on earth will ever force me to
transform the natural [organic] relationship…
between prince and people into a constitutional
[mechanistic] one”
(1847)

“In the face of this intransigent defense of the authorial principle, there was no hope
of constitutional progress or social reform; and Prussia remained a center of reaction until
the storm of 1848 swept over the land.”
op. cit., p. 50.

Austrian Lands and Peoples
Austria proper
Bohemia & Moravia
Galicia
Hungary
Illyria
Lombardy & Venetia
Germans
Czechs & Slovaks
Poles & Ruthenians
Magyars &c
Slovenes, Croats & Serbs
Italians

“After 1815 the Austrian empire
comprised Austria proper,•
Bohemia,• Galicia,• the kingdom
of Hungary,• Illyria on the
Dalmatian coast,• and the northern
Italian provinces of Lombardy and
Venetia.• The Vienna settlement
had made it more compact than it
had been before the Napoleonic
period, but this compactness did
not make for internal unity. The
thirty million people who inhabited the Habsburg lands differed in racial origins, historical background,
language, and customs….These peoples had little in common except the bond of the imperial house and
the Catholic church.
“Within the empire the Germans were the dominant people. The ruling house was German; German
was the official language, the language of commerce, and the language of the towns (not only of Vienna,
but also of Budapest and Prague); and Germans filled most of the positions in the imperial bureaucracy.
But this position was to be challenged in time by the strongest of the subject nationalities. Even in the
first years after 1815 the Magyars were restive, and they did not become any less so as time passed. In
general, Austria’s greatest problem, which became one of life or death, was that of adjusting and
balancing the desires of its diverse peoples in such a way as to preserve the bond of empire.
op. cit., p. 50.

“The Austrian economy was largely agricultural. There were some signs of industrial development in
the western towns, and in the ‘hungry forties’ this had gone far enough for there to be riots by factory
workers in Prague. In Lombardy also factory organization was getting under way at the end of this period
in the cotton, silk, and linen industries. But this was still on a very small scale. The government sought to
increase export trade by building the port of Trieste as an outlet to the Mediterranean,…”
op. cit., pp. 50-51.

“The Austrian economy was largely agricultural. There were some signs of industrial development in
the western towns, and in the ‘hungry forties’ this had gone far enough for there to be riots by factory
workers in Prague. In Lombardy also factory organization was getting under way at the end of this period
in the cotton, silk, and linen industries. But this was still on a very small scale. The government sought to
increase export trade by building the port of Trieste as an outlet to the Mediterranean, and it also made
some gestures in the direction of railway promotion, although its efforts in this latter respect were neither
as consistent nor as successful as those of the Prussian government. This was true also of tariff policy,
which was certainly less imaginative than the policy that led to the formation of the Prussian Zollverein,
as was shown by the continued existence throughout these years of a custom barrier between Austria and
Hungary. Austrian trade policy was enlightened only in fits and starts, and there was no appreciable
commercial growth. In any event, the backbone of the economy was agriculture, which engaged the great
majority of the population.
“As in the case of Russia, the nature of the economy was reflected in the social and political
hierarchy. The nobility owned most of the land, dispensed local justice, administered local affairs, and
provided the imperial government with officers for its army, diplomats for its foreign service, and
department heads for its ministries. Provided their economic rights were protected by the crown, they
supported it, although they were jealous of any infringement of their inherited feudal privileges. Within
their ranks there were gradations, especially in Hungary, where there was a considerable economic gap
between the magnates, who might own estates covering as much as 40,000 acres of land, and the small
squires, who often had more pride than possessions. This division had some political importance, but it
did not affect the nobility, great and small, toward the class that supported it.”
op. cit., pp. 50-51.

“The peasants lived in conditions similar to those of the serfs in Russia. they were subject to the legal
jurisdiction of the local lord and forced to pay dues and labor services, and this burden was heavy. It has
been estimated that, in Bohemia, peasants owed half their time and two-thirds of their crops to their lords,
and conditions were no different in other parts of the empire. This meant that the great mass of the
population was oppressed and miserable and that the conditions of their live excluded them from political
affairs.
“Special mention should perhaps be made of the imperial bureaucracy, which, while not a class in the
economic sense, was an important factor in the political and social life of the empire. Although this
service included Hungarian and Czech aristocrats and, indeed, men of every nationality, most of its
members were Germans, generally of the lesser nobility. They were held together by a tradition inherited
from the days of Emperor Joseph II, who tried to impose German culture and customs on the whole
empire; and they believed that their mission was to fight the forces of decentralization, local patriotism,
and aristocratic privilege. The labors of the bureaucracy kept the empire functioning but, at the same time,
invited conflict with the local magnates and the different national groups.”
op. cit., pp. 51-52.

The Course of Domestic Policy
“Govern and change nothing.”
—Francis I

“Until his death in 1835, Austria was ruled by Emperor Francis I. This monarch is sometimes
dismissed as childish or frivolous, and Sir Harold Nicholson has written that he was happiest when he
was in his workshop stamping seals on sealing wax or making toffee on the stove. But this does not do
Francis justice. He may have been indolent, but he was far from being a cipher in imperial affairs. As
Metternich wrote in 1820,…”
op. cit., p. 52.

Metternich wrote in 1820, the emperor knew exactly what he wanted, and he was autocrat enough to see
that he got it. His real weakness was narrowness of view. In an empire held together by bureaucrats, he
was the bureaucrat par excellence; fond of red tape and protocol, suspicious of ideas and methods that did
not conform to inherited practice and of people who were too obviously brilliant, averse to novelty, and
bitterly hostile to reform—a man whose motto might well have been ‘Govern and change nothing.’
“Francis succeeded in remaining true to this principle in the face of the dictates of common sense and
the arguments of his ministers. There can be little doubt that the imperial administration would have been
greatly improved if the welter of redundant chancelleries, courts, directories, and councils that made up
the machinery of state could either have been abolished completely or, at least, coordinated by the
creation of some kind of council for the whole empire. Metternich, who was certainly no reformer but
who was sensible enough to see that even autocracies should be run efficiently, repeatedly suggested such
a reorganization. Not only were his proposals never acted upon but after 1826 they were never seriously
considered.…”
op. cit., p. 52.

Metternich wrote in 1820, the emperor knew exactly what he wanted, and he was autocrat enough to see
that he got it. His real weakness was narrowness of view. In an empire held together by bureaucrats, he
was the bureaucrat par excellence; fond of red tape and protocol, suspicious of ideas and methods that did
not conform to inherited practice and of people who were too obviously brilliant, averse to novelty, and
bitterly hostile to reform—a man whose motto might well have been ‘Govern and change nothing.’
“Francis succeeded in remaining true to this principle in the face of the dictates of common sense and
the arguments of his ministers. There can be little doubt that the imperial administration would have been
greatly improved if the welter of redundant chancelleries, courts, directories, and councils that made up
the machinery of state could either have been abolished completely or, at least, coordinated by the
creation of some kind of council for the whole empire. Metternich, who was certainly no reformer but
who was sensible enough to see that even autocracies should be run efficiently, repeatedly suggested such
a reorganization. Not only were his proposals never acted upon but after 1826 they were never seriously
considered. In that year Count Kolowrat became minister of state, and the Czech aristocrat hated
Metternich and succeeded in undermining his position sufficiently so that he had to restrict himself
henceforward to foreign affairs. Kolowrat himself was not unaware of the need of administrative reform,
but he was not a strong enough man to overcome the emperor’s inertia.”
op. cit., p. 52.

“The result was that there were no essential changes in any branch of the imperial administration and,
in some cases, notably the army, programs of modernization that had been started before 1815 were
sharply curtailed. Despite the pressing need for financial reform, the imperial debt was allowed to go on
mounting; despite the example of effective tariff reform shown by Prussia, the old restrictions on trade
remained; and so forth. ‘I won’t have any innovations,’ Francis said in 1831. ‘Let the laws be justly
applied; they are good and adequate.
“People who persisted in advocating change Francis hounded down mercilessly. It is fair to say that in
internal affairs Metternich and Kolowrat were both less influential than the man who was minister of
police after 1817, Count [Josef von] Sedlnitzky.…”
op. cit., pp. 52-53.

“The result was that there were no essential changes in any branch of the imperial administration and,
in some cases, notably the army, programs of modernization that had been started before 1815 were
sharply curtailed. Despite the pressing need for financial reform, the imperial debt was allowed to go on
mounting; despite the example of effective tariff reform shown by Prussia, the old restrictions on trade
remained; and so forth. ‘I won’t have any innovations,’ Francis said in 1831. ‘Let the laws be justly
applied; they are good and adequate.
“People who persisted in advocating change Francis hounded down mercilessly. It is fair to say that in
internal affairs Metternich and Kolowrat were both less influential than the man who was minister of
police after 1817, Count [Josef von] Sedlnitzky. His agents opened even Metternich’s letters and had little
respect for less important persons. Espionage, denunciation, secret trials, and arbitrary punishment were
as much a part of life in Austria as they were in Russia in the heyday of Benckendorff. The Austrian press
was censored even more rigorously than the Prussian. Professors and schoolteachers were under constant
surveillance, never knowing who in their audiences might be a police spy; and school authorities were
strictly enjoined to report the expression of any sentiments that might be considered subversive. Students
were forbidden to study in foreign universities and were forced to content themselves with an educational
system in which everything that they and their professors read had to be approved by the government. It is
n wonder that so many of them came to regard their country as one large, and very dull, prison.”
op. cit., pp. 52-53.

Ferdinand I (1793-1835-1848-1875)
as many as 20 epileptic seizures a day
often dismissed as feeble minded, “Ich bin
der Kaiser und ich will Knödel”
a council of state: Metternich, Kolowrat,
and Archduke Ludwig,”the least gifted of
Francis I’s brothers” ran the bureaucracy
again, reforms were not on the agenda
Ferdinand was convinced to abdicate in
favor of his nephew Franz Josef in 1848

Developments in Hungary Before 1848

“There were signs of life, however, in Hungary. Despite attempts at Germanization and centralization,
the Magyars had preserved their medieval local assemblies, which were sounding boards for the
grievances of the nobility. Strong resistance on the part of these bodies to certain tax and recruiting
decrees of imperial authorities induced the Vienna government to try to propitiate the Hungarian
magnates by convoking a Central Hungarian Diet in 1825. The meeting was so stormy and so critical of
the regime that the emperor was forced to agree to raise no taxes in the future without the consent of this
body, which was to be reconvened periodically.
“It was at the Diet of 1825 that a remarkable leader appeared in the person of Stephan Széchenyi..”
op. cit., p. 53.

“It was at the Diet of 1825 that a remarkable leader appeared in the person of Stephan Széchenyi.• A
former officer and one of the richest men in Hungary, Széchenyi wished to lift his country out of the
torpor in which it had lived so long by awakening a sense of responsibility among his fellows in the upper
nobility. He dreamed of a Hungary in which the nobility would give up such privileges as its freedom
from the land tax and would cooperate in efforts to ameliorate the lot of the peasantry—a Hungary,
moreover, in which an economic transformation would be effected by means of technical assistance to
improve agriculture, the creation of capital resources to stimulate industry, the improvement of
communications, the abolition of the tariff wall separating Hungary from Austria, and the inclusion of
Hungary in the Austrian railroad system. Although disappointed in his hopes that he might receive
encouragement and assistance from Vienna, Széchenyi was able to induce his fellow magnates, between
1825 and 1832, to carry through some economic improvements, including the construction of a bridge •
between Buda and Pest (until then unconnected)…”
op. cit., p. 53.

between Buda and Pest (until then unconnected) and the development of steam navigation on the Danube.
…”
op. cit., p. 53.

The name of the company is well known in German-speaking
countries as a starter to humorously construct even longer
compound words.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze is such a
word, which potentially might even have been used, but
probably never actually was. It means a "DDSG captain's
hat". Another common example is
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskajütenschlüssel
which means "DDSG captain's cabin key".— Wikipedia
Dampfschiff = steam + ship = steamship— jbp

between Buda and Pest (until then unconnected) and the development of steam navigation on the
Danube.• Under his influence, the Hungarian Diet of 1832 actually began to consider a reform of the
condition of the peasantry.”
op. cit., p. 53.

“But Széchenyi could not win the support of the lesser nobility, whose reduced circumstances made
them cling to the very privileges that he wanted to abolish; and in 1832 they found a leader in Louis
Kossuth.…”
op. cit., p. 54.

Kossuth. …”
op. cit., p. 54.

Kossuth. This romantic figure, a journalist by trade, attained tremendous popularity by appealing to the
hostility with which the lesser nobility viewed the magnates and by urging not closer union with Austria,
which was the gist of Széchenyi’s economic program, but a greater degree of Hungarian independence.
Kossuth used the arguments of the German protectionist Friedrich List …”
op. cit., p. 54.

Kossuth. This romantic figure, a journalist by trade, attained tremendous popularity by appealing to the
hostility with which the lesser nobility viewed the magnates and by urging not closer union with Austria,
which was the gist of Széchenyi’s economic program, but a greater degree of Hungarian independence.
Kossuth used the arguments of the German protectionist Friedrich List to urge the necessity of a national
economy for Hungary.with separate tariff and communication systems and autonomous institutions. The
fervor with which he pleaded this case and his increasingly radical views and violent language divided the
Hungarian nobility into two camps, while at the same time created a turbulence that could not help but
affect the peasant masses as well. By the late 1840s Hungary was in a dangerous state of unrest.”
op. cit., p. 54.

The Austrian Mission

The Austrian Mission
“One of Metternich’s foreign colleagues said on
one occasion that Austria was Europe’s House of
Lords, meaning, no doubt, that its function was to
restrain the passions and undo the mistakes of the
common run of petty states in Europe….”
op. cit., p. 54

“…Austria’s geographical position made it the logical power to maintain order in central
Europe; there is no doubt that Metternich regarded that as the mission of his country after
1815. Some mention has been made of the vigilance with which he watched over Italian
affairs and the promptness with which he intervened to snuff out revolutionary movements.
Now it is time to review his activities in Germany.”
op. cit., p. 54.

Germany to 1848
The German States and the Confederation

“One of the great services that Napoleon Bonaparte performed for Germany was to simplify
its political structure.* …”
op. cit., p. 54.
* ‘In the beginning was Napoleon’ – with these words the late and much-lamented Thomas Nipperdey began his
masterly account of the history of Germany in the nineteenth century (recently translated as From Napoleon to
Bismarck). Like most lapidary phrases, it begs as many questions as it answers. Many of the forces which turned
Germany into the greatest power on the European continent went back far into the eighteenth century and beyond.
But, as we shall see, there is certainly a great deal to be said for taking Napoleon as the starting point…
History Today, (4 April 1998)

its political structure.* …”
op. cit., p. 54.

its political structure.* Before this time the area we think of as Germany was a crazy quilt of
conflicting sovereignties; it comprised over three hundred separate political units, each with its
own laws and regulations.…”
op. cit., p. 54.

KEY

to the smaller territories
Hansestadt = city of the Hanseatic League
A medieval trading alliance— jbp

its political structure.* Before this time the area we think of as Germany was a crazy quilt of
conflicting sovereignties; it comprised over three hundred separate political units, each with its
own laws and regulations. The French emperor had followed a policy of amalgamation and, in
the end, had reduced the number to less than fifty. The Congress of Vienna carried Napoleon’s
work further; when it was finished, Germany was composed of thirty-eight states, ranging in size
and importance from the five kingdoms of Prussia, Hanover, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Saxony
to such minuscule states as Lippe and the free cities of the north. All these states, plus the
German part of the Austrian empire, were members of the Germanic Confederation, which had
been created at Vienna. The central body of this organization was the Diet, which met
periodically at Frankfurt on the Main [to distinguish from Frankfurt on the Oder] and was
composed of representatives chosen by the rulers of the various member states. The Diet was
not, in other words, an elective assembly or parliament but a diplomatic organization which, in
some respects, resembled the United Nations of our time….”
op. cit., p. 54.

“…It had a complicated procedure and a very involved voting system on which it is unnecessary
to dilate, except to note that on all matters of importance two thirds of the members had to agree
before a decision was taken and on some matters unanimous agreement was required. This made
action of any kind difficult. Aside from this, the Congress of Vienna had not defined the
competence and jurisdiction of the Diet; and, true to the age-old German tradition of
particularism, the member states were not inclined to admit that it had, or should have, any
substantial authority.
“Article XIII of the Federal Constitution, which was incorporated into the Final Act of the
Congress of Vienna, stipulated that all member states should have constitutions that would
provide for assemblies of the estates. Such a constitution was granted by the Grand Duke of
Saxe-Weimar, and he was followed by the rulers of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-
Darmstadt. But, as we have seen above, Prussia did not follow suit, despite the solemn promise
of her king, and other rulers did not even bother to make empty promises. A ruler like the elector
of Hesse—who, when he returned to Cassel after seven years of French rule, proceeded to
invalidate all laws passed and even all military and bureaucratic promotions made during his
absence2 —was obviously not interested in issuing a charter of liberties to his subjects. As for
the ruling groups in the free cities of Hamburg and Lübeck, they outdid the Hessian prince by
returning to their charters of 1669 and 1528 respectively….”
op. cit., pp. 54-55.
_______
2 When it was announced, in 1813, that this prince was returning to his capital, a former servant of his donned his old
uniform and went to the residence. As the elector drove up, he shouted proudly, ‘Here I am, Your Highness! At my
post!’ The prince replied, ‘Good heavens, the old chap’s been standing there since 1806!’.

Germany to 1848
Liberalism and Nationalism in Germany

“The historian Sybel…”
op. cit., pp. 55-56.

“The historian Sybel wrote of the German Confederation that it was ‘received by the German
nation at large partly with cold indifference and partly with patriotic indignation.’ The first
reaction was probably the one felt by most persons. It is always a mistake to think that a
majority of any people are interested in politics; and in Germany these years formed the so-
called Biedermeier period, a time of relative stability and peace in which the ordinary people did
not look far beyond their family circle or the affairs of their village and in which they accepted
both the political and the social facts of life as they were presented to them.…”
op. cit., pp. 55-56.

“The historian Sybel wrote of the German Confederation that it was ‘received by the German
nation at large partly with cold indifference and partly with patriotic indignation.’ The first
reaction was probably the one felt by most persons. It is always a mistake to think that a
majority of any people are interested in politics; and in Germany these years formed the so-
called Biedermeier period, a time of relative stability and peace in which the ordinary people did
not look far beyond their family circle or the affairs of their village and in which they accepted
both the political and the social facts of life as they were presented to them.
“But there were forces of movement in the German states, and they were to be found in the
commercial and industrial towns and in the universities. It was among the latter that the first real
movement of protest against the status quo got under way. Students who had fought in the war of
liberation came back to the universities to found a new kind of organization, unlike the old beer-
swilling, dueling corporations, and devoted instead to the moral and political regeneration of
Germany and the cause of national unity. These societies were called Burschenschaften and, by
1816, they were organized into a national federation with branches in sixteen universities.
“In 1817, in celebration of the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig (turning point in
Germany’s struggle against Napoleon) and also of the three hundredth anniversary of Martin
Luther’s defiance of authority,…”
op. cit., pp. 55-56.

From May 1521 to March 1522, Martin Luther stayed at the castle under the name of Junker
Jörg (the Knight George), after he had been taken there for his safety at the request of
Frederick the Wise following his excommunication by Pope Leo X and his refusal to recant at
the Diet of Worms. It was during this period that Luther translated the New Testament from
ancient Greek into German in just ten weeks. Luther's was not the ﬁrst German translation of
the Bible but it quickly became the most well known and most widely circulated.—Wikipedia
The Luther Room

19 c Europe, Part 1, session 2; The Eastern Powers: Absolutism and its Limitations

19 c Europe, Part 1, session 2; The Eastern Powers: Absolutism and its Limitations

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19 c Europe, Part 1, session 2; The Eastern Powers: Absolutism and its Limitations