The Prussian Tradition

I. The Reformation

To trace the development of Brandenburg-Prussia, the nucleus of the Prussian tradition, we have to begin with the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty-Years War. There is no need to treat these events in great detail, since they are a significant part of Western Civilization. We are all familiar by now with the circumstances that led to Luther's revolt from Rome:

• the abuses and corruption that prevailed in the church;
• the attempt of reformers to purify the church and their failure;
• the event that led to the break with the papacy, symbolized by Luther's nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517;
• the attempt of the emperor Charles V and other princes to force Luther to recant and his heroic refusal at the Diet of Worms;
• Luther's temporary isolation in a castle and his translation of the Latin Bible into vernacular German;
• and finally the establishment of the Lutheran and other Protestant churches.

We all know that the causes for this great religious schism were social and economic as well as religious, although Luther was no social revolutionary, as his encouragement of the peasant suppression revealed. Yet the break with the universal church was permanent and Protestantism became established in Germany and several other northern European countries. But the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the princes, which contributed to the Reformation, continued, despite the so-called compromise of 1555, which satisfied no one. There was a revival of Catholicism at the Council of Trent, which brought about belated reform in the Catholic Church and set Catholicism off on a counter-offensive. Catholicism remained the predominant force in Austria, Bavaria and the Rhineland.

There was a constant quarrel over the church lands which had been secularized in the process of the Reformation. What about churchly princes who had been converted to Protestantism? What should be done with their territorial possessions? After the so-called Ecclesiastical Reservation of 1552 the churchly princes were supposed to give up their lands. But many princes claimed that this rule was not binding. A variety of incidents continued to escalate ill feelings and growing tensions. The emperors tried very hard to paper over the increasing series of crises. By 1600 Germany was really divided, and not only between Catholics and Protestants. The Calvinists and Lutherans were also in a state of disarray, even within the Protestant Union which was organized in 1600. During the next decade the opposition organized itself into the Catholic League. War now seemed to be all but inevitable.

II. The Thirty-Years-War

The so-called Thirty-Years-War really began as a civil war between German Protestants and German Catholics, but it soon turned into an international conflict. The contestants were not exactly divided along religious lines, but rather along power-political lines. The combat actually began in Bohemia, where John Hus had earlier started a religious revolt against the established church. Hus was basically a Protestant although he was also a great Czech national figure. There bad been a genuine cultural revival in Bohemia in the l4th century and during the l4th and l5th centuries Bohemia had managed to retain a measure of independence from a reluctant Habsburg regime.

In 1517 Bohemia received a new king, who happened to be a Catholic Habsburg-Ferdinand II. This event led to immediate conflict between the Bohemian nobility and people on the one hand and the new Catholic ruler on the other hand. It culminated in the famous "defenistration of Prague", when an official of the king was thrown out of the window of a public building by Czech patriots. The Bohemians then made Frederick, duke of Palatine, a Protestant, king of their country. The war was on. In the famous Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 the Czechs were defeated by the armies of the emperor and Frederick had to flee, receiving the name of the "winter king."

This war continued for some thirty indecisive years, eventually involving a number of foreign countries, most notably France (strangely enough on the Protestant side) and Sweden. In the end Germany lay in ruins, severely depopulated and spiritually devastated. The results were predictable. This war sealed the political decentralization of Germany and established the authority and power of the local princes. The many princes of Germany claimed, for the first time, political sovereignty in the French sense and the final treaties recognized that sovereignty. They could have their own armies, money, treaties and make their own economic legislation. However, they could make no alliances against the emperor himself, whose authority nevertheless was severely eroded. His only power base was found in his own lands-Austria, Hungary and Italy.

The Swedes got a hold of Pomerania and the French retained Metz and Verdun, thus further penetrating to the Rhine frontier. Prussia was a gainer since it received Hither Pomerania, and the son of the Count of Palatine acquired new lands plus an electorate but lost the Oberpfalz. Saxony, Bavaria and Prussia were greatly enlarged and became significant powers in Germany after 1648, the date of the Treaty of Westphalia.

Religiously the Calvinists received the same rights as the Lutherans. However, one could hardly speak of religious liberty for the people, since the princes determined the religion of their subjects. The religious division of Germany was now permanent, the Northeast being Protestant, the West half and half, and the South Catholic. Central Europe was the only place where the Reformation did not produce clear religious majorities. This had a tremendous effect on politics in the succeeding centuries.

III. The Emergence of Prussia

This general background brings us to the emergence of Prussia as a great power in German and European affairs. As I have already said, Prussia was one of the main gainers in the outcome of the Thirty-Years-War. Two men made Prussia into that power and may be called not only the creators of the Prussian state but the founders of the Prussian tradition in German affairs. These men were Frederick William, the Great Elector, and his grandson, Frederick II, the Great.

A. The Great Elector

Frederick William, the founder of the Prussian state, ruled for almost a half century, from 1640 to 1688. He was the first great Brandenhurg ruler, even overshadowing Albrecht the Bear, who first established himself in the territory around Berlin. Frederick William's accession ended five centuries of relative complacency. He played a far larger role in the Westphalian Congress than his state deserved, both in terms of size and role played in the war. The reason was that he had a large army and displayed certain spiritual qualities which impressed European rulers. Frederick William was determined to defend his three widely scattered possessions:

1. the Duchy of Prussia, surrounded by Poland and part of it encumbered by feudal law;
2. Cleve-Mark, subject to Dutch pressure;
3. and Brandenhurg, subject to Swedish pressure in West Pomerania.

His primary policy centered on integration of these territories and the overall protection of his realm. But territorial consolidation, no matter how tantalizing, was only a dream, hampered by many obstacles. Yet the Great Elector set the pace for the future and crystallized an overriding goal for his successors. In the last analysis Frederick William not only created the kingdom of Prussia (really his son did it), but he was the unconscious protector of a renovated Germany.

The Great Elector was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, which became identified with the rising commercial class, turning their faith outward rather than inward. Frederick William saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. He worked hard at his god-given task of ruling. His ministers never controlled him, although foreign ambassadors thought so and tried to bribe his ministers. He was given to frequent outbursts, which made others doubt his reliability. He was shifty in the Swedish-Polish war and his political opportunism also showed up in his shifting position in the Dutch War of 1672.

He was a realist who contemplated his self-interest like most of his contemporaries. He only had two important lapses from this policy. His testament impaired the edifice he had built and his candidature for the Polish throne in 1661 detracted from his job at home. The prospect of a royal crown was tempting, but would not have helped him at home since he would have had to convert to Catholicism. He was a patron of the fine arts, collected books and antiquities and loved the chase at the same time. Toward the end of his life he became pessimistic and tended to isolate himself, nursing various physical ills.

This was the age of the Baroque, the fading symbols of the Renaissance, which invigorated the Catholic Church and absolute monarchy. The pope ruled as an absolute monarch in the church. Louis XIV gave his rule a gallically flavored papal baroque. Brandenburg-Prussia was ripe to express itself in Baroque terms as well. Frederick William was an absolute ruler in every sense. He dominated the nobility, repressed the bourgeoisie, and wholly submerged the peasantry. The court was lavish and his Schloss in Berlin was a showpiece. But the most important exhibit of the Brandenburg Baroque was the elector himself. He was a kind of earthly Jove. A kind of myth developed around the Elector that he was the embodiment of law, upholding the state, yet very human and characterized by patriarchal kindliness. The initiative was reserved to tho state. The law confirmed its empire over consenting subjects and the subjects asserted their moral freedom by their voluntary subjection to the law.

B. Frederick III and Frederick William I

The Great Elector was succeeded by Frederick III, who made himself a king in Prussia in 1701, while the rest of Europe was involved in war. He was followed by Frederick William I who concentrated on building a bureaucracy, and most of all an army far disproportionate to the size of his country. He was so militaristic that one biographer has called him the "Potsdam Führer."

C. Frederick the Great

But it was primarily Frederick II, the Great, ruling from 1740 to 1786, who made the Prussian tradition. His several wars in the middle of the 18th century are known to all students of history, since they determined the life of Europe in the 19th century, to a large degree. We will not deal with those. Instead I want to concentrate on the personality and general policy of Frederick the Great.

He wielded absolute power with anxious, almost morbid jealousy. A prince should plan his system and execute it himself he thought. His government was personal and mechanical. He expected his subjects and servants to obey orders even without understanding them. He rejected all independent initiative, because he appeared to be afraid of it. He was against hasty reforms since he believed that the constitution of a country was the product of time.

The administration under Frederick II was collegiate in nature, meaning that there was collective responsibility in the councils of state. He inspected each department himself and saw people individually on his many inspection tours. He made and wrote decisions in the margins of many, many reports-as many as 60 in a single morning at his desk. He had little respect for his officials. "I could hang 99 percent of them with a clear conscience" he once said. He kept a careful eye on public opinion, yet he despised it completely, which is not unlike the attitude of some other German rulers, notably Hitler.

He shared the "sensibility"of his time, but he also revealed a stark realism, which was not really a token of the period. Frederick the Great despised abstractions and developed a kind of fact fetishism, which has become characteristic of many Germans-including professors of German history. His administrative routine was predictable: he normally spent two months touring the provinces after reviewing the troops at Berlin, Potsdam and Spandau. His mania for information, his unflagging concentration, stemmed from a fear of being duped. Although his desire of always being right was curbed somewhat, he did have a tendency to prejudge people. All of these characteristics are really a part of the Prussian tradition in German life.

Frederick made the Prussian bureaucracy more homogeneous, more methodical, more hard-working, and a more effective instrument of unification. The bureaucracy was infused with a sense of duty and public service-and that too is a part of the Prussian tradition. The German bureaucracy throughout history has probably been the most honest and productive and that is saying a lot. But Frederick also thwarted the spirit of initiative, personal inquiry, the taste for responsibility-and this too is essentially German. Any one who displeased him could be thrown into prison, although he did not like to change officials or ministers too often.

To Frederick men of birth who were not soldiers were scoundrels. Nobles were the foundation and support of the monarchy, whereas peasants were mere serfs or tenants for life subject to tithes and forced labor, suitors to the lords' courts. It was feudalism in full rigor. The towns were to make a lot of money in order to pay a lot of taxes. There was a real Prussian mercantilism. State intervention was matched by control of prices, and the movement of goods, customs prohibitions, and creation of protected industries. His two great economic enemies were Hamburg, which handled English goods, and Leipzig, which conducted an international fair. He encouraged colonization and 50,000 foreigners came to Prussia between 1740 and 1755.

Frederick was a tolerant unbeliever and it was by this religious enlightenment that he was a men of his time, a colleague of the philosophes. He deprived the monarchy of its character as a divine institution and this was a sort of intellectual revolution, which is mostly responsible for calling him great.

His theory of government is also very similar to that of the philosophes: people found they needed judges and protectors, so they chose the wisest, most disinterested, most human and valiant-this was the origin of the monarchy. People and the sovereign were considered to be one. Republics, according to Frederick, always ended up with despots. Monarchy owed its origin to the benefits the people expected of it and was upheld by those which it gave to the people. The prince was considered to be a watchman of the state

Frederick II was probably the greatest Prussian of history, but not the political incarnation of free thought, as the philosophes would have us believe. He simplified the law and jurisdiction and abolished trial for witchcraft, etc., but he was not so great as the philosophes believed. Most of the reforms were superficial, that increased administrative efficiency, but otherwise lacked any real substance. What Frederick did of course was maintain and expand the renowned military machine of Prussia. In essence for forty years Prussia was what Frederick was-with his brilliance and his faults, with the army as the centrality of his policy. And that became, very much, the essence of the Prussian tradition in German history.