CHAPTER XIII.
THE REACTION AND TEUTOMANIA.
The Jews in the Wars for Freedom—The Congress of Vienna—Hardenberg and Metternich—Rühs' Christian Germanism—Jew-hatred in Germany and Rome—German Act of Federation—Ewald's Defense of Judaism—Jew-hatred in Prussia—Lewis Way—Congress at Aix—Hep, hep Persecution—Hartwig Hundt—Julius von Voss—Jewish Avengers.
1813–1818 C. E.
Like the Persian monarch Xerxes, Napoleon, hitherto invincible, and grown haughty and brutal through his successes, summoned the nations and princes to a universal war, and they followed him as submissively as slaves follow their master. Proudly he led forth Europe, subdued by him, against Asiatic Russia. Within the memory of man such an immense expedition had not been known. But, if ever, the words of the text were fulfilled in this gigantic contest: "An horse is a vain thing for safety, neither shall he deliver any by his great strength"; if ever, Divine justice manifested itself in him who had trampled upon right and liberty. Napoleon was defeated, not by the power of his enemy, but by a Higher Hand which struck him with blindness—a blindness which permitted the glow of the flames at Moscow and the ice of a Russian winter to work his ruin. When God and fortune had forsaken him, the princes who had promised him service and allegiance fell away from him, and turned the points of their swords against him, and the people, which, relying upon his own warlike talents, he had so greatly despised, rose up against him. But the nations likewise were stricken with blindness; whilst breaking asunder one sort of bonds, they forged new ones for themselves. The two years (May, 1812-April, 1814) form an instructive chapter in history, from the moment when Napoleon led an army of more than half a million men against Russia, until the day when, abandoned by all, he was compelled to flee, in order to escape the threats and insults of the embittered French people. It was a sanguinary, horrifying drama.
No one could have suspected that the greater would drag down the less in its ruin, that by the downfall of Napoleon, the Jews whom he had liberated, though reluctantly, would be hurled into their former slavery. Jewish youths belonging to wealthy families had emulated their Christian friends in courage, and rushed to battle to help in slaying the giant. Large numbers of Jews, especially in Prussia, animated by burning love of country, had joined the volunteers, had rejoiced to be accepted in the ranks, and wipe away with their blood on the battlefield the stain of cowardice, so often imputed to them by the opponents to their emancipation. Jewish young men paid for the freedom accorded them on paper with their lives. Jewish physicians and surgeons sacrificed themselves in the camps and hospitals in their devoted attendance on the wounded and the plague-stricken. Jewish women and girls spared no efforts to bring help and comfort to the wounded. Again, as in the days of national independence, sons of the same race and religion were opposed to each other—German Jews engaged in deadly combat with French, Italian, and Dutch Jews, and recognized each other only in the last hour, in time to embrace as brothers. Those unfit to bear arms had shown their attachment to Germany and their worthiness of emancipation by sacrifices in other ways. Nevertheless, the seemingly forgotten Jew-hatred was rekindled in the hearts of the Germans, extended ever further, and robbed the Jews of the reward which the hard-won victories had promised to bring even to them.
With the fall of the hero began the rule of petty, intriguing, reckless speculators, who bartered both men and lands. They misled the princes who earnestly desired to restore long banished freedom, and ensnared them with lying artifices. In France these intriguers, the Talleyrands, reinstated the throne of the Bourbons. In Germany Metternich and Gentz turned the struggles for freedom into mockery. Only the more far-sighted knew that Europe, owing to the closer connection between the rulers, would be reduced to a more degrading state of slavery, because sloth and pettiness were the order of the day.
The Jews felt the first effects of the reaction now commencing in Germany. It arose in Frankfort, the seat of unmitigated, mediæval anti-Semitism. As soon as the artillery of the retreating enemy had ceased within the precincts of this city, loud voices were heard encouraging each other to demand that boundaries be set at once to the unheard-of presumption of the Jews. In Lübeck and Bremen, the citizens did not content themselves with depriving the Jews of their recently-acquired rights, but energetically strove to banish them altogether. The proposal was seriously made to drive all adherents of the Mosaic religion from the town. In Hanover, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and Hesse, they were at one blow divested of their rights of equality. These events naturally gave great anxiety to the Jews throughout Germany. If the privileges granted them by law, as in Frankfort, could be abolished, what security had they for the continuance of their equality? What a contrast this reaction presented to that in France! Here, although the nobility, who hated freedom and were thirsting for revenge, and the Catholic clergy were in power at the court of Louis XVIII, and looked upon the terrible events since 1789 as if they had not happened, yet the rights of the Jews were not abridged.
The Jews, concerned about their freedom, honor, nay, their very existence, especially in the so-called free towns, looked hopefully forward to the Congress of Vienna, which was to readjust dismembered Europe. The monarchical and diplomatic members of the Congress, however, did not hasten to act the part of Providence assigned to them. They opened the meetings in November instead of in August, and from the bosom of this Congress, intended to establish eternal peace, a desolating war arose. The community of Frankfort had sent two deputies to Vienna, one of them Jacob Baruch, the father of Börne, chosen because he had patrons at the Viennese court. Baruch fulfilled his task in a disinterested manner worthy of his great son. Together with his less known colleague, he presented a memorial (October, 1814) to the Congress, wherein the arguments in favor of the claim of the Frankfort Jews were clearly set forth. They made the formal claim, that their equalization had been duly purchased for a large sum, and the patriotic claim, that they had taken part in the liberation of Germany. Their chief aim was to remove the suzerainty of the Senate over them.
The Jews of the three Hanse Towns sent a Christian lawyer as deputy, to guard their interests in Vienna, who of his own accord had drawn up an appeal for the equalization of the Jews. In combination with the deputies, certain influential personages worked quietly and unobtrusively. The banking-house of Rothschild by its circumspection and fortunate enterprises had made itself a power in the money world; and not even prying suspicion could find a trace of dishonesty in the accumulation of its riches, which might be used as a pretext by anti-Jewish opponents. The founder of the house, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was held in the highest esteem in Frankfort, and in consequence of the equalization had a seat in the Electoral College. Happily he died before the beginning of the reaction (September, 1812), but his five sons increased the wealth left by their father. Although they appear to have adhered to the principle, not to throw the power of their riches into the scale on behalf of their co-religionists and their faith, yet they could not be indifferent to the attempt made in Frankfort, their home, to reduce the Jews again to a state of serfdom. One of the brothers probably addressed words of remonstrance to the most influential German members of the Congress against diminishing the rights of his co-religionists.
The statesmen who controlled German affairs in the Congress showed themselves favorable to the Jews. Hardenberg and Metternich in a letter on the subject expressed their disapproval of the oppressions to which the Jews in the Hanse Towns were subjected (January, 1815), and advised the Senate—advice which amounted to a command—to treat them in a humane, just spirit. Hardenberg pointed out to the Hanse Towns the example of Prussia and the edict of March 11, 1812, and remarked, with some sarcasm, that they would succeed in depriving the Jewish houses of the prosperity to which they had attained, and that constant oppression would compel them to withdraw their capital. In the sketch of the constitution for Germany drawn up by the Prussian plenipotentiary, William von Humboldt, which was submitted to Metternich, and accepted as a basis for discussion, the Jews were promised equality, even though they were mentioned separately. "The three Christian religious sects enjoy equal rights in all German states, and the adherents of the Jewish faith, so long as they undertake all the duties of citizenship, are to enjoy corresponding rights." But the goodwill of the two chancellors, even though their sentiments had been shared by the monarchs whom they represented, did not suffice at that time. A new enemy rose up against the Jews, tougher and more dangerous than envy and bourgeois pride. This terrible enemy who now turned his arms against the Jews was the German visionary. The yoke so long imposed on the Germans by the French, the compulsion under which they had been to obliterate their most characteristic peculiarities, had rendered hateful to them, not alone everything French, but all that was foreign, that did not bear the stamp of pure German origin. Allowances should certainly be made for a nation which, arriving at a consciousness of its strength and solidarity, breaks its fetters, if it conceives an exaggerated notion of its importance. But it was unpardonable and childish that grown men should dream in broad daylight, representing their dreams as truth and trying to foist them upon others. Extravagant Teutomania was a dream of this kind, and resulted in the ruin of the Germans. For the first time the German nation had acted as a unit; hitherto it had been the tool of princes in Italian expeditions, Turkish wars, or civil strife. The Germans sought analogous cases in their own history by which to regulate their conduct, and found them only in the Middle Ages, in the time of the Empire and the omnipotence of the papacy, or in early Teutonic times when uncouth barbarism and childish simplicity prevailed. The romantic school, the Schlegels, Arnims, and Brentanos, had shown them this grewsome specter of the Middle Ages in so wonderful a light, that the Germans in their delusion considered it an ideal, the realization of which was a holy task. To the Middle Ages belonged Christianity, credulity, unthinking clericalism, which became the dearest possessions of the Germans, because they were diametrically opposed to the unbelief of the French and the revolutionary epoch. From that time the hollow phrase, Christian-German (or Teutsch), arose, and speedily became a catchword.
But only the devoted followers of Catholicism, with the papacy as supreme authority, could be pious in the sense of the Middle Ages. Honest romanticists, such as Görres, Frederick Schlegel, Adam Müller, etc., logically went over to the Roman Church, and helped to re-establish the empire of the Jesuits and the Inquisition. As for the German Protestants, "God had poured out upon them the spirit of confusion and they tottered like drunken men." Instead of directing their attention to Vienna, where the Congress, amidst dancing and revelry, was running its quarry, the German people, to earth, the romanticists built castles in the air, and at once announced that certain people would be denied admission.
Christian Teutomania was the armed specter which for many decades robbed the German Jews of rest, honor, and joy in life. Because this race, strongly marked by descent and tradition, was distinguished from the Germans by external marks, by features, carriage, and vivacity, although akin in language, feeling, and temperament, they were repelled as foreigners, as a force breeding disturbance and discomfort, and had the spirit of the times permitted they would have been expelled from German territory. But to find a reason for this blind hate, the enemies of the Jews had recourse to old contemptible publications, and extracted rubbish from sources where others had found the rich intellectual treasures of the Jews, and drew such a portrait of them as to arouse terror both in themselves and others.
The first to clothe vague prejudice in words and heap abuse upon the Jews was not a knavish writer, but an academical professor named Friedrich Rühs, whom the newly-founded Berlin University had appointed to the chair of history. He wished to investigate the decline of Germany, and hit upon the Jews, as though they had been the authors of Germany's disgrace during its occupation by foreign powers. Rühs discussed the "Claims of the Jews to German Citizenship," developed the unwholesome theory of a Christian state, and thence derived his justification, if not actually to expel the Jews from Germany, yet to humble them and thwart their growth. He drew up a complete programme for their treatment, which was afterwards conscientiously carried out.
Above all things he wanted the Jews to live merely on sufferance, and on no account to claim equal rights of citizenship. They were once more to pay protection-money, a Jew-tax, and limits were to be set to their increase. The cities which had hitherto not tolerated them were to be supported in this course, and naturally Jews were not to be admitted to any office, nor even permitted to defend their country. Rühs, moreover, insisted that the Jews should again wear a badge, not a repulsive yellow patch, but a "national cockade"; at any rate some mark of distinction, "that the German who could not recognize his Hebrew enemy by face, gait, or speech, might do so by the doubtful badge of honor." Above all things, Rühs exhorted the German states and the German people to promote the conversion of the Jews to Christianity; that was most important. It was generally asserted, even in Christian quarters, that only bad and abandoned men exchanged Judaism for Christianity; but that was prejudice.
Rühs' pamphlet excited great interest. Worthy and learned men declared their agreement with him. The learned German world at the time of Lessing, Abt, Kant, and Herder, the apostolic messenger of universal humanity, now talked the language of the Church Fathers, and stirred up hate and persecution. Schleiermacher and Fichte brought the representatives of German intellect so low that they actually competed with the ultra-Catholics in hatred of the Jews. Pius VII, who in consequence of the Restoration once more reigned in the Papal States, and reintroduced the Inquisition, in order to drive out godlessness by means of the auto-da-fé, ordained that the Jews should forfeit the freedom enjoyed under French rule. The Jews of Rome had to forsake their beautiful houses in all parts of the city and return to the dirty, unhealthy Ghetto; the Middle Ages had returned to the Papal States. The Jews, as in the seventeenth century, had to attend sermons for their own conversion on pain of punishment. Meantime history had enacted one of those surprising interludes, which was to prove the instability of the reactionary Restoration. Napoleon had contrived to land on French ground despite English sea-guardianship. The props of the Bourbon throne—the nobility, the clergy, and intriguers, who had ostentatiously displayed their power,—collapsed before a single shot had been fired, and Napoleon entered Paris in triumph. The empire of the hundred days was established. The whole of Europe armed itself against one man, and the fortune of war decided in favor of the allies on the Dutch battlefields at Waterloo. In the Prussian army, which next to the English had been most instrumental in turning the tide of victory, there were many Jewish soldiers, among them several militia officers.
What reward did the German Jews receive for their sincere devotion to their country? When the Congress, alarmed by Napoleon's sudden reappearance, ceased to dally and began to hold regular sittings, the Act of Federation for the German states, which despite their union were to be autonomous, was brought up for consideration, and a paragraph in it devoted to the Jews. Citizenship was to be assured them, and in countries where obstacles to this reform existed, they were to be removed as far as possible. But this paragraph was accepted only by Prussia and Austria; all the other members of the league, especially those from the free towns, voted against it. To arrive at an agreement, a colorless compromise was proposed: "The Congress of the allies will consider how the civil improvement of those professing the Jewish faith in Germany is to be effected in the most harmonious manner, and how in particular the enjoyment of civil rights and participation in civil duties may be secured to them. The rights already conceded them in the several federated states will be continued."
The first portion was harmless, and could be accepted by all, since it remained open to every state to prevent its favorable interpretation. The latter portion, however, was apt to put the Free Towns into a delicate position. There the Jews through French influence were actually in possession of civil equality. Accordingly, the deputy for Frankfort (the syndic Danz) emphatically protested, and was supported by the Saxon deputies. To shame German narrow-mindedness, the Danish government, as if it had anticipated that the hatred of Jews in Germany would spread, ordered Bernstorff, its representative for Holstein, to declare that the adherents of the Jewish faith, if they fulfilled the duties of citizenship, might there expect a constitutional provision ensuring them against persecution, oppression, arbitrariness or uncertainty of legislation in respect of the rights conceded to them. The deputy for Bremen, Senator Schmidt, was cleverer; he did not protest, but defeated the suspicious resolution by a master-stroke. Remarking that the privileges of the Jews conferred by the French in North Germany (the 32d military division) could not be binding on the Germans, he stated that they need only change the word in into by, and everything would be right. Nobody at first took notice of this apparently insignificant change. Metternich and Hardenberg, who hitherto either from inclination or in pursuance of promises had appeared to favor the Jews, passed over this point in an incomprehensible manner. Thus the paragraph referring to the Jewish question in its final form read: "The rights already conceded the professors of the Jewish faith by the several federated states will be continued." Of the federated states, however, only Prussia and Mecklenburg, and perhaps also Baden, had conceded citizenship to the Jews. The enactment of the French authorities was thus made null and void, and Germany was saved. What did it matter to the delighted nation that this verbal change would cost so many tears?
The humiliation of the Jews soon showed itself in practical life. Lübeck, protected by the unfair interpretation of a paragraph, ordered more than forty Jewish families to leave the town (September, 1815). Bremen did the same with its Jews. Frankfort could not eject its Jewish inhabitants, but their lives were embittered; they were shut out from civil assemblies, Jewish functionaries were deposed, they were excluded from many trades and industries, marriage permits asked by Jewish couples were refused with the heartlessness of the Middle Ages, they were forbidden to live in certain parts of the town, and were treated as though they were still servi cameræ. But as the Senate knew that Prussia and Austria regarded it as a point of honor to preserve intact the civil rights of the Jews of Frankfort, and that the Federal Diet, at the instance of both great powers, might easily determine the controversy in favor of the Jews, it applied to three German juridical faculties, those of Berlin, Marburg, and Giessen, to have the question decided as one of law.
This struggle between the Frankfort Senate and the Jews, protracted during nine years (1815–24), and occasioning many vexations, will ever remain a stain on the time, a monument of German narrow– mindedness. The Jews, relying on the assurance of the two German powers, believed that their civil rights were guarded as by a triple wall.
But just this manifest truth, the Teutomaniacs and sophists, suddenly developed into bigots, sought to obscure and cry down. From all parts of Germany there resounded simultaneously outcries against the Jews, urging the nation, or the German federation, to enslave the Jews or destroy them. Journals and pamphlets raged against them, as if Germany or Christendom could be saved only by the destruction of the Jews.
The most violent attack was that of a physician and professor of natural science at Heidelberg, J. F. Fries, "Danger to the Welfare and Character of the Germans through the Jews" (summer, 1816), in which he asserted that the Jews ought to be expelled the country, that the tribe must be exterminated root and branch, as among all secret and political societies they were most dangerous to the state. "Ask man after man, and see, whether every peasant and every burgher do not hate and curse the Jews as national pests and bread robbers." The Jews, he said, had contrived to get more than half the entire capital of Frankfort into their hands. "Let them go on for forty years, and the sons of the first Christian houses will seek service among the Jews in the meanest capacities." It is remarkable that in the face of such passionate incitement, wild outbreaks against the Jews did not occur at that time, especially as Fries' pamphlet was read in all taverns and public-houses.
Was no Christian voice raised against this injustice? For the honor of the Germans it must be mentioned that some men had the courage to contend against crass prejudice and blind hatred. A highly respected and learned councilor in Ratisbon, August Krämer, wrote a defense, "The Jews and their Just Claims on the Christian States; a Contribution to the Mitigation of the Cruel Prejudices against the Jewish Nation." Councilor Schmidt, in Hildburghausen, on the one hand, pictured the abominable scenes which Christian fanaticism had in the past enacted against Jews, and, on the other hand, showed the superiority of culture possessed by the latter over the Christians in Spain. But their most thorough-going advocate was Johann Ludwig Ewald, a reformed clergyman of Carlsruhe, of high position, and seventy years old. Rühs' and Fries' malignant statements about the Jews incensed him so deeply, that he denied himself a season's recreation in Baden, and employed the time in giving the lie to their impudent assertions in a pamphlet (1816). Ewald vindicated the downtrodden sons of Israel in the name of Christianity, whose representative he was. Every groundless complaint against them he dissolved into nothing. From England and France, too, admonitions reached the Germans not to expose their own pettiness by their insane hatred of the Jews. An English paper thought that the town of Lübeck, as well as all the free towns, ought to be deprived of their independence (of which they had made so infamous a use) by the German federation, on account of the ignorant intolerance displayed against the Jews. A French writer, M. Bail, vindicated the unhappy people in glowing language, and covered their German enemies with shame.
"The Jewish nation to a higher degree than any other possesses the ancient, sanctified character which excites astonishment. I never meet a rabbi adorned with a white beard without thinking of the venerable patriarchs. Nothing is more elevating about the Israelites than their solemn life, which makes them the most devoted and honorable people on earth. In their midst is to be found the illustration of all domestic virtues, of loving care for the needy, and profound reverence for parents. Happy, a thousand times happy, are the nations among whom the basis of morality has been preserved."
But if truth and justice had spoken with angels' tongues, the Germans of those days would have remained deaf to their voices. They were so deeply imbued with hatred of the Jews that they were irrational.
An organ of the Austrian government directed a sort of threat against the encroachments of the people of Lübeck upon the rights of the Jews.
"How can the future Federal Diet discuss the improvement of the condition of the Jews, if individual states anticipate it by the most cruel and arbitrary resolutions? This conduct exhibits want of respect as much towards the ensuing Federal Diet as towards the foremost courts of Germany, whose principles in regard to this matter have been often and loudly enough expressed."
What was done by Austria itself, which displayed such righteous indignation against Lübeck on behalf of the Jews? Francis I and his ruler Metternich completely forgot the benevolent intentions of Joseph II, and kept in mind only the hateful laws of Maria Theresa against the Jews. They did not indeed expel the Jews, as in Lübeck and Bremen, but they were relegated to Ghettos within Austria, beyond which they were not allowed to pass. Tyrol, the secluded mountain province, was closed to them as to Protestants. In Bohemia the mountain cities and villages were forbidden them, and in Moravia, in the great cities of Brünn and Olmütz, they were allowed to stay only over-night or for a short time. Everywhere there were Jew-streets; the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Austria had become proverbial, whilst in Galicia they met with greater oppression than in the Middle Ages. Even the benevolent regulations of Joseph II, in regard to compulsory school attendance and practical religious instruction, were carried out not so much to spread culture among the Jews as to torment and injure them. Emperor Francis ennobled a few Jews, but the others were humiliated; they were obliged to render military service, but the bravest were rarely admitted even to the lowest rungs of the military ladder.
Austria, to be sure, had made the Jews no promises, and had awakened no hope of freedom. But Prussia, where they had already enjoyed full citizenship, conjured up a hobgoblin worthy of the Middle Ages, and wounded their honor the more deeply. Frederick William III, who had confirmed the equality of the Prussian Jews by law, annulled it, or rather left it unexecuted, a dead letter. Unconsciously he succumbed to the theory of the Christian state set up by the Teutomaniacs and sophists, who insisted that no place of honor be conceded the Jews. The promised equalization of the Jews in the newly-acquired or reconquered provinces was continually delayed. In the latter they remained subject to the restrictions of a former time, and Prussia's legislation regarding the Jews was a curious petrifaction. There were twenty-one fundamental laws for their treatment, and they were divided into French, old Prussian, Saxon, and Polish Jews, naturally to their disadvantage.
The specific aim of Prussia was to make Jews despicable in society. Whereas formerly the government had been at pains to avoid in official correspondence the words Jew, Jewish, as having an offensive connotation, they were now insisted upon.
The Judæophobist spirit in Prussia showed itself in a case which challenges comparison with France. The unjust Napoleonic law which had suspended the equality of the Jews of the German departments for ten years in respect of free migration and commerce was to fall into abeyance after the end of the respite (March 17, 1818), unless it was prolonged. The government of Louis XVIII, although besieged by clerical and political reactionaries, did not for a moment make an attempt to preserve the limitation. In the Chamber, which occupied itself with this point (February and March, 1818), only one hostile voice (Lathier) was raised against the Jews in Alsace. This opponent of the Jews alleged that the whole country would soon be in the hands of the Jews, if a check was not put to their greed. Not even the Right, which was clerically disposed, uttered a word against the Jews in general and for the restriction of their liberties. The phantom of a Christian state was quite unknown to the French. The Chamber rejected Lathier's proposal, and thus the Jews of Alsace were restored to their former equality. A similar law had been passed against the Jews of the district on the left bank of the Rhine, which was added to Prussia, or the Rhine province and Westphalia. The Prussian government, on taking this former French territory, had permitted the continuance of restrictive legislation, and a cabinet order of March 3d, 1818, renewed it for an indefinite period.
About this time a distinguished Englishman, with the Old and New Testaments in his hand, advocated the equality and freedom of the Jews throughout Europe with extraordinary zeal. Lewis Way, a disciple of the Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts of the English War of Independence, accepted the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, and was convinced that the Jewish nation would be resurrected, and be restored in glory to the land of their fathers. Only when they had recovered their independence would they be converted to the doctrines of Jesus. It was therefore a matter of conscience with him to promote the welfare of the Jews. He made a journey to Poland to ascertain the number and condition of the Jews in that country. Way now elaborated a remarkable memorial in which he dwelt on the high significance of the Jews in the past, and also in the future. With this memorial he betook himself to Aix, where the king of Prussia and the emperors of Russia and Austria with their ministers and diplomatists were met in Congress (end of September, 1818). He sought to make a favorable impression on Emperor Alexander, whose mystical temperament was known to him. As soon as the Czar showed himself in favor of the equalization of the Jews, it could not be doubted that Frederick William III and Emperor Francis would also be well disposed towards it.
Way started with the supposition that the Jews were a royal nation, and had not ceased to be so even in exile, in the misfortunes of their tragical career. This people possessed the key to the history of the whole globe. The same divine grace which had guided them in former times rested on them in banishment and exile. The promises which the prophets had foretold for the Israelite race would not fail to be accomplished; they would once more be gathered together in the land of their fathers. All the nations of the earth which have received salvation through them, were bound by gratitude to show the Jews the greatest honors and boundless beneficence, so as to wipe out the guilt incurred against this divinely-gifted race by the cruel persecutions inflicted on them. The present moment was highly favorable to their complete liberation. In some countries fanatical, narrow-minded clamorers had raised their voices against the emancipation of the Jews, but they no more represented public opinion than the furious outcries of a few American planters against the suppression of slavery. If Way was an enthusiast, when he tried to prove the necessity of e