THE GERMANS: Double History of a Nation BY EMIL LUDWIG Translated from the German by HEINZ and RUTH NORDEN Germany is nothing, but every individual German is much, and yet the Germans imagine the reverse to be true. —G OETHE LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANYBOSTON 1941 LANDSCAPE ON THE RHINE COPYRIGHT 1941, BY EMIL LUDWIG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM FIRST EDITION Published November 1941 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO S ENATOR R OBERT F. W AGNER model German-American Foreword THIS BOOK offers a history, not of Germany, but of the Germans. Here as in all his writings, the author’s scope is psychological. Even so, a complete story cannot be encompassed within the range of a single volume —here too the artist’s skill lies in his selection. There are indifferent German emperors, whose names will not be found in the pages that follow; for the purpose is not to tire the reader’s mind with as many names as possible, but to stimulate it with a smaller number of fully rounded characters. Battles and other external events resemble the zenith of a trajectory, whereas the real points of interest are where the projectile is fired and where it strikes—cause and effect. On every one of the four hundred ninety-five pages that follow, it is the author’s purpose to explain causes and effects of deeds and events—explain them through the German character. The German way of feeling, the cruel schism within the German soul which has remained unchanged throughout the ages—these are here to be developed, through two thousand years. There is no objective writing of history outside the encyclopedia. The present version, too, is conditioned by personal factors. Only the admission of this fact distinguishes it from others. In all lands certain professors strike rigid poses like the Supreme Judge on a Byzantine mosaic, and they often deceive their readers and themselves about the extent to which their own subjective destinies, fortunes and reverses influence their writings. An author who conceals his own situation and that of the age in which he lives leads the reader astray and grows tedious in the bargain. This is true especially in times such as our own when violent partisanship sets men against each other. No historian, not even the great Plutarch, would have written exactly as he did, had he written a century earlier or later. Carlyle was deeply influenced by the French Revolution, Burckhardt by the age of Bismarck; both were similarly influenced by deep-felt personal experiences, even when they wrote of distant times. The way in which one epoch mirrors itself in another is precisely what lends wings to author and reader. Since my twentieth year I have depicted the German character in a dozen dramas and biographies, from Ulrich von Hutten and Grünewald to Goethe, Beethoven, Weber and Wagner; and from Emperor Frederic II and King Frederic the Great to Bismarck, William and Hindenburg—always with reverence for the German spirit, but with censure for the German State. This discrepancy between State and spirit distinguishes German history from that of all other nations. It always obscures the spirit precisely when the State flourishes and vice versa. That is the subject of this new book, which seeks to go beyond the destiny of individual Germans to explain the character of the nation. It is a tragic and ironic spectacle, repeated throughout the centuries from Arminius to Hitler. It offers an answer to the question which all the world poses today: How is it possible for the people of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant to be relapsing forever into barbarism? German culture was hardly ever represented by the governing classes; it was created by the governed. The reasons why, in this dual history, one part of the people remained almost without influence on the other, lie in the complex and nervous character of the Germans, whose development we shall here outline, from the primeval forests of Caesar to the forest of Compiègne. This history, in which intellectual and political life pursue separate courses, resembles a two-story omnibus. The passengers on the upper level enjoy a broader view but remain without influence on the direction of the vehicle, because the driver below fails to take notice of them. Apart from this peculiarity, it will be shown how the forms of power which have made the name of Germany so hated and feared throughout the world come from the North (later Prussia), while the forms of the spirit and of art which constitute the everlasting glory of Germany come from the South and the West. It will be shown, furthermore, why the treasures that German culture has given to the world derive wholly from commoners, while the princes and nobles have brought forth only violence. The few exceptions to this rule, so deeply rooted in the German character, are the subject of special emphasis. Yet all the German emperors and chancellors taken together do not mean as much to the outside world as Mozart and Schubert, as Dürer and Cologne Cathedral. No German victory has impressed itself so deeply upon mankind as the invention of the art of printing. It seemed more important to the author to give a picture of the mental state of this warrior people than to describe its battles. The causes and consequences of its passion for war seemed to him more significant than the wars themselves. And finally it will be shown that Hitler is not an adventurer cast up in Germany by the merest chance, but a truly German phenomenon; and that all well-intentioned efforts to make a distinction between him and the German character miss their point. His spirit enters upon the stage in the very first scene of this book, and if he himself is allotted but two out of eighty-two chapters, it is only today that this seems scant; a German history of the year 2000 is likely to concede him even less. Since this book is to be published in languages other than German, the chapters dealing with the Middle Ages have been severely cut. The author has tried a new method towards which he has been moving for some time. You will find celebrated historical facts simply recorded in this book, whilst inner evolutions are elaborately developed. Parliamentary resolutions, battles and redistribution of territory are of little importance to posterity as succeeding wars and events again change the newly established order. Three things, however, are of great importance: the spiritual reasons and results of events; the character of the persons who bring them about; and comparisons with our present time. History is not made principally by economic forces but by the emotions of men. And, as these always remain the same, every epoch will be reflected in the persons emerging from the background of this historical picture. Born a German, the author owes his education to a civilization represented by the genius of Beethoven and Goethe. But the German State was alien to him even in his youth, so he left it at the age of twenty-five and went to live in free Switzerland, of which he has been a citizen for many years. This book was written in California, in one of the loveliest places in the world, whilst the author lived in an atmosphere of German music and philosophy. The Library of Congress, the Santa Barbara Public Library, and the co- operation of Dr. Harry Girvetz of the State College at Santa Barbara, and Dr. Albrecht Joseph, Hollywood, have generously facilitated this work. Santa Barbara, California March , 1941. E MIL L UDWIG Contents Foreword Prelude before Dawn BOOK I: The Dream of World Dominion From Charlemagne to Gutenberg (800–1500) BOOK II: Struggle for the Creed From Luther to Kepler (1500–1650) BOOK III: Schism of State and Spirit From the Great Elector to Goethe (1650–1800) BOOK IV: World-Citizens and Nationalists From Beethoven to Bismarck (1800–1890) BOOK V: Decline From William II to Hitler (1890–1940) Index Illustrations Landscape on the Rhine Two Medieval Statues on the Cathedral of Strasbourg Town Hall in Breslau Gothic Cathedral in Ulm Erasmus, Painted by Holbein Charles V at the Time of the Reichstag in Worms Luther at the Time of the Reichstag in Worms Self-Portrait of Dürer Architecture in Vienna, Seventeenth Century Frederic the Great Empress Maria Theresa Goethe at Forty Kloster Melk in Austria Beethoven Bismarck at Eighty, from a Photograph by Karl Hahn, Munich Court of the Castle in Heidelberg PRELUDE BEFORE DAWN “The German runs no greater risk than to lift himself up with and at the expense of his neighbor; wherefore it is a good thing for his nation that the outside world took notice of it so belatedly.” —G OETHE I FROM the wide plains a hill rises in the morning sun. Two mounted squadrons approach it from opposite sides at the same time. Their aspect is very different, one from the other. Military cloaks, fastened by clasps over leather armor and armless tunics, flutter from the shoulders of one group of horsemen. Strands of long dark hair stray from beneath the bronze helmets fitted with rigid sidepieces. Broad swords of fair length hang from the men’s sides and small bucklers are fastened on their backs but they grip their lances in their right hands, together with the reins. The horsemen of the other group have animal pelts fastened about their bodies, with stag or bison skins drawn over their heads. But beneath these skins long golden-yellow hair, often curly, escapes, seeming to take the place of helmets. The swords of these men are longer and narrower, and many carry a curved dagger besides. Their lances are long and better suited to thrusting than throwing. Before each of these hosts rides its leader, dressed in fashion similar to his men, but richer and more colorful. Both are preceded by mounted heralds bearing insignia—the one an artful eagle-shield of bronze with the four large letters SPQR, the other a crudely painted image of an animal, probably a bull’s head. A few hundred paces from the hill they halt; a messenger rides over; commands ring out in two different languages. At last the commanders disengage themselves from their troops, each taking along but ten men. Soon they meet on the crest of the hill, the leaders saluting each other without dismounting. They are Caesar, the Roman, and Ariovistus, the Teuton. The scene is close to the river of destiny, a bare mile west of the Rhine, in Gaul, about where Mulhouse lies today. It is the year 58 B.C. For two thousand years to come wars and battles will follow on each other’s heels here in Alsace. But on this particular day a peaceful settlement is still being sought. The two men, both between forty and fifty, had heard a great deal about each other. Both were in a strange country. Caesar, the Roman Proconsul, had only just come to Gaul, seeking an agreement with a conqueror who had preceded him and might be disposed to share the spoils. Ariovistus had made the westward crossing of the Rhine from the Elbe and the Oder on the pretext of aiding a distressed Gallic tribe; had then subjugated the supposedly liberated tribe, and later concluded treaties with faraway Rome. The Roman Senate had been eager to win over the unknown barbarian in the North with titles and presents, for the marauding Teutonic tribes had long spread fear and terror in Rome. But now that Caesar had come to Gaul in the name of the world power, he could not close his ears to the complaints of the displaced Aedui against the conquering Teutons. What the two men said on that hill that morning has been accurately recorded by Caesar:— “Remember, Ariovistus,” Caesar began, “all the favors you have received from me and from the Senate. We have recognized you as King, and admitted you to the rare honor of an official friend of the Roman people. Know, however, that the Aedui too are old allies of the Romans. Wage not war against the Aedui nor against their allies, but return to them their hostages, and if you cannot persuade your Teutons to retire beyond the Rhine, see to it at least that no more of them enter Gaul.”* Sitting astride his horse, Ariovistus responded to the Roman’s condescending speech with an agitation that had evidently been well prepared, for Caesar says that he spoke “little about these demands but much about his own virtues,” as follows:— “Not from my own impulse have I crossed the Rhine; it was the Gauls who implored me for aid! For their sake have I left my home and my clan! It was not I who began to wage war against the Gauls, but they against me! They cannot refuse me the tribute they have heretofore paid me of their own free will! All honor to the friendship of the Roman people—but if such friendship cost me my rights, then I must renounce it! True, I have led many Teutons to Gaul, but without the least purpose of disturbing the country, since it was not I who attacked them—I merely defended myself! In short, if you will, therefore, leave me in undisputed possession of my rights, I shall at my own expense help you to win all the wars that you may propose. If, on the other hand, you remain here on my own land, I shall henceforth regard you as my enemy! Then, when I have vanquished and killed you in battle, many powerful and highly-placed Romans will rejoice—they have so confided to me through special couriers and have offered me their friendship after Caesar’s death. Now you know it, Caesar, and now choose!” As soon as Caesar begins to answer, an officer reports to him that enemy horsemen are approaching and hurling stones and arrows into the Roman legions. Caesar breaks off and rides back. But when the Teuton’s speech spreads through the camp, the Roman soldiers grow angry. Two days later Ariovistus proposes another meeting, adding menacingly to his requests for peace that he has irrevocably set this as the last day for reaching an agreement. Caesar sends two younger officers, one of whom once enjoyed Ariovistus’ hospitality. They barely arrive when they are taken and put in irons as spies. Caesar prepares for battle, and the Teuton is disastrously beaten. According to Plutarch, 80,000 Teutons are supposed to have perished. To save himself, Ariovistus allowed his two wives and his sister to fall into enemy hands. He himself escaped across the Rhine in a boat and literally disappeared into obscurity. No one knows how the Teuton leader, who for twenty years had enjoyed the greatest fame among his people, ended his days. This first document to show us a Teuton leader in speech and in action contains all the elements characterizing the type—protestations of innocence, threats, tactlessness and treachery. Caesar too spoke as a diplomat and turned things to his own account; but he dealt straightforwardly, offering terms not stones. By way of contrast, what did the Teuton say? Out of pure kindness, to help the weak, had he made the sacrifice of invading Gaul; he had mobilized only to keep from being encircled by his evil neighbors; foreign lands had been voluntarily ceded to him, but, on the other hand, his were the rights of a conqueror. Were he to kill Caesar, the most powerful Romans would be grateful to him—indeed, they had expressly requested him, the so-called barbarian, to do so. And during his speech he had his army move up, for it was he who had given orders to shoot. When the bluff did not work he grew conciliatory, but when the intermediaries arrived, he had them put in chains. Done in the year 58 B.C. . . . Tomorrow it will be exactly two thousand years ago. Nothing has changed since then. * Caesar: Bellum Gallicum , Book 1, Chapter 43. 2 FIFTY YEARS earlier Marius, Caesar’s uncle, had saved Rome from the Teutons. At that time all Italy had been seized with panic. These Romans, who had conquered the plains of the Po and who felt secure behind the snowcapped ramparts of the Alps, had been frightened out of their power-engendered security when reports suddenly reached them in the year 113 of a huge army of northern barbarians massed north of the Alps. Half-naked giants with the “hair of aged men”; hundreds of thousands of them, but not merely an army: they had crude tent wagons and trappings and harnessed horses—and all their womenfolk and children with them. They carried clubs and long swords; their shields were the height of a man; their front line was tied together with ropes, and when they broke loose they set up a fearsome howl, artificially reinforced by holding their shields close to their lips. And all the while the women from the massed wagon train would shout encouragement to them not to yield. They slaughtered all prisoners, and the old women—priestesses in gray linen—stabbed the garlanded victims, catching their blood in vessels and foretelling the future from their entrails. These were the Cimbri and Teutones —the Roman equivalent of Cimbri , incidentally, was “Robbers”—who had left their homes in the North and East of Germany, roaming the country between the Vistula, the Oder and the Elbe, and finally advancing against the more civilized Celts. This was the “Cimbric Terror,” and centuries later, when other Teutonic tribes laid Italy waste, the term remained the expression of the fear in which slowly aging Rome held the wild tribes from the North. Why did they come and why did they always move on again—to the Rhône, the Seine, the Po, the Ebro? Was it land they lacked in the North? Had not their forefathers lived happily there in their fashion? They came from the arid steppes of northern Germany, from the primeval forests of Thuringia—always from the Northern regions. It was not land they sought; it was better land—and who is to blame them! It was cold where they lived with their animal pelts, their oatmeal, their skimmed-milk cheese and their bitter beer. And when they heard the legends of lands beyond the mountains that were bathed in everlasting sunshine, where the flour was white and the wine sweet—was it not natural that they should feel impelled to wander southward? To live a better life they had to conquer; and in order to conquer, they trained themselves to be warriors. Perhaps it was their cold and barren country that originally made the Teutons the strongest of the warrior peoples; at any rate, it kept their warlike spirit at high pitch. Always there was the same urge for more fertile and sunny regions, and the farther the tribes advanced—all the way to North Africa—the happier they grew, the more dissolute, the weaker. The same urge that drew their forerunners and successors to Italy, and Gaul, attracted their descendants, the Prussians and other semi-Slavs, to France for two thousand years; for there, before them, lay the garden, and behind them, at home, lay the steppe and the forest. A century after the Teutons were annihilated by the Romans in Italy, the Romans were annihilated by the Teutons in Germany. This battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 A.D. ) was an event in itself. Its circumstances reveal the German character at its earliest period to be precisely what it is today. Augustus, inclined in all things to copy and complete the work of Caesar, had set himself the conquest of Germany. Step by step he sought to fortify the Roman Empire from Lake Geneva to the Black Sea. At the same time he drew to his court a number of youthful half-savages from the trackless northern forests, somewhat as Queen Victoria on occasion adorned herself with a Hindu maharajah. One of these princes, Hermann, or Arminius in the Latin version, belonged to the rulers of the Cheruscan tribe whose abode was west of the Elbe. In Rome he endeavored to learn what he could from his hosts, and when he later saw them again in his own homeland, he paid court to the Roman general and with the aid of his title as a Roman knight spied upon the enemy legions. Another Teuton prince, his own cousin Segestus, likewise a guest of the Romans, sought to betray him. This was the first clash between two Teuton spies who trusted each other less than the enemy. In the end Arminius the Teuton, by means of wily treachery, lured the Romans into the forest primeval, where he had them led around in circles, only to annihilate them. But his cousin betrayed the liberator to the Romans. Thereupon one Teuton in revenge abducted the other’s daughter. Her father, in turn, kidnaped her from her husband, giving her to the Romans as a hostage. Arminius was embroiled in family strife and in the end murdered by his own kin. Segestus, the other Teuton prince, inveigled himself into the good graces of the Romans, as certain conquered leaders today truckle to their conquerors. During the triumphal procession in Rome he was permitted on the tribune as a guest, while down below his daughter was led by in chains, holding by the hand the German liberator’s son, born in prison. In the course of history we shall see this dual treachery oft repeated. The tribal leaders were forever locked in struggle. Throughout the later ages German princes were in the habit of betraying their rivals to the enemy abroad; indeed, it was only thereby that the victories of the Bourbon kings over Germany became possible. For the most part the Germans have won their wars by valor and lost them by treachery. Like all the peoples of their time they kept slaves and were accustomed to vent their love of power upon their bondsmen. Lacking the true instinct of rulership, they lapsed into brutality toward those beneath them and submissiveness to those above them. Even in the forest primeval, the pyramid, today once more the model for their ideal State, formed the symbol of their society, though there was as yet no Party and no bureaucracy to insure so artful a structure as today. At first their leader was the mightiest warrior or the boldest huntsman—later his son or grandson. Even before they called him a King or a Duke, they swore solemn fealty to him, to the accompaniment of sacrifices offered under their ancient rustling oaks. These oaths had a fearful binding force. They were at the heart of their religion, for the leader at the same time represented the gods and destiny. For this reason obedience to the leader was blind, excluding all independent thought and expressly requiring even treachery if the leader so ordered. Disgrace consisted not in killing a defenseless man, but in failing to kill someone the leader had marked for death. No one was allowed to boast of his deeds, which were always attributed to the leader. No one was allowed to return from a battle in which the leader had fallen. This loyalty unto death—a loyalty that did not shrink from crime—was the framework for the morals of those primitive times. It took the place of all law, and since there was no individual choice nor a general center, the loosely allied tribes formed a kind of communistic society of bold warriors in which but one thing was protected—the family or clan, which Tacitus called more powerful with them than the law with other peoples. The fact that they were all warriors was the only thing that remained common to the Teutonic tribes. Their heavens were battlefields, their gods warrior-heroes, their popular assemblies army reviews. Political rule found expression solely in war command. The citizen derived his citizenship from being a warrior. The slave became a citizen when he was invested with arms. The leader’s commands and punishments were supposed to be handed down to him by the gods, and since the leader was also general and judge, he must evidently know everything better. Five hundred years after the poor rose against the rich in Athens, after social revolutions of every kind had rocked the empires of the Mediterranean, all the Teutonic tribes still obeyed their leaders, adhering to this custom down to our own day, almost without wavering. On the other hand, the Teuton’s every impulse was wild and unpredictable. In a single night he might lose his freedom by a turn of the dice; he might slay his friend in a drunken stupor. When it came to battle he literally hurled himself into the fray with exultation. The utter contempt of death which amazed the peoples of antiquity so much in the Teutons resembled an intoxication such as only wild and pugnacious men develop, who know neither work nor love. Even today it fills a part of German youth. 3 THE ROMANS no more than the Franks or the Italians—indeed, not a single neighbor of the Germans—could ever trust the Germans to remain peaceable. No matter how happy their condition, their restless passion would urge them on to ever more extreme demands. The warlike Germans could no more bear an idyllic state of affairs than could Faust and his thousands of German fellow spirits the calm heights of the mind. To enjoy achievement and the fleeting moment was denied them. What was it these irresistible conquerors lacked? They lacked spirit, humaneness, vision. The Carthaginians and even the Romans came to colonize with fire and sword and so did the French when they forced the three ideals of the great Revolution upon the world. But with all of them ideals played a part—a theogony or religion, philosophy or natural science, a verse, a song on the lips of the conqueror. In their footsteps followed men who guarded the treasures of the spirit. But the Teutons were barbarians not because they were unable to read, but because they lacked the wisdom of the heart, the instinct of the mind, the knowledge of nature, wisdom and humility—the heritage of the Mediterranean, the source and substance of mankind. The inner lack of security that dwelt in the Teutonic soul even while the Teutonic body surged forward victoriously—indeed, particularly then—was not assuaged by the conquest of Europe. It grew, betraying itself in a willingness of the Teutons to accept readily whatever was offered them by the Romans, Greeks, Byzantines, whose conquerors but not superiors they were. The occasional efforts by these nomads, shunted from their wild forests to the luxuriant gardens of Sicily or the Provence, to emulate the heritage and lessons of generations were touching in their simple- mindedness. Never have they been more profoundly grasped than in Schubert’s “Wanderer,” who moans:—