The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag
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offices. There was a peculiar aspect, also, about these nobles that bore office. If the son of an old family studied law, he easily gained by his family connection the situation of councillor; and rose from thence, if clever and well informed, to the highest offices, even to be de facto a ruler of states, or political agent and ambassador at foreign courts. Besides divers rogues who were drawn forth in these bad times, there were also some men of education, worth, and capacity, among the German nobility of this class, who already in the time of Leibnitz formed the real aristocracy of the order. It became gradually customary for nobles to occupy the highest official positions and the posts of ambassadors, after they had become an established court institution; also the appointments of officers in the army. Whilst the Imperial armies, to which the young nobles from the greater part of Germany were attracted, retained, even after the reforms of Prince Eugene, somewhat of the aspect of the old Landsknecht army under the Hohenzollerns; the new organization of the Prussian army formed the ground-work of an excellent education for the officers. The Elector Frederic William had perceived that the wild country nobles of his devastated realm could be best turned to account in the army which he created amid the roar of cannon in the Thirty Years' War. He restrained their love of brawls by military discipline; regulated their rude sense of honour by esprit de corps and military laws; and gave them the feeling of being in a privileged position, by raising none but nobles to the rank of officers. Thus was effected one of the most remarkable changes in the civilization of the eighteenth century, especially when King Frederic William I. and Frederic II. had so emphatically declared that every prince of the Hohenzollern house must be both soldier and officer, wear the same coat, be under the same subordination and the same law of honour as the most insignificant Junker from the country.
Thus it happened that the descendants of many families that had lived as drones in the Commonwealth became closely bound up with the fondest recollections of the people. But this political privilege of the nobility became, it is true, even in the State of the Hohenzollerns, a source of new danger to the families of the nobility, and, which was still more important, to the State itself. We shall have occasion to speak of this later.
Thus the nobility, about 1750, were at their highest point--everywhere the ruling class. Thousands of their sons did homage, in both the great and small courts; scarcely a less number established themselves in the stalls of ecclesiastical endowments, occupied prebends and carried Imperial "panisbriefs"[57] in their pockets. The softest seats in the senate, the foremost places in the State carriages of diplomats, were taken by them; almost the whole of the State domains were in their hands. But it was just at this period that a great change took place in the minds of the German people; a new culture arose, and new views of the value of the things of this world spread themselves, quietly, gradually, imperceptibly, no one knew how or from whence. The German sentences received a new cadence; German verses became less majestic, and soon even simple. This new seeking after simplicity spread still further. Certain bold enthusiasts ventured to despise powder, and perukes; this was contrary to all etiquette, but new ideas and new feelings came into circulation. Beautiful tender hearts, and the dignity of man were spoken of. Soon, also, distinguished personages among the nobility caught the infection, even Sovereigns; the Duchess of Weimar went with a certain Wieland in a carrier's cart; two Reichsgrafen von Stolborg were not disinclined to bend the knee to one Klopstock, and embraced by moonlight the citizen students.
Among the bel-esprits of the citizens who now gained an influence, none was more adapted to reconcile the nobles to the new times than Gellert. He was not genial: he knew well what was due to every one, and he gave every one his proper place; he had a refined, modest disposition, but was rather a pessimist; he was very respectable, and had a mild and benevolent demeanour towards both ladies and gentlemen. Great was the influence that he exercised over the country nobles of Upper Saxony, Thuringia, and Lower Germany. The culture of the new time soon got a footing in these families. The ladies especially opened their hearts to the new feeling for literature, and many of them became proud of being patronesses of the beautiful art of poetry, whilst the gentlemen still looked distrustfully on the new state of things. As in Germany, poetry had the wonderful effect of bringing the nobility into unprecedented union with the citizen class, so at the same time in Austria, music had for a time a similar effect.
But there were greater results than the mere poetical emotions with which Kalb, Stein, and the loveable Lengfelds received the German poets. Science now began to speak more earnestly and more powerfully. What she commended or condemned became, as if by magic, among hundreds of thousands, the law of life or the object of aversion. Not many years after 1750, in a wide circle of highly cultivated minds, which included the most vigorous of the burgher class, together with the noblest spirits among the nobility, the privileges which gave the nobles a position among the people, were considered as obsolete; and the State ordinances which preserved them were regarded with coldness and contempt.
Again there came a stern period; the noble generals of the Prussian army could not maintain the State edifice of the old Hohenzollerns; they were the first to give up the State of Frederick the Great, and pusillanimously to surrender the Prussian fortresses to a foreign enemy. One of the necessary conditions for the preservation and restoration of Prussia and Germany was, that the nobility must renounce their valued privileges in civil offices, and officers' appointment.
Since the rising of the people in 1813, the life and prosperity of the State has mainly rested on the power and progress of culture in the German citizen. The citizens are no longer, as in the middle ages, a class confronting the other classes; they form the nation. Whoever would place himself in opposition to it by egotistical pretensions, begins a hopeless struggle. All the privileges by which the nobility up to the present day have sought to maintain a separate position among the people, have become a misfortune and fatality to themselves. Many of the best among them have long comprehended this; they are in every domain of intellectual and material interests, in art, science, and State, the representatives of the new life of the nation. Even the country noble, who within the boundary of his village district holds faithfully and lovingly to the recollections of the olden time, has in some degree made friends with the new time, and in some sort yielded unwillingly to its demands. But among the weaker of them there remains even now somewhat of the hearty disposition of the old mounted rovers. The modern Junker is an unfavourable caricature of the nobility; if one observes closely, he is only a pretentious continuation of the old Krippenreiter. Under uniforms and decorations are concealed the same hatred of the culture of the times, the same prejudices, the same arrogance, the same grotesque respect for decaying privileges, and the same rough egotism with regard to the commonwealth. Not a few of these court and country nobles still consider the State like the full store-room of a neighbour, as their ancestors did two centuries ago; against these rise the hatred and contempt of the people.
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