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The Religious Underpinnings of Early Prussian Liberalism: The Case of Wilhelm Grävell
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2014
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Writing in 1957, Leonard Krieger famously argued that Lutheranism was “not itself central” to what he called the “problem of political liberty” in the German lands during the nineteenth century. By downplaying the influence of Luther's teachings on German political thought, Krieger tacitly aimed to refute the controversial “from Luther to Hitler thesis” proposed by some historians in an effort to identify the ideological roots of National Socialism. Contrary to these scholars, Krieger blamed the emergence of Germany's “peculiar 19th century version of political freedom” not on religious doctrine, but on a complex of political and socioeconomic circumstances that, he argued, were unique to central Europe. Scholars have almost universally followed Krieger's line of interpretation. Recent debate focuses not on whether he was correct to argue that political and socioeconomic factors were primarily responsible for engendering a distinctively German species of liberalism, but rather on the question of which of these factors was paramount. As a consequence, religion's role in the making of early German liberalism seldom receives serious consideration today.
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References
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84 In his Anti-Platonischer Staat, Grävell argued that “after careful consideration the Senate decides whether it means to support the proposed law or to recommend against it. In the report that is written for this purpose, all the reasons for the decision must be included. This report contains merely advice for the ruler, who is entirely free to follow it, or not follow it.” Grävell, , Anti-Platonischer Staat, 34Google Scholar.
85 Ibid., dedication page.
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87 Grävell complained that his contemporaries had gone too far in their attacks on the guilds, and he opposed the breaking-up of the Junkers' manorial estates. See Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Der Baron und der Bauer, oder das Grundbesitzthum (Leipzig, 1840), 15–16Google Scholar.
88 Scholars who situate Grävell in the bourgeois liberal camp include Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution, 214, 397; Brandt, Hartwig, Landständische Repräsentation im deutschen Vormärz (Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968), 146–8Google Scholar; Obenaus, Herbert, Anfänge des Parlamentarismus in Preußen bis 1848 (Düsseldorf: Drost, 1984)Google Scholar, 91.
89 Hodenberg described the Prussian judiciary as the “domain of the established, self-confident and, above all, educated middle classes” in Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 33. She argued that scholars have overlooked the political differences between the judiciary and the administrative bureaucracy due to a tendency to lump them together under the heading “bureaucratic liberalism”; 17–18 and 331–2.
90 In 1818, the Rhenish liberal Johann Friedrich Benzenberg praised Hardenberg in the journal Zeitgenossen. This article, which was published anonymously as Die Verwaltung des Staatskanzlers Fürsten von Hardenberg (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1819)Google Scholar, met with disapproval from some liberal readers, who felt that it painted Hardenberg's administration in too positive a light. Grävell wrote a critical response, which appeared anonymously in 1819 in the journal Hermes and was later published as Anti-B-z-b-g. Grävell eventually confessed his authorship to clear the name of another man who had come under suspicion as its author.
91 Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution, 214. See also Obenaus, Anfänge des Parlamentarismus, 91.
92 Brandt, Landständische Repräsentation im deutschen Vormärz, 148.
93 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 239.
94 Ibid., 229.
95 Ibid., 197; Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, 305–9.
96 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 231 and 232.
97 Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 316 and 329. The judiciary's antidemocratic sympathies were reflected in the fact that almost two-thirds of the Prussian jurists elected to the Frankfurt Assembly gravitated toward its Center-Right or Right; 305–6.
98 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 214–6.
99 Ibid., 231–2.
100 Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 307.
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103 Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, 86.
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105 Levinger noted that “many of the figures who became leading lights of the reform party after 1806 were Masons, among them Hardenberg, Theodor von Schön, and Johann Gottfried Frey”; Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 28. See also Koselleck, Reinhart, Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), 55–81Google Scholar; and Reinalter, Helmut, ed., Freimaurer und Geheimbünde im 18. Jahrhundert in Mitteleuropa, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986)Google Scholar.
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109 Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Was muss derjenige, der von der Freimaurerei nichts andres weiß, als was davon allgemein bekannt ist, nothwendigerweise davon halten? (Cottbus, 1809; Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1810)Google Scholar. Grävell was one of the four anonymous authors of another defense of freemasonry, entitled Gegen die Angriffe des Prof. Steffens auf die Freimaurerei. Von vier Maurern (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1821)Google Scholar. In addition, he wrote a commentary on Masonic symbols and rituals, Betrachtungen ueber die Symbolik der Freimaurerei (Cottbus: Tornow, 1843)Google Scholar.
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