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Arnold Ruge: A Study in Democratic Caeserism PDF

551 Pages·1977·23.87 MB·English
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INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1.The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Paga(s)". If it was possible to obtain the mining page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 UjA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I 78-12,703 MOORE, James Willard ARNOLD RUGE, A STUDY IN DEMOCRATIC CAESARISM. University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1977 University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan 4eioe © 1977 JAMES WILLARD MOORE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Arnold Ruge A Study in Democratic Caesarism By James Willard Moore A.B. (Reed College) 1959 M.A. (University of California) 1966 C.Phil. (University of California) 1973 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the decree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Approved: Committee in Charge DEGREE CONFERRED DECEMBER 9,1977 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 1 Chapter I. ARNOLD RUGE, 1802-1830: THE SHAPING OF A PRUSSIAN INTELLECTUAL................................................... 18 II. RUGE AND HEGEL, 1830-1837: TWO INTELLECTUALS AND TWO GENERATIONS................................................... 61 III. THE HALLISCHE JAHRBUCHER AND PRUSSIANISM, 1838-1839 ... 110 IV. ARNOLD RUGE AND THE JAHRBUCHER, 1840-1843: THE HEGELIAN AS REBEL............................................ 133 V. RUGE IN DECLINE, THE DEUTSCH-FRANZOSISCHE JAHRBpCHER AND KARL MARX, 1843-1844 ..................................... 192 VI. ARNOLD RUGE THE RED PRUSSIAN, 1844-1848 243 VII. RUGE AND THE GERMAN NATIONAL REVOLUTION, FEBRUARY- AUGUST, 1848 .................................................. 275 VIII. REVOLUTION AND COUNTERREVOLUTION IN PRUSSIA, AUGUST 1848-1850 .............................................. 305 IX. ARNOLD RUGE AND CAESARISM, 1850-1880 ...................... 336 Years of Bitterness: 1850-1858 336 Years of Excitement, 1858-1866 .......................... 373 Years of Reconciliation, 1866-1880 ...................... 396 NOTES................................................................. 415 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................... 531 ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION Leonard Krieger begins his very formidable book on German liberalism by asking the following questions: Did the Germans' failure to achieve, under their own power, a democracy in the modern sense mean simply the triumph of conservatism over generic liberalism in Germany, or was a peculiar German attitude toward liberty involved in its defeat? If there was such an attitude, what were its ingredients?-1- Krieger believes that German liberalism was in fact crippled by its own attitudes. I agree. I would even go further. In my opinion not only German Idealism and liberalism, but also the democratic, socialist, and communist movements as they existed in Germany were plagued by an essentially constant set of debilitating attitudes and internal tensions: by tension between outward rebellion and inward deference to authority, by tension between an excessive outward confidence in formal theory and a debilitating inward lack of confidence in self, by an immanent sense of impotence and dependency that caused the progressive movement to collapse whenever it was sharply challenged, in 1848-49, in 1918, and finally in 1933. Here I hope to complement Krieger's very thoughtful and knowl­ edgeable, but also abstract and formal study, to go beneath the level of formal thought and to show how this "peculiar German attitude"— or, better, how this set of attitudes developed, how it affected formal doctrine and how it worked itself out in practice. I think that this is a useful approach, for an "attitude" is more than a political 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 doctrine. An "attitude," a state of mind or of feeling, may certainly influence philosophy or political theory, and it may gain influence and continuity through being embodied in formal theory. But it also has an existence independent of theory. "Attitudes" of this kind arise out of practical experience and in response to real needs, and even the most brilliant philosophy may lose its power when it no longer satisfies a real need. Because I wish to be concrete, I have chosen a relatively narrow topic. I take one instance in which the liberal opposition broke down, that of 1866. In 1866 many liberals gave up their opposition to Prussian authoritarianism and endorsed Otto von Bismarck's new system in Germany. What is more surprising, a number of democrats were among the first to endorse this system. I call these men "democratic Caesarists"— for reasons which I will explain. If we know what "atti­ tudes" led these men, these outspoken democrats, to support a system like Bismarck's, then it should be easy to understand why it was that others followed. The "democratic Caesarist" is the extreme example which illus­ trates a more general trend. To this extent he can be made to serve a function like that of an ideal type. For the "ideal type," illustrates the meaning which lies in a cultural phenomenon. Elements of a phenomenon in which its idea is expressed are one-sidedly exaggerated so that this intellectual construct, the ideal type, is brought into relief [and] may be compared with concrete reality.2 Here the "idea," the central theme of this paper, is Krieger's "peculiar German attitude toward liberty." In the "democratic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 Caesarist" one finds this idea "one-sidedly exaggerated" in a way that "illustrates the meaning" of the liberal defeat of 1866. I say that the "democratic Caesarist" can serve a function like that of an ideal type, for I do not mean to employ Max Weber's method in all of its abstract rigor. My approach is quasi-biographical, for I believe that the life of a human being is a study more varied, more suggestive and above all more concrete than any intellectual construct could be. I have chosen Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), who was at once the most radical and the most articulate of the small group of men whom I call democratic Caesarists. I call Ruge typical. I call him that, even though he held opinions which most German liberals did not hold, even though he was an Hegelian and a cosmopolitan democrat, a radical who at times called himself a republican and a socialist. For Hegelianism and republicanism are formal doctrines, and here we are concerned less with formal doctrines than with underlying attitudes. Ruge had to deal with the same basic problems as did most German liberals in his day. Like them he wished to realize a set of progressive or "western" ideals in the teeth of a political order which was basically hostile to these ideals, but which was strong and stable, which did have valid claims to his loyalty and which— as Krieger has shown— did have a healthy capacity to co-opt its opposition. Like other liberals, he wished somehow to realize his ideals without directly confronting the monarchy. Like them, he had an exaggerated faith in theory which helped to compensate for his own sense of powerlessness. He differed from most of his Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 contemporaries in that his demands went further than theirs. The tensions within his system were unusually great, and he often handled these tensions awkwardly. He sometimes said and did things which were absurd, and eventually this once popular man came to be widely regarded as a fool. But Ruge's weaknesses are not idiosyncratic. Ruge's career is representative in the sense that a caricature is representative, and by studying his career we can hope better to understand why the liberal movement in Germany so often failed. Ruge is representative— and therefore also interesting— not least because he was a Caesarist. That is, Ruge did not endorse Bismarck's system because he had abandoned his ideals and become a conservative or a nationalist, but he did so because he was caught up in a wider European mood, a mood which transcended older party lines and which, I will argue, had roots in the "peculiar attitudes" already mentioned. The word "Caesarism" is not a novel one. It was much used in the political literature of the late nineteenth century. Applied first to the methods of Louis Bonaparte and to the system of the Second Empire in Prance, it soon came to designate other European statesmen who used similar methods— to designate a political style which was characteristic of the era and which may in some ways be called a fore­ runner of modern Fascism. Otto von Bismarck in particular, with his special blend of authoritarianism and revolutionary methods, with his bold disregard of the traditions of conservative politics, with his appeals to patriotism and his manipulation of the masses, was thought to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 be Bonaparte's disciple. And the German Empire resembled that of Napoleon III in substance as well as in name. Both Empires were monarchial in form. The German Empire was not illegitimate, as Napoleon's was, but its legitimacy was not above question. Outside Prussia the Emperor could no longer depend on the traditional loyalty of the subject to his Prince; like Napoleon he had to rely on patriot­ ism and on his own popularity. Like Bonaparte, Bismarck depended on mass support to make good this loss of moral authority. Both systems were unstable. The masses had to be held through repeated successes in foreign policy, a need which in both cases eventually led to disaster.^ The historian Heinz Gollwitzer has suggested that this system 4 had in Germany an ideological counterpart. Although Louis Napoleon himself was unpopular here, his methods fascinated a surprising number of Germans. Many who rejected Bonaparte found other "strong men"— Cromwell or Cavour— to be worthy of imitation, and in some circles "Cavourism" passed as an acceptable euphemism for Bonapartism. The nineteenth century was especially rich in scholarly studies of Julius Caesar. For Gollwitzer it also produced an "ideology of Caesarism"— or, as I would put it, it produced a Caesaristic mood—a mood or ideology which helped to make a career like Bismarck's possible. What then is a "democratic Caesarist"? First of all, he would be a democrat who endorsed Bismarck's system—without ceasing to be a democrat. One would expect a Caesarist to show a certain tolerance for authoritarian methods and perhaps also a certain impatience with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 parliaments and majorities— as Ruge often did. One might call any German who expressed even a grudging admiration for Louis Napoleon— as Ruge did— a potential Caesarist. Again, a Caesarist would have to be flexible in certain matters of principle. Even conservatives had to be flexible to follow Bismarck. Bismarck's authority in the Empire rested on a "revolution from above," on a drastic breach in legal continuity, and on the extinction of the rights of several legitimate dynasties.5 In Prussia, his authority rested on the coup d'etat of 9 November 1848. From almost anyone's standpoint, conservative, liberal, or democratic, his system was legally questionable. One would thus expect a Ceasarist to be something of a legal relativist— as Ruge was. A democratic Caesarist would have to be flexible indeed, for the gap between the democratic ideal and Imperial reality was a particularly wide one. Even from a conservative standpoint, the legitimacy of the Empire was not above question. Democracy has its own concept of legitimacy; it holds that a government is legitimate only insofar as it represents the will of the people. Now, the government of the Empire was in no sense accountable to the popularly elected Reichstag or to any popular majority. To this extent it had the character of a plebiscitory dictatorship, even though its authority was limited by law. In order to endorse this quasi-dictatorship, a thoughtful and systematic democrat would therefore have to fall back on the "Rousseauian" or, better, on the absurd idea that this unaccountable government somehow represented the popular will better than a majority vote would have done. And ultimately, in the years after 1866, Ruge did also take this position. Ruge was certainly a democratic Caesarist. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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