Political Romanticism

Carl Schmitt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351498692
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

A pioneer in legal and political theory, Schmitt traces the prehistory of political romanticism by examining its relationship to revolutionary and reactionary tendencies in modern European history. Both the partisans of the French Revolution and its most embittered enemies were numbered among the romantics. During the movement for German national unity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, both revolutionaries and reactionaries counted themselves as romantics. According to Schmitt, the use of the concept to designate opposed political positions results from the character of political romanticism: its unpredictable quality and lack of commitment to any substantive political position.

The romantic person acts in such a way that his imagination can be affected. He acts insofar as he is moved. Thus an action is not a performance or something one does, but rather an affect or a mood, something one feels. The product of an action is not a result that can be evaluated according to moral standards, but rather an emotional experience that can be judged only in aesthetic and emotive terms.

These observations lead Schmitt to a profound reflection on the shortcomings of liberal politics. Apart from the liberal rule of law and its institution of an autonomous private sphere, the romantic inner sanctum of purely personal experience could not exist. Without the security of the private realm, the romantic imagination would be subject to unpredictable incursions. Only in a bourgeois world can the individual become both absolutely sovereign and thoroughly privatized: a master builder in the cathedral of his personality. An adequate political order cannot be maintained on such a tolerant individualism, concludes Schmitt.

1

The Outward Situation

The personal political significance of romantic writers in Germany

The romantic movement, which made its appearance at the end of the eighteenth century in Germany, declared itself to be a revolution, and thereby established a relationship to the political events in France. In view of the prevailing social conditions in the territories of this movement, in north and central Germany, it was self-evident that the connection was not politically intended. The bourgeois order was so absolutely secure that the enthusiastic reception of the Revolution could be permitted without any hesitation. When the Hanoverian government brought the impropriety of their conduct to the attention of the Gottingen professors Schlôzer, Feder, and Spittler — who had used their university chairs to celebrate the liberation of nations from the yoke of tyranny — the professors themselves were obviously surprised to be taken so seriously. If a special satisfaction over the Revolution was manifested at the Prussian Court, that was permitted because, on all accounts, the events in France had to lead to a weakening of the power position of France. Even when the new republic displayed an unexpected military strength and the threatened princes of the Imperial Diet in western Germany proclaimed their fear of the Jacobin “conquest state” to all the world, still no one expressed any fear of the abstractions of human rights and popular sovereignty that had demonstrated such formidable strength in France. In Germany, it was only in the wake of the wars of liberation that the fear of a revolution by means of ideas circulated and became a pretext for preventive police measures.

When Schlegel claims that the French Revolution, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister were the greatest tendencies of the century or that the French Revolution could be considered the greatest and most noteworthy phenomenon in the history of national states, the political significance of this remark should be assessed in the same way as countless other demonstrations of sympathy by German bourgeois, who allowed events to impinge upon them in the pacified security of the police state and turned the rude realization of abstract ideas that took place in France back into the region of the ideal. It was the reflection of a fire burning in the remote distance. Schlegel also quickly overcame his enthusiasm. It soon happened that the French Revolution was no longer sufficiently grandiose for him, and he noted that an outside possibility for true revolution remained only in Asia. He recognized the French Revolution that actually occurred as nothing more than a gratifying experiment. The revolution of the romantics themselves, however, consisted in promising a new religion, a new gospel, a new creativity, and a new universal art. As regards its manifestations in commonplace reality, scarcely anything belonged in a public forum. The deeds of the romantics were journals. The sensation that certain bourgeois literati created in the salons of Berlin bankers’ daughters, the social scandal produced by adultery committed against friends or hosts, the declaration of war against Goethe and Schiller, the destruction of Nicolai and the killing of Kotzebue — these were, taken at their face value, sundry facts. The widely traveled Madame de Staël once expressed her astonishment that in Germany, the most audacious revolutionary ideas were permitted free expression. Of course she also knew the explanation: no one took them seriously. In their politically preeminent position, the nobility and the upper-level bureaucracy did not have to be worried about a few writers who gave lectures under the protection of ladies with literary pretensions — writers who were permitted entree into fashionable society and were passionately bent on assimilating the aristocratic elegance they admired, or at least making a philosophy of urbanity out of it. Baron von Steigentesch, who had the candor of a frivolous man of the world, expressed the typical cavalier’s viewpoint: The scholars should only be left to rant and rave at their writing desks. Hunger drives their pens, and here the otherwise dangerous general human impulse for expansion produces only thick books. Even Gentz, who had known how to obtain respect for himself, was at times subjected by Metternich to a friendship that suggests the familiarity between master and valet. It was only to Gentz, his friend and zealous patron, that Adam Müller owed the consideration paid to him. The good Klinkowstrom was justifiably outraged at the “disgraceful” treatment of Müller and Gentz that the officials of the Vienna Court Chancery permitted themselves. And also in Rehberg’s reviews of Müller’s lectures we hear the contempt of the sound man. Here the effect is all the more powerful because Rehberg — who did not have the personal antipathy that was displayed by F. Raumer and many others — explains Müller’s lecture in a calm, matter-of-fact manner as a consequence of his dependence on high society. But even Lessing might not have been safe from the contempt of uncomprehending aristocrats or bureaucrats. The response to this sort of arrogance and the actual conduct of the political romantic who is given an opportunity for political activity are more important.

Schlegel’s political insignificance

In this regard, it is well known that Schlegel had begun by repudiating all practical political work as unworthy, and he had sworn “not to squander faith and love in the political world.” When he makes remarks of this sort, however, we should not take Schlegel at his word. Whenever there was something to do, he was keen on entering the fray. His ambition and temperament burned for the business of diplomacy and important commissions. We need not discuss his activity as a war correspondent or his journalistic work as an editor, first of the Oesterreichische Zeitung, and then of the Oesterreichischer Beobachter. Writing certain obligatory articles and memoranda cannot be understood as political activity. After a short time, the real editorial tasks were given to the more able Pilat. The fact that in 1809, Schlegel composed proclamations against Napoleon and even put them up himself does him honor, for it shows that he was capable of a spontaneous feeling. Not until his contribution to the Federal Parliament in Frankfurt, on which Schlegel worked so hard, do we find something that — had it not ended so ingloriously — could be called political activity. Here too, of course, he had begun with grand plans and promises. Dorothea wrote that Friedrich is now “occupied with constitutions and estates, the Federal Parliament, and public affairs,’’ matters only “the future effect” of which would concern their children. He attempted to meddle in diplomatic affairs and tried to outflank his chief, Count Buol, who had entrusted some work to the unemployed Schlegel. On this score, however, he suffered a painful failure. When Metternich in his memorandum of September 16, 1816, requested Buol to endeavor to influence public opinion on his behalf by means of publications and newspapers, he did indeed mention Adam Müller along with Klüber, Nikolaus Vogt, and Saalfeld as writers who might be considered, but not Schlegel. Buol, however, had Schlegel prepare a memorandum. With the exception of this piece and some other works that went unnoticed — the “Bemerkungen fiber die Frankfurter Angelegenheiten” [Remarks on Frankfurt matters], with which he made a nuisance of himself, some newspaper articles, including one on the Federal Parliament that Gentz described as the work of a “wellmeaning dreamer” — Schlegel could not point to any result of his political activity by the time of his recall (April 14, 1818). The correction of the minutes of the Federal Parliament, which he had assumed voluntarily, was soon taken from him. In the end, his letters, like those of his wife to influential acquaintances, are filled with requests for intercession in claims for damages, moving expenses, and the aggressive pursuit of his elevation to the nobility. In addition, there are character sketches of his employers that are of literary interest, and psychological aphorisms and critiques — these, of course, do not alter the fact that his attempt to play a political role failed, just as his appearance in the role of a philosopher in Jena many years before had failed. Finally, Metternich took him along when he left for Rome shortly thereafter, and in his letters he made remarks ridiculing the corpulent and gluttonous Schlegel in a good-natured manner.

From a human perspective and in terms of his intellectual significance, it would be extremely unjust to judge the unfortunate man on the basis of this failure. Nevertheless, where we are to consider the historical impact of the political personality, it has to be noted that whereas most of his political contemporaries had virtually no other immediate impression of his personality beyond that of corpulence, as a politician he was not taken seriously at all. And yet he had made a claim to serious political consideration with his ideas on the papacy, the Church, and the nobility. Here, however, he could not even hold his own against Adam Müller, whom Schlegel as a rule ventured to treat as his intellectual fellow traveler, and concerning whom the overall judgment was given that he was the “shadow” of Friedrich Schlegel.

Müller’s political development: an Anglophile in Gottingen, a feudal and estatist-conservative anticentralist in Berlin, a functionary of the absolutist centralized state in the Tyrol

Müller was the Austrian general consul in Leipzig since 1815. Clever and eager to be of service, he had known how to create a sphere of influence for himself there. And yet on one occasion, the forty-five-year-old man wrote to Gentz in a melancholy mood that his rhetorical veins, tapped by newspaper articles, were flowing away and running dry in his “Leipzig salon” for the benefit of a few well-meaning young men, but otherwise without effect. The conclusion of the letter, however, runs differently. Here Müller takes stock of his life. He knows that as a bourgeois without a good name and antecedents, he has managed no small achievement in becoming Imperial general consul in Leipzig. For this he thanks (without a trace of irony) “God and the prince” (Metternich). And yet: “Having arrived seven years ago at the pinnacle of what he could reasonably desire,” it pains the bourgeois advocate of the hereditary nobility (whose own elevation to the nobility remained in doubt) that the aristocrats “are so prejudiced against their best defenders,” and that the pretensions of birth in Europe “are again becoming quite boastful through our very substantial aid.” And on the other hand: “Our prince (Metternich) is happy. Till now, that was my consolation.”¹ He had the satisfaction — which was also a political success — that under his influence Duke Ferdinand von Anhalt-Côthen converted to Catholicism. He lived to experience a recognition that fulfilled his life’s wish: his elevation to the nobility. In all this activity, however, he had always remained the unquestioning tool of Metternich, and when he “strayed,” this did not happen in political praxis, but rather in theoretical intimations made in his writings. At the end of his life, he was simply a good, pious Catholic, frequently so meek that he probably paid for a human judgment with a decade of doubtful ambiguity. But the period in which he could make autonomous political decisions lies in the years 1808—1811. At that time it was still possible for him, as it was for Gentz, to become the spokesman for an important political idea, and to seek out and inspire a public on its behalf. In this way, he could have legitimized himself as a political journalist, and he also could have legitimized his own distinctive contribution as a political idea. If we view these years without concentrating unduly on biographical matters, then their outcome is the following.

Adam Müller also began as a romantic rebel, even though he already played the foe of the French Revolution as a twenty-year-old student in Gottingen. He did this as a docile follower of Gentz and by way of assuming a pose of Anglophilia, which he adopted under the influence of the Gottingen milieu, whose “cultural physiognomy at that time was more English than German.”² Continental romanticism always had a strong propensity for Anglomania. But it is important for an understanding of the romantic character that the influence of English culture that at that time emerged so powerfully in Hanover had nothing to do with romanticism. This influence was based on the solidarity of the reigning dynasty, common social interests, and the thorough familiarity with the English character and English institutions possessed by intelligent high officials such as Brandes and Rehberg. The kinship of Lower Saxon and Anglo-Saxon stock strengthened this influence and eliminated the last remaining vestige of the suspicion that romantic impulses could be at stake here. Thus the Hanoverian University of Gottingen also maintained its distance from the enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and many scholars adopted a prudent and critical posture in relation to the important events of the time. In the flood tide of Kantian and post-Kantian transcendental philosophy, “common sense” remained academically respectable at Gottingen.

The impression produced by these reasonable and objectively grounded influences of the English character was romanticized as Anglomania in the young Berliner. The son of an insignificant head of a finance office attempted to play the rich Englishman to strangers, and even at the beginning of his career he exhibited the inclination to quickly adapt himself to the ideal of social elegance that prevailed in his surroundings. At the same time, for him England was the homeland of philosophy. It was even the place where the arches of the academy he meant to establish would rise up. In addition, his interests retained the kaleidoscopic quality of romanticism: economics, philosophy of nature, medicine, literature, and astrology. His first book, Die Lehre vom Gegensatz [The theory of polarity] (1804), exhibits this quality of many-sidedness intact. It is a quality that could leave no object of interest untouched; nor could it apprehend any in an objective fashion, and it culminated in the attempt to meld Burke and Goethe into a higher third factor. Burke was the exponent of the English romantic complex, Goethe the exponent of the German. Müller treated neither as a real person, but both as romantic figures, and thus they could easily be melded. This is because the author was a romantic. In the preface, he began with the premise that the Revolution had failed. At that time, in 1803, this was the view of Schlegel as well. “Philosophical systems,” he claims, “shattered crowns, republican constitutions, theo-philanthropic plans, wrecked enterprises for preservation as well as destruction, moral principles and textbooks on natural right, exhausted duties, and abandoned rights lie together in one vast rubbish heap; and to this date no text, no discourse, no deed that the tumultuous conclusion of the eighteenth century left behind for us is complete.” Under these circumstances, the young writer wanted to reinstate the wrecked enterprise of the Revolution and carry it to its conclusion, give the words religion, philosophy, nature, and art a new content, break through the boundaries of the previous mechanistic age, and transplant the ethereal speculations of the intellectual revolution into the soil of reality.

In the ensuing years, his ideas did not become clearer. And his social and economic circumstances were such that his ambition must have been frustrated by this fact. He lived with his Polish friends Kurnatowski and Haza, who had also made him the “delegate” of their South Prussian Economic Society. One need only look at the “annals” of this association of rural landed proprietors in order to see that it could not satisfy a young man consumed by the desire to play a role in the real social world. In the melancholy of a lonely residence in the country, he suffered from severe depressions. He felt ill, became disagreeable, pursued astrology and meteorology, and finally accepted the invitation of Gentz to go to Vienna (from February 8 to April 30, 1805). There he converted to Catholicism on the day before his return journey. In October of 1805, he moved to Dresden with the Hazas, with whom he also lived, and as an unaffiliated scholar he gave lectures together with Bôttiger and G. H. Schubert to a fashionable audience composed mainly of foreigners: in the winter of 1805—1806, on German literature, science, and language; in 1806—1807, on dramatic poetry and art; in 1807-1808, on the idea of beauty. The lectures also appeared in book form and in part they were printed in Phoebus, the journal that Müller had edited together with Kleist since January 1808. The success of these lectures was quickly forgotten. Müller contributed several essays to Pallas: Eine Zeitschrift für Staats-und Kriegs-Kunst (edited since 1808 by Rühle von Lilienstern), including some remarks “Bei Gelegenheit der Untersuchungen über den Geburtsadel von Fr. Buchholz” (On the occasion of the investigations concerning the hereditary nobility by Friedrich Buchholz), in which he defended the nobility against the attacks of Buchholz.

At this point, his faithful friend Gentz, who was always concerned about Müller, gave him a decisive push and suggested that he write a book in defense of the nobility, or perhaps publish a collection of political, moral, and historical essays. “With heart and soul, I assure you that you will make an enormous reputation for yourself — and should you decide for the first course (the defense of the nobility), you will establish an extremely agreeable existence for yourself.”³ Gentz’s plan was based on the calculation that a faction that had fallen into difficulties with public opinion — such as the German, and especially the Prussian, nobility — would be grateful for any journalistic support. As a result of the defeat of 1806, liberal reforms that conflicted with the interests of the hereditary and landed nobility were to be expected in Prussia. Müller, of course, counted on entering the service of the Prussian nobility. Nevertheless, he agreed to his friend’s proposal and attempted to achieve both aims with one stroke. As early as the winter of 1808—1809, he gave lectures in Dresden on “das Ganze der Staatskunst” (Statecraft as a whole), in which he interceded on behalf of the feudal nobility and at the same time offered a series of political and historical remarks. The lectures were held “before His Serene Highness Prince Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar (Müller had been appointed his tutor) and an assembly of statesmen and diplomats.” He published them under the title Elemente der Staatskunst [Elements of statecraft], in which there might be an allusion to Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. Here, too, Müller’s success was limited to a narrow circle of acquaintances.

Meanwhile, Müller had gone to Berlin in the spring of 1809 because his presence in Dresden had become impossible. In the first place, for social and moral reasons: He had run away with the wife of his friend and host of many years, and shortly thereafter he married her in Berlin; but then for political reasons as well. It was not as if, like Kleist or the young Dahlmann, patriotism had made him give way to incautious remarks or actions. In his lectures on statecraft, all clear references to the time, and on several occasions even the word French, were deleted. They were subsequently reintroduced into the Berlin printing. So perhaps this was a measure imposed by the censor. In Elemente der Staatskunst, he makes malicious remarks at the expense of the people of the Alliance for Virtue. He speaks of their “theatrical melancholy,” in which they “certainly fancy themselves as refined,” and, probably in an allusion to Kleist, speaks of the “ideas of murder and revenge with which they are flirting.” He treated the worthy Martens — who delivered a letter from Count von Gôtzen and wanted to inform himself concerning the state of the national movement in Saxony — with an arrogant civility that was ridiculous and offensive at the same time. When the French marched into Dresden, however, he had to flee, because shortly before this, while the Austrians were in the city, he had made himself too visible publicly on behalf of their interests. And yet this catastrophe was not the kind that would have permanently compromised him in “higher places” either.

In Berlin, he submitted an interesting suggestion to the Prussian government (in a letter of August 20, 1809, to his acquaintance the privy counselor for finance, Stagemann). With excellent observations on the advantages of a semiofficial newspaper, he expounded the necessity for a regular influence of the government on public opinion. At the same time, he had an ingenious plan for sabotaging the opposition by forestalling them. He wrote verbatim: “I venture to publish a government newspaper openly and with the...