Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries Volume I Part 2

He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or a.s.sembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more dangerous to the n.o.bles and their bailiffs, and still more insupportable to their villeins,--it was always rigorously forbidden.[19] The settlement of disbanded soldiers, who brought their prize money into the village, was welcome; but whoever had once worn a soldier's dress revolted against the heavy burdens of the bondsman. It was, therefore, established that whoever had served under a banner became free from personal servitude; only those who had been camp-followers continued as bondsmen. The inhabitants of the different States had been interspersed during the war; subjects had wilfully changed their dwellings, and established themselves on other territories, with or without the permission of the new lords of the manor. This was insupportable, and a right was given to the landed proprietor to fetch them back; and if the new lord of the manor thought it his interest to protect them, and refused to give them up, force might be used to recover them. Thus the n.o.blemen rode with their attendants into a district to catch such of their villeins as had escaped without pa.s.s-tickets.[20]--The opposition of the people must have been violent, for the ordinances even in the provinces, where villeinage was most strict--as, for example, in Silesia--were obliged to recognise that the villeins were free people, and not slaves. But this remained a theoretical proposition, and was seldom attended to in the following century. The depopulation of the country, and the deficiency in servants and labourers, was very injurious to the landowner. All the villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men or women; all such lodgers were to be taken before the magistracy, and put into prison in case they should refuse domestic service, even if they maintained themselves by any other occupation--such as labouring for the peasant for daily hire, or carrying on business with money or corn.[21] Through a whole generation we find, in the ordinances of the territorial lords, bitter complaints against the malicious and wilful menials who would not yield to their hard conditions, nor be content with the pay a.s.signed by law. It was forbidden to individual proprietors to give more than the tax established by the provincial States. Nevertheless, the conditions of service shortly after the war are sometimes better than they were a hundred years later; in 1652 menials in Silesia had meat twice in the week; but in our century there are provinces where they get it only three times in the year.[22] The daily pay also was higher immediately after the war than in the following century.

Thus was an iron yoke again bound slowly round the necks of the undisciplined country people, closer and harder than before the war.

During the war small villages, and still more the single farms, which had been so favorable to the independence of the peasants, had vanished from the face of the earth; in the Palatinate, for example, and on the hills of Franconia, they had been numerous, and even in the present day their names cling to the soil. The village huts concentrated themselves in the neighbourhood of the manor house, and control over the weak community was easier when under the eye of the lord or his bailiff.

What was the course of their life in the time of our fathers will be distinctly seen when one examines more closely the nature of their service. A cursory glance at it will appear to the youth of the present generation like a peep into a strange and fearful world. The conditions under which the German country people suffered were undoubtedly various. Special customs existed, not only in the provinces, but in almost every community. If the names by which the different services and imposts were designated were arranged they would form an unpleasant vocabulary.[23] But, notwithstanding the difference in the names and extent of these burdens, there was an unanimity throughout the whole of Europe on the main points, which is, perhaps, more difficult to explain than the deviations.

The tenths were the oldest tax upon the countryman--the tenth sheaf, the tenth portion of slaughtered beasts, and even a tenth of wine, vegetables and fruit. It was probably older in Western Germany than Christianity, but the early church of the middle ages cunningly claimed it on the authority of scripture. It did not, however, succeed in retaining it only for itself; it was obliged to share it with the rulers, and often with the n.o.ble landed proprietors. At last it was paid by the agricultural peasant, either as a tax to the ruler or to his landlord, and besides as the priest's t.i.the to his church. However low his harvest yield might be valued, the tenth sheaf was far more than the tenth share of his clear produce.

But the countryman had, in the first place, to render service to the landed proprietor, both with his hands and with his team; in the greatest part of Germany, in the middle ages, three days a week,--thus he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset; the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride, call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Ta.s.so"

made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day free for their own work.[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's "Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike n.o.bility of Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order, enjoining on his n.o.bility not to lay claim to the soccage of the peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people with equity.

The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,[25] yet in the same province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first secured to them in most of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia.

This ordinance helped to put an end to a burden on the country people which threatened to depopulate the country. For in the former century, after the landowners had resolved to increase the revenue of their estates, they found it advantageous to rid themselves of some of their villeins, whose holdings they attached to their own property. The poor people, thus driven from their homes, fell into misery; and the burdens became quite unbearable to the remaining villeins, for they were expected by the landed proprietor to cultivate those former holdings, whose possessors had hitherto by their labour a.s.sisted in the cultivation of the whole estate. This system of ejection had become particularly bad in the east of Germany. When Frederick II. conquered Silesia there were many thousand farms without occupiers; the huts lay in ruins, and the fields were in the hands of the landed proprietors.

All the separate homesteads had to be reformed and reoccupied, furnished with cattle and implements, and given up to the farmer as his own heritable property. In Rugen this grievance occasioned a rising of the peasantry, in the youth of Ernst Moritz Arndt; soldiers were sent thither, and the rioters were put in prison; the peasants endeavoured to revenge themselves for this by laying in wait for and slaying individual n.o.blemen. In the same way in Electoral Saxony as late as 1790 this grievance occasioned a revolt.

The children also of villeins were subject to compulsory service. If they were capable of work they were brought before the authorities, and, if these demanded it, had to serve some time, frequently three years, on the farm. To serve in other places it was necessary to have a permit, which must be bought. Even those who had already served elsewhere had once a year--frequently about Christmas--to present themselves to the lord of the manor for choice. If the child of a villein entered into a trade or any other occupation, a sum had to be paid to the authorities for a letter of permission. It was considered a mitigation of the old remains of feudalism, when it was decided that the daughters of peasants might marry on to other properties without indemnifying their lord. But then the new lord had to greet the other in a friendly letter in acknowledgment of this emanc.i.p.ation.[26] The price which the villein had to give for the emanc.i.p.ation of himself and his family varied extremely, according to the period and the district.

Under Frederick II. it was reduced in Silesia to one ducat per head.

But this was an unusually favourable rate for the villein. In Rugen, at a still later date, the emanc.i.p.ation was left to the valuation of the proprietor; it could even be refused: a fine-looking youth had there to pay full a hundred and fifty, and a pretty girl fifty or sixty, thalers.

But the peasant was employed in other ways by the landed proprietor. He was bound to aid, with his hands and teams, in the cultivation of the estate; he was also bound to act as messenger. Whoever wished to go to the town had first to ask the bailiff and lord of the manor whether they had any orders. No householder could, except in special cases, remain a night out of the village without the previous sanction of the magistrate of the place. He was obliged to furnish a night watch of two men for the n.o.bleman's mansion. He had, when a child of the lord of the manor was to be married, to bring a contribution of corn, small cattle, honey, wax, and linen to the castle; finally, he had almost everywhere to carry to his lord his rent-hens and eggs, the old symbol of his dependence for house and farm.

But what was still more repugnant to the German peasant than many greater burdens, was the landlord's right of chase over his fields. The fearful tyranny with which the right of chase was practised by the German princes in the middle ages, was renewed after the Thirty Years'

War. The peasant was forbidden to carry a gun, and poachers were shot down. Where the cultivated ground bordered on the larger woods, or where the lord of the manor held the supreme right of chase, a secret and often b.l.o.o.d.y war was carried on for centuries betwixt the foresters and poachers. As long as wolves continued to prowl about the villages, the irritated peasant dug holes round the margin of the wood which he covered with branches, and the bottom of them was studded with pointed stakes. He called them wolf-pits, but they were well known to the law as game-traps, and were forbidden under severe penalties. He ventured to let such portions of ground as were most exposed to be injured by game, to soldiers or cities, but that also was forbidden him; he endeavoured to defend his fields by hedges, and his hedges were broken down. In the Erzgebirge of Saxony the peasants, in the former century, had watched by their ripening corn; then huts were built on the fields, fires were lighted in the night, the watchers called out and beat the drum, and their dogs barked; but the game at last became accustomed to these alarms, and feared neither peasant nor dog. In Electoral Saxony, at the end of a former century, under a mild government, where a moderate tax might be paid as indemnity for damage to game, it was forbidden to erect fences for fields above a certain height, or to employ pointed stakes, that the game might not be injured, nor prevented seeking its support on the fields, till at last fourteen communities in the Hohnstein bailiwick in a state of exasperation combined for a general hunt, and frightened the game over the frontier.

The logs which the sheep dogs wore round their necks were not sufficient to hinder them from hurting the hares, so they were held by cords on the fields. But the countrymen were bound, when the lord of the manor went to the chase, to go behind the nets and, as beaters, to swing the rattles. The coursing, moreover, spoilt his fields, as the riders with their greyhounds uprooted and trampled on the seed.

To these burdens, which were common to all, were added numerous local restrictions, of which only some of the more widely diffused will be here mentioned. The number of cattle that villeins were permitted to keep was frequently prescribed to them according to the extent of their holdings. A portion of the pasture land upon his holding before seed time, and of the produce after the harvest, belonged to the landowner.

This right, to which pretensions had been already made in the middle ages, became a severe plague in the last century, when the n.o.blemen began increasing their flocks of sheep. For they made demands on the peasants' fields generally, when fodder for cattle was failing: how, then, could the peasants maintain their own animals?

As early as 1617 it was held as a maxim in Silesia, that peasants must not keep sheep unless they possessed an old authorisation for it. The keeping of goats was altogether forbidden in many places. This old prohibition is one of the reasons why the poor in wide districts of Eastern Germany are deprived of these useful animals. Elector August of Saxony in 1560 denounced in his ordinances the pigeons of the peasants, and since that time they have been prohibited in other provincial ordinances. Other tyrannies were devised by the love of game. Shortly after the war it was held to be the duty of peasants to offer everything saleable, in the first instance, to the lord of the manor,--dung, wool, honey, and even eggs and poultry: if the authorities would not take his goods, he was bound to expose them for a fixed period in the nearest town; it was only then that the sale became free. But it was truly monstrous, when the authorities compelled their subjects to buy goods from the manorial property which they did not need. These barbarisms were quite common, at least in the East of Germany, after 1650, especially in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. When the great proprietors drew their ponds and could not sell the fish, the villeins were obliged to take them, in proportion to their means, at a fixed rate. The same was the case with b.u.t.ter, cheese, corn, and cattle. This was the cause of so many of the country people in Bohemia becoming small traders, as they had to convey these goods into neighbouring countries, often to their own great loss.[27] In vain did the magistrates in Silesia in 1716 endeavour to check this abuse.[28]

We will only mention here the worst tyranny of all. The n.o.bleman had seigneurial rights: he decreed through the justices, who were dependent on him, the punishments of police offences: fines, imprisonment, and corporal punishment. He was also in the habit of using the stick to the villeins when they were at work. Undoubtedly there was already in the sixteenth century, in the provincial ordinances, a humane provision, which prohibited the n.o.bles from striking their villeins; but in the two following centuries this prohibition was little attended to. When Frederick the Great re-organized Silesia, he gave the peasants the right of making complaint to the government against severe bodily punishment! And this was considered a progress!

But other burdens also weighed upon the life of the peasant. For, beside the landowner, the territorial ruler also demanded his impost or contribution, a land-tax or poll-tax; he could impress the son of the peasant under his banner, and demand waggons and gear for relays in time of war. And again, above the territorial ruler, was the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, which claimed in those parts of Germany where the const.i.tution of the circles was still in force, a quota for their exchequers.

The peasants, however, were not everywhere under the curse of bondage.

In the old domain of the Ripuarian Franks, the provinces on the other side of the Rhine from Cleves to the Moselle, and the Grafschaft of Mark, Essen, Werden, and Berg, had already in the middle ages freed themselves from bondage: those who had not property as landowners were freemen with leases for life. In the rest of Germany, freedom had taken refuge in the southern and northern frontiers, on the coasts of the North Sea and among the Alps. East Friesland, the marsh lands on the coasts of the Weser and the Elbe up to Ditmarschen,--those almost unconquerable settlements of st.u.r.dy peasant communities,--have remained free from the most ancient times. In the south, the Tyrol and the neighbouring Alps, at least the greatest portion of them, were occupied by free country-people; in Upper Austria also the free peasantry were numerous; and in Steiermark the tenths, which was the chief tax paid to the landed proprietors, was less oppressive than soccage was elsewhere.

Wherever the arable land was scarce, and the mountain pastures afforded sustenance to the inhabitants, the legal condition of the lower orders was better. On the other hand, in the countries of old Saxony from the time of the Carlovingians, with the exception of a few free peasant holdings, a severe state of bondage had been developed. The Brunswickers, the dwellers on the Church lands of Bremen and Verden, were in the most favourable condition, those of Hildesheim and the Grafschaft of Hoya in the worst. In the bishopric of Munster the soccage service of villeins was generally changed into a moderate money payment; the only thing that pressed heavily on them was the compulsory leading, and the necessity of buying exemption from their burdens. On the other hand, the right of the landed proprietor over the inheritance of villeins existed to the greatest extent. As late as the year 1800 the country-people, who--exceptionally--desired to save money, endeavoured to preserve their property to their heirs, by fict.i.tious transactions with the citizens; consequently more than a fourth portion of the Munster land remained uncultivated. A similar condition, in a somewhat milder form, existed in the bishopric of Osnabruck. Among the races of the interior, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Allemanni, the number of free peasants was continually decreasing during the whole of the middle ages: it was only in Upper Bavaria that they still formed a powerful part of the population. In Thuringia also the number of freemen was not inconsiderable. There the rule of the princes over the serf peasantry was lenient.

Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "_Erb-und Gerichtsscholtiseien_," as they were still called in memory of the circ.u.mstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper aristocracy.

In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower by one half than in the other provinces.

Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate.

Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700, wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the old time.

It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book.

Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient custom. Undoubtedly the kind-hearted benevolence of the n.o.bles, of old families who had grown up with their country-people through many generations, mitigated the severity of servitude, and a cordial connexion existed between master and serfs. Still more frequently the brutal selfishness of the masters was softened and kept within bounds by that prudence which now influences the American slaveholders. The landed proprietor and his family pa.s.sed their lives among the peasants, and if he endeavoured to instil fear, he also had cause for fear.

Easily on a stormy night might the flames be kindled among his wooden farm buildings, and no province was without its dismal stories of harsh landlords or bailiffs who had been slain by unknown hands in field or wood. However much we may admit the goodness or prudence of masters, the position of the peasants still remains the darkest feature of the past time. For we find everywhere in the scanty records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an unhealthy antagonism of cla.s.ses. _And it was the larger portion of the German people which was ruined by this oppression._[29]

Men even of uncommon strength and intelligence seldom succeeded in extricating themselves from the proscribed boundaries by which their life was fenced in. Ever greater became the chasm which separated them from the smaller portion of the nation, who, by their perukes, bagwigs, and pigtails, showed from afar that they belonged to a privileged cla.s.s. Up to the end of the seventeenth century these polished cla.s.ses seldom entertained a friendly feeling towards the peasant; on all sides were to be heard complaints of his obduracy, dishonesty, and coa.r.s.eness. At no period was the suffering portion of the people so harshly judged as in that, in which a spiritless orthodoxy embittered the souls of those who had to preach the gospel of love. None were more eager than the theologians in complaining of the worthlessness of the country people, among whom they had to live; they always heard h.e.l.l-hounds howling round the huts of the villeins; their whole conception of life was, indeed, dark, pedantic, and joyless. A well-known little book, from the native district of Christopher von Grimmelshausen, is especially characteristic. This book, ent.i.tled "Des Bauerstands Lasterprob"--the exposure of the vices of the peasant cla.s.s[30]--never ceased to point out from the deeds of the villagers, that the lives of the peasantry, from the village justice to the goose-herd, were worthless and G.o.dless; that they were in the habit of representing themselves as poor and miserable, and of complaining on all occasions; that they were rude and overbearing to those whom they did not fear; that they considered none as their friends, and ungratefully deceived their benefactors. This book is much more cruel than "The Lexicon of Deceit," by the hypochondriacal Coburger Honn, which some centuries later a.n.a.lysed the impositions of all cla.s.ses,--and amongst others, those of the peasants,--alphabetically, morosely, and with apt references.

To such defects, which are peculiar to the oppressed, others must, indeed, be added, the consequences of the long war and its demoralization. In the rooms of the village inns, about 1700, neither candlesticks nor snuffers were to be seen, for everything had been pilfered by the wayfarers; even the prayer-book had been stolen from the host; a small looking-gla.s.s was a thing not to be thought of, though 500 years earlier the village maiden, when she adorned herself for the dance, took her little hand-gla.s.s with her as an ornament; and if a householder lodged carriers, he was obliged to conceal all portable goods, and to lock up all barns and hay-lofts. It was even dangerous sometimes for a traveller to set foot in an inn. The desolate room was filled, not only with tobacco-smoke, but also with the fumes of powder; for it was a holiday amus.e.m.e.nt of the country people to play with powder, and to molest unlucky strangers by throwing squibs or small rockets before their feet or on their perukes; this was accompanied by railery and abuse.[31] We are frequently disposed to observe with astonishment, in these and similar complaints of contemporaries, how the German nature maintained, amidst the deepest degradation, a vital energy which, more than a hundred years after, made the beginning of a better condition possible; and we may sometimes doubt whether to admire the patience, or to lament the weakness, which so long endured such misery; for, in spite of all that party zeal has ever said in excuse of these servile relations, they were an endless source of immorality both to the masters, their officials, and to the people themselves. The sensuality of landed proprietors, and the self-interest of magistrates and stewards, were exposed to daily temptation at a period when a feeling of duty was weak in all cla.s.ses.

More than once did the sluggish provincial governments exert themselves to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.[32] What was the feeling of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young n.o.bles should have their heads broken betimes."[33]

Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve, and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the straw of his roof, and the c.o.c.ks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]

On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give up the prejudice against this useful cla.s.s of men, and no longer to exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.[35] More stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or s.h.i.+ngles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors were for the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers, the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province.

Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and 2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice, von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much the King favoured the n.o.bility when it was serviceable to the State, yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in elevating the ma.s.s of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present his pet.i.tion, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system was felt which so a.s.siduously raised the strength of the people, in order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.

Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary cla.s.ses. It is true that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant, material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote "Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however, before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the burgher cla.s.ses, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular, uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable foundation of the other cla.s.ses of human society.

One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution.

The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he makes for the elevation of the cla.s.s are sensible, but unsatisfactory; as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet, when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant, but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity, coa.r.s.eness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and a mult.i.tude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought in this despised and ruined cla.s.s; that the condition of things under which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly feeling, and of the n.o.ble consciousness of independence--was impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work, therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation.

The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but the literary cla.s.s. Garve speaks as follows:--

"One circ.u.mstance has great influence on the character of the peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They a.s.sociate like soldiers, and thus get an _esprit de corps_; many results arise from this: first, they become polished after their fas.h.i.+on, and more acute through this a.s.sociation. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and they have better notions than the common artisan of many of the relations of social life; that is to say, of all those which occur in their cla.s.s and in their own mode of life. This constant intercourse, this continual companions.h.i.+p, is with them, as with soldiers, what lightens their condition. It is a happy thing to hare much and constant companions.h.i.+p with others, if they are your equals; it gives rise to an intimate acquaintance and a reciprocal confidence, at least in outward appearance, without which no intercourse can be agreeable. The n.o.ble enjoys this advantage; he a.s.sociates for the most part only with his equals, being separated by his pride from those below him, and he and his equals live much together, as leisure and wealth enable him to do so. The peasant enjoys singular advantages from opposite reasons. His insignificance is so great that it prevents his having the wish, still more the opportunity, of a.s.sociating with those above him; he hardly ever sees anything but peasants, and his servitude and his work bring him frequently in companions.h.i.+p with these his equals.

"But this very circ.u.mstance causes the peasants to act in a body; thus the inconveniences of a democratic const.i.tution are introduced, so that a single unquiet head from their own body exercises great power over them, and often influences the whole community. It is, moreover, the reason why persons of another cla.s.s have so little influence over them, and can only sway them by authority and compulsion. They seldom see or hear the judgments, conceptions, and examples of the higher orders, and only for a brief s.p.a.ce.

"I have long studied the special signification of the word _tuckisch_, which I have never heard so frequently as when the talk has been of peasants. It denotes, without doubt, a mixture of childish character, of simplicity, and weakness, with spite and cunning.

"Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys, in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear, shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys, when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the pa.s.sersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. But as soon as the stranger is a little way off, they run to their comrades, and burst out laughing.

"The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on the other, in many respects, simple and ignorant; the frequent antagonism of his own will and advantage, to the will and the commands of those above him, implants in his mind the germs of animosity. Thus, if the failings of his cla.s.s are not counteracted by his personal qualities, he becomes such as the boy described, especially in his demeanour to his superiors. It is these superiors and lords of the peasants who are to blame for his _tuckischen_ character. He will use dissimulation in place of open resistance; he will be humble and yielding, nay, even appear devoted in their presence; but when he thinks he can act secretly, he will do everything against their will and interest. He will think of tricks and intrigues, which, nevertheless, are not so finely woven but that they may be easily seen through.

"One may discover two main differences, both in the fate and the character of the peasantry. He who is entirely under subjection, who sighs under the yoke of a complete slavery, will, under usual circ.u.mstances, submit to everything with apathy, without attempting the least resistance, and even without a wish to lighten his own lot; he will throw himself at the feet of any one who will tread on him. But if he is roused from this torpor by special circ.u.mstances, by agitators, by a cunning and bold leader, then he will become like a raging tiger, and will lose at once, with the humility of the slave, all the feelings of humanity.

"The half-serf who has property, and enjoys the protection of the laws, but under more or less burdensome conditions, is bound to the glebe, and at the same time to the service of the proprietor, to whose jurisdiction he is amenable; this peasant does not usually bear his burdens without wincing. There is no fear that he will endeavour to throw them off his neck by open violence as a rebel; but he will carry on a continual secret war with his master. To diminish his profit, and to increase his own, is a wish that he has always at heart, and an object which covertly, and as often as is practicable, he endeavours to pursue. He practises crafty and small thefts on the property of his master, and does not consider them so disgraceful as if he did the same by his equal. He is not the entirely humble slave, nor yet the dreaded enemy of his master, but he is not an obedient dependent, from free will and a good heart; he is that which probably has been intended to be expressed in some sort by the word _tuckisch_.

"One may add, as an ingredient or as a consequence of the '_tuckischen_' nature, a certain amount of stubbornness which distinguishes the peasant when his mind is agitated, or when a prejudice is once rooted in him. His soul in this case appears to become stiff, like his body and his limbs. He is then deaf to all representations, however obvious they may be, or however capable he might be, in an impartial state of mind, of seeing their justice. The lawyers employed in the lawsuits of peasants will sometimes have known such individuals, in whom it is doubtful whether the obstinacy with which they cling to an obviously absurd idea, arises from their blindness or from determined malice. Sometimes whole communities become thus addle-headed. They then resemble certain crazy people, who, as it is expressed, have a fixed idea, that is, a conception which their mind takes up incessantly or returns to on the slightest occasion, and which, however false it may be, can neither be removed by the evidence of the senses nor by the representations of reason, because it is not really in the mind, but has its foundation in the tenor of their organization."

Thus speaks Christian Garve. His final counsel was: "Better village schools." Some among the landed proprietors acted with a similar philanthropic feeling. We would gladly say that their number was great; but the frequent complaints to the contrary, and the zeal with which benevolent commentators bring forward individual examples--like one Rochow, of Rekahn, who established village schools at his own cost--justify the conclusion that such benevolence would have been less striking had it been more frequent. In fact it required individuals to be very prudent in showing their good feeling for the peasants in deeds, as it was often observed that they gave their service far more willingly to strict n.o.bles than to citizen proprietors; and that when these, with a warmer feeling for the peasant, wished to show him kindness, their goodwill sometimes met with a bad return. Thus a citizen proprietor, taking possession of his property, gave each of his peasants a present in money, and showed consideration for them in many ways; the not unnatural consequence was, that they renounced all service to him, and broke out into open resistance.

Whilst the German philanthropists were anxiously thinking and writing for the countryman, a storm was already brewing on the other side of the Rhine which in a few years was to destroy in Germany also, the servitude of the peasants, together with the old form of government.

About 1790 the peasants began to occupy themselves eagerly with politics. The schoolmaster read and explained the newspapers to them; the hearers sat motionless, amidst thick tobacco smoke, all ears. In Electoral Saxony some already made use of the new circulating library in the neighbouring city.[36] In the Palatinate, and in the Upper Rhine, the country people became disturbed, and refused service. In the same year, in the richest part of Electoral Saxony, in the Lommatzscher district, and on the property of the Graf von Schonburg, a peasant revolt once more broke out. Once more did the insurgents seize the weapon of the slave, the wooden club with iron hoops. The peasants, by a deputation, renounced all villein service to the landholders; they sent to the neighbouring communities; from village to village hastened the secret messengers; the magistrates, in the service of n.o.blemen, were expelled or beaten with sticks; the quiet parishes were threatened with fire and sword; in every village saddled horses were standing to send information to the neighbours of the march of the military. There were the same secret conspiracy, the same outbreak, spreading with the speed of lightning, the same union of measureless hate, with a natural feeling of their rights, as in the peasant war of the sixteenth century. Reciprocal agreements were laid before the landed proprietors, which most of them subscribed amicably; and severe n.o.bles were threatened with the worst. Their demands quickly increased; soon they required, not only exemption from tenths and soccage service, but also the reimburs.e.m.e.nt of fines that had been paid. The peasants collected in troops of more than a thousand men; they threatened the town of Meissen, and attacked small detachments. But they never withstood larger divisions of military. The most daring bands threw their caps and clubs away, as soon as the cavalry were ordered to charge through them. One of the chief leaders, a stubborn, daring old man of seventy years of age, while still in chains, complained of the faintheartedness of his bands. The movement was suppressed without much bloodshed. It was characteristic of the time, that the landowners, from fear, did everything in their power to bring about a mutual forgiveness and forgetfulness, and that the condemned, during their penal labour, were separated from other criminals and treated with leniency; they were also excused the prison dress. From records of that period it may clearly be seen how general was the feeling among the higher magistrates, that the position of the peasant did not come up to the requirements of the times.

Two years later, also, the German peasants in the Palatinate and in the Electorate of Mainz danced round the red cap on the tree of freedom.

Incessantly did French influence overspread Germany. The State of the Great Frederick was shattered; Germany became French up to the Elbe. In the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished, with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to the new dominion. The Princes of the Rhine Confederation followed this example, with greater consideration for those whom they patronised; but still under the strong influence of French ideas. In Prussia the Governments and people saw, with alarm, how insecure was the const.i.tution of a State which employed so much the bodies and working powers of the peasants, and took so little account of their souls. In the year 1807 the great change in the relations of the country people began in Prussia; the definition of the rights of the landowners and peasants has lasted there, with many fluctuations and interruptions, for half a century, and has not yet arrived at a full conclusion.

At this period the position of the countryman throughout Germany has so improved, that no other progress of civilization can be compared to it.

The villein of the landowner has--with the exception of Mecklenburg, where the condition of the middle ages still exists--become the free citizen of his State; the law protects and punishes him and the landowner alike; he sends representatives, not of his cla.s.s only, but of the nation, in union with the other cla.s.ses of voters, to the capital; he has legally ceased everywhere to be a separate order in the State--in many provinces he has laid aside, with his present dress, his old frowardness; he begins to dress himself _a la mode_, and--sometimes in a clumsy, unpleasing form--to take his share in the inventions and enjoyments of modern civilization. But, however great these changes may be, they are not yet great enough generally, in Germany, to give the countryman that position which, as a member of the State, a citizen, and an agriculturist, he must attain, if the life of the people is to give an impression in all respects of perfect soundness and power. His interest in, and comprehension of, that highest earthly concern of man--the State--is much too little developed; his craving for instruction and cultivation, considered on the whole, is too small; and in the larger portion of the Fatherland his soul is still enc.u.mbered by some of the qualities which are nurtured by long oppression, hard egotism, distrust of men differently moulded, litigiousness, awkwardness, and a deficient understanding of his rights and position as a citizen. The minds which have shaken off the old spell are still in the form of transition which gives them a specially unfinished and unpleasing aspect.

The agriculture of the German peasantry may still be considered as not having, on the whole, reached that point which is necessary for an energetic development of our national strength; nevertheless, we have reason to rejoice in having made great progress in this direction.

Intellect is everywhere incessantly occupied in introducing to the simple countryman new discoveries--machines, seeds, and a new method of cultivation. In some favoured districts the agriculture of the small farmer can scarcely be distinguished from the well-studied system of the larger model farms. Nor has the German peasant, in the times of the deepest depression, like the oppressed Slavonian, ever lost the instinct of self-acquisition. For the very qualities which are his characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists, however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The n.o.ble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons, frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy, technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures, trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies, and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our industry. If this circ.u.mstance is perhaps a surety for our stability, on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other cla.s.ses of the German people.

If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not yet gained, comparatively with the other cla.s.ses of the people, the independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened that the strength of the nation has pa.s.sed from the rural districts into cities, and that the n.o.bleman has raised himself so much above his neighbour the peasant, must beware of a.s.serting, that this depression of the country-people is the natural consequence of the establishment of a higher culture and more artistic forms of life by the side of the simple agriculture of the lower cla.s.s. He who follows his plough will seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original, he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and the easy intercourse of a modern _salon_ will scarcely be enlivened by his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must, at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by him.

Is it necessary that our neighbour the countryman should so seldom read a good book, and still less often buy one? Is it necessary that he should, as a rule, take in no other newspaper than the small sheet of his own district? Is it necessary that it should be unknown to him, and unfortunately sometimes also to his schoolmaster, how an angle is determined, a parallelogram measured, and an ellipse drawn? Whoever would now place a poem of Goethe's in the hand of a peasant woman, would probably do a useless thing, and raise a dignified smile in a "well-educated spectator." Must all that we possess of most beautiful be incomprehensible to half our nation? Six hundred years ago, the poem of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the same lively susceptibility for n.o.ble poetry which we now a.s.sume as the privilege of the highly educated. Is it necessary that the peasant of the present day should be deficient in it? The Bohemian village musician still plays with heartfelt delight the harmonious tones produced by the genius of Haydn and Mozart; is it necessary that few other musical sounds should be permitted to the German peasant than the stale measures of spiritless dances? All this is not necessary; something of the same barbarism benumbs our life which we perceive with astonishment in the time of Christian Garve.

What, however, we consider at first as one of the still remaining weaknesses of the peasants, is also the characteristic weakness of our whole culture, which has become too artificial, because it has bloomed in comparatively small and isolated circles of society, without the regulation and ever-increasing invigoration which the collective popular mind would have afforded it by cordial reciprocity and warm sympathy. The peasant's having for so many centuries been a stranger to social culture has, in the first place, made him weak, and also made the culture of the other cla.s.ses too unstable, over-refined, and sometimes unmanly and impracticable.