GERMANIA

GERMANY – G. of N. W. – 1) State boundaries; 2) Boundaries of ecclesiastical districts; 3) Railways. For Bavaria V. relevant map.

The need to import raw materials for processing and to find ever new markets for its growing production led to a trend toward increasingly concrete autarky. The defeat suffered in the Second World War greatly aggravated the difficulties of the German economy, both because of the loss of mining districts (the Silesian coal basin, the Saar, etc.) and because of the destruction of industrial equipment and the limitations placed on production by the Allies. However, in the Anglo-American bizone, the index of this production has now almost reached pre-war levels (1936), whereas nothing precise is known regarding the Soviet sector.

In the same bizone, more than 88 million tons of anthracite and 65 million tons of lignite were extracted in 1948. The importance of iron ore (Siegerland, Braunschweig), copper (Harz), silver, bauxite, etc., is much smaller, while for lead and zinc (Rhineland, Harz, Erzgebirge) and even more so for potash salts (central Germany: 14.5 million tons of ore before the war) Germany enjoyed almost a European monopoly.

Almost all the most efficient industries before the war (steel, mechanical, chemical, etc.) were either destroyed or greatly limited (including textiles, shoemaking, and paper), while among the free industries, apart from mining, those of furniture, glass, timber, and construction, etc., represent a very modest share of Germany’s formidable potential.

Before the war, this potential corresponded to an adequate commercial organization, which benefited from the country’s privileged geographical position—an intermediary between Western and Eastern Europe on one side, and between the Mediterranean world and the Atlantic on the other—while internally it had an excellent road network (in 1937 there were 213,000 km of public roads in Germany) and railway system (68,000 km), widely complemented by navigable rivers and canals. It also put at the service of international trade a merchant fleet that was the fourth largest in the world (4.5 million tons in 1939) and ports among the best equipped and busiest in Europe (Hamburg, Bremen, Emden). Currently, the available shipping is reduced to insignificant proportions (294,000 tons).

It should be recalled that before the First World War, Germany possessed a vast colonial empire (mainly in Africa, and partly in Asia and Oceania): nearly 3 million km² with, at the time, 13 million inhabitants (now about 20 million), which was subsequently entirely lost.

II. CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY

OUTLINE:

I. In the ancient world

II. The medieval empire

III. Germany and the Reformation

IV. Prussian predominance

V. The German Empire

VI. The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

I. IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

In the final period of the Republic, the Roman conquest of Gaul opened the way to knowledge of the lands beyond the Rhine, the river to whose banks Caesar had brought the Romans. In 38 BC the Ubii moved to the left bank of the Rhine, and Agrippa founded Cologne, the future metropolis of the Rhineland. But every Roman expedition was followed by uprisings among the tribes. The Usipetes, Tencteri, and Sicambri crossed the river and carried the war into Romanized Gaul. Augustus had to address the problem of pacifying the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe to secure the Gallic frontier and the Danube *limes*, which could be influenced by the insecurity of the former. The task was entrusted to Drusus (13–9 BC), and upon his death it was continued by Tiberius, who deserves credit for having accompanied—and indeed preceded—military action with a work of civil penetration that achieved the best results. The failure to subdue the Marcomanni, the unrest in Illyricum and Pannonia, and the revolt of AD 9 among the Germans, led by Arminius, chief of the Cherusci, endangered all of Rome’s work from Caesar to Tiberius. Although the loss of Quintilius Varus’s legions in the Teutoburg Forest might have had no graver consequences thanks to Tiberius’s prompt return and, above all, to the military operations conducted by Germanicus and the dissensions among the insurgents, the realization of a Roman Germany from the Rhine to the Elbe was forever lost.

Toward the end of the 1st century, western and southern Germany entered the territory of the Empire, and its history became largely intertwined with that of Gaul. The Batavian revolt of AD 69–70, the subsequent attempted establishment of a Gallic empire, and Vespasian’s victory over the widespread insurrection are among the most dramatic episodes. For three centuries Germany remained within the orbit of Rome, and the peoples brought into contact with its legislative and civil work were drawn to its civilization. From the end of the 3rd century, progressively intensifying through the 4th, Germany was swept by the shudder of invasions: Frisians, Franks, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Alemanni, Bavarians, Angles and Jutes, Thuringians and Burgundians, Rugians, Sciri, Turcilingi, Heruli, Gepids, Vandals, and later Ostrogoths and Visigoths pressed in from the south, east, and sea. What profoundly influenced Germany’s history was the formation of the Frankish kingdom: the end of the Alemannian kingdom, marked at Tolbiac in AD 496 by Clovis, founder of the Frankish dynasty, led to Frankish intervention beyond the Rhine and favored the formation of a state straddling the river. The Thuringian kingdom disappeared, the Saxons occupied the Harz, and the Gothic kingdom of Italy entered a crisis due to Byzantine intervention: all of this favored the Franks’ assumption of a predominant position among the Germanic peoples and made them a more effective bulwark against the incursions of the Slavs. Against the Avars and Lombards as well, the Franks would play a role in containing the defense of a civilization they believed to be from Rome and which drew them into the orbit of the Catholic Church, making them its obedient and faithful sons.

II. THE MEDIEVAL EMPIRE

After the Frankish conquest of Gaul was completed in the 6th century and this—together with the annexed German lands—was divided into Neustria, the land of the Western Franks, and Austrasia, straddling the Moselle, Main, and Rhine, the decline of the Merovingian dynasty did not, for the time being, decisively affect the loss of Frankish influence in Germany. Beginning with Pippin of Herstal and his victorious campaigns beyond the Rhine, the Carolingians resumed the expansionist policy of the early Frankish kings: Charles Martel (v.) defeated the Frisians and Saxons and drove them back from the territory between the Rhine and the Moselle as far as the Weser; Pippin the Short resumed the struggle against the Saxons and made the Bavarians and Alemanni tributary. With Charlemagne (v.), who subdued the indomitable Saxons in a thirty-year struggle, the work of his predecessors was completed and culminated in a general stabilization of Germany, from which it would derive the development of its national history.

When, in the name of an ideal of conquest and faith, Charlemagne had broken—with a cruelty only justified by the continual rekindling of rebellions—the resistance of the Saxons and their hero Widukind, he was able to extend beyond the Rhine the administrative-military system of the counties, the religious system of the bishops, and the judicial and civil system of Frankish law. At the same time as the disintegration of Saxon unity, the disintegration of Bavaria also occurred in stages, occasioned by the pro-Lombard orientation of the Agilolfing dukes, closely related to King Desiderius. Charlemagne also subdued the Avars, securing the middle Danube flank for the expansion and consolidation of the Germanic tribes. His initiative halted before the Slavs, though in his final years he still managed to secure the Jutland frontier against the Danes.

The Empire, half Roman and half Germanic—as shown by the very choice of its capital on the Rhine at Aachen—was deeply religious and Catholic, as evidenced by the grand ceremony of Christmas in the year 800, when Charlemagne definitively won Germany for Western civilization and, through the efforts of St. Boniface (q.v.) and other missionaries of the faith, for the Catholic Church. In the life of the Germanic peoples, there was a softening of customs, a progressive rapprochement with the Romance world, the work of both the Carolingian Empire and the Church.

The death of Charlemagne in 814 marked the first fissure in the unity of the two parts of the Carolingian Empire; those elements of subsequent autonomy, which had existed since the creation of Austrasia, became more pronounced under the successors of the great Emperor and prevailed during the struggles among the sons of Louis the Pious. These conflicts also favored the autonomist tendencies of the landed nobility: one of the two forces (the other, that of the great ecclesiastical estates, would arise later, almost to balance the first) upon which the power of the German Empire would develop. Already in 813, Louis, king of the Eastern Franks—who would later be called the German—united under his scepter the majority of Germanic territories and peoples: Franconia and Thuringia, Saxony, Alemannia, and Bavaria. In 814, Louis and Charles the Bald allied against Lothar I. The Oath of Strasbourg of February 14, 842, is both the first document in the German language and the first indication of the differentiation of the two nationalities. Even though Lothar I retained the imperial title, the Treaty of Verdun in August 843 sanctioned the respective independence of the Kingdoms of Germany and France.

Charles the Fat reunited the Empire, already divided into three autonomous entities—Bavaria, Saxony, and Alemannia—under his name in 884, while Louis the German was still alive; but in 887, his deposition at the Diet of Tribur marked a return to the autonomies already established. The situation of the Empire, shaken by internal strife and threatened externally by the incursions of the Hungarians, Normans, and Wends, was not resolved by the actions of Conrad I of Franconia, elected and consecrated in 911 at Forchheim, but was healed by the wise, energetic, and attentive work of Henry I, founder of the Saxon dynasty. His son Otto I, designated as his successor at the assembly in Erfurt (936), was the great interpreter of the matured *translatio imperii* from France to Germany. From the outset, he shaped his actions with a grandeur unknown in the past: from his coronation in Aachen to his greater detachment from the dukes, who were summoned to personal service of the sovereign. He established a new administrative system, creating alongside the dukes a class of officials, the palatine counts, and fostering the growth of a broad ecclesiastical feudalism, less dangerous than lay feudalism because it was not tied to a person and was useful in bringing other ecclesiastical hierarchies, inclined to prioritize the authority and call of the Pope, back into obedience to the crown.

At the death of Otto I, his successor was still a child, and the internal situation of Germany was so precarious that it induced Lothair II to attempt the conquest of France. Otto II succeeded in halting the invader and improving the internal situation; he might have renewed, with greater success, the expansion into the eastern lands, from which his people always hoped to derive greater opportunities for life and power, and further strengthened the foundations of the monarchy. He had married (a reminder of Otto I’s last, unhappy Italian campaign and the attempted agreement, which had also been Charlemagne’s dream, with the Byzantine Empire) the Greek Theophano, and, drawn by his father’s ultimate design, he resumed in 982, via Italy, the fateful march southward against the Greeks and Saracens. Defeated near Cotrone in July 982, while attempting to lay the groundwork for a resumption of the struggle, and learning of a new Slavic invasion from the German kingdom, he died in Rome at the age of not yet thirty, leaving the throne to his young son Otto, entrusted to the guardianship of his mother and grandmother. Otto III was drawn into the whirlwind of Roman factions and into an atmosphere permeated by a mystical expectation of religious reform with the approach of the millennium. He came to Rome, where his cousin elevated him to the papacy under the name Gregory V and crowned him emperor; he returned in 998 to end the power of Crescentius, who was defeated and killed. Between these two expeditions, he had to confront the Slavs on the Elbe, curb the growing power of Arduin, lord of Ivrea, in the March of Turin, and keep in check the rebellious Lombard princes of southern Italy; as the duke of Poland was of help to him in defending the borders of the German kingdom, so too the margrave of Tuscany, Hugh, aided him in Italy. A pupil of the learned bishop of Reims, Gerbert, whom he made archbishop of Ravenna, Otto III was inspired by the ancient grandeur of Rome and the traditions of classical culture. The phrase *renovatio imperii* is frequently invoked: the Emperor resided on the Aventine, clothing his mystical dream of renewal in sumptuous forms. In 999, he had Gerbert elected pope under the name Sylvester II; he found in him the other voice he needed—the spiritual one—and placed it, in the fervor of his divinations, beside the temporal voice, which he interpreted. He had extended ecclesiastical organization into the eastern lands, in Poland and Hungary, already a friend of Adalbert of Prague and Bruno of Querfurt, martyrs in the propagation of the Faith; he had assumed a significant title such as “servant of Jesus Christ” and paid homage in Aachen to Charlemagne, overseeing the exhumation of his remains. Yet a single violent and perpetual uprising of the Romans, dissatisfied with the failure to destroy Tivoli, sufficed to drive Sylvester and Otto from the city, the earthly base of their dream.

Ottone, whose fervent and restless soul was dominated by Greek blood over Germanic roughness, even in solidarity and affection with Pope Sylvester, was led to deny the validity of imperial donations to the Church. At the same time, he thought of withdrawing from the world as a hermit or of launching himself as a missionary to convert new peoples to the Faith, struck by the possibility of a conflict that his religious conscience foreshadowed. But then the value of the imperial function and the urgency of the duties of power rooted in him led him to overcome his inner crisis, and he turned with greater confidence to a restored ecclesiastical situation and to the possibility of perpetuating his dynasty and throne through a new Byzantine marriage, when, at the age of twenty, he too fell (January 23, 1002), like his father, a victim of one of the frequent epidemics in the peninsula.

Of a collateral branch of the House of Saxony, the successor, Henry II, resumed the traditional policy of Otto I, developing ecclesiastical feudalism as a counterbalance to lay feudalism. He was moreover driven by sincere religious zeal, which led him to become one of the greatest benefactors of the clergy and builder of churches and abbeys. Deeply sensitive to the atmosphere of religious renewal that Odo and Odilo had begun to radiate from Cluny, he became an enthusiastic advocate of II. He too was drawn to Italian politics; among his expeditions across the Alps, the last placed him before the first violent outbreak of Italian communal autonomism, with the destruction of the royal palace and the assault on Pavia. When he died in 1024, he left a Germany pacified and restored from the disorder into which Otto III’s reckless actions had plunged II. Agriculture, against the atavism of the barbarians of old, had spread throughout the land: monasteries and cities cooperated in the economic revival, of which the great rivers were the instruments. The national language had now emerged: the first documents of it survive.

Royal power passed, with Conrad II, to the local Franconian house, most closely related to the Ottonians. Unacceptable to the reforming clergy and the great lords of Lorraine and Saxony, Conrad II made himself the champion of the less privileged classes, aiming to shift the foundations of central power to the multitude of minor feudatories and knights, granting them hereditary rights to their fiefs. The central power would thus begin to count, in every duchy, independently of the attitude of the great feudatories, on its own loyal supporters. Agitations and conflicts at the borders, between Poles and Bohemians, Danes, Slavs, and Hungarians, allowed for the resumption of German expansion. Of particular note was the acquisition of Burgundy upon the death of Rudolph III. Yet Conrad too, with his two descents into Italy, did not forget the orientation toward the peninsula.

Upon a pacified and united Germany, the successor Henry III began to reign in 1039; but under him, while the Empire’s power seemed enormously increased, the resurgence of autonomist demands centered on the renewed strength of the dukes, the continuous—though not always successful—wars at the borders, and the rise of neighboring princes and officials to the highest dignities, all of which brought with it the widest jealousies, revealed the opening of a new crisis. Even Henry’s religious policy, openly favoring the Cluniac and reforming Church, and his interventions in Rome, would spark an intense reaction against German and imperial power, centered on the issue of lay investiture and destined to undermine the long reign of his son and heir.

When he assumed personal rule in 1065, Henry IV (q.v.) faced a state in open and conscious anarchy, where rebellions and endemic disorders had taken on the character of feudal opposition. Yet as he proceeded along the path of restoring central authority, the struggle against lay investiture and for the internal renewal of the Church—which with Gregory VII (q.v.) reached its decisive turning point—suddenly halted him and confronted him with the other side of the Empire’s problem: the Roman and Italian dimension, and moreover the ever-widening repercussions that the religious movement inspired by Gregory VII, opposing German autocracy, ignited throughout Christendom. The papal excommunication struck at the latent struggle against the king by the great lords of Germany. It rekindled to the point of provoking his deposition at the Diet of Tribur and the counter-election of the Duke of Swabia, Rudolph of Rheinfelden. The dukes reasserted their supremacy, seeking to resolve once and for all—though they would later succeed—the problem of imperial election by transforming the hereditary principle into an elective one. Central power, the centralized monarchy, however, represented a more modern orientation, inspired by the advantage of the collectivity, as opposed to feudal power and anarchy. This was seen in what saved Henry IV and, for the moment, the hereditary principle: the rise of the cities, the rural masses, the new aristocracy of the ministeriales, and a large part of the bishops in favor of the excommunicated and deposed king. Even some of the great lords rallied to his side, including the progenitor of the Hohenstaufen, Frederick. At Hohenmölsen (1080), his rival Rudolph died in battle, and in vain was Herman of Luxembourg named as his successor. The dissensions among the enemies, the mediation of the bishops, and the very length of the struggles—which had spread a general weariness—extinguished the flames of revolt, allowing Henry IV to remain long in Italy, where from 1081 to 1084 he contained the rising power of the Lombard communes, kept them in check with concessions and privileges, and, upon entering Rome, considered his personal struggle—long tormenting him—with Gregory VII concluded by the latter’s death in exile at Salerno.

Upon his return from Italy, where he had stayed from 1081 to 1084, he had to face the double rebellion of his two sons, Conrad (1093), the firstborn, and Henry, who, victorious, would assume the Empire under the name Henry V (1105–25). With him came a reaffirmation of the power of the great lords; nor did it help, as he emerged from quasi-tutelage, the act of violence and fraud by which Henry imposed on the unfortunate Paschal II (q.v.), after the renunciation of ecclesiastical goods pertaining to imperial rights—for the freedom of the Church—the privilegium of reinstatement in the rights of investiture, which amounted to an affront to the century-long struggle for reform. The opposition rallied around Lothair of Supplinburg, who had become Duke of Saxony, and around the Archbishop of Mainz, Adalbert. With Henry, the Franconian house ended after concluding with the Concordat of Worms (23 Sept. 1122) the dispute between Empire and Church through a compromise that preserved the prestige of both Pope and Emperor. In his place, Lothair of Supplinburg (1125–37) was elected emperor, belonging to the pro-ecclesiastical party, through whom he was able to defeat the coalition between the Guelfs of Bavaria and the Hohenstaufen Ghibellines and carry out a successful expedition against the Normans in Apulia. At his death (1137), in defiance of the dynastic principle, Conrad of Hohenstaufen ascended the throne—the former rival of the Emperor—under whom the struggle between the two opposing factions continued and remained as a heavy legacy for his nephew Frederick Barbarossa (q.v.).

From the very beginning of his reign, the necessity of establishing a firm foundation for his power also in Italy—against the now entirely autonomous and growing power of the Papacy and the flourishing rise of communal autonomies—drew the Emperor to a marked involvement in the affairs of the peninsula. It was not that the general peace declared could ensure the stability of the internal situation of Germany; but the Emperor addressed this through alternating descents into Italy, relying, especially during his absences, on the support of the dukes, who shared an interest in his government. Henry the Lion of Bavaria, the greatest expression of this German feudal separatism, achieved such territorial and political advantages along this path that, even after prolonged resistance, he was abandoned by the Emperor to the jealousy of the other great princes. His condemnation, along with the division of his estates, led to the disappearance of the largest hereditary feudal unit, and the fragmentation of lordships resumed—not in favor of central authority but of an inexhaustible process of anarchy, which would render futile the efforts of the German emperors in their homeland and drive them toward an overvaluation of Italian policy. This policy, from the final years of Barbarossa to the reign of his son Henry VI and that of Frederick II, marked the abandonment of the German fatherland and the relegation of its problems to secondary importance in the face of the universal issues raised by Italy and Rome.

When, in 1190, Frederick I drowned in the Saleph River on his way to the Holy Land, where he intended to lead a new crusade, he had barely overcome an attempt at a broad feudal coalition raised against him by the Archbishop of Cologne. By then, more than to the destruction of Milan and the subjugation of other Lombard, Tuscan, and Emilian cities, his memory was tied to the defeat at Legnano, the Peace of Venice, and the Peace of Constance, which had marked the victorious affirmation of the communes allied with the papacy. Yet, amid the difficulties of both the German internal situation and the Italian one, toward the end of his life, the great Emperor had, with far-sighted political judgment, united his son Henry in marriage with the heiress of the Norman Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Constance of Hauteville.

Henry VI found himself, at the outset, compelled to fight on two fronts: the reappearance of Henry the Lion in Germany and the opposition of a national party to his assumption of the crown of Sicily. Both fronts drew the involvement and interest of the major powers of Christendom: the Church, England, and Denmark. French neutrality, born of the hatred between Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus, and the extraordinary fortune of the capture of the former, returning from the Crusade, saved Henry VI. At the death of the obstinate rival Henry the Lion, the Emperor could force the hand of the prince-electors at the Diet of Würzburg to secure consent to the inheritance of the crown; but subsequent opposition led him instead to provoke the election, at the Diet of Frankfurt, of his son Frederick, noted in 1194. Meanwhile, as he turned his attention—after brutally suppressing the Sicilian and Apulian rebellion—to vast plans for expansion in the East, Henry died in Sicily in 1197.

Once again, a regency council (for a few months by the Empress dowager; then, by maternal testament, by Pope Innocent III, but in practice by the turbulent feudal lords of the court and the cunning Bishop of Troia, Walter of Pagliara) assumed control of the difficult situation. But this was in Italy. For Germany, the election of Philip of Swabia as king, sponsored by the very partisans of the Hohenstaufens, reopened the struggle with the Guelphs and their candidate, Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion and ally of England. It was the moment when conflicting interests of France and England intertwined in Lorraine, both seeking to insinuate themselves into Germany’s internal affairs. Innocent III, animated by the desire to divide, for a balance that would not obstruct the power of the Church, the Kingdom of Sicily from the Empire, intervened in favor of the Guelph contender; but this led to the coalescing, on a basis of solidarity new to German history, of the great princes of Germany and even the episcopate. Otto IV was already placed in a difficult position by the severity of his defeat at Wassenberg in 1206 when, shortly thereafter, the assassination of Philip of Swabia, in the midst of universal weariness, led to his recognition, and in 1209 he received the imperial dignity in Rome. But this caused the Pope, preferring a distant danger to an immediate one, to take up the defense of the interests of the young Frederick, thereby resolving the forces of the Hohenstaufens even in Germany. And by the end of 1212, Frederick II was elected King of Germany. At Bouvines two years later, allied with Philip Augustus, Otto IV was defeated and vanished from the scene. More than the young absent sovereign, soon entirely absorbed by Italian struggles, the situation thus created in Germany favored the uninterrupted process of disintegration of central authority and increasingly facilitated the formation of great territorial lordships.

Drawn by his beautiful Kingdom of Sicily and the eastern mirages revived by his father and the maternal Normans, Frederick II pursued his immense dream of a universal empire, rooted in Italy and Rome, renewing legislation, culture, and the very organization of the state, which with him experienced its first hour of modernity. In Germany, after having relied on the power of lay and ecclesiastical princes, in 1229 Frederick entrusted the government to his son Henry. But in turn, the Emperor found himself facing the rebellious stance of his son. Seven years were needed for the army to crush the seditious movement and, even through the marriage of Henry to Isabella, sister of the King of England, to remedy the situation created by the imprudent youth. The series of papal thunderbolts that struck the Emperor did not have the same effect as in the time of Henry IV: the higher clergy remained favorable, and the smaller neighboring kingdoms returned to imperial authority. The Mongol threat suddenly worsened over Germany; even when it dissipated due to his lack of intervention, Frederick II emerged diminished in the esteem of his subjects. The violence of the struggle with the papacy, moreover, suffered dangerous fractures in the loyalty of the great feudal lords.

Toward the end of his not-long life, even the situation in Germany weighed heavily on Frederick: the ever-greater harshness of the clash with the papacy reverberated in the loyalty of the higher clergy. A spirit of revolt spread among them, soon extending to the great lay feudal lords. Declared deposed at the Council of Lyon, Frederick II saw Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia—one of the Emperor’s favorites—elected antiking. Once again, the major cities stood firm in favor of the monarchy against the princes. The struggle thus hung in the balance when death snatched the Emperor at Castelfiorentino, on the edge of his Apulian plain, on December 13, 1250.

The sudden end of the great Emperor resulted in the long anarchy of the so-called Great Interregnum. Yet it was then that the cities took direct responsibility for safeguarding common interests. First, a league formed among the Rhenish cities, then another among the Westphalian cities; support came to them from the Stadtholder of Holland, William. The death of this latter put an end, for the time being, to federal development.

In 1273 Rudolph, Count of Habsburg, was chosen by the prince-electors as King of the Romans. Energetic in domestic policy but financially weak due to the growing autonomy of the princes, even he failed to secure the hereditary transfer of the throne to his son Albert. Instead, the crown passed to Adolph, Count of Nassau, who was succeeded after his death in battle and the murder of Albert by Henry VII, Count of Luxembourg. Having secured stability for Germany through the marriage of his son John and a firm influence over Bohemia, Henry turned his attention to Italy. The Greyhound, which Dante awaited, however, closed his descent into the peninsula fruitlessly, lacking the strength and facing adverse events, and died at Buonconvento in 1313.

Louis the Bavarian, who succeeded him in opposition to Frederick of Austria, with his failed attempt to subordinate the authority of the Church—then governed by John XXII—through his descent into Italy and his Roman struggles, effectively induced the German princes to take exclusive control over the right to dispose of royal and imperial power (1338). Eighteen years later, in 1356, another sovereign, Charles IV (v.), with the promulgation of the Golden Bull, brought that will to its ultimate conclusion. Yet to reach Charles IV and his decisive act, it was necessary for a national movement to develop in Germany—perhaps the first—where the consequences of Louis the Bavarian’s cumbersome and fragile Italian attempt and its disastrous repercussions beyond the Alps were felt in the princes’ discontent. From that discontent, and following Louis’s death, the crown passed to John of Luxembourg’s son and Henry VII’s nephew, namely the exponent of the Bohemian branch of the family, Charles IV.
The Holy Roman Empire was now effectively at an end, replaced by an empire exclusively Germanic in character.

The power of the prince-electors now knew no bounds: the king and designated emperor was no more than an emanation, their representative. Behind the leveling of the proud imperial concept to the reality of life, the nation and the state were born. It was, moreover, an acknowledgment—even in Germany and abandoning the now meaningless allure of the imperial name—of the common situation of national monarchies that had taken hold in England, France, Spain, and even the eastern lands civilized by Germany.

It was now that Charles IV could succeed where his predecessors had long striven: in securing the transmission of the throne to his eldest son, Wenceslas. Yet even his reign was marked by bitter conflicts between feudal lords and cities, sometimes bound in leagues, with the continual intervention of the Swiss cantons and the greater princes. Imperial authority had been hollowed out and transformed.

What now pressed upon the entire body of the Empire was a crisis no longer merely constitutional but general—political, religious, and economic—a crisis of civilization that had reached full maturity, driven more by urban centers than by any intrinsic capacity represented by the imperial institution. Throughout Germany, the antecedents and consequences of the Western Schism were reflected, and in the long process of attempts at internal reform of the Church throughout the 15th century, one may see the major antecedent of the Protestant Reformation. This would shatter the religious bond with Rome, which had underpinned the initial spread of civilization in Germany, and, following the centuries-old clash between Empire and papacy, would finally give impetus to the formation of a nation and a national state—until then lacking—and mark the decisive turning point in German history. Political motives would prevail over the initial religious ones; it would be as if the bitter Investiture Controversy were to determine, among the princes, a will to separate from Rome, seizing the opportunity of the moral crisis of the papacy and its struggles—amid the pagan revival of Renaissance life, rife with simony and corruption, contingent and moral problems, conciliarist democratic principles, and traditional Roman centralization.

In 1438, Albert II of Habsburg, son-in-law of Sigismund, was able to unite under his rule Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary—the hereditary possessions of the Habsburgs and Luxembourgs. But he had scarcely ascended the throne when he fell at the Raab, attempting to hinder the Turkish invasion of Hungary. Frederick III succeeded him, and his election helped affirm the hereditary principle in favor of the Habsburgs, while the axis of the Empire shifted toward the Danubian regions of Europe. Yet the fecklessness of the new sovereign, his detachment from the problems and interests of Germany, certainly did not favor the acquisition of a firm foundation.

While the authority of the Empire reached its lowest ebb, it found in an old Augustinian, Martin Luther (q.v.), its most prominent champion. Around him there gathered that league of princes and cities which the Empire had been unable to consolidate on firm foundations. The right to decide its own political and religious destiny, granted to the nation as a whole, proved advantageous by binding together the energies of Germany, hitherto dissipated in the discordant rise of ever-new princely states. On the other hand, social tendencies, driven by anarchic impulses, found in Luther himself—allied with the princes—the restraining force that would brutally suppress them. Germany thereby lost the genuineness and efficacy of its new faith but gained national consciousness and a state in formation.

At first, the alignment of princes and cities split into two leagues: Protestant and Catholic. The unity, unattained at Augsburg (1530), was consecrated the following year at Schmalkalden by the defensive Protestant league. The Council, which finally opened in Trent in 1545 (q.v.), despite every effort by Charles V and the papacy, would be partial: the Protestants would be absent. Even earlier, Charles V had realistically acknowledged the existence of the new order. The religious struggles, in which figures such as Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, Maurice of Saxony, and the other Saxon, Elector John Frederick, emerged, ended in their first phase with imperial and Catholic affirmation. Yet while the long Council of Trent unfolded, the Protestant princes tightened their ranks and ultimately prevailed in every resistance.

With the Peace of Augsburg (1555), the German Protestant princes achieved their aspirations for political and religious autonomy. By the end of the century, their position was further strengthened, even as the Counter-Reformation brought consolidation to the Catholic sphere. The Habsburgs’ adherence to the Catholic cause led to a progressive erosion of their significance for Germany. Amid constant oscillations, dissensions, and shifting fronts, a second decisive moment for the Reformation arrived: the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which marked both the conclusion of the religious revolution and the settling of political evolution within the framework of territorial states.

The impetus now came from neighboring Protestant princes such as Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. The Baltic became a Protestant sea. Preceded by a series of separate treaties, the general Peace of Münster and Osnabrück on 24 October 1648 ended the long war, confirming the autonomy and sovereignty of the states within their respective territorial spheres—an absolute sovereignty—and establishing a compromise, finally, in the coexistence of the two faiths based on a principle of tolerance, though not always or everywhere respected.

Among the Protestant princes, one emerged from the war and peace consolidated in his already extensive domains, animated by greater ambitions and conquests: the “Great Elector,” Frederick William of Brandenburg. From then on, Prussia would assume a primary role in German politics, in contrast to Bavaria, which remained Catholic. The Holy Roman Empire—now, for some time, purely Germanic—would remain for another century and a half a hollow name without substance: the heir of the House of Austria, it would represent nothing more than a memory of the past for the new princes and peoples of Germany.

IV. THE PRUSSIAN PREDOMINANCE — Already in the early decades of the eighteenth century, it was evident that the Hohenzollerns of Prussia were on the path to predominance in Germany. What had failed the Habsburgs, and earlier the House of Bavaria, now succeeded another equally peripheral dynasty with respect to the lands that had been the cradle of the medieval German Empire. The new role of Prussia was consecrated by the Seven Years’ War, preceded by its immediate prelude: the War of the Austrian Succession.

Under Frederick William I, the establishment of a standing army and the creation of provincial authorities dependent on the sovereign laid the foundations of Prussian power. His son, Frederick II—a warrior and astute politician—elevated the policy of the still-small Prussia, bringing it, after achieving parity with Austria (once inseparable), to the status of a European power. The War of the Polish Succession would consecrate this role.

The French Revolution initially had a relatively limited influence on the German lands: they became part of the European coalitions against France, but their contribution was hardly vigorous. Meanwhile, under the sway of liberal-romantic trends, new ideas gained ground more effectively than arms. Yet the revolutionary ferment in Germany operated, at a later stage, above all in a patriotic and national function, unlike in Italy, leading to the struggle against Napoleonic domination.

Faced with the mass of problems Germany had to confront and resolve between the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, the lack of a unified national structure became more keenly and gravely felt than ever. Even the thinkers and heralds of freedom, from Fichte to Hegel, reflected in their work the yearning for unity. It was this movement of spirits that would lead to the final evolution of Germany’s internal problem: from Germany as a historical and geographical expression to Germany as a national state and empire, through the predominance of Prussia and its participation in the German Confederation.

Napoleon, by decisively intervening in Germany’s structure, facilitated its consolidation into large territorial blocs. The Napoleonic campaign, culminating in the battles of Jena, Eylau, and Friedland (1806–1807), was at first a succession of defeats. Yet it served to instill in the Prussian military caste a proud sense of representing all of Germany—a sentiment it would maintain in the decades to come and which would provide the greatest impetus to contribute military force to Napoleon’s downfall. Indeed, it can be said that the new Germany emerged from the Battle of the Nations (Leipzig, 8 October 1813) and Waterloo, from the military effort of Blücher, which perpetuated the military tradition of Frederick the Great and would later connect to Moltke and Bismarck, the creators of the new German Empire.

Prussia emerged from the coalition war and presented itself at the Congress of Vienna as the moral victor—not only over Napoleon but also over the states of the Rhine Confederation, which had long benefited from the Emperor’s favor. The German states preserved after Vienna, for reasons of European balance, were, in addition to Prussia, Bavaria (enlarged by the Palatinate), Hanover, Saxony, Hesse, the grand duchies of Oldenburg, Weimar, Mecklenburg, Luxembourg, Württemberg, and Baden. Of the old Hanseatic League, the major centers (Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck) remained free cities, as did Frankfurt am Main.

An immediate consequence of the situation created by Napoleon’s collapse and the results of Vienna was the establishment, on 8 June 1815, of a Bund, or Confederation, in which all German states were represented, along with states that held German territories. Alongside Prussia and the other smaller German states, the Confederation included Austria, England (for the union of the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland and Hanover), Denmark (for the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg), and the Netherlands (for Luxembourg). For the time being, Austria assumed a certain primacy, though it had renounced the title of the Holy

GERMANY — Portrait of Frederick William III of Prussia (1770–1840) — Rome, Museo del Risorgimento.

The Roman Empire. Their example is not followed by Saxony, still feudal, nor by Prussia, on account of the absolutism of its king, Frederick William III. However, the Prussian army, its economic policy, and its customs union constitute the most concrete foundations for the realization—not democratic, but forceful—of German unity through the Zollverein of 1834, the revolution of 1848, and the establishment of the Empire. The two tendencies—the absolutist, represented by Frederick William IV, and the reformist—clash, and from their collision emerges the Frankfurt Constituent Assembly, tasked with creating a constitutional German unity. Yet the conflicts between Prussia and Austria, between northern and southern princes, and between Berlin and Frankfurt do not cease, so much so that at a certain point Prussia opposes the German Constituent Assembly with an autonomous Prussian Constituent Assembly, cleverly conceived as a first step toward an imperial constitution, but which meets with Austria’s determined opposition.

The initial drive toward German unity still requires a negative experience; meanwhile, the conservative-reactionary stance adopted by the Prince Regent William leaves Prussia discontented and embittered. This bitterness and discontent, widespread across Germany, lead to the renewed attempt at unity by the *Deutsches Nationalverein*. A central government for Germany is sought: the orientation toward Prussia becomes general; the expectation that the largest state would perform the miracle of unification grows pressing, as in Italy after 1848. Prince William reverses his position, and a liberal era seems to open, with a constitutional cabinet and a representative chamber. Between Prussia and Austria, it is now the smaller states that interfere, seeking to assert a power of their own, a third force. But a bitter dispute arises between government and Parliament over the formation of a national army. In 1861, William I finally succeeds Frederick William after his long illness, and political parties rapidly gain strength. Parliamentary developments and the reflection of general European politics strengthen the progressive party and its currents. The immediately following years see the attenuation of the main obstacles to further evolution: the legitimism and conservatism of the King, respectful of others’ sovereign prerogatives, are overcome by the chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in favor of a national and unitary vision; the tenacious resistance of the other princes finds its limit in their progressive weakening; and Austria’s long opposition, revealed in its true light as cold and calculated self-interest, turns against itself the German national sentiment.

Bismarck’s policy wins conviction, dismantles opposing positions, is conservative in nature, yet makes use of the revolutionary forces at play for the purpose of his life’s work. He bends all internal forces opposing his vast design; in foreign policy, he aims to isolate Austria; he exploits, for both domestic and external ends, the opportunity presented by the reopening of the Schleswig-Holstein question (1863–64). When, at the death of King Frederick VII, the two duchies are threatened with incorporation into Denmark, Bismarck, assuming the defense of German rights, secures his first victory by compelling the powers to refrain from intervention and forcing the new Danish king, Christian IX, in a swift campaign, to recognize the duchies’ autonomy and German affiliation. This diplomatic triumph, no less notable, is achieved with the full support of Austria. Rivalry, as was to be expected, erupts at the war’s end, and agitation spreads in the duchies, which seek a settlement within a German framework while remaining alien to any explicit incorporation into the Prussian state.

It is at this juncture, with the inevitability of a direct clash with Austria now clear, that Bismarck conceives and executes an alliance with Italy, enabling him to achieve his goal in the not-too-distant future. Even if Napoleon III’s desire to steer the conflict toward his own ends influences Bismarck—who, above all, champions a principle of pan-German solidarity, as subsequent events after Austria’s defeat would further clarify—the war is merely postponed at the Convention of Gastein (14 August 1865) to better prepare for II. By the beginning of the new year, relations grow tense again: the alliance with Italy is sealed, and the military machine is honed to perfection. It falls to this alliance to bring about the resolution that, after the failed negotiations for a European congress initiated by Napoleon III in the summer of 1866, leads to the great battle of Sadowa under the command of von Moltke. In response to renewed French interference, Bismarck hastens to conclude the preliminaries of Nikolsburg, a peace designed to secure Prussian predominance in Germany while preserving Habsburg power for the sake of Central and Eastern European balance. Meanwhile, French claims to southern Germany and the Rhineland become, in Bismarck’s skillful hands, the decisive card for securing the adherence of the German states to his policy of unity—and, indeed, for taking the further decisive step, in concert with those states, toward the renewal of a German Empire at France’s expense.

To this end, the dramatic shift provided by the 1867 elections—where the parliamentary majority shifts from progressives to conservatives, advocates of a policy of power—is also necessary. In the same year, the establishment of a new Zollverein finally brings all German states together.

V. THE GERMAN EMPIRE

Clear in the minds of Bismarck and his king at the very moment of the armistice, and perhaps even of the war, with Austria, was the necessity of a new war, intended as a cement for national unity, against the France of Napoleon III (the coexistence of four empires in continental Europe was impossible, even after the Austrian humiliation and amid Russia’s growing European isolation and Asian interests). The occasion did not long await: it was the candidacy of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to the Spanish throne, which Napoleon III, distrustful of a more favorable solution, obviously abhorred. Conducted with extreme resolve (it has been said: cynicism) by Bismarck, diplomatic solutions clashed against a determined and manifest will, to which corresponded, on the opposing side, an equally manifest inability (Prussian renunciation, French intransigence demanding the commitment “for the future,” the Ems dispatch). The publicizing of King William’s refusal to receive the French ambassador, Benedetti, deliberately arranged by Bismarck, sounding as an insult to France, made any resumption of negotiations impossible. War ensued. And from the outset, it proved disastrous for France (Battle of Sedan, capture of Napoleon III, surrender of Metz). After a vain attempt at resistance under the walls of Paris, the Republic, succeeding the Second Empire, was forced to sue for peace (armistice of 28 Jan. 1871; Peace of Frankfurt, 10 May). Alsace and Lorraine passed to Germany, which, finally united by victory and consecrated by the assumption, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, of the imperial crown by Kaiser William I, could now move from the provisional formula of the annexation of the southern states into the North German Confederation to a firm imperial constitution. Yet it was even more evident than for Piedmont and Italy that this was an enlargement of the Prussian state: for Germany it would leave a rich legacy of constitutional, economic, and religious problems, while the annexation of lands even ethnically diverse (and of Polish, Bohemian, Danish national groups) would prove a source of future difficulties.

Meanwhile, from the mid-century, Germany had made great strides in economic development: industrial transformation had found particularly favorable ground, as in England. The achieved unity would act as a further propelling element, even in the colonial sphere, into which Germany, though much later than Western nations, would enter. But Bismarck’s position grew more difficult as he consolidated unity itself: even as the preexisting states were reduced to a framework for Prussian predominance, parties agitated, and the Chancellor’s iron fist, still resting on the conservative element with a clever use of liberal forces, clashed especially with the resistance of the clergy. Behind this, from 1870, the Centre Party formed, rapidly gaining strength.

To render German Catholics autonomous from Rome and to create a national Catholic Church, Bismarck unleashed the often-violent campaign of the *Kulturkampf*, which ended negatively and, in the final analysis, to the advantage of the Centre. Only apparently more effective was the repressive action against the new socialist tendencies, manifestly visible in the homeland of Marx and Engels: in reality, Bismarck succeeded only by conceding those social defense laws that public opinion demanded and that placed Germany at the forefront in this area. In foreign policy, to guarantee the territorial gains achieved and to ward off any renewed threat on the Rhine, the Chancellor determined an approach to Russia and a return to collaboration with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, pivoting on the constant prospect of armed conflict between these two powers, driven by Pan-Slavism in the Slavic regions of the Danubian monarchy (the Bosnian-Herzegovinian question, etc.). It was the bloc of conservative states that Bismarck strove to maintain against a West eager for novelty and disruption. Within this framework, and in an attempt to create a counterbalance to Austro-Russian frictions, Bismarck’s efforts to establish the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy must be seen. These were the foundations of three decades of international politics, more useful to economic and technical progress than to ideal aspirations. It was all too evident that the Triple Alliance had its limits in the rise of Italian irredentist aspirations still detached from the motherland and in the ending of Italo-French colonial frictions, which Bismarck had skillfully exacerbated since the Congress of Berlin; in the consolidation of Pan-Slavism and other centrifugal forces within the Habsburg Empire; and in the revival of French nationalism, exacerbated by the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. And beyond these, there was an element that refused to accept exclusion from continental politics: Britain, with its great overseas power. All this passed before the eyes of the negotiators at every renewal of the Triple Alliance. The failure to secure a bilateral Russo-German pact in 1896 sounded like another alarm bell for the Chancellor’s policy. This policy was soon, after William II’s accession to the throne in 1889, confronted by a general shift in political orientations. The personal clash with William, incapable of adaptation and prudence, intolerant of controls but inclined toward impulsive and reckless policies, forced the old minister into retirement (1890).

Once Bismarck was out of public life, hostility between Russia and Austria began to affect its ally, Germany: it found itself between two fronts, amid growing French enmity. The Eastern Question (the Baghdad Railway) further sharpened a potential Anglo-German dispute between two powers both tending toward thalassocracy, though one, steeped in liberal spirit, was driven into positions of outright defense of its much older colonial and mercantile expansion. The last years of the century saw Germany’s naval arms race (von Tirpitz, large-scale naval construction); to Britain’s insistent warnings, Chancellor Bülow opposed a policy of blindness, as the Moroccan crisis, concluded by the Algeciras Conference, its reopening, and the now pronounced distrust—not only French but also Italian—clearly revealed. The Triple Entente (Russia, France, Britain) took shape, gaining, despite attempts at détente by the new Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, a threatening stance toward the Central Powers. It availed nothing to halt Germany’s fatal path to war that a majority in the Reichstag was won by liberals and Social Democrats. And the final act of Germany’s isolation drama unfolded with Italy’s definitive withdrawal from the Triple Alliance. The assassination at Sarajevo and the ultimatum to Serbia were followed swiftly by world conflagration.

VI. THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC AND THE THIRD REICH

Five years of war prostrated not only the army but also Germany’s internal resistance. The collapse of the Emperor’s personal authority, his abdication, and the socialist Ebert’s assumption of power marked the final stages of defeat. A provisional government was formed to sign the armistice (11 Nov. 1918). For the first time in German history, a democratic revolution took power while the Treaty of Versailles was being signed. From the elections of 16 Jan. 1919 and the Weimar Constituent Assembly emerged the Republic that would bear its name. It was a weak state, burdened by the terrible legacy of defeat and threatened by revolutionary groups; yet, in its remarkable cohesion, Germany did not disintegrate, and over time the new regime gained strength.

It was precisely from the harsh conditions of the peace treaty (reparations, the occupation of the Ruhr, total disarmament) and the Allies’ intransigence that the dream—later reality—of German recovery took shape. For a decade, amid the severe postwar crisis, Social Democracy (led by prominent figures such as Weber) managed to steer the nation’s course. However, after the Treaty of Lausanne (7 July 1932) ended the long reparations dispute, nationalist and right-wing currents, under the leadership of Hindenburg—the victor of the Masurian Lakes—began to push decisively for a resurgence, opposing the democratic but shortsighted policies tied to the Locarno Pact and Gustav Stresemann.

Exploiting the *Junker* sentiment, Prussian orthodoxy, and the nation’s ingrained militarism, an Austrian who had only recently been naturalized as a German citizen, Adolf Hitler, succeeded in laying the foundations for a new state. This occurred as the Weimar regime crumbled and democratic institutions were weakly defended by the Brüning and von Papen cabinets. Hitler consolidated power by assuming both the offices of President and Chancellor (following Hindenburg’s death), relying on the auxiliary militias that had replaced the disbanded army and on the latent military and political strength present throughout the country.

The 1932 elections (particularly the second round on 6 Nov.) gave a majority to the party of ex-soldiers and right-wing bourgeoisie: National Socialism. Hitler’s personal regime began, marked by its cult of brute force, neo-paganism, its late Romantic and Spenglerian heritage, and soon by aggressive actions against the remaining Allied guarantees of victory (militarization of the Ruhr, reannexation of the Saar), as well as persecution of Jews and Catholics, dissolution and deportation of communists (accused of the Reichstag fire) and social democrats.

From then on, with internal opposition within the party crushed (the purge of late June 1934), the Schutzstaffeln (SS—*Schutzstaffeln* = Protection Squads) were elevated above the SA (*Schutz-Abteilungen*), the Labor Front (*Arbeitsfront*) was created, and the economy was unified under the control of the skilled financier Hjalmar Schacht. With the Gestapo granted supreme authority, Hitler, in close collaboration with his key lieutenants (Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, etc.), pursued every stage of the most unrestrained centralization of power ever recorded in history.

Once the Nazi regime was firmly established internally, it exploited the military weakness of the democratic nations and the internal problems of Russia to launch a series of international aggressions. These, combined with ongoing military preparations, confronted Europe with faits accomplis and raised the question of the very survival of democracy. Presented as necessary territorial integrations of the common homeland, the annexation of Austria (March 1938) and then Czechoslovakia (March 1939) followed a pattern of prior violations of the collective security regime of the League of Nations (from which Germany had withdrawn) and the sovereignty of free nations. These actions were carried out with premeditated cynicism and bloody ferocity.

By the time of the Munich Agreement (29–30 Sept. 1938) and the Czechoslovak crisis, all diplomatic avenues pursued by the Western powers to prevent further aggression and avert renewed conflict had been exhausted. The ideological basis lay in the alliance among the three right-wing totalitarian regimes: National Socialism, Fascism, and Japanese militarism. It was no coincidence that the path to war, opened by the unresolved issues of the Treaty of Versailles, had already become apparent through Germany’s denunciation of the treaty’s military clauses, the failure of the Stresa Conference (April 1935), and the close alignment between Germany—eager for territorial revisions—and Italy, engaged in the Ethiopian and Spanish campaigns.

When, from 4 Feb. 1938, Hitler concentrated command of the German armed forces in his own hands, Germany’s internal preparations were complete, and there could be no further doubt that the acts of force against Austria and Czechoslovakia would be followed by others. Within months, the crisis over Danzig and the Polish Corridor led to the outbreak of war on 1 Sept. 1939.

Characterized initially by a period of stalemate, the war then saw a succession of German blitzkrieg offensives against the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Baltic states (except Sweden), alongside anxious anticipation of an invasion of England. The third phase reversed the general situation with the intervention of America and Russia and the emergence of an alliance among Central European powers.

As the military situation deteriorated—especially on the Eastern Front—and the Anglo-American invasion of the continent began, the collapse first of the Fascist regime in Italy and then the July 1944 military putsch attempt signaled the approaching agony of Hitler’s Germany. Surrender came shortly after the fall of Berlin and Hitler’s death, on 7 May 1945. Germany emerged from the war devastated, impoverished, and—worst of all—divided into four Allied occupation zones, including Berlin itself, and stripped of vast industrial regions (Silesia, Pomerania) ceded to Poland. The territorial fragmentation of pre-unification days returned, compounded by foreign imposition and occupation.

The competing influences of the West and Russia led to the division of German territories into two zones—a Western and an Eastern one—corresponding to the Federal Republic of Germany and a People’s Republic.

Helu I., *Monaco-Lipsia* 1879–94; E. Brandenburg, *Die Reichsgründung*, 2nd ed., Berlin 1922; G. Cavanigac, *La formation de la Prusse contemporaine* (1806–13), Paris 1891–98; G. S. Ford, *Stein and the Era of Reform in Prussia*, Princeton 1922; F. Meinecke, *Das Zeitalter der deutschen Erhebung*, Bielefeld 1924; id., *Preussen und Deutschland im XIX. und XX. Jahrhundert*, Munich 1914 (Eng. trans., Perugia 1920); O. Lorenz, *Kaiser Wilhelm und die Beerdigung der Reichs* 1866–71, Jena 1902.

On the German Empire 1871-1918: L. Bergsträsser, Gesch. d. politischen Parteien in Deutschland, 5th ed., Mannheim 1928; E. Zechlin, Bismarck u. d. Grundlegung d. deutschen Grossmacht, Stuttgart 1930; H. W. Dawson, The German Empire 1867-1914, London 1910; G. Gorgan, L'Allemagne religieuse, 5th ed., Paris 1905-1908; H. Brück, Gesch. d. kath. Kirche in Deutschland im XIX. Jh., 2nd ed., Mainz 1902-1908; H. Fredjung, D. Zeitalter d. Imperialismus, 1884-1914, Berlin 1919-22; K. Lamprecht, Deutsche Gesch. d. jüngsten Vergangenheit u. Gegenwart, 1912-13; J. Hohlfeld, Gesch. d. deutschen Reiches 1871-1924, Leipzig 1926; A. Wahl, Deutsche Gesch. von der Reichsgründung bis z. 2. Ausbruch d. Weltkrieges, 1871-1914, I, Stuttgart 1926; A. Rosenberg, Die Entstehung d. deutschen Republik, Berlin 1928; E. Hartung, Die grosse Politik der europa. Kabinette 1871-1914; id., Deutsche Gesch. von Frankfurter Frieden bis zum Vertrag vom Versailles 1871-1919, Bonn 1929; F. Stieve, Deutschland u. Europa, Berlin 1927.

On the final events: M. Baumont, La faillite de la paix (1918-20), 2nd ed., Paris 1945; L. Fraser, Germany between two Wars, Oxford 1945; L. Salvatorelli, Vent'anni fra le guerre, 2nd ed., Rome 1946; F. Friedensburg, Die Weimarer Republik, Berlin 1946; S. W. Halperin, Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933, New York 1946; F. Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe, Zurich 1946.

Pier Fausto Palumbo

III. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

### I. CONCORDATS

#### 1. Premises
The legal status of the Church in Germany is currently determined by four extant concordats: with Bavaria, dated 24 January 1925; with Prussia, dated 13 August 1929; with Baden, dated 11 March 1933; and with the German Reich, dated 10 September 1933. The latter, according to Article 2, applies to the entire territory of the Republic, with the exception of the three regions mentioned above. For these provinces, the provisions of the Reich Concordat apply "insofar as they concern matters not regulated (in the respective particular concordats) or supplement the existing arrangements."

#### 2. Concordat with Bavaria
The first concordat that the Holy See concluded with one of the German states after the First World War was that with Bavaria.

The concordat concluded between Pius VII and Maximilian Joseph on 5 July 1817 no longer corresponded to the situation created by the Weimar Constitution of 9 August 1919 and the particular constitution of the State of Bavaria of the same year (14 August 1919). Negotiations to establish new norms for Church-State relations in Bavaria began in the early months of 1920. Due to various difficulties, they dragged on until 1924. On 20 March of that year, the solemn pact could be signed. The Apostolic Nuncio in Bavaria, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, acted as plenipotentiary for the Holy See. After approval by the Bavarian Parliament, the concordat was notified on 24 January 1925 and entered into force on the same day.

The Bavarian concordat is a remarkable example of a wise arrangement of matters concerning religious instruction, benefices, and religious institutes.

#### 3. Concordat with Prussia
In this country, certain ecclesiastical issues, such as the delimitation of diocesan boundaries, the provision of ecclesiastical offices and benefices, and their endowment, had been the subject of particular agreements between Pius VII and Frederick William III of Prussia, between the latter and the princes of the Upper Rhine, and between Leo XII and George IV, King of Hanover. The conclusions of these agreements were contained in the papal bulls *De salute animarum* (1821), *Provida solersque* (1821), and *Impensa Romanorum Pontificum* (1824). The new conditions that followed the war of 1914-18 made new conventions necessary here as well, as in Bavaria, with the difference that the Protestant percentage was higher, comprising two-thirds of the po

pulation. Thus, the negotiations, which began immediately, encountered greater difficulties and only after a decade (14 June 1929) was the pact signed: the Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, acted as plenipotentiary for the Holy See. On 9 July, the Landtag gave its approval, and on 13 August, ratification followed, accompanied by two letters exchanged between the high contracting parties on the school question, which was not addressed in the concordat. These two letters were appended to the official records.

#### 4. Concordat with Baden
In Baden, where religious matters had previously been regulated by two bulls, *Provida solersque* and *Ad Dominici gregis custodiam* (1827)—the first agreed between Pius VII and certain German princes, the second between Leo XII and the princes of the Upper Rhine (the bull of Pius IX, *Aeterni Pastoris* of 1889, had remained a dead letter due to the non-approval by the Baden Diet)—negotiations for a new concordat began in 1929. After many difficulties, the concordat itself, along with an additional protocol, was signed by the plenipotentiaries on 2 October 1932, and an additional protocol on 7 November 1932: the Apostolic Nuncio, still Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, signed for the Holy See, while for the Supreme Council of the Republic of Baden, the ministers Joseph Schmitt, Eugen Baumgartner, and Wilhelm Mattes signed.

These three acts, narrowly approved by the Baden Diet, came into force upon the exchange of ratifications on 11 March 1933.

#### 5. Concordat with Germany
The need to fill the gaps left in the three concordats already concluded with Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden, and even more to regulate relations between the Catholic Church and the State in the other lands of the German Confederation that lacked their own concordat, led the Holy See and the German government to conclude a general concordat for all of Germany. In fact, attempts or at least discussions of this kind had taken place since 1919, and a draft had been prepared, but the final phase began from 9-19 April 1933 onwards, that is, after the rise to power of the National Socialist Party, which saw in these negotiations a means to consolidate itself and to devalue the Centre Party, while at the same time increasingly aligning itself with the government's agenda.

The negotiations proceeded so rapidly that the concordat could be signed on 20 July 1933 and ratified on 10 September 1933: among the plenipotentiaries were Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, then Secretary of State, on one side, and Franz von Papen, Vice-Chancellor of the German Reich, on the other. The main points of this concordat—which, as mentioned, supplements the first three and has the status of a single concordat for the other territories—can be summarized as follows: a) freedom of religion and legal protection for the free exercise of the Catholic religion throughout the territory of the Reich (Art. 1); b) full freedom for the Church in its internal governance (ibid.); c) particularly favorable provisions regarding the school question, recognizing Catholic religion as a subject of instruction in elementary, secondary, and higher schools (Art. 21), with guarantees in the selection of teachers, especially in elementary schools (Arts. 22, 24), while the Bavarian concordat goes even further by placing this instruction under the full supervision and direction of the Church (Art. 8; cf. also Arts. 3, 3, 9); d) the regulation of marriage is less straightforward, with civil marriage maintained, which in general should precede religious marriage (Concordat with Germany, Art. 26). Likewise, Art. 31 reveals the State's concern not to allow Catholic organizations too much freedom in their activities, particularly in the social sphere; e) favorable conditions are granted to the clergy regarding state subsidies in Bavaria (Arts. 10, 3, 9), less favorable in Baden (Art. 6) and Prussia (Art. 4).

From the outset, however, the Nazi government (which the Church had always distrusted but to which it had been unable to refuse its hand when it pretended to seek a peaceful understanding) lacked the will to seriously execute the Concordat it had concluded. Even on the day after its signing, attempts were made to violate one by one the most vital articles. Thus, according to a premeditated and centrally orchestrated plan, there followed the progressive destruction of Catholic schools; a covert and systematic campaign of denigration against the Church, the clergy, and Catholic laity; the continual issuance of decrees leading to the closure or confusion of religious houses; and the steady elimination of Catholic newspapers, periodicals, and publishing houses.

Against these abuses, the Supreme Pontiff, Pius XI, raised a proud voice in the encyclical *Mit brennender Sorge* of 14 March 1937 (AAS, 29 [1937], pp. 145–67; Italian trans., pp. 168–88), echoing the frank and courageous protests of the German episcopate, among whom the intrepid figure of Cardinal Michele de Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, shone forth (cf. the Pontifical Allocution of 2 June 1945, in AAS, 37 [1945], pp. 159–68).

The persecutions, however, continued unabated and were not even interrupted by the Great War of 1939–45; indeed, they intensified with the expansion of concentration camps, imprisonments, confiscations, and insults directed at members of the clergy, religious orders, and prominent figures within the Catholic laity. Other glorious episodes of intrepid resistance occurred, such as those involving Cardinal Adolf Bertram, Archbishop of Breslau, and Bishop (later Cardinal) Clemens August von Galen of Münster.

6. Western and Eastern Germany

With the collapse of the Nazi regime under the weight of defeat (May 1945) and the subsequent Allied and Soviet military occupation, dividing Germany into *Besatzungszonen*, old and new enemies of the Church debated the validity of the Concordat—or rather, the Concordats. The situation resolved itself differently in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, or the so-called Western Germany), which formed its first government on 20 September 1949, and in the Soviet occupation zone.

In the so-called *Grundgesetz* (Basic Law), the provisional constitution of Western Germany (the Bonn Republic), approved on 8 May 1949 by a vote of 53 to 12, Article 123 was inserted, by which the Federal Republic pledges to recognize all international treaties concluded with other powers. Among these international treaties is the Concordat of 10 September 1933, along with the earlier concordats with Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden.

On this basis, which has met with full approval from the Bonn government, the relations between Church and State in Western Germany must be considered. However, since the Bonn government has not yet been granted the right of legation, there is no Apostolic Nuncio (only a regent in Frankfurt am Main), nor is there a German minister to the Holy See.

In contrast, in the Soviet zone, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, which became the twenty-ninth republic of the U.S.S.R. on 19 March 1949, relations between Church and State—inasmuch as they can be discerned—are governed less by its Constitution (which the Republic itself has enacted and in which religious and conscience freedoms are nominally enshrined) than by the arbitrary rule of the *Volkspolizei* (People’s Police), which brutally dominates a population living under a regime of Bolshevik terror.

As is evident from a letter by the Cardinal of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing, in state schools children are indoctrinated with atheistic principles, and the State monopolizes education, leaving no alternative. Textbooks in these schools even go so far as to deny the historical existence of Jesus Christ. Catholic journalism is practically nonexistent. Episcopal ordinariates and commissions lack even an official newsletter. The circulation of ecclesiastical periodicals printed outside the Republic is prohibited. A decree issued at the end of 1949 obliges the Church to report all its activities to the authorities.

ECCLESIASTICAL CIRCUMSCRIPTIONS. — According to the 1950 *Annuario Pontificio*, Germany comprises 9 metropolitan sees and 19 suffragan sees, distributed as follows:
1) Bamberg (19 Nov. 1960; metropolitan since 19 Apr. 1818) with suffragans: Eichstätt (745); Speyer (4th c.), Würzburg, and Erbipoli (741).
2) Breslau (10th c.; metropolitan since 13 Aug. 1930) with suffragans: Berlin (13 Aug. 1930); Warmia (13th c.) and the *prelatura nullius* of Schneidemühl (13 Aug. 1930).
3) Cologne (2nd c.; metropolitan since the 8th c.) with suffragans: Aachen (29 Nov. 1901; suppressed 16 July 1821 and restored 13 Aug. 1930); Limburg (16 Aug. 1821); Münster (80); Osnabrück (772); Trier (1st c.).
4) Freiburg im Breisgau (16 Aug. 1821) with suffragans: Mainz (4th c.; metropolitan 747; suffragan 1801); Rottenburg (16 Aug. 1821).
5) Munich and Freising (739 at Freising; united and metropolitan since 5 June 1817) with suffragans: Augsburg (6th c.); Passau (737); Regensburg (739).
6) Paderborn (805; metropolitan since 13 Aug. 1930) with suffragans: Fulda (1752); Hildesheim (80).

Immediately subject to the Holy See: Meissen (2 Jan. 968; suppressed in 1581; restored 24 June 1921).

Total: 6 archdioceses, 19 dioceses, and 1 *prelatura nullius*.

III. CATHOLIC CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Among the various religious groups in Germany, the Catholic community is the most cohesive and organized, despite its numerical inferiority. Firmly united to its pastors, it has weathered storms and overcome painful and difficult situations, continually regaining strength and vigor.

Theology, outside the seminaries established for that purpose, was taught both in theological faculties attached to state universities (Würzburg since 1402; Freiburg im Breisgau since 1457; Tübingen since 1477; Breslau since 1702; Münster since 1771; Bonn since 1777; Munich since 1826, transferred from Ingolstadt [1459]) and in philosophical and theological academies and higher schools (Augsburg, Bamberg, Braunsberg, Dillingen, Eichstätt, Frankfurt am Main, Freising, Fulda, Mainz, Paderborn, Passau, Regensburg, Trier).

Linked to this teaching were the publications of important periodicals and series by the theological faculties attached to state universities, marked by high scholarly standards. The following should be noted in chronological order: *Theologische Quartalschrift* (1819) in Tübingen; *Biblische Studien* (1896), *Biblische Zeitschrift* (1903), and *Freiburger theologische Studien* (1910) in Freiburg im Breisgau; *Theologische Revue* (1902), *Biblische Zeitfragen* (1908), *Neustadtsheimliche Abhandlungen* (1908), and *Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen* (1909) in Münster; *Theologie und Glaube* (1909) in Paderborn; *Breslauer Studien zur historischen Theologie* (1922) in Breslau; *Bonner Bild* (1903) in Bonn.

Among the associations, in addition to those following the model of Catholic Action and its various groups, the following should be remembered: the Bonifatiusverein für das katholische Deutschland (founded in Regensburg in 1849 through the efforts of I. Döllinger and organized by J. Stolberg-Stolberg in 1849), dedicated to the defense and deepening of the faith, with a distinct branch for graduates: the Akademische Bonifatiusverein; the Deutsche Caritasverband (founded in Freiburg im Breisgau by L. Werthmann in 1897), which groups together all charitable institutions; the Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland (founded in Mönchengladbach in 1890 by F. Brandts and F. Hitze, with the cooperation of L. Windthorst) for the Christian-social propaganda among the masses; the Borromäusverein (founded in Bonn in 1844 by A. Reichenberger, M. von Löe, H. von Wittgenstein, F. X. Dieringer, F. Walter, and Aschbach) for good Catholic literature; the Görresgesellschaft (founded in 1876 in Bonn) for the promotion of high culture in the service of Christianity.

Many of these institutions and publications were suspended or damaged by the Second World War, but little by little, with tenacity, the lost time and space are being recovered.

IV. LITERATURE

SUMMARY:

I. From the origins to the 12th century

II. From the Minnesang to the Reformation

III. From Luther to Frederick the Great

IV. Enlightenment and Sturm und Drang

V. Classicism

VI. Romanticism

VII. Realism.

I. FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE 12TH CENTURY

If it is to be believed that among the ancient Germans, from the most remote times, there existed, as with all other peoples, a primitive poetic literature consisting of religious and warlike songs, funeral dirges, and love songs, it is equally certain that, based on their myths, a whole body of extemporaneous poetic literature arose in the distant centuries. But of all this poetry, which was transmitted orally, little or nothing remains, because at no time, neither at its inception nor later, was it committed to any written tradition, and because the Romans, who might have preserved it, showed little interest in doing so.

Nevertheless, Tacitus informs us that the Germans had *carmina* in which they celebrated the god Tuisto and invoked Donar; Jordanes, the historian of the Goths, also speaks of *prisca carmina*, while from Tacitus himself we learn that these warlike songs were called *barditus*, a name perhaps derived from the fact that warriors held their shields (*bardhi*) before their mouths to amplify the sound of their voices. The songs in praise of the dead must also have been choral, and it is entirely plausible that all these songs constituted the genesis of the sagas or heroic legends that later formed around the principal figures of princes and warriors.

The first monument of the Germanic language is the famous Gothic translation of the Bible made by Ulfila (311–81). Ordained at the age of thirty in 341 as bishop of the Arian Goths, he led his people—who were the first among the Germanic tribes to embrace Christianity—to adopt the faith. His translation, of which only notable fragments survive, was completed in full, except—if the legend is true—for the Book of Kings. It accompanied the Goths in their migrations to Italy and Spain, then faded from memory until, in the 17th century, the portion containing the Gospels was rediscovered in a manuscript (the *Codex Argenteus*), a work of Italian scribes, preserved in Uppsala. Other parts were later found, and among the fortunate discoverers was Cardinal Angelo Mai, who in 1819 found in the library of the monastery of Bobbio a manuscript containing the translation of the Epistles of St. Paul.

Apart from its extraordinary literary importance, this translation was above all for the Germanic peoples a grand work of religious propaganda and civilization, for wherever the Bible of Ulfila could reach, Christianity spread, and it may be said that this work is the greatest monument of Gothic civilization.

Even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Rome continued to exercise a hegemony over the Germanic peoples through the power of Christianity. Toward the end of the 7th century, the Irish St. Columban became the apostle of the Alemanni; other zealous missionaries carried forward the evangelization of Bavaria and Thuringia, until in the 8th century there arose—not so much to expand the already achieved Christian conquests as to consolidate them with strict monastic discipline and absolute obedience to the ecclesiastical authority of Rome—the figure of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany. He carried out his apostolic work especially in Thuringia, Hesse, and Saxony. To him are owed the establishment of many bishoprics in Germany and the foundation of various monasteries, among which the most famous is that of Fulda. There St. Boniface installed as abbot his favorite disciple, the Bavarian Sturm, who had been educated in Rome and at Monte Cassino. During his mission to the pagan Frisians, he won the palm of martyrdom (754); his remains rest in the monastery of Fulda.

This work of Christian penetration into Germany, carried out by zealous missionaries and bishops, found favor and support from the Frankish kings and especially from Charlemagne, under whose rule the evangelization of Saxony was completed. Thus, while it may have in some measure hindered the affirmation and spread of a literature inspired by pagan myths and legends, it undoubtedly fostered the flourishing of religious poetry and above all contributed to uniting a large part of the Germanic peoples under a single religious and civil ideal.

Nevertheless, the sources of epic poetry never died out, even if to trace any original testimony one must leap from the 4th century—when Ulfila’s translation appeared—to the 8th, at the end of which a fragment of a poem from the Dietrich cycle survives, known as the *Hildebrandslied*, in which the conflict between the sentiment of honor and that of kinship is played out.

Toward the end of the 8th century, the gigantic work of unifying the Germanic peoples took place, and Charlemagne marked one of the peaks of the German medieval renaissance: a political and cultural renaissance. His work in this field, especially after his campaign in Italy which brought him into direct contact with the superior Latin civilization, was of the greatest importance. His court represented the most significant center of culture of the time; among others, it included the philosopher, theologian, and humanist Alcuin, of Anglo-Saxon origin but educated in Rome, the Lombard Paul the Deacon, historian of his people, and the historian Eginhard. Aachen was to become, in Charlemagne’s intention, the center of this cultural renaissance, as Athens and Rome had once been.

However, this fervor for humanistic studies did not at all signify the stifling of the original German language and poetry; indeed, Charlemagne himself, as seems certain, had heroic songs collected and transcribed, which until then had been entrusted only to the memory of wandering minstrels. In any case, the very important fact remains that under his rule, and throughout the 9th century, thanks to the direction he had given, poetry and prose—despite their predominantly religious content being far removed from the spirit of national literature—preferred the use of the vernacular, while the use of Latin would become altogether prevalent in the literature of the following century. During the 8th and 9th centuries, in fact, little can be recalled that pertains to vernacular literature; only religiously inspired and themed poetry offers a core of works, which, however, have survived only in fragments, such as the *Wesobrunner Gebet*, a Christian-inspired text written at the beginning of the 9th century in alliterative verse and in Old High German, and the fragment of the so-called *Muspilli*, also in alliterative verse and in Old High German, which probably dates to the mid-9th century and describes, as the title suggests, the end of the world. More significant from a historical and artistic standpoint are, from this same century, two *Messiads*: one in Old Saxon by an unknown poet, *Heiland*, and the other, an *Evangelienharmonie* (Gospel Harmony) written in rhymed verse in Old High German by the Benedictine monk Offried von Weissenburg. The two *Messiads* express the highest theological culture of the time and represent, respectively, a popular and a learned attempt to vulgarize Christianity.

In the poetic production of the following century, which, as has been said, is written almost exclusively in Latin, mention should be made of a poem composed in Latin hexameters by the monk of St. Gall, Ekkehard, dedicated to the Germanic saga of Walter of Aquitaine (*Waltharius manu fortis*), which is the most notable, if not the only remaining link between the *Hildebrandslied* and the Nibelungian epic.

But if the poetic literature of the 10th century is characterized by classical imitation and the almost exclusive use of Latin, this did not prevent the resurgence of motifs drawn from heroic legends—always alive in popular consciousness—especially under the renewed political power of the Saxon emperors. Thus, the taste for Latin writers had not yet faded at the beginning of the 11th century when a monk, probably Bavarian, wrote in leonine hexameters a work titled *Ruddlieb*, the first adventure novel, which provides abundant material concerning the customs and manners of the society of the time. Most ecclesiastical poets sought no fame or glory; their poetry served only God. Thus, the name of a poetess, Ava, is known by chance, while only one true poet stands out from the rest for his ingenuity and artistic perfection: Heinrich von Melk, who left a didactic poem titled *Erinnerung an den Tod* (*Remembrance of Death*), in which an ideal of ascetic life is presented, preparing man for death.

II. FROM *MINNESANG* TO THE *REFORMATION*

The not inconsiderable period of time from the earliest beginnings of German literature up to the dawn of the movement that culminated in the *Reformation* can be divided into two periods: in the first, up to around 1300, literature developed under the influence of feudal society and was its expression, with the rich flourishing of love lyric, heroic, and chivalric poetry; in the second, which encompasses the 14th and 15th centuries, the bourgeoisie emerged in political and literary movements.

Love lyric (*Minnesang*), which draws its roots from reality, marks the most important part of lyrical production of this time. The love song begins with an initial uncertain and timid period of formation inspired by courtliness and the cult of woman. There are no strong passions, no vehement outbursts of the soul; the *Minnesänger*, almost coldly, directs his song to a vague and impersonal figure. The source of inspiration is nothing concrete or real; it is *Minne*, amorous thought, something indeterminate and fluctuating that stirs in his imagination and feeling alike, yet procures for him now pleasure, now pain, as if it were real.

The *Minnesang* reaches its peak around the mid-13th century. Songs by nearly two hundred *Minnesänger* survive, in whole or in part, including those of Friedrich von Hausen, Heinrich von Morungen, and the most illustrious of them all, Walther von der Vogelweide (1168–1230), who wrote songs in lapidary style, without any ornamentation, encapsulating within a few thoughts a pathos not infrequently of the highest order. He was a fervent and convinced Christian, yet spared neither those who were Christians in name only in his invectives, nor fiercely opposed papal interference in political affairs, remaining faithful to the principle: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," and extolling the idea of the *Reich*.

German epic poetry can be distinguished into heroic epic and chivalric epic; the former is the impersonal expression of the collective popular and national sentiment that anonymous poets drew from the rough material of Germanic sagas; the latter, instead, is the individual work of poets who drew their material from foreign sources. Works by precursors of true German epic, often written by ecclesiastics and strongly influenced by Christian thought, include the *Annolied*, the *Alexandreis*, and *Herzog Ernst*; entirely set in the pagan Germanic world are the main epics *Nibelungenlied* and *Gudrun*; the former stages all the peoples involved in the Germanic heroic age: the conquest of a treasure, symbol of ruin and death, the treacherous murder of Siegfried, and the terrifying vengeance of his wife Kriemhild, represented in the most salient parts of the poem. There is never a ray of human pity to illuminate these dark and tragic events.

The main sources of chivalric epic are various cycles of sagas: the ancient cycle, the Breton cycle of King Arthur, and the cycle of the Grail. Among the earliest representatives are Heinrich von Veldeke and Hartmann von Aue (c. 1170–1220?), to whom are owed two poems of moralizing and religious edification, *Der arme Heinrich* and *Gregorius auf dem Stein*. Far more notable from an artistic standpoint are *Parzival* by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in which the Arthurian cycle intertwines with the Grail cycle, and the unfinished poem by Gottfried von Strassburg: *Tristan und Isolde*.

The period from the first decades of the 14th century to the end of the 15th is dominated by the rise of the bourgeoisie; the heroic and chivalric world that had nourished poetry in previous centuries declines. The nobility, already decimated by the Crusades and unsettled by new social conditions, is no longer guided by that spirit of courtliness which had been the soul of chivalric poetry and *Minnesang*; in the castles, the environment that had been so conducive to the hospitality of poets and minstrels is transformed. As the poetic legacy passed from the nobility to the bourgeoisie, it transformed and declined. The literary institutions typical of this period are the associations of Meistersingers, found in as many cities, among which Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Ulm stand out. The work of the Meistersingers emerged from the bourgeoisie and artisan classes and addressed them. There is no amorous content or chivalric sentiment; the subjects reflect saints' festivals or civil and labor solemnities, recurring monotonously despite the unvarying metrical and linguistic devices that soon crystallized into rigid forms.

### III. FROM THE WOMB TO FREDERICK THE GREAT

Almost all the spiritual manifestations of the 16th century are dominated by two great events: Humanism and the "Reformation." It should be noted at once that the Humanist movement in Germany did not achieve great prominence, since its adherents, rather than deeply absorbing the spirit of antiquity, limited themselves to a superficial and rhetorical imitation of Latin writers. The German Humanists did not desire, nor did they make any effort toward, a new conception of life in which a higher *humanitas* would be the direct expression. They remained, above all, men of the Middle Ages, concerned chiefly with celestial things. There is in them a constant preoccupation with the hereafter; beyond fleeting enjoyment, they see the eternal abyss and, everywhere, the threatening finger of God. Hence, a continual need to instruct and moralize. Among the principal Humanists should be mentioned Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467–1536) and Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who concentrated his activity on theological and speculative questions, as evidenced by his Hebrew studies.

The "Reformation" cannot be considered solely as a religious movement; it was also a great and profound national revolution that involved all aspects of German life. It was a duel between two cultures, two civilizations. Germany had never, during the Middle Ages, openly accepted the current of civilization that spread from Rome to all the peoples of Europe; rather, it had submitted to it while remaining attached to the old spirit of its race. Now the opportunity presented itself to break with the world from which a considerable part of it felt threatened, after the Roman tradition had taken root in the increasingly vigorous throne of the Catholic Church. It was the *Los von Rom*. It is therefore natural that when Luther appeared—though he was the least revolutionary man of his time—he suddenly found himself at the head of a revolution. He soon imposed himself, above all, through the tenacity of his will. To him we owe, in addition to the translation of the Bible—which had a great linguistic and literary impact—the *Kirchenlieder*, imitated or freely translated, and many other polemical writings.

The tone given by Luther to religious poetry found countless imitators and continuators, spurred on by the new forms of Protestant worship; but in opposition to the Protestants, numerous Catholic poets arose, as well as satirical writers, among whom the Franciscan Thomas Murner stands out as the most notable imitator of Sebastian Brant. He wrote *Von dem grossen luterschen Narren*, in which, often with dramatic pathos, the subversive character of Lutheran doctrine is depicted.

The few epic elements that still radiated during the 15th and 16th centuries, and the best and most characteristic dramatic production, culminate in a single figure: Hans Sachs (1494–1576), a rare example of poetic fecundity who, taken as a whole, expresses all the most salient traits of his time. One of his merits was that he renewed himself at the pure sources of national popular sentiment, while at the same time managing to interpret and express the subsequent development dominated by the "Reformation" movement.

The theater, too, felt the influence of the "Reformation," and just as the religious song of Protestant adherents stimulated Catholic poets to counter it with other songs, so too did dramatic production experience a new flourishing, with biblical themes regaining vigor.

In the satirical field, with moralizing tendencies, should be mentioned Johannes Fischart (1550–1590), who particularly targeted the Roman Church and religious orders, especially the Jesuits, often descending to the coarse tone of a pamphleteer.

The civil and political conditions of the 17th century were to hinder every literary movement. Germany had to endure the Thirty Years' War, which sapped all moral energy, offering too long a spectacle of destruction. Violent religious disputes showed no signs of abating; the nation seemed to have lost consciousness of itself. Far from the literary glory of the past, it was inevitable that it should turn toward foreign literatures, especially the French. Thus, a colorless, unremarkable, mannered, and academic production emerged. Yet it was precisely to the academies, modeled on Italian ones, that recourse was had when a remedy was sought for the general decline of literature and, in particular, of poetry. At the very moment when, in many regions, the only literary activity was represented by linguistic societies, a poetic revival occurred in Silesia through the work of the poet Martin Opitz (1597–1639), who exerted a remarkable influence on his time, so much so that he was considered a school leader.

Indeed, many poets followed in his footsteps; among them should be mentioned Paul Fleming (1609–1640), even though many of his lyrics were imbued with the taste for "conceits." In the field of religious poetry, J. Hermann, the Pietist Spener, and Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676) are linked to Opitz; the latter achieved the greatest lyrical elevation in Protestant church song. Catholicism, too, was not immune to the Opitzian movement. Toward the end of the 17th century, as the ardor of conflict began to wane, Protestants and Catholics—at least in the field of poetry—found themselves singing the praises of the same God and the hymns of the same Christian faith.

The Jesuit Friedrich Spee (1591–1635), who dedicated his life to charitable works and exercised an apostolate of tolerance—especially in his opposition to the ferocious executions of witch trials—left behind a book of edification, *Gudens Tugendbuch*, and a collection of religious songs, *Trutz-Nachtigall*, which continues the tone of fervor and mystical love. One of his imitators was Johannes Scheffler, better known under the pseudonym Angelus Silesius (1624–1677), who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. In his *Cherubinischer Wandersmann*, a collection of short poetic compositions, he reflects the poet’s detachment from Lutheran rigorism and his yearning for new paths to reach God. Closer to the idyllic religious song of Spee is Silesius in *Heilige Seelenlust*, in which the life of Christ, the expectation of Him, His coming, His death, and His Resurrection are exalted in mystical fervor.

A lyrical poet of sacred and profane themes was Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664), whose name is nonetheless tied above all to his tragedies, which imitate the external structure of Greek tragedies and introduce the chorus, as well as to his comedies.

Just as religious song, satire, and the epigram are among the most genuine expressions of the German soul, so too did Friedrich von Logau contribute to the latter form with over three thousand epigrams (*Sinngedichte*), while for satire should be remembered H. Michael Moscherosch, who alternately violently attacks *fremde Thorheit* and delivers inexorable reproaches against the vices and baseness of the age, particularly in his *Wunderliche und wahrhaftige Geschichten Philanders von Sittenwald*. Finally, mention should be made of the most famous Catholic preacher of the time, Abraham a Sancta Clara.

The most authoritative representative of the so-called adventure novel was J. J. Christoph von Grimmelshausen (1625–1676), who, rather than resorting to violent satire, looked higher, envisaging and advocating a profound moral reconstruction. His *Der Abenteuerliche Simplicius Simplicissimus*, the most important and significant literary work of the 17th century, is a true *Bildungsroman*, such as could arise in a tragic era, in which he points the way that was to lead to the national and human rebirth of Germany.

In the field of lyric poetry among those poets who, more than to the lush imagery of the followers of the Opitzian school, aimed at substance, should be remembered Heinrich Brockes, whose poems form the bulk of the collection entitled *Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott*, and especially J. Christian Günther (1695–1723) for the sincerity of his feeling and the vividness of his expression, so much so that he seems ahead of his time.

IV. ENLIGHTENMENT AND “STURM UND DRANG.”
The long and ruinous Thirty Years’ War had morally and economically devastated Germany; it was natural, therefore, that it should be followed by a period of recovery during which the people, still lacking a national cohesive force, thought only of restoring their economy. Thought thus remained inert, devoid of creative impulses and lofty ideals. As Germany gradually rose again and around the figure of the Great Elector Frederick William the first nucleus of a great nation began to form, united in a common faith and a common ideal, the accession to the Prussian throne of Frederick II and the victorious Seven Years’ War became a source of exultation for the German people and gave impetus to vibrant patriotic poetry. True, the same king remained an admirer of the French, denying the Germans the possibility of creating anything truly original and great in the field of literature; yet it is also true that by fighting for Germany’s political emancipation he indirectly fostered and hastened the great literary reaction against France. Foreign imitation gradually diminished until it disappeared, and in the forefront appeared certain great minds that attained original expression of the nation’s soul, thereby implicitly performing work of universal importance.

Klopstock’s religious epic, expressing one of the deepest sentiments of the German soul; Wieland’s rich and restless production; Winckelmann’s enthusiastic and almost prophetic intuitions regarding the Hellenic world and Greek art; Lessing’s keen insight and clear artistic vision; Herder’s broad historical outlook—all these prepare the way worthily and form a fitting frame for the universal work of Wolfgang Goethe and the eclectic yet profoundly human work of Friedrich Schiller.

But before these great spirits reached their full affirmation—while almost the entire era of Frederick the Great was still dominated by Enlightenment thought and, consequently, by French influence in the fields of culture and poetry—there arose the first signs of a reaction against this dominance, which soon became an open and determined struggle, chiefly through the efforts of J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger, who waged a thoroughgoing battle against the prevailing aesthetic conception of J. C. Gottsched. A follower of rationalist philosophy, Gottsched was convinced that true poetry did not spring from imagination but from scrupulous observance of rules dictated by reason; he therefore championed the imitation of French literature, which he saw as the model of perfection, and at the same time propounded the vague and indeterminate principle that poetry should be an imitation of nature. His opponents, the so-called Zurich school, advocated greater freedom in the realm of inspiration and placed great value on imagination, which necessarily led them toward English poets. This explains why, when the first cantos of Klopstock’s *Messias* appeared in 1748 and were greeted with general enthusiasm, the two leaders of the Swiss school believed their cause vindicated by the advent of a great poet.

Today, however, a different judgment is passed on Klopstock’s poem: the bombastic tone of many passages, which only rarely gives way to sublime mystical elevation; the lack of harmony in the overall structure of the work; the boldness of its imagery and syntactic constructions; and even the unbridled richness of its language make it at least a difficult read. Yet Klopstock’s name is chiefly linked to his odes, in which are reflected the loftiest sentiments that illumined his life: religion, the cult of homeland and freedom, the feeling of friendship and love.

Not without reason is Klopstock often contrasted with G. E. Lessing (1729–81), a balanced, supremely acute mind, self-aware of both the intellectual demands surrounding him and the goal he sought to achieve. He was a guiding light for German literature; in the *Hamburgische Dramaturgie* he waged the first great battle against French literary dominance, turning instead to the English; and while the summit of his critical activity is marked by the aesthetic treatise *Laokoon*, he also attained a notable place as a dramatist, writing the comedy *Minna von Barnhelm*, which inaugurated a new era in German theater, and two dramatic masterpieces, *Emilia Galotti* and *Nathan der Weise*, in which the concept of humanity is exalted above and beyond every religious or confessional division.

One of the foremost places among German poets and prose writers for elegant freshness of style and a witty, philosophical view of life is held by C. M. Wieland (1733–1813), author of poems such as the chivalric-heroic *Oberon* and of novels like *Don Silvio von Rosalva*, *Agathon*, and *Die Abderiten*. He is one of those writers who possess the rare gift of being able to derive from others everything that suits their artistic temperament while preserving an originality that does not disdain to draw on spiritual attitudes expressed in the work of others.

Lessing’s criticism had not made people forget the name and work of Klopstock, and a group of young writers in Göttingen set out to continue his artistic ideals by publishing each year a collection of poems inspired by him. Thus appeared the *Musen Almanach*, and soon after arose the *Hainbund*, a kind of new Arcadia, though one that had nothing of the sugary quality of the Arcadians. Immediately there emerged as poets of value Heinrich Voß, Matthias Claudius, Johann Peter Hebel, and above all J. A. Bürger (1747–94), regarded as one of the finest representatives of popular poetry. He excelled in the ballad, a genre of rapid and dramatic lyrical narrative in which he knew how to treasure elements of popular inspiration, animating them with simple refinement of taste. His ballads *Lenore*, *Der Kaiser und der Abt*, and *Der wilde Jäger* have remained famous.

The culminating moment of German literature had a proximate preparation in the intellectual achievements of one of the greatest modern thinkers: Emanuel Kant, and in a surge of agitation to which, at the outset, Goethe himself adhered: it is the tempestuous period known as Sturm und Drang. To the spirits of this literary revolution, the present world seemed too narrow, stifled by outdated and now obsolete rules in which creative thought was bound to drown. Broader horizons were sought and a freer breath of life. Already the thought of Giorgio Hamann, who, above all in his assertion of the superiority of faith over reason, exerted such influence on Herder’s spirit, and that of Jacobi had vindicated this freedom for man, combating Enlightenment thought and maintaining that all must proceed from the individual and the totality of his powers. The concept of unrestrained freedom is the most evident feature of the Sturm und Drang program, in life as in art. Moreover, the literary revolt, which rejected every model and thus every rule, necessarily had to revert to nature, also under Rousseau’s influence. The popular current, whose first manifestations had already been seen in England with the publication of the Ossianic poems, then found a wide echo in Germany; but it was fated that these elements would degenerate into disorder, and especially the cult of freedom into a kind of moral anarchy, as in the movements of the Verterians and the Ruberians.

One of the most universal and profound minds of the age exerted no small influence on this movement: J. G. Herder (1744–1803), who championed the rise of a national literature, revived the tradition of German folk songs (Stimmen der Völker in Liedern), while in his work Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie he demonstrated that the Old Testament constitutes the oldest, simplest, and most natural poetry, spontaneously arising from the soul of a people whose ardent faith placed it in immediate contact with God. This work is almost a germ and introduction to his work of the philosophy of history, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Herder was also a poet, but above all a critic of broad vision and acute intuition; his spirit delved deep to investigate the primal nature of things, to listen to their first mysterious voice, from which he wrested the most recondite secrets.

V. CLASSICISM

In the luxuriant flowering of this literary period it is not always possible to distinguish the various tendencies and artistic forms, which often coexist in the same writer, and still less to classify poets neatly as classical or romantic. Goethe, for instance, began as a Stürmer und Dränger and was a classic par excellence, yet not a few romantic elements are found in his work; the same may be said of Schiller. Within the orbit of Sturm und Drang arose the novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, the drama Götz von Berlichingen, the lyrics and rhapsodies that represent the rupture of harmony between things and the happy soul, such as Prometheus, which immediately follow the serene pantheistic vision (Mailied, Ganymed, Mahomets Gesang). Two events contributed to bring Goethe’s genius to the full manifestation of his maturity: his stay in Weimar and his journey to Italy. The first marked a turning point in his lyrical production, as the poet sought new paths toward a calmer and more serene art that would contrast with the disordered fever of his early youth; the second represents the true rebirth of the man and the artist, whose fruits included, among others, Tasso and Iphigenie auf Tauris. In the tone of this latter work, in the sweet harmony of its flawless verse and the wondrous balance of its parts, the tragic sense that pervades it fades and is lost; the line and texture of the drama seem to possess the motionless composure of a Greek statue. Works of his maturity include the novel Wilhelm Meister and Die Wahlverwandtschaften, the most suave idyll in epic lines Hermann und Dorothea, Die römischen Elegien, the Italienische Reise, and Faust, the work on which the poet labored for about sixty years. Goethe found the legend of Faust alive in popular tradition, but by rethinking it in his own spirit he elevated its value to a universal symbol of humanity’s eternal stance (whether Faust investigates, or Mephistopheles denies, or Margaret suffers in agony) before the terrifying unknowns of life’s mystery. Apart from the unattainable splendor of its form, however, the dramatic poem reveals a new morality, which, exalting action for action’s sake and man’s unfulfilled and unfulfillable longing for ever new conquests—regardless of the means used to achieve them—renders Faust’s salvation possible precisely because “he who ever strives, ever yearns” may be redeemed. This is a morality that sits ill with the final intervention of the Virgin and the angels, inasmuch as it represents a contamination of Christian ethics. In any case, this is all that Goethe’s genius could give us within the bounds of thought and in the face of the general problem of existence, since he lacked that faith which is ready to satisfy reason with a formula of sentiment.

Opposed to Goethe’s reflective, objective, universal intellect is the nature of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), dominated by feeling, even when he granted himself respite in works of imagination and poetry by composing works of philosophy and history. His poetic output, in the fervor of its inspiration, the richness of its themes, and the ideal unity that illuminates it, seems governed by the poet’s premonition of his brief life. He lived intensely through all his work, drawing it from the deep roots of his own fantasy and soul, almost without pausing to gather the experience of reality. Schiller is thus a subjective spirit, eminently lyrical, even when, writing for the theater, he constructs action on a backdrop of historical elements that he colors and idealizes with the ardor of feeling and the impetus of fantasy, governed by a constant and unyielding restraint: a forbidden adaptation that never falters.

Still very young, he established himself in the theater with his first great tragedy Die Räuber, to be considered a product of Sturm und Drang for the unchecked impetus that dominates it; immediately followed were Die Verschwörung des Fiesko, the bourgeois tragedy Luise Miller, and the most tormented of his dramatic works, Don Carlos. The series of dramatic masterpieces begins with the Wallenstein trilogy, a human portrayal idealized by historical elements; in Maria Stuart Schiller is chiefly concerned with depicting human characters, while in Die Jungfrau von Orléans the dramatic action departs even further from historical reality, without lacking even the marvelous and supernatural element. His last completed drama, Wilhelm Tell, which in wondrous synthesis sums up the poet’s two great loves: love for the beauty of nature and love for freedom.

All of Schiller’s work is governed by an ethical principle, by a moral idea. To all his heroes he gives the impetus of magnanimous or daring passion, yet never deprives them of the flame of faith and the sense of moral responsibility. This is clear even in the composed demolitions of his early dramas, which, like those of his maturity, exclude any discord between the self and the world, between man and God, between necessity and freedom; rather, they are representations of human life in its struggles and sorrows, idealized by the poet’s conscience and dramatized by his passion.

Even Schiller’s rich lyrical output moves within the orbit of a moral ideal. Here every conflict between ethics and aesthetics seems to dissolve: the world and life appear to the poet in luminous clarity (*Die Ideale*, *Das Ideal und das Leben*, *Der Spaziergang*, the ballads, and the celebrated *Lied von der Glock*).

It would be an exaggeration to claim that Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller gave German literature a truly national theatre; nonetheless they had a large number of imitators who, though far from equalling the gold of their models, sometimes enjoyed resounding successes on the stage—such as A. W. Iffland, H. J. Collin, and above all August von Kotzebue, who was the true master of the theatre at the close of the 18th century.

Prose, especially humorous prose, on the other hand, in this period takes on strongly original traits through the work of various writers, one of them great: J. Paul Richter, who styled himself Jean Paul (1763–1825). Among his novels to be recalled are *Die unsichtbare Loge*, *Hesperus*, *Titan*, and *Flegeljahre*, besides the delightful tale *Maria Wus in Auenthal*. To grasp the humorous savour of this narrator, one must attend closely to his style, in which bold strokes and frequent oddities form an intimate whole with his thought. It is precisely from this fusion that his inexhaustible and original vein of humour springs.

VI. ROMANTICISM

Romanticism arose directly from the political conditions of the time and, even more, from a broad philosophical movement that prepared it and accompanied it for many years. Among the thinkers to whom the greatest credit for this preparation is due is G. G. F. Fichte. He has absolute faith in man’s creative activity and affirms the dogma of personality: man exists insofar as he has self-consciousness, and knowledge has no bounds, tending to expand without limit and gradually conquer the world outside himself. A disciple of Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, turned Fichtean idealism toward a broad and profound pantheism. His entire philosophical system is the fruit of the ardent imagination of a poet, which is why the romantics found in his assertions a reflection of their own doctrines and tastes—tending toward the vague in the free fields of fantasy, unchecked by the rigid control of reason and criticism. Completing the trio of philosophers is Georg W. F. Hegel, who returns once more to Spinozist pantheism, substituting for the static fundamental principle of substance the dynamic concept of the Idea, which in itself contains every creative impulse.

Yet the fertile seeds of the Romantic movement did not mature solely within philosophical thought; they are already to be found, without going back further, in the pantheistic mysticism of Böhme, entirely bent on the conquest of the divinity diffused in nature, in the struggle for liberation from French influence, in the affirmation of the rights of fantasy (Bodmer and Breitinger), in the conception of poetry as the effusion of feeling (Klopstock), in the exaltation of the individual by the Sturm und Drang, in the dismantling of the Horatian canon *ut pictura poesis* (Lessing), in the cult of Shakespeare, and in the recognition that poetry is the voice of nature (Herder). The romantics therefore shunned all that is present and real; what they strove to express were not concrete thoughts or mature feelings, but fleeting images barely sketched, throbs of feeling just budding from the poet’s soul, thoughts glimpsed in the most recondite mysteries of life and fleetingly expressed.

Determination, perfection do not answer to the Romantic ideal; its life is *Sehnsucht*, which tends toward the infinite and the eternal and thus has no possibility of fulfilment. Here lies the inner reason for the drama of the Romantic soul, which is ultimately the same drama as German idealism. And yet it is clear that their collective striving (*Streben*) aims at a solution, at a conquest of unity and harmony; and this is sought in two directions: the Dionysian and the Christian, one to be called immanent, the other transcendent—that is, one aiming at the absolute in a mad attempt to surpass life and scorn its inviolable laws, the other in renunciation. The first is also that of heroic activism and a heroic downfall; the second that of an un-resigned repose within a religious confession. Thus the Dionysian romantics may be considered Hölderlin and Kleist, the Christian ones Schlegel, Brentano, Tieck, Runge, and Novalis. But how and in what do the Romantic and the transcendental conception substantially diverge? For here precisely the problem of religion among the romantics arises, inasmuch as a revealed religion, with its dogmas and rigid norms, is not in irreconcilable contrast with the Romantic spirit, open to every impulse, yearning toward every goal. And indeed religion, whatever it may be, is always more or less in the service of the Romantic conception. So too with Christianity. For if Christ were felt, in the orthodox sense, as the Saviour of humanity, every soul would find in him easy and full fulfilment; whereas Christianity brings neither peace nor harmony to any Romantic spirit, but instead serves only to illuminate, through deviations or kindred attitudes, other sides of its restless and uneasy aspiration. Love, for example, is regarded as a religious expression; yet it is not divorced from sensuality, which satisfies the Romantic yearning for unity, for bringing the divine and the human together, heaven and earth, spirit and senses. And this mysticism of love necessarily bound the romantics to the religion of Christ in its two fundamental elements, of love and of sin: sin as the most insistent spur to love; love as the highest aspiration toward a return to God. Thus religion, love, and sensuality are equivalent; yet it is important to note that it is love in its fullness that creates and nourishes and characterizes religion; and since this religion is Christianity, it is once more clear that we are far from any orthodoxy and likewise from Christian morality.

Romantic ethics, in fact, confirms an absolute independence from all norms deriving from a revealed religion. Besides being drawn to spiritualized love and the sensuality of sin, the romantics were attracted to Christianity as a religion of death, inasmuch as death opens to all Christians, as to the romantics, a higher and better world beyond the real and the present, in a life beyond that is precisely the realization of the infinite and the—

and swept along by a powerful national current, it became patriotic and produced the passionate songs of Arndt, of Schenkendorf, of Rückert, and the grief-stricken and tempestuous verses of the younger German lyricist Theodor Körner.

But it is the Romantic drama, above all, that gives us a clearer and more precise idea of the immense favour which Romantic doctrines everywhere enjoyed, permeating the literature of the time. For if there is any literary genre that shuns unreality and indeterminacy of form, it is precisely the drama. Thus Romanticism performed the miracle of making audiences applaud on the stage the fate-tragedies of Zacharias Werner (1768–1823), such as *Der vierundzwanzigste Februar*, while Romantic elements—such as the fantastic, the marvellous, and the terrifying—determined by a more intimate and profound analysis of characters, appear in the dramas of Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), together with a marked tendency toward the absolute, which impressed at least his earliest dramas (*Die Familie Schroffenstein* and especially *Penthesilea*) with the stamp of an excessive personality. The same terribleness, at times even monstrousness, found in some of Kleist’s tragedies is echoed in the dramatic work of C. Grabbe, whereas it is carefully avoided in the dramas of Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), who does not seek to analyse his characters in obedience to a preconceived idea, nor ever subordinates action to philosophical considerations, making of his creations symbols or abstractions, but rather infuses them with real life and sets them moving on the stage as they would move in life. Yet it is easy to observe that the poet often intervenes in the course of the action to prevent his characters, driven by the impulse of their passions, from going too far; it is the curb that the *Verstandesmensch* of the most balanced and tenacious kind opposes to the poet of agitated and overflowing fantasy—something that does not occur in his fate-dramas such as *Die Ahnfrau* or even in the trilogy *Das goldene Vließ*.

In lyric poetry, on the other hand, Romantic elements gradually diminish, marking deviations and even reactions. Thus in the cult of form and in the intention of introducing into the language new metres and the inspiration of suggestive phantoms of the Eastern world, Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866) and August von Platen (1796–1835) found themselves in agreement; the latter was essentially Romantic in his earliest lyric collections and anti-Romantic in two comedies of Aristophanic imitation, while his conversion to the cult of classical form is affirmed in his later lyrics, especially in the *Sonette aus Venedig*, of exquisite craftsmanship. The Swabian poets, among whom Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862) stands first—author of ballads, rapid and highly romanticized, very popular for their ingenuousness and spontaneity of inspiration and for the concision of their style—form an artistic group with a distinctive physiognomy, while nonetheless all shared the aim of drawing from the Romantic current the greatest possible profit, abstaining from every exaggeration. Beside him should be remembered Eduard Mörike, great above all in his intimate and most harmonious lyrics, in which a Romantic echo is heard, even though the poet strives to reconcile Romanticism and Classicism. To the Swabian school is also linked the lyric poetry of Nikolaus Lenau (1802–50), a poet of vibrant and seductive originality for the immediacy and sincerity of his inspiration, for the colour and richness of his imagery, and for the broad and profound sense of human sorrow that pervades all his work and not infrequently assumes the character of *Weltschmerz*. He seeks sorrow as the necessary nourishment for his life and his poetry, and such sorrow sharpens and spreads into all things, until he feels the soul of the world weeping as his own soul weeps: a symbolism of nature, typically Romantic. A “desecrated” Romantic, as one critic has defined him, is another and far greater poet, the Jew Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), great in lyric poetry, especially in the *Buch der Lieder*, as in the prose of the *Reisebilder* and in the satirical epic *Atta Troll*. Heine may truly be considered the last Romantic; of restless and aggressive spirit, he embodies, with salient and typical traits, the tendencies, contradictions, sceptical rebellions, and delirious and fleeting enthusiasms of modern man, when the environment has not yet found its equilibrium. He lacks the tragic sense of the world, but rather has a tragic consciousness of his own world and his own life; thus he lacks the faith or the resigned sentiment of the believer, having only the tormented consciousness of man’s impotence before the inaccessible power that governs life—and it is precisely this consciousness that recreates his God, the terrible antagonist in the tragedy of a man who loves life and cannot enjoy it, who knows he must die and does not wish to die, and who therefore becomes humble and rebellious, prays and blasphemes, supplicates and mocks. It is his tragedy that is reflected in the poet’s final songs.

VII. REALISM

The speculative thought that had prepared and followed the Romantic movement may be said to have been exhausted by a series of epigones of Hegel’s philosophy, some of whom, strict continuators, limited themselves to a cold exegesis of his works, while others, more daring continuators, pushed their master’s doctrine to the furthest extreme of exaggeration. This group gathered under the name of the “Left Hegelians” and was led by Ludwig Feuerbach and David Friedrich Strauss, author of a *Life of Jesus*, while the Hegelians found a violent and sagacious opponent in Arthur Schopenhauer, who returned to Kant’s philosophy, arriving however at pessimistic conclusions.

In the nineteenth century, science and historiography in Germany reached their most fruitful results through a renewal of all auxiliary studies and a rigorous revision of problems concerning method. Similarly, the philosophical and linguistic studies of the Brothers Grimm and the studies in comparative literature and the history of languages by the Brothers Humboldt prepared the rise of a new and deeper vision of historical facts.

Toward the middle of the century, poetry presents a distinctly political character, which, far from a total vision of life, is likewise adherent to the particular and contingent reality of the moment. Already from the political upheavals of 1830, a great ideal took shape in Germany that found reflection even in political literature: to form national unity and to win freedom. This gave rise to a literary association (*Das Junge Deutschland*), which has evident points of contact with Romanticism for its marked tendency toward individualism, but differs sharply from it in its essential significance: its political-liberal tendency. It is the same tendency that gives rise to a patriotic lyric poetry, flourishing around the political movements of 1848 with Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Ferdinand Freiligrath, and Georg Herwegh.

Entirely outside any school, and a poetess in the truest and noblest sense of the word, was Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797–1848). All her lyric production (*Das geistliche Jahr* and *Letzte Gaben*) is pervaded by a sincere and profound religious sentiment. She is inwardly Catholic, but one would seek in vain in her verses the echo of previous confessional struggles; in her there breathes only an atmosphere of peace, diffused through all the creatures of earth and nature, and a pure, intimate sense of humanity, softened by a distinctly feminine tenderness, rises from every one of her songs.

In narrative literature, and particularly in the novel, modern life is increasingly reflected, or at least, in historical novels, events that occasion the narrative are considered through the eyes of men aware of life’s trends, aiming at psychological analysis and realistic representation. Thus, a conscientious observer of life is Gustav Freytag (in *Soll und Haben*), while vast readings across various historical periods, such as the Reformation in Germany and the Renaissance in Italy, were invaluable to C. Ferdinand Meyer in creating the backgrounds for many of his works. Social novels are worthily represented by Friedrich Spielhagen (*Problematische Naturen*); a delicate poet of nature who feels and describes with a fine artist’s touch the landscape and life of his homeland, Bohemia, is Adalbert Stifter; a delightful

short-story writer who loves above all small things (*Immensee*) is Theodor Storm, and equally notable narrators are also Friedrich Reuter, full of naturalness and liveliness, Theodor Fontane, who combines a purely naturalistic narrative with deep knowledge of German life and soul, Berthold Auerbach, whose tales are pervaded by a profound sense of humanity, Gottfried Keller, a Swiss who rises from simple, objective narration of rustic life and vivid, colorful descriptions of nature to a broader concept of humanity and pure poetry (*Die Leute von Seldwyla*), and finally a true master of the short story, Paul Heyse, enamored of Italy, where he lived for a long time and where the action of many of his stories unfolds; and the Styrian Peter Rosegger, a wildly popular writer of autobiographical tales, great in the small world of his native land (*Waldheimat*, *Die Schriften eines Waldschulmeisters*).

The theater likewise, in the second half of the 19th century, adopts attitudes analogous to those of narrative literature, increasingly orienting itself toward the analysis of feelings and the realistic representation of modern life. Hence, a greater and more immediate contact between the writer and the public: literature becomes popular. Thus, while narrative prose, through careful and detailed study of settings and characters, creates the village tale, the theater, also inspired by observation of everyday life, leads us to the realistic representations of Freytag and Anzengruber. But even before the latter, Friedrich Hebbel (1813–63), in a fairly copious series of tragedies (*Judith*, *Maria Magdalena*, *Herodes und Marianne*) and comedies, reveals himself as a modern writer concerned with capturing the spectator’s attention through analytical originality of thought, even if excess does not always achieve the intended effect. Hebbel is the creator of a new dramatic form; he considers drama the faithful representation of human life. For him, the tragic is an inherent element of our existence, inexorably springing from its essence, because to live means to will and to act, and to will and to act cannot mean anything but suffering and sin. It is always the idea of original sin that weighs upon humanity through the centuries, like an invincible fate. While prose theater thus found its way, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) accomplished the reform of musical drama, in comparison with which the—also great—merit of having himself composed the poems he later set to music, drawn from the rich and genuine popular tradition (*Tannhäuser*, *Lohengrin*, *Tristan und Isolde*, *Nibelungenlied*, *Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg*, *Parsifal*), recedes into the background.

Naturalism, toward the end of the 19th century, dominates the theater almost exclusively. What is demanded of the dramatic author is that he bring to the stage a work that acts upon the spectator like a real-life event and gives the illusion of reality. Subject and technique are subordinated to the necessity governing this illusionism on stage. The principal representatives of naturalistic drama are Hermann Sudermann (1857–1928) and Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946): the former oscillated between different formulas without ever freeing himself from a certain French influence, but it is undeniable that many of his dramas (*Die Ehre*, *Stein unter Steinen*) are solidly constructed and met with full success; Hauptmann, more individual and profound, has a broad and penetrating gaze for observing the contrasts of social reality (*Vor Sonnenaufgang*, *Einsame Menschen*, *Die Weber*). He is also a poet who does not disdain even symbolic attitudes derived from Ibsen’s theater; aided by a stage technique so ready and precise and by an agile efficacy of thought and feeling, his theater maintains a wholly distinctive physiognomy.

A clear departure from naturalistic theater is marked by the dramas of Arthur Schnitzler, who is influenced by Freudian doctrines in probing the depths of the human soul in its most mysterious aspects, as in its strongest passions (*Fräulein Else*), while in his later years he seems to become grave and thoughtful in the face of the mystery of death (a sense of fearful expectation indeed pervades his final works). Fundamentally skeptical and pessimistic, without any reconstructive capacity, is instead Frank Wedekind, who takes pleasure in treating in his dramas the most rugged and brutal material, without ever a ray of sunshine appearing in them. He can hardly be considered a moralist, as some critics claim, but rather a precursor of expressionist theater, which is immoral and subversive.

The naturalistic current, which sought either to abolish outright or at least to neglect all poetic tradition after *Sturm und Drang*, from Romanticism to Young Germany, soon declined without producing any great poet, and indeed aroused more or less strong reactions from poets of originality and personality, among whom Detlev von Liliencron, who attempted the novel and the theater but succeeded only in lyric poetry, and Richard Dehmel, who sang above all of love conceived as the cause and pivot of every manifestation of life, even assuming symbolic value. A more pronounced reaction to naturalism is found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, more notable as a lyric poet than as a thinker, and in that of Stefan George, a fervent advocate of a renewal of German poetry, in whose lyric collections, besides a deep Nietzschean influence, one senses, along with a vague cosmopolitanism, the desire to reconcile the classical world with the Germanic, which, however, culminates in a clear affirmation of Germanness, while from a pure aestheticism, in which poetry is reduced to mere images and sounds, he arrives in his later poems at the affirmation of an art not devoid of a particular ethical content. Unlike George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who also belongs to the circle of neo-Romantics gathered around the George coterie and the *Blätter für die Kunst*, distances himself from any contact with present reality and turns, preferably, to the world of myths in an intoxication of imaginative and resplendent forms and sounds, in which the influence of D’Annunzio is felt. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), who began on the artistic path with George, soon distances himself to transfer his poetic world into an intimate penetration of nature and a mystical isolation of the spirit. Through the soul of things, whose life he listens to and understands, he ceaselessly strives toward God, yet an immanent God, who creates in him the desire for love and spiritual communion with the world, a God whom he knows he can never fully possess or reach, yet to whom he nonetheless surrenders in complete abandonment.

If naturalism, with its revolutionary and socially reformist tendencies, had failed to produce great poetry, neoromanticism, with its cultural efforts and inner, transcendental vision, had likewise achieved no concrete success; thus, the gradual erosion of faith in the cosmic, naturalistic, and romantic order paved the way for the full ascendancy of a revolt characterized by expressionism, the new Sturm und Drang of the first three decades of the 20th century. Undoubtedly, much of German literature before the war and almost all that followed the First World War was steeped in the expressionist worldview. At its core remained an ethical problem; for while expressionism often yielded ephemeral poetic fruits, it stands out as a spiritual movement containing so much that is negating and dissolving. What strikes one most in it is the impetus of revolt against the past; this turbulent, muddy, and clamorous current bursting into the course of traditional literature, ignoring or seeking to sweep away everything that had once been the object of lofty aspirations—love and faith—and that had constituted a centuries-old norm of life within the orbit of family and society. One is aghast at the vehemence with which one generation hurls itself against another, children against parents (recall Hasenclever’s drama *Der Sohn*), at the most depraved forms of sexual perversion (recall certain dramas by Kaiser), and at the frenzies of a language that reveals not only a violent break from all formal completion but a genuine assault on the solid traditional linguistic organism.

Writers who, in certain respects, align themselves with the expressionist current but reveal more or less eminent artistic qualities include Döblin and Däubler, the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann (the latter’s great novel *Die Buddenbrooks*), Wassermann, von Unruh, Werfel, and Stefan Zweig.

Expressionist revolt had sought to alter the relationships between things, but it could not abolish the things themselves. It was thus predictable that one would return to look through the lens of intelligence. Man had flung himself disorderly, one might say blindly, toward the conquest of the universe; soon, however, he turned inward, preparing anew to know, and to substitute the reality of knowledge for the illusion of ecstasy, so that faith in the future might arise and poetry reclaim its eternal themes: love for creatures, the enchantment of nature, and elevation to God. Already in the early years of the decade from 1920 to 1930, a new tendency had thus emerged with content and forms more real and simpler, yet at the same time more intimate and sincere. This is the *Neue Sachlichkeit*, or, roughly, neo-realism—a current that did not reach its full and consistent development, being diverted and contaminated in its later years by a literature directly or indirectly tied to National Socialist ideology, with its well-known motifs of inspiration: the idea of the Reich and the historical becoming of the German people, the exaltation of race, and the intimate relation between blood and soil and between lineage and landscape. Yet slowly it begins to regain its course, as evidenced by some of the most gifted contemporary poets, among whom are Ernst Wiechert and Hans Carossa.

Archaeology. — Archaeological studies relating to early Christianity in Germany can normally be considered only in those lands this side of the Danube and the Rhine that were occupied by the Romans. In these regions, the principal military and commercial stations also became the most enduring ecclesiastical centers and, as such, nuclei of early Christian culture attested by places of worship, cemeteries, objects, furnishings, and inscriptions created under Roman influence up to the Carolingian period. The following are the principal cities in which ancient Christian monuments have been discovered.

Aquincum (v.). — Alzey: a paleo-Christian stamp for bread bearing the busts of the emperors Valentinian II, Valens, and Gratian (F. Drexel, in *Germania*, 13 [1929], p. 187; 14 [1930], p. 38). — Andernach (Antunacum): a sepulchral inscription with the expression “meruit sanctorum esse consortem” (F. X. Kraus, *Die altchristlichen Inschriften der Rheinlande*, Freiburg im Br. 1890, p. 133, no. 275). — Augsburg (v. Augusta Vindelicorum): remains of a 4th-century baptistery (L. Ohlenroth, in *Forschungen und Fortschritte*, 6 [1930], pp. 169–70). — Bingen (Bingium): Christian sepulchral inscriptions (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., pp. 33, no. 89; G. Behrens, in *Germania*, 10 [1926], pp. 146–47).

8). — Bonn: sotto il pavimento della cripta romanica della basilica dei SS. Cassio e Florenzio, oggi S. Martino, si scoprì nel 1928 un’area cimiteriale cristiana presso l’antico castrum romano del sec. IV e una chiesa cimiteriale del sec. IV-V (G. F. Kirsch, in Riv. di arch. crist., 9 [1932], pp. 151-158). Per le iscrizioni cristiane trovate in Bonn, V. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 137, n. 282; p. 138, n. 284). — Boppard (Baudobrica): sono note alcune iscrizioni sepolcrali cristiane tra le quali una di un «famus deis» (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 131, n. 267) e l’altra di un «Nonus presbyter» (id., op. cit., p. 133, n. 272). — Coblenza (Confluentes): iscrizione sepolcrale cristiana su lastra di calce di un «Leuradus lector» (id., op. cit., p. 130, n. 265). — Colonia (v. Colonia grippina). — Gondorf: iscrizioni sepolcrali cristiane (J. Klein, in Bonner Jahrbücher, 84 [1887], p. 241). — Göttingen (sul lago di Costanza): vi si trovò una Croce in lamina d’oro, una fibula argentata su cui è inciso un cavaliere sorreggente una Croce astile, vaso in bronzo con motivi allegorici, tra cui la scena del Battesimo, e una iscrizione greca (G. Kraft, in Badische Fundberichte, 1 [1928], p. 267; 2 [1929], p. 21; F. Garscha e F. W. Volbach, in Germania, 17 [1931], pp. 36-37; J. Sauer, Frühchristliche Funde in Deutschland aus den letzten 25 Jahren, in Atti del III Congresso internazionale di arch. crist., Città del Vaticano 1934, p. 179, fig. 6). — Hintschingen, sul Danubio: vi si rinvenne una Croce in lamina d’oro, un anello d’oro con moneta aurea di Giustino II e uno sperone con una Croce incisa (E. Wagner, in Römisch-Germanisches Korrispondenzblatt, 9 [1919], pp. 1-8; I. Sauer, op. cit., p. 177, fig. 5). — Lehmen, sulla Mosella: un’iscrizione cristiana sepolcrale (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 128, n. 261). — Magonza (v. Magontiacum). — Müngersdorf: cimitero del sec. VI-VII d. C. con 149 tombe e un altro con sarcofagi in pietra; vi si raccolse suppellettile in vetro e in metallo con soggetti pagani e cristiani (F. Fremersdorf, in Bullettino del Museo dell’Impero romano, 1 [1930], pp. 171-72). Molto nota è la coppa in vetro azzurro con scene di Noè nell’arca, Mosè che batte la rupe, Giona gettato in mare e in riposo e Daniele tra i leoni; queste scene sono alternate con quattro medaglioni nei quali F. Fremersdorf riconobbe i figli di Costantino: Crispo, Costantino, Costanzo e Costante (I. Sauer, op. cit., p. 176, fig. 4). Pure a Müngersdorf si rinvennero due cucchiai d’argento dell’a. 370 con l’iscrizione: «De gratias» (G. Behrens, in Germania, 11 [1927], p. 148). — Neuss (Novaecium): quattro vetri dorati con la rappresentazione

GERMANIA - Pianta della basilica primitiva di Eginardo (sec. IX secondo la ricostruzione di O. Müller.

degli apostoli Pietro e Paolo, di Giobbe, di s. Ippolito e di s. Sisto II (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 152, n. 302). - Passavia (Castra Batava): un santuario fondato da s. Severino protettore e apostolo delle province romane della Rezia e del Norico. Sotto la chiesa medievale sono apparsi resti del sec. VIII (H. Horman, St. Severin zu Passau, Die Kirche und ihre Baugeschichte nach neuen Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen, Passau 1935). - Pflaidt, presso Andernach: un'iscrizione cristiana (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 134, n. 274). - Ratisbona (v. REGINA CAELI). - Remagen (Ricomagus): un'iscrizione sepolcrale cristiana (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., p. 136, n. 279). - Saalburg: un'fischietto in corno con iscrizione: «Annius fidelis in R.», si tratta di un soldato della XXII legione (H. Leclercq, s. V. in DACL, VI, 1, col. 1209, fig. 5261). - Seligenstadt sul Meno: Eginardo (v.) in onore delle reliquie dei martiri romani Marcellino e Pietro, di cui si è riconosciuta la pianta che è del tipo di quelle di S. Prassede in Roma (A. Schuchert, in Riv. di arch. crist., 15 [1937], pp. 141-46). - Treviri (v.). - Worms (v.). - Wiesbaden (Aquae Mattiacae): sono note otto iscrizioni sepolcrali cristiane e un timbro (pastillum aeneum) con la dicitura «Fl. Paulini» (F. X. Kraus, op. cit., pp. 27-30, nn. 47-55). - Xanten (v.).

sformato in basilica ad archi ove fecero allora la prima comparsa in G. volte a croce nella navata centrale collegate ad una più salda struttura delle pareti della navata e di tutta la costruzione esterna). Così nella chiesa dell'abbazia di Maria Laach (1092-1156). Nella plastica si perde quella impetuosa forza espressiva del periodo intorno al 1000 a vantaggio di una monumentalità arcaicamente severa (cf. la Madonna d'oro di Essen, della fine del sec. X, con la Madonna del vescovo Imad del 1060 [Paderborn]). Nella seconda metà del sec. XI appare nelle nicchie la prima plastica con funzione architettonica (atrio di S. Emmeram, Ratisbona, 1048-64). Nel sec. XII un forte sentimento plastico si esprime nel rilievo delle forme dei corpi (sepolcro di Rodolfo di Svevia, m. nel 1080 [Merseburg]; sepolcro di Federico von Wetin, m. nel 1152 [Magdeburg]).

Dalla metà del sec. XII il nuovo senso di appagamento e di gioia proprio del tempo degli Staufer, il tempo dell'epopea eroica e dei cavallereschi Minnesänger, si riflette in una architettura di tratti robusti e di piacevoli ornamenti (Schwarzriedorf, doppia cappella, consacrata nel 1151; Colonia, SS. Apostoli, costruzione ampliata nella parte orientale, dopo il 1192; Worms, duomo, fine sec. XII-inizio sec. XIII; Strasburgo, Münster, Ostbau, dopo il 1176; duomo di Bamberga, 1185-1237; Limburg a. d. Lahn, Collegiata, consacrata nel 1235). Piacevole naturalezza e capacità di espressione tutta interiore si notano nella pittura e nella plastica: così negli affreschi del coro a Prüfening presso Ratisbona, verso il 1170. Così nelle rappresentazioni di soggetto sacro quali a Colonia in S. Gereone, nella Cappella del Battistero. Così nelle scuole di miniature di Ratisbora (Lode della S. Croce, 1170-85 [Monaco]), in quella conventuale bavarese (Libro mattutino dell'abate Corrado di Scheyern, principio del sec. XIII [Monaco]), in quella del Reno superiore (Hortus deliciarum di Herrad di Landsberg, ca. 1170), nell'altra del medio Reno (Liber Scivias di S. Ildegarda di Bingen del principio della seconda metà del sec. XII [Wiesbaden]), in quella di Thüringen (Salterio del langravio Hermann, 1211-13 [Stoccarda]). Nel campo

The figurative power and its spiritual expressive force embodied the profound religiosity and earthly confidence of this period. In the architectural field, structures became clearer, while the unity of masses emphasized the harmony of spaces and walls. The architectural system was bound to schematic principles, such as the double depth of the choir and the doubling of the transept naves, while the unitary sense of the entire structure was accentuated by bell towers (Gernrode, St. Cyriacus, built in 961; Cologne, St. Pantaleon with monumental apse, consecrated in 980; Hildesheim, St. Michael’s, a basilica with two choirs and two naves, 1000–33; Cologne, St. Maria in Campidoglio, 1049; Limburg on the Lahn, west façade with two bell towers, between 1025 and 1045).

The various schools of Ottonian illumination differed in content and style: Reichenau (Egbert Codex, c. 980 [Trier], Gospel Book of Otto III [Munich], Bamberg Apocalypse, early 11th century); Trier; Echternach (Codex aureus of Echternach, c. 1020 [Coburg]); Cologne (Hilda Codex, early 11th century [Darmstadt]); Regensburg (Uta Codex, 1002–25 [Munich]). The Gerokreuz in Cologne Cathedral is one of the first great examples of German monumental sculpture (c. 970). The first German cycle of sculptural figures, however, is admired on the two bronze doors of Bernward in Hildesheim Cathedral (completed 1015). In clarity and refinement of figuration, the goldsmith’s art stood apart from the dazzling variety of the Carolingian period (portable altar of Andrea, 975–93 [Trier], Basel antependium, 1002–24 [Paris], the ornaments of Empress Gisela, early 11th century, bindings of the great Reichenau manuscripts preserved in Munich).

From the mid-11th century, the art properly called Romanesque distinguished itself by firmness of form, originality of content, and structural cohesion—thus in the architectural school of Hirsau, and in the imperial cathedrals of Mainz and Speyer (c. 1082).

[...]

From the mid-14th century, in place of slender and delicate figures, more robust and stocky forms reappeared, sometimes conveying a sense of heavy corporeality (Gmünd, Church of the Holy Cross: Prophets and Wise and Foolish Virgins, c. 1350). Works from the workshop of the Parler family in Cologne, Prague, and Nuremberg. Claus Sluter, in the service of Philip the Bold from 1385, was active in Dijon.

The “soft style” sculpture of the early 15th century is characterized by small scale, an uninterrupted flow of lines, and a vague, ethereal expression. “Beautiful Madonnas” (e.g., the one from Krumau in Vienna). Mainz Cathedral: model for the “Door of Remembrance,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Seeon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm).

German late-Gothic sculpture reached its peak between 1460 and 1520: Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leiden (1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg, and Wiener-Neustadt); Jörg Syrlin the Elder (1425–93, Ulm); Michael Pachner (c. 1435/40–1408, Austria); Erasmus Grasser (c. 1450–1518, Munich); Gregor Erhart (Ulm and Augsburg); Bernt Notke (c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck); Veit Stoss (c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc.); Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460–1531, Franconia).

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Mainz, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm).

German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg, and Wiener-Neustadt; Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm; Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria; Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich; Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg; Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck; Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc.; Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, FranGERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St Emmeram (13th cent.) – Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St Emmeram (13th cent.) – Regensburg. (e.g. those of Krumau in Vienna). MANNHEIM, Cathedral: model of the ‘Door of Memory’, c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Seeon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg and Wiener-Neustadt. Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm. Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria. Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich. Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg. Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509 in Lübeck. Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow etc. Tilman Riemenschneider, c.## GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). MANNGONZA, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm).

German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably active in Trier, Strasbourg and Wiener-Neustadt; Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm; Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria; Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich; Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg; Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck; Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc.; Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, FranGERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see XIII) – Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Mainz Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Seeon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg, and Wiener-Neustadt; Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm; Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria; Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich; Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg; Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck; Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc.; Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, Fran

GERMANY - Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) - Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Man-gonza, Cathedral: model of the "Porta della memoria," c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400-67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches a high point in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463-73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg, and Wiener-Neustadt. Jörg Syrlin, 1425-93, Ulm. Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40-1508, Austria. Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450-1518, Munich. Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg. Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40-1509 in Lübeck. Veit Stoss, c. 1445-1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc. Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460-1531, Franconia-

GERMANY - Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) - Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St Emmeram (see XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Mainz, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm).

German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg and Wiener-Neustadt; Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm; Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria; Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich; Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg; Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck; Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc.; Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, Franconia).

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St Emmeram (see XIII) – Regensburg. (courtesy of Dr L. von Wilckens)GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (cf. XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Mainz, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg, and Wiener-Neustadt. Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm. Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria. Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich. Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg. Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509, Lübeck. Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow, etc. Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, FranGERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (by courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Man-gonza, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg and Wiener-Neustadt. Jörg Syrlin, 1425–93, Ulm. Michael Pacher, c. 1435/40–98, Austria. Erasmus Grasser, c. 1450–1518, Munich. Gregor Erhart in Ulm and Augsburg. Bernt Notke, c. 1435/40–1509 in Lübeck. Veit Stoss, c. 1445–1533, Nuremberg, Cracow etc. Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460–1531, Franconia.

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (by courtesy of Dr. L. von Wilckens)

GERMANY – Cloister of the former convent of St. Emmeram (see. XIII) – Regensburg. (e.g., those of Krumau in Vienna). Man-gonza, Cathedral: model of the “Porta della memoria,” c. 1410. Limburg, Pietà of Dernbach, c. 1400. Münster, Pietà of Unna, c. 1420. Munich, Madonna of Secon, c. 1430 (Hans Multscher, 1400–67, Ulm). German sculpture of the late Gothic period reaches its peak in the period from 1460 to 1520 (Nikolaus Gerhaert of Leyden, 1463–73, probably in Trier, Strasbourg

GERMANY

GERMANY – Altarpiece: Christ before Caiaphas, The Crucifixion, The Women at the Sepulchre. Art of Westphalia (early 1200s) – Berlin, Museum.

Peter Vischer the Elder, c. 1460–1520: bronze founder of Nuremberg. Hans Leinberger, c. 1480/85–1531, Landshut. Meister HL: high altar of Breisach, 1523–26).

Panel painting, which in the 13th century still appeared in isolated manifestations, gained great importance in the 14th, and French (miniature) and Italian (Giotto and the Sienese: reverse of the Klosterneuburg altarpiece, 1324–39) influences were strongly felt. School of Cologne, Bohemian school (altarpieces of Hohenfurth, c. 1340, and of Wittingau, c. 1380–90). Master Bertram of Minden, probably 1367–1415. Painters of the “soft style” include Konrad of Soest and Master Francke in Hamburg; his last disciples were Lukas Moser with the Tiefenbronn altarpiece (1431) and Stefan Lochner in Cologne. Konrad Witz, together with Hans Multscher, a representative of the new realism from 1430, painted in the Geneva altarpiece of 1444 the first image of a landscape that actually existed. Martin Schongauer of Colmar deserves special mention for the art of engraving developed from 1440. The Master of the Life of the Virgin, c. 1470–80, Cologne. Michael Pacher. Bernhard Strigel, c. 1460–1528, at Ulm. Hans Holbein the Elder, c. 1465–1524, Augsburg. Hans Baldung born near Grünewald, 1483/84–1545, on the Upper Rhine. Lucas Cranach, 1472–1553, and Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, propagators of Italian art beyond the Alps.

The 16th century and the first decades of the 17th are marked by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Alongside religious architecture, secular architecture also assumed particular importance. Thus, alongside religious subjects in sculpture and painting, earthly and mythological themes now appeared. Augsburg, Fugger Chapel, 1509–18: the first building derived from Italian Renaissance in Germany. Munich, Jesuit church of St Michael, 1583–97: modeled on the Gesù in Rome, but in the tradition of the German pillar churches of the late Gothic period, the impressive architecture of the German churches of the Counter-Reformation. Cologne, Jesuit church (St Maria Himmelfahrt, 1618–27): principal example of the late Gothic style fostered by the German Jesuits of the West. Flourishing of small sculpture in bronze, lead, carved wood, and stone. Konrad Meit of Worms, c. 1480–1550. Peter Flötner, c. 1490–1546, Nuremberg. Hans Schwarz, medallist, Augsburg. Hans Krumper, c. 1570–1634: bronze sculptures at the Munich court. Jörg Zürn: “Tare” altarpiece of Überlingen, 1613–19 (extension of the narrow Gothic altarpiece). Ludwig Münstermann, c. 1575–1638: representative of expressive religious Mannerism. Portraiture flourished in painting. Eminent master of the first half of the century is Hans Holbein the Younger (Augsburg 1497–98, London 1541). The German creator of ideal landscapes, which he often enlivened with small ornamental religious figures, is Adam Elsheimer of Frankfurt (1578–1610).

The age of the Baroque and especially of the Rococo once again brought all creative forces in Germany to a grand flourishing. In the 18th century there was a renewed fusion of all the arts as in the medieval workshop, since ceiling paintings, altarpieces, and sculptures, carved works and stuccowork served only to complete the architect’s work. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723), Lukas von Hildebrandt (Vienna, 1668–1745), Christoph Dientzenhofer (Prague, 1689–1751), Vorarlberg school of architecture with Caspar Mosbrugger, Franz Beer, and Peter Thumb. In Bavaria: Cosmas Damian Asam (1686–1739) and Egid Quirin Asam (1692–1750); Dominikus Zimmermann (1685–1766); Johann Michael Fischer (1691–1766); Johann Balthasar Neumann (1687–1753); Franz Baehr: Frauenkirche in Dresden (1726–38, central Protestant building with galleries). The center of gravity for sculpture and painting was also in southern Germany. Johann Meinrad Guggenbichler (Salzkammergut, 1649–1723), Balthasar Permoser (1651–1733), Georg Raphael Donner (Vienna, 1693–1741), Paul Egell (Mannheim, 1691–1752), Egid Quirin Asam, Johann Baptist Straub (Munich, 1704–84), Ignaz Günther (Munich, 1725–75), Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer (Lake Constance, 1696–1770). Religious painting of the 17th century culminates in the pathetic visions of martyrs and sacred representations of the Silesian Michael Willmann (1630–1706). In the 18th century ceiling painting triumphed: Cosmas Damian Asam, Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724–96, Austria).

Romanticism sought to express its yearning for renewal and purity in a sentimental style, orienting itself toward the old masters. Karl Friedrich Schinkel built the Werdersche Kirche in Berlin in Gothic forms in 1824–28. The Nazarenes (Karl Friedrich Overbeck, Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld) wished to renew religious painting inspired by Raphael. Only Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) succeeded in creating something new with his landscapes: allegories full of religious feeling. The 19th century did not bring real contributions in the field of Christian art. In the contemporary age architects such as Hans Bartning and Dominikus Böhm concerned themselves with the new Christian architecture. The sculptors Ernst Barlach and Gerhard Marcks and the painter Emil Nolde depicted ancient Christian themes in the spirit of the 20th century.

Ill.: A. Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der Karolinger und der sächsischen Kaiser, 4 vols., Berlin

GERMANY – The Blessed Virgin and St Elizabeth spinning. At their feet are Jesus and St John. School of Nuremberg (c. 1400). Nuremberg, National Museum.

1914: A. Feulner, Bayerisches Rokoko, Munich 1920; M. Hauttmann, Geschichte der kirchlichen Baukunst in Bayern, Frauen und Schrauben 1559–1780, ibid. 1921; J. Braun, Meisterwerke der deutschen Goldschmiedekunst der vogotischen Zeit, 2 vols., ibid. 1922; A. Haupt, Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Deutschland, Berlin-Neubabelsberg 1923; H. Beenken, Romanische Skulptur in Deutschland, Leipzig 1924; W. Pinder, Die deutsche Plastik vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zum Ende der Renaissance, 2 vols., Wildpark-Potsdam 1924–29; C. Glaser, Die altdeutsche Malerei, Munich 1924; H. Hildebrandt, Die Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Wildpark-Potsdam 1924; P. Frankl, Die Frühmittelalterliche und romanische Baukunst, ibid. 1926; A. Feulner, Deutsche Plastik des 17. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1926; S. Meller, Die deutschen Bronzegiesser der Renaissance, ibid. 1926; M. Sauerland, Die deutsche Plastik des 18. Jahrhunderts, ibid. 1926; E. F. Bange, Die Kleinplastik der deutschen Renaissance in Holz und Stein, ibid. 1928; C. Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 3rd ed., Berlin 1929; G. Dehio, Geschichte der deutschen Kunst, 8 vols., 4th ed., ibid. 1930–34; E. Gall, Karolingische und ottonische Kirchen, Burg bei Magdeburg 1930; A. Boeckler, Abendländische Miniaturen bis zum Ausgang der romanischen Zeit, Berlin-Leipzig 1930; J. Braun, Malerei und Plastik des Mittelalters in Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien, Wildpark-Potsdam 1930; C. H. Clasen, Die gotische Baukunst, ibid. 1930; A. Stange, Deutsche Malerei der Gotik, 3 vols., Berlin-Leipzig 1934–38; W. Pinder, Deutscher Barock. Die grossen Baumeister des 18. Jahrhunderts, Königstein i. T. 1938; R. Benz-A. V. Schneider, Die Kunst der deutschen Romantik, Munich 1939; H. Jantzen, Deutsche Plastik des 13. Jahrhunderts, ibid. 1941; O. Fischer, Geschichte der deutschen Malerei, ibid. 1942; H. Jantzen, Ottonische Kunst, ibid. 1947. Leonie V. Wilckens.

VII. SCHOOL SYSTEM.

With the defeat of National Socialist racial socialism, the school reform of Ernst Krieck, Alfred Baeumler, and Rosenberg—based on *Gleichschaltung* and *Gleichaltung*—also collapsed. Since that day, German schools have sought to orient themselves toward democracy and to consolidate their position. The path is difficult because there are no German educators ready to undertake a new reform of German school life on their own. Since 1945, any advice or imposition in the field of education has encountered distrust not only from intellectuals but also from the parents of students themselves. Political rhetoric has discredited even the best reform projects proposed by non-German authorities in the individual *Länder*. The reform projects of the governments of the individual *Länder*, on the other hand, are inspired by the German school reforms that followed one another from 1871 until Hitler’s rise. Each *Land* is an entity unto itself, and the German people’s unifying aspiration thus remains unfulfilled. Even the ideas about the role of the Church, religion, and the family in education are unclear, despite the respect today in western Germany for articles 4–9 of the Concordat concluded between the Church and the State in 1925. The spirit of the Weimar Republic (1918–33), however, is alive in the politicians of today’s Germany. As then, so today, the conservative current fights for a nationalistic individualism disciplined by military means, finding its strongholds both in universities and in ex-military circles. The other political currents—and among them a portion of the men of the Catholic Party—seek new paths and are not satisfied with a mere renewal of the Weimar school reform associated with the names of Wilhelm Dilthey, Eduard Spranger, Theodor Litt, C. H. Becker, and Hans Richert. The reform they aspire to must be based on the democratic teacher who never belonged to Nazism. The democratic courses established for Nazi teachers have not met their expectations; therefore, a new type of higher school of pedagogy has been established. In these schools, the future teacher must learn the art of education in order to be able to organically develop the intellectual powers of students, to guide youth in the fear of God, toward spiritual, moral, and political maturity.

Religious instruction is regulated by the 1925 Concordat, articles 4–9, and is compulsory in all elementary schools and optional in secondary schools. Teachers of theology and all those who attend to the spiritual life of students are appointed in agreement with the Church, in accordance with the 1949 law, § 12. School instruction (1948 law) is compulsory from ages 6 to 18 and is free of charge.

The types of schools are as follows: kindergartens, lower and upper elementary schools, post-elementary schools, middle schools, classical secondary schools (*Gymnasien*), and technical schools.