Prussia had suffered defeat and humiliation at the hands of Napoleon, a defeat not expected by the seemingly invincible. Yet that defeat came at a moment in time when Prussia’ leaders were convinced that the state was badly in need of reform. They had already cautiously that the state was badly in need of reform. They had already cautiously made their own preparations for reform and found themselves surprised by the disaster, but soon afterwards recognized that this disaster provided the opportunity to implement their plans.
It is one of the salient features of the Prussian Reform Movement that an obsolete cabinet government was replaced by a small articulate group of critically thinking civil servants and officers whose main objective was not the revolutionary transformation of the state, but reform from within and, more important, the reconstruction of the administrative and military pyramid. The decisive and determining point was that reconstruction should proceed form within the existing Prussian institutions and not outside them. Harmony in place of discord, absorption in place of conflict were the guiding stars of the Prussian Reform Movement – but also one of the major reasons for its failure and the reassertion of the powers of reaction after 1815.
It is only natural that reformers like Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Boyen, Schrotter, Schon, Frey and Wilhelm von Humboldt should be attracted by Kant’s concept of liberty, liberty defined as the privilege and ability to dedicate one’s self to the fulfillment of duty – or the practical application of Kant’s categorical imperative. The royal subject was to become the citizen, a process which required the abolition of the limitations which had so far prevented him from accepting full ethical and political responsibility. Fichte simply carried Kant’s idealism one stage further in arguing that the state represented the focal point of the community, towards which the attention of each individual component should be directed.
Of the group of reformers four in particular gave that reform impetus, power and a sense of direction: Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, and Humboldt. Reichsfreiherr H.F. Karl von und zum Stein had begun his civil service career under Frederick the Great, had become president of Westphalia and from 1804 until 1806 had been minister of trade. He was born in Nassau in 1757, the year of Rossbach, the ninth of 10 children. The von Stein family were members of the Reichsritterschaft, the Knights of the Reich, a corporate body which during the second half of the 17th century and throughout the eighteenth fought a continuous battle against the centralizing and rationalizing forces of princely absolutism, against princes who sought aggrandizement at the expense of both Emperor and knightly nobility. At a time when Germany had disintegrated into something like 60 major princely courts the Knights of the Reich still maintained their corporate identity, their sense of unity and the consciousness of the essential unity of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. Precisely that gave Stein the strength and independence of mind which characterized his relationship with Frederick William III. The Knights of the Reich enjoyed legislative, fiscal and judicial privileges; they were subject only to the Emperor but were without representation in the Reichstag. But they were a declining caste, their economic base shrank, the feuds with the local princes were no longer fought with sword or lance but with costly legal action before the Reichs Chamber Court. To escape the downward spiral of decline many Knights of the Reich sought service and career at a powerful court, as did Stein, and it is significant that he and many others chose Prussia rather than any other court.
One of Stein’s first actions while still a member of the General Directory was the abolition, on 26 December 1805, of internal tolls in Prussia, and he generally endeavored to turn Prussia’s economy away from the mercantilist policies that had predominated in the 18th century towards a policy on the principles of Adam Smith, whose faithful disciple Stein confessed himself to be on more than one occasion. He wanted to curb the powers of the guilds, to make them accessible to all trades, crafts and professions, to break down the barriers which so far had existed in Prussia between town and countryside. Trade should prosper throughout the kingdom, and there was little point and even less justice in levying on the countryside a relatively low land tax along the lines decreed for the first time in history by the French Convention in 1793, and carried out in England under Pitt the Younger in 1799 and again, after the reopening of hostilities between Great Britain and France in 1803. There was basically very little that was new in the reforms suggested by Stein. They were reforms which had first been demanded from the ancient regime by the French physiocrats, had then been adopted by parts of the French nobility and bourgeoisie, and in the execution of which Turgot had failed to overcome the entrenched forces of the opposition.
Stein was to experience a similar opposition, particularly form the nobility. Although himself a member of the General Directory, between King and minister there still stood the royal cabinet, the removal of which Stein deemed essential if the reforms he had conceived were to be carried through before the tide of revolution and war overcame the whole of the kingdom. The entire administrative structure of the Prussian state was in need of reform. His thoughts on the subject he expressed in his ‘Description of the faulty Organization of the Cabinet and the Formation of a Ministerial Conference.’ In this memorandum he blandly observed that the Prussian state did not possess a written constitution, that supreme power was not divided between supreme head the ‘deputies of the nation’, that the Prussian state was nothing other than a new aggregate of its provinces. These provinces were governed by King and his cabinet in whose hands lay the only decision-making power. Ministers could only appeal to the cabinet or submit petitions. They had to carry out decision, nothing else. They did not even form a council in order to communicate with one another. The minister possessed the expertise, but the cabinet, lacking expertise and carrying no responsibility, had all the power. This was bound to affect the morale not only of the ministers but of the entire bureaucracy. He demanded the establishment of direct contact between King and the highest members of the civil service, so that the persons ‘which have to submit business of state to the King’s final decision’ should be ‘by law and publicly called upon to do so’ and their assemblies be purposefully organized and carry responsibility’.
Stein had no one other than Napoleon himself to thank for being recalled to office. When Frederick William III remarked to Napoleon that it was really only Hardenberg to whom he could entrust high office, Napoleon replied ‘Prenez le baron de Stein, c’est un homme d’espirit.’ There had been talk that Stein and Hardenberg had had difficulties in getting on with one another. Napoleon may have thought that after Stein’s recall any Prussian attempt at recovery would be blocked by the mutual rivalry between the two men.
On the day of the Treaty of Tilsit, 10 June 1807, the King, through Hardenberg, sent Stein the call to return to office, to forget old grievances. That Stein could be moved to return was mainly due to Hardenberg’s ability to persuade him. On 4 October 1807 he resumed office for exactly one year, a year of momentous decisions that were to influence Prussia’s and Germany’s history for a century. Within five days of Stein’s return the first great reform measure was published, the Edict concerning easier Possession and free Use of Landed Property as well as the Personal Relations of the Population on the Land. Hardenberg had already prepared the ground for Stein. One of two commissions which he had appointed was to examine and replace the old order of the estates by a more modernly structured organization of society and to articulate anew the legal rights of the rural population. In spite of the reforms begun by Frederick William I and continued by his first two successors much needed to be done, and that need was recognized. Since Napoleon’s creation of the grand duchy of Warsaw all forms of serfdom there had been abolished. This in turn exerted pressure upon Prussia to do likewise. Theodor von Schon, an East Prussian infused with the ideas of Kant and Adam Smith who had traveled widely, including an extensive stay in England. In the negotiations to obtain the co-operation of the nobility, its representatives were surprisingly open to the suggestions made concerning the emancipation of the peasants. All they demanded was that in return the Prussian government would do away with those measures which had been enacted under three previous monarchs which protected specific rights of the peasants.
It is important when talking of serfdom in the 18th century to be aware that this condition varied from country to country. In Russia and in Poland it was a condition of abject subjugation, little short of actual slavery. In Austria, until the reforms of Joseph II, it was somewhat milder. In Prussia, however, the peasant serf was a man with certain specific duties to carry out for his lord, with the right of every citizen to go to court, and a watchful bureaucracy to ensure that the land-owner did not abuse his rights.
In effect Stein’s reform, followed up by the measures of Hardenberg dissolved the traditional lord-peasant relationship; serfdom was completely abolished, the entire social structure of Prussia was altered. Land-ownership was no longer the privilege of the nobility. However, some aspects of the reform still had to wait to be implemented; patrimonial justice was only abolished in the wake of the revolution of 1849 and the policing power of the estate owner in 1872.
The City Ordinance published on 19 November 1808 represents a return to the principle of the liberty of the cities that was characteristic of the Middle Ages, but in its practical aspects was based upon the requirements of a modern society. The concept of an autonomous independent community was part of the law of medieval Germany. As elsewhere in Europe this concept was gradually pushed back by the forces of royal absolutism. Under Frederick William I the autonomous body of the city magistrates fulfilled only a perfunctory function: the cities were really run by his military and fiscal authorities. Even Frederick the Great had attempted to restore a small part of the privileges which the towns had once enjoyed. It was Stein’s intention to push back this bureaucratic over-centralization. However, he realized that this could not be done by returning to medieval corporations such as the guilds, but instead took as his example the French revolutionary practice of determining the social structure not by birth but according to income. The City Ordinance contains various passages which are copied from the French Constitution of 1791.
Before Stein left office, forced out on Napoleon’s demand, he suggested to the King that he put Prussia’s envoy at the Holy See, Wilhelm von Humboldt, at the head of the administration of culture and education. He saw the German language as opposed to the Romance languages was, so he argued, largely unadulterated by foreign influences, and that gave it immeasurable depth and a virile force of expression, whereas other northern European languages, heavily Latinized, were capable of expressing the surface of life only. They were dead languages. Hence, he went on, to compare these languages with German was futile – one cannot compare life with death. Germany, as the unique possessor of a living language, represented the original Volk, the Urvolk, the only one with a living language. It did not matter in this view that the German nation was politically disunited, as long as it maintained the integrity of its language. For sooner or later this common language would resurrect the nation, the German Volk, as one political unit.
Scharnhorst wanted to turn the army into the school of the nation, but in practical terms he had to form an efficient but cheap military force for an impoverished state. The solution he envisaged was firstly to draft all who were able to carry arms into the army – though because the Treaty of Tilsit had limited the Prussian army to 42,000 men this could not be fully carried out until 1813. The national service men were to serve for a limited but uninterrupted period of time in the army, then be released but with the duty to remain in the reserves. Standing army and reserves were to constitute the regular army, ready to be mobilized the moment war threatened the country. But to ensure that everyone served in the army the Landwehr, the militia, was to be called into being to act as reinforcements or for the protection of the lines of communications. At first of course the Landwehr was bound to include many who as yet had never served in the army, but as the system of national service developed, ultimately every Landwehr soldier would in earlier years have served in the army.
Considering the far-reaching aims of the Prussian Reform Movement (within a purely Prussian context), particularly those in the educational and military sectors, then the net result was a very disappointing one. All that had ultimately been achieved in the military sector was the transformation of an army that had largely been based on mercenaries into one that was specifically Prussian and whose function in a sociological sense was that of integrating all its members into the Prussian state community. However, in the realm of education, Humboldt’s influence attained international proportions, the extent of which lies beyond the scope of this work.