Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

Germany's Rude Awakening. Censorship in the Land of the Brothers Grimm by Frederick Ohles Review by: Barbara C. Anderson Central European History, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1992), pp. 464-466 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4546302 . Accessed: 20/06/2012 06:55
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in an unpublished on the transformation of taste. But he fragment already knows that the answer is "no," that aesthetic and moral commitments are conditioned by geography and economy and culture, and that this is troubling: "This skepticism should almost lead us astray, into own our aesthetic sense and sensibility" mistrusting (p. 67). The strategy Herder devises in these years (and never abandons) to defeat the dark powers of disintegration is to seek wholeness in what it history has given him. If it has not joined him with others politically, has linguistically. The German language, his one true means of comcan be his route to community. And if history has decreed munication, that Europeans give up some of their natural poetic impulsiveness for and self-consciousness, the task is not to reflectiveness philosophical While we can no longer believe in oracles or resist, but to reconcile. of something in us other to elaborate rhetoric, acknowledgment respond than our reasoning selves is critical to holding us together. If German the full communicative writers would concentrate on developing power of the mother tongue, drawing linguistic energy from other languages rather than deferring to them, if they could fashion some kind of union of poetry and drive for clarity of between the instinctive expressiveness they could establish (it seems) the true modern German philosophy, republic. It would preach its own versions of the good, the beautiful, the but (Her? true appropriate to its linguistic resources and circumstances, der implies, without quite saying it) because of the culture's essential coherence, there would be no doubt that they really were versions of the universal moral and good, beautiful, and true. The way to humanity's with a particular culture aesthetic aims is through close identification pursuing its fullest potential. Menze and Palma's translation is, by my sampling, good and true, if not responsible. Its lack of artfulness is especially beautiful. It is thoroughly likely all to the good. Herder's style would be awfully hard to capture in English idiom; the chance for the right touch of lavender contemporary with died Carlyle. Menges' notes are a useful (and essential) guide probably the allusive thicket of Herder's musings. through Hugh University West

of Richmond

Rude Awakening. Germany's Censorship the Brothers Grimm. By Frederick Ohles. London, England: The Kent State University + 227. $35.00. ISBN 0-87338-460-1.

of Kent, Ohio, and Press. 1992. Pp. ix

in the Land

The land of the Brothers Grimm was the electorate of Hesse. During the and in the first half of the nineteenth century it was an eighteenth

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German state that was ruled by a dynasty of princes with impoverished an unbridled Count Frederick, the penchant for personal absolutism. most notorious of these autocrats, sold thousands of Hessians into mili? colonists. His successor, tary service against Britain's North American William II, used the electorate as a battleground for a private vendetta against his wife that drove even the mild Grimms away from Kassel. Frederick William I, narrowly Finally, the last of the prince electors, a murdered at masked ball. He lost his throne through escaped being Hesse's annexation by Prussia in 1866. the bizarre twists of the rulers' careers merely highlighted a However, of economic bleak background backwardness. Bypassed by all major high ways and railroads, the principality languished in unrelieved agrar? ian poverty that, as a number of English visitors observed, produced submissiveness law-abiding among the inhabitants on the one hand, but on the other (p. 18). "narrow, dark and confused" living arrangements Even Hesse's intellectual of Marburg, seemed to center, the University be grafted upon a teeming for here, Jacob and Wilhelm underworld, Grimm launched their brilliant linguistic studies that captured in the famous fairy tales the irrational workings of the people's soul. In short, Hesse-Kassel seemed to be the very acme of iron repression and treacherous both markers along the German Sonderweg. servility, But Frederik Ohles dispels generalizations of this sort. Censorship, he was the nerve center of reactionary but it gave the explains, politics, and organized impulse for the genesis of dissent, focused opposition, two legislative activity. Germany's Rude Awakening, then, accomplishes distinct but related tasks: As a study in the history of books and the it "show(s) how ideas were kept out of print" practice of censorship of political culture it traces the galvanizing (p. 4); as an interpretation had on the development of political impact the issue of censorship consciousness and activity. Both themes revolve around the censors and their work. As an emof the government's was ployee library in Kassel, Jacob Grimm to the censorship commission as a matter of administrative appointed about the drudgery of his duties, he had no policy. While complaining to the behind them: He still accepted the role ofthe objections principle state as guardian of its charges. However, the revolt of 1830 propelled Hesse into a new era. The constitution, granted the following year, replaced fuzzy old notions of the organic nature of the state with fresh and sharply drawn demarcations of power that became a sparring ground between the government and the legislative assembly for the next two decades. Censorship was the salient point of contention. The govern? ment wielded it to stifle the opposition and the legislature made it into an issue in an effort to compel the ruler to realize constitutional guarantees of freedom ofthe press. The lines of battle crossed within the censorship commission itself.

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successor in that agency, was secretly the Grimm's Karl Bernhardi, guiding force in Hesse's principal political paper, the Friend of the Con? most notorious case of government Kassel's stitution. Meanwhile, cause within the into a celebrated turned pan-German move? oppression of the German Confederation's ment for change. At the instigation Central Investigatory Commission, Sylvester Jordan, the author of a professor at Marburg, and the legislative assemHesse's constitution, critic of government abuses, was arrested and bly's most outspoken accused of treason in 1839. For more than two years, Jordan was held in the Marburg castle, but his martyrdom stirred up a wave of publicity his Hesse's supreme court overturned all over Germany. Eventually, and in 1848, Jordan was elected to the German National conviction, Parliament in Frankfurt. researched study of censorship exposes a Hence, Ohles's thoroughly German events with developments of paths that connect network the Western world: the enormous leaps in literacy, the throughout politics, and the governments' mounting pressure toward participatory steering and deflecting force. Barbara The Collegiate School, C. Anderson VA

Richmond,

Diegescheiterte das Deutsche

und Osterreich-Ungarn, England in der Ara Andrassy bis 1878/ (1867 Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 79). By Rainer F. Schmidt. 1992. Pp. ix + 653. DM 133.00. ISBN 3-631-44627-6. Allianz: Reich

account of the foreign policy of Rainer Schmidt gives us an impressive Andrassy, focused on the Eastern crisis ofthe late seventies. He contends a Hungarian who had been persecuted during the 1848 that Andrassy, to the Ballhausplatz. revolution, Andrassy brought a new perspective distrusted Russian ambitions in the Balkans and the powerful response Beust, who wanted among the South Slavs. Unlike his predecessor revenge on Bismarck, and his Austrian military colleagues, who wanted to divide the Balkans in cooperation with Russia, Andrassy's fantasy was to defeat the Russians decisively and discredit them as protectors of the Balkan Slavs. An opportunity might come, Andrassy theorized, if the could be caught in a Russians, marching overland on Constantinople, Austrian descent on their rear from the mousetrap by a simultaneous while they faced British warships at the Straits. passes of Transylvania was Andrassy's idee fixe Schmidt this situation, argues, Creating his ministry and provides the inner logic to his convoluted throughout diplomacy. Schmidt's portrayal of Andrassy Austrian history and historiography. is striking. He situates Andrassy in Some twenty-five years ago Wal-