We Germans, especially, have often
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding.
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding.
Treitschke - 1915 - Germany, France, Russia, and Islam
And certainly
it was fortunate that the nation could look up
unitedly to the grey-headed ruler, whose vener-
able figure will always appear greater to coming
generations the more closely it is made the subject
of historical investigation. "His Majesty sees
everything! " the sergeant-majors used to thunder
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? 212 In Memory of the Great War
at their careless men, and they said the truth.
When destiny raised him at an advanced age to the
throne he had never sought, he soon perceived that
Providence had determined him and his army to be
an instrument for its dispensations. "If I did
not beHeve that," he said calmly, ''how could I
otherwise have been able to bear the burden of
this war? " As a youth, he had admired the
nation under arms, when under the pressure of
necessity it had collected to carry out Scham-
horst's plans though only half -drilled ; as a man,
he had constantly considered with Schamhorst's
successor. Boy en, how these unripe ideas might
take a vital shape; finally as king, amid severe
parliamentary struggles, he had carried through
the three-years' service law which strengthened the
troops of the line, and secured us an army which
was at once popular and fully trained. He knew
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
Alone, without a council of war, he formed his
resolves according to Moltke's reports. Earlier
and more clearly than all those around him, he
perceived that the battle of Sedan had indeed
decided, but was far from ending the war. He
knew the fervent patriotic pride of the French; he
possessed in a special degree the rich experience
of old age preserved by a powerful memory; he
remembered how fifty-six years previously the
armed throngs of the peasantry of Champagne
had, as it were, started up out of the ground under
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? In Memory of the Great War 213
the eyes of the Prussians. Sooner and more clearly
than all others, he perceived the danger which
threatened from the Loire, and ordered the army
in the South to be strengthened. Thus, till the end
he remained the Commander-in-Chief, and when he
left French territory, even after such victories, he
seriously thought of the perpetual vicissitudes of
mortal things, and warned the army of what was
now united Germany that it could maintain its
position only by perpetual striving after improve-
ment.
It is the characteristic charm of German history
that we have never known a Napoleon suppressing
all the personalities around him. At all great
epochs there have stood near our principal heroes
free men of firm character and assured self-con-
fidence. King William also, a bom ruler, under-
stood how to allow able men, each superior to
himself in his own department, to have a free hand,
each in the right place. Nothing is more admir-
able than the true friendship which united the
Commander-in-Chief to the strategist, the intel-
lectual leader of the army, the wonderful man on
whom prodigal Nature bestowed not only the
sure eye and genial energy of a great commander,
but the keenness of an intelligence which compre-
hended almost the whole range of human know-
ledge and the artistic sense of a classical author.
And by the side of Moltke stood Roon, the stem
and bitterly hated; hard and immovable in his
principles hke a devout dragoon of Oliver Crom-
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? 214 In Memory of the Great War
weirs, he had carried out the reconstitution of the
army according to the instructions of his master;
now his converted opponents called him "Ger-
many's new armourer. " Then came the army-
leaders. After the Crown Prince, Goeben, the
serious and taciturn, of whom his men said that he
could not speak, but also that he could make no
mistake; they did not know that he could write
in a style like that of Csesar's Commentaries.
Then Con stan tine Alvensleben, a genuine son of
the Brandenburg warriors, cheerful and good-
natured, but terrible in battle, impetuous and
unweariable, until at last his troops' shout of
victory, "Hurrah! Brandenburg! " rang out at Le
Mans. Then the spirited, fiery Franke von der
Tann, who now helped to complete what he had
once attempted in the ardent fervour of youth, as
leader of the Schleswig-Holstein voluntary corps;
and so on, a large company of brave and thought-
ful men whom our people in the course of years
will regard with ever-deepening affection as they
do the heroes of the War of Liberation. Just as
the King himself was so simple and assured in his
bearing that the flatterers of the Courts never
dared to make any attempts on him, so his gener-
als, with a very few exceptions, displayed the
modest demeanour which Germans like. Let
anyone go through the forest to the Httle hunting-
lodge of Dreilinden. There in rural retirement
lived the commander to whom the announcement
was made, Monseigneur, fai Vordre de vous rendre
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? In Memory of the Great War 215
la garde imperiale. This was Prince Friedrich
Karl, who brought about the greatest capitulation
in the worid's history.
At last came the time of harvest. Paris sur-
rendered, and the last desperate attempt of the
French against Southern Alsace came to a pitiable
end. Four great armies were taken prisoners or
disarmed, and all the German races had an equal
and glorious share in the enormous success. In
these last weeks of the war there stepped into
the foreground of German history the strong
man of whom the troops had so often spoken by
their bivouac-fires. Ever since historical times
began the masses of people have always rated
character and energy above intellect and culture;
the greatest and most boundless popularity was
always only bestowed on the heroes of religion and
of the sword. The one statesman who seems to be
an exception only confirms the rule. In the popu-
lar mind Bismarck was never anything but the
gigantic warrior with the bronze helmet and the
yellow collar of the cuirassiers of Mars la Tour, as
the painters depicted him riding down the avenue
of poplars at Sedan. It was he who had once
spoken the salutary word, "Get rid of Austria! "
It was he who by treaties with the South German
States had in his far-sighted way prepared for the
inevitable war. And when twenty-five years
ago he read to the Reichstag the French declara-
tion of war, all felt as though he were the first to
raise the cry, ''All Germany on into France! "
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? 2i6 In Memory of the Great War
and it seemed to all as though he rode into the
enemy's land like a herald in front of the German
squadrons. Now when the war was over he
summed up the net results of the great battles,
and after troublesome negotiations settled the
constitution of the new kingdom. This constitu-
tion seemed quite new, and yet it evoked the old
sacred unforgettable emotions of German loyalty
to the Kaiser. It appeared complicated even to
formlessness, and yet it was fundamentally simple
because it admitted of unlimited development.
In her relations to foreign countries Germany
was henceforth one, and in spite of much doubt
all discerning people hoped that the Empire,
possessing an imperial head, would now attain
to its full growth.
This work of Bismarck's brought peace and
reconciliation to nearly all the old factions which
had hitherto struggled on our territory. They
had all made mistakes, and almost all rediscovered
in the constitution of the Empire some of their
most deeply-cherished projects. Our princes
especially had been in the wrong. In the course
of an eventful history they had often been the
protectors of German religious freedom and the
rich many-sidedness of our civilization, but had
been often misled by dynastic envy and pride,
even to the point of committing treachery. At
the middle of the century their pride was at its
height, for what else was the object of the war of
1866 except to break in pieces the State of the
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? In Memory of the Great War 217
great Frederick, and to degrade it to the wretched
condition of the petty German princedoms? But
the dethroning of the sovereigns of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau was a tremendous warning to the
princes. They recollected themselves and remem-
bered the noble traditions of imperial sentiment
in the old princely families ; and as soon as the war
began they gathered round their royal leader.
Therefore they could, according to the old privi-
leges of the German princes, themselves elect their
emperor, and secure for themselves their proper
share in the new imperial power. There in France
was the first foundation laid for that invisible
council of German princes, which is something else
than the Council of the Confederation, which is
not mentioned in any article of the imperial con-
stitution, and yet always works perceptibly for the
good of the Fatherland. Never yet at a critical
time has the honest help of the princes failed the
Hohenzollem Kaisers.
The Conservative parties in Prussia had
courageously championed the reconstitution of the
army, but had at first followed the German policy
of the new Chancellor of the Confederation not
without mistrust; but now they saw the martial
glory of their King established, and soon recognized
that the revolutionary idea of German unity really
signified nothing else than the victory of the
monarchic constitution over dynastic anarchy.
A tardy reparation was made to the old Gotha
Party, the much-ridiculed professors of Frankfort.
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? 21 8 In Memory of the Great War
They had certainly made a mistake when they
thought to constrain the imperial power by the
authoritative decree of a parliament ; but now there
fell to them the honour of being the first pioneers
of the nation's thought. What their leader,
Dahlmann, had said in the spring of 1848, was
literally fulfilled : "When Germany's united council
of princes leads before the Reichstag a Prince of
their own choice as hereditary head of the Empire,
then freedom and order will co-exist in harmony. "
Even the Democrats, so far as they were not mere
visionaries, were able to rejoice at a success.
Their best representative, Ludwig Uhland, had
been in the right when he prophesied, "No head
will be crowned over Germany which is not richly
anointed with democratic oil. " Without the
co-operation of the Parliaments of the North Ger-
man Confederation and the Southern States the
new imperial power could not have come into
existence.
The heaviest blow befell the partisans of Austria,
the "Great Germans. "^ So severe was it that
even their party -name entirely disappeared. But
those who were sincere among them had only
fought against the German "rival-Emperor"
because they feared a Prussian imperial power
would be too weak to sustain the position of the
nation as one of the Great Powers. And how was
it now? It was never doubtful whether a man was
a German or not. We bore the mark of our good
* That is, partisans of the union of Germany and Austria.
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? In Memory of the Great War 219
and evil qualities as distinctly impressed upon our
brows as formerly did the Greeks, our kindred in
temperament and destiny. But it was always a
matter of dispute for centuries where Germany
exactly was ; its boundaries were constantly chang-
ing or disappearing in the fog of "rights of the
Empire. " Now for the first time there existed
a German State whose frontiers were clearly
defined. It had lost the frontier territories of the
South-east, which for a long time past had only
been loosely connected with the Empire, but as a
compensation had finally recovered by conquest
those on the Rhine and the Moselle, which had
been torn away from the Empire. It had also,
through the State of the Hohenzollems, won
wide territories in the East and North which had
never or merely nominally belonged to the old
Empire, i. e. , Silesia, Posen, Prussia, the land of the
old Teutonic orders, and Schleswig. It was more
powerful than the old Empire had been for six
centuries. Who could now speak of it sneeringly
as ''Little Germany"? Out of the perpetual ebb
and flow of races in Central Europe there had
finally emerged two great Empires -- one purely
German with a mixture of religions, the other
Catholic, and comprising a variety of races who
yet could not dispense with the German language
and culture. Such an outcome of the struggles of
centuries could not fail to satisfy for a time even
the imagination of the "Greater Germany"
enthusiasts. The great majority of the nation
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? 220 In Memory of the Great War
joined in jubilantly when, in the Palace of Ver-
sailles, the acclamation of the princes and the army
greeted the Emperor, who in his deep modesty
accepted the new dignity only with hesitation.
Not all the blossoms of those days of enthusiasm
have ripened into fruit. We hoped then that the
intelligible resentment of the conquered would in
two decades at least have grown milder, and that
a friendly and neighbourly relation between
two peoples so closely united by common aims
of civilization would again be possible. But our
hopes were vain. Over the Vosges there came to
us voices of hatred, unanswered indeed, but irre-
concilable; serious and learned people even sug-
gested to us to give up volimtarily the western
frontier territories which had been recovered by
the sacrifice of thousands of our men. This was an
impudent insult, to which in the consciousness of
our good right we could only reply with cold con-
tempt. Unavoidably the influences of the war of
1870 operate much longer in the formation of the
community of European States than did those of
the War of Liberation. The irreconcilable hatred
of our neighbours confines our foreign policy to one
spot, and cramps the development of our power
overseas. We hoped also that the old crippling
jealousy between Austria and Germany would
disappear, that the two would stand independently
side by side as free allies, and that then the Teu-
tonic race on the Danube would flourish more
vigorously. This also was an error. With total
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? In Memory of the Great War 221
lack of consideration, the sub-Germanic peoples
of the Danube Empire verified the old rule of
historical ingratitude towards the Germans who
had brought them civilization. Forcibly the
conviction was impressed upon us that at home, at
any rate, where we are masters, we must defend
every inch-breadth of German civilization against
foreign Powers. Moreover, it was natural that
after our victory a truce should be proclaimed
between the German parties, but our party
struggles assumed rougher and coarser shapes
from year to year.
In the natural course of things, after the victory,
a truce was proclaimed between the German
political parties. But our party strifes have
become from year to year rougher and coarser.
They concern themselves less with political ideas
than with economic interests; they stir up the
flame of hatred between class and class, and
threaten the peace of society.
This coarsening of politics has its deepest source
in a serious alteration which has taken place in
our whole national life. Much that we considered
characteristic of a decaying old world is the out-
come of every over-cultivated city-civilization,
and is being repeated to-day before our eyes. A
democratized society does not care, as enthusi-
asts suppose, for the aristocracy of talent, but
for the power of gold or of the mob, or both to-
gether. In the new generation there is disappear-
ing terribly fast, what Goethe called the final aim
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? 222 In Memory of the Great War
of all moral education -- reverence: reverence for
God; reverence for the barriers which nature has
placed between the two sexes, and the limits
which the structure of human society has imposed
upon desire; reverence for the Fatherland which, as
an ideal, is said to be yielding its place to the
dream of a sensual and cosmopolitan plutocracy.
The wider culture spreads the more shallow it
becomes; the thoughtfulness of the ancient world
is despised ; only that which serves the aims of the
immediate future seems still important. Where
everyone gives his opinion about everything,
according to the newspaper and the encyclopaedia,
there original mental power becomes rare, and with
it the fine courage of ignorance, which marks an
independent mind. Science, which, once descend-
ing too deep, sought to fathom the inscrutable,
loses itself in expansion, and only isolated pines of
original thought tower above the low undergrowth
of collections of memoranda. The satiated taste,
which no longer understands the true, goes after
realism, and prizes the wax figure more than
the work of art. In the tedium of an empty
existence the affected naturalness of betting and
athletic sports gains an undeserved importance,
and when we see how immoderately the heroes of
the circus and the performers of the playground
are over-prized, we are unpleasantly reminded of
the enormous costly mosaic picture of the twenty-
eight prize-fighters in the Baths of Caracalla.
These are all serious signs of the time. But
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? In Memory of the Great War 223
no one stands so high that he can only accuse his
people.
We Germans, especially, have often
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding. And no one can say that he
really knows his own people. In the spring of
1870 even the most sanguine did not suppose that
our young men would strike as they did. So we,
also, will hope that to-day, deep in the hearts of
our people, there are at work rejuvenating powers
which we know not of. And how much that does
not pass away has, in spite of all, remained to us
from the great war. The Empire stands upright,
stronger than we ever expected ; every German dis-
cerns its mighty influence in the ordinary occur-
rences of every day, in the current exchange of the
market-place. None of us could live without the
Empire, and how strongly the thought of it glows
in our hearts is shown by the grateful affection
which seeks to console the first Imperial Chancellor
for the bitter experiences of his old age. In my
youth it was often said, *'If the Germans become
German, they will found the kingdom on earth
which will bring peace to the world. " We are
not so inoffensive any longer. For a long time
past we have known that the sword must maintain
what the sword won, and to the end of history,
the virile saying will hold good, gta gta ^la'C^ziai,
"Force is overcome by force. " And yet there is
a deep significance in that old verse about the
Germans. Not only was the war for Prussia's
existence -- the Seven Years' War, -- the first Euro-
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? 224 In Memory of the Great War
pean war, not only did our State combine both the
old State-systems of the East and the West into a
European community of States, but being at last
strengthened as a central State, during a quarter
of a century of dangerous diplomatic friction, it
has offered peace to the Continent not by means of
the panacea of the pacificists -- disarming -- but by
the exact opposite -- universal arming. Germany's
example compelled armies to become nations,
nations to become armies, and consequently war
to be a dangerous experiment ; and since no French-
man has yet asserted that France can recover her
old booty by force of arms, we may perhaps hope
for some more years of peace. Meanwhile, our
western frontier territory coalesces slowly, but
unceasingly, with the old Fatherland, and the time
will come when German culture, which has changed
its place of abode so often, will again recover
complete predominance in its old home. Finally,
after so many painful disappointments, we have
lately succeeded in a work, as only a great and
united people can succeed. It was, indeed, a well-
omened day when the canal between the North
Sea and the Baltic was opened, and the Ger-
mans on the Suabian Sea sent their brotherly
greeting to the distant coast.
Such hours of happy success you must hold fast
in memory, my dear comrades, when your heads
grow dizzy with the frenzy of party-spirit. Our
festival to-day has especial significance for you.
It is the privilege and happiness of youth to look
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? In Memory of the Great War 225
up, to trust the future in good spirits, not to de-
spise the deeds of their fathers, nor to become sub-
merged in the controversies of the day. You have
not, Hke we of the older generation, helped to con-
quer your Fatherland for yourselves with weapons,
or the surgeon's knife, or the weak pen; you
have not, like we, seen dear friends of your youth
perish in body and soul, because they despaired
too soon of Germany. To you comes the simple
summons, Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. Yes,
you have obtained it, without any merit on your
part, this imited Fatherland, which for the good of
mankind mounted ever higher, from Fehrbellin to
Leuthen, from Belle- Alliance to Sedan. It can pro-
vide scope for every virile force, and the best is
hardly good enough for it. If the call of the
war-lord should ever summon you under the ban-
ners of the eagle, you will not wish to be weaker
in courage and faithfulness, in the fear of God
and devotion, than the old Berlin students, whose
honoured names we preserve in marble in our
University hall. Whether Germany demands from
you the toils of peace, or the deeds of war,
cherish ever the vow which once the poet, looking
down on the corpse-strewn fields around Metz,
made in all our names :
Think not that the blood you shed,
Flowed in vain, O honoured dead,
Or shall ever be forgot !
And now, gentlemen, as we do in all national
15
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? 226 In Memory of the Great War
festivals of our University, let us remember,
reverentially, with loyal fidelity, the ruler who
guards our Empire with his sceptre. God bless his
Majesty, our Emperor and King. God grant him
to exercise a wise, righteous, and firm rule, and
grant us all strength to guard and to increase
the precious inheritance of those glorious times.
Come, good Germans, everywhere! Join with me
in the cry, " Long live Emperor and Empire! "
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? LUTHER AND THE GERMAN NATION
(A Lecture given at Darmstadt on November 7,
1883)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There are many among you who stood, not
many weeks ago, on the heights of the Niederwald,
when our venerable Emperor presided at the unveil-
ing of the statue representing Germania girt with
her sword; and you there had the privilege of
uniting with your compatriots from far and near
in a feeling of joy and thankfulness. For centuries
we Germans have been denied the luxury of join-
ing together in that happy and unenvious contem-
plation of our past which is the true life-blood of a
healthy people. The very victories which brought
about the unity of our Empire were the outcome
of the first great united act performed by the whole
nation since immemorial times. Glorious indeed
is the history of our nation, which has so often
given to this part of our globe the foremost figure
of the century, and has, in warfare, so often spoken
words of awakening or of reconciliation. Nearly
all our great men were, however, so inextricably
involved in the whirl of bewildering contrasts
227
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? 228 Luther and the German Nation
which disorganized our inner life that even to this
day they remain an enigma to great masses of the
people, and are looked upon merely as the pioneers
of a family, a party, or a creed -- ^not simply as
German heroes.
It was during the eighteenth century that the
last and greatest representative of the old-fash-
ioned unlimited monarchy held sway among us,
and now that we are able to judge of the extent of
his labours, the more enlightened among us have
begun to feel that he was fighting for Germany
when he waged war against Austria and the Holy
Roman Empire. But in spite of this King
Frederick, like his ancestor the Great Elector, will
ever remain the favourite of his Prussians, while
to the general mass of the Southern Germans he
will continue to be something of a stranger. A
century earlier we secured the religious peace of
Europe after a horrible war, but victory was pur-
chased at a fearful price, i. e. , the laying waste
of our ancient culture ; and almost the only lumin-
ous figure in all that sombre period, the hero
Gustavus Adolphus, was a foreigner. Moreover,
even his admirers must admit that his victorious
career terminated -- very favourably to us -- just
at the moment when his power began to be prejudi-
cial to our country.
The same limitations are to be observed even
in the commemorative festival which our Pro-
testant nation is thankfully celebrating this week.
It is not, unhappily, a festival in which all Ger-
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? Luther and the German Nation 229
mans will take part. Millions of our compatriots
are holding aloof in silence, or even in open dis-
approval. They are neither able nor willing
to imderstand that the Reformer of our Church
was the pioneer of the whole German nation on the
road to a freer civilization, and that in the State
and in Society, in our homes and in our centres
of learning, his spirit still breathes life into us.
Everyone who takes it upon himself to speak of
Luther must confess what is his own attitude
towards the great moral problems of the present
day. And the accusations of those who are un-
able to comprehend his greatness are as passion-
ate in tone to-day as if the Reformer still walked
in our midst.
Even during his life-time Martin Luther incurred
the penalty which awaits all great men, and
especially all great fighters: he was misunderstood.
During the early years of his public activity --
years so full of promise -- ^he was greeted by the
nation with a tempestuous joy such as has not been
seen again in Germany imtil our own time. In the
days when he first belled the cat, when, forced
forward by a lively conscience and the driving
power of untrammelled thought, he turned from
the paths of ancient orthodoxy to those of open
heresy; when he threw the Papal Bull into the
fire and gave that ringing call to the "Christian
nobility of the German nation," in which he
invited his Germans to reform the Church and the
State, root and branch; then it was that he stood
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? 230 Luther and the German Nation
revealed before the Emperor and the Empire
as the leader of the nation, a man as heroic in
aspect as the patron saint of his people, the warrior
Michael. Then it was that men sought to express
their joy in the words of the folk-song :
He showed himself at Worms,
All ready for the fray;
He silenced all his enemies,
And none could overcome him.
Then, also, it seemed as if the elemental forces
at work in a nation stirred to its depths -- the re-
ligious zeal of pious minds, the scientific curiosity
of the rising generation, the national hatred
of a knightly nobility for the foreign prelates,
the discontent of an oppressed peasantry -- were
about to unite in a mighty torrent impetuous
enough to sweep all Roman organizations and
influences out of our State and our Church. The
royal dignity of Germany was, however, still in
close bondage to the world-embracing policy of the
Holy Roman Empire. It can hardly have been
an accident that the crown was at that moment-
ous period worn by a stranger who could not
discern the beating of our heart, and whose only
answer to the acclamations with which the Germans
hailed the courageous frankness of their country-
man was a disdainful smile and the words, "Such
a man shall never make me a heretic. "
As soon as it became evident that the Emperor
had refused to listen to the voice of the nation, the
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? Luther and the German Nation 231
Reformer found ranged against him not only the
political strength of the Spanish World-Empire,
but also the immense moral force embodied in the
firm loyalty of our nation to the Emperor. Class-
hatred -- that mortal sin which has played so large
a part in our history -- now again made its appear-
ance. The nobility frittered away their hot-
blooded energy in the carrying on of aimless and
most unhappy feuds. The peasants interpreted
the gospel doctrine of Hberty in a material sense,
and plunged into a furious social war. Luther,
however, believed that his holy treasure had been
insulted, and poured all the vials of his wrath
upon the fools who sought to settle the problem
of the gospel with hammer and tongs. When
this horrible rising had been horribly punished by
a cruel nobility, the man who had been so lately
glorified by his compatriots found himself cursed
by the common people. In the meantime Eras-
mus, the first scholar of the century, had separated
himself from the Wittenberg party; Luther's
teacher, the mystic Staupitz, and the clever hu-
manists, Crotus Rubianus and Eobanus Hessus,
recoiled from him in terror. Their defection
made it clear that the new teaching would at
first have but a partial influence over the most
highly educated sections of the nation ; and as this
new doctrine freed the strong obstinacy as well
as the power of independent thought which char-
acterize the German character, its adherents
began to fritter away their strength in a highly
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? 232 Luther and the German Nation
dangerous manner. Undisciplined fanaticism and
quarrels about dogma broke their unity.
Luther, thus harassed and forsaken on all sides,
sought refuge among the German Princes. If his
last years were rich in great results, they were even
richer in painful disillusionments. He had begun
hoping that he might give new energies to Church
life in Christendom, or at least in his own nation.
Now he was forced to content himself with the
knowledge that small evangelical Churches had
gradually come into being in the territories of
the greater among the German temporal princes;
and he who watches, even superficially, the dawn
of day in history may consider it a merciful dis-
pensation of Providence that the Reformer, whom
over- work had quickly aged, should have died just
before the dissensions and aimless weaknesses of
the leaders in the Schmalkaldian War led to the
subjection of German Protestants to a foreign
rule. The glory of departed heroes is usually
exaggerated in the popular imagination; Luther,
on the contrary, appeared to his contemporaries a
lesser man than he really was. In those weary
decades of political inactivity and theological dis-
putes which followed upon the golden period of the
German Reformation, a little sect proceeded to
recreate Luther after its own image, as if he also
had been nothing but a zealous preacher of Bible
truths and a respectable father of a family, and as
if his aim had merely been to found a separate
Church called by the name of a sinful mortal. It
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? Luther and the German Nation 233
is only the historical science of our own day which
has succeeded in plucking up heart to comprehend
Luther in his entirety, Luther the epitome of his
century, in whose soul nearly all the new ideas of
the time were mightily re-echoed. We are far
enough removed from him in time to be able to
gauge the indirect consequences of his destructive
and constructive labours, to observe all the seeds
of a new culture which he sowed in German
soil with all the unconsciousness of genius, and to
realize with thankfulness how faithfully he kept
the promise thus made by him: " I was bom for my
Germans, and them will I serve. "
The joy of life has from the beginning possessed
the German soul; but side by side with this there
has always existed a meditative seriousness
which is painfully conscious of the transitory
nature of all earthly things. Undaunted courage
has always been accompanied in our national
character by a deep longing for deliverance from
the curse of sin. Of all the nations of Western
Europe, the ancient Germans alone had some
premonition, even in their heathen days, of the
future disappearance of this sinful race and of a
new world of purity and light which is to come.
To such a people the glad tidings from Jerusalem
were peculiarly acceptable, and the marvellous
buildings of our old cathedrals sufficiently testify
to the piety and the earnestness with which the
Germans received the new faith. It should,
nevertheless, be observed that the Christian
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? 234 Luther and the German Nation
doctrine had assumed a form in Rome which,
on its arrival in our midst, never entirely recom-
mended itself to us. All ages, peoples, and coun-
tries seemed to be united in the great community
of saints which bound the Church militant here
below to the Church expectant of the poor souls
in Purgatory and the Church triumphant of the
saints in Heaven. From the treasury of good
works laid up by the saints the Church dealt forth
remission of sins to the faithful, through the
medium of a ruling priesthood, whose members
were empowered by the spiritual gifts of ordina-
tion to change bread and wine into the Body
and Blood of the Saviour. Outside the Church
was no salvation; she embraced and hallowed
the life of every Christian from the cradle to the
bier, from baptism to extreme unction. The con-
ception was indeed a great and wonderful one.
The wisdom and piety of many holy persons
and a rare talent for ruling men had built up the
wonderful structure throughout many centuries.
Each stone stood firmly cemented to its fellow,
and the inevitable and logical sequence of one
dogma upon another gave the Christian no choice
between submission and heresy. But the close
logic of the Romans had never quite satisfied the
German mind; the living conscience of our people
could never find peace in means of grace supplied
by the Church and in prescribed good works alone.
As early as the fourteenth century the German
territories rang with the Kyrie eleisons of the sect
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? Luther and the German Nation 235
of Flagellants, and ever louder and more despair-
ing -- almost as heartrending as in the earliest days
of Christian history -- grew the cry of the sinful
creature pleading for reconciliation with its Creator.
Further, the bellicose and practical mind of the
Germans was bewildered by the teaching of the
old Church. This beautiful world offered so
many laurel wreaths of honour, and so many
elevated pleasures to men of energy, and yet
all these were to be of no account in comparison
with the higher sanctity of dedicated men, of
priests and monks who had renounced everything
that binds men to one another by human ties, and
who despised not only the infinite happiness, but
also the sacred duties of married life. Walther
von der Vogelweide, the greatest of our mediaeval
poets, pondered sadly over this dark riddle, com-
plaining that "One and the same heart can never,
alas! receive God's grace in form of riches and in
form of honour. "
And this priestly hierarchy, which kept itself
so immeasurably above the obedient multitude,
which so greatly scorned all worldly activities, had
long been the prey of a shameless worldliness which
caused secular persons to regard its members as a
race of hypocrites. The clergy owned the wealth-
iest third of Germany, always formed a majority
and carried all motions in the Reichstag, and
exerted a political influence which was looked upon
by the Germans as a kind of foreign rule. This
latter idea was due to the knowledge that the
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? 236 Luther and the German Nation
Church was ruled by the Pope and his Italian
prelates; and all the wealth of intellect, wit, and
culture which hobnobbed together in the ante-
rooms of the Vatican, all the masterpieces of the
chisel and the brush which the sun of Papal favour
brought into being, could not console our nation
for the fact that the mistress of Christendom
was the most profligate city of the earth. It was
in vain that the Germans had sought, at the
councils of the fifteenth century, to reform the
abuses in the Church. When Luther appeared
the nation was in a dangerous state of ferment,
the prey of conflicting emotions. On the one hand
were the pious persons, consumed by scruples, and
taking painful stock of their sins and their good
works, and contemplating the popular pictures
of the Dance of Death with holy terror; on the
other stood the sensuous lovers of life, full of
energy and high spirits, rejoicing in crude jests
and delighted to mock at the caricature of a
world turned upside down. But to whichever class
they belonged, all Germans united in hating the
foreign yoke.
The actual setting free of Germany was the
direct outcome of an internal conflict waged in
an honest German conscience. Luther drew from
his very humility suflicient strength to endow him
with the utmost boldness.
it was fortunate that the nation could look up
unitedly to the grey-headed ruler, whose vener-
able figure will always appear greater to coming
generations the more closely it is made the subject
of historical investigation. "His Majesty sees
everything! " the sergeant-majors used to thunder
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? 212 In Memory of the Great War
at their careless men, and they said the truth.
When destiny raised him at an advanced age to the
throne he had never sought, he soon perceived that
Providence had determined him and his army to be
an instrument for its dispensations. "If I did
not beHeve that," he said calmly, ''how could I
otherwise have been able to bear the burden of
this war? " As a youth, he had admired the
nation under arms, when under the pressure of
necessity it had collected to carry out Scham-
horst's plans though only half -drilled ; as a man,
he had constantly considered with Schamhorst's
successor. Boy en, how these unripe ideas might
take a vital shape; finally as king, amid severe
parliamentary struggles, he had carried through
the three-years' service law which strengthened the
troops of the line, and secured us an army which
was at once popular and fully trained. He knew
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
Alone, without a council of war, he formed his
resolves according to Moltke's reports. Earlier
and more clearly than all those around him, he
perceived that the battle of Sedan had indeed
decided, but was far from ending the war. He
knew the fervent patriotic pride of the French; he
possessed in a special degree the rich experience
of old age preserved by a powerful memory; he
remembered how fifty-six years previously the
armed throngs of the peasantry of Champagne
had, as it were, started up out of the ground under
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? In Memory of the Great War 213
the eyes of the Prussians. Sooner and more clearly
than all others, he perceived the danger which
threatened from the Loire, and ordered the army
in the South to be strengthened. Thus, till the end
he remained the Commander-in-Chief, and when he
left French territory, even after such victories, he
seriously thought of the perpetual vicissitudes of
mortal things, and warned the army of what was
now united Germany that it could maintain its
position only by perpetual striving after improve-
ment.
It is the characteristic charm of German history
that we have never known a Napoleon suppressing
all the personalities around him. At all great
epochs there have stood near our principal heroes
free men of firm character and assured self-con-
fidence. King William also, a bom ruler, under-
stood how to allow able men, each superior to
himself in his own department, to have a free hand,
each in the right place. Nothing is more admir-
able than the true friendship which united the
Commander-in-Chief to the strategist, the intel-
lectual leader of the army, the wonderful man on
whom prodigal Nature bestowed not only the
sure eye and genial energy of a great commander,
but the keenness of an intelligence which compre-
hended almost the whole range of human know-
ledge and the artistic sense of a classical author.
And by the side of Moltke stood Roon, the stem
and bitterly hated; hard and immovable in his
principles hke a devout dragoon of Oliver Crom-
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? 214 In Memory of the Great War
weirs, he had carried out the reconstitution of the
army according to the instructions of his master;
now his converted opponents called him "Ger-
many's new armourer. " Then came the army-
leaders. After the Crown Prince, Goeben, the
serious and taciturn, of whom his men said that he
could not speak, but also that he could make no
mistake; they did not know that he could write
in a style like that of Csesar's Commentaries.
Then Con stan tine Alvensleben, a genuine son of
the Brandenburg warriors, cheerful and good-
natured, but terrible in battle, impetuous and
unweariable, until at last his troops' shout of
victory, "Hurrah! Brandenburg! " rang out at Le
Mans. Then the spirited, fiery Franke von der
Tann, who now helped to complete what he had
once attempted in the ardent fervour of youth, as
leader of the Schleswig-Holstein voluntary corps;
and so on, a large company of brave and thought-
ful men whom our people in the course of years
will regard with ever-deepening affection as they
do the heroes of the War of Liberation. Just as
the King himself was so simple and assured in his
bearing that the flatterers of the Courts never
dared to make any attempts on him, so his gener-
als, with a very few exceptions, displayed the
modest demeanour which Germans like. Let
anyone go through the forest to the Httle hunting-
lodge of Dreilinden. There in rural retirement
lived the commander to whom the announcement
was made, Monseigneur, fai Vordre de vous rendre
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? In Memory of the Great War 215
la garde imperiale. This was Prince Friedrich
Karl, who brought about the greatest capitulation
in the worid's history.
At last came the time of harvest. Paris sur-
rendered, and the last desperate attempt of the
French against Southern Alsace came to a pitiable
end. Four great armies were taken prisoners or
disarmed, and all the German races had an equal
and glorious share in the enormous success. In
these last weeks of the war there stepped into
the foreground of German history the strong
man of whom the troops had so often spoken by
their bivouac-fires. Ever since historical times
began the masses of people have always rated
character and energy above intellect and culture;
the greatest and most boundless popularity was
always only bestowed on the heroes of religion and
of the sword. The one statesman who seems to be
an exception only confirms the rule. In the popu-
lar mind Bismarck was never anything but the
gigantic warrior with the bronze helmet and the
yellow collar of the cuirassiers of Mars la Tour, as
the painters depicted him riding down the avenue
of poplars at Sedan. It was he who had once
spoken the salutary word, "Get rid of Austria! "
It was he who by treaties with the South German
States had in his far-sighted way prepared for the
inevitable war. And when twenty-five years
ago he read to the Reichstag the French declara-
tion of war, all felt as though he were the first to
raise the cry, ''All Germany on into France! "
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? 2i6 In Memory of the Great War
and it seemed to all as though he rode into the
enemy's land like a herald in front of the German
squadrons. Now when the war was over he
summed up the net results of the great battles,
and after troublesome negotiations settled the
constitution of the new kingdom. This constitu-
tion seemed quite new, and yet it evoked the old
sacred unforgettable emotions of German loyalty
to the Kaiser. It appeared complicated even to
formlessness, and yet it was fundamentally simple
because it admitted of unlimited development.
In her relations to foreign countries Germany
was henceforth one, and in spite of much doubt
all discerning people hoped that the Empire,
possessing an imperial head, would now attain
to its full growth.
This work of Bismarck's brought peace and
reconciliation to nearly all the old factions which
had hitherto struggled on our territory. They
had all made mistakes, and almost all rediscovered
in the constitution of the Empire some of their
most deeply-cherished projects. Our princes
especially had been in the wrong. In the course
of an eventful history they had often been the
protectors of German religious freedom and the
rich many-sidedness of our civilization, but had
been often misled by dynastic envy and pride,
even to the point of committing treachery. At
the middle of the century their pride was at its
height, for what else was the object of the war of
1866 except to break in pieces the State of the
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? In Memory of the Great War 217
great Frederick, and to degrade it to the wretched
condition of the petty German princedoms? But
the dethroning of the sovereigns of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau was a tremendous warning to the
princes. They recollected themselves and remem-
bered the noble traditions of imperial sentiment
in the old princely families ; and as soon as the war
began they gathered round their royal leader.
Therefore they could, according to the old privi-
leges of the German princes, themselves elect their
emperor, and secure for themselves their proper
share in the new imperial power. There in France
was the first foundation laid for that invisible
council of German princes, which is something else
than the Council of the Confederation, which is
not mentioned in any article of the imperial con-
stitution, and yet always works perceptibly for the
good of the Fatherland. Never yet at a critical
time has the honest help of the princes failed the
Hohenzollem Kaisers.
The Conservative parties in Prussia had
courageously championed the reconstitution of the
army, but had at first followed the German policy
of the new Chancellor of the Confederation not
without mistrust; but now they saw the martial
glory of their King established, and soon recognized
that the revolutionary idea of German unity really
signified nothing else than the victory of the
monarchic constitution over dynastic anarchy.
A tardy reparation was made to the old Gotha
Party, the much-ridiculed professors of Frankfort.
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? 21 8 In Memory of the Great War
They had certainly made a mistake when they
thought to constrain the imperial power by the
authoritative decree of a parliament ; but now there
fell to them the honour of being the first pioneers
of the nation's thought. What their leader,
Dahlmann, had said in the spring of 1848, was
literally fulfilled : "When Germany's united council
of princes leads before the Reichstag a Prince of
their own choice as hereditary head of the Empire,
then freedom and order will co-exist in harmony. "
Even the Democrats, so far as they were not mere
visionaries, were able to rejoice at a success.
Their best representative, Ludwig Uhland, had
been in the right when he prophesied, "No head
will be crowned over Germany which is not richly
anointed with democratic oil. " Without the
co-operation of the Parliaments of the North Ger-
man Confederation and the Southern States the
new imperial power could not have come into
existence.
The heaviest blow befell the partisans of Austria,
the "Great Germans. "^ So severe was it that
even their party -name entirely disappeared. But
those who were sincere among them had only
fought against the German "rival-Emperor"
because they feared a Prussian imperial power
would be too weak to sustain the position of the
nation as one of the Great Powers. And how was
it now? It was never doubtful whether a man was
a German or not. We bore the mark of our good
* That is, partisans of the union of Germany and Austria.
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? In Memory of the Great War 219
and evil qualities as distinctly impressed upon our
brows as formerly did the Greeks, our kindred in
temperament and destiny. But it was always a
matter of dispute for centuries where Germany
exactly was ; its boundaries were constantly chang-
ing or disappearing in the fog of "rights of the
Empire. " Now for the first time there existed
a German State whose frontiers were clearly
defined. It had lost the frontier territories of the
South-east, which for a long time past had only
been loosely connected with the Empire, but as a
compensation had finally recovered by conquest
those on the Rhine and the Moselle, which had
been torn away from the Empire. It had also,
through the State of the Hohenzollems, won
wide territories in the East and North which had
never or merely nominally belonged to the old
Empire, i. e. , Silesia, Posen, Prussia, the land of the
old Teutonic orders, and Schleswig. It was more
powerful than the old Empire had been for six
centuries. Who could now speak of it sneeringly
as ''Little Germany"? Out of the perpetual ebb
and flow of races in Central Europe there had
finally emerged two great Empires -- one purely
German with a mixture of religions, the other
Catholic, and comprising a variety of races who
yet could not dispense with the German language
and culture. Such an outcome of the struggles of
centuries could not fail to satisfy for a time even
the imagination of the "Greater Germany"
enthusiasts. The great majority of the nation
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? 220 In Memory of the Great War
joined in jubilantly when, in the Palace of Ver-
sailles, the acclamation of the princes and the army
greeted the Emperor, who in his deep modesty
accepted the new dignity only with hesitation.
Not all the blossoms of those days of enthusiasm
have ripened into fruit. We hoped then that the
intelligible resentment of the conquered would in
two decades at least have grown milder, and that
a friendly and neighbourly relation between
two peoples so closely united by common aims
of civilization would again be possible. But our
hopes were vain. Over the Vosges there came to
us voices of hatred, unanswered indeed, but irre-
concilable; serious and learned people even sug-
gested to us to give up volimtarily the western
frontier territories which had been recovered by
the sacrifice of thousands of our men. This was an
impudent insult, to which in the consciousness of
our good right we could only reply with cold con-
tempt. Unavoidably the influences of the war of
1870 operate much longer in the formation of the
community of European States than did those of
the War of Liberation. The irreconcilable hatred
of our neighbours confines our foreign policy to one
spot, and cramps the development of our power
overseas. We hoped also that the old crippling
jealousy between Austria and Germany would
disappear, that the two would stand independently
side by side as free allies, and that then the Teu-
tonic race on the Danube would flourish more
vigorously. This also was an error. With total
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? In Memory of the Great War 221
lack of consideration, the sub-Germanic peoples
of the Danube Empire verified the old rule of
historical ingratitude towards the Germans who
had brought them civilization. Forcibly the
conviction was impressed upon us that at home, at
any rate, where we are masters, we must defend
every inch-breadth of German civilization against
foreign Powers. Moreover, it was natural that
after our victory a truce should be proclaimed
between the German parties, but our party
struggles assumed rougher and coarser shapes
from year to year.
In the natural course of things, after the victory,
a truce was proclaimed between the German
political parties. But our party strifes have
become from year to year rougher and coarser.
They concern themselves less with political ideas
than with economic interests; they stir up the
flame of hatred between class and class, and
threaten the peace of society.
This coarsening of politics has its deepest source
in a serious alteration which has taken place in
our whole national life. Much that we considered
characteristic of a decaying old world is the out-
come of every over-cultivated city-civilization,
and is being repeated to-day before our eyes. A
democratized society does not care, as enthusi-
asts suppose, for the aristocracy of talent, but
for the power of gold or of the mob, or both to-
gether. In the new generation there is disappear-
ing terribly fast, what Goethe called the final aim
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? 222 In Memory of the Great War
of all moral education -- reverence: reverence for
God; reverence for the barriers which nature has
placed between the two sexes, and the limits
which the structure of human society has imposed
upon desire; reverence for the Fatherland which, as
an ideal, is said to be yielding its place to the
dream of a sensual and cosmopolitan plutocracy.
The wider culture spreads the more shallow it
becomes; the thoughtfulness of the ancient world
is despised ; only that which serves the aims of the
immediate future seems still important. Where
everyone gives his opinion about everything,
according to the newspaper and the encyclopaedia,
there original mental power becomes rare, and with
it the fine courage of ignorance, which marks an
independent mind. Science, which, once descend-
ing too deep, sought to fathom the inscrutable,
loses itself in expansion, and only isolated pines of
original thought tower above the low undergrowth
of collections of memoranda. The satiated taste,
which no longer understands the true, goes after
realism, and prizes the wax figure more than
the work of art. In the tedium of an empty
existence the affected naturalness of betting and
athletic sports gains an undeserved importance,
and when we see how immoderately the heroes of
the circus and the performers of the playground
are over-prized, we are unpleasantly reminded of
the enormous costly mosaic picture of the twenty-
eight prize-fighters in the Baths of Caracalla.
These are all serious signs of the time. But
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? In Memory of the Great War 223
no one stands so high that he can only accuse his
people.
We Germans, especially, have often
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding. And no one can say that he
really knows his own people. In the spring of
1870 even the most sanguine did not suppose that
our young men would strike as they did. So we,
also, will hope that to-day, deep in the hearts of
our people, there are at work rejuvenating powers
which we know not of. And how much that does
not pass away has, in spite of all, remained to us
from the great war. The Empire stands upright,
stronger than we ever expected ; every German dis-
cerns its mighty influence in the ordinary occur-
rences of every day, in the current exchange of the
market-place. None of us could live without the
Empire, and how strongly the thought of it glows
in our hearts is shown by the grateful affection
which seeks to console the first Imperial Chancellor
for the bitter experiences of his old age. In my
youth it was often said, *'If the Germans become
German, they will found the kingdom on earth
which will bring peace to the world. " We are
not so inoffensive any longer. For a long time
past we have known that the sword must maintain
what the sword won, and to the end of history,
the virile saying will hold good, gta gta ^la'C^ziai,
"Force is overcome by force. " And yet there is
a deep significance in that old verse about the
Germans. Not only was the war for Prussia's
existence -- the Seven Years' War, -- the first Euro-
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? 224 In Memory of the Great War
pean war, not only did our State combine both the
old State-systems of the East and the West into a
European community of States, but being at last
strengthened as a central State, during a quarter
of a century of dangerous diplomatic friction, it
has offered peace to the Continent not by means of
the panacea of the pacificists -- disarming -- but by
the exact opposite -- universal arming. Germany's
example compelled armies to become nations,
nations to become armies, and consequently war
to be a dangerous experiment ; and since no French-
man has yet asserted that France can recover her
old booty by force of arms, we may perhaps hope
for some more years of peace. Meanwhile, our
western frontier territory coalesces slowly, but
unceasingly, with the old Fatherland, and the time
will come when German culture, which has changed
its place of abode so often, will again recover
complete predominance in its old home. Finally,
after so many painful disappointments, we have
lately succeeded in a work, as only a great and
united people can succeed. It was, indeed, a well-
omened day when the canal between the North
Sea and the Baltic was opened, and the Ger-
mans on the Suabian Sea sent their brotherly
greeting to the distant coast.
Such hours of happy success you must hold fast
in memory, my dear comrades, when your heads
grow dizzy with the frenzy of party-spirit. Our
festival to-day has especial significance for you.
It is the privilege and happiness of youth to look
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? In Memory of the Great War 225
up, to trust the future in good spirits, not to de-
spise the deeds of their fathers, nor to become sub-
merged in the controversies of the day. You have
not, Hke we of the older generation, helped to con-
quer your Fatherland for yourselves with weapons,
or the surgeon's knife, or the weak pen; you
have not, like we, seen dear friends of your youth
perish in body and soul, because they despaired
too soon of Germany. To you comes the simple
summons, Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. Yes,
you have obtained it, without any merit on your
part, this imited Fatherland, which for the good of
mankind mounted ever higher, from Fehrbellin to
Leuthen, from Belle- Alliance to Sedan. It can pro-
vide scope for every virile force, and the best is
hardly good enough for it. If the call of the
war-lord should ever summon you under the ban-
ners of the eagle, you will not wish to be weaker
in courage and faithfulness, in the fear of God
and devotion, than the old Berlin students, whose
honoured names we preserve in marble in our
University hall. Whether Germany demands from
you the toils of peace, or the deeds of war,
cherish ever the vow which once the poet, looking
down on the corpse-strewn fields around Metz,
made in all our names :
Think not that the blood you shed,
Flowed in vain, O honoured dead,
Or shall ever be forgot !
And now, gentlemen, as we do in all national
15
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? 226 In Memory of the Great War
festivals of our University, let us remember,
reverentially, with loyal fidelity, the ruler who
guards our Empire with his sceptre. God bless his
Majesty, our Emperor and King. God grant him
to exercise a wise, righteous, and firm rule, and
grant us all strength to guard and to increase
the precious inheritance of those glorious times.
Come, good Germans, everywhere! Join with me
in the cry, " Long live Emperor and Empire! "
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? LUTHER AND THE GERMAN NATION
(A Lecture given at Darmstadt on November 7,
1883)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There are many among you who stood, not
many weeks ago, on the heights of the Niederwald,
when our venerable Emperor presided at the unveil-
ing of the statue representing Germania girt with
her sword; and you there had the privilege of
uniting with your compatriots from far and near
in a feeling of joy and thankfulness. For centuries
we Germans have been denied the luxury of join-
ing together in that happy and unenvious contem-
plation of our past which is the true life-blood of a
healthy people. The very victories which brought
about the unity of our Empire were the outcome
of the first great united act performed by the whole
nation since immemorial times. Glorious indeed
is the history of our nation, which has so often
given to this part of our globe the foremost figure
of the century, and has, in warfare, so often spoken
words of awakening or of reconciliation. Nearly
all our great men were, however, so inextricably
involved in the whirl of bewildering contrasts
227
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? 228 Luther and the German Nation
which disorganized our inner life that even to this
day they remain an enigma to great masses of the
people, and are looked upon merely as the pioneers
of a family, a party, or a creed -- ^not simply as
German heroes.
It was during the eighteenth century that the
last and greatest representative of the old-fash-
ioned unlimited monarchy held sway among us,
and now that we are able to judge of the extent of
his labours, the more enlightened among us have
begun to feel that he was fighting for Germany
when he waged war against Austria and the Holy
Roman Empire. But in spite of this King
Frederick, like his ancestor the Great Elector, will
ever remain the favourite of his Prussians, while
to the general mass of the Southern Germans he
will continue to be something of a stranger. A
century earlier we secured the religious peace of
Europe after a horrible war, but victory was pur-
chased at a fearful price, i. e. , the laying waste
of our ancient culture ; and almost the only lumin-
ous figure in all that sombre period, the hero
Gustavus Adolphus, was a foreigner. Moreover,
even his admirers must admit that his victorious
career terminated -- very favourably to us -- just
at the moment when his power began to be prejudi-
cial to our country.
The same limitations are to be observed even
in the commemorative festival which our Pro-
testant nation is thankfully celebrating this week.
It is not, unhappily, a festival in which all Ger-
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? Luther and the German Nation 229
mans will take part. Millions of our compatriots
are holding aloof in silence, or even in open dis-
approval. They are neither able nor willing
to imderstand that the Reformer of our Church
was the pioneer of the whole German nation on the
road to a freer civilization, and that in the State
and in Society, in our homes and in our centres
of learning, his spirit still breathes life into us.
Everyone who takes it upon himself to speak of
Luther must confess what is his own attitude
towards the great moral problems of the present
day. And the accusations of those who are un-
able to comprehend his greatness are as passion-
ate in tone to-day as if the Reformer still walked
in our midst.
Even during his life-time Martin Luther incurred
the penalty which awaits all great men, and
especially all great fighters: he was misunderstood.
During the early years of his public activity --
years so full of promise -- ^he was greeted by the
nation with a tempestuous joy such as has not been
seen again in Germany imtil our own time. In the
days when he first belled the cat, when, forced
forward by a lively conscience and the driving
power of untrammelled thought, he turned from
the paths of ancient orthodoxy to those of open
heresy; when he threw the Papal Bull into the
fire and gave that ringing call to the "Christian
nobility of the German nation," in which he
invited his Germans to reform the Church and the
State, root and branch; then it was that he stood
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? 230 Luther and the German Nation
revealed before the Emperor and the Empire
as the leader of the nation, a man as heroic in
aspect as the patron saint of his people, the warrior
Michael. Then it was that men sought to express
their joy in the words of the folk-song :
He showed himself at Worms,
All ready for the fray;
He silenced all his enemies,
And none could overcome him.
Then, also, it seemed as if the elemental forces
at work in a nation stirred to its depths -- the re-
ligious zeal of pious minds, the scientific curiosity
of the rising generation, the national hatred
of a knightly nobility for the foreign prelates,
the discontent of an oppressed peasantry -- were
about to unite in a mighty torrent impetuous
enough to sweep all Roman organizations and
influences out of our State and our Church. The
royal dignity of Germany was, however, still in
close bondage to the world-embracing policy of the
Holy Roman Empire. It can hardly have been
an accident that the crown was at that moment-
ous period worn by a stranger who could not
discern the beating of our heart, and whose only
answer to the acclamations with which the Germans
hailed the courageous frankness of their country-
man was a disdainful smile and the words, "Such
a man shall never make me a heretic. "
As soon as it became evident that the Emperor
had refused to listen to the voice of the nation, the
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? Luther and the German Nation 231
Reformer found ranged against him not only the
political strength of the Spanish World-Empire,
but also the immense moral force embodied in the
firm loyalty of our nation to the Emperor. Class-
hatred -- that mortal sin which has played so large
a part in our history -- now again made its appear-
ance. The nobility frittered away their hot-
blooded energy in the carrying on of aimless and
most unhappy feuds. The peasants interpreted
the gospel doctrine of Hberty in a material sense,
and plunged into a furious social war. Luther,
however, believed that his holy treasure had been
insulted, and poured all the vials of his wrath
upon the fools who sought to settle the problem
of the gospel with hammer and tongs. When
this horrible rising had been horribly punished by
a cruel nobility, the man who had been so lately
glorified by his compatriots found himself cursed
by the common people. In the meantime Eras-
mus, the first scholar of the century, had separated
himself from the Wittenberg party; Luther's
teacher, the mystic Staupitz, and the clever hu-
manists, Crotus Rubianus and Eobanus Hessus,
recoiled from him in terror. Their defection
made it clear that the new teaching would at
first have but a partial influence over the most
highly educated sections of the nation ; and as this
new doctrine freed the strong obstinacy as well
as the power of independent thought which char-
acterize the German character, its adherents
began to fritter away their strength in a highly
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? 232 Luther and the German Nation
dangerous manner. Undisciplined fanaticism and
quarrels about dogma broke their unity.
Luther, thus harassed and forsaken on all sides,
sought refuge among the German Princes. If his
last years were rich in great results, they were even
richer in painful disillusionments. He had begun
hoping that he might give new energies to Church
life in Christendom, or at least in his own nation.
Now he was forced to content himself with the
knowledge that small evangelical Churches had
gradually come into being in the territories of
the greater among the German temporal princes;
and he who watches, even superficially, the dawn
of day in history may consider it a merciful dis-
pensation of Providence that the Reformer, whom
over- work had quickly aged, should have died just
before the dissensions and aimless weaknesses of
the leaders in the Schmalkaldian War led to the
subjection of German Protestants to a foreign
rule. The glory of departed heroes is usually
exaggerated in the popular imagination; Luther,
on the contrary, appeared to his contemporaries a
lesser man than he really was. In those weary
decades of political inactivity and theological dis-
putes which followed upon the golden period of the
German Reformation, a little sect proceeded to
recreate Luther after its own image, as if he also
had been nothing but a zealous preacher of Bible
truths and a respectable father of a family, and as
if his aim had merely been to found a separate
Church called by the name of a sinful mortal. It
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? Luther and the German Nation 233
is only the historical science of our own day which
has succeeded in plucking up heart to comprehend
Luther in his entirety, Luther the epitome of his
century, in whose soul nearly all the new ideas of
the time were mightily re-echoed. We are far
enough removed from him in time to be able to
gauge the indirect consequences of his destructive
and constructive labours, to observe all the seeds
of a new culture which he sowed in German
soil with all the unconsciousness of genius, and to
realize with thankfulness how faithfully he kept
the promise thus made by him: " I was bom for my
Germans, and them will I serve. "
The joy of life has from the beginning possessed
the German soul; but side by side with this there
has always existed a meditative seriousness
which is painfully conscious of the transitory
nature of all earthly things. Undaunted courage
has always been accompanied in our national
character by a deep longing for deliverance from
the curse of sin. Of all the nations of Western
Europe, the ancient Germans alone had some
premonition, even in their heathen days, of the
future disappearance of this sinful race and of a
new world of purity and light which is to come.
To such a people the glad tidings from Jerusalem
were peculiarly acceptable, and the marvellous
buildings of our old cathedrals sufficiently testify
to the piety and the earnestness with which the
Germans received the new faith. It should,
nevertheless, be observed that the Christian
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? 234 Luther and the German Nation
doctrine had assumed a form in Rome which,
on its arrival in our midst, never entirely recom-
mended itself to us. All ages, peoples, and coun-
tries seemed to be united in the great community
of saints which bound the Church militant here
below to the Church expectant of the poor souls
in Purgatory and the Church triumphant of the
saints in Heaven. From the treasury of good
works laid up by the saints the Church dealt forth
remission of sins to the faithful, through the
medium of a ruling priesthood, whose members
were empowered by the spiritual gifts of ordina-
tion to change bread and wine into the Body
and Blood of the Saviour. Outside the Church
was no salvation; she embraced and hallowed
the life of every Christian from the cradle to the
bier, from baptism to extreme unction. The con-
ception was indeed a great and wonderful one.
The wisdom and piety of many holy persons
and a rare talent for ruling men had built up the
wonderful structure throughout many centuries.
Each stone stood firmly cemented to its fellow,
and the inevitable and logical sequence of one
dogma upon another gave the Christian no choice
between submission and heresy. But the close
logic of the Romans had never quite satisfied the
German mind; the living conscience of our people
could never find peace in means of grace supplied
by the Church and in prescribed good works alone.
As early as the fourteenth century the German
territories rang with the Kyrie eleisons of the sect
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? Luther and the German Nation 235
of Flagellants, and ever louder and more despair-
ing -- almost as heartrending as in the earliest days
of Christian history -- grew the cry of the sinful
creature pleading for reconciliation with its Creator.
Further, the bellicose and practical mind of the
Germans was bewildered by the teaching of the
old Church. This beautiful world offered so
many laurel wreaths of honour, and so many
elevated pleasures to men of energy, and yet
all these were to be of no account in comparison
with the higher sanctity of dedicated men, of
priests and monks who had renounced everything
that binds men to one another by human ties, and
who despised not only the infinite happiness, but
also the sacred duties of married life. Walther
von der Vogelweide, the greatest of our mediaeval
poets, pondered sadly over this dark riddle, com-
plaining that "One and the same heart can never,
alas! receive God's grace in form of riches and in
form of honour. "
And this priestly hierarchy, which kept itself
so immeasurably above the obedient multitude,
which so greatly scorned all worldly activities, had
long been the prey of a shameless worldliness which
caused secular persons to regard its members as a
race of hypocrites. The clergy owned the wealth-
iest third of Germany, always formed a majority
and carried all motions in the Reichstag, and
exerted a political influence which was looked upon
by the Germans as a kind of foreign rule. This
latter idea was due to the knowledge that the
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? 236 Luther and the German Nation
Church was ruled by the Pope and his Italian
prelates; and all the wealth of intellect, wit, and
culture which hobnobbed together in the ante-
rooms of the Vatican, all the masterpieces of the
chisel and the brush which the sun of Papal favour
brought into being, could not console our nation
for the fact that the mistress of Christendom
was the most profligate city of the earth. It was
in vain that the Germans had sought, at the
councils of the fifteenth century, to reform the
abuses in the Church. When Luther appeared
the nation was in a dangerous state of ferment,
the prey of conflicting emotions. On the one hand
were the pious persons, consumed by scruples, and
taking painful stock of their sins and their good
works, and contemplating the popular pictures
of the Dance of Death with holy terror; on the
other stood the sensuous lovers of life, full of
energy and high spirits, rejoicing in crude jests
and delighted to mock at the caricature of a
world turned upside down. But to whichever class
they belonged, all Germans united in hating the
foreign yoke.
The actual setting free of Germany was the
direct outcome of an internal conflict waged in
an honest German conscience. Luther drew from
his very humility suflicient strength to endow him
with the utmost boldness.
