Читать книгу The Germans: Double History Of A Nation - Emil Grimm Ludwig - Страница 19

FOR SOME eight hundred years, from the Carolingians to the Great Revolution, France experienced no real change of dynasty, for the fact that the Houses of Valois and Bourbon took turns meant nothing compared to the constant crises in the German leadership. At that time the ducal houses fought each other not only at the time of royal elections; their perpetual plottings also interrupted the various reigns. Since no constitution compelled them to raise levies for the Imperial Army, their own private armies, like those of our present-day dictators, were a constant menace to the empire, against which they were likely to form various combinations. In the thirteenth century, while Germany disintegrated, France was ready to enter the scene of world affairs, precisely because it did not aspire to general world dominion, having instead consolidated its power within. Any natural jealousy of the imperial dignity and Roman succession in the French breast was at first dispelled in contemplation of French culture. The Germans did not begin to build up their own culture until they had met with failure in the world outside. The French did not go out into the world until they had secured their own culture. In this way the two powerful neighbors did not interfere with each other for a long time. Not until now did the French too turn to Italy.

In the meantime the Teutonic Order advanced eastward, where the Slavs had utilized the German imperial pilgrimages to Rome for invasions of their own. About 1250 the Teutonic Knights conquered large parts of what later became Prussia.

The true significance of these conquests was not to become apparent until later, during the seventeenth century, when these Eastern peoples, the mixed descendants of the native and invading stock, entered upon the scene of German history. Had the German kings in the Middle Ages had the time and mood to secure themselves in their Western lands,—in Burgundy or in Flanders,—the German West with all its gifts might have predominated. Instead, the princes between the Elbe and the Vistula, free of any effective check from the crown, grew more and more independent, subduing the Slavic tribes. The mixture of blood in the ensuing centuries created a people who were called Prussians, after the ancient warlike tribe of the Prussians that formed but part of their ancestry. The trading spirit of the immigrant merchants was perpetuated in the descendants just as much as the spirit of war, and thus there was formed a sober, efficient, prosaic mongrel race that necessarily grew thrifty and hard on its vast steppes, so difficult to cultivate. Later this Eastern people was to take the imaginative West of Germany by storm.

The kings had little influence upon this development in the East. Toward 1400 they began more and more to renounce world dominion and to trouble no longer about Italy and German unity but only about the power of their dynasty. The Hapsburgs led in this respect. If the name of Hapsburg resounds in the world more strongly than that of earlier dynasties, this is solely due to the length of its rule, for the Hapsburgs reigned in Germany or Austria for some six hundred years, until the last one fled Vienna after his defeat. As for the emperors the Hapsburgs supplied to Germany, they were lacking in great men, with the exception of Charles V.

The earliest merit of the Hapsburgs, when they were still counts rather than emperors, remains their greatest. Their oppressions set off the rebellion of the Swiss. Frederic II of Hohenstaufen with his falcon eye must have recognized the strength peculiar to this people of herdsmen and peasants, for he granted and confirmed the sovereignty that was to protect them against the arrogance of the Hapsburg barons.

How quickly the splendor of a dynasty fades in the memory of men unless it is reflected in the countenances of great members! Who out in the world remembers the first Hapsburg king? That he defeated the King of Bohemia in the battle by the River March, thereby acquiring Austria, and that he died in 1291, surrounded by splendor and glory? But many have at least heard of the flat Alpine meadow above Lake Lucerne, the Rütli, where in that same year 1291 a dozen poor herdsmen and peasants met to unite against that feudal dynasty. To this day songs and plays, pictures and legends tell of the deadly courage with which these “cowboys,” as the highborn knights jeeringly called them, together with the ancient Swiss towns of Zurich and Berne, battled the mighty hosts of kings and princes. Why did all this spread through the world so alarmingly, not to be forgotten to this day?

It was because a small nation there battled for its freedom. It was because, better than the Saxons and Frisians who also fought the kings, this little nation knew how to make decisions and how to fight. It was because here first three, then eight, finally thirteen little strips of land, sometimes comprising no more than a single Alpine valley, united. It was because this land, later called Switzerland after one of the three oldest Cantons, was the only one to establish popular government, reviving in a Europe under the heel of the princes for a thousand years the ideal of the Republic of antiquity. It was because Switzerland, one of the smallest of the German countries, was strong enough to maintain its integrity through all the storms, even taking into its federation races with other tongues—setting the world a meaningful example of how a nation can govern itself, even though it has several languages, without being dominated by a single man or race.

Thus German Switzerland set an example to France and America of how to build a democracy. Here was the sole tribe to save the honor of the other Germans, who all put up with the demands of their princes and who, despite two brief revolutions in a thousand years, both of which failed miserably, remained their masters’ servants. And in the end, after a brief period of anxious freedom, they have again thrown themselves into the arms of an all-powerful leader. Yet all the while Switzerland, situated in the middle of Europe, grouped around the central mass of the St. Gotthard Alps, controlling the great passes, of importance even in this age of tunnels and airplanes, undergoes ordeals of patience and silence which come harder to this, the only German stock with a political tradition, than the outside world realizes—for three fourths of its inhabitants speak German. In their chasms and valleys, their towns and villages, German freedom has sought its final refuge, just as it first issued from them.