András
Gergely
Small States
in the German Solar System
In October 1848, after much preliminary work in committee, the Paulskirche
Assembly in Frankfurt started on the discussion of the initial paragraphs
of the draft constitution. It was their purpose to define Germany as a
state, Germany that had previously existed merely as a theoretical, historical
and geographical term.
The definition of Germany's borders and of dynastic relations with non-German
territories, in terms of constitutional and international law was the subject
of a debate that stretched over several days, allowing those assembled
to expound their views on the kind of Europe they hoped for. Heinrich von
Gagern, the popular and respected chairman of the Assembly, the most prominent
German liberal of the Vor märz, and leader of the liberal centre,
the majority, asked for the floor on October 26th 1848, close to the end
of the debate.
Heinrich von Gagern argued that the humbled German people would have to
be raised again. Germany had a mission in the world. These days every nation
was expected to boost her own power and influence. Germany could not be
expected to warm herself in quiet retirement. She must ally herself with
her neighbours, with all the peoples that were likely to achieve independence,
such as the Italians, Hun garians and Poles. "Those Danube riparian
peoples which neither request independence, nor have a calling for it,
will have to be drawn into our solar system as planets."
What did this solar system vision, centred on (a non-existent) Germany,
mean for interstate relations? Was this an early, metaphoric German imperialist
claim, or rather a guardianship of the weak, a reckon-ing with Central
European reality? Did it express a liberal-democratic new order, a restraint
on the power of the czars, an attractive variant of the pax germanica?
How did the nations of the region react, the Hungarians in the first place?
Were they even aware of what was going on, or did they, in their ignorance,
neglect to consider what was said at Frankfurt? What was their own vision
concerning the new international relations in the region? Could their vision
of the future be reconciled with that of the Germans, bearing in mind that
--as no-one denied--an alliance to be con cluded with the new German power
was to be the lynchpin of their foreign policy?
What exactly were Heinrich von Ga gern's views? Gagern, a titled member
of the Rhine land landed gentry, became active in politics in the 1830s.
There is little public evidence of an interest in foreign policy, but his
surviving private papers tell us much about his thinking. I shall quote
from an 1832 draft:
The most wholesome, the D.v. most desirable, and the most obvious alliance,
offering every kind of reciprocity, is undoubtedly that between Germany
and Hungary. How could it be different, from the national point of view?
Neither subjugation, nor conquest, nor a melting pot! We are at one, and
have been through the centuries, for mutual protection and help... But
not only persons, the constitution, achievements, traditions and neighbourliness
link our two nations; the link provided by nature, by the Danube, holds
firmer still.
Great changes can be expected south of the Danube: "Bosnia, Serbia,
the great realm that is Alexander's heritage, are in turmoil. We could
well be mistaken, faced with so many symptoms of the gradual dissolution
of the Osmanli Empire. New empires will come into existence." Alliances
to be concluded with them will have to be based on the acceptance of the
national principle. Thus Gagern did not transform the thinking of the German
Enlightenment into Ger man nationalism. All that was the subject of a discussion
between him and his contemporaries. In 1844 he was more explicit, albeit
he still did not publish what he wrote.
I consider a desire for German cohesion, German influence, indeed preponderance
(if it can be achieved) to be justified in colo nies, to be natural and
beneficial, where no nation with national claims exixts, where a population
is still in statu nascendi... In countries, however, where a nation already
rules, i.e. dominates in the sense that, albeit the country could bear
a larger population and the need for immigration is present, the country,
and the ruling people are, however, identified by a history of which they
can be more or less proud, by local customs that are as good or bad as
many another--there foreign immigrants can do no better than to incorporate
themselves in the dominant nation, showing no tendency of forming a nation
within the nation by a mass endeavour to exercise national influence, resulting
in rivalries and ultimately in bloody civil war. I have repeatedly defended
this point of view, in particular as regards Brasil... or Greece... but
the Danubian Principalities and especially Hungary, also belong to this
category."
Gagern differentiated between nations and peoples, in the manner of
his time--just as Marx and Engels--calling on history as a classificatory
principle. Na tions with a history have a right to form nation-states.
In such countries, the Ger mans qua Germans had to renounce a national
role, at most they could have a cultural mission.
Gagern was not alone. It suffices to mention Friedrich List, a much read
economist of enormous influence on his Ger man contemporaries (and Hungarian
readers of yore too). According to him, "Hun gary is not only the
key to Turkey and the whole of the Levante for Germany" but "at
the same time a bulwark against northern preponderance." List, who
travelled much in Hungary, expressed himself with great enthusiasm about
the country's inhabitants:
A viable nation... in possession of great intellectual and material
goods. Fortunately Hun gary found her own nation and national language,
the Magyar nation and language, since only a nation which in its fundamentals
bears the stamp of the Magyar spirit, will found a great and flourishing
empire on this soil, one living in intimate friendship with Germany.
It follows that List too thought it natural that Germans settling in
these parts would adopt the language of the locals.
Owing to the censorship, the views on foreign policy of the Hungarian liberals
of the Age of Reform can only be reconstructed on the basis of the few
writings which were published--mostly abroad. An ano nymous pamphlet (written
by Count Károly Zay) published the views of the Védegylet
(Defence Club) in German, and made it clear that the aim was full separation
within the Habsburg Empire. As regards the objectives of expansion and
settlement,
the course of the Danube indicates the direction that had to be taken
by the policy of the House of Lorraine, if the dynasty wished to base its
might on a lasting warranty, on the geographic siting of its domains. Ac
cord ingly the Empire had to expand all the way to the Black Sea, Wallachia,
Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumelia lie in its purview, and are its due,
together with the mouth, with the Bosphorus, not Austria, but Hungary,
would have become the nucleus of the new Empire, and Buda-Pest its capital.
The Habsburg Empire is thus the instrument of an expansion which boosts
the weight of a Hungary which will move to the centre. Was this directed
against the Germans? Certainly not: "Honour the worthy Teuton, conclude
an eternal tie with him against Asiatic barbarity and Roman Law [that is
against the Russians and Daco-Romans, A.G.]; let heart and tongue stay
Magyar, but let head and arms be veined by German culture and German hard
work." Wesselényi's "Szózat a magyar és
a szláv nemzetiség ügyében" (Address in
the Cause of the Hungarian and the Slav Nation), published in 1843 (also
in Ger man), argued for a federal transformation of the Habsburg Empire,
and offered a concrete alliance to a Prussia which was deemed to be turning
liberal. The foreign policy notions of the Hungarian liberals could be
reconciled with those of the German liberals. A Hungary merely in Personal
-union within the Habsburg Empire, becoming ever more independent, and
a constitutional Prussia (or Germany), would conclude an anti-Russian defensive
alliance --as well as expanding in conjunction--through colonies, established
by interstate agreement, or else by annexation--along the Lower Danube
and in the Balkan region.
It was generally such views which reverbated in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt.
Karl Moering, made famous by earlier pamphlets (Sybillische Bücher...),
describ ed Hungary as the "most effective ally," as the "most
important country of the German Danube." It was he who moved on July
21st that all those in the Paulskirche should rise to their feet to urge
the early conclusion of a German-Hungarian treaty. It was up to them "to
create a mighty, united, free Mitteleuropa which, with mailed fist, would
hold the balance between East and West, between a republic and auto-cracy."
(Moering was the author of the term Mitteleuropa, as a seventy million
strong entity at the centre of Europe. The term first flourished in 1848,
in the Paulskirche.) According to the left-republican Zais, Germany was
"the central power of Europe and its natural centre of gravity, which
had to be guarded by an allied ring of secondary powers, Hungary occupying
pride of place in the South East." Rümelin, also on the left,
intended a similar role for Hungary in the creation of "a great, free
league of Nations," characterized by "equal rights for all the
nations" through which the German nation would "conquer"
making use of the "peaceful, free-of-envy propaganda of education,
commerce, colonization and intellectual superiority."
The German Paulskirche Assembly had hundreds of participants, of diverse
political views. Some spoke of non-German "tribes," of "peoplets"
(i.e. people in the diminutive "Völkchen"), the lost children
of the storms of the Great Migration Period, who only brought confusion
to the future arrangement of states in Europe, whose only fate could be
that of subjects. Some presumed that, in harmony with the progress of civilization,
the future of the inhabitants of the Danube valley lay in becoming Germans.
Should they not recognise the laws of progress, they will have to be taught
by force. Some even had daydreams about a congress of peoples where Slav,
Italian and Hungarian delegates would also be present, lending an extra
firmness to the German-dominated territory at the centre of Europe, but
such words were received with "extraordinary astonishment; continuous,
growing unrest"; it was obvious that such views--nationalist even
in the present sense of the term--did not meet with the approval of the
majority. It was not influential members of the Frankfurt parliament who
argued that way. Accord ing to Simon, the Deputy Chairman, such hege monistic
plans could only mean "dissolution and destruction for the German
Volk."
M uch of what was said is difficult to interpret, since in expressions
like "Ger man-mindedness," "German liberty," "Ger
man culture," "German nature," "Teu tonic spirit,"
"German" does not necessarily mean something national but a higher
standard than the one prevailing in East ern Europe. When people east of
Germany acquire that, they do not lose their national existence or independence,
but rise to the higher level. Vogt, the well known democrat, again argues
in an odd sort of way describing this process in relation to non-German
Austria:
Well, gentlemen, loosen the shackles, offer freedom to these tied up
nationalities... and these nationalities will become aware of what really
suits them. You will see then how close links with Germany will come about
on their own initiative through political and commercial alliances, you
will see pacts concluded freely, and out of conviction, pacts of a kind
against which the nations grumble if they are imposed on them.
Gentle utopia and an appetite for conquest; the "right" of
the strong and more developed and the intention to help small nations;
the (self-evident) assertion of world history and its (occasionally violent)
imposition; power politics and generous renunciation; anxiety and radiating
optimism; romantic daydreams and economic interests; nationalism and the
league of nations--an unbelievable whirl of ideas and arguments was characteristic
of the thinking of the Paulskirche. The historian of ideas is enchanted
by this abundance, the historian of politics notes the conceptual confusion
and the absence of a conceptual armory suitable for sizing up reality.
The employment of right and left as political coordinates is of scant help.
In the Cologne Neue Rheinische Zei tung, the "organ" of the left
that found itself outside parliament, the editor Karl Marx freely used
his blue pencil and the Vienna correspondent made use of expressions like
"Slav brute," "beastly week-minded Slavs," "Czech
hounds." The editor himself reported that "in Vienna Croats,
Pandoors, Czechs, constables and similar scum throttled Teutonic freedom,"
or "the Gypsies a.k.a. Czechs, once again brought all their national
impertinence with them." In a later, February 1849, article, Friedrich
Engles, a senior contributor, established that, as regards small nations,
the revolution and their national cause were in confrontation. Either they
gave up their nation and sided with the revolution, or, what was more likely,
they would provoke Habsburg imperial reaction. "The time will come
when bloody revenge will be our answer to the Slavs for their cowardly
and base betrayal of the revolution." This "all destroying fight"
and "implacable terrorism" will be fought not in the interests
of Germans but of the revolution.
Differences as regards ideas concerning the restructuring of the new order
can be more clearly traced. Some claim that all nations are equal and entitled
to full independence, that is that the map of Europe will have to be completely
redrawn, others will only recognize the German role in the area, presuming
that everyone else will sooner or later be absorbed by them. As a politician
of the Right put it, a little new Slav blood will do no harm. The majority,
however, agree with Gagern: some nations are more developed, and larger,
with a right to independence, thus alliances will have to be concluded
with them as independent states, and there are others that will fit into
this system as a planet fits into the solar system. The international order
will thus be transformed, with an anti-Russian alliance as the major objective
but national frontiers in Europe will survive and perhaps be revived. The
German liberals placed the orbits of their international system in the
zone between status quo conservatives and the revolutionary rear rang ers
who wanted to turn everything topsy-turvy.
The stakes were high but the fight was fought with kid gloves. They undoubtedly
shared a spiritual base, Hegel's Weltgeist. According to Hegel, the Teutons
at the centre of Europe were the intermediaries between Latins and Slavs,
not only geographically but also between excessive Latin freedom and Slav
servility. No-one may question the proper course of history, that is the
eastern expansion of Teutonic civilization. This is the shared idiom of
a discourse on which a generation was rais ed, and it would appear that
this idea would come to fulfilment in 1848. What took place in the Paulskirche
was not an amendment of the Hegelian world view, it was made operational
there, and turned into coin that could serve as legal tender. Mitteleuropa
transformed from geography into politics and ideology provided those bottles
into which the wine of the world spirit could be poured. For a new Mittel
europa could mean unambiguous German domination, perhaps a single Reich.
The majority thought of Mitteleuropa as an alliance in which a fifty-million
strong liberal Germany (including Deutschösterreich) would carry most
weight. Some of the plans included Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands,
arguing that this alone would make it possible to resist a two-pronged
attack by France and Russia, or, at least, as a free trade zone, this could
create the basis for an economic boom.
How did the other nations of the region react? For the Poles, the restoration
of their statehood was the sine qua non and that could not even be imagined
without German foreign policy support. Thus inter ests met on this point.
The Ro ma nians, primarily the revolutionaries in Walla chia, were ready
to accept even German tutelage and presented themselves at Frankfurt with
such requests. The non-German and non-Hungarian nations of the Habsburg
Em pire were those who were least pleas-ed. They, especially the Czechs
and Croats, feared absorption or the hegemony of Ger mans and Hungarians;
that is why they would have preferred to hold the reins of a federal Habsburg
Empire in cooperation, and in cooperation with the dynasty. Since this
would have put paid to Greater Ger man unity, as well as expressing Slav
solidarity and the Habsburgs' conservative for eign policy, it would have
been in accord with a Russophil foreign policy line.
But what were the foreign policy notions of Hungarian liberals seeking
independence, and could these by reconciled with those of Germany? The
notion of a German-Hungarian alliance between liberal nation-states, a
mutual recognition of independence by Frankfurt and Pest-Buda, the sending
of Hungarian envoys to Frank furt, the concrete Hungarian offer to conclude
an alliance, are all a recognized part of the history of the Hungarian
and the other Central European 1848 revolutions.
Count István Széchenyi was one of the first to argue for
a Hungarian nation-state and a Hungarian "mission". In his Kelet
Népe (People of the East) he maintained that preserving and developing
characteristics which the Magyars had brought with them from the East were
the duty of the nation. Hungary would have a voice of her own in the European
concert of nations.
Széchenyi had tabled his own "people of the East" notion
at a time when earlier Hungarian ideas concerning self-interpretation had
shown signs of exhaustion. According to the old tradition, first propagated
by Protestant preachers but accepted by the Counter-Reformation in the
17th century, the Hungarians were the Chosen People, just like the Jews
of old. God had something in mind for the Hungarians, for the time being
He just put them to the test, punishing them by subjecting them to ordeals,
primarily at the hand of the Turks. The last to present this image was
the poet Ferenc Kölcsey in his "Hymnus" (Anthem) in 1823,
which, set to music by Erkel, became the Hungarian National Anthem, but
he already expresses a reservation in his subtitle: "from the stormy
centuries of the Hungarian nation." The tradition was exhausted by
the 19th century, primarily because of the loss in strength suffered by
the religious world view, but also because for a century or more Hungarians
had not suffered any severe ordeal. The exhaustion of the tradition is
also indicated by the fact that "the God of the Hungarians" still
survives as a lively rhetorical trope, even in the press, but it only refers
to Providence. In translation the expression sounds odd, as if the Hungarians
were heathens, with a god of their own. Petoýfi's poem "Nemzeti
dal" (National Song) relies on this tradition when he asks that an
oath be taken on the "God of the Hungarians," but the poem con
tains no transcendent argument, there is nothing about God's personal displeasure,
nor is there any search into his intentions.
Széchenyi recognized that there was need of a secular national objective,
but his offer was rejected. Hungarian freedom as an objective, and not
"the people of the East"--as a cultural marking--finally took
centre-stage in the self-definition of the Hungarian nation. The concept
of freedom was nothing abstract: it found expres-
sion in the independence of the state, the liberation of serfs, an elected
parliament and constitutional government. In the Car pathian basin it was
solely the Hun garians who were enabled by their history and social status
to be the champions of freedom, so the national minorities could at least
show loyalty to the Hungarian state. In this region--primarily in a southerly
direction--it will be the mission of the Hun garians to propagate freedom,
perhaps by offering alliances, or by serving as a constitutional model
for others.
German national thinking, resting on Hegelian foundations, was concretely
influenced by Savigny's historical school of jurisprudence. According to
Savigny, the legal and constitutional system were manifestations of the
spirit of the nation, to which they must be adjusted. Reforms must therefore
be handled with care. This was the ruling spirit of the Paulskirche
assembly which numbered several dozen professors of law amongst its members.
Hungarian constitutional thinking did without "the spirit", but
the same historical approach was at work. Old legislation was rethought
and reinterpreted, sometimes revived, or amended by something new: that
was the basis of change. The forms may have been more pragmatic, but the
same historico-legal mentality ruled in Hungary as in Germany.
The basis of Hungarian foreign policy in 1848, that is of the foreign policy
of the government headed by Count Batthyány was the regional mission
of Hungarians. It was "Greater Hungarian", as the historian István
Hajnal tellingly called it. The most desirable course of events from this
point of view was that the western provinces of the Habsburg Empire should
join Ger many, the Italian provinces would secede, and Hun gary would become
completely independent, a new centre, joined, faute de mieux, at least
temporarily, by Dalmatia and Gali cia. The Danube riparian states, seceding
from the Ottoman Empire, would also take their cue from Pest-Buda. Similar
ideas were bruited about in the Pauls kirche as well. Some would have liked
to add Wal lachia to Hungary, others again plan ned a coordinated Hungarian
South-Slav Empire.
Both German and Hungarian liberals were interested in
building nation-states. What is surprising is the lightheartedness with
which they then went on to plan the alliances of nation-states, great and
small. At the back of all this were recognized foreign threats, and the
need to establish an anti-Russian alliance, but the model was the United
States of America. Again and again there was reference to the U. S. Constitution
when arguing that it was possible for independent states to cooperate.
What linked the two countries and regions was the Danube, which, temporarily,
replaced the Rhine in the German mind. "The Danube is our Mississippi,"
that is, what the Missisippi was to the English, Irish or French who desired
to emigrate, that was the Danube for Germans and Hungarians. It set the
course for migration. "That is our Texas and Mexico," they kept
on saying in the Paulskirche.
In liberal thinking the nation of the state, be it German or Hungarian,
had a mis sion in both politics and culture, with the difference that the
German stress was extra-territorial, the Hungarian, within Hun gary's borders.
Civilization and individual liberties were assured to the national minorities,
and assimilation was expected in exchange. The German emphasis tended to
be on culture, the Hungarian on politics. There were similarities in thinking.
It was said in the Paulskirche: "those brilliant speeches with which
Kossuth carries away his audiences, aren't they suffused by Ger man ideas
and German culture?" The thinking is similar, a German audience can
follow the argument, is all that the Paulskirche speaker was saying.
The image of the political future is similar, too. A Mitteleuropa jointed
by treaties, with an anti-Russian cutting edge, and open to participation
in restructuring the Balkans, pace Hungarian reservations--Kossuth's too--concerning
the dangers of German hegemony. The enemy outside is common, the Czar,
and there is an internal enemy which can also be defined jointly, "the
Slavs": Czechs for the Germans, and South Slavs for the Hungarians.
The Hun garian alliance proposal to the Paulskirche refers to this internal
threat, too, and not only to the Russians.
The two countries, of which Germany existed only on paper in the summer
and autumn of 1848, differed in scale and development, but they were complimentary.
Not a great power and a small state proposed an alliance, but a great and
a middling power, a country of fifty-million inhabitants and one of twelve
(which meant that contemporaries somewhat overestimat ed the population
of Hungary). Ger many was (relatively) overpopulated, a source of emigrants,
Hungary sparsely popul ated, ready to take immigrants. The new German constitution
established the right to emigrate, as 1847 turned into 1848, the Hun garian
National Assembly debated a bill on immigration and citizenship. The German
press touchily reacted to the pro posal that citizenship be linked to a
knowledge of Hungarian, and indeed, this provision was deleted, Kossuth
moving the amendment. Complimentarity was much in evidence. The German
press loudly debated over-population and emigration; in Hun gary,
according to Széchenyi, even parricides should be pardoned, in view
of the small number of Hungarians. That must have sent shivers down the
spine of Germans.
Germany was more civilized, a fact accepted in Hungary. That is why Károly
Zay, in 1844, spoke of "the Hungarian heart" and the "German
head" to be united in the Hungarian body. In 1848, when the Hun garian
Parliament wished to reciprocate the Paulskirche gesture urging an alliance,
István Gorove expounded that the Ger mans were the torch of civilization,
which the Hungarians carried in this region. In other words, the Hungarians
made the "Ger man" task their own, and implemented it.
[...]
Hungary as well, nor must we forget that the Hungarians applied the
same asymmetric model in their dealings with the national minorities in
Hungary. Although it was not so articulated, it could have been said that
the Hungarians were "that sun" around which "the planets"
of national minorities would revolve, national minorities unsuited for
independence, not destined for independence, nor feeling that independence
was their destiny.
There was one point on which the Hun garian liberals were ahead of the
Germans, and they knew it and were proud of it. What I have in mind is
constitutional practice. The April Laws had made a united country of Hungary
(united with Tran sylvania), with a liberal constitution, and a government
responsible to the legislature. The job was not complete, but basically
she was a legally existing liberal nation-state, apparently enjoying the
blessing of the dynasty, and even able to raise an army of its own. Dénes
Pázmándy, one of the Hungarian envoys to the Paulskirche,
wrote home with the superiority of a poli tician from a country that had
already undergone transformation, that the Ger man representatives in Frankfurt
kept on distinguishing and discriminating, but the cause of unity was making
no progress. László Szalay, the other envoy, who stayed on,
and who wished to share with others the benefit of the experiences of his
country that had carried out the transformation, certainly contributed
to the fact that the first paragraph of the draft constitution already
at committee stage excluded a link that went beyond Personalunion (personal
identity of the monarch) with non-German states. It must also have been
his influence that the third paragraph established that a German ruler
must appoint a regent in his non-German provinces. This provision was indeed
in keeping with the legal position of the Palatine of Hungary. (The German
Parliament finally passed these paragraphs of the Constitution at the end
of October 1848 without amendment.)
The German constitutional debate continued but the liberal
models of the international new order soon lost their timeliness in practice.
It was of purely theoretical importance that Gagern, early in 1849, as
a Frankfurt (German) Prime Minister without power, continued to support
a Europe of nation-states against Prince Schwarzenberg's--the Austrian
Prime Min-is ter's--absolutist plan for a seventy-million strong Mitteleuropa.
I cannot shut out the ambition to belong to such a great nation. But
the dominant idea of our time, from which we cannot depart with impunity,
is the progress of liberty on a national basis... It cannot be reconciled
with the demands of nationality, that we should allow a dozen foreign nations
to sit with us here.
By then the sun of Frankfurt had set. New constellations had put in
an appearance.
András Gergely
is professor of Hungarian history
at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He was Ambassador
to the Republic of South Africa between 1992-1995.
