AN UNRECORDED GERMAN PERIODICALFROM THE TIME OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

BEYTRAGE ZUR GESCHICHTE DES KRIEGESDER JAHRE 1812 UND 1813

DAVID PAISEY

GERMAN resistance to Napoleon, fostered by exiles such as Clausewitz and Stein inSt. Petersburg as well as by local patriots, burst into renewed life at the retreat fromMoscow and gathered strength throughout the year or so of struggle which followed,called in German the Freiheitskriege, wars of liberation from French occupation. A multi-farious underground literature sprang up, aimed at the ending of collaboration withNapoleon by rulers and their administrations and by the large German contingent in theGrande armee. Passionately nationalistic in a pan-German sense, it took the form mainlyof small pamphlets, the most successful texts being reprinted many times and in manyplaces, in spite of the close attention of censors and the informants of the French secretpolice, but usually without evidence of origin or with false imprints.'

The bibliography of this material is consequently extremely complicated: survivingeditions are widely scattered through many collections, and there is neither an exhaustivestudy of the field nor a union catalogue of German holdings. To call a periodical from thiscategory recently acquired by the British Library unrecorded is therefore perhaps no verystartling claim, but the Beytrdge zur Geschichte des Krieges der Jahre 1812 und 181 j , oder:das erwachte Europa (nos. i -18, each consisting of two quarto leaves, without place or dateof publication, but probably 1814)^ do not appear in Joachim Kirchner's Bibliographieder Zeitschriften des deutschen Sprachgebiets bis igoo.,^ nor does the most famous text theycontain, Ernst Moritz Arndt's poem 'Des Teutschen Vaterland' with which no. 3 begins,appear in this edition in Karl Heinz Schafer and Josef Schawe's voluminous Ernst MoritzArndt, ein bibliographisches Handbuch lydg-igGg:"^ K. H. Schafer has told me that he wasunable to find a copy of the Beytrdge in Germany.

The periodical shares its sub-title and, as we shall see, some of its content, with anotherserial which is comparatively well known, even though the history of its printings andreprintings is far from fully recorded. This is Russlands Triumph, oder das erwachte Europa,each issue a substantial octavo anthology of over 100 pages, including reports of recent eventsas well as political essays and poems, some by names as famous as Arndt, Kleist, and Kotze-bue, though the majority of contributions were published anonymously. Many items werereprints of pamphlets which had already appeared independently: a semi-undergroundpublication paid little attention to copyright law. Arndt wrote in a letter to G. A. Reimer,dated Konigsberg 22 March 1813: 'Es ist in Berlin ein russischer Triumphator aufgestanden,

129

der nicht allein viele kleine erschienene Pamphlets - was allerdings erlaubt ist - sondernauch Bucher nachdruckt'.^ Arndt was here objecting to unauthorized reprinting of hisbook Die Glocke der Stunde in drei Ziigen, first published in St. Petersburg in 1812, whichappeared in three instalments in Russlands Triumph, nos. 3, 4, and 5.

According to Fritz Lange, who has republished the text of the first six issues froma Berlin edition of 1813/14, with a most useful historical introduction,^ the first numberswere prepared in Riga in collaboration with the 'Russisch-deutsche Legion', a group ofGerman soldiers working with the Russians, and printed there with the imprint 'Deutsch-land 1812'. There were certainly a number of editions, the earliest I have seen being theBritish Library's copies of nos. i^ and 3 5 (pressmark 1390.C.38), nos. i, 3, and 4 havingthe imprint 'Deutschland. 1813' while no. 5 has 'Berlin, bei Friedrich Braunes. 1813'.The absence of nos. 2 and 6 from this set is no doubt due to the attentions of the censors:no. 2 contained the text of a speech by Ernst Raupach critical of the nobility and wasbrought to the notice of the Prussian Polizeiminister in April 1813, and we know that theentire printing of the bookseller Braunes's edition of no. 6 was ordered to be destroyed.^A copy of the first six numbers in the library at Gottingen is made up as follows: no. i hasthe imprint 'Berlin, bei Rudolph Werckmeister. 1813'; no. 2, designated 'Dritte Auflage',has the imprint 'Berlin. 1813'; nos. 3-5 appear identical with the British Library copiesdescribed above; no. 6 has no separate title-page or wrapper, and was issued by the Berlinpublisher Achenwall & Co. with a general title-page, dated 1814, for all six issues, pre-sented under the new title Das erwachte Europa as 'Erster Band, erstes bis sechstes Heft',and with a general introduction dated December 1813 promising a continuation under thenew title. This introduction recounts that the first issue came out in Berlin early in March1813, after the departure of French and the arrival of Russian troops, when a limitedamount of press freedom had been restored, and that several editions of the early numbershad been necessary. Achenwall did indeed go on to produce six more issues oi Das erwachteEuropa, the early numbers presumably coming out during 1814, though I have seen onlya copy,^ designated 'Zweiter Band, erstes bis sechstes Heft' on the general title-page,dated 1815, and without separate title-pages or wrappers for the individual numbers.^°All editions I have seen of the first six numbers (Russlands Triumph), including thetwo different editions of no. i in the collections mentioned above, appear to me to beproducts of the same press, whatever publishers may have been responsible for differentissues."

No fewer than ten items from the first four issues of Russlands Triumph are reprintedin the first nine issues of our 'new' Beytrdge, and supply well over half their content, threeof the longer items having to be spread over several numbers because each comprises onlyfour quarto pages. Leaving out of consideration the brief historical anecdotes, entitled'Quodlibets', which appear as gap-fillers in the two serials, many being common to both,only one item, an acrostic on the name Dresden (directed against collaborationist Saxonyand probably referring to the Napoleonic success in the battle near Dresden on 26-27 August1813) in the first issue of the Beytrdge, also occurs in the other serial in an issue later thanthe fourth,'^ but this could well have come from some common source. The dependence

130

of the early numbers of the Beytrdge on Russlands Triumph, however, is too consistent tobe the result of chance. Unfortunately, as dating evidence the copied material hardly helpsat all. As we have seen, the first number oi Russlands Triumph appeared in Berlin in March1813, and, with exception of the banned no. 6, the remaining numbers of the first seriesmust have followed swiftly, to judge from Arndt's letter quoted above: no internal evidencecontradicts this assumption. Even the banned no. 6, not released to the public until newyear 1814, must have predated the epoch-making German victory at Leipzig (16-19October 1813), since it is not mentioned until the first issue of the new volume of Daserwachte Europa (1814).

Leipzig is, however, a terminus post quem for the Beytrdge, since the first number openswith a poem by C. F. Gerlich entitled 'Die drei unvcrgesslichen Tage bei Leipzig'; indeed,no event later than this is mentioned in any of the eighteen numbers. With the tide nowdecisively turning, retrospection had become an effective instrument of propaganda.^^The most substantial item in the whole serial is a quite detailed account, published ininstalments over nos. 9 to 17, of the joint Prussian and Russian military campaign fromApril to June 1813. As in Russlands Triumph, there is here a strongly pro-Russian element:no. 18 even has translated extracts from a letter from a Cossack soldier to his commander,said to have been printed in Russian on 22 March 1813 in Kalisz, where a few weeks earherthe alliance between Prussia and Russia had been concluded. There is also one item ofparticular English interest, an account in nos. 10 and 11 of a meeting in the City of LondonTavern in London on 22 April 1813 to raise money and support for German patriots,addressed by the Duke of Sussex: the report of the occasion in The Times (23 April)is far less circumstantial. Amongst the miscellaneous items worthy of note is a balladin no. 18 by J. M. Schletzer entitled 'Jager Renz in der Schlacht bey Gorde am 15.Sept.1813', which tells (unfortunately rather clumsily) the apparently true story of a girlfrom Potsdam called Leonora Prochaska who joined the volunteer Liitzow'sche Frei-corps disguised as a man, under the name Renz, and who was killed in battle by a Frenchbullet.

But the most famous text here is undoubtedly Arndt's poem pubhshed anonymouslyin no. 3 (fig. i).'4 (Arndt, 1769-1860, was patriot, poet, and historian, and a notable pro-ponent of bourgeois democracy.) What at the time was a direct and fiery expression ofnationalism, a call for unity in face of oppression, has become so overlaid by the echoes ofits subsequent use, down to the Nazi period, as a rallying-cry of German imperialism, thatit is hard to read without a shudder. Even allowing for rhetorical licence and assumingArndt to have had in mind a kind of revived spiritual Holy Roman Empire (the politicalone having died so recently), the inclusion of Switzerland in the constituents of his idealfatherland, stretching 'so weit die teutsche Zunge klingt', is still ahenating. The poem waswritten towards the end of January 1813, first published as a single-sheet leaflet in February/March, probably in Konigsberg, and reprinted very quickly in a large number of more orless underground patriotic anthologies.'^ Its popularity was immediate, but as German .liberation proceeded and national unity against the French invader gave way to thereassertion of particularist interests by German princes and territorial juggling by the

e u t f d̂ c It a t e r n &.ift t*^ tcutf(f)cn SBfltctUirt) ?.

name mir U t l

om man tie 9?ebe Muht, 3Iu i^K^en uni) cin/ loo am 55dt Me aKolijc aicl)t'^ ^ .i^^" p-min!

ncin! 0 ufin! ' <^in S8at<rkii^ nju6

mitSKint ftd? (trecft?

^tfcn rccft? 'O ncin! o ncin! SDod) nctit 1 t»D(̂ ncin;!@cin fSatcrtttnb mug fftbfcr'fCDJt (Seiii 58«tcriant>

5^; h'o l»ie iDncin! 0 nemf

©0 nenne eutlid) rait fea^ Cot^ f©D tocit tiie tcutfcfcc ?unac fltn^tllnt>- ©ort im ^immcf JJIchft flngr

mug cr

k

132

super-powers, one of its stanzas gave such offence to the authorities that it had to bechanged or even omitted. This was the sixth stanza, reading originally as follows:

Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland ?So nenne mir das grosse Land !Ists was der Fiirsten Trug zerklaubt?Vom Kaiser und vom Reich geraubt.''O nein! o nein!Das Vaterland muss grosser sein.'̂

By as early as January 1814,'̂ this outspoken attack on the German princes was emasculatedin the first of a number of versions directing the criticism elsewhere: that in our Beytrdgesolves the problem by omitting the stanza altogether. Though it is followed by a call toarms ('An die Teutschen Fiirsten') copied from Russlands Triumph, no. 3, that can beinterpreted as conciliatory in its attitude, even to collaborationist rulers. It seems probable,therefore, that the Beytrdge appeared in 1814, like other toned-down versions of 'DesTeutschen Vaterland'.

I am unable to hazard a guess as to the place of pubhcation of the Beytrdge, except to saythat it was probably not Berlin. It is perhaps significant that the first nine numbers onlyare heavily dependent on the first four oi Russlands Triumph, whose various Berlin editionswould have kept that city supplied, and suggesting that subsequent numbers of the latterwere not available for copying. The absence of an imprint also suggests a region still subjectto severe censorship. The British Library copy was bought from a Copenhagen bookseller,which might be a pointer to a North German origin. But before the question can beanswered, much specialist work is required on the sources of contributions not fromRusslands Triumph, and even on the watermarks in the paper, of which there are severalstriking examples. It is of course impossible to say at this stage whether more than eighteennumbers were published. I hope that historians will welcome and exploit this smalladdition to the literature of German nationalism.'^

I One gets a good impression of the range of thisephemeral literature from the centenary publica-tion by Dr. Friedrich Schulze of forty items infacsimile (proclamations, political and historicalpamphlets,, songs, newspapers, etc.): Urkundender deutschen Erhebung {Leipzig, 1913), of whichthe British Library recently acquired a set (press-mark L.R.42o.e.4).

des3 Bd. I (to 1830), Stuttgart, 1969.4 Bonn, 1971, 806 pp. {Veroffentlichungen

Stadtarchivs Bonn., Bd. 8.)5 Ernst Moritz Arndt., ein Lebensbild in Briefen,

ed. H. Meisner and R. Geerds (Berlin, i8g8),no. 60.

6 Russlands Triumph 1812 oder das erwachte Europa,eingeleitet von Fritz Lange (Berlin, 1953). Copyin Cambridge University Library.

7 No. I includes the text of Czar Alexander's orderto his troops issued at Wiina on 6 Jan, 1813, so itcannot be simply an unaltered reprint from theRiga edition posited by Lange. All the editionswhich I have seen appear to bave no textualdifferences.

8 Fritz Lange, Ioc. cit,, pp. 14f.9 From the Hessische Landes- und Hochschul-

bibliothek at Darmstadt.10 The British Library used to possess a copy of

AchenwaWs Das erwachte Europa,Bd. iandBd.2,nos. I and 2 (pressmark PP.3443.cb), the eight

133

parts bound in two volumes; unfortunately thesecond, containing Bd. i, nos. 5 and 6 and Bd. 2,nos. I and 2 is lost without trace.

n Joachim Kirchner (op. cit., no. 1877a) creditsAchenwall with the publication of six numbersof Russlands Triumph during 1813, and with anew edition in 1813/14, but since no location isgiven for either, I have been unable to check therelationship between them and the editionsdescribed above. He also lists (no, 1884) anedition published by Rucker in Berlin of Daserwachte Europa, Bd, i and 2 (each comprisingsix numbers) in 1814/15, but again no locationis given.

Braunes, Achenwall, and Rucker were al!estabhshed Berlin publishers. Rudolph Werck-meister, however, does not appear in GustavSchwetschke's statistical compilation from theGerman book fair catalogues. Codex nundtnartusGermaniae literatae continuatus (HaWe, 1877), andthough tbis is not by itself sufficient reason to

think the name fictitious, the possibility shouldbe borne in mind with material of this nature.

12 Das erwachte Europa, Bd. 2, Heft i, p. 92.13 Compare the serial Beytrdge zur Geschichte des

russisch-franzosischen Feldzuges im Jahre 1812published in Breslau in 1814, Kirchner, op. cit.,no, 3991 (copy in the Austrian National Libraryat Vienna).

14 The words 'Das Echo' do not belong to the poem.Tbey have been carried over in error from no. 2,which begins with verses with that title.

15 Schafer and Scbawe, op. cit., nos. 296ff.16 Quoted from a Berlin edition of Arndt's FUnf

Lieder ftir deutsche Soldaten, published in April/May 1813.

17 Scbafer and Schawe, op. cit., no. 306.18 I am grateful to Karl Heinz Schafer for invaluable

information about Arndt, and to Giinter Wie-gand. Director of Kiel University Library, fordrawing my attention to Lange's edition ofRusslands Triumph.

134