Part 13

Scholars are just now writing learned essays as to whether the idea of the apotheosis of Augustus came to the Romans from Greece or from Egypt, or whether it may be a survival of fetishism. It may have had a much more homely origin, however. To the common people in the villages round Dessau, I feel sure that the Duke was little short of a god, provided always that they knew what was meant by a god. He might not have created the world, even _Divus Augustus_ was not credited with that _tour de force_; but there was nothing else, I believe, that the peasants would have thought beyond the power of their Duke. To us children also, the Duke, the Duchess, and all the members of the Ducal family, were something quite different from the rest of the world, and some of these impressions of childhood often remain for life. When their carriage passed through the streets, everybody stood still, took off his hat, and remained bareheaded till they had passed. There was nothing servile in all this, as little as there is in a Frenchman signing himself _Votre très-obéissant serviteur_, for no one ever thought at that time that it could be otherwise. Nor am I at all certain that this outward respect for a sovereign is a mistake, for in honouring their sovereign, people after all but honour themselves. Whether he is supposed to be a sovereign by the grace of God, or by hereditary right, or by the voice of the people, he represents the country and the people; he is their duke, their king, their emperor, and if they wish to see him honoured by others, they must not fail to honour him themselves. When I saw the other day a king passing through the streets of his own capital, and no one touching his hat, I thought, “What a low opinion these people must have of themselves.” Even as boys at school we felt a pride in our Duke, and, though we knew scraps only of the glorious history of his ancestors, we knew how they had borne the brunt of the battle in all the greatest episodes of the history of Germany.

Little is said of these numerous small principalities in the history of Germany, but without them German history would often be quite unintelligible, and Germany would never have had so intense a vitality, would never have become what it is now. No doubt there was also an element of danger in them, particularly during the first half of this century, when as members of the German Confederation they could band together and support either Austria or Prussia in their fatal rivalry. They were the horses, as Bismarck said, harnessed to the chariot of Germany, some before and some behind, and pulling in different directions, so that it was impossible to advance. But that danger is past, thanks chiefly to Bismarck’s policy, and for the future the smaller principalities that have escaped from his grasp will form the most useful centres of intellectual life, nor are they likely now to be absorbed by Prussia, if well advised. There was a time during the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 when everybody expected that Anhalt, being almost an enclave of Prussia, would share the fate of Hanover, Nassau, and the Electorate of Hessia. The reigning Duke had the strongest sympathies for Austria. But he had a clever minister, who showed him that there were only two ways open to him under the circumstances, either to abdicate of his own free will, and make as advantageous an arrangement with Prussia as possible, or to say yes to whatever demand was made from Berlin. He chose the latter alternative, and it is reported that it was of him that Bismarck said: “I know what to do with my enemies, but what to do with my friends, I don’t.”

I cannot resist the temptation of giving here a short sketch of the really glorious history of the duchy and the Dukes of Anhalt, such as it was known to us as boys. Nor should it be supposed that I exaggerate the importance of my native duchy. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any reigning house now that can produce such a splendid record as Anhalt. If it has remained small and lost much of its former political influence, that is due chiefly to a law of inheritance which prevailed in the ducal family. Instead of making the eldest son the ruler of the whole duchy, it was the custom to divide the land among all the princes. Thus instead of one Duchy of Anhalt there were four duchies, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Cöthen, Anhalt-Zerbst, and Anhalt-Bernburg, some of them again subdivided. From time to time the duchies were reunited, and so they are at present, the last of the collateral branches having died out in 1863, when they were united once more into one duchy.

If we go slowly back into the past, and that seems to me the real task of the historian, we shall find that there is no critical epoch in the history of Germany, and of the history of the world, where we do not meet with some of the princes of the small Duchy of Anhalt, standing in the very front of the fight. I only wonder that no one has yet attempted to write a popular history of the four principalities of Anhalt, in order to show the share which they took in the historical development of Germany. I have tried to refresh my memory by reading a carefully written manual, “Anhalt’s Geschichte in Wort und Bild,” by Dr. Hermann Lorenz, 1893, but instead of quoting his opinion, or the opinions of any historians, as to the personal merits and the historical achievements of the princes of Anhalt, whether as warriors or as rulers, I shall try to quote, wherever it is possible, the judgments pronounced on them by some of their own contemporaries, whose names will carry greater weight.

The beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by Napoleon’s invasion and almost annihilation of Germany. Dessau was then ruled by Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz (1740–1806). He had done an immense amount to raise both the material and the intellectual status of his people, and had well earned the name he is still known by, of “Father Franz.” Many of the princes of that time were far in advance of the people, and they met, as he did, with considerable difficulty in overcoming the resistance of those whom they wished to benefit by their reforms. The young prince of Dessau had travelled in Holland, England, and Italy. He avoided France, which he said was dangerous to young princes, and yet he was enlightened enough to erect a monument to Rousseau in his beautiful park at Wörlitz. He loved England. “In England,” he used to say, “one becomes a man.” Nor did he travel for pleasure only. While in England, he studied agriculture, architecture, gardening, brewing, and various other manufactures, in order to introduce as many improvements as possible among his own people. In Italy he studied art, both ancient and modern, under Winckelmann, and this great antiquarian was so delighted with the young prince and his companion that he spoke of their visit as the appearance of two young Greek gods. At that time it was still possible to buy old classical statues and old Italian pictures, and the young prince gladly availed himself of his opportunities as far as his financial resources would allow, and brought home to Dessau many valuable specimens of ancient and modern art. These he arranged in his various palaces and museums, all open to the people, and in the beautiful parks and gardens which he had created after English models in the neighbourhood of his capital. After a hundred years some of these parks, particularly that of Wörlitz, can vie with some of the finest parks in England. Like the neighbouring duchy of Weimar, Dessau soon attracted visitors from all parts of Germany. Goethe himself and his enlightened patron, the Duke Karl August, were often the guests of the Duke of Dessau, and Goethe has in several places spoken in rapturous terms of the beauties of Wörlitz, and the charm of the Duke’s society. Wieland, Lavater, Matthison, and other celebrities often passed happy days at Dessau as guests of the Duke.

But after Duke Franz had spent all his life in embellishing his land and inspiring his subjects with higher and nobler ideals, the Napoleonic thunder-cloud, which had long threatened Germany, burst over his head, and threatened to destroy everything that he had planted. After the battle of Jena in 1806 Prussia and the whole of Germany were at the mercy of the great French conqueror, and Napoleon, with his army of 100,000 men, who had to be lodged and fed in every town of Germany through which they passed, appeared at Dessau on 21st October, 1806. The old Prince had to receive him bareheaded at the foot of the staircase of his castle. My mother, then a child of six, remembered seeing her own grand and beautiful prince standing erect before the small and pale Corsican. The Prince, however, in his meeting with the Emperor, was not afraid to wear the Prussian order of the Black Eagle on his breast, and when he was asked by Napoleon whether he too had sent a contingent to the Prussian army, he said, “No, sir.” “Why not?” asked the Emperor. “Because I have not been asked,” was the answer. “But if you had been asked?” continued the Emperor. “Then I should certainly have sent my soldiers,” the Prince replied; and he added: “Your Majesty knows the right of the stronger.” This was a not very prudent remark to make, but the Emperor seems to have liked the outspoken old man. He invited him to inspect with him the bridge over the Elbe which had been burnt by the Prussians to cover their retreat. He demanded that it should be rebuilt at once, and on that condition he promised to grant neutrality to the duchy. Nay, before leaving Dessau in the morning he went so far as to ask his host whether he could do anything for him. “For myself,” the Prince replied, “I want nothing. I only ask for mercy for my people, for they are all to me like my children.”

The next critical period in the history of Germany is that of Frederick the Great, marked by the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the establishment of Prussia as one of the great Powers of Europe.

Here again we find a prince of Anhalt as one of the principal actors. The instrument with which Frederick the Great won his victories was his well-drilled army, and the drill-master of that army had been Leopold, Fürst zu Anhalt, the Field-Marshal of Frederick’s father. At the head of his grenadiers and by the side of Prince Eugène, Prince Leopold of Dessau had won, or helped to win, the great battles of Höchstadt, Blindheim (corrupted to Blenheim), Turin, and Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had thus helped in establishing against the overweening ambition of Louis XIV. what was then called the political equilibrium of Europe. The Prussian Field-Marshal was known at the time all over Germany as the “Alte Dessauer,” and through Carlyle’s “Life of Frederick the Great” his memory has lately been revived in England also. Having completely reorganised the Prussian army and having led it ever so many times to brilliant victories, he was for Prussia in his time what Bismarck was in our own. But after the death of Frederick I. and Frederick William II., Frederick II., or the Great, disliked the old general’s tutelage and dismissed him: much as Bismarck has been dismissed in our own time. The young King wrote to the old Field-Marshal quite openly: “I shall not be such a fool as to neglect my most experienced officers, but this campaign (in Silesia) I reserve for myself lest the world should think that the Prussian King cannot go to war without his tutor.” His old tutor was very angry, but he did not rebel, and in a State like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as right as the present Emperor in saying “Let one be King.” However, after Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive victories for his King. The King after the battle took off his hat before his tutor and embraced him in the sight of the whole army. The inscription placed on the Field-Marshal’s monument at Berlin, probably composed by the King himself, is simple and true: “He led the Prussian auxiliary forces victoriously to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; he took Stralsund and the island of Rügen. The battle of Kesselsdorf crowned his military career. The Prussian army owes him its strict discipline and the improvement of its infantry.” The successors of Frederick the Great have never forgotten what they owe to the “Alte Dessauer,” and I doubt not they may be counted on in the future also as the stoutest friends and supporters of the illustrious house of Albrecht the Bear, the first Markgrave of Brandenburg.

If stronger testimony to the military genius of the Old Dessauer were wanted from the mouth of his own contemporaries, it might easily be quoted from the despatches of Prince Eugène. That great general freely admits that the Prince’s troops surpassed his own in courage and discipline; nay, he adds, “the Prince of Dessau has done wonders in the battle of Turin.” The Emperor of Austria endorsed this judgment, and added, “that he had earned immortal glory,” and he conferred on him the title of Serene Highness.

So much for the eighteenth century. If now we look back to the seventeenth, the century of the Thirty Years’ War, we find Anhalt the constant trysting-ground of the two parties, the Catholic and the Protestant Powers, and we see the princes of Anhalt again and again at the head of the Northern or Protestant armies. The Elbe often divided the two, and the bridge over the river near Dessau was contested then as it was during the Napoleonic wars. Well do I remember, when as a boy I went to the Schanzenhaus, a coffeehouse on the way to the new bridge over the Elbe, how it was explained to me that these Schanzen or fortifications were what was left of the works erected by Wallenstein: just as I learnt at a later time that my own house at Oxford called _Park’s End_, was so called not because it stood as it does now at the end of the Park, but because what is now called the Park was originally the Parks, _i.e._, the parks of artillery erected by Cromwell’s army against the walls of Oxford. The right name of my house should therefore have been not Park’s End, but Parks’ End. A more merciless war than the Thirty Years’ War was seldom waged; villages and whole towns vanished from the ground, and many tracts of cultivated land, particularly along the Elbe, were changed into deserts. Yet during all that time the Anhalt princes never wavered. When the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick II., had been proclaimed King in Bohemia in 1619, his commander-in-chief was Prince Christian of Anhalt. When after years of slaughter Gustavus Adolphus came to the assistance of the Protestant Powers in Germany and won the decisive battle of Lützen, one of Prince Christian’s sons, Prince Ernest, fought at his side and died of his wounds soon after the battle. The memory of Gustavus Adolphus has been kept alive in Dessau to the present day. He has become the hero of popular romance, and as a schoolboy I heard several stories told by the common people of his adventures during the war. There stands a large red brick house which I often passed on my way from Dessau to Wörlitz, and which is simply called Gustavus Adolphus. The story goes that the Swedish king was in hiding there under a bridge while the enemy’s cavalry passed over it.

One more century back brings us to the time of the Reformation, and once more among the most prominent champions of the Protestant cause we see the princes of Anhalt. The very cradle of the Reformation, Wittenberg, was not far from Dessau, and the reigning family of Anhalt was closely connected by marriage with the Saxon princes of the house of Wettin, the chief protectors of the reforming movement in Germany. Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt was present at the Diet of Worms, in 1521, and again in 1529, at the Diet of Speier. He openly declared in favour of ecclesiastical reform, and he extended his patronage to Luther when he came to preach at Zerbst. This was at that time a most dangerous step to take, but the young prince was not to be frightened by Pope or Emperor, and at the Diet of Augsburg he was again one of the first princes to sign the Augsburg Confession. During the momentous years that followed, the Anhalt princes were willing, as they declared, to risk life and wealth, land and throne, for the Gospel. Nor was this a mere phrase, for Prince Wolfgang, when he found himself surrounded at Bernburg by the Imperial army, chiefly Spanish, had in good earnest to fly for his life and remain in hiding for some time. When he was able to return to his duchy, he devoted his remaining years to repairing, as much as possible, the ravages of the war, and he then retired into private life of his own free will, leaving the government to his three cousins, and ending his days as a simple citizen in the small town of Zerbst. Let me quote once more the judgment passed on him by the most eminent of his own contemporaries. Luther and Philip Melanchthon have spoken in no uncertain tone of the merits of the Anhalt princes during the most critical period of the Reformation. Of Prince Wolfgang Melanchthon said: “No one will come again, equal to him in authority among princes, in love towards churches and schools, in zeal to maintain peace and concord, and in readiness to give up his life for his faith.” Of Prince George, called the _Gottselige_, Luther is reported to have declared: “He is more pious than I am, and if he does not get into heaven, I too shall certainly have to remain outside.” Nay, even his antagonist, the Emperor Charles V., confessed that he knew no other person in the whole of his empire who could be compared in piety or ability to Prince George of Anhalt. Who knows of him now outside the limits of the Duchy of Dessau? but it is all the more the duty of his descendants to keep his memory fresh as one of that small band of men who have done their duty.

So much for the princes of the house of Anhalt during the period of the Reformation. No other reigning family could produce a brighter escutcheon during the troubles of the sixteenth century, and we saw how that escutcheon was preserved bright and brilliant during the centuries that followed, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth. If the title of Grand Duke does not depend on the number of square miles, surely no family has deserved that title so well as the ducal family of Anhalt.

Beyond the sixteenth century, the history of Germany tells us little of the private character of the Anhalt princes, but we may look forward to new information which the Ducal Archives will yield if examined, as they have been of late by competent historians. Much useful work has been done during the last twenty-two years by a historical society established at Dessau. A Codex Anhaltinus has been published and much light has been thrown on transactions in which some princes of Anhalt had taken a prominent part. If during the time of the Crusades the names of the Ascanians are but seldom mentioned, there was a good reason for it. Bernhard of Clairvaux himself, wise man as he was with all his fanaticism, had persuaded them to turn their arms against the heathen on the eastern borders of Germany, rather than against the heathen who had conquered the Holy Land. Slavonic tribes, particularly the Wends and Sorbs, who were still heathen, were constantly threatening the eastern parts of the German Empire, the very ramparts of civilisation and Christianity, and it was felt to be absolutely necessary to drive them back, or to induce them to adopt a civilised and Christian mode of life. In 1134 Albrecht, commonly called Albrecht the Bear, had been invested by the Emperor Lothar with the Northern Mark, or the Mark Brandenburg, as his fief, in order to defend it as best he could against these Slavonic inroads. This Albrecht the Bear is the ancestor of the reigning Dukes of Anhalt, the present duke being his nineteenth successor. It was the same Mark Brandenburg which was afterwards to become the cradle of Prussia and indirectly of the German Empire. Albrecht’s influence was so great at the time that, after the death of the Emperor Lothar, he succeeded in carrying the election of the Emperor Konrad III., the Hohenstaufen, against the Welfic party, who wished to raise the Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, to the Imperial throne of Germany. The Emperor rewarded Albrecht’s services by taking the Duchy of Saxony away from the Welfic Duke of Bavaria, and bestowing it on him. This led to a bloody war between the two claimants, and ended in the defeat of Albrecht. But though deprived again of his Saxon fief, Albrecht proved so successful in his own mark against the Sorbs and Wends that he received the title of Markgrave of Brandenburg, and as such became one of the Electors of the German Empire. All those fierce fights against the Slavonic races on the western frontier of Germany are now well-nigh forgotten, and only the names of towns and rivers remain to remind us how much of what is now German soil, between the Elbe and Oder, had for a long time been occupied by Slavonic tribes, uncivilised and pagan. Albrecht had really inherited this task of subduing and expelling these enemies from German soil from his father, Count Otto, who was the grandson of Count Esiko of Ballenstädt (1050). All these princes and their knights had to spend their lives in settling and defending the frontiers or marks of Germany, or of what had been German soil before the southward migrations of the German tribes began. They held their fiefs from the German Emperors, but were left free to do whatever they deemed necessary in the defence of their strongholds (burgs) and settlements. The first of the Saxon Emperors, Henry I. (919–936), was called the _Burgenbauer_, because he encouraged all over Germany the building of strongholds which afterwards grew into villages and towns, and thus led gradually to a more civilised life in the German Empire. Wherever it was possible churches were built, bishoprics were founded, monasteries and schools established and supported by liberal grants of land. A great share in this Eastern conquest fell to the Counts of Anhalt, and their achievements were richly rewarded by the great Saxon Emperors, Henry I. and Otto the Great. There can be no doubt that these bloody crusades of the German Markgraves against their pagan enemies in the East of Europe, though less famous, left more lasting and more substantial benefits to Germany than all the crusades against the Saracens.