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I
78-12,703
MOORE, James Willard
ARNOLD RUGE, A STUDY IN DEMOCRATIC
CAESARISM.
University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.,
1977
University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan 4eioe
© 1977
JAMES WILLARD MOORE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Arnold Ruge
A Study in Democratic Caesarism
By
James Willard Moore
A.B. (Reed College) 1959
M.A. (University of California) 1966
C.Phil. (University of California) 1973
DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the decree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
History
in the
GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Approved:
Committee in Charge
DEGREE CONFERRED DECEMBER 9,1977
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 1
Chapter
I. ARNOLD RUGE, 1802-1830: THE SHAPING OF A PRUSSIAN
INTELLECTUAL................................................... 18
II. RUGE AND HEGEL, 1830-1837: TWO INTELLECTUALS AND TWO
GENERATIONS................................................... 61
III. THE HALLISCHE JAHRBUCHER AND PRUSSIANISM, 1838-1839 ... 110
IV. ARNOLD RUGE AND THE JAHRBUCHER, 1840-1843: THE
HEGELIAN AS REBEL............................................ 133
V. RUGE IN DECLINE, THE DEUTSCH-FRANZOSISCHE JAHRBpCHER
AND KARL MARX, 1843-1844 ..................................... 192
VI. ARNOLD RUGE THE RED PRUSSIAN, 1844-1848 243
VII. RUGE AND THE GERMAN NATIONAL REVOLUTION, FEBRUARY-
AUGUST, 1848 .................................................. 275
VIII. REVOLUTION AND COUNTERREVOLUTION IN PRUSSIA,
AUGUST 1848-1850 .............................................. 305
IX. ARNOLD RUGE AND CAESARISM, 1850-1880 ...................... 336
Years of Bitterness: 1850-1858 336
Years of Excitement, 1858-1866 .......................... 373
Years of Reconciliation, 1866-1880 ...................... 396
NOTES................................................................. 415
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................... 531
ii
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INTRODUCTION
Leonard Krieger begins his very formidable book on German
liberalism by asking the following questions:
Did the Germans' failure to achieve, under their own power,
a democracy in the modern sense mean simply the triumph of
conservatism over generic liberalism in Germany, or was a
peculiar German attitude toward liberty involved in its
defeat? If there was such an attitude, what were its
ingredients?-1-
Krieger believes that German liberalism was in fact crippled by its own
attitudes. I agree. I would even go further. In my opinion not only
German Idealism and liberalism, but also the democratic, socialist, and
communist movements as they existed in Germany were plagued by an
essentially constant set of debilitating attitudes and internal tensions:
by tension between outward rebellion and inward deference to authority,
by tension between an excessive outward confidence in formal theory and
a debilitating inward lack of confidence in self, by an immanent sense
of impotence and dependency that caused the progressive movement to
collapse whenever it was sharply challenged, in 1848-49, in 1918, and
finally in 1933.
Here I hope to complement Krieger's very thoughtful and knowl
edgeable, but also abstract and formal study, to go beneath the level
of formal thought and to show how this "peculiar German attitude"— or,
better, how this set of attitudes developed, how it affected formal
doctrine and how it worked itself out in practice. I think that this
is a useful approach, for an "attitude" is more than a political
1
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2
doctrine. An "attitude," a state of mind or of feeling, may certainly
influence philosophy or political theory, and it may gain influence and
continuity through being embodied in formal theory. But it also has an
existence independent of theory. "Attitudes" of this kind arise out of
practical experience and in response to real needs, and even the most
brilliant philosophy may lose its power when it no longer satisfies a
real need.
Because I wish to be concrete, I have chosen a relatively narrow
topic. I take one instance in which the liberal opposition broke down,
that of 1866. In 1866 many liberals gave up their opposition to
Prussian authoritarianism and endorsed Otto von Bismarck's new system
in Germany. What is more surprising, a number of democrats were among
the first to endorse this system. I call these men "democratic
Caesarists"— for reasons which I will explain. If we know what "atti
tudes" led these men, these outspoken democrats, to support a system
like Bismarck's, then it should be easy to understand why it was that
others followed.
The "democratic Caesarist" is the extreme example which illus
trates a more general trend. To this extent he can be made to serve a
function like that of an ideal type. For the "ideal type,"
illustrates the meaning which lies in a cultural phenomenon.
Elements of a phenomenon in which its idea is expressed are
one-sidedly exaggerated so that this intellectual construct,
the ideal type, is brought into relief [and] may be compared
with concrete reality.2
Here the "idea," the central theme of this paper, is Krieger's
"peculiar German attitude toward liberty." In the "democratic
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3
Caesarist" one finds this idea "one-sidedly exaggerated" in a way that
"illustrates the meaning" of the liberal defeat of 1866.
I say that the "democratic Caesarist" can serve a function like
that of an ideal type, for I do not mean to employ Max Weber's method
in all of its abstract rigor. My approach is quasi-biographical, for I
believe that the life of a human being is a study more varied, more
suggestive and above all more concrete than any intellectual construct
could be. I have chosen Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), who was at once the
most radical and the most articulate of the small group of men whom I
call democratic Caesarists.
I call Ruge typical. I call him that, even though he held
opinions which most German liberals did not hold, even though he was an
Hegelian and a cosmopolitan democrat, a radical who at times called
himself a republican and a socialist. For Hegelianism and republicanism
are formal doctrines, and here we are concerned less with formal
doctrines than with underlying attitudes. Ruge had to deal with the
same basic problems as did most German liberals in his day. Like them
he wished to realize a set of progressive or "western" ideals in the
teeth of a political order which was basically hostile to these ideals,
but which was strong and stable, which did have valid claims to his
loyalty and which— as Krieger has shown— did have a healthy capacity to
co-opt its opposition. Like other liberals, he wished somehow to
realize his ideals without directly confronting the monarchy. Like them,
he had an exaggerated faith in theory which helped to compensate for
his own sense of powerlessness. He differed from most of his
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4
contemporaries in that his demands went further than theirs. The tensions
within his system were unusually great, and he often handled these
tensions awkwardly. He sometimes said and did things which were absurd,
and eventually this once popular man came to be widely regarded as a
fool. But Ruge's weaknesses are not idiosyncratic. Ruge's career is
representative in the sense that a caricature is representative, and by
studying his career we can hope better to understand why the liberal
movement in Germany so often failed.
Ruge is representative— and therefore also interesting— not
least because he was a Caesarist. That is, Ruge did not endorse
Bismarck's system because he had abandoned his ideals and become a
conservative or a nationalist, but he did so because he was caught up in
a wider European mood, a mood which transcended older party lines and
which, I will argue, had roots in the "peculiar attitudes" already
mentioned.
The word "Caesarism" is not a novel one. It was much used in
the political literature of the late nineteenth century. Applied first
to the methods of Louis Bonaparte and to the system of the Second
Empire in Prance, it soon came to designate other European statesmen
who used similar methods— to designate a political style which was
characteristic of the era and which may in some ways be called a fore
runner of modern Fascism. Otto von Bismarck in particular, with his
special blend of authoritarianism and revolutionary methods, with his
bold disregard of the traditions of conservative politics, with his
appeals to patriotism and his manipulation of the masses, was thought to
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5
be Bonaparte's disciple. And the German Empire resembled that of
Napoleon III in substance as well as in name. Both Empires were
monarchial in form. The German Empire was not illegitimate, as
Napoleon's was, but its legitimacy was not above question. Outside
Prussia the Emperor could no longer depend on the traditional loyalty
of the subject to his Prince; like Napoleon he had to rely on patriot
ism and on his own popularity. Like Bonaparte, Bismarck depended on
mass support to make good this loss of moral authority. Both systems
were unstable. The masses had to be held through repeated successes
in foreign policy, a need which in both cases eventually led to
disaster.^
The historian Heinz Gollwitzer has suggested that this system
4
had in Germany an ideological counterpart. Although Louis Napoleon
himself was unpopular here, his methods fascinated a surprising number
of Germans. Many who rejected Bonaparte found other "strong men"—
Cromwell or Cavour— to be worthy of imitation, and in some circles
"Cavourism" passed as an acceptable euphemism for Bonapartism. The
nineteenth century was especially rich in scholarly studies of Julius
Caesar. For Gollwitzer it also produced an "ideology of Caesarism"—
or, as I would put it, it produced a Caesaristic mood—a mood or
ideology which helped to make a career like Bismarck's possible.
What then is a "democratic Caesarist"? First of all, he would
be a democrat who endorsed Bismarck's system—without ceasing to be a
democrat. One would expect a Caesarist to show a certain tolerance
for authoritarian methods and perhaps also a certain impatience with
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6
parliaments and majorities— as Ruge often did. One might call any
German who expressed even a grudging admiration for Louis Napoleon— as
Ruge did— a potential Caesarist. Again, a Caesarist would have to be
flexible in certain matters of principle. Even conservatives had to be
flexible to follow Bismarck. Bismarck's authority in the Empire
rested on a "revolution from above," on a drastic breach in legal
continuity, and on the extinction of the rights of several legitimate
dynasties.5 In Prussia, his authority rested on the coup d'etat of
9 November 1848. From almost anyone's standpoint, conservative, liberal,
or democratic, his system was legally questionable. One would thus
expect a Ceasarist to be something of a legal relativist— as Ruge was.
A democratic Caesarist would have to be flexible indeed, for the
gap between the democratic ideal and Imperial reality was a particularly
wide one. Even from a conservative standpoint, the legitimacy of the
Empire was not above question. Democracy has its own concept of
legitimacy; it holds that a government is legitimate only insofar as
it represents the will of the people. Now, the government of the
Empire was in no sense accountable to the popularly elected Reichstag
or to any popular majority. To this extent it had the character of a
plebiscitory dictatorship, even though its authority was limited by law.
In order to endorse this quasi-dictatorship, a thoughtful and systematic
democrat would therefore have to fall back on the "Rousseauian" or,
better, on the absurd idea that this unaccountable government somehow
represented the popular will better than a majority vote would have
done. And ultimately, in the years after 1866, Ruge did also take this
position. Ruge was certainly a democratic Caesarist.
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