Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T03:05:15.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of Basques, Greeks, and Germans: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Ancient Republican Tradition in the Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2007

Brian Vick
Brian Vick
Affiliation:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The relationships between German intellectuals and politics at the turn of the nineteenth century have been much debated, with the nature of the German liberal tradition at the core of controversy, and with questions about the interconnections between liberalism, nationalism, and neohumanist Bildung circling not far beyond that core. Prominent in such discussions stands the figure of the Prussian scholar and statesman Wilhelm von Humboldt. Best known today variously for his part in overhauling the Prussian educational system during the “reform era” of Chancellors Stein and Hardenberg, or for helping to establish the disciplines of classical philology and comparative linguistics, Humboldt also authored one of the seminal texts in the European liberal tradition and was actively involved in the diplomacy, constitutional planning, and nationalist upheaval surrounding Napoleon's expulsion from Germany and the subsequent construction of the German Confederation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 653 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For the classic view, see Krieger, Leonard, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar, and Aris, Reinhold, The History of Political Thought in Germany, 1789–1815 (London: Cass, 1965)Google Scholar, a framework still echoed in Nipperdey, Thomas, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck 1800–1866 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 252–3Google Scholar, and Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1987–2003), II, 414Google Scholar. Newer work on “Gemeindeliberalismus” has expanded the social base and degree of democratic practice though still leaving a somewhat conservative corporatist image of the ideology: cf. Pröve, Ralf, Stadtgemeindlicher Republikanismus und die “Macht des Volkes” civile Ordnungsformationen und kommunale Leitbilder politischer Partizipation in den deutschen Staaten vom Ende des 18. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 23–26, 82–86, 480Google Scholar. Frederick Beiser in particular has challenged the notion of apolitical aestheticism among early German liberals and Romantics: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), while Matthew Levinger has recently argued that the introduction of nationalism allowed a measure of popular participation to coexist with the focus upon orderly administration, monarchical rule, and social harmony: Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture, 1806–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

2 In the early twentieth century, Siegfried Kaehler and Friedrich Meinecke, though disagreeing about Humboldt in other respects, both questioned his commitment to the power-political nation state: Meinecke, , Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, ed. Herzfeld, Hans (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1962 [1907]), 34–48, 133, 140–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaehler, , Wilhelm von Humboldt und der Staat. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte deutscher Lebensgestaltung um 1800, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963 [1927]), 138–45, but cf. 275–9Google Scholar. After the Second World War, Friedrich C. Sell and Eberhard Kessel viewed Humboldt's liberal humanism more positively, Sell even portraying Humboldt as a pacifist cosmopolitan: Sell, , Die Tragödie des deutschen Liberalismus (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1953), 37–45, 67, 78–9Google Scholar; Kessel, , Wilhelm v. Humboldt. Idee und Wirklichkeit (Stuttgart: Koehler, 1967), 9–15, 88–91, 212–3, 232–4Google Scholar, where the liberal and nationalist tendencies reinforce one another. Krieger saw Humboldt's already weak unpolitical liberalism merge into state-based nationalism: Idea, 167–71, 208–10; for David S. Sorkin, Humboldt's consistent liberalism both limited his conversion to nationalism and was in part reinforced by it, but at the cost of Bildung's civic dimension: “Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung), 1791–1810,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 55–73.

3 On the Scottish Enlightenment and the civic tradition, see the contributions in Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, above all J. G. A. Pocock's seminal “Cambridge Paradigms and Scottish Philosophers: A Study of the Relations between the Civic Humanist and the Civil Jurisprudential Interpretations of Eighteenth-Century Social Thought,” 235–52.

4 For the only sustained recent treatment of these writings, see Zabaleta-Gorrotxategi, J. Inaki, Wilhelm von Humboldts Forschungen über die baskische Nation und Sprache und ihre Bedeutung für seine Anthropologie (Ph.D. diss., Cologne, 1998)Google Scholar; and the older Farinelli, Arturo, “Guillaume de Humboldt et L'Espagne,” Revue Hispanique 5 (1898): 1–218, 145–94Google Scholar on the Basques.

5 Oz-Salzberger, Fania, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Humboldt and Stein, and the small role of civic discourse in nineteenth-century Germany generally. Even Josef Chytry's erudite exploration of the Greek ideal in German thought does not really trace the lines of civic humanism per se, as it tends to conflate the various liberal and ancient republican traditions and elide the thematic tensions between them, whether between Athens and Sparta, Greece and Rome, Whig and Country, commerce and virtue, or protective and participatory liberty: The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), esp. xliv–lxxiv. The newer research on “Gemeindeliberalismus” has begun to direct attention to the ancient republican inheritance, as in Nolte, Paul's pioneering, “Bürgerideal, Gemeinde und Republik. ‘Klassischer Republikanismus’ im frühen deutschen Liberalismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 254 (1992): 609–56Google Scholar. Pröve, Stadtgemeindlicher Republikanismus, 481–2, however, highlights the contribution of native traditions of “Stadtrepublikanismus” above the civic humanist legacy.

6 von Humboldt, Wilhelm, “Ideen über Staatsverfassung, durch die neue französische Constitution veranlasst. Aus einem Brief an einen Freund vom August 1791,” in Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften (GS), ed. Leitzmann, Albert, 17 vols. (Berlin: Behr, 1903–36), I, 77–85, 80–1Google Scholar. For a different view, Kost, Jürgen, Wilhelm von Humboldt—Weimarer Klassik—Bürgerliches Bewusstsein. Kulturelle Entwürfe in Deutschland um 1800 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004), 130, 139–40Google Scholar, where Humboldt's “Kräfte” mimic Aristotelian entelechy and determine character formation by themselves. On the “powers,” and Humboldt's historicism generally, as outgrowths of Enlightenment vitalism, with its reciprocal and holistic relationships between organism and world, see Reill, Peter Hans, “Science and the Construction of the Cultural Sciences in Late Enlightenment Germany: The Case of Wilhelm von Humboldt,” History and Theory 33, no. 3 (1994): 345–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen,” in GS I, 97–254, here, 129 on security; in English, Humboldt, , The Limits of State Action, ed. Burrow, J. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. the earlier essay “Über Religion,” in GS I, 45–76 (1789/1790), 69, for the state as a means of promoting Bildung. Gerald N. Izenberg also reads the Limits in the context of late eighteenth-century debates over civic virtue and commercial society, and suggests that while Humboldt drew his notion of individuality both from Weimar classicism and the classical republican tradition, he was “in the modern camp” (31) in arguing for commerce-related jurisprudentialist freedom as the better guarantee of individuality (where for Humboldt individuality and liberal individualism were still compatible in a way that they were not for Schleiermacher and the Romantics): Impossible Individuality: Romanticism, Revolution, and the Origins of Modern Selfhood, 1787–1802 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 4–6, 30–2, 34, 38.

8 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 106 (throughout, translations are my own); 107–11 for his views on individuality and Bildung.

9 For insightful discussions of Humboldtian Bildung that stress its aesthetic, processual, and intersubjective dimensions, see J. W. Burrow, “Editor's Introduction,” in Humboldt, Limits, vii–xliii; Giacomoni, Paola, “Wilhelm von Humboldt e l'idea di Bildung,” in Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 10 (1984): 339–65Google Scholar; and (though neglecting intersubjectivity), Dippel, Lydia, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Ästhetik und Anthropologie (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1990), 121–46Google Scholar. Menze, Clemens, Wilhelm von Humboldts Lehre und Bild vom Menschen (Ratingen: Henn, 1965), 149, 152–3Google Scholar, emphasizes a self-referential teleology above real exchange in Humboldt's image of social relationships, a view taken to extremes by Kost, Humboldt, 130–1; Dietrich Benner maintains the opposite, highlighting intersubjectivity and a strict rejection of individual teleology: Wilhelm von Humboldts Bildungstheorie. Eine problemgeschichtliche Studie zum Begründungszusammenhang neuzeitlicher Bildungsreform, 3rd ed. (Weinheim: Juventa, 2003). Seigel, Jerrold, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 343–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, intriguingly squares the circle, with a basic “homology between self and world” (343) in German thought ensuring that an individual's inner Kräfte are stimulated in their development by like forces from outside. This view captures part of Humboldt's thinking, but understates the role of intersubjective difference in unlocking the potential of latent human traits and spurring qualitatively new growth in individuals.

10 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 103.

11 Ibid., 104 on uniformity and energy; 142 on political participation. As Anthony J. LaVopa has argued, Humboldt, like Schiller and other German neohumanists, had adapted ancient republican discourse to combat modern alienation and corruption in its German form of office-holding through education in the classics: “Specialists Against Specialization: Hellenism as Professional Ideology in German Classical Studies,” in German Professions, 1800–1950, ed. Geoffrey Cocks and Konrad H. Jarausch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 27–45, esp. 28–31. As will become clear, Humboldt still called for a certain kind of political activity as an aspect of self-cultivation and therefore retained more of the civic as opposed to purely pedagogical humanism in his approach to the problem. Beiser, Enlightenment, 126–7, also stresses the Prussian context to Humboldt's treatise, which implicitly critiqued the newly promulgated Prussian legal code's paternalist emphasis on the role of the state in caring for the welfare rather than just the security of its subjects.

12 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 136–39 (ch. 5). This chapter was among those published in 1792 in the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Sell, Tragödie, 44, quotes the remarks on war, but still sees Humboldt as “pacifistic.”

13 Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), ch. 14Google Scholar on eighteenth-century developments and the rise of dialectical historicism; similarly for Germany, Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 316.

14 Beiser, Enlightenment, 135. On Humboldt's historicist disinclination to imitate the Greeks, I follow more closely Quillien, Jean, G. de Humboldt et la Grèce: Mode`le et Histoire (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1983), 129–31Google Scholar.

15 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 102–3 for the public-private distinction, the relative strength of institutions, and uniformity (and quote); 142–3 against national education.

16 Ibid., 131, 234, and 236 on the variously termed “Nationalanstalten,” “Nationalverbindung,” or “Nationalverein”; 234 for the rejection of the classical republican-style “Geistes unter der Nation” to inspire support for the constitution and the community. Burrow, “Editor's Introduction,” 17 for the Nationalverein as precursor to Humboldt's organic national community; similarly Krieger, Idea, 169; Sell, Tragödie, 38–9, catches the element of self-government but identifies it too closely with Smithian capitalism.

17 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 131, where Humboldt even speaks of an “original contract” underlying government. This understanding of social contract differs categorically from the classically inspired version of Rousseau, with its homogenizing civic religion.

18 See particularly the passage on Greek friendship, “soziale Verbindungen,” and the intimate encounter of personalities as central to Greek paideia and modern Bildung, ibid., 107. This goes against the recent argument of Kost, Humboldt, 129–31, 142–5, 148–61, according to which Humboldt's Bildung is ultimately self-referential, a radical individualism both asocial and apolitical.

19 Fulvio Tessitore rightly rejects the view of Humboldt as apolitical but understates the restrictions on state institutions and civic involvement insisted upon in the Limits: “Note su Humboldt politico,” Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 10 (1984): 319–38, esp. 320–1, 326–30.

20 Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch,” 143–4; cf. Dippel, Humboldt, 47–9, which justly denies charges of Humboldtian atomistic individualism but does not sufficiently distinguish between political activity in civil society and in the state or government when assessing their implications for education and personality development.

21 On this essay's contribution to Humboldt's understanding of nationality, Meinecke, Weltbürgertum, 46–7.

22 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Über das Studium des Altertums und des griechischen insbesondere,” in GS I, 255–81, here, 256, 265–8 for the study of the nation “nach allen seinen Seiten.”

23 Ibid., 268–9 and 274–5 on Greek primitiveness and its potential benefits.

24 Ibid., 265 on the Athenian focus, 268–9 on the unique Greek national character.

25 Ibid., 273–4.

26 Ibid., 273.

27 See Humboldt's letter to Schiller (Dec. 7, 1792) on this point, where he expressed admiration for the energy and national spirit shown by the French during the revolution, but still could not admit the superiority of “free constitutions” over a “moderate monarchy” for individual Bildung: Seidel, Siegfried, ed., Der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Schiller und Wilhelm von Humboldt, 2 vols. (East Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1962), I, 52–4Google Scholar, here 53.

28 Cf. Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Ankündigung einer Schrift über die vaskischen Sprache und Nation, nebst Angabe des Gesichtspunctes und Inhalts derselben,” GS III, 288–99, 293, where Humboldt remarked that in their “situation, constitution, and liveliness of character,” the Basques reminded him of “the small republics of ancient Greece.” In arguing the self-referentiality of the Humboldtian individual, Seigel, Idea of the Self, 346–7, contrasts Humboldt's emphasis on intimate relationships with Adam Smith's on strangers and commerce; the breadth of Humboldt's comparative scheme of Bildung, however, demonstrates the crucial role he allotted to difference and foreignness.

29 For example, Trabant, Jürgen, Traditionen Humboldts (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), 45–6Google Scholar; Sweet, Paul R., Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, 2 vols. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1978–80), I, 231Google Scholar; Kessel, Humboldt, 53–4, 91; Farinelli, “Guillaume de Humboldt,” 192–3.

30 See, for example, Römer, Ruth, Sprachwissenschaft und Rassenideologie in Deutschland (Munich: Fink, 1985), 154–6Google Scholar, and Grossman, Jeffrey, “Wilhelm von Humboldt's Linguistic Ideology: The Problem of Pluralism and the Absolute Difference of National Character: Or, Where Do the Jews Fit in?” German Studies Review 20, 1 (1997): 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. From at least the days of Meinecke and Hans Kohn, German nationalism has been classified as linguistic or cultural; I, however, argue that almost all German nationalists were like Humboldt in mixing political and historical criteria with cultural and linguistic ones in their conceptions of national identity: Vick, Brian E., Defining Germany: The 1848–1849 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 23–30, 39–47, 206–14Google Scholar.

31 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Latium und Hellas oder Betrachtungen über das classische Alterthum,” GS III, 136–70, quote 166.

32 Humboldt, “Ankündigung,” 291–4. For the travelogue (written c. 1803–4), Wilhelm von Humboldt, Die Vasken, oder Bemerkungen auf einer Reise durch Biscaya und das französische Basquenland im Frühling des Jahrs 1801. Nebst Untersuchungen über die vaskischen Sprache und Nation, und einer kurzen Darstellung ihrer Grammatik und ihrer Wörtervorraths, GS XIII, 1–196. For the date, Sweet, Humboldt, I, 277.

33 See esp. the essay of 1801, Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Cantabrica,” GS III, 114–35, here 118–9; plus Humboldt, Vasken, 178–9, and von Humboldt, Wilhelm, “Tagebuch der baskischen Reise 1801,” in Wilhelm von Humboldts Tagebücher, ed. Leitzmann, Albert, 2 vols. (Berlin: Behr, 1918–22), II, 443Google Scholar. Briefly on the role of free political institutions in defining the Basques as a political nation for Humboldt and differentiating Spanish from Basques, French, Agirreazkuenaga, Joseba, “Wilhelm von Humboldt and the representative assemblies of the Basque Country,” Parliaments, Estates, and Representation 19 (Nov. 1999): 143–9, 146–8Google Scholar.

34 Humboldt, Vasken, 167 on free speech in parliament as nourishing national pride and individual character.

35 Ibid., 162 for the quote; 6 for “Sitten-Einfalt,” 121, 127 for the Caseríos, plus 58–9 for the advantages of long leases. Cf. Humboldt, “Tagebuch,” 388–9, where Humboldt deemed the assembly at Guernica a “Bauern-Verfassung” as compared to the German “Ritter-Verfassung.”

36 Humboldt, Vasken, 58–60. Similarly, on 127–8 Humboldt argued that Biscaya's advantages derive from isolated, independent farmers living close to nature.

37 Ibid., 167; 14 for the question of the best policy for Spain's Basque provinces.

38 Ibid., 64–7, 140, and Humboldt, “Tagebuch,” 397.

39 Humboldt, Vasken, 127–8 for reciprocity in “popular enlightenment” and “literature”; cf. 60 and esp. 12–3.

40 For “national spirit,” ibid., 68; for festivities and the admission of a public character to activities elsewhere left private, 136 (cf. 128–9).

41 Ibid., 69–73, esp. 72–3; also Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Berichtigungen und Zusätze zum ersten Abschnitte des zweiten Buches des Mithridates über die Cantabrische oder Baskische Sprache” (1817), GS III, 222–87, here 225, 250–1; and Humboldt, “Tagebuch,” 408.

42 Humboldt, Vasken, 68–74 for games, songs, and festivals, 128–36 for dances.

43 Ibid., 68. Here “national character” appears as “Volkscharakter,” thus highlighting its egalitarian extension to all reaches of society.

44 Humboldt, “Latium und Hellas,” 157; in the Limits, recall, Humboldt had thought the Greeks did not even know the public-private divide. This reading goes partly against the otherwise insightful argument of David Sorkin, “Humboldt,” 58, 60–3, first, in that the social bonds necessary for modern Bildung were not restricted to the new educational institutions but rather still involved civic activity as well, and second, in that Humboldt was able to solve the problem of how to create these ties not just through his discovery of nationalism but also through changes in his analysis of the ancient Greek polis.

45 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Geschichte des Verfalls und Unterganges der griechischen Freistaaten,” GS III, 171–218, 182 for the communal yet free and conflictual nature of such education.

46 Ibid., 171; 181 for the restriction to the Athenians.

47 Ibid., 174–5.

48 Ibid., 175. Against Sorkin, “Humboldt,” 71–2, Humboldt defended not just the Athenian refusal to compromise, but also the Roman way.

49 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Denkschrift über die deutsche Verfassung an den Freiherrn vom Stein,” GS XI, 95–112, here 96–7. I differ from those who follow Meinecke in stressing the weakness and fragmentation of Humboldt's intended German polity, as for example Schulze, Hagen, “Humboldt oder das Paradox der Freiheit,” in Wilhelm von Humboldt. Vortragszyklus zum 150. Todestag, ed. Schlerath, Bernfried (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1986), 159–63Google Scholar. On Humboldt's constitutional drafts, see Menze, Clemens, “Die Verfassungspläne Wilhelm von Humboldts,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 16 (1989): 329–46Google Scholar.

50 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Ueber die innere und äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin,” GS X, 250–60, esp. 250–4, quote 253; and Humboldt, “Antrag auf Errichtung der Universität Berlin,” in ibid., 139–47 (May 12, 1809), esp. 140, where the Prussian-German relationship emerges more strongly.

51 Sorkin, “Humboldt,” 68–71, rightly emphasizes Humboldt's rejection of a “nationale Erziehung,” but the degree of civic involvement and national spirit had rather increased than decreased since his early writings—he was not simply trying to educate “obedient if not apolitical subjects” (69). For Humboldt on the Jewish Question, see Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Über den Entwurf zu einer neuen Konstitution für die Juden,” GS X, 97–115, esp. 99–101; and Sweet, Humboldt, II, 71–6, 206–8.

52 Sweet, Humboldt, II, 62–5 on relations between the state and university, and 49–50 on the academic “Deputationen” for Gymnasien; cf. Spranger, Eduard, Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Reform des Bildungswesens, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1960 [1910]), 107–8, 205Google Scholar.

53 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Denkschrift über Preussens ständische Verfassung,” (Feb. 4, 1819), GS XII/2, 225–297, here, 233 for the “sittliche Kraft” passage, where both the connection between external security and internal development and the balance between unity and diversity are reinforced. For the longer quote, see Humboldt, “Denkschrift über die deutsche Verfassung,” 108.

54 For the defense of local school financing as promoting “Bürgersinn” alongside Stein's municipal self-government reforms, Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Bericht der Sektion des Kultus und Unterrichts an den König,” (December 1, 1809), GS X, 199–224, here 208. Hence Humboldt did not oppose local school financing (or oversight) in favor of funding and control by the central state alone: cf. Sweet, Humboldt, II, 20–1, 49–50; and Spranger, Reform, 103–11, which argues for a balance between state and local control, particularly in finance, and emphasizes the similarity of Humboldt's and Stein's reform ideas generally.

55 Quote, Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Denkschrift über ständische Verfassung,” (October 1819), GS XII/2, 389–455, 399, the point being to begin by extending influence in local affairs and work up toward the provincial level.

56 Humboldt, “Denkschrift über die deutsche Verfassung,” 101; cf. Humboldt, “Denkschrift über ständische Verfassung,” 399, and Menze, “Verfassungspläne,” 338–9, for the same idea applied to the Prussian case. Humboldt thus recognized the link between local and national identities that has featured prominently in recent studies of German nationalism. For the early nineteenth century, see Schulze, Hagen, “Nationalismus—Regionalismus—Lokalismus. Aspekte der Erinnerungskultur im Spiegel von Publizistik und Denkmal,” in Lieux de Mémoire, Erinnerungsorte: D'un mot français à un projet allemand, ed. François, Etienne (Berlin: Centre Marc Bloch, 1996), 91–104Google Scholar; and Tacke, Charlotte, Denkmal im sozialen Raum. Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994)Google Scholar. For the eighteenth-century background, Umbach, Maiken, Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740–1806 (London: Hambledon Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

57 On “Genossenschaften” and “Bürgersinn,” Humboldt, “Denkschrift über ständische Verfassung,” 417; Sweet, Humboldt, II, 320–1, rightly notes this corporatism as novel, not feudal-conservative or guild-oriented.

58 Constant, Benjamin, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns,” in Political Writings, ed. and trans. Fontana, Biancamaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 309–28, esp. 327Google Scholar, where Constant stresses the role of political liberty in promoting “self-development.”

59 Thus, contra Sorkin, “Humboldt,” 69, 72 on the divergence from Stein. For the prevalence in this period of the reciprocal strength trope among German liberals and nationalists of many stripes, see Vick, Defining Germany, 61–3, 67–74, 180–6. On the blending of ancient republican and jurisprudential traditions in southwest German liberalism of the Vormärz, see Nolte, “Bürgerideal.”

60 Humboldt, “Betrachtungen über die Weltgeschichte,” in GS III, 350–9, 352.