Goethe as Political Advisor

Friedrich and Feldherr Bernhard Rode

This post continues the subject of the preceding one, namely, Goethe’s acculturation to life in Weimar to the point where, as Herder would write in 1782 to Hamann, he was majordomo of the court: “Er ist also jetzt Wirklicher Geheimer Rat, Kammerpräsident, Präsident des Kriegscollegi, Aufseher des Bauwesens bis zum Wegbau hinunter, dabei auch Directeur des Plaisirs, Hofpoet, Verfasser von schönen Festivitäten …” etcetera etcetera.

It was in that year of 1782 that Goethe was tasked with overseeing the “household finances” of the duchy. This good bourgeois son of Frankfurt — even if now Geheimrat — would introduce many reductions, including in military expenditures. It’s strange now to think of a duchy as small as Weimar having a standing army, even if much of it consisted of poorly trained part-timers, and regular troops who performed guard duty at bridges and gates and the workhouse.

Albrecht Schöne

Albrecht Schöne (96 this year!) devotes a chapter of his book Der Briefschreiber Goethe to his appointment at the age of twenty-nine, in 1779, as director of the War Commission, replacing the very much senior von Fritsch in that capacity. I should say at this point that Albrecht Schöne is a Goethe scholar from whom I have learned a lot. I was fortunate to review this book a few years ago for the Goethe Yearbook. Its nine chapters treat individual letters written by Goethe, from the earliest in 1764 to Ludwig Ysenburg von Bari, to one written in the final year of his life, 1832, to Wilhelm von Humboldt. Each chapter includes the full text of the letter. The one discussed here was written to Carl August in February 1779.

Archduke Joseph by Georg Decker

Already in late 1778, in Schöne’s account, Weimar was under pressure to supply troops for Prussia’s military excursus (Auseinandersetzung) against Austria: the War of the Bavarian Succession (so-called Potato War). The Prussians were determined to stop the ambitions of Josef II for Habsburg expansion into Central Europe. A certain Lieutenant von Rheinbaben, emissary of General von Moellendorff, visited von Frisch in early December 1778 requesting permission to recruit soldiers in the duchy for Prussia (theils einige Recruten, theils die Erlaubniß, in den hiesigen Landen zu werben). Von Fritsch responded negatively (mit einem entschieden abwehrenden Schreiben), on the grounds of insufficient men fit for service.

The Prussians were not to be put off, and another emissary of the Prussian king arrived at the end of the month, who was likewise rebuffed. The situation became increasingly threatening by January 1799, when young Weimar males were press-ganged by Prussian hussars or kidnapped as alleged Prussian deserters. Moellendorf wrote again, expressing the king’s “deep consternation” that von Fritsch had not presented the duke with the king’s most amicable and ardent request, namely, to be allowed some recruits (Ersuchen einiger Rekruten auf das freundschaftlichste, aber inständigste, nochmahlen zu widerholen). So it went, with Carl August declining and the king, Frederick the Great, replying in a tone that was “ruthlessly conciliatory” (mit knocheharter Konzilianz).

Part of the problem for Weimar was that if the Prussians were granted this request, Austria would take it amiss and might invade. The duke had to respond to the king. What was his course of action to be? So, in this increasingly threatening situation, Goethe drafted a letter on February 9, 1779, addressed to Carl August —  “Gnädigster Herr” — outlining the courses of action open to the duke. Schöne reproduces the text of the letter and analyzes it in great detail, including grammatically. The main interest here, however, is Goethe as a political advisor.

Goethe begins by writing that one (he always use “man” here, meaning Carl August) has to weigh two unpleasant courses of action against the other (beyde unangenehme Seiten gegenwärtiger Lage … natürlich gegen einander stellen)  in order to calculate the options open to Weimar, without emotional exaggeration while appraising the facts on the ground (ein sachlich abwägedendes Kalkül ziehen und sich dann ohne emotionale Übertreibungen die eigenen Optionen vor Augen führen, also Weimars Handlungsspielräume anloten).

Entscheidungstheorie

It is in this carefully constructed letter that one comes to appreciate how much Goethe actually learned from his father and from his studies of the law, however much he dismissed them. The duke, after all, only twenty-one years of age, was dealing, with Great Powers: Prussia and Austria. It shows how much he depended on Goethe already, asking his counsel, and not only that of the older and experienced von Fritsch.  Schöne refers to the letter as “ein meisterliche[s] Lehrstück strategischen Denkens.” The seven-page letter, drafted overnight, was not only an example of princely education in the age of enlightened absolutism, but, for Schöne, it also represents a textbook example of political advice. To provide a larger overview, Schöne includes a tree diagram (in Anlehnung an Darstellungsweisen der Entscheidungtheorie) that lays out the pros and cons of the two options (one regarding Prussia, the other Austria). Represented here is only the former, with P representing Prussia and W Weimar. The numbers in parens refer to lines of the letter. (Click on image to enlarge.)

The contents of the letter is of course something we expect “professionals” to consider when advising clients. In the end the letter had no consequences, as the political situation calmed down. Schöne makes the point that the letter was a letter meant privately for the duke. It makes no reference to earlier secret discussions of the Commission concerning the matter at hand, and is not found in Goethe’s “amtliche Schriften,” but instead in Carl August’s cache of private letters from Goethe.

Goethe and his scribes

Francesco Clemente, "History of the Heart in 3 Rainbows," from Palimpsest

I have been wanting to post something on Albrecht Schöne’s new book, Der Briefschreiber Goethe. It deserves several posts, but a recent review in Book Forum gives me an opportunity at least to mention it (vorübergehend, let us say, since I will return to it later). The BF review (by Clive Thompson) concerns Palmipsest: A History of the Written Word by Matthew Battles, who is also the author of Library: An Unquiet History.

The reviewer notes that writing has often been associated, “in the West, anyway, with the rise of interiority and the individual … It is by sitting in solitude with our thoughts, pen in hand, that we develop our most profound ideas about society, ethics, and ourselves.” As Battles points out, however, none of the writers in the Western literary tradition sat down in solitude to write. Instead, they dictated, often to slaves (in Greece and Rome).

One of the major benefits of having taught “Great Books” to undergrads while I was in grad school was the chance to read works I might otherwise have bypassed. These included Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates opposes writing on the grounds that it promotes forgetting, in contrast to orality, which encourages memory. As with gossip, however, oral transmission encourages a distortion of the original message, to the point where the original is no longer recognizable. Similarly, the oral transmission of "literature," such as the epics of Homer or other “ancient” writers, produced varying versions. The production of a standard text has been the task of philologists from the time there have been philologists.

To return to writing itself, which is the subject of Palimpsest (how I love that word: I must bring it into my spoken vocabulary), writing originally served commerce and statecraft, of “tallying just what was in the coffers of the state and the grandiose one of expressing the might of rulers.” Scribes thus wrote “at the king’s bequest.” On the other hand, as I remember from grade school so many years ago, it was Phoenicians, early tradesmen par excellence, who originated the script that is the basis of our alphabet.

Writing for purposes that were purely literary, on the other hand, was “a victory.” Thompson quotes the Canadian poet and translator Robert Bringhurst: “Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.”



And Goethe? As we know, he preferred to dictate, not only his literary works, but also his correspondence. The letters discussed in Schöne’s volume (there are nine “case studies”) were subject to much thought, though interiority as we understand it was not at issue. Rather, it was process of coming up with the correct rhetorical strategy for the person being addressed. His earliest letter to the 16-year-old Ludwig Ysenburg von Buri, dated May 23, 1764, when Goethe was 14 years old,  displays “heitere Souveränität … über das rhetorische Instrumentarium.”

Moreover, as Schöne adds in a footnote, this early letter in which Goethe presents his case for entry into the "Gesellschaft derer Arcadier zu Phylandria,” was not, aside from the signature, in his own hand. The scribe was Johann David Clauer. Goethe's father was the guardian of this mentally ill man, who was in any case a “Dr. jur.” He resided in the Goethe family home for 30 years, during which time he took dictation and also executed written documents for Goethe’s father. In several essays on Goethe, I have stressed that rather than drawing on his own “experience,” he was calling on established literary forms when he drafted his literary works, just like all poets before the 18th century. Goethe's genius, I have always thought, lay in disguising his literary forefathers, but in dictating to an amanuensis (another great word I have to make more use of) he was following in a venerable tradition.

Picture credits: Schirn Kunsthalle; Jonnie Miles/Getty Images; Crystal Links