which rests on the strength of German individualism, bore even at this early age the significant result that every prince provided for his own family, while few provided for the realm. Thus the new country of France was constantly divided and redivided, first by Clovis and later by his successors. This partitioning weakened the country and slowed up its attainment of national integrity.
From the welter of family feuds and partitions there emerged a valiant major-domo, who was proclaimed king. But before risking his coup d’état, he secured the blessings of heaven. He had inquiries made from the Bishop of Rome, who even then was styling himself Pope, as to what should be done with heedless kings who did nothing beyond accepting the gift offerings of the people. The situation was not unlike today when the few remaining kings are guided like puppets by dictators and by ministers.
Pope Zachary recognized the immeasurable advantage that might accrue to his successors for a thousand years to come from an alliance with the rising world power. Zachary decided upon a reply of world-historic importance: Pepin the upstart must be anointed by the Pope.
Here we see the beginnings of the German tragedy that did so much harm to the German nation. By voluntarily submitting to ecclesiastic power, the boldest leaders of Europe renounced their power as such. This established a paradox in the field of State power—a paradox that arose from the internal contradictions within the German soul which were thus perpetuated.
For Pepin was but the first of many who, having been anointed, pronounced the lie: “Not on behalf of any man but for Saint Peter alone have I gone out to do battle, that my sins may be forgiven.” It was a blending of self-interest and mysticism, typically German; and with this sentimental apology for his coup d’état Pepin spoke straight from the heart of his people, giving them the ideal pretext to justify violence. Show the Teuton a sacred motive, let him glimpse the Savior above his sword, and he will feel himself to be Saint Michael. Even when robbing alien peoples, he will believe his mission to be highly moral. With this psychology Pepin became the forerunner of a thousand years of highly moral German conquest. Even today the Germans avail themselves of God or Honor or Country as a cloak beneath which to hide the dagger.
Book I
THE DREAM OF WORLD DOMINION
From Charlemagne to Gutenberg (800–1500)
“I have often felt a bitter pang at the thought of the German people, so estimable as individuals and so wretched in the whole.”
—GOETHE
1
CHARLEMAGNE (768–814), one of the three or four rulers of stature among the Germans, was the first who envisioned a world empire—that boundless German dream that took hold of the Germans for a thousand years and that has again seized them today. It is this dream which time and again entices the imagination and the aspirations of the Germans to the high sea of thought, only to let them subsequently rest content with a few peoples cruelly subjugated.
Charlemagne seized primarily upon immediate objectives and thus met with more than usual success. Unwittingly, indeed against his will, he laid the fragmentary basis for German unity. Yet he always considered himself a Frank rather than a German, similar to Bismarck who, one thousand years later, always remained a Prussian.
This was possible only for a great character. The state of learning was still at a low ebb in the eighth century, and little knowledge about Charlemagne has been handed down; yet a few traits have indelibly impressed themselves upon posterity.
We see the mighty King of the Franks sitting there, learning to read. And having learned to read, trying his hand at a kind of German grammar. While his court in Aix-la-Chapelle strutted in elegant Latin, he had ancient German legends collected and German history written. Saint Boniface and other great lords neither spoke nor dined with anyone who departed in the slightest from the Church canon; but Charlemagne sent letters and presents to Harun-al-Rashid, not long after the Mohammedans had invaded France. If, in the course of his far-flung enterprises, he happened to have a day of leisure, he was in the habit of saying: “Let us undertake something memorable today, lest anyone reproach us for spending the day in idleness!” Here we witness a sense of responsibility and prestige unheard-of in any German before him. Words such as these endure in the memory of men longer than any battle, for they are universal and their human tone encourages successive generations to emulate such a man.
Charlemagne was tall, of robust and sturdy stature. He looked out into the world with wide-open eyes. His mood was generally cheerful. He liked to speak and he spoke well—in a clear voice that lacked volume. Despite his imperious nature, all accounts agree in describing him as amiable. No one knows exactly how many children he had, but between the age of sixty and seventy he still sired a daughter and three sons. His daughters he loved so greatly that he forbade them to marry in order to keep them with him. At the same time he gave them complete freedom in love, ultimately acknowledging their natural children as his grandchildren. For years he mourned the death of one beloved wife, who lost a magic ring. At Aix-la-Chapelle he used to sit for hours beside the pond in which the ring had disappeared.
The world of Charlemagne’s thoughts had a tangible beginning; at least it was set into motion by a crisis. When he wrested Italy from the Langobards, and even more a few years later, in 781, when he revisited the country under less strenuous circumstances, he was profoundly struck by the contrast between his own and his people’s lack of culture, and the monuments of the thousand-year-old culture he saw before him. Unlike the barbarians of our own day, Charlemagne recognized the intellectual superiority of a people, even though it might have succumbed to the force of arms. Nothing symbolizes the eternal German longing for the South more beautifully than the fact that this first Teutonic emperor had Italian chestnut and almond trees transplanted to his gardens in the North. But at the same time Charlemagne, who at forty had covered twelve thousand miles on horseback, threw himself with the passion of youth into the second, higher task—that of learning the vanquished people’s spirit and culture.
The first thing he did was to bring half a dozen of the outstanding scholars of literature and legend from Pisa and Parma across the Alps to his own court. There he gave them princely salaries and permitted them complete intellectual freedom. A character of such stature could dare things in the social field too which at that time seemed astonishing—elevating freedmen to high office, for example. He was, on the other hand, severe with the nobility, constantly sending out emissaries—always a clergyman and a secular official together—to supervise the barons on their estates, seeing to it that they did not ruin their tenants.
Charlemagne’s victory over the Lombards and Bavarians had been an easy one, but it took him thirty years to conquer the Saxons, and even then he succeeded for a short interval only. With true German premonition this powerful people, literally cut up into many tribes, was to resist the Franks and even more so Christianity in the name of which Charlemagne sought to conquer them. Here for the first time the two Germanys met on the field of battle, for the Saxons clung to their ancient faith with such fanaticism that they forbade the Christian faith on pain of death, while the Franks were determined to force Christ upon the Saxons with the sword. If on this occasion Charlemagne had forty-five hundred Saxons butchered at one stroke, even that was done by the conqueror in the name of the saints.
Yet this precipitated him into grave conflicts. Where were freedom and equality, the Saxons asked? Both had been promised them under the new faith. Once, when the captured Saxon duke Widukind was dining with his captor,—though each at a separate table,—he
