Catechism of the Germans

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Catechism of the Germans is a political work by Heinrich von Kleist . The text was written in Prague in 1809 for a conceived patriotic magazine Germania . After Austria's defeat by Napoleon Bonaparte , Kleist gave up the project.

Historical and biographical background

On April 9, 1809 Austria France declared war . After the failure of the Phöbus project and the break with Adam Müller in Dresden, Kleist left for Prague with Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, who was eight years his junior . There they wanted to support the war with patriotic propaganda and publish a weekly literary paper, the Germania . The aim was to drive the Germans into the People's War, similar to what Andreas Hofer and the Spaniards had already done. When the war ended in the summer and the hopes of the German patriots that Prussia and Russia would intervene were dashed, Kleist and Dahlmann gave up on their project. The fruits of this time, the Hermannsschlacht and the poem Germania to their children , are the most prominent political-nationalistic poems of Kleist alongside the catechism of the Germans .

Intention of the text

The text was originally to be published in the Germania magazine planned by Kleist and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann ; it is a political-satirical text that seeks to create a German nationalism. With this text, as well as with the trend drama Die Hermannsschlacht , written in 1808, Kleist aimed at a revolt of the Germans against the French occupiers, also in relation to the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon .

Catechism of the Germans

Genus and form

The title and form of the text are based on the ecclesiastical tradition of the catechism . Each chapter begins with a heading indicating the general theme of the section and then immediately reflects questions asked by the Father and answers given by the Son . In the Church, the catechism is a form of reproducing central messages in simple and as clear questions as possible (for the purpose of instructing baptized or confirmation students, for example). In German Protestantism (Kleist was a Lutheran), for example, Luther's The Small Catechism was of immense importance.

Chapter overview

  • Chapter 1: Of Germany in general
  • Chapter 2: Of love for the fatherland
  • Chapter 3: The Destruction of the Fatherland
  • Chapter 4: The Arch Enemy
  • Chapter 5: On the restoration of Germany
  • Chapter 6: Of Germany's War Against France
  • Chapter 7: On the Admiration of Napoleon
  • Chapter 8: On the education of the Germans
  • Chapter 9: A Side Question
  • Chapter 10: Of the Constitution of the Germans
  • Chapter 12: only fragmentary, without a heading
  • Chapter 13: Of the voluntary contributions
  • Chapter 14: From the top civil servants
  • Chapter 15: On Treason
  • Chapter 16: Conclusion

content

The full title of the work is “Catechism of the Germans, written in Spanish, for use by children and the elderly”. The Spanish model alludes to the Spanish War of Independence from 1808 to 1813. The Spaniards had succeeded in driving Napoleon out of Spain in a fight for freedom. The first chapter postulates a Germany in the form of the Holy Roman Empire . Although this no longer existed since 1806 , the text already anticipates a new proclamation of the empire by Francis II . In the following, love of the country is defined as absolute love, without any reference to any advantages of the homeland. You love your country because it's my country . Chapters three to seven deal with the conflict between the Germans and Napoleon from 1806 to 1809 and state that the Germans must be united and fraternal in their fight against the arch enemy Napoleon (fourth chapter); that they must restore the empire (fifth chapter) that the French started the war through their aggression (sixth chapter). In the Seventh Chapter, Napoleon is allowed to be admirable, but only when he is destroyed . The eighth chapter ( On the education of the Germans ) and the ninth chapter ( a subsidiary question ) describe the war against the French as morally healthy for the Germans. The upbringing of the Germans is the devastation of war, which makes these goods completely contemptible for them and instead strives for the highest, according to the text God, Fatherland, Emperor, freedom, love and loyalty, beauty, science and art . The tenth chapter accuses the princes of Germany for having forfeited their right to be masters as long as they do not “serve the fatherland”. In the fourteenth chapter the civil servants should courageously oppose Napoleonic diplomacy, even if they are in danger because otherwise they would not be loyal civil servants, but servants of Napoleon out of fear. The thirteenth chapter demands total readiness to put all goods and possessions at the disposal of the war against Napoleon. In the Fifteenth Chapter, anyone who does not take part in the war is qualified as a traitor and threatened with the death penalty. The end is the most radical part of the text: It doesn't matter whether the Germans win or lose because God likes it when people die because of their freedom .

classification

This text, like all of Kleist's nationalism, has been received controversially and is still discussed in research today, for example whether Kleist was an anti-Semite or how much his violent fantasies in works such as Germania to their children (“Dämmt the Rhine with their corpses; / Let, staufen from her leg, / Foaming around the Palatinate him give way, / And then be him the limit! ") are to be understood from the contemporary context. Kleist is an author of extremes around 1800. Like no other, he falls out of the usual explanatory models because he cannot be assigned to either the bourgeois or the aristocratic milieu. Kleist is radically political and a completely independent thinker. His works are political propaganda, such as the Hermannsschlacht , and reflect this themselves on a meta-level. Nationalism, which took shape from 1808 to 1813 and which appeared in this way for the first time in Germany, was largely promoted by intellectuals like Kleist and not by the general public. In this respect, the Catechism of the Germans is a multifaceted example of political agitation in a time of changing epochs.

literature

  • Heinrich von Kleist: Works and Letters in Four Volumes. Volume 3. Berlin and Weimar 1978, pp. 389-401.
  • Heinrich v. Kleist: All works. Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich / Zurich 1961.
  • Günter Blamberger : Heinrich von Kleist. Biography. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-007111-8 . (Biography based on the current state of research with work interpretations and explanations.)
  • Dieter Borchmeyer : What is German? A nation's search for itself. Rowohlt, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-87134-070-3 , pp. 102-109.

Web links

Individual evidence and note

  1. ^ Blamberger, Günter: Heinrich von Kleist. Biography , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2011, pp. 356-365
  2. ^ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete Works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 803
  3. ↑ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete Works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 806
  4. ↑ Note: This refers to huts and fields .
  5. ^ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete Works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 807
  6. ^ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 810