The later so-called Weimar classic was not simply a sociable circle of select spirits who gathered around a generous princely house for free conversation and constant intellectual production. This imagination, captured in paintings in the 19th century, hides the fact that the talented people whom Duchess Anna Amalia and her son Carl August brought to their Weimar court and to the University of Jena all also fulfilled specific tasks and professions. In addition, Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach were politically dependent, they had to navigate between the larger German powers and, above all, show consideration for power-hungry Prussia.
Wieland became a prince’s educator, soon also publisher and editor of what was then the most successful German-language magazine: an entrepreneur. Goethe worked professionally in the government and administration of the duchy; In addition to his work as a theater manager, he was temporarily responsible for finances, the military, road construction and mining. His concern for Jena university politics – including the library and collections – only ended with his death.
Herder was superintendent and court chaplain, he governed the church and elementary education in the small country. Schiller became a professor in Jena shortly before Fichte and Hegel took office there. The notorious early romanticism came to the small town because of the attractive university, which lived mainly from student consumption. And many others were also active: first and foremost the big businessman Bertuch, who dealt in luxury items and fashion magazines.
A lot of precise information about the finances
These concrete, specialized and arithmetic relationships have been researched more and more closely for 150 years, we know them down to the level of individual civil servants, privy councilors and ministers, the library servants, the acting staff. Since reunification in 1990, even more precise detailed knowledge has accumulated in countless individual studies and comments, thanks to research focuses and huge new editions.
It is commendable that the Jena historian Georg Schmidt made a description of it that brought it up to date. Unfortunately, his gift for storytelling and characterization is limited. Many readers may still have clear images of Wieland or Herder in their heads, but this is unlikely to be the case with Christian Gottlob Voigt, a senior minister who was in charge for many years and was an anxious, humanistically zealous civil servant. And who do you think of as Bertuch or Chancellor Müller?
Georg Schmidt: Through beauty to freedom. The world of Weimar-Jena around 1800. Publisher CH Beck, Munich 2022. 384 pages, 29.95 euros.
(Photo: CH Beck)
After all, we learn a lot of precise information about the finances: Anna Amalia’s two-year trip to Italy devoured 65,000 thalers, five years’ salary for Goethe. That was an astronomical sum for a chronically over-indebted country. The marriage of Hereditary Duke Carl Friedrich to a sister of the Tsar was a tangible relief.
Maria Pavlovna’s dowry was one million thalers, half of which was invested as interest, so that Goethe’s four annual salaries flowed annually. There was also a Russian appanage of 60,000 thalers. This explains why the Grand Duchess was still able to act as a patron almost out of petty cash into her old age, when she financed the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin”.
There can be no question of aesthetic distance from politics, the classics were professionals
Anyone who takes note of these real conditions will also better understand the relationship between the classics and politics and the upheavals of the epoch. There can be no question of aesthetic politics distance, the classics were professionals who lived in close proximity to the rulers, who knew how laborious government action is in detail and how small the scope for change was. This protects against revolutionary utopianism, despite all the joy in freehand politics, for example with Wieland. He speculated on constitutional questions no less enthusiastically than Parisian garret writers with their practical inexperience – only Wieland was much, much more knowledgeable.
Goethe’s “Tasso” is also a satire on artistic arrogance in serious court conditions, far removed from the moral radicalism of western European intellectuals. Schiller’s letters on the aesthetic education of man logically separated the spheres, and that was also a contribution to political sobriety. The ghost of the apolitical German – in any case, it couldn’t haunt Weimar. The apolitical nature of the classics did not come from being unworldly, but from a clear awareness of the inherent rights of the spheres, i.e. from political judgement.
The lack of narrative impetus is also likely to be related to the production method
Georg Schmidt works through the pronouncements of the classics, but unfortunately just like pronouncements, in a series of quotations and indirect speech that successfully dampens their wit. And when the classics look at the big politics beyond the dynastic small state, something important escapes them: Why does the brilliant research come from Hans Jürgen Schingswhich expose the works of the classics as “certain negations” of the French Revolution, with references in philological detail, not at all?
The lack of narrative momentum is also likely to be related to the production method with which such books are now being created – and increasingly so since the pandemic. They are formulated along the excerpts and quotations available in an always the same style. This can be seen in Schmidt’s truly erratic citation style. Goethe’s works and letters are quoted partly from the Weimar edition, partly from any secondary literature, partly even with links to the scan dump zeno.org.
And that’s telling: There’s nothing easier than knitting together such documents quickly with copy and paste, because the pages fill up quickly. It is then not noticeable that Goethe’s statements on the revolution from the last years of his life stand indiscriminately next to simultaneous reactions to the events, as if a process of reflection had not taken place in many decades. In parts, Schmidt’s book reads like an unfinished collection of material, like the draft of a book. But that is really to be regretted for such a knowledgeable author.