1816: the Grandest Tour

Germany: Chapter 10

After the revelry of the bonfire, the fifty-odd men of the Burschenschaft settled into a more general merrymaking. During this they drained the remaining kegs of beer, and sang all the louder for it. Karl, as he'd shown, was not a great drinker, and contented himself with a single mug by the fire. Its blaze was still strong, not now from the cinders of Kotzebue's work, but from its underlying wood and fresh logs. Dittmar was singing and carousing with the rest, but George and his friends joined Karl to watch the fire and gaze out on the night-bound countryside. It seemed as good a time as any, George thought, so he turned once more to their new German friend.

"We did our best to follow your speech," he said, "but can you tell me something more of this – society? How did it all come about?"

Karl nodded kindly and took a small sip from his mug.

"I'm glad you want to know, my friend," Karl answered. "The whole world should know, not only Germans."

Tobias and Isaac drew in closer. In Karl's mixture of German and rough French that followed, they managed to understand nearly the whole without translation. None of them were sure what made this possible – perhaps their rare, expansive state of mind.

"In our quest for a true German Fatherland," Karl began, "we seek nothing more, and nothing less, than a united, liberal, and democratic state, for all its people. Napoleon may have been the closest our age has come to producing an Antichrist, but his conquest of the German states did prove one thing. It showed us the astonishing weakness and cowardice of our rulers. The great war of liberation, and the victory that threw off the French yoke, was none of their doing – not even the King of Prussia. It was, rather, ordinary men – like me, and Dittmar, and all the rest – who had the courage to dream of freedom, and a new age."

"Indeed, the King of Prussia made many a promise to us, spoke many warm words, about a German union. On his promises we followed his general, Prince Blücher, to Waterloo, and whipped Bonaparte once and for all. But did all Prussia's words and promises amount to so much as a fart at the Congress of Vienna? Not on your life."

"To realize our dream, we few believers knew we could rely on only ourselves. So here in Erlangen, Dittmar and I founded this fraternity, the Burschenschaft. The men of the Landmannschaft, our political rivals, called us Teutonia in sport, after the ancient German tribe the Teutons. But we had no quarrel with the name at all! And so it stuck."

Karl laughed and paused for a moment, staring into the fire.

"Dittmar is my greatest friend here," he said. "He may be hot-headed sometimes, but his heart is pure. Perhaps even more than my own. He will make a great founder of Germany one day."

He stopped again to look back towards the other young men, who were still singing and enjoying themselves in the flickering torchlight.

George began to speak, haltingly at first, about their experience in that queer little state of Hundwald-Pferdigstadt. He told Karl about the absurd Prince-Bishop and his pretensions to sovereignty, concluding with how he had barely escaped unmarried to the princess Brunhilde. When he had finished, Karl shook his head ruefully.

"I'm afraid this is quite typical in Germany," he said. "Our small princes are desperate to survive – to hang on to the privileges they have so long taken for granted, without lifting a finger to earn them. I must admit I have not even heard of this Prince-Bishop myself. In the end, though, they all become playthings of Prussia and Austria."

They sat in silence for another minute. Then George remembered he had more questions.

"Who are the men in that other group – the 'Landmannschaft'?" he said. "Why do they despise you all?"