A Social History of the Divide Between East and West
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Germany versus Russia: A Social History of the Divide between East and West by Florian Gassner A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (German) The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) March 2012 © Florian Gassner, 2012 Abstract The present study investigates European and in particular German representations of Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Specifically, it discusses the image of Russia with regard to its influence on the formation of German identity. This dissertation demonstrates that cultural and intellectual distinction from an ‗Eastern‘ Russia was pivotal for consolidating the ‗Western‘ identity of Germans in the middle of the nineteenth century. The point of departure for this inquiry is the work of Larry Wolff, who argued that the origins of the modern east-west dichotomy lay in the late Enlightenment period. Wolff, however, by focusing on the history of ideas, describes but the first inception of this divide. This study, in contrast, through the example of Germany, discloses the socio-historical factors which led to the popularization and consummation of the distinction between Eastern and Western Europe in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Thereby, it becomes evident that the modern east-west dichotomy was not the result of intellectual speculation, as Wolff asserts. Rather, its origins are inextricably linked to core processes in the formation of European civil society, such as the rise of the nation state idea, the popularization of liberalism, and the proliferation of racial chauvinism. Considering these factors helps fully appreciate the power of the modern east-west dichotomy and its sustained influence on German identity. Page | ii Preface In the course of my research, I have published part of my findings in the following articles. Gassner, Florian. ―Becoming a Western Nation. The Quest for German National Identity and the Image of Russia.‖ In The East-West Discourse: Symbolic Geography and its Consequences, edited by Alexander Maxwell, 51–72. Oxford: Lang, 2010. This article pertains to Chapters II through VIII. Gassner, Florian. ―Imagining Russia: A Scottish Perspective.‖ Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 5, no. 1 (2011): 29–47. This article pertains to Chapters II, III, and VIII. Gassner, Florian. ―Theodor Fontanes Vor dem Sturm: Der Entwurf einer deutschen Identität im europäischen Kontext.‖ Transcarpathica 9 (2010): 207–226. This article pertains to Chapters IV through VIII. Page | iii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................. ii Preface ............................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .............................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ v I. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 II. The Early Eighteenth Century: The Birth of European Russia ................... 15 III. The Late Eighteenth Century: Russia Inside and Outside of Europe ........ 48 IV. Revolutionary Europe: The Three Eastern Courts..................................... 75 V. 1815: A System of Alliances and Congresses .......................................... 101 VI. The Early Nineteenth Century: Central, Eastern, or Western Europe? ... 119 VII. 1830-1848: A War of Words .................................................................. 140 VIII. The Crimean War: East and West Divided ........................................... 169 IX. Conclusion ............................................................................................... 195 Bibliography ................................................................................................... 198 Page | iv Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my supervisory committee for their exceptional support in the course of my studies and during the completion of my dissertation. Professor Peter Petro ensured that I at all times kept my eyes on the big picture and retained the love for my research topic. Gaby Pailer provided me with every opportunity to establish myself in the academic world. My special thanks, however, go to Professor Thomas Salumets, the most dedicated mentor one can imagine. I would also like to thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of British Columbia for generously supporting my studies with a Four Year Fellowship for PhD students. The same thanks go out to the University of British Columbia‘s Faculty of Arts, who made possible my enrolment at UBC with a Faculty of Arts Graduate Award. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Eppich Family, the German Speaking Community of B.C., and the R Howard Webster Foundation, whose financial support significantly contributed to the completion of this dissertation. Page | v I. Introduction I. Introduction German attitudes towards Russia continue to be determined by the notion of an elementary divide separating East and West. The political developments of the past two decades, it seems, have not weakened the popularity of this binary. When, for example, in the fall of 2010 German chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met for a strategic summit in French Deauville, the participants spoke not of efforts towards a ‗Russo-German-French‘ or ‗Russo-European‘ rapprochement, but of a closer alliance between (Eastern) ‗Russia and the West.‘ Ultimately, the persistence of this concept suggests that there indeed exists a sedimented rift separating inherently different cultures in the East and West of Europe. However, this not only belies the novelty of the modern East-West dichotomy, which dates back but a century and a half. With regard to Germany and Russia, it also conceals the close relations of these two nations in the time preceding this divide. As a matter of fact, before Germans came to think of themselves as a Western nation in the middle of the nineteenth century, Eastern Russia had often appeared much closer and far more kindred than the neighbours to the west. Nevertheless, Germans today consider themselves citizens of a genuinely ‗Western‘ nation with a decidedly ‗Western‘ past. Recently, the leading historian August Winkler even termed German history The Long Road West (2006),1 thereby implying that although 1 Heinrich A. Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen. 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 2000). Page | 1 I. Introduction Germans may have struggled to accede to the Western community, this had always been their ultimate goal. This claim Winkler reinforced in the first volume of his ambitious History of the West (2009).2 In it he argues that the foundation of the modern West of the French, British, and German tradition was laid as early as the first centuries of the Common Era with the spread of Christianity. Winkler thus privileges and, in fact, essentializes Europe‘s most recent history by projecting the modern East-West dichotomy onto a near- mythical past. As a consequence, the divide between East and West and, by extension, between German and Russian cultures appears an indisputable fact. However, other recent scholars have come to challenge this notion. They emphasize that German history is just as closely connected to the cultures and peoples of those regions which today constitute Eastern Europe. The German History in the East of Europe (10 vols., 1992-1999)3 is but the most monumental witness to the past Germans share with Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and the Balkan peoples. This encyclopaedic endeavour recalls that the vast territories beyond the Oder River and the Bavarian Forest more than once set the stage for landmarks in German political, intellectual, and cultural history, from the Battle of Tannenberg (today: Stębark) in Poland (1410) over the foundation of the first German University in Prague (1348) to the publication of Immanuel Kant‘s Critique of Pure Reason in Riga (1781) and the signing of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow (1990). However, this aspect of German history enjoys little currency in popular discourse. Rather, it is eclipsed by the hegemonic notion of a ‗Western‘ identity. It is important to bear in mind that in terms of symbolic geography the meaning of ‗east‘ and ‗west‘ is indeed arbitrary. Throughout European history, the binary has been invoked in different contexts to describe a wide variety of intercultural encounters. It was used to distinguish western Rome from eastern Byzantium, the Catholic from the Orthodox Christian creed, and Christian Europeans from Muslim Ottomans. Finally, in modern times, it has come to divide the European continent itself. Larry Wolff not long ago endeavoured to disclose the origins and the ideological implications of this last shift in his seminal study 2 Heinrich August Winkler, Geschichte des Westens, 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 2009-2011). 3 Werner Conze and Hartmut Boockmann, Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, 10 vols. (Berlin: Siedler, 1992-1999). Page | 2 I. Introduction Inventing Eastern Europe (1994). According to Wolff, the notion of ‗Eastern Europe‘ was the by-product of efforts to imagine a ‗Western European‘ identity based on the intellectual achievements