communicated his desire to the Bishop, in inimitable fashion: MICROCOSM: Portrait of a European City by Norman Davies (pp. 224-266) The Holy Ghost and I are agreed that Prelate Schaffgotsch should be coadjutor of [Bresslau] and that those of your canons who resist him shall be regarded as persons who have surrendered to the Court in and to the Devil, and, having resisted the Holy annexed in the early phase of the Enlightenment. Europe was Ghost, deserve the highest degree of damnation. turning its back on the religious bigotry of the preceding period and was entering the so-called 'Age of Reason'. What is more, Prussia was one of the The Bishop replied in kind: more tolerant of the German states. It did not permit the same degree of religious liberty that had been practised in neighbouring until the late The great understanding between the Holy Ghost and Your Majesty is news to me; I was seventeenth century, but equally it did not profess the same sort of religious unaware that the acquaintance had been made. I hope that He will send the Pope and the partisanship that surrounded the Habsburgs. The Hohenzollerns of had canons the inspiration appropriate to our wishes. welcomed Huguenot refugees from France and had found a modus vivendi between Lutherans and Calvinists. In this case, the King was unsuccessful. A compromise solution had to be Yet religious life in Prussian Silesia would not lack controversy. The found whereby the papal nuncio in Warsaw was charged with Silesian affairs. annexation of a predominantly Catholic province by a predominantly But, in 1747, the King tried again and Schaffgotsch, aged only thirty-one, was Protestant kingdom was to bring special problems. On entering Bresslau in duly appointed Bishop of Bresslau. The demarche was to be short-lived. With January 1741, Frederick II ordered thirty Prussian cavalrymen to guard the the outbreak of war in 1756, Schaffgotsch defected again and went off to serve Jesuit College from the wrath of the Protestant mob. It was said that the Maria Theresa. When he returned to Silesia in 1763, he was forbidden to enter Prussian soldiers, when approaching a quiet corner outside the Jesuit College, Bresslau and was exiled to the episcopal residence of Johannisberg at Jauernig had heard the sound of moaning and, after fruitless investigations, had decided in Austrian Silesia. The affairs of the bishopric were managed by two suffragan to knock the wall down. Inside they discovered an old grey-haired man, living bishops, notably by Johann Moritz von Strachwitz (1721-81). in his own filth, with a piece of bread and a jug of water that had evidently In the late eighteenth century, Catholicism in Prussia entered a period of been passed to him through a hole in the wall. When asked who he was, he intellectual crisis. The dissolution of the in 1774, the replied that his name was Jakob Sturm, a preacher from Liegnitz, and that he humiliating partitions of Catholic Poland and the vibrancy of Protestant had written a number of tracts against the Jesuits. He had counted twenty-six universities such as Halle all combined to magnify Protestant prestige. No one winters since his arrest, and he died ten days after his release. This, of course, better personified this pre-eminence than the most important theologian of the was a Prussian tale. But it says something about the reigning tensions. age, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Born and educated in Bresslau, Though a religious sceptic himself, Frederick recognised the social Schleiermacher became Dean of the Theological Faculty of Berlin University. importance of religion. Initially, he maintained a distance from both Through his efforts to win over the educated classes and his emphasis on confessions in Silesia. The restrictions on Protestant worship in some Catholic feeling as the basis of faith, he was to have a profound influence on Protestant districts were lifted and the rights of Catholics were respected in Protestant thought. As a proponent of the Union of Protestant Churches in Prussia, he ones. In 1742, he allowed the Bishop of Bresslau, Cardinal von Sinzendorf, to also wielded political influence. His principal works were Über die Religion ('On return to his post, on condition that the Vatican be kept at arm's length and Religion', 1799) Die Weihnachtsfeier ('Christmas Celebration', 1806) and Der that he become a 'Prussian Pope'. Yet, mindful of the divided loyalties of christliche Glaube ('The Christian Faith', 1821-2). On his death, it was said that Silesian Catholics, the King could not resist interfering. His tool was to be 30,000 people joined the funeral procession through the streets of Berlin. Philipp Graf von Schaffgotsch (1716-95), a Jesuit-educated Silesian who had The Union of Prussian Protestant Churches, effected in 1817, joined the been accepted into the priesthood in Vienna. In 1740 he had defected to serve Lutherans and Calvinists of Prussia into one 'Evangelical State Church'. The Prussia and had been rewarded with rapid promotion. Three years later, he use of the word 'Protestant' was forbidden. In 1822, a new common liturgy was became Frederick's favoured candidate for the post of coadjutor in Bresslau in introduced. Dissenters could be labelled as heretical. For Bresslau's Lutherans, a blatant contravention of the Church's own right of appointment. The King the reorganisation was not insignificant. For nearly three centuries they had been a self-governing community. Unlike most Lutherans in Germany, they the educational, medical and pastoral services of the Orders, but also, perhaps had not been subject under Habsburg rule to the state authorities or to the more fundamentally, of the irreplaceable devotional flavour that only dedicated religious inclinations of the ruling dynasty. But now they were obliged to monks and nuns could contribute. Admirers of Prussian state power called it relinquish all aspects of their autonomy. The King of Prussia was summus modernisation. Many believers thought it retrograde, not to say heartless. The episcopus of the state Church, just as Henry VIII had made himself 'Supreme only exceptions to be made were for religious institutions caring for the Governor' of the Church of England. His Protestant subjects, who could no incurably sick or the mentally ill. Apart from that, everything had to go. The St longer call themselves Protestant and who were no longer straightforward Matthias Hospital became a secular school. The Dominicans' Library became a Lutherans but hybrid Luthero-Calvinists, were simply expected to obey. They state library. The ancient Abbey of Trebnitz was turned into a factory. were asked to adapt to a major confessional and liturgical shift. Some would Another important reorientation took place as a result of the Concordat of say that they had suffered a major defeat. 1821, when the Catholic Diocese of Bresslau was detached from its historical Not surprisingly, a prominent group of dissenters, that of the 'Old links with the See of Gniezno (Gnesen). To a large extent, the step was a Lutherans' emerged in Bresslau. Its leader, Johann Scheibel (1783-1843), : natural consequence of the partitions of Poland. Gniezno itself lay inside the another Vratislavian born and bred and a Professor of Theology at the territory taken by Prussia, while most of its ecclesiastical province had fallen university, had headed the protests against the Union. Having petitioned both under Russian or Austrian control. The Polish Primate at Gniezno was unable the City Council and the King, he managed to delay its official recognition in to exercise his duties. The solution in Prussia was to create a new archbishopric Bresslau, thereby creating a 5,000-strong congregation. In the following years, of Posen-Gnesen to administer the former Polish provinces, and to raise the the movement suffered persistent persecution. Many of its members emigrated, princely bishopric of Bresslau into an independent see directly subordinated to establishing communities as far afield as Adelaide in South Australia. The Old Rome. The status of the Vratislavian diocese was undoubtedly enhanced, not Lutherans of Silesia were only granted recognition as a tolerated non- least because its authority now ran from the Baltic to Bohemia, and included conformist Church in 1845. Berlin. For the first time in 800 years, it was also fully drawn into the German Catholicism, too, had its dissenters. The German Catholic Movement, which sphere. All its Prince-Bishops in the subsequent era were Germans: emerged in the 1840s, was protesting against its perception of the Roman Church as superstitious and fanatical. It was founded in Bresslau in 1845, by, 1747-95 Philipp Graf von Schaffgotsch among others, Johannes Ronge (1813-87), a former chaplain in Grottkau 1795-1817 Joh. Christian, Prince of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein (Grodkow). Having publicly polemicised against the cult of 'Christ's Coat' in 1824-32 Emanuel Schimonski , Ronge was excommunicated. But, freed from Church control, he only 1836-40 Leopold Sedlnitzky widened his attacks. In an open letter to the Bishop of Trier, he wrote, 'Already 1843-4 Josef Knauer the historians are taking up their pens and are covering your name with all the 1845-53 Melchior Baron von Diepenbrock contempt of this world and the next; they describe you as the Tetzel of the 1853-81 Heinrich Forster. 19th century.' Ronge's followers were no less trenchant. They rejected the primacy of the Papacy, confession, celibacy, indulgences, fasting, pilgrimage The incidence of Polish names on the episcopal list is misleading. The only and the cults of saints and relics. Welcomed by the Prussian authorities, their prelate with any Polish sympathies was Bernhard Bogedein, a suffragan bishop numbers grew rapidly, reaching some 259 communities and 100,000 members in Bresslau in 1858-60, who supported the preservation of Polish primary by 1848. Ronge became a celebrity, lauded by Protestants and sympathetic schools and who is now described as 'a moderate Germaniser'. Catholics alike, and fully engaged on lengthy speaking tours. Judaism returned to Bresslau with the Jewish community, which was Nonetheless, mainstream Catholic life in nineteenth-century Bresslau was officially readmitted in 1744 after an almost 300-year absence (see below). But changing as well. In 1811, for example, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, the Jews, too, had their religious conflicts. They moved into a Bresslau where the state authorities in Prussia implemented their plan for dissolving all industrialisation was in progress and where they quickly formed part of the religious Orders and confiscating their property. At a stroke fifty-six educated middle class. In other words, they encountered conditions that monasteries and seventeen convents in Silesia were closed and sequestrated, favoured the tendencies associated with Reformed Judaism. It was in this many of them in Bresslau. The Catholic community was robbed not only of context that the rivalry of Rabbi Abraham Geiger and Chief Rabbi Salomon Tiktin turned sour. After Tiktin's death in 1843, his son Gedaliah pursued the century Bresslau derived from the dynamic growth of the Roman Catholic feud. By the time of the foundation of the Bresslau Jewish Theological population. Between 1817 and 1849 the Catholics of the Bresslau area grew Seminary in 1854, the Reformist-Orthodox division had ossified into two from 26 per cent to 39 per cent of the total, driving the Protestant share down divided communities with separate rabbis, separate schools and separate from 72 per cent to 59 per cent (the Jewish community, though increasing in synagogues. absolute numbers, declined proportionally from 1.3 per cent to 1 per cent). It is The ideas of Abraham Geiger (1810-74), and their role in the formation of reasonable to assume that the increase came mainly from Catholic immigration Reformed Judaism, had a bearing on events far beyond Bresslau - indeed, far from other areas of Silesia, Bohemia or Poland. By 1871, when the German beyond Germany. They were first formulated in the 1830s in a series of Empire was proclaimed, the old, Protestant character of Bresslau was being lectures presented in his native , but were elaborated and published in transformed into that of a more cosmopolitan, multi-denominational various works when he worked in Bresslau between 1838 and 1866. The metropolis. English translation of his Judaism and its history (1866) had a great effect on the The coexistence of three religions, each with their dissident wings, exposed evolution of American Jewry. In the practical sphere, Geiger shared the laurels nineteenth-century Bresslau to a rich ferment of argument and debate. In this with Samuel Holdheim as one of the co-organisers of the three rabbinical sense, Bresslau became 'the Hyde Park Corner of Prussia'. Liberals and conferences - Braunschweig (1844), Frankfurt (1845) and Bresslau (1846) - conservatives battled it out on all fronts. From 1811, the University of Bresslau where Reformed Judaism was launched. He had two main concerns. One was had two separate Faculties of Theology. The larger of them was Catholic, to modify Jewish ritual so that practising Jews could participate fully in the inherited from the old Jesuit College. The other, imported through the merger political, social and cultural life of the country (in this regard, he even toyed with the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, was Protestant. Each argued with the idea of moving the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday). The other was to open with the other; and both argued with the members of the Jewish Seminary. up Judaism to the full rigours of intellectual. and theological debate. He firmly Competition was rife. Publications proliferated. The poaching of professors believed that much of the tension between Christians and Jews was born of from one side to another was an open game. Conversions in all directions were mutual ignorance and that both sides must engage in dialogue. He had no not uncommon. Religious life at this level was nothing if not exciting. illusions about the superiority complex of many Christians and of Christianity's Debate became particularly intense in the late 1850s over the rights and pretensions of being 'an ecclesiastical world power'. On the other hand, he saw wrongs of ultramontanism and the principle of papal infallibility. The Roman signs of hope. 'Christianity had been intolerant,' he wrote, 'but intolerance is struggled to maintain doctrinal discipline: not a trait that is essentially Christian.' And 'The drama is not yet concluded . . . the time will come . . . Judaism has not yet fulfilled its mission.' In 1866, Rabbi 28 April 1860. Geiger left Bresslau to take up the office of Chief Rabbi in Berlin. We read in the Silesian Gazette that the Prince Bishop of Bresslau has withdrawn the The Jewish Theological Seminary, the first of its kind in Europe, owed its licences of two members of the Catholic Theological Faculty. Dr Baltzer, a canon [of the foundation to the cooperation of Rabbi Geiger with the prominent Jewish cathedral chapter] has temporarily lost the right missio canonica [right to conduct mass:], theologian Zacharias Frankel (1801-75) and to funds donated by the Bresslau whilst Dr Bittner has permanently lost his venia legendi or [permission to conduct lectures]. businessman, Jonas Fraenckel (no relation). Its founders recognised not only The [Faculty] noticeboard displays the following announcements: that traditional rabbinical training required modernisation, but that the 'I allow myself to inform my colleagues and students that, as the result of a decision by His principles of Judaism could not escape critical examination. When the seminary Princely-Episcopal Eminence, I am temporarily unable to present my classes, until such time opened its doors in August 1854, the omens were not good - a cholera as the academic position contained in my pro memoria to the regarding epidemic was raging and only twenty-one students and four lecturers attended. anthropological dogmas has been resolved. Prof. Dr Baltzer.' . . . But, under Frankel's directorship, it developed rapidly, doubling student 'I allow myself to report to attenders of my lectures in the Catholic Theology Faculty that numbers within four years and becoming one of the most important centres of in accordance with a decree of the Prince-Bishop of the 8th inst., which does not question my Jewish scholarship in the world. Its celebrated library and its journal, the proven loyalty to the Church, I shall not be presenting any further classes. Veritatem laborare Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, were to rival those of nitnis saepe aiunt, extingui nunquam (Livy XXII, 39). Bresslau, 26 April i860. Prof. Dr Berlin, and Vienna. Bittner.' Nevertheless, one of the primary religious developments in nineteenth- Canon Johann Baptiste Baltzer (1803-71) was suspended by the Vatican in Gotthard (1733-1808), began his career by designing the new Hatzfeld Palace, 1862 and joined the independent 'Old Catholics' the year before he died. whose construction he oversaw between 1766 and 1774. Thereafter, as Head of the Building Department of the regional Prussian administration {Chef des * Bauamtes der Bresslauer und Glogauer Kriegs- und Domanenkammerri) he is credited with a number of other Bresslau landmarks, including the Prussian Garrison on After 1741 Bresslau was immediately drawn into the cultural life of the the Burgerwerder and the Bresslau Theatre (Schauspielhaus). Appointed Prussian kingdom. Not surprisingly, since the King had claims to be an Director of the Prussian Oberhofbauamt in Berlin in 1786, he ended his career in enlightened philosopher, philosophy came to enjoy special prominence. glory after designing and constructing the Brandenburg Gate. Christian Wolff (1679-1754), born in Bresslau, taught mainly at the University The younger Langhans, Carl Ferdinand (1781-1869), was destined to of Halle. Known as 'the German spokesman of the Enlightenment', he argued become, alongside Gottfried Semper, one of the leading architects of the next in his Vernunftige Gedanken ('Rational Ideas') that every occurrence must have an generation. Like his father, he began work in Bresslau, with the new Church of adequate reason for happening. His philosophy was to hold sway in Germany the Eleven Thousand Virgins (1821) and the 'Stork Synagogue' (1827-9). In until displaced by that of Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth century. Unlike Berlin, he designed the elegant residence of King Frederick William III, the Wolff, Christian Garve (1742-98) studied in Frankfurt and Halle, but spent Palace of 'Unter den Linden' (1828). most of his adult life in Bresslau. His main interests lay in ethics and The Prussian army brought a huge influx of soldiers and administrators to psychology, and he was a pioneer in the study of the role of the individual in Bresslau. Among them was the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780- society. A correspondent of Goethe and Schiller, he was a scholar who greatly 1831), who arrived in 1830. Having seen combat at the tender age of thirteen, helped to popularise the German Enlightenment. Clausewitz had enjoyed a fascinating career. He had served as military tutor to Education was strongly promoted in Prussia. Despite the nominal the Prussian Crown Prince before entering Russian service in 1812 and fighting introduction of compulsory elementary schools in 1717, schooling had varied at Borodino. He was then instrumental in negotiating the Convention of in both quality and extent. Yet in the second half of the eighteenth century, it Tauroggen, whereby Prussia reneged on its French alliance. Returning to was significantly improved through increased government spending and Berlin, he was reinstated and promoted to General. In 1830 he was appointed regulation. In Bresslau, as elsewhere, the state sought to exploit the pedagogical Chief of Staff of an Army of Observation stationed in Bresslau to watch the skills of the Jesuits. After the dissolution of the Order in 1773, they were border during the November Rising in Poland. Though successful in ordered to change their dress and name, but to proceed with their activities in organising a sanitary cordon to prevent the spread of cholera into Silesia, he the educational sphere, as the Gesellschaft der Priester des Koniglichen Schulinstituts succumbed to the disease in his lodgings on the Schweidnitzer Strasse, and was (Society of Priests of the Royal School Institute). In the nineteenth century, buried in the Bresslau military cemetery. His monumental study On War (1853), several city schools were housed in former monastic buildings. a bible to military theorists, was published by his widow. The resultant growth in literacy supplied a readership avid for news. The Military duties also brought the Lessing family to Bresslau. Gotthold Jesuit-sponsored Schlesischer Nouvellen-Courier had been produced in Bresslau Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) arrived in 1760 as secretary to General Tauentzien. since 1708. But in 1742, its place was taken by the state-sanctioned Schlesische In his spare time he studied philosophy and aesthetics in the city's libraries, and priviligierte Staats- Kriegs- und Friedens-Zeitung, generally known as the Schlesische produced the treatise Laokoon, oder iiber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie Zeitung ('The Silesian News'). The new paper's publisher was Johann Jacob ('Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry', 1766), in which he took Korn (1702-56), a Brandenburger who had settled in Bresslau in 1732. Korn issue with Winckelmann. While stationed in the barracks on the Biirgerwerder, was granted the privilege to produce the Schlesische Zeitung and received articles he wrote the play Minna von Barnhelm, a drama of manners set during the Seven written by the royal hand, under the pseudonym 'a high-ranking Prussian Years War, which marks the birth of classical German theatre. Lessing's family officer'. His publishing enterprise flourished. By the end of the century, its list remained in the city after his departure for Berlin in 1765. His younger brother, included the works of Garve and Svarez and numerous Polish-language Karl Gotthelf, became director of the Bresslau Mint, and the latter's grandson, editions of German works. Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808-80), became a noted artist of the Romantic The Langhans family, which had deep roots in Silesia, achieved prominence Movement (see below). in the development of German architecture. The elder Langhans, Carl J.W. Goethe (1749-1832) came to Bresslau in the autumn of 1790 at the invitation of his patron, the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, whose regiment of And will not be returning. cuirassiers happened to be stationed at Schweidnitz. He attended a ball at the Royal Castle organised by King Frederick William II, and in the course of his O valleys broad! O soaring crags, travels he twice stayed at the Rote Haus Inn on Ruska Strasse. On his way back And fair green woods below! to Weimar, he stopped at Hirschberg, climbed the Schneekoppe and drank the My refuge for reflecting waters at Bad Warmbrunn (Cieplice Zdroj). Goethe did not like Bresslau. In a On all life's joy and sorrow . . . letter dated 11 November 1790, he described it as 'noisy, dirty and smelly'. One of Germany's most exquisite lyric poets, Josef Baron von Eichendorff Deep in the forest stands engraved (1788-1857), was a pupil at the St Matthias Gymnasium in Bresslau in 1801-4. The quiet, telling truth His family seat was at Lubowitz (Lubowice) near Ratibor, but he retained many Of how aright to live and love, connections to Bresslau, including a spell in 1816—19 in the Silesian provincial Of where lies man's real wealth . . . administration. Eichendorffs simple melodic lines evoking giant hills, dark forests and moonlit nights frequently provided the inspiration for songs by Yet, I too, soon must leave you. Schubert, Schumann, and Wolff. His chosen themes of Lust (Desire), Heimat A stranger in a stranger's land, (Homeland) and Waldeinsamkeit (Loneli ness in the Forest) evoke the very soul I'll watch on some packed avenue of Silesia: The world's immodest pageant.)

In einem küihlen Grunde In 1811, the Jesuit-founded Leopold University of Bresslau was secularised Da geht ein Muhlenrad, and merged with the Viadrina University of Frankfurt an der Oder to form the Mein Liebste ist verschwunden, 'Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bresslau' or Academia Viadrina Die dort gewohnet hat. Wratislaviensis. It assumed a unifying role in intellectual life, bridging the gulf between the Protestant and Catholic communities. Its students, inspired by the O Täler weit, O Höhen, nationalist resurgence, organised themselves into Burschenschaften, or 'scholars' O schöner grüner Wald, societies', which sprouted almost everywhere. Three such groups had been Du meiner Lust und Wehen formed in Bresslau by 1817: the German Raczek and Germama and the Polish Andacht'ger Aufenthalt! Polonia. Despite the police suppressions marshalled by Metternich, they taught a doctrine that could not be contained. The nationalist genie could not be Im Walde steht geschrieben returned to its bottle. By the 1840s, the generation that had joined the Lutzow Ein stilles ernstes Wort Freikorps and the Burschenschaften were fully employed as journalists, university Vom rechten Tun und Lieben, lecturers and schoolteachers. Und was des Menschen Hort. The artist Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) was typical of this growth of national sentiment. Born in Bresslau, he emerged as probably the finest illustrator of his Bald werd' ich dich verlassen, day, and his work was often directed to the patriotic themes of the time. He Fremd in die Fremde geh'n, was called on to illustrate Franz Kugler's Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen ('History Auf buntbewegten Gassen of ', 1842), before producing numerous illustrated works on Des lebens Schauspiel seh'n. the soldiers and uniforms of the Frederician era. Though almost entirely self- taught, he later earned a reputation as a noted painter, and has found a place alongside Caspar David Friedrich as one of the most important German artists (In the cool and gentle valley of the nineteenth century. The breadth of his work is demonstrated by the The mill-wheel still is turning. ethereal beauty of The Balcony Room (1845) and the monumental Coronation of But my sweetheart has departed, William I at Königsberg (1861—5). The Vratislavian artist Philipp Hoyoll (1816-1875) had quite different reprieved by the King, for writing satirical poems. Ten years later, he published interests. He had studied at the Düsseldorf Academy before returning to Silesia a highly eccentric interpretation of Christianity, the 'Layman's Gospel' or in 1839 to make a living as a portrait painter. Caught up in the Vormdrz, the Laienevangelium, composed in blank verse. He lived in Bresslau after leaving the prelude to the 'springtime of the nations', he painted his masterpiece Zerstorung army, and wrote several volumes of poetry on subjects varying from 'Young eines Backerladens ('The Destruction of a Baker's Shop') in 1846 (see Love' to 'Pantheism'. In an age when the sense of Germanity was rising, Sallet illustrations). A depiction of the shooting of starving rioters, the scene is was not slow to ask what being German really meant. And he answered in apparently set on the Bresslau Neumarkt, but is in fact a pastiche of events biting satire: during the Weavers' Revolt two years earlier. Nevertheless, it is a powerful symbol of Bresslau of 1848-9. Hoyoll himself became a noted pamphleteer, . . . Wir wollen auch echtdeutsch erzittern vor jedem Polizei-Gendarme Echtdeutsch uns publishing under the pseudonym 'Kilian Raschke'. Like many veterans of 1848, krummern vor den Rittern Und vor dem Bureaukratenschwarm. he died in exile in England. (As true Germans we want to tremble before every Policeman and Gendarme As Carl Friedrich Lessing (1816-80) was Hoyoll's exact contemporary. A Germans bow down to the nobles and to the bureaucratic swarm.) Vratislavian who had studied in Berlin before joining the Diisseldorf School, he was deeply influenced by Caspar David Friedrich, specialising in historical Moritz, Count von Strachwitz (1822-47), born at the family seat of Peterwitz scenes and evocative Silesian landscapes. His later work drew on a fascination (Stoszowice), was a student at Bresslau before going to Berlin and joining the with Hussite themes and produced a series of paintings: Hussite Preacher (1835), literary circle of the Tunnel uber der Spree. His lyrical, historical and patriotic Hus before the Council (1842) and Hus at the stake (1850), which evoked Bresslau's ballads were written in the few short years before his death. Some of them, like Bohemian past. Unlike Hoyoll, he avoided politics and died in honourable Richard Lowenherz ' Tod or Das Herz von Douglas, were very popular in their time. retirement in Karlsruhe. He was a Prussian for whom the ideas of Homecoming' and 'Fatherland' were The writer , whose real name was Georg Haring, shared both indissolubly linked with Silesia: the cultural milieu of Menzel and his fascination with Frederick the Great. Though born in Bresslau, he spent much of his life in . Specialising in Sei mir gegriisst am Strassenrand romantic historical novels and short stories, he produced some pretty dubious Mein alter Wartenstein! Fredericiana: Ich fahre in mein Vaterland Mein Vaterland hinein. . . . Friedericus Rex, unser König und Herr, Du aber bist noch, herziger Schatz, der rief seinen Soldaten Wie immer schön und suss, allesamt ins Gewehr, Und alles steht am alten Platz, zweihundert Batallions und an die tausend Schwadronen Da, wo ich's stehen liess. und jeder Grenadier kriegte sechzig Patronen. (Greetings from the roadside (Fridericus Rex, our monarch and lord, Beloved Wartenstein! He called out his soldiers to take up the sword, I'm travelling to my Fatherland He summoned at least two hundred battalions Dear Fatherland of mine . . . and of grenadiers, some thousand squadrons.) But you are still, my dearest love, Two middle-ranking Silesian poets of the early nineteenth century, both of As ever, sweet and kind, whom died young, had close connections to Bresslau. Friedrich von Sallet And everything is in its place, (1812-43), born at Reichau (Zarzyce), made the headlines more than once. In Just as I left behind.) 1830, when an army officer, he was court-martialled and cashiered, and then Strachwitz also possessed a profound, if peculiar, sense of 'Germania':

Land des Rechtes, Land des Lichtes, Land des Schwertes und Gedichtes, Land der freien Und getreuen, Land der Adler und der Leuen, Land, du bist dem Tode nah', Sieh dich um, Germania!

(Land of justice, land of light, Land of sword and lyric, Land of liberty And fidelity, Land of Eagles and of Lions, Land, your end is surely nigh, Guard thyself, Germania!)

František Ladislav Čelakovský (1799-1852), who spent most of the 1840s in Bresslau as the first professor of Slavonic languages, illustrates the great difficulties that the non-German cultures of Central Europe were facing in his time. (left: Andread Gryphius - 1616-64, right: Angelus Silesius - 1624-77)

The leading poet of the Czech National Revival, he had been expelled from the University of Prague only to find that many of his lectures in Bresslau had to be abandoned for lack of students. His devotion to the Czech national movement won him little sympathy from German colleagues, while his support for pan-Slavism set him apart from Polish circles. In 1848, when the Czech cause surfaced in Prague, Čelakovský was surrounded in Bresslau by people with completely separate interests. Prague was physically close, but culturally distant.

By that time, Bresslau was emerging as a cornerstone of Germany's liberal- national movement. Its thinkers, politicians and pamphleteers drew heavily on the symbolism of 1813 and sought to reawaken the national solidarity of the struggle against Napoleon. Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874) was foremost among them. Prior to his forced exile in 1841, he had been Professor of Philosophy at Bresslau and a versatile author. He penned some well-loved nursery rhymes: Alle Vögel sind schon da,

Alle Vögel alle! (left: Elizabeth Stuart „The Winter “ - 1596-1662, right: Lennart Welch ein Singen, Musiziern, Torstenson, Swedish general - 1603-51) Pfeifen, Zwitschen, Tirilieren! Frühling will nun einmarschiern, Already the sun was low in the sky, as the two wanderers arrived at the first houses of the Kommt mit Sang und Schalle. [Silesian] capital. First solitary small buildings, then dainty summerhouses set in flourishing gardens, then the houses became closer together, the street closed in on either side, and with the (All the lovely birds are here, dust and rattling of the carts, uneasy thoughts settled in the hearts of our heroes. All the birds, yes, every one! What a singing, music-making! Whistling, chirping, twitter-making! Spring will soon be marching in, Coming with its song and din.)

He also penned the most famous of German anthems, the Deutschlandlied, which he composed on the British crown territory of Heligoland:

Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, Über alles in der Welt. Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze, Brüderlich zusammenhalt. Von der Maas bis an der Memel, Von der Etsch bis an der Belt. Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, Über alles in der Welt.

(Germany, Germany above all else, Above everything in the world.

As always for protection and defence (The Naschmarkt : the north side of the Main Square, 18th century) We stand together as brothers true.

From the Maas to the Memel,

From the Etsch to the Belt. Adolf Anderssen (1818-79), another graduate of the university, found fame Germany, Germany above all else, as a master, and is widely credited with popularising the game throughout Above everything in the world.) Germany. Appointed as the representative of the Berlin Chess Society (Berliner

Schachgeselhchaft) for the International Tournament of 1851, he To all Vratislavians with a sense of history, it must have been ironic to hear astonished the chess world by defeating the favourite, the Englishman Howard that Hoffmann's anthem came to be sung to a Haydn melody called 'Austria'. Staunton, and emerging as champion. For a time Anderssen was considered The novelist Gustav Freytag (1816-95) was Hoffmann's former student and the strongest player in the world. His strength lay in his ability to force rapid fellow lecturer at Bresslau. While editing the leading journal of German decisions. One of his contests was dubbed 'the '. In 1861, in liberalism, Die Grenzboten, Freytag wrote Soll und Haben ('Debit and Credit', Bristol, he played in a match against Ignac Kolisch, in which time limits were 1855), one of the archetypal social novels of the century. In this magnum opus he first employed, using sandglasses. He won the second London Tournament in used the experiences in Bresslau of his two protagonists, the Gentile Anton 1862 and the Baden-Baden Tournament in 1870. Despite his international Wohlfahrt and the Jew Veitel Itzig, to extol the virtues of liberal repute, he continued teaching mathematics and German at the Friedrichs constitutionalism, middle-class values and enlightened Protestantism: Gymnasium. retirement. The historians Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), Gustav Stenzel Bresslau developed all the cultural institutions required by a modern city. (1792-1854) and Richard Roepell (1808-93) headed an illustrious list of alumni. The Botanical Garden was established in 1811 on a section of drained riverbed Mommsen, after his passionate support for the 1848 Revolution, came to east of the former Cathedral Island. The Merchant's Hall (Zwinger) provided a Bresslau in 1854 to teach Roman history and law, before moving to Berlin and site for musical performances and balls and staged a concert by Chopin in becoming a prominent member of the Prussian and National Parliaments. 1830. The Theatre and Opera House (Stadttheater), built by Carl Ferdinand Stenzel, who had come to Bresslau University in 1820, was a member of the Langhans, was completed in 1841 and later gained a reputation as a home for Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 and the foremost nineteenth-century authority 'Wagnerian nights'. The Art Gallery was opened in 1853, and five years later on Silesian history. And from 1841, Roepell occupied the Chair of Slavistics in the Silesian Museum of Antiquities followed. In 1862, the old Scheitnig Park Bresslau, the first of its kind in Germany. He had begun his career by was restored by the German horticulturist, Peter Josef Lenne, who had authoring the first in German in 1839. As a specialist in designed the gardens of Sanssouci at Potsdam and the Berlin Tiergarten. The Polish history, he was one of few German scholars to devote themselves to the nearby Zoological Garden was established the following year. study of Germany's immediate eastern neighbour, an exception to a deplorable rule that has never been properly overcome. His reputation drew numerous students from partitioned Poland and served to strengthen the Polish presence both at the university and in the city at large.

(Breslau)

The Department of Slavistics started by Roepell was a remarkable institution (Defenestration of Prague, 1618 by Wenzel von Brozik) from several points of view. It was not just an institute of Polonistyka. Frantisek Celakovsky was one of its leading lights, and it took a broad interest in University life showed signs of extraordinary dynamism. Scientific research, philology, comparative literature and history. When Roepell advanced to then in its infancy, blossomed. In 1840 the first Physiological Institute in university rector, the directorship fell to Professor Wojciech Cybulski (1808- Germany was opened at Bresslau under the leadership of the renowned Czech 67), a Posnanian and specialist on Mickiewicz, who defied the convention of physician, Johannes Purkinje. The chemist R.W. Bunsen taught at the the day and lectured in Polish. A Slavonic Literary Society (TLS) served to university in the 1850s before taking a chair at Heidelberg, where he made his open the university's doors to the non-academic public. Most importantly, the name. The physicist G.R. Kirchhoff lectured at Bresslau in 1850-4, while the professors of the department were deeply involved in cultural politics. father of German zoology, Karl Siebold, taught there from 1850 to his Celakovsky had lost his job at the University of Prague for protesting against Tsarist policy in Poland. Cybulski was a real live patriotic insurrectionary, who was widely taken to be doomed. There was no Polish state, so there was no had fought in the November Rising, had survived exile in Arctic Russia and for point in preserving Polish language and culture. The policy of Germanisation good measure had been imprisoned at Schweidnitz by the Prussian authorities. in Prussia, like Anglicisation in the British Isles or Russification in the Tsarist The chief initiator of the TLS, then a medical student, Teodor Matecki (1810- Empire, was being adopted not by reactionaries but by progressives. In an era 86), was twice imprisoned for Polish conspiratorial activities. He was tried in when various forms of vulgar Darwinism were taking hold, the world was Berlin in 1846 and escaped from the Moabit Prison in 1848 when it was thought to be divided into 'historic nations', which had a natural right to stormed by the mob. The other students must have loved it. political and cultural independence, and 'unhistoric nations', which did not. To put it bluntly, Poland was generally considered to have squandered its right to be counted among the historic nations. The Poles had to fight a heroic campaign over nearly two centuries to prove that assumption wrong. Manifestations of Polish culture in Bresslau, therefore, were much more likely to emanate from visitors and temporary residents than from locals. Prussians in particular, who had fed on the corpse of old Poland, were less sympathetic to the Poles than other Germans were. In the 1830s, for instance, the citizens of Dresden and in neighbouring held meetings in support of refugees from the Russo-Polish War and composed Polenlieder or 'Songs for Poland', in their honour. Few such episodes were recorded in Bresslau. Even so, the number of Polish contacts remained high, and the Polish undercurrent should not be neglected. Jozef Wybicki (1747-1822) lived in Bresslau from 1802 to 1806. At the time, he was coming to the end of a lengthy exile caused by the Third Partition. He was a distinguished reformer, constitutionalist and writer, with several plays and operas to his name. Most importantly, he had just spent several years in the service of Napoleon's Polish Legions, and was already the author of the famous Piem Legionow, ('The Song of the Legions', 1797)

Jeszcze Polska nie zginela Poki my zyjemy Co nam obca przemoc wzigla odbijemy. Marsz, marsz, Dobrowski! Z ziemi wloskiej do Polski! (Entry into Breslau of Emperor Matthias, 1613) Pod Twoim przewodem Zlaczym sie z narodem. In this regard, one has to pay attention to the many adversities with which Polish culture was contending. In the mid-nineteenth century, every European (Poland has not perished yet state was intent on promoting a single state language. Despite the solid body of So long as we still live Polish speakers in Prussia, Prussian officialdom had no more love for Polish That which alien force has seized culture than British officialdom had for Welsh or Gaelic, or French officialdom We at swordpoint shall retrieve. for Breton. Multiculturalism was a movement of the distant future. What is March, march, Dobrowski! more, the Partitions of Poland had created a climate in which everything Polish From Italy to Poland! Let us now rejoin the nation his friends and family in Poland on how to find him. Under thy command.) His mother was to drive in her carriage from Lemberg to Cracow, and then At the end of 1806, when Napoleon was reorganising Central Europe after take what he called the cug from Cracow to Bresslau: Austerlitz, Wybicki left Bresslau for Berlin to meet the Emperor and to join the commission charged with forming the Duchy of Warsaw. 1 When you set off, send me a letter ahead so that I can wait for a couple of evenings on Maria Czartoryska, Princess of Wurttemberg (1768-1854), a highly educated the debarquardere of the railway. and well-married aristocrat of the Napoleonic generation, holds a special place 2 Address all your letters to Madame Sophie Mieleka, Tauentzienstrasse, No. 69. in Polish literature. One of the few women of her time to gain fame as a writer, 3 If by some chance you miss me on the debarquardere, get someone to take you to the she ran a prominent literary salon in Warsaw during the French occupation Hotel Weisser Adler, then send the man there, who has my visiting card, to come and fetch and, as the author of Malwina (1816), introduced Poland to the influential genre me. of sentimental writing derived from Laurence Sterne. It was a genre where 4 Send him to Neue Schweidnitzerstrasse no. 3 (second floor, right-hand doorbell); and if even the most trivial emotions and reactions were analysed ad nauseam. She I'm not there, tell him to leave your card. passed through Bresslau on her way to take the waters at Karlsbad: Even Romantics must attend to details. His mother came in early July, a Lidia and I were chatting so beautifully, it was a shame that no-one else passenger in the very first season of the Bresslau-Cracow line. He left on the could hear us and that the sight of [Bresslau] interrupted so fine a 8th and never saw her again. conversation. Many lesser Polish figures were connected to Bresslau either through birth [Bresslau] drove out all other thoughts. I was expecting to find my mother or education - Bandtkie, Eisner and General Langiewicz. Still more Poles, from there. We alight at our well-known auberge. I step down [from the coach] Mniszek, Skarbek and Kosciuszko to Kollataj, Kraszewski and Lenartowicz and walk to the stairs. Oh! How my heart is beating with joy! passed through in transit. Slowacki's Romantic rival, Zygmunt Krasihski (1812- - Why are you weeping, Malvina? Lidia asked, seeing the letter which I held in my hand. 59), stayed in Bresslau no fewer than eight or nine times. Polish interest in the - My mother is feeling faint and is still in Warmbrunn: She won't be coming; I won't be city was rising. Romantic authors and publicists searching for Staropolska, or able to see her . . . 'Old Poland', began to write about their 'Polish brothers' in Silesia and their - So let's go to Warmbrunn, Lidia declares . . . We'll go straight away and leave 'grievous loss' of Bresslau. Luminaries such as Stanislaw Staszic and Julian tomorrow at dawn. Lidia's words seemed to be spoken by a guardian angel and lifted the Ursyn Niemcewicz contributed to a growing body of literature, which ranged burden from my heart. Why could I not think of such a simple solution for myself! I just from poetic eulogies of Poland's lost lands to scientific studies of regional don't know. There must be some reason why my good intentions always seem to be overtaken dialects. Wincenty Pol spanned both ends of the spectrum, but his Piesn 0 ziemi by unwanted preoccupations. But more of that later. Now, we're leaving for Warmbrunn. naszej ('Song of our Land', 1843) was typical of the former:

Juliusz Slowacki (1809-49), the most romantic of Poland's Romantic poets, A od ruskich rzek wybrzezy spent two months in Bresslau in the early summer of 1848. A wandering, Az po Tatrow piers jalowa tortured and tubercular exile, he had earlier travelled from Paris to Posen to Po dziedzing Krakusowa, encourage the revolutionary events; he had come to Bresslau in the hope of Tarn po Odre, po Zulawy, meeting his mother. Most of his greatest works lay behind him. And in eight Stara ziemia Piasta lezy - frustrating weeks of waiting in May and June, having taken lodgings under a I lud gniezdzi starej slawy, false name in the Neue Schweidnitzer Strasse, he daily expected to be expelled A w posrodku Wisla biezy! by the Prussian police. He spent his time visiting the post office to look in vain for his mail, composing - or at least thinking about - some of the rambling (And from the banks of the Ruthenian rivers mystical verses that would be added to the published version of Król-Duch To the barren breast of the Tatras, ('King Spirit') after his death, and writing a constant stream of instructions to Through the realm of Krakus, There, along the Oder, and in Zulawy that reason all the provinces, however separate from one another, form a united body. Lie the old lands of the Piasts - where the people of ancient fame dwell, and the Vistula flows through their heart. )

Yet it is interesting to see how many Poles who might otherwise have settled in Bresslau decided to leave. Jerzy Bandtkie (1768-1835), vwho had studied and taught at St Elizabeth's Gymnasium and who beccame a leading authority on Silesian culture, chose to move to Cracow. Thee composer Jozef Eisner (1769- 1854), who went to school at the St Matthias (Gymnasium and who became Chopin's teacher of piano, spent virtually his whole career in Warsaw. The actor and fertile dramatist Karl von Holtei (1798-1880), a German with exceptional Polonophile proclivities, spent his childhood and retirement in

Bresslau, but not the bulk of his career. Itt is hard not to conclude that the cultural climate of Prussian Bresslau was no more than lukewarm for such (The Nikolai Gate and Bridge, demolished 1820) people.

Bresslau's secular musical life, already well established in the eighteenth century, went from strength to strength. It gained no small prestige from the three-year stay between 1804 and 1807 of Carl Maria von Weber, composer of Der Freischiitz. Thereafter it was a regular' destination for leading performers on the circuit between Vienna, Prague and Berlin. The high point, according to many, was the visit in July 1829) of the violinist Niccolo Paganini: During his 8-day stay, he gave two concerts in the Aula and two by general request in the Theatre. He was received with enthusiasm and constant applause. During one of the rehearsals, a group of sstudents broke down the door and pushed their way in by force, just to heear the master Play. Their disorder was broken up by the police. Several reviews appeared, the most important by Panoffski in the Bresslau Gazette nr 180 ... The greatest praise was offered to the effect that Paganirni played with unequalled charm and wizardry . . . No-one played like him before; no-one plays like him at present; and no-one will play like him again.

Prussia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a dynastic state, which demanded loyalty from its subjects but was not very interested in national or (Austrian defeat: the siege of Breslau, December 1757) ethnic matters. Indeed, until a radical change of heart in the 186os, it was firmly opposed to the German national movement. It was still a supranational entity, where service to the crown was the only decisive factor. As Frederick The very idea of 'Germany' in the eighteenth century was so vague that it the Great noted in 1752: was almost meaningless. No two definitions of it would be the same. The Habsburg lands further clouded the issue. Which of them could be counted as I have done everything possible to spread the name 'Prussian', in order to teach the officers German? The radical solution of excluding them all, as in the later ' Kleindeutsch' that, whatever province they came from, they were all counted as Prussians, and that for idea, surfaced only in 1756, at the Treaty of Westminster. It is important to remember that the Holy Roman Empire stayed in existence until 1806 and that the Kings of Prussia, who were imperial electors, had every reason to keep it industrialisation was beginning to attract economic migrants from the south - going. It was only after Napoleon intervened that the framework changed. It from Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia and Romania - as well as from the east. Several was Napoleon who determined that the Holy Roman Empire should eye-witnesses left their impressions. A description from 1840 is especially disappear, that the Habsburg crown lands should be transformed into a illuminating: completely new 'Austrian Empire' and that the should be reconstructed as a separate entity. Prior to 1806, the Habsburgs and the Breslau is a remarkable city: made up of different elements. The Prussian-Silesian one Hohenzollerns were uneasy partners in the same overarching entity. After prevails, but alongside it there is a Polish and ... an Austrian-Silesian one. Of the 15-20 1806, they were independent competitors for control of a future 'Germany' couples that one meets here, at least one pair speaks Polish. At our tavern table, where we that was still to be conceived. were only 30 in total, were seven men and women who were Polish speakers. They even have The issue of language was largely irrelevant. Frederick the Great spoke their own inns: the White Eagle, . . . the Wizianowsky . . . The Austrian element is French by preference and, though he understood German, he said that it noticeable mainly in the dialect . . . certain tools and dishes have Austrian or corrupted compared unfavourably to the neighing of his horse.78 In the 1770s, when the Bohemian names. After fourteen years away from Austria, I had almost forgotten the dialect First Partition gave his kingdom a sizeable Polish population, he decreed that and the jolly tone of speech, but here I was reminded of it in a flash. Of course, after a few any future Crown Prince should gain a working knowledge of Polish. This days . . . the idiom appeared less Austrian and more Prussian - rather a mixture of the two. particular tradition persisted right down to the minority of William II, a The common incidence of the German and Polish languages reminded me of Prague . . . But hundred years later. For a brief time between 1795 and 1806, when Warsaw lay Breslau is a thoroughly German city, the Poles are guests here. in Prussia, the Polish population reached 40 per cent. Fleetingly, it looked as if Prussia would become a Germano-Slav state. The attitude of German Bresslauers towards their Polish 'guests' was not In Bresslau, therefore, anyone who was a good Prussian would feel at home. uniform. A few were unashamedly fascinated by all things Polish. In 1829, Karl German and Polish were common currency in the streets; Latin and Hebrew von Holtei produced an operetta about Tadeusz Kosciuszko, called Der alte were present as sacred languages; and French was the language of the royal Feldherr ('The Old General'). Others did not greet the Polish presence quite so court. Local and religious affiliations were strong. But the stark national enthusiastically. It is interesting to see that, while Poles had long complained of divisions, which developed in Silesia later between German and Pole, would 'Germanisation', Germans were now complaining ever more vociferously barely have been understood. about 'Polonisation'. Indeed, a nasty, supercilious anti-Polish streak had taken By 1815, German nationalism was on the rise, but its influence should not be root in the Prussian make-up ever since Frederick the Great, whose thoughts exaggerated. Frederick William III's speech An mein Volk had made no on the Poles were less than kind: mention of 'Germans'. It referred exclusively to the peoples of Prussia as 'Brandenburgers, Prussians, Silesians, Pomeranians and Lithuanians'. 80 Only the La meme encore qu'a la creation, Brute, stupide et sans instruction, Staroste, juif, serf, frustrations of the decades after 1815 encouraged more exclusive forms of palatin ivrogne, Tous vegetaux qui vivaient sans vergogne. (The same today as at the national identity. The triumph of the German national cause was not complete creation, Crude, stupid and without instruction, Lord, Jew, serf, and drunken palatine, All before the declaration of the German Empire at Versailles in 1871. beasts living entirely without shame.) Thanks to the lack of an effective census, the size of the Polish population In 1848, the Prussian government saw fit to expel all Polish migrants from of Bresslau is very difficult to ascertain. But it was certainly growing. The Bresslau ostensibly for fear of revolutionary sympathies. It prompted an opportunities for work and study made the city a haven for Poles not only impassioned response from a Pole in the Democratic Club, known only as from nearby Upper Silesia and from the Duchy of Posen, but also from more 'Stanislaus S------i': distant parts of partitioned Poland. In 1817, some 16 per cent of students at the University in Bresslau were Polish, many of them enrolled in the Faculty of The Polish nation is already too used to suffering and sorrows of all kinds to tolerate Law. Primed by their studies under Roepell and others, or by membership of today's humiliation . . . [it] looks with contempt on the death throes of a government which the TLS they were to figure prominently in the Polish national risings of 1848 seeks to extend its sorry life . . . through the destruction of a crowd of refugees. Sirs! You have and 1863. seen the atrocity committed today . . . And what is the crime that we have committed? It is Bresslau evidently bore a complex and cosmopolitan make-up. Rapid the love for our unhappy fatherland which sighs for deliverance. That is what drove us through cannonfire ... to your hospitable city, to lay our troubled brows amongst you and await the Polish historical novelist, J.I. Kraszewski (1812-87), who stayed in Bresslau hour of our rebirth. The action of your government has destroyed all our hopes at a stroke. regularly between 1858 and 1879, was still more emphatic. 'To this day,' he wrote in i860, 'Germanisation has not managed to erase the traces of The ban did not last long. Nonetheless, the novelist Gustav Freytag was [Bresslau]'s Slavonic origins. Indeed, one could say that the city is still half- complaining about the Polish presence in 1857. 'On the whole,' he wrote to a Polish. One can hear our speech at the very gates of the Silesian capital; and friend, 'Breslau is very much polonised and lacks the desired purity and other [the district immediately] across the river is even known [to its inhabitants] as symptoms of education.'bHis lack of enthusiasm was well demonstrated in his "Poland".' 88 If this was accurate, nothing much had changed since the days of poem Der polnische Bettler ('The Polish Beggar'), published in 1845: Barthel Stein, 350 years before. By the nineteenth century, Jews formed the second prominent minority in In Breslau vor dem Dome stand einst ein Bettelmann Prussian Bresslau. After the Prussian annexation, the regulations on Jewish In grauem, leinenem Kittel, mit vielen Lappen d'ran. residence had been eased. In 1744 Frederick II promulgated his Allergnädigste Die Rechte hielt ein Säckchen, die Linke den Knotenstab, Deklaration ('Most merciful Declaration'). Twelve Jewish families were Das weisse Haar hing zottig ihm über die Stirn hinab, permitted to reside permanently in Bresslau. Only one son from each family Und traurig sah'n die Augen in's Gotteshaus hinein, could marry and settle. All the other children were permitted to return for a three-day stay on payment of a fee. The concession was not overly generous. Er legte Stock und Ranzen bedenklich auf einem Stein Nonetheless, under the leadership of Rabbi Benedix Reuben Gomperz of Und wischte mit schmutzigem Ärmel sich ab der Thränen Thau: Wesel, Bresslau's Jewish community had prospered. In 1761, it gained its own 'O heilige Mutter Gottes, du braune von Czenstochau! cemetery on the Clasenstrasse to the south of the city. Yet despite his self- Hier steh' ich in fremden Landen, ein elender armer Wicht, proclaimed enlightenment, Frederick shared many prejudices of the age. In Und wenn ich polnisch bitte, verstehn mich die Leute nicht, 1779, when visited by a Jewish delegation seeking greater liberties, he Und wenn ich polnisch bete, hier hören die Heiligen nicht, responded tartly: Du braune Mutter von Polen, hilf deinem armen Sohn, Those [liberties] which are connected to your trade you can keep. But, it's just not on that Du Hebe heilige Mutter, ich zittre vor Hunger schon!' . . . you bring whole hordes of Jews to Bresslau and want to make a new Jerusalem out of it. By Frederick's death, the Jewish population of Bresslau numbered some (By Bresslau Minster a beggar once stood, 2,500. In 1790 a new decree restricted numbers to twenty-four privileged and His smock in patches, like his linen hood, 160 semi-privileged families. At the same time the Neue Konigliche Wilhelms- His left hand held a staff, a scrip in his right, Schule, or 'William's School', was established in the Jewish quarter in the south- His hair hung from his brow in tufts of white. west of the Old Town. Like the later Madchenschule fur arme Tochter, or Into God's house his sad eyes strayed, 'School for Poor Girls', it adhered to the principles of the Jewish Staff and scrip on a stone he laid, Enlightenment, or Haskalah, and strongly promoted assimilation. It inevitably With a dirty sleeve he wiped away the tears: met resistance from Orthodox Jews. 'Lady of Czenstochau, hear my cares! In 1812, Prussia granted Jews legal equality, thereby encouraging a further In foreign lands, in misery, I stand here- rise in numbers. The Jews of Bresslau soon acquired all the accoutrements of If I beg in Polish, the people won't hear me, permanence. In 1829, the 'White Stork' Synagogue was built in the heart of the If I pray in Polish, the saints won't heed me; Jewish quarter. Fifteen years later, the Fraenckel Hospital opened to care for Brown Lady of the Poles, help your wretched child, the sick. More schools followed. In 1856, a new cemetery was established on I shake for hunger, dear Holy Mother Mild!') the Lohestrasse. By 1871 the Jewish population of Bresslau had risen to 13,916, some 7 per cent of the total. In time, the Polish 'guests' appeared to become more accepted. Another The Jewish community participated fully in Prussia's blossoming cultural life. commentator stated that the inhabitants of Bresslau 'are partly German and Three academics deserve special mention. The botanist Ferdinand Julius Cohn partly Slavic [but] on the right bank of the Oder, they speak mainly Polish'. The (1828-98), a Bresslauer by birth, was appointed Professor at Bresslau University in 1859 and came to be recognised as the father of bacteriology. The postillion and the Wagenmeister; twenty-three kilograms of baggage were carried astronomer Johann Galle (1812-90), discoverer of the planet Neptune, headed gratis. There were four main routes - west, east, north and south - divided into the Bresslau Observatory from 1851. And Heinrich Graetz (1817-91), stages where horses could be watered or changed. Professor at Bresslau from 1853, was the foremost Jewish historian of the nineteenth century. His eleven-volume History of the Jewish People (1853-75), which is said to have been buried with him, set a benchmark for the future study of the subject. Though Graetz might have objected, such men were every bit as German as they were Jewish. Assimilation was proceeding apace.

*

In 1741, Bresslau, with a population of approximately 50,000, was still largely confined to the old walled town of the Middle Ages. It suffered no material damage during the Prussian annexation - the only major damage occurring in 1749 when the gunpowder store was struck by lightning and exploded, killing or injuring some 700 people. Frederick II soon began the repair and expansion of the defences. New and improved fortifications were laid out and a permanent garrison was established on the sparsely populated Bürgerwerder (Kepa Mieszczaiiska). Next to the headquarters building, a sugar refinery was opened in 1772 to obviate expensive imports. Many other dwellings and businesses grew up nearby, thereby hastening the integration of the Bürgerwerder into Bresslau proper. To improve the northern fortifications, the outer Oder arm that surrounded Cathedral Island was drained, thereby depriving the cathedral of its insular position and giving fresh impetus to settlement in the north-east. In a few decades, Frederick's fortifications were surrounded by urban overspill and were rendered militarily useless. By the late eighteenth century, Prussian Bresslau was fully integrated into an international network of postal and relay services. It featured prominently in one of the very early tourist guides, published in Weimar in French in 1793 by Hans Ottokar Reichard. Indeed, with a declared population of 60,179, Bresslau was presented after Vienna (270,000), Berlin (151,000), (120,000) and Prague (84,000) as the fifth city of Germany. Apart from Dresden and Cologne, no other German cities exceeded 50,000; Munich, Frankfurt and Reichard's itineraries were accompanied by observations locales. Many Danzig were the only others to exceed 40,000. localities in the environs of Bresslau received favourable mention: Bresslau was connected to all of them, and by extension to the rest of

Europe, by a permanent system of posthouses and stagecoaches, which • BUNZLAU : a fine orphanage: St Dorothy's Church: Mr Liebner's flower permitted passengers, packets and messages to travel at the 'incredible' speed garden: the mechanical works of Messrs Jacob & Hutting: the brown of 24-9 kilometres per day. Prussia insisted that travellers carried passport earthenware pottery, known as 'Bunzlau ware'. . . letters, which were checked at the city gates; and certificates of good health • HAYNAU : The Lutheran Church contains several remarkable tombs and a prevented lengthy investigations by sanitary inspectors. In Bresslau, as in fine library. At Tschetschendorf, i\ leagues from Haynau there is a beautiful Berlin, the standard charge of three groschen per kilometre covered tips for the English Park. • LIEGNITZ : The castle is one of the finest in all Silesia: it was besieged in in January 1763. The new Hatzfeld Palace was built in 1775, replacing its 1241 by the Tartars ... At Wahlstadt, the Benedictine Convent built on the site predecessor, which had been destroyed in 1760. It housed Jerome Bonaparte. of the battle of 1241 has some good pictures. And the classical Wallenberg-Pachaly Palace on the Rossmarkt was completed • OELS : The castle library with collections of antiquities and natural history: in 1787. It was built by C.G. Langhans for the Pachaly banking family (it St John's Church, the Catholic Church and the celebrated Public School. The currently houses part of the University Library). mineral springs at Skarfin lie 3 leagues from the town. Bresslau was deprived of its fortifications by order of Napoleon himself. As • GLATZ : The ancient castle and fortifications: the fine College of the cidevant elsewhere in Germany, the city walls were to be dismantled and the ditches Jesuits. The Parish Church keeps a miraculous icon. One should see the picture filled, though the gates were to be left standing. In total 2,000 labourers were gallery of Mr Krause and the botanical gardens of his brother, the apothecary. hired for the task. After the French withdrawal, the King of Prussia was • NIMPTSCH : The surroundings, including the village of Vogelsang, the park approached for financial aid. He could only donate the land and recommend, at Iseritz, and the view from the Kassenberg, are remarkable. The village of as Napoleon had done, that the battlements be turned into promenades. The Kosemitz is famed for the chrysoprases found nearby. outer suburbs, which had been damaged during the siege, saw partial • NEUMARKT : This small town is known for its tourbes and its carriages. renovation under Jerome Bonaparte. The Schweidnitzer suburb to the south • GRUNBERG : Here there are some sizeable cloth factories. Over 2,410 was favoured by the building of attractive boulevards surrounding the new vineyards produce only sour wine. Tauentzien Platz. The General's wish of 1760 was now granted. An elegant marble sarcophagus, designed by C.G. Langhans and J.G. Schadow, was Reichard's description of Bresslau itself runs to nearly three pages. Among erected at the centre point of the square. Soon afterwards, in 1827, a powerful the long list of 'remarkable buildings', literary bodies, galleries, entertainments, neo-classical statue of Marshal Bliicher was erected on the Salt Market. inns and industries, one also learns about the Silesian Lodge of the Freemasons In reality, early nineteenth-century Bresslau had much to offer the intelligent and, quite wrongly, of the imperial victory at nearby Leuthen thirty-six years visitor, no less in its collections of books and paintings than in its architecture. earlier. A Polish princess and collector who recorded her lachrymose impressions Opinions about Bresslau at the turn of the nineteenth century varied during a visit in 1816 found much to see: considerably, but many were unflattering. Goethe's comments (see page 232) have been explained by the fact that he visited following a late summer drought We reached [Bresslau] in the early morning; but, because of the Wool Fair, we had to that had raised the bad odours to unusual levels. Nonetheless, he described it make do with an indifferent inn and bad meal. After that we set off round the town and were as a city from which he hoped 'to be delivered' A contemporary of his wrote most warmly welcomed by the bookseller, Korn. I had neither the time nor inclination to look that Bresslau was 'an old, gloomy and cramped fortress . . . One passes under through his shop, which contains many fine publications ... So he took us to his private rooms the battlements, across the Oder bridge and through the city gate with a feeling where some beautiful pictures were hanging that he had acquired from Mirabeau. He deals, of horror'. Indeed, travellers were informed in advance of the city's among other things, in antiques . . . and the word superbe never leaves his lips. shortcomings. The future American President, John Quincy Adams, who The next day, Korn invited us to dinner at his property [in the former abbey] at [Oswitz] passed through in 1804, had been told that Bresslau was 'nothing more than a on the outskirts of Bresslau. Then, we went to see the Wool Fair ... In the evening, the large, old, and very dirty city . . . containing nothing that deserved the attention German theatre presented a play [Der Wald bei Bondi] in which a dog discovers his master's of travellers'. Yet, having seen it for himself, he conceded that it contained murderer. The poodle, playing the role of the faithful dog, was so adorable that I was moved 'objects of curiosity sufficient to amuse and employ the few days we have to tears . . . devoted to the place'. In the morning, a Sunday, I went to Mass at the cathedral ... I observed the ancient For one thing, Bresslau was already adorned with a number of fine palaces. vaulting and the Gothic pillars, with respect and emotion. There was once a time when all The Spaetgen Palace had been purchased by Frederick II in 1750 to serve as this belonged to Poland. I didn't realise that tears were rolling down my cheeks as I revelled the royal residence. After being extended and refitted, it suffered enormous in the past. . . [Later], entering the Church of the Holy Cross, I heard the lusty singing of the damage during the Austrian siege of 1760, when many rooms were entirely people [which] moved me so deeply as I listened to the same Polish refrains one hears at home burned out. It was home to the King during the dark winters of the Seven . . . Years War and was the scene of the muted celebration of his fiftieth birthday The Princess then left for a tour of the mountain spas. But she was back in the three bastions now carry the green tips of trees and innumerable wreaths of flowers . . . Bresslau a few weeks later for another three-day stay, when she lodged at the inn of 'the honest Rautencrantz': According to Gustav Freytag, Bresslau compared favourably to the Prussian

In the evening, I attended ... an interesting new play, Jolanda, Queen of Jerusalem. It was It was in the autumn of 1836 that I went to Berlin. My friend was . . . much annoyed about chivalry, and a large part was taken up by the Templars . . . [Then] we visited because I declared that the marketplace in Bresslau was more beautiful than the Gendarmen churches. I have always liked the Gothic style. But now I see that it is best suited to divinity . Markt, and I would not allow that the statue of the commander-in-chief by the principal . . barracks was better than our Blucher in the Salt Market. He was very unwilling to allow I called on Professor Bach [at the School of Fine Arts] who possesses a remarkable that the churches in Bresslau were more picturesque than those in Berlin with their great collection of paintings. Guido Reini's Head of Christ reduced us again to tears . . . Another domes. And he got quite angry when I remarked to him that the wide streets of his city picture by Carracci depicts the Saviour dying in the arms of the Holy Virgin. A third is a looked like a large coat on a small body . . . Rembrandt of great beauty portraying The Restraint of Scipio . . . The next day we went to look at the library house in St Elizabeth's Church ... I didn't Nonetheless, expansion had its problems. The old infrastructure could no notice the books, all German, but was amazed by the manuscripts, above all by a four- longer cope. The condition of the Ohle had long been a source of concern, but volume copy in folio of Froissart [written] on well-preserved pergamon and illustrated by by the mid-nineteenth century it had become little more than an open sewer. exquisite miniatures. Napoleon . . . wanted to take it, and when that failed, he tried to buy Hence it was decided in February 1866 to drain it, fill it and pave it, thereby it, offering a vast sum of money....But it remained in [Bresslau]. There's also a very ancient creating a pedestrian zone around the inside of the Old Town. In 1870, the manuscript of Cicero's De natura deorum: an Iliad in Greek on pergamon, and a very fine new streets were named Reussenohle, Schlossohle, Altbusserohle and Valerius Maximus. The oldest items are four Latin Gospels from the VIIth century . . . Katzelohle. On 3 September we left [Bresslau] after breakfast, making for [Oels] where we dined at an inn. Afterwards, we drove to [GroB Wartenberg], which is in the possession of Duke [Gustav] Biron de Courland, whose wife is Countess Maltzan. Both of them were away, For Central Europe, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 had consequences far enjoying themselves in Dresden. So we spent the night in an excellent inn . . . beyond the purely political sphere. It upset the balance not merely of military and political power, but of the cultural and social traditions that 'Austria' and Bresslau's extensive battlements took several decades to disappear. Though 'Prussia' embodied. Ever since 1741, Bresslau - though ruled by Prussia - had the walls were swiftly demolished, the rubble took longer to remove and the developed in a world where Prussia and Austria were rivals of equal standing, last of the towers did not succumb until 1838. Nonetheless, growing space had where each of them aspired to lead the 'Greater Germany' that many people been provided beyond the medieval limits and by 1840 the population had believed to be the formation of the future. Yet after 1866, all such assumptions grown again by two-thirds of its 1800 level. Those decades saw a flurry of evaporated. Under Bismarck's inspiration, Prussia opted not only to put an end municipal building projects. The neo-classical Alte Borse on the Salt Market to Austrian rivalry by force, but equally to exclude Austria permanently from dated from 1824, whilst the Neues Rathaus on the Main Square (1863) and the the 'Little Germany' that he was planning. Vienna ruled over an empire of a Neue Börse on Graupenstrasse (now Krupnicza) (1867), were fine examples of dozen nationalities and was constrained by necessity to reconcile multiple the neo-Gothic style. interests. Indeed, in consequence of 1866, she created the 'Dual Monarchy' of By the mid-nineteenth century, therefore, Bresslau's appearance was a source Austro-Hungary, which went a considerable way towards multinational of pride. For people who had known it earlier, its new look made it virtually federalism and which gave the Magyars and the Kaisertreuen - Poles of Galicia unrecognisable: (though not the other nationalities) - a place in the sun alongside the Austrian Germans. Berlin, in contrast, moved in exactly the opposite direction. The old There are few traces left to suggest that [Bresslau] was once a powerful fortress. The grim Prussian dynasticism was pushed into second place by the new German fortifications have been exchanged for green gardens and for lively promenades densely planted nationalism. 'Germanity' was to be elevated and everything non-German with trees. On all sides nowadays it is brighter, merrier, and more spacious. The hand of the relegated. Less and less respect was to be paid to the fruitful diversity of the present is constantly smoothing out the ugly wrinkles of the past. In place of deadly cannon, past. For a province like Silesia, which was part German and part Slav - and for a city like Bresslau, whose heritage had Austrian, Bohemian and Polish as well as Prussian layers - the shift was ominous. Bresslau had long been located on the borders of Prussia and Austria. Yet in 1864, when it watched as the Tsarist army finally suppressed the adjacent Kingdom of Poland, the complexities of its position increased. Henceforth, its citizens were to stand on the frontline of the German and Russian Empires. On the one hand, they could comfort from joining an enlarged German club and from seeing Prussianism offset by the gentler, more easy-going ambience of southern and western Germany. On the other hand, they were bound to feel anxious at becoming an exposed and vulnerable outpost on the new Germany's eastern frontier. In an age when nationalism was rising on all sides, future conflict was not hard to forecast.