The Banner of Conservatism: Friedrich Julius Stahl, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and the Reinvention of Divine-Right Kingship in Prussia, 1833-1863 Madeline Clare Taylor Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in History under the advisement of Simon Grote April 2019 © 2019 Madeline Clare Taylor Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the support of myriad individuals and institutions. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Simon Grote for being the best possible thesis adviser. Thank you for launching my journey at Wellesley as both a writer and an historian during my first semester in your writing class and thank you for the dedication you brought to the King Killers seminar last year which inspired this thesis. Thank you, most especially, for your intellectual guidance, rigorous yet kind feedback, generosity, insight, and genuine interest in my work throughout this process. Thank you to Prof. Ryan Quintana, my history major adviser. In your courses and our conversations, I was introduced to the capacious ideas that inspired and sustained my love of history. Thank you for teaching me the meaning of historical narrative and instilling in me an enduring fascination with the state. Thank you for teaching me to read, write, and think like a historian, and for helping me find my scholarly voice. Thank you, as well, to Prof. Quinn Slobodian and Prof. Lidwien Kapteijns, who have been brilliant seminar leaders during my time at Wellesley, and who armed me with the intellectual tools that made this project possible. Thank you to Prof. Hélène Bilis, who graciously agreed to serve on my thesis committee. I am deeply indebted to the German Departments at Wellesley and MIT, including Prof. Thomas Nolden, Prof. Anjeana Hans, Prof. Mark Römisch, and Prof. Kurt Fendt. I began German at the introductory level at Wellesley, and without their attentive teaching, I could not have developed the German language skills that this thesis demanded of me. Thank you to my parents, who raised me to read voraciously, act ambitiously, and think boldly. Thank you for offering your unflinching trust and support in every decision I’ve made and for making my time at Wellesley possible. Thank you to the Schiff and Schwarz Fellowships for enabling me to pursue my research. Vicky, every moment spent with you feels like home. Thank you for your endless humor, understanding, and for knowing me so very well. Your friendship means everything to me. Stephanie, thank you for being such a reliable, thoughtful, and honest friend. Thank you for always looking out for me, offering advice, and being my rock. Ann and Shira, thank you for being my Wellesley family. Your love, compassion, and company have kept me centered. 2 Shawn and Jon, thank you for always offering a much-needed break and being my family outside of Wellesley. Thank you to my colleagues and friends in the Wellesley Copy Center, who have been my source of laughter on a day-to-day basis. Thank you to Buddhist Chaplain John Bailes, whose instruction in meditation has helped me become a kinder, more resilient, and more mindful person. None of this would be possible without the endless support of my advisers, professors, colleagues, classmates, friends, and family. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One “The powers that be are ordained of God”: Friedrich Julius Stahl and the Transformation of Divine Right Theory in Vormärz Prussia 21 Chapter Two ‘von Gottes Gnaden’ or ‘von Volkes Gnaden’? King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Birth of Prussian Constitutionalism 53 Chapter Three Divine Right as a Party Flag: Stahl’s Parliamentary Career and the Forging of a Conservative Platform, 1849-1863 98 Conclusion 136 Appendix 140 Bibliography 146 4 Introduction “It is useless to demonstrate, what nobody doubts, that the theory of the Divine Right of Kings has no affinity with the creed of any modern political party.”1 So wrote John Neville Figgis (1866-1919) in his seminal historical study, The Divine Right of Kings, first published in 1896. What Neville apparently overlooked, however, was that just thirty years prior, in 1861, the Prussian conservative politician Friedrich Julius Stahl (1801-1861) had stood before an assembly in Berlin, passionately eulogizing the recently deceased Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (1795-1861) for his commitment to the “the crown, which he alone wears ‘from God’.”2 Indeed, such was a reflection of Stahl’s own career-long effort to establish the principle of divine right as the ideological stronghold of the Prussian Conservative Party—that is to say, “the banner of the conservatives.”3 Two years after Stahl’s death, his dear friend and colleague in the conservative party, Ernst Ludwig Gerlach (1795-1877), held his own spirited address in Stahl’s honor, in which he declared divine right to be “a true party flag.”4 This was, by all accounts, strikingly anachronistic. As Figgis too wrote, “That the doctrine [of divine right kingship] is absurd, when judged from the stand point of modern political thought, is a statement that requires neither proof nor exposition.”5 And yet, for a group of German thinkers and politicians, it was neither absurd nor outdated. Rather, they considered it 1 John Neville Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), 12. 2 Friedrich Julius Stahl, “Zum Gedächtniß seiner Majestät des hochseligen Königs Friedrich Wilhelm IV und seiner Regierung,” in Siebzehn parlamentarische Reden und drei Vorträge (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Herz, 1862), 273. 3 Friedrich Julius Stahl, Die Revolution und die constitutionelle Monarchie (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Herz, 1849), 28. 4 Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Christenthum und Königthum von Gottes Gnaden im Verhältniss zu den Fortschritten des Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag und Druck von F. Heinicke, 1863), 36. 5 Figgis, Divine Right, 1. 5 imminently possible to reconcile the doctrine of divine right with modernity. Stahl, above all, led the charge in this regard, devoting his career as an academic and politician to the reimagination, defense, and re-entrenchment of the doctrine of divine right. In turn, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, whose reign coincided with the height of Stahl’s career, accepted it as his personal vocation to espouse belief in and exude the image of a king “by the grace of God.” It is these two characters, and their seemingly anachronistic intellectual endeavors, which will constitute the core of this study. How did what is regarded as a thoroughly “premodern” political idea find a new life in the nineteenth century? This is the story I attempt to tell. History of Divine-Right Kingship The idea of “divine right kingship” has its roots in the medieval period. As Anne McLaren has argued, “Christian kings could, and from the time of Charlemagne (742–814) did, claim to rule dei gratia: by the grace of God, by his gift and permission.”6 This theory, which has such medieval roots, developed into a more concrete doctrine in the early modern period. The Reformation, and Martin Luther (1483-1546) in particular, had a profound influence on it. Luther laid out his early views on authority in his pivotal work Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523). The well-known contention of this work, Jarrett Carty has argued, remains that “Christians were governed by God through zwei Reiche, or two kingdoms: the 6 Anne McLaren, “Divine Right Kingship,” in Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006). 6 geistliche Reich, or spiritual kingdom, and the weltliche Reich, or worldly kingdom.”7 This distinction between the two kingdoms has been the subject of much scholarly attention. The book itself was organized into three parts, the first of which addressed the basis of temporal authority. Luther turned to scripture to answer this question, citing Romans 13:1-2 and Peter 2: 13-14. Romans 13:1-2 states: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” In these New Testament passages, Luther understood a greater meaning. Not only did they serve as Paul and Peter’s warning to Christians to be obedient. Rather as Carty has claimed, Luther “also saw an emphasis on the divine institution of government as a universal, transhistorical foundation for all political legitimacy.”8 In other words, “the foundations for temporal authority were laid in the antediluvian age.” In the second section of Temporal Authority, Luther sought to justify the need for temporal authority at all. True Christians, after all, were part of the spiritual kingdom and thus “had no need of temporal government.”9 However, the Christian was simultaneously “inescapably in this life a subject of the temporal kingdom, and thus cannot do without the divinely ordained government to provide order and at times even coerce his body.”10 After defending the necessity of temporal authority at all, Luther used the third section of his work to explain how to be a good Christian prince—that is, to “‘instruct [the ruler’s] heart’ on how to see his duties and princely affairs as godly duties to the temporal kingdom.”11 7 Jarrett A. Carty, God and Government: Martin Luther’s Political Thought (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), 37. 8 Carty, God and Government, 41. 9 Carty, God and Government, 42. 10 Carty, God and Government, 42. 11 Carty, God and Government, 43. 7 Despite the significance of Temporal Authority, however, Luther presented another key facet of his views on authority in a slightly earlier and lesser-known work, his Sincere Admonition to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (1522).