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Romantics and Hegelians 1830–1840

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Between Ideology and Utopia

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Abstract

August Dolçga Cieszkowski was born in September 1814 at Sucha near Warsaw1.

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Notes

  1. Cieszkowski’s birthdate is given as 12th September in Andrzej Wojtkowski’s excellent biographical article in Witold Jakóbczyk, ed., Wielkopolanie XIX-go wieku, vol. I, Posen, 1969, pp. 141–175. In Cieszkowski’s own curriculum vitae, however, as reprinted in Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, op. cit., p. 426, the birthdate is 6th September.

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  2. Cieszkowski family file, Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu, Posen; this contains papers, letters and deeds from the beginning of the eighteenth to the twentieth century. I am grateful to the Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych in Warsaw for having granted me permission to examine the file.

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  3. Concerning Cieszkowski’s father: Kühne. ‘Das Bibliothek des Grafen August Cieszkowski’, Zentrallblatt fur das Bibliotheks-Wesen, L, nr. 6, June 1933, pp. 413–418;

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  4. Adam Zółtowski, op. cit., pp. 1–2; Zółtowski, ‘Cieszkowski’, in Polski Sbwnik Biograficzny, vol. IV, Cracow, 1937, pp. 62. Zółtowski maintains that Cieszkowski had Niccola Monti (d. 1795), sculptor, decorator of churches and palaces come to Poland from Ascoli.

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  5. There appear to be no letters extant between Paweł and August Cieszkowski although we know from the latter’s Paris diary that they carried on an extensive correspondence. See, however, Zygmunt Krasiński’s comments on their relations: Krasiński, Listy do Augusta Cieszkowskiego, J. Kallenbach, ed., vols, I and II, Cracow, 1912.

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  6. Also Krasiński’s Listy do Konstantego Gapczyńskiego, ed., Sudolski, Warsaw, 1971, p. 470.

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  7. Among the former was Tomasz Dziekoński, author of numerous pedagogical works; among the latter was the Baronne de la Haye, also Zygmunt Krasiński’s governess. See Jakóbczyk, Wielkopolanie, op. cit.

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  8. Bronisław Trentowski, Listy, Cracow, 1937, letter 88.

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  9. Adam Bar, ‘Die ersten Einflüsse Hegels in der polnischen Zeitschriftenliteratur’, Germanoslavica, I, 1931–32, pp. 76ff. The article ‘Czy jezyk nasz jest filozoficzny?’ was published in the Haliczanin, 1820.

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  10. Marceli Handelsman, Les idées françaises et la mentalité politique en Pologne au XIXème siècle, Paris, 1927.

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  11. Adam Zóltowski, ‘Cieszkowski’ in Sto lat filozofii polskiej: wiek XIX, vol. V, Cracow, 1909, ed. S. Chlebowski et al., p. 422.

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  12. The poem is printed and discussed by Janina Znamirowska, ‘O nieznanych wierszach Augusta Cieszkowskiego’, in Ruch Literacki, IV, nr. 2, 1929, pp. 44–46, sources given as ‘Wiersze patryjotyczne z roku 1831; Printed and handwritten pieces from the Biblioteka Krasińskich’.

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  13. Ibid.

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  14. These semi-legendary accounts are repeated by Zółtowski, Wojtkowski, as well as by Walicki in the 1972 edition of the Prolegomena, op. cit.

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  15. See Adam Wrzosek, ‘Przyczynek do źyciorysu Augustra Cieszkowskiego’ in Dziennik Poznański, 1924, nr. 10, nr. 11, where the memoirs of a Dr. Skobel, Cieszkowski’s personal physician in 1831–33 are quoted.

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  16. See also Krasiński, Listy do Gapczyńskiego, op. cit., p. 470, letter of 19th April 1847, where he writes: “Just as Demosthenes developed his speaking ability artificially by putting pebbles into his mouth so Cieszkowski developed his health artificially”.

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  17. Some significant Polish figures who sympathized with the Insurrection did not actually play an active role in it. Mickiewicz was in Switzerland at its outbreak; Chopin was also too frail to act. The stigma of non-participation did not affect them because of their unquestionable devotion to the national cause. It did, however, affect Cieszkowski’s close friend, Zygmunt Krasiński, whose father as one of the leading military figures collaborating with the Russians in 1830–31 disastrously compromised the younger Krasinski’s standing among his contemporaries. It is thus important for those who would see Cieszkowski as a patriot to establish him as an insurgent — even though his friendship with Krasiński dates from a later period. Kühne, ‘Das Bibliothek...’, op cit. writes that Cieszkowski collected all literature on the 1830 Insurrection.

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  18. Wojtkowski, op cit.

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  19. From curriculum vitae in Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 426–427.

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  20. Cieszkowski’s mentor in Cracow was Józef Emanuel Jankowski, a Kantian of no particular standing. See the curriculum vitae cited above as well as Walicki’s biographical sketch in Prolegomena, 1972, op. cit., p. XLVIII.

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  21. Curriculum vitae. Kühne, op. cit., p. 427.

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  22. Georg Andreas Gabler (1786–1853) had been a gymnasium professor since 1811. His first lectures were so immensely popular that no hall was large enough to contain all his students. Soon, however, his audience dwindled to a very few to whom Gabler lectured primarily on the Platonic dialogues. Apart from his unfinished Propadeutik der Philosophie he wrote Hegelsche Philosophic Beiträge zu ihrer richtigen Beurteilung. See Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. VII, Leipzig, 1878; also Max Lenz, Geschichte der königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität zu Berlin, vol. III, Halle, 1910. The lists of deans and rectors between 1831 and 1837 reflect the end of an era of intellectual giants. No longer do names such as Humboldt, Fichte and Hegel appear.

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  23. G. W. F. Hegel, History of Philosophy, vol. III, trans, by E. S. Haldane, London, 1896, p. 551; 1st ed. by K. L. Michelet, Berlin, 1833.

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  24. Karl Rosenkrantz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Leben, Berlin, 1844, p. 552, cites Förster’s funeral oration for Hegel: “It is now our profession to protect, to preach and to strengthen his teaching... No successor will mount the vacated throne of Alexander and satraps will divide the deserted provinces among themselves...”

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  25. Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, vol. I, Tubingen, 1921, describes the eschatological mood and the fantastic speed with which philosophical systems succeeded each other in Germany after 1800.

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  26. The point has been reiterated in all discussions of Young Hegelian Zeitbewusstsein, such as, Löwith, Stuke, Gebhardt, op. cit.,

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  27. and especially Heinrich Popitz, Der entfremdete Mensch, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1968. Hegel can be quoted freely to support the point: Phenomenology of Mind, trans, by J. B. Baillie, New York, 1967, p. 75: “It is not difficult to see that our time is a time of birth and of transition to a new period. The spirit is working out its transformation”. His sense of the historical significance of his age is evident too in the lyrical comments on the French Revolution: “Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around him had it been perceived that man’s existence centres in his head... This was accordingly a glorious mental dawn. All thinking beings shared in the jubilation of the epoch. Emotions of a lofty character stirred men’s minds at that time; a spiritual enthusiasm thrilled through the world as if the reconcilation between the Divine and the Secular was now first accomplished”. Philosophy of History, trans, by J. B. Sibree, New York, 1956, p. 447.

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  28. The twin terms “epochal” and “epigonal” are used effectively by Popitz, op. cit., to describe the tensions inherent in the Young Hegelians’ predicament. He treats the early post-Hegel period rather scantily, however, as do virtually all other commentators except Gebhardt, op. cit.; even here the eccentricity of the treatment impairs its value. For a comment on the Hegelians’ concept of a philosophical mission of the Prussian state, see B. Groethuysen, ‘Les jeunes hégéliens et les origines du socialisme contemporain en Allemagne’, Revue Philosophique, XLVIII, 1923, pp. 379–395.

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  29. Hermann Lübbe, ‘Die politische Theorie der Hegeischen Rechte’, Archiv für Philosophie, X, 1960, p. 187.

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  30. Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit, Berlin, 1857, p. 4.

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  31. Most notoriously in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, trans, by T. M. Knox, Oxford, 1952.

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  32. Haym, op cit., p. 4.

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  33. Edgar Quinet, ‘La vie de Jésus par le Dr. Strauss’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1838, nr 4, p. 463, already realized that Strauss had not said much that was new and wondered at the stir that had been created.

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  34. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, 3rd ed., London, 1954, trans, by W. Montgomery, pp. 68–120, emphatically declares that Strauss’ work is indeed a milestone in Bible criticism but primarily because of its synthesis of earlier conflicting interpretations.

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  35. Schweitzer calls “semi-rationalists” that group of theologians which did not deliberately reject all miracles but tried to reduce their number by offering naturalistic explanations; it was quite ahistorical and interested primarily in showing Jesus as an enlightened burgher and great teacher of virtue. Op. cit., pp. 27–68. The supernaturalists led by Hengstenberg of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung took the position that “what God has joined together no man should divide; Scripture and Spirit, external and internal word”. See Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XII, pp. 737–747

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  36. Schweitzer, op. cit., p. 97.

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  37. Ibid., p. 68.

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  38. Schweitzer maintains that the main difference between Strauss and his predecessors is that in asking whether an application of myth to the gospels would leave anything of the historical Jesus, Strauss felt no terror and it was Hegel’s philosophy which had set him free; Ibid., p. 79. However, Strauss’s incautious blasphemies, e.g., entitling the chapter on nature miracles “Sea Stories and Fish Stories” shocked churchmen, making some wish that the book had been written in Latin (!) Ibid., p. 100, citing Ullmann in Studien und Kritike.

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  39. It is a revealing reflection on the liberalism of Prussian cultural policy that Strauss’ book, although first subjected to review by the theologian Neander-who disagreed with Strauss but urged publication — was actually published. In the same period Hengstenberg’s fundamentalist Evangelische Kirchenzeitung had considerable difficulty in obtaining a permit to publish. Gebhardt, op cit., p. 22, points out the special role of the theological faculties for German Protestantism, thus explaining the easy transition from church dispute to university debate.

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  40. Gebhardt, op. cit., p. 114.

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  41. Karl Barth, introductory essay to Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, trans, by George Eliot, New York, 1957, p. xxiii, explains the problem in these terms and concludes that Hegel “showed himself perhaps only too good a Lutheran”.

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  42. Hegel makes his position quite clear in the introduction to his lectures on the philosophy of religion, reprinted in J. Glenn Gray, ed., On Art, Religion, Philosophy: GWF Hegel, New York and Evanston, 1970, p. 145: “Thus religion and philosophy come to be one. Philosophy is itself, in fact, worship; it is religion, for in the same way it renounces subjective notions and opinions in order to occupy itself with God. Philosophy is thus identical with religion, but the distinction is that it is so in a peculiar manner, distinct from the manner of looking at things which is commonly called religion as such. What they have in common is that they are religion; what distinguishes them from each other is merely the kind and manner of religion we find in each”.

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  43. Phillip Friedrich Marheineke, Christliche Dogmatik, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1827, was perhaps the first to consider the problem of the agreement of Christian dogma and its speculative content. Marheineke later edited Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion.

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  44. Friedrich Richter, Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen, part I, Breslau, 1833, expressly denied that personal immortality is a necessary consequence of Hegel’s philosophy.

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  45. See Willy Moog, Hegel und die hegelsche Schule, München, 1930, pp. 410ff, for an account of these early revisionists.

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  46. The classification was coined by Strauss in his Streitschriften zur Verteidigung meiner Schrift über das Leben Jesu, III, and picked up by K. L. Michelet, Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, Berlin 1837, vol. II, p. 659. Cited in Löwith, op. cit., p. 53. It is significant that the classification should have been coined by the revisionists, thus putting the orthodox Hegelians on the defensive, at least terminologically.

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  47. See Bronisław Baczko, ‘Lewica i Prawica heglowska w Polsce’ in Baczko, ed., Człowiek i Swiatopoglady, Warsaw, 1965, pp. 212–272.

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  48. An alternative classification which unfortunately never acquired common usage was Heinrich Leo’s “Hegelingen” and “Hegeliten” to describe what Strauss called “left” and “right”. Die Hegelingen, Halle, 1838.

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  49. Lobkowicz, op. cit., p. 188; the confusion within the school was such that Strauss earnestly affirmed that he preferred to deal with the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung where at least “one knows where one is” than with other Hegelians.

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  50. Schweitzer, op. cit., p. 107.

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  51. William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians, New Haven-London, 1970, quite rightly stresses the religious concerns of the Young Hegelians.

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  52. That the theology of the Young Hegelians was simply Aesopian language for their politics is the argument of Friedrich Engels in Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, and is often repeated, for example by Sir Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Oxford, 1963.

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  53. However, Brazill, op. cit., points out that religious deviation was at least as great a crime as political unorthodoxy. Ruge, even after having served a sentence for political engagement in the Burschenschaften, was allowed to teach; Bruno Bauer and Feurebach were eventually dismissed from their posts not for political sins but for their religious heresies.

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  54. Gebhardt, op. cit., p. 82: “In the years 1833–35 Christian symbols were thrown away as inadequate for their speculative content and, parallel to this, the eschatological reality of the transfigured and redeemed man was experienced as an innerworldly one”. Gebhardt’s whole study shows, however, that the Young Hegelians were shackled to the forms they had rejected. This is also the point of Marx’s ironical religious analogies in The German Ideology.

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  55. In the dispute between the government and the Archbishop of Cologne over the church’s revocation of its permission to allow children of mixed marriages to be brought up outside the Catholic faith Ruge unambiguously supported the government. See Lauth, op. cit., p. 434 and Cornu, op. cit., p. 90. Ruge gave up his teaching (presumably voluntarily) in November 1839 to devote himself full-time to the Hallische Jahrbücher. At the same time, Bruno Bauer raised a storm with the first part of his Kritik der Geschichte der Offenbarung: he was not dismissed but quietly shuffled off to teach in Bonn.

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  56. Stuke, op. cit., pp. 32–33, is most emphatic on this point, and the confusion becomes apparent upon comparing classifications: Baczko calls Michelet orthodox and Brazill calls Gans a Right Hegelian. However, Michelet identifies himself with Strauss and mentions Gans as holding views similar to his own. Michelet is described in 1848 as “left-right”, in Lübbe’s article cited above as in his, Die Hegeische Rechte, Stuttgart, 1962, introduction, p. 15. The problem is obviously one of differentiating time periods and defending the strictness of definition of right and left.

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  57. Bruno Bauer’s letter to Marx of April 5th, 1840 has been much quoted in this respect: “The catastrophe will be enormous and frightening. I would almost say that it will be more terrible and more colossal than the one which heralded Christianity’s entry into the world”. Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, vol. I, 2, Berlin 1927, p. 241.

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  58. Brazill, op. cit., p. 73, calls this the “party organ” of the Left Hegelians. One could argue that it was the organ which created the party.

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  59. Arnold Ruge, Aus Früherer Zeit, vol. 4, Berlin, 1867, p. 444.

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  60. Hallische Jahrbücher, 1st November 1839, p. 2101, ‘Karl Streckfuss und das Preus-sentum’, quoted in Cornu, op. cit., p. 90: “Prussia is today in most of its tendencies and in its state of existence Catholic”. Cornu pinpoints this as the moment of transition from the critique of philosophy to that of politics.

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  61. Hegel to Niethammer, 28th October 1808, quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Hegel, London, 1962, p. 323. Many years earlier Hegel seemed to have considered the question which his disciples sought to answer: “... It has been reserved in the main for our epoch to vindicate at least in theory the human ownership of the treasures formerly squandered on heaven; but what age will have the strength to validate this right in practice and make itself its possessor?” ‘Positivity of the Christian Religion’, in Early Theological Writings, trans, by T. M. Knox with introduction and fragments by Richard Kroner, Philadelphia, 1971, 1st English ed., 1948, 1st ed., 1907, p. 159.

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  62. Feuerbach to Hegel, Briefe an und von Hegel, III, Glöckner Jubiläumsausgabe, Stuttgart, 1927–30 pp. 244–248.

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  63. Paul Achatius Pfinzer, Briefwechsel zweier Deutschen, 1831,

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  64. cited in Stuke, op. cit., p. 32. An equally obscure Karl Bayerhoffer wrote: “World history has entered a time when the spirit celebrates its last reconciliation with itself and all reality. Thus, the question is now one regarding the being or non-being of philosophy”. Idee und Geschichte der Philosophie, III, 1837, cited in Stuke, ibid.

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  65. Philosophy of Right, p. 13.

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  66. Hermann Hinrich, Politische Vorlesungen, I, 1843, p. VII.

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  67. Karl Ludwig Michelet, Jahrbücher fur Wissenschaftliche Kritik, 1831,

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  68. cited in Stuke, op. cit., p. 64.

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  69. There is evidence to support both arguments in Groethuysen, op. cit.;

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  70. also in Jacques d’Hondt, De Hegel à Marx, Paris, 1972, esp. pp. 121–192 and Charles Rihs, ‘La pénétration du saint-simonisme en Allemagne’, Mélanges de la faculté des sciences économiques de Genève, XVIII, pp. 187–209.

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  71. Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 444; Michelet writing in 1837 writes of these national characteristics as virtually self-evident: “This brilliance (of the Germans — A. L.) in the history of philosophy finds its counterpart in the contemporary political development of a neighbour. This development took as much time as our philosophical revolution and followed directly upon it. As in our time the most active political life is to be found there so the most active philosophical life is to be found among the Germans”. Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, vol. I, p. 10.

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  72. Hegel, Berliner Schriften, makes occasional reference to Saint-Simon from his reading of French papers. Rihs, op. cit., points out that Saint-Simonianism penetrated into Germany before the revolution of 1830 but was only effective later. He could have said as much of Saint-Simonian influence in France.

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  73. Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy, is perhaps the most lavish outpouring of Young Hegelian scorn at French pretensions to philosophical discourse. Garewicz, op. cit., remarks that the only article which the Hallische Jahrbücher devoted to Fourier was a mocking discussion of sexual life in the Fourierist harmony, p. 226,

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  74. See also E. M. Butler, The Saint-Simonian Religion in Germany, Cambridge, 1926, pp. 60f.

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  75. Engels, ‘Progress of Social Reform on the Continent’, in Marx-Engels. Werke, vol. I, Berlin, 1969, p. 487,

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  76. D. McLellan, op. cit., has graphically described the surprise of the Young Hegelians who made their pilgrimage to Paris only to find the socialists they had admired exhorting them to the most naive sort of Christianity.

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  77. George Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism, New York, 1969, p. 54.

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  78. Lichtheim, op. cit., p. 55,

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  79. and Butler, op. cit., p. 433; the latter writes of Saint-Simonianism: “This curious religion was romantic in its origins but it absorbed other elements as it grew which were incompatible with romance. It became logical, practical, socialist and dogmatic where German romanticism had been visionary...”

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  80. Butler, ibid.

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  81. L. A. Willoughby, The Romantic Movement in Germany, Oxford, 1930, pp. 126–145, discusses the importance of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense’s salon — a salon much frequented by Hegel and his pupils — for the rise of Young Germany. The name arose in 1833 with Weinberg’s dedication of Aesthetische Feldzüge: “Dem jungen Deutschland, nicht dem Alten!”

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  82. Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School, in Works, vol. VI, London, 1892, trans, by G. Leland, p. 101.

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  83. “It often seems to me as if the heads of the French were furnished internally like their cafés with innumerable mirrors so that every idea which gets in reflects itself countless times by which optical arrangement the narrowest scantiest heads appear to be broad and enlightened”. See also his sarcasms regarding Victor Cousin’s purported familiarity with German philosophy. On the other hand, Heine defended Saint-Simonianism in the Augsburger Zeitung from 1832 and Henry René d’Allemagne, Les saint simoniens, Paris, 1930, p. 152, cites Heine: “Saint-Simonianism is accomplishing what religion, philosophy, politics and education have attempted for centuries”.

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  84. Rihs, op. cit., p. 190, cites the Saint-Simonian Globe, 16th April, 1832: “Prussia is a model of political government, it is the enemy of all disorderly and unconsidered liberalism. (Prussia) is preparing for social and individual regeneration”, Also K. W. Swart, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century France, The Hague, 1964, p. 60, writes of the Germanomania which began with Madame de Staël and had Gerard de Nerval speak of “la vieille Allemagne notre mère à tous”.

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  85. See also Cornu, op. cit., p. 105.

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  86. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, paragraph 244: “When the standard of living of a large mass of people falls... the result is the creation of a rabble of paupers... etc.”.

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  87. See Werner Conze’s article, ‘Vom “Pöbel” zum “Proletariat”’Vierteljahreschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, XLI, 1954, pp. 333–364. For details on Radowitz, see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. XXVII, Leipzig, 1888, p. 14. Conze cites Rodowitz in 1825: “Now with the proletariat the lord takes the essence of his body and his strength for himself and leaves the rest to him in bitter irony. This is the result of the fact that the correct understanding of service and work has been lost — the new process of liberation is often enough only a passage from a subordination to persons to a subordination of things, needs and money”.

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  88. On Baader and the proletariat see Ernst Benz, ‘Franz von Baaders Gedanken über den Proletair’, in Zeitschrift fur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, I, 1948, pp. 97–105. Also the anthology Franz von Baaders Gesellschaftslehre, Munich, 1957. The full and staggering title of his twenty-page article was: “Uber das dermalige Missverhältnis der Vermögenlosen oder Proletairs zu den Vermögen besitzenden Classen der Societät in Betreff ihres Auskommens sowohl in materieller als intellectueller Hinsicht aus dem Standpunkte des Rechts betrachtet”, Munich, 1835.

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  89. Lübbe, Hegeische Rechte; Rihs, op. cit.,

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  90. summarizes A. Carové’s Der Saint Simonismus und die neuere französische Philosophie, Leipzig, 1831, as affirming that Bazard’s and Enfantin’s doctrines were all contained in nuce in Rousseau and in Fichte, thus presenting nothing really new. Instead of discrediting Saint-Simonianism this made it more palatable to Carové’s German readers. Similarly, the Gesellschafter announced Rodrigues’ translation of Lessing’s Education of the Human Race as proof of Saint-Simonians’ seriousness; d’Allemagne, op. cit., p. 152.

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  91. Der Messianismus, die neuen Templar und einige anders merkwürdige Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der Religion und Philosophie in Frankreich..., Leipzig, 1834. Zur Beurtheilung des Buches der polnischen Pilgrime von Mickiewicz. Zurich, 1835. See the Carové bibliography in Lübbe, Hegeische Rechte, pp. 321–322.

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  92. See Hanns Günther Reissner, Edouard Gans. Ein Leben in Vormärz, Tübingen, 1965.

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  93. Gans’ Tagesgeschichtliche Vorträge, given in 1833–34 were suspended and then permitted once again in 1838–39. Lübbe, Archiv fur Philosophie, op. cit., p. 197.

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  94. Edouard Gans, Rückblicke auf Personen und Zustände, Berlin, 1838, pp. 91–105.

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  95. Cornu, op. cit., p. 49, mentions that Gans was a member of the Club des amis de la Pologne in 1831.

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  96. Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 357ff for text of the Cieszkowski-Michelet correspondence.

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  97. Curriculum vitae in Kühne, ibid., p. 426.

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  98. Karl-Ludwig Michelet, Wahrheit aus meinem Leben, Berlin, 1884, are Michelet’s memoirs and give a picture both of the man and of the Hegelian school as it disintegrated. Michelet’s Parisian experiences are described there on pp. 129ff.

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  99. Gebhardt, op. cit., p. 117.

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  100. A. Michelet, Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie, vol. II, p. 799.

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  101. A. Michelet, Entwicklungsgeschichte der neuesten deutschen Philosophie, Berlin, 1843, p. 399.

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  102. On Michelet, see also Löwith, op. cit., p. 65 and chapter three below.

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  103. Curriculum vitae, op. cit.

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  104. There are no further details concerning this trip, although there are scattered confirmations that Cieszkowski did actually visit England before 1842-e.g., A. Cieszkowski, ‘Wrażenia z Rzymu’, Biblioteka Warszawska, 1842, I, pp. 642–657. The omission of France can probably be explained politically. Tsarist subjects, and particularly students, often had difficulties in obtaining passports to France. Sir Isaiah Berlin has commented on the irony of “Young Russian anarchists who dutifully went to Germany (and) were infected by dangerous ideas far more violently than they would have been had they gone to Paris in the easygoing early years of Louis-Philippe”. ‘A Marvellous Decade’, Encounter, nr 31, June 1955, p. 28. Berlin overestimates, I feel, the tranquility of Paris in these days as I shall try to show in part two of this work.

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  105. This consisted of three farms in Surchow in the Kransnystaw area of Lublin province. Wojtkowski in Jakóbczyk, ed., op. cit.

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  106. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 1, 20th June 1836, in A. Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, p. 357.

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  107. Ibid., pp. 357–358.

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  108. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr. 2, 10th October 1836, ibid., p. 360. The entire correspondence, moreover, is in French.

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  109. G. Lefèbvre, La monarchie de juillet, n.d., typescript of Sorbonne (?) lectures, available at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, p. 202. Beet sugar had been introduced under the empire because of the blockade. It had been maintained under the Restoration and had made great progress under the July Monarchy to the extent that virtually every farm had its sugar beet production. In response to pressure from colonial cane growers and their refiners the French government from 1839 imposed heavy taxes on beet sugar.

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  110. Entry for 18th November 1837, cited by Walicki in his introduction to Cieszkowski’s Prolegomena, 1972, p. XXXIII.

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  111. Diary II, p. 3.

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  112. Ibid., p. 10.

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  113. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr. 3, 18th March 1837; Kühne, op. cit., p. 365: “... I have been so absorbed by pseudosocial activities that I am happy, now that Lent has come, that at least my mornings are free... You will doubtlessly smile, wondering how it was possible for me, whom you knew as someone totally absorbed by his work and studying so pedantically, to decide to forsake his books and pen for white gloves and a top hat”. The aberration appears to have been short-lived.

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  114. Jozef Szaniawski (1764–1843) after having taken part in Kościusko’s uprising became a councillor of state in 1821 and after the insurrection of 1830 took part in a Russian criminal court judging the conspirators. See Gabryl, op. cit., pp. 20ff.

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  115. Diary II, p. 4, Cieszkowski reports having attended a ball at the Warsaw citadel given by the governor. In the context of the day this indicates a compromising attitude vis-à-vis the Russian administration.

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  116. Diary II, p. 11, dated September 1838.

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  117. Clearly, Cieszkowski tried to keep up to date with the development of the Hegelian school. It is surprising, therefore, that he had not read Richter’s well-known book earlier. Cieszkowski also complains that he has not been able to get hold of “Strauss’ famous work” because the edition had been promptly sold out. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 2, 10th October, 1836, Kühne, op. cit., pp. 360–361.

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  118. Diary I, p. 4.

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  119. Diary I, p. 25.

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  120. Paragraph 389, Philosophy of Mind, being part three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans, by William Wallace with introduction by J. N. Findlay, Oxford, 1971, p. 29.

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  121. Diary I, pp. 8–9.

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  122. Ibid., p. 9.

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  123. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 1, Kühne, op. cit., p. 358.

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  124. Ibid.

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  125. Ibid., p. 359.

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  126. Ibid., Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 2, Ibid., p. 361.

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  127. Ibid.

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  128. Although this letter is apparently lost, we can reconstruct Michelet’s arguments from Cieszkowski’s reply to Michelet, letter nr 3, 18th March 1837, Ibid., pp. 366–367 as well as Michelet to Cieszkowski, letter nr, 4, 6th April 1838, Ibid., pp. 369–370.

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  129. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 3, Ibid., pp. 366–367.

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  130. Ibid., p. 366.

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  131. Michelet to Cieszkowski, letter nr 4, Ibid., p. 370.

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  132. Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 3, Ibid., p. 365.

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  133. Ibid.

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  134. Ibid.

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  135. See Cieszkowski’s notes to the Prolegomena, in Ibid., pp. 427–428.

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  136. August Cieszkowski Junior has argued that the “historiosophic system appeared to Cieszkowski during midnight mass in Cracow in 1832”. See Wojtkowski in Jakóbczyk, ed., op. cit., p. 144. The evidence presented here would seem to discount that theory entirely.

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  137. Diary II, p. 9, 7th June 1838: “Visited professors I know — looked with Lehmann over the final copy — read it to Michelet & Werder — notes & conclusion — Werder’s lectures on logic & hist of philosophy — closer acquaintance with him — persuading him of my views... Faust in the theatre — dinner for Gans, Michelet, Henning & Benary”.

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  138. Moritz Veit had previously published Polenlieder during the wave of enthusiasm for the Polish cause in 1830/31. In 1838 he submitted a thesis to Jena on “Saint Simonismus’ Allgemeiner Völkerbund und ewiger Friede”. Kühne, op. cit., p. 141.

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© 1979 D. Reidel Pubkishing company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Liebich, A. (1979). Romantics and Hegelians 1830–1840. In: Between Ideology and Utopia. Sovietica, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9383-9_2

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