The Arena

The Arena, by Various

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Title: The Arena Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891
Author: Various
Editor: B. O. Flower
Release Date: January 4, 2007 [EBook #20281]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ARENA ***

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THE ARENA.
No. XXI.

AUGUST, 1891.

[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (signed "Sincerely yours
Elizabeth Cady Stanton")]

THE UNITY OF GERMANY.
BY MME. BLAZE DE BURY.
"THE IDEA WHENCE SPRANG THE FACT."[1]
[1] "L'Allemagne lepnis, Leibniz. Essai sur le Développement de la
Conscience Nationale en Allemagne." By Prof. Lévy Brühl, Paris. 1 vol.
Hachette, 1890.
Since the Great French Revolution of 1789 and its immediate
consequence in the military despotism of Bonaparte, nothing has
occurred that has so convulsed the Old World and so altered the
conditions of men and things, as the establishment of the United
German Empire in 1870. The men of our time are obliged to know how
this event came about, or remain in ignorance of all that has happened
during the twenty years following it--that is, to ignore their own
political status.
Now two records of this enormous change in all our destinies exist; as
yet there are but two, and modern men are bound in duty to take
cognizance of them. One is the famous "History," written in Germany
by Heinrich von Sybel; the other the work of Prof. Lévy Brühl,
published in France. Both must be read.[2]
[2] "History of the Creation of United Germany." 5 vols. Heinrich v.
Sybel, Berlin, 1890.
The remarkable book of M. Lévy Brühl on the reconstruction of the
German Empire cannot be read by itself or separated from the scarcely

less remarkable one of Heinrich von Sybel, the fifth and latest volume
of which has just appeared. The two require to be studied together, for
though starting from opposite standpoints, they explain each other and
distinctly show the impartial reader where to recognize the real raison
d' ètre of German unity. When Sybel speaks, as he constantly does, of
the creation of Germanic unity, after the war of 1870, he, as a matter of
fact, adopts the French theory, while the independent French writer
exposes from a far more German point of view, what have been and
what are the causes underlying the present formation of the various
component parts of Germany into a State. The title of either tells
sufficiently its own tale. Sybel proclaims at once the:--
"Begründing des Deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm!" whilst Lévy
Brühl announces the progress of the "National Conscience as
Developed in a Race."
Sybel's is the narrative of a past that is doubly ended, the past of a
country and of a political system, the past of Prussia as personified by
the Hohenzollerns, and of a military and oligarchical absolutism as
represented by Prince Bismarck and Marshal Von Moltke. It is the
chronicle of an epoch whose glories, from 1700 to 1870, none can
dispute, but whose real life was extinct, and whose capacity of future
expansion in its original sense was stopped at Sédan, or a few months
later, at Versailles. Sybel conceives his history as a thoroughly
well-trained functionary must conceive it; he is brought up in
traditional conventionalities, and is rather even an official than a
"public" servant.
The foreign author, on the contrary, feels what has lurked during long
ages in the soul of the innominate throng of the people, and been
expressed in the thoughts and impulses of such men as Hagern,
Scharnhorst, Gueiseman, and Stein, Germans, patriots who taught
Prussia to speak, think, act, and embody the inspirations, passions, and
instincts of a whole land; arousing the conscience and vindicating the
honor of seemingly divided communities whose hearts were already
one.
No sooner had M. Lévy Brühl's book appeared than the effect was

evident; it was felt that it told the true truth ("la verité vraie") as the
French say; that it set forth the real "raison d' ètre" of the astounding
achievement that had taken the world by surprise, puzzling the patented
politicians on one bank of the Rhine almost as much as those upon the
other.[3]
[3] Few events since the deceptions and catastrophes of the war itself
ever produced the sudden impression of Lévy Brühl's boldly outspoken,
utterly impartial book. Published in the first days of last September
(1890), in one week it was famous throughout all France