Baar Monika. Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century

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158 Language as Medium, Language as Message

the Origins, Development and Inﬂuence of State Theories in Modern

Europe, inspired by Heeren, 1842) ﬁrst appeared in the leading journal

of the Reform Period, Athenaeum. Although the title acknowledges

that Horv

ath drew upon Heeren’s work, it conceals the depth of

his engagement with the German scholar’s text; in particular that he

faithfully adheres to the original, to an extent which today would be

considered ‘word-for-word’ translation. The essay evaluates the political

ideas of Machiavelli, Grotius, Bodin, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu

and Rousseau, focusing primarily on contractual theories and problems

connected with the division of power. The article identiﬁes various

state forms, located between the two poles of autocracy and democracy,

in line with a mainstream conviction of the Aufkl

arer, who criticized

absolute monarchy but did not entirely favour democracy. At the same

time, by appealing to a powerful metaphor, the Heeren–Horv

ath essay

denies the existence of an ideal state form: ‘What is every constitutional

form if not an empty form? What is it, if it is not a track upon which

a wagon travels? Naturally, it is not unimportant how the track is

constructed . . . but no matter how excellent the construction, does it

follow that the wagon will remain in the track? Can the track alone

force the wagon to remain in it? That depends upon the team of horses

and the driver.’⁸⁸ In this spirit, author and translator conclude that:

Neither democracy, nor aristocracy or absolute monarchy are preferable and

the true key to political understanding lies in grasping the nature of the

unique conjunction of spiritual, moral, and structural elements that animated

aspeciﬁc historical entityata speciﬁctime...To establisha formofstate

which includes the guarantees of its permanence in itself is more absurd than to

invent the perpetuum mobile, which is permanently in motion without external

inﬂuence.⁸⁹

Another essay on the theory of history, Gondolatok a t¨ort´enetír

the´ori

ab´ol (Reﬂections on the Theory of Historiography) (1839)

a word-for-word translation of Wilhelm Wachsmuth’s work, ap-

peared without indicating the original source. Horv

ath translated

the introductory chapter (entitled Die Aufgabe)fromWachsmuth’s

ﬁve-volume Europ

aische Sittengeschichte. Besides Heeren, this Leipzig

professor exercised the greatest inﬂuence on Horv

ath’s historiographical

⁸⁸ Heeren, Historische Werke, I. 450–1. I have used the translation which can be found in

Reill, The German Enlightenment, 137–8.

⁸⁹ Horv

ath, Polg

arosod

as, liberalizmus, f¨uggetlens´egi harc, 102.

Language as Medium, Language as Message 159

views.⁹⁰ The lack of reference to the author of the text may appear

puzzling at ﬁrst sight, but, as has already been noted, standards of

authorship in our era diverged signiﬁcantly from those of our times and

translators habitually masqueraded their pieces as originals.

The Wachsmuth–Horv

ath article advocates a programme that is

founded on two pillars. Firstly, historiography should not exclusively

concentrate on the deeds of the ruling elite, but also investigate the life

of the unprivileged classes. Secondly, the descriptive historical method

should be succeeded by a pragmatic-analytical approach adhering to the

principles of Hegelian dialectics.⁹¹ As we have seen, the ﬁrst point was an

omnipresent, perhaps even the most frequently voiced, historiographical

desideratum of the age. The relevance of the second criterion may be

illuminated by contextualization. Horv

ath’s article appeared at a time

when an ardent controversy about the virtues and vices of Hegel’s

ideology permeated Hungarian cultural life, marking a crucial stage in

the reception of German idealism.⁹² Attacks on Hegelians were based

on their allegedly anti-religious and revolutionary views and because

they championed an ideology which anti-Hegelians believed to be

incongruous with the ‘national spirit’. In turn Hegelians sought to

prove the compatibility of the German philosopher’s system of thought

with religious morals and the preservation of the existing political order.

This debate, which at times raged viciously, ultimately served to enliven

Hungarian cultural and academic life, because the relevant publications

in academic journals engaged a uniquely wide range of readers in active

participation. Another positive side-effect was the impetus which the

development of speciﬁc philosophical vocabulary received through the

attempts to convert Hegelian terms into Hungarian.

Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to conclude that Horv

ath was

an enthusiastic Hegelian. He might have been impressed by Hegel’s

theory in his youth, but only sporadic references pertaining to the

relationship between reason and spirit and arts and sciences testify to his

familiarity with the German philosopher. Nor did he become involved

in the controversy. At a more mature age, when writing the history

of the Reform Period, he seems to have denounced Hegel’s ideals,

stating that ‘some of our thinkers, having completed their studies at

⁹⁰ Horv

ath was also inspired by Wachsmuth’s Entwurf einer Theorie der Geschichte (Halle,

1820), which also inﬂuenced Lelewel; for a reference see Dzieła, II/2. 402.

⁹¹ Horv

ath, Polg

arosod

as,liberalizmus, f¨uggetlens´egi harc, 20.

⁹² B

ela Puk

anszky, Hegel ´es magyar k¨oz¨ons´ege (Budapest, 1932).

160 Language as Medium, Language as Message

German universities, became the apostles of a hair-splitting speculative

philosophy, especially that of the extremely obscure system of Hegel.’⁹³

THE BIRTH OF MODERN POLITICAL LANGUAGE

IN ROMANIA

Kog

alniceanu’s two short essays, Despre Civilisat¸ie (On Civilization, a

translation) and Despre Pauperism (On Pauperism, an adaptation, both

1845) provide illuminating instances of the ways in which these concepts

inﬁltrated Romanian political vocabulary.⁹⁴ The original version of the

piece on civilization was composed by

Elias Regnault and appeared

in the Dictionnaire Politique: encyclop´edie du langage et de la science

politiques (ﬁrst edition Paris, 1842), which was edited by a group of

French publicists and journalists. Whilst not one of the most prominent

scholars of his generation, Regnault’s name clearly resonated with

Kog

alniceanu because he had shown a keen interest in the Romanian

principalities, culminating in the book Histoire politique et sociale des

principaut´es danubiennes (Paris, 1855). In his account Regnault drew

attention to the unresolved diplomatic problem of the ‘Eastern question’.

The ambitions of Dictionnaire Politique were addressed in the publisher’s

and chief editor’s forewords. These express regret that whilst the natural

sciences had acquired well-deﬁned linguistic conventions, in the political

sciences this was not yet the case. Parliamentary discourses, political

debates in the press, as well as public discussions, desperately needed

precise and universally accepted deﬁnitions, and hence the dictionary’s

aim lay in contributing to that goal.⁹⁵ The editor in chief warned:

the lack of consensus presents a grave danger. If Buffon and Cuvier failed to

provide a perfect anatomical description of an elephant or a cheese mite, such an

oversight did not, in any way, inﬂuence the destiny of the world. Nevertheless,

in the political, and also in the moral sciences, (such) uncertainty about the

meaning of words can lead to regrettable consequences. From the confusion of

language stems the confusion of ideas. The spirit stagnates in a milieu where

diverse interpretations reign.⁹⁶

⁹³ Horv

ath, Huszon¨ot ´ev, II. 25. ⁹⁴ Kog

alniceanu, Opere, I. 558–661 and 572–7.

⁹⁵ Garnier-Pag

es’s foreword in Dictionnaire Politique: encyclop´edie du langage et de la science

politiques ed. Garnier-Pag`es

Etienne (Paris, 1855), x.

⁹⁶ Laurent Pagnerre’s introduction in Dictionnaire Politique: encyclop´edie du langage et de

la science politiques, vii–viii.

Language as Medium, Language as Message 161

Thus, the authors concluded that only the use of a consensual political

language was deemed capable of eliminating ignorance, the source of

prejudices, errors and sophisms.⁹⁷

As we have seen in the previous chapter, civilization evolved into

a leitmotiv of political and cultural thought in the ﬁrst half of the

nineteenth century. Originally associated with the late-Enlightenment

paradigm of civility and politesse, it gradually acquired new connotations.

Franc¸ois Guizot, who made one of the most enduring contributions

to the deﬁnition of the concept, found that ‘civilization essentially

consists of two principles: the improvement of the exterior and general

condition of man, and that of his inward and personal nature; in a

word, in the improvement of both society and humanity’.⁹⁸ Regnault’s

entry in Dictionnaire Politique ascribes meanings to civilization which

correspond to this canonical French interpretation, in particular to the

conviction that the true history of humanity equates to the constant

expansion of civilization, also known as progress.⁹⁹ By afﬁliating the

concept with freedom and equality, the Regnault–Kog

alinceanu article

endows it with a democratic aspect. Furthermore, civilization is also

associated with emancipation, which is deﬁned as a twofold battle:

between man and nature on the one hand, and between humans

themselves on the other.

The 1840s represented seminal years in the formation of modern

Romanian political and social vocabulary, testifying to the gradual

erosion of feudal structures through ‘modernization’. By translating

and publishing this article in the Calendar pentru poporul rom

anesc

(Calendar for the Romanian People) in 1845 (and on two further

occasions), Kog

alniceanu contributed to the redeﬁnition of the word

civilizat¸ie in the Romanian language. In this epoch, civilization evolved

into a cornerstone of Romanian political thought, to which every

prominent scholar had recourse. Diverse as their concepts might have

been, material progress was perhaps less important than a strong

moral-political component.¹⁰⁰

⁹⁷ Dictionnaire Politique proved succesful in its intention to establish conventions, even

creating new expressions in the process. For example, the terms ‘extreme right’ and ‘extreme

left’ were inaugurated on its pages.

⁹⁸ Guizot, Historical Essays and Lectures, 269.

⁹⁹ Karol Weintraub, Visions of Culture (Chicago, 1966), 86.

¹⁰⁰ See Simeon Marcovici’s entry ‘Civilizat¸ia’ in Paul Cornea and Mihai Zamﬁr (eds.),

Gîndirea rom

aneasc

a în epoca pas¸optist

a, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 1968), I. 230–9.

162 Language as Medium, Language as Message

This extension of the meaning of the word reﬂected a shift that

occurred in social theory in the 1840s.¹⁰¹ Until that period, in ac-

cordance with the prevailing Enlightenment concept of civilization, it

denoted knowledge and moral education (as a synonym of cultur

and also reﬂected the status of material culture. From the 1840s, civic

freedom and equality became the semantic foci of the word and it also

acquired an association with sociabilit´e, civilized social conduct. (As

antonym, barbarie was used.)

The article Despre Pauperism (On Pauperism—a neologism in the

Romanian language) ﬁrst appeared in 1845 in the Calendar pen-

tru poporul rom

anesc.Kog

alniceanu was inspired by a minor French

economist, Adolphe Gustave Blaise (1811–86), who also contributed

articles to the above-mentioned Dictionnaire Politique. Blaise’s essay on

pauperism appeared in a French popular magazine.¹⁰² Kog

alniceanu’s

essay commenced with a lengthy quotation from Blaise’s text, and

went on to reconsider the problem of pauperism in the Romanian

context.¹⁰³ The message of the article was reinforced by an illustration

of a beggar. The long and presumably direct quotation from Blaise’s

text emphasizes the two elements that operate in any society: those of

necessity and liberty. The right to work is deﬁned as a cornerstone of

every society, and also an equalizing factor. Kog

alniceanu reminds his

readers that pauperism represents a problem for underdeveloped and

prosperous societies alike: nowhere else is it more conspicuous than in

the industrially advanced nation of England. He emphasizes the indi-

vidual’s responsibility for his own affairs, but also acknowledges that,

under certain circumstances, the state has to intervene. Therefore he

proposes the establishment of orphanages, a hospital for the terminally

ill, and measures to curb alcoholism. Additionally he suggests setting

up a depozit de cers¸

atori (depˆot de mendicit´e), which he describes as a

‘place which accepts the sick, old and poor people and offers them

work according to their capacities’. The other establishment which he

promotes is the cas

adep

astrare (maison d’ ´epargne): ‘an institution where

the diligent worker can deposit his money in good times and can have

guaranteed access to it in hard times (earning interest)’.¹⁰⁴ The fact that

the French version of these organizations is indicated in parentheses

¹⁰¹ Klaus Bochmann, Der politisch-soziale Wortschatz des Rum

anischen (1821–1850),

(Berlin, 1979), 115.

¹⁰² Unfortunately, I was unable to trace the original French article, nor could I ﬁnd a clue

in the secondary literature about its location.

¹⁰³ Kog

alniceanu, Opere, I. 572. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 576.

Language as Medium, Language as Message 163

may indicate that Kog

alniceanu himself coined the Romanian terms and

thus the French originals had to be maintained as points of reference.

TOWARDS CREATING ‘ORIGINAL’ SCHOLARSHIP

Whilst acknowledging that no clear line may be drawn between ‘original’

production and ‘imitation’, Palack

y’s pursuits in aesthetics and Lelewel’s

studies in the theory of historiography merit separate attention. These

incorporated achievements in foreign scholarship, but in such a way

that allowed them to draw imaginative conclusions about their chosen

subjects. Palack

y’s fascination with aesthetics is reﬂected in several essays

along with his unfulﬁlled ambition to construct an aesthetic system.¹⁰⁵

An early piece, Pˇrehled d˘ejin kr

asov˘edy a její literatury (A Historical

Survey of the Science of Beauty and the Literature on the Subject)

appeared in 1823, in the journal Krok (Step), the oldest multidisciplinary

publication in the Czech language. The author’s intention was to devise

a philosophical terminology in the Czech language, as illustrated by his

avoidance of the term estetika to designate reﬂections of beauty and art

in Czech; instead, he coined the neologism kr

asov˘eda.¹⁰⁶

Palack

y’s essay is primarily a critical assessment of aesthetic theories

from the time of classical antiquity. The main impulse for his analysis was

provided by G

ottingen scholars, in particular by Friedrich Bouterwek’s

Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende des dreizehnten

Jahrhunderts (1801). Both the Czech and German scholars employ a

particular trope when likening the development of modern aesthetics

to a continuous movement, a relay-race, in the course of which new

nations emerge on the scene and take the lead from earlier ones.

Another G

ottingen scholar, the historian Ludwig Wachler, applied this

motif to the history of European historiography and the same tendency

informed Guizot’s scheme of civilizational progress, according to which

‘the civilization of the Egyptians and Phoenicians prepared the way

for that of the Greeks; while that of the Romans was not lost to the

barbarians who established themselves upon the ruins of the empire

(and so forth)’.¹⁰⁷

¹⁰⁵ Palack

y, A Historical Survey on the Science of Beauty and the Literature on the Subject,

ed. Tom

s Hlobil, trans. Derek and Marzia Paton (Olomouc, 2001).

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., xi.

¹⁰⁷ Blanke, Historiographiegeschichte als Historik, 268; Guizot, Historical Essays and Lec-

tures,8.

164 Language as Medium, Language as Message

Both Bouterwek and Palack

y locate the birth of aesthetics in ancient

Greece and argue that the ﬁeld emerged due to the favourable natural

conditions and political freedom, a constellation particularly conducive

to independent thinking. The modern period is then divided into

an Italian era (from the early sixteenth century), a French (from the

mid-seventeenth century), a British (from the mid-eighteenth) and a

German period (from the end of the eighteenth century). Palack

yac-

cepts some of Bouterwek’s conclusions (without indicating his source),

as shown by his assessment of Samuel Johnson’s work and his dismis-

sive stance towards Edmund Burke’s aesthetics.¹⁰⁸ On other occasions,

however, he presents his individual judgements, rejecting the aes-

thetic visions of the revolutionary Encyclopaedists such as Diderot,

Voltaire and Helvetius, whilst revering Montesquieu, Rousseau and,

in particular, Madame de Sta

el. Lastly, Palack

y adjoins a new, antic-

ipated Slavonic-Czech phase to the relay race and expresses the hope

that in the future Czech aesthetics would be liberated from its de-

pendence on German cultural dominance and ultimately achieve its

individual style.¹⁰⁹

Lelewel’s enquiry into the theory of history and especially his attempt

to systematize his thoughts on the subject mark a unique schol-

arly venture in early nineteenth-century East-Central Europe.¹¹⁰ In

Historyka (a term coined by himself) the analysis encompasses three

categories. The ﬁrst one, Krytyka (Criticism), relates to the truth content

of events and addresses sources and source criticism. The second com-

ponent, Etiologika (Aetiology), revolves around the causal relationship

between circumstances of time, places and events. Among the elemen-

tary and auxiliary subjects in this ﬁeld are politics, ethnography and

Statistik (also known as Staatskunde, a discipline describing the inter-

nal situation of the state). Lastly, the third component, Historiograﬁa

(Historiography), concerns the manner of presentation.

Lelewel’s system can be described as truly original, yet it also reveals

a debt to contemporary scholarship, which he assesses critically. This

includes a loosely but meaningfully edited compilation of numerous

historians’ ideas about ‘the art and methods of history’, such as Voltaire,

Bonnot de Mably, Lenglet du Fresnoy, Karl von Rotteck, Bolingbroke,

¹⁰⁸ Palack

y, A Historical Survey on the Science of Beauty, xlviii.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., 20–1, 68–9.

¹¹⁰ For an analysis of Lelewel’s ideas see Nina Assorodobraj’s introduction ‘Wst

ep’ to

Dzieła,Vol.II/1:Pisma Metodologiczne (Warsaw, 1964), 7–93.

Language as Medium, Language as Message 165

Hugh Blair, Wilhelm Wachsmuth and Johann Christoph Gatterer.¹¹¹

The emphasis on source criticism as well as the belief in the indispens-

ability of auxiliary sciences indicates a degree of ‘professionalization’.

Nonetheless, Lelewel’s interpretation of sources stands on a par with

that of his contemporaries, rather than with the deﬁnition of mod-

ern professional scholarship. Accordingly, epic poetry and myths are

also classiﬁed as primary sources, rendering his views comparable to

those of scholars such as Schl

ozer, Niebuhr and Michelet. They all

believed that myths, legends and epic poetry were phenomena meriting

serious study, as they were unique fountainheads for the historians of

antiquity, especially in relation to the period before the emergence of

literacy.

The emphasis on critical research also manifests itself in the author’s

orientation towards historiographical desiderata which no longer revolve

around rhetoric and are no longer conﬁned to the art of writing.¹¹² This

becomes obvious in Lelewel’s comments, for example, on the standards

of English historiography: he praises the pragmatic didacticism repre-

sented by Bolingbroke (demonstrating another appeal to the magistra

vitae tradition), but criticizes Bolingbroke’s contemporaries—including

the lesser-known John Hill and Jonathan Richardson—for being overly

concerned with style and composition: ‘about critical research, they

displayed very little’.¹¹³

CONCLUSION

The prolonged emphasis on, sometimes bordering on an obsession

with, language has frequently been seen as an attribute indicative of the

development of national cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. Nev-

ertheless, language did not necessarily represent a pivotal, and certainly

not the sole criterion of nationhood for my protagonists. Moreover, an

approach which conﬁnes the predominance of linguistic involvement to

distinct regions obfuscates the parallels in the development of European

vernacular cultures, which appear to be far more fundamental than

¹¹¹ See his overview of historical-methodological literature given in Dzieła, II/1. 393–470.

¹¹² Violeta Julkowska, Retoryka w narracji historycznej Joachima Lelewela (Pozna

n, 1998),

43.

¹¹³ In this context he refers to John Hill’s Essays on the Principle of Historical Composition

and Jonathan Richardson’s Morning Thoughts or Poetical Meditations, Dzieła, II/1. 398.

166 Language as Medium, Language as Message

individual and regional variations. Linguistic consolidation was neces-

sary to enable scholars to conduct academic writing in the vernacular,

a process which appears to have consisted of similar stages in the ma-

jority of European languages. The vernacularization of national culture

corresponded with scholars’ attempts to appeal to a wider audience

and thereby democratize not only historical writing, but also academic

culture in a more general sense.

My historians employed their native tongues innovatively: Lelewel

wrote the ﬁrst textbook on ancient history in the Polish language for stu-

dents, as well as the ﬁrst geographical treatise in Polish.¹¹⁴ His accounts

of bibliography and historiography were landmark developments in Pol-

ish culture. Palack

y’s essays on aesthetics represented the ﬁrst attempts

to use the Czech language for philosophical discourse since the seven-

teenth century. Kog

alniceanu authored two plays, Dou

a femei împotriva

unui b

arbat (Two Women Against One Man) and Orbul fericit (The

Happy Blind Man), as well as an unﬁnished autobiographical novel,

Tainele inimei (Mysteries of the Heart). In addition to the topicality

of language as a medium, it also assumed relevance as the conveyor of

national identity. As we have seen, language could be utilized to buttress

arguments highlighting the unity and continuity of the nation as well

as its antiquity and uniqueness.

My historians’ encounters with translation reveal that this activity

presented an effective vehicle for enriching their language. In the

process, they often had to modify the premises of the source culture,

in the light of the demands of different linguistic, cultural, political or

economic circumstances. In a more general context, the character of

the origins of ‘cultural invention’ among small nations undergoing a

‘revival’ has also been described as translation-like. As Palack

y’s attitude

to German culture in his studies into the prosodic system has revealed,

this process typically exhibited a twofold attitude towards the source

culture: analogy and negation.¹¹⁵ Linguistic pursuits thus required my

protagonists to manoeuvre between transmitting new philosophical and

political concepts and acting as guardians of the values of their native

culture.

¹¹⁴ Lelewel, Historia geograﬁi i odkry´c (Warsaw, 1814).

¹¹⁵ Proch

azka, ‘Cultural Invention and Cultural Awareness’, 57.

National Antiquities

THE INTEREST IN ORIGINS AND EARLY

SOCIETIES

The search for origins, whether in a universal or particular setting,

represented a perennially popular theme in European history. Its

prevalence was to a large extent due to the powerful capacity that

myths of origins possess to enable people to position themselves in

time and space. Another reason for the omnipresent nature of such

myths in national historiography lay in their potential to provide a

foundation for ideologies which contribute to the creation of a sense

of community and cohesion within societies.¹ In medieval chroni-

cles and humanist writing such pursuits addressed the genealogies of

ruling dynasties. In addition to attributing biblical descent to the

royal family, under the widespread impact of Italian humanism in the

European historiographical tradition almost every nation cherished a

classical version of national antiquity, which originated the rulers from

a Greek or Roman mythological ﬁgure. Thematizations of antiquity

were inherently tied to cultural legitimization, and classical variants

often represented a competing alternative to theories asserting Ger-

manic descent. For example, in English historiography, the Romanist

interpretation associated Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, with

the forefather of the nation and endowed English institutions with

Roman lineage. However, later, the strong Protestant component in

English national consciousness envisioned the Romans as ‘foreign’ and

the Anglo-Saxon tradition subsequently gained more popularity.² Cor-

respondingly, in the French tradition the pursuit of antiquity was

¹ Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History (Montreal, 1982), 1.

² For an account of origins in English historiography, in addition to MacDougall’s above-

mentioned book see Reginald Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain

before 1850’, JournaloftheHistoryofIdeas37:3 (1976), 387–410.