Pure Hierarchy: The Prussian Enlightenment
The Saxon Enlightenment may have been a step ahead of the Prussian one, but both came from remarkably similar events: wide scale refugee movements of middle class men and women into the country. In the case of Saxony, it was a historical fluke; there was little else besides their tolerance that would indicate that they would receive a mass of people like that. The migration into the Grand Duchy of Posen, however, was very much the fault of Prussia.
"By the 1650s," to quote Henry Kissinger in
Diplomacy, "there were two constants in Europe: Denmark's continued conquests in Northwestern Germany, and the continued partitions of the former Korona of Poland." Because of the religious nature of the Danish Wars of Aggression, from the 2nd War of Danish Aggression on they are considered parts of the 50 Years War, 'named skirmishes before the nameless massacres of the Imperial Wars'. Denmark, unlike District Saxony (
Going to start calling the region of Thuringia, Saxony, and Anhalt this, as they're all innovative, tolerant realms) and Prussia, was still a highly religiously motivated society, and under the increasingly belligerent Karl X and Frederich Posadofsky (who sympathized with the clerical serfs more than any other group and felt that 'serfdom under Catholic law is naught but a series of abominations') fought with the goal of annexing the land of the German Catholic Bishoprics.
It may seem odd that Ferdinand II, an effete, pacifistic and pro-imperial aristocrat, would support the bellicose "Bauernschaft" (peasant's rule, a derogatory term created by Grand Duke of Austria) in Denmark, and many satirists played with the idea of the King as an uncultured peasant in regal clothing. The fact of the matter is that after the reform of the Doppelkorps Ferdinand had left nearly all foreign matters to the new Diplomatic corps, led by Johann von Below. Ferdinand, on the other hand, spent nearly all of his time in Neukoln, 'cultivating German genius'.
The palace at Neukoln was so grandiose by the end of Ferdinand II's rule that it was used as the inspiration for the French palace at Versailles
Thus, most of the policies that Ferdinand had a hand in were cultural policies. Even the Army Reform Act of 1655, which mandated that Polish aristocrats in the Grand Duchy of Posen join the hussar corps and which was written and passed entirely by Ferdinand (at the anger of
Armee and Directory Bureaucrats who now had to pay 6,000 new cavalrymen) was written with the effort of integrating the Polish nobility into Prussia via the army--a historically Eastern tradition of reform through the military.
However, Ferdinand II's interest in military and foreign affairs waxed and waned. Every decade he would make a new effort to 'bring the army to heel', increasing discipline amongst soldiers, bringing in new requirements for soldiery, (1660 brought the final new requirement, requiring literate officers, which marked Prussia's slow shift back to quality soldiers from large numbers of soldiers, a shift that happened more than a century earlier, while simultaneously showing the amazing amount of education already present in Prussia), and reorganizing armies into corps of 3 regiments each.
The last portion of the military reform of 1655 was, perhaps, the most important--the role of pikemen, now greatly reduced in proportion to musketeers, was combined with the musketeer--though the bayonet had been invented 50 years earlier, the Prussian army was the first to deploy in drills using them en masse. Beyond that, Prussian cavalry was changed in order to bring them closer to the far more deadly tactics of the Polish cavalry.
The Military Reform Act of 1655, which included the recruiting of 1,000 Polish aristocrats from each province in the Grand Duchy of Posen
However, the truth of the matter was that Ferdinand II didn't have enough practical experience in the field to do any more than rely on his generals to implement his reforms. This meant that though the reforms which increased the deadliness of the soldiers were used, Ferdinand's proposed reforms to have the
Armee be governed by 'universal laws of war' were never able to succeed, because looting both benefited the Generals economically and made their troops more loyal. However, in 1656 the 'despicable' actions of several generals (most notably von Stille) led to Ferdinand issuing their resignations early. This is important in view of the next two rebellions, which nearly broke Prussia apart but which ended up propelling her into the Aufklarung.
The seeds of rebellion started in neighboring Poland. Torn apart by the 4th Partition, which created a dynamic where more Poles were under foreign than domestic rule, Lithuanian rebels sacked the city of Vilno. Led by the Lithuanian nobleman Casimir Gostautai, a peasant levy supported by noble musketeers and hussars stormed Warsaw. Speaking in front of the assemblies of Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, Casimir announced the Despotate of Poland--a new and Lithuanian-dominated kingdom, based in Vilno.
Stating that "Jewish weakness has corrupted our beautiful realm for too long", Casimir's first act was the expelling of all Jews in Poland. While this was a popular act which added to the new Despotate's legitimacy, it left nearly 70,000 men and women without homes and property, and the capital flight which accompanied the expelling of the Polish Jewry enfeebled the nation for years to come.
The state of the Polish Kingdom, 1657, and the expelling of the Jews. note: when Poland did this herself, I reloaded so that I could show the decision, which goes on for farrr longer
Out of the 70,000 expelled Polish Jews, 50,000 of them escaped to the neighboring Prussia--a sad fact, lamented many Jewish poets, that
"their burglar had become their host". The most jarring of the migrations was the migration of 8,00 Jews into the city of Koenigsburg. With that migration, Ostpreussen was thrust yet again into the economic framework of Prussia as a center for linguistics, philosophy, and general scholarship. Neumark, a poor, rural area between the estates of Ostpommern and the city of Berlin, had its first group of Jews enter the province as moneylenders and provincial bureaucrats--the Congregation of Neumark would soon be known for its civil service to the Kingdom.
I got a stab hit from taking in such a large number of Jews. At this point my stability is +1, I figured I'd have a calm couple of years no big deal
However, the migrations, supported by the Prussian government, mainly in Posen, were highly controversial. This was partially because of the hugely rural nature of the Grand Duchy--though Poland, during her Golden Age, had built textile manufacturies all along the Vistula, but they had gone unmanned for decades. The migration of Jews (some 10,000) into the area increased the profitability of the Duchy but also created a general outcry--Why hadn't the nominally independent Grand Duchy been given a say in this?
Similar complaints were aired in Silesia, except the Silesian Estate allowed for a far more organized request--a request for real, not nominal, independence from the Kingdom of Prussia under a similar system Magdeburg had a century before. When Ferdinand rebuffed the request, nationalists rose up in riots all along the military district, which led to similar assaults on authority in Posen.
And now I have -2 stability and I had to use 'extreme measures'
On the face of it, the rebellions were rebellions for more local government, similar to the local governance that the states in the federation of Denmark enjoyed. However, the Freigruppe, influenced by Posadofsky's recent philosophizing on local governance, backed the right of Silesians and Posenians to govern themselves locally, and Ferdinand himself was of two minds--he didn't want to put down yet another revolt and the accusations that his rule was unjust hit him hard.
Which leads us to one of the oddest intellectual events in history. With fires in the streets of Posen, Breslaw, and Neukyau, Ferdinand II announced that there would be an essay contest on the most pressing issue of the Prussian Kingdom: "Is localized rule preferable to the rule of an absolutist king?"
That he chose to present the policy question to the whole of the Kingdom, and in the written word, enraged the Royal Bureaucracy to no end. "
While the citizens in the district and duchy die at the hands of brigands, our king asks us to write prose?" The image of Ferdinand-as-Nero, writing an essay while Berlin burns, has survived through history.
However, there were more reasons that the bureaucracy was angered by the 'contest'--with nearly all of Prussia's philosopher's allied with the Posenians/Silesians, the bureaucrats who would normally be the ones deciding whether or not to put down a revolt were being asked to compete with Prussia's most clever men in order to stop the deaths of hundreds. Their anger and need became more pronounced when the rebels at Kalisz overwhelmed the local militia and started murdering local Jews by the hundred.
The pogrom of Kalisz put a great deal of fear into the newly immigrated Prussian Jewry, who were by and large making plans for leaving the Grand Duchy by the end of 1653
Their hope came to one man--Helmut von Zeithen, once the unofficial head of the philosopher's faction in the courts, had had a definite falling out with the freigruppe during the recent months. While the freigruppe railed against the injustice of forcing a Jewish minority on the Posenians and argued that the ongoing pogrom in Kalisz '
was, if overly extreme, a just reaction to the unjust placement of Jewish refugees in the Grand Duchy of Posen by the state' (this quote came from Johann von Memel, the new head of the philosopher's faction).
The bureaucrats feared, by the end of 1656, that the revolts would succeed, and that the Grand Duchy of Posen and the Military District of Silesia would become independent entities, a success 'greater than any foreign duke or king could hope for' (Frederich von Below). von Zeithen feared that these newly independent entities would reinstate serfdom (the primary cause of the Silesian nobility) and restrict the rights of Polish Jews (the primary cause of the Posenian nobility). Thus he spent nearly a month without any sleep, writing with his feet in cold water in order to keep him awake, and on the January of 1657, he handed in a 200 page philosophical treatise.
On the rule of Kings was the point at which von Ziethen separated from the beliefs of Posadofsky, and, not coincidentally, it is the work by which he is most remembered, "a German Leviathan".
"While it may seem good and fair to a Silesian or Posenian to claim that local, democratic rule is more just, the Jews know the truth--that the rule of local leaders and the rule of the mob is held back only by the restraint of those people, and that any second rule of the people could become rule of the pogrom." He then used the ancient example of Athens: "
The trial of Socrates showed the true spirit of democracy: that when enough of the rabble yell loud enough, the law is permitted to die. Under a monarch, especially an Enlightened Monarch, the law is enforced ad infinitum. He then expands on the idea of enlightened monarchies: "
It is said that in the lands of the far east, the Emperor, supported by a colossal royal bureaucracy which is chosen on merit, is so great that he is viewed to have a Heavenly Mandate, and is so powerful that he is able to rule without recourse to local princes. I see no reason why a similar form of governance could not be adopted within Europe."
Though much of the text is a defense of the status quo of absolutist rule, the concept of an enlightened despot who rests on a meritocratic bureaucracy was a new idea, and the reform of the bureaucracy was the crux of von Zeithen's argument. To this end he suggested that the Grand Duke of Posen be made into a military governor like the governor of Silesia, and that the rebels in Silesia and Posen be put down. These two things were swiftly done by the convinced Ferdinand, who, newly confident in his right to rule, put down the nationalists in Silesia and exiled the philosopher's faction from his courts. von Zeithen himself handed in a letter of resignation to the King, asking for the right to create a College similar to the University of Leipzig in the King's estate in Ostpommern. Ferdinand accepted this request, even going to far as to enroll Crown Prince Henry in it.
The College of Governance at Ostpommern was the first of its kind, a school devoted to teaching the skills of government to up and coming aristocrats and bureaucrats
The College at Ostpommern was originally designed along the same lines of the University at Leipzig--a seminar-centric school devoted to philosophy and linguistics. However, Helmut von Zeithen was a very different man than Leo von Bimback. Rather than a philosopher of ethics, von Zeithen was very much a political philosopher and eventually most of the discussions came to questions of governance--what is the best way that a prince may govern? Is local rule better than the rule of Kings? What is the role of the bureaucracy, and for that matter, the army? This discussion was made even more rabid after the school gained some fame, after which the royal families of Pomerania, Mecklemburg, Anhalt and Denmark enrolled in the school.
Soon realizing the potential niche that a school of governance could provide, von Zeithen changed the nature of the College at Ostpommern away from philosophy towards government. The first class, required by all students, was Posadofsyk's '
On the Nature of Law' and Machiavelli's
Il Principe, which gave future kings and bureaucrats the framework of moral but practical law.
The College of Governance also sought to end the situation that would be popularly called "Ferdinand's Court"--that those with the least knowledge of the events truly occurring were also the best able to elucidate their opinions. By creating a trained and knowledgeable Bureaucracy, and including writing classes (and considering the seminar's focus on creating better arguments), von Zeithen hoped that after the death of Ferdinand, the country would no longer have a rule of fools.
The College at Ostpommern was aimed at creating better leaders but also better bureaucrats, producing a 'pure hierarchy'. The eventual result of the College was to mix Ferdinand's courtly factions into one heterogeneous group
This process, from a university of philosophy to a college of governance, took roughly half a decade, but when the University of Ostpommern was rechristened the College of Governance at Ostpommern, this marked a shift in Prussian education. Previously, through the influence of the Berlin Renaissance and the printing press, Prussia was a highly educated country but also a highly
self educated country, with people learning how to read by reading broadsheets rather than enrolling in universities.
The Aufklarung changed this--schooling would now become a mark of prestige in Prussia. The creation of the College at Ostpommern was soon followed with two more Universities instituted in the Mark over the next 2 years (
I wouldn't normally be able to get any manufacturies because the Textile mills in the G.D. of Posen bumped up the costs. I just made it that whenever I got to 2,500,000 thalers I would cheat myself the ducats to buy a university and spend the rest on naval techs which are worthless to me because I don't plan on having a navy). This trend towards formal schooling would become enshrined in 1673, the Advancement of Education Act, one of Ferdinand's last acts and his greatest legacy.