Teutonic Order

“ The organization became very rich and powerful in the course of time, and, swerving from its original purpose, degenerated and finally fell into disrepute. The Teutonic order, an organization of German knights banded together for labor in the Holy Land, did splendid work in building and managing hospitals. ”

“ Although for some ten years after the Franco-German War it was a poor country, it was nevertheless laying the foundations of that preparedness for eventual attack upon others, which it felt would be necessary in order to consolidate its position of prominence. After 1880 the great growth in material prosperity facilitated the extension of armed power, whilst national pride, which before had been reasonable, now grew into an extraordinary conception of the Divine right of Teutonic aspirations. ”

“ When there were no more heathens within reach to convert and despoil, the chief attraction to outsiders to join its ranks disappeared. After the conversion of Prussia into a secular duchy the Teutonic order still continued to exist as an ecclesiastical organization, possessing eleven bailiwicks in different parts of Europe, with a total area of 850 square miles and 88,000 inhabitants. ”

“ In the first place, the German is a branch of the Teutonic race. Of the latter it is sufficient to say here that its mission was to combine the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and in this way to develop in and by itself a new and different age after the ancient world had perished. ”

“ Muss im Leben untergehen.”
[pg vii] TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE The Teutonic Order, originally, like the Knights Hospitallers, established in the Holy Land about 1199, settled, after the cessation of the Crusades, in the country bordering upon the Baltic Sea, at the mouth of the Vistula, in the year 1225. ”

“ That which more than all else arouses the German mind—the Schleswig-Holstein question, identified as it is with the great question of the unity of the Teutonic race—was not taken up by the Government at Frankfort, but by that at Berlin. In the mean time the several Governments of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria had gained the mastery over their own domestic revolutions, so that they could act more freely. Austria called home its archduke and its members in the Frankfort Parliament, and finally the whole movement subsided into the old order of things. ”

“ And as the principle of all Teutonic law is, that the 33amount of bót or compensation shall vary directly with the dignity of the party leased, the high tariff appointed for royalty is evidence that the king really stood at the summit of the social order, and was the first in rank and honour, whatever he may have been in power. This is equally apparent in the earliest law, that of Æðelberht, as in Eádweard the Confessor’s, the latest. ”

“ Their power and consequence did not protect even the greatest: we find, during the fifteenth century, some of the principal cities of the empire summoned before the tribunals of Westphalian counts. Thus in the records of those times we read of citations served on Bremen, Lübeck, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Erfurt, Görlitz, and Dantzig. Even Prussia and Livonia, then belonging to the order of the Teutonic knights, were annoyed by their interference. ”

“ The Teutons loved personal freedom. They never called any man master, but followed their chosen leader as companions and equals. They could not even bear to have the houses of their villages set close together. And again we see the same independent spirit expressed in their assemblies of freemen, in which meetings, all matters of public interest were debated and decided. In this trait of the Teutonic disposition lay the germ of representative government and of Protestant, or Teutonic Christianity. ”

“ It is curious how a certain strain or vein of temperament, like that just mentioned, will run through a nation's whole life, and colour its actions in all departments, recognized and commented on by the whole outside world, and yet remain unobserved by the nation itself.
Every one who has known the Germans at home—even years back—has been conscious of a certain strain in the Teutonic character which has had a like bearing in the German national life. ”

“ But the spirit of progress is Teutonic, although the form, in many instances, may be Roman. It must be observed, too, that the foundation of local government in Germany, England, and the United States was of Teutonic {283} origin; that the road from imperialism to democracy is lined with Teutonic institutions and lighted with Teutonic liberty, and that the whole system of individual rights and popular government has been influenced by the attitude of the Teutonic spirit toward government and law. ”

“ New nations or confederacies, bearing, for the most part, names unknown to earlier times, begin to be far more dangerous than the smaller and more scattered tribes of the earlier times had been. These movements{85} among the German nations themselves, hastened by pressure of other nations to the east of them, caused the Teutonic attacks on the Empire to become more and more formidable, and at last to grow into Teutonic settlements within the Empire. ”

“ After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark. Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added to the culture and the inner [pg 154] happiness of the German people. The days of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the vitality of the Teutonic race. Still, whether for good or for evil, the unification of Germany must stand out as the greatest event in the history of the Nineteenth Century. ”

“ And then there were the Bohemians who began the revolt, and the Swiss Calvinists, and the rebels of the Peasants' War in Würtemberg! None of these were ethnically Teutons. Let us beware of such ascriptions of a monopoly of virtue or intellect to any given race, however comforting they may be to us who are of Teutonic descent. Modern Germany, to be sure, is half Catholic and half Protestant, but the division was not of ethnic origin in any sense. ”

“ In our reckonings and prognostications we should keep in mind that the German is the centre body of the Teutonic race. He is down, but he is not finally beaten. His mind is resentful, and indeed full of the revenge instinct. ”

“ If we were able—at this hour, when, through the act of the Teutonic Empire, the world may witness unnamable deeds—if we were able to cite the most odious of them, we should say that, after the massacre of innocent people and all the assaults on the rights of mankind committed by the German armies, the worst has seemed to us the shameless manner in which the superior intellects beyond the Rhine have dared to cover up these crimes. ”

“ Tacitus also speaks of the Germanic Comitatus, consisting of a chief and a band of youths drawn together by his repute, who fight by his side and are disgraced if they survive him dead upon the field. In time of peace they may seek another leader from a tribe at war; for the Germans are impatient of peace and toil, and slothful except when fighting or hunting. They had further traits and customs which are barbaric rather than specifically Teutonic: cruelty and faithlessness toward enemies, feuds, wergeld, drinking bouts, gambling, slavery, absence of testaments. ”

“ All the remainder of the empire—no, not even excluding Prussia, east of the Elbe—is less Teutonic in type, until finally in the essentially Alpine broad-headed populations of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, in the south the Teutonic race passes from view. The only difference, then, between Germany and France in respect of race is that the northern country has a little more Teutonic blood in it. ”

“ The professor received this question with a scornful shrug.
"Political liberty!... Only decadent and ungovernable people, inferior races anxious for equality and democratic confusion, talk about political liberty. We Germans do not need it. We are a nation of masters who recognize the sacredness of government, and we wish to be commanded by those of superior birth. We possess the genius of organization."
That, according to the Doctor, was the grand German secret, and the Teutonic race upon taking possession of the world, would share its discovery with all. ”

“ On the farther side of the Rhine and the Danube, in marked contrast with this society, the Teutonic Barbarians tilled their lands and herded their flocks. They dwelt in little communities which were banded together into tribes; and these in turn were united in a sort of loose confederation, which assumed the semblance of a nation only when under the necessity of military action, and then the adult male population constituted the army. ”

“ It so happens that the various accidents which interrupted our strivings for unity permitted other national groups, inferior morally and physically to our own, to play a greater part than such an inferiority warranted; and the same accidents permitted men of Teutonic stock, not inhabiting the ancient homes of the Teutons, but emigrated therefrom and politically separated from the German Empire, to obtain advantages in which we ourselves should have had a share, but which we missed. Thus England, a Teutonic country, obtained her vast colonial empire while we had not a ship upon the sea. ”

“ Our first glimpse of the Teutons shows them in their central German land, already occupying both sides of the Rhine, though seemingly not very old settlers on its left bank. The long wanderings of the various Teutonic and Slavonic tribes over all parts of central Europe, their settlements in the southern and western lands, are all matters of history. So is the great Teutonic settlement in the British islands, which partly exterminated, partly assimilated, their Celtic inhabitants, so as to leave them as mere a remnant, though a greater remnant, as they themselves had made the Basques. ”

“ Then came the wandering of the nations, on which, as regards men of our own race, we need not dwell. The Goths marched at will through the Eastern Empire; but no Teutonic settlement was ever made within its bounds, no lasting Teutonic settlement was ever made even on its border. The part of the Teuton in the West was played far less perfectly indeed by the Slave in the East. ”

“ But it cannot be sued for by the nations whom Germany wanted to enslave by the might of her crushing militarism operating under the dictates of a new code of International Law of her own barbarous creation.
Thank God, the flowing tide of unlimited Teutonic ambition let loose over the world, more than four years ago, has met with inaccessible summits where love of Justice, respect of Right, devotion [385] to human Civilization, obedience to Christian Law, heroism of sacrifices, were so deeply entrenched, that they could not be reached and conquered. ”

“ It was for the good of Germany—to make her a greater nation—that these men should work—the longer hours the better—to help to reclaim the bad land, to cultivate the fields, to raise more crops to feed more soldiers to take more prisoners to cultivate more land to raise more crops.
It was perfectly clear to the Teutonic mind. No link in the chain must be broken. Deutschland über Alles!
At noon the Russians were still running—it is astonishing what the human machine can stand! ”

“ But more potent than all this were the forces arising from the political system of Germany and its relations with the Holy See. The Teutonic spirit of independence had early found expression in the Sachsenspiegel and Sächsische Weichbild—the laws and customs of Northern Germany— which were resolutely maintained in spite of repeated papal condemnation. Thus not only did the Church inspire there less awe than elsewhere in Europe, but throughout the Middle Ages there had been special causes of antagonism actively at work. ”

“ The Germans of to-day, whether they live on the farms or in the cities, are for the most part descendants of the peasants who survived, not of the brilliant knights and sturdy foot soldiers who fell in that mighty conflict. Knowledge of this great past when Europe was Teutonic and memories of the shadowy grandeur of the Hohenstaufen Emperors, 187who, generation after generation, led Teutonic armies over the Alps to assert their title to Italian provinces, have played no small part in modern German consciousness. ”

“ The people who say that parliaments or pictures or gardens or roads or universities were made by the Teutonic race from the north can be disposed of by the simple question: why did not the Teutonic race make them in the north? ”

“ The same ideals led to her endeavours to shatter the ententes, and it is alone the general acceptance of this gospel, which explains the remarkable unanimity with which the German nation has stood behind the Kaiser's Government in each trial of strength. They have learned to consider all attempts of the lesser peoples (Britain, France and Russia included) to maintain themselves against the Teutonic onset as impudent attacks on sacred Germany, which also illuminates the fact that Germans call the present struggle—"Germany's holy, sacred war." ”

“ Indeed, Fichte, during the Winter of 1807-08, at the University of Berlin, made an address to the German people which may be accounted the first famous academic harbinger and source of the present Teutonic state of mind. Here the parallel stops. With America and France, war made way for independence, liberty and freedom, political and moral; Germany would establish everywhere her absolute military despotism. ”

“ In these border provinces the population is very much mixed. On the German side there are many men who through forty years of enemy rule have never lost their true nationality. On the French side one hears many German names, sees many Teutonic faces. Here naturally was an opportunity which during all these years the Wilhelmstrasse wasn't likely to neglect. Who is to draw the line? Who is to say that this Teutonic type is a loyal Frenchman or a German spy? ”