Adrien Fauchier-Magnan - The Small German Courts in the Eighteenth Century

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
GERMAN HISTORY

Volume 12

THE SMALL GERMAN COURTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE SMALL GERMAN COURTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ADRIEN FAUCHIER-MAGNAN
TRANSLATED BY MERVYN SAVILL

First published in English in 1958 by Methuen & Co Ltd.

This edition first published in 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1958 English Translation Methuen & Co.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-02813-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27806-8 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-23577-2 (Volume 12) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28058-0 (Volume 12) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

THE
SMALL GERMAN COURTS

in the Eighteenth Century

ADRIEN
FAUCHIER-MAGNAN

translated by
MERVYN SAVILL

First published in 1947 as
LES PETITES COURS DALLEMAGNE AU XVIIIme SICLE
by Flammarion, diteur, Paris
First English edition 1958
This translation Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1958

Printed in Great Britain
by Western Printing Services Ltd Bristol
Catalogue No. 6083/U

Contents

Illustrations

PLATES

IN THE TEXT

T he idea of this book came to me on one of the several journeys I made with the express purpose of visiting the palaces and castles built by the German princes during the eighteenth century.

Wandering through these palaces, alternately pompous replicas of Louis XIV chateaux, or endowed with that grace so characteristic of the Louis XV period; strolling through parks now formal as the classic prototypes of Le Ntre, now artless and neglected in the English manner, or filled with unexpected chinoiseries, my initial curiosity soon became an obsession. The visitor is eager to know more of the creators of these magnificent domains, frames from which the pictures have vanished, than he can learn from the vague and usually erroneous information given by the guides. He would like a glimpse into the private lives of the figures who dwelt in them, and who perhaps deserve to be rescued from oblivion.

I had already been struck by a phrase Voltaire wrote in a letter to his niece, Mme Denis: The majority of the German Courts today are like those of the ancient Paladins. They are old castles where one seeks amusement. One finds there pretty ladies-in-waiting, handsome bachelors; they engage mountebanks.

I was anxious to pursue my researches in a subject which I already had vaguely in mind, when I came across Heinrich Heines appreciation of the vast workit comprises no fewer than forty-four volumeson the German courts by the Austrian, Vehse. It appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century: The Germans, he says, will at last meet their princes face to face. What a superb menagerie of highly original animals true masterpieces of the Good Lord in which He has given free reign to poetic fantasy and an authors talent which fills me with admiration. No human artist could have conceived such figures, neither a Shakespeare nor a Raupach. We can only see in them the handiwork of God.

1 Letter from Berlin, dated 22nd August 1750.

And sure enough, day by day as I continued my investigations, I saw arise from the past, complementing certain well-known characters, princely figures who in their eccentricity surpassed my wildest hopes. In their retinues could be found a number of Germanic types such as we are wont to conceive them: the churlish roisterer always ready to draw his sword; the cynic entirely preoccupied with his selfish pleasures; the scholar covered with dust from the libraries meditating upon some system of philosophy; the man of letters or poet in tireless quest of some hazy ideal; and even the forlorn sentimental youth walking with doleful sighs in the moonlight by the brook. The procession was rounded off by a few women, some beautiful and gracious, in love with literature and art; others violent, ambitious, sensual and depraved.

The mass of documents relating to the period enables one to paint highly-coloured pictures which have no claim to represent history, but merely the by-paths of history. Leaving aside the vast political and philosophical developments, I have been content to collect these images and to present the settings and the characters with as little pedantry as possible. In these chronicles of the small German courts I have adhered to the naturalistic, to the anecdote which often affords a better likeness than any reflection of great profundity. Voltaire called the eighteenth century the century of trifles; let us stick to these trifles for they too have their own particular savour.

My sources of information have been mainly the memoirs and autobiographies of contemporary Germans. These publications, it is true, are of only minor importance, since the Germans of the period did not affect this type of literature which abounds in France, where it is unrivalled.

These personal memories can fortunately be completed by the accounts of travellers, and by correspondence between the various princes and their satellites: courtiers, scholars, philosophers, historians, poets, artists.

The originality of this volume will consist in the combing of numerous German works which in the course of the past fifty years have dealt with this particular subjectworks so little known that one might almost say the material is hitherto unpublished. These huge tomesthey are rarely less than a thousand pagesare both scholarly and conscientious, stuffed with facts and observations on German customs and culture; they are a gold-mine of reference, but their presentation is so confusing and the text so indigestible that they intimidate the most inquisitive.

The study of the eighteenth century is inexhaustible. Why does the mind constantly revert to this period, which has the privilege of always remaining attractive? It is because all the characters which made it live, although close to us in time, today seem so different and remote that they are a constant source of entertainment. However small the part they played, it was never an insignificant one.

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