The End of Prussia

This action, which could be considered as a logical consequence of decisions taken by the European Advisory Commission in 1943 and by the Big Three at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam, and of the absorption since 1945 of much of the old Prussia by the Poles and the Russians and the expulsion of the native population, received no particular attention in the press. The Times of London and the New York Times reported it without elaboration or comment, and the other papers were silent. No one thought to cite the text of the law and to suggest that there was something faintly comic about a quartet of generals solemnly reprobating militarism. No one pointed out that three of the signatory powers had, at an earlier time, profited from Prussian militarism, that at the turning point in Russia's desperate struggle against Napoleon Bonaparte Prussia had come to its aid, and that it was not for nothing that towns and taverns and privateers in the British colonies were called King of Prussia. No one even bothered to point out that, when one was talking about reconstructing the political life of Germany on a democratic basis, it might be well to remember that the last truly democratic government in Germany had been the Prussian government that Franz von Papen had dissolved on July 20, 1932, or, for that matter, that in the resistance against Hitler Prussian soldiers and Prussian Social Democrats, working in close collaboration, had played a leading role. None of this was said, or would have impressed anyone if it had been said. The end of Prussian history was passed over in almost total silence. This was true also in Germany, where people had other things to worry about in 1947 than the fate of the Prussian State. Even the historians accepted the fait accompli with an air of philosophical resignation. In 1955, Carl Hinrichs wrote that the irrevocable end of Prussia would have at least one beneficial result. It would provide the historian with an opportunity to study its past with complete detachment from contemporary considerations or political calculation. Having ceased to be a living force, Prussia had become a historical problem, and it was now up to the historians to make a balanced assessment of its role in German history. It cannot be said that there was exactly a rush to rm-eet that challenge in the two decades that followed, but things have changed in the last three years, and there has been a marked revival of interest in Prussia in both halves of Germany. In the German Democratic Republic, where it has been recognized, belatedly, that it is important to find some historical legitimacy for the present regime, new scholarship has tended to focus upon the Prussian reform period of 1807-1813, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst and Neidthardt von Gneisenau, the fathers of the idea of the citizen-army, have become socialist heroes. (Nowadays, one can actually buy medallions bearing the likeness of Scharnhorst in the Pergamon Museum.) In the Federal Republic, books about Prussia have begun to appear on the lists of best-sellers (like Sebastian Haffner's enormously successful Preupen ohne Legende), and the television and film industries have learned that Prussian themes attract large audiences (hence the re-discovery by these media of the novels of Theodor Fontane.) More impressive evidence of the Prussian Wave was the decision of the Senate of Berlin in 1977 to authorize a Prussian Exhibition, which will take place in the summer of 1981 in the refurbished Kunstgewerbemuseum near the Potsdamer Platz in West Berlin. A professional staff is currently developing plans for this Ausstellung with the assitstance of an international board of consultants of which our newly elected foreign member Karl Dietrich Bracher (1979) and I are members. The theme chosen for this exhibition is Preu/ien: Versuch einer Bilanz (Prussia: An Attempt to Strike a Balance). It is intended, in the words of its director Manfred Schlenke, not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as an attempt to present a critical view

Political science · European history and politics · History

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