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BOURGEOIS MODERNITY VERSUS THE HISTORICAL ARISTOCRACY IN CHRISTOPH MEINERS'S POLITICAL THOUGHT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2018

MORGAN GOLF-FRENCH
MORGAN GOLF-FRENCH*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of History, University College London, wc1e 6btzcraf48@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), a major historian and philosopher of the German late Enlightenment, has received increasing recognition as a significant thinker in the emergence of nineteenth-century racial theories. The scholarly focus on Meiners's hierarchical view of race and its legacy has led to the classification of his broader oeuvre as conservative, or even reactionary. By examining his Geschichte der Ungleichheit der Stände unter den vornehmsten europäischen Völkern (1792), written in response to the French Revolution and the contemporary circumstances of the Holy Roman Empire, this article sheds new light on his work, as well as on an under-researched line of thought in the 1790s. Rather than a conservative or reactionary work, this text is a radical critique of the German aristocracy that ultimately recommends the abolition of most significant aristocratic privileges and the overhaul of its membership in favour of the bourgeoisie. This article presents not only a more complex understanding of Christoph Meiners's ideas, but also calls for a reappraisal of the categories applied to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century intellectuals both in Germany and in Europe more broadly.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 943 - 966
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

I

During the 1790s and early 1800s, the work of the Göttingen professor Christoph Meiners (1747–1810) played a crucial role in German debates about the history of the aristocracy and its position in contemporary society.Footnote 1 In 1802, the Jewish philosopher Saul Ascher published his Ideen zur natürlichen Geschichte der politischen Revolutionen. He had attempted to publish it in 1799, but the Prussian censor prevented the work's appearance, calling it ‘an open call to revolution’.Footnote 2 The Ideen attacked the German status quo, offering instead a radical vision of the future: cosmopolitan, tolerant, and abounding in individual rights. Ascher's argument built upon a historical analysis in which the ancien régime was in the process of giving way to the values of the bourgeoisie, and one of his key sources was Meiners's 1792 critique of the aristocracy, titled Geschichte der Ungleichheit der Stände unter den vornehmsten europäischen Völkern.Footnote 3 Ascher was not alone in using this text. As early as 1793, the Geschichte appeared as a source in Johann Ludwig Ewald's Was sollte der Adel jetzt thun?, which argued that the German aristocracy should forsake its unfair privileges in order to avoid unrest.Footnote 4 Likewise, in 1794, the anonymous Freymüthige Gedanken über die allerwichtigste Angelegenheit Deutschlands also used Meiners's text to critique aristocratic institutions.Footnote 5 The following year, Friedrich Georg August Schmidt drew on the Geschichte to argue in favour of legal equality.Footnote 6 By the time that Ascher's Ideen was published, Meiners's work had become a staple source for German critics of the aristocracy and its institutions.

By the 1930s, however, Meiners's role in this anti-aristocratic tradition had been forgotten. Instead, he was known primarily for his hierarchical division of humanity into different racial and cultural groups, and National Socialist intellectuals read Meiners as an anthropologist whose work prefigured their own racial-theoretical ideas. In 1938, the prominent sociologist Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann claimed that Meiners's racial thought appeared ‘completely modern’.Footnote 7 Two years later, Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt (whose racial typology may have influenced the Nuremberg Laws) called Meiners the ‘founder of racial doctrine (Begründer der Rassenlehre)’ and argued that his work had been a key source for Arthur de Gobineau, claiming further that ‘it is time to recognize the man's intellectual-historical influence, and his real importance’.Footnote 8 In 1943, the Nazi historian Hermann Blome lauded Meiners as a central figure in the emergence of modern racial ideas.Footnote 9

The fact that Meiners's ideas could be appropriated both by a radical German-Jewish intellectual like Ascher and by leading National Socialist thinkers highlights the interpretative challenges that scholars confront when dealing with his thought. Meiners's legacy in the work of writers such as Mühlmann, Eickstedt, and Blome, as well as the breadth of his output, has further complicated the task of situating the various aspects of his works within their late Enlightenment contexts. It has become commonplace to characterize Meiners's political thought as particularly conservative, or even reactionary. Sabine Vetter and Hans Carl Finsen summarize his political thought simply as a defence of ‘Enlightened absolutism’, while Susanne Zantop's study of Meiners's racial philosophy describes his output as an ‘antirevolutionary colonialist discourse’.Footnote 10 Perhaps most significantly, the prominent US historian of race and racism Nell Irvin Painter described Meiners as ‘reactionary’, ‘cranky’, and ‘politically retrograde’.Footnote 11

Despite increasing recognition of his significance, however, the majority of Meiners's political writings, including the Geschichte der Ungleichheit, have received little scholarly attention.Footnote 12 This article approaches the Geschichte as an intervention in contemporary debates about the aristocracy, the French Revolution, and socio-political reform. In this context, Meiners's text offered a radical critique of the German aristocracy and its institutions. The Geschichte's central thesis was that, while aristocratic privileges can be both just and desirable, the contemporary German nobility urgently required extensive reform. Meiners recommended the social ascendance of the bourgeoisie (Bürgerstand) and the broader adoption of bourgeois (bürgerlich) values which, he claimed, were uniquely suited to modernity. Without discounting or otherwise mitigating the discriminatory implications of his racial philosophy, Meiners is much harder to categorize than the designations of Painter, Zantop, and others suggest.

In fact, Meiners's thought more closely resembles the early nineteenth-century nationalism(s) of Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, and the Napoleonic writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte than the ideas of more aristocratic racial thinkers like Gobineau, Eickstedt, and Mühlmann. Like Arndt, Jahn, Fichte, and their disciples, Meiners's work combined strongly exclusionary attitudes towards supposedly non-Germanic groups (including Jews) with a critique of contemporary aristocratic norms.Footnote 13 Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to suggest that Meiners's thought straightforwardly prefigured these authors. Perhaps most importantly, Arndt, Jahn, and Fichte had begun to articulate nationalist ideals that conceptualized the German ‘Volk’ in terms of popular culture and traditions.

In the work of Arndt and Jahn in particular, this ‘völkisch’ culture was contrasted with the (supposedly) more commercial, cosmopolitan, and elitist values of the bourgeoisie.Footnote 14 Conversely, the Geschichte der Ungleichheit was a defence of ‘Enlightened’ bourgeois norms and did not entail any commitment to populist ideals. While both Meiners and later Romantic nationalists considered European nations in terms of cultural characteristics, in Meiners's work these characteristics were explicitly bound to the biological superiority of European peoples. Although Meiners's critique of European aristocracies is not contingent upon his racial theories, his biological concept of race is more important to his understanding of European culture than it is in the works of Arndt, Jahn, and Fichte. It is in his concept of race that Meiners most resembles the thought of later ‘scientific’ racial theorists: he was explicit that racial characteristics reflected heritable biological realities with profound moral and socio-political implications. While he may be considered a ‘transitional’ thinker in the history of political thought, even in this sense Meiners's work resists easy categorization. He was neither a Romantic nor a nationalist (at least in the post-Napoleonic sense), but an exemplary case of an Enlightenment thinker whose thought challenges later expectations.

Similarly, in an article discussing the historiography of the so-called ‘Sattelzeit’, George S. Williamson emphasized the need to question ‘received assumptions’ about the period and engage with ideas and individuals that have received less scholarly attention.Footnote 15 In Reinhart Koselleck's original formulation, the Sattelzeit represented a period of historiographical transformation between 1750 and 1850.Footnote 16 This transformation, centred in the German lands, represented the transition – in Daniel Fulda's words – ‘from the plurality of exemplary histories to one autonomous history’ in methodology, presentation, and purpose.Footnote 17 Through the work of Koselleck and others, the term has come to refer to the broader intellectual and conceptual transformations taking place within the German lands.Footnote 18 These years, and especially those between 1789 and 1815, have become associated with the crystallization of distinct categories and movements within contemporary political thought. In this view, the intellectual and political developments of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods encouraged the polarization of German intellectuals into distinct political camps.Footnote 19 In this context, Meiners's work deserves particular attention. By integrating specific socio-cultural contingencies into a unified historical narrative, his work can be seen as emblematic of the Sattelzeit's novel historical thinking. At the same time, his political thought resists many of the categories traditionally applied to this period.

II

The concepts ‘conservative’, ‘radical’, and ‘reactionary’ have proven especially contentious in the study of early modern German political thought. The vast differences in policies, constitutions, and governments across the various jurisdictions of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as rapid political changes within these, make it impossible to establish a comprehensive or uncontroversial set of values, ideals, or institutions through which these terms could be defined.

Disagreements have arisen not just regarding the definitions of these terms, but also regarding their application to specific individuals. For example, Klaus Epstein's influential work The genesis of German conservatism describes the Hanoverian writers and ministers Ernst Brandes and August Wilhelm Rehberg as ‘reform conservatives’ because they advocated gradual reform within contemporary institutional frameworks.Footnote 20 Conversely, Brandes's biographer, Carl Haase, disputes not only this description in relation to both thinkers, but the concept of ‘reform conservatism’ itself.Footnote 21 According to Haase, advocates of gradual reform are not ‘conservatives’ at all, but simply pragmatic reformers. Perhaps the most prominent – and polarizing – debate on eighteenth-century German radicalism surrounded the so-called ‘German Jacobins’. Not only have discussions considered the popularity of ‘Jacobinism’ in Germany, but also whether and/or to what extent these ‘Jacobins’ were political radicals at all.Footnote 22 The body of work produced by these debates is invaluable and has contributed to a much more nuanced understanding of 1790s Germany, but it has also demonstrated the difficulty of establishing conclusive definitions for these terms.

With this in mind, I use such labels tentatively, acknowledging that they are necessarily tied to the specific circumstances of 1790s Germany. They are consequently considered largely with reference to the political ideals of ‘freedom, equality, and fraternity’ commonly associated with the French Revolution. While contemporary Germans engaged with debates that often originated long before 1789, the events, ideas, and factions in Revolutionary France nonetheless came to dominate the increasingly polarized and antagonistic landscape of German political discourse.Footnote 23 Moreover, rather than representing cohesive political-philosophical camps, individual thinkers could – and, as in the case of Meiners, often did – simultaneously hold ideas which, taken separately, may fairly be described as conservative, reactionary, and/or radical.

In this context, ‘conservative’ refers to expressions of broad satisfaction with social and political institutions within a given territory, while allowing for a degree of limited and/or gradual change in favour of expanding the rights held by disadvantaged classes, promoting social and/or political mobility, and/or limiting hierarchical relationships of power, distinctions, and privileges insofar as such changes would not drastically alter the primary functions or fundamental structure of those social and political institutions. ‘Reactionary’ refers to expressions of commitment to traditional (or historical) social and political institutions within a territory, while advocating changes that would reduce the rights of disadvantaged classes, reduce social and/or political mobility, and/or strengthen hierarchical relationships of power, distinctions, and privileges. Finally, ‘radical’ refers to expressions of strong dissatisfaction with social and political institutions within a given territory, and the consequent espousal of considerable changes to their functions and/or composition, in particular when doing so would significantly expand the rights of lower classes, promote social and/or political mobility, and/or reduce hierarchical relationships of power, distinctions, and privileges.

III

Christoph Meiners was a prominent German intellectual and, arguably, a major thinker in the European Enlightenment more broadly. Born in Warstade in Bremen-VerdenFootnote 24 in 1747, Meiners studied law from 1767 to 1770, published a well-received critique of ‘esoteric philosophy’ in 1772, and began teaching at the University of Göttingen the same year, where he remained until his death in 1810.Footnote 25 He published books on a wide range of subjects, from animal magnetism to travel, joined various learned societies, became privy counsellor to the Hanoverian court and served as university prorector from 1796 to 1800.Footnote 26 Meiners's work was widely known, appeared in French and English translations, and in the 1800s he was a crucial figure in a transnational network of intellectuals and officials recruiting German professors for Russian universities.Footnote 27 He made significant contributions to the German reception of contemporary British works and was a central figure in so-called German Popularphilosophie.Footnote 28 His ideas were used by diverse figures, including the Prussian statesman Baron vom Stein and the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt.Footnote 29 Finally, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger has drawn attention to Meiners's pioneering use of ‘sex as historiographical category’.Footnote 30

Nevertheless, Meiners became best known for his writings on race, the most important of which are Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit, an article defending the transatlantic slave trade, and the posthumous Untersuchungen über die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen.Footnote 31 The racial theses presented in these three writings brought him into conflict with contemporaries like Immanuel Kant, Georg Forster, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.Footnote 32 The historical significance of his racial ideas had been largely neglected prior to the appearance of pioneering scholarship by Friedrich Lotter, Britta Rupp-Eisenreich, and Sabine Vetter beginning in the 1980s.Footnote 33 These studies have uncovered his crucial role in the emergence of anthropology as a distinct discipline.Footnote 34 As well as being cited by Arthur de Gobineau and the National Socialist authors mentioned above, Meiners's racial anthropology is known to have influenced the French Société des observateurs de l'homme and Julien-Joseph Virey, the latter of whose work was used in prominent nineteenth-century debates about slavery.Footnote 35

Indeed, when approaching Meiners's work, it is important to recognize that he wrote within a framework of methods, themes, and arguments that would now be described as anthropological. Most of his oeuvre reflects this framework in that it contemplates and seeks to understand what constitutes humanity and human difference within a broad understanding of the ‘history of humanity (Geschichte der Menschheit)’.Footnote 36 Despite only occupying an ancillary position in many of his writings, race remained a major preoccupation in his thought from the publication of the first edition of the Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit in 1785 until the end of his life.

Contrary to Edward Said's suggestion that, due to the lack of a national colonial project, German anthropological discussions were almost exclusively intellectual pursuits, such discussions reflected a range of political debates and interests.Footnote 37 As Thomas Strack has persuasively argued, discussions of ethnology – and race in particular – were ‘necessarily tied to the controversy surrounding slavery’.Footnote 38 Perhaps most notably, claims about the culture and/or biology of ‘oriental’ peoples were used in debates about Germany's Jewish population, and especially in relation to Jewish emancipation.Footnote 39 Additionally, Göttingen was part of the Electorate of Hanover, which was then ruled by the House of Hanover in personal union with the British crown. Although it is unlikely that individual Göttingen professors had significant material interests in British colonialism, many felt they had a unique affinity with Britain.Footnote 40 Such a perceived bond may have impacted their anthropological writings and thinking about British rule generally. Anthropological thinkers responded to political questions of both practical and theoretical import, and Meiners explicitly situated his ideas in relation to these disputes. Most infamously, he took the exceptional position (among intellectuals) of justifying not only the subjugation of non-European peoples, but also the transatlantic slave trade.Footnote 41

Meiners's most comprehensive text concerning human difference published during his lifetime was the Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit, the second (slightly revised) edition of which appeared in 1793. The Grundriß is largely a collection of statements and citations regarding the appearance, behaviour, and institutions of different cultures, as well as how these are affected by climate, heredity, and other factors. It is pitched as a primer through which readers interested in the ‘history of humanity’ can learn about key concepts, problems, and sources.Footnote 42 Meiners claimed that his work represented a novel intellectual field, which he conceived as being centred on the broad study of human physical and cultural differences with a view to understanding how such differences emerged over time.Footnote 43

The Grundriß divided humanity into two primordial ‘lineages (Hauptstämme)’ – Caucasian and Mongol – which gradually sub-divided into various ‘races (Raçen)’, and thence into smaller national groups.Footnote 44 The Caucasian group comprised ‘Celtic’ peoples (most western and northern Europeans) and ‘Slavic’ peoples (including, among others, Jews, Arabs, higher-caste Indians, and the peoples considered Slavic today).Footnote 45 The Mongol lineage contained all other groups, including Finns, East Asians, black Africans, and Native Americans.Footnote 46 These groups are not described neutrally. Instead, they reflect moral, intellectual, cultural, and physical differences, with Caucasian (and especially ‘Celtic’) peoples considered fundamentally superior to ‘Mongol’ peoples. In the second edition, Meiners referred to the original lineages simply as ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’.Footnote 47 Reflecting a central theme in his concept of aristocracy, these groups and their associated values arose through a range of factors, but especially through selective breeding over many generations. Meiners explicitly defended European imperialism, claiming that the only possibility for the improvement of ‘ugly’ peoples is the unrestricted domination by superior races.Footnote 48 At a time when ‘race’ remained an ambiguous term, with debates regarding the extent to which it should be considered biological or related to specific moral, intellectual, or cultural traits, Meiners was explicit that racial characteristics reflected heritable biological realities.Footnote 49

Like most of Meiners's works, then, the Grundriß is a political text. That the second, largely unchanged, edition of the Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit appeared in 1793 further suggests that Meiners's views on race – which may fairly be described as conservative or reactionary – remained consistent throughout the period in which he wrote and published the Geschichte. Consequently, it is not my contention that the more radical 1792 text somehow represents Meiners's ‘true’ political thought while the Grundriß does not, but that the Geschichte challenges any straightforward political categorization of his ideas. Furthermore, the prominent roles that race and heredity play in the Grundriß are central to understanding the Geschichte. The importance of heredity in the latter, discussed below, shows a clear conceptual relationship with the Grundriß. Although the Geschichte is primarily a narrative history of Europe, it reflects Meiners's broader anthropological ideas in its historical treatment of the development of unequal qualities across shifting ethnic units.

Importantly, Meiners wrote neither text with only academic audiences in mind. As Ursula Goldenbaum has argued, the broad realm of public discourse that Jürgen Habermas termed ‘bourgeois publicity (bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit)’ – usually translated as the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ – emerged in Germany in the early decades of the eighteenth century.Footnote 50 Accordingly, Meiners was writing within a mature ‘public sphere’ that featured an array of periodicals, thinkers, and ideas responding to political questions and events. Meiners self-consciously engaged with these debates, addressing his work to academics and the educated public generally, meaning that both the Grundriß and the Geschichte should be considered interventions in mainstream debates. His attempts to reach this broader readership appear to have been successful. Meiners's writings on race achieved notoriety within his lifetime and faced significant criticism, most notably from Georg Forster, Immanuel Kant, and Meiners's colleagues Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.Footnote 51 These criticisms targeted Meiners's methodology (such as his superficial, or misrepresentative, use of travel reports), as well as his disparaging treatment of ‘Mongol’ peoples. His ideas were even satirized in a novel by the popular author August Lafontaine, which follows a misguided nobleman's attempts to segregate his villagers according to their racial status.Footnote 52 These efforts cause chaos and discord before the nobleman's views are rectified by an African former slave.

To base discussions of Meiners's reception solely on the criticisms of authors now considered the period's ‘great thinkers’ would be anachronistic. However, that so many thinkers felt it necessary to denounce his thought suggests a broader positive reception, and Lafontaine's satire itself indicates that Meiners's ideas must have been prevalent enough for readers to get the joke. The first edition of the Grundriß received a positive review in the influential Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, and the publication of a second edition, as well as Meiners's later writings on race, indicates a significant demand for his ideas.Footnote 53 As mentioned above, his work was well received by prominent French anthropologists, and the translation of his writings into French and English suggests a significant international audience.Footnote 54 Indeed, in April 1803, Tsar Alexander I sent Meiners a diamond ring in recognition of his work.Footnote 55 Meiners was clearly a controversial figure, and his Geschichte would have been expected to find a broad readership already familiar with his racial theories.

IV

Anthony J. La Vopa has described the ‘flood’ of works on natural law in 1790s Germany, invigorated by debates surrounding both the French Revolution and the Critical Philosophy.Footnote 56 Moreover, Otto Dann has shown that German discussions of inequality were typically framed in natural-legal terms.Footnote 57 In this context, it is unsurprising that the Geschichte begins with a discussion of natural law. In doing so, Meiners clearly situated his work within the ethical, political, and legal frameworks of late Enlightenment Germany – a fact reinforced by his references to well-known textbooks by Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, and Ludwig Höpfner.Footnote 58 What is unusual about Meiners's discussion of natural law, however, is that it was premised on natural human inequality.Footnote 59 In the century and a half since Hobbes's Leviathan, it had become typical among German thinkers to premise discussions of natural law with the claim that, within a hypothetical state of nature, humans are morally and socially equal.Footnote 60 This position was maintained not only by intellectuals ranging from Immanuel Kant to the historian Justus Möser, but also by officials like the Prussian court jurist Carl Gottlieb Svarez and the Bavarian chancellor Wiguläus von Kreittmayr.Footnote 61 While it was generally accepted that human beings outside the state of nature retain a degree of moral and/or religious equality, most thinkers concluded that the historical reality of human existence made social (and political) inequality necessary and/or desirable. Meiners's claim that humans are both historically and naturally unequal was exceptional, reflecting the centrality of inequality in his understanding of humanity.

Meiners justified this position in explicit opposition to Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748).Footnote 62 Burlamaqui's work posited that individuals are naturally equal, naturally free, and cannot willingly renounce their freedom.Footnote 63 There is reason to believe that, in responding to Burlamaqui, Meiners had Jean-Jacques Rousseau in mind as well. Although Rousseau's work is absent from the Geschichte, Hans Erich Bödeker has compellingly argued that Meiners's ‘natural history of inequality’ can be read as a critical counter-narrative to Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inegalité, and it is noteworthy that Rousseau praised Burlamaqui's work in this Discours.Footnote 64 Moreover, in a book published the following year, Meiners was particularly scathing of Rousseau's description of a benign, egalitarian, state of nature.Footnote 65 Meiners's critique may also have been directed against Immanuel Kant, whose concept of a ‘kingdom of ends’ was founded on universal human equality and ethical freedom.Footnote 66 Meiners had long opposed Kant's philosophy, and in the early years of the nineteenth century published an extensive critique of the Critical Philosophy.Footnote 67 Nevertheless, regardless of whose work he had in mind, Meiners's attack on Burlamaqui necessarily positioned itself as rejecting all advocates of natural equality.

This critique was based on a series of inductive comparisons founded on a set of (supposedly) verifiable facts regarding human difference. Animals are naturally inferior to humans due to their relative lack of skills, tastes, and moral sensibilities, he claimed, just as certain races are naturally inferior to others on precisely the same grounds.Footnote 68 Meiners extended this reasoning to within racial groups: ‘extraordinarily beautiful, strong, industrious, brave, ingenious, and charitable’ individuals have natural rights against and authorities over those lacking such qualities.Footnote 69 In a narrative contrasting sharply with Rousseau's argument that social inequality emerged through a process of corruption, Meiners described meritocratic and benevolent social hierarchies as having emerged through natural inequalities.Footnote 70 Relying once again on an argument central to his model of racial difference – that many characteristics are heritable – he argued that because the traits that justify social inequality are heritable, the privileges that they yield should be heritable also.Footnote 71 Meiners thus described the institutionalization of a stratified political, social, and cultural realm within which privileges are meritocratically distributed and inherited.Footnote 72

Importantly, this process is legitimized principally with reference to the encouragement of human happiness. Meiners claimed that ‘right’, or Recht, is defined by the promotion of ‘happiness (Glückseligkeit)’ amongst individuals and communities.Footnote 73 According to him, Recht should be manifested in positive law, meaning that institutional inequalities must be justified according to their contribution to a society's well-being. As a result, despite asserting a set of (supposedly) universal human rights – ‘security…of life, health, property, and honour’ – Meiners rejected claims that freedom should be considered a universal right.Footnote 74 Instead, legitimate rights to freedom are only held by those able to benefit society by being independent of the will of others. Others, lacking such advantages, should be subjugated by those capable of determining their interests.Footnote 75 This argument reflects another prominent theme in Meiners's earlier anthropological writings: freedom is not a universal characteristic of human nature, but relative to one's situation within a hierarchy of attributes.Footnote 76 One important implication of this argument is the corollary rejection of the desirability (and justice) of any political constitution founded on the claim – as found in Rousseau's Contrat social, among other textsFootnote 77 – that all individuals should participate in establishing the laws which govern them.

Meiners's emphasis on a set of universal human rights and, crucially, his unequivocal claim that socio-political inequalities must be justified by both personal merit and social value make it difficult to situate his account of natural law as reactionary. The argument that unequal institutions must contribute towards a people's happiness implied that such institutions should be assessed and reformed in order to meet that standard. Equally, the claim that institutional inequalities should derive from individual merit included a similar principle of revision should this criterion not be met. These two claims were central to Meiners's discussion of the historical aristocracy and, crucially, his critique of contemporary German institutions.

V

The core of the Geschichte is a narrative describing the emergence of different European social groups, their moral norms, characteristics, and socio-political circumstances. When approaching this narrative, readers must bear in mind the dual meaning of ‘aristocracy (Adel)’ within the text. This stems from Meiners's emphasis on the divergence between ‘natural’ inequalities and the historical reality of unequal institutions. The text itself does not establish or consistently use distinct terms with reference to these two concepts. For reasons of clarity, the adjectives ‘natural’ or ‘true’ refer to those aristocrats who Meiners claims are genuinely superior according to an objective (or ‘natural’) standard. Conversely, ‘contemporary’ or ‘historical’ refer to those recognized as aristocrats by contemporary European institutions, since their aristocratic status emerged through the contingencies of historical change.

The Geschichte describes five hereditary ranks among the early Germanic tribes, with privileges distributed according to individual virtues linked to martial prowess.Footnote 78 Rather than maintaining these virtues, however, the Germanic tribes adopted the decadent morals of the conquered Romans, including sexual customs (like concubinage) unsuited to the strict regulation of hereditary rank, thereby causing the heritable attributes of the ‘natural’ German aristocracy to deteriorate.Footnote 79 These problems were compounded by the discovery of new vices and rulers’ overly generous distribution of privileges, which further corrupted European social and political institutions.Footnote 80 According to Meiners, these material and moral changes generated unnatural inequalities, convoluted socio-political structures, and continuous war.Footnote 81 Moreover, the difficulty of maintaining the security of early medieval states encouraged a process of centralization, as monarchs were granted increased powers but were nevertheless unable to institute lasting reforms.Footnote 82 These circumstances diminished the political and legislative rights of lower-ranking aristocrats and citizens, further distorting the social order.Footnote 83 Such changes, as in other Enlightenment histories of the middle ages, resulted in a despotism characterized by serfdom, superstition, and the abuse of power by an immoral feudal aristocracy.Footnote 84

The primary catalyst for change in this narrative was the monarchical investiture of economically productive cities with privileges against territorial nobilities.Footnote 85 Geschichte der Ungleichheit traces the development of cities as spaces for the free exercise of commerce and industry, meritocratic distributions of wealth, and the emergence of a new, virtuous – ‘bourgeois’ – ‘aristocracy’.Footnote 86 The open and dynamic nature of these bourgeois ‘aristocracies’ fostered individuals’ sense of personal investment in their cities’ political and social success, creating positive feedback loops and the emergence of strong civic cultures.Footnote 87 Although Meiners did not clearly define either the bourgeoisie or its values, his usage of these terms suggests a broad conception of the bourgeoisie as the ‘middle class’ between the peasantry and historical aristocracy, typically inclined towards commerce and/or the pursuit of knowledge.Footnote 88 Horst Möller's suggestion that eighteenth-century Germans generally considered ‘bourgeois values’ to include ‘inner merits (innere Werte), virtue, diligence, frugality, honesty (Ehrlichkeit), [and] self-sufficiency’ is both persuasive and consistent with Meiners's account.Footnote 89 Importantly, Möller argues, eighteenth-century thinkers considered these values to be both suited to the ‘bourgeoisie’ and to have universal social and moral worth.Footnote 90 This was especially true when contrasted with the negative values often associated with the aristocracy: vanity, disingenuousness, pomp, ‘empty etiquette’, and immorality.Footnote 91

Meiners's emphasis on, and positive evaluation of, the historical role of cities relied on the work of William Robertson.Footnote 92 Meiners's and Robertson's accounts share other important factors in the late medieval reconfiguration of European society, such as major military, legal, and bureaucratic changes, the end of serfdom, and protracted wars.Footnote 93 These factors accelerated three key processes: monarchical centralization, the moral decay of the historical aristocracy, and the emergence of modern bourgeois norms. Meiners described the formation of centralized military structures organized around units of infantry rather than increasingly unreliable, unwarlike, and morally corrupt nobles.Footnote 94 Similarly, the education of professional lawyers with ‘knowledge, diligence, and incorruptibility’, alongside the increased jurisdiction of monarchical courts, gradually divested aristocrats of their legal roles.Footnote 95 The rise of universities and formal qualifications enabled the expansion and development of state bureaucracies, displacing members of the aristocracy from ministerial and other official positions.Footnote 96 Finally, the Crusades and other protracted conflicts drained the aristocracy of men and money, further weakening their position.Footnote 97 Each of these processes centralized state administration, diminished the roles of aristocrats, and created space for the rise of more virtuous and talented individuals.

In this narrative, the historical aristocracy's loss of virtue and change of circumstances provoked a protracted power struggle between nobles and monarchs, through which the constitutive elements of modern European society emerged: an industrious urban bourgeoisie, military, legal, and administrative professionalization, and coherent, centralized, states based on taxation rather than feudal obligations. Meiners's account of these transformations is strikingly similar to those described by other authors of what J. G. A. Pocock has called ‘Enlightened narratives’, and especially that of William Robertson.Footnote 98 The ‘Enlightened narrative’, according to Pocock, was a common historiographical norm employed by writers including Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith, Pietro Giannone, Voltaire, and Robertson himself, whereby writers explicated and commented upon the transition from Medieval ‘barbarism’ to Enlightened modernity.Footnote 99 Robertson's account, which Meiners used extensively, had been well received in both Britain and Germany. Although it was not unchallenged, by the 1790s its salient features were neither especially unusual nor controversial.Footnote 100 Thus, whereas Meiners's account of human nature stood out for its rejection of natural equality, his narration of the emergence of modern European society and norms largely fell within the mainstream of eighteenth-century historiography. By tracing the emergence of European modernity, moreover, Meiners explained the existence of a virtuous, industrial, and bourgeois ‘aristocracy’, as well as the contemporary unsuitability of the historical aristocracy and its martial values. Thus, contrary to Vetter's claim that Meiners's thought represented a ‘de-moralization (Entmoralisierung)’ of thinking about humanity and human difference, the historical role of morals is central to his critique of contemporary European aristocrats.Footnote 101

When it came to assessing these aristocrats, Meiners signalled his approval for at least some aspects of the French Revolution by praising the peaceful end of ‘baleful’ French privileges.Footnote 102 Crucially, even if he did not approve of the Revolution wholesale, his criticisms are directed towards the French aristocracy (rather than the Revolutionaries) for having acted despotically, corrupted the king, oppressed the provinces, and ruined the kingdom so much that, as of 1792, it was unclear how the French state could survive.Footnote 103 That Meiners blamed the French nobles for the Revolution and its aftermath, thereby vindicating the early Revolutionaries, was not unusual. German observers were generally critical of the French aristocracy, and positive regarding the early Revolution's anti-aristocratic impulses.Footnote 104 The discussion of France is, however, significant: it is written with an eye to the Holy Roman Empire, serving as a cautionary tale for the German nobility.

The situation of the contemporary German aristocracy is, by Meiners's reckoning, appalling – moral degradation and the dramatic changes in European culture described above had made it unfit for purpose.Footnote 105 Meiners is often vague regarding the identification of specific offenders among the empire's myriad territories, titles, and privileges, perhaps from fear of appearing partial, or even fear of repercussions. Nevertheless, and typical of many contemporary assessments, the Imperial Knights are described as enjoying far greater privileges than they should, while the aristocracy's domination of official positions and other unfair legal, social, and political rights is criticized in terms consistent with other German advocates of the bourgeoisie.Footnote 106 More broadly, the nobility enjoyed bourgeois advantages without ‘bourgeois burdens’.Footnote 107 In summary, Meiners argued that the adjustment of aristocratic privileges must accommodate the values and attitudes of the ‘third estate’, declaring that ‘the third estate has long felt that the aristocracy possesses harmful prerogatives’.Footnote 108 Should the situation not be rectified, the bourgeoisie may be forced to take actions similar to those in France.Footnote 109 Such a statement, if not quite a threat, must certainly have seemed like one to many.

Having discussed the aristocracy's current state, Meiners shifted to a more general analysis, but which is nevertheless – and despite his choosing primarily non-German interlocutors – intended for his German readers. Meiners situated himself as a moderate thinker, representing a meritocratic socio-political vision opposed to both egalitarianism and ancien régime aristocratism. To do this, he positioned himself between two opposing camps – egalitarians, or ‘ochlocrats’, in favour of abolishing inequality entirely, and ‘oligarchs’ advocating the maintenance of many traditional aristocratic privileges.Footnote 110 Meiners chose Jacques-Antoine Dulaure to represent the former, and Edmund Burke and Montesquieu the latter.Footnote 111

Meiners responded to these thinkers by reminding readers of his unusually radical argument, derived from natural law, that, while heritable privileges are justifiable, the (re-)establishment of beneficial inequality in modern Europe (or, at least, modern Germany) would require a comprehensive overhaul of modern aristocracies. He was emphatic that contemporary aristocrats had both lost their earlier virtues and that the virtues they had previously possessed had lost their value. The virtues that had previously justified aristocratic privilege – in his words ‘beauty, strength, bravery, experience in arms and at war’ – were no longer socially beneficial, and therefore could no longer be justified.Footnote 112 Previously, warriors were needed, but in 1792 it was those with ‘a great, active, and educated (gebildet) spirit’ and a brave, selfless, ‘elevated soul’.Footnote 113 In other words, the ‘true’, modern, aristocracy should be composed of virtuous, Enlightened, and public-spirited individuals – the values he considered exemplified by the bourgeoisie.Footnote 114 The historical aristocracy had lost both its moral compass and its social utility, and it was time for their widespread displacement by members of the bourgeoisie.

In addition to proposing the ascendance of the bourgeoisie, Meiners also recommended a drastic reduction of aristocratic privileges generally. Exclusive access to higher positions in the clergy, court, and state administration should be abolished, and freedom from taxation is described as groundless, unjust, and lacking in social value.Footnote 115 In order to ensure that complaints are dealt with fairly, aristocrats should have less legal influence, and feudal duties demanding labour and resources from peasants should be abolished.Footnote 116 While Meiners clearly advocated some kind of aristocratic system, even his ideal, modern, aristocrats seem left with few, if any, significant privileges.Footnote 117 In short, despite beginning the Geschichte with an unequivocal defence of inequality, Meiners concluded his work with a broadside against contemporary German aristocrats and their privileges, arguing that they did not meet the requirements of natural law. His solution was an aristocracy of merit according to bourgeois values.

VI

Although the French Revolution brought debates about inequality to the fore, the problem of how (and occasionally whether) aristocracy could be philosophically justified and reconciled with modernity had been crucial themes in eighteenth-century European thought.Footnote 118 Responses varied widely across political, cultural, and intellectual contexts, and in the Holy Roman Empire debates about inequality were integral to discussions of the empire's web of institutions, rights, and relationships of power. Although it is no longer customary to treat the decades prior to the empire's 1806 dissolution as years of inexorable political decline, the period was marked by intense debate about whether, how, and to what extent the empire should be reformed.Footnote 119 Additionally, German thinking about the aristocracy was oriented not just around the historical reality of aristocratic institutions, but also their relationship to the rising bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie's situation within the empire generally.Footnote 120 Many called for significant reforms, in particular regarding entities seen as outdated, such as the Imperial Knights, Free Imperial Cities, and ecclesiastical principalities. Nevertheless, most writers were largely content with the Reich's core aristocratic institutions.

Although the French Revolution catalysed these discussions, egalitarianism remained unpopular in Germany, including during the Revolution's early positive reception (prior to the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793). Terms like ‘equality-men (Gleichheitsmänner)’ and ‘equality-fanatics (Gleichheitsphanatiker)’ appeared as pejoratives and, while there were increasing demands to re-orient inequality around merit, very few authors advocated complete socio-political equality.Footnote 121 Even Adolph Knigge (1752–96) – often considered one of the period's most radical thinkers – saw, in Otto Dann's words, ‘the implementation of social equality more as a procedure of Enlightenment and moral understanding’.Footnote 122 It was only in 1793, after the Geschichte appeared, that Kant and Fichte published explicit calls for the abolition of inherited privileges.Footnote 123 Kant and Fichte arguably represented the intellectual avant-garde of German egalitarianism: both were controversial, even shocking, and many observers branded them as Jacobins.Footnote 124 Although egalitarian arguments became more widespread in the following years, according to Dieter Langewiesche, bourgeois critiques of the aristocracy were overwhelmingly against the wholesale abolition of aristocratic privilege.Footnote 125 More mainstream were the views of the jurist Wilhelm August Friedrich Danz (1764–1803) and the Franco-German politician Karl Friedrich Reinhard (1761–1837), who maintained that, while German social and political structures may require some reform, such reforms should be minor, or restricted to particularly pernicious aspects.Footnote 126

While his categorical anti-egalitarianism clearly made Meiners a more conservative figure than Knigge, Kant, and Fichte, this was the case for the vast majority of German thinkers at the time. When compared with the views of thinkers like Danz and Reinhard, however, Meiners's critique of the aristocracy and its privileges places him at the radical end of German discourse. This is even clearer when Meiners's views are compared with the work of more reactionary thinkers like Leopold Alois Hoffmann, Felix Franz Hofstätter, and Ludwig Adolf Grolmann, who recommended the hardening of social distinctions, traditional institutions, and strict obeisance to one's superiors.Footnote 127 In other words, to describe Meiners's attitude towards the aristocracy as conservative or reactionary would be to lose sight of his intellectual context.

The Geschichte der Ungleichheit appears to have found a positive reception, for example, in Christoph Friedrich Nicolai's influential Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek. Footnote 128 More importantly, it was quickly adopted as a reference point by other critics of the aristocracy, as discussed at the beginning of this article, and it continued to appear across a range of histories, legal manuals, and other writings decades after its publication.Footnote 129 One scholar citing the Geschichte even described Meiners as ‘one of the greatest philosophers of his time’.Footnote 130 A comprehensive study of the reception of his thought remains to be written, but this evidence suggests that Meiners's intellectual and cultural impact extended well beyond his writings on race, and included his more radical critique of the German aristocracy.

VII

Christoph Meiners's writings of the Revolutionary decade deserve attention because they challenge conventional views about German political thought during the Sattelzeit. His critique of the historical aristocracy suggests that he was neither a conservative nor a reactionary thinker. His arguments in Geschichte der Ungleichheit and other publications in this period are complex, advocating both a hierarchical view of human difference and a drastic overhaul of the German aristocracy. The fact that Meiners's argument is congruent with his racial philosophy suggests that his ideas about human difference need to be approached carefully in order to appreciate the different ways in which he used them. This is not to diminish his hierarchical, essentializing, racial theories, but to bear in mind that many Enlightenment authors, like Meiners, resist straightforward categorization. As discussed earlier, Meiners's synthesis of racial inequality and anti-aristocratism may in some sense prefigure the populist-xenophobic German nationalism of works like Ernst Moritz Arndt's Ueber Volkshaß.Footnote 131 Nevertheless, Geschichte der Ungleichheit was written in the context of the early 1790s and not in the wake of the so-called ‘Wars of Liberation (Befreiungskriege)’: Meiners's work was fundamentally anti-populist and did not reflect, let alone advocate, Franco-German antagonism. Instead, the Geschichte was a radical, multifaceted, response to the socio-political circumstances of the late Holy Roman Empire.

Finally, Meiners's interventions in contemporary political debates deserve further investigation for their moral-cultural analyses of historical events and developments. His rejection of natural equality, combined with his historicization of moral values, shows a thinker attempting to reconcile universal moral norms with historical change. Meiners's solution in the Geschichte was to construct a model of natural law oriented around utilitarian value, offering social well-being as a criterion for determining socio-political privileges. Meiners's analysis of a transition from martial values to modern, bourgeois, norms bears comparison with the ‘Enlightened narratives’ of thinkers like Edward Gibbon and William Robertson, as described by J. G. A. Pocock.

This suggests a significant German engagement with this historiographical trend. László Kontler has argued that Meiners's use of Robertson in the Geschichte was limited by his framework of German ethnic superiority, and this suggestion is reasonable given the pervasiveness of racial categories in Meiners's thought more broadly. Whereas one might expect his ‘Enlightened narrative’ of European history to ‘bracket out’ non-European racial groups, racial categories do play key roles in several of Meiners's other discussions of European history.Footnote 132 Nevertheless, his assessment of the emergence of modern European norms and institutions relied primarily on historical arguments and data that are, like those of Robertson, independent of such racial ideas.Footnote 133 Indeed, as shown above, the institutions of medieval Europe were products of the corruption of the Germanic conquerors, rather than their superiority, and modern European norms and institutions emerged through late medieval socio-political conditions rather than racial differences. The Geschichte depicts a fundamentally hierarchical understanding of human nature that is largely coherent with the racial philosophy of the Grundriß, but Meiners's account of the emergence of modernity makes extensive use of Robertson without depending in itself upon a specific racial framework. Human inequality, and in particular racial inequality, was a central feature of Meiners's thought. Yet his assessment of the middle ages as a period of unnatural hierarchies enabled the construction of a more mainstream ‘Enlightened narrative’, culminating in a set of radical proposals for the German aristocracy. Meiners's synthesis of cultural history and natural law enabled him to present a sharp critique of contemporary institutions without abandoning his commitment to inequality, whether social, political, or racial.

Footnotes

I am grateful to my supervisors Avi Lifschitz and Axel Körner for their support and helpful criticism of my work. I am also grateful to my two anonymous referees for their specific comments. I am indebted to everyone I met during my 2017 stay at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen, and especially Martin van Gelderen and Dominik Huenniger for making this stay possible. In particular, I would like to thank Hans Erich Bödeker, Martin Gierl, and Demetrius Eudell for their invaluable feedback on my work and expertise regarding Christoph Meiners. I would also like to thank Johan van der Zande, László Kontler, and Anthony J. La Vopa for sharing both their feedback and their insights into the broader intellectual history of the period. I am also grateful to the German Historical Institute London, the DAAD, and the UCL Postgraduate Research Scholarship, whose funding made this research possible. I would also like to thank the participants at the various conferences and seminars where I have been able to test and clarify my ideas. Lastly, I would like to thank my father Steven French and my colleague Charlotte McCallum, who both read over this text and helped me refine its style and argumentation. Any errors or infelicities in the text are, of course, entirely my own.

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60 Dann, Gleichheit und Gleichberechtigung, pp. 94–102, 118–22.

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67 Christoph Meiners, Allgemeine kritische Geschichte der ältern und neuern Ethik oder Lebenswissenschaft (2 vols., Göttingen, 1800–1).

68 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 8–13.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., pp. 13–15. Cf. Rousseau, Discours sur l'inégalité.

71 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 21–4.

72 Ibid., pp. 13–15.

73 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

74 Ibid., pp. 17–18. Meiners does not explain how these rights could be reconciled with the transatlantic slave trade.

75 Ibid.

76 Meiners, ‘Vorrede’.

77 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Du contrat social; ou principes du droit politique (Amsterdam, 1762), pp. 31–76Google Scholar.

78 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 25–41.

79 Ibid., pp. 41–6.

80 Ibid., pp. 50–2.

81 Ibid., pp. 55–68, 132.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., pp. 41–2, 88–114, 146–7.

84 Ibid., pp. 169–85, 282–303.

85 Ibid., pp. 319–454.

86 Ibid., pp. 320, 324–5, 333–7.

87 Ibid., p. 401.

88 On shifting definitions of the bourgeoisie, see Riedel, Manfred, ‘Bürger’, in Koselleck, Reinhart et al. , Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, i (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 672–725Google Scholar.

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90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92 Other Enlightenment histories emphasized the role of cities, and perhaps most notably Adam Smith's The wealth of nations. While Meiners mentions Smith (and many other historians) in the Geschichte der Ungleichheit, he only cites Robertson significantly in this section. Smith's discussion of the role of cities can be found in Smith, Adam, The wealth of nations: books I–III, ed. Skinner, Andrew (London, 1999), pp. 496–506Google Scholar.

93 Robertson, William, The history of the reign of the Emperor Charles V, with a view of the progress of society in Europe, i (London, 1769), pp. 11–19, 22–9, 39–41, 66–9, 95–6, 112–14Google Scholar.

94 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 454–85.

95 Ibid., pp. 496–9.

96 Ibid., pp. 536–44

97 Ibid., pp. 524–33.

98 Pocock, J. G. A., Barbarism and religion, ii: Narratives of civil government (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 3–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Ibid.

100 Kontler, Translations, histories, enlightenments, pp. 1–17.

101 Vetter, Wissenschaftlicher Reduktionismus, pp. 10–11.

102 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 594, 621–2.

103 Ibid.

104 Saine, Thomas, Black bread-white bread: German intellectuals and the French Revolution (Columbia, SC, 1988), pp. 7–57Google Scholar; von Aretin, Karl Otmar, ‘Deutschland und die französische Revolution’, in von Aretin, Karl Otmar and Härter, Karl, eds., Revolution und Konservatives Beharren: Das Alte Reich und die Französische Revolution (Mainz, 1990), pp. 10–19Google Scholar.

105 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 571–2.

106 Ibid.; Gagliardo, John G., Reich and nation: the Holy Roman Empire as idea and reality, 1763–1806 (Bloomington, IN, 1980), pp. 227–41Google Scholar; Umbach, Maiken, ‘Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany’, in Scott, Hamish and Simms, Brendan, eds., Cultures of power in Europe during the long eighteenth century (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 180–99Google Scholar.

107 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 571–2.

108 Ibid., p. 575.

109 Ibid.

110 Ibid., pp. 578–9

111 Ibid. Despite his present obscurity, Dulaure's books sold well and he became a deputy to the National Convention. Meiners took his work seriously, and he lists Dulaure's Histoire de la noblesse (Paris, 1790)Google Scholar as an important source for Geschichte der Ungleichheit. On Dulaure, see Boudet, Marcelin, Les conventionnels d'Auvergne: Dulaure (Paris, 1874)Google Scholar.

112 Meiners, Geschichte der Ungleichheit, pp. 601–3.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid., pp. 604–7, 639–41.

115 Ibid., pp. 609–14, 618–34.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid. Meiners does not state which privileges aristocrats should maintain.

118 Bödeker, ‘Einleitung’, p. v; Dann, Gleichheit und Gleichberechtigung, p. 85.

119 Schmidt, Georg, Geschichte des alten reiches (Munich, 1999)Google Scholar; Whaley, Joachim, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, ii: The Peace of Westphalia to the dissolution of the Reich, 1648–1806 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 453–650Google Scholar; Blanning, T. C. W., The French Revolution in Germany (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Gagliardo, Reich and Nation; and Godsey, Nobles and nation, passim.

120 Dann, Gleichheit und Gleichberechtigung, pp. 122, 126–31, 143–9; Möller, ‘Aufklärung und Adel’, pp. 1–10.

121 Dann, Gleichheit und Gleichberechtigung, pp. 122, 126–31, 143–9.

122 Ibid.; Knigge, Adolph Freiherr, Ueber den Umgang mit Menschen (3 vols., 3rd edn, Hanover, 1790), passimGoogle Scholar.

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126 Schmidt, Geschichte des alten Reiches, pp. 320–6.

127 E.g. Hoffmann, Leopold Alois, ‘Prolog’, in Hoffmann, Leopold Alois, ed., Wiener Zeitschrift, i, 1 (Vienna, 1792), pp. 3–6Google Scholar; (anonymous), ‘Einladung des Herausgebers’, in Hofstätter, Felix Franz, ed., Magazin der Kunst und Literattur, iv (Vienna, 1793), pp. 46–50Google Scholar; Grolmann, Ludwig Adolf, ‘Prospectus’, in Grolmann, Ludwig Adolf, ed., Eudämonia, i, 1 (Leipzig, 1795), pp. iii–viGoogle Scholar; Weiß, Christoph and Albrecht, Wolfgang, eds., Von ‘Obscuranten’ und ‘Eudämonisten’: Gegenaufklärerische, konservative und antirevolutionäre Publizisten im späten 18. Jahrhundert (St Ingbert, 1997)Google Scholar.

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129 E.g. von Proff, Karl Freiherrn, Ueber Titel und Würden in den regierenden Deutschen Fürstenhäusern (Munich, 1816), p. 7Google Scholar; Beck, Christian Daniel, Handbuch der mittlern und neuern allgemeinen Welt- und Völker-Geschichte zum Gebrauch für Studirende, ii (Leipzig, 1807), p. 877Google Scholar; Wachler, Ludwig, Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst, ii:2 (Göttingen, 1818), p. 888Google Scholar; Mittermaier, C. J. A., Lehrbuch des deutschen Privatrechts (Landshut, 1821), p. 128Google Scholar.

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132 I would like to thank one of my anonymous referees for encouraging me to clarify this point. Meiners's racial ideas are important in the following accounts of European history, among others: Meiners, Christoph, ‘Ueber die Natur der Slawischen Völker in Europa’, Göttingisches historisches Magazin, 7 (1790), pp. 600–51Google Scholar; ‘Ueber die Natur der Germanischen und übrigen Celtischen Völker’, Göttingisches historisches Magazin, 8 (1791), pp. 1–48Google Scholar.

133 Kontler, Translations, histories, enlightenments, p. 94.