Freiherr vom Stein

German politician

• Born: October 26, 1757
• Birthplace: Nassau, Holy Roman Empire (now in Germany)
• Died: June 29, 1831
• Place of death: Cappenberg, Prussia (now in Germany)

Stein was the architect of an early nineteenth century reform movement in Prussia that altered the authoritarian nature of the Prussian state in the direction of modern liberalism and resulted in fundamental changes in Prussian institutions.

Early Life

Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein (shtin) was the ninth of ten children of Karl Philipp Freiherr vom Stein and Langwerth vom Stein (née von Simmern). The vom Stein family was of the Imperial Knighthood and had been independent proprietors within the Holy Roman Empire for more than seven hundred years when Karl (as he was called by his family and friends) was born in his ancestral home at Nassau on October 26, 1757. His father had entered the bureaucracy of the neighboring state of Mainz, where he eventually rose to the rank of privy councillor.

Stein’s parents impressed upon him that as a representative of his caste he had the patriotic duty to devote his life to the service of the community. With that end in mind, he was matriculated at the age of sixteen at the University of Göttingen to study law and political science preparatory to entering government service. Although Göttingen was experiencing perhaps its most dynamic era of literary ferment during Stein’s stay there, he was relatively unaffected by it. He concentrated on the study of history and of constitutional and legal theory, which apparently deepened the patriotic feelings imbued in him by his parents and strengthened his determination to enter government service.

Stein’s original inclination was to enter the still-extant but ineffective government machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. After leaving Göttingen, he traveled to the Imperial Chamber at Wetzlar, the Imperial Court Council in Vienna, and the Imperial Diet at Regensburg in order to gain an understanding of the political and administrative structure of the empire.

Apparently disillusioned by the largely figurehead nature of imperial administration, Stein accepted an appointment to the Prussian bureaucracy under Frederick William II in 1780 at the age of twenty-three. Some of his biographers have suggested that even at this early age, Stein had already concluded that the best hope of unifying all the German people into a strong political entity, with liberal institutions and a constitution, lay with Prussia.

Life’s Work

For the next sixteen years, Stein held progressively more responsible positions within the Prussian government, primarily in mining operations and in the provincial administration in Prussian Westphalia. This experience gave him an intimate knowledge of the workings of local government and led to his appointment in 1796 as head of all the Prussian Rhenish and Westphalian administrative districts. His success in this capacity and other endeavors resulted in his appointment in 1804 as minister of economic affairs for the royal government in Berlin. There Stein rapidly developed the conviction that the Prussian governmental and social systems would have to be drastically reformed and modernized if Prussia were to survive what Stein perceived as an inevitable clash with the burgeoning Napoleonic empire. Stein’s vocal insistence on reform resulted, in 1807, in his dismissal by Frederick William III shortly after the disastrous Prussian defeat by Napoleon I at the Battles of Jena and Auerstedt.

Stein’s forced retirement to his family estate at Nassau gave him time to systematize and set down on paper his ideas concerning the reforms necessary to modernize and rejuvenate the Prussian state. In his famous Nassauer Denkschrift (1807; Nassau memorandum), Stein argued that if the Prussian state was to survive, its citizens must be allowed to participate in the management of its affairs. He further suggested in his memorandum that only self-government could instill into the Prussian people the patriotism and community spirit that would allow Prussia to survive in an increasingly dangerous world. Stein’s lifelong study of British history and his admiration for the British parliamentary system undoubtedly contributed to his advocacy of the establishment of a similar system in Prussia.

During Stein’s unwilling retirement, Napoleon forced Frederick William to sign the Treaty of Tilsit. The terms of the treaty considerably diminished the size and autonomy of the Prussian state and convinced many Prussians in the bureaucracy and the army of the necessity of sweeping reforms in the governmental apparatus. Napoleon insisted on the dismissal of Frederick William’s foreign minister, Karl von Hardenberg, and the appointment of Stein in his place. Frederick William confirmed Stein as prime minister of Prussia on October 4, 1807.

Stein took advantage of a wave of patriotism and widespread demand for reform engendered by the twin debacles of Jena and Tilsit to force Frederick William to accede to the first of the great changes in Prussian government, administration, and society later known collectively as the Prussian Reform movement. The first, and in many ways the most far-reaching, of the reforms was promulgated on October 19, 1807, as the Law Concerning the Emancipated Possession and the Free Use of Landed Property and the Personal Relationships of the Inhabitants of the Land. This law emancipated the Prussian serfs from feudal obligations and enabled the Prussian aristocracy to sell their land to non-nobles. In addition, the law enabled all Prussians to follow the vocation of their choice. The law was a decisive step toward the destruction of the old caste relationships of Prussian society and the creation of civic and legal equality.

One year later, Stein was responsible for the creation of effective local self-government for the towns and cities of Germany through the issuance of the Städteordnung (municipal ordinances). He then turned his attention to modernizing the national government. He replaced the old, secretive councillor administration with departmental ministries of foreign affairs, internal affairs, finance, justice, and war, each with responsibility and authority for the whole of the Prussian kingdom. He also reorganized provincial administration along more efficient lines. Whether Stein would have succeeded in introducing in Prussia the national parliament, which he so admired in the English system, will never be known. Napoleon forced Frederick William to dismiss him from office on November 24, 1808, after French spies intercepted a letter Stein sent to a friend criticizing the French emperor and his policies toward Prussia.

Stein took refuge until 1812 in Austria, where he continued to correspond with his successor Hardenberg and with other men in the bureaucracy and the army of Prussia who were carrying the banner of reform. In 1812, he answered a summons by Alexander I of Russia to come to St. Petersburg as a political adviser. He was instrumental in that capacity in negotiating the Russo-Prussian alliance in 1813, after Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia ended in catastrophe.

Stein then provided moral leadership for the German states during the war of liberation, which ended with Napoleon’s final defeat and exile in 1815. During that period, Stein also continued to influence those men in Prussia who pursued progressive reform, men such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, August von Gneisenau, Ernst Arndt, Heinrich von Kleist, and Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. At the Congress of Vienna, Stein championed the cause of the political unification of the German states but was not satisfied with the final form that unification took. He regarded the Germanic Confederation that resulted from the deliberations at Vienna as little more than the ghost of the recently deceased Holy Roman Empire.

After the Congress of Vienna, Stein retired to his estate of Cappenberg, Westphalia, where he devoted the remainder of his life to the writing of history and to the publication of the works of other historians on the subject of German history. He died in his home on June 29, 1831.

Significance

Freiherr vom Stein was a pivotal figure in the transformation of Prussian government from an absolute monarchy toward liberalism and constitutionalism. He was, along with Hardenberg, one of the champions of the concept that such changes must be instituted peacefully and slowly from above, or else they will be brought about violently and quickly, and with unforeseeable consequences, from below, as in the French Revolution. His conviction that the reforms must be made was based less on a concern for individual liberty and human rights than on a desire to prevent German institutions from being overwhelmed by the French. He realized that the powerful forces of nationalism and liberalism unleashed by the French Revolution of 1789 could not be withstood without unleashing similar forces in Germany. He hoped to control those forces while retaining the virtues of older Prussian society.

The unfinished nature of his reforms had far-reaching consequences for the development of Prussian and German society: The serfs were freed, but without land; the former serfs were reduced to the status of migrant agricultural laborers, many of whom migrated to the cities and became the nucleus of the proletariat, which turned to Marxism and trade unionism in later decades and caused much turmoil in imperial Germany. Equality before the law was established, but without constitutional guarantees; the widespread and unsatisfied desire among the Prussian intellectual community and the bourgeoisie for a constitution and a parliament culminated with the revolutions of 1848. The principle of participatory government was established, but without a medium through which it could be practiced. The essentially conservative approach to reform adopted by Stein created a tradition in Prussia of expecting the government to effect necessary reform in societal institutions that prevailed into the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Gray, Marion W. Prussia in Transition: Society and Politics Under the Stein Reform Ministry of 1808. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986. This book, a reprint of an article from Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, is primarily concerned with the milieu in which Stein’s reforms took place and the effects of the reforms on Prussian society, rather than with Stein himself. An excellent introduction to the era of the Prussian Reform movement.

Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany, 1648-1840. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Holborn’s book contains several chapters on the Prussian Reform movement and provides sketches of the most important movement leaders, including Stein. The book places the reform movement and the reformers in their proper perspective within German history.

Meinecke, Friedrich. The Age of German Liberation, 1795-1815. Translated by Peter Peret and Helmuth Fischer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. One of the best accounts of the period, providing a good overview of Stein’s life and work. Meinecke argues that Stein and the other reformers successfully provided the transition between absolutism and representative government that made possible the unification of Germany half a century later.

Seeley, John Robert. Life and Times of Stein: Or, Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Seeley’s book is the only full-length biography of Stein in English. It is perhaps overly laudatory. In the main, it agrees with Meinecke’s evaluation of Stein and his reforms.

Simon, Walter. The Failure of the Prussian Reform Movement. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955. Simon is critical of both the reforms and the reformers, including Stein, of whom he writes at great length. Simon argues that the failure of the reforms to establish a unified German state with a constitutional, parliamentary form of government led directly to the development of an authoritarian German empire after 1871 and ultimately to the Third Reich.