Börne

Ludwig Börne (1786-1837)

The journalist and essayist Ludwig Börne was born Juda Löw Baruch in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt am Main. He studied at the universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Giessen. Returning to Frankfurt, he worked in police administration from 1811 to 1815, benefiting from the civil rights granted to German Jews by the French occupiers. After the defeat of Napoleon and the creation of the German Confederation in 1815, Börne was dismissed from his post. From 1818 to 1821 he published his own newspaper Die Wage; The Scales, in which he campaigned against the political repression of the Metternich era. The journal was banned in 1821; he later founded another journal, La Balance.

Börne moved to Paris after the July Revolution of 1830, and remained there until his death in 1837. In the 1830s he was a leading liberal and republican, speaking at the Hambach festival in 1832. In his later years, Börne retreated from his Enlightenment positions and produced a German translation of the works of Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais, the forerunner of social Catholicism. Public opinion was polarised by Börne’s literary attacks on Goethe and Heine (Börne much preferred Jean Paul), and Heine took his revenge in Ludwig Börne. Eine Denkschrift; Ludwig Börne: A Memorial (1840). Despite Heine’s caricature of him, Börne’s essays are well worth reading.

Every year since 1993, the Ludwig Börne foundation in Frankfurt has awarded the prestigious Ludwig Börne prize for political essays and reportage.

Börne’s two most important works are Briefe aus Paris; Letters from Paris (1832-34) and Menzel der Franzosenfresser; Menzel, Easter of the French (1837).

Briefe aus Paris; Letters from Paris (1832-34)

Börne’s letters from Paris are a series of eyewitness reports on political conditions in France after the revolution of July 1830 – Börne had arrived there two months later, in September. Börne conveys his infectious excitement about political progress in France and elsewhere in Europe, calling on his German readers to learn from the French and embrace political modernity. Gradually, though Börne becomes disillusioned with the ‘bourgeois monarch’ Louis Philippe, and observes bitterly in the 24th letter that the revolutionary soup has gone cold.

The sixtieth letter from Paris, dated 30 November–4 December 1831, was written against the background of the Lyon silk weavers’ revolt (Canut revolt) of October–December 1831. It shows Börne at his most radical. Börne observes the admission by Casimir-Pierre Perier (1777-1832), the French Minister of the Interior, that there is a struggle taking place between rich and poor. Börne agrees that this struggle is taking place, although he thinks Perier was foolish to admit it:

Es ist wahr, der Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen hat begonnen, und wehe jenen Staatsmännern, die zu dumm oder zu schlecht sind, zu begreifen, daß man nicht gegen die Armen, sondern gegen die Armut zu Felde ziehen müsse. Nicht gegen den Besitz, nur gegen die Vorrechte der Reichen streitet das Volk; wenn aber diese Vorrechte sich hinter dem Besitze verschanzen, wie will das Volk die Gleichheit, die ihm gebührt, anders erobern, als indem es den Besitz erstürmt? (Sämtliche Schriften vol. 3: 371-72; letter 60)

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/boerne/briparis/chap060.html

It is true, the war of the poor against the rich has begun, and woe to those statesmen who are too foolish or too wicked to understand that one must not combat poor people, but poverty itself. The people do not contest property, they only contest the privileges of the rich; but if these privileges become entrenched behind property, then how can the people win the equality that is its due, except by storming property?

Menzel der Franzosenfresser; Menzel, Eater of the French (1837)

Börne’s last great polemic was directed against his former ally, the nationalist literary critic Wolfgang Menzel (1798-1873), editor of Cotta’s literary supplement published in Hamburg. In autumn 1835, Menzel attacked Karl Gutzkow and other members of Junges Deutschland (Young Germany), and this denunciation served as the pretext for a Prussian decree of 14 November 1835, banning the works of Junges Deutschland and Heine. Börne chose to defend the young Germans and his rival Heine against Menzel.

As Anita Bunyan points out: ‘In Börne’s view, by denouncing the political opposition as unpatriotic and somehow un-German, Menzel was [cynically] manipulating and instrumentalising national loyalties’ (see below, Bunyan p. 104).

In the essay Börne warns his readers that German patriotism is being used as an instrument of political repression to serve the interests of the German elites:

Wenn Herr Menzel sagt, ‘für das Vaterland handelt man immer schön’, so ist das eine alberne Floskel, albern und lästerlich zugleich. Nein, man handelt nur schön für das Vaterland, wenn es das Vaterland ist, für das man sich bemüht, nicht aber ein einzelner Mensch, ein Stand oder ein Interesse, die durch Ränke und Gewalt sich für das Vaterland geltend zu machen wußten. (Sämtliche Schriften vol. 3: 919)

When Mr Menzel says ‘any action in service of the Fatherland is good’, that is a silly cliché, silly and malicious too. No, you only do a good deed for the Fatherland if you are making your efforts for the Fatherland itself, and not serving a single individual, a class or a narrow interest group who assert themselves by means of schemes and violence in the name of the Fatherland.

German Edition

Ludwig Börne, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. by Inge and Peter Rippmann (Dreieich: Melzer, 1964-68), 5 volumes