Prussian Reform Movement
[1] The reforms were a reaction to the defeat of the Prussians by Napoleon I at the battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, leading to the second Treaty of Tilsit, in which Prussia lost about half its territory and was forced to make massive tribute payments to the First French Empire.
They led to the reorganization of Prussia's government and administration and changes in its agricultural trade regulations, including the abolition of serfdom and allowing peasants to become landowners.
Gneisenau made it clear that all these reforms were part of a single programme when he stated that Prussia had to put its foundations in "the three-faced primacy of arms, knowledge and the constitution".
Encouraged by the United Kingdom, Prussia broke off its neutrality (in force since 1795), repudiated the 1795 Peace of Basel, joined the Fourth Coalition and entered the war against France.
Prussia was on the verge of collapse, and three days after the defeat Frederick William III issued posters appealing to the inhabitants of Berlin to remain calm.
The absolutist system started to re-solidify under the obscurantist influence of Johann Christoph von Wöllner, financial privy councillor to Frederick William II.
Its aims included linking the state and middle class society to the law and to civil rights, but at the same time it retained and confirmed the whole structure of the Ancien Régime.
As Minister of Finances and the Economy, Stein put some reforms in place, such as standardising the price of salt (then a state monopoly) and partially abolishing the export-import taxes between the kingdom's territories.
Following the series of defeats in December 1806, Frederick William III fled from French armies and arrived at Ortelsburg, a small town in East Prussia.
The main editors of the Rigaer Denkschrift were Barthold Georg Niebuhr, an expert financier, Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein, a future minister of Finances[35] and Heinrich Theodor von Schön.
Sovereigns and their ministers thus put in place reforms to gain all the advantages of a revolution without any of the disadvantages, such as losing their power or suffering from setbacks or outbreaks of violence.
[52] Their rôle, which even went as far as putting up sanitary cordons in the event of an epidemic, was similar to that of French prefects – that is, to represent regional interests to the central government.
[60][61] Prior to the reforms the Prussian towns east of the river Elbe were under the state's direct control, with any surviving instances of self-government retaining their names and forms but none of their power.
[63] This was the strongest indication of Stein's rejection of a centralised bureaucracy – self-government had to awaken its citizens' interest in public affairs in order to benefit the whole Prussian state.
That reform occurred on 26 May 1818, with the establishment of a compromise between the interests of the major landowners practicing free-exchange and those of the still-weak industrial economy asking for protectionist custom duties.
The first peasants to be freed were those working on the domains in the Reichsritter and on 11 November 1810 at the latest, all the Prussian serfs were declared free:[81] On St Martin's Day 1810 all servitude ended throughout our states.
The measures put in place by the reformers did have some financial success, however, with Prussia's cultivated land rising from 7.3 to 12.46 million hectares in 1848[88] and production raised by 40%.
Ernst Rudolf Huber, professor of public law, judged that the agricultural reforms were:one of the tragic ironies of German constitutional history.
[89][91][92] By the Edict of Emancipation of 11 March 1812, Jews gained the same rights and duties as other citizens: We, Frederick William, King of Prussia by the Grace of God, etc.
etc., having decided to establish a new constitution conforming to the public good of Jewish believers living in our Kingdom, proclaim all the former laws and prescriptions not confirmed in this present Edict to be abrogated.
Nevertheless, unlike the reforms in the Kingdom of Westphalia, the Edict of Emancipation in Prussia did have some limitations – Jews could not become army officers or have any government or legal role, but were still required to do military service.
[102] Unlike the utilitarian teaching of the Enlightenment, which wished to transmit useful knowledge for practical life, Humboldt desired a general formation of man.
In Humboldt's thinking, university represented the crowning glory of intellectual education and the expression of the ideal of freedom between teaching and research held an important place in it.
It was opened in 1810 and the great men of the era taught there – Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, the historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny.
In practice a system of co-opting of officers was put in place which generally favoured the nobility, even if there remained some (albeit minor) bourgeois influence.
[130] In 1810, Klewitz and Theodor von Schön edited the Verordnung über die veränderte Staatsverfassung aller obersten Staatsbehörden (Decree on the new constitution of all the high portfolios of state).
On 30 December 1812, Yorck von Wartenburg signed the convention of Tauroggen,[134] by which Prussia in effect turned against Napoleon and repudiated the Treaty of Tilsit.
In late 19th century historiography, the Prussian reforms and the "revolution from above" were considered by Heinrich von Treitschke and others to be the first step in the foundation of the German Empire on the basis of a 'small-Germany' solution.
Another is that the Prussian regions – dynamic in industry and society – belonged to the French sphere of influence directly or indirectly until the end of the Napoleonic era.
Stein featured on commemorative stamps in 1957 and 2007 and Humboldt in 1952, whilst several streets are now named after the reformers, especially in Berlin, which has a Humboldtstraße, a Hardenbergstraße, a Freiherr-vom-Stein-Straße, a Niebuhrstraße, a Gneisenaustraße and a Scharnhorststraße.
