Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Alexandra Richie

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СКАЧАТЬ with the Catholics … than with the Calvinists.⁴⁰ Fights over religious succession were often bitter; a regent in the Palatinate was so desperate to ensure the province remained Calvinist that he locked the young Lutheran successor away in a lonely convent and tried to convert him; in Baden the regent stole his nephew from his dead brother’s wife and forced him to adopt his own religion. Berlin was at the centre of a similar conflict. The first of the Calvinist electors was Johann Sigismund, who had converted in 1613, and his successors remained faithful, swearing, ‘I am a Calvinist and with God’s help I shall die one.’ Berliners, however, remained devout Lutherans and were violently opposed to change. When the Great Elector took power the only Calvinist institutions in Berlin were the court and the cathedral, and when the first Calvinist preacher entered the city a Lutheran mob broke into his house, beat him up and stole everything but his green underwear – in which he was forced to preach the following Sunday. Thereafter the few Calvinists in Berlin were regularly attacked in the streets.⁴¹ If the elector could not convert Berliners peacefully he could do so by force of numbers, which could be bolstered by the refugees. As a result, when war broke out in Europe in 1672 and Catholic governments began to attack the entire Protestant community he invited them to Berlin, not only from France but also from the Palatinate, the upper Rhine and from Habsburg lands. They changed the religious balance in Berlin, and did so without bloodshed.

      The townspeople were suspicious and even hostile to the large number of Calvinist refugees who suddenly appeared in their midst. The French spoke a strange language, wore strange clothing and followed a different religion; worse still, they were given tax breaks and financial assistance funded by the local population through forced collections like that of 20 January 1686, when ‘each and every citizen’ had to contribute to a fund of 14,000 thalers for the refugees.⁴² Despite later claims of ‘tolerance’ these Berliners did not welcome the newcomers with open arms; Muret decried the ‘Gehässigkeit’, the hateful behaviour of Berlin Lutherans towards the French, and it took generations for them to be accepted.⁴³ In the end, however, the Huguenots became an integral part of the city. By 1690 the institutional autonomy of the Lutheran Church had crumbled and Calvinism had become the official religion in Berlin.

      By the eighteenth century ‘tolerance’ had come to mean the freedom to practise religion without the kind of persecution seen in many parts of Europe at the time. This extended to many groups, including the Jews. Like other cities of the ancien régime Berlin was far from allowing complete emancipation of Jews but it was more liberal than many in Europe; it did not have a ghetto and had ceased to persecute and expel Jews.⁴⁴ The Great Elector had invited a small number of ‘protected Jews’ into Brandenburg in 1650 and on 21 May 1671 issued an edict on the ‘Admission of Fifty Families of Protected Jews’, who were permitted to ‘keep open stalls and booths, to sell cloths and similar wares … to deal in new and old clothes, and further, to slaughter in their houses and to sell what is above their needs or forbidden to them by their religion, and finally to seek their subsistence in any place where they live’. The Jews were not permitted to have synagogues but could meet in one of their own houses as long as they conducted ceremonies ‘without giving offence to Christians’.⁴⁵ The electoral edict of 1671 attracted many more families to Prussia from Poland and the Habsburg lands; wealthy Jewish families who had been expelled from Vienna in 1670 came to the city and formed the foundation of what was to become Berlin’s sophisticated German-Jewish sub-culture.⁴⁶ Frederick the Great would improve their situation further in 1750 through the ‘Revised General Privilege and Regulation for the Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia’, under which they were given complete control of their own schools, synagogues and cemeteries and were to be tried in accordance with the tenets of Jewish law. Berlin was not tolerant in the twentieth-century sense but it became the most permissive of all Prussian towns and was, for a time, one of the most open-minded in Europe.⁴⁷ Even so, some religions were excluded until the reign of Frederick the Great: in the Brandenburg Recess of 1653 Frederick William announced he would ‘not permit the practice of their religion, in public or private, to Papists, Arrians, Photinians, Weigalians, Anabaptists, and Minists’. He emphasized that his successors ‘must not tolerate Jesuits in your lands. They are devils who are capable of much evil and intrigue against you and the whole community’.⁴⁸ Catholics continued to suffer under intolerant laws until well into the eighteenth century and even ‘protected Jews’ were subject to myriad regulations, special taxes and discrimination.

      Irrespective of their shortcomings the Great Elector’s innovative policies were highly successful in creating a prosperous state out of the devastation of the Thirty Years War. The influx of skilled and talented refugees fired the Berlin economy and the city began to flourish. Increased trade and industry meant more revenue for the state, and to assist in administration and tax collection Frederick William created the General Kriegskommissariat (War Commission), a powerful new agency based on the French and Dutch models which formed the basis of a unified central state apparatus. It was the tentative beginning of Berlin’s role as the administrative centre of Prussia. In 1667 he introduced a detailed excise tax on virtually every product: home distilled brandy cost 6 groschen per quart, Rhenish and Polish brandy cost 9 groschen per quart, a fattened hog cost 3 groschen, a ton of salt 4. The revenue generated was ploughed back into the most distinctive feature of the new state, the army.

      It had been clear from the beginning of his reign that Frederick William had intended to create a strong army but few had realized the extent of his plan. His army was not to be a mere fighting force; it was set to become the very foundation, the very essence of the Prussian state. The army would change Berlin for ever, influencing everything from its layout and architecture to its culture, its economy and its spirit. In the short term it helped to protect Prussia and made it an important power in European affairs. In the long term, the obsession with the military would prove disastrous.

      In his Political Testament Frederick William wrote: ‘A ruler is of no consideration if he does not have adequate means and forces of his own; that alone has made me – thank God for it – a force to be reckoned with.’⁴⁹ The experience of the Thirty Years War had taught him that although alliances were useful they could not be relied upon and it was this which determined his military policy. Unlike other German princes Frederick William had not disbanded his troops after the Peace of Westphalia but had quickly added to his forces. The growth of the military was spectacular: at the end of the Thirty Years War Frederick William had an army of a mere 2,000 poorly trained, undisciplined men, but he was determined to change this. Berlin became a garrison city in 1657 and that year Prussia defeated the Swedes at Fehrbellin, making Brandenburg the strongest German state after Austria. The elector spent 70,000 thalers on the fortification of Berlin alone, building an eight-metre-high wall complete with thirteen bastions around the city. Parade grounds and guard houses began to appear everywhere and Berlin took on the arid militaristic atmosphere which would soon give it the reputation of the ‘Sparta of the North’. The recruitment and generous financing brought results: when the Great Elector died the army consisted of 30,000 men. Suddenly, Berlin ruled over one of the largest forces in Europe.⁵⁰

      Frederick William died in 1688. He had not achieved the power or prestige of contemporaries like Cromwell or Richelieu but his accomplishments were extraordinary. He had raised his lands above the dismal legacy of the Thirty Years War and created the foundations of a strong, successful Prussian state. His acceptance of religious refugees and his innovative approach to industry had made Berlin prosper, while his determination to create a strong army had made it an important European power.

      After the death of the Great Elector his son Frederick III, the least impressive of the four rulers, took the throne. He had an immediate impact on the city. The new elector was tired of the obsession with fiscal policy and the army and reacted against everything his father had stood for. He was more concerned with questions of status and spent money on useless wars which he had not started and could not influence while splashing out on a grandiose life of luxury. He gave Berlin a short-lived air of decadence. Politically, Frederick’s reign was unremarkable. His only real accomplishment was to use his father’s army to blackmail the Holy Roman Emperor into giving him a royal title; СКАЧАТЬ