"This year marks the 250th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest of all German writers and poets and one of the giants of world literature. In his political outlook, he was also a thorough-going classical liberal, arguing that free trade and free cultural exchange are the keys to authentic national and international integration. He argued and fought against the expansion, centralization, and unification of government on grounds that these trends can only hinder prosperity and true cultural development."
"As a liberal, Goethe, wisely and with remarkable prescience, stood largely alone in firm opposition to this transformation of the liberal creed. In his view, mass democracy was incompatible with liberty. "Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time," he wrote in his Maximen und Reflexionen, "are either psychopaths or mountebanks." And political centralization, as Goethe explained in his conversation with Eckermann, would lead to the destruction of all culture."
Goethe e como a grandeza da nação e da sua cultura não carece de um governo federal forte e centralizado, pelo contrário. Curiosa sua referência de como o Federalismo Alemão se deveu aos "...German liberals had become democrats and advocates of a unified German nation state". E o Federalismo alemão deu no que deu.
Curioso também como foi a guerra contra Napoleão e o Congresso de Viena que reduziu o número de entidades independentes. Como sempre a Guerra (mesmo as boas, se é que as há) conduz sempre a uma maior centralização em todos os domínios.
"From 1648 until the Napoleonic wars, Germany consisted of some 234 countries, 51 free cities, and about 1,500 independent knightly manors. Of this multitude of independent political units, only Austria counted as a great power, and only Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Hannover could be considered major political players. Saxe-Weimar was one of the smaller and poorer countries, encompassing just a few dozen villages and small towns.
As a result of the Vienna Congress of 1815 following Napoleon's defeat, the number of independent political territories was reduced to thirty-nine. Owing to the family relationship of its ruling house with the Russian dynasty, Saxe-Weimar grew by about one third of its former size (to a size slightly larger than that of Rhode Island) and became the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Still, it remained one of Germany's smaller, poorer, and politically less significant countries.
...made the following remarks concerning the relationship between political particularism (Kleinstaaterei) and culture. At the time these remarks were made, on October 23, 1828, Germany had become increasingly affected by democratic and nationalistic sentiments as a result of the French Revolution and the following Napoleonic era. Most of the German liberals had become democrats and advocates of a unified German nation state.
"I do not fear that Germany will not be united; our excellent streets and future railroads will do their own. Germany is united in her patriotism and opposition to external enemies. She is united, because the German Taler and Groschen have the same value throughout the entire Empire, and because my suitcase can pass through all thirty-six states without being opened. It is united, because the municipal travel documents of a resident of Weimar are accepted everywhere on a par with the passports of the citizens of her mighty foreign neighbors. With regard to the German states, there is no longer any talk of domestic and foreign lands. Further, Germany is united in the areas of weights and measures, trade and migration, and a hundred similar things which I neither can nor wish to mention.
"One is mistaken, however, if one thinks that Germany's unity should be expressed in the form of one large capital city, and that this great city might benefit the masses in the same way that it might benefit the development of a few outstanding individuals.
"What makes Germany great is her admirable popular culture, which has penetrated all parts of the Empire evenly. And is it not the many different princely residences from whence this culture springs and which are its bearers and curators? Just assume that for centuries only the two capitals of Vienna and Berlin had existed in Germany, or even only a single one. Then, I am wondering, what would have happened to the German culture and the widespread prosperity that goes hand in hand with culture.
Goethe on National Greatness, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
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