Nature, Nation, and Folk Culture: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Birth of Middle-Class Self-conception

Paul Richard Blum

 

Abstract:

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) praised Benjamin Franklin for his 'sense of humanity' based on history and experience combined with practical reason. In fostering this sense of humaneness in the German people, Herder investigated cultural history, particularly folk poetry. Humanity is manifest in creativity, which pervades human history and aims at societal perfection. Human nature, hence, is both individual and expressed in folk culture that is equivalent with national culture. References like the one to Franklin show that Herder pursued an anti-feudal agenda and aimed at establishing civil pride in community and geniality, which was to become middle-class ideology.  

 

Foreword

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The poem continues describing the suffering of a black slave being hanged for having resisted his fiancé to be touched. Emmett Till in the 18^th century and in reverse. Now, in case the imagery sounds familiar – here is what we all know. 

 

 

Strange Fruit

By Abel Meeropol alias Lewis Allan

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

Pastoral scene of the gallant south

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

 

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

 

The similarity between Billy Holiday’s famous song and this poem by Herder is most likely not a coincidence. The comparison is shocking, and meant to be so. What I could ascertain is, that the author, the Jewish poet, and teacher of James Baldwin and secret communist, Abel Meeropol from the Bronx was personally acquainted with two famous Germans of his time:  The communist composer Kurt Weill, who set The Three Pennies Opera of Bertolt Brecht to music, and the very bourgeois writer Thomas Mann. Incidentally, I will soon refer to Thomas Mann’s brother Heinrich Mann and to Bert Brecht. But for now, it is worth mentioning that Johann Gottfried Herder was engaged in the anti-slavery movement of the late 18^th century. The poem is part of a collection under the title “Neger-Idyllen” – idyllic Negro scenes – which he included in his collection of essays Letters for the Advancement of Humanity. One page before this poem Herder observes with sarcasm: “The negro depicts the devil as white, and the Latvian does not want to enter into heaven as soon as there are Germans there.”[1] What does it mean for a German intellectual and a Lutheran theologian to decry the cruelty of slavery? As the title of the essays claim: it’s about humanity. Now, the fact that some humans depict the others as devils and hate Germans does not abolish humanity – it rather calls for a theory of humanity that goes to its roots and explains the potential of inhuman behavior.

Introduction: Herder and Benjamin Franklin

Another occasion that may make it plausible to look into Herder from an American point of view is his appreciation of Benjamin Franklin. Herder was enchanted by Franklin’s autobiography (which he regretfully read in French). He praised Franklin’s sense “for the simple and eternal laws of nature, the unfailing practical rules, and the need and interest of humanity.”[2] Humanity is, in this note, reason, education, order, industriousness, common sense; in one word, Ben Franklin is a Volksschriftsteller, a folk writer in the best possible sense, that is, a writer who encourages ordinary people to obtain all the virtues that make a good citizen in a free nation. Herder attached to this essay his own translation of Franklin’s “Standing Queries for the Junto”, a questionnaire intended to guide active citizens of the “Club for mutual Improvement”. [3] Interestingly, to some of the topics Herder added his personal comments. Industry and “noble competition” are the best antidote against despotism and slavery. Herder terms Franklin’s ideal club a “society of humanity” – thus emphasizing his main agenda: humanity is the foundation of Volk.

Isn't it strange that in old and new times the highest and most fruitful wisdom always came from the people (Volk), always with knowledge of nature ... , always accompanied by a calm, unbiased spirit, accompanied by cheerful jest, and preferably dwelling under the rose?

Herder claims that Volk is nature, spirit, cheerfulness, and poetry (as exemplified in the rose). Volk is the opposite of tyranny. Here we have Herder’s program of anthropology of the naturally societal human being that is working, creative, and happy.

 

The downfall of the bourgeoisie: Heinrich Mann and Berthold Brecht

 

Now, since I am supposed to speak about the making of the middle-class, I should offer a few definitions of bourgeoisie, class, and folk culture as they feature in my presentation. To make a long story short: the middle-class evolved as that stratum in a modern society that was neither proletarian, fighting for plain survival in more or less forced labor, nor feudal leadership as it existed in Ben Franklin’s time and all over Europe until the collapse of monarchies as the result of the First World War. I want to illustrate this effect with a negative and a positive example in German literature, namely, Heinrich Mann and Bertolt Brecht.

At the dawn of WWI, which was the twilight of the German Empire, Heinrich Mann wrote his novel Der Untertan. The title is the program: what makes an Untertan? It is the bootlicking subject to the feudal powers that be, whereby the subject believes to be loyal, but is scorned by the authority whose boots require to be licked. This subject is the middle-class bourgeois.

This species is conscious of personal agency and at the same time subject to higher law and destiny, which supports and guarantees existence. The existence of the Untertan is dialectical insofar as on the one hand, he is not a slave in any sense and rather confident of his self-supporting prowess; on the other hand he can only exist by believing in the authority that gives life. In this perspective, the citizen is free and creative, but only in serving the protector. In one scene of the novel, the leader of the liberals expressly shifts his discourse from criticizing the Emperor to accusing the Untertan: “The average person with common intelligence depends on circumstances: lackluster when things are not favorable to him, and of great self-confidence when they turn around.” This ambiguity of self-confidence and dependency is what feeds the citizen: creativity still remains in the service of the superior. Heinrich Mann uses masochistic sex-play as an allegory of such decadent bourgeois consciousness. “His eyes were full of anxiety and desire,” he says of the citizen. And after this humiliation the Untertan “crawled on all four and sought refuge behind the bronze [statue of] the Emperor.” Heinrich Mann exhorts us not to cave in to despots and domination, lest we lose our power.

Thus, the atmosphere of WWI: the ideology of the middle-class collapses under the weight of the unresolved contradiction of the ordinary man who is proud and confident of his own devices and, at the same time, conscious of his dependence on the higher order that may smash him or elevate him anytime.

With Heinrich Mann we witness the end of Herder’s endeavor: the human being is by nature endowed with creativity and as such the independent burgher, the autonomous citizen. The loyal subject is that sort of citizen who originally and naturally is free but fell for authority. The Untertan indicates the downfall of middle-class and hence becomes subject of dictatorship.

Bert Brecht fought all his life against the temptations that authority and power offered to subjects in order to quell their autonomy and creativity. That’s why he was considered a communist, and sided with communists after the Second World War. When in 1953, the workers of the communist Eastern Germany revolted, and the government expressed sincere disappointment in the working class, Brecht commented dryly: Well, then the government should elect a different people. His emphasis on the capability of Volk to understand well what is and what is not their interest is also visible in a famous statement of his: Das Volk ist nicht tümlich. Brecht separated the qualifier from the noun: volkstümlich – volks-tümlich and insisted that folklore does not exist without folk. Even more, whoever is talking to the people has to acknowledge the intelligence and creativity of them, and especially of the lower classes.

 

Herder: Human nature and folk culture

As we saw, for Herder, ‘folk’ is shorthand for human nature, and humanity is co-extensive with societal life. In an age of populism and with our recent history of abuse of concepts like citizenship, nation, and patriotism we have to listen carefully to Herder’s ideas. Populism pitches common sense against reason while implying cynically that ordinary people are stupid enough to fall for propaganda. (That was Brecht’s critique of folksiness.) Some propagandists make their audience believe that citizenship is a birthright without challenge (and, consequently, also without merit); and that nation and fatherland come first, and humanity last. This is the opposite of Herder’s teaching about humanity and folk culture. In one of his essays, poetry is the touchstone.

Poetry is most effective when it depicts true morals and living nature; if the morals are good, and it depicts nature for good aims, poetry also effects good morals and maintains them.[4]

Herder has no illusions regarding the function of poetry at his times: it’s refined, decadent, ineffective regarding morality, and plainly serves entertainment. True poetry is educational, societal, political, provided poetry is rooted in human nature. In this concept, the people coincides with morality and humanity. Herder’s paradigm is the Bible.

One of his least known and – in my view – most important books is his study on Genesis by the title Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (The most ancient document of humankind). It reads the story of creation as God’s instruction to humans on nature, creation and human nature. Herder interprets the story of creation as Unterricht unter der Morgenröte – Instruction under the Aurora. The beginning of the world is the first and foremost education of humankind about being human. Therefore, talking about Sabbath, the moment God rested in His creation work, Herder calls it the “first, great, mystic sanctum” for humans:

To rest and having accomplished – is there any more simple and dignified idea of the purpose (chased by man in everything down here), of the beatitude, relish, and bliss?  … It is the eternal maxim of humankind present in hundreds of guises, disguises, and errors. 

Eternal rest, to be sure, is not what we get down here; but the Genesis sets the standard. For the Protestant theologian, the Bible is the revelation of human nature – and therefore it is also the first and foremost poetry. In a way, whatever comes after the First Book of Moses must be weaker and inevitably decadent. But it is also the standard, the first beginning which is the goal ingrained in human existence. Therefore, the variations of humanity over time are not simply lamentable errors; rather under whatever disguise, humans are human by way of struggling.

In a rather conventional way, Herder compares the ancient, medieval, and modern times with the phases of human life: childhood, adulthood, and old age. But this is not meant in any nostalgic way. While criticizing contemporary culture he does not give in to nostalgia and a call to return to the golden age. Rather, Herder sees the epochs in a truly historical sense. Humans evolve. Humanity changes aspect like fashions. The history of humanity is the continuous mutation of the same human essence and nature. The latest fad, however, is not what counts, but the “true morals and living nature” that takes on so many guises and fashions. If we look carefully, at any moment in history we are close to the golden age: “Tree top waving in heavenly air – the golden age is near.” That is, the fulfillment of the golden age is ever present. But how can we get hold of this human nature that appears to be elusive? In poetry, and particularly in the poetry of the original folk cultures.

An exemplary case is William Shakespeare. Herder joined the group of German intellectuals who rediscovered Shakespeare and his poetic power, particularly against the classicism of the French playwrights, which was perceived to be decadent. If it is true, Herder says, that in classical Greek dramaturgy, the most important features were simplicity, folk tradition, and life, then Shakespeare recovered that for the British:

Shakespeare found in front of him and all around nothing but simplicity of native morals, actions, inclinations, and historic traditions, as they made up Greek drama … And as a genius … he generated the very same effect [as the Greeks did], that is, fear and compassion …[5]

He calls Shakespeare “Sophocles’s brother”, because to him the whole world is one body: “Sophocles was faithful to nature” through the unity of action, place, and time, while Shakespeare was faithful to nature by “trundling world events and human fate through all places and all times.”[6] The emphasis is on nature, human nature; and with a stab at the French dramatists Herder makes clear, human nature has nothing to do with fashion or courtly entertainment.

Well, Shakespeare is no folk poet – or is he? In Herder’s reading he is. For he shares the fundamental qualities of true humane art: Hoheit, Unschuld, Einfalt, Tätigkeit, und Seligkeit (Loftiness, Innocence, Simplicity, Action, and Bliss), as we saw. 

Ein Dichter so voll Hoheit, Unschuld, Einfalt, Tätigkeit, und Seligkeit des menschlichen Lebens muß … gewiß wirken und die Herzen rühren, die auch in der armen Schottischen Hütte zu leben wünschen.
A poet – so full of loftiness, innocence, simplicity, activity, and bliss of human life ... –must certainly work and touch the hearts that also would wish to live in the poor Scottish hovel.[7]

However, the poet Herder is praising here is not Shakespeare but Ossian; and his exaltation of Ossian precedes that of Shakespeare in Herder’s essays Von deutscher Art und Kunst – On German Ways and Art. Ossian’s songs, only recently discovered – as everyone believed – or, rather, recently forged by a Scottish author, were intended to be, and were publicly received, as the very original and natural form of folk poetry that expressed human nature and natural community. They are, in Herder’s words, “songs, people’s songs, songs of an uneducated sensual folk that were sung on for so long in the tradition of the fathers” (448). “The more wild, that is, the more alive, the more freely working a folk … the more wild, that is, the more alive, free, sensual, lyrically working, must be its songs.” And he adds: “alive and freely working is the actual meaning of folk.” (452). The original folksong is the more authentic the wilder it is; or in other words: the more impressive and compelling its texts and its images the folksong testifies for the national character. The folksong is the conglomerate of emotions, sounds, letters, melodies, images that all melt into one living world, a song of adages and a national song that is the eternal heritage and joy of a people. (452). “Das sind die Pfeile dieses wilden Apoll, womit er Herzen durchbohrt, und woran er Seelen und Gedächtnisse heftet!” “These are the arrows of the wild Apollo, with which he transfixes the hearts and to which he fixes souls and memories!” (452)

 As I said before, Herder is not calling for a nostalgic return to the primitive state. He expressly ridicules Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his call to return back to the state of animals. Humankind does progress by situations, education, and traditions. But: “Woe to the philosopher of humanity and morals who considers his time to be the only one and misjudges the first times to be the worst! … Each and any of them show a remarkable trait of humanity.” (456)

 

Herder: From Volk to Nation

 

Ossian and folk poetry also play a role in Herder’s theory of language. In his famous Treatise on the Origin of Language, he places the Ossian poem next to Homer and to Celtic, Caribbean, Peruvian and other epics. All these songs represent the original language of each people; they preserve their treasure of language plus history plus poetry. Humanity equals the creativity of speaking, telling stories and singing.[8]

Interesting for our present topic is the set of four laws of nature established in this work 

1.                    Erstes Naturgesetz
Der Mensch ist ein freidenkendes, tätiges Wesen, dessen Kräfte in Progression fortwürken; darum sei er ein Geschöpf der Sprache!

2.                   Zweites Naturgesetz
Der Mensch ist in seiner Bestimmung ein Geschöpf der Herde, der Gesellschaft: die Fortbildung einer Sprache wird ihm also natürlich, wesentlich, notwendig.

3.                   Drittes Naturgesetz
So wie das ganze menschliche Geschlecht unmöglich eine Herde bleiben konnte, so konnte es auch nicht eine Sprache behalten. Es wird also eine Bildung verschiedner Nationalsprachen.

4.                   Viertes Naturgesetz
So wie nach aller Wahrscheinlichkeit das menschliche Geschlecht ein progressives Ganze von einem Ursprunge in einer großen Haushaltung ausmacht, so auch die Sprachen und mit ihnen die ganze Kette der Bildung.

1. “The human being is a freely thinking, active being, whose forces operate forth progressively. Therefore he must be a creature of language!”

2. “The human being is in his destiny a creature of the herd, of society. Hence the progressive formation of a language becomes natural, essential, necessary for him.”

3. “Just as the whole human species could not possibly remain one herd, likewise it could not retain one language either. So there arises a formation of different national languages.”

4. “Just as in all probability, humankind constitutes one progressive whole with one origin in one great household, likewise all languages, and with them the whole chain of civilization [Bildung].”

 

Here we have in a nutshell the interconnection of human nature, human culture, and human society. It is a unity in diversity.

 

 

 

Herder: From Universal to Civil Virtues

Leaving the linguistic theories aside, which are the core of this writing, we notice a social and political program in these laws of nature that shape humanity. As in Ben Franklin’s social thought, humanity manifests itself in activity, industry, and communication. The diversity of cultures is the fruit of human creativity and sociability. If humankind can be meaningful, then only as a huge household. Or, the other way round, the civic household is the core and paradigm of society. For us today, accustomed to democratic procedures and a republican constitution, that appears to be quite plausible. But let us think the opposite: As the medieval rebel John Ball had said:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

Herder’s theory of poetry, language, and humanity has no space for nobility, no respect for feudal institutions. Occasionally, he pretended to appreciate a king, but in very ironic manner. In his already quoted Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, he quotes at length the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, known to some philosophy students as the author of Meditations in stoic mood. Herder introduces the excerpts as paradigmatic for the understanding of human nature, its strength and gifts, its vocation and duty. “The human being has will, is capable of law; reason is law to humans.”[9] Accordingly the excerpts from the Roman Emperor’s Meditations cover liberty, housekeeping, reasonability, community, and civility. The excerpts conclude with the praise:

Wir wollen nicht sagen: “Heiliger bitte für uns; sondern: menschlicher Kaiser, sei uns ein Muster.”[10]
Let us not say: Saint, pray for us; but, rather: humane Emperor, be our model.

It is unmistakable irony when Herder advertises bourgeois virtues under the guise of learning from an Emperor. The irony was certainly a ploy to circumvent censure from Prussian authorities. But as in many thinkers of the same time, irony was an art that promoted ideas not on billboards but by making people think.

Let me conclude our tour into the far distant origins of middle-class ideology with yet another piece of irony. Again, Herder publishes excerpts, this time from a speech delivered in 1792 on the occasion of the opening of a public library. It opens with a clear endorsement of the economic importance of civil engagement, and as such, it could be repeated at any present-day humanities symposium. And again, Herder finishes with a very ambiguous punch line. He cites a poem, an epitaph, by his contemporary Ewald von Kleist. It says, in my translation:

Wit, understanding and scholarship, taste, modesty, humaneness, and honesty and integrity,

The burgher's virtues, the finest man’s gifts,

Had he who was buried here.

He lived for his town; died with quiet courage.

Winds, breeze softly where his ashes are resting.

We may say, for a Lutheran pastor, praising education and then all the middle-class virtues that even today we recognize – that was acceptable, if not even his duty. However, his appendix is not a faithful transcription of the original.

Kleist’s epitaph, however, had been addressed to a fallen soldier, a field officer. Herder silently translated all references to the military into civilian, bourgeois features:

 

 

Herder's Version of Kleist's Poem

Witz, Einsicht, Wissenschaft, Geschmack, Bescheidenheit,

Und Menschenlieb' und Redlichkeit,

Des Bürgers Tugenden, des feinsten Mannes Gaben,

Besaß Er, den man hier begraben.

Er lebte seiner Stadt; er starb mit stillem Muth.

Ihr Winde, wehet sanft, wo seine Asche ruht.

Lebe wohl, geliebte, gutmüthige Seele!

 

Valor turns into integrity, virtues are civil virtues, dying for the fatherland is outdone by life in the town, and soldierly valor evolves into quiet courage. Herder adds the line: “Faire well, beloved good-natured soul!”

The history of human nature culminates in civility and humaneness.  

 

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[1] Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder: Philosophical Writings, ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 383.

[2] Briefe Humanität I 2: Und wie ſehr haͤlt er ſich allenthalben an die einfachen, ewigen Geſetze der Natur, an die unfehlbarſten praktiſchen Regeln, aus Beduͤrfniß und Intereſſe der Menſchheit!”

[3] Benjamin Franklin, “Standing Queries for the Junto - 1:255a,” Benjamin Franklin Papers, accessed March 24, 2019, http://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp; Benjamin Franklin, “Standing Queries for the Junto, 1732,” Founders Online, accessed March 31, 2019, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0088.

[4] Über die Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten. Werke 4, 149-214; 213: “Denn ist die Dichtkunst am wirksamsten, wenn sie wahre Sitten, lebendige Natur darstellt; sind die Sitten gut, stellet sie die lebendige Natur zu guten Zwecken dar, so kann sie auch gute Sitten wirken, und lange erhalten.”

[5] Herders Werke Aufbau 2, p. 247.

[6] Ibid. 254.

[7] “Von deutscher Art und Kunst I: Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder der Alten Völker”, Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in Zehn Bänden, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), 447.

[8] Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985), 791.

[9] Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 7 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1991), 153.

[10] Herder, 7:157.