Logo DBNL
Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman. Jaargang 30 (2007)

Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman. Jaargang 30

(2007)– [tijdschrift] Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Johann Pezzl's Faustin: an idealized, historical appeal for enlightened practice
Edward T. Larkin



illustratie
Faustin, titlepage


In 1783, two years after Emperor Joseph II initiated his reform programs, among which was an expanded freedom of expression, the young Bavarian writer Johann Pezzl (1756-1823) published his novel Faustin oder das philosophische Jahrhundert. Understood as the novel of the Illuminati, Faustin, published anonymously, was probably written in Switzerland, and, according to Klaus Zeyringer,1. became the best-known philosophical novel in the late eighteenth century. In the foreword to his novel, Pezzl makes clear his intention to present an unambiguous distinction between a vanishing obscurantism and an expanding, seemingly preordained Enlightenment. He offers the reader

eine Skizze der letzten konvulsivischen Bewegungen des sterbenden Aberglaubens, Fanatism, Pfaffentrugs, Despotendruks und Verfolgungsgeistes, unter denen er noch - durch grosse und kleine Feinde der Aufklärung und Duldung, des Menschenverstandes und Menschengefühls unterstüzt - seine sinkende Wuth zeigt, die Hefen seines schändlichen Geistes von sich speit, ehe er der Philosophie und dem Rechte der Menschheit die Siegeskrone überläßt.2.

Writing some twenty-four years after Voltaire published his Candide, a novel with which Faustin is frequently compared,3. Pezzl chooses to demonstrate the mantra-like victory of reason over darkness - ‘Sieg der Vernunft’ - ex negativo, for Faustin, like Candide before him, more often experiences the absence of enlightened humanity than its presence. At nearly every step of his jour-

ney, Faustin, like his French predecessor, confronts the very fanatics, despots, and enemies of Enlightenment that Pezzl noted above in the novel's preface. Similarly, Faustin's acceptance of his mentor's belief in the ultimate triumph of reason closely parallels Candide's embrace of Pangloss' claim that all that happens does so for the best. But Faustin, whose travels take place between 1773 and 1781-82, embarks not merely on a philosophical voyage toward an abstract age of Enlightenment. His path, unlike Candide's, traverses a more transparently historicized even if not always precisely accurate eighteenth-century geography.4. His voyage is not really a philosophical voyage. The author of Faustin, whom Caroline Pichler described as ‘voll Geist, Leben und Kenntnisse’,5. insists that he is relating not mere fantasies but ‘wirkliche Fakta’ in the hope that ‘die - politschen und kirchlichen - Ketzermacher ihre Stimme und ihre Galle ein bischen moderiren’.6. In the novel, this factual knowledge takes the form of historical events and anecdotes, often gleaned from the leading publications of his day, e.g. Schlözer's Briefwechsel, Wekhrlin's Chronologie, Hannoverischen Magazin, etc. Indeed, even his characterization of the novel as a sketch - ‘eine Skizze’ - suggests an interest in portraying a non-fictionalized reality. Through his description of historical figures and occurrences, Pezzl, more keenly than Voltaire in his Candide, offers his reader credible points of identification, which lessen the distance between hero, author, and reader7. and thus reinforce the need for actual societal transformation, the kind he had begun to see in Salzburg. Pezzl's later Skizze von Wien (1786-1790), a defence of Vienna against Nicolai's critique of the city in the latter's Reise durch Deutschland (1783-1786), further confirms the realistic character of his aesthetic position as it elaborates the geography, social classes, professions, institutions, and political and moral character of Vienna in the 1780s. Werner Bauer correctly assesses Pezzl's insistence on historical narration when he writes: ‘Pezzl will die Erzählhaltung des Geschichtsschreibers ernsthaft durchhalten, das Gespräch ergibt ihm die Dokumentation des Geschehens...’8. This stance is not that of Voltaire, who writes perhaps out of greater wisdom or scepticism accompanying his later years. Indeed, the satire of the young Pezzl is directed not only against the irrational inhibitors of enlightened practice but also against the resignation implied in Voltaire's Candide itself. For, unlike Candide, whose goal ultimately turns out to be illusionary (as he marries an old, unattractive Cunnigunde), Pezzl's Faustin experiences in the policies of Joseph II a real, if still idealized state of Enlightenment.9. Not a Bildungsroman, interested in revealing a subject's inner development and relation to the world, but rather an analysis of how that portrayed world fails to measure up to romanticized, enlightened ideas, Faustin aims to educate the reader about the specific, albeit relatively moderate aspirations of the Enlightenment in the early years of the reign of Joseph II.10. This essay seeks to elaborate those aspirations and also point to the author's own retreat from the forcefulness and inevitability of the earlier pronouncements in Faustin.

Pezzl, who was born to a baker in Mallersdorf on 30 November 1756, may have first come into contact with the progressive tendencies of the Enlightenment as a novitiate in the Benedictine Abbey in Oberalteich. The education was certainly primarily religious, but Pezzl seems to have had illicit contacts with contemporary writers. Even as he castigates cloister life for its intellectual backwardness, hypocrisy, and humiliation in his persiflage of a year at an abbey in his Briefe aus dem Novizziat (1780), his hero (probably himself) does speak of reading contemporary authors, such as Gleim, Jacobi, Ramler, Goethe's Werther, Wieland, Nicolai and even Voltaire's Candide. It was the unconditional (and to Pezzl's mind unnatural) submission to the Abbot as well as the latter's insistence on seemingly irrational articles of faith (immaculate conception and original sin) that led to his claim of the ‘unnatürliche Möncherey’11. in his Briefe and hastened his departure from the abbey, much to the dismay of his father, an impoverished dependent of the monastery at Mallersdorf who had thought he had at least one of his children provided for. In 1776 Pezzl travelled to the Benedictine university at Salzburg to study law. Here he witnessed the generally enlightened policies

of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, Mozart's nemesis, who had ascended to the office in 1772. Colloredo had sought a reduction in holidays, greater religious tolerance, the abolition of the tax on Jews, the reform of the schools and the university, a reorganization of the justice system, a liberalization of the censorship laws, and a general aggiornamento of church practices, all done admittedly less out of a desire to increase the happiness of the population than to consolidate his own administrative practices and achieve financial savings. Pezzl must have been aware of these changes, and his Faustin reads like a dramatization of Colloredo's reforms. Moreover, both Salzburg and Colloredo receive rather positive treatment in the novel as well as in the author's popular and still available Reise durch den bayrischen Kreis (1784). In Salzburg, Pezzl also made the acquaintance of Johann Kaspar Riesbeck, who had travelled widely in Germany, had visited Vienna, and had written passionately on Enlightenment causes. It may have been Riesbeck, the author of the successful Briefe über das Mönchswesen (1771-1781), who further emboldened Pezzl to publish the enlightened perspectives in his Briefe aus dem Novizziat (1780) with the same publisher as Riesbeck's own Briefe. Indeed, Pezzl's rebuke of the mentality and the practices of the authorities at a Benedictine abbey may ultimately have caused his appearance before the religious investigatory commission at the university and precipitated his unexplained departure from Salzburg to Zurich where he likely began work on Faustin.12.

Pezzl's hero, who may be named after Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), the nephew of Laelius Socinus (1525-1562), an opponent of the feudal connections of the church, is born in Bavaria not far from the abbey in Wansthausen. He possesses a good nature and a true German heart (‘die gütige Natur nebst einem ächten deutschen Biederherzen’, 7). He is honest, cheerful, open and generous (‘Gerade, munter, offenherzig, wohltätig’, 7). The offspring of a liaison between an abbot and his washerwoman, he is moral, but not handsome. His adopted father, a village official, who had become disfigured in a war while serving under Emperor Karl VII, initially earns his living as a valet for the director of the abbey; he subsequently becomes an administrator of the village when he unsuspectingly marries the pregnant mistress of the abbot. Faustin is then educated at the abbey by the enlightened Pater Bonifaz, who reads more German than French, subscribes to the weeklies, and is aware of current trends in literature. A student of intellectual history, he is most interested in transmitting his belief in the beneficial effect of philosophy: ‘Aufklärung, Erleuchtung des Menschengeschlechts, Toleranz, politische Thätigkeit, helle philosophische Denkungsart’ (13). While the philosophical idiom of the words ‘Aufklärung,’ ‘Erleuchtung des Menschengeschlechts,’ and ‘helle philosophische Denkungsart’ underscore Bonifaz's progressive philosophical stance, as does his unstinting support of Voltaire - ‘der größte Philosoph seit's Philosophen gibt’ (16), Faustin's education to the ideals of the Enlightenment under the guidance of Bonifaz is not bereft of social, historical and political context - ‘politische Thätigkeit.’ Faustin's later political awareness (if not engagement) and his social commitment reflect this practical (if not easily realizable) aspect of his education as well. In other words, as the story of the novel repeatedly but not solely turns on contentious philosophical issues and highly inflammable ecclesiastical matters, Pezzl has staked out a reasonably broad experiential framework for his hero, outlined by Bonifaz' belief that they are living in ‘das wahre philosophische Jahrhundert’ (14). Faustin is then not an ignorant young man who must be educated, but rather a programmed visionary, against whom the depicted social, religious, political and philosophical ideas of Europe and the New World are to be measured. As a hero, Faustin only rarely calls into question his own belief in the ‘philosophical century’, nor does that really matter, since, as Christoph Siegrist accurately observes, ‘... in Zentrum [des Romans] stand nun nicht mehr eine abstrakte metaphysische Theorie, sondern die Frage nach dem Realisierungsgrad von “Aufklärung”, des Abbaus von Obskurantismus und Despotismus’.13.

Faustin's first attempt to put into practice the goals of an enlightened society occurs when he ar-

gues with the local peasants that the excessive number of feast days and processions, which he has learned are an impediment to economic activity, should be reduced. Modelling enlightened behavior, he works in the field on the holiday. But this decision, which renders him in the eyes of the local peasants ‘ein Lutheraner’, (20) leads to disappointment: the farmers pummel him and destroy his tools. While protestant, northern Germany may not have been a paragon of Enlightenment virtue by the 1780s, it had already begun to see as trivial the Moral Weeklies, even as the Catholic south had hardly established an educated reading public. It is not unimaginable that the peasants responded as they did. Moreover, while the impulse to oppose anachronistic mystical religious beliefs may have been obvious to the educated public and to the empire's officials (and the emperor himself), the peasants did not share this belief. For them, behavior that departed from traditional Catholic doctrine and practice was seen as evidence of Protestant infiltration and even an abdication of political responsibility.14. Despite this initial failure, Faustin and Bonifaz continue to read enlightened books (Voltaire, Helvetius, Bayle, Montesquieu) until these are confiscated by the ‘Inquisitionsgericht’ (24), with the result that the books are burned along with those of the encyclopedists, Wieland, and Nicolai.

Upon his arrival in Munich, Faustin witnesses a crowd throwing stones at the window of an alleged ‘Aufklärer und Verbesserer’, who wants to reform the schools and introduce a new catechism. But in Bavaria, writes Pezzl, one thinks differently: ‘Alter Glaube und altes Bier ist noch das Beste was wir in Baiern haben’ (28). There is no need for change as far as the inhabitants of Munich are concerned. Here Faustin befriends Traubach, the son of a merchant with similarly enlightened sentiments but perhaps more common sense. In contrast to Faustin, and in anticipation of the encomium to Joseph II that concludes the novel, Traubach sees the court, not the ‘Volk’, as the medium through which enlightened thinking and practice can emerge. A subsequent chance meeting with the Swiss miracle worker Johann Joseph Gassner, who claims to be able to heal physical ailments by exorcising the devil from the sick, illustrates once again the backwardness of the ‘Volk’ and represents the next challenge to the potential Enlighteners, for philosophy and miraculous cures are, to the enlightened view, irreconcilable. Hysterical women and spasmodics are among those who come to Gassner to be healed ‘durch sein Hokus-Pokus’ (40). True to the enlightened notion of verifiable scientific proof, Faustin recommends that Gassner, encouraged in his pursuits by some bishops (not Salzburg and Mainz) who gain financially from his activity, submit his claims to the scientists in Göttingen. In this chapter entitled ‘Die Komödie der Religion’, Faustin is subsequently attacked by one of Gassner's followers, and the wound to his eye becomes a kind of badge of honor to his enlightened beliefs (43). It appears that, for Pezzl, even before his extended stay in Vienna in the mid-1780s, where his own enthusiasm for the Enlightenment waned, the common folk are not readily receptive to the practical truths of the Enlightenment.

Forced to flee the ‘Klauen der Pfaffenrache’ (49), brought on in part of Faustin's book against the monks and the virgin birth, the friends next find themselves in Venice, an averred pillar of republican thought. But for Traubach and Faustin the city proves to be only one more stop in unenlightened Italy where kisses placed on a donkey grant indulgence, where the Inquisition remains active and excommunication a frequently employed disciplinary measure, where denial of the power of saints (Anthony in Padua) imperils one's life, where the country is, simply put, ‘gegen den Geist unsers Jahrhunderts.’ (54) Particularly in the political arena, critical thought is not tolerated, for the pair is arrested for reasoning about the feast of the marriage of the Doge to the sea.

Poverty, superstition, fanaticism, and oppression are also in evidence during Faustin's further, solitary stay in Italy, where he encounters masses of pilgrims travelling to Rome to receive indulgence, thus filling the Church's coffers. From a German painter Faustin hears of the indexing of the enlightened thinkers of the Catholic Church, most of whom had argued for the subordination of the

church to the state, e.g. Peter von Osterwald, Antonio Pereira de Figueiredo, and Bishop Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (Febronius). He also learns of the monopolistic wool trade that the Church practices, much to the disadvantage of Germans who must pay for the wool burial garments of the deceased bishops. A visit to St Peter's Cathedral provides commentary on the exploitation of the employed eunuchs and on the frequent murders and high rate of criminality in the eternal city. And when a fellow traveller is taken ill as a result of a stiletto wound, Faustin is initially unable to get the necessary medical attention because the injured man is a Lutheran. That Faustin nevertheless secures a doctor demonstrates his own religious tolerance and his conviction that those who believe differently are likewise entitled to be treated compassionately.

In Naples Faustin learns of the excommunication of members of the Freemasons and of the remarkably low number of ‘Selbstdenker’ (78) as well as of the general lack of available information about enlightened figures, e.g. Voltaire. The Freemasons, whose Viennese ‘Loge zu Wohltätigkeit’15. later included Pezzl, are subject to excommunication and mistreatment, indeed to torture. There is likewise very little tolerance shown for the Turks, whose religion is alien to Catholic orthodoxy. The fanatical religious hysteria manifests itself most graphically in the ‘Fest des heiligen Januarius’ (84), at which the dried blood of San Genaro is said to become liquified in the presence of a statue of the saint; but when the blood doesn't flow, Faustin is held to be the cause. Suspected of being a Freemason, he loses two teeth in the ensuing brawl as he agrees with his rescuer: ‘Man sollt' erst mehr in der Aufklärung thun, ehe man so viel Geschreis darüber macht’ (89).

Escaping to Genoa, Faustin meets a group of Bavarians who are preparing to travel to the Sierra Morena in Spain because of the freedom that it promises. Both Protestants and Catholics have been invited by the King of Spain to populate the area, which is said to be an enlightened paradise, under the guidance of the tolerant Count Olavides. Here there are allegedly no ‘Schwärmer’, no cloisters, no ex-Jesuits, and church and state are said to be separate, long a goal of the Enlightenment. The inquisition - ‘die heilige Mordbrennerei’ (105) - has also come to an end. But on the ship to Spain Faustin witnesses a thief being whipped by a Carmelite monk; the thief eventually dies despite Faustin's protest that this treatment is ‘wider alle Menschlichkeit’ (113). Once in the Sierra Morena, Faustin becomes the secretary to Count Olavides who corresponds with Faustin's beloved Voltaire, ‘der grosse Philosoph, der Aufklärer des Menschengeschlechts,... der die Fakel der Philosophie und Toleranz in Europa aufstekte, der Vernunft und Menschheit in ihre Rechte einsetzte,... kurz dem wir unser philosophisches Jahrhundert zu verdanken haben’ (123-24). In the progressive Olavides, whom Voltaire himself admired, Faustin sees the potential for the instatement of Enlightenment practice over the forces of obscurantism. But the ugly head of superstitious belief emerges once again, when the king, owing to an apparition, reconstitutes the Inquisition, and Olavides is summoned before the court. One fears, as happened in Pombal's Portugal, the re-introduction of the ‘Rokenphilosophie’.

In the chapter entitled ‘Eine bekannte Historie’, Pezzl narrates how both Olavides, who had sought to hold religious figures accountable to the law, and Faustin are arrested for having espoused enlightened beliefs and for having corresponded with Voltaire and Rousseau. As a result of the decision of the court of inquisition, whose members Pezzl lists, Olavides loses his fortune and is banned from the Sierra Morena, and Faustin is beaten and exiled to Brest before he finds his way to Paris. Pezzl focuses more keenly on social issues in his hero's visit to France. First, Faustin's bags are searched because the King of France is now the ‘Universalerbe’ (151). More significantly, Faustin then observes the Parisian nobility's exploitation of the poor and its excessive self-indulgence. Faustin finds it inexplicable that the nobility can earn ‘12000 Livres Einkünfte, wobei man nichts arbeiten darf’ (156). The opulence of the opera is inconsistent with the poverty of the general population. It is suggested that the monies could be put to better use by improving the quality of the

water. Ultimately, Faustin despairs that France, the land of Voltaire and Montesquieu, could produce such misery. In as much as the encyclopedists are without influence and indeed imprisoned, France, in the final analysis, approximates the end of the Enlightenment: ‘Adieu Aufklärung! Adieu Sieg der Vernunft!’ (167)

The precarious or ambivalent position of the Enlightenment is further illustrated in Pezzl's description of Voltaire's final years. While Faustin shares Voltaire's fundamental enlightened stance, he can also find fault with the French author's character. About to be exiled, Voltaire is said to be uncertain about the Enlightenment despite the cheers of the crowds (including Faustin) who wait outside his hotel. But Faustin comes to agree with his new Bavarian side-kick, Bruckner, who notes of the French philosopher: ‘Man schätzt - bis auf einige wenige versteht sich - seine Schriften allgemein; aber man liebt den Mann selbst nicht, der bei allem seinem Toleranzpredigen doch eine gewaltige Dosis Galle und Verfolgungsgeist hatte’ (179). Upon hearing this judgement, Faustin decides to abandon his desire to see the French philosopher. With the death of Voltaire in 1778, Bruckner summarizes Voltaire's achievement: ‘Wollen alle deine der Vernunft und Menschheit Ehre machende Grundsätze befolgen und ausbreiten, ohne deine moralischen und authorschaftliche Schwachheiten nachzuahmen’ (183). Pezzl narrates how Voltaire's body is taken secretly from Paris to the Champagne where it is buried much to the presumed jubilation of the Catholic world: ‘Wie hoch wird die Literatur des katholischen Deutschlands jauchzen! Das ist ein herrlicher Bissen für sie: Die hat nun die schönste Gelegenheit das Register ihrer Insolenzen mit einer Bestie zu vergrössern’ (187).

Enlightened practice seems to fare no better in Germany. In Speyer, Faustin hears of the scholar Martin Wiehrl who, because he affirmed self-love and published in German, is persecuted, ultimately as a Spinozist. Faustin finds this especially troubling because the Palatinate, with its many pirate publishers, had been a substantial contributor to the advancement of enlightened thinking. As Traubach had previously dampened Faustin's enthusiasm for the acceptance of Enlightenment thought, Bruckner is also more cautious with respect to the real possibility of Enlightenment: ‘Aber fragen Sie einmal, was all diese Laternen zur realen Aufklärung und Verbesserung schon beigetragen haben’ (198). Perhaps echoing Pezzl, he notes that there is too much theory and not enough practice. As further evidence of the absence of enlightened practice Bruckner offers the fact that thousands are leaving their repressive, intolerant homeland in the Palatinate: ‘Was die Regierung taugt? Ich denke, dies ist der handgreiflichste, der unumstößlichste Beweis dafür, dass Fehler, wesentliche Fehler in der Staatsverwaltung grassieren, wenn Schwärme von Bürgern mit kaltem Blut aus dem Land ziehn...’ (199). Repression is likewise evident in Mainz where a book by Johann Lorenz Isenbiehl (1744-1818), critical of the dogmatists, has found some acceptance. Neuer Versuch über die Weissagung von Emmanuel, issued without a place of publication in 1778, argued against the possibility of an immaculate conception and resulted in the arrest of its Catholic author. Readers of the book were threatened with excommunication, thus raising the question of the proper relationship between religious authority and civil law. The progressives argued, apparently without success, that the excommunicated still have civil rights - ‘dass jeder Exkommunizirte alle seine Bürgerliche und Gesellschafts-Rechte beibehalten müsse’ (211). And in Koblenz Faustin notes the imprisonment of a newspaper writer ‘weil er die ganz nakte Wahrheit in sein Blättchen gesezt, dass der achtzigjährige Febronius den Widerruf seines fürchterlichen Buches, mit dem er den Römischen Stul ganz in Stüke zerschmettert hatte, nicht aus freiem Willen und eignem Kopfe verfertigt, sondern nur so abgeschrieben habe, wie er ihm unter hunderttausend Drohungen... auf Anstiften seines eignen Fürst-Erzbischofes war aufgedrungen worden’ (214-215). Despite the control of the education process by the monks, Pezzl cites Hontheim's belief that his words and works will outlast the forced recantation. Underscoring the undesirable intimate relationship between church and sta-

te, these examples reinforce the novel's intent to address both the errant ways of religious obscurantism and of political despotism. Of course, one finds no efforts to overthrow the authorities, but the enlightened stance and the criticized positions leave the reader in no doubt about how the author evaluates the behavior.

Religious intolerance also undermines personal relationships. In Cologne Faustin is infatuated with a young woman named Klärchen and forgets momentarily ‘Philosophie und Aufklärung’ (225). When he witnesses the shocking intolerance of the Lutheran pastor Westhoff, who has his thugs compel the people to church service (recalling the Synod of Volberg which asserted that those who miss communion were to be fined), Faustin reflects long about who the worse offender was - the Catholic or the Protestant - and concludes ‘Endlich erkannte er dem evangelischen Büttel Westhoff die erste Stelle unter den kristlichen Pharisäern zu’ (229).16. Indeed, the surprising intolerance of the Lutheran pastor awakens Faustin from his infatuation. But the scales in the contest of the faiths are balanced in a chapter entitled ‘Thorheiten auf beyden Seiten’: Faustin accompanies his beloved Klärchen to a public sermon in which a Pater Simple Haan, an Augustinian monk, pontificates ‘Kein Protestant könne selig werden’ (232). The monk further refers to Luther and Calvin as ‘Höllenbraten, Verführer des Volks’ (232). Faustin is deeply shaken by the intolerance, and when he drinks an ecumenical toast to the ‘Wohlsein aller Protestanten’ (236), Klärchen leaves him.

Since the clerics are demonstrably incapable of enlightened leadership, Faustin next places his trust with the military leaders:

Geistlichkeit bleibt immer Geistlichkeit; wird sich immer vom Staate unabhängig zu machen, und doch Einfluss auf denselben zu erhalten suchen, das ist ihr Esprit de Corps. Damals war das goldne Alter der Pfaffen, jezt ist das goldne Alter der Soldaten: Und bei einer genauen Untersuchung soll sich's finden, hoff ich, dass die Menschheit im Ganzen unter dem Soldaten Regiment noch immer ehrlicher behandelt wird als unter dem Regiment der Geistlichen... (250)

But his hope for an improvement of humanity under the military, while not dashed, is not fulfilled either. For, Faustin soon finds himself in Hessia before Hauptmann von Lunten, who is involved in the sending of German peasants to America to fight for the British. As he learns more about the intricacies of the ‘deutscher Sklavenhandel’ (245), Faustin becomes despondent. Still, while he agrees that the Americans' war with England is of no consequence to the German peasants, the prospect of visiting England, ‘die philosophischste aller Nazionen’ (251), and the ‘menschenfreundliche Quakem in Philadelphia’ (251) rekindles in him some hope for witnessing enlightened practice. But England only brings further disappointment when he observes a funeral pyre at which the Pope, as Antichrist, is to be festively burned. In an enlightened age this seems to him the most grievous offense: ‘Dieses Spektakel dünkte ihm bei weitem das ärgerlichste aus allen denen die er bis jezt noch zur Schande unsers Jahrhunderts hatte spielen sehen’ (260).

The harsh critique of the sale of peasants and soldiers is followed by an even more vitriolic condemnation of the black slave trade, which Faustin observes in the subsequent employ of Mr Monyful in Jamaica. He labels Captain Stone-Heart's treatment and sale of black slaves ‘die unverschämtesten Dinge unterm Monde’ (268). Pezzl graphically details the beatings, rapes and starvation the slaves must endure. He describes how they were set upon by tigers, how they were packed into ships, and how some were tossed overboard. Conjoining the despicable social practice with the powerful language of philosophical and religious belief, Faustin exclaims: ‘Das sogenannte Naturrecht und die gepriesene Menschenliebe ist wohl nur in den europäischen Büchern zu Hause. Und die Religion!...die sanfte Kristus-Religion! Wenn diese Sklavenmäkler und Sklaventyrannen keine Gottesläugner sind, dann gibts wahrlich keine mehr in der Welt’ (275). As he once again observes

the gap between enlightened theory and practice, Faustin criticizes the hypocrisy of the English who speak of freedom yet practise slavery. Frequently, his praise of the victory of reason and humanity is ironic, but nowhere is it more indignant than here: ‘Ist wohl Sieg der Menschheit, philosophisches Jahrhundert!... Aber ich muss neuerdings wiederholen: Diese Sklavenhändler und Konsorten, die sind die wahren, die einzigen Atheisten!’ (279)17. Given the limits imposed on political speech, the language of religion is perhaps the most penetrating that Pezzl can employ.

As a result of his rescue of the slave-dealer Mr Monyful, Faustin is rewarded with his freedom and some money. He travels to New York and is able to purchase the freedom of some German slaves, one of whom is, remarkably, his old teacher Pastor Bonifaz, who had been incarcerated for his enlightened belief ‘dass es nützlicher wäre, Oekonomie, Physik und Mathematik zu studieren, als schwarzgallige Polemik und dürre Dogmatik’ (287). Despite his personal misfortune Bonifaz still affirms that there are good men in Germany who aim to combat superstition and intolerance. Thus, Faustin and Bonifaz decide to go to Berlin to find an enlightened rule. Before sailing for Friedrich's Berlin, they pause in London to pay homage at the gravesites of England's enlightened figures, but they are told that there is no site for the Catholic Alexander Pope. Faustin exclaims: ‘Wär Pope als Postklepper oder Rennpferd gestorben, so hätt' er ein Monument aus Alabaster; aber weil er als Katholik starb, darum hat er keins’ (295). While Catholics are supposed to be equal before the law in enlightened England, the home of Sir George Saville, who had earlier proposed laws allowing Catholics greater rights (1699/1700), was stormed and burned by intolerant Protestant fanatics chanting for an end to the papacy. Bonifaz refers to the event as a ‘Protestantische Bartholomäustag’ (297). Pezzl then describes the assault on the Parliament of five thousand demonstrators (he actually writes of 20,000), led by Lord George Gordon in 1780, who sought to undo the liberalization of the legal improvement of the Catholics of 1778. The disturbances led to the deaths of 450 English citizens. The military, which was summoned to defend the assaulted parliamentarians, seems to have stood aside and let the ‘Dämon des Fanatismus’ (300) continue. Bonifaz cites Voltaire to explain the rebellion:

Wenn der Fanatism das Gehim eines Volkes einmal angesteckt und verpestet hat, ist die Krankheit unheilbar. Man muss fliehen und ausharren, bis die Luft wieder gereinigt ist. Der Geist der Philosophie ist das einzige Mittel, der nach und nach die Gährung dämpft: Gesetze und Religion vermögen nichts gegen die Pest der Seele; die Religion, statt als Panazee zu dienen, verwandelt sich in solch einem angesteckten Gehime zu eitel Gift. (301)

Even-handed and deliberate reason is indeed no match for the fanatical masses, not in the eighteenth century nor in the twenty-first. Watching the ransacking of a Catholic church from the Bavarian embassy, Faustin decides to flee. He is prepared to abandon his dream of an enlightened society. But the dying Bonifaz convinces him to keep the faith and return to Germany.

In Hamburg Faustin encounters Pastor Johann Melchior Götz who preaches against the Catholics, the Reformists, the theater, Lessing, and Campe's educational program. Faustin remarks that fanatics like Gordon, Westhof, Götz, Osma, Haan, appear to belong to all churches. Once in Berlin, on the other hand, Faustin readily perceives the ‘wohltätigen Folgen der philosophischen Denkungsart des grossen Monarchen’18. (315). And yet, even in the Prussian capital, one finds conflict when the unenlightened population opposes the introduction of a new Protestant songbook precipitating the ‘Liederkrieg’. To underscore the general tolerance of the crown, Pezzl cites Friedrich's familiar parole three times in the short chapter: ‘Bei mir kann Jeder glauben was er will, wenn er nur Ehrlich ist’ (317). And Faustin offers lavish praise of Friedrich's religious broad-mindedness as he lists all of the tolerated groups; the Moslems in fact are said to be ‘toleranter als die Allerkristlichsten’ (319). Faustin is especially pleased to find a lack of dogma in Berlin, where belief in the immacu-

late conception, in the Council of Trent, in the holy house at Loretto, and in the infallibility of the Pope are not required.19. Not a world without religion is desired, only one in which the clergy recognize that they are ‘die Lehrer des grossen Haufens’ (321) and thus have an obligation to instruct their followers away from fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution.

Having seen aspects of enlightened rule in the north, Faustin intends to travel to Vienna to learn first hand of Joseph II's reforms. On the way, Traubach, his newly re-found friend, recounts his own adventures, which provide further corroboration for the reader of Faustin's experience of the intolerant and repressive authorities. In general, repetition is a key aesthetic technique in the novel, as is listing, e.g. of groups, places, etc. When Traubach expresses doubt about the installation of enlightened practices, Faustin reveals that his teacher Bonifaz had also occasionally questioned the real possibility of the philosophical century: ‘Er gestand mir zwar, dass in der wirklichen Welt nicht so viel Toleranz, Aufklärung und Philosophie sey, als in den Büchern; dass die Epoche der allgemeinen Erleuchtung um etwas zu frühe angekündigt worden;... Aber noch in seinen letzten Augenblicken versicherte er mich, wir würden uns noch des wahren philosophischen Jahrhunderts zu erfreuen haben’ (328-329). This is perhaps as close as Faustin comes intellectually to despairing of his belief in the inherent reasonableness of the world, this despite the fact that in Ingolstadt the monks have regained control of the university and subordinated reason to revelation. But the detailed ‘Der Sieg der Möncherei’ is followed by ‘Bessere Aussichten’. in which Pezzl has the friends celebrate Archbishop Colloredo's reform plan of 1782, in particular his Hirtenbrief against Gassner. This letter, which was distributed by Joseph to all the bishops in the empire, broadly defines the goals to be fostered by the Enlightenment: ‘...Völker umschaffen, neue Generazionen wirklich bilden...’ (363).20. Convinced again of the possibility to fulfil Enlightenment thought, Faustin actually provides a date for the beginning of such Enlightenment: 1780, the beginning of Joseph's reign, is written in large letters in the text.

In the final chapter ‘Die Philosophie auf dem Thron’, which essentially enthrones enlightened philosophy and philosophizes the throne, Pezzl via Traubach recounts, excessively perhaps, Joseph's enlightened achievements. These reforms could remove precisely those obstacles which Faustin (and Traubach) had encountered: there is a reduction in the number of processions and rituals that reinforce superstition and fanaticism; book censorship is limited (private collections are not subject to censorship); monks are subordinate to their local bishops; the latter are permitted to offer marital dispensations; tolerance is extended in the whole monarchy; many contemplative monastic orders are abolished; the rights of Jews are expanded; there is an end to the practice of bondage; bishops need no longer swear an oath of allegiance to Rome; the oath of immaculate conception is eliminated; Protestant houses of prayer are legally established; schools are increased and improved; the church's wealth is put to use in support of the poor; and German church songs gain popularity. Seeking to resolve (or perhaps to overlook) the dichotomy between absolutism and Enlightenment, Faustin concludes ‘dass der Kaiser den Grundsätzen des größten Philosophen [Voltaire] doch nicht sehr abgeneigt wäre’ (375). Voltaire, the model of an enlightened philosopher, may indeed have been right to announce the beginning of the ‘Tage der Vernunft’ (376) since the tyranny of Rome has been overturned - ‘das Joch des tyrannischen Roms ist abgeschüttet’ (376). Impressed by the policies of Joseph, the German Titus, Faustin and Traubach decide to settle in Vienna as an enlightened, tolerant, and true philosophical century is ushered in.21. Clearly, the relationship of Joseph to the Enlightenment is a complex one, and its analysis extends beyond the scope of this essay, which has the more modest aim to illuminate the practical dimensions of the Enlightenment as conveyed by Pezzl's Faustin.22. Perhaps it suffices to point out that the praise of Joseph in Faustin is a result of the enthusiasm for his reforms, not of absolute adulation for the monarch. Written before the widespread disillusion with the Joseph's reign (and before the retraction of some of those reforms),

the novel cannot easily capture the despotic qualities in the emperor. Pezzl's later biography of Joseph, Charakteristik Josephs II: eine historische und biographische Skizze (1790), which was published five times by 1824, is an overall positive evaluation of the emperor but it is not exclusively so.23. One can perhaps safely say that the theme of reform in Pezzl's extremely popular novel struck a resonant chord in the hearts and minds of Viennese society in the late eighteenth century. While the means to implement societal change were not always at their disposal, reform-minded writers and bureaucrats, moderate in their hopes like Pezzl, were at least able keep such potential change in the conversations of those who wielded the political power.24.

As the preceding commentary (whose summarizing tendency may be useful to those unfamiliar with the text) may make clear, Pezzl's Faustin can be legitimately criticized for its lack of varied, coherent plot line and for the absence of character development,25. criticisms that could also be levelled at a host of eighteenth-century novels. There is indeed much structural redundancy: time and again (but, owing to the different historical contexts, not ad nauseum), Faustin's experiences are contradicted by his preconceived notion of enlightened practice. While it is indeed fair to say that Pezzl's novel is aesthetically and linguistically less sophisticated than Voltaire's Candide, one should nevertheless recall its seemingly different intellectual aim: if Voltaire wants to question the legitimacy of an optimistic attitude toward life (Candide ou l'Optimisme), Pezzl seeks to convey the possible realization of the practical ethos of the Enlightenment. Moreover, in contrast to Voltaire's novel, the value of Pezzl's text lies not only in its affirmation of the progressive aspects of Enlightenment thought as universal heritage but also in the very historical and geographical information communicated. With his ‘real facts,’ Pezzl seeks to instruct, inform, and entertain. Through irony, satire, exaggeration, and occasional sarcasm, Pezzl argues rather aggressively that the historical inhabitants of the European, American and African continents are entitled to specific fundamental or natural expectations: religious tolerance, freedom from repression and slavery, moderate censorship laws, et. al. Praised by reviewers in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliographie, the novel does indeed focus primarily on what Gugitz refers to as the ‘Los-von-Rom Bewegung’, the determination to separate political rule from Roman authority.26. Religious practice and religious institutions do bear the brunt of Pezzl's critique, but issues pertaining to the church - holidays, indexing of books, liturgical reform, civil rights - were inseparable from the overall aims of reform that obtained in the educated public and in the ruling house. For the 1780s such religious satire was the norm, particularly when the political variety was more hazardous, and the ubiquitous Roman Church had become, especially under Joseph II, a relatively safe target in pre-patriotic Austria.27. But it should be clear from the foregoing review that Pezzl, a kind of Nicolai of the south, who was befriended in Vienna by the reform-minded poet Aloys Blumauer, editor of the Journal für Freimaurer in 1784, affirms other non-religious dimensions of the Enlightenment in this early writing: its social, political, scientific and even economic aspects.28. This enlightened practice dovetails with aims of the Freemasons, whom Pezzl, himself a member, defended against Joseph II's wishes in his Schatten und Licht. Epilog zu den Wiener Maurerschriften (1786).

Besides its understandable artistic shortcomings (Pezzl was not a friend of the Romantics and their new aesthetic), the hypercritical perspective of the novel may also have contributed to the novel's and the author's obscurity. This was a writer whose work was praised by both Georg Forster and Freiherr von Knigge and whose Faustin could be found in the Handbibliothek of Novalis. Jean Paul wrote a sequel to Pezzl's Faustin with the title Faustins Nachlass.29. In the restorative years following Joseph's rule, there were likely not many who would have wanted to read such a hardhitting, reportage-like critique, especially in an age that gradually came to prefer an aesthetics that enshrined the fantastic or that accentuated eternal truths and beauties.30. The budding field of Germanistik also preferred to forget such ‘trivial’ writing and writers. Pezzl remains known today

largely as the author of Skizze von Wien and Neue Skizze von Wien, texts written not many years after the publication of Faustin, when Joseph's reforms were in part withdrawn and Pezzl had found a secure position as secretary and librarian to Fürst Kaunitz in Vienna (1785). These guides to Vienna as well as the author's subsequent novels, Ulrich von Unkenbach und seine Steckenpferde (1800-02) and Gabriel oder die Stiefmutter Natur (1810), document the author's more cautious even disapproving assessment of the Enlightenment. Criticizing those who do not distinguish true from false Enlightenment, the result in part of the many scribblers in Vienna, Pezzl, after whom a park and a small street in Vienna are named, offers in his Skizze von Wien this fairly conservative, bourgeois assessment of the Enlightenment, one which might be typical of a high ranking civil servant:

Ein aufgeklärter Mann ist mir derjenige, dessen moralisches Gefühl richtig gebildet ist; der Genügsamkeit in dem Beruf zu finden weiß, worin der Zufall oder die Gesetze ihn gestellt haben; der aus Überlegung rechtschaffen handelt; der Liebe zur Arbeit, Ehrfurcht für die Gesetze, Empfänglichkeit für Belehrung, Liebe zur Ordnung in seinen häuslichen und öffentlichen Geschäften, diätische Mäßigkeit und Sorge für seine Gesundheit sich zu habituellen Eigenschaften gemacht hat; dem es nie gelüstet nach einem Aufwand, der seine Kräfte übersteigt; der die zu seiner gesellschaftlichen Bestimmung nötigen Talente stets zu vervollkommnen sucht; der die Pflichten des Bürgers, Freundes, Ehemannes, Vaters kennt und ausübt; der weiß, daß man in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung des Ganzen individuelle Lasten tragen und Privatvorteile notwendig aufopfern muß und dieselben ohne Bitterkeit trägt und aufopfert; der die vom Staat öffentlich eingeführte Religion nie unbescheiden anfällt, und wenn er sich andere Überzeugungen erworben hat, denselben im Stillen huldigt; der endlich sein Dasein freudig genießt und die Wissenschaft besitzt, es bequem, lange und ruhig zu genießen.31.

The primary themes of Faustin are no longer readily in evidence in the above quotation, and one can detect the lack of fiery indignation and perplexity at unenlightened positions that characterize Pezzl's early novel. Pezzl's relatively aggressive defense of a historically based demand for human dignity has been dampened and replaced by an emphasis on self-disciplined, domestic morality and personal happiness. The contrast illustrates the transmogrification of the ethos of the Enlightenment into a Biedermeier perspective.


Vorige Volgende

Over het gehele werk

auteurs


Over dit hoofdstuk/artikel

auteurs