Johann Joseph von Görres
Encyclopedia
Johann Joseph von Görres (25 January 1776 – 29 January 1848) was a German writer and journalist.

Early life

Görres was born at Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...

. His father was moderately well off, and sent his son to a Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 college under the direction of the Roman Catholic clergy. The young Görres' sympathies were initially with the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, and the French exiles in the Rhineland confirmed his beliefs, which would then evolve over time. He harangued the revolutionary clubs, and insisted on the unity of interests which would ally all civilized states to one another. He began a republican journal called Das rote Blatt, and afterwards Rubezahl, in which he strongly condemned the administration of the Rhenish provinces by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

After the Treaty of Campo Formio
Treaty of Campo Formio
The Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on 18 October 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of revolutionary France and the Austrian monarchy...

 (1797) there was hope that the Rhenish provinces would be constituted into an independent republic. In 1799 the provinces sent an embassy, of which Görres was a member, to Paris to put their case before the directory. The embassy reached Paris on 20 November 1799; two days before this Napoleon had assumed power. After much delay he received the embassy; but the only answer they obtained was "that they might rely on perfect justice, and that the French government would never lose sight of their wants". Görres on his return published a tract called Resultate meiner Sendung nach Paris, in which he reviewed the history of the French Revolution.

During the thirteen years of Napoleon's dominion Görres lived a quiet life, devoting himself chiefly to art or science. In 1801 he married Catherine de Lasaulx, and for some years taught at a secondary school in Koblenz; in 1806 he moved to Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

, where he lectured at the university. As a leading member of the Heidelberg Romantic group, he edited together with Klemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim
Ludwig Achim von Arnim
Ludwig Achim von Arnim was a German poet and novelist born in Berlin.-Life:Arnim was descended from a Prussian noble family. His father was Joachim Erdmann von Arnim , associated with the Prussian court and, among other roles, active as the Director of the Berlin theater...

 the Zeitung für Einsiedler (subsequently re-named Trost-Einsamkeit), and in 1807 he published Die deutschen Volksbücher (literally, The Books of the German People).

He returned to Koblenz in 1808, and again found occupation as a teacher in a secondary school, supported by civic funds. He now studied Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, and in two years published a Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (History of the Myths of the Asiatic World), which was followed ten years later by Das Heldenbuch von Iran (The Book of Heroes of Iran), a translation of part of the Shahnama
Shahnameh
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of Iran and related societies...

, the epic of Firdousi
Ferdowsi
Ferdowsi was a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and related societies.The Shahnameh was originally composed by Ferdowsi for the princes of the Samanid dynasty, who were responsible for a revival of Persian cultural traditions after the...

.

Editor of the Merkur

In 1813 he again took up the cause of national independence, and in the following year founded Der rheinische Merkur. The outspokenness of its hostility to Napoleon made it influential, and Napoleon himself called it la cinquième puissance (the fifth power). It campaigned for a united Germany, with a representative government, but under an emperor, Görres having abandoned his earlier advocacy of republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...

. When Napoleon was at Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...

, Görres wrote an ironic imaginary proclamation issued by him to the people. He criticised the second peace of Paris (1815), declaring that Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

 and Lorraine
Lorraine (région)
Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...

 should have been demanded back from France.

Stein used the Merkur at the time of the meeting of the congress of Vienna to give expression to his hopes. But Hardenberg
Karl August von Hardenberg
Karl August Fürst von Hardenberg was a Prussian statesman and Prime Minister of Prussia. While during his late career he acquiesced to reactionary policies, earlier in his career he implemented a variety of Liberal reforms...

, in May 1815, warned Görres to remember that he was not to arouse hostility against France, but only against Napoleon. There was also in the Merkur an antipathy to Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

, expression of the desire that an Austrian prince should assume the imperial title, and also a tendency to liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

—all distasteful to Hardenberg, and to his master Friedrich Wilhelm III. Görres disregarded warnings sent to him by the censorship, so that the Merkur was suppressed early in 1816, at the instance of the Prussian government; and soon after Görres was dismissed from his teaching post.

Works

He supported himself by his pen, and he became a political pamphleteer. In the excitement which followed Kotzebue's assassination, the reactionary decrees of Carlsbad were framed, and these were the subject of Görres's pamphlet Teutschland und die Revolution (1820). In this work he reviewed the circumstances which had led to the murder of August von Kotzebue
August von Kotzebue
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist.One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften...

, and, while expressing horror at the deed itself, he urged that it was impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion. The success of the work was marked, despite a ponderous style. It was suppressed by the Prussian government, and orders were issued for the arrest of Görres and the seizure of his papers. He escaped to Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, and thence went to Switzerland. Two more political tracts were Europa und die Revolution (1821) and In Sachen der Rheinprovinzen und in eigener Angelegenheit (1822).

In Görres's pamphlet Die Heilige Allianz und die Völker auf dem Kongress zu Verona he asserted that the princes had met together to crush the liberties of the people, and that the people must look elsewhere for help. The "elsewhere" was to Rome; and from this time Görres became an Ultramontane writer. He was summoned to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 by King Ludwig of Bavaria
Ludwig I of Bavaria
Ludwig I was a German king of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states.-Crown prince:...

 as Professor of History in the university, and there his writing enjoyed popularity. His Christliche Mystik (1836–1842) gave a series of biographies of the saints, together with an exposition of Roman Catholic mysticism. But his most celebrated ultramontane work was a polemical one. Its occasion was the deposition and imprisonment by the Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n government of the archbishop Clement Wenceslaus reportedly due to his refusal to sanction in certain instances the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Görres, in his Athanasius (1837), upheld the power of the church, although liberals of later claimed he never insisted on the absolute supremacy of Rome. Athanasius went through several editions, and initiated a long and bitter controversy. In the Historisch-politische Blätter, a Munich journal, Görres and his son Guido (1805–1852) continued to uphold the claims of the church. Görres received the Order of Merit from the king for his services.

Görres studied mysticism while in Strasbourg. He went into the mystical writers of the Middle Ages such as Maria of Agreda
Maria de Agreda
María Fernández Coronel y Arana, Abbess of Ágreda or, known in religion as Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda , also known as the Lady in Blue and the Blue Nun, was born, and died, in Ágreda, a town located in the province of Soria, Castile and León, Spain...

 as well as observing, partly in person, the ecstatic young women of his time (Maria von Mörl, and others); and strove to comprehend more thoroughly the nature of Christian mysticism. These studies led to his work Die christliche Mystik (4 vols., 1836–42; 2nd ed., 5 vols., 1879).

External links



Attribution

Other

  • Carl Jung
    Carl Jung
    Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

     mentions reading Görres as a young man in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
    Memories, Dreams, Reflections
    Memories, Dreams, Reflections is a partially autobiographical book by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and associate Aniela Jaffé...

    (1963) p. 99 ISBN 0-679-72395-1.
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