Joseph Görres


Johann Joseph Görres, since 1839 von Görres, was a German writer, philosopher, theologian, historian and journalist.

Early life

Görres was born in Koblenz. His father was moderately well off, and sent his son to a Latin college under the direction of the Roman Catholic clergy. The young Görres' sympathies were initially with the French Revolution, 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 Rübezahl, in which he strongly condemned the administration of the Rhenish provinces by France.
After the Treaty of Campo Formio 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, where he lectured at the university. British lawyer and diarist Henry Crabb Robinson met Görres during this time. A quote from his diary:

Görres has the wildest physiognomy – looks like an overgrown old student. A faun-like nose and lips, fierce eyes, and locks as wild as Caliban’s. Strong sense, with a sort of sulky indifference toward others, are the characteristics of his manner.

Clemens Brentano compared his appearance to that

of an old lion shaking and pulling his mane caught in the bars of his cage.

As a leading member of the Heidelberg Romantic group, he edited together with Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim the Zeitung für Einsiedler, and in 1807 he published Die deutschen Volksbücher.
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, and in two years published a Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt, which was followed ten years later by Das Heldenbuch von Iran, a translation of part of the Shahnama, the epic of Firdousi.

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 "a fifth power". It campaigned for a united Germany, with a representative government, but under an emperor, Görres having abandoned his earlier advocacy of republicanism. When Napoleon was at Elba, Görres wrote an ironic imaginary proclamation issued by him to the people. He criticised the second peace of Paris, declaring that Alsace and Lorraine 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, 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, expression of the desire that an Austrian prince should assume the imperial title, and also a tendency to liberalism—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.

Life as an independent writer

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’ pamphlet Teutschland und die Revolution. In this work he reviewed the circumstances which had led to the murder of August von Kotzebue, 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, and thence went to Switzerland. Two more political tracts were Europa und die Revolution and In Sachen der Rheinprovinzen und in eigener Angelegenheit. In the former book – read with avidity throughout Germany. – Görres describes the moral, intellectual and political corruption of France in the course of the eighteenth century as the major cause which led to the revolution:
In his pamphlet Die heilige Allianz und die Völker auf dem Congresse von Verona Görres 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 by King Ludwig of Bavaria as professor of history in the university, and there his writing enjoyed popularity.
Since his sojourn in Strasbourg, Görres had studied the mystic testimonies of various epochs. He went into the mystical writers of the Middle Ages such as María de Ágreda as well as observing, partly in person, the ecstatic young women of his time, and strove to comprehend more thoroughly the nature of Christian mysticism. His Christliche Mystik 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 Prussian government of the archbishop Clement Wenceslaus reportedly due to his refusal to sanction in certain instances the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics.
In his Athanasius, Görres 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 continued to uphold the claims of the church. On New Year's Day of 1839, Görres received the "Civil Order of Merit" from the king for his services.

Death

He died 29 January 1848, the year of the fall of Metternich, and was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich.

Publications