BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

Germany. 35 An infectious enthusiasm for ideas among Germans steeped in “immense erudition”
and “pedagogism,” if invested in revolutionary ideologies and put into practice, could potentially
upset the “equilibrium of the social and moral order” and disturb the “uniform course of
progressive improvement and prosperity.” 36 The double irony of German political incapacity
producing unempirical philosophy or literature tainted at its source, which in turn could
propagate political fanaticism, underscores the key importance of the unpolitical German
stereotype in establishing a perspective on political developments in Germany. Because of the
premium placed on national character, uncertainties and misgivings regarding the Germans
seemed to amplify the specter of menacing and portentous political changes in Germany,
especially when measured in opposition to an idealized English pragmatism and model of
political development.
35 “The Archbishop of Cologne and the King of Prussia,” Blackwood’s, 767.
36 Ibid., 768.
Unrevolutionary Germany: 1848
The stigma of German political ineptitude, defined so thoroughly by the 1840s with
various pronouncements in Blackwood’s about German political degradation, disunity,
indifference and lack of patriotism, came to full fruition in reports of revolutionary activity and
the convocation of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. Blackwood’s mockingly lamented the lost
glories of “old Father Rhine,” who, despite his “conceitedly-vulgar airs” and “overrated
allurements,” yet retained a “spurious halo” of kindly reminiscences for the English tourist, but
who had lately been despoiled by Young Germany in its “revolutionary frenzy” of the “charm of
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