Buddhist Romanticism

date curriculum, which often meant keeping up with the latest liberal
trends from England and France; but to maintain the support of their
sponsors, they had to ensure that what they taught would not be so liberal
as to upset the status quo. Thus the students at these universities found
themselves in a schizophrenic environment of ever-changing standards for
what could and could not be taught.
The schizophrenia did not end with their graduation. If they were lucky
enough to secure jobs in the German bureaucracies, they found themselves
dealing with the vagaries of the local monarchs or legislative councils, who
often required their officials to act in direct contradiction to the principles
learned at school. This, of course, has been a recurring problem in human
history, but in late 18th century Germany it was felt especially acutely, as
German political realities lagged so far behind those of its neighbors to the
west.
Historians writing about this period describe the prevailing mood
among educated Germans as one of alienation and separation: feeling
divided within themselves because of the disconnect between the liberal
principles in which they had been educated and the conservative principles
that still governed the society where they lived and worked; and divided
from a larger sense of communion with like-minded people by the
fragmented social and political landscape. In terms later popularized by the
French Revolution, there was a felt lack of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
With little practical hope of attaining the first two of these three ideals,
many educated Germans focused their energies on the third. Here,
leadership came first from another consequence of the Thirty Years War:
the growth of Pietism.
Although modern historians have suggested that the real causes of the
war were economic, those in the midst of the war saw it as a life-and-death
battle over the future of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church
had been eager to see the Reformation suppressed by military means, as
had happened to earlier heterodox movements throughout the Middle
Ages. The Protestant denominations, in response, recognized the need to
become more organized and to seek military support of their own. In
exchange for this support, however, they found themselves forced to
become more and more subservient to the rulers allied to their cause. The
altar, to use the terms of the time, became subject to the throne. To make
this fact more palatable, participants in the war justified it in terms of the
87