An edict purported to govern what preachers might utter from the pulpit; a pamphlet turned it into farce, its author concealing himself behind an assumed name. At Halle, in April 1789, the inquiry instituted against the theologian Karl Friedrich Bahrdt sought not merely the hand behind a satire. It was tasked with determining how far the freedom of the pen might extend when a text held the sovereign and his ministers up to ridicule. A second suspicion—that of a secret society—further widened the affair; yet the tribunal did not condemn Bahrdt for directing that clandestine brotherhood.
The dispute had its origins in the Religious Edict of July 1788. The Prussian minister Wöllner sought to curb the doctrinal deviations of pastors and schoolmasters: they were forbidden from teaching publicly against the confessions of the Evangelical Church. Proponents of the measure presented it as a safeguard of doctrine; its adversaries saw in it a yoke laid upon conscience and speech. The debate might have remained confined to scholarly tomes and university halls. It assumed a far more personal cast upon the appearance of an anonymous play entitled The Religious Edict, a Comedy in Five Acts, bearing the name of “Nicolai the Younger.”
The play placed upon the boards a parson charged with drafting the edict. Drunken and coarse, the character framed an enactment that promised tolerance whilst mandating orthodoxy. Surrounding him, interlocutors derided the contradictions of the text, the obligation laid upon ministers to profess publicly a doctrine they might not privately hold, and the constraints imposed upon dissenters. The caricature was not content merely to dispute a policy; it attributed to high officials words and gestures designed to render them contemptible. The 1863 chronicle cites numerous passages from the pamphlet, though it notes that the printed copy itself was no longer accessible to the compiler.
Bahrdt was no stranger caught in an isolated fit of temper. The son of a pastor, a doctor of theology, and a preacher, he had already changed posts several times following doctrinal disputes and academic inquisitions. He had settled in Halle as a privatdozent, written copiously, and opened a coffee-house on the outskirts of the town. He was also accustomed to placing himself at the head of novel enterprises, literary or educational, at times with greater haste than his capacity to organize them permitted. The chapter in the Pitaval views this career with severe judgment; one must distinguish that retrospective portrait from the actual facts examined by the commissioners in the trial of 1789.
Two magistrates—Zepernik, director of the municipal court, and Rottler, syndic of the university—were commanded by higher authority to conduct the investigation. The first charge concerned the commentary on the religious edict and the anonymous comedy. The second pertained to an alleged secret association, the Deutsche Union, sometimes styled the Society of the Twenty-Two. Initially, the inquiry sought to determine whether Bahrdt had written or circulated the two texts; soon, however, the seized papers and the theologian’s own depositions opened another path.
Regarding the commentary on the edict, the examination failed to establish that Bahrdt was its author or publisher. The court accordingly dismissed it from its final deliberations. Matters stood otherwise with the comedy. Bahrdt obstinately denied having composed it, yet he confessed to having aided in its circulation and printing. He had introduced corrections, seen it through the press, and read passages aloud whilst the manuscript was still in circulation. The magistrates thus held evidence establishing his complicity, even if proof of his sole authorship remained, in the eyes of the court, highly probable rather than strictly demonstrated.
The judicial debate turned not upon the propriety of criticizing the edict. The judgment conceded that a subject touching the state might legitimately be submitted to scholarly examination and public discussion; it allowed that the liberty of the press had its proper sphere. Yet this liberty, the judges maintained, was bound to observe the limits of moderation and gravity. They reproached the comedy for inventing scenes and utterances, attributing to the sovereign a farcical enactment, and attacking ministers with personal abuse. They dwelt particularly upon those passages which Bahrdt admitted to having inserted or revised.
The court’s reasoning was at once moral and political. Criticism might legitimately dissect the substance of a statute; it was not permitted, according to this doctrine, to fabricate statements calculated to undermine the subjects’ confidence in their sovereign. The judgment concluded that Bahrdt had played an active part in the distribution of the pamphlet and was in all likelihood its author. For the injury done to the honor due to the crown, the Kammergericht sentenced him to two years’ detention in a fortress. The punishment struck not at all critique of the edict, but at a satire adjudged scurrilous and deceitful.
The Deutsche Union gave rise to a broader inquiry, yet its issue was quite different. An anonymous tract entitled More Notes Than Text had denounced the existence of an association of men of letters and readers. Bahrdt was suspected of being its prime mover. He testified that as early as 1783 he had received an initial invitation to join such an undertaking, followed four years later by fresh instructions and an incomplete plan. He stated that he had corresponded with associates—notably a man named Pott—corrected drafts, caused circulars to be printed, and established a recruiting center in Halle.
In his deposition, Bahrdt described an enterprise in embryo rather than an established society. He had invited men to form regional circles, urged certain individuals to become district directors, and sought to transfer the center of operations to the territories of Bernburg. He maintained that the aim was the advancement of the sciences, arts, education, and religious instruction, and the combat against superstition. He claimed to have labored without remuneration, animated solely by the hope that the organization would bring greater notice to his books. He admitted having assumed the direction of the Halle branch and having circulated plans and letters under the name of the Deutsche Union.
The seized papers revealed a graded structure, rules of admission, and a “secret plan of operations.” The third degree announced as its ultimate goal the end of moral despotism, the emancipation of mankind from superstition, and the elevation of reason to the office of sole judge of truth. Adversaries perceived therein a dangerous faction; other features bore an affinity to Masonic rites. The court also examined the proposal to enlist postal officials, the founding of a publishing house, and the distribution of periodicals. It held that the explanations advanced by Bahrdt—namely, to expedite correspondence and prevent its interception—did not suffice to prove an engine of subversion.
A question remained: had he in truth founded a vast organization? The narrative in the Pitaval relates that persons named upon a roster of members publicly protested and disavowed their affiliation. The compiler concludes that Bahrdt had perhaps created the idea of the society rather than the society itself. This view belongs to the compiler alone; the judgment confined itself to legally established facts. The archives of the Union and the registers of subscriptions were nowhere to be found. The court ruled that the scheme, though secret and framed in degrees, was not intrinsically criminal: its professed objects did not endanger the state, and no statutory offense was demonstrated by the means contemplated.
The verdict thus drew a sharp distinction between the two charges. Bahrdt was found guilty of complicity in the libelous comedy; the direction of the Union was held to constitute no crime. The tribunal took care to note that this acquittal did not stamp every assertion of the accused with the seal of truth, and that several aspects of the enterprise remained obscure. It stated merely that the evidence and the applicable laws afforded no ground to punish him for that activity.
The sentence of two years was subsequently halved by royal grace. Bahrdt served one year in the fortress of Magdeburg. During his confinement, he penned the memoirs of his life; he died in April 1792 upon his vineyard estate near Halle. The proceeding had not resolved the great controversy over the liberty of the press; it had rendered a narrower decree, wherein the bench distinguished between a tolerated association and a pamphlet it accounted an actionable offense.
In this cause, the pen had gone before the cell. Bahrdt was not condemned because every censure of Wöllner or the edict was forbidden: upon one count, the magistrates failed to establish his guilt; upon the other, they found no offense in his governance of the Union. But as to the comedy, his participation in its publication was admitted, and his sarcasms were judged to have overstepped the boundary the court was resolved to defend. The sentence thus spoke as much to the political limits imposed upon the printed word as to the man who had ventured to test them.