Professor of German, Univ. of Tennessee, Kno xville
Note: Please excuse errors in this text for now because I have not been able to get HTML to work the way I want it to in this long text. It is from a draft on an old typewriter and from handwriting. Dr. Groth died in 1976 .
The quotations and sayings written in my great grandfather’s album by
his college and university friends reflect the spirit of rationalism;
Voltaire and other Frenchman along with the English D
eists are to be found among them. The father of Theodore Kliefoth, later
the "Lutheran Pope of Mecklenburg," wrote the following which I copied
from the album: "Tugend und Glueckseligkeit, mein lieber Groth,
sind nicht entgagengesetzte, sondern nur
wohl zu unterscheidende Begriffe," which in English might read: "Virtue
and Happiness, my dear Groth,
are not contrary concepts; one should
merely fully distinguish between them."
My grandfather was born in 1820. Hence, his period of train ing falls in the age of the so called Revival of Faith (Wiedererweckung des Glaubens). I need only mention such names as Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emerson, to make clear what I mean. I ha te to see Rousseau, Kant and Hegel mentioned in such company, but they too tossed out irrationalist statements enough for the will-to-believe folks to tie to. Given Schleiermacher’s Gefuehl,
Kant’s Unknowable, Schelling’s Mysticism, Hegel’s Al legoricism, and you’ll soon find people throwing in the sponge and saying, as it were: "So Reason is a dubious guide; let us have Faith!" From here it is but a step to a repristinating orthodoxy. The process involved is called "conversion," with i ts emotional concomitant of inward bliss.
My grandfather’s early sermons, some of which are in my possession, team with enthusiastic statements about the blessedness of the state of grace and the anticipation of the joys of Heaven where one shal l be on intimate, sweet terms with Jesus. While grandfather went on to the rigid orthodoxy of the Missourian type, he never ceased to preach about all the sweet things I have alluded to. I stress this because when years later, his sons, Hans and Ha rtwig, after a wild binge in the army, became "converted" at a Hamburg revival meeting and upon their return home greeted their father with the words: "Rejoice with us, papa, we have found the Savior," he retorted: "You fools, shut up with that ju nk." I have the story from Uncle Hartwig. In German he said, "Schwiegt still, Ihr Esel, mit solchem Unfug." The boys had thought they had at last put their father’s teachings into real practice.
I dare say my grandfather was not unique in this matter. One might at one extreme question the sincerity of all of these Faith theologians. But that would not quite be fair. However to a psychologist there must have been other elements in their position besides the ostensible one. Take a look at a convert to another religion or faith: in the background there might well be some factors which have no relation to religion at all. It might be marriage or it might be social status; it might be economic gain.
The great German missionary to t he Chinese, Wilhelm, refused ever to baptize a Chinese man or woman if because it was too obvious they were moved to ask it for ulterior reasons. My brother Hartie told me the rather sordid story how the Chicago Society for the Conversion of Israel had finally snared one family; Hartie as president of the Chicago Lutheran Ministerial Association preached the sermon. Honest man as Hartie was, he was ashamed of the whole business. The convert was badly in need of a job to feed and clothe himself and his numerous offspring.
We might discover the secret motivation of the exponents of the Revival of Faith if we could put our finger on some one thing they all had in common. I believe that it would not be hard to do. With the exception of Hofmann of Erlangen, I do not know of a single representative of this large group who was not a political reactionary. This, I believe, is our clue. Between the Napoleonic wars and 1848, Germany was in a state of political ferment. Liberal thought had come into control of all the four faculties of the Universities. The crown heads of Europe responded to the demands of the liberal groups with the bayonet. Consider the trouble of so many university professors and students. They were headed into jails like sheep. Many fled to America. This is how we got out Willards and Schurzes. Among those who sweated it out in Germany we find such names as the Grimm brothers and the philosopher Hebard.
The Revival of Faith was co- incidental with the political reaction which followed in the wake of the infamous Carlsbad Decrees. In other words the churchmen became religious reactionaries as they became political reactionaries. In each case the temper is the same. You evade t he difficulties of the situation by not facing them. On rational and historical grounds neither religious nor political orthodoxy can be defended; the way out is to make assertions which can be answered only by violence, and then the victory goes to the side having the heaviest cannon. Mecklenburg fell into the hands of the son of Theodore Kliefoth that I have mentioned earlier in connection with my grandfather’s album. Kliefoth snuggled up to the bosom of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and w as a faithful servant to his lord (the Grand Duke, not Jesus). It was expedient for a man like my grandfather to go along with these movements; the surprising thing is that my great grandfather stood by his guns and remained a liberal.
The Revival of Faith, joined together with the political revival of reaction, inevitably led to another phenomenon, namely High Churchism. Kliefoth wrote a big work in , I believe, eight books on the church; Loehe write a book of similar properties on the same subject, and so also Franz Delitzch, the Hebrew scholar. These men all departed form Luther, to whom the ministry was only a convenience, the central doctrine being the priesthood of all believers. According to Luther a man became ordain ed when he was installed as a pastor, at which time, for the sake of order, the members of the congregation conferred upon the pastor their right to preach and teach and administer the Sacraments and perform other ministerial acts. To these Revivers of Faith, the ministry was exalted into something very special, not unlike the Roman Catholic priesthood. The group I grew up with in Iowa was founded by Loehe and many of our pastors had high priestly notions about the ministry. However, there w as a vestigial remains of the Luther’s thought to be found among my teachers at college and theological seminary who were ordained clergymen: they scoured the countryside in search of a group of Lutherans, however small, so as to have the outward form of the ministry, which, according to Luther, they otherwise didn’t have. To occupy its place alongside the state it was necessary for the church in Europe to exalt herself to something special.
The subservience to the state brought with it another element and a very negative one. The church lost its right to serve as a witness against social wrongs.
Not only that, the church forced itself to oppose all the movement for social and economic change and political improvement of th e lot of the common man. About this I shall have more to say later.
To the students of English history, the Oxford movement is the exact counterpart to the German Revival of Faith. Pusey and Newman and Hurrel Froude very clearly tried to block forward-thinking tendencies in England. Newman’s real passion was directed against what I might roughly call Democracy. The venom of the Eighteen Points against Liberalism which he appended to a later edition of the Apologia really lets the cat out of the bag. And not only Newman is in this category, even Jowett, J.A. Froude belong here, and most of the other “eminent” Victorians. They found even Pobedonjeszeff agreeable. All were Tory reactionaries.
To return to my grandfather, after about ten years as a tutor in a nobleman’s family in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he assumed his duties as a pastor of the great village of Kittendorf, the seat of the von Oertzen family. I have no hesitation in calling it “great” because the von Oertzens were one of the oldest Mecklenburg families of nobility. They had chosen and became Christians in the 12th Century at the time that Henry the Lion swept through that territory. Many however fled to Russia in order to avoid the waters of Baptism. I have been told that my grandfather received the parish at the insistence of an old countess who lived with the family where my grandfather had been a tutor. The old lady made my grandparents a wedding present of her own silverware table service. U pon the death of my grandfather, my father asked for one table spoon form that set. It is now in the possession of one of my nephews who also has the name of Emil Groth.
I visited Kittendorf in 1931. The then incumbent minister, a huge Mecklenburg er, the second since my grandfather's death (in 1884), showed me around. The church, built before 1280, the date on one of the bells in the tower, was built of stone three feet in thickness. You had to step down to get in, so much has it sunk into the ground. The chancel furniture was hand-carved, the legends being in Low German. To the left of the chancel were the stalls reserved for the von Oertzens. The grounds around the church were the cemetery, one corner of which was likewise limited t o the noble family.
The parsonage was a huge oblong building, the kind they are building aga in nowadays. The rooms went by color, die rote Stube, die blaue Stube, and so on. The attic had the smoke room at one end and the pigeon roost at the oth er. When they served squab, as they did when I was there, the slot was closed the night before and early in the morning a servant would pick some fat ones. The middle of the attic was the parish office. Hung here the pictures of the former pastor, m y grandfather among them. Pastor Idler, the incumbent, opened a drawer and drew forth a sheaf of papers. They were grandfather's school records. He was what we today would call a "straight A" student. I looked at the papers and said nothing. Past or Idler finally said to me somewhat gruffly: "Well, aren't you going to say anything about this?" Upon my negative reply, he literally roared: "What kind of a man are you anyway? Aren't you proud of your grandfather's record?" I replied I had alw ays had my doubts about people with records like that. They might be sponges or Lerngenies. I felt every good man will at one time or another become absorbed in a subject to such an extent that he will necessarily neglect others. However, I forgave my grandfather, since he had to pay for his scholarships owing to the numerousness of the family, and the going was hard for my great grandfather.
Later, in the study, Idler called my attention to two photos hanging over his writing desk---th e kind you stand up to, as in our post offices. The one picture was that of a handsome young man, the other that of a handsome old man. The inscription on the first read: "To Emil Groth, my best Hebrew student of the year----," signed Franz Delit zch; the other read: "To Adolph Idler, my best Hebrew student of the year----," signed again Franz Delitzch. The first had the dateline "Rostock" and the second "Leipzig." The great Delitzch each year chose a student who had done the best work in Hebrew and gave him his signed photo as of that year. I seem to recall that my father had told me that his father had been considered the best Hebrew scholar in the church at Mecklenburg. Idler also told me that my grandfather also had the distinc tion among his brethren of the church of being the champion whist player. Many years later my father confessed to me his hatred of cards stemmed form the fact that his father forced him to play whist with him and was all too impatient with my father' s mistakes.
My grandfather became the Parson at Kittendorf in 1850. It was then that he married Emma Tarnow of Schwerin. The Tarnows, like the von Oertzens had accepted baptism at the time of Henry the Lion, and became a distinguished patrici an family. Several times Tarnows who had distinguished themselves in public service refused the patent of nobility. Like Goethe's father, they looked with suspicion on all nobles.
My grandmother was remembered as a woman of sharp tongue and bi ting wit; perhaps it was only that she had the courage of her convictions. Idler told me the von Oertzens disliked her. I shall tell how this mutual feeling began by telling the story of an incident which took place the day i arrived in Kittendorf i n Autumn, 1931. The parson's son, a student at Goetingen, happened to be at home and he took me over to see the church. Later, on a village street we came upon and old woman. The parson's son introduced me and asked if she remembered Pastor Groth . Her reply was in Low German: "Iwo, he het mi doefft, und uk konfirmiert und uk trucht!" (He baptized me, he confirmed me, and he also married me). Then she quickly added: "Sei ehr Grootmudder is nich upstahn und so suend wi uk nich mihr usstahn !" (Your grandmother didn't get up, and so we stopped getting up too). I did not need any coaching form the pastor's son to get what she meant to say. My father had already told me about it. When the noble family entered the church everything stopped; all arose while the great ones crawled into their stalls in the chancel. But there was another rule, namely that the congregation did not rise before the pastor's wife did so. On my grandmother's first Sunday in Kittendorf, she being a Tar now, simply refused to rise, and the congregation, lacking the cue from her, remained seated also. Since that day in 1850, the village folk have not honored the von Oertzens when they enter the church.
Historically there were general grounds w hy non-noble families disliked the nobility. It is well known how all over Europe the kings fought against the nobles in behalf of the common man. King John lost the battle in England when he was forced to grant the Charter of Privileges so that t he exploitation might go on. The Hohenzollerns in Prussia did a good job of it, especially Frederick the Great. This accounts for the patriotism of the Prussian and the pride he took in his ruling house. In Mecklenburg one of the Grand Dukes took up the fight; among his nastiest opponents were the Herren von Oertzen. The Duke invited all the nobles to one of his palaces, locked them up on one floor which had no toilet facilities and literally turned on the heat. They capitulated, but not for long. Hence Mecklenburg retained down to modern times the most antiquated form of government in all of Europe. Pastor Idler told me, when I said in a mocking mood that I would like to buy Kittendorf, that I'd be buying all the humans who went with it. This was in 1931. There was a handful of men who were known as Frieburen--free peasants---who had their own houses and land about a mile from the village. We walked out to visit one of them.
The patrician in Emma Tarnow Groth, my gran dmother, came out on one other occasion. The children of the nobles were permitted to play only with the children of the Pastor. But the former learned French before they learned German---so long was the reach of the Sun King of France and of Fre derick the Great---hence my father and his brothers and sisters had to learn French very early in life to play with the children of the nobility. In fact, they had a French governess. One rainy day my uncles were playing with the eldest son of the Lord of the Manor. To get out of the rain they came into the house. In Germany, be it remembered, if your shoes were wet or muddy, you took them off at the door and rang for a maid to bring your slippers. The morning Idler and I went out to see the Frieburen our shoes upon our return were a mess. We took them off, put on the Pantoffen-as the slippers were called--and in a half hour a maid came with our shoes bright and shiny. When the boys on the occasion I mentioned, came to the house, my uncles followed the procedure about the shoes; but not so the young von Oertzen. He carried the mud right into the foyer with him. Unfortunately for him my grandmother happened upon the scene. She had him stay right where he was while she sent fo r a maid with a mop and a bucket of soapy water. She stood by while he cleaned up the mess. Pastor Idler said this particular von Oertzen was now the Lord of the Manor and had been during most of his ministry at Kittendorf. He had never forgiven m y grandmother for that indignity.
I have said that the evil union of the church with the state precluded any real attempts on the part of the church to effect any kind of amelioration of social and economic ills. In the cities a Wichern and Bod elschwingh could do little on the side as it were for the laboring man. In the big estates it was different. In Kittendorf and the affiliated villages, also the property of the von Oertzens, a laboring man and a hired girl could not get married. They got a few cents a year and a change of clothes. Their food consisted mainly of "Speck und Brot," that is, bacon and dry bread. In the house they were huddled together in the Gesindestude---the room for the servants. My father told me that t hese girls sometimes had a baby each year; one had six children by the same man. When the baby was brought for baptism it was turned over to a family which believed it could feed an extra mouth, often a husky farm wife who had milk enough in her br easts to feed two. The State, that is the Lord of the Manor , would make cash payments monthly up until the time the child was confirmed and then the child would become a house maid or what ever job might be assigned to her by the Lord. A New York stock broker told me the greatest grief he suffered in his life was when they took his "sister" away; his parents had taken over an unfortunate baby and he had thought all along it was his real sister.
The crowning event in this satanic system was the fact that at the baptism of the baby the unwed mother had to do public penance before the whole congregation.
From all I learned about my grandfather, I gather that he, a kindly, outgoing individual, leutselig, as the old Keeper of the M anorial Sheep had it, I believe he was also a sincere Christian in the usual sense of the word. Yet there is no record that he ever protested against the evil state of affairs.
Pastor Idler informed me that through the work of the Social Demo crats (1931) much had been done to remedy these inequalities. The joke is that these people were for all practical purposes atheists; but they were humanitarians.
I should like to say here that I shall have occasion to do elsewhere, the world owes whatever social improvement we have achieved not to the supposed Bride of Christ, but to the people outside of it. There is a preacher in Gainesville, Florida who has a University president and many professors sitting at his feet every Sunda y who does not tire in saying that every woman should belong to the church because the church gave her and all women their emancipation. Nobody protests against and nobody laughs at the fool. If anyone cares to pursue this matter further, let them read Dafoe's Moll Flanders.
To account for my grandmother's spunk when it comes to dealing with the von Oertzens there were two other factors besides her patrician heritage which may have been a motivating force. In the first place she had a fina ncial competence of her own. And second, her illustrious ancestors. I shall single out just two. Anyone interested in the Protestant theology of Germany in the 17th Century is bound sooner of later to come upon the names of Paul Tarnow and his u ncle Johann Tarnow, professors of theology at the University of Rostock, which we Groths call "our university." Henke in his monumental work on Calixt, Leuba on the Orthodoxy of the 17th Century, and Tholuck on the same subject have much to say ab out them.
Return toGroth ancestors page
Return to Groth home page
World wide web page photos and design ©1995 Emil Groth