2009 FNF - Friedrich Naumann-English

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That we striveto become as free

as we are able.(Friedrich Naumann, 1905)

The Life and Works of Friedrich Naumann 18601919.Chronicle of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom 19582009


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This publication wasmade possible by thefinancial support ofThe Society of Friends

and Patrons of theFriedrich NaumannFoundation for Freedom.


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Friedrich Naumann. The Ideal of Freedom (1905).

That we striveto become as free

as we are able.


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.Table of Contents.

Preface. Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt

4-7

His Life, his Work, his Impact. Dr. Barthold C. Witte

8-45

100 Years Later. Dr. Jrgen Frlich

46-65

Biography of Friedrich Naumann.66-67

Selected Friedrich Naumann Bibliography.

68-69

Chronicle of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

70-74

Chairpersons of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

7 75

Political Principles of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

7477 76-79

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom today.7881 80-8

50 Years of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

84-97

Federal President Prof. Dr. Horst Khler

84

Prof. Dr. Lord Ralf Dahrendorf

85 88


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It would appear to us that Friedrich Naumann

is somebody from the past. His birth was around one

and a half centuries back and he passed away 90

years ago. Many aspects of the social and politicalframework that defined his life and work have dis-

appeared: the German Empire, Prussian Junkerdom,

Europes claim to world leadership, the German colo-

nies, the structure of European world powers, etc.

There is no longer anybody left with personal

memories of him: a different situation than when our

foundation was founded 50 years ago. Is there any

sense in relating the work of a political foundation to

a protagonist of the 19th and 20th Centuries?

At first glance no as some if not even many

aspects of Naumanns political strategies are no

longer up-to-date even obsolete: there are no longer

different tiers in electoral rights like there used to be

in Prussia, the German parliament is clearly defined

in the constitution as the political decision-maker,the split among German liberals has been overcome

with the founding of the Free Democratic Party 60

years ago and certainly since the merger with East

Germanys liberals and finally: workers participation

has long been secured. Thus the justifiable question

remains: what is still relevant in the political and

social thoughts of the son of a Saxon vicar?

I uphold the opinion that Friedrich Naumann

in a different manner is still very modern. I do not in

the first place mean his optimistic view of the world,

Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt,Chairman of the FriedrichNaumann Foundation forFreedom (since 2006)


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.

his belief in the continual development of human

society and his conviction in the creative power offreedom. This should be common ground for all libe-

ral-minded individuals.

The modernity and actuality of Friedrich

Naumann is for me above all the way he analysed

the problems of his day and how he tackled them.

Naumann, for example, realised very early in life

that we then as now live in a globalised world,

whose effects on a nation cannot be contained. AndNaumann didnt wish to contain them anyway: We

only have the choice of remaining a small nation on

the sidelines of world history or to introduce free

trade.

When Naumann wrote this back in 1906 it

was clear to him which choice had to be taken as

he recognised in free trade the the greatest pos-

sible guarantor for social welfare and that is why

he wrote, Let the air be free. Let ports be free. Let

us create a workshop of nations and a stockyard

of produce from all regions. (Friedrich Naumann:

Neudeutsche Wirtschaftspolitik A New German

Economic Policy). We should get our inspiration from

Friedrich Naumanns optimism and consider the

second wave of globalisation to be equally and above

all a chance.

Yet, Friedrich Naumann did not fail to recogni-

ze the failings of Liberalism in his day. He searched

for new strategies and means of action, partly tried

by himself, such as in his fulminant electoral success

in Heilbronn in 1907. But above all, he attempted to

open up Liberalism of his day to new social groups

which till then was limited to the academic and pro-perty-owning classes.

Only a small segment of ruling Liberalism con-

Preface.


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6

sisted of intellectuals and artists. Naumann was not

simply content with repeatedly pointing this out, he

wished to offer them a permanent forum in among

other places his publications such as in Hilfe (Help)

that he founded as a political and cultural magazine

back in 1895. The Deutsche Werkbund which cele-

brated its centenary in 2007 throughout Germany,

is part of this context. It is an organization set up to

promote high standard design reform within industry.

From todays vantage point Naumanns aims in

the Werkbund are less important. What is of interest,

and sets an example, is rather the way that he and his

compatriots, among them Theodor Heuss, succeededin creating a network of intellectual pacemakers,

creative artists and innovative industrialists that has

survived many a contemporary storm till today. The

original Werkbund is for sure still a model of how to

carry liberal thinking into what appears to be non-

political social circles.

Friedrich Naumann recognised a second and by

far much larger group than those reached through theWerkbund: women. They were more or less excluded

from political life in those days. The first improvement

in their position was achieved precisely 100 years ago

with the passing of the Reichsvereinsgesetz (Imperial

Law on Associations) a law strongly supported by

Naumann.

Naumann was highly sympathetic to the

womens movement in which he saw a kind of

freedom movement that he wished to win over for

Liberalism. This he achieved in part when one con-

siders outstanding German liberals such as Helene

Lange, Gertrud Bumer and Marie-Elisabeth Lders.

Friedrich Naumann was convinced that

Liberalism was not a question of social background,

but rather that people outside the classic middleclasses would equally benefit from it. On the other

hand, it is necessary for the liberals to approach

them. Here a further quotation from the Neudeutsche


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.Preface.

Wirtschaftspolitik: For Liberalism to ensure its self-

preservation it must support industrial structures, the

freedom of coalitions, the defence of workers rights

and to support everything that furthers the value of

the individual within the multitude of office and fac-

tory workers.

This quotation underlines the fact that

Naumann always strove to further develop the scope

of freedom. This was for him the central aspect of

modern society, no matter how much he distanced

himself from or even criticised Classic Liberalism in

specific fields. And freedom concerned each and eve-

ryone: Freedom is a very personal affair and if this isnot the case, then there can be no free nations and no

free cultures.

This sentence published in 1905 in Ideal der

Freiheit (Ideals of Freedom) still stands 100 years

later at the centre of our foundations civic educati-

on programme. Thus, I consider it to be consistent that

the term freedom was added to the time-honoured

name of our foundation. Im sure Friedrich Naumannwould have approved as nothing has changed in his

fundamental importance for our foundations work.

Potsdam, August 2009

Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt


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Friedrich Naumann:

His Life,his Work,

his Impact.

Dr. Barthold C. Witte

Revised version of a speech given onSeptember 3, 1994 in Gummersbach,on the occassion of the 75th anniversaryof the Friedrich Naumanns death.


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.His Life, his Work, his Impact.

Friedrich Naumann died on August

24, 1919 in Travemnde on the BalticSea. At the time of his death, he wasthe leader of the German DemocraticParty (DDP), which had been esta-blished just barely a year prior to hisdeath; he had also been a member ofthe constitutional National Assemblyin Weimar, editor of the journal DieHilfe, and successful author of lite-rature specialising in politics. At hisdeath, he was only 59 years old. He isburied in Berlin, where he had beenactive in politics and in publicist workover the span of two decades.

What distinguishes Friedrich Naumannfrom the numerous, mostly long-for-

gotten politicians who were activeduring the German Empire? He hadhardly any share in political power,even as a Member of Parliament in the

Reichstag. He is not well known for

any great legislative work. He led theleft-liberal party that he had co-foun-ded for exactly one month. Moreover,its initial election success at thebeginning of the Weimar Republicdidnt last; rather, even before Hitlersrise to power, it had already turnedinto an agonising failure. For thosewho only think in categories of power,Friedrich Naumann is at best a brilli-ant speaker and a successful authorfrom a long-forgotten time. So whenwe think of him today under the aus-pices of the foundation which bearshis name, we must have other reasonsfor doing so. We would like to attendto those reasons, and to represent

both the person and his life's work.Finally, we then want to ask whatFriedrich Naumann has to say to ustoday about tomorrow.

Friedrich Naumann in 1911.


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Like the writer Lessing and the philo-sopher Nietzsche, Friedrich Naumanncame from a Saxon parsonage. Thehouse in which he was born on March2, 1860 is still standing in Strmthalnear Leipzig. At that time, the villagewas a wealthy one: in our time, ithas been practically covered in browncoal. Both his father and grandfatherwere theologians small wonderthen, that their off-spring wouldalso devote himself to theology, of

course according to his own innerstruggles and doubt. To be sure, theFrstenschule St. Afra zu Meienwhere the young Friedrich enteredas a high school student contributedboth to his doubt and to his resolve.

He certainly did not have it easythere, and not just because of thesevere order. Looking back on hisexperiences there, he would evenpraise its severity as a part of the"whole educational spirit" of St. Afra,which was free of pedagogicalsentimentality and was "rough andtough, full of battles and all mannerof romanticism". But he was a poorgymnast, a terrible singer, and fairlymediocre in languages. It also took

some time for his fellow students toaccept the latecomer. Nonetheless, heloved his school so much that he laterthought that if he had a son whowas healthy and strong, he too wouldhave to go through the same school.Mathematics was the subject that hewanted to study above all, until thepassion for questions of faith, which

arose both at home and at school,eventually won out.The future politician's preference forworking with historical connectionsand statistical comparisons is evi-dence of the long-lasting fruits ofSt. Afra. In this respect, on the occa-sion of Naumann's death, his brotherJohannes who was also graduate fromSt. Afra was justified in saying that St.Afra had lost one of its faithful sons,"who rewarded his people with whatit had bestowed on him for his life."This life was colorful enough. Afterhis studies in theology in Leipzig andErlangen, he served for two yearsas chief assistant in the Hamburg

Rauhes Haus, the famous establish-ment of the Protestant social ethicistand social practitioner Johann HinrichWichern.

Church in Strmthal,Friedrich Naumanns birthplace.

The Young Theologian.


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This introduction to the contempo-rary problems of the industrial agewas followed by a four-year vicarshipin the small Saxon working-classtown of Langenberg, and by his firstwritings, beginning with a workerscatechism. Thereafter, he returnedto the Home Mission, Wichernsestablishment, as the spiritual coun-sellor for social services in Frankfurtam Main. It was at this time thatNaumann began his political activity

in the Christian social movementas well as his intensive publicistactivity as one of their spokespeople.But soon, the young pastor dared tostand on his own two feet: in 1895,with very little money and a lot ofcourage, he founded his own weeklypublication, Die Hilfe.In the following year, Naumann

undertook a second, even greaterventure, namely, the founding ofthe National Social Association as apolitical party. Both of these ventureswere followed by his retirement from

the ministry and by his relocation tothe political centre of Berlin.From that time until the time of hisdeath, Friedrich Naumann remaineda publicist and a politician, bothcareers for him, but also callings.Admittedly, these endeavours metwith both success and failure inequal measure. His journal was sooninfluential; however, the foundingof a newspaper ran aground. Hispolitical books were all best-sellers,

most of all the 1915 programmaticpaper Central Europe; meanwhile,the National Social Association hadremained completelyunsuccessful in two Reichstagelections. After its dissolution andafter Naumann went over to the left-leaning Liberal Association in 190with the majority of like-minded

people, he won the 1907 electionin the Reichstag not incidentally,thanks to his young election campai-gn leader Theodor Heuss, in whosehometown of Heilbronn Naumannwas candidate. But he remained anoutsider in Parliament, and it wasnot until 1919, when he was electedto be the first leader of the GermanDemocratic Party (DDP), that heaccomplished the leap to the politicalsummit. Then, weakened by warfamine, a sudden and lonely deathcaught up with him.

Public Work.

Friedrich Naumannsburial place inBerlin-Schneberg.


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Really substantial political resultswere denied him. But nonetheless,as orator and as writer, he was oneof the most influential men of thepublic life of his time. He had firstgained attention as an orator at acongress for the Home Mission inKassel in 1888, when he was just 28years old. This was in the year of thethree emperors: following the death

of the very old first emperor Wilhelm,his fatally ill son Friedrich, who hadbeen the hope of the Liberals, ruledfor a mere hundred days; he wasthen followed by his ambitious, intel-ligent, and unstable son Wilhelm II.The most urgent problem of Germandomestic politics was the labourquestion, and the young emperor

decisively turned his attentiontoward it. At that time, anyone whotried to reconcile Christianity andsocialism, workers and church witheach other, and who thus attemptedto overcome Marxs secular socialdemocracy, was really the man ofthe hour. As one of the matadors ofthe Christian social movement, youngNaumann was just such a man. Orso it appeared anyway, if only for afew years, until Wilhelm II. embarkedon a conservative counter-courseand the Protestant church obedientlyfollowed him. Naumann must haverealised that there was no placefor the Christian socialism that

he had fought for so tirelessly. Onething remained: the young rebel hadbrought himself and his messageto the attention of the public. His

book Jesus as a Man of the People,which appeared in 1894, reachedmany thousands of readers.It was not only as a consequence ofthese external factors that Naumanncame to this Christian social experi-ment; he had more personal reasonsas well. During the conferencesof the Protestant-Social Congress(which he had also co-founded in

these years), he met Rudolf Sohmand Max Weber, two of his heavy-weight fellow fighters in the battlefor social reforms, the one a theoristof public law, the other a nationaleconomist. Through Sohm, Naumannmade the painful recognition that nopolitical, economical, or social pre-scription of the day was to be won

from Christianity, for example fromthe Sermon on the Mount. A specifi-cally Christian politics was thereforenot possible. On the other hand,Max Weber, who was at that time ayoung celebrity, taught Naumann torecognise power and to respect it. Forhim, this was the end of the politicsof ideas.

Power is embodied in the State, andfor Naumann and for his contempo-raries that meant the German Empire.In his swiftly famous and then laternotorious 1895 Freiburg speech,Max Weber described the foundingof Bismarcks State as a costly and

childish folly of the old German nati-on, if it meant the end of and notthe point of departure for a Germanworld-power politics.


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This is how the imperialism ofthe time sounded, and not just inGermany. Today of course, state-ments such as these are cause foralarm. In this respect, Naumannand many others followed this spiritof the times. Colonial and navalpolitics, competition with England,war against practically unarmedChina, even against the Hottentots to them, these were legitimate

world politics. Achieving domesticsupport for these efforts took on thevery meaning of social reform, andconversely, German world power wasconsidered to be the prerequisitefor social progress. One can readabout this in detail in Naumannsprogrammatic paper for his NationalSocial Association under the heading

Socialism for the Nation.

It is easy to wage heavy critiqueon all of this today. Some criticshave even approximated FriedrichNaumann to Hitler, and have calledhim a precursor of the Nazis. Infact, there was a fairly extensivebook on the subject in the formerGDR. However, the Nazis themselvessaw things completely differently:Theodor Heuss was allowed topublish his wonderful, still rele-vant 197 biography of FriedrichNaumann only on the condition thathis hero would not be associatedwith the National Socialism in any

way.

Naturally he gave this assurancehappily but also credibly. It may be

true that Hitler took over the imperi-alism of Wilhelm II. but to entirelydifferent purposes, namely for theimplementation of his racial maniaand to dominate the entire worldthrough violence. In truth Naumann'ssystem of thought is very far from allof this.He remained as committed to the

commandment of brotherly loveas he did to the democratic goalof the rule of the people. His greatbook from 1900 on "Democracy andthe Empire" attests to this, as doeshis 1902 "God's Help", a collectionof his weekly articles from "DieHilfe". As for the anti-Semitismthat had been on the rise since the1880s, it would certainly not havebeen entirely foreign to Naumann,given that he was influenced bythe Christian socialist Adolf Stker.

Yet later he would demonstrativelyleave the "Association of GermanStudents", which he had cofounded,when it began to join forces with

the anti-Jewish movement. No, in allhonesty, we cannot and must not callFriedrich Naumann a precursor of theNazis.


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Students in Leipzig, 1880.

Study Report dated May 27,1882 from Erlangen to the

brothers of TheologicalAssociation in Leipzig.

In it Naumann criticises theprofessors in Leipzig and speaksof the Erlangen professor Frank

with enthusiasm.


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Friedrich Naumann asyoung pastor in 1886.

The church and presumablythe vicarage in Langenberg.

Inaugural sermon inLangenberg on May 2, 1886.


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The actual weakness of Naumann'spolitical ideas lay elsewhere. On theone hand, what he had envisionedhis National Social Association tobe, namely a people's movementcomprised of the middle and wor-king classes, remained lamentablystuck in the German party system.He had grossly underestimated its

steadfastness. Consequently, heentered into this system. In the desirefor a Christian, then for a nationalsocialism, both in clear opposition toMarxism, Naumann simply allowedthe claim for a social Liberalism tofollow. However, he always remainedtrue to the principle of overcomingthe class struggle through a partner-

ship of equality between the middleclass and the workers. In the firstdecade of his public activities hehad already learned that the mostimportant goal had to be the priorityof the free individual and not thedesired goal of socialism, which wasto give priority to the community.Of course, the steadfastness of thesocial structure was contrary to hisideas once again: the left-Liberals ofthe Empire and the Democrats of theWeimar Republic, like the NationalSocial Association, managed to reachonly parts of the middle class andnot the working class.

On the other hand, the emperor didnot reconcile himself with democracyas Naumann expected he would.Wilhelm II. never summoned theauthor of "Democracy and theEmpire" for a discussion.On the contrary: the Monarchblocked the way for long overdueconstitutional reforms because he

stubbornly adhered to his view thatthe ruler blessed by God was thehighest instance of power. The muchneeded parliamentary rule didn'tcome about until the defeat of 1918.And with this, the emperor fell.


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After his turn to Liberalism, Naumanndirected all his hopes toward itsrenewal. New German EconomicPolicies is the title of his 1906 pro-grammatic paper.

Using lively, colourful language andmany statistics, it presents the tech-nical-industrial development fromwood to steel as the outcome of theformation of large business opera-tions, cartels, associations. All of this

was thoroughly optimistic, althoughcertainly not without criticism of thedanger that the individual would bestifled by these large organisations.This meant that the end of Statesocialism had come and it was timefor democracy to move into thefactories through the participatoryrights of worker-committees. That

sounds very much like the processesof organisational participation indecision-making that would beintroduced in West Germany 5decades later. No wonder that thethen Social Democrats turned awayfrom Naumann disappointed and LujoBrentano himself, Theodor Heusssdoctoral supervisor and Naumannsintellectual guide for the NewGerman Economic Policies, did notknow what to make of all this. In anycase, Naumanns intention remainedfully clear: to introduce a social ele-ment into the State-sponsored capi-talism of the time, not only in theform of social security for the weak,

but furthermore through a partici-pation of those without property inindustrial and political power.

To pose the question of power thusmeant to challenge classical libe-ralism, to break out of its property-based, bourgeois narrowness, and toguide it into new, hopefully voter-richterritory.

Once again, Naumann hit a nerve ofhis time even though he ventured intoan area that must have been quiteforeign to the educated theologianand social practitioner. He certainly

wasn't an expert in economic theoryor in the politics of the economy, norwould he ever be. In particular, hewas not a systematist nor was he abeliever in the system. His strengthwas much more the overview, thefresh approach that could discernpreviously invisible connections. Andas orator and as writer, he knew how

to express what he discerned, so thatthe educated man as well as the manon the street would understand andwould profit from his obersvations.The reports of those who heard himare unanimous, that in his time hewas the most brilliant orator in theGerman Reichstag. Whoever readsNaumann today still gets a good senseof this impression. Moreover, he wasextremely hard-working. As parlia-mentarian, he completely immersedhimself in legislative detail work. Thefirst of these tasks after his electionconcerned the law regarding thehomebased cottage industry, one thatfor the times was highly progressive.

In this work, his lively experiencesfrom the pastoral office and from thedioceses certainly continued to servehim well.

Reform of Liberalism.


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Lise on August 7, 1903. Card to Lise from Berlin-Schnebergfrom August 4, 1902.

Friedrich Naumanns engagement to Magdalene Zimmermann in 1889 and their marriage in December 1889.

Friedrich Naumann sent his daughter Elisabeth (Lise) short greatings from everywhere he went and oftenproduced paintings of her.

His Life, his Work, his Impact.


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However, Naumanns most pro-found impact lay much more in hiswritings than in his parliamentarywork. The more he dedicated him-self to the political arena, the lesshe allowed himself to be taken fora narrow-minded specialist. As apious Christian, albeit distancedfrom the ministry, he published hisLetters on Religion only a yearafter his devotional book; in 1911,he published a collection of essays

on Spirit and Faith and finally, inthe middle of the World War, on theoccasion of the 400th anniversary ofthe Reformation, he brought out animpressive essay on freedom accor-ding to Luther. In it he wrote aboutthe experience of faith of the youngmonk, about his translation of theBible, about how a new church emer-

ged out of his message and muchmore, but also this:Whether Luther was a writer? Itwas only in the second half of hislife that he began writing out hymns,and these are almost all renderingsof the confessions of his belief, reli-gious and exalted words clothed sothat they could be sung, like A SolidCastle and From on High. But hecouldnt have put his confessions intosongs just so, if they did not alreadyexist in the form of comprehensiblepictures and good, contemporarynotions. It is wonderful how easilyhe makes difficult spiritual problemsso comprehensible without at the

same time being superficial. It is asif everything that he writes is actu-ally spoken face to face. He doesntthrive merely with the paper that lies

Other Talents.

before him; rather, he communicatesdirectly with the people, to whom hesends out his books as if they wereletters. The power of his languagegrows with his own greatness andin casting a glance on high, he findsexpressions of joy and anger as ifhe were himself a great organ with

innumerable registers.

He who so writes is himself a poetand is in part at least describinghimself.

In any case, Naumann was certainlyan artist. He dabbled extensively indrawing and watercolours; one of

his many watercolours that he hadgiven to friends is one of my prizedpossessions. He had a steady eye forform and colour and a fast hand thatcould capture what he saw in linesand in words. Form and Colouris the title of a collection of hisreflections on art, which for the mostpart appeared in Die Hilfe. Theirsubjects, ranging from Rembrandtup to Naumanns contemporariesLiebermann and Bcklin, concernmostly painting and a little sculpture;several deal with architecture, butalso with the question of how onelearns to draw and, at the very end,with the question of whether beau-

tiful expression has the capacity formoral improvement. The answer istypical for Naumann, namely, a shortstory:


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In the train, there were two soldiers,one salesman, a postal conductorand one other person. The area wasflooded in red evening light, theheath on the level mountains burnedlike Phoenician purple, the gravel pitswere as luminous as a gold mine, old

black trees stood like the remainsof the era of the idols in a seraphiclandscape. Nature was burning sostrongly, that everyone in the trainwas quiet and whispered: That isbeautiful! One had to feel that fiveartistic souls were at work here. Themere barbarian does not have such avision.

And not the mere politician either.Friedrich Naumann was simply nota mere politician. Certainly, from1897 he had earned his income asa political publicist, and from 1907as a parliamentarian as well. Butthe so-called professional politiciansof today, who are often condemnedfor being so narrowly focused, wereforeign to Naumann. Furthermore,in the same way that he publiclyspoke and wrote about questionsof faith, art was also vital for him.Clarity of style was important to him,

just as much in words as in artisticform. That is the reason why, from

very early on, he reacted so stronglyagainst the prevailing eclecticismof his impassioned contemporaries,especially in architecture.

He described the Berliner Dom newly built at the time in compa-rison to the "truly majestic building"of the Schlter Palace directly acrossfrom it as "a decorative piece of fur-niture". His sympathies proved effec-tive for the architects and designerswhose growing opposition to theturn-of-the-century eclecticism ledthem to develop clear simple forms

out of specific functions. In 1907,they founded the Deutsche Werkbundin Munich Naumann, the tirelessorator and organiser, was alwaysprominent. Some years later TheodorHeuss who was, like Naumann, alsoa visually talented person, took overthe leadership of the Werkbund fora longer period. The Bauhaus style

is not the only one to have emergedfrom it. Industrial development ofform and design is unthinkable todaywithout the Werkbund. As TheodorHeuss had already noted in his bio-graphy, Naumann belongs to "thehistory of German art, if one under-stands this to involve not only thecollection and the interpretation ofartist personalities and their works,but rather also the spiritual backdropthat informs the creative work."Naumann brought a very wide audi-ence to this background and withmuch success.


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Advertising notice for thefirst edition of

"Democracy and the Empire"from the year 1900.

Naumanns New Yearsgreeting from the year 1896.

Friedrich Naumann with"Die Hilfe" during

the First World War.


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The Times. National SocialWeekly Magazine. Trial editionfrom September 1901.

Friedrich Naumanns artistictendencies gave him the

opportunity to work on thedesign of the publications of

the Deutsche Werkbund, aswell as on their statutes.


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Central Europe.

Friedrich Naumann celebrated hisgreatest and longest lasting booksuccess not, finally, as a friend ofthe arts but as homo politicus: hiswriting on the war aims of Germanyentitled Central Europe, that waspublished in 1915, was surpassed insuccess only by Bismarcks Thoughtsand Memories. The book remainscontroversial even up to the presentday: when I undertook an attemptto critically and fairly evaluate the

book some years ago for the journalliberal, a strong reply immediatelyfollowed in the Journal of Germanand International Politics, whereinthe writer was of the opinion thatNaumann, despite his Christianbeliefs, had revealed himself to benot only a nationalist, but worse still,an imperialist.

Certainly, Central Europe isanything but a call for pacifism.Bertha von Suttners call, Weaponsdown! remained foreign toNaumann through his entire life,influenced as he was by Max Webersthinking in categories of power. Firstof all, the book is the product ofGermanys condition after one yearof war, with surges of war-happyrhetoric here and there. Under theseconditions, an intense discussion overGermanys war goals had developed,with far-reaching demands by milita-ry rulers and their political aides forannexation: it was self-evident for

them that Belgium and Poland wereto be incorporated into the GermanReich and that not only should thelost colonies be regained, but that

extensive areas of Africa should alsobe annexed to them. Against this,voices of reason were raised thatstrove for a peace agreement withoutfurther annexations the 1917 poli-tical cooperation of the left-Liberalswith the Centre Party and the SocialDemocrats resulted in the Reichstagslater Resolution for Peace. With hisbook Democracy and the Empire,Naumann had given them a future-oriented vision.

Actually, the idea was that theGerman Reich should develop aCentral Europe with the smallstates that surrounded it, especiallywith Austria-Hungary. Naumannsidea was not that a purely militaryalliance should come into being inthe heart of the continent, and also

not just an association of states,but rather a stable supranationalumbrella organisation that wouldestablish a common economic policyand a common defence system. Inthis proposal, we can recognise thecurrent structure and the goal-set-ting of West European integrationin its germinal form, although, ofcourse, in Naumanns formulationit is restricted to questions of geo-graphical space, in which leadershipwould have somehow naturally fallento the German Reich. Thus, judge-ment of Naumann's vision after twoworld wars, both of which centred onGermany, must remain controversial.


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In the DDP.

On the one hand, it is a sign ofNaumanns visionary thinking thathe saw both the coming of the endof the sovereign nation state andthe necessity for supranational inte-gration. Yet on the other hand, henever managed to free himself fromthe hegemonic claims of the GermanReich in this sense, he was verymuch involved with and dependentupon the spirit of his time.

The long course of the war and thenthe complete defeat in 1918 madewaste of Naumanns reflections. Thevictor shattered the Habsburg monar-chy, forced the German Reich to cedemuch of its territory, and ensuredthat its smaller neighbours wouldremain at a distrustful distance fromGerman politics. They also preven-

ted the accession of the heavilydiminished Austria, something thatNaumann, shortly before his death,had decisively supported, togetherwith all the democratic politiciansin Berlin and Vienna. We now knowall too well just how short-sightedthis political strategy of the vic-tors was. Naumann passionatelyrevolted against it. The outline of the

Versailles Peace Treaty is the mur-der of the people, he cried, againstwhich the passive resistance of anentire people must be mobilised: Wedont pay, we dont sign, until theyare ready to treat us as humans,he wrote in Die Hilfe. In the end,

however, and under massive pressurefrom their victorious opponents, themajority in the Reichstag decided infavour of signing. Naumann and his

friends No could then only be seenas a gesture of patriotism.

As all of this was happening,Friedrich Naumann was deeplyexhausted, both physically and men-tally. In the constitutional NationalAssembly which had a sitting afterthe destruction of the Hohenzollernin Weimar, he was a great bearerof hope. Under the pressure of amilitary defeat and in the middle

of insurrections from both left andright, it was time to build a newrepublic. This task required hisentire strength. Naumann also didnot refuse when the newly foundedGerman Democratic Party (DDP), thesuccessor to the previous left-liberalparty, of which he was already amember, asked him to take on the

role of party leader. The party hadwon 18.5 percent of the votes duringthe election in the National Assemblyand had moved into the post-warParliament as the third-strongestParliamentary party after the SocialDemocrats and the Catholic Centre.The objective was to maintain thisstatus or even to improve on it ifpossible. Naumann, the advocate ofthe alliances between the middleclass and the workers, the brilliantorator and writer, and the tirelessorganiser was clearly the best choicefor this task. On July 21, 1919 at theBerlin DDP Party Congress, he wasappointed party leader with a majo-

rity of votes. It was Naumann's firstgreat political office. He died fiveweeks later.


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Venice 1905. Ink drawing.

Friedrich Naumanns many pencil and ink drawings andwatercolours created over many years, are evidence ofhis artistic talent.

The Archive of German Liberalism in Gummersbach has numerousartistic works by Friedrich Naumann in its collection.


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Cette, April 7, 1910. Watercolour.

Cette, April 7, 1910. Watercolour.


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Bequests.

Naumann left behind three politicalinitiatives as his direct legacy. Thefirst continues to have an effect upto our own time, namely his great,perhaps decisive, share in the newregulation of the relation betweenState and Church in the WeimarImperial Constitution. This hadbecome necessary especially for theProtestant churches because of thedestruction of the German monarchyand the resulting end of the episco-

pal status of the state-sovereigns.With that, the churches becameindependent from the State butwhich form of rights should theythen have?

Naumann convinced the social demo-cracy, which had traditionally main-tained a distance from the church,

that it would be best for churchesto become corporations under publiclaw. And so it happened. This remainsvalid under constitutional law todayand ever since the Unity Agreementand the accession of the GDR to theConstitution, it is valid in the easternfederal states as well.

The second legacy did not becomea component of the Weimar consti-tution, but nevertheless it remainsnoteworthy: Friedrich Naumanns AnEssay on Fundamental Rights thatare Comprehensible to the People.He presented this text as a motionto the constitutional committee

in Weimar during a sitting of theNational Assembly at the end ofMarch 1919. It was undisputed thatthe Constitution should contain a

catalogue of the fundamental rightsof citizens, as was already the casefor the St. Pauls Church Constitutionof 1849. But Naumann wanted it tobe accessible to all citizens, both incontent and in style. So he adoptedsome traditional formulae like thestatement All Germans are equalbefore the law. But he also formu-lated some of his own, for example:Every German is valuable for thenation so long as he remains worthy

of his people. Or: The fatherlandstands above the party. And also:Order and freedom are siblings.Then, entirely relevant to our time:To pay debts is both a public anda private duty. Equally relevant:Questions of wages are questionsof existence. Even this: Those whodo not want to work should also not

eat!

Of course, the educated constitu-tional lawyers did not really knowwhere to begin with such statements.Naumanns motion did not becomelaw. However, the essay remainsthought-provoking in its intention:to articulate the rights of individualsin relation to that unassailable inhe-ritance of classical liberalism, indivi-dual duty. According to Naumannsreasoning, the greater the rights ofindividual citizens, the greater thedemands that the State can place onhim. Ideas such as these should sure-ly be food for thought for us today.

The most important legacy from thelast years of Naumanns life lies inwhat he said to his contemporaries


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and also what he says to us todayregarding civic education. He alwayssaw himself as much more of an edu-cator of the people than as a merepower person. In both his orationand in his writing, he always tried tolead his fellow citizens, both youngand old, into political maturity. In thefinal year of the war and in view ofthe impending defeat, he developedhis plan for a Free German Academyfor Politics in four Letters to Young

Friends, a plan for a citizens acade-my that would serve to educate fordemocracy. To be sure, he knew thatone could only learn politics up to acertain point; in politics, he wrote tohis young friends, all know-how isonly a set of tools and teaching aidsthat must of course be present andwhose application must be learned;

no creative strength comes fromthem though and no clear decisive-ness either. Politics is never withoutgood education, but on its own it isnot knowledge; rather, an ability anda will must be much more deeplyimbedded in human nature than canbe imparted by hours of instruction.

Yes, politics is an art, innate andnot acquired, though of course itis put to work through education.Education regarding politics is thusneeded so that citizens can turn theirabilities into a politics of engagedaction.

These insights garnered from his own

experience had very practical conse-quences: in the same year, a seriesof citizens courses for young peoplewas established in Berlin and was

supported by Naumanns friend andsponsor Robert Bosch. It was not tobe a school of a political party; rather,it was to create forums for open dia-logue for the use of the young demo-cracy. In 1920, after Naumanns death,the German Academy for Politics eve-loped out of it. Theodor Heuss taughtthere until 19, at which time itas overtaken by Hitlers followersand obbed of all its significance. Thefailure of the Weimar Republic due to

a lack of democracy clearly demons-trated that civic education is a long-term project. At any rate, following itsreestablishment after the catastropheof World War II, the Berlin Academyoffered substantial numbers of youngpeople the chance to take on politicalresponsibility. Among them were manypolitical refugees from the Soviet-

occupied zone and the GDR; my friendKarl-Hermann Flach was among them.Finally, the Academy ended up at theFree University in Berlin as the OttoSuhr Institute, a development thatwas not to the benefit of its originalgoals. But that is another story.

What the passage of time had instore for Friedrich Naumanns Citizens'Academy could, in sense, stand assymbol for the consequences of hisentire life's work. Already in his ownlifetime, success and failure werealways found in close proximity. Inthis sense, after their initial successes,the republic that he had co-founded

and the party that he had led bothcame to a disgraceful end in theturbulence of the ensuing politicaldisaster.


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Reichstag vote 1903, after the election defeat.


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Group photo of the members of theNational Social Association on the stepsof the caf Lderitz in Werder in 1900.

Members of the National Social Organisation1896. Adolf Damaschke (lower right),Hellmuth von Gerlach (second from lower left),Friedrich Naumann (middle upper),Adolf Pohlmann, Wilhelm Ruprecht,Martin Wenck (second from left, upper).


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Naumanns Legacy.

Yet Naumanns life and works conti-nued to have significance, especiallyfor the many young people on whomhe had a lasting influence. TheodorHeuss is the first among these peo-ple.

Throughout his life, Heuss cultiva-ted the public memory of FriedrichNaumann, his honoured, even loved,political and personal mentor. This

began immediately after Naumannsdeath, when Theodor Heuss editedShapes and Shaper, a collection ofNaumanns biographical portraits,his historical-biographical sketches.In the preface, Heuss evokes the oralpower of expression in these textsand their special place in Naumannsoeuvre, particularly because they

concentrated on people and noton things. Heuss: That he lookedpeople in the eye and really spoketo them shows what was truly nobleabout Naumann: the deep respectthat he had for greatness and forhistorical performance both at homeand abroad, the warm opinion thathe had for bourgeois efficiency, theaffable frame of mind that was gra-cefully and willingly thankful.

It was already clear that TheodorHeuss thought to remember theentirety of Naumann, not simplyNaumann the politician. This inten-tion set the tone for the extensiveNaumann biography that Heusspublished in 197. In his introductoryessay to the 1968 paperback editionof the Naumann biography, WernerStephan, the first president of theFriedrich Naumann Foundation, vivid-

ly portrayed the serious difficultiesthat this publication encountered. AsHeuss writes in his memoirs, he sawthe success of this work as a sourceof one of the greatest joys of his life:The duty of my existence seemed tome to be fulfilled by this effort.

Heuss wanted to portray the entirety

of the man in his time, as well as hisentire oeuvre. Of course, his perspec-tive of the politician Naumann wasalso coloured by the times, by thecollapse of the Weimar Republic thatNaumann had co-founded, and byHitlers victory and its consequences.Therefore a portrayal of the politicianwas not placed in the foreground.Naumanns historical puissance,Heuss summarizes in the conclusion,is of a spiritual and moral kind. Inthis, even an attentive reader of thattime would have understood it asa counter-portrait to the National-Socialist present in which it waswritten. Heuss goes on to say that

Naumann had fulfilled his task, inthat he bequeathed the simple


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example of dedication and truthful-ness ... The final hierarchy appropri-ate to him is the moral one. In theface of this, even reverence fails tofind the adequate words. A note-worthy conclusion to a biographypublished in Germany in 197!

These ideas served to establish acontinuity, even after the hugecatastrophe of the war and the total

defeat. In the first speech after hiselection on September 12, 1949the Federal President of the newly-founded Federal Republic of Germanyexpressly remembered two men whohad shaped his thinking and hiswork: his father, who embodied thedemocratic tradition of 1848, andFriedrich Naumann, who gave form

to my growth and without whom Iwould not be who I am. He thankedNaumann for the knowledge thatthe nation can live only when it issupported by the love of the masses.He also cited one of Naumanns well-known core statements: To declareoneself in favour of nationality andof the humanisation of the masses

are for us only two sides of one andthe same thing.It would be hard to imagine a politi-cian uttering such a statement today.But one must remember the contextin which he was speaking: destroyed

factories and cities, uprooted people,mass poverty and unemployment,intense social unease and Germanyscomplete division. The fear of ter-rible unrest, even before the war,was greater for most people thanthe hope for peaceful development.Now, contrary to this position, Heusssaid after his election: We have the

task of finding our way back intothe political sphere, appropriatelyand adequately, and, once there, tobuild up the dignity that we, deepin our souls, never lost. Heuss wasconvinced that only at this meta-level, beyond the timid regrowth ofwealth, would the Germans achieverenewed health. Friedrich Naumann the realist influenced by Christianfaith, the sympathetic pastor of theworking class, the reformer workingfor a reconciliation of the classes, thepeoples teacher of a human readi-ness for improvement must havebeen helpful in this regard.


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Naumann the social reformer wasalso a political force in the GermanWest, as a witness for the "thirdway" between capitalism and socia-lism. In this regard, two leadingProtestants declared their allegianceto his inheritance during the 50s and60s: Eugen Gerstenmaier and ErhardEppler. In a 1958 programmatic spee-ch at the Kiel Federal Party Congress,Gerstenmaier attempted to legitimatethe Christian-social position of his

party through recource to Naumann.In 1961, after he had entered theSPD, Eppler published an analysis ofNaumann's heritage under the hea-ding "Liberal and Social Democracy".Despite significant differences intheir party-political orientation,social engagement lay close to bothof their hearts. this was grounded

in the Protestant-social tradition towhich Naumann doubtlessly belon-ged, especially in the first phase ofhis public engagement. RegardingNaumann's later turn toward liberalpolitics, neither of them have muchto say.

Heuss was not alone in this hope,nor was he alone in his recourseto the reformer Naumann. The firstNaumann renaissance took placein the Soviet-occupied zone inGermany very soon after the end of

the war and the dictatorship. Muchto the indignation of the GermanCommunists and the occupyingpower, the exremely successfulLiberal Democratic Party (LDP) madehim into one of their forefathers.Had Naumann not introduced thesocial aspect into German liberalismonce again? To cite him meant to

declare one's allegiance to modernliberalism and at the same time todistance oneself from the capitalistdegeneration of liberal views andwith that, to go a distance to meetthe occupiers. What to the CDU ofthe east was "Christian Socialism",was to the LDP a commitmentto social reform in the spirit ofNaumann and to the basic reform ofhis fellow combatant Damaschke. Thenumerous streets in many GDR citiesthat were named after Naumanntestify to this. However, under thesign of "fully developed socialism"and the completion of the blockintegration of the LDP, most of the

streets were later renamed.


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Theodor Heuss in theConstitutional Council

and withFederal ChancellorKonrad Adenauer.

Federal President

Theodor Heuss in 1950.


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them capable of political engagement.Secondly, they wanted to initiate anextensive debate over the intellectualfoundations and the political goals ofliberal politics. The one was supposedto stimulate the other. Up until then,there had been no systematic educa-tional work and no setting of long-term goals in the arduously re-esta-blished post-war liberal environment.

The 1957 Berlin Platform of the FDP,its first extensively developed politicalplatform ever, was hardly more than asummary of already existing positions.The school seminars were only intheir initial stages and were restrictedmostly to preparations for electioncampaigns. As a consequence botheducational and platform work had to

be newly established. Both, though,had to be free from the constraints ofthe party line: they had to be muchmore open, and therein attractive alsofor people who did not yet belong toany political party.

For its founders, the best way to ensu-re this independence was to give bothof these projects over to a foundation.The Friedrich Ebert Foundation was themodel for this, although it had beenorganised as a registered organisationin the meantime.

On the grounds of their decades-longrelationship, Werner Stephan appealed

to Theodor Heuss, who reacted appro-vingly. He was not indifferent to whatwould become of politically organisedliberalism, although his presidential

The Foundation.

Through Theodor Heuss, FriedrichNaumann was raised to the status ofone of the forefathers, so to speak, ofthe new Republic. This was primarilya consequence of the founding ofthe Friedrich Naumann Foundationin 1958. The history of this foun-ding and of the Friedrich NaumannFoundation as a whole has yet to bewritten (a pressing need!). However,as a witness to the founding, I cancontribute some preliminary obser-

vations.

The year before, on September 15,1957, the election day of the thirdGerman Bundestag, the citizens ofthe German Federal Republic fur-nished Konrad Adenauers ChristianDemocratic Party Alliance with anabsolute majority of votes and seats

in Parliament, whereas the oppositionparty, the FDP, was punished with aclear loss of votes. Early in 1956, theLiberal Party had been pushed out ofthe government (incidentally, againstHeusss will), had become dividedbecause of this and, with only 7.7percent of the votes, it braced itselffor an existential crisis. How toovercome this? Above all, how towin the younger generation? Someof the thoughtful party members,among them FDP party leader WernerStephan and his potential successorKarl-Hermann Flach, answered:through the work of civic educationand through serious reflection on the

political platform. Two things are tobe understood here: firstly, politicalknowledge was to be imparted to theyounger generation in order to make


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office made his public neutralitya duty. He used his many variouscontacts to spiritual, academic, andpolitical life in order to gather acircle of like-minded people for thefoundations Board of Trustees, itsBoard of Directors, and its AdvisoryCouncil. They had to be liberals, withor without official party membership.The list of founders extends fromprofessor Walter Erbe to the lea-ding culture critic for the FDP Paul

Luchtenberg, and from the histo-rian Hermann Heimpel and bishopHermann Kunst to Richard vonWeizscker, who was at that timestill without a party.

It was also Heuss who gave thefoundation its name. He did notwant his own name to stand as the

foundations honorary patron; it wasonly after he left the presidentialoffice that he agreed that his namewould be used after his death for theEducational Centre of the foundation,which was first opened in 1967. Hehinted at Friedrich Naumann andespecially at the Citizens Academythat Naumann had founded shortlybefore his death, and that formed thebasis for the later Berlin Academyfor Politics. Heuss had worked on itsdevelopment until the Nazis barredhim from the teaching profession in19. As a refugee from the Sovietzone, Karl-Hermann Flach had recei-ved his ideas-based political formati-

on at the re-established academy. Atthat time it was under the leadershipof Hans Reif, one of the members ofthe founders circle of the foundati-

on. In this way, the bestowal of thename also represented a consciousact of continuity.

Furthermore, the project goals of thefoundation in the post-war periodwere not so very different from whatNaumann had conferred upon hisfoundation, which had been financedby Robert Bosch. Both times,democracy had developed upon theGermans after a lost war. Whereasin other countries the embodiment

of liberal democracy was broughtabout either by a long tradition orby a revolutionary break, Germanyhad to catch up through a real edu-cation of the people. "Education forPolitics", the title of Naumann's lastwriting, resonates with this goal; itwas a text in which he set the aspi-rations of the Citizens' Academy. Infour speeches to his young friends,Naumann explained what politicsafter the war should look like.Already earlier in 1914, he who wasas successful as an orator as he wasa publicist had expanded on not lessthan a hundred points on the art oforation, less on its theory and more

on its practice. This is still worthreading today.


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We cannot live without general political ideas,even though we recognise the purely relativecharacter of these ideas. Every epoch has its owngeneral ideas, but at the same time, every epochalso bears the past, the present, and the futurewithin it. So, at the same time, it has ideas thatare at first yet illusions, ones that become truth,

and then fade away again. A certain stage in thedevelopment of the first idea is called utopia.

From: Friedrich Naumann,

Illusions in Politics (1904).

And when we complain that the progress of freedom in theGerman people doesnt seem to be in a hurry, the observation of whatwe see when we look into the very bottom of our souls forces usto consider how many poor utilitarian souls are willing to bowto every kind of serfdom so long as they are only left in peace.No one wants to be compromised, to get knocked around, to be

bothered, to be uncomfortable. However, this complacency damagesfreedom in every sense. The first thing to do in order to assist uni-versal freedom is that we strive to become as free as we are able.


The Ideal of Freedom (1905).


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9

His Life, his Work, his Impact.

There are some people who believe that there isnothing more to nationality than playing the roleof the oppressed and launching complaints in everydirection regarding all the evil things that otherpeople have done to us. The entire catalogue of eternalnationalistic complaints is at the same time acatalogue of feelings of powerlessness.But those who are secure and free in their beingGerman, those who trust their State and believe in itsgreatness and future will have enough inner freedomand patience to allow for and to facilitate the freedom anddevelopment of not only the allophone nations besideus but also of those among us if it is necessary.

Just as there are small-minded aesthetes, there are alsosmall-minded politicians. The one labours away at exhibitions and theother in ministries or in chambers. Both are hollow because they arenot overwhelmed by the greatness of their task, but rather are onlyserving themselves with much fuss and bawling. This sort can ruin anypolitics or art, and part of the mistrust of politics in aesthetic circlesis the low estimation of representatives of the political calling. But

would it be right to judge the arts according to their helots? Is it rightto take the measure of politics with such standards? Everyone whois near to it knows how much work is involved. Have respect for thiswork of maintaining the people and of constituting the State!


The Aesthetic Person and Politics

(1908).


On the Way to a Peoples State

(1917).


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This is still valid today even underthe conditions of a world and of acountry which have changed verymuch since then. But already inHeusss time, Friedrich Naumann hadreceded into the shadows of history.Although this is even more the casenow, it certainly did not prevent theFriedrich Naumann Foundation fromseeing it as their duty to publish and

edit the newly collected work of theirhonorary patron. Of course, this pro-

ject only involved a selection of hiswritings but nonetheless it comprisessix volumes. It appeared beginningin 1964 in the West German Pressunder the academic supervisionof Heinz Ladendorf, Alfred Milatz,Theodor Schieder, and Walter

Uhsadel. Theodor Heusss introduc-tion dates from November 196,only a few weeks before his death.In order to complete this project, in1968 the foundation arranged for athird edition of Heusss biography ofNaumann published together withintroductory and explanatory texts byAlfred Milatz and Werner Stephan inthe Siebenstern paperback series.

The later effects of great personali-ties sometimes travel along strangepaths. In Naumanns case, he wasoften cited as a forerunner to theSocial-Liberal Coalition in the publicpolitical debates of the late 60s and

early 70s. Had he not fought forsuch a coalition even before WorldWar I. with his watchword, FromBasserman to Bebel? Had he not

The Cultivation of Tradition.

When Theodor Heuss lent hisweight to the proceedings of theFriedrich Naumann Foundations firstpublic conference that took placehalf a year after the ceremonialinauguration of the foundation inHeusss official seat on May 19,1958, the title of the speech couldbe none other than The Legacy ofFriedrich Naumann. In it, though,Heuss presented anything but anexercise in hero-worship. For his

audience, among whom was EugenGerstenmaier, he portrayed a pas-sionate contemporary of the era ofWilhelm II., a man who in the courseof his public work had repeatedlychanged and who had always livedwithin the irresolvable tension bet-ween the Christian commandment oflove and the claims to power of every

statehood. Heuss advised againstpainting Naumann as a Liberal outof the German picture book andequally against understanding hispolitical ideas for example thoseconcerning Central Europe as stillliterally useful. His works, addedHeuss, are not to be used as aslogan booklet for current modes ofconduct. His actual legacy lies muchmore in the fact that this man, whowas such a brilliant teacher, alwaysremained a student of reality so thathe would be confronted with a moraldecision within the freedom offeredby it.


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been an early advocate of organisati-onal consensus under the watchword,Factory Democracy? From thisvantage point, the 1971 FDP FreiburgPlatform must have appeared as adirect continuation of Naumannsorganisational reform of Germanliberalism.

I admit to being not entirely innocentin this respect. One must admit that

this portrayal does not reflect thewhole Naumann not the early sup-porter of Stckers Christian socialistconservatism, not the later co-authorof the 1917 great coalition againstmilitary rule and in favour of thenegotiated peace that lead to allthe parties that supported the Statein the Weimar coalition. But this is

what happens when great namesget used for political purposes. InNaumanns case, this deploymentmeant that after the 1982 change inthe coalition, many liberals did noteven consider the great man to beworthy of citation. At certain timesin the past even the foundation thatbears his name gave the impressionthat it didnt really know what to dowith its honorary patron. Since then,and much to its own benefit, thefoundation has begun to think betterof Naumann.

The task of the historian undersuch well-known conditions is, asLichtenberg once said, to thrust thetorch of truth right into the crowdseven if one beard or another mightget scorched by it. To be sure, thepolitical exploitation of the past bythe political motives of the presentis not prevented by this, but themuch-needed historical foundation

of the second German democracy isbetter served when its predecessors,to whom Friedrich Naumann belongs,are understood in all their comple-xity.

Thus, Friedrich Naumann has certain-ly earned a place of honour in thevaried history of German democracy.

Indeed, in all of his many dimensions,Naumann is not easily forced intothe narrowness of a particular partydesignation. In the same respect, hisvery personal piety, influenced by thecultural Protestantism of the time,is unsuitable for any one school oftheology or another to adopt as theirown. The truly special thing abouthim is precisely that he never belon-ged to any "school", that he simplynever saw himself as a man whofollowed leaders, and that he alwaysrefused to remain true to ideas thathe had tried out and had not foundto be compelling. He had neither"students" nor followers; rather, he

always maintained the freedom forrenewed reflection and for the publicrethinking of his position when thesituation demanded it of him.


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Education for liberalism is in no way merely the educationof members of parliament; at a much higher level, it is abouteducating the people for liberal thinking and action.

Even if one could make all of the current Members of Parliamentdisappear through a trapdoor and put other men in their places,the end result would be the same, since the new men wouldonly be copies of the national tradition that they are called upon

to represent. One would do well, therefore, to stop criticising onlyindividual men,as if everything was at hand to get a successful Germanliberalism on its feet tomorrow, if only they wanted to!

A people that is strong enough to develop a new form ofleadership out of its own ranks already has the men thatit needs, but what is still lacking today is a broad, general flowof liberal thought. That is the reason for the slow

pace of progress.

This must be worked on, not in bitterness and discord,but rather in that reciprocal respect that simply cannotbe realised without the difficult task of education.


German Liberalism (1909).


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but rather to the NATO and to theEuropean Union. Furthermore, theeconomic policies of today havecompletely different problems tosolve than those at the beginningof the last century. And we liberalsof the present day are certainly verydistant from Naumanns enthusiasmfor mass production and large orga-nisations.

What then is left of what Friedrich

Naumann began, what he stoodfor, and what he embodied? It isnot only in Germany that liberalismis no longer considered relevant,

just as was already the case at thebeginning of the last century, whenNaumann joined progressive libera-lism. Naumanns response to this: Ageneral German liberalism is needed

once again, a peoples party in whichdemocracy and nationalism residenext to each other, a broad andcreative party full of new ideas forthe majority. According to Naumannthen, the doors had to be opened sothat the spirit of free strength thatwanted to move forward could do so;the desire for political power had tobe instilled in the three million liberalvoters.To achieve that end, liberalism as aparty had to be better organised inorder to be a contender in democra-tic competition with other parties.As well, in their striving for this, ithad to be only a question of the

well-being of the individual and hisfreedom. Liberalism, Naumann said,develops on the basis that not onlydoes the individual person want his

What then constituted his greatnessand his enduring significance? For hisclose contemporaries, it was aboveall the radiance of his personalitythat created admirers out of theintellectual elite of his time. At thesame time, he was highly persua-sive both in his spoken and writtenlanguage. Not least of all, in all thathe did he embodied the desire ofboth the best minds of his time andof broad classes of people, namely

to overcome the class struggle fromabove as from below, and to recon-cile the State with its citizens.

It might be the case that today,under so many transformed relati-onships, his significance is simplyan historical one. Despite all thedifferences and the tensions bet-

ween the wealthy and the poor thatbecome especially visible in timesof economic recession like thoseof recent years, our German andEuropean communities are no longerinfluenced by the class struggle. Aswell, even before Naumanns death,the confrontation with the authori-tarian Hohenzollern monarchy hadended when the last emperor fled toHolland to escape defeat. This reallyis just history now. The same goesfor the debate about central Europe it did flare up again in the 80s,fuelled by Hungarian, Polish, andCzech intellectuals in their struggleagainst eastern Soviet power and its

rulers. However, with the collapseof Communism, this too has beenovercome: our neighbours to the eastno longer aspire to Central Europe

Liberal Visions.


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own independence, but rather thathe also wants his neighbours to havetheir independence as well. Further:Freedom is a completely personalmatter. If this is not the case, thenthere are no free countries and nofree cultures.

Naumann didnt shy away from alofty and passionate style when hespoke of freedom or of his vision of asociety of free men. He was a credi-

ble witness to this freedom becausehe so clearly vouched for it withhis whole person. Politicians todaylack this credibility all too often. Weshould even must demand this ofthem. It does not depend on whetherpoliticians pursue politics alongsidetheir career or whether their career ispolitics. Naumann himself became a

career politician and turned sharplyagainst the dignitary-tradition ofthe liberal parties, which he saw asno longer suitable for the present.Just as little does Naumanns credi-bility have to do with his persistentflexibility. Naumann changed hisviews often enough throughout thecourse of his life, either due to bet-ter insights or because of changedcircumstances. Perhaps then hiscredibility has much more to do withhis commitment to ethical standards.In Naumann this commitment deve-loped out of his Christian faith, butof course it can have other founda-tions as well. Only one thing is sure:

politics without ethical commitmentends in complete arbitrariness.

Another source of Naumanns credi-bility lay in his capacity to developlong-term visions without ever losinghis grounding in reality. The esta-blishment of a political programmealways depended for him on howits principles measured up to reality not to allow the given reality tofall into oblivion, but rather to beable to do practical politics. At the

same time, liberal politics oughtnot to merely think ahead for everyfour-year term, or from month tomonth, or even to react from head-line to headline, but rather to takethe vision of a free, open society ofindependent citizens seriously and todevelop from this a politics for thecoming years as a politics of what is

now possible. The basic programmeof the German Liberals adopted inWiesbaden in 1997, which moved the1971 Freiburg theses and the 1985Saarbrcken Liberal Manifesto intonew territory, can open the way tothis possibility.

Finally, the task that Naumann setfor political liberalism remains asyet unfulfilled, namely, to becomea true party for the people. I dontmean this in the customary sense ofthe term first used by the CDU andthen by the SPD, wherein a party ofthe people is nothing more than atug-of-war or the lowest common

denominator between large socialpowers.


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In Naumanns sense of the term,a party of the people means muchmore than this: it is one that canand does gather support for its keyideas from people of all classes, theprimary of these ideas being the ideaof freedom. German political libera-lism is still quite far from this goal.It remains an open question whetheror not it seriously intends to take thisroute. In any case, it is the most cen-

tral task of the foundation that bearsFriedrich Naumann's name inno-vative thinking, namely along liberallines. The other task is to equip asmany people as possible with theirpolitical responsibility the best wecan, in the spirit of Naumann'sCitizens' Academy.

When Theodor Heuss called theFriedrich Naumann Foundation intolife, he presented his teacher as amodel, but he warned against makingits honorary patron into a catechismthat is valid on a literal level. In hisevery fibre, Friedrich Naumann wasa man of his time. As such Heuss'swarning spplies equally to us today.However, what Max Weber wrote toNaumann's widow immediately afterhis death remains more valid thanever in times of growing politicalennui. He wrote: "You know thatwe loved him deeply, beyond whathe meant to us as a politician, as acultured man, or as a German. The

proud humbleness of his character

did not permit us to tell him what hisgallantry, composure, warmth, andfullness offered to us personally, orhow noble he was in the discussionsand the battles of our public lives,or how much greater his existence

was than his results, and his resultstill greater than his public success... his greatness didn't lie in what hewanted but rather in how he wantedit and how he pursued his goals. Theexample that he gave did not havean immediate effect, at least notwhat its true worth deserved. Butnevertheless, it has not been lost.

What is not lost is above all the factthat a person so strongly stood hisground in a time that was not madefor him. Either he came too early orhe came too late. All the same: thathe was once here is something that,for all of us, can never be lost."


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100 Years

Later

or

Naumanns Relevance

to the Present.

Dr. Jrgen Frlich


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.100 Years Later.

Friedrich Naumann was without doubt a Wilhelminer.

Historically, his political work largely coincides with

the reign of the last German monarch (1888 1918),

whose name has come to define the era. Many aspects of

Naumanns political thought are also bound up with the

era of Wilhelm II. Eighty years after Naumanns death,not only has the Empire long disappeared, but so too has

the State that is associated with it, the German Reich.

Social, economic, and political circumstances have also

been radically transformed since Naumanns time. What

does his work, which began at the end of the 19th cen-

tury and ended in the first quarter of the 20th century,

still have to say to citizens at the beginning of the 21st

century? Does it still have significance?

From a liberal perspective, Naumann has certainly

bequeathed much to us, and there are many areas in

which his thought continues to be highly re levant. I will

introduce three examples that will allow us to draw con-

nections between Naumanns time and our own, over a

century later.


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The Naumann Circle.

Martin Wenck(18621927),editor in chief,Naumann biographer.

Friedrich Weinhausen(18671925),social political publicist,M. d. R. (19101920).

Hellmuth von Gerlach(18661935),Editor of the BerlinWelt am Montag(19191933).

Gottfried Traub (18691956), minister, Memberof Parliament for theLiberal Party and then

for the GermanNational Party.

Eugen Katz(18811937),Editor of Die Hilfe.

Paul Rohrbach(18691956),Protestant theologianand political publicist

The German idea.

Paul Ghre(18641928),minister, Member ofParliament of the SPD(19031930).

Wilhelm Heile(18811969)editor of Die Hilfe,M.d.R. of the DDP(19191924).

Wilhelm Cohnstaedt(18801937),until 1933political editor of theFrankfurter Zeitung.

Th

eFisherofMen


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.The Naumann Circle.

With that, I mean to invoke thenetwork around Naumann, the fullextent of which has only recentlybecome apparent. Naumann wasat the centre of a wide circle oflike-minded people and friends thatextended from the high bourgeoisie

and the educated middle class rightthrough to the working class. Thisnetwork originally developed out ofNaumanns circle of fellow studentsin St. Afra and the so-called wildyouths in the Protestant-SocialCongress, those who like Naumanndid not want to get swept up inthe conservative, even anti-Semitic,channels of Adolf Stcker.

The Naumann circle achievedits organisational form from theNational Social Association, butit lived on informally after thisassociation came to an end. Famouscontemporaries Max Weber and LujoBrentano and rising thinkers Theodor

Heuss and Elly Knapp belonged tothis Naumann circle both at thattime and later. Others were alsothere, who would later go in entirelydifferent political directions, likeGustav Streseman for instance.

The circle had far-reaching conse-quences right up until the time ofthe German Republic; some peopleout of his circle were even amongthose who founded the FriedrichNaumann Foundation in 1958. Intotal, this group must have compri-sed up to 1,700 people, all of whomstood in greater or lesser proximity toNaumann. However, given that this

was an era that knew no electronicmeans of communication, such aninformal association was extraordina-ry, especially since Naumanns undis-

The Brentano family,Friedrich Naumann, and Elly Knapp 1903.

Friedrich Naumann on the 25th of March 1910in Friendship and Admiration.


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puted charisma was effective almostexclusively in his personal addresses,be it in speeches and lectures or insmall circles. The Naumann circle offriends extended over the entiretyof Germany and into Austria, andformed the source from which the

political personnel and the publicistsof left-liberalism were recruitedbetween 190 and 19. This givesus much to think about in terms ofhow one can provide liberalism witha firm social foundation, one which isindependent of all utilitarian political

Gustav Stresemann(18781929).

Elly Heuss-Knapp(18811952),Teacher, economist,first First Lady.

Martin Rade(18571940),Protestant ministerand publicist.

Walter Goetz(18671958),Professor of History.

The signatures of the founders onthe memorandum of incorporation

of the Friedrich NaumannFoundation from May 19, 1958.


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.The Naumann Circle.

thinking, and how one can create theconditions for a liberal elite.

In different ways, organised libera-lism tries to maintain connectionswith this great tradition today, inorder to give liberal-minded citizenseven outside of a formal party mem-bership a political-organisationalhome base. Especially for the modernindividualistic people of our time,these informal and loosely organised

ties are far more important than theclassical system of party membership.In many ways, the Naumann circleis the model for this kind of politics,something like the liberal networkof the FDP, the alumni organi-sation of the Friedrich Naumann

Foundation, the Association ofLiberal Academics, and the Societyof Friends and Patrons of theFriedrich Naumann Foundation. Allof these organisations of liberal citi-zens contribute to the developmentof liberal ideas and beyond that, theyprovide ongoing support for them.For instance, the "Friends andPatrons" financially support the workof the Friedrich Naumann Foundationand that of organised liberalism.

In modified form, the Naumann circlelives on in initiatives like these.


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Renewal of

Liberalism.

DDP group in the German National Assembly, June 1919.

The

Liberal


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.Renewal of Liberalism.

Election in Heilbronn 1907.

Pamphlet regarding the rightof women to vote, 1913.

At the turn of the 20th century fromthe 19th, Friedrich Naumann beganrallying for the renewal of Germanliberalism both at the level of con-tent and of organisation. In 1906 hepublished a series of articles underthe title The Renewal of Liberalism,which was soon found in the formof a best-selling brochure entitledA Political Waking Call. What isof lesser importance today is thekind of party-platform and tactical

goals that Naumann had set for theLiberals.

Yet the important social prioritiesthat he ascribed to the liberal projectcontinue to be relevant: he wantedto loosen liberalism from the stiffnessof the property-owning, educated

middle class and to make it becomesensitive to the needs, the worries,and the desires of the majority ofGerman people. That might strikemany an economic Liberal today asquite foreign. But one should con-sider Naumanns sense for reality,which made it apparent to him that

liberal goals can only be realisedwhere they find sufficient social sup-port. His conviction that fidelity toprinciples must be combined with anunderstanding of political possibili-ties and that also the most convincedliberal citizen must not shy awayfrom providing organisational support could not be more true today, onehundred years later.


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Friedrich Naumann in frontof the Reichstag in 1919.

Election speech, 1907.


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August Bebel, Werner Sombart, andFriedrich Naumann on the way

to the SPD Party Congress in Breslau, 1895.

Handwritten notes from the Reichstag.

In addition, Naumanns convictionthat political platforms alone are

not enough for political success isstill relevant today. It is almost asimportant to have strategic ideas asto how one can bring as many peopleto the political programme as pos-sible. In this sense, he was superiorto all of his Liberal contemporaries.For the political constellation of histime, the motto From Bassermannto Bebel the watchword for theformation of a great reform allianceof the Liberal Party, the NationalLiberals and the reformist SocialDemocrats provided Naumann withboth a handy formulation as wellas a multidimensional vision of howthe politics of the era of Wilhelm II.

could be transformed according tohis ideas.


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From this perspective it is no wonderthat whenever the liberals in theFederal Republic try to improve theirposition, they directly or indirectlytake up Naumanns ideas. This wasentirely clear during the discussionsthat ultimately led to the Freiburg

Platform of the FDP in 1971.

The FDPs internal debates and reso-lutions in the more recent past alsostand in the tradition of Naumannsmethods. For with its WiesbadenPrinciples of 1997, the FDP didexactly what Friedrich Naumann hadset as a task for forward-thinkingLiberals in 1906: The idea ofliberalism must first, and always,be worked out anew.


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1990 Federal Party Congressof the FDP in Hannover: the Liberalswere the first to integrate to form aGerman-wide party.

Photo:dpa,MartinAthenstdt.

Similarly, this is also the case for thelively discussions around Project18, the FDP goal for the electionresults in the Bundestag election of2002, setting it well beyond the 10percent mark. Certainly, this has noresonance at the level of contentbut is rather an echo of Naumannsstrategic methodical procedure. To besure, it is just as disputed both insideand outside the liberal camp as was

Naumanns project of a Coalitionfrom Bassermann to Bebel. To many,this too sounded utopian in its time,but it represented an important

milestone in German domestic poli-tics for the medium term. Just asthen, it remains decisive to set goalsand to begin the process of politicalchange so that perspectives canbe opened up for the many urgentand necessary political reforms inGermany.


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Civic Education.

German Academy for Politics, Berlin, Schinkelplatz 6, located in theAlte Bauakademie (built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel) between theuniversity and the palace at the Werderscher Markt. The firstCitizensAcademy as defined by Friedrich Naumann.

Thepe

oplesEd

ucator


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Lorem ipsum dor sit amm dolor slor sit.Civic Education.

Book cover of Patria. Yearbook of Die Hilfe.Year 1, 1901.

For the Friedrich NaumannFoundation, it is only natural thatNaumanns reflections on and hisengagement with civic educationwould ultimately stand at the centreof their work and of their cultiva-tion of tradition. For his entire life,Naumann understood himself asRalf Dahrendorf once expressed it as an educator of the people.

Of course, this is not surprising for apastor, even if Naumann stands as anexception among his contemporariesin his engagement with and for thelittle people. In his later work aspublicist and politician, he alwaysmaintained this emphasis on peda-gogy. His writings are generally heldto be almost always comprehensible,without at the same time losingtheir level of intelligent guidanceand without a simplification of their

formulae: Naumann wanted to bepopular but not a populist.


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Already comparatively early he hadbegun to reflect on how more peoplecould be encouraged to take part inpolitical discussions and in decision-making processes between elections:"The nation, which one so oftenpraises for its thoroughness, is notyet ready to deeply examine itsown fate." For Naumann, one wayto bring the citizen to a greaterengagement was through "educatingfor politics" or, expressed in modern

terms, through civic education. The

extent to which this occupied himis clear from the fact that duringthe difficult time of the First WorldWar, Naumann pressed forward withhis reflections on this theme, notonly conceptually but also entirelypractically: the financial support ofRobert Bosch made it possible toopen the "Citizens' Academy" in thesummer of 1918.

First curriculum of the Citizens Academy.


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2009 FNF - Friedrich Naumann-English

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