Politics, Radicalism and Anglo-German Relations: The Reception of Ernst Moritz Arndt in early 19th-century Britain

This essay presents the early reception of Ernst Moritz Arndt in Britain. Retrieving this largely forgotten engagement with Arndt, and engagement of Arndt as it turns out, provides two insights. On a more general level it illustrates the influence of political constellations and political expediency on the introduction and reception of authors and texts. On a more specific level, it gives an insight into the engagement of young English liberals with the (radical) political thinking of the German Wars of Liberation, especially with its liberal and spiritual aspects, and its efforts to exert influence in a growing and increasingly powerful public sphere. 1

phase, the young Hare did not make public his political agreement with the Arndt of the Befreiungskriege, who was being removed from his professorial post at the new University of Bonn amid suspicion of demagogy and sedition. But Hare's dedication to introduce German critical, political and spiritual thought into Britain through his journalistic writing and translations from 1820 onwards helped to prepare the ground for the first Reform Bill and make German thought a key ingredient of the Victorian intellectual landscape. 3 By the late 1830s, when the political and intellectual landscape had changed and public opinion no longer considered German literature and thought dangerous, Hare is happy to refer to Arndt in very favourable terms.
If it was controversial to introduce Arndt into Britain in 1806-08, his reception history has remained polarised throughout the centuries. This polarisation hinged on the status of two ideas: nationalism and progressive politics, both of which are cornerstones of Arndt's thinking. While up to the 1830s he was considered a left-wing radical arguing for a constitutional nation state and enfranchised citizenship (who up to 1815 would nevertheless be useful to Prussian authorities in the battle against Napoleon), from the later 1830s he became an elder statesman of constitutional reform and nation statehood, who was elected to the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. In the later 19 th and early 20 th century he was celebrated as an essentialist nationalist who focused on ethnicity and promoted Francophobia. In post-1945 in West-Germany this then necessarily made him a dangerous Teutomanic nationalist who had helped pave the way for the disastrous turns of German history between 1914 and 1945, while in the GDR he was celebrated as a defender of the dispossessed and disenfranchised, and a precursor of socialism who paved the way to "our socialist state of German nation". 4 The debate about the value and nature of his legacy continues to this day as the battle over the name of the University in Greifswald, Arndt's alma mater which (used to) bear his name, illustrates. 5 3 It is beyond the scope of this essay to treat Hare's publicist activities in the 1820s in this respect. against the German princes. The volumes are mixed-genre, containing loosely connected essays, speeches and poems or songs, much of which up to part 3 comes across as a kind of anti-Napoleonic agit prop, but at the same time, and especially in part 1, Arndt tries to work out how something like 'a spirit of the age' comes about, socially and intellectually.
To this end Geist der Zeit I opens with a theoretical section about how a spirit of the age arises, and how the current one has arisen, before reviewing a large number of modern (and a smaller number of ancient) European nations as well as different social classes and polities. A whole chapter is dedicated to Napoleon. The analysis draws on historical observations, an analysis of current conditions, and the relationship between intellectual elites and their publics. Although his analysis makes claims to general applicability, its key aim is to explain how the current political and cultural climate, which was allowing Napoleon to conquer Europe, had come about. The political players largely to blame are the German princes, selfish or cowardly 'Franzosenknechte', 6 who oppress and exploit their lands and fail in their duties to their people, not least because they foster a culture of selfishness among the upper German mysticism, which is frequently used as shorthand for Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. The review foregrounds Arndt's criticism of the negative effect of too much speculative metaphysics: 'he [Arndt] censures with great propriety the rage for proposing new systems, the separation of literary men from active life, their desire to know everything' (525). The reviewer on the other hand censures Arndt for his inappropriate and needless exaggerations, his dispersiveness and obscurities in argument and language, i.e. the reviewer acknowledges and confirms British prejudices of German writing. He also skirts over the novel aspects in Arndt's book -the investigation of how ideas are spread by intellectual elites and how and why they find approval -and instead praises the book's more traditional part, the panorama of nations and their characteristics as the 'most interesting' section (526). Such overviews had been a stock feature of historical texts since the 17 th century, were generally common, and hence safe to praise because entirely uncontroversial. 10 Before going into detail regarding the content, the reviewer takes care to present Arndt as a positive figure. He establishes Arndt's moral superiority by reporting that Arndt 'objects to the literary, political and moral qualities of his contemporaries' (525), i.e. a wrong-headed spirit of the age, before suggesting he is 'the voice of truth' (527). Arndt's 'frank confessions of his sentiments' (525) evince him as honest. He is brave: fearless to speak out on political matters in a context of political persecution, 'he by no means avoids the subjects on which it is now scarcely safe in Germany to speak or write the truth' (525). This makes him the trustworthy voice of the considerable sections of the German public who share key British views regarding the political landscape, and especially Napoleon. This commonality of views with trustworthy Germans is presented by the reviewer as a pleasant surprise, something that is unlikely to be obvious to his British audience. He asserts that the British have been misinformed, not to say misled: 'We have often been told that opinions abroad respecting the ruler of France differed widely from those which are prevalent among us; but we may conclude, from the pages of this writer, that many think, but few dare to speak or write, as we do.' (527) Regarding content, the reviewer focuses on Napoleon, the British, and the Spanish, i.e. on areas of direct British interest. He translates three long quotes, each tailored to engage British readers: two relating to the British themselves and one about the Spanish. The first quote relating to the British presents Arndt's view that it is in Germany's interest to support Britain, because Britain falling to France would produce an (even more) intolerable French hegemony. To the British reader it must then seem that many Germans would naturally support the British war effort. The second quote establishes Arndt as an admirer of English liberty and nationhood (a common stance among several generations of political liberals).
The reviewer does however not shrink from quoting Arndt's assessment of the recent British political and social decline, possibly because these views were also current in Britain.
Although risky, this strategy may be intended to give himself, and Arndt, extra trustworthiness, he is honest about the book and Arndt is telling it like it is. The quote finishes with Arndt's impassioned exhortation to the 'Britons' to recover their sense of themselves and defend liberty in Europe.
'Britons: you were one a noble people. Your constitution gave spirit and power; you had poets and orators, astronomers and discoverers; you were free, high minded [sic] and just. On the banks of the Ganges and the Senegal, and in Jamaica, the morals, the virtues and the admirable constitution of Englishmen were lost! Oppressors became oppressed, and despots became slaves! […] Victories by land and sea militate nothing against this assertion; such proofs or glory and virtue many nations can produce, when everything else is lost that rendered them worthy of being a people. Should you be overwhelmed, and France become the despot of the seas, the last spark of European liberty is extinguished. You will perish by no power but your own. You are yet more a nation than most of us […] You have been so great that your fall would shake the world.' (527) Spain was of particular interest to the British for a number of reasons. It is geographically close and dominant next to Britain's ally Portugal. Portugal was crucial for British naval operations against the French and important as a transatlantic trading partner through their colonial possessions in Brazil, and Spain was an unreliable player in the ongoing wars, having sided with and against France, revolutionary and Napoleonic, since the early 1790s.
Only a year ago, in October 1805, the battle of Trafalgar had been fought against a Franco-Spanish fleet. Portugal remained vulnerable, and the Franco-Spanish occupation of Portugal, which was to precipitate the Peninsular War, would take place five months after the review appeared, in early May 1807. Spain, however, rather like the Rheinbund, was really under Napoleon's control. The reviewer introduces Arndt's assessment of the Spanish in a way that must be palatable to British ears: the Spanish are stronger than one might think. 'Of the Spaniards he [Arndt] entertains great hopes, and he anticipates from the nature of their country and the character of the inhabitants the approach of better times' (526). In fact Spain has, according to Arndt, the fibre to throw off French domination. The reviewer translates: 'Had the courage of the antient Cantabrians and Celtiberians now existed, a French army might indeed have crossed the Pyrenees, but none would have returned. Yet the time of deliverance approaches […] All America will be free; priests will lose the lustre of holiness and kings will lose their thrones, unless the former mean to work and the latter to govern.
Then the Spaniards will be again what they once were, one of the most flourishing and powerful nations of Europe.' (526) Again, there is an element of risk in the reviewer's strategy, he is happy to underline Arndt's liberal stance: the Spanish will only re-achieve their former greatness if they become liberal modern citizens, abandoning what remains of exploitative colonial rule, sponging Catholicism and parasitical absolutism, and make kings and priests facilitators of their communities who hold their offices on the understanding that they serve. According to Arndt, victory over Napoleon will only come to a reformed, public- There is evidence that he was well connected, in 1819 he was appointed chaplain to the Duchess of Kent, Princess Victorian's German mother, and in 1820 made 'minister of the Prussian Embassy'. 14 The Duchess of Kent was also patron of the German and English school attached to St. George's, which had existed since the early days of the church in the 1760s, but was given a new building in 1805, under Schwabe's incumbency as pastor. In 1808, less than two years later, a partial translation of Geist der Zeit I appeared in London, entitled Arndt's Spirit of the Times. 17 It seems that simply drawing attention to Arndt's book was not enough, part of it was to be made available to Anglophone readers. The translation shares a number of features with Schwabe's review: it, too, is carefully calibrates Arndt's text for its target audience at this particular time, it has the same aim of pointing out shared anti-Napoleonic interests between Britain and 'Germany', and the translator, who is working into English, is German. The translator, who identifies himself on the cover only as 'Rev. P. W.', is, like Schwabe, a Protestant clergyman. Unlike Schwabe, he outs himself as German in his preface, but he too wants to influence British public opinion, not least by promoting Arndt's genius as a political analyst.
The slim volume renders less than half the source text, focusing on the sections that the reviewer(s) valued so highly. It presents most, though not all, of the review of nations, and the chapter on Napoleon, i.e. it offers Arndt's assessment of contemporary politics, but,like It looks as if the volume was published in haste, the somewhat dyslexic misspelling of Arndt's name on the cover as 'Ardnt' was not picked up on this front page that is so carefully designed to attract immediate attention. Tapping into anti-Napoleonic feeling, the cover refers to Napoleon as 'the Destoyer', a strategy continued in the preface, where he is described as 'French Attila' (iv) and 'modern Attila' (vi). The cover also suggests that Arndt's book is the publication that led to the infamous execution of the bookseller Johann Philip Palm by the French in August 1806 in Braunau am Inn. Palm was executed for disseminating anti-Napoleonic material, in lieu of the author of the text, who could not be found, nor identified. Arndt's book, however, was not the 'Corpus Delicti' (iii), as the translator promptly admits in his preface, explaining his casual approach to facts with the points that it had become difficult and dangerous to try to procure the publication that had really led to Palm's death (the anonymous Deutschland in seiner größten Erniedrigung), that Arndt's book too had 'kindled' Napoleon's bloodthirsty rage, and implying that Arndt would have faced a similar fate, had he not fled into exile (iii-iv). Using the Palm-story was probably a tactical decision: while Arndt was evidently fairly unknown in Britain, the translator could rely on Palm's execution being public knowledge. In the preface he refers to a public outcry in Britain over the execution: 'the heroic Palm, the unfortunate bookseller of Erlangen, (whose fate, to the eternal honour of the British character, made so deep an impression on the minds of Englishmen, that a very considerable sum was generously collected here by subscription for his disconsolate widow and fatherless children)' (iii). In the translator's description Napoleon appears as a despotic, vengeful tyrant, i.e. the opposite of a liberator or wise legislator, he is in fact a man who 'tramples under foot all laws, both human and divine' (iii). Finally, the translator Arndt's prescience regarding the Spanish uprising in May 1808 as a selling point, presenting Arndt as an exceptionally far-sighted political analyst, from whose wisdom every politically minded reader will profit. 'His [Arndt's] remarks on the Belligerent Powers […] bespeak him a man of considerable knowledge of the world and the human heart, and of profound political penetration and judgement' (v), so much so that 'other predictions of the author, that of the late glorious revolution in Spain, written in November 1805, was literally fulfilling' (iv). Given such prescience, Arndt's views must 'be highly interesting to every loyal Briton at the present crisis' and 'to the public in general' (v). As Arndt's text provides (other) 'political sketches with prognostics', the correct prediction of the Spanish uprising adds weight to what he says.
The translator's intentions are very similar to Schwabe's, but his approach to his audience is more determined. Unlike Schwabe, he takes no risks. For example, he decides to leave out the chapter on Britain, sidestepping its condemnation alongside its praise, avoiding offending his public. To an even greater degree than Schwabe, he manages his target audience's preconceptions. His preface is an exemplary para-text, very deliberately setting out how to The Rev. Peter Will (1764-1839) was, like Christian Schwabe, a Protestant German clergyman serving the sizeable German community in Georgian London. Will was also a prolific translator of German (Gothic) novels into English during the 1790s and early 1800s, he also translated some Lavater and Knigge, 21 and was generally active in the area of disseminating contemporary German literature in Britain. 22 There is considerable irony in the fact that the unabating popularity of German 'Gothic' literature, which was so suspect to arbiters of good British taste (and sense) and part of the reason for the anti-German bias that Will so carefully addresses in his calibration, also contributed significantly to his income.
Will exclusively translated from German to English, which is testimony to his excellent language skills. Considering Will's and Schwabe's respective posts, it is certain that they did not only know each other, but would have been in close contact, as the German Lutheran While he does not reveal his name for fear that his parents, who still live in Germany, will be the target of reprisals, he is happy to give his London address (8 Howland St, Fitzroy Square), in case anyone wants to peruse the whole book in the original. The review provides further publicity for Arndt, his views and the idea that Britain and 'Germany' should 'naturally' work together against Napoleon, but it is also clearly designed to stimulate discussion and reflection of the situation. It is tempting to suspect that Schwabe and Will were co-ordinating their interventions. Whether their efforts were instigated or sanctioned by higher authorities with political motives is a question that requires more research. I have already mentioned that Schwabe was appointed minister to the Prussian embassy in London in 1820, over a decade later, but this does not mean he had no contact with these circles earlier.
To sum up, Arndt's Geist der Zeit is introduced into Britain promptly after its publication in Germany, the introduction is engineered by German nationals, to some extent under the cover By 1815 the political landscape had changed dramatically, Napoleon was defeated and exiled, and the Congress of Vienna was re-ordering Europe, in many respects by turning back the political clock. Liberal opposition to conservative politics became difficult, but it did not go away. One of the centres of youthful political liberalism in England was Trinity College Cambridge. And one of the young men at Trinity was Julius Hare, who was, it seems, a keen admirer of Arndt's. pp. 55-56), but it is likely that Plumptre, who as a member of Hare's extended family had known Hare personally in his later years and was writing from personal memory, would not have included this detail if he had not heard it from Hare himself. Both Schlegel and Schleiermacher were well represented in Hare's Library, but not as numerous as Arndt. Visiting Niebuhr would have been natural not just because Hare was cotranslating Niebuhr's Römische Geschichte, but because the two were corresponding at the time. 29 While the right to lecture, the main source of income for a university professor, had not been returned to him, although he had been acquitted by a special tribunal of the charges of sedition and demagogy in early 1821 It would appear that Arndt appealed to Hare on several counts: politically, spiritually, and as a leader of public opinion. Like Arndt, the young Hare was convinced that social and political reforms were required and that these should be based on (nearly lost liberal) national traditions. He shared with Arndt a fervent Protestant religiosity and a hatred of Napoleon, and he is likely to have admired Arndt's political activism, his public role, fighting his battles in the public sphere, engaged in changing public opinion and the condition of his nation. This is a role Hare whole-heartedly adopted from himself during the 1820s and 1830s: his reforming effortsboth politically and spirituallyfocused on changing attitudes via engaging the were staunch republicans, they idolized Switzerland as a model of a historical democracy and independent nationhood and welcomed the French Revolution. 30 The latter was not that rare in their generation, but their political liberalism outlived the terror and transferred to Napoleon, at least in the late 1790s. 31 Although they avidly politicized their children, 32 Hare did not take over any of his parents' enthusiasm for Napoleon. While at Cambridge he refers to Napoleon as a blood-thirsty Aaron, 33 which is reminiscent of Peter Will's epithets, and a view shared by Arndt. It is of course also a view shared by large numbers of others in Britain and elsewhere from the early 1800s onwards.

J.C. Hare: Liberal Student Politics and Hidden Reception of Ernst Moritz Arndt
Hare went to Trinity College Cambridge in 1812, and remained connected to the college throughout the 1820s. Hare's German library, which contained mainly recent publications, caused great concern to his conservative aunt Jones, who feared her nephew was becoming radicalised in Jacobin and atheistic directions. A heated argument between the two is occasioned by Geist der Zeit 4, Arndt was suspended on full pay, and residing in style in a handsome house in the town. 30 Distad, Guessing, 10-12. 31 Distad, Guessing, 10. 32 According to Distad, Francis jr.'s letters to his parents, when the latter made a trip back to England in 1797 while three of their children stayed behind in Italy, were regularly confiscated on their journey into Britain due to the republican slogans which adorned them. Distad, Guessing, 12. 33 Distad, Guessing, 29. preserved in their letters when Aunt Jones suggests Julius should burn his German books.
Hare counters that German thought helped him to tackle the rupture between knowledge and faith, and to withstand the immoral onslaught of materialistic capitalism, which relies on, and produces, selfishness.
As for my German books, I hope from my heart that the day will never arrive when I shall be induced to burn them, for I am convinced that I shall never do so, unless I Hare is reported to have told his aunt, when she objected to him translating German gothic horror (Motte de la Fouqué's Sintram) that his 'patriotism and his faith were in danger from the materialism which in England was claiming every domain of thought and even of religion itself'. Quoted in Distad, Guessing, 17. 35 His effort to harmonize knowledge and faith is evident in his Commonplace Book, a notebook preserved in Trinity College Library, where he rejects, as in the letter to Lady Jones, the retreat into irrational faith and embraces the search for integrating advancing knowledge with religious belief. 'Often I have deplored the loss of that childish confidence, and yearned with a painful desire to cast away all the uncertainties of halfknowledge against which my soul is at present struggling […]. But it cannot be: -it must not be. Even if it were possible to forget our knowledge, it would be our duty to increase it.' Quoted in Distad, Guessing, 27. While this is reminiscent of Schiller's impassioned appeal for the modern human being not to regress but to achieve happiness from completing the striving through the totality of knowledge in the 1795 Naïve und Sentimentalische Dichtung, it is equally the topic of Josef Görres' Glauben und Wissen (1805), which Hare owned. In his Commonplace Book Hare also inveighed against selfish competitiveness, which he felt was encouraged by the socialisation of boys in British boarding schools. Such institutions, in his view, bred 'selfishness' as they instilled a 'duty to surpass', regarding 'merit not as a positive, but a comparative' and bred 'a pernicious spirit of emulation, rivalry, and of contention.' Quoted in Distad, Guessing, 21. and 1818 and was the basis for the Follen-led 'Black' Burschenschaft at Gießen, the "Gießener Schwarzen". The reading matter discussed at Follen's 'Lesegesellschaft' ranged from literature to political pamphlets and newspapers, and unsurprisingly included works by 40 This, however, is not to suggest that Hare copied from them: many of the above publications appeared between 1815 and 1821, after he had already formed the ideas he expresses in his Union speech draft. On the other hand, if he was still buying books of such content after he had formulated his views in the Commonplace Book, it would suggest that his 'radical' views were neither transitory nor just for argument's sake. 41 Distad, Guessing, 30.
Arndt. 42 Both Follen brothers were youthful veterans of the Wars of Liberation and at the heart of the radical German constitutionalist movement between 1814 and 1819. 43 While we do not know whether Hare knew of the Follens, 44 we can be sure that he read Arndt's Geist der Zeit I. His copy bears the evidence of avid reading, the binding shows the effects of frequent use and its margins are littered with those pencil markings that Roger Paulin has identified as typical of Hare. 45 The most extensive markings, sometimes whole or half pages, are in the first part of the volume, where Arndt discusses the social impact of intellectual elites, such as writers (poets, journalists, reviewers) and scholars (philosophers, theologians, historians), and the way a particular age (Zeitalter) shapes and is shaped by its contemporaries (Zeitgenossen). These are the parts of the volume that the reviewers, including Schwabe and Will, purported not to value. Hare, however, clearly grasped the function and importance of these intellectual elites within the public sphere when it came to exerting public influence and directing public opinion in an increasingly literate and politicised age. This understanding more than likely informed Hare's own activities as a writer, translator and journalist from the 1820s onwards.
In the second half of the book, which contains the more traditional review of peoples and wasmuch preferred by the reviewers, the chapters on the English, the Germans and the French are particularly marked, as is the final chapter 'Wahrheit und Versöhnung'. 46 Hare was interested in the relationship between religion, truth, and good government, and in (1815), 47 in which Hare has marked especially sections relating to forms of government and the pernicious aspects of the rule of aristocratic oligarchies, as well as Arndt's reiteration of Britain's uneven potential, on the one hand as the model of historical liberty, but on the other as currently morally corrupt, 48 which was also a feature of Geist der Zeit I.
That Arndt's commanding presence in Hare's library, and his thought, has gone unnoticed is probably largely due to the fact that until the late 1830s Hare avoided mentioning Arndt's name in his publications. A case in point is his first book, co-authored with his brother Augustus, Guesses at Truth by two Brothers, the first edition of which appeared in 1827.
Guesses is a collection of short essays and aphorisms, intended to make especially young men think, as the authors explain in the preface. While there is no mention of Arndt in this edition of Guesses, Hare describes the impact of the age on its contemporaries and their actions in a way that is very similar to Arndt's in Geist der Zeit I. In the 1838 edition of Guesses Hare finally mentions Arndt, as that 'honest and hearty German patriot, Arndt, which [sic] did such good service in kindling and feeding the enthusiasm during the war with France', introducing Arndt as the writer of German national political agitation, which supported the British-led war against Napoleonic France. 53 Arndt is able to 'kindle' and 'feed enthusiasm', i.e. have public impact, because he communicates directly and without over-complicating matters. This is why he is able to get at 'truth'. 54 The communication of truth is also a principal theme in Geist der Zeit I, introduced in its first chapter about 'Der Schreiber' and summed up in the final one 'Wahrheit und Versöhnung', both liberally pencil-marked in Hare's copy.
It would appear that in the 1820s Hare felt uneasy referring in print to a political radical who had been removed from his university post and faced a special tribunal to defend himself against charges of sedition in this homeland. (Any such qualms, however, did not stop Hare, it seems, from visiting Arndt in the year after Guesses came out.) When by the late 1830s Arndt was on the way to being exonerated, Hare was happy to refer to him directly. In 1840 The new editions are Hare's own work, Augustus died in 1834, before Julius embarked on the first reworking. The differences between the 1827 and 1838 editions of volume 1 and the differences between volume 2 of 1827 and 1848 are especially significant. The texts are adjusted in numerous ways, from changing individual words or phrases, to omitting sections, adding large sections and changing the positions or individual guesses, sometimes dramatically. A thorough study of all changes and their relations to Hare's views and the changing political and intellectual contexts is still outstanding. 52 Arndt, Geist der Zeit 2. (London: Boosey, 1813), pp. v and iii respectively. 53 Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers, 2 nd edition. (London: Tayler and Walton, 1838), 269. 54 This (very brief) discussion of Arndt occurs in a section on language use, which touches on the difficulties of translating, the pitfalls of over-complicating language, i.e. making it highly technical and specialised, or using foreign words. In this context Hare compares Arndt to Cobbett, both are able to use straightforward language to effectively express truth, rather like Martin Luther, an association that must convey the highest merit on both writers. Hare's main concern is the immediacy of simple direct language, which has not gone through numerous editing processes, of which he cites Cobbett's and Arndt's as good examples. Such language Hare recommends for intellectual discourse as well.
Arndt was reinstated in his professorial post at Bonn on the orders of the new Prussian king, Frederic William IV. And, in an extremely speedy rehabilitation, he was, by 1841, Rektor of his university. In Germany, too, Arndt had (again) become a venerable 'patriot'.
There is no precise information regarding when Hare bought, or pencil-marked, his Arndt books. It is, theoretically, possible that the reason why he does not mention him in 1827 is that he had not read Arndt by the time he and Augustus were putting together Guesses in the mid-1820s. Against the political background and in the context of Hare's own activities presented here I find this unlikely. How much Arndt Hare had read by the time he prepared his speech for the Cambridge Union debate in early 1816 is however uncertain. That he would have read Geist der Zeit I or its review in the Monthly Review is unlikelyin 1806 he was an eleven-year-old pupil at Charterhouse. But his copy of Geist der Zeit I is the second edition of 1807, not the 1815-one; it is bound with the 1813 edition of part 2. Part 3 (1813) and part 4 (1818), both first editions, are bound together. This could suggest that he did not acquire the books until 1818, but the fact that part 1 is so evidently carefully perused, whereas the others are not, could suggest he had this earlier, perhaps in a separate binding.
His well-thumbed copy of Der Wächter (1815) may suggest perusal in the mid-1810s, when Hare was an undergraduate.
The reception of Arndt's Geist der Zeit in Britain is clearly driven by political dynamics. In its first part between 1806 and 1808 it was more of an introduction than a reception. The book was pointed out and made available to British readers as part of a political agenda pursued by German nationals who wanted to influence public opinion. Whether British readers were swayed by this agenda is another matter, 55 but Arndt's ideas were presented to them, which they otherwise might not have been. In Arndt's more 'genuine' reception by Julius Harewhich may well be quite separate from the 'introduction' by Schwabe and Will political motives were still key, although they were part of a more generally social agenda for spiritual renewal and political reform. It is very likely that Arndt's thought strongly influenced the young Hare's own political thinking and his public activities; and it looks as if political conditions influenced Hare's public acknowledgement of Arndt, initially a nonacknowledgement, which changed as conditions did. (Arndt went on to have a strong public reception in Britain -which is beyond the scope of this essay.) Arndt's reception history in Britain up to the 1830s illustrates two things: texts tend not to travel randomly and any successful reception requires favourable conditions (even if these are covert). These two points are well acknowledged regarding cultural conditions. What is less often stressed, and so clear in this example, is the importance of political constellations.
There are few barriers to receiving foreign texts (and authors) that are in line with existing prevalent political views and structures. To what extent such texts are received depends largely on the target context's appetite for foreign culture. Foreign texts that sell, and have little overt political content, may be frowned upon by the arbiters of taste or by supporters of the prevailing political structures (if the texts could be seen as undermining 'proper' attitudes), but tend to be unstoppable, unless censorship is enforced. In this context the influence of German gothic and sentimental literature is an example of such unstoppable influx, with Kotzebue perhaps the most emblematic name. But texts that are problematic because they are in some respect counter-cultural in a political sense, like Arndt's Geist der Zeit I, tend to have hidden reception histories (at least while they are counter-cultural) because they enter unfavourable territory. Their receptions are covert, harder to trace and hence easy to overlook. The introduction of such texts requires considerable management if they are to appeal to an audience broader than the small counter-cultural group that may have picked them up. Seeking such a broader appeal makes sense if a political (or possibly cultural) impact is the aim. And only a distinct agenda justifies the efforts of 'management' that are required to give such texts the chance to be received broadly and favourably. Arndt's early reception in Britain is a clear example of such an introduction.