THE PRUSSIAN PARTITION 87There was a long-standing tradition of social paternalism. The duty of
improving and caring for the condition of the poorer and more vulnerable ele-
ments of society was ingrained in the Prussian ethic. It can be traced to the
Protestant Pietism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when a pre-
cocious network of schools, orphanages, almshouses, and hospitals was cre-
ated, and when men like August Herman Francke and his circle at the University
of Halle taught the virtues of practical Christianity. It ensured that the emanci-
pation of the serfs, undertaken between 1807 and 1823, was complete in Prussia
before Russia had even commenced the process. Its influence can be observed in
attitudes at both ends of the political spectrum, in the work of Ferdinand
Lassalle (1825-64), a Breslau Jew and the founder of state socialism, and in that
of Bismarck himself, whose social insurance scheme of 1878, to protect workers
against sickness and accident, was far in advance of its time. Paternalism of this
sort drew the sting of social ills and confined demands for national liberation to
the political sphere.
Cultural life was highly developed. In the Revolutionary era, Berlin, the
'Sparta of the North' was enlivened by an unprecedented explosion of literary
and philosophical excellence. The modest achievements of the Frederickian
Enlightenment were far surpassed by those of Kant, Hamann, Schlegel, Fichte,
Hegel, and Schopenhauer (who was born a Polish subject in Danzig, in 1788).
Herder, Niebuhr, and Ranke founded a School of History which was admired
and imitated throughout Europe. Humboldt, Chamisso, and Bunsen in the nat-
ural sciences, Savigny and Eichhorn in jurisprudence, are counted among the
pioneers of their subjects. Kleist, Lessing, and Novalis raised German literature
out of its doldrums. First Konigsberg and then Berlin became intellectual centres
of continental import. Men of talent and ambition were drawn from home and
abroad, and not a few recruited into the Prussian service. In the intellectual
salons of Henriette Herz or Rachel Levin, philosophers and poets mingled with
politicians and aristocrats. The spirit of inquiry penetrated deep into educated
society, and, coming at the very beginning of the Reform Era, made .a profound
impact on all spheres of life. Notwithstanding the authoritarian state, all polit-
ical changes in Prussia were subjected to searching debate, and were thoroughly
discussed at a high level. What is more, the excellence of intellectual life in
Prussia was sustained. In the persons of Treitschke, Mommsen, or Max Planck,
Berlin could boast no lesser status in 1900 than in 1800. In the absence of any
comparable intellectual development in the Polish lands, many Poles were
inevitably drawn into the world of German culture.
The Industrial Revolution came to Prussia early. The first steel-mill was
erected in the Ruhr in the 1780s, and in Silesia in 1794. The first railway was
built in 1847. Industrial enterprise and urban development were in German
hands from the start, even in the Polish provinces. Political movements, deriv-
ing from economic and social change, were equally in German hands. Both
Socialism as a whole, and Trade Unionism in particular, were ail-German
affairs, and were fundamentally opposed to any tampering with the Prussian