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IDEAS FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
HISTORY OF MANKIND
 Ideas for the Philosophy of
the History of Mankind
JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY GREGORY MARTIN MOORE

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD
Copyright © 2024 by Princeton University Press
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ISBN 978-0-691-14718-5
eISBN 9780691255705
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Version 1.0
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Editorial: Ben Tate and Josh Drake
Production Editorial: Karen Carter
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Copyeditor: Hank Southgate
 CONTENTS

Introduction xiii
Note on the Translation lxxv

IDEAS FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTORY OF MANKIND

PART ONE

Preface 3
Book 1 8
I. Our Earth Is a Star among Other Stars 8
II. Our Earth Is One of the Middle Planets 10
III. Our Earth Underwent Many Revolutions before It Became
What It Is Now 14
IV. Our Earth Is a Sphere That Rotates on Its Axis and Moves
around the Sun in an Oblique Direction 16
V. Our Earth Is Enveloped in an Atmosphere and in
Contention with Several Celestial Bodies 19
VI. The Planet That We Inhabit Is a Mountain of Rock That
Rises Up over the Surface of the Waters 21
VII. The Mountain Chains Made Our Two Hemispheres the
Scene of the Most Remarkable Variety and Change 28
Book 2 31
I. Our Terrestrial Globe Is an Immense Workshop for the
Organization of Exceedingly Diverse Beings 31
 II. The Vegetable Kingdom of Our Earth in Relation to
Human History 33
III. The Animal Kingdom in Relation to Human History 39
IV. Man Is an Intermediate Creature among the Animals of
the Earth 43
Book 3 46
I. Comparison of the Structure of Plants and Animals in
Relation to the Organization of Man 46
II. Comparison of the Several Organic Forces Operative in
the Animal 52
III. Examples of the Physiological Structure of Several
Animals 58
IV. On the Instincts of Animals 62
V. The Advancement of Creatures to the Association of
Several Ideas and to a Peculiar and Freer Employment of
Their Senses and Limbs 65
VI. Organic Difference between Human Beings and Animals
69
Book 4 73
I. Man Is Organized for the Faculty of Reason 73
II. Retrospect from the Organization of the Human Head to
the Inferior Creatures Approximating Its Form 84
III. Man Is Organized for Finer Senses, for Art, and for
Language 87
IV. Man Is Organized for Finer Instincts and Hence for
Freedom 91
V. Man Is Organized for the Most Delicate Health, yet at the
Same Time for the Greatest Durability, and Consequently
for His Dispersal across the Earth 96
VI. Man Is Formed for Humanity and Religion 99
VII. Man Is Formed for the Hope of Immortality 106
 Book 5 107
I. A Series of Ascending Forms and Forces Prevails in Our
Earthly Creation 107
II. No Force of Nature Is without an Organ; the Organ,
However, Is Never the Force Itself, Which Operates by
Means Thereof 110
III. The Nexus of Forces and Forms Is neither Retrograde nor
Stationary, but Progressive 113
IV. The Realm of Human Organization Is a System of Spiritual
Forces 116
V. Our Humanity Is Only Preparatory, the Bud of a Future
Flower 121
VI. The Present State of Man Is Probably the Connecting Link
between Two Worlds 125

PART TWO

Book 6 133
I. Organization of the Peoples Living Near the North Pole
133
II. Organization of the Peoples on the Asiatic Ridge of the
Earth 138
III. Organization of the Finely Formed Peoples of This
Region 143
IV. Organization of the African Peoples 147
V. Organization of Mankind in the Islands of the Tropics
153
VI. Organization of the Americans 155
VII. Conclusion 163
Book 7 165
I. Though Mankind May Appear in Such Various Forms
throughout the World, They Belong to One and the Same
Species 165
 II. The One Species of Man Has Acclimatized Itself
Everywhere on Earth 169
III. What Is Climate, and How Does It Affect the Formation of
Man’s Body and Soul? 174
IV. The Genetic Force Is the Parent of All Forms on Earth,
Which the Climate Affects Either Adversely or Beneficially
179
V. Concluding Remarks on the Conflict between Genesis and
Climate 185
Book 8 190
I. The Sensibility of Our Species Varies with Its Forms and
Climate; But It Is a Human Employment of the Senses That
Everywhere Leads to Humanity 190
II. The Imagination of Men Is Everywhere Organic and
Climatic, but Everywhere Guided by Tradition 196
III. The Practical Understanding of Mankind Has Everywhere
Developed in Response to the Demands of a Particular
Mode of Life; but Everywhere It Is the Flower of National
Genius, the Offspring of Habit and Tradition 203
IV. The Sensations and Instincts of Men Are Everywhere
Adapted to the Conditions in Which They Live and to Their
Organization; But Everywhere They Are Governed by
Opinions and Habit 209
V. The Happiness of Man Is Everywhere an Individual Good;
Consequently It Is Everywhere Climatic and Organic, the
Offspring of Practice, Tradition, and Habit 219
Book 9 225
I. For All That Man Fondly Imagines That He Produces
Everything from Himself, yet He Depends on Others for the
Development of His Faculties 225
II. The Particular Means of Forming Man Is Language 231
 III. All the Arts and Sciences of the Human Species Have
Been Invented by Means of Imitation, Reason, and
Language 238
IV. Governments Are Orders of Men, for the Most Part
Established on the Basis of Inherited Tradition 242
V. Religion Is the Oldest and Most Sacred Tradition in the
World 249
Book 10 255
I. Our Earth Is Specially Formed for Its Living Creation
255
II. Where Was Man Formed and Where His Most Ancient
Abode? 257
III. The Course of Culture and of History Furnishes Proof That
the Origin of the Human Species Was in Asia 262
IV. Asiatic Traditions on the Creation of the Earth and Origin
of Mankind 267
V. The Oldest Written Tradition on the Beginnings of Human
History 271
VI. Continuation of the Oldest Written Tradition on the
Beginnings of Human History 276
VII. Conclusion of the Oldest Written Tradition on the Origin of
Human History 282

PART THREE

Book 11 287
I. China 288
II. Cochin-China, Tonkin, Laos, Korea, Eastern Tartary,
Japan 296
III. Tibet 298
IV. Hindustan 302
V. General Reflections on the History of These States 307
Book 12 312
I. Babylon, Assyria, Chaldea 314
II. Medes and Persians 319
III. Hebrews 324
IV. Phoenicia and Carthage 330
V. Egyptians 336
VI. Further Ideas on the Philosophy of Human History 341
Book 13 346
I. The Situation and Population of Greece 347
II. The Language, Mythology, and Poetry of Greece 352
III. The Arts of the Greeks 356
IV. The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Greeks 362
V. Scientific Endeavors of the Greeks 369
VI. History of the Revolutions in Greece 375
VII. General Observations on the History of Greece 381
Book 14 387
I. Etruscans and Latins 388
II. The Establishments by Which Rome Arrived at Political
and Military Ascendancy 394
III. Conquests of the Romans 399
IV. The Decline of Rome 405
V. Character, Sciences, and Arts of the Romans 411
VI. General Observations on the Fate and History of Rome
419
Book 15 423
I. Humanity Is the End of Human Nature, and with This End
God Put the Fate of Mankind in Their Own Hands 425
II. All Destructive Forces in Nature Must Not Only Yield, in
the Course of Time, to the Preservative Forces, but Must
 Themselves Ultimately Promote the Consummation of the
Whole 429
III. Mankind Is Destined to Pass through Various Degrees of
Culture; but Their Enduring Welfare Is Founded Solely and
Essentially on Reason and Equity 436
IV. By the Laws of Their Inner Nature, Reason and Equity
Must, in the Course of Time, Gain a Greater Foothold
among Mankind and Promote a More Enduring Humanity
442
V. A Wise Goodness Presides over the Fate of Mankind;
Hence There Is No Nobler Dignity, No Purer or More
Lasting Happiness Than to Work in Concert with It 448

PART FOUR

Book 16 457
I. Basques, Gaels, Cymry 458
II. Finns, Latvians, and Prussians 464
III. The German Peoples 466
IV. Slav Peoples 470
V. Foreign Peoples in Europe 472
VI. General Remarks and Conclusions 475
Book 17 479
I. The Origin of Christianity, together with Its Fundamental
Principles 480
II. Propagation of Christianity in the East 488
III. Progress of Christianity in the Greek Lands 496
IV. Progress of Christianity in the Latin Provinces 504
Book 18 511
I. The Kingdoms of the Visigoths, Suebi, Alans, and Vandals
511
II. Kingdoms of the Ostrogoths and Lombards 517
 III. Kingdoms of the Alemanni, Burgundians, and Franks
523
IV. Kingdoms of the Saxons, Northmen, and Danes 530
V. The Northern Kingdoms and Germany 536
VI. General Remarks on the Establishment of the German
Kingdoms in Europe 541
Book 19 547
I. Roman Hierarchy 548
II. Effect of the Hierarchy on Europe 554
III. Secular Protectors of the Church 559
IV. Kingdoms of the Arabs 564
V. Effects of the Arab Kingdoms 571
VI. General Reflections 578
Book 20 580
I. The Commercial Spirit in Europe 580
II. The Spirit of Chivalry in Europe 586
III. The Crusades and Their Consequences 592
IV. The Culture of Reason in Europe 599
V. Institutions and Discoveries in Europe 606
VI. Concluding Remarks 610

Appendix: Plan for the Concluding Volume of the Ideas (1788/89)

613
Notes 615
Index 693
 INTRODUCTION

“WAS HERDER A GREAT MAN?” wondered the essayist Thomas De

Quincey in 1823, a few months after the Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater had won him instant notoriety and some twenty years
after his subject’s death. If he declared himself at a loss to answer
his own question, it was not from ignorance or an insular mistrust of
the foreign. De Quincey, who in his memoir fondly recalled the giddy
intoxication promised by a roaring fire, “a quart of ruby-coloured
laudanum … and a book of German metaphysics,”1 had long devoted
himself to the study of Kant and would tirelessly champion, before
the tribunal of British taste, the literature of Lessing, Schiller, and
especially Jean Paul. But Herder puzzled him: “I still find it difficult to
form any judgment of an author … so polymorphous as Herder:
there is the same sort of difficulty in making an estimate of his
merits, as there would be to a political economist in appraising the
strength and weakness of an empire like the Chinese, or like the
Roman under Trajan.”2 Herder would doubtless have bristled at the
terms of comparison, and dismissed the younger man’s insolent
suggestion that, since Herder had reached only his sixtieth year after
“a life of most exemplary temperance,” he might have enjoyed
greater longevity by turning to the bottle or the poppy. But De
Quincey’s perplexity is understandable: Herder was indeed one of
the most versatile and original thinkers of the European
Enlightenment. A theologian, critic, educator, antiquarian, folklorist,
poet, and translator, he wrote prolifically, and on a remarkable
variety of subjects, making seminal contributions to the philosophy
of history, culture, religion, art, and language. But what is true of
Herder’s accomplishments as a whole—that they defy easy
description—applies equally to the colossal, ambitious, and yet
unfinished edifice intended as his magnum opus: the Ideas for the
Philosophy of the History of Mankind.
Published in four installments between 1784 and 1791, and
translated into English for the first time in 1800, the Ideas, like Vico’s
similarly adventurous and unclassifiable chef d’oeuvre, aspired to
nothing less than the founding of a “new science.” The object of that
science was to discover the laws and purpose of history, not in divine
or metaphysical legislation, but in the observable regularities of
nature: to extend to the human world those empirical investigations
that since Copernicus had yielded insight into the machinery of the
universe. This required that Herder first relate the history of nature
itself, beginning with the formation of the solar system and of the
earth; then survey the frontiers of the mineral, vegetable, and
animal kingdoms; enumerate the powers of organic life; distinguish
the species character of mankind, which Herder terms “humanity”
(Humanität); and, finally, explain the biological origin and function of
those unique phenomena in which that species character is
manifested, namely culture. Only then does Herder feel ready to
narrate the course of history, understood as the progressive and
maximally diverse development of our faculties, as the process by
which we express our humanity. The Ideas, then, aims to be a
thoroughly naturalistic work, but one nevertheless consistent with
Scripture—Herder was, after all, the head of the Lutheran Church in
the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. By articulating a monism, in which
Herder was confirmed by his reading of Spinoza, the Ideas seeks to
reconcile opposites, to overcome the dualism and deism, materialism
and mysticism between which modern thought oscillated.
Impatiently awaited and, with certain conspicuous exceptions,
warmly received by contemporaries, it would be heralded as one of
the supreme achievements of the German literary reflorescence that
Herder himself had done so much to bring about and as the
programmatic statement of Weimar Classicism. (It is no coincidence
that, when, in 1788, the Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia sat for a
portrait by Angelika Kauffmann, she posed with a copy of the Ideas
resting on her lap.) The Ideas was prized not only for the grandeur
of the vistas that it opened on nature and history, but also for the
majesty of its moral vision, for the hope and consolation it offered to
those pondering the mysteries and meaning of human existence. It
was, Benjamin Constant confided to his diary in 1804, “like a warm,
soft bed in which one may dream pleasantly.”3
The awkward title of Herder’s work, abbreviated by the first editor
of his collected writings to Ideas for the History of Mankind, is at
once accurate and misleading.4 On the one hand, the book declares
itself to be tentative and preliminary, allegedly preparing the way for
a fuller, more systematic investigation of its subject matter, but also
brimming with insights, observations, and countless suggestions for
future avenues of research. On the other hand, and contrary to its
reputation for conceptual diffuseness—Coleridge called it “a painted
Mist with no sharp outline”5—the Ideas evinces a remarkable
cohesion, not only in the sustained manner of argument, unlike
anything Herder had ever attempted before, but in the
unprecedented synthesis of multiple branches of eighteenth-century
knowledge, including physics, chemistry, geography, anatomy,
embryology, and ethnology, and in the ongoing dialogue with every
major thinker of the Enlightenment. As such, and as a contribution
to anthropology, the elaboration of which ranked among the most
urgent tasks of the age, the Ideas was a timely book and, in the
words of Christian von Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador to the
Court of St James’s, would “continue to live and to be studied, when
ninety-nine out of one hundred celebrities of this century and of the
last shall have been forgotten.”6
Yet there is some truth to Nietzsche’s observation that “even
Herder’s major work, for example, his Ideas for the History of
Mankind [sic], was something antiquated as soon as it appeared.”7
The convictions that motivated the Ideas; the questions that it
sought to answer; the debates in which it was engaged: all these
were promptly swept away by events beyond Herder’s control. The
French Revolution not only interrupted the publication of the Ideas,
casting doubt on the narrative that Herder wished to unfold; but the
ensuing political reaction, both before 1815 and in the decades
thereafter, gave rise to an intellectual climate at odds with the liberal
sentiments informing Herder’s work. Even before the storming of the
Bastille, however, the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason in
1781 had begun by the following decade to shift the ground beneath
Herder’s feet: signaling, at least from the latter’s perspective, a
return to philosophia prima and the arid metaphysical wrangling
against which he had long campaigned. Herder, who had studied
under Kant in Königsberg, felt even more aggrieved when, just a few
months after the appearance of Part One, this “arch-sophist and
arch-scholastic”8 brought out his own, rather more succinct
discussion of the topic under a suspiciously similar title—Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose—before proceeding
to write haughty, finger-wagging reviews of the first and second
volumes of Herder’s book. These schoolmasterly censures have cast
a long shadow over the reception of the Ideas; so, too, has an
embittered Herder’s decision to devote his last years to anti-Kantian
polemics that so obviously failed to turn the tide of German
philosophy.
Notwithstanding these obstacles, the Ideas exercised a profound
influence in the nineteenth century and beyond. Goethe, a close
collaborator while Herder was preparing Part One, and who had
embarked on his own important researches in comparative anatomy
and morphology, would claim in 1830 that Herder’s work had
“passed into the knowledge of the whole mass of people to such an
extent that only a few who now peruse it will learn anything new,”
precisely because the public had already encountered the same
precepts in “hundreds” of filiations from Herder’s original.9 The Ideas
left its mark on the Romantic Naturphilosophie of Schelling,
Alexander von Humboldt, and Franz von Baader; Franz Josef Gall’s
phrenology; on modern geographical science as established by Carl
Ritter and later Friedrich Ratzel; on the elaboration of the
pedagogical ideal of Bildung or self-cultivation, closely associated in
Germany with Wilhelm von Humboldt and in the English-speaking
world with Matthew Arnold; and perhaps most evidently on the
enormous growth of historical thought so characteristic of European
but especially German intellectual life in the nineteenth century:
represented by figures such as Hegel, Droysen, and even Marx, but
also François Guizot, Victor Cousin, Ernest Renan, Thomas Henry
Buckle, Thomas Carlyle, and William Lecky. But if in Germany
Rankean historiography tended to be principally concerned with the
state, an institution about which Herder remained at best
ambivalent, then the Ideas had the greatest effect on those who
sought to expand Herder’s analysis of culture and society, beginning
with Karl Heinrich Pölitz’s doomed attempt to shore up the
supposedly insecure edifice of Herder’s Ideas with Kant’s critical
philosophy;10 through Slavist philologists such as Pavel Šafárik and
Ján Kollár; republicans like Johann Georg August Wirth, who saw the
Herderian history of culture as a necessary means to political
emancipation; later proponents of a Kulturgeschichte such as Karl
Lamprecht and Kurt Breysig; Wilhelm Wundt’s psychologization of
history, understood explicitly as a development toward “humanity” in
Herder’s sense; and the anthropology of Franz Boas.11 But these are
all collateral heirs. The true lineal descendant of the Ideas was
Hermann Lotze’s Microcosm (1856–64), itself one of the most
consequential philosophical works of the second half of the
nineteenth century, which strove to reconcile mechanism and
idealism, and to offer a comprehensive account of nature and human
character, by recapitulating, “with the changed points of view to
which the present age has attained, the undertaking that was begun
so brilliantly in Herder’s Ideas for the History of Mankind [sic].”12
The Ideas faded into oblivion after the First World War: amid the
prolonged crises of modernity, Herder, the “apostle of humanity,” as
he had been routinely eulogized, was increasingly hailed as the
“prophet of Deutschtum” and the harbinger of German
irrationalism.13 Even as critical interest in Herder reawakened in the
last decades of the twentieth century, attention has been focused on
the exuberant, essayistic writings of the young Stürmer und Dränger
rather than on the mature, imposing work that previous generations
considered his masterpiece and by which he had been “almost
exclusively known.”14 It is time to return to the Ideas. Not only so
that Herder himself emerges more clearly into view, in all the
polymorphism that De Quincey noticed, but because our
understanding of the Enlightenment itself will remain incomplete
without an appreciation of his achievement. We might say,
borrowing Herder’s description of humankind’s relation to the rest of
creation, that the Ideas represents the pinnacle and epitome of
eighteenth-century thought, demonstrating, for all its regional and
confessional diversity, the fundamental unity of the European
Enlightenment. It also reveals a thinker who deserves to be ranked
alongside Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Ferguson as the most
penetrating observers of human nature; a writer whose talent for
historical portraiture rivals Voltaire and Hume while far surpassing
any contemporary in Germany; and a philosopher of history who, by
contrast with the post-Kantian tradition of Fichte, Hegel, and
Schlegel, insisted on a fruitful blend of concrete fact and rational
explanation, instead of the a priori speculation about final ends
divorced from the material reality of the past that Nietzsche derided
as “underhanded theology.”15 The Ideas is, to borrow Goethe’s
mocking assessment of his own Iphigenia in Tauris, “deucedly
humane” (verteufelt human).16 It still has much to teach us.

History and Philosophy in the Eighteenth

Century
Shortly after Melchior Adam Weikard had arrived in Saint Petersburg
to take up his post as court physician, he was asked by Catherine
the Great to report on some of the latest books published in
Germany. When he began to speak of “a brand new philosophical
work by Mr Herder on the history of mankind,” the empress cut him
short. “Who is this Herder?” she demanded. A clergyman in Weimar,
came the reply. “A clergyman?” mused Catherine. “Then it can’t be a
philosophical work. If this fellow is a philosopher, then he can’t be a
clergyman and if he’s a clergyman, he can’t continue as a
philosopher. Admittedly, the supernatural mischief that passes for
philosophy in some quarters today is more suited to clergymen,
Jews, and heathens; but it remains incompatible with good sense.”17
If Catherine’s improvised tirade reveals the degree to which she had
imbibed the anticlerical attitudes of the French Enlightenment, some
of the leading figures of which she counted as her friends, it is
perhaps even more telling that, unlike Herder’s professional
standing, the very subject matter of his book passes without
comment, as if it were perfectly commonplace. It no longer is. What
did it mean, in 1784, to write a philosophy of the history of
mankind?
What came to be called the philosophy of history emerged as a
response to events in the last quarter of the seventeenth century,
when the twin authorities of revealed religion and of the ancients
began to wane in that period of intellectual unrest that Paul Hazard
famously characterized as “the crisis of the European mind.”18
Established modes of writing history had become increasingly
untenable: rejected by Cartesian philosophy as both useless and
inevitably partial, incapable of arriving at rational and systematic
truths; mistrusted by skeptics, who questioned the credibility of the
testimonies on which historians drew and in extreme cases doubted
whether knowledge of the past was even possible; and threatened
by the incipient disenchantment of European thought. At the turn of
the eighteenth century, there were three main genres of
historiography. Christian universal history, originated by Eusebius,
revived in the Protestant Reformation by Johann Carion and Philip
Melancthon, and perfected by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, sought to
chronicle the events of the world during the six thousand years or so
assumed to have elapsed between Adam and the present day.
Pegged to the chronologies of Scripture, and especially the prophetic
dreams of the Four Monarchies in the Book of Daniel, it contrasted
the vicissitudes of human life with the eternal Word of God and was
intended as a meditation on the vanity of existence: the history of
the earthly city having meaning only to whatever extent it reflected
the glory of the civitas dei. Secondly, the neoclassical tradition of
civil history inaugurated by Machiavelli and Guicciardini narrated the
exemplary actions of great men or the rise and fall of republics. It,
too, viewed history as magistra vitae: its purpose was to be
instructive or what Polybius had called “pragmatic.” But its emphasis
on the virtù of individual statesmen and on the guiding principle of
raison d’état, to say nothing of the resurrected doctrine of the
endless cycle of constitutional forms (anacyclosis), sat rather
uneasily with the providential framework of universal history and
could not account for how the remote biblical past bore on more
recent times. A third field of historical endeavor was antiquarianism
or erudition, which, eschewing chronology and ignoring the political,
aimed to collect, preserve, and interpret every kind of record of the
past—legal, religious, literary, or artistic. It extended the scope of
historical inquiry, creating the auxiliary sciences of diplomatics,
epigraphy, paleography, iconography, and numismatics, and sought
to buttress it against skeptical interrogation; but only deepened the
crisis by generating multitudes of facts orphaned from any
immediate utility.
These modes of history, being either purely descriptive or
didactic, tended to generalize without regard to particulars or to
accumulate minutiae in the absence of some larger framework. The
challenge facing historians at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, then, was to find a way to explain the relation between
facts, to arrive at general maxims by which the past might be
interpreted, while still doing justice to the richness of concrete detail.
To achieve this, history had to become “philosophical.” If, as dictated
by the customary divisions of human knowledge, historia had been
concerned solely with recording the phenomena furnished by either
the senses or memory, then philosophy, which was supposed to
pertain to the rational faculty, aimed to discover the causes, the
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Monographien
zur Erdkunde
 Land und Leute
Monographien
zur Erdkunde
In Verbindung mit Anderen
herausgegeben von A. Scobel

10

Am Rhein

1908
Bielefeld und Leipzig
Verlag von Velhagen & Klasing
 Am Rhein
von H. Kerp
Mit 192 Abbildungen nach photographischen
Aufnahmen und einer farbigen Karte
Zweite Auflage

1908
Bielefeld und Leipzig
Verlag von Velhagen & Klasing
Druck von Fischer & Wittig in Leipzig.
 Inhalt.
Seite
I. Einleitung 3
II. Zur geologischen Einführung 6
III. Das Mainzer Becken, der Rheingau und der Taunus 18
IV. Das Rheintal von Rüdesheim bis Coblenz 48
V. Der Hunsrück nebst dem Nahe-, Saar- und Moseltale 78
VI. Das Rheintal von Coblenz bis Bonn 110
Der Westerwald nebst dem Sieg- und Lahntale und das
VII.
Siebengebirge 130
VIII. Die Eifel 157
IX. Die Kölner Bucht und das Bergische Land 164
X. Der rheinische Weinbau 185

Literatur 193
Verzeichnis der Abbildungen 194
Register 197
Karte der Rheinlande.
 Abb. 1. Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth und Siebengebirge.
Nach einer Photographie von Stengel & Co. in Berlin. (Zu Seite 123.)
 I. Einleitung.
Am Rhein! Welche Fülle von Vorstellungen, von
Gedanken und Empfindungen wird beim Klange Einleitung.
dieses Wortes in uns geweckt! Das Auge schaut
herrliche Landschaftsbilder, die neben dem Schönsten auf Erden
noch in Schönheit strahlen; das Ohr lauscht den weihevollen
Rheinliedern, die von dem Tiefsten, was die deutsche Brust gefühlt,
sprechen, die bald von klagendem Schmerz, bald von stolzer
Siegesfreude erzählen oder in den Traum der Sage den Übermut
eines fröhlichen Lebens mischen; und der Geist, der die Spuren des
Raumes und der Zeit gleich schnell durchmißt, faßt all das Große
und Schöne, das Ernste und Heitere, was die Vergangenheit
brachte, was die Gegenwart bietet und die Zukunft zu erhoffen läßt,
zusammen und weiht den Strom, der Deutschlands Stolz und seines
Landes Schönheit ist, zu einem Sinnbild, das alle deutschen Lande
und alle deutschen Bruderstämme mit dem Bande ewiger Einigkeit
und Treue umfaßt. Das ist der Rhein, und das bedeutet sein Name,
und so wird auch sein Name überall, nicht bloß im deutschen
Vaterlande, sondern auch in der übrigen Welt verstanden und
gedeutet. Darum lockt er die Menschen, führt fröhlich sie von Ort zu
Ort, von Stadt zu Stadt und läßt traurig sie weiter ziehen. Für
Tausende und Millionen aber bleibt er ein ewiger Traum, der nie sich
erfüllen ließ, ein Traum, der selbst bei anderen Völkern lebt, zu
denen die Wellen der geheimnisvoll plaudernden Myth’ und Sage,
der laut redenden Geschichte schlugen und des schönen
Rheinlands begeisternde Kunde drang. Davon ein Beispiel!
Es war am Empfangsabende des Internationalen Geologen-
Kongresses zu Petersburg im Jahre 1897. In einem großen
Restaurant in der Demidowstraße hatten sich die Teilnehmer aus
aller Herren Ländern eingefunden. Das war für viele ein frohes
Wiedersehen! Das Stimmengewirr der zahlreichen Gruppen, die sich
an den Tischen und dem reichgedeckten Büfett gebildet hatten,
durchdrang die gastlichen Räume. Im frohen Austausch der
Reiseerinnerungen und der weiteren Reisepläne und im Auffrischen
früherer Lebensbeziehungen vergingen schnell, nur zu schnell, die
schönen Stunden. Meine älteren deutschen Reisefreunde wollten
sich nun, gegen Mitternacht, verabschieden, und den
protestierenden jungen russischen Herren, die in liebenswürdiger
Weise uns an unserem Tische Gesellschaft geleistet hatten, wurde
ich als jüngster zurückgelassen, als das Opfer einer angenehmen
Pflicht. Wir rückten die Stühle näher zusammen und plauderten
weiter. Ich pries die gastliche Aufnahme, die uns in Rußland bereitet
wurde, und meine frohgestimmten Tischgenossen wollten wissen, in
welchem Teile Deutschlands ich wohne. Und als ich sagte: „Ich
wohne am Rhein!“ da riefen alle wie aus einem Munde: „O, so
erzählen Sie uns vom Rhein!“ Und ich erzählte von meinem
Heimatlande mit der Begeisterung, die der Vater Rhein mir in das
Herz gelegt hat, und mit dem Feuer, das ich in den Augen der
jungen Russen auflodern sah. Ich pries den stolzen Strom mit seinen
grünen Wellen, die Berge, die, rebenbekränzt, die alten Burgen
tragen, die rheinischen Städte, deren gewaltige Dome im Rheine
sich spiegeln, die freundlichen Dörfchen, die überall, manche
umschattet von Obsthainen, die Ufer des Stromes säumen, und
auch die rheinischen Mädchen und Frauen, die den fremden
Wanderer von der hohen Burgruine herab grüßen, wenn er muß
scheiden aus solchem Paradies. Als die Begeisterung überquoll, da
erklangen Rheinlieder, fern am Strande der Newá, beim lustigen
Klang der Gläser, die mit kaukasischem Wein gefüllt waren.
Wir saßen noch lange. Als wir endlich schieden, da fühlten auch
die jungen Russen etwas von jener Sehnsuchtsstimmung nach dem
Vater Rhein, die jeden Rheinländer erfaßt, wenn er in anderen
Erdenländern weilt. So oft ich noch von einer weiten Reise
zurückkehrte, war es mir beim Anblicke des stolzen Stromes, wenn
wieder die Türme des Kölner Doms vor mir erschienen und der Zug
polternd über die Rheinbrücke fuhr, als hätte ich etwas Verlorenes
wieder gewonnen. Und nach meiner Ankunft in Bonn war gewöhnlich
mein erster Gang an den Rhein und auf den Alten Zoll, wo ich die
Sieben Berge grüßen konnte. Am ersten freien und schönen
Nachmittage aber fuhr ich auf einem der stolzen Rheindampfer
stromaufwärts, als müßte ich mich überzeugen, ob all die
Herrlichkeit noch da wäre.

Abb. 2. Das Kölner Dombild. Altargemälde von Meister Stephan. (Zu Seite 5 u. 171.)

Diese einleitenden Worte mögen dem freundlichen Leser sagen,

mit welch freudigen Gefühlen ich der Aufforderung, für die
Sammlung geographischer Monographien die Bearbeitung des
Rheins und des Rheinischen Schiefergebirges zu übernehmen,
nachgekommen bin. War ich doch durch den Stoff ausgezeichnet vor
allen anderen! Durfte ich doch den Strom schildern und preisen, um
den zwischen den Völkern so oft und so heiß gestritten worden ist,
der durch die Weihe der Geschichte für jeden Deutschen zum
heiligen Strom geworden ist, so daß der Klang seines Namens heute
das Losungswort, das Triumphgeschrei deutscher Einigkeit, Freiheit
und Stärke bedeutet.
 Abb. 3. Frankfurt im 17. Jahrhundert (nach Merian). (Zu Seite 20.)

Wie ich an jenem Abende in Petersburg in einer frohen Stunde

den jungen Russen — es waren Studenten der Bergakademie und
Anthropologen — von der Herrlichkeit des Rheines erzählen durfte,
so möchte ich auch dem freundlichen Leser von Land und Leuten
am Rhein wenn auch kein vollständiges, so doch ein in seiner
Eigenart ausgeprägtes Bild zu geben versuchen. Es ist das Bild
einer ruhmreichen Vergangenheit und einer nicht weniger
glanzvollen Gegenwart, ein Bild, dessen einzelne Züge durch Sage
und Dichtung so verklärt sind, daß uns Wonne umgibt fast überall,
wohin wir schauen. Wir sehen in den Städten die herrlichen Dome
ragen, und andachtsvoll betreten wir die Stätten, wo hochvollendete
Kunstschöpfungen zu Thronen des Himmlischen und Göttlichen
wurden. Wir durchwandern die einzelnen Blütezeiten der rheinischen
Kunst, im Geiste und in der Wirklichkeit. Aus den Gräbern steigt das
glänzende Bild der römischen Kultur mit seinen Lagern, Kastellen,
Brücken, Straßen, Wasserleitungen, Tempeln und
reichgeschmückten Landhäusern; wir schauen das Bild der
Frankenzeit mit seinen Königshöfen oder Pfalzen und den ältesten
christlichen Gotteshäusern; reicher, in staunenerregender Fülle
entfaltet sich uns der Kulturschmuck des eigentlichen Mittelalters,
der Zeit, die die herrlichen Dome schuf, die von dem gemütvollen
romanischen Baustile nach interessanten Übergängen fortwanderte
zur stolzen, himmelanstrebenden Gotik, die auch die prächtigen
Burgen auf die Rebenhöhen setzte und die reichgeschmückten
Rathäuser in den Städten baute, die ferner durch Künstlerhand
wertvolle Skulpturen und geschätzte Malereien (Abb. 2) entstehen
ließ; endlich, nach einer Zeit traurigen Verfalls, sehen wir, in einer
glücklichen Gegenwart, eine neue Blütezeit der Kultur anbrechen,
eine Zeit, die mit Verständnis das Alte durchforscht und wie ein
Schatz hütet und wahrt, die zugleich neue Züge dem Gesamtbilde
zufügt und es besonders mit den menschenbeglückenden
Wunderwerken der neuzeitlichen Technik ausstattet. Einem kräftig
pulsierenden Leben sind diese Neuschöpfungen menschlichen
Könnens vornehmlich gewidmet, einem Leben, in dem ein rühriges
Streben mit rheinischem Frohsinn so glücklich sich paart, wie es
wohl auch in den früheren Kulturzeiten, die das rheinische Land
schaute, gewesen ist und in dem sonnigen Lande der Reben auch
nicht anders sein kann. Dorthin mögen die freundlichen Leser froh
mit mir wandern, möge auch der rheinische Dichter Karl Simrock
zurück uns winken mit den launigen Worten:

„An den Rhein, an den Rhein, zieh’ nicht an den Rhein,

Mein Sohn, ich rate dir gut!“
 Abb. 4. Frankfurt, von Sachsenhausen gesehen.
Nach einer Photographie von Sophus Williams in Berlin. (Zu Seite 20.)

Von der alten Kaiserstadt Frankfurt am Main und vom alten

goldenen Mainz soll die Wanderung uns führen durch die
Rebengefilde des Rheingaues, durch das herrliche Rheintal selbst
und durch die nicht minder schönen Nebentäler der Nahe, der Saar,
der Mosel, der Lahn, der Ahr, der Sieg und der Wupper, sowie durch
die schönsten Gegenden des Rheinischen Schiefergebirges, durch
das jene Täler tiefe Furchen gezogen haben, bis hin nach
Düsseldorf, der jung strahlenden Kunststadt am Rhein, und nach
Aachen, der alten Kaiserstadt.
 Abb. 5. Der Kaisersaal im Römer zu Frankfurt.
Nach einer Photographie von Ludwig Klement in Frankfurt. (Zu Seite 20.)
 II. Zur geologischen Einführung.
Zwar bedarf es nicht unbedingt der Führung
eines Naturforschers, um die Schönheit, mit der die Geologische
Oberfläche der Erde geschmückt ist, zu empfinden Einführung.
und zu genießen. Anderseits bin ich auch nicht der umgekehrten
Ansicht, daß beim Genießen des Schönen der Verstand fernzuhalten
sei als ein Störenfried, der manche Empfindungen, naive des Volkes,
die aber von der Poesie geliebt werden, verscheuchen könnte. Herz
und Verstand vertragen sich in den meisten Menschen recht gut
miteinander, und für Empfindungen, die beim Fragen nach
verborgenen Ursachen flüchten, melden im Herzen sich andere, die
sicheren Ursprung haben und unser Gefühlsleben noch wärmer
anhauchen. Auch die Geologie oder Erdgeschichte, die manches
Überlieferte, so auch den Drachen, der einst am Drachenfels hauste,
zur Fabel macht und manches Teufelswerk in der Natur einer
phantasieärmeren Wirklichkeit zurückgibt, entschädigt uns reichlich,
indem sie uns in dem Antlitz der Erde lebensvolle Züge zeigt, die wir
vorher nicht kannten, nicht sahen und nicht suchten. Es wird uns, als
wenn ein Marmorbild zu leben begänne. Der starre Fels, er haucht
Leben, indem er uns sagt, wie er geworden, seine Schichten, so
innig sie verbunden sind, entfliehen in verschiedene, weit
voneinander entfernte Zeiten, das verbrannte Gestein des Kraters
beginnt zu glühen, und Kiese und Sande, Lehm und Ton, die so wohl
gebettet sind, beginnen zu wandern und werden ein Spiel der Fluten.
Durch die unermeßlichen Räume der Zeiten eilt der Geist, die
Phantasie beginnt großartige Bilder der Vergangenheit zu gestalten,
zu denen der Verstand die Grundlinien eines Planes fand, und unser
Herz wird erfüllt von jenem Empfinden, das dem Werden alles
Großen sich beugt.
Wenn wir so auch das Antlitz unseres schönen
Rheinlandes, wie es aussah in früheren Erd- Die Variskischen
Alpen.
Epochen, im Geiste zu gestalten suchen, geleitet
von namhaften geologischen Forschern, so schauen wir ein
riesenhaftes Gebirge, ein Hochgebirge, das an die heutigen Alpen
erinnert. Von dem Ostende der mittelfranzösischen Gebirgsscholle
zog es sich in einem gewaltigen Bogen über Vogesen und
Schwarzwald, durch Süd-, West- und Mitteldeutschland, um den
Nordrand Böhmens herum bis zu den Karpathen hin. Nicht bloß
diese Hauptrichtung hatte es mit den ebenfalls bogenförmig
verlaufenden Alpen gemein. Es war wie diese auch ein einseitig
aufgebautes Kettengebirge, das auf der konvexen Südseite, wo die
höchsten Gipfel lagen, eine kristallinische Hauptzone, auf der
konkaven Nordseite eine breite Zone mächtig entwickelter
Sedimentgesteine besaß. Von dieser letzteren Zone des früheren
mitteleuropäischen Hochgebirges, das Sueß nach dem Lande der
alten Varisker, dem heutigen Vogtlande, Variskische Alpen genannt
hat, ist das Rheinische Schiefergebirge, durch welches später der
Rhein und seine Nebenflüsse ihre tiefen Furchen gezogen haben,
der Rest eines kleinen Gliedes, ein recht armseliger Rest; denn nur
das Fundament, der Sockel der einstigen Hochgebirgsfalten, blieb
unserer Zeit erhalten, genug noch, um daraus die Schönheit des
heutigen Rheinlandes zu gestalten.