Goetz de Berlichingen … est heureusement choisi pour représenter quelle étoit l'indépendance des nobles avant que l'autorité de gouvernement pesât sur tous. Dans le moyen âge, chaque château étoit une forteresse, chaque seigneur un souverain. …

Mme. de Staël, De l' Allemagne

I

Traditional interpretations hold that Goethe became enamored of Götz von Berlichingen's autobiography because he discovered in the historical figure of Götz the perfect embodiment of the ideal Sturm und Drang character, the Kraftkerl. Frequently they cite the report of Henry Crabb Robinson, who after a visit with Goethe's mother disseminated the following anecdote:

He came home one evening in high spirits. Oh mother, he said, I have found such a book in the public library, and will make a play of it! What great eyes the Philistines will make at the Knight with the Iron-hand! That's glorious—the Iron-hand!¹

According to this account, the discovery of the indomitable knight not only provided the spark which kindled Goethe's creativity—it also instilled in the unknown and ambitious poet the desire to achieve in the field of drama what Götz had accomplished on the battlefield: clearly the Goethe of the anecdote sets out to rattle his narrow-minded age just as Götz's iron fist supposedly unnerved his contemporaries. If we furthermore recall, as a number of interpretations do, the aphorism by Matthias Claudius that the play attacks Aristotle's three unities “wie sein edler tapfrer Götz … die blanken Esquadrons feindlicher Reiter,”² a particularly seductive model for the play's interpretation emerges, seamlessly tying the play's content (rebellion against a corrupt world), its form (rebellion against literary conventions), and the intention of its author (rebellion against his age) into one compact and defiant aesthetic statement.

Such a reading no doubt suggests itself, not least because it squares so nicely with the conventional view of the Sturm und Drang as a revolt against the cold rationalism of orthodox Enlightenment and an expression of the political frustrations of the Bürgertum of eighteenth-century Germany. However, the important presupposition it makes, namely that Goethe's Götz was meant to be a positive hero and a role model for his feeble age, may very well be called into question by a sober look at the play.

It is quite conspicuous, for example, how much Götz seems to love violence for its own sake. This is perhaps best illustrated in the scene where the newly arrived Lerse offers his services to Götz and the two bond by vividly recalling a previous military engagement in which they faced each other as enemies (603-5).³ Far from expressing any regret over having met in battle, Lerse and Götz warmly relive this encounter, and Lerse even rejoices at having had the opportunity to prove his mettle against Götz (605). They both engage in rather smug mutual admiration for each other's skill and valor, recalling Lerse's feat of injuring Götz with particular fondness. Any regret over the fact that violence and death are so commonplace in the lives they lead is strikingly absent in their nostalgic celebration of past skirmishes: “Fünf und zwanzig gegen acht! Da galts kein feiren. Erhard Truchses durchstach mir einen Knecht, dafür rannt ich ihn vom Pferde” (604).

If Götz had an aversion to violence, it would be hard to explain why he never regrets the fact that his life of endless warfare prevents him from enjoying a peaceful life on his estate. Indeed, when the emperor effectively places Götz under house arrest, Götz does not enjoy the peacefulness of his existence, but develops such a severe form of cabin fever that for the first time in his life he breaks his word and enters the fray of the Bauernkrieg (incidentally not to end it, but to steer its violence in a more productive direction). And during the “last supper” with his men just before his surrender to the imperial troops, Götz envisions an ideal society, in which, despite its general peacefulness, he and his followers can nevertheless engage in violence:

Wir wollten die Gebürge von Wölfen säubern, wollten unserm ruhig ackernden Nachbar einen Braten aus dem Wald holen, und dafür die Suppe mit ihm essen. Wär uns das nicht genug, wir wollten mit unsern Brüdern gleich Cherubs mit flammenden Schwertern, vor die Grenzen des Reichs gegen die Wölfe die Türken, gegen die Füchse die Franzosen lagern, und zugleich unsers teuern Kaisers sehr ausgesetzte Länder und die Ruhe des Ganzen beschützen.

(619)

Since therefore Götz appears to feel most alive when flinging enemies off their horses, the question of whether Goethe meant to glorify violence is certainly both legitimate and pertinent. If Götz was intended as a role model, does that not support the rather improbable conclusion that Goethe envisioned a life centered around fighting and even killing as the way out of the malaise of the Sturm und Drang generation?

Traditional scholarship undoubtedly assumed that Götz was meant to be an exemplary character because he is presented throughout the play in such a straightforwardly positive light. After all, whenever Götz comes on the stage in the play's exposition, someone—be it the peasants, Georg, Bruder Martin, Elisabeth, or even Weislingen—invariably sings his praises, thereby seemingly scripting the way the audience should judge him. But, one might ask, if Götz's character is so faultless and overwhelmingly positive, why the need for this excessive adoration? Do his personality and his actions not speak for themselves? Or does his love for violence have to be compensated so that he is able to make at least some claim on our affection?

Although few critics have openly admitted to the centrality of violence in Götz's existence, many have felt the need to touch upon this troubling issue by pointing out that Götz, in his dealings with the princes (particularly the Bishop of Bamberg), is merely acting in self-defense. After all, aren't the princes encroaching on his rights; is their rhetoric of peace not simply a cover better to pursue their politics of aggression; and aren't they breaking the law themselves? Witness the Bishop, who loudly proclaims his fervent wish that the Empire could live “in sicherster Ruhe und Frieden” (569), but then does a complete turnabout and nonchalantly says that, while temporarily giving in to Götz's demands to gain the freedom of Weislingen, he always intended to resume his old politics of intimidation: “Unsere Anschläge auf ihn und seine Gesellen wären fortgegangen” (585). In the face of such duplicitous enemies, Götz's use of violence seems justified, if only because violence was, according to medieval law, a perfectly legal way to pursue justice, as long as it was used during a feud—i.e., in accordance with precisely delineated rules and regulations. Since feuding appears to be Götz's only legal recourse against the princes' power grabs, his use of violence and defense of his actions when confronted by the imperial councillors—“ich bin in einer ehrlichen Fehd begriffen” (625)—seem legitimate.

It is true that the Bishop's politics is anything but peaceful; in fact, it appears that he willfully broke an old peace treaty by detaining one of Götz's men (566f.). However, the question whether the text regards this as sufficient justification for Götz's violence is, as this paper will show, quite difficult to answer. In the case of Götz's actions against the Bishop, for example, we have to point out that without a doubt there must have been acts of violence preceding this old peace treaty, and here, as no interpreter of the play has noticed, Götz is hardly innocent. In a conversation with Weislingen, he explains how the war started and why the “Bischof so giftig über mich wurde”: “Ich hatt' ihm … zwei Schiff auf dem Mayn niedergeworfen” (562).⁴ The cargo of these ships must have been worth quite a fortune,⁵ and it therefore appears that Götz did not start to rob in order to defend himself against the Bishop's wanton aggression; rather, the Bishop's aggression seems to have been provoked by Götz's original act of robbery. When Götz later succumbs militarily to his enemies, he is therefore simply hoist with his own petard.

Since it seems that both Götz and the Bishop are painted not in black and white, but rather in shades of gray, it may be quite telling that the story of how Goethe came to write the play—the account with which I began and which is almost universally accepted as authentic—should on closer examination be considered apocryphal. Firstly, it runs counter to Goethe's own account in Dichtung und Wahrheit, where he states explicitly that he became preoccupied with a play about Götz during his stay in Straßburg—i.e., when his mother was not on hand to witness his inspiration (16:445). And secondly, in 1781, two decades before Robinson's visit, Goethe's mother herself tells a story in a letter to the actor Großmann which differs significantly from the Englishman's account:

[Mein Sohn] fand etliche Spuren dieses vortrefflichen Mannes in einem juristischen Lehrbuch, ließ sich Götzens Lebensbeschreibung von Nürnberg kommen …, webte einige Episoden hinein und ließ es ausgehen in alle Welt.⁶

This account has to be considered significantly more believable than Robinson's, and not just because it is firsthand.⁷ It is particularly plausible because the legal textbook mentioned can be identified with a reasonable degree of certainty.

When listing in Dichtung und Wahrheit the authors who had the greatest impact on him during his studies in Leipzig, Goethe mentions Johann Stephan Pütter, the most important constitutional scholar of his time, singling him out for particular praise because of his unusual clarity of style (16:301). Since Goethe at the same time attended a lecture on constitutional law and legal history (16:269), he must certainly have read the standard textbook on the subject at the time, Pütter's Grundriß der Staatsveränderungen des deutschen Reichs. We know that Goethe worked with Pütter's book in Straßburg, because in the collection of notes usually called Ephemerides he quotes from this book when he takes notes on, of all things, the medieval institution of the feud.⁸ Therefore it is highly likely that Goethe was familiar with Pütter's discussion of the Ewiger Landfrieden of 1495, where Pütter stresses the fact that its successful implementation took a rather long time. “Es blieben seit 1495 noch geraume Zeit Überbleibsel des Faustrechts genug,” Pütter writes, and after discussing a list of examples, he singles out the historical Götz as a particularly important case: “S. auch überhaupt / Lebensbeschreibung Herrn Götzens von Berlichingen …, Nürnberg 1731.”⁹

The question whether Götz was conceived as a model character is without a doubt central to the interpretation of the play. Now it appears that this question is to a large extent connected to matters of law. Are Götz's feuds legal, and is it legal to rob in the course of a feud? Is the Bishop within his rights to attack Götz militarily? Such questions are undeniably important, and it is telling that, when Goethe talks in Dichtung und Wahrheit about his work on Götz, he points out that he diligently read the “Hauptschriftsteller” and singles out Johann Philipp Datt's De pace publica,¹⁰ which in over 900 Latin folio pages gives a detailed account of all the ramifications of the constitutional reform of 1495, touching on a number of legal subjects which have found entry into Goethe's text, e.g., the Westfälische Feme and the Reichskammergericht. However, only recently have scholars taken important, and in the case of Ferdinand van Ingen, crucial steps toward considering the text's moral and legal puzzles (overlooked or downplayed by so many traditional readings) and examining the way legal and constitutional history contribute to the meaning of the text.¹¹ The discussion that follows will take its cue from these approaches first by systematizing, deepening, and augmenting the historical reading and then by showing that the play is to a large extent a reflection upon the difficulties Enlightenment social contract theory faced in accounting for the legitimacy of the modern state.

II

The time of the historical Götz witnessed true paradigm shifts in the sphere of politics and law, as well as in economics, culture, and religion. The modern state, in which a sovereign exercises control over a territory, triumphed over the old medieval political order based on the feudal contract; trading and manufacturing eclipsed agricultural production as sources of wealth, and consequently cities gained in importance over landed nobility; princes consolidated their territories and powers and thereby marginalized imperial knights like Götz as political players; huge mercenary armies of foot soldiers proved more effective than the cavalry-based army recruited from medieval vassals; Roman law replaced medieval common law; and new modes of thinking, epitomized by Humanism and the Reformation, successfully challenged scholasticism and Catholicism. If one were to reduce these multifarious developments to one common denominator, one could say that modernity in all its aspects was inexorably replacing a premodern way of life.

Since Goethe himself says that he was attracted to the subject matter of Götz and his time because in it “[ein] Wendepunkt der Staatengeschichte” (16:815) had become visible, it should come as no surprise that the clash of a premodern with a modern conception of the state emerges as a central aspect of the play. Let us look first at the central feature of the medieval state: the feudal contract. The imperial expeditionary force charged with hunting down Götz is recruited from mercenaries, and consequently the desertion rate reaches catastrophic proportions.¹² Götz is quite cocky about their military inferiority (“es sind lauter Mietlinge,” he says dismissively [602]), not the least because he is sure of the unshakable loyalty of his own men. This loyalty, as I will try to show, is more than just a fortuitous character trait lacking in the imperial troops. Rather, it is the direct expression of an ethical system which puts at its center the performance of the feudal contract, i.e., the pledge of military service and fealty on the part of the vassal and the promise of loyal protection on the part of the lord.

Georg and Lerse do not reside in Götz's territory and are therefore not politically subject to him: Georg grew up at an inn far from Götz's castle,¹³ and Lerse joined Götz's cause after having served (and valiantly battled Götz) under one of Götz's enemies, Conrad Schott (604f.). Nevertheless, they serve him, and they behave as if they were his vassals (although, technically speaking, they are not). Like vassals, they unconditionally serve not a country or a cause, as a modern soldier would, but rather a certain man. It is their stated admiration for Götz—not their objection to the princes' newfound power—that causes them to join in Götz's battles. And just as a vassal would, they translate this personal loyalty into valiant military service, in the performance of which Georg even meets his death.

Götz in turn behaves like a feudal lord who is sworn to protect his men from danger. When he is captured, his first thought is of the fate of his “liebe Getreuen,” and the news of their captivity nearly crushes him (621). When shortly thereafter the imperial councillors offer him his freedom in exchange for the Urfehde, he at first refuses to sign the document and inquires about the fate of his companions (623). He relents only when he learns that without his signature his followers stand no chance of regaining their freedom (624). Even shortly before his death, when the whole extent of his desperate situation dawns on him, Götz is obsessed with saving a follower in peril:

Suchtest du den Götz? Der ist lang hin. Sie haben mich nach und nach verstümmelt, meine Hand, meine Freiheit, Güter und guten Namen. Mein Kopf was ist an dem?—Was hört ihr von Georgen? Ist Lerse nach Georgen?

(650-1)

Two epithets often bestowed upon the emperor of the time, Maximilian I, pithily sum up the transition of a medieval polity to an early modern state. That Maximilian was called both “der letzte Reichsritter” and “der erste Landsknecht” indicates how he uncomfortably straddled two paradigms of imperial politics: on the one hand was a politics based on the feudal contract and warfare with armies made up of vassals bound by a knightly code of honor and personal loyalty; on the other hand was the politics of a sovereign ruler who pursues his quest for power with the help of standing armies recruited from mercenaries. In this development, Götz is placed squarely on the losing side of history. The feudal code of behavior, on which his power rests, has obviously become obsolete, for while Georg and Lerse remain loyal to the bitter end, other men forsake him once his troubles mount (613, 621) and thus precipitate his defeat. And according to the logic of the plot, Götz's loyalty toward his men is ultimately his downfall: he renews his feud with the Bishop of Bamberg over the capture and mistreatment of one of them, thereby unleashing a chain of events that ultimately results in his death.¹⁴

It is no surprise, then, that Götz views his relationship to the emperor as structurally identical to the relationship of his followers to him: both ties are governed by the mutual obligations spelled out in the feudal contract. Toward Weislingen, he defines the be-all and end-all of his politics as the fulfillment of his duties as a vassal (“[dem Kaiser] Treu und Dienst zu leisten” [567]), and as his incensed protest against the imperial councillor's accusation that he is a rebel shows (to be discussed in more detail later), his conscience tells him that he has discharged his duties successfully (624).

In turn, Götz expects from the emperor, as his feudal lord, the protection which the feudal contract demands. This becomes apparent in his irate response to the councillors who refuse to listen to his pleas for his men's safety: “So wende der Kaiser sein Angesicht von euch wenn ihr in Not steckt” (623-24). This expectation also informs his famous response to the messenger who reads him the imperial Ächtungserklärung: “Beleidiger der Majestät! Die Aufforderung hat ein Pfaff gemacht. … Sag deinem Hauptmann: Vor Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät hab ich, wie immer schuldigen Respekt. Er aber, sags ihm, er kann mich im Arsch lecken” (615). Here it appears that since Götz is certain about having held up his side of the feudal contract, it is inconceivable for him that the emperor would not do the same. He is therefore compelled to assume that other people, like the Bishop, have managed to distort the will of the formerly loyal and protective Maximilian. And although he is not completely wrong, since Maximilian is politically somewhat of a fence-sitter, these passages again highlight his anachronicity by pointing to his failure to realize that the feudal contract as a principle of imperial policy is long since obsolete.¹⁵

Unlike the modern state, the medieval polity is to a large extent the sum total of numerous individual contracts between feudal lords and their vassals. Since it would collapse if the parties to the contract regularly failed to keep their word, the faithful execution of promises figures prominently in the knightly code of honor. Götz, as has been pointed out repeatedly in the literature, has a considerable fixation on his “ritterliches Ehrenwort,” and by making his trust in the power of promissory obligation a major reason for Götz's downfall, Goethe is again highlighting Götz's anachronicity.

Having captured Weislingen, Götz releases him on his solemn promise that, from now on, he will be a friend. But soon thereafter he learns that Weislingen has successfully lobbied the emperor to assemble an expeditionary force against Götz. During this force's siege of his castle he trusts in their promises of safe-conduct, only to find himself treacherously taken prisoner. Strangely enough, he does not learn from experience. Although Götz later gains the upper hand with the imperial councillors (who have just broken another promise of “ritterliches Gefängnis”) and could, sword in hand, dictate the terms of the proceedings, he makes another improbable request for their word of honor (“Aber ich will euch lehren wie man Wort hält. Versprecht mir ritterlich Gefängnis, und ich gebe mein Schwert weg und bin wie vorher euer Gefangener” [625]), thereby acquiescing in the house arrest he cannot tolerate and thus setting up his ultimate downfall.

Götz's trustfulness may be morally endearing, but it is hopelessly naive, for his enemies have long since adopted the maxim that one should keep one's promises only as long as there is an advantage to be gained by it. Götz's downfall therefore appears to be symptomatic of the important paradigm shift in European politics (best expressed in Machiavelli's writings), where the medieval politics of personal loyalty was replaced by the cynical Renaissance politics of raw power. In the new order, the well-being of vassals like Götz counted substantially less than the Staatsräson, the raggio d'etato, to use Machiavelli's term. Characteristically, the text itself spells this out: when the old Emperor Maximilian reflects upon his failed politics in general and Götz's sad fate in particular, he blames his councillors, under whose influence he had rejected the “Glück einzelner Menschen” as the guiding principle of his politics in favor of the “Wohl des Staates” (629).

Historically, the most important feature of the emergence of the modern state was a new approach to one of the most vexing problems facing every political system, the establishment of public peace. It is important to note that the right to feud—i.e., in effect, to wage private wars—was explicitly granted to all members of the nobility by the Golden Bull, the “constitution” of the Holy Roman Empire. As a result, the history of the Empire was characterized by repeated flare-ups of domestic political violence, which often involved quite illustrious people and even emperors. The only remedy the medieval political system offered rested with the emperor himself: he had to use his influence over the various parties at war with each other, mediate in their disputes, and sponsor a peace treaty between them. This treaty was called a Landfrieden, and since it was only a matter of time until it was broken for old or new reasons, the domestic history of the Empire can very well be described as a series of Landfrieden always broken anew. It is to this fact that the Bishop alludes when he complains to Olearius: “Das Reich ist, trotz ein vierzig Landfriedens, noch immer eine Mördergrube” (571).

In the fifteenth century, however, partly due to the fact that the feudal system had declined substantially and many noblemen took to declaring feuds for fraudulent purposes (e.g., to give robberies the semblance of legality), the emperor's ability to negotiate these Landfrieden had declined precipitously. The result was a significant decrease in public safety. Consequently, in the constitutional reform of 1495 all feuds were declared to be henceforth illegal, and a so-called ewiger or allgemeiner Landfrieden was proclaimed.¹⁶ In the history of the Holy Roman Empire, this constitutional reform constitutes the central event in the transition to a modern state: not only did it institute such trappings of the modern state as a universal tax (the so-called “gemeine Pfennig”) and a Supreme Court (the Reichskammergericht) with a universally binding legal code (the Roman Law that had displaced traditional medieval law, a development the play is highly aware of), but in particular it established what is arguably the most important feature of a modern polity: only the state, and no private person, had the right to use violence for the purpose of establishing justice and enforcing law, order, and peace.

It is a curious feature of the text that it does not highlight this central aspect of the constitutional reform of 1495 despite its significance for the moral evaluation of Götz. (I will have more to say about this below.) Nevertheless, the Fehdeverbot is mentioned in the play, if only en passant. In the same scene which saw the Bishop's complaint about the never-ending series of Landfrieden, quoted above, the Bishop describes the main goals of imperial politics as “das Reich zu beruhigen, die Fehden abzuschaffen, und das Ansehen der Gerichte zu befestigen” (571), or in other words, to make the legislative vision of the constitutional reform a social reality. At another point, Götz complains to Weislingen:

Aber wie wars mit dem Landfrieden? Ich weiß noch als ein Bub von sechzehn Jahren, war ich mit dem Marggraf auf dem Reichstag. Was die Fürsten da für weite Mäuler machten, und die Geistlichen am ärgsten. Euer Bischof lärmte dem Kaiser die Ohren voll, als wenn ihm wunder die Gerechtigkeit an's Herz gewachsen wäre, und jetzt wirft er mir selbst einen Buben nieder.

(566f.)

The term Landfrieden here cannot refer to any of the temporary Landfrieden preceding the ewiger Landfrieden. The fact that the Bishop's seizure of one of Götz's men is taken to be an offense against this Landfrieden implies that both the Bishop and Götz are bound by it. But since a sixteen-year-old boy and a Bishop hardly could have been antagonists in a feud which required the intervention of the emperor in sponsoring a Landfrieden, they can only be considered to be bound by the allgemeiner Landfrieden, which historically was, just as the quote maintains, sponsored by the princes.

The most explicit reference to the ewiger Landfrieden can be found in the Urgötz. In a scene in which Elisabeth has to defend Götz's use of violence against Maria's reproaches, she not only explicitly refers to the Landfrieden, but even sees Götz as being justified in opposing it: “Sieh nur wie übermütig die Fürsten geworden sind, seit dem sie unsern Kaiser beredet haben einen allgemeinen Landfrieden auszuschreiben” (399).

References to the law that permanently outlawed feuds are somewhat hidden in the text, and undoubtedly for that reason the vast majority of scholarly interpretations fails to take them into account. An important exception is the analysis by Ferdinand van Ingen, who draws what strikes me as the proper conclusion about the reform: he shows, firstly, that Götz in all his major actions has to be considered a common lawbreaker, and secondly, that his statement before the imperial councillors that he is “in einer ehrlichen Fehd begriffen” is from a legal standpoint completely off the mark, since after 1495 there was no longer any such thing as “eine ehrliche Fehd.”¹⁷

It is worthwhile at this point to take a closer look at this exchange with the imperial councillors, since in an important respect it encapsulates the meaning of the play. In the scene, Götz loses his composure after being called a rebel against emperor and Empire:

Ich bin kein Rebell, habe gegen Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät nichts verbrochen, und das Reich geht mich nichts an. … Tret einer auf, und zeug! Hab ich wider den Kaiser, wider das Haus Österreich nur einen Schritt getan! Hab ich nicht von jeher durch alle Handlungen gewiesen, daß ich besser als einer fühle … was die Kleinen, die Ritter und Freien ihrem Kaiser schuldig sind.

(624)

At first glance, Götz's claim that he is not a rebel appears rather impertinent. After all, he has violated imperial law by engaging in a feud, and without a doubt this is the substance of the imperial councillors' accusation. But if Götz really believes what he says shortly thereafter, namely, that he is “in einer ehrlichen Fehd begriffen,” it appears that, since he is aware of the new law (witness the above quote), he simply does not accept its legitimacy. For in the terms of the old legal order, which we have to assume serves as Götz's frame of reference, the word “rebellion” does not mean a revolt against the government or the legal order of the Empire, but rather an act of aggression against the feudal lord personally. This explains why Götz thinks it a sufficient defense to point out that he has never transgressed “wider den Kaiser” or “das Haus Österreich.” It also explains why he claims in good conscience, “das Reich geht mich nichts an,” for unlike the modern state, the feudal system knows no obligation to the state as such; it recognizes only the obligation to the feudal lord. In the final analysis, then, the dispute between Götz and the councillors is really a squabble over semantics, and the two parties are bound to misunderstand each other because in their different legal frames of reference the word Rebell has different and ultimately incommensurable meanings.¹⁸ This scene therefore is the quintessential expression of Götz's anachronicity: his thinking is outmoded and he is aware of it, but he stubbornly refuses to accept the legitimacy of the new legal reality. And since the powers that be support it, he is ultimately destroyed. Götz's struggles throughout the play are the last gasps of the medieval legal order, and his death is the triumph of political modernity.

III

It is now possible to return to the question raised at the outset of this paper: does the play condone or does it criticize Götz's way of life? Is the play, in light of my analysis, a nostalgic yearning for a time of manly exploits and knightly honor and thus an attack against modernity and the emergence of a powerful and oppressive state? Or is it rather a critique of premodern violence and of the general insecurity inherent in a medieval political system in which private wars were both frequent and legal? Does the play uphold or deny the legitimacy of the modern state and its monopoly on the use of violence? Or does it, as I will argue, intentionally withhold judgment and serve as a study in ambivalence?

Of course, the vast majority of scholars have assumed that the play heavily favors Götz's position, since they presupposed both his right to self-defense against princely aggression and the legality of his feuding. But it is important to notice that in the play wanton princely aggression and Götz's right to feud are mentioned only in pronouncements by Götz, and it appears that interpreters, with few exceptions, have simply taken Götz's words at face value without contemplating the possibility that his apparent good conscience may really be bad faith. Particularly given Goethe's general tendency toward irony and subtlety, using Götz's claims as the basis for an interpretation is methodologically as questionable as taking at face value the Bishop's claims that his policies only aim at pacifying the Empire. Falling, as it were, under the spell of Götz's charismatic personality—just as Weislingen does—most critics have overlooked the way the text points to the illegality of Götz's feuds and shows the Bishop's aggression for what it really is: retaliation against an original act of violence.

This prejudice in favor of Götz is particularly surprising since Goethe himself gave some indication, particularly in Dichtung und Wahrheit, that the play was never meant to be an exercise in nostalgia and simple hero worship. In perhaps his most unequivocal remark to this effect, Goethe complains that many of his contemporaries (Bürger in particular is singled out) misunderstood him by assuming that the play gave license for “alles was in der Jugend Wildes und Ungeschlachtes lebt” and even intended “jene unregelmäßigen Zeiten wieder einzuführen” (16:608). It is too simplistic to dismiss statements like these as attempts by the mature Goethe to distance himself from the follies of his youth. For in fact the last lines of the play, “Wehe der Nachkommenschaft die dich [sc. Götz] verkennt,” suggest that Goethe's contemporaries, the apparent addressees, should not so much strive to be like Götz as to understand him properly. Given the way in which the play parallels the great sweep of history and given Götz's fate and ultimate death, we must be allowed to ask whether in fact it presents the preconditions of a premodern existence in such inexorable decline in order to show that they are irretrievably lost.

It is interesting to look at the reasons why Goethe thought his contemporaries had misunderstood him when they adopted the play as a “Panier” for their own lifestyle (16:608). For when he claims that they mistakenly focused on the play's subject matter (“Stoff”) and neglected its artistic presentation (“Behandlung”), he seems to indicate that their identification with the central character of the play took precedence over any attention to the way this character was presented, which might very well have forestalled any easy identification. Does this not suggest that Goethe wanted the form of his drama to encourage the audience to suspend moral and political judgment?

A look at the construction of two scenes from the first act will confirm this and show how Goethe tries to prevent interpretive closure. These scenes are particularly suitable in this context, since in both the question of whether Götz's lifestyle is moral or at least legal is dealt with quite directly. In the first scene, Elisabeth and Maria argue over whether Götz should be taken as a role model in the education of his son Carl, with Elisabeth predictably defending Götz's use of violence as an attempt to secure justice for himself and others, and Maria expressing skepticism: “Die rechtschaffensten Ritter begehen mehr Ungerechtigkeit als Gerechtigkeit auf ihren Zügen” (560). In the second of these scenes, Götz and Weislingen have a frank exchange about their political positions, with Götz defending his actions as necessary in the face of princely aggression, while Weislingen insists upon the peaceful aims of princely politics. It is important to realize that in both instances charges and countercharges are being traded freely, but that no pat answer to the underlying moral question emerges from the verbal sparring. In fact, both times the defenders of violence end the exchange in a suspiciously abrupt manner: Elisabeth states, “Schwester du weißt nicht was du redst” (560), and Götz exclaims, “Kein Wort mehr davon, ich bin ein Feind von Explikationen” (567), but in both cases they have hardly refuted their opponents on the level of argument. Rather, the fact that both Götz and Elisabeth try to silence their interlocutors may be construed as indicating an inherent weakness in their position. It therefore appears that from the outset the play presents Götz's lifestyle with a question mark; in the following I will try to present further evidence for such a reading.

Let us look first at the Bishop of Bamberg. Does the text not validate Götz by indicting his opponent's politics toward him as unlawful aggression? Indeed, when the play's action begins, the Bishop is harassing Götz without direct provocation. He has taken one of Götz's men prisoner, although, as Götz points out to Weislingen, who concedes the point, a peace agreement had been reached. And no matter what concessions he has to make in order to gain Weislingen's liberty (585), the Bishop pursues without scruples his anti-Götz policies.

But then again, why is he pursuing Götz so relentlessly? Surely the reason is that Götz started the altercation with an act of brazen banditry, so even though there is currently a peace agreement between them, it would be foolish to expect Götz to renounce his way of life and give up highway robbery altogether. In addition, we see the Bishop not only bemoaning the fact that Weislingen's temporary alliance with Götz endangers “[den] blühenden Zustand [seiner] Felder” (586), but also altruistically ordering his troops to provide a military escort for foreigners, the merchants from Nürnberg (597). Therefore, we may surmise that his main interest is the public safety of his part of the Empire and that he is not dissembling when he professes his interest in Olearius's promise about Roman law, “ein Reich [könnte] in sicherster Ruhe und Frieden leben, wo es völlig eingeführt, und recht gehandhabt würde” (569), or when he shows his approval of the imperial policy “das Reich zu beruhigen, die Fehden abzuschaffen, und das Ansehn der Gerichte zu befestigen” (571).¹⁹ Finally, violence is not even the Bishop's weapon of choice; instead he repeatedly resorts to Weislingen's well-known expertise in the non-violent way of settling disputes, diplomacy.

The Bishop is far from being a sympathetic character, but by the same token he is not the unredeemable villain many scholars make him out to be (probably because they falsely assume that he has gratuitously attacked Götz). With respect to him, the play mainly tries to indicate the actual historical constellation: in the absence of an effective imperial police force which could handle troublemakers like Götz, enforcement of the public peace has fallen to the princes. Insofar as the Bishop is intent on using his power to stop Götz's robberies, he is no different from any modern magistrate and his behavior can hardly be used to cast aspersions on his character. However, insofar as he breaks the law in order to gain the upper hand, he can properly be criticized.

The text displays a similar ambivalence toward Götz. There is no doubt that it often presents Götz in such a glowing light that it seems he can do no wrong, and many critics have certainly assumed as much. However, this positive image of Götz is balanced out firstly by the fact that feuds have been outlawed, and secondly by a series of subtle hints that Götz repeatedly (i.e., not just in the capture of the Bishop's ships), uses violence not to defend himself or secure justice, but for material gain. It is instructive to see the subtle irony with which Goethe undercuts the unconditional adoration of Georg, who wishes for nothing more than to join Götz's military expedition against Weislingen:

GEORG:
Ach gestrenger Herr!
GöTZ:
Was hast du?
GEORG:
Darf ich nicht mit?
GöTZ:
Ein andermal Georg, wann wir Kaufleute fangen und Fuhren wegnehmen.

(552)

In effect, Götz promises to teach an impressionable youth how to kidnap and rob. Some role model!

A close look at the text shows that Götz's robberies are not justified by virtue of occurring in the framework of a feud, as the example of Götz's feud with the city of Nürnberg shows. In a conversation with Selbitz, Götz justifies this feud by claiming that the people of Nürnberg had betrayed one of his followers to the Bishop, whereupon the Bishop had kidnapped the man (582). Firstly, it has to be said that it is very questionable whether according to medieval law this is just cause for a feud.²⁰ After all, the injustice of taking the poor fellow prisoner was not committed by the city. In addition, medieval law stipulated that the accused should always be able to forestall or end a feud by voluntarily undoing the damage he had inflicted upon the accusing party. This happens, for example, when Götz feuds with Köln on behalf of the tailor from Stuttgart, where the feud ends upon the payment of the money that the citizens of Köln had unjustly withheld from the tailor (559). But in the case at hand the people of Nürnberg have no jurisdiction over the release of the man and therefore could not end the feud even if they wanted to. Since Götz's military actions therefore cannot really fulfill the purpose of a legal feud, i.e., to right a wrong by violent means when other judicial recourse such as lawsuits or appeals to higher authorities was unavailable, they cannot be seen as a legal bid for justice otherwise denied, but rather at best as the attempt to indulge a desire for revenge.

Secondly, it is quite questionable whether Nürnberg is really guilty of anything. Instead of citing concrete evidence to justify starting a war, Götz offers nothing but his strong conviction as to Nürnberg's guilt when he states, “Es ist am Tag” (582), making an argument that for lack of evidence would never hold up in a court of law. And thirdly, if Götz were really concerned about peace and justice, he would loudly protest the unfortunate fact that the outrageous behavior of the citizens of Nürnberg leaves him, the peace-loving Götz, no other choice but to take up arms against them. But instead he rejoices: “Mir ist gar recht, daß sie angefangen haben” (582). And when he finally concludes the conversation with the hopeful prediction, “Wir werden einen guten Fang tun” (583), it seems that not just a lust for revenge, but also the prospect of financial gain has motivated him all along.

This is not the only instance where Götz appears to be a run-of-the-mill robber baron. In the scene Bauernhochzeit, Selbitz exclaims: “Götz! Wir sind Räuber!” and when Götz advises the peasants on how to recoup the money they had lost in the judicial proceedings, he lets slip that he has started fights “wohl eher um des vierten Teils willen” (596). In the context of this particular scene, these words could conceivably be construed to indicate that Götz and Selbitz only rob in order to secure compensation for previously suffered wrongs (even though there is no passage in the text which would indicate that Götz is forced to rob). Later, however, upon reflecting on the totality of his life in a conversation with Elisabeth, Götz makes clear that he has risked his life not just for his reputation as an honorable knight, but for financial gain as well: “Setz ich so oft meine Haut an anderer Gut und Geld, sollt ich sie nicht an mein Wort setzen” (632). It is hard to allay the suspicion that Götz's rhetoric about his “ehrliche Fehd” and his need to defend himself is put forward only to hide all the better a policy of material gain through armed robbery.

In a word, the enemies of the old medieval order which Götz symbolizes may be ruthless in driving it out of existence, but it cannot be denied that Götz himself is guilty of substantial abuses. That both sides of the historical divide, Götz and the Bishop, appear in an equally ambivalent moral light is highlighted by the fact that the text shows them engaging in rather similar hypocrisy: Götz uses the rhetoric of righteousness to cover his robberies, and the Bishop uses the rhetoric of public peace to distract from his own abuses of law enforcement.

One might be tempted to argue that in respect to Götz's feuds there is no moral ambivalence in the play, since the legal situation is quite clear: the constitutional reform of 1495 outlawed all feuds, and Götz is therefore, despite his frequent protestations, a common criminal. However, things are not quite that simple. Firstly, as has been pointed out before, references to this aspect of the constitutional reform of 1495 are so subtle that the vast majority of interpreters has been able either to claim or to presuppose that Götz's actions are perfectly legal. For reasons to be considered later, the play tends to downplay Götz's transgressions, although it does not fail to acknowledge them. Secondly, it cannot be denied that despite all the subtle criticism Goethe slips into the text, the depiction of Götz is simply too positive. He is characterized as so noble, his downfall as so undeserved, and his death as so mournful that it is impossible to think that he was meant to be taken for a common criminal.

But there is another reason why the claim that Götz is nothing but a common lawbreaker has to be taken with a grain of salt. According to the medieval understanding of the law, no constitutional reform could legitimately outlaw feuds. In medieval thought, all laws as well as the privileges bestowed by them are not arbitrarily made by men, but rather, they are god-given; man's role in the administration of justice is strictly limited to the mere interpretation of these laws.²¹ If therefore any authority repeals or alters a law, or revokes a person's privileges, that authority is overstepping its legitimate powers by trying to alter the god-given order. Of course a modern state, in contrast, rests to a large extent on the assumption that all laws are man-made and, should the need arise, can be altered at will. Even constitutions, as we well know, can be amended. Götz, however, not only believes that he has been wrongly deprived of his right to feud, he is also unable to see any justification for the rival position, as the misunderstanding with the imperial councillors analyzed above shows. In other words, his inability to comprehend the legal foundations of the actions taken against him and his stubborn insistence on the legality of his feuds is predicated upon his medieval understanding of law, which challenges the very legitimacy of his opponents'—and the modern state's—claim to a monopoly on the use of violence.

It appears that the play's treatment of the conflict between a medieval polity and a modern state can be reformulated as a systematic probing of the conflict between legality and legitimacy. Such a conflict arises when an action is legal by virtue of its conformity to a certain law, but at the same time is illegitimate by virtue of its gross violation of general principles of justice. If my interpretation is correct, then the play seems to ask whether the modern state's challenge to the legality of the medieval feud could not be answered with Götz's counter-challenge to the legitimacy of the modern state. It is important to note that Goethe in Dichtung und Wahrheit explicitly frames his discussion of Götz in terms of this conflict between legality and legitimacy when he describes Götz as a “Privatmann, [der] wo nicht gesetzlich, doch rechtlich zu handeln dachte” (16:752). Here Goethe obviously concedes what few interpreters were willing to admit—namely, that Götz is breaking the law. But in the same breath he contemplates the possibility that Götz's opposition to the law might be “rechtlich”—in other words, legitimate by virtue of its conformity to higher principles of justice. But rather than commit himself to either side in this controversy and undermine the ambivalence of the play, Goethe does not betray his own position on the matter and only allows that Götz “thought” that his position was legitimate.

One has to conclude that not only does Goethe throughout the play avoid taking sides, he also carefully balances out every possible bias toward one side or the other. The Bishop harasses Götz, but he also seems genuinely interested in peace. Götz defends himself heroically, but he also robs for personal gain. Feuds have been declared illegal, but the legitimacy of this declaration is itself problematic. Therefore the question arises as to why Goethe is so insistent upon not taking a position for or against the legitimacy of the modern state. To arrive at an answer, I will have to show first that the play is not just a sophisticated depiction of the transformation of a medieval polity into a modern state, but also a reflection on Hobbesian social contract theory.

IV

Let me begin by looking at a short passage, taken almost verbatim from Götz's autobiography, where one of his men describes his master in hot pursuit of Weislingen:

Und da wars kurios, wie wir so in die Nacht reiten, hüt' just ein Schäfer da, und fallen fünf Wölf in die Herd, und packten weidlich an. Da lachte unser Herr und sagte: Glück zu lieben Gesellen, Glück überall und uns auch.

(560f.)

Most commentators have all but ignored this passage, in all likelihood because it is disconcerting to see Götz identifying himself with wolves in a killing frenzy.²² In the context of my interpretation, of course, this passage is just another example of the text's persistence in pointing out the violence inherent in Götz's way of life. But there may be more to it. It is interesting to note that the edition of Götz's autobiography used by Goethe adds an explanatory footnote which contains the words homo homini lupus.²³ Could this have inspired Goethe to make a connection to the author who most famously used this phrase, Hobbes?²⁴

This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that Götz is compared to a wolf in two other passages. In the first, Sickingen voices his doubts about Götz's military chances against the imperial troops:

SICKINGEN:
Ihr werdet gegen der Menge wenig sein.
GöTZ:
Ein Wolf ist einer ganzen Heerde Schafe zu viel.
SICKINGEN:
Wenn sie aber einen guten Hirten haben.

(602)

In the second passage, Weislingen criticizes Götz for rejecting the politics of the imperial princes:

Du siehst die Fürsten an, wie der Wolf den Hirten. Und doch, darfst du sie schelten, daß sie ihrer Leut und Länder Bestes wahren? Sind sie denn einen Augenblick vor den ungerechten Rittern sicher, die ihre Untertanen auf allen Straßen anfallen, ihre Dörfer und Schlösser verheeren? … Ist's nicht ein guter Geist der ihnen einrät auf Mittel zu denken Teutschland zu beruhigen, die Staatsverhältnisse näher zu bestimmen,²⁵ um einem jeden, Großen und Kleinen die Vorteile des Friedens genießen zu machen.

(565f.)

In all three passages, the comparison of Götz with a wolf occurs in the context of an image which combines the same three elements in an identical constellation: a shepherd is protecting a flock of sheep from a wolf. This image is relevant insofar as the wolf's relation to the shepherd and his sheep is, if the preceding interpretation is correct, structurally identical to the relation Götz has to the princes and their subjects: Götz and the wolf are both attacking the subjects/sheep with whose safekeeping the princes/shepherds are entrusted. Weislingen's use of the image not only makes explicit that the shepherds are an allegory of the princes, it also casts the political mandate of the princes/shepherds in exactly the terms Hobbes uses to describe the purpose of the sovereign: he is there to protect public peace and eradicate its enemies. Therefore the recurrent use of this image suggests a Hobbesian subtext whose elements will be identified below. According to this subtext, the play is not just a faithful portrayal of the historical events associated with the demise of the medieval polity at the hands of the emerging modern state, it is also an allegorical depiction of the struggle of a Hobbesian sovereign to protect his subjects in the face of a lawbreaker who is still, in Hobbes's terminology, a wolf in the state of nature.²⁶ In other words: the play reinterprets the historical emergence of the modern state as the establishment of a Hobbesian sovereign.

The political philosophies of Goethe's time already identified the creation of a sovereign with the replacement of the medieval state. When Jean Bodin launched modern political philosophy by claiming for the first time that the state is constituted through the lawful exercise of power by a sovereign over, as he put it in Aristotelian fashion, a group of families,²⁷ it was because he had realized that the terminology of traditional (i.e., medieval) political philosophy was unable to grasp the new realities of political life.²⁸ Hobbes took up Bodin's legal insights and argued that this sovereign came into being through a social contract between men in the state of nature who wanted to ensure public peace by placing over everyone a sovereign power which held all of them “in awe.” And when in the context of this theory he described the state of nature as “a war … of every man, against every man,”²⁹ he was consciously thinking, as will become apparent, about medieval politics.

Before I attempt to show how Hobbes's conception of the social contract reappears in the structure of the play, it is worthwhile to see how recourse to the concept of the sovereign helps us to understand two important themes of the play: freedom and keeping one's word.

The concept of freedom surfaces quite frequently in the play, and recently scholars have at last begun to determine its precise meaning.³⁰ Its centrality is highlighted by the fact that during the banquet with his men at the end of the third act Götz vows to die with the word “Freiheit” on his lips (618), and then, when the time has come, he actually does so (653). But is Götz, as some critics seem to suggest, an anarchist who refuses to accept any political superstructure that could curtail his liberty? Or is he rather using a medieval concept of freedom when he claims to be, at the same time, free and a loyal servant of the emperor (567)? Already Bodin, in his attempt to separate medieval from modern political systems, pointed out the difference between the vassal's relationship to his lord and the subject's relationship to the sovereign: while the subject is unconditionally subordinated to the sovereign and does not have the freedom to escape this status legally, the vassal can, of his own free will, nullify the feudal contract and his obligations to the feudal lord at any given moment by returning the fiefs and privileges granted by the lord.³¹ So while in the modern state one has no choice but to be part of a power relation, in the medieval order all relations of political power were entered into freely. It is this concept of freedom which Götz embraces when he characterizes his and his men's status in his ideal society oxymoronically as “frei dienen” (618), or which Goethe alludes to in Dichtung und Wahrheit when he calls Lerse's offer to serve Götz an act of “dignified subordination.”³² For Götz, the word “freedom” therefore simply signifies the absence of subjection to a sovereign, and when at the end of the play he desperately longs for freedom, it is because in a series of military actions the sovereign has subordinated him in a most undignified manner.

Finally, Götz's obsession with keeping promises, which I discussed above, is best understood in the light of Hobbes's critique of the feudal order. For Hobbes, the reliance of a political system such as the medieval polity on a network of mutual promises between all the individuals involved is doomed to failure. “The bonds of words are too weak to bridle men's ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions,” he says, continuing that promises and contracts can only be relied upon if there is a “fear of some coercive power,”³³ i.e., of a sovereign. As the reference to the broken promises of “ein vierzig Landfrieden” (571) testifies, the play does not depict the medieval order as having overcome the unreliability of promises. It appears that precisely to mask this inherent weakness of the feudal order, its stoutest defender, Götz, has made its foundation, the promise, the centerpiece of his ethics. When he bases his political utopia on the wish that everybody could be like him, he is effectively trying, by the example of his conduct, to rescue the medieval order from a fundamental flaw by nullifying Hobbes's reasons for the establishment of a sovereign through the universal and faithful performance of feudal promises.³⁴

But Hobbes's social contract theory enters into the meaning of the play in an even more important fashion, insofar as its three main elements—the state of nature, the social contract, and the sovereign's enforcement of public peace—find their counterparts in the drama. It is appropriate to say that Götz and his world—in other words, medieval society—represent Hobbes's state of nature, and not just because in Dichtung und Wahrheit Goethe called Götz a “Ritter … im allgemeinen gesetzlosen Zustande” (16:752). For unlike Rousseau, Hobbes characterized the state of nature not as a form of life in which men lead isolated lives without any family, society, technology, and culture, but rather as a state where men are already joined together in clans and families and try to give stability to their lives with the help of “bonds of words,” where men practice the arts of agriculture and warfare, and where society and culture, even cities already exist. According to Hobbes, the chief motivators of human action are not just the prospect of material gain, but also clan and family loyalty and a quest for reputation. In other words, Hobbes modeled the state of nature quite clearly after the structure of medieval society. Of particular importance in the context of my argument is that Götz's life is fundamentally determined by the ubiquity of warfare. His feuds might be legal according to medieval law, but even there they are “bella privata,” and a society marked by private wars fits the description of Hobbes's general war in the state of nature quite well. If, finally, we look at Götz's crippled body and at the fate of various of his enemies and his men (particularly Georg, who dies a senseless death in the prime of his life), we are justified in saying that Goethe depicted the life of Götz and his kind in strict adherence to Hobbes's terse characterization of life in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short” (82).

If Götz's way of life is the equivalent of Hobbes's state of nature, we should be entitled to identify the constitutional reform of 1495 with the Hobbesian social contract. Just as in Hobbes the warring men in the state of nature come together to ensure peace and security by instituting a sovereign and outlawing all acts of war among themselves, in this constitutional reform all the estates of the Empire came together, outlawed all wars among themselves by proclaiming the Ewiger Landfrieden, and instituted a new political structure which had the main purpose of securing this peace: the Reichskammergericht was given the authority to prosecute feuding parties on its own initiative, and the emperor was given the means and the mandate to enforce domestic peace. Historically, the play is not off the mark when it portrays this attempt at establishing a sovereign as only partly successful by presenting Maximilian as a reluctant enforcer of public peace and by depicting the Reichskammergericht as being too inefficient and corrupt to take this role upon itself. Both in history and in the play, the dirty work of peace-enforcement fell to the imperial estates on whose initiative the reform was passed in the first place, which is the real reason why Götz and the princes, particularly the Bishop, are arch-enemies.³⁵ It is therefore not surprising to see how often the text uses words derived from Ruhe and Frieden when it describes the goals of princely or imperial politics as “Teutschland zu beruhigen” (566), “einem jeden … die Vorteile des Friedens genießen zu machen” (566), “das Reich zu beruhigen” (571), and generally establishing “Bürgerliche Ruh und Glückseligkeit” (588).

In the interest of this peace, Götz is captured twice, and both times we see the newly established sovereign taking decisive action in fulfilling his mandate of ensuring public peace. When Maximilian decides to assemble the expeditionary force which will later capture Götz in his castle, he does not act as a feudal lord who sends out loyal vassals to strike at someone who has proved disloyal or a threat. No personal motives are at work, for he speaks quite fondly of Götz (598). Rather, he acts because the safety and property of two merchants have been compromised and because the lobbying of Weislingen makes it clear that, unlike in a medieval polity, such instances of domestic violence are unacceptable. It is interesting to see how Weislingen employs Hobbes's terminology when he urges the emperor to extinguish the last smoldering embers of a previously raging domestic war (and witness again the use of words derived from Ruhe):

Es ist mitnichten ganz Deutschland das über Beunruhigung klagt. Franken und Schwaben allein glimmt noch von den Resten des innerlichen verderblichen Burgerkriegs. Und auch da sind viele der Edlen und Freien die sich nach Ruhe sehnen. Hätten wir einmal diesen Sickingen, Selbitz—Berlichingen auf die Seite geschafft, das übrige würde bald von sich selbsten zerfallen.

(598)

The second time, Götz is captured not in an action directed at him personally, but more or less accidentally in the course of the military defeat of the rebellious peasants.³⁶ Of course, any medieval king would have been bound to defend his vassals against rebellious serfs, and therefore the military campaign against the peasants could be construed either as the result of a feudal lord's loyalty toward his vassals or the sovereign's attempt to discharge his duty of reestablishing public peace. But the play makes it abundantly clear that the rebellion does not occur in the framework of a medieval political system, since most of the peasants are upset over the politics of the princes, the main point of which was to institute the rule of a peace-enforcing sovereign over their territories and, in the constitutional reform of 1495, over the Empire at large.³⁷ As Götz puts it, the political goal of the peasants is “[ihre] Rechte und Freiheiten wieder zu erlangen” (637), or, in other words, to revert to the old feudal system characterized by the absence of a Hobbesian sovereign.³⁸ When Götz joins the peasants in support of this cause, he therefore commits an even greater transgression against the Hobbesian sovereign than in his earlier refusal to stop feuding: then he had just disregarded the sovereign's law, whereas now he takes part in a civil war in order to abolish the sovereign himself.

V

If this reading is correct and the play's structure mirrors the main elements of Hobbes's theory of the social contract, then it must be possible to pose my previous question about legality and legitimacy on a deeper level. Just as the play is concerned with the legitimacy of the modern state as it historically came into being in Germany, it must be concerned as well with the question of whether the Hobbesian sovereign, whose emergence the play allegorically depicts, can claim legitimacy. Since the theoretical innovation which distinguishes Hobbes's from Bodin's theory of sovereignty concerns mainly the problem of legitimacy, this question is of particular interest.

Bodin's importance should not be underestimated: his basic definitions of the relevant terms of constitutional law were essentially taken over not only by Hobbes, but in fact by modern political philosophy in general. However, Bodin was not able to account for a number of important questions: How does the sovereign come into being? Why does he exist? And why is his exercise of power legitimate?³⁹ Here Hobbes was able to provide answers: the sovereign comes into being through a social contract, he exists in order to enforce public peace, and, most important in the context of this article, he uses his power with legitimacy because he has been authorized to do so by the social contract. If therefore Goethe questions the legitimacy of the modern state, he by the same token probes the cogency of social contract theory as the only explanation of the legitimacy of the sovereign which was available to him and his contemporaries.

When Götz denies the legitimacy of the princes' or the emperor's right to punish him for his feuds, the Hobbesian answer would simply be to point to the constitutional reform of 1495, in which the estates of the Empire “signed” a social contract which created precisely this authority. But in his defense Götz could point out that he did not sign this contract and that therefore it would be illegitimate to claim that he, just like the signatories, is bound by it. In its ultimate consequence this reasoning holds that social contract theory cannot explain the legitimacy of the sovereign's actions toward anybody who was not a party to the social contract and therefore did not give up the original freedom he can claim to have been born with.⁴⁰

This situation is rather troubling for social contract theory, because it questions the legitimacy of the sovereign's actions against precisely those who are most likely to endanger public peace. Interestingly, Hobbes was aware of this weakness in the conception of the social contract, so much so that he tried twice to eliminate it. First, he argued that the sovereign can simply force a person to sign the contract and consequently be bound by it.⁴¹ In fact, this is what happens to Götz when he is forced to surrender to the Reichsexekution and sign the Urfehde, which amounts to accepting the authority of the sovereign by waiving the right to feud. However, it is a basic principle of justice that a contract signed under duress is not binding, and therefore the sovereign's coercive power over the signatory still has to be considered illegitimate. Hobbes must have seen the shortcomings of his argument, for in a later passage he accounts differently for the sovereign's use of power against those who refuse to accept his legitimacy:

Because the major part hath by consenting voices declared a sovereign; he that dissented … must either submit to their decrees, or be left in the condition of war he was in before; wherein he might without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever.

(Hobbes, Leviathan, 115, emphasis added)

It is important to see that this passage contains a summary of Goethe's play: while the Reichstag of 1495 has, by consenting voices, declared a sovereign and required Götz to submit to the decree of the Fehdeverbot, Götz, the dissenter, has chosen to remain in the condition of war he was in before and is, at least in the eyes of his enemies, destroyed without any injustice whatsoever. The implicit brutality of this procedure, the undignified subordination I spoke of above, is best expressed in the Ächtungserklärung as quoted by Götz: “Der Kaiser hat Exekution gegen mich verordnet, die mein Fleisch den Vögeln unter dem Himmel, und den Tieren auf dem Felde zu fressen vorschneiden soll” (601).

But why does Hobbes in this passage claim that the violence employed by the sovereign is “without injustice,” i.e., legitimate? Apparently Hobbes argues that the violence which destroys the dissenter reaches him in the state of war he was in all along, i.e., in a state where there is no such thing as law or justice, and that therefore a claim of illegitimacy cannot be raised, since such a claim would always presuppose a law or principle of justice. Whoever puts himself outside of the law, Hobbes argues, does not have grounds to complain that certain actions taken against him are violations of it. This position is quite radical, for it implies among other things that the sovereign establishes the universality of the rule of law not, as the conception of the social contract seems to suggest, through the free assent of the governed, but rather through the raw exercise of superior power. In other words: as far as the basic legitimacy of the sovereign is concerned, might makes right.

But precisely at this point Götz has good reason to complain. For his sphere of life was not at all devoid of law, but rather governed by a different law, which happened to make do without a sovereign and permitted the waging of private wars. So if someone is being destroyed in this state, he is not at all being destroyed “without injustice,” since unlike the superimposition of a legal code on a genuinely lawless society, the replacement of one legal code with another requires justification, not just victorious violence, to claim legitimacy. In other words: in order to give legitimacy to the sovereign, Hobbesian social contract theory found it necessary on the one hand to construe the state of nature as a society modeled after the Middle Ages, but on the other hand to wrongly deny it the status of a law-governed society. Götz's fate—his undignified subordination—therefore testifies to the fact that according to social contract theory, whatever is legal is also legitimate, provided the authority of the sovereign has been accepted. But the outcome of the play also suggests that the authority of the sovereign itself has been established by an irreducible, unjustifiable, and therefore illegitimate act of violence.

It now should be possible to understand why in all major political and ethical questions, be it Götz's use of violence, the princely politics of public peace, or the legitimacy of the modern state, the play is such a study in ambiguity. It appears that the play is not simply trying to take sides, either for or against the politics of the sovereign—it is attempting to understand the consequences which political modernization brought about. For this reason, on the negative side, the violence of Götz's robberies and carefree skirmishes is balanced out by the ruthlessness of the sovereign's enforcement of public peace, and the illegality of Götz's feuds is offset by the illegitimacy of the sovereign's subjection of the dissenter to the social contract. And for this reason, on the positive side, Götz's lifestyle is characterized by autonomy, dignity, and freedom, and the rule of the sovereign by public peace and prosperity.

In refusing to commit to either side, the play is concerned with presenting the trade-off which took place when the modern state triumphed over the medieval order. Public peace was gained, but the autonomy of the individual was lost irretrievably. The violence which is the consequence of Götz's exercise of his freedom is eradicated; however, the violence which subjugates the individual is omnipresent. All this is presented as a clear and unavoidable Either-Or: neither in the medieval nor in the modern state can the autonomy of the individual and the absence of violence coexist.

This finally explains why Goethe presented Götz in such a positive light and touched only lightly on his love for violence, thereby misleading many a critic. Since Goethe's contemporaries were long since used to the blessings of public peace enforced by a sovereign, an emphasis on the violence and illegality of Götz's actions would have unduly prejudiced the audience. Götz's subjugation by the sovereign would then have been construed as positive, and the illegitimacy of the sovereign's violence would have been masked. But since instead the violence against Götz is highlighted and his character and lifestyle are presented with remarkable affection, the audience is meant to feel sympathy for Götz, and, upon witnessing his downfall, to reflect upon the autonomy that has been lost now that the sovereign is firmly entrenched. This is the complex meaning of the last line of the play, “Wehe der Nachkommenschaft die dich [sc. Götz] verkennt” (653): whoever sees Götz as merely an outlaw robber baron fails to realize how his own possibilities have been stunted by the sovereign, and whoever thinks that we should try to recover the dignity and freedom of Götz's life fails to acknowledge the violence it entails. It is, ultimately, a tragic view of life which the play presents, since no society can be envisioned without violence, be it Götz's or the sovereign's. And the purpose of the play is not, as scholars who naively championed Götz have implicitly assumed, to exhort the audience to shape for itself a new way of life. The purpose is rather to make it understand the tragic loss of alternatives.

Let me conclude by looking at two recurrent theses of Götz scholarship in light of my results. Often it is said that the historical force Götz opposes is the absolutism which began its rise in the principalities of the Empire during his lifetime. Unless my analysis is wrong, this thesis is incorrect. It is true that Hobbes thought that an absolute monarch was the most effective enforcer of public peace, but he allowed that there are other sovereigns, e.g., a parliament or the people at large. However, Götz's opposition is focused not on the fact that it is an absolutist prince who takes away his right to feud, but rather on the fact that this right is being taken away in the first place. Therefore, he is not in conflict with absolutism, but with any kind of sovereign.⁴²

A different line of interpretation refers back to a book review in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, where in a quasi-Rousseauistic argument Goethe claims that during the process of civilization a nation is “polished” and consequently loses the characteristics which are truly its own:

Die Verhältnisse der Religion, die mit ihnen auf das engste verbundenen bürgerlichen Beziehungen, der Druck der Gesetze, der noch größere Druck gesellschaftlicher Verbindungen und tausend andere Dinge lassen den polierten Menschen und die polierte Nation, nie ein eigenes Geschöpf sein.

(1, 2:381)

Insofar as this passage can be read as a questioning of modernity, it is without a doubt closely related to the play. However, in the play we learn precious little about how Götz's character is “polished” by “Verhältnisse der Religion,” “bürgerliche Beziehungen,” and the “Druck gesellschaftlicher Beziehungen.” In fact, because of his isolated life, Götz is rather independent of all of them, and even the “Druck der Gesetze” does not really rob him of his individuality, since there is only one law with which he is really in conflict—the Fehdeverbot. By focusing almost exclusively on matters of constitutional law, the play does not advance a general critique of modernity along the lines of the quote; it only contemplates the ramifications of what might be considered the foundational act of political modernity (and in respect to which the quote's list of polishing agents is merely secondary): the endorsement of the subjugation of man by the sovereign.⁴³

Notes

1. Quoted from Hans Gerhard Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen (Frankfurt/Main: Literarische Anstalt, 1901-1914), vol. 2, bk. 3, 24.

2. Quoted from Gerhard Sauder, introduction and commentary to MA 1, 1:958. In this context, scholarship often refers as well to the essay Zum Shakespeares Tag: “Mein Herz [wäre mir] geborsten, wenn ich ihnen [sc. den aristotelischen Einheiten] nicht Fehde angekündigt hätte, und nicht täglich suchte, ihre Türne zusammen zu schlagen” (MA 1, 2:412, emphasis added).

3. All quotes from Götz are from MA 1, 1, cited in parentheses in the text. All quotes from Dichtung und Wahrheit, also cited in parentheses, are from MA 16.

4. It is interesting that Goethe changed the chronology of Götz's autobiography, where the feud indeed starts with an original transgression by the Bishop, the arrest of one of Götz's men (Götz von Berlichingen: Mein Fehd und Handlungen, edited by Helgard Ulmschneider [Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1981] 84). Only then does Götz participate in the raid of his cousin Eustachius von Thüngen on the Bishop's ships (88-90). By letting Götz's raid on the ships precede the Bishop's capture of the man, the play clearly turns Götz into the aggressor.

5. In Götz's autobiography, the loot filled “16 wägenn mit allerley wahr” (Mein Fehd und Handlungen, 90).

6. Quoted from Ekkehard Gerstenberg, Recht und Staat in Goethes “Götz von Berlichingen” (Ph.D. diss., University of Würzburg, 1952) 52.

7. This alternative version was presented by Albert Leitzmann, “Einleitung zur Lebensbeschreibung Herrn Götzens von Berlichingen,” in: Quellenschriften zur neueren deutschen Literatur, no. 2 (Halle/Saale: M. Niemeyer, 1916). Hardly a critic since him has taken note of it.

8. “Unter dem jungen Ludwig zirka 900 reißen die ersten Befehdungen ein. Besonders weltliche gegen geistliche. Pütter. 60” (MA 1, 2:538).

9. Johann Stephan Pütter, Staatsveränderungen des Teutschen Reichs von den ältesten bis auf die neuesten Zeiten im Grundrisse entworfen, 1st edition (Göttingen, 1753) 238, fn. (e).

10. Johann Philipp Datt, Volumen Rerum Germanicarum Novum sive De Pace Imperii Publica Libri V … (Ulm, 1698).

11. Despite choosing politics and law as his topic, Ekkehard Gerstenberg (n. 6) fails to present a convincing interpretation. Hermann Meyer-Benfey (Goethes Götz von Berlichingen [Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1929]) points out some of the important historical facts, e.g., the existence of the Fehdeverbot of 1495, but fails to realize the consequences. H. G. Haile (“‘Herr, er will uns fressen’: The Spirit of Götz,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 44 [1965]: 610-34) points out some of the moral difficulties inherent in the character of Götz, but does not place them in a legal context. Volker Neuhaus (“Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen,” in: Geschichte als Schauspiel: Deutsche Geschichtsdramen. Interpretationen, ed. Walther Hinck [Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981] 82-100) and Edward McInnes (“Moral, Politik und Geschichte in Goethes Götz von Berlichingen,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 103 [1984], Sonderheft, 2-20) show in some depth that the topic of the play is the clash of two irreconcilably different political paradigms. David Pugh (“From the Static to the Progressive Order of Nature: King Lear and Götz von Berlichingen,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 17 [1990]: 255-79) reinterprets these results in terms of different competing concepts of nature and points out that Götz is not just an object of admiration, but of criticism as well. Ferdinand Van Ingen (Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen. Grundlagen und Gedanken zum Verständnis des Dramas [Frankfurt/Main: Diesterweg, 1988]) significantly deepens this approach by providing the historical and legal background in great detail and discussing at length the moral ambiguity of the character of Götz. However, scholars only refer to his earlier article (“Aporien der Freiheit: Goethes Götz von Berlichingen,” in: Verlorene Klassik: Ein Symposion, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986] 1-23), probably because his book was meant for use in German Gymnasien. They have therefore overlooked the significant improvement of his position both in scope (e.g., the insistence on Götz as a violent outlaw) and detail (e.g., the inclusion of facts of constitutional history) as well as the implicit revisions of those aspects of his interpretation which might be open to criticism.

12. Four different scenes of the third act refer in one way or another to the problem of desertion in the expeditionary force (605f., 608, 611, 612). In the last of these scenes, there are only 150 men left from an original 400.

13. The inn is situated near “Dachsbach,” which in turn is close to Neustadt an der Aisch, i.e., about 70 km from Jagsthausen (554). The geographical facts of the play are always very precise: Götz is staying at the inn in order to capture Weislingen; since Neustadt an der Aisch is about halfway between Bamberg and Jagsthausen, it makes perfect sense that Weislingen would try to gain local allies for the Bishop among imperial knights from this area.

14. This unwavering loyalty to his men and fervent care for their safety has been duly noted in the secondary literature, but has always been attributed to the nobility of his character. However, my reading indicates that this nobility does not stand outside of a historical context: it is simply the reflection of Götz's allegiance to the old feudal order and its code of conduct. The old chestnut of Götz criticism, whether the play is a Charakter- or a Geschichtsdrama, belabors a moot point: to a large extent, Götz's character is the expression of a certain historical mentality.

15. The degree to which Götz conceives of his relationship with the emperor in terms of the feudal contract manifests itself perhaps most prominently in his conversation with Sickingen in the fourth act. Both assume that the emperor, after Götz's temporary fall from imperial grace, will give him his currently confiscated estates “wieder zu Lehn” (627), in other words, that he will renew the feudal contract with Götz. They even anticipate that Götz will finally be able to fulfill the traditional duty of the vassal. “Sickingen: [Der Kaiser] hat von jeher gewünscht dich unter seiner Armee zu haben. Du wirst nicht lang auf deinem Schloß sitzen, so wirst du aufgerufen werden. Götz: Wollte Gott bald, eh ich's fechten verlerne” (627f.). That the emperor's military politics has been based for some years now on principles other than those of the feudal contract does not enter their minds.

16. The main architect of the constitutional reform was the archbishop of Mainz, Berthold von Henneberg. Footnote 24 of the edition of Götz's autobiography which Goethe used mentions Berthold and explains his relevance (Gottfried von Berlichingen, Lebensbeschreibung Herrn Gözens von Berlichingen, zugenannt mit der Eisern Hand … zum Druck befördert von Verono Franck von Steigerwald [=Georg Tobias Pistorius] … [Nürnberg, 1731] 14). In Datt's De pace publica Goethe could find both a reprint of Berthold's draft of the reform (830) and a description of his role as Maximilian's antagonist in the course of the proceedings of the imperial diet (831). Goethe was obviously aware of these facts, since in the Urgötz he not only depicts the imperial diet in session, but presents Berthold, under the title “Maynz,” as the main legislative opponent of Maximilian (437-39).

17. Cf. Van Ingen, Götz, 45ff. Even if it could be proven that the text argues that Götz's and Elisabeth's claim that the Ewiger Landfrieden was only passed to strengthen the hand of the princes in their attempt to weaken and eliminate imperial knights, Götz's actions would still be illegal: the law is the law, no matter what the reasons for its passage. However, the existence of such ulterior legislative motives could be used to argue for the law's illegitimacy.

18. It is the central point of the classic modern study of the subject at hand (Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft: Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter, 5th edition [1965, reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985]) that the legal concepts needed to describe the modern and the medieval state respectively are incommensurable, and that historians have been unable to properly understand medieval politics because they have superimposed their modern legal concepts onto the medieval state.

19. Quite frequently the secondary literature claims that the princes of the play try to enlarge their power at the expense of the Reich. Even Van Ingen, who is the most successful analyst of the historical dimension of the play, repeats this charge (22). However, no scholar cites specific passages as evidence, and I can find no basis for the claim in the text itself.

20. Concerning feuds, their rules, and their importance for understanding the conceptual differences between a modern and a medieval body politic, the classic text is still Brunner's Land und Herrschaft.

21. Cf. George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 4th edition, revised by Thomas Landon Thorson (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973) 195; and Brunner, Land und Herrschaft, passim.

22. One exception is Gerstenberg, Recht und Staat, who points to the fact that the coat of arms of the historical Götz contained a wolf. This certainly might explain why the historical Götz happily identified himself with a wolf, but it fails to explain why Goethe chose to add the passage to the second version of the play (it is missing in the Urgötz) without adding the arcane heraldic information necessary to maintain a positive image of Götz despite the obvious association with bloodthirstiness.

23. Berlichingen, Lebensbeschreibung, 179, fn. 363.

24. It appears unlikely that Goethe read Hobbes's texts directly. However, he must have been familiar with the outlines of Hobbes's theory, since he knew Spinoza, Hobbes's most ardent disciple, intimately, and even argued, as he notes in Dichtung und Wahrheit, for Spinoza's and Hobbes's position on the relationship between church and state in his dissertation De legislatoribus (16:504-6). In addition, he was familiar with Rousseau's Second Discourse, which contains a polemic against Hobbes.

25. This phrase is probably best read as referring to princely attempts at constitutional reform.

26. The only critic who has attempted to establish a connection to Hobbes via the wolf metaphor is Wolfgang Wittkowski (“Homo homini lupus, homo homini deus: Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand als Tragödie und als Drama gesellschaftlicher Aufklärung und Emanzipation,” Colloquia Germanica 20 [1987]: 299-324). However, he seems to go astray by assuming that Hobbes uses the phrase homo homini lupus as a description of the nature of man, while in the context of the passage where it appears (De Cive: the Latin version, edited by Howard Warrenger [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983] 73) it clearly is meant to be a description not of the nature of man, but of man in the state of nature, just as the phrase homo homini deus is a description of man in the state of subjection to a sovereign. The anthropology which Wittkowski uses, namely, that man is a split being which struggles to overcome his wolf-nature and realize his God-nature, is quite alien to Hobbes. The general war among mankind in the state of nature according to Hobbes is not the result of an evil inclination toward violence in man, but of his proper use of rationality in the quest for self-preservation, which tells man, for example, that security is only achieved if potential enemies are preventively destroyed (Leviathan Or The Matter, Forme and Power of A Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, edited with an introduction by Michael Oakeshott [Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1957], part 1, ch. 13).

    In addition, such an anthropology is hardly visible in Goethe's text itself. Two points will suffice. First, the main person who is explicitly compared to a wolf, Götz, never tries to purge his life of all the violence in it. Instead, as we have seen, this violence is celebrated. And secondly, Wittkowski is not convincing when he imputes wolf-like behavior to other characters in the play, particularly when he calls Weislingen “ein Wolf im Schafspelz” (306). The only other people in the play who are explicitly associated with the wolf are the Turks and the Gypsies, and both are not subject to the sovereign and therefore are in the state of nature as well. Neither Weislingen nor anyone else is metaphorically associated with a wolf. Wittkowski might have felt entitled to call Weislingen a wolf because of his unscrupulous behavior and his wish to destroy Götz, but he is thereby misrepresenting Weislingen's actions as they would be interpreted in Hobbes's philosophy. When Weislingen incites the emperor to take military action against Götz, he certainly is very unkind to his childhood friend, but he is only reminding the emperor of his duty to enforce the Fehdeverbot of the constitutional reform of 1495, and he does so by lobbying on behalf of his constituents, the Bishop and the Nürnberg merchants. All of this happens outside of what Hobbes would consider the state of nature, where alone man is a wolf to others. And when later Weislingen abuses his power as an agent of the sovereign in the fight against Götz, he is breaking the law, a fact which obviously implies that he is in a law-governed society, and therefore not a wolf in the state of nature.

27. “Republique est un droit gouvernement de plusieurs mesnages, & de ce qui eut est commun, avec puissance souveraine.” (Jean Bodin, Les six Livres de la Republique [1583; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1977] 1).

28. See M. J. Tooley, introduction to Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth, abridged and translated by M. J. Tooley (Oxford: Blackwell, [1955]) xiv.

29. Hobbes, Leviathan, 82.

30. Van Ingen, Götz, 54-64; Peter Michelsen, “Goethes Götz: Geschichte dramatisiert?” Goethe Jahrbuch 110 (1993): 49.

31. “Le vassal … ne doit que le service & hommage porté par son investiture, & s'en peut exempter en quittant le fief sans fraude: mais le subiect naturel … ne se peut exempter de la puissance de son prince sans son vouloir & consentement” (Bodin, Six Livres, 163).

32. Lerse is “[die wackere] Figur, die sich auf eine so würdige Art zu subordinieren weiß” (16:403).

33. Hobbes, Leviathan, 89.

34. At this point one could object that while it is indeed Götz, the fetishist of the faithful performance of the “ritterliches Ehrenwort,” who breaks the peace and therefore brings upon himself the wrath of the sovereign, it is paradoxically the sovereign, the supposed guardian of the promise, who breaks his word. But Hobbes's theory of the sovereign accounts for this particular feature. For while the sovereign is charged, among other things, with enforcing promises and contracts, there is no agency which could enforce his own promises—for if there were, he would not be the sovereign. Therefore he is by necessity not bound by any laws or promises, and is perfectly entitled to break promises and contracts in the enforcement of public peace. Locke and political philosophers after him found this feature of the Hobbesian sovereign too scandalous to be tolerated and therefore developed the doctrine of the separation of powers and the legal limitation of powers of the different branches of government by constitutional means. In any case, if Götz fails, as I have tried to show, because he places too great a premium on the word of honor, his mistake is to expect the emperor to behave through his agents like a medieval king, when in fact the emperor has long since begun to act as a Hobbesian sovereign.

35. It is important to realize in this context that the Hobbesian sovereign is not identical with a monarch, but could be an assembly, even the entire people. Hobbes, Leviathan, part 2, ch. 19.

36. Only after the military action is well under way does Weislingen learn that Götz is with the peasants and that he finally has a chance to destroy his old enemy (641).

37. It is interesting to note that for the second version of the play Goethe eliminated the Urgötz's many references to personal abuse of the peasants at the hands of their lords. Apparently, he wanted to stress that the peasants' frustration did not grow out of irresponsible behavior, but out of the consequences of a change in the political system.

38. However, while some peasant leaders (Wild and Kohl) have honest political motives, others (Metzler and Link) simply try to exploit the frustration of the masses for their own personal gain: “uns empor zu helfen” (638).

39. Cf. Sabine, History, 376f.

40. This group of people would not only include dissidents like Götz, but also any young person coming of age who refuses to agree to be subject to a sovereign. Interestingly, the so-called militia movement in the U.S. has uncanny similarities with Götz's position. It refuses to accept the legitimacy of the sovereignty of the U.S. government just as Götz refuses to accept the legitimacy of the modern state; it challenges the government's monopoly on the use of force just as Götz insists on his right to feud; and it claims that the present way of doing politics rests on a severe distortion of the original constitution, just as Götz claims that the modern way of politics is a perversion of the old medieval order. The conflicts between the U.S. government and the militias that have led to actual military confrontation (the stand-offs between the FBI and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge and the Montana Freemen) have carried eerie echoes of the siege the Reichsexekution lays to Götz's castle. This in itself might be proof enough that the constitutional conundrums sketched in the play are, mutatis mutandis, still with us today.

41. Hobbes, Leviathan, part 1, ch. 14.

42. Incidentally, a similar situation can be found in the second version of Werther, where after the Bauernbursche is apprehended for the murder of the widow he loved, Werther is upset about the fact that he will be prosecuted by the Amtmann. Obviously, Werther is not opposed to the fact that the prosecutor is the local agent of the absolutist prince, but rather to the fact that there will be a prosecution in the first place.

43. I am grateful to Ulrich Lange and Judith Robey for their numerous helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.