Of all his wars, and even of the Crusade in the course of which he drowned in a river in Asia Minor, nothing bore fruit for German history but his notion of marrying his own son to a Norman princess; for from this union there issued a grandson who was truly a great man—Frederic II (1212–1250).
He took over the reins as a youth. Of all German rulers he remains the noblest. He alone, between Charlemagne and Charles V, bore the traits of a great personality, the most modern of all. The secret lies in the fact that this German emperor was born and died in Sicily, that of his reign of thirty-eight years only ten were spent in Germany. In him a felicitous mixture of races uniquely blended the southern and northern characters. At moments when one is inclined to see in history but a spectacle, one is tempted, for the sake of this one bright star, to accept the German southward aspiration as an attempt of providence to resolve the German conflict.
When Frederic became Emperor, at the age of twenty-one, he began his career by breaking two vows he had given the Pope. He neither handed over Sicily, as he had promised, nor did he undertake a Crusade. When the Pope excommunicated him, Frederic did what no one before him had thought of. Instead of fighting or repenting, he mocked the Lord of Christendom. He sent copies of the Papal bull of excommunication to all the princes of Europe and simultaneously decided to save Jerusalem now that he was beyond the pale of Christendom. Frederic proceeded like an oriental chessplayer rather than like a German general. He arranged for a friendly meeting with the Sultan of Egypt. Frederic spoke six languages, including Arabic, and since he was himself half a Moor, the two rulers soon came to an agreement. Why all the fuss for two hundred years? they asked each other in amazement. The Sultan handed over the holy places to the Emperor, retaining only the temple, even there, however, granting Christians the right to pray. With brief interruptions this arrangement held down to the year 1918. The two rulers at the same time concluded a sensible trade treaty. To discredit the Pope even further, the Emperor sent the entire clergy away from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and had a so-called secular crown placed on the altar. Then he entered and placed the crown upon his own head. Returning with a few companions, he forced the Pope to lift the ban. It was the most successful and least bloody of all the Crusades, undertaken against the infidels by one who was less of a believer than any of them.
Germany appeared to Frederic II as a mere dependency. He went north when his son went in league with the other German princes against him, had him taken in chains and later had him buried as a king. He had many more children, for he had four wives and many mistresses. The manner in which he lived with them reminds only superficially of Charlemagne. Frederic was actually much moodier and more dependent on his nerves. He might suddenly turn against a son who did something against his liking. The women too he seems often to have treated with cynicism, perhaps because he had lost his mother in childhood and had been forced to contract an early marriage. Among his sons he evidently loved those best who were handsomest.
For it was beauty this German emperor—first and last in this endeavor—sought to gather round him. And it was wisdom that ennobled him. His court, at Palermo, two hundred and fifty years before the Renaissance in Florence and Venice and Rome, was unique in the Middle Ages, entirely irradiated by his person. A true Maecenas, he capably practised what he patronized, especially writing. His book on falconry is but one example, for there are many scattered fragments from his hand. No matter what their origin, useful innovations were introduced by him—Arabic numerals, but recently brought to Europe, the first poetry of young Italy; and when he had no gold, bank notes after the model of ancient Carthage. At the same time he himself was the champion falconer, for he loved nothing more than hunting, and for this very reason the German princes begrudged his absence, for they were wont to share the pleasures of the hunt with their kings.
He had been brought up in Sicily, the witches’ caldron of the nations, and had lived more closely to the sages of Islam than to the learned monks. He exhibited complete tolerance toward all religions, believing in none himself, often praising the serenity of the Mohammedans to fanatical Christians. Superstitious and fatalistic, he inclined somewhat to Islam. “Study well,” he wrote to his son and successor, “that you may learn to understand much; for kings are born like other men and die like them.” Yet he regarded himself as of divine descent, not because he came from the House of Hohenstaufen, but because he was a genius. This almost Voltairean spirit, who required much effort and time to govern, still found time for everything Occident and Orient had to offer by way of intellect and art, collecting the one in his head, the other in his palace.
The German share in his character emerged in a lifelong friendship with a Teutonic knight from Thuringia who seems to have combined all the traits the Germans admire and therefore call “German”—wisdom and loyalty, strength and kindness. By his very nature this friend and Chancellor of Frederic must have been an opponent or at least a foil to another Minister, an Italian, who actually cheated the Emperor in the end. In those last gloomy years Frederic may have carried himself with critical thoughts about the South, at the same time revising his ideas about the North.
In accordance with his character, Frederic’s features were intellectual rather than handsome, especially since he early grew bald and near-sighted. An Arab wrote of him: “He would be worth little as a slave.” Perhaps that was because he was worth so much as a king. When a visitor speaks of the serpent’s eyes with which Frederic occasionally regarded people, one immediately senses the truth of the report. Frederic, at any rate, was the only German emperor besides Charlemagne who rested on his own strength.
He had come without predecessor, and at the age of fifty-seven he passed away without a successor. He died in the land he loved, and lies buried in Palermo. When one enters the Cathedral from the hot sun the marble of his sarcophagus is cool to the touch.
5
FOR SOME eight hundred years, from the Carolingians to the Great Revolution, France experienced no real change of dynasty, for the fact that the Houses of Valois and Bourbon took turns meant nothing compared to the constant crises in the German leadership. At that time the ducal houses fought each other not only at the time of royal elections; their perpetual plottings also interrupted the various reigns. Since no constitution compelled them to raise levies for the Imperial Army, their own private armies, like those of our present-day dictators, were a constant menace to the empire, against which they were likely to form various combinations. In the thirteenth century, while Germany disintegrated, France was ready to enter the scene of world affairs, precisely because it did not aspire to general world dominion, having instead consolidated its power within. Any natural jealousy of the imperial dignity and Roman succession in the French breast was at first dispelled in contemplation of French culture. The Germans did not begin to build up their own culture until they had met with failure in the world outside. The French did not go out into the world until they had secured their own culture. In this way the two powerful neighbors did not interfere with each other for a long time. Not until now did the French too turn to Italy.
In the meantime the Teutonic Order advanced eastward, where the Slavs had utilized the German imperial pilgrimages to Rome for invasions of their own. About 1250 the Teutonic Knights conquered large parts of what later became Prussia.
The true significance of these conquests was not to become apparent until later, during the seventeenth century, when these Eastern peoples, the mixed descendants of the native and invading stock, entered upon the scene of German history. Had the German kings in the Middle Ages had the time and mood to secure themselves in their Western lands,—in Burgundy or in Flanders,—the German West with all its gifts might have predominated. Instead, the princes between the Elbe and the Vistula, free of any effective check from the crown, grew more and more independent, subduing the Slavic tribes. The mixture of blood in the ensuing centuries created a people who were called Prussians, after the ancient warlike tribe of the Prussians that formed but part of their ancestry. The trading spirit of the immigrant merchants was perpetuated in the descendants just as much