Abstract
The question of how literary fiction is used for political and ideological propaganda involves both textual and contextual comparative analysis. Using recent discussions of the literary genre of prophecy, Mehtonen explores the case of a hitherto unexplored anonymous fictional publication from 1770, which became a literary sensation and was soon translated from German into Danish, Russian, Swedish, Finnish and Dutch. Mehtonen shows how this narrative – about the 106-year-old Swiss hermit Martin Zadeck, who presented on his deathbed in 1769 a prophecy about the coming of a powerful united Northern Europe – was closely attached not only to emerging ideas of Europe and its transoceanic expansion after the Seven Years War (1756–1763), but also to topical trends in the utopian fiction of the nobility and military networks in the Northern European monarchies. Mehtonen concludes that the seemingly simple prophecy by Zadeck, often catalogued as »devotion literature«, in fact addressed multiple audiences and even clashing worldviews. The monarchic and colonialist ideas of the narrative appealed to royalist patriots; the legendary and mythological layers were immediately evident to readers familiar with the Rosicrucian and Hermetic underpinnings; the millenarian vision pleased the eschatological mindset of proponents of religious awakening movements; and, ultimately, the Zadecksche Gattung was food for enlightened critiques and philosophies concerning superstition.
Zusammenfassung
Bei der Frage nach dem Gebrauch der literarischen Fiktion für die politische und ideologische Propaganda hat man sowohl die Textanalyse als auch den Kontext zu berücksichtigen. Mehtonen befasst sich dabei, unter Berücksichtigung der aktuellen Diskussion zur Prophezeiung als literarischer Gattung, mit einer bisher nicht erforschten, anonym verfassten fiktionalen Publikation von 1770, die in den Rang einer literarischen Sensation erhoben und bald aus dem Deutschen ins Dänische, Russische, Schwedische, Finnische und Holländische übersetzt wurde. Mehtonen zeigt, wie diese Erzählung – über den 106-jährigen schweizerischen Einsiedler Martin Zadeck, der 1769 auf seinem Todesbett eine Prophezeiung über die Entstehung eines geeinten und starken Nordeuropas machte – nicht nur eng verbunden war mit dem damals aufkommenden Europa-Gedanken und der überseeischen Expansion nach dem Siebenjährigen Krieg (1756–1763), sondern auch mit weiteren aufkommenden Topoi der utopischen Fiktion in den Netzwerken des Adels und der militärischen Kreise in den nordeuropäischen Monarchien. Mehtonens Schlussfolgerung ist, dass die einfach wirkende Prophezeiung Zadecks, die oft als «devotionale Literatur« bezeichnet wurde, die Interessen verschiedener Zuhörerschaften und sogar gegensätzlicher Weltanschauungen bediente. Die monarchistischen und kolonialistischen Ideen der Erzählung fanden fruchtbaren Boden bei Royalisten; die legendenhaften und mythologischen Ebenen fanden Anklang bei Rosenkreuz- und Hermetik-Anhängern; die millenarischen Visionen gefielen den eschatologisch ausgerichteten Anhängern der Erweckungsbewegungen; und zu guter Letzt war die Zadecksche Gattung ein gefundenes Fressen für die aufgeklärte Kritik und Philosophie des Aberglaubens.
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Notes
Rupert Taylor, The Political Prophecy in England, New York 1911, 2–3. I am indebted to the fellowship programme of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel for an inspiring research community and to Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland for supporting this study. I am also grateful to Professor Christian Krötzl for useful comments and the German translation of the abstract.
For interdisciplinary discussions, see Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most (eds.), Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices. A Global Comparative Approach, Cambridge 2016.
The only exception comprises the studies of the Russian tradition, which nevertheless have neglected the earliest editions of 1770–1771 and their international scope. For instance, Faith Wigzell (falsely) rejected the statement of Vladimir Nabokov regarding the wide distribution of the German prophecy: »[…] it seems unlikely that it ran to more than one German edition. The Swiss sage was saved from rapid extinction by the lucky accident of a Russian translation of his predictions« (Faith Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes. Print Culture, Gender, and Divination in Russia from 1765, Cambridge 1998, 219n11, 150 respectively; italics added). For the later Russian Martin Zadeck adaptations, which came to represent the genre of dream literature rather than political prophecy and which still continued after the 1989 Glasnost, see W. F. Ryan, Faith Wigzell, »Gullible Girls and Dreadful Dreams. Zhukovskii, Pushkin and Popular Divination,« The Slavonic and East European Review 70/4, 647–669, in: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211086 (1.6.2022); Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes, 156–157; Faith Wigzell, »The Dreambook in Russia,« in: Dreams and History. The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis, eds. Daniel Pick, Lyndal Roper, London 2004, 178–197, here 186–187; W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight. An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia, Phoenix Mill 1999, 153–155; Gesine Drews-Sylla, »Von Martyn Zadeka über Puškin und Gogol bis zum Affenorden. Aleksej Remizovs Traumpoetik und ihre Kontexte,« in: Das nächtliche Selbst. Traumwissen und Traumkunst im Jahrhundert der Psychologie, eds. Marie Guthmüller, Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, vol. 2, Göttingen 2020, 312–341, here 321–331.
See Eric Weiskott, »English Political Prophecy and the Problem of Modernity,« Postmedieval, vol. 10, 8–21, in: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0117-z (1.6.2022), here 13, 19, based on the medieval and later English tradition. On political prophecy as a genre or literary form, see also Franz Kampers, Kaiserprophetien und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kaiseridee, München 1895 (Reprint 2011); Taylor (note 1); Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Richard Saage (eds.), Die Politisierung des Utopischen im 18. Jahrhundert. Vom utopischen Systementwurf zum Zeitalter der Revolution, Tübingen 1996.
In this study, the term »popular« refers to literature commonly liked and frequently reprinted (not with binary opposition of elite and popular culture).
On diplomatic concepts such as »the tranquillity of the North« (die Ruhe des Nordens; Nordens ro) and related issues of international politics in the 1760s, see Michael Roberts, British Diplomacy and Swedish Politics, 1758–1773, Minneapolis 1980, xiv et passim. This tranquillity was constantly shattered or threatened between 1721 and 1790.
On the development in general, see, e.g., Raffaella Faggionato, A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia. The Masonic Circle of N. I. Novikov, Dordrecht 2005, 250.
According to Taylor’s viable definition ([note 1], 2), a political prophecy in literature is a narrative construction in which »an attempt is made to foretell a coming event of a political nature«. In Frye’s (Northrop Frye, The Great Code. The Bible and Literature, San Diego, New York, London 1983, 105–138) classic study on the structure of revelation as a narrative, prophecy forms one of the seven phases of a revelation (along with creation, revolution, law, wisdom, gospel and apocalypse).
Woldemar Hermann von Schmettau (Schmettow) [1772], Blätter, aus Liebe zur Wahrheit geschrieben. [S. l. <Plön>: S.d.], 43; Taylor (note 1), 7.
P 1771, 8; E 1771, 8.
See Nicole Clifton, »Manuscripts of ›A prince out of the north‹«, Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History, vol. 14 (2011), 251–260, here 254.
Gedruckt, 1770, [s.p., 2–3]; Gedruckt nach dem Solothurner Exemplar 1770, [3].
On Frederick’s politics and involvement in the question of Poland (as presented here and in the following section), see Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great. King of Prussia, New York 2016.
Gedruckt nach dem Solothurner Exemplar 1770, [3]; P 1771, 4–5.
For the different developments leading to the almost simultaneous introduction of the freedom of the press in Denmark and Sweden, see Jonas Nordin, John Christian Laursen, »Northern Declarations of Freedom of the Press. The Relative Importance of Philosophical Ideas and of Local Politics,« Journal of the History of Ideas 81/2 (2020), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2020.0014 (1.6.2022). Also John Laursen, »Luxdorph’s Press Freedom Writings. Before the Fall of Struensee in Early 1770s Denmark-Norway,« The European Legacy. Toward New Paradigms 7/1 (2002), 61–77, here 62; Jens Glebe-Møller, I kamp mod dumhed og hykleri. Om oplysningsmanden general W. H. von Schmettau (1719–85), Københavns Universitet 2011, 10–11.
Thomas Munck, »The Northern Periphery. German Cultural Influences on the Danish-Norwegian Kingdom During the Enlightenment,« in: The Holy Roman Empire, 1495–1806. A European Perspective, eds. R. J. W. Evans, Peter H. Wilson, Leiden, Boston 2012, 294–312, here 295, 297–298.
Martin Zadecks forunderlige og merkværdige Spaadom 1770, p. 1.
See Munck (note 16), 295n, paraphrasing a Copenhagen newspaper from the year 1767.
Glebe-Møller (note 15), 45. While Glebe-Møller’s important biography leaves aside Schmettau’s Zadeck satire and debate, for the present discussion they are germane elements concerning the early Zadeck reception. For a discussion of the Russian Zadeck studies and a suggestion that the author of the pamphlet was one Ernst Roder, see Faith Wigzell, »Russian Dream Books and Lady Macbeth’s Cat,« The Slavonic and East European Review 66/4 (1988), 625–630, in: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4209847 (1.6.2022), here 626–627n.
Woldemar Hermann von Schmettau (Schmettow), Orthodoxer höchsterbaulicher Theologischer Beweis von der Gewiss zu erwartenden Erfüllung der wichtigen Weissagung des neuen Schweitzerischen kleinen Propheten Martin Zadeck. [Bergedorf 1770]. On his life, see Claus Bech, K. C. Rockstroh, »Waldemar Schmettau,« in: Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 3. edition 1979–1984, ed. Svend Cedergreen Bech, in: https://biografiskleksikon.lex.dk/Waldemar_Schmettau (1.6.2022); Glebe-Møller (note 15), 22, 24–25 et passim. An early review of Schmettau’s writings was published by J. A. Eberhard, »Rez.: Schmettau, H. W. Graf v., Blätter, aus Liebe zur Wahrheit geschrieben,« Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1777), Anh. 13, 24 Bd., 2 Abt., 1020–1021, Bielefeld Universitätsbibliothek, in: http://ds.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/viewer/!metadata/2002572_150/387/-/ (1.6.2022).
Wigzell (note 19), 626–627n; Ryan, Wigzell (note 3), 666n; Wigzell (note 3), 152–153; Ryan (note 3), 153–155. Voltaire’s Zadig was translated into Russian in 1765, which may have assisted the favourable reception of the Zadeck prophecy in Russia (Wigzell [note 3], 153). A Danish translation of Zadig appeared in 1750 and Swedish in 1780.
Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment. Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, New York, Oxford 1991, 158. Voltaire was initiated into the Nine Sisters lodge in Paris in 1778.
Glebe-Møller (note 15), 22, 45–46 et passim.
Schmettau 1770 (note 20), 5 et passim.
Schmettau [1772] (note 9), 52. In this anonymously published book, Schmettau answers to the criticisms by defending »the author of Ort. Bew.« (i.e., himself and the Theological Evidence of 1770; Schmettau [1772] [note 9], 23, 40, 43, 46–47 et passim).
Laursen (note 15), 71; Gerhard Kay Birkner, Blätter, aus Liebe zur Wahrheit geschrieben. Der »Fall Schmettow«: Plöner Zensurskandal von 1772, 2. vermehrte Aufl., Plön 2007; Glebe-Møller (note 15), 12–13.
On Frederic’s northern politics, see Roberts (note 6), 20, 24–27, 283, 319, 341 et passim; Blanning (note 13).
On Frederic’s involvement and publications pro and contra the philosophers (e.g., Examen de l’Essai sur les préjugés, 1770), see Mark Curran, Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment in Pre-revolutionary Europe, Woodbridge, Suffolk (UK), Rochester (NY) 2012, 57–58, 101–103.
Frye ([note 8], 127) notes in the ancient context that that in order to keep »any self-deluded crank« out of the business, a prophecy had to be accredited by either secular or spiritual authority as already established. Until modern times, rulers have commissioned prophecies. For the history of the printing houses Wennberg & Nordström and the Royal Finnish Press, see G. E. Klemming, J. G. Nordin, Svensk boktryckeri-historia 1483–1883, Stockholm 1883, 242–243.
It is possible to detect the identity of some writers. In the royal Kanslikollegiet worked also a Finnish translator, due to the Finnish-speaking subjects of the Swedish crown. Some linguistic features suggest that the Finnish translation of Martin Zadeck was made by Abraham Lind (1736–1785), who worked in the chancellery in 1768–1785. He replaced the older combination of the letters tz with ts (Kari Tarkiainen, Finnarnas historia i Sverige, vol. 1: Inflyttarna från Finland under det gemensamma rikets tid, Helsinki 1990, 283–284), a feature that also appears in the first Finnish edition of Martin Zadeck.
See P 1771; E 1771.
For manuscripts produced by provincial scribes, see, e.g., the National Library of Finland, ms C.III.29. In 1867, a newspaper article noted the centennial of the Zadeck prophecy and mentioned that the editors had learned about the text via a manuscript owned by an old peasant (Hufvudstadsbladet 2, 1 March 1867).
See Lekeby’s (Kjell Lekeby, Gustaf Adolf Reuterholms hemliga arkiv från 1780-talet, Stockholm 2011, 62) catalogue of the collection housed at the archive of the Swedish Order of Freemasons: ms 121.131 »Profetia av […] eremiten Martin Zadeck 20 dec. 1767«. Reuterholm added the manuscript into the collection in 1784 and noted that it had been copied some years earlier by Duke Charles. In addition to copies of older prophetic, Rosicrucian and Hermetic literature, Reuterholm’s collection included documents related to the contemporary »freemason prophets« and charlatans, who attracted the attention of Gustavian nobles and townspeople in Stockholm. On Reuterholm’s life and archives, see Kari Tarkiainen, »Gustav Adolf Reuterholm,« Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, Häfte 147, Stockholm 1998, 43–47; Göran Anderberg, »Till frågan om Reuterholmska arkivets mystiska papper,« Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, vol. 1 (2003), 1–23, here 4, 7–8 et passim; Göran Anderberg, »Reuterholm – vännen på gott och ont,« in: Hertig Carl och det svenska frimureriet, eds. Dan Eklund, Sten Svensson, Hans Berg, Uppsala 2010, 298–331; Kjell Lekeby, Gustaviansk mystik. Alkemister, kabbalister, magiker, andeskådare, astrologer och skattgrävare i den esoteriska kretsen kring G. A. Reuterholm, hertig Carl och hertiginnan Charlotta 1776–1803, Sala, Södermalm 2010.
Robert Collis, Natalie Bayer, Initiating the Millennium. The Avignon Society of Illuminism in Europe, Oxford 2020, 117–118, on Reuterholm’s visit to a prophet of the European-wide Avignon Society.
For the relations of prophecies to the nobility and political establishments in Europe, see Taylor (note 1), 83 ff.; Frye (note 8), 126. The eighteenth-century politicizing of the utopian literature (die Politisierung des Utopischen) in general and in the German and Swedish fraternal collaborations in particular is discussed in Neugebauer-Wölk, Saage (note 4); Andreas Önnerfors, »From Jacobite Support to a Part of the State Apparatus – Swedish Freemasonry Between Reform and Revolution,« Franc-Maçonnerie et Politique au Siècle des Lumières. Europe-Amériques, vol. 7 (2006), 203–225; Anderberg (note 33), 300. On the involvement of nobility and statesmen with the oracles of the so-called Avignon Society, see Collis, Bayer (note 34), 6–7, 37–60, 70, 84–85, 92, 143–151, 198–199 et passim.
I owe the concept of the »ideological address« to Ericsson’s study (Peter Ericsson, Stora nordiska kriget förklarat. Karl XII och det ideologiska tilltalet, Uppsala 2002) of literature during the Great Northern War (1700–1721) and the reign of Charles XII of Sweden. For the notion of the »Age of Prophecy«, see Weiskott (note 4), 15.
On such developments in Prussia, Russia and Sweden, Raffaella Faggionato, »From a Society of the Enlightened to the Enlightenment of Society. The Russian Bible Society and Rosicrucianism in the Age of Alexander I,« Slavonic and East European Review 79/3 (2001), 459–487; Faggionato (note 7), 250–251. The early editions of Martin Zadeck in Russia: Ryan, Wigzell (note 3), 666–667, Ryan (note 3), 154. For masonic literary genres (almanacs, pamphlets, etc.) where also Frederick the Great, the Swedish monarchs and other protectors were adored, see Jacob (note 22), 156–157.
On the early history of Rosicrucian literature, see Renko D. Geffarth, Religion und Arkane Hierarchie. Der Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer als Geheime Kirche im 18. Jahrhundert, Leiden, Boston 2007, 41–42 et passim; Johann Valentin Andreae, Rosenkreuzerschriften, ed., trans. and comm. by Roland Edighoffer, in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt 2010. A classic yet (partly) contested study is Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, St. Albans 1975.
In Sweden and Finland, too, the Paracelsian-Sibyllian legacy of prophecies was popular. See, e.g., Per Olof Bäckström, Öfversigt af svensk folkläsning från äldre till närvarande tid, Stockholm 1848, in: http://runeberg.org/svfolkbok/ofverfolkl/0009.html (1.6.2022), here 128–134 for »folk books« such as Sibyllas Profetia and Paracelsi Spådom, which stemmed from the German originals. For further relevant narrative motifs of Kaiserprophetien such as a mountain retreat (Bergentrückung), rebirth and prophetic activism in near-apocalyptic times, see Kampers (note 4), 193 (and 194n for a pejorative reference to the Martin Zadeck prophecy, as a popular example of the motif of »the king in the mountain«).
For instance, on the botanist, physician and alchemist Johannes Franck’s alchemical allegory »Colloquium with Mountain Gods« (1651), see Sten Lindroth, Paracelsismen i Sverige till 1600-talets mitt (Studies and Sources Published by the Swedish History of Science Society), Uppsala 1943, 309–311; Susanna Åkerman, »Sendivogius in Sweden. Elias Artista and the Fratres roris cocti,« Aries 14/1 (2014), 62–72.
Gedruckt, 1770, [3]; [Gedruckt nach dem Solothurner Exemplar 1770, <3–4>]: »Schweden wird ein sehr mächtiges Reich werden, man wird darinnen viele [viel] neue Goldgruben finden, sein Staat wird blühen, seine Einwohner [Inwohner] werden jauchzen. Dännemarck aber wird noch mächtiger werden, und seine Macht in Asien und America ausbreiten. […] Drey Nationen von Morgen [aus Norden] erscheinen mit mächtigen Flotten an den Africanischen Küsten, und werden in einer kurzen Zeit ganz Africa unter ihre Bothmässigkeit bringen. […] Ganz Deutschland jauchze, denn der Herr giebt dir Friede. Russland, Schweden und Dännemark warden [wird] mit grossen Reichthum und unzähligen Schätzen erfüllet [erfreuet] werden, und alle orientalische Kostbarkeiten wird man nunmehro in diesen Ländern antreffen.«.
Róisín Healy, »From Commonwealth to Colony? Poland under Prussia,« in: The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past, eds. Róisín Healy, Enrico Dal Lago. (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series) London 2014, 109–125, in: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450753 (1.6.2022); see also Horst Gründer, Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien, 6th ed, Paderborn 2012.
The history of the Danish-Norwegian West Indies in 1672–1848 (today the US Virgin Islands: St Thomas, St John, St Croix) is explored in the special issue Niklas Thode Jensen, Gunvor Simonsen (eds.), Scandinavian Journal of History 41/4–5 (2016), Special issue: Slavery, Servitude and Freedom. New Perspectives on Life in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, 1672–1848.
Eric Schnakenbourg, »Sweden and the Atlantic. The Dynamism of Sweden’s Colonial Projects in the Eighteenth Century,« in: Magdalena Naum, Jonas M. Nordin (eds.), Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology 37), New York 2013, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_13 (1.6.2022), 229–242; Fredrik Thomasson, »Gustavia Free Press? Handwritten and Printed Newspapers in the Swedish Colony Saint Barthélemy,« in: Handwritten Newspapers. An Alternative Medium during the Early Modern and Modern Periods, eds. Heiko Droste, Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, Helsinki 2019, 60–77, here 62.
For a discussion of the colonialist views of Carl Linnaeus, the pietist theologian Erik Pontoppidan and others, see Magdalena Naum, Jonas M. Nordin, »Introduction. Situating Scandinavian Colonialism,« in: Naum, Nordin (note 44), 3–16, here 10–12.
Schnakenbourg (note 44), 235.
See, e.g., »En profetia«. Svenska Pressen 201 (2 September 1941); Tammerfors Aftonblad 162 (3 September 1941); Björneborgs Tidning 72 (16 September 1941).
See, e.g., J. W. F. von Krohne, »Weissagung von der gewiß zu erwartenden Erfüllung des alten Sprichworts: Tandem bona caussa triumphat,« The Royal Library of Denmark, Luxdorphs samling af trykkefrihedens skrifter 1770–1773, 1773, in: https://tekster.kb.dk/text/tfs-texts-2_020-shoot-workid2_020_014 (1.6.2022), 3–4 on the fall of Struensee.
Lorenzo Hammarsköld, Markalls Sömnlösa Nätter, Stockholm 1820. Veltman’s The Year MMMCDXLVIII [3448]. A Manuscript by Martyn Zadek (1833) is today considered a proto-science-fiction work (Wigzell [note 3], 153).
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Mehtonen, P.M. The politics and poetics of prophecy:. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 98, 31–52 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-023-00200-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-023-00200-1