691 



STEIBELT, DANIEL. 



STEIN, BARON VON. 



returned to Halle, and took an extremely active part, not unattended 

 with danger, in the secret preparations of tho Prussian patriots to 

 cast off the French yoke, which they felt to be alike burdensome and 

 disgraceful. When tho time for action arrived, Steffens joined the 

 Prussian forces as a volunteer, and by his enthusiastic addresses roused 

 and supported the energy of his comrades, with whom he continued 

 till the entry into Paris in 1813. After this he returned to Breslau, 

 where he had been created professor of physics and of natural history. 

 The.-e offices he held till 1831, when he removed in a similar capacity 

 to the University of Berlin, in which city he died on February 13, 

 1845. While in Breslau he wrote, in connection with what may be 

 called his professional pursuits, his ' Anthropologie,' published in 



1822, in which he strove to elucidate on philosophical principles the 

 existence of mankind in connection with the universe. This subject 

 he continued in his ' Polemische Blattern zur Beforderung der 

 speculativen Physik ' (' Polemical Leaves for the advancement of Specu- 

 lative Physics'), in two parts, issued in 1825 and 1835; but these 

 works rather represent the philosophy of the Schelling school than add 

 to our knowledge by any new facts. The intellectual activity and 

 mental riches of Steffens however were not confined to one branch of 

 knowledge, and he frequently and successfully appealed to the present 

 thoughts and feeliugs of his fellow-countrymen. To this description 

 of works belong his essay ' Ueber die Idee der Universitiiten ' (' On 

 the Ideas of the Universities'), 1809; 'Die gegenwtirtige Zcit, und 

 wio sie geworden' ('The present Time, and what it will become'), 

 1817; and 'Ueber geheime Verbindungen auf Universitaten ' ('On 

 the secret Societies of the Universities'), in 1835. His disinclination 

 also to the attempted church union in Prussia rendered him at first 

 the leader of a considerable number of dissenters from that union, 

 and at length involved him in many controversies, which ultimately 

 occasioned the production of his work ' Von der falschen Theologie 

 und dem wahren Glauben' ('On the false Theology and the true 

 Faith'), in 1824, of which more than one edition has been called for. 

 In 1831 he published ' Wie ich wieder Lutheraner wurde und was mir 

 das Lutherthum ist' ('How I became again a Lutheran, and what 

 Lutheranism is to me '), which is a personal confession of faith, 

 certainly of the Pietist class, but it is of a far higher character of 

 thought than that of most of the works of that sect, and appears to be 

 the result of an inward struggle against the modern system of abso- 

 lutism, which principle he defines as a positive surrender of the 

 belief in the personality of the Deity. In 1827 also he struck 

 into a new line : he began a series of novels, of which the first ' Die 

 Familien Walseth und Leith,' in three volumes, was followed in 1828 

 by ' Die vier Norweger,' in six volumes, and that by ' Malcolm ' in 

 two. These novels contain many references to himself both in the 

 incidents and opinions, but they also contain well-defined pictures of 

 the peculiarities of national character, narratives of the historical 

 events of the period, with lively and correct descriptions of scenery, 

 especially that of his native country in ' The Four Norwegians,' and 

 nil are penetrated with a deep-lying religious feeling, which give 

 them a peculiar character. In the last years of his life he occupied 

 himself with writing a detailed autobiography, ' Was ich erlebte,' 

 published in ten volumes, from 1 840 to 1845. It is perhaps too minute, 

 but contains mauy interesting facts, and a fragment of it has been 

 translated into English under the title of ' Adventures on the Road to 

 Paris,' an account of the advance of the allied armies in 1813. Since 

 his death some posthumous works have been published, ' Nachgelassene 

 Schriften,' with a preface by Schelling. 



STEIBELT, DANIEL, a celebrated composer for, and performer 

 on, the pianoforte, was born in 1755 at Berlin, where his father was a 

 manufacturer of musical instruments. When a youth, attracting the 

 notice of William III. of Prussia, he was educated at the charge of 

 that monarch, and soon distinguished himself. In his travels he 

 visited Paris and London. In the former city he had the honour to 

 introduce Haydn's ' Creation,' and also published many works : in 

 the latter he made a considerable stay, took many pupils, and pro- 

 duced and printed much pianoforte music. He afterwards returned 

 to his native country, and finally settled at St. Petersburg, where he 

 was appointed maitre de chapelle to the emperor. He there died in 



1823, in distressing circumstances, for he had lived thoughtlessly to 

 use a very mild epithet. Steibelt may almost be said to have formed 

 a pianoforte school, to which the term ' sparkling ' may be applied. 

 His best compositions are remarkable for brilliancy, and what we wih 

 venture to call picturesque effect, and his execution of them was sin- 

 gularly delicate, animated, and beautiful. He composed also some 

 operas, which were performed in Paris and in St. Petersburg, but 

 these did not survive their author. 



STEIN, HEINRICH FRIEDRICH KARL, BARON VON, the great 

 Prussian statesman, was born at Nassau on the 15th of October 1757. 

 He was the third son and ninth child of his father Karl Philipp von 

 Stein, the descendant of one of the old noble families of the German 

 Empire, the possessor of large estates, and who had been in high 

 official employment under the archbishop-elector of Mainz. In 1773 

 the future statesman went to the University of Gb'ttingen to study law. 

 He afterwards continued his studies at Wetziar and Vienna. In 1779 

 he entered the Prussian official service as a director of mines ; and in 

 this capacity, and in others to which he was successively appointed 

 during the lifetime of Frederick the Great, he laid the foundation of 



his reputation for administrative talent. In 1786, on the death of 

 Frederick the Great, Stein, in company with his friends, Count von 

 Redem and Count Schlabrendorf, visited England ; and while here he 

 made it bis business to study the constitution and social arrangements 

 of the country with the utmost attention. The impressions made 

 upon him by what he saw and heard iu this country, worked power- 

 fully on his mind, and had much influence upon his future career. 

 In particular he seems about this time to have begun to have less 

 respect for that theoretical republicanism to which, with other young 

 Germans, he had till then been attached, and to have come to the 

 conclusion that the greatness and strength of such a country AS 

 Britain was owing less to peculiarities of her constitution, which 

 might be supposed to have an abstract value, than to the reality of 

 free and popular institutions which time and the genius of the people 

 had consolidated. On his return to Prussia, he resumed his official 

 employment in connection with the administration of the mines of the 

 kingdom ; and about the same time he married the Countess of 

 Wallmoden-Gimborn. As he had himself inherited large property, 

 this marriage made him extremely wealthy. In 1793, at which time 

 the Prussian Government of Frederick William II. was engaged in 

 organising some Westphalian provinces which had been added to the 

 kingdom, Stein was appointed a member of the commission for that 

 purpose ; and he afterwards became director, then president, and in 

 1796 he was appointed supreme president of the Westphalia Chambers 

 of Wesel, Hamm, and Minden ; and in this capacity he introduced 

 many improvements into the agriculture, greatly improved the roads, 

 and ameliorated other parts of the social economy of the provinces 

 under his administration. 



The above however were but the preliminary employments of this 

 remarkable man ; and it was during the eventful reign of the Prussian 

 king Frederick William III. (1797-1840), or rather during the earlier 

 and more eventful part of that reign, that Stein was to accomplish 

 the labours which have made his name famous. In 1804, on the 

 death of Count Struensee, he was invited to Berlin as minister of the 

 department of indirect taxes, excise, salt-works, trade, commerce, 

 public debt, &c. In this important pest he laboured indefatigably ; 

 and he had already effected, under much difficulty, many reforms in 

 the administration in Prussia, chiefly-in the direction of a removal of 

 restrictions on internal commerce, when those misunderstandings 

 between Napoleon and the Prussian king began which led to the 

 French invasion and conquest of Prussia. Stein, from the very first, 

 took a thoroughly German and patriotic view of the war which the 

 coalition was waging against Napoleon, and his differences with his 

 colleagues in the ministry on this and other subjects led to his 

 dismissal in the early part of 1807. The battle of Friedland on the 

 14th of June in that year decided the fate of Prussia. By the peace 

 of Tilsit the kingdom was shorn of more than half its territory ; and 

 what remained was given back to the Prussian king, to be governed 

 by him, rather as a tributary of the French Empire than as an inde- 

 pendent sovereign. Then was the moment for Stein's re-appearance. 

 He had gone to reside on his family property in Nassau ; but on being 

 invited by the oppressed and desponding Frederick William to become 

 the minister of what remained of his kingdom, be at once complied. 

 He developed his plan for restoring Prussia to her place in Europe. 

 The essence of the plan was contained in these striking words, " What 

 the state loses in extensive greatness, it must make up by intensive 

 strength." The means towards this " intensive " strengthening of 

 Prussia proposed by Stein were most thorough-going. They 

 amounted to nothing less than a radical change of system in Prussian 

 politics and administration. The true strength of the kingdom, said 

 Stein, was to be found not in the aristocracy, but in the whole nation. 

 Let villenage therefore be abolished throughout Prussia by indemni- 

 fying the nobles ; let class-distinctions in the eye of the law be 

 abolished as soon as possible ; let nobles pay the land-tax as well as 

 others ; let the old rule of the Prussian military service, which pre- 

 vented any but nobles from being commissioned officers, be abrogated. 

 He urged also the formation of a municipal system in Prussia not 

 unlike that of England ; and he devised a scheme by which the 

 Prussian youth could be gradually, and yet universally, trained to the 

 use of arms the peculiarity of the scheme being that the youth 

 should be trained in successive batches, so as not to increase the army 

 and awaken the suspicion of Napoleon. These and many other 

 reforms, forming in their aggregate what has since been called " Stein's 

 system," he explained to the king and others. He was able also 

 personally, to some extent, to carry them into effect with the best 

 results. Napoleon however had heard of " one Stein" who was engaged 

 in retrieving by such means the reverses of Prussia ; and in November 

 1808 Stein was obliged to resign the ministry and take refuge in 

 Austria. Before his departure he addressed a circular to all the high 

 officials of the kingdom, in which, so far as he deemed it prudent, he 

 explained the features of his " system." From what he said in this 

 circular, it became clear that his " system " looked forward to some- 

 thing more than mere administrative changes in Prussia that, in 

 short, it contemplated the formation of a free national representation, 

 in which all who possessed one hundred acres of land, or were 

 engaged in trade extensively, or in the culture of letters, should take 

 part in the legislation. The administrative part of Stein's system, 

 more especially as regarded the army and the municipality, was put 



