Rewriting Eighteenth-Century Swedish Republican Political Thought: Heinrich Ludwig von Hess's Der Republickaner (1754)

Abstract

This article provides the first comprehensive and historically genuine analysis of Heinrich Ludwig von Hess's (1719–1784) pamphlet Der Republickaner (1754). Hess was an important figure in both the German and Swedish eighteenth-century political context. Firstly, I will show that the proper historiographical context for Hess's pamphlet is Sweden. In previous historiography on the subject it has been argued that Der Republickaner was a comment on the constitutional reality of Hamburg. My article demonstrates that the original context of Hess's pamphlet was the power struggle between King Adolf Frederick of Sweden and the council of the realm. Secondly, I argue that Hess's pamphlet is the most elaborate defence of aristocratic republicanism written in Sweden in the Age of Liberty (1719–1772). As a result, Hess's pamphlet is the fiercest attack on absolutism written in German in the eighteenth century.