“As gently as the ripe apple falls from the tree” – New article by Alexander Kruska
A new essay by Dr. Alexander Kruska, entitled “As gently as the ripe apple falls from the tree”: Political Rule, Rightful Government, and the Founding of the American Republic in Prussian Old-Conservatism, has recently been published.
The piece appears in the edited volume Representations and Uses of the American Revolution in Past and Present, published in the series of the Bavarian American Academy (eds. Depkat, Fitz, and Lachenicht). The essay is available online (Universitätsverlag Winter).
Abstract
In his study “‘As gently as the ripe apple falls from the tree’,” Alexander Kruska examines how Prussian conservatives of the Vormärz era interpreted the American Revolution within the context of their evolving political thought. While one faction of early German Conservatism categorically rejected revolutionary principles in favor of rigid legitimism, Kruska highlights a more moderate strand. Thinkers such as Karl Ludwig von Haller, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Friedrich Julius Stahl did not perceive the American Revolution as a radical rupture, but rather as a legitimate and orderly constitutional reform that preserved the natural and legal order. From their perspective, the Revolution represented a controlled adaptation of existing institutions rather than a break with tradition. It thus provided a model for regime change—reform rather than revolution—that aligned with conservative values and stood in sharp contrast to the destructive and anarchic tendencies of the French Revolution. Kruska demonstrates how these conservatives sought to selectively integrate revolutionary ideas into a conservative framework, aiming to reconcile political transformation with continuity and tradition.