Joining the Left, he at once became one of its leading spokesmen. His chief oratorical triumphs are associated with the early period of his membership of the House; two noteworthy occasions being his violent attack (September 1862) upon the government budget in connexion with the reorganization of the Prussian army, and his defence (1864) of the Polish chiefs of the (then) grand-duchy of Posen, who were accused of high treason. In 1857–1863 was published Das heutige englische Verfassungs -und Verwaltungsrecht, a work which, contrasting English and German constitutional law and administration, aimed at exercising political pressure upon the government of the day. In 1868 Gneist became a member of the North German parliament, and acted as a member of the commission for organizing the federal army, and also of that for the settlement of ecclesiastical controversial questions. On the establishment of German unity his mandate was renewed for the Reichstag, and in this he sat, an active and prominent member of the National Liberal party, until 1884. In the Kulturkampf he sided with the government against the attacks of the Clericals, whom he bitterly denounced, and whose implacable enemy he ever showed himself. In 1879, together with his colleague, von Hänel, he violently attacked the motion for the prosecution of certain Socialist members, which as a result of the vigour of his opposition was almost unanimously rejected. He was parliamentary reporter for the committees on all great financial and administrative questions, and his profound acquaintance with constitutional law caused his advice to be frequently sought, not only in his own but also in other countries. In Prussia he largely influenced legislation, the reform of the judicial and penal systems and the new constitution of the Evangelical Church being largely his work. He was also consulted by the Japanese government when a constitution was being introduced into that country. In 1875 he was appointed a member of the supreme administrative court (Oberverwaltungsgericht) of Prussia, but only held office for two years. In 1882 was published his Englische Verfassungsgeschichte (trans. History of the English Constitution, London, 1886), which may perhaps be described as his magnum opus. It placed the author at once on the level of such writers on English constitutional history as Hallam and Stubbs, and supplied English literature with a text-book almost unrivalled in point of historical research. In 1888 one of the first acts of the ill-fated emperor Frederick III., who had always, as crown prince, shown great admiration for him, was to ennoble Gneist, and attach him as instructor in constitutional law to his son, the emperor William II., a charge of which he worthily acquitted himself. The last years of his life were full of energy, and, in the possession of all his faculties, he continued his wonted academic labours until a short time before his death, which occurred at Berlin on the 22nd of July 1895.
As a politician, Gneist’s career cannot perhaps be said to have been entirely successful. In a country where parliamentary institutions are the living exponents of the popular will he might have risen to a foremost position in the state; as it was, the party to which he allied himself could never hope to become more than what it remained, a parliamentary faction, and the influence it for a time wielded in the counsels of the state waned as soon as the Social-Democratic party grew to be a force to be reckoned with. It is as a writer and a teacher that Gneist is best known to fame. He was a jurist of a special type. To him law was not mere theory, but living force; and this conception of its power animates all his schemes of practical reform. As a teacher he exercised a magnetic influence, not only by reason of the clearness and cogency of his exposition, but also because of the success with which he developed the talents and guided the aspirations of his pupils. He was a man of noble bearing, religious, and imbued with a stern sense of duty. He was proud of being a “Preussischer Junker” (a member of the Prussian squirearchy), and throughout his writings, despite their liberal tendencies, may be perceived the loyalty and affection with which he clung to monarchical institutions. A great admirer and a true friend of England, to which country he was attached by many personal ties, he surpassed all other Germans in his efforts to make her free institutions, in which he found his ideal, the common heritage of the two great nations of the Teutonic race.
Gneist was a prolific writer, especially on the subject he had made peculiarly his own, that of constitutional law and history, and among his works, other than those above named, may be mentioned the following: Budget und Gesetz nach dem constitutionellen Staatsrecht Englands (Berlin, 1867); Freie Advocatur (ib., 1867); Der Rechtsstaat (ib., 1872, and 2nd edition, 1879); Zur Verwaltungsreform in Preussen (Leipzig, 1880); Das englische Parlament (Berlin, 1886); in English translation, The English Parliament (London, 1886; 3rd edition, 1889); Die Militär-Vorlage von 1892 und der preussische Verfassungsconflikt von 1862 bis 1866 (Berlin, 1893); Die nationale Rechtsidee von den Ständen und das preussische Dreiklassenwahlsystem (ib., 1895); Die verfassungsmässige Stellung des preussischen Gesamtministeriums (ib., 1895). See O. Gierke, Rudolph von Gneist, Gedächtnisrede (Berlin, 1895), an In Memoriam address delivered in Berlin. (P. A. A.)
GNESEN (Polish, Gniezno), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, in an undulating and fertile country, on the Wrzesnia, 30 m. E.N.E. of Posen by the railway to Thorn. Pop. (1905) 23,727. Besides the cathedral, a handsome Gothic edifice with twin towers, which contains the remains of St Adalbert, there are eight Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church, a synagogue, a clerical seminary and a convent of the Franciscan nuns. Among the industries are cloth and linen weaving, brewing and distilling. A great horse and cattle market is held here annually. Gnesen is one of the oldest towns in the former kingdom of Poland. Its name, Gniezno, signifies “nest,” and points to early Polish traditions. The cathedral is believed to have been founded towards the close of the 9th century, and, having received the bones of St Adalbert, it was visited in 1000 by the emperor Otto III., who made it the seat of an archbishop. Here, until 1320, the kings of Poland were crowned; and the archbishop, since 1416 primate of Poland, acted as protector pending the appointment of a new king. In 1821 the see of Posen was founded and the archbishop removed his residence thither, though its cathedral chapter still remains at Gnesen. After a long period of decay the town revived after 1815, when it came under the rule of Prussia.
See S. Karwowski, Gniezno (Posen, 1892).
GNOME, and GNOMIC POETRY. Sententious maxims, put into verse for the better aid of the memory, were known by the Greeks as gnomes, γνῶμαι, from γνώμη, an opinion. A gnome is defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham (1576?–1643?) as “a saying pertaining to the manners and common practices of men, which declareth, with an apt brevity, what in this our life ought to be done, or not done.” The Gnomic Poets of Greece, who flourished in the 6th century B.C., were those who arranged series of sententious maxims in verse. These were collected in the 4th century, by Lobon of Argos, an orator, but his collection has disappeared. The chief gnomic poets were Theognis, Solon, Phocylides, Simonides of Amorgos, Demodocus, Xenophanes and Euenus. With the exception of Theognis, whose gnomes were fortunately preserved by some schoolmaster about 300 B.C., only fragments of the Gnomic Poets have come down to us. The moral poem attributed to Phocylides, long supposed to be a masterpiece of the school, is now known to have been written by a Jew in Alexandria. Of the gnomic movement typified by the moral works of the poets named above, Prof. Gilbert Murray has remarked that it receives its special expression in the conception of the Seven Wise Men, to whom such proverbs as “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much” were popularly attributed, and whose names differed in different lists. These gnomes or maxims were extended and put into literary shape by the poets. Fragments of Solon, Euenus and Mimnermus have been preserved, in a very confused state, from having been written, for purposes of comparison, on the margins of the MSS. of Theognis, whence they have often slipped into the text of that poet. Theognis enshrines his moral precepts in his elegies, and this was probably the custom of the rest; it is improbable that there ever existed a species of poetry made up entirely of successive gnomes. But the title “gnomic” came to be given to all poetry which dealt in a sententious way with questions
