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Cornell University Library
PT 91.F82 1901
A history of German literature as determ
3 1924 014 411 775
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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014411775
A HISTORY
OF
GERMAN LITERATURE
AS DETERMINED BY SOCIAL FORCES
KUNO fRANCKE, Ph.D.
Professor 0/ German Literature in Harvard University
SEVENTH IMPRESSION
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1907
Copyright, 1896, 1901,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
ZHetncn lieben ©efc^toxftern tn
Seutfc^Ianb, ber Scanjets
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tDtbme tdj btefe Blatter als etnen
fdjrDadjen 2tus6rud unDerbriic^Itdjer
Creue nnb 2tn^angltcljfett an unfer
gemeinfames Vahtlanb.
Die Litteraturen, scheint es mir, haben Jahreszeiten, die,
miteinander abwecliselnd, wie in der Natur, gewisse Phanomene
hervorbringen und sich der Reihe nach wiederholen.
Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit III, 12.
Die Gedanken kommen wieder, die Ueberzeugungen pflanzen
sich fort, die ZustSnde gehen unwiederbringlich voruber.
Goethe, Maximen und Keflexionen III.
— und so oft im erneuenden Umschwung
In verjungter Gestalt aufstrebte die Welt,
Klang auch ein germanisches Lied nach.
Platen, Der Romantische Oedipus V.
PREFACE.
The following attempt to define what seem to me the
essential features of German literature is made from the
point of view of the student of civilization rather than from
that of the linguistic scholar or the literary critic.
My own university studies under such men as Giesebrecht,
Brunn, Erwin Rohde, Paulsen; my subsequent work under
Georg Waitz; and the part taken by me in editing for the
Monumenta Germanics Historica the controversial writings
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries — all this has naturally
led me to look at the substance rather than the form of
literature, to see in literature primarily the working of popu-
lar forces, to consider it chiefly as an expression of national
culture.
To this personal bias there was added the consideration
that, while there is no lack of works dealing with the his-
tory of German literature from the linguistic or the literary
point of view, there seems to be a decided need of a book
which, based upon an original study of the sources, should
give a coherent account of the great intellectual movements
of German life as expressed in literature; which should
point out the mutual relation of action and reaction between
these movements and the social and political condition of
the masses from which they sprang or which they affected;
VI PREFACE,
which, in short, should trace the history of the German
people in the works of its thinkers and poets.
No one could feel more clearly than I how far the
present essay falls short of achieving what is implied in the
foregoing remarks. All that I wish to claim is that this is
an honest attempt, to analyze the social, religious, and
moral forces which determined the growth of German litera-
ture as a whole. And all that I can hope is that the very
distance which separates me from the country of my birth
may have helped me to see at least some of its intellectual
mountain-peaks as they tower up in clear outline above the
dark stretch of the hills and the lowlands.
As to the fundamental principles which have shaped my
conception of German literature, I may here say this. It
seems to me that all literary development is determined by
the incessant conflict of two elemental human tendencies:
the tendency toward personal freedom and the tendency
toward collective organization. The former leads to the
observation and representation of whatever is striking,
genuine, individual; in short, to realism. The latter leads
to the observation and representation of whatever is beauti-
ful, significant, universal; in short, to idealism. The indi-
vidualistic tendency, if unchecked, may lead either to a
vulgar naturalism or to a fantastic mysticism. The col-
lectivistic tendency, if unchecked, may lead to an empty
conventionalism. Those ages and those men in whom the
individualistic and the collectivistic tendencies are evenly
balanced, produce the works of literature which are truly
great.
Should this book reach the shores of Germany, let it
greet from me all the dear old places and faces; especially
three friends and associates of youthful days, the thought
of whom was constantly with me while writing it: Friedrich
Renter, professor at the Altona ' Christianeum '; Friedrich
Paulsen, professor at the University of Berlin; Ferdinand
Tonnies, professor at the University of Kiel. I should be
PREFACE. VU
happy if they were to find here a not altogether unworthy
expression of the ideals which were the bond of our friend-
ship in years gone by.
To my American friends and colleagues, Ephraim Emer-
ton and G. L. Kittredge, I am indebted for a careful re-
vision of the language of the book. But in spite of this
kind service, for which I wish here to express my sincerest
gratitude, its style will easily betray the foreigner.
KuNO Francke.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.,
December i, 1895.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In sending the second edition of this book to press, I
cannot withhold the wish that it might have been possible
for me to make a more extensive use of the suggestions
offered in so friendly a spirit by not a few of my reviewers.
But inasmuch as some at least of these changes would in-
volve the rewriting of considerable portions of the book, I
shall have to leave this task to some future opportunity,
A few slight changes, however, have been made and typo-
graphical errors have been corrected.
K. F.
January 3, 1897.
In the third edition, also, only a few minor corrections
have been made.
K. F.
March 23, 1899.
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
At the suggestion of my publishers, the fourth American
edition of " Social Forces in German Literature " appears
under a different title. I have assented to this change
partly in order to secure uniformity of title with the first
English edition which is to be brought out simultaneously
by Messrs. George Bell & Sons, partly because the present
title indicates more clearly than the former the fact that
this book attempts to give a comprehensive account of the
development of German literature as a whole.
In substance the only change made in this edition is a
somewhat fuller treatment of the contemporary German
drama. Part of the new matter is reprinted — with the kind
consent of Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. — from my " Glimpses
of Modern German Culture."
K.F.
February, 27, 1901.
TABLE OF CONTENT&
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
The Epochs of German Culture 3
CHAPTER I.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS.
(From the Fifth to the Ninth Century.)
The disintegrating effect of the Migrations upon public
morality. — The Germanic Epic. The historical and
mythical elements of the different sagas. — Leading char-
acters of the Dietrich-, Wolfdietrich-, Walthari-, Gudrun-,
and Nibelung-sagas 7
CHAPTER II.
THE GROWTH OF MEDIjEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM.
(From the Ninth to the Middle of the Twelfth Century.)
The conflict, in mediaeval life, between church and state; and
the corresponding conflict, in mediaeval literature, be-
tween the spiritual and the worldly. — Heljand. Otfrid's
Harmony of the Gospels. — Liudprand of Cremona.
Ecbasis Captivi. Rosvitha. Ruodlieb. Konig Rother.
Herzog Ernst. Rolandslied. Alexanderlied 34
CHAPTER III.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE.
(From the Middle of the Twelfth to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century.)
The approach, in the aristocratic society of the Hohenstaufen
epoch, toward a reconciliation between the spiritual and
ix
X TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGB
the worldly. — Minnesong: Walther von der Vogelweide.
— Revival of the ancient Germanic Epic : Nibelungenlied."'
Gudrun.— The Court Epic: Hartmann von Aue. Wolfram-
von Eschenbach. Gottfried von Strassburg 63
CHAPTER IV.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
(From the Middle of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century.)
Growth of territorial sovereignty and municipal independ-
ence. — The beginnings of modern individualism. — The
Mystic Movement: Berthold von Regensburg. Eckhart.
Suso. Tauler. — The Volkslied. — Didactic and satirical
narrative: Der Pfaffe Amis. Meier Helmbrecht. Hugo
von Trimberg's Renner. Boner's Edelstein. Sebastian
Brant. Reinkede Vos. Thomas Murner. Till Eulen-
spiegel. — The religious drama: Ludus de Antichristo.
Wiener Osterspiel. Alsfelder Passionsspiel. Hessisches
Weihnachtspiel. Redentiner Osterspiel. — The Fast-
nachtspiel 100
CHAPTER V.
THE ERA OF THE REFORM A TION.
(The Sixteenth Century.)
The democratic movement of the beginning of the sixteenth
century. — Humanism: Erasmus's Moriae Encomium and
Enchiridion Militis Christiani. Hutten's Dialogues and
other anti-Roman writings. — Luther's revolutionary
pamphlets of 1520. — The turning-point of the Reforma-
tion. Luther's return to authority. — The effect of the re-
action upon literature. Hans Sachs. Johann Fischart.
The Faust-book of 1587 joq
CHAPTER VI.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ABSOLUTISM AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LIFE.
(The Seventeenth and the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.)
I. The Recovery FROM THE Thirty Years' War. The growth
of Prussia.— Pietism and Rationalism. Leibniz 172
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI
PAG1£
2- Pseudo-classicism. Opitz. Gottsched. The literature
of gallantry 178
3. The Individualistic Undercurrent of Seventeenth-
century Literature. Religious poetry: Fleming.
Gerhardt. Spec. ScheiHer. — Satire and novel: Logau.
Moscherosch. Grimmelshausen. — Comedy: Gryphius.
Weise 187
4. The Sentimentalism and Rationalism of the First
Half of the Eighteenth Century. Giinther. Brookes.
Haller. The Anacreonticists. Gellert 213
CHAPTER VII.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREA T AND THE HEIGHT
OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
(The Third Quarter of the Eighteenth Century.)
[. The Enlightened Absolutism. The conflict between
Frederick's intellectual convictions and political methods.
Its effect on modern German culture 228
2. Klopstock. His spirituality. His poetic quality as ex-
emplified in the Messias. His patriotism. His cosmo-
politanism 233
3. Wieland. His ideal of culture as shown in Agathon. His
position as literary interpreter of the rationalistic phi-
losophy • 251
4. Lessing. The destruction of Gottschedianism. — The re-
discovery of classic antiquity: Winckelmann. Laokoon.
Hamburgische Dramaturgic. — The creation of a national
drama: Tellheim and Odoardo as its types. — The positive
and the rational religion: Anti-Goeze. Nathan. Die
Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts. — Frederick's De la
Littgrature Allemande 265
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE CLIMAX OP
INDIVIDUA LISM.
(The End of the Eighteenth and the Beginnings of the Nineteenth Century.)
I. The Storm-and-Stress Movement. Its revolutionary
tendencies: Lenz. H. L. Wagner. Klinger. Schubart.
Maler Mailer. Fr. Stolberg/ BiUgor. Heinse. — Con-
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
servative influences: Justus Moeser.— The outcome of
the movement 3°^
II. The Classics of Individualism.
1. Herder. The idea of organic development. Literature
as an index of national culture. The apotheosis of
humanity 3i°
2. Kant. The Pure Reason. The Moral Law. Latent
Pantheism.— The new Humanism: Wilhelm von Hum-
boldt 328
3. Goethe and Schiller. Their part in the Storm-and-Stress
movement: Goetz. Werther. Faust. Egmont. Die
RSuber. Kabale und Liebe. Don Carlos. — Goethe's
maturity: Lyrics and Ballads. Iphigenie. Tasso. Wil-
helm Meister. Hermann und Dorothea. The second
conception of Faust. — Schiller's maturity: ^Esthetic
prose writings. Lyrics and ballads. Wallenstein. Maria
Stuart. Jungfrau von Orleans. Braut von Messina.
Tell. — Goethe and Schiller as public characters 335
CHAPTER IX.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION AND THE
GROWTH OF THE COLLECTIVISTIC IDEAL.
(Prom the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Revolution of 1S48.)
I. The Transition from Classicism to Romanticism. Jean
Paul. His sense of the unity of life. His greatness as
landscape-painter; as genre-painter; as humorist. His
excessive individualism. His capriciousness. His lack
of form 399
II. The Disintegration OF Classicism. Early Romanticism
a. caricature of Classicism. Tieck's William Lovell.
Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde. Novalis 412
III. The Regeneration of the German People and the
Wars of Liberation.
1. Pantheism and Socialism. Schleiermacher's Reden ttber
die Religion and Monologen. Fichte's Grundzflge des
gegenwartigen Zeitalters and Reden an die deutsche
Nation 428
2. The Renaissance of the German Past. Holderlin. Wack-
enroder. Novalis's Geistliche Lieder. Tieck and his
TABLE OF CONTPNTS. XIU
PAGE
followers. August Wilhelm Schlegel. Des Knaben
Wunderhorn. GOrres. The brothers Grimm 444
3, The New Poetry and the National Uprising, Kleist: Der
zerbrochene Krug. Penthesilea. Kathchen von Heil-
bronn. Kohlhaas. Hermannsschlacht. Katechismus
der Deutschen. Prinz von Homburg. — Uhland. — The
war of 1813. KSrner. Arndt 467
IV. The Age of the Restoration.
1. The Effect of the Political Reaction upon Literature.
Grillparzer. Rilckert. Schopenhauer. Lenau. Platen.
Immermann. BSrne. Heine 495
2. The Victory of Liberalism. Goethe's old age. Wilhelm
Meisters Wanderjahre and the Second Part of Faust.
Hegel. Rechtsphilosophie and Philosophic der Ge-
schichte. The development from 1830 to the Revolution
0(1848 ^ 527
EPILOGUE.
RiCHAKD Wagner. The Contemporary Drama* 548
Index 581
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
GdgPh, = Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, herausgege-
ben von H. Paul. Strassburg, 1891-93.
GG. = K. Goedeke, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen
Dichtung. Zweite Aufl., Hannover (Dresden),
1884-91.
MSD. 5= Milllenhoff und Scherer, Denkmaler deutscher Poesie
und Prosa aus dem 8.-I2. Jahrhundert. Dritte
Aufl., Berlin, 1892.
DNL. s= Deutsche National-Litteratur, herausgegeben von
Joseph Kurschner. Berlin und Stuttgart.
NddLw. = Neudrucke deutscher Litteraturwerke des 16. und 17.
Jahrhunderts, herausgegeben von W. Braune.
Halle, 1882 £f.
DLD. = Deutsche Litteraturdenkmale des iB. (und 19.) Jahr-
hunderts, herausgegeben von B. Seuffert (und A.
Sauer). Heilbronn (Stuttgart), 1882 ff.
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN CULTURE.
The fundamental conception which underlies the follow-
ing account of the development of German literature is that
of a continual struggle between individualistic and collec-
tivistic tendencies, between man and society, between per-
sonality and tradition, between liberty and unity, between
cosmopolitanism and nationality, — a struggle which maybe
said to be the prime motive power of all human progress.
The first appearance of Germanic tribes in the foreground
of European history, the influx of the Northern barbarians
into the decaying civilization of the Roman empire, is
marked by a dissolution of all social bonds. Severed from
their native soil, thrust into a world in which their ancestral
faith, customs, institutions have no authority, the Teutons
of the era of the Migrations experience for the first time on
a grand scale the conflict between universal law and indi-
vidual passion. The Germanic epic with its colossal types
of heroic devotion, greed, and guilt, is the poetic embodi-
ment of this tragic conflict.
Out of the bloody tumult of the Migration epoch there
rise gradually, from the ninth century on, the outlines of a
new social order. The Carolingian monarchy, a gigantic
attempt to unite the whole continent under Germanic
rule, soon gives way to more limited and more natural
political combinations; and by the middle of the tenth
century we see for the first time a distinctly German
state holding its place among, or rather above, a variety of
3
4 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Other nationalities. At the same time, the papacy, as the
representative both of the Christian ideal of cosmopolitan-
ism and of the Roman claim to world-dominion, extends its
centralizing influence over the whole Occident, thus creat-
ing a new international bond of spiritual relationship. In
the fierce and prolonged struggles which, with alternating
success, are waged between empire and papacy, the intellec-
tual life of feudal society reaches its first climax. Under
the influence of all these contrasting tendencies there grows
up a literature which, though controlled exclusively by
ecclesiastics, oscillates for a long time between a drastic rep-
resentation of every-day reality, and ideal images of the
inner life; until about the middle of the twelfth century,
simultaneously with the heightening of the whole national
existence brought about by the crusades, attempts are made
to depict human nature in its fulness.
The end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the
thirteenth show mediaeval society at its height. The
struggle between empire and papacy now assumes its grand-
est proportions and brings forth the most striking mani-
festations of collective consciousness. The aristocratic
principles of chivalry have been fully established, and are
accepted as the foundation of public life. Allegiance to the
feudal lord, to the church, to the chosen lady; a decorous be-
haviour, courtliness of speech and bearing, valour, readiness
for service, self-possession, gentleness, magnanimity, mode-
ration; the whole galaxy of virtues suggested by the one
word diu mdze (measure): — these are the duties magnified by
an age whose social etiquette seems to bring back in a new
form the Greek ideal of KaXoKaya-dia. In the Minnesong;
in the rejuvenated and transformed Germanic epic of the
Migration period; in the adaptation, through the medium
of the French, of Celtic and Graeco-Roman epic traditions;
the chivalric ideal receives its supreme poetic expression.
At the same time, however, there is seen in the finest repre-
sentatives of chivalric culture — in Walther von der Vogel-
THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN CULTURE. J
weide, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Gottfried von Strassburg — an instinctive reaching out be-
yond the limits of this culture, a divinatory anticipation of
a new social order.
The beginnings of this new order make themselves felt
about the middle of the thirteenth century. While the!
empire falls a prey to sectional rivalries, while the church;
shows signs of internal decay, while chivalry deteriorates
both economically and morally, modern freedom finds its first!
embodiment in the communal independence of the greaV
commercial centres. Corporate interest, to be sure, remains
even here the chief concern of life ; but by its side, or
rather within it, there develops a spirit of self-assertion, of
observation, of introspection, which ultimately must turn
against the corporate consciousness and destroy it. In the
directness and subjectivity of the Volkslied; in the sturdy
realism of the religious drama; in the glorification by the
Mystics of the inner union between God and the individual
soul; in the proclamation by the Humanists of the sove-
reignty of the individual intellect — we see different phases
of that revolt against mediaeval society which culminates in
the religious Reformation.
The reformation begins with a grand movement for
popular freedom; it ends by establishing more firmly fhan
ever the absolutism, religious as well as political, of the ter-
ritorial princes. It begins with the restoration of national
unity and greatness in sight; it ends in the misery of the
Thirty Years' War. By the middle of the seventeenth
century, the fate of Germany seems to be sealed. Instead
of the generous, broad, all-embracing mediaeval church there
dominates in religious affairs a narrow, spiteful, inquisitorial
sectarianism. Instead of the cultivated and public-spirited
aristocracy of the Hohenstaufen period, there rules in
political matters an ignorant, swaggering, depraved cavalier-
dom. The proud, stately, self-asserting burgher of the
palmy days of the Hanse has been transformed into a
6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
timid, cowed, official-ridden subject. Literature is degraded
into a plaything for idle courtiers. The German past is
effaced. Society is atomized; public life is dead.
At this point there sets in a movement, the roots of
which go back to Humanism and the Reformation, the
climax of which is attained in the age of Kant and Goethe,
^the struggle for completeness of individuality. Debarred
from active participation in public life, hemmed in by nar-
row surroundings, out of contact with the nation at large,
Germany's best men now turn all the more eagerly to the
cultivation of the inner self. Reorganization of the national
body through regeneration of the individual mind — this
now becomes the great task of literature. Pietism and
Rationalism, Sentimentalism and Storm-and-Stress, Classi-
cism and Romanticism, co-operate in this common task of
building up and rounding out the inner life. And at the
end of the eighteenth century, at the very time when the
last remnants of the old German empire are swept away by
the irresistible tide of the French Revolution, German cul-
ture has reached a height which is best described in the
words of Goethe : " Germany as a whole is nothing, the
individual German is everything."
And here, finally, begins the last great movement of Ger-
man thought. Just as Wolfram von Eschenbach and his
peers point beyond the conventions of chivalric society
toward individual freedom and culture, so Goethe, Schiller,
and their kin point beyond individual freedom and culture
toward the common tasks of a new society. German litera-
ture of the nineteenth century, while by no means discard-
ing the individualism of the eighteenth, finds its highest
inspiration in this new, collectivistic ideal.
This is, in outline, the intellectual development which we
shall now proceed to consider in detail, briefly up jto the
time of the Thirty Years' War, somewhat more fully from
the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the nine-
teenth century.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS.
(From the Fifth to the Ninth Century.)
The period of the Migrations, introducing for the first
time Germanic tribes as shapers of the destiny of Europe,
forms the opening chapter in the political career _,
of the German people. From their seats north mentsoftte
and east of the Danube and the Rhine, where 'arioua tribes,
we find the Germans settled at the time of Augustus, they
move, tribe after tribe, southward and westward and grad-
ually overrun the greater part of the Roman empire. First,
to mention only a few striking dates, the Visigoths under
their heroic leader Alaric (d. 410) sweep over the Balkan
peninsula, down into Greece, and through all Italy, until
they finally settle in Spain. They are succeeded by the
Vandals, who with equally irresistible rapidity pass through
middle and southwestern Europe, cross over to Africa (429),
and from there, by frequent piratical expeditions, terrorize
the coasts of the Mediterranean. About the same time the
Burgundians leave their seats between the Oder and the
Vistula and settle in the upper Rhine valley; until, defeated
in aviolent conflict with Hunnish tribes (437), they abandon
this new home also anV^move on towards the banks of the
Rhone. Soon after {449), the Anglo-Saxons, hired by the
Britons to assist them in their struggle against the Picts and
Scots, swarm over the Channel and, having conquered the
common foe, defeat and subdue their former allies. There
follows the gigantic clash between the Roman world and
the Hunnish invaders under Attila; and here again Ger-
7
8 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
manic tribes play an important part. Attila himself appears
half Germanized, his name is Gothic,' at his court he re-
ceives Gothic singers, Ostrogoths and Thuringians form a
part of his hosts; but against him also, on the side of the
Romans, there are German armies, and the great battle of
Chilons (451) is won mainly through the valour of the Visi-
goths. Shortly afterwards the domination of Italy passes
definitely into German hands? In 476 Odoacer, a chieftain
of the tribe of the Heruli, dethrones the powerless Roman
emperor and assumes himself the title of patricius and king
of Italy. This rule soon gives way to that of the noble
tribe of the Ostrogoths, who under their great leader The-
oderic and his successors not only extend their sway over
the greater part of the peninsula, but also attempt to bring
about a reconciliation between Germanic and Roman cul-
ture and institutions; until they, in turn, succumb to the
armies of the Byzantine emperor (552). Now the Lango-
bards rush into the place left free by the Ostrogoths, and
for two centuries (568-774) subject the people of northern
Italy to an iron military rule, without, however, leaving
more than a sporadic impress on the character of the van-
quished country. Finally, the Franks, by overthrowing the
Roman rule in Gaul and by gradually forcing the other
German tribes into their allegiance, become the dominating
power in Europe, and, under Charles the Great, even restore
the name and supremacy of the old Roman empire. With
the foundation of the Carolingian monarchy the westward
wanderings of the Germanic nations may be said to have
come to an end; except for the Norsemen, whose Viking
expeditions continued to infest the coast districts of north-
ern and western Europe throughout the ninth century,
terminating only with the establishmeHt of that Norman
' It is a diminutive form of Goth, atta = father. Cf. J. Grimm,
Gesch. der d. Sfr* p. 189. 332. F. Kluge, NominaU StammHldungs-
Uhre § S6.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 9
colony on French soil (912) which was destined to be the
foster-mother of English greatness.
The full extent of the extraordinary revolution which
these centuries of uninterrupted warfare and tumult pro-
duced in the life and character of the German Effect of the
race it is hard for us to appreciate at this dis- JJigrations on
'^ '^ . the national
tant day. But if we were to express m a word character.
the main lines on which this revolution seems to have pro-
ceeded, we might say that the Teutons during the period of
the Migrations conquered the world at the expense of them-
selves. In the time of Tacitus they were the most purely
aboriginal and unadulterated nation of Europe; in the time
of Charles the Great they are largely Romanized. Before
they had crossed the Danube, they prayed to Wodan and
Donar and Frija; having overthrown the Roman empire,
they bow before the Crucified One. Once, in their native
♦woods, they were free men; now, on foreign soil, they obey
kings. It would, of course, be a mistake to see in this self-
surrender of Germanic tradition and faith a loss only.|
Without the influx of Roman elements, without Christian-
ity, without the feudal monarchy, the history of the Middle \
Ages would have been without its greatest glory and its
greatest achievements. And even the very process of mas-
tering the new form of life, the struggle between native and
foreign conceptions and institutions, seems to have brought
out in the character of the German invaders traits which
otherwise might have remained hidden.
There can be little doubt that it was this very conflict
which gave rise to those manifestations of a haughty race-
feelins which are so characteristic of the heroes
, , ,,. . • •■ • , II.- Baoe feeling,
of the Migration period. As early as the begin-
ning of the third century an adventurous Gothic herdboy —
the later emperor Maximinus — found his way into the camp
of a Roman army and the presence of the Roman emperor.
Far from being overawed by the august surroundings, he
at once enters upon a wrestling-match with one of the im-
10 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
perial body-guards, and tries to outrun the horse of the
emperor himself." When Alaric, before the walls of Rome,
is met by a deputation of citizens, who, in order to frighten
him from an attack on the city, point out to him the strength
of the Roman army, he answers:' "Well, the thicker the
grass the easier it is to mow." When the Vandal king
Geiseric sets out on one of his piratic expeditions, and
the pilot asks him whither he shall direct his course, the
king replies:' "Wherever there are people with whom God
is angry." Such stories, be they historically correct or not,
show at least the spirit attributed to the leaders of the in-
vaders by their own contemporaries; and something of the
same spirit, of the same contempt for their enemies, of the
same fatalistic belief in their own power and race-superiority,
must have lived in the masses of the invaders also. Surely,
nothing could be prouder and more defiant than the self-
characterization of the Franks in the prologue of their
national code, the Lex Salica:'' " The glorious people of the
Franks, whose founder is God himself, brave in arms, firm in
peace, wise in council, noble in body, radiant in health,
excelling in beauty, daring, quick, hardened, . . . this is
the people which shook the cruel yoke of the Romans from
its neck."
Alongside of this proud self-consciousness of a people
brimming over with animal vigour and youthful defiance we
Oontaot with ^"^ ^" equally wonderful power of adaptation in
higher ciTili- these German barbarians, and this faculty also is
jation. stimulated by the contact with the higher ci\ Iliza-
tion of Rome and the deeper thought of the Christian church.
The history of the world knows few more impressive figures
than Theoderic, the noble Ostrogoth, who, after having es-
* Jordanes Geiica ed. Th. Mommsen XV, 84 ff.
* Zosimus 'llTTopia v^a. ed. Imm. Bekker V, 40.
* Procopius De bello Vandalico ed. W. Dindorf I, 5,
* Zmc Salica ed. Merclcel fifol. IV., p. 93,
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. II
tablished the dominion of his people in Italy with bloody
hand, attempts to rule as a prince of peace over Teutons
and Romans alike, protecting the weak, advancing the
public prosperity, establishing a new code of law, surround-
ing himself with Roman statesmen, philosophers and artists,
and at the same time preserving the proud, warlike traditions
of his own people. No more venerable leader is seen at
the beginning of any nation's history than Ulfilas, the bishop
of the Visigoths (d. 381), who, a second Moses, guiding his
people through war and strife, at the same time became,
through his translation of the Bible, the creator of their
written language. No purer and better men have ever lived
than the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, such as Willibrord
(d. c. 740) and Winifred (d. 755), who, only a few gen-
erations after their own nation had been won over to
Christianity, set out to preach the gospel to their Ger-
man brethren on the Rhine and the Weser : men sturdy
in mind and body, single-minded, open-eyed, full of com-
mon sense, yet unflinchingly clinging to the spiritual,
ready to lay down their lives at any moment in the service
of the eternal.
And what hero of the world's history could be compared
to the man whose towering figure stands at the end of
this whole epoch : Charles the Great ? His
attempt to weld the Germanic tribes into one ^^J.°°*''*
mighty nation may have been premature; his
methods of spreading the Christian religion may have
been crude and barbaric; his efforts, both for the renewal
of classic literature and art and for the preservation of
ancient Germanic poetry, may have been temporary fail-
ures; yet it is not too much to say that his life-work was an
anticipation of the course which German culture was to
take during the next eight hundred years. His empire soon
crumbled to pieces, but the idea of German unity and the
memory of Germanic traditions remained alive, in spite of
all that tended to obliterate them. The splendour of imperial
12 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Aachen soon vanished, but the seeds from which was to
spring the flower of mediaeval art had not been sown in vain.
The fame of the imperial academy was soon forgotten,
but the foundations had been laid for a system of public
instruction which was to maintain throughout the Middle
Ages the contact at least of the clergy with classic antiquity;
and scholars like Paulus Diaconus, Einhard, and Alcuin,
the emperor's most trusted advisers, must be counted
among the forerunners of sixteenth-century Humanism.
One may be fully sensible of these hopeful and positive
features of the time, and yet find the chief characteristic of
Dl inte ation ^^ period of the Migrations in a complete up-
of public mo- rooting of public morality, a universal overturn-
raUty. j^g gf inherited conceptions of right and wrong.
Even if we consider the description of Germanic society by
Tacitus, written about three hundred years before the Mi-
grations began, as too idealistic and as, in some respects,
overdrawn, there can be no doubt that the life of the Ger-
mans at that time was in a singular degree surrounded and
guarded by a pure tradition, that the sanctity of blood-rela-
tionship, tlie holiness of the plighted word, the chastity of
women, were with them ideals not yet to be defiled without
popular chastisement. And nothing could more vividly ex-
press the very essence of Germanic life at that time than the
famous word of the Roman historian," that with the Germans
good customs were more powerful than elsewhere good laws.
Now this whole fabric of popular custom is broken up. In
the decades, nay, centuries of perpetual fighting and wan-
dering that follow, tribal traditions are effaced, the contact
with the native soil is lost, family ties are severed, religious
beliefs are shattered. And now there appear, as the typical
• Tacitus Germania ed. Mtillenhoff, t. 19. — A masterly character-
iration of primitive Germanic culture in K. Lamprecht, Deutsche Ge-
schichte I, 160 ff. Cf. W. Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit p. 187 ff. F.
Dabn, Gesch, d. deutschen Urzeit I, 122 ff. For the oldest religious
poetry cf. R. Koegel, Gesch. d, d. Liti. its z. Ausg. d. MA. I, 12 ff.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 13
hero and heroine of the period, the man without conscience,
the woman without shame, believing in nothing but them-
selves, restrained by nothing but the limits of their own
power, individuals cut loose from the laws of common
humanity.
Especially the annals of the Langobards and the Franks are
stained with the record of crimes, perhaps the most atrocious
and colossal in human history. The Langobard ^;^^ g^j
king Alboin had killed in battle the king of a Bosamond,
rival tribe, Kunimund. Out of the murdered man's skull he
ordered a drinking-cup to be made, his daughter Rosamond
he carried away captive and made her his wife. Once,
at a drinking-bout in his banquet-hall, he has the cup
filled with wine, and offers it to the queen. Compelled to
drink, she obeys, but she feels deeply the insult to her
father's memory, and resolves on revenge. She hires a mur-
derer, leads him herself into the room where Alboin is
taking his noonday rest, binds the sword of the sleeping
man to the bedstead, takes away his shield, and then
watches him as he falls under the blows of the assassin.
She marries an accomplice to the murder, Helmichis ; and
both, taking with them Alboin's treasure, flee the country.
But soon Rosamond's wanton desire is directed toward
another lover. She gives poison to Helmichis ; but he,
after putting the cup to his lips, feels what he has taken, and
forces Rosamond to drink the rest of the deadly potion.'
The whole record of Clovis, the king of the Franks, who
through his alliance with the papal see laid the foundation
of the feudal theocracy of the Middle Ages,
is one of broken faith and brutal perfidy. It
may suffice to relate one episode in his career, in the
words of the bishop Gregory of Tours, the foremost con-
temporary chronicler of the deeds of the Merovingian
kings (d. 594)^:
' Paulus Diaconus Historia Langobardoruvt ed. G. Waitz II, 28 f.
* GregorittS Turonensis Historia Francorum ed. W. Arndt II, 40.
14 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
"After Clovis had made Paris his capital, he sent secret messen-
gers to Cloderic, son of Sigibert, king of the Ripuarian Franks, who
resided at Cologne, with these words : ' Your father is old and feeble
and lame. If he were dead, his kingdom and our friendship would
be yours.' This message aroused the young man's cupidity, and set
him to thinking how he could do away with his father. One day the
latter was hunting in the forests on the banks of the Rhine opposite
Cologne ; when at noon he was lying asleep in his tent, assassins,
hired by his son, fell upon him and killed him. Thereupon the son
sent messengers to king Clovis, who said in Cloderic's name : ' My
father is dead, and his kingdom and treasures are now mine. Send
some of your people to me, and I will gladly give you whatever of
my father's treasure pleases you.' Clovis answered: 'I thank you
for your good will. When my envoys come, do not hesitate, I pray
you, to show them all ; for I shall not take anything of your riches.'
The messengers came, and Cloderic showed them the treasure of his
father. Leading them to one of the chests, he said : ' In this chest
my father used to keep his coins.' ' Will you not,' answered the
messengers, 'reach with your hand into it down to the bottom
that we may see all that is in it ? ' He did so, and as he
stooped, one of the men split his skull with an axe. Clovis, at the
news of Cloderic's death, hastened to Cologne, called the people to-
gether, and spoke as follows : ' Listen to what has happened! While
I was far from here, sailing down the Scheldt river, Cloderic, the
son of my own cousin Sigibert, coveting his father's realm, made him
believe that I was seeking his life. And when the old man, alarmed
by this suspicion, fled, he sent assassins after him who succeeded in
killing him. Thereafter Cloderic himself, while displaying his
father's treasures, was likewise murdered by a man unknown to me.
In all these things I have had no part ; for I am not so wicked as to
kill my own kin. But since it has thus come to pass, I give you this
advice : turn to me, that you may live securely under ray protection.'
The people, when they heard this, applauded Clovis, lifted him on the
shield, and greeted him as king,"
It is hardly necessary to give further proofs of the utter
disintegration of moral feeling brought about by the poli-
tical and social revolution of the Migration period; but
it may be added that the part played by women
L'fShiia. ^'^ ^'^^^ shocking history of crime and perfidy
seems to have been even more striking than that
of men. There is a touch of genuine humanity in Rosa-
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 1$
mond s atrocities ; for they proceeded in the first place
from filial attachment and wounded pride. But one looks
in vain for any redeeming weakness or virtue in such
characters as the Frankish princess Austrichildis, who,
dying, entreated her husband to have the attendant physi-
cians beheaded after her death," or the rival queens, Frede-
gond and Brunhild, who involved a whole generation of
Frankish princes in their own vice and villany. There is
no parallel in history to the fearful death which Brunhild,
by that time a white-haired matron of about seventy years,
found in 613 at the hands of the enraged Frankish nobles.
Convicted of the murder of ten members of the Mero-
vingian dynasty, she was tortured for three days, led through
the camp on the back of a camel, tied to the feet of wild
horses and dragged to death. Her corpse was thrown into
the fire.'°
To sum up. I t is a. time of rapid national expansi on, of
rad ical changes in habit, in conduct, in be iipt ; a tin|^'-£n11
of gigantic pa ssions, full of unscrupulous achiev e-
ment, 'ihe heart o f the people is stirred by
th e sight of great rndiviguair; a M^^^ S!g&e5s...j e.nEesjeiit-
ing those tremendous forces which are shaping th e destin y
oflhti ptJOplti lllj at, showlftg IB JJtHking proportions thp.
power ot this youthful race both for good and for evil.
Out o{_SJAcli ^ tray ail gr eat epics are Dorn . is'ucli a time it
was when the Hindu peoplt! ftiTgrated from their peaceful
settlements on the banks of the Indus south-
ward, to conquer the nations of the Ganges edoareflexof
valley; and the poetical reflection of this era of theMigra-
warfare and conquest was the great national epic ™^'
Mahabbharaia. Such a time it was when the Greeks
fought their way into western Asia ; and the poetical re-
flection of this combat was the Homeric poetry. Now the
same thing happens again ; at the entrance of modern
' Gregorius Turonensis /. c. V, 35.
'" Liber historiae Francorum ed. B. Krusch c. 40.
1 6 SOCIAL PORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
European history, and as a poetical reflection of the time
of the Migrations, stand the great epic poems of the Ger-
manic peoples : — creations alive with all the stir and strife
of the time ; retaining an afterglow of the oldest mythical
tradition, but strangely tinged with recent historical experi-
ences ; representing the old Germanic idea of uprightness,
devotion and fidelity, but also the loosening of all social
bonds, and the rule of vile passions brought about through
this age of revolt ; a grand triumphal song of world-wide
victories, but also a fearful record of the reach of guilt and
the tragedy of greatness.
Our direct knowledge of these poems is very scanty. We
know that they were sung or recited in the banquet-halls of
Germanic kings, mostly by men of noble blood,
'u^''"^"'" ''*'^° themselves might have taken part in the
heroic scenes which they described. The By-
zantine statesman Priscus, in the narrative of his stay at
the court of Attila, tells of the appearance of Gothic sing-
ers at the royal table. " Towards evening," he says," "they
lit torches, and two barbarians, stepping in front of Attila,
recited songs celebrating his victories and warlike virtues.
The guests looked intently at the singers, some enjoying the
poems, some inspired by the thought of their own frays ;
others, however, whose bodies had become feeble, and
whose impetuosity had been calmed by age, bursting into
tears." Jordanes, the historian of the Ostrogoths, relates
of the nobles of his own race, that, accompanied by stringed
instruments, they sang the heroic deeds of their ances-
tors." In the Anglo-Saxon poem BSowulf a thane of
the king is introduced," —
a man renowned, mindful of songs,
he who very many of old-time sagas,
a great number remembered,
" Cf. Historici Graeci minores ed. L. Dindorf I, 317.
" Jordanes Getica V, 43.
" V. 867 ff. ; Garnett's translation.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGSATIONS. 1 7
riding on horseback with other warriors and singing to
them of dragon;fights and the winning of ring-hoards.
We know, also, or may at least infer, that the form o^ all
nf thqjie po ems once in existence was t he same as that of
the few pr eserved to us : nameIv!tti'e''rlTTyffi^gT?gg''""''' ""
... ' II ' """ - " ■ '""' ill H I III ' Fonn,
al literative verse, consisting of two half-lines .
separaLejjL, j}^„a^ paa^ ir^j^ a ^mg^re^hose _ gand. jonoro us
mn notonv was wonderfuUv adapted to the representation o f ,
a life oLoiilpit i v e he roism.
But as to the subject-matter of these poems, the extent
of the sagas treated in them, and the manner in which they
were treated, our knowledge is for the most part
based not upon these songs themselves but ^^i^^tBo^
. , . . , , epio poetry,
upon indirect evidence drawn from works of
a much later period. It is well known that the Christian
church, considering the native Germanic traditions as
heathenish monstrosities, tried to suppress them in every
possible way. This attempt was so successful that, al-
though even a man like Charles the Great asserted his
influence for the preservation and collection of ancient
popular lays," they had by the end of the tenth cen-
tury, with a few exceptions, disappeared. And the only
genuine remnants of the poetry of the Migration per-
iod left to us are the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf,
just mentioned (end of the seventh century), a fragment
of the old Low-German song of Hildebrand (c. 800),
and the heroic lays of the Icelandic Edda (ninth and
tenth centuries). Fortunately, hbwever, the memory of
the deeds related in the ancient songs did not die out with
the songs themselves. And when in the twelfth century,
ushered in by the enthusiasm of the crusades and the
glorious reign of the Hohenstaufen, a new epoch of
literary greatness dawned upon Germany, the old heroes of
the Migration period again took hold of the popular fancy
" Einhard Vita Karoli Magni ed. G. Waitz c. 29.
l8 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
and again were celebrated in epic song. Of course they
did not appear in the same guise as of old : they were thor-
oughly Christianized, from fierce stormy barbarians they
had turned into gallant chivalrous knights; and yet it is
possible to detect the old spirit even in this new form, to
recognise in these creations of the Minnesinger period the
contemporaries of Attila and Theoderic.
It is, then, from these later epics, in connection with the
few older lays just mentioned, that we shall try to gather
Combination at least a few hints of what the heroic poetry of
of mythical jjjg Germanic peoples of the time of the Migra-
and nistonoal . -^ ^ ^
elements. tions seems to have been. A feature common
to al l, or n early all^of these lajfs, which pieJianaZIjiiore
clear ^ ih^_ixy^'^^ ci^Tj^i^f^~^e>%iQTt our _mind the disinte-
grating, transforming, and readjustinggrocess forced upon
the Germanic tribes dunngjtheir wan^Oji^jis, on the
one h4n3J^Xjtran^_JWending of half-forgotten mythical
legend s with historical facts, o'n_the_otherj^ an utter con-
fusion of the historical trad ition itse lf.
Thus 'i'teocieric tke 6strogoth, or, as the epic poets, in
memory of his victory over Odoacer near Verona (489), call
him, Dietrich von Bern, is taken to be a contemporary, not
only of Attila, who in reality lived in the time of his father,
but also of king Ermanric, who lived more than a century
before him; and this Ermanric is called king of Rome, in-
stead of what he really was, king of the Goths. The his-
torical fact then of the conquest of Italy by the Ostrogoths
is reproduced in this legendary form: Theoderic is driven
from his Italian home through the evil devices of his uncle
Ermanric; with a few faithful followers he finds refuge at
the court of Attila, where for long years he lives as an
exile; finally he gathers an army round him, returns to
Italy, defeats Ermanric, and wins back his inherited
kingdom.
In the same way the Beowulf saga retains the memory of
an actual Danish chieftain, living in the beginning of the
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRA TIONS. - 1 9
sixth century, blended with the remnants of an ancient
myth of the fight between a dragon and a godlike hero. So
an old Vandal myth of a pair of divine youths, similar to
that of Castor and Pollux, developed through a succession
of curious interpretations and combinations into the sagas
of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich, who are called kings of Lom-
bardy and Constantinople ; and their legends are connected
with confused recollections of the intestine wars of the_
Merovingian dynasty. So the sagas of Hilde, Gudrun, and
Walthari, different as they are from each other in plot and
scenery, the two former depicting episodes in the pirate
life of the Norsemen, the latter introducing us into the
conflict between Attila's hosts and the nations of western
Europe, yet all three contain the same old mythical basis:
the rape of a Valkyrie, the pursuit of the robber, and ai
violent combat ensuing from it. /
So, finally, t he Nib elungen saga, the gre atest of them al y
conaists_of an almost inextricable web of mythical and his-
torical threads intertwined!
The mythical element" is of Frankish origin." There is
a treasure upon which the gods have laid a curse; Siegfried,
or, as the Norse poets call him, Sigurd wins it by killing the
dragon hoarding it. There is an enchanted virgin sleeping
on a mountain side surrounded by a wall of flames, to be
delivered only by him who is chosen. Siegfried is the
chosen one; he rides through the fiery wall, awakens Brun-
hild, or, as the Norsemen also call her, Sigrdrifa, and
makes her his bride. But soon he becomes the prey of
demonic powers. He leaves his wife and arrives at the
court of the king of the Nibelungs, the sons of darkness,
who are imagined as a race living near the Rhine stream.
Here, through a magic potion, he is made forgetful of
Brunhild and marries the king's daughter, whose name in
the later German poems is Kriemhild. The latter's brother
»Cf. GdgPh. II, I,/. 25 f.
20 SOCIAL FORCES Ilf GERMAN LITERATURE.
Gunther, in the Norse sources called Gunnar, hears of Brun-
hild's beauty and sets out to woo her. Unable to overcome
her strength, he appeals to Siegfried, and the latter, dis-
guised as Gunther, conquers Brunhild for a second time.
When Brunhild learns what an outrage has been done to
her, she resolves on Siegfried's death. She incites the
Nibelungs against him, and he is treacherously slain, his
treasure being made the booty of his murderers. When
Brunhild sees his corpse on the pyre, her passion for him
bursts out once more; she stabs herself, and is burnt to-
gether with her faithless lover.
With this essentially mythical tale there were connected
in course of time dim historical reminiscences of the period
of the Migrations. At the beginning of this chapter
was mentioned the decisive defeat which, in 437, the Bur-
gundians, then settled in the upper Rhine valley, suffered
in a terrible conflict with the Hunnish invaders, their king
Gundicar and some twenty thousand of the tribe being
killed. This king Gundicar is identified with the Gun-
ther of the Siegfried saga, the Nibelungs are identified with
the Burgundians, and their collision with the Huns is con-
sidered as having been brought about through the latter's
coveting Siegfried's treasure. But this is not enough.
Although the historical Attila had nothing whatever to do
with the conflict between the Huns and the Burgundians,
his name also, being one of the most impressive of the time,
is connected with the new form of the Nibelungen saga: he
is introduced as the leader of the Huns in the destruction
of Gunther's race. And finally, his wife Ildico, who is said
to have murdered him, is identified with Siegfried's widow
Kriemhild; and either, as in the Norse poems, appears as
the avenger of the ruin of her race, the Burgundians, by
killing her Hunnish husband, or, as in the later German
form of the saga, marries him merely in order to take revenge,
through him, on the murderers of her first husband, Sieg-
fried. The last touch is added to the saga by the ap-
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 21
pearance of the great Thcoderic, who, in accordance with
the majestic wisdom of his traditional character, here also
takes the part of supreme judge. After the terrible struggle
is over, Huns and Burgundians alike having been slaugh-
tered by the thousand, the Gothic king steps up to Kriem-
hild, the instigator of all this horror and bloodshed, and
beheads her."
Even from what has been said thus far, it must have be-
come evident that the chief characteristic of the Fierceness of
life portrayed in these sagas of the Migration the life por-
. J . J. V 1- J 11 trayed in the
period IS fierce combativeness and reckless Qermanio
bravery. Let us illustrate this point somewhat epio.
more fully by a few striking scenes.
Hildebrand," the armourer " of Theoderic of Bern, has
followed the latter into his exile at Attila's court. After
many years' absence he sets out to ride home-
ward. On his way he is met and challenged by
his own son Hadubrand, who meanwhile has become a
stranger to him. Hildebrand inquires froi-^ the younger
man his descent and kin. He replies : " Thus told me our
people, old and wise ones, who formerly lived, that Hilde-
brand was my father ; I am Hadubrand. Once he went
eastward, fleeing before Odoacer's wrath, with Theoderic
and many of his thanes. He left in the land, helplessly
sitting, his wife in the house, the child ungrown, bereft of
the inheritance. Always he was at the head of the people,
always fight was dearest to him. Not, I think, is he alive."
" In the Nibtlungenlied Xias, execution is performed by Theoderic's
armourer Hildebrand.
" Cf. MSD.^ p. 2 ff. P. Piper, Die alteste deutscfu LUteratur
{DXL. I) p. 145 ff- An excellent account of the warlike aspect of
early Germanic life is given by F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins
p. 826 ff.
'* About this office, its frequent mention in the Germanic sagas, and
its political counterpart in the institution of the Frankish maior domus
cf. Uhland, Schriften sur Gescfi. d. Diclitung u. Sage I, 242-253.
22 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Upon these words the father makes himself known, and as
a token of friendship offers his son a pair of golden brace-
lets on the point of his spear. But Hadubrand suspects
him to be a trickster, and rejects the gifts. " With the spear
a man receives gifts, point against point. Thou old Hun,
oversly, wishest to mislead me with thy words, wishest to
smite me with thy spear. Thou art such an old man and
yet designest evil. Thus told me seafaring men, westward
over the Weiidelsea," that war took him away. Dead is
Hildebrand, Heribrand's son." Now Hildebrand bewails
his fate, which forces him to fight his own son; but not for
a moment does he think of evading the combat. " Woe is
me, avenging God, woeful fate is near. I wandered sum-
mers and winters sixty; always they placed me in the crowd
of the shooters, before no walls death was brought me; now
my own child shall strike me with the sword, crush me with
his axe, or I become his murderer. But he would be the
basest of the Eastern men who would now refuse the fight,
since thou desirest strife so much. Try then the combat,
which of us to-day shall loose his mail-coat, or both of
these byrnies possess." So they ride against each
other with their spears; then they dismount and fight with
swords; finally, it seems, — for the end of the lay is lost, — the
father kills his own offspring.""
Less pathetic, but perhaps for that reason all the more
unmitigated in its grimness, is the Walthari saga, as it has
Walthari ^^^" preserved to us in Latin by the monk
'^* *"■ Ekkehard I. of St. Gallen (c. 930)." Walthari, like
Hildebrand, has for years been living at the Hunnish court,
sent thither as a hostage by his father, the Visigothic king
" The Mediterranean.
"» This tragic end is suggested by comparison with similar t;il"s
of other nations, especially Persian and Gaelic. Cf. Uhland /. c. 164 ff.
A happy ending in the ballad of the 15th century {DNL. VII., 301 ff.).
«' Cf. Waltharius nianu fortis ed. Scheffel and Holder J.'iiSb ff
J, KeUe, Gesch. d. d. Litt. bis z. Mitte J.ii. Jhdis. p. 218 ff.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 23
of Aquitaine. There he has been betrothed to Hildegund,
the daughter of the Burgundian king, who also had been
carried away by the Huns. Now the two flee together,
riding on one horse, laden with treasures stolen from Attila's
palace. In the Vosges mountains king Gunther of Worms
with twelve thanes falls on him; and there, at the mouth of
a glen where the fugitives had rested for a night, a most
fearful slaughter ensues. Eleven of Gunther's men are
struck down, one after another, by Walthari's sword. For
a time night puts an end to the contest; Walthari, ex-
hausted by incessant fighting, lies down to sleep in his be-
loved one's lap, while she, sitting erect, keeps herself awake
by singing. But the next morning the two remaining foes,
Gunther himself and his stalwart champion Hagen, ride up
to avenge the death of their eleven comrades. And now
Walthari's valour is put to a decisive test; he first rushes
upon Gunther and with a tremendous blow hews off his leg
near the hip. ^ Hagen avenges his master by chopping off
Walthari's right hand. But even this does not daunt the
irrepressible hero; he slips the stump of his right arm
through the strap of his shield, grasps his sword with the
left, and jumping upon Hagen knocks out his right eye,
slashes his face, and dislodges six of his teeth. Now at
last the martial spirit gives way to friendly feeling. The
three mutilated fighters sit down on the grass, Hildegund
dresses their wounds and passes the wine, and over grim
jokes and raillery they forget their bleeding gashes. "In
future," said Hagen to Walthari, "you will have to wear
a leather glove stuffed with wool on your right arm, and
make men believe it is your hand. Your sword will hang
on your right hip, and if you want to embrace your dear
wife Hildegund, you'll have to do it with the left arm."
Oh, you one-eyed squinter," retorted Walthari, " I shall
strike down many a deer with my left hand ere you will be
able to eat again your roast of boar. But I'll give you
friendly advice: when you get home, you had better have
24 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
some baby porridge cooked up for you; that is good for a
toothless man, and strengthens his bones."
Two figures, undoubtedly among the oldest of the Ger-
manic hero-saga, who, in course of time have become con-
nected, the one with the Gudrun, the other with the Nibe-
lungen legend, may conclude this sketch of the fierceness of
old Germanic life: Wate, Gudrun's most devoted champion,
and Hagen, Siegfried's murderer.
Wate seems originally to have been a sea-god. He is the
son of a mermaid; his long grizzly beard inspires horror;
when he blows his horn, the land quivers, the
^**°' sea foams up, and the walls of castles totter.
Gradually, as the supernatural in him receded, he became
the type of a wild, indomitable, irresistible Viking. In
the Gudrunlied (beginning of the thirteenth century), he
appears most strikingly on three different occasions. First,
when Hettel, king of the Danes, has sent him with other
vassals to sue for Hilde, daughter of the king of Ireland."
He is introduced to the ladies of the royal household, and
has to make conversation. Hilde asks him jestingly whether
he prefers to sit and chat with beautiful women or to fight
in the wild combat; he answers: "One thing suits me best.
Never did I sit so softly with beautiful women that I would
not rather with good knights fight in many a hard combat."
Whereupon the girls laugh heartily. — Hilde and Hettel
have been married, their daughter Gudrun has grown up a
beautiful maiden, the Norsemen have carried her away, the
Danes pursue the robbers: now Wate steps into the fore-
ground for the second time.^^ At a low island near the
mouth of the river Scheldt the Norsemen with their fair
booty are overtaken, and here a bloody battle is fought,
the famous battle' of the Wulpensand. It lasts from morn-
ing till night : not so quickly do snowflakes sweep from
the Alpine mountains as the spears flew hither and thither
" Cf. Kmdrun ed. E. Martin str. 340 ff. " lb. str. 882 ff. 921 ff.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 2$
that day. King Hettel himself was slain; when Wate saw
him fall, his voice roared wildly, and like the evening
red the helmets were seen aglow from his swift strokes.
Under cover of the night the Norsemen escape, and the
Danes return home beaten and cast down. Usually, when
Wate returned from a battle, he came with trumpet-sound
and glee. Now he rode still and silent into the castle; and
when the people thronged around him and asked about
their friends, he answered: "I will not lie; they have all
been slain. Do not weep and wail, from death no one re-
turns; but when our children are grown men, the time will
come for revenge."
Fourteen years have gone; Gudrun has remained a cajj-
tive of the Norsemen, faithfully preserving in exile and
misery her troth plighted to king Herwig of Sealand.
Now at last the ships of the rescuing Danes appear. Wate
leads them; he is fuming with long-repressed rage and
thirst for/fight.'* He delights in the coolness of the night
that precedes the battle. " How cheerful the air is," he
exclaims, " how calm and refreshing ! how softly the moon
shines ! how exalted I feel !" In the morning he blows his
horn so loud that it is heard for thirty miles along the
coast. At the head of his men he presses into the crowd
of the Norsemen. Their chief, Hartmut, makes a stand
against him, but is on the point of succumbing to his blows
when Gudrun observes them from a window. Moved by
womanly pity, she calls upon her lover Herwig to save Hart-
mut, although he is her enemy, from the fierce Wate. Her-
wig delivers her message to Wate, but he cries: "Out of
the way, Herwig ! If I obeyed women, I should be out of
my mind. If I spared our enemies, I should have to re-
proach myself. He shall suffer for his misdeeds." And
when Herwig tries to step between the two, he receives
such a blow from the old fighter that he staggers and falls,
»* Kudrun str. 1345 ff. 1491 ff.
26 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and has to be carried from the field. And Wate rages
on like a war-god, sparing not even women or children, and
not pausing until the bloody work is done.
If Wate, as Scherer has said, impresses us as a rude ele-
mental force, we find in Hagen, added to this physical
power, a mind of wonderful keenness and fertility." Even
in the Waltharilied, where we saw him as Gun-
*^°"" ther's vassal, he stands head and shoulders
above the other knights, and even above his master. But
it is only in the Nibelungenlied that his character comes
out in all its dark grandeur. He is the principal figure at
the court of Worms before Siegfried's arrival; through him
Siegfried falls; and after Siegfried's death he at once assumes
the leadership again. When the messengers come from
Kriemhild and Ezzel (Attila) to invite the Nibelungs to the
Hunnish court, he immediately feels that it is the arm of re-
venge stretching out for him and his accomplices in Sieg-
fried's murder. But he is too proud to shun the conse-
quences of his own deeds. He himself leads the armed
host on their journey eastward, he knows the way, he is the
travellers' help and comfort. When they reach the Danube,
he finds some mermaids sporting in the river. They
prophesy to him the doom that awaits the Nibelungs in the
land of the Huns. But Hagen, far from dissuading his
friends from proceeding on their journey, keeps the tidings to
himself until he has ferried them all over the river. Then
he breaks the ferryboat to pieces and calls out to them":
" None of us will return home from the land of the Huns."
The same unflinching spirit, the same heroic fanaticism,
the same eagerness to challenge fate rather than await it, he
preserves throughout the awful events that follow." Kriem-
" Cf. for the following Uhland /. c. 307-314. W. Scherer, Gesch.
d. d. Liu. p. 119 ff.
" Der Nibelunge NSt ed. Bartsch str. 1526 ff.
" lb. str. 1761 ff. 1951 ff.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 2J
hild betrays her hatred of him from the very first moment
that the Nibelungs have arrived at her court. She sees
Hagen and his comrade, Volker the fiddler, sitting in front
of the palace; followed by sixty Huns carrying concealed
weapons, she descends from the hall and accosts the two
men in a hostile manner. Hagen, unmoved and coldly de-
fiant, keeps his seat, placing across his knees the sword
which he took away from Siegfried when he slew him. And
when Kriemhild at the sight of it bursts forth into passionate
invectives, he answers: " Why all this talk ? Yes, I, Hagen,
slew Siegfried; I am guilty of all this evil; let him avenge
it who will, man or woman." None of the Huns dare
approach him, and Kriemhild has to resort to another plan
of attack.
The Burgundian yeomen, who have been quartered sepa-
rately from their masters, are fallen upon by a large crowd
of Huns, and treacherously massacred. One of them es-
capes, and appears covered with blood in the hall where
the Burgundian and Hunnish princes are feasting to-
gether. When Hagen sees him, he springs to his feet and
shouts: "Our yeomen have been foully murdered. Up,
friends! let the drinking-bout begin! " And striking off the
head of Ezzel's young son, who is sitting near him at the
table, he hurls it quivering into Kriemhild's lap. From
here on,'' his only aim is to sell his life dearly. Like a mad-
man he rages through the hall, striking down whoever comes
near him. At night Kriemhild, who with Ezzel and
his immediate followers has withdrawn from the palace,
causes it to be set on fire. The heat is torturing; the
Nibelungen heroes with difficulty protect themselves from
the falling brands; but Hagen is unshaken, he calls upon
his friends to quench their thirst with blood. " In such a
heat, it is better than wine," he says. At last, vanquished
by Dietrich and led captive before Kriemhild, he refuses to
" For the following cf. Der Nibelunge N6t str. 2114 ff. 2367 fif.
28 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
tell her where Siegfried's treasure is concealed, and when
she holds Gunther's bleeding head before him, he exclaims:
" Now it has come to pass as 1 thought: the treasure now
no one knows but God and myself; and from thee, thou
daughter of hell, it shall forever be hidden! " Thereupon
with Siegfried's sword Kriemhild severs Hagen's head from
his body.
It would be a grave mistake to believe the life of the
Germanic heroes, as represented in epic poetry, an uninter-
_, „ rupted succession of combat and violence. The
The finer emo- '^ .
tions in fter- very existence of this poetry is a proof that the
manic life. finer emotions were by no means lacking in this
life. The historian Procopius tells " of the Vandal king
Gelimer, that in surrendering after a long and cruel siege
to the Byzantine general, he asked as a last favour from his
enemies for three things: a loaf of bread, to know once
more how it tasted; a sponge to cool his eyes that had be-
come dim with tears; a harp to sing his misery. The same
contrast between the heroic and the gentle, between fero-
city and sentiment, between wildness and artistic grace, per-
vades the epic songs of this time. By the side of Wate,
the grim warrior of the Gudrun saga, stands Horand the
singer, not less heroic than he, but full of divine inspira-
tion and melody. He has been taught his art " on the wild
sea," probably by some water-sprite; and when he sings, the
birds grow silent, the deer of the forest leave their pasture,
the worms in the grass cease creeping, the fishes stop swim-
ming, the sick and the well lose their senses." A similar
trait helps to relieve even the atrociousness of the fate of
the Nibelungs. King Gunnar, according to the Norse
traditions," has a magic gift of music. Made captive by
Atli (Attila) he is thrown into a snake-den, his hands be-
" Procopius /. c. II, 6. '» Kudrun str. 388 ff.
"' C£. Atlakvipa sir. 28 and Ailamql str. 60 ; Eddalieder ed. F.
J6nsson II, 80. 89 ; V^lsungasaga ed. Bugge c. 37,
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 29
ing chained. But he strikes the harp with his toes so won-
der tully that women weep, warriors are unnerved, the beams
of ihe building burst, and the snakes fall asleep — except one
viper who stings the hero to the heart.
As to the mo ral side of life , there can be no question
that these ep icsbring out in all its res.plen(jeri , t beauty at
lea st one virtue, the safflfi y^\yr\^ TiPlp^H in hn iU. DietriohTon
ing up the tnbai monarchies of thj«iiii©SiJon Bem,
period: the virtue of personal at tachment and dey Qlion.
The w'iiole legena ot Dfetrich von Bern rests on the idea of
faithful allegiance between the king and his followers.
Dietrich has sent out eight of his men to win a treasure.
On their return, they fall into an ambush laid by the in-
sidious Ermenrich. Night and day, Dietrich bewails their
loss and longs to die. In vain he offers for them Ermen-
rich's son and eighteen hundred men whom he is keeping
as hostages. Ermenrich threatens to kill Dietrich's men,
unless he cede his whole realm to him. And Dietrich an-
swers:'" " Even though all empires of the world were mine,
I would rather give them away than desert my dear faithful
thanes." He keeps his word, abandons his kingdom, and
goes with his faithful ones into exile.
The same tone underlies the Wolfdietrich legend.
Driven from his inheritance, cast about in a life of struggle
and adventure, Wolfdietrich does not forget his
, , . , , , WolHietricli.
eleven champions at home, who on account 01
their fidelity to him have been chained and imprisoned.
One night" he gets to the tower where they lie in fetters;
and he hears their wailing, although he cannot see them,
and is not allowed to speak to them. But when he rides
away, he claps his hands and shouts: " I am not dead ";
and the faithful men recognise the hoof-tramps of his horse,
'" Cf. Dietrichs Flmht ed. E. Martin (Deutsches Hddenbuch II) v.
3784 ff.
^ Cf. Der grossc Wolfdieterich ed. A. Holtzmann str. 1312 ff.
30 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and rejoice. Here, as Uhland has finely said," faith ap-
pears as a spiritual bond, a sense in the darkness, an ever-
wakeful memory, a nearness beyond time and space.
In the Gudrun saga, it is loyalty to the bonds of
love and kinship, which through strife and death leads
to victory. Carried away from her ancestral
flnditm. home, bereft in bloody combat of her father
and many of her kin, Gudrun has been given the choice
either to renounce her betrothed and to wear the crown
with her abductor, or to submit to an ignominious ser-
vitude. Her choice is soon made : she rejects the crown,
and chooses thraldom. Twice seven years she performs
the services of an humble housemaid, and bears quietly
the contumelies heaped upon her by a spiteful mistress;
twice seven years no smile comes upon her lips. But
when at last the deliverers appear, she laughs out trium-
phantly," and resumes at once her native nobility of speech
and bearing.
These epic impersonations of fidelity and allegiance are
too numerous and conspicuous to be overlooked. And
Predominance ^^^ ^^^""^ ^^ danger of attaching too much
ofieokless importance to them. It has often been said
passion. ^jj^j jjjg dominating ideal of old Germanic life
was faith. It seems, however, as though, applied to the
period of the Migrations, this statement is far from being
true. Faith, allegiance, devotion, the precious inheritance
of a preceding age, undoubtedly entered as factors into the
life of the time, and helped to bring about the political and
moral reconstruction of Europe. But the strongest incen-
tive to action, at least on the part of the leaders of the peo-
ple, seems to have been a primitive love of power, an in-
domitable desire to live themselves out, an instinctive
impulse to reach beyond themselves. The historical annals
" L. c. 234. '' Cf. Kudrun sir. 1318 ft.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 3 1
of the Migration period, as was pointed out before, are
stained with greed, perfidy, and recklessness ; they bring
before our minds, as the typical figure of the time, the
individual cut loose from social bonds, full of animal vigour
and susceptibility, keen-eyed and sharp-witted, but without
any moral reserve, obeying the momentary impulse, having
no higher ideal than himself, carrying the germ of ruin
within him.
No more tragic picture of this self-destruction of the
Germanic race in its striving for power and self-gratifica-
tion has been preserved to us than the saga of
Sigurd and Brynhild. Guilt marks Sigurd's ^^^^^^
path from the very beginning. Before he wins
the fatal treasure, he hears from the dragon who hoards it
that a curse has been laid upon it by the gods. Without
heeding this warning, he kills the dragon and lays hand on
the gold. While he is roasting the dragon's heart — his
master and companion, Regin, lying asleep near by — a
drop of the monster's blood touches his lips and makes
him understand the language of the birds. He hears
them say: " Beware, Sigurd; there lies Regin thinking how
he can deprive you of your treasure; you had better kill
him." And so Sigurd kills Regin, and drinks his and the
dragon's blood."
Brynhild also bears the stamp of guilt upon her face.
She is a fallen Valkyrie. In battle she has defied Odin's
order by putting to death another man than him whom she
had been commanded to slay. For this she has been put
to sleep amidst the flames. When Sigurd, riding through
the flames, awakes her, she greets him with a passionate
outburst of delight." " Hail to thee. Day ! Hail to you.
Sons of Day! Hail to thee. Night and thy daughter Earth !
With unresentful eyes look upon us and give us victory !
^^ Cf. Fdfnesmil ^, str. 1. 2 ; Eddalieder ^A. F. Jbnsson II, 41.
" Cf. SigrdHfom^l sir. I. 2 ; /. t. 43.
3^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Hail to you, Gods ! Hail to you, Goddesses ! Hail to
thee, fruit-bearing field ! Word and wisdom give to us two
and ever-healing hands."
They are united, but soon Sigurd's evil fate drives him
on. He leaves Brynhild, and not only forgets her in the
arms of Gudrun, the Nibelung princess, but, disguised as-
Gunnar, even forces Brynhild to become the latter's wife.
When Brynhild sees him again at the court of the Nibelungs,
she is torn with wrath and jealousy." " Lonely she sat when
evening came, outside of the house, and said to herself: ' Die
I will, or have Sigurd in my arms. I said the word, but now
I repent it. His wife is Gudrun, and I am Gunnar's. Evil
Norns gave us long-lasting pain.' Often she went, filled
with gloom, over the ice-fields and glaciers at eventide, when
Sigurd and his bride were lying together." Now it hap-
pened" that one day the two queens Brynhild and Gudrun
were bathing together in the Rhine. Brynhild would not
allow Gudrun to go into the water further up stream
than she. " For why," she said, " should I suffer my body
to be touched by the water which has flowed through your
hair; since my husband is so much better than yours."
Gudrun answered: " My husband is so noble that neither
Gunnar nor any one else can equal him." And in the alter-
cation which followed, she betrayed to Brynhild that it was
Sigurd, not Gunnar, who made her Gunnar's wife. Now
Brynhild's wrath knows no bounds. She incites the
Nibelungs to murder Sigurd. In death she is united to
him.
It will now be understood in what sense the Germanic
epic must be called a poetical reflection of the time of the
Migrations. Certainly not in the sense that the epic poems
contribute anything to our knowledge of actual events of
that time. It is a remarkable fact that the two greatest
^* Cf. Sigurfiarkvipa en skamma sir. 6-9 ; /. c. 55.
*' Skdldskaparm^l c. 45 ; Edda Snorra Sturlusonar ed. Th. J6nsson
p. 121.
THE PERIOD OF THE MIGRATIONS. 33
events of the epoch, the destruction of the Roman empire
and the adoption of Christianity by the Germanic race, are
not mentioned by a single word in the whole range of this
poetry. And of the frequent and strange distortions of
actual history which occur in it we have had sufficient
proof. And yet the Germanic epic, as well as the histori-
cal annals of the time, tells its tale of the Migrations of the
peoples. It speaks to us of the greed and savagery of those
German adventurers who terrorized Roman cities and
made Roman emperors tremble. It brings to our mind
the record of many a German chieftain who, cut loose from
the belief of his own ancestors and not yet firmly rooted
in the new creed, plunged a whole tribe into ruin by his
lust and recklessness. But it also tells us of the indomitable
energy, the dauntless courage, the self-sacrificing devotion,
and the deep sense of moral justice which, through all the
tumult and uproar of those times, remained the priceless
heritage of the German race, and which, when the floods
of that great revolution had passed away, helped, under the
guidance of Christian ideas, to develop a better and nobler
state of national existence.
CHAPTER II.
THE GROWTH OF MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY
AND FEUDALISM.
(From the Ninth to the Middle of the Twelfth Century.)
The period of German history from the middle of the
ninth to the middle of the twelfth century — embracing the
dismemberment of the universal Carolingian
OonBolldation j i ,-.
of papacy and monarchy; the growth, under the Saxon and
empire. Frankish dynasties, of a distinctively German
nation; the struggle, at the time of Henry IV., between
church and state ; and the beginning of the crusades — is an
age of political organization and consolidation. The two
great institutions which had emerged from the turmoil of the
Migration period as the controlling forces of European
life, the Roman church and the Germanic state, are now
assuming a more distinct form and gradually define their
spheres of influence.
A remarkable contrast in the development of these two
powers at once claims our attention.
Ever since the western Christian church had come to
Tie oentralia- recognise the bishop of Rome as its supreme
omeme™i-'°° ^^^'^' *^ gliding principle of its policy had
aval ohnioh. been centralization without regard to nation-
ality. Everything conspired to make this policy suc-
cessful. It proceeded from the very spirit of the Chris-
tian religion, which addresses itself to all humanity and
proclaims the spiritual kinship of all races. It gained
powerful support from the traditional reverence of the
European nations for the name of that great empire — the
Roman — which had been the first embodiment, if not
of the brotherhood, at least of the unity of humankind,
34
MEDIAEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 35
and whose political aspirations, methods of government
and even language were now adopted by the church, its
successor. It was advocated and impersonated by a
remarkable number of men of genius and enthusiasm, from
St. Augustine (d. 430), who in his Civitas Dei depicted in
glowing colours the joys of a spiritual existence lifted high
above the barriers and distinctions of the visible world,
down to pope Gregory VII. (d. 1085), who during his strug-
gle with the German crown opposed to the variety of na-
tional and temporal interests the supreme law of the one
indivisible and all-transcendent church. It was put into
practice and carried out in detail through a hierarchy of
most elaborate organization and machinery, and yet,
through all its manifold gradations of archbishop, bishop,
canons, priests, and monks, directed by one command and
given over to one service, — the most formidable intellectual
army which the world has seen.
On the other hand, the political life of the time more
and more drifted towards decentralization. To be sure,
the empire founded by Charles the Great was The decentral-
meant by its creator to be, in a still more direct ifng tenden-
■* oiea of the me-
sense than the church, a continuation of the old diaval state.
Roman empire. Its boundaries reached almost as far as
the dominion of the church ; its claims of sovereignty were
quite as universal. But this empire was rather the creation
of a gigantic personality than a natural growth, and after
the death of its founder (814) it soon passed away also.
In its place there arose a variety of race confederations,
which in course of time developed into the three leading
nations of continental Europe: the German, the French,
and the Italian. And even within these new national units
there was no power which exercised as undisputed and
general an influence as the church. As in all primitive
periods, when no uniform medium of exchange has as yet
been established, the state officials in the Carolingian mon-
archy were paid, not in money, but by the transference of
36 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
power, — power over the produce of a certain tract of land,
power over the property and the lives of a certain number
of people. This temporary delegation of sovereign rights to
crown officials — the root of mediaeval feudalism — in course
of time became a permanent one, and by the middle of the
eleventh century the principle had become fairly established
that rights acquired in this way should be hereditary. The
consequence was that, as contrasted with the all-pervading,
uniform, impersonal authority of the church, the state of
that time represented a great variety of small, secondary
sovereignties, based on local tradition and personal privi-
leges, loosely held together by common descent and a cer-
tain degree of allegiance to the nominal source of all tem-
poral sovereignty, the king.
At the time of Charles the Great, church and state were
in the main co-ordinated and closely allied. The emperor
Oonfliotbe- ^^^ ^^^ Pope, each in his own sphere, were
tween ohnroli considered as the two equal sovereigns of all
and state. Christendom. They were the two fountain-heads
from which the light of divine justice and mercy flowed
out over all humanity ; they were the two swords, the spi-
ritual and the worldly, with which the conflict of heaven
against the powers of darkness was to be waged. With the
decay of the Carolingian empire, however, this relation of the
two powers to each other began to be disturbed. The ninth
century, the period of ferment in the development of the new
nationalities, is characterized by an utter lack of any domi-
nating or even preponderating secular power ; this century,
therefore, sees the pope as arbitrator between kings and
nations, as a leading factor in European politics. There
follows a reaction in the tenth century. Under the reign
of the sturdy Saxon dynasty the foundations of a truly
national German state are laid, and at once an attempt is
made on the part of this state to reunite the German king-
dom and the universal empire. Otto I. is crowned at Rome
as the successor of Charles the Great (962). On the
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 37
Strength of his imperial dignity he not only deposes one
pope and directs the election of another : he even makes
the clergy the chief instrument of the feudal organization
of the German state. But this combination of the highest
political and ecclesiastical authority in the hands of the
German king is of short duration. In the eleventh century,
during the reign of the Frankish dynasty, the untenable
position of the clergy — as in the service both of the pope
and the emperor, of the pope as keepers of souls, of
the emperor as holders of land — brings about a conflict
between papacy and empire (1075-1122) which plunges
Germany into a fierce civil war ; stirs up the public opinion
of Europe in a manner unheard of before; humiliates in
turn the emperor before the pope, and the pope before the
emperor, and finally ends with a compromise favourable
to the papacy, by theoretically separating the spiritual
and temporal functions of the clerical ofifice, practically,
however, putting the clergy under the exclusive control of
the Roman bishop. About the same time the ascendency
of the church reaches its climax in the great movement of
the crusades, which is both the result and the cause of a
most extraordinary popular outburst of religious enthusiasm,
and which raises the pope to the undisputed leadership of
all Europe united in a holy warfare.
These, then, in a general way, were the social and intel-
lectual conditions under which German literature developed
during the first centuries of the Middle Ages.
On the one hand, the soaring idealism of an all- tweenthe"
embracing church, preaching, if not always prac- spiritnal and
tising, the abnegation of the flesh, the essential * "" ^'
vanity of earthly things, the nothingness of human greatness ;
resting on the deep-rooted belief of the human mind in the
indestructibility of things spiritual, and the eternal longing
of the human heart for a better world beyond the grave.
On the other hand, the sturdy realism of a youthful people
settling down to the practical business of the day ; turning
38 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the glebe of a virgin soil, and at the same time constantly
in arms against inner and outer foes ; taking the first steps
in working out a national state, but also jealously watching
over the maintenance of individual rights and privileges ;
living in close communion with nature and enjoying the
sights of the visible world ; pre-eminently given over to the
present, to things tangible and near at hand. It will be our
task to see how the literature of the time reflected these
Eff t fth *^° great tendencies ; how it gave expression,
oonfiiotfi upon now to the aspirations of the church, now to
Uteratnre. patriotic sentiment ; how it stood in turn for
the worldly and the spiritual, the real and the ideal ; and
how towards the end of the period it helped in opening the
way for reconciling and combining both these principles.
It cannot be denied that at the very beginning of the
period there stands a work which in a singular degree is
both real and ideal, national and religious ; a
work reminding us, in the ruggedness of its alli-
terative form and the robustness of its descriptions, of old
Germanic hero-life, but at the same time, by the whole
drift of its thought, pointing forward to a higher moral
plane than that afforded by the epics of the preceding age :
the Old-Saxon poem Heljand or The Redeemer, written
about 830 at the suggestion of the emperor Ludwig the
Pious, by a Saxon priest, with the avowed purpose of open-
ing the obdurate ears of his countrymen to the message of
Christianity.
It is not too much to say that this poem, based as it is on
Eealistdooha- ^ ^^'''^ Harmony of the Gospels,' represents the
raoterofthe most complete absorption of the Christian tradi-
poem. tjon ^y jjjg German mind, the most perfect blend-
ing of Christian ideas and German forms of expression
' Which in its turn goes back to a work of the Syrian Tatianus
(second century). Cf. GdgPh. II, i, 241. For the Old-Saxon Genesis
cf. Koegel I.e. 288a ff. F. Vetter, D. neuentdeckte deutsche Bibeldichtg
d. qten Jhdts.
MEDI/EVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 39
before the time of Diirer. The same acclimatization of
sacred history to German soil which gives to the religious
paintings of the fifteenth century such a wonderful,
homely charm, we find in this poem of the ninth century.
Christ himself is conceived of as the ideal Germanic king.
He is the ruler of the land, the folklord, the giver of rings,
the leader of the armed host, bold and strong, mighty and
renowned. With his twelve warlike thanes he travels over
the land, from Bethlehemburg to Nazarethburg and Je-
rusalemburg, everywhere pledging the people to his alle-
giance. The Sermon on the Mount is given as the speech
of a warrior-king before his faithful followers." The people
gather and place themselves around him, " silently expect-
ing what the lord, the ruler, is going to reveal to them with
his own words, a joy to them all." And he himself " sat
and was silent and looked at them for a long time," and
finally " opened his lips and spoke wise words to the men
whom he had called to the thing." The marriage-feast in
Cana becomes a picture of a drinking-bout in a royal ban-
quet-hall, where the cup-bearers go about with bumpers
and jugs filled with limpid wine, the joy of the people
resounds from the benches, the warriors are revelling.'
The air of the North Sea breathes in the description of the
storm on the Lake of Tiberias.^ " The sails hoisted the
weatherwise men, and let the wind drive them into the
middle of the sea. Then fearful weather came up, a storm
gathered, the waves rose, darkness burst upon darkness, the
sea was in uproar, wind battled with water." The scene of
Christ's capture by the Jews gives an opportunity for grati-
fying the Germanic love of fighting. Even here Christ
appears less a martyr than a hero who, even though betrayed
and forsaken, makes his enemies tremble. And hardly any
situation is dwelt upon with such apparent delight as when
' Heliand ed. Sievers v. 1279 ff.
' lb. V. 2006 ff. * 16. V. 2239 ff.
40 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LiTERA TURE.
"the swift warrior" Peter smites off Malchus' ear.' "Then
became enraged the swift sword-thane, Simon Peter ; his
wrath welled up, he could not speak a word, so deeply it
grieved him that they wanted to bind the Lord. Fiercely
he went, the bold thane, to stand in front of his liege lord.
Not wavering was his heart nor Eh^- hip bosom. At once
he drew the sword irom his side aucl smote the foremost of
the foes with full force so that Malchus was reddened with
the sword's edge on the right side, his ear hewn off, his
cheek gashed, blood leaped forth, welling from the wound.
And the people dr°w b-ck, fearing the rword-bite."
There i;; reason to believe that two other poetical ver-
sions of biblical subjects, contemporary with IhtHelJand, of
which, however, only fragments have been pre-
Wessoteuim served to us, showed this same blending of
Prayer, Christian and Germanic conceptions which is seen
in the Heljand. One of these fragments, the so-called Wes-
sobrunn Prayer (c. 800), ° describes the creation of the world
in a manner remarkably similar to the cosmogony of the Elder
Edda. The other, the so-called Muspilli (c. 850),' depicts
the last judgment in words which cannot fail to suggest the
old Germanic idea of the conflagration of the world." " The
' Heliand v. 4865 ff.
' It was found in a codex of the Bavarian monastery Wessobrunn,
which contains among other things an exposition of the seven liberal
arts, the verses on the world's creation being introduced as a speci-
men of poetical diction. The beginning {MSD. I, i. Piper, /. c.
p. 139) reads: "This I learned an\ong men as the greatest of won-
ders that once there was no earth nor sky nor tree nor hill nor brook
nor the shining sun nor the glistening moon nor the glorious sea."
compare with this Vqlospq sir. 3 ; Eddalieder ed. F. J6nsson I, i.
Cf., however, Kelle, Gesch. d. d. Litt. p. 75 ff.
' This name was given to it by Schmeller, the first editor of the
fragment, on account of the word mftspilli = earth-destruction occur-
ring in it.
" V. 51 ff. ; MSD. I, 10, Piper /. c. p. 154. Compare V^losp^ sir.
39, /. c. 7. Cf. KBgel, Gesch. d. d. Litt. I, 324 f.
MEDIAEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 4I
mountains take fftre, not a tree remains standing on the
earth, the waters run dry, the sea is swallowed up, the
heavens stand ablaze, the moon falls, Midgard is aglow."
These expressions, however, in the ninth century, of old
Germanic conceptions and ideals in the midst of Christian
surroundings, were only a remnant of a time
gone by, a last offshoot, as it were, of the great •^sosndmoy of
pan-Germanic uprising which had received its
final political form in the Carolingian empire. ''As the century
passes on, bringing in its train the gradual dismemberment
of that empire and the gradual but steady growth and ex-
pansion of the Roman church, literature also assumes more
and more an exclusively clerical appearance.
The most striking example" of this change in the literary
taste of the time is a poetical story of Christ's qj^jj f
life by the monk Otfrid of Weissenburg in Weissenbnig.
Alsace (c. 868).
The very fact that Otfrid's work — The Book of the Gos-
pels in the Vernacular, as he calls it himself — is known as
the first specimen of rhymed verse in German
literature, is significant of the tendency of that ^°'
time. Otfrid's personal reason for discarding alliterative
verse and adopting rhyme in its stead was his hatred of
what he calls" " the obscene songs of the laymen," i.e., the
' The same prevalence of Christian over Germanic conceptions
which marks Otfrid's poem is found in the so-called Ludwigslied
{MSD. I, 24 ff. Piper /. c. 258 &.), a song of triumph written in S81
by a Prankish ecclesiastic to celebrate the victory, in the battle of Sau-
court, of the West-Frankish king over an army of piratical Norsemen.
The inroad of the Norsemen appears here as a visitation sent by God
to try the king's heart ; and the Prankish army enters the battle sing-
ins; a Kyrie eleison. Cf. E. Dummler, Gesch. des ostfrdnk. Retches'
II f, 152 ff. Kelle /. c.p. 177.
'" Otfrid's Evangelienbuch ed. Erdmann, praef. ad Liutbertum 5. —
Otfrid was a disciple of Hrabanus Maurijs, abbot of Pulda and arch-
bishop of Mainz, the foremost representative of clerical learning
among the Germans of the ninth century.
42 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
popular epic ballads. As these still preserved the alliter-
ative measure, Otfrid could not have marked his opposi-
tion to them more effectively than by introducing a poeti-
cal form hallowed by the example of the great hymn-writers
of the Latin church. But there can be little doubt that
alliterative verse itself in the middle of the ninth century
had already begun to decay, and to lose its hold upon the
people at large. Limited as it was to the portrayal of a
primitive, sturdy, unreflective life, it would have given way,
even without Otfrid's initiative, to a poetic form better
adapted to the emotional, reflective, spiritual state of mind
which now was in the ascendency, and which Otfrid him-
self so well represents.
Nothing is more characteristic of his way of looking
at things than the division of his work into five books
and his justification of it. "Although," he says,"
ATjaenoeof "there are only four gospels, I have divided
epio quality. ^ , .
the narrative of Christ's life into five books, be-
cause they are intended to purify our five senses. What-
ever sin, through sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, we
are led to commit, we can purge our corruption through
reading these books. Let vulgar sight be blinded, our in-
ternal eye being illumined by evangelic words ; let vile
hearing cease to be harmful to our heart ; let smell and
taste be made susceptible to Christian sweetness ; let the
touch of memory always rest on sacred lessons." Only,
then, as revelations of some deeper religious truth have the
phenomena of outward life any interest for Otfrid. He
altogether lacks that delight in the surface of things, that
sympathy with the visible world, that joy in mere being and
doing, which more than anything else makes the epic poet.
Consequently his descriptions of actual scenes are far in-
ferior to those in the Heljand. The turning of the water
into wine at the marriage-feast in Cana, which in the Saxon
" Otfrid 45.
MEDIMVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 43
poem is filled with the uproarious joy of Germanic holiday
life, is introduced by Otfrid with the dry remark :"
" Meanwhile the beverage gave out, and there was a lack of
wine." The Sermon on the Mount, which to his predeces-
sor gave an opportunity of presenting an impressive picture
of a large popular gathering, Otfrid prefaces by saying :"
" When the Lord saw the multitude coming together, he
received them with kind eyes and went to a mountain, and
when he sat down his disciples stepped up to him, as was
their duty. And he opened his mouth and imparted to
them the greatest of treasures."
But this lack, in Otfrid, of descriptive power and epic
emphasis is outweighed, on the other hand, by a sweetness
and tenderness of the inner life of which the
author of the Heljand knew nothing. It is in f ^ilJisfs of tts
inner life.
Otfrid's poem that we first meet those beauti-
ful, idyllic pictures of the Annunciation, of Christ's birth,
of the Chant of the Shepherds, and other scenes of the
Saviour's youth, in nearly the same form in which later
they became the favourite subjects of mediaeval poets,
painters, and sculptors. Even the master of the Cologne
altar-piece does not excel in naive gracefulness and inno-
cence the description by Otfrid of Gabriel's entrance into
the Virgin's chamber": " There came a messenger from
God, an angel from heaven, he brought to this world
precious tidings. He flew the sun's path, the road of the
stars, the way of the clouds to the sacred Virgin, the noble
mistress, Mary herself. He went into the palace and found
her in sadness, the psalm-book in her hand, singing from
it, working embroidery of costly cloth. And he spoke to
her reverently, as a man shall speak to a woman, a mes-
senger to his mistress : ' Hail to thee, lovely maiden, beau-
tiful virgin, of all women dearest to God. Do not tremble
in thy heart, nor turn the colour of thy face ; thou art full of
5» Otfrid II, 8, II. " lb. II, 15. 13 ff. " lb- I. 5. 3 «•
44 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
the grace of God. The prophets have sung of thee, blissful
one, all the worlds they have turned towards thee, of old.
Immaculate gem, O beautiful maiden, the dearest of
mothers thou shalt be ! ' " No poet has sung more touch-
ingly than the Weissenburg monk of Mary's joy in nursing
her baby." " With delight she gave him her virgin's breast,
not did she avoid showing that she was suckling him. Hail
to the breast which Christ himself has kissed, and to the
mother who spoke to him and covered him. Hail to her
who rocked him and held him in her lap, who sweetly put
him to sleep, and laid him beside her. Blessed she who
clothed him and swaddled him and who lay in the same
bed with such a child."
And even the frequent symbolic interpretations which
Otfrid is so fond of adding to his nairrative, and which
have given so much offence to his modern critics,
ym sm. gjjow at least how deeply imbued this earnest
soul was with spiritual problems, and how devotedly he
clung to the ideals of his life. Who would, for instance,
dare to ridicule the following contemplation, occasioned by
the mention of the fact that the Magi returned home on a
different road from that which they had travelled in search
of Bethlehem" ?—
" By this journey we also are admonished to think of the return to
our native land. Our native land is Paradise, the land where there is
life without death, light without darkness, and eternal joy. We have
left it, lost it through trespassing ; our heart's wanton desire seduced
us. Now we are weeping, exiled in a foreign land. O foreign
land, how hard thou art, how heavy to bear ! , In sorrow live those
who are away from home, I have felt it myself. No other good 1
found abroad than sadness, a woeful heart and manifold pain. Su
then, like the Magi, let us take another road, the path thai brings us
back to our own native land. That lovely path demands pure leet ;
and if thou wishest to tread it, let humility live in thy heart and tru*
love, for evermore. Give thyself up joyfully to abstinence ; do not
listen to thy own will ; into the pureness of thy heart let not the lust
"Otfrid I, II, 37 ff- '' Il>- I. i8.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 45
of the world enier ; flee the sight of present things. Lo, this is the
other path. Tread the path, it will bring thee home."
The tenth and the first half of the eleventh century, as
was said before, are marked by an intense national move-
ment: under Henry I. (919-936) an independent, Eealisticoiia-
distinctively German kingdom is founded; Otto '* "^'aim'*
I. (936-973) adds to this the revived imperial tnreoftlie
dignity; Henry III. (10^9-1056) appears as the tonthand
, , / -f^^ -^ ^„ ,. eleventh cen-
acknovvledged master of Europe. But this re- turies.
newed national life bears an unmistakably ecclesiastical
stamp. The monasteries, such as St. Gallen, Reichenau,
Fulda, Gandersheim, are the principal seats of learning and
culture ; the archbishoprics and bishoprics, such as Mainz,
Trier, Koln, Metz, Speier, Constanz, Regensburg, Hildes-
heim, are the main centres of commercial' and political
activity; the clergy are the chief support and stay of the
central government, intimately connected with the every-day
life of the people, in close contact with its work and its joys
in field and market-place. This state of things brings about
a new turn in the intellectual development and gives to the
literature of the period its peculiar, double-faced appear-
ance. It makes monks the biographers of kings, it opens
the gates of nunneries to Ovid's Ars amandi and the
realistic Roman comedy; it calls forth a numerous class of
writings devoted to those very subjects from which Otfrid
had turned away in holy horror : scenes of actual, present
life, but couched in Latin, the language of the learned. It
produces, in short, a clerical literature which, to a very large
extent at least, is decidedly unclerical ; it gives place within
the ranks of the clergy themselves to a reaction of the
national, sensual, real, against the universal, spiritual, ideal.
One of the most interesting figures at the court of Otto I.
is Liudprand, bishop of Cremona, a Lombard
by birth, well versed in affairs, indefatigable ^^^^*°^
in diplomatic machinations and intrigues, of
a passionate, ambitious, vindictive temper. In 968 he
46 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
was sent by his master on a diplomatic mission to the
Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus. This mission entirely
failed; Liudprand was not even treated with a minimum of
international courtesy; he was, as we should say, given the
cold shoulder both by the emperor and his courtiers. On
his return, he wrote a report of his stay at Constantinople
which in tartness of expression, bitterness of invective, and
grotesqueness of caricature ranks among the most remark-
able documents of mediaeval literature.
This is the description which Liudprand gives of the
personal appearance of the Byzantine emperor " :
" On the holy Whitsunday, in the Hall of Coronation, I was brought
before Nicephorus, a man of most extraordinary appearance, a pygmy
with a swollen head and small eyes like those of a mole, disfigured by
a short, broad, thick grayish beard, with a neck about an inch long.
His long dense hair gives him the appearance of ■» hog, in com-
plexion he looks like an Ethiopian; he is one of those whom you
wouldn't care to meet at midnight. Moreover, he has a puffed-up
paunch, thin hips, disproportionately long shanks, and short legs.
Only his feet are in good proportion. He was dressed in a precious
state garment, which, however, from old age and long use was faded
and had a very musty smell."
And the following is the picture he draws of one of the
great occasions in Byzantine court life, the solemn Pentecost
procession of the emperor to the Hagia Sophia":
" A large crowd of merchants and other common people had g^athered
for the reception of Nicephorus and stood like walls on both sides o(
the street from the palace to the cathedral, disfigured by small thin
shields and miserable-looking lances. The contemptibleness ol
" Liudprandi Relatio de legatione Constantinopol. ed. Dilmmler c. 3.
" lb. c. g. 10.— That Liudprand in spite of his Italian extraction
and surroundings (cf. Wattenbach GeschichtsquelUn = I, 391) had a most
pronounced Germanic race feeling is proven by his violent decla-
mations against the Romans, "quos nos, Langobardi scilicet. Sax-
ones, Franci, Lotharingi, Bagoarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tamo
indignamur, ut inimicos nostros commoti nil aliud contumeliarum,
nisi : Romane ! dicamus." lb. c. 12.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 47
their appearance was heightened by the fact that the larger part of this
rabble, in honour of the emperor, had marched up barefoot. But even
among the grandees of his court, who proceeded with him through the
ranlcs of this barefooted populace, there was hardly any one who wore
a garment which his grandfather had worn new. With gold or
precious stones no one was decorated, except Nicephorus, who in his
long imperial garment, made after the measure of his predecessors,
looked all the more abominable. They had given me a place on a
stand next to the imperial choir of singers. When he now came along
like a creeping worm, the choir struck up this hymn: ' Lo ! there
comes the morning star ! Lucifer is rising ! his glance is a reflection
of the sunbeams ! the pale death of the Saracens ! Nicephorus the
ruler ! ' Much more fittingly would they have sung something like
this: 'You burned-out coal, you old hussy, you ugly ape, you goat-
footed, horned faun, you shaggy, stubborn, boorish barbarian.'
Thus then, puffed up by deceitful eulogies, the emperor enters the
church of the Hagia Sophia."
If a bishop condescended to depict events of contempo-
rary history in a manner which comes near the sensationalism
of modern newspaper style, one will not be sur- ^ ,., .
prised to find that the fiction of the time also, Eciasis Oap-
although it emanated exclusively from the cells ^^'
of the monks and the cloister school-rooms, was at bottom
thoroughly realistic and responded, on its part, to the popular
demand for broad facts and blunt actuality. In the pre-
ceding chapter the fact was mentioned that about the year
930 the monk Ekkehard I. of St. Gallen treated in Latin hex-
ameter the saga of Walthari, the hero of Aquitaine, and his
fight in the Vosges mountains with King Gunther and his
vassals ; and it will be remembered how faithfully and with
what apparent delight the translator reproduced the graphic
bluntness and rugged ferocity of the old Germanic tale."
About the same time another monk, whose name has not
been preserved to us, was led through strange personal
experiences to produce the first connected animal story of
German literature, the Ecbasis cuiusdam captivi. He seems
" Supra p. 22 f.
4^ SOCIAL PORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
to have been an exuberant, unruly fellow, fond of roving
and outdoor sports, who naturally found it very hard to
submit to the strict, monotonous discipline of the monastery.
Several times he escaped from it, but was caught and
forced back to the life so distasteful to him. At last, in the
desolation of his heart, he took refuge in poetry and repre-
sented his own unlucky escapades under the disguise of the
adventures of a calf, which, left alone in the barn, while all
the other cattle had been driven to pasture, finally broke
loose and started in search of his mother. At least a few
scenes from this poem may be selected, showing how atten-
tively this monk must have listened to the sounds of nature,
hpw deeply he must have been in sympathy with the life
around him in forest and field. After sporting about in the
meadows to his heart's content, the calf towards evening
seeks the shelter of the woods. There he is met by the
wolf, the forester, and at once taken to his den, situated
under bold rocks, near a lustily flowing torrent. As it is
Lenten time, the wolf has been living for months on a very
light diet; vegetables, and some trout and salmon furnished
him by his two servants, the urchin and the otter, being his
daily food. No wonder that he welcomes the calf most
cordially. He invites him to share in his supper and offers
him a shelter for the night, but announces at the same time
that he is to be eaten up for dinner to-morrow, orders being
given to the steward to put him on the table raw, with a
little salt and spicy dressing, but for heaven's sake with-
out beans." Things, however, turn out well for the calf.
In the morning the mournful lowing of the mother cow
calls the attention of the shepherd to his absence. A dog,
familiar with all the highways and byways of the region,
reports that last night he heard a great deal of noise in a
robber's den up in the mountains. So the whole herd, the
mighty bull at their head, start out to besiege the wolf's
'" Ecbasis Caftivi ed. E. Voigt v. 69 ff.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 4$
fastness, and with the assistance of the fox, who has an old
grudge against him," the wolf is overcome, and the calf
trots off by the side of his mother.
It has often been pointed out what a remarkably active
part the women of the tenth century seem to have played in
politics and literature. Side by side with the inflnenoeof
heroic figures of Henry I. and Otto I. stand the women in the
venerable forms of Mathilda and Editha, their EosrithaoT^'
pious wives, and the reigns of Otto II. and Otto Gandersheim.
III. bear most decided traces of the influence which two
royal women, Adelheid and Theophano, exercised upon the
political and intellectual life of their time. Well known
is Hadwig, Duchess of Swabia, a niece of Otto the Great,
a strong-minded, almost manly woman, who whiled away
the loneliness of her early widowhood in the study of Greek
and Latin and in intercourse with learned men, such as
Ekkehard, the monk of St. Gallen."' Her sister Gerbirg
was abbess of the monastery of Gandersheim and likewise
famous for her thorough knowledge of the ancient authors.
All the more noteworthy is it, therefore, that the most refined
and most highly cultured of all these women of the tenth
century, Rosvitha of Gandersheim, surrounded as she was
by the atmosphere of the nunnery, and filled as she was
'' The origin of the hostility between fox and wolf is related in a
long digression, v. 392-1097, which indeed forms the larger half of the
poem. Thefirst comprehensive animal-epic is the /jf»^>'jOT»j(c. 1148).
" Ekkehard II., tutor of the emperor Otto II., not the author of
Waltharius. — Foremost among the representatives of clerical learning
in the tenth and eleventh centuries are Ekkehard's cousin Notker III.,
surnamed the German (d. 1022), the head of the St. Gallen cloister-
school, the translator of the Psalms, of Boethius, Aristotle, and Mar-
cianus Capella; Williram abbot of Ebersberg, author of a paraphrase
of the Song of Solomon (c. 1065) ; the historians Widukind of Corvey
{Res gestae Saxonicae, c. 967), Thietmar of Merseburg (Chronicon,
I0i8), Ekkehard IV. of St. GaWen (Casus S. Galli, c. 1035), Hermann of
Reichenau {Chronicon, 1054), Adam of Bremen {Gesta pontificum
Hammenburgensium, c. 1072), Lambert of Hersfeld {Annales, 1077).
50 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
with a fiery enthusiasm for Christian holiness and purity,
was carried away by the naturalistic current of the time,
like the rest of her contemporaries. The one theme of het
plays— which, by the way, are the first dramatic attempts in
the literatures of modern Europe— is the battle of vice and
virtue, the triumph of Christian martyrdom over the tempta<
tions and sins of this world. But the world is not a
shadowy abstraction to this maiden dramatist, as it has been
and is to so many didactic and homiletic writers. It is a
living being, a monster to be sure, heinous and doomed, but
yet alluring and strangely human. None of her plays passes
beyond the range of a dramatic sketch. Most of them con-
sist only of a few scenes. There is hardly any attempt at
the development of character. But it is astonishing how
well Rosvitha understands with a few bold touches, with a
few glaring colours, to bring before us an image of life.
Here are two scenes of her Dulcitius, a play which very
properly has been called a sacred farce." Dulcitius, a
Roman general, has, by order of the emperor
Duloitlns. Diocletian, thrown three Christian maidens
into prison. Seized with wanton desire, he goes to see
them at night. On approaching the prison he asks the
guard : " How do the prisoners behave themselves to-
night ? " Guard : " They are singing hymns. " Dulc: " Let
us go nearer." Guard: "You can hear the silvery sound
of their voices from afar." Dulc: "You stand here and
keep watch with the lanterns ; I'll go and see them my-
self." The next scene shows the interior of the prison
with the three maidens. Agape, Irene, Chionia. Agape :
" What a noise there is in front of the door ! " Irene :
" The wretched Dulcitius enters." Chiona: " God be with
us!" Agape: "Amen." Chiona: " What can that clatter
mean among the pots and kettles and pans in the kitchen ? "
Irene : " Let us see what it is. Come let us look through
" C£. Die Werke der Hrotsvitha ed. K. A. Barack p. l8o ff.
MEDIMVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. $1
the chinks of the wall." Agape : " What do you see ? "
Irene: "The fool, he is out of his mind; he fancies he
is embracing us." Agape: "Why, what does he do?"
Irene : " He is holding the pots caressingly on his lap.
Now he goes for the pans and kettles and kisses them ten-
derly." Chiona : " How funny ! " Irene : " And his face
and his hands and his clothes are soiled and blackened all
over by his imaginary sweethearts." Chiona : " That is
right : it is the colosr of Satan, who possesses him."
In another play, entitled Abraham, an old hermit of that
name hears that his stepdaughter, after having eloped with
an adventurer, is now living in abject misery.
He at once sets out to rescue her, and finds
her in a house of ill-repute. Having introduced himself
under a false name, he comes to see the full depth of moral
wretchedness into which the poor woman has fallen. Then
throwing off his mask, he exclaims": "O my daughter,
part of my soul, Maria, do you recognise the old man who
with fatherly love brought you up and betrothed you to
the Son of the Heavenly Ruler ? " Now there ensues the
following dialogue, which one would not be surprised to
find in a drama of Sardou. Maria : " Woe is me ! My
father and teacher Abraham it is whom I hear." Abra-
ham : " What is it, child ? " M. : " Oh, misery ! " A. :
" Whither has nown that sweet angelic voice which formerly
was yours ? " M. : " Gone, forever gone ! " A. : " Your
m^den purity, yv>ur virgin modesty, where are they ? " M. :
" Lost, irretrievably lost." A.: " What reward, unless you
repent, is btfore you ? You that plunged wilfully from
heavenly heights into the depths of hell!" M.: "Oh!"
A.: "Why did you flee from me? Why did you conceal
your misery from me — from me who would have prayed
and done penance for you ? " M. : " After I had fallen a
victim to sin I did not dare approach you." A.: " To sin
'* Hrotsvitha 22q ff. For the Callinwchus cf. Scherer I.e. 58.
52 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
is human, to persist in sin is devilish. He who stumbles
is not to be blamed, only he who neglects to rise as quickly
as possible." M. (throwing herself down): "Woe is me,
miserable one ! " A. : " What do you throw yourself down ?
Why do you lie on the ground motionless ? Arise ! Listen
to my words."
As the last example of the predominance of the realistic
taste in the clerical literature of the tenth and eleventh
centuries a work may briefly be mentioned
Enodlie . ^hich has been called the first novel of modern
European literature, the Ruodlieb, written by an unknown
monk of the Bavarian monastery Tegernsee about 1030.
Under the form of a story of love and adventure, into
which we cannot here enter, this work gives us a vivid
and complete picture of German life in the first half of
the eleventh century."" We see the king, surrounded by
his vassals in ceremonious splendour; we see a most elabo-
rate, somewhat heavy etiquette of courtly manners ; we see
a rural population, rough and uncultivated, but full of sturdy
thriftiness. We have hunting and fishing scenes, battles
and diplomatic negotiations,"" country fairs, murders, mobs,
criminal proceedings, flirtations, weddings, scenes of domes-
tic happiness and misfortune, — hardly any feature of life
remains untouched. And here again, as in the works men-
tioned before, we find a carefulness of delineation, an exact-
ness in reproducing outward happenings, and a realistic love
of detail which is truly astonishing, and which we should
hardly expect in men drawn by their calling towards the
spiritual, if we did not know that by the same class of men
were done those wonderfully minute and careful illumina-
" Cf. Ruodlieb ed. F. Seiler, introd. p. 8r.
°^ One of these negotiations, /. c.p. 226 flf., is depicted so much in
accordance with historical reports about a meeting between emperor
Henry II. and king Robert of France, which toolc place in 1023, that
W. V. Giesebrecht, ICaiserzeit^ II, 602, has felt justified to use this
chapter of the Ruodlieb as a historical document.
MEDIJEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 53
tions and miniatures of mediaeval manuscripts, which bring
the life of the Middle Ages perhaps more vividly before our
eyes than anything else can do.
From the middle of the eleventh to the last decades of
the twelfth century there follows a transition-period. Two
events of far-reaching import stand in the fore- New impnlse
ground of the political interest of this epoch: 5'™''*°
a r r- national life
the struggle between church and state, and the thionghthe
beginning of the crusades. Both events, while investiture
. oonnicts and
raising the supremacy of the church to its highest the ornaades.
pitch, at the same time set free popular forces hitherto
bound. To be sure, both the crusades and the wars of
investiture had their evil consequences, the former by fos-
tering that spirit of aimless adventure and waste of energy
which found its most characteristic type in the figure of the
knight-errant, the latter by giving rise to a violent party
hatred which prevented the formation of a strong national
executive. But what do these evils count compared with
the elevation of the whole national life, the quickening of
religious feeling, the widening of the intellectual horizon,
brought about by these great movements ?
Whether priests should be allowed to rharry; whether the
king or the pope was to appoint bishops; whether the pope
had the right to absolve subjects from their oath of
allegiance to the king, — these were questions, not of theo-
logical interest, but of the most direct bearing on the every-
day life of the people. And the mere putting of these
questions could not fail to bring both clergy and laity into
closer contact with the great problems of the day; so that
it is perhaps not too much to say that the struggle between
church and state at the time of Gregory VII. created public
opinion in Germany, and not only in Germany but in
Europe. On the other hand, however large an admixture
of worldly motives there may have been in the crusade
enthusiasm, it certainly cannot be denied that here, for the
first time in history, we find the leading classes of Europe;,
54 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the clergy and the nobility, united in one great ideal under-
taking, an undertaking which lifts even the average man
into a higher sphere and kindles a flame of human brother-
hood even in enemies.
In short, the time of fulfilment is ripening, a time is
approaching which will make the spiritual worldly and the
worldly spiritual, and bring forth a literature more real than
the speculative flight of Otfrid's asceticism and more ideal
than the narrow sensualism of the Ruodlieb. Let us take a
brief glance at the literary symptoms of this approaching
reconciliation.
A fact not without importance, which, however, can here
be only hinted at, is the stepping into prominence, at the
The Spiel- beginning of the twelfth century, of the minstrel
mannsdioh- poetry. When, after the period- of the Migra-
Ertler.^Hw- tions, the old heroic poetry was banished from
i!og Ernst, the banquet-halls of kings, it took refuge with
the lower people, and became the property of wandering
gleemen. During the centuries of prevailing clerical litera-
ture these popular singers seem to have led a very humble
and, as a rule, a rather doubtful existence, ranking in
the same class with jugglers and tricksters, and appealing
in the main to a vulgar taste." Now the social position of
these minstrels begins to be raised, they begin to regain
the favour of the nobility, they begin to assume a more dig-
" Still cruder are such poems as St. Oswald (cf. Die Spielmanns-
dichtung, DNL. II, \, p. 146 ff.), Orendel {ib. 170 ff.), Salman und
Morolf {ib. 196 ff.), clumsy conglomerations of fantastic adventure,
farcical satire, and commonplace morality. Tliey are, however, note-
worthy as testifying to the social aspirations of the gleemen of the
twelfth century. In every one of these poems the gleeman (for in St.
Oswald the raven takes the gleeman's r6Ie) performs an important
part, as merrymaker, as messenger, as trusty and shrewd counsellor,
as indefatigable helper in need. In Salman und Morolf, king Solo-
mon himself is entirely overshadowed by his versatile brother, who
very fittingly has been called the ideal gleeman. Cf. W. Golther,
Ccsch. d. d. Lift, bis z, Ausg. d. MA. p. no.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 55
nified tone. And what is most significant, they treat by
preference subjects which show the influence of the cru-
sades. No doubt the sensational still prevails in these
poems. Even in the best of them, such as Konig Rother
(c. 1150) and Herzog Ernst (c. 1175), '^e imagination is
crowded with stupendous monstrosities. King Rother on his
voyage to Constantinople is accompanied by giants, one of
whom is so ferocious that he must be led by a chain, while
another is so abnormally strong that when he stamps his
foot it goes into the ground up to his knee."' Duke Ernst,
during his adventurous expeditions in the Orient, fights
against cranes and griffins, pygmies and giants, against men
so flat-footed that they use their feet as umbrellas, against
others with ears so long that they cover their nakedness
with them." However absurd such exaggerations appear to
us, even these exotic extravagances throw light on the influx
of new ideas brought about through the crusades. And
in this lies the chief importance of the minstrel song as a
whole. It shows that the representation of that which is
near at hand and familiar does not any longer satisfy the
popular taste; that men are attempting to assimilate foreign
ideas; that the distant begins to exert its fantastic charm;
that German literature is beginning to take flights into
regions heretofore unexplored.
Of still greater significance than this development of the
minstrel song is a revolution which simultaneously takes
place in the form and spirit of the clerical litera- „ ,, ,.
' '^ New idealism
ture. It has been made sufficiently clear, it seems, inolerioal
that this literature— although confined to Latin, literate.
the language of books and of the past, as its vehicle of
expression — was up to this time mainly given over to a
portrayal of things present and visible. Now we observe a
change in both respects. The clerical writers begin to
" Konig Rother ed. H. Ruckert v. 758 ff. 942 f.
" Herzog Ernst ed. K. Bartsch v. 2845 ff. 4114 ff. 4669 ff. 4813 ff.
S6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
adopt the German language, and at the same time they
begin to imbue their writings with a larger sentiment, to
evince a higher view of human life, to draw characters of
a deeper meaning, to bestow less attention upon accurate
description of details, and to bring out more fully the out-
lines and proportions of the whole. Let us observe the
manifestations of this new spirit in two poems,'" which
belong to the best productions of clerical literature in the
twelfth century, and which stand fittingly at the close of
this review of the preclassic period in the mediaeval litera-
ture of Germany: the Rolandslied of the pfaffe Konrad
(c. 1 132) and xh& Alexanderlied of the pfaffe Lamprecht
(c. 1 138).
A comparison of the German Rolandslied with its French
model cannot but be unfavourable to the former. It alto-
gether lacks that patriotic joyousness, that fierv
Eolandslied. ^ ^, - r << ^ -c- .. j . , •
enthusiasm for sweet France and her glorious
heroes, which make the Chanson de Roland such an impor-
tant testimony to the growth of French national feeling.
"• These two poems, however, do not stand alone. The same com-
bination of the worldly and the spiritual which we observe in the
Rolandslied a.x\A Alexanderlied\s manifested in not a small number of
clerical poems of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, of which it may
suffice here to mention Ezzo's Song of Redemption (c. 1060), the Wiener
Genesis (c. 1070), the Annolied (before iioo), the so-called elder
Judith (c. Ilio), the Life Of Jesus formerly ascribed to the nun Ava
(c. 1120), the Kaiserchronik {c. 1150, written probably by Konrad, the
author of the Rolandslied), the Amsteiner Marienleich (c. 1150), the
Life of Mary by the priest Wernher (c. 11 72), the legend of Pilatus
(c. 1 180). Cf. MSD.; Piper, D.geistl. Dichtung d. MA., DNL. Ill ;
and Spielmannsdichtung I, c. II, 2. All these poems are marked by
childlike purity of feeling and simple delight in the passing show of
existence, and at the same time betray a deep sense of the eternal
mystery of things. On the other hand, even in the violent declama-
tions of Heinrich of Melk (c. 1160, cf. H. Hildebrand, Didaktik aus
d. Zt. d. Kreuzziige, DNL. IX, 6g ff.) against the world and its
treacherous splendour there is a power of human passion which shows
that he, too, felt himself under the spell of the world's realities.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 57
But this lack of a strong national consciousness in the
German poem we are made to forget by a religious fervour
which is not of the monkish, world-abjuring type, but
heroic, masculine, world-conquering. Not until our own
century, when Uhland's ballads infused a new life into
the old legend, has the tale of Kaiser Karl and his pala-
dins received a more worthy interpretation in German
literature than in the Rolandslied. As Karl Bartsch has
said," " the spirit of the Old Testament breathes in this
poem."
What a wonderful majesty is poured out over the figure of
emperor Karl! When he hears of the heathenish horrors in
Spain, that the Saracens venerate idols and have no fear of
God, he grows very sad and beseeches the Creator of man-
kind to rescue his people and to deliver heathendom from
the dark night of hell. An angel appears calling upon him
to go forth and fight against the reprobate. All night the
emperor lies in fervent prayer; in the morning he summons
his twelve paladins and tells them that they are chosen to
win the crown of martyrdom, which shines as brightly as
the morning star." When the messengers of the Saracens,
bearing a deceitful offer of submission, appear before him,
they find him playing at chess. Without asking, they recog-
nise him by the fiery glance of his eyes, which they can bear
as little as the rays of the midday sun. Three times the
chief of the ambassadors addresses him, declaring the will-
ingness of his master to accept Christianity. The emperor,
his head bowed down, listens silently; at last he raises his
face and, as if moved by divine inspiration, breaks out in
praise of the Almighty."
What a truly great picture of Christian heroism is the
scene of Roland's death on the battle-field of Roncesval !
After accomplishing most wonderful deeds of prowess,
" Das Rolandslied ed. Bartsch, introd. p. 14.
»« lb. V. 31 ff. 83 /^. j,_ 675 f[.
58 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
mortally wounded, he sits down on the stump of a tree. A
Saracen, believing him dead, steals up to him to rob him
of his sword and horn. But Roland, lifting his horn, breaks
it upon the helmet of the coward so that the blood leaps
forth from his eyes. Then, feeling that his hour has come,
he tries to destroy his dear sword Durendarte. He grasps
it with both hands; ten times he dashes it against the rock,
but in vain: the sword remains without notch or blemish.
Now he addresses it, calls up the memory of all the deeds
which it has done, of all the enemies which it has con-
quered, and then bids it farewell. He takes off his gauntlet
and holds it up to heaven; an angel appears and receives
it. Roland commends his soul to the heavenly Father;
and as he dies, the earth quivers, the thunder rolls, the sun
is darkened, and the sea is swept by mighty whirlwinds."
If in the Rolandslied the ideal religious hero of the time
of the crusades is exhibited, the author of the Alexanderlied
makes at least an attempt at representine the
Alexanderlied. . , , , „ , „^,
ideal worldly hero. What strange transforma-
tions the great Alexander has undergone from the time of
his death to the twelfth century! Almost all the nations of
southern Europe and the Orient have contributed in chang-
ing him from an historical figure into a hero of legend.
The Greeks saw in him a new Dionysos. The Egyptians
made him the son of a fabulous magician. The Jews re-
garded him as the representative of human presumptuous-
ness, and told of his attempted conquest of paradise. The
Byzantines made him a predecessor of their emperors, and
tried to back up their claims on Italy with a fictitious Italian
expedition of his. The Persians changed him into the hero
of a fairy tale, who knows the hidden powers of nature and
who lives entirely in a world of the incredible. All these
traits we see combined in the German Alexanderlied ; and
if the combination is neither very original — for its author,
' Rolandslied v. bTji S.
MEDIEVAL HIERARCHY AND FEUDALISM. 59
like the poet of the RolandsLied, worked after a French
model" — nor artistically altogether satisfactory, it shows
at least an honest attempt to focus the manifold and di-
verging rays of character, to penetrate into the mystery of
genius, to look at human life from a free and elevated
standpoint.
We may smile at the naive way in which the poet, in
order to suggest the supernatural greatness and fertility of
his hero's mind, lends to his body a most fanciful mixture
of animal characteristics, making him look like a wolf
standing over his prey; with hair, red and shaggy, like the
fins of a sea-monster or the mane of a lion; his one eye
blue, like that of a dragon, the other black, like that of a
griffin/" But we can have nothing but admiration for the
truly human large-mindedness with which the same poet
knows how to treat the heroic as well as the humble, the
passionate as well as the gentle, the active and the con-
templative, the sublime and the graceful, the gigantic and
the sentimental. The description of the grief of the Per-
sians over the defeat of Darius" is pathetic in the extreme.
" When the message came into Persia that the king had been
beaten, grief and sorrow were great overall the land. There was many
a one that bewailed and wept over the loss of his fellow; the father
wept over his child; the sister over her brother; the mother over her
son; the betrothed over her lover. The boys in the streets, gathered
for play, wept for their lords and masters. The infants lying in the
cradle wept with their elders. Moon and sun were darkened and
turned away from the terrible slaughter, Darius himself went up into
'* Cf. Lamfrecht's Alexander ed. Kinzel v. 13 :
Alberich von Bisinzo
der brahte uns diz lit zft.
er hetez in walhisken getihtet.
Since only a few fragmentary lines of this poem have been pre-
served to as, it is impossible to decide how far Lamprecht is indebted
to it. So much is clear, that he did not follow it slavishly. Cf.
Kinzel's introd. p. 29. For an analysis of the poem cf. Gervinus,
Ge. 56, 14 ff. " 76. 3, I ff.; the I-eicA.
" lb. 81, 7 ff. Cf. his manly conception of honour 102, 29 ff.
" Ih. 124, I ff.
76 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
know where he was. In a little dramatic poem he bids
farewell to lady World, the devil's innkeeper." " Lady
World," he says, "tell your host that I have paid him
squarely. Let him strike my name from the book; I have
paid off my debt. He who owes him has many sorrows.
Before incurring a debt with him, I would rather borrow
from a Jew. He waits until the fatal day, but then he
takes a pledge from him that cannot pay." Lady World
tries to keep Walther; she reminds him of the joys that she
has given him, of the loneliness that will befall him without
her. But Walther knows her only too well: "Your face is
beautiful and fair, but at your back there are horrible mon-
sters; always will I hate you. God give you a good night,
lady World; I must go to my own resting-place."
The second important outgrowth of chivalrous civiliza-
tion consists in the revival which the ancient Germanic
The Middle hero-saga received at the hands of wandering
High German minstrels, in other words, in the Middle High
folk-epio. German folk-epics. The principal subjects
of these epics — the Nibelungen legend, the Gudrun legend,
the legends of Dietrich von Bern, of Walthari, of Ortnit
and Wolfdietrich — we have considered in connection with
the time in which they first took shape, the period of the
Migrations. What interests us here is certain features of
their remodelled form which reflect the age of knightly
culture and refinement.
That from an artistic point of view the change from the
heroic freedom of the old Germanic epic to the conven-
,, , ... tional courtliness and the equally conventional
of the ancient grotesqueness of minstrel poetry was far from
heio-saga, being a gain is too apparent to require more than
passing comment. One need only compare the endless
descriptions of knightly pomp and tournament, of gorgeous
costumes and weapons, of decorous speeches and blameless
" Walther von d. Vogelweide ed. W. Wilmanns lOO, 24 £f.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. J J
manners, which form the bulk of poems like Orinit, Wolf-
dietrich, Virginal, Biterolf und DieUeib (thirteenth century),
with the tragic brevity and compactness of the ancient lay of
Hildebrand; or the clownish brutality of such a character
as the monk Ilsan, the most striking figure of the Rosengarten
(also thirteenth century), with the truly humorous grimness
that pervades the concluding scenes of Ekkehard's Waltha-
rius," in order to feel the world-wide difference between
genuine and borrowed poetry. And it cannot be denied
that even the foremost among the poems which proceeded
from these attempts at resuscitating old Germanic hero-life,
that even the Nibelungenlied and Gudrun,'* are far removed
from that organic unity which is the truest sign of a natural
artistic growth. They give the impression of ruins modern-
ized. The gigantic outlines of the original plan are, in part
at least, still to be seen; but they are seen side by side with
meaningless patchwork, and the sombre grandeur of the
whole is disturbed through the not infrequent effort at
imparting to the old subject a new, aristocratic lustre.
At the same time, it must be said that the life portrayed
in these epics shows unmistakably a moral progress over
the life portrayed in the ancient Germanic hfero-saga. It
shows a more fully developed inner cojisciousness, a more"
"' Cf. supra p. 23. Extracts from the poems mentioned, with biblio-
graphy, in E. Henrici, Das deutsche Heldenbuch, DNLMII. Notable for
their pathetic beauty, and undoubtedly remnants of the older heroic
poetry, are such scenes as the combat of young Alphart with Witege
and Heime in Alpharts Tod (Henrici /. c. p. 259 ff.), and the death of
Ezzel's two sons in Die Rabenschlacht (ii. 272 ff.).
'^ Both the Nibelungenlied and Gudrun are the productions of indi-
vidual poets who attempted to weld together the older epic material
handed down to them in a variety of shorter lays. The name of
neither of these poets is known to us ; both, however, were Austrians.
The Nibelungenlied was composed between 119O and 1200 ; Gudrun
between 1210 and 1215. For the theories of Lachmann and MUllen-
hoff, and a full bibliography of both poems, cf. the introductions to
the editions in vol. VI, i and 2 of the DNL.
78 SOCIAL FORCES JN GERMAN LITERATURE.
subtle sense of duty, a finer imagination, a clearer apprecia-
tion of self-discipline, a greater susceptibility to ideal
demands. It shows the civilizing influence- j3Qth of the
mediaeval church and the mediaeval state; it shows the_Xen-
dency of chivalric society toward a reconciliation~Q£_the
worldly and the spiritual.
Striking is the contrast in which the lays which are welded
together in iheNibelungenlied stand to the old sagas of Sigurd
Nitelimgeii- ^'^^ Brynhild. To be sure, these lays, as well as
lied, the older ones, are filled with crimt -and~h^red
and wild passion. Like their ancient prototypes, they extol
the manly virtues of physical prowess and reckless bravery.
But far more forcibly than in the former stands out in them
the image of womanly tenderness and sweet^ness ; and
through the din of strife and battle there rings for^TaTclear
voice of humanity and faith. Their subject is not so much
how revenge follows crime, as how joy turns to sorrow; "
their principal characters are not fierce Sigurd and Bryn-
hild, but gallant Siegfried and gentle Kriemhild. And if gen-
tle Kriemhild through a succession of portentous events is
changed into a raging monster, this very distortion makes
us see all the more clearly and mourn all the more deeply
her lost beauty and fairness.
A picture of inimitable grace and delicacy is Siegfried's
wooing of Kriemhild, as told in the first three " Sventiures " of
the Nibelungenlied. In Worms on the Rhine there reigned
Gunther, king of the Burgundians. His sister Kriemhild
once in a dream fancied that she had reared a falcon, and that
two eagles came and plucked his feathers. Her mother
interpreted the falcon as Kriemhild's future lover; but she,
refusing this interpretation, said: "Never shall the love of
a man bring me grief and pain." Siegfried, the prince of
^' ' als ie diu liebe leide z'aller jfing£ste g!t ' ; Nibel. ed. Bartsch
str. 2378.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 79
Netherland, heard of Kriemhild's beauty, and came to woo
her; he was kindly received at the court, and feasts and
tournaments succeeded each other to honour the guest
and to give him opportunity for proving his skill and
strength. While the knights were sporting in the fields,
Kriemhild would stand at her window enjoying the sight
and longing for him who from the very first had won her
heart. But he was not allowed to see her, and when he had
stayed in Worms for a whole year they had not yet spoken
a word to each other. Then it happened that the Danes
and Saxons declared war against Gunther. Siegfried, de-
lighted at this chance to give vent to his passion for fight, at
once started out against them. When, after, a victorious
battle, his messenger arrived in Worms, Kriemhild secretly
summoned him to her cnamber and inquired about Sieg-
fried ; and when she heard that he had surpassed all others in
deeds of bravery, she could not conceal her emotion, and
" her bright colour bloomed like a rose." And now he him-
self returned. The whole court proceeded to receive him,
and Kriemhild was selected to bid him welcome. As the
morning red comes forth from the clouds, as the full moon
stands out among the stars, so she came surrounded by her
maidens. And Siegfried, when he saw her, thought to him-
self : " How could I dare to love you ? and yet, should I
lose you, would that I were dead." Blushing, she spoke to
him: "Be welcome, Siegfried, noble knight." His heart
rejoicing, he bowed before her and took her by the hand.
" How tenderly and courteously the knight went by her
side ! With loving glances looked at each other the youth
and the maiden : secretly was it done."
Siegfried's death is surrounded by the full splendour of
imperishable poetry." As in the older sagas, it is brought
about through the rivalry of Brunhild and Kriemhild. But
in the Edda the altercation of the two queens takes place
35 Avent. XIV-XVI.
8o SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
while they are bathing in the Rhine stream;" here the scene
is laid in front of the cathedral. Kriemhild wishes to enter
the church before Brunhild; Brunhild steps in her way;
there ensues an angry dispute between them, the climax of
which is reached when Kriemhild reveals the secret of Brun-
hild's having been made Gunther's wife by the disguised
Siegfried. Now Brunhild resolves on Siegfried's doom; the
evil Hagen offers his help. A false rumour of a new war
against the Saxons is spread abroad. Hagen goes to ask
Kriemhild whether he can by some means protect Siegfried
in the coming danger; and she, in the anxiety of her heart
and in the desire to save her beloved husband's life, betrays
a secret through which she surrenders him into the hands of
his murderers. Once in his youth Siegfried had killed a
dragon ; and, bathing in the dead monster's blood, he had
become invulnerable, save in one little spot on his shoulder,
where a linden-leaf had lain while he was bathing. This
Kriemhild reveals to Hagen, and in order to make him more
sure she sews a cross upon Siegfried's coat of mail just
on that fatal spot. After having thus unconsciously be-
trayed her husband, she is tormented by dreadful forebod-
ings. Dreaming, she sees him pursued by wild boars,
mountains fall upon him, and she loses sight of him. The
next morning she beseeches Siegfried to stay at home, but
he laughs at her presentiments and leaves her, as confident
as ever. The war rumours are now denied and a hunt-
ing party is arranged instead. Siegfried displays all the
heroic elements of his character; he kills lions, boars, and
buffaloes; finally he catches a bear, fastens him to his horse,
and gallops back to the tents. Then he lets the bear loose
into the kitchen; the cooks run about in wild confusion, but
Siegfried laughingly runs after him and catches him again.
Now Hagen proposes a race to a distant fountain, and
Siegfried is the first to accept. Although in full armour,
" Cf. supra p. 32.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 8 1
whilst the others have put their weapons aside, he reaches
the goal first. Then he leans his shield and sword against
a tree and waits courteously until the others have arrived
and until King Gunther has quenched his thirst. Mean-
while Hagen has taken away the hero's weapons, and when
Siegfried is stooping down to the fountain, he aims his spear
at the cross on Siegfried's shoulder, and the fatal deed is
done. At the dawn of the next morning, when Kriemhild
is about to go to mass, the chamberlain reports to her that
a dead man is lying before her door, and instantly she sees
it all with dreadful clearness: " It is Siegfried," she cries;
" Brunhild has planned it, and Hagen has slain him."
It is true that the events which follow — Kriemhild's
change from a sweet, angelic woman into a revengeful,
bloodthirsty .fury; her marriage with Ezzel, king of the
Huns; her treachery to her own kin, and the wholesale
slaughter of the Burgundians at King Ezzel's court — are
replete with all the wildness and cruelty of early Germanic
life; But even here the tempering influence of a milder
and more cultivated age is discernible, — above all, in the
Riidiger episode." Riidiger is the Max Piccolomini of the
Nibelungenlied. He is pledged by sacred bonds to both of
the conflicting parties. He is Ezzel's vassal, to Kriemhild he
is attached by a special oath of allegiance; but Gunther and
the Burgundians also are his friends: on their way to
Ezzel's court he has been their escort, he has received them
as guests in Ws own castle, his daughter he has betrothed
to Gunther's youngest brother. Now he has to make the
bitter choice between different forms of felony. For which-
ever side he may take, he will be a traitor to his word; and
even if he keeps aloof from the combat, he will be found
faithless. For a long time he wavers. , He implores Kriem-
hild to release him from his oath: "Honour and life I
would gladly give up for you; to lose my soul I did not
»* Av. XXXVII. Cf. Diu Klage (c. 1200) ed. Piper v. 2807 ff.
82 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
pledge myself." He beseeches Ezzel to take back the
castles and countries with which he has invested him :
" Nothing will I call my own, as a homeless man will I go
into exile." He prays to God to let him die. When no
other way is left, he rushes into the combat, and his prayer
is fulfilled: he finds death by the very sword which once,
in better days, he had given as a pledge of friendship to
the Burgundian hero who now becomes his unwilling
slayer.
The same fulness of the inner life, the same variety of
emotions, which we observe in Riidiger is found in the hero-
ine of the other great national epic of the Mid-
■ die High German period, in Gudran, except that
here the tragic element has only a subordinate part.^jQu-
drun is undoubtedly the most complex character in the
whole German folk-epic. She is the first figure of mediseval
poetry which in lifelikeness and individual colouring -sug-
gests the depth of modern portrait-painting. Even in
characters like Siegfried, Kriemhild, Hagen, there is a cer-
tain archaic inflexibility and monotony; Gudrun surprises
us through an originality and freedom of feeling which can-
not be surpassed.
There is nothing in her of the conventional blushing
maiden. She is a charming mixture of pertness and
thoughtfulness, of coyness and impetuosity,- -of purest
womanly devotion and an almost masculine firmness of
decision.
Artificial restraint is something entirely foreign to her.
When Herwig, the man of her choice, comes to woo her, her
heart leaps up; with girlish exuberance she exclaims": "Be-
lieve me, I shall not reject you! Of all the girls whom you
ever saw none is moreen love with you than I!" When
news is brought that Herwig's dominions are overrun by
enemies, and that, if left alone, he is powerless to resist
" Kudrun ed. Martin str. 657.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 83
them, she weeps and wails; she throws herself at her father's
feet and implores him to succour her lover." And when,
after her father's departure, she is threatened by another
wooer with forcible abduction, her sole answer is an im-
pulsive laugh."
It is only after these threats have been put into practice,
it is only after she has become a captive of Hartmut, king
of the Normans, that her natural buoyancy of temper gives
way to immovable composure." Now her lips are sealed.
She remains indifferent to Hartmut's proposals, indifferent
to the atrocities of the cruel Gerlind. Or, rather, she wel-
comes these atrocities as a help to make her bear the agony
of separation from her beloved. She refuses kindness and
comfort; she delights in every new humiliation, and when
at last Gerlind orders her to do the washing by the seashore,
she answers": " Noble queen, deign then to teach me how
to wash your linen. Since I am not to have joy, pray give
me still more pain."
What a wonderful transformation, what a welling up of \
feelings long repressed, when after fourteen years of servi- '
tude the first hope of rescue dawns upon her! It is a cold '
March morning. Gudrun and her faithful Hildeburg are
washing by the shore. They see a bird swimming toward
them." Gudrun says: "Beautiful bird, how I pity thee,
swimming so far on the wide sea! " The bird answers: " I
am a messenger of God; and if thou wilt ask me, I shall
give thee tidings of thy friends." Gudrun at these words
throws herself on the ground to pray; and then, trembling,
gaspingly asks and asks, until she has heard of all her dear
ones, until she knows that Herwig with his army is coming
to deliver her. All night long Gudrun hardly closes her
eyes; her thoughts are on the sea whence her rescuers are
to come. The next morning she and Hildeburg are again
" Kudrun ed. Martin sir. 681 ff. "' lb. str. 771.
" lb. avent. 20. 21. " lb. str. 1055. " lb. str. Ii66 ff.
84 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
at the shore. Herwig and Ortwin, Gudrun's brother, ap-
proach in a boat in order to explore the land." The girls
flee at sight of them, but are overtaken. Ortwin asks
whether they know anything of Gudrun. Gudrun replies:
"If you are seeking for Gudrun, your errand is in vain;
she is dead; she died from suffering and grief." Then
Herwig breaks out into tears: " She was mine! She was
my wife! " But Gudrun goes on: "You deceive me! I
know that Herwig, Gudrun's spouse, is dead ! If he were
alive, the joy of the world would be mine ! " And now at
last all doubt is gone. " He held her in his arms," the
poet says, " and kissed her I know not how often; and
what they said to each other gave them both bliss and woe."
We have seen the manifestations of chivalry in the Min-
nesong and in the revived national epics. It remains to
The court- follow its traces in the so-called court- epics,
epics. These epics were not based on native pop^ular
lore, but adapted from foreign traditions; they were purposely
designed, not for the people at large, but for the exclusive
audience of lords and ladies familiar with the dictates of
gallantry and noblesse, which, together with these poetical
traditions, had been imported from France, the native land
of cavaliers. It is in these epics that we find the chival-
rous spirit at its height.
In the Nibelungenlied the leading characters, even in their
knightly garb, still retain something of the old heroic free-
dom. Walther, over and above his being a~gal-
of'etiQnette ° '^'''' ^^S^'") ^^^ ^ loyal and devoted son of his
country. In these courtly poems we are met by
an all-absorbing sense of class and convention. Of the
people we hear nothing; national matters are left out of sight;
the whole world seems to have been converted into one vast
opportunity for fashionable sport and sentimental love-
making. There is no background to most of these poems.
*' Kudruii ed. Martin str. 1207 ff.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 85
In reading them we feel as though we were seeing a mirage.
It all hangs in the air. To be sure, we meet names which
originally were borne by poetical characters endowed with
the fulness of national life: the heroes of the Homeric
poems and of King Arthur's court. But these names in the
chivalrous epics have entirely lost their native flavour. The
heroes of the Trojan war have been changed into dallying,
love-sighing courtiers; and King Arthur is no longer the
champion of the Celtic race in its struggles with Romans
and Anglo-Saxons, but the typical representative of a fan-
tastic, high-flown chivalry. With his noble wife Ginevre,
he resides in his castle of Caerlleon. Hundreds of brill-
iant knights and of beautiful women surround him. Among
them all the most distinguished are his twelve paladins,
the companions of his Round Table, the most valiant of
the valiant, the noblest of the noble. They are mod-
elled somewhat after the paladins of Kaiser Karl; like
them they lead a life of incessant combat. But the heroes
of the Karl saga are champions of religion, the heroes of
King Arthur are champions of etiquette; the former fight
against heathendom and for the expansion of Christianity,
the latter maintain the cause of social decorum. Theii
enemies are the uncouth and awkward, braggarts, liars, de-
ppisers of women, giants, dwarfs. Their charges are noble
ladies, orphans, imprisoned youths, enchanted princesses.
Even animals in distress attract their generous attention,
and usually reward their rescuers by faithful attachment."
Some of the love-scenes in these aristocratic romances
are of exquisite delicacy. Famous is the senti- Dgii„.„_i^
mental picture which Heinrich von Veldeke, the portrayal
in his JSneid (c. 1180), gives of the love-sick ofl"™'
Lavinia when she first sees the noble ^neas." Her mother
" Most renowned is the rescue of a lion from the clutches of a
dragon by the gallant Iwein. Hartmann's Iwein ed. E. Henrici v.
3828 ff. Cf. W. Scherer, Gesch. d. d. Lift. p. 158 ff.
" Cf. Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneide ed. O. Behaghel v. 10031-10631.
86 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
wished her to marry the gallant Turnus. But she was quite
unsusceptible to men's wooings, and when her mother, a
short time before, had given her a long lecture about love,
she had hardly understood her. But now, when she saw
the Trojan hero, Lady Venus shot a poisoned dart at
her. That gave her pain and grief enough. It wounded
her heart and made her love, whether she would or not,
even if she should lose her mother's good-will. She was hot
and cold, she perspired and trembled, she was pale and
flushed, great were her pangs. She knew nothing of the
wound from which the evil came, but she was forced to think
of what her mother had said to her. At last she recovered
her strength and spoke wailing to herself: " Now I do not
know what to do. I do not know what dazzles and bewil-
ders me so. I was always hale and sound, and now I am
almost dead. Who has so bound my heart, which only now
was loose and free ? I fear it was the grief of which my
mother spoke." All night she lies awake. In the morning
her mother, seeing her pale and colourless, insists on learn-
ing what ails her, and Lavinia confesses that it is love.
But she is too bashful to tell the name of her loved one.
All she can persuade herself to do is to write it. " Trem-
blingly she smoothed the wax and began to write. E was
the first letter, then N, then again E — great was her anguish
and pain — then A and S. The mother spelled it and ex-
claimed: ' Here stands Eneas ! ' ' Yes, mother dear ! ' "
Most pathetic is the way in which in Wolfram von
Eschenbach's Parzival Sigune mourns her dead lover
Schionatulander. She appears in the poem four times,
separated by long intervals. The first time she is sitting
by the roadside, tearing her hair in despair over her lover,
who has just been slain." The second time she is Still sit-
^ Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival sA. Bartsch III, 667 ff. It is
well known that Wolfram made the love of Sigune and Schionatulander
the subject of a separate cycle of poems, the so-called Titurel.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 87
ting in the same place, with the embahned body of the dead
man on her lap." The third time she is living as a recluse
in a cell, built by her own hands, over the grave of her loved
one." The fourth time she is found dead, kneeling in her
cell as if in prayer." And similar in its heart-stirring effu-
sion is the grief of the heathen princess Jafite over the death
of her husband Roaz, as described in Wirnt von Graven-
berg's Wigalois ".•
"She rushed upon him, pressed him with her white arms, and
kissed him as though he were still living. 'Woe,' she cried, 'woe,
ray dear husband, now you have lost your beautiful body for my
sake. But nothing shall keep me from you. I shall be yours in
heaven or in hell, wherever we shall be. Where art thou now, Mach-
met? In thy help I always trusted. Machmet, sweet god, I have
always loved thee. To whom hast thou now left me here ? O
Roaz, dear husband, you were my soul and my body, I was your
heart and your wife. As your heart was mine and my will yours, so
your death shall be my death.' She lifted him upon her lap, with
both her arms she embraced him, her heart broke. So she lay upon
him dead."
It is remarkable to see what painstaking care these chival-
rous poets bestow upon a correct representation of the
manners and the outward paraphernalia of Convention-
courtly life. Again and again we are reminded ?^'*y °^ ,
■^ ° ° drapery and
of how this hero or that one bore himself, how landscape,
he stood or sat, how he was dressed, what his complexion
was, or the cut of his hair. We have most elaborate de-
scriptions of castles, of weapons, of monsters, of romantic
landscapes. No doubt these descriptions help to make the
doings and happenings of chivalrous life more real to us ;
they transport us into its social atmosphere. But it cannot
be said that they add anything to the human interest of,
these poems. It is largely drapery and nothing more.
However varied and fantastic the armours and garments of
" Parzival ed. Bartsch V, 761 ff. '» lb. IX, 66 ff.
" lb. XVI, 517 ff. " Wigalois ed. Benecke v. 7677 ff.
88 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
these lords and ladies are, almost^lljheir faces look alike ;
, however wild the forests, however gorgeous the ravines, we
\do not hear the wind rustle in the leaves, or the water roaring
in its fall. And over the unending succession of fashion-
able happenings, of gallant tournaments, of love-scenes,
both delicate and frivolous," of bold abductions and miracu-
lous escapes, we entirely lose sight of the real forces and the
true meaning of human life. The very thing which called
forth this poetry also ternded to kill its spirit : aristocratic
exclusiveness and social correctness.
It is the lasting glory of three great men to have risen
Hartmann above these narrow bounds of an artificial caste,
Wolfram, and thus to have raised themselves above the
Gottfried. jjj^gg jj£ jljg chivalrous epic poets as Walther
von der Vogelweide stands out from the crowd of the Minne-
singers : Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Gottfried von Strassburg."
These men were far from disclaiming the ideas of chivalry ;
on the contrary they were full of them. They avowedly
meant to represent the perfect chivalrous life.
Traces of / , . ^. , .
conventional They even bowed not infrequently to its con-
chivalry in ventional absurdities. Hartmann's two most
them. . . „ , ^ .
pretentious epics, Erec and Iwetn, are not very
different in their detail from the average romances of the
knight-errant style ; they show the same superabundance of
meaningless adventures, the same worship of courteous
bearing, the same revelling in insignificant trifles : the
bulk of a chapter in £rec, for instance, is devoTed to the
description of a saddle-horse." In Gottfried's Tristan
the whole plot hinges on so conventional a device as a
magic potion, which brings about a sudden change of char-
'' One of the most frivolous and inane of all these romances is the
Lanzelet oi Ulrich von Zatzikhoven (c. 1200).
" Hartmann's principal works were written between iigo and 1205.
Gottfried's and Wolfram's poetic activity falls between 1205 and 1220
" Erec der Wunderare ed. F. Bech v. 7289-7765.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 89
acter, drawing together with irresistible power two persons
who only a short time before were kept apart from each other
by grudge and hatred. Even in Wolfram's Parzival the
machinery of the central action is utterly conventional and
comes dangerously near being a farce. Parzival on one of
his knightly sallies gets by chance into the castle of the
Holy Grail, that mysterious syn^bol of consummate knight-
hood which forms the spiritual counterpart to the worldly
perfection of King Arthur's court. Parzival was destined
to be the royal high-priest of this knightly sanctuary.
There is, however, a rule that only he shall actually attain
to that dignity who, brought face to face with the wonders
of the Grail, not knowing what it all means, asks a certain
question about it. Parzival, from a misdirected sense of
propriety, neglects to ask that question. He is therefore
not yet worthy of the Holy Grail. Again entering upon
his former life of adventure, he comes to know where he
has been, what the wonders of the Grail are, and what
question he ought to have asked. A second time he is
brought into the presence of the sanctuary, and now, on the
strength of the knowledge meanwhile acquired, he asks the
required question, and it works to a charm.
But how insignificant and almost trifling do these blem-
ishes appear when we realize what these three men, Hart-
mann, Gottfried, and Wolfram, have done for _ .
^ J_ .-.'.-.. . Tneiressen-
GernVair Irterat'ure ~af large ! Bemg rooted in tial freedom
chivalry, they rose above it : representing a life from oonTen-
,">-/_ , ,-. , . . ,. , tionality.
of class prejudice and conventionality, they
preached toleration and liberality ; each in his own way,
consciously or unconsciously, they demonstrated the superi-
ority of human feeling over the dead forms of accepted
rules and dogmas. And thus they have created poetic
characters which in their peculiar blending of conventional
form with a thoroughly independent spirit mark the same
,phase in the development of German, -cixlture-wjijch in the
plastic arts is marked by those "strangely fascinating, half-
90 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
archaic, half-modern sculptures of the fully matured Ro-
manesque style : above all, the portrait-statues in the
cathedral of Naumburg, the saints and prophets of the
golden gate at Freiberg, and the superb Sibyl o_f_Bamberg."
Hartmann's Erec and Iwein, as already intimated, stand
nearest the commonplace level of approved chivalrous
Hartmann's morality. Yet even here there is at least a con-
Ereo and flict between the two principal motives of chiv-
Iwein. alrous conduct : honour and love. Erec, giving
himself up to the joys of domestic love, comes near losing
his manly vigour and his social reputation. Iwein, in a life
of ambition and restless adventure, forgetting his duties to
his wife, comes near losing her love. Both are saved by
sore trials and womanly forbearance. Iwein, although as
a literary production more finished than Erec, is, from a
psychological point of view, less interesting, the only epi-
sode of deeper import being the spell of insanity to which
the hero for a time succumbs. But in Erec there are not a
few scenes of most pathetic power. It is Erec's own wife
Enite who points out to him that he is in danger of becom-
ing effeminate. He rallies, and resolves to show the world
that he is still worthy of knighthood. At the same time, a
doubt in the confidence and faithfulness of his wife arises
in him. So, in going forth to meet adventures, he compels
her to accompany him, and in addition lays upon her the
capricious injunction never to speak to him. The trial of
husband and wife in this expedition forms the essence of
the poem. Erec is everywhere victorious ; Enite con-
stantly trespasses against the unnatural command of silence,
especially by warning her husband of approaching dangers.
Every time the cruel man makes her suffer for it ; but
through his very cruelty her faithfulness and devotion are
brought out all the more resplendently. The climax of the
romance is reached in chapters 16 and 17. Erec undergoes
" Cf. W. Bode, Geschichte der deutschen Plastikp, 39.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 91
a terrible combat with two giants, in which badly healed
wounds of former fights break out again. With difficulty
he rides back to the place where he has left his wife ; in
dismounting he faints and falls prostrate at her feet. Enite
thinks him dead and gives herself up to heart-rending
lamentation over her beloved husband. She wants to die
and is about to throw herself on her husband's sword, when
a count Oringlas of Limors appears, who, enraptured by
Enite's beauty, prevents her from committing suicide. On
his own horse he takes her to his castle ; Erec also, appar-
ently dead, is carried thither, and placed on a bier sur-
rounded with candles. Oringlas determines to marry Enite
at once ; from the bier he drags her into his banquet-hall.
Her loud wailings arouse Erec from his stupor. Like a
ghost, wrapped in his white shroud, he appears in the hall.
The company is terrified, he strikes down whomever he
meets, the rest scatter in flight. Enite remains alone with
her husband, who now asks and receives her forgiveness.
It is, however, not in these high-flown representations of
chivalry that Hartmann's art is seen at its best, but rather
in the humbler sphere of legendary narrative, in ^^ Gregorins
stories such as that of Gregorius, " the virtuous and Der arme
sinner," who atones for heinous crimes unwit- ^*"™'''''
tingly committed by retiring to a life of holy abnegation on a
barren rock in the wide sea ; or that of Der arme Heinrich,
the Suabian knight, who, like Job, in the midst of worldly
affluence and splendour is visited by a terrible disease, who,
unlike Job, abandons himself to grief and despair, but is
finally healed, both bodily and mentally, through the pure
faith and self-surrender of a simple peasant girl. Nowhere
does Hartmann betray such a breadth of human sympathy
as in this latter poem, the only one of his works which was
inspired by a popular tradition of his own Suabian home."
" Erec and Iwein are taken almost bodily from Chrestien de Troyes ;
Gregorius, an ancient subject of legendary literature, is lilcewise copied
from a French model ; the " buoch " which inspired Hartmann to Der
92 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Nowhere does he show so clearly the liberalizing influence
of Christian spirituality. And it may be doubted whether
in all literature there is a finer type of naive religious devo-
tion than this lovely child of the Black Forest who craves
to sacrifice her life in order to save her master. How she
sits at his feet while he tells her parents of his sad fate
which dooms him to lifelong agony unless a pure maiden of
her own free will dies for him ; how she lies awake at night
weeping and grieving for the poor man, until she suddenly
is overjoyed and transfigured by the thought that it is her
own mission to rescue him ; how she awakens her parents
and tells them of her decision ; how the parents, heart-
broken, yet with wondering adoration, submit to it, because
they see it is the divine spirit that is speaking through their
child ; how, finally, the sight of this lovely creature joyfully
offering her bosom to the deadly knife brings about a change
of heart in Heinrich himself ; how he recognises his unwor-
thiness to accept this offering ; how he interrupts the sacri-
ficial act ; how he resolves henceforth to bear his burden
without complaint and with trust in God ; how this inner
transformation is followed by his delivery from disease ; and
how his rescuer now becomes his wedded wife — all this " is
told with such a sublime simplicity and childlikeness that
even a poem like Goethe's Iphigenie appears cold and studied
in comparison with it.
If Hartmann von Aue tries to reconcile inclination and
duty ; if he holds up symbols of a life in which " diu
Wolfram's maze," i.e., a happy harmony of instinct and
Pandval. reason, is the dominating rule of conduct,"
his great contemporary Wolfram von Eschenbach strikes
arvie Heinrich was probably a Latin version of the legend. That Long-
fellow's Golden Legendh. based on Haftmann's poem is well known.
'^ Dir arme Heinrich ci. Bech i'. 295-348. 459-902. 1217-1520. Cf.
Goethe's strange verdict, Tag- u. Jahreshefte 1811, Werke Hempel,
XXVII, 203:
" In one of his lyric poems, Lieder ed. Bech 2, 15, Hartmann ex-
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 93
a Still higher key. Indeed, with the one exception of
Dante, no mediaeval poet has treated so deep and por-
tentous problems as this honest, ardent, sinewy Franco-
nian, whose mental physiogonomy reminds one of Diirer's
famous knight riding fearlessly in the company of death
and the devil. We observed the unsatisfactory and formal
way in which Wolfram makes his Parzival comply with the
rules of the Holy Grail. But this defect does not touch the
real core of his wonderful epic. After all, the Holy Grail
is only an episode, although a most important one, of the
poem ; its true essence lies in the development of Parzival's
character. And who will deny that in this character Wol-
fram has put before us, within the forms of chivalrous life,
an immortal symbol of struggling, sinning, despairing, but
finally redeemed humanity ?
What an inimitable picture of the vague sweet dreami-
ness of boyhood is the description of Parzival's youth spent
with his mother in the loneliness of the forest ! '° He loves
to listen to the songs of the birds. He roams about under
the trees and gazes at them, his bosom swells, he runs home
with tears in his eyes ; his mother asks what ails him, but
he cannot tell. One day he meets some knights in the
forest; he is so amazed by their shining armour that he thinks
it is God, whom his mother has described to him as being
brighter than day. They tell him of King Arthur's court,
and in spite of his mother's warning he sets out to try his
fortune in the world. Inexperienced and boyish as he is,
he falls into strange errors and incurs ridicule, especially by
the too literal following out of the precepts which his
mother and other friends had given him." But even in his
follies, the chaste, unsoiled mind of the youth is proved ;
the good in him, although not developed, is felt as a hidden,
presses this ideal by saying : "sinne machent saeldehaften man," i.e. a
wise sensuousness makes a happy man. Cf. Erstes Bilchlein ed. Bech
■V. 1269 ff.
»» Parzival cA. Bartsch III, 56 ff. " lb. 339 ff. 1629 ff.
94 SOCIAL FORCES IM GERMAN LITERATURE.
unspent force. This it is which opens to him the hearts of
all whom he meets, which makes him a welcome guest at
Arthur's court, which wins him the love and the hand of
a beautiful woman, which even makes him worthy to
reach the castle of the Grail without knowing it. But here
he entirely misses his opportunity." Biassed by social
prejudice and etiquette, he does not listen to the voice of
pure human sympathy, he does not ask what the strange
and affecting things mean which he sees in the castle ; the
whole episode passes by like a dream without leaving a
trace. Returning to Arthur's court he hears what he has
missed. And now, instead of blaming himself, he revolts
against God." "What is God ?" he exclaims. "If he were
mighty, he would not allow such a mockery. I have served
him as long as I have lived and could think. In future I
will throw up his service. If he has hatred, I will bear
hatred." So he hardens his heart, in dark despair he defies
all tender feelings. That which was not to be given to him
he will now obtain by force.
Here the poet takes leave of Parzival for a time, con-
centrating the main attention upon the worldly circle of the
Round Table knights, and their main champion Gawain.
Only from time to time Parzival appears as if in the dis-
tance, not taking part in the action, but keeping aloof, and
in gloomy despair pursuing his path. But gradually we see
a change taking place in his soul. He has a succession of
experiences which cannot fail to appeal to his better nature.
First he meets a young maiden (the above-mentioned
Sigune) living as a recluse by the grave of her slain lover.
The sight of her self-sacrificing, consecrated life, and her
calm, consoling words, awaken in Parzival, also, a sense of
humility and a gentle hope." Then, on a Good Friday
morning he is accosted by an old knight, who, being on a
pilgrimage with his wife and daughters, is astonished to see
" Parzival fiA. Bartsch book V. " lb. VI, 1561 ff. " lb. IX, 62 ff.
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 95
Parzival on such a sacred day in full armour and on horse-
back. He calls up in Parzival's mind the memory of long-
forgotten means of grace." Finally, he falls in with an old
lay hermit, who, in a most tender, benevolent manner,
shows him his mistakes, reveals to him the eternal wisdom,
patience, and Jong-suffering of God, and succeeds in win-
ning back his heart to a joyful view of life." Now Parzival
is worthy to be granted what first in the folly of inexperience
he had trifled away and what he had then in vain tried to get
by force. He is no longer the innocent, unconscious youth;
he has passed through the hard school of life, he has
doubted and despaired, but through.jdoubt-he has returned
to the oM certainty, to the belief of his childhood. Now he
is chosen, as keeper of the Holy Grail, to become a guide
for others also to the highest treasures of earthly life."
Wolfram is the most liberaliminded man of mediaeval
Germany. Although deeply religious, he is far from being
a churchjnan. He even has a certain weakness
fox-the heathen. In one of his expeditions Par- '^^^^'^^
■■ . "^ , toleration.
zival meets a pagan. They fight with each
other. Parzival's sword breaks, but his opponent is gen-
erous enough not to take any advantage of this. In the
conversation which ensues, he proves to be a half-brother
of Parzival's, a son of the first, heathen wife of his father.
They exchange words of friendship and affection, and the
heathen man is even received into the company of the
Round Table.
Although intensely earnest. Wolfram is far from being
ascetic. None of his contemporaries has depicted the joys
of manly sport more sympathetically, none has felt more
" Parzival eA. Bartsch book iX, 396 ff. «« lb. 585 ff.
" The poem ends with a brief allusion to the legend of Lohengrin,
Parzival's son, who "in the service of the Grail won praise'' ; XVI,
1 107 ff. Cf. K. Bartsch, Parz. als psychol. Epos, Vortr. u. Au/s. p-
log ff.
«« lb. XV, 35 ff.
96 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
deeply the comfort of married life, none has set greater
store by a strong, doughty knighthood. The
nmani y, j^^^j ^£ Parzival's life he expresses in the words "' :
"des libes pris unt doch der sele pardis bejagen mit schilt
und ouch mit sper" (the body's prize and the soul's para-
dise conquer with shield and with spear) ; and when the old
hermit absolves Parzival from his sins. Wolfram adds, with
evident gratification, that he at the same time gave him
good chivalrous advice.'" In no poem of the Middle Ages
does chivalry appear so complete and so truly human as in
the Parzival.
It is hard to understand fully the mental attitude of
Gottfried von Strassburg. On the one hand he shows
himself thoroughly imbued with the spirit of
Tri^n*'° polite society. Courtly manners are to him a
most essential part of ethics. He delights in
the description of brilliant fashionable events; he even
gives at times direct advice in the liberal art of etiquette;
nothing seems to him more to the credit of his hero Tristan
than that he knows how to quarter a deer in blamelessly
correct fashion." On the other hand, he has no heart for
the ideal tasks of chivalry; of Wolfram's enthusiasm for
spiritual knighthood he has not a spark; the sacred rites of
the church are hollow forms to him; he does not shrink
from representing a judicial ordeal as mockery." He
seems to have been one of those finely organized natures
who see the essential inanity of all things and yet delight
in the beauty of their outward aspects; a doubtful character,
without respect or reverence, but a true artist, with the
most delicate sense of form and a caressing sympathy for
human frailties and passions.
" /"arzij/a/ ed. Bartsch IX, 1171 ff. A similar ideal is represented
in Wolfram's WilUhalm. CI. GdgPh. II, i, 279.
'" 16. IX, 2057 f. For Wolfram's relation to Chrestien and Kyot
cf. GdgPh. II, 1, p. 278 f.
" C£. Tristan ed. R. Bertsjein V, 2786 S.. " Il>. XXIV, 15737 ff-
THE HEIGHT OF CHJVALRIC CULTURE. 97
His Tristan is the most exquisitely finished portrayal in
mediseval literature of the human soul swayed by emotions.
Never has the irresistible power of love been represented in
a more enchanting, bewildering, intoxicating manner than
in this poem."
Tristan has been sent by his uncle Marke, king of Kur-
newal, to sue in his name for the hand of Isolt, daughter of
the king of Ireland. Isolt follows him grudgingly. She
entertains a twofold spite against him: for he is the slayer
of Morolt, her uncle; and now he has come to take her
away from her home to a foreign country and to an un-
known husband. On board the ship which carries them
to Kurnewal she keeps aloof from him, and when he ap-
proaches her she receives him with bitter words. As for
Tristan, he feels towards Isolt nothing more than the respect
due to a beautiful woman, who is moreover the betrothed
of his master. Through an accident, however, they both
drink of a magic love-potion, and now their hearts and
minds are completely changed."
" When the maiden and the man, Isolt and Tristan, had taken the
potion, forthwith there appeared the world's unrest, Love, the hunt-
ress of hearts, and stole upon their souls. Before they were aware
of it, she waved her banner over them and drew them both into her
power. One and united they became who had been two and divided.
Isolt's hatred was gone. Love, the peacemaker, had cleansed and
smoothed both their hearts so that each to the other seemed as clear
as a mirror. They had only one heart: Isolt's grief was Tristan's
pain, Tristan's pain was Isolt's grief; they were one in joy and in
sorrow. And yet they hid it from each other. It was doubt and
shame that made them do so. She felt ashamed, and so did he; she
" Cf. K. Bartsch, Tristan u. Isolde, in Vortr. u. Aufs. p. 132 ff.
For the relation of Gottfried to his French predecessor " Thomas von
Britanje " ( 7>jV. v. 150) cf. GdgPh. II, i, 284 f.— The first German
poet to treat the Tristan saga was Eilhart von Oberge (c. 11 70).
Gottfried's Tristan, which was left unfinished, was brought to a close
by Ulrich von Tflrheim (c. 1240) and Heinrich von Freiberg (c. 1300).
" Tristan ed. Bechstein XVI, 1171' «
98 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
doubted him, he doubted her. Though blindly their hearts' desire
drew them towards one goal, yet they both dreaded the first step.
When Tristan felt the touch of Love, he said to himself : ' No, Tristan,
turn away, recollect yourself, put it out of your mind.' He battled
against his will, he desired against his desire, he wished to flee and
was arrested. He turned to Honour and Faith for help, but at once
Love attacked him and brought him back to her. Honour and Faith
pressed upon him, but Love pressed still harder. Often, as prisoners
are wont to do, did he think of escape. 'Look after others,' he said
to himself, ' let your desire wander and love who may be loved.' But
the snare held him fast, and when he probed his heart to find a change
in it, he found in it Love and Isolt. Even so it fared with Isolt.
She, also, struggled like a bird in the lime, she felt her senses sink,
she tried to lift herself up, but she was held back and drawn down-
ward. She turned hither and thither, with hands and feet she strove,
but all the more her hands and feet sank into the blind sweetness of
Love and Tristan. Shame turned her eyes away from him, but Love
drew her heart back to him. Shame and maiden battled against Love
and man. But as it is said that Shame and maiden do not live long,
so here also they soon surrendered; and Isolt, yielding to Love, let
her glances and her heart rest upon Tristan."
From this time on they both seem to have lost all moral
responsibility. They are driven about like wrecks on the
sea of passion, they trespass all human and divine law.
Even before they reach Kurnewal they have sinned,
and when Isolt becomes Marke's wife she has already
broken her plight. Hardly an attempt is made at hushing
the matter. Even at Marke's court Tristan and Isolt find
constant opportunity to see each other and to continue
their criminal relation. Marke constantly suspects, and is
constantly deceived; and the poet, although seeming to
disapprove of the immorality of all this, at heart .evidently
delights in the ever-new tricks and devices which the lovers
find for gratifying their fatal desire. At last Tristan is
exiled. He enters upon a new life of adventure and
struggle; he again falls victim to his passion by losing his
heart to another Isolt who reminds him of his first love. A
new conflict arises in his soul- his old and his new love
THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. 99
Struggle with each other; self-reproach and gloomy fore-
bodings take hold of him. — Here the poem breaks off. But
we may assume that it was the intention of the poet to let
the hero die in the midst of his moral agonies, his feelings
exhausted, his heart broken.
In Gottfried von Strassburg we see the dissolution of
chivalric society. Passion overleaps- all the Barriers of
■^cial custom and moral law. An elemental instinct breaks
down the rules of tradition and accepted respectability.
As in the poetry of the Migration period, the individual
appears again as its own centre, its own guiding star, its
own ruin. The ideals of mediaeval life have lost their
meaning."
We shall see, in the chapter following, the growth of a
new life, the appearance of a new social spirit : the rise of
the middle classes, and the first advancing steps of modern
Democracy.
'" Cf. for the whole subject of this chapter, K, Lamprecht I.e. Ill,
204-253.
CHAPTER IV.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
(From the Middle of the Thirteenth to the Beginning of the Sixteenth
Century.)
The middle of the thirteenth century marks the transition
from mediaeval to modern life.
The two great institutions which had controlled European
society ever since the time of Charles the Great, empire and
Decline of em- P^P^^y- "^"^ no w showing^ unmistakable signs
pireand of decay. The downfall of tlie Hohenstaufen
papacy. dynasty (1268) put an end to German predomi-
nance in Europe. The imperial dignity, divested of national
import, becarhe a mere party name and a pretext for sec-
tional aspirations. Nothing is more significant of the utter
dissolution of national unity in Germany during the follow-
ing centuries than that in 1347, at a time when Paris and
London had for generations been the acknowledged centres
of French and English political life, the seat of the German
government was transferred for more than fifty years to
Prague, the capital of a territory un-German in population
and until then hardly connected with the political system
of the German empire. During the whole period from
Rudolf von Habsburg (d. 1291) to Maximilian I. (d. 1519)
there appeared not a single ruler who succeeded in enforc-
ing the most ordinary right and performing the most
ordinary duty of government: the levying of taxes and the
maintenance of public order.
Less apparent, but all the more significant, were the
symptoms of decay threatening the very root of the ecclesi-
xoo
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. lOI
astical system of the time. Nevet, to be sure, was the out-
ward condition of the church more flourishing than in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Never did monasti-
cism exert such an omnipresent influence upon -a-li classes"
of the people as in the period following the foundation of
the Franciscan and Dominican orders (beginning of the
thirteenth century). Never was the Christian doctrine ex-
pounded and defended by more learned or zealous men
than the great scholastic writers of the thirteenth century:
Albert of Cologne (d. 1280), Thomas of Aquino (d. 1274),
Duns Scotus (d. 1308). Never did Christian artiring forth
more perfect embodiments of Christian ideals than the
wonderful cathedrals which during, the same century rose
in Amiens^ Cologne, and Canterbury.
But all this outward splendour and activity could not cover
up the fact that the most advanced minds of the age, at any
rate, were beginning to fall away from a religious system
which regarded the pope as not only the infallible inter-
preter of eternal truth, but also the keeper of supreme
temporal £ower. In Italy, Dante, the forerunner of
Humanism, raised the cry of indignant protest against the
degradation ~of divine^ offices to human ends,' upholding
at the sa-me time the divine origin and essential indepen-
dence of the temporal state." - In France king PhiHp the
Fair called up his people against the attempts of the pope
to interfere with the internal affairs of the nation, and
public opinion rallied solidly around the standard of the
crown. In Germany the violent struggle between church
and state during- the reign of Ludwig of Bavaria led (in
133^) to a solemn declaration by the assembled princes
that the election by the princes, not the papal consecra-
tion, was the source of imperial power. In England the
' a., e.g., Inferno XIX, 115.
* This is the central thought of his treatise De monarchia ; cf. es-
pecially III, 13-15 ed. Witte.
I02 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LIl^ERATURIi.
bold accusations of Wycliffe (1324-84) against Romish
corruption and usurpation were re-echoed at least among
the learned, and were upheld by Parliament. And not
long after, the spirit of revolt against mediaeval hierarchy
found its first great martyr and hero in Johannes Hus
(d. 1415).
While thus the main supports of mediaeval life were
gradually crumbling away, there arose at the same time two
forces destined to become the chief instruments
Thenewpolit- ^f ^ jjg^ civilization: the sovereign-«asKerol,
loalpowersi , . . , . , , ...
the territorial princes and the coniniunal_inde-
pendence of jhe cities. Paradoxical as it may seem, both
these forces combined to prepare the way for modern de-
mocracy, the princes by levelling down, the cities by level-
ling up; the former by forcing their subjects into equality,
the latter by opening their gates to liberty, both by intro-
ducing a new social factor: the middle classes;
It was the territorial princes who broke up the feudal
state. Their claims of sovereignty did not, like those of
the emperor, rest upon a personal relation of
Tte temtonal allegiance, but upon the hereditary transmission
pnnoes. 07 r -'
of a public office. And the history of the four-
teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries is a record of one
continuous and finally successful effort on the part of the
princes to assert the supreme power of such office against
the conflicting interests of all classes, the clergy and the
nobility as well as the bourgeoisie. Many time-honoured
rights were crushed in this struggle, many well-founded
privileges were trampled into the ground; and yet it is
impossible not to see that without this demolition of medi-
aeval institutions and class distinctions the structure of
the modern state could not have been established. And it
ought not to be forgotten- that it was the'princes who dur-
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries founded most of
the universities which, to-day are the pride oFGermany;
that it was they who in the sixteenth century saved the
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. IO3
religious Reformation from being smothered in party
hatred and fanaticism.
The whole history of the German cities from the tenth
^to-the fifteenth century is a succession of stages of emanci-
/ pation. From settlements of artisans employed
by the 'Bishop and living around the bishop's ° eeoiies,
ca-stkr,' tliey had in course of time changed into independent
communities of free citizens, making and executing their
own laws, electing their own magistrates, ranking with the
princes and barons as one of the great estates of the empire,
upholding the honour of the common fatherland at home
and abroad at a time when the central government had
become decrepit and powerless. An animated description
from the pen of the Italian cardinal Enea Silvio, who
visited Germany in 1458, gives us a picture of the material
prosperity of the German cities in the fifteenth century.
"We say frankly," he declares,' "never has Germany been
richer, never more^resj)lendent than to-day. JTothTn^more
magni-ficent or beautiful can be found in all Euroj)e than
Cologne'with its wonderful churches, city halls, towers
and palaces, its stately burghers, its noble stream, its fer-
tile cornfields." And equally beautiful are Mainz, Worms,
Speier, Basel, Bern. ' " Some of the houses of Strassburg
citizens are so proud and costly that no king would disdain
to live in them. Certainly the kings of Scotland would be
glad if they were housed as well as the moderately well-to-do
burghers of Niirnberg. Augsburg is not surpassed in riches
by any city in the world; Vienna has some palaces and
churches which even Italy may envy." It would be hard
to overrate the social importance of this outward prosperity
of the German cities in the later Middle Ages, spreading as
it did over a large geographical area, and affording comfort
^ Aeneas Sylvius De ritu^ situ, moribus et conditione Germaniae,
Opera ed. Hopperus, Basileae 1571,^. 1052-55. Cf. H. Janitschek,
Geschichii d. deutschen Malerei p. 225.
I04 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
to a class of people who during the height of chivalrous
culture were still confined to the hard,_slruggle -for-bare
existence. But even more important than this prosperity
itself is the fact that it was the fruit of a long-sustained
fight for independence. It seems like an embodiment of
the very^pirit -of this fight when Eike von Repgow in his
Sachsenspiegel {1230) says*: "Servitude is against God's
will. It has its origin in constraint, imprisonment, and
illegitimate force, which in times of old were introduced by
usurpation, and which now are held up to us as right." The
very consciousness of having fought for their existence gave
to the German cities that character of intellectual sturdi-
ness and fearlessness which made them the principal seats
of the Mystic movement, which opened their gates to Hu-
manism, which rendered them the firmest allies of Lhther.
The literature which corresponds to this changed state of
affairs is at first sight somewhat disappointing, and seems to
offer little to attract the attention of the student
The new lite- of literary history. The heroic grandeur of the
national epics, the aristocratic noblesse of the
Minnesong, the dignity and grace of the court romances, are
now things of the past. Their place is taken by produc-
tions which reveal depth rather than beauty, truthfulness
rather than wealth of imagination, common-sense rather than
genius. One generation at the point of transition from the
twelfth to the thirteenth century had produced Hartmann,
Wolfram, Gottfried, Walther von der Vogelweide, the singers
of the Nibelungenlied and of Gudrun j now there follow
three centuries without a poet whose name is counted among
the great names of history.
* Sachsenspiegel ed. Homeyer, Landr. Ill, 42. The same spirit of
civic independence permeates ttie city clironicles of the time, such as
those of Strassburg by Fritsche Closener (1362) and Jacob Twinger
von KSnlgshofen (1415), Konrad Justinger's Chronik von Bern
(1420). — Cf. for this whole subject K. Lamprecht I.e. IV, 211-303.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. I05
And yet these same centuries, far from being a waste in
the development of German civilization, belong to the most
fruitful epochs which the history of the German
mind has ever seen. If they have given us no Indi-ridualism,
Wolfram, they prepared the way for a Diirer ;
if they produced no Nibelungenlied, they brought forth a
prose literature of marvellous wealth and power. If they
fell behind the time of the crusades in explosive enthusi-
asm and chivalrous devotion, they brought to life a prin-
ciple without which there would have been no Luther, no
Lessing, no Kant, no Goethe, in short no modern life: the
principle of individualism. ' ■*
It would of course be a mistake to attach to the word
individualism, when applied to the fourteenth century, the
same fulness of meaning which it has for us of the present
day. No mediaeval man ever thought of himself as a per-
fectly independent being founded only on himself, or with-
out a most direct and definite relation to some larger
organism, be it empire, church, city, or guild. No mediae-
val man ever seriously doubted that the institutions within
which he lived were divinely established ordinances, far
superior and quite inaccessible to his own individual reason
and judgment. No mediaeval man would ever have ad-
mitted that he conceived nature to be other than the crea-
tion of an extramundane God, destined to glorify its creator
arrrdTtSTpleasC the _eye of man. It was reserved for the
eighteenth century to draw the last consequences of indi-
vidualism; to see in man, in each individual man, an inde-
pendent and complete entity; to derive the origin of state,
church, and society from the spontaneous action of these
independent individuals; and to consider nature as a sys-
tem of forces sufficient unto themselves. When we speak
of individualism in the declining centuries of the Middle
Ages, we ijiean-fey-it .that these centuries. -initiated the move-
ment whicl-i_the „eighteejith_century .bjought to a climax.
Now, for the first time since the decay of classic literature,
Io6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
people at large began to give way to emotional introspec-
tion; now for the first time they darecf to throw offTtrr
. disguises of rank and station and lay bare the hjuman heart
which is hidden under it all. Now for the first time popu-
lar criticism lifted its head and attacked, if not the existing
order of things itself, at least its evils and , abuse s. And
now for the first time men were seized by a common im-
pulse to reproduce the reality of nature in its thousandfold
' manifestations, and to enter into the mysterious affinity
, of its life with ours.
It cannot be denied that the first traces of this movement
are to be seen in the very climax of the preceding literary
epoch. The Nibelungenlied abounds in scenes of wonder-
ful realistic power. Hartmann, Wolfram, Gottfried, al-
though they give a consummate expression to the ideals of
chivalry, at the same time demonstrate, each in his own
way, the superiority of human feeling over social conven-
tions. Walther is quite as unrestrained in revealing his
own personal emotions as he is bold in his attacks against
the church and the princes. And one need only to think
of the humane refinement preached in the Welscher Gast by
Thomasin von Zirclaria (1216), of Freidank's passionate
declamations against Romish corruption (about 1230), of
the graphic descriptions of peasant life by Neidhart von
Reuenthal (d. about 1240), of the moral enthusiasm revealed
in the poetry of Reinmar vori Zweter (d. about 1250), of
the sympathetic view of burgherdom taken in The Good
Gerhard by Rudolf von Ems (d. 1254), of the intense spirit-
uality displayed in The World' s^Remard^ The Golden
Forge by Konrad von Wurzburg (d. 1287), of the delicacy
of sentiment pervading the love-songs of alHadlaub. (about
1300) or Frauenlob (d. 1318), to realize that even in the
thirteenth century the ideals of chivalry had by no means
ceased to be living forces in the widening and deepening of
human culture. And yet there can be no doubt that it
was the material and intellectual awakening of the middle
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. lOJ
classes and the liberalizing influence of city life which first
made room for the full development of the modern spirit:
the spirit of subjectivism, of criticism, of sympathy with
life in all its forms and phases.
"The first remarkable manifestation of this new spirit is
to be found in the greater freedom of religious oratory
brought about through the activity of the two
great pr©atrhing~of3ers of the Franciscans and T^ep'eaoMng
the Dominicans.- Previous to the establishment
of these'orders the traditional preaching service was con>
fined within certain clearly marked limitations. There were
sermons, as a rule, only on Sundays and holy-days, only
within a church or chapel, only by the regularly appointed
parson or his superiors; and most of the sermons were of a
decidedly conventional and stereotyped character." From
all these limitations the new preaching orders were exempt.
They were endowed with a special papal privilege to dis-
pense the word of God in all dioceses, and the bishops
were not slow to impress upon their subordinates the duty
of receiving these preaching friars readily and willingly.
The Franciscan preacher, then, would go about from town
to town, he would speak on whatever text he might choose,
on any day, in any place, in the public square, before the
city gates, from steeples, from trees'; and it is easy to see
how this freedom of movement would tend to widen the
range of his thought, to bring him into closer touch with the
world, to impart to his speech a fuller grasp of life.
The typical representative of this new method of sermon-
izing is Berthold of Regensburg (d. 1272), the Berthold of
greatest orator of the thirteenth century. No Eegensljurg,
mediaeval preacher, if we except Bernhard of Clairvaux,
' Cf. R. Cruel, Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt im MA. p. 48 f. 78. 279 f.
It would be a mistake to assume that there existed in the Middle Ages
a universally recognised obligation for every parson to preach on
every Sunday. lb. p. 208 fif.
' Cf. W. Wackernagel, AUdeutsche Predigten a. Gebete p. 362.
I08 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
seems to have drawn audiences equal to his in size and
entlj^usiasm.' The manuscript of one of his sermons con-
tains the marginal note : " Many thousands listened to it
at Zurich before the gate ; " and in other manuscripts
/ audiences of forty, sixty, a hundred, nay two hundred,
thousand people are recorded — statements which, even
' though they are palpable exaggerations, show the extraor-
dinary influence exerted by this man. Not a few fancied
they saw a halo around his head while he was speaking;
and many a proud knight would return stolen church prop-
erty, many a frivolous courtesan would abjure the lusts of
the world, touched by his speech. Once, when his thunder-
ing words have terrified one of his hearers, a poor daughter
of sin, to such a degree that she breaks down, he calls out
to the assembled populace: " Who of you will take this re-
pentant daughter for a wife ? I will endow her with a mar-
riage-portion." A man steps forward to accept the offer.
Berthold promises ten pounds, and sends some men through
the crowd to collect the sum. While the collection is being
taken, he suddenly exclaims: " Enough! we have the money
that is needed." And lo! exactly ten pounds, not a penny
less or more, had been collected.
A true man of the people, Berthold knew how to appeal
to the instincts of the common man, how to enliven his
oratory with allusions to every-day occurrences, how to
illustrate even the supernatural by graphic and striking
imagery. Here is how, in one of his sermons, he depicts
the glory of God°: " No mother ever was so fond of her
child that, if she were to look at it for three days with-
out intermission, she would not on the fourth prefer eating
a piece of bread. But if you should say to a man who is
with God: 'Thou hast ten children on earth, and for every
one of them thou shalt obtain honour and riches as long
' For the following cf. Wackernagel /. c. /. 354 ff.
^ Berthold von Regensburg ed. Pfeiffer and Strobl, I, 388 ff.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. IO9
as they live if thou wilt only turn thy eyes from God as
long as it takes me to turn my hand,' — that man would
rather let his children go a-begging than turn his face from
God this single moment. Of the glory of God we can
speak only in images. For all that we could ever say about
it, that is just as though the unborn babe in its mother's
womb were to tell of all the beauty and glory of the world,
of the shining sun, of the shining stars, of the power and
manifold colours of precious metals, of the power and per-
fume of noble spices, of the beautiful things made of silk
and gold, of all the sweet voices of the world, of the song
of birds and the sound of harps, and of the variegated
colours of the flowers. As little as the babe in the mother's
womb which never saw either good or bad and never felt a
single joy, could talk of this, — so little can we talk of the
unspeakable delight which is in heaven, or of the beauteous
face of the living God."
In all this we see an intensity of the inner life, a passion-
ate glow of individual feeling, which it is hard to imagine
in permanent accord with the fixed forms of an accepted
creed; and if men like Berthold and his teacher, David of
Augsburg,' with all their wealth of original thought, re-
hiained most zealous supporters of outward churchliness,
they were soon followed by men whom the contrast between
individual inspiration and traditional dogma was to lead
to a more or less open opposition against the whole hier-
archical system: the classics of German Mysticism in the
fourteenth century.
Each of the three great mystic preachers of the four-
teenth century seems to have been affected by popular move-
ments on which the church had laid the oppro-
brium of unsound and dangerous doctrine. One ^' '°°'
of the chief accusations raised against Master Eckhart
• Cf. F. Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker des 14. Jahrhdts I, 309 ff. ; and
Ztschr.f. d. Altert. IX, i ff.
I lO SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN- LITERA TURE.
(d. 1327) by the papal inquisition was that he had abetted
the heresies of the Beghards and the " Brethren of the Free
Spirit.'"" ^Hein^tSuso (d. 1366) was censur ed by t he
authorities of his order for haying defeB /*. 3S4. " lb. 364.
114 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and receive help from within, or thou wilt never come to
any good ; however thou mayest seek and inquire, thou
must also be willing to be tormented without succour from
the outward help of any creature. I tell you, children, that
the very holiest man I ever saw in outward conduct and
inward life had never heard more than five sermons in all
his days. Let the common people run about and hear
all they can, that they may not fall into despair or unbelief;
but know that all who would be God's inwardly and out-
wardly turn to themselves and retire within." He contrasts
the prayer of the soul with the prayer of the lips" : " Out-
ward prayer is of no profit except in so far as it stirs the
noble flame of devotion in the heart, and when that sweet
incense breaks forth and rises up, then it matters little
whether the prayer of the lips be uttered or not." He-is
fond of enlivening his speech by-pictures_ofoutdoor life,.as
for instancerrwhen -he compares— those XllcisHiSfr^wSi-liave
not yet come to know God truly with untrained d^s who
"have not yet acquired the true scent of the game" : " They
run with all speed after the good dogs of nobler breed.
And verily, if they kept on running, they would with them
bring down the stag. But no, in the space of a short
hour or so they look about them, and lose sight of their
companions, or they stand still with their nose in the earth
and let the others get ahead of them, and so they are left
behind."
But his whole soul flames up when he depicts in
heavenly colours the beauty of the true spiritual life. So
when he likens it to a wilderness "* in which
"there spring up and flourish many sweet flowers where they are
not trodden under foot by man. In this wilderness are found the
lilies of chastity, and the white roses of innocence ; and therein are
found too the red roses of sacrifice, when flesh and blood are con-
sumed in the struggle with sin, and the man is ready, if need be, to
«« Tauler's Sermons 217. " /*. 321 f. " lb. 198 f.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. II5
suffer martyrdom — the which is not easily to be learned in the world.
In this wilderness, too, are found the violets of humility, and many
other fair flowers and wholesome roots, in the examples of holy men
of God. And in this wilderness shalt thou choose for thyself a pleas-
ant spot wherein to dwell ; that is, a holy life in which thou mayest
follow the example of God's saints in pureness of heart, poverty of
spirit, true obedience, and all other virtues ; so that it may be said,
as it is in the Canticles : ' Many flowers have appeared in our land ' ;
for many have died full of holiness and good works."
So when he depicts God's sun shining upon the noble vine
of the Christian heart and bringing forth all its precious
fruit;" so, above all, when he describes the mystery of
mysteries, the union of God and the soul."
" When, through all manner of exercises, the outward man has been
converted into the inward, reasonable man, and thus the two, that is
10 say, the powers of the senses and the powers of the reason, are
gathered up into the very centre of the man's being, — the unseen_depths
of his spirit, wherein lies the image of God, — and thus he flings him-
self into the divine abyss in which he dwelt eternally before he was
created; then, when God finds the man thus simply and nakedly turned
towards him, the Godhead bends down and descends into the depths
of the pure, waiting soul, and transforms, the created soul, drawing it
up into the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes one with
him. Could such a man behold .himself, Jie would see himself so
noble that he would fancy himself God, and see himself, a thousand
times nobler than he is iji himself, and would perceive all the
thoughts and purposes, words and works, and have all th* knowledge
of nil men that ever were.
" Tauler's Sermons 251.
'* lb. 380. — InTauler the religious oratory of Germany before Luther
reached its culminating point. For Geiler of Kaisersberg, the greatest
preacher of the fifteenth century.(cf. Cruel /. i. p. 538 fi.), far from
having developed the pure and elevated style of Tauler, rather repre-
sents a return to the drastic realism of Berthold of Regensburg. Nor
can it be said that the religious thought of the fifteenth century added
much to the religious thought of the fourteenth. Both the Tkeologia
deulsck by the so-called Frankfurter and the Imitatio Christi by
Thomas of Kempen are in the main restatements of what the Mystics
of the fourteenth century had said before.
/
Il6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
In reading these effusions, is it not as though we were
looking at one of those marvellous fifteenth-century paint-
ings in Ghent or Bruges, Cologne or Liibeck, in which the
most simple and serene worldliness, the intensest passion,
the calmest contemplation, and the deepest spirituality have
• been blended into so chaste and harmonious a whole that
\all merely technical criticism is silenced before them ?
\ The same vividness of representation, the same mdi-
viduality and truthfulness of feeling, the same sympathy
with real life which we observed to be cha-
oetryi racteristic features of the religious prose of the
centuries preceding the birth of Protestantism, we observe,
also, in the three most important branches of the poetic
literature of this period, i.e., in the Volkslied, in didactic
and satirical narrative, and in the religious drama.
If we compare the German Volkslied " of the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries with the chivalric Minne-
song, we cannot help being struck with the
TheVolksUed. , ' • , j j •
extraordmary advance made durmg these cen-
turies in directness, force, and originality of poetic
speech. Not in the laborious rhymes and metres of
the Mastersingers," but in the freedom and artlessness of
the Volkslied, do we find the most -characteristic lyrical
expression oi the hBightehihg and widening of individual
life which accompanied the growth oi civic independence
during these centuries.
No doubt there is a great deal of truth in the assertion
which, since Herder's Von deutscher Art und Kunst, has
found its way into all literary histories, that the Volks-
lied is property and product of a whole nation. A song
once started is taken up by the multitude"; it is sung by
" An exhaustive bibliography of the Volkslied GdgPh. II, i, 752 ff.
" Cf. Adam Puschmann, GtHndlicker Bericht des deutschen Meister-
gesangs, in NddLw. nr. 73. GG. § 91.
" Cf. Limburger Chronik ed. A. Wyss, p. 56. 65. 70. 74. 75. passim.
7'HE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. II7
SO many different persons, in so many different ways, on
so many different occasions, that in the course of time,
through additions, omissions, and transformations, it loses
its original character. It is moulded, as it were, by the
stream of public imagination, as the pebbles in the brook are
moulded and remoulded by the current of the water which
carries them along. And yet it is equally certain that each
Volkslied, in its original form, is property and product of
an individual poet, and is the result of individual and
personal experiences. If this were not self-evident, the
German folk-songs of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six-
teenth centuries would give ample proof of it. Although
largely anonymous, these songs are emphatically personal.
In many cases the very headline indicates the subjective
character of the poem by introducing an Ick, Du, Wir, or
Ihr: " Ich hort ein sichellin rauschen" — " Ich weiss ein
fein brauns megdelin" — " Ich stund an einem morgen" —
" Ich ritt mit lust durch einen wald " — " Ei du feiner reuter,
edler herre mein " — " Was wollen wir aber haben an ? " —
"Wol uf, ir lieben gsellen ! " — etc., etc. And not infre-
quently the author, if he does not openly give his name,
hints at least at his occupation and station in life. This
song, we hear, for instance, was sung by a student, another
by a fisherman, another by a pilgrim, still others by a rider
good at Augsburg, by a poor beggar, by a landsknecht free,
by three maidens at Vienna. Or we hear a frank expres-
sion of the author's satisfaction with himself and his pro-
duction":
Wer ist der uns das liedlein sang
Auss freiera mut, ja raut ?
Das tet eins reichen bauren son.
War gar ein junges blut.
At times there is coupled with this a reference to per-
sonal experiences, not at all connected with the subject of
" Uhland, Alte hoch- u. niederdctitsche Volhslieder nr. 23.
Il8 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAtf LITERATURE.
the song, but which the singer is anxious to have his hear-
ers know" :
Der uns diss neuwe liedlein sang
Er hats gar wol gesungen,
Er ist dreimal in Frankreich gewest
Und allzeit wider kommen.
And now the subject-matter of these songs itself ! There
is hardly a side of human character, there is hardly a phase
of human life, hardly an event in national history, which
did not find expression in them. It is as though the
circulation of the national body had been quickened and
its sensibilities heightened, as though people were seeing
with keener eyes and listening with more receptive ears, as
though they were gathering the thousandfold impressions of
the inner and outer world: of stars and clouds, of trees and
brooks, of love and longing, of broken faith and heroic
deeds, — and were then giving shape to these impressions in
melody and song. An unpretentious and succinct form
it is. There is nothing in the Volkslied of the
majestic massiveness of the Pindaric ode, nor does it
have the finely chiselled elegance of the troubadour chanson.
It is direct, simple, almost laconic. But this brevity is
fraught with a deep sense of the living forces in nature and
man, and this simplicity and directness convey impres-
sions all the more vivid and striking, since they surprise us
in the same way as the naive wisdom of a child surprises us.
Sometimes a single touch, such as " Dort oben auf dem
berge " or " Zwischen berg und tiefem tal," opens the view
of a whole landscape, with rivers flowing, with castles on
mountain-tops, and birds sporting in the air. A single
picture reveals sometimes the kinship of all living beings, as
for instance the image of the linden-tree which is mourning
with the deserted maiden ":
" Uhland /. c. nr. gq A ; cf. nr. 114. " lb. nr. 27.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. IIQ
Es stetein lind in disem tal,
Ach Gott, was tut sie da?
Sie will mir helfen trauren.
Das:: ich kein bulen hab.
A single stanza sometimes gives us an epitome of a whole
human life with all its joys, sorrows, and catastrophes.
What can be more impressive than the abruptness and the
seemingly fragmentary character of the story, told in two
short stanzas, of the youth who loved the miller's daughter?
She lives upon yonder hill where the mill is turning; and
when he looks up to it from the valley, then his senses are
bewildered, and it seems to him as though the ceaseless
turning of the wheel was his own unending love":
Dort hoch auf jenem berge
Da get ein miilerad,
Das malet nichts denn liebe
Die nacht biss an den tag.
This is the first scene; but without transition there follows
another picture. The mill is destroyed, the lovers have
been parted, and the poor fellow is wandering away into
loneliness and misery;
Die mtile ist zerbrochen.
Die liebe hat ein end.
So gsegen dich got, mein feines lieb !
Jez far ich ins ellend.
How artless and enchanting, how dreamy and yet how
distinctly drawn, is the scene in the wheatiSeld, where
the poet overhears amidst the sound of the sickles the
voices of two reaping girls, the one bewailing the loss of
her sweetheart, the other rejoicing in her own happiness of
newly awakened love":
" Ubland /. c. nr. 33. '* li. nr. 34 A.
I20 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Ich hort ein sichellin rauschen,
Wol rauschen durch das korn,
Ich hort ein feine magt klagen :
Sie het ir lieb verlorn.
' La rauschen, lieb, la rauschen }
Ich acht nit wie es ge ;
Ich hab mir ein bulen erworben
In feiel und griinen kle.'
' Hast du ein bulen erworben
In feiel und grUnen kle.
So ste ich hie alleine.
Tut nnieinem herzen we.'
How could a tragic story be told more simply and more
thrillingly than in the tale of the little boy who has
been poisoned by his stepmother ? He is coming back
from his aunt's house, where the poison has been given to
him; and the whole crime is revealed to us in seven short
stanzas, consisting of questions and answers directed to and
given by the boy, and ending with a terrible curse against
the cruel mother " :
Kind, wo bist du hin gewesen?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Nach meiner mutter schwester,
Wie we ist mir ! '
Kind, was gaben sie dir zu essen ?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Eine brfle mit pfeffer,
Wie we ist mir ! '
Kind, was gaben sie dir zu trinken 7
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Ein glas mit rotem weine,
Wie we ist mir.'
Kind, was gaben sie den hunden ?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Eine brUe mit pfeffer,
Wie we ist mir ! '
'" Uhland l.c, nr. 120 ; cf. Child, Engl, and Scott. Pop. Ballads 1, 153 ff.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 121
Kind, was machten denn die hunde?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Sie sturben zur selben stunde,
Wie we ist mir !
Kind, was soli dein vater haben ?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Einen stul in dem himmel,
Wie we ist mir ! '
Kind, was soil deine mutter haben?
Kind, sage dus mir !
' Einen stul in der hSUe,
Wie we ist mir ! '
What a picture of honest domesticity and burgher re-
spectability is given in the touching story of the German
Hero and Leander," the " two ,royal children who could
not come together — the water was far too wide." And how
rugged and whole-souled, on the other hand, the German
yeomanry appear in the outcry of the Dithmarse freemen
against the Duke of Holstein, because he dared to build
a fortified castle within their boundaries. Their leader
calls upon them to tear down the hateful structure":
Tredet herto, gi stolten Ditmarschen !
Unsen kummer wille wi wreken.
Wat hendeken gebuwet haen ,
Dat konnen wol hendeken tobreken.
And the people answer with a magnificent affirmation of their
readiness to undertake all things or to sacrifice all things
rather than to lose their independence:
'" Uhland I.e. nr. 91.
" Liliencron, Die hist. Volksl. d. Deutsehen I, nr. 45 ; the event
belongs to the year 1404. Cf. ib. nr. 32-34 (Schlacht bei SempacK), nr,
35 (Schlackt bei Ndfels), II nr. 138-41 (Schlacht bei Granson), nr.
142-44 (Seklacht bei Murten), nr. 147 ( Vom ursprung der eidgnoschaft).
J. BSchtcld, Geschichte d. deutsehen Lift, in d. Schweiz p. 191 ff.
122 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
De Ditmarschen repen averlut :
' Dat lide wi nu und nummermere,
Wi willen darumme wagen hals und gut
Und willen dat gar ummekeren.
' Wi willen darumme wagen goet und bloet
Und willen dar alle umme sterven,
Er dat der Holsten er averraoet
So scholde unse schone lant vorderven.'
If, then, in the Volkslied of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries we notice a very marked advance over
^., ,. , the bulk of the Minnesong in originality of
Didactic and , . , , • •
narrative feeling and in fulness of life, we observe a sirai-
poetry, j^y progress in the didactic and narrative poetry
of the time, as compared with the average court-epics of
the preceding epoch. To say it in a word : here lie
the roots of the modern realistic novel. Not that any
sustained and successful attempt had been made at that
time to portray human character as developed under the
influence of everyday occurrences and ordinary experi-
ences; iox Reinke de Vos,^'"' although it certainly is a most
amusing and masterly caricature of human society, still re-
tains too much of the weirdness of animal nature to be
termed a portrayal of human character. But if we thus
have no work in this narrative poetry, which in its totality
could be called a forerunner of the modern novel, we have,
on the other hand, a superabundance of situations, of in-
cidents, of characters scattered through this literature,
which are drawn with the same predilection for the com-
mon and the lowly, the same antipa-thy-to^society con-
ventions, the,same,Qbservation of detail, the same attention
to -thSapparently insignificant, which mark the realistic
tendencies of our own time.
^'^ For the development of the animal epic from the Ecbasis Captivi
and Isengrimus (supra, p. 47 fiE), through the French Roman de Renart
and Isengrtnes N6t by Heinrich der Glichesaere (c. 1180), to the Roman
van den Vos Reinaerde by the Flemish poet Willem (c. 1250), and
thence to the Low German Reinke (1498), cf. GdgPh. II, i, 262,462 f.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. I23
One of the earliest works of this kind, Der Pfaffe Amis,
a colleetion of tales, written about 1230 by an Austrian poet
narheia Strieker, is noteworthy as an attempt to draw the
character of a clerical swindler. Of the manner in which this
design is carried out the following episode in the impostor's
career may serve as an illustration. '' Conceal-
ing his clerical character, he introduces himself to ^^'^.^^affe
Arms,
the prior of a monastery as a simple, unlearned
business-man. Appointed manager of the worldly affairs of
the monastery, he displays remarkable executive capacity
and wins the favour and confidence of the prior. One day he
announces that he has had a vision : an angel has appeared
before him and summoned him to conduct mass. He is in
great perplexity about it ; for how could he, an ignorant,
uneducated layman, who has never looked into a book, read
Latin ? The prior encourages him to try. They lock them-
selves up in the church. Amis (the name of the impostor)
is put into priestly garments, he steps before the altar, and
lo and behold, he sings the mass from beginning to end
most fluently and impressively. The prior is amazed and
overjoyed : he has discovered a saint ! He spreads his fame
abroad ; from all parts of the country people flock to the
monastery, bringing large offerings of silver and gold. One
fine morning the saint is gone, and the silver and gold with
him.
About the same time, probably towards 1250, a Bavarian
poet, Wernher "the Gardener," wrote the story of Meier
Helmbrecht, a young farmer, who, despising the jigigj selm-
honest modesty of his father's home, embraces treoht.
court life, associates with a robber knight, becomes a high-
wayman himself, and is finally hung by enraged peasants.
The scene where, on one of his plundering expeditions, he
revisits his home for the first time since he left it against
" Cf. c. 10, Die Messe; Erztihlungen «. Schwdnke d. MA. ed. Lam-
bel/. 67ff.
124 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
his father's warning and wishes, is a masterpiece of minute
and terse characterization":
" When Helmbrecht rode up to his father's house, all the inmates
ran to the gate, and the servants called out, not ' Welcome, Helm-
brecht ' — that they did not dare to do — but : ' Our young lord, be
graciously welcome.' He answered in the Saxon dialect : ' Suster-
kindeken, got late inch immer saelic sin.' His sister ran up to him
and embraced him, but he said to her, ' Gratia vester.' Last of all
came the old folks rather slowly, and embraced him affectionately ;
but he said to his father in French, 'Deu sal,' and to his mother in
Bohemian, ' Dobra ytra.' Father and mother looked at each other,
and the mother said to her husband : ' My lord, our senses have been
bewildered, it is not our child, it is a Bohemian,' The father cried
out : ' It is a Frenchman, it is not my son, whom I commended
to God.' And his sister Gotelint said : ' It is not your son, to me
he spoke in Latin, it must be a monk.' And the servant said : ' What
I heard of him made me think he came from Saxony or Brabant ; he
said Susterkindekin, he surely is a Saxon.' Then the old farmer said
with direct simplicity : 'Is it you, my son, Helmbrecht? Honouryour
moiher and me, say a. word in German, and I myself will groom
your horse, I, and not my servant.' ' Ey waz sakent ir, gebure-
kin?' answered the son. 'Min parit sol dehein geburik man zware
nimmer gripen an.' ('Eh, what are you talking of, peasant? My
horse, forsooth, no peasant shall dare to touch.') The old man was
grieved and frightened, but again said : ' Are you Helmbrecht, my
son? Then will I roast you a chicken this very night. But if you
are a stranger, a Bohemian, or a Wendish man, then I have no shelter
for you. If you are a Saxon or a Brabanter you must look out your-
self for a meal, from me you shall have nothing, even though the
night lasted a whole year. If you are a lord I have no beer or wine
for you, go and find it with the lords.' Meanwhile it had grown
/ate, and the boy knew there was no shelter for him in the neighbour-
hood, so at last he said : ' Yes, I am he, I am Helmbrecht ; once I
was your son and servant.' 'Then tell me the names of my four
oxen ! ' ' Ouwer, Raeme, Erge, Sunne ; I have often cracked my
whip over them, they are the best oxen in the world ; will you now
receive me ? ' And the father cried out : ' Door and gate, chamber
and closet, all shall be open to you ! ' "
•* Meier Helmbrecht v. 697 ff. ; ib. p. 163 ff.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 12$
Some fifty years after Wernher had drawn this tragic picture
from Bavarian peasant life a Bamberg schoolmaster, Hugo of
Trimberg, composed a vast didactic poem, en-
titled Der Renner (1300), in which he attempted pS" of Trim-
to give a view of the universe as it presented
itself to him from behind the windows of his cloistered
study. And here again, in the midst of long-winded reflec-
tions about heaven and earth, about the nature of beast and
man, about virtues and vices, we find descriptions of actual
life so forcible, so wholesome and unaffected, that we may
feel tempted to apply to this moralising poet what the Zim-
burg Chronicle under the year 1380 says of Master Wilhelm
of Koln, the first great German painter" : " He knew how
to paint any man of whatever form as though he were
alive."
The following parable " of the mule who tries to hide his
plebeian origin shows the democratic spirit which pervades
all of these scenes. When the lion had been elected king of
the animals he commanded all the beasts, great and small,
to come before him and tell him their names. With the
rest the mule came to the gathering. Said the king : " Tell
me, what is your name ?" The mule answered : " Sire, do
you know the horse of the knight who resides at Bacharach
and is called Sir Toldnir ? Believe me, that same horse is
ray uncle ; that same horse and my mother fed from
the same manger and were born of the same mother."
The king waxed angry and said : " As yet, it is not known
to me what was your father's name." The mule answered :
" Sire, did your path ever lead you by the town of Bruns-
wick ? Sire, there stands a young colt well kept and
groomed. He belongs to the lord of the land, and is my
uncle, as I have heard from my mother." The king said :
" Limburger Chronik ed. Wyss p. 75.
*' Cf. F. Vetter, Lehrhafte Litt. d. 14. «. it,.Jkdts, DNL. XII, i, p.
2582,
126 SOCIAL FOUCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
"However noble your uncles are, however noble your
mother may be, as yet I do not know who you are yourself,
unless you tell me who your father is." Then the mule
was silent. But the fox, who stood near by, said : " Sire, do
you know the donkey whom the baker owns at Wesel, out
yonder towards the field ? Know that selfsame donkey is
his father. Himself he is called mule, and he is four times
my superior in strength and size. But I should not care to
exchange my state with his patched-up nobility. His
father, of whom he did not wish to speak, is far more
worthy than any of his uncles. For faithfulness and sim-
plicity dwell in him, and he supports himself by honest toil
and to no one does he any harm. Sire, I speak the truth."
Said the king : " You are right."
About thirty years later than this poetic encyclopaedia of
Hugo's is the Edehtein of the Bernese friar Ulrich Boner
~ . , - (i33°)> a collection of parables and fables in-
Ulnon Boner. , , , , . , . ,.
tended, as the title indicates, to serve as a
talisman against the evils and errors of the world. To what
lengths of realistic frankness — not to say coarseness — the
fourteenth century would go in its protest against chivalric
conventions is illustrated, among other parables of this col-
lection, by the tale of the fever and the flea." One day
the fever met the flea. Both had had a terrible night, and
told their woes to each other. The flea said : " I'm nearly
dead of hunger. Last night I went to a convent hoping for
a good supper. But how sadly was I mistaken. I jumped
upon a high bed, beautifully upholstered and richly decked
out. It was that of the abbess, a very fine lady. When in
the evening she went to bed, she noticed me at once,
and cried : ' Irmentraut, where are you ? come ! bring the
candle, quick ! ' I skipped off before the girl came, and
when the light was out again I went back to the same place
as before. Again she called, again I skipped off. And so
" Vetter /. c. p. 28 fit.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 12;
it went all night long, and now you see I am completely
tired out. Would to God that I had better luck." The
fever said : " Well, don't think that I fared much better.
I went to a working-woman last night. When she noticed
that I was shaking her, she sat down, brewed herself a
strong broth and ate it, after which she poured a pailful of
water down her throat. Then she went to work to wash a
lot of linen that she had standing in a tub ; and she kept
it up nearly, all night long. I never spent such an uncom-
fortable night. At early dawn she put the tub on her head
and carried it off to a brook to rinse the washing. Then
I had enough of her and ran away." — The two now agree to
change places the next night. The fever visits the abbess,
the flea goes to the washerwoman's, and both have a very
satisfactory time of it. For the abbess has herself warmly
covered up and treated to all sorts of delicacies, which of
course makes the fever stay with her for weeks ; and the
washerwoman is so tired with her day's work that she im-
mediately drops off and sleeps all night without even sus-
pecting that anything is wrong.
In order to convince ourselves that the tendency to realis-
tic portrayal of life which is manifested in these specimens
of poetic narrative from the thirteenth and four- Realism in
teenth centuries had by no means abated by the fifteenth-oen-
beginning of the sixteenth, we need only to i^u^atorioal
glance at some of the representative works of Bignifioanoe,
the decades immediately preceding the religious Reforma-
tion, such as SithasX.ia.n'ETa.nt's Narrenschiff (ii^g/^), Jieinke
de Vos (1498), Thomas yiwcntx's Narrenbeschworung (1512)
and Gauchmatt (Fools' Meadow, 1514), or the popular
prose tale of Till Eulenspiegel (1515)." Here we find
" Cf., e.g., Narrinsch. (DNL. XVI) c. 62 "Von nachts hofieren" ;
Reinke ed. K. Schroder I, 9 (the grotesque description of the villagers);
Narrenbischw. (DNL. XVII, i) c. 80 " Ein lutenschlaher im herzen
hon" ; Eulensp. {DNL. XXV) c. 68 "Wie Ulenspiegel einen bijreii
umb ein griin leindisch thuch betrog."
128 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the same spirit which we observed in Meier Helmbrecht or
Der Pfaffe Amis, the same spirit which was to find its con-
summate artistic expression in the woodcuts and the
sculptures of the sixteenth century, in works like Diirer's
Life of Mary, Peter Vischer's Tomb of St. Sebald, or Hol-
bein's Dance of Death: a spirit of naive fearlessness and
truthfulness ; a childlike delight in direct and unconven-
tional, and even coarse, utterance ; a loving tenderness for
the apparently small and common; and a grim hatred of all
pretence and usurpation. And if we thus are led to consider
the historic significance of this outburst of realism in the
narrative poetry of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries, we cannot fail to see in it a symptom of one of the
most important movements in modern history; we cannot
fail to see in it a symptom that the time had come when the
peasant, the merchant, the artisan were ready to claim their
share in public life alongside of the clergyman and the
knight ; we cannot fail to see in it a symptom that the tide
of that great popular upheaval against class rule which
reached its first high-water mark in the religious Reforma-
tion had set in. When the second climax of that great
upheaval, the French Revolution, was approaching, it was
h^alded in France, England, and Germany by a literary
revolt. Instead of the gallant shepherds and shepherd-
esses, instead of the polite cavaliers and high-minded kings,
who in the seventeenth century were deemed the only suit-
able subjects for fiction and the drama, people now wanted
to see men and women of their own flesh and blood ; and
Fielding, Diderot, and Lessing appeared as the regenerators •
of literature. Just so, in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies, the old heroic and ideal figures of Siegfried, of Par-
zival, of Tristan, representatives of a bygone aristocratic
past, had lost their force ; what people wanted to see in
literature was their own life, their__mro^narrQa!:,_crowded
streets, their own gabled houses and__steepled_£atbedrars,
their own sturdy and homely faces. ^ -
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 129
It is under this same aspect, it is primarily as a social
phenomenon, that the development of the religious drama
during these centuries interests us here. The „, ,. .
beginnings of the religious drama go back to drama. Its
the early Middle Ages. They were connected liegi^iigs.
with the chief festivals of the_church, and had their basis
in the dramatTc'elemejitsol the church liturgy. Out of the
CBrtstiHaS^ituaJ, the principal subjects of which were the
events^centring around the birth of the Saviour, there de-
veloped simple dramatic representations of such scenes as
the Annunciation, the Song of the Angels, the Adoration of
the Shepherds and the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, the
Slaughter of the Innocents." The recital on Good Friday of
ffie'biblical account of Christ's passion and death gradually
led to an impersonation of the principal characters that
appear in it. The introduction into the Easter mass of
brig^f choral anthems, suggesting the dialogue between the
angel and the three Marys at the grave, naturally gave rise
to a similar representation of the whole group of events
connected with the Resurrection." And to these three
foremost plays on Christmas, Qood Friday, and Easter,
other performances on other festivals in course of time
were added.
During the hergHFof chivalr-ic culture in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries these, plays seem to have shared the
ideal and solemn character which marked this j^g ^jjajg^^tgr
whole periods They were written in Latin; ia the twelfth
■ they were performed within the churches and <=eiittiiy.
by members of the clergy; they wefe^ operatic rather than
dramatic; they were confined to the sphere of thought and
" Cf., e.g„ the so-called Ordo Rachelis; K. Weinhold, Weihnachts-
spiileu. -Liederp. 62 ff.— Bibliography of the religious drama GdgPh.
II, I, 397. A comprehensive account in W. Creizenach, Gesch. d.
neuern Dramas I. Ten Brink, Hist, of Engl. Lit. II, i, 234 ff.
'" Cf. K. Lange, Die lat. Oster/eiern p. 22 ff.
130 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
.fancy which had received the sanction of the temporal and
spiritual authorities.
From a contemporary and ardent admirer of emperor
Frederick Barbarossa we have a Play of Antichrist (c.
1 180)," which in a most emphatic manner reveals the
elevated and sombre tone of the early sacred drama. Two
allegoric personages, Paganism and the Syna-
ThelndTiaao gogue, open this play. Paganism extols the poly-
theistic view, which accords due reverence to all
heavenly powers, while the Synagogue glorifies the one in-
visible God, and inveighs against the belief in the divinity
of Christ. Then, as a third, the Church comes forward, in
regal crown and armour, on her right hand Mercy with the
olive branch, on her left Justice with balance and sword.
Against those who are of another faith than hers she pro-
nounces eternal damnation. She is followed on the right
by the pope and clergy, on the left by the emperor and his
hosts. The kings of the earth bring up the rear. The
emperor now demands the submission of the kings. All
accord it, except the king of France, who, however, is at
last forced into obedience. Then the emperor starts for the
Holy Land to deliver it from the hands of the pagans. He
triumphs over the enemies of Christendom, and thereupon
lays down his crown and sceptre in the house of the Lord.
But now the hypocrites conspire against the Church. In
their midst is Antichrist, wearing a coat of mail beneath
his wings, and leading on his right hand Hypocrisy, on his
left Heresy. In the very temple of Jerusalem his followers
erect his throne; and the Church, conquered and humili-
ated, is driven to the Papal See. Antichrist sends ambas-
sadors to demand the homage of the world, and all kings
" Edited by Froning, Das Drama dis MA. {DNL. XIV) I, 199 ff.
Of a similarly elevated character are the two so-called Benedlktbeuren
Plays (Froning III, 875 ff. I, 278 ff.), the former a Christmas, the
latter a Passion play ; and the Trier Easter play {ib. I, 46 ff.).
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. I3I
kneel before him, except the German emperor. But al-
though the emperor conquers him in a pitched battle, Anti-
christ manages at last, through false miracles, to gain even
the support of the Germans; he conquers Babylon and is
received by the Jews as their Messiah; his earthly kingdom
extends farther than any other realm. But now the prophets
Ehjah and Enoch appear and preach the glory of the
Saviour. A new struggle between light and darkness begins,
but immediately comes to an abrupt end. A sound is
heard from above. Antichrist falls, his followers flee away
in haste and consternation, while the Church sings a halle-
lujah and announces that the Lord is coming to sit in judg-
ment over the world.
If we now turn from this essentially allegorical drama,
and, passing over nearly three hundred years, on an Easter
Sunday in the second half of the fifteenth cen- jjjjfgjgj^^
tury, mingle with the populace of a free German character of
town, assembled in the market-place to witness Jfie later re-
' "^ ugions dramai
the representation of the Redeemer's resurrec- wiener Oater-
tion, we shall see a very different spectacle." ^P'^^-
The first person that appears on the stage — after the resur-
rection itself with its usual sequence, Christ's descent into
hell and the delivery of the Fathers, has passed before our
eyes — is a quack doctor and vender of medicines. He has
just come from Paris, where he has bought a great supply
of salves and tonics and domestic wares, the usefulness of
which he is not slow to impress upon his audience. But
his salesman has run away, and he wants another. Now
a second personage of an equally doubtful character, by the
name of Rubin, presents himself. Though still a young
fellow, he is an expert in all sorts of tricks. He is a pick-
pocket, a gambler, a counterfeiter, and he has always
managed to defy the courts, except in Bavaria, where they
caught him once and branded his cheeks. To the doctor
*' Cf. Hoffmann, Fundgrubm II, 313 ff.
132 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LIIERATURE.
he seems the right man, and he is engaged accordingly, the
salary being fixed at a pound of mushrooms and a soft
cheese. And since the streets are now beginning to be
filled with a concourse of people, the two proceed at once
to set up their booth. At this moment there arises from
amidst the crowd a wailing song, — the three Marys are
lamenting the death of Christ :
Wir haben verlorn Jesum Christ,
Der aller werlde ein troster ist,
Marien son den reinen:
Darum musse wir beweinen
Swerlichen seinen cot:
Wenn er half uns aus grosser not^
which is followed by the exhortation to go to his grave and
anoint his body with ointment. The quack sees his chance
for a good bargain; he sends Rubin to coax the women to
his booth, and now there ensues a regular country fair
scene. The three Marys evidently do not know the value
of money; they offer to pay all they have, three gold
florins; and the merchant is so overcome by this unexpected
readiness of his customers that he in turn gives them better
stuff than he is accustomed to do. But here his wife, who,
it seems, has a better business head, intervenes. She has
made the ointment herself, she knows it ought to sell for much
more, she bids the women not to touch it, and when her hus-
band insists on keeping his agreement, she abuses him as a
drunkard and spendthrift, — an attack which he answers by
beating and kicking her. Finally they pack all their things
together and move off, and again the farcical suddenly
gives way to the pathetic. The three women arrive at the
grave; but the stone has been rolled away, and the angel
accosts them singing:
Er ist nicht hie den ir sucht;
Sunder get, ob irs gerucht,
Und saget seinen jungern
Und Petro besunder
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 1 33
Dass er ist erstanden
Und gein Galilea gegangen.
The scene closes with a chant of the three Marys, which is
partly an expression of grief and sorrow that even the body
of the Saviour should have been taken away from them: —
Owe der mere !
Owe der jemmerlichen klage !
Das grap ist lere :
Owe meiner tage ! —
and partly an assertion of hope and confidence in the sup-
port of their Redeemer:
Jesu, du bist der milde trost
Der uns von sunden hat erlost.
Von sunden und von sorgen
Den abent und den morgen.
Er hat dem teufel angesiget,
Der noch vil feste gebunden liget.
Er hat vil manche sele erlost :
O Jesu, du bist der werlde trost.
The whole religious drama of the fifteenth century is
crowded with scenes similar to these. Most pathetic and
soul-stirring are the lamentations of Mary before
the cross, as they are depicted, for instance, in ^^felder
the Alsfeld Passion play of the end of the cen- ^^^"''^^P" ■
tury." She appeals to all Christendom, to the earth, to the
very stones for sympathy; she makes John repeat again and
again the cruel tale of all the tortures and wounds inflicted
upon her son; she wails at seeing him hanging yonder so
naked and bare, his cheeks so pallid and hollow; she turns
to the Jews and beseeches them to take her own life instead
of his:— all this reveals the deepest feelings of a mother's
heart. Yet in the same play there are scenes of such caustic
*' Froning III, 779 ff. A large part of these lamentations is taken
verbatim from the so-called Trierer Marimklage (Wackernagel, Das
deutsche Kirchenlied II, 347). The Judas-scene ib. 681 ff.
134 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERAI'URE.
sarcasm and Such grotesque caricature that we might fancy
ourselves face to face with a farcical satire rather than a
religious tragedy. This, for instance, is the way Judas haggles
with the Jews about the traditional thirty pieces of silver.
In the first place he demands thirty shillings; subsequently
he comes down to thirty pennies instead. But he has them
counted out to him one by one, and he is as scrupulous in
the examination of the different coins as a mediaeval trades-
man dealing with people from a neighbouring town.
Judas : This penny is red.
Caiphas : 'Tis good enough to buy meat and bread.
Judas : This one is bad.
Caiphas : Judas, hear what a good ring it has.
Judas : This one is broken.
Caiphas : Well, take another and stop grumbling.
Judas : This one has a hole in it.
Caiphas : Take another, then ; here is a good one.
Judas : This one has a false stamp.
Caiphas : If you don't want it, I'll give you another.
Judas : This one is black.
Caiphas : Look at this one, and be done with it.
Judas : This crack is altogether too large.
Caiphas : Judas, if you'll hang yourself, here's a rope.
Judas : This one is leaden.
Caiphas : How long are you going to make fun of us?
In a Hessian Christmas play, also of the end of the fif-
teenth century," Joseph and Mary appear as a poor home-
Eeasisohes ^^^^ couple. They wander from house to house,
Weihnaolits- nobody is willing to take them in, and even in
'P^^'- the vagrants' home, where they at last find
shelter, poor Joseph must submit to the most humiliating
insults heaped upon him by two servant-girls. When the
child is born, the most necessary provisions are lacking; no
food, no bedding for the mother, not even swaddling-clothes
for the infant. But Mary comforts herself: naked are we
*' Froning III, go2 fiE.
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 135
born, naked are we to go hence. And old Joseph makes a
most devoted father. He succeeds in hunting up a cradle
for the baby, he has a pair of old trousers which will do
very well for swaddling-clothes; and how happy he sits
there rocking the little one to sleep and singing to him a
German lullaby !
But if we wish to see the religious drama of the fifteenth
century at its best, if we wish to know what a Bedentmer
wealth of earnestness and humour, of spiritual Osterspiel,
fervour and sturdy joy of the world it contained, if
we would fully realize the life-giving influence of city
freedom upon the popular conceptions of the old sacred
lore, we must turn to an Easter play written at Redentin
near Wismar in 1464." Here we have a worthy counterpart
to the best creations of sixteenth-century art, to works like
Diirer's Passion (1511) or Briiggemann's noble altar-piece
in Schleswig cathedral (1515). Here more deeply than
in any other of these plays are we made to feel that won-
derful blending of the secular and the religious, the ephem-
eral and the eternal, which gives to the city life of the end
of the Middle Ages its unique and ineffaceable charm.
Here we find ourselves transported into a time when sacred
history had acquired all the actuality of local happenings,
when every crucifix on the roadside was a Golgotha, every
cathedral a Jerusalem, every baptismal font a Jordan in
which at any time the figure of the Saviour might be seen,
bowing down before the Baptist, while from above would be
heard the word: "This is my beloved son, in whom I am
well pleased."
The play begins with the resurrection of Christ, but the
resurrection takes place, not in Jerusalem, but in the good
old town of Wismar itself. Pilate, who appears as the type
of a stately, somewhat phlegmatic burgomaster, hears a
rumour that Christ's followers intend to steal his body; and
»" Froning I, 107 ff.
136 SOCIAL FOUCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
therefore details four knights to watch the grave, one to the
north, one to the south, one to the east, and one to the
west. The knights behave in a manner altogether suitable
to representatives of that vagrant soldiery which in those
times of club-law were an object of both terror and ridicule
to the peaceful citizen. They brag about their prowess,
clatter with their swords, threaten to smash any one who
shall dare to come near them; and then go quietly to
sleep, having first made an arrangement with the night-
watchman, who is stationed on the steeple of the cathedral,
to keep on the lookout in their place. The watchman sees
a vessel approaching on the Baltic Sea. He tries to wake
the knights, but in vain. He hears the dogs barking, and
again vainly tries to arouse the sleepers. He calls out the
midnight hour. And now a chorus of angels is heard on
high, the earth is shaken, Jesus arises and sings:
Nu synt alle dynke vuUenbracht
De dar vor in der ewicheit weren bedacht,
Dat ik des bitteren dodes scholde sterven,
Unt deme mynschen gnade wedder vorwerven.
From these scenes, in which the burlesque and the serious
are so quaintly mingled, we now pass on to events of truly
sublime simplicity and serene grandeur. Jesus descends
into hell to rescue the souls of the Fathers. His approach
is foreshadowed in the joyous expectancy of the waiting
souls. They see a wondrous light spreading overhead.
Abel is the first to interpret this as a sign that the time of
their redemption is nigh; but the others at once join with
him. Adam rejoices in the hope of regaining paradise.
Isaiah is sure that this is the light of God; for is it not an
evident fulfilment of what is written in his own book of
prophecy (he quotes himself in Latin): "The people that
walked in darkness have seen a great light " ? And Seth
recalls the twig which five thousand six hundred years ago
he planted at God's behest that it might grow into the tree
THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 137
of salvation (the cross). Now John the Baptist appears as
forerunner of the Saviour, and announces his coming. In
vain do Lucifer and Satan summon their hosts, in vain do
they lock the gates of hell. Surrounded by the archangels,
Christ advances. With a few majestic words he silences
Satan, the "accursed serpent"; with a mere sign of his
hand he bursts the gates; Lucifer he commands to be
bound until the day of judgment. And now the souls
stream forward, exulting, jubilating, stammering with joy
and gratitude; and Jesus takes them by the hand and
greets them, and then commits them to the care of Michael,
the archangel, that he may lead them upward into paradise.
At the end of the play we return once more to the sphere
of the burlesque, to a satire upon social conditions of the
fifteenth century. Through the rescue of the souls of
the Fathers, hell has become desolate; Lucifer, therefore,
chained as he is, sends his servants out to catch new souls.
But the devils return empty-handed and discouraged:
through Christ's death and resurrection, they say, the world
has become so good that very little chance is left for hell.
Lucifer, however, is not discouraged. He has heard that a
great plague is raging just now in the city of Liibeck, and
he sends his messengers out for a second time, to try their
fortunes in the Hanse town. And this time they come
back laden with souls of sinners, sinners of every kind and
description. There is the baker, who deceived his cus-
tomers by using too much yeast in his bread and too little
flour. There is the shoemaker, who sold sheepskin for
Cordovan leather. There is the tailor, who stole half of
his customers' cloth. There is the inn-keeper, who adul-
terated his beer and served it with too much foam in the
pot. There is the butcher, who stuffed his sausages with
all sorts of refuse. There is the grocer, who used false
measure and weight. There is even the priest, who so
often overslept the mass and so often celebrated the even-
ing service in the tavern. In short, — this is the moral
138 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
pointed out by the concluding chorus, — Lucifer is right:
the power of evil has not yet been broken. Sin is still
mighty in the land, and only by cleaving to God and his
word can we be saved. And only then can we truly sing
with the angels: 'Christ is risen.'
It would be easy to multiply these examples. It might
be shown how the same realistic tendency, the same blend-
ing of the religious and the secular which is re-
Other plays. ° . , ^, • •., • , T^
The Fast- vealed m these Christmas, Passion, and Easter
naohtspiel. plays, also manifested itself in other dramatic
representations of biblical or legendary themes, as, for in-
stance, in the plays of The Wise and the Foolish Virgins
(1322)," of Theophilus (fifteenth century), °'' of Frau Jutta
(1480)." It might be shown how in the Shrovetide plays"
of the fifteenth century the secular, detached from its con-
nection with the religious, ran riot and degenerated into
uncouth vulgarity. But enough has been said to prove that
the drama of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, no less
than the Mystic prose, the Volkslied, and the narrative and
didactic poetry of the same period, was a result of that
wonderful awakening of individual thought and feeling
which politically led to the classic epoch of German city
freedom. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, all
these forces worked together to bring about those two great
movements which mark the final breaking away from medi-
aeval authority: Humanism and the religious Reformation.
" Das Spiel von den zehen Jungfrauen ed. M. Rieger, Germania X,
311 ff.
" Ed. EttmllUer 1849 \ Hoffmann 1853. 54-
" A. V. Keller, Fastnachispiele nr. in.
" Five of the better Shrovetide plays (Der Fastnacht undder Fasten
Recht, Von Papst /Cardinal und Bischofen, Des TUrken Fastnachtspiel,
by Hans RosenplilC ; Fastnachtspiel von einem Bauemgericht by Hans
Folz ; and the anonymous Spiel von einem Kaiser und einem Ait) re-
printed from Keller by Froning, /. i. Ill, 963 ff. Cf. GG. § 93. Al-
win Schultz, Deutsches Leben im 14. ». \c,. Jhdt. II, 398 ff.
CHAPTER V.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION.
(The Sixteenth Century.)
The history of the German people in the sixteenth cen-
tury presents a strange and tragic spectacle. At the begin-
ning of the period Germany, of all European Contrast be-
nations, shows the highest intellectual promise, tyeen begiu-
The long pent-up spirit of revolt against medi- of tfe^Befor-
aeval class rule and scholasticism is breaking mation.
forth with elemental power. Great men are standing up
for a great cause. Copernicus is pointing toward an en-
tirely new conception of the physical universe. Erasmus
and Hutten, Holbein and Diirer, Melanchthon and Luther,
each in his own sphere, are preparing the way for a new
and higher form of national life. It seems as though a
strong and free German state, a golden age of German art
and literature, were near at hand. At the end of the cen-
tury all these hopes have been crushed. While England is
entering the Elizabethan era, while the Dutch are fighting
the most glorious struggle of modern times for free thought
and free government, Germany, the motherland of religious
liberty, is hopelessly lost in the conflict between Jesuit and
Protestant fanaticism, and is gradually drifting toward the
abyss of the Thirty Years' War.
How different would the course of events have been if
there had existed at that time a broad national spirit, a
strong public opinion, in Germany! When, in 1521, Luther
139
I40 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
at the diet of Worms, face to face with emperor, princes,
and cardinals, upheld the freedom of conscience, the heart
of Germany was with him. Never before in German his-
tory had there arisen a national hero like him; never be-
fore had there been a moment fraught with such weighty
possibilities. On Luther's side there were the most en-
lightened of the princes and nearly all of the gentry. The
cities greeted his teaching as a weapon against hierarchi-
cal aggression; the peasantry hailed it as a promise of social
betterment. What might not have been accomplished if all
the friends of reform had united, if all party desires and
class aspirations had been merged in one grand popular
uprising ?
No great opportunity was ever more irretrievably lost.
Instead of a nation rallying to establish its independence,
we see separate classes and sects, regardless of the wp^-ffirp ~
^ the whole, attempting to secure their own individual
liberties. Instead of a great idea sweeping everything
before it, we see the inevitable defeat of small conspira-
cies. Instead of a continuous growth and gradual expan-
sion of the Protestant cause, we see it, after a first glorious
effort, step by step retreating, and at last confining itself
within the narrow limits of an orthodoxy not a whit more
rational and far less imposing than the old system of papal
supremacy.
The religious Reformation had been born out of the
bitter agonies of an ardent soul seeking after truth; it was
brought to a close by a compromise between opposing
political powers. It had bidden fair to inaugurate a new
era of national unification and greatness; its real effect was
a further step in the dismemberment and weakening of the
empire. Its first outcry had been Luther's: " Ich kann nicht
anders, Gott helfe mir, amen "; its final word was the abso-
lutist doctrine: " cujus regio, eius religio." Was there ever
a noble cause more shamefully disfigured and perverted ?
In order to understand fully the effect of this deplorable
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. I41
course of events upon the literature of the period, we must
remember that the two preceding centuries had been marked
by a steady growth of realistic tendencies. More ™, ,
and more had literature come to be an expres- tie movement
sion of the needs of the day, more and more had ***eliegiii-
. ., I- ■,<■ -t J • •■, "°e "ft'^s
It imbued itself with democratic ideas, more sixteenth cen-
and more had it become the prophecy of a *"?•
great intellectual and social revolution. At the beginning
of the sixteenth century, it seemed as if the hour of fulfil-
ment had come, as if the vital energy of the people had
been nourished long enough to give birth to a new ideal-
ism, inspired with a larger conception of humanity, and
therefore fuller of life and higher-reaching than that of
any previous age.
What is it that gives such an imperishably youthful charm
to the German Humanistic movement of the first decades of
the sixteenth century ? ' What was it that in-
spired such men as Reuchlin, Erasmus, and
Hutten ? Was it simply the revival of classical learning ?
Was it merely delight in the discovery of a great civili-
zation buried beneath the wreck of centuries ? Was it pre-
eminently an aesthetic pleasure in the splendour of Cicero-
nian eloquence or the massiveness of Augustan verse ? Far
from it. More than anything else, it was the instinctive
feeling that a new era in the history of mankind was dawn-
ing, that the time had come to throw off the fetters of
obsolete tradition, and to reach out, each man for himself,
into the heights of human freedom and greatness. ■ It
was this spirit that moved the quiet, retiring Reuchlin to
' A bibliography of German Humanism in L. Geiger, Renaissance
u. Humanismus in Italien u. Deutschland p. 573 ff. For earlier
German Humanism cf. GG. § 97 (Niclas von Wyle, Heinr. Stain-
hoevvel, Albrecht von Eyb). M. Herrmann, Albrecht von Eyb u. d.
Frtihzeit d. deutschen Humanismus. K. Burdach, Vom MA. zur
Reformation. For Konraci Celtis cf. Allg. D. Biogr. IV, 82 fi.
142 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
throw down the gauntlet to the whole system of clerical
learning'; that made Hutten exclaim °:
Die warheit ist von newem gborn
Und halt der btrugk sein schein verlorn,
Des sag Gott yeder lob und eer
Und acht nit furter lugen meer;
that put upon the lips of Erasmus the prayer*: " Sancte
Socrates, ora pro nobis." The Humanistic movement, in a
word, was an intellectual revolution, a search for new prin-
ciples of human conduct, an attempt to reconstruct the
spiritual life by the light of human reason, the first great
declaration, if not of the rights, at least of the dignity of
man.
The Humanists have left no works which can be called
great. Their force was spent in battle. They were pioneers,
they were violent partisans. Into the finer problems and
the deeper mysteries of life they did not enter. There is a
certain shallowness and showiness in even the best of them.
And yet who can fail to perceive in them a breath of that
spirit which has created the ideal world of modern hu-
manity ?
Erasmus, the acknowledged leader of the movement, has
very fittingly been compared to Voltaire. He was a scoffer
and a merciless critic. No more scathing satire
of the existing order of things has ever been
written than his Moriae Encomium (1509). To represent
the world as ruled by Folly was no new device; countless
satirists of the Middle Ages had done the same thing. The
' Cf. his Augenspiegel, the Defensio contra calumniatores Colonienses,
and other polemics called forth through his controversy with the Jew-
baiter Pfefferkorn. Geiger, Joh. Reuchlin p. 205 ff.
' Preface to his Gesprdchbuchhin ed. Balke, DNL. XVII, 2,/. 285.
* Colloquia familiaria. Opera Lugd. Batav. 1703, I, 683. Cf. A.
Horawitz Ueber die colloquia des Erasmus v. R. in Histor, Taschenb,
VI, 6, p. 55 ff. fimile Amiel, £rasme p. 337 f.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 143
new thing, the thing which startled the contemporaries and
gave this book at once a European reputation, was the un-
sparingly empirical manner, the cold rationalistic way, in
which even the most fundamental beliefs and the most
sacred idols of the time were held up to ridicule. Former
critics had tried to heal the defects of church and state
from within ; here was a man who looked at the whole hier-
archical system from without, who dared to place his own
private reason over and above the towering mass of time-
honoured fallacies and hallowed superstitions. Do we not ■
seem to hear an icrasez Vinfame in the following passage'
on the inane wisdom of the schoolmen of the time ?
"Whilst being happy in their own opinion, and as if they dwelt in
the third heaven, they look with haughtiness on all others as poor
creeping things, and could almost find in their hearts to pitie 'em.
Whilst hedg'd in with so many magisterial definitions, conclusions,
corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, they abound with so
many starting holes that Vulcan's net cannot hold 'em so fast, but
they'll slip through with their distinctions, with which they so easily
cut all knots asunder that a hatchet could not have done it better.
They explicate the most hidden mysteries according to their own
fancie, as: how the world was first made; how original sin is deriv'd
to posterity; in what manner, how much room, and how long time,
Christ lay in the Virgin's womb; how accidents subsist in the Eu-
charist without their subject. But these are common and threadbare.
These are worthy of our great and illuminated divines, as the world
calls 'em, at these, if ever they fall athwart 'em, they prick up, as:
whether there was any instant of time in the generation of the Second
Person; whether there be more than one filiation in Christ; whether
it be a possible proposition that God the Father hates the Son, or
whether it was possible that Christ could have taken upon him the
likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or of a stone, or of
a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preach't, wrought
miracles, or been hung on the cross. There are infinite of these sub-
tile trifles and other more subtile than these, of notions, relations,
'Trsl. by John Wilson, London 1668,/. 97. Cf. J. A. Froude,
Life and Letters of Erasmus p. 129 ff. For similar attacks by Bu-
schius, Bebel, and other Humanists cf. Paulsen, Gesch. d. gel. Un-
terrickts p. 47. 97.
144 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
instants, formalities, quiddities, ecceities which no one can perceive
who could not look through a stone wall and discover those things
through the thickest darkness that never were."
Or, to take another example, does not this passage on the
follies of saint-worship" sound like the frivolous laughter of
a La Mettrie ?
" As every one of them (the saints) has his particular gift, so, also,
his particular form of worship. As, one is good for the tooth ache;
another for groaning women; a third for stolen goods; a fourth for
making a voyage prosperous; and a fifth to cure sheep of the rot; and
so of the rest, for it would be too tedious to run over all. And some
there are that are good for more things than one; but chiefly the Vir-
gin Mother, to whom the common people do in a manner attribute
more than to the Son. Yet what do they beg of these saints, but what
belongs to Folly ? To examine it a little: among all those offerings
which are so frequently hung up in churches, nay up to the very roof
of some of 'em, did you ever see the least acknowledgment from any
one that he had left his Folly, or grown a hair's-breadth the wiser?
One scapes a shipwrack and gets safe to shore. Another, run
through in a duel, recovers. Another, while the rest were fighting,
ran out of the field, no less luckily than valiantly. Another, con-
demn'd to be hang'd, by the favour of some saint or other, a friend
to thieves, got off himself by impeaching his fellows. Another es-
cap'd by breaking prison. Another's poison turning to a. looseness
prov'd his remedy rather than death; and that to his wife's no small
sorrow, in that she lost both her labour and her charge. Another's
cart broke, and he sav'd his horses. Another preserv'd from the fall
of a house. Another taken tardy by her husband, persuades him out
of 't. All these hang up their tablets; but no one gives thanks for
his recovery from Folly. So sweet a thing it is, not to be wise, that,
on the contrary, men rather pray against anything than Folly."
Undoubtedly, Erasmus and his followers were sarcastic
rather than appreciative, destroyers rather than organizers.
But they were destroyers, not because they were without
ideals, but because they felt the value of the ideal so deeply
that the grossness and self-sufficiency of the actual world
aroused in them a noble indignation. And they were sar-
castic, not because they held low views of human life, but
' Encom. Mor. p. 6g.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1 4$
because they held higher views about the dignity and voca-
tion of man than the bulk of their contemporaries.
There is no single book which demonstrates this more
clearly than Erasmus's Manual of the Christian Soldier
(Enchiridion Militis Christiani, 1509), one of the first unmis-
takable attempts in modern history to make reason the basis
of religious experience. Reason is to Erasmus " a king, a
divine counsellor of man." " Enthroned in its lofty citadel,
mindful of its exalted origin, it does not admit a thought of
baseness or impurity." ' It is to reason that we must turn
to fathom the divine wisdom, it is here that the roots of
self-perfection lie. To the unenlightened mind the Bible
remains a labyrinth of contradictions, a book full of insipid
and even immoral incidents. Through rational interpreta-
tion we learn to understand it as a symbolical expression of
moral truths. An unthinking piety is without avail. " Christ
despises the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood,
if it is not taken spiritually." ' " God hates a well-fed, cor-
pulent devoutness." ° But the rational believer sees the
working of the divine spirit everywhere, his eye is open to
the beauty, the wisdom, the virtue of all ages, he penetrates
to the very core of Christianity. " For Christ is nothing
else than love, simplicity, patience, purity, in short all that
he himself taught; and the devil is nothing but that which
draws us away from those ideals." "
It is evident that this sort of rationalism, bursting as it
did upon an age full of religious emotions and in the main
guided by an undoubting faith, could not help acting as a
moral dissolvent; and it is not to be wondered at that so
many of the young Humanists were plunged into a life of
wild conflicts and consuming passions. In most of them
' Enchiridion Militis Christiani ed. Ludg. Bat. 1641 p. 96 : ration!
tanquam regi. 97 : consultor ille divinus, sublimi in arce praesidens,
memor originis suae, nihil sordidum, nihil humile cogitaf.
^ lb. p. I'll. 'Ib.p.iTi. '"Z^. /. 145.
146 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the result was simply a sinking to the level of the common-
place. But when, as in the case of Ulrich von Hutten,
a sturdy mind and a fiery soul were wasted in this conflict,
the sadness of this issue was relieved by a note of genuine
greatness. For in Hutten certainly, if in none other, this
very struggle brought out all the intellectual enthusiasm and
moral idealism, which, after all, were the fundamental forces
of the Humanistic movement.
If Erasmus has been compared to Voltaire, Hutten may
justly be called a forerunner of Lessing. No one, not even
Luther, has fought more sturdily for the free-
dom of conscience, no one has been a better
hater of any kind of usurpation. His life stands to us as
a symbol of that wonderful flight of thought and feeling
which the Ge rma n people took under the inspiration of
the first great moments of Luther's work.
Hutten had already won his place as a writer when
Luther struck his first blows against the papal system. He
had taken part in that memorable campaign of the Human-
ists against the old time scholasticism, which began with
Reuchlin's protest against the Dominican persecution of
Jewish literature, and which culminated in the famous
EpistolcB obscurorum virorum (1515-17), that collection of
fictitious letters presenting a glaring caricature of the
monkish party with all its filth, ignorance, and fanaticism.
In biting satire he had held up to ridicule the arrogance
and nothingness of professorial Ic^arning, contrasting it with
the fulness and glory of a life devoted to the free pursuit of
truth." In high-flown rhetoric he had entreated the em-
peror to guard the honour of the state against inner and
outer foes." But it was only Luther's redeeming word
" Cf. the satire Nemo, Schriften ed. Rocking III, 107 ff. Especially
significant the dedication to Crotus Rubianus, ib. I, 187. Strauss,
Ulrich V, Hutten p. 105 ff. — The Epistolae obscur. vir. in the Suppl.
to the Schriften. Cf. Paulsen /. c. 49 ff.
" Cf. especially the Epigrams addressed to Maximilian (Schr. Ill,
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. I47
that aroused him to the full conscioust^^ss of his own
mission.
To be sure, the chief object of his writingis remained as
it had been, war to the knife against the church of Rome.
But the spirit of his attacks underwent a ch^rige under
Luther's influence. Formerly he had been a scdiffer, now
he became a prophet; formerly he had addressed himself to
the small circle of the educated, now he became the spokes-
man of a whole people; formerly he had written in Latin ex-
clusively, now he translated his own writings into German;
formerly he had looked down upon the theological disputes
of the ecclesiastics as unworthy trifles, now he recognised
the Wittenberg monk as his "dearest brother," as " the ser-
vant of God," and pledged to his cause his own life and
earthly possessions."
From the artistic point of view, Hutten's most important
contribution to the literature of the Reformation are the
-two volumes oi Dialogues v^Y^ch appeared in 1520 and 1521.
A true little masterpiece, full of Lucianic wit, and teeming
with a noble patriotic fervour, is the scene, in Die Anschauen-
den, where Sol and Phaeton from their heavenly heights
look down upon the imperial diet held at Augsburg in
1518." Their attention is attracted by a magnificent pro-
cession: cardinal Gaetani, who, as Sol explains to his
son, has been sent by the pope to extort money from the
Germans, is being conducted to the city hall in solemn
state. Phaeton asks: " How long is the pope going to play
this shameful game ? " Sol: " Until the Germans, whom up
to the present time he has led by the nose, shall recover
their senses." Phaeton: " Is the time near when they will
205 ff. Strauss /. 1.. p. 65 ff.)and the orations against Ulric of WUrtem-
berg {Schr. IV, i ff. Strauss p. 79 ff.).
" Eyn klag iiber den Luterischen Brandt zu Mentz, Schr. Ill, 459.
" Die Anschauenden ed. Balke, DNL. XVII, 2,/. 295 ff.— For the
dates of Hutten's Reformation pamphlets cf. S. Szamat61ski, Ulrichs
■d, Hutten deutsche Schriftenp. 53 ff.
148 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
recover their sf.ises?" Sol: "Very near. For this car-
dinal will be t'lC first to go home with enipty bags, to the
great dismay ri the Holy City, where they never would have
believed thf barbarians would stand their own ground."
Phaeton: "The Germans, then, belong to the barbarians?"
Sol: " According to the judgment of the Romans they do,
they no less than the French and all other peoples outside
of Italy. But if you consider good morals and friendly in-
tercourse, zeal in all virtues, steadiness and honesty of
mind, then the Germans are the most highly cultivated nation,
and the Romans the most hopeless barbarians. For they
are corrupted through effeminacy and luxury; and you find
with them fickleness and inconstancy, little faith and trust,
but trickery and malice more than with any other people."
Phaeton: " I like what you tell me of the Germans, if they
only were not given so much to drunkenness." There fol-
lows an animated conversation between the two heavenly
observers about the social and political condition of the
German people, and the abuses of the Roman church,
which, however, is suddenly cut short when they hear the
cardinal in great excitement flinging angry words at them
from below. Incensed at their freedom of speech, he pro-
nounces the papal excommunication against them, where-
upon with a scornful smile they leave him to the contempt
of mankind. Phaeton: "I leave you to the laughter of the
Germans. May they chase you away with shame, and make
you an example for future times. Be, the derision of the
world! That is a fitting punishment for you." Sol: "Let
the wretch alone. It is time to turn our chariot downward,
and to give room to the evening star. Let him yonder go on
lying, cheating, stealing, robbing, and pillaging at his own
risk." Phaeton: "Yes, and go to the deuce, too! But I'll
drive on the horses and resume our westward course."
If this dialogue is distinguished by elegance of com-
position and gracefulness of invention, there are others that
excel it in depth of passion. What an irresistible, over-
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1 49
whelming force there is in the repetition of those threefold
accusations which like echoing thunder roll upon us again
and again from the Roman Triad {Die Romischd Dreifaltig-
keit)\" "Three things uphold the Roman authority: the
papal power, relics, and indulgences. Three things are
brought home by those who make a pilgrimage to Rome: a
bad conscience, a sick stomach, and an empty purse.
Three things are killed at Rome: a good conscience, re-
ligion, and a binding oath. Three things the Romans sneer
at: the example of the ancients, St. Peter's memory, and
the last judgment. Three things are banished from Rome:
simplicity, continence, and honesty. Three things are for
sale at Rome: Christ, spiritual offices, and women." And
what reader, even of the present day, can fail to be
thrilled by the flaming words with which Hutten in his
reply to the papal excommunication against Luther {Bulla
vel Bullicida) summons the German youth to bring succour
to endangered Liberty ? " " Oh, hither, ye freemen! It is
our common cause, our common weal! The flame of war is
spreading. Come hither all ye who want to be free. Here
the tyrants shall be smitten, here the bondage shall be
broken. Where are you, freemen ? Where are you, nobles ?
Men of great names, where are you ? Heads of nations, why
do you not rally to deliver the common fatherland froai
this plague ? Is there no one who is ashamed of servitude
and cannot wait to be free ? — They have heard me. A hun-
dred thousand I see coming on. Thanks to the gods! Ger-
many has become herself! Now woe to you, bull of Led "
Ulrich von Hutten could indeed say of himself ":
Ich habs gewagt rait sinnen
Und trag des noch kein reu;
Mag ich nit dran gewinnen,
Noch muss man sptiren treu.
" Cf. Strauss, Huttens Gesprache p. 114 ff.
'« lb. p. 259. " DNL. XVII, 2, p. 269.
ISO SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
He could indeed call himself Truth's most devoted
champion ":
Von wahrheit ich will nimmer Ian,
Das soil mir bitten ab kein mann.
Auch schafft zu stillen mich kein wehr,
Kein bann, kein acht, wie vast und sehr
Man mich darmit zu schrecken meint.
Wie wol mein fromme mutter weint
Do ich die sach hett gfangen an —
Gott woU sie trSsten — es muss gan!
And if his life was by no means free from blemishes,
if the flame of his passion did not always burn purely, he
at least never palliated his own defects. And Death,
finding him, as it did, wounded, disarmed, and with broken
hopes, still found him a man.
There can be no doubt that Luther, in his first great
revolutionary writings, strove, although in a different spirit,
after exactly the same ideal which the Human-
ists had at heart: a strong, sweeping religious
individualism. That he himself felt this to be the under-
lying thought of his Theses against the sale of indulgences
(1517) is shown by the fact that in sending them to a
friend he signed himself as " Martinus Eleutherius '' (Mar-
tin the Freeman), adding these unmistakable words ":
" Why were Christ and all the martyrs put to death ? Why
did most of the great teachers incur hatred and envy, if not
because they were bold despisers of old far-famed wisdom,
or because, without consulting the preservers of old knowl-
edge, they brought forward a new thing ? " But the works
in which Luther set forth what is truly vital and permanent
in his doctrine, in which he spoke the word that was to
revolutionize all modern life, in which he anticipated what
■8 DNL. XVII, 2, p. 286.
" Luthers Briefe ed. de Wette I, 73. Cf. Th. Kolde, Martin
Luther I, 146. — A masterly presentation of Luiher's religious develop-
ment in K. Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichtc V, 1, p. 221 ff.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 151
has become a reality only in our day, were the three great
manifestoes of the year 1520: the address To the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of Chris-
tian Society, the pamphlet On the Babylonish Captivity of the
Church, and the essay On the Liberty of a Christian Man.
Let us examine somewhat more closely these three great
pillars of our own spiritual existence.
The address to the German nobility is Luther's first com-
prehensive avowal of religious independence. As Joshua
led the children of Israel against Jericho, so Vondes
Luther in this treatise is going to lead the Ger- «^stliohen
° ° Standes Bes-
man knighthood against the walls of Rome; and semng,
he prays God to give him a trumpet, before whose blast
the straw and paper walls of the enemy shall fall. Three
such walls there are, behind which the papacy has in-
trenched itself.
The first wall is the assertion that there exists a special
spiritual order, distinct from the secular, and in all respects
superior to it. This, Luther says, is a mere fiction of
Rome. All Christians are of a truly spiritual order. Christ
has made us all priests: the pope can make no one a priest.
" The infant, when he creeps out of the baptismal font,
may boast to have already been consecrated priest, bishop,
,,and pope."" There is a difference between men with
regard to their external occupation only. As there are shoe-
makers, smiths, peasants, so there may be priests also; that
is, men whose external occupation it is to administer the
public services of religion. Inwardly, every true Christian
has aright to this office; to' its outward exercise only he is
entitled on whom the right has been conferred by the com-
munity. The community, then, elects the priest, it deposes
him, it is the only sovereign in the spiritual administration.
" If it should happen that a person elected to such an office
'" An den christl. Adel deuischer Nation von des christl. Standes Bes-
serung, NddLm. nr. 4,/. 8.
152 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
through his abuse of it were deposed, then he would be as
he was before, — a peasant or a burgher, like the rest." " Thus
the first wall of the papists is shattered.
The second wall is the assertion that nobody but the pope
has the right to interpret the Holy Scriptures. This is a
wantonly concocted fable. Has not the pope often erred?
Have there not been, in all ages, pious' Christians who
understood Christ's spirit better than the pope ? Are not
all of us priests ? Why, then, should we not be able to
perceive and judge what is right and wrong in belief ?
What means the word of Paul: A spiritual man judges all
things, and is judged by nobody ? " So let us, then, be
courageous and free; and let not the spirit of liberty be
stifled by the fictitious assumptions of popery; but boldly
forward ! to judge all that they do and all that they leave
undone according to our trustful understanding of the
Scriptures. If God spoke through an ass against the
prophet Balaam, why should he not speak now through us
against the pope ?" "
The third wall is the claim of the pope that he alone has
the right to call an ecclesiastical council. This wall falls
by itself with the two others. When the pope acts con-
trary to the Scriptures, then it is our duty to uphold the
Scriptures against the pope. We must arraign him before
the community, and therefore the community must be
gathered in a council. And every Christian, no matter of
what rank or condition, has a sacred obligation to co-
operate in such an endeavour. " If there is a fire in the
city, shall the citizens stand still and let the fire burn
because they are not the burgomaster, or because the fire
perhaps began in the burgomaster's own house ?" " So, in
Christ's spiritual city, if there arises the fire of scandal, it is
the duty and right of every man to lend a hand to quench
the flame.
" NddLv). nr. 4, p. 9. " lb. p. 14. " lb. p. 15.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 153
There follow in the greater part of the pamphlet a de-
scription of the evils that existed in the church of Luther's
time, and radical propositions for their reform. Germany,
he says, ought to be purged of the vile, devilish rule of the
Romans. For Rome is draining the nation in such a way
that " it is a wonder that we have still anything left to eat."
" It would not be strange if God should rain fire and brim-
stone from heaven, and hurl Rome into the abyss, as in
olden times he hurled 'Sodom and Gomorrah. O noble
princes and lords, how long will you suffer your land and
your people to be a prey to these ravaging wolves ?" " All
money contributions to Rome he would have forbidden;
every envoy of the pope that should come to Germany he
would have ordered to quit the country or to jump into the
Rhine, to give the Roman brief a cold bath. The German
bishops should cease to be mere figures and tools in the
hands of the pope; none of them should be allowed to
ask to have his election confirmed in Rome. The temporal
power of the pope should be entirely abolished. All holi-
days ought to be done away with, or restricted to Sundays.
All pilgrimages ought to be prohibited, and the chapels of
pilgrimage be demolished. The marriage of priests should
be allowed. Spiritual punishments — as interdict, ban, sus-
pension — are horrible plagues imposed by the evil spirit
upon Christianity, and ought, therefore, to be abrogated.
On the whole, the entire canon law, from its first letter to
the last, ought to be uprooted.
This pamphlet to the German nobility preaches, indeed,
nothing less than a complete revolution of the religious and
social order as it then existed. And Luther himself was
fully aware that these few pages contained the programme
of a new chapter in the history of mankind. " I consider
well " (these are his closing words "'') " that I have pitched
my song high and brought forward many things that will be
" NddLw. nr. 4, /. 20. 24. ^^ lb. p. 79. 80.
1 54 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
thought impossible. But what shall I do ? I am bound
to say it. I would rather have the world angry with me
than God. Therefore, let them come on, whether he be
pope, bishop, priest, monk, or scholar; they are just the
right ones to persecute truth, as they have always done.
May God give us all a Christian understanding, and, above
all, to the Christian nobility of the German nation a true spir-
itual courage to do their best for the poor church. Amen."
A further step in the emancipation of secular life from
ecclesiastical pretensions was taken in the pamphlet on the
_ « "t t Babylonish Captivity of the Church, which ap-
Batylonica peared in the same year with the address to
eoolesiao, jjjg nobility. One of the chief means by which
the mediaeval church walled about the life of the people was
the doctrine of the sacraments. Without baptism, no
promise of grace; without confirmation, no continuance of
it; without holy communion, no sight of God; without the
sanction of the church, no marital union ; without the author-
ity of the church, no right of priesthood; without extreme
unction, no hope of eternal life. From the bondage of
these ecclesiastical enactments Luther finds in the Bible
the right to free the people. Neither confirmation, nor
penance, nor marriage, nor consecration of priests, nor
extreme unction, have a right to existence, as church insti-
tutions, through any recognition or especial promise in the
Bible." Above all, the sanction of marriage and the
anointing of priests are nothing but arbitrary encroachments
of the church upon purely human relations.
" Since matrimony," he says," "has existed from the beginning of
the world, and still continues even among unbelievers, there are no
"The real meaning of sacrament, according to Luther, is "a
promise of blessing from God to his children, confirmed by an out-
ward and visible sign." Two such promises, accompanied by two
such signs, he finds in baptism and communion ; and these alone he
recognises as means of grace.
" De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, Luthers Werke, Krit. Gesammt-
ausg. VI, 550 f.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1 55
reasons why it should be called a sacrament of the new law and the
church alone. The marriages of the patriarchs were not less mar-
riages than ours, nor are those of unbelievers less real than those of
believers ; and yet no one calls them a sacrament. Moreover, there
are among believers wicked husbands and wives worse than any
gentiles. Why should we, then, say: there is sacrament here, and
not among the gentiles? Shall we so trifle with baptism and the
church as to say that matrimony is a sacrament in the church only ? "
And Still more strongly than in the address to the
nobility he condemns the self-glorification of the priesthood,
asserting again and again the inalienable rights of common
humanity.
" What then," he exclaims,^' " is there in you that is not to be
found in any layman ? Your tonsure and your vestments ? Wretched
priesthood, which consists in tonsure and vestments ! Is it the oil
poured on your fingers ? Every Christian is anointed and sanctified
in body and soul with the oil of the Holy Spirit. . '. . When I see
how far the sacrosanct sanctity of these orders has already gone, I
expect that the time will come when the laity will not even be
allowed to touch the altar except when they offer money. I almost
burst with anger when I think of the impious tyranny of these reck-
less men who mock and ruin the liberty and glory of the religion of
Christ by such frivolous and puerile triflings. . . . Those priests and
bishops with whom the church is crowded at the present day, unless
they work out their salvation on another plan — that is, unless they
acknowledge themselves to be neither priests nor bishops, and repent
pf bearing the name of an office the work of which they either do not
know or cannot fulfil, and thus deplore with prayers and tears the
miserable fate of their hypocrisy, — are verily the people of eternal
perdition, concerning whom the saying will be fulfilled : ' My people
are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge ; and their
honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
Therefore, hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without
measure ; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and
he that rejoiceth shall descend into it.' "
It shows the extraordinary productivity of Luther's mind
that the same year in which he published the address to the
=8 Luther s Werke I. c. 566 f.
IS6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
nobility and the pamphlet on the captivity of the church
saw also a third treatise from his hand, in which
heiteines "' ^^ tn^^ to establish a positive foundation of
Christen- morals, which should find its sanction exclu-
mensohen. gfyely in the inner consciousness and personality
of the individual. This is the precious little tract On the
Liberty of a Christian Man.
The whole of this essay is summed up in the two anti-
thetical propositions which stand at its head " : "A Chris-
tian man is the freest lord of all, and subject to none.
A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and sub-
ject to every one.''
Wherein, according to Luther, lies this lordship of the
Christian man over all things ? Luther answers with the
Mystics : in faith, in an inward renunciation of the indi-
vidual to God, in a personal surrender to his word. To
many this faith seems an easy thing ; but, in truth, nobody
can even conceive of it who has not under deep tribulations
acquired it by himself. He, however, who has once at-
tained it cannot cease to speak and write of it. He needs
no external thing any longer, he has all — comfort, food, joy,
peace, light, power, justice, truth, wisdom, liberty, and all
good things in abundance. " The soul which cleaves to
the promises of God with a firm faith is so united to them,
nay, thoroughly absorbed by them, that it not only partakes
in but is penetrated and saturated by all their virtue. For,
if the touch of Christ was health, how much more does that
spiritual touch, nay, absorption of the word communicate
to the soul all that belongs to the word ! As is the word,
such is the soul made by it, — just as iron exposed to fire
glows like fire on account of its union with the fire." "
Thus the Christian has been elevated above all things, and
'• Von der Freiheit eines Christen menschen, Luthers Schrifien ed.
E. Wolff, DNL. XV, 80. Cf. J. Kostlin, Luthers Leben^ p. 223 ff.
» lb. 84.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 157
has become lord of all. For nothing can prevent his salva-
tion. " It is a lofty and eminent dignity, a true and
almighty dominion, a spiritual empire, in which there is noth-
ing so good, nothing so bad, as not to work together for my
good, if I only believe." "
The second part of the original proposition — namely, that
"a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and
subject to every one " — is only an outgrowth of the first.
It is the application of faith to practice, it is the message
of man's service to mankind.
" The good things which we have from God ought to flow from one
to another and become common to all, so that every one of us may,
as it were, put on his neighbour, and so behave towards him as if he
were himself in his place. They flowed and do flow from Christ to
us : he put us on and acted for us as if he himself were what we are.
From us they flow to those who have need of them. We conclude,
therefore, that a Christian man does not live in himself, but in Christ
and in his neighbour, or else is no Christian : in Christ by faith, in his
neighbour by love. By faith he is carried upwards above himself to
God, and by love he sinks back below himself to his neighbour."''
In 152 1 Albrecht Diirer, while travelling in the Nether-
lands, was startled by a rumour of Luther's having been as-
sassinated. The words of passionate grief which this re-
port wrung from Diirer's lips, and which have
been preserved in his diary, show perhaps more ^'"'f''"'
clearly than any other single utterance what a
future there was before the German people if the wonder-
ful idealism of its great reformers had been supported by
an unwavering, sober, broad-minded public opinion. After
ha,ving inveighed against the insidious policy of the Roman
See, to which, he thought, Luther had fallen a victim,
Diirer goes on to say '" :
" And if we really should have lost this man who has written in a
more enlightened manner than any one for the last hundred and forty
" lb. 87 f. S2 lb. 98 f.
'' Cf. Albrecht Durers Tagebuch ed. F. Leitschuh p. 82.
158 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
years [i.e., since Wycliflfe], and to whom thou, O Heavenly Father,
hast given such an evangelic mind, then we pray thee that thou wilt
again give thy Holy Spirit to some man who may bind together thy
holy Christian church, so that we may live again peaceably, and as
true Christians. . . . But as thy Son, Jesus Christ, had to be Dut to
death by the priests in order to rise from death and ascend to heaven,
so perhaps thou wiliest it to be done likewise to thy servant Martin
Luther, whom the pope with his money has so treacherously de-
prived of his life. And as thou didst ordain that Jerusalem be de
stroyed for it, so thou wilt destroy the arbitrary power of the
Roman See. And after that, O Lord, give us the new beautiful
Jerusalem, descending from heaven, about which it is written in the
Apocalypse, the holy unalloyed Gospel, unobscured by human wil-
fulness."
Diirer himself is the most illustrious proof of the artis-
tic perfection to which the inspiration of this great moral
uplifting might have led. His Four Apostles, painted in 1526
Diirer's Tonr ^O"" ^^ ^ity of Niimberg, his native town," will
Apostles. forever stand as the most complete incarnation
of the German national spirit in the age of Luther. The
two principal figures are John and Paul, Luther's favourite
''' Cf. M. Thausing, Durer p. 483 ff. — That a victory of the demo-
cratic principles underlying the religious Reformation would probably
have brought about the growth of a truly national German drama may
be inferred from the existence in the first half of the sixteenth century
of a Protestant drama which, while preserving the popular character of
the religious plays of the fifteenth century, at the same time stands in the
service of the new spiritual life. Cf., e.g.. Die Totenfresser by Pam-
philus Gengenbach (c. 1521), Der Ablasskrdmer by Niklaus Manuel
(1525), Der verlorne Sohn by Burkard Waldis (1527), Paul Rebhuhn's
Susanna (1535) in : Froning, Das Drama der Reformationszeit DNL.
XXn. If we compare with works like these the dramatic produc-
tions of the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
century: the plays of the English comedians (DNL. XXIH.) and
their imitators, such as Jacob Ayrer (ed. Keller, Bibliothek d. Litter,
Vereins LXXVl ff.) and Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick (ed.
Tittmann, Deutsche Dichter d. 16. Jhdts XIV.), we find ourselves
transported from the free air of popular art into the stifling atmosphere
of technical drill, sensational effects, and clownish slang.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1 59
writers. John, the type of a tall, strongly built, blond
German youth, wrapt in his wide red mantle, standing
erect, his chaste, manly, thoughtful head slightly bent
forward, his gaze fixed upon the open Bible which he
holds in his hands. Paul, the very image of a spiritual
warrior. His long flowing beard, the swollen vein in his
forehead, the mighty skull, the threatening eye, the massive
neck, the majestic folds of his white mantle, the naked
sword in his right hand, — all this reminds one of an old Ger-
manic chieftain. But what he fights for is not a hoard of
gold, not the booty of fair women, it is the book which
he holds clasped in his left hand, it is the same eternal
truth, the gospel of redeemed humanity, which John is
represented as contemplating. Both figures together bring
before us that magnificent union of fearless speculation and
firm, unswerving faith which has made the Germany of the
Reformation period the classic soil of spiritual and moral
freedom.
We have already spoken of the causes which, between 1525
and 1530, brought the Reformation movement to a stand-
still, and checked the upward idealistic current ™ t,^„.
of German literature. To say it once more : point of the
the chief reason was the absence in the Germany Reformation.
of the sixteenth century of a strong national will, of an en-
lightened public opinion. Divided into an infinite num-
ber of little independent sovereignties, separated in itself
by class prejudices and provincial jealousies, without effi-
cient organs of popular legislation, even without a truly
national dynasty, the German people did not as yet feel
itself as a whole. The result was that the religious
Reformation, instead of being borne along by an irresistible
tide of national enthusiasm, was forced into the narrow
channels of local fanaticism ; that Germany, instead of be-
ing led into an era of social reconstruction, saw itself
plunged into a state of confusion, bordering upon anarchy ;
and that the enemies of reform found it an easy matter to
l6o SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
quench the new thought soon after it had been kindled.
Probably no event in modern history has so decidedly re-
tarded the progress of civilization as the series of isolated
revolutionary uprisings and their successive defeats which
mark the course of the German Reformation from 1522 to
about 1530. First, in 1522, the landed gentry in a bold
assault try to overthrow the temporal power of the ecclesi-
astical magnates ; this conspiracy is easily crushed. Two
years later the peasantry, stirred up by Luther's proclaim-
ing the spiritual equality of all men, attempt to shake off
the yoke of hereditary bondage ; this rebellion is ruth-
lessly suppressed. About the same time, the masses of the
city population, intoxicated by the doctrine of universal
priesthood, are led into a wild communistic movement ;
this agitation is mercilessly stamped out. And thus it came
about that at the very time (1530) when, in the Augsburg
Confession, the official form of the Protestant belief was
definitely fixed, Protestantism had ceased to represent what
in the beginning it had stood for, the deepest hopes and
highest aspirations of a united people.
Luther himself ended by abandoning the ideals of his
early manhood. He had broken with the old sacred tradi-
tion ; he had rejected all outward helps to sal-
tumtothe vation ; he had placed himself on his own
principle of ground, alone in all the world, trusting in the
a° on ?■ personal guidance and protection of God. As
a result of his own teaching he now saw the country trans-
formed into a surging sea, tossed, as it seemed to him, by
evil doctrines and pernicious contests. Had it, then, really
been the voice of God that called him ? or had he lent his
ear to the insinuations of Satan ? Persecuted by terrible
visions, the very foundations of "his faith tottering under
him, his life appearing blighted and his work cursed, he sees
in his extremity only one way of deliverance. He can only
answer these terrible questionings by a blind and implicit
faith. He comes forth from the struggle, not as he had
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. l6l
entered it, strong in intellectual fearlessness, but strong in
stubborn adherence to a chosen authority ; not any longer
as the champion of reason, but as its defamer. Reason
now appears to him as the root of all evil ; reason has led
man astray from God ; reason is " a light that is only dark-
ness." Without knowledge of the divine grace it is " a
poisonous beast with many dragons' heads," it is " an ugly
devil's bride," it is " the all-cruellest and most fatal enemy
of God." " It is a quality of faith," he says, " that it
wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast which
else the whole world with all creatures could not strangle.
But how ? It holds to God's word, lets it be right and true,
HO matter how foolish and impossible it sounds." And
by thus strangling reason, we offer to God " the all-accept-
ablest sacrifice and service that can ever be brought to
him." "
Nothing is a surer evidence of moral greatness than the
courage of inconsistency. Nothing makes Luther's figure
more impressive than the scars of this Titanic struggle be-
tween his former and his later self. Nor has it been with-
out noble fruits for humanity. Out of this very struggle ^
were born those spiritual battle-songs of his, — such as
" Ach Gott vom himmel sieh darein," " Aus tiefer not
schrei ich zu dir," " Ein feste burg ist unser Gott," — the
power of which will be felt as long as there is a human soul
longing for a sight of the divine. And in this very con-
flict Luther found the inspiration to undertake and carry
through that colossal work through which he has become
the creator of the modern German language, his translation
'' Cf. his Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians ( Werke ed.
Walch VIII, 2043. 2048), quoted by C. Beard, The Reformation in its
relation to Modern Thought p. 156. 163. — In the last sermon preached
by Luther in Wittenberg, Jan. 17, 1546, he says of reason : " Es ist
die hOchste Hure die der Teufel hat." Luthers Werke f. d. christl.
Ham ed. Buchwald, Kawerau etc. V, 96. — Selections from Luther's
lyrics DNL. XV. For his language cf. Wackernagel, Gesch. d. d.
Litt.^ II, 8 ft.
l62 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
of the Bible. And yet how different the intellectual his-
tory of Germany and of the world would have been if the
man who had given the German people the idea of univer-
sal priesthood, who had called on them to fling away the
form "in order to save the substance of religion, who had
grounded the religious life upon individual belief and indi-
vidual reason, had not ended as the founder of a new or-
thodoxy and a new absolutism.
From this time on the higher life of Germany slowly
sinks, until toward the middle of the seventeenth century it
reaches its lowest ebb. Realism becomes again,
The intellect- ^^^t it had been before the Reformation move-
nal leaotioiii . . . , . , .
ment, the dominant force m literary production ;
but it is no longer the youthful realism of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, full of buoyancy and hope ; it is
the realism of disappointment and resignation. It has no
message of its own to tell, it only restates what has been
told before, it looks backward and not forward. We shall,
therefore, not enter here upon the by no means inconsider-
able literary output of the second half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. We shall not speak of the mass of vulgarity and
coarseness which flooded the popular prose romances of the
time — they are characterized sufficiently by the uncouth
figure of Grobianus — ; " nor of the revival which the inani-
ties of chivalric love-adventure found in the tales of Ama-
dis of Gaul" ; nor even of the good-natured honesty, the
" The word occurs for the first time in Seb. Brant's Narrensckiff
72. i:
Ein nuer heilig heisst Grobian,
den will ietz fUren iederman.
Caspar Scheidt's Grobianus (NddLw. nr. 34. 35) appeared in 1551.
Cf. GG. § 158. K. Borinski, Geschichte d. deutschtn Litt. seit d. Ausg.
d. MA. p. 15 f. C. H. Herford, Literary Relations of England and
Germany p. 379 ff.
" GG. § 160. Borinski /. c. p. 104 f.
THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1 65
racy humoui and sturdy patriotism displayed in the writings
of such men as Jorg Wickram," Burkard Waldis," Georg
Rollenhagen,'°Nicodemus Frischlin.*' Only two men, who
under more favourable circumstances might have become
writers of national influence and leaders in a new progres-
sive movement, may be singled out as the most striking
figures of a time which had turned away from its true ideal :
Hans Sachs (d. 1576) and Johann Fischart (d. 1590).
Hans Sachs is one of the most lovable characters in
German literature. This honest Niirnberg burgher, faith-
ful in the narrow circle of his handicraft, and
at the same time reaching out into the wide
realm of thought and poetry ; looking into the world with
wondering childlike eyes ; transforming all that he sees or
hears into a tale or ditty or Shrovetide play ; restlessly
working, and yet always seeming at leisure ; serene, true-
hearted, public-spirited ; a loyal supporter of Luther, whom
he greeted (1523) as the "Wittenberg JNightingale," but un-
failingly gentle an» DNL. XLHI, 40. 8' lb. 234.
THE STRUGGLE AGAMST ABSOLUTISM. 22$
what I felt? Was my earnestness gentle and my frolic innocent? Did
I watch over my dear ones with tender care ? Did I lead them to the
good by my example? Was I not slow in the duties of compassion ?
Did I rejoice in the happiness of others ? Did I repent a false step
as soon as I had taken it ? Did I battle down evil desires ? And
if God to-night should summon me, am I ready to stand before Him ? "
One of the most graceful and delicate descriptions of
rural life before the days of Werther is contained in a let-
ter of Gellert's,'" relating his experiences as a guest on the
estate of a large landholder, which at the same time is a
striking example of his happy way of blending sentimental
reflectiveness with a vein of gentle rationalistic humour.
It reminds us of Chodowiecki's subtile drawings.
" I sleep in a room," he says, "looking on one side into the court-
yard, on the other upon the lawn and the field. Ordinarily about six
o'clock in the morning, I stand at the window and gaze with an insa-
tiable eye into the autumn lying over field and garden. The wide open
sky, of which we in the city know nothing, is to me from this window
an altogether new spectacle. Here I stand and forget myself for half
an hour in looking and thinking. After these happy moments, still
intoxicated with the spirit of the morning, I open the door to call for
a servant. But, instead of one, there appear at least three at a time,
having run themselves out of breath for my sake, and all of them
bent on being at my service. In short, whether I want it or not, I
must submit to being dressed by them. During this occupation, five
or six gentle greyhounds make their call, with whom I enter into a
little conversation, because I know they won't answer me. Mean-
while the gamekeeper narrates to me their feats, describes to me the
whole hunting-ground, and expresses his regret that I am no sports-
man. Because I have given him several times to understand that
one ought to be charitable even to animals, he has secretly inquired
of my gracious hostess whether I was a Pietist.
" Now comes the coffee. I take a book, assume a learned mien,
and at once my servants flee. The books which I have taken with me
are Terence, Horace, and Gresset. Would you believe that I find
in these poets far more beauties here in the country than in the city?
But why should you wonder? Here Nature herself, who inspired
them, is their interpreter. And she interprets them, if not as learn-
'» Gellert's Sdmmtl. Schr. IV, 182 ff.
226 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
edly, at least more pleasantly and distinctly than the most renowned
commentators.
"When I have read enough, I pay my respects to my gracious
hostess and her daughter. I usually find them busy with a book or
looking over accounts with the superintendent. Everybody receives
me with kind smiles; and even the superintendent, who for twenty
years was a sergeant, forces his grim face into a pleasant expression.
During this hour (for this is about the length of time that I spend
with my hostess) I earn in some sense the privilege of enjoying my-
self on her estate: for our conversation usually turns on the educa-
tion of her son, the hope of her house. Toward noon I sit in the
courtyard; I ring with a little bell, and now there comes — who do you
think? a herd of feathered folk, shooting along on foot or on the
wing; and I feed them — chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, doves, all
in a heap, and count my people. After this, I visit the partridges
and quails and the young doves in their cot. A lovely scene! Here
a mother feeds her children, there another is breeding a still hidden
posterity, while her husband tries to induce her to let him take her
place on the nest, and to refresh herself by a meal. First he en-
treats her gently and lovingly, presently he talks quite earnestly, and
if this does not make her yield, he commands her in a lordly, cockish
tone, and turns about ten times in a circle, as though he would not
look at her any longer, and at the same time would give her a chance
to leave the nest unnoticed.
" I must add an amusing incident which illustrates the church-
going habits of this region. They are very tyrannical. Last Sunday
I went alone to church, because madame had some guests. I took
my seat, as it chanced, next to a peasant unknown to me. A student
ascended the pulpit and perpetrated an awful sermon on the text of
the lilies of the field. He was so philosophical that he explained to
the peasants what sowing and reaping were. The sermon had its
natural effect upon me. I gently fell asleep. In this church, how-
ever, you are not at liberty to go to sleep over a poor sermon. My
neighbour woke me up with a rather sudden shock, and shouted : ' The
boy is coming.' I didn't know what he meant, and since the preacher
was just demonstrating with a passage from Cicero that no one was
rich who could not maintain an army from his private fortune, I
thought he had aroused me on account of this learned quotation, and
therefore went to sleep again. Presently I awoke a second time
from quite a severe blow, and saw a little peasant boy, with a long
stick, standing in front of me, and nodding his head at me reproach-
fully. Now I understood what my neighbour had meant. He had
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ABSOLUTISM. 22/
warned me of this boy, whose office it is to run about in the church
with his lance and keep the congregation awake.''
More emphatically than any other writer of his time,
Gellert was a private individual . In \ai Lectures on Moral-
JtT i2L^o \. a single wo rd about public or patriotic duties is to
be fo und. The battle of Rossbach, the first national vic-
tory won by a German army since the days of Maximilian,
an event which sent a thrill of joy through the hearts of all
who still hoped for a great future of the German state,
aroused in Gellert only feelings of horror and human com-
passion. "Oh, that battle of Rossbach! " he writes," "I
have lived through it, at a distance of only a few miles;
smitten with sickness, shaken by the roaring cannonade,
with panting breast and shivering hands, in prayer for the
dying, — no, not in prayer, for I could neither pray nor weep,
sighs only were left to me, — thus I heard it, through four
long hours, heard it even the day before it began, in the
rattle of the guns which thundered along under my win-
dow." If this seems weakness, let us not forget that it
was thro ugh this very turning aw ay from outer conditions,
throu gh this very limitation to the inner self that the Ger-
jnan _mind was at that time preparing for a new era of
nationa l greatness. And Gellert,by making self-reflection
_and self-discipline the keynote of his life as well as his lit-
erary wor k, dj^d more than any other man of his generation
_to cultivate that spirit which was to find its highest expres-
sionjn_Q:qethe's Wilhelm Meister.
" Printed Sammtl. Schr. VI and VII. " Biedermann /. c. 52.
CHAPTER VII.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GR.EAT AND
THE HEIGHT OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
(The Third Quarter of the Eighteenth Century.)
Schiller, in the poem Die deutsche Muse^ points with
just pride to the independent character of modern German
German lite- literature. No princely favours, he says, were
FraderioMilie bestowed upon it; no Augustus, no Medici fos-
Great. tered it; the greatest German of his time, Fred-
erick of Prussia, had no place for it at his court
Von dem grSssten deutschen Sohne,
Von des grossen Friedrichs Throne
Ging sie schutzlos, ungeehrt.
Riihmend darf's der Deutsche sagen,
Hoher darf das Herz ihm schlagen:
Selbst erschuf er sich den Wert.
However true this, generally speaking, is, Goethe was
equally right when he declared " that the heroic struggle of
Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War added a new
and higher life to German literature; and Kant was right
when he designated ' the intellectual epoch from which he
himself had sprung as the age of Frederick the Great.
I. The Enlightened Absolutism.
There is a strange and somewhat melancholy fascination
in imagining what would have been the aspect of modern
' SUmmtl. Schr., Hist.-Krit. Ausg. (Goedeke) XI, 329.
'» Dichtg u. Wahrh. b. 7 ; Werke Hempel XXI, 62.
• Was ist Aufkldrungl ; Werke ed. Hartenstein IV, l66.
228
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 229
German civilization if Frederick, instead of throwing
the weight of his mighty personality into the p^ , . , ,
balance of monarchical absolutism, could have theoretical
stood for the cause of popular freedom. That liberalism,
his own convictions pointed in this direction, there can be
little doubt. It reads like a passage from Rousseau's Con-
trat Social, when, in his first political pamphlet, the Con'
siderations sur I'e'tat du corps politique de l' Europe, he says^
" The princes must be made to know that their false max-
ims are the poisonous fountain-head whence flow all the
evils that are the. curse of Europe. Most princes are of the
opinion that God, solely from regard for their own great-
ness, happiness, and vanity, has created those masses of
men whose welfare has been entrusted to them, and that
their subjects have no other purpose but to be the instru-
ments of princely passions. Hence their desire of false
glory, their wild ambition for usurping everything, the weight
of the taxes with which they burden the people; hence
their laziness, arrogance, injustice, and tyranny; hence all
those vices with which they degrade human nature. If the
princes would rid themselves of this fundamental error and
seriously reflect upon the aim and purpose of their power,
they would find that their rank and dignity, which they are
so jealously guarding, are solely the gift of the people ; that
these thousands of men entrusted to them have by no means
made themselves the slaves of a single individual in order to
render him all the more formidable and powerful ; that they
have not submitted to one of their fellow-citizens in order to
become a prey to his arbitrary caprices, but that they have
elected from their midst the one whom they expected to be
the most just and benevolent ruler, the most humane in re-
lieving distress, the bravest in warding off enemies, the
' (Euvres VIII, 35 f. — Cf. for the following Hettner, Gesck. d. d.
Lit. i. \%. Jkdt II, 14 ff. Freytag's Bilder IV, 220 ff. Treitschke,
D. Gesch. i. z.q. Jhdt I, 49 ff. Hillebrand, German Thought p. 52 ff.
230 SOCIAL FORCES !N GERMAN LITERA TORE.
wisest in avoiding destructive wars, the most capable of
successfully maintaining the public authority." Not even
Montesquieu has more emphatically pointed out the great-
ness of English parliamentary life than Frederick, in the
following passage of his Antimachiavel*: "It seems to me
that, if there is a form of government which may be held
up as a model for our days, it is the English. There, par-
liament is the supreme judge both of the people and the
king, while the king has full power of doing good, but
none of doing evil." And Americans ought not to forget
that Frederick most heartily welcomed the Declaration of
Independence,' and that his government was among the
very first to enter into relations of commercial reciprocity
with the United States.'
Furthermore, it is equally certain that the intellectual
classes all over Germany would have hailed no event with
greater unanimity and enthusiasm than any steps which
Frederick might have taken toward granting his subjects
a share, however limited, in the management of public af-
fairs. Most of the great German thinkers and poets, from
Klopstock to Kant and Schiller, were at heart republicans.
Great as was the stimulus which their admiration of Fred-
erick imparted to their works, it would have been a hundred
times greater if they could have sympathized with his meth-
ods of government. As in the time of the Reformation,
there was again a chance for the kindling of a mighty flame
of popular freedom, which, nourished and propagated by the
best and noblest of the educated classes, might have swept
from one end of Germany to the other, burying the hun-
dreds of petty tyrants in a gigantic conflagration, and weld-
< (EuvresVXW, 125. 255.
' lb. XXIII, 353. That Frederick's friendly feeling toward the
United States was at least partly due to his resentment of the faith-
less policy pursued toward him by the English, there can be no doubt.
• Cf. W. Oncken, D. Zeitalter Friidr. d. Grossen II, 838 ff.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 23 1
ing the hundreds of lifeless embryonic states into one free,
united people.'
We may regret that nothing of this kind happened. But
it is only due to historic truth to say that, if ever a similar
vision had flitted across Frederick s mind, which
it probably did not, he would at once have con- Sispraotical
r _ ^ . absolntisai,
signed it to the region of empty dreams. Reared
in the atmosphere of military paternalism; placed upon the
throne of a state whose policy from its earliest times had
had unscrupulous aggrandizement and centralization for
its chief maxim; called upon to defend the very existence
of this state in a deadly struggle of seven years against the
combined forces of more than half of Europe, he could not
fail to become convinced of the absolute necessity of auto-
cratic methods of government for his own country, and to
see in the improvement and perfection of these methods
the supreme task of his life.
Frederick has given to the world the wonderful spectacle
of an autocrat who acknowledged himself a servant of the
people." In 1759, after the terrible defeat of
Kunersdorf, when Berlin seemed to be at the His idea of
. . . , puDlio aervioe.
mercy of the Austrian and Russian armies, he
wrote to a friend': " I will throw myself in their way, and
have them cut my throat, or save the capital. Had I more
than one life, I would give it up for my fatherland. Do
not think that I shall survive the ruin of my country. I
have my own way of thinking. I do not wish to imitate
either Sertorius or Cato. I have no thought of my fame,
my only thought is the state." Frederick's whole life bore
out the truth of this sentiment. He gave to Prussia an ad-
ministration more efificient and more just than existed in
^ That a similar attempt made by Joseph II. failed, is no proof that
Frederick might not have succeeded,
' Cf. (Euvres IX, 193.
• Letter to the Marquis d'Argens, Aug. 16, 1759 ; (Euvres XIX, 79.
232 SOCIAL FORCES JN GERMAN LITERATURE.
any European country of his time. He established, in
principle at least, equality of all his subjects before the
law. He made the unrestricted liberty of religious belief
and philosophical thought a fundamental principle of legis-
lation." He delivered Germany from the curse of princely
libertinism, which for more than a century had been gnaw-
ing at the very root of her national life. In a word, he
gave the sanction of the state to that protest against arbi-
trary despotism which we have seen to be the motive
power in German intellectual life during the preceding
epoch. In this sense he stood indeed for the cause of
freedom.
This dualism in the political attitude of Frederick the
Great, which was more or less imitated by all the other
Dualism in German princes of the time, gave to the lit-
modemGer- grature of the second half of the eighteenth
mam htera- . °
tnie. century its ipiost distinguishmg feature. Still
debarred, on the one hand, from practical participation in
public life; favoured, on the other, with a large degree of
(freedom in theoretical belief and speculation; spurred on
I by the sight of a great hero and wonderful military achieve-
ments, the German men of thought and culture now more
• fervently than ever turned to the cultivation of the ideal,
1 and by holding up to their countrymen the image of a world
i of beauty, truth, and perfection helped to engender that
craving for the realization of ideal demands in national
institutions which, in the nineteenth century, has created
the German state.
Four literary generations, succeeding each other in close
I continuity and covering the period from the middle of
^Begeiieratioii ^^^ eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth
&om within century, co-operated in this work of regene-
its keynote. xsXvcig the national body by imparting a new life
to the national mind: (i) The contemporaries of Frederick
"» Cf. Hettner /. c. 27 £.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 233
the Great himself; (2) the contemporaries of the French
Revolution; (3) the contemporaries of the Napoleonic
wars; (4) the forerunners of the Revolution of 1848. Our
present task is a consideration of the leading men of the
first of these epochs.
2. Klopstock.
It was i n 1748, t he same year in which Frederick, in the
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, ach ieved his first great political
triumph, that Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock K lopatock'B I
(1724-1803), i n the three opening. , cantos of his " 'fl^°'?°° "-
M essias, s ounded that morning call of joyous 'Werther,
ideali sm and exalte d individua lism which was to be the /
dominant note of the best in all modern German literature. /
No one has more vividly described the magic spell which /
the name of Klopstock exercised upon all aspiring minds i
of the middle of the eighteenth century than Goethe in The\
Sorrows of Werther. In his account of the garden-party
where Lotte for the first time danced with him, and in the
twinkling of an eye set his whole being aflame, Werther
relates among other incidents the disturbance created by a
sudden thunderstorm. The company scatters; Werther
and Lotte are fortunate enough to meet alone. When the
worst of the storm is over, they step to a window. " In the
distance," these are his own words," " the thunder was dying
away, a glorious rain fell gently upon the land, and the
most refreshing perfume arose to us out of the fulness of
the warm air. She stood leaning upon her elbow; her
glance penetrated the distance, she looked heavenward, and
upon me; I saw her eyes fill with tears; she laid her hand
upon mine, and said — Klopstock! I at once remembered
the beautiful ode " which was in her mind, and lost myself
in the torrent of emotions which rushed over me with this
" Die Leiden d. jungen Werthers, letter of June 16 ; Werke XIV, 36.
^* Die Friihlingsfeier ; DNL. XLVII, 104 £f.
234 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
name. I could bear it no longer; I bent over her hand and
kissed it with most blissful tears."
What was it that gave Klopstock his extraordinary sway-
over the hearts and minds of his generation ? What was the
mission which he was born to fulfil to the German people ?
felopstock led German literature from the narrow circle
of private emotions and purposes to which the absolutism
of the seventeenth century had come near con-
Klopstook'a fining it, into the broad realm of universal sym-
pathy^ He was the first great freeman since the
days of Luther. He did not, lik e Haller. content himself
with the sight of an independentbut provinci al an d primi-
tive life, as afforded by the rural communities of Switzer-
land. JHe did not, like Gellert, turn away from the op-
pressed and helpless condition of the German pej)£]eJo a
weakly, exaggerated cultivatipn.gfJtuiBS,elf. He addressed
himself to the whole nation, nay, to all mankind. And by
appealing to all that is grand and noble; by calling forth
those passions and emotions which link the hurnan to the
divine; by awakening the poor down-trodden souls of men
who thus far had known themselves only as the subjects of
princes to the consciousness of their moral and spiritual citi-
zenship, he became the prophet of that invisible republic
which now for nearly a century and a half has been the
ideal counterpart in German life of a stern monarchical
reality.
No one perhaps has better expressed the limitations of
Klopstock's genius than Schiller, when in trying to define
his place among modern poets he says": " His
His Bpiritual- spj^gj-g jg always the realm of ideas, and he
makes everything lead up to the infinite. One
might say that he robs everything that he touches of its
" Ueier naive u. sentiment. Dichtg ; Sammtl. Schr. X, 473. — The
best modern account of Klopstock is F. Muncker's Klopstock : Gesch,
s. Lebens u. s. Schriften.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 235
_body in order to turn it into spirit, whereas other poets
seekto clothe the spiritual with a body?' It is undoubtedly
this lack of plastic power, this inability to create living
palpable bein gs, which prevented Klopstock Irom _ajttaining
the hi gh artistic ideal vyhich his, first ^re„3t,e££usionsLseenied
to proph esy. The older he grew, the more he withdrew
from the actual world, the more he surrounded himself
with the halo of superhuman experiences, the more he
insisted on describi ng the indescrib able, and expressing the
inexpressible; un til at last the same man, whose first youthful
utterances had unloosened mighty forces of popular pas-
sion, was intelligible only to a few adepts initiated into the
mysteries of his artificial, esoteric language.
And yet it is easy to see that it was precisely through this
exaggerated and overstrained spirituality that Klopstock
achieved the greatest of his work. [He would never have pro-
ceed the marvellous impression upon his contemporaries
which he did produce, had he attempted to represent life
as it isT] That task had been done by Moscherosch, Weise,
and their successors. [What was needed now was a higher
view of human existence, the kindling of larger emotions,
the pointing out of loftier aimsT} A man was needed who I
sh ould gi ve utterance to that religious idealism which,)
though buried under the ruins of popular independence,/
/wal nev^theiess the one vital principle of Protestantism'
^ot yet^xtmct; a man who, through an exalted conception
of nationality, should inspire his generation with a new
faith in Germany's political future; a man who, by virtue of
his own genuine sympathy with all that is human in the
noblest sense, and through his unwavering belief in the high
destiny of mankind, should usher in a new era of enlight-
ened cosmopolitanism. It was K lopstock's spi rituality
which enabled him to assume this threefold leadership, and
the immeasurable services rendered by him in this capacity
to the cause of religion, fatherland, and humanity may well
236 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
make us forget the artistic shortcomings by which they
were accompanied.
None of Klopstock's works has been so much subjected
to misleading and unappreciative criticism as his greatest
religious poem, the Messias. Let us admit
TheMesnas. ^^ ^^^ outset that in this seeming e|)i £ nearly
_all the most essential epic qualities are lacking, j^al-
ity in events^ clearness of motive, naturalness of char -
acter, directness ofstyle, all these are things for jwliich,
in most parts of the poem, we look in vain. Through-
out its_twenty_cantc^we constantly circle^_between_h^aveji,_
hell, and earth, without at any given moment seeming
to know where we are. Christ's passion and death, the
central action of the work, is robbed of its human inter-
est through the over-anxious desire of the poet to exalt
the divine nature of the Saviour, and to represent the
atonement as predetermined in the original plan of cre-
ation. The countless hosts of angelic and Satanic spir-
its which hover before us in endless space are for the most
part without individual features. Even the human sympa-
thizers and adversaries of the Son of God play their parts
more by portentous looks, unutterable thoughts, effusive
prayer, or mysterious silence, than by straightforward action.
But what do all these criticisms mean ? They simply
mean that it was a mistake in Klopstock's admirers to call
„ . . him a German Milton, and that the Messias
Botanepio, — ^.
bnt an ora- ought not to be looked upon as an epic poem at
*""''• all. Not Milton, but the great German com-
posers of church music were Klopstock's spiritual prede-
cessors; his place is by the side of Bach and Handel as
the third great master of the oratorio.'*
The three most important parts of an oratorio, outside of
the orchestral accompaniment, are: the recitative, the arias,
the choruses. In a religious oratorio, such as Bach's Pas-
" Cf. Julian Schmidt, Gesch. d. d. Litt. sett Leibniz II, 237.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 237
ston Music, or Handel's Messiah, the recitative is in the main
confined to the narrative passages of the gospels lieepio
and to the words of single persons introduced lyric, and
in them. The chorus performs a double task. ^e'^Zofthe'
Either it represents groups of persons taking oratorio,
part in the action itself, as, for instance, the body of the
disciples or the Jewish populace; or it is conceived of as a
collective spectator, giving utterance to the feelings and
emotions which the suffering, death, and triumph of the
Saviour cannot help arousing in the mass of believers. In
the arias, finally, these same feelings of compassion and ado-
ration are expressed; not, however, as emanating from the
whole of the Christian community, but from the individual
human soul. In other words, the oratorio is a combination
of an epic element, represented by the recitative, with lyric
and dramatic, elements, represented by aria and chorus.
And if we may liken it as a whole to a festive garland
wound around the altar of the Most High, it is clear that in
this comparison the recitative corresponds to the slender
stems and branches which, strung together and intertwined
with each other, form a gentle line of even colour running
through it all, while the arias and choruses cluster around
it like variegated masses of exuberant foliage.
Klopstock's Messias, like the oratorio, consists of epic,
lyric, and dramatic elements. Of these, the epic element
..corresponds to what the recitative is in the _,
^ — - — ^ — - -- The same ele-
■Siiiprio^ It is the background of th e who le, mentsinthe
it forms a connecting link between the other l^^^sBiaa,
parts, butjnitself it would be incomplete. Only in the lyric
and dramatic passages, those passages which correspond to
the arias and choruses of the oratorio, does the poem rise
to its height; only here is the full splendour of Klopstock's
musical genius revealed.
The time will certainly come when even the narrative
part of the Messias will again, as in Goethe's youth, find
readers willing to let themselves be carried along by
238 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
its powerful and sonorous, thou gh sometimes m onotonous,
flow of oratory. Nothing could be grander
The epic ele- ^^^^ ^^ ^jjg game time, simpler than the general
outline of the poem. How, from the scene in
the first canto, where Christ on the Mount of Olives conse-
crates himself to the work of redemption, we are led
through the councils of heaven and hell, through Gethse-
mane and Golgotha, to the Resurrection and Ascension,
until at last " the living heavens rejoice and sing about the
throne, and a gleam of love irradiates the whole universe," "
— all this is nobly planned
Nor is there a lack of individual scenes full of inner life
and divine fire. What an air of sublime mystery and awe
lingers over the lonely night spent by Jesus on the Mount
of Olives at the beginning of the poem." In the distance
there glimmers around him the light of sacrifices, flaming,
to appease the Deity, on high Moriah. John, his beloved
disciple, ascends with him, but stops half-way, remaining in
prayer at the sepulchres of the prophets. Gabriel, the arch-
angel, from a grove near the summit, sees Jesus coming
and addresses him with words of admiration. Jesus passes
by, answering him only with a look of tenderness and mercy.
He reaches the summit and stands in God's presence. He
prays. He recalls how in the solitude of eternity, ere the
cherubim and seraphim were formed, he and the Father
were together; how they saw the future destiny of the
world, the sin and fall of man, and how he then resolved to
accomplish through his own death the work of redemption.
" Oh earth, how wast thou, before my humiliation in this
human form, my chosen, my beloved object! and thou. Oh
Canaan, sacred land, how oft has my compassionate eye
been cast on thee! " Now he is ready to fulfil his work. He
" Words of Goethe's, Dichtg u. Wahrh. 6. 10 ; Werke XXI, 170.
" Der Messias ed. Hamel (DATL. XLVII, I. 2), canto I, 43 «f. Cf.
the prose transl. by Joseph CoUyer, Boston 181 1.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 239
lifts his head to the heavens and his hand to the clouds,
and vows that he will redeem mankind. And the Eternal
Father raises his head above the highest heavens, and
stretches his hand through the immensity of space, and
vows that he will forgive the sins of the repentant children
of men.
" While the Eternal Ones thus spake, all nature shook. Souls,
just emerging from non-existence, which had not yet begun to think,
trembled, and first experienced sensation. The Seraphim were over-
whelmed with awe, like the earth when she expects an approaching
tempest. A sweet delight and intoxicating sense of eternal life
entered the souls of future Christians. But the Satanic spirits, sense-
less and in despair, fell from their thrones, the deep broke under
them, and lowest hell resounded."
What a brilliancy of oratorical diction and invention
there is in the scene where Christ, after his resurrection,
holds judgment on Mount Tabor over the souls of those
who have recently died! Among them the souls of war-
riors and those of infants are contrasted."
" There had been a battle. Below, in the silent fields, there lay
the dead and the dying; like thunderclouds their spirits streamed
Upward, with them the leaders of the two armies, — both unscrupulous
conquerors. The Judge of the world lifted his right hand, thunders
crashed upon the two great criminals, the traitors to humanity,
echoing long and low as they were hurled down to hell; and from
hell there came the sound of curses and scourging, the warriors
slaughtered on the field of battle rising against their masters to
chastise them. — But now, with the whisper of angelic harps, there
arose melodies of sweetest joy. For earthless there came, from
Ganges and Rhine, from Niagara and Nile, souls of children flying
to Mount Tabor, as lambs nourished by the spring sport on the
hillside. And the Judge judged not. From star to star they were
led, encircled by the dance of the joyful hours; and they learned
many wonders until, changed into heavenly youths, holier realms
they entered."
Or, to select a passage of less fanciful imagery, what
" Canto XVI, 307 ff.
240 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
could surpass in graceful delineation and true poetic feeling
the description of the beautiful morning on lake Tiberias
when the risen Christ appears to his disciples! "
Herauf war die MorgendSmmrung gestiegen,
Und den Strahl des werdenden Tages milderte lichter
Nebel, ein Schleier, aus Glanz und weissem Dufte gewebet.
Ruh' war auf die Gefild' umher, sanftatmende Stille
Ausgegossen, Ein Nachen entglitt da langsamsichtbar
Voll von Freunden dem lieblichen Duft des werdenden Tages.
Nackt bei dem iiberhangenden Netz stand vorn in dem Nachen
Kephas. Es sassen umher, mil silberhaarigem Haupte
BartholomSus, Lebbaus, gelehnt auf ein Ruder, mit vollem
Freudeglanzenden Bliclce der Zwilling, mit ISchelnder Heitre
Selbst Nathanael, sassen die Zebedaiden, Jakobus
Mit den Gedanken im Himmel, Johannes beim Herrn auf der Erde.
Da sie nSher heran zu dem Ufer kommen, erblicken
Sie den Mittler, allein sie erkennen ihn nicht; doch vereliren
Sie den ernsten Fremdling, der dort des Morgens, in sanfte
Rube versenkt, und seiner Gedanken sich freuet.
It is evident from these examples, which might easily be
multiplied, that even that part of the Messias which is
closest to the narrative of the gospels is by no means the
dreary and tiresome waste which popular prejudice and
pragmatic criticism have made it out to be. Looked upon
as the recitative element of a musical composition, it ap-
pears to fulfil a perfectly legitimate function, that of trans-
jorting th e hearer into the loftier realm of supernatural
experiences, and of forming with its vague, shadowy sounds
a backgrounH for the richer notes of the lyric and dramatic
passages of the poem.
For the most part, these passages are so closely inter-
woven with the narrative itself that it is impossible to con-
Tlie lyiio ele- sider them separately. This is, for instance,
ment, Com- ^j^g ^^^^ ^jjjj ^^ poetic images and compari-
panaons. r- , . ° . ^ .
Episodes. sons. Klopstock s most impressive compan-
sons are not epic, ^hey do not serve to make a certain
'8 Canto XIX, 268 ff.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 24 1
part of the narrative, by which they were suggested,
more graphic and tangibley^the^ are lyrical, they lead
put of the reality of the_narrative into ^_realm_of_
jdeeper emotions and higher experiericesj| they can be fully
appreciated only when conc eived of a^ _uttered Jn song,
Christ is represented standing before Herod, as divine
Providence called before the tribunal of reprobate scep-
tics." Mary hastens to meet her Son, as a noble thought
soars toward heaven." Gabriel, finding the Saviour asleep
on the Mount of Olives, gazes on his peaceful, benign
countenance with rapt veneration,"' " as a travelling seraph
views the dim face of the blooming earth on a spring night,
when the evening star stands high in the lonely heaven and
beckons to the pensive sage to gaze at him from the dusky
grove." The same must be said of the many digressions
and episodes. They also do not to any considerable extent
heighten the reality of events, but they do heighten, perhaps
more than anything else, the effect of Jhe poem ^s a lyrical
expression of a fervent and exalted ^pirittjali^y. Take as a
typical example two scenes in which one of the most pow-
erful of Klopstock's characters appears: Abbadona, the
fallen angel, who, in the service of Satan, longs for the inno-
cence and happiness of his former existence. The first
scene is in the hellish assembly where Satan discloses his
plan of putting the Messiah to death." Abbadona is sit-
ting by himself, far away from Satan's throne, in gloomy
solitude, lost in thoughts of the past, especially of his
friendship with Abdiel, the exalted seraph, who on the day
of Satan's revolt deserted the ranks of the reprobate and
returned to God. Abbadona was near escaping with that
heroic seraph; but surrounded with the rapid chariots of
Satan ai^H tfie furious bands of those who fell from their
" Canto VII, 553 ff. Cf. Erich Schmidt, Charakteristiktn p. 133 f.
«» Canto IV, 919. " Canto I, 541 ff.
" Canto II, 627 ft. Cf. The Seven First Cantos of the Messiah, trls.
into English Verse, London, 1826.
242 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
allegiance, he drew back, and though Abdiel, with looks
of menacing love, strove to hasten his escape from the rebel
hosts, inebriated and dazzled by the delusive prospect of
his future godhead, he no longer followed the once powerful
glance of his friend, but suffered himself to be carried in
triumph to Satan.
Now mournfully he sits
Engross'd in thought, and muses o'er the scenes
Of youth and innocence, the morning fair
Of his creation, when to life and light
Abdiel and he, at God's first call, had sprung
Together forth. In ecstasy exclaim'd
Each to the other, "Who are we? Oh say
How long hast thou been here ? " In dazzling beams
Then shone the distant glory of the Lord
With rays of blessing on them; round they look'd
And saw innumerable multitudes
Of bright immortals near; and soon aloft,
Uprais'd by silvery clouds, were they convey'd
To the Almighty Presence.
Abbadona, tortured by these reminiscences, bursts into a
torrent of tears, and now resolves to oppose the blasphem-
ous speech of Satan calling for the death of the Messiah.
Thrice he attempts to speak, but his sighs stop his utterance.
" Thus, when in a bloody battle two brothers are mortally
wounded by each other's hand, at last, each to the other
being mutually known, they are unable to speak, and sighs
only proceed from their dying lips."
The other scene is in the garden of Gethsemane." Ab-
badona has gone in search of the Saviour, led by an in-
stinctive though distrustful hope of his own redemption.
Through every desert has he roved, every river has he
traced from its source, in the solitude of every sequestered
grove his trembling feet have wandered. To the cedar he
has said: Oh tell me, in rustling whispers tell me, dost thou
" Canto V, 485-633.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 243
conceal him?" To the towering mountains he has cried:
" Bow down your solitary tops to my tears, that I may see
the divine Jesus, who, perhaps, sleeps on your summits!"
But he feels that he is unworthy to see his face. " O
Jesus, thou art the Saviour only of men! Me thou wilt not
save! " Lost in these thoughts, he enters the grove, where
he finds Christ in the agony of his final resolve, and sud-
denly he is struck with the resemblance of this man lying
there prone in the dust to the mighty Son of God, who at
the head of the heavenly hosts once hurled Satan and him
to hell.
O thou who yonder dost contend with death.
Who art thou ? Com'st thou from the dust ? A son
Of that dishonour'd earth which bears God's curse.
And, ripe for judgment, trembling waits the day
Of dissolution ? Com'st thou from her dust ?
Yes! Human is thy form! But majesty
Divine around it beams! Thy lofty eye
Speaks higher language than of graves and death!
Ha! trace I not tremendous likeness there ?
Cease, boding terror! Death eternal, cease
To shake my shudd'ring soul! But yes! Ah, yes!
• I trace resemblance to the Son of God!
To him who erst, borne on the flaming wheels
Of his red chariot, from Jehovah's throne
Thund'ring pursued us!
Once, but once, I tum'd
My trembling head behind in wild affright,
Saw the tremendous Son, caught the dread eye
Of him who wielded thunder! High he stood
Above his burning car; midnight's deep gloom
Lay stretch'd beneath his feet; below was death!
Omnipotent he came. — Woe, woe is me! Ah, then
The whirl of his avenging sword, the sound
Of his swift thunderbolt with deaf'ning din
Affrighted nature shook! I saw no more.
In night my eyes were seal'd; plunging I sunk
Through storm and whirlwind, through the doleful cries
Of scar'd creation, fainting in despair;
244 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE
Yet was immortal! Lo, I see him now!
E'en now I view his likeness in the form
Of yonder man, who, prostrate on the ground.
Lies there! Is he — ah, can he be the great.
The promis'd Saviour?
Thus far we have been considering scenes in which the
lyric element is intimately connected and interwoven with
the narrative. But it is not in these alone that
Airs and re- , . .
sponsive Klopstock s lyrico-dramatic fervour asserts itself,
oliantfl, Again and again, from the first canto to the last,
it forces its way, as it were, with elemental power through
the epic narrative, and assumes a form of its own." Some-
times it is the poet himself who in rapturous song gives
vent to his religious enthusiasm, as at the beginning of the
poem," where he calls upon his immortal soul to sing the
redemption of mankind; or at the opening of the eleventh
canto," where he girds himself to penetrate the mysteries of
the Resurrection :
" If in my religious flight I have not sunk too low, but have
poured sublime sensations into the hearts of the redeemed, guided by
the Almighty, I have been borne on eagle's wings! O religion! I
have learned from revelation a sense of thy dignity. He who waits
not, with devout awe, by the pure crystal stream that from the throne
flows among the trees of life, may his praise, dispersed by the winds,
not reach mine ear, or if undispersed, not pollute my heart! Ah,
among the dust had lain ray song, had not yon living stream poured
from the New Jerusalem, the city of God, and thither turned its
course. Lead me still farther, thou guide invisible, and direct my
trembling steps. The Son's humiliation have I sung, let me now
rise to sing his glory. May I attempt to sing the Victor's triumph,
the hills and valleys yielding forth their dead, and his exaltation t<7
the heaven of heavens, the throne of the eternal Father? O thou,
'4 Hamel, DNL. XLVI, \,p. viii, shows very strikingly that even
the metrical form of the Messias, although having the outward ap-
pearance of the epic hexameter, as a matter of fact consists of ' free
rhythms.'
" Canto I, I ff. »• Canto XI, I ff.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 245
to heaven raised, help me, help me and those who hear me, to bear
the terrors of thy glory!"
Again there are the airs and responsive chants with which
angels and sacred men and women accompany the central
action, softening its horrors and heightening its pathetic
beauty. Thus at the beginning of the seventh canto," the
seraph Eloa, standing on a morning cloud, greets the dawn
of the day of crucifixion with a hymn of exultant joy.
Thus in the tenth canto," the prophetesses Miriam and
Deborah, who with Adam, Eve, Abraham, and other saints
and seers of the Old Testament form a cloud of witnesses
around the cross on which Jesus is dying, break forth into
the following antiphony:
"Deborah. O thou, once the most lovely of human beings! thou
who wast the fairest of the sons of men! how are thy features
changed by the livid traces of death!
Miriam. My heart is plunged into softest sorrow, and clouds of
grief surround me. Yet still to me he appears the most beautiful of
men, of all creation the most lovely, fairer than the sons of light,
when glowing with fervour they adore the Eternal.
Deborah. Mourn, ye cedars of Lebanon, which to the weary afford
a refreshing shade. The sighing cedar is cut down, of the cedar is
formed his cross.
Miriam. Mourn, ye flowers of the vale! The thorn-bush spread its
branches on the bank of the silver stream. They have been wound
around the head of the Divine One as a crown of thorns.
Deborah. Unwearied he lifted up his hands to the Father in behalf
of sinners. His feet unwearied visited the dwellings of affliction.
Now are they pierced with cruel wounds.
Miriam. His divine brow, which he bowed here into the dust,
from which ran mingled blood and sweat, ah! how has the crown,
the bloody crown now pierced it!
Deborah. Oh, Miriam! his eye brealcs and his life breathes hard.
Soon, ah! soon, will he look his last toward heaven.
Miriam. O Deborah! a mortal paleness sits on his faded cheeks.
Soon will his divine head sink to rise no more.
" Canto VII, I £f. *« Canto X, 486 ff.
S46 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Deborah. Thou who shinest above, O celestial Jerusalem, burst
into tears of joy. Soon will the hour of affliction be past.
Miriam. Thou who sinnest below, O terrestrial Jerusalem, burst
into tears of grief. For soon at thy barbarous hands will the sover-
eign Judge require his blood.
Deborah. The stars in their courses stand still, and creation is
stricken dumb at the sufferings of her Creator! — at the sufferings of
Jesus! the everlasting High Priest! the Redeemer! the Prince of
Peace!
Miriam. The earth also stands still, and from you who dwell on the
earth, dust upon dust, the sun has withdrawn his light. For this is
Jesus! The everlasting High Priest! the Redeemer! the Prince of
Peace! Hallelujah! "
In the later portions of the poem, finally, it is the choral
element which carries everything before it. In fact, the
whole of the last canto is a succession of jubi-
The choral j^„j choruses, thronging about the Redeemer,
as he slowly pursues his triumphal path through
the heavens until at last he ascends the throne and sits at
the right hand of the Father. It would be hard to imagine
a more impressive finale than this bursting of the universe
into a mighty hymn of praise echoing from star to star, and
embracing the voices of all zones and ages; and it is indeed
strange that a poet who was capable of such visions as these
should have been taken to task by modern critics " for not
having confined himself more closely to the representation of
actual conditions.
If J^n Jhe^^^w/ai' we see the crowning poetic manifesta-
tion of the religious ideaHsm of the German people which
in the period preceding Klopstock had found
Sr^w^rk^ its expression in the emotional individualism of
the hymn-writers of the seventeenth century,
the pietistic godliness of Spener and Francke, the colossal
musical compositions of Bach and Handel, we find the
chief importance of Klopstock's other works in their~rela-
" Especially Scherer, Gesch. d. d. Litt. p. 424.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 247
tion t o the national and cosmopolitan sentiment of his
age. "~
Here again Klopstock's services have failed to receive
due recognition from our own time. His cosmopolitanism
has been called fantastic, his patriotism laboured His efforts to
and unreal; the jieiuvenation of Germanic anti- "a*i™='li™
' " — trermaiL
_£uit}|^jnJii^s_odej and^dram derided literatme.
as empty phraseology; his turning away from Frederick the
Great has been referred to the ignoble motive of disap-
pointed ambition. The truth is that_ Klopstock's effort s
to nationalize German literature stand, on the_same_level
_with Frederick's political achievements. Had Frederick
been more liberal than autocratic, instead of being more
autocratic than liberal, had he been more German than
Prussian, instead of being more Prussian than German, we
should undoubtedly have seen the greatest German poet
of his time a devoted follower of the greatest German
monarch. We may regret that this sight has been denied
us; that even Klopstock did not find in contemporary
life sufficient nourishment for his imagination; that even
he, who had started out as an ardent admirer of Frederick,
was at length compelled to seek in the remote past for a
realization of his dreams of German greatness and liberty.
But let us be careful not to attach any personal blame to
our regret; let us be satisfied to note here again the fatal
trend of German history since the failure of the Reforma-
tion, which now for fully two centuries had tended to put
Germany's best men in opposition to the actual and the
present; and let us be thankful to Klopstock for having
brought back from his flight into the Germanic dreamland
figures and conceptions which, better understood and more
fully developed by the Romanticists of the nineteenth
century, above all by the brothers Grimm, by Uhland, and
by Richard Wagner, have now become a permanent ele-
ment in modern German culture.""
'° In England, this revival of ancient national traditions began
248 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
And must we not also be grateful to Klopstock for the
hopes which he entertained for the future of his country
_. ^ ^, and of humanity? There are few poems in Ger-
ms patriotism . ...
and oosmopoli- man literature inspired with a nobler and more
tanism. genuine sense of nationality than the one in
which he represents the English and the German Muse
entering the lists of the poetic arena." Proudly relying on
the record of former victories, the daughter of Britain
appears on the scene; with glowing cheeks and trembling
with youthful ambition, the German maid steps to her side.
With friendly condescension, the British woman addresses
her young rival, reminding her of the many trophies she
has won, of her contest with the Muses of Greece and
Rome, and warning the young German not to risk too dan-
gerous a race.
Sie sprach's. Der ernste, richtende Augenblick
Kam mit dem Herold naher. " Ich liebe dich! "
Sprach schnell mit Flammenblick Teutona,
" Brittin, ich liebe dich mit Bewunderung!
Doch dich nicht heisser als die Unsterblichkeit,
Und jene Palmen! Ruhre, dein Genius
Gebeut er's, sie vor mir; doch fass' ich,
Wenn du sie fassest, dann gleich die Kron' auch.
Und, o wie beb' ich! o ihr Unsterblichen!
Vielleicht erreich' ich frUher das hohe Ziel!
Dann mag, o dann an meine leichte
Fliegende Locke dein Athem hauchen! "
somewhat earlier than in Germany : Macpherson's Remains of Ancient
Poetry appeared in 1760, his Fingal i-jtl, Percy's Reliques 1765. In
Germany, it was Gerstenberg, the author of Ugolino, who in his Ge-
dicht eines Skalden (1766) introduced for the first time the Northern
mythology into modern poetry. Cf. Hamel in his introd. to Klop-
stock's Oden ; DNL. XLVII,/. xx f. Muncker, Klopstock p. 379 f.
" Die beiden Musen (1752) ; DNL. XLVII, 86. Cf. Goethe's crit-
icism of the poem ; Eckermann, GesprSche I, 115.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 249
Der Herold klang. Sie flogen mit Adlereil.
Die weite Laufbahn stSubte, wie Wolken, auf.
Ich sah: vorbei der Eiche wehte
Dunkler der Staub und mein Blick verier sie!
What could be finer than the cosmopolitan enthusiasm
with which Klopstock greeted the outbreak of the French
Revolution? The heroic struggle of the Seven His sympathy
Years' War seems to him of secondary impor- !S'*'^*J^*
,.,,., . FrenonEevo-
tance compared with this dawn of a new era in iiition.
human existence." In a gigantic vision he sees the spirit
of Freedom rise before a tyrannical princeling and throw
him into speechless terror.°° Even in his bitter disappoint-
ment over the wild orgies of Jacobinism, he finds comfort
in the noble daring of Charlotte Corday." And although
he despairs of seeing the French people establish the reign
of lawful liberty, yet he takes leave of them as of brothers,
with a feeling of deepest sympathy."
Menschenfeind soil ich also im Blutenhaare noch werden ?
Der hier stets obstand, siegend kampfete ? Nein!
Menschenelend soil mich zum Menschenfeinde nicht machen;
ThrSnen im Blicke, nicht Zorn, scheid' ich, Briider, von euch.
And, finally, what a divine belief in the inevitable victory
of reason, what a truly prophetic spirit breathes in the ode,"
written long before the French Revolution, in His hones for
which the poet, like an ancient Germanic seer, (Jermaay,
from the wild plunges of a riderless steed predicts the
future freedom of his own country!
Ob's auf immer laste? Dein Joch, o Deutschland,
Sinket dereinst! Ein Jahrhundert nur noch;
" Die &tats Gdn^raux (1788); DNL. XLVII, 177.
'" Der FUrst u. s. Kebsweib (1789); ib, 181.
'* Mein Irrthum (1793); ib. 187.
" Die Denkseiten (1793); ib. iSg.
'* Weissngung (1773); ib. 155.
250 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
So ist es geschehn, so herrscht
Der Vernunft Recht vor dem Schwertrecht!
Denn im Haine brauset' es her gehobnes
Halses, und sprang, Flug die Mahne, dahin
Das heilige Ross, und ein Spott
War der Sturm ihm, und der Strom ihm!
Auf der Wiese stand es, und stampft', und blickte
Wiehernd umher; sorglos weidet' es, sah
Voll Stolz nach dem Reiter nicht bin,
Der im Blut lag an dem Grenzsteinl
Nicht auf immer lastet es. Frei, o Deutschland,
Wirst du dereinst! Ein Jahrhundert nur noch;
So ist es geschehn, so herrscht
Der Vernunft Recht vor dem Schwertrecht!
Klopstock was a true liberator. LHe was the first amon) ; ;
m odern German poets who drew^his^ inspiration from the
_ depth of a heart beating for all humanity." :He was the
jfirst among them, greater than his worksj By putting the
stamp of his own wonderful personality upon everything
that_he wrqte_or_didj bj lifting himself, his friends, the
objects of his love and veneration into the sphere of ty.-
traordinary spiritual experiences,^' he raised the ideals of
his age to a higher pitchjl and although his memory has
been dimmed through the greater men who came after him,
the note struck by him still vibrates in the finest chords of
the life of to-day.
" Cf. the Aus dem goldenen Abce der Dichter in his Gelehrtenrepublik
(1774). ii- 277 f.
'* Among Klopstock's finest odes devoted to friendship and the
joys of nature are the following (Z?iVZ. XLVII): Die kunftige Geliebte
(1747); An Eiert (ly^S) ; An Fanny (jT^i); Der ZUrcher See (iTso);
Die Frilhlingsfeier (1759) ; Der Eislauf (1764); Die fruhen Grdber
(1764); Die Sommernacht {l-jbt); Rothschild's Grdber (1766).
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 2$1
3. Wieland.
The second great literary name of the Friderician age
is that of a man who in nearly every respect was the exact
opposite of Klopstock: Christoph Martin Wie- Coatrastbe-
land (1733-1813). While Klopstock leaned tweenSiop-
to the English taste, Wieland inclined to the S'^ThH''
French. While Klopstock was an ardent and commoE task.
uncompromising republican, Wieland was in turn an advo-
cate of enlightened absolutism,^' an admirer of the French
Revolution of 1789," and again, after the declaration of
the republic, a spokesman of German paternalism." While
Klopstock, with a tenacity which came near being stubborn-
ness, clung throughout his life to the spiritual ideals of his
youth, Wieland constantly passed from one mental state to
another, from pietism to cynicism, from supernaturalism to
materialism, from Platonic to Epicurean views, until at last
he persuaded himself that he had found the solution of all
moral problems in a. juste milieu between pleasure and virtue,
instinct and duty.
But in spite of this personal contrast between the two
men, or rather because of it, Wieland performed a task for
German culture closely allied to that performed by Klop-
stock. He, no less than the latter, helped to prepare the
ground for that perfect intellectual freedom and equipoise,
that universality of human interest and endeavour which was
to be the signal feature of cultivated German society toward
the end of the eighteenth century. Klopstock did his part
by expanding and elevating the moral sentiment, Wieland
" Cf. the novel Der goldene Spiegel {jITl) ; Werke Hempel XVIII,
XIX; and the essay Ueber d. gottl. Recht d. Obrigkeii (iT]i); Werke
XXXIII, loi ff.
*• Cf. Unparteiische Betracktungen iiber d. dermal. Staatsrevolution
in Frankreich (1790); Werke XXXIV, 66 ff.
*' Cf. Betracktungen iiber d, gegenw. Lage d. Vaterlandes (1793);
Werke XXXIV, 291 ff.
252 SOVIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
did his by fostering a refined sensuality. Klopstock drew
his strength from Pietism, Wieland was rooted in Rational-
ism. He endeavoured to quicken and broaden the irealistic
current of German literature which we have seen running
at greater or less depth from Grimmelshausen to Gellert;
while Klopstock endeavoured to give a new and stronger
impetus to the idealistic current which we have likewise
seen flowing throughout the preceding epoch. Both men
seem more remarkable to us for their aspirations than for
their attainments. Klopstock often soared too high, Wie-
land still oftener sunk too low. The absence even in the
Friderician age of truly national tasks and of a firmly estab-
lished public opinion imparted to both an eccentric indi-
vidualism, which in Klopstock appeared as a disregard for
the limitations of reality, in Wieland as a capricious delight
in its superficial appearances. And yet it is an injustice
to both Klopstock and Wieland to speak of their works in
a manner which is now only too common, as though they
had no message to deliver to our own time, as though the
spiritual ardour of the former, the serene sensuousness of
the latter had lost their meaning for us moderns.
The first work in which Wieland showed his true fibre was
■Wieland'a the novel ^^a//^(7«, published in 1766-67. Up to
Agathontlie ^.jj^j jj^g j^g jj^^j \ittn oscillating between weak
typical ex- , •
pression of attempts in the seraphic manner of Klopstock and
eigtteentli- Young, and equally weak imitations of French
century ^' . ^ ^ ^^ ^ , . . ,
rationalism. rococo literature. Now for the first time he
struck a theme which brought out his own literary indi-
viduality and which at the same time put him into contact
with the strongest intellectual current of the age, the ra-
tionalistic movement. To quote his own testimony " about
the intentions followed out in this novel, he chose the Ho-
ratian line : ' Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit ' for its
motto, " not as though he wished to show in the character
*' Ueber d. Historische im Agathon; Werke \, 59.
TltE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 253
of Agathon what wisdom and virtue are by themselves, but
how far a human being through natural power may advance
in both; how large a part external circumstances have in
our way of thinking, in our good and evil acts, in our wis-
dom and folly; and how only through experience, mistakes,
incessant self-improvement, frequent changes in our mode
of thought and, above all, through the example and friend-
ship of wise and good men, we may become wise and good
ourselves." In other words, he wished to point out in an
object-lesson what the rationalistic philosophy of the time
tried to point out theoretically — the true way toward indi-
vidual perfection; and if this object-lesson appears less
convincing to us than it appeared to Lessing when he called
Agathon " the only novel for thinking men," " this much is
certain, that in the whole period between the Simplicissimus
and Wilhelm Meister there is no German novel dealing with
as broad phases of life in as successful a manner as Wie-
land's Agathon.
The opening scene" is a magnificent classic-romantic
picture in the style of the Alexandrian novel. Agathon, a
noble Athenian youth, having for a time played
a leading part in the politics of his native town, t^4?^^ °^
by a sudden revulsion of public feeling has lost
popular favour and is now on his way into exile. Roaming
about at nightfall in a mountain wilderness, he is startled
by strange tumultuous sounds. To trace their origin, he
climbs to the top of the glen where he happens to be, and
here witnesses an extraordinary spectacle: a crowd of
infuriated Menads shouting, dancing, raging about in the
bright moonlight.
" A luxuriant imagination, or the pen of a La Fage, might
undoubtedly give an alluring description of such a scene; but
the impression which the reality itself made upon our hero was
*' Hamb. Dramat., 69. St. ; Sammtl. Schr. ed. Lachm.-Muncker
X, So. •" Werke I, 6g ff.
254 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
far from being pleasant. The stormy, flowing hair, the rolling
eyes, the foaming lips, the swollen muscles, the wild gestures,
the frenzied extravagance with which these demented women in
a thousand wanton attitudes shook their spears wound with
ivy and tame serpents, clanged their tin cymbals or stammered
forth abrupt dithyrambs with babbling tongues: all these out-
breaks of a fanatic rage which appeared to him all the more
detestable because it proceeded from a superstitious belief,
aroused in him nothing but aversion and disgust. He wished
to flee away, but it was impossible, because at this very moment
he was noticed by them. The sight of a youth in a place and at a
festival which were not to be desecrated by the eye of a man, sud-
denly arrested the course of their tumultuous gaiety and turned
their whole attention upon his appearance. A youth of Agathon's
beauty, in this place, at this time ! Could they take him for
anything less than Bacchus himself ? In the frenzy which had
taken hold of their senses, nothing was more natural than this
idea, which gave to their imagination such a fiery impulse that
they suddenly seemed to see not only the god himself, but his
whole retinue also. Their enchanted eyes brought before them
the Silens and the goat-footed Satyrs swarming about him, and
tigers and leopards licking his feet caressingly. Flowers, it
seemed to them, sprang from beneath his feet, and fountains of
wine and honey welled forth from under his steps and ran in
foaming torrents down the rocks. Of a sudden, the whole moun-
tain, the forest and the neighbouring rocks resounded with their
loud Evoe, Evoe! accompanied by such a frightful din of drums
and cymbals that Agathon, struck with astonishment and fright,
remained as motionless as a statue while the enraptured Menads
wound their extravagant dances around him, by a thousand fran-
tic gestures expressing their delight over the supposed presence
of their patron god."
The sudden appearance of Cilician pirates rescues Aga-
thon from this awkward situation, but only to plunge him
at once into another and more serious trouble. In com-
mon with the crowd of revellers, he is made captive by the
robbers and put aboard a ship which is to convey them
with other prisoners to the slave markets of Asia Minor.
On board this vessel he has a third, equally unexpected
and sensational experience. Among his fellow captives, he
THt: AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 255
is attracted by a handsome youth dressed as a slave, whom
he soon recognises as Psyche, the love of his boyhood.
They had been brought up together in the temple of Del-
phi; both were consecrated to the service of Apollo; both
were inspired with a glowing desire for purity and moral
perfection; no wonder that they formed a friendship in-
stinct with all the innocent idealism of inexperience, which
made their spiritual communions in the moon-lit temple
groves seem to them like glimpses of Elysium. But the
intrigues of a jealous and voluptuous priestess soon inter-
rupted the course of their youthful love. Agathon and
Psyche were parted, and only now, through a curious com-
bination of circumstances, they are again brought together
as the fellow victims of barbarian slave-hunters. But even
this reunion is of short duration. While Psyche is kept in
the service of the chief of the pirates himself, Agathon is
taken to Smyrna, and at a public auction sold to Hippias,
the Sophist.
Wieland introduces this figure by giving a characteriza-
tion of the Sophists in general, and of their relation to
Socrates in particular.*'
" It must be admitted that the wisdom of which the Sophists
made a profession was in quality, as well as in effect, the exact
opposite of that professed by Socrates. The Sophists taught the
art of exciting other men's passions, Socrates inculcated the art
of controlling one's own. The former showed how to appear
wise and virtuous, the latter how to be so. The former encour-
aged the youth of Athens to assume control of the state, the
latter pointed out to them that it would take half their lifetime
to learn how to rule themselves. The Socratic philosophy took
pride in going without riches, the philosophy of the Sophists
knew how to acquire them. It was complaisant, prepossessing,
versatile; it glorified the great, cringed before their servants,
dallied with the women, and flattered everybody who paid for it.
It was everywhere at home, a favourite at court, in the boudoir,
with the aristocracy, even with the priesthood; while Socrates' s
« Werkel,i/»' Neue Teutsche Merkur), cf. Koberstein /. c.
Ill, 123 f.
264 SOCIAL FOKCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
ral rights. For it is dear that what Wieland considers as
the normal, natural, complete man cannot develop in the
sphere of autocratic encroachments ; and the hope of the
race therefore must, according to his own premises, lie, for
him, in the establishment and gradual expansion of legiti-
mate freedom.
" If it i;, true," he says himself, in the admirable essay On
the Place of Reason in Matters of Faith (1788)," "that
this eighteenth century of ours may boast of some consid-
erable advantages over all previous centuries, it is also true
that we owe them exclusively to the freedom of thought
and expression, to the propagation of a scientific and philo-
sophic spirit, and to the popularization of those truths on
which the welfare of society depends. It may be that
some eulogists of our age have made too much of these
advantages. But if the blessings which we have derived
from them are not greater, more extensive, and beneficial
than they are — what is the cause of it, if it be not this: that
the rights of reason still lack recognition in a good many
countries of this hemisphere, and that even in those coun-
tries where there is the most light, they still find a most
powerful and obstinate resistance in the prejudices, the
passions, and the private interests of ruling parties, classes
and orders.
*' It cannot be too often repeated: Nothing of what
men have ever publicly said, written, or done is exempted
from the impartial and sober criticism of reason. No
monarch is so great, no pontiff so sacred, that he might
not commit follies which we should not be permitted to
call what they are, namely, follies. It is true, children —
as long as they are children — must be guided by authority.
" Werke XXXII, 279. — The last comprehensive exposition of his
views of life Wieland gave in his Arisiifp u. einige s. Zeiigenossen
(1800-1802; Werke XKN-XXYIW. Especially interesting the discuf
sion of Plate's RtfuHic, ieok IV, t, 4 f{.)
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 265
But it is in the nature of things that a child with every
added year comes to be less of a child. It has in itself
all that is needed to bring it to maturity, to the per-
fection of its individual nature; and it is wrong for its
superiors, from selfish motives, to hinder its development.
If, then, what we call people is a sort of collective child
(a current conception which is not altogether without
foundation), then it must be true of this child what is
true of all children: it must be given every opportunity
to develop into intelligent manhood. What need we
fear from light ? What can we hope from darkness ? If
diseased eyes are not able to bear the light, well, we must
try to heal them, and they will certainly learn how to
bear the light."
4. Lessii^.
We have seen how from the Reformation to the middle
of the eighteenth century whatever there was progressive
in German thought tended, on the one hand, toward a dis-
integration of the collective forces of an outworn society;
on the other, toward the unfolding of isolated independent
individuals, the germ-bearers of a new social order. In
Frederick the Great, th e enlightened autocrat; in Klop-
stock, the exalted idealis t: in Wieland, th e man of universal
rnlti^ rr, wp found rep resentative ty pes of this individual-
Jstic_developmen t. We shall now consider a man who,
whil£_co_mbiningJrLiyinselfJhe enlightenment, the idealism,
the u niversality of the be st of his age, added to this an
in tellectu al fearlessness and a constructive energy which
have made him the ch ampion destroyer of de spotism and
th e master builder o f lawful free dom: Gotthol d Ephraim
Lessing (i72q-i 78i).
It must be admitte J that Lessing's works, no less than
those of Klopstock and Wieland, had a higher significance
for his time than they have for ours. Among his dramas,
266 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Minna von Barnhelm and E m ilia Galotti a re still unequalled
_, . , models of psychological workmanship and are
just appreoia- Still holding their own on the German stage by
tionofLessing. the side of Goethe's and Schiller's plays. Yet
this very excellence of workmanship makes us feel all the
more the absence in them of that inner affinity to our own life
which allows Iphigenie and Wallenstein to become a part of
our moral nature. Lessing's^dramas are to o specific in tone
^nd purpose to be a common and permanent possession of
^humanity. The confli ct between love an d honou r which is
Represented in Minna von Barnhelm m so masterly a fashion
cannot be fully understood by a society like ours whose
conception of honour is so far removed from the military
rigour of the official classes of Prussia. The motives which
in Emilia Galotti impel the aged Odoardo to sacrifice the
life of his daughter rather than that of the princely liber-
tine who threatens to lay violent hands on her can be
duly appreciated only by people who have themselves
known what it is to live under a lawless tyranny. Even in
Nathan, broad and nobly humane as its teaching is, there
is an element of partisan invective, justified undoubtedly
by the bigotry and narrowness of the orthodox Protestant-
ism of Lessing's time, but which nevertheless detracts from
its permanent and universal value.
Nor can it be said that Lessing's theoretical views on
art, poetry, and religion have still a very decided influence
on the minds of thinking men. His vigorous attacks, in
the Hafnburgische Dramaturgic, against the classic French
drama were called forth and justified by the unnatural pre-
dominance of French taste and fashion in the contempo-
rary German literature, and they were one of the foremost
means of emancipating the German mind from slavish
I imitation of foreign models. But now that this emancipa-
tion has been completed, and that we may look upon the
writers of the silcle de Louis XIV. not as idols, claiming
unconditional worship, but as objects of judicious observa-
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 267
tion, we have no longer need of that absolute standard of
criticism which enabled Lessing to overthrow those idols;
and if we do not rank Corneille and Racine with Sophocles
and Shakspere, we are none the less willing to acknow-
ledge their measured greatness and statuesque beauty.
Lessing^ artistic views as set forth in \i\^^ Laokoqn went
a great way toward clearing up the confusion, preva-
lent at his time, about the legitimate province of art
and poetry. Lessing has fully demonstrated that e^ch
art follows its own laws, that the modes of expression
in different arts must be different, that to engraft the prin-
j:iples of one art upon another destroys the main principle
_of all art£_beauty. This lesson is by no means antiquated;
Wagner's painful efforts at a musical expression of the
purely intellectual, the failure of the pre-Raphaelites in
attempting to paint lyrics, are striking instances of the truth
of Lessing's observation. But the scope and range of aes-
thetic speculation has been so immensely widened since
Lessing's days, so many new problems have arisen and are
continually arising, that his teaching, true and suggestive as
it is, does not hold the same attention now which it held a
century ago. And a similar fate has befallen Lessing's
theological views. It is not to be forgotten that, among all
_th e Rationalists of his tim e, he was at once the most consis-j
tent j,nd the least impetuous; that while dealing deadly]
blows to a bigoted and self-suiBcient priesthood, he never
joined the crusade of Voltaire and his followers for a whole-
sale extirpation of the church; and that while repudiating
__t he right of any positiv e religion to claim an absolute worth
he willingly^ recognised the relative worth of all. But theo-
logical research has made so vast a progress during the last
hundred years, the field of religious investigation has be-
come so enlarged, that Lessing's influence, although virtu-
ally not diminished, is less evident now than before.
While we thus cannot help being conscious of the bar-
riers which prevent us from seeing Lessing himself in his
268 SOCIAL FORCES IN GEHMAN LITERATURE.
true stature, we are yet near enough to his time to realize
that he has done more than any other of his
character of contemporaries to solve the problems of literary
his work, ^^^ artistic reform, of social progress, of re-
ligious emancipation, which are still agitating the world;
and that whatever there is of positive, constructive lib-
eralism in German life of to-day has sprung more directly
from him than from any other man of his age.
The struggle Lessing began his career as a literary critic
against ^y destroying what may be calle d Gottsched-
Psendo-olaB- . T —
sioism. lanism .
" ' Nobody,' say the editors of the Library," 'willdeny that the
German stage owes a large part of its first improvements to Pro-
fessor Gottsched.'. . . I am this Nobody; I deny it point blank.
It were to be wished that Mr. Gottsched had never meddled with
the German stage. His pretended improvements either concern
irrelevant trifles or are outright changes for the worse. To see
the wretched condition of our present dramatic literature, it was
not necessary to be a mind of the very highest order. Nor was
Mr. Gottsched the first one to see it; he was only the first one
who thought himself capable of reforming it. But how did he
set to work in this ? His ambition was not so much to improve
our drama as to create a new one. And what sort of a new
one? A Frenchified one; without asking himself whether this
Frenchified drama was suited to the German temper or not.
From the very works of our old dramatic literature, which he
ostracized, he might have learned that we are much more akin to
the English than to the French taste; that we want more food
for observation and thought than the timid French tragedy gives
us; that the grand, the terrible, the melancholy appeals more to
us than the gallant, the delicate, the amorous; that too great
simplicity tries us more than too gisat complexity, and so forth.
He ought to have followed out this line of thought, and it would
have led him straightway to the English stage.
" If the masterpieces of Shakspere, with a few slight altera-
" The Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften u. freitn Kiinste, 1757-
65, edited by Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and Chr. Fel. Weisse; after 1765
continued by Weisse under the title Neue Sibl, etc.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 269
tions, had been made accessible to our German public, I am con-
vinced that better results would have followed than could follow
from the introduction upon our stage of Corneille and Racine.
In the first place, Shakspere's works would have appealed much
more to the people than those of Corneille and Racine possibly
could; and secondly, the former would have aroused quite differ-
ent minds among us from those whom the latter have awakened.
For genius can be kindled only by genius; especially by a genius
which seems to owe everything to nature, and which does not
frighten us away by the laborious perfections of art. Even if
we apply the standard of the ancients, Shakspere is a far
greater tragic poet than Corneille; although the latter knew the
ancients very well, and the former hardly at all. Corneille is
nearer them in the outward mechanism, Shakspere in the vital
essence of the drama. The Englishman almost always reaches
the goal of tragedy, however erratic and untrodden paths he may
choose; the Frenchman hardly ever reaches it, although he
follows in the beaten track of the ancients."
In these words, from the first of Lessing's critical reform
manifestoes, th.t Brief e , die neu este Litte ratur b etreffend'''
which, in common with Friedrich Nicolai and Moses Men-
delss ohn, he edited in 175 9 and 17 60, we have the first un-
mistakable indication of the way in which he was to lead
modern German literature. That he did a personal injus-
tice to Gottsched by refusing to see any merit in the latter's
endeavours for the purification and elevation of the German
stage, there is no doubt. But it was the kind of injustice
which seems to be inseparable from the strong assertion of
a new and victorious principle against the representatives
of an old and decrepit system of belief. Gottsched, with
all his zeal for what he considered the advancement of good
taste, with all his outward success and influence, with all
his literary triumphs and honours, was essentially a man
" 17. Brief; Werke Hempel IX, 79 ff. Of. Erich Schmidt, Lessing
I, 410 ff. — For Nicolai cf. J. Minor, Lessings fugendfreunde ; DNL.
LXXII, 275 ff. ; for Mendelssohn, J. Minor, Popularphihsophen d. 18
Jhdts; ib. LXXTII, 213 ff.
270 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
of the past, a representative of the soulless and preten-
tious seventeenth-century absolutism ; while in the young
" Nobody " Lessing there was teeming the hope and enthu-
siasm of a people ready to throw off the fetters of courtly
etiquette and to declare its literary and intellectual, if not
its political, independence. And it is clear that this aim
could be attained only by the annihilation of those who
stood in its way.
Gottsched was the first one to,-fall; he wa s followed by
the whole school o f Pseudo-classicism which now for more
_ ,. than two centuries had kept the genuinely classic
' of true olassio out of sight. T he discovery of true classic an -
antiqmty. tiquity ; the^reconstruction of its real beaut y and
greatness ; the reform of modern art^ and l iteratur e, not
through a slavish imitation^ of its f orms, but through an
active assimilation and j.daptation of its principles ; in
short, the reassertion and fuller development of the ideals
for which in the beginning of the sixteenth century the
Humanists had fought,— this was the second a nd decisive
step i n Lessing's critical career, marked by Laokoon (1766)
and the Hamburgische Dramaturgic (1767).
Goethe, in an often quoted passage of Dichtung und
Wahrheit" has testified to the liberating influence which
the Laokoon exercised upon his generation. " One
^ °™' must be a youth," he says, "to realize the effect
produced upon us by Lessing 's Laokoon, which transported
us from the region of petty observation into the free fields
of thought. The ' ut pictura poesis' so long misunderstood
was at once set aside; the difference between art and poetry
was made clear; the summits of both appeared separated,
however near each other might be their bases. The artist
was to confin e himself within^ the Jimits of the beautiful ;
while to the poet, who cannot ignore whatever there is sig-
nificant in any sense, iFwas given to roam into wider fields.
" Book 8; Werke XXI, 95 f.
THE AGE OP FREDERICK THE GREAT. 27 1
The former labours for the external sense, which is satisfied
only with the beautiful; the latter for the imagination,
whij;h may come to terms even with the ugly. As by a
flash of lightning, all the consequences of this striking
thought were revealed to us; all previous criticism was
thrown away like a worn-out coat."
Let us try to understand wherein consisted the peculiar
value for Lessing's contemporaries of the thought contained
in his Laokoon.
Eleven years before its publication, there had appeared a
work which for the first time brought out the true essence
of Greek art and its vital relation to the modern -winokel-
world : Winckelmann's Gedanken iiber die Nach- maim, Greek
ahmung der griechischen Kunstwerke (1755). flex of Greek
Winckelmann fo und in Greek life the sourc e life.
and prototype o f G reek art. He showed how climate,
race, religion, customs, political institutions, in short all the
inner and outer conditions of Greek civilization combined
to produce, as its finest flower, consummate works of art.
He pointed to the inherent tendency of Greejc arj; towardjhe
typical, th e ideal. He recognised " as its universal charac-
teristic " a noble simplicity and calm grandeur.'' "As the
deep of the ocean remains ever quiet, even though its sur-
face be in an uproar, thus the Greek statues reveal with all
their passion a soul at rest. Laocoon, in the statue, does
not break into cries as Vergil's Laocoon does; bodily pain
" Cf. for the following Winckelmann's Ged. iiber d. Nachahmung d.
Griech, Werke in d. Malsrei u. Bildhauerkunst; DLD. nr. 20, p. 24 ff.
In striking contrast with the essentially liberal thought pervading this
essay are the adulatory phrases of the dedication which precedes it —
phrases more suited to a Gottsched than a Winckelmann. It seems as
though we saw two epochs meet in this youthful production of Win-
ckelmann's : on the one hand the old submission to seventeenth-cen-
tury absolutism, on the other the new life born from the emancipation
movement of the eighteenth century, Cf. Carl Justi, Winckelmann I,
384.
272 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and mental greatness are kept in balance, as it were,
throughout his frame; we wish we might be able to bear
misery like this great man." In truth, Greek art is the re-
flex of an inner vision ; it does not imitate nature, but lifts
itself above nature; it creates gods. Thus the hand of
Greek artists has brought forth forms, freed from human
necessity, rising into the sphere of pure beauty, awakening
no desire, but, like an idea conceived without the help of
the senses, transporting the mind into a dream of blissful
ecstasy.
What a contrast with us moderns, who, surrounded by
ugliness, oppressed by artificiality, overwhelmed with sterile
learning, have lost our artistic equilibrium, and are helplessly
drifting about in a sea of meaningless mannerisms ! But
what a lesson also ! For is it not clear that in order to
produce works of art like the Greeks, we must learn to feel
like the Greeks, to live like the Greeks, to be like the Greeks,
that is, as noble, as free, as well balanced, as true to our
own nature as they ?
The_superiority of Greek idealism over j-ococo formal-
ism, w hich Winckelmann in his intuitive, far-reaching
The laws of manner had divined rather than proven, Lessing
sonlptnial . ~ °
andpoetio demonstrated m a more concise fashion, m a
beauty as re- more limited field. He introduced usTnto the
vealedtythe , i ,- i - • ,
andenta. workshops of the ancient artists and poets. He
showed us not only that, but also how they had come to be
unequalled models of artistic perfection. As Winckelmann
rightly observed, the sculptors of the Laocoon group rep-
resent the hero, not as breaking into cries, but as sighing
only. But why ? Not, as Winckelmann thought, because
crying to the Greeks appeared unworthy of a man, — on the
contrary, to suppress the affections seemed to them the sign
of a barbarian, — but because it would have ~ offended^ the
laws of sculptural beauty to show a face with muscles vio-
lently and permanently distorted. Vergil, on the other hand,
did represent Laocoon as crying, not because he had a dif-
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREA T. 273
ferent conception of his character, but because the laws of_
poetic beauty allowed him to introduce a sight, impressive
Jthrough its contrast with wha t pre ceded and what followed,
_and robbed of its repulsive features through thej[eetness
of its appearance. Here, then, we have the secret of the
wonderful workmanship of the ancients. They observe,
not the capricious dictates of external conventions, but the
_natural and inherent laws of art, each in its own sphere. _
How does Homer produce his effects ? Not, as our
' pseudo-classic poets do, by attempting to paint, that is, by
heaping epithets, by throwing elaborate descriptions of
character or situations on the canyas, but by simple narra-
tive, by continual motion, by rejiolving coexistent condi-
tions into successive actions. Homer does not analyze the
beauty of Helen, but relates how she affected even the old
men of Troy when she appeared among them on the city
walls." He does not describe the shield of Achilles as
completed, but makes us witness its completion under the
hands of Hephaestus." He does not dwell on the condi-
tion produced in the camp of the Greeks by the plague
sent upon them by Apollo, but he shows the god himself
descending in his wrath from Mount Olympus." "With
every step the arrows resound in his quiver. He strides along
like the night. He sits himself in front of the ships. He
sends his first arrow upon the mules and dogs, the second,
more poisonous, upon the men — and everywhere flame the
funeral-pyres heaped with corpses."
How did the Greek artists^j)roduce their effects ? Not,
as our modern naturalists and mannerists do, by trying to vie
with the poet, that is, by bringing before the senses figures
and scenes which are tolerable only to the fugitive imagina-
tion, but by s electi ng moments ajid situations wh^ch can be_
thought of as stable, as permanent, or which, if passing, are
«» Lackoon XXII, Werke VI, 133.
«« n. XVIII, /. ,.. 113. " ^l>- XIII, /. c. 93.
2/4 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
^,at least sugg estive of other portentous moments and situa-
tions. Thus Medea was represented by Timomachus, not
in the moment of murdering her children, but before the
murder, as being torn by the conflicting passions of motherly
love and the desire for revenge — a conflict which might
well be imagined as lasting; the raging Ajax was shown, not
in his mad onslaught upon the cattle-herd, but after the
onslaught, cowering in despair on the ground and brooding
over what he had done. In these pictures we have the true
Medea and the true Ajax."' But a waterfall represented in
marble ceases to be a waterfall and becomes a block of ice;
a fleeting smile arrested on canvas ceases to be a smile
and becomes a grin; and the frequency of these and similar
subjects in rococo art shows its fundamental perversity and
corruption.
While Lessing thus in t he Laokoon brush ed away the mis-
interpretations and arbitrary_ru2esm_which pseudo-classicism
_,, _ had buried Jhewqrks_of classic sculpture and
bnigisolie poet^j; bringing to light their true human out-
Dramatmgie. jjjjg a,nd their true value for a regeneration of
modern art and literature, he was at the same time pre-
paring himself to rescue the classic drama from a similar
perversion and to bring about the final overthrow ofpseudo-
chissicism on the German stage. The one fact that not a
*C',v of the weapons with which in the Hamburgische Drama-
fturgie Lessing made his fierce attack against the French
drama of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had
come from the critical forge of Diderot," ought to warn us
against seeing the chief significance of this work in the
checking of French taste or the widening of English in-
fluence. Nor ought we to consider its vital problem the
question whether Corneille or Shakspere came nearer the
•* Laokoon III, /. c. 32 f.
•' For Lessing's relation to Diderot cf. Erich Schmidt, Lessing II,
41 ff. I03. 113 f. Sime, Lessing I, 208-10.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 27S
Standard of tragedy as attained by Sophocles and defined
by Aristotle. What Lessing was battling ag ainst was not so
much the French drama, as the spirit of despotic conven-
tionalism and false propriety w hich du ring the last hundred
years had been the ruling taste i n Eng land no less than in
France or Germa ny. And what he was contend ing for was
not so much a correct view of the Greek theory of tragedy,
as the s pirit of true humanity and sound nature whi ch ha d
made Sophocles and Sh^ksgere possible, and for the pro-
pagation of which the best men in the last hundred years
in France no less than in Germany or England had been
struggling.
Only by thus detaching from the Jlambur^ische Drama-
tur^ ie what is merely, national, and by directing our chief
attention upon its universally human features,
are we enabled to see what it really was : apart themoTemeat
of the universal eighteen th-century movement f" popular
forjopular ema nc ipati on. emancipa on.
This is the meaning of the attack against the ' three
unities ' and their hollow tyranny which had reduced the
average drama of the time to a mere puppet-show." This
is the meaning of the attempt, in consonance with the true
teaching of Aristotle, to establish the natural laws of tragic
poetry as a representation of human character and fate,
calling forth a violent discharge of the emotions, and by
this very process purifying them." This is the meaning of
the constant appeal to the greatness of the Greek drama
and of Shakspere in contrast with the pettiness and in-
significance of modern productions."
" It is well known how much in earnest the Greek and Roman
peopUs were with their theatre; especially the Greeks, with
tragedy. How indifferent, how cold, on the contrary, are our
■"• Hamb. Dramat. St. 44-46 ; JVirke VII, 241 ff.
" li. St. 37. 38. 74-79. 81. 82 ; I.e. 210 £f. 364 ff. 394 ff.
« lb. St. 80 ; i.e. 388.
276 SOCIAL FORCES IN' GERMAN LITERATURE.
people in regard to the theatre! Whence this difference, if it
does not arise from the fact that the Greeks were inspired by
their stage with feelings so strong, so extraordinary, that they
could scarce await the moment for experiencing them again and
again; while we receive from our stage such weak impressions
that we seldom think it worth the time and money to secure
them ? We go to the theatre almost all, almost always, from
curiosity, from fashion, from ennui, from a desire for society,
from a wish to stare and to be stared at; and only a few, and
these few seldom, from other motives. I say, we, our people,
our stage; I do not mean, however, only the Germans. We
Germans are honest enough to confess that as yet we have no
theatre. What many of our critics who subscribe to this confes-
sion and at the same time are great admirers of the French
theatre are thinking cf in forming such a judgment, I know not;
but I know what I myself think of it. I think that not only we
Germans, but also that those who for a century have boasted of
having a drama, the best drama in all Europe — that even the
French have no d.ama. No tragedy, certainly! For the im-
pression which French tragedy produces is so shallow, so cold! "
Shakspere, on the other hand, affects us deeply, because
he, like the Greek tragic poets, represents human nature at
its highest, and thus heightens our own self. While the
feeble correctness of French tragedy has invited a host of
successful imitators, he in his lonely grandeur defies all
imitation, but through this very fact calls out the rivalry of
genius.''
"What has been said of Homer, that it would be easier to
rob Hercules of his club than to take a verse from him, is
perfectly true also of Shakspere. Upon the smallest of his
beauties a stamp is impressed which cries out to the whole world:
' I am Shakspere's! ' And woe to any other beauty which has
the audacity to place itself beside his! S hakspere must be
studied, not plundered. If we have genius, Shakspere must be
to us what the camera obscura is to the landscape-painter.
Let him look diligently into it, to learn how nature projects
itself in all cases upon a flat surface; but let him not attempt
to borrow from it."
'^ Hamb. Dramat. St. 73; /. c. 362.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 2/7
We have emphasized in Lessing's literary and artistic
criticism the tendencies connecting him with the great cur-
rent of freedom, the spread of which through
the whole of Europe and beyond it forms the ^s™"?'"
^ ^ patnotism.
most remarkable phenomenon of the eighteenth
century. But it would be shutting one's eyes to an appa-
rent fact, not to see th at Lessing was in equally close contact
with ano ther great movement which, as we have already
seen in Klopstock, was intimately allied with the eighteenth-
century struggle for freedom, and which was destined to
become the dominant factor in the history of the nineteenth
century: th e movement for national consolidation. Indeed,
it is this very blending of cosmopolitan breadth and patri-
otic warmth, of republican fearlessness and monarchical
discipline, that gives to most of Lessing's productions their
masculine vigour and intensity. He declined to beat the
Prussian war-drum with the shallow enthusiasm of a Ram-
ler"; he did not hesitate to express his indignation at the
despotic methods of Frederick's government "; he would
in a moment of disgust and impatience speak of patriotism
as " an heroic weakness," and disclaim for himself the name
of a patriot." But what else than patriotism, what else
than the feeling which animated the Prussian army at Ross-
bach was it when, in the concluding article of the Drama-
turgic, he wrote ": " What a simple idea to give the Ger-
mans a national theatre, while we Germans are as yet no
nation! I do not speak of the political constitution, but
only of the moral character. One might almost say: the
character of the Germans is to insist on having none of
their own. We are still the sworn imitators of everything
foreign, especially the humble admirers of the never-enough-
admired French. Everything from beyond the Rhine is
" Cf. Erich Schmidt /. ... I, 294 f.
" Cf. letter to Nicolai nr. 178 ; Werke XX. i, p. 330.
" Cf. letters to Gleim nr. 77. 78; /. <.. 170. I73.
" St. 101; Werke VII, 474.
278 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
beautiful, charming, lovely, divine; we would rather disown
sight and hearing than think otherwise; we will rather per-
suade ourselves to accept coarseness for naturalness, fri-
volity for grace, grimace for expression, a tingling of rhymes
for poetry, howling for music, than in the smallest degree
doubt the superiority in all that is good and beautiful and
sublime and becoming, which this charming nation, this
first nation of the world, as it is accustomed very modestly to
call itself, has received as its share from a just Providence."
Nowhere more forcibly than in his dramas has Lessing
manifested this twofold quality of his work as standing
_, ,,^ , both for cosmopolitan freedom and for national
aspect of Les- dignity. Indeed it is not too much to say that
sing's diamas. nearly every one of his dramas marks an impor-
tant step in either of these directions, if not in both. In
Mi ss Sara Sampson (1755), the first German tragedy of
common life, he emancipated the German stage from the
absurd pseudo-c lassic prejudice that th e representation o f
elevated feeling and deep emotion shoul d be restricted to
the sphere of kings a nd princes, — t hus accomplishing for
his own country what Lillo and Steele had done before him
in England, what Nivelle de la Chauss6e, Diderot, and others
had attempted in France. In Philotas (1759) ^^ imperso-
nated, alt hough in Greek disguise, the spirit of heroism and
unswerving devotion to king and country which made the
Prussia of the Seven Years' War."* In Minna von Barn-
helm (1767) he created the first unquestionably and uncon-
ditionally Ger man ch aracters o f the modern German stage ,
char acters ch arged, as it were , witlT^turdy individuality ,
and at the same time types of a people beginning_to feel
itself again as a whole, and to be again conscious of national
responsibilities.! In Emilia Galotti (1772) he gave voice
to popular indignation at the oppression of the m iddle
classes through a corrupt and vicious aristocracy, thiTs
"* It was not until three years later that Thomas Abbt wrote his
enthusiastic essay Vom Todt filrs Vaterland {i']t\).
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 279
opening the battle which was to be carried on in the ' Sturm
und Drang ' movement, and which, in the classic days of
Weimar and Jena, was to bring about the German counter-
part to the French Revolution: the supplanting of the old
aristocracy, based on birth and privilege, by a new aristo-
cracy of intellect and culture.
Let us examine somewhat more closely at least two of
Lessing's dramatic characters — Tellheim. t he lover of Minna
von Barnhelm; Odoardo, the father of Emilia Tellheimand
Gallotti — which "bring out in a most emph atic Odoardo as
manner this twofold p rinciple of qosmo politan- raoters.
ism and natjaaaJi ly, of freedom and discipline .
Tellheim is a soldier without a grain of the hireling in
him. "A man must be a soldier " — he says " — " for his
country, or for love of the cause for which he Tellheim
is fighting. To serve without a purpose, to-day a type of the
here, to-morrow there, is to hire himself out as a Frederick the
butcher, nothing else." He has found out by Great,
personal experience " that " the service of the great is dan-
gerous, and does not repay the trouble, the want of free-
dom, the humiliation it costs. I became a soldier from pre-
dilection, I know not for what political maxims, and from
a whim that it was good for every honest man to try this
profession for a time, to familiarize himself with everything
called danger, and to learn coolness and determination.
Utter necessity only would have compelled me to make of
this experiment a vocation, of this occasional employment
a trade." And nothing is more significant of his feelings
than the abrupt exclamation called forth by a chance men-
tion of the Moor of Venice.'" " But pray tell me, madame,
how did the Moor come to be in the Venetian service ? Had
the Moor no fatherland ? Why did he lend his arm and his
blood to a foreign state ? "
^Honour is his highest law, but it is the true honour of a
" Minna v. B. ( Werke II) III, 7. " lb. V, 9 «> Jb. IV, 6
28o SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITESA^UJiE.
man controlling his own desires, ready to sacrifice himself
for his fellows, in touch with every human feeling; not the
false, pretentious honour of a selfish, conceited high-caste
official. What genuine manliness he displays in the scene "
where he, the poor, discharged officer, who has just been
forced by a greedy landlord to quit his lodgings, refuses to
acknowledge the debt which the widow of one of his com-
rades comes to pay him ! He knows that the woman has
sold everything in order to raise the necessary sum, he
knows that she has a son to bring up, and his decision is
quick and simple — " Would you have me rob the untutored
orphan of my friend ? " Then, after the widow has left him,
he takes the bill of debt from his pocket-book. " Poor,
excellent woman ! I must not forget to destroy this trifle."
What a picture of noble constraint and self-renunciation
when after a separation of months and years he for the first
time meets Minna again! *" When they were engaged, he
had every reason to believe that he could make her happy.
He was in the full possession of his power; an officer in
the proudest army of Europe; a life of honour and success
seemed before him. Since then fate has pursued him. A
shot has lamed his right arm; at the conclusion of the Hu-
bertusburg peace he has been discharged; a suspicion — base-
less to be sure — has been cast upon his character. Not
willing to inflict his misfortune upon the woman whom he
loves, the proud man has fled from her, he has tried to for-
get her, and now she has come to make him her own.
" Tellheim : You, here ? What are you seeking madame ?
Minna : I am seeking nothing — now {approaching him with
open arms). All I sought I have found.
Tellheim (shrinking from her) : You sought a fortunate man,
a man worthy of your love; and find — a wretch.
Minna : Then you love me no longer ? and you love another ?
Tellheim: Ah! he never loved you, madame, who after you
can love another.
Minna : You draw only one thorn from my heart. If I have
" Minna v. B. I, 6. 7. 8» j/,^ u^ g_
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 28 1
lost your love, what matters it whether indifference or more
powerful charms robbed me of it ? You love me no longer, and
you do not love another ? Unhappy man! not to love at all!
Tellheim : Right, madame. The unfortunate man must not
love at all. He deserves his misfortune if he does not gain this
victory over himself; if he can allow himself to let those whom
he loves share his misfortune. — How hard is this victory! —
Since reason and necessity bade me forget Minna von Barnhelm,
what pains have I endured in order to forget her! I was just
beginning to hope that these pains would not be forever fruit-
less — and you appear, madame."
And finally, the change of his attitude in the last act,
brought about through Minna's innocent deception in
representing herself as disinherited and helpless." How
the loyalty, the self-sacrificing devotion of the man wells
up at the thought that his life has an aim again, that the
one whom he loves so deeply, and whom he dared not to
make his own, needs his protection ! " My soul has acquired
new springs of action. My own misfortune depressed me,
made me irritable, short-sighted, timid, sluggish. Her mis-
fortune elevates me. I breathe afresh, and feel ready and
strong enough to undertake anything for her." How elo-
quent this man of few words becomes, how he pleads with
Minna, how he entreats her to accept his care ! How the
suppressed hopefulness of his nature reveals itself ! " Is
this country the world ? Does the sun rise but here ?
Where might I not go ? What service would refuse me ?
And if I am obliged to seek it in farthest lands, follow
me with courage, dearest Minna, we shall want nothing."
And when at last it appears that there is a place for him in
his own country, when the suspicion that had been cast
upon his honour is dispelled, when a new career of success
and fame lies before him, it is again not the thought of
himself, it is the thought of service for his beloved Minna
that animates him. " Now that fortune has restored to me
8' Minna v. B. V, 2. 5. 9.
282 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE,
enough to satisfy the wishes of a reasonable man, it shall
depend alone on my Minna whether I shall belong to any
one but her. To her service alone shall my whole life be
devoted. Minna is not one of those vain women who love
their husbands for nothing but their rank and titles. She
will love me for myself; and for her I shall forget the whole
world."
In all this we observe the co mbination of two c onflictjng
tendencies. On the one hand we see the after-effect of the
turning away from public problems and interests which we
have come to know as the main drift of German life from
the Thirty Years' War to the age of Frederick the Great.
Even Tellheim, the Prussian officer, has no more immediate
interests than his private aifairs, his personal relations to a
small circle of individuals. But, on the other hand, we see
the first signs of a new tide of public consciousness setting
in. How different this individualism of the Lessingian type
is from the weakly self-introspection of a Gellert, the re-
fined self-complacency of a Wieland, or the ecstatic self-
exaltation of a Klopstock. This individualism rests on
self-control and .gglf-surr enderj this individualism is inti-
mately allied with the proud self-abnegation, the unflinching
loyalty, the thoroughly monarchical discipline to whiclTthe
Prussia of Lessing's time owed all that it was, and which in
our own days has become the final and decisive instrument
in bringing about a new era of German national greatness."
Odoardo is a character very similar to Tellheim. He has
Odoardo a liv- the Same ipdependence, courage, and earnest-
ing protest ness ofjurpose ; th e same disciplined devotion
Mdmr^^me ^° principle and honour ; the same contempt
society. foF the glittering and the_JaJ_se. But there is
one thing in Odoardo which makes him in a still more strik-
" It is well known that Tellheim's character is, in part at least,
drawn after Lessing's friend, the Prussian major Ewald von Kleist,
author of Der Fruhling, who was mortally wounded in the battle of
Kunersdorf, 1759. Cf. Erich Schmidt /. i. I, 473 ff.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 283
ing manner than Tellheim a representative of this age of
e mancipation and reconstructio n :_ a hatred ^f tyranny
which cannot help being defiant, and a republican rigour
which knows no compromise.
Nowhere does he display this more forcibly than in the
manner in which he rescues his daughter from the snares of
courtly corruption. As is well known, the prototype of
Emilia Galotti is the Roman Virginia, of whom we read in
Livy. Virginia is coveted by the decemvir Appius Clau-
dius. In order to gratify his desires, he' openly breaks
through the most sacred restraints of the law, by wilfully
adjudicating her to one of his clients. When the girl is
about to be carried away into his service, the father asks
for a last interview with his daughter, and to save her from
slavery and shame, stabs her in the heart. This desperate
deed, committed in the open market-place, kindles the la-
tent indignation of the people at the tyranny of Appius into
revolt; the decemvirs are thrown out of office; ani_JB^me
is free.
"Etmiia, the daughter of colonel Odoardo, excites the pas-
sion of the prince of Guastalla, her father's sovereign. In
order to gratify the appetite of the princely libertine, the
whole machinery of Macchiavellian intrigue and high-
handed brutality at the disposal of an eighteenth-century
autocrat is set in motion. On the morning of the day on
which Emilia was to be wedded to the man of her choice
the latter is murdered by hired bandits. Emilia herself,
under the pretext of sheltering her, is separated from her
family and taken to the prince's country-seat. Odoardo,
informed of what has happened, hastens to his daughter's
rescue. But finding that the meshes of the fiendish intrigue
are too closely drawn, he sees no rescue for her but in death.
He kills her with his own hand.
Up to this point the two cases are essentially the same;
but here the similarity ends. Odoardo does not, like Vir-
ginius, call for the revenge of his daughter's blood, and his
284. SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
deed does not, like that of Virginius, bring about a popular
upheaval against tyrannical usurpation. He surrenders
himself to the courts, and the prince, to all outward appear-
ance, remains unpunished. It is this discrepancy from th e
Roman tradition, this substitution of private for publ ic mo-
tivesj whichLessing had in mind when he called "' Emilia^
Galo tti a bou rgeoise Virginia. And it is this very departure
which makes this tragedy, and particularly the character of
Odoardo, in such an eminent manner representative of the
period preceding the French Revolution.
No stronger indictment of the whole system of auto cratic
misrule_has_eyer been written. This prince of Guastalla, a
man for whom his subjects are nothing but so many oppor-
tunities for extortion, a man who will sign a death-warrant
with the same unconcern with which he engages a singer or
deserts a mistress,"' an expert in the science of self-gratifica-
tion, a master in the art of seduction and corruption, and
with all this a mere tool in the hands of his omnipotent
prime minister Marinelli; this Marinelli, an impersonation
of unscrupulous rascality, incapable of conceiving motives
that are not low and contemptible, a coward and a liar, a
wretch too miserable even to have any strong passion or to
indulge in any striking vice, a vampire in human form ; this
countess Orsina, the deserted mistress, a woman of parts
and refinement, but signed with the stamp of lost inno-
cence, consuming herself in the mad attempt to force the
prince back into his former allegiance, a Pompadour trans-
formed into a Messalina, a bacchante turned into a Fury,"
— what a revelation of ancien regime society these charac-
ters contain !
And now, on the other side, Odoardo and his kin. He is
a man of his own making. Having retired from the army,
" Cf. letter to Nicolai nr. 63; Werke XX, I, p. 145. For the in-
fluence on Lessing of the Virginia by Samuel Crisp (1754) cf. G.
Roethe in Vierteljahrschr. f. Littgesch. II, 520 ff.
«6 Emilia Galotti ( Werke II) I, 8. " /*. IV, 7.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 285
where he had risen from a private to a colonel, he lives in quiet
retreat at a modest country-seat near the capital, leaving it"
" to the Marinellis to stoop, to flatter, and to cringe." His
daughter is betrothed to the count Appiani, a man of equal
sturdiness of character, who in spite of his aristocratic
birth has decided to sever his connections with the court,
and to lead henceforth the independent life of a country
gentleman." " Hardly can I wait for the moment when I
shall call this worthy young man my son. Everything in
him delights me; but above all his decision to live to him-
self in his ancestral valleys."
Into this prospect of a happy family idyll there breaks a
sudden stream of vice aiid_^^truction^^ent ^orthf^^
pestilent pool of court_lifej_ The violent passion of the
"pfmce Tor~Ernilia,' the decision to obtain her at any cost,
Marinelli's fiendish intrigue, culminating in the murder of
Appiani and Emilia's abduction, — all these events follow
each other in rapid, flashlike succession. When Odoardo,
as yet ignorant of the full extent of what has happened,
hastens to the castle in order to claim his daughter, he is
met by the countess Orsina, who has come to seek revenge
for the outrages committed by the prince against herself.
She reveals to him the connection of events, she forces upon
him the dagger which she has brought with her as a last
resort. Half crazed with grief and wrath, as Odoardo is,
his first impulse is to kill the prince himself. But he soon
collects himself. "" Is he to share in the revenge of a repro-
bate ? Is he to punish one crime by committing another ?
" What has injured virtue to do with the revenge of vice ?
The former only have I to rescue. And thy cause, my son,
O my son! — thy cause a higher than I will make his own.
Enough for me if thy murderer is not to enjoy the fruit of his
crime. Let this torment him more than his crime ! As he hastens
on from lust to lust, driven by satiety and ennui, let the thought
of having lost this prize embitter to him all the rest. In his every
88 Emilia Galotti II, 4. «' lb. '» lb. V, 2.
286 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
dream may the blood-stained bridegroom appear before his bed,
leading the bride on his arm; and when he stretches out his
wanton hand for her, let him hear the scornful laughter of hell,
and awake! "
In this mood, Odoardo. comes to see that the attempt to
free his daughter is in vain; and fr6m her own lips he
hears the most awful, the most crushing truth. Emilia
does not feel sure of herself; even she, the modest, inno-
cent girl, the daughter of an Odoardo, the betrothed of an
Appiani, has been touched by the foul breath of courtly-
corruption. Like the dove charmed by the serpent's glance,
she is in danger of losing her power of conscious motion,
she feels herself that she might be resistlessly drawn into
the gulf of seduction, and she herself sees her only salva-
tion in death. And now the father hesitates no longer, he
" plucks the rose before the storm scatters its leaves."
Artistically this denouement, in spite of its masterly and
thoroughly consistent representation, is undoubtedly open to
criticism. As an e xpression of political feelin g nothing
could be stronger. No more revolutionary, and at the
same time conservative, character has been drawn than this
man who disdains to take revenge with his own hand,
knowing that the eternal justice of things will surely sweep
away the whole system of foulness and usurpation under
which his generation is smarting. No more stirring, though
implicit, plea for popular freedom has been made than the
words with which he surrenders himself to the authori-
ties"': " There, prince! Does she still please you ? Does
she still excite your desire ? Still, in this blood, that cries
for vengeance against you ? — I go, and give myself up to
prison. I go, and await you as judge. — And then, yonder,
■ — I await you before the Judge of us all! "
We have seen how Lessing, by destroying the pseudo-
" lb. V, 8. For the influence of Emilia upon the Storm-and-Stress
literature cf. Erich Schmidt /. c. II, 221 ff.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 287
classic theory of art and poetry, opened the way f or true
classicism, which is identical with true human-
Jsjjit we have seen how, by exposing in all their religions
hideousness the evils of despotic usurpation, and ™*'™8'^-
by pointing at the same time to the true springs of national
strength, he helped to reconstruct the social fabric of his
age. It remains to glance at the services rendered by him
to the cause of religi ous emancipation.
In' Klopstock we saw th e poetic climax of Pietism, in
Wieland th e literary reflex of Rationalism ; Lessing's place
Js above either of these movements . To put The historic
it in a word , he was in the domain of religion f? ^'^""] ^^
wh at Winckelmann was in the domain of art. He religion.
foreg ^^i ^doaiK.ed.-'if h e did not fully develop, that most pow-
erful and most liberalizing of all modern ideas: the idea of
organic growth/ The whole of Lessing's religious thougH
is^determined by th e contrast b eta ken the jj OTJtive or his-
toric and the ration al o r ideal religion. The former, that
is, religion as embodied in the great church organizations of
history, conceives of God as an extra-mundane, supernatu-
ral being, ruling the world, his creation, after the fashion of
an absolute monarch, arbitrarily enacting and cancelling
laws, and making his will known to humanity by special
decrees calle d rev el ations. The latter, that is, religion as it
presents itself to the^ thinking individual, conceives of God
as the mner life of the world, as the inherent unity, the im-
manent Iaw~bf things, as a hidden~spir itual forc e, of which
our ow n feeling s, thoughts, and actions are the jtruest reve-
lations. That the latter view is the logical consequence
and the consummation of Protestantism, while the former
is its direct opposite and negation, can be as little ques-
tioned as it could be doubted to which of these views
Lessing, the friend of the Deists, the admirer of Spinoza,
naturally inclined. The remarkable thing is that, although j
unequivocally refusing to accept the belief in supernatu-
ral revelation for himself, he was far from denying the '
288 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
services renderedjohu manity by th is-very belief; and that,
'instead of ioining the majority of_Rationalistrm_condemn-
ing the positive religions as the inventions of shrewd amT"
ambitious priests, he saw in them a succession of tentative
'e"ffbfts and a gradual approach toward the one afiff 'final,
id'eal religion. — ^ -■ -^
Proof of this are th e three principal stages of Lessinp;j _
religious activity: (i) the polemics against Goeze , (2)
Nathan the Wise, and ( 3) The Education of the Human
Race.
Lessing' s theological polemics against the pastor pri-
mariu s Goeze o f Hambu rg and his adherents (1777-78) ar e
_,, among the few controversial writings of the
troversy with world's literature which are creative rather than
®°°^°" destructive. What interests us in them is not so
much the annihilation of an arrogant and intolerant church
dignitary — a type of society which may be crushed in indi-
viduals, but which as a class seems to be ineradicable;
what interests us in them and moves us so profoundly is the
assertion of a posi tive and vital principle of modern thought,
the principle of ixte inquiry an d unb iased, impartial re -
search, even, or rathe r above all, in religious matters.
It was because Lessing felt bound to uphold this princi-
ple that he gave publicity in the so-call ed Wolfenbuttel
_, 3. ^ Fragments t o the radical vie ws conc erning the
of free in- hist orical a uthentici ty of the Bible and the
qtiiry. origin of the Ch ristian religion held by his
friend Reimarus — views which he himself was far from
sharing as a whole. It was because he saw this principle
endangered th at he arose in a ll his fearlessness and might
against the storm of orthodox indignation and oblog[uy
called forth by this publication. Nothing could excel the
clearness with which Lessing in this controversy draws the
line between the spirit and the letter, between religion and
religious documents, between the endless motion of life and
the petty narrowness of a selfish, stagnant formalism.
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 289
He conjures up " the shade of Luther, his intellectual
ancestor and patron:
" Luther! great, misunderstood man! And by none more mis-
understood than by the short-sighted bigots who, with thy
slippers in their hands, shrieking but indifferent, loiter along the
road trodden smooth by thee! Thou hast freed us from the yoke
of tradition; who will free us from the more intolerable yoke of
the letter ? Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou
wouldst now teach us, such as Christ himself would teach ? "
He inveighs" with flaming words against those who from
fear for their own safety and quiet^wish to check all
progress:
" O ye fools who would banish the hurricane from nature,
because here it buries a. ship in the sands, and there dashes
another against a rocky coast. O ye hypocrites! for we know
you. It is not for these unfortunate ships that you care, unless
you had M Werke XVIII, 185 ff.
298 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
this discussion, is set forth, disguised, it is true, in theologi-
cal language, yet clearly and unequivocally.
Lessing repres ents the successive sta ges in the history
gi religion as a p ro cess of education. Providence is the
Eeligions teacher, mankind the pupi l; the. various s ystem s
evolntion. ^of-theology, pr, as Lessing says, revelations, are
the text -book s.
Through education the pupil obtains nothing which he
could not obtain from himself; he only obtains it more
quickly and more easily. So revelation imparts nothing to
jnankind_which mankind, if left to itself, would not dis-
cover by its own reasoning; only revelation imparts it more
quickly and. more easily.
In order to be effective, education must adapt itself to
the mental development of the pupil. In like manner, reve-
Jation must be adapted to the various stages in the progress
of mankind. Since primitive mankind is crude and sensual,
primitive revelation also must be crude and sensual. The
Jews, in their early period, were not capable of conceiving
a strict monotheism or of entertaining a truly spiritual view
of life; consequently, the divine Pedagogue revealed himself
to them, not as the one God, but as the most powerful of
gods, and, instead of holding out to them the prospect of
an immortal life, he held before them the discipline of
earthly rewards and punishments. Thus, in the Old Testa-
ment, we have the first, elementary text-book of humanity.
With the gradual progress of civilization the people be-
came susceptible of higher views of divinity, and when
Christ came they were ready to understand God as a
spiritual being, and to accept the idea of immortality.
This, then: a true, spiritual monotheism, and the idea of
future rewards and punishments, is the essence of the
second text-book of humanity, the New Testament.
Is this to be the end ? — What is the object of education ?
To devel op men. What is the object of rev elation ? To
_develap^ humanity. Fully developed men need text-books
THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 299
no longer; a nd humanity, when fully developed, will need
no revelations. A time must come when human reason
will be able to see the divine without the help of symbols;
when the good will be done, not for the sake of future re-
wards, but because it is the good; when God will be found,
not without, but within.
None of Lessing's works is so characteristic of his reli-
gious position, and indeed of his whole intellectual attitude,
as this little essay. Lessing does not break loose from the
traditional belief, he accepts its premises, he adopts its phra-
seology. Yet, under his very hands, the old seems to assume
a new and different life; its meaning changes; and having
started with the conception of an extra-mundane deity, he
at last finds himself face to face with a living universe. The
theist before our very eyes develops into a pantheist.
Let us return to the starting-point of this chapter. In
the same year in which Lessing gave to the j. , ,. .
world his intellectual testament, Frederick the tiueAlle-
Great, he too not far from the grave, suddenly ™8,nde.
appeared among the literary critics, with his startling
essay De la LitUrature All emandey This little book is
perhaps the truest index of what at the beginning of this
chapter was called the dualism of German life during this
epoch. The names of Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, do
not appear in it; Gellert is spoken of as the foremost
representative of German literature; the bulk of the paper
'»' DLD. nr. 16. Cf. B. Suphan, Friedr. des Grossen Schrift iiber
d. d. Liu. H. Proehle, Fr. d. Gr. u. d. d. Lit. p. 165 ff. G. Krause,
Fr. d. Gr. u. d. d. Poesie p. 29 ff. — Frederick's conception of his own
services to German culture may be gathered from what he said to
Mirabeau in answer to the question why, being the German Caesar,
he had not also endeavoured to become the Augustus of German lite-
rature : "You do not know what you are saying. By allowing the
intellectual life of Germany to take its own course, I have done more
for the Germans than I could possibly have done by giving them a
literature." Krause^. 35.
300 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
consists in pedantic considerations about the defects of
the German language, and in amateurish propositions for
its "improvement." The wonderful revival of the Ger-
man mind, the struggle of a whole generation for spirit-
ual freedom and humane culture, seems to have been
"■going on without disturbing the sphere of the lonely auto-
crat on the throne of Prussia. And yet he himself, as we
know, was a part of this movement. Without his heroic
career, without his enlightened views, this movement, al-
though bound to come, would probably have been delayed
and would certainly have been different. And if he failed
to grasp the new life which was pressing upon him on all
sides, he seems at least to have had an instinctive feeling
of its presence: he concludes his essay by prophesying a
golden age of German literature near at hand.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE
CLIMAX OF INDIVIDUALISM.
(The End of the Eighteenth and the Beginning of the
Nineteenth Century.)
I. The Storm-and-Stress Movement.
The golden age of modern German literature and the
French Revolution are not only contemporary with each
other, they are different phases of the same great emanci-
pation movement, the gradual rise of which throughout the
eighteenth century we have been studying in the two
preceding chapters.
In the seventh and e ighth de cades of the century, when
the ' Sturm und Drang ' agitation was at its highest, it looked
as though Germany instead of France was to be Extreme indi-
the scene of a violent social upheaval. Never, ■ridnaliam of
.^, . . , , _ . the Storm-and-
with the one exception of the Romantic move- stress move-
ment, which as a matter of fact was nothing ment.
but a revived ' Sturm und Drang,' has individualism been
preached with greater vehemence and aggressiveness than
it was preached by the leaders of this agitation.
Destruction of every barrier to individu al growth; war
against authority of whatever kind; the glorification of
primitive, uncprrupted, nature, of instinct, of passion , of
_genius; the vilification of the existing social order, of re-
gularity, of learning, of conscious effort — these were the
watchwords which inspired the generation succeeding that
of Klopstock and Lessing.
It was the time when Ham ann (1730-88), 'the Magu s
301
302 SOCIAL FOUCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
of the North,' wrote in sibylline utterances of the lofty
freedom of Oriental literature, contrasting with it the shal-
lowness and meagreness of modern life.' " Nature works
through senses and passions. He who mutilates these
organs, how can he feel ? Are paralyzed sinews capable of
motion ? You wish to rule Nature, and you fetter your own
hands and feet ? If passions are organs of dishonour, do
they therefore cease to be weapons of manhood ? Passion
alone gives to abstraction hands, feet, wings; passion alone
gives to images and symbols, spirit, life, language. A heart_
without passions is a head without ideas." It was the time
when the youthful Herder, Hamann's pupil, revelled in
panegyrics on untutored popular life and unstudied popular
song. It was the time when Basedow (1723-90) filled the
air with his boisterous call for a new education based on
^individuality a nd the contact with real life" ; when Lavater
(1741-1801) by his bold generalizations about a mysterious
correspondence between spiritual force and-physical form
seemed to give a new and higher aspect to individual ex-
istence.° It was the time when the German drama, novel,
and lyrics, seemed to have become a vast battlefield, on
which there were arrayed against each other social preju-
dice, class tyranny, moral corruption, on the one hand; and
free humanity, self-asserting individuals, the apostles of a
new morality, on the other.
Where did this agitation originate ? What was its rela-
• Cf. Hettner l.c.\\\, 1 ,p. 308 £f. J. Minor, Hamann in s. Bedtutung
f. d. Sturm- u. Drangperiode. The quotation is from Kreuzzuge des
Philologen (1762); Schriften ed. Roth II, 280. 286 ff.
^ \W=, Methodenbuch filr Vdter und Mutter SLppesiTed in 1770; the
Elementarwerk 1774. In the same year Basedow established the Des-
sau ' Philanthropinum.'
' His Physiognomische Fragmente were published between 1775 and
1778. Cf. Goethe's masterly characterization of Lavater and Base-
dow, Dichtg u. Wahrh. book 14: Werke XXII, 150 £f. A. Sauer, StUr-
mer uni Drdnger; DNL. LXXIX, 14 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 303
tion to the three great leaders of the older generat ion,
Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing ?
Although the movement would have been impossible had
it not been preceded by Lessing's intrepid, though con-
servative, work of reform, its conservatism prevented him
from having a large personal influence upon the younger
and more radical minds of the age. Wieland appeared to
the ' Stur m und Drang ' m en only from his frivolous side;
he was considered by most of them' as the very incarnation
of artificiality and corruption; he and Voltaire were held
up to scorn and contempt as the two great enemies and
destroyers of morality. Klopstock, on the other hand, was
th^patron saint of the move men t; not only at Gottingen,
where Voss, Boie, Ho lty, Miller," the brothers Sto lberg ,
and the rest of the so-called ' Ha inbiindler ' went into hys-
terics over his name, but all over Germany he was at that
time worshipped as the greatest man of the nation. Yet
even the effect of Klopstock's influence would have been
less, but for the quiver of feverish emotion into which the
intellectual world of Germany was thrown by the man who
more powerfully and eloquently than any other had ex-
pressed that longing for nature, for freedom, for individu-
ality, for humanity, which we have seen cropping out again
and again in German literature of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries:. ^ean Jacques Rousseau.
It is indeed impossible to conceive of the ' Sturm und
Drang' movement without Rousseau's Nouvelle Hdoise and
^mile. It is undeniable that it was the stimulus received
from France which set this agitation in motion. But it must
at once be added that, at first at least, the agitation assumed
in Germany proportions far more imposing than in France.
Leaving aside for the present the youthful works of
* A notable exception to this is the unquestionable influence exerted
by Wieland upon Helnse. Cf. Hettner /. c. 288.
*' For Miller's Siegwart (l^^t), perhaps the most sentimental pro-
duction of this group, cf. Er. Schmidt, Charakteristiken p. 178 ft.
304 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Goethe and Schiller, which, it is hardly necessary to say,
Literary repre- were among the most remarkable productions of
sentations of ^^^jg period, what is there in the French drama
political ana "^ , i • t i , ,
aooial misery, or lyrics of the seventh and eighth decades of
the eighteenth century which in bitterness of invective
against the nobility, against militarism, again st princely
despot ism could at all be compared with the works even of
such men as Maxim ilian K linger, Re inho ld Lenz, Heinrich
Leopold Wagner, Christian Daniel Schubart^?
Take such a play as Der Hofmeister by Lenz (1774).
The principal figure is a weakly, sentimental enthusiast
Lenz'sHof- whom the ambition and poverty of his father
meister. force to accept a position as resident tutor in
a noble family, where of course he falls desperately in love
with the daughter of the house. He ruins the girl and is
made to ruin himself. But is this to be wondered at ? Is
it strange that he loses every spark of self-respect and
human dignity ? Has he not been treated worse than a
slave ? Is it not society rather than he himself that has
made him a wretch ? The mistress of the house and a caller
converse with each other about the new ballet-dancer ; the
tutor, to whom his Leipzig student days have given a
taste for the theatre, takes the liberty of throwing in a re-
mark, when the lady interrupts him': "You should know,
my friend, that domestics do not speak in the presence of
persons of rank. Go to your room. Who has asked you ? "
— And the master of the house, finding him and his pupil
at their studies, indulges in the following apostrophe":
" That's right. That's what I want. And if the rascal
doesn't know his lesson, preceptor, beat him over the
head with the book, till he can't stand ! I'll fix you, you
good-for-nothing ! You shall learn something, or I'll whip
you until your bowels burst ! And you, sir, no letting up,
if you please, and no loafing and lounging ! Work won't
' Der Hofmeister I, 3; DNL. LXXX, 7. « li. I, 4.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. JOg
make you sick. That's only an idea of you schoolmasters.
— -Keep your seat, sir ; keep your seat, I say. What is the
chair there for, but to sit upon ? You have travelled in
the world, you say, and don't know that yet ? "
Or take the Kindermorderin by Wagne r (1776). What
a picture of depravity and destruction brought into the
family of an honest citizen through the brutal
licentiousness of an all-powerful soldiery! An agi«rsKin-
„ . J . , , ^ , , dermbrdenn.
officer IS quartered m the house of a butcher.
In the absence of the husband, he inveigles mother and
daughter to go with him to a public masquerade. After
the ball he takes them to a house of ill repute. The
mother is drugged into sleep, while the daughter falls a
victim to the officer's licentiousness. This is the revolting
sequence of events in the first act. The rest may be ima-
gined. The lawless libertine poses as a devoted lover, he
holds out a promise of marriage. For months the girl lives
in hope and despair, pursued by shame and repentance, and
in continual dread of her stern, austere father. At last, like
Gretchen in Goethe's Faust, she takes flight. The mother
dies from grief. The daughter, frenzied by misery and starva-
tion, kills her infant child, and is put to death by the sword. '
Or, read a description of the misery and oppression of
the peasantry such as is given in the following episode
o f Fa ust's Leben, That en und Hollenfahrt, by xiinger's
_ Maxim ilia n Klinger . ' The devil and Faust are Fanst.
riding one day on the banks of the river Fulda, when under
' DLD. nr. 13 {DNL. LXXX, 283 fif.). A similar subject is treated
in Die Soldaten by Lenz (1776; DNL. LXXX, 83 ff.). Cf., also, Bur-
ger's ballad Des Pfarrers Tochter von Tauhenhain (17S1; DNL.
LXXVIII, 241) and Schiller's Die Kindsmorderin(\-]'i2\ Sammtl. Schr.
I, 226). Erich Schmidt, H. L. Wagner' f. 70 ff. 137 ff.
' DNL. LXXIX, 201 ff. Although this work was published only in
1791, its conception undoubtedly goes back to the seventies, and the
episode quoted is thoroughly characteristic of Storm and Stress. Cf.
Ch. G. Salzmann's Carl v. Carhberg oder iiber das menschliche Elend
(1783-88).
306 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE. .
an oak tree near a village they see a peasant-woman sitting
with her children, lifeless pictures of pain and dull despair.
Faust rides up to them and inquires the cause of their
misery. The woman looks at him blankly for a long time.
At last, with sobs and tears, she tells something like the
following :
" ' For the past three years my husband has not been able to
pay the taxes to the lord bishop. The first year the crops failed;
the second, the wild boars of the bishop ruined everything; and
the third year, the bishop's hunt went over our fields. Since
the bailiff was continually threatening my husband with eviction,
he was going to-day to drive a fattened calf and his last pair of
oxen to Frankfurt, to sell them in order to pay his taxes. As he
was driving out of the yard, the steward of the bishop came and
demanded the calf for the bishop's table. My husband repre-
sented to him his distress, and implored him to consider what a
cruelty it would be to force this calf from him for nothing, which
in Frankfurt he could sell for a good price. The steward asked
whether he did not know that a peasant was not allowed to trans-
port anything beyond the frontier which belonged to him, the
steward. While they were talking, the bailiff with his constables
appeared. Instead of taking my husband's part, he had the oxen
unhitched; the steward took the calf; the constables drove me
and the children from hearth and home; and my despairing
husband cut his throat in the barn. There! see him under this
sheet! We sit here to guard his body from the wild beasts; for
the priest is not willing to bury him.' She tore the white sheet
from the corpse, and sank to the ground. Faust started back at
the terrible sight. He cried, 'Mankind! mankind! is this thy
lot ? Did God allow this unfortunate man to be born, that a ser-
vant of his religion should drive him into suicide ? ' "
Faust rides to the bishop's palace. The bishop, a ' fat,
red, jovial prelate,' invites him to the table. During the
dinner Faust, still quivering with excitement, relates what
he has seen and heard in the morning. Nobody seems to
pay attention to it. Faust grows all the more earnest and
aggressive. The bishop, to divert the conversation, says to
the steward: ' Steward, that's a nice calf's head there in the
centre of the table.' Steward : ' Why, that's the head of
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 307
Hans Ruprecht's calf.' Bishop: 'Well, well ! All the bet-
ter ! Let me carve it.' The steward places the platter
before the bishop. Faust whispers something into the
devil's ear, and at the moment when the bishop puts his
knife on the calf's head, it is changed into the head of
Ruprecht staring wild and bloody into the bishop's eyes.
The bishop drops the knife, and falls into a fainting fit, and
the whole company sit paralyzed and terror-stricken."
Or, finally, listen to the fierce denunciation of princely
voluptuousness and avarice in Schubart's Fiirstengruft
(1781).'° There they lie, the remnants of a
^oud past, once the idols of a world, now the ^'l^^^^'^
prey of worms and decay ! The hand which
once threw a freeman into chains, because he spoke the
truth, has now shrivelled to a bone. Dried up are the
channels in which once wanton blood was boiling, poison-
ing virtue of soul and body. They who petted dogs and
horses and foreign wenches, and allowed genius and wis-
dom to starve, they are themselves now left alone and
friendless.
Weckt sie nur nicht mit eurem bangen Achzen,
Ihr Scharen, die sie arm gemacht,
Verscheucht die Raben, dass von ihrem KrSchzen
Kein Wiitrich hier erwacht!
Hier klatsche nicht des armen Landmanns Peitsche,
Die naclits das Wild vom Acker scheucht!
An diesem Gitter weile nicht der Deutsche,
Der siech vorilberkeucht!
Hier heule nicht der bleiche Waisenknabe,
Dem ein Tyrann den Vater nahm;
Nie fluche hier der Kruppel an dem Stabe,
Von fremdem Solde lahm!
' Cf. Burger's Der wilde Jdger {DNL. LXXVIII, 331) and Voss's
Die Leibeigenen {Gedichte 1785,/. 11).
'» DNL. LXXXI. 375 ff.
308 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LIl'ERATURM.
Damit die QuSler nicht zu friih erwachen,
Seid menschlicher, erweckt sie nicht.
Ha! frflh genug wird uber ihnen krachen
Der Donner am Gericht!
Evidently there was plenty of inflammable 'material in
Bevolntionary *^^ ^'^'"^^ *° serve as fuel for a revolution. And
spirit. there was plenty of revolutionary spirit also to
kindle the latent fire into open conflagation.
Nur Freiheitsschwert ist Scliwert fiir das Vaterland!
AVer Freilieitsscliwert hebt, flammt durchdas Schlachtgewuhl
Wie Blitz des Nachtsturms! Stiirzt Palaste!
Stiirze Tyrann, dem Verderber Gottes!
O Namen, Namen festlich wie Siegsgesang!
Tell! Hermann! Klopstock! Brutus! TimoleonI
O ihir, wem freie Seele Gott gab,
Flam mend ins eherne Herz gegraben!
It would be in vain to look in such effusions as these —
they are from Fritz von Stolberg!^ famous Ode to Liberty
(1775) " — it would be in vain to look here for any dis-
tinct political programme or for a serious plan of action of
any kind. These young champions of freedom were so
absorbed in their own feelings that they had no time or
strength left for practical exertion. Yet, that the very ex-
pression of sentiments like these pointed toward a coming
revolution, there can be no doubt. And what else but revo-
lutionary was that craving for Klopstockian originality, for
the Nature of Rousseau, for the weirdness and wildness
of Ossian, which again and again breaks out in the writ-
ings of these years ? What else but revolutionary were the
favourite heroes of this generation: Faust, th e rebel a gainst
tradition and accepted wisdom; Prometheus, the_titanic
despiser of the Olympians, the cKampion of untram melled
" Die Freiheit (1775); Ges. Werke I, 19. CI. Goethe's characteriza-
tion of the brothers Stolberg, Dichtg u. Wahrh. b. 18; Werke XXIII,
53 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 309
humanity ; and so many similar names of legend, history,
or fiction ?
In .Klinger's d rama, ^iurm und Dran^ (1776), the influ-
ence -of which is demonstrated by the fact that it Jias. given.
the name to the whol e movement, the principal
hero, from mere excess of vitality and an indefi- gt^^^^a
nite craving for boundless activity, runs away to Drang,
take part in the American Revolution.
" I had to run away," he says," " to get out of this fearful
restlessness and uncertainty. Have been everything. Became
a day-labourer to be something. Lived on the Alps, pastured
goats, lay day and night under the boundless vault of the heavens,
cooled by the winds, burning with an inner fire. Nowhere rest,
nowhere repose. See, thus I am glutted by impulse and power,
and cannot work it out of me. I am going to take part in this
campaign as a volunteer; there I can expand my soul, and if they
do me the favour to shoot me down, — all the better."
In^Die Zwillinee (1776), perhaps the most powerful of all
of^linger's pr oductions, Guelfo, the fratricide,
gives vent to his untamable passion in the fol- '* °^*'
lowing manner":
" Has not everything a sting for revenge? Does not the worm
under thy foot coil up and try to avenge itself ? I have hated
him from the cradle, hated him from the hour when his vanity
wanted to overreach me, hated him from his first childish babble.
Ha! Did he not once in sport call me ' little Guelfo ' ? Did I not
strike him down for it ? The clothes he wore I hated. Did he
wear a coat of the colour of mine, I would tear mine to pieces.
When all the boys had imitated my firm step, he also wanted to
copy it. But I worked at my knees and worked until my step
had changed. — It seems to me sometimes I hate Camilla, because
I saw her lips on his. And when I think what life is, how one, who
^"^ Sturm u. Drang I, i; DNL. LXXIX, 68. Cf. Wagner's Kin-
derm.'lV, 1 : "Noch heut' macht' ich mich auf den Weg nach Ame-
rika, uAd half fur die Freiheit streiten."
" Die Zwillinge III, i; I. c. 40. 37. For the relation of Klinger's
drama to Leisewitz's y«/i«J ww Tat-ev! r.i ^leitner/. c. III. I,^. 351 f.
3IO SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
has a powerful soul, lies on the ground, and another, a feeble,
vain, coaxing sycophant, steps over him and takes a high place!
I am only Guelfo, a man by his deeds terrible alike to friend
and foe. And there, Ferdinando, a weak, miserable, toy mani-
kin, with a bit of a girl's heart, talking incessantly about senti-
ment. — I must, I must! Fate has spoken, I must! The angel
of Death flourishes his bloody sword over me and touches my
soul! I must, I must! "
Maler Miiller, an other of these young fire-eaters, prefaces
MalerMuller's ^'^^ drama Fa ust's Leben (1778) w ith the follow-
Fanst. ing reflection ":
" Faust was one of the favourite heroes of my childhood,
because I early recognised him as a great fellow, a fellow who
feels all his power, feels the bridle which Fate has put upon him,
and tries to throw it off, who has the courage to hurl everything
down that steps in his way to check him. — Is it not in human
nature to lift one's self as high as possible, to be fully what one
feels he might be ? The grumbling, too, against Fate and the
world, which hold us down, which force our noble self, our inde-
pendent will into the yoke of conventions, is in human nature.
Where is the lowly, long-suffering creature which never would
wish to soar upward, which would resign itself of its own accord,
which would delight in its own degradation ? I have no feeling
for such a creature; I should consider it a monstrosity which had
issued prematurely from the womb of nature and in which nature
has no part. — There are moments in life — who does not know
them ? — when the heart overleaps itself, when the best, the
noblest fellow, in spite of justice and law, cannot help being
carried beyond himself."
_Burger|swhole life and work was a continual rebellio n
against accepted respectabilit y an d order. In his ballads —
Lenore (1773), Der Wilde Jager (1778), Des
.ffarrers Tochter~von^~Taubenhain (i7»i),"' anf
others — he displays a marvellous power o f natural istic ej :
fects. Irresistibly he forces the hearer into the wild dance
" Preface to Faust's Leben ; DLD. nr. -x,, p- 8.
" DNL. LXXVIIl, 170 zv 241. Cf. Er. Schmidt, Charakt. 199 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 3II
of his feverish imagination. He _ revels in the gr uesome
and the sensational. He makes the ghastly as gh astly as
possible, he makes the atrocities, especially those committed
by noblemen against the common people, as atrocious_j.s
possible. In his lyric poems he reveals his stormy, unruly
heart without reserve or restru;tion.__ He is pursued by a
passionate love for his wife's sister. Far from suppressing
his desire, he speaks of it as a necessity, as a natural right '";
he glories in it, he surrounds it with all the halo of para-
disiac innocence I and beauty." And when at last his poor,
devoted wife dies, and he is allowed to make Molly also
legally his own, the frenzied man breaks out into a trium-
phal song of praise and joy."
Wilhelm Heinse, in his^ A rdi7tg hello Jj.i%2)j, goes so far as
to preach unbridled license as the highest law of nature.
With him there is no attempt at palliating or
apologizing for things. Life is the self-mani- ?^1?^^','
festation of an elemental instinct. Passion,
lust, crime, are necessary forms of existence. Or rather,
there is no crime in the ordinary sense. The only real
crime is weakness; the true virtue is power; the highest
good is beauty, the manifestation of power. Thus Ar-
dinghello rages through his life from seduction to murder,
from murder to seduction, ever remorseless, ever master
of himself, ever teeming with vitality, ever revelling in
voluptuous delights, a Napoleon of sensuality. He him-
self says of Hannibal ":
" Cf. the poem An die Menschengesichter; ib. 94:
Ich habe was Liebes, das hab ich zu lieb ;
Was kann ich, was kann ich dafur?
and the sonnet Naturrecht; ib. 120.
" Cf. the poem Untreue Uber A lies; ib. 238.
" Das hoke Lied von der Einzigen; ib. 122. It is not surprising that
Schiller should have had a natural aversion to Burger. Cf. his essay
Ueber Burgers Gedichte (1791); Sammtl. Schr. VI, 314 ff.
^"^ Ardinghello b. V; DNL, CLXXXVI, 131.
312 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
" Among all heroic expeditions none has impressed me so much
as that of Hannibal through Italy. From his plunge over the
wild, swift streaming Rhone below Avignon, and the bold march
through the rapid torrents, the dark gorges, over the primeval
snow and ice of Alpine rocks, — in every one of his battles he
appears as an Olympian athlete. Everywhere with his well-
trained little troop he falls upon his big clumsy antagonist, strikes
him down, and beats his nose, ears, and jaws into one bleeding
mass. He understood the art of victory, as no one else. Before,
in the midst of, and after, the battle he handled armies of hun-
dreds of thousands like a single man; at every spot, at every
moment, full of caution, alertness, courage, shrewdness, and
presence of mind. What a succession of exploits! Like an un-
tamable lion bent on revenge, he tears through the land,
destroying and devouring the herds of cattle and the bleeding
sheep. What are millions of men, who all their lives have had
not a single hour like this, compared with this one man ? "
At last Ardinghello founds a communistic state, the most
characteristic features of which are free love, woman suf-
frage, and the worship of the elements. In a payable which
may be taken as a motto of the whole novel, Heinse ex-
presses his view of life thus '":
" A waxen house-god, left out of sight, stood by the side of
a fire in which beautiful Campanian vases were being hardened,
and began to melt. He bitterly complained to the flames.
' Look,' he said, ' how cruelly you treat me. To those vessels
yonder you lend durability, and me you destroy.' The fire
answered: ' Complain rather of your own nature. As to myself,
I am fire everywhere.' "
In a word, then , all G erman literature of those years
Oansea whioli seerris to be aflame. A new order of things
prevented a " —7 — -,_—,».___.. — -„ , , . .
German revo- seems about to break forth from the bram of
lutioninthe thg nation. A political and social revolution
eignteentn . . '^
centnry. Seems imminent. Why did this revolution
not come ?
»» DNL. CLXXXVI, 52.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 313
A number of causes co-operated to prevent it. In the
first place, the revolution was, to a certain extent at least,
forestalled by reform measures, emanating from _ ,
^ . Keiorms ema-
the rulers themselves. Frederick the Great was nating from
by no means the only German Prince of the tl'^P^oes,
eighteenth century who understood the signs of the time.
However high he stands above the emperor Joseph II.
(1765-90) in political discernment and in statesmanlike
appreciation of the difference between the desirable and
the attainable, — the youthful enthusiasm, the reformatory
zeal of the latter were none the less worthy of the admira-
tion bestowed upon them by the best men of his time; and if
he had accomplished nothing but the abolition of serfdom,
this alone would be sufficient to secure him a place among
the benefactors of humanity. Nor were these two great
princes alone in their lofty view of the tasks and duties of
rulers. Karl August of Sachsen- Weimar, Karl Friedrich of
Baden, Max Joseph of Baiern, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of
Braunschweig among the secular; Friedrich Franz von
Fiirstenberg of Miinster, Emmerich Joseph of Mainz,
Franz Ludwig von Erthal of Wiirzburg-Bamberg among
the ecclesiastical princes, were shining examples of en-
lightened statesmanship. They were men who considered
themselves servants of the state, if not of the people ; and
by alleviating feudal burdens, by softening class distinctions
and enmities, by improving the judiciary, by fostering in-
stitutions of learning, by patronizing men of genius and
culture," they did much toward reconciling even the bois-
terous spirits of the 'Sturm und Drang' period to existing
" Cf. L. Hausser, Deutsche Gesckichte vom Tode Friedrichs d. Gros-
sen bis zur Griindung d. deuischen Bundes I, 94 ff. 106 ff. — A typical
representative of this spirit of an enlightened and sober liberalism is
Georg Forster (1754-1794), author of the Ansichten vom Niederrhein
(1791). Selected essays of Forster's DLD. nr. 46-47. About the
tragic fate which finally drove this man into the arms of the Jacobins
sf. Biedermann /. c. II, 3, p. 1197 ff.
314 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
conditions. The days of an Augustus the Strong belonged
irrevocably to the past''; the German people as a rule
were right when they looked to their princes for reform
and progress.
Secondly. The dismemberment of the German empire
into an infinitude of little independent sovereignties, hurtful
Wtolesome as it was politically, was at the same time not
results of tli8 ^vithout its compensating social advantages,
centralization. The proverb " Under the crozier there is good
living " (Unter dem Krummstab ist gut wohnen) was true
of not a few among the ecclesiastical estates, and the same
might be said of a good many of the secular principalities,
the free cities, and the rural communities. No one reading
in Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit the description of
Frankfurt as it was in his childhood, can help being im-
pressed with the soundness and good sense, the thoughtful-
ness and culture, the integrity and liberal-mindedness of the
average Frankfurt citizen of that time. Nor was Goethe's
native town altogether an exception in this respect. What
a happy, patriarchal life did the old Gleim lead in his
hospitable retreat at Halberstadt"; what an honoured posi-
tion did Klopstock occupy in Hamburg society ; what a
homely charm there is spread over Kant's life at Konigs-
berg ! And when have domestic joys, rural simplicity, the
holiday pleasures and workaday affairs of a contented, com-
fortable, and respectable people been more pleasantly and
truthfully portrayed than in the sketches of Westphalian
yeomanry homes drawn by Justus Moeser, or the scenes
from H annoverian and Holstein country life by Matthias
Claudius a n d Johann Heinric h Voss, of~Swabian peasantry
J jfe by Peter Hebel ? Such poems as Voss^ Luise or ThT
" Even a tyrant like Karl Eugen of Wiirtemberg, notorious for his
shameful treatment of Schubart, felt the need of at least posing as a
benevolent patriarch. Cf. J. Minor, Schiller I, 85 £f.
*' Cf. Goethe's characterization of Gleim, Dicktg u. Wahrh. b. lO;
Werke XXI, 171 i.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 315
Seventieth Birthda y; a s Claudius's Rheinweinlied or A bend-
, lied; a s Hebel's Die Wiese or Sonntagsfrilhe, °' are classic
examples of the unspeakab le charm which the faithful
repr esentation of an existence hedged^Jii by uncorrupted
_senhment, simple ^ecorum, and a chastejopular tradition
can not fail to exert. A single one of Moeser's Patriotische
Phantasieen will be suifificient to mark the, contrast between
these des cripti ons of the averag e life of the cortmon herd
and the glaring pictures of aristocratic depravity as painted
by.JOinger or Lenz. It is a humorous sketch purporting
to be a letter of a travelling Gascon to a Westphalian
schoolmaster, and runs in the main as follows '"':
" You may say as much as you please in praise of your father-
land, I cannot help telling you that, although I have travelled a
good deal on land and sea, I have never seen a country where
there are fewer thoroughly original fools than in yours. I am,
as you know, a playwright by profession, and I visited your
country to iind some material for comedies, as others go abroad
in quest of lions, monkeys, and other rare animals. But to tell
the truth, I have not found a single fool among your people who
was worth studying; which undoubtedly shows that there is no
genius among you.
" I will not dispute you the title of good, honest, industrious
people. But these are to be found everywhere, and when you
have seen one, you have seen all. What I am after is the ex-
ceptional. That is the thing which pays nowadays.
" At first I thought this deplorable uniformity of your coun-
trymen might be confined to the common people. I hoped aftei
all among the nobility, or at least among the ladies, to find
something which I could use for my collection of rarities. But
•* Hebel, whose Allemannische Gedichte appeared in 1803, cannot of
course in any sense be called a contemporary of the Storm-and-Stress
writers. However, since his poetry is closely related to that of Voss
and was directly influenced by it, his name does not seem out of place
here.
" Patriot. Phant. ed. R. Zollner /. 82 fif. Cf., also. Die gute selige
Frau, ill. 16 ff. Der alte Rath, ib. 68 f. Schreiben dis Herrn von H.,
edition of 1778, I, 266 f£.
3l6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
here also I was disappointed. I met a nobleman of high rank,
who treated his bondmen as rational beings; who felt their
wants, advised them, helped them in case of need, and took
a paternal interest in all their household affairs. The lady of the
house left me in the midst of an interesting tale of mine, in order
to talk with a poor woman. And — ^what I thought almost original
' — mademoiselle started for the cellar to give out the wine, while
I was making a sketch of the latest thing in fashions for her.:
When, after dinner, we went into the garden, I noticed that there
was not even an orangery. Would you believe it, no orangery!
The master of the house told me that in the times of his grand-
father no nobleman's estate had been without one; but that now
they thought more of an oak tree than of a laurel. Oh, what
commonplace people!
"Well, I thought, in the country things are hppeless; but
perhaps in the cities there is more to be had. But no, here too,
with the exception of a few abortive copies, the originals of
which I had seen infinitely superior elsewhere, nothing but
healthy, contented, industrious people; not a single figure worthy
to be sketched or to be exhibited in a salon. A lady to whom I
expressed my astonishment about this promised to show me
' something which I would hardly see in other countries. And
where did she take me ? To the nursery, where her husband
was endeavouring to teach their children the fundamentals of
Christianity; a task in which, after the first few civilities, he
quietly proceeded during my presence! The lady sat down by
the side of her daughter, and pressed her hand when she
answered her father correctly, and the girl was more charmed
with this approbation than with me, although I flatter myself
not to be an altogether ordinary person. I suppose these people
even go to church with the common rabble, and have never
dreamed of the fact that the ten commandments have been out of
fashion for more than a hundred years. -
" In a country like this, in a country where, I suppose, hus-
band and wife still sleep in one bed, it is no wonder that from
mere ennui a great many children are begotten; I am only sur-
prised that there are not a million to the square mile. But the
only things of interest which ! have found there, and of which
I shall take specimens with me to put them on exhibition in
Paris, are raw ham and Pumpernickel."
-jQLJke_circurnstanc es which p revented_jtheJ_Sturm und
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 317
Drang ' moveme nt from plunging Germany into a political
levolution, we have thus far mentioned two. (i) The
social-reform policy entered upon by. the most enlightened
_pf the German goyernments— tending, as it did, toward the
limitation of f eudal privileges, th e softening down of class
distinctions, the public recognition of the rights of man —
was, in part at least, a fulfilment of the very demands raised
by the leaders of the movement. (2) The political decen-
tralization of Germanyj^reventing, as it did, on the one
han d, the growth of a strong p ublic opinion , an d ensurin g,
on the other,, a considerable amount of local indepen dence,
private comfort and happiness — served to make the middle
classes (the well-to-do peasant, the burgher, the scholar,
the professional man, the official) slow even to desire a
radical change of existing, conditions.
This leads us to a third and fina l co nsideration. The
' Sturm und Drang ' agitation, although teeming with social
catchwords and political phrases , wa s at bottom _,
^ ' — i-116 6SS6Q-
an essentially intell ectual movement . Its true ti allyintel-
aim — and here we see its close connection with^"*"*^ "''?"
.... raoter of the
the whole development of German civilization storm-aad-
since the Thirty Years' War — was not so much a Stress move-
, , ,. ■; . — ment.
reco nstruc tion of outward conditions, a reprgani-
zation of public life, as it was the expressipn of the inner
_self. the deepening of individual experience, the rounding
_out of individual character. The ideal of human perfec-
tion which inspired this movement was not man as a social
being, dependent upon and determined by the force of sur-
rounding conditions, but man as such, man lifted above the
barriers of his political, social, moral environment, mati in
the full autonomy of his own free, spiritual nature. And
it is fair to assume that it was this lofty individualistic
view of life more than anything else which deprived the
' Sturm und Drang ' movement of a large popular following ;
which restricted its revolutionary influence largely to the
sphere of thought and aesthetic culture.
3l8 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Thus it came to pass that the great German revolution
of the eighteenth century was fought out, not on the politi-
The German ^^^ battlefield, but in the realm of let ters ; that
revolution of it s leaders we re, not a Mirabeau, a Danton, a
theeigtteentli Napoleon, but men like Herder, Kant, Goethe,
oentniy an -^ ' . . -7— :
Intelleotnal Schiller ; that its victories were won, not in parr.
revolntion. liamentary debates or in street conflicts, but on
the stage and in the study; that it resulted , not in a violent
uprooting of the old, hereditary aristocracy, b ut in the
peaceful triumph of the new, intellectual aristocracy, w hich
during the hundred years just preceding, recruiting itself
largely from the middle classes, had gradually united in itself
the best minds of the whole nation.
II. The Classics of Individualism.
Having now reached the classic period of modern Ge r-
man literature, we shall not enter into a study of the lives
of the great men who represent it, nor shall we undertake a
detailed analysis of their works. What we shall attempt is
to understand their place in the history of German civiliza-
tion; to grasp their relation to the time in which they lived;
to interpret their message to coming generations.
To put it briefly, th e Germa n classic thinkers and poet s,
while leading the intellect ual movement of the eight eenth^
century to its culrnination, while saying the last word and
embodying the highest ideal of indivLdualism, ushered in at
the same time the strongest intellectual movement of the
nineteenth century, by anticipating, at least in theory, the
new collectivistic ideal.
Let us elucidate this statement by a rapid review of what
the work of Herder and Kant, of Goethe and Schiller
means to us.
I. Herder.
None of these men was more distinctly the spokesman of
his own age and the prophet of a coming era tha n Johann
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 319
Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). L ike the rest of the ' Sturm
und Drang ' enthusiasts, he began as a follower -Zwis^ the
of Rousseau, as a swor n defender of individu- spokesman of
_ilitZi_9Ln§t.ure^pf„_freedoiru_ And throughout "fttpSeHf
his life he remained faithful to these ideals of oolleotivism,
his youth. But from the very beginning there was an
essential difference between him and Rousseau. To Rous-
seau, mankind appeared dissected, as it were, into an in-
finitude of free and equal individuals ; the development,
the culture, the happiness of these individuals was the all-
absorbing topic of his interest and passionate endeavour.
Herder, although equally enthusiastic in exalting the dignity
and moral autonomy of the individual human soul, con-
ceived of it from the very first as an integral part of a larger
organism: th e soul o f the people. Like Winckelmann and
Lessing, only much more comprehensively than the former
and much more emphatically than the latter. Herder bas ed
_hk_yiew of^the ^evelopment^of mankind upon the_ f undar
J05eilt^^LjLdea_of_ na^tipnalind^ And in the per-
fection of the national type he sawjthe way towa.rd the
perfection both of the individual man and of humanity at
large.
It is this^intuitiye^rasp of the organic unity of all man-
kind, of the^evitable iriterdependence of the individual,
the nation, and the race, which has made Herder the father
of the modern evolutionary view of histpry.
_A11 the great achievements of human civilization — lan-
guage, religion, law, custom, poetry, art — he considered as
_the natural products of coll ective h uman life, as Ybx, idea of
t h e . necessary outgrowth of national initinfilS-^orgamo
and co nditions. Man does not invent these ^'"^
things, he does not consciously set out to coin words, to
establish a certain set of religious conceptions, or to work
out certain problems of artistic composition. At least this
is not the way in which the vital forms of a language, the
great religious symbols, or the ideal types of art and poetry
320 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
are created. They are not created at all; they are not the
work of individual endeavour; they are t he result of accumu -
lated impressions exercised upon masses of human beings
living under similar conditions a.n d similarly organiz ed. In
other~words,~ they are en gendered and conceived in the
nation as a whol e ; the individual poets, artists, prophets,
through whom they are given their audible or visible shape,
are only, as it were, the most receptive and at the same
time the most productive organs of the national body.
They are the channels through which a national language,
a national poetry, a national religion come to light.
Twenty years before Herder's first writings, Montesquieu
in his Esprit des Lois (1748) had made the analysis of po-
Literatrae the litical institutions a means of gauging national
natioMl""'^ character. Herder applied this same method to
character. the Study of language, religion, and, above all,
of literature. " He taught us," as Goethe says,"' " to_con;
ceive of poetry as the^ommon ffft of all mankind, .not_as_
the private property of a few r efined, c ultivated individu-
als." He taught us to see, in a rude Esquimaux funeral
song no less than in a Hebrew psalm or in a Spanish ballad
dealing with romantic love adventure, national spirit crys-
tallized in verse. He for the first time clear ly and sys-
tematically considered all literature as the expression of
living national forces, as the re flex of _the whole ^f^ the
national civilization.
Herder was not more than twenty-three years old when,
in th e Fragmente Uber die neue re deutsche Literatur (1767) ,
Laws of lite- - ^ .^lit gave utterai}ce_ tj) Jhis_ epoc h-makin g
rary develop- idea. " There is the same la w of change " —
™''*' " thuThe begins the second Fragment "— " in_alL
mankind and in every individual n ation and tribe. From
^^ Dichtgu. Wahrh. b. 10 ; Werkeyiy^l. 179.
" Von dtn Lebensaltirn einer Sprache; Sdmmtl. Werke ed. B. Suphan
I, 151 ff. Cf. R. Haym, Herder I, 137 ff. Hillebrand, German
Thought p. iiyft. — The latest biographer of Herder is E. Kiihnemann.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 321
the bad to the good, from the good to the better and best,
from the best to the less good, from the less good to the
bad — this is the circle of all th ings. So it is with art and
science; they grow, blossom, ripen, and decay. So it is with
language also." A primitive people, like a child, stares at
all things; fright, fear, admiration are the only emotions of
which it is capable, and the language of these emotions,
consists of high-pitched, inarticulate sounds and violent '
gestures. This is the first, prehistoric, infantile period in
the. history of a language. There follows the period of
youth. With the increasing knowledge of things, fright and
wonder are softened. Man comes to be more familiar with
his surroundings, his life becomes more civilized. But as
yet he is in close contact with nature; affections, emotions,
sensuous impressions have more influence upon his conduct
than principles and thought. This is the age of poetry.
The language now is a melodious echo of the outer world;
it is full of images and metaphors, it is free and natural in -.
its construction. The whole life of the people is poetry. '
" Battles and victories, fables and moral reflections, laws and
mythology are now contained in song." The third period
is the age of manhood. The social fabric grows more com-
plicated, the laws of conduct become more artificial, the
intellect obtains the ascendency over the emotions. Litera-
ture also takes part in this change. The language becomes
more abstract; it strives for regularity, for order; it gains in
intellectual strength and loses in sensuous fervour; in other
words, poetry is replaced by prose. And prose, in its turn,
after it has fulfilled the measure of its maturity, sinks into
senile correctness and sterility, thus rounding out the life
of a given national literature, and making room for a new
development.
Here we have ^the key to Herder's whole life-work. Again
and again, in one way or another, he comes primitive
back to this conception of literature as a civilization.
manifestation of national culture. During his voyage, in
322 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
1769, from Riga to Nantes, he comes to un derstand
th e Homeric epics a s the poetic outgrowth of a seafari ng
people.
" It was seafarers," he writes in his diary .'^ " who brought the
Greeks their earliest religion. All Greece was a colony on the
sea. Consequently their mythology was not, like that of the
Egyptians and Arabs, a religion of the desert, but a. religion of
the sea and the forest. Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, to be fully
understood, ought to be read at sea. With what an absorption
one listens to or tells stories on shipboard! How easily a sailor
inclines to the fabulous! Himself an adventurer, in quest of
strange worlds, how ready is he to imagine wondrous things!
Have I not experienced this myself ? With what a sense of
wonder I went on board ship! Did I not see everything stranger,
larger, more astounding and fearful than it was ? With what
curiosity and excitement one approaches the land! How one
stares at the pilot with his wooden shoes and his large white hat!
How one sees in him the whole French nation down to their
king, Louis the Great! Is it strange that out of such a state of
strained expectation and wonder tales like that of the Argonauts
and poems like the Odyssey should have sprung ? "
Jn common with the young Goethe and Justus Moeser,
Herder in 1773 published the '_|!liegende Bl atter ' V on
deutscher Art un d Kunst. Here he applies the
opuar ™S' sam e principle to the study of pM Scotch and,
_English po£try, and_ofj)opular s ong in ge neral. He tells "
how on his cruise in the Baltic and North Seas he for the first
time fully appreciated Ossian: " Suddenly borne away from
tiie petty stir and strife of civilized life, from the study-chair
^of the scholar and the soft cushions of the salons; far removed
from social distractions, from libraries, from newspapers;
floaiing on the wide open ocean; suspended between the
sky and the bottomless deep; daily surrounded by the same
infinite elements, only now and then a new distant coast, a
strange cloud, a far-off dreamland appearing before our
■" Werke IV, 357 ff- ,^
" Briefwechsel uber Ossian u. d. Lieder alter VSlker; Werke V, 168 f.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 323
vision; passing by the cliffs and islands and sand-banks
where formerly skalds and Vikings wielded their harps or
swords, where Fingal's deeds were done, where Ossian's
melancholy strains resounded— believe me, there I could
read the ancient skalds and bards to better purpose than in
the professor's lecture-room." He considers pojDular song
_is a re flex of primit ive life; in its wild, i rregu lar rhythm
he feels the heart-beat of a youthful, impulsive people; its
simple directness he contrasts with the false rhetoric of
modern book lyrics." The wilder, that is, the fuller of life
and freedom a people is, the wilder, that is, the fuller of life,
freedom, and sensuous power must be its songs. The fur-
ther removed a people is from artificial thought and scien-
tific language, the less its songs are made for print and paper,
the richer are they in lyric charm and wealth of imagery-
A savage" either is silent, or he speaks with an unpremedi-
tated firmness and beauty which a civilized European can-
not equal; every word of his is clearly cut, concrete, living,
and seems to exhaust what it is meant to express; his mind
and his tongue are, as it were, tuned to the same pitch.
Even in the apparent abruptness and incoherency of popu-
lar song Herder sees an element of beauty rather than a
defect, inasmuch as it results from the natural attitude of
the unperverted mind toward the outer world."
" All the songs of primitive peoples turn on actual things,
doings, events, circumstances, incidents, on m living, manifold
world. All this the eye has seen, and since the imagination
reproduces it as it has been seen, it must needs be reproduced
in an abrupt, fragmentary manner. There is no other connec-
tion between the different parts of these songs than there is
between the trees and bushes of the forest, the rocks and caverns
of the desert, and between the different scenes of the events
themselves. When the Greenlander tells of a seal-hunt, he does
not so much relate as paint with words and gestures single facts
and isolated incidents: they are all parts of the picture in his soul.
*> Werke V, 164. " lb. 181. ^» lb. 196 £.
324 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
When he laments the death of a beloved one, he does not deliver
a eulogy or preach a funeral sermon, ^& paints, and the very life
of the departed, summoned up in a succession of striking situa-
tions, is made to speak and to mourn."
And not only the Greenlander, not only a rude and primi-
tive people, feel and sing in this manner. All the great
po ets of the world do t he same; Homer, Sopho-
Bhakspere, ^j^^^ David, Luther, Shakspere— they a ll reflect
-Jthe life which surrounds them, they .give us, as i t were, in-
_stanJajieou^_pijctures^ of_humjrut£^ they sawit; and thus
_they biecomg_for us an epito me of their ti me and th eir na-
jtion._ Herein, above all^ lies the incalc ulable importance o f
Shakspere for us of to-day." For Shakspere more fully
than any other poet has expressed the secre^rf our own
life. He reflects the character of the Germanic race in its
totality. He seems to have heard with a thousand ears
and to have seen with a thousand eyes; his mind seems to
have been a storehouse of countless living impressions.
King and fool, beggar and prince, madman and philosopher,
angels and devils in human form; the endless variety of in-
dividuals and class- types; the sturdy endeavour, the reckless
daring of a people, hardened in the battle with wild ele-
ments, passionate but faithful, lusty and sensual but at the
same time longing for a deeper truth and a purer happiness;
— all this we see in his dramas in bold and striking out-
line, and in it all we recognise our own self heightened and
intensified.
A few words may suffice to indicate ho w this same train
_of thought runs through near l y all of Herder's later writ-
Jngs^ In the ,essay. Vo n Ae hnlichkeit der mitt le-_
oi^imtion, ^^^ englischen un d deutschenJDichtkunst (17x7) "
h^held out the prospect o f a hist ory of civiliza-
tion based upon the variousnational literatures, thus clearl y
*' Cf. the essay Shakespear; ib. 2ig.
" Werke IX, 532 f.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 325
formulating the problem which literary history has been
Jtrying tp_sp]ve_eyer .jince,^ In th e Volkslieder of 177 8 and
1779" hejaid the foundation for a comparative st udy of
lii?S.teI§„.by collecting and translating with wonderful
insight and faithfulness popular songs and ballads from
all over the globe; a collection which i n 180.3 he supple-
mented by the most finished and artistically perfect of Jiis
_poetical_wprkSi_ a reproduction of the old Spanish romances
of t he Cjd^' In the booJk_ Vom Geist der, ebrdiscMn Pnp't if
(1782 -83X^^16 considered the poetry of the B ible from t he
sam e point of view. In the Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit ( 1 7 84.-Q i ) ^^_he represented the whole
history of mankind as a succession of national organisms ; each
.revo lving around its ow n axis; ea ch living out its own spirit ;
_eac]ij;reating individual forms of language, religion, society,
literature, art; and each by this very individualization of
national types helping to enrich and develop the hunian
type a s a who le.
To repeat: In Herder's mind there were united the pre-
vailing tendencies of two centuries. With the ei^teenth
century he believed in freedom, humanity, indi- _
viduality. From national arrogance and preju- jj^^g^^^.-.
dice he was as far removed as Lessing. "Among
all the forms of pride," he says in the Brief e zur Beforde rung
der Ifumamiaijijg^-g'j),^' " 1 consider national pride the
greatest folly. Let us contribute as much as we can to the
honour of our nation; let us defend it, if it is wronged. To
praise it exprofesso seems to me an inane self-glorification."
The advancement of mankind through self-perfection of the
individual was to Hm, as it was to his contemporaries, the
/
" Werhe XXV, 127 f.
>« ^'^^/^^ XXVIII, 399 ff.
»' Werke XI, 213 ff. XII, I ff.
58 Werke YAW. XIV.
«» IV, 42/ Werke XVII, 211.
326 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
highest co ncern of life, and nobody has spoken more nobly
or eloquently of it than he."
" Whatever belongs to the nature of our race, every possible
means of its improvement and progress, this is the object which
a humane man has in mind, this is the centre of his work. Since
our race must work out its own destiny, none of its members has
a right to be idle in this work. Every one must take part in the
weal and woe of the whole, every one must willingly sacrifice
his share of reason, his mite of activity, to the genius of the
race. No one, however, can contribute to the welfare of man-
kind who does not make himself what he can and ought to be
made. Every one, therefore, must cultivate the seed of human-
ity, most of all, on the bed where he himself is planted. We
all carry in us an ideal of what we ought to be and are not.
The dross which we ought to cast away, the perfection which
we ought to attain, we all know. A ndsince we can become what
we ought to be only throu gh ourselves and others from whom
we receive or whom we affe ct, our own hu manity necessarily
becomes at one with the humanity of other s."
In all this we hear the son of the age of enlightenment,
the apostle of to leration a nd cosmopolitanism . But we
also see jthe point where Herder l ifts himse lf above the
level of his o wn age, whe re he reaches^out into the nine-
teenth centiiry. Enthusiastic individualist that he was, he
was at the same tim e the first great modern collectivist .
Every individual was to him a public character, an heir of
all the ages, an epitome o f a whole natio n. He first among
modern thinkers considered man in the fulness of his in-
stincts, in the endless variety of his relations to the larger
organisms of which he is a part. He first attempted on a
large scale to represent all history as an unbroken chain of
cause and effect, or rather as a grand living whole in whose
development no atom is lost, no force is wasted. As he
himself says in that wonderful apotheosis of humanity, the
fifteenth book of the Ideen":
*" Briefe z. Bef. d. Humanitat III, 32; /. c. 153.
« XV, 4. 5; Werke Hempel XI, 193 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 327
" If no sunbeam that ever fell upon our earth has been lost, no
withered leaf fallen from a. tree, no corpse of a decaying animal,
no seed blown away by the wind, how much less could an action
of a conscious being have remained without effect ? Every one
of the living generations has progressed within the limits which
other generations put to it; and the industry of man as well as
the madness of his ravages has become an instrument of life in
the hands of time. Upon the ruins of destroyed cities there
arise verdant fields, cultivated by a new, hopeful people. Divine
Omnipotence itself cannot ordain that effect should not be effect;
it cannot change the earth to what it was a thousand years ago.
Let any one of our day try to sing an Iliad, to write like jEschy-
lus, Sophocles, or Plato; it is impossible. The simple childlike
frame of mind, the naive way of looking at the world which the
Greeks possessed, are irrevocably things of the past. We,'oirthe
other hand, have and know a great many things of which neither
Greeks, nor Jews, nor Romans knew. One century has taught
the other; tradition has become fuller; history, the muse of time,
speaks now with a hundred voices, blows on a hundred flutes.
And even the confusion which has resulted from this enormous
increase of knowledge is a necessary part of human progress.
All beings have their centre in themselves, and each stands in a
well-proportioned relation to all the rest; they all depend on the
equilibrium of antagonistic forces, held together by one central
organizing power. With this certainty for a guide, I wander
through the labyrinth of history and see everywhere harmo-
nious, divine order. For whatever can happen, happens; what-
ever can work, does work. Reason only and justice abide;
madness and folly destroy themselves. It is a beautiful thing to
dream of a future life, to imagine one's self in friendly intercourse
with all the wise and good men who ever worked for humanity
and entered the higher land with the sweet reward of accom-
plished labour. But, in a certain sense, history also opens to us
these delightful bowers of friendship and discourse with the
upright and thoughtful of all times. Here Plato stands before
me; there I hear Socrates's kindly questionings, and share in his
last fate. When Marcus Antoninus in his chamber communes
with his heart, he also speaks to mine; and poor Epictetus gives
commands more powerful than those of a king. The ill-starred
Tullius, the unfortunate Boethius speak to me, confiding to me
the circumstances of their lives, the anguish and the comfort of
their souls. Thus history leads us, as it were, into the council
328 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
of fate, teaches us the eternal laws of human nature, and assigns
to us our own place in that great organism in which reason and
goodness have to struggle, to be sure, with chaotic forces, but
always, according to their very nature, must create order and
go forward on the path of victory."
2. Kant.
While Herder conceived of all histgry_as_a j:pnscious or .
unconscious striving after^ a ,harmoniaus_W^eAding_o£indi-:
T?,Bnmniiiati()n_vidual _aiid Collective forces, Immanuel Kant ,
ofempirioiam ('1^24-1804) discovered this_s^arne ideal as a
in the Kantian L^g^l^tive jaw of the intellectual and moral
philosophy. nature^ of, man. In Kant ther e converged the
strongest, philosophical tendenc ies of the seventeenth and
eighteentji^ cen^urieSj in the same manner in which the
strongest religious tendencies of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries converged in Luther. Luther, by combining in
himself the Mystic and the Humanistic movement, revolu-
tionized the mediaeval church. Kant, by combining in
himself both the e mpiricism and the idealism of his prede -
cessors , revo lutionized modern thought.
Developing, correcting, and systematizing the ideas of
English empiricism, he demonstrated in the Kritik der
reinen Vernunft {jj^x)" the subj ect ive charac ter of all
The empirioal human knowledge. Human knowledg e consist s
character of ^j ^^^ fundamental elements: matter and form.
namanknow- -^ — -■ —---
ledge. The matter is furnished to u s by experienc e.
Without sense impressions, without a tangible, visible world
our mind would be without any contents; science would
be without an objective basis. There ar e no demonstrable
truths except those which can be verified by^ empirical^ex-
perience. Questions which are beyond the reach of empiri-
cal experience, such as : Is there a God ? Is there freedom
*' Sdmmtl. Werke in chronol. Reihenf. ed. Hartenstein III. — For
Herder's ill-tempered attacks against the Kantian system, which, how-
ever, in no way disprove the essential harmony of the two men with
regard to the ultimate ideals of life, cf. Haym, Herder II, 651 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 329
of the human will ? Is there immortality of the human
soul? do not belong before the tribunal of the intellect;
from a theoretical point of view they are unanswerable.
By its very nature, the human intellect is debarred from
the infinite; its only legitimate study is the world as we see
it about us.
But how do we see this world ? In Kant's phraseology,
What is the form of human knowledge ? , When we say:
' The stone is square, the tree is tall,' we seem
to attribute squareness to the stone, height '^'? subjective
to the tree as mherent space qualities. In
reality we describe the result of a certain process going on
in our own nervous organism. When we say: ' The violet
blossoms earlier than the aster,' we seem to attribute the
early blossoming to the violet, the late blossoming to the
aster as inherent time qualities. In reality we describe a
certain state of our own self-consciousness. When we say:
'An explosion is produced through the tension of gases,'
we seem to state an inherent relation of cause and effect
between the two events. In reality we describe our own
method of registering and classifying events. In other
words, the th ree fundamental forms of all human knowl-
edge, the conceptions of space, time, and causation, are not
determinations or relations of things ; they are subjective
functions of our own intellect through which we see things.
We see things not as they are, but as they appear to us.
^Intellec tually, th en,"the prevailing tendency of our Jife is
_an extreme individualism. Only the raw material of „ our
cognition is found in the outer world; it is the
jnind which ^endows this j;aw_ material witha ^J-^j^^^jignj,
form. The object of our experience is a chaotic
mass of sensations; pur intellect through organizing^ activity
Jr ansfo rms these sensations into knowledge. All nature as
we know it is a product of the human mind. Each indi-
vidual observer, inasmuch as he compels the objects to
submit to the functions of his mind, ie a law-giver, a creator.
33° SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
If in Xkt.Kritik der reinen Ve rnunft we see Kant, start -
ing from the premi ses of empiri cism, gradually rise into the
region of the ideal, we find him in th e Kritik der pra ktischen
Vernunft (1788)" from the outset in the ideal sphere. It is
here that he brings to a climax the ethical ideas of Leibniz
and Spinoza; it is here that he formulates t he religion of
modern mankind.
Our intellect is confined to the realm of the senses as the
object of its activity; our will reaches out into the infinite.
We could not hope, love, strive, struggle, in
short, we could not live, without the conviction ?f°5°^ ooUoo-
favism,
that this fleeting world of appearances is the
manifestation of an eternal, spiritual world. To the intel-
lect the ideas of God, of nioral freedom, of jmmortality, axe
undemonstrable assumptions ; to the will they are necessary
conditions of our life. If we cannot say: // is sure that
they are real, we certainly can and must say: We are sure
that they are real. In our own personality, in our spiritual
organization, in the dictates of our conscience, we find a
direct and absolute proof that there exists a moral order of
things of which we ourselves are an integral part. The
moral law is the most complete expression of man's highest
dignity. It resides within each individual, it is felt by him
instinctively as his innermost essence ; buf at the same
time it lifts him above his own self and c onnects him with
all mankind/^
" Has not every man, even if he possess only a moderate degree
of honesty, sometimes found that he eschewed a harmless He by
which he might have drawn himself out of a troublesome affair
or perhaps even have helped a beloved and worthy friend, solely
because he did not want to lower himself in his own eyes ? Is
not an honest man, entangled in a misfortune which he might
have avoided if he had only set aside his duty, is he not upheld
by the consciousness that he preserved and glorified in his own
person the dignity of mankind and that he has no reason to be
ashamed of himself or to fear the test of self-examination ? "
" Sdmmtl. Werke V, I-169. " Kritik d. prakt. Vern.; I. c. 92.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 33 1
_ In obedience, th en, to the moral law, in submission to the
voice of duty which speaks to every one of us from within
his own selfj^ther e lies the true freedom of man. < ^^ ma3!i
This is the central point around which revolves law.
our whole existence. Everything else in this world of ap-
pearances is subject to doubt and misrepresentation; the
dictates of d uty alone are a direct and unmistakable revela-
tion .of_the..divine. They a lone are exem pt from all sensual
admixture, they alone are roo ted solely i n man's spiritual
Jjeing, th ey alone justify our belief in an eternal goodness
and justice.
Thus, while Kant demolished, on the one hand^ whatever
was le ft of a religious system which saw in God an extra-
mundane and extra-human sovereign, he firmly
established, on the other, a belief which recon- ^?™»3eni
■ — , ' . . , . . leligioiii
strucls the divme from the mner consciousness
of man. We feel ourselves moral beings. This is the
fundamental fact of all ethics and of all religion. This
feeling assures us that " it is impossible to conceive of any-
thing in this world or without which could without restric-
tion be called good, except a good will ; and this not on ac-
count of what it produces or effects, but solely on account
of its intrinsic goodness. " " This feeling gives us an unfail-
ing guide of conduct in the maxim *° : " Act in such a man-
ner that the motive of thy will at any time might be made
the principle of a universal legislation." This feeling teaches
us that the aim of life is not individual happiness, but work
in the service of humanity.
Here again, as Jjef ore in Herder, we see the point wh^re
rtiejndividualism o^ the eighteenth century, developed to
its highest form,^passes over into nineteenth-
century collectivism. Personality was the ggj^jj^j^^t
watchword of the Kantian philosophy no less
than of Herder's conception of history. But to both Kant
" Grundlegung zur Meiaphysik der Sittin; Werke IV, 241.
*' Kritik d. prakt. Vim.; I. c. 3a.
332 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
ancL Herder^i^rgpriglilX-J-g^gi^ g"'"^*^^^"g '^'^^^^ different
from what it meant to their int ellectual predecess ors^Rous-
seau^d the 'Sturm und Drang' enthusiasts. Rousseau
and hij fgllgwers saw in mankind an agg regate o f free and
equal individuals; Hejder saw in h an or ganic who le, made
up of a great variety of widelv differing natio nal type s ;
Kant saw in it a community of moral Jbeings,_heldJogether__
by t he sternlaw of duty. The practical outcome of Rous-
' seau's teachings was the anarchy of the French Revolution.
The practical outcome of the teachings of Kant and of
Herder was the regeneration of the Prussian state by men
like Fichte, Humboldt, Stein, Scharnhorst — men who, on
the one hand, represented the most refined individuality,
who embodied the highest intellectual culture of their time,
and who on the other, recognised the inexorable rule of
the moral law, and who felt deeply the obligations laid upon
each individual by the traditions of common national life.
One of these men has expressed in so characteristic a
manner the idea of personality which was at the bottom of
German thought at the end of the eighteenth
Whelm von ^^^ jjjg beginning of the nineteenth century,
HumDoldti . i- 1 •
that his words may stand as a motto for this
whole epoch. In his essay On the Proper Limits of State
Activity, -wntten in 1792," Wilhelm von Humboldt under-
takes to show that the whole aim of public life is to give the
individual the fullest opportunity for unhampered develop-
ment. The definition, however, which Humboldt gives of
what seems to him the ideal individual is a striking proof of
the height to which individualism had now risen, how far it
had been removed from private selfishness and isolation,
how replete with noblest humanity it had come to be.
" The idea of moral and intellectual perfection," he says,** " is
large and full and inspiring enough not to need any longer the
■" Published in full only after the author's death, in his Gesammelte
WerkeWl, I ff.
« L. c. 64 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 333
fielp of religious symbols. Even to him who has not accustomed
himself to personify the sum total of all moral goodness in a divine
ideal, this idea of perfection must be an ever-present incentive to
activity, an unfailing source of happiness. Firmly convinced by
experience that his mind is capable of progress in higher moral
strength, he cannot help working toward this goal. The pros-
pective annihilation of his earthly existence does not frighten
him; his unavoidable dependence on external circumstances does
not oppress him. His mind, conscious of its inner strength, feels
itself raised above the changes of this world of appearances. If
he, then, reviews his past; if he examines his course step by
step, how by degrees he came to be what he now is; if he thus
finds cause and effect, aim and means united in himself, so that,
full of the noblest human pride, he may exclaim ":
Hast du nicht AUes selbst vollendet
Heilig gliihend Herz ? —
how is it possible that he should feel the loneliness and helpless-
ness which are usually associated with the lack of a belief in a
personal, extra-mundane cause of the chain of finite beings ? Nor
does this consciousness of self, this being in and through him-
self, make him harsh and insusceptible toward other beings, or
shut out love and benevolence from his heart. The very idea
of perfection which animates his whole activity projects his
own existence into the existence of others. He is not com-
pletely imbued with the highest ideal of morality so long as he
considers himself or others as isolated beings, so long as he
has not attained the conception of a perfection to which all
spiritual beings contribute as constituent parts. Perhaps his
relation to his fellow-beings is all the more intimate, his sympathy
with their fate all the more hearty, the more deeply he is con-
vinced that their fate, as well as his, depends altogether on indi-
vidual effort."
These, then, to sum up briefly, were t he main fe atures of
_ the intellectual life underlying the ckssk Germ^an liter^^^^
lof the days of Weimar and Jena. In the first
placBi^n absolute freedom from traditional au- ^henew
thority. Probably never ill the history of man-
kind has there been a period when men looked at things
*' Cf. Goethe's Prometheus; Werke I, 162.
334 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
from as broad a point of view and with so little bias. _Hu;
manity in the la rgest sense w as the chos^n_studj;j)f_the_age.
Everywhere — in language, in literature, in political institu-
tions, in religion — men tried to detect the human element
and brought it to light with all the fearlessness of scientific
ardour. With this boldness of research there was allied,
secondly, a supreme interest in^ the inner life. Man was
considered bound up, to "be sure, with the world of the
senses, and confined to it as the scene of his activity,
yet essentially a spiritual being, determining the material
world rather than determined by it, responsible . for his ac-
tions to the unerring tribunal of his own moral conscious-
ness. In the sea of criticism and doubt which had swept
away traditional conceptions and beliefs this inner con-
sciousness appeared as the one firm rock.. Here, so it
seemed, were thetrue foundations for a new religious bel ief,
a belief which maintains that it is ab solutel y impossible to
serve God otherwise than by^fulfiUin£_one^s^duties_to^men,
and which considers the divine rather as the final goal than
as the pre-existing cause of life. And lastly, there was a
joyo us optimism in the men of this age which could not
1 help raising them into a higher sphere. The y believed in ^
the fvLture. They beli eved in eternity. T hey believed that
,\ humanity was slowly advancing toward perfection, that a
time must come when the thoughts of the few wise men, the
dreams of the few poets and prophets would become trans-
Tused into the life-blood "of the masses, when the good
would be done because it is the good, when instinct and
duty would be reconciled; and Ihey derived 'their "highest
inspirations from the feeling that they themselves were
workers in the service of this cause."*
It will now be our task to see how these intellectual and
moral ideals were reflected in the work of the two greatest
poets of the age.
*'* For the preceding pages cf, Paulsen, Einl. i. d, Philes, p. 306 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 335
3. Goethe and Schiller.
Goethe and Schiller stand to each other in a relation both
of contrast and harmony, similar to that which we found to
exist between Herder and Kant.
Goethe's chosen field of study was nature and the human
affections, Schiller's was history and human aspirations.
Goethe's prevailing attitude was one of sympa- _._
thetic contemplation, Schiller's was one of ener- their views
getic activity. Goethe, like Herder, looked at "^lif^.
life as an organic whole of natural causes and effects. To
live one's self out to the full extent of one's faculties, to
promote in others the unhampered growth of individuality,
to recognise the unity and reasonableness of the whole
order of phenomena — this seemed to him the first and most
necessary task of civilized man. Schiller, like Kant, looked
at life as a continuous struggle for perfection. The victory of
mind over matter, of the inner law over outer conditions,
of the human will over the inevitableness of fate — this
seemed to him the great problem of existence. Goethe
strove for aesthetic universality, Schiller strove for moral
freedom.
But in spite of these far-reaching differences of temper
and genius, the mission performed by Goethe and Schiller
for modern humanity was essentially the same. On the
basis of the most complete intellectual freedom, unham-
pered by any bias of whatever kind, religious, social, or
even national, they reared a structure of poetic symbols
embodying the fundamental demands of all religion and
bringing out the common ideals of all society and of every
race.
The typical man: man placed in the conflict between the
sensual and the spiritual, but impelled by his g^^^jj^g^^f
innernature to overcome this conflict; maninevi- their nltimate
tably exring and sinning, but nevertheless master ^''^^'^^
of his own destiny; man naturally bent on rounding out his
33^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
own individuality, but through this very instinct forced into
organic relation with the social and national body; in short,
man rising to the stature of his true self, striving for a har-
monious blending of all his powers — this was the ideal which
inspired both Goethe's and Schiller's poetic work, as it in-
deed inspired all the highest artistic productions of the
time, Mozart's Don Juan no less that Beethoven's Fidelia
or Thorwaldsen's Triumph of Alexander.
Neither Goethe nor Schiller attained to this lofty height
before they reached the years of ripened manhood. Both
began in the tumultuous fashion of the ' Sturm
the^Stom-and- ""^ Drang ' enthusiasts. Their early works, al-
Stress move- though fully revealing the extraordinary genius
of both, were not so much creations of pure art as
outcries of souls overflowing with compassionate zeal for
struggling and suffering humanity.
If one remembers what a degree of classic perfection,
what a noble harmony of substance and form German litera-
Superiorityof tare had reached in Lessing's master-works, one '
Lessing's cannot help feeling that Goethe's and Schiller's-
over the youthful effusions marked a decided lowering of
youthful works aesthetic as well as moral standards. Goethe's Gotz
von Berlichingen (1773), with its crude imita-
tion of Shakspere, its looseness of dramatic structure, and
its lack of true dramatic motive, forms indeed a striking
contrast to the refined, compact, well-rounded proportions
of Emilia Galotti. The languid sentimentalism of Werther
(1774), the weakly self-indulgence of Stella (1775), become
all the more manifest if compared with the healthy manli-
ness of ch aracters like Tellheim or Appiani.
■ — Even tie greatest of Goethe's creations, Faust, in its first
T ■ I T. . conception, was of far less universal significance
Lessing's Fanst v ,
andeoethe's than seems to have been Lessing's conception
earliest Faust of the same theme. No greater loss has ever
befallen German literature than the m^^terious
disappearance of Lessing's Faust. From what we know
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 337
indirectly about this work," it is clear that Lessing had
transformed the sixteenth-century magician into a cham-
pion of eighteenth-century enlightenment. Faust was rep-
resented as an ideal youth, living only for the pursuit of
wisdom, superior to all human passion 'except the passion
for truth. The attempt to ruin this ' favourite of God,' to
ruin him through the nobility of his own nature, through
his burning thirst for knowledge, through his insatiable
yearning for the divine, this was the part to be played in
Lessing's drama by Satan and his associates. But from the
very beginning the hearers were not to be left in doubt as
to the final issue of this contest. For when, in the first
scene, the satanic spirits set out for their task of seduction,
there is heard a voice from above: " Ye shall not conquer! "
It is hard to conceive of a similar harmonious issue of
Goethe's Faust in its original form." Here Faust appears,
not as a cha mpion of human reason , but as an apostle ot
numan pas sion, as a despise r of tradition and orde r, as T"
reck less 'Sturm und Drang^ individualist, whos e lawless
career, it seems, c an only be expiated b y death itself..
Ur IS It possible to imagine any form of expiation except^
death by which Faust could atone for the foulest of crimes,
the wilful corruption of a pure, innocent girl ? Is it not
intolerable to think that after Gretchen's ruin Faust should
live on, regretful perhaps of the past, but without any suffer-
ing commensurate with the agony which he inflicted on her
who loved him ? And if this is true, if a tragic death is
the only outcome consistent with the rebellious career of
Goethe's P'aust as originall)' conceived, how limited, how
fragmentary does this conception appear compared with the
grand outline and the wide perspective of Lessing's Faust
ideal! I \
> . .
'" Cf. Lessing's Werke Hempel XI, 2, p. 579 ff. Erich Schmidt,
Lessing I, 369 ff.
" Cf. Goethe's Faust in ursprilngl. Geslalt ed. Erich Schmidt. W.
Scherer, Aus Goethes FrUhzeit; Quellen u. Forsck. XXXIV, 77 fif.
338 SOCIAL FORCES IN' GERMAN LITERA TURE.
Even further removed from Lessing's artistic refinemerif ]
and intellectual serenity were the beginnings of Schiller,!
His first dramas, Die Rduber (1781), FiescA
SohlUar's (1783), Kabale und Liebe (1784), besides hav-
early diamaa, j^g ^U tjjg faults of the violent and over-
strained ' Storm-and-gtress ' language, are in substance
pathological rather than tragic. That an affectionate
father acting solely upon the insinuations of an infa-
mous slanderer should tear his most beloved son from his
bosom and abandon him to abject misery; that this son
instead of making a direct appeal to his father, instead of
disentangling the whole web of lies and forgery by a simple
statement of the truth, should fly off into the forest, gather
a band of robbers about him, and declare war upon human
society; that this whole train of horror and crime should
have its origin in the cold villainy of another son whose
dominant passion is evil for evil's sake — this is what we
are forced to accept in The Robbers. Still more dis-
torted and unnatural are the plot and characters of Kabale
und Liebe, This scheming courtier, who, in order to ingra-
tiate himself with his princely master, would drive his own
son into a marriage with the prince's mistress, thereby
wrecking his hopes for a union with a pure, innocent burgher
maiden; this ecstatic youth, who, although fully aware of
his father's intrigues as well as the unwavering faithfulness
of his beloved, is through a most shallow stratagem made
to doubt her, and thus to plunge both her and himself
into death; this guileless burgher maiden who talks to
the prince's mistress as though she herself had fathomed
all the misery of a sinful life; this sentimental mistress
who would fain arouse our sympathy by intimating that
she has given away her honour, but not her heart " — how
painful, not to say atrocious," all this is ! Even where, as
" C£. Kabale u. Liebe II, I ; Sammtl. Schr. Ill, 390.
*• To what extent Kabale u. Liebe reflects actual conditions and
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 339
in Fiesco, the characters are less abnormal and out of pro-
portion, there is such a lack of simplicity and such a large
admixture of the accidental and artificial in the plot that
the whole fails to produce a compact and harmonious im-
pression. How inorganic, for instance, and out of accord
with the central action is such a scene as the death of Leo-
nore, Fiesco's wife. Fiesco has made use of the republican
conspiracy against the tyranny of the Dorias to reach out
himself after the ducal crown of Genoa. He is now on the
point of striking the final blow. The city is in revolt.
Fiesco at the head of the conspirators is marching against
the Doria palace. The fall of the reigning family seems
imminent. The revolutionary leader is just about to throw
off the republican mask and proclaim himself dictator.
At this moment he is overtaken, — not by the inevitable con-
sequence of his own guilt, but by a mere outward mishap.
He kills by mistake his own wife. " Leonore," he exclaims,"
" the hour has come : thy Fiesco is duke of Genoa ; — and the
most abject beggar in Genoa would hesitate to exchange
his misery with my woe and my purple. A wife shares
his misery ; — and with whom can I share my splendour ? "
Here, Lessing would have said, we hear not the solemn
voice of tragedy, but the hollow clamour of the melodrama.
The true poet reveals to us the unerring law of human
doing and suffering; Schiller here confronts us with the
capricious lawlessness of chance.
All these defects of Goethe's and Schiller's early works
are obvious and beyond dispute. And yet when Extraordi-
we remind ourselves of the torrents of violent nary effect of
emotion let loose by the appearance above all gohiuer's
of Werther, Gotz, and The Robbers ; when we re- youthfol
member that so cold and feelingless an observer ^"^ °'
of men as Napoleon carried a copy of Werther with him
characters of eighteenth-century society, is well shown by J. Minor,
Schiller II, 127 ff.
^FiescoV, 13; Sii?nmtl. Schr. Ill, 153.
340 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
during the Egyptian campaign " ; when we think of Mme.
de Stael's laughing remark that this book was responsible
for more suicides than the most beautiful woman had ever
been "; when we recall what a German prince once said
to Goethe," that, if he had been God on the point of cre-
ating the world, and had foreseen that Schiller would write
The Robbers in it, he would not have created it, — we may
realize how far these works excelled those of Lessing in
their immediate effect upon the imagination and morals of
the time.
Here, at last, the revolutionary spirit of the age had
found a body suited to itself. Just because there was
nothing in these works of the moderation and
Their elomen- self-restraint which characterizes even the bold-
tal poweri
est of Lessing's works, they were hailed, espe-
cially by the young, as messengers of a radically new ordei\
of things; their very eccentricities and abnormities were
accepted as unmistakable tokens that the days even of
enlightened absolutism were drawing to a close. These
works seemed to restore to their rightful place the elemen-
tal powers and instincts of human nature ; they seemed to
demand peremptorily and with the assurance of immediate
success what to Lessing was only a far-off ideal : the eman-
cipation of the masses; they seemed to hurl against the
rulers of Europe the words of defiance which Goethe's Pro-
metheus addresses to the ruler of Olympus ":
Ich dich ehren ? Wofilr ?
Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert
Je des Beladenen ?
Hast du die ThrSnen gestillet
Je des Geangsteten ?
Hat nicht mich zum Manne geschmiedet
Die allmachtige Zeit ?
" Cf. J. W. Appall, Werther u. s. Zeit'' p. 43 i.
" Cf. Hettner /. c. Ill, y, p. 165.
" Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe I, 206.
»» Werke Hempel 1, 162.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 34 1
Und das ewige Schicksal,
Meine Herren und deine ?
Hier sitz' ich, forme Menschen
Nach meinem Bilde,
Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei,
Zu leiden, zu weinen,
Zu geniessen und zu freuen sich,
Und dein nicht zu achten,
Wie ich!
It is interesting to observe how even these early works of
the two men reveal the essential contrasts in Difference in
their mental physiognomy, and how they at the ^^ physiog-
same time point to the common ideal of human- Qo"fiie°s and
ity which after all inspired the work of both. Bcliiller's
Goethe's characters are receptive rather than ^^'^ '"''^^'
initiative, emotional rather than reasoning, deep rather than
strong, gentle rather than heroic, types of inner Goethe's
life rather than of outer activity. Even the man- "''"■^''teys
. . types of inner
hest of them all, Gotz von Berlichingen, does life,
not so much determine circumstances as he is determined
by them; he becomes a rebel not because he wants to revo-
lutionize the present, but because he wants to uphold the past ;
he is ruined not so much through what he does as through
what he is: a trusting, faithful, upright man, standing alone
in a world of meanness, treachery, and rascality. He is the
victim of a time in which, to use the words which Goethe
himself prefixed to his drama," " the heart of the people
has been trampled into the mud, and is no longer capable
of a noble sentiment." The same thing, only much more
emphatically, is true of Werther. He, too, is a victim of
his conditions. He harbours within him a world of feeling
and thought; he would embrace the universe with loving
arms; he understands the language of the brook and the
" I.e., to the first version of 1771-72, which was published only in
the posthumous worl£s. The quotation is from Haller's didactic novel
Usong,
342 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
trees no less than that of the human heart; he sympathizes
with all that lives and breathes, with the worm in the grass
no less than with the spirit of Homer and Ossian; he is
artist, philosopher, poet, philanthropist :— everything except
a man! The conflicts of life grate upon him; the conven-
tions of society distress him; he feels, or imagines him-
self, surrounded by miserable class prejudice and philistin-
ism, and he has not the strength of mind or the firmness of
will needed to make him a reformer. No wonder that
when he feels the hopelessness of his love for Lotte, life
ceases to be worth living.
"A veil has been removed from my soul," he writes,™ "and the
scene of infinite life changes before me into the abyss of an eternally
open grave. Can you say: 'this is ! ', since everything passes away,
since everything with the swiftness of a thunder-storm rolls past, so
rarely living out the whole strength of its existence, so continually
swept into the current, tossed about, and crashed against the rocks ?
There is not a moment which Joes not consume thee and thine about
thee, not a moment when thou art not, must not be, a destroyer.
The most harmless pleasure-walk costs the life of a thousand poor
worms, a step of thy foot annihilates the laborious structures of the
ants and stamps a little world into an ignominious grave. Ah ! not
the colossal and rare calamities of the world, these floods which wash
away your villages, these earthquakes which devour your cities, move
me; my heart is undermined by the consuming power which lies
hidden in the universe of nature, which has produced nothing that
did not destroy its neighbours and itself. And so I reel in anguish.
Heaven and earth and their restless forces about me: I see nothing
but an ever-devouring, ever-annihilating monster.'"
What is it, finally, that makes Faust's character ? Surely
not that which distinguishes Marlowe's Dr. Faustus or
even, though in a lesser, degree, the hero of the German
puppet-play. Marlowe's Faustus craves extraordinary
power; he broods over colossal plans; like a true English-
man he wants to rule men and to master the elements."
«» Letter of Aug. i8; Werke XIV, 59 f.
" Marlowe's Faustus ed, Breymann v, 343 ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 343
Had I as many soules as there be starres,
Ide giue them al for Mephastophilis :
By him He be great Emprour of the world,
And make a bridge through the moouing ayre.
To passe the Ocean with a band of men,
He joyne the hils that binde the Affriclce shore.
And make that land continent to Spaine,
And both contributory to my crowne:
The Emprour shal not Hue but by my leaue.
Nor any Potentate of Germany.
Goethe's Faust, as a true German of the eighteenth cen-
tury, is a dreamer and an idealist. What he craves is not
power, but a sighti of the divine. He is sick of words, he
longs for an intuition of the truly real, he longs to under-
stand the inner working of nature, to fathom the law of life,
he is drunk with the mysteries of the universe. But alas!
this soaring idealist is after all but of the earth earthy.
By the side of the spiritual longing which lifts him above
himsel'
into the high ancestral spaces
there dwells within him the sensual instinct which
with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces.
And in the conflict between these " two souls within his ',
breast " Faust spends the best of his vitality. I
What a contrast to this feminine fulness and ripe in-
wardness of Goethe's characters are the rugged, aggres'
sive figures of Schiller's muse, eager for public Schiller's
life and for public deeds ! "Fie! fie upon this Jifftyp/s
, . . ., . oiontward
weak effeminate age,' exclaims the robber activity.
Moor," " fit only to ponder over the deeds of former times,
and to torture the heroes of antiquity with commentaries,
or mangle them in tragedies. Am I to squeeze my body
into stays, and straitlace my will in the trammels of law ?
What might have risen to an eagle's flight has been reduced
" Die Rduber I, 2; Sdmmtl. Schr. II, 29 f. The trsl. is Bohn's.
344 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
to a snail's pace, by law. Never yet has law formed a great
man; 'tis liberty that breeds giants and heroes. Oh that
the spirit of Hermann still glowed in his ashes! Set me at
the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Ger-
many shall spring a republic , compared with which Rome
and Sparta will be but nunneries." Fiesco,"a. republican
tragedy," as Schiller significantly calls it, deals' from be-
ginning to end with the great affairs of state; and if the
hero of the play, seduced by selfish ambition, deserts the
common cause, his very selfishness is so colossal and awe-
inspiring that we seem to see in it, not the emotion of a
single individual, but the bursting into existence of a
mighty collective will. It is as though we heard History
herself in that monologue of his in which he decides to be-
come a traitor to liberty."
" Is the armour which encases the pigmy's feeble frame suited to
the giant? — This majestic city mine !— To flame above it like the god
of day ! To rule over it with a monarch mind ! To hold in subjec-
tion all the raging passions, all the insatiable desires in this fathom-
less ocean ! To obey or to command ! — A fearful dizzying gulf that
absorbs whate'er is precious in the eyes of men : the trophies of the
conqueror, the immortal works of science and of art, the voluptuous
pleasures of the epicure, the whole wealth encompassed by the seas !
— To obey or to command ! To be or not to be ! — The space between
is as wide as from the lowest depths of hell to the throne of the
Almighty."
And lastly, Kabale und Liebe. What is this drama if not
a political manifesto, an Emilia Galotti intensified and ex-
aggerated, a literary anticipation of the social upheaval of
1789? None of the Storm-and-Stress writings gives so
merciless and glaring a picture of the unspeakable rotten-
ness of ancien regime society, none unfolds so impetuously
and boldly the standard of the revolution as this drama; in
none of them is there a scene which goes so directly to the
" Fiesco III, 2 ; /. t. Ill, 83 f. Bohn's trsl.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 345
core of popular misery as the interview between Lady
Milford, the prince's mistress, and the old valet whose two
sons were among some seven thousand young men who
were sold by the prince to the English to be marched off to
America."
"Lady ; But they went not by compulsion ?
Valet {laughing bitterly) : Oh dear no ! they were all volunteers !
Some forward fellows, to be sure, stepped out before the line and
asked the colonel at what price a yoke the prince was selling men.
But our most gracious lord had all the regiments march out on the
parade-ground and the impertinent fellows shot down. We heard the
muskets ring, saw their brains spatter the pavement, and the whole
army shouted ' Hurrah for America ! '
Lady : Good God ! and I heard nothing, noticed nothing.
Valet : Well, gracious lady — how did you happen to be riding with
his highness off to the bear-hunt just as they struck up the signal for
marching? You ought not to have lost the fine sight when the roll-
ing drums announced to us that it was time; and here wailing orphans
followed a living father, and there a mad mother ran to spit her suck-
ing child upon the bayonets, and how they hewed bride and bride-
groom apart with sabre-cuts, while we graybeards stood there in
despair and at last threw our crutches after the fellows. Oh, and in
the midst of all, the thundering drums that God might not hear us
pray ! ... At the city gate they turned and cried ; ' God be with you,
wives and children ! Long live our good father, the prince ! At the
Judgment Day we shall be Jaack ! ' "
Schiller's heroes are what Goethe's are not, types of out-
ward activity. Their inner life is less rich; their _._ .
impress upon the world is stronger. They shape artistic
circumstances, they battle with fate, they are S'^'i^*^"' ^
leaders of great popular movements, they are Schiller's
destroyers of usurped and oppressive power, early works.
Goethe's creations, as compared with the sharp contours
and subtle shading of Lessing's character-drawings, glow in
the full warmth and colour of life. As he himself poured
forth his whole being in lyrics of unrivalled depth and
" Kab. u. Liebe II, 2; /. c. Ill, 393 f.
34^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
power, so the characters of his epic and dramatic fancy re-
veal themselves to us wholly and without reserve ; every
one of them stands out roundly and fully, while the soft
lustre of poetry is spread evenly over them all. Schiller
strives for brilliant effects ; dark masses he hurls against
floods of glaring colour ; instead of rounding out his figures
he flashes a strong light on one side of them, and thus im-
parts to them a concentrated radiance which often makes
them appear larger than they really are.
As has been said already, in spite of these obvious con-
trasts of natural bent and artistic manner, there was in
_ . Goethe and Schiller from their very Jseginhings
nltimate a unity of ultimate moral aims not less apparent,
moral aims. qq^^ von Berlichingen and Karl Moor, Werther
and Fiesco, however widely they differ in range of thought
and activity, after all stand for one and the same thing : a
great and free personality, raised above the barriers of petty
conventions and breathing in the pure air of the universally
human. Ferdinand, in Kabale und Liebe,"'' throws away the
privileges of rank and station for the prize of true womanly
love. " Who can rend the bonds that bind two hearts, or
separate the tones of a chord ? True, I am a nobleman,
but show me that my patent of nobility is older than the
eternal laws of the universe, or my scutcheon more valid
than the handwriting of heaven in my Louisa's eyes : ' This
woman is for this man ' ? " — Egmont, whose first conception
in Goethe's mind was simultaneous with that of Gotz and
Faust, is the very type of a personality overflowing with life,
and in closest sympathy with all the healthy feelings that
swell a human breast". How he revels in the joys of forest
and field," " man's natural element, where, exhaling from
the earth, nature's richest treasures are poured forth around
" I, 4 ; I- <■■ 371.
" Egmont V, 2 ; Werke VII, 7g. Miss Swanwick's trsl.— Cf.
Dicht. u. Wahrk. b. 20 ; Werke XXIII, I02 f.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 347
US, while from, the wide heavens the stars send down their
blessings through the still air ; where, like earth-born giants
we spring aloft, invigorated by our mother's touch ; where
our entire humanity and our human desires throb in every
vein." How he delights in the sturdy independence of his
Netherlanders " : " They are men worthy to tread God's
earth, each complete in himself, a little king, steadfast,
active, capable, loyal, attached to ancient customs. 'Tis
hard to win their confidence, easy to retain it. Firm and
unbending I They may be crushed but not subdued."
How his countrymen cherish and adore him " : " Why are
we all so devoted to him ? Why, because one can read in
his face that he loves us ; because joyousness, openhearted-
nesS, and good-nature speak in his eyes ; because he pos-
sesses nothing that he does not share with him who needs it,
ay, and with him who needs it not." How Klarchen's
humble heart swells up at the thought of him " : " This
chamber, this lowly house, is a paradise, since Egmont's
love dwells here. . . . There is not a drop of false blood
in his veins. And, mother, is he not after all the great
Egmont ? Yet, when he comes to me, how tender he is,
how kind ! how anxious he is about me ! so nothing but
man, friend, lover ! " — The Marquis of Posa, the central
figure of Schiller's Don Carlos (1784-87), takes up the part
of Lessing's Nathan in pleading before the mightiest mon-
arch in Europe for freedom of thought, for civil rights, for
the restitution of " mankind's lost nobility." '° And Faust
breaks forth into that wonderful pantheistic confession of
faith, which is at the same time an apotheosis of hu-
manity " :
«' Egmont IV, 2 ; I. £. 71.
«8 16. I, I ; /. c. 19.
" 16. I, 3 ; /. c. 31 f.
'" £>on Carlos III, 10 ; Sammtl. Schr. V, 2, p. 316.
" ^t 3438 ff. (Weimar ed.). Bayard Taylor's trsl.
348 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
The All-enfolding,
The All-upholding,
Folds and upholds he not
Thee, me, himself?
Arches not there the sky above us ?
Lies not beneath us, firm, the earth?
And rise not, on us shining,
Friendly, the everlasting stars?
Look I not, eye to eye, on thee.
And feelst not, thronging
To head and heart, the force.
Still weaving its eternal secret.
Invisible, visible, round thy life ?
Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart.
And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art.
Call it then what thou wilt, —
Call it Bliss ! Heart ! Love ! God !
We may now understand how this inner afShity of
Goethe's and Schiller's views of life, this polarity, as it were,
&oethe and of their moral constitution, gradually drew them
Sohilleriu ^^^^ g^j,jj qx!ii&c as artists also, until in their
tneiT lull . , - '
matmity. ripest maturity they stood together as one man,
as a twofold embodiment of the most exalted ideals of their
age.
And here we see again how the individualistic movement
of the eighteenth century, after having passed through the
Transition successive Stages of Pietism, Sentimentalism, and
from the in- Rationalism, after having subsequently given
dividnalistio . , , . r , , „
to the ooUeo- "se to the revolutionary commotion of Sturm
tiiiBtio ideal, und Drang,' transformed itself at the height of
its development into a new, ideal collectivism, thus prepar-
ing the ground for the great national and social reform
movements of our own day. All of Goethe's and Schiller's
greatest productions point this way. They all lead out of
narrow, isolated, fragmentary conceptions of life into the
broad daylight of universal humanity. They all tend toward
the representation of human nature in its totality. They all
prophesy a state of human culture where the goal of ex-
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION: 349
istence — an equilibrium between the sensuous and the
spiritual, instinct and duty, egotism and altruism, the indi-
vidual and society — shall have been reached.
Nor is it too much to say that the whole state of German
culture during those golden Weimar days was an ideal an-
ticipation of such a new era in the history of Height of
mankind. No people has ever produced within eigl^teentli-
• . , r • 1 oentnry
SO limited a range of time such an astounding culture,
array of men devoted wholly to the highest tasks and the
broadest problems of humanity. No people has ever freed
itself so radically from the narrowing influences of race,
tradition, and belief, as the Germans during the last decades
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Kant when he dreams of a future confederation of
all states and peoples for the establishment of a universal
peace" ; Schelling when he conceives of the history of the
universe as an interminable process of spiritualization and
idealization " ; Fichte when he speaks contemptuously " of
" the earth-born men who recognise their fatherland in the
soil, the rivers, and the mountains of the state of their
birth, whereas the sunlike spirit, irresistibly attracted, will
wing its way wherever there is light and liberty " ; Schleier-
macher when he represents " as truly religious, not him
"who believes in holy scriptures, but him who needs no holy
scriptures, or who might produce a holy scripture himself "
— they all were inspired with the idea of a nobler, fuller,
more perfect type of man.
It must be admitted that there was an element of moral
weakness in this absolute intellectual freedom; that by
" Cf. the essay Zum ewigen Frieden (1795); Werke VI, 405 ff. Kuno
Fischer, Gesch. d. neueren Philos. IV, 231 ff.
" Cf. his Abhandlungen 2. Erl. d. Idealismus d. WissenschaftsUhre
(1796. 97) III ; SSmmtl. Werke I, 386 f.
" Grundzuge d. gegentu. Zeitalters (1804) XIV ; Sammtl. Werke VII,
212.
" Reden iiber d. Religion, ed. of 1799, /. 108.
3 so SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
overstepping the limits of race and creed these men over-
stepped the limits of nature itself; that their unbounded
worship of Greek civilization, which to them stood for the
noblest symbol of a perfect individuality, revealed a lack of
sympathy with their own homely surroundings; that their
message was addressed not to the people at large, but to
the cultivated few who were able to follow their aerial
flights. But it nevertheless remains true that without the
exalted creations of their thought and fancy there would be
to-day no German nation; and history would lack one of
the most striking instances' of collective organization born
of individualistic ideals.
In Goethe's life this period of transition to the fullest
harmony and completeness is marked, apart from the
greater number of his finest lyrics, by Iphigenie
maltood (1787). Tasso (1790), Wilhelm Meisters Lehr-
jahre (1795-96), Hermann und Dorothea (1797),
and what may be called the second conception of Faust,
(fixed between 1797 and 1808); in Schiller's life by nearly
all of his lyric and ballad poetry, by the Letters on the
Esthetic Education of Man (1795) and kindred essays, and
by the five great dramas, from Walknstein (1798-99) to
Wilhelm Tell (1804).
It is hardly necessary to dwell here on the often-drawn
comparison between Goethe's Iphigenie and the Iphigeneia
of Euripides. Suffice it to say, what has also
P genie. often been said before, that Goethe by freeing the
Greek legend from national limitation, by imbuing it with
a spirit of universal sympathy, by substituting for the con-
flict between the gods and mortals, between Greek atid bar-
barian, the conflict of the human heart between its lower
and its higher promptings, has given to this pathetic story
its final and eternal form." — In the background there lies
" Cf. GG. § 233 (p. 500 f.). For the relation of Goethe's drama
to the art of Racine and Gluclc see Scherer, Gesth. d. d. Litt. p.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 351
the dark night of Tartarus. We hear, it seems, the muffled
groan of the fettered Titans rising from it. We see in less
dim outline the curse-laden heroic figures of the sons of
Tantalus. Nameless horrors committed by one generation
after another, — Atreus slaughtering his brother's children;
Agamemnon slain by his wife and her wanton lover; the
death of Klytemnaestra at the hands of her only son, — loom
up before us in gigantic and Shadowy proportions. And as
a living embodiment of the crime-begetting power of crime
there rushes upon the scene, plainly visible in the foreground
of the action, the only male survivor of this self-destroying
race, Orestes, the matricide, pursued by madness and de-
spairing of life. Against this mass of accumulated horrors
there stands out the pure saintlike figure of Iphigenie. She
is the only one of her race whom the breath of perdition
has not touched. In early youth a divine dispensation res-
cued her from the altar on which she was about to be
immolated. Since theri'slW'ilas^ lived, far removed^ from
the land of her birth, separated from all that is dear to her,
in holy self-renunciation and devotion to duty, a priestess
of humanity amid barbarians. It is through her healing
hand, through contact with her pure humanity, that the
frenzied mind of Orestes is restored to healffi^and hope,
that the ancient hereditary curse is lifted from the house of
Tantalus, and a new era of human brotherhood and free-
dom is ushered in. Goethe's Iphigenie is the first great
dramatic work which shows unmistakably the falling away
from the titanic impetuosity and revolutionary bitterness of
the 'Sturm und Drang' period; it is a poetic symbol of
the purifying influence which the friendship with Frau
von Stein exercised upon Goethe, of the classic serenity
which the Italian journey (1786-87) shed upon his mind;
it is a triumphal song of inner regeneration. The power
of holiness over sin, of truth over deceit, of unselfish, all-
538 f. H. Grimm, Goethe II, 24 ff. Cf., also, Kuno Fischer, Goethe-
Schriften I.
352 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
enduring love over wilfulness and gloom, of calm self-posses-
sion over tumultuous revolt, has never been more beauti-
fully portrayed; in crystalline transparency and harmonious
simplicity the modern stage has not its equal.
Torquato Tasso, still more exclusively than Iphigenie,
deals with inner struggles and aspirations; although by no
means lacking dramatic motive, it is not so much
Tasso, ^ drama as a symphony of thought and feeling,
revealing the deepest chords of Goethe's own spiritual ex-
perience. Here, too, we see a conflict between the diseased
and the healthy, between a fragmentary and a compre-
hensive view of life. On the one hand, Tasso himself,
the inspired artist, the worshipper of beauty, the lofty
eighteenth-century individualist. He lives in a world of his
own, peopled with the creations of his fancy."
His eye scarce lingers on this earthly scene.
To nature's harmony his ear is tuned.
What history offers and what life presents
His bosom promptly and with joy receives.
The widely scattered is by him combined, '
And his quick feeling animates the dead.
Oft he ennobles what we count for naught.
What others treasure is by him despised.
Thus, moving in his own enchanted sphere.
The wondrous man doth still allure us on
To wander with him and partake his joy.
Though seeming to approach us, he remains
Remote as ever, and perchance his eye,
Resting on us, sees spirits in our place.
On the other hand, Antonio, the man of the world. One
might call him an ideal anticipation of the typical German
of to-day. Stately, proud, self-possessed, he looks at life as
a continual struggle of opposing forces, and he is sure to be
himself on the winning side. Organization, discipline, offi-
cial duties — these are the themes which he is fond of dis-
" Words of Leonore, Tasso I, i ; Werke VII, 204. Cf. Kuno
Fischer, Gotthe-Schriften III.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 353
cussing. He chactarerizes himself in characterizing his
chosen model, Pope Gregory XIII."
The world lies spread before his searching gaze
Clear as the interests of his own domain.
In action we must yield him our applause,
And mark with joy when time unfolds the plans
Which his deep forethought fashioned long before.
He honours science when it is of use, —
Teaching to govern states, to know mankind;
He prizes art when it embellishes, —
When it exalts and beautifies his Roitie.
Within his sphere of influence he admits
Naught inefficient, and alone esteems
The active cause and instrument of good.
Between these diametrically opposed views of life, be-
tween these two characters who collide with each other
"because nature did not form one man of both," the pen-
dulum of the action swings to and fro. In the beginning
our sympathies are altogether with Tasso. The modesty of
the youth around whose head there flames the halo of
immortal genius; the noble seriousness of his soaring imagi-
nation; his deep feeling for friendship which makes him
exclaim":
Who doth not in his friends behold the world
Deserves not that of him the world should hear;
the ingenuousness of his gratitude toward his lord and
patron the duke Alfonso of Ferrara; the purity of his fer-
vent passion for the gentle princess Leonora: — all this makes
us see in him a true messenger of the divine. Antonio, on
the contrary, impresses us at first as essentially narrow and
earthy. He has that veneration for " solid facts " which so
often is nothing but incapacity to see things in their true
dimensions; he has no feeling for the rights of genius; he
ill disguises his contempt for a life devoted to the problems
of the inner self; he openly betrays the smallness of his
™ Tasso I, 4 ; /. c. 217. " lb. I, 3 ; /. c. 212.
354 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
nature by begrudging the laurel wreath which Leonora
pressed upon Tasso's forehead. In the hostile encounter
of the two men Antonio appears as the representative of
caste and courtly etiquette; he acts in very much the same
way that the average Prussian official of to-day would act
when embarrassed by the presence of an erratic advocate
of individualism; while Tasso stands for personal nobility
and the eternal demands of the human heart.
Nevertheless, the leading note of the poem as a whole is
by no means the exaltation of the individual. It is rather
a note of warning against excessive individualism, a plea
for self-restraint, composure, and social endeavour. In this
respect Tasso shows himself lamentably lacking. He has
as little control over himself as Werther, he has no con-
ception of his duties toward society. He whines and
whimpers like a spoiled child, when he receives a well-
deserved and friendly reproof from the duke for having
violated, through his challenge of Antonio, the law of
courtly conduct. Tormented by a groundless suspicion that
the princess, too, has turned away from him, he completely
loses his balance. He raves like a maniac when, as a
consequence of his own impossible behaviour, a separation
from the princess becomes at last inevitable. The man
who from the depth of his bosom called forth a world of
transcendent harmony and beauty succumbs in the con-
flict with real life. He would end, like Werther, in self-
destruction, if here Antonio did not again step info the
foreground, no longer as an enemy and riv,al, but as a
friendly helper. While Tasso in the conflict with the outer
world comes near losing himself, Antonio, as a witness of
his struggles, has gained a new insight into the mysteries of
the human heart. His own nature is expanded through
sympathy with the poor, wayward dreamer ; he is able now
to appreciate the inner suffering which is a necessary con-
dition of great artistic achievement; he is prepared for a fuller
understanding of ideal aspirations. Thus the symphony
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 355
dismisses us with a hopeful and harmonious finale. In the
union of Tasso and Antonio we see a symbol of humanity
enlarged and heightened, the harmony between the indi-
vidual and society is held out as the ideal of the future.
The same theme underlies Wilhelm Meisier, next to
Faust the most distinctly autobiographical and at the same
time the most universal of Goethe's works. As Wolfram's
Parzival unfolds before our eyes the highest
culture of mediaeval chivalry, as Grimmels- ?^^^^™
hausen's Simplicissimus reveals to us the deep-
est misery of seventeenth-century absolutism, so Goethe's
Wilhelm Meisier gives us the most complete picture of
German society in its transition from ancien regime aris-
tocracy to the modern aristocracy of the spirit.
No more convincing proof of the outward limitations
and the inner fulness of German life at the end of the
eighteenth century can be imagined than this book. We
of the present day feel more clearly perhaps what Goethe
felt when in contrasting himself with Sir Walter Scott he
once spoke '" of the vast opportunities offered to the Eng-
lish novelist by the glorious traditions and the public
life of his country, while he the German, in order to give
animation to his picture, was obliged to resort to the most
forlorn conditions of society, vagrant comedians and impe-
cunious country gentlemen. We feel as though we could not
breathe in this atmosphere, as though there was no chance
for activity in a social order in which the main interests of
modern German life, a national dynasty, a national parlia-
ment, problems of national organization, defence, and self-
assertion, had no part. We even feel something akin to
contempt for these men and women who keep a most
*" Cf. Goethes Unterhaltungen mit d. Kanzler Fr. von Miiller, ed.
Burkhardt /. 55. — It was in a similar frame of mind that Goethe
sought refuge from the hopelessness of contemporary politics in a re-
juvenation of the old German animal epic. His Reineke Fuchs (1794)
is indeed little more than a paraphrase of the Low German Reineke.
3S6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GEE&IAN LITERATURE.
scrupulous account of their own precious emotions, who
bestow the most serious consideration upon a host of in-
significant trifles, and who, at the same time, only too often
are found erring in the simplest question of right and
wrong. The curse of dilettanteism seems to lie upon this
whole generation. With no great public task before them,
with no incentive to stake their hopes and to risk their lives
for an all-absorbing common cause, what wonder that they
— and the most cultivated of them most conspicuously —
should waste their efforts in fictitious interests and unreal
schemes, from Wilhelm's delight in puppet-shows to the
fantastic symbolisms of the secret brotherhood, from the
pietistic self-indulgence of the Beautiful Soul to Theresa's
experiments in dress reform and the emancipation of women ?
With the exception of Mignon and Philine, the child of the
past and the child of a day, there is not a single prominent
character in the book capable of forgetting himself and
living unreflectively and resolutely for the homely duties of
the present. But while this is true, it is also true— and
here lies the paramount importance of the novel for its own
time as well as ours— that the one ideal running through
its pages, the one goal for which nearly all of its leading
characters are striving, is this very self-forgetfulness. Not
the simple self-forgetfulness of the natural, gregarious man,
but the acquired self-forgetfulness of the cultivated, indi-
vidualized man, self-forgetfulness as the result of fullest
self- development and self-expansion :— this is the beginning
and the end of the moral wisdom laid down in Wilhelm
Meister.
And here we see the inner justification of that peaceful
revolution which, as was said before, is reflected in this
book: the transition from the class rule of the old hereditary
nobility to the freedom of modern intellectual aristocracy.
As Goethe himself, the great-grandson of a country farrier,
the son of a Frankfurt citizen, had entered and illumined
the court of the duke of Weimar, so Wilhelm by sheer force
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. SS7
of character and mind outgrows the bourgeois surroundings
of his youth and is received into the aristocracy, not in the
manner of a social upstart, but as a man the inner fulness
of whose life necessarily demands and creates an outward
form equally full and exalted.
Nothing could be more characteristic of the pre-emi-
nently aesthetic drift of German life during this epoch than
that Wilhelm reaches his goal by the roundabout way of an
actor's career. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the
ideal of culture held by Goethe and his contemporaries
than the reasons by which Wilhelm justifies his decision to
take this step.
" I know not how it is in other countries," he says,*' " but in Ger-
many no one except a nobleman has an opportunity for attaining to
a well-rounded and, if I may say so, personal culture. A citizen may
render useful service, he may at best cultivate his intellect ; but his
personality will be lost whatever he may undertake. The nobleman
through his very associations is forced to acquire a distinguished bear-
ing, which in course of time becomes a. natural and dignified ease.
As no house is ever closed to him, as he has to pay with his own
figure, his own person, be it at court or in the army, he has every
reason to be conscious of his worth and to show that he is conscious
of it. A certain stately gracefulness in common things, and a species
of light elegance in earnest and important matters, become| him well,
because he thus proves that he always keeps his equipoise. He is a
public character, and the more refined his movements, the more so-
norous his voice, the more collected and reserved his whole deport-
ment, the more perfect he becomes. For the citizen, on the other
hand, nothing is more fitting than a tacit consciousness of the limits
within which he is restrained. The question with him is not, ' What
are you?' but, ' What have you got? what discernment, knowledge,
talent, or riches?' The nobleman gives all that he has to give in the
display of his personal qualities, but the citizen cannot and must not
give anything through his personality. The former is justified in
*' WiU. Meisters Lehrjahre V, 3 ; Werkt XVII, 278 ff. Cf. R. M.
Meyer, Goethe p. 255 ff. — The overrefinement of German society of the
time is strikingly illustrated by two novels of Goethe's friend Fritz
Jacobi, A llwiU (i'!f)2) and Woldemar (1794). Cf. Koberstein /. c. IV,
295 ff.
358 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
seeming, the latter is compelled to be, and all his attempts at seeming
are ridiculous and absurd. The former must do and act, the latter
only contributes and procures ; he must cultivate some particular
talent in order to be useful, and it is well understood that in his exist-
ence there can be no harmony, because in order to render one talent
useful he must abandon the exercise of every other,
" I must confess that I feel an irresistible impulse to pursue just this
harmonious cultivation of my nature, which has been denied to me by
birth. My wish to become a public character, and to widen my
sphere of attraction and influence, is every day becoming stronger.
To this is joined my taste for poetry and everything connected
therewith, and the necessity of cultivating my mind in rder that I
may come to enjoy only the truly good and the truly beautiful. You
will at once perceive that the stage alone can supply what I require,
and that in no other element can I educate myself according to my
wishes. Upon the stage the man of cultivated mind may display his
personal accomplishments as effectively as in the upper classes of
society, his bodily and mental endowments must improve in equal
proportion ; and there, better than in any other place, can I assume
the twofold character of seeming and of actually being."
The organic connection, then, of Wilhelm's theatrical
experiences with the final aims of his life is perfectly ap-
parent. As a necessary stage in his inner development
they fully deserve the prominence given to them in the
novel. We cannot help feeling that Wilhelm would have
been more of a man if it had been given to him to train
his powers in the conflict with real life. We^should be
more in sympathy with him if the goal of his ambition had
been to be a Cassar rather than to act Hamlet, r But we
clearly see why this was impossible, and we have no right
to apply the standards of our own age to that of Goethe.
Our own life would be narrow and barren if we were to
lose sight of the ultimate ideal of humanity held out in
this work: the fullest and freest development of all human
powers. This is an ideal so far removed from selfishness
that it may be called the gospel of a secular Christianity.
If the teaching of Christ rests on the belief that every in-
dividual soul has within it the possibility of salvation, the
teaching of Goethe rests on the belief that every individual
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 359
mind has within it a tendency toward complete manifesta-
tion of itself. The former preaches the necessity of in-
dividual salvation in order to bring about the kingdom of
heaven, the latter preaches the necessity of individual self-
development in order to raise mankind to a higher level.
The former is democratic, the latter is aristocratic; but
both are opposed to spiritual tyranny of any sort. To both
the inner motive, the mental effort, the moral striving are
the things which decide the worth of a man. Both believe
in the essential goodness of human nature, which makes it
possible for us to preserve our better self even in error and
sin, nay, to attain through error and sin to deeper insights
and loftier ideals."
As if to escape for a while from the perplexing problems
of conscious self -culture, Goethe, fresh from Wilhelm Meis-
ter, turned to the representation of a life lim-
ited in its aspirations, hedged in by tradition, Hermann
, ^ J- -^ ,r , , • „ • • nnd Dorothea.
but sure of itself and complete m all its innocent
simplicity. Hermann und Dorothea is the last and highest
outcome of the idyllic undercurrent of eighteenth-century
literature, the feeble beginnings of which we observed in
the laborious descriptions of nature by Brookes and Haller,
and in the Anacreontic trivialities of Hagedorn and Gleim.
Until the beginning of the Storm-and-Stress period there was
httle either of thought or of life in German idyllic poetry.
The full, sonorous strains of Ewald von Kleist's Friihling
(1749) were after all without a deeper meaning; The
dainty shepherds and shepherdesses of Salomon Gessner's
Idyllen (1754-56) were as unreal and fictitious as Rousseau's
'' Of the afBnity of Goethe's Wilhebn Meister to Wieland's Agathon
we have spoken in the preceding chapter. It is interesting to note
that, as Lessing called Agathon the only novel for thinking men, so
Schiller said of Wilhelm Meister : " I could not be friend with him
who did not appreciate this work" (letter to Goethe, June 19, 1795;
Schillers Briefe ed. Jonas IV, 190). — Cf. J. R. Seeley, Goethe Reviewed
after Sixty Years p. 120 ff.
360 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
dreams of the primitive innocence of mankind or the
seraphic flights of Klopstock's imagination. Only through
the new impulse given by the ' Sturm und Drang ' movement
to the observation of everyday life, through the new in-
sight afforded by Hamann and Herder into the actual con-
ditions of primitive peoples, through the new light shed by
Winckelmann and his successors on the moral forces under-
lying the ideal of Greek simplicity, above all, through the
masterly reproduction of the Homeric world in Voss's
translation of the Odyssey (1781), the elements were given
for an idyllic poem which, without leaving the firm soil of
familiar reality, should at the same time open up a far-reach-
ing ideal perspective. In the union of these elements there
lies the peculiar charm of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea.
In reading it we feel as if we were looking at a modern
and a secular counterpart to one of those wonderful religious
paintings in which a Van Eyck or a Memlinc embodied the
idyllic side of mediasval Christianity. Memlinc spreads
before us a landscape in which we easily recognise the dis-
tinguishing features of his own age." We see towering
castles on hilltops; cities surrounded by wall and moat,
mighty cathedrals looming up in their midst; we see the
farmer sowing and reaping in the fields; we see the trades-
man laden with his wares, and troops of stately riders on
the highway. The meadows are strewn with buttercups
and daisies; birds are sporting in the air; flocks of sheep
are grazing on the hillside, the shepherds with staff and
bagpipe sitting close by. Charming as this familiar and
iiomelike scenery is in itself, it yet points beyond itself to a
higher spiritual life. The city with its Gothic spires and
i<,ibles is Jerusalem; the knights on the highway are the
Magi of the East with their retinue, travelling in search of
the star of Bethlehem ; and the shepherds are accosted by
" The following is a description of some scenes in Memlinc's Seven
Joys of Mary, now in the Munich Pinakothek.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 36 1
the angel of the Lord announcing the birth of the Saviour.
In the midst of our own kin there walk the figures of a
sacred past; the present is felt as a living part of an end-
less eternity.
In Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea there is no admix-
ture of the supernatural, no heavenly figures mingle here
with men. Yet here also, we gain a calming sense of the
kinship, and essential oneness of all life. We see, as it
were, a living illustration of what Schiller meant by his"
Und die Sonne Homers, siehe ! sie lachelt auch uns.
Though German to the core, this poem is surrounded with
the halo of Greek ideality; though instinct with the forces
and problems of actual life, it represents types of a simple
and pure humanity. Although it holds itself in the narrow
circle of family experiences and village society, it reflects in
this narrow circle the great movements of the world's his-
tory, the eternal round of decay and growth, of concentra-
tion and expansion, of stability and progress. The little
village near the Rhine with its peaceful streets, its neatly
stuccoed houses and gabled roofs, embowered in its vine-
yards and wheatfields, appears to us as a symbol of those
sustaining forces of custom and tradition which connect
our own life with that of the remotest past. The distant
thun.der of the French Revolution, the commotion caused
by the passage of the emigrants, the striking individualities
standing out among this wandering community, remind us
of the equally enduring forces of change and development.
Hermann, the chaste, self-restrained youth, the bashful
lover, the loyal son, performing quietly the settled duties
of each day; Dorothea, the thrifty manager, the ready
helper, the heroic virgin, tried in homelessness and adversity,
are the typical representatives of those two elemental ten-
dencies of human life. Modest and restricted as are the
surroundings in which they live, they move before us with
'* Der Spaziergang; Sammtl. Schr. XI, 91.
362 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE,
the simple dignity of beings belonging to a higher order of
existence, and in their final union we gain a glimpse of
complete manhood and womanhood."
From the sight of this complete, though limited and child-
like existence Goethe, now in the fulness of his maturity,
returned to the visions which had haunted his
■^P^'^*^*^ youthful years; he resumed his work on Faust.
He resumed it a different man from what he
was when he began it, when he conceived of Faust as a
reckless individualist whose turbulent passion overleaps all
bounds of law and tradition, burying in its torrent the dreams
of happiness and peace and innocence. In the love of
Frau von Stein Goethe had found a safe harbour for his
affections; the sojourn in Italy had opened to him the
full glory of classic art; the study of Spinoza as well as his
own zoological and botanical investigations, in which he
anticipated the modern theory of evolution, had confirmed
him in a thoroughly monistic view of the world and strength-
ened his belief in a universal law which makes evil itself an
integral part of the good; the friendship with Schiller had
brought him into closest contact with a life which was a
far-shining evidence of the power of the mind to assimilate
and transform matter. How could a man who had gone
through all this, who had himself experienced a complete
inner regeneration, how could the poet of Iphigenie, Tasso,
Wilhelm Meister, and Hermann und Dorothea resume a
theme like Faust without reflecting in it this revolution of
his inner self — in other words, without changing Faust
from the rebellious realist of the ' Sturm und Drang' years
into an ideal representative of struggling and striving
humanity ?
Among the scenes which reveal this momentous change
in Goethe's Faust conception, the most important are the
" Cf. W. Scherer's admirable analysis of Hermann u. Dorothea;
Gesch. d. d. Litt. p. 568 ; also, V. Hehn, Utbtr Coethes Hcrm. u. Dor,
p. 41 £f. 86 &.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 363
' Prologue in Heaven,' and the succession of scenes which
in the completed First Part of 1808 fill up the gap left in the
Fragment oi 1790 between Faust's first monologue and his
definite union with Mephisto.
The poetic framework even of these scenes can hardly be
reconciled with what we should expect from a poem deal-
ing with the ultimate problems of modern life. The very-
fact that the ' Prologue in Heaven ' was modelled after
the beginning of the Book of Job, where Satan amid the
sons of God appears before the Lord, shows how little its
artistic form tallies with its intellectual meaning. That
Jehovah should converse with Satan about the conduct of
his servant Job is perfectly consistent with the view of
the divine held throughout the Old Testament. The
modern conception of God, which Goethe himself per-
haps more than any other man of his time helped to
disseminate, the conception of the divine as the universal
spirit in whom we live, move, and have our being, as the
oneness of all forces, the harmony of all existence, this con-
ception is so sublime and all-embracing that any attempt to
contract it into the visible symbol of a separate personality
must of necessity fail. The same, of course, is true of the
modern conception of evil. Evil, according to Goethe's
own belief, has no positive existence at all. It is merely
the negative side of existence. It is the tendency to disin-
tegration and annihilation, immanent in all life, and at the
time, though in spite of itself, productive of life. To per-
sonify evil in Mephisto and to represent him approaching
the Lord with the offer of a wager and engaging with Faust
in a bargain for his soul, is therefore a most inadequate ex-
pression of the modern view of good and evil. We expect
to be admitted into the mysteries of a harmonious universe,
to see the unity of all life brought out in sweeping outline,
and we find ourselves taken back to the mediaeval dualism
of heaven and hell.
If Goethe's Faust, then, from the highest point of view is
364 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
seen not to hold what it appears to promise, if it fails to be
a complete embodiment of modern pantheism, it certainly
is a complete embodiment of the modern idea of personality
as related to its social environment. Restless endeavour, in-
cessant striving from lower spheres of life to higher ones,
from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work,
I from creed to deed, from self to' humanity: — this is the
/ moving thought of the whole drama; and although it is not
until the Second Part that this thought assumes its fullest
poetic reality, it is clearly outlined even in the First.
The keynote is struck for the first time in the 'Pro-
logue in Heaven.' We hear that Faust, the daring idealist,
the servant of God, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the
despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. But we also
hear, and we hear it from God's own lips, as in Lessing's
drama we heard it through a voice from above, that the
tempter will not succeed. Evil cannot, in the end, succeed.
In its very nature it is a condition of the good. God allows
the Devil free play because he knows that he will frustrate
his own endeavour. °°
Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level;
Unqualified repose he learns to crave ;
Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave,
Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil.
Faust will be led astray — " es irrt der Mensch so lang er
strebt"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations;
through aberration and sin he will find the true way toward
which his inner nature instinctively guides him. He will
not eat dust.
For the second time the message of hope is heard in the
' Angels' Chant ' on Easter Morning. Faust, after the pas-
*^ Prol. im Himmel v. 340 ff. The trsl. is Bayard Taylor's.— For
the Faust literature cf. GG. § 246. Among the most recent com-
mentaries may be singled out H . Baumgart, Goethes Faust als nn-
heitl. Dichtung erldutert (iSg3) and Veit Valentin, Goethes Faustdicht-
ung in ihrer kunstler. Einheit dargesletlt (1894). Cf. Thomas's ^i. p.yi
viifC.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 365
sionate outburst of titanic feelings in the first monologue,
after-the rapturous delight into which the appearance of the
Earth-Spirit had transported him, has been hurled back
into " Man's uncertain fate." "
The fine emotions whence our life we mould.
Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.
He is. sick and weary. The same man who a short time
before reached out into the spirit-world, who felt his own
vital force beating in nature's veins, who was at one with
the infinite life, is now like the worm,
That while in dust it lives and seeks its bread
Is crushed and buried by the wanderer's tread.
Death seems to him the only salvation. He is just put-
ting the poisonous cup to his lips, when the Easter bells
and, the song of the angels announcing the resurrection of
the Saviour call him back to life.™
Christ ist erstanden !
Freude dem Sterblichen,
Den die verderblichen,
Schleichenden, erblichen
Mangel umwanden.
Christ ist erstanden
Aus der Verwesung SchoosI
Reisset von Banden
Freudig euch los !
Thatig ihn preisenden,
Liebe beweisenden,
Bruderlich speisenden,
Predigend reisenden,
Wonne verheissenden,
Euch ist der Meister nah,
Euch ist er da!
To Faust this song brings back the memory of his youth,
of the years when he could still believe and pray; to us it is
at the same time a prophecy of his future, when he himself
" Faust I, 638 fi. ™ /*. 737 ff.
366 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
will rise from the thraldom of self-gratification, when in
brotherly love, in work for his fellow men, he will work out
his own redemption.
For the present, to be sure, his course leads down into
darkness. But even on this path of gloom Faust never
loses himself entirely. His gaze even here is turned toward
the light. Again and again we see his ideal self shining
forth through the disguise of sin and despair.
From the fatal pleasure-walk where the evil one for the
first time joined him, he returns to his study, calm and re-
freshed. His spiritual nature has been awakened; he
" yearns the rivers of existence, the very founts of life to
reach"; he turns to the gospel of St. John and sets himself
to translating its opening lines from the hallowed original
into his " beloved German." °°
Geschrieben steht: ' Im Anfang war das Wort'
How can the Word, a mere form, a name of a thing, not a
thing itself, have been at the bottom of all things ? Would
not: 'In the beginning was the Thought' be a better trans-
lation ? Thought, as the essence, the substance, the inner
meaning of all life ? But thought is not necessarily crea-
tive, thought sometimes remains without external manifes-
tation. Why not then: ' In the beginning was the Power ' ?
For power implies a tendency toward tangible results, it
brings to mind the shaping and reshaping of matter.
But power may be something merely mechanical. The
formative principle of the universe cannot be merely me-
chanical; it must be something living, personal, conscious,
active : —
Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat
Und schreibe getrost: ' Im Anfang war die That!
It is clear that as long as Faust adheres to such resolute
and manly convictions as these, the evil one has no power
" Faust I, 1224 ff.
THE ACE OF THE REVOLUTION. 367
over him; and we understand why Mephisto waits for a
better opportunity to lay his snare.
He finds this opportunity only too soon. Faust relaps-
ing into a fit of pessimism curses all the highest joys and
ideals of existence. Mephisto, on his part, holds before
him the magic mirror of sensual lust, and now at last Faust
is ready to make his compact with the devil. Biit even
here, nay, here more conspicuously than anywhere else, does
the inherent and ineradicable craving of Faust for a life of
truly productive endeavour assert itself. His wager with
the devil is nothing but an act of despair, and the very fact
that he does not hope anything from it shows that he will
win it. He knows that sensual enjoyment will never give
him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives himself
up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to
which he would say: "Abide, thou art so fair ! " From the
outset we feel that by living up to the very terms of the
agreement, Faust will rise superior to it; that by rushing
into the whirlpool of earthly passion and experience, his
being will be calmed and purified."
Fear not that I this pact shall seek to sever!
The promise that I make to thee
Is just the sum of my endeavour.
Plunge we in Time's tumultuous dance
In the rush and roll of circumstance!
Then may delight and distress
And worry and success,
Alternately follow, as best they can:
Restless activity proves the man!
My bosom, of its thirst for knowledge sated.
Shall not henceforth from any pang be wrested,
And all of life for all mankind created
Shall be within mine inmost being tested:
The highest, lowest forms my soul shall borrow.
Shall heap upon itself their bliss and sorrow.
And thus my own sole self to all their selves expanded,
I too, at last, shall with them all be stranded!
•" I, 1 741 ff. The last seven lines are found already in the Fragment.
368 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
This is a pessimism which is bound to lead in the end to
the highest form of optimism, this is an individualism which
.nust at last develop into the most exalted collectivism.
For it would be impossible to have such universal sympa-
ihies as these without giving expression to them in a life
devoted to the common good of man; and a life thus spent
cannot end in despair. The more deeply it is tinged with
suffering and sadness, the fuller and deeper its joys will be,
and the more firmly will it cling to ideal endeavour as the
only true reality.
In a subsequent chapter we shall analyze the poetic form
which this joyous and all-embracing idealism received
in the Second Part of Faust and the other out-
Sohiller's growths of Goethe's old age. For the present
miuihood. , , ,
we must return to the last and most mature
creations of Schiller, and thus bring our review of the revo-
lutionary era to a close.
In the same year with the outbreak of the French Revo-
lution Schiller wrung from himself that magnificent dithy-
ramb, The Artists, in which he for the first time
unreservedly and without a remnant of the old
' Sturm und Drang ' bitterness unfolded his view of the
onward march of human civilization. Rousseau's concep-
tion of an ideal state of nature is here supplanted by the
conception of an ideal state of culture. The history of
'mankind is represented as an endless striving for the perfect
^ life; and art, man's noblest and most peculiarly human en-
dowment, is held up as the greatest moral and intellectual
agency of the world.
" Only through the morning-gate of beauty goes the path-
way to the land of knowledge." Long before philosophy
hazarded its dogmas, an Iliad solved the riddles of fate;
long before science discovered the laws of nature, poets
and artists divined the secrets of a living universe. Art
freed the primitive man from the tyranny of the senses, and
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 369
transformed the gloomy materialism of the savage into a
hopeful spirituality."
Jetzt wand sich von dem Sinnenschlafe
Die freie schone Seele los;
Durch euch entfesselt, sprang der Sklave
Der Sorge in der Freude Schoos.
Jetzt fiel der Tierheit dumpfe Schranke,.
Und Menschheit trat auf die entwolkte Stirn,
Und der erhabne Fremdling, der Gedanke,
Sprang aus dem scaunenden Gehirn.
But art stands not only at the beginning of civilization;
her highest office lies in the future. Science, industry,
commerce, social and political activity, — in short, all other
forms of human endeavour appeal only to certain sides of
man's nature. Art alone requires the whole man, she alone
holds before us a vision of our complete self. Science
criticises, art creates;' the one dissolves, the other unites.
It is the mission of art to lead modern humanity, disorgan-
ized and at war with itself, to that inner harmony of which
primitive nature was an early promise, the highest fulfilment
of which, however, will be reached through highest culture.
Into your hands, then, O artists, is committed the dignity
of humankind, with you to sink, with you to rise. Heed,
oh heed the sacred trust! Disdain the vulgar and the tran-
sient, keep your eyes fixed upon the mountain heights of
eternal beauty, point out to your fellows the ideal of a per-
fect culture and thus lift them above their own selves into
the presentiment of a better, though distant, future.'"
Borne on your daring pinions soar sublime
Above the shoal and eddy of the time.
Far glimmering on your wizard mirror, see I
The silent shadow of the agJ to be! ^'
In this poem we have an epitome of all the best and "high-
est which Schiller's life, so prematurely and abruptly to be
" Sdmmtl. Schr. VI, 270. •' R. 278. Bulwer's trsl.
370 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
ended, has given to the world. Again and again, in his
prose writings, in his poems, in his dramas, we meet with
this jdeaDf.culture as the source of his finest inspiration.
It was this very conception oTTuimairnatufe in its totality
which made it inij)ossible for Schiller to accept the Kantian
view of duty as neceBsaTily-opposed-to-iasttftctr'
"Diesohono jj-qj. Jjj repression, Tjiit in cultivation, -of-tfee^TT-
stinct he saw the truly moral conduct. The
truest type of manhood he saw, not in the stern ascetic, but
in what he called " the beautiful soul," a definition of which
term he undertook in the admirable little essay on Grace
and Dignity (i793)."-j "Not to perform individual moral
actions, but to be a moral being, is man's destiny. Virtue,
not virtues, is his task; and virtue is nothing but an instinct
for duty. Nature herself by making him a spiritual-sensual
being, that is: a man, enjoined upon him not to separate
what she united, even in the purest manifestations of his
divine self not to forget his sensual self, and to beware of
basing the triumph of the one upon the defeat af the other.
His moral character is safe only when it proceeds from his
whole self as the combined result of both principles. The
defeated enemy may rise again, the reconciled enemy is
truly conquered." Here we have the constituent elements
of a beautiful soul."^ "A beautiful soul we call a state
where the moral sentiment has taken possession of all the
emotions to such a degree that it may unhesitatingly com-
mit the guidance of life to the instinct without running the
risk of conflicting with its decisions. A beautiful soul has
no other merit than that it is. With an ease and freedom
as though it acted only from instinct, it performs the most
painful duties of life; and the most heroic sacrifice which
it obtains from the will appears as a voluntary offering of
" Sammtl. Schr. X, 99 f. — Cf. for the following Kuno Fischer, Schil-
ler-Schrift^n III, IV. O. Harnack, D. klass. Aesthetik d. Deutschen.
H. V. Stein, Beitr. z. Aesth, d. d. Klassiker.
••' Sammtl. Schr. X, 103.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 37I
this very will." The highest culture has been convertedX
into highest nature. J
In the Letters on the Esthetic Education of Man (1795)
Schiller pursued this thought still further, and undertook to
show that, under existing circumstances at least, Briefe nler
completeness of character could be reached dieasstlie-
only through striving for beauty. From the auto- ^^g \^^ ™^
cratic governments of his time he expected no- Measchen,
thing ; nay, he saw in them the sworn enemies of genuine
humanity." "When the state makes the office the measure
of the man; when it honours in one of its subjects memory
alone, in another clerical sagacity, in a third mechanical
cleverness ; when in one case, indifferent toward character,
it insists only on knowledge,' in another condones the
most flagrant intellectual obtuseness if accompanied by
outward discipline and loyalty — is it a wonder that in order
to cultivate the one talent which brings honour and reward
all other gifts of the mind are neglected? To be sure, a
genius will rise above the barriers of his profession ; but
the mass of mediocre talents must of necessity consume
their whole strength in their official existence. And thus
individual, concrete life is gradually being annihilated in
order that the abstract shadow of the whole may drag out
its barren existence." The only hope of the future, then,
lies in the inner regeneration of the individual, and the
royal way toward this regeneration is aesthetic culture.
Man is fully man only in perceiving or creating the beauti-
ful. For beauty arises only from the most complete and
harmonious blending of the real and the ideal, of matter
and form, of nature and freedom. Beauty'" alone imparts
to man a truly social character. The pleasures of the
senses we enjoy merely as individuals, without the species,
" Ueber d. cesthet. Erziehung d. Menschen, Br. 6; /. c. 2go.
'^ Cf. Br. 27; /. c. 382 f. Cf. G. Schmoller, Schillers ethischer «.
kulturgeschichtl. Standpunkt in his Ziir Littgesch. d. Staats- und So-
cial- Wissensch. p. I ff.
372 SOCIAL FORCES IN' GERMAN LITERATURE.
immanent in us, taking part in them. Our sensual plea-
sures, therefore, we cannot lift into the sphere of the uni-
versal. The pleasures of reason we enjoy merely as species,
without our individual self taking part in them. Our intel-
lectual pleasures, therefore, cannot enter fully into the
sphere of personality. The beautiful alone we enjoy both
as individuals and as species, that is: as representatives of the
species ; and the artist who creates, the public who sympa-
thetically receive the beautiful, perform a service for society
far greater than the so-called public services of the average
diplomat and politician. They are workers for an ideal
society which, although it may for ever remain unrealized,
is bound to exert, even as a mere postulate, a cleansing and
exalting influence upon society as it is ; just as the idea of
an invisible church has inspired far nobler movements and
brought about far greater revolutions in the history of reli-
gious life than all ecclesiastical institutions taken together.
From the heights of this conception of a complete human-
ity Schiller, in the essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry
Uel)6T naive (1795-96), reviewed the history of literature as
taUsohemoht- ^^ expression of this complete humanity, deriv-
img. ing from this review an additional proof for his
own ideal of art. All poetry as we know it is either naive ,
or sentimental, that is, reflects the harmony of life either as
an existing condition or as a goal to be striven for. Naive
poetry corresponds to a state of society where the harmony
between belief and reason, between the sensual and the
spiritual, has not yet been lost. This was the case in the
best time of Greek civilization." "The entire social sys-
tem of the Greeks was founded upon natural instinct, not
upon artificial reflection ; their mythology even was the in-
spiration of a naive feeling, the child of a joyous intuition,
not the result of brooding reason, as the religious belief
of modern nations is. In harmony with himself and happy
•' Ueber naive u. sentimentalische Dichtttng; I. c, 444 f.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 373
in the consciousness of his full humanity, the Greek had
no incentive to go beyond himself except in order to assimi-
late the outer world to his own image ; while we moderns,
at war with ourselves and disappointed in our experiences
of humanity, have no more urgent desire than to flee from
ourselves and remove the disfigured form of mankind from
our sight." Modern poetry, then, is essentially sentimental,
that is: inspired with the idea of a nobler and more com-
plete life than that which surrounds us. Our present age,
with its artificial class distinctions, with its predominance
of the intellect over sentiment, with its conflict between
authority and freedom, with its philosophic doubts and its
moral problems, is far removed from harmony of life. The
completeness of human nature as a living force has no
place in modern society. But all the more deeply do we
long for this completeness and rejoice whenever we find it.
This is the reason why the creations of a naive genius, like
those of Homer or Shakspere, move us so profoundly. This
is the reason why we delight in the unconscious wisdom of
childish play. This is at the bottom of our feeling for the
simplest objects of nature, a flower, a spring, a mossy rock.""
" It is not these objects, it is the idea manifested in them
which we love. We love in them the quietly creating life,
the calm working from within, the existence according to
one's own law, the inner necessity, the constant harmony
with one's own self. They are what we were ; they are what ,
we are bound to be again. We were nature like them, and
our culture by way of reason and freedom is to bring us
back to nature. They are therefore, on the one hand, a
symbol of our lost childhood, which will be for ever the
most precious memory to us ; on the other hand, they are
symbols of our highest perfection, which lies before us as
the ideal of the future," and the way toward which it is the
most sacred office of poetry and art to point out.
*8 Ueber naive u. sentimcntalische Dichtung; I. t. 426 f .
374 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Let US now see how Schiller's own poetic works, so far as
they belong to the period of his highest maturity, — the last
ten years of his life, — have fulfilled the mission formulated
in his theoretical writings ; let us see how far they are
symbols of a complete existence, in what manner they
point toward the reconciliation of nature and culture, of
matter and spirit, of fate and freedom.
In point of time, his lyric and ballad poetry stands nearest
Difference ^^ ^^ prose essays. Here perhaps more clearly
between than anywhere else do we see the difference be-
SoMUeX^''* tween his genius and that of Goethe. Goethe, to
lyrics. adopt Schiller's own phraseology, was essentially-
a naive poet ; while he himself was essentially sentimental.
Goethe, although in closest contact with the manifold pro-
blems of a philosophic age and although incessantly at work
in building out and adding to the "pyramid of his exist-
ence," always retained the inner harmony with himself and
the world. His lyrics and ballads, therefore, as the most
immediate outpourings of his inner self, are like the naive
strains of popular song, unconscious revelations of an un-
broken existence. Heine's saying": " Nature wished to
know how she looked, and she created Goethe," is perhaps
truer of this part of his activity than of any other. Whether
in the rhythmic tumult of the Promethean rhapsodies of his
youth, or the measured melody of songs replete with the
full midday glow of self-possessed manhood, or the sibylr
line wisdom of epigrammatic verse reflecting a divine old
age; whether in the simple true-heartedness of the Konig'
in Thule, or the healthy sensuousness of the Romische Ele-
gieen, or the mysterious depth of the songs of Mignon and
the Harper, or again in the magic lifelikeness of such
visions as Der Fischer, Erlkonig, Zueignung — everywhere
we see the welling up of a great soul, drawing its stream of
^^ Reisebilder III, 26; Werke ed. Elster III, 265. Cf. V. Hehn,
Gedanken Uber Goethe I, 28 r ff.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 375
life from the deepest recesses of elemental instinct, and
pouring it forth with effortless abundance. Not so with
Schiller. With him everything bears the stamp of con-
scious endeavour, of moral purpose. What lends to his
verse such an irresistible power is not so much the wealth
of imagination or the inner affinity with life in all its forms
— in both respects he was far inferior to Goethe: it is the con-
centrated energy of a mind craving to bridge the chasm be-
tween idea and reality, bent on restoring to humanity its
lost equilibrium, inspired with the idea of moral freedom.
Among his ballads there is hardly one which does not repre-
sent in one way or another the conflict between the lower
and higher in man, and which does not call upon the will
to assert itself against the force of circumstance. Here is
the source of the fiery eloquence, the — one might say —
martial sonorousness that pervades these poems. "'Tis
mind that shapes the body to itself " (Es ist der Geist der
sich den Korper baut ) "° — this is what all of them proclaim;
whether they exalt the struggle of man with the elements,
as Der Taucher ; or victory over self, as Der Kampf mit
dem Drachen ; or faithfulness unto death, as Die Biirg-
schafis whether they give impressive pictures of national
exploits and triumphs, as in Das Siegesfesl j or whether,
like Kassandra, Der Ring des Polykrates, Die Kraniche des
Ibykus, they reveal the mysterious working of the world-
spirit in the forebodings and catastrophes of the human
breast. The same is true, perhaps even more emphatically
so, of Schiller's lyric and didactic poetry. Here more
clearly than anywhere else do we notice the absence in him
of that childlike simplicity and sensuousness which is the
sign of the highest poetic genius. But we also feel (what
Beethoven must have felt when the Hymn to Joy inspired
him to one of his sublimest symphonic achievements) that
there is a strength of spiritual vision even in the most
'»" WalUnsteins Tod III, 13 ; Sammtl. Schr. XII, 295.
3/6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
abstruse and esoteric of Schiller's conceptions which give
to them a moral suggestiveness and perspective such as is
to be found only in the work of the few great men destined
to be leaders of mankind toward the ideal life. Not to
dwell upon the Song of the Bell, the popular ring and
healthy common-sense of which appeal even to the most
unsophisticated, while its noble symbolism reveals to the
more searching mind the deeper significance and relation-
ship of all outer phenomena, — what a wonderful power of
giving bodily form to abstract philosophical ideas there is
in such poems as Das Ideal und das Leben or Der Spazier-
gang !
Well might Schiller write in sending the former to his
friend Wilhelm von Humboldt'" : "When you receive this
letter put aside all that is profane, and read
Das Ideal nnd jjjjg poem in consecrated stillness." For it is
das Leben.
a consecration song of noblest humanity, an im-
perishable symbol of ever active, ever hopeful endeavour.
There glows in it the flame of Platonic enthusiasm strangely
mingled with Christian resignation and Kantian rigour; there
lives in it the modern faith in the attainableness of the
ideal through devotion to the needs of actual life. Life is
an endless struggle with matter; through work only are we
delivered from the slavery of the senses; only the stroke of
the chisel wakes from the marble block a beauteous form;
truth is discovered only through unremitting self-surrender;
the moral law sets us tasks which seem almost too heavy
for our feeble shoulders. But the very trials and suffer-
ings of mankind bring out its divine nature and insure its
ultimate transition to an existence of ideal harmony and
beauty, where matter and form are united and where the
gulf between the human will and the moral law has been
bridged. This is the essential thought of the poem, run-
ning in manifold variations through its first thirteen stanzas
'01 Letter of Aug. 9, 1795 ; Schillers Briefe IV, 232.
THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION. 377
and then, in the last two, rising to that magnificent image
of the apotheosis of Heracles, who, after all the toil and
turmoil of his earthly career, at last soars aloft towar±ia5e;;^rieast— from his self-destruc-
tive broodings^^^ofgets huSiilFplre-ftads the true sources
of his strengtlChe becomes a poet. '
Not that the national catastrophe at once wrung from
Kleist an outcry of patriotic feeling. Only the end of the
year 1808 was to see the birth of the Hermannsschlacht.
Yet every one of the four remarkable works which were
finished in the two years preceding it — Der zerbrochene Krug
(1806), Penthesilea, Das Kathchen von Heilbronn, Michael
'" Koberstein /. c; letter of Oct. 26.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. \J\
Kohlhaas (1808),"' — reflects in its own way the process of
inner recovery and reconstruction, through which in this
very time of outward humiliation and defeat the German
nation was to pass.
It is as though the ideal of complete humanity which in-
spired the great classic poets had here, under the stress of
national misery, been welded into a form, less
beautiful to be sure, but more compact and life- ■^°'''^™'
like. Instead of the mellow transparency of marble we have
the sharp ruggedness of bronze. We feel: these figures have
been hardened in the fire; they are the result of emotions
so fierce, so violent, so volcanic as are experienced only by
men who have felt the very soil give way under their feet
who have lived through a break-down of their whole spiritual
existence.
This it is which gives such a poignancy and raciness even
to the stout humour of Dutch village life as displayed in Der
zerbrochene Krug. Like a Teniers or a Terburg,
Kleist fairly revels, in this inimitable little play, J'orzerliro-
in the faithful reproduction of the ordinary and
the commonplace. '" What an atmosphere of every-day
reality is spread over it ! How squarely they stand before
us, this slovenly and slothful justice of the peace with his
club foot, his blackened eye, and his big bald head; this
sleek, thin, officious clerk, constantly on the alert for an
opportunity to thrust himself into the position of his chief;
this quarrelsome and loquacious Frau Marthe, not hesitating
to drag the good name of her daughter into the court-room
if there is a chance of recovering damages for a broken jar;
"' A full analysis of all of Kleist's works in O. Brahm, Heinrich
von Kleist. At the end of Brahm's book there is a complete Kleist
bibliography up to 18S4. Of all the critics of Kleist none seems
to me to have entered as deeply into Kleist's character as H, v.
Treitschke; Historische u. Politische Aufsdtze II.
■" Tieck seems to have been the first to observe this resemblance
between Kleist and the old Dutch masters. Cf. Jul. Schmidt /. c. 84.
472 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and, in pleasant contrast with all these, this sturdy peasant-
lad and his sweetheart, whose love, though sorely tried, is
proven to be so genuine and true ! Yet after all, Kleist's
realism is something very different from the realism of the
old Dutch genre-painters. It entirely lacks their restfulness
and serenity, there is something fierce and breathless in it,
there is burning under its surface a violent hatred of sham
and deceit, a grim desire to unmask the illusions of life. A
mere nothing, a broken pot, disturbs the peace of the com-
munity, severs family ties, and threatens the happiness of
lovers. And when the law is called upon to settle matters,
it appears that the judge himself is the real sinner, his very
examination of the litigating parties reveals the fact that he
has made an attempt against the honour of one of them, and
the trial ends with his ignominious flight from the court-
room. — Such is the world we live in; these are the men
from whom we expect justice !
What in Der zerbrochene Krug we feel as a latent force
only — the heartburnings of a man who carries within him
the image of a perfect world unrealized-:— breaks
forth in Penthesilea with unbridled and irresisti-
ble impetuosity. Here for the first time Kleist finds a poetic
symbol for his innermost being, here for the first time we
see him in his full heroic stature. It is doubtful whether in
the whole range of literature there is to be found another
work breathing such elemental, nay, chaotic passion, as does
this marvellous poem, in whicn the days of centaur struggles
and bacchantic rage seem to have been revived. What a
strange, fabulous region it is into which we are led ! This
realm of the Amazons with its barbarous traditions of hus-
band-slaughter and husband-rape; this holy ordinance com-
pelling the maiden to seek and to vanquish her lover on
the field of battle; these gorgeous paraphernalia of war sur-
rounded by which Penthesilea herself sets out to subdue the
beloved Achilles — what is all this to us ? How little of human
interest it seems to have! Thus we think, until we hear this
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 473
Penthesilea speak; until we become aware that this fabulous
queen of the Amazons is in reality Kleist's own soul, a soul
inspired with titanic daring, driven by superhuman desire,
bent on conquering eternity. When the conviction first
dawned upon Kleist that the whole of truth is beyond
human reach, all life henceforth seemed worthless to him.
When Penthesilea instead of vanquishing the beloved hero
is overcome by him, even his love is hateful to her. The
ideal which she cannot fully and without reserve make hers
she must destroy. The god in her having been killed, the
beast awakes. And thus, immediately after that enchanting
scene '" where the lovers for the first time and the last have
been revelling in mutual surrender and delight, she falls like
a tigress upon the unsuspecting and weaponless man; with
the voluptuousness of despair, she sends the arrow through
his breast; she lets her hounds loose upon him as he dies,
and together with the hounds she tears his limbs and drinks
his blood; until at last, brought back to her senses, and
realizing what she has done, she sinks into the arms of
death, — a character so atrocious and so ravishing, so mon-
strous and so divine, so miraculous and so true, as no other
poet ever has created.
Das Kathchen vo?i Heilbronn and Michael Kohlhaas are
both variations of the same theme struck in Penthesilea:
the theme of unconditional, unfaltering, unquestioning obe-
dience to the promptings of the inner voice. But they are
variations of a most pronounced originality. In Kathchen
it is the absolute trust of a child following instinctively and
as if under hypnotic influence the spell of a superior per-
sonality. In Kohlhaas it is the imperturbable self-respect
of a man who would plunge the whole world into ruin rather
than allow the intruder upon his own lawful right to go un-
punished.
Kathchen's character may be summed up in the words of
'»' Penthesilea Sc. 15 ; JVerie ed. Muncker II, 168 ff.
474 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
her father, the honest sword-smith of Heilbronn "": " Sound
of body and soul like the first-born men ; a child after God's
^ _. , own heart, rising like a straight column of
ohenvonHeU- frankincense and juniper in the quiet evening
tronn. ^y gf my life. A being more tender or dear
you could not imagine, even though you were to see the
dear little angels peeping with their clear eyes from the
clouds under God's own hands and feet. As she passed
along the street in her homely attire, the straw hat on her
head shining with yellow lacquer, her little bodice of black
velvet hung with slender little silver chains about her breast,
there would run a whisper from window to window: ' Look!
our Kathchen of Heilbronn! ' — our Kathchen of Heilbronn,
sirs, as though the sky of Suabia had begotten her and the
town lying under it, impregnated by its kiss, had brought
her forth." And her conduct since that portentous day
when she first saw the man who was to enslave her soul,
stands out with equal clearness from the anguish of the
father who has lost his child '": " Since that day she follows
him in blind devotion from place to place, led by the light
of his face which has been wound like a chord five-stranded
round her soul; with naked feet exposed to every pebble,
the short little skirt that covers her hips fluttering in the
wind, nothing but a straw hat to protect her face from the
rage of the elements. Wherever his foot turns in the course
of his adventures, through misty glens, through deserts
scorched by the midday sun, through the night of imper-
vious forests: like a dog on the scent of his master, she paces
after him; and she who was accustomed to rest on soft
cushions, who felt the smallest little knot in the threads of
the bed-linen — she now lies down, like a serving-woman, in
his stables and goes to sleep, faint with fatigue, upon the
straw which is trampled upon by his proud steeds."
How widely apart from all this and yet how nearly related
'" D. Kathchen v. Heilbr. I, r : /. t. 227. »» lb. 231.
THE ERA OF NATIOJ^AL RECONSTRUCTION. 475
is Michael Kohlhaas, the central figure of that powerful story
of the sixteenth century in which it seems as
though the spirit of revenge which soon was to ^^^I'^el KoU-
unite the German peoples in the universal uprising
against the oppressor of Europe, was for the first time lif tinr^
its head! Here, if anywhere, Kleist is a master in the art of
crowding a world of passion into the most concise, succinct,
and seemingly objective narrative. Kohlhaas becomes a
rebel and a criminal because he cannot consent to the pros-
titution of justice. This commonplace horse-dealer, this
contented, well-to-do citizen, this plain practical man of the
people, is at bottom a stalwart idealist. It is his belief
in the inevitable victory of right which in the beginning of his
trouble with the Baron von Tronka makes him go to the ut-
most length of forbearance. Without the slightest provoca-
tion on his part, some of his horses are detained by the
baron: Kohlhaas submits to it as to one of those unpleasant
necessities which are a part of the "defective order of this
world." "' Having established the groundlessness of the
detention, he reclaims the horses, only to find that through
overwork, starvation, and wanton ill-treatment they have
been well-nigh ruined, while his groom on protesting against
such an outrage has been nearly beaten to death. Even now
Kohlhaas controls himself. He carefully weighs all possi-
bilities, and only when he has fully convinced himself that
there is no other way of redress does he decide to invoke the
law in his behalf. But now there happens the unheard of,
the incredible: the law itself sides with the law-breaker!
even the highest court of the land rejects Kohlhaas's com-
plaint as irrelevant and futile! It is superb to see how the
long-suppressed impulse of vindicating the right with his own
hand now flames up in this quiet and self-possessed North
German with irrepressible and fatal power. Through all his
wrath and indignation at " seeing the world in such a pro-
"' Cf. Werke IV, 13.
47^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
digious disorder " there flashes a feeling of inward satisfac-
tion that " his own mind has at last been set right." "' His
faithful wife having made a last effort to redress his wrongs,
and having died while engaged in it, he arranges her funeral
with all the solemnity and deliberateness of one who is about
to settle his account with this world. (What a picture! this
silent man, his youngest child on his arm, standing by and
watching, as they are digging her grave!) He sells all his
property except his horses and his arms; he puts his chil-
dren in the care of relatives; once more he throws himself
down in the deserted house before the bed of the departed
one: — and then he rises " for the business of revenge." '"
And when, after years of murder and destruction, after the
whole country has been made to feel all the terrors of a civil
war, the horses are at last restored to him in good condition
and the baron is sentenced to prison, Kohlhaas willingly
suffers the fate of a rebel, and lays his head on the block
with the joyful consciousness that justice has been done.
While Kleist was putting the finishing touches to this
thrilling tale of popular rebellion, there had been heard the
Die Her- *^"' mutterings of the European revolt against
manns- Napoleonic usurpation. The Spanish people had
sohlaoht, rigg^^ a^^ £j.Qjj^ ^.j^g \i2X\\& fields of Saragossa and
Baylen there came a mighty voice calling upon the German
people to do likewise. Kleist's response to this call was his
Hermannsschlacht, the glorification of the first great rising
of Germanic yeoman against foreign tyranny.
Wherever there is a nation down-trodden and enslaved,
wherever the blood of the innocent cries to heaven, where-
ever there are souls thirsting for a day of retaliation, this
mighty song of judgment will be heard. Here again Kleist
proves himself the man of extremes; here again his passion
is all the more unscrupulous and unreflecting, because it has
struggled through self-introspection and doubt. The whole
'" Werke IV, 22. "« Jb, 28.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 477
drama is like one long-drawn breath of exultant joy that
now, at last, the time of theorizing and considering is over,
that the hour of action, of relentless, pitiless action has
come.
In the beginning, Hermann himself is the only one who
clearly recognises this hour. He recognises it, because
among a multitude of half-hearted and selfish wiseacres he
alone fights, not for his life, not for his property, but for an
idea. He is the embodiment of the spirit which Fichte in
his Addresses to the German Nation had endeavoured to
evoke, the spirit of absolute, not to say fanatical, surrender
to the common cause. To free Germany from the foreign
yoke — this is the consuming, the maddening passion of his
Jife. To accomplish this, he is ready to sacrifice everything
and every one, to break every faith, to violate every prin-
ciple."* In order to lull Ventidius, the Roman legate, into
a feeling of complete security, he encourages his frivolous
advances to his own wife Thusnelda. He risks the life of
his own children by sending them as hostages to Marbod.
He opens his own territory to the spoliations of the hostile
army. He himself incites the Roman soldiery to outrages
against his people. On hearing of the noble deed of the
Roman centurion who in the sacking of a Cheruscan village
has saved a child from the flames, he wildly exclaims '";
Er sei verflucht, wenn er mir das gethan!
Er hat auf einen Augenblick
Mein Herz veruntreut, zum Verrater
An Deutschlands grosser Sache mich gemacht!
Ich will He hohnische Damonenbrut nicht lieben!
So lang sie in Germanien trotzt,
1st Hass mein Amt, und meine Tugend Rache!
The gradual spreading of this spirit of unconditional, pas-
sionate devotion to the national cause, the slow but irre-
sistible surging on of this wave of collective wrath, until at
last it sweeps over and bears away the whole structure of
'" Cf, Brahm /. t. 29a f. '*' Hermannsschl. IV, 9; Werkt III, 71.
478 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Roman perfidy and despotism — this forms the dominating
action of the drama ; this is brought out, above all, in the
way in which Thusnelda becomes an avenger of her coun-
try's honour.
Thusnelda— Thuschen, as Hermann loves to call her — is
a figure such as only Kleist could create : all childlike in-
stinct, all faith, all womanliness, a being born to be loved, —
So was ein Deutscher lieben nennt,
Mit Ehrfurcht und mit Sehnsucht — "'
and at the same time a fierce, revengeful, Penthesilea-like
barbarian. The simple-minded woman has taken the atten-
tions of Ventidius, the gallant Roman, seriously. She re-
proaches herself for not having undeceived him at once, and
when Hermann makes fun of these scruples, her resentment
clearly shows that her feminine vanity has not remained
untouched by the flatteries of the shallow diplomat"':
Dich macht, ich seh', dein Romerhass ganz blind.
Weil als damonenartig dir
Das Ganz' erscheint, so kannst du dir
Als sittHch nicht den Einzelnen gedenken.
Hermann drops the subject and waits for a better oppor-
tunity to open her eyes. One of the symptoms which to
Thusnelda showed the depth of Ventidius's passion for her
was that he managed furtively to cut off a lock of her golden
hair. To this incident Hermann recurs the very day when
he and Thusnelda, sitting under the oak tree, are expecting
the triumphal entry of the Roman army into Teutoburg."*
" Well, Thuschen, how you will look after these Romans
have shaved your head bald as a rat ! "
" The Romans ? What ? "
Hermann. Ja, was zum Hanker, denkst du ?
Die rom'schen Damen mflssen doch,
Wenn sie sich schmucken, hUbsche Haare haben?
Thusnelda. Nun, haben denn die rSm'schen Damen keine ?
^^ Hermannsschl. II, 8; /. i. 2g.
'" lb. 30. "» Cf. for the following III, 3; /. c. 41 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 479
Herm. Nein, sag' ich! Schwarze! Schwarz und fett, wie Hexen!
Nicht hUbsche, trock'ne, gold'ne, so wie du!
Thusn. Wohlan! so raOgen sie! Der trift'ge Grundi
Wenn sie mit htibschen nicht begabt,
So m5gen sie mit schmutz'gen sich behelfen!
Herm. So! In der That! Da sollen die Kohorten
Umsonst wohl tiber'n Rhein gekommen sein ?
Thusn. Wer ? Die Kohorten ?
Herm. Ja, die Varus fiihrt.
Thusn, (lachi). Das muss ich sagen! Der wird doch
Um meiner Haare nicht gekommen sein?
[lerm. Was? Allerdings! Bei unsrer grossen Hertha!
Hat dir Ventidius das noch nicht gesagt?
And now he goes on in the same grimly jocose manner,
telling her how the Roman soldiers fall upon German
women, cut their hair and break their teeth, in order that
the fine ladies in Rome be well supplied with stolen charms;
while Thusnelda listens laughing, wondering, gasping, until
she finally breaks out:
Thusn. Bei alien Rachegottern! alien Furien!
Bei allem was die HftUe finster macht!
Mit welchem Recht, wenn dem so ist,
Vom Kopf uns aber nehmen sie sie weg ?
Herm. Ich weiss nicht, Thuschen, wie du heut' dich stellst.
Steht August nicht mit den Kohorten
In alien LSndern siegreich aufgepflanzt ?
Fur wen erschaffen ward die Welt als Rom ?
Nimmt August nicht dem Elefanten
Das Elfenbein, das Oel der Bisamkatze,
Dem Pantertier das Fell, dem Wurm die Seide ?
Was soil der Deutsche hier zum voraus haben ?
And at last she learns that the lock of her own hair stolen
by Ventidius was not a symbol of his love, is not being
worn by him nearest to his heart, but has been sent to the
empress as an outlandish curiosity. And now her wrath
knows no bounds. She implores Hermann to abandon
Ventidius to her vengeance, she lures the traitor to a
secret rendezvous, and commits him herself to the em-
480 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
braces of a wild bear. — In the whole of William Tell
there is no episode which in passionate intensity and
truthfulness could be compared with these Thusnelda
scenes.
In the spring of 1809 it seemed as though Kleist was
no longer to be alone in his dreams of national revenge,
as though the hour of the German rising of
Kateolismns ^jjich he had sung in Die Hermannsschlacht
derDentsohen. , , . , , . ■ , , j
had come mdeed. Austria declared war upon
France, and all over Germany this declaration was greeted
as the dawn of a new epoch. The Austrian army rejoiced
at the chance of blotting out the memory of Austerlitz;
the Tirolese peasants followed the example of the Spanish
insurgents ; and although Prussia still kept neutral, yet here
also the long-suppressed popular wrath found a voice in
the enthusiasm aroused by Schill's glorious, though fool-
hardy, expedition. Kleist could not be inactive in this uni-
versal awakening. He hastened to the scene of war itself,
and here he wrote those flaming manifestoes in which now
with the massive energy of Fichtean grandiloquence,"' now
with the simplicity and incisiveness of a popular pam-
phleteer, he repeats again and again the one thing needful :
a common heart and a common will. Two chapters of
the Catechistn for Germans "° will be sufficient to illustrate
the spirit of these heart-stirring effusions.
" Chapter 2. On the Love of Country. Q.: Thou lovest thy
fatherland, my son, dost thou not? A.: Yes, my father, I do.
Q.: Why dost thou love it? A.: Because it is my fatherland.
Q.: Thou meanest, because God has blessed it with abundant
fruit, because it is adorned with beautiful works of art, because
heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, to whose names there is
no end, have magnified it? A.: No, father: thou misleadest
me. Q.; I mislead thee ? A.: For Rome and Egypt, as thou hast
"' Cf. especially ihe manifesto Was gilt es in diesem Kriege ? Werke
IV, 278 ff
'" Werke IV, 265 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 48 1
taught me, are much more richly .blest than Germany with fruit
and beautiful works of art and whatever is great and delightful.
Yet, if it were thy son's fate to live in either of these countries,
he would feel sad and never would love it as he loves Germany.
Q.: Why then dost thou love Germany? A.: My father, I have
told thee already. Q.: Thou hast told me? A.: Because it is
my fatherland. — Chapter 7. On the Admiration of Napoleon.
Q.: What kind of a man dost thou consider Napoleon, the Corsi
can, the all-famous emperor of the French 7 A.: My father,
pardon me, thou hast asked me that already. Q.: Say it once
more, in the words which I have taught thee ! A.: A detestable
man, the beginning of all evil and the end of all good ; a sinner, to
denounce whom men have no language and the angels of dooms-
day have no breath. Q.. Didst thou ever see him ? A.: Never,
my father. Q.. How art thou to imagine him to thyself ? A.; As
the ghost of a parricide, risen from hell, sneaking about in the
temple of Nature and trying to shake the columns that bear it.
Q.: When hast thou repeated this to thyself? A.: Last night
when 1 went to bed, and this morning when I rose. Q.; And
when wilt thou repeat it again? A.. To-night when I go to bed,
and to-morrow when I rise. Q.: And yet, they say, he has many
virtues. The business of subduing the world, they say, he man-
ages with shrewdness, agility, and boldness; and especially on
the day of battle, they say, he is a great leader. A.: Yes, my
father, so they say. Q. : Dost thou not think that for these
qualities he deserves admiration? A.: Thou jestest, my father.
Q.: Why not? A.: That would be as cowardly as though I were
to admire the athletic power of a man in the moment in which he
throws me into the mud and tramples upon my face. Q.: Who,
then, among the Germans may admire him ? A.: The generals,
perhaps, and they who know the art of war. Q.: And even these,
when only may they do it? A.: When he is crushed."
What poet has ever sung more sublimely of the great
concerns of human life, tradition, home, freedom, right,
than Kleist in this homely and unpretentious Catechism ?
The battle of Wagram destroyed at one stroke all the
exultant hopes with which the Austrian war
had been begun. The future of Germany seemed '^J^ ^ ™
darker than ever, the foreign yoke seemed fas-
tened upon it indissolubly and for all time. Once more
482 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Kleist's ideals had been shattered. For a time he seems to
have brooded over a mad design of assassinating Napoleon.
At last he returned weary and broken to his Prussian home,
from which since 1807 he had been absent. Here mean-
while a momentous change had taken place. The Prussia
of 1806 was dead, and a new Prussia, the Prussia of Stein,
of Fichte, of Schleiermacher had arisen. Kleist saw before
him a people such as the Addresses to the German Nation
had aimed to create, a people which seemed the embodiment
of noblest service and devotion to common duty, a people
ready to sacrifice everything in order to regain a dignified
national existence. The sight of this people wrung from
Kleist his last work and his sanest, the drama which has
given to the German stage the finest type of military
discipline, which has surrounded the Brandenburg of the
great Elector with the halo of immortal poetry : Der
Prinz von Hamburg (1810).
The history of literature knows of no other poetic pro-
duction which, born from an equally deep individual ex-
perience, has at the same time in a more emphatic manner
manifested in itself the concentrated thought of a whole
epoch than does this wonderful poem. No other figure of
Kleist's imagination bears a more striking resemblance to
Kleist himself than this wayward dreamer who under the
stress of necessity becomes a man ; and no other figure
is a finer type of the return of Romanticism from capri-
cious self-indulgence and aesthetic revelry to the simple and
all-important duties of common life.
An indescribable charm lies over those first scenes of
the drama where the young hero merged into the sweet
illusion of a moonlit summer-night is carried away by the
vision of the ideals that swell his heart : the laurel wreath
of fame; the favour of his lord, the Elector; the love of
the princess Natalie. Yet, irresistible as this unalloyed and
boyish enthusiast is, we feel at once that he lacks the steady
purpose and self-mastery which transforms genius into cha-
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 483
racter. His country is in the most pressing danger, the Swedes
have swept over the larger part of Brandenburg and are
threatening Berlin, it is the eve of a decisive battle. The
prince of Homburg seems to feel nothing of all this. Dis-
tracted and absent-minded, he attends the meeting of the
generals at which the orders for the next day are issued.
Mechanically and listlessly he receives his own order not to
advance until the enemy is routed. What is the plan of
battle to him ? He still sees Natalie holding out to him
the laurel-wreath adorned with the Elector's golden chain,
he still seems to follow her while she retreats, he again
seems to grasp her arm, and again to see the vision fade.
In this frame of mind he enters the battle. It is intolerable
to him to be condemned to wait. Against his orders,
against the protests of his officers, he advances with his
squadrons at the very height of the combat, and thereby
decides the victory. A rumour spreads that the Elector
himself has fallen from his horse. The victorious general
feels himself the head of the whole army, of the whole state ;
and at this very moment he is made to feel that Natalie
is his. Beside himself, frenzied with passionate elation, he
exclaims '" :
O Caesar Divus !
Die Leiter setz ich an, an deinen Stern !
But the Elector has not fallen in the battle. He lives,
and he is determined to chastise the disobedient general.
In him Kleist has created the ideal type of a Hohenzollern
ruler, a figure which suggests the venerable features of the
old emperor William. Not a trace of wilfulness, of arro-
gance in him. A simple, upright man; kind, yet austere;
gentle in his feelings, but chary of utterance. A prince
who loves a frank, manly word, whose heart is with his
subjects, a true father of his people, yet stern as the law
itself against the violator of the law. He is unwilling to
"' Prinz V. Homb. II, 8; Werke III, 147.
484 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
accept victory from a lawless chance: the prince of Hom-
burg is court-martialled and sentenced to death.
Once again does Kleist make his hero go to the extreme
of passionate emotion. The same man who with reck-
less bravery had plunged into the thick of battle, loses all
self-respect and self-control at the thought of the grave.
He begs for his life, he whines for pity, he is willing to re-
nounce Natalie if only he can save his own miserable exist-
ence. And he rises from this self-degradation only when
the Elector, moved by the pitiful spectacle, calls upon the
prince himself to judge his own transgression: if he himself
considers the verdict unjust he is to be free. Now at last
Homburg recovers his moral equilibrium, now at last he
becomes fully himself. He submits to the law, he acknow-
ledges his guilt, he asks for death, he exults in the conscious-
ness of giving himself as a sacrifice to eternal order "":
Nun, o Unsterblichkeit, bist du ganz mein!
Du strahlst mir durch die Binde meiner Augen
Mit Glanz der tausendfachen Sonne zu, —
and now he is worthy to be pardoned. The whole has pre-
vailed over the individual. Romanticism has returned to
the classic ideal.
It was not given to Kleist himself to reach the moral
harmony for which nearly all of his heroes strive and which
the prince of Homburg so gloriously attains. Misjudged
by his time, neglected by his friends, at last rejected even
by those dearest to him, he turned away from this world in
gloom and despair, he did not see the day of glory. But
he, too, no less than the thousands who died on the fields of
Leipzig and Waterloo, must be numbered among the mar-
tyrs for freedom and right.'"
'J" Prinz von Homb. V, 10; /. c. 194.
'" Never has a man of genius suffered such bitter disappointment
and ignominy as Heinrich von Kleist. Of his principal works, Das
Kdthchm von Heilbronn was the only one which received even so
much as a respectful hearing. Der zerbrochcne Krug was a complete
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 485
One cannot help feeling a certain disenchantment when
one turns from Heinrich von Kleist to a man who in so
many ways was his opposite: Ludwig Uhland."'
There, the passionate struggles of a Titan; here, fffi^tyV"*
the quiet labour of a conscientious artist. There, tween Kleist
a fiery enthusiast, consumed by the desire to °'''* ™''*°*'
snatch the crown of glory from the head of the immor-
tals '"; here, a simple man of the people, knowing of no
greater joy than to stand by his window and listen to ca-
rousing students singing his own songs. There, a mind
brooding over the deepest problems, craving for the highest
ideals; convulsive efforts, sudden outbursts of the soul; and
failure on the Weimar stage. Penthesilea was found so shocking
that its publisher, Cotta, was not even willing to advertise it. And
neither Die Hermanns schlacht nor the political pamphlets nor even
Der Prinz von Hamburg saw the light of publicity during Kleist's life-
time. , When, at last, even his sister Ulrike turned away from him,
he could live no longer. Together with Henriette Vogel he committed
suicide, Nov. 21, 1811.
'" Although the first collection of Uhland's poems did not appear
until 1815, most of his best known songs and ballads were written a
good deal earlier. Der blinde Konig, Die sterbenden Helden 1804; Die
Kapelle, Schdfers Sonntagslied, Das Schloss am Meere 1805; Des Kna-
ben Berglied, Abschied 1806; Lebewohl 1807; Klein Roland 1808; Der
Wirtin Tochterlein, Der gute Kamerad 1809; Die Rache 1810; Mor-
genlied^ Abreise, Einkehr^ Heimkehr, Der weisse Hirsch, Roland Schild-
trdger, Mdrchen 181 1 ; Fruhlingsglaube, Siegfrieds Schwert, Konig
Karls Meerfahri, Taillefer 1?:12; Lied eines deutschen Sdngers, An das
Vaterland, Sdngerliebe, Schwdbische Kunde, Des Sdngers Fluch 1814.
It is rather remarkable that none of Uhland's finest poems belongs to
the year 1813. After 1815, represented by Graf Eberkard der Rau-
schebart, and 1816, in which were written Das alte gute Recht, Am
18. October ;8i6, Das Herz fur unser Volk, Uhland became less and
less prolific. Yet even among his later poetry there are such wonder-
ful creations as Auf der Ueberfahrt 1823; Bertran de Born, Der Wal-
ler, Miinsler sage, Ver Sacrum, Tells Tod i&2q; fVanderung, Die Bi-
dassoabriicke. Das Glilck von Edenhall, Die versunkene Krone 1834.
"' " Ich werde ihm den Kranz von der Stirne reissen " — a word of
Kleist's spoken with reference to Goethe ; Brahm /. c. in.
486 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
at last a despairing plunge into the darkness. Here a gen-
tle heart and a strong will; an early blossoming of a pure
and harmonious imagination; long years of public usefulness
and unflinching consecration to national tasks; and at last a
serene and honoured old age, devoted to scholarly research.
And yet these two men belong together. They are op-
posite types of the same intellectual movement. They both
represent the turning away of Romantic poetry from caprice
to law, from negation to construction, from the individual-
istic to the collectivistic ideal.
David Friedrich Strauss seems to have been the first to
call Uhland the classic of Romanticism. "° It is impossible
„, , ,^ to characterize the Suabian singer in few words
TThlandtlie , , ,, -r ■, ■ , • , • ^ i
classic of more truthfully. In him there is nothing of the
Bomantlcism. extravagance of a Friedrich Schlegel, nothing
of the mistiness of a Novalis, nothing of the lurid fatalism
of a Tieck or a Zacharias Werner. It seems as though the
voluptuous dream of Romanticism had touched his soul
only to give him a fuller sense of sober reality; as though
all its nightly phantoms had only helped to open his eyes to
the spirits that walk in the light of day "'; as though the
Wild Chase of the supernatural had passed over his head
only to make him see all the more clearly the wonders hid-
den in the natural and the normal.'" His figures walk up-
"' Cf . Fr. Th. Vischer, Ludwig Uhland in his Kritische Gauge, N.
F., IV, 148. — Cf., also, Uhland's Leben von seiner Wittwe (1874).
Hermann Fischer, L. Uhland (1887). G. Hassenstein, L. Uhland
(1887).
'*' Cf. Uhland's definition of a romantic scenery : "Eine Gegend
ist romantisch, wo Geister wandeln''; Jul. Schmidt, Gesch. d. d. Litt.
IV, 33S-
'«' This distinguishes Uhland from his friend Justinus Kerner (1786-
1862). In spite of his deep sense of nature (cf. the poem Der Ein-
same) and in spite of his talent for naive healthy enjoyment (cf. the
Wander lied : ' Wohlauf ! noch getrunken ') there is an undercurrent
of morbid supranaturalism in Kerner's poetry. Gustav Schwab, on
the other hand, the author of Der Reiter und der Bodensee (1826),
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 487
right and on solid ground. They are sound and sane; chaste
and true; blue-eyed children of the Black Forest, sur-
rounded with all the charm of popular tradition and native
belief; poetic types of a healthy common consciousness;
eternal symbols of the abiding and preserving forces of hu-
man life. And if in Kleist we saw the birth-throes of an
age labouring with new forms of national existence, we gain
from Uhland's poems the impression that the rejuvenation
of the national body had already been accomplished.
Even in his earliest songs, which to a certain extent show
the influence of the morbid and fantastic in Romanticism,
there is a clearness of vision, a simplicity and gig Ta^sa.-
depth of sentiment, which separate them from ninga.
anything that Tieck ever wrote, and which place them by
the side of Goethe and the Volkslied. How is it possible that
in view of such wonderful poems as Die Kapelle, Schdfers
Sonntagslied, Das Schloss am Meere (1805), Des Knaben
Berglied, Abschied (1806), a man like Scherer could speak"'
contemptuously of " fair shepherds and kings and queens
with red mantles and golden crowns " ? Even here the
Romantic form is imbued with the most real, the most uni-
versally human feeling; even here there speaks, not the c;'a-
pricious child of an artificial culture, but a man whose heart
beats in common with the highest and the lowest of his
fellow men; even here there is reflected a collective rather
than an individual consciousness. And it certainly is more
than a mere accident that the shepherd, kneeling down for
his prayer on Sunday morning, feels "as though many were
kneeling unseen with him " "°; that the mountain boy,
much as he delights in the freedohi of rock and ravine,
falls U-T behind Uhland in depth of feeling and power of representa-
tion. Nearest to Uhland, among the poets influenced by him, comes
Eduard MSrike in such poems as Schon- Rohtraut , Das verlassene
Magdkin, and others {Gedichte 1838).
'*' Gesch. d. d. Litt. p. 653. Cf. Uhland's Gedichte «. Dramen II, 8.
"» Schdfers Sonntagslied ; Gedichte «. Dramen I, 23.
488 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
much as he glories in living above the clouds that bear
lightning and thunder into the valley, also thinks of the
time when he shall descend from his heights and wield the
sword in defence of his country "':
Und wann die Sturmglock' einst erschallt,
Manch Feuer auf den Bergen wallt,
Dann steig' ich nieder, tret' ins Glied
Und schwing' mein Schwert und sing' mein Lied:
Ich bin der Knab' vom Berge!
The most productive period of Uhland's life falls in that
momentous epoch with which from so many different points
Hia maturity. °^ view we have already become familiar, the
The demo- years from the deepest national degradation to the
raoterofhis ^^^ delivery from the foreign yoke. And here
poetry, we see most clearly that what gives to Uhland's
poetry its most distinctive character is that democracy of
heart which is the surest sign of true nobility, and which
determined Uhland's attitude in all the great questions of
his time, from the struggle against Napoleon and the consti-
tutional conflicts in Wurtemberg to the Revolution of 1848.
What poet ever knew better how the common man feels
than he, what poet has surrounded ordinary e^fperiences
with a deeper glow of imagination ? Nowhere has hidden
love been depicted more touchingly than in Der Wirtin
Tochterlein, or the fellowship of danger more simply and
truly than in Der gute Kamerad (1809). Nowhere has the
humorous enjoyment of harmless pleasure found a, more
perfect artistic expression than in the praise of "mine
host, the bounteous apple tree " {Einkehr, 1811). There is
no love song quivering with more genuine passion than
those few lines (Heimkehr, 181 1) which seem like the in-
voluntary emitting of a breath long suppressed:
O, brich nicht Steg ! du zitterst sehr.
O, stlirz nicht Fels ! du drauest schwer.
Welt, geh nicht unter; Himmel, fall nicht ein,
Eh' ich mag bei der Liebsten sein !
1" Des Knaben Berglied ; I. c, I, 25.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 489
And what a difference there is between Uhland's medi-
aeval figures and those of other Romanticists! Klein Roland
(1808), Roland Schildtrdger (181 1), Siegfrieds Sckwert, Kdnig
Karls Meerfahrt, Taillefer, Sangerliebe, Schwabische Kunde,
Des Sdngers Fluch (1814) '" — what a galaxy of beauty, of
joyousness, of exultant vitality, of foolhardy combativeness,
and at the same time of gentleness, of childlike trust,
of serene moderation, and humble wisdom these names
call up! Here the spirit of the Nibelungenlied se.ems to
be united with that of Walther von der Vogelweide.
Through all the- martial clamour and i splendour there
sounds a prophecy of peace and justice ; and in all the
high-fiown wooing and daring we recognise a strongly
developed feeling for the common good. However romantic
the scenery, however fabulous the incidents, we "never for
a moment lose the impression that here our own kinsmen
are speaking and acting. And whether it be young Roland
stepping into the king's palace as unconcernedly " as into
the forest green"; whether it be young Siegfried driving the
anvil into the ground and forging his own sword; whether
it be King Charles sitting at the helm and quietly steer-
ing the ship through the gale ; whether it be Taillefer rid-
ing at the head of the Normans and inspiring them with
his song ; whether it be the hoary bard cursing the castle
of the murderous despot: — they all seem to bring before us
the ideal of a nation, pious and free, strong and true ; they
all remind us of the words in which Uhland has expressed
his own "heart for the people " '°' :
An unsrer Vater Thaten
riit Liebe sich erba'un,
Fortpflanzen ihre Saaten,
Dem alten Grund vertraun;
"' Only such poems are mentioned here as are contained in the
Gidichte of 1815. Among later poems dealing with media;val sub-
jects, Bertran de Born and Der Waller (both 1829) stand out as per-
haps marking the climax of Uhland's art.
"2 Das Herzfilr unser Volk ; I. c. 1, 116.
49° SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
In solchem Angedenken
Des Landes Heil erneun;
Um unsre Schmach sich kranken
Sich unsrer Ehre freun;
Sein eignes Ich vergessen
In aller Lust und Schmerz:
Das nennt man, wohl ermessen,
Fur unser Volk ein Herz.
Next to Schiller, Uhland is the most popular of all
German poets; and justly so. For he has shown the Ger-
Uhlandthe man people their better self; he has shown the
efermm''" world what a wealth of strength, of bravery, of
people. humour, of goodness, of inspiration, slumbers
beneath the modest and quiet exterior of this people ; he
has glorified those unpretentious and emphatically German
virtues : faithfulness and patience. And when toward the
end of his life, at a time when the muse had long since taken
leave of him, he wrote those lines of noble resignation "':
Das Lied, es mag am Lebensabend schweigen,
Sieht nur der Geist dann heil'ge Sterne steigen —
he unwittingly told the innermost secret of his own poetry,
a poetry over which there stand hallowed stars, visible to
all, though intelligible to none.
In the same year in which Uhland sang of young Sieg-
fried and of Taillefer, Napoleon retreated from Moscow.
A few months later (March 17, 1813), the king
The national ^^f prussia, driven by an irresistible tide of popu-
upnsingi . '' ir r
lar enthusiasm, called his people to arms.'" And
now at last the time had come for which Klopstock and
"•* Written in 1854; /. c II, 315.
'" Here are some passages from the proclamation To my People
(Hausser, D. Gesch. v. Tode Friedr. d. Gr. b z. Grilnd. d. d. Bundes)
IV, 57 f.): " Remember your past; remember the blessings for which
our ancestors have bled and struggled : freedom of conscience, honour,
independence, industry, devotion to the arts, the pursuit of science.
Even little peoples have taken up arms for like privileges against
more powerful foes, and have triumphed. Think of the heroic Swiss
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 49I
Leasing, Goethe and Schiller, Fichte and Schleiermacher,
for which all the thinkers and seers of the last seventy years
had worked and hoped, toward which both Classicism and
Romanticism had inevitably been drifting: the time of po-
litical unity and greatness.
Of the spirit which impelled the German people in the
mighty struggle that was now at hand, it is hard to form an
adequate conception. A glimpse of it we seem
to catch in a little scene the memory of which '^^ ^P™* "^
has been preserved by Friedrich Forster, the
friend and comrade of Theodor Korner. Forster belonged
like Korner to the Liitzow volunteers, that noble band of
German youth who, largely from the academies and univer-
sities, had flocked to the Prussian colours, a corps of war-
riors whose boyishly romantic enthusiasm forms one of the
brightest spots in military history. On their march from
Silesia where they had mustered to the scene of war, Fors-
ter's regiment about the middle of April had reached the
town of Meissen, and here the incident took place which
he himself describes in the following manner"':
" We had just finished our morning song in front of the inn in
which our captain was quartered when I saw a man whose features
seemed familiar to me entering a mail-coach. I could hardly
believe my eyes when I saw it was Goethe ! As a friend of his
son I had often been in his house; but I could not explain to myself
how he, the man of peace, should have ventured into the midst
of this commotion of war. I still thought I had been mistaken,
especially since he had pulled a military cap over his eyes and
was wrapped in a Russian general's mantle. But when I saw
his little secretary, friend John, step up to the coach, I was sure
it was he, and at once communicated the glorious discovery to
my comrades. With a military salute I now approached the coach
and the Dutch. Great sacrifices will be required of all. But these
sacrifices are slight compared with the sacred possessions for which
we make them, for which we must battle and triumph, or cease being
Germans." The author of the proclamation was Hippel.
"" Cf. A. Kohut, Theodor Korner : j. Leben u. s. Dichtungen p. 173.
Fr, Forster, Goethes Leben u. Werke ; Goethe's fVerie Hempel I, i68.
492 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and said : ' I beg to report to your excellency that a company of
Royal Prussian Volunteers of the Black Rifle Corps, en route
for Leipzig, have drawn up before your headquarters and desire
to salute your excellency.' The captain gave the command :
' Present arms ! ' and I called : ' The poet of all poets, Goethe,
hurrah!' The band played and the whole company cheered.
He touched his cap and nodded kindly. Now I once more
stepped up to him and said : ' It is no use for your excellency to
try to keep your incognito; the Black Riflemen have sharp eyes,
and to meet Goethe at the beginning of our march was too good
an omen to pass unnoticed. We ask from you a blessing for our
arms!' ' With all my heart,' he said. I held out my gun and sword;
he laid his hand on them and said: ' March forward with God!
and may all good things be granted to your joyous German cour-
age ! ' While we again cheered him, still saluting he drove past us."
The same naive, undefiled enthusiasm which is revealed
in this little episode is manifested in the whole record of
the years 1813-15. We see it in the appearance of a ' Cam-
paign and Tent Edition ' of the Nibelungenlied.^" We see
it in that scene described by professor StefEens of Breslau
where he called upon his assembled students to desert their
studies and to follow him to the recruiting-ground."° We
see it in that most touching of war contributions, the golden
wedding-rings which the Prussian women gave in exchange
for iron ones."" We see it in the religious fervour with
which whole regiments attended the communion service be-
fore setting out for the " holy war." "° And we hear it in all
the war lyrics of those years, from Schenkendorf's sweet,
melodious prophecies of a new realm of poetry and free-
dom, to the stormy battle-cries of KQrner, from the solemn
and measured trombone sound of Riickert's Geharnischte
Sonette to the joyous trumpet-call and the deep organ-
strains of Ernst Moritz Arndt.'"
'" The editor was Prof. Zeune of Berlin University.
"' Cf. Henrich Steffens, Was ich erlebte VII, 71 ff.
'" Hausser /. .. IV, 50.
«» Cf. H. V. Treitschke, D. Gtsch. i. 19. Jhdt I, 428 ff.
'" A collection of them DNL. CXCVI.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 493
" Germany is rising," with these wprds "" Theodor Kor-
ner informs his father of his decision to sacrifice the hopes
of a life graced with the happiness of youthful love, teeming
with promises of literary fame, " Germany is rising, the
Prussian eagle by his bold flight awakens in all faithful
hearts the hope of German liberty. My art sighs for her
fatherland — let me be her worthy disciple! — Now that I
know what bliss there is in this life, now that all the stars
of happiness shine upon me, now, by God! it is a worthy
feeling that impels me; now it is a mighty conviction that
no sacrifice is too great for the highest human good, the
freedom of one's people. A great time demands great
hearts. Shall I in cowardly ecstasy drawl my triumphal
songs while my brethren fight the battle ? I know you
will suffer many anxieties from it, my mother will weep —
God comfort her ! I cannot save you this." And a few
hours before his death on the field of honour, he sings that
rapturous bridal song to his sword"":
So komm denn aus der Scheide
Du Reiters Augenweide,
Heraus, mein Schwert, heraus!
Ftihr' dich in's Vaterhaus!
Hurrah!
Erst that es an der Linken
Nur ganz verstohlen blinken;
Doch an die Rechte traut
Gott sichtbarlich die Braut!
Hurrah!
Drum druckt den liebeheissen
BrSutlichen Mund von Eisen
An eure Lippen fest.
Fluch! wer die Braut verlasstl
Hurrah!
Nun lasst das Liebchen singen,
Dass helle Funken springen! _^
"' Th. Korner's Sammtl. Werke ed. Streckfuss I, 33 '.
"8 /*. 108 ff.
494 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Dei Hochzeitmorgen graut-"
Hurrah ! du Eisenbraut !
Hurrah !
And of the same spirit, only still more rugged and more
mature, is Arndt, the Blticher of German lyrics.'" After
he has thundered forth his mighty song of ' The God who
let the iron grow,' after he has accompanied the stalwart
riders through battle and death, after he has rung out the
tidings of Leipzig's bloody judgment-day, after he has sung
the glorious hymn of German unity, he still has breath for
that splendid outburst of joy and gratitude and boundless
trust which comes upon us with the overwhelming force of
a chorus from Handel's Judas Maccabeus^"" :
Wem soil der erste Dank erschallen?
Detn Gott, der gross und wunderbar
Aus langer Schande Nacht uns alien
In Flammenglanz erschienen war;
Der unsrer Feinde Trotz zerblitzet,
Der unsre Kraft uns schon erneut,
Und auf den Sternen waltend sitzet
Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit.
Wem soil der zweite Wunsch ertOnen?
Des Vaterlandes Majestat !
Verderben alien die es hShnen!
Gliick dem der mit ihm fallt und steht I
Es geh', durch Tugenden bewundert,
Geliebt durch Ehrlichkeit und Recht,
Stolz von Jahrhundert zu Jahrhundert,
An Kraft und Ehren ungeschwacht !
RUckt dichter in der heil'gen Runde
Und klingt den letzten Jubelklang!
Von Herz zu Herz, von Mund zu Munde
Erbrause freudig der Gesang!
Das Wort, das unsern Bund geschUrzet,
Das Heil, das uns kein Teufel raubt
Und kein Tyrannentrug uns kurzet,
Das sei gehalten und geglaubt!
'" An excellent characterization of Arndt by R. Haym ^aPtcuss.
Jahrb. V, 470 £f. For Arndt's Geist der Zeit cf. supra p. 437 f
"• Bundeslied; Ernst Moritz Arndt's Gedichte (i86o) p. 212
THE ERA OP NATtOMAL RECONSTRUCTION. 495
Joyousness, exultant, jubilant joyousness — this is perhaps ''
the word which best characterizes the whole German rising
against Napoleon. There is hardly a trace in it of that dark
desperate hatred which gave such a sinister aspect to Hein-
rich von Kleist's patriotic effusions. Its dominant note is
a feeling of unspeakable delight that at last all the little
provincial rivalries have been forgotten, that for once the
differences of class, of religion, of education have been
swept away; that for once there is nothing but one grand
common cause, one heaven and one earth for all who speak
and think and dream German. It is as though the whble
past of the nation were crowded into one supreme moment,
as though old Barbarossa had risen from the sleep of cen-
turies and brought back the splendour of the ancient empire,
as though the Nibelungen heroes were striding by the side
of the Black Hussars, as though the pillars and vaults of
Gothic cathedrals were once more embracing a united peo-
ple, as though a new ' Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott ' were
bursting forth from every German heart. Wonderful, divine
years! ample reward for all the sufferings and humiliations
of a long servitude, glorious climax of more than half a cen-
tury of unremitting intellectual effort, signals of light for all
future ages !
IV. Thk Age of the Restoration.
We have come to the last chapter of Romanticism, to the
days of the Holy Alliance and of Metternich, to the time of
reaction against the very spirit which made 1813 possible,
to the proscription of liberty, to. the blighting of national
hopes.
What a singular and astounding spectacle ! Here is a
people just recovered from centuries of political misery,
having just regained the full sense of its powej-, just risen
with one accord to vindicate its honour and inde-
pendence; and the very moment that the foreign enemy
496 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
is vanquished, the very moment that the longed-for oppor-
tunity for a thorough national reconstruction has come, this
same people again falls a victim to its hereditary lack of
common consciousness, it allows the old sectional animosi-
ties to revive, it suffers the leaders in the great struggle for
freedom and unity to be pushed aside, it is forced back into
the old submission to princely omnipotence. Once more it
is left to the dreamers and prophets to keep the ideal of na-
tional greatness alive. Another fifty years full of internal
dissension and strife must pass", before the fruits of- the com-
mon struggle against Napoleon can be reaped, before the
nation, at least politically, is welded into one;" and even then
it takes the iron hand of a Bismarck to accomplish this task.
Tantae molts erat Germanam condere gentem. '
1. The Effect of the Political Reaction Upon Literature.
The attitude of the governments during this period of re-
action, which lasted in the main unbroken from 18 15 to the
Revolution of 1848, was determined by the one
Tlie Metter- desire to efface as far as possible the vestiges of
moll system! . * ,,...,
the great upheaval against the old regmie which
had marked the beginning of the century, to reassert and
to maintain the obsolete principle of the divine right of
kings. It was characterized by the retirement from publi,c
life of nearly all the men who had helped to bring about the
reorganization of Prussia ; by the impeachment for high
treason of patriots like Arndt, Jahn, and Gorres (181 9); by
the wholesale incarceration of harmless university students
who, like Fritz Reuter, had committed the heinous crime of
wearing the German colours in their buttonholes "'; by the
"* It is an interesting fact that the beginnings of a more general
German immigration to the United Stales were connected with this
reactionary persecution of the universities; and that two of the most
remarkable men among this first generation of German immigrants,
Karl FoUen and Franz Lieber, became connected, the former with
Harvard University, the latter with Columbia College. A third, Carl
Postl (Charles Sealsfield), became the Cooper of the German novel.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 497
famous decree of the Federal Diet of 1835 '" putting an
interdict upon the entire literary production, future as well
as past, of Heine and the other members of "Young Ger-
many "; by the dismissal from Gottingen University of seven
of its most illustrious professors (among them the brothers
Grimm, Dahlmann, and Gervinus) because they had pro-
tested against an open violation of constitutional right com-
mitted by the king of Hanover (1837).
Public opinion, which in the days of Stein and Fichte
had at last become a motive power in national' life, was
again reduced to naught. For although in the constitu-
tional monarchies of South Germany at least . „
,1 . , . , Its effect on
there was enjoyed a certain degree of parlia- public and
mentary freedom, the political strength repre- library Ufe.
sented by these miniature states was so little, that the de-
bates of their legislatures had seldom more than academic
value and hardly ever stirred the nation as a whole. . And
while Austria and Prussia were foremost in pursuing a policy
of persistent and relentless coercion, the educated public of
Vienna and Berlin was engrossed in discussing the latest
literary scandal or the advent of a new ballet-dancer on the
operatic stage. No wonder that this should have been the
time in which renegades of freedom, like Friedrich von
Gentz, Adam Miiller, K. L. von Haller, were praised as great
political philosophers; in which the 'Fate Tragedy' with
its pallid faces and meaningless horrors, with its hopelesa
gospel of submission to a blind chance, achieved its greatest
theatrical triumphs ™; in which the hollow phantasms of a
spiritualistic dreamer like Amadeus Hoffmann were admired
as marvels of poetic- fiction."" No wonder that such a
Cf. T. S. Perry, Francis Lieber. H. v. Treitschke, Deutsche Gesch.
im i^.Jhdt 111,477 ff. K. Francke,j?ar/ Fallen and the Liberal Move-
ment in Germany; Papers of the American Hist. Assoc. V, i, p. 65 ff,
A. B. Faust, Charles Sealsfield {fia\\\mo-!e., i8g2).
'" Cf. Heine's Samtl. Werke ed, Elster VII, 530 f. 545 f.
"' Cf. supra p. 455. "' Cf. supra p. 455.
498 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TVRE.
hopeless pedant as Raupach should have been exalted by
this age as a master of the historical drama '"; that the lyric
dilettanteism of the period should have found an organ in
those numberless poetic almanacs and keepsakes embellished
with inane steel-engravings, the thought of which forced
upon the lips of the manly Gervinus the words of Harry
Hotspur "':
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew.
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers.
It is sad to see how even the best minds of the nation
were affected by this universal repression of public activity,
how they were crippled in their natural development, alien-
ated from their own day and their own country, led astray
in their tastes and propensities, discouraged in their views
of life, debarred from truly constructive achievements.
Grillparzer, the greatest dramatic talent since Kleist, a
poet whose debut in Die Ahnfrau (1817) showed a wonder-
ful power of instilling human blood even into the
Grillparzsr. X\it\ts% characters of the ' Fate Tragedy,' whose
Sappho (1818) seemed to bring back the classic days of
Goethe's Jphigenie, whose Golden Fleece (1821) and King
Ottokar (1825) recalled the grand dimensions of Schiller's
genius, — Grillparzer was doomed to spend his life in the
stifling atmosphere of Austrian bureaucracy and to see his
poetic energies wasted under the humiliating annoyances
of a petty censorship '"; so that instead of developing into
"" Cf. Heine's amusing characterization of Raupach in D. roman-
tische Schule III, 4 (Werke V, 340 ff.) and Ueber die Framosische
Biihne I (/. c. IV, 493 ff .)• Raupach's Hohinstaufen i830-'37. — That
the beginnings of the German historical novel (Hauff's Lichtenstein
1S26; W. Alexis's Der falsche Waldemar 1842) fall in this same time,
is well known.
'" Henry IV. Ill, I. Cf. Gervinus Gesch. d. d. Dichtung JV
(1840), introd.
"' The manuscript of Konig Ottokars Gliiek und Ende was kept for
two years in the censor's office; so that the poet had given it up as
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 499
a distinct type of his own he ended in a half classic, half
romantic eclecticism.
Riickert, the poet of the Geharnischte Sonette, the prophet
of a time when the ravens will fly no more around Barba-
rossa's mountain, when the old hero will come back to lead
his people to glory,"" learned through bitter per-
sonal experience that this day of national great- ^'"'^^'^•
ness was again removed into a far distance. His own gene-
ration he felt destined to be consumed in the furnace of
purifying trials '":
So lasse sich auch dies Geschlecht nicht dSuchten
Freiheit zu finden, weil es bricht die Bande;
Es muss verbrennen in dem Lautrungsbrande,
Das reine Licht wird erst den Enlieln leuchten.
And he himself took refuge from a hostile world in the quiet
communion with nature, his family, and his books. Far be
it from us to underrate the wealth of noble thought and
feeling which the German people owes to the author of
the Liebesfriihling (1823) and the Weisheit des Brahmanen
(1836 ff.). His friend Kopp was right when he praised him
as the master of didactic verse, as a poetic interpreter of
pantheism, when he found in the best of his poems a magic
transparency and depth of colour such as is spread over the
solemn landscape of the East. "* And yet who can help
lost when by a mere accident it was brought to light. After the first
performance of Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn the government offered
to buy the manuscript on condition that the drama should never be
published or performed again. Laube, who relates these astounding
facts (Grillparzer's Samtl. Werke I, p. xxv f.) pertinently adds: " Man
denke sich die Empfindung des Dichters [bei solchen VorgSngen]!
Musste nicht der Gedanke in ihm herrschend werden : dein ganzes
Dichten ist wohl ein Verbrechen, und das fernere Trachten nach Stif-
fen und Compositionen ist die mussigste, unergiebigste Thatigkeit
von der Welt?" — Cf. J. Volkelt, Grillparzer als Dichter des Tragi-
schen. Bulthaupt's Dramaturgie des Schauspiels III. Sauer's edition.
"^ Bariarossa ; Gedichte (Ausiv. d. Verf.) p. 104.
'" Geharn. Sonette, Nachklang ; I. c. 164.
'" Cf. Fr. Renter, F. Riickert u. J. Kopp p. 17 ff.
500 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
feeling that much of this oriental brilliancy in Riickert's
poems is laboured and artificial; who can help regretting
that this sturdy mind should have been forced to emigrate
to Persians and Hindoos in order to find inspiration for his
song; who can escape the impression that there lies a shadow
of disappointment and resignation over all his poetry ? "°
Als ich Abschied nahm, a.ls ich Abschied nahm,
War die Welt mir voll so sehr;
Als ich wieder kam, als ich wieder kam,
War alles leer.
I And how is it with most of the other eminent writers
'of the time ? with Schopenhauer, with Platen, Immermann,
Borne, Heine, Lenau ? Must we not see in them what we
see in Byron and the youthful Victor Hugo, sufferers from
a social and political system so vicious and absurd that by
its aid men like Metternich and Nicholas I. of Russia could
succeed in ruling Europe for more than thirty years ? They
all show the impress of a time unable to satisfy the deepest
cravings of the heart, unworthy of the serious efforts of
serious men. They all are seekers for an unknown some-
thing which is to bring relief from the terrible agony of in-
tellectual suffocation. Would they not have been larger
types of men — Schopenhauer less embittered, Lenau less
morbid. Borne less fanatic, Heine less vacillating. Platen
and Immermann less morose and self-absorbed, if they
could have seen the hopes of 1813 fulfilled, if they had
not been deprived of the noblest privilege of freemen, a
successful activity in the service of one's country ?
Schopenhauer, a dialectic genius of wonderful consisten-
cy and power, was held throughout his life in the magic
spell of a moral quietism which stamps him as
ope auer. ^ belated Romanticist of the Friedrich Schlegel
type. His keen critical sense'made him see that the will
and not the intellect is the primary force of life, that
"' Aus der Jugendzeit ; I. i. 330.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 50 1
what has created this world of ours with all its diversified
forms of existence, with all its manifold institutions, be-
liefs, ideals, is in the last analysis a blind, irresistible
desire for functional activity. No view of life seems
fuller of incentive than this, more capable of inspiring
with a firm trust in the gradual evolution of the world
from the sensual to the spiritual, for leading to active
participation in the work of human progress. Schopen-
hauer, whose youthful impressions were formed in the
gloomiest days of Napoleonic tyranny, whose manhood
fell in a time which made it impossible for him to take
a part in the affairs of his country,'" was led by it to the
negation of all progress. The desire for activity, instead
of being a source of satisfaction, is to him, as it was to
the author of Lucinde, the root of all human suffering.
He purposely closes his eyes to the fact that the true
reward of effort consists, not in the attainment of its ob-
ject, but in the effort itself; and he squanders his vast
resources of reason and learning in the futile attempt to
demonstrate that the goal of our aspirations is unattain-
able, that there is no happiness, that the essence of life is
pain. " The desire is in its very nature suffering: its fulfil-
ment soon begets satiety: the goal was only an illusion: at- '
tained, it loses its charm: under a new form the desire, the
need reappears; if not, there results desolation, emptiness,
ennui, the struggle against which is fully as tormenting as
that against necessity": — this seems to him the monotonous
and dreary refrain of all existence.'" For even the purest
joys of life, pure because they afford a temporary relief from
the ever-restless desire, the joys of philosophic insight and
'" It is a noteworthy coincidence that the first edition of Die Welt
als Wiile u. Vorstetlung appeared only a few months before the so-
called Karlsbad Resolutions of 1819, the beginning of the aggressive
policy of the German governments against liberalism.
™ Cf. D. Welt als W. u. V. IV, 57 ; IVerke ed. FrauenstSdt II,
370.
502 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
of artistic contemplation, are only fleeting dreams from
which there is a terrible awakening. Nay, these very joys
mark the climax of life's tragedy; for they imply a degree
of intellectual susceptibility which makes those able to feel
them the chief sufferers from cruel reality. And thus there
remains only one thing to be hoped for: the complete and
permanent negation of the will, the extinction of this world
of hopeless endeavour, the Nirvana, the Nothing.""
It would of course be folly to assume that in a less re-
actionary age a man like Lenau would have been a gay child
of the world. Nor are we utilitarian enough to
wish that he had been. His poetry would lose
its most delicate perfume if it were deprived of the sweet
melancholy that pervades it. Had he not grieved so bitterly
over the loss of his childhood's faith, had he not pined; and
craved for that peace of the soul which passeth all under-
standing and which the world cannot giVe, we should not
have had his Schilflieder, we should not have had that
wonderful song to Night "°:
Weil auf mir, du dunkles Auge,
Uebe deine ganze Macht,
Ernste, milde, trSumerische,
Unergrilndlich susse Nacht!
Nimm mit deinem Zauberdunkel
Diese Welt von hinnen mir,
Dass du iiber meinem Leben
Einsam schwebest ftir und ftlr.
What we mean by calling Lenau a victim of his time "°*
is this. No one can fail to see that with all his pensiveness
and sadness there was in Lenau a deep instinct for all that
"' Cf. D. Welt ah W. u. V. IV, 71; /. c. 483 ff.
'«" BitU; Werke^A. Max Koch I^DNL. CLIV) I, 49.
"»• Cf. Grillparzer's poem An Nicolaus Lenau ; Sammtl. Werke I,
no:
Was dich zerbrach, hat Staaten schon zerbrochen:
Dich hob, dich trug und dich verdarb die Zeit.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. SO3
is brave, manly, free, bold. In his veins there ran the fiery
blood of the Hungarian nobleman; his heart never beat
higher than when, roaming about on the endless plains of
his native land, he would see a troop of brown-faced sons
of the Pussta gallop past him; and his verse is never more
fervent or powerful than when he describes those magnifi-
cent fellows dancing at the lonely inn in the midst of the
prairie, all aglow with wine and joyfulness, the clatter of
their spurs mingling with the intoxicating strains of gypsy
music."' What in these popular scenes from his native
land he depicted with such rapturous passion, a sturdy en-
joyment and unreflective grasp of the moment, a healthy,
free, masculine activity, was denied to the poet himself.
The Austria of Metternich, to use Lenau's own words,'™
" had no room for deeds." And thus this man with the soul
of a hero found himself condemned to the role of a passive
and lonely spectator of life. Being too deep a nature to
derive satisfaction, like his friend Anastasius Griin, from
the display of liberal oratory, he turned his back upon an
age which, especially since the crushing failure of the Polish
rebellion (1831),''' seemed more and more to be drifting to-
ward Russian despotism. For a time he cherished the illu-
sion that in the great republic beyond the sea he might
discover a world worthy of his song.
" I am going to send my imagination to school," he writes,'"
" namely, into the forests of North America; I shall hear the roar
of the Niagara and shall sing hymns of the Niagara. My poetry
lives and breathes in nature, and in America nature is grander
and more beautiful than in Europe. An immense wealth of glo-
rious sights awaits me there, an abundance of divine scenes,
untouched and virginal like the soil of the primeval forests. I pro-
'" Cf. Die Heideschenke ; I. c. 151 ff. Die Werbung; ib. 28.
'" Letter of July 19, 1840; Anton X. Schurz, Lenau's Leben II, 36.
'^' Cf. In der Schenke and Der Polenflilchtlirtg ; Werke I, 22-26.
'"Letter of March 16, 1832; Schurz /. c. I, 161 f. — What Lenau
here expresses as an artistic want was a few years later realized in the
gorgeous descriptions of tropic scenery by Freiligrath (Gedichte 1838),
S04 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
mise myself a wonderful effect from this upon my mind. And
perhaps in this new world there will arise in me a new world of
poetry. I really feel something slumbering in me, entirely differ-
ent from what I have been thus far. Perhaps this unknown
something will be awakened by the thundering call of the Niagara.
How beautiful that very name is: Niagara! Niagara! Niagara!"
And when in the autumn of 1832 he did indeed set sail for
America, he felt as though he were on a pilgrimage to the
holy land of freedom '" :
Fleug, Schiff, wie Wolken durch die Luft,
Hin, wo die GOtterflamme brennt !
Sptil mir hinweg, o Meer, die Kluft,
Die von der Freiheit mich noch trennt 1
Du neue Welt, du freie Welt,
An deren bliitenreichem Strand
Die Flut der Tyrannei zerschellt,
Ich grusse dich, mein Vaterland I
A winter spent in the neighbourhood of Pittsburg was suf-
ficient to change this youthful enthusiasm to utter disap-
pointment and contempt for a country which " has no
wine and no nightingales," whose national beverage, cider,
" rhymes with leider," "° and which to its citizens has no
other interest " than that of a vast insurance company." "'
Even in primeval nature, from the sight of which Lenau had
hoped for a new inner life, he found nothing but gloom and
hopelessness: an ever-repeated and ever-monotonous work
of destruction, a ruthless struggle of darkness against light,
of brutal force against delicate form, one grand triumphal
^^^, Absc hied (Lied eines auswandernden Portugieseti); IVerkeX, 95.
"« Cf. letter of Oct. 16, 1832 ; Schurz /. c. I, 198 f.: "Man darf
diese Kerle nur im Wirtshause sehen, um sie auf immer zu hassen.
Eine lange Tafel, auf belden Seiten funfzig Stilhle; Speisen, meist
Fleisch, bedecken den Tisch. Da erschallt die Fressglocke, und
hundert Amerikaner stiirzen herein, keiner sieht den andern an,
keiner spricht ein Wort, jeder stiirzt auf eine Schiissel, frisst hastig
hinein, springt dann auf, wirft den Stuhl hin, und eilt davon, Dollars
zu verdienen."
'" Letter of March 6, 1833; Schurz /. •.. I, 208.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 505
scene of death. And thus we see him in the silent forests
of the Alleghanies,™ where the young growth " in vain tries
to sprout forth through mouldering trunks, the withered
fingers of death," bury his head in the decaying leaves and
stare into the abyss of life's mystery.
So lag ich auf dem Grunde schwer beklommen,
Dem Tode nah, wie nie zuvor, gekommen;
Bis ich die dtirren Blatter rauschen hOrte,
Und mich der Huftritt meines Rosses stSrte.
Es schritt heran zu mir, als wollt' es mahnen
Mich an die DSmmerung und unsre Bahnen;
Ich aber rief: " Ist's auch der Miihe wert,
Noch einmal zu beschreiten dich, mein Pferd?"
Es blickt mich an mit stiller Lebenslust,
Die warmend mir gedrungen in die Brust,
Und ruhebringend wie mit Zaubermacht.
Und auf den tiefeinsamen Waldeswegen
Ritt ich getrost der nachsten Nacht entgegen,
Und der geheimnisvollen Todesnacht.
Is it a wonder that this man, even after the return to his
home and his friends, should in vain have striven for a
more serene and hopeful view of the world ? that in his
Faust (1836) he should have made self-destruction the goal
of free thought ? that in Savonarola (1837) he should have
denounced pantheism and modern science ? and that his
mind should at last have fallen a prey to the dark powers
which he saw lurking about him everywhere ? Let us be
thankful that Lenau did not sink into the night of living
death, before having created the masterwork of his art, be-
fore having uttered at least one clear and penetrating call
for spiritual freedom, at least one word of unshaken trust
in the future of humanity. At the end of Die Albigenser
(1842), that superb gallery of frescoes "° immortalizing the
188 £)gy l/rwald ; Werke I, 237 f.
'*' Lenau said himself of Die Albigenser : " Sie sind das Kuhnste,
das Grossartigste, was ich gemacht habe. Es sind Fresken." Werke
II, 350.
506 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.\
nameless sufferings and the dauntless heroism of the noble
race whose rebellion against mediaeval hierarchy is among
the first great popular risings of modern Europe, there stand
the lines"":
Das Licht vom Himmel lasst sich nicht versprengen,
Noch lasst der Sonnenaufgang sich verhangen
Mit Purpurmanteln oder dunklen Kutten.
Den Albigensern folgen die Hussiten
Und zahlen blutig heim was jene litten.
Nach Huss und Ziska kommen Luther, Hutten,
Die dreissig Jahre, die Cevennenstreiter,
Die StUrmer der Bastille, und so weiter !
It would be hard to conceive of two literary types more
unlike each other and at the same time more nearly related
than Platen and Immermann. Platen by birth
^memam ^""^ instinct an aristocrat; living in free and
leisurely devotion to his art; producing nothing
without giving it the stamp of perfection; a contemplative
spirit feeling truly at home only with the great of all ages ;
a sculptor of words; a connoisseur of the sublime. Immer-
mann by family tradition and calling belonging to the Prus-
sian bureaucracy; compelled to divide his time between
literary work and official duties; often defective in his
workmanship and never entirely sure of his tools; not until
after many tentative efforts finding his true vocation as a
delineator of every-day life; a thinker rather than an artist;
an observer rather than a sympathizer. Both men stub-
' bornly adhering to the spirit which in 1815 made them
combatants against Napoleon; both lovers of civil freedom
and national dignity; both unable to come to terms with an
age which had no room for their ideals of life.
What a proud, manly figure this Platen is I like Riickert
one of those earnest, sinewy Franconians who preserve the
type of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Diirer to
the present day. He, if any one, seemed chosen
to sing of the great affa irs of his country and nation; he, 6i
"» Werke II, 463 £. "
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. SO/
all men, seemed destined to be for his time, what Schiller
had been for his, a priest of human dignity, a herald of hu-
man progress; he, of all poets, seemed able to lead his peo-
ple to that harmonious and lawful freedom which was the
goal of his own aspirations.
O goldne Freiheit, der auch ich entstamme,
Die du den Aether, wie ein Zelt, entfaltest,
Die du, der SchSnheit und des Lebens Amme,
Die Welt ernShrst und immer neu gestaltest;
Vestalin, die du des Gedanlcens Flamme
Als ein Symbol der Ewigkeit verwaltest:
Lass uns den Blick zu dir zu heben wagen,
Lehr' uns die Wahrheit, die du kennst, ertragen!
It was the tragedy of Platen's life that he was unable to
inspire his contemporaries with the ideal expressed in these
words "'; that instead of being borne along on the crest of
an irresistible popular movement for constitutional liberty,^
he found himself cast aside by the current of retrogressive
absolutism; that he who began as an enthusiastic spokesman
of a truly national art should have ended as a voluntary
exile, disappointed and out of sympathy even with the best
of his people.
German literature has reaped from Platen's gloom lyric
poems as exquisite and noble as ever came from souls more
joyful and serene."' No criticism of his sonnets could be
more unjust than the often-heard remark that behind their
faultless form there beats no living heart. It was the fer-
vour of deepest feeling, it was the white heat of passionate
"' ZIjV verhangnisvolU GabelWl, Parab.; Ges. Werie(i84j)lV, 4$-
'" The following is a chronological list of the more important of
Platen's works. Gaselen 1821. Sonette aus Venedig 1825. Die ver-
hangnisvolle Gahd 1826. Gedichte 1828. Dir romantische (Edipus
1828. Gedichte'^ 1834. Die Abbasiden 1834 (finished 1830). Platen
died in Syracuse, in 1835, only 39 years old. A detailed chronology
in the Hempel edition of his works III, 289 ff.— Cf. Goedeke's sketch
of his life in vol. I of the Ges. Werke. J. Marbach, Platens Stellung
in d. d. Natlit.; Weimar. Jahrb. IV, 43 ff- !• L. Hoffmann, Pla-
tens Stellung zu Lit. ». Leben ; Nurnberger Album fiir 1857, p. 154 ff.
S08 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
grief which melted Platen's language into such absolute pu-
rity and liquidness that it could be welded into the most
flawless and perfect rhythm. Those magnificent pictures of
grandeur in decay through which Platen has surrounded
the name of Venice with a new immortality, could not have
been created by a man who had not in himself experienced
that " long, eternal sigh " which he saw hovering over the
lagoons and palaces of the city of the Adria.'" No man
whose soul had not been seized with an irresistible desire to
flee from this noisy and inane world into the desert of a
consecrated solitude, could have written that sublime in-
terpretation of Titian's John the Baptist '":
Zur Wiiste fliehend vor dem Menschenschwarme
Steht hier ein Jflngling, um zu reinern Sph9ren
Durch Einsamkeit die Seele zu verklaren,
Die hohe, grossgestimmte, gotteswarme.
Vol! von Begeisterung, von heil'gem Harme,
Erglanzt sein ew'ger, ernster Blick von ZShren;
Nach jenem, den Maria soil gebaren,
Scheint er zu deuten mit erhobnera Arme.
Wer kann sich weg von diesem Hilda kehren
Und mOchte nicht, mit briinstigen GebSrden,
Den Gott im Busen Tizian's verehren ?•
O goldne Zeit, die nicht mehr ist im Werden,
AIs noch die Kunst vermocht die Welt zu lehren,
Und nur das SchOne heilig war auf Erden!
No man who had not zealously striven for harmony with his
native surroundings, who had not felt the bitter pangs of
intellectual isolation and homelessness, could have "written
those words of manly resignation '": — "
Es sehnt sich ewig dieser Geist ins Weite
Und mOchte furder, immer furder streben;
Nie kOnnt' ich lang an einer SchoUe kleben,
Und hatt' ein Eden ich an jeder Seite.
"" Sonette nr. 32 ; Werke II, in.
*^^ Sonette nr. 36 ; /. t. 113.
"' Sonette nr. 81 ; /. c. 143,
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. S09
Mein Geist, bewegt von innerlichem Streite,
Empfand so sehr in diesem kurzen Leben,
Wie leicht es ist, die Heimat aufzugeben,
Allein wie schwer, zu finden eine zweite.
Doch wer aus voller Seele hasst das Schlechte,
Auch aus der Heimat wird es ihn verjagen,
Wenn dort verehrt es wird vom Voile der Knechte.
Weit klUger ist's, dam Vaterland entsagen,
Als unter einem kindischen Geschlechte
Das Joch des blinden PSbelhasses tragen.
It may be that the peculiarity of Platen's genius was
brought out rather than disguised by the attitude of defi-
ance against his own generation forced upon him through
the political reaction of his time. What must for ever be
considered a national misfortune, what for ever will be an
irreparable loss both for the political and the literary history
of modern Europe, is that this born defender of freedom
never found an opportunity to fight the battle of freemen;
that he never had an opponent worthy of himself."" That
there was in him a truly Aristophanic power of invective is
proven by his satirical plays Die verhangnisvoUe Gabel {i?>26)'
and Der romantische Oedipus (1829). He who enters the
fantastic world of these comedies without pedantic consider-
ations of theatrical canons will be unable to resist the breath
of righteous indignation at every sort of literary sham which
pervades them ; he will not fail to rejoice at the crushing J
blows showered upon the hollow perversities of the ' Fate
Tragedy ' and other forms of Romantic wilfulness. But
all the keener will be the regret that it was never given to
Platen to extend his powerful satire to the political field;
that — to use his own words "' — " instead of giving a picture
"* His disgraceful wrangle with Heine, actuated as it was on both
sides by nothing but personal spite, does not deserve the name of po-
lemics. That Platen's attacks against Immermann proceeded from
an entirely mistaken estimate of Immermann, there can be no doubt.
"' Z>. verh. Gabel IV, Parab.; Werke IV, 60.
5IO SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
of the world " he had to resign himself to giving "a picture of
the picture of the world." And who will condemn the poet
that he at last abandoned all faith in his people and turned
with bitter abuse against those whom he had loved so well ?
This is what he wrote when the bloodhounds of reactionary
morality, the literary police, interfered with his Poknlieder,
in which he had been sacrilegious enough to speak for
Polish freedom and against the Czar of Russia '": —
So muss ich denn gezwungen schweigen,
Und so verlasst mich jener Wahn,
Mich fUrder einem Volk zu zeij;en
Das wandelt eine solche Bahn.
Doch gieb, o Dichter, dich zufrieden,
Es biisst die Welt nur wenig ein,
Du weisst es ISngst, man kann hienieden
Nichts Schlechtres als ein Deutscher sein.
It is Immermann who has most clearly defined and most
severely condemned the literary character of
Immemaim. ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ calling it " an age of the after-
born." "•
" Of misfortune there has been enough at all times. The curse
of the present generation is to be miserable without any particular
misfortune. A desolate wavering and vacillating, a laughable
mock earnestness and abstraction, a groping one knows not whi-
ther, a fear of horrors which are all the more uncanny since
they have no shape! We are, to express the whole misery in a
word, late comers, weighed down by the burden which is "the lot
of the heirs and the after-born. The great movement in the
realm of spirit which our fathers started from their modest huts
has flooded us with a wealth of treasures which now are spread
out on all counters. Without special effort even mediocrity may
acquire at least the small change of every art and science. But
it is with borrowed ideas as it is with borrowed money: he who
^'>* Polmlieder, Epilog; Werke Hempel I, irs. Cf. the powerful
Eamus omnis execrata civiias ; ib. 102.
"' Cf. Die Epigonen II, 10; Immermann's Werke Hempel V, 123 f.
— A vivid account of the effects of this intellectual condition on German
university life in F. Reuter, Die Erlanger Burs'henschaft p. 201 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 511
recklessly trades with the capital of others doubly impoverishes
himself."
There is certainly a good deal of truth in all this, not only
for Immermann's time, but for ours as well; but can it be
said that Immermann himself had grappled with the pro-
blems of life in such a manner as to make him a safe guide
out of the confusion of this age ? Was he not himself largely
feeding on the thought of a past generation ? Was he not
himself groping rather than seeing his way ?
Undoubtedly, we feel something of a Faust atmosphere
in his Merlin (1832), the tragedy of that mysterious son of
Satan and the saintly virgin who succumbs in the attempt to
unite the two poles of human existence, the spirit and the
senses. Yet what in Goethe's drama is embodied in concrete
and living beings is here dissolved into grand but shadowy
allegories. And if the keynote of Faust is hope and en-
deavour, the keynote of Merlin is discord and destruction.
"Merlin" says Immermann himself,'"" " was to be the tra-
gedy of negation. The divine in us when it enters the
realm of appearances is refracted, disintegrated, by con-
tact with it. Even the religious feeling is subject to this
law. Only within certain bounds is it kept from becoming
a caricature. I doubt whether there is a single saint who
entirely avoided being ridiculous. Reflections like these,
only sublimated, spiritualized, I tried to express in Merlin.
The son of Satan and the virgin, ecstatic with devout rap-
ture, on his way to God, falls a prey to the most abject
madness."
Again, no one can fail to see a reflex of Wilhelm Meister in
Immermann's Die Epigonen (1836).""' In both novels there
are depicted important phases of social development: in
Wilhelm Meister the rise of the third estate to the intellectual
and social level of the hereditary aristocracy, in DieEpigonen
am Dusseldorfer Anfangi 4; Werke XX, 157 f.
"" Cf. Fr. Schultess, Zritgeschichte u. Zntgcnossen in Immermanns
Epigonen; Preuss. Jahrb. LXXIII, 212 ff.
512 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the decomposition of the entire old order caused by the
rise of modern industrialism. But there is a remarkable con-
trast in the attitude of the two authors toward their themes.
Goethe sees in the transition from an aristocracy of birth
to an aristocracy of intellect and character a step forward
in civilization; and the hero of his novel typifies this pro-
gress in his own career. Immermann considers modern
industrialism as an unmitigated evil, as the forerunner of
social anarchy; and his hero stands for reaction instead of
progress. The words spoken by him at the end pf the
novel, when through the acquisition of a vast estate he sees
himself at the head of a manufacturing community, are
typical of the drift of the whole book. " First of all,", he
says,"' " the factories are to be done away with, and the
fields to be restored to agriculture. These establishments
for the artificial gratification of artificial wants appear to
me downright ruinous and bad. The soil belongs to the
plough, to sunshine and rain, which unfold the seed-corn,
and to the simple industrious hand. With stormlike r-a-
pidity the present age is moving on toward a dry mechan-
ism. We cannot check its course; but we are certainly not '
to blame if we hedge off a little green spot for ourselves and ,
ours and defend this island as long as^possible against the
tide of the surging industrial waves."
Even in his last and ripest novel, in Munchhausen (1838-
39), Immermann manifests this same spirit of isolation, of
opposition to the prevailing current of his own age. Who
can help admiring the high sense of justice and truth which
here induces Immermann to arraign the follies and insin-
cerities of the whole Restoration epoch before the tribunal
of his merciless satire ? Who would not sympathize with
his scorn at the renewal of obsolete feudal institutions, with
his flings at the somnambulism of the modern advocates of
a mediaeval Christianity, at the shallowness of a purely in-
"" Die Epigonen IX, 16 ; Werke VII, 257.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 513
tellectual culture, at the arrogance of a short-sighted bureau-
cracy ? And who would not all the more gratefully acknow-
ledge the beauty of that picture of undefiled and sturdy po-
pular life which forms such an impressive contrast to this
array of social sham and patchwork: the picture of that
grand old Westphalian peasant, who, untouched by modern
sophistry, unaffected by the soulless principles of a formal
jurisprudence, guards the sovereignty of traditional law with
the rigid dignity of an Old Testament patriarch ? The mys-
terious sword of Carolus Magnus by the authority of which
this Hofschulze pronounces the verdicts of the court of free-
holders and neighbours, is a fitting symbol of the sanctity in
which he holds his office as an organ of popular self-govern-
ment. And when this man succumbs to a tragic fate, when
his sword is stolen, when the secrets of the peasant court
are divulged, when the court is swept away by the levelling
machinery of the modern state, we yet feel the truth of the
words uttered by a fair-minded looker-on""; "Let the
judge's seat crumble to pieces, let the sword be stolen, let
them call out the secret usages from all the roofs. Have
you not found in yourself and in your friends the watch-
word of independence ? This is the watchword by which
you recognise your own and which cannot be taken from
'°* Munckhausen VIII, 5 ; Werke IV, 121, f. — The same spirit
which lives in these sturdy Westphalian characters of Immermann's
we feel as a creative force in the lyric poems of Annette von Droste-
Hulshoff (d. 1848), the author of Die Schlacht im Lorner Bruch, a true
daughter of the " red soil " : pure and strong ; stubborn and gentle ;
of a soaring idealism, yet full of tenderness for the humble and the
lowly ; passionately clinging to ancient traditions, yet open to every
true feeling. Cf. the biography by W. Kreiten in vol. I of her Ges.
Werke. H. Hflffer, Annette v. Droste-H. u. ihre Werke. Also Rreuss.
fahrb. LXVI, 439 fi. LXIX, 340 ff. — Compared with these abso-
lutely genuine representations of Westphalian yeomanry and the
equally truthful sketches of Swiss popular life by Jeremias Gotthelf
(Ulider Knecht 1841), the graceful Schwarzwdlder Dorfgeschichten by
Auerbach (1843) appear somewhat affected.
514 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
you. You have planted the conviction that .nan's place is
among his nearest, the plain, true, simple folk; not with
strangers who will force upon him the stamp of artificiality
and distortedness. And this conviction has no need of the
stone seats under the old linden trees in order to find good
law. Your freedom, your manliness, your firm iron nature,
you yourself, you sublime old man, — this is the true sword
of Carolus Magnus, and the hand of theft cannot reach out
for this." All this as well as the story of a deep and pa-
thetic love connected with the fate of the Hofschulze has
the genuine ring of golden poetry. Yet here again, was it
necessary to confine most that is healthy and true to a
sphere uninvaded by modern civilization, and to represent
nearly all that is specifically modern as corrupt and diseased ?
Is this a wise attitude for a man to take who wishes to lead
his age to better things ? Do we not here once more see
the narrowing influence exerted upon Immermann by the
political repression of his time which debarred him from a
more hopeful view of the future, and which with all his
liberalism and broadmindedness made him in a certain way
a reactionist himself ?
The same age which thus prevented Immermann and
Platen from truly constructive achievements brought out
whatever there was negative and undermining in Borne and
Heine. We cannot sympathize with the violent
Borne and declamations of contemporary Anti-Semitism
against what is called the inroad of Judaism into
German culture, an inroad which we are told began with
these two men.''"* We are unwilling to join in the defama-
»»^ Cf. H. V. Treitschke, D. Gesch. im 19. Jhdt III, 701 ff. IV, 419
ff. It is a mistake to think of Wolfgang Menzel, the intellectual
father of modern German Anti-Semitism, as an irreconcilable enemy
of BSrne and Heine. His estimate of both men, in vol. IV of his Die
deutsche Litteratur (1836), belongs to the best that has been said
about either. A most judicious account of Borne and Heine in J.
Proelss, D.junge Deutschland p. Siff. 124 fi. Cf. the first edition of
CG. I 325, 41. 42. A detailed synopsis of the opinions of French
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. JIS
don of writers whose services as forerunners of the Revolu-
tion of 1848 should be suificient to secure them an honour-
able place in German history. We respect in Borne a journal-
ist of republican integrity and fearlessness, a patriot imbued
with the conviction that literature is a public trust. We
admire in Heine a poetic genius in whom there vibrated the
accords as well as the discords of a whole century. If there
is to be blame — and alas! there is ample ground for it — let
them be blamed first who stigmatized these Jews as Jews;
who slandered their race and vilified their ideals; who cast
suspicion upon their motives and slurs upon their achieve-
ments; who forced them into unworthy compromises and
stratagems, or else into a sterile opposition to the whole ex-
isting order; who in a word, by disfranchising them, made
them either scoffers or fanatics or both.
There are few passages in Heine which reveal in so touch-
ing a manner his native sympathies, which demonstrate so
conclusively how humiliating must have been for him the
adoption of the Christian faith necessitated by the exigen-
cies of his social position, as the one, in his essay on
Shakspere, where he relates of a performance of the Mer-
chant of Venice in Drury Lane '""'•.
"There stood behind me in the box a beautiful pale British
woman, who at the end of the fourth act wept impetuously and
more than once exclaimed: ' The poor man is wronged! ' It was a
face of the noblest Greek cut, and her eyes were large and black.
critics on Heine in L. P. Betz, Heine in Frankreich. Matthew
Arnold's article on Heine, which first appeared in the Cornhill Maga-
zine for Aug. 1863, was reprinted in the Essays in Criticism,
"" Shakespeare's Madchen «. Frauen; Samtl. Werke ed. Elster V,
448 f. Cf. the vision in Atta Troll 19. 20 (Werke W, 394 ff.) where,
among the Greek goddess Diana, the Celtic fairy Abunde, and the
Jewess Herodias, Heine gives preference to Herodias :
Denn ich Hebe dich am meisten !
Mehr als jene Griechengottin,
Mehr als jene Fee des Nordens,
Lieb' ich dich, du tote jiidin !
5 l6 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
I have never been able to forget them, those large black eyes,
which wept forShylock! And when I think of those tears, I must
rank the Merchant of Venice with the tragedies, although the
framework of the play is adorned with the gayest masks, satyrs,
and amorettes, and although the poet meant it as a comedy.
Shakspere probably intended to amuse the crowd with the rep-
resentation of a hateful, fabulous monster who craves for blood,
and instead loses his daughter and his ducats and is moreover
held up to ridicule. But the genius of the poet, the world-spirit
living in him, is more powerful than his private will; and thus
it happened that, in spite of the glaring caricature, Shakspere
vindicated in Shylock an unfortunate sect which Providence for
inscrutable reasons has burdened with the hatred of the rabble
both high and low and which has not always been able to reward
this hatred with loving-kindness."
And Borne, the child of the Frankfurt Ghetto, who well
remembered the time when no Jew was allowed on a side-
walk in the public park; when on every Sunday afternoon
the gate of the Jewish quarter was closed and guarded by a
sentry; Borne, who lived to see that the very triumph of the
national cause in 1815 brought to the Jews of Frankfurt the
abolition of the civil rights and liberties acquired by them
during the Napoleonic invasion, — is Borne to be condemned'
because he did not forget his origin ? Would it not be more
gracious to admire the exaltedness of soul which enabled
him to remember his origin and yet to hope for the future
of Germany ? Indeed he must be deaf to all human voices
except his own who does not hear the ring of true humanity
in the answer given in one of his Letters from Paris (1830-
1833)"° to the continual aspersions against his nationality.
" Poor German people! Living as they do on the lowest floor,
oppressed by the seven stories of the higher classes, they feel
relieved if ihey can talk of people who live still lower than they
themselves, in the cellar. Not being Jews comforts them for not
being Privy-Councillors. No, having been born a Jew has never
embittered me against the Germans, has never blinded my reason.
'<" Briefe aus Paris nr. 74 ; Ludiv. Boine's Ges. Schr. (1862) X,
242 if.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION, %l^
I shojild indeed not be worthy to enjoy the light of the sun if I
repaid God's mercy in letting me be at the same time a German
and a Jew with base grumbling, — on account of jeerings which I
always disdained, of sufferings which I have long forgotten. No,
I know how to value the undeserved good fortune of being a
German and at the same time a Jew, of being allowed to strive
for all the virtues of the Germans without sharing their defects.
Yes, because I was born a slave I love freedom better than you.
Yes, because I was born to no fatherland I crave for a fatherland
more eagerly than you; and because the place of my birth was
not larger than the Ghetto, and what was beyond the closed gate
was to me a foreign country, now not even a city suffices me, not
a district, not a province; only the whole vast fatherland suffices
me, as far as its language reaches. And if I had the power, I
would not tolerate it that one German tribe should be separated
from another by a lane as broad as my hand. If I had the power,
I would not tolerate it that a single German word coming from
German lips should sound to my ears from beyond the frontier.
And because I have ceased to be a slave of my townsfolk, I will
no longer be the slave of a prince; wholly free I must be. I pray
you, do not look down upon my Jews. If you only were like
them, you would be better. If they were only as many as you,
they would be better than you. You are thirty millions of Ger-
mans, and you count only for thirty in the world. Give us thirty
millions of Jews and the world would not count beside them.
You have taken away the air from the Jews; but they have been
kept thereby from rotting. You have strewn the salt of hatred
into their heart; but their heart has been kept fresh thereby. You
have locked them the whole long winter in a deep cellar and
have stopped up the cellar-door with dirt, but you, freely exposed
as you were to the air, are nearly frozen. When spring comes,
we shall see who sprouts first, the Jew or the Christian."
One may fully sympathize with all this, and yet feel com-
pelled to acknowledge that neither Heine nor Borne was
in a true sense an intellectual leader, that neither Heine nor
Borne has added to the store of modern culture a single
original thought or a single poetic symbol of the highest
life. Their strength was consumed in negation; their mis-
sion was fulfilled in fighting the principles of the Holy
Alliance, in helping to break down the absolutism of Met-
5l8 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
ternich, in making room again for the ideas which had led
to the national revival of 1813.
Borne's strength lay in his passionate, nay, fanatic love of
democracy. In all his writings there is nothing more im-
pressive than what he says about the two great
Bome'a demo- dangers which threaten modern society: pluto-
cracy and militarism. No one who has observed
intelligently recent developments in the internal affairs of
imperial Germany can fail to see the truth of this remarka-
ble prophecy'": — "In Prussia they are going to introduce
uniforms for all government officials. By this means the
government will be entirely separated from the people, pa-
triotism will be changed into blind discipline, a standing
army will be created out of the sitting army of clerks. The
judges will employ rescripts and verdicts as gunpowder, the
associate judges will have to stand sentry, the registrars of
the court will do patrol duty at night. The ministry will
be a headquarters and every office a guard-room." And in
these days of Panama disclosures and whiskey trusts it
would be well to remember that only a year after the tri-
umph of the French bourgeoisie in the July Revolution,
Borne predicted the downfall of this bourgeoisie as a ne-
cessary consequence of its sordid greed.'"' " Woe to the
statesmen who are too dull or too bad, not to see that war
should be waged, not against the poor, but against poverty.
Not the property of the rich, only their monopolies are at-
tacked by the people; but if these monopolies are sheltered
by property, how can the people win the equality which is
its due otherwise than by storming against property ? What
shortsightedness to believe that in those countries where
the clergy and nobility have lost their privileges eternal
peace has been assured! On the contrary, they are nearer
the most portentous of revolutions than the countries
where there is no freedom yet. In the latter, the fourth
'"^ Briefe aus Paris nr. 74; /. c. 254, i"» lb. nr. 60 ; /. c. 21 fj
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. $19
estate is debarred through its neighbour, the bourgeoisie,
from a view of the higher, privileged classey. It therefore
does not miss equality. But where the bourgeoisie has
acquired equality with the higher classes, the fourth estate
sees inequality by its side, it becomes aware of its own
wretchedness, and sooner or later the war of the poor
against the rich must break out."
It is only in turning from these astute observations of
existing evils to Borne's attempts at positive thinking that
we become aware of how completely his intel-
lectual energies were exhausted by the incessant ^'^ intelleo-
and fruitless struggle against the political reac- " a ™ y.
tion of his time. When we hear him replying to the well-
founded charge of superficial brilliancy """i "You call my
writings fireworks ? Let them be fireworks, if only they
make you see that you are living in darkness"; when we
hear that he looks forward to Goethe's death as to the
birthday of German liberty'"; when we read again and
again that he expects to solve all the problems of social
life by the one abstract formula: equality; when we find
him in all seriousness proposing to divide the money spent
on the library of Gottingen University among an indefinite
number of village libraries, or again — as he expresses it "' —
to divide thirty professors into thirty thousand schoolmas-
ters, — then we cannot help seeing in Borne a striking ex-
ample of the fundamental sterility of thought which is the
curse of all fanaticism.
Of all the accusations raised against Heine, none is more
unjust than the oft-repeated assertion that he had no heart
for Germany. If anywhere there is a note of _ . , , .
deep-felt sadness and longing in Heine's verse, ingforGer-
it is in those simple lines on Germany in which, ™*°y'
though they were written in a country more friendly to his
*"' Brief e aus Paris nr. 74: /. c. 247.
"» lb. nr. 16 ; /. c. VIII, 117. *" lb. nr. 103; /. c. XII, 44.
520 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
genius than his native land, there is hidden a whole life of
homelessness and isolation.""
Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum.
Das kusste mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch
(Man glaubt es kaum
Wie gut es klang) das Wort: ' Ich Hebe dich!'
Es war ein Traum.
And what writer ever expressed more clearly alid more
touchingly what he felt and hoped for his people than Hei-
ne v."hen, at the end of the Pictures of Travel (1826-31), "°
he compares himself to Kunz von Rosen, the court fool of
emperor Maximilian. The emperor has been captured by
his enemies ; his knights and courtiers have deserted him ;
he is sitting in his lonely prison. Suddenly the door opens,
a man wrapped in a mantle enters, and when he throws back
his mantle, the emperor recognises his faithful court fool.
" O German fatherland, beloved German people, I am thy
Kunz von Rosen. The man whose real office was merry-making,
who should have only amused thee in prosperous days, now en-
ters thy dungeon in a time of distress ; here, under my mantle I
bring thee thy beautiful sceptre and crown, — dost thou not recog-
nise me, my emperor ? If I cannot free thee, I will at least com-
fort thee, and thou shalt have some one with thee who will talk
with thee about thy hardships and give thee courage and love
thee, and whose best wit and best blood is at thy service. For
thou, my people, art the true emperor, thy will is sovereign and
much more truly legitimate than the purple ' Tel est notre plaisir '
which surrounds itself with a claim of divine right, without any
other authority than the babblings of shaven jugglers; thy will,
my people, is the only source of power. Though now thou liest
"' In der Fremde ; Samtl. Werke I, 263. The pathos of these lines
becomes doubly apparent when one compares them with the unreflec-
tive joyousness of patriotic feeling revealed in such men as Hoffmann
von Fallersleben (' Deutschland, Deutschland liber AUes,' 1841) or
Freiligrath.
"» ReUebilder IV ; /. c. Ill, 504.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 521
prostrate and in fetters, thy good right will triumph in the end,
the day of delivery is near, a new time begins — my emperor, the
night is gone, out yonder glows the morning red."
There can be little doubt that these words reflect what-
ever there was in Heine of true inspiration. Heine had not
in vain sat at the feet of Hegel, he was not in
vain an ardent admirer of Goethe. There hover- ^s panthe-
ism,
ed before him, at least in his best years, an ideal
of society not unlike the ideal which had inspired the great
writers of the days of Weimar and Jena. The much-reviled
" emancipation of the flesh," the social programme which
united Heine on the one hand with the Saint-Simonians, on
the other with Gutzkow, Laube, and the rest of " Young
Germany," was after all only a new form of that ideal of
free humanity toward which all German culture from Luther
to Goethe had tended. And it is one of Heine's lasting
achievements to have brought out, in those much-abused
and much-appropriated essays On the History of German
Religion and Philosophy (1834), this inner continuity of the
intellectual development of modern Europe. Such charac-
terizations as that of Luther's ' Ein feste Burg' as the Mar-
seillaise of the Reformation,'" of Luther himself as the first
complete individual of modern history,''^ of Lessing as the
prophet who pointed from the second Testament forward
to a third,"° of Kant as the executioner of deism,"' of Goe-
the as the Spinoza of poetry,'"'— to refer only to a few among
the many striking passages of this book, — reveal a man who
was fully conscious of his own intellectual ancestry, and
fully aware of the mission bequeathed by it to himself: the
mission of winning the world over to pantheism, " the hid-
den religion of Germany."""
" The aim of modern life is the rehabilitation of matter, its
moral recognition, its religious sanctification, its reconciliation
•" Zur Gesch. d. Rel. u. Philos. in Deutschl. I ; /. c. IV, 200.
"s lb. 190 f. «'« lb. 243. "' lb. 249.
*'8 lb. 272. "* /*. 222. 224.
522 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
with the spirit. God is identical with the world. He manifests
himself in the plants which without consciousness lead a cosmic-
magnetic life. He manifests himself in the animals, which in
their sensual dream-life feel a more or less dumb existence. But
most gloriously he manifests himself in man, who both feels and
thinks, who perceives the difference between himself and nature
and who bears in his own reason the ideas which are revealed to
him in the world of appearances. In man God reaches self-con-
sciousness, and through man he reveals this self-consciousness;
not in and through the individual man, but in and through the
whole of mankind ; so that, while the individual man conceives
and represents only a part of the God-universe, all men together
conceive and represent the whole God-universe in idea and reality.
God, therefore, is the true hero of the world's history. The latter
is his continual thinking, speaking, doing; and of all mankind it
can truly be said that it is an incarnation of God. — It is a mistake
to believe that this religion of pantheism will lead men to indif-
ference. On the contrary, the consciousness of his divinity will
inspire man to manifest himself as divine ; and thus will be
brought on an age when the true exploits of true heroism will
magnify this earth. We battle not for the human rights but for
the divine rights of man."
Could the innermost creed of the poets and thinkers who
i had created the new Germany, could the life-work of a
|Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schleiermacher,
Hegel, Goethe, be expressed more eloquently or more
plainly ? Could a Walt Whitman have spoken more enthu-
siastically of the tasks and the triumphs which await the
human race after its final emancipation from a belief which
exalts one part of man only to degrade the other, and which
degrades the world of appearances in order to exalt an
invisible and extramundane God ?
It is just at this point that we see the fatal defect, the
essential barrenness of Heine's life. This man who could
speak so fervently of the ideals of existence never _.
1 J 1 ■ • • .1 . , , . , , His surrender
placed his genius in the service of these ideals, to the reao-
His whole career is poisoned by a fundamental *''"'■
falsehood. Having been born a Jew, and living in the'era
of the Restoration, he is forced through his social and politi-
TBE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 523
cal surroundings into an act of treason against himself. He
abjures the faith of his ancestors and adopts the outward
form of a creed which he inwardly despises. Thus he enters
the literary arena with the secret stigma of desertion upon
him. And when we come to cast the balance of his life, we
find that, with all his noble sympathies and aspirations, he was
at the end — or shall we not rather say: from the beginning ?
— religiously, politically, and even artistically a renegade.
Who would refuse human compassion to his last years ?
Who would not marvel at the brilliant shafts of wit, imagi-
nation, and feeling which flashed forth from this poor suf-
ferer as he lay in one long death-agony in his " mattress-
grave " of the Rue d 'Amsterdam ? Who would doubt for
one moment the sincerity of the religious recantation to
which under these circumstances he felt himself compelled ?
There is something infinitely naive and pathetic in that
often retold tale of his, how on a May day of 1848, the day
on which he went out for the last time, he took leave of the
" sweet idols " which he had worshipped in the days of hap-
piness."'" " Hardly could I drag myself as far as the Louvre,
and I almost broke down when I entered the sublime hall
where the blessed goddess of beauty, our Dear Lady of Milo,
stands on her pedestal. For a long time I lay at her feet and
wept so bitterly that a stone would have taken pity on me.
And the goddess looked compassionately down upon me,
but at the same time disconsolately as though she wanted
to say: Dost thou not see that I have no arms and therefore
cannot help thee ? " Here we see clearly what it was that
drove Heine back into the fold of a theistic creed. It was
the helplessness of a man incapable of living up to his ideals
under severe trial, it was the defenselessness of a man who had
'''" Nachwort zum Romanzero ; I. <■. I, 487- The proof for Heine's
religious recantation is contained chiefiy in tliree documents wriUen
between 1851 and 54: (i) The Nachwort just mentioned; (2) the in-
troduction to the second edition of Zur Gesch. d. Rel. u. Phil. (I. c.
IV, 154 ff.); (3) the Gestandnisse {/. c VI, 15 ff.)-
524 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
never trained his powers in self-denying devotion to a com-
mon cause. And we cannot be surprised that even behind
his last conversion there lurks that sterile Mephistophelean
smile which robs even the finest feeling of its moral worth.
"Yes," he says.'^'" " I did return to God like the prodigal son,
after having for a long time herded swine with the Hegelians.
A heavenly homesickness came over me and drove me on through
forests and glens, over the most giddy mountain-paths of dialec-
tics. On my way I found the God of the pantheists, but I could
make no use of him. This poor, dreamy being is interwoven
and entangled with the world, imprisoned in it, as it were, and
yawns at you indolently and powerlessly. To have a will one
must be a person, to manifest one's will one must have elbow-
room. If you want a God who can help — and that after all is
the main thing,— you must accept his personality, his extramun-
daneity, and all his holy attributes. If you accept this, then the
immortality of the soul, your own continuance after death, is
given to you into the bargain, as it were, lilce the marrow-bone
which the butcher pushes into his customer's basket, if he is
pleased with him. Such a nice marrow-bone is called in the lan-
guage of the French cuisine la r^jouissance, and you make from it
an excellent bouillon which is most refreshing and stimulating for
the poor sick people. That I did not refuse such a re'jouissance,
but on the contrary took to it with great relish, every feeling
soul will understand."
We can think of no better way of refuting such blas-
phemous godliness as this than to quote a word of the
master of whom Heine was, it is not too harsh-
Contrast with jq g^„ jt an unworthy disciple. Less than a
&oethe. , , , , . , i , , • , ,
month before his death, looking back upon a
life full of restless striving, full of pain and joy, Goethe
wrote"'': "I have always sought to understand as fully
as possible what can be known, understood, applied; and
in this I have succeeded in such a manner as to please
myself and others even. Herein I have now been brought
''^ Nachwort aum Romanzero ; I. i. I, 485.
*" Letter to Sulpiz Boisserfee, Febr. 25, 1832 ; S. B., Briefwechsel
niit Goethe, p. 591.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION- $2$
to a limit; so that I begin to believe where others despair:
namely those who, because they cannot reach beyond the
limits set to man, consider the highest achievements of
mankind as naught. Thus we are driven from the indi-
vidual to the whole, and from the whole to the individual,,
whether we will or not." Goethe, in other words, remained
faithful to the modern ideal of humanity, because his very
doubt was at bottom constructive and reverent; Heine de-
nounced this ideal, because his very belief was at bottom
negative and frivolous.
Politically, Heine never stooped to so sweeping a dis-
avowal of his own convictions. From that enthusiastic
apotheosis of freedom in the Reisebilder^''^ in. which he
claims for his coffin not a laurel wreath but a sword—" for
I was a brave soldier in the war of human emancipation " —
down to one of the last poems of the Romanzero (1851),"' in
which he calls himself an enfant perdu of the liberal army, he
never ceased to insist on his republican sympathies. And
when the biting reflections upon the political reaction in Prus-
sia, to which he gave vent in Deutschland ein Wintermarchen
(1844),"' were misconstrued into a malicious attack upon
the land of his birth, he was fully justified in drawing a
distinction ™ between " the old official Germany, the moul-
dering land of the Philistines, which has, however, produced
no Goliath, not a single great man," and " the real Germany,
the great, mysterious, one might say anonymous Germany
of the German people, the sleeping sovereign with whose
sceptre and crown the apes are playing." And yet it must
be said that here too he entirely lacked that stability, seri-
ousness, and trust in the radical goodness of human nature
which alone give moral dignity to democratic convictions.
A man who abandoned what he called atheism, because he
"" Reisebilder III, 29-31; /. c. Ill, 273 ff.
'" Romanzero II, 20; /. t. I, 430.
"» Cf. especially c. 3. 18; /. <.. II, 434 fif. 468 ff.
«" Sdmtl. W. IV, 155.
526 SbCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
saw '" that " atheism began to stink of cheese, brandy, and
tobacco"; a man who said"' that "he would wash his
hands if the sovereign people should honour him with a
handshake"; who could make fun of popular distress by
saying"': "We must see to it that the sovereign people
always has something to eat; as soon as Its Majesty is well
fed and filled, it will smile at you most graciously, just like
the other Majesties," — such a man cannot expect to be
classed with the true friends of the people.
And finally, as to his art, nothing could be more signifi-
cant for Heine's character than that this greatest lyric genius
since Goethe should have produced hardly a single poem
which fathoms the depths of life. This master in the art
of poetic hypnotizing hardly ever sets free our higher self.
This brilliant painter of nature, who with a few careless
touches charms a whole landscape before our eyes, who is as
much at home on the lonely downs of the North Sea as in
the mountain wilderness of the Pyrenees,"" hardly ever al-
lows us a glimpse into the mysterious brooding and moving
of nature's creative forces. This accomplished connoisseur
of the human heart, this expert of human desires, hardly
ever reveals the secret of true love. This philosophic
apostle of a complete and harmonious humanity revels as a
poet in exposing his own unharmonious, fickle, scoffing
petulant self. And one of the most perfect artistic achieve-
ments of this enthusiast for popular freedom is a glorifica-
tion of military bravado, an apotheosis of the man of AvTs-
terlitz and Moscow."'
Is it too much to say that of all the writers of his time
Heine is the saddest example of the intellectual degenera-
^"' Gestdndnisse ; I. c. VI, 41.
"" /*. 42.
"' lb. 43. Cf. G. Brandes, Das junge Deutschland p. 131 ff.
"° Cf. Dit Nordsee {I. <.. I, 163 £f.) and Atia Troll c. 13. 15. 16 17
20. (/. c. 11, 381 ff.).
'•''' Die Grenadier! ; I. c. I, 39.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 527
tion wrought by the political principles of the age of the
Restoration ?
2. The Victory of Liberalism.
We have seen how the era of great constructive ideas
which led to the national uprising of 1813 was followed,
after 1815, by an epoch of political and intellectual reaction.
We observed some of the effects of this reaction upon litera-
ture: the absence of truly leading men, tlie revival of a
capricious and morbid subjectivism, the renewal of the
Romantic flight into the mysterious and the distant, the
prevalence of merely negative views of public life. But
we have not yet completed our review of the Restoration
epoch. We have not yet considered the last achieve-
ments of the two men who, although essentially belonging
to a former age, must nevertheless be thought of as the true
intellectual leaders of this age also: Goethe and Hegel.
It would be a futile undertaking to palliate the fact that the
most glorious epoch of modern German history, the period of
inner regeneration preceding the overthrow of the ^^^^^ ^^^
Napoleonic yoke, was at the same time the least 18O6 to
inspiring epoch in the life of Germany's greatest ^^^^•
poet. Here, as in all questions touching the relation of a great
man to his time, one should be careful to refrain from per-
sonal incriminations. It was probably impossible for Goethe,
the man who harboured within himself a world of culture
destined to be the spiritual home of future generations, — it
was probably impossible for him to feel as deeply as his
contemporaries did the death-agony of the old social order.
And yet there is something uncanny, something one might
say inhuman, in the quiet and composure with which Goethe
lives through the succession of national catastrophes from
1806 to 1815. While the country is quivering under the
blows of Jena and Tilsit, Goethe calmly pursues his studies
in biology and the theory of colours. While Fichte and
Heinrich von Kleist wring from themselves works of oratory
528 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
and poetic inspiration in which there vibrates the deepest
passion of a people imbued with the conviction that the
moment for a final supreme effort of self-preservation has
come, Goethe is held in'the spell oi Pandora (1807) and
The Elective Affinities (1809), themes utterly devoid of na-
tional motives. And when at last the fulfilment of time
has indeed come, when the people rise, when the foreign
conqueror is put to flight, Goethe is shocked rather than
stirred: the touching ovation given to him by the Liitzow
volunteers, which was narrated in another connection,""
took place while he was on his way to the Bohemian sum-
mer resorts, trying to escape from what seemed to him a
rude overturning of peaceful culture. Indeed, there is a
deep pathos in the fact that the principal character of the
play with which Goethe in 1815 celebrated the final triumph
of the German cause should have been a dim figure of
Greek antiquity — Epimenides, the legendary sage who
awakens from a sleep of long years to find himself alone
among a people whose battles he has not fought, whose
pangs he has not shared.'"
With all this, even Pandora and The Elective Affinities
are a part of the national regeneration that led to 1813.
Nowhere has Goethe more emphatically con-
demned the reckless individualism of early Ro-
manticism than in these two works. In Pandora he seems
to retract the revolutionary aspirations of his own youth.
In his youth he had magnified the Titans as rebels against
the autocracy of Olympus; now he magnifies the Olympians
as the upholders of divine order. The Titans represent
what is partial and one-sided, — Prometheus the active,
''* Cf. supra p. 4gi f.
'^' Cf. Des Epimenides Erwachen 23; Werke XI, I, /. 196 :
Doch scham' ich mich der Ruhesiunden,
Mit euch zu leiden war Gewinn;
Denn fUr den Schmerz den ihr empfunden,
Seid ihr auch grosser als ich bin.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. $29
Epimetheus the meditative phase of life; only through an
amalgamation of both can the true life be obtained. Pan-
dora, the child of the Gods, preserves this highest life in
her magic vessel. Through her the conflicts of the Titans
are appeased; through her a reign of beauty, goodness, and
joy is initiated. And the human offspring of the Titans
are united_in the worship of universal harmony '" —
Was zu wUnschen ist, ihr unten fiihlt es;
Was zu geben sei, die wissen's droben.
Gross beginnet ihr Titanen, aber leiten
Zu dem ewig Guten, ewig Schonen,
Ist der G5tter Werk; die lasst gewShren!
While Pandora thus, in allegorical visions of rare trans-
lucency and wedlth of colour, reveals human effort lifted into
the sphere of the divine, there rises before us in The Elective
Affinities a tragic conflict between elemental in- jj;^ WaMver-
stinct and the moral law. In Gottfried's Tristan waudtschaf-
we saw the conventions of chivalric society give
way before a resistless passion; here we see modern cul-
ture, developed to the highest intellectual and aesthetic
refinement, undermined by moral indifference. Over The
Elective Affinities as over Tristan there hangs a sultry, sti-
fling atmosphere. No tasks of public import; no questions
of national honour or greatness; the whole of life a mere
■pastime. No wonder that Eduard like Tristan becomes
the prey of an all-absorbing desire; no wonder that a blind
fatalism governs most of the characters in the modern as
well as in the mediaeval romance. And yet what a differ-
ence in the ultimate significance of the two creations; what
a difference, above all, in the attitude of the two principal
heroines ! In the whole career of Isolt after she has par-
taken of the magic love-potion there is not a single act of
moral freedom. Passion has truly enchanted her; she has
lost all sense of responsibility; she has become incapable of
^°'' Last verses of Pandora ; Werke X, 382.
S30 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
distinguishing between good and evil. Ottilie, on the con-
trary, through the very instinct which brings her into conflict
with the law of society, is rendered mistress of herself; and
what threatens to lead to utter moral ruin ends by leading to
moral victory. Ottilie is one of those sensitive natures to
whom all knowledge comes by intuition, none through re-
flection; who act only under the stress of an irresistible
impulse. Sure of her owli feelings for Eduard, assured
.noreover that Eduard and Charlotte desire nothing more
fervently than a divorce, she does not question the legiti-
macy of her feelings. Thus she lives on, in her dreamy,
plantlike fashion, welcoming every opportunity to meet her
beloved, turning to him as to the light of day, unconscious
of the catastrophe that awaits them both. But all of a sud-
den she comes to see that she has unwittingly sinned, and
henceforth her only thought is expiation.'"' ° " I have trans-
gressed my sphere, I have broken my law, I shudder at my-
self, I shall never be his. In a terrible way God has opened
my eyes and made me see my crime. I shall atone for it, I
shall atone for it." She renounces the world, she is going
to devote herself to the instruction of the young; for who
is better fitted for guiding the young than he who through
misfortune has come to know the joy of self-possession ?
And when she is thwarted even in this through Eduard's
mad design to win her at any cost, there is nothing left her
but to die. She dies like a saint, by the mere resolve not to
live, passing over gradually and placidly into the sphere of
the spiritual.
No period of Goethe's life is fuller of moral incentive,
richer in spiritual visions, fraught with greater national sig-
aoeth'e'sold nificance than his last seventeen years, from the
^-se' end of the Napoleonic wars to 1832. The resto-
ration of peace, the hope for a new era of national greatness
bring back to the septuagenarian all the joyf ulness and vigour
»" Wahlverw. II, 14; Werke XV, 223. Cf. A SchSll, Goethe p. 398 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. S3 1
of his youth ; and at the same time there rests on him the
halo of deeper wisdom and broader sympathies acquired in
the trials of his manhood. Whatever there was of earthy
dross in his nature seems now to have been cast aside. His
whole being seems illumined, and he seems to illumine what-
ever comes within his ken. Whether it be the development
of his own genius as portrayed in Dichtung und Wahrheit
(1811 ff.); or the manifold correlations of physical condi-
tions and national culture as brought to light in the Italian
Journey (1816-17); whether it be the analysis — in Kunst
und Altertum (1816-28), in his correspondence with Sulpiz
Boisseree or Zelter — of some mediaeval cathedral, of some
painting by the Van Eycks or Mantegna; or the tranquil
contemplation — in the Maximen und Reflexionen, "° in his
conversations with Eckermann, Riemer, and others — of
some natural phenomenon, some literary masterpiece, some
phase of human conduct; be it the poetic confession of
faith, in the Westostlicher Divan (1814-19), of a man who
to the very end of his life drinks in the joys of existence, in
whom the sunset, the clouds, the winds, the glance of a
beautiful eye, the sound of a gentle voice, call forth melo-
dies of deepest power, and who at the same time feels that
" to be a man is to be a warrior," "' that " to die and to be
reborn " '"is the great task of life: — everywhere we see the
same conception of the universe as a grand living whole, the
'" Edited under the title Spruche in Prosa by Loeper; Werke XIX.
Cf. Bailey Saunders, Goethe's Maxims and Reflections.
"" Cf. Westostl. Divan XII, 4; Werke IV, 2n:
Nicht so vieles Federlesen !
Lass mich immer nur herein :
Denn ich bin ein Mensch gewesen
Und das heisst ein Kam pf er sein.
•"i2. I, x8; /. c. 27:
Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses : Stirb und werde !
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.
S32 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
same loving tenderness for all that draws breath, the same
divine trust in the ever-ascending and ever-widening path
of human perfection.
Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen,
Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare,
Wie sie das Feste ISsst zu Geist zerrinnen,
Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre!"''
It was in this state of mind, it was in the spirit of a joy-
ous pantheism, in the firm belief in the power of the human
mind to transform matter, in the divinatory anticipation of
social conditions which shall be perfect embodiments of a
perfect manhood, that Goethe returned to the two great
themes of his early career. In Wilhelm Meister's Travels
(1821. 29) and the Second Part of Faust (1832) he gave to
the world his last message and his final legacy.
In Wilhehn Meister's Apprenticeship and the First Part of
Faust, as we have seen before,"" Goethe had given a typical
expression to that most vital of eighteenth-century ideals,
to the striving for completeness of individual culture. But
Goethe was more than a poetic interpreter of eighteenth-
century ideals. Not in vain had he lived through the years
of national humiliation following so closely upon the classic
days of individual culture; not in vain had he witnessed the
birth of a new national life out of most extraordinary trials
and sacrifices. He had come to see that subordination of
the individual to the collective tasks of national culture,
that the organization of the masses, that the regulation
of public service would be the supreme problem of the
future. And now, at a time when all that had been gained
in those years of national reconstruction seemed again to
be lost, when a most vicious system of political as well as
religious reaction seemed to bring back the worst days of
"' Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schddel, 17. Sept. 1826; Werke III,
191. For other lyric expressions of Goethe's pantheism c£. Prooemion,
WeltsteU, Eins und Alks ; Werke II, 223-26.
'" Cf. supra p. 355 ff. 362 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 533
aristocratic class rule, he once more arose as the prophet of
a free and exalted humanity: he pointed forward to the
ultimate triumph of democracy through universal self-sur-
render.
It is needless to say that neither Wilhelm Meister's
Travels nor the Second Part of Faust is a representation of
life as it is. Both are symbolic suggestions of what to the
aged Goethe was the life to be striven for. They may be
called Utopian. But in calling them so, let us not forget
that the whole history of civilization is a continual struggle
for the realization of ideas which before they won the sup-
port of the majority were considered Utopian. And who
can fail to see that no small part of what is dimly outlined
in these poetic visions of Goethe's last years has already
been transformed into living reality ?
If the principal theme of Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre
was individual culture, the principal theme of the Wander-
jahre is society well organized. There the watchword was
universality, unchecked development, variety of „.,,
experience, fulness of the inner life; here the Meister's
watchword is specialization, discipline, renun- '^^a^^erjalue.
ciation, doing ! There we saw the transition from the old
regime of hereditary aristocracy to the new aristocracy of
the spirit; here we see the transformation of this spiritual
aristocracy into a democracy of fellow workers.
Each of the three books into which the Wanderjahre is
divided contains, among much that is irrelevant and capri-
cious, at least one important stage of this development.
The first leads us from that charming apotheosis of
handicraft, the idyllic story of St. Joseph the Second,^"
through the reflections of Jarno the naturalist, into the
sphere of " The Uncle," the embodiment of American
"' Chapters i and 2. Like most of the novelettes inserted into the
main narrative of the Wanderjahre, this story was written long before
the composition of the whole : about 1799. In nearly all these novel-
ettes the underlying idea is some form of renunciation.
534 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
common-sense and enterprise combined with European
culture."" Its essence may be summed up in the words of
Jarno"':
"Many-sidedness prepares only the element in which the one-
sided can work. Now is the time for the one-sided; well for him
who comprehends it, and who works for himself and others in
this spirit. Practice till you are an able violinist, and be assured
that the director will have pleasure in assigning you a place in
the orchestra. Make an instrument of yourself, and wait and
see what sort of place humanity will grant you in universal life.
Everywhere one needs to serve from the ranks upward. To
limit one's self to one craft is best. To the narrow mind it will be
nothing but a craft; to the more intelligent an art; and the best,
when he does one thing, does everything — or, to be less para-
doxical, in the one thing which he does rightly he beholds the
semblance of everything that is rightly done."
Nowhere is the contrast between the Lehrjahre and the
Wanderjahre, between Goethe the individualist and Goethe
the coUectivist, more clearly marked than in the principles
of education set forth in each of these works. The funda
mental lesson of the Lehrjahre is that in order to be a cul-
tivated individual you must tread the labyrinthine path of
mistakes and aberrations. The fundamental lesson of the
Wanderjahre is that in order to be a useful member of
society you must choose the straight road of systematic
drill. Wilhelm, in the Lehrjahre, took the former; his son
Felix, in the second book of the Wanderjahre, is made to
take the latter. Of course, this drill is not of the sort
which blunts individuality. On the contrary, like Fichte's
system of national education, it is to raise individuality to
a higher standard, to give the individual a clearer sense of
his faculties and his limitations, to impart to him a deeper
knowledge of the whole order of life which is the condition
of his own existence. The classic expression of this spirit
is the famous chapter of the " Three Reverences," which
"''' Chapters 5 to 7.
«" Wanderj. I, 4; Werke XVIII, 55.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 535
found such an ardent admirer in Carlyle. On entering the
" Pedagogic Province," the hallowed precinct where his son
is to be educated, Wilhelm observes that he is greeted by
the assembled youth with strange and varied gestures. The
youngest children cross their arms on their breasts and
look upward; the older ones hold their arms behind them
and look to the ground; the oldest place themselves in a
row, and, standing erect, with arms at their sides, turn their
heads to the right. Wilhelm inquires what these gestures
signify, and he receives the answer"*: Reverence, a three-
fold reverence!
"The first is reverence for that which is above us. That ges-
ture, the arms folded on the breast, a cheerful glance toward the
sky, that is what we prescribe to our untutored children, requir-
ing thereby witness of them that there is a God on high who
reflects himself in our parents, tutors, and superiors. The se-
cond, reverence for that which is below us. The hands folded on
the back as if tied together, the lowered, smiling glance, bespeak
that we have to regard the earth carefully and cheerfully; it gives
us an opportunity to maintain ourselves; it affords unspeakable
joys; but it brings disproportionate sufferings. If one hurts one's
self bodily, whether through a fault or innocently; if others hurt
one, intentionally or accidentally; if earthly chance does one any
harm, let that be carefully thought of; for such danger accom-
panies us all our life long. But from this condition we deliver
our pupil as quickly as possible: as soon as we are convinced
that the teachings of this stage have made a sufficient impression
upon him. Then we bid him be a man, look to his companions,
and guide himself with reference to them. Now he stands erect
and bold, yet not selfishly isolated; only in union with his equals
does he present a brave front to the world. We are unable to
add anything further."
The third book, finally, brings the consummation of
Wilhelm's career through his joining, as a physician, that
little band of travelling mechanics whom Goethe seems to
have meant as prophetic types of a coming era of industrial
organization and international fr aternity. To be at home
=" Wanderj. II, \\ I. c. 164 f.
53^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
wherever you can serve; to be an apostle of peace, a
pioneer of civilization among whatever people, in whatever
clime; to consider your own property as a trust to be
administered for the benefit of the community; to respect
all creeds, to respect all governments as more or less per-
fect expressions of the supreme law; but at the same time
to work for the coming of a world-religion and a world-
republic; to hope for a future when mankind shall have
reached such a state of spirituality that it will feel itself
truly one with the universal spirit which controls all solar
systems'": — these are the ideals in which Wilhelm's restless
search for culture finds a lasting satisfaction. Truly, like
Saul the son of Kish, he had gone out to find his father's
asses, and he found a kingdom.""
The same gospel of renunciation and deed which forms
the climax of Wilhelm Meister's development is the condi-
tion of the final salvation of Faust. As we have
The Second gggj^ before,''" this gospel is heard even in the
Part of Paust. or
first part of the drama ; it is implied in the very
contract by which Faust binds himself to Mephisto. Its
full application, however, it receives only in the second
part.
There is, at the beginning of the fourth act, a scene of
marvellous power and beauty, in which Faust, stepping
forth from the clouds that have borne him over land and
sea, alights on a lonely mountain-peak. Gazing at the
changing forms of the nebulous masses as they roll away,
he sees in them images of the two women to whom the
best of his life belongs: Gretchen and Helena ; and he pours
'^^ A symbolic anticipation of this state is the mysterioii= fiijure of
Makarie. Cf. Wanderj. Ill, 14. 15; /. c. 404 ff. — An excellent analy-
sis of the ideals of life held out in the Wanderjahre in Ferd. Grego.
rovius, Goethe's With. Meister in s. socialistiscken Elementen p. 85 ff.
'"' Cf. Eckermann, Gcspr. I, 135.
"' Cf. supra p. 364 ff.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 537
out his feelings for them in words full of sublimest pas-
348
sion :
Down gazing on the deepest solitudes below,
I tread deliberately this summit's lonely edge,
Relinquishing my cloudy car, which hither bore
Me softly through the shining day o'er land and sea.
Unscattered, slowly moved, it separates from me.
Off eastward strives the mass with rounded, rolling march:
And strives the eye, amazed, admiring, after it.
In motion it divides, in wave-like, changeful guise;
Yet seems to shape a figure. — Yes! mine eyes not err!
On sun-illumined pillows beauteously reclined.
Colossal, truly, but a godlike woman-form
I see! The like of Juno, Leda, Helena,
Majestically lovely, floats before my sight!
Ah, now 'tis broken! Towering broad and formlessly,
It rests along the east like distant icy hills.
And shapes the grand significance of fleeting days.
Yet still there clings a light and delicate band of mist
Around my breast and brow, caressing, cheering me.
Now light, delayjngly, it soars and higher soars.
And folds together. — Cheats me an ecstatic form.
As early-youthful, long-foregone and highest bliss?
The first glad treasures of my deepest heart break forth;
Aurora's love, so light of pinion, is its type.
The swiftly-felt, the first, scarce-comprehended glance,
Outshining every treasure, when retained and held.
Like spiritual beauty mounts the gracious form,
Dissolving not, but lifts itself through ether far,
And from my inner being bears the best away.
Gretchen had been the Aurora of Faust's existence. The
humble German burgher-maiden, the naive child of the
people, all tenderness, all simplicity, all love, had opened be-
fore him a world of undefiled beauty and grace. His own
frenzy destroyed this world, and now he has to live the
long, cheerless day of lonely struggle. Now there rises be-
fore him the ideal form of another woman : Helena, the
"8 Faust II, 10039 ff.
538 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
brilliant Greek heroine, the representative of classic culture,
the symbol of a life devoted to freedom and progress.
The Faust of the Gretchen tragedy, with all his sublime
feelings, with all his noble aspirations, was nevertheless
essentially a gigantic egotist. The Faust of the Second
Part, with all his thirst for power, with all his craving for
self-expansion, is nevertheless essentially a worker for hu-
manity. The former felt, even in the arms of Gretchen,
the curse of a consuming desire upon him'":
I am the fugitive, all houseless roaming,
The monster without aim or rest.
That like a cataract, down rocks and gorges foaming,
Leaps, maddened, into the abyss's breast.
The latter has come to feel that, while
The thrill of awe is man's best quality,*'"
" enjoyment makes vulgar " "'; and, dying, he proclaims the
redeeming power of ceaseless endeavour"':
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence ;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true :
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
In Other words, he finds the ideal life in making even the
receptive part of his nature subservient to moral aims, in
blending the highest spiritual culture with the most intense
and the most unselfish practical activity.
The Second Part of Faust is a triumphal song of civili-
zation; it is a glorification of individual culture hallowed
through devotion to collective tasks. Isolation, selfishness,
negation, destroy themselves. Homunculus,""' the per-
"' P"-"'t I. 3348 ff. s» Faust II, 6272.
"' ^. 10259. ««' lb. 11573 ff.
="• For the part played fay Homunculus in the economy of the
drama, especially with regard to Helena, cf. V. Valentin, Homunkulus
und Helena ; Goethe-Jahrb. XVI, 127 ff. For Helena cf. J Nieiahr
Euphorion, I, 81 ff. J J .
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 539
sonified desire for individual life, loses his individuality at
the very moment that he reaches true existence. Eupho-
rion, the embodiment of uncontrolled fancy and reckless
aspiration, while presuming to soar to inaccessible heights,
falls helpless to the ground. Mephisto, the arch-scoffer
and deceiver, is defeated, because he has no conception of
the all-conquering power of a steadfast purpose. Faust is
saved, because he makes every new experience a stepping-
stone for a higher and more complete form of existence.
Sin itself seems to have ennobled him. After he has seen
Gretchen in the dungeon, after he has been overwhelmed
at the sight of her fate, by " mankind's collected woe,'""
he seems to be raised above all lower desire. Henceforth
his life belongs to the world at large, and every new temp-
tation he turns into an opportunity for wider activity. As
statesman, as general, nay, even in the fantastic pursuit of
Helena, he appears as a man who has espoused the cause of
human happiness. ' In the last two acts he is clearly a spokes-
man of Liberalism, a stanch opponent of the principles
which guided the policy of the Holy Alliance. The Em-
peror and his satellites, as representatives of the political
and religious reaction which set in after 1815, see in the
pacification of the empire, brought about through Faust,
nothing but a chance for re-establishing their own feudal
privileges ; Faust builds upon it plans of social reform and
popular enterprise which seem a prophecy of the time when
millions of German emigrants were to take part in the peace-
ful conquests of the great republic beyond the sea. He
dies as a champion of democracy. His last vision is that of
a free people living on a free soil "" :
"» Faust I, 4406.
=5^ Faust II, 1 1 563 ff.— One might say that in this vision of the dying
Faust and in the final philosophy of Voltaire's Candida— "il faut
cultiver notre jardin " {CEuvres Compl. XXI, 218)— there are typified
both the affinity and the contrast between the eighteenth and the
nineteenth century.
540 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
To many millions let me furnish soil,
Though not secure, yet free to active toil ;
Green, fertile fields, where men and herds go forth
At once, with comfort, on the newest earth,
And swiftly settled on the hill's firm base,
Created by the bold, industrious race.
A land like Paradise here, round about :
Up to the brink the tide may roar without.
And though it gnaw, to burst with force the limit.
By common impulse all unite to hem it. —
Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away
Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day.
And such a throng I fain would see, —
Stand on free soil among a people free!
Then dare I hail the moment fleeing :
'Ah, still delay — thou art so fair!'
The traces cannot, of mine earthly being.
In seons perish, — they are there! —
In proud forefeeling of such lofty bliss,
I now enjoy the highest moment, — this.
Only a few months after Goethe had brought his life's
work to a close — he himself considered the days left to him
after the completion of Faust as a " pure gift" ^°' —
°^° ■ there died (in November, 1831) the philosopher
whose name must be placed by the side of Goethe's as that
of the other great leader from the era of the Holy Alliance
to the Revolution of 1848.
It cannot be denied that Hegel in a certain sense was
himself a part of the inglorious reaction which in the decades
Th Ph" following the Congress of Vienna threatened to
menologie deB blot out the ideas of national freedom and great-
Gelstes, „ggg ^^^^^ jjg^^j jg^ ^q jjjg uprising of 1813. -It
must be admitted that he was, as a thinker, a worshipper of
scholastic formulas ; as a man, a worshipper of the powers
that be. In his early manhood he had witnessed the down-
fall of Prussia, the annihilation of the German empire under
the footsteps of the foreign conqueror. But even less thah
"' Cf. Eckermann, Gespr. II, 237,
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 54 1
Goethe had he been stirred by this sight to patriotic indig-
nation and activity. While the battle of Jena was being
fought, nay, within the very hearing of the thunder of its
cannon, he had finished his first remarkable book, the
Phenomenology of Spirit (1806). But in vain would you
listen in this book for an echo, however faint, of the great
catastrophe in the midst of which it was written. While
every stone of the tottering edifice of the German state
seemed to call out the truth that it is the will and not the
intellect which builds the world, Hegel fancied that he
was drawing a true picture of reality by representing it as
a succession of varying degrees of self-comprehension, by
dissolving the history of human culture into a kaleidoscopic
show of shifting intellectual moods. While every new day
seemed to be an added proof that it was overstrained intel-
lectuality which was plunging the nation into defeat after
defeat, Hegel persisted in seeing the essence, of life in dia-
lectic abstractions, in proclaiming as the highest existence —
not fullest activity, but " absolute knowledge."
Indeed, it is not surprising that a man who had so little
feeling for the concrete forces and struggles of
national life as the author of the Phenomenology ^^f^„^^t,
should have found it easy to make himself a tool
of despotism. It is not surprising that he should have spoken
of Napoleon as the " world-soul " "° ; that he should have
prevailed upon himself to edit, in the midst of his country's
degradation through Napoleon, a Napoleonic newspaper"' ;
that he should have discountenanced, after the War of Libe-
ration, the movement to obtain parliamentary government ;
that he should have characterized the people in contradis-
tinction from the government as " that part of the state
which does not know its own w ill'"""; that he should have
«6 Cf. K. Rosenkranz, Hegels Leben p. 229.
25' Thus R. Haym, Hegel u. s. Zeit p. 272, characterizes the spirit in
which Hegel from 1807 to 8 managed the Bamberger Zeitung.
«8 Philosofhie des Rechts (1821) § 301; Werke VIII, 386.
542 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERA TURE.
stooped to unworthy compromises of his own, essentially
liberal thought with the divine right of kings and the infal-
lible authority of the church ; that he should have ended
in a fanatic admiration of Prussian bureaucracy as the most
perfect embodiment of organized public intelligence.""
With all this, the Hegelian philosophy has fulfilled a great
and noble mission in the history of modern culture. If it has
created no new ideals of life, it has reconstructed"
Hegel's ool- jjjg qJ^ . jj j^^g systematized the whole Qomplex
lectiviam. . . -
of ideas to which it had fallen heir ; it has been
a vessel of preservation and an instrument of reconstruction
for the pantheistic thought of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Schellihg,
and Schleiermacher ; it has been— to say it in a word — the
first comprehensive attempt to make the collectivistjc view
of life the key for the interpretation of the universe.
Hegel looks at the world not from the standpoint ot the
individual, but from the standpoint of the absolute mind.
Indeed, the individual does not exist for him except as a
part of the absolute mind. All life is to him a continual,
endless self-unfolding of the infinite ; it is comprised in the
eternal circle of unity, differentiation, and return to Unity
(or, as Hegel expresses it, of thesis, antithesis, and synthe-
sis). The finite is the infinite on its way from mere iden-
tity with itself to organic complexity. Nature is mind on its
way from an abstract and, as it were, empty self-conscious-
ness to a self-consciousness fraught with the fulness' of life.
"The rational is real, and the real is rational"""; every-
thing is a phase, a necessary phase, in the one all-absorbing
struggle of life : the struggle of the divine spirit to attain,
through differentiation, negation, contradiction, destruction,
to the most complete realization of itself.""*
5" Cf. the Kritik der engl. Reformblll ; Werke XVII, 425 flf.
'"" Words from the Preface to the Fhilos. d. R.; Werke VIII, 17.
26o» The same decade, 1820-30, which brought the Hegelian system
to its final completion, matured in Alexander von Humboldt that
comprehensive conception of the physical universe which found its
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 543
The human mind is the highest form of the divine spirit
accessible to our understanding ; man's consciousness of
God is God's self-consciousness : these are the premises
which led Hegel to a theory of pubHc life which
cannot but be called a deification of the state and the sut^ and
of human history. The state is not, as Rous- ofl"story.
seau thought, the result of a contract between individuals ;
it exists before and above the individuals. It is the divine
will itself embodied in'human will, it is reason made mani-
fest, the infinite personified."' It is its own aim ; that is, its
office is not to further individual interests, to protect pri-
vate property — these and similar functions of the state are
merely incidental and subordinate — its real office is to be
an embodiment of the organic unity of public life. The
highest task of the individual is to co-operate in making
this embodiment complete. The highest freedom is service
to the state. And what constitutes the measure of human
progress ? Who are the true heroes of the world's history ?
There is only one true hero of the world's history, and
that is the idea of humanity itself. Individual men, nay,
even individual nations, are nothing but organs of this uni-
versal idea ; and the only measure of their greatness is to
be found in their fitness to embody this idea.
Hegel sees in history a continual progress toward free-
dom, and he distinguishes three great epochs in
this development : the Oriental, the Grasco-Ro- fi^ idea of
, treedom.
man, and the Germanic. In the first epoch only
one was free, in the second some were free, in the third all
are free.'" But it is clear that by freedom Hegel under-
stands, not individual independence, but rather universal
responsibility ; that the climax of human development is to
final form in his Kosmos (1845-58, first outlined in public lectures de-
livered at Berlin 1827-28).
«' Cf. Phihs. d. R. § 257 f. 273; /. c. 305 ff. 352. L6vy-Bruhl, I'Al-
lemagne depuis Leibniz p. 388 ff.
2*2 Cf. Philosophie der Geschichte, Einl.; Werke IX, 23 f.
544 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
him, not highest individual culture, but rather the most
fully organized and the widest reaching collective con-
sciousness. The individuals are sacrificed, the idea of the
whole lives on ; and only by living in and for this idea may
the individual be admitted to a share in its immortality.
Whatever may be said about the technical foundations of
this system of thought, it is impossible to resist the inspiring
Ijreath that emanates from it. Even as a mere dream of the
world it is one of the most consistent views of
Uiemlismtf ■^ the world ever conceived. It seems to open the
the Hegelian whole universe, to solve every riddle, to shed a'
system. \\^X of eternity even upon the most fleeting, to
hallow even the most humble life by connecting it with the
life of the infinite spirit. It makes the world an evolution
of the divine; it sees in human society an organism whose
principal function is the living out of the universal idea; it
finds the goal of human progress in the establishment of the
kingdom of God on earth. It is Christianity secularized.
It will now be seen in what sense the aged Goethe and
Hegel must be called the true representatives of German
The develop- culture in the era of the Restoration. While the
la^nt^"™ majority of their contemporaries either stooped
1848. to a blind worship of the divine right of kings as
embodied in the men of the Holy Alliance, or wasted their
strength in capricious and spasmodic attacks against the
ruling system, or again submitted to existing conditions with
the impotent defiance of blighted hope, Goethe and Hegel,
although not entirely free from the contagion of a diseased
age, yet in the main stood faithfully by the great national
traditions of the generation of 1813; and the whole intel-
lectual development of Germany from 1830 to 1848 may be
said to consist in the gradual ascendency and final triumph
of the ideas of public life contained in the Hegelian phi-
losophy and the Second Part of Faust.
Into the details of this development we shall not enter.
Suffice it to point out briefly its three most noteworthy stages.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 54$
- The first— covering, in point of time, the decade from the
Paris July Revolution (1830) to the death of king Frederick
William III. (1840)— is on the whole a period of waiting and
doubt.'" That a storm is approaching cannot be questioned.
There is constant sheet-lightning on the hori-
zon. " Young Germany " issues its first rationa- "To™g &er-
listic manifestoes: Borne's Letters from Paris, ^^^^"
Heine's essays on German thought, Gutzkow's Wally, die
Zweiflerin (1835). Political liberalism finds its first lyric
champion in Anastasius Grun. Historical bible criticism
achieves its first popular triumph in Strauss's Life of Jesus
(1835). In some of the minor German states successful
experiments in constitutional government are made; in
others there ensue serious conflicts between the adherents
of the old order and the new. The air is full of such watch-
words as progress, emancipation, humanity, public opinion,
spirit of the time. It is apparent that the individualism of
the eighteenth century is about to lock arms with the col-
lectivism of the nineteenth in order to march in common
with it against the citadel of Holy Alliance feudalism. But,
as yet, nothing decisive has been done; indeed, as long as
the two ruling states, Austria and Prussia, offer a united
front to all attempts at reform, nothing decisive can be done.
With the death of king Frederick William III. there be-
gins, in Prussia at least, a new era.'"" Frederick William IV.,
impulsive, imaginative, generous, susceptible to
ideal aspirations, seems for a time to justify the '^^ ^°'™^
. ' ■' Hegelians."
hopes placed upon him by the friends of freedom
and progress. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that this
enthusiastic lover of art, this magnanimous patron of learn-
'*' An excellent account of this period, with especial emphasis on
the activity of Gutzliow and Laube, in J. Proelss, D. junge Deutsch-
tand p. 185 ff.
'"'■' Cf. for this epoch G. Brandes, D. junge Deutschland p. 344 ff ,
K. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre deutscher Geschichte (^1840-18^0). H.
V. Treitschke, D. Gesch. im ip. Jhdt vol. v.
546 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
ing, this devout believer, lacks the one quality indispensable
to a monarch: steadfastness of purpose; that he more and
more gives way to a fanciful and capricious desire to force
modern life back into a picturesque but meaningless medi-
sevalism. And now the liberal movement, both encouraged
and threatened, rapidly assumes vaster and vaster propor-
tions, until finally all other questions are merged in one
vital, all-absorbing issue: on the one side the monarchy,
officialdom, militarism, priestcraft; on the other, the people,
popular justice, popular armament, popular religion ; on the
one coercion, on the other freedom; on the one privilege,
on the other law; on the one sectional rivalry and provincial-
ism, on the other national unity and greatness. This is the
history of the years from 1840 to 1848. This is the issue
which rallies under the same flag of opposition collectivists
and individualists, rationalists and pantheists, the moderate
and the radical wing of the Hegelians, the adherents of a
constitutional monarchy and socialistic republicans. This
is the condition of things which brings forth literary pro-
ductions of such intense party ardour as Herwegh's Songs
of Life (1841), Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity (1841),
Dingelstedt's Songs of a Cosmopolitan Night-Watchman-
(1842), Prutz's The Political Childbed (1845), Freiligrath's
fa ira (1846), Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta (1846). This is the
struggle which leads to that grand outburst of popular wrath
and national enthusiasm which at last sweeps away the whole
machinery of Metternich despotism, and makes, for a time
at least, democracy triumphant : the Revolution of 1848.
Public opinion of contemporary Germany, dominated as
it is by the colossal events of 1870, is inclined to look upon
the Revolution of 1848 as a mere stage show.
tionon848, ^^^zled by the extraordinary services rendered
to the national cause by the monarchical states
men and generals of the era of William I., it sees in the
popular rising of fifty years ago nothing but a succession of
mistakes and failures. But the time will come when 1848
THE ERA OF NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 547
will have taken its place in German history by the side of
1813 and 1870 as one of the supreme moments of the nine-
teenth century. The time will come when the March Revo-
lution, with all its puerile mistakes and lamentable failures,
will have been universally recognised as the great national
awakening without which even the successes of imperial
Germany would have been impossible. The time will
come when the German people will again think with pride
and gratitude of the men who in 1848 tried to accomplish
what even now has not been fully accomplished: the unifi-
cation of Germany on a democratic basis. And then it will
be seen more clearly than it is seen now that the Revolution
of 1848 was a necessary outcome of the great intellectual
movement which had begun exactly a hundred years before
with Klopstock's Messi'as, and the end of which is still hid-
den in the future.""
'" This, in the main, is the place assigned to the Revolution of 1848
by H. v. Sybel in his Dit Grilndung des deutschen Reiches, vol. I.
EPILOGUE.
We shall conclude this review of the leading ideas of
German literature with a brief consideration of the moral
ideals which underlie the life-work of the greatest poet of
our own time, and with a suggestion of the spirit which is at
work in the most recent literary movement.
When the revolution of 1848 broke out, Richard Wagner
had already completed his first two masterpieces, Tannhdu-
ser (1845) and Lohengrin (1847). A. life of suc-
Eiohard cessful artistic activity seemed to lie before him,
Wagner, / '
when he was drawn into the torrent of popular
enthusiasm unloosened by the glorious days of March. He
went so far as to take an active part in the uprising af
Dresden, and a few months later he found himself, together
with Kinkel, Ruge, Freiligrath, and many another champion
of freedom and right, an outlaw and an exile. It is to Wagner,
the banished revolutionist, that German literature owes the
most emphatic proclamation of the artistic ideal of the
future, the ideal of pantheistic collectivism.
We have seen that this was the direction in which, since
the end of the eighteenth century, all German life had been
developing. This was the religion of Kant and Fichte, of'
Goethe and Schiller. This was the fundamental, though
disguised, idea of the Romantic movement. This was the
goal hovering before Hegel and his followers, before nearly
all the men who in the days of the Restoration stood for
liberal thought. Richard Wagner, therefore, succeeded to
the most precious inheritance of German culture, when in
the essays Art and Revolution (1849) and The Art-Work of
the Future (1850), both written during his exile in Switzer-
548
EPILOGUE. 549
land, he prophesied the birth of a drama which would em-
body the aspirations of a whole people, which would be per-
vaded with the belief in the divineness of all existence.
Like Schiller he turns to Greek art as the eternal symbol
of the highest life. But if Schiller finds in Greek art an ex-
pression of individual culture brought to its cli- H^g ^^^ „{
max, Wagner finds in it a perfect embodiment art as an ex-
of collective consciousness. He leads us back P™^'™"*
, collective con-
to the Athens of the Persian wars, and makes soionsness.
us witness the performance of an ^schylean tragedy.'
"This people, in every part, in every one of its members
abounding in individuality; restlessly active; seeing in the goal
of one undertaking only the starting-point of another ; in con-
tinual friction with itself, in daily changing alliances, daily re-
newed struggles; to-day successful, to-morrow defeated ; to-day
threatened by the extreme of danger, to-morrow pressing forward
to crush its enemies; absolutely unchecked in its constant and
complete development, within and without, — this people would
stream together from the public meeting, from court and market-
place, from the country, from the ships, from the camp, from most
distant parts, would fill to the number of thirty thousand the am-
phitheatre to listen to the profoundest of all tragedies, .(Eschylus's
Prometheus, to compose itself before the mightiest work of art, to
grasp the meaning of its own activity, to melt into the most inti-
mate harmony with its own being, with its totality, with its God,
and thus to be again in noblest and deepest calm what a few
hours ago it had been in the most restless excitement and the
most individualized endeavour. For in the tragedy the spectator
found the noblest part of his own self blended with the noblest
part of the collective being of his nation. Out of his own inner-
most nature he pronounced to himself, through the mouth of
the tragic poet, the Delphian oracle ; he, God and priest in one,
divine man, himself in the whole, the whole in him; like one of
the thousands of fibres which in the one life of the plant grow from
the soil, lift themselves in slender forms into the air, to produce
the flower which blossoms for eternity.''
In glaring contrast with this ideal view of Greek civiliza-
' Die Kunst a, die Revolution; Ges. Schr. u. Dicht. Ill, 15 f.
S50 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LII^ERATURE.
tion Wagner draws a picture of modern society in which
Modem ^^ easily recognise the socialistic agitator, a
Society. Karl Marx of poetry and art.
Through priestcraft, princely despotism, and industrial-
ism, the modern world has been ground into a mass of
inorganic atoms. If it was the curse of Greek civilization
that it rested on a system of slavery which deprived at least
a part of the population of their human birthright by mak-
ing them mere tools for the benefit of the citizen, modern
society has extended this slavery, though different in form,
over the vast majority of the citizens themselves. The
very essence of modern society is a merciless struggle for
material existence; the unchecked operation of the com-
mercial principle of supply and demand, and the conse-
quent degradation of human labour to a mere commodity;
the crowding together of the masses in a few colossal work-
shops managed for private benefit; the splitting up of the
national body into the toiling many and the enjoying few."
"Who are the people? The people is the community of those
who feel a common need. To it belong, therefore, all those who
recognise their own need as a common one, who do not expect a
relief from their own need except through the relief of the com-
mon need, and who, consequently, devote all their energies to
this relief of the common need. — Who does not belong to the peo-
ple? And who are its enemies? All those who feel no need,
whose lives are actuated by an imaginary, unreal, egotistical
want; by a want which is opposed to the common need, which can
be satisfied only at the expense of others going without the
necessities of life.
"And this devil, this insane want without a want, this want of
want, this want of luxury, rules the world. It is the soul of this
industrial system which kills the man in order to employ him as a
machine; the soul of this state which robs the citizen of his dignity
in order mercifully to accept him as a subject ; the soul of this
church which sacrifices the world to an extramundane God, the
° For this and the following paragraphs cf. Kunst u. Revol. (1.
c. 30 ff.) and Das Ktmst .-/' d.--' Zukunft (ib. 59 ff. 25).
EPILOGUE. 551
consummation of all spiritual luxury ; it is — alas ! — the soul, the
very condition of our art."
True art is a priestess of humanity; the art of our age has
been degraded to a servant of the fiesh. " Its moral aim is
money-making, its aesthetic pretext the entertainment of the
ennuied." Wearied and exhausted, the modern man hastens
to the theatre, not to be uplifted, not to find food for reflec-
tion, not to strengthen his feeling of fellowship with all that
is sublime and eternal, but in order to distract himself, to
get away from the misery of social dissipations, if he is rich,
from the monotony of toil and routine if he is poor. Hence
this constant appeal to 4he sensational, this craving for
meaningless pomp, this woeful lack of earnestness and char-
acter in most of our dramatic productions. Hence this
modern monstrosity, Italian opera, with its Vanity Fair of
sing-song, spectacular effects, and orchestral flourishes, the
embodiment of artistic impotence, the very negation of
organic unity.
From this gloomy view of the present — a view in which
with all its onesidedness and exaggeration we cannot fail to
recognise a kernel of profound truth — Wagner ,^^ ^ .
turns all the more hopefully toward the future, istio move-
Like Fichte, he sees in the climax of social dis- ™^''*'
integration the beginning of a new social order. The great
mass of the people having already ceased to possess private
property, the final transformation of all property into public
property has become the economic task of the future.
Inasmuch as this transformation involves a struggle with
private privilege and individual selfishness, its completion
still lies in the far distance. But that even now we are in
the midst of a revolution tending toward this goal cannot be
doubted. As for Wagner, he is in fullest sympathy with it.
" How," thus he asks,' " how in the present stage of socia!
development does this revolutionary tendency express itself?
' Kunst u. Revol.; I. c. 39.
552 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Does it not most strikingly express itself as defiance on the part
of the workman, based upon the moral consciousness of his
industry as opposed to the vicious idleness or immoral activity
of the rich? Does he not, as a revenge, want to make the prin-
ciple of work the only saving religion of society? Does he not
want to force the rich to work like him, to earn like him his daily
bread by the sweat of his brow? Must we not fear that the car-
rying out of this principle would make degrading toil an abso-
lute and universal power and (to limit ourselves to our main sub-
ject) would destroy for all time true art ? This is indeed the
apprehension of many an honest friend of art, even of many a
sincere philanthropist who has the preservation of the best in
our civilization at heart. But these men fail to see the true
essence of the great social movement. They are misled by the
expression of violent hatred on the part of the oppressed. Even
this hatred proceeds from a deep and noble instinct, the instinct
for a, dignified enjoyment of life, the desire to press forward
from toil to art, from slavery to free humanity."
And the real aim of this great movement is the final and
complete emancipation of all, by making each subservient
to all; it is the bringing about of a state *
/^" in which men will have freed themselves from the last super-
stition, the superstition that man can be a tool for an aim lying
outside of himself. Having at last recognised himself as the
only aim of his existence, having discovered that this aim can be
reached only through collective work, man's social creed will
consist in a practical affirmation of the doctrine of Jesus: ' There-
fore take no thought, saying. What shall we eat? or, What shall
we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.'
And this heavenly father will be none else but the collective
wisdom of humanity which appropriates nature and its fulness
for the benefit of all."
Society, in other words, is striving for a state where in-
dividual morality shall have been absorbed in collective
morality; and in this state, Wagner predicts,
ftitat''°^*''° "'^ '^^^^ ^^""^ ^"'^"'^ ^*^^ rightful place as the
highest moral agency of the world; it will at last
be in a position where, unsullied by selfishness and sordid
* Kunst u. Revol.; I. <.. 40.
EPILOGUE. 553
^ain, it will without reserve abandon itself to its supreme
mission of interpreting and sanctifying life. The art-work
of the future will be again what the Greek tragedy, what
the Nibelungenlied, what the mediaeval cathedrals were, the
product of the collective energy of a whole age. But, since
this age will be more enlightened, more spiritual, more
comprehensive than any previous age, it will produce also
a work of art more enlightened, more spiritual, and more
comprehensive than the artistic creations of all former ages.
As the majority of people will probably always be inclined
to look at social questions from the commercial point of
view, a resolute and fearless proclamation of the eternal
values of human life is doubly needed. And if the millen-
nium of unselfishness and collective devotion, if the golden
age of poetry and art, prophesied by Wagner, has not come
yet; if in the form predicted by him it will probably never
come, it still remains an ideal worthy of the best inspiration
of the best men.
Nor should the fact that Wagner in later life made a
compromise with existing conditions be taken as evidence
that the ideals of his early manhood failed him at the height
of his power. For never perhaps has an artist felt himself
so distinctly and persistently as the representative of a
whole nation as he. And who can listen to the enchanting
"Waldweben" or the pathetic farewell scene between
Wotan and Brunnhilde in Die Walkure, to the soul-stirring
scene in Siegfried where Brunnhilde is awakened by her
deliverer's " long, long kiss of youth and love," to Sieg-
fried's majestic funeral dirge in Die Go Her damme rung,
without feeling that here indeed is expressed the funda-
mental passion, the innermost struggle, the deepest long-
ing of a man who derives his noblest feelings from a belief
in the divineness of all life and his best thoughts from the
ideal of a perfect and truly human society ! '
6 " Die Zeit dtinkte mich nichtig, und das wahre Sein lag mir ausser
554 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
Apart from Wagner's music-dramas, German literature
during the period from the Revolution of 1848 to the final
establishment of German unity has produced
Literatnre ]jttig {jj^t stands for the highest aims of life,
after 1850. , , , , , , , , ,
Not that there has been a lack of able writers
during this time. One needs only to think of such
names as Geibel, Hebbel, Otto Ludwig, Gustav Freytag,
Wilhelm Jordan, Schack, Hamerling, Scheffel, Dahn, Spiel-
hagen, Paul Heyse, Storm, Fontane, Raabe, Fritz Renter,
Gottfried Keller, Anzengruber, Rosegger, to bring to
one's mind a world of sturdy respectability, of earnest
thought, of patriotic devotion, of aesthetic refinement, of
hearty joyfulness, of deepest feeling, of invincible humour.
But it is nevertheless true that literature in the decades pre-
ceding or immediately following the Franco-German war
had ceased to be a motive power of highest national impor-
tance. The great movement for political unification which
had reached its first climax in the national uprising of 1813,
the second in the Revolution of 1848, now pressed toward
its final crisis. Not the thinker and the poet, but the states-
man and the general were now the men most needed. The
hour had come for king William and his paladins.
. At present we are witnessing another turning of the tide.
jWith German unity accomplished, with German industry
1 The modem ^^^ commerce successfully established in the
Storm and world's market, with German science setting
Stress. thg methods of research to all other nations, the
ideals of the inner life are once more beginning to assert
themselves, and it is clear that literature is once more to
take the lead in the strife for social progress.
In more ways than one, the intellectual situation of to-day
resembles the intellectual situation during the seventies and
ihrer Gesetzmassigkeit" — words from the Epilogischir Bericht to Der
Ring des Nibelungen ; Ges. Schr. u. Dicht. VI, 369.— H. T. Finck in
his interesting book, Wagner and His Works, entirely fails to do jus-
tice to Wagner's dreams of social reform.
EPILOGUE. 555
eighties of the last century. The Storm-and-Stress agitation,
which then was at its height, was the composite result of a
number of movements, distinct from each other in temper
and immediate purpose, but at one in their ultimate aim of
widening the scope of individual life, of raising man to the
stature of his true self. Richardson and Rousseau, Diderot
and Ossian, combined to produce The Sorrows of Wcrther
and The Robbers. Pietism and Rationalism, sentimentality
and self-portrayal, the yearning for nature and the striving
for freedom, all rushed together into one surging whirlpool
of revolt against the existing social and political order.
To-day, as a hundred and twenty years ago, the leading
note of German literature is revolt. In the eighteenth century
this revolt meant the ascendency of the middle classes over
an hereditary aristocracy which had ceased to be an aristo-
cracy of the spirit; to-day it means the ascendency of the
working classes over a bourgeoisie which has ceased to be the
representative of the whole people. It means now no less
than it meant then an upward movement in the development
of the race, another phase in the gradual extension of human
dignity and self-respect; it means a further step toward
the final reconciliation of individualism and collectivism.
To-day, as a hundred and twenty years ago, the names of
the men who first gave life to the new literature are not the
names of Germans: the modern Rousseau is Tolstoi, and
the modern Diderot is Ibsen. But to-day happens what
happened then: the foreign pioneers are quickly being suc-
ceeded by German writers of originality and power; and if,
perhaps, no Goethe or Schiller has as yet come forth, the
nearly simultaneous appearance of such works as Suder-
mann's Heimat (1S93) and Hauptmann's Die Weber (1892)
augurs well indeed for the future of the German drama."
* For a comprehensive account of the recent dramatic develop-
ment cf. B. Litzmann, Das deutsche Drama in den litterarischen
Be-wtgungen der Gegenwart. Also Schonbach's Ubtr Lesen u. Bild-
uag. p. 235 flf., and R. M. Meyer's Deutsche Litteratur des 19. Jahr-
httnderts.
SS^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
At no time, perhaps, during the present century has Ger-
man dramatic literature, and German literature in general,
been at so low an ebb as it was during the dec-
of theTama ' ^^^ which followed the Franco-German war.
Then it seemed as if military achievements and
political glory had crushed the finer emotions of the Ger-»
man heart, as if the gigantic struggles which had led to the
establishment of national unity and greatness had so ex-
hausted the productive energy of the German people that
there was no strength left for the cultivation of those ideal
aspirations which give to life its highest charm. With the
exception of Richard Wagner, Germany has produced in the
Bismarckian era not a single poet or artist whose name
could be mentioned by the side of that of the Iron Chan-
cellor himself. And the very years when Bismarck's power
was at its height, when the destiny of Europe was held in
the hands of German diplomacy, were marked in literature
by the supremacy of flimsiness and insipidity. The one fact
that a writer so utterly devoid both of artistic feeling and of
ideal aims as Paul Lindau should in those years have been
able to impose himself upon a credulous public as a critic
of the Lessingian type is sufficient to show to what a depth
of literary apathy the land of Schiller and Goethe had then
sunk.
This was clearly an unnatural condition. A people that
has risen to leadership in nearly all the domains of higher
activity, a people which stands among the very foremost
nations of the world in politics, in science, in education, in
trade, in industry, in social organization, such a people can-
not in the long run remain satisfied with a second place in
literature and art. The same force which impelled it to a
heightened and diversified activity in material things and
in matters that concern the intellect, must in the end mani-
fest itself in heightening and diversifying the feeling and
the imagination also. For just as in the life of the individ-
ual there is an unbroken chain of action and reaction
EPILOGUE. 557
between the various functions of mind or body, as the ex-
ercise of one muscle inevitably brings into play a number
of other muscles connected with it, as the training of one's
memory is impossible without the corresponding simultane-
ous training of one's will, so it is in the life of a nation :
whatever stimulus is given to one organ of national-activity
it is never given to this organ alone, it is passed on to
other organs, and sooner or later it pervades the whole
national body.
This is what is happening now in German literature.
German literature is at last beginning to partake in that uni-
versal heightening of German national life of which the
foundation of the new empire thirty years ago was the first
far-shining signal, which has made the German universities
a meeting-ground of the best students from all over the
globe, and which has helped to build the record-breaking
flyers " Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse " and " Deutschland."
German literature is at last beginning to reap the fruits of
the seed that was sown on the bloody battlefields of Metz
and Sedan : once more is literature coming to be something
more than a mere pastime or recreation, once more is it
coming to be a matter of national concern ; once more are
writers coming forward who feel that they have a mission
to fulfil, whose highest desire it is to be interpreters of the
longings and aspirations of the people ; once more are
novels and dramas being produced which arouse popular
passion and enthusiasm, because they represent, in palpable
and living forms, the momentous problems and conflicts of
the day. ..._
Our whole age is an age of unsolved problems and un-\
settled conflicts. Everywhere, all the world over, there is
a violent clash between the old and the new, be-
tween the classes and the masses, between Q.°°jj^nUfj.
capital and labour, between autocracy and free-
dom, between state and church , between traditional
creeds and personal convictions. Nowhere, however, is
558 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
this conflict being waged with such an intensity, such
a deep-rooted bitterness as in Germany. Germany is
at present the classic land of moral contrasts. In nearly
every domain of life the country is divided into parties
bent on mutual annihilation.
Politically, the strife between church and state, which in
the seventies flamed up with such a sinister glare, is at present
smouldering under the ashes. But it would be a mistake
to think that the passions which at that time seemed to set
the whole nation on fire had spent their force. As long as
there is on the one hand a centralized empire claiming ab-
solute control over the intellectual and moral training of all
its subjects, on the other an infallible papacy claiming
superhuman authority and demanding unconditional sub-
mission to its divine laws, there can be no real and enduring
public peace, there can be at best a temporary cessation
of hostilities, and at any moment the perennial dispute be-
tween king and pontiff may break out again.
Even less veiled than this war between the powers tem-
poral and spiritual is the second great conflict that threatens
the public peace of Germany : the conflict between mon-
archy and democracy. There can be no doubt that this is
the real point at issue between the socialist labour party and
the imperial government. On the surface it is a question of
labour organization, of the distribution of wealth, of
strikes and wages ; at bottom it is a question of life
and death between military absolutism and popular au-
tonomy. Well enough do the upholders of the monarchy
know that the socialist state of the future is a harmless
Utopia, a humanitarian dream which would vanish into air
at the first real attempt to put it into practice. This is not
what they fear. What they do fear and what they resist
with the grim ardour of men attacked in the very stronghold
of their innermost convictions is the undermining of mili-
tary authority, the shattering of the belief in the royalist
legend, the spread of republican ideas — the real dangers to
EPILOGUE. 5S9
the monarchy which the socialist agitation of the last
twenty-five years has conjured up. Hence the wholesale
prosecution of socialist editors, the endless trials for lese-
majeste, the organized efforts to suppress free thought by
means of an approved theology, the ever-repeated attempts
to curtail the political franchise, measures which of course
have no other effect but to strengthen and, cement the
ranks of the opposition and to inspire them with a deter-
mined devotion to a cause which they believe in the end is
bound to win.
And the same is true of the attitude of the masses in the
third great struggle which has to be fought out in the
twentieth century : the struggle between industrialism and
humanity. Nowhere are the lines between employer and
employed more sharply drawn than in Germany, nowhere is
there more of class feeling and of class hatred. But this
very fact has given to the German labour movement a com-
pactness and a solidarity superior to that of most other
countries ; it has imbued it with a firm belief in the final
victory of right that has something of a religious fervour ;
it has made it a movement of an eminently educational
character ; and I am inclined to think that the socialist
workingmen of Germany stand higher than the workingmen
of most other countries in intellectual drill, in political dis-
cipline, and in respect for the ideal concerns of life.
These are some of the contradictions of public life in
contemporary Germany. But there are contradictions also
in the individual life of the cultivated German of to-day:
above all the contradiction between the materialistic tenden-
cies of our own, predominantly scientific age, and the ideal
cravings bequeathed to us by a past excelling in literary
and Eesthetic refinement. In no single individual has this
contrast received a more striking embodiment than in that
strangely paradoxical poet-philosopher whose rhapsodic,
half-inspired, half-crazy utterances have had such a daz-
zling, though stimulating, influence on the present genera-
S6o SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
tion of German writers and artists : I mean of course in
Friedrich Nietzsche. Here we see on the one
hand a most delicate perception of the finest
operations of the mind, a penetrating analysis of the most
tender instincts and longings of the human soul, a revelling
in artistic enjoyment, a glorification of the most sublimated
culture — and on the other hand, a savage delight in the
underlying selfishness and brutality of all life, a ruthless
exaltation of might over right, a fierce contempt for the
Christian virtues of meekness and faith, an hysterical apo-
theosis of the " blond beast " and of cavalier morality. No
wonder that Nietzsche himself in this whirlpool of con-
flicting emotions should have lost his own balance, that the
night of insanity should have closed in upon him and ex-
tinguished even before his bodily death the lights of that
exultant life which he loved so much.
I have laid emphasis on the multitude of moral conflicts
that beset contemporary Germany, not from any desire to
paint gloom, but, on the contrary, because I think that
from the very friction of these opposing tendencies there
has arisen the new life in art and literature, and espe-
cially in dramatic literature, of which I spoke before.
Novalis has defined individual genius as a plurality of
personalities combined in one. Similarly, one might say
that the German people is at present giving signs of dra-
matic genius, because it contains such a variety of opposing
ideals, because in Wildenbruch, in Sudermann, in Haupt-
mann, in Halbe these opposing ideals clash together and
are welded by them into something new, into a work of art.
I doubt whether there exists in any language a poetic pro-
duction which represents the perennial struggle between the
powers temporal and spiritual in as striking and picturesque
a manner as the drama which unquestionably marks the
climax of Ernst von Wildenbruch's artistic career : King
Henry (1895). This drama is a poetic reflex, as it were, of
Bismarck's parliamentary warfare with the RomSl^ Church,
EPILOGUE. 561
and throughout its scenes, filled as they are with the clatter
of mediasval arms and the popular stir of medi-
seval town halls, we seem to hear an echo of "Konig Hem-
those haughty and defiant words of the founder ™^"
of German unity: " Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht! "
Wildenbruch is above all a playwright. He is fiery,
passionate, brilliant, rhetorical. He has constantly the
stage in mind. He knows how to make the action swell
on irresistibly to a grand climax. He leaps, as it were,
from catastrophe to catastrophe, leaving it to the imagina-
tion of his hearers to make its way after him through the
dark glens and ravines that lead up to these shining moun-
tain peaks. All these qualities, characteristic of Wilden-
bruch's art, are particularly characteristic of the manner in
which he, in this drama, represents the historic struggle be-
tween King Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VH. as a tragic
conflict between two principles, both exalted, both true,
but absolutely incompatible with each other, and therefore
bent on mutual destruction. That he should have suc-
ceeded in arousing in us at the same tinie genuinely human
sympathies, in making us feel that it is after all the indi-
vidual heart and the individual brain which make the
destinies of nations, this is saying a good deal, but it is
not, I think, saying too much.
In a prelude we see Henry as a boy, an impetuous, im-
perious youth, smarting under the discipline of a fanati-
cally religious mother, burning with the desire to equal the
fame of his heroic father, at last thrust into the prison walls
of monastic asceticism under the tutorship of Anno, arch-
bishop of Cologne. — At the beginning of the drama itself
he appears as King, in the acme of his power. He has
subdued the rebellious Saxons; he enters triumphantly his
faithful Worms; he is received by the citizens as the pro-
tector of civil freedom against princely tyranny and clerical
arrogance; all Germany seems to rise in a grand ovation
to her beloved leader. Intoxicated by his success, he
S62 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
resents all the more deeply the paternal admonitions of
Pope Gregory about the looseness of his private life which
are just then conveyed to him; he insists on being crowned
Emperor at once; and, when this request is not complied
with, he allows himself to be carried away by his indomi-
table wrath, he forces his bishops into that insulting letter
by which Gregory is declared a usurper, a felon, a blas-
phemer, to be driven out from the sanctuary of the Church
which he pollutes by his presence.
And now we are introduced to the other great character
of the drama, to the opposite of this fiery, unmanageable
young ruler, to Gregory, the self-possessed and self-abasing
priest, the man in whose soul there seems to be no room for
any passion except the passion for the cause of the Church,
for the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, and who never-
theless harbours in his breast, unknown to himself^ the most
consuming ambition and the most colossal egotism. We
see him sitting in cathedra in the basilica of Santa Maria
Maggiore. Suppliants and criminals are brought before
him. A Flemish count, who has committed murder, and
who has in vain fled throughout the length and breadth of
Europe in quest of delivery from the anguish of his tor-
mented conscience, beseeches the Pope to put an end to his
wretched life; Gregory, instead, holds out to him the hope
of salvation through joining a crusade. A Roman noble,
who in robber-knight fashion has made an assault upon the
Pope, and who by the clergy and the people has been con-
demned to death for this crime, is pardoned by Gregory —
" for he has sinned, not against the Church, the holy one,
but against Gregory, a poor, feeble mortal." A lay brother
of St, Peter's, who, disguised as priest, has taken money
from foreign pilgrims for reading mass to them, and who by
the clergy and the people has been sentenced to a fine and
exile, is ordered by Gregory to be thrown into the Tiber —
"for he has sinned against the Church, he has cheated
human souls of their salvation."
EPILOG UE. 563
These scenes have just passed before our eyes when the
messengers of King Henry, bearing the letter of libel and
vilification, are admitted. Gregory is the only one who in
the tumult that follows its reading remains absolutely calm;
he protects the messenger himself against the rage of the
Romans; he forgives Henry, the man, for what he has said
against Gregory, the man.
"For what he has said against the head of the Holy Church,
for that let Henry be cursed ! I forbid all Christians to serve
thee as a King, I release them from the oath that they have sworn
thee. Thou, darkness revolting against light, return to chaos !
Thou, wave revolting against the ocean, return to naught ! No
bell shall be sounded in the city where Henry dwells, no church
be opened, no sacrament be administered. Where Henry dwells,
death shall dwell ! Let my legates go forth and announce my
message to the world ! "
The climax of the whole drama is, as it should be, the
Canossa catastrophe. It is here that Gregory, the victor
in the political game, succumbs morally ; that Henry, the
vanquished, rises in his native greatness. It is here that
Gregory, with all his soaring idealism, reveals himself as an
inhuman monster ; that Henry, with all his faults and frail-
ties, arouses to the full the sympathy which we cannot help
feeling for a bravely struggling man.
The excommunication of Henry has plunged Germany
into civil war. A rival king, Rudolf of Swabia, has been
proclaimed. He and the chiefs of his party have come to
Canossa to obtain the papal sanction for their revolt.
Gregory clearly sees that Rudolf is nothing but a figure-
head, a mere tool in the hands of fanatic conspirators,
totally unfit to rule an empire. He clearly feels it his duty
to discountenance this revolt, to restore peace to Ger-
many by making his peace with Henry. But the demon of
ambition lurking in his breast beguiles him with a vision of
world-dominion : he, the servant of the servants of God,
shall be the arbiter of Europe ; he, the plebeian, shall see
the crowns of kings roll before him in the dust. He does
564 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
not discountenance Rudolf and his set ; and when Henry
appears before the castle, broken and humiliated, askipg for
absolution from the ban, Gregory remains unmoved. ^ For
three days and nights the King stands before the gate in
ice and snow ; for three days and nights the Pope sits in
his chair, speechless, sleepless, refusing to eat or drink. At
last, the intercession of Henry's mother, who, herself in the
shadow of death, has come to pray for her son's salvatiop,
softens Gregory's heart : he admits Henry to his presence.
Henry appears, a king even in his misery. He bends^his
knee before the Pope, he confesses his guilt, he acknowl-
edges the justice of his punishment. The reconciliation is
brought about. Just then Henry's glance falls upon Rudolf
and his followers standing in the background. He greets
them as friends, thinking that they have come to renew their
allegiance to him. But they rudely repulse him, and boast
of the Pope's intention to acknowledge Rudolf as King.
And Gregory does not contradict them. With fearful sud-
denness Henry sees what a shameful game has been played
with him ; and yet he masters himself, he makes one last
appeal to whatever there is of true feeling in his opponent :
"God, help me against myself! Christ, Saviour, who wast
thyself a king among the heavenly host and didst bow thy neck
under the scourge, help me against myself ! {He turns abruptly
toward Gregory.) Once before I knelt before thee — I did it for
myself. (He falls down on his knees.) Here, a second time, I lie
before thee, for Germany lie I here ! Break thy silence ! Thy
silence is the coffin in which the happiness of Germany is
entombed ! If thou didst know how unhappy this Germany is,
thou wouldst speak; — speak! Thou, ordained by God to bring
peace to the world, let me take peace with me on my way to Ger-
many, not war, not howling civil war !"
And Gregory remains silent ! From here on to the end
of the drama there is nothing but revenge, and revenge on
revenge. And this work of destruction does not stop until
both Gregory and Henry have breathed their last. Both
men die in defeat and desolation ; both die inwardly un-
EPILOGUE. 565
broken— Gregory trusting in the future triumph of the
Church, Henry trusting in the indestructible vitality of the
German people.
One could not well conceive of a more striking artistic
contrast than that which exists between this sonorous,
brilliant, and (one must confess it) somewhat melodramatic
tragedy of Wildenbruch's and a number of dramas by
Sudermann, Hauptmann, and Halbe which directly or indi-
rectly deal with those other conflicts of modern German
life of which I have spoken before : the struggle between
monarchy and democracy, between society and the indi-
vidual, between the Church and free thought, between
industrialism and humanity, between materialism and ideal-
ism. Wildenbruch stands alone among contemporary Ger-.
man dramatists as a stanch advocate of the ideals of the
past. His is essentially a world of chivalry. He is pre-
eminently a believer, a believer in the reality of revealed
truths, in the sacredness of existing conditions, in the
beauty and nobility of monarchical institutions, in the
exalted mission of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and in his
own mission to proclaim it. His ideal is the blond German
youth, firm and faithful, pure and pious, ready to lay down
his life in the service of his King — the noble youth whom
we know from the Watch on the Rhine and from Emperor
William's speeches. It is hard to resist the unsophisticated
ardour of his aristocratic convictions, the naive optimism of
his warlike patriotism. Yet one cannot help feeling that
he has been too lightly touched by the wave of modern
doubt and social discontent.
Just here is the source from which his three foremost
competitors — Sudermann, Hauptmann, and Halbe — derive
their inspiration and strength. They are doubters and
seekers ; they are steeped in Nietzsche and Ibsen ; they
sympathize with the revolt of the masses against aristocratic
and plutocratic class rule, with the rebellion of the indi-
vidual against the soulless conventions of society and the
$66 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
obsolete formulas of the church ; they incline to pessimism
and sarcasm ; it is in their writings that we hear the minor
key and the deeper discords of modern life.
Of the three, Halbe seems to me the one who gives least
promise of real greatness. He is an excellent observer, he
sees clearly the symptoms of social unrest that surround us,
he feels distinctly the conflict which is going on in every
one of us between the traditions of the past and the ideals
of the future ; but he lacks the strength of character and
the depth of conviction which would enable him to take a
definite stand in this conflict. He vacillates between ex-
treme individualism and moral dissoluteness on the one
hand and sentimental cravings for the peace and security
of traditional morality on the other. He never gets beyond
impulses, he never opens up a new world to us, he never
leads us into the regions of moral freedom.
There is no better illustration of this than his most ambi-
tious production — Mother Earth (1895), a drama which has
the undoubted merit of dealing with a distinctly modern
situation, the clash between the hereditary, patriarchal, in-
stinctive views of life, resting on the belief in the accepted
order of things, and the new democratic ideas, born of the
restlessness of industrial progress and competition.
Paul Warkentin, the son of an East-Elbian country
TT ,v . gentleman (all these modernest Germans are
Halbe'a ° ■ \ ,
'• Mutter East-Elbians), became acquamted, while study-
Erde." jng at Berlin, with a young woman of superior
intellect and will power, Hella Bernhardy by name. The
daughter of a University professor, she had from childhood
on led a city life, and being of an almost masculine bent of
mind, had early become absorbed in the problems of the
day, particularly in the woman movement. To Paul, the
dreamy, undeveloped country boy, she opened a new world
of ideas ; and the natural consequence was their engage-
ment and subsequent marriage. The latter, however, was
not accomplished without a violent catastrophe. For Paul's
EPILOGUE. 567
father, who naturally wished his son to be his successor in
the management of the estate, insisted on his marrying one
of the girls of the neighbourhood, Antoinette, a playmate of
Paul's in his country-school days, to whom he had been as
much as engaged when he left for the University. And
when Paul refused both to marry Antoinette and to assume
the management of the estate, the irascible old gentleman
forbade him his house.
All this has happened some ten years ago. Since then
Paul and his wife have plunged into the exciting life of
Berlin journalism, they have been editing a paper bearing the
suggestive name of ' Women's Rights,' and, if we may trust
Hella's own statements, have played a considerable part in
radical politics. Now the father has suddenly died; and for
the first time since his marriage, Paul re-enters the house of
his ancestors, to pay the last homage to the departed one.
Hella accompanies him, although she hates to leave the city
and begrudges the delay which this trip will cause in the
printing of her next editorial in ' Women's Rights.' How-
ever, to recompense herself for this intellectual sacrifice,
she has brought with her a young admirer of hers, wKo will
help her reading proof while Paul is busy with the funeral
arrangements or receives visits of condolence! Paul, on the
other hand, with the first step over the threshold of his old
home feels himself drawn back into the spell of the long-
neglectpd but ever-precious recollections of his youth. And
so it is not surprising that husband and wife do not har-
monize as well in these new, quiet surroundings as they
seemed to do in the bustling stir of the -capital. In fact,
they are at odds in small things as well as great. Paul is
deeply touched at the sight of the parlour chandelier lit in
his honour by the old maiden aunt, his fostermother; — Hella
thinks such sentimentality ridiculous. Paul comes in, cov-
ered with snow and glowing with delight over a ride he has
taken on horseback through the wintry landscape, the first
one for ten years : " You don't know what it is to be a man
S68 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
until you feel a horse under you ! " Hella wishes herself
to be back at her desk in the editor's office. And when
Hella reminds her husband of the days when they were
still battling shoulder to shoulder in the good fight for' the
betterment of the race, he breaks out : " Fight for the better-
ment of the race ? You had better speak of the dissipation of
my energies, the benumbing of my natural instincts, the
bankruptcy of my moral life — that is what has been the
result of this artificial existence of ours, this continual
restlessness, this bookishness, these airy abstractions, this
casting loose from the soil where our true strength is
rooted."
It is after one of these scenes (needless to say ! ) that
Antoinette, the love of Paul's boyhood, appears. After
having been jilted by Paul, the impetuous girl out of sheer
despair had thrown herself away on the first man that asked
for her hand, a worthless, rollicking, dissipated Junker of
the neighbourhood ; and since then she has been leading a
wretched and ignominious life, hating herself, her husband,
the world. Now she sees Paul again, and his face at once
reveals to her his history. " One consolation is left me,"
she tells him : "you have made me unhappy; but you are
unhappy too! And to enjoy that I am here ! " Paul, on his
part, is transfixed. All his ideals of an active and useful
life, all the traditions of his home with its friendly human
intercourse, its naturalness, its honesty and soundness,
seem to him to have taken form in this daughter of his own
native soil, this superb, beautiful woman, all the more
beautiful to him for her grief. For she is grieving' for him!
She might have been his! And he has thrown her away, to
attach himself to a mere shadow, to a sexless being in whose
veins there flows no blood and whose brain is thinking
thoughts that have no meaning for him!
Up to this point the action of the play is perfectly con-
sistent, in a way even fascinating. For Halbe is a master of
those little illuminating touches which bring out with life-
EPILOGUE. 569
like energy the great contrast that pervades the whole
drama. But now we have arrived at the crucial point of the
plot. What is Paul to do ? Is he to leave Hella and re-
turn to his first love ? Or is he to remain faithful to his
marital vow and suppress his instinctive longings ? Either
solution, it seems to me, would have been artistically possi-
ble, and to a degree even satisfactory. For Hella appears
from the very first so entirely devoid not only of womanly
grace, but of womanly feeling also, so utterly incapable of
even understanding her wifely duties, that one would greet
Paul's deserting her for Antoinette almost with joy, savage
though this joy might be. It would be a return to Nature, to
undefiled, sensuous, exuberant Nature; it would be violence,
but it would be violence that overturns a false, a vicious
order of things, that sets things into their right relatione.
On the other hand, if Paul and Antoinette were to renounce
each other, this too would be in a way a satisfactory ending.
It would be a moral victory, a victory of duty over instinct.
Both Paul and Antoinette would return to their daily tasks,
enriched and strengthened by the rapturous feelings which
the assurance of their spiritual inseparableness has brought
them. And both would find ample opportunity for making
humanity reap the fruits of their bitter experience — Paul
by devoting himself with a higher heart and a nobler pur-
pose to the cause for which he has been working these last
ten years ; Antoinette by giving herself to that most wom-
anly of occupations, the healing of wounds and the relieving
of distress.
Halbe has chosen to follow neither of these two lines of
thought. Instead, he makes the two lovers go hand in
hand into death, " return to Mother Earth " as they say
themselves. This seems to me, even apart from the melo-
dramatic manner in which it is brought about, an utterly
indefensible ending of the play. For it is in vain that
Halbe tries to justify it by Hella's unwillingness to relieve
her husband from his vows. Its true reason (not justifica-
57° SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN /.ITERA TURE.
tion) lies in the fact that Halbe is given over to a hopeless
fatalism which makes him shrink from any kind of free
moral decision. To him life seems to be nothing but a
series of impressions; nowhere is there a suggestion in him of
a manly grappling with outward circumstance ; nowhere
does he rise above conditions ; and even where he preaches
revolt against established evils, as in his Icedriftings (1892)
and Youth (1893), this very revolt is nothing but disguised
self-indulgence and self-gratification.
It is just here that the vast superiority of Sudermannand
Hauptmann over Halbe shows itself ; it is the deep moral
earnestness, the holy zeal for truth, the passionate longing
for purity of thought and life, the intense sympathy with
human joys and sufferings which give even to their darkest
and seemingly hopeless pictures of social distress and rot-
tenness a glow of that enthusiasm which makes us see a
new heaven and a new earth.
What could be gloomier or more abject than the awful
scenes of popular misery and degradation that
anp mami. ^^^ rolled Up before us in Hauptmann's The
Weavers (1892)? Yet never has there been produced a
work of art which appealed more strongly to our highest
moral instincts. Never has poetry lifted her voice more
solemnly for justice and right ; never has she appeared more
truly as a messenger from above, as an angel of divine
wrath, as a prophetess of eternal judgments. What could
be more oppressive and excruciating than the mental
agonies portrayed in the same author's Lonely People (1891)
— agonies of souls blindly struggling for freedom and light,
craving for a life in the spirit, for completeness of exist-
ence, revelling in the thought of a new, all-embracing reli-
gion, but totally unable to cope with existing conditions,
and therefore ground down under the wheels of inexorable
reality ? Yet I doubt whether there are many works of'lit-
erature that preach more forcibly the necessity of self-dis-
■eipline, that impress us more deeply with the beauty of
EPILOGUE. 571
simple right-mindedness, or that glorify more truthfully a
brave aggressive idealism.
Sudermann's artistic temper is diametrically opposed to
that of Hauptn.ann. Hauptmann is lyrical,
Sudermann is rhetorical ; Hauptmann is the ^ ermann.
greater poet, Sudermann is the greater dramatist ; Haupt-
mann is a strange combination of sublime visions and cruel
disenchantments, of fantastic mysticism and impression-
ist realism, of pantheistic ideals and a hidden longing for
the lost belief of childhood ; Sudermann is absolutely
straightforward, there are no mysterious recesses in him,
he is a single-minded champion of intellectual freedom and
unhampered individuality. Yet, in spite of these differ-
ences in the artistic temper of the two men, the moral effect
of Sudermann's dramas is very similar to that of Haupt-
mann's. Take such a play as Sodom's Ruin (1891), with
its lurid descriptions of baseness, dissoluteness, and de-
bauchery. The effect of this drama is not debasing or
enervating, as is the case with most of Zola's productions
of a similar character. On the contrary, it is stimulating
and stirring in the highest degree. It affects us as a for-
midable arraignment of social conditions which it is for us
to set right ; like Schiller's youthful dramas it fills us with
moral indignation ; it inspires us with a solemn determina-
tion to put our hand to the plough which is to r^e^up the ^
barren field of humanity and open it to the wholesome influx
of light and air. Or take the most widely known of Suder-
mann's earlier works, Heimat (1893), or as it is called in
England and America : Magda. What gives to this drama
its distinguishing feature and its abiding value, is that here
we have not merely a domestic tragedy of the order of The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, not merely a breaking loose from
family ties that have become intolerable, not merely a
revolt against a paternal authority which stifles individual
life, but, beside and above all this, an ever-present sense of
572 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
the sacredness of personal obligations and a recognition of
the supreme duty of faithfulness to one's higher self.
Indeed, it is not surprising that these two men, Haupt-
mann and Sudermann, should have come to be acknowl-
edged as the real leaders in the new literary movement of
Germany. From the very first they have given a voice
to the hopes, longings, and perplexities bound up with
the essentially modern problems of modern life ; and
nearly every new work of theirs has marked a step for-
ward, has brought them nearer to that comprehensive-
ness of view from which the conflicts of existence appear
not any more as irreconcilable and permanent, but as
fleeting discords dissolving into the strains of the world's
universal symphony, thereby increasing its volume and
heightening its beauty. It is a matter for genuine rejoicing
that the end of the nineteenth century should have brought
us at least one work from each of these men in which this
note of the universally human is heard with such a dis-
tinctness as to bring back to our minds the classic era of
eighteenth-century culture : I mean Hauptmann's Sunken
Bell (1896) and Sudermann's John the Baptist (1898).
With a brief consideration of these two dramas this epilogue
may be brought to a close.
The Sunken Bell is a fairy drama, a fantastic vision,
„j^, transporting us into lonely forests haunted by
Tersnnkene elfs and water-sprites, and strangely illumined
Glooke." ]3y tjjg flicker of swarming glow-worms. But in
these weird surroundings and among these fanciful hap-
penings we soon are brought face to face with scenes that
reveal the most fundamental passions and longings of the
human heart.
The time of the action is somewhere in the Middle Ages.
The principal character is a figure belonging to the race of
Faust, Manfred, and Brand : Meister Heinrich, a bell-
founder in a lonely village of the Riesengebirge. It is
evidently not long since Christianity made its way into
EPILOGUE. 575
these remote regions, for we hear that the mountain elfs
are disgusted with the unaccustomed sight of church-build-
ing going on in the midst of their retreats, and still more
with the unaccustomed sound of the church bells ringing
through the peace of the forests. Just now one of these
malicious spirits has seized the opportunity of venting his
spite. He has lain in wait when a bell wrought by Master
Henry and destined for a chapel on the mountain summit
was being carted up the hill ; he has broken the wheel of
the truck, and has hurled the bell and its maker down into
the lake. Here is the beginning of the action. Henry,
rallying, but as yet hardly conscious of his steps, gropes his
way upward again, and wanders about in aimless despair
through the rocky wilderness. Finally he sinks down ex-
hausted. His cries of agony have been overheard by Rau-
tendelein, a strange mixture of elf and maiden; and for the
first time there has been awakened in her breast the dim
feeling of a higher life and the blind desire to win it. So,
when the villagers come to carry Henry's nearly lifeless
body back to the valley, Rautendelein follows them, deter-
mined to see and to know " the land of men." Disguised
as a servant, she enters the house where Henry, attended
by his faithful wife, lies at the point of death. He is de-
lirious. His life seems to him a failure; the comforting
words of his wife sound to him like mockery; he persuades
himself that she has no conception of what it is to feel the
creative impulse and to have it checked by brutal fate; he
is sure that she does not understand him, that nobody
understands him; he curses his work; he wishes to die. At
this moment Rautendelein appears, and the sight of this
unbroken youthful life brings back to him his own youthful
aspirations. It is as though Nature herself had touched
him and renewed his strength, as though she beckoned him
to throw away the commonplace cares and duties of ordi-
nary social existence and to follow him to the heights of a
free, unfettered, creative activity. He cannot resist. The
574 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
supreme desire for unhampered exercise of his faculties
restores his health; the delirious despondency leaves him;
he is himself again.
When the scene changes, Rautendelein has led him back
into the mountains. She now appears as his inspiring
genius. He is in the fulness of his powers; he is raised
above the petty conflict of good and evil. He has won
control over the spirits that dwell in rock and cavern; with
their help he is creating a wonder-work of art, a temple
structure on highest mountain peak whose melodious chime
is to call free humanity to the festival of universal brother-
hood. Wrapt up in these ecstatic visions he has entirely
lost sight of his former life. He seems not to know that
once he had a loving wife and children. He scorns the
friendly warnings of the village priest, who ventures into his
enchanted wilderness in order to save his soul. He defies
the onslaught of the peasants who attempt to storm his
fastness in order to annihilate the godless blasphemer. He
quiets occasional pangs of conscience by renewed feverish
work; only at night he lies restless and is visited by fearful
dreams. More and more, however, these evil forebodings
get the better of him. Again and again he hears a strange
sound that seems to draw him downward, he recognises in
it the tolling of the bell that lies at the bottom of the moun-
tain lake. What causes the bell to give the sound ? Who
is that pale, ghastly figure floating toward it and striking its
tongue ? And who are these shadowy forms of little chil-
dren, coming slowly and sadly toward him, and carrying
with great effort a heavily filled urn ? Breathless with
horror, he addresses them. " What carry ye ? " " Father,
we carry an urn." " What is in the urn ? " " Father, some-
thing bitter." " What is the something bitter ? " "Father,
our mother's tears." " Where is your mother ? " " Where
the water-lilies grow."
Now, at last, Henry sees that he has overstepped the
bounds set to man. The whole wretchedness of his imag-
EPILOGUE. 575
ined grandeur is revealed to him with terrible clearness.
He drives Rautendelein away with calumny and cursing.
He destroys with his own hand the work which had been
to him the symbol of a perfect humanity. He resolves to
descend again to the fellowship of mortals. But it is too
late. The superhuman striving has consumed his strength.
In his last moment Rautendelein appears to him once more;
she has returned into her own realm, she has become the
wife of an ugly old water-sprite who had wooed her for
years. But she is still longing for human affections, and
she presses a fervent kiss upon the lips of the dying one.
If in this fairy-drama of Hauptmann's, in spite of its fan-
tastic setting, we are yet made to hear, throughout, the echo
of the spiritual struggles of modern humanity, we are intro-
duced into equally modern conflicts in Sudermann's bi-
blical drama J^ohannes.
Sudermann's John the Baptist is indeed a counterpart to
Hauptmann's Henry, the bell-founder. The fate „
r^ ■. ■ • , • rr.-. -,- , "Johannes."
of both IS genumely tragic. 1 he mediaeval mys-
tic succumbs in striving for an artistic ideal too grand and
too shadowy for human imagination. The Jewish prophet
succumbs in striving for a moral ideal too visionary and too
austere for human happiness. Both lose faith in themselves
and in their mission, and both rise through their very failure
to the height of true humanity. Nothing is more impress-
ive in Sudermann's drama than the way in which this
disenchantment of the prophet with himself, this gradual
awakening to the sense of his fundamental error, and the
final bursting forth of the true light from doubt and despair,
are brought before us.
In the beginning we see the preacher in the wilderness.
He has gathered about himself the laden and the lowly.
With burning words he speaks to them of the woe of the
time, of the misery of the people trodden into the dust both
by the foreign conqueror and by its own rulers, tormented by
its traditional obedience to a heartless, inexorable law. And
57^ SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
he holds out to them the vision of the deliverer and aveng-
er that is to come : the Messiah, clad in splendour, like the
King of the heavenly host, the cherubim around him on
armoured steeds and with flaming swords, ready to crush and
to slaughter. Yet, irresistible and intoxicating as his ha-
rangues are, an occasional look, an occasional word betrays
even here that his faith is not born of a free and joyous sur-
render to the divine, but of a dark, brooding fanaticism,
and we feel instinctively that it will not stand the test of
self-scrutiny.
Next he appears in the streets of Jerusalem, inciting the
populace to revolt against Herod and his lustful house,
especially against the scandalous marriage into which the
tetrarch has just entered with Herodias, the divorced wif€
of his own brother, and which he wishes to have sanctioned
by the synagogue. But here again, it is the blind fanatic
rather than the inspired leader whom we hear in John's lan-
guage. Having led the infuriated mob to the King's pal-
ace, he is at a loss what to do, he feels lonely in the midst
of the surging crowd, he longs for his rocks in the wilder-
ness ; and when the Pharisees take this opportunity to em-
barrass him by mocking questions about the new Law the
advent of which he has been holding out to his hearers, he
has no answer. Just then there is heard out of the midst
of the populace the voice of a Galilean pilgrim : " Higher
than Law and Sacrifice is Love! " It is the message of him
whose coming John has been preaching without divining
his true call. This word strikes deep into his soul. For
the first time he doubts his own mission, for the first time
there looms up before him the dim vision of something
more exalted than his own dream of the Messiah.
Again he rises to his full power as a hero of asceticism in
his interview with Herodias and her wanton daughter
Salome. Salome has been fascinated by the weird, fan-
tastic appearance of this man with the lion's mane and th'"
far-away look in his eyes ; she wishes to flirt with him, to
EPILOGUE. 577
tame him, to possess him. When he enters the palace, she
receives him with a shower of roses and the voluptuous
songs of her maidens. But he remains unmoved. " Gird
thy loins," he says to her, " and turn away from me in sack-
cloth and ashes. For I have been sent as a wrath over
thee and as a curse to destroy thee." And he does not
seem to notice that this very curse affects the infatuated girl
like a magic love-potion. Herodias, too, wishes to win
him — she wishes to make him a tool of her political designs,
to stifle through him the popular opposition to the clerical
sanction of her marriage ; and she attempts to bribe him by
offering him the charms of her daughter. But again his only
answer is : " Adulteress ! " And yet even this victory over
sensual temptation leaves a sting in his soul ; for again he
hears that mysterious word, Love, and he must remain silent
when Herodias calls out to him : " What right have you to
judge the guilty, you who flee from human life into the
loneliness of the desert ? What do you know of those who
live and die for love's sake ? "
And now he comes to see that he does not understand
even those nearest to him. The wife of his favourite dis-
ciple comes to him and beseeches him to give back to her
the heart of her husband ; for since he has joined the band
of the Baptist's followers he has forsaken his home and for-
gotten his kindred. And John never knew anything of
this man's inner life, he knew nothing of the love that
he is accused of having stifled ! Who, then, is he to teach
others — he who is constantly confronted with his own limi-
tations, who must confess to himself that he is without a
guiding principle of his own conduct ! Where is there an
outlook for him ? Where is the path toward his salvation ?
Is it this Love that is thrust upon him from all sides ? No,
no ; it cannot be. Love is littleness, is weakness, is selfish-
ness, is sin ! No, the only salvation lies in the Messiah,
in him who is to come in heavenly splendour, surrounded
by the rainbow, the King of kings, the great fulfiller and
578 SOCIAL FORCES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.
judge ! Thus he tries to assure himself, thus he strains
every nerve to maintain his tottering belief in his mission,
to keep awake the hope of his poor downtrodden people.
And from this very people, from the mouth of an old
wretched beggar-woman, he now hears for the first time the
full, the cruel truth : " We do not want your Messiah !
We do not want your King ! Kings come only to kings ;
they have nothing in common with us, the poor. Go away ;
let us alone, you false prophet ! "
Immediately after this scene the climax is reached. Ever
since the Baptist for the first time heard that mysterious
message of love, he has been endeavouring to discover
whence it came. In a vague manner he has associated it
with the noble youth whom years ago he baptized in the
Jordan, and from whom he has in some way hoped for the
fulfilment of his Messianic dreams. Now he learns from
some Galilean fishermen that this Jesus of Nazareth has
indeed brought a new gospel — not the gospel of a super-
human Messiah, but of human brotherhood and kindliness,
of the love of one's enemies, the very gospel of which John,
through the bitter disenchantment, has gradually become
the worthiest prophet. Just after this meeting with the
Galileans he is drawn into the surging throng of the popu-
lace, who have streamed together to make a forcible attack
upon Herod and his wife as they, in solemn procession,
repair to the temple. Torn with conflicting feelings as he
is, unable to collect his thoughts, he is pushed along to the
steps of the temple. A stone is forced into his hand: he is
to execute the judgment of the people against the vicious
King himself. Mechanically he lifts the stone; he calls out
to Herod: "In the name of him who — "; but the stone
glides from his hand, and he stammers — " of him who bade
me love you ! "
The rest of the drama brings little new of inner experi-
ence. Once more John rises to the full grandeur of the
Old Testament prophet. Imprisoned, and led before the
EPILOGUE. 579
love-infatuated Salome, he once more defies her raging
passion. He dies with words of peace and hope upon his
lips. Immediately after his execution there is heard from
the street the hosannah of the jubilant masses greeting the
entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
It is not the office of Poetry to solve social problems. It
is the office of Poetry to hold out social ideals. The Ger-
man drama of the last decade has fulfilled this mission with
singular nobility of purpose and with singular
artistic success.' To think that this remarkable
literary phenomenon was a symptom of approaching social
peace would of course be tantamount to a belief in the
approaching millennium. The end of social strife would
end national life itself. But well may we hope that the
ideals held out in the German drama of the last decade
will help to raise this strife to a higher level and make it,
instead of an instrument of destruction, an instrument of
progress and human happiness.
' That even in such fearful pictures of moral disintegration as
Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang or Das Friedensfest there is a
great deal of moral incentive, no one would deny. One cannot
help wishing, however, that the Versunkeni Glockf might have
put an end to these awful representations of hopeless misery.
Unfortunately in his latest productions, Fuhrmann Henschel and
Michael Kramer, Hauptmann seems to have returned to the
earliest stage of his artistic development.
INDEX.
Abbt, Thomas, Vom Tode furs
Vaterland, 278
Abraham a Sancta C\a.xa., Judas
der Ertzschebn, 203, 204
Adam of Bremen, 49
Addison, 215
Adelheid, wife of emperor Otto
. I-. 49
Aegidius Albertinus, Cusman
von Alfarache, 200
^neas Sylvius, see Enea Silvio.
yEschylus, 469, 549
Alaric, king of the Visigoths,
7, 10
Alberich von Bisinzo (Besan-
Son), 59
Albert of Koln (Albertus Mag-
nus), loi
Alboin, king of the Langobards,
13
Albrecht von Eyb, 141
Alcuin, 12
Aleman, Mateo, 200
Alexandcrlied, 56, 58~62
Alexis, Willibald, pseudon. for
Wilhelm Haring, Der falsche
Waldemar , 498
Alp harts Tod, Tl
Alsfeld, see Passion-plays.
Amadis of Gaul, 162
American Revolution, 230, 309,
345, 445
Amiens, loi
Amis, see Strieker.
Anacreonticists, 222
Angelus Silesius, pseudon. for
Johann Scheffler, 193, 195-
197. 450
Anglo-Saxons, 7, 11, 85
Annolied, 56
Antichristo, Ludus de, 130, 131
Anzengruber, Ludwig, 554
Aquino, see Thomas of.
Arcadian novel, 185
Aristotle, 49, 275
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 437, 438,
492, 494, 496; Geist der Zeit,
437, 438
Arnim, Achim von, 460, 461
Arnim, Bettina von, 421
Arnsteiner Marienleich, 56
Arthurian legend, 85, 89, 93-95
Attila, Atli, Ezzel, 7, 8, 16, 18,
20, 26-28, 81, 82
Aue, see Hartmann von.
Auerbach, Berthold, 407, 513
Auersperg, see Grun.
Augsburg, see David of.
Augustine, St., Civitas Dei, 35
Augustus the Strong of Sax-
ony, 181, 187, 213
Austria, 72, 480, 497, 503
Ava, 56
Ayrer, Jacob, 158, 214
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 197,
236, 237, 246
Bacon, 176
Babenberg dynasty, 72
Ballads, Popular, see Lyrics.
Bamberg, Sculptures in the
cathedral of, 90
Basedow, Joh. Bernhard, 302
Basel, Treaty of, 397, 409
Baur, Ferdinand, 400
Bayle, 176
581
t82
INDEX.
Bebel, Heinrich, 143
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 336,
375, 400, 455
Benediktbeuren, see Christmas
plays. Passion-plays.
Beowulf, 16-19
Berlin, 173, 406, 437, 497, 543 ;
University, 434, 440, 444
Bern, see Dietrich von.
Bernhard of Clairvaux, 107,
192
Berthold of Regensburg, 107-
109, 115
Besanfon, see Alberich von Bi-
sinzo.
Besser, Johann von, 1S6
Bibliothek der schonen Wissen-
schaften, 268
Bismarck, Prince, 395, 496, 556,
560, 561
Biterolf und Dietleib, 77
Bitzius, Albert, see Gotthelf.
Boccaccio, 292
Bodmer, Johann Jacob, 215,
458
Boethius, 49
Bohme, Jacob, 195
Boie, Christian Heinrich, 303
Boileau, 183
Boisserfee, Sulpiz, 531
Boner, Ulrich, Edelstein, 126,
127
Boniface, St., see Winifred.
Borne, Ludwig, 395, 500, 514-
519. 545
Brandenburg, after the Thirty
Years' War, 173
Brant, Sebastian, Narrenschiff,
127, 162
Breitinger, Joh. Jacob, 215
Bremen, see Adam of.
Bremer Beitrdge, 215
Brentano, Clemens, 455, 460,
461
Britanje, see Thomas von.
Brockes, Barthold Heinrich,
218, 219, 221, 359
Bruges, Ii5
Brilggemann, Hans, 135
Brunhild, Prankish princess, 15
Brunhild, Brynhild, Sigrdrifa,
19, 20, 31, 32, 78-80
Brunswick, see Henry Julius.
Buchholtz, Andreas Heinrich,
Herculiscus und Herculadisla,
185
Burger, Gottfried August, 305,
307, 310, 311, 457
Burgundians, 7, 20, 21, 27, 81
Buschius, Hermann, 143
Byron, 400, 500
Calderon, 453, 456
Canterbury, loi
Carlyle, 384, 535
Carolingian monarchy, 3, 8, 35,
36. 67
Catholicism, Romantic revival
of. 447-454
Celtic legends, 4, 85
Celtis, Konrad, 141
Chalons, Battle of, 8
Chamisso, Adelbert von, 455
Charles the Great, II, 12, 17,
35. 36. 67. 68; in poetry, 57,
85, 489. 513
Chateaubriand, 432
Chivalry, 4, 67, 68, 186, 187
Chodowiecki, Daniel, 225
Chrestien de Troyes, 91, 96
Christian von Hamle, 71
Christmas plays, 129, 130; Be-
nediktbeuren play, 130; Hes-
sian, 134, 135
City life, in the Middle Ages,
103, 104, 135
Clairvaux, see Bernhard of.
Claudius, Matthias, 314, 315
Closener, Fritsche, 104
Clovis, king of the Franks, 13,
14
Collectivism, 63, 64, 318, 319,
326, 331, 348, 368, 399, 400,
430, 431, 433, 434, 436, 439,
440, 442, 443, 446, 448, 542-
544, 545. 548-553, 555,
Cologne, see Koln.
Columbia College, 496
Comte, Auguste, 400
Conrad, see Konrad.
Constantinople, 46, 47, 55
Cooper, James Fenimore, 496
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 139, 170,
171
INDEX.
S83
Corneille, 267, 269, 274
Cornelius, Peter, 400, 456
Corvey, see Widukind of.
Cremona, see Liudprand of.
Crisp, Samuel, Virginia, 284
Crotus Rubianus, 146
Crusades, 53-55
Dach, Simon, 189
Dahlmann, Friedr. Christoph,
497
Dahn, Felix, 554
Dante, 64, 93, loi
Darwin, 400
David of Augsburg, 109
Defoe, 215
Defregger, Franz, 407
Descartes, 176, 177
Didactic poetry, of the Middle
Ages, 122-128
Diderot, 12S, 274, 278, 555
Dietleib, see 3iterolf.
Dietrich von Bern, 18, 21, 29.
See Theoderic.
Dingelstedt, Franz, 546
Discourse der Maler, 215
Domenichino, 194
Dominican order, loi, 107
Drama, of the Middle Ages,
129—138; of the Reformation
period, 158, 164-166 (school-
drama, 163); of the seven-
teenth century, 185; of the
Storm-and-Stress period, 305,
309, 310, 336-341, 343-347;
the Classic drama, 278-286,
292-297, 350-355, 362-368, 379
-397, 536-540; the Romantic
drama, 451-453. 455. 472-474.
476-480, 482-484, 497-499. 509,
536-540; Richard Wagner's
view of the drama, 549; the
contemporary drama, 555-579
Droste-Hiilshoff, Annette von,
513
Duns Scotus, loi
Diirer, Albrecht, 39, 93, 105,
128, 157-159. 506
Easter plays, 129-138; Reden-
tin play, 135-138; Trier play,
130; Vienna play, 131-133
Ebersberg, see Williram of.
Ecbasis captivi, 47-49, 122
Eckermann, Johann Peter, 531
Eckhart, Master, log-iii
Edda, 17, 19, 20, 28, 31, 32, 40
Editha, wife of Otto 1., 49
Eichendorff, Joseph von, 455
Eike von Repgow, Sachsenspie-
gel, 104
Eilhard von Oberge, 97
Einhard, 12
Ekkehard I., of St. Gallen, 22,
47, 77
Ekkehard II., 49
Ekkehard IV., 49
Ems, see Rudolf von.
Enea Silvio, 103
English influence on German
literature, 158, 214-216, 248,
251, 274, 328, 456, 457; the
English comedians, 158, 214,
456
Epic poetry, of the Migration
period, 3, 16-33, 7^; the na-
tional epics of the twelfth
century, 4, 76-84; t!,e court
epics, 4, 84-99; animal epics,
47-49, 122
Epistolce obscurorum virorum-f
146
Erasmus of Rotterdam, 139, 141
—145 ; MoritB Encomium^ 142
-144; Enchiridion^ 145
Ermanric, king of the Goths,
18
Ernst, Herzog, 55
Eschenbach, see Wolfram von.
Eschenburg's transl. of Shak-
spere. 457
Eulenspiegel , Till, 127, 462
Euripides, 350
Eyb, see Albrecht von.
Eyck, Hubert and Jan, 113, 360,
531
Ezzel, see Attila.
Ezzo's Song of Redemption, 56
Fairy tales, see W. Grimm,
MusSus, Tieck.
Fate-Tragedy, 455, 497, 509
Faust, the Volksbuch of, 170,
171; the puppet-play, 342;
584
INDEX.
Marlowe's Faustus, 342, 343;
Lessing's Faust, 336, 337;
Maler Miiller's, 310; Klin-
ger's, 305-307;' Grabbe's, 455;
Lenau's, 505. See Goethe.
Felsenburg, Die Insel, 215
Ferdinand II., emperor, 173
Feudalism, 3,4, 35, 36, 63, 64
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 546
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 332,
349. 416, 434-443. 447, 448,
467, 477, 480, 482, 491, 522,
527. 534. 542. 548, 551; Grund-
zzige des gegenw, Zeitalters,
437t 438-441; Reden an d.
deutsche Nation, 43^, 441-443,
477, 482
Fielding, 128
Fischart, Johann, 163, 167-170,
173; Gluckhafft Schiff, 167,
168; Geschichtklitterung, 168,
169
Fleming, Paul, 189, igo
Follen, Karl, 496
Folz, Hans, 138
Fontane, Theodor, 554
Forster, Friedrich, 491, 492
Forster, Georg, 313
FortunatUs , 462
Fouqu6, Friedrich, Baron de
la Motte, 455
Franciscan order, loi, 107
Francke, August Hermann,
175, 176. 246. — Cotton Ma-
ther on F., 175
Frankfurt, 314, 516
Frankfurter, Der, see Theolo-
gia deutsch.
Prankish dynasty, 34, 37
Franks, 8, 10, 13-15, 19
Frauenlob, see Heinrich von
Meissen.
Fredegond, Prankish princess,
15
Frederick Barbarossa, 65, 66,
130, 186, 495, 499
Frederick II., emperor, 66, 67,
72
Frederick the Great, 223, 228-
232, 265, 277, 299, 300, 313,
435- — F. on Gellert, 223; on
German literature, 299, 300
Frederick William, the Great
Elector, 173, 188, 482-484
Frederick William I., king of
Prussia, 173
Frederick William III., king of
Prussia, 440, 441, 490, 491,
545
Frederick William IV., king of
Prussia, 545, 546
Freiberg, The Golden Porte of,
90
Freiberg, see Heinrich von.
Freidank, 106
Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 503, 546,
548
Freising, see Otto of.
French influence on German
literature, in the Middle
Ages, 4, 56, 59, 69, 72, 84, 91,
96, 97, 122; in the seven-
teenth century, 179, 183, 200;
in the eighteenth century,
179, 183, 184, 251, 252, 266,
268, 269, 274, 276-278
French Revolution, 128, 249,
251, 301, 332, 344, 361, 3(i8,
378, 396, 435; the July Revo-
lution, 518, 545
Freytag, Gustav, 554
Friedrich von Hausen, 70
Frischlin, Nicodemus, Julius
Redivivus, 163
Fulda, 41, 45
Gallen, St., 45, 49
Gandersheim, 45, 49. See Ger-
birg and Rosvitha.
Geibel, Emanuel, 554
Geiler von Kaisersberg, 115
Geiseric, king of the Vandals,
10
Gelimer, king of the Vandals,
28
Gellert, Christian Furchtegott,
216, 223-227, 234, 252, 282. —
G. on the battle of Rossbach,
227
Genesis, Old-Saxon, 38; Wiener
Genesis, 56
Geneste, Sieur de la, 200
Gengenbach, Pamphilus, Die
Totenfresser, 158
INDEX.
58s
Gentz, Friedrich.von, 497
Gerbirg of Gandersheim, 49
Gerhardt, Paul, 189, 191-193
Germanic tribes, Migrations of,
3, 7-9; the effect of the Mi-
grations on Germanic charac-
ter, 9-15; the Germanic past
in seventeenth-century liter-
ature, 201, 203, 444; in eigh-
teenth - century literature,
247. 445
Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm
von, 248
Gervinus, Georg Gottfried,
497. 498
Gessner, Salomon, 359
Ghent, 116
Gleemen, 54, 55
Gleim, Johann Ludwig, 222,
223, 314, 359
Gluck, Willibald, 350
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 6,
92, III, 163, 177, 218, 223,
228, 233, 238, 248, 263, 266,
270, 271, 302, 308, 318, 335-
337. 339-368, 374. 375. 395-
398, 399, 410, 413, 414. 416, 423.
425, 427, 429, 433, 441, 445.
456. 457. 467. 468, 487. 491.
492, 512, 519, 521, 524, 525,
527-540, 548; Von deutscher
Art u. Kunst, 322; Gotz v»n
Berlickingen, 336, 339, 341,
346; Werthers Leiden, 225,
233, 336. 339. 340-342, 346;
Urfaust and Faust, ein Frag-
ment, 305, 336. 337. 343. 347.
348, 362, 416; Prometheus,
333. 340. 341 ' Stella, 336; Eg-
mont, 346, 347; Iphigenie, 92,
266, 350-352, 362; Tasso, 350,
352-355. 362; lyrics and bal-
lads, 350, 374. 375; Retneke
Fuchs,2,Si; Wilhelm Meister' s
Lehrjahre, 227, 253, 350, 355t
359, 362, 413, 419. 427. 5".
532, 534; Hermann und Doro-
thea, 350, 359-362, 425; Xi-
nien, 414; scientific writ-
ings 527; Faust, First Part,
263, '343, 350, 362-368 532;
Pandora, 528, 529) Wahlver-
■wandtschaften , 528-530; Dich-
tung und Wahrheit, 270, 314,
531; Des Epimenides Erwa-
chen, 528; Italienische Reise,
531; Kunst und Altertum , 531;
Westostlicher Divan, 531 ;
Maxim en und Reflexionen,
531; Wilh. Meisters Wander-
jahre, 532-536; Faust, Second
Part, 532, 533. 53^540.— G.
on Der arme Heinrich, 92; on
H. Sachs, 163; on Gunther,
218; on Gellert, 223; on Klop-
stock, 233, 238, 248; on Wie-
land, 262, 263; on Lessing,
270, 271; on the Stolbergs,3o8;
on Gleim, 314; on Herder, 320;
on Germany, 398, 405
Goeze, Melchior, 288-290
Goliard poetry, 69
Gorres, Joseph, 461-463, 496
Goths, see Ostrogoths, Visi-
goths.
Gottfried von Strassburg,
Tristan, 5, 88, 89, 96-99, 104,
106, 529
Gotthelf, Jeremias, pseudon.
for Albert Bitzius, 513
G5ttingen, 220, 303
Gottsched, Johann Christoph,
179-185, 268-270, 271; Criti-
sche Dichtkunst, 180-182, 184,
185; Ster bender Cato, 1 Si; Die
vcrniinftigen Tadlerinnen, 21S
Grabbe, Christian, 455
Grafenberg, see Wirnt von.
Grail, Holy, 89, 93-95
Gregory VII., pope, 35, 53
Gregory of Tours, 13
Grillparzer, Franz, 498, 499, 502
Grimm, Jacob, 247, 400, 458,
463-467, 497
Grimm, Wilhelm, 247, 463-467.
497; preface to the Kinder-
und Hausvidrchen, 466
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jacob
Christoffel von, Simplicissi-
mus, 200, 203-206, 20g (Con-
tinuatio, 215), 219, 252, 253,
355, 427
Grobianus, 162
GrUn, Anastasius, pseudon. for
S86
INDEX.
Alexander Count Auersperg,
503 545
Gryphius, Andreas, 185, 207,
208
Guarini, 187
Gudrun legend, ig, 24-26, 30 ;
Wate, 24-26; Horand, 28. —
The Middle High German
Gudrun, 77, 82-84, 104; Gu-
drun's character, 82
Gudrun=Kriemhild, 32
Gundicar, king of the Burgun-
dians, 20
Gunther, (Gunnar), 20, 23, 28,
29, 32, 78-81
Gflnther, Johann Christian,
217, 218
Gutzliow, Karl, 521, 545, 546
Hadlaub, Johannes, 106
Hadwig, duchess of Swabia, 49
Hagedorn, Friedrich von, 215,
222, 359
Hagen, Fried. H. von der, 460
Hagen, in the Nibelungen le-
gend, 26-28, 80-82; in the
Walthari legend, 23
Hagenau, see Reinmar von.
Hainbund, 303
Halbe, Max, 560, 565-570
Halberstadt, 314
Halle University, 175, 440
Haller, Albrecht von, 215, 220-
222,234, 341. 359
Haller, Karl Ludwig von, 497
Hamann, Johann Georg, 301,
302, 360
Hamburg, 314
Hamerling, Robert, 554
Hamle, see Christian von.
Hampden, John, 397
Handel, Georg Friedrich, 197,
236, 237, 246, 494
iardenberg, see Novalis.
laring, Wilhelm, see Alexis.
Harsdorfer, Georg Philipp,
180, 181
Hartmann von Aue, 5, 85, 88-
93, 104, 106; BUchlein, 93;
Erec, 88, go, gi ; Gregorius, gi ;
Der arme Heinrich, 91, 92;
Iivein, 85, 88, go, 91
Harvard University, 496 '
Hauflf, Wilhelm, Lichtenstein,
498
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 5C0, i'-iS,
570-575, 579
Haupt- und Staatsactionen, 185
Hausen, see Friedrich von.
Haydn, Joseph, 400
Hebbel, Friedrich, 554
Hebel, Johann Peter, 314, 315,
407
Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wil-
helm, no, 400, 521, 527, 540-
544; Phiinomenologie, 541;
Philosophie des Rechts, 542,
543; Philosophie der Ce-
schichte, 543, 544
Heine, Heinrich, 374, 454, 456,
497, 498, 500, 509, 514-517,
519-527, 545
Heinrich von Freiberg, 97
Heinrich der Glichesaere, Iseti'
grtnes N6t, 122
Heinrich von Meissen, Frauen-
lob, 106
Heinrich von Melk, 56
Heinrich von Morungen, 70
Heinrich von Veldeke, 70, 85,
86
Heinse, Wilhelm, 303; Ardin-
ghello, 311, 312
Heljand, 38-40
Henry I., king of Germany, 45,
49
Henry II,, emperor, 52
Henry III., emperor, 45
Henry IV., emperor, 34
Henry VI., emperor, 74
Henry Julius, duke of Bruns-
wick, 158, 214
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 116,
302, 31.8-328, 332, 335, 360, 395,
396, 399, 429, 433, 441, 445, 447,
456, 457,459,467, 542; Frag-
mente iiber die neuere deutsche
Literatur, 320, 321; Tagebuch
einer Seereise von Riga nach
Nantes, 321, 322; Von deut-
scher Art und Kunst, 116,
322-324; Von Aehnlichkeit der
mittleren engl. a. deutschen
Dichtkunst, 324, 325; Volks^
INDEX.
587
lieder, 325; Vom Geist der
ebraischen Poesie, 325; Ideen
mr Philosophic der Geschichte
der Menschheit, 325-328, 459;
Briefe zur Beforderung der
Humanitat , 325, 326; Cid, 325
Hermann of Reichenau, 49
Hermann, landgrave of Thu-
ringia, 72
Hersfeld, see Lambert of.
Herwegh, Georg, 546
Heyse, Paul, 554
Hilde legend, 19
Hildebrandslied, 17, 21, 22, 77
Hindu literature, 15, 457, 500
Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von,
405; G. Th. von, 491
Hofer, Andreas, 456
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Ama-
daus, 455, 497
Hoffmann von Fallersleben,
Heinrich, 520
Hoffmannswaldau, Christian
von, 186
Hohenstaufen dynasty, 17, 65-
67, 100
HohenzoUern dynasty, 173, 174
Holbein, Hans, 128, 139, 558
Holderlin, Friedrich, Hyperion,
445, 446
Holty, Ludwig, 303
Holy Alliance, The, 401, 495,
517, 539
Homeric poems, 15, 85, 273, 322,
324, 342, 360, 459
Horace, 183, 252
Houwald, Ernst von, 455
Hrabanus Maurus, see Rabanus.
Hrotsvitha, see Rosvitha.
Hugo, Victor, 400, 443, 500
Hugo of Trimberg, Der Ren-
ner, 125, 126
Humanism, 5, 12. loi. i°4. 138,
141-150, 176, 328; modern
Humanism, 333, 334, 349, 350
Humboldt, Alexander von, 400,
542, 543
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 332,
333, 376, 434
Hume, 176
Huss, John, 102
Hutten, Ulrich von, 139, 141,
142, 146-150; Die Anschauen-
den, 147, 148; Die rom. Drei-
faltigkeit, 149; Bullicida, 149
Ibsen, 555
Idyllic poetry, of the eighteenth
century, 359, 360
Ildico, Attila's wife, 20
Ilsan, the monk, 77
Immermann, Karl Lebrecht,
500, 506, 509, 510-514; Mer-
lin, 511; Epigonen, 511, 512;
Miinchhausen, 512-514
Individualism, 5, 6, 105, 106
117, 141, 145, 150, 175-178, 187,
188, 198, 216, 233, 282, 317-
319, 326, 329, 331, 348, 368,
396, 413, 418, 429, 430, 433,
435, 441, 442, 447, 448, 545,
555
Ingres, Jean Auguste, 400
Innocent III., pope, 64, 65, 74,
75
Investiture, Wars of, 37, 53
Isengrimus , 49, 122
Italy, 8, II, 18, 65, loi, 351,
362; Italian influence on Ger-
man literature of the seven-
teenth century, 187; Italian
opera, 551
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 355
Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 496
Jansenists, 175
Jean Paul, see Richter.
Jena, 333, 377, 37^: battle of,
378, 409, 427, 437, 441, 527,
541
Jesuits, 139, 167, 168, 17s, 193,
423
Jordan, Wilhelm, 554
Jordanes, 16
Joseph II., emperor, 231, 313
Judith, 56
Jung-Stilling, Heinrich, 406
Justinger, Konrad, Chronik
von Bern, 104
Jutta, Frau, 138
Kaiserchronik, 56
Kaisersberg, see Geiler von.
Kant, Immanuel, 6, 22S, 314,
588
INDEX.
318, 328-332, 335, 349, 370, 395.
399, 416, 429, 430, 432-436,
440, 441, 467-469, 521, 542,
548, 559; Kritik der reinen
Vernun/i, 32S, 32<); Kritik der
fraktischen Vernunft, 330, 331
Karl August, grand-duke of
Sachsen-Weimar, 313
Karl Eugen, duke of Wiirtem-
berg, 314
Karlsbad Resolutions, The, 501
Keller, Gottfried, 554
Kempen, see Thomas of.
Keppler, Johann, 170
Kerner, Justinus, 486
Kinkel, Gottfried, 548
Klage, diu, 81
Kleist, Christian Ewald von,
215, 282, 359
Kleist, Heinrich von, 467-485,
487, 495, 527; Robert Giiis-
eard ^dg^ 470; Der zerbrochene
Krug, 470-472, 484, 485; Fen-
thesilea, 470, 472, 473, 485;
Kdthchen von Heilbronn, 470,
473> 474. 484; Michael Kohl-
haas, 470, 473, 475, 476; ^1??--
mannsschlackt, 470, 476-480,
485; JCatechisnius der Deut-
schen, 480, 4S1, 485; Prinz
von Hamburg, 482—485
Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian,
304, 315, 558; Faust, 305-307;
Sturm u. Drang, 309; Zwil-
linge, 309
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb,
197, 219, 233-250, 251, 252,
265, 282, 287, 303, 308, 360,
429, 445, 490, 547; Der
Messias, 233, 236-246; odes
and dramas, 233, 246-250;
Gelehrtenrepublik, 250
Knaus, Ludwig, 407
K61n, 45, loi; paintings of the
Cologne school, 43, 116. See
Albert of Koln, Wilhelm of
Koln, Lochner.
Konig, Johann Ulrich von, 186
Konigsberg, 314
Konigshofen, see Twinger.
Konrad, Der pfaffe, 56. See
Rolandslied, Kaiserchronik.
Konrad of Wtirzburg, Der Well
Lohn, Die goldene Schmiede,
Tab
Kopp, Joseph, 499
KBrner, Theodor, 491-494
Kotzebue, August von, 414
Kriemhild, 19-21, 26-28, (Gu-
drun, 32,) 78-82
Kudrun, see Gudrun.
Kyot, 96
Lachmann, Karl, 460
La Chaussfee, Nivelle de, 278
Lambert of Hersfeld, 49
Lamennais, 400
Lamprecht, Der pfaffe, 56, 58-62
Langobards, 8, 13
Laube, Heinrich, 499, 521, 545
Lauremberg, Johann, 203
Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 302
Leben Jesu, 56
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 176-
178, 188, igi, 256
Leipzig, 223; battle of, 467, 494
Leisewitz, Johann Anton, y«/jW
von Tarent, 309
Lenau, Nicolaus, pseudon. for
Nic. Franz Niembsch Edler
von Strehlenau, 500, 502—506
Lenz, Jacob Michael Rein-
hold, 304, 315, 558 ; Der Hof-
meister, 304 ; Die Soldaten, 305
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,
128, 146, 180, 198, 220, 265-
299. 303. 319. 336 , 337. 339.
340, 345, 359. '*399^ 429, 49L
521; Miss Sara Sampson^jiy
Ditteratur brief e , 268-270 ^'jF'ri*^
lotas, 278; Laokoon, 267, 270-
274 ; Ham-bur gische Drama-
turgie, 266, 270, 274-278 ;
Minna von Barnhelm, 266,
278-282; Emilia Galotti, 266,
278, 279, 282-286, 336, 344;
Faust, v;^ 337; Wolfenbut-
teler Fragmente, 288; polemics
■with Goeze, 288-291; Nathan
der Weise, 288, 292-297, 347;
Ernst und Falk, 293; Erzieh-
ung des Menschengeschlechts,
288, 297-299.— L. on Haller,
220; on Wieland, 253; on Cor
INDEX.
589
neille, 269; on Shakspere,
268, 269, 276; on Homer, 273;
on Luther, 289
Lex Salica, 10
Lexington, Minute-Men ot, 397
Lichteuberg, Georg Christ., 405
Lichtenstein, sec Ulrich von.
Lieber, Franz, 496
Lillo, 278
Liviburger Chronik, 116, 125
Lindau, Paul, 556
Liscow, Christian Ludwig, 215
Liudprand of Cremona, 45-47
Lochner, Stephan, 43, 113
Locke, 176, 177
Logau, Friedrich von, 199, 200,
203
Lohengrin legend, 95
Lohenstein, Daniel Casper von,
Arminius^ 185
Longfellow, 92
Louis XIV., 173, 183, 266
Lilbeck, 116, 137
Luden, Heinrich, 398
Ludwig, Otto, 554
Ludwig the Pious, emperor, 38
Ludwig of Bavaria, emperor,
lOI
Ludivigslied, 41
Luther, Martin, 139, 140, 146,
147, 150-158, 160-163, 166.
168, 171, 175, 177. 328, 397,
521, 559; An den christlichen
Adel, 151-154; De captivitate
Babylonica, 154, 155; Von der
Freiheit eines Ckristenvien-
schen, 156, 157; hymns, 161;
translation of the Bible, 161;
last sermon in Wittenberg,
161. — Durer on Luther, 157,
158; Lessing on Luther, 289
Liitzow volunteers, 491, 492
Lyrics, Popular, 5, 116-122; re-
ligious lyrics, 188-197; Her-
der's view of the Volkslied,-
116, 323. 324; Arnim's, 460,
461. See Wunderhorn,
Macpherson, 248
Mahabbharata, 15
Mainz, 41, 45
Mantegna, 531
Manuel, Niclas, Der Ablasskrii-
mer, 158
Marcianus Capella, 49
Marienklage^ Trierer^ 133
Marino, 187
Marlowe's Faustus, 342, 343
Marx, Karl, 400, 550
Masters, The Seven Wise, 462
Mastersingers, 116
Mather, Cotton, 175
Mathilda, wife of King Henry
L, 49
Maximilian L, emperor, 100,
146, 520
Maximinus, Roman emperor, 9,
10
Meier Helnibrecht, see Wernher.
Meissen, see Heinrich von.
Melanchthon, Philipp, 139
Melk, see Heinrich von.
Memlinc, Hans, 113, 360, 361,
424, 425
Mendelssohn, Moses, 268, 269
Menzel, Wolfgang, 514
Merseburg, see Thietmar ol.
Merswin, Rulman, 113
Metternich, Prince, 455, 495,
500, 503, 546
Middle Ages, 3, 4, 34-138; Me-
diaeval church and state, 34-
38, 100-104; preaching in the
Middle Ages, 107; territorial
princes, 102, 103; city life,
103, 104, 135; idyllic side of
mediaeval life, 360; Roman-
ticism and the Middle Ages,
424-426, 445-467
Miller, Martin, Siegwart, 303
Milton, 214, 215
Minnesong, 4, 68-76, 122, 456,
458, 459
Minstrels, see Gleemen.
Mirabeau, 299
Moliere, 209
Montesquieu, 230, 320
Moralische Wochenschriften, 215
Morike, Eduard, 487
Morolf, see Salman,
Morungen, see Heinrich von.
Moscherosch, Hans Michael,
Gesichte Philanders von Sitte-
wald, 200-203, 219, 235, 444
59°
INDEX.
Moser, Justus, 314; Patriot.
Phantasieen, 315, 316; Von
deutscher Art u.Kunst, 322
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus,
336, 400
Mliller, Adam, 497
MUller, Friedrich (Maler
Muller), Faust, 310
MUller, Johannes von, 459
Muller, Wilhelm, 455
Milliner, Adolf, 455
Murner, Thomas, Narrenbe-
schworung, Gauchmatt, 127
Musaus, Joh. Karl August,
Volksmdrchen, 465
Muspilli, 40, 41
Mysticism, 5, 104, iog-115, 195,
328
Napoleon, 339, 340, 378, 401,
428, 436, 442, 476, 481, 482,
490, 495. 501, 506. 516, 526,
541
Naumburg, Sculptures m the
cathedral of, 90
Neidhart von Reuenthal, 71,
io6
Newman, Cardinal, 195
Nibelungen legend, 19-21, 26-
29; Sigurd and Brynhild, 31,
32; Hagen, 26-28
Nibelungenlied, 21, 26, 77-^2,
84, 104, lo6, 444, 456, 459,
460, 488, 492, 495, 553; Sieg-
fried, 78-82; Kriemhild, 78-
82; Riidiger, 81
Niclas von Wyle, 141
Nicolai, Friedrich, 268, 269, 289,
414. 457
Nicolaus I., 500, 510
Niembsch von Strehlenau, see
Lenau
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 559, 560
Normans, Norsemen, 8, 9, 24,
25, 41. 83
Notker the German, 49
Novalis, pseudon. for Friedrich
von Hardenberg, 414, 421-
428, 447, 450, 451, 453, 486;
Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
414, 421, 425-428; Hymnen an
die Nacht, 422,423; Christen-
heit Oder Europa, 423, 450;
Geistliche Lieder, 450, 45 1 ;
Fragmente, 421, 422
Nfirnberg, 158, 163
Oberge, see Eilhard von.
Odoacer, chieftain of the
Heruli, 8, 18, 21
Opitz, Martin, 179, 180, 182,
183, 186, 189, 444; Buch von
d. deutschen Poeterey, 180, 182,
Oratorio, The religious, 236,
237
OrdoRachelis, 129
Orendel, 54
Ortnit legend, 18; Ortnii, 77
Ossian, 248, 308, 322, 323, 342,
555
Ostrogoths, 8, 10, 11, 16, 18
Oswald, St., 54
Otfrid of Weissenburg, 41-45.
54
Otto I., emperor, 36, 37, 45, 49
Otto II., emperor, 49
Otto III., emperor, 49
Otto IV., emperor, 72
Otto of Freising, 65, 66
Overbeck, Friedrich, 455
Ovid, 45
Pantheism, no, 196, 197, 363,
364, 432-434, 448, 521, 522,
532, 542, 543. 548
Pascal, 291
Passion-plays, 129, 130; Alsfeld
play, 133, 134; Benedikt-
beuren play, 130
Paulns Diaconus, 12
Penn, William, 175
Percy's Reliques of Ancient
Poetry, 248
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich,
442
Petrarch, 453
Pfefferkorn, 142
Philip the Fair, king of France,
lOI
Picaresco novel, 200
Pietism, 6, 175, 176, 252, 348,
555
Pilatus, 56
INDEX.
591
Platen, August, Count von,
500, 506-510, 514
Plato, 264, 431
Pombal, 258
Pope, 215
Postl, Carl, see Sealsfield
Prague, 100
Priscus, 16
Procopius, 28
Protestantism, 116, 140, 160,
174-176, 188, 235, 287, 434
Prussia, 172-174, 231, 232, 277,
278, 282, 429, 440, 441, 482,
492-495, 497. 518
Prutz, Robert, 546
Pseudo-classicism, 178-187, 268-
270, 274
Pufendorf, Samuel von, 174
Puschmann, Adam, 116, 166
Quevedo, Francisco Gomez de,
Suenos, 200
Quincy, Thomas de, 403
Raabe, Wilhelm, 554
Rabanus, Maurus, 41
Rabelais, 168, 169
Rabener, Gottlieb Wilhelm, 215
Rabenschlacht, 77
Racine, 267, 269, 350
Rahel, see Varnhagen
Raimund, Ferdinand, 455
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm, 277
Ranke, Leopold, 400
Rationalism, 6, 141-145, 176-
178, 216-227, 252, 264, 265,
267, 348, 555
Raupach, Ernst, 498
Rebhuhn, Paul, Susanna, 158
Redentin, see Easter plays.,
Reformation, The religious, 5,
6, 128, 139-171. 175. 402. 434,
447
Regensburg, 45- See Berthold
of.
Reichenau, 45- See Hermann
of-
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel,
288
Reinke de Vos, 122, 127, 355
Reinmar von Hagenau, 70, 71
Reinmar von Zweter, 106
Renaissance architecture, 168;
lyrics, 184, 194. See Arcadian
novel. Drama.
Renart, Roman de. 111
Reni, Guido, 194
Repgow, see Eike von.
Reuchlin, Johann, 141, 142, 146
Reuter, Christian, Schelmuff-
sky, 204
Reuter, Fritz, 496, 554
Revolution of 1848, The, 488,
540, 546, 547
Rheinbund, 409, 456
Richardson, 215, 216, 555
Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich,
402-412; Unsichtbare Lege,
406; Wiiz, 406; Hesperus, 409,
411, 412; Quintus Fixlein,
407-409; Siebenkds, 406; Ti-
tan, 404, 405, 409, 411, 412;
Flegeljahre, 409, 411, 412;
Katzenberger s Badereise, 406
Richter, Ludwig, 456
Riemer, Friedrich Wilhelm,
.531
Rist, Johann, 190
Robert, king of France, 52
Robinsonaden, 215
Rococo architecture, 186
Rogier van der Weyde, 113
Rolandslied, 56-58; Chanson de
Roland, 56
Rollenhagen, Georg, Frosch-
vieuseler, 163
Romances, Popular Prose, 127,
461-463
Romanticism, 215, 247, 262,301,
401-547
Ronsard, 183
Rosamond, wife of Alboin, 13
Rosegger, Peter, 554
Rosengarten, 77
Rosenpliit, Hans, 138
Rossbach, Battle of, 227
Rosvitha of Gandersheim, 49-
52; Dulcitius, 50; Abraham,
51; Callimachus, 51
Rother, Konig, 55
Rousseau, 112, 229, 303, 308, 319,
332, 359, 368, 395, 415, 416.
424, 43S, 555
Rubianus, see Crotus.
592
INDEX.
RUckert, Friedrich, 492, 499,
500, 506
Rudiger, see Nibelungenlied.
Rudolf von Ems, Der gute Ger-
hard, 106
Rudolf of Habsburg, emperor,
100
Ruge, Arnold, 548
Ruodlieb, 52, 54
Ruskin, 448
Sachs, Hans, 163-166, 453; S.
Peter mitd. Geiss, 163; Dieun-
gleichen Kinder Eve, 164, 165 ;
his self-characterization, 166
Sachsenspiegel, see Eike von
Repgow.
Salman und Morolf, 54
Salzmann, Ch. G. Carl von
Carlsberg, 305
Saxon dynasty, 34, 36
Schack, Friedrich von, 554
Scheffel, Josef Victor, 401, 456,
554
SchefBer, Jphann, see Angelus
Silesius.
Scheldt, Caspar, Grobianus, 162
Schelling, Caroline, 421, 452
Schelling, Friedr. Wilh. Josef,
349, 403, 421, 422, 542
Schelmuffsky, see Reuter.
Schenkendorf, Max von, 492
Schernberg, Th., see Jutta.
Schill, Ferdinand von, 456, 480
Schiller, Friedrich, 6, iii, 228,
263, 266, 305, 31S, 335, 336,
338-341, 343-350, 359, 361,
362, 368-398, 399, 410, 412-
415, 423. 424. 429, 438, 441,
457, 467, 468, 491, 507, 548,
549, 559! Die Rduber , 338-340,
343. 344, 34&. 555; Fiesco, 338.
339, 344, 346', Kabale und
Liebe, 338, 344-346; Don Car-
los, 347; Abfall der Nieder-
lande, 379; Die Gotter Grie-
c hen lands, 415; Die Kunstler,
368, 369, 377, 438; Dreissig-
jdhr. Krieg,y^^\ Ueber Anmut
und WUrde, 370, 371; Aesthe-
tische Erziehung des Men-
schen, 350, 371, 372; Naive
und sentimentalische Dich-
tung, 372, 373; Das Ideal und
das Le ben, 376, 377; Der Spa-
ziergang, 361, 377, 378; Xe-
nien, 414; Ballads, 350, 374,
375; Wallenstein, 266, 350,
379-384, 412, 413; Maria
Stuart, 379, 385-389; Jung-
frau von Orleans, 379, 389—
3931 Braut von Messina, 379,
385, 393, 394; Wilhelm Tell,
350, 379, 394-397. 412.— Sch.
on Klopstock, 234, 235; on
Burger, 311
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 447;
transl. of Shakspere, 456, 457;
Vorlesungen uber schone Litter-
atur u. Kunst, 459, 460; Vor-
lesungen iiber dramatische Lit-
teratur u. Kunst, 456
Schlegel, Caroline, see Schell-
ing, Caroline.
Schlegel, Dorothea, 421
Schlegel, Friedrich, 447, 486,
500; Lucinde, 414, 418-421,
430, 501 ; Sfrache u. Weisheit
der Indier, 456, 457
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 349,
400, 429-434, 447, 448. 450,467,
482, 491, 542; Reden iiber die
Religion, 432, 433; Monologen,
430, 431
Schleswig cathedral, 135
Schnabel, Joh. Gottfried, Insel
Felsenburg, 215
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 500-502
Schubart, Christian Friedrich
Daniel, 304, 314; FUrsten-
gruft. 307
Schubert, Franz, 455
Schupp, Balthasar, Freund in
der Noth, 203
Schwab, Gustav, 486, 487
Schwind, Moritz von, 456
Scott, Walter, 355
Sealsfield, Charles, pseudon.
for Carl Postl, 496
Sentimentalism, 6, 216-227, 303.
348, 372, 373. 555
Seume, Johann Gottfried, 437
Sense, sec Suso.
Shakspere, 207, 214, 268, 269,
Il^DEX.
593
274-276, 373, 453, 456, 457,
469; Leasing on S., 268, 269,
276; Herder on S., 3241 trans-
lations of S., 456, 457
Shrovetide plays, 138, 164-166
Siegfried, 19, 20, 26-28, 78-82,
128. See Nibelungenlied.
Sigurd, see Nibelungen legend.
Socialism, 434, 436, 439, 440,
448, 551-553
Sophocles, 267
Spanish influence on German
literature of the 17th century,
200; the Spanish insurrection
against Napoleon, 476
Spee, Friedrich, 193, 194
Spencer, Herbert, 400
Spener, Philipp Jacob, 175, 176,
188, 246
Spielhagen, Friedrich, 554
Spielmannsdichtungy see Glee-
men.
Spinoza, 177, 195, 287, 362, 432,
521
Sprachgesellschaften, 180
Stael, Mme. de, 340, 389, 419
Staihhowel, Heinrich, 141
Steele, 278
Steffens, Henrich, 492
Stein, Frau von, 351, 362
Stein, Freih. von, 332. 440, 482
Stolberg, Christian, Count von,
303, 308
Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold,
Count von, 303, 308
Storm, Theodor, 554
Storm-and-Stress movement, 6,
215, 279, 286, 301-318, 336-348,
351. 360. 396. 413. 555
Strassburg, 104; S. cathedral,
445. See Gottfried von S.,
Closener, Twinger.
Strauss, David Friedrich, 400,
486, 545
Strieker, Der, Der Pfaffe Amis,
123, 128
Sudermann, Hermann, 560, 565,
570-572, 575-579
Suso (Seuse), Heinrich, 110-113
Swift, 215
Tacitus, 9, 12
Tagelied, 70
Tannhauser, Der, 71, 72
Tatianus, 38
Tauler, Johann, no, 113-115,
559
Tegernsee, 52, 69
Teniers, 471
Territorial princes, in the Mid-
dle Ages, 102, 103
Theoderic the Great, 8, 10, 11,
18,21. 5«^ Dietrich von Bern.
Theologia deutsch, 115
Theophano, wife of emperor
Otto n., 49
Theophilus, 138
Thietmar of Merseburg, 49
Thirty Years' War, 5, 170, 172,
173, 191, 199, 202-206, 441, 444
Thomas of Aquino, loi
Thomas von Britanje, 97
Thomas of Kempen, Imitaiio
C/tristi, 115
Thomasin von Zirclaria, Wel-
scher Gast, 106
Thomasius, Christian, 176
Thomson's Seasons, 215
Thorwaldsen, Bertel, 336
Thuringians, Thuringia, 8, 72
Tieck, Ludwig, 413-418, 447,
448, 451-454. 457-459. 465.
486, 487; William Lovell, 414-
418; Volksmdrchen, 451, 453,
454, 465; Sternbnlds Wander-
ungen, 452; Phantasieen iiber
die A'unst, 448; Romantische
Dichtungen, 452, 454; Geno-
veva, 452, 453; Minnelieder ,
458, 459; Kaiser Octavianus,
452, 453: Phantasus, 451. 453.
454. 457. 458
Timomachus, 274
Tolstoi, 555
Trier, 45. See Easter plays, Ma-
rienklage.
Trimberg, see Hugo of.
Tristan legend, 97, 128
Troubadour poetry, 69, 118
Troyes, see Chrestien de.
Ttirheim, see Ulrich von.
Turner, William, 404
Twinger, Jacob, von Kfinigs-
hofen, 104
594
INDEX.
Uhland, Ludwig, 247, 456, 467,
468, 485-490
Ulfilas, Wulfila, 11
Ulm, Capitulation of, 397
Ulrich von Lichtenstein, 71,
III, 112
Ulrich von Tilrheim, 97
Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Lan-
zelet, 88
Vandals, 7, 10, 19, 28
Varnhagen, Rahel, 421
Veldeke, see Heinrich von.
Vergil, 271, 272
Vienna, 72, 497 ; Congress of,
540. See Easter plays. Gene-
sis.
Virginal, 77
Virgins, The Wise and the Fool-
ish, 138
Vischer, Peter, 128
Visigoths, 7, 8, II
Vogelweide, see Walther von
der.
Volksbilcher, see Romances.
Volksepos, see Epic poetry.
Volkslied, see Lyrics.
Voltaire, 142, 176, 256, 267, 539
Voss, Johann Heinrich, 303,
307, 314, 315, 360; trsl. of
Odyssey, 360
Wackenroder, Heinrich Wil-
helm, 447-449
Wagner, Heinrich Leopold,'304;
Kindermorderin, 305
Wagner, Richard, 247, 267, 400,
401, 404, 456, 548-553
Waldis, Burkard, Der verlorne
Sohn, 158; Esopus, 163
Walthari legend, 19
Waltharius manu fortis 22—24,
47, 77
Walther von der Vogelweide,
4, 70, 72-76, 88, 104, 106, igo,
199, 48B
Wate, see Gudrun legend.
Weber, Karl Maria von, 455
Weckherlin, Rudolf, 180
Weimar, The intellectual at-
mosphere of, 333, 334, 349,
350
Weise, Christian, 207, 235 ;
Bdurischer Machiavellus , 208-
213; Ueberjliissige Gedanken,
208; Ertznarren, 209.
Weisse, Christian Felix, 268.
Weissenburg, see Otfrid of.
Werner, Zacharias, 455, 486.
Wernher, der gartenaere, Meier
Helmbrecht , 123, 124, 128
Wernher, the priest, Marien-
lieder, 56
Wessobrunner Gebet, 40
Whitman, Walt, 522
Wickram, JOrg, RollwagenbUch-
lin, 163
Widukind of Corvey, 49
Wieland, Christoph Martin,
222, 251-265, 282, 287, 303,
456, 457, 465; translation of
Shakspere, 456, 457; Agathon,
252-261 (Lessing on Agathon,
253), 359. 415; Musarion, 262;
Der goldene Spiegel, 251; Der
teutsche Merkur, 263; Die
Abderiten, 261; Geron der
Adelich, 262; Oberon, 262, 263;
JJeber d. Gebr. d. Vernunft
in Glaubenssachen, 264, 265;
Aristipf, 264
Wiidenbruch, Ernst von, 560-
565
Wilhelm of Koln, Master, 125
Willem, Roman van den Vos
Reinaerde, 122
William I., emperor, 483, 546,
554
Willibrord, missionary, 11
Williram of Ebersberg, Song of
Solomon, 49
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim,
271, 272, 319, 360, 399
Winifred (St. Boniface), 11
Wirnt von Grafenberg, Wiga-
lois, 87
Wismar, 135
Wochenschriften, see Moralische
W.
Wolf, Friedrich August, 459
Wolfdietrich legend, 19, 29
Wolfdietrich, Ti
Wolff, Christian, 176, 184,
256
INDEX.
595
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 5, 6,
86, 88, 89,92-96,104, 106, 506;
Parzival, 86, 89, 93-96, 204,
355. 424. 427; Titurel, 86;
IVillehalm, 96
Wulfila, see Ulfilas.
Wunderhorn, Des Knaben, 460,
461
Wycliffe, 102
Wyle, see Niclas von.
Young, 252
Young Germany, 497, 521, 545
Zacharia, Friedrich Wilhelm,
215
Zatzikhoven, see Ulrich von.
Zelter, Karl Friedrich, 531
Zesen, Philipp von, Adriatische
Rosamund, 185
Ziegler, Heinrich Anshelm von,
Asiatische Banise, 185
Zinzendorf, Count, 193
Zweter, see Reinmar von.
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