Part 30

Prince Pückler had never had any serious thought of taking up the profession of author, but in 1830 he determined to publish anonymously the letters which he had written to Lucie during his travels in search of an heiress. They had a great success. There was a society tone about them very uncommon in German literature, an attractive carelessness of construction, due to the fact that they were not written for publication, a pleasing mixture of wisdom and frivolity. As already mentioned, many ascribed their authorship to Heine. Their writer was modern in the extreme, thoroughly _blasé_, an advanced Liberal, a freethinker in the literal sense of the word.

For readers of to-day the four volumes of _Briefe eines Verstorbenen_ ("Letters of a Dead Man") have much the same value as Madame de Girardin's attractive five volumes, _Lettres parisiennes du Vicomte de Launay_. She is fresher and writes infinitely better than the prince. He has cosmopolitan experiences of classes and of countries that she knows nothing about. As a specimen of his style, those interested should read the unassuming account of his conversation with Goethe in Weimar, to be found in the third volume of the Letters. Pückler's enthusiastic reverence for Goethe has a genuine ring, and the same may be said of Goethe's answer to Pückler's polite speeches. Goethe at once begins to talk about Muskau (referred to in letters as M.), and commends attempts like Pückler's to awaken the feeling for beauty, dwells on the fact that the welfare of all would be rapidly advanced if only each in his own sphere, great or small, would work faithfully and lovingly--that is what Pückler is doing in Muskau, and he himself has done no more.

Pückler's later volumes of travel, many in number, leave us quite cold. They lack the spontaneity of the Letters, and are still more destitute of that which could alone replace it, namely, literary talent. But until about the year 1840 they stood as high in the favour of the reading public as his first books, and their author's popularity was unbounded; he was, like Franz Liszt, known and admired everywhere. As late as 1854 Heine dedicates his _Lutetia_ to him in an enthusiastic preface, in which he calls him "mein hochgefeierter und wahlverwandter Zeitgenosse" (that highly honoured contemporary, to whom I feel myself spiritually akin). And in Varnhagen's diary for July 7, 1839, we read: "Prince Pückler's name acts like magic. It needs but to be mentioned, and the great world of all countries listens in suspense. His fame is stupendous, and the cleverer men are, the more they appreciate him."

In 1834 Varnhagen had said of him that he possessed one quality in common with Young Germany, and that the most important, namely, absolute freedom of thought; at a later period he said that Pückler represented the upper house, Heine the lower house in modern German literature.

Pückler's attitude to the House of Hohenzollern was one of chivalrous devotion. He never came to Berlin without waiting on the king. He appreciated Frederick William IV.'s culture and wit, but, being a pronounced Voltairean, to whom every priest was a hypocrite and all vague piety an abomination, the romantic strain in the king's character repelled him. Like Humboldt he often fled from the court and took refuge with Varnhagen, the keen observer and critic, who sat forgotten in his corner, writing in his Journal (a diary kept in Sainte-Beuve's manner) the history of the times. And in later years Pückler, too, was a regular guest at Lassalle's small dinner-parties, where he often did most of the talking; it is said that he was the only person privileged by Lassalle to do so.[4]

To the authors already named we have only to add the aged Arndt, who in his day had been persecuted as a demagogue, and we have the complete list of the romantic, conservative, neutral, or aristocratic writers whom the most powerful king in Germany succeeded in attaching to his person. We see the length and the strength of the attachment. The Opposition attacked every author who had the very slightest connection with the court or with those in power. We have seen how Herwegh begins his first book with a defiant attack on Prince Pückler. He jeered even at Arndt--called him a sunset glow, incapable of illuminating the young world--and received a poetical reproof from Freiligrath for so doing.

Freiligrath was the only one of the young poets whom the king at once (1841) placed under an obligation (Geibel was taken into favour a year or two later). General von Radowitz, who admired Freiligrath's poem "Löwenritt," in spite of its unnaturalness, induced the king to look favourably on its author and to grant him a pension of 300 thalers. Herwegh, not content with making merry at Freiligrath's expense in such lines as the following, where _Freiligrath_ is substituted for _Mühlenrad_ (mill-wheel):

"Mir wird von alle dem so dumm, Als ging mir ein Freiligrath im Kopf herum,"[5]

wrote in his _Duett der Pensionirten_:

"_Geibel_: Bist du's? _Freiligrath_: Ja, willst du mich kennen? Ja, ich bin es in der That, Den Bediente Bruder nennen Bin der Sänger Freiligrath."[6]

This was more than Freiligrath could stand. He threw up his pension, a step which was soon followed by his complete conversion. His volumes, _Ein Glaubensbekenntniss_ ("A Confession of Faith"), published in 1844, and _Ça ira_, published in 1846, show a steadily increasing passion of devotion to the revolutionary cause. He became the most honoured poet of the party. Immediately after the publication of _Ein Glaubensbekenntniss_ he was obliged to flee the country, going first to Brussels and then to London, where he earned his livelihood as a merchant.

The following anecdote shows how popular he already was: From Brussels he had taken an excursion to Antwerp. There he and his friends went on board a barque that was lying in the river, ready to sail for Canton. While the boatswain was showing them over the ship, the captain, with some friends, came out of the cabin. Freiligrath's party made many excuses, but the courteous sailor bade them welcome, and invited them into the cabin. On one of the shelves of the little book-case stood Freiligrath's Poems. "Are you not pleased that your poems are going out to Canton?" asks one of his companions. "Eh!" says the captain. "This is Freiligrath? The real Freiligrath?" On his question being answered in the affirmative, the captain rushes to the speaking-tube: "Hoist the flags! Man the yards! and serve champagne on deck!"[7]

The fermentation throughout Germany was rapidly becoming more violent. Ever since 1842 the Hungarians under Kossuth had been defying Metternich; in Bavaria the prestige of royalty had suffered from King Ludwig's amour with the ballet-dancer, Lola Montez; in German Switzerland the Radical and Jesuit parties were engaged in stern conflict. In Prussia the authority of the State Church was being vigorously asserted; Roman Catholicism was favoured, but all other dissenters were harassed. It was not only the Free-Catholics, a sect founded by Ronge, and the so-called Friends of Light, another free sect, founded by Wislicenus, that were regarded with disfavour; even Pietists were objected to, as not orthodox enough to suit the State requirements. One protest after another reached the king from those whose liberty in matters of conscience was threatened. And purely political agitation was on the increase too. The leaders of the opposition parties in all the States of Germany decried with one voice the old Federal constitution (_Bundesverfassung_). Louder and louder rose the cry in Prussia (the king having laid no great restrictions on the liberty of the press) for the promised new constitution. From abroad too came revolutionary impulses. Since 1846 Pius IX. had been giving himself out as a Liberal and an Italian patriot. Insurrections were breaking out all over Italy; Metternich was unable to prevent them, and they were destroying his prestige. German emigrants in Switzerland and North America did their best to fan the flame in Germany.

Meantime the King of Prussia occupied himself with the institution of the new Order of the Swan and with architectural plans. He proposed the erection of a great Hermann monument on the Rhine, as a demonstration against constitutional France; and he set the builders to work again on the Cathedral of Cologne, after a pause of 300 years. This latter undertaking was considered symbolical, not from the national but from the ecclesiastical point of view. It gave Heine occasion for various protests and erroneous prophecies in _Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen_, and also gave occasion to Strauss's clever pamphlet, _Der Romantiker auf dem Trone der Cäsaren_, in which he manages to describe Julian the Apostate as the enthusiastic religious reactionary, in such a way that the parallel with Frederick William IV. suggests itself without being pointed out.

The new literature, to which the king was distinctly inimical, soon began to return his enmity with interest. He established Tieck, the fretful, crippled old man, at Sans Souci as poet-laureate, and Schelling, the mystifier, in Berlin as _summus philosophus_. He caused the _Antigone_ of Sophocles and the _Medea_ of Euripides to be performed in the theatres of Berlin and Potsdam, in hopes of thereby counteracting the spirit of unrest in German literature. But that literature went its own way.

[1] Examples of Frederick William's style of wit: When the king was at the play, lackeys stood in attendance outside the door of the royal box. One evening, when his Majesty, provoked by the tiresomeness of a new play, left his box before the close of the performance, he found one of the lackeys sitting on the floor of the passage, sound asleep, his head leant against the wall of the box. Instead of being angry, the king said: "Der hat gehorcht" (means both: He has listened, and: He has obeyed). In 1848, in the palmy days of the Revolution, the king was obliged to receive one deputation after another, sometimes of very pretentious and presumptuous common people. He addressed the members of one such deputation, one after the other. What are you?--A silk and woollen cloth warehouseman, your Majesty.--Most interesting occupation. And you?--A medical student.--Excellent preparation for taking part in the government of the country! And so on, all the time with a most polite, if ironical, smile. (Told me by an eye-witness.)

[2] The king was at one time deeply interested in the mysteries of table-turning, but it was long before any of the palace tables could be persuaded to perform, a fact which did not surprise Humboldt. At last the king received him one morning with the exclamation: "Aha! what do you say now? We sat round the table for a full half-hour last night before it would move, but at last off it went, round and round, faster and faster. How do you explain that?" "Why, your Majesty, in all disputes it's the wiser of the two that gives in." (Related by Humboldt himself.)

[3]

O little bird, to sing 'tis thine, gently to the lark began; I set thee free, that deed is mine; We all must pray as best we can.

[4] A. de Reumont: _Aus König Fr. Wilhelm IV. gesunden und kranken Tagen.--Briefe Alex. v. Humboldt's an Varnhagen von Ense.--Varnhagen von Ense's Tagebücher_.--Hillebrand: _Zeiten, Völker und Menschen II_.

[5] All that is going on makes me as stupid as if a mill-wheel (a Freiligrath) were turning in my head.

[6]

"_Geibel_: Is this you? _Freiligrath_: Yes! will you recognise me? Truly it is I; servants now call me brother, yet I am the poet Freiligrath.

[7] Schmidt-Weissenfels: _Freiligrath._

XXVI

POLITICAL POETRY, PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION

In Anastasius Grün's (Count Alexander von Auersperg's) volume, _Spaziergänge eines Wiener Poeten_ ("Walks of a Viennese Poet"), there is a poem, the title and the refrain of which is: Why? When new prohibitory enactments are pasted on the notice-board at the town-hall, a little man comes and reads them and quietly asks: Why? When the priests from their pulpits groan and howl at the sunlight, he asks: Why? When men go out to fight sparrows with halberts and spears, and use cannons to shoot larks, he asks: Why? And when they try, condemn, and execute himself, from his very grave is heard the question: Why?

Something of this kind happened in Germany as soon as the patriarchal faith in monarchy was thoroughly shaken. When an act of violence, or a stupid act, or a subterfuge on the part of the Government killed a hope, out of the grave of that hope grew a Why. And every Why gave birth to others. The four questions of the East-Prussian were inadequate now; questions grew and multiplied like those invisible but dangerous animals which in an incredibly short time can undermine an organism. Why revere? Why trust? Why endure? And, first and foremost, why keep silence? When they are going to shake off the yoke, men begin by refusing to bear it silently. Suffering and wrath, desire and longing, now found vent in words, in song.

Political verse, of which there had been occasional specimens among the work of Platen and Lenau, Uhland and Heine, now concentrates and crystallises itself into a separate species of poetry, a separate form of art. Political song of every variety is heard throughout the land. It is a time of growth; men of talent come to the surface in crowds--Hoffmann and Herwegh, Dingelstedt and Prutz, Freiligrath and Max Waldau, Karl Beck and Mofitz Hartmann--such a rich and fragant bloom as had never been seen in this domain before. Old Romanticists expressed their contempt for prose (_i.e._ political) poetry, dogmatic æsthetes declared these poets to be possessed of rhetoric and not of lyric talent; but all to no purpose; the very number of them, and the way in which they spontaneously fell into position as a group, showed that they had the very best, the only unchallengeable reason for coming into existence, namely, that they could not help it, that the spirit of the times was making its voice heard through them; and soon they also proved that they possessed the one and only right to exist, for they were able to hold their ground, they took their position as literary men, and gained the popular ear.

They had had a single forerunner in the Thirties, the above-mentioned Austrian poet, Alexander Auersperg. His verse was imposing, somewhat overloaded with imagery, at times wanting in taste; nevertheless it had the true ring, and his pathos was genuine. Joseph II. is Auersperg's hero, and it is from the "enlightenment" standpoint that he regards that political liberty which he so eagerly desires. It is the power of the priesthood that specially arouses his wrath; but he distinguishes between _Pfaffen_ and _Priester_, attacks the worthless and sings the praises of the high-minded among the clergy. Upon lines like:

"Stoss in's Horn, Herold des Krieges: Zu den Waffen, zu den Waffen! Kampf und Krieg der argen Horde heuchlerischer, dummer Pfaffen!"[1]

follow others which extol the virtues of the really saintly priests. Still we feel that in his opinion more of the former than of the latter are to be found in his own day. He regards it as one of the signs of the times that the fat, animal priest has been succeeded by the lean, intelligent, ambitious one:

_Die Dicken und die Dünnen._

"Fünfzig Jahre sind's, da riefen unsere Aeltern zu den Waffen, Krieg und Kampf den dicken, kugelrunden, feisten Pfaffen! Auch in Waffen stehn wir Enkel; jetzt doch muss die Lösung sein: Krieg und Kampf den dünnen, magern, spindelhagern Pfäffelein!"[2]

In spirited verse the courageous poet attacked now Metternich, now the detective police, now the censorship. His poems display a frank, vigorous spirit of opposition, no hatred, no wild resentment; one feels that they are animated by anticipation of a glorious future and enthusiasm for the great men of the past. But Auersperg's plastic power is slight; he too often loses himself in a maze of allegory. The best of the political poetry of the Forties is, both intellectually and artistically, much superior to his.

About a year after his famous journey, from the effects of which he had completely recovered, Georg Herwegh published a second volume of _Gedichte eines Lebendigen_ ("Poems of a Living Man"), in which some new and valuable qualities are combined with those characterising the first. There is more confidence and more fire, and both enthusiasms and animosities are less vague. We have fewer illusions, and a clearer understanding of ends and means; no more appeals to a king to lead the onward march of his people, or to God to give freedom and happiness to all the nations of the earth. Frederick William IV. had extinguished Herwegh's faith in princes, and Ludwig Feuerbach his faith in God. But we gain the impression that the dawning light in men's minds has broadened into the light of day.

In the old dawn-songs, which Shakespeare has imitated in _Romeo and Juliet_, the young girl always tries to keep her lover with her by declaring that it is not sunlight but moonlight that he sees, not the lark but the nightingale that he hears. This idea is cleverly reversed in the poem _Morgenzuruf_ ("Cry of the Morning"):

"Die Lerche war's, nicht die Nachtigall, Die eben am Himmel geschlagen: Schon schwingt er sich auf, der Sonnenball, Vom Winde des Morgens getragen. Der Tag, der Tag ist erwacht! Die Nacht, Die Nacht soll blutig verenden. Heraus wer an's ewige Licht noch glaubt, Ihr Schläfer, die Rosen der Liebe vom Haupt, Und ein flammendes Schwert um die Lenden!"[3]

_Unglückliche Liebe_ ("Unhappy Love") is an epigram pointed against kings:

"Nicht an den Königen liegt's--die Könige lieben die Freiheit, Aber die Freiheit liebt leider die Könige nicht."[4]

The tone of Herwegh's previous volume, even in its apparently irreligious utterances, had been theistic. On the adjuration to tear the crosses from the graves and use them as swords, follows the line: "God forgives the deed ye do." But in this new volume we find a poem in which Feuerbach's praises are sung because he has attacked the doctrine of immortality, and a Song of the Heathen, which is more daring in its mockery than any similar poem of Heine's:

"Die Heiden--'s ist doch Schade um solch Ingenium. Sie hiessen Vier gerade und nahmen Fünf für krumm. Auch hatt' die Jungfernschaft ein End, sobald die Magd ein Kind gebar, Dieweil das neue Testament noch nicht erfunden war."

And, unlike Auersperg, who makes a distinction between the good and the bad priest, Herwegh holds the whole brotherhood in derision, mocks at Catholic and Protestant, shorn and unshorn, in the witty, untranslatable epigram:

"Ob sie katholisch geschoren, ob protestantisch gescheitelt, Gleichviel--immer geräth man den Gesellen in's Haar."

He had pricked before, now he stung; the singer of liberty had developed into a herald and preparer of the approaching revolution.

If these powerful poems did not greatly move men's minds, it is to be ascribed to the fact that the deficiencies of Herwegh's personal character were subtly influencing his verse. They betray themselves in a certain straining after effect, in his evident satisfaction with his own witty sallies, and in his intellectual barrenness in every domain except that of polemics. This second volume of poems is not a collection which suggests that its author has any store of ideas, of imagination, to draw upon. When we read it, we understand his life; and his life helps us to understand this book, with which his career as a poet practically came to a close. All that he subsequently wrote, and he lived for thirty-two years longer, is contained in one small volume, published after his death. The poems of this last collection are full of wit and full of enthusiasm for liberty; they are written--hardly four in the year--by a man who to the day of his death remained faithful to his revolutionary youth.

Though faithful enough to his past, Herwegh was no worker in the service of liberty. The latter part of his life was spent in idleness. His career as a poet and critic began in 1839[5] and culminated with _Gedichte eines Lebendigen_. He married a rich young Jewess, an enthusiastic admirer of his poetry. After the Revolution of February he took up the position of a leader in Paris, and invaded Baden at the head of a body of republican German and French workmen; on the 27th of April they were defeated by Würtembergian troops; thanks to his wife's courage, Herwegh escaped. Heine has given a bitingly sarcastic, but very unfair description of this campaign in _Simplicissimus I._ The simple, truthful account which Herwegh's wife has published since, of all the incidents of the revolt, and of the part which her husband played in it, proves that, even if he lacked the tactical skill which he laid no claim to possessing, he was a brave man. Herwegh now became a member of the emigrant colony in London, and lived the emigrants' perniciously idle life; they had literally nothing to do but concoct futile plans for new revolutions and fall in love with one another's wives. He afterwards lived in Paris and Zürich, always the same inactive life, persistently dissatisfied with the progress of events in Germany. Like Kinkel and like Moritz Hartmann, Herwegh was unable to the day of his death (1875) to reconcile himself to the great development of power attained by Germany at the expense of liberty. He never relinquished the ideals of his youth; retained a manly admiration even for Heine, who had held him up to derision.

Being such as he was, it was only natural that Herwegh should from the very first be on the watch in the matter of his brother poets' fidelity to their flag and the genuineness of their liberalism. His attacks on Geibel and Freiligrath have already been noticed. He next turned upon Anastasius Grün (Auersperg), who had gone to Vienna in hopes of obtaining the appointment and rank of Chamberlain; his wife, by birth a Countess Attems, was invested with the Order of the Star of the Cross, and he wished to be able to accompany her to court. In stirring words Herwegh entreated him to retrace his steps:

"Darf man den Tempel um ein Weib entweih'n, Mit einem Weib um goldne Götzen tanzen," &c[6]

Dingelstedt retorted, defending Count Auersperg in a pretty poem:

"O, sie will es nie begreifen, ihre Prosa und Gemeinheit, Das ein Geist wie Du, ein Name, bürgt für der Gesinnung Reinheit, Nur das Schlechte glaubt sie willig," &c.[7]

The retort evaded the attack instead of repulsing it. No one seriously believed in a man like Auersperg having changed his convictions; the ground of Herwegh's attack was that, holding such convictions, he had solicited a court appointment. It was his own future position that Dingelstedt defended; he was the next poet upon whom Herwegh turned, with a satire that was all the fiercer because it was silent, or at least only indirectly expressed.

Dingelstedt, like Herwegh, had been obliged to leave Germany to escape the consequences of writing political poems. The two poets met in Paris. There they one evening amused themselves by trying which could write the better verses on the subject of his own imaginary political conversion. Herwegh wrote the poem "Wohlgeboren" the burden of which is: What is the use of all this talk of liberty and fatherland, of all this enthusiasm, all this meddling with politics? What good has it done me? No, no! for the future I will be a quiet, respectable citizen:

"Du sollst, verdammte Freiheit, mir Die Ruhe fürder nicht gefährden; Lisette, noch ein Gläschen Bier! Ich will ein guter Bürger werden."[8]