_Divisionsauditor_), in the town of Münster, in Westphalia, an old,
strictly Catholic, provincial town, where at first he felt himself out
of sympathy with every one and everything. But here, ere long, he made
acquaintance with the woman who was to be the most powerful influence
in his life.
Elisa von Lützow was the wife of Brigadier-General Adolf von Lützow,
the famous leader of the volunteer corps celebrated in Körner's song.
By birth she was a Dane, a Countess Ahlefeldt-Laurvig of Tranekjær
in the island of Langeland. When Immermann first saw her she was
twenty-nine, and, according to the testimony of her contemporaries,
a most fascinating woman, graceful, charming, intelligent, of
aristocratic bearing, and yet genial. From her earliest youth she had
made a deep impression on the men who came within her sphere.
She had grown up the supposed heiress of great wealth, but in an
unhappy home; her father and mother had become estranged from each
other, and about the time she was fourteen they separated. Count
Ahlefeldt, a favourite of Frederick VI., was a pleasure-loving man, a
pasha with a constantly changing harem; he was a patron of music and
of the drama, kept a private orchestra, and entertained companies of
French and German actors at Tranekjær; so hospitable and recklessly
extravagant was he that even his great wealth could not stand the drain
upon it. What brought Elisa and Immermann together was her applying to
him for legal advice when her father not only refused to make over to
her what had been left her by her mother, who had died in 1812, but
also to pay the yearly income which he had settled upon her.
Count Ahlefeldt long refused his consent to his daughter's marriage
with the poor and as yet undistinguished foreign officer, but he gave
it in 1810, and when, in 1813, the youth of Prussia joyfully and
enthusiastically rose to arms at the call of Frederick William III.,
and Lützow formed the famous volunteer corps known by his name, his
wild and daring riflemen (_die wilde, verwegene Jagd_) found their
Valkyrie in their leader's beautiful wife, who was worshipped by the
whole regiment as a superior being. Elisa, who appears to have spoken
German from her childhood, felt herself at home on German soil, became
a faithful daughter of her new fatherland, and identified herself with
its interests. She inspirited the brave, nursed the wounded with heroic
devotion, was the confidante, helper, and comforter of the best among
the young men. After a victory, the choicest of the booty was always
presented to her. The lieutenant who first stepped into Napoleon's
captured carriage after the fight at Belle-Alliance brought her, as a
remembrance, a pair of gloves and two glasses of the Emperor's.
After the conclusion of peace she lived with her husband in the
different garrison towns to which he was transferred. In 1817 they came
to Münster. The stiff, narrow-minded, bigoted tone of its society was
antipathetic to her; but here, as elsewhere, she gathered round her
a circle of enthusiastic admirers, who were charmed by her taste and
by the keen intelligence which she displayed, without being a great
talker--sometimes only by a smile and a nod.
To Immermann she was like a revelation from a higher, nobler world,
for which in his lonely, joyless life he had been longing. Lützow's
quarters were in a castle-like building that had been a convent, with
high windows and great folding doors. Here, surrounded by flowers,
statues, books, birds, dogs, and admirers, she seemed like a noble
lady of olden days, or one of those princesses of the Renaissance who
attracted poets to their courts and inspired them.
With the year 1825 came a great change in Elisa's life. The
good-natured and chivalrous but volatile and impressionable Lützow fell
so violently in love with an insignificant flirt that he requested his
wife to set him at liberty again. This she was not prepared to do; but
after she happened to overhear Lützow remark to a friend that when he
was quite young he had made up his mind to marry a great heiress, a new
light was thrown upon the determination he had shown in their early
days to win her, and her feelings towards him changed. Her pride was
hurt; she presently informed him that she would no longer stand in the
way of his happiness, and agreed to a divorce, the reason of which she
kept secret.
Not an angry word passed between husband and wife. The divorce was
pronounced in April 1825. Both before and after it Lützow wrote Elisa
letters which testify to a most friendly feeling and warm admiration.
It was an unlucky day for him when he took the step which separated
them. He was universally blamed, and when it came to the point, his
capricious enslaver would have nothing to say to him. He repented his
delusion when it was too late. Some years afterwards, in order to make
a home for himself again, he married his brother's widow, but this
lady's temper was so bad that it made the last years of his life most
unhappy.
The divorce left Elisa homeless and solitary, and this led to
gradually increasing intimacy with young Immermann, who saw in her his
ideal, and was passionately desirous to make her his wife. But Elisa
shuddered at the thought of a second marriage; the disillusionments
of her wedded life had disgusted her with matrimony in general, and
she reflected, moreover, that she was six years older than the young
poet. When Immermann, in 1827, was promoted to the appointment of
_Landesgerichtsrath_ in Düsseldorf, he passionately urged her to
accompany him there. She agreed to do this, though she again refused to
marry him; both, however, vowed never to think of marriage with any one
else.
The lovers inhabited a country house in the village of Derendorf, close
to Düsseldorf, where they had their separate suites of apartments. This
house, which lay in a great rose garden, they decorated with exquisite
taste, and here they lived a full and happy life for a number of years.
Düsseldorf was at that time the resort of many of the best artists in
Germany, painters like Schadow, Lessing, Hildebrandt. Thither, too,
came poets (like Grabbe), composers (Mendelssohn), art amateurs, and
critics from all parts. Immermann's and Elisa von Ahlefeldt's house was
a rendezvous for all these. In Elisa's circle in Münster, Immermann
had distinguished himself as a clever reader of dramatic works; here
he continued to give semipublic readings of the same description.
This gradually developed a desire on his part to manage a theatre.
He rehearsed a number of trial plays with the Düsseldorf theatrical
company; artists from other parts came to his assistance; the great
actor, Seydelmann from Berlin, played Nathan; Felix Mendelssohn put two
operas on the stage for him and directed the performance.
Elisa's father died in 1832. She did not inherit all the wealth that in
her youth was expected to be her portion, but the cousin who succeeded
to her father's title and property settled a handsome annuity on her.
She and Immermann now travelled together--on the Rhine, to Dresden,
in Holland; a tour which Immermann took alone is described in his
_Reisejoumal_, which consists entirely of the letters he wrote to
Elisa. Everything else was written beside her, and subjected to her
affectionate but frequently severe criticism.
After an existence of three years, Immermann's theatre, failing to
obtain state aid, had to be closed. This was a great grief to him. He
sought to distract himself by a tour in Franconian Switzerland. His
_Fränkische Reise,_ the description of this tour, also consists of
letters to Elisa. They were the last he wrote her. For during this
absence he met, in Magdeburg, a girl of nineteen, Marianne Niemeyer
by name, who made a very strong impression on him. When he rejoined
Elisa he once more, to her surprise, asked her to marry him. As before,
she refused. It would seem as if he had been pretty certain of the
answer he would receive, and only desired to salve his conscience.
For immediately afterwards, unknown to Elisa, he began a lively
correspondence with Marianne, proposed to her, and was accepted. Elisa
heard of his engagement from others, and at once resolved to leave
Düsseldorf. She did so in August 1839, Immermann accompanying her and
the friend with whom she travelled as far as Cologne. Till this time,
in spite of her forty-nine years, she had retained her beauty; now she
suddenly grew old. In October 1839 Immermann married; in August 1840 he
died. Elisa survived him fifteen years.[1]
It is quite obvious that the connection with Elisa, which for so many
years was pleasurable and helpful to Immermann, in the end became
burdensome to him. But it is unwarrantable to assert (as Goedeke
has done) that it was the breaking off of this connection and his
subsequent lawful marriage which first gave Immermann the creative
vigour which he displayed in his last important work, _Münchhausen_. It
was conceived and executed under Elisa's influence to quite the same
extent as his other works.
Her personality and the position in which he stood to her often and in
many ways influenced his writings. She is supposed to have suggested
his drama, _Petrarca_, which treats of Petrarch's love of Laura,
and represents the irresistible strength of a passion inspired by a
high-born lady even when the said lady is not free. Her views on the
subject of love, and its unqualified justification as such, are said to
be recognisable in the drama, _Cardenio und Celinde_. She was probably
his model for the heroine of the comedy, _Du schelmische Gräfin_, and
certainly the model for Johanne in the novel _Die Epigonen_. But all
this is as nothing in comparison with the general development and
refining influence which she exerted over him as an author.
Immermann's is a curious fame. Of all his works only one is still read,
his novel, _Münchhausen_; and only one part of this novel, the smaller
half of it (now separated from the rest and published by itself), will
carry his name down to posterity. This one small volume is in reality
of more value than all the rest of his work.
In its construction, _Münchhausen_, following the general rule of the
Romantic tales, was intentionally disorderly; the book begins, for
example, with the eleventh chapter. The hero, a Westphalian baron, is
a descendant of the old lying Münchhausen, and, like him, a fantastic
liar. The whole was meant to be a sort of satiric repertory of the
various humbugs and nonsensicalities of the day, amongst which the
author's humour might play at will. But out of all this irregular
play of fancy, which corresponds to the title _Eine Geschichte in
Arabesken_, there was gradually developed the great rural romance
which has taken a place in German literature under the name of _Der
Oberhof_. Its principal characters, the village magistrate (_der
Hofschulze_) and the fair-haired Lisbeth, represent a new truth, a new
creative art. They live and move on "the red soil" of Westphalia, and
in their persons the German peasant is for the first time introduced
into literature without the sentimentality of the pastoral idyll or the
distortion of the opera ballet, undoubtedly conventionalised, but with
caste and race individuality. There is a vigorous, fresh naturalness
about these characters, which will never grow old.
_Der Oberhof_ has taken its place as the original type of all the
European peasant tales, and in certain points it is superior to any of
them, old-fashioned in many ways as it now seems. Hundreds of fantastic
threads connect this admirable story with the romance of Romanticism,
but it is easy to cut them, and then we have before us as it were
the hard crystal into which Romanticism finally condensed itself in
Immermann's mind.
It is the custom nowadays to regard the peasant tale as a direct
offshoot of Romanticism. Yet it undoubtedly, both in France and in the
North, marked the transition to an art which, was more true to nature
than the Romantic.
It signified a complete change of sphere in German art when Immermann
gave up writing historical or fantastic dramas in iambic verse, the
scenes of which were laid in countries which he had never seen,
and portrayed ordinary human life in the little known province of
Westphalia, where he had lived and exercised the functions of a
judge. There were no railways in the Westphalia of those days, and no
manufactures; but it was a country of patriarchal, wholesome manners
and customs, and he had only to represent it with the faithfulness
which illuminates, to produce an effect infinitely surpassing that of
any of the earlier arbitrary creations of his poetic imagination.
The wealthy peasant landowner, who is the principal personage in this
story, is the prototype of all the sturdy, independent farmers of
the German peasant tales, and of many in those of other countries.
Excellent as many of Auerbach's characters of this type are, he
surpasses them all in what may be called the historic greatness which
is imparted to this character by the intimate relation which we feel
to exist between it and the far back past of the country. This peasant
appears on the background of traditions still in force, which link the
present with almost forgotten times.
He is a genuine peasant. He is not in the least amiable; he has had
no time to cultivate amiability; from his boyhood, life has been too
hard to allow of that. His distinguishing qualities are sound common
sense, seriousness, obstinacy, pride of position, and permissible
self-interest. There is a granite-like foundation to his character. He
has the true peasant shrewdness, not to say shiftiness, in business;
he is always ready to advise his neighbours how best to hold their own
against the authorities when any forced sale of land is threatened,
always on his guard against emissaries of the government, even
when their mission is the construction of new roads or some such
improvement; he is cold in his family relations, and has all the
prejudices of the rustic.
And yet he is great. He rules, and he always carries his point. He
not only reigns over his own large estate like the stern, patriarchal
kings of old, upholding good old customs, keeping his eye on every
one and everything, admonishing in proverbs, rewarding with the
honour of retention in his service; but, unquestionably the superior
of all his neighbours, he has induced them to regard him as their
leader, and has quietly, without disturbance or revolt of any kind,
led them to free themselves from the supremacy of state authorities
and to rule themselves under him as a sort of judge of the old Jewish
type. In his district both law-suits and criminal cases are unknown;
no one goes to law with his neighbour; no one is ever accused of a
crime; one might take it to be an oasis of innocence and peace. It
is far from being that; but since medieval times the secret courts
of justice (_Vehmgerichte_) have existed here, and the peasants,
under the influence of this great peasant, have agreed to uphold
these, and thus privately provide for the maintenance of equity and
justice among themselves. They assemble secretly at night in a lonely
place and settle their own disputes. The sentences are accepted and
executed without dispute. The only punishment awarded is a sort of
excommunication of the malefactor, which is as severe a chastisement as
any that could be imposed by a state judge. A peasant whom all avoid,
whom no one will help, with whom no one will have any dealings, suffers
from almost as strict isolation as the man confined in a prison cell.
As a symbol of his power and dignity the old "Hofschulze" treasures a
sword, which he believes to be what tradition calls it, the sword of
Charlemagne, and which he regards as his most precious possession. His
hand is on its hilt when he pronounces judgment. This sword, which was
dug up somewhere in the neighbourhood, is really a perfectly common
weapon, possibly two hundred years old; and we have an admirable
description of how the old farmer is at times tormented by doubts of
its antiquity, doubts which, with his peasant shrewdness, he tries to
dispose of once for all. He tempts an antiquarian in the neighbourhood
with the sight of a beautiful amphora, and then obliges him to give in
payment for it a written certification that the sword had undoubtedly
belonged to Charlemagne.
The tragic catastrophe of the story is brought about in this way. A
man who is now a vagrant had, in consequence of an intrigue with the
daughter of the "Hofschulze," been attacked by her brother and had
killed him in self-defence. This vagabond, to revenge himself on the
"Hofschulze" for the sentence of excommunication which has ruined his
life, steals the sword and hides it where no one can find it. The loss
breaks the old man's spirit. All the mysteries of the secret court of
justice are divulged, and he is obliged to stand his trial.
Granted permission to make a last speech, he says: "Your Worship! I
have no doubt that the clerk is noting me down in his minutes as a
fool, and my sword and secret judgment-seat as foolery; for so, if
I mistake not, I heard the young gentleman call the things that lie
nearest to my heart. I would fain give some explanation regarding this
foolery." And he goes on to say how, ever since he could think, he has
observed that, after calamities such as hailstorms, floods, failure of
crops, or cattle-plague, some of those gentlemen came to the district
who not only understand how to write reports, but also how to judge
everything much better than the people concerned; they described the
calamity after it was past, but were never there at the time to help;
and if a little money happened to be sent, it never reached those who
needed it most. "One thing was more astonishing than all else. One
or other of these government gentlemen would order things so in the
district that we peasants could not refrain from laughing at it all.
In a year or two the same gentleman would come driving in a carriage
and four, with all kinds of ribbons and orders on his breast, looking
as if he had helped to create the world. Thinking over all this in my
plain way, I came to the conclusion that the government gentlemen were
of little service to us peasants; nor did they come to do us service;
they came to write, and they wrote until they wrote themselves into a
carriage and four.... And then I thought (for all my life I have been
given to thinking) that a steady, industrious man will always get on
if he watches the wind and the weather, and attends to his business
and is a good neighbour.... And first I accustomed myself, even in
times of trouble, never to think of help; I paid my taxes and bore my
own burdens ... and then I accustomed my neighbours to do the same.
They followed my example; we settled our own affairs among ourselves,
and many matters about which much ado would have been made elsewhere,
were never heard of beyond the bounds of the parish.... By degrees
we came to settling everything. A peasant has understanding enough to
tell who has the best claim to a certain wall or strip of meadow. And
when a house has been broken into, the village nearly always knows who
has been the thief; but because it is not always possible to bring
sufficient proof, a man well known to be a rascal may impudently and
scandalously show his face and enjoy his booty, which its rightful
owner never recovers. So we quietly took the law into our hands, and no
one could accuse us of anything, for we injured no man; we only refused
to hold any communication whatsoever with the evildoers whom we placed
under the ban; and of this ban men were more afraid than of the judge's
sentence and prison."
"And," he concludes, "if other people would but do the same, if the
townsmen, the merchants, the noblemen, the scholars, would but manage
their own affairs, things would be better than they are. Men would no
longer be like stupid children, for ever crying for father and mother,
but every man would be like a prince in his own house and among his
equals. And the king himself would then be a far mightier monarch, a
ruler like no other, for he would rule over hundreds of thousands of
princes,"
We have the feeling at the end of the story that, now the secret is
divulged and the sword stolen, the days of popular justice are at an
end. But the author gives us his own opinion on this subject by the
mouth of the wise pastor, who declares that the independence which
is the watch-word of this peasant and his friends is a reality which
cannot be done away with by being divulged, that the idea which has
united them, the idea that a man is dependent on his neighbours, not
on strangers who stand in a perfectly artificial relation to him, does
not require the support of the tribunal under the old lime-tree. In the
peasant farmer himself, the mighty old yeoman, he sees the true sword
of Charlemagne, which no thief can steal, the true backbone of the
country.
Observe that this is written by an author who was a magistrate and the
son of a Prussian government official.
A marked contrast to the strong, stern figure of the old peasant, but
drawn with as sure a hand, is Lisbeth, the fair-haired, country girl
who is the heroine of the tale. Young Count Oswald, who wanders about
the country shooting, falls in love with her, and it is the eventful
love-story of these two young people which forms the chief attraction
of the book. Immermann had in his writings long shown himself to be a
firm believer in the unbounded power of love over humanity, but here
he tells the story of young love as he had never done before. We have
the beat and glow of two innocent young hearts. The youth and maiden
meet, full of budding, swelling, healthy presentiments and hopes. No
renunciation or disappointment has as yet cooled one drop of their warm
blood. The distance between them is bridged over in an original manner.
The young sportsman, who has inherited from his parents a taste for
shooting, along with absolute incapacity to hit anything, for once in
his life succeeds in setting his mark on a living creature; he lodges a
whole charge of small shot in the girl's shoulder. The shame and regret
he feels give place in time to ardent love. When she has recovered and
the two have discovered that they love each other, they go together one
day into the wood.
"'I want to ask your wounds to forgive me,' he said--undid her
kerchief, and kissed the small red spots between her breast and her
white shoulder. She did not resist; her little hands lay folded on her
lap, and she sat quite still, a resigned victim of love; but she looked
at him bashfully, entreatingly. He could not bear that look; he quickly
covered breast and shoulders again with the kerchief, fell at her feet,
pressed her knees to his heart, and then walked away a few steps to
overcome his emotion."
This suffers in translation. It must be read as it occurs in the
original, this little field idyll, in which the lovers play like
children; she stands up against him that he may measure her height; he
plays with her curls; from time to time she gently whispers: "O du!"
but this is all she can say; they make a meal on apples and bread,
which they buy from a woman they meet, agreeing that novel writers lie
when they assert that love lives on air; she eats from his hand and he
from hers. It is all as natural and as good as anything of the same
style in Auerbach, Keller, or Björnson.