Scherenberg, whose poems, more especially the battle-pieces _Waterloo_
and _Abukir_, were much admired at court--the author himself had to
read them aloud. Even as an octogenarian, Scherenberg retained his
place as a favourite in Berlin society. He was born in 1798. His
life had been a hard struggle. After the dissolution of his unhappy
marriage, he lived, from 1833 to 1840, in rooms in a small house at the
corner of the Bendlerstrasse, looking towards the Zoological Gardens,
in such poverty that he could not afford to buy firewood, and had to
send his children to gather sticks in the Gardens. He wrote poems,
tragedies, and comedies, for which he could never find a publisher;
nevertheless he was so successful in his attempts to keep up the
appearance of a gentleman, that his relations in Stettin believed he
had won fame under an assumed name, and begged him to "remove his mask"
and let them into the secret. All that his pen brought him was what he
received for composing begging letters and for copying; the rest of his
living he gained by acting as tutor to the families of the gardeners
who lived in the neighbourhood, giving lessons which, according to
agreement, were paid for in potatoes. A pretty story is told by Fontane
in his _Life of Scherenberg_. Great hopes had been entertained in the
Bendlerstrasse that a certain long-deferred payment would be made at
Easter in the shape of a juicy roast of veal; but in place of this, the
pupil, in his innocent desire to give pleasure, appeared with a lark
in a little green cage. On Easter morning, 1840, Scherenberg himself
carried the cage out to an open field, set the lark free, and wrote the
sweet poem, one verse of which runs:
"Du, Vöglein, singst, das ist das Deine,
Hub leise ich zur Lerche an,
Ich geb' dich frei, das ist das Meine,
Ein Jeder bete, wie er kann."[3]
The poor, struggling poet let the lark go, but kept its little clay
water-dish as a remembrance, promoting it to be his ink-pot.
At last his poems caught the fancy of the public, and the king,
delighted with the originality and rugged energy of the battle-pieces,
took their author into favour. The only thing connected with the time
when he read aloud at court that Scherenberg could be persuaded to talk
about, was the pleasure of the half-hour before the reading, spent in
his friend Count Bismarck-Bohlen's room, where men joked and smoked,
and afterwards drenched themselves with Eau de Cologne, because the
king disliked the smell of tobacco. Many years later there was another
potentate in Berlin at whose court Scherenberg was an attendant. This
was Ferdinand Lassalle. At his house the poet met livelier companions,
in whose society he not infrequently permitted himself to make fun
of his royal and aristocratic patrons. It was in his nature to suit
himself to his company; his court friends knew his weakness and excused
him.
Another favourite at the Prussian court, as indeed at all the courts of
Europe, was Prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau, who from time to time came
to Berlin to visit the wife whom, though divorced from her, he still
loved. He was a handsome man, aristocratic in appearance and manners,
accomplished and versatile, a favourite with men because of his
spirit and gaiety, irresistibly charming to women; the list of famous
women who were devoted to him is a long one; it includes Sophie Gay,
Henriette Sontag, Bettina, and Ida Hahn-Hahn. In much the same manner
as the Prince de Ligne before him, Pückler-Muskau belonged, by right of
his intellectual qualities, to the international aristocracy of Europe.
His desire to shine did not lead him to over-estimate his powers, did
not even preclude real modesty. He was a brilliant vagabond, a master
of the art of living, and a skilled professional in one department of
art strictly so-called, namely, landscape gardening. He was the first
in Germany to desert the stiff, French style of laying out a garden,
and to reinstate nature in her rights. His garden at Muskau soon became
the model garden of Europe.
There were many strange episodes in his life. Nothing could be much
stranger than the story of his marriage. He was in love at the same
time with two young girls, daughters of Count von Pappenheim, whose
wife was a daughter of Chancellor Hardenberg. This lady, who was forty,
nine years older than Pückler, herself conceived such a violent passion
for him that she infected him with it. She gave up everything to become
his, and he married her, but with the proviso that he was to be at
complete liberty to dispose of his affections as he chose. The marriage
turned out happily. But after they had lived together for ten years the
couple amicably arranged a divorce, in the hope that the prince might
find and marry a rich heiress, and thereby repair his fallen fortunes.
With this aim in view he first visits London, then travels about in
Germany. He writes daily to his divorced wife, his Lucie, keeping her
faithfully informed of the progress he makes and of the difficulties
he encounters in his pursuit of an heiress. Unable to capture one, he
returns to Lucie, and they again live lovingly together for some years.
After this he travels for six years, returning at the end of that
time with a beautiful little slave, named Machbuba, whom he instals
at Muskau. With this arrangement the princess was not altogether
satisfied, though she had made it a rule never to plague him with
jealousy. At the age of seventy she still loved and worshipped him,
and in his intercourse with her he was always personified kindness,
frankness, and cordiality.
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.