mouths of the destroyers; fearlessly he cries: "First me, then the
defenceless citizen!"--No farther command is given. Thou hast shamed
them! All thanks to thee, brave gunner!
[3] Frhr. von Helfert: _Wiener Parnass im Jahre_ 1848.
[4] The press is free! Peal the bells! sound the glad tidings far and
wide! Proclaim to the farthest-off of Germany's sons: The press is
free, the ramparts of liberty are stormed!
[5] All hail to thee, my Emperor! Full of joy in their accomplished
work, thy people greet thee, whom they have always known to be of noble
mind.
[6] As your swords leap from their scabbards, let a song, O my
brothers, come from your hearts! Let the song of songs resound through
your rejoicing ranks--bright as burnished armour, clear as ringing
steel, the song of the Garde-National!
[7] Let the black draperies flutter in the wind, and let a sad lament
resound for those who have laid down their lives in the cause of
liberty.
[8] Ye have rightly understood the nature of liberty; we cannot half
possess her; if we but let her little finger be taken from us, she will
soon be gone. That little finger is our honour. Who lets that go knows
not what honour is. Therefore with strong arms and good swords ye have
defended it.
[9]
In secret hiding-place and gloom
Long time we have concealed it;
But now at last the day is come,
The day that has revealed it.
Ha! how the smoke is round it rolled!
Hurrah! thou Black and Red and Gold!
Powder is black,
Blood is red,
Golden glows the flame!
(JOYNES.)
[10] _Des deutschen Volkes Erhebung im Jahre_ 1848, _sein Kampf um
freie Institutionen und sein Siegesjubel._ Von J. Lasker und Fr.
Gerhard. Danzig, 1848.
[11] Eine Rotte von Bösewichtern, meist aus Fremden bestehend, die sich
seit einer Woche, obgleich aufgesucht, doch zu verbergen gewusst haben,
haben diesen Umstand im Sinne ihrer argen Pläne durch augenscheinliche
Lüge verdreht und die erhitzten Gemüther von vielen meiner treuen und
lieben Berliner mit Rachegedanken um vermeintlich vergossenes Blut
erfullt und sind so die greulichen Urheber von Blutvergiessen geworden.
[12] _Des deutschen Volkes Erhebung_, p. 54. Varnhagen: _Tagebücher_,
Adolf Streckfuss: _Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre_ 1848; _Der Zeitgeist_,
1889, Nr. 51.
[13]
With bullets through and through our breast--our forehead
split with spike and spear,
So bear us onward shoulder-high, laid dead upon a blood-stained bier;
Yea, shoulder-high above the crowd, that on the man that bade us die,
Our dreadful death-distorted face may be a bitter curse for aye;
That he may see it day and night, or when he wakes or when he sleeps,
Or when he opes his holy book, or when with wine high revel keeps;
That ever like a scorching brand that sight his secret soul may burn;
That he may ne'er escape its curse, nor know to whom for aid to turn;
That always each disfeatured face, each gaping wound his sight may sear,
And brood above his bed of death, and curdle all his blood with fear!
[14] PRUSSIAN MISUNDERSTANDINGS.
The big, incredulous town of Berlin has become the home of miracles.
For two whole days they have been shooting, storming, burning there
without a pause; thousands are lying in the bloody dust. The King
is distressed by what has occurred; he says: "The guns went off of
themselves; the whole has been a misunderstanding."
In the old, incredulous town of Berlin strange tricks are being played;
a King decks himself in black, red, and gold, and declares himself to
be the leader of Germany, the arch-demagogue, chosen of heaven to bring
about German unity. But Germany only laughs and shouts: "This is a
misunderstanding."
[15] Then the last of the faithful, who had remained true to their
saviour, scattered to the four winds of heaven, to proclaim the word
of salvation, knowing full well that what awaited them was exile and
poverty, want and suffering, torture, imprisonment, and death. "The
word of salvation will survive them"; note this, ye slaves, ye bloody
hordes: The word has become flesh, has become God.
[16] Rest peacefully, rest well, my Robert! No need is there for us
to wish that light upon thy breast may lie the blood-drenched earth
of Vienna, the soil thy valour captured. Thou art not dead, despite
the loud laments and songs of mourning of the German people.... From
mouth to mouth spreads the report: "Our Robert lives, that Robert Blum
the tyrants shot"--and every German heart beats high. That precious
blood has not been shed; hope whispers in our ears: "The tri-coloured
standard is trailed in the dust, but Germany is not lost."... He is
with us everywhere! With his spirit hands he turns back the bullets, or
receives them in his breast--these bullets rained on us by our paternal
rulers.... A wanderer he, until the German people have released
themselves from the betrayer's grip, until he has cleared the sacred
land of his fathers, of princes and of priests.
[17]
In this same city of Cologne, 'mid moaning winds of winter wild,
To-day in deepest organ-tones resounds the grave-song of this child.
'Tis not the mother bow'd in grief who sings it o'er her fallen son;
Nay, all Cologne bewails the death of him whose toil too soon is done.
With solemn woe the city speaks: Thou who didst bear the noble dead,
Remain to weep within thy home, and bow to earth thine aged head;
I also am his mother! Yea, and yet a mightier one than I,
I and the Revolution's self, for whom he laid him down to die.
Stay thou within and nurse thy woe. 'Tis we will do him honour here;
'Tis we will watch and requiem sing for thy dead son upon his bier.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why grasp ye not your swords in wrath, O ye that sing and ye that pray?
Ye organ-pipes, to trumpets turn, and fight the scoundrels with your
breath,
And din into their dastard ears the dreadful news of sudden death,
Those scoundrels who the order gave, the cruel murder dared to do--
The hero leant him on his knee in that autumnal morning's dew,
Then silent fell upon his face in blood--'tis eight short days ago--
Two bullets smote him on the breast, and laid his head for ever low.
(JOYNES.)
[18] I see scientists and professors, presidents and assessors,
wine merchants and editors, superintendents and accoucheurs; I see
financiers and journalists; I see astronomers and tax-collectors,
rag merchants and antiquarians; I see Messrs. Biedermann, Hansemann,
Bassermann--but where are the _men_, the _men?_
XXX
CONCLUSION
It is a mighty panorama, this, which the study of the feelings and
thoughts of Germany, first oppositionist, then revolutionary, between
1815 and 1848, unrolls to our view. We see the spirit of Metternich,
a spirit of shallowness, brooding over Austria and the whole of
Germany. We follow the new intellectual movement from the time when it
first finds expression at the Wartburg Festival in 1817. We see how
the assassination of Kotzebue gives occasion to the open persecution
of Liberalism and introduces a long period of ruthless reaction and
oppression, during which Goethe is regarded as the Quietist foe of
liberty and lauded or denounced as such, and German philosophy under
the auspices of Hegel becomes, in a rather questionable manner,
conservative. The oppositionist tendency finds occasional expression in
the writings of poets like Chamisso, Platen, and Heine, but the general
intellectual condition is one of depression, relieved by outbursts of
self-ridicule. The state of stagnation is put an end to by the news
of the Revolution of July 1830, which electrifies public feeling and
gives both poets and prose writers new courage and fresh inspiration.
The remembrance of Byron's life and death influences men in the same
direction, and the Polish revolt awakens sympathy and enthusiasm in
spite of the part that Germany takes in the annihilation of Poland as
a nation. Börne becomes the most eminent advocate of Liberalism in
politics, holds high the banner of liberty and justice, shows a noble
example in the matter of strength of character and conviction, but at
the same time displays a naïve and fanatical optimism which proves
that his is not the temperament required in a statesman. In Heine, the
greatest poet of the period, we feel the vibration of its every nerve.
In him modern poetry casts off the swaddling-clothes of Romanticism.
In love, in appreciation of nature, in his political, social, and
religious views, in his descriptive, poetic, and satiric style, he is
the man of our own day--fitter, as we pointed out, than any other to
grapple with modern life in its hardness and ugliness, its charm and
its restlessness, and its wealth of violent contrasts. About the same
time, in a different and yet kindred manner, Immermann, in his best
book, marks the transition to a more realistic style of art.
The Revolution of July had not only changed the tone of literature,
it had also altered the character of the Hegelian philosophy, which
from this time onwards is to be regarded as one of the strongest
influences in the revolutionising of men's conception of life; from
the doctrines of the master who died such a strong Conservative, his
pupils draw reformatory or revolutionary inferences and principles.
And now, with the echoes of the Revolution of July sounding in their
ears, appear a group of young authors; they are influenced by the
philosophy of Hegel and the poetry of Goethe, this last interpreted as
anti-Christian; Heine and Börne are their masters, Rahel and George
Sand their muses; they come to be known by the name of Young Germany.
They desire to assimilate literature with life, to subvert existing
religious and moral doctrines, to introduce a freer morality in the
matter of marriage and divorce and a new species of pantheistic piety.
The impeachment of these men by Menzel in 1835 is the signal for a
new series of persecutions directed against all that in that day went
by the name of the literature of movement (Bewegungslitteratur). Very
few of the representatives of the young generation show strength of
character when thus put to the test, but both the highly gifted men
(Gutzkow) and those of moderate ability (Laube, &c.) develop their
talents amidst these persecutions, and works are produced which
accurately mirror the hopes and struggles of the age, the thoughts and
feelings, temptations, mistakes, and victories of the individual.
Between the years 1830 and 1840 something has been happening quietly,
deep down in men's minds--Goethe's poetry and Goethe's philosophy of
life, at first championed exclusively by enthusiastic women, have been
steadily gaining influence over the cultivated, making them proof
against theological impressions but receptive to all great human ideas.
The cult of Goethe leads by degrees, even in the case of women, to the
cult of political liberty and social reform.
In 1840 German philosophy begins to develop in the direction of
Radicalism, and the poets begin openly to advocate the cause of
political liberty. The men of this new generation, too, owe their
philosophic training to Hegel, but they have metamorphosed his doctrine
into an atheistical, anti-monarchical doctrine. They regard the
standpoint of Young Germany with contempt as being purely belletristic,
and busy themselves with the nature of Christianity and the idea of the
state.
On the throne of Prussia at this juncture sits a king with a curiously
complex character and many talents, a typical transition figure,
whose personality, especially in its relation to the literature and
intellectual life of the day, is of great interest. In the south of
Germany it is Metternich, in the north it is Frederick William IV., who
outwardly regulates the course of events. We see literary and political
celebrities being attracted by him, coming into collision with him,
and rebounding from him. The invalids of literature, men like Tieck
and Schelling, pass their last days under his protection; Herwegh
and Freiligrath are first attracted and then repelled by him; Jacoby
attacks him, Dingelstedt ridicules him.
And now we follow the development of political poetry, from its founder
Anastasius Grün to Herwegh and Dingelstedt, observing what a deep
impression such a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach makes on the intellectual
life of his contemporaries. Men like Freiligrath and Prutz, Sallet and
Hartmann, are the petrels that foretell the storm; in 1848 we hear
the song of certain gifted poets high above the roar of the political
hurricane, and we also notice that these unexampled occurrences
transform men of minor or undeveloped talent into organs of the great
movement of the hour.
During our study of this fragment of literary history we have passed
in review a whole gallery of remarkable figures, devoting careful
attention to the most important or most typical.
We saw how Napoleon's great personality, in its legendary form,
exercised almost as powerful an influence on men's minds as Byron's.
Of the great intellectual forces of the eighteenth century, Goethe,
Jean Paul, Heinse, and Hegel are those by which our period is most
perceptibly influenced. Some of the Romanticists influence as
teachers and masters (Wilhelm Schlegel, Brentano, Chamisso), others
as antagonists (Tieck). Börne and Heine, geniuses of most dissimilar
types, by virtue of that polemical quality which was an essential
characteristic of both, influence the whole period.
What a wealth of remarkable, original characters! Glance at our gallery
of women--Rahel and Bettina, the friends of Goethe; Börne's friends,
Henrietta Herz and Jeannette Wohl; Heine's La Mouche, Immermann's
Elisa, and Princess Pückler and Charlotte Stieglitz--gifted women
and devoted wives! Or let your eyes wander over our collection of
male portraits--authors and men of the world, like Varnhagen and
Pückler; stiff, stately figures, like Platen and Immermann; others
that are all life and fire, like Börne and Heine; manly eccentrics,
like Jacoby; kingly figures, like Feuerbach; grimacing fanatics, like
Menzel; independent poets great and small, like Rückert, Hebbel,
Ludwig, and Scherenberg; agitators, like Wienbarg and Gutzkow; men of
pliant talent, like Laube and Mundt; weak desponders, like Stieglitz;
bold singers of liberty, like Hoffmann and Freiligrath; immature
characters, like Herwegh; problematic characters, like Dingelstedt and
Meissner; brave men, like Sallet, Hartmann, and Prutz. Even when their
productions are not of the highest quality, we study the men themselves
with interest.
* * * * *
And yet what is presented in this volume can only be fully understood
by those who read it in its connection with the earlier volumes of the
work of which it forms a part, who regard it in the light of the last
act of a great historic drama. The plan of the work is indicated in the
introduction to the first volume, and is strictly adhered to throughout
all six.
The author's intention, as explained in the first lines of his work,
was, by means of the study of certain main groups and main movements
in European literature, to outline a psychology of the first half
of the nineteenth century. The year 1848, which, as a historical
turning-point, marks a conclusion for the time being, was indicated as
the point to which he intended to pursue his subject. The six groups
which, according to the original plan, have been portrayed, are, the
French Emigrant Literature, German Romanticism, the French Reaction,
English Naturalism, French Romanticism, and Young Germany. Each one
of the six parts of the work has in the course of years either been
re-written or revised.
The author's first proceeding was to separate and classify the chief
literary movements of the first half of the century, his next to find
their general direction or law of progression, a starting point, and a
central point.
The direction he discovered to be a great rhythmical ebb and flow--the
gradual dying out and disappearing of the ideas and feelings of the
eighteenth century until authority, the hereditary principle, and
ancient custom once more reigned supreme, then the reappearance of the
ideas of liberty in ever higher mounting waves. The starting point
was now self-evident, namely, the group of French literary works
denominated the Emigrant Literature, the first epoch-making one of
which bears the date 1800. The central point was equally unmistakable.
From the literary point of view it was Byron's death, from the
political that Greek war of liberation in which he fell. This double
event is epoch-making in the intellectual life and the literature
of the Continent. The concluding point was also clearly indicated,
namely, the European revolution of 1848. Byron's death forming the
central point of the work, the school of English literature to which
he belongs, became as it were the hinge on which it turned. The main
outlines now stood out clearly: the incipient reaction in the case of
the emigrants, held in check by the revolutionary ideas still in vogue;
the growth of the reaction in the Germany of the Romanticists; its
culmination and triumph during the first year of the Restoration in
France; the turn of the tide discernible in what is denominated English
Naturalism; the change which takes place in all the great writers of
France shortly before the Revolution of July, a change which results
in the formation of the French Romantic school; and, lastly, the
development in German literature which issues in the events of March
1848.
It is self-evident that the standpoint here adopted is a personal
one. It is the personal point of view, the personal treatment, which
presents literary personages and works thus grouped and ordered, thus
contrasted, thus thrown into relief or cast into shadow. Regarded
impersonally, the literature of a half-century is nothing but a chaos
of hundreds of thousands of books in many languages.
The personal standpoint is not, however, an arbitrary one. It has
been the author's aim to do justice, as far as in him lay, to every
single person and phenomenon he has described. No attempt has been made
to fit any of them into larger or smaller places than they actually
occupied. It is no whim or preconceived intention of the author that
has given the work its shape. The power which has grouped, contrasted,
thrown into relief or suppressed, lengthened or shortened, placed in
full light, in half light, or in shadow, is none other than that never
entirely conscious power to which we usually give the name of art.
THE END