Leipzig. There Ernesti appeared to me as a brilliant light; Morus,
too, already awakened much confidence*. I planned for myself in secret
an opposition-course, or rather I built a castle in the air, on a
tolerably solid foundation; and it seemed to me quite romantically
honourable to mark out my own path of life, which appeared the less
visionary, as Griesbach had already made great progress in a similar
way, and was commended for it by every one. The secret joy of a
prisoner, when he has unbound the fetters and rapidly filed through
the bars of his gaol-window, cannot be greater than was mine as I saw
day after day disappear, and October draw nigh. The inclement season
and the bad roads, of which everybody had something to tell, did not
frighten me. The thought of making good my footing in a strange place,
and in winter, did not make me sad; suffice it to say, that I only saw
my present situation was gloomy, and represented to myself the other
unknown world as light and cheerful. Thus I formed my dreams, to which
I gave myself up exclusively, and promised myself nothing but happiness
and content in the distance.
Closely as I kept these projects a secret from every one else, I could
not hide them from my sister, who, after being very much alarmed about
them at first, was finally consoled when I promised to send after her,
so that she could enjoy with me the brilliant station I was to obtain,
and share my comfort with me.
Michaelmas, so longingly expected, came at last, when I set out with
delight, in company with the bookseller Fleischer and his wife (whose
maiden name was Triller, and who was going to visit her father in
Wittemberg); and I left behind me the worthy city in which I had been
born and bred, with indifference, as if I wished never to set foot in
it again.
Thus, at certain epochs, children part from parents, servants from
masters, _protégés_ from their patrons; and whether it succeed or
not, such an attempt to stand on one's own feet, to make one's self
independent, to live for one's self, is always in accordance with the
will of nature.
[Side-note: Departure for Leipzig.]
We had driven out through the Allerheiligen (_All Saints_) gate, and
had soon left Hanau behind us, after which we reached scenes which
aroused my attention by their novelty, if, at this season of the year,
they offered little that was pleasing. A continual rain had completely
spoiled the roads, which, generally speaking, were not then in such
good order as we find them now; and our journey "was thus neither
pleasant nor happy. Yet I was indebted to this damp weather for the
sight of a natural phenomenon which must be exceedingly rare, for I
have seen nothing like it since, nor have I heard of its being observed
by others. At night, namely, we were driving up a rising ground
between Hanau and Gelhausen, and, although it was dark, we preferred
walking to exposing ourselves to the danger and difficulty of that
part of the road. All at once, in a ravine on the right-hand side of
the way, I saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. In a
funnel-shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming,
ranged step-fashion over one another, and they shone so brilliantly
that the eye was dazzled. But what stiff more confused the sight
was, that they did not keep still, but jumped about here and there,
as well downwards from above as _vice versâ_, and in every direction.
The most of them, however, remained stationary, and beamed on. It was
only with the greatest reluctance that I suffered myself to be called
away from this spectacle, which I could have wished to examine more
closely. On interrogating the postillion, he indeed knew nothing about
such a phenomenon, but said that there was in the neighbourhood an
old stone-quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water. Now
whether this was a pandemonium of will-o'-the-wisps, or a company of
shining creatures, I will not decide.
The roads through Thuringia were yet worse, and unfortunately, at
night-fall, our coach stuck fast in the vicinity of Auerstädt. We
were far removed from all mankind, and did everything possible to
work ourselves out. I failed not to exert myself zealously, and
might thereby have overstrained the ligaments of my chest; for soon
afterwards I felt a pain, which went off and returned, and did not
leave me entirely until after many years.
Yet on that same night, as if it had been destined for alternate good
and bad luck, I was forced, after an unexpectedly fortunate incident,
to experience a teazing vexation. We met, in Auerstädt, a genteel
married couple, who had also just arrived, having been delayed by a
similar accident; a pleasing, dignified man, in his best years, with a
very handsome wife. They politely persuaded us to sup in their company,
and I felt very happy when the excellent lady addressed a friendly
word to me. But when I was sent out to accelerate the soup which had
been ordered, not having been accustomed to the loss of rest and the
fatigues of travelling, such an unconquerable drowsiness overtook me,
that actually I fell asleep while walking, returned into the room with
my hat on my head, and without remarking that the others were saying
grace, placed myself with quiet unconsciousness behind the chair,
and never dreamed that by my conduct I had come to disturb their
devotions in a very droll way. Madame Fleischer, who lacked neither
spirit nor wit, nor tongue, entreated the strangers, before they had
seated themselves, not to be surprised at anything they might see
here; for that their young fellow-traveller had in his nature much of
the peculiarity of the Quakers, who believe that they cannot honour
God and the king better than with covered heads. The handsome lady,
who could not restrain her laughter, looked prettier than ever in
consequence, and I would have given everything in the world not to have
been the cause of a merriment which was so beautifully becoming in her
countenance. I had, however, scarcely laid aside my hat, than these
persons, in accordance with their polished manners, immediately dropped
the joke, and with the best wine from their bottle-case completely
extinguished sleep, chagrin, and the memory of all past troubles.
[Side-note: Leipzig.]
I arrived in Leipzig just at the time of the fair, from which I derived
particular pleasure: for here I saw before me the continuation of
a state of things belonging to my native city, familiar wares and
traders;--only in other places, and in a different order. I rambled
about the market and the booths with much interest, but my attention
was particularly attracted by the inhabitants of the Eastern countries
in their strange dresses, the Poles and Russians, and above all, the
Greeks, for the sake of whose handsome forms and dignified costume I
often went to the spot.
But this animating bustle was soon over, and now the city itself
appeared before me, with its handsome, high, and uniform houses. It
made a very good impression upon me, and it cannot be denied, that in
general, but especially in the silent moments of Sundays and holidays,
it has something imposing; and when in the moonlight the streets were
half in shadow, half-illuminated, they often invited me to nocturnal
promenades.
In the meantime, as compared with that to which I had hitherto been
accustomed, this new state of affairs was by no means satisfactory.
Leipzig calls up before the spectator no antique time; it is a new,
recently elapsed epoch, testifying commercial activity, comfort and
wealth, which announces itself to us in these monuments. Yet quite to
my taste were the huge-looking buildings, which, fronting two streets,
and embracing a citizen-world within their large court-yards, built
round with lofty walls, are like large castles, nay, even half-cities.
In one of these strange places I quartered myself, namely, in the
Bombshell Tavern (_Teuerkugel_), between the Old and the New Newmarket
(_Neumarkt._) A couple of pleasant rooms looking out upon a court-yard,
which, on account of the thoroughfare, was not without animation, were
occupied by the bookseller Fleischer during the fair; and by me taken
for the rest of the time at a moderate price. As a fellow-lodger I
found a theological student, who was deeply learned in his professional
studies, a sound thinker, but poor, and suffering much from his eyes,
which caused him great anxiety for the future. He had brought this
affliction upon himself by his inordinate reading till the latest dusk
of the evening, and even by moonlight, to save a little oil. Our old
hostess showed herself benevolent to him, always friendly to me, and
careful for us both.
[Side-note: Gellert.]
I now hastened-with my letters of introduction to Hofrath Böhme, who
once a pupil of Maskow, and now his successor, was professor of history
and public law. A little, thick-set, lively man, received me kindly
enough, and introduced me to his wife. Both of them, as well as the
other persons whom I waited on, gave me the pleasantest hopes as to
my future residence; but at first I let no one know of the design I
entertained, although I could scarcely wait for the favourable moment
when I should declare myself free from jurisprudence, and devoted to
the study of the classics. I cautiously waited till the Fleischers
had returned, that my purpose might not be too prematurely betrayed
to my family. But I then went, without delay, to Hofrath Böhme, to
whom, before all, I thought I must confide the matter, and with much
self-importance and boldness of speech disclosed my views to him.
However, I found by no means a good reception of my proposition. As
professor of history and public law, he had a declared hatred for
everything that savoured of the _belles lettres._ Unfortunately he
did not stand on the best footing with those who cultivated them, and
Gellert in particular, in whom I had, awkwardly enough, expressed much
confidence, he could not even endure. To send a faithful student to
those men, therefore, while he deprived himself of one, and especially
under such circumstances, seemed to him altogether out of the question.
He therefore gave me a severe lecture on the spot, in which he
protested that he could not permit such a step without the permission
of my parents, even if he approved of it himself, which was not the
case in this instance. He then passionately inveighed against philology
and the study of languages, but still more against poetical exercises,
which I had indeed allowed to peep out in the back-ground. He finally
concluded that, if I wished to enter more closely into the study of the
ancients, it could be done much better by the way of jurisprudence.
He brought to my recollection many elegant jurists, such as Eberhard,
Otto, and Heineccius, promised me mountains of gold from Roman
antiquities and the history of law, and showed me, clear as the sun,
that I should here be taking no roundabout way, even if afterwards,
on more mature deliberation, and with the consent of my parents, I
should determine to follow out my own plan. He begged me, in a friendly
manner, to think the matter over once more, and to open my mind to him
soon, as it would be necessary to come to a determination at once, on
account of the impending commencement of the lectures.
It was, however, very polite of him not to press me on the spot. His
arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already
convinced my pliant youth, and I now first saw the difficulties and
doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so
feasible. Frau Hofrath Böhme invited me to see her shortly afterwards.
I found her alone. She was no longer young, and had very delicate
health, was gentle and tender to an infinite degree, and formed a
decided contrast to her husband, whose good-nature was even clustering.
She spoke of the conversation her husband had lately had with me, and
once more placed the subject before me, in all its bearings, in so
cordial a manner, so affectionately and sensibly, that I could not help
yielding; the few reservations on which I insisted were also agreed
upon by the other side.
Thereupon her husband regulated my hours: for I was to hear lectures on
philosophy, the history of law, the Institutes, and some other matters.
I was content with this; but I carried my point so as to attend
Gellert's history of literature (with Stockhausen for a text-book), and
his _Practicum_ besides.
The reverence and love with which Gellert was regarded by all young
people was extraordinary. I had already visited him, and had been
kindly received by him. Not of tall stature, elegant without being
lean, soft and rather pensive eyes, a very fine forehead, a nose
aquiline, but not too much so, a delicate mouth, a face of an agreeable
oval,--all made his presence pleasing and desirable. It cost some
trouble to reach him His two _Famuli_ appeared like priests who guard a
sanctuary, the access to which is not permitted to everybody, nor at
every time; and such a precaution was very necessary: for he would have
sacrificed his whole time, had he been willing to receive and satisfy
all those who wished to become intimate with him.
At first I attended my lectures assiduously and faithfully: but the
philosophy would not enlighten me at all. In the logic it seemed
strange to me that I had so to tear asunder, isolate, and, as it
were, destroy those operations of the mind which I had performed
with the greatest ease from my youth upwards, and this in order to
see into the right use of them. Of the thing itself, of the world,
and of God, I thought I knew about as much as the professor himself,
and in more places than one the affair seemed to me to come into a
tremendous strait. Yet all went on in tolerable order till towards
Shrovetide, when, in the neighbourhood of Professor Winkler's house on
the _Thomas-place_, the most delicious fritters came hot out of the
pan just at the hour of lecture, and these delayed us so long, that
our note-books became disordered, and the conclusion of them, towards
spring, melted away, together with the snow, and was lost.
It was soon quite as bad with the law lectures: for I already knew
just as much as the professor thought good to communicate to us. My
stubborn industry in writing down the lectures at first, was paralyzed
by degrees, for I found it excessively tedious to pen down once more
that which, partly by question, partly by answer, I had repeated with
my father often enough to retain it for ever in my memory. The harm
which is done when young people at school are advanced too far in many
things, was afterwards manifested still more when time and attention
were diverted from exercises in the languages, and a foundation in what
are, properly speaking, preparatory studies, in order to be applied to
what are called "Realities," which dissipate more than they cultivate,
if they are not methodically and thoroughly taught.
I here mention, by the way, another evil by which students are much
embarrassed. Professors, as well as other men in office, cannot all
be of the same age; but when the younger ones teach, in fact, only
that they may learn, and moreover, it they have talent, anticipate
their age, they acquire their own cultivation altogether at the cost
of their hearers, since these are not instructed in what they really
need, but in that which the professor finds it necessary to elaborate
for himself. Among the oldest professors, on the contrary, many are for
a long time stationary; they deliver on the whole only fixed views,
and, in the details, much that time has already condemned as useless
and false. Between the two arises a sad conflict, in which young minds
are dragged hither and thither, and which can scarcely be set right by
the middle-aged professors, who, though sufficiently instructed and
cultivated, always feel within themselves an active endeavour after
knowledge and reflection.
Now as in this way I learned to know much more than I could digest,
whereby a constantly increasing uncomfortableness was forced upon me,
so also from life I experienced many disagreeable trifles, as indeed
one must always pay one's footing when one changes one's place and
comes into a new position. The first thing that the ladies blamed in me
related to my dress; for I had come from home to the university rather
oddly equipped.
[Side-note: Domestic Tailoring.]
My father, who detested nothing so much as when something happened in
vain, when any one did not know how to make use of his time, or found
no opportunity for turning it to account, carried his economy of time
and abilities so far, that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to
kill two birds with one stone.[2] He had therefore never engaged a
servant who could not be useful to the house in something else. Now, as
he had always written everything with his own hand, and had, latterly,
the convenience of dictating to the young inmate of the house, he
found it most advantageous to have tailors for his domestics, who were
obliged to make good use of their time, as they not only had to make
their own liveries, but the clothes for my father and the children,
besides doing all the mending. My father himself took pains to have the
best cloths and stuffs, by getting fine wares of the foreign merchants
at the fair, and laying them up in store. I still remember well that
he always visited the Herrn von Löwenicht, of Aix-la-Chapelle, and
from my earliest youth made me acquainted with these and other eminent
merchants.
Care was also taken for the fitness of the stuff, and there was a
plentiful stock of different kinds of cloth, serge, and Götting stuff,
besides the requisite lining, so that, as far as the materials were
concerned, we might well venture to be seen. But the form spoiled
almost everything. For if one of our home-tailors was anything of a
clever hand at sewing and making up a coat which had been cut out for
him in masterly fashion, he was now obliged also to cut out the dress
for himself, which did not always succeed to perfection. In addition to
this my father kept whatever belonged to his clothing in very good and
neat order, and preserved more than used it for many years. Thus he had
a predilection for certain old cuts and trimmings, by which our dress
sometimes acquired a strange appearance.
In this same way had the wardrobe which I took with me to the
university been furnished: it was very complete and handsome, and
there was even a laced suit amongst the rest. Already accustomed to
this kind of attire, I thought myself sufficiently well dressed; but
it was not long before my female friends, first by gentle raillery,
then by sensible remonstrances, convinced me that I looked as if I had
dropped down out of another world. Much as I felt vexed at this, I did
not at first see how I could help myself. But when Herr von Masuren,
the favourite poetical country squire, once entered the theatre in a
similar costume, and was heartily laughed at, more by reason of his
external than his internal absurdity, I took courage, and ventured at
once to exchange my whole wardrobe for a new-fashioned one, suited to
the place, by which, however, it shrunk considerably.
After this trial was surmounted, a new one was to make its appearance,
which proved to be far more unpleasant, because it concerned a matter
which one does not so easily put off and exchange.
I had been born and bred in the Upper-German dialect, and although
my father always laboured after a certain purity of language, and,
from our youth upwards, had made us children attentive to what may
be really called the defects of that idiom, and so prepared us for a
better maimer of speaking, I retained nevertheless many deeper-seated
peculiarities, which, because they pleased me by their _naïveté_, I was
fond of making conspicuous, and thus every time I used them incurred
a severe reprimand from my new fellow-townsmen. The Upper-German, and
perhaps chiefly he who lives by the Rhine and Maine (for great rivers,
like the sea-coast, always have something animating about them),
expresses himself much in similes and allusions, and makes use of
proverbial sayings with a native common-sense aptness. In both cases
he is often blunt, but when one sees the drift of the expression, it
is always appropriate; only something, to be sure, may often slip in,
which proves offensive to a more delicate ear.
[Side-note: Provincial Dialect.]
Every province loves its own dialect: for it is, properly speaking,
the element in which the soul draws its breath. But every one knows
with what obstinacy the Misnian dialect has contrived to domineer over
the rest, and even, for a long time, to exclude them. We have suffered
for many years under this pedantic tyranny, and only by reiterated
struggles have all the provinces again established themselves in
their ancient rights. What a lively young man had to endure from this
continual tutoring, may be easily inferred by any one who reflects
that modes of thought, imagination, feeling, native character, must be
sacrificed with the pronunciation which one at last consents to alter.
And this intolerable demand was made by men and women of education,
whose convictions I could not adopt, whose injustice I believed I
felt, though I was unable to make it plain to myself. Allusions to the
pithy biblical texts were to be forbidden me, as well as the use of
the honest-hearted expressions from the Chronicles. I had to forget
that I had read the _Kaiser von Geisersberg_, and eschew the use of
proverbs, which nevertheless, instead of much fiddle-faddle, just hit
the nail upon the head;--all this, which I had appropriated to myself
with youthful ardour, I was now to do without; I felt myself paralyzed
to the core, and scarcely knew any more how I had to express myself on
the commonest things. I was told, besides, that one should speak as one
writes, and write as one speaks; while, to me, speaking and writing
seemed once for all two different things, each of which might well
maintain its own rights. And even in the Misnian dialect had I to hear
many things which would have made no great figure on paper.
Every one who perceives in this the influence which men and women
of education, the learned, and other persons who take pleasure in
refined society, so decidedly exercise over a young student, would
be immediately convinced that we were in Leipzig, even if it had not
been mentioned. Each one of the German universities has a particular
character: for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland,
every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the
last, its own characteristic peculiarities; exactly the same thing
holds good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been
carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the
wildest self-help was there the order of the day; and such a state of
affairs can only be maintained and propagated by the most universal
riot. The relations of the students to the inhabitants of those cities,
various as they might be, nevertheless agreed in this, that the wild
stranger had no regard for the citizen, and looked upon himself as a
peculiar being, privileged to all sorts of freedom and insolence. In
Leipzig, on the contrary, a student could scarcely be anything else
than polite, as soon as he wished to stand on any footing at all with
the rich, well-bred, and punctilious inhabitants.
All politeness, indeed, when it does not present itself as the
flowering of a great and comprehensive mode of life, must appear
restrained, stationary, and from some points of view, perhaps, absurd;
and so those wild huntsmen from the Saale[3] thought they had a great
superiority over the tame shepherds on the Pleisse.[4] Zachariä's
_Renommist_ will always be a valuable document, from which the manner
of life and thought at that time rises visibly forth; as in general
his poems must be welcome to every one who wishes to form for himself
a conception of the then prevailing state of social life and manners,
which was indeed feeble, but amiable on account of its innocence and
childlike simplicity.