The very next thing I must do was to attempt to establish my hopes of a

larger income, so sadly doomed hitherto, upon a very much sounder

basis. In this respect it occurred to me that I might consult my friend

Liszt, and beg him to suggest a remedy for my grievous position. And lo

and behold, shortly after those fateful March days, and not long before

the completion of my Lohengrin score, to my very great delight and

astonishment, the very man I wanted walked into my room. He had come

from Vienna, where he had lived through the ‘Barricade Days,’ and he

was going on to Weimar, where he intended to settle permanently. We

spent an evening together at Schumann’s, had a little music, and

finally began a discussion on Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, in which Liszt

and Schumann differed so fundamentally that the latter, completely

losing his temper, retired in a fury to his bedroom for quite a long

time. This incident did indeed place us in a somewhat awkward position

towards our host, but it furnished us with a most amusing topic of

conversation on the way home, I have seldom seen Liszt so extravagantly

cheerful as on that night, when, in spite of the cold and the fact that

he was clad only in ordinary evening-dress, he accompanied first the

music director Schubert, and then myself, to our respective homes.

Subsequently I took advantage of a few days’ holiday in August to make

an excursion to Weimar, where I found Liszt permanently installed and,

as is well known, enjoying a life of most intimate intercourse with the

Grand Duke. Even though he was unable to help me in my affairs, except

by giving me a recommendation which finally proved useless, his

reception of me on this short visit was so hearty and so exceedingly

stimulating, that it left me profoundly cheered and encouraged. On

returning to Dresden I tried as far as possible to curtail my expenses

and to live within my means; and, as every means of assistance failed

me, I resorted to the expedient of sending out a circular letter

addressed jointly to my remaining creditors, all of whom were really

friends; and in this I told them frankly of my situation, and enjoined

them to relinquish their demands for an indefinite time, till my

affairs took a turn for the better, as without this I should certainly

never be in a position to satisfy them. By this means they would, at

all events, be in a position to oppose my general manager, whom I had

every reason to suspect of evil designs, and who would have been only

too glad to seize any signs of hostility towards me, on the part of my

creditors, as a pretext for taking the worst steps against me. The

assurance I required was given me unhesitatingly; my friend Pusinelli,

and Frau Klepperbein (an old friend of my mother’s), even going so far

as to declare that they were prepared to give up all claim to the money

they had lent me. Thus, in some measure reassured, and with my position

relative to Lüttichau so far improved that I could consult my own

wishes as to whether and when I should give up my post entirely, I now

continued to fulfil my duties as a conductor as patiently and

conscientiously as I was able, while with great zeal I also resumed my

studies, which were carrying me ever further and further afield.

Thus settled, I now began to watch the wonderful developments in the

fate of my friend Röckel. As every day brought fresh rumours of

threatened reactionary coups d’etat and similar violent outbreaks,

which Röckel thought it right to prevent, he drew up an appeal to the

soldiers of the army of Saxony, in which he explained every detail of

the cause for which he stood, and which he then had printed and

distributed broadcast. This was too flagrant a misdeed for the public

prosecutors: he was therefore immediately placed under arrest, and had

to remain three days in gaol while an action for high treason was

lodged against him. He was only released when the solicitor Minkwitz

stood bail for the requisite three thousand marks (equal to L150). This

return home to his anxious wife and children was celebrated by a little

public festival, which the committee of the Vaterlands-Verein had

arranged in his honour, and the liberated man was greeted as the

champion of the people’s cause. On the other hand, however, the general

management of the court theatre, who had before suspended him

temporarily, now gave him his final dismissal. Röckel let a full beard

grow, and began the publication of a popular journal called the

Volksblatt, of which he was sole editor. He must have counted on its

success to compensate him for the loss of his salary as musical

director, for he at once hired an office in the Brudergasse for his

undertaking. This paper succeeded in attracting the attention of a

great many people to its editor, and showed up his talents in quite a

new light, he never got involved in his style or indulged in any

elaboration of words, but confined himself to matters of immediate

importance and general interest; it was only after having discussed

them in a calm and sober fashion, that he led up from them to further

deductions of still greater interest connected with them. The

individual articles were short, and never contained anything

superfluous, in addition to which they were so clearly written, that

they made an instructive and convincing appeal to the most uneducated

mind. By always going to the root of things, instead of indulging in

circumlocutions which, in politics, have caused such great confusion in

the minds of the uneducated masses, he soon had a large circle of

readers, both among cultivated and uncultivated people. The only

drawback was that the price of the little weekly paper was too small to

yield him a corresponding profit. Moreover, it was necessary to warn

him that if the reactionary party should ever come into power again, it

could never possibly forgive him for this newspaper. His younger

brother, Edward, who was paying a visit at the time in Dresden,

declared himself willing to accept a post as piano-teacher in England,

which, though most uncongenial to him, would be lucrative and place him

in a position to help Röckel’s family, if, as seemed probable, he met

his reward in prison or on the gallows. Owing to his connection with

various societies, his time was so much taken up that my intercourse

with him was limited to walks, which became more and more rare. On

these occasions I often got lost in the most wildly speculative and

profound discussions, while this wonderfully exciteable man always

remained calmly reflective and clear-headed. First and foremost, he had

planned a drastic social reform of the middle classes—as at present

constituted—by aiming at a complete alteration of the basis of their

condition. He constructed a totally new moral order of things, founded

on the teaching of Proudhon and other socialists regarding the

annihilation of the power of capital, by immediately productive labour,

dispensing with the middleman. Little by little he converted me, by

most seductive arguments, to his own views, to such an extent that I

began to rebuild my hopes for the realisation of my ideal in art upon

them. Thus there were two questions which concerned me very nearly: he

wished to abolish matrimony, in the usual acceptation of the word,

altogether. I thereupon asked him what he thought the result would be

of promiscuous intercourse with women of a doubtful character. With

amiable indignation he gave me to understand that we could have no idea

about the purity of morals in general, and of the relations of the

sexes in particular, so long as we were unable to free people

completely from the yoke of the trades, guilds, and similar coercive

institutions. He asked me to consider what the only motive would be

which would induce a woman to surrender herself to a man, when not only

the considerations of money, fortune, position, and family prejudices,

but also the various influences necessarily arising from these, had

disappeared. When I, in my turn, asked him whence he would obtain

persons of great intellect and of artistic ability, if everybody were

to be merged in the working classes, he met my objection by replying,

that owing to the very fact that everybody would participate in the

necessary labour according to his strength and capacity, work would

cease to be a burden, and would become simply an occupation which would

finally assume an entirely artistic character. He demonstrated this on

the principle that, as had already been proved, a field, worked

laboriously by a single peasant, was infinitely less productive than

when cultivated by several persons in a scientific way. These and

similar suggestions, which Röckel communicated to me with a really

delightful enthusiasm, led me to further reflections, and gave birth to

new plans upon which, to my mind, a possible organisation of the human

race, which would correspond to my highest ideals in art, could alone

be based. In reference to this, I immediately turned my thoughts to

what was close at hand, and directed my attention to the theatre. The

motive for this came not only from my own feelings, but also from

external circumstances. In accordance with the latest democratic

suffrage laws, a general election seemed imminent in Saxony; the

election of extreme radicals, which had now taken place nearly

everywhere else, showed us that if the movement lasted, there would be

the most extraordinary changes even in the administration of the

revenue. Apparently a general resolution had been passed to subject the

Civil List to a strict revision; all that was deemed superfluous in the

royal household was to be done away with; the theatre, as an

unnecessary place of entertainment for a depraved portion of the

public, was threatened with the withdrawal of the subsidy granted it

from the Civil List. I now resolved, in view of the importance which I

attached to the theatre, to suggest to the ministers that they should

inform the members of parliament, that if the theatre in its present

condition were not worth any sacrifice from the state, it would sink to

still more doubtful tendencies—and might even become dangerous to

public morals—if deprived of that state control which had for its aim

the ideal, and, at the same time, felt itself called upon to place

culture and education under its beneficial protection. It was of the

highest importance to me to secure an organisation of the theatre,

which would make the carrying out its loftiest ideals not only a

possibility but also a certainty. Accordingly I drew up a project by

which the same sum as that which was allotted from the Civil List for

the support of a court theatre should be employed for the foundation

and upkeep of a national theatre for the kingdom of Saxony. In showing

the practical nature of the well-planned particulars of my scheme, I

defined them with such great precision, that I felt assured my work

would serve as a useful guide to the ministers as to how they should

put this matter before parliament. The point now was to have a personal

interview with one of the ministers, and it occurred to me that the

best man to apply to in the matter would be Herr von der Pfordten, the

Minister of Education. Although he already enjoyed the reputation of

being a turncoat in politics, and was said to be struggling to efface

the origin of his political promotion, which had taken place at a time

of great agitation, the mere fact of his having formerly been a

professor was sufficient to make me suppose that he was a man with whom

I could discuss the question that I had so much at heart. I learned,

however, that the real art institutions of the kingdom, such, for

instance, as the Academy of Fine Arts, to whose number I so ardently

desired to see the theatre added, belonged to the department of the

Minister of the Interior. To this man—the worthy though not highly

cultivated or artistic Herr Oberlander—I submitted my plans, not,

however, without having first made myself known to Herr von der

Pfordten, in order, for the reasons above stated, to command my project

to him. This man, who apparently was very busy, received me in a polite

and reassuring manner; but his whole bearing, indeed the very

expression of his face, seemed to destroy all hopes I might ever have

cherished of finding in him that understanding which I had expected.

The minister Oberlander, on the other hand, earned my confidence by the

straightforward earnestness with which he promised a thorough inquiry

into the matter. Unfortunately, however, at the same time, he informed

me with the most simple frankness, that he could entertain but very

little hope of getting the King’s authorisation for any unusual

treatment of a question hitherto given over to routine. It must be

understood that the relations of the King to his ministers were both

strained and unconfidential, and that this was more especially so in

the case of Oberlander, who never approached the monarch on any other

business than that which the strictest discharge of his current duties

rendered indispensable. He therefore thought it would be better if my

plan could be brought forward, in the first place, by the Chamber of

Deputies. As, in the event of the new Civil List being discussed, I was

particularly anxious to avoid the question of the continuation of the

court theatre being treated in the ignorant and shortsighted radical

fashion, which was to be feared above all, I did not despair of making

the acquaintance of some of the most influential among the new members

of parliament. In this wise I found myself suddenly plunged into quite

a new and strange world, and became acquainted with persons and

opinions, the very existence of which until then I had not even

suspected. I found it somewhat trying always to be obliged to meet

these gentlemen at their beer and shrouded in the dense clouds of their

tobacco smoke, and to have to discuss with them matters which, though

very dear to me, must have seemed a little fantastic to their mind.

After a certain Herr von Trutschler, a very handsome, energetic man,

whose seriousness was almost gloomy, had listened to me calmly for some

time, and had told me that he no longer knew anything about the state,

but only about society, and that the latter would know, without either

his or my aid, how it should act in regard to art and to the theatre, I

was filled with such extraordinary feelings, half mingled with shame,

that there and then I gave up, not only all my exertions, but all my

hopes as well. The only reminder I ever had of the whole affair came

some while, after when, on meeting Herr von Lüttichau, I quickly

gathered from his attitude to me that he had got wind of the episode,

and that it only inspired him with fresh hostility towards me.

During my walks, which I now took absolutely alone, I thought ever more

deeply—and much to the relief of my mind—over my ideas concerning that

state of human society for which the boldest hopes and efforts of the

socialists and communists, then busily engaged in constructing their

system, offered me but the roughest foundation. These efforts could

begin to have some meaning and value for me only when they had attained

to that political revolution and reconstruction which they aimed at;

for it was only then that I, in my turn, could start my reforms in art.

At the same time my thoughts were busy with a drama, in which the

Emperor Frederick I. (surnamed ‘Barbarossa’) was to be the hero. In it

the model ruler was portrayed in a manner which lent him the greatest

and most powerful significance. His dignified resignation at the

impossibility of making his ideals prevail was intended not only to

present a true transcript of the arbitrary multifariousness of the

things of this world, but also to arouse sympathy for the hero. I

wished to carry out this drama in popular rhyme, and in the style of

the German used by our epic poets of the Middle Ages, and in this

respect the poem Alexander, by the priest Lambert, struck me as a good

example; but I never got further with this play than to sketch its

outline in the broadest manner possible. The five acts were planned in

the following manner: Act i. Imperial Diet in the Roncaglian fields, a

demonstration of the significance of imperial power which should extend

even to the investiture of water and air; Act ii. the siege and capture

of Milan; Act iii. revolt of Henry the Lion and his overthrow at

Ligano; Act iv. Imperial Diet in Augsburg, the humiliation and

punishment of Henry the Lion; Act v. Imperial Diet and grand court

assembly at Mainz; peace with the Lombards, reconciliation with the

Pope, acceptance of the Cross, and the departure for the East. I lost

all interest, however, in the carrying out of this dramatic scheme

directly I discovered its resemblance to the subject-matter of the

Nibelungen and Siegfried myths, which possessed a more powerful

attraction for me. The points of similarity which I recognised between

the history and the legend in question then induced me to write a

treatise on the subject; and in this I was assisted by some stimulating

monographs (found in the royal library), written by authors whose names

have now escaped my memory, but which taught me in a very attractive

manner a considerable amount about the old original kingdom of Germany.

Later on I published this fairly extensive essay with the title of Die

Nibelungen, but in working it out I finally lost all inclination to

elaborate the historical material for a real drama.

In direct connection with this I began to sketch a clear summary of the

form which the old original Nibelungen myth had assumed in my mind in

its immediate association with the mythological legend of the gods—a

form which, though full of detail, was yet much condensed in its

leading features. Thanks to this work, I was able to convert the chief

part of the material itself into a musical drama. It was only by

degrees, however, and after long hesitation that I dared to enter more

deeply into my plans for this work; for the thought of the practical

realisation of such a work on our stage literally appalled me. I must

confess that it required all the despair which I then felt of ever

having the chance of doing anything more for our theatre, to give me

the necessary courage to begin upon this new work. Until that time I

simply allowed myself to drift, while I meditated listlessly upon the

possibility of things pursuing their course further under the existing

circumstances. In regard to Lohengrin, I had got to that point when I

hoped for nothing more than the best possible production of it at the

Dresden theatre, and felt that I should have to be satisfied in all

respects, and for all time, if I were able to achieve even that. I had

duly announced the completion of the score to Herr von Lüttichau; but,

in consideration of the unfavourable nature of my circumstances at the

time, I had left it entirely to him to decide when my work should be

produced.

Meanwhile the time arrived when the keeper of the Archives of the Royal

Orchestra called to mind that it was just three hundred years since

this royal institution had been founded, and that a jubilee would

therefore have to be celebrated. To this end a great concert festival

was planned, the programme of which was to be made up of the

compositions of all the Saxon orchestral conductors that had lived

since the institution had been founded. The whole body of musicians,

with both their conductors at their head, were first to present their

grateful homage to the King in Pillnitz; and on this occasion a

musician was, for the first time, to be elevated to the rank of Knight

of the Civil Order of Merit of Saxony. This musician was my colleague

Reissiger. Until then he had been treated by the court, and by the

manager himself, in the most scornful manner possible, but had, owing

to his conspicuous loyalty at this critical time, especially to me,

found exceptional favour in the eyes of our committees. When he

appeared before the public decorated with the wonderful order, he was

greeted with great jubilation by the loyal audience that filled the

theatre on the evening of the festival concert. His overture to Yelva

was also received with a perfect uproar of enthusiastic applause, such

as had never fallen to his lot; whereas the finale of the first act

from Lohengrin, which was produced as the work of the youngest

conductor, was accorded only an indifferent reception. This was all the

more strange as I was quite unaccustomed to such coolness in regard to

my work on the part of the Dresden public. Following upon the concert,

there was a festive supper, and when this was over, as all kinds of

speeches were being made, I freely proclaimed to the orchestra, in a

loud and decided tone, my views as to what was desirable for their

perfection in the future. Hereupon Marschner, who, as a former musical

conductor in Dresden, had been invited to the jubilee celebrations,

expressed the opinion that I should do myself a great deal of harm by

holding too good an opinion of the musicians. He said I ought just to

consider how uncultivated these people were with whom I had to deal; he

pointed out that they were trained simply for the one instrument they

played; and asked me whether I did not think that by discoursing to

them on the aspirations of art I would produce not only confusion, but

even perhaps bad blood? Far more pleasant to me than these festivities

is the remembrance of the quiet memorial ceremony which united us on

the morning of the Jubilee Day, with the object of placing wreaths on

Weber’s grave. As nobody could find a word to utter, and even Marschner

was able to give expression only to the very driest and most trivial of

speeches about the departed master, I felt it incumbent upon me to say

a few heartfelt words concerning the memorial ceremony for which we

were gathered together. This brief spell of artistic activity was

speedily broken by fresh excitements, which kept pouring in upon us

from the political world. The events of October in Vienna awakened our

liveliest sympathy, and our walls daily blazed with red and black

placards, with summonses to march on Vienna, with the curse of ‘Red

Monarchy,’ as opposed to the hated ‘Red Republic,’ and with other

equally startling matter. Except for those who were best informed as to

the course of events—and who certainly did not swarm in our

streets—these occurrences aroused great uneasiness everywhere. With the

entry of Windischgratz into Vienna, the acquittal of Frobel and the

execution of Blum, it seemed as though even Dresden were on the eve of

an explosion. A vast demonstration of mourning was organised for Blum,

with an endless procession through the streets. At the head marched the

ministry, among whom the people were particularly glad to see Herr von

der Pfordten taking a sympathetic share in the ceremony, as he had

already become an object of suspicion to them. From that day gloomy

forebodings of disaster grew ever more prevalent on every side. People

even went so far as to say, with little attempt at circumlocution, that

the execution of Blum had been an act of friendship on the part of the

Archduchess Sophia to her sister, the Queen of Saxony, for during his

agitation in Leipzig the man had made himself both hated and feared.

Troops of Viennese fugitives, disguised as members of the student

bands, began to arrive in Dresden, and made a formidable addition to

its population, which from this time forth paraded the streets with

ever-increasing confidence. One day, as I was on my way to the theatre

to conduct a performance of Rienzi, the choir-master informed me that

several foreign gentlemen had been asking for me. Thereupon half a

dozen persons presented themselves, greeted me as a brother democrat,

and begged me to procure them free entrance tickets. Among them I

recognised a former dabbler in literature, a man named Hafner, a little

hunchback, in a Calabrian hat cocked at a terrific angle, to whom I had

been introduced by Uhl on the occasion of my visit to the Vienna

political club. Great as was my embarrassment at this visit, which

evidently astonished our musicians, I felt in no wise compelled to make

any compromising admission, but quietly went to the booking-office,

took six tickets and handed them to my strange visitors, who parted

from me before all the world with much hearty shaking of hands. Whether

this evening call improved my position as musical conductor in Dresden

in the minds of the theatrical officials and others, may well be

doubted; but, at all events, on no occasion was I so frantically called

for after every act as at this particular performance of Rienzi.

Indeed, at this time I seemed to have won over to my side a party of

almost passionate adherents among the theatre-going public, in

opposition to the clique which had shown such marked coldness on the

occasion of the gala concert already mentioned. It mattered not whether

Tannhäuser or Rienzi were being played, I was always greeted with

special applause; and although the political tendencies of this party

may have given our management some cause for alarm, yet it forced them

to regard me with a certain amount of awe. One day Lüttichau proposed

to have my Lohengrin performed at an early date. I explained my reasons

for not having offered it to him before, but declared myself ready to

further his wishes, as I considered the opera company was now

sufficiently powerful. The son of my old friend, F. Heine, had just

returned from Paris, where he had been sent by the Dresden management

to study scene-painting under the artists Desplechin and Dieterle. By

way of testing his powers, with a view to an engagement at the Dresden

Royal Theatre, the task of preparing suitable scenery for this opera

was entrusted to him. He had already asked permission to do this for

Lohengrin at the instigation of Lüttichau, who wished to call attention

to my latest work. Consequently, when I gave my consent, young Heine’s

wish was granted.

I regarded this turn of events with no little satisfaction, believing

that in the study of this particular work I should find a wholesome and

effective diversion from all the excitement and confusion of recent

events. My horror, therefore, was all the greater, when young Wilhelm

Heine one day came to my room with the news that the scenery for

Lohengrin had been suddenly countermanded, and instructions given him

to prepare for another opera. I did not make any remark, nor ask the

reason for this singular behaviour. The assurances which Luttichan

afterwards made to my wife—if they were really true—made me regret

having laid the chief blame for this mortification at his door, and

having thereby irrevocably alienated my sympathy from him. When she

asked him about this many years later, he assured her that he had found

the court vehemently hostile to me, and that his well-meant attempts to

produce my work had met with insuperable obstacles.

However that may have been, the bitterness I now experienced wrought a

decisive effect upon my feelings. Not only did I relinquish all hope of

a reconciliation with the theatre authorities by a splendid production

of my Lohengrin, but I determined to turn my back for ever on the

theatre, and to make no further attempt to meddle with its concerns. By

this act I expressed not merely my utter indifference as to whether I

kept my position as musical conductor or no, but my artistic ambitions

also entirely cut me off from all possibility of ever cultivating

modern theatrical conditions again.

I at once proceeded to execute my long-cherished plans for Siegfried’s

Tod, which I had been half afraid of before. In this work I no longer

gave a thought to the Dresden or any other court theatre in the world;

my sole preoccupation was to produce something that should free me,

once and for all, from this irrational subservience. As I could get

nothing more from Röckel in this connection, I now corresponded

exclusively with Eduard Devrient on matters connected with the theatre

and dramatic art. When, on the completion of my poem, I read it to him,

he listened with amazement, and at once realised the fact that such a

production would be an absolute drug in the modern theatrical market,

and he naturally could not agree to let it remain so. On the other

hand, he tried so far to reconcile himself to my work as to try and

make it less startling and more adapted for actual production. He

proved the sincerity of his intentions by pointing out my error in

asking too much of the public, and requiring it to supply from its own

knowledge many things necessary for a right under-standing of my

subject-matter, at which I had only hinted in brief and scattered

suggestions. He showed me, for instance, that before Siegfried and

Brunhilda are displayed in a position of bitter hostility towards each

other, they ought first to have been presented in their true and calmer

relationship. I had, in fact, opened the poem of SIEGFRIED’S TOD with

those scenes which now form the first act of the GOTTERDAMMERUNG. The

details of Siegfried’s relation to Brunhilda had been merely outlined

to the listeners in a lyrico-episodical dialogue between the hero’s

wife, whom he had left behind in solitude, and a crowd of Valkyries

passing before her rock. To my great joy, Devrient’s hint on this point

directed my thoughts to those scenes which I afterwards worked out in

the prologue of this drama.

This and other matters of a similar nature brought me into intimate

contact with Eduard Devrient, and made our intercourse much more lively

and pleasant. He often invited a select circle of friends to attend

dramatic readings at his house in which I gladly took part, for I

found, to my surprise, that his gift for declamation, which quite

forsook him on the stage, here stood out in strong relief. It was,

moreover, a consolation to pour into a sympathetic ear my worries about

my growing unpopularity with the director. Devrient seemed particularly

anxious to prevent a definite breach; but of this there was little

hope. With the approach of winter the court had returned to town, and

once more frequented the theatre, and various signs of dissatisfaction

in high quarters with my behaviour as conductor began to be manifested.

On one occasion the Queen thought that I had conducted NORMA badly, and

on another that I ‘had taken the time wrongly’ in ROBERT THE DEVIL. As

Luettichau had to communicate these reprimands to me, it was natural

that our intercourse at such times should hardly be of a nature to

restore our mutual satisfaction with each other.

Notwithstanding all this, it still seemed possible to prevent matters

from coming to a crisis, though everything continued in a state of

agitating uncertainty and fermentation. At all events the forces of

reaction, which were holding themselves in readiness on every side,

were not yet sufficiently certain that the hour of their triumph had

come as not to consider it advisable for the present, at least, to

avoid all provocation. Consequently our management did not meddle with

the musicians of the royal orchestra, who, in obedience to the spirit

of the times, had formed a union for debate and the protection of their

artistic and civic interests. In this matter one of our youngest

musicians, Theodor Uhlig, had been particularly active. He was a young

man, still in his early twenties, and was a violinist in the orchestra.

His face was strikingly mild, intelligent and noble, and he was

conspicuous among his fellows on account of his great seriousness and

his quiet but unusually firm character. He had particularly attracted

my notice on several occasions by his quick insight and extensive

knowledge of music. As I recognised in him a spirit keenly alert in

every direction, and unusually eager for culture, it was not long

before I chose him as my companion in my regular walks—a habit I still

continued to cultivate—and on which Roeckel had hitherto accompanied

me. He induced me to come to a meeting of this union of the orchestral

company, in order that I might form an opinion about it, and encourage

and support so praiseworthy a movement. On this occasion I communicated

to its members the contents of my memorandum to the director, which had

been rejected a year before, and in which I had made suggestions for

reforms in the band, and I also explained further intentions and plans

arising therefrom. At the same time I was obliged to confess that I had

lost all hope of carrying out any projects of the kind through the

general management, and must therefore recommend them to take the

initiative vigorously into their own hands. They acclaimed the idea

with enthusiastic approval. Although, as I have said before, Luettichau

left these musicians unmolested in their more or less democratic union,

yet he took care to be informed through spies of what took place at

their highly treasonable gatherings. His chief instrument was a bugler

named Lewy, who, much to the disgust of all his comrades in the

orchestra, was in particularly high favour with the director. He

consequently received precise, or rather exaggerated, accounts of my

appearance there, and thought it was now high time to let me once more

feel the weight of his authority. I was officially summoned to his

presence, and had to listen to a long and wrathful tirade which he had

been bottling up for some time about several matters. I also learned

that he knew all about the plan of theatre reform which I had laid

before the ministry. This knowledge he betrayed in a popular Dresden

phrase, which until then I had never heard; he knew very well, he said,

that in a memorandum respecting the theatre I had ‘made him look

ridiculous’ (ihm an den Laden gelegt). In answer to this I did not

refrain from telling him how I intended to act in retaliation, and when

he threatened to report me to the King and demand my dismissal, I

calmly replied that he might do as he pleased, as I was well assured

that I could rely on his Majesty’s justice to hear, not only his

charges, but also my defence. Moreover, I added, this was the only

befitting manner for me to discuss with the King the many points on

which I had to complain, not only in my own interests, but also in

those of the theatre and of art. This was not pleasant hearing for

Lüttichau, and he asked how it was possible for him to try and

co-operate with me, when I for my part had openly declared (to use his

own expression) that all labour was wasted upon him (Hopfen und Malz

verloren seien). We had at last to part with mutual shruggings of the

shoulder. My conduct seemed to trouble my former patron, and he

therefore enlisted the tact and moderation of Eduard Devrient in his

service, and asked him to use his influence with me to facilitate some

further arrangement between us. But, in spite of all his zeal, Devrient

had to admit with a smile, after we had discussed his message, that

nothing much could be done; and as I persisted in my refusal to meet

the director again in consultation respecting the service of the

theatre, he had at last to recognise that his own wisdom would have to

help him out of the difficulty.

Throughout the whole period during which I was fated to fill the post

of conductor at Dresden, the effects of this dislike on the part of the

court and the director continued to make themselves felt in everything.

The orchestral concerts, which had been organised by me in the previous

winter, were this year placed under Reissiger’s control, and at once

sank to the usual level of ordinary concerts. Public interest quickly

waned, and the undertaking could only with difficulty be kept alive. In

opera I was unable to carry out the proposed revival of the Fliegender

Holländer, for which I had found in Mitterwurzer’s maturer talent an

admirable and promising exponent. My niece Johanna, whom I had destined

for the part of Senta, did not like the role, because it offered little

opportunity for splendid costumes. She preferred ZAMPA and FAVORITA,

partly to please her new protector, my erstwhile RIENZI enthusiast,

Tichatschck, partly for the sake of THREE BRILLIANT COSTUMES which the

management had to furnish for each of these parts. In fact, these two

ringleaders of the Dresden opera of that day had formed an alliance of

rebellion against my vigorous rule in the matter of operatic

repertoire. Their opposition, to my great discomfiture, was crowned by

success when they secured the production of this FAVORITA of

Donizetti’s, the arrangement of which I had once been obliged to

undertake for Schlesinger in Paris. I had at first emphatically refused

to have anything to do with this opera, although its principal part

suited my niece’s voice admirably, even in her father’s judgment. But

now that they knew of my feud with the director, and of my voluntary

loss of influence, and finally of my evident disgrace, they thought the

opportunity ripe for compelling me to conduct this tiresome work

myself, as it happened to be my turn.

Besides this, my chief occupation at the royal theatre during this

period consisted in conducting Flotow’s opera MARTHA, which, although

it failed to attract the public, was nevertheless produced with

excessive frequency, owing to its convenient cast. On reviewing the

results of my labours in Dresden—where I had now been nearly seven

years—I could not help feeling humiliated when I considered the

powerful and energetic impetus I knew I had given in many directions to

the court theatre, and I found myself obliged to confess that, were I

now to leave Dresden, not, the smallest trace of my influence would

remain behind. From various signs I also gathered that, if ever it

should come to a trial before the King between the director and myself,

even if his Majesty were in my favour, yet out of consideration for the

courtier the verdict would go against me.

Nevertheless, on Palm Sunday of the new year, 1849, I received ample

amends. In order to ensure liberal receipts, our orchestra had again

decided to produce Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Every one did his utmost

to make this one of our finest performances, and the public took up the

matter with real enthusiasm. Michael Bakunin, unknown to the police,

had been present at the public rehearsal. At its close he walked

unhesitatingly up to me in the orchestra, and said in a loud voice,

that if all the music that had ever been written were lost in the

expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge ourselves to rescue

this symphony, even at the peril of our lives. Not many weeks after

this performance it really seemed as though this world-wide

conflagration would actually be kindled in the streets of Dresden, and

that Bakunin, with whom I had meanwhile become more closely associated

through strange and unusual circumstances, would undertake the office

of chief stoker.

It was long before this date that I first made the acquaintance of this

most remarkable man. For years I had come across his name in the

newspapers, and always under extraordinary circumstances. He turned up

in Paris at a Polish gathering, but although he was a Russian, he

declared that it mattered little whether a man were a Russian or a

Pole, so long as he wanted to be a free man, and that this was all that

mattered. I heard afterwards, through George Herwegh, that he had

renounced all his sources of income as a member of an influential

Russian family, and that one day, when his entire fortune consisted of

two francs, he had given them away to a beggar on the boulevard,

because it was irksome to him to be bound by this possession to take

any thought for the morrow. I was informed of his presence in Dresden

one day by Röckel, after the latter had become a rampant republican. He

had taken the Russian into his house, and invited me to come and make

his acquaintance. Bakunin was at that time being persecuted by the

Austrian government for his share in the events which took place in

Prague in the summer of 1848, and because he was a member of the Slav

Congress which had preceded them. He had consequently sought refuge in

our city, as he did not wish to settle too far from the Bohemian

frontier. The extraordinary sensation he had created in Prague arose

from the fact that, when the Czechs sought the protection of Russia

against the dreaded Germanising policy of Austria, he conjured them to

defend themselves with fire and sword against those very Russians, and

indeed against any other people who lived under the rule of a despotism

like that of the Tsars. This superficial acquaintance with Balumin’s

aims had sufficed to change the purely national prejudices of the

Germans against him into sympathy. When I met him, therefore, under the

humble shelter of Röckel’s roof, I was immediately struck by his

singular and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom

of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age. Everything

about him was colossal, and he was full of a primitive exuberance and

strength. I never gathered that he set much store by my acquaintance.

Indeed, he did not seem to care for merely intellectual men; what he

demanded was men of reckless energy. As I afterwards perceived, theory

in this case had more weight with him than purely personal sentiment;

and he talked much and expatiated freely on the matter. His general

mode of discussion was the Socratic method, and he seemed quite at his

ease when, stretched on his host’s hard sofa, he could argue

discursively with a crowd of all sorts of men on the problems of

revolution. On these occasions he invariably got the best of the

argument. It was impossible to triumph against his opinions, stated as

they were with the utmost conviction, and overstepping in every

direction even the extremest bounds of radicalism. So communicative was

he, that on the very first evening of our meeting he gave me full

details about the various stages of his development, he was a Russian

officer of high birth, but smarting under the yoke of the narrowest

martial tyranny, he had been led by a study of Rousseau’s writings to

escape to Germany under pretence of taking furlough. In Berlin he had

flung himself into the study of philosophy with all the zest of a

barbarian newly awakened to civilisation. Hegel’s philosophy was the

one which was the rage at that moment, and he soon became such an

expert in it, that he had been able to hurl that master’s most famous

disciples from the saddle of their own philosophy, in a thesis couched

in terms of the strictest Hegelian dialectic. After he had got

philosophy off his chest, as he expressed it, he proceeded to

Switzerland, where he preached communism, and thence wandered over

France and Germany back to the borderland of the Slav world, from which

quarter he looked for the regeneration of humanity, because the Slavs

had been less enervated by civilisation. His hopes in this respect were

centred in the more strongly pronounced Slav type characteristic of the

Russian peasant class. In the natural detestation of the Russian serf

for his cruel oppressor the nobleman, he believed he could trace a

substratum of simple-minded brotherly love, and that instinct which

leads animals to hate the men who hunt them. In support of this idea he

cited the childish, almost demoniac delight of the Russian people in

fire, a quality on which Rostopschin calculated in his strategic

burning of Moscow. He argued that all that was necessary to set in

motion a world-wide movement was to convince the Russian peasant, in

whom the natural goodness of oppressed human nature had preserved its

most childlike characteristics, that it was perfectly right and well

pleasing to God for them to burn their lords’ castles, with everything

in and about them. The least that could result from such a movement

would be the destruction of all those things which, rightly considered,

must appear, even to Europe’s most philosophical thinkers, the real

source of all the misery of the modern world. To set these destructive

forces in action appeared to him the only object worthy of a sensible

man’s activity. (Even while he was preaching these horrible doctrines,

Bakunin, noticing that my eyes troubled me, shielded them with his

outstretched hand from the naked light for a full hour, in spite of my

protestations.) This annihilation of all civilisation was the goal upon

which his heart was set. Meanwhile it amused him to utilise every lever

of political agitation he could lay hands on for the advancement of

this aim, and in so doing he often found cause for ironical merriment.

In his retreat he received people belonging to every shade of

revolutionary thought. Nearest to him stood those of Slav nationality,

because these, he thought, would be the most convenient and effective

weapons he could use in the uprooting of Russian despotism. In spite of

their republic and their socialism a la Proudhon, he thought nothing of

the French, and as for the Germans, he never mentioned them to me.

Democracy, republicanism, and anything else of the kind he regarded as

unworthy of serious consideration.

Every objection raised by those who had the slightest wish to

reconstruct what had been demolished, he met with overwhelming

criticism. I well remember on one occasion that a Pole, startled by his

theories, maintained that there must be an organised state to guarantee

the individual in the possession of the fields he had cultivated.

‘What!’ he answered; ‘would you carefully fence in your field to

provide a livelihood for the police again!’ This shut the mouth of the

terrified Pole. He comforted himself by saying that the creators of the

new order of things would arise of themselves, but that our sole

business in the meantime was to find the power to destroy. Was any one

of us so mad as to fancy that he would survive the desired destruction?

We ought to imagine the whole of Europe with St. Petersburg, Paris, and

London transformed into a vast rubbish-heap. How could we expect the

kindlers of such a fire to retain any consciousness after so vast a

devastation? He used to puzzle any who professed their readiness for

self-sacrifice by telling them it was not the so-called tyrants who

were so obnoxious, but the smug Philistines. As a type of these he

pointed to a Protestant parson, and declared that he would not believe

he had really reached the full stature of a man until he saw him commit

his own parsonage, with his wife and child, to the flames.

I was all the more perplexed for a while, in the face of such dreadful

ideas, by the fact that Bakunin in other respects proved a really

amiable and tender-hearted man. He was fully alive to my own anxiety

and despair with regard to the risk I ran of forever destroying my

ideals and hopes for the future of art. It is true, he declined to

receive any further instruction concerning these artistic schemes, and

would not even look at my work on the Nibelungen saga. I had just then

been inspired by a study of the Gospels to conceive the plan of a

tragedy for the ideal stage of the future, entitled Jesus of Nazareth.

Bakunin begged me to spare him any details; and when I sought to win

him over to my project by a few verbal hints, he wished me luck, but

insisted that I must at all costs make Jesus appear as a weak

character. As for the music of the piece, he advised me, amid all the

variations, to use only one set of phrases, namely: for the tenor, ‘Off

with His head!’; for the soprano, ‘Hang Him!’; and for the basso

continuo, ‘Fire! fire!’ And yet I felt more sympathetically drawn

towards this prodigy of a man when I one day induced him to hear me

play and sing the first scenes of my Fliegender Holländer. After

listening with more attention than most people gave, he exclaimed,

during a momentary pause, ‘That is stupendously fine!’ and wanted to

hear more.

As his life of permanent concealment was very dull, I occasionally

invited him to spend an evening with me. For supper my wife set before

him finely cut slices of sausage and meat, which he at once devoured

wholesale, instead of spreading them frugally on his bread in Saxon

fashion. Noticing Minna’s alarm at this, I was guilty of the weakness

of telling him how we were accustomed to consume such viands, whereupon

he reassured me with a laugh, saying that it was quite enough, only he

would like to eat what was set before him in his own way. I was

similarly astonished at the manner in which he drank wine from our

ordinary-sized small glasses. As a matter of fact he detested wine,

which only satisfied his craving for alcoholic stimulants in such

paltry, prolonged, and subdivided doses; whereas a stiff glass of

brandy, swallowed at a gulp, at once produced the same result, which,

after all, was only temporarily attained. Above all, he scorned the

sentiment which seeks to prolong enjoyment by moderation, arguing that

a true man should only strive to still the cravings of nature, and that

the only real pleasure in life worthy of a man was love.

These and other similar little characteristics showed clearly that in

this remarkable man the purest impulses of an ideal humanity conflicted

strangely with a savagery entirely inimical to all civilisation, so

that my feelings during my intercourse with him fluctuated between

involuntary horror and irresistible attraction. I frequently called for

him to share my lonely wanderings. This he gladly did, not only for the

sake of necessary bodily exercise, but also because he could do so in

this part of the world without fear of meeting his pursuers. My

attempts during our conversations to instruct him more fully regarding

my artistic aims remained quite unavailing as long as we were unable to

quit the field of mere discussion. All these things seemed to him

premature. He refused to admit that out of the very needs of the evil

present all laws for the future would have to be evolved, and that

these, moreover, must be moulded upon quite different ideas of social

culture. Seeing that he continued to urge destruction, and again

destruction, I had at last to inquire how my wonderful friend proposed

to set this work of destruction in operation. It then soon became

clear, as I had suspected it would, and as the event soon proved, that

with this man of boundless activity everything rested upon the most

impossible hypotheses. Doubtless I, with my hopes of a future artistic

remodelling of human society, appeared to him to be floating in the

barren air; yet it soon became obvious to me that his assumptions as to

the unavoidable demolition of all the institutions of culture were at

least equally visionary. My first idea was that Bakunin was the centre

of an international conspiracy; but his practical plans seem originally

to have been restricted to a project for revolutionising Prague, where

he relied merely on a union formed among a handful of students.

Believing that the time had now come to strike a blow, he prepared

himself one evening to go there. This proceeding was not free from

danger, and he set off under the protection of a passport made out for

an English merchant. First of all, however, with the view of adapting

himself to the most Philistine culture, he had to submit his huge beard

and bushy hair to the tender mercies of the razor and shears. As no

barber was available, Röckel had to undertake the task. A small group

of friends watched the operation, which had to be executed with a dull

razor, causing no little pain, under which none but the victim himself

remained passive. We bade farewell to Bakunin with the firm conviction

that we should never see him again alive. But in a week he was back

once more, as he had realised immediately what a distorted account he

had received as to the state of things in Prague, where all he found

ready for him was a mere handful of childish students. These admissions

made him the butt of Röckel’s good-humoured chaff, and after this he

won the reputation among us of being a mere revolutionary, who was

content with theoretical conspiracy. Very similar to his expectations

from the Prague students were his presumptions with regard to the

Russian people. These also afterwards proved to be entirely groundless,

and based merely on gratuitous assumptions drawn from the supposed

nature of things. I consequently found myself driven to explain the

universal belief in the terrible dangerousness of this man by his

theoretical views, as expressed here and elsewhere, and not as arising

from any actual experience of his practical activity. But I was soon to

become almost an eye-witness of the fact that his personal conduct was

never for a moment swayed by prudence, such as one is accustomed to

meet in those whose theories are not seriously meant. This was shortly

to be proved in the momentous insurrection of May, 1849.

The winter of this year, up to the spring of 1849, passed in a

many-sided development of my position and temper, as I have described

them, that is to say, in a sort of dull agitation. My latest artistic

occupation had been the five-act drama, Jesus of Nazareth, just

mentioned. Henceforth I lingered on in a state of brooding instability,

full of expectation, yet without any definite wish. I felt fully

convinced that my activity in Dresden, as an artist, had come to an

end, and I was only waiting for the pressure of circumstances to shake

myself free. On the other hand, the whole political situation, both in

Saxony and the rest of Germany, tended inevitably towards a

catastrophe. Day by day this drew nearer, and I flattered myself into

regarding my own personal fate as interwoven with this universal

unrest. Now that the powers of reaction were everywhere more and more

openly bracing themselves for conflict, the final decisive struggle

seemed indeed close at hand. My feelings of partisanship were not

sufficiently passionate to make me desire to take any active share in

these conflicts. I was merely conscious of an impulse to give myself up

recklessly to the stream of events, no matter whither it might lead.

Just at this moment, however, an entirely new influence forced itself

in a most strange fashion into my fortunes, and was at first greeted by

me with a smile of scepticism. Liszt wrote announcing an early

production in Weimar of my Tannhäuser under his own conductorship—the

first that had taken place outside Dresden—and he added with great

modesty that this was merely a fulfilment of his own personal desire.

In order to ensure success he had sent a special invitation to

Tichatschek to be his guest for the two first performances. When the

latter returned he said that the production had, on the whole, been a

success, which surprised me very much. I received a gold snuff-box from

the Grand Duke as a keepsake, which I continued to use until the year

1864. All this was new and strange to me, and I was still inclined to

regard this otherwise agreeable occurrence as a fleeting episode, due

to the friendly feeling of a great artist. ‘What does this mean for

me?’ I asked myself. ‘Has it come too early or too late?’ But a very

cordial letter from Liszt induced me to visit Weimar for a few days

later on, for a third performance of Tannhausar, which was to be

carried out entirely by native talent, with a view to the permanent

addition of this opera to the repertoire. For this purpose I obtained

leave of absence from my management for the second week in May.

Only a few days elapsed before the execution of this little plan; but

they were destined to be momentous ones. On the 1st of May the Chambers

were dissolved by the new Beust ministry, which the King had charged

with carrying out his proposed reactionary policy. This event imposed

upon me the friendly task of caring for Röckel and his family. Hitherto

his position as a deputy had shielded him from the danger of criminal

prosecution; but as soon as the Chambers were dissolved this protection

was withdrawn, and he had to escape by flight from being arrested

again. As I could do little to help him in this matter, I promised at

least to provide for the continued publication of his popular

Volksblatt, mainly because the proceeds from this would support his

family. Scarcely was Röckel safely across the Bohemian frontier, while

I was still toiling at great inconvenience to myself in the printer’s

office, in order to provide material for an issue of his paper, when

the long-expected storm burst over Dresden. Emergency deputations,

nightly mob demonstrations, stormy meetings of the various unions, and

all the other signs that precede a swift decision in the streets,

manifested themselves. On the 3rd May the demeanour of the crowds

moving in our thoroughfares plainly showed that this consummation would

soon be reached, as was undoubtedly desired. Each local deputation

which petitioned for the recognition of the German constitution, which

was the universal cry, was refused an audience by the government, and

this with a peremptoriness which at last became startling. I was

present one afternoon at a committee meeting of the Vaterlands-Verein,

although merely as a representative of Röckel’s Volksblatt, for whose

continuance, both from economic as well as humane motives, I felt

pledged. Here I was at once absorbed in watching the conduct and

demeanour of the men whom popular favour had raised to the leadership

of such unions. It was quite evident that events had passed beyond the

control of these persons; more particularly were they utterly at a loss

as to how to deal with that peculiar terrorism exerted by the lower

classes which is always so ready to react upon the representatives of

democratic theories. On every side I heard a medley of wild proposals

and hesitating responses. One of the chief subjects under debate was

the necessity of preparing for defence. Arms, and how to procure them,

were eagerly discussed, but all in the midst of great disorder; and

when at last they discovered that it was time to break up, the only

impression I received was one of the wildest confusion. I loft the hall

with a young painter named Kaufmann, from whose hand I had previously

seen a series of cartoons in the Dresden Art Exhibition, illustrating

‘The History of the Mind.’ One day I had seen the King of Saxony

standing before one of these, representing the torture of a heretic

under the Spanish Inquisition, and observed him turn away with a

disapproving shake of the head from so abstruse a subject. I was on my

way home, deep in conversation with this man, whose pale face and

troubled look betrayed that he foresaw the disaster that was imminent,

when, just as we reached the Postplatz, near the fountain erected from

Semper’s design, the clang of bells from the neighbouring tower of St.

Ann’s Church suddenly sounded the tocsin of revolt. With a terrified

cry, ‘Good God, it has begun!’ my companion vanished from my side. He

wrote to me—afterwards to say that he was living as a fugitive in

Berne, but I never saw his face again.

The clang of this bell, so close at hand, made a profound impression

upon me also. It was a very sunny afternoon, and I at once noticed the

same phenomenon which Goethe describes in his attempt to depict his own

sensations during the bombardment of Valmy. The whole square looked as

though it were illuminated by a dark yellow, almost brown, light, such

as I had once before seen in Magdeburg during an eclipse of the sun. My

most pronounced sensation beyond this was one of great, almost

extravagant, satisfaction. I felt a sudden strange longing to play with

something hitherto regarded as dangerous and important. My first idea,

suggested probably by the vicinity of the square, was to inquire at

Tichatschek’s house for the gun which, as an enthusiastic Sunday

sportsman, he was accustomed to use. I only found his wife at home, as

he was away on a holiday tour. Her evident terror as to what was going

to happen provoked me to uncontrollable laughter. I advised her to

lodge her husband’s gun in a place of safety, by handing it to the

committee of the Vaterlands-Verein in return for a receipt, as it might

otherwise soon be requisitioned by the mob. I have since learned that

my eccentric behaviour on this occasion, was afterwards reckoned

against me as a serious crime. I then returned to the streets, to see

whether anything beyond a ringing of bells and a yellowish eclipse of

the sun might be going on in the town, I first made my way to the Old

Market-place, where I noticed a group of men gathered round a

vociferous orator. It was also an agreeable surprise to me to see

Schroder-Devrient descending at the door of a hotel. She had just

arrived from Merlin, and was keenly excited by the news which had

reached her, that the populace had already been fired upon. As she had

only recently seen an abortive insurrection crushed by arms in Berlin,

she was indignant to find the same things happening in her ‘peaceful

Dresden’ as she termed it.

When she turned to me from the stolid crowd, which had complacently

been listening to her passionate outpourings, she seemed relieved at

finding some one to whom she could appeal to oppose these horrible

proceedings with all his might. I met her on another occasion at the

house of my old friend Heine, where she had taken refuge. When she

noticed my indifference she again adjured me to use every possible

effort to prevent the senseless, suicidal conflict. I heard afterwards

that a charge of high treason on account of sedition had been brought

against Schroder-Devrient by reason of her conduct in regard to this

matter. She had to prove her innocence in a court of law, so as to

establish beyond dispute her claim to the pension which she had been

promised by contract for her many years’ service in Dresden as an

opera-singer.

On the 3rd of May I betook myself direct to that quarter of the town

where I heard unpleasant rumours of a sanguinary conflict having taken

place. I afterwards learned that the actual cause of the dispute

between the civil and military power had arisen when the watch had been

changed in front of the Arsenal. At that moment the mob, under a bold

leader, had seized the opportunity to take forcible possession of the

armoury. A display of military force was made, and the crowd was fired

upon by a few cannon loaded with grape-shot. As I approached the scene

of operations through the Rampische Gasse, I met a company of the

Dresden Communal Guards, who, although they were quite innocent, had

apparently been exposed to this fire. I noticed that one of the citizen

guards, leaning heavily on the arm of a comrade, was trying to hurry

along, in spite of the fact that his right leg seemed to be dragging

helplessly behind him. Some of the crowd, seeing the blood on the

pavement behind him, shouted ‘He is bleeding.’ In the midst of this

excitement I suddenly became conscious of the cry raised on all sides:

‘To the barricades! to the barricades!’ Driven by a mechanical impulse

I followed the stream of people, which moved once more in the direction

of the Town Hall in the Old Market-place. Amid the terrific tumult I

particularly noticed a significant group stretching right across the

street, and striding along the Rosmaringasse. It reminded me, though

the simile was rather exaggerated, of the crowd that had once stood at

the doors of the theatre and demanded free entrance to Rienzi; among

them was a hunchback, who at once suggested Goethe’s Vansen in Egmont,

and as the revolutionary cry rose about his ears, I saw him rub his

hands together in great glee over the long-desired ecstasy of revolt

which he had realised at last.

I recollect quite clearly that from that moment I was attracted by

surprise and interest in the drama, without feeling any desire to join

the ranks of the combatants. However, the agitation caused by my

sympathy as a mere spectator increased with every step I felt impelled

to take. I was able to press right into the rooms of the town council,

escaping notice in the tumultuous crowd, and it seemed to me as if the

officials were guilty of collusion with the mob. I made my way

unobserved into the council-chamber; what I saw there was utter

disorder and confusion. When night fell I wandered slowly through the

hastily made barricades, consisting chiefly of market stalls, back to

my house in the distant Friedrichstrasse, and next morning I again

watched these amazing proceedings with sympathetic interest.

On Thursday, 4th May, I could see that the Town Hall was gradually

becoming the undoubted centre of the revolution. That section of the

people who had hoped for a peaceful understanding with the monarch was

thrown into the utmost consternation by the news that the King and his

whole court, acting on the advice of his minister Beust, had left the

palace, and had gone by ship down the Elbe to the fortress of

Konigstein. In those circumstances the town council saw they were no

longer able to face the situation, and thereupon took part in summoning

those members of the Saxon Chamber who were still in Dresden. These

latter now assembled in the Town Hall to decide what steps should be

taken for the protection of the state. A deputation was sent to the

ministry, but returned with the report that they were nowhere to be

found. At the same moment news arrived from all sides that, in

accordance with a previous compact, the King of Prussia’s troops would

advance to occupy Dresden. A general outcry immediately arose for

measures to be adopted to prevent this incursion of foreign troops.

Simultaneously with this, came the intelligence of the national

uprising in Wurtemberg, where the troops themselves had frustrated the

intentions of the government by their declaration of fidelity to the

parliament, and the ministry had been compelled against their will to

acknowledge the Pan-German Constitution. The opinion of our

politicians, who were assembled in consultation, was that the matter

might still be settled by peaceful means, if it were possible to induce

the Saxon troops to take up a similar attitude, as by this means the

King would at least be placed under the wholesome necessity of offering

patriotic resistance to the Prussian occupation of his country.

Everything seemed to depend on making the Saxon battalions in Dresden

understand the paramount importance of their action. As this seemed to

me the only hope of an honourable peace in this senseless chaos, I

confess that, on this one occasion, I did allow myself to be led astray

so far as to organise a demonstration which, however, proved futile.

I induced the printer of Röckel’s Volksblatt, which was for the moment

at a standstill, to employ all the type he would have used for his next

number, in printing in huge characters on strips of paper the words:

Seid Ihr mit uns gegen fremde Truppen? (‘Are you on our side against

the foreign troops?’). Placards bearing these words were fixed on those

barricades which it was thought would be the first to be assaulted, and

were intended to bring the Saxon troops to a halt if they were

commanded to attack the revolutionaries. Of course no one took any

notice of these placards except intending informers. On that day

nothing but confused negotiations and wild excitement took place which

threw no light on the situation. The Old Town of Dresden, with its

barricades, was an interesting enough sight for the spectators. I

looked on with amazement and disgust, but my attention was suddenly

distracted by seeing Bakunin emerge from his hiding-place and wander

among the barricades in a black frockcoat. But I was very much mistaken

in thinking he would be pleased with what he saw; he recognised the

childish inefficiency of all the measures that had been taken for

defence, and declared that the only satisfaction he could feel in the

state of affairs was that he need not trouble about the police, but

could calmly consider the question of going elsewhere, as he found no

inducement to take part in an insurrection conducted in such a slovenly

fashion. While he walked about, smoking his cigar, and making fun of

the naivete of the Dresden revolution, I watched the Communal Guards

assembling under arms in front of the Town Hall at the summons of their

commandant. From the ranks of its most popular corps, the

Schützen-Compagnie, I was accosted by Rietschel, who was most anxious

about the nature of the rising, and also by Semper. Rietschel, who

seemed to think I was better informed of the facts than he was, assured

me that he felt his position was a very difficult one. He said the

select company to which he belonged was very democratic, and as his

professorship at the Fine Arts Academy placed him in a peculiar

position, he did not know how to reconcile the sentiments he shared

with his company with his duty as a citizen. The word ‘citizen’ amused

me; I glanced sharply at Semper and repeated the word ‘citizen.’ Semper

responded with a peculiar smile, and turned away without further

comment.

The next day (Friday the 5th of May), when I again took my place as a

passionately interested spectator of the proceedings at the Town Hall,

events took a decisive turn. The remnant of the leaders of the Saxon

people there assembled thought it advisable to constitute themselves

into a provisional government, as there was no Saxon government in

existence with which negotiations could be conducted. Professor Kochly,

who was an eloquent speaker, was chosen to proclaim the new

administration. He performed this solemn ceremony from the balcony of

the Town Hall, facing the faithful remnant of the Communal Guards and

the not very numerous crowd. At the same time the legal existence of

the Pan-German Constitution was proclaimed, and allegiance to it was

sworn by the armed forces of the nation. I recollect that these

proceedings did not seem to me imposing, and Bakunin’s reiterated

opinion about their triviality gradually became more comprehensible.

Even from a technical point of view these reflections were justified

when, to my great amusement and surprise, Semper, in the full uniform

of a citizen guard, with a hat bedecked with the national colours,

asked for me at the Town Hall, and informed me of the extremely faulty

construction of the barricades in the Wild Strufergasse and the

neighbouring Brudergasse. To pacify his artistic conscience as an

engineer I directed him to the office of the ‘Military Commission for

the Defence.’ He followed my advice with conscientious satisfaction;

possibly he obtained the necessary authorisation to give instructions

for the building of suitable works of defence at that neglected point.

After that I never saw him again in Dresden; but I presume that he

carried out the strategic works entrusted to him by that committee with

all the conscientiousness of a Michael Angelo or a Leonardo da Vinci.

The rest of the day passed in continuous negotiations over the truce

which, by arrangement with the Saxon troops, was to last until noon of

the next day. In this business I noticed the very pronounced activity

of a former college friend, Marschall von Bieberstein, a lawyer who, in

his capacity as senior officer of the Dresden Communal Guard,

distinguished himself by his boundless zeal amid the shouts of a mighty

band of fellow-orators. On that day a certain Heinz, formerly a Greek

colonel, was placed in command of the armed forces. These proceedings

did not seem at all satisfactory to Bakunin, who put in an occasional

appearance. While the provisional government placed all its hopes on

finding a peaceful settlement of the conflict by moral persuasion, he,

on the contrary, with his clear vision foresaw a well-planned military

attack by the Prussians, and thought it could only be met by good

strategic measures. He therefore urgently pressed for the acquisition

of some experienced Polish officers who happened to be in Dresden, as

the Saxon revolutionaries appeared to be absolutely lacking in military

tactics. Everybody was afraid to take this course; on the other hand,

great expectations were entertained from negotiations with the

Frankfort States Assembly, which was on its last legs. Everything was

to be done as far as possible in legal form. The time passed pleasantly

enough. Elegant ladies with their cavaliers promenaded the barricaded

streets during those beautiful spring evenings. It seemed to be little

more than an entertaining drama. The unaccustomed aspect of things even

afforded me genuine pleasure, combined with a feeling that the whole

thing was not quite serious, and that a friendly proclamation from the

government would put an end to it. So I strolled comfortably home

through the numerous barricades at a late hour, thinking as I went of

the material for a drama, Achilleus, with which I had been occupied for

some time.

At home I found my two nieces, Clara and Ottilie Brockhaus, the

daughters of my sister Louisa. They had been living for a year with a

governess in Dresden, and their weekly visits and contagious good

spirits delighted me. Every one was in a high state of glee about the

revolution; they all heartily approved of the barricades, and felt no

scruples about desiring victory for their defenders. Protected by the

truce, this state of mind remained undisturbed the whole of Friday (5th

May). From all parts came news which led us to believe in a universal

uprising throughout Germany. Baden and the Palatinate were in the

throes of a revolt on behalf of the whole of Germany. Similar rumours

came in from free towns like Breslau. In Leipzig, volunteer student

corps had mustered contingents for Dresden, which arrived amid the

exultation of the populace. A fully equipped defence department was

organised at the Town Hall, and young Heine, disappointed like myself

in his hopes of the performance of Lohengrin, had also joined this

body. Vigorous promises of support came from the Saxon Erzgebirge, as

well as announcements that armed contingents were forthcoming. Every

one thought, therefore, that if only the Old Town were kept well

barricaded, it could safely defy the threat of foreign occupation.

Early on Saturday, 6th May, it was obvious that the situation was

becoming more serious. Prussian troops had marched into the New Town,

and the Saxon troops, which it had not been considered advisable to use

for an attack, were kept loyal to the flag. The truce expired at noon,

and the troops, supported by several guns, at once opened the attack on

one, of the principal positions held by the people on the Neumarkt.

So far I had entertained no other conviction than that the matter would

be decided in the most summary fashion as soon as it came to an actual

conflict, for there was no evidence in the state of my own feelings

(or, indeed, in what I was able to gather independently of them) of

that passionate seriousness of purpose, without which tests as severe

as this have never been successfully withstood. It was irritating to

me, while I heard the sharp rattle of fire, to be unable to gather

anything of what was going on, and I thought by climbing the Kreuz

tower I might get a good view. Even from this elevation I could not see

anything clearly, but I gathered enough to satisfy myself that after an

hour of heavy firing the advance artillery of the Prussian troops had

retired, and had at last been completely silenced, their withdrawal

being signalled by a loud shout of jubilation from the populace.

Apparently the first attack had exhausted itself; and now my interest

in what was going on began to assume a more and more vivid hue. To

obtain information in greater detail I hurried back to the Town Hall. I

could extract nothing, however, from the boundless confusion which I

met, until at last I came upon Bakunin in the midst of the main group

of speakers. He was able to give me an extraordinarily accurate account

of what had happened. Information had reached headquarters from a

barricade in the Neumarkt where the attack was most serious, that

everything had been in a state of confusion there before the onslaught

of the troops; thereupon my friend Marschall von Bieberstein, together

with Leo von Zichlinsky, who were officers in the citizen corps, had

called up some volunteers and conducted them to the place of danger.

Kreis-Amtmann Heubner of Freiberg, without a weapon to defend himself,

and with bared head, jumped immediately on to the top of the barricade,

which had just been abandoned by all its defenders. He was the sole

member of the provisional government to remain on the spot, the

leaders, Todt and Tschirner, having disappeared at the first sign of a

panic. Heubner turned round to exhort the volunteers to advance,

addressing them in stirring words. His success was complete, the

barricade was taken again, and a fire, as unexpected as it was fierce,

was directed upon the troops, which, as I myself saw, were forced to

retire. Bakunin had been in close touch with this action, he had

followed the volunteers, and he now explained to me that however narrow

might be the political views of Heubner (he belonged to the moderate

Left of the Saxon Chamber), he was a man of noble character, at whose

service he had immediately placed his own life.

Bakunin had only needed this example to determine his own line of

conduct; he had decided to risk his neck in the attempt and to ask no

further questions. Heubner too was now bound to recognise the necessity

for extreme measures, and no longer recoiled from any proposal on the

part of Bakunin which was directed to this end. The military advice of

experienced Polish officers was brought to bear on the commandant,

whose incapacity had not been slow to reveal itself; Bakunin, who

openly confessed that he understood nothing of pure strategy, never

moved from the Town Hall, but remained at Heubner’s side, giving advice

and information in every direction with wonderful sangfroid. For the

rest of the day the battle confined itself to skirmishes by

sharpshooters from the various positions. I was itching to climb the

Kreuz tower again, so as to get the widest possible survey over the

whole field of action. In order to reach this tower from the Town Hall,

one had to pass through a space which was under a cross-fire of

rifle-shots from the troops posted in the royal palace. At a moment

when this square was quite deserted, I yielded to my daring impulse,

and crossed it on my way to the Kreuz tower at a slow pace, remembering

that in such circumstances the young soldier is advised never to hurry,

because by so doing he may draw the shot upon himself. On reaching this

post of vantage I found several people who had gathered there, some of

them driven by a curiosity like my own, others in obedience to an order

from the headquarters of the revolutionaries to reconnoitre the enemy’s

movements. Amongst them I made the acquaintance of a schoolmaster

called Berthold, a man of quiet and gentle disposition, but full of

conviction and determination. I lost myself in an earnest philosophical

discussion with him which extended to the widest spheres of religion.

At the same time he showed a homely anxiety to protect us from the

cone-shaped bullets of the Prussian sharpshooters by placing us

ingeniously behind a barricade consisting of one of the straw

mattresses which he had cajoled out of the warder. The Prussian

sharpshooters were posted on the distant tower of the Frauenkirche, and

had chosen the height occupied by us as their target. At nightfall I

found it impossible to make up my mind to go home and leave my

interesting place of refuge, so I persuaded the warder to send a

subordinate to Friedrichstadt with a few lines to my wife, and with

instructions to ask her to let me have some necessary provisions. Thus

I spent one of the most extraordinary nights of my life, taking turns

with Berthold to keep watch and sleep, close beneath the great bell

with its terrible groaning clang, and with the accompaniment of the

continuous rattle of the Prussian shot as it beat against the tower

walls.

Sunday (the 7th of May) was one of the most beautiful days in the year.

I was awakened by the song of a nightingale, which rose to our ears

from the Schütze garden close by. A sacred calm and peacefulness lay

over the town and the wide suburbs of Dresden, which were visible from

my point of vantage. Towards sunrise a mist settled upon the outskirts,

and suddenly through its folds we could hear the music of the

Marseillaise making its way clearly and distinctly from the district of

the Tharanderstrasse. As the sound drew nearer and nearer, the mist

dispersed, and the glow of the rising sun spread a glittering light

upon the weapons of a long column which was winding its way towards the

town. It was impossible not to feel deeply impressed at the sight of

this continuous procession. Suddenly a perception of that element which

I had so long missed in the German people was borne in upon me in all

its essential freshness and vital colour. The fact that until this

moment I had been obliged to resign myself to its absence, had

contributed not a little to the feelings by which I had been swayed.

Here I beheld some thousand men from the Erzgebirge, mostly miners,

well armed and organised, who had rallied to the defence of Dresden.

Soon we saw them march up the Altmarkt opposite the Town Hall, and

after receiving a joyful welcome, bivouac there to recover from their

journey. Reinforcements continued to pour in the whole day long, and

the heroic achievement of the previous day now received its reward in

the shape of a universal elevation of spirits. A change seemed to have

been made in the plan of attack by the Prussian troops. This could be

gathered from the fact that numerous simultaneous attacks, but of a

less concentrated type, were made upon various positions. The troops

which had come to reinforce us brought with them four small cannon, the

property of a certain Herr Thade von Burgk, whose acquaintance I had

made before on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the

Dresden Choral Society, when he had made a speech which was well

intentioned but wearisome to the point of being ludicrous. The

recollection of this speech returned to me with peculiar irony, now

that his cannon were being fired from the barricade upon the enemy. I

felt a still deeper impression, however, when, towards eleven o’clock,

I saw the old Opera House, in which a few weeks ago I had conducted the

last performance of the Ninth Symphony, burst into flames. As I have

had occasion to mention before, the danger from fire to which this

building was exposed, full as it was with wood and all kind of textile

fabric, and originally built only for a temporary purpose, had always

been a subject of terror and apprehension to those who visited it.

I was told that the Opera House had been set alight on strategical

grounds, in order to face a dangerous attack on this exposed side, and

also to protect the famous ‘Semper’ barricade from an overpowering

surprise. From this I concluded that reasons of this kind act as far

more powerful motives in the world than aesthetic considerations. For a

long time men of taste had vainly cried aloud for abolition of this

ugly building which was such an eyesore by the side of the elegant

proportions of the Zwinger Gallery in its neighbourhood. In a few

moments the Opera House (which as regards size was, it is true, an

imposing edifice), together with its highly inflammable contents, was a

vast sea of flames. When this reached the metal roofs of the

neighbouring wings of the Zwinger, and enveloped them in wonderful

bluish waves of fire, the first expression of regret made itself

audible amongst the spectators. What a disaster! Some thought that the

Natural History collection was in danger; others maintained that it was

the Armoury, upon which a citizen soldier retorted that if such were

the case, it would be a very good job if the ‘stuffed noblemen’ were

burnt to cinders. But it appeared that a keen sense of the value of art

knew how to curb the fire’s lust for further dominion, and, as a matter

of fact, it did but little damage in that quarter. Finally our post of

observation, which until now had remained comparatively quiet, was

filled itself with swarms and swarms of armed men, who had been ordered

thither to defend the approach from the church to the Altmarkt, upon

which an attack was feared from the side of the ill-secured Kreuzgasse.

Unarmed men were now in the way; moreover, I had received a message

from my wife summoning me home after the long and terrible anxiety she

had suffered.

At last, after meeting with innumerable obstacles and overcoming a host

of difficulties, I succeeded, by means of all sorts of circuitous

routes, in reaching my remote suburb, from which I was cut off by the

fortified portions of the town, and especially by a cannonade directed

from the Zwinger. My lodgings were full to overflowing with excited

women who had collected round Minna; among them the panic-stricken wife

of Röckel, who suspected her husband of being in the very thick of the

fight, as she thought that on the receipt of the news that Dresden had

risen he would probably have returned. As a matter of fact, I had heard

a rumour that Röckel had arrived on this very day, but as yet I had not

obtained a glimpse of him. My young nieces helped once more to raise my

spirits. The firing had put them into a high state of glee, which to

some extent infected my wife, as soon as she was reassured as to my

personal safety. All of them were furious with the sculptor Hänel, who

had never ceased insisting upon the expedience of bolting the house to

prevent an entry of the revolutionaries. All the women without

exception were joking about his abject terror at the sight of some men

armed with scythes who had appeared in the street In this way Sunday

passed like a sort of family jollification.

On the following morning (Monday, 8th May) I tried again to get

information as to the state of affairs by forcing my way to the Town

Hall from my house, which was cut off from the place of action. As in

the course of my journey I was making my way over a barricade near St.

Ann’s Church, one of the Communal Guard shouted out to me, ‘Hullo,

conductor, your der Freude schöner Götterfunken[15] has indeed set fire

to things. The rotten building is rased to the ground.’ Obviously the

man was an enthusiastic member of the audience at my last performance

of the Ninth Symphony. Coming upon me so unexpectedly, this pathetic

greeting filled me with a curious sense of strength and freedom. A

little further on, in a lonely alley in the suburb of Plauen, I fell in

with the musician Hiebendahl, the first oboist in the royal orchestra,

and a man who still enjoyed a very high reputation; he was in the

uniform of the Communal Guards, but carried no gun, and was chatting

with a citizen in a similar costume. As soon as he saw me, he felt he

must immediately make an appeal to me to use my influence against

Röckel, who, accompanied by ordnance officers of the revolutionary

party, was instituting a search for guns in this quarter. As soon as he

realised that I was making sympathetic inquiries about Röckel, he drew

back frightened, and said to me in tones of the deepest anxiety: ‘But,

conductor, have you no thought for your position, and what you may lose

by exposing yourself in this fashion?’ This remark had the most drastic

effect upon me; I burst into a loud laugh, and told him that my

position was not worth a thought one way or the other. This indeed was

the expression of my real feelings, which had long been suppressed, and

now broke out into almost jubilant utterance. At that moment I caught

sight of Röckel, with two men of the citizen army who were carrying

some guns, making his way towards me. He gave me a most friendly

greeting, but turned at once to Hiebendahl and his companion and asked

him why he was idling about here in uniform instead of being at his

post. When Hiebendahl made the excuse that his gun had been

requisitioned, Röckel cried out to him, ‘You’re a fine lot of fellows!’

and went away laughing. He gave me a brief account as we proceeded of

what had happened to him since I had lost sight of him, and thus spared

me the obligation of giving him a report of his Volksblatt. We were

interrupted by an imposing troop of well-armed young students of the

gymnasium who had just entered the city and wished to have a safe

conduct to their place of muster. The sight of these serried ranks of

youthful figures, numbering several hundreds, who were stepping bravely

to their duty, did not fail to make the most elevating impression upon

me. Röckel undertook to accompany them over the barricade in safety to

the mastering place in front of the Town Hall. He took the opportunity

of lamenting the utter absence of true spirit which he had hitherto

encountered in those in command. He had proposed, in case of extremity,

to defend the most seriously threatened barricades by tiring them with

pitch brands; at the mere word the provisional government had fallen

into a veritable state of panic. I let him go his way in order that I

might enjoy the privilege of a solitary person and reach the Town Hall

by a short cut, and it was not until thirteen years later that I again

set eyes upon him.

[15] These words refer to the opening of the Ninth Symphony chorus:

‘Freude, Freude, Freude, schöner götterfunken Tochter aus

Elysium’—(Praise her, praise oh praise Joy, the god-descended daughter

of Elysium.) English version by Natalia Macfarren.—Editor.

In the Town Hall I learned from Bakunin that the provisional government

had passed a resolution, on his advice, to abandon the position in

Dresden, which had been entirely neglected from the beginning, and was

consequently quite untenable for any length of time. This resolution

proposed an armed retreat to the Erzgebirge, where it would be possible

to concentrate the reinforcements pouring in from all sides, especially

from Thuringia, in such strength, that the advantageous position could

be used to inaugurate a German civil war that would sound no hesitating

note at its outset. To persist in defending isolated barricaded streets

in Dresden could, on the other hand, lend little but the character of

an urban riot to the contest, although it was pursued with the highest

courage. I must confess that this idea seemed to me magnificent and

full of meaning. Up to this moment I had been moved only by a feeling

of sympathy for a method of procedure entered upon at first with almost

ironical incredulity, and then pursued with the vigour of surprise.

Now, however, all that had before seemed incomprehensible, unfolded

itself before my vision in the form of a great and hopeful solution.

Without either feeling that I was in any way being compelled, or that

it was my vocation to get some part or function allotted to me in these

events, I now definitely abandoned all consideration for my personal

situation, and determined to surrender myself to the stream of

developments which flowed in the direction towards which my feelings

had driven me with a delight that was full of despair. Still, I did not

wish to leave my wife helpless in Dresden, and I rapidly devised a

means of drawing her into the path which I had chosen, without

immediately informing her of what my resolve meant. During my hasty

return to Friedrichstadt I recognised that this portion of the town had

been almost entirely cut off from the inner city by the occupation of

the Prussian troops; I saw in my mind’s eye our own suburb occupied,

and the consequences of a state of military siege in their most

repulsive light. It was an easy job to persuade Minna to accompany me

on a visit, by way of the Tharanderstrasse, which was still free, to

Chemnitz, where my married sister Clara lived. It was only a matter of

a moment for her to arrange her household orders, and she promised to

follow me to the next village in an hour with the parrot. I went on in

advance with my little dog Peps, in order to hire a carriage in which

to proceed on our journey to Chemnitz. It was a smiling spring morning

when I traversed for the last time the paths I had so often trod on my

lonely walks, with the knowledge that I should never wander along them

again. While the larks were soaring to dizzy heights above my head, and

singing in the furrows of the fields, the light and heavy artillery did

not cease to thunder down the streets of Dresden. The noise of this

shooting, which had continued uninterruptedly for several days, had

hammered itself so indelibly upon my nerves, that it continued to

re-echo for a long time in my brain; just as the motion of the ship

which took me to London had made me stagger for some time afterwards.

Accompanied by this terrible music, I threw my parting greeting to the

towers of the city that lay behind me, and said to myself with a smile,

that if, seven years ago, my entry had taken place under thoroughly

obscure auspices, at all events my exit was conducted with some show of

pomp and ceremony.

When at last I found myself with Minna in a one-horse carriage on the

way to the Erzgebirge, we frequently met armed reinforcements on their

way to Dresden. The sight of them always kindled an involuntary joy in

us; even my wife could not refrain from addressing words of

encouragement to the men; at present it seemed not a single barricade

had been lost. On the other hand, a gloomy impression was made upon us

by a company of regulars which was making its way towards Dresden in

silence. We asked some of them whither they were bound; and their

answer, ‘To do their duty,’ had been obviously impressed upon them by

command. At last we reached my relations in Chemnitz. I terrified all

those near and dear to me when I declared my intention to return to

Dresden on the following day at the earliest possible hour, in order to

ascertain how things were going there. In spite of all attempts to

dissuade me, I carried out my decision, pursued by a suspicion that I

should meet the armed forces of the Dresden people on the country

highroad in the act of retreat. The nearer I approached the capital,

the stronger became the confirmation of the rumours that, as yet, there

was no thought in Dresden of surrender or withdrawal, but that, on the

contrary, the contest was proving very favourable for the national

party. All this appeared to me like one miracle after another. On this

day, Tuesday, 9th of May, I once more forced my way in a high state of

excitement over ground which had become more and more inaccessible. All

the highways had to be avoided, and it was only possible to make

progress through such houses as had been broken through. At last I

reached the Town Hall in the Altstadt, just as night was falling. A

truly terrible spectacle met my eyes, for I crossed those parts of the

town in which preparations had been made for a house-to-house fight.

The incessant groaning of big and small guns reduced to an uncanny

murmur all the other sounds that came from armed men ceaselessly crying

out to one another from barricade to barricade, and from one house to

another, which they had broken through. Pitch brands burnt here and

there, pale-faced figures lay prostrate around the watch-posts, half

dead with fatigue, and any unarmed wayfarer forcing a path for himself

was sharply challenged. Nothing, however, that I have lived through can

be compared with the impression that I received on my entry into the

chambers of the Town Hall. Here was a gloomy, and yet fairly compact

and serious mass of people; a look of unspeakable fatigue was upon all

faces; not a single voice had retained its natural tone. There was a

hoarse jumble of conversation inspired by a state of the highest

tension. The only familiar sight that survived was to be found in the

old servants of the Town Hall in their curious antiquated uniform and

three-cornered hats. These tall men, at other times an object of

considerable fear, I found engaged partly in buttering pieces of bread,

and cutting slices of ham and sausage, and partly in piling into

baskets immense stores of provisions for the messengers sent by the

defenders of the barricades for supplies. These men had turned into

veritable nursing mothers of the revolution.

As I proceeded further, I came at last upon the members of the

provisional government, among whom Todt and Tschirner, after their

first panic-stricken flight, were once more to be found gliding to and

fro, gloomy as spectres, now that they were chained to the performance

of their heavy duties. Heubner alone had preserved his full energy; but

he was a really piteous sight: a ghostly fire burned in his eyes which

had not had a wink of sleep for seven nights. He was delighted to see

me again, as he regarded my arrival as a good omen for the cause which

he was defending; while on the other hand, in the rapid succession of

events, he had come into contact with elements about which no

conclusion could shape itself to his complete satisfaction. I found

Bakunin’s outlook undisturbed, and his attitude firm and quiet. He did

not show the smallest change in his appearance, in spite of having had

no sleep during the whole time, which I afterwards heard was a fact.

With a cigar in his mouth he received me, seated on one of the

mattresses which lay distributed over the floor of the Town Hall. At

his side was a very young Pole (a Galician) named Haimberger, a

violinist whom he had once asked me to recommend to Lipinsky, in order

that he might give him lessons, as he did not want this raw and

inexperienced boy, who had become passionately attached to him, to get

drawn into the vortex of the present upheavals. Now that Haimberger had

shouldered a gun, and presented himself for service at the barricades,

however, Bakunin had greeted him none the less joyfully. He had drawn

him down to sit by his side on the couch, and every time the youth

shuddered with fear at the violent sound of the cannon-shot, he slapped

him vigorously on the back and cried out: ‘You are not in the company

of your fiddle here, my friend. What a pity you didn’t stay where you

were!’ Bakinin then gave me a short and precise account of what had

happened since I had left him on the previous morning. The retreat

which had then been decided upon soon proved unadvisable, as it would

have discouraged the numerous reinforcements which had already arrived

on that day. Moreover, the desire for fighting had been so great, and

the force of the defenders so considerable, that it had been possible

to oppose the enemy’s troops successfully so far. But as the latter had

also got large reinforcements, they again had been able to make an

effective combined attack on the strong Wildstruf barricade. The

Prussian troops had avoided fighting in the streets, choosing instead

the method of fighting from house to house by breaking through the

walls. This had made it clear that all defence by barricades had become

useless, and that the enemy would succeed slowly but surely in drawing

near the Town Hall, the seat of the provisional government. Bakunin had

now proposed that all the powder stores should be brought together in

the lower rooms of the Town Hall, and that on the approach of the enemy

it should be blown up. The town council, who were still in consultation

in a back room, had remonstrated with the greatest vehemence. Bakunin,

however, had insisted with great firmness on the execution of the

measure, but in the end had been completely outwitted by the removal of

all the powder stores. Moreover, Heubner, to whom Bakunin could refuse

nothing, had been won over to the other side. It was now decided that

as everything was ready, the retreat to the Erzgebirge, which had

originally been intended for the previous day, should be fixed for the

early morrow. Young Zichlinsky had already received orders to cover the

road to Plauen so as to make it strategically safe. When I inquired

after Röckel, Bakunin replied swiftly that he had not been seen since

the previous evening, and that he had most likely allowed himself to be

caught: he was in such a nervous state. I now gave an account of what I

had observed on my way to and from Chemnitz, describing the great

masses of reinforcements, amongst which was the communal guard of that

place, several thousands strong. In Freiberg I had met four hundred

reservists, who had come in excellent form to back the citizen army,

but could not proceed further, as they were tired out by their forced

march. It seemed obvious that this was a case in which the necessary

energy to requisition wagons had been lacking, and that if the bounds

of loyalty were transgressed in this matter, the advent of fresh forces

would be considerably promoted. I was begged to make my way back at

once, and convey the opinion of the provisional government to the

people whose acquaintance I had made. My old friend Marschall von

Bieberstein immediately proposed to accompany me. I welcomed his offer,

as he was an officer of the provisional government, and was

consequently more fitted than I was to communicate orders. This man,

who had been almost extravagant in his enthusiasm before, was now

utterly exhausted by sleeplessness, and unable to emit another word

from his hoarse throat. He now made his way with me from the Town Hall

to his house in the suburb of Plauen by the devious ways that had been

indicated to us, in order to requisition a carriage for our purpose

from a coachman he knew, and to bid farewell to his family, from whom

he assumed he would in all probability have to separate himself for

some time.

While we were waiting for the coachman we had tea and supper, talking

the while, in a fairly calm and composed manner, with the ladies of the

house. We arrived at Freiberg early the following morning, after

various adventures, and I set out forthwith to find the leaders of the

reservist contingent with whom I was already acquainted. Marschall

advised them to requisition horses and carts in the villages wherever

they could do so. When they had all set off in marching order for

Dresden, and while I was feeling impelled by my passionate interest in

the fate of that city to return to it once more, Marschall conceived

the desire to carry his commission further afield, and for this purpose

asked to be allowed to leave me. Whereupon I again turned my back on

the heights of the Erzgebirge, and was travelling by special coach in

the direction of Tharand, when I too was overcome with sleep, and was

only awakened by violent shouts and the sound of some one holding a

parley with the postillion. On opening my eyes I found, to my

astonishment, that the road was filled with armed revolutionaries

marching, not towards, but away from Dresden, and some of them were

trying to commandeer the coach to relieve their weariness on the way

back.

‘What is the matter?’ I cried. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Home,’ was the reply. ‘It is all over in Dresden. The provincial

government is close behind us in that carriage down there.’

I shot out of the coach like a dart, leaving it at the disposal of the

tired men, and hurried on, down the steeply sloping road, to meet the

ill-fated party. And there I actually found them—Heubner, Bakunin, and

Martin, the energetic post-office clerk, the two latter armed with

muskets—in a smart hired carriage from Dresden which was coming slowly

up the hill. On the box were, as I supposed, the secretaries, while as

many as possible of the weary National Guard struggled for seats

behind. I hastened to swing myself into the coach, and so came in for a

conversation which thereupon took place between the driver, who was

also the owner of the coach, and the provisional government. The man

was imploring them to spare his carriage, which, he said, was very

lightly sprung and quite unequal to carrying such a load; he begged

that the people should be told not to seat themselves behind and in

front. But Bakunin remained quite unconcerned, and elected to give me a

short account of the retreat from Dresden, which had been successfully

achieved without loss. He had had the trees in the newly planted

Maximilian Avenue felled early in the morning to form a barricade

against a possible flank attack of cavalry, and had been immensely

entertained by the lamentations of the inhabitants, who during the

process did nothing but bewail their _Scheene Beeme_.[16] All this time

our driver’s lamentations over his coach were growing more importunate.

Finally he broke into loud sobs and tears, upon which Bakunin,

regarding him with positive pleasure, called out: ‘The tears of a

Philistine are nectar for the gods.’ He would not vouchsafe him a word,

but Heubner and I found the scene tiresome, whereupon he asked me

whether we two at least should not get out, as he could not ask it of

the others. As a matter of fact, it was high time to leave the coach,

as some new contingents of revolutionaries had formed up in rank and

file all along the highway to salute the provisional government and

receive orders. Heubner strode down the line with great dignity,

acquainted the leaders with the state of affairs, and exhorted them to

keep their trust in the righteousness of the cause for which so many

had shed their blood. All were now to retire to Freiberg, there to

await further orders.

[16] Saxon corruption of _schöne Bäume_, beautiful trees.—EDITOR.

A youngish man of serious mien now stepped forward from the ranks of

the rebels to place himself under the special protection of the

provisional government. He was a certain Menzdorff, a German Catholic

priest whom I had had the advantage of meeting in Dresden. (It was he

who, in the course of a significant conversation, had first induced me

to read Feuerbach.) He had been dragged along as a prisoner and

abominably treated by the Chemnitz municipal guard on this particular

march, having originally been the instigator of a demonstration to

force that body to take up arms and march to Dresden. He owed his

freedom only to the chance meeting with other better disposed volunteer

corps. We saw this Chemnitz town guard ourselves, stationed far away on

a hill. They sent representatives to beseech Heubner to tell them how

things stood. When they had received the information required, and had

been told that the fight would be continued in a determined manner,

they invited the provisional government to quarter at Chemnitz. As soon

as they rejoined their main body we saw them wheel round and turn back.

With many similar interruptions the somewhat disorganised procession

reached Freiberg. Here some friends of Heubner’s came to meet him in

the streets with the urgent request not to plunge their native place

into the misery of desperate street-fighting by establishing the

provisional government there. Heubner made no reply to this, but

requested Bakunin and myself to accompany him into his house for a

consultation. First we had to witness the painful meeting between

Heubner and his wife; in a few words he pointed out the gravity and

importance of the task assigned to him, reminding her that it was for

Germany and the high destiny of his country that he was staking his

life.

Breakfast was then prepared, and after the meal, during which a fairly

cheerful mood prevailed, Heubner made a short speech to Bakunin,

speaking quietly but firmly. ‘My dear Bakunin,’ he said (his previous

acquaintance with Bakunin was so slight that he did not even know how

to pronounce his name), ‘before we decide anything further, I must ask

you to state clearly whether your political aim is really the Red

Republic, of which they tell me you are a partisan. Tell me frankly, so

that I may know if I can rely on your friendship in the future?’

Bakunin explained briefly that he had no scheme for any political form

of government, and would not risk his life for any of them. As for his

own far-reaching desires and hopes, they had nothing whatever to do

with the street-fighting in Dresden and all that this implied for

Germany. He had looked upon the rising in Dresden as a foolish,

ludicrous movement until he realised the effect of Heubner’s noble and

courageous example. From that moment every political consideration and

aim had been put in the background by his sympathy with this heroic

attitude, and he had immediately resolved to assist this excellent man

with all the devotion and energy of a friend. He knew, of course, that

he belonged to the so-called moderate party, of whose political future

he was not able to form an opinion, as he had not profited much by his

opportunities of studying the position of the various parties in

Germany.

Heubner declared himself satisfied by this reply, and proceeded to ask

Bakunin’s opinion of the present state of things—whether it would not

be conscientious and reasonable to dismiss the men and give up a

struggle which might be considered hopeless. In reply Bakunin insisted,

with his usual calm assurance, that whoever else threw up the sponge,

Heubner must certainly not do so. He had been the first member of the

provisional government, and it was he who had given the call to arms.

The call had been obeyed, and hundreds of lives had been sacrificed; to

scatter the people again would look as if these sacrifices had been

made to idle folly. Even if they were the only two left, they still

ought not to forsake their posts. If they went under their lives might

be forfeit, but their honour must remain unsullied, so that a similar

appeal in the future might not drive every one to despair.