(1816-1895)
Gustav Freytag, one of the foremost of German novelists, was born July
13th, 1816, in Kreuzburg, Silesia, where his father was a physician.
He studied alternately at Breslau and Berlin, at which latter
university he was given the degree of a doctor of philosophy in 1838.
In 1839 he settled as a _privatdocent_ at the University of Breslau,
where he lectured on the German language and literature until 1844,
when he resigned his position to devote himself to literature. He
removed to Leipzig in 1846, and the following year to Dresden, where
he married. In 1848 he returned to Leipzig to edit with Julian Schmidt
the weekly journal Die Grenzboten, which he conducted until 1861, and
again from 1869 to 1870. In 1867 he became Liberal member for Erfurt
in the North German Reichstag. In 1870, on the breaking out of the
Franco-Prussian war, he was attached to the staff of the Crown Prince,
later the German Emperor Frederick III., and remained in service until
after the battle of Sedan. Subsequently to 1870 his journalistic work
was chiefly for the newly established weekly periodical Im Neuen
Reich. In 1879 he retired from public life and afterward lived in
Wiesbaden, except for the summer months, which he spent on his estate
Siebleben near Gotha. He died at Wiesbaden, April 30th, 1895.
All of Freytag's earliest work, with the single exception of a volume
of poems published in 1845 under the title 'In Breslau,' is dramatic.
His first production was a comedy, 'Die Brautfahrt' (The Wedding
Journey), published in 1844, which although it was awarded a prize
offered by the Royal Theatre in Berlin, found but indifferent popular
favor, as did its successor, the one-act tragedy 'Die Gelehrte' (The
Scholar). With his next play, 'Die Valentine' (1846), Freytag however
was signally successful. This was followed the year after by 'Graf
Waldemar.' He attained his highest dramatic success with the comedy
'Die Journalisten' (The Journalists), which appeared in 1853, and
since its first production in 1854 has maintained its place as one of
the most popular plays on the German stage. But one other play
followed, the tragedy 'Die Fabier' (The Fabii), which appeared in
1859.
He had begun in the mean time his career as a novelist with his most
famous novel, 'Soll und Haben' (Debit and Credit), which was
published in 1855 and met with an immediate and unbounded success.
The appearance of this first novel, furthermore, was most significant,
for it marked at the same time an era both in German literature and in
its author's own career, in that it introduced into the one in its
most recent phase one of the profoundest problems of modern life in
Germany, and unmistakably pointed out, in the other, the direction
which he was subsequently to follow. This latter statement has a
twofold bearing. It is not only that as a writer of novels Freytag did
his most important and lasting work, but that the whole of this work
was in a manner the development of a similar tendency. Although as
different as need be in environment, all of his subsequent novels
embody inherently the characteristics of 'Debit and Credit,' for like
it, they are all well-defined attempts to depict the typical social
conditions of the period in which they move, and their characters are
the carefully considered types of their time. Freytag, with a
philosophic seriousness of purpose perhaps characteristically German,
is writing not only novels but the history of civilization, in his
early work. Later on, the didactic purpose to a certain extent
overshadows the rest; and although he never loses his power of telling
a story, it is the history in the end that is paramount.
'Debit and Credit' is a novel of the century, and it takes up the
great problem of the century, the position of modern industrialism in
the social life of the day. Its principal centre of action is the
business house of the wholesale grocer T.O. Schroeter, who is an
admirable embodiment of the careful, industrious, and successful
merchant. In sharp contradistinction to him is the Baron von
Rothsattel, the representative of earlier conditions in the
organization of the State, which made the nobleman pre-eminently a
social force. Freytag's polemic is not only the dignity of labor under
present conditions, but the absolute effeteness of the old order of
things that despised it. The real hero of the story is Anton
Wohlfahrt, who begins his commercial career as a youth in the house of
T.O. Schroeter, and ends, after some vicissitudes, as a member of the
firm. Mercantile life has nowhere been better described in its
monotony, its interests, and its aspirations, as the story is
developed; and although at first sight no field could be more barren
in literary interest, there is in reality no lack of incident and
action, whose inevitable sequence makes the plot. Anton's career in
the house of Schroeter is interrupted by his connection with the Baron
von Rothsattel, who has, through his want of a business training and
his lack of a knowledge of men, fallen into the hands of a Jew
money-lender; by whom he is persuaded to mortgage his land in order to
embark in a business undertaking which it is presumed will increase
his fortune. His mill fails, however, and he is involved in
difficulties from which he is unable to extricate himself. Anton, the
intimate friend of the family, is therefore persuaded by the Baroness
to undertake the management of matters, and after vainly endeavoring
to induce his principal to interest himself in the affair, sacrifices
his position to accompany the family to their dilapidated estate in a
distant province. The Baron will tolerate no interference, however,
and Anton finally returns to the house of Schroeter and is reinstated
in the business. Lenore, the Baron's daughter, the first cause of
Anton's interest, meantime becomes engaged to the young nobleman Fink;
who has been an associate of Anton's in the office of T. O. Schroeter,
has but recently returned from the United States, and who first
advances funds for the improvement of the estate and ultimately
purchases it.
Fink acts his part in the author's philosophy as a contrast to the
Baron von Rothsattel. Although a nobleman, he has adapted himself to
the conditions of the century, and is free from any hallucinations of
his hereditary rank, even while he is perfectly awake to its
traditions. He has entered upon a commercial career not from choice,
but from necessity; but he has accepted his fate and has made
successful use of his opportunities. Anton marries the sister of T. O.
Schroeter, and becomes a partner in the business. Fink is however
really the one who gains the princess in this modern tale, and is
plainly to have the more important share as an actual social force in
the future. The old feudal nobility has played its part on the stage
of the world; and being so picturesque, and full of romantic
opportunity, its loss is doubtless to be regretted. The tamer
realities of the modern industrial state have succeeded it. As Freytag
solves the problem in 'Soll und Haben,' it is the man who works, the
man of the industrial classes alone, to whom the victory belongs in
the modern social struggle, be his antecedents bourgeois or
aristocratic.
Freytag's second great novel, 'Die Verlorene Handschrift' (The Lost
Manuscript), which appeared in 1864, concerns itself with another
phase of the same problem. This time, however, instead of the merchant
and man of affairs, it is the scholar about whom the action centres.
Felix Werner, professor of philology, has come upon unmistakable
traces of the lost books of Tacitus, whose recovery is the object of
his life. In his search for the manuscript in an old house in the
country he finds his future wife Ilse, one of the finest types in all
German literature of the true German woman, both while at home a maid
in her father's house and subsequently as the professor's wife in the
university town. Werner, in his scholarly absorption, unwittingly
neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of the
prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously to
involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become
evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost
manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has
vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial humor,
unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent enough
in 'The Journalists.' The professorial life is admirably drawn with
all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambitions, its
peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more understandingly
treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit and Credit,'
displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The plot is so
confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes lost sight
of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which as a
German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in these
pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraordinary
novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel with
them; and as a picture of German university life from the point of
view of the professor, 'The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in
literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of
labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than in
the mercantile environment of the first.
These two novels, which outside of Germany are Freytag's best claim to
attention, were followed by the four volumes of 'Bilder aus der
Deutschen Vergangenheit' (Pictures from the German Past: 1859-62), a
series of studies of German life from different epochs of its history,
intended to illustrate the evolution of modern conditions through
their successive stages from the remote past. Freytag's early work as
a university _docent_ had particularly fitted him for this sort of
writing, and some of his best is contained in these books.
More important still, however, was his next great work, the long
series of historical novels 'Die Ahnen' (The Ancestors: 1872-80), an
ambitious plan, born of the stirring events of the Franco-Prussian War
and the resultant awakening of the new spirit of nationality, to trace
the development of the German people from the earliest time down to
the present day. To carry out this purpose he accordingly selects a
typical German family, which he describes under the characteristic
conditions of each period, with the most conscientious attention to
manners and customs and social environment. The same family thus
appears from generation to generation under the changing conditions of
the different epochs of German history, and the whole forms together
the consecutive _Culturgeschichte_ of the nation.
This whole long series of 'The Ancestors' stands as a monument of
careful research into the most minute factors of German life in their
time of action. Freytag's antiquarianism is not of the dilettante kind
that is content to masquerade modern motives in ancient garb and
setting. He was fully conscious of all the elements of his problem,
and he sought to reproduce the intellectual point of view of his
actors, and to account for their motives of action, as well as to
picture accurately their material environment. It is in his
super-conscientiousness in these directions that the inherent
weakness of the novels of this series lies. They are too palpably
reconstructions with a purpose. Their didacticism is wrapped around
them like a garment; and much of the time, that is all that is visible
upon the surface. As the series advances this fault grows upon them.
They are in reality of very unequal interest. 'Ingo' and 'Ingraban'
are the sprightliest in action, and have been as a consequence the
most widely read of these later works, many of which are, in part at
least, far too serious of purpose to play their part conspicuously
well as novels.
The novels of 'The Ancestors' are a culmination of Freytag's literary
evolution. As a playwright he will no doubt be forgotten except for
'The Journalists'; in which he has, however, left an imperishable play
which German critics have not hesitated to call the best comedy of the
century. The two novels of modern life from his middle period form
together his greatest work, although here, and particularly in 'The
Lost Manuscript,' he has overweighted his material with abstract
discussion, in which his perspective has sometimes all but
disappeared. Subsequently, both the 'Bilder' and 'Die Ahnen' show his
decided predilection for historical studies. The struggle in his own
case was between the scholar and the man of letters, in which the
scholar eventually won possession of the field.
Freytag's other work includes--'Die Technik des Dramas' (The Technique
of the Drama: 1863), a consideration of the principles of dramatic
construction; the life of his friend Karl Malthy, 1870; and 'Der
Kronprinz und die Deutsche Kaiserkrone' (The Crown Prince and the
German Imperial Crown: 1889), written after the death of Frederick
III., with whom Freytag had had personal relations. To accompany
the collected edition of his works (1887-88), he wrote a short
autobiography, 'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections from
My Life).