_Joseph Victor Scheffel_ was born in the year 1826, at Karlsruhe, in
Baden, where his father, a veteran officer, had taken up his residence.
He received his first instruction in the 'Lyceum' of his native place,
a high school which enjoyed at the time a splendid reputation, and was
considered the best in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Whatever may have been
said against one or the other of the professors, the majority were
remarkable men, knowing how to awaken the mental activity of their
pupils. The social life of the 'Lyceists' was free from ordinary
constraints; and the merry youths enjoyed many privileges, which at
other places were strictly reserved for University students.
Nor did they lack any opportunities for intellectual improvement in the
capital of Baden. The theatre was then excellent, and the 'Lyceists'
visited it regularly. Eyen politics agitated the mind of this young
generation. It must be remembered that thirty years ago Baden was the
focus of political life, to which the eyes of every German patriot was
directed; and although Mannheim was the seat of the agitation, the
chamber united at Karlsruhe a number of men, whose names will ever be
held in respect in Baden: Itzstein, Welcker, Bassermann, Hecker, Mathy,
Soiron.
Joseph Victor passed with all the honours, and as one of the best
pupils, all the classes of the Lyceum, and then devoted himself to the
study of law at the University of Heidelberg. There he joined a
so-called academical society of progress, without, however, taking part
in the Baden revolution, which drove so many of his comrades into
exile.
After having passed the Government examination we find our young poet
as '_Rechtspractikant_' (practitioner of law) in the little town of
Saeckingen. Well might the little provincial place appear dull to a
student coming from the liveliest university of Germany. Still the
splendid scenery of the environs of Saeckingen compensated for many
shortcomings. With the numerous friends he won there, Scheffel made
frequent excursions through the valleys which stretch in all directions
from the Feldberg and the Rhine. He proved to be a bold and even
reckless swimmer, passing many a time through the bridge of Saeckingen,
saluting the bystanders as he accomplished this daring feat.
In the office of his court, located in an old convent of nuns, Scheffel
found a number of old documents and MSS., and there his first poem was
written, based on one of them: '_Der Trompeter von Saeckingen. Ein Sang
vom Oberrhein_.'
The success of this first production was complete. It was published at
the time when the 'incense perfume of the pious soul,' as Scheffel
calls the poems of Oskar von Redwitz, had its firmest hold on the
misguided taste of the public. In comparison with this sickly,
effeminate poetry, the simple, natural, and yet intensely poetic
production of Scheffel afforded something like the enjoyment of fresh
mountain air after that of a hot-house. It is true, Scheffel was
at first entirely ignored by the Berlin and Leipzig critics who
assume to sit in judgment over modern German literature (he has,
up to the present day, not even found a place in Brockhaus's
_Conversations-Lexicon_), but the unsophisticated public recognized the
kernel of pure poetry in Scheffel's unpretentious verses; and his
'Trompeter' is at present the most popular poem in Germany. Its story
is told with extreme simplicity and humour, in blank trochees with
interspersed rhymed poems; it leads us to the forest-town of Saeckingen
during the second half of the 17th century, and into the neighbouring
castle of a baron, whose only daughter is wooed and, at last, won by a
young musician, a merry youth, who had been expelled from the
University of Heidelberg on account of his noisy behaviour.
Nothing can be more humorous than the account of the ex-student's life
at Heidelberg, of his duels and his libations beneath the big tun of
the castle,
Bei dem Wunder unserer Tage,
Bei dem Kunstwerk deutschen Denkens,
Bei dem Heidelberger Fass,
or the historical episode of the foundation of Saeckingen by Saint
Fridolin, an Irish apostle, sent by Chlodwig with the following message
to convert the Allemannic Germans:
Hatt' sonst nicht die groesste Vorlieb
Fuer die Kutten, fuer die Heil'gen,
Aber seit mir die verfluchten
Scharfen Alemannenspiesse
Allzunah um's Ohr gepfiffen,
Seit der schweren Schlacht bei Zuelpich,
Bin ich and'rer Ansicht worden,
--Noth lehrt auch die Koenige beten.
Schutz drum geb' ich, wo ihr hinzieht.
Und empfehl' hauptsaechlich Euch am
Oberrhein die Alemannen.
Diese haben schwere Schaedel,
Diese sind noch trotz'ge Heiden,
Macht mir diese fromm und artig--
or the meditations of the cat of the castle, which, as silent witness
of the caresses of the two lovers, thus broods over the enigma of the
kiss:
Warum kuessen sich die Menschen?
S'ist nicht Hass, sie beissen sich nicht,
Hunger nicht, sie fressen sich nicht.
S'kann auch kein zweckloser blinder
Unverstand sein, denn sie sind sonst
Klug und selbstbewusst im Handeln;
Warum, also, frag' umsonst ich,
Warum kuessen sich die Menschen?
Warum meistens nur die Juengern?
Warum diese meist im Fruehling?
Ueber diese Punkte werd' ich
Morgen auf des Daches Giebel
Etwas naher meditiren.
In the delineations of the various characters of the 'Trompeter'
Scheffel exhibits a gift of true poetical conception, a warmth of
feeling, and a power of description, equalled by few of our modern
poets; indeed, the characters rise before our mind with such
truthfulness, as the idealized types of the people in that corner of
Germany, that one might almost believe one had met all of them during
one's wanderings in the Black Forest, whether it be Werner, the merry
trumpeter, or the crusty old baron, or Anton, the respectable
'Hausknecht.'
Scheffel did not remain long in Saeckingen. He quitted the Government
service, and, after passing some time in travels in South Germany,
settled at Donaueschingen as Keeper of the Archives of Prince
Fuerstenberg. This town is likewise exceedingly small, the environs are
bare and not to be compared with the romantic scenery of the Upper
Rhine; but at the court of the refined princes of Fuerstenberg there
were at all times remarkable men, and the library afforded, in MSS. and
documents, ample means for the study of Old German history, language,
and literature.
To this study Scheffel now devoted himself, and, in combining his
qualities as a poet with that of an historian, created his famous novel
Ekkehard. Based chiefly on the Chronicles of the Monastery of St.
Gallen, it gives us a faithful picture of the social life in South
Western Germany--the most ancient seat and nucleus of German
civilization during the tenth century,--in retaining and reproducing
all the naivete, freshness, and simple-minded views which are the
charms of these celebrated chronicles, whilst the poet's figures are
marked with that distinct individuality which raises the dry chronicle
to a skilful and poetical tale of human passions and conflicts.
Ekkehard may be compared with the best of Sir Walter Scott's novels.
Another fruit of Scheffel's researches in mediaeval literature is his
charming little volume '_Frau Aventiure_,' and likewise, although
published much later, '_Juniperus_,' the history of a German Crusader,
and his most recent work, '_Die Bergpsalmen_.' Both these latter works
(the last one is written in verse) exhibit the same merits as Ekkehard,
but they are laid out on a smaller scale, and are of a more fragmentary
character. '_Frau Aventiure_' is a collection of songs, partly jocose,
partly inspired by the most tender feelings, in the spirit of the poems
of the Minnesinger and wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, and is
based on a subtle knowledge of mediaeval culture and poetry.
But to his second residence in Heidelberg we must trace the origin of
his most popular work, the collection of songs known under the title of
'Gaudeamus.' A small circle of friends, who met every Wednesday evening
at a supper in the Hollaender Hof, near the bridge (and amongst whose
most conspicuous members were the celebrated historian Ludwig Haeusser,
and the venerable pastor of Ziegelhausen, Fr. Schmezer), kindled those
sparks of unequalled humour and merriment--the Rodensteiner, 'Im
Schwarzen Wallfisch zu Askalon,' and the geological songs, which
delighted readers of every class, and found their way into every
student's songbook of Germany. The geological songs owe their origin to
a course of lectures on geology which Pastor Schmezer delivered at the
time. Scheffel regularly attended these lectures of his friend, and the
latter was certain to find as regularly on the following morning of his
lecture a poetical resume of it on his desk, in the form of a humorous
poem.
What gives such a high value to these songs, and indeed to all the
poetry of Scheffel, is the fact that they, in depicting the joyous vein
in human nature, set forth a faithful abstract, a true poetical
substratum, of the popular life and thought of South-Western Germany.
If any one should fail to comprehend the spirit of Scheffel's poetry
let him go to the 'joyful Palatinate,' and to its ancient capital,
Heidelberg. There he will find the frank, merry, and humorous
characters of Scheffel's poems, and especially the prototypes of that
thirsty soul, the Rodensteiner who pawned his three villages during the
revelries 'Zu Heidelberg im Hirschen,' and finally bequeathed his
thirst to the students. And looking from the ruins of the castle over
the beautiful valleys of the Neckar and the Rhine, he will perhaps
understand the enthusiasm which our poet has for this blessed spot, in
singing:
Und stechen mich die Dornen,
Und wird mir's draus zu kahl;
Geb' ich dem Pferd die Spornen,
Und reit' in's Neckarthal.