THROUGH STORM AND STRESS TO CLASSICISM AND HUMANISM
About the middle of the eighteenth century, after long and weary years
of unfruitful struggle, disappointment and desolation, there begins
faintly to glimmer, and then rapidly to shine in broad illumination, a
stupendous cultural movement the impelling force of which was the
humanizing thought which sprang from the fertile brains of great
literary and philosophical thinkers; preeminent among whom were Lessing,
the greatest critical genius of the German nation, and Kant, Germany's
greatest philosopher. Enlightenment mental liberation from the shackles
of tradition and orthodoxy became the watch-word of the time. Through
the dominating personality of Frederick the Great (1740-1786), even
despotism was made to feel this influence, the scope of which was still
further extended, though less successfully, by the reforms of Joseph II.
(1765-1790), Maria Theresa's son. The message sounded from beyond the
seas in the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution
spread through the hearts of the nations of Europe, proclaiming the
gospel of human rights and equality before God and the law. The French
Revolution was its most direct fruit. In Germany, the liberation of
thought, of science and art, the emancipation of man and woman alike,
had to precede political freedom which, in its full development, could
be evolved only by blood and iron.
It is true, however, that, though the idea of humanism then became the
ideal of the present, there remained enough of the social and political
vices and errors of the past to make this epoch perhaps the most complex
and complicated in German history. Divine thought and
mystic-sentimental-pseudo-science, the grossest lust and the highest
idealism, the most abject servility and the most liberal political
views, cynical scepticism and childlike faith, true patriotism and
nationalism on the one hand, national treason and anti-national
cosmopolitanism on the other, meet and conflict at every step.
But whatever were the conditions of the time, woman was the _causa
movens_, the underlying force of the cultural life of the nation and of
all its leaders. Women contributed to the progress of the storm and
stress evolution toward classicism and emancipation; women inspired the
bloom of literature; women gave Germany a stage and adorned it with
their genius as actresses; women fostered the arts; women on the throne
ruled Germany; a German woman, withal the greatest and vilest, Katharine
the Great, raised Russia to the rank of a world power; women dominated
the nobility and the courts; women elevated the bourgeoisie to higher
standards of living and thinking; women strove to emancipate themselves
and their peasant husbands from servitude.
The movements of the women of the burgher classes were much more
restricted than are those of the women of to-day. They might not walk
abroad, or visit theatres, concerts, or public places, without their
natural male companions; their chambermaids accompanied them even to
church and to stores. Their natural field of activity, their world, was
the house. The reading of novels was held in low esteem. Book learning
was of a rather elementary kind, but there was plenty of good sense and
home happiness, and sensible rearing of large families. It is a painful
fact that from Bavaria, a country which was under the fullest sway of
the Church, quite different testimony comes to us. We may realize,
however, from the base tone of characteristic sermons, communicated to
us in Nicolai's works, how low must have been the standard of the clergy
of that time. The author and traveller Risbeck describes the degradation
of the burgher classes in Bavaria, "where all vie in drinking and
immorality, where next to every church stands a tavern and a base house.
There a priest touches a fair maiden's bosom, which is half-covered with
a 'scapulier.' There one inquires whether you are of her religion, for
she will have nothing to do with a heretic. Another discusses during her
debauch her spiritual sodalities, her pilgrimages and absolutions, etc.,
etc."
Owing to their gradual enfranchisement by Frederick the Great and Joseph
II., the peasantry had mightily progressed from the brutal feudal
oppression. The French Revolution also had some beneficent results for
the German peasantry. After the terrible downfall of Prussia and Austria
because of Napoleon's onslaughts, a great step forward was taken through
the reforms of the statesman Stein, and the Revolution of 1848
accomplished the rest. Therewith the elevation of the women of the
peasantry went hand in hand. The many and varied popular festivals of
the German peasantry, with their peculiar customs and gaieties, reveal
the fact that there was no lack of those harmless social pleasures which
are the delight of woman, inasmuch as they give scope to characteristics
peculiarly feminine. The festivals of singers, riflemen, and gymnasts,
which were then and are to-day observed in nearly every little German
town and village, also contributed to the enrichment of the life of the
lower classes.
The chapter of wealth and poverty, of overwork and enforced idleness,
belongs but incidentally to our theme, in so far as it affects the life
and morality of German womanhood. While the record is, on the whole,
favorable for the time, yet we cannot conceal the fact that with the
pauperism of certain sections of Germany, due to wars, drought, princely
maladministration, and unjust taxation, the female vices and crimes
which are instigated by poverty attained terrible proportions. The great
romantic authoress Bettina von Arnim has given us painful insight into
the lives of the poor women in the "family-houses" of Berlin, a sad
anticipation of our tenement houses. The female youth of the
God-forsaken proletariat then, as to-day, fell almost irretrievable
victims to the blasting, soul-consuming vice of prostitution. The
numberless examples of the brave, courageous, noble self-sacrifice of
hundreds of thousands of pure women of the poorest classes, who through
overwork staggered into an early grave, are not statistically reported;
but the statistics of prostitution of German cities, which are
conscientiously recorded, reveal a terrible state of affairs, not worse
than that of other great civilized nations, yet painful enough for the
historian of culture.
But let us return to the shadow of the thrones of the second half of the
eighteenth century. Under Maria Theresa's father, Charles VI.
(1711-1740), the last Habsburger, French morals had been domesticated in
Vienna. The monarch officially kept a mistress, maitresse en Hire. Lady
Montague, a distinguished British peeress, reported that "every lady of
rank in Vienna had two men, one who gave her his name, the other, who
fulfilled the duties of the husband." These alliances were so general
that it would have been a grievous offence not to invite the two men
with the lady to a feast. It is true that with Maria Theresa's ascent to
the throne a different morality was forced upon the unwilling court
circles. The empress was virtuous and religious in the extreme, an
admirable wife and mother, and maintained toward vice an unrelenting
attitude.
The political greatness of Empress Maria Theresa does not belong to our
theme. To characterize her, however, in a nutshell, we cannot forgo
quoting her famous note to Prime Minister Kaunitz, with which she
accompanied the treaty of the first partition of Poland in 1772: "When
all my States were assailed and I did not know where to bear my child, I
insisted upon my right and the help of God. But in this affair, in which
not only manifest justice cries to heaven against us, but also right and
common reason is against us, I must confess that I have never in my life
felt such an anguish and such a shame to allow myself to be seen.
Consider, Prince, what an example we give to all the world when, for a
miserable piece of Poland or of Moldavia and Wallachia, we throw to the
dogs our honor and reputation! I notice well that I stand alone and am
no Longer _en vigueur_, therefore I let things take their course, though
not without my greatest grief."
The moral example of Maria Theresa did not, however, in any great degree
affect her gallant husband, Francis of Lorraine. His mistress, Princess
Auersperg-Neipperg, had all the noble vices of her exalted position. The
prime minister, Kaunitz, was utterly immoral, and even dared to take
with him in his equipage his mistresses, who waited till his audience
with the empress was over. When the latter once ventured to remonstrate
with him, he replied: "Madam, I have come here to speak with you about
your affairs, not about my own." The so-called chastity commission
established by the empress to supervise the morals of Vienna succeeded
in compelling those who persistently indulged in vices at least to
exercise more caution and discretion; for she remained inexorable
against scandalous debauch and inflicted ignominious chastisement upon
the offenders, according to the Draconic code of the time. The result
was that Vienna had its "Messalinas in toned down colors," as the
British traveller Wraxall says, and that "the superstition of Austrian
women, though it be traditional and immense, is by no means an obstacle
to excesses; they sin, pray, confess, and begin anew."
The brilliant court at Vienna found its counterpart in the frugal,
economical bourgeois court of Berlin, while that of Dresden, as
mentioned in the foregoing chapters, was sunk in a mire of moral
corruption. The memoirs of Marquise Sophie Wilhelmine of Baireuth,
sister of Frederick the Great, describe, with humor and sometimes with
ingenuous malice, the condition of the court at Dresden. The wife and
children of the coarse soldier-king were treated with great harshness
and almost deprived of the necessities of life. The marquise tells of a
visit to Dresden in 1738, where Frederick fell in love with Countess
Orzelska, a natural daughter and mistress of August the Strong. The pen
refuses to record the history of the incest practised at that court with
and among the three hundred and fifty-four "natural" children of August.
August was jealous of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and therefore
substituted for Countess Orzelska the beautiful Italian Formera, who
became Frederick's first mistress. Later, however, at the return visit
of the Saxon court to Berlin, as Scherr reports, Frederick again met the
Countess Orzelska, a meeting which did not remain without consequences.
Other details of the court life of the time cannot be put on paper: we
must refer the reader to Scherr's discussion of Eighteenth Century Court
Society, to Lessing's Emilia Galotti, in which in Italian disguise the
great classicist chastises German princely rape, and to Schiller's
drama, Cabal and Love, which proves that, unfortunately, the victims of
princely lust were not always the willing courtesans; but frequently
victims chosen from the people.
The court of Berlin is said by some to have assumed a higher standard of
morality when Frederick ascended the throne. His consort, Princess
Elizabeth of Brunswick, though a noble and pure woman, had never won his
love, for he had been forced into the marriage by his father; she did
not reside with her royal husband, whose life was now filled with his
world-stirring military and political deeds and, for recreation, with
music, history, and philosophy. On the other hand, from the report of
the British ambassador, Lord Malmesbury (1772), it seems that the great
king had not succeeded in raising the standard of morality among the
inhabitants of his residence, as the ambassador, perhaps owing to
splenetic exaggeration, writes that "there is in that capital neither an
honest man nor a chaste woman. An absolute moral corruption prevails
among both sexes of all classes, to which must be added a general
impoverishment due to the fiscal oppressions of the actual king,
Frederick the Great, and their love of luxury since the times of the
king's grandfather. The men are constantly occupied with limited means
in leading an immoral life. The women are harpies who have sunk so low
more from want of modesty than anything else. They sell themselves to
him who pays best, and delicacy or true love are to them unknown
things." The great traveller and naturalist George Foster confirms that
statement at least as regards women, whom he describes as "generally
corrupted."
Though Frederick of Prussia and Joseph II. of Austria lived purely, at
least after their respective accessions, and were, politically, epoch
makers in history, they were both succeeded by rulers who were morally
and politically decadent. Leopold of Austria (1790-1792) died after a
reign of but two years, his death being caused by sexual excesses and
debauchery with his German and Italian concubines. His private cabinet
was, after his death, found to be a true "arsenal of lust."
Still more disastrous to Prussia proved the sovereignty of Frederick
William II., nephew of the great Frederick; for during his calamitous
reign of eleven years (1786-1797) this monarch disorganized the solid
forces of the realm to such an extent that, a few years later, at the
battle of Jena (1806), Napoleon succeeded, as it were with one blow, in
overturning the proud structure of Frederick's state.
His court was the abode of an indescribable dissoluteness. As crown
prince, he had been married to Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, who,
though not of good moral repute herself, nevertheless declined
intercourse with her dissolute consort. We must waive the responsibility
for the following report given by Scherr upon the authority of
Dampmartin, the well-informed courtier. "Frederick the Great, desiring
the succession to the throne to be ensured before his death, ordered an
old chamberlain to communicate to the princess that he, the king, wished
she should admit to intimate intercourse the lieutenant of the royal
guard N. N. (Von Schmettau), who had impressed the king by the beauty of
his form, his conduct, and his bravery. But no eloquence prevailed upon
the princess to yield to the shameless demand, whereupon the king
resolved upon the divorce of his nephew." Frederick William II. later
married Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, who bore him an heir to the
throne, the pure and honest Frederick William III. (1797-1840).
It must be said, however, that lawful marriage was but an episode in the
life of the immoral king Frederick William II., while favorite after
favorite divided his affections. Wilhelmina Encke, nominal wife of the
chamberlain Rietz, later raised to the rank of Countess of Lichtenau,
maintained her position with the king during his whole life, not only
through the influence of her own charms, but by means of immoral
services in connection with other beautiful women. Other ladies of noble
birth, Julie von Voss and Countess Sophie von Donhoff, exacted almost a
formal marriage from the king while the queen was actually alive, and
the Evangelical Consistory was compelled submissively to sanction the
royal bigamy. Rich payments to the families of the royal pseudo-wives
are on record, and prove the accumulation of a debt of forty-nine
million thalers at the death of the king, who had had at his disposal
the treasure of Frederick the Great.
It is with relief that we leave the pages stained with the depravity and
moral bankruptcy of the era of Countess Lichtenau.
One royal woman, shining in the lustre of purity, genuine nobility, and
self-sacrificing patriotism, dispels the moral darkness around her as
the sun purifies and warms the atmosphere of the world. Princess Louise
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, consort of Frederick William III., mother of
Emperor William I., great-grandmother of the actual German emperor,
William II., is one of the purest and noblest of women of all times, and
is rightly sanctified in the hearts, not only of all Germans, but of
all, whether friend or foe, who have ever contemplated her life, her
motherhood, her martyrdom, and her early death. From her pure bosom
sprang, to a large extent, the present greatness of Germany.
Truly, were not the age too far advanced, Queen Louise deserved to be
canonized. As if fate dared no relapse, no unworthy woman has succeeded
her in the house of Hohenzollern. To offset the instances of the
degradation of womanhood related for the sake of historical truth, let
us twine a wreath of the laurel of fame, the myrtle of chastity, and the
lilies of purity for her noble and beautiful brow.
A biographer well says of Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia, the fair,
blue-eyed princess who was born on March 10, 1776, and baptized in the
Church of the Holy Ghost, that the child was as sweet and fair as a lily
unfolding in the genial sunshine of early spring. When the summer season
of her life had run its course, when autumn's winds began to whisper
that all bright things on earth must die to be renewed, the lily was
gathered and taken away to bloom on in the Paradise above. Many eulogies
were written in honor of Queen Louisa; one of the most pleasing is Jean
Paul Richter's poetical allegory: "Before she was born, her Genius stood
and questioned Fate. 'I have many wreaths for the child,' he said; 'the
flower garland of beauty, the myrtle-wreath of marriage, the oak and
laurel wreath of the love for the German Fatherland, and a crown of
thorns; which of all may I give the child?' 'Give her all thy wreaths
and crowns,' said Fate; 'but there still remains one which is worth all
the others.' On the day when the death-wreath was placed on that noble
forehead the Genius again appeared, but he questioned only by his tears.
Then answered a voice 'Look up!' and the God of Christians appeared."
As a maiden of fourteen, Princess Louisa, through a providential
circumstance, became with her sister Friederika the guest of Frau Rath
Goethe in Frankfort on the occasion of the coronation of Emperor
Leopold. Goethe's famous mother considered herself highly honored in
being chosen as hostess to entertain the princesses. The occasion
furnishes some very interesting glimpses of the character of both those
famous women. Frau Goethe found the highborn sisters so simple-minded,
so unaffected in their manners, that she was delighted with them. Frau
Goethe, young with the young to the end of her days, entered into their
enjoyment of scenes and circumstances invested with the charm of novelty
for the light-hearted princesses. She never forgot the meeting with the
future Queen of Prussia, and often used to tell a story about the pump
in the rear of Goethe's house. When Louisa once espied the pump from the
back room, she exclaimed roguishly: "I wonder if we could make the water
rush out; how I should like to try." Upon a consenting wink, they rushed
to the back yard and pumped to their hearts' content. The highborn
lady-in-waiting was shocked and objected to their plebeian occupation,
but Goethe's mother threatened to turn the door key rather than permit
interference with the sport of her princely guests.
Bettina von Arnim, who was on terms of great intimacy with Goethe's
mother, amusingly described in a letter to Goethe a meeting with the
brother of the princesses, who had invited himself to eat bacon, salad,
and pancake at Frau Goethe's house.
After the unfortunate campaign of the allies, Prussia and Austria
against France in 1792, while the princes of Mecklenburg were with the
army, Louisa and her three sisters were with their grandmother at
Hildburghausen, comforting and cheering one another in those days of
political desolation. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, the poet, enjoyed the
distinction of the friendship of the princesses of Mecklenburg. Louisa,
at the age of sixteen, is thus described. She was like her sister
Charlotte, had "the same loving blue eyes," but their expression changed
more quickly with the feeling or thought of the moment. Her soft brown
hair still retained a gleam of the golden tints of childhood; her fair
transparent complexion was in the bloom of its exquisite beauty, painted
by nature as softly as were the roses she gathered and enjoyed. The
princess was tall and slight, and graceful in all her movements. This
grace was not merely external; it rose from the inner depths of a pure
and noble mind, and therefore was full of soul.
On their return to Darmstadt, the capital of Princess George of Hesse,
Louisa's grandmother, the princesses met the King of Prussia and his
sons at Frankfort. It was an eventful day. The crown prince, later
Frederick William III., whose "age was in sorrow, whose hope in God," as
his motto runs, was captivated by the loveliness of Louisa. Long years
after her death he revealed his feelings at that momentous hour to
Bishop Eylert, his spiritual friend and comforter in sorrow, referring
to Schiller's words in The Bride of Messina:
"So strangely, mysteriously, wonderfully
Her presence seized upon my inner life;
'Twas not the magic of that lovely smile,
'Twas not the charm which hover'd o'er her cheek,
Not yet the radiance of her sylph-like form;
It was the pure deep secret of her being
Which held and fettered me with holy might.
Like magic powers that blend mysteriously,
Our twin souls seemed without one spoken word
To spring together, spirit stirred to blend
As we together breathed the air of heaven.
Stranger to me, yet inwardly akin,
Beloved at once I felt graved on my heart
'Tis she, or none on earth."
On April 24, 1793, the double betrothals between the two royal sons of
Prussia and the two Mecklenburg princesses were celebrated at Darmstadt.
At the encampment of Mainz, Goethe saw the royal brothers and their
fiancees walking through the canvas streets. Hidden in his own tent he
was entranced by their charms: "Amid all the terrible and tumultuous
memories of the war, the recollection of those two young ladies rises up
before me like a heavenly vision, which having been once seen can never
be forgotten." Princess Louisa may not even have known of Goethe's
presence in the camp, but she knew his works well and admired especially
his shorter poems. She certainly cherished the recollection of her stay
in the great poet's house at Frankfort, in recognition of which Prince
Charles Frederick of Mecklenburg had presented to Frau Goethe, as a
token of thanks, a beautiful snuffbox which was to her almost a sacred
relic.
On December 21st, Prince Charles Frederick, with his daughters and their
grandmother, arrived at Potsdam, where they were awaited by the
impatient bridegrooms. It was a day of universal joy, and every window
of the city was illuminated when the royal visitors passed under the
triumphal arch. Two days later there was a solemn entrance into Berlin.
Universal was the admiration excited by the uncommon beauty and
unaffected grace of the princesses. The foundation of Queen Louisa's
popularity was laid. On Christmas eve, 1793, all the members of the
royal family assembled in the apartments of the queen, where the diamond
crown of the Hohenzollerns was placed upon Louisa's head. The entire
court then betook themselves to the apartments of Elizabeth Christine,
the unfortunate widow of Frederick the Great. What a contrast between
this happy union of love, and that of the poor Princess of Brunswick who
had been forced upon the unwilling Frederick! We learn from the court
records that Louisa's bridal dress was entirely of silver lace, simply
made, but that her corsage glittered with diamonds corresponding to
those of the crown on her head.
This is not the place to dwell upon the home life of the royal couple,
their happiness, their seclusion from the atmosphere of that corrupted
court, Louisa's studies, especially of Shakespeare and the German
classics, and the unconscious influence of purity that emanated from her
presence. A sad time was approaching, and forebodings of political evil
were not wanting. The king, whose private life had undermined his
health, was slowly dying; but before the crown prince ascended the
throne Louisa bore him two sons, both of whom were to be kings of
Prussia, the second son was to be even Emperor of Germany and the
restorer of the ancient glories of the empire. Louisa's husband,
however, gentle, honest, upright, and his noble queen, the best beloved
that ever ruled over Prussia, paid politically the penalty for their
private happiness. The great statesman Von Stein rightly deemed him
inadequate for the gigantic mission of reforming the decadence that had
been going on steadily since the death of Frederick the Great: "I love
him," he said, "for his kind, benevolent nature, his well meaning
character; but I pity him for living in this iron age, in which to
enable him to maintain his position, but one thing is necessary:
commanding military talent, united with that reckless selfishness which
can crush and trample everything under foot, and is ready to enthrone
itself on corpses."
Nevertheless, the queen loyally aided her consort in his effort to
improve the condition of the realm. Their travels through the provinces
and the newly acquired Polish territories had a good effect. The
domestic life of the royal family was a model one and made for morality
in the lives of their subjects. The royal couple were patrons of arts
and letters, and Queen Louisa was particularly enthusiastic in support
of culture. But soon the wheel of fortune turned; the king, pacific in
the extreme, did not recognize in time that, unless he would join in the
coalition against the overweening pride and power of France, Prussia
would, single handed, be compelled sooner or later to meet that power.
The battle of Austerlitz prostrated Austria completely, and the doom of
Prussia approached.
In the years of threat and war Queen Louisa lost a beloved son, Prince
Ferdinand, and the sorrow alarmingly aggravated her previous
indisposition. The waters of Pyrmont restored her somewhat, and as for a
time painful political events were kept from her, the change of scene
and the affections of her relatives and dearest friends brought to her
once more a glimpse of happiness, the last that was to come into her
brief life. Yet her constitution had been shaken by the harassing
anxieties of the situation, and added sorrow was soon to fall upon
unhappy Prussia. The army was repeatedly defeated, and blow after blow
fell upon the unhappy country. The queen and her children fled to the
confines of the realm, to Konigsberg, the coronation city of the
Prussian kings. There her third son, Frederick Charles, fell ill with
typhoid fever. The child recovered, but his mother contracted the
disease and again went down to the brink of death. The famous physician
Hufeland describes the anxieties of the crisis: "The queen was in the
utmost danger, and all night long the wind howled terrifically. . . .
The wind was so strong, it blew down a gable of the old castle. By the
blessing of God the queen passed over the crisis of the fever, and was
beginning to rally, when suddenly came the news that the French were
approaching. It was feared that the queen was not strong enough to bear
removal, and it was therefore put off as long as possible, but she
begged to be taken away, quoting the words of King David:
'I am in great straits: let us now fall into the hand of the Lord, for
his mercies are great: and let us not fall into the hands of men.' In a
blinding snowstorm and a heavy wind the queen and the delicate prince
travelled for three days along the strand of the Baltic to Memel on the
Russian frontier on their tedious, painful journey to exile, knowing not
whether they would ever return. Hufeland reports in his diary: "The
queen spent the first night in a miserable room with a broken window,
and we found the melting snow was dropping on her bed. We were very much
alarmed on her majesty's account, but she was full of trust and courage,
and the fortitude with which she suffered, gave us strength to act. I
cannot say how thankful we felt when we came within sight of Memel, and
just at that moment the sun burst gloriously through the clouds for the
first time since we had been on this journey, and we hailed it as a
happy augury." In Memel the queen recovered, though living under the
most distressing circumstances.
After the retreat of the French from the frontier the Prussian court
repaired again to Konigsberg; the queen and Madame de Kriidener, the
wife of the Russian ambassador, the religious friend of Czar Alexander,
formed a lasting friendship. They attended frequently to the sick and
wounded in the hospitals, and strengthened their faith in a bright
future, at least for the unhappy country. After their separation, Louisa
wrote to Madame de Kruedener: "I owe a confession to you, my good friend,
which I know you will receive with tears of joy. You have made me better
than I was before. Your truthful words, our conversations on
Christianity, have left an impression on my mind. I have thought with
deeper earnestness upon these things, the existence and value of which I
had indeed felt before, but I had thought lightly of them, rather
guessed at them than felt assured of them. These contemplations brought
me nearer to God, my faith became stronger, so that in the midst of
misfortune I have never been without comfort, never quite unhappy. You
will understand that I can never be perfectly miserable while this
source of purest joy is open to me...." And in spite of the loss of
one-half of her realm, and in spite of all humiliations, joy was indeed
vouchsafed her in the development of her noble children, whom she thus
describes to her father: "Our children are our most precious treasures,
and we look on them with happiness and hope.... Now you have my whole
gallery of family portraits before you, my dear father. You will say
they are painted by a foolish mother who sees nothing but good in her
children, and is quite blind to their faults or failings. But really, I
am watchful, and I do not notice in the children any dispositions or
evil propensities which need make us painfully anxious.... Circumstances
educate people, and it may be well that they learn to know the serious
side of life in their youth. Had they been brought up in luxury they
might think it was the natural course of things, that it must be so...."
When we consider that Louisa speaks of the future king and the future
Emperor of Germany, many things in the after history of Germany become
clear to us! She truly estimated the unfolding dispositions of the
future rulers of Germany. Posterity does not agree with her first modest
words: "Posterity will not place my name among those of celebrated
women, but when people think of the troubles of these times they may
say: 'She suffered much and endured with patience,' and I only wish they
may be able to add 'She gave birth to children who were worthy of better
times, and who by their strenuous endeavors have succeeded in attaining
them.'" Queen Louisa is the most famous and the best beloved woman who
ever sat on a Hohenzollern throne. Even to-day her portrait adorns
nearly every Prussian home, and her beautiful form in Grecian attire, as
a symbol of pure and noble womanhood, is found in thousands of American
homes where the prototype may not even be known by name.
She died as she had lived. In the agonies of a painful death she
preserved her patience and loveliness. When free from pain she lay very
tranquil, looking like an angel, and now and then repeating to herself a
few words of a very simple hymn which she had learned in her childhood.
The unhappy king said at her death: "Oh, if she were not mine, she might
recover." The king gazed on her dead form for a moment with a look of
anguish which wrung the hearts of all who witnessed it; then he left the
room, but soon returned with his sons. Her countenance was beautiful in
death, particularly the brow; and the calm expression of the mouth told
that struggle was forever past.
Sixty years later, in July, 1870, on the day of her death, William I.
(1861-1888) visited her Mausoleum, and prayed before the recumbent
statue of his great mother, as he did frequently, this time with a heart
burdened with hopes and fears, for again a war of tremendous
proportions, the national question of "_to be or not to be_," was
pending with the same country under an emperor of the same ominous name
"Napoleon." Before Louisa's statue the aged monarch received the
inspiration and the strength which nerved him for the last gigantic
struggle.
Leaving the saintly Louisa, an entirely different type of royal
womanhood demands our consideration, a type rendered noteworthy by sheer
intellectual force. Catherine II., the Great, was the greatest woman,
politically speaking, ever produced by the German nation; but her genius
benefited, or rather raised to world power, a foreign and rival state,
namely, the Russian empire (1762-1796). Born at Stettin in 1729, and the
daughter of the petty Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine was married to
Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, heir to the Russian throne, whose blind
admiration for the great Frederick of Prussia alienated from him the
affections of the Russian people; while Catherine identified herself
with the Russians, whose future she was destined or determined to rule.
Even as crown princess she led a notorious life, at first with Count
Soltikof, and later with Count Poniatowski, afterward the ill-fated king
of dying Poland; but she never forgot to strengthen herself, all the
while, politically, and to secure all the instruments of power against
her hated and despised husband. Peter was deposed, imprisoned, and
strangled by Gregory Orloff, Catherine's paramour, certainly not without
her knowledge (July, 1762). As empress, she forcibly obtained for Russia
a controlling influence in the councils of Europe, while civilizing her
people and mightily fostering the arts and sciences. Her literary and
epistolary works and correspondence with the greatest men of her time
prove her to have been a woman of extraordinary genius and literary
capacity. As all her talents seemed to be out of proportion to womanly
limitations, so were her immorality and passion. She ruled with an iron
hand, through a succession of favorites or recognized lovers who, it
must be confessed, had nothing to recommend them but the physical
advantages of form and animal strength. The brutal Orloff, whom she
raised from a low station, maintained himself longest in her favor,
until his aspiration for the hand of his imperial mistress worked his
undoing. Other men, selected partly from the ranks of the common
soldiers, followed in rapid succession; finally, Gregory Potemkin became
the most powerful of all of them, until he was banished from the court
for trying to win Catherine in lawful marriage. Potemkin endeavored,
though with barbarous methods, to build up southern Russia, and remained
Catherine's favorite, at a distance, till his death. Meanwhile, she
chose her later lovers merely for personal gratification, so as not to
endanger her autocracy by the presumption of powerful men. She had
brought about the election of her favorite Poniatowski as King of
Poland, but she tore the kingdom to pieces when she recognized that the
conquest of Poland alone could make her beloved Russia a civilized
European or Western power. The domestic reforms which she instituted
along all the lines of political, economic, and sociological endeavor
are stupendous, and, compared with them, the deeds of Elizabeth of
England appear insignificant. Only the Titanic success of pushing
forward the boundaries of the empire in all directions, adding to it the
Crimea, the country as far as to the Dniester, with Courland and Poland,
as well as the beneficence of her rule in the reform of justice,
administration, and sanitation, the establishment of schools and
hospitals, the building of canals and fortresses, and the improvement of
the conditions of the peasants and of the lower bureaucracy, can
compensate, in the minds of historians and publicists, for her private
moral corruption and the gigantic immorality which she carried on
without restraint and in open defiance of civilized moral order. She
died of an attack of apoplexy in November, 1796. History remains
doubtful which was greater, her boundless energy, ambition, and genius,
or her superhuman immorality.
Returning to Prussia, we find weakness to contrast with Russia's
strength. Fifteen years after the death of Frederick the Great, we have
seen that Prussia was politically in a state of decadence. As of
politics, so of morals; and even the good example of the royal family
was unable to redeem society from the demoralization that had seized
upon the higher classes, and especially upon a great number of the
officers of the army. Regarding them a credible report of a contemporary
states: "The ranks of officers, already for a long time given over to
idleness and estranged from science, are farthest sunk in debauch. They
those privileged disturbers trample under foot everything which was
formerly called sacred: religion, marital faith, all the virtues of
domesticity. Among them their wives have become common property, whom
they sell and exchange and seduce mutually. The women are so corrupted
that even ladies of noble birth degrade themselves by becoming
procuresses and panderers, to attract young women of rank in order to
procure their seduction. One finds in the public houses true Vestal
virgins as compared with many distinguished ladies who are the leaders
in society. There are women of high rank who are not ashamed to sit in
the theatre on the benches of public women, to procure for themselves
lovers to go home with them. Many dissolute women of rank even unite and
hire furnished quarters in company, whither they invite their lovers,
and celebrate without restraint bacchanalia and orgies which would have
been unknown even to the regent of France. Since Berlin is the central
point of the monarchy from which all good and evil spreads over the
provinces, the corruption has gradually expanded even thither."
Forsooth, the ignominious defeat of Jena was indeed quietly preparing
many years before it took place.
Prince Louis Ferdinand, a cousin of the king, a chameleon-like
character, composed of some good and many evil qualities, who is still
sung in German folklore, owing to his heroic death on the battlefield
against Napoleon, was an exponent of that frivolous life. Like his
prototype, the Athenian Alcibiades, he was a devotee now to wine, woman,
song, now to the strenuous life of a brave soldier and heroic patriot.
One woman of wonderful beauty and of the temper of a Messalina, to use
Scherr's words, Pauline Wiesel, held him under her demoniacal sway of
never satisfied passion. But a woman of an entirely different type, the
extraordinary Jewish authoress, and ingenious, spirited
conversationalist and epistolographer, Rahel Levin, served him as a true
Egeria in pure friendship and intellectual affinity. Rahel Levin is a
great factor in the later time of restoration and one of its foremost
personalities. Rahel, as the wife of Varnhagen von Ense, and Bettina von
Arnim are the leaders of those women who exercised such a tremendous
influence in the evolution of German womanhood during the first half of
the eighteenth century. Their influence is enduring and makes even
to-day for good.
It is incumbent upon us to retrace our steps to give a more orderly
account of the literary, intellectual, and artistic woman. The
initiators of that class, the Gottschedin and the Neuberin have been
mentioned. Since the day of Frau Caroline Neuber, the status of the
German stage had risen considerably. The theatrical companies of
Schonemann, of Koch, of Ackermann had attained fame through their
liberation from French types. Simplicity and naturalness became the
ideal of playwrights. Friederike Hensel won the reputation of being the
greatest German actress of her time, as Konrad Eckhof became foremost
among the actors. These two, and Ackermann, with his daughter, Frau
Lowen, and others, became so to speak the charter members of the newly
founded National Theatre of Hamburg, for which Lessing was appointed
dramaturgiste. After two years the enterprise failed, but nevertheless
the ideal of what a German national theatre ought to be, was created and
expressed. Gifted women and Lessing an extraordinary combination indeed!
had founded it!
Female literary work began more modestly. While a great poet like
Lessing celebrated the great era of Frederick, while Ewald von Kleist
sang his king and the Prussian army and of death for the fatherland
which glory fell to his share at the battle of Kunersdorf, there arose
also a female poet, Anna Louisa Karsch, of the newly won province of
Silesia, who, in spite of her mediocrity, was celebrated as a Prussian
Sappho. The experiences of her life, springing from abject poverty, or
rather misery, her service as a stable maid, her marriage to a brutal
old husband, and yet her constant endeavors to improve her mind under
the most trying circumstances of menial labor and want, her divorce and
remarriage with a drunken, lazy tailor, Karsch, who sold even the
clothing of her children to indulge in his vice of drunkenness, read
almost like a terrible nightmare. But the hour of salvation came. When
her good-for-nothing husband was obliged to go to the Seven Years' War,
the Silesian Baron von Kottwitz noticed her talent and took her to
Berlin. In Berlin she soon became the fashion; she was received in
literary circles, and her poetry was encouraged. The "German Horace, the
thought-singing Ramler," informed her that Gleim, the poet of Prussian
war songs, desired to know "his sister in Apollo." She hastened to write
to the "Apollinian brother." Her friends secured her even an interview
with Frederick the Great, who promised to take care of her, a promise
which he forgot, however, in spite of her repeated rhymed exhortations.
Later, he sent her a royal present of two Prussian thalers, which she
promptly returned by mail. Frederick's successor directed "that a house
should be built for her adorned with all the allegories of the Muses."
In this she lived until 1791.
The estimate of her poetic gifts cannot be very high. She was a ready
rhymester of a rather mechanical sort, but she was the first of the line
of Germanic poetesses of the modern time, and as such her work deserves
study and, it may be, praise.
Woman's love is the mainspring of action in poetry. But the sensuous and
sensual side of woman's life not alone influenced the character and
nature of I may boldly say all the German poets of the storm and stress
period as well as of the great classical era. Their religious and
ethical being was also powerfully moved by intellectual women. Goethe
had become alienated from dogmatic religion, especially at the
University of Leipzig, and when he returned sick and despondent to his
native city, a friend of his mother, Fraulein von Klettenberg, by her
"presence soothed his stormy, divergent passions at least for moments,"
and even won him over for a time to pietism. The mystic notions of the
German Quakers, the Herrenhut brotherhood, besides studies in cabalistic
alchemy, took, at least for a time, deep root in his soul. In his prayer
he betrays an almost irrational longing for the union with God and
separation from earthly things: "O that I could for once be filled with
thee, Eternal One," and again: "Alas, this anxious deep torture of the
soul, how long does it last on this earth!" Although after his recovery
he was saved by his strong healthy nature from sentimental religious
weakness, he always preserved a genuine toleration for the religious
beliefs and errors of others, and his portrait of Fraulein von
Klettenberg in his Confessions of a Beautiful Soul, will always remain a
psychological masterpiece.
It was an intellectual woman, too, who succeeded in winning the poet
Fritz Stolberg over to the Roman Catholic Church. Princess Amalia
Galitzin, called the Christian Aspasia, in Miinster, the centre of
Westphalian Catholicism, gathered the North German Catholics as well as
the Orthodox Protestants around her, and exercised for a time a powerful
influence.
As women at all times affected the hearts and souls of the great poets,
there is not one who was not moulded by womanly affections, so they in
turn were remoulded by the respective lovers. This is proved by the
entire literature of the period. The great ballad poet Burger, scorning
the tenets of morality, leads a dissolute life; and this life is
reflected even in his best work. He marries Dorette Leonhardt, while he
already loves her younger sister Molly, and his passion for the latter
grows more impetuous during his married life. As Molly returns his
criminal love, the lawful wife resigns herself to a relation which
destroys the lives of all three. After having lost both his wives in
rapid succession, he commits the error of marrying a third wife, Elise
Hahn, who, carried away by his poetry, offers herself to Burger, whom
she has never seen, and who romantically accepts her hand. But "the
delusion was short, repentance was long." Elise's fickleness, frivolity,
and manifest infidelity soon brought about a divorce. Broken in heart
and spirit, the great poet, whose life had been wrecked by "the eternal
feminine," which, instead of uplifting him, dragged him into the mire,
died, solitary, wretched, and reduced to poverty and self-contempt. His
poetry bears the traces of his ruined life.
On the other hand, the simple, virtuous and idyllic, pastoral life in
Germany is charmingly portrayed in Voss's _Luise_, and is illuminated by
Goethe's poetic genius in _Hermann and Dorothea_. Goethe, however, not
only depicted idyllic life in poetry, but actually lived it in his
student days in Strassburg with Friederike Brion, the pastor's daughter,
of Sessenheim. The art of painting has immortalized in numberless
pictures the charming idyllic forms of the lovely shepherdesses, the
Luises, the Mariannes. Miller's Siegwart, a _Cloister Story_, is one of
the many picture books of the feminine soul of that complex period of
simplicity and enlightenment. Chodowiecki, the great painter, is perhaps
the best delineator of those typical figures of German womanhood.
Sophie La Roche, who had in her youth revolutionized the mind of the
great poet Christoph Martin Wieland, was one of the most remarkable
women of her time. Wieland, in his youth, conceived a passionate love
for Sophie, whom he introduced into the treasure house of poetry, but
his enthusiastic love for her did not terminate in marriage. She
remained, however, during all her life his intimate friend, though
Goethe's overwhelming genius made Wieland's star pale in her later
estimate. As the wife of Maximilian La Roche, councillor of the Elector
of Mainz, she turned to French literature, especially to Voltaire and
Rousseau, and made her home "the place of spiritual pilgrimage on the
Rhine for German authors. Young Goethe was received there, and according
to his disposition, against which he was quite helpless revered the
mother for the sake of her two beautiful daughters, who were just
approaching womanhood. When her husband lost favor with the prince,
Sophie supported her family by her writings as "the teacher of Germany's
daughters." Her novels, written in the spirit of Richardson, are
valuable records of the many-colored court life and of the activities of
the social personages of her time. A modern author, Ludmilla Assing, has
described the life of this extraordinary woman, who is to be remembered
not only for her own merit, but as the grandmother of Clemens and
Bettina Brentano; because of whom Sophie La Roche may be called the
grandmother of German "Romanticism."
It is impossible to give even the most cursory account of the remarkable
German women of this later period, for at every step we meet with such
an _embarras de richesse_ of extraordinary women, of whom voluminous
biographical accounts have been written, that we can only select typical
characters.
Besides Caroline Neuberin, the pioneer and founder of a respectable
German stage, only one important woman played a role in the life of the
grand Lessing. A great love awoke in his heart for Eva Konig, "the only
woman with whom he would venture to live." To realize his desire, he
accepted a poorly paid position as librarian at Wolfenbiittel. He was
forty years old when the betrothal took place, but six years later his
circumstances for the first time permitted him to marry. His happiness
lasted but a short time. On Christmas eve, in 1777, a son was born to
him, who died at birth; and two weeks later, to his inconsolable grief,
he lost his beloved wife. His literary references to this great sorrow
belong to the most pathetic passages in literature, just as his
correspondence with Eva Konig, edited by Alfred Schone, furnishes the
most charming portrait of a great man.
Lessing's correspondence with Eva Konig is but an additional proof that
among the most valuable documents adduced for the characterization of
German womanhood are love letters to and from German women. Such letters
are accessible to us from the thirteenth century. During the fourteenth
century they become more numerous: a nun corresponds, perchance, with
her father confessor; presents are exchanged, and sentiments, not always
of a purely religious nature. Now and then the tender phrase is wanting,
but is replaced by a crude picture of a heart pierced with an arrow.
Later on we find an address like "lovable, subtle, beneficent,
well-formed, overloved woman." Luther greets his "friendly, dear 'lord,'
Frau Catherine von Bora, Doctor Lutherin in Wittenberg" with teasing
endearments, as he complains of the fare at the court of Saxony and
expresses his longing for home: "What a good wine and beer have I at
home, besides a charming wife, or should I say 'lord!'" An attractive
originality shines forth from the letters of Duchess Elizabeth Charlotte
of Orleans, and from those of Goethe's mother. Naturalness was the ideal
in letter writing of the late eighteenth century, as artificiality had
been that of the preceding era. Frau Gottsched, in her letters, reveals
a roguish grace that contrasts with the stilted style of her tyrant
husband. Goethe's letters of love and longing in Werther will stand as a
model as long as literature shall be esteemed in the world, although
there is a realistic and totally indefensible sentimentality in
Werther's love of Lotte, the wife of another man.
Werther, beautiful of form, spiritual, and highly gifted, had,
naturally, frequently aroused love without returning it; now Nemesis
seizes him; he loves, loves to madness the wife of another man. The
loveliness of Lotte (by the way, she is a real person, Charlotte Buff;
while the lover is a composite of Goethe himself and young Jerusalem,
who had actually shot himself at Wetzlar for the love of another man's
wife), as we see her in pictures of German artists, feeding her numerous
brothers and sisters, who cling to her, fans Werther's love, which is
stronger than all the other forces of his heart. Unable to resist his
passion, he chooses death as an inevitable necessity. The romance
presented in the letters of the hero only concentrates the sequence of
events forcibly upon the tragic climax. Lotte is the passive instrument
in bringing about Werther's suicide. As to Werther he is Goethe himself,
the novel is simply a fragment of a great confession.
Goethe's numberless works, touching upon universal interests, are among
the most profound and most exhaustive treatises on womanly nature ever
written. Women accompany him through his long life and influence him at
every step of his career as poet, philosopher, and statesman. His
extraordinary mother, of a patrician Frankfort family, spirited,
natural, poetic, with a melodious, beautiful soul, instilled into him
the sense of the beautiful and perchance gave him creative force.
Cornelia, Goethe's only sister, also powerfully influenced and inspired
him. She was to Goethe what Frederick the Great's favorite sister,
Wilhelmine, was to her brother. Goethe delineated the characteristics of
his charming mother in the character of Elizabeth, wife of Goetz von
Berlichingen. Poor abandoned Maria is, according to Goethe's allusions,
the martyred Friederike. Sister Cornelia inspired the play.
The abiding effect of woman's love upon Goethe becomes manifest when we
realize that an unhappily ending early love affair with Gretchen, a
young girl of Frankfort, remained imprinted upon his soul for more than
forty years, and served him as a prototype for his greatest, most
complex, and most pathetic heroine, Gretchen in _Faust_. It is true that
after the unfortunate ending of that romance at Frankfort he found
sufficient compensation in his love for Kaethe Schonkopf, the daughter of
a wine dealer in Leipzig, at whose restaurant he boarded when a student
of seventeen at the university. According to the portrait taken from the
gallery of Goethean women, Kaethe was a fascinating, round-faced girl.
She gave up her ardent lover when he tortured her too much with his
jealous whims, and the pain of that separation was dramatized by Goethe
in his earliest play, _The Caprice of the Lover_.
We have briefly mentioned Goethe's return, broken in health and spirit,
from Leipzig to Frankfort, the influence exerted upon him by Katherine
von Klettenberg, his transfer to the University of Strassburg, and his
idyl with Friederike of Sessenheim, which the most eminent
German-American literary critic Julius Goebel calls, however, more
fittingly "a tragedy." His famous poem, _The Rose on the Heath_, in
which the rose is passionately broken by the wanton boy in spite of her
protest, sums up in charming symbolism the sad story of Goethe's love
for the unfortunate Friederike. What this charming flower of the
parsonage had been to his youth, how he left her, the pangs of
conscience which tormented him for a long time, his unfailing memory of
her who never forgot him, and who died unmarried in 1813, all this
Goethe's genius characterized with psychological delicacy in his
autobiography: "Fiction and Truth".
Perhaps even more profound was the storm aroused in Goethe's soul
somewhat later by his love for Lili Schoenemann, who inspired many of his
most beautiful songs and reminiscences. The daughter of a rich Frankfort
banker, highly educated by her French mother, young and very beautiful,
blond and graceful, in the enjoyment of all the social advantages of her
position, she keenly aroused Goethe's emotions, while she also was
deeply stirred to see that extraordinary man at her feet. She succeeded
absolutely: Goethe became hers with life and soul, while, at the same
time, he enjoyed with young Countess Auguste von Stolberg, sister of the
two poets, a deep romantic friendship which survived all the storms of
his eventful life. He never saw the countess, whom he nevertheless
addresses familiarly as "Gustchen" and "thou." His correspondence with
her sheds a wondrous light on his soul, especially with reference to his
love for Lili. Lili tried to win him, now paining him by jealousy, now
soothing him by love. At last a formal betrothal was arranged, which was
but the beginning of the end. He tried "whether he could live without
Lili," and went on a journey to Switzerland with Count Stolberg. But he
never forgot her. In a letter to Gustchen he calls her "the maiden who
makes me unhappy without any fault of hers, she with the soul of an
angel whose serene days I sadden!"
Lili Schonemann became later the wife of the Alsatian Baron von
Turckheim, with whom she lived in happy marriage till her death in 1817.
She confessed to her daughter as the true reason of her broken betrothal
to Goethe the revelation made to her by her mother of Goethe's former
relation to Friederike Brion and of his conduct toward her. Lili, though
pure and true to her husband, never forgot Goethe; while the latter, in
his age, confessed to Eckermann that "he had loved her deeply as no one
before or afterward." Lili's biography, _Lili's Portrait_, written by
her grandson, Count Turckheim, is an important chapter in the history of
a cultured, high-minded, energetic, and exquisite womanly character,
loved and lost by the poet-prince of Germany. It is not accidental that
Goethe, distracted by the loss and not knowing where to turn, plunged
into and translated just at that time Solomon's Song of Songs, which he
described in a letter to his friend Merck as "the most glorious
collection of songs of love God ever created." It is also almost
providential that he received, even at that period of regret and
despair, the renewed invitation of Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, who
had recently ascended the throne of his fathers, and who was destined to
become the greatest Maecenas of the century and, as it were, the sponsor
of Germany's greatest intellectual bloom, to establish himself at
Weimar. There he arrived on November 7, 1775, at the age of twenty-six,
received with universal rejoicing and enthusiasm. "New love, new life,"
arises for him in Weimar, and with his new love and new life a new era
for Germany the era of Goethe, or Classicism proper.