1848.
I now come to perhaps the most important period in Richard Wagner’s
life, full of deep interest in itself, and pregnant with future good to
our art. Additional interest is further attached to it because of the
incomplete or inaccurate accounts given by the many Wagner biographers.
For this shortcoming, this unsatisfactory treatment, Wagner is himself
to blame. He has left behind him rich materials for an almost exhaustive
biography; he was a man of great literary power, a clear and full
writer, and yet, with reference to the part he played in the revolution
in Saxony, of 1848-49, he is singularly, I could almost say
significantly, silent, or, when he does allude to it, his references are
either incomplete or misleading.
Wagner was an active participator in the so-called Revolution of 1849,
notwithstanding his late-day statements to the contrary. During the
first few of his eleven years of exile his talk was incessantly about
the outbreak, and the active aid he rendered at the time, and of his
services to the cause by speech, and by pen, prior to the 1849 May days;
and yet in after-life, in his talk with me, I, who held documentary
evidence, under his own hand, of his participation, he in petulant tones
sought either to minimize the part he played, or to explain it away
altogether. This change of front I first noticed about 1864, at Munich.
But before stating what I know, on the incontestable evidence of his own
handwriting, his explicit utterances to me, the evidence of
eyewitnesses, and the present criminal official records in the
procès-verbal Richard Wagner, of his relations with the reform movement
(misnamed the Revolution); I will at once cite one instance of his--to
me--apparent desire to forget the part he enacted during a trying and
excited period.
Wagner was a member of a reform union; before this body he read, in
June, 1848, a paper of revolutionary tendencies, the gist of which was
abolition of the monarchy, and the constitution of a republic. This
document, of somewhat lengthy proportions, harmless in itself, which was
printed by the union, constituted part of the Saxon government
indictment against Richard Wagner. From 1871-1883 Wagner edited his
“Collected Writings,” published by Fritsch, of Leipzic, in eleven
volumes; these include short sketches on less important topics, written
in Paris, in 1841, but this important and interesting statement of his
political opinions is significantly omitted. Comment is needless.
[Sidenote: _THE REVOLUTION AGAIN._]
To help in forming an accurate judgment of Richard Wagner’s
“revolutionary tendencies” (?) a slight sketch of the outbreak, its
objects, and the means employed, will be of assistance. Secondly, as the
head and front of Wagner’s offending, according to the government,
rested on a letter he had written from Dresden to August Roeckel at
Prague, on the first day of the rise, which letter was unfortunately
found on Roeckel when taken prisoner, references to Roeckel’s
participation will be necessary. Indeed, from an intimate knowledge of
the two men, I place my strong conviction on record, that had it not
been for August Roeckel, the patriot, Wagner, revolutionary demagogue,
would never have existed nor have been expatriated. True and undoubted
it is, that Richard Wagner’s nature was of the radical reformer’s type,
but in these matters he was cautious, and would not have played the
prominent part he did, had it not been for the stirring appeals of “the
friend who sacrificed his art future for my sake.” The feeling already
existed in him; it was fanned into a glowing flame by his colleague,
Roeckel. When aroused, Wagner was not the spirit to falter.
Wagner has often been charged with base ingratitude towards his king.
The accusation is absurd, and proceeds solely from ignorance, forsooth,
indeed, it is disproved emphatically in the very revolutionary paper
which forms part of the official government indictment against him.
Although he therein argues in favour of a republic, his personal
references to the king of Saxony are inspired by feelings of reverential
affection. Wagner was no common trickster, or prevaricator, and when he
speaks of the “pure virtues” of the king, “his honourable, just, and
gentle character,” of the “noblest of sovereigns,” we may unhesitatingly
acquit him of any personal animosity. He even seems to have had a
prophetic instinct of this charge, and meets it by, “He who speaks this
to-day, and ... is most firmly convinced that he never proved his
fidelity to the oath of allegiance he took to the king, on accepting
office, more than on the day he penned this address.”
[Sidenote: _HIS INCENDIARY PAPER._]
In the year 1848 the kingdom of Saxony, and other German principalities,
were in a state of much unrest. The outbreak of the French Revolution
caused an onward movement, and the German people clamoured for
constitutional government, and demanded (1) freedom of the press, (2)
trial by jury, (3) national armies, and (4) political representatives. A
deputation set out from Leipzic, in February, 1848, and pleaded
personally before the king of Saxony. He replied by a more rigorous
press censorship. The people congregated in thousands before the Leipzic
town hall, to hear the royal reply read. Enraged at the refusal of their
requests, and at the tone of that refusal, they determined on sending a
second deputation. Wagner was present when this arrived. They no longer
prayed, but plainly told the king that the press was free, demanded
another minister, and intimated that if the freedom was not officially
recognized, Leipzic would march _en masse_ on Dresden. Six other towns
then sent deputations; the king was advised not to receive them, but
they forced their way to the presence chamber, which the king left by
another door, exclaiming, “I will not listen--go!” As a reply to such
unwise treatment, Wagner’s townsmen prepared to make good their words,
and marched on Dresden. Prussian aid was sought, and promptly given,
troops mobilizing on the northern frontier, the Saxon soldiery being
despatched to surround Leipzic. Other towns arranged mass deputations to
the king, who despatched a minister to report on the attitude of
Leipzic. The report came, “The people are determined and orderly.” The
whole report was favourable to the town; upon which, the king changed
his ministers, abolished the press censorship, instituted trial by jury,
and promised a reform of the electoral laws. The people became
delirious with joy, and received the king everywhere with acclamations.
It was during these stirring times that Wagner and Roeckel became
members of the “Fatherland Union,” a reform institution with a modest
propaganda. The Union was really a federation of existing reform and
political institutions, adopting for its motto, “The will of the people
is law,” leaving the question of a republic or a monarchy an open one.
There was plenty of enthusiasm and strong determination among members of
the Union, but they lacked organization. The drift of the government’s
attitude was clear, seemingly conciliatory, but really more oppressive.
The Union felt that until the electoral laws were altered and national
armies instituted, the people would never be in a position to cope with
the government. It was not that they desired the abolition of the
monarchy so much as the acknowledgment that capable, law-abiding
citizens had a right to a voice in the selection of their rulers. The
Union had its own printing-press, and distributed largely political
leaflets, a proceeding carried on openly, though the members knew
themselves exposed to every hazard.
It is a fact that one of the best papers read before the members of the
Union was written by Richard Wagner. It was not possible that a man of
Wagner’s excitable temperament, with his love of freedom, his
deep-rooted sympathy with the masses, would have joined such a society
without actively exerting himself to further its objects. In his heart
he was not a revolutionist, he had no wish to overturn governments, but
his principles were decidedly utilitarian, and to secure these he did
not scruple to urge the abolition of the monarchy, although represented
by a prince he dearly loved. His argument was delivered against the
office and not against the man. Among the many reforms he advocates in
this paper are two to which democratic England has not yet attained: (1)
manhood suffrage without limitation or restriction of any kind, and (2)
the abolition of the second chamber. Though he urges the substitution of
a republic for a monarchy, he strives at the impossible task of proving
that the king can still be the first, the head of a republic, and that
the name only would be changed, and that he would enjoy the heart’s love
of a whole people in place of a varnished demeanour of courtiers. His
paper was read on the 16th June, 1848, before the Fatherland Union. It
was ordered to be printed and circulated among the various federated
societies. A copy of this paper was sent to me, of which I give a
translation here. It will be noted that it is not signed Richard Wagner
but only “A Member of the Fatherland Union.” This mattered not, as the
author was well known, and when Wagner was numbered among those accused
by the government, this paper was filed as part of the indictment
against him. It is entitled:--
“What is the Relation that our Efforts bear to the Monarchy?” and is as
follows:--
[Sidenote: “_STRIP HIM OF HIS TINSEL._”]
As it is desirable that we become perfectly clear on this point,
let us first closely examine the essence of republican
requirements. Do you honestly believe that by marching resolutely
onward from our present basis we should very soon reach a true
republic, one without a king? Is this your deliberate opinion, or
do you say so only to delude the timorous? Are you so ignorant, or
do you intentionally purpose to mislead?
Let me tell you to what goal our republican efforts are tending.
Our efforts are for the good of all and are directed towards a
future in which our present achievements will be but as the first
streak of moonlight. With this object kept steadily in view, we
should insist on the overthrow of the last remaining glitter of
aristocracy. As the aristocracy no longer consists of feudal lords
and masters who can enslave and bodily chastise us at their will,
they would do wisely to obliterate old grievances by relinquishing
the last remnants of class distinction which, at any moment, might
become a Nessus shirt, consuming them if not cast off in time.
Should they answer us that the memory of their ancestors would
render it impious to resign any privileges inherited by them, then
let them remember also that we too have forefathers, whose noble
deeds of heroism, though not inscribed on genealogical trees, are
yet inscribed--their sufferings, bondage, oppression, and slavery
of every kind--in letters of blood in the unfalsified archives of
the history of the last thousand years.
To the aristocracy I would say, forget your ancestors, throw away
your titles and every outward sign of courtly favour, and we will
promise you to be generous and efface every remembrance of our
ancestors. Let us be children of one father, brothers of one
family! Listen to the warning--follow it freely and with a good
will, for it is not to be slighted. Christ says, “If thy right eye
offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is better
that one of thy members should perish than that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.”
And now another point. Once for all, resign the exclusive honour of
ever being in the presence of our monarch. Pray him to cease
investing you with a medley of useless court offices, distinctions,
and privileges; in our time they make the court a subject for
unpleasant reflection. Discontinue to be lords of the chamber and
lords of the robes, whose only utterance is “our king,”--strip him
of his tinsel, lackeys, and flunkeys, frivolous excrescences of a
bad time--the time of Louis the Fourteenth, when all princes sought
to imitate the French monarch. Withdraw from a court which is an
almshouse for idle nobility, and exert yourselves, that it may
become the court of a whole and happy people, which every
individual will enjoy and will be ready to defend, and smile on a
sovereign who is the father of a whole contented people.
Therefore, do away with the first chamber. There is but one people,
not a first and a second, and they need but one house for their
representation. This house, let it be a simple, noble building,
with an elevated roof, resting on tall and strong pillars. Why
would you disfigure the building by dividing it with a mean
partition, thus causing two confined spaces?
We further insist upon the unconditional right of every
natural-born subject, when of age, to a vote. The more needy he be,
the more his right, and the more earnestly will he aid in keeping
the laws which he himself assisted in framing and which,
henceforth, are to protect him from any similar future state of
need and misery. Our republican programme further includes a new
system of national defence, in which every citizen capable of
bearing arms shall be enrolled. No standing army. It shall be
neither a standing army nor a militia, nor yet a reduction of the
one nor an increase of the other. It must be a new creation, which
in its process of development, will do away with the necessity of a
standing army as well as a militia.
[Sidenote: _NOT THREATS, BUT WARNING._]
And when all who draw breath in our dear German land are united
into one great free people, when class prejudices shall have ceased
to exist, then do you suppose we have reached our goal? Oh, no; we
are just equipped for the beginning. Then will it be our duty to
investigate boldly, with all our reasoning power, the cause of
misery of our present social status, and determine whether man, the
crown of creation, with his high mental abilities and his wonderful
physical development, can have been destined by God to be the
servile slave of inert base metal. We must decide whether money
shall exert such degrading power over the image of God--man--as to
render him the despicable slave of the passions of usury and
avarice. The war against this existing evil will cause neither
tears nor blood. The result of the foregone victory will be a
universal conviction that the highest attainable happiness is
commonwealth, a state in which as many active men as Mother Earth
can supply with food will join in the well-ordered republic,
supporting it by a fair exchange of labor, mutually supplying each
other’s wants, and contributing to the universal happiness. Society
must be in a diseased state when the activity of individuals is
restrained and the existing laws imperfectly administered. In the
coming contest we shall find that society will be maintained by
the physical activity of individuals, and we shall destroy the
nebulous notion that money possesses any inherent power. And heaven
will help us to discover the true law by which this shall be
proved, and dispel the false halo with which the unthinking mind
invests this demon money. Then shall we root out the miseries
engendered and nourished by public and secret usury, deceptive
paper money and fraudulent speculations. This will tend to promote
the emancipation of the human race (whilst fulfilling the teachings
of Christ, a simple and clear truism which it is ever sought to
hide behind the glamour of dogma, once invented to appeal to the
feeble understanding of simple-minded barbarians), and to prepare
it for a state towards the highest development of which we are now
tending with clear vision and reason.
Do you think that you scent in this the teachings of communism?
Are you then so stupid or wicked as to confound a theory so
senseless as that of communism with that which is absolutely
necessary to the salvation of the human race from its degraded
servitude? Are you not capable of perceiving that the very attempt,
even though it were allowed, of dividing mathematically the goods
of this world, would be a senseless solution of a burning question,
but which attempt, fortunately however, in its complete
impossibility, carries its own death-warrant. But though communism
fails to supply the remedy, will you on that account deny the
disease? Have a care! Notwithstanding that we have enjoyed peace
for thirty-three years now, what do you see around you? Dejection
and pitiful poverty; everywhere the horrid pallor of hunger and
want. Look to it while there is yet time and before it becomes too
late to act!
Think not to solve the question by the giving of alms; acknowledge
at once the inalienable rights of humanity, rights vouchsafed by
the Omnipotent, or else you may live to see the day that cruel
scorn will be met by vengeance and brute force. Then the wild cry
of victory might be that of communism, and although the
impossibility of any lengthened duration of its principles as a
ruling power can be boldly predicted, yet even the briefest reign
of such a thraldom might be sufficient to expunge for a long time
to come all the advantages of a civilization of two thousand years
old.
Do you believe I threaten? No; I warn! When by our republican
efforts we shall have solved this most important problem for the
weal of society, and have established the dignity of the freed man,
and established his claim to what we consider his rights, shall we
then rest satisfied? No; then only are we reinvigorated for our
great effort. For when we have succeeded in solving the
emancipation question, thereby assisting in the regeneration of
society, then will arise a new, free, and active race, then shall
we have gained a new mean to aid us towards the attainments of the
highest benefits, and then shall we actively disseminate our
republican principles.
Then shall we traverse the ocean in our ships, and found here and
there a new young Germany, enriching it with the fruits of our
achievements, and educating our children in our principles of human
rights, so that they may be propagated everywhere. We shall do
otherwise than the Spaniards, who made the new world into a
papistic slaughter-house; we shall do otherwise than the English,
who convert their colonies into huge shops for their own individual
profit. Our colonies shall be truly German, and from sunrise to
sunset we shall contemplate a beautiful, free Germany, inhabited,
as in the mother country, by a free people. The sun of German
freedom and German gentleness shall alike warm and elevate Cossack,
Frenchmen, Bushmen, and Chinese. You see our republican zeal in
this respect has no termination; it pushes on further and further
from century to century, to confer happiness on the whole of the
human race! Do you call this a Utopian dream? When we once set to
work with a good will, and act courageously, then every year shall
throw its light on a good deed of progress.
But you ask, will all this be achieved under a monarchy? My answer
is that throughout I have persistently kept it in view, but if you
have any doubts of such a possibility, then it is you who pronounce
the monarchical death-warrant. But if you agree with me, and
consider it possible as I realize it, then a republic is the exact
and right thing, and we should but have to petition the king to
become the first and most genuine republican.
[Sidenote: _THE QUESTION TO BE SOLVED._]
And who is more called upon to be the most genuine republican than
the king? _Res-publica_ means the affairs of the people. What
individual can be destined more than the king to belong with his
whole soul and mind to the people’s affairs? When he has been
convinced of this undeniable truth, what is there possible that
could induce him to lower himself from his exalted position to
become the head of a special and small section only of his people.
However deeply any republican may feel for the general good, he
never can emulate the feelings of the king, nor become so genuine a
republican, for the king’s anxiety is for his people as a whole,
whilst every one of us is, in the nature of things, compelled to
divide his attention between private and public affairs. And in
what would consist a sacrifice, which it might be supposed the king
would have to make in order to effect so grand and noble a change?
Can it be considered a sacrifice for a king to see his free
citizens no longer subjects? This right has been acknowledged and
granted by the new constitution, and he who confirms its justice
and adopts it with fidelity, cannot see a sacrifice in the
abolition of subjects, and the substitution of “free men.” Would it
be possible that a monarch could view the loss of the idle, vapid
court attendance, with its surfeit of extinct titles and obsolete
offices, as a sacrifice? What a contemptuous notion we should have
of one of the most gentle-minded, true-hearted princes of our
period, were we to assume that the fulfilment of our wishes
entailed a sacrifice on his part, when we feel convinced that even
a real sacrifice might with safety be expected from him, and the
more so, when it is proved to him that the love of his people
depended on the removal of an obstacle. What gives us the right to
suppose this? that by our interpretation of the feelings of so
exceptional a prince, we are able to infer that he would grant our
request when we could not dare act thus with one of our body? It is
the spirit of our time, the new state of things, that has grown up,
which seems to give to the simplest among us the power of prophecy.
There is a decided pressure for a decision. There are two camps
amongst the civilized nations of Europe; from one we hear the cry
of monarchy; republic, is the cry of the other.
Will you deny that the time has come when a solution of this
question must be arrived at, a question, the reply to which
embodies all that which, at the present moment, excites human
sympathies down to their lowest depths? Do you mean to say that you
do not recognize the hour as inspired by God, that all this had
been said and attempted before, and would again pass off like a fit
of inebriation, and would fall back into its old place? Well,
then, it would seem as though the heavens had stricken you with
blindness. No; at the present moment we clearly perceive the
necessity of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, and
monarchy as the embodiment of autocracy is a falsehood--our
constitution has proved it to be so.
All who despair of a reconciliation throw yourselves boldly into
the arms of the republic; those still willing to hope, lift their
eyes for the last time to the points of existing circumstances to
find a solution. The latter see that if the contest be against
monarchy, it is only in isolated cases against the person of the
prince, whilst everywhere war is being waged against the party that
lifts the monarch on a shield, under the cover of which they fight
for their own selfish ends. This is the party that has to be thrown
down and conquered, however bloody the fight. And if all
reconciliation fail, party and prince will simultaneously be hit.
But the means of peace are in the hands of the prince; if he be the
genuine father of his people, and by one single noble resolution he
can plant the standard of peace, there where war seems otherwise
inevitable peace will reign. Let us then cast our glance around,
and seek among the European monarchs those said to be the chosen
instruments of heaven for the great work of paternal government,
and what do we see? A degenerated race, unfit for any noble
calling! What a sight we find in Spain, Portugal, or Naples. What
heartache fills us when we look in Germany, on Hanover, Hesse,
Bavaria. Let us look away from these! God has judged the weak and
wicked; their evils extend from branch to branch. Let us turn our
eyes towards home. There we meet a prince beloved by his people,
not in the old traditional sense, but from a genuine acknowledgment
of his real self, his pure virtues, his honourable, just, and
gentle character; therefore, we cry aloud, “This is the man
Providence has chosen!”
[Sidenote: _A SELF-DEPOSING KING._]
If Prussia insists on monarchy, it is to suit its notion of
Prussian destiny, a vain idea that cannot fail to pale soon. If
Austria is of the same mind, it is because she sees in her dynasty
the only means of keeping together a conglomeration of people and
lands thrown into an unnatural whole and which cannot by any
possibility hold together much longer. But if a Saxon chooses
monarchy, it is because he loves his king, is happy in calling such
a prince his own, not from a cold, calculating spirit of
advantage, but from genuine affection. This pure affection shall be
our beacon-light, our guide not only during this troubled state of
things, but for the future and forever. Filled with this
unspeakably grand and important thought, we with inspired
conviction courageously exclaim, “We are republicans!”
By what we have achieved we are rapidly nearing our goal,--the
republic,--and although much anger and deception attach themselves
still to the name, all doubts can be dispelled by one word from our
sovereign. It is not we who shall proclaim the republic; it will be
our king, the noblest of sovereigns; he shall say:--
“I declare Saxony to be a free state, and the first of this free
state shall give to every one the fullest security of his station,
and we further proclaim that the highest power in the land of
Saxony is invested in the royal house of Wettin to descend from
branch to branch by the right of the firstborn. And we swear to
keep the oath that the law shall never be broken, not that our
taking it will be the safeguard of its being kept, for how many
oaths are continually broken to such covenants! No; its safeguard
will be the conviction we had before we took the oath, that the law
will be the beginning of a new era of unchangeable happiness, not
only for Saxony, but the whole of Germany, aye, to all Europe will
it carry the beneficent message.”
He who speaks this to-day, emboldened by inspired hope, is most
firmly convinced that he never proved his fidelity to the oath of
allegiance he took to the king on accepting office more than on the
day he penned this address. Does it appear to you that by this
proposition, _monarchy would be altogether abolished? Yes, so it
would!_ But the kingdom would thereby be emancipated. Do not
deceive yourselves, ye who clamour for “a constitutional monarchy
on the broadest basis.”
You are either not honest in reference to that basis, or if you are
in real earnest, you will torture your artificial monarchy to
death, for every step you take in advancing on that democratic
basis will be an encroachment on the power of the monarch, viz.:
his autocracy; and in this light only can a monarchy be understood,
therefore every step you take in a democratic direction will be a
humiliation to the monarch, since it will bespeak a distrust of his
rule. How can love and confidence prosper in a continual conflict
between totally opposed principles? A monarch cannot fail to be
thwarted and annoyed in a contest in which very often undignified
measures are employed that cannot but produce an unhealthy state of
things. Let us save the monarch from such an unhappy half-life.
_Therefore, let us abolish monarchy altogether_, as autocracy,
_i.e._ sole-reigning, becomes impossible by the strong opposition
of democracy,--the reign of the many,--but, on the other hand, let
us set against this the complete emancipation of royalty.
At the head of the free state--the republic, the king by lineal
descent, will be what he in the noblest sense should be, viz. the
first of the people, the freest of the free!
Would this not be the grandest realization of Christ’s teaching,
“the highest among you shall be the servant of all,” for in serving
and upholding the liberty of all, he raises in himself the
conception of liberty to the highest pinnacle, the divine. The more
earnestly we dive into the annals of German history, the more we
become convinced that the signification of sovereignty, as we have
given it, is but a resuscitated one. The circle of historical
development will be closed when we have adopted it, and its
greatest aberration will be found in the present un-German
conception of monarchy.
Should we wish to formulate our heartfelt wishes into a petition,
then I am convinced we should have to count our petitions by the
hundred thousands, for their contents would lead to a
reconciliation of contesting parties, at least of all of them that
mean well. But only one signature is wanted here to be conclusive,
that is, the signature of our beloved king, whom from the innermost
depth of our hearts we wish a happier lot than he can at present
enjoy!
A MEMBER OF THE FATHERLAND UNION.
16TH JUNE, 1848.
[Sidenote: _HE BECOMES A MASKED MAN._]
It may be supposed with such documents scattered broadcast by a great
political institution, that the government would have shown discretion
and endeavoured to conciliate the people by judicious concessions. Their
action, however, was in the contrary direction. They were well aware
they could crush the people at the first appearance of an outbreak, and
cared not. As long as they had control of the army they felt secure.
This question of natural armies was for the moment pressing. Wagner had
endeavoured to solve it in his paper, but his were more suggestions than
a detailed plan, so his talk with his friend, August Roeckel, led to the
latter attempting a solution. Roeckel took for his basis the various
military organizations in force in Switzerland. His paper was read
before the Fatherland Union, and Wagner told me, he was loudly
applauded. Like his own paper it was printed, and in thousands. He, too,
signed his scheme, “A Member of the Fatherland Union,” but it was an
open secret who was the author. The result was that he was dismissed
from his post of assistant court conductor, after five years of service.
The Union then resolved to hold themselves in readiness for extreme
measures, and with that view directed Roeckel to amplify his plan. As
this was a question of technical skill and practical experience, the aid
of officers in the army was sought. The movement was popular with the
troops, and advice was readily forthcoming. The government, becoming
aware of this, at once dismissed all military men who had aided in
formulating the plan. From this time Wagner was what might be termed a
marked man. It was known that “the companion of my solitude” was his
offending assistant director, and means were taken to indicate the
disapprobation of the court. August Roeckel was dismissed in the autumn
of 1848, just at the time all Dresden was celebrating the three-hundred
years’ jubilee of its theatre. Among the favours bestowed by the king
were decorations for Chapel Master Reissiger, (a man vastly the inferior
of Wagner) and other subordinates, but Wagner was passed over. The
slight was intentional.
But a few weeks later Liszt was going to produce “Tannhäuser” at Vienna.
To secure as perfect a representation as possible, Jenasst, the Vienna
stage manager, visited Richard Wagner, for consultation, and he relates
how Wagner took him to a meeting of republicans where the men all wore
large hats, and behaved themselves generally in a wild, excited fashion.
No longer a musician by profession, but engaged entirely in the cause of
the people, August Roeckel founded a small weekly paper called the
“Volksblatte” (People’s Paper), naturally supported by the Union; it was
narrowly watched by the government. Occasionally seizures were made, but
no charge was brought against Roeckel. In this Wagner wrote, and I know
that the tenour of his articles was, “Destroy an interested clique of
flatterers who surround the King; and let the royal ear be open to the
prayers of all the people.” The government contemplated a prosecution of
Roeckel, but refrained solely because of the difficulty of securing a
conviction.
[Sidenote: _ROECKEL’S PROMINENCE._]
In November the _Prussian National Gathering_ was dissolved. This
procedure exasperated the people, upon which Berlin openly announced
that any exhibition of revolt would be at once put down mercilessly by
bayonet and cannon. August Roeckel was appealed to, and he wrote a
letter to the Prussian military authorities on the subject, copies of
which he sent to the public journals. For this the government arrested
him and put him in prison, where he remained three days without trial;
a generous unknown friend, putting ten thousand dollars as bail, secured
his release. Shortly after, he was tried and acquitted, but to this day
it is not known who was the benefactor on that occasion. So popular was
August Roeckel with the people, that on his acquittal, he was met by a
large concourse of friends, to which joined a detachment of Life Guards,
some two dozen, from the barracks close at hand, and headed a procession
through the town. As may be expected, the whole of the troop of soldiers
were tried, punished, and dismissed from the army. I mention this
incident as bearing upon the prominence of Roeckel in the eyes of the
government; and because the charges against Wagner rested on his
friendship with Roeckel, and on papers found at Roeckel’s house,
implicating Richard Wagner.
In the opening winter months of 1848, the air was thick with reform. A
new chamber was to be elected; every one was straining his utmost for
the cause. It was felt that on the result of the elections the fate of
the people rested. The Fatherland Union determined to run as many
candidates of their own as possible, and Roeckel was of the chosen
number. He was elected deputy for Limbach, near Chemnitz, the electors
purchasing and presenting him with the freehold property, which it was
required all members should possess. The result of the elections gave an
overwhelming majority for what were termed the people’s candidates.
Roeckel wrote me the result, which was as follows:--
Government party, nil seats.
Moderate liberals, one-tenth.
Democratic party, nine-tenths.
[Sidenote: _A GERMAN NATIONAL THEATRE._]
The democratic party as a body had pledged itself to a revision of
taxation. It was felt that the new chamber would not trifle with an
iniquitously large court list, nor would it tolerate luxuries on the
civil list. This was openly talked about. Wagner was in distress. The
subsidy granted by the government to the theatre was one of the items of
the civil list; was this to go? He saw Roeckel; there was the man most
fitted to urge the wisdom of retaining the charge. His devotion to the
cause of the masses was unhesitatingly admitted on all hands, and he
knew the theatre and its necessary expenditure better than any one. It
was decided that while Roeckel should work in the chamber, Wagner
should, as conductor, draw out a scheme and submit it to ministers,
independently of his coadjutor. The plan once begun assumed much larger
proportions than was intended for the occasion. It was delivered, and he
heard nothing of it for months, officially, but he knew that the
discussion was being shirked. When it was returned to him, there was
evidence in the shape of pencil-marks that he had been laughed at as a
visionary, anticipating a great measure of reform when it was intended
none should be granted. Communications had been opened up secretly with
the Prussian government, who promised on the first show of discontent to
enter Saxony with their troops and very effectively stamp it out; and so
the king’s advisers had no intention of considering any plan the newly
elected chamber might submit. In itself the plan is a marvel of
administrative and constructive ability. He entitled it, “Scheme for the
Organization of a German National Theatre.” There are many propositions
advanced in it which are very moot points, in urging which Wagner, in
my judgment, was in error; _e.g._ private enterprise was to be
discountenanced for the reason that an impressario might produce immoral
pieces. To him the theatre was a great educator of a nation, and he
would insist on all theatres being under the direct control of the
government. But apart from this, which is a matter of opinion, the
scheme is a logical and exhaustive treatment of the whole question of
dramatic and vocal art, from the training-school for girls and boys to
their retirement on a pension to be allowed by the government. I will
briefly mention the main features of his plan: (1) Girls to enter
training-schools at fourteen, boys at sixteen, for three years; (2)
curriculum to embrace dancing, fencing, and general culture; (3) pupils
to first appear in the provinces; (4) pensions to be guaranteed, and
innumerable details as to construction of chorus, orchestra,
qualification of directors and instructors, practice, etc.