I was born in the lowest and deepest part of Ardistan, a favourite
of distress, worry, and sorrow. My father was a poor weaver.
Both of my grandfathers had met with fatal mishaps. My mother's
father died at home, my father's father in the forest. On
Christmas day, he had gone to a neighbouring village, to fetch
some bread. Nightfall came suddenly. In a raging snowstorm he
lost his way and plunged into the ravine of "Krähenholz" <Crows'
Wood>, which used to be rather steep, and could not struggle his
way out again. His tracks were blown away. He was searched for a
long time in vain. Not until the snow had disappeared, his
corpse, and also the bread, was found. Generally, Christmas has
very often been, for myself as well as my family, not so much a
joyous time, but rather a time of tragic misfortune.
I was born on February the 25th, 1842, in the tiny town of
Ernstthal <Earnest Valley> in the Erzgebirge <Ore Mountains> [a],
which was a very poor and small town then, mostly populated by
weavers. Now, it has been incorporated into the slightly larger
Hohenstein <High Rock>. There were nine of us: my father, my
mother, both grandmothers, four sisters, and me, the only boy.
My mother's mother scrubbed floors for other people and span
cotton. On some occasions, she earned more than 25 pfennig per
day. Then, she became generous and gave us five children two
tiny rolls of bread, which only cost four pfennig, because they
were extremely hard and stale, often even moldy. She was a kind,
hard working, silent woman, who never complained. She died, as
one would say, of old age. The real reason for her death was
probably what is nowadays discretely termed as "being underfed".
About my other grandmother, my father's mother, there is more to
tell, but not here, at this point. My mother was a martyr, a
saint, always quiet, infinitely hard working, constantly willing
to make a sacrifice for other, even poorer people in spite of our
own poverty. Never ever, I have heard her speak a bad word. She
was a blessing for everyone she met, and a special blessing for
us, her children. No matter how hard she suffered, she would
never let anyone know about it. But at night, when she sat,
busily knitting, by the light of the small, smoking oil-lamp and
thought no one was watching, it happened that a tear came to her
eye to run down her cheek, vanishing even faster than it had
appeared. With one movement of the fingertips this trace of her
sufferings was instantly wiped away.
[a] Erzgebirge: the mountain range which forms the border of
Saxony with Bohemia.
The name of the town is spelled "Ernsttal" throughout most of
the original book. In 1901, there had been a reform of the
German spelling system, changing "th" into "t" in all words
where it does not transliterate the Greek letter theta. Thus
"Thal" <valley> became "Tal". But this change should not be
applied to names of places and persons.
My father was a man of two souls: One soul of infinite tenderness
and one of tyrannic proportions, knowing no limits in his rage,
incapable to control himself. He possessed outstanding talents,
all of which remained undeveloped on account of our immense
poverty. He had never attended any school, but had learnt through
his own efforts to read fluently and to write very well. He was
naturally handy in all crafts necessary for daily life. Whatever
his eyes saw, his hands could reproduce. Though being just a
weaver, he was nevertheless capable to tailor his own coats and
trousers, and to sole his own boots. He enjoyed whittling and
sculpting, and what he achieved in these field had some appeal and
was not too bad. When I wanted a violin, and he did not have the
money to buy the bow as well, he swiftly made one himself. Its
shape was not so beautifully curved, and it lacked in elegance,
but it was entirely fit for its job. Father liked to busy himself
with his work, but all of his work was always done in a hurry.
What took another weaver fourteen hours, took him only ten. He
then used the other four to do things he enjoyed more. During
those ten hours of immense strain, he was very bad company,
everyone had to keep quiet, no one was allowed to stir. At these
times, we lived in constant fear of arousing his rage. Then, woe
on us! Attached to his loom, there was a threefold woven rope,
which left blue marks on the flesh, and behind the oven, he kept
the well known "birch-wood Hans", whom we children particularly
feared, because father loved to soak it in the large "oven-pot"
before every chastisement, to make it more elastic and therefore
more penetrating. But on the other hand, when the ten hours were
over, we had nothing to fear any more. We all sighed in relief,
and father's other soul smiled at us. He could be downright
endearing then, but even in most joyous and peaceful moments, we
felt like standing on an active volcano, which might errupt at any
given moment. Then we got the rope or the "Hans", until father's
strength wore out. Our oldest sister, a highly gifted, kind,
happy, conscientious girl, was still disciplined by slaps to the
face after she was engaged, because she had come home from a walk
with her fiancé just slightly later than she had been permitted.
Here, I have to interrupt, to interject a serious, more important
remark. I am not writing this book for my opponents' sake, to
respond to them or to defend myself against them. I am rather of
the opinion that the manner in which I am being attacked renders
any kind of response or defence impossible. Nor am I writing this
book for my friends, because they know, understand, and comprehend
me, so that I have no need to inform them about myself. I rather
write it only FOR MY OWN SAKE, to become certain of myself and to
account to myself what I have done up to now and what I am still
planning to do. Thus I write in order to confess. But I am not
confessing to people; after all, they would also never think of
admitting their sins to me, but rather I am confessing to my God
and myself, and whatever these two will say after I have ended,
will bear upon me. Thus, these are not ordinary, but sacred,
hours in which I write these pages. I am not just talking here
for this life, but also for the other life I believe in and I am
yearning for. In making this confession, I put myself into this
entity and existence as which I will persist after death. Thus,
it can be truly, truly irrelevant to me, what my friends or foes
will say about this, my book. I place it in very different hands,
the right hands, the hands of destiny, of omniscient providence,
which knows neither favour nor disfavour, only justice and truth.
Here, nothing can be concealed or embellished. Here, everything
has to be said and admitted honestly as it is, no matter how
unrespectful it may seem or how much it might hurt. Someone had
invented the expression "Karl-May-problem". Well then, I accept
it and let it stand. This problem will not be solved by any of
these people, who have not even read my books or did not
understand them and nevertheless pass judgement upon them. The
Karl-May-problem is mankind's most fundamental problem, transposed
from the huge, all encompassing plural into the singular, into the
single individual. And the same way this problem of mankind is to
be solved, the Karl-May-problem is also to be solved, there is no
other way! Whoever turns out to be incapable of solving the
Karl-May-puzzle in a satisfactory, humane manner, shall for God's
sake keep his feeble hand and inadequate ideas from grasping
beyond his own self and to deal with more difficult questions that
concern all of mankind! The key for all of these puzzles exists
for a long time. The Christian church calls it "original
sin" [a]. To know the forefathers and foremothers is to
understand the children and grandchildren; and only with a humane
attitude, a truly noble spirit, one will be enabled to be truthful
and honest concerning one's ancestors, in order to be able to be
just as truthful and honest concerning the descendants. To bring
the influence of the deceased on later generations to light, is,
on the one hand, a bliss and, on the other hand, a redemption for
both parts. And therefore, I too have to describe my family just
as they have been in reality, whether this might be regarded as
being contrary to child's duty or not. I do not only have to be
truthful concerning them and me, but also concerning all of my
fellow-men. Perhaps someone else could learn from our example to
do the right thing in his own affairs. - -
[a] "Erbsünde": the German expression for "original sin"
suggests rather a meaning of "inherited sin". Actually, the
idea of Adam's original sin being inherited by every human
being at birth is rather common among Catholics and
Protestants (but is rejected by Orthodox Christians). I have
been told that this belief is based on a misinterpretation of
Romans 5:12 by St. Augustine, who interpreted the words for
"sin" and "death" as synonymous in this verse: "as by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men".
Entirely unexpectedly, mother had inherited a house as well as a
few small, linen money-pouches from a distant relative. One of
these money-pouches contained lots of two-pfennig-pieces, another
one lots of tree-pfennig-pieces, and a third one lots of
groschen [a]. A fourth one contained three score of
fifty-pfennig-pieces, and in the fifth and last pouch, ten old
pieces of six from Schaffhausen, ten eight-groschen-pieces, five
gulden [b], and four taler [c] were found. This was really a
fortune! In our poverty, it seemed almost like a million!
Granted, the house was just as wide as three small windows and
largely built of wood, but on the other hand, it was three storeys
high and had on the very top, right under the ridge of the roof, a
pigeonry, which is, of course, not so commonly found.
Grandmother, my father's mother, moved into the ground floor,
which only consisted of one room with two windows and the
entrance. Behind the room was a chamber with an old mangle, which
was rented to other people at two pfennig per hour. There were
happy Saturdays, when this mangle earned us ten, twelve, yes even
fourteen pfennig. This increased our standard of living quite
extensively. On the first floor, the parents lived with us.
There stood the loom with its reel. On the second floor, we slept
with a colony of mice and some larger rodents, who usually lived
in the pigeonry and only visited us at night. There also was a
cellar, but it was always empty. Once, it held a few bags of
potatoes, but they did not belong to us, but rather to a
neighbour, who did not have his own cellar. Grandmother remarked
that it would be much better, if the cellar belonged to him and
the potatoes to us. The yard was just big enough for us five
children to stand in it without crowding each other. It adjoined
the garden, which contained an elder-bush, an apple-tree, and a
plum-tree, as well as small pond, which we called our "lake". The
elder-bush supplied us with the tea, we drank in order to get into
a sweat, whenever we had caught a cold. But it did not last very
long, because as soon as one of us children had caught a cold, all
others started coughing as well and wanted to sweat along. The
apple-tree always blossomed very beautifully and amply. But since
we knew just too well that apples taste best right after the
blossoms were gone, all apples were usually harvested as early as
the beginning of June. The plums, on the other hand, were taboo
to us. Grandmother enjoyed them far too much. They were counted
daily, and nobody dared to touch them. Nevertheless, we children
got more, much more of them, than what was our rightful share. As
far as the "lake" is concerned, it was full of life, but
unfortunately not with fish, but with frogs. We knew all of them
individually, even by their voices. There were always between ten
and fifteen of them. We fed them with earth-worms, flies,
beetles, and all kinds of other nice things we could not enjoy
ourselves for gastronomic or aesthetic reasons, and they always
responded very gratefully. They knew us. They left the water,
whenever we approached them. Some even allowed us to hold and pet
them. But the full measure of their gratitude could be heard at
night, when we were falling asleep. No dairymaid could enjoy her
zither more, then we enjoyed our frogs. We knew precisely, which
one it was, making his noise, whether it was Arthur, Paul, or
Fritz, and when they even began to sing in a duet or in a chorus,
we jumped out of our beds, opened the windows, to join the
croaking, until mother or grandmother came and put us back where
we belonged. Unfortunately, one day, a so-called
district-physician came to our small town, to conduct a so-called
health-survey. Everywhere, he found something objectionable.
This equally weird and callous man clapped his hands over his
head, as soon as he saw our garden and our beautiful pond, and
declared that his cesspool of pestilence and cholera had to
disappear at once. The next day, the policeman Eberhardt brought
a note from the town's Judge Layritz, stating that within three
days the pond had to be filled in and the population of frogs had
to be killed, otherwise a fine of fifteen "good groschen" [d] had
to be payed. We children were outraged. To murder our frogs!
Well, if Judge Layritz had been a frog, then we would have done it
with pleasure! We discussed the matter, and as we decided, so it
was carried out. The water was scooped from the pond, until we
could catch the frogs. They were put into the large basked, which
had a lid, and carried to the large pond of the coal-pit behind
the rifle-house, grandmother marching ahead, we followed. There,
every frog was individually taken from the basket, lovingly
petted, and put into the water. How many sighs could be heard,
how many tears were shed, and how many condemning judgements were
passed on that so-called district-physician, I can no longer say
with certainty now, after more than sixty years have passed. But
I still know quite definitely that grandmother assured us, to put
an end to our immense sorrow, every one of us would, after
precisely ten years had passed, inherit a three times larger house
with a garden, five times as large, which would contain a ten
times larger lake with twenty times larger frogs. This brought an
equally sudden and pleasant change to our disposition.
Cheerfully, we marched home with grandmother and the empty basket.
[a] Groschen: a coin worth 10 pfennig.
[b] Gulden, a.k.a. guilder: a coin worth 20 groschen.
[c] Taler (outdated spelling: Thaler), a.k.a. dollar: a coin
worth 30 groschen. (The American currency was named after
this coin.)
[d] "Guter Groschen" (good groschen): an older type of groschen,
worth slightly more (1.25) than the Neugroschen
(new-groschen).
This happened at a time, when I was no longer blind and was
already able to walk. I was neither born blind, nor was I
inflicted with some kind of an inherited physical defect. Father
and mother were indeed vigorous and healthy by nature. They have
never been sick throughout their lives. To accuse me of atavistic
frailties is an act of malice, I have to reject most decisively.
That I fell seriously ill shortly after my birth, lost my
eyesight, and was ailing for entire four years, was not the
consequence of inheritance, but rather only due to the local
conditions, the poverty, ignorance, and harmful quackery, the
victim of which I became. As soon as I came into the hands of a
capable physician, my eyesight returned, and I became a most sound
and robust boy, who was strong enough to take on any other boy.
But, before I talk about myself, I have to devote some more time
to the surroundings, in which I have spent my earliest childhood.
Along with the house, mother had also inherited the debts,
associated with it. Interests had to be paid on them. Therefore,
all we got out of it was that we had to pay interests instead of
rent. Mother was economical, and father was so too in his own
way. But just as he was excessive in everything, in his love, his
rage, his work, his praise, his reprimand, so he was here as well
in is assessment of that small inheritance, which could only be an
incentive to continue saving money and to remove the debt from the
house. But though he did not take to the belief he had suddenly
become rich, he nonetheless presumed he could adopt a different
lifestyle, now. He stopped spending his entire life toiling at
the loom. After all, he had a house now, and he had money, lots
of money. He could turn to something else, which was less
strenuous, more worth while than weaving. While lying in his bed,
being unable to sleep, and thinking about what he should do, he
heard the rats rumbling upstairs in the empty pigeonry. This
rumble was repeated day by day, and so, in that manner well known
to any psychologist, the decision ripened in him, to drive out the
rats and to buy pigeons. He wanted to become a pigeon-dealer,
though he knew nothing at all about this trade. He had been told
that a lot of money could be made in this business, and was
convinced that, even without the necessary special knowledge, he
would possess enough intelligence to outsmart any other dealer.
The rats were driven out and pigeons were bought.
Unfortunately, this purchase could not be made without spending
some money. Mother had to sacrifice one of her pouches, perhaps
even two. She did it just reluctantly. The pigeons did not give
her the same joy, they gave us children. Our greatest pleasure
was to watch the dear animals changing their tender plumage.
Father had bought two pairs of very expensive "blue-striped"
pigeons. He brought them home and showed them to us. He hoped to
make at least three taler of them. Some days later, the blue
feathers lay on the ground: they had not been real, but had been
glued on. The precious "blue-striped" pigeons turned out to be
entirely worthless, common, white ones. Father purchased a very
pretty, young, grey cock pigeon for one taler and fifteen good
groschen. After a short time, the pigeon turned out to be blind
of old age. He never left the pigeonry, his value was zero. Such
and similar incidents occurred increasingly. The consequence of
this was that mother had to sacrifice another pouch to really get
the pigeon-trade going. Of course, father also tried his best.
He took no leisure-time. He attended all markets, all inns and
bars in order to buy or to find buyers. One time he bought peas,
another time vetches, he had obtained "almost for free". He was
always on the move, from one village to another, from one farmer
to another. He constantly brought home cheese, eggs, and butter,
we did not even need. He had bought them over price, just entice
the farmers' wives into a deal, and could only unload them with
difficulties and at a loss. This restless, unprofitable life
yielded no gain, but devoured the happiness of our home. It even
ravaged the remaining linen pouches. Mother talked to him kindly,
in vain. She worried and kept quiet, until it would have been a
sin to bear it any longer. Then, she arrived at a decision and
went to Judge Layritz, who turned out to be much, much more
reasonable in this case, than at that other time with our frogs.
She presented her case to him. She told him that she did love her
husband very, very much, but had to consider primarily her
children's well-being. She disclosed to him that she owned an
additional pouch, she had not shown, but kept from her husband.
She asked the judge to be so kind to tell her how she should
invest this money in order to achieve security for herself and her
children. She presented him with the pouch. He opened it and
counted. There were sixty hard, shiny, well polished talers.
This caused great astonishment! Judge Layritz thought about it,
then he said: "My dear Mrs. May, I know you. You are a good
woman, and I will vouch for you. Our midwife is old, we need a
younger one. You will go to Dresden and spent your money there on
becoming a midwife. I will arrange this! If you'll return with
the highest marks, we will hire you right away. I'm giving you my
word on this. But if you should return with lesser marks, we will
not be able to use you. But now, go back home and tell your
husband, he should come and see me right away, I'd have to talk
with him!"
So it happened. Mother went to Dresden. She returned with the
highest marks, and Judge Layritz kept his word; she was hired.
During her absence, father did all of the housework together with
grandmother. This was a hard time, a time of suffering, for all
of us. There was an outbreak of small-pox. All of us children
became ill. Grandmother did almost more than was humanly
possible; but father did so too. One of the sisters' head had
turned into a shapeless lump on account of the small-pox.
Forehead, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin had entirely
disappeared. The physician had to probe for the lips with a
knife, in order to feed the sick girl with at least some milk.
She is still alive today, the most cheerful one of us all, and has
never been sick again. The scars are still visible, which
resulted from the physician cutting her, while searching for her
mouth.
These hard times were not entirely over yet, when mother returned,
but her stay in Dresden brought a big stroke of good fortune for
me. By her hard work and her quiet, deeply sincere ways, she had
gained the favour of the two professors Grenzer and Haase, and had
told them about me, her miserable, blinded, and yet spiritually so
lively boy. She had been asked to bring me to Dresden, to be
treated by these two physicians. This was now done, and with a
quite remarkable success. I learnt to see, and returned home
healthily in all other respects as well. But all of this required
a large, large sacrifice; of course it was only large in respect
to our poor conditions. Because of all of the necessary expenses,
we had to sell the house, and the small part of the price we were
to keep as our own was hardly sufficient to pay for the most
urgent things. We moved to a rented place. - -
And now, I will turn to that person, who had the most profound and
extensive influence on my development in a spiritual respect.
While our mother's mother had been born in Hohenstein and was
therefore called the "Hohensteiner grandmother" by us, my father's
mother was from Ernstthal and therefore had to listen to the name
"Ernstthaler grandmother". The latter was an entirely peculiar,
inscrutable, noble, and, I might almost say, mysterious character.
She was to me, from my early youth on, a cherished, blissful
puzzle, from the depth of which I could scoop up wisdom without
ever running out of it. Where had she obtained all this from.
Very simple: She was a soul, nothing but a soul, and modern
psychology knows what this means. She was born in the direst need
and had grown up in the direst suffering; therefore, she regarded
everything with hoping eyes, yearning for deliverance. And
whoever is capable to hope and to believe the right way, has
already pushed all the misery of earth aside and will only find
sunshine and God's peace ahead. She was the daughter of miserably
poor folks, had lost her mother at an early age, and to feed her
father, who was neither able to stand nor to lie and was tied and
bound to an old leather arm-chair for many years, until he died.
She took care of him with an endless self-denial, which would move
a person to tears. Poverty allowed her only the cheapest of
accommodations. Her chamber's window let her see only the
cemetery, nothing else. She knew all of the graves, and thought
there would only be one course for herself and her father, to be
carried out of their humble dying chamber in a coffin towards the
churchyard. She had one lover, who had decent and honest
intentions, but she gave him up. She wanted to devote her entire
time only to her father, and the good fellow agreed with her. He
said nothing, but he waited and remained faithful to her.
Upstairs, in the attic, stood an old chest, containing even older
books. This were heirlooms, bound in leather, of various
contents, both religious and secular. It was told that there had
been clerics, scholars, and travellers in our family, when it had
been prosperous, of whom we are reminded up to this day by those
books. Father and daughter were able to read, they had both
learnt it by themselves. At nightfall, after the strife and work
of the day was done, the Reifröckchen [1] was lit, and one of them
read to the other. Once in a while, a pause was made to discuss
what had been read. Though having read the books almost twenty
times already, they started over again and again, because every
time, new ideas were found, which seemed to be better, more
beautiful and also truer than those from before. Most frequently,
a rather large and very worn-out volume was read, the title of
which was:
[1] a small oil lamp
_The_Hakawati_
i.e.
the story-teller in Asia, Africa, Turkia, Arabia, Persia, and
India, including an appendix with interpretation, explanatio &
interpretatio, also many a comparison and images
by
Christianus Kretzschmann
who was from Germania.
Printed by Wilhelmus Candidus
A. D.: M. D. C. V.
*
* *
This book contained a large amount of meaningful, oriental tales,
which were not to be found in any previous collection.
Grandmother knew all of these tales. Usually, she recited them
literally, word by word, but in certain instances, whenever it
deemed her necessary, she made alterations or added applications,
from which became evident that she knew the spirit of the stories
she told very well, and made precise use of its effect. Her
favourite tale was the fable of Sitara. Later, it also became my
favourite, because it dealt with the geography and ethnology of
our earth and its inhabitants from a purely ethical point of view.
But let this just be a small indication, here.
The father died as a consequence of a series of hemorrhages.
Taking care of him was so exhausting that the daughter came close
to death herself, but she survived it. After the time of mourning
had passed, May, the faithful lover, came and took her on. Now
finally, finally she was truly happy! It was a marriage,
according to God's will. Two children were born, my father and a
sister before him; she later suffered a serious fall and was
crippled as a consequence of it. So you see, that we always had
our share of afflictions, or rather tests of faith. And you can
also see that I do not conceal anything. It must not be my
intension, to embellish the ugly parts. But shortly after the
birth of the second child, that sorrowful event occurred at
Christmas time, I already told about. The good young man plunged
at night with the bread into the deep, snowy ravine and froze to
death. Grandmother and both of her children had nothing to eat
during the Christmas holidays, and only found out after a long
time of agony that she had lost her beloved husband, and under
such dreadful circumstances. Hereafter came years of mourning and
then the hard times of the Napoleonic wars and of famine.
Everything was devastated. No work could be found anywhere.
Inflation grew; hunger raged. A poor, young journeyman came to
beg. Grandmother could not give him anything. She did not even
have a single piece of bread for herself and her children. He saw
that she was silently weeping. This aroused his compassion. He
left and returned after more than one hour. He poured out before
her, whatever he had got, pieces of bread, a dozen potatoes, a
rutabaga, a small, very ancient cheese, a small bag of flour, an
equally small bag of barley, a thin slice of sausage, and a tiny
piece of mutton-suet. Then, he swiftly went away to avoid her
gratitude. She never saw him again; but there is one who knows
him for sure and will not forget him. This one sent even more and
better help. The wife of a head forester had died. He lived
outside of the town and was known to be as prosperous as he was
kind-hearted. His wife had left him with a very large number of
children. He wished to employ grandmother as a housekeeper. In
this time of need, she would have liked to accept just too well,
but declared that she could not possibly part with her own
children, even if she found a place to house them. It did not
take the good man long to decide. He declared to her, he would
not care whether six or eight children ate at his house; they
would all be fed. She should just come, not without them, but
with them. This saved her from the direst need!
The stay in the quiet, lonely house of the forester was doing the
mother and her children a world of good. They grew healthier and
stronger from the better nutrition. The head forester saw
grandmother doing her best to show her gratitude and to gain his
satisfaction. She worked almost more than her strength would
allow, but felt good about it. He quietly observed this and
rewarded her by granting her children, in every respect, the same
things his own children received. Surely, he was an aristocrat
and basically proud. He ate alone with his mother-in-law.
Grandmother was just a servant, yet she did not eat in the
servant's, but the children's room. But when, after some time, he
had gained an insight into the peculiar world of her soul, he
cared for her spiritual wellbeing as well. He eased the heavy
burden of her work, allowed her to read to him and his
mother-in-law from her books in the evenings, and permitted her
then to look at his own books as well. How much did she enjoy
this! And he had such good, such useful books!
The children had, in reasonable limits, a free life. They chased
each other through the forest and got strong limbs and red cheeks.
Little May was the youngest and smallest of them all, but he
joined the others with all of his energy. And he payed attention;
he learnt and remembered. He wanted to know everything. He asked
about every object he did not know yet. Soon, he knew the names
of all plants, all caterpillars and worms, all bugs and
butterflies, which existed in his realm. He sought to familiarise
himself with their character, their properties and habits.
This zest for knowledge, gained him the head forester's special
affections, who did not even regard it beneath him, to allow the
boy to accompany him. I have to mention this, so that later
events become understandable. The following relapse from this
sunny, hopeful time of his boyhood into the previous poverty and
wretchedness could not possibly have had a positive effect on the
boy.
It was at this time that, during lunch, grandmother suddenly fell
from her chair and dropped dead to the floor. The whole house
became very excited. The physician was called. He diagnosed a
heart attack and stated that grandmother was dead and had to be
buried within three days. But she was alive. Yet, she could not
move a single limb, not even her lips or the not entirely closed
eyelids. She saw and heard everything, the weeping, the
lamentations for her. She understood every word that was spoken.
She saw and heard the carpenter, who came to take her measurements
for the coffin. When it was done, she was placed into it and put
into a cold chamber. On the day of the burial, she was laid out
in the corridor. The pall bearers came, the minister and the
cantor with the students' choir. The family started to bid its
farewell to her who appeared to be dead. Just imagine their
agony! For three days and three nights, she had made every
effort, to show by any kind of movement that she was still alive -
- in vain! Now, the last moment had come, when she could still be
saved. Once the coffin had been closed, there was no hope left.
Later, she told that in her terrible mortal fear, she had made
efforts, quite beyond what is humanly possible, to at least wiggle
one finger, when one after another came by to hold her hand for
the last time. So also did the head forester's youngest girl, who
had always felt particularly close to grandmother. Suddenly, the
child startled and screamed: "She has grabbed my hand; she wants
to hold on to me!" And really, everyone saw the seemingly
deceased, alternatingly opening and closing her hand in a slow
motion. The funeral was, of course, called off immediately.
Other physicians were brought in; grandmother was saved. But
from then on, the way she led her life was even graver and more
uplifted than before. Just rarely, she talked about what she had
thought and felt in those unforgettable three days on the
threshold between life and death. It must have been horrible.
But this also just served to strengthen her faith in God and to
deepen her confidence in Him. Just as her death had been unreal,
from now on she also regarded the so-called actual death as
equally unreal, and for many years she sought the right ideas to
explain and to prove this. It is thanks to her and her false
death that I in general only believe in life, but not in death.
Before she was mentally quite over this experience, grandmother
and her two children were hurled back into their previous way of
life, on account of the head forester being assigned to another
district and getting remarried. She returned to Ernstthal, and
again had to earn her living penny by penny. A good man, Vogel by
name and also a weaver by trade, proposed to her. Everyone kept
urging her, she had to give her children a new father; she owed
them that much. She did it, and had no cause to regret it, but
unfortunately, she became once more a widow after just a short
time. He died and left her everything he owned: poverty and the
reputation of a good, hard working man. Hereafter, her life
became quiet and even quieter. She got her girl a place with a
seamstress, and her boy was sent to a weaver, who kept him working
at the reel from dawn to dusk. After all, it was now taken for
granted that the boy had to become nothing but a weaver, though
he had definitely lost all interest in it during his stay at the
forester's house. He had already gained an entirely different
image of himself, and it is surely understandable that later,
after having been forced into this unloved craft, he got the idea
to free himself from it again by means of the pigeon-trade.
Nevertheless, he did his duty, both as a boy and as an adolescent.
He worked hard and became a capable weaver, whose merchandise
turned out so clean and accurate that every businessman liked to
have him work for him. But, in this leisure-time, he strolled
through forests and meadows, to collect plants and to keep all the
knowledge he had gained at the head forester's fast in his memory.
Therefore he took great pleasure from the fact that among the
previously mentioned inheritance of our mother there were also
some old, most interesting books, the contents of which turned out
to be of great benefit to him in these leisure-time activities.
Here, I am particularly thinking of a large, thick folio, which
had about a thousand pages and bore the following title:
Herbal Book
Of the most learned and worldwide famous Dr. Petri Andreae
Matthioli. Now again with many beautiful new illustrations,
useful medicine also, and other good pieces, for the third time
with particular effort enlarged and printed,
by
Joachimum Camerarium,
Doctor of medicine at the praiseworthy city of Nürnberg.
With three, well ordered, useful registers of herbs' Latin and
German names, and then the medicine, with the usage of the same
included. Also ample information, on distilling and kilns.
With special privilege of His Roman Imperial Majesty,
not to be copied in any format.
Printed in Frankfurt am Main,
M. D. C.
*
* *
It was the most natural thing in the world for father to
immediately take this book and to study it eagerly. It contained
even more than the title promised. For instance, the names of the
plants were often also given in French, English, Russian,
Bohemian, Italian, and even in Arabic, which later helped me in
particular to a quite extraordinary degree. Father also turned
from one page of this delightful book to another, from one plant
to another. He added much, much more to the knowledge, he already
had; not just about the flaura itself, but also about its
nutritious and technical properties and its healing effects. The
ancestors had tested these effects and had added very many
marginal notes to the volume, telling about the results of these
tests. Later, this book became a source of the purest and most
natural pleasure for me, and I may well say that father
excellently supported me in this.
Another one of these books was a collection of biblical woodcuts,
probably from the earliest time of the xylographic art. I own it,
just like the Herbal Book, up to this day. It contains very many,
quite excellent pictures; some are unfortunately missing. The
first one is Moses and the last one the beast from the eleventh
chapter of the Revelation of John. The title page has been lost.
Therefore, I do not know who the author is or in what year this
volume was printed. Grandmother used this book as an aid when
telling us the biblical stories. We immensely enjoyed every one
of these tales, and this brings me to most outstanding quality,
grandmother possessed for us children, this was her incomparable
gift for story-telling.
Actually, what grandmother did was not that much story-telling as
it was creating, drawing, painting, shaping. Even the toughest
subject-matter gained shape and colour, being told by her lips.
And when twenty persons listened to her, every single one of these
twenty had the impression that she told what she told quite
exclusively for him alone. And it stuck, it lasted. Whether she
related a passage from the Bible or from the vast realm of her
fairy-tales, it always culminated to some profound insight in the
relationship between heaven and earth, the victory of good over
evil, and the warning that everything on earth was just a parable,
because the source of truth was not to be found in this low form
of life, but only in a higher existence. I am convinced that she
did not do this consciously and with the full intension; she was
not sufficiently educated for this, but it was a inborn gift, a
genius, and such a beneficial spirit will, as is well known, do
its work most surely, when it is neither discovered nor observed.
Grandmother was a poor, uneducated woman, but nevertheless a poet
with a god-given talent, and therefore a stroy-teller, who created
characters from the wealth of her stories, which not just existed
in those stories, but truly came alive.
Thinking back at my earliest memory, I do not come across the
fable of Sitara first, but rather the fable "of the lost and
forgotten human soul". I felt such endless pity for this soul. I
have wept for it with my blind, unseeing eyes of a child. To me,
this tale contained nothing but truth. But only years later,
after I had experienced how life could treat a person and after I
had extensively delved into the the heart of mankind, I realized
that the knowledge of the human soul had indeed been lost and
forgotten and that all of our psychology had not not yet been able
to return this knowledge to us. In my childhood, I have spent
hours sitting quietly and motionlessly, staring into the darkness
of my sick eyes, to contemplate where this lost and forgotten soul
might have ended up. I really, really wanted to find it. Then,
grandmother took me on her lap, kissed me on the forehead and
said: "Be quiet, my boy! Don't be sad for it! I have found it.
It is here!" "Where?", I asked. "Here with me", she answered.
"You are this soul, you!" "But I am not lost", I objected. "Of
course, you are lost. You have been cast down into the poorest,
dirtiest Ardistan. But you will be found; because even when
everybody and all have forgotten about you, God has not forgotten
about you." - I did not comprehend this, then; I only understood
it later, much, much later. Actually, in this time of my early
childhood, every living being was just a soul to me, nothing but a
soul. I saw nothing. To me, there were neither appearances nor
shapes, nor colours, neither locations nor movement from one
location to another. I was very well able to feel, hear, and
smell the persons and objects, but this was not enough to picture
them truly and vividly. I could only imagine them. I did not
know how a person, a dog, a table would look like; I could only
picture it in my soul, and this picture reflected its soul.
Whenever somebody spoke, I did not hear his body, but his soul.
Not his external, but his internal appearance approached me. To
me, there were only souls, nothing but souls. And so it has
continued to be, even after I had learnt to see, from my boyhood
on, up to this day. This is the difference between myself and
others. This is the key to my books. This is the explanation for
everything which has been praised or condemned in me. Only he who
had been blind and became seeing again, and only he who possessed
such a deeply rooted and powerful world within himself that it,
even after he became seeing, dominated the world outside for his
entire life, only he will be able to put himself in my place and
understand everything what I was planning, what I did, and what I
wrote, and only he will have the ability to criticise me, _nobody_
_else!_
I spent the entire day not with my parents, but with grandmother.
She meant everything to me. She was my father, my mother, my
teacher, my light, my sunshine which my eyes lacked. Everything
that became a part of me, physically and mentally, I got from her.
Thus, I most naturally came to resemble her. Whatever she told
me, I told back to her, adding what my youthful imagination
partially guessed, partially grasped. I told it to my sisters and
to others who came to me, because I could not come to them. I
told it in grandmother's tone of voice, with her confidence that
left no room for any doubt. This sounded precociously and
convincingly. It gave me the nimbus of a child well beyond his
age in intelligence. Thus, adults came as well, to listen to me,
and I might have degenerated into an oracle or miracle child, if
grandmother had not been so very modest, truthful, and
intelligent, to intervene wherever any kind of danger arose to me.
A blind child is given little work. He has more time to think and
ponder, than other children. So, he might easily appear more
intelligent than he is. Unfortunately, father did not possess
grandmother's intelligent modesty, nor mother's silent
thoughtfulness. He enjoyed talking very much and exaggerated, as
we already know, in everything he did and said. So it happened
that this fate, which I escaped here, later, nevertheless, was to
come over me, that awful fate, to be praised to death.
When I learnt to see, my inner self was already developed and
fixed in its later major features to such an extent that even the
world of light, opening now before my eyes, did not possess the
power to draw the centre of my inner being outside towards it. I
remained a child for all times, just turning into an older child,
the older I grew; I remained a child in which the soul dominated
and still dominates today, so that no consideration for the world
outside and the physical life could ever keep me from doing
something, what I have found to be right for the soul. And in all
of my life, I have incessantly made the experience that with
entire peoples it is in no way different than with me. They
preferably act not due to external causes, but on account of
themselves, their souls. The greatest and most beautiful deeds of
a nation were born out of its inner self. And no matter how
strong and how inventive a poet's mind might be, he would still
never succeed in forcing the plot of a great, national drama upon
the history of a people, if it was not already in the people's
soul. And even if we would found hundreds of associations and
commissions of authors of books for young people and thousands of
libraries for children, students, and the general public, we will
arrive at the opposite of what we intent, if we choose books which
only satisfy the needs of our pedantry and our methodics, but not
the needs of those souls, upon which we force them. I have come
to know these souls, have studied them since the time of my youth.
I have been such a soul myself, and am it even still today.
Therefore I know that the general public and the younger
generation must not be given books full of paragons of virtue,
simply because there is no person who is a paragon of virtue. The
reader wants truth, wants real life. He hates the virtuous
dummies, which always stay where they were once placed, possess
neither flesh nor blood, and are only clothed in whatever that
dress-maker called "textbook morality" has dressed them up with,
and nothing more. The task of an author writing for a young
audience does not consist of the creation of characters who act so
exceedingly delightfully impeccable in every situation that the
reader necessarily has to get bored by them, but such an author's
art is rather to allow his characters to commit all those errors
and stupidities, he wants to save his youthful readers from. It
is a thousand times better he would let his fictional characters
perish, than to have the disgruntled boy transfer the evil, which
did not occur, though it should have occurred in all truthfulness,
from the book into the real life. This is the axis around which
our literature for the youth and the general public has to
revolve. Exemplary boys and men are bad role-models; they repel.
Show the negative, but true to life and thrilling, thus you will
achieve the positive.
After we had moved into a rented place, we lived at the market,
with the church in its centre. This square was the children's
favourite playground. In the evenings, the older school-boys
gathered at the church gate to tell stories. This was a most
exclusive club. Not everyone was allowed to go there. When
someone came, they did not like, they made no fuss; he was sent
away with a thrashing and surely would not return. I, on the
other hand, did not come, nor did I ask, but rather I was invited
in, though I was only five years old, while the others were
thirteen and fourteen. What an honour! Such a thing had never
happened before! I had grandmother and her tales to thank for
this! At first, I kept quiet and just listened, until I knew all
of the tales which were going around here. They did not hold it
against me, because I had learnt to see only a short time ago,
kept my eyes still half bandaged, and was treated with some
consideration by everyone. But once this was over, I had to take
my turn. Every day another fairy-tale, another story, another
narration. This was asking much, very much, but I delivered, and
with pleasure. Grandmother worked with me. What I was to tell at
dusk, we worked out in the early mornings, even before we ate our
morning soup. Then, I was well prepared when I reached the church
gate. Our beautiful book, "The Hakawati", supplied our stories
for a long time. On top of it, this stock of stories increased
quite extraordinarily over time, of course not in the book, but in
me. This was the very simple and natural consequence of me having
to translate, after I had become seeing, the world of my soul,
generated by the Hakawati in me, into the visible world of
colours, shapes, bodies, and surfaces. By this, innumerable
variations and multiplications were created, which I could only
put into a fixed shape and form by telling them.
By this time, father had managed to get me the permission to
attend school. Normally this permission was only granted after
the age of six; but my mother was, in her capacity as a midwife,
in frequent contact with the minister, who enjoyed granting her
this wish, since he also served as the local school inspector, and
father met the elementary school teacher Schulze twice a week to
play skat or schafkopf [a], and therefore it did not turn out to
be difficult to obtain his permission as well. I learnt to read
and write very quickly, because father and grandmother helped with
it, and then, once I could do this, father thought the time had
come to start carrying out the plans he had for me. He wanted to
fulfil in me what was not fulfilled in him. At the forester's
house, he had been granted a glimpse at better and more humane
conditions. And he was always haunted by the idea that there had
been important men among out ancestors, about whom we, their
descendants, had to say that we were not worthy of them. He
wanted to live up to their example, but was violently pushed down
by the circumstances. This offended and annoyed him. For
himself, he had settled with these circumstances. He had to
remain what he was: a poor, uneducated craftsman. But now, he
transfered all of his wishes, hopes, and everything else onto me.
And he was resolved to do everything possible and not to miss any
opportunity to turn me into the man he had been denied to become.
This can surely only be regarded as a commendable act of his. But
the important thing was what path and manner he gave to my
education. He wanted whatever was good and beneficent to me. He
could only achieve this with good and beneficent means. But
unfortunately, I have to say, without telling too much about
future events, that my "childhood" came to an end now, at the age
of five. It died in the very moment when I opened my eyes to see.
What those poor eyes got to see from then on up to today, was
nothing but work and work again, worry and worry again, suffering
and suffering again, up to my present agony, like being tied to a
stake and being incessantly tortured without any end being in
sight. - - -
[a] Skat, Schafkopf: Two popular games of cards. The word
"Skat" is derived from the Italian "scarto" (discarding
cards), and "Schafkopf" means literally "sheep's head".