64.HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin,March 21st, 1842.

My dear friend, so happily restored to me! It is a source of infinite joy to me to learn, from your exquisite letter, that the really very delightful society at the Princess’s has benefited you physically, and, therefore, as I should say in my criminal materialism, mentally also. Such a society, blown together chiefly from the same fashionable world of Berlin (somewhat flat and stale), immediately takes a new shape in the house of Princess Pueckler. It is like the spirit which should breathe life into the state; the material seems ennobled.

I still retain your “Christliche Glaubenslehre,”[31]I who long ago, in Potsdam, was so delighted with Strauss’s Life of the Saviour. One learns from it, not only what he does not believe, which is less new to me, but rather what kind of things have been believed and taught by those black coats (parsons) who know how toenslave mankind anew, yea, who are putting on the armor of their former adversaries. I shall gladly copy the passage concerning Spinoza. Will not the late date of the second volume of the “Glaubenslehre” (1841) he urged against it by these men who pretend to teach from ancient manuscript? It would seem to me a better plan to have published the wonderfully conflicting chronology with some remarks on the new faith in the whole “roman historique” of the apostolic collectors of myths. He who teaches so publicly has to subject himself to the publicity arising from the defence of those who differ from him in creed. A private statement, clothed in the mild language of complaint, makes the subsequent public one very difficult, and elicits only patronizing smiles and a denial. It is not the mishap of Spinoza, but this degradation of the noblest intellectual faculties in the service of the narrow doctrines of dark ages, that is really painful to me. The man[32]himself had certainly nothing attractive for me, but I had a kind of predilection for him, because everything enthrals and enraptures me, in which, as in his lecture on Art, the gentle breath of imagination warms and enlivens the harmony of language.Now we are separated. In his last speech, not the one on art, amid the glare of torchlight, he spoke of his departure like a well-paid artist who had just accomplished a musical tour—probably only a sentimental figure of speech to frighten his listeners.

Now for an answer to enquiries for the biography, of which, after all, I think with some fear, not on account of its political contents, but on account of family considerations. I rely on your promise. The man certainly cannot want to afflict so many!

Wilhelm was born in Potsdam, because his father was Royal Chamberlain, and at the same time acting Chamberlain to the Princess Elizabeth of Prussia. He left Potsdam when the Princess was sent to Stettin. My father remained in high favor with the Prince of Prussia, who visited him frequently at Tegel. This explains to you the passage in the English despatch, running thus (I believe very early in 1775? Raumer’s Beitraege zur neuern Geschichte, vol. v., p. 297):—“Hertzberg, Schulenburg could form a ministry, but those have the greatest chance of success, who, although not of the same kind, are considered favorites of the Prince. Among the first of these stands Herr von Humboldt, formerly an official in the allied army, a man of sense and fine character; Herr von Hordt, an enterprising genius....” The expression “official” is a strange mistake. My father was major and aide-de-camp to DukeFerdinand, of Brunswick: after long service in the Finkenstein dragoons, he was frequently sent to Frederick II., during the gloomiest period of the Seven Years’ War; thus Frederick II. writes in his letters on the Wedel disaster:—“I told Humboldt everything that can be told at such a distance.”—(Manuscript letters quite recently bought by the King in Eastern Prussia.)

My family comes from Northern Pomerania. My brother and I were for a long time the last of our name. My mother’s maiden name was Colomb, cousin of the Princess Bluecher, and therefore niece of the old President in Aurich (Ostfriesland). She was first married to a Baron von Holwede. From this marriage sprung my step-brother Holwede, formerly in the regiment of gensdarmes. To my mother belongs the merit of having procured for us, at the instigation of old privy-councillor Kunth, a thorough education. Wilhelm, for the first years, was educated by our tutor Campe. The foundation of his profound attainments in Grecian lore was laid by Loeffler, the author of a liberal book on the New Platonism of the Fathers of the Church; he then was a chaplain in the army, and afterwards chief ecclesiastical counsellor at Gotha. Fischer, of the Graue Kloster, instructed Wilhelm in Greek for many years; he had, what is little known, a profound knowledge of Greek, besides that of mathematics. That Engel, Reitemeier,Dohm, and Klein lectured to us for a long time on philosophy, jurisprudence, and political science, is known to you. When at the University of Frankfurt (for six months) we lived with Loeffler, who was Professor there. In Goettingen, both of us were members (for one year) of the Philological Seminary of Heyne.

To my father belonged Tegel (formerly a hunting chateau of the great Elector, and it was consequently only a leasehold property. Wilhelm first possessed the place in fee-simple, as a manor; therefore Schinkel added to it four towers, in order to preserve the old tower erected under the great Elector). Besides this, he owned Ringenwalde, near Soldin, in the Neumark. Ringenwalde afterwards belonged to me, then to the Counts Reeden and Achim Arnim. Wilhelm, at the time of his death, possessed Tegel, Burgoerner, and Auleben (acquired by his wife, as the fiefdom of the Dacheroeden family had been abolished), Hadersleben, in the Magdeburg country, and Castle Ottmachau, in Silesia, the dotation given to him after the Paris peace.

The Sonnet I., 394, refers to a second child, I believe, which Frau von Humboldt lost when at Rome. One was buried in Paris.

I conjure you do not mention to the author anything as coming from me. He would inevitably state it inthe preface, and then I should become responsible for a great many things which I dread.

Pardon the stercoran-like[33]loquacity.

A. Ht.

Note by Varnhagen.—He probably had just read of the Stercoranists in Strauss’s “Glaubenslehre.” Hence this allusion.

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