Chapter 17

[1]'Twas in the mountains the first shot was fired—in the mountains, against the priests! That shot loosened the avalanche—three countries sprang to arms! Switzerland can already rest on her laurels; the eternal mountains are trembling to their centres with joy.The sport soon spread to Italy—Scylla and Charybdis, Vesuvius and Etna broke loose; explosion upon explosion, blow upon blow!' "This is becoming serious, my royal, my imperial brother!" is the message from Vienna to Berlin, from Berlin to Vienna; even Nick begins to tremble.And now the paving-stones are once more torn up, the stones of those streets on to which ere now two kings have been ruthlessly flung by armed liberty.

The sport soon spread to Italy—Scylla and Charybdis, Vesuvius and Etna broke loose; explosion upon explosion, blow upon blow!' "This is becoming serious, my royal, my imperial brother!" is the message from Vienna to Berlin, from Berlin to Vienna; even Nick begins to tremble.

And now the paving-stones are once more torn up, the stones of those streets on to which ere now two kings have been ruthlessly flung by armed liberty.

[2]In front of the castle in threatening line stand the cannon, awaiting the word of command—the gates are shuddering and yielding—the moment has come, brave gunner!Forward to the muzzle he goes, as if the order had been to stop the mouths of the destroyers; fearlessly he cries: "First me, then the defenceless citizen!"—No farther command is given. Thou hast shamed them! All thanks to thee, brave gunner!

[2]In front of the castle in threatening line stand the cannon, awaiting the word of command—the gates are shuddering and yielding—the moment has come, brave gunner!

Forward to the muzzle he goes, as if the order had been to stop the mouths of the destroyers; fearlessly he cries: "First me, then the defenceless citizen!"—No farther command is given. Thou hast shamed them! All thanks to thee, brave gunner!

[3]Frhr. von Helfert:Wiener Parnass im Jahre1848.

[4]The press is free! Peal the bells! sound the glad tidings far and wide! Proclaim to the farthest-off of Germany's sons: The press is free, the ramparts of liberty are stormed!

[5]All hail to thee, my Emperor! Full of joy in their accomplished work, thy people greet thee, whom they have always known to be of noble mind.

[6]As your swords leap from their scabbards, let a song, O my brothers, come from your hearts! Let the song of songs resound through your rejoicing ranks—bright as burnished armour, clear as ringing steel, the song of the Garde-National!

[7]Let the black draperies flutter in the wind, and let a sad lament resound for those who have laid down their lives in the cause of liberty.

[8]Ye have rightly understood the nature of liberty; we cannot half possess her; if we but let her little finger be taken from us, she will soon be gone. That little finger is our honour. Who lets that go knows not what honour is. Therefore with strong arms and good swords ye have defended it.

[9]In secret hiding-place and gloomLong time we have concealed it;But now at last the day is come,The day that has revealed it.Ha! how the smoke is round it rolled!Hurrah! thou Black and Red and Gold!Powder is black,Blood is red,Golden glows the flame!(JOYNES.)

[10]Des deutschen Volkes Erhebung im Jahre1848,sein Kampf um freie Institutionen und sein Siegesjubel.Von J. Lasker und Fr. Gerhard. Danzig, 1848.

[11]Eine Rotte von Bösewichtern, meist aus Fremden bestehend, die sich seit einer Woche, obgleich aufgesucht, doch zu verbergen gewusst haben, haben diesen Umstand im Sinne ihrer argen Pläne durch augenscheinliche Lüge verdreht und die erhitzten Gemüther von vielen meiner treuen und lieben Berliner mit Rachegedanken um vermeintlich vergossenes Blut erfullt und sind so die greulichen Urheber von Blutvergiessen geworden.

[12]Des deutschen Volkes Erhebung, p. 54. Varnhagen:Tagebücher, Adolf Streckfuss:Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre1848;Der Zeitgeist, 1889, Nr. 51.

[13]With bullets through and through our breast—our forehead split with spike and spear,So bear us onward shoulder-high, laid dead upon a blood-stained bier;Yea, shoulder-high above the crowd, that on the man that bade us die,Our dreadful death-distorted face may be a bitter curse for aye;That he may see it day and night, or when he wakes or when he sleeps,Or when he opes his holy book, or when with wine high revel keeps;That ever like a scorching brand that sight his secret soul may burn;That he may ne'er escape its curse, nor know to whom for aid to turn;That always each disfeatured face, each gaping wound his sight may sear,And brood above his bed of death, and curdle all his blood with fear!

[14]PRUSSIAN MISUNDERSTANDINGS.The big, incredulous town of Berlin has become the home of miracles. For two whole days they have been shooting, storming, burning there without a pause; thousands are lying in the bloody dust. The King is distressed by what has occurred; he says: "The guns went off of themselves; the whole has been a misunderstanding."In the old, incredulous town of Berlin strange tricks are being played; a King decks himself in black, red, and gold, and declares himself to be the leader of Germany, the arch-demagogue, chosen of heaven to bring about German unity. But Germany only laughs and shouts: "This is a misunderstanding."

[14]PRUSSIAN MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

The big, incredulous town of Berlin has become the home of miracles. For two whole days they have been shooting, storming, burning there without a pause; thousands are lying in the bloody dust. The King is distressed by what has occurred; he says: "The guns went off of themselves; the whole has been a misunderstanding."

In the old, incredulous town of Berlin strange tricks are being played; a King decks himself in black, red, and gold, and declares himself to be the leader of Germany, the arch-demagogue, chosen of heaven to bring about German unity. But Germany only laughs and shouts: "This is a misunderstanding."

[15]Then the last of the faithful, who had remained true to their saviour, scattered to the four winds of heaven, to proclaim the word of salvation, knowing full well that what awaited them was exile and poverty, want and suffering, torture, imprisonment, and death. "The word of salvation will survive them"; note this, ye slaves, ye bloody hordes: The word has become flesh, has become God.

[16]Rest peacefully, rest well, my Robert! No need is there for us to wish that light upon thy breast may lie the blood-drenched earth of Vienna, the soil thy valour captured. Thou art not dead, despite the loud laments and songs of mourning of the German people.... From mouth to mouth spreads the report: "Our Robert lives, that Robert Blum the tyrants shot"—and every German heart beats high. That precious blood has not been shed; hope whispers in our ears: "The tri-coloured standard is trailed in the dust, but Germany is not lost."... He is with us everywhere! With his spirit hands he turns back the bullets, or receives them in his breast—these bullets rained on us by our paternal rulers.... A wanderer he, until the German people have released themselves from the betrayer's grip, until he has cleared the sacred land of his fathers, of princes and of priests.

[17]In this same city of Cologne, 'mid moaning winds of winter wild,To-day in deepest organ-tones resounds the grave-song of this child.'Tis not the mother bow'd in grief who sings it o'er her fallen son;Nay, all Cologne bewails the death of him whose toil too soon is done.With solemn woe the city speaks: Thou who didst bear the noble dead,Remain to weep within thy home, and bow to earth thine aged head;I also am his mother! Yea, and yet a mightier one than I,I and the Revolution's self, for whom he laid him down to die.Stay thou within and nurse thy woe. 'Tis we will do him honour here;'Tis we will watch and requiem sing for thy dead son upon his bier.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Why grasp ye not your swords in wrath, O ye that sing and ye that pray?Ye organ-pipes, to trumpets turn, and fight the scoundrels with your breath,And din into their dastard ears the dreadful news of sudden death,Those scoundrels who the order gave, the cruel murder dared to do—The hero leant him on his knee in that autumnal morning's dew,Then silent fell upon his face in blood—'tis eight short days ago—Two bullets smote him on the breast, and laid his head for ever low.(JOYNES.)

[18]I see scientists and professors, presidents and assessors, wine merchants and editors, superintendents and accoucheurs; I see financiers and journalists; I see astronomers and tax-collectors, rag merchants and antiquarians; I see Messrs. Biedermann, Hansemann, Bassermann—but where are themen, themen?

It is a mighty panorama, this, which the study of the feelings and thoughts of Germany, first oppositionist, then revolutionary, between 1815 and 1848, unrolls to our view. We see the spirit of Metternich, a spirit of shallowness, brooding over Austria and the whole of Germany. We follow the new intellectual movement from the time when it first finds expression at the Wartburg Festival in 1817. We see how the assassination of Kotzebue gives occasion to the open persecution of Liberalism and introduces a long period of ruthless reaction and oppression, during which Goethe is regarded as the Quietist foe of liberty and lauded or denounced as such, and German philosophy under the auspices of Hegel becomes, in a rather questionable manner, conservative. The oppositionist tendency finds occasional expression in the writings of poets like Chamisso, Platen, and Heine, but the general intellectual condition is one of depression, relieved by outbursts of self-ridicule. The state of stagnation is put an end to by the news of the Revolution of July 1830, which electrifies public feeling and gives both poets and prose writers new courage and fresh inspiration. The remembrance of Byron's life and death influences men in the same direction, and the Polish revolt awakens sympathy and enthusiasm in spite of the part that Germany takes in the annihilation of Poland as a nation. Börne becomes the most eminent advocate of Liberalism in politics, holds high the banner of liberty and justice, shows a noble example in the matter of strength of character and conviction, but at the same time displays a naïve and fanatical optimism which proves that his is not the temperament required in a statesman. In Heine, the greatest poet of the period, we feel the vibration of its every nerve. In him modern poetry casts off the swaddling-clothes of Romanticism. In love, in appreciation of nature, in his political, social, and religious views, in his descriptive, poetic, and satiric style, he is the man of our own day—fitter, as we pointed out, than any other to grapple with modern life in its hardness and ugliness, its charm and its restlessness, and its wealth of violent contrasts. About the same time, in a different and yet kindred manner, Immermann, in his best book, marks the transition to a more realistic style of art.

The Revolution of July had not only changed the tone of literature, it had also altered the character of the Hegelian philosophy, which from this time onwards is to be regarded as one of the strongest influences in the revolutionising of men's conception of life; from the doctrines of the master who died such a strong Conservative, his pupils draw reformatory or revolutionary inferences and principles. And now, with the echoes of the Revolution of July sounding in their ears, appear a group of young authors; they are influenced by the philosophy of Hegel and the poetry of Goethe, this last interpreted as anti-Christian; Heine and Börne are their masters, Rahel and George Sand their muses; they come to be known by the name of Young Germany. They desire to assimilate literature with life, to subvert existing religious and moral doctrines, to introduce a freer morality in the matter of marriage and divorce and a new species of pantheistic piety. The impeachment of these men by Menzel in 1835 is the signal for a new series of persecutions directed against all that in that day went by the name of the literature of movement (Bewegungslitteratur). Very few of the representatives of the young generation show strength of character when thus put to the test, but both the highly gifted men (Gutzkow) and those of moderate ability (Laube, &c.) develop their talents amidst these persecutions, and works are produced which accurately mirror the hopes and struggles of the age, the thoughts and feelings, temptations, mistakes, and victories of the individual.

Between the years 1830 and 1840 something has been happening quietly, deep down in men's minds—Goethe's poetry and Goethe's philosophy of life, at first championed exclusively by enthusiastic women, have been steadily gaining influence over the cultivated, making them proof against theological impressions but receptive to all great human ideas. The cult of Goethe leads by degrees, even in the case of women, to the cult of political liberty and social reform.

In 1840 German philosophy begins to develop in the direction of Radicalism, and the poets begin openly to advocate the cause of political liberty. The men of this new generation, too, owe their philosophic training to Hegel, but they have metamorphosed his doctrine into an atheistical, anti-monarchical doctrine. They regard the standpoint of Young Germany with contempt as being purely belletristic, and busy themselves with the nature of Christianity and the idea of the state.

On the throne of Prussia at this juncture sits a king with a curiously complex character and many talents, a typical transition figure, whose personality, especially in its relation to the literature and intellectual life of the day, is of great interest. In the south of Germany it is Metternich, in the north it is Frederick William IV., who outwardly regulates the course of events. We see literary and political celebrities being attracted by him, coming into collision with him, and rebounding from him. The invalids of literature, men like Tieck and Schelling, pass their last days under his protection; Herwegh and Freiligrath are first attracted and then repelled by him; Jacoby attacks him, Dingelstedt ridicules him.

And now we follow the development of political poetry, from its founder Anastasius Grün to Herwegh and Dingelstedt, observing what a deep impression such a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach makes on the intellectual life of his contemporaries. Men like Freiligrath and Prutz, Sallet and Hartmann, are the petrels that foretell the storm; in 1848 we hear the song of certain gifted poets high above the roar of the political hurricane, and we also notice that these unexampled occurrences transform men of minor or undeveloped talent into organs of the great movement of the hour.

During our study of this fragment of literary history we have passed in review a whole gallery of remarkable figures, devoting careful attention to the most important or most typical.

We saw how Napoleon's great personality, in its legendary form, exercised almost as powerful an influence on men's minds as Byron's. Of the great intellectual forces of the eighteenth century, Goethe, Jean Paul, Heinse, and Hegel are those by which our period is most perceptibly influenced. Some of the Romanticists influence as teachers and masters (Wilhelm Schlegel, Brentano, Chamisso), others as antagonists (Tieck). Börne and Heine, geniuses of most dissimilar types, by virtue of that polemical quality which was an essential characteristic of both, influence the whole period.

What a wealth of remarkable, original characters! Glance at our gallery of women—Rahel and Bettina, the friends of Goethe; Börne's friends, Henrietta Herz and Jeannette Wohl; Heine's La Mouche, Immermann's Elisa, and Princess Pückler and Charlotte Stieglitz—gifted women and devoted wives! Or let your eyes wander over our collection of male portraits—authors and men of the world, like Varnhagen and Pückler; stiff, stately figures, like Platen and Immermann; others that are all life and fire, like Börne and Heine; manly eccentrics, like Jacoby; kingly figures, like Feuerbach; grimacing fanatics, like Menzel; independent poets great and small, like Rückert, Hebbel, Ludwig, and Scherenberg; agitators, like Wienbarg and Gutzkow; men of pliant talent, like Laube and Mundt; weak desponders, like Stieglitz; bold singers of liberty, like Hoffmann and Freiligrath; immature characters, like Herwegh; problematic characters, like Dingelstedt and Meissner; brave men, like Sallet, Hartmann, and Prutz. Even when their productions are not of the highest quality, we study the men themselves with interest.

And yet what is presented in this volume can only be fully understood by those who read it in its connection with the earlier volumes of the work of which it forms a part, who regard it in the light of the last act of a great historic drama. The plan of the work is indicated in the introduction to the first volume, and is strictly adhered to throughout all six.

The author's intention, as explained in the first lines of his work, was, by means of the study of certain main groups and main movements in European literature, to outline a psychology of the first half of the nineteenth century. The year 1848, which, as a historical turning-point, marks a conclusion for the time being, was indicated as the point to which he intended to pursue his subject. The six groups which, according to the original plan, have been portrayed, are, the French Emigrant Literature, German Romanticism, the French Reaction, English Naturalism, French Romanticism, and Young Germany. Each one of the six parts of the work has in the course of years either been re-written or revised.

The author's first proceeding was to separate and classify the chief literary movements of the first half of the century, his next to find their general direction or law of progression, a starting point, and a central point.

The direction he discovered to be a great rhythmical ebb and flow—the gradual dying out and disappearing of the ideas and feelings of the eighteenth century until authority, the hereditary principle, and ancient custom once more reigned supreme, then the reappearance of the ideas of liberty in ever higher mounting waves. The starting point was now self-evident, namely, the group of French literary works denominated the Emigrant Literature, the first epoch-making one of which bears the date 1800. The central point was equally unmistakable. From the literary point of view it was Byron's death, from the political that Greek war of liberation in which he fell. This double event is epoch-making in the intellectual life and the literature of the Continent. The concluding point was also clearly indicated, namely, the European revolution of 1848. Byron's death forming the central point of the work, the school of English literature to which he belongs, became as it were the hinge on which it turned. The main outlines now stood out clearly: the incipient reaction in the case of the emigrants, held in check by the revolutionary ideas still in vogue; the growth of the reaction in the Germany of the Romanticists; its culmination and triumph during the first year of the Restoration in France; the turn of the tide discernible in what is denominated English Naturalism; the change which takes place in all the great writers of France shortly before the Revolution of July, a change which results in the formation of the French Romantic school; and, lastly, the development in German literature which issues in the events of March 1848.

It is self-evident that the standpoint here adopted is a personal one. It is the personal point of view, the personal treatment, which presents literary personages and works thus grouped and ordered, thus contrasted, thus thrown into relief or cast into shadow. Regarded impersonally, the literature of a half-century is nothing but a chaos of hundreds of thousands of books in many languages.

The personal standpoint is not, however, an arbitrary one. It has been the author's aim to do justice, as far as in him lay, to every single person and phenomenon he has described. No attempt has been made to fit any of them into larger or smaller places than they actually occupied. It is no whim or preconceived intention of the author that has given the work its shape. The power which has grouped, contrasted, thrown into relief or suppressed, lengthened or shortened, placed in full light, in half light, or in shadow, is none other than that never entirely conscious power to which we usually give the name of art.

Back to Index Next