[a]quarto: an old paper size. 22.5 × 28.5 cm, 8.86 × 11.22 in.[b]The grades in German secondary schools used to be numbered backwards.
It was the custom of the seminary that the students had to take turns in performing certain duties for the grade, each one for a week. Therefore, the student concerned was referred to as the "weekner". Furthermore, in the first grade, there was an "enforcing weekner", and in the second grade a "light-weekner", the latter one being in charge of the lighting of the classrooms. In those days, the classrooms were lit by means of tallow-candles, which had to be replaced as soon as they were burnt down. The light-weekner had to clean the old, worthless candlesticks every day, and in particular, he had to clear away the remnants of wicks and tallow from the grooves. These remnants were either just thrown away or molten down to be used boot-polish or some other kind of grease by the janitor. They were generally to be regarded as worthless.
It was in the beginning of the the week of Christmas when it was my turn to be the light-weekner. I performed this work like everybody else. The day before Christmas Eve, our vacation started. The day before, one of my sisters came by, to get my laundry as well as the little luggage I had to take with me on vacation. She always did this whenever the vacation started. The way she had to take from Ernstthal to Waldenburg took two hours. That day was no exception. As she came in this time, I was just busy cleaning the candlesticks. She was sad. Things were not good at home. There was no work and therefore also no income. Mother used to bake at least some cakes for Christmas, as even the poorest people would do. This year, she could hardly afford it. But there would not be any gifts, none at all, because the money just was not there. There were no candles for the Christmas chandelier. Even my smaller sisters' wooden angles were to be without candles. Three little candles were meant to go with these angles, at five or six pfennig per piece; but when those eighteen pfennig were needed for other, more necessary things, they just had to live with that. This hurt me. My sister was almost crying. She saw the remnants of tallow, which I had just scratched out of the grooves and down from the candlesticks. "Couldn't some pfennig-candles be made out of these?" she asked. "Quite easily", I answered. "All it takes is some rolled up paper and a wick, nothing else; but it wouldn't burn so well, because all this stuff is still useful for is as grease." "So what, so what! At least we would have some kind of candles for the three angles. Who owns this garbage?" "Nobody really. I have to get it to the janitor. Whether he throws it out or not, is his business." "So it wouldn't be stealing, if we'd take a bit of it home with us?" "Stealing. Ridiculous! Nobody would think of it! All of this dirt isn't worth three pfennig. I'll wrap some of it in a piece of paper for you. This we'll use to make three little Christmas candles."
Said, done! We were not alone. Another seminarist was with us; someone from the first grade, one grade above mine. I am reluctant to give his name. His father was a gendarme. This upstanding fellow student observed everything. He did not warn me at all, but was quite friendly, left, and -- -- -- reported on me. The principal came in person, to investigate the "theft". I admitted very calmly what I had done and returned the "loot" I had taken. I truly thought nothing bad of it. But he called me an "infernal character" and assembled the faculty, to decide about me and my punishment. Just half an hour later, I was informed of it. I was dismissed from the seminary, I was free to go to wherever I wished. I left right away with my sister -- -- -- for the holy Christmas season -- -- -- without tallow for the Christmas angles -- -- -- these were very gloomy, dark Christmas holidays. I guess, I did already say that especially Christmas had often been for me a time of sadness, not joy. In those days of Christmas, holy flames of my soul were quenched out, lights which I held dear. I learnt to differentiate between Christianity and those who call themselves Christians. I had come to know Christians who had acted less Christianly against me than Jews, Turks, and heathens would have done.
Luckily, the department of culture and public education, I had turned to, proved to be more reasonable and more humane than the seminary's management. Without any objections, I obtained the permission to continue my interrupted studies at the seminary of Plauen. There, I got into the same grade, that is into the second one, and after having finished the first grade, I passed the examination to become a teacher, after which I obtained my first job in Glauchau, but soon got to Altchemnitz into a school, belonging to a factory, where the all of the students were rather grown up factory workers. Here, my confessions have to start. I give them without hesitation, according to the truth, as if I was not dealing with myself, but another person, a stranger.
I am going to turn back to my parents' poverty. The examination had required a tailcoat, an expensive matter for our circumstances. Furthermore, as a teacher, I could not continue being dressed like a student, and needed at least some modest supply of laundry and other necessary items. My parents did not have this kind of money; I had to take care of this myself; this means, I borrowed it, to pay it back from my salary in installments. So I had to be economical, thinking twice before I would spend a single pfennig! I limited myself to the bare necessities, and had to do without all expenses, unless they were absolutely unavoidable. I did not even own a watch, though this is quite indispensable for a teacher, who has to be punctual by the minute.
The owner of the factory, the school of which had been entrusted to me, was obliged by contract to supply my accommodations. He chose what was most convenient for him. One of his accountants had also been granted free accommodations, a living room and a bedroom. Until now, he had both for himself; now, my quarters were to be at his place; he had to share with me. By this, he lost his independence and his convenience; he was constantly annoyed by my presence, and thus one can easily comprehend that I was not particularly welcome by him, and that the idea had crossed his mind, to get rid of this intrusion in some way. Otherwise, I got along with him rather well. I did him every favour I could and treated him, since I saw that he wanted it this way, as the actual master of the lodgings. This obliged him to return my kindness. An opportunity for this came very soon. He had received a new pocket watch from his parents. His old watch, which he now did not need any more, hang unused on a nail at the wall. Its value was at most twenty marks. He offered to sell it to me, because I did not possess any; but I rejected, because if I would eventually buy a watch, it was supposed to be new, a better one. Of course, this was still a long way to go, because I had to pay back my debts first. Then, he himself suggested to me that I should take his old watch with me to school, since I was required to be punctual. I went for it and was grateful to him for this. At first, I placed the watch back on the nail as soon as I returned from school. Later, I occasionally failed to do this; I kept it in my pockets for several hours more, because to me, it would have seemed not that much conscientious, but rather ridiculous, to put so much emphasis on the fact that it did not belong to me. Finally, I even took it with me when I went out and only hang it back up in its place after I had returned at night. There was no real friendship or even cordial relationship between us. He accepted me, because he had to, and occasionally, he made it a point to let me know that he was not pleased to share his lodgings.
Then, Christmas came. I informed him that I would spend the holidays with my parents and bid him farewell, because I wanted to depart immediately after school, without returning to our lodgings. After the last lesson was over, I went to Ernstthal, which took just one hour by rail, so it was not far to go at all. Being filled with the joy of the holidays, I completely forgot, to leave the watch behind. When I noticed that it was still in my pocket, I did not care about this at all. After all, there was not even the slightest dishonest intension in my mind. This night with my parents was such a happy occasion. My time as a student was behind me; I had a job; I received a salary. The beginning of my career was there. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. We already started preparing for the exchange of the Christmas presents. While doing so, I spoke about my future, my ideals, which all appeared shining most brightly before me in the lustre of Christmas. Father joined my enthusiasm. Mother was quietly happy. Grandmother's old, faithful eyes were shining. After we had finally turned in for the night, I still lay awake for a long time in my bed and contemplated what I had done right and wrong in my life. For the first time, I grew fully aware of my internal uncertainty. I saw the treacherous abyss gaping behind me, but none in front of me, because my path seemed to be, though hard and strenuous, still entirely free from obstacles: to become an author; to achieve great things, but first to learn a great things! To cast off, one after another, all those faults of my inner self, which were the consequence of my wrong upbringing, so that there shall be room for something new, better, righter, noble! With those thoughts, I fell asleep, and when I woke, it was already almost noon, and I had to go to the Hohensteiner Christmas market to buy a few more small gifts for my sisters. There, I came across a gendarme, who asked me, if I was the teacher May. After I had confirmed this, he told me to come to the town hall, to the police, where I they wanted to question me. I went along, not suspecting anything at all. First, I was shown into the living room, not the office. A woman was sitting there and sewing. Please, allow me to keep to myself whose wife she was. She was a close acquaintance of my mother, who had gone to school with her, and now she looked at me with anxious eyes. The gendarme ordered me to sit down and left the room for a short time, to give his report. The woman used this opportunity to ask me hastily:
"You've been arrested! Do you know that?"
"No", I answered, mortally startled. "Why?"
"You're said to have stolen a watch from your roommate! If they'll find it on you, you'll be sent to prison and will be dismissed as a teacher!"
Everything flickered before my eyes. I felt like being hit over the head with a club. I thought of last night, my thoughts before falling asleep, and now all of a sudden there was dismissal and imprisonment!
"But it's not stolen at all, just borrowed!" I stuttered, pulling it out of my pocket.
"They won't believe that! Put it away! Return it to him secretly, but don't let anybody see it now! Quickly, quickly!"
My devastation was indescribable. A single clear, calm thought would have saved me, but it did not occur to me. I just had to show the watch and tell the truth, then everything would have been well; but I was so scared that I was like in a fever and acted like in a fever. I did not put the watch back into my pocket, but into my suit, where it did not belong to, and as soon as this had happened, the gendarme returned to get me. Let be as brief as possible on what had happened now! I committed the insane act of denying the possession of the watch; but it was found, when I was searched for it. Thus, the lie destroyed me instead of saving me; but it always does; I was a -- -- -- thief! I was brought to Chemnitz to appear before the investigating judge, spent the Christmas holidays not with my parents, but locked up, and was sentenced to six weeks in prison. Whether and by what means I defended myself; whether I sought refuge in an appeal, an appellation, any kind of legal remedy, a petition for clemency, a lawyer, I cannot say. My recollection of those days has disappeared, entirely disappeared. For important psychological reasons, I would like to tell everything as openly and comprehensively as possible, but unfortunately, I cannot do this, because all of this has been wiped off my memory, due to rather peculiar psychological conditions, on which I will have to report in the next chapter. I only know that I was entirely lost, and that I found myself again once I was back in the care of my parents and especially of my grandmother. After the strain of recovering, when I had regained enough of my strength, I went to Altchemnitz, to refresh my damaged memory. In respect to the locations, it was in vain; I recognised nothing, neither the factory, nor my former lodgings, nor any other place where I undoubtedly must have been. But suddenly, he stood before me, my roommate, the accountant. He happened to come my way on the street and stopped, once he had reached me. Him, I recognised immediately, he me too, though he assured me that I looked completely different than before, so very ailing. He gave me his hand and asked me, to forgive him. He had not intended for it to come out the way it did at all. He said, he was so infinitely sorry for having spoiled my career! I gave him an astonished look. Having spoiled my career? Would anybody have been able to do this? Even if the government would not want to hire me any more, there are still enough private jobs available, which are even better payed. And it had also never been my intension to remain a teacher of a public or even factory school; I had entirely different plans and still had them on this day. I just left the man standing in the middle of the street and went away, without a word of reproach.
Yes, I left, but where to?! I could not have guessed it, then. I have said just before in this account that a treacherous abyss was behind me, but none in front of me, and that I intended to achieve great things, but first to learn great things. The first thing was wrong. On the very contrary, the abyss was not behind me, but in front of me. And the great thing I had to learn and to achieve was, to tumble into this abyss, without being shattered and to freely ascend it on the other side, without ever relapsing into it again. This is the hardest task there is for a mortal, and I think I have solved it. -- -- --
I now turn to the time which is for me and every compassionate soul the most horrible, but for a psychologist the most interesting of all times. As I take up my pen write this down, I could give this account in such terms of psychology or even criminal psychology, which are most suitable to let an expert comprehend what happened inside of me then; but I am not writing this for a specialist in psychology, but for the general public reading my books, and therefore, I have to abstain from all attempts to practice psychology. Consequentially, I will avoid all technical terms and rather employ an allegoric form of expression than a terminology which is not universally understood.
The event described in the previous chapter had effected me like a blow, like a blow over the head, the impact of which will make a person collapse. And I did collapse! I did rise again, though, but only externally; internally I stayed down in mindless unconsciousness; for weeks, even for months. That it had happened at Christmas out of all times, had doubled the effect. Whether I had turned to a lawyer, whether I appealed, appellated, or had employed any other kind of legal remedy, I do not know. I only remember that I lived in a cell for six weeks, together with two other men. They were prisoners on remand. Apparently, I was regarded as harmless, or else I would not have been locked up together with persons who had not been convicted yet. One of them was a bank official, the other one an hotelier. I did not care why they were investigated. They were kind towards me and made every attempt to lift me out of the state of internal petrification I was in, but in vain. I left the cell, once my imprisonment had ended, with the same lack of emotion with which I had entered it. I went home to my parents.
Neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor the sisters would have thought of reproaching me with something. And this was perfectly horrible! At that time when I, with all the ignorance of a child, wanted to go to Spain and father brought me home, I had promised myself that would never sadden him again anything similar, and now it had turned out so very differently and so much worse! I was not concerned about my future or about a job; I could have obtained this any time. Now, with matters being as they were, the thing for me to do was not to turn sideways off my path, but to set on that course right now and for ever on the other end of which were those ideals which I bore within the deepest depth of my heart since my boyhood: To become an author, to become a poet! Learning, learning, learning! To work myself up by what is great, beautiful, noble, out of my present deep and low state! To get to know the world as a stage, and the people who swarm on it! And in the end of this hard, laborious life, to write for that other stage, for the theatre, to solve, there, the mysteries which had captured me since my earliest childhood and which, though I felt them then, I was still far, far, far from comprehending!
The process which formed those thoughts and intentions within me was not at all clearly, shortly, and concisely expressing itself, oh no, because inside of me there was now the very opposite of clarity; it was night; there were only a few free moments when I saw further than the present day would allow me. This night was not entirely dark; it had the faint light of dawn. And strangely, it only extended over the soul, not the mind as well. My soul was ill, not my mind. I possessed the capability to make every logical conclusion, to solve every mathematical problem. I had the keenest insight in everything unconnected with my inner self; but as soon as something approached me, to interact with me, this insight stopped. I was not able to inspect myself, to understand myself, to guide and control myself. Just occasionally, a moment came which granted me the ability to know what I wanted, and then, this wish was my only desire until the next one of these moments came. This was a condition I had never observed before in another human being and never read about in any book. And mentally, I was very well aware of this condition of the soul, but did not possess the power to alter and even less to overcome it. I developed the realization that I no longer was one whole, but a split personality, very much according to the new doctrine, that man is not an individual, but a drama. In this drama, there were several characters, acting out their parts, who at some time were entirely indistinguishable and then again took on their very well distinguished forms.
First of all, there was myself, this is me, who was observing
all of this. But who this "me" actually was and where he was
within myself, I could not tell. He very much resembled my father
and had all of his faults. A second being within myself always
kept at a distance. It resembled a fairy, an angel, one of those
impeccable, bliss bringing beings from grandmother's book of
fairy-tales. It admonished; it warned. It smiled when I obeyed,
and it mourned when I was disobedient. The third entity, of
course not a physical one, but an appearance on the soul, was
nothing less than abhorrent to me. Fateful, ugly, mocking,
repulsive, always gloomy and threatening; I have never seen it
any other way, and I have never heard it any other way. This is
because I have not just seen it, I also heard it; it spoke. It
often spoke to me for entire days and entire nights without
interruption. And it never wanted what was good, but always just
what was evil and unlawful. It was new to me; I had never seen it
before, but only from now on, once my inner being was split. But
when, for a short time, it kept silent and I therefore found the
time to observe it secretly and attentively, then it struck me as
so familiar and well acquainted, as if I had seen it a thousand
times before. Then its appearance changed, and its face changed,
too. At times, it was from the Batzendorf, then from the bowling
alley, or from the Lügenschmiede. One day it looked like
Rinaldo Rinaldini, the next day like the robber-knight Kuno of
the Eulenburg
I did not make these observations of my inner self all at once, but gradually. Many, many months passed, until they had developed to such an extent within me that I was able to behold their image in my mind and commit this to memory. And then, I started to comprehend was all of this was actually about. What occurred within every human being, without him or she being aware of it or even suspecting it, also occurred in me, but with me seeing and hearing it. Was this a benefit, a gift of God? Or was I insane? If so, I was at any rate not insane in the mind, but in the soul, because I made these observations with an objectiveness and cold-bloodedness, as if this would not concern myself, but someone entirely different, a person who was a perfect stranger to me. And I lived my ordinary, every day life just as any sane person would, who is entirely unaffected by such psychological events. The strength and the will to live returned to me. I worked. I taught music and foreign languages. I wrote poetry; I composed. I formed a small group of musicians, to practice and to perform what I had composed. Members of this orchestra are still alive today. I became the chairman of a glee club, which I conducted at public concerts, in spite of my youth. And I began to write fiction. First, I wrote humorous short stories, then "Village-Tales from the Ore Mountains". I had no problems at all in finding publishers. Good, suspenseful, and humorous short stories are extremely rare and are very well paid. My stories were passed from one magazine to another. It was a joy to see how excellently this was developing. But this joy was ruined in a cruel manner by another development, which took place at the same time and in parallel inside of me. The split within me grew further. Every sensation, every feeling seemed to demand its own form. I was full of characters who wanted to worry with me, work with me, create with me, write with me, and compose with me. And every one of these characters spoke; I had to hear them. This was enough to drive a person insane! As there had previously been only two characters aside from myself, the bright one and the dark one, so there were now two groups aside from myself. And as more time passed, they became more distinguished, and I recognised them more clearly. There were two hostile forces, fighting against each other: grandmother's bright, luminous characters from the Bible and her fairy-tales against the filthy daemons of this unfortunate rental library from Hohenstein. Ardistan against Jinnistan. The legacy of thoughts from the swamp, I was born into, against the bliss bringing ideas of the highland, which I was seeking. The miasmas of a poisoned childhood and youth against the pure, redeeming wishes and hopes, with which I looked forward to my future; the lie against the truth; the vice against the virtue; the inborn human beast against the rebirth, which every mortal has to seek to become a person of noble spirit.
Every thinking human being who seeks for advancement has to go
through such internal struggles. Normally, these are thoughts and
emotions, which are competing against one another. But with me,
those thoughts and feelings had taken on shapes of visible and
audible characters. I saw them with my eyes closed, and I heard
them by day and night; they interrupted my work; they woke me
from my sleep. The dark ones were more powerful than the bright
ones; when they forced themselves upon me, resistance was
useless. At ordinary times, my inner world was quiet; then, there
was no conflict. But was soon as I started to work, one character
after another woke up. Every one of them wanted to change my work
according to its wishes. This also very much depended on the
topic I was dealing with. Nobody objected against a funny short
story. I could finish something like this without an argument,
without interruption. But when working on a serious village-tale,
numerous voices spoke out for and against me. In those
village-tales, I have proven time and time again that God will
not permit any mockery of his power, but punishes precisely
according to the sin committed. Against this, certain characters
within me rose up. But I met with the greatest resistance, as
soon as I rose to even higher paths in my work or in my reading.
Whenever I took on a religiously, or ethically, or aesthetically
higher topic, the dark character within me rebelled with all of
its might against it and tormented me in a manner which is
entirely inexpressible. In order to demonstrate in what manner
this occurred and what kind of a torment this was, I want to give
an explanatory example: I had been commissioned to write a parody
of "Des Sängers Fluch"
[a]Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862)
"The mortgage does await this,that you, today, shall fall.Damn walls, hear what your fate is:I will destroy you all!"
I wrote this parody, without being disturbed by my inner voices while doing so. Nothing within me rebelled to the slightest extent against such a base thing. Just the luminous character disappeared; it mourned, because I had enough abilities to do better and nobler things. Some time later, I had to write a didactic poem, of which I now remember nothing more than the following verses:
"Once you will comprehend the teachings,Which your own saviour taught to you,And in your country heed his preachings,Obey and act as you should do,Then, mankind will unite in one crowd,From near and far, they'll join in then;They'll pray to one Lord, all with no doubt;The world's his church since it began.Triumphant is the faith which says this:One God, one Lord for evermore.The names will fade, and what remains isThat all roads lead to heaven's door."
As soon as I had sat down to construct this ambitious poem, a rare clarity came over me, I saw the joyful smile of the luminous character, and a hundred beautiful, noble thoughts hurried towards me to enter my mind. I reached for the pen. But then, I suddenly felt as if a black curtain had veiled my inner self. The clarity was over; the luminous character disappeared; the dark one entered, laughing sarcastically, and throughout my entire inner being a thousand voices echoed: "The tailor's curse, the tailor's curse, the tailor's curse, etc." So it resounded within me for hours and hours, on and on, endlessly, unrelentingly, and without even the slightest pause, not just in my imagination, but for real, for real. I felt as if those voices spoke not from within me, but right before my very own ear. I tried my best to silence them, but this was all in vain as long as I held the pen in my hand remained on my seat to write. Even after I got up, they echoed forth, and only when I considered to give up all attempts to write this didactic poem, silence instantly followed. But since I had to keep my promise to write it, I soon reached for the pen again. Immediately, this multitude of voiced intoned again: "The tailor's curse, the tailor's curse!" and when, in spite of all this, I focused my thoughts on my task, they additionally loudly roared these sentences: "The mortgage does await this, the mortgage does await this; damn walls, hear what your fate is, damn walls, hear what your fate is!" This went on for the entire day and the entire night and even continued after this. Nobody else saw and heard it; no one suspected of what and how terribly I suffered. Anybody else would have described this as madness, but not me. I remained distant and observed myself. In spite of all opposition, I managed to complete my poem on time. But I always had to pay very dearly for such victories; once it was achieved, my inner self collapsed.
Unfortunately, this violent obstruction of my good intentions did not just extend to my studies and work, but to a much larger degree and quite particularly to my lifestyle, my daily routine, as well. It was as if I had brought quite a lot of invisible criminals back home from this cell, in which I had been incarcerated for six weeks; and those criminals, now, had made it their cause to force their companionship upon me and to turn my mind to their way of thinking. I did not see them; I only saw the dark, mocking, main character from the swamp which was my home town and the trashy novels from Hohenstein; but they persistently talked to me; they influenced me. And when I resisted, they grew louder, to cloud my senses and to tire me, so that I lost the strength to resist. The main point was that was supposed to seek revenge, revenge against the owner of that watch, who had reported me to the police just to get rid of me from his apartment, revenge against the police, revenge against the judge, revenge against the government, against mankind, against basically everybody! I was a model citizen, like a lamb so white, pure, and innocent. The world had cheated me out of my future, my happiness. By what means? By forever regarding me as this what they had turned me into: a criminal.
This was what the tempters inside of me were demanding. I resisted as much as I could, as long as my strength would last. Everything I wrote at this time, especially my village-tales, I gave an ethical, strictly lawful, royalist tendency. I did this not just for the spiritual support of others, but also for my own. But how hard, how infinitely hard was this on me! Whenever I did not do as those loud voices demanded, I was assaulted with mocking laughter, with curses and maledictions, not just for hours, but for half days and entire nights. To escape these voices, I used to jump out of my bed and run out into the rain and the snowstorm. I felt urged to leave, to go so far, so very far away! I quitted my home to save myself, nobody knew where to, but I felt drawn back, again and again. I did not let anyone know what took place inside of me and how inhumanly or even superhumanly I fought, neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor one of the sisters. And even much less someone else, a stranger; I would not have been understood, anyhow; but they would rather have thought that I had just gone crazy. Whether anybody else in my place would have been able to bear this, I do not know, but I hardly think so. I was physically as well as mentally a sturdy, even a very sturdy person, but nevertheless I grew more and more tired. First, there were days, then even entire weeks, when everything within me turned completely dark; then, I sometimes hardly knew and often did not know at all what I did. At these times, the luminous character within me had disappeared completely. The dark entity led me my the hand. It always walked along the edge of the abyss. At times, I was supposed to do this, at another time that, in any case something illegal. In the end, I only resisted like in a dream. If I had only told my parents or at least my grandmother what state I was in, the deep fall I was heading for would surely have been avoided. And it came, not at home, but in Leipzig, to where some business connected with the theatre had brought me. There I have, though I did not need anything of the kind, bought furs and ran off with them, without paying. How I was capable of doing something like this, I can no longer tell; I probably did not even know it then either. This is because I feel sure and certain, that I could not have possibly acted this way while being fully conscious of what I was doing. I remember nothing at all of the ensuing trail, neither any detail nor any general impression. I also cannot recall how the verdict read. Up until now, I had believed that the sentence had been four years of imprisonment; but according to what the newspapers have recently reported, it was even one month more. But this is irrelevant. What matters is that the gaping abyss had not opened for me in vain. I had plunged into it; I was committed to the state penitentiary of Zwickau.
Before I elaborate on my imprisonment, I have to turn against some prejudices and wrong opinions, concerning everything connected with the penal system, which should finally be done away with. I have heard many an educated fellow prisoner threatening with understandable, but unfounded bitterness, that he would, after he had been released, write a book about his imprisonment, to disclose the equally severe as numerous shortcomings of our legal and penal system. A wise man would smile at such threats, which might be expressed, but are hardly ever carried out. Every released prisoner, if he possesses a sense of honour, is glad to have put the time of his punishment behind him. He would never consider making this public, what up to now only a few people knew about, now that he has managed to get through it. Thus, he will remain silent. And this is good, because his book, if he would write it, would surely prove that there is hardly one among a thousand prisoners who would be able to assess himself and his punishment impartially and objectively. But I believe that I have worked my way up to this objectivity and impartiality; I regard my conclusions as well considered and correct and feel obliged to set the following point straight, here:
The times when the prisons could be described as "schools for criminals" are long gone. In our penitentiaries, conditions are not less moral and not less humane than in freedom.
What was one denounced as "the world of the criminals", does not exist any more. The inmates of today's penitentiaries come from all classes of the population. In respect to their professions and intelligence, the same percentages are to be found here as among the "unpunished".
For the act of the individual, the society as a whole is also to blame. For its own sake, it has to take a part of the guilt from him and unto itself.
The German judges are very well aware of this truth. I have not met a single judge, even among those who had decided against me, whom I could accuse of any wrongdoing. The numerous lawsuits, my opponents virtually force me to conduct, give me ample opportunities to make such experiences, and I have to say that I have nothing but the utmost respect for all of these gentlemen, both in the criminal and the civil courts. I have even experienced one case where a judge in Dresden decided in my favour, though all of his relatives and acquaintances were against me and sought to influence him in that respect. What satisfaction and what confidence in all judges this can give, knows only he who has experienced something like I did.
In respect to the penal system, I have express the same thing. During my entire imprisonment, I have not met a single high-ranking official or guard, who had given me cause for any complaint in respect to his fairness and humane treatment of the prisoners. I would even say that the guards feel the harshness of their duties much more than the prisoners. Hundreds of times, I have admired a kindness, a patience and forbearance, which I would not have been capable of. Prison is no concert-hall and no dance-hall, but a very, very serious place, where a person has to discover who he is. The detainee who is wise enough to realize this will never find any cause for complaint, but only all conceivable help, to erase the memory of what he had been accused of. There were officials who became so very dear to me, and I am completely convinced that they not just pretended to return my kindness, but were perfectly honest about it.
With the achievements of our justice and penal system nonetheless not being as we would wish them to be, it are truly not the judges and also not the prison officials who are to blame for this; instead the cause is to be sought in an entirely different place: in a flawed legislation, in the foolish self-righteousness of one's dear neighbour, in certain, too deeply rooted forms of prejudice, and last but not least also in our so-called, highly praised "criminal psychology", in which only certain experts believe, but not those who really know human nature and even much less those, all this is in the end about, these are the so-called -- -- -- criminals.
These are the sources from which ever new crimes and recidivisms spring, though all kinds of measures are being taken, to contain these murky waters and to dry them out one after another. Should I give proof for those sources, starting right away with the latter one, the "criminal psychology", I have several works of this most interesting, extremely disputed subject opened up right in front of me, the contents of which are veritably abundant with evidence for my point. One of the authors, a well known prosecutor, distinguishes himself by means of his numerous attempts to turn the legal and penal system towards a milder, more humane course. He has made a name for himself by this. Whenever and wherever this humanisation is discussed, he is often quoted, and he would be a blessing for this cause, if he would not destroy it all again as a criminal psychologist, which he seeks to build up as a pioneer of humaneness. I will not name any names here as well, because I am not concerned with the person, but with the subject. Being, as a humanitarian, worthy of respect in the highest degree, he can be, as a psychologist (i.e. someone who "investigates the soul"), to an almost even higher degree inconsiderate and cruel. In trying to give evidence for his public assertions, he does not stop at including persons into his "psychiatric" studies, who have been punished thirty or more years ago, and have now, by means of hard work, obtained a public position, and he makes them thus recognisable in his writings that everyone knows whom he is referring to. Having been confronted about this by a lawyer, he answered that he, as a scientist, had the right to do this; there was an article of law which would allow it. I will refrain from adding any critical remarks to this. But even if it were true, that there was such an article, who would force this public prosecutor, for such an article's sake, to act against his own, otherwise evident humaneness and to vivisect with such a knife people who had never done him any harm and whose protection had been his duty as a representative of the government? If this article really exists, it is more than time for parliament, to put it under a serious examination. If every former prisoner, no matter how high he has worked his way up, is forced by this law, to allow those criminal psychologists to publicly put him into their scientific pillory, it is surely not surprising that criminology displays no tendency for improvement. I will have to return to this point in the further course of my discussion.
As far as the flaws in the legislature are concerned, I only need to point out how completely unprotected someone who has been previously convicted is against certain lawyers. The worst scoundrel can, by means of his lawyer, obtain the confidential criminal records of whomever he would like to ruin; these will then be published, and the poor devil is doomed! A. is a villain; B. is an honourable gentleman, but unfortunately with a criminal record. A. has the intention to destroy B.. He just needs to insult him and wait for B. to sue him. Being the accused, he will then demand that the plaintiff's records be presented. This is done. They are read in a public trail. A. is fined ten marks for his insult; but B. has been cast back into his former contempt and into the previous misery, and he will swear that for someone who had once been punished all resolutions to "better" himself are useless. If he would now revert to crime, this would surely be no surprise. Unfortunately, there are not just a few lawyers, who, entirely without scruples, turn to these most unfair of all means, to conduct lawsuits which cannot be won based on the facts in a personally malignant and ruthless manner. I myself was also faced with such opponents, but I have always seen that our judges never allowed themselves to be influenced by this kind of filth. I am convinced that, more than anybody else, those gentlemen would happily be in favour of a removal of these legal regulations, by means of which, as I have already said, every scoundrel is enabled to dig up things again which are long since past and long since atoned for. Then, the extensive number of repeat offenders due to so-called embitterment might soon be a thing of the past.
To list the foolish self-righteousness of our "dear neighbours", I was entire justified. This is and continues to be the main cause of the evils, which are to be discussed here. By no means, I want to assert that this is based on a lack of morality. I rather think that we are faced with old forms of prejudice, which have sunk in so deeply that they are no longer recognisable as prejudice, but are regarded as a truth, which no one dares to question. In old times, a "criminal" was outlawed; and today there is no difference. Everyone keeps picking on him; if it is not done openly, it nevertheless happens in secret. When he is looking for work, for help, for justice, he is always last in line after everyone else. In life, there are hundreds and hundreds of situations in which he is regarded and treated as a person of lower value, and it requires an unusual peace of mind and a rare strength of will on his part, to bear this again and again, without allowing himself to be cast back onto his old course. The greatest danger for him is to be found in the fact that his dear neighbours, by and by, will numb or even kill his sense for honour. Once he allows it to come to this, he is doomed, and criminology will never surrender its victim again, being either embittered or having become completely indifferent. This will not and cannot change at all, as long as the old, equally senseless and cruel prejudice is maintained, that every punished person has to be regarded as a "criminal" for the entire duration of his life. Recently, in Charlottenburg, the case occurred that someone who had been punished more than forty years ago, but had conducted himself well since then, had been described as a "born criminal" by a malicious person. The offended one sued the offender, but the latter was acquitted. Does this not mean that by this a poor man, who has, with all of his willpower, worked his way up out of the abyss and has proven himself for forty years at its top, is cast back down with brutal force? -- --
Down there, I also lay. In continuing to report about this, it is not at all my intention, to do this in a manner which readers who are in need for excitement and lust for sensations would wish. To experience these things only once, is more than enough. When being forced to experience them for a second time, by writing them down for others, it is surely justified to keep it as short as possible. I hereby make use of this right.
Upon my arrival at the penitentiary, I was received strictly, but by no means insultingly. He who is polite, complies with the prison's rules, and is not so stupid to keep on maintaining his innocence, will never have cause to complain about a hard treatment. As far as the occupation is concerned which was chosen for me, I was assigned to the clerical office. You can see from this how carefully the conditions of the prisoners were considered by the warden's office. But unfortunately, this care did not bear the expected success in my case. What happened was, that I failed so completely as a clerk, that I was regarded as useless. Having been a new arrival, I had to do the easiest job there was; but even this I could not cope with. This was noticed. They thought to themselves that there must have been something rather peculiar about me; after all, I must have been able to write! Particular attention was devoted on me. I was given different work, the most decent manual labour which was available. I was assigned to the room of the wallet manufacturers and became a member of a team, which produced fine purses and cigar-cases. Including me, this team consisted of four persons, these were a merchant from Prague, a teacher from Leipzig, and what the fourth one was I could not find out; he never talked about it. These three coworkers were kind, good people. They had already been working together for a longer time, were in a good reputation with the superiors, and did their best to make the training and all the rest of this hard time as easy as possible for me. No ugly or even illegal word was ever said between us. The room we worked in held seventy to eighty people. Among them, I noticed not a single one whose behaviour would have reminded me of the assertion, that prison would be the training ground for criminals. On the contrary! Every single one was constantly trying to make as good an impression as he could on his superiors and his fellow prisoners. During my entire imprisonment, I have never heard anything about hatching evil plans for the future. If anybody had dared to utter anything like this, even if he would not have been reported to the guards, he would nonetheless have been rejected in the most determined manner.
The name of the watchman of this room, or this "visitation" as it was called there, was Göhler. I mention his name with great, honest gratitude. He had to observe me and, though he did not know the slightest thing about psychology, just on account of his humanity and his rich experience, he tracked down the innermost part of nature so well, that his reports about me, as it turned out later, almost reached the truth. He had, as I guess all of these watchman had, previously served in the military, in his case it had been the band where he had played the first piston[a]. Therefore he had been put in charge of the musical corps and brass-band of the prisoners. On Sundays, he had concerts in the visitations and prison-yards, which he conducted very well. He also had to accompany the singers with his instrumental music during the religious services. But unfortunately, neither he nor the Bible teacher, who was in charge of the church corps, possessed the necessary theoretical knowledge, to rework, or to arrange, which is the technical term, the pieces, which were supposed to be performed, for the available personnel. Therefore, both gentlemen had already for a long time been looking for a prisoner, who might be able to fill this void; but there had not been any.
[a]Piston (French): A special kind of cornet, one octave above a trumpet; a.k.a. key-bugle or keyed bugle or Kent bugle.
At this point, watchman Göhler, due to his observation of my psychological condition, got the idea to take me into his brass-band, to see, if this might have a good effect on me. He asked the warden's office and received the permission. Then, he asked me, and quite naturally, I also did not say no. I joined the band. At that time, only the althorn happened to be available. I had never held an althorn in my hands before, but soon I joined in the best I could. The watchman was happy about this. He was even more happy, when he found out that I had learnt about compositions and was able to arrange musical pieces. Immediately, he reported this to the Bible teacher, and the latter made me one of the church singers. So I was now a member of both the brass-band and the church corps and was busy in going through the available pieces of music and to arrange new ones. The concerts and the performances in church received, from now on, an entirely different character.
I have to mention that this musical work was not my main occupation. By no means, it caused me to be relieved from performing the same amount of work which any other prisoner had to do every day, if he wanted to avoid getting into trouble. This workload was not too much; everyone who is willing to work could make it. The skillful ones would even make it in a few hours. Therefore, I was left with amply enough time for my compositions, which I did not even abandon, after I had been transfered out of the visitation of the wallet manufacturers. This was when they fulfilled my profound wish to be by myself.
Right from the start, when I had been committed, I had asked to be given a cell for myself; but a fulfilment of this wish had not been possible. Not until now, after the final psychological judgement had been made about me, I was transfered to the isolation building and received my room right next to the office of its inspector. He was a highly educated and humane gentleman, who was very conscious of his duties, and I became his personal clerk. This had been a job which had not existed up until this point. Let me here draw your attention to this psychologically meaningful point, that at the time of my commitment I had been completely unable to be a clerk, but was now regarded as capable, to perform the job of a clerk, which required great mental carefulness and insight and was the position of the highest confidence in the entire institution. This is because, aside from being the head of the isolation building, my inspector's professional duties also included the preparation of written documents. This work of his concerned the peculiar statistics of our institution and the manner and the tasks of the penal system in general. He wrote the reports which dealt with his subject and was very busy corresponding with all outstanding men of the penal system. My task was to determine the statistical figures, to investigate their reliability, to compile and compare them, and finally to extract result out of them. Basically, this was a very hard, strenuous, and seemingly boring occupation with a set of lifeless numbers; but to piece these numbers together into characters and to breathe life and soul into these characters, to make them speak, this was most interesting, and I may very well say that I have learnt much, very much there, and that this work in my quiet, lonely cell has advanced my progress in understanding the psychology of mankind much further, than what I would have been able to achieve without this imprisonment. That, for this purpose, only the best and most reliable documents were at my disposal, goes entirely without saying. There, I have learnt to understand the most peculiar things. There, I have looked into the deepest depths of human existence and seen things, which others will never see, because they are blind to them. There, I have realized that grandmother's fable was telling the truth, that there is a Jinnistan and an Ardistan, an ethical highland and an ethical lowland, and that the main movement, we all have to participate in, is not downwards, but upwards, up, up towards liberation from sin, rising towards the nobler state of the human soul. This realization has been the greatest blessing for me; it has even freed me as well. I have heard those voices, I talked about earlier, also in the cell, screaming inside of me. I have fought them, and I have always silenced them. They returned, though; they rose their voices again, but with longer and longer intervals, until I could finally assume, that they had become completely mute once and for all.
Furthermore, I had to manage the prisoner's library, and the official's library was also made available to me. The works collected in the latter were not at all just concerned with the criminal law and the penal system, but rather all fields of science were represented. I have not just read these delightful books, which were so rich in contents, but rather I have studied them and gained very much from them. And there were not just the volumes of the institution's libraries, which were made available to me, but I was also happily granted the opportunity to access books from outside. I felt the irresistible desire, to use the quiet and undisturbed situation in my cell as much as possible to progress mentally, and the officials enjoyed in assisting me in this in every manner which did not contradict the institution's regulations. Thus, the time of my punishment transformed for me into a time of studying, in which I found greater opportunities for being focused and greater possibilities for in-depth studies than any university student would ever find in freedom. I will say more about this great, inestimable benefit, which the imprisonment afforded me, later on. Even today, I am still in particularly grateful for the fact that I was not prohibited to obtain books on foreign grammar and to lay, by this, the actual foundation of my later traveller's tales, which are, as is well known, not based on any actual travels at all, but were meant to form an entirely different, up to this point untreated, genre. But for now, it is not my intention, to elaborate on these studies of mine, but rather I have to concentrate here solely and in particular on the fact that the management of the prisoner's library, which I had been entrusted with, gave me the opportunity to make most important observations and experiences, under the influence of which my work as an author has taken on the shape in which it appears now.
In stating that I got to know what literature, or let me rather say reading material, the mentality of the general public desires, I am asking you to take this statement serious. It should not be said that each librarian in every public library and every rental library could make the same experiences, because this is not true. A reader in freedom and a reader in prison, this are two entirely different characters. In the latter, reading can actually become a spiritual requirement for his existence. His nature is changing direction, it is turning around. The external personality no longer matters under the discipline of the institution; the internal one emerges. And this is the one which has to be discovered and seized by the officials, by the system of reeducation in such an institution, if the greatly humane purpose of punishment is to be realized: moral uplifting and consolidation, reconciliation between society and the so-called criminal, who have both committed a sin against one another. In freedom, this emergence of the internal personality is the exception, but in captivity it is the rule. During his imprisonment, the prisoner has to do without all of his physical privileges. In the physical respect, he is no longer a person, but just a thing, a number, which is registered in books and by which he is also addressed. Just the more strongly, yes even with an unstoppable vitality, his internal form, his soul emerges, to demand its rights, to satisfy its needs. The body is forced to put up with the prison's clothing and the prison's food. But do not dare to commit the mistake to restrict the soul in the same manner as well! Forcefully, it seeks to break out of the prison's clothing; famishedly, it demands a kind of food, by which it can become ethically sound and strong, to free itself from the bondage, in which it languished up to now. Believe me, no convict wishes to be evil; they all wish to be good. In the deepest bottom of his heart, everyone has the urge to be, not just physically, but also ethically, free, even the seemingly unreformable ones. But from what shall this naked, hungry soul receive good clothing and good food, meaning good in the ethical sense? From itself? From the sermons, held in the institution every Sunday? From the few, short visits of the institution's chaplain and other officials? From the companionship of the other prisoners? However you may answer these questions, the main source of all reeducation, improvement, and uplifting can under conditions like these only be the library. Each prisoner, who conducts himself in such a manner that he does not have to be forbidden to read, receives one book per week. For seven days, its contents provides the spiritual food for his famished soul. He is not allowed to choose the book; he has to take what he gets. What he is given, can turn out to be his blessing or his misfortune, can enrich his knowledge or worsen his punishment, can lead him towards understanding himself and the errors of his ways, but it can also offend and harden him. One of my fellow prisoners, an intelligent banker, had, for three quarters of a year, received nothing but old issues of a magazine called "Fraundorfer Blätter" to read, dry instructions in gardening, which neither interested him, nor could benefit him in any way. He put up with it, being increasingly embittered, until I got in charge of the library and gave him something more fitting to his needs. An actor, who was a hothead, was thus enraged by the tales of Jeremias Gotthelf, that he had almost been punished for improper behaviour. The last one he had to read bore the title "How Five Girls Miserably Perish with Brandy"[a]. When I gave him a volume by Edmund Höfer[b], he was as happy as if I had given him a fortune. A social democratic plumber had been victimised my a long series of devotional books. He angrily swore to me that just for these books there could not be any God. He had only gone bankrupt due to his bitter poverty; but the authors and publishers of these scriptures were bankrupt due to self-righteousness and arrogance and deserved at least the same prison sentence as he.