VI YOUNG GERMANY (continued 8)

"O, sie will es nie begreifen, ihre Prosa und Gemeinheit, Das ein Geist wie Du, ein Name, bürgt für der Gesinnung Reinheit, Nur das Schlechte glaubt sie willig," &c.[7]

The retort evaded the attack instead of repulsing it. No one seriously believed in a man like Auersperg having changed his convictions; the ground of Herwegh's attack was that, holding such convictions, he had solicited a court appointment. It was his own future position that Dingelstedt defended; he was the next poet upon whom Herwegh turned, with a satire that was all the fiercer because it was silent, or at least only indirectly expressed.

Dingelstedt, like Herwegh, had been obliged to leave Germany to escape the consequences of writing political poems. The two poets met in Paris. There they one evening amused themselves by trying which could write the better verses on the subject of his own imaginary political conversion. Herwegh wrote the poem "Wohlgeboren" the burden of which is: What is the use of all this talk of liberty and fatherland, of all this enthusiasm, all this meddling with politics? What good has it done me? No, no! for the future I will be a quiet, respectable citizen:

"Du sollst, verdammte Freiheit, mir Die Ruhe fürder nicht gefährden; Lisette, noch ein Gläschen Bier! Ich will ein guter Bürger werden."[8]

This last line forms the refrain of all the verses. To outbid his friend, Dingelstedt wrote the poem "Hochwohlgeboren," which begins:

"Ein guter Bürger willst du werden? Pfui Freund!—Ein guter, Bürger—Du? Das also war dein Ziel auf Erden, Dem stürmten deine Lieder zu? O nimm's zurück, das ekle Wort, Wer mag sich so gemein geberden! Nein, nein, mich reisst es weiter fort: Ich muss Geheimer Hofrath werden!"[9]

In this poem, too, the last line of the first verse serves as refrain to all the others.

Two years later Dingelstedt was Privy Councillor, librarian, and reader at the court of the King of Würtemberg. Herwegh contented himself with reprinting the two poems side by side.

Franz Dingelstedt (born in 1814) represents one of the most curious types of the day. He is a revolutionary who ought to have been born in the purple, a Prince Pückler in the guise of a poor schoolmaster, a satirist who cannot dispense with appearances, a man of first-rate abilities with neither serious vices nor serious enthusiasm, but with ready wit and frequent poetic inspiration; early blasé, he retains a certain practical activity of mind to the last. He was born in the worst-governed country in Germany, Hesse-Cassel, under the hated administration of Hassenpflug, became master at one of its grammar-schools, aroused dissatisfaction by his emancipated opinions and conduct and the liberal tone of his poetry, was transferred and perpetually interfered with, and sent in his resignation in 1841, when he was twenty-seven. Only one year after Herwegh he published his first collection of political poetry, Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters ("Songs of a Cosmopolitan Night-Watchman"). Good verse, clever poems, a good idea. The watchman in his uniform, armed with his spiked mace, his horn in his hand, goes his nightly round, and, pausing outside the houses, tells us what he sees and imagines within.

He is a genuine night-watchman—thoroughly weary of the old woman at home, who is so ugly and so wrinkled, yet with whom he manages to live peaceably, for she sleeps by night and he by day; a genuine night-watchman, who sings the watchman's song about lights and fires; looks up at the prisoners, the political prisoners, peering through the iron bars and shaking them; shudders as he passes the cathedral with all its relics, where the wind is howling so loud in the organ pipes; and then laughs at himself for shuddering. It is twenty years since he was inside the building, he is none of your seat-holding church-goers.

And yet he is not a genuine night-watchman. He has feelings and opinions which are not those of a man in his station. In one house a ball is going on; he listens to the music, and describes the dancing and the behaviour of the fashionable company. What a sensation it would create if he, lantern and mace in hand, snow on his cloak and cap, his cheeks burning and frost on his beard, were suddenly to appear among all these shadows! Outside another house stands the carriage of the great, the all-powerful, Minister of State. The coachman is wrapped in furs, but the poor uncovered horses are trembling with cold whilst their master is playing cards within—just as if they could not revenge themselves when he comes:

"Ich rathe dir, lass die Karten ruhn, Und hüte dich fein, Ministerlein! Du hast es mit vier Hengsten zu thun, Bedenk', dass es keine Bürger sein."[10]

There are many pathetic passages. In one of the suburbs the watchman passes a house where a poor wretch lies in his last agonies; he passes the lunatic asylum, and the dread of madness that always seizes him here is mingled with a strange feeling of attraction; he passes the cemetery, where his poor father, who took his own life, lies in a disdained, neglected corner; and on his way back he passes the palace, where the prince tosses sleeplessly on his pillow of down, while the sentry sleeps soundly standing in his box.

A night-watchman might easily have had some of these feelings—he would never have expressed them thus; the mask is perpetually falling off. There are one or two most masterly and natural expressions of popular indignation, for example the tirade occasioned by the sight of light in the sickroom of a cringing courtier whose extortions have impoverished his country:

"Warum er nicht schläft? warum er in Wuth die Spitzen am Hemde zerissen? Ein gutes Gewissen schläft überall gut, und nirgends ein schlechtes Gewissen. Er hat an des Landes Mark, die Schlang', sich voll gefressen, gesogen, Er hat—ein Menschenleben lang!—gestohlen, gelogen, betrogen."[11]

But there are also expressions of hatred and exasperation which we feel belong to another class of society. We actually find the watchman giving frivolous advice to a beautiful young lady who has been married to an old reprobate, telling her how she may best revenge herself upon him. At times his thoughts and reveries take a higher flight. He is leaning on an old cannon, which stands on the rampart, shining and dumb. Once its wheels rolled over dead and living on the field of victory; once it gave the signal for the dread onslaught, for beside the touch-hole there is an N. surmounted by the imperial crown. Now its voice is only heard when some wretched prisoner has escaped from his dungeon, or on the occasion of his Majesty's birthday, or when a princess is born. "Patience!" cries the watchman to the cannon; "it may be that ere long thou wilt once more pour thy balls upon the enemy; but keep silent in the meantime, old veteran, or they will spike thee as they are gagging us." Here the mask is completely thrown off.

After Dingelstedt had left Hesse-Cassel, he published Nachtwächters Weltgang ("The Night-Watch man's World Patrol"), in which the poet is no longer the unsophisticated night-watchman—but the cultivated revolutionary. He falls foul of bad kings, of the governments of Hesse-Cassel, Prussia, and Hanover, and of false German patriotism: "What, gentlemen, is a German patriot?—A man who serves the Lord on Sunday and the king on week-days. What are the objects of his desire?—Office, a title, and a ribbon for himself, bread for his lawful offspring, and legitimate sovereigns for his country.—Away with you, German patriot! The temple is no place for you! You are a Judas, whose treacherous kiss has been the death of liberty!"

A few months later Dingelstedt was a Privy Councillor and Councillor of Legation—held office, had a title, wore a ribbon. Naturally no one believed in any genuine conversion, and it is not surprising that his conduct was severely, and in some quarters spitefully, judged. The numerous documents relating to his character and life which have been published of late years (especially Julius Rodenberg's articles in the Deutsche Rundschau of 1889-90) throw a more favourable light upon his action than that in which his contemporaries saw it. There was a want of fine feeling about it, it was unseemly, but it was not base. There was nothing wrong in the actual fact of his accepting the post of reader to a cultivated and amiable sovereign, the fault lay in his having so shortly beforehand proclaimed all sorts of democratic and radical principles which he was not prepared to stand by.

He had the true artist's temperament, and yet was distinctly practical; he was pleasure-loving and ambitious, unable to bear permanently the humiliation of being poor and consequently ignored; he was above all else impressed, strongly impressed, by the belief that in following the path he had entered upon he was pursuing a métier de dupe. What did he gain by refusing, because of his principles, to accept good appointments and influential positions! What did the world gain by clever men on principle leaving titles, money, office, orders, and posts of honour to the stupid men! Was this the best way to improve matters? His great desire was to play the sovereign in some domain of art, to solve great scenic problems, to direct great theatres, to be the favoured of beautiful women. Was he at all likely to attain it as the exiled schoolmaster, the correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung? Who would permanently hold in esteem the poor, independent journalist? who would not, in course of time, esteem the influential courtier? Of course there would be an outcry when he accepted the call—if only he had not written that wretched poem to Herwegh!—but what was needed was cool courage, ironical impenetrability, smiling indifference, and the calm superiority which allows one's opponents to bawl till they are tired; and these gifts he possessed.

He became, as every one knows, not only a courtier, but in course of time manager of one court theatre after another—Stuttgart, Munich, Weimar—ending his career as the influential director of the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Heine, who was not strict, but witty, wrote the incomparable poem "Verhofrätherei," which begins:

"Verschlechtert sich nicht dein Herz und dein Stil, So magst du treiben jedwedes Spiel, Mein Freund, ich werde dich nie verkennen, Und soll ich dich auch Herr Hofrath nennen,"[12]

It expresses a mournful understanding of Dingelstedt's conduct, and bitter contempt for the public to whom both he and Dingelstedt addressed themselves.

Any one who desires to get a distinct and correct idea of Dingelstedt's intellectual personality should compare the clever, graphic account of his life, entitled Münchener Bilderbuch, with his own cyclus of poems entitled Ein Roman. These poems show us far more of his inmost nature than the verses of his early youth. But he had early experienced the mingled feeling of attraction to the great world and contempt for it. In the poem "Krähwinkel," he wrote of fashionable society:

"Sie lügen, sie krakehlen, sie hassen sich bis auf's Blut, Zum Morden oder Stehlen fehlt ihnen nur der Muth. Sie möchten gern und wagen's nicht, das heisst denn Recht und Pflicht; Die denken können, sagen's nicht. Die Meisten denken nicht."[13]

Now he tells the story of a society amour. In England, at a ball, the poet meets a lady of Hindoo blood, but English in every other respect. She is spiritually akin to himself, gloomy and cold and weary of life. They fall in love:

"Wir klammerten uns, ob aus Zeitvertreib, Ob aus Verzweiflung, an einander an, Sie, ein verlornes, neugebornes Weib, Ich, ein verlorner, neugeborner Mann."[14]

The word "Zeitvertreib" (pastime) is a little too weak, the word "Verzweiflung" (despair) is a shade too strong. There is German puerility in this insistence upon fashionable frivolity and blank despair. So much is certain; the two fall in love. We have plenty of passion, hot and wild—more of sensuality in it than love, voluptuous nights, secret pleasures, and coldly cynical front shown to the world; then separation, farewell, and oblivion; until one day in a conservatory in Amsterdam the decaying smell of a dead lotus-plant makes him feel faint. He is reminded of her, and presses one of the dead leaves to his lips as if it were the hand of a corpse.

Such characters as Dingelstedt significantly illustrate their age, they do not create it. They are not the builders of the palace, they are its gilders. No doubt the work of the gilder first attracts the eye, and attracts far more eyes than the work of the builder, who in laying the foundation of the palace determines its whole construction; but there is also no doubt as to whose work is of the more importance.

These pleasure-loving poets, often disillusioned so young, with no principles except the political convictions of which they sing and boast, and to which they generally prove unfaithful, are of social importance from the fact that they create the opinion of the moment, general political opinion, and thereby accelerate the slow reorganisation of society. But this outward reorganisation is not itself the principal matter; political opinion is not the prime mover. The outward revolution is a result of movements going on much deeper below the surface. Perhaps the most powerful impulse is given by philosophy with its quiet revolutionising of the religious view of life.

In this domain of philosophic agitation there appeared in the summer of 1841 (the year in which Dingelstedt's first book was published, the year following the publication of Herwegh's first) an epoch-making thinker. In the work entitled Das Wesen des Christenthums ("The Nature of Christianity") he formulates great thoughts, founds and expounds a philosophy of life which makes its influence felt in the spoken and written words of all who come after him, all at least whose minds attain their fullest development. Ludwig Feuerbach is the foundation-stone upon which for the next twenty years every one builds, everything is built.

When I say of him that he was great, a great man and a great thinker, I myself resent the platitude. Great is a term which we hear so constantly applied to this, that, and the other thing, that we have come to be unaffected by it. There is not even any very keen appreciation among us of the quality of greatness. The sense for it is deadened by the cold, clammy manner in which the intellectually great are handled by those who write learned treatises on their work. Take up a history of philosophy, and you will find them all arranged and labelled, one looking exactly like the other. There they stand in a row, all treated with the same respect, and regarded with the same interest—Schelling, who was a genius and a charlatan; Trendelenburg, who accepted his appointment from Eichhorn and improved his opportunities after the death of Altenstein; Strauss, who was a second-rate thinker, and a bit of a pedant; Karl Vogt, who was a gifted gourmand; Lotze, who was an excellent professor of philosophy, but nothing more; and amongst the rest Feuerbach, one of a list, possibly labelled as inferior, onesided men, calling themselves ideal realists or something of the sort. The effect is demoralising.

He was great. This means that there is a wide, open space round him on every side. It means that if we would understand him, we must separate him clearly in our minds from all those men, all those facts that jostle him in lesson-books and hand-books. That he was great means, that he is altogether upon another level. The moment we catch sight of him as he stands there alone, reverence takes possession of us.

Simply natural as he was in intercourse with friends, there was yet something awe-inspiring about the man. Look at that face, in every feature of which there is genius and character—obstinate, energetic character. There is character in the mighty brow, in the small eyes, in the big, fan-shaped beard. There is power in it all, power and nobility, and manly beauty, stern as though cast in bronze.

Himself a genius, he belongs to a notably talented family; the father one of the most distinguished criminal jurists of Germany; brother, sister, nephew, all gifted. He is born at Landshut in 1804; studies at Heidelberg; turns his attention to theology, first from the orthodox, afterwards from the critical standpoint; then to philosophy, first abstract, afterwards realistic, ever more realistic. He publishes his Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit ("Thoughts on Death and Immortality") anonymously. The book is at first confiscated, but subsequently allowed to circulate. After it becomes known that he is the author, he applies in vain for professional appointments at several of the South German universities, and similar attempts made somewhat later in Berlin, France, Switzerland, and Greece prove equally fruitless, in spite of the support of noted savants. From 1836 onwards he lives a retired life in the country—till 1860 at Brückberg, near Ansbach, afterwards at Rechenberg, near Nuremberg. In his later years it is the life of a hermit. He corresponds with friends of his own class and stamp, and also with men of the people (such as Konrad Deubler of the Salzkammergut), who sometimes understand his writings better and feel them more deeply than the so-called cultivated class. In 1837 he married the love of his youth. It was not without influence on his life that, in the beginning of the Forties, a young girl, daughter of one of his friends, was for a time passionately attached to him, an attachment which he returned.

His only course of lectures was delivered in 1848, at Heidelberg, but not at the university; there he was dreaded and shunned. In 1842 his friends had tried to get him appointed professor at Heidelberg; he at first took kindly to their plan, but afterwards frantically opposed it. "To try to make me a professor and that, too, in the ordinary way, the way in which any blockhead can be made one ... is to place me on a level with the fools that are posing as professors now, is to insult, to disgrace me.... The professor's desk is no place for a man with a head like mine. Do you know the proper place for my head? Guess! The block: for my brain is as keen and as peremptory as the executioner's sword, and I have no desire, no courage to do any deeds but those for which men risk the loss of their heads."[15] His friend had been advising him rather to call his work Wesen der Théologie than Wesen des Christenthums. He answers: "I take no interest whatever in the overturning of theology. I concern myself only with great world-entities (welthistorische Wesen).... One must deal a mortal blow, must deny on principle. To act means to take life—with the determination, if necessary, to give one's own life in return."

This is more resolute language than the poets used; these views are very different from theirs. Saint-René Taillandier animadverted on the fact that Feuerbach, holding such views, did not take part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Feuerbach answered: "M. Taillandier! When another revolution breaks out and I take part in it, know, to the dismay of your godly soul, that that revolution will be victorious; the last day of the monarchy and the hierarchy will have come. Alas! I shall not live to take part in that revolution. But I am playing an active part in another great and victorious one, the results of which will not be evident till centuries have come and gone. For, according to my philosophy—which you know nothing about and presume to judge without having studied—according to my philosophy, which ignores gods, and, consequently, miracles wrought by means of political measures, space and time are necessary conditions of all being, all thought, and all action. It was not, as has been asserted in the Bavarian Reichsrathskammer, because the Parliament of Frankfort consisted of unbelievers that it was such a complete and shameful failure; as a matter of fact the majority of its members were believers—and surely God, too, respects a majority; it was a failure because it was destitute of the sense of place and time."[16]

Notwithstanding the number of different stages through which Feuerbach passed in his progress towards realism, notwithstanding all that can with justice be said of the diversity of the positions he took up, his ground-thought, the key-stone of the vaulting upon which the whole rests, is as simple as it is great. It is this: Man cannot be conscious of a being that is higher than himself. If it were possible for man to be conscious of himself—that is, his being or nature—as finite, compared with another being apprehended as infinite, he would by this consciousness limit his own being, i.e. deny it. His consciousness would extend beyond the limits of his being, which is impossible, for consciousness is simply the self-affirmation of being.

Instead, therefore, of saying with Hegel: Man's consciousness of God is God's self-consciousness, we are compelled to say: Man's consciousness of God is man's self-consciousness; religion is man's first and indirect self-knowledge.

It is universally acknowledged that the idea, God, can only be formulated by the aid of human predicates—God is love, God is goodness, knowledge, power, &c. The subject here is nothing but the personified predicate. The predicate is the original. What religion really means is this: Love is divine, i.e. of absolute worth, deserving of adoration; goodness, knowledge, power are divine.

Hence belief in a God is belief in man as the essential being.

The apparent axiom of religion is: I am nothing, measured with God; its real axiom is: Everything else is nothing measured with me; everything serves my purposes. By means of prayers and miracles, with God as intermediary, I have everything at my disposal. God is the creation of man's desire. The main desire of Christianity being unlimited happiness, bliss, God is the means whereby bliss is attained, or, more correctly, bliss and God are one.

In a word; theology is anthropology, the theological problem is a psychological problem—which Feuerbach has solved in all essentials for all time.

Viewed thus, his life-work is seen in its unity. Though it is not possible to express the whole in a few words, yet it is easy to feel that it is one single great thought, for which humanity is his debtor.

When a young man stands in the Pantheon in Rome, lost in admiration of its dome, the most beautiful in the world, his most natural thought is: O, like the builder of this temple, to have, were it but once in one's life, an idea, simple and great as that which produced this cupola—to conceive some single fundamental principle, some simple and yet composite formula, capable of expansion to a whole scheme, of dimensions as grand as this firmament in miniature! One such thought, simple in its beginning, stupendous in its development, would give greatness enough to any human life.

Feuerbach's was one of these fundamental thoughts.

XXVII

REVOLUTIONARY POETRY

The profoundest characteristic of that literature which in the Forties still continued to be known by the name of Bewegungslitteratur, is its utter want of connection with official Germany. It is the absence of any such connection that gives it its strength and its freshness. Official Germany is not to be taken here in the narrow sense of German officialdom; it means all that part of the people—German or any other—which in normal circumstances appears to be the whole people, and as such sets the stamp of nationality on all that is produced by that people, the same stamp which it has set on all that has emanated from it in the past. With what a later period has called Bildungsphilisterei (cultured philistinism), the most eminent literary men of the period in question have no connection whatever. There is no corresponding group of personalities and writings in Scandinavian literature. Even the Radical poetry of the Scandinavian students became official in the course of a very few years. The most gifted of the German poets of the day are independent, or make themselves independent, of official Germany, and bear like men the consequences of the position they take up.

Among those who declare their independence, the most interesting figure is Freiligrath, born in Detmold in 1810. Fair, blue-eyed, massively built, and shaggy-maned, he is the true son of Westphalia. His father, a schoolmaster, educated him against his will as a merchant, and to his commercial education and pursuits are to be ascribed his freedom from classical reminiscences, his exclusively modern literary culture, his understanding of the foreign climes and countries with which commerce brings us into communication, and his distinctly modern turn of thought.

Freiligrath is not, like Hoffmann von Fallersleben, his predecessor in the field of political poetry, only a prolific song writer; he is a genuine, inspired poet. Hoffmann, who had made a study of the old German songs and ballads, and was himself a man of simple, popular tastes, poured forth an inexhaustible stream of polemical verse, directed against the squirearchy and bureaucracy, but he repeated himself with the monotony of the popular poet. Freiligrath wrote comparatively little, but every one of his poems has its distinct individuality. He is influenced by that modern French and English poetry of which he has given us so many admirable translations, and makes his debut as a descriptive poet of the Victor Hugo school, but soon develops a distinct literary individuality. He possesses in a very high degree two qualities which are seldom found united, the faculty of picturesque description and intensity of feeling. The former leads him to depict themes from foreign lands, full of glowing colour, the latter displays itself when he sings of home and fatherland. In his revolutionary period his warm feeling became powerful pathos, and his gift of graphic delineation was exclusively devoted to the service of hostility and ire.

In his youth, in Amsterdam (1831), the sea and the shipping made a deep impression on him. In his dreams he followed all the vessels that glided out of the harbour bound for Africa, for India, for Turkey, for America. He was seized by the desire to describe these foreign climes as they appeared in his imagination, and Hugo's Les Orientales not only suggested the colours to be employed in the treatment of such themes, but also the metrical form. Freiligrath alone among German poets tried to master the alexandrines beloved of Frenchmen, despised in Germany, and to vindicate their beauty. Strangely enough, in spite of his usually correct ear, he so entirely misapprehended the peculiarity of this metre that he always writes it in pure iambics, a practice which Germans have continued.

He was possessed by the longing to roam—out into the wide world, across the great ocean. Instead of German "garret poetry," he wrote, in his garret, scenes laid in the deserts of Africa and the primeval forests of America. He attempted tropical local colouring, which was at times successful, at times unnatural; his linguistic specialty was new and remarkable rhymes, produced with the assistance of resonant foreign words like "Sykomore," "Tricolore," &c. His good verses were like living, his bad, in their lifeless splendour, like stuffed humming-birds.

But this African Freiligrath is not the best Freiligrath. Freiligrath, the Liberal patriot, is greatly his superior. After Herwegh's political challenge had roused him, he took himself to task, tested with simple-minded fairness those sympathies and tendencies of his nature as to which he himself was not yet absolutely clear, and discovered in the depths of his being an unquenchable desire for liberty and a sympathy with the oppressed which on occasion could develop into burning indignation and hatred. His genius chose the revolutionary path, pursued it at full speed, and finally spread its wings and flew. Marseillaise after Marseillaise came from the poet's pen. O these hymns of 1848! they are enthusiasm itself, the enthusiasm that begets enthusiasm. In the earlier ones we have fierceness, faith, revolutionary piety, fiery sarcasm, the intoxicated jubilation of victory; in the later, noble despair, sublime in its expression.

But the poems which anticipate the Revolution and incite to it are also worth reading. Take, for instance, the volume entitled Ça ira, published in 1846. In each of the poems of which it consists a symbolical picture is graphically elaborated. In the first, a ship is setting sail; her name is Revolution, she is the black fire-ship that sends her rockets aboard that hypocritical craft, the Church, and then points her guns at the silver fleet of Wealth. In another we have a symbolical idea borrowed from Thomas Moore: the ice-palace of despotism, which will crack, and break up, and melt away as soon as spring comes. In Wie man's macht ("How the Thing is Done") the poet describes the storming of the arsenal of a capital with such infectious ardour, so dramatically and vividly, that we see it all, are ourselves in the thick of the fray. As the Revolution which he foresees draws nearer and nearer, his poetry becomes more and more up to date. He describes a Rhine steamer, which has the King and Queen of Prussia on board. The steamer is a picture of German society. The company on deck are enjoying the fresh air, the bright sunshine, the beautiful scenery of the Rhine; but down below in the engine-room stand the proletariat, in the shape of engineer and stoker, masters of the volcano that drives the ship onwards. One push, one blow from them, and the whole edifice of which the king is the crown, collapses; the deck is blown to fragments, the flames mount to the clouds—but not yet, thou angry element, not to-day! In such a poem as Freie Presse the course of events is anticipated: the insurrection is on the point of breaking out; one day more, and there will be fighting in the streets. Ammunition being short, the owner of the printing works orders his workmen to melt down all the alphabets. And presently the hissing, glowing mass is flowing into the bullet moulds. The times are such that only in the form of bullets can the types emancipate humanity.

The days of Young Germany were over, but now it seemed as if Germany herself had grown young.

Robert Prutz (born in 1816 at Stettin) received that classical education which had been denied to Freiligrath. A critical student of philosophy and history, he wrote upon many subjects, but it is only as a political poet that he has any abiding significance. He was one of the young men who ardently vented their opinions in Ruge's Hallische Jahrbücher, the result in his case being banishment. He is the Feuerbachian as poet. His political poetry, from the absolute directness with which it follows its aim, is apt to be somewhat dry and unimaginative, but his sober and yet warm love of liberty attracts us. If you once learn to like him, it will be a thorough liking; you will even highly prize his latest collection of poems, Aus der Heimath, a book which has been foolishly condemned as sensual; it cannot be denied that he showed bad taste in dedicating it to his wife.

In his best work, a little Aristophanic masterpiece entitled Die politische Wochenstube ("The Political Lying-in Room"), Zürich, 1843, Prutz, Holberg's warmest German admirer,[1] has succeeded in epitomising the wit, the irony, the endeavour, and the hopes of the younger generation.

It was only natural that a poet with Prutz's classical training should adopt the Aristophanic method, the pity was that he followed it too closely. His play became in consequence a jewel of price for a select circle of readers instead of food for the multitude. It is the production of a young, hopeful dreamer, whose faith in a glorious future for Germany was quite as lively and as strong as the pleasure he felt in demolishing with his sarcasm what was decrepit and decayed; the burlesque figures and conceits stand out against an idealistic golden background because the poet sees the sun of the future rising and shining behind them.

The action passes partly in, partly outside of the house of a doctor who keeps a kind of private lying-in hospital, where young ladies of the upper classes at times take refuge. Of late his business has not thriven. It had flourished when Pietism flourished in Königsberg; much pious embracing had gone on then, which, with God's blessing, had borne fruit; but now that the State Church has set itself to suppress Pietism, his wards stand empty. He will soon be driven to apply for a post on the staff of the Prussian official newspaper; those who are fit for nothing else can always earn their bread in its service. The Doctor's servant, Kilian, who is famishing, asks for food. The Doctor advises him to have his stomach removed, takes out his knife to do the operation, tells him that he will never feel hungry again, and that he will confer an inestimable benefit on humanity if he can show himself as a living proof that the operation is possible. For what is the rock on which virtue splits nowadays? Why did Freiligrath take a pension? Why did Dingelstedt allow himself to be branded. The stomach, and nothing but the stomach is to blame for everything.

In the meantime Herr Schlaukopf (Mr. Sly) has come on the scene, disguised as a beggar. He declaims some patriotic sentiment, in the style of the Niebelungenlied, on the subject of Hermann the Cheruscan, and then asks for a contribution for the statue of that national hero. The Doctor is incautious enough to call the statue a scarecrow, a hideous sentry brandishing a spit, on which Schlaukopf declares that he shall pay for these words by at least twelve years' imprisonment with hard labour. They fight, the Doctor pulls off Schlaukopfs false nose, and thereupon recognises in him the friend of his youth, the quondam socialist, singer of liberty, republican, and regicide, now advanced to the post of "Wirklicher-geheimer-königlicher Leibspion" (Real Private Royal Body-spy). They fall into each other's arms, and Schlaukopf tells his errand, but not till he has assured himself that the Doctor holds no awkward or seditious political beliefs. The Doctor, recognising the importance of the man with whom he has to do, falls on his knees and swears that he believes nothing except that crown-pieces are round. Then Schlaukopf divulges the secret: "Germany, our mother-country, the Germany of Frederick and of Luther, the fair-haired queen, is with child."

The Doctor is at first incredulous. Is it not dropsy, the result of all the water-drinking introduced by these new total abstinence associations? No, she is pregnant, and the only surprising thing about it is that the fact has not been announced in the newspapers, which usually inform the public when queens and princesses are in that condition. And now Schlaukopf communicates the joyful intelligence that the Doctor, as an experienced accoucheur, has been chosen to attend Germania; he, and no other, is to deliver her. The Doctor dances for joy, demands that he shall be rewarded with perquisites and an order, requests Schlaukopf to bring the lady—but see, she comes!

Slaves, who represent the enthralled people, bear her in in a golden chair. She is fair, with a fat, amiable face, a wide mouth, and eyes of watery blue. All salute and do homage to her as Germania. But from a confidential conversation between her and Schlaukopf we learn that she is not the person she gives herself out to be. He asks her if she is really pregnant; she replies that he ought to know best, he and the others whom he has introduced to her. It seems that he has taken her from the street and trained her to play her part. She is the official Germania—and she has done everything that her artful masters have ordered her to do, has bowed, and knelt, and pattered prayers at command. And now, at command, she is pregnant. Schlaukopf abuses her, and threatens to beat her; she taunts him and threatens in return to run away and leave him to find another Germania where he best can.

Meanwhile in the darkness of night a stranger has appeared in the street in front of the house, a woman with a harassed, hunted look, who declares that she knows not where to lay her outlawed head. "I," she says, "the legitimate queen, must, like a common vagrant, hide my royal head in the darkness of night, whilst she who has been exalted in my stead and impudently allows herself to be called by my name, sleeps voluptuously on silken pillows. Ye stones, be my pillow! For my people, like their queen, have to lie on stone."

Through the night comes a cry, "Germania!" The woman in the house and the woman on the street answer at the same moment. Wrangling and confusion ensue, the gendarmes arrive, and an attempt is made to discover which of the two has taken a name that does not belong to her. "Not I!" cries the stranger to Schlaukopf. She maintains that he has stolen her name and decked his brazen-faced paramour with it, and concludes: "Shame on you both! I alone am the real, the true Germania!" Kilian finds it impossible to believe that any one so slender and emaciated can be Germania, but the serfs are thrilled to the heart by the sweet sound of her voice. The diplomatic Schlaukopf alone keeps his countenance:

"Allein, so thut ein wenig nur die Augen auf, Zu sehen braucht Ihr diese da und jene nur, So ist's ja klärlicb, welche hier die Rechte sei: In Lumpen jene, diese jedoch im seidnen Rock; Die abgemagert, hungerbleich, ein Schattenbild, Verbannt zu Bettlern, selber eine Bettlerin; Höchst stattlich diese, wohlgenährt, anmuthiglich, In hoher Herren ehrender Festgenossenschaft, Ja selbst gesegneten Leibes ist, wie Ihr seht."[2]

To this comparison between her rival's magnificence and her own poverty the stranger answers with dignity:

"Wohl spotte mein! In meine Wunde lege du Die blutbefleckten, diebsgewandten Finger mir! Auf meine Lumpen speie du, und rühme dich Weil ich ein armes, heimathlos vertriebnes Weib; Du weisst am besten, wessen Hand mein Blut vergoss, Und wer vom Haupt die Krone mir gerissen hat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ihr bautest du Paläste, mir Gefängnisse. Ihr schmeichelten deine Schergen, mich verfolgten sie— Dir aber sag ich, Schattenkönigin, o du, Die du mit Zittern meines Namens dich erfrechst: Hinweg! verbirg dich! Räume du den Platz, der mir Allein gebührt! Denn eure Herrscherin bin ich."[3]

And the serfs bend low in homage to the woman who comes, not in regal purple, but in rags like their own, saying to each other: "May not this be the long-looked-for redresser of our wrongs, she who is to break our yoke asunder and awaken the sleeping world with the lightning flash of liberty?"

But now the two women are called upon to prove their respective claims. Schlaukopf exclaims: "It is the legitimist principle we are called on to defend!" and proceeds to prompt official Germania. That fat, fair lady, who boasts that she bears the future of Germany in her womb and claims in consequence to be treated with consideration and reverence, repeats a long rigmarole, supposed to be the story of her life: In the gray of eld she lay on bear-skins in the forest, drinking foaming mead and eating beech-nuts and acorns. "Beech-nuts and acorns!" cry the Doctor, Kilian, and Schlaukopf. "It is she." Then she tells how she was sent to school to the priests, had her nose flattened against the crucifix, became christlich-germanisch, endowed monasteries, built churches, kissed the Pope's toe, &c., &c., and once more the Doctor, Kilian, and Schlaukopf cry: "It is she!" She tells what a peaceable, governable disposition she developed, how she allowed any one that liked to box her ears, how her loyalty has now reached such a pitch that if her master but whistle, she comes, stands on her hind legs, fetches the stick—"In a word, I am a well-trained poodle." And again we hear the jubilant chorus: "It is she!" She concludes: "God and the king willing, I shall be in the future what I have been in the past. By government order I am now, as you see, with child. O gendarmes, take my part! Recognise me as the one, true, Germania, as the thoroughbred German, and be assured that in return I will bring up my son as a gendarme!"

The gendarmes are of opinion that she has made out a good case, and Schlaukopf is beginning to boast that the vagrant has been silenced, when she in turn lifts up her voice. She does not understand the art of self-praise, she says, nor has she much to praise herself for; the future will show what she is. "I cannot deny," she continues, "that she who stands there is a Germania; she is official Germany, the Germany of the Government, of the Federal Diet; but the Germany of the German people she is not; they do not know her, they do not care a straw for her rotten genealogical tree. If you would know which is the true Germania, ask these fettered serfs!" At this moment the other Germania is seized with violent pains. She suddenly explodes with a loud report and disappears in a cloud of smoke, which, as it gradually disperses, takes the shape of pilgrim monks, of romantic poets who sing the praises of the holy Middle Ages, of geese who lament that the Order of the Swan is not yet instituted, of moderate Liberals singing the chorus:

"Immer langsam voran, immer langsam voran! Dass der preussische Fortschritt nachkommen kann!"[4]

Then the serfs break their chains, cast themselves on the ground before the poor stranger, and do homage to her as the true Germania, who is still a virgin, but who one day will give birth to the ruler of the future....

The emblematical picture is a very fine, powerful one, and moreover it is true. The German Empire of to-day is not the offspring of the oppressed, divided Germany that was then extolled as pregnant with future greatness; it is the outcome of the much-despised, the harshly suppressed endeavours after liberty and unity. It is a mistake, however, to have represented the true Germania with no past, with all her power and glory in the future; though such a break of historical continuity did not in those days seem the impossibility that it does in ours.

One of the truths proclaimed by this Radical polemical poem admits of no controversion, namely, that the official fatherland, the official country, everywhere lays claim to all that the genius of the people in times past has produced, to all their great men, even those whose lives were one constant rebellion against it. It banished, imprisoned, executed them—no matter; now it wears their portraits next its heart. And the official fatherland claims, and always has claimed, to bear the future in its womb. It not only maintains that the present existence of all and of everything is inseparably bound up with its existence, but that it is pregnant with the new age and is consequently entitled to receive the respectful care that is the due of a pregnant queen. For the thinking men of any people there is, besides this fatherland, another, one that is not recognised, that is often disowned. It does not deck itself with the national colours; for it the national song is not sung. It exists wherever people feel and act in the spirit that has been the spirit of the best of the country's sons. It has the allegiance of all the thinking youth. Those of low degree have more part and lot in it than those in place and power. To it alone the future belongs.

XXVIII

REVOLUTIONARY POETRY

There were real poets, aspiring spirits, who did not follow the general trend of literature at this period. There were men like Eduard Mörike (born in 1804), the last scion of the Swabian School, who broke the bounds of its narrow tradition, and in his lyric verse may rather be regarded as an offshoot of the Goethe stem—a genuinely gifted poet, the idyllic, arch, melancholy singer of the inner life, author of the immortal poem, Denk es, O Seele! And there were men like Otto Ludwig, the Thuringian, and Friedrich Hebbel, the Ditmarschian, the two most robust originals in modern German literature, who were both born in 1813, and both developed their very dissimilar peculiarities after 1848—two gnarled, leafy oaks standing without the forest's bounds. The only mark of the period in which they were youths is the peculiar defiant gloom which lies deep down in both natures. Specially their own is a kind of melancholy keen-sightedness, inclining towards bold realism. They are the heralds of the realism of a later, unpolitical age. But they have not the characteristic common to all the political poets of their own age—sunny enthusiasm, a natural bias towards public life, towards the radical reform, or, if necessary, the complete revolution of society.

This bias, in combination with the philosophic lucidity due to the influence of Hegel and Feuerbach, is perhaps most remarkably observable in an author whose writings are, undeservedly, beginning to be somewhat neglected nowadays, an author who, dying at the early age of thirty-one, did not live to see the Revolution of March. This is Friedrich von Sallet, a young German officer of extraordinary strength of character, whose solid, comprehensive culture was due to his own unaided efforts. In him the profound thought of his age is united with its extreme, passionate Liberalism. After his dismissal from the army in 1831, he devoted himself entirely to literature.

His best known work is his Laien-Evangelium, a kind of devotional book for free-thinkers, a series of poems in which he gives a symbolical modern interpretation to the various events of the Gospels. He begins each poem with some story or lesson from the Bible, and then proceeds to show the living, eternal kernel in it, and to cast away the historical or mythical husks. The interpretations are at times rather far-fetched, and the employment of but one metre throughout the whole book undeniably tends to monotony. In its general conception the work reminds us of another, older book, Leopold Schefer's Laien-Brevier; but the contrast is great between Schefer's comfortable satisfaction with the divine government of the universe, and Sallet's impatient inclination to interfere with the natural course of events. We are also slightly reminded of Rückert's Weisheit der Bramanen; but Sallet's wisdom is a wrathful wisdom, no peaceful collection of golden rules of life like Rückert's, but fiery denunciation of deceit and stupidity. In his introductory poem Sallet compares those who had written Oriental poetry before him to the Kings of the East, who offered gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Light of the world, and then fell back again into their Oriental dream-life. Now, he says, light is once more dawning, thought is once more rousing from their slumber both East and West. In his eager advocacy of his ideals, he is too indifferent to colouring, too Western; his book is spoiled by its too modern, directly didactic tone.

The collection of poems known as Gedichte is a much finer one. Here again the political poems are the most important.

He describes a sleeping giant, on whose head and breast foolish dwarfs are disporting themselves. They sit on chairs in his open mouth and pay compliments to each other; spread their tables and dine upon his stomach; declare that it is his duty to sleep—if he does not, they will punish him with pin-pricks. They believe that God has created the great giant solely that they may disport themselves merrily on the top of him, the truth being that if he were to awake and rise there would be an end of them. The poet himself is tickling the giant's nose with his paper in hopes that he will perhaps sneeze; that alone would play the deuce with them. He cries: "Awake and see how they are daring to behave; it will be an easy matter for you to drive them away." And he concludes: "I know perfectly well what the giant's name is, but I have my reasons for not divulging it."

In another poem, Ecce Homo, instead of appealing to the people as a people, he appeals to man as man: "There stands the old, grey cathedral, and there the old, fortified royal castle, looking down on wandering humanity passing beneath them, one generation after another. Song is heard from the one, fealty is sworn in the other, from century to century; we seem, in comparison with them, but insects of a day. And therefore fools preach veneration for these houses of cards. For what are they but card-castles, built for himself by man in his childhood! He built them, and he can knock them down, and build others in their stead. Heaven and earth are but soft clay, which man can mould as he inclines."

At times Sallet writes in a lighter, more playful tone: "What is the name of the old man to whom people everywhere, but these good Germans in particular, are devoted, though he has never done anything worth doing? He stands in the pulpit, he drills the soldiers, he administers justice, he lectures at the universities, and his voice carries weight in the councils of the State. Taking a hundred steps to do what could be done with one jump is called in his language 'the good old ways and customs'; this is what he approves of, but if you produce anything original and great, his wrath is aroused and he scolds and storms till men begin to be afraid of you. He is wanting both in brains and backbone, the old gentleman, and yet he rules almost absolutely, and to oppose him successfully one would need to be as strong as a lion. There is no reason for concealing his name; it is Old Routine."

Among the Gedichte are also clever parodies, such as the one in which the poet attacks the censor, by whom he was perpetually worried:

"Kennst Du das Land, wo Knut und Kantschu blühn, Den Steiss von Zarenliebe machend glühn, Wo man das Zeitungsblatt schwarz überstreicht, Dass preussisch' Landtagsgift in's Volk nicht schleicht, Kennst du es wohl? Dahin, dahin, Möcht' ich mit dir, geliebter Censor, fliehn."

He is even more wroth with the cowardly prophet than with the censor: "Ever so slight a blow with your hand," he says, "and the mummy falls to pieces, once it has been brought up from the airless subterranean halls to the light of day; it will stand intact so long as no hand is raised against it." He is furious with those who declare that things will happen of themselves, that historical evolution, &c., will bring them about. Nothing irritates him so much as to hear people say: "A change must come; things cannot go on as they are doing." "Since the beginning of the world," he says, "nothing has ever happened of itself."

He could not, on account of the censorship, attack monarchy directly, but he gives us, in excellent verse, the parable of the bear. Much in the same manner as wolves are kept in the Capitol in Rome, the bear is kept in Berne as the emblem of the city. On this practice Sallet founds his fable: "The people of the Canton of Berne in days of old kept a bear. They let him live on the fat of the land, but they took good care to keep his claws cut in case he should take it into his head to tear them to pieces. When asked to explain what good the bear did them, they answered with surprise: 'Explain! Why, what should he do! He eats his fill, he moves about majestically, he growls—he is our bear, and that is enough.' If questioned as to why they kept him, they gave answer: 'Because our fathers did. If the race were to die out, all would be over with us.' If any one ventured once again to ask why, they only shouted; 'Hold your tongue, or we'll beat out your brains.'

"One day loud cries were heard throughout the town; the citizens thronged together—the bear lay dead. He had died suddenly; they had no new bear ready to take his place, and everywhere the dolorous cry resounded: 'It is all over with the Canton of Berne! Up and away, brave hunters! Get us a new bear!

In vain the hunters explore the mountains and the ravines; they cannot find a bear. But in spite of this, wonderful to relate, corn and grapes ripen, fruit grows on the trees—it seems as if nature were utterly indifferent to the woe of Berne. The sun, though it saw the bear lie dead, still rises every morning—the world still stands. What can be the meaning of it?"

Witty as the fable is, it will hardly convince any supporter of monarchy of the uselessness of that institution. Sallet only attacks the foolish worship of the supposedly indispensable symbol, without making any attempt to dispute the most frequently employed argument in favour of monarchy, namely, the benefit which results from the withdrawal of the highest of all positions from competition. He puts his whole soul into another poem, Aut—Aut, a poem which became a sort of watchword for the youth of the day. Its most characteristic verses are:

"Die ihr den grossen Kampf der Zeit Ausfechten wollt, herbei ihr Ritter! Sprecht, welcher Sach' ihr euch geweiht, Sprecht frei durchs offne Helmgegitter! Entweder—oder! Für Fürstenmacht, für Volkesrecht? Für Geisteslicht, für Pfaffendunkel? Republikaner oder Knecht? Ja oder nein! nur kein Gemunkel! Entweder—oder!"[1]

And the poem concludes with an allusion to the time now fast approaching when the last on one side or the other with cloven skull will bite the dust.

Sallet did not live to take part in the great, decisive encounter for which he so ardently longed. He died in 1843. Not long after his death the storm-clouds begin to thicken and the birds to fly low. We are approaching 1848.

Literature follows in Sallet's path. From all parts of Germany comes the cry: "Let deeds follow upon words!" We hear it not only from the poets of North Germany, the Rhineland, and Switzerland; three poets of far-off Austria, Karl Beck, Alfred Meissner, Moritz Hartmann join in the chorus.

Karl Beck, the son of a Hungarian and a Hungarian Jewess, born at Baja in 1817, first studied medicine in Vienna, but gave that up, devoted himself to literature under the auspices of Gustav Kühne, and produced a succession of poetical works which attracted attention by their faithful and vivid delineation of Hungarian scenery and Hungarian national character. As regards this aspect of his work, Beck may be classed with the Hungarian national poet, Petöfi, a man five years his junior; but as the poet of liberty, he must be regarded as a disciple of Börne—the only one who was of any importance as a poet. Like Börne he is the champion of the Jewish race, of the proletariat, and of political liberty. In his writing we have the Old Testament style and pathos combined with the influence of the newest French and German oppositionist literature. In Austrian poetry Anastasius Grün and Lenau are his immediate predecessors. He had not the culture of a Prutz, but his writing is distinguished by fervid colouring, emotional glow, graphic power, and wrathful enthusiasm. He was, however, one of those who, hailing the outbreak of the Revolution with joy, changed the key-note of their song after the victory of the reaction. After the magnificent revolt of Hungary had been crushed, he addressed a poem to the Emperor of Austria in which he flatters the victor, and entreats him to have mercy on the captive heroes. This poem enraged his old companions in arms. They called to mind that he who was now playing the part of a loyal subject of the Emperor of Austria had, before the collapse, been a republican and a socialist.[2]

Alfred Meissner (born at Teplitz in 1822) and Moritz Hartmann (born at Duschnitz in 1821), Bohemia's two best lyric poets, are both inspired by the most ardent desire for political liberty.

It is unfair to allow the unpleasant ending to Meissner's literary career to blind us to his unquestionably genuine poetical talent. It is both pitiable and monstrous that one of Germany's best lyric poets should, after an honourable youth, have descended so low as to buy the manuscripts of an inferior novel-writer and publish them under his own name, but it does not detract from his worth as author of the fine poems which undoubtedly are his own. As specimens of a revolutionary eloquence which was, and with reason, irresistible to the youth of the Forties, read his glowing lines to the memory of Byron and George Sand.

Moritz Hartmann, Meissner's countryman and contemporary, is a figure cast in different metal; there is no flaw in him; he is a hero as well as an unusually gifted poet. No other German poet has loved liberty so faithfully and passionately from his earliest youth to the day of his death, or risked his life for it so daringly and so often.

Hartmann, who was one of the handsomest men it is possible to imagine, was born of Jewish parents in the little town of Duschnitz. The family was of Spanish origin, the name Hartmann being a translation of Duros. Moritz was sent to school in Prague, where, as a boy, he witnessed the banished King Charles the Tenth's melancholy entrance into the town. At the early age of thirteen he emancipated himself from the religious faith of his family, and while still a mere child was deeply affected by the news of the discomfiture of the Polish revolutionists. As a student he became acquainted with Lenau, to whom he devoted himself with the enthusiasm of a boy and a disciple. From his childhood he spoke both Czech and German, and his first book of poems, Kelch und Schwert ("Chalice and Sword"), contains abundant indication of his love for the Czech language, which he ranks with Polish, and extols as superior to Russian. But when it comes to the question of Czech political sympathy with Russia and hatred of everything German, he is entirely the German.

In Kelch und Schwert (1845) the Bohemian predominates. The little introductory poem tells us as much:

"Der ich komm' aus dem Hussitenlande, Glaube, dass ich Gottes Blut genossen, Liebe fühl' ich in mein Herz gegossen, Lieb' ist Gottes Blut—mein Herz sein Kelch. Der ich komm' aus dem Hussitenlande, Glaube an die fleischgewordnen Worte, Dass Gedanken werden zur Kohorte Und jedwedes Lied ein heilig Schwert?[3]

A native of that country from which the emancipating doctrines of Huss have been banished, he feels himself a Hussite, and interprets the old Hussite war-cry, the right of the laity to receive the chalice in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in a modern spirit, almost the spirit of Feuerbach. In a poem on the German "songs of liberty" he tells the lyric poets of Germany that song is not the hammer that will shatter a prince's heart; also that liberty is a woman, and not to be won by words alone. He feels for the Poles as if he were himself a Pole. We are made aware that he loves a Polish lady, and that through his love to her he has become in his heart her countryman. The poem, To C——a, is one of the most beautiful that sympathy with Poland has produced. Hartmann can at times be prolix and commonplace, but much more frequently he is concise and dramatic. Some of his scenes impress themselves indelibly on the reader's mind. Read, for instance, Die Drei, the poem of the three exiles who meet in a lonely inn on the plains of Hungary. They are sitting silent over their wine in the stillness of night, when some one suddenly raises his glass and cries: "Our country!" Of the three, one is a gipsy, one a Jew, and one a Pole. They have no country; they look at their glasses and sit silent as before.

Even more impassioned than his pity for Poland is his pity for Bohemia, "the poor stag that is bleeding to death in the depths of a forest." Nothing is left to the Bohemians but their music, that sweet music which awakes compassion for them everywhere, which sings and sobs and melts men's hearts with its mysterious melodies.

We may say of this first book of poems what the poet himself has said of the following: "Not a song in it but has been kissed on the brow by liberty, the most beautiful and noble of all muses." He already gives frank expression to his hatred of Metternich's Austria, that Austria which in 1848, in his Reimchronik des Pfaffen Mauritius, he was to call the Bastille of the nations, within whose walls the silence of death is only broken by the clank of fetters.

The sensation created by Kelch und Schwert meant exile for Hartmann. He had, in the first instance, transgressed the laws of Austria by publishing in a foreign town a work which had not been submitted to Austrian censorship. He knew that if he were to return from Leipzig, where he had been living for some time, in intercourse with Kühne and Laube, he was liable to be arrested on the frontier. But he could not resist the desire to see his mother again, and succeeded in making his way secretly to his native town. It was not possible to conceal his presence there; a traitor betrayed him, and he was obliged, before many days had passed, to make his escape by a back-door while the police were forcing their way into the house. In his Zeitlosen there is a set of poems entitled Heimkehr und Flucht, in which he describes this youthful escapade, and thus proudly delineates his own character:

"Und als der Verrath mich ausgewittert Und als die Häscher herangekommen, Da hat die bleiche Mutter gezittert, Der Schwester Aug' in Thänen geschwommen. Ich aber sprach: Die Thränen verwischet, Wir müssen scheiden und von einander, Und da mich rings die Gefahr umzischet, In Flammen werd' ich zum Salamander. Ich bin geboren, ich, für Gefahren, Sie lauern immer auf meinem Gange Wie Wegelagrer in dunklen Schaaren; Doch kenn' ich nimmer die Furcht, die bange. Ich bin zu Gefahren bestimmt und geboren, Sie lieben mich, wie Löwen den Meister. Ich hab' sie alle heraufbeschworen, Sie dienen mir, wie dem Zaubrer die Geister."[4]

On account of the prologue which he spoke at the Schiller Festival at Leipzig on the 11th of November 1847, a festival which was in reality a demonstration in favour of the liberty of the press, Hartmann was accused of high treason and of offering affront to the Emperor of Austria. In 1848, as soon as the revolution broke out, he hastened to Prague. He and two friends, of whom Alfred Meissner was one, were sent as a deputation to Vienna. He has given an exquisitely humorous account of their audience with Archduke Franz Karl, who received them because his brother, the Emperor, was ill, and who was perfectly unable to understand what they wanted.[5] When the rabble, during the disturbances in Prague, attempted to storm the Jewish quarter and slaughter its inhabitants, it was Hartmann who rushed to the university, persuaded a body of armed students to accompany him, and with their assistance defended the quarter against the maddened crowd until the grenadiers arrived.[6]

In the Parliament of Frankfort Hartmann voted with the extreme Left; his aim was the unity of Germany as a republic. He spoke seldom, but attracted much attention; he was known as the handsomest man in the Parliament. Kinkel describes him at this time as a handsome, amiable man, with firm convictions; "the Southern imagination of the Austrian gave him fluency of speech, his German training had given him solidity; with Jewish cosmopolitanism he combined a steadfast patriotism which not unfrequently found utterance in proud words." At first he took part enthusiastically in the proceedings of the Parliament. Afterwards, when these became both tedious and barren, and the assembly showed its incapability of laying any great and lasting new foundation, his disappointment found vent in the witty, impressive Reimchronik, a work written in the metre of Hans Sachs. Hartmann, however, was not only a man of words, but a man of deeds. In the engagement in the streets of Frankfort on the 18th of September, he exposed himself a hundred times to the bullets of both parties in his endeavours to arrange a truce. After the revolution had broken out in Vienna, he and Froebel went there as deputies from Frankfort to the provisional government to express the sympathies of the national assembly, and Hartmann entered the army of the revolution as a common soldier. When Vienna was defending itself desperately against the Croats, he one day, with apparently certain death before him, joined a party that were determined to march through a severe fire to gain possession of a mill, and was made officer and leader when the original leader fell. After the fall of Vienna he escaped, thanks to the protection of a lady of high position, who procured him a falsified passport. He returned to his duties in the Parliament of Frankfort, and, when it broke up, went with the protesting party to Stuttgart. There this last remnant of the Parliament was dispersed by force of arms.

All Hartmann's work, including the youthful poetry written before 1848, bears the mark of his resolute character. In the volume, Neuere Gedichte, published in 1847, which as a whole is unpolitical, we find in the division Ost und West wild omens of the coming European storm—for example, the irate poem to the King of Prussia, in which Hartmann, deprecating Platen's and Herwegh's respectful attitude, cries shame upon him for delivering up the Poles to the Russian knout, and that other very touching poem, Hüter, ist die Nacht bald hin? ("Watchman, is the Night nigh past?"), which is one long sigh of impatient desire for the dawning of the new era.

And now that Bohemia and Hungary, Franconia and North Germany, were lifting up their voices in one great chorus—the voices of thinkers and of poets blending in unison—the youth of the country, as soon as they awakened to intellectual life, were impelled to join that chorus; from the boy on the school-bench to the oldest student, their minds were re-attuned, attuned to the key of revolution. Now they suddenly began not only to imbibe a revolutionary spirit from the works of the revolutionary writers of the day, but to read one into the writings of approved neutral and conservative authors long since dead. At a given moment it became their persuasion that all literature called to arms, even that old classic literature which was living its immortal life in handsome bindings on the bookshelves. A certain frame of mind is the result of our reading of all books.

What had he been, that Schiller whose writings had been put into their hands when they were children? What but a revolutionary, the motto of whose first book was the famous saying that what medicines cannot cure, cold steel cures, and what cold steel cannot cure, fire cures. Did the spirit of his works in any single point harmonise with the royal Prussian or the Austrian imperial spirit? What had Goethe's youthful attitude been but one of Titanic defiance? Did not even the work of his old age, the second part of Faust, end with the wish that he could see a free people on free soil? He had loathed the Berlin of Frederick II., would not his detestation of the Berlin of Frederick William IV. be greater still? From the writings of Hegel, who had begun life as a revolutionary and ended it as an ultra-conservative, they drew all the conclusions which he himself had left undrawn. Feuerbach had declared that he would have nothing to do with politics, nevertheless they transposed his philosophic decapitation of the historical state into the region of practical politics.

Yes, the clouds were gathering. In place of the swallows, the heraldic eagles of Prussia and Austria were flying low. The monarchs attempted in vain to exorcise the tempest. Frederick William IV. convened a general Landtag (Parliament) in April 1847. With his convictions he could not do otherwise than open it with a speech in which, in spite of all concessions, real and apparent, he made it clear that he was not prepared to take the decisive step which his people demanded of him.

"No power on earth," he cried, "will make me consent to the exchange of the natural relation between a king and his people for a conventional, constitutional relation; never with my will shall a written paper interfere between Almighty God and this country, rule us with its paragraphs, and supercede ancient, sacred loyalty."[7]

The time had come. The assembly demanded annual Parliaments and complete fulfilment of the promises made in 1815 and 1829. Jacoby, Heinrich Simon, Gervinus, and others criticised the king's proposals and rejected them.

Then the storm broke—first in Switzerland, where in November 1847 the Liberal cantons armed and suppressed the Jesuitical Sonderbund (league of the Catholic cantons), then with overpowering force in Paris, then in all the German and many of the other European capitals. As thunder in a mountainous country echoes from hill to hill, so the thunder of the revolution echoed from one European country to another in the mad and holy year, 1848.

XXIX

THE REVOLUTION

"Im Hochland fiel der erste Schuss— Im Hochland wider die Pfaffen! Da kam, die fallen wird und muss, Ja, die Lawine kam in Schuss— Drei Länder in den Waffen! Schon kann die Schweiz von Siegen ruhn: Das Urgebirg und die Nagelfluhn Zittern vor Lust bis zum Kerne! Drauf ging der Tanz in Welschland los— Die Scyllen und Charybden, Vesuv und Aetna brachen los: Ausbruch auf Ausbruch, Stoss auf Stoss! —'Sehr bedenklich, Euer Liebden!' Also schallt's von Berlin nach Wien Und von Wien zurück nach Berlin— Sogar dem Nickel graut es! (Nickel, i.e. Czar Nicholas.) Und nun ist denn auch abermals Das Pflaster aufgerissen, Auf dem die Freiheit, nackten Stahls Aus der lumpigen Pracht des Königssaals Zwei Könige schon geschmissen."[1]

Thus sang Freiligrath in February 1848, a few days after the revolution in Paris. A long shudder, of pain and at the same time of relief, passed through the whole of Germany. It was as if a window had been opened, and air had reached the lungs of Europe. Example, the one power that can do miracles, was forcing the German people to action. They were also impelled by the fear that absolutism would now venture its last move, would declare Germany to be endangered by the revolution in France, and compel the people of Prussia and Austria to take up arms against the French republic.

In Austria intolerance had gone as far as it could go. In 1846 Metternich's government had actually placed the Herzensergüsse of the Emperor Joseph II., collected and published by a banished patriot, on the list of contraband books. And now the disturbances in the Austro-Italian provinces, which were endangering the credit of the state and the industries of the country, brought dissatisfaction with Metternichs rule to a climax. The decisive defeat he had met with in Switzerland, namely, the collapse of that Jesuitical "Sonderbund" which with all his might he had supported against the Radicals, had given the last blow to men's faith in his invincibility. In one of the provinces of Prussia, Silesia, bureaucratic misgovernment had just produced terrible consequences. Typhus, the result of starvation, had raged for months among the miserably poor industrial population before those in power had made any attempt to remedy the state of matters. Hundreds of dead and dying lay by the roadsides. In the cold of January, poor, solitary wretches starved in their hovels, and naked children pined to death beside the corpses of their parents; no one came to their aid, for the ignorant local authorities had, in order to prevent the spread of infection, made it a punishable offence to enter any infected house. All this time the government officials only appeared to collect the taxes, which they did with harsh regardlessness of circumstances; and when the Governor was attacked because no remedial measures had been taken from August 1847 to the end of January 1848, he answered that no formal appeal for assistance had been made.

In such circumstances the political leaders of the middle classes found it an easy matter to rouse their own class to action, and the working classes, hoping to improve their position, and exasperated by arbitrary police regulations, everywhere followed in the footsteps of the middle classes.

It is difficult for the present generation to enter into the feelings of the men of 1848. The frame of mind which prevailed in Denmark at that time cannot be regarded as typical. There, as elsewhere, it undoubtedly was the instinct of national self-preservation and pride that asserted itself. But whereas the other countries rose in revolt against hereditary rule and coercion, in Denmark a revolt was suppressed by the power of the hereditary monarchy and of insulted national feeling. There was no thought of revolution in the minds of the Danes; it was for old rights they fought, not for new ideas.

Everywhere else in Europe the oppressed peoples revolted. It was long since anything but evil had fallen to their lot, since they had witnessed the triumph of anything but wrong, use-and-wont, and falsehood. Actual and detestable had with them come to be almost synonymous terms. But they had a faith that could remove mountains and a hope that could shake the earth. Liberty, Parliament, national unity, liberty of the press, republic, were to them magic words, at the very sound of which their hearts leaped like the heart of a youth who suddenly sees his beloved.

The aspiring spirits of the generation of to-day do not feel thus. They know that stupidity is a ferocious animal, and the hardest of all to kill—that cowardice, the agile slave that stands at the beck of power, is as strong as courage itself when there is any question of defending ancient privilege—that what is known by the name of progress is a feeble snail. The simpleton in the fable bought a raven that he might see for himself if it was true that ravens live for two hundred years. The friends of progress in our days know beforehand that all the raven-black lies and raven-trickeries of all the privilege-rookeries, great and small, will outlive them—for how many hundred years they cannot tell. At a rare time they have seen good victorious, but never have they heard it acknowledged that it is their good which has triumphed. They have always seen truth first abused, then if possible killed—if that proved impossible, maimed and recognised. Therefore they have little hope. Many of them, indeed, have killed hope in their own breasts, as we kill a nerve that gives us too much pain. They have been disappointed too often.

The men of 1848 had never relinquished their hope in the future. They had been oppressed, and they had suffered so long that they had grown accustomed to see brute force and hypocrisy triumphant, accustomed to live in a sort of spiritual twilight. But they believed in the coming day. And now, suddenly, they saw it. First a gleam, then a ray, then a flame, then the whole horizon, as far as the eye could reach, a sea of light. For the first time they heard loud, ringing voices proclaim liberty to be the right of the people, without a voice raised in opposition; and for the first time, with wondering eyes, they saw power, that hitherto immovable mass, the giant bearer of oppression and falsehood, begin to stir like some gigantic elephant, writhe and turn and shake itself, throw off its riders, and move ponderously in the direction of the high-spirited, ardent friends of liberty, the men of the new day, who stood ready to fling themselves on its back and force it to trample down all the ancient abuses.

For the younger men especially it was a moment without compare, a sight that intoxicated them, that drove them wild. They shouted, they sang, they rejoiced, and in their wild exultation they felt it a necessity to act, to risk all, to give their lives if need be—anything, everything, except be behindhand in greeting and ushering in the dawning day of liberty.

True it is that democratic illusions held high revelry; true it is that there prevailed a touchingly naïve belief in the infallibility of popular instincts; and true it is that the ability of theorists to settle practical difficulties was greatly overestimated. But the first impulse was irresistible, the original instinct was correct. Those who really possessed capacity became leaders, took the command without any fuss or parade, and were obeyed, not because of their outward authority, but because their real superiority was felt by all.

The score of students who commanded on the barricades in Berlin may be given as an instance. Many a so-called very ordinary man for a few days of his life showed himself to be a hero. During the first months some of the finest qualities of humanity displayed themselves and shone with astonishing lustre.

It was in Austria that the revolutionary movement began, immediately after the arrival of the news of the Revolution of February in Paris. A speech made by Kossuth in the Hungarian Parliament on the 3rd of March, demanding constitutional government for all the provinces of the Empire, inaugurated the revolution both in Buda-Pesth and Vienna. On the 11th of March a similar demand was made by the Czechs in Prague, and before this, on the 6th of March, the Austrian Industrial Union had presented a petition to Archduke Franz Karl, the presumptive heir to the throne, requesting Metternich's dismissal, and also demanding liberty of the press, the right of voting supplies, of taking part in legislation, &c.

On this followed what has been called the petition storm. Every day, every hour new petitions to the Emperor poured in. On the 12th of March the students held a great meeting at the University, the result of which was also a petition to the Emperor, demanding liberty of the press, religious liberty, and liberty of instruction. The Emperor received the deputation the following day, but gave an undecided answer. In these unforeseen circumstances the 13th of March, the opening day of the Lower Austrian Convention of the Estates, arrived and found the Government unprepared. The populace crowded into the enclosure of the assembly hall, where Kossuth's speech was read aloud amidst excited rejoicings and shouts of "Hurrah for the constitution!" A party forced their way into the hall and began to smash the furniture and throw it out on to the heads of the soldiers; even Archduke Albrecht, who was in command, was struck by a block of wood. Then the order was given to fire, and the first Revolution of Vienna broke out. The Italian troops fired, but the Austrians unscrewed their bayonets amidst the joyful shouts of the crowd. At the Castle the gunners, instead of shooting, placed themselves in front of their guns—as we read in one of the poems of the day, Rick's Das Lied vom braven Kanonier:

"Vor der Burg in glühender Front, Des blutgen Befehls gewärtig, Vor der Burg in glühender Front, Da stehn die Kanonen fertig. Schon zittern die Thore, sie brechen schier, Jetzt gilt's, du braver Kanonier! Und du trittst vor die Mündung hin, Als wolltest du fesseln den Würger— Und du rufst mit begeistertem Sinn: Erst mich! dann den wehrlosen Bürger!— Dann schweigt das Commando, beschämt vor dir. Hab Dank, du braver Kanonier!"[2]

Towards evening it became clear to Metternich that no concessions would now avail. He who for forty years had led the policy of Austria hurriedly gave in his resignation and made his escape in disguise in the imperial laundry cart. At nine o'clock the same evening the troops were withdrawn from Vienna (exactly a week before the same thing happened in Berlin), and citizens and students mounted guard everywhere. The arsenal was opened, and in one day arms were served out to 25,000 men.

There was some severe fighting in the outskirts of the town. So fiercely resolute were the populace that, all unarmed, they pressed in upon and disarmed two companies of grenadiers who were defending the entrance to Metternichs villa. Those who resisted were trampled under foot.

That same evening the abolition of the censorship and liberty of the press were publicly announced. The intimation produced a feeling of intense relief—it was as if a gag had been removed from the mouth of the nation.

The newspapers, as a matter of course, instantaneously began to give expression to the popular political ideas. It had hitherto been impossible to treat even in poetic form any subject with a social or political tendency; Austria had resembled a forest where the voices of the birds were silent. Now suddenly pipe and call, whistle and song, were heard from every bush and tree, a mighty and confused chorus.[3]

Poems of liberty were published in all the languages of Austria—German and Czech, Slavonian and Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, and Italian. So eager were men to make use of their new liberty that a whole bevy of poems, superscribed Erstes censurfreies Gedicht ("First poem printed after the abolition of the censure"), appeared simultaneously.

The one generally accepted as the first is Frankl's Die Universität. During the night between the 14th and 15th of March, one of the professors, fearing an outbreak of the prisoners, requested the armed students to despatch a guard to one of the prisons. Twenty students were at once sent, under the command of Ludwig August Frankl. Whilst he stood on guard that young man gave expression to the feelings of the day in the song:

"Was kommt heran mit kühnem Gange? Die Waffe blinkt, die Fahne weht, Es naht mit hellem Trommelklange Die Universität. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Das freie Wort, das sie gefangen, Seit Joseph arg verhöhnt, verschmäht, Vorkämpfend sprengte seine Spangen Die Universität."

In 1890, on his eightieth birthday, Frankl published a large volume of able poetry; during his long life he has been an unusually productive poet and writer of biography; he has been presented with the freedom of Vienna and of three other European and Asiatic towns; but this song, of which in course of time at least a hundred thousand copies were printed, was what founded his reputation.

It was not, however, really the first poem printed after the abolition of the censorship, for on the previous night Castelli had written his song of the Garde-National. In the German language alone there are three or four poems which lay claim to the same distinction. One of these is the song of the Vienna student brigade, Erwacht, erwacht o Brüder! Ein grosser Morgen tagt ("Awake, awake, O brothers! a great morning is dawning"), and another is Fr. Gerhard's Die freie Presse, which begins:

"Die Presse frei! Die Glocken lasst ertönen Und läutet Jubel überall! Und ruft's hinaus zu Deutschlands fernsten Söhnen Die Presse frei, erstürmt der Freiheit Wall![4]

Simultaneously with these poems, which express such an innocent, exuberant delight at being able to speak and write without restraint, there appeared others full of the most childish gratitude to the weak-minded Emperor. In them he is "the good Emperor," "our good Ferdinand," &c., &c. People were ready to forget immediately that every single concession had been, not granted, but forcibly extorted, or else they believed naïvely that this was the way to make their late oppressors forget it. In one of the many songs in praise of the Emperor we read:

"Heil dir, mein Kaiser! in all der Lust Zu der sich dein Volk ermannt hat, Sei Dir vor Allen ein Heil gebracht, Den es immer als edel erkannt hat."[5]

On the 16th of March the Hungarian deputation, 150 magnates with Kossuth at their head, rode into Vienna, through the Prater, welcomed with deafening cheers and showers of flowers. That day the number of armed citizens had risen to 60,000. In the afternoon a herald appeared on the balcony of the Castle and read the following proclamation: "We, Ferdinand the First, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and Bohemia, of Lombardy and Venice, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Illyria, &c., have now, in agreement with the wishes of our faithful people, decided to take certain steps." On this introduction follows the announcement of the liberty of the press, the formation of the National Guard, and the convention of an assembly of deputies for the purpose of drafting "that constitution which we have determined to bestow on our country."

Saphir sang:

"Schwert aus der Scheid, aus dem Herzen das Lied! Stimmt an das Lied der Lieder! Jauchzend ertön' es durch Reihe und Glied, Jauchzend durch jubelnde Brüder! Blank wie die Waffe und hell wie der Stahl Klinge das Lied von der Garde-National."[6]

Even the mocking-birds, we see, on this occasion ceased from mocking and found voice to join in the universal chorus. In the persistent employment of the French word, Garde Nationale, we have an example of the importation and imitation which so largely characterised the movement.

In turning over the pages of a collection of the German political poems, several thousand in number, which were published in 1848 in Vienna alone, we come upon many unknown names, but also upon almost all that were well known at that time and on many that were destined to become famous. We are struck by a poem of Bauernfeld's, Wien an die Provinzen, weak from a literary point of view, but significant from its indication of the first sign of reaction, namely, an attempt made in the provinces to shake off what was called the tyranny of the capital; in other words, to counteract the influence of the example set by victorious, free Vienna. Friedrich Uhl, at a later period editor of the Wiener Abendpost, the official organ of the Government, writes a lament for the fallen revolutionary heroes:

"Das schwarze Band, den schwarzen Flor Lasst in den Lüften wallen, Den Todten singt ein Klagelied, Die für die Freiheit gefallen."[7]

There are poems to Lenau, the most popular of living Austrian poets, bewailing that the singer of liberty is now insane and silent, his ears deaf to the victors' joyful shouts. Richard Wagner, as yet unknown to fame, sends a "Greeting from Saxony to Vienna":

"Ihr habt der Freiheit Art erkannt; Nicht halb wird sie gewonnen; Ist uns ihr kleinstes Glied entwandt, Schnell ist sie ganz zeronnen. Dies kleinste Glied ist unsre Ehre, Ehrlos ist, wer es lässt, Mit hellen Waffen, guter Wehre, Drum hieltet Ihr es fest."[8]

Amongst the writers of serious poems we find names like Grillparzer and Hebbel; Saphir and Dingelstedt write mock-heroic elegies on the last of the censors, both of them parodies of Schiller's Nadowessische Todesklage; and there are no end of satiric thrusts at the King of Prussia, who, curiously enough, was considered to have acted heretofore in a more reactionary spirit, and now to be granting concessions more unwillingly than the Austrian Emperor.

Since the beginning of March Berlin had been in a state of the wildest excitement. Directly after the Revolution of February the Kreuzzeitung published an article advocating war with France. It awakened extreme anxiety; people asked each other if long-suffering Prussia was actually to be compelled to take up arms against the French Republic. It was in these days that all Germany began to deck itself in black, red, and gold, the colours symbolising unity and liberty. Freiligrath wrote of them:

"In Kümmerniss und Dunkelheit Da mussten wir sie bergen, Nun haben wir sie doch befreit, Befreit aus ihren Särgen; Ha, wie das blitzt und rauscht und rollt! Hurrah, du Schwarz, du Roth, du Gold! Pulver ist schwarz, Blut ist roth, Golden flackert die Flamme!"[9]

On the 7th of March the first great public meeting was held at In den Zelten. It was resolved to present an address to the King, demanding that he should immediately convene the Landtag and grant a constitution. The address ended with the words: "No war with France! Lawful liberty in our own country! Fraternal union of the whole great German nation!" On the 12th of March a regiment of cavalry charged the crowds at In den Zelten and dispersed them, but they collected again in town, built barricades, and attempted to seize a gunsmith's shop in the Jägerstrasse. Two men were killed in front of the Opera House. Under the windows of the Castle the people shouted "Liberty! Liberty of the press!" and insulted the sentries. On the 14th of March a general Landtag was summoned. So far things had been managed on the whole peaceably; but on the 15th of March the soldiers, who were worn out with night-watching, and with having to hold themselves in constant readiness in the barracks, began to behave roughly to the crowd, to strike with the butt-ends of their guns, &c. Small barricades which some boys had erected at the corner of the Kurstrasse and the Gertraudenstrasse were charged by the Cuirassier Guards from Potsdam, and the boys were cruelly handled.

At one o'clock on the 18th of March a royal proclamation was read in front of the Castle. It declared that Germany was to be from henceforth not a federation of States, but one federated State (Staatenbund—Bundesstaat), with a common Parliament, a common army, free-trade, liberty of emigration, and liberty of the press. At the end of each sentence the crowd answered with thundering hurrahs. Cries were heard of "Away with the soldiers!" and some stones were thrown. The famous General von Pfuel, who was in command, forbade the soldiers to fire, ordered the dragoons to dismount, and praised the discipline they showed in obeying at once, furious as they were. When the town seemed quiet he went home for a short time.

During his absence, in consequence of an order given, no one knows by whom, though the embittered populace during the following days laid the blame of it on the Prince of Prussia, the future Emperor William, a regiment of dragoon guards arrived. The crowd shouted "Away!" The dragoons wheeled round, and the crowd were beginning to cry "Bravo!" when suddenly the soldiers charged in amongst them with naked swords. At the same moment a battalion of infantry marched out at the Castle gate, drew up in line, and also charged with levelled bayonets. Some shots were fired—possibly by accident. With loud shrieks the crowd instantaneously dispersed. Only a moment before joy had been at its height; strangers had been embracing each other, waving their hats, and shouting "Hurrah for the King"; now, as if at a preconcerted signal, barricades sprang up, as they had done in Vienna, over the whole town. There were two hundred of them, built of paving-stones, gutter-planking, and carts. The town was a camp. Men fired on the troops from every roof; those who could not get guns, threw stones. Every axe, every thick stick became a weapon.[10]

The roofs were torn off corner houses, and paving-stones were carried up in baskets. The students met, armed, in front of the University, fastened tri-coloured cockades in their caps, and proceeded to man the barricades. Powder and shot, axes and iron bars, were provided by the merchants. On the evening of the 18th, the artillery opened fire in the Königstrasse. The King looked on from the windows of the Castle, incensed by the deputations that came entreating him to withdraw the troops, but at times condescending to jest; what specially annoyed him was the sight of the tri-coloured flags waving on the barricades. He was ready, he said, to concede much to entreaty, nothing to illegal violence.

Varnhagen, in his Diary, describes what he saw and heard from his windows that night: "Asmall body of citizens under trusty leaders held the streets, doubly watchful because their numbers were so few. For a number of hours absolute darkness and silence prevailed; then, towards morning, the sound of far-off drums was heard; troops were evidently approaching. The citizen combatants were instantly on the alert; we could hear them whispering. A youthful voice gave the word of command: 'To the roofs, gentlemen!' and every man went to his post. This calm, determined command, given with noble simplicity, rang terrible and yet inspiring through the darkness. One felt the dangers which those who obeyed it were braving, for the general resistance was becoming weaker, and it seemed as if they were doomed, after a fruitless struggle, to meet an ignominious death, either by a fall from the roof, by the soldiers' bayonets, or by the hand of the executioner." Varnhagen concludes: "The heroic courage and determination of these daring youths was most undoubtedly worthy of all admiration"—weighty words, coming from the pen of an old, experienced officer.

On the night between the 18th and 19th of March, wherever barricades were being erected or repaired, the windows were illuminated. But the moment troops entered the street all was darkness. The soldiers hewed and sabred right and left in the houses which they entered, and showed mediæval brutality in their treatment of prisoners. Towards morning the arsenal of the Garde-Landwehr regiment was captured by the insurgents; they found that the locks of the guns had been destroyed, but all the smiths of the quarter set to work and repaired the damage.

At last, in the course of the morning, a royal proclamation headed An meine lieben Berliner! was circulated, in which an attempt was made to explain the events of the day before as being the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, "It had been necessary to clear the square in front of the Castle with cavalry, ordered to advance at a walking pace and with sheathed swords (im Schritt und mit eingesteckter Waffe); two infantry muskets had about this time gone off by accident, fortunately injuring no one; a company of evil-disposed individuals, chiefly strangers, had taken advantage of this unfortunate occurrence to stir up ideas of revenge in the minds of the excited crowd; the troops had used their weapons, but not until driven to do so by being repeatedly fired at. The King promises that the troops shall be withdrawn from Berlin, and concludes with the hope that both parties will forget what has happened."[11]

Meanwhile the struggle raged on with frightful exasperation on both sides. In treating with the deputations that waited on him on the morning of the 19th of March, the King attempted to make his promise of withdrawing the troops conditional on the dismantling of the barricades. But in the end everything was conceded—change of ministry, release of the prisoners taken during the night, and withdrawal of the troops. Amidst the shouts of the rejoicing crowd, to muffled beat of drum and Chorale-music, the soldiers were marched off to Potsdam, feeling that they had sustained a deadly insult at the hands of their royal commander-in-chief.