Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries Volume Ii Part 3

To Frau von Camas he writes:--"You speak of the death of poor F----.

Ah, dear mamma, for six years I have mourned more for the living than for the dead."

Thus did the King write and grieve, but he held out; and any one who is startled by the gloomy energy of his resolves, must guard himself from thinking that these were the highest expressions of the powers of this wonderful mind. It is true that the King had moments of depression, when he desired death under the fire of the enemy rather than seek it from his own hand out of the phial which he carried about him. It is true that he was firmly determined not to bring destruction on his State by allowing himself to live as a prisoner of the Austrians. There was a fearful truth in all that he wrote; but he was of a poetic disposition; he was a child of the century, which had such a craving for great deeds, and took delight in the expression of exalted feelings; he was, to his heart's core, a German, with the same longings as the immeasurably weaker Klopstock and his admirers. The contemplation and decided utterance of this last resolve gave him inward freedom and cheerfulness. He wrote concerning it also to his sister of Baireuth, in the dismal second year of the war, and this letter is particularly characteristic;[19] for she also had decided not to outlive the fall of her house; and he approved this decision, to which, however, he paid little attention, being immersed in the gloomy satisfaction of his own reflections. Both these royal children had once secretly recited together the _roles_ of French tragedies in the strict parental house; now their hearts beat again in unison, both thinking of freeing themselves, by an antique death, from a life full of illusions, errors, and sufferings. But when the excited and nervous sister fell dangerously ill, Frederic forgot all his stoical philosophy, and, with a pa.s.sionate tenderness that still clung to life, he fretted and grieved about her who was the dearest to him of his family; and when she died, his sorrow was, perhaps, more severe from feeling that he had enacted a tragic part in the tender life of the woman. Thus, strangely, was mixed in the greatest German that arose in the eighteenth century, poetical feeling and the wish to appear charming and great with the earnest life of reality. The poor little Professor Semler, who, in the midst of the deepest emotion, still studied his att.i.tudes and prepared his compliments, and the great King, who, in calm expectation of the hour of death, wrote in finely-formed periods concerning self-destruction, were both sons of that same time in which the pathos that found no worthy expression in art twined like a creeper round real life. But the King was greater than his philosophy; in fact, he never lost his courage, nor the stubborn strength of the German, nor the quiet hope which is needful to man for every great work.

And he held out. The strength of his enemies became less, their Generals were worn out, and their armies shattered, and at last Russia withdrew from the coalition. This, and the King's last victory, decided the question. He had triumphed, he had preserved the conquered Silesia to Prussia; his people exulted, the faithful citizens of his capital prepared him a festive reception, but he avoided all rejoicings, and returned alone and quietly to Sans Souci. He wished, he said, to live the rest of his days in peace and for his people.

The first three-and-twenty years of his reign he had struggled and fought, and established his power throughout the world; three-and-twenty years more was he to rule over his people as a wise and strict father. The ideas according to which he guided the State--with great self-denial, but also self-will, aiming at the highest, but also ruling in the most trifling matters--have been partly set aside by the higher culture of the present day; they express the knowledge which he had gained in his youth, and from the experiences of his early manhood. The mind was to be free, and each one to think as he chose, but to do his duty as a citizen. As he subordinated his pleasure and expenditure to the good of the State, restricting the whole royal household to about 200,000 thalers, and thought first of the advantage of the people, and not till then of his own; so were all his subjects to be ready to do the duties and bear the burdens he might impose upon them. Each was to remain in the sphere in which his birth and education had placed him; the n.o.bleman was to be landowner and officer; the sphere of the citizen was the city, commerce, industry, teaching, and invention; that of the peasant was field labour and service. But each in his position was to be prosperous and comfortable. There was to be equal, strict, rapid justice for all; no favour for the n.o.ble or rich, but rather, in doubtful cases, for the poor man. The number of working men was to be increased, each occupation made as remunerative and as prosperous as possible; the less that was imported from abroad the better; everything to be produced at home, and the surplus to be disposed of beyond the frontiers. Such were the main principles of his political economy. Incessantly did he endeavour to increase the number of morgens of arable land, and to procure new places for settlers.

Swamps were drained, lakes drawn off, and d.y.k.es thrown up; ca.n.a.ls were dug, and advances made for the establishment of new manufactories; cities and villages rebuilt more solid and convenient than before, under the active encouragement of government; the provincial credit system, the fire-insurance society, and the royal bank were established; popular schools everywhere founded, well-informed people encouraged to come, and the education and discipline of the ruling official cla.s.s promoted by examinations and strict control. It is the business of historians to enumerate and extol all this, and also to recount some vain attempts of the King which failed from his endeavour to guide everything himself.

The King looked after all his dominions, and not least after that child of sorrow, the newly won Silesia. When he conquered this large province it had little more than a million of inhabitants.[20] Greatly was the contrast felt between the easy-going Austrian government and the strict, restless, stirring rule of Prussia. At Vienna the catalogue of forbidden books was greater than at Rome; now ceaseless bales of books found their way into the province from Germany: all were free to buy and read, even the attacks upon their own ruler. In Austria it was the privilege of the n.o.bility to wear foreign cloth; in Prussia, when the father of Frederic the Great had forbidden the import of foreign cloth, he first dressed himself and his princesses in home-made manufacture.

At Vienna no office was considered distinguished for which anything more was required than representation: all the work was the affair of the subalterns; the lord of the bedchamber was more considered than a deserving General or minister. In Prussia even the highest in rank was little esteemed if he was not useful to the State; and the King himself was the most precise official, for he looked after every thousand thalers that were saved or disbursed. He who in Austria left the Roman Catholic faith was punished with confiscation and banishment; in Prussia every one could change his religion as he chose, that was his affair. In the Imperial dominions the government felt it burdensome to look after anything; the Prussian officials thrust their noses into everything. In spite of the three Silesian wars, the country was far more flouris.h.i.+ng than in the Imperial time; a century had not been sufficient to efface the traces of the Thirty Years' War; the people remembered well how in the cities heaps of ruins had remained from the Swedish time, and everywhere near the newly-built houses, the dismal wastes caused by fire. Many little cities had still blockhouses in the old Sclavonian style, with straw and s.h.i.+ngle roofs, which had long been scantily patched. Under the Prussians, not only the traces of the old devastation, but even of the Seven Years' War, soon disappeared.

Frederic had fifteen large cities built up with regular streets at the King's cost, and some hundred new villages constructed and occupied by freehold colonists; he had laid on the landed proprietors the heavy burden of rebuilding some thousands of homesteads, and occupying them with tenants with hereditary rights. In the Imperial time the imposts had been far less, but they were unequally apportioned, and the heaviest burdens were on the poor; the n.o.bles were exempt from the greater part; the method of raising them was ill arranged; much was embezzled or squandered, and little proportionately found its way into the Emperor's coffers. The Prussians, on the other hand, had divided the country into small circles, valued the collective acreage, and in a few years had withdrawn all exemptions from taxes; the country now paid its ground tax, the cities their excise. Thus the province bore a double amount of burdens with greater ease, only the privileged murmured; and in this way it was able to maintain 40,000 soldiers, whilst formerly there had been only 2000. Before 1740 the n.o.bles had acted the part of fine gentlemen; any one who was a Roman Catholic, and rich, lived at Vienna; others, who could afford it, went to Breslau.

Now the greater number of the landed proprietors dwelt on their properties. Krippenreiters had ceased; the n.o.blemen knew that the King considered it honourable in him to care for the culture of his ground, and that he showed cold contempt towards those who were not landlords, officials, or officers. Formerly, law-suits were incessant and costly, and could scarcely be carried on without bribery and great sacrifice of money; now the number of lawyers became less, because decisions were so rapid. Under the Austrians the caravan traffic with the east of Europe had undoubtedly been greater; the Bukowins and Hungarians, and also the Poles, became estranged, and already looked to Trieste; but new sources of industry arose, large manufactories of wool and cloth, and in the mountain valleys linen, were established. Many were dissatisfied with the new time, some were in fact oppressed by its harshness, but few ventured to deny that on the whole there was improvement.

But there was another characteristic of the Prussian State that made an impression on the Silesians, and soon obtained a mastery over their minds. This was the devoted Spartan spirit of those who served the King, which frequently appeared in the lowest officials. The excise officers, even before the introduction of the French system, were little liked; they were invalid subaltern officers, old soldiers of the King, who had won his battles, and had grown grey in his service. They sat now at the gates, and smoked their wooden pipes; they received very little pay, and could indulge themselves in little, but were from early dawn till late in the evening at their post, did their duty skilfully, quickly, and punctually, like old soldiers, received and faithfully delivered up the money as a matter of course. They thought always of their service: it was their honour, their pride; and long did the old Silesians continue to relate to their descendants how much they had been struck by the punctiliousness, strictness, and honesty of these and other Prussian officials. There was in every district town a receiver of taxes; he lived in his small office room, which was perhaps at the same time his bedroom, and received in a large wooden dish the land tax which the village magistrate brought to his room once a month.

Many thousand thalers were noted down on the long list, and were delivered to the last penny into the State coffers. Small was the salary of even such a man as this; he sat, received and packed away in bags, till his hair became white, and his trembling hands could no longer lay hold of the two-groschen pieces. And the pride of his life was, that the King knew him personally, and, if he ever came through the place during the change of horses, he fixed on him silently his large eyes, or, if he was very gracious, inclined his head a little towards him. The people regarded with a certain degree of respect and awe these subordinate servants of a new principle. And not the Silesians only; it was something new in the world. It was not as a mere jest that Frederic II. had called himself the first servant of his State. As on the battlefield he had taught his wild n.o.bles that the highest honour was to die for the Fatherland, so did his unwearied care and high sense of duty imprint upon the soul of the meanest of his servants on the most distant frontiers his great idea, that his first duty was to live and labour for the good of his King and country.

Though the provinces of Prussia, in the Seven Years' War, were compelled to do homage to the Empress Elizabeth, and remained for some time incorporated in the Russian Empire, yet the officials of the districts under the foreign army and government ventured secretly to raise money and provisions for their King, and great art was required for the pa.s.sage of the transports. Many were in the secret, but there was not one traitor; they stole in disguise through the Russian camp in danger of their lives. They discovered afterwards that they earned little thanks by it, for the King did not like his East Prussians; he spoke depreciatingly of them; seldom showed them the same favour as the other provinces; he looked like stone whenever he learnt that one of his young officers was born between the Vistula and Memel, and never entered his East Prussian province after the war. But the East Prussians were not shaken in their veneration for him: they clung with true love to their ungracious master, and his best and most intellectual panegyrist was Emmanuel Kant.

The life in the King's service was undoubtedly a rough one: incessant were the work and deprivations; it was difficult for the best to do enough for so strict a master, and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks; if a man was worn out he was probably coldly thrown aside; the labour was without end everywhere,--new undertakings--scaffoldings of an unfinished building. To any one who came into the country this life did not appear cheerful, it was so austere, monotonous, and rough; there was little of beauty or pleasure in it; and as the bachelor household of the King, with his obedient servants and his submissive intimates taking the air under the trees of a quiet garden, gave the impression of a monastery to a foreign guest; so he found in the whole Prussian regime, something of the self-denial and obedience of a large industrious monastic brotherhood.

Somewhat of this spirit had pa.s.sed into the people themselves. But we honour in this an enduring service of Frederic II.: still is this spirit of self-denial the secret of the greatness of the Prussian State, the last and best guarantee for its duration. The excellent machine which the King had erected with so much intelligence and energy could not eternally last; it was shattered twenty years after his death; but that the State did not at the same time sink,--that the intelligence and patriotism of the citizen were in a condition to create a new life on new foundations under his successors,--is the secret of Frederic's greatness.

Nine years after the conclusion of the last war, which led to the retention of Silesia, Frederic increased his kingdom by a new acquisition, not much less in number of miles, but with a scanty population: it was the district of Poland, which has since pa.s.sed under the name of West Prussia.

If the claims of the King on Silesia had been doubtful, it required all the acuteness of his officials to put a plausible appearance on the uncertain rights to a portion of the new acquisition. The King himself cared little about it; he had, with almost superhuman heroism, defended the possession of Silesia in the face of the world; that province had been bound to Prussia by streams of blood; but in this case, political shrewdness was almost all that had been required. Long, in the opinion of men, was the conqueror deficient in that justification which it appeared was only given by the horrors of war and the accidental fortune of the battle-field. But this last acquisition of the King, which was made without the thunder of cannon or the flourish of victory, was, of all the great gifts for which the German people had to thank Frederic II., the greatest and most beneficial. During many hundred years the much-divided Germans were confined and injured by ambitious neighbours; the great King was the first conqueror who extended the German frontier further to the east. A century after his great ancestor had in vain defended the Rhine fortresses against Louis XIV., he again gave the Germans the emphatic admonition, that it was their task to carry laws, education, freedom, cultivation, and industry into the east of Europe. His whole country, with the exception of some old Saxon territory, had been won from the Sclavonians by force and colonisation; never since the great migration of the Middle Ages had the struggle for the wide plains on the east of the Oder ceased; never had his house forgotten that it was the guardian of the German frontier. Whenever the struggle of arms ceased, politicians contended.

The Elector Frederic William had freed the Prussian territories of the Teutonic order from the Polish suzerainty. Frederic I. had brought this isolated colony under the crown. But the possession of East Prussia was insecure; the danger was not, however, from the degenerate Republic of Poland, but from the rising greatness of Russia. Frederic had learnt to consider the Russians as enemies; he knew the high-flown plans of the Empress Catherine; the clever Prince knew how to grasp at the fitting moment. The new domain--Pommerellen, the Woiwodschaft of Kulm and Marienburg, the Bishopric of Ermland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Kujavien, and a part of Posen--united East Prussia with Pomerania and the Marches of Brandenburg. It had always been a frontier land; since ancient times people of different races had thronged to the coast of the Northern Sea: Germans, Sclavonians, Lithuanians, and Finns. Since the thirteenth century, the Germans had forced themselves into this debatable ground as founders of cities and agriculturists; orders of knights, merchants, pious monks, German n.o.blemen, and peasants congregated there. On both sides of the Vistula arose towers and boundary stones of the German colonists. Above all rose the splendid Dantzic,--the Venice of the Baltic, the great sea-mart of the Sclavonian countries, with its rich Marien-church and the palaces of its merchants; behind it, on the other arm of the Vistula, its modest rival Elbing; further upwards, the stately towers and broad arcades of Marienburg, where is the great princely castle of the Teutonic Knights, the most beautiful edifice in the north of Germany; and in the luxurious low-countries, in the valley of the Vistula, were the old prosperous colonial properties, one of the most favoured districts of the world, and defended by powerful dikes against the devastations of the Vistula. Still further upwards, Marienwerder, Graudenz, Kulm, and in the low countries, Netzebromberg, the centre of a strip of Polish frontier. Smaller German cities and village communities were scattered through the whole territory, which had been energetically colonised by the rich Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Pelplin. But the tyrannical severity of this order drove the German cities and landed proprietors of West Prussia, in the fifteenth century, to annex themselves to Poland. The Reformation of the sixteenth century subdued not only the souls of the German colonists, but also those of the Poles. In the great Polish Republic, three-fourths of the n.o.bility became Protestants, and in the Sclavonian districts of Pommerellen, seventy out of one hundred parishes, did the same. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unhealthy change. The Polish n.o.bles fell back to the Roman Catholic Church, their sons were brought up in the Jesuits' schools as converting fanatics. From that time the Polish State began to decline; its condition became constantly more hopeless.

There was a great difference in the conduct of the Germans of West Prussia with respect to proselytising Jesuits and Sclavonian tyranny.

The immigrant German n.o.bles became Roman Catholic and Polish, but the citizens and peasants remained stubborn Protestants. To the opposition of languages was added the opposition of confessions; to the hatred of race, the fury of contending faiths. In the century of enlightenment there was a fanatical persecution of the Germans in these provinces; one Protestant church after another was pulled down, the wooden ones were burnt; when a church was burnt, the villages lost the right of having bells; German preachers and schoolmasters were driven away and shamefully ill-used "_Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum_" was the usual saying of the Poles against the Germans. One of the great landed proprietors of the country, Starost of Gnesen, from the family of Birnbaum, was condemned to death, by tearing out his tongue and chopping off his hands, because he had copied into a record from German books some biting remarks against the Jesuits. There was no law and no protection. The national party of Polish n.o.bles, in alliance with fanatical priests, persecuted most violently those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All the predatory rabble joined themselves to the patriots or confederates; they hired hordes who went plundering about the country and fell upon small cities and German villages. Ever more vehement became the rage against the Germans, not only from zeal for the faith, but still more from covetousness. The Polish n.o.bleman Roskowski put on a red and a black boot: the one signified fire, and the other death; thus he rode from one place to another, laying all under contribution; at last, in Jastrow, he caused the hands, feet, and finally the head of the Evangelical preacher Wellick to be cut off, and the limbs to be thrown into a bog. This happened in 1768.

Such was the state of the country shortly before the Prussian occupation. Dantzic, which was indispensable to the Poles, kept itself, through this century of decay, from the rest of the country; it remained a free State under Sclavonian protection, and was long adverse to the great King. But the country and most of the German cities energetically helped to preserve the King from destruction. The Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at the wretchedness which existed at a few days' journey from their capital. Only some of the larger cities, in which German life was maintained by old trading intercourse within strong walls, and protected strips of land exclusively occupied by Germans,--like the low countries near Dantzig,--the villages under the mild government of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the wealthy German districts of Catholic Ermland, were in tolerable condition. Other cities lay in ruins, as did most of the farms on the plains. The Prussians found Bromberg, a city of German colonists, in ruins; it is not possible now accurately to ascertain how the city came into this condition;[21] indeed the fate of the whole Netze district, in the last ten years before the Prussian occupation, is quite unknown. No historians, no records, and no registers give any account of the destruction and slaughter with which that country was ravaged. Apparently the Polish factions must have fought amongst themselves; bad harvests and pestilence may have done the rest. Kulm has from ancient times preserved its well-built walls and stately churches, but in the streets the covered pa.s.sages to the cellars projected over the rotten wood and the fragments of brick from the dilapidated buildings; whole streets consisted of such cellars, in which the miserable inhabitants dwelt. Twenty-eight of the forty houses of the great market-place had no doors, no roofs, no inhabitants, and no proprietors. In a similar condition were other cities.

The greater number of the country people lived in circ.u.mstances which appeared to the King's officials lamentable; especially on the frontiers of Pomerania, where the Windish Ka.s.subes dwelt; the villages were a collection of old huts, with torn thatched roofs, on bare plains, without a tree and without a garden; there was only the indigenous wild cherry-tree. The houses were built of wooden rafters and clay; going through the house door, one entered a room with a large hearth, without a chimney; stoves were unknown; no candle was ever lighted, only fir chips brightened the darkness of the long winter evenings; the chief article in the miserable furniture was the crucifix, and under it a bowl of holy water. The dirty, forlorn people lived on rye porridge, or only on herbs, which they made into soup, or on herrings, and brandy, in which both women and men indulged. Bread was almost unknown; many had never in their life tasted such a delicacy; there were few villages in which there was an oven. If they ever kept bees, they sold the honey to the citizens, as well as carved spoons and stolen bark; and with the produce, they bought at the fairs, coa.r.s.e blue cloth dresses, with black fur caps, and bright red handkerchiefs for the women. There was rarely a weaving-loom, and the spinning-wheel was unknown. The Prussians heard there no national songs; there were no dances, no music, nor indeed any of the pleasures which the most miserable Poles partake of, but stupidly and silently the people drank bad drams, fought, and reeled about. The poor n.o.ble also differed little from the peasant; he drove his own rude plough, and clattered in wooden slippers about the unboarded floor of his hut.

It was difficult, even for the Prussian King, to make anything of these people. The use of potatoes spread rapidly, but the people long continued to destroy the fruit trees, the culture of which was commanded; and they opposed all other attempts at cultivation. Equally needy and decaying were the frontier districts with Polish population; but the Polish peasant preserved, in his state of poverty and disorder, at least the vivacity of his race. Even on the properties of the greater n.o.bles, such as the Starosties, and of the crown, all the farming buildings were ruined and useless. If any one wished to forward a letter, he had to send a special messenger, for there was no post in the country; indeed, in the villages no need of it was felt, for a great portion of the n.o.bles could not read or write, more than the peasants. Were any one ill, no a.s.sistance could be obtained but the mysterious remedies of some old village crone, for there was no apothecary in the whole country. Any one who needed a coat, did well to be able to use a needle himself, for no tailor was to be found for many miles, unless one pa.s.sed through the country on a venture.[22] He who wished to build a house, had first to ascertain whether he could get labourers from the west. The country people still kept up a weak struggle with hordes of wolves, and there were few villages in which men and beasts were not decimated every winter.[23] If the small-pox broke out, or any other infectious illness came into the country, the people saw the white figure of the pestilence flying through the air and settling down on their huts; they knew what such appearances betokened; it was the desolation of their homes, the destruction of whole communities; with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate.

There was hardly any administration of justice in the country; only in the larger cities were powerless courts. The Starosts inflicted punishment with arbitrary power; they beat and threw into horrible jails, not only the peasant, but even the citizens of the country towns who rented their houses or fell into their hands. In their quarrels amongst themselves they contended by bribery, in any of the few courts that had jurisdiction over them. In later years, even that had almost fallen into disuse, and they sought revenge with their own hands.

It was indeed a forlorn country, without discipline, without law, and without a master; it was a wilderness, with only a population of 500,000 on 600 square miles--not 850 to the mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an untenanted prairie; almost at his pleasure he fixed boundary stones, or removed them some miles further.

And then he began, in his admirable way, the culture of the country; the very rottenness of its condition was attractive to him, and West Prussia became, as Silesia had hitherto been, his favourite child, that he washed and brushed, and dressed in new clothes, sent to school, controlled, and kept under his eyes, with incessant care like a true mother. The diplomatic contention about the acquisition still continued, but he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness; the districts were divided into small circles; the whole surface of the country valued in the shortest time, and equally taxed; and every circle provided with a provincial magistrate, a judicature, a post, and a sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic; a company of 187 schoolmasters were introduced into the country; the worthy Semler had sought out and drilled some of them.

Numbers of German artisans were hired, machine and brick makers; digging, hammering, and building began all over the country; the cities were reinhabited; street upon street arose out of the heaps of ruins; the Starosties were changed into crown property; new villages were built and colonised, and new agriculture enjoined. In the course of the first year after taking possession of the country, the great ca.n.a.l was dug, three German miles in length, uniting the Vistula by means of the Netze with the Oder and Elbe; a year after, the King had given directions for this work, he saw loaded boats from the Oder, 120 feet long, pa.s.sing from the East to the Vistula. By means of the new water-wheels, wide districts of country were drained and occupied by German colonists. The King worked indefatigably; he praised and blamed; and, however great the zeal of his officials, they could seldom do enough for him. In consequence of this, the wild Sclavonian tares, which had shot up, not only there but also in the German fields, were brought under, so that even the Polish districts got accustomed to the new order of things; and West Prussia, in the war after 1806, proved itself almost as Prussian as the old provinces.

Whilst the grey-headed King was creating and looking after everything, one year pa.s.sed after another over his thoughtful head; all about him was more tranquil, but void and lonely, and small was the circle of men in whom he confided. He had laid his flute aside, and the new French literature appeared to him insipid and prosy; sometimes it seemed as if a new life sprouted up under him in Germany, to which he was a stranger. Unweariedly did he labour for the improvement of his army and the welfare of his people; ever less did he value his tools, and ever higher and more pa.s.sionate was his feeling of the great duties of his position.

But if his struggles in the Seven Years' War may be called superhuman, equally so did his labours now appear to contemporaries. There was something great, but also terrible, in the way in which he made the prosperity of the whole his highest and constant object, disregarding the comfort of individuals. When, in front of the ranks, he dismissed from the service with bitter words of blame the Colonel of a regiment which had made a great blunder at a review; when, in the marsh lands of the Netze, he calculated more the strokes of the ten thousand spades than the hards.h.i.+ps of the labourers, who lay, stricken with marsh fever, in the hospital he had erected for them; when be overstepped in his demands what the most rapid action could accomplish,--terror as of one who moved in an unearthly element mingled with the deep reverence and devotion of his people. Like Fate, he appeared to the Prussians, incalculable, inexorable, and omniscient; superintending the smallest as well as the greatest things. When they related to one another that he had endeavoured to control Nature also, but that his orange-trees had been frozen by the last spring frosts, then they secretly rejoiced that there were limits even for their King, but still more that he had borne it with such good humour, and had made his bow to the cold days of May.

With touching sympathy the people collected all the sayings of the King in which there was any human feeling that brought him more into communion with them. So lonely were his house and garden, that the imaginations of his Prussians continually hovered about the consecrated spot. If any one was so fortunate as to come into the neighbourhood of the castle on a warm moonlight night, he would perhaps find open doors without a guard, and he could see the great King in his bedroom, sleeping on his camp-bed. The scent of the flowers, the night song of the birds, and the quiet moonlight were the only guards, almost the whole regal state, of the lonely man.

For fourteen years after the acquisition of West Prussia, did the oranges of Sans Souci bloom; then did Nature rea.s.sert her empire over the great King. He died alone, only surrounded by his servants.

In the bloom of life he was completely wrapped up in ambitious feelings; he had wrested from fate all the high and splendid garlands of life,--he, the prince of poets and philosophers, the historian and the General. No triumph that he had ever gained contented him; all earthly fame had become to him accidental, uncertain, and valueless; an iron feeling of duty, incessantly working, was all that remained to him. Amid the dangerous alternation of warm enthusiasm and cool acuteness, his soul had reached its maturity. He had, in his own mind, surrounded with a poetical halo, certain individuals; and he despised the mult.i.tude about him. But in the struggles of life his egotism disappeared; he lost almost all that was personally dear to him, and he ended by caring little for individuals, whilst the need of living for the whole became ever stronger in him. With the most refined self-seeking, he had desired the highest for himself; and at last, regardless of himself, he gave himself up for the public weal and the lowest. He had entered life as an idealist, and his ideal had not been destroyed by the most fearful experiences, but rather enn.o.bled, exalted, and purified; he had sacrificed many men to his State, but no man so much as himself.

Great and uncommon did this appear to his contemporaries; greater still to us, who can perceive, even in the present time, the traces of his activity in the character of our people, our political life, our arts, and literature.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE SCHOOLING OF THE GERMAN CITIZEN.

(1790.)

Many races of poets had pa.s.sed away; their hearts had never been stirred by vivid impressions of a heroes life; they celebrated the victories of Alexander and the death of Cato in countless forms, with chilling phrases and in artificial periods. Now the smallest story told at the house-door by an invalid soldier caused transports, even that the great King of Prussia had been seen by him at the cathedral and had spoken five words to him. The tale of the simple man brought at once, as if by enchantment, before the minds of his hearers the exalted image of the man, the camp, the watch-fire, and the watch. How weak was the impression produced by the artificial praise of long-spun verses against such anecdotes which could be told in a few lines! They excited sympathy and fellow-feeling, even to tears and wringing of hands. In what lay the magic of these slight traits of life? Those few words of the King were so characteristic, one could perceive in them the whole nature of the hero, and the rough true-hearted tone of the narrator gave his account a peculiar colouring which increased the effect. A poetic feeling was undoubtedly produced in the hearer, but different as heaven from earth to the old art. And this poetry was felt by every one in Germany after the Silesian war; it had become as popular as the newspapers and the roll of the soldiers' drum. He who would produce an effect as a German poet, must know how to narrate, like that honest man of the people, in a simple and homely way, as from the heart, and it must be a subject which would make the heart beat quicker. Goethe knew well why he referred the whole of the youthful intellectual life of his time to Frederic II., for even he had in his father's house been influenced by the n.o.ble poetry which shone from the life of that great man on his contemporaries. The great King had p.r.o.nounced "Gotz von Berlichingen" a horrible piece, yet he had himself materially contributed to it, by giving the poet courage to weave together the old anecdotes of the troopers into a drama. And when Goethe, in his old age, concluded his last drama, he brought forward again the figure of the old King, and he makes his Faust an indefatigable and exacting master, who carries his ca.n.a.l through the marsh lands of the Vistula.

And it was not different with Lessing, to say nothing of the minor poets. In "Minna von Barnhelm," the King sends a decisive letter on the stage; and in "Nathan"--the antagonism betwixt tolerance and fanaticism, betwixt Judaism and priestcraft--is an enn.o.bled reflex of the views of D'Argen's Jewish letters.

It was not only the easily moved spirit of poets that was excited by the idea of the King: even the scientific life of the Germans, their speculative and moral philosophy, were elevated and transformed by it.

For the freedom of conscience which the King placed at the head of his maxims of government, dissolved like a spell the compulsion which the church had hitherto laid on the learned. The strong antipathy which the King had for priestly rule, and every kind of restraint of the mind, worked in many spheres. The most daring teaching, the most determined attacks on existing opinions, were now allowed; the struggle was carried on with equal weapons, and science obtained for the first time a feeling of supremacy over the soul. It was by no accident that Kant rose to eminence in Prussia; for the whole stringent power of his teaching, the high elevation of the feeling of duty, even the quiet resignation with which the individual had to submit himself to the "categorical imperative," is nothing more than the ideal counterpart of the devotion to duty which the King practised himself and demanded of his Prussians. No one has more n.o.bly expressed than the great philosopher himself, how much the State system of Frederic II. had been the basis of his teaching.

Historical science was not the least gainer by him. Great political deeds were so intimately blended with the imaginations and the hearts of Germans, that every individual partic.i.p.ated in them; manly doings and sufferings appeared so worthy of reverence, that the feeling for what was significant and characteristic animated in a new way the German historical inquirer, and his precepts for the nation attained a higher meaning.

It was not, indeed, immediately that the Germans gained the sure judgment and political culture which are necessary to every historian who undertakes to represent life of his nation. It was remarkable that the historical mind of Germany deviated so much from that of England and France, but it developed itself in a way that led the greatest intellectual acquisitions.

And these new blossoms of intellectual life in Germany, which were unfolded after the year 1750, bore a thoroughly national character; indeed, their highest gain remains up to the present time almost entirely to the German. It began to be recognised that the life of a people develops itself, like that of an individual, according to certain natural laws; that, through the individual souls of the inventor and thinker, a something national and in common penetrates from generation to generation, each at the same time limiting and invigorating it. Since Winckelman undertook to discern and fix the periods of ancient sculptural art, a similar advance was ventured upon in other domains of knowledge. Semler had already endeavoured to point out the historical development of Christianity in the oldest church.

The existence of old Homer was denied, and the origin of the epical poem sought in the peculiarities of a popular life which existed 3000 years ago. The meaning of myths and traditions, striking peculiarities in the inventions and creations of the youthful period of a people, were clearly pointed out; soon Romulus and the Tarquins, and finally the records of the Bible, were subjected to the same reckless inquiries.

But it was peculiar that these deep-thinking investigations were united with so much freedom and power of invention. He who wrote the "Laoc.o.o.n"

and the "Dramaturgie" was himself a poet; and Goethe and Schiller, the same men whose springs of imagination flowed so full and copiously, looked intently into its depth, investigating, like quiet men of learning, the laws of life of their novels, dramas, and ballads.

Meanwhile all the best spirits of the nation were enchanted with their poems; the beautiful was suddenly poured out over the German soil as if by a divinity. With an enthusiasm which often approached to wors.h.i.+p, the German gave himself up to the charms of his national poetry. The world of s.h.i.+ning imagery acquired in his eyes an importance which sometimes made him unjust to the practical life which surrounded him.

He, who so often appeared as the citizen of a nation without a State, found almost everything that was n.o.ble and exalted in the golden realm of poetry and art; the realities about him appeared to him common, low, and indifferent.

How through this an aristocracy of men of refinement were trained,--how the great poets themselves were occupied in looking down with proud resignation from their serene heights on the twilight of the German earth,--has often been portrayed. Here we will only relate how the time worked on the common run of men, remodelling their characters and ideas.

It is the year 1790, four years after the death of the great King; the second year in which the eyes of Germany had been fixed with astonishment on the condition of France. A few individuals only interested themselves in the struggle going on in the capital of a foreign country betwixt the nation and the throne. The German citizen had freed himself from the influence of French culture; indeed Frederic II. had taught his country people to pay little attention to the political condition of the neighbouring country. It was known that great reforms were necessary in France, and the literary men were on the side of the French opposition. The Germans were more especially occupied with themselves; a feeling of satisfaction is perceptible in the nation, of which they had been long deprived; they perceive that they are making good progress; a wonderful spirit of reform penetrates through their whole life: trade is flouris.h.i.+ng, wealth increases, the new culture exalts and pleases, youths recite with feeling the verses of their favourite poet, and rejoice to see on the stage the representations of great virtues and vices, and listen to the entrancing sounds of German music. It was a new life, but it was the end of the good time. Many years later the Germans looked longingly back for the peaceful years after the Seven Years' War.

If any one at this time entered the streets of a moderate-sized city, through which he had pa.s.sed in the year 1750, he would be struck by the greater energy of its inhabitants. The old walls and gates are indeed still standing; but it is proposed to free from brick and mortar the entrances which are too narrow for men and waggons, and to subst.i.tute light iron trellis-work, and in other places to open new gates in the walls. The rampart round the city moat has been planted with pollards, and in the thick shade of the limes and chestnuts the citizens take their const.i.tutional walks, and the children of the lower orders breathe the fresh summer air. The small gardens on the city walls are embellished; new foreign blossoms s.h.i.+ne amongst the old, and cl.u.s.ter round some fragment of a column or a small wooden angel that is painted white; here and there a summer-house rises, either in the form of an antique temple or as a hut of moss-covered bark, as a remembrance of the original state of innocence of the human race, in which the feelings were so incomparably purer and the restraints of dress and _convenances_ were so much less.

But the traffic of the city has extended itself beyond the old walls, where a high road leads to the city, and suburban rows of houses stretch far into the plain. Many new houses, with red-tiled roofs under loaded fruit-trees, delight the eyes. The number of houses in the city has also increased; leaning with broad fronts, gable to gable, there they stand, with large windows and open staircases enclosing wide s.p.a.ces. The ornaments that adorn the front are still modestly made of plaster of Paris; bright lime-washes of all shades are almost the only characteristics, and give the streets a variegated appearance. They are, for the most part, built by merchants and manufacturers, who are now almost everywhere the wealthy people of the city.

The wounds inflicted by the Seven Years' War on the prosperity of the citizens are healed. Not in vain have the police, for more than fifty years, admonished and commanded; the city arrangements are well regulated; provisions for the care of the poor are organised, funds for their maintenance, doctors, and medicine supplied gratuitously. In the larger cities much is done for the support of the infirm; in Dresden, in 1790, the yearly amount of funds for the poor was 50,000 thalers; in Berlin also, where Frederic William had done much for the poor, the government warmly partic.i.p.ated in rendering a.s.sistance,--it was reported that more was done there than elsewhere. But the benevolence which the educated cla.s.ses evinced towards the people was deficient in judgment--alms-giving was the only thing thought of; a few years later it was considered truly patriotic in the finance minister, von Struensee, to remit to the Berlin poor a considerable portion of his salary. At the same time there were loud complaints of the increasing immorality, and of the preponderance of poor. It was remarked, with alarm, that Berlin, under Frederic II., had been the only capital in the world in which more men were born in the year than died, and that now it was beginning to be the reverse. At Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig, beggars were no longer to be seen; indeed there were few in any of the Prussian cities, with exception of Silesia and West Prussia; but in the smaller places in Lower Saxony they still continued to be a plague to travellers. They congregated at the hotels and post-houses, and waylaid strangers on their arrival.

But a greater and more satisfactory improvement was made by the exertions of the government in the increased care of the sick: the devastating pestilence and other diseases were--one has reason to believe--shut out from the frontiers of Germany. From 1709-11 the plague had raged fearfully in Poland, and even in 1770 there had been deaths from it; whole villages had been depopulated by it, but our native land was little injured. There was one disease which still made its ravages among rich and poor alike--the small-pox. It was Europe's great misery--the repulsive visitant of blooming youth, bringing death and disfigurement. It was the turning-point of life, how they pa.s.sed through this malady. Much heart-rending misery has now ceased; the beauty of our women has become more secure, and the number of diseased and helpless, has considerably diminished since Jenner and his friends established in London, in 1799, the first public vaccinating inst.i.tution.

Everywhere, about this time, began complaints of the want of economy, and immoderate love of pleasure of the working cla.s.ses: complaints which certainly were justified in many cases, but which must inevitably be heard where the greater wealth of individuals increases the necessities of the people in the lower cla.s.ses. One must be cautious before one a.s.sumes from this a decrease in the popular strength; the awakening desires of the people is more frequently the first unhealthy sign of progress. On the whole it does not appear to have been so very bad. Smoking was indeed general; it constantly increased, although Frederic II. had raised the price in Prussia by his stamp on each packet. The coloured porcelain-headed pipe began to supplant the meerschaum. In Northern Germany the white beer became the new fas.h.i.+onable drink of the citizens; staid old-fas.h.i.+oned tradesmen shook their heads, and complained that their favourite old brew became worse, and that the consumption of wine among the citizens increased immoderately. In Saxony they began to drink coffee to a great extent, however thin and adulterated it might be, and it was the only warm drink of the poor. The general complaint of travellers, who came from the south of Germany, was that the cooking in Prussia, Saxony, and Thuringia was poor and scanty.

The public amus.e.m.e.nts, also, were neither numerous or expensive.

Foremost was the theatre; it was quite a pa.s.sion with the citizens. The wandering companies became better and more numerous, the number of theatres greater; the best place was the parterre, in which officers, students, or young officials, who were frequently at variance, gave the tone. The sensation dramas, with dagger, poison, and rattling of chains, enchanted the unpretending; pathetic family dramas, with iniquitous ministers of state, and raving lovers excited feeling in the educated; and the bad taste of the pieces, and the good acting, astonished strangers. The entrance of one of these companies within walls was an event of great importance; and we see, from the accounts of many worthy men, how great was the influence of such representations upon their life. It is difficult for us to comprehend the enthusiasm with which young people of education followed these performances, the intensity of the feelings excited in them. Iffland's pieces, "Verbrechen aus Ehrgeiz" and "Der Spieler," drew forth not only tears and sobs, but also oaths and impa.s.sioned vows. Once at Lauchstadt, when the curtain fell at the end of the "Spielers" (Gamblers), one of the wildest students of Halle rushed up to another, also of Halle, but whom he scarcely knew, and begged him, the tears streaming from his eyes, to record his oath that he would never again touch a card. According to the account the excited youth kept his word. Similar scenes were not extraordinary. Poor students saved money for weeks to enable them to go even once from Halle to the theatre in Lauchstadt, and they ran back the same night, so as not to miss their lectures the next morning. But, lively as was the interest of the Germans in the drama, it was not easy for the society of even the larger cities to keep up a stationary theatre. At Berlin the French theatre was changed to a German one, with the proud t.i.tle of National Theatre; but this, the only one in the capital, was, in 1790, little visited, although Fleck and both the Unzelmanns played there. The Italian Opera was, indeed, better attended, but it was given at the King's expense; every magistrate had his own box; the King still sat, with his court, in the parterre behind the orchestra; and throughout the whole winter there were only six representations--one new and one old, each performed three times. Then, undoubtedly, the public thronged there, to see the splendour of this court festival, and were astounded at the great procession of elephants and lions in "Darius." It is mentioned that at Dresden, also, the children's theatricals in families were far more in request than the great theatre; and in Berlin, which was considered so particularly frivolous and pleasure-seeking, this same winter, at the great masquerade, of which there was so much talk in the country, there was only one person dressed in character; the others were all spiritless dominoes, and the whole was very dull to strangers.[24] All this does not look much like lavish expenditure.