Part 29

The letter itself was stupid and indiscreet; its publication in a Leipzig newspaper a few weeks later was a piece of folly that avenged itself. In Stettin, Herwegh received orders to leave the country; policemen escorted him to the stage-coach, from which he was forbidden to alight in Halle. He had received a festive welcome in Prussia, but his leave-taking was of the coldest.

The arch-scoffer Heine, in his poem, _Der Ex-lebendige_, has the following lines:

"Aranchuez! in deinem Sand' Wie schnell die schönen Tage schwanden, Als ich vor König Philip stand Und seinen uckermarkschen Granden.

Er hat mir Beifall zugenickt, Als ich gespielt den Marquis Posa, In Versen hab' ich ihn entzückt Doch ihm gefiel nicht meine Prosa."[7]

[7] O my Aranchuez! how the days flew that I spent amidst thy sands! those days when I stood in the presence of King Philip and his Uckermark grandees. He nodded approval to me when I played Marquis Posa; my verses charmed him, but my prose he could not stand.

And in _Die Audienz_ he jeers more mercilessly still at the Swabian suckling:

"'Ich will, wie einst mein Heiland that, Am Anblick der Kinder mich laben. Lass zu mir kommen die Kindlein, zumal Das grosse Kind aus Schwaben.'

So sprach der König, der Kämmerer lief Und kam zurück und brachte Herein das grosse Schwabenkind Das seinen Diener machte.

Der König sprach: 'Du bist wohl ein Schwab? Das ist just keine Schande.' 'Gerathen! erwidert der Schwab, ich bin Geboren im Schwabenlande.' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Erbitte dir eine Gnade,' sprach Der König. Da kniete nieder Der Schwabe und rief: 'O geben Sie, Sire! Dem Volke die Freiheit wieder.'

Der König stand erschüttert tief; Es war eine schöne Scene. Mit seinem Rockärmel wischte sich Der Schwab' aus dem Auge die Thräne.

Der König sprach endlich: 'Ein schöner Traum! Leb' wohl und werde gescheidter! Und da du ein Somnambülericht bist, So geb' ich dir zwei Begleiter.

Zwei sichre Gendarm', die sollen dich Bis an die Grenze führen. Leb' wohl, ich muss zur Parade geh'n, Schon hör ich die Trommel rühren.'"[8]

[8]

"I will, as my gracious Saviour did, Find the sight of the children pleasant; So suffer the children to come, and first The big one, the Swabian peasant."

Thus spake the monarch; the chamberlain ran, And return'd, introducing slowly The stalwart child from Swabia's land, Who made a reverence lowly.

Thus spake the king: "A Swabian art thou? There's no disgrace in that, surely?" "Quite right! I was born in Swabia's land," Replied the Swabian demurely. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "One wish I will grant thee," the monarch said-- Then the Swabian in deep supplication Knelt down and exclaimed: "O sire, I pray grant Their freedom once more to the nation!"

The monarch in deep amazement stood, The scene was really enthralling; With his sleeve the Swabian wiped from his eye The tear that was well-nigh falling.

At last said the king: "In truth a fine dream! Farewell, and pray learn discretion; And as a somnambulist plainly thou art, Of thy person I'll give the possession

To two trusty gendarmes, whose duty 'twill be To see thee safe over the border-- Farewell! I must hasten to join the parade, The drums are beating to order." (BOWRING.)

It was not only humour that laughed, but envy and vindictiveness as well. Men wreaked vengeance on their own former enthusiasm. The Herwegh catastrophe was, moreover, attended by disastrous practical results. The _Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung_, the Opposition newspaper most widely read in Prussia, was suppressed the day after it published the letter to the king. The _Rheinische Zeitung_, the principal Liberal paper published in Prussia, itself very soon received its death-blow. And in Saxony, at the request of Prussia, Arnold Ruge's _Deutsche Jahrbücher_ (first known as the _Hallische Jahrbücher_), the leading periodical expressing the opinions of the reflective youth of the day, was also suppressed.

One lesson the young generation learned from what had happened. It was no momentous matter that a young poet should have shown himself embarrassed and then unmanly in his relations with a king. But the men of this day had imagined themselves to have taken a great step in advance of the men of the Thirties; they believed that they possessed strength of character, whereas their elders had only been gifted with talent. Now it was borne in upon them, not only that poets are little calculated to make good political leaders, but also that the whole generation must discipline itself severely if it were to stand any firmer in the day of trial than its predecessors had done.

So now thinkers and politicians by profession (in almost too many instances professors) took the lead. And the fact that the generation which now revolutionised the mind of Germany failed so miserably in the close of the struggle of 1848, is to be ascribed, not to want of strength of character, but to that idealism which is bred in the minds of men who have never ruled, to their belief in the irresistible powers of ideas and ideals to realise themselves, and to their contempt for that external brute force, which in theory was of minor importance, but which, vanquished in the first brush, calmly allowed itself to be disdained, and awaited the moment when, with renewed vigour, it returned to the attack.

There was considerable difference of opinion as to the advisability of the various measures taken by Frederick William's ministers, but for the most part they were unfavourably criticised. Under every other question smouldered the question of the Prussian Constitution. The king's attempt to dispose of it by a rebuff had been unsuccessful, and the means which he and his advisers employed to put down the movement were extremely infelicitous. In the Silesian Landtag (Parliament) the chief magistrate and other representatives of the town of Breslau had proposed an address from the Silesian Estates on the subject of a general assembly of the Estates of the whole kingdom--a Reichstag. The king replied by a special announcement of the procedure to be observed on the occasion of his approaching visit to Silesia, intimating that no arrangements need be made for his festive reception and entertainment in Breslau, as he would accept nothing from that town. This in May, in reference to a journey to be taken in October, and festivities of which there had as yet been no offer! And the king entered Breslau in state and was fêted after all, though the festivities were not held specially on his account, but on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Silesia with Prussia. He contented himself with deploring the absence in the invitation sent him of "expressions which would have given him heart-felt pleasure," and with declining to stay longer than a day or two on account of want of time.

Yet the king stood in need of the consent of the Estates of the realm to the carrying out of a project of the utmost importance for the whole country. The time of railways had come, and two matters had to be arranged, a loan of the money needed for the construction of State railways, and a State guarantee to the constructors of private lines. According to a law passed by Hardenberg in 1820, the consent of the Estates of the realm was imperative in both cases. The king evolved an impossible plan; he proposed to convoke an assembly of six hundred representatives chosen from the different provincial Landtage, and to let this assembly play the part of Reichstände (Estates of the realm). Metternich was obliged to interfere, and prove the utter impracticability of the scheme.[9]

[9] Sybel: _Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches_, i. 107.

It was at this juncture that a small pamphlet, _Vier Fragen eines Ostpreussen_ ("Four Questions by an East-Prussian"), made a sensation throughout the whole of Germany. The little book appeared on the spiritual horizon like the first distant flash of lightning that preludes the storm. Purporting to be printed in Mannheim, it was scattered abroad everywhere in the end of February 1841. Such careful arrangements had been made that it found its way into the booksellers' windows of every town in Prussia on the same day--every town except Berlin, where it appeared a little later, a precaution taken to prevent confiscation before the general distribution.

The Four Questions which it contained foreboded the downfall of absolute monarchy. They were: What did the Estates ask? What right had they to make such a request? What answer did they receive? What remains for them to do?

The book's answer to the first question was that, as things now stood, the people had almost no share in their own government, although the general high level of education made it natural that they should wish it. And their desire for a representative constitution, for a national parliament, was made more ardent by the fact that they possessed no other means, such, for instance, as a free press, of expressing their opinions, and that they thoroughly distrusted the king's ministers because of their arbitrariness, servility, and pietistic tendencies. To the question: What right had the Estates to make such a demand? the author replied: The right of authority, an authority declared and recognised on the 22nd of May 1815. To the third question: What answer did they receive? the reply was: A recognition of their loyalty, a rejection of their proposal, and comforting promises of some vague future indemnification. The answer to the fourth question: What remains for the Estates to do? only occupied a line and a half. It was: To demand now as a demonstrable right what they had previously solicited as an act of grace.

The earnest, impressive tone of the pamphlet, its appeal to the people's sense of justice and self-respect, aroused a keen desire to know the name of the anonymous author. He himself had sent his book to the king, with his name written on the title page: Dr. Johann Jacoby, physician in Königsberg. The king at once ordered criminal proceedings to be instituted against him. It appeared that he was a man of means, and a very highly esteemed physician. In 1831, during the first and most violent epidemic of cholera in Poland, he had gone there to study the disease. At a later period he had had a protracted quarrel with a Warsaw doctor, a regular quack, who, when the cholera broke out again in 1837, advertised his discovery of an infallible remedy for "this trivial, easily curable disease." Jacoby wrote a short scientific article in disparagement of this man. The quack wrote an answer full of insulting imputations, which he published in the Berlin newspapers. By the help of influential friends he not only managed to secure the prohibition of the publication of Jacoby's retort, but also to defeat the latter's successive appeals to the Berlin censor's superior, to the highest council of censorship, to Rochow, the Secretary of State, and to the king himself. The publishers in Hamburg, Leipzig, Grimma, Basle, and Berne, one and all refused to print the documents throwing light on this affair. Any other man would now have given up the attempt to get his reply to an attack in a contemptible newspaper article published. Not so Jacoby. Month followed upon month. The manuscript travelled thousands of miles, and was published at last in Paris, under the title of _Contribution to a Future Historical Account of the Censorship of the Press in Prussia_.

Such was Jacoby's character. Here at last was found what Young Germany so sorely needed, what even Youngest Germany with its Herwegh had not produced, that first essential in public life--a man. At last the Germany of the Forties had found a strong political leader--not a statesman in the proper sense of the word, for time showed that he was incapable of accommodating himself to circumstances, that he could not be satisfied with aiming at the attainable; but a man of inflexible will, of absolute integrity, who with indomitable courage pressed onwards to his goal.

The Government organs, the libellous press, began a systematic attack upon him. There was nothing to lay hold of in his blameless personality, but he was of Jewish descent. In a little pamphlet published by the local magnates of a small town in the neighbourhood of Königsberg under the title of _Stimme treuer Unterthanen seiner Majestät des Königs von Preussen_ ("Voice of a Few Faithful Subjects of his Majesty the King of Prussia"), we read: "Not from German, not from Christian lips did these words proceed.... East-Prussia would be disgraced if her sons had expressed such sentiments.... The seed of Jacob did not hearken to the voice of God, did not acknowledge his only begotten son, but put him to death; therefore they were cast off for ever, and scattered abroad among the nations of the earth." Presently, however, in all the booksellers' windows the portrait of Jacoby was to be seen; his face, with its clear-cut features, was surrounded by four marks of interrogation; he held his pen like a lance poised for attack.

The significance of the man who thus made his appearance was felt by the poets, even by those with least strength of character, even by Dingelstedt, who was then preparing to barter his oppositionist principles for the title of _Hofrath_ (Privy Councillor). In Dingelstedt's fine collection of poems, _Nachtwächters Weltgang_, we find one with the heading: ????, evidently addressed to the King of Prussia:

"Du weisst, was das bedeuten will? Du wirst sie mir nicht streichen? Es sind ja nur unschuldige--vier kleine Fragezeichen. Die wurzeln tief, die ragen hoch; wie die gerühmten Eichen Des freien deutschen Volkes stehn vier kleine Fragezeichen. Du wolltest sie zwar nimmer sehn in deinen weiten Reichen, Doch drängen sie sich immer auf, vier kleine Fragezeichen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Und einst, wenn du gestorben bist, als Stempel dann und Aichen Stehn gross an deinem Monument--vier kleine Fragezeichen."[10]

[10] You know the meaning of these marks? You would never dream of erasing them--four innocent little marks of interrogation? Yet they strike deep root, they mount towards heaven, like the oak, the emblem of the great, free German nation. You have done your best to annihilate them throughout your wide realms, but they persistently appear again, these four little marks of interrogation.... In years to come, when you are dead, there will stand as sign and symbol on your monument--four little marks of interrogation.

Herwegh, too, sang Jacoby's praises, as if he had a prevision that this was a man who, placed face to face with the King of Prussia, would play a more manly part than he himself had done. And the prevision was correct In November 1848, when the king replied to the deputation that waited on him to demand a change of ministers: "I will not listen to any communication on this subject," it was Jacoby who stepped forward and said: "It is the great misfortune of kings, that they will not listen to the truth." Herwegh's poem, which has a J. as headings, begins:

"Und wieder ob den Landen Lag jüngst ein schwerer Bann: Da ist ein Mann erstanden, Ein ganzer, deutscher Mann. Ein deutscher und ein freier, Wer hätte das gedacht! Dass selbst die deutsche Leier Aus ihrem Schlaf erwacht."[11]

[11] Our country in these latter days lay under a heavy ban; but, behold! there arose to deliver her one who with truth could be called a man. A German, and a freeman--who could have dreamt it? who could have looked for this awakening of the German lyre?

The proceedings against Jacoby were carried on with extraordinary vigour. In less than four weeks he was brought up for examination twenty times; ninety-six witnesses gave evidence, shop-women, cooks, and school-children among the number. His real misdemeanour was merely a transgression of the press-laws, namely circumvention of censorship. But he was accused of instigation to disaffection--for which the punishment was two years' imprisonment and disfranchisement; of _lèse-majesté_--for which the punishment was four years' penal servitude; and of high treason--punishment, "death, with application of the most severe and deterrent pains and penalties."

It was in his native town, Königsberg, that Jacoby was brought to trial; but the court there declared itself incompetent to deal with the case, seeing that it was one of high treason, and passed it on to the Kammergericht in Berlin. The Kammergericht, aware that the charge of high treason was untenable, also declared itself unqualified, and sent it back. The king was obliged to issue an order in council, requiring the Königsberg court to proceed with the trial. It was altogether to Jacoby's advantage to be tried by his fellow-citizens; but he disdained the idea of an illegal acquittal, and obstinately demanded to be tried by the Kammergericht in Berlin, since he was accused of high treason. His wish had to be complied with. He was condemned to two and a half years' imprisonment with hard labour and disfranchisement. But three years later the highest court of appeal pronounced a full and free acquittal.

In the meantime all over Germany money was collected to present him with a civic wreath; subscriptions poured in; the names of eminent men headed the lists. Once more the Government was obliged to take

## action; the subscription lists were seized, the subscribers summoned,

and a stop put to the whole proceeding. While the police and the censors were thus struggling to suppress the agitation for a free constitution, there was issued, on the 11th of August 1842, the most absurd regulation of which there is any record in the annals of an autocratically governed country--one of the country's own existing laws was added to the list of prohibited writings; it was forbidden to reprint the law of the 22nd of May 1815 (that relating to the institution of Estates of the Realm), because of its tendency to excite discontent.

In September 1842, those Prussians who had hoped to see their country under the new king shake itself free from its humiliating relations with the Emperor Nicholas, learned that Frederick William IV., in Platen's day the warm, if platonic, friend of Poland, the hater of Russian tactics, was preparing for a journey to Warsaw to meet the Czar. On the return journey the king stopped at Kalisch to inspect the monument erected there in memory of the meeting between the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia in 1813. A Russian officer, General Berg (the future castigator of Poland), translated the inscriptions for him. One of them was: "May the Almighty give His blessing to the alliance and friendship between Russia and Prussia, that it may advance the peace and prosperity of both countries and inspire fear in their common enemies!" On hearing this inscription read, the king hastened up the steps of the monument and in the dust upon its side wrote with his finger the word: Amen![12]

[12] Prutz: _Zehn Jahre_, i. pp. 237, 367, 516, &c.

XXV

THE NEUTRAL LITERATURE

Nevertheless, Frederick William IV. was, and remained, the most intellectually gifted monarch of his day; his conversation gave evidence of both intelligence and imagination. It was a principle with him that all his feelings ought to be kingly; his published letters to Humboldt, written in amusing court jargon, are bright and clever; his sayings show quickness of apprehension, easily awakened compassion, ready wit.[1] Nor can it be said that he was out of touch with the German intellectual life and literature of the day; he showed favour to all the "good" writers, and disfavour to the "bad"; but it was not long before all Oppositionist writers were included in the latter class.

In the beginning of the reign, Humboldt's was the dominating literary influence at court. Alexander von Humboldt, now eighty, the most famous scientist of the day, and a man of world-wide celebrity, kept the king well posted up in all the latest intellectual and scientific movements. His brother Wilhelm's liberal political theories had fallen into complete disrepute; to his own he dared not give expression at court; holding both superstition and reaction in abhorrence, he was a silent witness of much that was repugnant to him, though he now and again spoke his mind.[2] Honoured by the king and his intimates as the ornament of the court and the pride of his country, he took advantage of his position to further the cause of science and to say an occasional helpful word for this or that persecuted author. Published letters show that, before 1848, the king treated Humboldt with a sort of playful familiarity, though there was no real, deep sympathy between the two men. After 1848, when the Kreuzzeitung party became all-powerful, Humboldt gave expression to his annoyance at having lost his influence, in such remarks as, "It is no longer possible to amuse the king;" or, "the king persists in wasting fruitless affection on persons whom he has taken into favour." Amiability was not his characteristic at court; he was often sarcastic, and became angry when Ranke's political opinions found more favour than his. He was disliked by many, amongst others by the queen, who disapproved of his attachment to Louis Philippe and his family. He was in the habit of reading aloud all varieties of literature, but never his own writings; most frequently he read the _Journal des Débats_, whilst the king sat planning landscapes and architectural drawings.

Another of those who read aloud to the royal family was Tieck, whom the king had brought to Berlin from Dresden. Though Tieck was considerably younger than Humboldt, court life was a burden to him because of his bodily infirmity. Shakespeare and Kleist were the authors he most frequently read from. The king ordered Tieck's own old fairy play, _Puss in Boots_, to be performed in Berlin, it was like the appearance of some antiquated spectre. At the king's instigation Tieck put the _Antigone_ of Sophocles on the stage, and Mendelssohn composed music for it. But Tieck was only one of literature's invalided soldiers. When the court dined in the garden of Sans Souci, he was afraid of draughts, even on the warmest days.

Another once famous author of the Romantic period whom the king called to Berlin was La Motte Fouqué. Though not much over sixty, this writer had completely outlived his reputation. His romances seemed to the younger generation to belong to a pre-historic period. People were tired of tales of chivalry and the service of love (_Minnedienst_) told in a conventionally childish style; his unhistorical conception of past times and his sanctimoniousness aroused derision. Had it not been for the king's support, he would have died in want and oblivion.

In 1841, chiefly on the recommendation of Varnhagen, the king invited to Berlin a great poet who did not belong to the Romantic school. This was Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866). Rückert was only fifty-three, but he did not belong to the period in which he lived; he was the expression in the literature of the day of that German universality which is unaffected by circumstances, of the gift of appropriation, absorption and imitation of the peculiarities of all other races. All his life long he shook poems out of his sleeve with a truly astonishing skill. As a young man he was initiated by Joseph von Hammer into the literatures of Arabia, Persia, and Turkey, and in 1826 he was appointed lecturer in Oriental languages at the University of Erlangen, but his duties as lecturer he constantly tried to evade.