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 Form L-9-15m-7,'32
 
 SOCIAL FORCES 
 
 IN 
 
 GERMAN LITERATURE, 
 
 A Study in the History of Civilisation. 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE, Ph. D., 
 
 Professor of German Literature, in Harvard 
 University. 
 
 [Second Edition.] 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 .897. 
 
 :173
 
 Glimpses of 
 Modern German Culture
 
 Glimpses of 
 Modern German Culture 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE 
 ^Professor at Harvard University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1898 
 
 3
 
 Copyright, 1898, by 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 Zfye £orfc $aftimorc (preee 
 
 THE KRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
 BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.
 
 
 35GI 
 
 TO MY WIFE
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introductory. The Conflicts of Modern 
 
 Germany 9 
 
 I. The Leibniz Day of the Berlin Acad- 
 emy of Sciences . . . .16 
 
 II. The Socialist Situation . . .28 
 
 III. Wildenbruch's "King Henry" and 
 
 Hauptmann's " Florian Geyer " . 42 
 
 IV. Johanna Ambrosius . . . .57 
 
 V. Karoline von Gunderode and Fried- 
 rich Creuzer 69 
 
 VI. Hauptmann's "The Sunken Bell" . 85 
 
 VII. Hermann Grimm 98 
 
 VIII. Impressions of Industrial and Patri- 
 archal Germany . . . .113 
 
 IX. Max Halbe's "Mother Earth" . 129 
 
 X. Sudermann's "John the Baptist" . 142 
 
 XI. Arnold Bocklin 154 
 
 XII. Heinrich Seidel 166 
 
 XIII. Peter Rosegger 180 
 
 XIV. Bismarck as a National Type . . 195
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The Conflicts of Modern Germany. 
 
 Germany is at present the classic land of 
 moral contrasts. Nowhere is the conflict 
 between the powers temporal and spirit- 
 ual, between traditional creeds and per- 
 sonal convictions, between autocracy and 
 freedom being waged with greater inten- 
 sity or deeper rooted bitterness. Nowhere 
 is there such a variety of parties bent on 
 mutual annihilation. 
 
 The strife between church and state 
 which in the seventies flamed up with such 
 a sinister glare, is at present smouldering 
 under the ashes. But it would be a mis- 
 take to think that the passions which at 
 that time seemed to set the whole nation 
 on fire had spent their force. As long as
 
 io Glimpses of 
 
 there is on the one hand a centralised em- 
 pire claiming absolute control over the in- 
 tellectual and moral training of all its sub- 
 jects, on the other an infallible papacy 
 claiming superhuman authority and de- 
 manding unconditional submission to its 
 divine laws, there can be no real and en- 
 during public peace, there can be at best 
 a temporary cessation of hostilities, and at 
 any moment the perennial dispute between 
 king and pontiff may break out again. 
 
 Even less veiled than this war between 
 the powers temporal and spiritual is the 
 conflict between monarchy and democracy. 
 There can be no doubt that this is the real 
 point at issue between the Socialist labour 
 party and the imperial Government. On 
 the surface it is a question of labour organi- 
 sation, of the distribution of wealth, of 
 strikes and wages; at bottom it is a ques- 
 tion of life and death between the divine 
 right of kings and popular autonomy. Well
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 
 
 enough do the upholders of the monarchy 
 know that the Socialist state of the future 
 is a harmless Utopia, a humanitarian dream 
 which would vanish into air at the first real 
 attempt to put it into practice. This is 
 not what they fear. What they do fear 
 and what they resist with the grim ardour 
 of men attacked in the very stronghold 
 of their innermost convictions is the under- 
 mining of military authority, the shattering 
 of the belief in the royalist legend, the 
 spread of republican ideas — the real dan- 
 gers to the monarchy which the Socialist 
 propaganda of the last twenty-five years 
 has conjured up. Hence the wholesale 
 prosecution of Socialist editors, the endless 
 trials for lese majesty, the organised efforts 
 to suppress free thought by means of an 
 approved theology, the ever repeated at- 
 tempts to curtail the political franchise, — 
 measures of war which, of course, have 
 no other effect but to strengthen and ce-
 
 1 2 Glimpses of 
 
 ment the ranks of the opposition and to 
 inspire them with a determined devotion 
 to a cause which is glorified by martyrdom. 
 And the same thorough-going, one 
 might say exalted, fierceness characterises 
 the third great struggle that disturbs the 
 public peace of Germany: the struggle be- 
 tween industrial bondage and industrial 
 freedom. Nowhere are the lines between 
 employer and employed more sharply 
 drawn than in Germany, nowhere is there 
 more of class feeling. But this very fact 
 has given to the German labour movement 
 a compactness and solidarity superior to 
 that of most other countries; it has imbued 
 it with a firm belief in the final victory of 
 right that has something of a religious fer- 
 vour; it has made it a movement of an emi- 
 nently educational character; and I am in- 
 clined to think that the Socialist working- 
 men of Germany stand higher than the 
 workingmen of most other countries in
 
 Modern German Culture 1 3 
 
 intellectual drill, in political discipline, and 
 in respect for the ideal concerns of life. 
 
 These are the contradictions of public 
 life in contemporary Germany. But there 
 are contradictions also in the individual life 
 of the cultivated German of to-day: above 
 all the contradiction between the material- 
 istic tendencies of our own, predominantly 
 scientific age and the ideal cravings be- 
 queathed to us by a past excelling in liter- 
 ary and aesthetic refinement. In no single 
 individual has this contrast received a more 
 striking embodiment than in that strangely 
 paradoxical poet-philosopher, whose rhap- 
 sodic, half inspired, half crazy utterances 
 have had such a dazzling, though stimulat- 
 ing, influence on the present generation of 
 German writers and artists: I mean, of 
 course, in Friedrich Nietzsche. Here we 
 see on the one hand a most delicate per- 
 ception of the finest operations of the mind, 
 a penetrating analysis of the most tender 
 instincts and longings of the human soul,
 
 H Glimpses of 
 
 a revelling in artistic enjoyment, a glorifi- 
 cation of the most sublimated culture — 
 and on the other hand, a savage delight in 
 the underlying selfishness and brutality of 
 all life, a ruthless exaltation of might over 
 right, a diabolical contempt for spiritual 
 endeavour, an hysterical apotheosis of the 
 "blond beast," of the " Uebermensch," 
 and of cavalier morality. No wonder that 
 Nietzsche himself in this whirlpool of con- 
 flicting emotions should have lost his bal- 
 ance, that the night of insanity should have 
 closed in upon him and extinguished the 
 lights of that exultant life which he loved 
 so much. 
 
 I have laid emphasis on the multitude of 
 moral conflicts that beset contemporary 
 Germany, not from any desire to paint 
 gloom, but on the contrary, because I 
 think that from the very friction of these 
 opposing tendencies there has arisen the 
 new life in art and literature which is char- 
 acterised by such names as Wildenbruch,
 
 Modern German Culture 1 5 
 
 Sudermann, Hauptmann, Boecklin. No- 
 valis has defined individual genius as. a 
 plurality of personalities combined in one. 
 Similarly, one might say that the German 
 people is at present giving signs of genius 
 because of the variety of opposing ideals 
 which are struggling for supremacy in the 
 national heart. He would be of little faith, 
 indeed, who would deplore this struggle as 
 a sign of national disintegration. 
 
 The following sketches (nine of which 
 have previously appeared in The Nation, 
 four in The Bookman, one in The At- 
 lantic) are a slight attempt to describe some 
 of the symptoms of the eager activity indi- 
 cated in the preceding remarks. Written 
 partly in Berlin, partly in ■ Cambridge, 
 under the immediate impression of the mo- 
 . ment, they disclaim explicitly the sober 
 impartiality of second thought; although 
 readers familiar with my " Social Forces in 
 German Literature " will find here the same 
 basis of fundamental convictions.
 
 1 6 Glimpses of 
 
 L— THE LEIBNIZ DAY OF THE 
 
 BERLIN ACADEMY OF 
 
 SCIENCES 
 
 July, 1895. 
 
 It is eminently fitting that the Berlin Acad- 
 emy should annually celebrate the memory 
 of Leibniz — not only because Leibniz was 
 the virtual founder of this, the foremost of 
 Germany's learned institutions, but chiefly 
 because he was the first great representa- 
 tive among the Germans of what is implied 
 in the somewhat unfortunate term, modern 
 culture. Leibniz stands midway between 
 Luther and Goethe. He first reduced to 
 philosophic reasoning the individualistic 
 view of the universe which had been at the 
 bottom of the Reformation movement, and 
 which was to find its fullest artistic expres-
 
 Modern German Culture 1 7 
 
 sion in the classic epoch of eighteenth-cen- 
 tury literature. At a time when the Thirty 
 Years' War and its disastrous conse- 
 quences had crushed all national hopes, 
 his philosophy formed a rallying-point for 
 higher-striving minds, and opened up the 
 prospect of an ultimate, though distant, 
 resurrection of the German people. 
 
 If Descartes, Locke, and even Spinoza 
 look at the world as a huge mechanism in 
 which there is little room left for sponta- 
 neous activity and self-assertion, Leibniz 
 considers it as an aggregate of an infi- 
 nite multitude of independent intellectual 
 forces. There is mind in everything. The 
 body is nothing but mind contracted into 
 form : " Omne corpus est mens momenta- 
 nea." Between plant, animal, and man 
 there is a difference of degree only, not of 
 quality. The whole world is engaged in 
 a process of continual change, transition, 
 perfection. There is an unbroken line of
 
 1 8 Glimpses of 
 
 development from the sleeping life of a 
 seed-corn to the free consciousness of a 
 full-grown man; from the gloomy egotism 
 of the savage to the broad, enlightened 
 charity of the sage. God is the supreme 
 wisdom and the supreme love. From an 
 infinite number of possible worlds he has 
 chosen the actual world as the best. He 
 has created it, and is therefore outside of 
 it : but he has constituted it in such a man- 
 ner that it needs no guidance except 
 through its own intrinsic laws. He has 
 so arranged it that all individual forces 
 work together harmoniously and for a 
 common end. Evil itself is only a less per- 
 fect good. An admiring insight into this 
 harmony of the universe is man's highest 
 happiness and virtue. It is happiness, be- 
 cause it gives us trust in the reasonableness 
 of things and makes us accept all that may 
 befall us, pain no less than pleasure, as the 
 dispensation of a divine providence. It is
 
 Modern German Culture 19 
 
 virtue, because it helps us to overcome all 
 littleness, puts before us the ideal of a com- 
 plete existence, and teaches us through 
 self-perfection to take part in the better- 
 ment of the race. 
 
 Strange and enigmatic as this curious 
 mixture of scientific ideas and mythologi- 
 cal images must appear to an age which 
 has accustomed itself to approach all ques- 
 tions without the bias of the supernatural, 
 it is none the less clear that the leading 
 thought of the nineteenth century, the idea 
 of organic evolution, is here at least fore- 
 shadowed. And however well deserved 
 the fame of Leibniz the antiquarian, the 
 linguist, the mathematician, the exact in- 
 vestigator, may be, his true significance 
 lies in this divinatory conception of the 
 world as a living whole. 
 
 Both the environment and the spirit of 
 the assemblage which, the day before yes- 
 terday, gathered in the modest hall of the
 
 20 Glimpses of 
 
 Berlin Academy of Sciences to do homage 
 to this great man, were thoroughly char- 
 acteristic of the prevailing tendencies — 
 patent or hidden — in modern German life. 
 Perhaps the most conspicuous thing about 
 it was the complete absence of anything 
 even approaching public interest in the 
 matter. Suppose there were some stated 
 day on which the memory of Locke or 
 Hume was celebrated at Harvard Univer- 
 sity — a day on which men like William 
 James, John Fiske, Brinton, Gildersleeve, 
 Child (to take at random a few names sug- 
 gested by the thought of a possible Ameri- 
 can Academy) could be heard or seen — a 
 day, moreover, which would lend itself 
 naturally to the most delightful afternoon 
 teas and receptions — a day on which the 
 latest spring gown could be worn to the 
 best advantage; then all the elements nec- 
 essary for a most emphatically social time 
 in the electric cars between Boston and
 
 Modern German Culture 2 1 
 
 Cambridge would be given. The Berlin 
 public evidently are so saturated with intel- 
 ligence and culture that they are above the 
 vulgar desire to see and hear distinguished 
 men. And thus it happened that the Leib- 
 niz day of the Royal Academy, an occasion 
 in which men of world-wide fame, like 
 Mommsen, Curtius, Virchow, Harnack, Du 
 Bois-Reymond, were sure to participate, 
 attracted, apart from the friends and guests 
 of the Academicians themselves, not more 
 than a little group of students and foreign 
 visitors — all told, an audience of some 
 three hundred people; while in the daily 
 press it was hardly mentioned, either be- 
 fore or after. 
 
 Another characteristic feature of the 
 meeting — and a most agreeable one — was 
 its absolute simplicity and freedom from 
 formality. The only official representative 
 of the Government present was Dr. Bosse, 
 the Minister of Public Instruction, and he
 
 22 Glimpses of 
 
 was a few minutes late. That Mommsen, 
 the presiding officer, did not wait for him 
 in opening the proceedings, seemed to me 
 an accident of almost symbolical signifi- 
 cance. Bureaucracy and militarism have 
 not yet penetrated into the sanctuary of 
 science, thank God ! Not a single uniform 
 was to be seen in the audience; not a single 
 lady whom one would have felt tempted to 
 address with " Gnadige Frau." The pre- 
 dominant types were earnest, unpreten- 
 tious, and determined-looking men, and 
 simple and benevolent-looking housewives. 
 Even boys and girls were there, sitting 
 quietly and modestly with their parents. 
 It was altogether a family affair of Berlin's 
 best men. 
 
 To me the most interesting figure was 
 Mommsen. He sat by the side of Curtius, 
 and the two together appeared an almost 
 perfect embodiment of the ideal scholar. 
 Curtius, though he has rallied from his re-
 
 Modern German Culture 
 
 cent accident with wonderful elasticity, yet 
 gives the impression of one whose thoughts 
 do not dwell any longer on this earth. 
 The far-away look of his eye and the mel- 
 ancholy smile that plays around his lips — 
 these characteristic expressions of his es- 
 sentially lyric temper — have been accentu- 
 ated by the approach of the end, and sur- 
 round him more than ever with a curious 
 dreamy charm. Mommsen, on the other 
 hand, seems to have been only steeled and 
 invigorated by old age. His voice is as 
 keen and penetrating as ever, his eye has 
 still the same inexorable, sibylline glance 
 as of old; and the sarcastic lines that run 
 from nose to chin are perhaps even more 
 marked than they used to be. But, at the 
 same time, there is spread over his face a 
 certain softness which was formerly absent, 
 and the nervousness of his manner has en- 
 tirely disappeared. 
 
 The exercises of the day consisted in an
 
 24 Glimpses of 
 
 opening address by Mommsen, in the intia- 
 tion, also by Mommsen, of some newly 
 elected members, among them Erich 
 Schmidt and Adolf Erman; and in a memo- 
 rial address on Helmholtz by Du Bois- 
 Reymond. While the latter was in the 
 main biographical, and offered little that 
 was either new or of universal interest, 
 there was a terseness, a poignancy, a free- 
 dom in all that Mommsen said, which was 
 simply irresistible. The central subject of 
 his remarks was the relation of the special- 
 ist to the whole system of human knowl- 
 edge. " Are we truly assembled here in 
 the spirit of Leibniz? " he asked. " Can 
 we truly call ourselves his disciples? " The 
 answer to this question seems at first sight 
 to be a negative one. To Leibniz the in- 
 dividual fact had no significance except as 
 a link in the whole of a well-rounded and 
 complete view of the world; and he him- 
 self mastered all the details of a systematic
 
 Modern German Culture 25 
 
 view of the world which was the fruit of 
 his own thought and his own researches in 
 nearly every domain of science. To us the 
 isolated fact is only too often the final goal 
 of investigation; and as for mastering the 
 system of knowledge as a whole, none of 
 us is a master, we are all journeymen. " Un- 
 ser Werk lobt keinen Meister; nicht wir 
 beherrschen die Wissenschaft, die Wissen- 
 schaft beherrscht uns." If, then, through 
 specialisation of work we have lost the uni- 
 versal culture and true humanity which for 
 Leibniz was still attainable, it would yet be 
 a grave mistake to condemn on that ac- 
 count the tendency of specialisation. On 
 the contrary, it is the specialist — i. e., the 
 specialist who looks beyond the isolated 
 fact — who is to lead us back to culture and 
 humanity. Only from him can we expect 
 the elucidation of the organic unity of all 
 knowledge; only he can penetrate to the 
 one source of all life. It is, therefore, he,
 
 26 Glimpses of 
 
 and not the compiler, who truly represents 
 the conception of science as an organic 
 whole; and of him more truly than of any 
 one else can it be said that he walks in the 
 footsteps of Leibniz. 
 
 While this was the general trend of 
 Mommsen's discourse, it was perfectly ap- 
 parent that through it all there ran an un- 
 dercurrent of protest against recent politi- 
 cal developments, against the autocratic 
 rule of the present Emperor and the con- 
 stantly growing overbearance of Prussian 
 officialdom. It was undoubtedly intended 
 for the ears of the Minister of Public In- 
 struction, who, by the way, sat directly op- 
 posite him, when Mommsen remarked that 
 the time seemed forever gone when a dis- 
 tinguished scholar like Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt could at the same time be a Prus- 
 sian Minister of State. It was an unmistak- 
 able reproof of the Emperor's extraordi- 
 nary treatment of the venerable Von Sybel
 
 Modern German Culture 
 
 when Mommsen spoke of the relation of 
 Frederick the Great — " Friedrichs des Ein- 
 zigen" — to the members of the Acdemy 
 as something which would be simply im- 
 possible at present. It was a direct con- 
 demnation of contemporary Byzantinism 
 and a plea for a freer and nobler view of life 
 than that held by modern worshipers of 
 might, when in the words of welcome ad- 
 dressed to Erich Schmidt, he called it the 
 task of the historian of German literature 
 " to lead the age of William back to the 
 age of Schiller and Goethe." And thus 
 there was heard even in this peaceful gath- 
 ering an echo of the conflict which is di- 
 viding modern Germany into two hostile 
 camps — a conflict of which we thus far 
 have witnessed only the beginning.
 
 28 Glimpses of 
 
 II.— THE SOCIALIST SITUATION 
 
 August, 1895. 
 
 The little town of Kolberg in Pomera- 
 nia, so famous for the bravery displayed by 
 its citizens during the Napoleonic invasion, 
 was recently the scene of a somewhat re- 
 markable incident. As is not unusual in 
 German watering-places, the bathing es- 
 tablishments of Kolberg are under the su- 
 pervision of the municipal government, 
 and the principal hotel of the town, the so- 
 called Strandschloss, is city property. As 
 the dining-hall of this hotel is the largest 
 hall in the town, it has come to be the cus- 
 tomary meeting-place for political parties 
 of every description. Some weeks ago 
 Bebel, the Socialist leader, was to give an 
 address in Kolberg. The local committee
 
 Modem German Culture 29 
 
 of the Socialist party applied' to the mayor 
 for the use of the Strandschloss hall on this 
 occasion, and the mayor, himself a Liberal 
 of long standing and a man without any 
 Socialistic affiliations, granted the request. 
 The meeting took place, and is universally 
 reported to have been perfectly orderly and 
 well behaved. 
 
 So far so good. But now the matter 
 begins to be interesting. No sooner have 
 the state authorities, the Landrat of the 
 district of Kolberg and the Regierungs- 
 Prasident of the province of Pomerania, 
 been informed of the mayor's compliance 
 with the Socialist petition than they divine 
 treason. The Landrat endeavours to in- 
 duce the commander of the Kolberg gar- 
 rison to withdraw the regimental band 
 from the daily concerts in the Strand- 
 schloss Park; the Regierungs-Prasident 
 countermands an official dinner which was 
 to be held in the Strandschloss, and, at
 
 30 Glimpses of 
 
 the same time, requests from the mayor a 
 prompt justification of the motives that 
 have led him to an act calculated to en- 
 danger the commercial interests as well as 
 the good repute of the city of Kolberg. 
 And when the mayor, in his reply, declares 
 his conduct to have been actuated by the 
 demands of simple, common justice, he is 
 fined to the amount of ninety marks for 
 misbehaviour and neglect of duty. 
 
 Extraordinary as these facts are, they re- 
 ceive their proper relief only through the 
 correspondence between Regierungs-Prasi- 
 dent and mayor occasioned by them. The 
 Regierungs-Prasident distinctly affirms it 
 to be incompatible with good morals and 
 public decency to have any relations what- 
 soever with " a party which has written the 
 overthrow of the existing social order, of 
 the monarchy, and the Christian religion 
 on its banner." The mayor asserts with 
 equal directness that to deprive the Social-
 
 Modern German Culture 3 1 
 
 ists of the rights granted to all other po- 
 litical parties is simply shutting one's eyes 
 to the fact that of all German parties they 
 are, numerically at least, the strongest: 
 
 " He who does not want to sit where 
 Socialists have sat, will nowadays be some- 
 what embarassed to find a seat anywhere 
 in Germany; at least he cannot any longer 
 travel in railway carriages. What we eat 
 and drink is for the most part made by 
 Socialists. Our clothes have been manu- 
 factured by Socialist workingmen. You 
 cannot live in a new house in the building 
 of which Socialists have not been engaged. 
 In short, to avoid Socialists or to stigmatise 
 them as a class outside of the pale of re- 
 spectable society is an absolutely futile task. 
 Only by acknowledging them as a public 
 factor on an equality with all other public 
 factors can the social peace be furthered.'' 
 
 In this Kolberg incident we have in a 
 nutshell the whole of the political situation
 
 32 Glimpses of 
 
 in Germany with regard to Socialism. The 
 Government, on the one hand, since the 
 defeat of the famous anti-revolution bill, 
 is more eagerly than ever resorting to a 
 policy of small advantages and petty perse- 
 cutions. Hardly a day passes without the 
 conviction of some obscure enemy of so- 
 ciety, or without the dissolution of some 
 Socialistic organisation. Since the courts 
 in all cases of lese-majesty — one of the 
 most common forms of Socialistic crimes — 
 adopt secret sessions, it is impossible to 
 get anything like full knowledge of this 
 part of the anti-Socialist warfare. But 
 there can be little doubt that the ma- 
 jority of cases is not very different from 
 one which was tried before a Berlin court 
 a few days ago and of which there was 
 given out the following official report : " A 
 butcher, Franz Rautenberg, having made 
 some contemptuous remarks about the 
 Emperor, was convicted of lese-majesty.
 
 Modern German Culture 33 
 
 Although the incriminating utterances were 
 not of an out-and-out insulting nature, the 
 court fixed the sentence at six months' im- 
 prisonment, since the defendant had al- 
 ready served a previous term of two 
 months for blasphemy, and consequently 
 must be considered as predisposed to crim- 
 inal acts of this kind." 
 
 In cases like this it is only an individual, 
 and perhaps a worthless one, who is hurled 
 by the defenders of morality into utter 
 moral ruin. But it is not individuals only, 
 it is above all the party organisations 
 against which the saviours of society di- 
 rect their hollow weapons. That in Ham- 
 burg a few weeks ago one hundred and 
 fifty working-women were fined fifteen 
 marks each for belonging to a club in 
 which political matters were discussed (the 
 privilege of forming political organisations 
 being reserved to men), may have been 
 reported even in American newspapers.
 
 34 Glimpses of 
 
 Less striking, but none the less significant, 
 is a case which recently happened in Cope- 
 nick, a little town near Berlin. There ex- 
 ists in Copenick a Socialist Wahlverein, 
 comprising some twelve to sixteen mem- 
 bers, who meet as a rule every two weeks. 
 At one of their last meetings they were 
 surprised to see a policeman enter at ten 
 o'clock and demand an adjournment, on 
 account of the " Polizeistunde " having 
 struck. The members of the club naturally 
 protested against this action, pleading that 
 their club as a closed society was not sub- 
 ject to the ordinary police regulations. 
 But the Oberverwaltungs-Gericht, before 
 which, as the highest tribunal, this protest, 
 in the ordinary course of judicial proceed- 
 ings, was carried, decided that, inasmuch 
 as the club in question had not a fixed 
 membership, but could be joined on pay- 
 ment of a small fee by any sympathiser 
 with the Socialist cause, it was not a closed
 
 Modern German Culture 35 
 
 society; that its meetings were not private 
 meetings, but public gatherings, and there- 
 fore subject to all the regulations which are 
 in force for public gatherings; that, in 
 short, every one of its meetings must be 
 announced beforehand to the police au- 
 thorities and must be attended by a police 
 officer. 
 
 It is clear that this decision of the Ober- 
 verwaltungs-Gericht, if carried out con- 
 sistently, will put a speedy end in Prussia 
 to all political clubs which, for one reason 
 or another, are inconvenient to the Gov- 
 ernment. For it would be hard to find a 
 political club of any description the mem- 
 bership of which was not equally elastic 
 with that of the Copenick Wahlverein, and 
 would not consequently come under the 
 same kind of police supervision. And it 
 is not surprising that already the larger 
 Socialist organisations, as, for instance, the 
 Berlin Freie Volksbiihne, which at present
 
 36 Glimpses of 
 
 is a body of some 8,000 members admitted 
 by the payment of a small fee, are prepar- 
 ing for voluntary dissolution, of course 
 only in order to carry on their work un- 
 molested by official interference, under the 
 disguise of some other less compact and 
 palpable form. 
 
 While the Government is thus wasting 
 its strength in the futile attempt to fight 
 the Socialist propaganda with petty police 
 annoyances, the country seems to be re- 
 sistlessly drifting into the arms of this very 
 propaganda. 
 
 It is a sad fact, but it is none the less a 
 fact, that, twenty-five years after the foun- 
 dation of the German Empire, German 
 party life has reached a degree of confusion 
 hardly less obnoxious than was the ab- 
 sence of all parliamentary institutions under 
 the old Bundestag regime. There is act- 
 ually not a single German party, except the 
 Social Democratic, which, either on account
 
 Modern German Culture 37 
 
 of its size or the consistency of its pro- 
 gramme, seems destined to be a controlling 
 power in national affairs. The Conserva- 
 tives, naturally the allies of a government 
 which for generations has been accustomed 
 to rely principally on the unwavering sup- 
 port of the landed gentry, have been forced 
 into a perfectly untenable position through 
 their exclusively agrarian policy and their 
 consequent opposition to the governmental 
 policy of a tentative free trade. The Cen- 
 tre party, since the death of Windthorst, 
 the only man who was able to control 
 its centrifugal tendencies, is more and 
 more tending towards an open rupture 
 between its feudal and its radical ele- 
 ments. And, what is most momentous 
 of all, the very class which, after all, 
 has had the largest share in securing 
 to Germany her present position as a 
 leading power among the nations of the 
 world in intellectual, industrial, and com- 
 
 173
 
 3 8 Glimpses of 
 
 mercial progress — the " bourgeoisie " — 
 is politically reduced to absolute impo- 
 tence: whatever there is left of the old 
 Liberal party is a mere name and shadow. 
 It is only natural that this condition 
 of things — a condition unquestionably 
 brought about through the Bismarckian 
 policy of playing off one party against an- 
 other without allowing either to obtain a 
 share in the government — should have led 
 to a general discontent and uneasiness 
 throughout the German land, the intensity 
 of which it would be hard to overestimate. 
 The farmer declaims against the commer- 
 cial treaties with Russia and Austria, which 
 are ruining his wheat trade; the manufact- 
 urer rebels against the burden imposed 
 upon him through the accident- and old- 
 age insurance laws, the bureaucratic pro- 
 visions of which seem to make the larger 
 part of the contributions intended for the 
 benefit of the labourer go to maintain an
 
 Modern German Culture 39 
 
 army of petty administrative officers; the 
 small tradesman and artisan clamour 
 against the ruthless monopoly of trusts, 
 and demand the restitution of the old-time 
 guilds; and everybody is disgusted with a 
 government on which it is impossible to 
 place any reliance, a government which 
 will undo to-morrow what it has done to- 
 day, a government which is nothing but a 
 tool in the hands of a restless, impetuous, 
 and eccentric sovereign of the Stuart order. 
 Is it surprising that, under these circum- 
 stances, the only party which is unwilling 
 to make any compromise with the ruling- 
 system, which stands unwaveringly by the 
 programme of a radical democracy, should 
 rapidly increase its ranks? Is it, in other 
 words, surprising that the Socialist party 
 is fast developing into the only formidable 
 opposition party, so that the time may be 
 foreseen when the Socialist leaders will at 
 the same time be among the foremost lead- 
 ers of Parliament?
 
 4o Glimpses of 
 
 That, on the other hand, this very party 
 is more and more losing its exclusively 
 socialistic character, that it is more and 
 more converting itself into a party of peace- 
 ful, though radical reform, that it looks to 
 a final absorption of all the liberal elements 
 of the country, is a fact which only the 
 blindest fanaticism can deny. The time is 
 long past when the Socialist meetings were 
 gatherings of the mob. To-day the So- 
 cialist organisations which devote them- 
 selves to the elevation of the masses, to 
 the spreading of moral and political en- 
 lightenment, to the cultivation of science, 
 literature, music, and other forms of intel- 
 lectual refinement, are legion. To-day, it 
 is a principle adopted by the rank and file 
 as well as by the leaders of the party, that 
 the only way to combat successfully the 
 ruling system of militarism and officialdom 
 is the peaceful revolutionising of minds, 
 not a violent convulsion of the social order.
 
 Modern German Culture 4 1 
 
 And if the present development is allowed 
 to go on unchecked by international con- 
 flicts or other complications, we may look 
 forward to the formation of a party resting 
 on the broad masses of the working popu- . 
 lation and the small trades people, but 
 reaching out into the sphere of the well- 
 to-do burgherdom and yeomanry; and this 
 party will control the majority of the 
 Reichstag. When this moment arrives, the 
 real struggle for civic freedom in Germany 
 will begin.
 
 4 2 Glimpses of 
 
 III. — WILDENBRUCH'S "KING 
 
 HENRY" AND HAUPT- 
 
 MANN'S " FLORIAN 
 
 GEYER " 
 
 May, 1896. 
 
 Ernst von Wildenbruch and Gerhart 
 Hauptmann are, in a way, representatives of 
 two extremes in contemporary German 
 literature. Wildenbruch, fiery, passionate, 
 rhetorical; Hauptmann, dreamy, brood- 
 ing, visionary. Wildenbruch, an ardent 
 monarchist, a zealous supporter of the 
 present regime, seeing the salvation of 
 Germany in a continued supremacy of 
 Bismarckian principles; Hauptmann, a 
 Democrat if not a Socialist, in deepest 
 sympathy with the sufferings of the " dis- 
 inherited," hoping for the millennium of
 
 Modern German Culture 43 
 
 universal brotherhood. Wildenbruch, an 
 idealist of the straightforward, tmreflective 
 type, sunny, serene, somewhat inclined to- 
 ward melodramatic effects; Hauptmann, a 
 strange mixture of a pessimistic realism 
 and of a mystic faith in the glory of the 
 unseen, disdaining all that is not absolutely 
 genuine and true. Wildenbruch the great- 
 er playwright; Hauptmann the greater 
 poet. This contrast of artistic temper, 
 while it marks the whole literary career of 
 the two men, has never been brought out 
 more conspicuously than in the two great 
 historical dramas which have been the 
 event of the year on the Berlin stage: 
 Hauptmann's " Florian Geyer " and Wil- 
 denbruch's " Heinrich und Heinrichs 
 Geschlecht." 
 
 That Wildenbruch's " Heinrich " should 
 have easily carried off the crown of popu- 
 lar success, is not surprising. As a stage 
 show it is simply overwhelming. Here
 
 44 Glimpses of 
 
 we have all the brilliancy of diction, the 
 intensity of action, the irresistible surging 
 up to a grand climax which give eternal 
 youth to Schiller's dramas; and, added 
 thereto, we have the lifelikeness, the pal- 
 pability, the breadth of detail, in which 
 modern realism revels. Here we see, in- 
 deed, the gigantic figure of History her- 
 self striding over the stage, but we also 
 see our own feelings, longings, and aspi- 
 rations embodied in human forms, and rec- 
 ognise them as the real movers and mak- 
 ers of national destinies. The subject of 
 the drama is a struggle which, as Bis- 
 mark has said, dates back to the days when 
 Agamemnon quarrelled with Calchas, the 
 struggle between king and priest. The 
 principal combatants in this struggle are 
 Henry IV and Gregory VII; the prize for 
 which it is fought out is Germany. With 
 true dramatic instinct Wildenbruch 
 throughout the play — which is intended
 
 Modern German Culture 45 
 
 for two successive evenings — maintains 
 himself on the very height of his subject; 
 he leaps, as it were, from catastrophe to 
 catastrophe, leaving it to the imagination 
 of his hearers to make its way after him 
 through the dark glens and ravines that 
 lead up to these shining mountain peaks. 
 
 In the beginning we see Henry as a boy, 
 an impetuous, imperious youth, smarting 
 under the discipline of a fanatically relig- 
 ious mother, burning with the desire to 
 equal the fame of his heroic father, at last 
 thrust into the prison walls of monastic as- 
 ceticism under the tutorship of Anno, 
 Archbishop of Cologne. Next he appears 
 as King, in the acme of his power. He 
 has subdued the rebellious Saxons; he en- 
 ters triumphantly his faithful Worms; he is 
 received by the citizens as the protector of 
 civil freedom against princely tyranny and 
 clerical arrogance; all Germany seems to 
 rise in a grand ovation to her beloved lead-
 
 46 Glimpses of 
 
 er. Intoxicated by his success, he resents 
 all the more deeply the paternal admoni- 
 tions of Pope Gregory about the looseness 
 of his private life which are just then con- 
 veyed to him; he insists on being crowned 
 Emperor at once; and, when this request 
 is not complied with, he allows himself to 
 be carried away by his indomitable wrath, 
 he forces his bishops into that insulting let- 
 ter by which Gregory is declared a usurper, 
 a felon, a blasphemer, to be driven out 
 from the sanctuary of the Church which he 
 pollutes by his presence. 
 
 And now we are introduced to the other 
 great character of the drama, to the oppo- 
 site of this fiery, unmanageable young 
 ruler, to Gregory, the self-possessed and 
 .self-abasing priest, the man in whose soul 
 there seems to be no room for any passion 
 except the passion for the cause of the 
 Church, for the triumph of the spirit over 
 the flesh, and who nevertheless harbours in
 
 Modern German Culture 47 
 
 his breast, unknown to himself, the most 
 consuming ambition and the most colossal 
 egotism. We see him sitting in cathedra 
 in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 
 Suppliants and criminals are brought be- 
 fore him. A Flemish count, who has com- 
 mitted murder, and who has in vain fled 
 throughout the length and breadth of 
 Europe in quest of delivery from the 
 anguish of his tormented conscience, 
 beseeches the Pope to put an end to 
 his wretched life; Gregory, instead, holds 
 out to him the hope of salvation 
 through joining a crusade. A Roman 
 noble, who in robber knight fashion has 
 made an assault upon the Pope, and 
 who by the clergy and the people has been 
 condemned to death for this crime, is par- 
 doned by Gregory — " for he has sinned, 
 not against the Church, the holy one, but 
 against Gregory, a poor, feeble mortal." 
 A lay brother of St. Peter's who, disguised
 
 48 Glimpses of 
 
 as priest, has taken money from foreign 
 pilgrims for reading mass to them, and 
 who by the clergy and the people has been 
 sentenced to a fine and exile, is ordered by 
 Gregory to be thrown into the Tiber — "for 
 he has sinned against the Church, he has 
 cheated human souls of their salvation." 
 
 These scenes have just passed before our 
 eyes when the messengers of King Henry, 
 bearing „the letter of libel and vilification, 
 are admitted. Gregory is the only one who 
 in the tumult that follows its reading re- 
 mains absolutely calm; he protects the 
 messenger himself against the rage of the 
 Romans; he forgives Henry, the man, for 
 what he has said against Gregory, the man. 
 
 " For what he has said against the head 
 of the Holy Church, for that let Henry be 
 cursed ! I forbid all Christians to serve thee 
 as a King, I release them from the oath 
 that they have sworn thee. Thou, dark- 
 ness revolting against light, return to
 
 Modern German Culture 49 
 
 chaos! Thou, wave revolting against the 
 ocean, return to naught! No bell shall be 
 sounded in the city where Henry dwells, no 
 church be opened, no sacrament be admin- 
 istered. Where Henry dwells, death shall 
 dwell ! Let my legates go forth and an- 
 nounce my message to the world ! " 
 
 The climax of the whole drama is, as it 
 should be, the Canossa catastrophe. It is 
 here that Gregory, the victor in the politi- 
 cal game, succumbs morally; that Henry, 
 the vanquished, rises in his native great- 
 ness. It is here that Gregory, with all his 
 soaring idealism, reveals himself as an in- 
 human monster; that Henry, with all his 
 faults and frailties, arouses to the full the 
 sympathy which we cannot help feeling for 
 a bravely struggling man. 
 
 The excommunication of Henry has 
 plunged Germany into civil war. A rival 
 king, Rudolf of Swabia, has been proclaim- 
 ed. He and the chiefs of his party have
 
 50 Glimpses of 
 
 come to Canossa to obtain the papal sanc- 
 tion for their revolt. Gregory clearly sees 
 that Rudolf is nothing but a figure-head, a 
 mere tool in the hands of fanatic conspira- 
 tors, totally unfit to rule an empire. He 
 clearly feels it his duty to discountenance 
 this revolt, to restore peace to Germany by 
 making his peace with Henry. But the 
 demon of ambition lurking in his breast be- 
 guiles him with a vision of world domin- 
 ion; he, the servant of the servants of God, 
 shall be the arbiter of Europe; he, the ple- 
 beian, shall see the crowns of kings roll 
 before him in the dust. He does not dis- 
 countenance Rudolf and his party; and 
 when Henry appears before the castle, 
 broken and humiliated, asking for absolu- 
 tion from the ban, Gregory remains un- 
 moved. For three days and nights the 
 King stands before the gate in ice and snow; 
 for three days and nights the Pope sits in 
 his chair, speechless, sleepless, refusing to
 
 Modern German Culture 5 1 
 
 eat or drink. At last, the intercession of 
 Henry's mother, who, herself in the 
 shadow of death, has come to pray for her 
 son's salvation, softens Gregory's heart : he 
 admits Henry to his presence. Henry ap- 
 pears, a king even in his misery. He bends 
 his knee before the Pope, he confesses his 
 guilt, he acknowledges the justice of his 
 punishment. The reconciliation is brought 
 about. Just then Henry's glance falls upon 
 Rudolf and his followers standing in the 
 background. He greets them as friends, 
 thinking that they have come to renew their 
 allegiance to him. But they rudely repulse 
 him, and boast of the Pope's intention to 
 acknowledge Rudolf as King. And Greg- 
 ory does not contradict them. With fear- 
 ful suddenness Henry sees what a shameful 
 game has been played with him; and yet 
 he masters himself, he makes one last ap- 
 peal to whatever there is of true feeling in 
 his opponent:
 
 52 Glimpses of 
 
 " God, help me against myself ! Christ, 
 Saviour, who wast thyself a king among 
 the heavenly host and didst bow thy neck 
 under the scourge, help me against myself ! 
 (He turns abruptly toivard Gregory?) Once 
 before I knelt before thee — I did it 
 for myself. {He falls down on his knees?) 
 Here, a second time, I lie before thee, for 
 Germany lie I here! Break thy silence! 
 Thy silence is the coffin in which the hap- 
 piness of Germany is entombed ! If thou 
 didst know how unhappy this Germany is 
 thou wouldst speak — speak! Thou, or- 
 dained by God to bring peace to the world, 
 let me take peace with me on my way to 
 Germany, not war, not howling civil war ! " 
 
 And Gregory remains silent ! — From 
 here on to the end of the drama there is 
 nothing but revenge, and revenge on re- 
 venge. And this work of destruction does 
 not stop until both Gregory and Henry have 
 breathed their last. Both men die in de-
 
 Modern German Culture 53 
 
 feat and desolation — Gregory hearing from 
 his death-bed the jubilant shouts of the 
 faithless Romans as they greet the trium- 
 phant entry of a rival pope, Henry driven 
 into exile and hunted down by the minions 
 of his rebellious son. Both die inwardly 
 unbroken — Gregory trusting in the future 
 triumph of the Church, Henry trusting in 
 the indestructible vitality of the German 
 people. 
 
 A few words may be added about Haupt- 
 mann's " Florian Geyer," although it is im- 
 possible to do justice to this work except 
 by reading and analysing it scene by scene. 
 The defects of Hauptmann's dramatic style 
 are here, perhaps, more clearly visible than 
 in any previous production of his. The 
 lack of unity, the absence of a true hero, 
 which were seen in " Die Weber," charac- 
 terise this drama also. And, in addition 
 to this, there is a slowness and diffuseness 
 of movement which must be fatal to its
 
 54 Glimpses of 
 
 effect as a theatrical piece. And yet it is 
 impossible to resist the impression that 
 here we are face to face with the creation 
 of a great artist. Hauptmann sees things 
 not as they appear on the stage, but as 
 they are in life. He seems to have no 
 thought of how his figures may affect his 
 hearers. He simply tells what he sees, and 
 he tells it with that wonderful directness 
 which is the privilege of children and poets. 
 Not a phrase which could not thus have 
 been spoken; not an event which could not 
 thus have taken place; not a character which 
 would not probably have taken just this 
 turn; and beneath all this realism, that 
 strange belief in a hidden life which makes 
 us feel that all these outward happenings 
 are only feeble manifestations of some 
 grand mysterious central force working 
 under their surface. This is the manner in 
 which Hauptmann in this drama makes us 
 live through the great German peasant re-
 
 Modern German Culture 55 
 
 volt of the sixteenth century, its glorious 
 beginning and its miserable end; its hopes, 
 triumphs, excesses, massacres, failures; its 
 noble enthusiasm, its dark fanaticism, its 
 savageness and greed, its egotism and pet- 
 tiness. And it is not too much to say that 
 in order to understand what is implied by 
 the word " Revolution," one could do no 
 better than to study the details of this 
 strangely monotonous and strangely fasci- 
 nating picture of popular wrath and popu- 
 lar delusion. 
 
 That German literature during the last 
 decade has entered upon a new era of gen- 
 uine productivity must have been clear for 
 some time past to every intelligent ob- 
 server. That this new movement should 
 have acquired sufficient strength to pro- 
 duce, only a year or two after the triumphs 
 achieved by " Heimat " and " Die Weber," 
 two dramas of such heroic dimensions and 
 such extraordinary power as Hauptmann's
 
 56 Glimpses of 
 
 " Florian Geyer " and Wildenbruch's 
 " Heinrich," is nevertheless a surprise, and 
 seems to justify the hopes of those who 
 see in the present revolt against conven- 
 tions the dawn of another epoch of classic 
 perfection of form.
 
 Modern German Culture S7 
 
 IV.— JOHANNA AMBROSIUS 
 
 August, 1896. 
 
 Until within a year and a half ago the 
 name of Johanna Ambrosius was not 
 known outside of the little East Prussian 
 village where she herself, as the wife of a 
 poor peasant, led a humble and monoto- 
 nous existence. To-day her poems have 
 passed through the twenty-seventh edition, 
 and she is hailed throughout Germany as 
 a lyric genius destined to play an import- 
 ant part in the literary revival which has 
 been so brilliantly initiated by the dramatic 
 achievements of Sudermann and his asso- 
 ciates. What is it that has given this 
 simple peasant woman, whose intellectual 
 resources until very recently were confined 
 to a few back volumes of the " Garten-
 
 5 8 Glimpses of 
 
 laube," such an extraordinary hold on the 
 national heart? What is it that has raised 
 her at one stroke far above the host of 
 clever and refined singers who, during the 
 last thirty years, have re-echoed the melo- 
 dies of the great masters? 
 
 The secret, I think, lies in this, that in 
 Johanna Ambrosius there has arisen a new 
 voice in the struggle for the emancipation 
 of the German woman. Whatever one 
 may think of this movement, it would be 
 folly to deny either its volume or its 
 strength. It is naturally strongest in so- 
 cialistic circles; indeed, the Social-Demo- 
 cratic party is thus far the only political 
 organisation which has allowed women a 
 considerable share in its meetings and de- 
 liberations. But the influence of the wo- 
 man movement is by no means confined to 
 Socialist gatherings. It pervades the air, 
 it is felt in the family, it agitates the univer- 
 sities, it has entered the drawing-rooms, it
 
 Modern German Culture 59 
 
 has deeply affected the novel and the 
 drama; everywhere we notice as one of 
 the leading forces of the day the striving- of 
 woman for a fuller and more complete in- 
 dividuality. If this were not so, such a 
 figure as Sudermann's Magxla could not 
 have been created. 
 
 There is a good deal of family likeness 
 between the heroine of " Heimat " and 
 Johanna Ambrosius. The circumstances 
 are different, the abiding traits of character 
 are the same: in Sudermann's drama, an 
 impetuous, unruly girl, who, craving for a 
 fuller life than that afforded by " respec- 
 table " society, falls a prey to sin, and 
 through sin rises to the level of her true 
 self; in the East-Prussian peasant home 
 which has been and still is the scene of 
 Johanna Ambrosius's life, the agonies and 
 struggles of a woman who, harbouring in 
 herself a world of passion, longing, and 
 ideal striving, is smothered by the hard
 
 60 Glimpses of 
 
 facts of actual starvation, degrading toil, 
 and absolute intellectual loneliness — until 
 at last the long repressed despair breaks 
 Forth with volcanic power, shakes the very 
 foundations of this life, and lifts it into a 
 higher sphere. 
 
 Of Johanna's mental development her 
 sister, who, it seems, has been the only one 
 to stand faithfully by her in all these 
 gloomy struggles, has given a sympathetic 
 sketch, from which a passage relating to 
 the years of girlish maturity and early mar- 
 ried life may here be quoted: 
 
 " Even in those early days," she says, 
 " we both felt how alone we stood in our 
 village surroundings. Our squls began to 
 retire within themselves; the longing for 
 freedom, for light, for life became irresist- 
 ible. Johanna had outgrown the obedi- 
 ence demanded by her parents, but oppres- 
 sive to body and soul; her own will often 
 manifested itself; and, half following her
 
 Modern German Culture 61 
 
 will, half submitting to the force of cir- 
 cumstances, she entered service in the 
 house of strangers. Perhaps she hoped to 
 find outside of her family what her soul 
 craved. She soon returned home, and, in 
 order to find freedom, as she thought, she 
 accepted the hand of a simple, but good 
 and honest peasant lad. By the side of the 
 man of her choice Johanna went with eyes 
 open into poverty and hardest toil. Proud 
 and uncomplaining, she bore the self-chosen 
 fate until she lay broken on the ground. 
 The whole misery of a life wrestling in vain 
 for food had seized upon her. Out of the 
 night of these boundless sufferings there 
 rose — the poet." 
 
 It would be indelicate to pry into the 
 details of the family tragedy which these 
 words half disclose and half conceal. Some 
 German literary periodicals have already 
 given too much publicity to them. From 
 the merely personal point of view, it might
 
 62 Glimpses of 
 
 even seem as though too much sympathy 
 had been accorded to Johanna herself, and 
 too little to the "simple, but good and hon- 
 est peasant " whose fate, by the side of this 
 fiery, soaring idealist, appears pathetic in 
 the extreme. What makes Johanna Am- 
 brosius such a remarkable, nay, inspiring 
 figure in the modern woman movement, 
 is the fact that her own sufferings, instead 
 of embittering her, have opened her heart 
 to the woe of all her fellow-sufferers, that 
 her own struggles have made her a leader 
 in the universal struggle for a fuller hu- 
 manity. 
 
 The most striking note of her poetry, to 
 be sure, is one of passionate longing for a 
 happiness which she knows can never be 
 hers. She fairly revels in the maddening 
 consciousness of being forever shut out 
 from life's best gifts — peace of soul and in- 
 tellectual companionship. She consumes 
 herself in the thought of what might have
 
 Modern German Culture 63 
 
 been. There was a time when her heart 
 swelled with hope, when the fata morgana 
 of love conjured up before her a world of 
 bliss and beauty. But all that is now for- 
 ever destroyed, and all is dark. " Ah, bind 
 my hands with iron chains, lest they draw 
 a beloved head to my bosom ! Wall in my 
 heart and close it fast, lest the flames of 
 love blaze forth from its windows ! Make 
 me deaf, make me blind, lest I see happi- 
 ness ! Oh miserable, God-forsaken child 
 that I am ! " She sits at dusk by the hearth, 
 and gazes into the flickering fire as it 
 dances up and down before her eyes, for 
 a moment bringing back the colour of 
 youth to her cheeks, awakening in her the 
 glow of long-suppressed passion and de- 
 sire, and then quickly dying away — oh, 
 that the raging fire within might consume 
 itself as quickly! She consecrates her 
 songs to Pain, her best and inseparable 
 friend. He stands before her threshold
 
 64 Glimpses of 
 
 with drawn sword, and wards off whoever 
 might disturb them; only his sister. Sorrow 
 he at times invites to keep them company : 
 
 " Nur manchmal ladet er zu Gaste 
 Sich seine Schwester Leid, 
 Die bleibt dann lang bei uns zu Raste, 
 Und naht fur mich ein Kleid." 
 
 She cries out to God to make an end of 
 it; to deliver her at last from ever pressing 
 the wounded breast against the rocks, from 
 lying bound without being allowed to rest 
 her head; to take from her the glowing 
 chains which with hellish fire are burning 
 deep into her heart. 
 
 Whatever she sees about her assumes 
 the melancholy hue of her own darkened 
 existence. She tells of how " Mariechen, 
 susses Mariechen mein," the fairest girl in 
 the village, is plunged into misery by the 
 old witch Care; how the happiness of her 
 young married life is poisoned by want; 
 how the same man who had loved her so 
 fervently, embittered and hardened by his
 
 Modern German Culture 65 
 
 and his children's hunger, turns away from 
 her, and at last raises his arm to strike 
 her: 
 
 " Der Schlag traf gut, nun noch ein Hieb : 
 Ade, Du Gliick, gebaut auf Lieb ! 
 Die alte Hex' Sorg' in die Faust sich lacht, 
 Und schleicht sich weiter durch Nebel und Nacht. 
 Was wimmert so schmerzlich im Sternenschein ? 
 Ach Mariechen, susses Mariechen mein !" 
 
 She describes a peaceful farmhouse en- 
 closed by wheat-fields. Its white gable 
 blinks cheerfully through a cluster of hem- 
 locks; like a column of frankincense, the 
 smoke rises from the thatched roof and 
 loses itself in the evening red; the spring 
 water gently trickles over the mossy stones 
 of the well; the doves are cooing in their 
 cotes, swallows are chasing through the air, 
 a cat lies sleepy on the threshold. But 
 where is the housewife, where the farm 
 hands? From the fields she comes, with 
 her child. Cold as marble is her face, her 
 forehead overshadowed with grief. Shyly 
 she gathers the broken pots and glasses
 
 66 Glimpses of 
 
 strewn about in the yard. Has a storm 
 raged here? Has some evil spirit entered? 
 In the arbour lies the husband by the side 
 of his bottle. 
 
 With all this gloom, the poetry of Jo- 
 hanna Ambrosius as a whole is far from 
 having a discouraging or depressing effect. 
 There is nothing enervating, nothing dis- 
 integrating in it. While often reminding 
 us of Heine's truthfulness and simplicity, 
 this woman has nothing of Heine's scepti- 
 cism. Even in her saddest moods we rec- 
 ognise a bravely struggling soul, a char- 
 acter faithful to itself, a heart embracing 
 all mankind. Her woes have sanctified 
 her; they have strengthened her trust in 
 the final victory of goodness and right; 
 they have fanned in her a burning desire 
 to help, to comfort, to inspire. And al- 
 though the range of her thought is nar- 
 row, she compensates us for this by a fresh- 
 ness of feeling which gives even the oldest
 
 Modern German Culture 67 
 
 truths the stamp of a new acquisition. It 
 is indeed touching to hear this daughter of 
 the people speak of the exalted mission of 
 the poet : " Through sleepless nights in 
 the throes of creation he moans for the 
 lost Paradise; he weeps for all men, he 
 bears the burden of all mankind; he dyes 
 the roses with his heart's blood, he bleach- 
 es the lilies with his tears; his poems are 
 sighs, they are prayers offered up to God 
 from the depth of his soul for the sake of 
 a suffering world. — Oh bear them lovingly 
 in your hearts, like your own children ! 
 You know not from what pains they have 
 been born." And who could help being 
 moved by that " Last Song " which this 
 peasant woman would fain sing, a song 
 which shall be wafted through the world 
 like a gentle breeze of May, which shall 
 bring refreshment to the dying, which shall 
 calm all pain and encourage all good fight- 
 ers, and which at last shall swell into a
 
 68 Glimpses of 
 
 raging gale and drive the serpent Sin back 
 into the sea? When this song shall be ac- 
 complished, the singer herself will break 
 her lyre and sing no more; in the forest 
 would she be buried, and none should 
 know who conceived the song: 
 
 " Im Wald miisst ihr verscharren 
 Mich Heimlich unterm Tann, 
 Und Niemand sollt' erfahren 
 Wer dieses Lied ersann." 
 
 It will be of interest to see how Johanna 
 Ambrosius will bear the popularity which 
 has so suddenly come to her and the hon- 
 ours which have been so profusely show- 
 ered upon her. She seems great enough 
 to justify the hope that recognition will 
 bring out in her the joyous rather than the 
 commonplace.
 
 Modern German Culture 69 
 
 V.— KAROLINE VON GUNDERODE 
 AND FRIEDRICH CREUZER 
 
 September, 1896. 
 
 Prof. Erwin Rohde, the distinguished 
 classical philologist, has done a good ser- 
 vice to students of German civilisation by 
 recently publishing, from manuscripts pre- 
 served in the Heidelberg University Li- 
 brary, the letters relating to one of the 
 strangest and saddest episodes in the his- 
 tory of Romanticism — the love tragedy 
 which ended in the suicide of Karoline von 
 Giinderode. This is a tragedy not only 
 full of historical import, but also of direct 
 significance for our own time. For it re- 
 veals moods and passions which the ex- 
 treme individualism of modern Romanti- 
 cists such as Nietzsche and Ibsen has made 
 once more a force in social life.
 
 70 Glimpses of 
 
 Karoline von Giinderode was a worthy 
 representative of that brilliant activity dis- 
 played by women in the higher concerns 
 of life which gave to German culture of the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century such 
 a decidedly feminine tinge. If she lacked 
 the vivacity of her friend Bettina Brentano, 
 she also lacked her coquettishness and the- 
 atrical mannerism. If she did not have the 
 keenness of analysis possessed by Rahel 
 Varnhagen, she was also free from Rahel's 
 bent for fantastic and hair-splitting specu- 
 lation. And to both Bettina and Rahel 
 she was superior in sincerity of feeling, 
 depth of passion, and true womanly charm. 
 She was a genuine poet, not so much in 
 what she wrote for the public ear (although 
 her poems were admired even by Goethe) 
 as in her every-day thoughts, her letters to 
 friends, her whole manner of life. It is not 
 surprising that her refined beauty and aris- 
 tocratic bearing should have attracted the
 
 Modern German Culture 7 1 
 
 best men of her time. Savigny, the great 
 jurist, devoted to her years of chivalric 
 friendship. Clemens Brentano, editor of 
 the " Wunderhorn," went into raptures 
 over her. No man, however, understood 
 her so well or stirred her so deeply as the 
 one who was to lead her to her own des- 
 truction, namely Friedrich Creuzer, the fa- 
 mous author of the " Symbolik." 
 
 Creuzer, also, is a typical figure of the 
 period preceding the national catastrophe 
 of 1806, a period which was as devoid of 
 moral vigour as it was rich in aesthetic culti- 
 vation. As we see him in his public activ- 
 ity, in his far-reaching studies on the re- 
 ligion of the ancient Greeks, in his petty 
 quarrels with scientific opponents, he ap- 
 pears as both a pathfinder and a perverter 
 of sound methods of historical investiga- 
 tion; as a strange mixture of noble inspira- 
 tions and selfish conduct, of mystic intui- 
 tion and scholastic pedantry; as a priest of
 
 7 2 Glimpses of 
 
 humanity and at the same time as a vain 
 professor. One must keep all these con- 
 flicting qualities of his in mind in order to 
 understand how his relations to Karoline 
 von Giinderode came to be what they were. 
 When Creuzer, in the spring of 1804, en- 
 tered upon his Heidelberg professorship, 
 he was thirty-three years old; for half a 
 decade he had been united in childless mar- 
 riage to a widow, thirteen years his senior. 
 Is it surprising that when, on a beautiful 
 August day of the same year, on the ter- 
 race of Heidelberg castle, he met Karoline 
 von Giinderode for the first time, he should 
 have experienced an inner revolution such 
 as Werther underwent when he for the first 
 time saw Lotte? He feels at once that 
 from now on there are only two possibili- 
 ties : " Heaven or death; there is no mean 
 between the two." He flies into the soli- 
 tude of the forests in order to read her let- 
 ters, and when he looks up to the sky from
 
 Modern German Culture 73 
 
 her pages, it seems to him as though he 
 were looking into the eyes of his beloved. 
 He hides her poems on his shelves in order 
 to enjoy them alone in the stillness of the 
 night. And at last — two months after the 
 first meeting — he informs his wife " that he 
 can no longer consider her as his wife, in 
 fact, has never considered her as such, but 
 that he will forever cherish grateful feel- 
 ings towards her; " whereupon the wife, in 
 a fit of sudden magnanimity, declares that 
 she approves of his sentiment, renounces her 
 claims on him, and desires to be in future 
 nothing but an older sister to him. In short, 
 it seems as though the whole affair were 
 to end in happy romantic fashion : husband 
 and wife will peacefully separate and an- 
 other union be established. Or, to adopt 
 Creuzer's own inimitable phraseology, the 
 wife will stay in the house " as mother, as 
 the manager of the household," while the 
 loved one will bring "freedom and poetry"
 
 74 Glimpses of 
 
 into the husband's life — exactly the same 
 situation, by the way, which forms the 
 basis of the tragic conflict in one of the 
 most remarkable realistic dramas of our 
 own time, Gerhart Hauptmann's " Ein- 
 same Menschen." 
 
 In Creuzer's and Karoline's case, as in 
 the modern drama, the serenity of those 
 paradisiac dreams soon gives way to 
 gloomy forebodings. Sophie, the wife, re- 
 tracts her resignation; she is ready to leave 
 the house, but in despair only, not in good 
 part; she is not willing to tolerate Karoline 
 by her side. And Creuzer, impulsive as 
 always, and, theoretically at least, of a chiv- 
 alrous frame of mind, realises at once that 
 he must not force his wife's actions; he is 
 unwilling, in his own words, " to demand a 
 human sacrifice." Recognising his duty 
 towards his wife so clearly, one would 
 think that he must see with equal clearness 
 his duty towards Karoline: a speedy and
 
 Modem German Culture 75 
 
 complete rupture of their relations seems 
 imperative. But, far from feeling this, 
 Creuzer is now all the more eager to re- 
 tain Karoline's love. He speaks with the 
 utmost disdain of the " abyss of Biirger- 
 lichkeit" which forbids a married man to 
 think of other women. He talks of dying 
 with Karoline. He beseeches her not to 
 abandon his " beautiful soul." " I am like 
 one of those wooden Silenus figures in 
 Plato's 'Symposium' which, mean in them- 
 selves, serve as cases for beautiful images 
 of gods enclosed in them. The divine im- 
 age encased in my poor body is my soul, 
 which was capable of feeling your worth." 
 He compares Karoline to Raphael's " Po- 
 esy"; he glorifies her as the Virgin Mary 
 hovering in eternal youth and freedom 
 above the clouds: 
 
 " I often appear to myself criminal in 
 wishing to draw you down into this do- 
 mestic world, when I see how you, a Vir-
 
 76 Glimpses of 
 
 gin, hover gloriously in the splendour of 
 the stars, untouched by the burdens of 
 life. And yet, when I think how once it 
 was your own will to descend into this 
 world of mine, then I rejoice again in the 
 consciousness of my courage to die with 
 you." 
 
 The result of all this reckless playing 
 with fire is another meeting of the lovers 
 at Frankfort, Karoline's residence. And 
 this meeting, of course, gives added vio- 
 lence to the flame of passion. Karoline 
 appears from now on in Creuzer's letters 
 mostly under symbolic names, " The 
 Friend," " The Saint," " Poesy," while his 
 wife, to denote the hopeless philistinism of 
 her character, receives the nickname " The 
 Good-Natured One"; and a separation 
 from her, or rather lamentations over the 
 impossibility of a separation from her, be- 
 come again the burden of Creuzer's talk: 
 
 " Is it right, or is it cruel, that a woman
 
 Modern German Culture 77 
 
 who has lived through the natural course 
 of her history in the love of her first hus- 
 band, in children who adore her, in chil- 
 dren's children whom she is looking for- 
 ward to — that this woman should insist 
 that a young man is to find the aim of his 
 life in brightening and warming a little, 
 like a wintry sun, the late autumn and No- 
 vember days of her existence? It is right! 
 He might have known it in advance. Still, 
 my heart, still ! It is right ! Oh, if she 
 only could be a little large-minded — or 
 thoroughly bad ! But this agonising good- 
 nature ! " 
 
 It is not quite clear what ripened in So- 
 phie for a second time the decision to give 
 way to her favoured rival. Enough that, 
 in September, 1805, she took this decision: 
 she wrote to Karoline sanctioning her re- 
 lation with Creuzer, and expressing the 
 hope that he soon might be entirely hers. 
 Creuzer on his part even goes so far as to
 
 78 Glimpses of 
 
 address Karoline as his " beloved wife " ; 
 he speaks of the formal dissolution of his 
 marriage as soon to be brought about; he 
 reports a plan to accept a professorship at 
 the University of Moscow so as to spare 
 his young bride the difficulties of living 
 with him in the old surroundings: all the 
 clouds seem to be chased away, the happi- 
 ness of the lovers seems assured. All of 
 a sudden there is a change in the tone of 
 Creuzer's letters. He begins to feel that 
 Karoline is too good for him, that he does 
 not deserve her; he mentions financial diffi- 
 culties that stand in the way of a speedy 
 marriage; he seems to think that Karoline 
 has no natural taste for the duties of a 
 housewife; he has heard a rumour that 
 Karoline does not intend to live with him 
 as a wife, but plans to accompany him to 
 Russia in men's clothes as a student friend; 
 he has talked with his friend Savigny about 
 the matter, who has convinced him that a
 
 Modern German Culture 79 
 
 separation from Sophie would be a moral 
 wrong - . In brief, only two months after 
 his wife has expressed her willingness to 
 release him, he has practically broken off 
 with Karoline; and it is Karoline, not So- 
 phie, who sends him the following letter of 
 resignation : 
 
 " My whole life remains forever conse- 
 crated to thee, beloved sweet friend. Nor 
 time nor circumstances shall step between 
 us. The loss of thy love I should not be 
 able to bear. Promise me never to leave 
 me. O life of my life, do not leave my 
 soul. — See, I feel freer and purer since I 
 have renounced all earthly hope. Into hal- 
 lowed melancholy has the violent grief 
 been dissolved. Fate is conquered. Thou 
 art mine, above all fate. Nothing can take 
 thee from me, since I have won thee in 
 such a manner. — Try to gain Sophie's con- 
 fidence. Tell her that we have resigned. 
 I, too shall write her, in order that peace
 
 8o Glimpses of 
 
 may be restored to the household and she 
 not disturb our relation, which has no 
 longer any danger for her." 
 
 It seems incredible that Creuzer's sense 
 of honour should not have been sufficient 
 to make him respect the obligations laid 
 upon him by such an appeal as this. In- 
 stead of helping Karoline to live up to her 
 noble renunciation, instead of silencing 
 once for all his own unruly longings, he 
 now more than ever relapses into his ha- 
 bitual wavering between sentimental la- 
 mentations and passionate protestations of 
 love. On Christmas eve he feels in the 
 midst of his family " like a pilgrim who, 
 on his way to the Holy Land, has been 
 captured by a people that worships other 
 gods." In the Christmas vacation he goes 
 on with his " Symbolik " in constant 
 thought of the fair friend to whom, he 
 hopes, this book will be something of a 
 compensation for all the pain he has given
 
 Modern German Culture 81 
 
 her. In the following April (1806) he vis- 
 its her in Frankfort, and after his departure 
 he revels in ecstatic memories of their 
 meeting and in mournful complaints about 
 his present loneliness : " Ah, nothing will 
 ever satisfy me but this dear, palpable near- 
 ness, from which I now have been torn 
 away. The present stares blankly at me: 
 back into the joys of the past my spirit 
 longs to turn. sanctissima virgo, tecum 
 moriar lib ens!' In June he is in Mann- 
 heim and is taken by a friend to the point 
 where the Neckar River flows into the 
 Rhine. " It is a beautiful place, and I saw 
 with deep emotion how the two rivers em- 
 brace each other. The impatient longing 
 with which they hasten towards one an- 
 other was to me a symbol of our life. Ah, 
 the fortunate ones, I thought, to attain 
 thus to the goal of their desires ! Sadly I 
 went away." And when, after all these ap- 
 peals to the emotion, Karoline indeed
 
 82 Glimpses of 
 
 seems to lose her self-control and to re- 
 spond in the same passionate vein, how 
 does he receive this? 
 
 " For heaven's sake, Lina, do not aban- 
 don yourself to such storms of passion ! I 
 have burnt all that you wrote to-day, pray- 
 ing- for your tranquility of mind while the 
 flames were consuming your pages. — Be- 
 loved, I owe you a large debt, a debt equal 
 to the value of my own life; but quiet you 
 owe to me, and you will give me quiet 
 when you see that you owe it to yourself." 
 
 We hasten to the end. On June 29 or 
 30 a last meeting of the lovers took place. 
 With what feelings they saw each other, in 
 what a frame of mind they separated, we 
 are unable to tell. Immediately after it 
 Creuzer fell into a violent fever. During 
 his sickness his friends prevailed upon him 
 to make a solemn declaration that he would 
 completely and irrevocably break off his 
 relations with Karoline. One of these
 
 Modern German Culture 83 
 
 friends took it upon himself to inform 
 Karoline of this decision. In order to 
 break the cruel news to her in as gentle a 
 manner as possible, the letter containing 
 it was addressed to a friend of Karoline's 
 with whom she was at the time sojourning. 
 These measures of precaution were frus- 
 trated. Karoline, who for weeks had been 
 waiting for a letter from Creuzer, hastened 
 to meet the messenger, took the letter, op- 
 ened it in her room, and read — her death- 
 warrant. She soon came back from her 
 room, apparently undisturbed, took leave 
 of her friend for a short evening walk 
 such as she was in the habit of taking, but 
 did not return. On the next morning her 
 body was found on the banks of the Rhine. 
 She had stabbed herself with the dagger 
 which for some time previous she had been 
 carrying about her. 
 
 Two months after the death of Karoline 
 von Giinderode the battle of Jena was
 
 84 Glimpses of 
 
 fought. Little as these events seem to have 
 in common with each other, it is yet true 
 that the battle of Jena exerted a profound 
 influence on the whole moral and intellect- 
 ual atmosphere which determined the 
 tragic fate of the romantic poetess. In the 
 national breakdown, in the utter ruin of its 
 political existence, the German people re- 
 covered its sense of moral dignity and dis- 
 cipline which had been obscured by the 
 flighty conceptions of an exclusively aes- 
 thetic culture; and the Creuzers and Gun- 
 derodes were superseded by the Steins and 
 the Fichtes.
 
 Modern German Culture 85 
 
 VI.— HAUPTMANN'S "THE SUNK- 
 EN BELL" 
 
 April, 1897. 
 
 Rarely has the mysterious affinity be- 
 tween the extremes of realism and roman- 
 ticism been illustrated as strikingly as now 
 in the gradual unfolding of Gerhart Haupt- 
 mann's poetic genius. Hauptmann is one 
 of those fascinating men whose character 
 seems to baffle all attempts at rational 
 analysis. He is at the same time the most 
 modern of the moderns and the most de- 
 vout worshipper of the traditions of the 
 past, an iconoclast and a dreamer, a pan- 
 theist and an inspired interpreter of me- 
 diaeval Christianity, a socialist and an up- 
 holder of personal freedom, an impression- 
 ist painter of the most uncompromising
 
 86 Glimpses of 
 
 kind and a lyric poet of the deepest feeling 
 and the most delicate sensibility. At times 
 he speaks as though he saw before him a 
 new age of exalted humanity, as though he 
 would lead his people forward on the path 
 of liberty and spiritual progress; and then 
 again he seems like a child lost in the 
 wilderness of an outworn civilisation, he 
 flees from the shallow brilliancy of modern 
 society to the primitive sturdiness of the 
 fairy tale, and, in the midst of a career full 
 of restless striving and ambition, he dreams 
 himself back to the sombre seclusion of his 
 Silesian mountain home. He is crude and 
 refined, heavy and graceful, pessimistic and 
 buoyant, flippant and sublime; and in all 
 these changes he is always and unfailingly 
 true to himself. 
 
 He began with lurid scenes from con- 
 temporary life, in which it was easy to 
 detect the influence of Ibsen and Zola. 
 But even in the atrocious vulgarity of "Vor
 
 Modern German Culture 87 
 
 Sonnenaufgang " and in the hopeless 
 gloom of " Das Friedensfest " there ap- 
 peared a strain quite foreign alike to the 
 cynic bitterness of the Norwegian and to 
 the proletarian ferociousness of the French- 
 man : a deep, silent craving for purity and 
 childlike innocence. Next, there followed 
 " Einsame Menschen," a masterpiece of 
 psychological analysis, vibrating with the 
 profoundest chords of modern thought, 
 bringing out in figures of wonderful life- 
 likeness the tragedy of moral emancipation 
 unaided by moral greatness. Then came 
 " Die Weber," a modern Dance of Death, 
 a cry of sympathy with suffering humanity 
 as genuine and heart-stirring as any word 
 of lamentation or scorn uttered by the 
 prophets of old. Then a strange pair of 
 unlike brothers : " Der Biberpelz," a gross 
 satire of the Prussian police officer in 
 search for crimes of lese-majesty, and 
 " Hannele," a glorification of the spiritual-
 
 88 Glimpses of 
 
 istic elements of the Christian belief. Then 
 the historical drama, " Florian Geyer," a 
 work both grand and ordinary, irresistible 
 and intolerable, a most faithful — perhaps 
 too faithful — reproduction of the sixteenth 
 century, with its democratic aspirations, its 
 reformatory zeal, its popular heroism, fa- 
 naticism, and savagery, but somehow lack- 
 ing in the finer human emotions. And 
 now, finally, " Die versunkene Glocke," a 
 fantastic vision, transporting us into lonely 
 forests haunted by elfs and water-sprites, 
 and strangely illumined by the flicker of 
 swarming glow-worms. 
 
 It is almost impossible to give an ade- 
 quate conception of this " fairy drama " 
 which now for months has been delighting 
 Berlin audiences. The time of the action 
 is somewhere in the Middle Ages. The 
 principal character is a figure belonging to 
 the race of Faust, Manfred, and Brand: 
 Meister Heinrich, a bellfounder in a lonely
 
 Modern German Culture 89 
 
 village of the Riesengebirge. It is evi- 
 dently not long since Christianity made its 
 way into these remote regions, for we hear 
 that the mountain elfs are disgusted with 
 the unaccustomed sight of church-building 
 going on in the midst of their retreats, and 
 still more with the unaccustomed sound of 
 the church bells ringing through the peace 
 of the forests. Just now one of these ma- 
 licious spirits has seized the opportunity of 
 venting his spite. He has lain in wait when 
 a bell wrought by Master Henry and des- 
 tined for a chapel on the mountain summit 
 was being carted up the hill; he has broken 
 the wheel of the truck, and has hurled the 
 bell and its maker down into the lake. 
 Here is the beginning of the action. Hen- 
 ry, rallying, but as yet hardly conscious of 
 his steps, gropes his way upward again, 
 and wanders about in aimless despair 
 through the rocky wilderness. Finally he 
 sinks down exhausted. His cries of agony
 
 90 Glimpses of 
 
 have been overheard by Rautendelein, a 
 strange mixture of elf and maiden; and for 
 the first time there has been awakened in 
 her breast the dim feeling of a higher life 
 and the blind desire to win it. So, when 
 the villagers come to carry Henry's nearly 
 lifeless body back to the valley, Rautende- 
 lein follows them, determined to see and 
 to know " the land of men." Dis- 
 guised as a servant, she enters the house 
 where Henry, attended by his faithful wife, 
 lies at the point of death. He is delirious. 
 His life seems to him a failure; the comfort- 
 ing words of his wife sound to him like 
 mockery; he persuades himself that she has 
 no conception of what it is to feel the cre- 
 ative impulse and to have it checked by 
 brutal fate; he is sure that she does not 
 understand him, that nobody understands 
 him; he curses his work; he wishes to die. 
 At this moment Rautendelein appears, and 
 the sight of this unbroken youthful life
 
 Modern German Culture 91 
 
 brings back to him his own youthful aspi- 
 rations. It is as though Nature herself 
 had touched him and renewed his strength, 
 as though she beckoned him to throw away 
 the commonplace cares and duties of ordi- 
 nary social existence and to follow her to 
 the heights of a free, unfettered, creative 
 activity. He cannot resist. The supreme 
 desire for unhampered exercise of his facul- 
 ties restores his health; the delirious des- 
 pondency leaves him; he is himself again. 
 When the scene changes, Rautendelein 
 has led him back into the mountains. She 
 now appears as his inspiring genius. He 
 is in the fulness of his powers; he is raised 
 above the petty conflict of good and evil. 
 He has won control over the spirits that 
 dwell in rock and cavern; with their help 
 he is creating a wonder work of art, a 
 temple structure on highest mountain 
 peak whose melodious chime is to call free 
 humanity to the festival of universal broth-
 
 92 Glimpses of 
 
 erhood. Wrapt up in these estatic visions 
 he has entirely lost sight of his former life. 
 He seems not to know that once he had 
 a loving wife and children. He scorns the 
 friendly warning of the village priest, who 
 ventures into his enchanted wilderness in 
 order to save his soul. He defies the on- 
 slaught of the peasants who attempt to 
 storm his fastness in order to annihilate the 
 godless blasphemer. He quiets occasional 
 pangs of conscience by renewed feverish 
 work; only at night he lies restless and is 
 visited by fearful dreams. More and more, 
 however, these evil forebodings get the 
 better of him. Again and again he hears 
 a strange sound that seems to draw him 
 downward, he recognises in it the tolling 
 of the bell that lies at the bottom of the 
 mountain lake. What causes the bell to 
 give the sound? Who is that pale, ghastly 
 figure floating toward it and striking its 
 tongue? And who are these shadowy
 
 Modern German Culture 93 
 
 forms of little children, coming slowly and 
 sadly toward him, and carrying with great 
 effort a heavily rilled urn? Breathless with 
 horror, he addresses them. " What carry 
 ye? " " Father, we carry an urn." " What 
 is in the urn?" "Father, something bit- 
 ter." " What is the something bitter? " 
 " Father, our mother's tears." " Where is 
 your mother? " " Where the water-lilies 
 grow." 
 
 Now, at last, Henry sees that he has 
 overstepped the bounds set to man. The 
 whole wretchedness of his imagined gran- 
 deur is revealed to him with terrible clear- 
 ness. He drives Rautendelein away with 
 calumny and cursing. He destroys with 
 his own hand the work which had been to 
 him the symbol of a perfect humanity. He 
 resolves to descend again to the fellowship 
 of mortals. But it is too late. The super- 
 human striving has consumed his strength. 
 In his last moment Rautendelein appears
 
 94 Glimpses of 
 
 to him once more; she has returned into 
 her own realm, she has become the wife of 
 an ugly old water-sprite who had wooed 
 her for years. But she is still longing for 
 human affections, and she presses a fervent 
 kiss upon the lips of the dying one. 
 
 The drama thus hastily outlined is to us 
 a messenger of good tidings. It is a 
 fresh evidence of a fact which has recently 
 become manifest in more ways than one: 
 the fact that Germany is preparing again to 
 take a leading part in the literature of the 
 world. Especially the German realistic 
 drama of the last decade has shown a fer- 
 tility of motives and a constructive energy 
 far superior to that of recent dramatic pro- 
 ductions in England or France. But most 
 of these realistic dramas are in too pro- 
 nounced a manner children of the age to 
 have a long life before them; they are 
 clever dramatic essays rather on social, re- 
 ligious, or philosophical questions of imme-
 
 Modern German Culture 95 
 
 diate and acute interest than works of art 
 which permanently satisfy. In " Die ver- 
 sunkene Glocke " for the first time we hear 
 once more the unmistakable ring of the 
 universally human. Here we are made to 
 feel once more the eternal longing of the 
 human heart for a happiness that lies be- 
 yond the things seen or heard. Here we 
 are brought face to face once more with 
 an ideal striving far transcending all inter- 
 est in so-called questions of the day. Here 
 we are indeed reminded of the artistic tem- 
 per which created the type of Faust. 
 
 To be sure, the form of this drama is 
 too fantastic to appeal to all persons or to 
 all times. It needs a special frame of mind 
 to find out the instinctive striving after na- 
 ture which underlies even its grotesque ar- 
 tificialities. German critics have with good 
 reason pointed out the affinity between this 
 drama and the paintings of Boecklin. 
 Hauptmann and Boecklin belong, indeed,
 
 96 Glimpses of 
 
 together. Both are endowed with an ex- 
 traordinary sensibility, both feel an irre- 
 pressible desire to reproduce the sounds 
 and sights of nature exactly as they hear 
 and see them. But both hear and see not 
 only the sounds and sights of nature, they 
 are equally strongly affected by the dis- 
 cordant impressions of their social environ- 
 ment; and in order not to be disturbed by 
 these, they strain their receptive organs to 
 such an extent that the water looks bluer 
 to them than it does to the normal eye, 
 and the wind roars more wildly to them 
 than it does to the normal ear. This is 
 especially true of "Die versunkene Glocke." 
 There is a note of exaggeration in it which 
 takes away from its sincerity. And de- 
 lightful as this company of roving, rollick- 
 ing, swaggering, half malicious, half good- 
 natured earth-spirits is which forms the ele- 
 mental background of the dramatic action, 
 we are hardly more than amused by it.
 
 Modern German Culture 97 
 
 The true simplicity of the fairy tale is for 
 the most part absent. 
 
 But this objection does not touch the 
 central conception of the drama. Haupt- 
 mann has created a work which treats the 
 old Faust theme of man's superhuman as- 
 pirations in a new and fascinating manner. 
 We may confidently hope that his youth- 
 ful genius, which has given us so much al- 
 ready that is fine and true, will give us 
 something still finer and truer. He is now 
 approaching his full maturity. May he 
 live himself out completely and harmoni- 
 ously. May he go on, undisturbed by 
 fame or slander, unmoved by the wrangle 
 between literary cliques, unmindful of the 
 meaningless war-cries of romanticism and 
 classicism, to bring forth what is in him. 
 If he does this, he seems destined to ac- 
 complish what his Meister Heinrich strove 
 for in vain : to build a temple of art in 
 which all ages and all nations may wor- 
 ship.
 
 98 Glimpses of 
 
 VII.— HERMAN GRIMM 
 May, 1897. 
 
 Since the days of Tieck and the brothers 
 Schlegel, Germany has produced no man 
 of letters who in universality of interests 
 and refinement of taste can be compared to 
 Herman Grimm. There is no dearth of 
 critics who within the limits of their special 
 studies have accomplished as much or per- 
 haps even more than he. In philosophic 
 grasp of abstract intellectual problems, 
 men like Kuno Fischer or Rudolf Haym 
 are his superiors. In questions touching 
 the technical workmanship displayed in 
 works of painting or sculpture, his judg- 
 ments have not infrequently been over- 
 ridden by the verdict of more thoroughly 
 trained experts. In the sphere of philo-
 
 Modern German Culture 99 
 
 logical text criticism, the chosen province 
 of nearly all the younger literary historians, 
 he has never felt quite at home. What dis- 
 tinguishes Herman Grimm from all other 
 German scholars of to-day, what gives him 
 his unique position in modern life, is the 
 fact that he is philosopher, art critic, and 
 literary historian in one, that he is an in- 
 terpreter of the spiritual ideals of mankind, 
 whatever form they may have assumed or 
 to whatever age they may belong. He is, 
 among living Germans, the most eminent 
 advocate of aesthetic culture; the principal, 
 if not sole, upholder of the classic tradition 
 of Weimar and Jena; the chosen apostle of 
 that striving for completeness of person- 
 ality without which all special activity must 
 of necessity fail to reach out into the high- 
 est sphere of human aspirations. 
 
 When men of marked originality deline- 
 ate the character of other men, they at the 
 same time bring before us their own fea-
 
 ioo Glimpses of 
 
 tures. Herman Grimm's writings, there- 
 fore, although they are almost wholly de- 
 voted to the study of the works and lives 
 of other writers and artists, at the same 
 time give us a remarkably striking picture 
 of himself. And it would be difficult to 
 state more truthfully and simply the very 
 essence of his individuality than by repeat- 
 ing what he has said of two men whose 
 intellectual kinship with his own nature he 
 has often acknowledged : Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson and Ernst Curtius. This is his 
 characterisation of the American thinker: 
 
 " Emerson nowhere lays down a system. 
 It seems as though he were simply acting 
 under the impulse of the moment to speak 
 out what happens to be uppermost in his 
 mind. But if one takes together all that 
 he has thus said in the course of a long life, 
 the numerous individual parts are seen to 
 group themselves into a well rounded, har- 
 monious whole. He is imbued with a
 
 Modern German Culture 101 
 
 wonderful divination of the relationship of 
 all moral phenomena. From the very first 
 he feels what place belongs to each. Con- 
 fusion becomes order before his glance. 
 He expresses himself without any special 
 exertion. Effortless and gently, as Na- 
 ture herself seems to work even where the 
 most terrible happens, his sentences chain 
 themselves to each other, link by link. He 
 never is out of breath; step by step he leads 
 us from one thought to another. Always 
 he simply speaks his mind, and utterances 
 which at first seem strange soon come to 
 sound natural and necessary, if one confi- 
 dently tries to enter into their meaning." 
 
 And these are the words which less than 
 a year ago the death of his friend Ernst 
 Curtius wrung from his lips : 
 
 " Curtius had something inward in his 
 manner. In speaking with him, you often 
 remained so long without an answer that 
 you might think he had not heard you or
 
 102 Glimpses of 
 
 not even listened. Then, as if awakening, 
 he would give the answer. In general, 
 there was something silent in him, and yet 
 he found the greatest enjoyment and recre- 
 ation in conversing and talking. He had 
 seen and experienced much, and he spoke 
 of it as though he were gathering old rec- 
 ollections for himself. He gladly pointed 
 things out and explained, and always in a 
 tone as though it was self-evident that his 
 opinion was the only true one, that his in- 
 sight was the higher one. There was 
 something festal in his words and his bear- 
 ing. He walked quick and free and joyful, 
 as though encompassed by great thoughts. 
 If one spoke to him on the street, he would 
 seem surprised, and at his friends even he 
 would look as though he recognised them 
 only just now and were just seeing them 
 again after a long separation. The youth- 
 fulness of his nature was indestructible. 
 Even in his last days he walked about like
 
 Modern German Culture 103 
 
 one of the Olympians who know nothing 
 of death." 
 
 Here we have both the intellectual and 
 the emotional side of Herman Grimm's 
 own character clearly brought before us. 
 Like Emerson, he disdains to bind himself " 
 to a strict philosophical system; he never 
 attempts to formulate a general law of ar- 
 tistic or literary development; and yet, in 
 analysing and interpreting the great works 
 of the world's literature and art, he always 
 makes us feel that they are necessary mani- 
 festations of a deep, mysterious force which 
 regulates all human life. Like Curtius, he ., 
 is essentially a lyric nature; what appeals to 
 him in a statue or a poem is the inner vis- 
 ion rather than the outward form; what 
 attracts him in an artist or a poet is what 
 they have to say rather than how they say 
 it. Like both Emerson and Curtius, he 
 feels truly at home only in the calm world 
 of ideas. With the present age and its
 
 104 Glimpses of 
 
 noisy, breathless activity he has little in 
 common. He would flee away from what 
 he has called " the deep, inward unrest of 
 the moderns, which, at its climax to-day, 
 drives us to despair." 
 
 With all this Herman Grimm is not a 
 Romanticist of the Ruskinian type. His 
 abhorrence of commonplace reality does 
 not make him flee into the region of the 
 fantastic. From nothing is he further re- 
 moved than from the worship of the abnor- 
 mal. On the contrary, if there is anything 
 that stands out as the central thought of 
 his writings, it is the conviction that the 
 true leaders of mankind are only those 
 men who have given expression to the uni- 
 versally human, who are intelligible to all 
 ages and all races, who appeal to the simp- 
 lest and most fundamental of feelings. And 
 although the range of his vision is well- 
 nigh limitless, although he is able to sym- 
 pathise with the most different types of
 
 Modern German Culture 105 
 
 character, with Erasmus and Diirer, with 
 Saraceni and Carstens, with Shakspere 
 and Voltaire, with Overbeck and Boecklin, 
 yet the true object of his whole literary ac- 
 tivity is to rivet the eyes of the modern 
 world upon those eternal heights where 
 stand the ideal figures of a harmonious hu- 
 manity — a Homer, a Dante, a Raphael, a 
 Goethe. 
 
 What is Grimm's attitude toward these 
 greatest of men? 
 
 Until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury all literature and art was looked upon 
 merely as the creation of a few isolated 
 individuals. Herder, Winckelmann, and 
 the Romanticists have taught us to under- 
 stand these few great individuals as pro- 
 ducts of the physical, social, and mental 
 conditions of the masses from whom they 
 sprang, as spokesmen of their time, as rep- 
 resentatives of wide-spread intellectual 
 movements; and the works of these men
 
 106 Glimpses of 
 
 they have taught us to view less as pro- 
 ceeding from the conscious effort of pri- 
 vate individuals than as born from the in- 
 stinctive longing's of the national spirit. 
 Herman Grimm has by no means thrown 
 away the invaluable insight gained by Her- 
 der and his followers. He would not have 
 been a faithful keeper of the inheritance be- 
 queathed to him by his father and his uncle, 
 Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, if he had not 
 adhered to their belief in the inseparable 
 union of national instincts and social cur- 
 rents with individual endeavour. Indeed, 
 whatever may be said from the merely tech- 
 nical point of view against his first great 
 book, the "Life of Michael Angelo," it 
 would be preposterous to deny that here 
 we have one of the few biographies of the 
 world's literature which show us a man in 
 the very centre of the conflicting tenden- 
 cies of his time, or which bring out the very 
 essence of a given age in the experiences
 
 Modern German Culture 107 
 
 and aspirations of an individual life. And 
 not even Taine could have expressed more 
 tersely the overwhelming influence which 
 the milieu exerts upon personality than 
 these words from Grimm's essay on Carlo 
 Saraceni : 
 
 " It would be a mistake to speak of the 
 inevitable decline of Italian art after the 
 death of Leonardo, Raphael, Correggio, 
 Michael Angelo, and Titian, in the sense 
 as though in these five men Art had ex- 
 hausted herself. Who will say that the 
 creative power of nature is limited to the 
 production of a certain number of great 
 men? If we nevertheless speak of the inev- 
 itable decline of Italian art at that time, 
 we mean by it that, if in those days a genius 
 had been born, as it well might have been, 
 it would not have been able to unfold itself, 
 because the force of circumstances would 
 not have permitted it." 
 
 Yet this very affinity between Grimm and
 
 108 Glimpses of 
 
 Taine in philosophic doctrine brings out all 
 the more clearly the contrast between 
 Grimm and Taine in philosophic temper. 
 Taine thinks as a scientist; Grimm thinks 
 as an artist. For Taine the general move- 
 ment is of prime importance; Grimm lays 
 the chief emphasis upon the individual who 
 represents the general movement. Taine 
 is greater in analysing men who seem to 
 have been nothing but tools of the intel- 
 lectual or moral development of mankind, 
 whose strength seems to have been ab- 
 sorbed by living out a certain phase of the 
 world's history; Grimm is greater in depict- 
 ing men who seem to stand by themselves, 
 who seem to have taken rescue from the 
 whirlpool of circumstance and fate into the 
 serene regions of personal freedom. 
 
 Two types of these greatest of men are 
 Grimm's particular favourites. The first 
 type is represented by Michael Angelo and 
 Goethe. Men like them take hold of life
 
 Modern German Culture 109 
 
 in all its varied relations; they are of the 
 world; they try themselves in the most dif- 
 ferent fields of activity; they might equally 
 well be statesmen, conquerors, artists, or 
 philosophers; they show the impress of a 
 continual grappling with new problems; it 
 is impossible to understand their works 
 without a full knowledge of their lives; the 
 artist in them, however great, is yet of less 
 significance to us than the man. The sec- 
 ond type is that of men who, however 
 stormy their existence in reality may be, 
 as artists seem to be wholly independent of 
 earthly vicissitudes. They are men who 
 " aspire to belong to themselves in order to 
 give form to what fills their imagination." 
 They hardly seem to touch the ground; 
 their spirits dwell above the earth, and their 
 works, having been conceived in those 
 higher regions " where the pure forms 
 live," have something impersonal, one 
 might say angelic, in them. Such men 
 were Schiller and Raphael.
 
 1 10 Glimpses of 
 
 Which of these types Herman Grimm 
 values most it would be hard to say. Al- 
 though he has treated most fully the two 
 men belonging to the former class, Michael 
 Angelo and Goethe, one might almost feel 
 inclined to infer from the peculiarly deep 
 and mellow tone which pervades his " Life 
 of Raphael," that his heart beats still more 
 strongly for men of the latter stamp. And 
 it seems as though we had a right to hope 
 that he will be spared to give us an equally 
 fine characterisation, and one as deeply felt, 
 of the great German idealist, of Schiller. 
 More than any other living man does 
 Grimm seem predestined to bring the 
 artist Schiller within the reach of modern 
 feeling. For no other living man has the 
 same wonderful faculty of creating Stim- 
 immg which he himself ascribes to Em- 
 erson : 
 
 " As the night-wind passing through the 
 woods and over the meadows comes to us
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 1 
 
 laden with the sweet breath of trees and 
 grasses and flowers which we have not seen, 
 so he surrounds us with the atmosphere of 
 things as if they were in reality near us." 
 
 Herman Grimm is something vastly 
 more than a mere analyser and interpreter 
 of other men's works. He is a creative 
 artist; he is a portrait painter of consum- 
 mate skill and refinement. And he is more 
 than a portrait painter; he is equally ex- 
 quisite in the landscape, in still life, even in 
 heroic scenes. He possesses that delicate 
 receptivity which enables the true artist 
 to hear and see where other men are blind. 
 He has the magic gift of making all things 
 seem animate. By a word, by a mere in- 
 terjection he transports his reader to the 
 remotest times and lands; the strangest 
 sights he makes familiar; he gives us a 
 sense of being at home with the mighty 
 shades of history. He is, in short, a repro- 
 ductive genius such as there have been very
 
 1 1 2 Glimpses of 
 
 few in any age and among any people; and 
 his writings will be reckoned in times to 
 come with the finest productions of that 
 wonderful epoch of poetry of which he and 
 Paul Heyse are perhaps the last afterglow.
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 3 
 
 VIII.— IMPRESSIONS OF INDUS- 
 TRIAL AND PATRIARCHAL 
 GERMANY 
 
 August, 1897. 
 
 What in contemporary Germany most 
 forcibly strikes one who has been out of its 
 reach for some time is its intense modern- 
 ness. It seems as though within twenty- 
 five years the country had completely 
 changed its moral complexion, as though 
 it had leaped at a bound from a compara- 
 tively patriarchal condition into the very 
 midst of modern capitalism and industrial- 
 ism. That the very rapidity of this devel- 
 opment has destroyed a good deal of what 
 constituted the principal charm of German 
 life in the time of our fathers, it would be 
 idle to deny. The average German of to-
 
 H4 Glimpses of 
 
 day, at least if he be selected from the high- 
 er classes, is not any more the youthful en- 
 thusiast and idealist of the old liberal type; 
 he is rather a shrewd observer and a cool- 
 headed manager of affairs, who despises the 
 Greeks for having gone to war without 
 having provided themselves with the nec- 
 essary wherewithal. And the average Ger- 
 man home of the same stratum of society, 
 far from being distinguished for its sim- 
 plicity and frugality, is rather marked by 
 a degree of high living and display that 
 would have astounded the contemporaries 
 of Freiligrath and Platen. Whatever one 
 may think of the present Emperor, he cer- 
 tainly is an adequate representative of an 
 age full of restless ambition, overflowing 
 with vitality, seeking new avenues of ac- 
 tivity in every direction, luxurious, revel- 
 ling in success and enjoyment, but some- 
 how lacking in the finer aspirations and 
 feelings. And no truer artistic index of
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 5 
 
 this newest phase of German life could 
 have been found than the gorgeous monu- 
 ment which, by his Majesty's decree, has 
 been erected in front of the austere old 
 Hohenzollern castle in memory of Em- 
 peror William I — the " Wilhelm in der 
 Lowengrube," as Berlin popular humour 
 has dubbed it, on account of the roaring 
 lions that surround the equestrian statue 
 of the Emperor himself — a work so pom- 
 pous and supercilious that one rubs one's 
 eyes to realise that this is meant to be the 
 simple, good old man whose sole ambition 
 it was to perform his daily duty well. 
 
 Fortunately signs are not lacking that all 
 this outward display has not yet deeply af- 
 fected the nation as a whole, so that, as it 
 has been the result of the sudden accumu- 
 lation of wealth it will pass away with the 
 gradual absorption of this wealth by the 
 masses. For alongside of the great indus- 
 trial and commercial prosperity there has
 
 1 1 6 Glimpses of 
 
 come an intellectual awakening also which, 
 although it has not had the same outward 
 effect thus far, cannot fail to exert its in- 
 fluence on the future. I refer to the educat- 
 ing and humanising work done by the So- 
 cialist workmen clubs; to the extraordinary 
 advances made by the woman movement; 
 to the realistic wave in educational meth- 
 ods that set in with the school legislation 
 of 1892; to the new public activity of the 
 Church, as shown on the one hand in the 
 great philanthropic undertakings of the 
 conservative Pastor von Bodelschwingh, 
 and on the other in the efforts of the lib- 
 eral Pastor Naumann to create a national 
 workingmen's party; and, above all, to the 
 new literary movement. 
 
 It is, indeed, a matter for national re- 
 joicing that just at this time two men of 
 such profound earnestness of purpose and 
 of such signal ability to grasp the one thing 
 needful have come to the front as Haupt-
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 7 
 
 mann and Sudermann. Both men are now 
 approaching the zenith of their power; both 
 may look back upon a career of constantly 
 ascending achievements. Hanptmann has 
 risen from the hopelessness of " Vor Son- 
 nenaufgang " to the vita nuova of the "Ver- 
 sunkene Glocke " ; Sudermann, from the 
 bitter sarcasm of " Sodoms Ende " to the 
 Messianic forebodings of his " Johannes." 
 Both seem predestined to conciliate the 
 ideals of the old patriarchal Germany with 
 the unruly claims and strivings of the new 
 industrial Germany. And even now they 
 seem to be nearer that harmonious view of 
 life which is the indispensable condition for 
 the creation of truly great works of art 
 than their master Ibsen, who, by his un- 
 compromising radicalism, is prevented from 
 ever fully gratifying that most natural and 
 most human demand of the ordinary man, 
 the desire to be elevated and edified. 
 The literary career of both Hauptmann
 
 1 1 8 Glimpses of 
 
 and Sudermann has from the very first 
 been distinguished by a deep moral fer- 
 vour, by a holy zeal for truth, by a passion- 
 ate longing for purity of thought and life; 
 and even their darkest and seemingly hope- 
 less pictures of social distress and rotten- 
 ness have a glow of that enthusiasm which 
 makes us see a new heaven and a new earth. 
 What could be gloomier or more de- 
 pressing than the awful scenes of popular 
 misery and degradation that are rolled up 
 before us in Hauptmann's " Die Weber"? 
 Yet never has there been produced a work 
 of art which appealed more strongly to our 
 moral instincts. Never has Poetry lifted 
 her voice more solemnly for justice and 
 humanity; never has she appeared more 
 truly as a messenger from above, as an 
 angel of divine wrath, as a prophetess of # 
 eternal judgments. What could be more 
 oppressive and excruciating than the men- 
 tal agonies portrayed in the same author's
 
 Modern German Culture 1 1 9 
 
 " Einsame Menschen " — agonies of souls 
 blindly struggling for freedom and light, 
 craving for a life in the spirit, for complete- 
 ness of existence, revelling in the thought 
 of a new, all-embracing religion, but totally 
 unable to cope with existing conditions, 
 and therefore ground down under the 
 wheels of inexorable reality? Yet I doubt 
 whether there are many works of literature 
 that preach more forcibly the necessity of 
 self-discipline, that impress us more deeply 
 with the beauty of simple right-mindedness, 
 or that glorify more truthfully a brave ag- 
 gressive idealism. 
 
 Sudermann's artistic temper is diametric- 
 ally opposed to that of Hauptmann. 
 Hauptmann is lyrical, Sudermann is rhe- 
 torical; Hauptmann is a strange combina- 
 tion of sublime visions and cruel disen- 
 chantments, of fantastic mysticism and im- 
 pressionist realism, of pantheistic ideals and 
 a hidden longing for the lost belief of
 
 1 20 Glimpses of 
 
 childhood; Sudermann is absolutely 
 straightforward, there are no mysterious 
 recesses in him, he is a single-minded 
 champion of intellectual freedom and un- 
 hampered individuality. Yet in spite of 
 these differences in the artistic temper of 
 the two men, the moral effect of Suder- 
 mann's dramas is very similar to that of 
 Hauptmann's. Take such a play as " Die 
 Ehre " with its lurid descriptions of base- 
 ness and debauchery. The effect of this 
 drama is not debasing or enervating. On 
 the contrary, it is stimulating and stirring 
 in the highest degree. It affects us as a 
 formidable arraignment of social conditions 
 which it is for us to set right ; like Schiller's 
 youthful dramas, it fills us with moral in- 
 dignation; it inspires us with a solemn de- 
 termination to put our hand to the plough 
 which is to rake up the barren field of hu- 
 manity and open it to the wholesome influx 
 of light and air. Or take the most widely
 
 Modern German Culture 1 2 1 
 
 known of Sudermann's earlier works, 
 " Heimat." What gives to this drama its 
 distinguishing feature and its abiding value 
 is that here we have not merely a domestic 
 tragedy of the order of " The Second Mrs. 
 Tanqueray," not merely a breaking loose 
 from family ties that have become intoler- 
 able, not merely a revolt against a paternal 
 authority which stifles individual life, but 
 beside and above all this an ever-present 
 sense of the sacredness of personal obliga- 
 tions and a recognition of the supreme 
 duty of faithfulness to one's higher self. 
 
 Indeed, it is not surprising that these two 
 men, Hauptmann and Sudermann, should 
 have come to be acknowledged as the real 
 leaders in the new literary movement of 
 Germany. From the very first they have 
 given a voice to the hopes, longings, and 
 perplexities bound up with the essentially 
 modern problems of modern life; and 
 nearly every new work of theirs has marked
 
 1 2 2 Glimpses of 
 
 a step forward, has brought them nearer to 
 that comprehensiveness of view from which 
 the conflicts of existence appear not any- 
 more as irreconcilable and permanent, but 
 as fleeting discords dissolving into the 
 strains of the world's universal symphony, 
 thereby increasing its volume and height- 
 ening its beauty. 
 
 While youngest Germany is thus work- 
 ing out its destiny under auspices upon 
 the whole encouraging, old Germany is by 
 no means dead. Some days ago I had a 
 glimpse of it, when Herman Grimm gave 
 me a drama written by his wife, Giesela von 
 Arnim, the daughter of Bettina, which he 
 himself, since her death some eight years 
 ago, has edited with loving care. Her- 
 man Grimm himself is a noble representa- 
 tive of that golden age of letters at the be- 
 ginning of this century, when it was still 
 possible for the man of culture to develop 
 all his faculties into a harmonious whole;
 
 Modern German Culture 123 
 
 and as he sat opposite me in his study, talk- 
 ing in his fascinating manner — a combina- 
 tion of frankness, melancholy, gracefulness, 
 benignity, and humour — about his hopes 
 for America, about the formalism of mod- 
 ern philological learning, about his uncle 
 Jacob, his father, Bettina, and other noble 
 shades of the past, it seemed to me that I 
 had never seen a man who was so perfect 
 an embodiment of mental and moral refine- 
 ment, or such a living protest against the 
 materialism of the day. Giesela must have 
 been a woman in every way worthy of a 
 man like Herman Grimm and in every 
 way worthy of the noble traditions implied 
 by the name of Arnim. And we probably 
 do not go astray in thinking that it is partly 
 the inherited longings and aspirations of 
 the Arnim family which in this posthumous 
 drama of hers (the work of decades, as her 
 husband tells us) have found a supreme 
 poetic expression.
 
 124 Glimpses of 
 
 Its title is "Alt Schottland"; its plot cen- 
 tres around the futile efforts of Charles Ed- 
 ward, the last Stuart pretender, to recon- 
 quer the throne of his fathers. The con- 
 flict which pervades the action is similar to 
 that now being waged between the old 
 Germany and the new: on the one hand, 
 chivalrous old Scotland, with its mountains 
 and lakes, its legends and songs, its se- 
 cluded country homes, its faithfulness and 
 devotion; on the other, commercial Eng- 
 land, with its highly developed city life, its 
 party struggles, its popular freedom, its 
 selfishness and greed. In the midst of this 
 conflict there stands a figure of wonderful 
 impressiveness and pathos: Lord Jacob 
 Mac Orn, an old Scotch nobleman whose 
 house is drawn into the ruin of the luckless 
 dynasty with which all his best feelings are 
 associated. Herman Grimm.makes it prob- 
 able that this Scottish lord is a composite 
 portrait, as it were, of Giesela's father,
 
 Modern German Culture 1 2 5 
 
 Achim von Arnim, and of Jacob Grimm. 
 Like Jacob Grimm, he is a silver-haired pa- 
 triarch, revelling in the traditions of the 
 past and feeling nowhere happier than in 
 the quiet realm of his library. Like Achim 
 von Arnim, he is an uncrowned king, un- 
 disputed lord of his estate and his family, 
 with every fibre of his being bound to his 
 native soil, but his face turned toward the 
 regions of the infinite and the eternal. A 
 cousin of his, instigated by his English wife, 
 intrigues against him, seeking to put him- 
 self in possession of his estate. The law- 
 suit about the ownership of this estate, 
 which has been going on for some time, 
 would undoubtedly have been decided in 
 Lord Jacob's favour if the perfidious Eng- 
 lish woman had not managed to destroy 
 the documentary evidence; so that the case 
 cannot be settled by the courts, but has to 
 be submitted to the good pleasure of the 
 King. And since Lord Jacob is reported
 
 126 Glimpses of 
 
 to have given shelter in his castle to the 
 fugitive Charles Edward, the King decides 
 against him. 
 
 The scene where the old nobleman, upon 
 receipt of the fatal news, takes leave of the 
 home of his ancestors, and, surrounded by 
 his family and his servants, goes out into 
 the world, is the climax of the play and 
 one of the most affecting in dramatic lit- 
 erature. The faithless cousin and his wife 
 are staying as guests in the house, for it 
 is the old patriarch's birthday and a gay 
 festival has been planned by the household. 
 But now the guests have suddenly become 
 the owners, and the festival is changed to 
 a funeral. It seems as though the old 
 squire could not tear himself away from 
 the spot where his whole life has been spent 
 so honourably and fruitfully. He stops at 
 every nook and corner of the ancestral hall; 
 he addresses the chairs, the tables hallowed 
 by sacred memories; he lingers over the
 
 Modern German Culture 127 
 
 thought of the beloved ones that have 
 passed beyond from out these walls. At 
 last, when he comes to the place where, 
 years ago, he pressed the last kiss upon 
 the lips of his wife, he faints away. He is 
 thought to be dead. The children and the 
 household burst into cries of mingled grief 
 and wrath. Only Elinor, his heroic daugh- 
 ter, feels it cannot be the last. She kneels 
 down at his side; she throws her arms 
 around him; she calls up before him the 
 form, the voice of her mother; she strikes 
 on the harp the tune of " Old Scotland," 
 an ancient national hymn which seems to 
 voice the feelings of this family in all great 
 crises. And now the old man rises as in a 
 trance; he grasps the harp himself and fin- 
 gers it mightily; the whole household 
 breaks out with fervent passion in the be- 
 loved hymn, and thus, supported by his 
 sons, and followed by his faithful folk, he 
 strides away, a Caesar, a conquerer of worlds 
 invisible !
 
 128 Glimpses of 
 
 Truly, the whole Ibsenite company of 
 cynics, modern prophets, and would-be re- 
 formers seem to sink into nothingness if 
 brought face to face with characters of 
 such genuine grandeur as this simple-mind- 
 ed country nobleman of the old school; and 
 it is devoutly to be hoped that the rapid 
 modernisation of her social conditions 
 through which Germany is at present pass- 
 ing, will not lead her away from the ideals 
 of life which this man so superbly repre- 
 sents.
 
 Modern German Culture 129 
 
 IX.— MAX HALBE'S " MOTHER 
 EARTH " 
 
 January, 1898. 
 
 The rapidity with which things have been 
 moving in Germany since the final estab- 
 lishment of political unity, in 1870, is truly 
 astonishing. Thirty years ago no one 
 would have dreamed of the possibility of 
 English commerce ever being seriously 
 threatened by Germany; to-day the German 
 flag is the principal rival of the Union Jack 
 in nearly every quarter of the globe. At 
 the Centennial Exposition of 1876 the 
 German industrial exhibit was character- 
 ised by the German commissioner himself 
 as "cheap and worthless"; at Chicago, in 
 1894, German manufactures formed in 
 quality as well as bulk perhaps the most
 
 130 Glimpses of 
 
 noteworthy part of the whole exposition. 
 Twenty years ago hardly a woman student 
 was to be found at the German universities; 
 during the current semester there are two 
 hundred women hearers at the University 
 of Berlin alone. Fifteen years ago the 
 repertoire of the German stage depended, 
 apart from Shakspere and the German 
 classics of the eighteenth century, largely 
 on Norwegian and French importations; 
 to-day Sudermann and Hauptmann are be- 
 ing brought out in London and Paris, and 
 in Germany itself there has rallied around 
 their names a new dramatic school, thor- 
 oughly German, thoroughly realistic, and 
 thoroughly alive to the vital questions of 
 the day. 
 
 One of the latest productions of this new 
 school — " Mother Earth," a tragedy by 
 Max Halbe — has recently been received 
 with such general approval, both by the 
 critics and the public of the great centres
 
 Modern German Culture 1 3 1 
 
 of German culture, that it may fairly be 
 accepted as representative of the prevail- 
 ing literary drift of the present generation. 
 Halbe is not a novice in dramatic art. 
 Among his earlier dramas there are at least 
 three of decided individuality and power: 
 " The Upstart " (1889), a fearful picture of 
 elemental passions burying a German peas- 
 ant home in wreck and ruin ; " Icedriftings " 
 (1892), a merciless exposition of the moral 
 rottenness which, according to Halbe, has 
 undermined the very breastworks of mod- 
 ern society, so that they will surely crumble 
 away when the autumnal floods of popular 
 revolt are coming; " Youth " (1893), a fas- 
 cinating though depressing tale of a boyish 
 love heedlessly rushing into sin and disas- 
 ter. But only with " Mother Earth " has 
 Halbe struck a theme which leads into the 
 very midst of the great struggle that di- 
 vides modern Germany into two hostile 
 camps, the struggle between the traditions 
 of the past and the ideals of the future.
 
 i3 2 Glimpses of 
 
 The particular form which this struggle 
 assumes in the present case is the conflict 
 between love pure and simple, based upon 
 instinct and the emotions, and the subli- 
 mated love of intellectual companionship. 
 
 Paul Warkentin, the son of an East El- 
 bian country gentleman (all these modern- 
 est Germans are East Elbians), became ac- 
 quainted, while studying at Berlin, with a 
 young woman of superior intellect and 
 will-power, Hella Bernhardy by name. The 
 daughter of a university professor, she had 
 from childhood on led a city life, and being 
 of an almost masculine bent of mind, had 
 early become absorbed in the problems of 
 the day, particularly in the woman move- 
 ment. To Paul, the dreamy, undeveloped 
 country boy, she opened a new world of 
 ideas; and the natural consequence was 
 their engagement and subsequent marriage. 
 The latter, however, was not accomplished 
 without a violent catastrophe. For Paul's
 
 Modern German Culture 133 
 
 father, who naturally wished his son to be 
 his successor in the management of the es- 
 tate, insisted on his marrying one of the 
 girls of the neighborhood, Antoinette, a 
 playmate of Paul's in his country school- 
 days, to whom he had been as much as en- 
 gaged when he left for the university. And 
 when Paul refused both to marry Antoi- 
 nette and to assume the management of 
 the estate, the irascible old gentleman for- 
 bade him his house. 
 
 All this has happened some ten years 
 ago. Since then Paul and his wife have 
 plunged into the exciting life of Berlin 
 journalism, they have been editing a paper 
 bearing the suggestive name of Women's 
 Rights, and, if we may trust Hella's own 
 statements, have played a considerable part 
 in radical politics. Now the father has sud- 
 denly died; and, for the first time since his 
 marriage, Paul re-enters the house of his 
 ancestors to pay the last homage to the de-
 
 134 Glimpses of 
 
 parted one. Hella accompanies him, al- 
 though she hates to leave the city, and be- 
 grudges the delay which this trip will cause 
 in the printing of her next editorial in 
 Women's Rights. However, to recompense 
 herself for this intellectual sacrifice, she has 
 brought with her a young admirer of hers, 
 who will help her reading proof while Paul 
 is busy with the funeral arrangements or 
 receives visits of condolence ! Paul, on the 
 other hand, with the first step over the 
 threshold of his old home, feels himself 
 drawn back into the spell of the long-neg- 
 lected but ever-precious recollections of his 
 youth. And so it is not surprising that 
 husband and wife do not harmonise as well 
 in these new, quiet surroundings as they 
 seemed to do in the bustling stir of the 
 capital. In fact, they are at odds in small 
 things as well as great. Paul is deeply 
 touched at the sight of the parlour chande- 
 lier lit in his honour by the old maiden aunt,
 
 Modern German Culture 135 
 
 his foster-mother; — Hella thinks such senti- 
 mentality ridiculous. Paul comes in, cov- 
 ered with snow and glowing with delight 
 over a ride he has taken on horseback 
 through the wintry landscape, the first one 
 for ten years : " Ah, you don't know what 
 it is to be a man until you feel a horse un- 
 der you ! " — Hella wishes herself to be back 
 at her desk in the editor's office. And 
 when Hella reminds her husband of the 
 days when they were still battling shoulder 
 to shoulder in the good fight for the bet- 
 terment of the race, he breaks out : " Fight 
 for the betterment of the race? You had 
 better speak of the dissipation of my ener- 
 gies, the benumbing of my natural instincts, 
 the bankruptcy of my moral life — that is 
 what has been the result of this artificial 
 existence of ours, this continual restless- 
 ness, this bookishness, these airy abstrac- 
 tions, this cutting loose from the soil where 
 our true strength is rooted."
 
 13 6 Glimpses of 
 
 It is after one of these scenes (needless to 
 say!) that Antoinette, the love of Paul's 
 boyhood, appears. After having been jilted 
 by Paul, the impetuous girl, out of sheer 
 despair, had thrown herself away on the first 
 man that asked for her hand, a worthless, 
 rollicking, dissipated Junker of the neigh- 
 bourhood; and since then she has been lead- 
 ing a wretched and ignominious life, hating 
 herself, her husband, the world. Now she 
 sees Paul again, and his face at once re- 
 veals to her his history. " One consola- 
 tion is left me," she tells him; " you have 
 made me unhappy, but you are unhappy 
 too ! And to enjoy that I am here ! " Paul, 
 on his part, is transfixed. All his ideals of 
 an active and useful life, all the traditions 
 of his home, with its friendly human inter- 
 course, its naturalness, its honesty and 
 soundness, seem to him to have taken form 
 in this daughter of his own native soil, this 
 superb, beautiful woman, all the more beau-
 
 Modern German Culture 137 
 
 tiful to him for her grief. For she is griev- 
 ing for him! She might have been his! 
 And he has thrown her away to attach him- 
 self to a mere shadow, to a sexless being in 
 whose veins there flows no blood, and 
 whose brain is thinking thoughts that have 
 no meaning for him ! 
 
 Up to this point the action of the play is 
 perfectly consistent, in a way even fascinat- 
 ing; for Halbe is a master of those little illu- 
 minating touches which bring out with life- 
 like energy the great contrast that pervades 
 the whole drama. But now we have ar- 
 rived at the crucial point of the plot. What 
 is Paul to do? Is he to leave Hella and re- 
 turn to his first love, or is he to remain 
 faithful to his marital vow and suppress his 
 instinctive longings? Either solution, it 
 seems to me, would have been artistically 
 possible, and to a degree even satisfac- 
 tory. For Hella appears from the very 
 first so entirely devoid not only of womanly
 
 138 Glimpses of 
 
 grace, but of womanly feeling also, so 
 utterly incapable of even understanding her 
 wifely duties, that one would greet Paul's 
 deserting her for Antoinette almost with 
 joy, savage though this joy might be. It 
 would be a return to nature — to undefiled, 
 sensuous, exuberant nature; it would be 
 violence, but it would be violence that 
 overturns a false, a vicious order of things, 
 that sets things into their right relations. 
 On the other hand, if Paul and Antoinette 
 were to renounce each other, this, too, 
 would be in a way a satisfactory ending. 
 It would be a moral victory — a victory of 
 duty over instinct. Both Paul and An- 
 toinette would return to their daily tasks, 
 enriched and strengthened by the rapturous 
 feelings which the assurance of their spir- 
 itual inseparableness has brought them. 
 And both would find ample opportunity for 
 making humanity reap the fruits of their 
 bitter experience — Paul by devoting him-
 
 Modern German Culture 1 39 
 
 self with a higher heart and a nobler pur- 
 pose to the cause for which he has been 
 working these last ten years; Antoinette by 
 giving herself to that most womanly of oc- 
 cupations, the healing of wounds and the 
 relieving of distress. 
 
 Halbe has chosen to follow neither of 
 these two lines of thought. Instead, he 
 makes the two lovers go hand in hand into 
 death, " return to Mother Earth," as they 
 say themselves. This seems to me, even 
 apart from the melodramatic manner in 
 which it is brought about, an utterly 
 indefensible ending of the play, for it 
 is in vain that Halbe tries to justify 
 it by Hella's unwillingness to relieve her 
 husband from his vows. Its true reason 
 (not justification) lies in the fact that 
 Halbe, like nearly all the other repre- 
 sentatives of youngest Germany, is given 
 over to a hopeless fatalism which makes 
 him shrink from any kind of free moral
 
 14° Glimpses of 
 
 decision. And here, too, is to be sought 
 the reason for the inexpressible gloom 
 which nearly all the productions of this 
 latest literary school exert upon us. No 
 one would deny the power and bril- 
 liancy of these young writers, no one could 
 help feeling grateful for the new life which 
 they have infused into the drama. Works 
 like Hartleben's " Hanna Jagert," like 
 Hirschfeld's " Die Mutter," like Halbe's 
 " Jugend " and " Mutter Erde " are symp- 
 toms of a literary activity that promises 
 much. But these promises will not be 
 fully realised until the Germans have, once 
 for all, cast the pessimism of Ibsen and 
 Tolstoi behind them, until they have 
 learned once more to believe in moral free- 
 dom, until they once more shall dare to 
 defy reality. This it is that gives to works 
 like Hauptmann's " Versunkene Glocke," 
 and Sudermann's " Johannes," such a great 
 symptomatic significance. For here we
 
 Modern German Culture 141 
 
 feel indeed the pulse of a new time, here we 
 see clearly the beginnings of a new 
 idealism.
 
 14 2 Glimpses of 
 
 X.— SUDERMANN'S " JOHN THE 
 BAPTIST " 
 
 February, 1898. 
 
 The cable has informed us that Suder- 
 mann's " Johannes," on its first production, 
 on January 16, in the Deutsches Theater of 
 Berlin, in spite of the elaborate stage set- 
 ting, and in spite of the superb acting of 
 Josef Kainz and Agnes Sorma, was at least 
 a partial failure. If this be true, one can- 
 not help thinking that the failure was due 
 chiefly to the fact that the audience, 
 through the attempted prohibition of the 
 performance by the police, had been led to 
 expect something like a Biblical extrava- 
 ganza, and was naturally loath to be put 
 off with a religious drama of deep poetic 
 feeling. The lover of literature, and the
 
 Modern German Culture 143 
 
 lover of German literature in particular, 
 will judge this play differently; he will carry 
 away from its reading a sense of profound 
 gratitude to Sudermann for having once 
 more (and this time more emphatically than 
 ever) stepped forward as a leader in the up- 
 ward, idealistic movement which, in vari- 
 ous ways, had made itself felt for some time 
 past until last year it broke forth with an 
 overpowering wealth of poetry in Haupt- 
 mann's " The Sunken Bell." 
 
 Sudermann's John the Baptist is indeed 
 a counterpart to Hauptmann's Henry, the 
 bell-founder. The fate of both is genuinely 
 tragic. The mediaeval mystic succumbs in 
 striving for an artistic ideal too grand and 
 too shadowy for human imagination. The 
 Jewish prophet succumbs in striving for a 
 moral ideal too visionary and too austere 
 for human happiness. Both lose faith in 
 themselves and in their mission, and both 
 rise through their very failure to the height
 
 144 Glimpses of 
 
 of true humanity. Nothing is more im- 
 pressive in Sudermann's drama than the 
 way in which this disenchantment of the 
 prophet with himself, this gradual awaken- 
 ing to the sense of his fundamental error, 
 and the final bursting forth of the true light 
 from doubt and despair, are brought before 
 us. 
 
 In the beginning we see the preacher in 
 the wilderness. He has gathered about 
 himself the laden and the lowly. With 
 burning words he speaks to them of the 
 woe of the time, of the misery of the people 
 trodden into the dust both by the foreign 
 conqueror and by its own rulers, tormented 
 by its traditional obedience to a heartless, 
 inexorable law. And he holds out to them 
 the vision of the deliverer and avenger that 
 is to come : the Messiah, clad in splendour, 
 like the King of the heavenly host, the 
 cherubim around him on armoured steeds 
 and with flaming swords, ready to crush
 
 Modern German Culture 145 
 
 and to slaughter. Yet, irresistible and in- 
 toxicating as his harangues are, an occa- 
 sional look, an occasional word betrays even 
 here that his faith is not born of a free and 
 joyous surrender to the divine, but of a 
 dark, brooding fanaticism, and we feel in- 
 stinctively that it will not stand the test of 
 self-scrutiny. 
 
 Next he appears in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, inciting the populace to revolt 
 against Herod and his lustful house, es- 
 pecially against the scandalous marriage in- 
 to which the tetrarch has just entered with 
 Herodias, the divorced wife of his own 
 brother, and which he wishes to have sanc- 
 tioned by the synagogue. But here again 
 it is the blind fanatic rather than the in- 
 spired leader whom we hear in John's lan- 
 guage. Having led the infuriated mob to 
 the King's palace, he is at a loss what to 
 do, he feels lonely in the midst of the surg- 
 ing crowd, he longs for his rocks in the 
 10
 
 146 Glimpses of 
 
 wilderness; and when the Pharisees take 
 this opportunity to embarrass him by mock- 
 ing questions about the new Law the ad- 
 vent of which he has been holding out to 
 his hearers, he has no answer. Just then 
 there is heard out of the midst of the popu- 
 lace the voice of a Galilean pilgrim: 
 " Higher than Law and Sacrifice is Love ! " 
 It is the message of him whose coming 
 John has been preaching without divining 
 his true call. This word strikes deep into 
 his soul, all the deeper since he evidently 
 himself has all along been dimly groping 
 for a similar thought. For the first time 
 he doubts his own mission, for the first 
 time there looms up before him the vision 
 of something more exalted than his own 
 dream of the Messiah. 
 
 Again he rises to his full power as a hero 
 of asceticism in his interview with Hero- 
 dias and her wanton daughter Salome. Sa- 
 lome has been fascinated by the weird, fan-
 
 Modern German Culture 147 
 
 tastic appearance of this man with the lion's 
 mane and the far-away look in his eyes; she 
 wishes to flirt with him, to tame him, to 
 possess him. When he enters the palace, 
 she receives him with a shower of roses 
 and the voluptuous songs of her maidens. 
 But he remains unmoved. " Gird thy 
 loins," he says to her, " and turn away from 
 me in sackcloth and ashes. For I have been 
 sent as a wrath over thee and as a curse to 
 destroy thee." And he does not seem to 
 notice that this very curse affects the in- 
 fatuated girl like a magic love potion. 
 
 Herodias, too, wishes to win him — she 
 wishes to make him a tool of her political 
 designs, to stifle through him the popular 
 opposition to the clerical sanction of her 
 marriage; and she attempts to bribe him 
 by offering him the charms of her daughter. 
 But again his only answer is : " Adult- 
 eress ! " And yet even this victory over 
 sensual temptation leaves a sting in his
 
 148 Glimpses of 
 
 soul; for again he hears that mysterious 
 word, Love, and he must remain silent 
 when Herodias calls out to him : " What 
 right have you to judge the guilty, you 
 who flee from human life into the loneliness 
 of the desert? What do you know of those 
 who live and die for love's sake? " 
 
 And now he conies to see that he does 
 not understand even those nearest to him. 
 The wife of his favourite disciple comes to 
 him and beseeches him to give back to her 
 the heart of her husband; for since he has 
 joined the band of the Baptist's followers 
 he has forsaken his home and forgotten his 
 kindred. And John never knew anything 
 of this man's inner life, he knew nothing 
 of the love that he is accused of having 
 stifled ! Who, then, is he to teach others — 
 he who is constantly confronted with his 
 own limitations, who must confess to him- 
 self that he is without a guiding principle 
 of his own conduct! Where is there an
 
 Modern German Culture H9 
 
 outlook for him? Where is the path to- 
 ward his salvation? Is it this Love that is 
 thrust upon him from all sides? No, no; 
 it cannot be. Love is littleness, is weak- 
 ness, is selfishness, is sin ! No, the only 
 salvation lies in the Messiah, in him who is 
 to come in heavenly splendour, surrounded 
 by the rainbow, the King of Kings, the 
 great fulfiller and judge! Thus he tries to 
 assure himself, thus he strains every nerve 
 to maintain his tottering belief in his mis- 
 sion, to keep awake the hope of his poor 
 downtrodden people. And from this very 
 people, from the mouth of an old wretched 
 beggar-woman, he now hears for the first 
 time the full, the cruel truth : " We do not 
 want your Messiah! We do not want 
 your King! Kings come only to kings; 
 they have nothing in common with us, the 
 poor. Go away; let us alone, you false 
 prophet ! " 
 
 Immediately after this scene the climax
 
 150 Glimpses of 
 
 is reached. Ever since the Baptist for the 
 first time heard that mysterious message of 
 Love, he has been endeavouring to discov- 
 er whence it came. In a vague manner he 
 has associated it with the noble youth 
 whom years ago he baptised in the Jordan, 
 and from whom he has in some way hoped 
 for the fulfilment of his Messianic dreams. 
 Now he learns from some Galilean fisher- 
 men that this Jesus of Nazareth has indeed 
 brought a new gospel — not the gospel of 
 a superhuman Messiah, but of human 
 brotherhood and kindliness, of the love of 
 one's enemies, the very gospel of which 
 John, through the bitter disenchantment, 
 has gradually become the worthiest pro- 
 phet. Just after this meeting with the 
 Galileans he is drawn into the surging 
 throng of the populace, who have streamed 
 together to make a forcible attack upon 
 Herod and his wife as they, in solemn pro- 
 cession, repair to the temple. Torn with
 
 Modern German Culture 1 5 1 
 
 conflicting feelings as he is, unable to col- 
 lect his thoughts, he is pushed along to the 
 steps of the temple. A stone is forced 
 into his hand: he is to execute the judg- 
 ment of the people against the vicious King 
 himself. Mechanically he lifts the stone; 
 he calls out to Herod : " In the name of 
 him who — "; but the stone glides from his 
 hand, and he stammers — " of him who bade 
 me love you ! " 
 
 The rest of the drama brings little new of 
 inner experience. Once more John rises to 
 the full grandeur of the Old Testament 
 prophet. Imprisoned, and led before the 
 love-infatuated Salome, he once more defies 
 her raging passion. He dies with words of 
 peace and hope upon his lips. Immedi- 
 ately after his execution there is heard from 
 the street the hosannah of the jubilant 
 masses greeting the entry of Jesus into Je- 
 rusalem. 
 
 It may be that here and there in this
 
 15 2 Glimpses of 
 
 drama there is an overdose of staginess; 
 staginess is undoubtedly the danger of Su- 
 dermann's talent. It may be that the real- 
 istic touches are here and there a little 
 forced, and seem like effects borrowed 
 from the religious paintings of Munkacsy. 
 It may be that the talk of the Roman sol- 
 diery smacks a little too much of the jargon 
 of the Prussian officers of the guard. And 
 there can be no doubt that the figure of 
 Salome, this self-conscious, calculating 
 Berlin coquette, falls far behind that ravish- 
 ing creation of Heine's fancy after which 
 she has been modelled: 
 
 " In den Handen tragt sie immer 
 Jene Schiissel mit dem Haupte 
 Des Johannes, und sie kiisst es, 
 Ja sie kiisst das Haupt mit Inbrunst. 
 
 " War vielleicht ein Bischen bose 
 Auf den Liebsten, liess ihn kopfen ; 
 Aber als sie auf der Schiissel 
 Das geliebte Haupt erblickte, 
 
 " Weinte sie und ward verriickt, 
 Und sie starb in Liebeswahnsinn. 
 (Liebeswahnsinn ! Pleonasmus ! 
 Liebe ist ja schon ein Wahnsinn!)"
 
 Modern German Culture 153 
 
 But what does all this mean beside the 
 fact that in the Baptist himself Sudermann 
 has created a character worthy of Schiller's 
 genius; a character which arouses in us 
 emotions such as our forefathers must have 
 felt when they saw the first performance of 
 a " Jungfrau von Orleans " or a " Wilhelm 
 Tell"; a character which, we may confi- 
 dently hope, will be a source of inspiration 
 and delight to our children and our chil- 
 dren's children.
 
 1 54 Glimpses of 
 
 XL— ARNOLD BOCKLIN 
 July, 1898. 
 
 It is surprising how indifferent the major- 
 ity of American art students and cultivated 
 Americans in general are towards whatever 
 Germany has accomplished in the Fine Arts. 
 While the Gothic architecture of France 
 and England, Italian painting and sculpture 
 of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 
 the Renaissance architecture of Italy and 
 France, and modern French and English 
 painting have engaged both the careful at- 
 tention of specialists and the devoted in- 
 terest of the wider circle of art-lovers, it 
 would be in vain to search among us for a 
 single prominent advocate or exponent of 
 German achievements in these three sister 
 arts. Where is there in this country an op- 
 portunity to study adequately the wonder-
 
 Modern German Culture 155 
 
 ful development of German church-build- 
 ing during the Romanesque period? How 
 much is known, even by professional art 
 critics, of the superb thirteenth-century 
 sculptures, in Naumburg, Wechselburg, 
 Bamberg, or Freiburg; how much of the 
 extraordinary wood-carvings of the fif- 
 teenth century, such as the altar-works of 
 Michael Pacher and Hans Briiggemann? 
 What American contribution has there 
 been made — if we except the admirable 
 work (tone by S. R. Koehler — towards a 
 fuller knowledge even of such men as Du- 
 rer and HolUein? And how many Ameri- 
 cans are there to whom the names of Karl 
 Rottmann, Ludwig Richter, Moritz von 
 Schwind, and Anselm Feuerbach are more 
 than mere names? 
 
 It looks as though the same fate was 
 about to overtake the life-work of Arnold 
 Bocklin,' and yet it is safe to say not only 
 that the paintings of Bocklin are filling the
 
 1 56 Glimpses of 
 
 imagination of cultivated Germans of the 
 present day to a degree rarely equalled by 
 artists of former ages, but that they are 
 entitled to the earnest consideration of all 
 those — whether they be Europeans or 
 Americans — to whom art is still a chosen 
 interpreter of the deepest mysteries of life. 
 There is probably no artist of modern 
 times in whom elemental instinct has burst 
 forth with such tempestuous power as in 
 Bocklin. There may be painters who, like 
 Turner, surpass him in glow and brilliancy 
 of colour; others, such as Puvis de Cha- 
 vannes, may be his superiors in delicacy 
 of tint and outline; still others, as for in- 
 stance Verestchagin, may have a surer 
 grasp in reproducing actual happening. But 
 not since the days of the Renaissance has 
 there been his like in exultant sense of cre- 
 ative vitality. Most artists are copyists. 
 They merely tell, in one way or another, 
 what they find in real life; they derive all
 
 Modern German Culture 1 5 7 
 
 their conceptions from what they see or 
 hear. Only the greatest create their own 
 world. It is to these that Bocklin belongs. 
 Whether we like his conceptions or not, it 
 would never occur to us to deny them their 
 right of existence, as little as we should 
 think of disputing the legitimacy of the 
 manifold forms and types of Nature- her- 
 self. This alone would be sufficient to give 
 Bocklin a place among the chosen few. 
 What gives him an added significance for 
 our own time, what makes him a represen- 
 tative of modern life, is that he, more in- 
 tensely than any other artist, seems to have 
 felt in himself the two contrasting passions 
 of the modern world: its feverish striving, 
 its indomitable thirst for boundless activity, 
 and, at the same time, its deep, inarticulate 
 craving for spiritual peace. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking example of the 
 Titanic impetuosity of Bocklin's art is his 
 " Prometheus." Not even the masters of
 
 158 Glimpses of 
 
 the frieze of Pergamon entered more fully 
 into the spirit of fierce revolt that charac- 
 terises the ancient story of the fight of the 
 giants against the gods. But to this spirit 
 of defiance there is added in Bocklin a 
 sublime touch of mysticism. This colossal 
 but shadowy figure that we see chained to 
 the summit of the mountain, stretching out 
 over its whole ridge, half mingling with 
 the clouds that surround it, we feel to be 
 a part of the universal yearning and strug- 
 gling of creation for a higher existence. 
 Indeed, it seems as though dumb nature 
 had found a voice in this suffering man. 
 He, rather than the rocks upon which he 
 lies, seems to form the real summit of the 
 mountain; and as we see the waves of pur- 
 ple Okeanos dashing against its base, as 
 we see the forests on its slope bending 
 down before the raging gale, we can- 
 not help imagining that all this together — 
 sea, rocks, forests, clouds, and man — is one
 
 Modern German Culture 1 59 
 
 gigantic being, throbbing with passionate 
 life, brimming over, even in defeat, with 
 indomitable energy and desire. How in- 
 sipid and sentimental do most of the mod- 
 ern representations of Prometheus appear 
 by the side of this truly yEschylean con- 
 ception ! 
 
 It is, however, not only in such intrinsi- 
 cally heroic situations that Bocklin's extra- 
 ordinary sense for the elemental forces of 
 nature and their restless weaving and work- 
 ing asserts itself. Indeed, one might de- 
 scribe most of his pictures as illustrations 
 to the words of the Earth-Spirit in 
 " Faust " : 
 
 "In Lebensfluten, im Thatensturm 
 Wall ich auf und ab, 
 Wehe hin und her. 
 Geburt und Grab, 
 Ein ewiges Meer, 
 Ein wechselnd Weben, 
 Ein gliihend Leben — 
 
 So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit 
 Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid."
 
 160 Glimpses of 
 
 Or rather, most of his paintings seem to 
 quiver with that intense, eager, ceaseless 
 emotion by which such an activity as the 
 Earth-Spirit's must be accompanied. 
 
 What an irrepressible animal exuberance, 
 for instance, breathes in his pictures of the 
 sea ! To him every wave is a living being. 
 As they dance and glitter in the sunshine, 
 as they roll and heave in the storm, as they 
 break over each other and spread into 
 foamy whirls, as they glide gently upon the 
 sand, every one of them seems to feel, to 
 sing, to wail, to long, or to rejoice. And 
 at the same time the sea as a whole seems 
 to be a huge, many-headed, mysterious 
 monster, of insatiable appetites, of unfath- 
 omable power, and of endlessly changing 
 forms. So that we are not in the least sur- 
 prised to see all sorts of fantastic shapes 
 and faces, mermaids, sea-dragons, centaurs, 
 and fabulous serpents, lurking in the water 
 and on the shore, riding on the crests of 
 waves or diving into the deep.
 
 Modern German Culture 1 6 1 
 
 One of these pictures shows a valley be- 
 tween two gigantic rollers, evidently in 
 mid-ocean; no distant view; nothing but 
 this enormous mass of surging water. But 
 on the top of one of the waves there comes 
 riding along a shaggy ocean monster, a fat, 
 brown, rollicking, sea-captain-like fellow, 
 and his sudden appearance frightens some 
 mermaids that are sporting below, so that 
 they plunge headforemost into the protect- 
 ing element. Another picture shows the 
 breakers dashing over some barren rocks 
 in the sea; on one of the rocks there sits a 
 grizzly Triton blowing lustily into a tortu- 
 ous shell which serves him for a trumpet; 
 at his side, stretched out on her back, there 
 lies a naked woman, letting the waves wash 
 over her voluptuously, one of her hands 
 lazily bent backward to her neck, the other 
 playing with a gorgeous snake that has 
 raised its luring head and part of its glit- 
 tering body from under the water. In still 
 11
 
 1 62 Glimpses of 
 
 another picture of this kind we see the tow- 
 ering cliffs of a desolate coast; the surf is 
 just receding, in rapid eddies, through the 
 crevices of the rocks and boulders. In the 
 middle of the cliffs there is a cavern-like 
 chasm, and here there stands, leaning 
 against the bare wall, a strange, super- 
 humanly beautiful woman, her dark hair 
 flowing upon her shining shoulders, her eye 
 rapturously following the receding floods, 
 while at the same time she drinks in the 
 sound of an ^Eolian harp that is suspended 
 at the opening of the ravine. 
 
 In all this, what a wonderful fascination, 
 what an irresistible passion, what a glow- 
 ing, daring, bewildering life ! Is it a wonder 
 that Bocklin touches the heart of modern 
 men? Is not this the way in which modern 
 men live — feverishly working, feverishly 
 enjoying, crowding eternities into a brief, 
 hasty moment? Is not this an age of 
 giants and of demigods? And do we not
 
 Modern German Culture 163 
 
 even in nature see our own selves, do we 
 not even from nature derive excitement and 
 intensified energy rather than edification 
 and calm? I believe that, in spite of the 
 classical form of many of his conceptions, 
 there is, in this respect at least, no more 
 intensely modern artist than Bocklin. 
 
 Herman Grimm, to whom we owe an ad- 
 mirable analysis of Bocklin's character, finds 
 in him a lack of spirituality. He notices 
 an underlying sadness in his work, and 
 thinks its effect disquieting rather than up- 
 lifting. That here a real limitation of 
 Bocklin's genius is touched upon is made 
 perfectly apparent if we compare his sen- 
 suous and decidedly earthy creations with 
 the soaring conceptions of a man with 
 whom in artistic power he has a good deal 
 in common : the unswerving idealist Watts. 
 And yet I cannot help thinking that, if 
 Bocklin lacks spirituality, he certainly does 
 not lack the desire for spirituality. No man
 
 164 Glimpses of 
 
 could have created such works as " The 
 Silence of the Forest," or " The Palace by 
 the Sea," or " The Playing Hermit " who 
 had not a deep-rooted craving for redemp- 
 tion from this busy show world, who did 
 not feel the awe of the Infinite. And does 
 there exist a more perfect symbol of the 
 longing of modern humanity for transfigu- 
 ration and peace than Bocklin's " Isle of 
 the Dead " ? Again we are in the middle 
 of the sea. Out of the endless glassy calm 
 there rises a rocky island. It seems a 
 burnt-out volcano; on its sides we see, 
 hewn into the rock, openings that remind 
 one of the Christian catacombs. Waterfalls 
 float like veils over the surface of the rocks 
 and lose themselves gently in the sea. In 
 the middle of the island there is a labyrinth 
 of cypresses. Their tops rise above the 
 surrounding cliffs and are being lashed by a 
 storm that sweeps along in the higher 
 regions. But in the forest itself there
 
 Modern German Culture 165 
 
 reigns absolute stillness and a mysterious 
 dusk. In the foreground, on the water, 
 there drifts a boat towards the island — no 
 sail, no rudder, no oarsmen; a figure, 
 shrouded in a white garment, stands in it, 
 erect, but with bowed head. Soon it will 
 have reached its goal.
 
 1 66 Glimpses of 
 
 XII.— HEINRICH SEIDEL 
 August 1898. 
 
 What a pleasure it is (and what a rare 
 one) to meet a man who, in the midst of 
 an active and busy career, surrounded by 
 humdrum cares and duties, struggling 
 with the stern realities of existence, has 
 still preserved all the joyfulness, recep- 
 tivity, and fancifulness of his childhood, 
 and who, above the noise and din of his 
 work-a-day world, leads a life of gay and 
 sunny visions! Such a man is Heinrich 
 Seidel. In reading him we are made to 
 forget that there is a threatening social 
 question, that there is an imperious pop- 
 ular demand for sweeping political re- 
 forms; or rather, we are made to feel that 
 these social and political reforms will be
 
 Modern German Culture 167 
 
 of no avail, if they do not involve the main- 
 tenance and strengthening of those virtues 
 of individual character which are the foun- 
 dation of all society: faith, purity, disci- 
 pline, cheerfulness, loyalty, love. 
 
 Seidel is the poet of the commonplace, 
 more especially of the commonplace in 
 modern city life. He has the pure and 
 unclouded eye which detects joy and in- 
 spiration even in the monotonous drudg- 
 ery of the factory and the counting-room, 
 and which finds a reflex of the divine 
 even in back alleys and tenement houses. 
 He has that reverence for the humble 
 and the unpretentious which makes him 
 discover worlds of feelings, longings, and 
 aspirations where others would see noth- 
 ing but anonymous philistinism. He is 
 the Ludwig Richter of modern German 
 burgherdom. 
 
 To what extent Seidel even now, as a 
 man of over fifty, is dominated by the im-
 
 1 68 Glimpses of 
 
 pressions of his youth, we see in his re- 
 cently published autobiography. It is a 
 touching sight to see this strong, martial- 
 looking man, this hardy Mecklenburger 
 who made his way from his father's coun- 
 try parsonage to a leading position in the 
 engineering department of one of the fore- 
 most German railway systems, who may 
 justly claim the honour of having achieved 
 one of the most remarkable feats of mod- 
 ern iron architecture : the huge iron frame 
 roof that overarches the Anhalter Bahnhof 
 at Berlin — to see such a man revelling in 
 the simplest odds and ends of family recol- 
 lections, and taking an infinite delight in 
 the most harmless kind of friendly jokes. 
 
 I select a few scenes which will give an 
 idea of the poetic charm that surrounds 
 the matter-of-fact experiences of this hon- 
 est German burgher. Speaking of the fine 
 sense of justice which surprises us so often 
 in children with regard to the kind of pun-
 
 Modern German Culture 169 
 
 ishment meted out to their offences, Seidel 
 recalls an occasion where the fact that he 
 received less of a retribution than he knew 
 he deserved tormented him more deeply 
 than any chastisement that had ever been 
 inflicted on him. 
 
 " I had teased my little brother Werner 
 by bending a piece of whalebone back and 
 letting it snap against his hand — as every 
 boy knows, a very painful device. He cried 
 for mother. She came, and as a punish- 
 ment simply struck me with the slender 
 whalebone a few times on the palm of my 
 hand, which of course I hardly felt. But 
 in my heart I feel it deeply, and a boundless 
 admiration seized me for the goodness and 
 magnanimity of my mother, who thus mis- 
 judged me in meliorem partem. I stole into 
 a corner and my tears flowed freely. Even 
 in after-years I could not get over the feel- 
 ing of contrition that took hold of me, 
 whenever I thought of this little incident.
 
 1 7° Glimpses of 
 
 Had my mother punished me in the same 
 painful way in which I had sinned, we 
 should have been quits, and never would 
 she have appeared to me in such an angelic 
 light as was now the case." 
 
 The father appears to have entered much 
 less deeply into young Seidel's life than 
 the mother. He seems to have been a 
 man entirely absorbed in his clerical duties 
 and occasional poetic musings, and one 
 cannot help thinking that the son often 
 longed in vain for closer intimacy with him. 
 There is, then, a peculiar pathos in the fact 
 that after his death the thought of him 
 seems to have been for years so constantly 
 in Seidel's mind that it took the form of an 
 ever and ever recurring dream. Seidel 
 describes this dream in the following man- 
 ner: 
 
 " My father had not really been buried, 
 but in his place a coffin laden with stones; 
 while he himself had gone far away and was
 
 Modern German Culture 1 7 1 
 
 now living as a wanderer in distant moun- 
 tains. He had regained his health, and 
 though he looked very emaciated, he had 
 a brown, healthy complexion and an elastic 
 step. The longing to see his family again 
 would from time to time draw him back to 
 us; but it was a deep secret that he was still 
 alive, and nobody was to know it. After a 
 short sojourn with us, he would wander 
 away again. Once I had this dream again, 
 this time with the variation that people 
 were on his track and we had to conceal 
 him. We took him into a large subter- 
 ranean wareroom, where one vault led to 
 another, and sought for a hiding-place 
 among the innumerable boxes and bales that 
 were stored there. All the while we heard 
 the talking and walking about of the peo- 
 ple who were in search of him. Finally the 
 danger was past and we took him to the 
 sea and bade him farewell. Over the sea 
 a wooden bridge had been built, which to-
 
 17 2 Glimpses of 
 
 ward the horizon lost itself in the distance. 
 He took his long walking staff, which was 
 higher than himself, seized it about two- 
 thirds of its length, and went out on the 
 bridge, putting down the staff for support 
 at every step. We stood on the shore 
 looking after him, and he became smaller 
 and smaller and finally disappeared at a 
 little point in the distance. Since then this 
 dream has not come again." 
 
 Even if we did not hear from Seidel him- 
 self that he is a great admirer of Amadeus 
 Hoffmann, the Romanticist of Romanti- 
 cists, in conceptions like these — and there 
 are many similar ones — we should detect the 
 romantic element as an important part in 
 Seidel's literary make-up. Fortunately, his 
 romanticism has not a trace of Hoffmann's 
 morbidness; it is inwardly sound; it is tem- 
 pered by common sense and humour; and 
 the result is that, far from leading us into a 
 world of incongruous hallucinations, it
 
 Modern German Culture 173 
 
 gives us an enlarged view of reality, be- 
 cause it shows us reality in the glamour of 
 an inner light which has its origin in re- 
 gions inaccessible to the intellect. 
 
 None of Seidel's creations shows this 
 two-fold character of his fancy more strik- 
 ingly than that figure by which his name 
 will probably longest be remembered: the 
 inimitable Leberecht Huhnchen and his 
 circle. 
 
 Here again we observe the intimate con- 
 nection between Seidel's literary activity 
 and the impressions of his own life; for the 
 prototype of Leberecht Huhnchen was a 
 fellow-student of Seidel's at the Polytech- 
 nikum of Hanover whom in his autobi- 
 ography he characterises thus: 
 
 " Being of extremely slender means, he 
 had to peg along through all sorts of hard- 
 ships. But all the time something like 
 sunshine emanated from him, and he knew 
 how to find a serene side in everything. He
 
 1 74 Glimpses of 
 
 could take infinite glee in grotesque con- 
 ceptions and inventions. Once I found 
 him sitting at his window and looking out 
 upon the square in front with an expression 
 of intense amusement. I asked him what 
 entertained him so much. ' Oh,' said he, 
 ' I am only imagining that I could suddenly 
 dart out my nose way off into the square 
 and quickly draw it in again, so that I could 
 tip with it the people yonder on the shoul- 
 der; and then, when they looked round, 
 frightened and surprised, nobody would be 
 there." 
 
 Here is the germ of that harmless, con- 
 tented, moderately fantastic, and withal so 
 thoroughly sound and useful life of which 
 the good Leberecht forms the centre. But 
 how this life has expanded under Seidel's 
 hands, how its meaning has deepened ! 
 
 The very opening scene suggests the 
 charm of all that is to follow. For years 
 the poet has lost all trace of his old college
 
 Modern German Culture 1 75 
 
 friend, when by accident he learns that he 
 has obtained a subordinate position in one 
 of the large Berlin iron foundries and is 
 living- somewhere in the outlying districts 
 of the city. All the dear old recollections 
 of their student days are revived by this 
 news in Seidel's mind, and he starts out at 
 once in quest of the long-lost companion. 
 Sauntering about in the quarter of the 
 town to which he has been directed, he sees 
 a little boy and girl playing on the front 
 steps of an apartment house and deriving 
 an immense amount of delight from turn- 
 ing their heads backward and letting it rain 
 into their wide-open mouths. At once the 
 thought crosses Seidel's mind : these can- 
 not but be Leberecht Hiihnchen's children ! 
 He speaks to them, and forsooth ! Hiihn- 
 chen is their father ! Merrily they run up- 
 stairs, three stories high, to announce the 
 stranger, and soon the two friends have 
 clasped hands once more.
 
 1 76 Glimpses of 
 
 From this scene to the last ones, de- 
 picting the joys and sorrows of Hiihn- 
 chen's old age, his domestic comfort, the 
 merry-making and holiday pleasures of the 
 circle of friends that has gathered about 
 him, the engagement and wedding of his 
 daughter, the birth of the first grandson, 
 and later on the death of a dear little grand- 
 daughter — what a world of tender feeling, 
 of genuine poetry, of deep religious faith, 
 and of sturdy honesty there is revealed to 
 us! It is not too much to say that not 
 since Jean Paul's " Quintus Fixlein " has 
 there been drawn a lovelier picture of what 
 is most charming, most wholesome, and 
 most German in German family life. And I 
 doubt whether parental feelings have ever 
 been described more truthfully and more 
 poetically than in the following account 
 of a night spent by a father at the sick-bed 
 of his little boy : 
 
 " The crisis of the illness had come, and 
 when I had just lain down a little on the
 
 Modern German Culture 1 77 
 
 bed in my clothes, the boy began to be 
 delirious. Suddenly he was on his knees 
 and played eagerly with imaginary things. 
 Something that could not be seen he would 
 put constantlynow here, now there, and then 
 he would quickly grope with the hand after 
 it, as though it were running away from 
 him. ' Wolfgang, what are you doing? ' 
 I asked. ' Oh, I am playing with my 
 store,' he said, ' but don't you see, it is all 
 running away from me, all the time, there 
 — there — there.' ' My boy, you are dream- 
 ing,' I said, and pressed him gently back on 
 his pillow. ' Ah, yes,' said he then and lay 
 patiently down on his side. But after a 
 while he began again playing in the same 
 manner. Then there seized me a nameless 
 fright, and I began softly walking up and 
 down, up and down through the room. 
 And once as I stepped to the window and 
 was staring out into the misty night, I saw 
 something or believed to see something. 
 Was it a vision with which my excited 
 12
 
 1 7& Glimpses of 
 
 imagination deluded me? There, between 
 the bushes of the garden it stood, like a 
 long, lean, closely buttoned figure, shad- 
 owy but discernible. It was as though 
 it were waiting for some one. And now it 
 seemed as though this shadowy being took 
 out a watch and looked at it searchingly, 
 and then turned its dark, hollow eyes to 
 the window where I was standing. And 
 then it nodded its head, as if to say : ' It is 
 time.' Then there spoke something in me, 
 imploringly, although I could not bring a 
 sound to my lips : ' Go, go ! thou frightful, 
 cruel, pitiless one, go, go ! and leave him to 
 me, I beseech you from the depths of my 
 soul. There are so many who long for 
 thee, to whom thou comest as a redeemer, 
 as a messenger of peace. Turn thy steps 
 yonder, and leave him to me, leave my 
 child to me ! ' 
 
 "And it seemed to me as though he was 
 hesitating, the frightful shadow. Did he 
 not stoop down and pick a poor little
 
 Modern German Culture 179 
 
 flower that stood there between some thin 
 stalks, and did not he then vanish away in 
 the mist? From the bed of my son I 
 heard the sound of quiet breathing, for the 
 first time this night. He was asleep. The 
 next morning the doctor came, and his 
 eyes shone when he saw the child. ' Thank 
 God ! ' he exclaimed, ' now we are 
 through ! ' " 
 
 Although Heinrich Seidel is not a young 
 man any more (he was born in 1842), there 
 is no sign of waning power in his recent 
 writings. Indeed, his latest volume, " The 
 Eyes of Memory and other Sketches," has 
 all the charm of sentiment and droll humour 
 that pervades his early work. But even 
 if his task were in the main done now, it 
 would have been a task than which no man 
 could wish for a worthier one. For what 
 cannot be said of very many literary pro- 
 ductions of our time, can be said of his: 
 they have helped to make men happier and 
 healthier.
 
 180 Glimpses of 
 
 XIII.— PETER ROSEGGER 
 September, 1898. 
 
 Probably no territory inhabited by Ger- 
 man-speaking people is as crowded with 
 picturesque sights and scenes as are the 
 Bavarian and Austrian Highlands. The 
 mountains themselves offer a wonderful va- 
 riety of scenery, from the gentle charm of 
 smiling lakes bordered by gay villages, of 
 crystal streams flowing through luxuriant 
 meadows, to the solemn grandeur of Alpine 
 wilderness with its primeval forests, impas- 
 sable chasms, and silent summits. And in 
 this land there dwells a people worthy of its 
 soil, sturdy and joyous, full of merriment 
 and song, clinging to old traditions, of na- 
 tive beauty of speech and bearing. Here, 
 centuries ago, the legend of the Nibelungs 
 was welded into the lays in which it has
 
 Modern German Culture 181 
 
 come down to us. Here Walther von der 
 Vogelweide learned the art of chivalric 
 song. Here was the home of Haydn and 
 Mozart. Here the Catholic Church is still 
 in living contact with the people, and Pas- 
 sion Plays and rustic sculpture and painting- 
 testify to its ennobling influence upon 
 popular art. 
 
 No living writer is a truer representative 
 of this hardy people than Peter Rosegger; 
 none could in as full a sense of the word be 
 called a son of the Alps. He was born 
 fifty-five years ago in an out-of-the-way 
 nook of the Styrian mountains, the pater- 
 nal homestead being separated by miles 
 and miles of forest and glen from the near- 
 est village, Krieglach by name. His father 
 belonged to a family of peasants; the grand- 
 father on his mother's side was a charcoal- 
 burner. From early childhood the boy 
 shared in the incessant toil and drudgery 
 by which the family eked out their scanty
 
 1 82 Glimpses of 
 
 living, but he also imbibed that sense of 
 freedom and that intense love of home so 
 characteristic of his race. His earliest in- 
 struction he received, in a desultory way, 
 from an itinerant schoolmaster who on ac- 
 count of liberal opinions had been forced 
 out of office by the village priest and who 
 thereupon, taking up the life of a vagrant, 
 dispensed for food and shelter the rudi- 
 ments of wisdom in the lonely mountain 
 settlements. Since the parents wished to 
 have the delicate boy study for the clergy, 
 they placed him when about fifteen years of 
 age in charge of a priest in a neighbouring 
 village; but the love for his mountain home 
 was too strong in him: after three days he 
 ran away from his tutor, and wandered 
 back into the ancestral wilderness. 
 
 Instead of the clerical profession the par- 
 ents now decided on another branch of 
 learning for their son, to wit, the tailor's 
 craft ; and it was as a tailor's apprentice that
 
 Modern German Culture 183 
 
 young Rosegger made his first study of the 
 world. He himself has called the five years 
 of this apprenticeship the college period of 
 his literary career. Like his first instruc- 
 tor in the rudiments of school learning, so 
 his master in the tailoring trade also be- 
 longed to the itinerant sort. He would 
 travel with his journeymen and apprentices 
 from farm to farm all over their native 
 mountains, stay in each house as long as 
 there was work for them to do, and then 
 pass on to another, where they would be 
 received into the same household intimacy. 
 In this manner young Rosegger during 
 those five years came into the closest rela- 
 tionship with nearly seventy different 
 households — an opportunity for character 
 study probably unparalleled in literary his- 
 tory. It was during this time that he gath- 
 ered that rich store of popular tradition and 
 wisdom which makes his works a veritable 
 mine of information for the student of
 
 1 84 Glimpses of 
 
 primitive folk life; and even the imagina- 
 tive part of his writings can be traced in a 
 good many instances to the talk and the 
 incidents that formed the romance of this 
 ambulant tailorshop. 
 
 Some poems of his in Styrian dialect 
 which would now and then find their way 
 into local newspapers attracted the atten- 
 tion of litterateurs in Graz, the Styrian 
 capital, and through the efforts of these 
 men — among whom Rosegger mentions 
 with particular affection and gratitude Dr. 
 Svoboda, Robert Hamerling, and Rudolf 
 Falb — the young poet was released from 
 the narrow bonds of handicraft and given 
 an opportunity for liberal studies and 
 further literary work. From here on his 
 career was assured. From the very first 
 his descriptions of Alpine life found a full 
 measure of applause from those for whom 
 no doubt they were in the first place writ- 
 ten — the Alpine folk themselves. But
 
 Modern German Culture 185 
 
 soon their reputation spread beyond the 
 range of the Austrian mountains; and at 
 present there is, apart from the modern 
 realistic dramatists, hardly a writer in all 
 Germany who commands such universal at- 
 tention and respect as this artless story- 
 teller of the wilderness. He himself is fully 
 aware of the limitations of his fancy and 
 his philosophy of life. With few excep- 
 tions, he has eschewed subjects which lie 
 outside of " the small great world " which 
 he knows so well. And although he has 
 not infrequently given readings from his 
 works in the great centres of modern Ger- 
 man culture, from Vienna to Hamburg, it 
 always drew him back into his mountains, 
 and even now he spends at least part of the 
 year in an Alpine cottage near the old peas- 
 ant homestead. 
 
 The two most conspicuous traits of Ro- 
 segger's literary character are a rare power 
 of grasping the picturesque aspect of
 
 1 86 Glimpses of 
 
 things, and a sublime simplicity and depth 
 of sentiment. 
 
 It is indeed a mistake to think of Franz 
 Defregger as the foremost painter of Ger- 
 man Highland life. Who would not be 
 grateful to the jovial master for having in- 
 troduced us into the holiday frolic of his 
 mountaineers? Who would not take de- 
 light in those superb lads and lasses of his 
 as they dance in the village inn or engage 
 in harmless raillery and merrymaking at 
 the lonely Alpine home? Who would not 
 feel the thrill of genuine love of country 
 when looking at such heroic scenes as 
 " The Last Muster " or " Hofer Going to 
 His Execution"? But, after all, how 
 limited Defregger's sphere is in comparison 
 with the well-nigh universal range of 
 Rosegger's observation; how much fuller 
 and richer a picture of life the painter in 
 words unfolds before us than the painter 
 on canvas!
 
 Modern German Culture 187 
 
 Rosegger seems to see with more than 
 his own eyes and to hear with more than 
 his own ears. Nothing seems to escape 
 him, and everything seems to turn before 
 him into a picture. His own youth, as he 
 narrates it in his " Forest Home," appears 
 to us as an almost endless chain of pictur- 
 esque incidents, the very chapter headings 
 often suggesting fanciful or humourous 
 situations : " Of the great-grandfather as 
 he sat on the hemlock tree," " When I 
 presented the dear Lord God with my Sun- 
 day jacket," " Stories under the changing 
 moon," " The Advent of the Holy Ghost," 
 " When I was a grist miller," " When the 
 nights were bright," " When I was build- 
 ing a world in the sky," " When I went to 
 see the Emperor," " When I sat for the first 
 time in a steam car." And every one of 
 these situations seems a world in itself, as 
 far removed from the dusty prose of ordi- 
 nary life as the mountain peaks themselves
 
 1 88 Glimpses of 
 
 are from the smoke of the factories. But 
 Rosegger's real subject is the mountain folk 
 in its totality, every shade of its character, 
 every side of its varied activities and en- 
 joyments, its superstitions as well as its 
 faith, its humdrum toil no less than its gay 
 eccentricities and fierce passions. 
 
 There is the priest of the outlying forest 
 settlements, humble and devoted, a worker 
 among workers, a helper in distress, a 
 father of the fatherless; there is the jovial 
 village priest, both a ruler and a friend of 
 his people, shrewd and good-natured, 
 bigoted, but full of sturdy wisdom. There 
 is the domestic life of the peasants: the 
 father given over to the hard struggle for 
 existence, superintending his hired men al- 
 most more carefully than his family, con- 
 servative, stubborn, chary of words, but 
 easily inflammable; the mother, undisputed 
 ruler of the house, provident, sagacious, in- 
 cessantly at work, a tower of strength to
 
 Modern German Culture 189 
 
 her husband, an inexhaustible source of 
 comfort and joy to the children. There is 
 the floating population of the mountains 
 with its adventurous and doubtful char- 
 acters : the travelling traders and craftsmen, 
 the woodcutters, the military conscripts, 
 the fiddlers, the pilgrims, the vagrant beg- 
 gars, the fortune-tellers, the orphans, the 
 village idiots. There are the popular rites 
 and festivals, half Catholic and half pagan : 
 the driving out of winter, the summer sols- 
 tice fire, the charming of thunderstorms 
 and eclipses of the moon, the Corpus 
 Christi processions, the Christmas and Pas- 
 sion plays. And back of it all there lies the 
 solemn world of the Alps in its unapproach- 
 able grandeur, with its towering cliffs and 
 peaks untrod by man, with its ravines and 
 canons, unillumined by the rays of the sun, 
 with its torrents and its tornadoes, its silent 
 lakes and its mighty avalanches. Truly, 
 one might say of Rosegger's descriptions
 
 190 Glimpses of 
 
 of Alpine life what he himself has said of his 
 people : a huge treasure of moral power is 
 stored in them, an inexhaustible reserve of 
 primitive fancy, which cannot fail to be a 
 source of rejuvenation to the over-culti- 
 vated minds of the present age, which will 
 help to restore to their rightful place de- 
 mands which in the feverish struggle for in- 
 tellectual progress so often are lost sight 
 of — the demands of the human heart. 
 
 Rosegger is by no means indifferent to 
 the all-absorbing conflicts of the day. In 
 the great questions of political and religious 
 organisation he is altogether on the side of 
 freedom. Nothing is more foreign to him 
 than the desire to stem the tide of social 
 emancipation which is now forcing its way 
 even into the Highland valleys. He is as 
 far from being a fantastic dreamer as from 
 being a reactionary fanatic. He is essen- 
 tially a modern man. But his liberalism 
 does not keep him from lingering tenderly
 
 Modern German Culture 191 
 
 and lovingly over the precious traditions of 
 the past; indeed he finds the mission of his 
 life in carrying over into the new time 
 whatever he can rescue from the ruin of 
 the old. This it is that gives to his stories 
 that indescribable charm of gentle melan- 
 choly, of reverent veracity, of fairy-tale sin- 
 cerity and uprightness which is so strik- 
 ingly absent in most of our modern realists. 
 Is it not as though one heard the voice of 
 an Uhland or a Wilhelm Grimm in such a 
 scene as the following: 
 
 " Once my mother and I went through 
 the forest in the middle of the night. The 
 little daughter of a charcoal-burner had 
 died, and we went to pray at her bier and 
 to help the parents keep watch over the 
 dead. We walked slowly over the moss, 
 the forest was dark. But high above the 
 tree-tops stood the full moon, and where it 
 could penetrate through the thicket of 
 boughs, it scattered stars and milk-white 
 dots before us on the ground.
 
 19 2 Glimpses of 
 
 "As we came to a little clearing-, my 
 mother stood still, turned her face to the 
 sky, put her hand over her eyes and said: 
 ' Ah, there you can see it nicely, the spin- 
 ning wheel of our dear Lady/ She meant 
 the moon, which was spinning its soft, deli- 
 cate threads between the tree-tops and 
 branches. Then my mother turned to me : 
 ' Look into the moon, boy. There sits our 
 dear Lady and spins. She is spinning a 
 heavenly garment for the dear little girl 
 that to-day lies on the bier. And look a 
 little more. Your great-grandmother sits 
 there too.' Forsooth, there I saw it, yon- 
 der in the moon there sat two women won- 
 drous fair at the wheel. 
 
 " We went on, and the moon went with 
 us apace, and spun its heavenly silk down 
 into our wide forest. When we came 
 to the hut where the charcoal-burner's 
 daughter lay, the door was wide open, and 
 the moon was shining upon her body, and
 
 Modern German Culture 193 
 
 her face was sweet and dear and mild, like 
 snow-white wax. ' We are out of oil,' said 
 the charcoal-burner, ' and we cannot have 
 a lamp here; so we opened the door, that 
 the moon might be the light for the dead.' 
 At once I thought of our dear Lady; now 
 she was surely spinning the heavenly gar- 
 ment for the little girl. 
 
 " We watched at the body until the 
 morning-red began to shimmer upon the 
 tops of the forest, and until the moon, pale 
 and almost lustreless, sank down behind 
 the distant rocks of the Highlands. Then 
 they took up the lovely child and carried 
 her away. And when the moon rose once 
 more, it found a fresh mound in the church- 
 yard and a little wooden cross upon it, and 
 it shed its lustre over the grave, sweet and 
 calm." 
 
 Besides his sketches of a more or less 
 autobiographical nature and besides his 
 character studies depicting popular life in
 
 194 Glimpses of 
 
 its various phases and types, Rosegger has 
 written several novels — such as Heide- 
 peter" s Gabriel and The God-Seeker — which 
 in an equally striking manner prove 
 his extraordinary power of creating what 
 the Germans call a Stimmiingsbild. But it 
 seems as though his very gift of transform- 
 ing every sight into a picture fraught with 
 sentiment prevented him from attaining the 
 highest goal in blending this infinitude of 
 impressions and emotions into the architec- 
 tural structure of a novel. One might say 
 that he lives rather than produces his 
 poetry. It is their lyric quality that will 
 make his works endure.
 
 Modern German Culture 195 
 
 XIV.— BISMARCK AS A NATIONAL 
 TYPE 
 
 October, 1898. 
 
 It was a spring day in 1883. The crafts 
 and trades of Berlin were celebrating the 
 anniversary of the founding of one of their 
 guilds some four or five centuries ago. In 
 good German fashion, there was an abun- 
 dance of solemn and sonorous jollification 
 throughout the day, but the climax of the 
 exercises was reached in an historical pa- 
 geant representing the growth of Berlin 
 commerce and manufactures from the 
 Middle Ages down to the present time. 
 
 It had been given out that this pageant 
 was to be reviewed by the old Emperor 
 from his familiar corner window, and it was 
 rumoured that it would also pass by the 
 Imperial Chancellery, and that Prince Bis-
 
 i 96 Glimpses of 
 
 marck would probably be there to see it 
 pass. In anticipation of this event, a dense 
 multitude had taken possession of the 
 square in front of Bismarck's official resi- 
 dence — the Wilhelmsplatz — hours before 
 the procession had even begun to move. 
 An eager, nervous expectation seemed to 
 hover over the surging masses. Will the 
 procession really come this way? And if 
 it does, will he appear — he who is so in- 
 different to pompous demonstrations, so 
 averse to appeals to the crowd? As yet 
 there was no sign of life in the Bismarck 
 mansion : the windows were closed; most of 
 the curtains were drawn. Perhaps the 
 Prince is not even at home, or is too en- 
 grossed in public business to have given 
 any attention to this local holiday. In 
 spite of such misgivings, the populace held 
 out unfalteringly; every minute swelled its 
 numbers. Now, not only the square, but 
 the adjoining streets also were literally
 
 Modern German Culture 197 
 
 packed. Presently there was heard from 
 the direction of Unter den Linden the low 
 thunder of tumultuous cheering, inter- 
 spersed now and then with some distant 
 strains of martial music; evidently the pro- 
 cession was passing the Emperor's palace. 
 Nearer and nearer the sounds came, and 
 higher and higher ran our feverish excite- 
 ment. 
 
 Presently in a wing of the Chancellery 
 nearest to the Wilhelmstrasse a window was 
 thrown open : the Princess Bismarck and 
 Count Herbert leaned out, and far back in 
 the darkness of the room there loomed up 
 a shadowy form, from which a mighty head 
 seemed to be shining forth with something 
 like electric energy. To describe the 
 frenzy which seized the thousands in 
 the street at this sight would be a futile 
 task. It was as though we had had a vis- 
 ion, as though something superhuman had 
 suddenly flashed down upon us and ex-
 
 198 Glimpses of 
 
 tinguished every other feeling except the 
 impulse to worship. How long we had 
 been cheering before he came forward to 
 the window I cannot tell, but I venture to 
 say that even an American football enthu- 
 siast would have been pleased with our 
 efforts. 
 
 At last, however, he did come forward, 
 and, putting on a pair of immense spec- 
 tacles which his wife handed to him, looked 
 down upon us with an expression of grave 
 satisfaction. Meanwhile, the procession of 
 the guilds had swung into the Wilhelm- 
 strasse, and now passed by the Chancellery 
 in seemingly endless array, every band 
 striking up The Watch on the Rhine just 
 before it reached his window, every banner 
 being dipped as long as his eye was upon 
 it, and every man straightening himself up 
 and feeling raised above his own narrow 
 self while looking up to that stern and awe- 
 inspiring face.
 
 Modern German Culture 199 
 
 What was it that moved the multitude 
 so profoundly during those hours, that 
 gave to that impromptu demonstration the 
 significance and dignity of a national 
 event? Was it the consciousness of stand- 
 ing in the presence of the greatest diplo- 
 mat of modern times, the maker and un- 
 maker of kings and emperors, the founder 
 of German unity, the arbiter of Europe? 
 Undoubtedly this was a large part of it. 
 But political achievements alone are not 
 sufficient to stir the people's heart. What 
 called forth this extraordinary outburst of 
 enthusiasm, what gave to every one in that 
 crowd the sense of a heightened existence, 
 was, after all, the man, not his work; it was 
 the instinctive feeling that in this one man 
 yonder there were contained the lives of 
 many millions of Germans, their dreams 
 and struggles, their eccentricities and 
 yearnings, their mistakes and triumphs, 
 their prejudices, passions, ideals, their love, 
 hate, humour, poetry and religion.
 
 200 Glimpses of 
 
 Let us single out a few of these affinities 
 between Bismarck and the German people, 
 in order to understand, however imper- 
 fectly, why the news of his death that has 
 burst so suddenly upon us means for the 
 sons of the Fatherland all over the globe 
 the severing of their own lives from what 
 they feel to have been the most complete 
 embodiment, since Luther, of German na- 
 tionality. 
 
 Perhaps the most obviously Teutonic 
 trait in Bismarck's character is its martial 
 quality. It would be preposterous, of 
 course, to claim warlike distinction as a 
 prerogative of the German race. Russians, 
 Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, un- 
 doubtedly, make as good fighters as Ger- 
 mans. But it is not an exaggeration to 
 say that there is no country in the world 
 where the army is as enlightened or as
 
 Modern German Culture 201 
 
 popular an institution as it is in Germany. 
 I do not underrate the evils of militarism. 
 I believe the struggle against these evils 
 will be the foremost task of the next 
 twenty-five years in German political life. 
 But I fail to see how it can be denied that 
 the introduction of universal military ser- 
 vice, which we owe to the inner regenera- 
 tion of Prussia after the downfall of 1806, 
 has been the very corner-stone of German 
 greatness in this century. 
 
 The German army is not composed of 
 hirelings, of professional fighters whose 
 business it is to pick up quarrels, no mat- 
 ter with whom. It is, in the strictest sense 
 of the word, the people in arms. Among 
 its officers there is a large percentage of 
 the intellectual elite of the country; its 
 rank and file embrace every occupation 
 and every class of society, from the scion 
 of royal blood down to the son of the 
 seamstress. Although it is based upon the
 
 202 Glimpses of 
 
 unconditional acceptance of the monarchi- 
 cal creed, nothing is farther removed from 
 it than the spirit of servility. On the con- 
 trary, one of the very first teachings which 
 are inculcated upon the German recruit is 
 that in wearing the " king's coat " he is 
 performing a public duty, and that by per- 
 forming this duty he is honouring himself. 
 Nor can it be said that it is the aim of Ger- 
 man military drill to reduce the soldier to 
 a mere machine, at will to be set in motion 
 or be brought to a standstill by his supe- 
 rior. The aim of this drill is rather to 
 give each soldier increased self-control, 
 mentally no less than bodily; to develop his 
 self-respect; to enlarge his sense of respon- 
 sibility, as well as to teach him the absolute 
 necessity of the subordination of the indi- 
 vidual to the needs of the whole. The 
 German army, then, is by no means a life- 
 less tool that might be used by an unscru- 
 pulous and adventurous despot to gratify
 
 Modern German Culture 203 
 
 his own whims or to wreak his private ven- 
 geance. The German army is, in principle 
 at least, a national school of manly virtues, 
 of discipline, of comradeship, of self-sacri- 
 fice, of promptness of action, of tenacity of 
 purpose. Although, probably, the most 
 powerful armament which the world has 
 ever seen, it makes for peace rather than 
 for war. Although called upon to defend 
 the standard of the most imperious dynasty 
 of western Europe, it contains more of the 
 spirit of true democracy than many a city 
 government on this side of the Atlantic. 
 
 All this has to be borne in mind if we 
 wish to judge correctly of Bismarck's mili- 
 tary propensities. He has never concealed 
 the fact that he felt himself above all a sol- 
 dier. One of his earliest public utterances 
 was a defense of the Prussian army against 
 the sympathizers with the revolution of 
 1848. His first great political achievement 
 was the carrying through of King William's
 
 204 Glimpses of 
 
 army reform in the face of the most stub- 
 born and virulent opposition of a parlia- 
 mentary majority. Never did his speech in 
 the German Diet rise to a higher pathos 
 than when he was asserting the military 
 supremacy of the Emperor, or calling upon 
 the parties to forget their dissensions in 
 maintaining the defensive strength of the 
 nation, or showering contempt upon liberal 
 deputies who seemed to think that ques- 
 tions of national existence could be solved 
 by effusions of academic oratory. Over 
 and over, during the last decade of his offi- 
 cial career, did he declare that the only 
 thing which kept him from throwing aside 
 the worry and vexation of governmental 
 duties, and retiring to the much coveted 
 leisure of home and hearth, was the oath 
 of vassal loyalty constraining him to stand 
 at his post until his imperial master released 
 him of his own accord. And at the very 
 height of his political triumphs he wrote to
 
 Modern German Culture 205 
 
 his sovereign : " I have always regretted 
 that my parents did not allow me to testify 
 my attachment to the royal house, and my 
 enthusiasm for the greatness and glory of 
 the Fatherland, in the front rank of a regi- 
 ment rather than behind a writing-desk. 
 And even now, after having been raised 
 by your Majesty to the highest honors of a 
 statesman, I cannot altogether repress a 
 feeling of regret at not having been simi- 
 larly able to carve out a career for myself 
 as a soldier. Perhaps I should have made 
 a poor general, but if I had been free to fol- 
 low the bent of my own inclination I would 
 rather have won battles for your Majesty 
 than diplomatic campaigns." 
 
 It seems clear to me that both the defects 
 and the greatness of Bismarck's character 
 are intimately associated with these mili- 
 tary leanings of his. He certainly was 
 overbearing; he could tolerate no opposi- 
 tion; he was revengeful and unforgiving;
 
 206 Glimpses of 
 
 he took pleasure in the appeal to violence; 
 he easily resorted to measures of repres- 
 sion; he requited insults with counter-in- 
 sults; he had something of that blind furor 
 Teutonicus which was the terror of the Ital- 
 ian republics in the Middle Ages. These 
 are defects of temper which will probably 
 prevent his name from ever shining with 
 that serene lustre of international venera- 
 tion that has surrounded the memory of a 
 Joseph II. or a Washington with a kind 
 of impersonal immaculateness. But his 
 countrymen, at least, have every reason to 
 condone these defects; for they are conco- 
 mitant results of the military bent of Ger- 
 man character, and they are offset by such 
 transcendent military virtues that we would 
 almost welcome them as bringing this co- 
 lossal figure within the reach of our own 
 frailties and shortcomings. 
 
 Three of the military qualities that made 
 Bismarck great seem to me to stand out
 
 Modern German Culture 207 
 
 with particular distinctness : his readiness 
 to take the most tremendous responsibili- 
 ties, if he could justify his action by the 
 worth of the cause for which he made him- 
 self responsible; his moderation after suc- 
 cess was assured; his unflinching submis- 
 sion to the dictates of monarchical disci- 
 pline. 
 
 Moritz Busch has recorded an occur- 
 rence, belonging to the autumn of 1877, 
 which most impressively brings before us 
 the tragic grandeur and the portentous 
 issues of Bismarck's career. It was twi- 
 light at Varzin, and the Chancellor, as was 
 his wont after dinner, was sitting by the 
 stove in the large back drawing-room. 
 After having sat silent for a while, gazing 
 straight before him, and feeding the fire 
 now and anon with fir-cones, he suddenly 
 began to complain that his political activity 
 had brought him but little satisfaction and 
 few friends. Nobody loved him for what
 
 208 Glimpses of 
 
 he had done. He had never made anybody 
 happy thereby, he said — not himself, nor 
 his family, nor any one else. Some of 
 those present would not admit this, and 
 suggested " that he had made a great na- 
 tion happy." " But," he continued, " how 
 many have I made unhappy ! But for me 
 three great wars would not have been 
 fought; eighty thousand men would not 
 have perished; parents, brothers, sisters, 
 and wives would not have been bereaved 
 and plunged into mourning. . . . That 
 matter, however, I have settled with God." 
 " Settled with God " ! — an amazing state- 
 ment, a statement which would seem the 
 height of blasphemy, if it were not an ex- 
 pression of noblest manliness; if it did not 
 reveal the soul of a warrior dauntlessly 
 fighting for a great cause, risking for it the 
 existence of a whole country as well as his 
 own happiness, peace, and salvation, and 
 being ready to submit the consequences,
 
 Modern German Culture 209 
 
 whatever they might be, to the tribunal of 
 eternity. To say that a man who is willing 
 to take such responsibilities as these makes 
 himself thereby an offender against moral- 
 ity appears to me tantamount to condemn- 
 ing the Alps as obstructions to bicycling. 
 A people, at any rate, that glories in the 
 achievements of Luther has no right to 
 cast a slur upon the motives of Bismarck. 
 Whatever one may think of the worth 
 of the cause for which Bismarck battled all 
 his life — the unity and greatness of Ger- 
 many — it is impossible not to admire the 
 policy of moderation and self-restraint pur- 
 sued by him after every one of his most 
 decisive victories. And here again we note 
 in him the peculiarly German military tem- 
 per. German war-songs do not glorify 
 foreign conquest and brilliant adventure; 
 they glorify dogged resistance, and bitter 
 fight for house and home, for kith and 
 kin. The German army, composed as it 
 
 14
 
 210 Glimpses of 
 
 is of millions of peaceful citizens, is essen- 
 tially a weapon of defense. And it can 
 truly be said that Bismarck, with all his 
 natural aggressiveness and ferocity, has in 
 the main been a defender, not a conqueror. 
 He defended Prussia against the intol- 
 erable arrogance and un-German policy 
 of Austria; he defended Germany against 
 French interference in the work of national 
 consolidation; he defended the principle of 
 state sovereignty against the encroach- 
 ments of the Papacy; he defended the mon- 
 archy against the republicanism of the Lib- 
 erals and Socialists; and his last public act 
 was a defense of ministerial responsibility 
 against the new-fangled absolutism of his 
 young imperial master. 
 
 The third predominant trait of Bis- 
 marck's character that stamps him as a 
 soldier — his unquestioning obedience to 
 monarchical discipline — is so closely bound 
 up with the peculiarly German conceptions
 
 Modern German Culture 2 1 1 
 
 of the functions and the purpose of the 
 state, that it will be better to approach this 
 part of his nature from the political instead 
 of the military side. 
 
 11. 
 
 In no other of the leading countries of 
 the world has the laissez faire doctrine had 
 as little influence in political matters as in 
 Germany. Luther, the fearless champion 
 of religious individualism, was in questions 
 of government the most pronounced advo- 
 cate of paternalism. Kant, the cool dis- 
 sector of the human intellect, was at the 
 same time the most rigid upholder of cor- 
 porate morality. It was Fichte, the ecsta- 
 tic proclaimer of the glory of the individ- 
 ual will, who wrote this dithyramb on the 
 necessity of the constant surrender of pri- 
 vate interests to the common welfare : 
 " Nothing can live by itself or for itself; 
 everything lives in the whole; and the
 
 2 1 2 Glimpses of 
 
 whole continually sacrifices itself to itself 
 in order to live anew. This is the law of 
 life. Whatever has come to the conscious- 
 ness of existence must fall a victim to the 
 progress of all existence. Only there is a 
 difference whether you are dragged to the 
 shambles like a beast with bandaged eyes, 
 or whether, in full and joyous presentiment 
 of the life which will spring forth from 
 your sacrifice, you offer yourself freely on 
 the altar of eternity." 
 
 Not even Plato and Aristotle went so far 
 in the deification of the state as Hegel. 
 And if Hegel declared that the real office 
 of the state is not to further individual in- 
 terests, to protect private property, but to 
 be an embodiment of the organic unity of 
 public life; if he saw the highest task and 
 the real freedom of the individual in mak- 
 ing himself a part of this organic unity of 
 public life, he voiced a sentiment which was 
 fully shared by the leading classes of the
 
 Modern German Culture 2 1 3 
 
 Prussia of his time, and which has since 
 become a part of the political creed of the 
 Socialist masses all over Germany. 
 
 Here we have the moral background of 
 Bismarck's internal policy. His monarch- 
 ism rested not only on his personal allegi- 
 ance to the hereditary dynasty, although no 
 mediaeval knight could have been more 
 steadfast in his loyalty to his liege lord than 
 Bismarck was in his unswerving devotion 
 to the Hohenzollern house. His monarch- 
 ism rested above all on the conviction that, 
 under the present conditions of German po- 
 litical life, no other form of government 
 ^ould insure equally well the fulfillment of 
 the moral obligations of the state. 
 
 He was by no means blind to the value 
 of parliamentary institutions. More than 
 once has he described the English Consti- 
 tution as the necessary outcome and the 
 fit expression of the vital forces of English 
 society. More than once has he eulogized
 
 2 1 4 Glimpses of 
 
 the sterling political qualities of English 
 landlordism, its respect for the law, its com- 
 mon sense, its noble devotion to national 
 interests. More than once has he deplored 
 the absence in Germany of " the class which 
 in England is the main support of the state 
 — the class of wealthy and therefore conser- 
 vative gentlemen, independent of material 
 interests, whose whole education is directed 
 with a view to their becoming statesmen, 
 and whose only aim in life is to take part 
 in public affairs"; and the absence of "a 
 Parliament, like the English, containing 
 two sharply defined parties, whereof one 
 forms a sure and unswerving majority 
 which subjects itself with iron discipline to 
 its ministerial leaders.'' We may regret that 
 Bismarck himself did not do more to de- 
 velop parliamentary discipline; that indeed 
 he did everything in his power to arrest the 
 healthy growth of German party life. But 
 it is at least perfectly clear that his reasons
 
 Modern German Culture 2 1 5 
 
 for refusing to allow the German parties a 
 controlling influence in shaping the policy 
 of the government were not the result of 
 mere despotic caprice, but were founded 
 upon thoroughly German traditions, and 
 upon a thoroughly sober, though one-sided 
 view of the present state of German public 
 affairs. 
 
 To him party government appeared as 
 much of an impossibility as it had appeared 
 to Hegel. The attempt to establish it 
 would in his opinion have led to nothing 
 less than chaos. The German parties, as 
 he viewed them, represented, not the state, 
 not the nation, but an infinite variety of 
 private and class interests, the interests of 
 landholders, traders, manufacturers, labour- 
 ers, politicians, priests, and so on; each par- 
 ticular set of interests desiring the particu- 
 lar consideration of the public treasury, and 
 refusing the same amount of consideration 
 to every other. It seemed highly desirable
 
 2 1 6 Glimpses of 
 
 to him, as it did to Hegel, that all these in- 
 terests should be heard ; that they should be 
 represented in a Parliament based upon as 
 wide and liberal a suffrage as possible. 
 But to entrust any one of these interests 
 with the functions of government would, 
 in his opinion, have been treason to the 
 state; it would have been class tyranny of 
 the worst kind. 
 
 The logical outcome of all this was his 
 conviction of the absolute necessity, for 
 Germany, of a strong non-partisan govern- 
 ment : a government which should hold all 
 the conflicting class interests in check, 
 which should force them into continual 
 compromises with each other; a govern- 
 ment which should be unrestricted by any 
 class prejudices, pledges, or theories, 
 which should have no other guiding star 
 than the welfare of the whole nation. And 
 the only basis for such a government he 
 found in the Prussian monarchy, with its
 
 Modern German Culture 2 1 7 
 
 glorious tradition of military discipline, of 
 benevolent paternalism, and of self-sacrific- 
 ing devotion to national greatness; with its 
 patriotic gentry, its incorruptible courts, 
 its religious freedom, its enlightened educa- 
 tional system, its efficient and highly 
 trained civil service. To bow before such 
 a monarchy, to serve such a state, was in- 
 deed something different from submitting 
 to the chance vote of a parliamentary ma- 
 jority; in this bondage even a Bismarck 
 could find his highest freedom. 
 
 For nearly forty years he bore this bond- 
 age; for twenty-eight he stood in the place 
 nearest to the monarch himself; and not 
 even his enemies have dared to assert that 
 his political conduct was guided by other 
 motives than the consideration of public 
 welfare. Indeed, if there is any phrase for 
 which he, the apparent cynic, the sworn de- 
 spiser of phrases, seems to have had a cer- 
 tain weakness, it is the word, salus publica.
 
 218 Glimpses of 
 
 To it he sacrificed his days and his nights; 
 for it he more than once risked his life, for 
 it he incurred more hatred and slander than 
 perhaps any man of his time; for it he alien- 
 ated his best friends; for it he turned not 
 once or twice, but one might almost say 
 habitually, against his own cherished preju- 
 dices and convictions. The career of few 
 men shows so many apparent inconsisten- 
 cies and contrasts. One of his earliest 
 speeches in the Prussian Landtag was a 
 fervent protest against the introduction of 
 civil marriage; yet the civil marriage clause 
 in the German constitution is his work. 
 He was by birth and tradition a believer in 
 the divine right of kings, yet the King of 
 Hanover could tell something of the man- 
 ner in which Bismarck dealt with the di- 
 vine right of kings if it stood in the way of 
 German unity. He took pride in belong- 
 ing to the most feudal aristocracy of west- 
 ern Europe, the Prussian Junkerdom; yet
 
 Modern German Culture 219 
 
 he has done more to uproot feudal privi- 
 leges than any other German statesman 
 since 1848. He gloried in defying public 
 opinion; he was wont to say that he felt 
 doubtful about himself whenever he met 
 with popular applause; yet he is the founder 
 of the German Parliament, and he founded 
 it on direct and universal suffrage. He 
 was the sworn enemy of the Socialist party 
 — he attempted to destroy it root and 
 branch; yet through the nationalisation of 
 railways and the obligatory insurance of 
 workmen he infused more Socialism into 
 German legislation than any other states- 
 man before him. He began as a quixotic 
 champion of royal autocracy; he died the 
 advocate of the German nation against the 
 capricious mysticism of imperial omnipo- 
 tence. 
 
 Truly, a man who could thus sacrifice his 
 own wishes and instincts to the common 
 good; who could so completely sink his
 
 220 Glimpses of 
 
 own personality in the cause of the nation; 
 who with such matchless courage defended 
 this cause against attacks from whatever 
 quarter — against court intrigue no less than 
 against demagogues — such a man had a 
 right to stand above parties; and he spoke 
 the truth, when, some years before leaving 
 office, in a moment of gloom and disap- 
 pointment he wrote under his portrait, 
 " Patriae inserviendo consumor." 
 
 in. 
 
 There is a strange, but after all perfectly 
 natural antithesis in German national char- 
 acter. The same people that instinctively 
 believes in political paternalism, that wil- 
 lingly submits to restrictions of personal 
 liberty in matters of state such as no Eng- 
 lishman would ever tolerate, is more jealous 
 of its independence than perhaps any other 
 nation in matters pertaining to the intel-
 
 Modern German Culture 221 
 
 lectual, social, and religious life of the indi- 
 vidual. It seems as if the very pressure 
 from without had helped to strengthen and 
 enrich the life within. 
 
 Not only all the great men of German 
 thought, from Luther down to the Grimms 
 and the Humboldts, have been conspicuous 
 for their freedom from artificial conven- 
 tions, and for the originality and homeli- 
 ness of their human intercourse, but even 
 the average German official — wedded as he 
 may be to his rank or his title, anxious as 
 he may be to preserve an outward decorum 
 in exact keeping with the precise shade of 
 his public status — is often the most delight- 
 fully unconventional, good-natured, un- 
 sophisticated, and even erratic being in the 
 world, as soon as he has left the cares of 
 his office behind him. Germany is the 
 classic land of queer people. It is the land 
 of Ouintus Fixlein, Onkel Brasig, Lebe- 
 recht Huhnchen, and the host of Fliegende
 
 222 Glimpses of 
 
 Blatter worthies; it is the land of the beer- 
 garden and the Kaffekranzchen, of the 
 Christmas-tree and the Whitsuntide merry- 
 making; it is the land of country inns and of 
 student pranks. What more need be said 
 to bring before one's mind the wealth of 
 hearty joyfulness, jolly good-fellowship, 
 boisterous frolic, sturdy humour, simple di- 
 rectness, and genuinely democratic feeling 
 that characterises social life in Germany. 
 
 And still less reason is there for dwelling 
 on the intellectual and religious indepen- 
 dence of German character. Absence of 
 constraint in scientific inquiry and religious 
 conduct is indeed the very palladium of 
 German freedom. Nowhere is higher edu- 
 cation so entirely removed from class dis- 
 tinction as in the country where the im- 
 perial princes are sent to the same school 
 with the sons of tradesmen and artisans. 
 Nowhere is there so little religious formal- 
 ism coupled with such deep religious feel-
 
 Modern German Culture 223 
 
 ing as in the country where sermons are 
 preached to empty benches, while Tann- 
 hauser and Lohengrin, Wallenstein and Faust, 
 are listened to with the hush of awe and 
 bated breath by thousands upon thousands. 
 In all these respects — socially, intellect- 
 ually, religiously — Bismarck was the very 
 incarnation of German character. Al- 
 though an aristocrat by birth and bearing, 
 and although, especially during the years of 
 early manhood, passionately given over to 
 the aristocratic habits of dueling, hunting, 
 swaggering and carousing, he was essen- 
 tially a man of the people. Nothing was 
 so utterly foreign to him as any form of 
 libertinism; even his eccentricities were of 
 the hardy homespun sort. He was abso- 
 lutely free from social vanity; he detested 
 court festivities; he set no store by orders 
 or decorations; the only two among the in- 
 numerable ones conferred upon him which 
 he is said to have highly valued were the
 
 224 Glimpses of 
 
 Prussian order of the Iron Cross, bestowed 
 for personal bravery on the battlefield, and 
 the medal for " rescuing from danger " 
 which he earned in 1842 for having saved 
 his groom from drowning by plunging into 
 the water after him. What he thought of 
 meaningless titles may be gathered from 
 his remark anent the bestowal upon him 
 by the present Emperor of the ducal dig- 
 nity : " If ever I wish to travel incognito, I 
 shall call myself Duke of Lauenburg." 
 
 All his instincts were bound up with the 
 soil from which he had sprung. He pas- 
 sionately loved the North German plain, 
 with its gloomy moorlands, its purple 
 heather, its endless wheatfields, its kingly 
 forests, its gentle lakes, and its superb 
 sweep of sky and clouds. Writing to his 
 friends when abroad — he traveled very little 
 abroad — he was in the habit of describ- 
 ing foreign scenery by comparing it to fa- 
 miliar views and places on his own estates.
 
 Modern German Culture 225 
 
 During sleepless nights in the Chancellery 
 at Berlin there would often rise before him 
 a sudden vision of Varzin, his Pomeranian 
 country-seat, " perfectly distinct in the 
 minutest particulars, like a great picture 
 with all its colours fresh — the green trees, 
 the sunshine on the stems, the blue sky 
 above. I saw every individual tree." 
 Never was he more happy than when alone 
 with nature. " Saturday," he writes to his 
 wife from Frankfort, " I drove to Rudes- 
 heim. There I took a boat, rowed out on 
 the Rhine, and swam in the moonlight, 
 with nothing but nose and eyes out of 
 water, as far as the Mausethurm near Bin- 
 gen, where the bad bishop came to his end. 
 It gives one a peculiar dreamy sensation to 
 float thus on a quiet warm night in the 
 water, gently carried down by the current, 
 looking above on the heavens studded with 
 moon and stars, and on each side the banks 
 and wooded hilltops and the battlements of 
 
 15
 
 226 Glimpses of 
 
 the old castles bathed in the moonlight, 
 whilst nothing falls on one's ear but the 
 gentle splashing of one's movements. I 
 should like to swim like this every even- 
 ing." And what poet has more deeply felt 
 than he that vague musical longing which 
 seizes one when far away from human 
 sounds, by the brook-side or the hill-slope? 
 " I feel as if I were looking out on the mel- 
 lowing foliage of a fine September day," 
 he writes again to his wife, " health and 
 spirits good, but with a soft touch of mel- 
 ancholy, a little homesickness, a longing 
 for deep woods and lakes, for a desert, for 
 yourself and the children, and all this mixed 
 up with a sunset and Beethoven." 
 
 His domestic affections were by no 
 means limited to those united to him by 
 ties of blood; he cherished strong patri- 
 archal feelings for every member of his 
 household, past or present. He possessed 
 in a high degree the German tenderness for
 
 Modern German Culture 227 
 
 little things. He never forgot a service 
 rendered to him, however small. In the 
 midst of the most engrossing public activity 
 he kept himself informed about the min- 
 utest details of the management of his es- 
 tates, so that his wife could once laughingly 
 say : a turnip from his own fields interested 
 him vastly more than all the problems of 
 international politics. 
 
 His humour, also, was entirely of the 
 German stamp. It was boisterous, rollick- 
 ing, aggressive, unsparing — of himself as 
 little as of others, — cynic, immoderate, but 
 never without a touch of good-nature. His 
 satire was often crushing, never venomous. 
 His wit was racy and exuberant, never equi- 
 vocal. Whether he describes his vis-a-vis 
 at a hotel table, his Excellency So-and-So, 
 as " one of those figures which appear to 
 one when he has the nightmare — a fat frog 
 without legs, who opens his mouth as wide 
 as his shoulders, like a carpet-bag, for each
 
 228 Glimpses of 
 
 bit, so that I am obliged to hold tight on 
 by the table from giddiness"; whether he 
 characterises his colleagues at the Frank- 
 fort Bundestag as " mere caricatures of 
 periwig diplomatists, who at once put on 
 their official visage if I merely beg of them 
 a light to my cigar, and who study their 
 words and looks with Regensburg care 
 when they ask for the key of the lavatory "; 
 whether he sums up his impression of the 
 excited, emotional manner in which Jules 
 Favre pleaded with him for the peace terms 
 in the words, " He evidently took me for a 
 public meeting"; whether he declined to 
 look at the statue erected to him at Co- 
 logne, because he " didn't care to see him- 
 self fossilized " ; whether he spoke of the 
 unprecedented popular ovations given to 
 him at his final departure from Berlin as a 
 " first-class funeral " — there is always the 
 same childlike directness, the same na'ive 
 impulsiveness, the same bantering earnest-
 
 Modern German Culture 229 
 
 ness, the same sublime contempt for sham 
 and hypocrisy. 
 
 And what man has been more truthful in 
 intellectual and religious matters? He, the 
 man of iron will, of ferocious temper, was 
 at the same time the coolest reasoner, the 
 most unbiased thinker. He willingly sub- 
 mitted to the judgment of experts, he 
 cheerfully acknowledged intellectual talent 
 in others, he took a pride in having re- 
 mained a learner all his life, but he hated 
 arrogant amateurishness. He was not a 
 church-goer; he declined to be drawn into 
 the circle of religious schemers and reac- 
 tionary fanatics; he would occasionally 
 speak in contemptuous terms of " the creed 
 of court chaplains"; but writing to his wife 
 of that historic meeting with Napoleon in 
 the lonely cottage near the battlefield of 
 Sedan, he said : " A powerful contrast with 
 our last meeting in the Tuileries in '67. 
 Our conversation was a difficult thing, if I
 
 230 Glimpses of 
 
 wanted to avoid touching on topics which 
 could not but affect painfully the man 
 whom God's mighty hand had cast down." 
 And more than once has he given vent to 
 reflections like these : " For him who does 
 not believe — as I do from the bottom of 
 my heart — that death is a transition from 
 one existence to another, and that we are 
 justified in holding out to the worst of 
 criminals in his dying hour the comforting 
 assurance, mors janua vita — I say that for 
 him who does not share that conviction, the 
 joys of this life must possess so high a value 
 that I could almost envy him the sensations 
 they must procure him." Or these: 
 " Twenty years hence, or at most thirty, we 
 shall be past the troubles of this life, whilst 
 our children will have reached our present 
 standpoint, and will discover with astonish- 
 ment that their existence (but now so 
 brightly begun) has turned the corner and 
 is going downhill. Were that to be the
 
 Modern German Culture 231 
 
 end of it all, life would not be worth the 
 trouble of dressing and undressing every 
 day." 
 
 IV. 
 
 We have considered a few traits of Bis- 
 marck's mental and moral make-up which 
 seem to be closely allied with German na- 
 tional character and traditions. But after 
 all, the personality of a man like Bismarck 
 is not exhausted by the qualities which he 
 has in common with his people, however 
 sublimated these qualities may be in him. 
 His innermost life belongs to himself alone, 
 or is shared, at most, by the few men of 
 the world's history who, like him, tower in 
 splendid solitude above the waste of the 
 ages. In the Middle High German Alex- 
 anderlied there is an episode which most 
 impressively brings out the impelling mo- 
 tive of such titanic lives. On one of his 
 expeditions Alexander penetrates into the
 
 232 Glimpses of 
 
 land of Scythian barbarians. These child- 
 like people are so contented with their 
 simple, primitive existence that they be- 
 seech Alexander to give them immortality. 
 He answers that this is not in his power. 
 Surprised, they ask why, then, if he is only 
 a mortal, he is making such a stir in the 
 world. Thereupon he answers : " The Su- 
 preme Power has ordained us to carry out 
 what is in us. The sea is given over to the 
 whirlwind to plough it up. As long as life 
 lasts and I am master of my senses, I must 
 bring forth what is in me. What would 
 life be if all men in the world were like 
 you? " These words might have been 
 spoken by Bismarck. Every word, every 
 act of his public career, gives us the im- 
 pression of a man irresistibly driven on by 
 some overwhelming, mysterious power. 
 He was not an ambitious schemer, like 
 Beaconsfield or Napoleon; he was not a 
 moral enthusiast like Gladstone or Cavour.
 
 Modern German Culture 
 
 If he had consulted his private tastes and 
 inclinations, he would never have wielded 
 the destinies of an empire. Indeed, he 
 often rebelled against his task; again and 
 again he tried to shake it off; and the only 
 thing which again and again brought him 
 back to it was the feeling, " I must; I can- 
 not do otherwise." If ever there was a 
 man in whom Fate revealed its moral sov- 
 ereignty, that man was Bismarck. 
 
 Whither has he gone now? Has he 
 joined his compeers? Is he conversing in 
 ethereal regions with Alexander, Caesar, 
 Frederick? Is he sweeping over land and 
 sea in the whirlwind and the thunder-cloud? 
 Or may we hope that he is still working 
 out the task which, in spite of all the im- 
 periousness of his nature, was the essence 
 of his earthly life — the task of making the 
 Germans a nation of true freemen? 
 
 16
 
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 modern German 
 
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