Ill
 
 3 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 IN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 BEFORE LUTHER 
 
 BY 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE, PH.D., LL.D., LlTT.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF GERMAN CULTURE 
 
 AND CURATOR OF THE GERMANIC MUSEUM, 
 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1916
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 TT 
 
 179 
 
 p 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE lectures were delivered at the Lowell 
 Institute in Boston in January, 1915. Four 
 of them were repeated in February of the same 
 year at Cornell University on the Jacob H. Schiff 
 Foundation for the Advancement of German Cul- 
 ture. The whole course was repeated at the Uni- 
 versity of California in July, 1916. 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 683254
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CHIVALRIC MINNESONG AND THE COURTLY EPIC 
 
 OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 3 
 
 The unity of national life. Literature as an expression 
 of national culture. Jacob Burckhardt's view of the 
 absence of individuality in the Middle Ages. The un- 
 tenableness of this view. Chivalry the connecting link 
 between medieval collectivism and modern individu- 
 alism. Walther von der Vogelweide as a forerunner 
 of humanism. The soul life in Hartman von Aue's 
 Poor Henry. The striving for the ideal in Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach's Parzival. The protest against society 
 in Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GERMAN MYSTICISM OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 43 
 The democratization of personality through the rise of 
 the middle classes. Individualism in the religious life 
 of the thirteenth century. Cultivation of the inner 
 self, as demonstrated in the Visions of Matilda of 
 Magdeburg. Grasp upon the outer world, as demon- 
 strated by the Sermons of Berthold of Regensburg. 
 The philosophy of Master Eckhart. Its affinity with 
 modern pantheism. The combination of symbolism 
 and naturalism in Heinrich Suso. His affinity with 
 modern romanticists. The climax of the mystic move- 
 ment in Johannes Tauler. His practical idealism. 
 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POPULAR SONG AND POPULAR SATIRE FROM THE THIR- 
 TEENTH TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. . . 78 
 Individualistic character of the German folksong of 
 the end of the Middle Ages. Its universality. Its 
 naturalness. Its humanity. The love song. The 
 ballad. The Two Royal Children. Tannhauser. The 
 Stepmother. The Faithful Sister. Didactic and satir- 
 ical narrative. The rogue Amis. Meier Helmbrecht. 
 The tide of democratic feeling. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 AND DURER'S BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS . . .115 
 The emancipation of the religious drama from its 
 liturgic origins. The influx of secular elements. The 
 bourgeois character of the religious drama. Preponder- 
 ance of the trivial. Absence of dramatic unity. Power 
 of characterization in details. Effects of contrast. 
 The Vienna Easter play. The Redentin Easter play. 
 The Alsfeld Passion play. The St. John episode. 
 Diirer's relation to medieval legend. The Apocalypse. 
 The Life of Mary. The Passion. The Holy Trinity. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE HUMANIST ENLIGHTENMENT: ERASMUS .... 151 
 Climax of individualistic culture at the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century. German humanism. Its 
 defects and aberrations. Its high intellectual aims. 
 Erasmus its most comprehensive representative. Eras- 
 mus as thinker. His skepticism. His optimism. The 
 " philosophy of Christ." Toleration. Work for social 
 welfare. Belief in freedom of will. Erasmus as artist. 
 The Praise of Folly. The Familiar Colloquies.
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HUMANIST REVOLT: ULRICH VON HUTTEN . . 184 
 Hutten's ideals of life. His self-characterization in 
 the preface to the satire Nemo (1512) and in his letter 
 to Pirkheimer (1518). His revolutionary activity. 
 His revolutionary writings. His Dialogues. The Spec- 
 tators. The Bull-killer. The Robbers. Hutten's great- 
 ness. Conclusion. 
 
 INDEX 217
 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 IN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 BEFORE LUTHER
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHIVALRIC MINNESONG AND THE COURTLY 
 EPIC OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 PERSONALITY and nationality are closely 
 interrelated terms. To think of a nation as a 
 conglomeration of isolated individuals, pursuing 
 only their private aims and their private happi- 
 ness, is as impossible as it is to think of an individ- 
 ual devoid of a share in the traditions of his folk. 
 National life implies a kinship of aspirations in all 
 fields of human activity, political and social as well 
 as religious, scientific, and artistic. National char- 
 acter, therefore, is both the source and the product 
 of a great variety of individual characters, moved 
 and directed by a common controlling spirit. 
 
 These are the fundamental considerations which 
 underlie the following attempt to present some 
 manifestations of German national character in 
 that portentous epoch when the modern world was 
 born, the era from the height of chivalric culture to 
 the Renaissance and the Reformation the cen- 
 turies which saw the finest flower of Minnesong 
 and Courtly Epic, in the works of Walther von 
 der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach and
 
 -. 
 
 4 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Gottfried von Strassburg; the noblest flight of 
 mystic speculation, in Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler; 
 the richest outburst of popular imagination in folk- 
 song and ballad; the fullest sway of realism in the 
 literature of burgherdom; and the boldest assertion 
 of individual reason in the humanist revolt against 
 the Church. 
 
 The mam trend of my discussion will be the en- 
 deavor to trace the development of German per- 
 sonality in all these different kinds of literature a 
 development which, although it brings the transi- 
 tion from chivalric refinement and elegance to 
 bourgeois commonplaceness and neglect of form, 
 nevertheless in the main represents an ascending 
 line of a continuous widening, intensifying, and 
 deepening of individual life. 
 
 Incidentally, my whole narrative will be an im- 
 plicit criticism of a theory which has been best 
 stated, some fifty years ago, by Jacob Burckhardt 
 hi his admirable " Civilization of the Renaissance 
 in Italy," the theory that, in the intellectual his- 
 tory of the modern world, it was the Italian Renais- 
 sance which first led to the " discovery of man." 
 " In the Middle Ages," to paraphrase one of the 
 most significant utterances of Burckhardt's on this 
 subject * "In the Middle Ages the human mind 
 
 1 Cuttur der Renaissance, * p. 104.
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 5 
 
 was in a state of dreamy half consciousness. It 
 looked at the world, both the inner and the outer, 
 through a veil woven of faith, illusion, and childish 
 prepossession. Man was conscious of himself only 
 as a member of a race, people, class, family or cor- 
 poration only through some general category. 
 In the Italy of the Renaissance this veil first melted 
 into air; an objective treatment and consideration 
 of the things of this world became possible; and at 
 the same time the subjective side of consciousness 
 asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man 
 became a spiritual individual and recognized 
 himself as such." 
 
 I do not believe that there is a serious student 
 of medieval literature and art living today who 
 would subscribe fully to such views as these. To 
 demonstrate their insufficiency, one would hardly 
 need to go beyond the reach of French and German 
 sculpture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
 Anyone who knows that wonderland of grace and 
 beauty, of noble earnestness and spiritual refine- 
 ment which, in a bewildering wealth of the most 
 varied plastic types of kings and queens, patriarchs 
 and prophets, angels and saints, surrounds the 
 cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims, or who has seen 
 those remarkable, sharply individualized portrait 
 statues of princely donors and patrons which make
 
 6 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the choir of Naumburg Cathedral a classic gallery 
 of human character, must be convinced that the 
 artists who created these sculptures looked into the 
 world not through a veil of childish prepossessions, 
 but with the clear eye of the discoverer, that they 
 had the fullest sense of personality, that they de- 
 tected the human in man under whatever guise of 
 nationality or class or station it might appear. In 
 other words, French and German sculpture of the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries would suffice to 
 convince us that individuality was not an inven- 
 tion of the Italian Renaissance, nor something 
 foreign to the Middle Ages, but was, on the con- 
 trary, a natural growth of medieval life itself. 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be not amiss to show this 
 outgrowth of individuality from the very structure 
 of medieval society on a somewhat larger scale, 
 in its application to a comprehensive and widely 
 ramified phenomenon, namely, the development of 
 German literature from the thirteenth to the six- 
 teenth centuries. And this is what I propose to do. 
 In doing so, I shall purposely refrain from an ex- 
 tended comparison of German literature with other 
 literatures, partly because my knowledge of other 
 literatures is too limited to make such a compari- 
 son really fruitful, partly because I believe that, 
 if the rise of individuality out of the conditions
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 7 
 
 of medieval life is made clear for Germany, a 
 parallel development in other countries is thereby 
 implicitly established. 
 
 If we contrast in a broad way the spirit of the 
 Middle Ages with the prevailing spirit of the mod- 
 ern era, it must be admitted that medieval life 
 was dominated by collective consciousness while 
 modern life is dominated by individual conscious- 
 ness; but it must also be admitted that the very 
 climax of medieval life, the institution of chivalry, 
 forms a connecting link between medieval collec- 
 tivism and modern individualism. In no other 
 institution of the Middle Ages has the spirit of the 
 submission of the individual to a larger corporate 
 whole asserted itself more strongly than in chivalry; 
 but alongside with this spirit of submission to a 
 corporate whole there are found hi chivalry the 
 germs at least of a tendency which ultimately was 
 to set free the individual and raise it above the level 
 of merely corporate existence. Chivalry is service; 
 service to the liege lord, service to the knightly 
 class, service to the church, service to the chosen 
 lady. It rests upon the assumption that compli- 
 ance with a certain set of class conventions is the 
 true standard of conduct. It finds its highest ami 
 hi the scrupulous maintenance of this social stand- 
 ard. This is one side of chivalry; but there is an-
 
 8 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 other side to it. The chivalric ideal, although in 
 the most conspicuous manner an ideal of social 
 decorum, is at the same time an ideal of personal 
 dignity and of personal worth. The canon of vir- 
 tues which under the undoubted influence of the 
 medieval church came to be the moral code of 
 chivalry at its highest point, comprises the same 
 virtues the virtues of devotion, faith, magna- 
 nimity, steadfastness, valor, generosity, modera- 
 tion, self-possession which, as we moderns would 
 say, make the gentleman, or, as the Greeks said, 
 make the avyp KaKoKa-yaBoy. Although in the first 
 place contributing to develop a strong and clearly 
 denned feeling of class, the moral code of chivalry 
 also contributes to deepen and widen personal life; 
 and thus there arises from the very perfection of 
 the medieval conception of class a state of mind 
 which is at least an anticipation of what we mean 
 when we speak of true humanity. 
 
 German poetry of the end of the twelfth century 
 and the beginning of the thirteenth, lyric as well as 
 epic, illustrates in a striking manner this double 
 nature of the chivalric ideal. In the average pro- 
 ductions of the Minnesingers, in the majority of 
 the courtly epics, even in the mass of the folk epics, 
 there is a predominance of class feeling and of social 
 etiquette. But from this mass there stand out in-
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 9 
 
 dividual poets who, without detaching themselves 
 from the conceptions and ideals of the chivalric 
 class, lend to these ideals of class the whole fullness 
 of their own personality; and from this combina- 
 tion there arise works of universally human signifi- 
 cance, works which, like the highest productions of 
 German sculpture of the thirteenth century, need 
 not fear comparison with the best of all ages and 
 nations. 
 
 I shall single out from these noblest represent- 
 atives of chivalric personality in German poetry 
 four names of particular effulgence: Walther von 
 der Vogelweide, Hartman von Aue, Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg. 1 
 
 Walther von der Vogelweide's poetic activity 
 may be divided into two unequal halves, the first 
 consisting of the brief period of his sojourn at the 
 court of the Austrian dukes at Vienna, from 1190 to 
 1198; the second consisting of long years of home- 
 less wanderings from castle to castle, and from land 
 to land, ending with his supposed participation in 
 the crusade of 1228, after which trace of him is lost. 
 We are probably justified in ascribing to the first of 
 these two periods the majority of his finest and 
 most spirited love songs, to the second the larger 
 
 1 For a discussion of personality in the Nibdungerdied and Gudrun, 
 see my Ktdturwerte der deutschen Literatur im Mittelalter, pp. 123-133.
 
 10 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 part of his poems dealing with the affairs of Church 
 and State. The important fact is that both in his 
 love songs and in his poems on public affairs there 
 is revealed an individual, holding himself reverently 
 and devoutly within the limits set to him by class 
 tradition and custom, yet within these limits reso- 
 lutely asserting his own convictions, refusing to be 
 fettered by sham and artificial fashion, fearlessly 
 defending the rights of common humanity, a true 
 freeman in knightly garb, in universality of sym- 
 pathies, in fully rounded personality a peer of 
 Dante and Chaucer, whom he anticipated by 
 generations. 
 
 Perhaps in no artistic productions has chivalry 
 appeared more genuinely human than in some love 
 songs of Walther's in which, while adopting the 
 traditional form of courtly lyrics, he fills this form 
 with his own soul and thus imparts to it a new 
 spirit. What a charming mixture, e. g., of deference 
 to courtly demeanor and social correctness on the 
 one hand and of naive, childlike joy in nature on 
 the other is embodied in the poem "So die bluo- 
 men uz dem grase dringent " the comparison of 
 a May morning " when flowers greet with smiles 
 the sun's bright rays " and the little birds sing " in 
 their best manner " with the " noble maiden, fair 
 and pure," who
 
 CHWALRIC MINNESONG II 
 
 wol gekleidet unde wol gebunden, 
 durch kurzewlle zuo vil liuten gat, 
 hovelichen hohgemuot, niht eine, 
 umbe sehende ein wenic under stunden, 
 alsam der sunne gegen den sternen stat. 1 
 
 How enchanting is the combination of bashful 
 delicacy and social decorum with joyful frankness 
 and daring love in that perhaps best known of 
 Walther's poems in which he makes a young girl 
 recall to herself the blissful hour spent with her be- 
 loved among the roses under the linden tree. 2 How 
 forcible is the contrast, hi the poem " Miiget ir 
 schowen waz dem meien " between the fastidious 
 description of courtly gayness and the earnest ap- 
 peal of the heart to the cruel woman whose coldness 
 robs the poet of his bliss. 
 
 roter mund, wie du dich swachest! 
 
 la din lachen sin. 
 
 scham dich, daz du mich an lachest 
 
 nach dem schaden min. 
 
 ist daz wol getan ? 
 
 owe" so verlorner stunde, 
 
 sol von minneclichem munde 
 
 solch unminne ergan! 3 
 
 1 Well clad and well braided, mingles, for pleasure's sake, in com- 
 pany, courteously festive, not alone, glancing around a little at times 
 like the sun among stars. Kiirschner's Deutsche Nationattiteratur 
 (D. N. L.), VIII, 2, p. 16. 2 Loc. tit., p. 15. 
 
 * Rosy mouth, how thou harmest thyself! Let thy laughter cease! 
 Shame upon thee that thou laughest at my discomfiture. Is that well 
 done ? Ah for the time lost in such manner if from lovely mouth is 
 to proceed such unloveliness ! Loc. cit., p. 27.
 
 12 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The crown, however, of these love songs in which a 
 conventional conception is made the vehicle of per- 
 sonal experience and emotion seems to me a poem 
 that might be called a spiritualized alba or tagelied. 
 As hi the tagelied) the underlying conception of this 
 poem is a meeting of the lovers at night and their 
 separation at the dawn of day. But from the realm 
 of fashionable adventure, which forms the back- 
 ground of this scene in the tagelied, it has been tran- 
 sported by Walther into his own inner life. It is 
 not a stealthy meeting between a knight errant and 
 his paramour; it is a vision that has come to Wal- 
 ther in the stillness of the night, a vision of his 
 having reached the goal of his desires. He has been 
 dreaming of meeting a beautiful maiden hi the 
 lonely forest. They gathered flowers together, he 
 placed a wreath of roses upon her head, and as she 
 looked at him, he felt a happiness such as never 
 before. 
 
 mich dittite daz mir nie 
 
 lieber wurde danne mir ze muote was: 
 
 die bluomen vielen ie 
 
 von den boumen bl uns nider an daz gras. 
 
 seht, d6 muost' ich von freuden lachen, 
 
 do ich s6 wiinnecliche 
 
 was in troume richer 
 
 dd tagete ez und muose ich wachen. 1 
 
 1 It seemed to me that I never felt more joyful. The blossoms fell 
 ever from the trees about us on the grass. Then I must laugh for joy,
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 13 
 
 The beautiful form has vanished; he finds himself 
 alone. But the image of her still hovers before his 
 mind's eye; wherever he goes, it flits about him; 
 and he is impelled to seek for its real counterpart 
 among the living. 
 
 From the aesthetic point of view these poems in 
 which Walther weaves his own individuality into 
 the fabric of courtly tradition and aristocratic cus- 
 tom and thus produces a whole of exquisite richness 
 and grace, probably mark the climax of his art. 
 But from the historical point of view, another cate- 
 gory of his love poems is equally notable, perhaps 
 even more so, poems hi which the personal ele- 
 ment predominates, in which even an opposition to 
 the accepted standards of class etiquette and con- 
 duct may be discerned. These poems, naturally, 
 lack for the most part that poise, harmony, and 
 finish, characteristic of the former category; but 
 they compensate us for this lack by telling us of 
 the struggle for the emancipation of the individual 
 which began in Walther's time, which in the six- 
 teenth century overthrew the whole system of 
 medieval hierarchy, in the seventeenth led to the 
 victory of the English commonwealth over the 
 absolute monarchy, hi the eighteenth established 
 
 since I was so wondrously rich in my dream. Then dawned the day 
 and I must awake. Loc. cit., p. 15.
 
 14 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 American independence, crushed the ancien regime 
 in France, and brought forth the classic epoch of 
 German genius in music, literature, and phil- 
 osophy; and which, we pray, may convert the pres- 
 ent death struggle of European nations into the 
 birth throes of a new era of common humanity. 
 
 It seems a far cry from such portentous, world- 
 wide revolutions as these to medieval love songs. 
 And yet it is no exaggeration to say that even in 
 Walther's love songs there is seen not infrequently 
 an anticipation of this great emancipation move- 
 ment, a protest of the individual against the dic- 
 tates of society. What else than such a protest is 
 it when, in centra-distinction to the fashionable de- 
 votees of the Frauendienst, Walther prefers the 
 word Weib (woman) to the word Frau (Lady). 1 
 What else when he scorns a love which does not 
 help to raise his own feeling of personal dignity. 2 
 What else when he puts grace above beauty for 
 grace, he says, makes a woman beautiful; beauty 
 alone does not ; when the glass finger-ring of the 
 simple maid whom he loves is to him more precious 
 than the golden crown of a queen. 3 In all this we 
 recognize the same spirit which enabled Walther to 
 express more strongly than any of his contempora- 
 
 1 D. N, L., VIII, 2, p. 71. 3 Loc. cit., p. 13 f. 
 * Loc. cit., p. 33.
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 15 
 
 ries his belief in the brotherhood of all men, be they 
 Christians, Jews or Pagans; x which made him see 
 the foundation of all ethics hi the conquering of 
 one's self. 2 Truly, what Jacob Burckhardt has 
 said 3 of Dante may with equal justice, nay, con- 
 sidering that Dante lived a hundred years later, 
 with greater justice be said of Walther, namely, 
 that " in reading him we fancy that throughout the 
 Middle Ages the poets had been purposely fleeing 
 from themselves, and that he was the first to seek 
 his own soul." 
 
 It is however in his political and ecclesiastical 
 poems, in the poems dealing with the burning ques- 
 tions of the day in Church and State, that Wal- 
 ther's individualism most clearly asserts itself. 
 Sometimes his language has a truly revolutionary 
 ring. When he accuses Pope Innocent III of having 
 instigated civil war in Germany by playing out the 
 two great political parties of the Guelf s and Hohen- 
 staufen against each other; 4 when he bewails the 
 Constantine Donation as the beginning of the rum 
 of the Church; 6 when he compares the Roman See 
 with a sorcerer's abode, a robber's den, a wolf's fast- 
 ness 6 we are indeed reminded of Luther's violent 
 
 1 D. N. L., VIII, 2, p. 87. * D. N. L., VIII, 2, p. 96. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., p. 119. 6 Loc. cit., p. 83. 
 
 3 Cultur der Renaissance* p. 245. 6 Loc. cit., p. 101.
 
 1 6 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 invectives against the depraved Church of his day. 
 In two of these poems the affinity with Luther is 
 particularly obvious, because Walther protests in 
 them against an evil which wrung from Luther his 
 first great effusion of patriotic wrath and indigna- 
 tion, the extortions of money from the German 
 people made under the pretext of a Peter's Pence 
 or of contributions for a crusade. In the first poem 
 Walther represents the Pope himself, in company 
 with his Roman priests and prelates, glorying over 
 the misery and confusion brought upon Germany 
 by the two rival kings, Otto IV and Frederick II, 
 and laughing in his sleeve over the stupidity of the 
 good natured Germans who meanwhile fill his 
 treasures: 
 
 al die wile fulle ich mine kasten. 
 
 ich han s'an minen stoc gement: ir guot wirt allez min, 
 
 ir tiuschez silber vert in minen welschen schrin. 
 
 ir pfaffen, ezzet hiienr und trinket win 
 
 und lat die tcerschen tiuschen leien vasten. 1 
 
 In the second poem he addresses the contribution 
 box itself as " Sir Box," and curses it as an emis- 
 sary of the evil Pope who was not thinking for a 
 moment of using the collected money for religious 
 
 1 All the while I fill my chests. I have led them about by my 
 stick: their riches will all be mine, their German silver flows into 
 my Roman shrine. Feast on fowl, ye priests, and drink your wine, 
 and let the witless German laymen fast! Loc. cit., p. 103.
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 1 7 
 
 purposes and was only bent on finding out how 
 many fools are left in German lands. 1 
 
 And yet, in spite of these and similar outbursts of 
 impassioned feelings which impress us as essentially 
 modern, because hi them the individual boldly op- 
 poses his own views to the acknowledged supreme 
 authorities of public life, it must be said that in 
 these political poems no less than in his love songs 
 Walther reveals himself after all as a medieval 
 man, as a man firmly believing in the sacredness 
 and God-given power of the great public institu- 
 tions and ordinances, above all firmly believing hi 
 Empire and Papacy as the indispensable safeguards 
 of temporal and spiritual welfare. And here again, 
 as in his love songs, the principal charm of his 
 poetry seems to lie in the very union of these two 
 contrasting elements of corporate consciousness 
 on the one hand and individual consciousness on 
 the other. We have in these poems all the warmth 
 of feeling, all the serene contemplativeness, all the 
 naive childlikeness which only faith in the accepted 
 forms of life can give; but we also have in them an 
 outlook into those wider fields where man, freed 
 from the fetters of tradition, may exert to the full 
 the whole variety of his faculties and thus develop 
 in himself what is abidingly and universally human. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 104
 
 1 8 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 When the poet gives us a picture of himself, 1 as 
 he is sitting reflectively on a rock, his legs crossed, 
 his arm resting upon his knee, and his chin sup- 
 ported by his hand, and thus muses about the evils 
 of his day: how impossible it is to put mankind 
 into possession of the three greatest blessings of 
 life honor, wealth, and the grace of God as 
 long as the highwaymen Violence and Treason are 
 lurking in ambush and are sorely pressing the val- 
 iant squires Justice and Peace, we recognize in 
 medieval form a thoroughly modern conception, 
 the idea of a State founded on right. When the 
 aged Walther sees himself brought back to the 
 scenes of his childhood 2 and everything now seems 
 so different to him his playmates, his friends, 
 the fields, the forest, everything different and 
 strange, only the brook is flowing as of yore , we 
 would fancy hearing a poet of our own times, if 
 these universally human feelings were not followed 
 by a lament upon the sinfulness of the age and an 
 appeal to atone for it by participation in a crusade. 
 And finally in his Leich, 3 perhaps the most deeply 
 felt religious hymn of German chivalry, what an 
 intimate alliance of naive childlike faith and free, 
 mature, manly conviction ! When has the praise of 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 78. * Loc. tit., pp. 144 ff. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., pp. 125 ff.
 
 CHIVALRIC MINNESONG 19 
 
 the Mother of God, the sweet, pure Virgin been 
 sung more touchingly than here ? By what poet 
 has the whole constellation of symbols by which the 
 Middle Ages loved to surround the mystery of 
 Mary's virgin motherhood the budding rod of 
 Aaron, the burning bush of Moses, Ezekiel's portal, 
 the dawn consumed by the rising sun, the crystal 
 irradiated by light been combined into a more 
 resplendent galaxy of images ? By whom has the 
 medieval feeling of the need of redemption, the 
 medieval longing for the revival of the " arid 
 heart " by the " holy stream " of the divine spirit 
 been expressed more forcibly and fervently ? And 
 in closest union with all this the boldest criticism 
 of the medieval Church, the antithesis between 
 Christendom and Christianity, the emphasis upon 
 personal deed as the only foundation of eternal life. 
 Truly, here Walther von der Vogelweide is revealed 
 to us in his most significant role, hi his true histori- 
 cal perspective, as a proclaimer of universally 
 human ideals, as a forerunner, or shall we say a 
 spiritual contemporary of the classic German liter- 
 ature of Goethe's and Schiller's days, as a prophet 
 of the reconciliation between traditional belief and 
 free personality. 1 
 
 1 His national feeling also, as attested by the song " Ir suit 
 sprechen willekomen," is based upon the belief in the true humanity 
 of German character. Loc. cit., p. 57.
 
 20 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Another climax of this same outgrowth of in- 
 dividuality from chivalric tradition is represented 
 in the finest productions of the courtly epic. That 
 the mass of these epics is incarnated spirit of caste 
 and offers very little to touch the feelings common 
 to all men, cannot be denied. In most of these 
 epics the world seems to have been transformed 
 into one continuous opportunity for gallant adven- 
 ture. Whether the heroes and heroines belong to 
 the legends of the Trojan war or to Celtic or to 
 Oriental tradition, whether their names are Eneas 
 and Lavinia, or Iwein and Laudine, or Terramer and 
 Arabele, makes no difference; they all are nothing 
 but modifications of the one ideal of chivalric eti- 
 quette which from France had spread throughout 
 Europe. Few of them call forth human interest; in 
 most of them, particularly the knights of King 
 Arthur's following, the human interest is smothered 
 and stifled by ever repeated phantastic trivialities. 
 What do we care for all these enchanted castles 
 from which gentle maidens are to be rescued; these 
 miraculous fountains in the wilderness near which 
 terrific battles are to be fought for nothing; these 
 giants and dwarfs defying courtly manners; these 
 lions with lamb-like obedience following their mas- 
 ters; these caves of love and fairy groves; these 
 bold abductions and strange deliverances ? What is
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 21 
 
 it all but an endless monotonous masquerade, a 
 fashionable entertainment of an exclusive caste? 
 How wearisome are these incessant descriptions of 
 armaments and garments; of hairdress and com- 
 plexion; of the striding, riding, sitting and curtsey- 
 ing of the knights and ladies; of horses, hounds, and 
 monsters; of precious stones and stately halls; of 
 rocky denies and impenetrable forests. Variegated 
 and motley as are the costumes, the faces of their 
 wearers are nearly all alike. Romantic as are the 
 landscapes, they remain mere scenery, and hardly 
 ever evoke the feeling of affinity between nature 
 and man. Even the best known of these epics 
 of French origin and manner, such as Hartman's 
 "Erec" and "Iwein," nay even Wolfram's "Par- 
 zival"and Gottfried's "Tristan," are spoiled for 
 the unsophisticated reader by fashionableness and 
 artificiality, by the lack of artistic selection be- 
 tween the essential and superficial, by the over- 
 crowding of the fundamental theme with a mass 
 of episodes that have little or nothing to do with 
 the human soul, by over-emphasis of what appeals 
 merely to the feeling of caste. 
 
 And yet it must be acknowledged that these 
 courtly epics in their best representatives make it 
 especially clear how this very exclusiveness of 
 chivalric feeling leads to the heightening and in-
 
 22 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 tensifying of personal life; how from the mass of 
 colorless and correct society types there arise a few, 
 markedly original and singular, individual types 
 either men who in themselves live out the chivalric 
 morals in their most sublimated form and thereby 
 transform traditional morals into personal mor- 
 ality; or men who, on the contrary, oppose their 
 own self to the traditional morals, who in desire for 
 enjoyment and self -gratification transgress the bar- 
 riers of accepted respectability, and thereby act as 
 dissolvents of the whole social order from which 
 they themselves proceed. It is instructive from 
 this point of view to analyze Hartman von Aue's 
 "Poor Henry," Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Par- 
 zival," and Gottfried von Strassburg's "Tristan." 
 It will always remain a sad document of the fatal 
 influence of classicist formalism upon pre-romantic 
 German literature that Goethe, the poet of "Iphi- 
 genie," should not only not have had any under- 
 standing for Hartman's "Poor Henry," but should 
 have shrunk from it with a feeling of positive 
 aversion and something like fear of contagion. 1 For 
 where in all the world is there a poetic theme more 
 nearly akin to the theme of Goethe's " Iphigenie " ? 
 Where, except in Goethe's " Iphigenie," has the vic- 
 tory of a pure heart over a terrible fate, has inner 
 
 1 Goethe, Tag-und Jahreshefte, 1811, Werke, Hempel, xxvii, 203.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 23 
 
 recovery and purification been more touchingly rep- 
 resented than in Hartman's "Poor Henry " ? Nor 
 is the universally human value of this poem im- 
 paired by the fact that it holds itself strictly within 
 the bounds of chivalric conceptions and is, indeed, 
 a perfect expression of their religious elements. 
 
 It is impossible to reproduce the charm of this 
 poem which, by the way, is the only one of 
 Hartman's works based upon native German tra- 
 dition by an analysis of its contents. Every line 
 in it is genuine poetry, the composition of the whole 
 of a simplicity, perspicuity, and gracefulness, such 
 as no other narrative poem of this period betrays. 
 All glaring contrasts between health and disease, 
 happiness and misery, riches and poverty, good and 
 evil contrasts which lie close enough to the plot 
 of the story are scrupulously avoided. The ter- 
 rible disease of leprosy by which Sir Henry is 
 visited, is not conceived of as a punishment for his 
 sins. He is not a hard, cruel, arrogant lord; on the 
 contrary, he is a nobleman as he should be, "a 
 flower of youth, a mirror of joy, an adamant of 
 steady faith, a crown of courtly manners." l And 
 his guilt consists only in this that he does not, like 
 Job, accept patiently and trustfully the fearful 
 trial by which God wants to test him, but revolts 
 
 1 Verses 60 ff .
 
 24 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 against it and gives himself over to wild, defiant 
 misery. His misery turns into utter hopelessness 
 when he hears from the physician at Salerno that 
 he can be healed only by the heart-blood of a pure 
 maiden who of her own free will would give her life 
 for him. He retires to a lonely farm in the Black 
 Forest to await his end hi mute resignation. But 
 here again, we are spared the crude effects of patho- 
 logical naturalism. There is no shrill discord be- 
 tween the comfortable life of the stately Swabian 
 farmhouse, with its sturdy master, the industrious 
 housewife and their healthy, beautiful children, 
 and the wretchedness and despair of the lonely 
 sufferer. On the contrary, a spirit of human fel- 
 lowship and mutual understanding is spread over 
 their intercourse; and golden poetry surrounds the 
 figure of the lovely child, the eight year old daugh- 
 ter, who instinctively clings to the poor stranger, 
 follows him everywhere, and rejoices when he calls 
 her his " little spouse " and presents her with toys 
 and nicknacks. 
 
 How simple and how deeply affecting is what 
 now follows: the series of soul-stirring experiences 
 which reaches its climax hi Henry's recovery and 
 his union with his deliverer. 
 
 The child is sitting at his feet when one day, 
 three years after his arrival, he tells the parents his
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 25 
 
 sad story, 1 ending with the account of the crushing 
 declaration of the physician at Salerno which 
 robbed him of every hope for how could a girl 
 be willing to shed her blood for his sake ? The child 
 listens intently; all day long she broods over his 
 words ; at night, lying at the foot-end of the parental 
 bed, she cannot find sleep; she sighs and sighs, and 
 " the rain of her eyes watered the feet of the sleep- 
 ing ones." The parents, aroused, bid her to be 
 quiet : of what avail was lamenting ? to help the 
 poor knight was impossible. So the child is silent; 
 but all night long she remains awake, and through- 
 out the whole next day she has no other thought, 
 and in the following night she weeps and weeps 
 again, until suddenly there comes the illumination: 
 I must die for him, I am destined to save him ! And 
 now she awakens her parents again and imparts to 
 them her resolve. It is moving to see how the 
 parents at first shudder at the frightful thought, 
 how they remind the daughter of her filial duty and 
 beseech her not to break their hearts; 2 but how 
 they come to recognize the divine spirit speaking 
 out of the child, and gradually resign themselves to 
 give up their dearest, and let the will of God be 
 done. Cold with misery, speechless, they sit at her 
 bed, and yet proud that this is their child, that 
 
 ^Verses 378 ff. * Verses 565 ff.
 
 26 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 through her death the divinity in man will be 
 glorified. 1 
 
 And finally, the solution of the whole. What 
 could be freer from conventional externalities, 
 what could be more deeply experienced than the 
 way in which Henry's recovery is brought about ? 
 Outwardly, to be sure, it seems to be the conse- 
 quence of the willingness of the girl to sacrifice her- 
 self; in reality, it is the consequence of his own 
 inner regeneration. Only after long resistance and 
 grave scruples, whether he could accept her sacri- 
 fice, has he gone with her to Salerno. The physician 
 has convinced himself by severe scrutiny that the 
 girl of her own free will has decided to die and to 
 win the crown of martyrdom. She has been strip- 
 ped and bound upon the table, the physician 
 sharpens his knife. Henry stands before the door, 
 he hears the noise in the room, he looks through a 
 chink in the wall, he sees the sweet creature that 
 wants to die for him and he is seized in his inner- 
 most being, he is given, as the poet expresses it, 2 
 " a new mind." Till now he has hardened himself 
 against God's decree, he has felt his visitation as 
 deep injustice, even the pure goodness of the lovely 
 maiden has not changed his spirit. Now it sud- 
 denly comes over him: What am I that I dare to 
 
 1 Verses 865 ff. * Verse 1245.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 27 
 
 defy God's will! He forgets his own suffering over 
 the sympathy with another being; he has inwardly 
 been restored to health. And thus the poem ends 
 with a series of charming idyllic scenes : 1 the home- 
 ward journey of the two together, the return of 
 Henry's youthful strength and manly beauty, the 
 joyous welcome by the good Swabian countrymen, 
 the calling of the clan for the selection of a bride, 
 the assembly of chattering and gossiping cousins, 
 and Henry's stepping forth into their midst, em- 
 bracing his deliverer before them and proclaiming 
 her as his wedded wife. 
 
 It seems to me hi no wise improper to place the 
 poet of "Poor Henry" upon the same level with 
 the poet of "Iphigenie." Goethe as well as Hart- 
 man have lifted a subject resting upon conventional 
 conceptions into the sphere of spiritual personality. 
 As in Goethe's drama the delivery of Orestes from 
 the pursuit of the Furies proceeds from the mental 
 revolution wrought in him through contact with 
 the pure soul of Iphigenie, so the bodily recovery of 
 the knight Henry is the result of an inner rebirth 
 brought about by the sight of pure human devotion 
 and self-sacrifice. Both poems glorify the triumph 
 of the inner life over outer conditions, both are 
 symbols of the reconciliation between matter and 
 spirit. 
 
 1 Verses 1381 ff.
 
 28 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 If Hartman von Aue's "Poor Henry" is a poem of 
 the human soul, we have in Wolfram von Eschen- 
 bach's "Parzival" a poetic representation of the 
 striving for firmness and completeness of human 
 character. In spite of all external and trifling 
 appendages, in spite of all the confusion of fan- 
 tastic episodes, this poem shows us the unremit- 
 ting pressing forward of " steadfastness " and 
 " undaunted courage," the unremitting struggle 
 against " doubt " and " faithlessness," the unre- 
 mitting " chase after the body's crown and the 
 soul's renown" 1 in unforgettably impressive and 
 monumental figures. Diirer's knight, fearlessly 
 riding into the world in company with Death and 
 Devil, has in this poem a forerunner endowed with 
 the full glory of medieval romance. 
 
 As is well known, the general outline of the whole 
 and much of the detail of Wolfram's " Parzival " are 
 based upon the "Perceval" of Chrestien de Troyes. 
 If it nevertheless has been asserted, and justly so, 
 I believe, that the ideal of chivalry stands out 
 more humanly and with stronger appeal to funda- 
 mental emotions in Wolfram's poem, this assertion 
 rests upon the conviction that Wolfram's hero 
 experiences the problems of chivalric morals more 
 deeply, that he maintains steadfastness more 
 
 1 Book IX, 1171 ff.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 29 
 
 firmly, that he tastes bitterer doubt and purer 
 joy, and thus becomes a more fully rounded per- 
 sonality. Three phases of Parzival's inner develop- 
 ment may be considered as illustrations of this 
 fact: his youthful adventures, his marriage, and 
 his search for the Grail. 
 
 The youthful Perceval of Chrestien's also is a 
 captivating, irresistible figure, a " vallet sauvage," 
 proving the uncorrupted sturdiness of his nature 
 even in all his tomfooleries and reckless escapades. 
 Such scenes as where he rides into a tent hi which a 
 " damoisiele," the " amie " of the knight Orgueil- 
 lous, is asleep, thinking that it is a church; l or 
 where he lets his horse trot straightway into the 
 hall of King Artus, so near to the king himself that 
 the horse's head knocks off his hat 2 these and 
 similar scenes are related with happy humor. Nor 
 does this youthful romp lack in finer feelings. He 
 is deeply stirred by the rebuke inflicted upon the 
 lady at the court of King Artus for laughing at his 
 eccentric appearance. And in the midst of his 
 adventurous course he is seized by a sudden long- 
 ing for his mother whose breaking down at his de- 
 parture he had so heartlessly ignored. The full 
 poetry, however, of this tale of the happy-go-lucky 
 simpleton is revealed only in the form given to it by 
 
 1 Perceval, ed. Potvin, verses 1849 ff. 2 Loc. tit., verses 2095 jf.
 
 30 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Wolfram. Here we feel from the beginning: in 
 this dreamy, delicately sensitive boy who is so 
 affected by the singing of the birds in the forest 
 that he runs home weeping, he knows not why; 1 
 in this innocent youth who, riding out into the 
 world, follows the farewell precepts of his mother so 
 literally that he constantly misses their meaning 
 and constantly incurs ridicule; in this pure fool 
 to use Richard Wagner's felicitous expression 
 there lives an unconscious moral impulse, an in- 
 stinctive belief in everything noble and sacred, 
 which makes us feel assured of his development 
 into a strong, trustful, independent man. When 
 the young simpleton in all innocence snatches a kiss 
 from the charming Jeschute; 2 when he takes the 
 deepest pity hi the grief of Sigune over the death 
 of her beloved, although both are entire strangers 
 to him; 3 when his manly valor and beauty dazzle 
 the whole court of Nantes while he remains entirely 
 unconscious of it; 4 when at the castle of Gurne- 
 manz he receives the chivalric instructions of the 
 old knight so eagerly and reverently that, at his 
 departure, his host feels as though he were losing a 
 son; 5 when the beautiful princess Kondwiramur, 
 pressed by her enemies, turns to him for help and, 
 
 1 Book III, 70 ff. 4 Loc. cti., 937 ff. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., 413 ff. 6 Loc. cit., 1623 ff. 
 1 Loc. cit., 665 ff.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 31 
 
 disregarding all proprieties, herself in her night- 
 gown, kneels down at his bed, and her appearance 
 arouses in him only feelings of unselfish sympathy 
 and the ardor to avenge her 1 we understand 
 what the poet means by saying: 
 
 got was an einer siiezen zuht, 
 d6r Parzivalen worhte. 2 
 
 Parzival's marriage to Kondwiramur is perhaps 
 the most original feature of Wolfram's poem; in 
 none of the other Parzival epics has the relation 
 between husband and wife found as fine an expres- 
 sion. Through his marriage, Parzival is charmed 
 against all the worldly allurements to which his 
 counterpart, the gallant Gawan, eagerly yields. 
 The thought of his beloved wife accompanies him 
 in all his adventures. Not only in that beautiful 
 episode when the drops of blood in the snow re- 
 mind him of the tears in her white face, 3 but again 
 and again her image rises before his soul and makes 
 him sure that there is no room in his heart for faith- 
 lessness. But the tragedy also of his life, the agony 
 of his lonely wanderings after the curse pronounced 
 upon him by the messenger of the Grail, is aggra- 
 vated and intensified through the thought of his 
 
 1 Book IV, 387 ff. 
 
 2 God was in a joyous mood, when he created Parzival, Book III, 
 982. Book VI, 80 ff.
 
 32 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 wife. For his errors have plunged not only himself, 
 but her as well into misery, and now, separated from 
 her, hi the darkness of his lonely life he carries her 
 despair with him as well as his own. It is there- 
 fore an act of true redemption and soul delivery 
 when through Parzival's final whining of the Grail 
 the reunion with his wife also is brought about. 
 Few scenes of the poem surpass in depth and purity 
 of sentiment the description of this happy meeting. 
 Parzival has heard that Kondwiramur is on her 
 way to greet him hi the castle of the Grail. With 
 small escort he starts out to meet her. All night 
 long he rides through the forest. At dawn he sees 
 her camp. He enters her tent and finds her still 
 asleep, at her side their two little boys. 
 
 si blicket uf und sah ir man, 
 si hete niht wanz hemde an, 
 limb sich siz teclachen swanc, 
 fiirz pette ufen teppech spranc 
 Cundwiramurs diu lieht gemal. 
 ouch umbevienc si Parzival. 
 man sagte mir, si kusten sich. 1 
 
 She bids him welcome, she would like to be angry 
 with him, and cannot, she praises the day which 
 
 1 She looked up and saw her husband, she had nothing on but her 
 nightgown, about her she flung the sheet, from the bed upon the carpet 
 leapt Kondwiramur, the lovely spouse. And Parzival embraced her; 
 they tell me, they kissed each other. Book XVI, 419 &.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 33 
 
 has brought her this embrace and has ended all her 
 woe. Now the boys also awaken, and Parzival 
 takes them upon his arm and kisses them. Then, 
 however, the little ones are carried away, the ser- 
 vants leave the tent, and husband and wife remain 
 alone together until the high morn. 
 
 Finally, Parzival's quest of the Grail. Here also 
 it must be said that Wolfram's poem deepens the 
 moral conceptions of Chrestien, although here also 
 he follows huii in the outline of the action. Wolf- 
 ram's Parzival, like Chrestien's, has failed to ask 
 the question upon which depends the winning of 
 the kingdom of the Grail, because he keeps too 
 closely to the rules of chivalric conduct which the 
 knight Gurnemanz has given him. Like Chres- 
 tien's Perceval, he is cursed for this omission by the 
 messenger of the Grail. Like him, he now sets out 
 to win the Grail in spiteful defiance. But all these 
 happenings are in Chrestien's poem somewhat con- 
 ventional. The question to be asked refers with 
 hun to the wonders of the Grail. " Qui on en 
 servoit ? " is the formula, 1 " Whom serves one with 
 the Grail ? " in other words, it is a question 
 concerning the meaning of the Grail ritual. With 
 Wolfram, it is a question of human sympathy, of 
 sympathy with the fearful suffering of Anfortas, 
 
 1 Perceval, Verses 4423, 4472.
 
 34 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the King of the Grail, who because he has profaned 
 the sanctuary has been visited by a terrible disease 
 and can be healed only by him who inquires for the 
 cause of his torments. This question of human 
 sympathy Parzival fails to ask because he is led 
 astray by the precept of courtly silence. For this 
 lack of human sympathy with the suffering of 
 others he is himself thrust into misery and distress. 
 And much more violently than Chrestien's Per- 
 ceval is he shaken thereby. He has erred unknow- 
 ingly, nay, he has fancied that by obedience to the 
 precept of courtly silence he fulfilled a moral com- 
 mand. His condemnation, therefore, seems to him 
 cruel injustice. He doubts in God's omnipotence 
 and goodness. He defies him. " What is God ? " 
 he exclaims. 
 
 waer der gewaldec, solhen spot 
 het er uns peden niht gegeben, 
 kunde got mit kreften leben. 
 ich was im dienes undertan, 
 sit ich genaden mich versan. 
 nu wilich im dienest widersagen: 
 hat er haz, den wil ich tragen. 1 
 
 And thus he sallies forth, bent upon conquering by 
 sheer force and prowess the crown of life which can 
 
 1 If he were mighty, such mockery he would not have brought 
 upon us both, could God live in power. I served him in faithful ser- 
 vice ever since I could think of his mercies. From now on I renounce 
 his service. If he has hatred, hatred I will bear. Book VI, 1562 ff.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 35 
 
 be won only by humility of heart and as a gift from 
 above. 
 
 Beautiful is the gradual transformation and puri- 
 fication of soul which through a series of inner ex- 
 periences, leads to his final victory. First, another 
 meeting with Sigune, 1 now living as a recluse by 
 the grave of her slain lover: the sight of her self- 
 sacrificing, consecrated life, and her calm, consoling 
 words awaken in Parzival also a sense of humility 
 and a gentle hope. Then, the meeting on Good 
 Friday morning with the old knight and his family, 2 
 barefoot and in sackcloth, being on a pilgrimage to 
 a shrine of mercy : they call up in Parzival's mind 
 the memory of long forgotten means of grace. 
 Then the stay with the hermit Trevrizent : 3 in the 
 intercourse with this venerable man of wisdom, 
 who has sought refuge from the tumult of chivalric 
 battles hi the solitude of the forest, Parzival finds 
 himself again. By him he is instructed about God's 
 mysterious and merciful ways ; by him he is intro- 
 duced into the secrets of the Grail, the guilt and the 
 fearful fate of King Anfortas, and thereby into the 
 meaning of human guilt and penance at large; 
 through Trevrizent he becomes conscious of what 
 he himself has been guilty of toward Anfortas, and 
 
 1 Book IX, 62 ff. J Loc. cit., 585 ff. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., 396 ff.
 
 36 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the desire arises in him to atone for it, to deliver 
 him. Thus Parzival leaves the hospitable hermitage 
 as one reborn. He strives for the Grail, but not any 
 longer in blind defiance and with hardened heart. 
 He has tasted the bitter tragedy of life, but from 
 the well of suffering he has drawn sympathy with all 
 human experience. For a second tune he reaches 
 the Castle of the Grail. From his innermost heart, 
 moved by genuine pity, he asks the question: 1 
 " Anfortas, what ails thee ? " Anfortas recovers. 
 Parzival himself has become worthy of the crown 
 which first in blind inexperience he had trifled 
 away, which then in futile defiance he had tried to 
 force. He has been purified by life. Through 
 doubt and despair he has returned to the old cer- 
 tainty of faith, he has made the ideal of chivalry a 
 part of his own spiritual personality. 
 
 If in Wolfram's "Parzival" we observe how the 
 intense development of chivalric morals leads to 
 the heightening of individual morality, and how the 
 heightening of individual morality in turn leads to a 
 still further development of chivalric morals, we see 
 a process diametrically opposite in the "Tristan" 
 of Gottfried von Strassburg. Here the overstrain- 
 ing of chivalric culture leads to a revolt of the in- 
 dividual against the barriers of society and thereby 
 
 1 Book XVI, 269.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 37 
 
 to a dissolution of the moral foundations both of 
 social and individual life. While Wolfram with 
 soul-stirring power calls up to view the gradual 
 rounding out and persistent upbuilding of a char- 
 acter clinging to the chivalric ideal, Gottfried with 
 finest psychological art depicts the delight and the 
 woe, the demoniac charm and the consuming fire, 
 the guilt, the madness, and the curse of destructive 
 passion. No other work of medieval poetry im- 
 presses us so deeply with the tragedy of human 
 civilization which by its very striving for ever 
 higher refinement again and again is driven to self- 
 destruction and to the annihilation of all true 
 culture. 
 
 The individual and society cannot be contrasted 
 more sharply than hi this poem. On the one 
 hand, chivalric society with its complicated code 
 of refined conduct, absorbing every thought and 
 controlling every action. Everything in this 
 chivalric world seems to be teeming with culture 
 and decorum; the whole life dissolves itself into 
 elegant attitudes, courteous forms of address, and 
 obliging politeness. Tristan himself appears as a 
 veritable paragon of aristocratic demeanor and 
 correctness. He is a perfect cavalier and hunts- 
 man; * he sings, plays the harp and other stringed 
 
 1 V, 2786 S.
 
 38 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 instruments; he speaks Latin, French, German, 
 Danish, Irish and who knows how many other 
 languages. 1 He and his companions are saturated 
 with sententious virtuousness, magnanimity, and 
 noble intentions. 2 
 
 To be sure, there are darker passages in this life; 
 there is no lack of exciting episodes. Tristan as a 
 boy is abducted by pirates. Morold, the duke of 
 Ireland, annually levies from Cornwall the cruel 
 tribute of thirty noble youths, and only Tristan's 
 victorious combat with Morold puts a stop to this 
 barbaric usage. Isolt's father has made the fight 
 with a monstrous dragon the condition of winning 
 her hand, and thousands of knights have perished 
 before Tristan kills the beast. But even these 
 catastrophes of life seem, as it were, levelled off by 
 courtly etiquette; they have come to be a social 
 pastime, romantic adventures, sportlike inter- 
 ruptions of the monotony of every-day existence. 
 Chivalry, in short, shows itself here in the most 
 roseate light. An accepted moral code simplifies all 
 decisions, smooths all difficulties, banishes every- 
 thing ugly, loud and uncouth, removes misery and 
 distress into a far distance, and spreads a general 
 feeling of security and belief in the permanency of 
 this brilliant, refined society. 
 
 1 VI, 3664 ff ; 3687 ff. 2 VIII, 5020 ff.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 39 
 
 Suddenly an elemental passion breaks into this 
 realm of gentle breeding and perfect manners; and 
 all at once these elegant and cultivated people re- 
 veal themselves in their primitive, brutal selfish- 
 ness, and with one stroke demolish the whole 
 artificial structure of their social articles of faith. 
 The external occasion of this sudden revulsion is 
 the magic potion which Tristan and Isolt drink on 
 the vessel upon which Tristan is to convey Isolt to 
 King Marke as his bride-elect. Its psychological 
 justification lies in the fact that the overstraining 
 of social refinement is apt to bring about, as in- 
 dividual reaction, a moral indifference which de- 
 taches the individual from all social bonds and 
 makes him a prey to his own caprice and desire. 
 
 With supreme art the poet depicts how Tristan 
 and Isolt succumb to this fate. For a tune they try 
 to resist. Tristan thinks of what honor demands of 
 him, he reminds himself of his feudal duty toward 
 Marke, the man who has shown him nothing but 
 kindness, has become a second father to him, and 
 trusts him implicitly. He flees the sight of Isolt, he 
 roams in thought all over the world to find some 
 sort of diversion; but he is always brought back to 
 the one feeling, and when he looks into his heart, he 
 finds there " nothing but Isolt and Love." [ Isolt 
 
 1 XVI, 11791.
 
 40 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 also at first struggles against passion. She is con- 
 sumed with shame, she wishes to die. She wishes 
 she could hate Tristan, as she used to hate him 
 why didn't she kill him then ? But she is like a 
 bird that has been caught in the lime. " She felt 
 her senses sink, she tried to lift herself up, but she 
 was held back and drawn downward. She turned 
 hither and thither, with hands and feet she strove, 
 but all the more her hands and feet sank into the 
 blind sweetness of Tristan and Love." 1 
 
 And thus both, with will power benumbed and in 
 raving ecstasy, surrender to the blind impulse that 
 draws them together. From here on there is noth- 
 ing left in them but love's madness. All moral 
 scruples are silenced. Brangaene, Isolt's faithful 
 servant and confidante of her passion, is forced to 
 take her place in the bridal night at Marke's side; 
 and now Isolt, for fear of being betrayed by her, 
 does not even recoil from trying to put her to death. 
 The whole social fabric with its courtly etiquette 
 and refinement appears from now on as one colossal 
 lie. While outwardly life takes its ordinary course, 
 the principles on which it rests are constantly most 
 shamelessly mocked and violated. Every ruse, 
 every breach of faith appears permissible in order 
 to deceive Marke, the ever-forgiving one, and to 
 
 1 XVI, 11807 ff.
 
 THE COURTLY EPIC 41 
 
 give the lovers an opportunity for a stealthy ren- 
 dezvous. This goes so far that Isolt, trusting in 
 " God's courtliness," 1 i. e., hi his chivalrous for- 
 bearance with her criminal life, at a solemn ordeal 
 commits open perjury and thereby makes the 
 Church itself an accomplice of her evil ways. In 
 short, the whole career of the two, since that fateful 
 break with society, is tuned to the frenzy that re- 
 sounds in Tristan's delirious love stammering of 
 the "sweet poison which brings him death in Isolt." 2 
 They both are morally poisoned, and to both love 
 brings, not immortal life, but spiritual extinction. 
 That the poet, however, should surround this 
 love of Tristan and Isolt with all the splendor of 
 romantic poetry; that he should contrast it as the 
 only true love with the trivial love conception of 
 chivalric society; 3 that he should glorify the suf- 
 ferings which it brings and excuse the errors to 
 which it leads; that he should represent Tristan 
 and Isolt as martyrs of the inner life and as victims 
 and outcasts of soulless convention this shows 
 how completely the chivalric ideal has paled for 
 this poet, what an empty form chivalric morals 
 have become to him, how passionately and exclu- 
 sively the fate of the individual man absorbs him. 
 
 i XXIV, 15,556. 'I,45ff.; 2" ff. 
 
 8 XVIII, 1 2,498 ff.
 
 42 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The detachment of personality from the corporate 
 consciousness of chivalry appears here as an ac- 
 complished fact. 
 
 All too soon chivalric culture decayed. Its decay 
 coincided with the political and social decline of 
 the class with whose prosperity it was connected. 
 But its most valuable outgrowth, the development 
 of personality, has not been lost. This develop- 
 ment was taken up and carried further by the 
 class which, from the end of the thirteenth century, 
 rose to a leading position in German life, the 
 burgherdom.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GERMAN MYSTICISM OF THE 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 IN the preceding chapter I tried to show that 
 the modern conception of personality has its 
 germ in medieval chivalry; that the laws of con- 
 duct which to us appear as demands of the indi- 
 vidual human reason, historically are derived from 
 the chivalric ideal of social decorum. The cen- 
 turies following the climax of chivalric culture, the 
 centuries marked by the ascendency of burgher- 
 dom and peasantry, are the epoch in which this 
 aristocratic ideal of a refined personality, nobly 
 conscious of its duties and rights, is democratized, 
 is applied to a wide sphere of popular activities, 
 and thereby for the first time comes to be a power 
 in the life of the masses. These centuries, then, 
 the thirteenth to the sixteenth, are the true 
 incubation period of modern thought and feeling. 
 If we speak of the individualism of German bur- 
 gherdom and peasantry in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries, we must not forget that this 
 word, individualism, in this connection means 
 something very different from what it means if ap- 
 
 43
 
 44 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 plied to Rousseau or to Nietzsche. As little as the 
 knight of the twelfth century, did the citizen or the 
 peasant of the fourteenth think of himself as an 
 isolated individual; fully as much as the knight 
 did he feel himself above all a member of a corpo- 
 rative whole the city, the patrician family, the 
 guild, the rural parish. No man in those centuries 
 seriously doubted that the institutions under which 
 he lived were divine institutions, lifted far above 
 the intellect of the individual and inaccessible to 
 his limited judgment. No man in those centuries 
 would have admitted that he conceived of nature 
 otherwise than as the creation of an extra-mundane 
 God, a creation meant to glorify its creator and to 
 please the eye of man. It was left for the eight- 
 eenth century to produce a consistent individual- 
 istic philosophy: to think of the individual as an 
 independent, autonomous being; to derive the 
 origin of state, church and society from the con- 
 scious will of these independent individuals; and to 
 conceive of nature as a system of individual forces, 
 resting hi themselves and mutually maintaining 
 each other. 
 
 But this much may be said. The individual per- 
 son and the individual fact obtain a deeper signifi- 
 cance, exercise a broader influence, and stand out 
 in stronger relief in the epoch of citizen and peasant
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 45 
 
 ascendency than had been the case in the epoch of 
 chivalric culture. The quicker pulsation of life in 
 the cities, the greater variety of social types and 
 conditions, the more intense friction between man 
 and man all this leads to spiritual stirrings of 
 the masses which cannot help unfettering the in- 
 dividual. It is therefore not surprising that the 
 literature of this epoch shows an intensity, a free- 
 dom, and a power of individual emotion and obser- 
 vation which is hardly paralleled in the literature 
 of chivalry. With deeper fervor and more rapt 
 intuition than their scholastic predecessors do the 
 German mystics of the fourteenth century set out 
 to solve the riddles of the universe. More fully 
 and more truly than in chivalric lyrics does life 
 ring out in German folksong of the end of the Mid- 
 dle Ages. More trenchantly and boldly than even 
 Walther von der Vogelweide does the bourgeois 
 satire castigate the follies and vices of human 
 society. And with greater minuteness of actual 
 detail as well as with wider scope of emotion than 
 ever before is the Christian legend visualized in the 
 religious drama of the fifteenth century. These are 
 some of the characteristic phases in the develop- 
 ment of German literature in the closing centuries 
 of the Middle Ages which we shall study in the 
 following chapters. We shall begin by trying to
 
 46 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 obtain a somewhat clearer view of how personality 
 is revealed in the mystic movement. 
 
 The climax of German mysticism in the four- 
 teenth century is preceded in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury by a remarkable series of religious phenomena 
 connected on the one hand with the deepening of 
 the inner life in the large number of newly founded 
 semi-clerical lay organizations devoted to the 
 cultivation of the soul, on the other hand with the 
 firmer grasp upon outer life exercised by the new 
 method of preaching as practised by the popular 
 orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans. 
 
 Perhaps the most influential among the lay or- 
 ganizations just mentioned was an association of 
 women, the order of the Beguines which from the 
 Netherlands, its starting point, gradually spread 
 over all of Germany, hi such numbers that in Co- 
 logne, for instance, there lived about the year 1250 
 more than a thousand Beguines, while more than 
 forty convents of Beguines are testified for Strass- 
 burg in documents of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries. The Beguines do not irrevocably re- 
 nounce worldly possessions or marriage. They 
 retain their property rights; but they devote their 
 property to the common aims of the order : helping 
 the poor and the sick. They may leave the order 
 and marry; but as long as they belong to the order,
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 47 
 
 they remain single. In other words, they try to 
 combine the discipline of the monastery with the 
 freedom of secular life. They seek God in humility, 
 in contemplation, in the love of one's neighbor, in 
 self-abnegating work for the community. 
 
 What intensity of religious feeling, what ecstasy 
 of spiritual longings there were created in the com- 
 mon life of these humble seekers of the divine, may 
 perhaps best be illustrated by the personal effusions 
 of a woman who from 1235 to 1265, that is for 
 thirty years, was a member of a Beguine convent in 
 North Germany, Sister Matilda of Magdeburg. 
 The record of her emotions and visions is contained 
 in a singular little book of hers bearing the title 
 " The Streaming Light of the Godhead," which 
 belongs to the most profoundly moving and the 
 most genuinely authentic autobiographical con- 
 fessions of the world's literature. Its keynote is the 
 bliss and the woe of divine Love; the wounds 
 which it inflicts, the sacrifices which it demands; 
 and the unspeakable joy of the perfect life to which 
 it leads. The chivalric Minnesong, the passion of 
 a Tristan, appear like frivolous dallying with arti- 
 ficial sentiments if compared with the bitter tor- 
 ments and the rapturous delights of this spiritual 
 Isolt. " Divine Love," she exclaims, " thou hast 
 chased me and captured me and bound me and
 
 48 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 wounded me so deeply that I can never recover. 
 Tell me, am I ever to be delivered from thee ? " 
 And Divine Love answers: 
 
 das ich dich jagete, das luste mich; 
 
 das ich dich vieng, des gerte ich; 
 
 das ich dich bant, des frcewete ich mich. 
 
 ich han den almehtigen got von dem himelrich getriben 
 
 und han ime benomen sin mcenschlich leben; 
 
 wie mcegest du, snoeder wurm, vor mir genesen. 1 
 
 So, then, Matilda abandons herself to the one feel- 
 ing of endless desire for her heavenly master, her 
 mystic bridegroom. Her chamberlains, the senses, 
 announce to her his coming, and counsel her to pre- 
 pare for him, by contrition, by self-chastisement, 
 by martyrdom, by a life of holy solitude, by wor- 
 ship of the saints and the angels. All this she is 
 prepared to take upon herself; but satisfaction she 
 cannot find in any of these practices. What she 
 craves is complete absorption in the Godhead, 
 absolute union with the Infinite. " Woman, 
 woman," the senses call out to her, " take care not 
 to over-reach yourself. The fire of the divine will 
 blind and consume you." But she answers: 
 
 1 That I chased thee, that was my desire; that I captured thee, 
 that was my wish; that I bound thee, that was my joy. I have driven 
 almighty God from Heaven and have taken from him his human life; 
 how couldst thou, poor worm, withstand me. Ojfenbarungen der 
 Sehwester Mechthild von Magdeburg, oder das fliessende Licht der 
 Gottheit, herausg. von P. Gall Morel, i, 3.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 49 
 
 der visch mag in dem wasser nit ertrinken, 
 
 der vogel in dem lufte nit versinken. 
 
 das gold mag in dem fure nit verderben, 
 
 wan es enpfat da sin klarheit und sin luhtende varwe. 
 
 got hat alien creature das gegeben, 
 
 das si ir nature pflegen; 
 
 wie moehte ich den miner nature widerstan ? l 
 
 It can truly be said: This woman has drunk the 
 magic potion of heavenly love. She has become 
 entranced thereby. The limits of the earthly have 
 vanished for her. She lives in visions of the eternal, 
 and in the visions of the eternal she finds herself. 
 This woman and her spiritual kindred of which 
 there were many all over Germany are con- 
 clusive proof that the heightening of personality 
 which proceeded from the refined etiquette of 
 chivalry did not remain confined to chivalry, but 
 affected the deeper currents of religious life as well. 
 In the mystic movement of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury these under-currents were to come to the 
 surface and to assume most impressive proportions. 
 Next to this deepening of the inner life culti- 
 vated by lay organizations of humble God seekers 
 like the order of the Beguines, there was another 
 
 1 The fish cannot drown in the water; the bird cannot sink in the 
 air; the gold cannot be destroyed in the fire; it acquires therein its 
 purity and its lustre. God has given to all beings to live according to 
 their own nature; how should I then strive against mine ? Loc. cit., 
 1,44.
 
 50 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 popular force in the thirteenth century which pre- 
 pared the way for the activity of the great mystics 
 in the fourteenth century: the new method of 
 preaching introduced by the Franciscans and 
 Dominicans. 
 
 Previous to the establishment of these orders, the 
 sermon played a very limited and meagre part in 
 German church service. It consisted in a formal 
 exegesis of the biblical text prescribed for each 
 Sunday or Holiday; it drew its material mainly 
 from scanty excerpts from the Latin Church 
 Fathers; and it was preached exclusively by mem- 
 bers of the parish clergy and their superiors. The 
 new popular orders were the first monastic orders 
 to be granted the privilege of preaching, and they 
 exercised this privilege in the widest and freest 
 manner. The Franciscan or Dominican preacher 
 would go about from town to town; he would 
 speak on whatever text he might choose, on any 
 day, in any place, in the public square, before the 
 city gates, from towers, from trees; and it is easy 
 to see how this freedom of movement would tend 
 to widen the range of his thought, to bring him into 
 closer contact with the world, to impart to his 
 speech a fuller grasp of life. 
 
 The typical representative of this new method of 
 sermonizing is the Franciscan Berthold of Regens-
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 51 
 
 burg, the greatest orator of the thirteenth century. 
 No medieval preacher, if we except Bernhard of 
 Clairvaux, seems to have attracted and stirred the 
 masses in like manner. His wanderings included 
 many countries. Apart from his native province 
 Bavaria, his activity is attested for the Palatinate, 
 for Alsace, Lake Constance; for the Swiss cantons 
 of Aargau, Zurich, the Grisons; for Austria, 
 Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, Thuringia. Every- 
 where the people flocked to hear him. The manu- 
 script of one of his sermons contains the marginal 
 note: " Many thousands listened to it at Zurich, 
 before the Gate " ; and in other manuscripts 
 audiences of forty, sixty, a hundred, nay two hun- 
 dred thousand people are recorded statements, 
 which even though they are palpable exaggerations, 
 show the extraordinary influence exerted by this 
 man. Not a few fancied they saw a halo around his 
 head while he was speaking; moved by his speech, 
 many a proud knight would return stolen church 
 property, many a frivolous courtesan would abjure 
 the lusts of the world. And Berthold apparently 
 knew how to turn such a moment of success into a 
 powerful appeal to the feelings of the masses. 
 Once when his thundering words have terrified one 
 of his hearers, a poor daughter of sin, to such a 
 degree that she breaks down, he calls out to the
 
 52 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 assembled populace: " Who of you will take this 
 repentant daughter for a wife ? I will endow her 
 with a marriage portion." A man steps forward to 
 accept the bargain. B erthold promises ten pounds ; 
 and, having no money himself, he sends some men 
 through the crowd to collect the sum. While the 
 collection is being taken, he suddenly exclaims: 
 "Enough! we have the money that is needed." 
 And lo! exactly ten pounds, not a penny less or 
 more, had been collected. 1 
 
 Berthold of Regensburg also, no less than Ma- 
 tilda of Magdeburg, is imbued with the belief in the 
 unseen. For him, too, the world is a symbol of the 
 spirit; for him too the outer happening is a reflex 
 of the inner life. The song of the nightingale, he 
 believes, fertilizes the egg which his mate is hatch- 
 ing while he sits in front of the nest; the spots in 
 the moon, he thinks, are the tears of Mary Mag- 
 dalen; the constellation of the dipper is to him the 
 fiery chariot upon which the human souls are car- 
 ried to heaven. And all the grandeur, all the 
 splendor of the world is nothing compared with the 
 spiritual beauty that emanates from the face of 
 God illumining the heavenly host. 
 
 But, much as Berthold loves to revel in such de- 
 scriptions of the unseen and the spiritual, his chief 
 
 1 Berthold von Regensburg, ed. Pfeiffer and Strobl, i, p. xxiv.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 53 
 
 interest is after all directed toward the actual and 
 the palpable. In Matilda of Magdeburg we saw the 
 widening of personality toward the life within, 
 the discovery of a world of inner visions; in Ber- 
 thold we see the widening of personality toward the 
 life without, the transmission of the inner self into 
 the current of outer experience. Berthold is driven 
 by the impulse to convert and to proselyte; he 
 would like to realize the image of the perfect life 
 which he carries in himself; he deeply feels how 
 wide the distance is between his ideal and common 
 reality. Ah* this lends to him a keenness of obser- 
 vation for the appearances of the outer world, for 
 the peculiarities and idiosyncracies, the foibles and 
 absurdities, the distortions and aberrations of 
 human lif e such as no writer before him possessed. 
 And up to this day his art of striking and original 
 characterization, suggestive rather than descrip- 
 tive, has hardly been surpassed. 
 
 How graphic is that scene 1 from the nursery, 
 satirizing the overfeeding of the children of the 
 rich. " Why is it," he asks, " that so many less 
 children of the rich grow up to a mature age than 
 children of the poor ? Because of the excess of 
 feeding rich people indulge in. First the sister 
 makes a jelly for the baby and pushes it into his 
 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 433 f.
 
 54 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 mouth. But baby's little stomach cannot hold 
 much and is soon full. So the jelly comes out 
 again; but sister pushes it in again. Then comes 
 auntie; and goes through the same performance. 
 Then comes the nurse and says: " Dear me, baby 
 doesn't eat a thing today," and proceeds to fill it 
 up once more. So baby lies there, screaming and 
 kicking." 
 
 What a power of homely parody there is in the 
 grotesque comparison between the locust and the 
 robber knight. 1 "Wherever he goes, he acts like a 
 locust. The locust always wants to sit in the grass 
 where it is thickest. So the robber knight always 
 wants to live on the fat of the land. He scatters 
 the peasants' fodder and hay before his horses, 
 much more of it than they can eat. When one 
 chicken would be enough, he kills ten. What the 
 farmer's family might live on for a whole year, 
 that he would squander on himself in a single day, 
 if he could. And yet, a robber knight seldom comes 
 to look comfortable and portly. Just like the 
 locust, which, however deeply it may eat into the 
 grass, never gets fatter, always is lean and long- 
 legged and gnat-like. So are you, robber knight. 
 And like a locust you come hopping along on your 
 jaded nag, with your shoes dangling from your feet 
 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 368 f.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 55 
 
 in shreds. And you are never well taken care of 
 and must finally die a shameful death again 
 like the locust, for it is trodden down by the people 
 or the cattle or cut in pieces by the scythe, when 
 they mow the grass." 
 
 And where in all polemic literature is to be found 
 a more powerful invective, a bolder or firmer grasp 
 of reality than in Berthold's thundering words 
 against " usury," that is against any kind of money 
 transactions based on the taking of interest. 1 " Fi, 
 usurer, how do you employ your time ? How will 
 you stand at the great reckoning ? How much 
 worse you will fare than all other sinners who ever 
 lived or will live. For your time does not only pass 
 uselessly, it passes uselessly and shamefully and 
 sinfully. All other sinners give at least some part 
 of their tune to better things; only your tune is 
 given to sin day in day out uninterruptedly. See, 
 usurer, ever since I began to preach today, you 
 have kept on getting richer six pennies may 
 be by your pawnbroking and money lending. 
 Ye adulterers, sitting here before me, you have not 
 been committing adultery during this time. Ye 
 murderers, you are not committing murder now, 
 you are sitting here properly and well mannered. 
 Ye topers, you are not drinking now, but are keep- 
 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 20 f ; cf. 137 f.
 
 56 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 ing your thirst in check. Ye robbers, you are here 
 before me without pillaging and burning and other 
 misdoings. Ye swearers and blasphemers, you are 
 sitting here well behaved and are keeping your 
 tongues. And the same you do when you are at 
 mass or at another service. But you, usurer, 
 whatever tune it may be, you are never resting 
 from sin. Since I began to talk about you, you 
 have again become richer by half a penny. You 
 make money at mass, at matins, during the ser- 
 mon, on Christmasday, on Goodfriday, on Easter 
 Sunday, on Whitsunday, whatever God's time it 
 may be. Now see to it, usurer, how you are going 
 to make good to God for his tune. Ye devils, on 
 Judgment Day bear me witness that I have re- 
 claimed God's time for him! Ye angels, bear me 
 witness! All ye people, bear me witness! " 
 
 In all this we recognize an individual of extra- 
 ordinary readiness and acuteness of perception, a 
 man of almost startling originality. The demo- 
 cratization of the courtly ideal of personality, of 
 which I spoke before as a concomitant result of the 
 rise of burgherdom and peasantry, is illustrated by 
 this man perhaps more impressively than by any 
 other figure of the thirteenth century. In many 
 respects Berthold is far inferior to the noble char- 
 acters of the chivalric epoch: he is an intolerant
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 57 
 
 zealot, a Jew-baiter, a persecutor of heretics. Of 
 the right of an honest opinion differing from his 
 own he has no conception. And yet, this rough 
 and passionate fanatic is a more modern man than 
 the highly cultivated, well-poised and harmonious 
 men of our courtly literature. With him the chief 
 concern of existence is not any longer a question of 
 aristocratic etiquette, a conflict between courtly 
 custom and personal will and desire. To him the 
 ideal man is not any longer confined to a particular 
 class, be it knighthood or burgherdom. Life in its 
 totality storms in upon him, life with all its sub- 
 limity and all its meanness, all its crudity and all 
 its tenderness, with its social claims and its natural 
 instincts, with its delights of heaven and its terrors 
 of hell and everything leaves an impress upon 
 him, everything he makes a part of himself , every- 
 thing he transforms in his receptive and vivid 
 imagination into a work of art. If German literary 
 historians of today speak of such a man as a rep- 
 resentative of artistic decline setting in with the 
 decay of chivalric literature, they forget that the 
 only standard by which we can safely measure 
 the value of all art is the degree in which a work 
 of the imagination heightens and deepens our sense 
 of life. Measured by this standard, the sermons of 
 Berthold of Regensburg are works of art which
 
 58 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 take their place by the side of the Minnesong 
 of Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram's 
 Parzival. 
 
 I have tried to sketch the process of the deep- 
 ening and heightening of personality which is 
 revealed to us in the literature of religious contem- 
 plation and in the sermon of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. In mysticism of the fourteenth century 
 this process reaches its climax. 
 
 The fundamental thought of the German mystics 
 of the fourteenth century was nothing new. It 
 was a revived and christianized Neo-platonism. 
 Throughout the Middle Ages more subtle thinkers 
 had been fascinated by the neo-platonic conception, 
 that the world is an incessant and gradual differen- 
 tiation of the originally undivided and undifferen- 
 tiated Divine; that man, however, and man alone, 
 possesses the power by a free act of will to reverse 
 this incessant process of differentiation, and thus to 
 return from the diaspora of manifold phenomena 
 into the oneness of the undivided Divine. The 
 so-called Dionysius Areopagita, Scotus Erigena, 
 Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Bernard of Clair- 
 vaux these all see the essential goal of human 
 life hi this return from the many into the one; they 
 all love to dwell on the different stages of inner con- 
 centration by which man approaches this goal;
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 59 
 
 they all praise enthusiastically the state of highest 
 self-surrender where man is completely welded into 
 one with the Divine as the waterdrop is resolved 
 into wine; or as iron, melting in the fire, seems to 
 become fire, or as the air, illuminated by the sun, 
 seems itself to become sunlight. 1 It is, however, no 
 exaggeration to say that this ideal of complete self- 
 surrender of the individual to the infinite has sel- 
 dom produced such a variety of individual life as 
 in the German mystics of the fourteenth century. 
 Three of the most pronounced personalities pro- 
 duced by this mystic longing for the merging of 
 personality in the Divine I shall try briefly to 
 characterize : Master Eckhart, Heinrich Suso, and 
 Johannes Tauler. 
 
 A wonderful solemnity and impressive harmony 
 is spread over the thought of Master Eckhart, the 
 intellectual head of the German mystics. The 
 whole universe, from the highest state of purest 
 spirituality to the lowest worm in the dust, is to 
 him the emanation and revelation of one mighty 
 and eternal will. In its most elemental and funda- 
 mental form this will is apparently without willing; 
 it is pure, undifferentiated being, uncreated nature; 
 the naught, that is, the negation of all contrasts; 
 
 1 Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, c. 10; Migne, Patro- 
 logia latino ,vol. 182, p. 991.
 
 60 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the synthesis of all life; the godhead by itself. 
 This infinite and unmodified eternal being, tranquil 
 and unmoved, is, however, at the same time the 
 source of all motion and of all the variety of finite 
 beings. It eradiates without losing its substance; 
 as the sun according to medieval physics sheds 
 light without losing it. The highest form of this 
 self-manifestation of the godhead is the Trinity, 
 which Eckhart conceives of as a constant process 
 of self-realization of the complexity of the infinite, 
 and as its constantly renewed awakening to full 
 consciousness. In the Son the Father comes to 
 know himself, and Father and Son create out of 
 their common love the Holy Spirit a strange 
 mythical birth of divine forms going on unceas- 
 ingly in the highest regions of spiritual existence. 
 To this transcendental process of a continual divine 
 birth the visible world forms a lower counterpart. 
 Into the visible world the Divine is also constantly 
 discharging itself; yes, only. in the fullness of the 
 world, with its countless forms and contrasts, does 
 the Divine find its fullest expression. " All things 
 are God; God is all things. God may not under- 
 stand himself without me. Before there were 
 creatures, God was not God." l These are some of 
 Eckhart's sibyllinic formulas to express the divine- 
 
 1 Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker, ii, 311, 282, 583, 281.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 6 1 
 
 ness of the world. But by the side of this fact of 
 the divineness of life there stands the other fact of 
 its earthiness. We cannot get away from the 
 tragic conflict pervading all life, the conflict be- 
 tween the naught and the aught, between the infi- 
 nite and the finite, between spirit streaming from 
 above and matter pressing on from below. And 
 thus, after all, in its scale of forms from the most 
 highly organized beings to inanimate objects, the 
 world presents the spectacle of a gradually dimin- 
 ishing admixture of free spiritual power and a 
 gradually increasing admixture of dead material 
 weight. 
 
 Man alone has the faculty of freeing himself 
 from matter, of giving himself fully over to the 
 divine spirit and of thus rising above the conflict 
 which enthralls all creation. " In dumb creation 
 there is something of God, but in the human soul 
 there is God divine. The eye with which I see God 
 is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye 
 and God's eye are one eye." l It is only a question 
 of man's becoming fully conscious of his high estate, 
 of his divine nature. " We are to turn the eyes of 
 our reason upon ourselves, and contemplate the 
 nobility of our spiritual being, and recognize that 
 we have been so formed as to be by divine mercy 
 
 1 Pfeiffer, loc. cit., 230, 312.
 
 62 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 united to the eternal spirit. And if we thus come 
 to know our own riches, we should find such tran- 
 scending joy in them that we should care no longer 
 for any outward pleasure and satisfaction." 1 In- 
 wardness, then, is the great goal of life. Through 
 descending into the innermost recesses of the soul, 
 through retiring from the distracting senses into 
 the oneness of the mind, through complete absorp- 
 tion in the spiritual, do we rise above the dualism 
 of life, do we reach the Divine. " When the soul 
 has reached this state, it looses its own self, and 
 God draws it into himself, so that it is entirely 
 absorbed in him, even as the sun draws the morning 
 red into itself so that it is entirely absorbed by 
 light." 2 
 
 He who thus has fully entered into the unio 
 mystica with the Divine has become immune 
 against the perils of circumstance and chance; he 
 has freed himself from the blind superstitions of the 
 multitude; he has emancipated himself from the 
 need of ecclesiastical conventions; he has come 
 near the state of human perfection in which the 
 good will be done for its own sake. " The highest 
 that the spirit may attain in this mortal clay is 
 this: to live in such a manner that virtue is no 
 
 1 Jostes, Meister Eckhart und seine Jtinger, p. 49. 
 
 2 Pfeiffer, loc. cit., p. 491.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 63 
 
 longer an effort, that is, that all virtues have be- 
 come so natural to the soul that it not only pur- 
 posely practises virtue, but makes all virtues shine 
 forth from itself unconsciously, even as though it 
 were virtue itself." * 
 
 It is certain that Master Eckhart, the doctor of 
 divinity, Dominican prior at Erfurt, professor of 
 theology at the school of his order at Cologne, 
 would have inwardly revolted against the idea of 
 harboring unorthodox thoughts. Indeed, a short 
 time before his death he publicly denounced such 
 accusations as misunderstandings of his teaching 
 and explicitly accepted the supreme authority of 
 the church. That, however, the principle of his 
 thought was diametrically opposed to orthodox 
 Christianity, that it tended toward the dissolution 
 of the hierarchical system and toward complete 
 religious freedom, would be clear, even if two years 
 after his death the Roman See had not officially 
 condemned the majority of his teachings and thus 
 formally acknowledged their revolutionary char- 
 acter. Eckhart is indeed a forerunner of modern 
 pantheism. His conception of the world as a con- 
 tinual transition of the godhead from naught to 
 aught, from the potential to the actual, from the 
 formless one to the multiform many, is a clear 
 
 1 Ztsch.f. hist. Theol., 1864, p. 169.
 
 64 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 anticipation of the Hegelian principle of the self- 
 unfolding of the Idea. His ideal of losing one- 
 self in the abyss of the Divine suggests Goethe's 
 " Wfltseele komm! uns zu durchdringen" and "Sick 
 aufzugeben wird Genuss." And his description of 
 the highest state of perfection, in which duty has 
 become an instinct, brings to mind Schiller's 1 defi- 
 nition of the Beautiful Soul as that state " where 
 the moral sentiment has taken possession of all the 
 emotions to such a degree that it may unhesitat- 
 ingly commit the guidance of life to the instinct 
 without running the risk of conflicting with its 
 decisions." 
 
 If Master Eckhart points toward the great 
 classic German writers of the end of the eighteenth 
 and the beginning of the nineteenth century, his 
 pupil Suso transports us into the emotional world 
 of romanticism. And as the intense subjectivity 
 of the romantic poets has led to a curious oscilla- 
 tion in their works between the two extremes of 
 symbolism and naturalism, so we find these same 
 extremes side by side with each other in the 
 effusions of this medieval monk. Suso belongs 
 to those over-refined, erratic personalities, like 
 Amadeus Hoffmann, Poe, Ibsen, and Hauptmann, 
 who express themselves only in extremes, who rush 
 
 1 S&mtl, Schriften, ed. Goedeke, x, 403.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 65 
 
 from the airiest visions to the grossest materialism, 
 who revel now in ecstatic flights of imagination and 
 now in painful reproductions of crass actuality. 
 
 In Suso the emotional tension of German mysti- 
 cism reaches its climax. The whole strife of a time 
 torn by tremendous conflicts seems to vibrate 
 sympathetically in his soul. It seems as though 
 large and wide-reaching popular disturbances 
 the struggle between Empire and Papacy, the rev- 
 olution of the guilds against the city patriciate, 
 the religious reform movements of the " Friends 
 of God " and similar sects, the horrors of the Great 
 Plague, the cruelties of Jew-baiting, the fanaticism 
 of the Flagellants as though all this had been 
 crowding in upon the contemplative mind of this 
 solitary monk, setting in motion its innermost 
 chords and calling forth therefrom sounds of dark 
 passion and fierce power and then again of sweetest 
 purity and transcendent beauty. 
 
 With what knightly courteousness and grace 
 does he, the scion of a patrician family of Con- 
 stance, describe the chivalric love-service which he 
 offers to his chosen one, Eternal Wisdom, in his 
 cloister cell. " As in Swabia," thus he narrates in 
 his autobiography, 1 " the young men at New Year 
 
 1 Heinrich Seuse, Deutsche Schriflen herausg. von K. Bihlmeyer, 
 p. 26 f .
 
 66 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 ask for a favor from their sweethearts, so he also on 
 New Year's night turned to his love. Before day- 
 break he stepped in front of the image where the 
 divine mother holds her lovely child, Eternal Wis- 
 dom, on her lap and presses it to her bosom, and he 
 knelt down and began to sing a sequence to the 
 mother, praying that she permit him to receive a 
 wreath from her child, and he was so deeply stirred 
 that the hot tears welled forth from his eyes. And 
 then he turned to Eternal Wisdom, bowed down to 
 the ground, and greeted his love, and spake: 
 ' Thou, dearest, art my Easter day, my heart's 
 summer delight, my joyous hour. Thou art the 
 sweetheart whom alone my soul is wooing and 
 craving and for whom it scorns all other loves. 
 Oh, reward me this night, and let me win a wreath 
 from thee.' ' 
 
 He invites Eternal Wisdom as a guest to his 
 table, and offers her bread and fruit. 1 He sees her 
 in manifold forms. " She hovered," he says, 2 
 " high above him on a throne of clouds, she 
 twinkled like the morning star and shone like the 
 sun. Her crown was eternity, her garment was 
 bliss, her mantle all joys' fulfilment. She was far 
 and near, high and low, she was present and yet 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 24. 
 
 * Loc.cit.,p. 14. Cf. Herder's poem "Die ewige Weisheit," Werke, 
 ed. Suphan xxviii, 221.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 67 
 
 hidden. She reached above the highest of the 
 heavens and touched the deepest of the earth's 
 abysses. At one moment she appeared as a beauti- 
 ful maiden, and then suddenly changed into a 
 proud squire. She inclined herself toward him and 
 greeted him kindly and spake lovingly: Praebe, 
 fili, cor tuum mihi." 
 
 All this sounds like an echo of chivalric minne- 
 song. How little, however, these feelings had, after 
 all, to do with courtly love, from what a cruelly 
 harsh and hideous reality these ethereal visions 
 came forth, is proved by the narrative of revolting 
 naturalism in which Suso describes the fearful 
 chastisements by which he tried to subdue his 
 rebellious body. 1 " He had himself made an under- 
 garment of hair-cloth, and hi the garment straps in 
 which there were inserted fifty and a hundred 
 pointed nails, made of brass and filed sharp on the 
 point, and the points of the nails were turned 
 against his flesh. And he made the garment tight 
 and held together in front, in order that the nails 
 should penetrate the flesh, and he made it so high 
 that it came close up to his face. Herein he slept at 
 night. In summer nights, when it was hot and he 
 was tired from walking and ill, or when he had bled 
 himself and lay exhausted and the vermin pestered 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 39 f.
 
 68 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 him, he would betimes feel as though he were lying 
 in an ant-heap; and would weep and gnash his 
 teeth and say: * Good God, what kind of death is 
 this! Whom murderers kill or the wild beasts, he 
 is done with it quickly. But I am lying here among 
 this horrible vermin and am dying and yet cannot 
 die.' ' And with a similar delight in the repellent, 
 with a similarly gruesome naturalism, he makes 
 Christ describe the horrible disfigurements of his 
 body which he suffered when hanging on the cross. 1 
 " My right hand was pierced by nails, my left hand 
 was hammered through. My right arm was 
 stretched out of joint, my left arm was drawn out 
 of shape. My right foot was sore with open wounds 
 and my left foot was cruelly mangled. I hung in 
 faintness and exhaustion of all my limbs. The 
 blood was breaking forth from all over my body, 
 making it a gory mass and a horrible sight. I was 
 covered with sores and ulcers." 
 
 In the ecstasy of enthusiasm Suso often loses 
 control of himself. He would melt away hi rapture 
 when Eternal Wisdom initiates him into the mys- 
 teries of the transubstantiation. 2 Like a medieval 
 Werther, he would embrace the universe with the 
 arms of love when singing in holy mass the Sursum 
 Corda. 3 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 210. * Loc. cii., p. 28. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 290.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 69 
 
 This same man, however, experiences all the dif- 
 ferent matter-of-fact episodes of his life with such 
 an intensity and relates these episodes with such a 
 power and precision of actual observation that they 
 impress the modern reader as scenes of present-day 
 life, and often make one hold one's breath from 
 excitement. Some of these scenes stand before us 
 with a truly marvellous distinctness. How a little 
 girl accuses Suso of having stolen a crucifix, and 
 thereby incites a great tumult against him hi the 
 town; 1 how in another village he is accused of hav- 
 ing poisoned the wells, and barely escapes death at 
 the hand of the raging mob that has gathered there 
 for the fair; 2 how his sister runs away from the 
 nunnery, and thereby plunges him into the depths 
 of despair until he succeeds in leading her back to 
 her vow; 3 how a lewd woman whom he had tried 
 to convert charges him with being the father of her 
 child and succeeds for a time in making his name 
 despised and rejected; 4 how hi a forest on the 
 banks of the Rhine he meets a highwayman and his 
 paramour and is frightened by them out of his 
 wits, 5 these and similar happenings are told in a 
 manner reminding one of Zola or Tolstoi. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 66. 4 Loc. cit., pp. 117 ff. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., pp. 74 ff. 5 Loc. cit., pp. 78 ff. 
 8 Loc. cit., pp. 70 ff.
 
 70 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 No painter of the Cologne school has represented 
 the idyllic bliss of heaven with more delicate and 
 rosy colors than Suso. 1 " Look upon the beautiful 
 heavenly heath: here summer's delight, here May's 
 festive meadow, here the vale of true bliss. Here 
 you see joyful glances go from love to love; here 
 harping and fiddling; here singing, dancing, and 
 ever rejoicing; here all wishes' fulfilment; here 
 love without sorrow, hi everlasting security. Now 
 look upon the countless multitude, how they drink 
 from the welling fountain of living waters; how 
 they gaze upon the clear pure mirror of the god- 
 head in which all things become known to them. 
 Steal still farther forward and look, how the glori- 
 ous queen of the heavenly land, clad in joy and 
 dignity, hovers above all the heavenly host, how 
 the divine mother of mercy turns her eyes, her 
 mild, merciful eyes, so benignly upon you, how her 
 miraculous beauty gives joy and bliss to the whole 
 heavenly host." 
 
 If we contrast with this idyllic vision the fierce, 
 passionate wailings of a dying man whose voice 
 Suso hears calling for help, we are indeed reminded 
 of the contrast between the Ghent altar of the 
 brothers van Eyck and a Last Judgment scene by 
 Breughel. 2 " O God in Heaven, why was I born 
 
 1 Loc. cit., pp. 241 f. 2 Loc. cit., pp. 280 ff.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 71 
 
 into this world ? The beginning of my life was 
 crying and weeping, and now my leave-taking is 
 bitter wailing and lamenting. I strike my hands 
 over my head, I wring them feverishly, I turn my 
 glance to all the corners of the world, whether some 
 help or comfort may be found. But it cannot be. 
 I am like a bird that is lying under the claws of a 
 hawk and has lost its senses from fright. My hands 
 begin to wither, my face to grow pallid, my eyes are 
 breaking. Ah, the thrusts of grim death strike my 
 chest! I am heaving heavily, the light of this 
 world grows dim. I am looking into the other 
 world. Great God, what a sight! The gruesome 
 forms of the black Moors are gathering, the hellish 
 beasts have surrounded me, they are lying in wait 
 for my soul. O God, I see the wild raging flames 
 shoot up, hideous monsters pass hither and thither, 
 like sparks in the fire. And thus I depart." 
 
 From what has been said it is obvious that the 
 traditional view of Suso as a spiritual minnesinger 
 is far from being adequate. His personality was 
 far too complicated to be a mere reflex or afterglow 
 of the age of chivalric culture. The chords of his 
 soul were so high-strung and vibrated so quickly 
 that the whole fullness of life re-echoed in them. 
 He and his compeers for he had many kindred 
 and followers, especially in the convents of South
 
 72 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Germany do not point backward to the age of 
 chivalry, they point forward to the great epoch of 
 Flemish and German painting in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. The extraordinary combination of deep re- 
 ligious feeling, of rapturous delight in the mysteries 
 of a divine universe, with minute and often harsh 
 and painful reproduction of the smallest detail of 
 every-day reality which mark fifteenth-century 
 painting from the van Eycks to Durer, cannot be 
 fully understood without taking into account the 
 intense subjectivity and emotionalism of that phase 
 of the mystic movement which Suso represents. 
 
 In Johannes Tauler, the great Strassburg 
 preacher, German mysticism of the fourteenth 
 century reaches its fullest popular influence and its 
 sanest and most rational form. Of all mystics, 
 Tauler is the least eccentric; more earnestly than 
 either Eckhart or Suso does he strive for a recon- 
 ciliation between the absorption of the individual 
 by the Divine and the duties of the individual 
 toward society. 
 
 For Tauler, as for his teacher Eckhart, man is 
 originally a part of the godhead. Like Eckhart, he 
 laments the alienation of man from his origin and 
 sees the goal of man hi his return to it. But he is 
 less abstruse than Eckhart; he does not revel so 
 much in contemplation of the " formless and shape-
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 73 
 
 less abyss " of the infinite; he lays more emphasis 
 on the striving of man for perfection. In the anal- 
 ysis of the various stages which shall lead man to 
 this perfection, Tauler shows affinity with Suso. 
 But he is separated from Suso by his clearer sense 
 of the attainable, his soberer view of human limi- 
 tations. With all his predilection for asceticism 
 and renunciation of the world, he is without a trace 
 of fanaticism. 
 
 He openly protests against the morbid exaggera- 
 tions of monkish discipline; he preaches self-con- 
 trol, not self-elimination. In the fine comparison of 
 the human soul with the vine, he represents human 
 nature as an essentially sound and hardy plant 
 whose growth is to be furthered by rational prun- 
 ing and must not be stunted by senseless mutila- 
 tion. He asserts that a life of honest labor and 
 faithful fulfilment of every-day tasks is more 
 pleasing to God than eccentric revelling in high 
 inspirations. 1 " Many a man is busy in the world 
 and works for his wife and children, and many a 
 man sits in his shop and makes shoes to get a living, 
 and some poor people go from village to village to 
 earn their bread with great trouble; and, I tell you, 
 all these may fare a hundred tunes better before 
 God than some would-be prophets." " I know one 
 
 1 Die Predigten Tauler s, ed. by F. Vetter, in: Deutsche Texte des 
 Mitlelalters, , 179.
 
 74 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of the greatest Friends of God, who all his life has 
 been a farmer and is so now. And he once asked the 
 Lord whether he should give up farming and sit in 
 church. And the Lord said, 'No, he should rather 
 go on earning his bread by the sweat of his brow; 
 that was the best service he could give to Him.' ' 
 Tauler, then, believes in the divine origin and the 
 divine mission of every calling and every kind of 
 activity; with truly democratic conviction he 
 praises work as the truest title to nobility; in the 
 right conception of work he sees the way to social 
 peace. 1 " One can spin, another can make shoes, 
 and some have great aptness for all sorts of busi- 
 ness, so that they can earn a great deal, while 
 others are altogether without this quickness. These 
 are all gifts proceeding from the Spirit of God. If 
 I were not a priest, but were a member of a guild, 
 I should take it as a great favor that I knew how 
 to make shoes, and should try to make them better 
 than any one else, and would gladly earn my bread 
 by the labor of my hands. So let every one see 
 to his appointed office, and all work thereby for the 
 common good." 
 
 In all this there is revealed an individualist in the 
 best sense, a man who, standing in the midst of life, 
 has an open mind for the needs and the duties of all 
 classes and of each individual, and who has before 
 
 1 Ed. Vetter, loc. cit., p. 177.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 75 
 
 his eye the ideal of a democratic society resting 
 upon the mutual acceptance and free co-operation 
 of each and all. The fullest significance, however, 
 of Tauler's individualism comes to light in his 
 utterances on the last and highest questions, on the 
 relation of the individual to God. None of the 
 mystics has conceived of the unio mystica, the 
 sinking of deified man in the infinite, in so genu- 
 inely human a manner, or in terms so far raised 
 above all exclusively ecclesiastical views. With 
 what a deep, manly earnestness does he oppose to 
 external conventional churchliness the inner self- 
 scrutiny and self-discipline of the individual. 1 
 " Behold, dear friend, if thou shouldst spend all thy 
 years in running from church to church, thou must 
 look for and receive help from within, or thou wilt 
 never come to any good; however thou mayest 
 seek and inquire, thou must also be willing to be 
 tormented without succor from the outward help 
 of any creature. I tell you, children, that the very 
 holiest man I ever saw in outward conduct and 
 inward life had never heard more than five ser- 
 mons in all his days. Let the common people run 
 about and hear all they can, that they may not fall 
 into despair or unbelief; but know that all who 
 would be God's, inwardly and outwardly, turn to 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 213.
 
 76 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 themselves and retire within." With what a glow 
 of sacred conviction does he describe the necessity 
 of ever deeper scrutiny, ever higher striving, ever 
 purer knowledge, ever freer and fuller surrender, 
 until at last man, without the interposition of any 
 external institution, finds himself indissolubly 
 welded into one with the Divine. 1 " And if such a 
 man were dragged into the bottom of hell, then 
 there would be the kingdom of God and eternal 
 bliss in hell." And what a truly grand exaltation, 
 what a wonderful vision of human possibilities, 
 is there in the picture which Tauler draws of this 
 state of ideal humanity. 2 " When through all man- 
 ner of exercises, the outward man has been con- 
 verted into the inward, spiritual man, and thus the 
 two, that is to say, the powers of the senses and the 
 powers of the reason, are gathered up into the very 
 centre of the man's being, the unseen depths of 
 his spirit, wherein lies the image of God, and 
 thus he flings himself into the divine abyss in which 
 he dwelt eternally before he was created, then, 
 when God finds the man thus simply and nakedly 
 turned towards him, the godhead bends down and 
 descends into the depths of the pure, waiting soul, 
 and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into 
 the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes 
 
 1 Loc. cit., p. 33. 2 Loc. tit., p. 363.
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY MYSTICISM 77 
 
 one with him. Could such a man behold himself, 
 he would see himself so noble that he would fancy 
 himself God, and see himself a thousand times 
 nobler than he is in himself, and would perceive all 
 the thoughts and purposes, words and works, and 
 have all the knowledge of all men that ever were." 
 
 Here, we may say, the individualistic tendency 
 of medieval German mysticism has reached its 
 consummation. Here the conception of person- 
 ality has been heightened and deepened to such an 
 extent that it seems impossible to heighten and 
 deepen it further. 
 
 Surely, whatever formulas have been employed 
 since Tauler's time to define the ideal of human 
 existence the glorification of reason by the 
 Humanists, Luther's exaltation of faith, Rous- 
 seau's gospel of nature, Goethe's and Schiller's 
 apotheosis of culture, Nietzsche's proclamation of 
 the Superman they are nothing but ever new 
 attempts at re-stating in new terms what Tauler 
 felt to be the fundamental need of life : the need of 
 man's being at one with himself , if he is to conquer 
 the infinite.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 POPULAR SONG AND POPULAR SATIRE FROM 
 
 THE THIRTEENTH TO THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 CENTURIES 
 
 THERE seems to be little in common between 
 mysticism and folksong. And yet, it is not an 
 accident that the fourteenth century, which wit- 
 nessed the climax of German mystic thought, also 
 witnessed the first great outburst of German popu- 
 lar song. It is not an accident that during the 
 same decades when the disciples of Suso and Tauler 
 in monastic seclusion would penetrate into the 
 depths of the divine and search for selfhood in the 
 infinite, the Limburg Chronicle should have been 
 able to relate from year to year: l "At this tune 
 they whistled and sang in the lands near the Rhine 
 and the Main in village streets and on country 
 roads this or that or such and such a song." In a 
 different manner from mysticism but for all that 
 no less audibly than mysticism, does the popular 
 song, from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth 
 proclaim the important historic process which 
 forms the principal note of the whole epoch of bur- 
 
 1 Limburger Chronik ed. A. Wyss, pp. 56, 65, 70, 74, 75. 
 78
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 79 
 
 gher ascendancy: the heightening of individuality, 
 the deepening of the inner life, the democratization 
 of personality. 
 
 From the days of Herder's " Von deutscher Art 
 und Kunst " to Professor Gummere's " The Begin- 
 nings of Poetry " it has been asserted over and over 
 again that popular song is not the product and prop- 
 erty of an individual, but is produced and owned 
 by the whole people. This assertion contains an 
 important truth. A new song, whoever be its au- 
 thor, is taken up by the multitude; it is sung by so 
 many different persons, in so many different ways, 
 on so many different occasions, that in the course of 
 tune, through additions, omissions, and transforma- 
 tions, it may lose its original character and become 
 as it were something impersonal. It is moulded, so 
 to speak, by the stream of public imagination, as 
 the pebbles in the brook are moulded and re- 
 moulded by the current of the water which carries 
 them along. This also is unquestionably true as 
 Professor Blicher has shown in his admirable 
 " Arbeit und Rhythmus " that a large part of 
 popular song originally was a rhythmic accompani- 
 ment to the common activity of groups of people, 
 be it manual labor or religious rites or communal 
 festivities, and, in so far as this was the case, did 
 express not so much the feelings of an individual as
 
 8o GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of groups of individuals, and was therefore, from 
 its very start, in essence as well as in form anony- 
 mous. But all this cannot alter the fact that the 
 German folksong of the end of the Middle Ages, if 
 we wish to determine its peculiar place in the de- 
 velopment of German culture, must be regarded as 
 a most impressive, collective testimony to an ex- 
 traordinary heightening of personal sensibility and 
 personal power of imagination, among masses of 
 people. 
 
 The very manner in which the anonymity of 
 these songs is constantly encroached upon by sub- 
 jective allusions, makes us at the outset divine the 
 personal experience, the individual situation from 
 which each song has sprung. In many cases, the 
 very first line indicates the subjective character of 
 the whole by introducing an I, Thou, We, or You: 
 " I heard a sickle rustling " "I know a sweet 
 brown lassie " "I stood of an early morning " 
 " I rode with cheer through a forest " " Thou 
 rider gallant and noble " " What shall we now 
 be a-doing " " Come on, ye boon companions " 
 similar uses of the first or second personal pro- 
 noun in the opening line of a folksong might easily 
 be multiplied. The last stanza frequently begins 
 with the question: " Who is it that sang us this 
 ditty ? " and in the answer to this question the
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 8 1 
 
 author, if he does not openly give his name, likes at 
 least to designate his occupation and station in life. 
 The answers are varied enough: " a landsknecht 
 free" "three landsknechts good at Magdeburg 
 town" "a sturdy boy from Switzerland" "a 
 journeyman " "a baker's apprentice " "a 
 butcher's son" "a simple peasant" "a miner" 
 
 "a rider brave" "two riders brave, an old 
 and a young one" "a scribe" "a student" 
 
 "a fisherman" "a pilgrim" "a poor beg- 
 gar " " three maidens at Vienna. ' ' Occasionally 
 we hear a frank expression of the author's satis- 
 faction with himself and his production: 
 
 Wer ist, der uns das liedlein sang 
 Aus freiem mut, ja mut ? 
 Das tet eins reichen bauren son, 
 War gar ein junges blut. 2 
 
 And at times the author cannot resist the tempta- 
 tion of telling his hearers of some personal experi- 
 ence from his own life which has either no connec- 
 tion at all or only a slight one with the subject of 
 this particular song: 
 
 Der uns disz neuwe liedlein sang, 
 Er hats gar wohl gesungen; 
 Er ist dreimal in Frankreich gewest 
 Und allzeit wieder kummen. 1 
 
 1 Erk und Boehme, Deutscher Liederhort, ii, 260. 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 471.
 
 82 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 In short, the personality of the author, his class, his 
 calling, his experiences, present themselves to us in 
 many of these songs clearly and palpably, one 
 might say : without, if not contrary to, the intention 
 of the author himself. 
 
 And now the subject matter and the form of 
 these songs. There is hardly a side of human char- 
 acter, hardly a phase of human life, hardly an 
 event in national history, which did not find expres- 
 sion hi them. It is as though the circulation of the 
 national body had been quickened and its sensibili- 
 ties heightened; as though people were seeing with 
 keener eyes and listening with more receptive ears; 
 as though they were gathering more intently the 
 thousandfold impressions of the inner and the outer 
 world: of stars and clouds, of trees and brooks, of 
 love and longing, of crime and revenge, of broken 
 faith and heroic deeds; and as though all these 
 impressions were condensed into a living form, an 
 artistic image, a personal creation, in popular song. 
 
 The folksong of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
 sixteenth centuries is not only a worthy successor 
 of the chivalric Minnesong, but it is also its enlarge- 
 ment and fulfilment. It surpasses the chivalric 
 Minnesong hi range of subjects, in depth of feeling, 
 hi human sympathy, in power of presentation. 
 While courtly lyric even in its best representatives
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 83 
 
 remains the expression of class consciousness, how- 
 ever refined and cultivated this consciousness may 
 be, the folksong of the end of the Middle Ages is 
 universal. It is folksong not in the sense that it 
 expressed only the feelings of the common folk; it 
 addresses itself to high and low, poor and rich, 
 learned and unlearned. Like the sermon and the 
 mystery plays of the fifteenth century, like the 
 Gothic cathedrals with the popular language of 
 their altar pieces and portal sculptures, the folk- 
 song of that period also was a spiritual bond em- 
 bracing all classes and ranks of the people. Oldest 
 saga and most recent event, public affairs and the 
 secrets of the heart, longing for eternity and enjoy- 
 ment of the moment, tenderest love and frivolous 
 banter, jubilant exultation and nameless woe, 
 romantic adventure and wedlock commonplace, 
 robber-knight arrogance and peasant pride, jour- 
 neymen's wanderings and guild traditions, childish 
 play and Last Judgment terror whatever stirred 
 the life of those times, it all found a direct and 
 artless response in popular song. 
 
 In refinement of form the folksong, for the most 
 part, is inferior to the lyrics of chivalry. It has 
 something bourgeois-like, homely, and unpreten- 
 tious. If Walther von der Vogelweide reminds 
 us of the grace and delicacy of the sculptures of
 
 84 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Strassburg and Bamberg cathedrals, the folksong 
 frequently suggests the bluffness and angularity of 
 a relief by Adam Kraft. The suddenness of its 
 transitions, the fragmentariness and abruptness of 
 its presentation which appealed so much to 
 Herder and the romanticists often leads to 
 obscurity and ambiguousness. Side by side with 
 traits of supreme beauty and entrancing charm it 
 shows at times features of gross, repellent vul- 
 garity; just as in Flemish painting of the fifteenth 
 century, enchanting naivete and grace of expression 
 is so often found side by side with harshness and 
 commonness of form. But what do all these for- 
 mal defects count compared with the one fact that 
 the folksong breaks forth from the personal experi- 
 ence, directly and without circumlocution, and 
 thereby brings to view reality both inner and 
 outer hi all its freshness, with all its contrasts, 
 all its paradoxes, all its mysteries and riddles. 
 Every genuine folksong is born from the moment; 
 it is a piece of nature ; it is a sound produced by the 
 mighty whir of the world hi an individual soul, 
 which, reverberating in other souls, echoes the 
 common feeling of life. 
 
 The mass of chivalric Minnesong, as we have 
 seen, was dominated by society convention; only 
 in a few exceptional personalities the feeling of
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 85 
 
 genuine humanity rang out. A similar danger 
 threatened the folksong of the end of the Middle 
 Ages: its bulk shows the deteriorating influence 
 exerted by the crowd; only the minority of these 
 songs is unaffected by the trivial, the sensational, 
 the commonplace. But if we compare the best of 
 the folksong with the best of the Minnesong, we 
 must admit the folksong leads us into a freer, 
 wider, and essentially sounder world. We may 
 transport ourselves back into the conceptions of 
 Walther von der Vogelweide, we may enjoy his 
 images of life, we may sympathize with his ideals. 
 But the folksong we experience directly in our- 
 selves; we feel our kinship with it; we are not 
 separated from it by social barriers or historical 
 traditions. " Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's 
 sein." 
 
 From the great wealth of the popular love song, 
 with its manifold expressions of parting and long- 
 ing, of wooing and grieving, of rejoicing and mourn- 
 ing and faithfulness unto death, I select four short 
 songs which seem to me particularly well adapted 
 to make us feel the nobly simple, universally 
 human keynote of this love poetry. 
 
 What is all the fastidious and laborious land- 
 scape painting of the courtly Minnesong compared 
 with the mute expression of instinctive affinity be-
 
 86 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 tween man and nature contained in the touching 
 words of the lonely lover who makes the linden 
 tree the confidant of his sadness: 
 
 Es stet ein lind in diesem tal, 
 Ach gott, was tut sie da ? 
 Sie will mir helfen trauren, 
 Dass ich kein bulen hab. 1 
 
 And still more clearly does this affinity express 
 itself in the next stanza in which the youth com- 
 forts both himself and the linden tree : 
 
 So traur, du feines lindelein, 
 
 Und traur das jahr allein! 
 
 Hat mir ein brauns meidlein verheiszen, 
 
 Sie woll mein eigen sein 
 
 Only a year it will last; then both the youth and 
 the linden tree will be able to rejoice. For then he 
 will have his sweetheart for his own ; and he knows, 
 the tree will be glad for him. 
 
 What are all the romantic adventures of chivalric 
 poetry compared with the deep tragedy of the two 
 short stanzas which tell us of the fate of the miller's 
 apprentice and his love. She lives yonder on the 
 hill where the mill wheel is turning; and when he 
 looks up to it from the valley, then his senses are 
 bewildered, and it seems to him as though the 
 
 1 Erk und Boehme, loc. cit., ii, 217.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 87 
 
 ceaseless turning of the wheel and the ceaseless 
 flowing of the water were his own unending love: 
 
 Dort hoch auf jenem berge 
 Da geht ein miilerad, 
 Das malet nichts denn Hebe 
 Die nacht bis an den tag. 1 
 
 This is the first scene; but without transition, 
 sharp and cruel as life itself, and yet not without 
 that strength of feeling and inner poise which a 
 healthy man preserves even hi the breakdown of 
 his happiness, there follows the picture of the 
 catastrophe: 
 
 Die miile ist zerbrochen, 
 
 Die liebe hat ein end. 
 
 So gsegn dich got, mein feines lieb! 
 
 Jez far ich ins ellend. 
 
 How artless and enchanting, how dreamy and 
 yet how distinctly drawn is the scene in the wheat- 
 field where two reaping girls, swinging the scythe 
 in even measure, give way to such contrasting feel- 
 ings. The one bewails the loss of her sweetheart, 
 the other rejoices in her own happiness of newly 
 awakened love. And grief and joy appear united 
 and, as it were, borne along by the rhythmic rust- 
 ling of the scythes under which the blades of grain 
 are falling: 
 
 1 Loc. tit., ii, 234.
 
 88 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Ich hort ein sichellin rauschen, 
 Wol rauschen durch das korn, 
 Ich hort ein feine magt klagen, 
 Sie het ir lieb verlorn. 
 
 " La rauschen, lieb, la rauschen, 
 Ich acht nit, wie es ge: 
 Ich hab mir ein bulen erworben 
 In feiel und griinen kle." 
 
 " Hast du ein bulen erworben 
 In feiel und griinen kle: 
 So ste ich hie alleine 
 Tut meinem herzen we." l 
 
 And finally, how touchingly simple, how devoid of 
 all morbid exaggeration is the farewell of the jour- 
 neyman from Innsbruck where he leaves his love at 
 home. He knows, foreign lands cannot offer him 
 any joy. But he cheers himself by the thought of 
 her; her heart will be his home wherever he goes; 
 hers he will be forever; and he asks God to pre- 
 serve her until his return. Of the tune of this song 
 Sebastian Bach is reported to have said : he would 
 gladly give his best compositions for this one 
 
 melody. 
 
 Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, 
 Ich fahr dahin mein strassen 
 In fremde land dahin. 
 Mein freud ist mir genommen, 
 Die ich nit weisz bekommen, 
 Wo ich in elend bin. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., ii, 472.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 89 
 
 Grosz leid musz ich ertragen, 
 Das ich allein tu klagen 
 Dem liebsten buhlen mein. 
 Ach lieb, nun lasz mich armen 
 Im herzen dein erwarmen, 
 Dasz ich musz dannen sein. 
 
 Mein trost ob alien weiben, 
 Dein tu ich ewig bleiben, 
 Stet, treu, der ehren frumm. 
 Nun musz dich gott bewahren, 
 In aller tugend sparen, 
 Bis dasz ich wieder kumm. 1 
 
 It is hard to think of poetry more delicate and more 
 appealing, more universally human and more 
 specifically personal than these and similar love 
 songs. Carried along by melodies which set the 
 innermost chords of the soul in vibration, these 
 songs have outlasted all the vicissitudes of German 
 history of the last five hundred years; they have 
 outlived the distress of the Thirty Years' War and 
 the tunes of princely tyranny and scholastic pedan- 
 try; they have comforted the common people and 
 have inspired the great poets and composers of the 
 eighteenth century; and through the romanti- 
 cism of the nineteenth century they have finally 
 become a fountain of youth for German lyric 
 poetry at large. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., ii, 546.
 
 90 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 I must pass over historical popular lyrics, al- 
 though here too individuality asserts itself not 
 infrequently with characteristically German rug- 
 gedness, in order to analyze a few at least of the 
 most representative popular ballads. In the ballad 
 the folksong of the fourteenth to the sixteenth 
 centuries reached its climax; and here again it is 
 the firm grasp, the bold stroke to use a word of 
 Goethe's, the absence of all laborious descrip- 
 tion, the limitation to a few striking features, the 
 clever use of dramatic contrasts, the suggestiveness 
 of characterization, the irrepressible onward strid- 
 ing from peak to peak, as it were, of the narrative 
 in a word, it is the intense personal concentra- 
 tion and power which more than anything else 
 determines the peculiar character of this poetry. 
 Poems of supreme beauty and truthfulness have 
 come forth from this intensity and concentration 
 of personal feeling hi the popular ballad, poems 
 which again make us wonder how critics ever could 
 have spoken disparagingly of the end of the 
 Middle Ages as a period of literary decline. 
 
 One might indeed say: one such ballad as the 
 ballad of the " Two Royal Children " the Ger- 
 man version of the Greek legend of Hero and 
 Leander outweighs thousands of verses from 
 the epic cycles of chivalry. Not a stanza in this
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 91 
 
 ballad which does not enrich and deepen the action; 
 none which does not add a new touching trait. 
 
 Et wassen twe kiinigeskinner, 
 De hadden enander so lef , 
 De konnen to nanner nich kummen, 
 Dat water was vil to bred. 1 
 
 This is the overture. Now two short stanzas which 
 relate the lighting of the candles, their being put 
 out by the " evil nun," and the drowning of the 
 royal youth. And from here on the whole power of 
 poetic beauty is concentrated upon the grief of the 
 bereaved maiden. 
 
 Et was up en sunndage morgen, 
 De Hide woren alle so fro, 
 Nich so des kiiniges dochter, 
 De augen de seten er to. 
 
 "O moder," sede se, "moder! 
 Mine augen dod mi der so we; 
 Mag ick der nich gon spazeren 
 An de kant von de ruskende se ? " 
 
 The mother, apparently foreboding the coming 
 catastrophe, is not willing to allow her daughter to 
 go alone: she must call her youngest sister to go 
 with her. But the daughter insists, that her sister 
 is too childish, she would pick all the flowers on the 
 seashore, and then people would say, she herself had 
 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 296.
 
 92 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 done it. No, she must go alone; her eyes feel so 
 sore. The mother answers: " Then call your 
 youngest brother to go with you." But again the 
 daughter has an excuse : her brother is too childish, 
 he would shoot all the birds on the seashore, and 
 then people would say, she herself had done it. No 
 she must go alone. And now she cannot dissemble 
 any longer: not her eyes are sore, but her heart; 
 not a walk she wants to take, she wants to pray by 
 the surging sea. 
 
 " O moder," sede se, " moder! 
 Min herte dod mi der so we. 
 Lot annere gon tor kerken, 
 Ick bed an de ruskende se." 
 
 And so she puts on her golden crown and her dia- 
 mond ring and goes up and down on the strand 
 until she finds a fisherman. She hires the fisherman 
 to sink his net in the sea: " fish for me the royal 
 youth." 
 
 He sette sin netkes to water, 
 De lotkes sunken to grund. 
 He fiskde und fiskde so lange, 
 De kiinigsson wurde sin fund. 
 
 Do nam de kiiniges dochter 
 Von hoefd ere goldene kron: 
 " Siih do, woledele fisker! 
 Dat is ju verdende Ion! "
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 93 
 
 Se trock von eren finger 
 Den rink von demanten so schon: 
 " Suh do, woledele fisker! 
 Dat is ju verdende Ion." 
 
 Se nam in ere blanke arme 
 Den kiinigsson, o we! 
 Se sprank mit em in de wellen: 
 " O vader un moder, ade! " 
 
 Still more dramatic and impassioned, if not of 
 the same unspeakably touching and pathetic 
 charm as this ballad of the " Two Royal Child- 
 ren," is the ballad of Tannhauser, a poem contain- 
 ing in brief compass all the essential elements of 
 Richard Wagner's stirring composition. Boldly 
 and effectively this ballad transports us at once 
 into the sultry atmosphere of the Venus mountain, 
 into the conflict between the knight, who longs to 
 free himself from the fetters of sensuality, and the 
 enchantress who wishes to hold him. 
 
 " Herr Danhauser, ir seind mir lieb 
 Daran solt ir gedenken! 
 Ir habt mir einen aid geschworn 
 Ir wolt von mir nit wenken." 
 
 " Fraw Venus! Das enhab ich nit, 
 Ich will das widersprechen, 
 Und redt das jemants mer denn ir, 
 Gott helf mirs an ihm rechen! " l 
 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 39.
 
 94 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Thus the dialogue swells on: upon the one hand, 
 ever more passionate caressing, ever more urgent 
 wooing; upon the other, ever more violent strug- 
 gling to get loose, ever more desperate wrenching 
 away, up to the last wild outcry of Tannhauser: 
 
 " Fraw Venus, edle fraw so zart, 
 Ir seind ain teufelinne! " 
 
 and: 
 
 " Maria, muter, raine maid, 
 Nun hilf mir von den weiben! " 
 
 The pilgrimage to Rome, which presently follows, 
 is brought out with the same incisive intensity. 
 First Tannhauser's readiness for repentance and 
 his trust in God's mercy: 
 
 " Ach bapst, lieber herre mein! 
 Ich klag euch hie mein siinde, 
 Die ich mein tag begangen hab, 
 Als ich euch will verkunden. 
 
 Ich bin gewesen auch ain jahr 
 
 Bei Venus, ainer frawen, 
 
 Nun wolt ich beicht und busz empfahn 
 
 Ob ich mocht gott anschauen." 
 
 With Tannhauser's craving for penance and abso- 
 lution there is contrasted the cold and harsh self- 
 righteousness of the Pope which knows nothing of 
 sympathy with the repentant shiner. The Vicar 
 of Christ does not even enter upon Tannhauser's
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 95 
 
 confession, his only word is damnation, made 
 doubly impressive by the reference to his pontifical 
 staff: as little as this staff will sprout into leaf, so 
 little will Tannhauser be saved. 
 
 Now there follow with flashlike rapidity Tann- 
 hauser's relapse into sensuality, his return into the 
 Venus mountain, and the jubilant words with 
 which he is received by his paramour: 
 
 Da zoch er widrumb aus der statt 
 In jammer und in laide: 
 " Maria, muter, raine maid! 
 Ich muss mich von dir schaiden." 
 
 Er zoch nun widrumb in den berg 
 Und ewiklich on ende: 
 " Ich will zu meiner frawen zart, 
 Wa mich gott will hinsenden." 
 
 " Seind gottwillkomen, Danhauser! 
 Ich hab eur lang emboren; 
 Seind willkom, mein lieber herr, 
 Zu ainem bulen auserkoren! " 
 
 And finally, the harmonious issue of the whole, a 
 glorification of genuine humanity and a condemna- 
 tion of heartless intolerance: the staff of the Pope 
 bursts into leaf God has received the sinner into 
 His grace. 
 
 Truly, we understand why this ballad, embrac- 
 ing, in its intenseness of personal experience, the
 
 96 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 heights and the depths of life, should have wrung 
 from the most intensely subjective of modern 
 German poets words of boundless admiration. 
 When Heinrich Heine discovered it in a miscellan- 
 eous volume of the seventeenth century, he felt, 
 he says, 1 as though hi a dark mountain cleft he had 
 suddenly come across a large vein of gold. " The 
 bold and simple, primitively grand words shone at 
 me so lustrously that my heart was almost blinded 
 by the unexpected brilliancy. I at once felt, from 
 this poem there spoke to me a familiar voice of joy. 
 This poem is like a battle of love, and the reddest 
 heart blood flows therein." 
 
 By many further examples it might be shown 
 how sharply the popular ballad individualizes, 
 how fearlessly it likes to bring out contrasts, what 
 bold situations it dares to portray, with what sure 
 hand it works up to a climax. Only two poems, 
 belonging to the favorite cycle of subjects relating 
 to domestic tragedies, may be singled out to illus- 
 trate this peculiarity of the ballad still more fully: 
 the poem of the bad mother who has poisoned her 
 stepchild, and the poem of the faithful sister who 
 rescues her brother from the gallows. 
 
 The crime of the stepmother is revealed to us in 
 seven short stanzas, each of them consisting of a 
 
 1 Werke, ed. Karpeles, v, 365.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 97 
 
 brief question and answer directed to and given by 
 the boy. He comes from his aunt's house where 
 the poison has been given to him. He is already 
 in the agonies of death. Every answer of his ends 
 with a " Wie weh ist mir"; every new answer 
 makes us more clearly see how the crime has been 
 perpetrated; and the last answer with its blunt 
 curse unmasks the murderess herself. 
 
 Kind, wo bist du bin gewesen ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir. 
 " Nach meiner mutter sch wester, 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 Kind, was gaben sie dir zu essen ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir. 
 " Eine briie mit pfeffer, 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 Kind, was gaben sie dir zu trinken ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir. 
 " Ein glas mit rotem weine, 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 Kind, was gaben sie den hunden ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir. 
 " Eine briie mit pfeffer, 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 Kind, was machten denn die hunde ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir! 
 " Sie sturben zur selben stunde, 
 Wie we ist mir! "
 
 98 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Kind, was soil dein vater haben ? 
 Kind, sage dus mir! 
 " Einen stul in dem himmel, 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 Kind, was soil deine mutter haben ? 
 
 Kind, sage dus mir! 
 
 " Einen stul in der hb'lle, 
 
 Wie we ist mir! " 
 
 In the ballad of the "Faithful Sister" also there is 
 an almost breathless suspense. Here also the single 
 parts of the action follow each other stroke upon 
 stroke. Here also each part appears like a flash 
 from the dark, and disappears equally quickly. 
 Here also everything points toward one grand 
 climax. The father, at a drinking bout, has 
 gambled away his only little son to a company of 
 wild fellows. The boy is to be hung by them. The 
 riders come to get him, but none of them dares to 
 lead him out. Then the unnatural father himself 
 seizes him and leads him out of the yard. And 
 now the poem continues : 
 
 Wie weit schritt ihm die mutter nach ? 
 Sie schritt bis hinter die pforte nach. 
 
 Wie weit schritt ihm die schwester nach ? 
 Sie schritt bis hinter das galgengericht. 
 
 " Ach herren, edle herren mein, 
 Gebt mir mein einziges briiderlein." 
 
 1 Erk und Boehme i, 581. Cf. Chad, English and Scottish Ballads
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 99 
 
 " Und deinen bruder den kriegst du nicht, 
 Er musz jetzt hangen am galgengericht; 
 
 Und wenn du dich ziehst nackend aus 
 Und dreimal um den galgen laufst " 
 
 Und wie das letzte wort geschah, 
 Die kleider schon alle unten war'n. 
 
 Und wie sie's erste mal 'rum kam, 
 Da fingen alle frauen zu weinen an. 
 
 Und wie sie's zweite mal 'rum kam, 
 Da fingen alle herren zu weinen an. 
 
 Und wie sie's letzte mal 'rum kam, 
 Da hieszen sie sie stille stahn: 
 
 " Schliesst ab, schliesst ab das kettenband, 
 Und lasst den knaben wieder ins land." 1 
 
 I trust, it has now become clear that what so 
 often has been praised and justly so as one 
 of the most characteristic and greatest beauties of 
 popular song, its extraordinary objectivity, is in 
 reality the result of an extraordinarily heightened 
 subjectivity. The poet of the popular song sees 
 the objects that surround him so sharply, because 
 he himself is a sharply individualized personality. 
 He grasps life in its totality, because in himself life 
 pulsates fully. He has an eye and an ear for the 
 highest and the lowest, for the most delicate and 
 
 1 Erk und Boehme, loc. cit., i, 566.
 
 100 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the grossest of the outer world, because the con- 
 trasts of existence clash in his own innermost soul. 
 It is not a mere coincidence that many of the most 
 lustrous figures of popular song belong to the same 
 time which, in the paintings of a Jan van Eyck or a 
 Rogier van der Weyden, has left us portraits of 
 individuals of such a depth of expression, such a 
 firmness of character, such a complexity of will and 
 intellect as hardly any other time has produced. 
 Both painting and folksong of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury prove to us that it was the concentration of 
 the inner self which enabled the men of that tune 
 to assimilate the world and to reproduce it in art. 
 
 If the folksong of the end of the Middle Ages is 
 a popular successor to chivalric Minnesong, we 
 may see a popular successor to the chivalric epic 
 in the satirical narrative from the thirteenth to the 
 sixteenth centuries. German satirical narrative 
 of those tunes has produced no character which 
 reaches the level of the great characters of the 
 chivalric epic, or which in any sense is worthy to 
 be placed by the side of that immortal parody of the 
 chivalric epic, Cervantes' "Don Quixote." Its sub- 
 jects offer no room for the portrayal of the highest 
 and deepest that moves the heart of man. Its aims 
 are confined to the problems of a particular time 
 and have no universal application. Moreover, the
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE IOI 
 
 centrifugal development of Germany in those 
 centuries brings it about that the literary repre- 
 sentation of reality contained in the satirical nar- 
 rative bears essentially a local and provincial 
 stamp and reveals hardly anything of that hardy 
 feeling of national power and that joyous lustre of 
 national greatness which make Chaucer's " Canter- 
 bury Tales " such a shining monument of English 
 life of the late Middle Ages. And lastly, in artistic 
 form, this satire shows retrogression rather than 
 progress from the thirteenth century to the six- 
 teenth. The Low German animal epic of " Reinke 
 de Vos " is the only satire of the fifteenth century 
 which, as a work of art, could be compared with 
 the earlier satires of the thirteenth century; and 
 " Reinke de Vos " is after all only a copy of the thir- 
 teenth century Reinaert by a Flemish poet. 
 
 All this must be admitted. But the fact remains 
 that German satirical narrative, no less than the 
 folksong, is an important historical evidence of 
 the individualistic trend of German life from the 
 thirteenth century on. Its wealth of caricature; 
 its richness in strongly, if grotesquely, drawn per- 
 sonalities; its unsparing naturalism; even its 
 revelling in the trivial and the vulgar bring out 
 with particular emphasis the bourgeois character 
 of this period. The protest of the masses against
 
 102 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the corruption of the nobility and clergy, which in 
 the Reformation of the sixteenth century led to a 
 reversal of the whole social order, is heard in this 
 narrative literature for the first time with popular 
 force. And it is not amiss to compare the part 
 played by this literature in bringing about the 
 social reversal of the sixteenth century with the 
 part played by the novel of the eighteenth century 
 in bringing about the French Revolution. The 
 reading public of Fielding and Le Sage had become 
 weary of the elegant cavaliers and crowned poten- 
 tates, the aristocratic shepherds, and the learned 
 allegories of pseudo-classic literature. They 
 wanted to see men and women of their own flesh 
 and blood ; they wanted to have a representation of 
 actual society with all its distortions and aberra- 
 tions and with all its need for reform; and this 
 widely-spread desire contributed to preparing the 
 ground for the declaration of the rights of man and 
 the final overthrow of absolutism. Just so in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ideal and 
 heroic figures of a Siegfried, a Parzival, a Tristan 
 and similar representatives of an aristocratic past 
 had lost their charm for the masses, or survived 
 only in the coarser form of the chapbooks. What 
 people wanted to see in literature was their own 
 life, their own narrow and crowded streets, their
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 103 
 
 own gabled houses and steepled cathedrals, their 
 own sturdy and homely faces; and the gratifica- 
 tion of this popular desire by the writers of satirical 
 narrative helped on its part to bring on the great 
 democratic upheaval of the sixteenth century. 
 
 I must confine myself here to a brief analysis of 
 two of the earliest of these satirical narratives, 
 both belonging to the middle of the thirteenth 
 century, the one a good-natured ridicule of the cre- 
 dulity and superstition of the general public, the 
 other a poignant arraignment of the viciousness of 
 a degenerate robber-knighthood: the collection of 
 humorous tales having for its principal character 
 the astute clerical swindler Amis, and the tragic 
 story of young Helmbrecht, the farmer's son who 
 wanted to be a baron. 
 
 The account of the tricks performed by the ec- 
 clesiastical mountebank, Amis, is entirely devoid of 
 polemic animosity. At the end the jolly rogue even 
 reforms; he donates the riches accumulated by his 
 swindles to a convent, is himself chosen abbot, and 
 by an exemplary administration of his office wins 
 for himself a title to eternal life. But that these 
 amusing tales as a whole are nevertheless a striking 
 satire upon the church and upon social respecta- 
 bility, is evident. There is hardly a class of people 
 which did not fall a prey to the deceptions of the
 
 104 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 crafty priest. At a church festival he represents 
 himself as having been sent out by St. Brandan to 
 undertake collections for a cathedral, with the 
 provision to accept gifts only from women who 
 have not sinned against their marriage vows. Of 
 course, he is showered with money and valuables 
 by all married women, especially those who feel 
 themselves guilty of unfaithfulness to their marital 
 pledge. 1 At the court of the king of France he in- 
 troduces himself as a painter and announces an 
 exhibition of his pictures. These pictures, how- 
 ever, he declares, can be seen only by people of 
 legitimate birth. Of course, there are no pictures 
 at all; but everybody comes, everybody pretends 
 to see the pictures, and Amis pockets large sums of 
 money from the would-be patrons of his art. 2 One 
 of the most amusing episodes is the trick played by 
 him upon the prior of a rich monastery. 3 Amis 
 presents himself to the prior as a simple peasant, 
 ignorant of reading or writing, and in his humble 
 way caring only for the salvation of his soul. His 
 appearance of integrity, however, induces the prior 
 to appoint him treasurer of the monastery; and 
 Amis, although he affects great distrust in his 
 capacity to fill this office, discharges it with such 
 
 1 Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters, xii, 31 ff. 
 
 1 Loc. cit., 36 S. * Loc. cit., 63 ff.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 105 
 
 dexterity that he wins the favor and the confidence 
 of the whole convent. One day he takes the prior 
 apart and tells him under the seal of secrecy that a 
 miracle has happened to him an angel has ap- 
 peared before him and summoned him to conduct 
 mass. But how could he, an ignorant, illiterate 
 layman, who has never even looked into a book, 
 read Latin ? And yet he would like to make the 
 trial, that is if the prior would be alone with him in 
 the church and assist him. The prior enters upon 
 this plan joyfully. They lock themselves up hi the 
 church. Amis is put into priestly garments, he 
 steps before the altar, and lo and behold! he reads 
 the mass from beginning to end most fluently and 
 impressively. The prior is amazed and overjoyed : 
 he has discovered a saint! He spreads his fame 
 abroad; from all parts of the country people flock 
 to the monastery, bringing large offerings of silver 
 and gold to the miraculous man. One fine morn- 
 ing the saintly treasurer is gone, and the silver and 
 gold with him. 
 
 Far more bitter and cutting than in these merry 
 tales of the priest Amis is the satire of the other 
 book which I mentioned before, the " Farmer Helm- 
 brecht " by the Bavarian friar Wernher, 1 a book 
 which in its fierce denunciation of cavalier arro- 
 
 1 Deutsche Klassiker des Miltelalters, xii, 131 ff.
 
 106 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 gance and viciousness brings before us something 
 of that elemental wrath and indignation of the 
 oppressed which in the sixteenth century was to 
 lead to the terrible explosion of the Peasants' Re- 
 volt. The tragic theme of the conflict between the 
 old and the young, between the honest respecta- 
 bility of the generation of the fathers and the 
 unbridled license of the generation of the sons, has 
 hardly ever been treated more pointedly and in- 
 cisively than in this little masterpiece which indeed 
 seems an anticipation of the art of Heinrich von 
 Kleist, Turgenjeff, and Gerhart Hauptmann. 
 
 How vividly does young Helmbrecht stand be- 
 fore us from the start this fashionable braggart, 
 this dandified farmer's son and would-be knight, 
 with his blond locks f ailing over his shoulders, with 
 his beautiful silk cap embroidered with doves, par- 
 rots and other designs, with his fine linen, with his 
 doublet of mail and his sword, with his blue surcoat 
 and silver-buckled belt, with the bells on his sleeves 
 which tinkle in the ears of the girls when he dances 
 with them: all these, gifts from his mother and 
 sister who are infatuated with the haughty, spoiled 
 good-for-nothing. And in contrast with him the 
 honest old father, whose whole pride consists in 
 tilling his land with his own hand and in preserving 
 inviolate the simple traditions of his class, who likes
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 1 07 
 
 to remember the time when as a boy he would be 
 sent with cheese and eggs to the baronial castle and 
 could then observe the courtly bearing and the 
 refined manners of the lords and ladies, whereas 
 now the castles resound only with wild carousings 
 and savage atrocities. What gives true greatness 
 to the conflict of this sturdy representative of 
 ancient custom and moral discipline with youth- 
 ful dissipation and depravity is the inexorable 
 consistency with which the fate of the young de- 
 generate fulfills itself, and the unbending right- 
 eousness with which the father, though broken 
 hearted, makes himself an instrument of the divine 
 judgment that overtakes his son. 
 
 It is in five stages that the tragic fate of the 
 farmer's family for through the son's wicked- 
 ness the whole family is plunged into ruin is 
 enacted before us. 
 
 First the departure of the young headstrong 
 from the old homestead. Movingly the father 
 exhorts him, impressively he depicts to him the 
 blessing and the joys of the farmer's life and the 
 dangers and vices of robber-knighthood; but the 
 son has only words of scorn for the miserable 
 existence of a clod-hopper, and the paternal warn- 
 ings are as tiresome to him as a lenten sermon. 1 
 
 1 Verses 259 flf.
 
 108 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 " Silence, dear father. Never shall your sacks 
 graze my shoulders; never will I load your wag- 
 gon with dung; that would ill suit my beautiful 
 coat and embroidered cap. I must taste court life. 
 Shall I drag on three years with a foal or an ox, 
 when I may every day have my booty ? I will 
 help myself to strangers' cattle and drag the peas- 
 ants by their hair through the hedges. Hasten, 
 father, I will not remain with you any longer." So 
 the father must let him depart. Thirty bolts of 
 cloth, four good cows, two oxen, three steers and 
 four bushels of grain he sells to buy a steed for his 
 son; but instead of a blessing he gives him a mes- 
 sage of woe at his departure. 2 " Take care of your 
 cap with the silken birds, and guard your long 
 locks. I dreamt I saw you groping about on a 
 staff, with your eyes out and with a wooden leg; 
 and again I dreamt I saw you standing on a tree, 
 your feet full a fathom and a half from the grass. 
 A raven and a crow sat on a branch over your head, 
 your curly hair was entangled; on the right hand 
 the raven combed it, and on the left the crow 
 parted it. I repent me that I have reared you." 
 
 How well-founded the father's warnings against 
 court life are, is shown by the second series of 
 scenes: the temporary return of Helmbrecht to his 
 
 * Verses 429 ff.; 516 ff.; 580 ff.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 109 
 
 home after the first year of his chivalric adven- 
 tures. At the first meeting with his family he 
 affects the courtly fop. The sister he greets in 
 Latin, the father in French, the mother in Bo- 
 hemian; and, only upon the earnest entreaty of 
 the father to speak a word of simple German, he at 
 last condescends to acknowledge himself as his 
 son. But soon he reveals the whole brutality and 
 viciousness of the aristocratic highwaymen into 
 whose company he has been received. 1 " Father, 
 it is now more than a week that I have drank no 
 wine; since then I have taken in my girdle by three 
 holes. I must capture some cattle before my 
 buckle will return to its former place. A rich far- 
 mer has done me a great injury. I saw him once 
 riding over the crops of my godfather the knight; 
 he shall pay dear for it. I shall trot off his cattle, 
 sheep, and swine, because he has trampled over the 
 fields of my dear godfather. I know another rich 
 farmer who has also grievously injured me; he ate 
 bread with his pastry; by my life, I will revenge 
 that. There is yet another simple fool who was 
 unseemly enough to blow the froth of his beer into 
 a goblet. If I do not revenge that, I will never 
 gird sword to my side, nor be worthy of courting a 
 lady." The father asks who the noble companions 
 
 1 Verses 1115 ff.
 
 110 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 are who have taught him to rob a farmer of his all 
 if he eats pastry and bread together; and the son 
 names them : Sir Lambgobbler, Sir Ramswallower, 
 Sir Hellsack, Sir Shakepress, Sir Gobletjerker, 
 Sir Wolf's Jaw, Sir Wolf's Gut and so on. Of 
 himself he says: 1 " I am called Sir Countrygob- 
 bler. I am not the delight of the peasants. What 
 the peasants have is mine. I gouge the eyes of 
 one, I hack the back of another, I tie this one down 
 on an ant-hill, and another I hang by his legs to 
 a willow." Now at last the father's righteous in- 
 dignation breaks forth: 2 "Son, however noble 
 those may be whom you have named and extolled, 
 yet I hope, if there is a just God, the day will come 
 when the hangman may seize them, and throw 
 them off from his ladder." 
 
 While the clear eye of the father thus sees 
 through the whole nefariousness of this aristo- 
 cratic gang of robbers, Gotelind, the foolish sister, 
 is blinded by the false splendor of Helmbrecht's ad- 
 ventures. Her vanity is flattered when one of his 
 companions, the wild Sir Lambgobbler, wooes for 
 her hand. Secretly she leaves father and mother, 
 and elopes with her paramour. The wedding of 
 the fine pair and the coining on of the long delayed 
 punishment, closely connected with it, form the 
 third stage and the climax of the whole story. 
 
 1 Verses 1237 ff. 2 Verses 1257 ff.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE III 
 
 " Many widows and orphans " so runs the 
 account * " were robbed of their property when 
 Sir Lambgobbler and his bride Gotelind sat at 
 their wedding table. From far away there were 
 brought in wagons and on horses stolen food and 
 drink to the feast. The wedding of King Arthur 
 and Ginevra was nothing compared with the revel- 
 ling at Sir Lambgobbler's castle. It was wonderful 
 how the food disappeared before the revellers, as if 
 a wind blew it from the table; they ate incessantly 
 of everything that was brought from the kitchen 
 by the servants, and there remained nothing but 
 bare bones for the dogs. Then came true what 
 a wise man has said: ' When anyone eats with 
 excessive greed, it is a sign that his end is near.' 
 Yes, it was the last time that they feasted together. 
 Gotelind began to shudder and exclaimed: ' Woe 
 to us! Some misfortune approaches; my heart is 
 so heavy! Woe is me that I have abandoned my 
 father and mother; whoever desires too much, 
 will gain little; greediness leads to the abyss of 
 hell.' " Hardly is the banquet ended when the 
 judge and the executioners appear. The knights 
 are overpowered. Nine of them are hanged. Helm- 
 brecht has his eyes put out and one hand and one 
 foot cut off. Thus, as a miserable cripple, he takes 
 
 1 Verses 14645.; 1557 ff.
 
 1 1 2 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 leave from his sister as she lies, benumbed with 
 fright, by the roadside. 
 
 Finally, the last two gruesome scenes: the re- 
 jection of Helmbrecht from his father's house and 
 his ignominious death. 
 
 " When l the blind Helmbrecht, limping on a 
 staff and led by a servant, came to his father's 
 house, hear how his father greeted him: ' Dieu 
 salue, monsieur Blindman, go from hence, mon- 
 sieur Blindman; if you delay, I will have you 
 driven away by my servant; away with you from 
 the door! ' * Sir, I am your child.' ' Is the boy 
 become blind who called himself Sir Countrygob- 
 bler ? Hey, how cocky you were when you rode 
 off on the steed for which I gave my cattle. Be- 
 gone, and never return again! ' Again the blind 
 man spoke: ' If you will not recognize me as your 
 child, at least allow a miserable man to crawl into 
 your house and lie under the staircase, as you allow 
 the poor sick to do. The country people hate me; 
 I cannot save myself from them.' The heart of the 
 old man was shaken, for the blind man who stood 
 before him was his own flesh and blood his son; 
 yet he exclaimed with a scornful laugh: * You 
 went out daringly into the world; you have caused 
 many a heart to sigh, and robbed many a peasant 
 
 1 Verses 1707 ff.
 
 POPULAR SONG AND SATIRE 113 
 
 of his possessions. Think of my dream. Servant, 
 close the door and draw the bolt; I will have my 
 night's rest.' So the blind man went away, and the 
 peasants hooted and scoffed at him." 
 
 " Early l one morning when he was going through 
 a forest, some peasants who were gathering wood 
 saw him, and one of them, from whom he had 
 taken a cow, called to the others for help. All of 
 them had been injured by him. One of them cried : 
 ' I'll tear him into pieces as small as the motes in 
 the sunbeams; he stripped my wife and myself 
 naked.' Another said: * He broke into my cellar 
 and plundered it.' The fourth, trembling like a 
 reed with passion, shouted: * I will wring his neck; 
 he thrust my sleeping child into a sack, and when it 
 awoke and cried, he tossed it out into the snow, so 
 that it died.' The fifth roared: ' He has ravished 
 my daughter. If he were thrice as blind as he is, I 
 would hang him all the same.' Thus they all 
 turned against Helmbrecht. ' Now take care of 
 your silken cap ! ' The embroidery which had been 
 left untouched before was now torn, and scattered 
 on the road with his hair. They allowed the miser- 
 able wretch to make his confession, and one of them 
 broke a piece of dirt from the ground and gave it to 
 he worthless man as gate money for hell fire. Then 
 
 1 Verses 1823 ff.
 
 1 14 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 they hanged him to a tree. And the father's dream 
 had been fulfilled." 
 
 Let us return to our fundamental theme, the 
 evolution of personality in German literature at 
 the end of the Middle Ages. Can there be any 
 doubt that both folksong and popular satire of the 
 thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries pre- 
 sent a particularly striking phase of this evolution 
 of personality ? Both folksong and popular satire 
 of those centuries foreshadow in a particularly 
 striking manner the great social upheaval which 
 was to come in the sixteenth century; more clearly 
 than any other form of literature do they reflect 
 the democratization of feeling, the rising tide of 
 citizen independence, the imbuing of the masses 
 with the instinct for self-assertion which made 
 Luther's work possible. When Luther appeared, 
 the state of the popular mind had come to be a 
 surging mass of conflicting emotions of class 
 hatred and party passion, of vulgar cynicism and 
 frivolous skepticism, of bold enjoyment of the 
 flesh and blind groping for the spirit, of sturdy 
 trust in human rights and fanatic craving for the 
 destruction of order. It was Luther's mission to 
 give to this mass of conflicting popular emotions a 
 common moral aim: the striving for individual 
 salvation.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA OF THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY AND DURER'S BIBLICAL 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 IN German mysticism, in German folksong, and 
 in German popular satire of the end of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, we observed a constantly increasing de- 
 mocratization of feeling, a constant deepening and 
 heightening of personality, a constantly growing 
 detachment of the individual from the tradition of 
 society. A similar development may be traced in 
 the medieval German drama, more specifically in 
 the process of a constantly growing secularization 
 which led the religious drama from the austere 
 liturgical compositions of the tenth century to the 
 motley popular shows of the fifteenth. 
 
 In the Latin Easter Plays from the tenth to the 
 thirteenth century, only slight beginnings of dra- 
 matic action and mimic art can be seen. These 
 plays are no plays; they are musical compositions, 
 which at first formed a part of the early Mass of 
 Easter Sunday. In the manner of the oratorio, 
 with a slender admixture of suggested rather than 
 performed action, in antiphonal chants between 
 
 "5
 
 Il6 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 two choruses, later also between choruses and 
 solo voices, they gave to the congregation assem- 
 bled hi church on Easter morning an emotional 
 picture of the events at the grave, the scene be- 
 tween the three Marys and the angel, and the 
 spreading of the news of the resurrection among the 
 disciples. They usually ended with a Te Deum 
 sung by the choir, to which occasionally there was 
 added a hymn of praise sung by the whole congre- 
 gation. Solemn and liturgical as this whole per- 
 formance was, it cannot be denied that it contained 
 possibilities of dramatic development and that it 
 step by step widened its circle of action. The dis- 
 play before the disciples of Christ's sudary and 
 shroud, the meeting between Mary Magdalen and 
 the risen Christ, the hastening of Peter and John 
 to the grave, the appearance, at the end, of the 
 transfigured Christ with the banner of the Cross, 
 as victor over death and hell these were scenes 
 which hardly fitted within the narrow frame of an 
 interlude of the Mass. And to such scenes as these 
 there were added in course of time others which 
 went still further beyond the liturgic origins of 
 these plays: the scene of the three Marys buying 
 ointment or the scene where Pilate despatches his 
 soldiers to watch the grave. We are safe hi assum- 
 ing that not later than the thirteenth century, this
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 117 
 
 whole development had led in Germany to that 
 stage in the growth of the religious drama which 
 for France is vouched for by the Mystery Play of 
 Tours as early as the twelfth century: the detach- 
 ment of the Latin Easter Play from the regular 
 church service. 
 
 A similar course of development is seen in the 
 Latin Christmas Plays. To what a variety and 
 vividness of action the Christmas Play of the 
 twelfth century had progressed from its original 
 liturgic limitations, is strikingly shown in the Bene- 
 diktbeuren Christmas Play. The fact that the text 
 of this play is contained in a manuscript which 
 also contains the largest collection of twelfth cen- 
 tury Latin lyrics, the poetry of wine, women and 
 song by the very unclerical order of the clerici 
 vagantes, vagrant theological students who were 
 the despair of the university authorities of that 
 day, is an additional proof for the assumption sup- 
 ported by other reasons also, that these vagrant 
 clerks exercised an important influence upon the 
 secularization and popularization of the religious 
 drama. The stage directions of this Benedikt- 
 beuren Christmas Play expressly state that it is to 
 be performed not inside, but hi front of a church; 1 
 and although the play itself is from beginning to 
 
 1 Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters, iii, 877.
 
 Il8 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 end in Latin, it often enough appeals to the pre- 
 dilection for strong effects and telling actuality 
 which distinguishes the poetry of the vagrant 
 clerks. In the disputation between the prophets 
 and the leader of the synagogue, with which the 
 play begins, there is no lack of realistic traits. The 
 Sibyl, according to the stage directions, is to pro- 
 nounce her prophecy of the coming of Christ 
 " cum gestu mobili," 1 with vivid gestures; and 
 the leader of the Synagogue is to betray great 
 excitement and violent indignation at these and 
 similar prophecies. He is to punch his fellows with 
 his elbow, he is to toss his head and his whole body 
 to and fro, stamp on the ground and wield his stick 
 altogether in the manner of a Jew. 2 The striving 
 for grotesque imitation of reality which marks this 
 introductory scene appears again and again 
 throughout the play proper, the action of which 
 leads from the Annunciation and the Nativity to 
 the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Death of 
 Herod. Most strikingly perhaps is this the case in 
 the scene of the Shepherds in the Field 3 who are 
 accosted on the one hand by an angel announcing 
 the birth of the Saviour, on the other by the devil 
 denouncing the angelic message as a preposterous 
 
 1 Loc. cit., 878. Loc. cit., 892 ff. 
 
 2 Loc. cit., 880.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 119 
 
 invention. Three times the shepherds set out to 
 perform their worship before the Child in the 
 manger, three times they are sent back by the 
 devil. Finally they are entirely non-plussed by the 
 discrepancy of the arguments hurled at them from 
 either side; they put their heads together and con- 
 fess to each other that they don't know where to 
 turn. Then, fortunately, there appears a multitude 
 of the heavenly host singing the " Gloria in excelsis 
 deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis." 
 This, of course, convinces the shepherds; they cast 
 then* doubts to the wind; they proceed to the man- 
 ger, and now there follows the Adoration scene in 
 strict accordance with the biblical narrative. 
 
 These few observations may suffice to remind us 
 of the fact that the ecclesiastical development 
 within itself had led in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries to a religious drama which, although, in 
 the main, confined to the Latin language and to a 
 spirit of austere churchliness, at the same time con- 
 tained numerous germs of a freer, more secular and 
 more individual conception of life. But only from 
 the fourteenth century on, together with the 
 powerful growth of the great German city repub- 
 lics, and clearly influenced by the spirit of civic 
 independence emanating from them, there de- 
 velops a German vernacular drama which offers
 
 120 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 room for a broad representation of reality and for 
 a large variety of personal types. 
 
 It must frankly be admitted that just as the 
 folksong and the popular satire of the end of the 
 Middle Ages as compared with the courtly lyrics 
 and epics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
 frequently betray a coarsening of motives, so the 
 popular drama of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies, also, is decidedly less refined than the older 
 prevailingly liturgic drama. Indeed, many of 
 these plays are overcrowded with trivial vulgarity. 
 Especially where, as hi the Shrovetide Plays, the 
 ecclesiastical element is either totally absent or 
 present only as an object of ridicule, there is often 
 a display of ordinariness, uncouthness, nay filthi- 
 ness which deprives this farcical tavern drama of 
 any association with poetry and makes it worthy 
 of notice only as a vulgar by-product of the teem- 
 ing vitality of an epoch inclined to go to extremes 
 both in spiritual aspirations and in the things of 
 the flesh. 
 
 This also must be admitted that the influx of 
 secular matter into the religious drama has not led 
 to the creation of an artistic form hi which the 
 spiritual and the material appear reconciled. Only 
 in a few plays belonging to the outer periphery of 
 the ecclesiastical legend, such as the Low German
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 121 
 
 "Theophilus" (fourteenth century) or the play of 
 " Frau Jutta " (1480), are we confronted with a con- 
 sistent central action which upon the background 
 of churchly life presents human passions and con- 
 flicts. And just in these plays there is too great a 
 lack of wide perspective for them to arouse deepest 
 human interest. Both the fate of Frau Jutta 
 whose vain enterprise, after having lifted her to the 
 throne of St. Peter, plunges her into sudden down- 
 fall, and the career of the priest Theophilus whom 
 ecclesiastical ambition seduces into a compact 
 with the devil, after all serve only to glorify the 
 intercession of the Virgin Mary for the repentant 
 sinner. Both plays lack the compelling force of 
 soul experience. The great mass, however, of the 
 religious plays, especially those which have for 
 their subject the kernel of the Christian legend 
 the birth, the earthly career, the passion, and 
 resurrection of the Saviour consist of an almost 
 endless agglomeration of glaring contrasts between 
 the church and the world, between the serious 
 and the burlesque, between deepest feelings of the 
 innermost heart and commonplace externalities; 
 all this at the expense of artistic unity and a closely 
 knit composition. 
 
 Some of these contrasts, however, are indeed 
 presented in such a manner that we are made to
 
 122 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 feel thereby the tragic complexity of existence, the 
 inevitable interweaving of the high and the low, 
 of blessing and curse, which makes the web of 
 human life. Truly impressive is the contrast in the 
 "Play of the Wise and Foolish Virgins" between 
 the tender, merciful f eelings of the Virgin Mary and 
 the austere inaccessibility of the divine Judge him- 
 self. His mother pleads for the Foolish Virgins on 
 her knees; 1 she reminds him of all the toil which 
 for more than three and thirty years she has under- 
 gone for him, of all the suffering which his death 
 has brought her; and as a reward for all this she 
 demands from him the pardoning of the repentant 
 sinners. But Christ remains unmoved; with a 
 commanding gesture he imposes silence upon his 
 mother; his only answer to her ever repeated 
 entreaties is a solemn: " Too late, too late "; and 
 with majestic loftiness he commits the poor 
 wretches to eternal damnation. No wonder that 
 when in 1322 this play was produced at Ei- 
 senach, one of the spectators, the Landgrave of 
 Thuringia, was affected so deeply that he is said 
 to have collapsed with the words: " What is our 
 Christian faith then for, if God is not willing to 
 be merciful, even at the intercession of his own 
 Mother ? " 
 
 1 Das Spiel von den zehn Jungfrauen, ed. Otto Beckers, verses 279 ff.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 123 
 
 Truly touching is the contrast in the Hessian 
 Christmas Play of the end of the fifteenth century 
 between the glory of the inner life and the out- 
 ward wretchedness of a proletarian existence. 1 
 Mary and Joseph are homeless. They wander 
 from town to town to find a shelter for the ap- 
 proaching confinement of the Mother of God. At 
 every house where they stop they are turned away 
 from the door with harsh words; and even in the 
 vagrants' home where they at last are taken in, old 
 Joseph must submit to the most humiliating insults 
 heaped upon him by two servant girls. When the 
 child is born, the most necessary provisions are 
 lacking. No food, no bedding for the mother, not 
 even swaddling clothes for the infant. But Mary 
 comforts herself: naked are we born, naked are we 
 to go hence. And good Joseph makes a most de- 
 voted father. He succeeds in hunting up a cradle 
 for the baby, he gets a pair of old trousers which 
 will do very well for swaddling clothes; and then, 
 how happy he settles down at the cradle, rocking 
 the little one and singing it to sleep with a German 
 lullaby. 
 
 And even the Merchant scene of the Easter 
 Plays, although it often goes to the very limit of the 
 endurable in coarseness and triviality, at times 
 
 1 Froning, iii, 902 ff.
 
 124 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 gives us a sense of the fundamental paradox of life 
 which so frequently makes moments of supreme 
 solemnity and portentousness clash with incidents 
 of utter clownishness and frivolity. In the Vienna 
 Play, 1 the scene begins like a country fair scene by 
 Teniers or some other Dutch genre painter. The 
 merchant, a quack and mountebank of the first 
 order, professes just to have come from Paris and 
 to have bought there a great supply of salves, 
 tonics, and domestic wares, the usefulness of which 
 he is not slow to impress upon the crowd gathered 
 about his booth. In the crowd he notices a fellow 
 whose face appeals to him as betokening a kindred 
 soul: Rubin, the Jew, pickpocket, gambler, and 
 counterfeiter. Everywhere this Rubin has man- 
 aged to defy or escape the courts; only in Bavaria 
 they once caught him and branded his cheeks. 
 Rubin is engaged by the merchant as a fellow sales- 
 man, and the two together proceed to harangue 
 the multitude. Suddenly there arises from the 
 midst of the concourse, like a voice from another 
 world, a wailing song the lamentation of the 
 three Marys over the death of Jesus, followed by 
 their mutual exhortation to go to his grave and to 
 anoint his body with ointment. The quack sees 
 his chance for a good bargain; he sends Rubin to 
 
 1 Hoffmann, Fundgruben, ii, 313 ff.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 125 
 
 coax the women to his booth. The three Marys 
 apparently do not know the value of money; they 
 offer to pay all they have, three gold florins; and 
 the merchant is so overcome by this unexpected 
 readiness of his customers that he in turn gives 
 them better stuff than he is accustomed to give. 
 But here his wife, who, it seems, has a better busi- 
 ness head, intervenes. She has made the ointment 
 herself, she says; she ought to know better how 
 much it is worth; she bids the women not to 
 touch it. And when her husband insists on keeping 
 his agreement, she abuses him as a drunkard and 
 spendthrift an attack which he answers by beat- 
 ing and kicking her. In short, the vulgarity and 
 ugliness of everyday reality smother the finer 
 feelings of the heart which the lamentation of the 
 three Marys had kindled. But these feelings are 
 rekindled by the following scene at the grave, the 
 joyful message by the angel of Christ's resurrection 
 and the expression by the three Marys of hope and 
 trust in the living Saviour: 
 
 Jesu, du bist der milde trost, 
 Der uns von sunden hat erlost, 
 Von sunden und von sorgen, 
 Den abent und den morgen. 
 Er hat den teufel angesiget, 
 Der noch vil feste gebunden liget. 
 Er hat vil manche sele erlost: 
 O Jesu, du bist der werlde trost.
 
 126 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 If scenes of contrast, like those mentioned, serve 
 to give to the religious plays of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury a remarkable variety and lifelikeness, the 
 absence of unity in them, of which I spoke before, 
 is not always equally pronounced. Indeed, over- 
 crowded as many of these plays are with multi- 
 farious matter, awkward as is their language, drag- 
 ging as is their action, lacking as they are in artistic 
 unity, they are not without spiritual unity. The 
 best of these plays give us perhaps the most com- 
 prehensive picture of a tune in which the sacred 
 legend had passed over into the life of the whole 
 people and had become the personal property of 
 every individual. They make us realize the state 
 of mind of a multitude for whom the passion and the 
 resurrection of the Saviour was an ever recurrent 
 and ever present fact, closely allied with their own 
 local surroundings and local happenings; a multi- 
 tude, who in the stations of Christ's passion carved 
 in stone and bordering the road between the city 
 wall and some churchyard, had constantly before 
 their eyes the road to Golgotha; a multitude to 
 whom it would not have seemed incredible, if the 
 baptismal font in the minster during divine service 
 suddenly were to change into the Jordan and re- 
 ceive the sacred forms of John the Baptist and the 
 Saviour bowing down before him, while from above
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 127 
 
 there would be heard the word: " This is my be- 
 loved son, in whom I am well pleased." The spec- 
 tators themselves gave unity to these plays, 
 through their personally re-experiencing an action 
 with every detail of which they were thoroughly 
 familiar and every part of which was to their mind 
 ultimately connected with the whole. 
 
 Two of these plays an Easter Play written in 
 1464 by a priest at Redentin near the Hanse town 
 of Wismar on the Baltic Sea, and a Passion Play 
 performed hi 1501 in the Hessian town of Alsfeld, 
 not far from Frankfurt it may be worth while to 
 sketch at least in outline. 
 
 Hardly anywhere has the localizing and mod- 
 ernizing of sacred history been carried to such an 
 extreme and has there at the same tune been main- 
 tained such a high level of artistic form as in the 
 Redentin Easter Play. The play begins with the 
 resurrection of Christ, but the resurrection takes 
 place, not in Jerusalem, but hi the good old town 
 of Wismar itself. Pilate, who appears as the type 
 of a stately, somewhat phlegmatic burgomaster, 
 hears a rumor that Christ's followers intend to steal 
 his body; and he therefore details four knights to 
 watch the grave, one to the north, one to the south, 
 one to the east, and one to the west. The knights 
 behave in a very martial manner, and their whole
 
 128 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 conduct is clearly a caricature of the depraved 
 robber barons and predatory mercenaries who in 
 those tunes of club law were an object of both 
 terror and ridicule to the peaceful citizen. They 
 brag about their prowess, clatter with their swords, 
 threaten to smash any one who shall dare to come 
 near them; and then go quietly to sleep, having 
 first made an arrangement with the city night 
 watchman, who is stationed on the steeple of the 
 cathedral, to keep on the lookout in their place. 
 The watchman sees a vessel approaching on the 
 Baltic Sea. He tries to wake the knights, but in 
 vain. He hears the dogs barking, and again vainly 
 tries to arouse the sleepers. He calls out the mid- 
 night hour. And now a chorus of angels is heard 
 on high, the earth is shaken, Jesus rises from the 
 grave and proclaims the redemption of mankind: 
 
 Nu synt alle dynk vullenbracht, 
 De da vor in de ewicheit weren bedacht, 
 Dat ik des bitteren dodes scholde sterven 
 Unde dene mynschen gnade wedder vorwerven. 1 
 
 From these scenes, hi which the burlesque and the 
 serious are so quaintly mingled, we now pass on to 
 events of truly sublime simplicity and serene 
 grandeur. Jesus descends into hell, to rescue the 
 souls of the forefathers. His approach is fore- 
 
 1 Froning, i, 133.
 
 THE HARROWING OF HELL 
 From Durer's Little Passion
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 129 
 
 shadowed in the joyous expectancy of the waiting 
 souls. They see a wondrous light spreading over- 
 head. Abel is the first to interpret this as a sign 
 that the tune of their redemption is nigh; but the 
 others at once join with him. Adam rejoices hi the 
 hope of regaining paradise. Isaiah is sure that this 
 is the light of God; for is it not an evident fulfil- 
 ment of what is written in his own book of pro- 
 phecy (he quotes himself in Latin) : " The people 
 that walked in darkness have seen a great light " ? 
 And Seth recalls the twig which five thousand and 
 six hundred years ago he planted at God's behest 
 that it might grow into the tree of salvation, the 
 cross. Now, John the Baptist appears as fore- 
 runner of the Saviour, and announces his coming. 
 In vain do Lucifer and Satan summon their hosts, 
 in vain do they lock the gates of hell. Surrounded 
 by the archangels, Christ advances. With a few 
 majestic words he silences Satan, the " accursed 
 serpent "; with a mere sign of his hand he bursts 
 the gates; Lucifer he commands to be bound until 
 the day of Judgment. And now the souls stream 
 forward, exulting, jubilating, stammering with joy 
 and gratitude; and Christ takes them by the hand 
 and greets them, and then commits them to the 
 care of Michael, the archangel, that he may lead 
 them upward into paradise.
 
 130 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 At the end of the play we return once more to the 
 sphere of the burlesque, to a satire upon social con- 
 ditions of the fifteenth century. Through the 
 rescue of the souls of the Fathers, hell has become 
 desolate; Lucifer therefore, chained as he is, sends 
 his servants out to catch new souls. But the devils 
 return empty-handed and discouraged: through 
 Christ's death and resurrection, they say, the 
 world has become so good that very little chance is 
 left for hell. Lucifer, however, is not discouraged. 
 He has heard that a great plague is raging just now 
 in the city of Liibeck, the rival town of Wismar, 
 and he sends his messengers out for a second time, 
 to try their fortunes in the Hanse town. And this 
 tune they come back laden with souls of sinners, 
 sinners of every kind and description. There is the 
 baker, who deceived his customers by using too 
 much yeast in his bread and too little flour. There 
 is the shoemaker, who sold sheepskin for Cordovan 
 leather. There is the tailor, who stole half of his 
 customers' cloth. There is the inn-keeper, who 
 adulterated his beer and served it with too much 
 foam in the pot. There is the grocer, who used 
 false measure and weight. There is even the priest, 
 who so often overslept the mass and so often cele- 
 brated the vesper service in the tavern. In short, 
 this is the moral with which the play at the end
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 131 
 
 returns to the Easter theme Lucifer is right: 
 the power of evil has not yet been broken; sin is 
 still mighty in the land; only by cleaving to God 
 and his word can we be saved. Only then can we 
 truly sing with the angels: " Christ is risen." 
 
 In unity and perspicuity of composition the 
 Alsfeld Passion Play, extending as it does over three 
 play days and containing as it does more than eight 
 thousand lines, cannot be compared with this truly 
 classic Redentin Easter Play. The Alsfeld play 
 often drags and is often full of platitudes and of 
 insufferable loquacity. But the cardinal motive of 
 the whole, the conflict between the powers of 
 darkness and light, is well conceived and shines 
 forth from the unending succession of events again 
 and again with genuine power. 
 
 The distribution of the unwieldly material of the 
 Alsfeld play upon the three days of the perform- 
 ance is not without dramatic skill. The first day 
 begins effectively with a council of devils, in which 
 Lucifer and his prime minister Satan introduce 
 their plan of bringing about the death of Christ 
 apparently without realizing that through the 
 execution of this plan they are bound, against their 
 will, to further the cause of salvation. As a pre- 
 lude to Christ's passion and death, there follows the 
 John the Baptist episode: his incarceration, the
 
 132 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 feast of Herod, the dance of Herodias' daughter, 
 the death of John, the punishment of Herodias and 
 her daughter. The rest, that is the larger half, of 
 the first day is devoted to Christ's public career, 
 from the calling of the disciples to the Last Supper, 
 with the emphasis laid upon the miracles per- 
 formed by Christ, among which the raising of 
 Lazarus and the transformation of Mary Magdalen 
 from a vain daughter of the world into a pious 
 penitent stand out with particular vividness. The 
 second day brings the preparatory events of the 
 Passion. It commences with the Last Supper and 
 reaches its climax in the trial of Christ before 
 Pilate, in which God the Father, surrounded by 
 the archangels and the heavenly host, appears as a 
 witness to the glory of his son, humbled and de- 
 graded into a poor shiner. A disputation between 
 the allegorical figures of Ecclesia and Synagoga, 
 the representatives of the two contending prin- 
 ciples of good and evil which direct the action of 
 the whole play, brings the second day to a logically, 
 if not artistically, satisfactory conclusion. The 
 third day, finally, rises to the greatest events of the 
 sacred legend. The bearing of the Cross, the la- 
 mentation of Mary, the crucifixion, the resurrec- 
 tion, the harrowing of hell, the scene at the grave, 
 the ascension, the descent of the Holy Ghost all
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 133 
 
 this is passed in review before us, with hardy 
 realism, with strong accents and with broad effu- 
 sion of feeling; so that the last scene, the parting 
 of the Apostles as they set out to wander through 
 the world and to convey the glad tidings of salva- 
 tion to all mankind, indeed dismisses us with the 
 impression of a great personal experience. 
 
 Only one of the many and variegated episodes 
 which make the whole of this motley Alsfeld play 
 I should like to analyze a little more fully, hi order 
 to bring out once more the truthful directness and 
 simplicity in the representation of personal char- 
 acter in which the principal merit of all these plays 
 is to be found : I mean the John the Baptist episode 
 of the first day of the performance. 1 
 
 By his bold stand against the vicious Herodias 
 and by his preaching of penitence to the people, 
 John has alarmed hell. Lucifer is afraid of him; 
 he fears he might win the world over to God; he 
 therefore decides upon his death and he despatches 
 Satan to execute it. Satan assumes the disguise of 
 an old woman and enters the palace of Herodias. 
 In the manner of a witch, he accosts her with in- 
 sinuating flattery and inquires why her eyes are so 
 red with tears. Herodias blurts out at once: 
 " That has been done to me by the evil John. He 
 
 1 Froning, ii, 584-606.
 
 134 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 has spoken so ill of me that I can have no joy 
 unless I have revenge on him." Satan answers: 
 
 Folget mir, frau! ich will euch lehren; 
 
 HIT sollt euch machen an euren herren; 
 
 Den konig Herodes sollet ihr bitten 
 
 Mit schreienden augen nach weibes sitten 
 
 Und sollet ihm off nen euer leid ! 
 
 So weisz ich wohl, er wird bereit, 
 
 Dasz er tut all euren willen. 
 
 Eure schreienden augen wird er stillen; 
 
 Und was ihr dann von ihm begehrt, 
 
 Des seid ihr dann von ihm gewahrt. 
 
 Er lasset euch in keinen noten, 
 
 Und sollte er den bosen mann lassen toten, 
 
 Der euch so leide hat getan. 
 
 Damit will ich von hinnen gan. 
 
 Gebet mir urlaub, fraue zart! 
 
 Ich will mich machen auf mein' fahrt! 1 
 
 In reality, however, he does not leave, but only 
 steps aside; and in all the following scenes he 
 remains as an unobserved observer hi the back- 
 ground. 
 
 Herodias acts upon Satan's counsel. She de- 
 clares to the king, she would never be happy and 
 he would never have a dutiful wife in her, unless he 
 were willing to put to death the " rudely man- 
 nered man " who had scolded her so fiercely. The 
 king is only too willing to enter upon this; he 
 embraces his wife, draws her close to him on his 
 
 1 Verses 712 ff:
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 135 
 
 chair, calls her his dear darling whose fair body was 
 dearer to him than all the treasures of the world, 
 and bids her to be of good cheer; for her wish 
 would be fulfilled. John is arrested, dragged 
 hither and thither by the brutal soldiers, and 
 finally thrust into a dungeon; all this, without his 
 uttering a single word of protest or complaint. 
 His disciples, from whose midst he has been 
 snatched, follow him to the prison gate, and stand 
 about frightened and disconsolate, longing for their 
 lost master. The king, however, happily rid of the 
 irksome preacher of penitence, wants to celebrate 
 his birthday in merry good fashion: the table is to 
 be crowded with game and fish, with pastry and 
 wine; his whole retinue is to feast and carouse; 
 and Herodias and her daughter are to sit next to 
 him and forget all sorrow and care. 
 
 Now there follows the dance of Herodias' daugh- 
 ter. The king attaches to his request for a dance 
 the well known promise to fulfill any wish which 
 the daughter might ask. After she has danced, he 
 insists upon her naming her wish. The girl cannot 
 make up her mind; she must ask her mother's 
 advice about it. And now, while mother and 
 daughter consult with each other, Satan, still in 
 his disguise of an old hag, comes forward from the 
 background and whispers into their ears, " Ask for
 
 136 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 John's head; for as long as he lives, you won't be 
 rulers of the land." Eagerly the passionate Hero- 
 dias seizes this suggestion; and willingly her 
 daughter, the heartless and vain society girl, enters 
 upon it. With a dutiful curtsy she accosts the 
 king and names her wish. The king, after a brief 
 struggle with himself, grants it. 
 
 This leads to the climax of the action. The be- 
 heading of John is carried out by the king's brutal 
 satellites storming into the dungeon and dragging 
 him out with insults and contumelies. Herodias' 
 daughter receives the bleeding head without any 
 sign of horror and with a conventional smile. 
 Holding it before her on the platter and striking up 
 a song of rejoicing, she dances about. But in the 
 very moment when she passes John's head over to 
 her mother, Satan suddenly reveals his true self, 
 he throws off the disguise of mantle and veil, and 
 standing erect and threatening in all his diabolical 
 grimness, he shouts: 
 
 Hoiho! Hoiho! ich hab gesehen, 
 Dasz all mein wille 1st geschehen ! 
 Der mann in unschuld ist ermort! 
 Drum will ich eilig laufen dort 
 Zu meinem herren Luzifer, 
 Und will ihm bringen gute mar. 
 Ich weisz, er wird mich wohl empfahn. 
 Da ich solch liebe ihm getan. 1 
 
 1 Verses 1040 ff :
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 137 
 
 Hell rejoices at the welcome news. The devils 
 storm upon earth, enter the palace, seize Herodias 
 and her daughter, and drag them, regardless of 
 their cries for help and their woeful lamentations, 
 down to eternal perdition. 
 
 We may say that all this is good, healthy, home- 
 made food. Nothing of the brilliant complexity 
 of Heine's Herodias. 1 Nothing of the theatrical 
 cleverness of Sudermann's Johannes. Nothing of 
 the perverse sensual passion of Oscar Wilde's 
 Salome. The characters of this Aisfeld Play are 
 direct, transparent, naive; they offer us no riddles 
 to solve; they do not shock our nerves. But how 
 vividly and clearly do these figures stand before us: 
 John, the fiery preacher of penitence, and at the 
 same tune the humble man of non-resistance; 
 Herod, the bragging tyrant and the henpecked 
 husband; the impassioned, ambitious Herodias; 
 her daughter, the pretty and soulless society doll; 
 and above all Satan with his craftiness and ver- 
 satility, with his grim maliciousness and his blind 
 rage for destruction. In characters and scenes 
 like these, the Christian legend, we feel, has come 
 to be entirely acclimatized to German city life of 
 the fifteenth century; it has come to be a perfect 
 expression of the personal experience of the average 
 citizen of those days. 
 
 1 Atta Troll, c. 19; Werke ed. Karpeles, ii, 152 ff.
 
 138 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 I have tried to reproduce something of the 
 wealth of personal feeling and personal character 
 contained in the religious drama of the fifteenth 
 century. It seems proper to conclude with a few 
 remarks upon a man who, although in a different 
 field of art, has given to this tendency toward 
 imbuing sacred legend with the fullness of personal 
 experience its consummate artistic form, Albrecht 
 Diirer. The parallelism that exists between the 
 German religious drama and German religious 
 painting of the fifteenth century could not be 
 better illustrated. 
 
 While Holbein was a man of a distinctly secular 
 frame of mind and therefore pursued his path 
 either away from medieval tradition, or (as in his 
 Dance of Death) in direct opposition to it, Diirer 
 found the perfection of his artistic personality in 
 the inner assimilation of this tradition. Proof of 
 this is above all the four great series of woodcuts 
 which appeared between 1498 and 1511, the 
 Apocalypse, the Life of Mary, the Large Passion, 
 and the Little Passion. These woodcuts belong to 
 the formative period of his life; they show him in 
 the midst of his mental conflicts: losing himself hi 
 the mysteries of scholastic speculation; refreshing 
 himself in the pure fountain of sacred legend; pro- 
 testing against the corruption and worldliness of
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 139 
 
 the church of his day; in spite of doubt and 
 disappointment clinging to the faith that at last 
 there will come a tune when the dream of the 
 ages, the advent of the New Jerusalem, will be 
 realized. 
 
 Throughout the fifteenth century the figures 
 of sacred legend had been presented to the popu- 
 lar eye not only upon the stage of the religious 
 drama, but also in countless paintings enshrined 
 hi churches and convents. And in painting no less 
 than in the drama, there had been a constant at- 
 tempt to reconcile deepest soul experience with 
 objective representation of outer reality. In the 
 monumental calm of the Ghent altar, in the emo- 
 tional intensity of Rogier van der Weyden, hi the 
 mild beauty of Memlinc and the serene transpar- 
 ency of Dirk Bouts, in the idyllic charm of the 
 Cologne masters and the naive contemplativeness 
 of Schongauer and Wohlgemut, religious painting 
 of the fifteenth century had achieved wonders of 
 truly popular art. This whole movement reaches 
 its climax in Durer. In Diirer all that medieval 
 Christianity had gathered in power and delicacy, 
 ecstatic passion and idyllic contemplation, fan- 
 tastic longing for the infinite and lusty enjoyment 
 of the present, is brought together and united into 
 a compact and mighty artistic personality.
 
 140 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The fantastic element predominates in the 
 scenes from the Apocalypse. 1 But all the more 
 remarkable is the sure sense of reality with which 
 Dtirer succeeds in giving form to the ecstatic 
 visions of oriental imagination and in adapting 
 them to the f eelings of his own people and his own 
 tune. Like an event of real life appears the open- 
 ing of the gates of heaven, the third cut of the 
 series. Diirer transports us here into a romantic 
 landscape showing the characteristic traits of his 
 Franconian homeland: forest, rock, and lake, 
 castles on hilltops, mountains in the distance. 
 Above all this, in the clouds, the scriptural vision, 
 but likewise conceived in the forms of the life 
 which surrounded Diirer himself. The gates of 
 heaven are evidently the portals of some medieval 
 cathedral; the throne of God stands in the choir 
 of this cathedral; the seven lamps of fire above the 
 throne have the shape of medieval church vessels; 
 and at the right and the left there sit in richly 
 carved choirstalls the twenty-four Elders, like 
 canons of a cathedral chapter. The Elder furthest 
 in the foreground at the left turns with a friendly 
 gesture to the reverently kneeling John the Evan- 
 gelist. The whole composition calls up the feelings 
 
 1 Edited, in phototypic reproduction, by J. N. Sepp; Miinchen, 
 1896.
 
 THE APOCALYPTIC RIDERS 
 
 From Durer's Apocalypse
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 141 
 
 which we experience in entering a venerable 
 church; and only the clouds on which the heavenly 
 apparition rests, and the rays of light which break 
 forth from the opened gates, transport us into the 
 world of visions. 
 
 Of grandiose dramatic effect are the plates which 
 have for their subject the executors of divine Judg- 
 ment, above all the angels of wrath and the four 
 apocalyptic riders. In representing the apocalyptic 
 riders Diirer omits the landscape entirely, in 
 order to concentrate the attention upon the four 
 gruesome riders, galloping away over unhappy 
 mankind: Pestilence shooting its arrow, War 
 brandishing its sword, Famine swinging a parr of 
 empty scales, Death jogging along on a jaded nag 
 and flourishing the infernal trident. We entirely 
 forget the allegorical character of these figures. 
 We only feel their irresistible storming onward, all 
 the more forcibly, since we do not see whence or 
 whither they storm. They break forth, as it were, 
 from the dark; and we are immediately in front of 
 the hoofs of their horses, as they trample down 
 whatever is in their way. Of similar dramatic in- 
 tensity is the picture of the work of destruction 
 wrought by the angels of wrath. Diirer represents 
 them as tall, gaunt, bony men with vultures' 
 wings, filled, one might say, with apathetic grim-
 
 142 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 ness and cold revenge. Swinging their swords, 
 they are wading through a surging mass of human 
 bodies, from which there emerge in wild confusion 
 figures of despair, of impotent struggling, of the 
 dying and the dead. One of the angels seizes a 
 woman by her hair; another strikes down horse 
 and rider; a third brandishes his sword over an 
 old man who in vain appeals to his mercy; a 
 fourth has seized the pope by the shoulder, as he 
 lies on the ground; while the emperor, likewise on 
 the ground, tries to protect his tottering crown. 
 One feels the approaching breakdown of medieval 
 society hi this fierce, passionate conception. 
 
 What a contrast between the solemn grandeur 
 of these Apocalyptic visions and the idyllic charm 
 of Diirer's Life of Mary. 1 Many as are the medi- 
 eval poets and painters who have vied with each 
 other in glorifying the Virgin, none of them have 
 treated her legend in as truly popular a manner as 
 Diirer. None of them have made the Queen of 
 Heaven so human, so bourgeois, so German. 
 
 Abounding in variety of characters are the intro- 
 ductory scenes from the legend of Joachim and 
 Anna. In the Refusal of their Offerings by the 
 High Priest, on account of the childlessness of their 
 
 1 Edited, in phototypic reproduction, by Bruno Meyer; Leipzig, 
 1887.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 143 
 
 marriage, the contrition of Joachim, the mute 
 despair of Anna effectively contrast with the sym- 
 pathy, the indifference, the contempt of the crowd 
 of bystanders. The appearance of the angel before 
 Joachim in the wilderness, with the glad tidings 
 that God has heard his prayer for a child even in 
 his old age, is represented with telling naivete". 
 The scenery is a forest by the sea; sheep are graz- 
 ing on a pasture; the shepherds seeing the vision 
 from on high, raise their heads and spread their 
 arms in utter amazement. The angel brings the 
 divine message in the form of an official parch- 
 ment, on which not even the seal is lacking. Old 
 Joachim in the foreground bends his knees, 
 overcome with emotion. 
 
 Touching is the meeting of Joachim and Anna, 
 at the golden Gate of Jerusalem, after his return 
 from the wilderness. He has just imparted to his 
 wife the angelic message. In speechless happiness 
 she leans on her husband's breast, received by him 
 with loving tenderness. A number of bystanders 
 seem to engage in gossipy conversation about 
 them. A vivid picture of German burgher life is 
 presented in the Birth of the Virgin. In the back- 
 ground lies Anna in bed, weak and exhausted, 
 tended by two women friends, while a third is sit- 
 ting by the bed, apparently resting from the exer-
 
 144 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 tions of a sleepless night. The foreground is filled 
 with a whole crowd of gossips and neighbors, being 
 in various stages of excitement over the advent of a 
 little daughter hi the house. One of the women is 
 giving the new born baby a bath, others are busy 
 with the swaddling clothes, still others are eagerly 
 discussing the great event, while a mighty beer-jug 
 goes the round among them. Only the angel hover- 
 ing over this scene, swinging a censer, reminds us 
 that it is not an every day incident from Diirer's 
 own time and surroundings. 
 
 And now there follows the life of Mary herself, 
 and the childhood and early manhood of her son, 
 told with the same naive assimilation of the sacred 
 legend to the sphere of German burgherdom and 
 with the same power of individual characterization. 
 Five of these scenes may serve to illustrate Diirer's 
 wealth of motives and the popular truthfulness of 
 his manner: the Visitation, the Presentation hi the 
 Temple, the Flight into Egypt, the Sojourn in 
 Egypt, and the Leave-taking of Jesus from his 
 Mother. 
 
 Something like foreboding expectancy surrounds 
 the Visitation. It takes place in a gorgeous land- 
 scape, fantastic rocks and mountain tops looming 
 up over wide stretches of woodland. While the 
 women embrace each other, Zacharias appears at
 
 THE VISITATION 
 From Durer's Life of Mary
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 145 
 
 the door, his felt hat in his hand, looking at them 
 with a somewhat troubled expression. Full of 
 solemn calmness, on the other hand, is the Pre- 
 sentation in the Temple. Most impressive is the 
 noble Renaissance entablature supported by mas- 
 sive columns under which the sacred ceremony is 
 being performed; through the columns one sees 
 into the mysterious darkness of the temple. With 
 patriarchal benignity old Simeon bends over the 
 little child; reverently and demurely Joseph and 
 Mary look on; an air of calm edification lies over 
 the crowd of friends and relatives silently standing 
 by. 
 
 The Flight into Egypt, conceived after a print of 
 Schongauer's, shows the holy family on their pil- 
 grimage, journeying very much in the same man- 
 ner in which German peasants of Diirer's time 
 would journey to a country fair. Good Joseph is 
 trudging along in front, carrying most of the bag- 
 gage on his back, leading the ass on which the 
 mother sits, the baby on her lap, her big traveling 
 hat hanging over her shoulders. Even the cow the 
 thrifty people have taken along, so that they will 
 not suffer want in foreign lands. The Sojourn in 
 Egypt also takes us to the Germany of the fifteenth 
 century. Joseph has established his carpenter 
 shop in the courtyard of a rambling, half tumbled
 
 146 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 down building, such as Niirnberg in Diirer's time 
 must have had many. He is just pausing from his 
 work, and gazing thoughtfully at the group next to 
 him: the young mother sitting at the distaff and 
 at the same time rocking the baby in the cradle, 
 while adoring angels, like good fairies, bend over 
 the child to bless it. Little winged genii are play- 
 ing around Joseph, collecting chips of wood into a 
 basket, running about with toy wind mills, trying 
 to blow on sticks of wood as on trumpets. One of 
 them has even playfully cocked Joseph's hat upon 
 his little head. Above, in the clouds, there appears 
 the figure of God the Father, with patriarchal satis- 
 faction looking down upon this peaceful picture of 
 domestic happiness. In striking contrast with 
 these idyllic scenes, finally, one of the last cuts of 
 the whole series: Christ's leave-taking from his 
 aged mother, before his last journey to Jerusalem. 
 Here everything is grand and pathetic. Christ, a 
 heroic figure, is turning to go. His austere and 
 solemn attitude shows that he is ready to take the 
 cross upon him. For the last tune, he blesses his 
 mother who, wringing her hands despairingly, 
 sinks down in anguish. Two women companions 
 beside her; one of them seems to beseech Jesus to 
 have pity on his heart-broken mother; the other 
 one wraps herself hi her mantle with an expression
 
 THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 
 From Dttrer's Little Passion
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 147 
 
 of horror. Here we feel that the time of Christ's 
 Passion is approaching. 
 
 The Passion of the Lord, Diirer has represented 
 many tunes, hi individual scenes as well as hi 
 cycles of scenes; most impressively, however, in 
 the two series of woodcuts called the Large and the 
 Little Passion. The Arrest of Christ and the Bear- 
 ing of the Cross in the Large Passion, the Man of 
 Sorrows, the Cleansing of the Temple, Gethsemane, 
 Christ before Pilate, the Crown of Thorns, the 
 Harrowing of Hell in the Little Passion 1 what a 
 gallery of soul portraits, what monumental art, an 
 art reduced to the essentials, crowding into narrow 
 compass a world of deepest feeling. 
 
 In the Man of Sorrows, all the sufferings of 
 Christ have been concentrated into the figure of 
 the lonely sitting man, bent together, wrestling 
 with himself. In the Cleansing of the Temple, 
 Christ's scorn and indignation over the desecration 
 of the sanctuary are brought out not so much by 
 his face the face is almost concealed from view 
 as by the irresistible forward movement of his 
 whole body and above all by his heavy, flowing gar- 
 ment which gives to this forward movement weight 
 and momentum. In the Arrest of Christ, it is the 
 
 1 Edited, in phototypic reproduction, by Bruno Meyer; Leipzig, 
 1887.
 
 148 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 rhythm of contrasting movements which reveals 
 the inner life. Christ is in the midst of a wild popu- 
 lar tumult. The shouting, roaring soldiers are 
 dragging, pulling, pushing Christ along. From the 
 darkness of the background Judas stealthily ap- 
 proaches for the traitorous kiss. While Christ is 
 being swept along hi this mad torrent, he seems 
 inwardly raised above it. Only the lower limbs are 
 instinctively yielding to the force that draws him 
 forward. His head is thrown back and seems to see 
 heaven opened. In the Bearing of the Cross, it is 
 above all the eye of Christ which holds us in its 
 spell. Christ has succumbed under the weight of 
 the Cross. He has sunk down upon his knees. 
 With one arm he holds the cross on his shoulder, 
 with the other he supports himself upon the stump 
 of a tree. Thus he looks back with a glance of 
 nameless woe but complete self-renunciation upon 
 his followers, as though he were saying: " It is for 
 you that I grieve, not for myself." 
 
 Thus we might go through this whole series of 
 scenes and everywhere we would be forced to make 
 the same observation. It is the intense individual- 
 ization, the deep personal experience that gives 
 to Diirer's representations of the Christian legend 
 their compelling power, that makes them uni- 
 versally human documents. The mystics of the
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 149 
 
 fourteenth century, as we have seen before, trans- 
 formed the ecclesiastical doctrine into an inner 
 experience of the individual self. The folksong 
 of the end of the Middle Ages created an image of 
 the outer world from the depth of individual feel- 
 ing. Satirical narrative measured society by sub- 
 jective standards. The religious drama clothed 
 the biblical events in the garb of contemporary 
 life. All this re-echoes in Diirer's work and makes 
 him look at the whole mass of medieval tradition, 
 reverently to be sure, but with perfect spiritual 
 freedom. 
 
 In his Holy Trinity of 1513, this whole medieval 
 world once more comes to view in all its f ullness and 
 glory. This painting is indeed a glorification of the 
 all-embracing, universal church, a worthy counter- 
 part and companion of the Ghent altar of the 
 brothers van Eyck. A wonderful unity holds to- 
 gether these countless figures which, high above in 
 the heavenly regions, congregate, in four concen- 
 tric circles, about the Trinity: winged heads of the 
 Seraphim, angels carrying the insignia of Christ's 
 Passion, the Saints and Martyrs led by the Virgin 
 Mary, the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old 
 Testament led by John the Baptist, the vast 
 multitude of believers, both clergy and laity. All 
 are imbued with the same feeling of religious rap-
 
 150 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 ture, all are blissful in the sight of the divine. But 
 at the same time, what a variety of types, from 
 pope and emperor down to burgher and peasant! 
 How deeply conceived, how clearly differentiated 
 the faces! What a wealth in personalities! And 
 below this whole heavenly apparition, in a wide 
 lonely landscape, stately and erect, wrapt in his 
 mantle, his masterful and thoughtful eye gazing 
 into the distance, there stands the man from whose 
 innermost self this fullness of visions has sprung; 
 and his feeling of self is expressed in the inscription 
 next to him: Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat. 
 
 This painting is the last great medieval creation 
 of German art. It is a forerunner of an era of 
 universal and free humanity.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE HUMANIST ENLIGHTENMENT: ERASMUS 
 
 TO appreciate fully what at the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century was at stake for German 
 culture, we must remember that the two preceding 
 centuries had been signalized by a constantly ris- 
 ing tide of individualism. In the ecstatic rapture 
 and the deep inwardness of the mystics of the four- 
 teenth century, in the freedom and directness of 
 folksong, in the grotesque subjectivity of the 
 bourgeois satire, in the secular liveliness of the re- 
 ligious drama, in the intense truthfulness of reli- 
 gious painting, this movement, directed toward a 
 heightening and intensifying of personality, had 
 found its most characteristic expression. Now, at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century, it seemed as 
 though this movement was about to lead to a 
 classic era of noble humanity, as though Human- 
 ism and Reformation, allied in a common struggle 
 for freedom, were to inspire the German people 
 with a new idealism and a new faith. 
 
 To be sure, the achievements of German human- 
 ism have frequently been overrated, not only by 
 the humanists themselves but also by their modern
 
 152 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 admirers. The great chivalric poets of the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries and the great mystics of 
 the fourteenth century had penetrated more deeply 
 into the problems of life, they had recognized more 
 clearly the necessity of self-discipline for the de- 
 velopment of true personality than most of the 
 pretentious humanist " poetae " who talk so much 
 about their own precious ego. In vying with their 
 chosen models, the great writers of Greece and 
 Rome, the humanists remained nothing but cold 
 imitators. Their supercilious turning away from 
 the life and the language of their own people 
 brought about that baneful division of the people 
 into so-called educated and so-called uneducated 
 which has given to German culture down to 
 Lessing the prevailing stamp of artificiality and 
 unnaturalness. And personally, the humanists, 
 as a rule, were by no means such pure and un- 
 defiled idealists as they themselves took pains to 
 make themselves appear to be. On the contrary, 
 as typical figures of a time out of joint socially and 
 spiritually, the majority of their spokesmen were 
 inclined to all sorts of license and excess and often 
 lacked conspicuously in steadfastness of moral 
 purpose. Nor can the German humanists, in par- 
 ticular, be compared in beauty and grace of ut- 
 terance and conduct with the Italian humanists
 
 ERASMUS 153 
 
 whose Neo-platonism helped to build the world 
 of matchless form that eradiates from the works 
 of Lionardo, Raffael and Michelangelo. 
 
 The strength of German humanism lies in its 
 critical impetus. It cannot be denied that this 
 critical impetus also was not altogether free from 
 blemish. In many cases it ran riot and conse- 
 quently led to extravagant and fantastic vagaries 
 one only need to think of such men as Paracelsus 
 or Agrippa of Nettesheim. The popular figure of 
 the sorcerer Faustus is the well-known legendary 
 type of this side of German humanism. Yet, with 
 all these reservations, the fact remains that the 
 German humanists of the sixteenth century, as a 
 whole, have been among the principal forerunners 
 of the modern scientific view of the world. 
 
 They based their view of the world upon the 
 intellect instead of the belief. They found their 
 religion in the striving for insight into the reason- 
 ableness of the universe. They taught a morality 
 which places the reward of virtue in the feeling of 
 harmony with reason and in work for the enlighten- 
 ment of humanity. They kindled a light which, 
 although soon to be eclipsed by the dogmatic con- 
 flict between Protestantism and Catholicism, has 
 shone into the far distance and has again and again 
 awakened new life.
 
 154 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The central figure of humanism north of the 
 Alps, and especially of German humanism, at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, was Erasmus 
 of Rotterdam. Until Luther shook the world with 
 his first revolutionary manifestoes, Erasmus was 
 the controlling power of German intellectual life. 
 In all German universities where the humanist 
 " poetae " struggled for supremacy against their 
 adversaries the " theologistae," Erasmus' name 
 was the watchword around which the representa- 
 tives of the new conception of human freedom and 
 human dignity rallied. 1 The young Tubingen 
 magister artium Philip Melanchthon published in 
 1516 an original poem in Greek " in Erasmum 
 optimum maximum," in which Zeus entertains 
 Apollo and the Muses with the sweet-perfumed 
 flowers of Erasmus' poetry. In a letter of October, 
 1516, Ulrich von Hutten addressed Erasmus as the 
 German Socrates whom he would like to serve with 
 greater devotion than Alcibiades had shown toward 
 the Greek philosopher. In the same year he desig- 
 nated Erasmus and Reuchlin as the two eyes of 
 Germany: through them, he said, the German 
 people had been wrested from barbarism. As a 
 second Hercules, who had freed the world from the 
 monsters of darkness, Erasmus was greeted in 1517 
 
 1 Cf. Paulsen, Gesch. d. gelehrten Unterrichts i, 102.
 
 ERASMUS 155 
 
 by the Cologne humanist, Caesarius; as a second 
 Paul, who was bringing back genuine Christianity, 
 he was glorified by the Leipzig theologian, Hierony- 
 mus Emser. In Niirnberg, the Erasmian ideal of 
 a reconciliation between the Church and classical 
 antiquity found a splendid embodiment in the 
 stately patrician Willibald Pirkheimer. At the 
 University of Erfurt, Eobanus Hessus based his 
 lectures on humanism upon the Erasmian " Hand- 
 book of a Christian Soldier." In the circle of the 
 brilliant Mutianus at Gotha, Erasmian toleration 
 and free thought became the spiritual bond of a 
 literary coterie of extraordinary refinement and 
 aristocratic fastidiousness of cultivation. Mutia- 
 nus himself has said: " Erasmus surpasses the 
 measure of human gifts. He is divine, and must be 
 worshipped in pious devoutness." 
 
 This seemingly excessive praise of Erasmus by 
 his contemporaries was after all not undeserved. 
 It rested on the instinctive feeling that Erasmus 
 was the most perfect personal embodiment of the 
 ideals hi which the humanists believed. 
 
 None of the German humanists represents the 
 intellectual culture of the sixteenth century hi as 
 brilliant a manner as Erasmus. None has made 
 freedom of critical investigation so consistently as 
 he the measure of all thinking and acting. None
 
 156 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 has had the same power of creating works of art of 
 universally human significance, on the basis of this 
 strictly intellectual view of life. Erasmus of all 
 men of his time comes nearest the ideal of cul- 
 ture of the eighteenth century. He combines in 
 himself the two seemingly opposed tendencies 
 scepticism and optimism which in the age of 
 rationalism were to reign supreme in all Europe. 
 
 Sceptical observation is the basis of Erasmian 
 wisdom. No authority and no hallowed institution 
 escapes his searching criticism. Everywhere he 
 looks through appearances into the essence of 
 things. With daring courage and subtlest irony he 
 unmasks the selfishness, the vanity, the cruelty, 
 the greed, the laziness, and above all the stupidity 
 which in the ordinary affairs of men hide them- 
 selves behind solemn manners, fine words, and 
 brilliant pomp. Nay, all life often appears to 
 Erasmus as one great farce. For men deceive 
 themselves; they really believe to be what they 
 would like to seem; they themselves do not know 
 how absurd they are. Erasmus, however, would 
 rob them of this self-illusion, he would make them 
 spectators of their own folly, he would enable them 
 to have a laugh at themselves. 
 
 But the Erasmian laughter is by no means sa- 
 tanic. Erasmus is not a spirit of negation. On the
 
 ERASMUS 157 
 
 contrary, if ever a man believed in the power of 
 mind and in the mission of reason, it was he. In 
 this subtle satirist, this delicately organized, ner- 
 vously sensitive scholar there lives a firm faith in 
 the final victory of the few enlightened over the 
 stolid ignorance of the mass, there lives a supreme 
 trust in the ultimate redemption of humanity. We 
 may say that nearly all the liberating ideas which 
 make the foundation of the international culture 
 of the present age are to be found, more or less 
 developed, hi his thought. 
 
 His whole life is pervaded by the thoughts of 
 religious reform which he presented for the first 
 tune connectedly in his youthful production " The 
 Handbook of a Christian Soldier," written in 1502; 
 they cuhninate in the demand for spiritualization 
 and rationalization of ecclesiastical forms. 1 Reason 
 is for Erasmus " a queen, a divine counselor. En- 
 throned in her lofty citadel, mindful of her exalted 
 origin she does not admit a thought of baseness or 
 impurity." It is to reason that we must turn to 
 fathom the divine wisdom, it is here that the roots 
 of self-perfection lie. To the unenlightened mind, 
 the Bible remains a labyrinth of contradictions, a 
 book full of insipid and even unmoral incidents. 
 
 1 For the following cf. Enchiridion Militis Christiani, Lugd. Batav. 
 1641, pp. 96, 171, 173, 145.
 
 158 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Through rational interpretation, Erasmus thinks, 
 we learn to understand it as a symbolical expres- 
 sion of moral truths. An unthinking piety is with- 
 out avail. " Christ," says Erasmus, " despises 
 the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his 
 blood, if it is not taken spiritually. God hates a 
 well fed, corpulent devoutness." But the rational 
 believer sees the working of a divine spirit every- 
 where, his eye is open to the beauty, the wisdom, 
 the virtue of all ages, he penetrates to the very core 
 of Christianity. " For Christ is nothing else than 
 love, simplicity, patience, purity, in short all that 
 he himself taught; and the devil is nothing but 
 that which draws us away from those ideals." 
 
 To teach and to further this " philosophy of 
 Christ," as he called it, i. e., a rational, practical, 
 human, undogmatic Christianity, Erasmus consid- 
 ered the task of his life; from it there spring all the 
 other ideals of his manifold intellectual activity. 
 
 More clearly than any of his contemporaries he 
 saw before his eyes the ideal of a religion of man; 
 and the bold conception of an amalgamation be- 
 tween ancient and Christian culture has perhaps 
 nowhere found as touching and genuinely human 
 an expression as in the famous passage of his " Re- 
 ligious Banquet ": 1 " Surely the first place is due 
 
 1 Convivium Religiosum ; Cottoquia Familiaria, Amstelodami 1679, 
 pp. 128, 132.
 
 ERASMUS 159 
 
 to holy script: but sometimes I find some things 
 said or written by the ancients, by pagans and 
 poets, so chaste, so holy, so divine, that I am per- 
 suaded a good genius enlightened them. Certainly, 
 there are many in the communion of saints who are 
 not hi our catalogue of saints. I confess, I cannot 
 read Cicero's books on old age, on friendship, on 
 the duties, or his Tusculan disquisitions, without 
 kissing the book, and worshipping the saintly heart 
 which was imbued by divine spirit. And truly, I 
 have never read anything in the ancients which 
 comes nearer Christianity than the words which 
 Socrates addressed to Crito shortly before he 
 drank the poison. This great man did not trust in 
 his own achievements; but since he was conscious 
 of his endeavor to obey God's will, he was inspired 
 by the hope that God, on account of the purity of 
 this endeavor, would accept him in His mercy. 
 Truly, a wonderful elevation of mind for a man 
 who knew neither Christ nor the Scriptures. And 
 thus, when I read such things, I can hardly forego 
 exclaiming: ' Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.' ' 
 
 From this toleration and magnanimity of his 
 religious conceptions there emanates, furthermore, 
 the enthusiasm of Erasmus for everything that 
 serves the cause of peace and his persistent, inde- 
 fatigable agitation against the uselessness and
 
 160 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 wickedness of war, which has even induced him, in 
 his book on " The Education of a Prince," dedi- 
 cated to Emperor Charles the Fifth, to propose in 
 so many words the establishment of an interna- 
 tional tribunal of arbitration for the settlement of 
 disputes of foreign politics. From the same sense 
 for the reasonable and the useful there emanate his 
 many endeavors for popular enlightenment and 
 popular welfare, his protest against taxing the 
 necessaries of life, and his advocacy of taxing arti- 
 cles of luxury, his demand of reform in public sani- 
 tation, his propositions for the prevention of the 
 propagation of sexual diseases, his condemnation 
 of wet-nursing as a danger for the health and purity 
 of the race, his insistence also on the necessity of 
 the higher education of women. 
 
 And finally, in this trust in the power of reason 
 and hi this conviction of the value of human self- 
 reliance there lies the cause for Erasmus' protest 
 against Luther's doctrine of determinism. Erasmus 
 revolted instinctively against the Augustinian con- 
 ception that God works the evil as well as the good 
 in us and rewards His own good works hi us and 
 punishes His own evil works in us. " How far," he 
 says, 1 " how far would the door to godlessness be 
 opened to numberless people, if this doctrine, even 
 
 1 De libero arbitrio ed. Walter, la 10, IV 5, IV 13.
 
 ERASMUS l6l 
 
 if it were true, were proclaimed publicly and uni- 
 versally! What weak man would persist in the 
 constant and hard struggle against the flesh ? 
 What evil man would endeavor to reform ? Who 
 could prevail upon himself to love a God who pre- 
 pared eternal torments of Hell for us in order to 
 make unhappy humanity atone for His own evil 
 deeds ? Surely, that would be a cruel and unjust 
 master who would have his slave scourged to death 
 because he was not beautiful enough for him or had 
 a crooked nose or some other bodily defect. Would 
 not the slave be justified to say to his master, 
 ' Why must I be punished for something that I 
 cannot help ? ' And Luther and his people 
 seemed to Erasmus to have carried the conception 
 of Original Sin to the extreme of barbarism. " They 
 exaggerate Original Sin above all measure and 
 above all bounds; they try to make us believe that 
 the noblest powers of human nature are so cor- 
 rupted by it, that we are incapable of anything but 
 misjudging and hating God." 
 
 In all this we recognize an extraordinarily free 
 and broad spirit, a man of a serene view of the 
 world who takes life as it is, enjoys its gay and 
 motley scenes, laughs at its vanities and follies, 
 but does not lose for all that his belief in humanity; 
 but on the contrary, again and again, reverts to
 
 1 62 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the cultivation of our better self, of the higher 
 nature in us as the sacred concern of life. We 
 recognize in him the mixture of talents and moods 
 which makes the true artist. 
 
 Let us see how far Erasmus has succeeded in 
 his two most prominent literary productions 
 " The Praise of Folly " and " The Familiar Col- 
 loquies " in creating, from this purely intellectual 
 observation of life, true works of art. 
 
 Those critics entirely misunderstand the pecu- 
 liarity of " The Praise of Folly " who place this 
 brilliant play of humor on the same level with such 
 commonplace invectives as Sebastian Brant's 
 " Ship of Fools " or Murner's " Fools' Meadow." 
 Brant's and Murner's poems are nothing but last 
 off-shoots of medieval popular satire; they are 
 direct attacks against definite defects and abuses 
 of contemporary society; poetic value they have 
 at most here and there in brisk characterization of 
 reality. To be sure, even " The Praise of Folly " 
 contains a wealth of such satirical descriptions of 
 reality and of direct attacks upon definite social 
 conditions; and it is probable that just they found 
 the greatest applause from the contemporaries and 
 have had the largest share in the circulation of the 
 book throughout Europe. Indeed, some of these 
 invectives have such a pungency, such a penetrat-
 
 ERASMUS 163 
 
 ing, merciless truthfulness and such a universally 
 human applicability that even today they are sure 
 of their effect. Not only for the man of the six- 
 teenth century, but for every kind of bigoted 
 churchliness, of whatever tune and nationality, 
 is the fiercely ironical judgment which Erasmus 
 pronounces over the stupid saint worship of the 
 great multitude. 1 
 
 " Saints here and saints there, every one for his 
 particular craft and every one with his particular 
 cult. One is good for toothache, another helps 
 women in childbed, a third recovers stolen articles, 
 this one saves from shipwreck, that one protects 
 the cattle and so on ad infinitum. But what is 
 it that people beg for from all these saints ? Noth- 
 ing but follies. Among all the votary offerings 
 with which the church walls are hung up to the 
 ceiling, have you ever seen a tablet of gratitude for 
 someone's having escaped folly ? One has been 
 saved from drowning; another from the dagger of 
 an enemy; a third one has bravely run away from 
 the battlefield; a fourth, through intercession of 
 the patron saint of the thieves, has safely jumped 
 down from the gallows; a fifth has broken out 
 from prison; this one in spite of his physician has 
 recovered from a fever; another has not been killed 
 
 1 Moriae Encomium, Lugd. Batav, 1648, pp. 160 ff.
 
 1 64 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 but benefited by the poison given to him by his 
 wife; still another, caught with the wife of another, 
 has successfully outwitted her raging husband 
 all these people hang up their votary tablets. But 
 no one gives thanks for having been cured of folly." 
 And of equal universality of satire is the bitter 
 comparison of the teaching of Christ and the life 
 of his Vicar at Rome, 1 a comparison between ideal 
 and reality of social institutions which will be re- 
 peated again and again, as long as there are institu- 
 tions needy of reform. " If the pope, the Vicar of 
 Christ, were to attempt to imitate Christ's life, 
 that is, his poverty, his toil, his teaching, his cross, 
 his scorn of the world, what position hi the world 
 would be more dreadful than that of the pope ? 
 Who would then still care to buy the holy office 
 with endless treasure or, having bought it, try to 
 maintain it by sword and poison and every vio- 
 lence ? What pleasures and joys would the pontiff 
 forego, if he allowed wisdom, nay even a grain of 
 that salt of which Christ speaks, to have access to 
 his court! What wealth, what honors, riches, con- 
 quests, taxes, horses, mules, guards and all kinds of 
 luxuries would he lose! And in their place he 
 would have vigils, prayers, fasts, tears, sermons, 
 lectures, and a thousand other painful things. How 
 
 1 Loc. cit., pp. 282 ff.
 
 ERASMUS 165 
 
 many scribes, copyists, notaries, advocates, pro- 
 moters, money-changers, mule-drivers, grooms, 
 innkeepers and disorderly persons would be driven 
 to starvation! Inhuman and abominable to think 
 of such a thing! " 
 
 But deeply penetrating and universal as is the 
 satire of this book, its poetic charm and its intel- 
 lectual significance consist in something else. 
 " The Praise of Folly," to put it briefly, is the con- 
 fession of faith of a brilliant free thinker, who looks 
 at life without any constraint or preconceptions, 
 who looks down with a pitying smile upon " the 
 mob of dignitaries and wise men " 1 and before 
 whose capricious and fantastic humor hardly any- 
 thing except the wholesome, instinctive enjoyment 
 of life stands the test. It is a chapter of romantic- 
 ism before the romantic period. Friedrich Schlegel 
 and Ludwig Tieck must have delighted in this 
 jolly " fox hunt " against Philistinism. 
 
 It was a stroke of genius that Erasmus makes 
 Folly her own advocate, that he makes her propound 
 herself her own topsy-turvy view of the world. For 
 in the first place, he reserved to himself thereby his 
 own final judgment and kept open the way toward 
 his own true ideal of the reign of reason. And then, 
 what is more important, the book gains thereby, 
 
 1 Loc. tit., p. 25.
 
 1 66 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 from the very beginning, an irresistibly dramatic 
 life. From beginning to end, we rejoice in the 
 bold, brilliant paradoxes of the buoyant speaker; 
 we hear the applause with which she is greeted by 
 the large audience as she appears on the platform; 
 and we are satisfied at the end that of all the ad- 
 vices contained in her speech none will be more 
 conscientiously followed by her hearers than the 
 "Vivite, bibite!" "Live, and drink!" with which 
 she leaves the desk. 
 
 " Do not take, ye men " thus the serene wis- 
 dom of this graceful and eloquent lady, a feminine 
 forerunner of Bernard Shaw, might perhaps be 
 paraphrased "do not take life so hopelessly 
 seriously and deliberately. What is it after all but 
 one long, divinely foolish intoxication ? I, myself, 
 the protectress and benefactress of humankind, 
 have descended from the Happy Isles. Not as the 
 tiresome and prudish Athene have I sprung from 
 the brain of my father; no, I am a child of love's 
 frenzy; laughing have I come into the world and 
 my parents were Riches and Youth. And the 
 same is true of the origin of all true life. Not 
 thought and reflection, but instinct and desire 
 lead to propagation; for what man would, on 
 serious reflection, take upon himself the fetters of 
 marriage, and what girl the pains of motherdom ?
 
 ERASMUS 167 
 
 Nay, as much as they would like to deny it, even 
 gray-bearded philosophers and decrepit monks, 
 even king and emperor, and bishop and pope, owe 
 their origin to the intoxication of a moment. And 
 all the joys which life offers come from the same 
 source. Why does all the world delight in a child's 
 face, why do we fondle and caress and kiss the 
 little ones, but because they don't know anything ? 
 What is more repellent and disagreeable than a 
 precocious and overwise child ? Wherein consists 
 the charm of youth but in this, that it lives from 
 day to day without thought and care ? And 
 whence come the furrows, the dragging gait and 
 the sour mien of riper age than from this, that 
 thinking makes the blood sluggish and the limbs 
 lagging ? Thanks, therefore, to me, to Divine 
 Folly, that in old age I lead men back to the 
 Fountain of Youth and hi oblivion bestow on 
 them a new life. 
 
 But even in the midst of the cares and duties of 
 middle life, it is I who make life at least to some 
 extent tolerable. For fortunately, man is only in 
 small part intellect and in by far the greatest part 
 instinct and feeling; and thus he tries over and 
 over again to sweeten the dreariness of lif e through 
 some blind caprice, some outright folly. Does not 
 love bless us just because it makes us blind ? Do
 
 1 68 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 we not seek in wine oblivion from the platitudes of 
 work-a-day life ? Does not friendship paint even 
 the defects of our friends as virtues ? And are not 
 all our hobbies a sort of spleen ? Are we not proud 
 of our own foibles, errors and prejudices ? Are we 
 not fond of deceiving ourselves by attributing to 
 our actions fine motives, by representing our am- 
 bition as sense of duty, our desire for glory as 
 patriotism ? But just in all these illusions there 
 rests our true happiness; and all the great things 
 that are done proceed from them. 
 
 What could be more useless and delirious than 
 war ? The very things which it wants to accom- 
 plish, the blessings of peace, it destroys. And yet 
 war has rightly been called the father of all things. 
 For it fans the great passions, it gives birth to the 
 great deeds of history, it creates the great men who 
 do not reflect long whether they are to act thus or 
 thus, but who like Quintus Curtius, following the 
 phantom of glory, with quick resolution jump into 
 the chasm. And as in war so it goes in public life 
 at large. Plato was wrong when he wanted to 
 entrust the conduct of state to the philosophers. 
 Not the wise man but the ignorant is the born 
 leader of the masses, the man of quick decision and 
 of happy instinct, who knows how to get on with 
 everybody, is himself no paragon of virtue and
 
 ERASMUS 169 
 
 does not expect much from others, but trusts in 
 himself and his luck. 
 
 In short, the less burdened by thought, the 
 lighter, gayer and more beautiful is life. The more 
 we follow only our instinct, the more we approach 
 the Golden Age, the happy state of nature. 1 And 
 perhaps here Erasmus takes a sudden mystic 
 turn perhaps this is also the only way in which 
 we can penetrate into the mysteries of the divine. 
 For the divine is not to be reached by logic; the 
 sterile scholasticism of our theologians proves this 
 sufficiently. In order to grasp the eternal, the 
 invisible, the spiritual, man must be driven by 
 holy madness. The chosen few to whom this is 
 given are as it were beside themselves, they rage 
 like lovers, they weep and laugh, are jubilant and 
 downcast, fume and storm, until at last they are so 
 entirely out of their senses, that they give them- 
 selves up wholly to the divine in inexpressible bliss. 2 
 And this, then, is a small foretaste of the future 
 heavenly joys. 
 
 Thus, then, through the whole book there runs as 
 a fundamental thought the contrast between the 
 dry and inadequate intellect and the creative power 
 and infinite changeability of imagination. On the 
 
 1 Loc. tit., pp. 1 20, 125. 
 1 Loc. cit., pp. 347 f.
 
 170 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 one hand, conscious calculation and fruitless labor, 
 on the other unconscious instinct and happy enjoy- 
 ment. On the one hand, perversity and artifi- 
 ciality, on the other full and free nature. On the 
 one hand the learned pedant, the heartless phil- 
 istine, the kill-joy, the hypocritical formalist, 
 the self-righteous, friendless, stone-cold, inhuman 
 paragon of virtue; l on the other the light-hearted 
 artist, the joyous companion, the good comrade, 
 the bold hero, the inspired enthusiast, the amiable 
 man of feeling, who abhors no human weakness 
 and no human folly. 
 
 It is proof of the extraordinary breadth of Eras- 
 mus' view, that he, the apostle of reason, the repre- 
 sentative of a rationalistic philosophy, should at 
 the same time have possessed so open a mind for 
 the insufficiency of an exclusively intellectual cul- 
 ture; that he, whose whole activity of enlighten- 
 ment so often reminds us of Voltaire, should at the 
 same tune have formed a conception of the world 
 which in its artistic romanticism foreshadows the 
 nature cult of Rousseau. 
 
 Predominantly rationalistic and of unmistak- 
 ably didactic tendency is the other literary master- 
 
 1 Marmoreum hominis simulacrum, stupidum et ab omni prorsus 
 humano sensu alienum; he. cit., p. 106.
 
 ERASMUS 171 
 
 piece of Erasmus, " The Familiar Colloquies," 
 that collection of varied scenes from every day life 
 in dialogue form, which the author began at the 
 end of the fifteenth century, but brought to a con- 
 clusion only at the beginning of the twenties of the 
 sixteenth. It is curious that this book, which ap- 
 peared down into the nineteenth century in ever 
 new editions and exerted an extraordinary in- 
 fluence throughout Europe, should have become 
 almost unknown to our own time. For it contains 
 the ripest fruit of Erasmus' clear, serene view of 
 life and shows him not infrequently as a master of 
 literary art. Indeed, one gains in these Erasmian 
 colloquies a picture of the sixteenth century so 
 comprehensive, so variegated, so intimate, so 
 sharply drawn, lighted up by such delightful 
 humor, enlivened by such noble sentiment, as in 
 hardly any other work of the time. 
 
 In part they are mere genre pictures, descriptions 
 of manners without obvious spiritual tendencies, 
 but just in them the Erasmian humor is most ap- 
 parent. How delightful, for instance, is the scene 
 from school life, 1 in which the playful boys beg of 
 their morose teacher to give them a holiday, be- 
 cause the weather is so fine. How humorous is the 
 description of the doings in German inns; 2 the 
 
 1 Lusus pueriles; ColhquiaFamiliaria,Amstdodani,i6'jg,pp.3g&. 
 1 Diversoria; loc. cit., pp. 214 ff.
 
 172 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 surly porter, who at the arrival of a stranger puts 
 his head out of the window, as the turtle from its 
 shell, and without answering the demand for a 
 lodging points with the hand toward the stable, in 
 which every one must put up his own horse; the 
 stuffy living room in which riders and pedestrians, 
 merchants and skippers, teamsters and peasants, 
 women and children, healthy and sick, crowd one 
 another, each one attending to his own needs and 
 in which, although the air through overheating 
 and smells is intolerable, yet by no means a window 
 must be opened; the long, dirty tables set with 
 wooden plates and wooden spoons, at which one 
 must sit forever and wait until the miserable even- 
 ing meal and the sour home-grown wine are served; 
 the infernal noise which is set up, after the supper, 
 by the drunken company; the Jack who silently 
 goes from table to table, chalking off on each the 
 bill according to the number of guests sitting there, 
 and just as silently taking in the cash; all this 
 could not be described in a more graphic or droll 
 manner. 
 
 Particularly happy is Erasmus, whenever he 
 combines with this description of real life humor- 
 ous traits from the traditional popular tales, as 
 for instance, in the " Apparition," the delightful 
 jokes which a jolly fellow plays on the superstition
 
 ERASMUS 173 
 
 of an ignorant priest believing in ghosts; or the 
 " Horse Dealer," the merry story of the shrewd 
 tricks by which a man deceived at a horse deal 
 succeeds like David Harum in working off the 
 worthless nag on the deceitful seller at double 
 the price he had given for it. 
 
 In both dialogues the manner in which Erasmus 
 transports us at once into the action is remark- 
 ably vivid. In the " Apparition," one of the two 
 characters says: 1 "You know the farmer, So- 
 and-so, the great rogue, and his farm near Lon- 
 don ? " " Certainly, I have often enough had a 
 glass with him." " Then you remember the high- 
 road near by with the two long straight rows of 
 trees ? " " Certainly, two gun-shot from the left 
 of the house." " Just so, and on one side of the 
 high-road is a ditch, overgrown with thorns and 
 bushes, and across the ditch there leads a small 
 bridge upon a path into the field." That now is 
 the place where the ghost is said to have appeared, 
 and in the whole following account the scenery as 
 well as the main character of the action stand most 
 distinctly before our eyes. And perhaps still more 
 original is the setting of the other tale. 2 Two 
 friends meet and one of them says: " Why so sober 
 
 1 Exorcismns sive Spectrum; loc. cit., p. 292. 
 1 Hippoplanus; loc. cit., p. 309.
 
 174 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 and solemn ? " " I'm just coming from confes- 
 sion." " Then you have reeled off all your sins ? " 
 " All except one." " Why not that one ?" "Be- 
 cause I'm so much in love with it." " That must 
 be a charming sin." " I don't know whether it is a 
 sin or not." And now he tells the tale, how he paid 
 back the deceitful horse dealer in his own coin; 
 and at the end the friend declares him not only not 
 guilty, but thinks that his cleverness is worthy of 
 a monument. 
 
 The true essence, however, of the Erasmian 
 " Colloquies " does after all not lie in their mas- 
 terly and sure representation of reality, but in the 
 enlightened, free, genuinely human spirit which 
 animates them. In the preface to the edition of 
 1526, Erasmus defends himself against the accusa- 
 tion that his " Colloquies " undermine morality 
 and the belief hi God. And, indeed, nothing is 
 more unjust than this accusation, which was 
 raised by the Sorbonne as well as Luther and many 
 other zealots of his time. To be sure, of prudish- 
 ness or respect for established prejudices there is 
 not a trace in this book. Erasmus calls things by 
 their names; he drags crimes, sins and foulness of 
 all sorts out into the light of day; he cannot resist 
 pouring the vials of his irony over stupidity and 
 mediocrity. But again and again there appears,
 
 ERASMUS 175 
 
 as the fundamental tendency of these varied pic- 
 tures of life, the honest endeavor to widen the 
 horizon, to heighten the sense of true greatness, to 
 awaken sympathy with genuine piety, to promote 
 tolerance, peaceableness, self-control, industry, 
 pure conduct, innocent enjoyment, trust in the 
 wisdom and beneficence of Providence. And here 
 and there at least this ideal of humanity finds a 
 truly remarkable artistic expression. 
 
 Seldom has monastic life been represented so 
 attractively or been embodied in so fine and human 
 a character as in the dialogue between the Carthu- 
 sian monk and the soldier. 1 Set off against the 
 barbarous trade of war, with its endless knocking 
 about, its brutalities and excesses, the monastery 
 appears here as an abode of peace and spiritual 
 culture. The Carthusian has not plunged into it 
 recklessly and headlong as into a fountain, but 
 after he had come to know the world and scruti- 
 nized himself, he has entered it. And now he feels 
 there completely happy. " This place is to me the 
 world," he says, " and from here I may roam in 
 thought over the whole globe, and travel more 
 comfortably and safely than those who sail after 
 the newly discovered isles. And as to loneliness of 
 which you speak well, even the prophets, the 
 
 1 Mttitis et Carthusiani Didogus; loc. cit., pp. 193 ff.
 
 1 76 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 philosophers, the poets, indeed, all men who ever 
 undertook anything great and above the ordinary, 
 retired from the crowd into solitude. And besides, 
 I have here in my brethren as much opportunity 
 for intercourse as I want, and above all, the best 
 company in my books." " But you in the monas- 
 tery," answers the soldier, " place too much value 
 in prayers, garments, fastings and ceremonies." 
 " It is not for me," says the monk, " to judge what 
 others do; as for myself, I put no value in these 
 ceremonies, but trust alone in the purity of the soul 
 and in Christ." Now the conversation turns to- 
 ward the military trade, and again the enlightened 
 mind of the friar reveals itself. He asks the soldier 
 how he could have justified to himself leaving his 
 young wife and children and stooping, for miserable 
 pay, to pillage and murder his fellow men. " It is 
 right to kill our enemies," says the soldier. " Per- 
 haps then," answers the Carthusian, " when he 
 attacks your country. Then it may appear pious 
 to fight for wife and children, for parents and 
 friends, for altar and hearth, for the peace of the 
 state. But what has that to do with your merce- 
 nary trade ? If you had been killed in this war, 
 I shouldn't have given a rotten nut to save your 
 soul." 
 
 If in this colloquy the magnanimity of Erasmus 
 even toward the representatives of the old church
 
 ERASMUS 177 
 
 is shown, provided they evince an honest endeavor 
 for spiritual independence, he draws in another 
 dialogue, entitled " The Funeral," x an extra- 
 ordinarily bold and artistically complete picture 
 of the stupidity, greed and hypocrisy of the ruling 
 churchdom, contrasting with it the noble humanity 
 of his own belief. 
 
 The subject is the death bed and the funeral of 
 two very different men. The one is a former cap- 
 tain of mercenaries, who has amassed a pretty for- 
 tune in war, is entirely correct in. church matters, 
 and therefore belongs to the pillars of society. 
 Now he is dying. The physicians have given him 
 up, but are still carrying on a heated dispute, in the 
 death chamber, over the diagnosis of the disease, 
 and finally force the patient to consent that there 
 shall be an autopsy. Now the physicians are re- 
 placed by the clergy, who press around the bed in 
 large numbers. They, too, get at once into con- 
 flict with each other, like vultures gathering around 
 the carcass. A horrible scene is now enacted. No 
 attention is paid to the dying man or his family; 
 the only concern of these holy men is to squeeze out 
 of him as much as possible. In the first place, the 
 local priest and the begging friars have a squabble. 
 The priest insists that the dying, who has just con- 
 
 1 Funus; loc. tit., pp. 439 ff.
 
 178 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 fessed to the friars, should again confess to him; 
 he is treated for this by his rivals to the vilest 
 insults, and pays them back with like defamations. 
 Finally, the patient puts a stop to the loathsome 
 altercation by promising the priest to pay in ad- 
 vance all the fees for the last sacramental rites, the 
 tolling of the bell and the funeral. Scarcely has 
 this been settled, when a still wilder dispute arises 
 between the individual orders; for now it is the 
 question of the will, and every one of the five orders 
 wants of course to snap up the fattest portion. 
 Again there ensue the most violent accusations and 
 counter-accusations, the most miserable haggling 
 and bargaining, and again the patient must beg for 
 peace, and satisfy the shameless greed of the holy 
 men by submitting to all their demands. His own 
 family fare worst in the will; all five orders are well 
 provided for; most bountifully, however, the 
 Franciscans and Dominicans. Now the arrange- 
 ments for the funeral are made, and again there 
 arise exhilarating discussions about precedence and 
 rank of the individual orders and clericals in the 
 procession. Then the pompous monument, which 
 is to be erected to the noble lord, is arranged for 
 in detail. And now at last he may die, but even 
 that not undisturbed. He is clothed in a monk's 
 cowl; and while he is lying in his last gasps, a Fran-
 
 ERASMUS 179 
 
 ciscan shouts into his right ear and a Dominican 
 into the left. 
 
 How died the other man whom this dialogue 
 depicts ? He died as he lived, without ado and 
 without giving any one any trouble. Years ago he 
 had made his will; legacies for monasteries and 
 churches there were none. " For," he used to say, 
 " I've given as much in my life-tune to public 
 charities as was in my power. And now that I 
 leave my property to my people, I leave to them 
 also the disposal thereof, and hope that they will 
 make a better use of it than I have done." No 
 priest attended him in his dying hour (confession 
 and last unction had been performed a few days 
 before); only his family and two trusted friends 
 were at his side. He had refused tolling of bells 
 and solemn funeral. With simple words he took 
 leave from his wife and children. " If you should 
 marry again, my beloved wife," he said at these 
 words the wife broke into tears and vowed that she 
 would never think of it; but he continued, and 
 assured her that she should not consider herself 
 bound to him under all circumstances; only she 
 should not forget what duties she had for her 
 children, and especially she should see to it that the 
 children would not choose too early a definite 
 calling, but wait until they were experienced
 
 l8o GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 enough to make a really suitable decision. Then 
 he kissed wife and children, prayed for them, made 
 the sign of the cross over them, and commended 
 them to the mercy of Christ. At four o'clock in the 
 morning he had a psalm read to him and asked for 
 cross and candle. And after he had taken the 
 candle hi his hand and kissed the cross, he laid his 
 hands over his breast hi prayer and said, his eyes 
 raised to heaven, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 
 And he closed his eyes and went to sleep. 
 
 Finally, a scene from the "Apotheosis of Reuch- 
 lin," l the dialogue in which Erasmus vies with 
 the art of a Memlinc or Bouts in the representation 
 of a heavenly idyll, but at the same tune embodies 
 his own ideals of free and fearless inquiry in the 
 character of his humanist friend and fellow soldier. 
 
 For some time they have known in Tuebingen 
 that the old scholar is ill, and one fears for his life. 
 Then a pious Franciscan in the town at early morn- 
 ing after the matin has the following dream. " It 
 seemed to me," he says, " I was standing by a 
 bridge, which led to a wondrous meadow. Leaves 
 and grass shone in emerald green. The flowers 
 sparkled like stars. Everything exhaled fragrance 
 round about. And the fields this side of the brook 
 which separated me from the meadow seemed dead 
 
 1 Apotheosis Capnionis; loc. cit., pp. 147 ff.
 
 ERASMUS l8l 
 
 and withered in comparison. While I was still lost 
 in this glory, Reuchlin passed by me, and offered 
 me greetings in Hebrew. 1 He had already passed 
 the middle of the bridge, when I noticed him; and 
 when I wanted to hasten after him, he bade me 
 remain. ' Not yet,' he said. ' Five years from 
 now, follow me. Meanwhile remain here as spec- 
 tator and witness of what happens.' He wore a 
 white garment, strangely translucent, and a charm- 
 ing boy with wings followed him. But behind him 
 at a distance there hopped black birds like magpies, 
 but as large as vultures, with feathered tufts on 
 their heads and with crooked beaks and claws, and 
 fat bellies. 2 They cawed and screamed at the 
 sturdy knight, Reuchlin, and feigned to attack him. 
 But he turned around toward them and made the 
 sign of the cross and spoke : ' Get ye hence, ye ugly 
 monsters. Off with you where you belong. You 
 have enough to do on earth, your rage has no 
 power over me here in eternity.' Scarcely had he 
 said this, when the ugly birds flew away, leaving 
 a frightful stench behind them. But already 
 Saint Jerome 3 approached the bridge and greeted 
 
 1 The language to the study of which he had devoted his life. 
 
 2 Types of the monkish detractors and enemies of Reuchlin. 
 
 3 Reuchlin's forerunner and intellectual associate in biblical 
 editorship.
 
 1 82 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Reuchlin with the words: ' Welcome, saintly com- 
 panion. I am commissioned to lead you into the 
 heavenly dwellings of the blessed, which the good- 
 ness of God has ordained for you as a reward for 
 your pious endeavors.' The whole field swarmed 
 with myriads of angels, who filled the air like sun- 
 beams. Jerome embraced Reuchlin and led him to 
 a hill in the middle of the meadow. On the summit 
 of the hill they kissed each other, and then the 
 heavens opened above their heads hi boundless dis- 
 tance, and an inexpressible glory floated down, 
 like a mighty transparent column of fire. In it the 
 two saints, embracing each other, ascended to 
 heaven, and the angels sang together." " So 
 then," exclaim the friends in whose circle this 
 vision is told, " so then let us receive the great man 
 into our calendar of saints. Let us place him in 
 the chapel next to the most illustrious of the mar- 
 tyrs. In the service of science he has suffered many 
 persecutions from evil men and hypocritical scribes, 
 but now he is reaping the fruits of the seed which 
 he has sown. His death we cannot bemoan; for he 
 has left us precious monuments of his life, and his 
 works have dedicated his name to immortality." 
 
 May we not apply these words to Erasmus him- 
 self ? May we not say of him that in his " Praise 
 of Folly " and in the " Familiar Colloquies " he
 
 ERASMUS 183 
 
 has left us works of art, of truly liberating, purify- 
 ing power ? Works of art which will retain their 
 value, as long as there is any need of continuing the 
 warfare for a rational view of the world and for a 
 society worthy of mankind.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE HUMANIST REVOLT: ULRICH VON HUTTEN 
 
 RECENT German criticism is inclined to un- 
 dervalue the services rendered by Ulrich von 
 Hutten to the cause of German culture. Friedrich 
 Paulsen in his " History of Higher Education in 
 Germany " calls Hutten's whole humanist propa- 
 ganda a bombastic masquerade. 1 Friedrich von 
 Bezold in his " History of the Reformation " dis- 
 misses Hutten's plan for a reorganization of Church 
 and State as fantastic dreams. 2 And nearly every 
 writer on Luther and his work contrasts with the 
 deep and invincible faith of the Wittenberg monk 
 and his irresistible pressing on from fight to fight 
 the wayward, meteoric and fruitless career of the 
 unbelieving and sceptical partisan of humanism. 
 
 It is my purpose to vindicate Hutten's activity, 
 to show that his political ideals were by no means 
 intrinsically unconstructive and that, if he failed 
 in his work, if his cause was vanquished, there 
 might be said of him what the ancient poet said 
 
 1 Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts i, pp. 86 ff. 
 * Geschichte der deutschen Reformation, pp. 2842. 
 184
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 185 
 
 of the unsuccessful opponent of Caesar: " Victrix 
 causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." 
 
 In Ulrich von Hutten's personality German 
 humanism gains its most ravishing and irresistible 
 expression; in him the Erasmian enlightenment 
 turns into a revolutionary power, which shakes the 
 foundations of existence. They misjudge Hutten's 
 innermost being, who consider him above all as an 
 ally of the Lutheran reformation. Hutten himself 
 saw in Luther the ally and champion of his own 
 humanist cause; he saw in him the destroyer of 
 hierarchy, the deliverer of the German people from 
 the Romish yoke. He would have been the last to 
 submit to a new religious dogma as preached by the 
 Wittenberg party. His aim was the political and 
 intellectual reconstruction of Germany. Abolition 
 of the monasteries, confiscation of church property, 
 secularization of the schools and the higher institu- 
 tions of learning, safe-guarding of free thought and 
 free inquiry, centralization of the empire, limita- 
 tion of the power of the territorial princes, utiliza- 
 tion of the knighthood and the citizen class for the 
 formation of a powerful German army these 
 were the practical ideals which fired his reforma- 
 tory passion. Perhaps these thoughts were 
 doomed from the beginning to remain unrealized. 
 Perhaps the centrifugal development of Germany
 
 1 86 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 during the preceding centuries had made a radical 
 reconstruction of the imperial power impossible. 
 Perhaps the German masses were not yet ripe for 
 the adoption of a rationalistic view of life, although 
 Zwingli's reformatory activity in Switzerland has 
 been a valid testimony to the capacity of human- 
 ism even for ecclesiastical organization. Perhaps 
 the German knighthood was the least fitting in- 
 strument of national rejuvenation. And, surely, 
 all these plans were wrecked by the fact that of the 
 two German emperors of Hutten's time the fan- 
 tastic Maximilian lacked the power, and the un- 
 German Charles the Fifth the least disposition to 
 carry them through. But are they on that account 
 less remarkable or less worthy of the admiration 
 of a posterity which has seen their fulfillment, not 
 to be sure in the form which Hutten hoped for ? 
 Hutten remains in spite of all his errors and defects 
 one of Germany's heroes. It remains a pathetic 
 story how this man, thrust out a mere boy into a 
 friendless world, tossed about in poverty, toil, and 
 youthful excesses, early afflicted and tortured for 
 years by a hideous disease, placed entirely upon his 
 own resources, driven about in fruitless struggles 
 and adventures, steadfastly adheres to his ideals 
 of country and liberty, preaches for them with 
 flaming eloquence, works with restless activity for
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 187 
 
 their realization, is never for a moment doubtful of 
 himself, dedicates himself unreservedly to his 
 cause, and finally at thirty-five years of age physi- 
 cally exhausted and politically annihilated, but 
 inwardly unbroken, meets death in exile. And it 
 remains an honor to Zwingli that, while Erasmus 
 as well as Luther finally shook off the impetuous 
 and uncompromising fighter, the Swiss reformer 
 was large-minded enough to offer him, as a soldier 
 of freedom, a last refuge. 
 
 Hutten has expressed himself about his practical 
 relations to life perhaps most emphatically in two 
 letters to friends the letter with which in 1514 he 
 sends to Crotus Rubeanus, the principal author of 
 the "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," his humor- 
 ous poem "Nemo" (The Nobody); and the letter 
 of October, 1518, to the Niirnberg patrician and 
 humanist, Willibald Pirkheimer, in which he justi- 
 fies himself for his accepting a position at the court 
 of the archbishop of Mainz. 
 
 In the former letter 1 Hutten appears as the 
 champion of a free, entirely unrestrained literary 
 life. It had been the impulse for spiritual inde- 
 pendence, for struggle with fate, for adventurous 
 tests of power and for a full living out of himself, 
 which had driven the sixteen-year old youth to 
 
 1 Hut ten i Opera ed. Booking i, 175 ff.
 
 1 88 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 flight from the cloister-school in Fulda, and then to 
 vagrant journeyings from one German and Italian 
 university to another, and finally into service in the 
 imperial army in Italy, Without having brought 
 his studies to a conclusion, without title and office, 
 full of contempt for theological and legal pseudo- 
 science, full of enthusiasm for the humanist ideals 
 of life, he had, in 1514, returned home. Instead of 
 being welcomed after so long an absence, he relates 
 to Crotus, he was treated by his family as a degen- 
 erate, as a man who had wasted his time and not 
 accomplished anything, as a " Nothing," a " No- 
 body." These mocking designations Hutten 
 accepts as a title of honor. " Yes," he says, " if 
 to be something means to acquire a degree of mas- 
 ter or doctor, if you are nothing until you stoop 
 to take part in the farce of learned nonsense, if it 
 is not a question what kind of a man you are but 
 whether you have learned the tricks of rabulistic 
 perverters of law, or the hair-splitting dialectics of 
 hypocritical theologians, then I will rather not 
 have learned anything, I will rather remain a 
 "Nothing" and a " Nobody." For a man proves 
 himself in the struggle with life and in the free ser- 
 vice of the muses; and nothing shall induce me to 
 swerve a hair's breadth from the striving after this 
 genuine humanity, unfalsified by empty formulas 
 and hollow names."
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 189 
 
 If this letter reveals the Faust-like craving of the 
 Renaissance man for free individuality, we recog- 
 nize in the letter to Pirkheimer l the other side of 
 Hutten: his passionate desire to accomplish some- 
 thing worthy, for humanity and above all for his 
 country. In the meantime he had gamed oppor- 
 tunity for activity on a larger scale as well as 
 recognition from his sympathizers. Against the 
 foreign enemies of the empire, especially Venice, 
 France, and the Pope, he had sounded a call in his 
 epigrams addressed to Emperor Maximilian. He 
 had attacked in weighty philippics the Duke Ulrich 
 of Wuertemberg, the murderer of his own cousin, 
 Hans von Hutten, as a disturber of the inner peace, 
 and had appealed especially to the knighthood to 
 help in annihilating the " tyrant." He had con- 
 tributed his share to Crotus' "Epistolae Obscuro- 
 rum Virorum," 2 and here he had contrasted with 
 monkish stupidity and sloth his ideals of free and 
 enlightened humanism. By editing Lorenzo Valla's 
 " Constantine Donation," and by its ironical 
 dedication to Leo X, he had, in 1517, struck his 
 first great blow against the papacy. He himself 
 had in the same year at Augsburg been crowned 
 poet laureate by Emperor Maximilian, had then 
 
 1 Loc, cit., pp. 195 ff. 
 
 2 Namely the Appendix to the first part and all of the second 
 part.
 
 190 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 entered the service of the liberal-minded arch- 
 bishop of Mainz and had prepared for the Augs- 
 burg diet of 1518 a flaming address in which he 
 exhorted the German princes to unity and to the 
 granting of means for a war against the Turks. All 
 these things re-echo in the letter to his friend 
 Pirkheimer of October, 1518, in which he justifies 
 himself for his entering politics and court life. It 
 is clear from this letter: Hutten now feels himself 
 a public leader, a representative of Germany, a 
 champion of national culture, honor, and freedom. 
 He recalls to mind Pirkheimer's own example, his 
 many-sided public activity, the highly developed 
 public life of his native town, Nurnberg, which, 
 Hutten says, had led not only to the highest de- 
 velopment of industry and commerce, but had 
 also offered room for the scientific and literary 
 endeavors of a Regiomontanus and Celtes and for 
 the brilliant creations of the German Apelles 
 as he called him: Albrecht Diirer. What Pirk- 
 heimer and his like had done for the cities he, 
 Hutten, so he answers Pirkheimer was try- 
 ing to do for his own class, the knighthood. The 
 knighthood, he tells us, unfortunately, still lacked 
 the consciousness of its high, spiritual tasks, it was 
 entirely absorbed in economic struggles and petty 
 feuds. Therefore, it was his ambition to make
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 191 
 
 clear to his class that true nobility must be ac- 
 quired by service, and to give them in himself an 
 example of genuine class honor and of knightly 
 championship of national affairs. " May it fare ill 
 with me, Willibald, if I think myself a noble unless 
 I have made myself so by work. And let me not be 
 contented with what I have inherited from my 
 ancestors, but let me add something to it which by 
 me will be bequeathed to posterity." l The tune 
 is ripe, he thinks; not a few of the princes are in- 
 clined to further the new culture. Through enter- 
 ing their services, the nobility might again become 
 a power for progress. For him personally such a 
 practical participation in the affairs of public life 
 is an inner necessity. He has not yet tamed him- 
 self, not yet calmed his youthful fire, not yet done 
 enough to give himself over to scholarly leisure. 
 But even in the unrest and the distractions of court 
 life he will never cease to belong to himself. " I 
 shall always be Hutten and never be found a 
 traitor to myself." Never will he allow fate the 
 control of his soul, always will he consider the 
 
 1 Ut non ex imaginariis illis nobilibus tantum censear aut eo quod a 
 maioribus meis accepi contentus sim, verum aliquid ad istas dotes 
 quod a me in posteros proficiscatur adiecisse videar; loc. cit., p. 208. 
 The parallelism between these words and Goethe's 
 Was du ererbt von deinen Vatem hast 
 Erwirb es urn es zu besitzen 
 
 is obvious.
 
 192 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 struggle for humanism as the sacred concern of 
 the tune and call himself happy that he has been 
 chosen to take part in the struggle. " century, 
 O arts, it is a joy to live and not to rest, my 
 Willibald. The studies are flourishing, the spirit 
 is awake. Barbarism, accept the yoke and sub- 
 mit to exile! " 
 
 Since the days of Walther von der Vogelweide no 
 German had proclaimed as emphatically as Hutten 
 did hi these two letters, the union of spiritual inde- 
 pendence with unselfish devotion to the cause of 
 country as the ideal of manly activity. During 
 the five years which now were left to him he en- 
 deavored with restless energy and with heroic 
 exertion of his whole personality to realize this 
 ideal and to make it, as far as lay in his power, a 
 means of destruction of medieval theocracy and 
 to found on it a new German public consciousness. 
 These five years from 1519 to 1523 contain the 
 writings of Hutten which show him at his height 
 and associate him with the greatest German pub- 
 licists of all tunes. 
 
 When we recall what Hutten hi these years 
 experienced, planned, strove for and, accomplished 
 we cannot escape, quite apart from the cause 
 which he represents, the impression of human 
 greatness.
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 193 
 
 The mere extent and range of his activity during 
 these years is astounding, all the more so when we 
 remember that the curse of his life, the frightful 
 disease to which he finally was to succumb in spite 
 of transient and apparent recovery, continued to 
 prey upon him during this whole time, constantly 
 broke out afresh, and again and again prostrated 
 him. In the spring of 1519, he exchanges court life 
 once more for his inherited knightly craft; he takes 
 part in the expedition of the Swabian alliance 
 against his old foe, Duke Ulrich of Wuertemberg. 
 Then he settles for a few months in his ancestral 
 castle, Steckelberg, establishes there his own print- 
 ing press and sends out from there his last phil- 
 ippics against Ulrich, which instinctively turn into 
 a paean of victory over the hated tyrant, at last 
 defeated. In April, 1520, he publishes that first 
 collection of martial dialogues in which, anticipat- 
 ing Luther's revolutionary manifestoes by several 
 months, he incites the German laity to a complete 
 break with Rome and to extinction of the whole 
 clerical system. In June of the same year, he goes 
 to Brussels in order to win Archduke Ferdinand, 
 the brother of Charles the Fifth, for his plans of 
 nationalizing the German church. Without having 
 found a hearing, he must take leave. On the home 
 journey, he learns that a papal edict has been sent
 
 194 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 against him in which his former master, the Arch- 
 bishop of Mainz, is requested to proceed against 
 him on account of his " scandalous machinations." 
 Then he accepts the refuge which his friend, Franz 
 von Sickingen, offers him in his castle, the Ebern- 
 burg near Kreuznach, and from this " shelter of 
 justice " he displays again, during the last third of 
 1520 and the larger part of 1521, the most intensely 
 revolutionary propaganda. He turns to Emperor 
 Charles and adjures him to stop the papal inso- 
 lence; he turns to the Elector, Frederick the Wise 
 of Saxony and admonishes him of his duty at the 
 head of the German princes to succor the country's 
 freedom and welfare; he turns to Germans of all 
 classes and calls upon them " to drive from the 
 country the godless pardon-mongers, the impious 
 dealers in dispensations, absolutions and all sorts of 
 bulls, who had turned the holy church of God into 
 a grocery shop." He edits the papal bull against 
 Luther with ironical comments; in a poetical lam- 
 entation over the burning of Luther's writings at 
 Mainz, the earliest of his German poems, he ad- 
 dresses Luther as his " dearest brother " and 
 places himself life and limb at his disposal. In the 
 " Lament and Exhortation against the excessive 
 un-Christian Power of the Bishop of Rome and the 
 unministerial Ministers," he calls upon his coun-
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 195 
 
 trymen to take to arms. He translates his Latin 
 dialogues into German and adds to them pithy and 
 stirring prefatory verses; and at the same time he 
 publishes a new series of warlike dialogues, in spite 
 of their Latin form of truly popular power. He 
 follows from Sickingen's castle the Diet of Worms 
 with feverish interest, he sends to Luther words of 
 unreserved admiration and assurances of unquali- 
 fied faith (" My affairs are human, you dwell 
 entirely in the divine,"); 1 he hurls invectives 
 against the papal delegates, against the cardinals, 
 bishops and abbots assembled in Worms, and ad- 
 dresses patriotic exhortations to the Emperor. And 
 finally, when the imperial edict against Luther has 
 been issued, he seeks a last means for saving the 
 country in an offensive alliance of the knighthood 
 and the cities. In the fatal campaign of Sickingen's 
 against the Archbishop of Treves, which hi 1522 
 leads to the breakdown of all of Hutten's hopes and 
 plans, we lose trace of him, until he reappears as a 
 fugitive in Switzerland. But even the hunted and 
 exhausted fugitive rallies, in the controversy with 
 Erasmus, to a last passage at arms for the Lutheran 
 cause, and the dying one gives to his people in the 
 resuscitated figure of Arminius, the destroyer of 
 the Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest, a new 
 national hero. 
 
 1 Loc. cii., ii, 55.
 
 196 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The keynote of all these war manifestoes is a 
 boundless, imperturbable trust in the cause of 
 truth, and the unbending will to carry it to victory 
 or to die for it. It was no mere phrase when from 
 the Ebernburg he writes to the Elector of Saxony: l 
 " Would to God that either you (the princes) who 
 have the power had the will, or I had the power, as 
 I have the will. But if I cannot move you nor else- 
 where stir a fire, I shall at least do what I can ac- 
 complish alone. I shall do nothing unworthy of a 
 brave knight, I shall never, as long as I have my 
 senses, swerve one step from my undertaking; you, 
 however, if I should see you deviate from manly 
 firmness, I shall pity. I can die, but I cannot be a 
 slave, nor can I see Germany enslaved. I hope the 
 best from you; therefore I have written to you a 
 freeman to a freeman. Farewell and be a man." 
 His own ideal of a man he has expressed in 
 the "New Year's Wishes" with which he sends 
 his German dialogues to Franz von Sickingen: 2 
 " And I wish you, not as we often wish our friends, 
 an agreeable and enjoyable leisure, but plenty of 
 serious, hard, and strenuous work, by which, for 
 the benefit of the many, you may exercise and test 
 your own proud and heroic mind." And from his 
 
 1 Loc. tit., i, 398 f. 
 1 Loc. cit., i, 449.
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 197 
 
 innermost heart there came the thrilling words 
 with which he introduces these dialogues to the 
 reader: 1 glorying in the rebirth of truth; conse- 
 crating himself to its defence; defying all the 
 powers of darkness, papal excommunication and 
 imperial proscription; asking God's blessing for 
 his pious mother in her care and anxiety for his 
 fate; and winding up with the exultant " Ich hab's 
 gewagt! " 
 
 Hutten's was not a deep or a speculative nature. 
 All mysticism, all religious fervor were foreign to 
 him. Not like the great medieval mystics, not 
 like Luther, did he want to serve the cause of God; 
 but, like the ancients, he wished to accomplish 
 great things and thereby leave his name to pos- 
 terity. But that he was thoroughly in earnest in 
 his attempt to make rationalism the basis of life, 
 that he hoped from the victory of humanism the 
 dawn of a new era of national culture for his father- 
 land, and longed for it with the whole glow of his 
 passionate soul, words like those quoted are a 
 sufficient proof, even apart from his whole life 
 entirely devoted to this one idea. 
 
 And must we not admit that Hutten was indeed 
 the representative of a higher culture ? Apart 
 from Crotus' "Epistolae," Erasmus' "Colloquies" 
 
 1 Loc. cit., 450.
 
 198 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 and Luther's manifestoes and hymns, what has 
 German literature produced in those first hopeful 
 years of the Reformation that reveals such inner 
 strength and truthfulness, such a wide horizon, 
 such a free sweep of artistic form as Hutten's 
 Dialogues? Among the whole mass of polemics 
 called forth through Luther's first stand against 
 Rome nothing comes near them. To be sure, a 
 fresh breath of wholesome life goes through the 
 polemic dramas of a Pamphilus Gengenbach and 
 Niklas Manuel. Certainly, the flood of peasant 
 and bourgeois pasquils and satire let loose by the 
 struggle against Rome has something overpower- 
 ing in its elementary fury and recklessness. And 
 even the principal leaders of the Romish party, 
 such as Thomas Murner or Hieronymus Emser, 
 did by no means lack power of persuasion and 
 honesty of conviction. But how crude and un- 
 couth on the one hand, how limited and reactionary 
 on the other does all this appear when we contrast 
 it with the sharply chiselled form and the free 
 grand spirit of Hutten's Dialogues. Here, indeed, 
 there is a man who, like Erasmus, has assimilated 
 the best of ancient culture, the high conception of 
 human dignity, but who is not, like Erasmus, con- 
 tent to cultivate and spread this spiritual refine- 
 ment but is driven by the impulse to rejuvenate
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 199 
 
 and reconstruct thereby the whole order of society. 
 Justly David Friedrich Strauss has pointed out 1 
 that it is this youthful impulse of reform which so 
 emphatically distinguishes Hutten's Dialogues from 
 their formal prototype, the dialogues of the bril- 
 liant, but cool and blase* Lucian. At the same time, 
 in spite of all his zeal for the common cause, Hut- 
 ten remains a brilliant artist, a proclaimer of 
 individual genius, and just hereby he lifts himself 
 above the limitations of his subject and above the 
 time to which he speaks; just hereby, he associates 
 himself, like Erasmus, with the few of his age who 
 speak to us also. 
 
 If Hutten had not written anything except " The 
 Spectators," " The Bull Killer " and " The Rob- 
 bers," these three dialogues would be sufficient to 
 secure him a name among the classics of German 
 literature. Who could read these little master- 
 pieces of dialogue without feeling transported by 
 them to the heights of free humanity, and lifted 
 above all meanness, pettiness and artificial dis- 
 tortion ? Who will not admit that here polemics 
 against what is evil and doomed to destruction 
 turns at the same tune into a serene picture 
 of the world and of a wholesome and hopeful 
 life? 
 
 1 Gespritche von Ulrich von Hutten, Ubersetzt von D. F. Strauss, p. 5.
 
 200 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Delightful is the free and unconcerned manner 
 with which, in " The Spectators," l the two divine 
 aviators Sol and Phaethon, who from the height of 
 their day's journey through the heavens look down 
 upon earth, converse with each other about the 
 struggles and joys of the small world of men that 
 swarms far beneath them. It is the tune of the 
 Augsburg Diet of 1518, and the divine charioteers 
 have just arrived over the old imperial town. How 
 they crowd and jostle down below, how they push 
 back and forth, draw hither and thither! What a 
 noise, what a carousing, what a prattling and 
 prancing! Sol instructs his inquisitive son: "It is 
 the Germans; they cannot carry on politics or any 
 public business without banquets and drinking 
 bouts. To be sure, there are some sober people 
 among them (Hutten means himself and his fol- 
 lowers) ; men who hold themselves in control, drink 
 water, cultivate their minds, and take serious 
 things seriously; may they succeed in making 
 themselves felt, for then* country's good; but the 
 mass, princes as well as knights and populace, are 
 unfortunately still in the fetters of their inherited 
 and besetting sin, of which Tacitus related long 
 ago ' Excess in eating and drinking; ' and just 
 the best and freest among them, the Saxons, are 
 
 1 Opera ed. Booking iv, 270 ff.
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 2OI 
 
 the worst topers of all. But otherwise the Ger- 
 mans are a splendid people, true, brave, honest and 
 joyous." " But what is the cause of the concourse 
 below in Augsburg?" Phaethon asks. "They are 
 conducting the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan, in 
 solemn procession to the city hall. He has been 
 sent across the Alps to fool the Germans, has all his 
 sacks full of indulgences, and hopes to bring them 
 back to Rome filled with German gold." " How 
 long is the Pope going to carry on this shameful 
 game ? " " Until the Germans who till now he 
 has led by the nose have come to their senses." 
 " Is the time near when the Germans will have 
 come to their senses ? " " Very near; for this 
 Cardinal will be the first one who comes home with 
 empty sacks, to the great terror of the Holy City, 
 where they never would have believed that the 
 barbarians would have been so bold." " Are the 
 Germans then barbarians ? " " According to the 
 judgment of the Romans, yes. But if you look 
 upon good manners and friendly intercourse, upon 
 zeal in all virtues, upon constancy and honesty of 
 mind, then the Germans are the most cultivated of 
 all people and the Romans the most hopeless of 
 barbarians. For they have been corrupted by 
 luxury and debauchery and you find with them 
 faithlessness, more than feminine fickleness, deceit
 
 202 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 and villainy as nowhere else." " I like what you 
 say of the Germans, if they only were not such 
 topers." The further course of the dialogue, 
 which now goes on to enlarge on the political and 
 social conditions of Germany, is interrupted by the 
 Cardinal Cajetan himself , who in great excitement 
 and full of wrath shouts up to them from the pro- 
 cession. He calls upon Sol, who thus far had only 
 glanced through the clouds, that he should scatter 
 the clouds and at last once more, as in Italy, shine 
 from a clear sky; furthermore, he should bring 
 heat and contagious diseases, so that more church 
 livings fall vacant by deaths and thereby new 
 revenues accrue to the Holy See. When Sol with 
 proud calm rejects these requests of the " hot- 
 headed little man," and Phaethon in youthful indig- 
 nation calls down to him some pithy and bald 
 truths, then the Cardinal in pompous rage pro- 
 nounces the excommunication against the two 
 heavenly travellers, but in return is delivered by 
 them to the contempt of the world. Phaethon: "I 
 give you over to the ridicule of the Germans, whom 
 you are plundering, that they may chase you away 
 in scorn." Sol: " Leave the wretch alone. It is 
 time to turn our chariot downward and to give 
 room to the evening star. Let the villain down 
 below lie, cheat, steal, rob and pillage at his own
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 203 
 
 risk." Phaethon: "Yes, and go to the devil, too. 
 So then I spur the horses on our downward course 
 and follow westward." 
 
 The second of the above mentioned dialogues, 
 " The Bull Killer " 1 reminds one of the clownish 
 brawls of a medieval farce. But it is a farce 
 imbued with mighty passion and moral pathos; 
 and, as hi Holbein's " Dance of Death," here also 
 medieval conceptions are made the vehicles of a 
 thoroughly modern feeling. The bull of excom- 
 munication issued by Leo X against Luther 
 appears here hi person, as a fat, bloated monster, 
 that attacks with threats and blows a beautiful 
 woman, German Freedom. Freedom is too delicate 
 for this passage at arms; she can oppose to the 
 maltreatment by the fiend nothing but laments and 
 calls for help. But finally upon her call: " Does 
 no one dare to succor me, is there no true freeman, 
 no one who strives for virtue, loves the good, hates 
 deceit, honors justice, abhors sin in a word, is 
 no German there " upon this call there appears, 
 like a knight of Saint George, Ulrich von Hutten 
 himself. " This call, from whomsoever it may 
 come, concerns me " with these words he 
 presses upon the brute, which now, first cursing, 
 then whining, tries to defend itself. But in vain, 
 
 1 Loc. cit., iv, 311 ff.
 
 204 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 for Hutten comes from that " shelter of justice," 
 the Ebernburg, " where the men are true men, 
 where one keeps one's covenant, preserves faith, 
 worships the divine, and protects innocence," 
 while in Rome, whence the bull comes, the con- 
 trary of all this is the case. "If it were only a 
 question of Luther," he exclaims, " I would let you 
 go, but you attack not only his life, but that of her 
 here, German Freedom; and therefore you must be 
 deprived of your own life." Now there ensues the 
 climax of the action. The bull, writhing under 
 Hutten's merciless strokes, left in the lurch by all 
 his superstitious German adherents (" For Ger- 
 many now sees with her own eyes "), beseeching 
 his victorious opponent on his knees for mercy, 
 finally in greatest distress makes a last deceitful 
 attempt to save himself. He offers indulgence and 
 papal absolution to perjurers and murderers, rob- 
 bers and desecrators of churches, adulterers, forni- 
 cators and blasphemers, if they only will help him 
 and, lo, first it seems like an army of fleas, then 
 of ants, then of cats that moves on from the dis- 
 tance; it is the Roman courtiers and mercenaries 
 pressing over the Alps. And now Hutten summons 
 his warriors. " Come, ye freemen; our common 
 concern, the common weal is at stake. Here the 
 tyrants will be crushed; here the servitude will be
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 205 
 
 broken. Where are the freemen, where are the 
 illustrious ones, the men of great names, where are 
 ye, heads of nations ? They have heard me a 
 hundred thousand I see, at their head my friend, 
 Sickingen. The gods be thanked! Germany has 
 come to herself; even Emperor Charles is here, and 
 all the princes about him. How, now, creature of 
 Leo ? " The Roman courtiers and their army flee; 
 and Franz von Sickingen, who now comes forward, 
 in a mighty speech of triumph once more sounds 
 all the patriotic feelings and hopes with which Hut- 
 ten's own soul was filled. " The gates of freedom 
 are opened, let us press on. God has unjustly de- 
 stroyed the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, if he 
 spares the people of Rome, in comparison with 
 whose godlessness they were innocent babes. Let 
 us at last fulfill what thus far seemed impossible. 
 But I make the vow: if Christ will help me to do 
 that which I have in mind, I will spare no labor, 
 and will not give up, until the accursed courtiers, the 
 godless Romans, find no more game in Germany." 
 With a last desperate exertion, the bull turns to the 
 Emperor. Rejected by him also, the wrathful beast 
 bursts in two, and from his belly there proceeds a 
 vapor of poisonous vices. The dragon is dead. 
 
 The last of these three dialogues, " The Rob- 
 bers," l is not the equal of " The Bull Killer " and 
 
 1 Loc. rit., iv, 363 ff.
 
 206 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 " The Spectators " in concentrated power and 
 dramatic weight. But we are compensated for 
 this by the impressive, free and human manner in 
 which the fundamental thought of this dialogue, 
 the necessity of an alliance between the knight- 
 hood and the cities for common warfare, is brought 
 out. At the beginning of the colloquy such an 
 alliance seems far off. Hutten, the Hotspur, has 
 got into a squabble with a merchant, a business 
 manager of the great banking house of the Fug- 
 gers, on account of the latter's thesis that the 
 knights were the true disturbers of peace in Ger- 
 many, that they were highwaymen and robbers, 
 and that the Emperor could not do anything better 
 for the country than to stop their trade. Hutten 
 is on the point of breaking the ribs of the business 
 man, whom he contemptuously addresses as a 
 " Peppersack," when Franz von Sickingen enters 
 and with disinterested composure exhorts the hot- 
 headed Hutten to moderation, and then himself 
 undertakes the defense of the knighthood against 
 the merchant. He does not deny that there are 
 some knights who live from pillage and robbery, 
 but, he thinks, they are disavowed by their own 
 class. The nobility as a class consider it their 
 highest duty to guard the public peace, to help the 
 weak and to protect the innocent. But the worst
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 207 
 
 robbers in Germany are not those occasional high- 
 waymen and bushwhackers; they could easily be 
 subdued; the worst are "The monks," inter- 
 rupts the irascible Hutten. " Wait," says Sickin- 
 gen with superior calm, " I leave them to you for 
 later treatment. First I must speak of the mer- 
 chants themselves." And now there follows a 
 discussion, resting largely on stoic principles, about 
 the destructiveness of the greed for money, of the 
 over-cultivated city life, of luxury, of the consump- 
 tion of nerve-exhausting stimulants; and popular 
 invectives against usury, against foreign fashions, 
 but above all against the extortion of the common 
 people by the monopoly of the great corporations 
 like those of the Medici and the Fuggers. " They 
 are worse robbers than the robber-knights," says 
 Sickingen, " but still worse are the scribes and 
 lawyers; for they are the people who at the courts 
 of the princes and in the councils and court-rooms 
 of the cities, instead of the cause of the people, fol- 
 low only their own private gam. They had Em- 
 peror Maximilian entirely in their power, so that 
 nothing came of all his plans of reform. Now they 
 begin the same intrigues with Emperor Charles. 
 They pervert the law, they conceal truth, they 
 deceive the people by sham trials, out of which 
 they alone make money. A court fool is better
 
 208 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 company for a prince than such a sneaking scrib- 
 bler and quibbler. And it would be better, if these 
 doctors of law with their red caps, who make the 
 greatest difficulties over the most insignificant 
 trifles, and out of their mountains of books bring 
 nothing but confusion of law, had never come into 
 the country, and if the people, according to our 
 ancestral traditions, were their own lawmakers 
 and judges." The merchant listens with ever 
 growing interest, and finally assents with full con- 
 viction to Hutten's wish that this vicious brood of 
 law perverters be exterminated root and branch. 
 But now Hutten cannot be restrained any longer. 
 Together with Sickingen he falls with tempestuous 
 fury upon the worst and most wicked of all robbers, 
 the monks, the bishops, the cardinals, the pope and 
 his courtiers. Against all these robbers, all these 
 exploiters of the common man and of the German 
 Empire (this is the end of the dialogue) the people 
 must make a common cause; to that pledge the 
 merchant and the two knights give one another the 
 hand. And Hutten closes with the solemn words of 
 consecration: " May Christ, the Lord and Saviour 
 confirm this covenant, and may He grant that our ex- 
 ample find a mighty following throughout the land." 
 Did Hutten, apart from his incessant endeavors 
 to unite the emperor, the princes, the knights and
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 209 
 
 the cities into a great alliance for freedom, think of 
 drawing the peasants also into this formidable 
 union for progress ? It almost seems so. For in 
 the dialogue " The New Karsthans " which, al- 
 though not written by Hutten, unquestionably 
 reflects his thought, such plans are mentioned. 
 But be this as it may, so much is certain: no 
 writer of his time has looked at German national 
 conditions from so high and broad a point of view 
 as Hutten. None has contemplated so radical a 
 national regeneration as he. 
 
 It is difficult to do justice to this man so pre- 
 maturely snatched from life, to this restless spirit 
 who conceived so much, and began so many things. 
 He himself once said that it was the fate of Ger- 
 many to be unhappy. 1 If one understands by 
 happiness above all the consciousness of success, 
 then this was the fate of his own life; for the feeling 
 of the goal attained was denied him. But if to be 
 a man means to be a fighter, and if endeavor is the 
 true measure of the greatness of character, then 
 Hutten is one of the greatest and most human char- 
 acters in German literature. How much in him 
 seems to anticipate the great spirits of a later time! 
 With Lessing he shares the restless striving for 
 truth and the indomitable courage of truth. He is 
 
 1 Miseram oportet esse Germaniam necessario; loc. cit., iv, 384.
 
 210 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 akin to Heinrich von Kleist in his contempt of com- 
 promise and his unconditional surrender to a cause. 
 Something of Ernst Moritz Arndt one seems to feel 
 in his romantic enthusiasm for German nation- 
 ality and his defiance of foreign fashion. His his- 
 torically unfair and yet historically justified hatred 
 of the clergy reminds one of the excessive super- 
 ciliousness of Nietzsche. His delight in cavalier- 
 like sport, his pleasure in country life, his Junker- 
 like hatred of cities, and his fervent passion for 
 Germany's unity and greatness associate him with 
 the greatest German Junker of the nineteenth 
 century, Bismarck. Nay, one of the very most 
 recent social tendencies, the temperance move- 
 ment, finds energetic expression in his eager 
 invectives against the German national vice of 
 intemperance. What could this man not have 
 accomplished, what might he not have become for 
 Germany, if there had been more men like him, if 
 his age had been more friendly to him, if he had 
 succeeded in carrying public opinion. 
 
 That he by no means was a mere enthusiast or 
 a mere destroyer, but also a man of constructive 
 thought, our whole survey of his activity must have 
 shown. But that with a successful carrying out of 
 his thoughts he would also have learned modera- 
 tion, is made probable by two of his last dialogues,
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 211 
 
 " The Warners." In one of them Luther appears, 
 in the other Franz von Sickingen, both, in order to 
 justify themselves to a friend for their attitude in 
 the great concern of the tunes, the reformation of 
 the church, and both do this with the greatest 
 objectivity and restraint, although with entire 
 decision and complete trust in their cause. Luther 
 sees his task in leading the church back to the sim- 
 plicity and inwardness of oldest Christian times; 
 and Sickingen also refutes the accusation of his 
 being an innovator, for him also the mam question 
 is the restitution of the true faith in place of super- 
 stition, of the religion of Christ in place of that of 
 his Vicar at Rome. 
 
 What a view is opened by the thought of the 
 possibility that it might have been granted to 
 Hutten to carry through the war for this cause at 
 the side of Luther, as he had hoped! If the aristo- 
 crat and the man of the people, the knight and the 
 son of the miner had really understood each other, 
 if the religious Reformation could have assimilated 
 the ideal of humanity and the rational culture of 
 humanism, if Hutten's thought of an alliance of 
 all classes for the foundation of a free united Ger- 
 many had been realized, what an age of national 
 greatness and power would then have dawned for 
 Germany! Hutten's own writings, so full of hope,
 
 212 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 stirred by such mighty thoughts, so perfect in form, 
 even in their foreign garb so nobly popular, give us 
 at least a foretaste of what might have been. That 
 Hutten himself, vanquished, deserted, cast out, as 
 a fugitive beyond the German boundaries, sank 
 into his grave, is an impressive symbol of the tragic 
 turn which the fate of Germany took from that 
 moment when the Reformation shook off human- 
 ism and thereby, instead of a universally human 
 movement came to be a question of church ortho- 
 doxy and theological zeal. But Hutten's figure 
 stands before us transfigured by eternal youthful- 
 ness, as the earliest champion of an ideal to which 
 after him many of the best sons of Germany have 
 devoted themselves and which at last, in a more 
 enlightened age, has been at least partially realized : 
 the independence of secular life from the encroach- 
 ments of clerical authority and the function of the 
 State as the legitimate upholder of liberal culture 
 and spiritual progress. 
 
 Was Hutten right when he said that it was the 
 fate of Germany to be unhappy ? If he was, 
 and it would almost seem so then it must be said 
 that the tragedy of German history is most inti- 
 mately allied with German greatness. Twice 
 within the last four hundred years German na-
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 213 
 
 tional life has been nearly crushed at the very 
 moment when it seemed as though the fulfillment 
 of the ages had come; twice there has arisen from 
 this very destruction a new and a higher national 
 culture. 
 
 In the sixteenth century Germany gave to the 
 world the principle of religious freedom. But 
 owing to the lack of a broad national spirit and a 
 firmly consolidated public opinion, religious free- 
 dom reacted upon Germany not as an upbuilding, 
 but as a disintegrating force. At the end of the 
 sixteenth century, when England was about to 
 enter the Elizabethan era, when the Dutch were 
 fighting the most glorious struggle of modern times 
 for free thought and free government, Germany, 
 the motherland of religious liberty, seemed hope- 
 lessly lost in the conflict between Jesuit and Pro- 
 testant fanaticism and was gradually drifting 
 toward the abyss of the Thirty Years' War. From 
 the ruin and the desolation of this war, Germany 
 gradually and slowly wrestled upward in the seven- 
 teenth century. Under the most terrible discour- 
 agements, with infinite patience and abiding faith, 
 her citizens, her intellectual and spiritual leaders, 
 and her princes, each in his own narrow sphere, 
 tried to cultivate and to strengthen what there was 
 left of germs of prosperity and of hope for the
 
 214 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 future; and from utter political impotence at the 
 time of Louis XIV at least one German state, 
 Prussia, gradually rose to the heroic achievements 
 of the reign of Frederick the Great. 
 
 Then there came another epoch when Germany 
 gave to the world a precious spiritual message. 
 Kant exalted the moral law as the only true revela- 
 tion of the divine, Schiller pointed to beauty as the 
 reconciliation between the ideal and the real, 
 Goethe found the salvation of man in the restless 
 striving for culture. But again it seemed as though 
 Germany must pay with her own life for the price- 
 less treasures won by her for humanity. Her 
 aesthetic and moral culture had become too refined 
 to resist the rude attack of a hostile world. The 
 classic epoch of German literature and philosophy 
 coincided with the breakdown of the German 
 Empire and the subjugation of the German people 
 by the French conqueror. 
 
 From the throes of this fearful catastrophe the 
 Germany of today was born. By summoning all 
 her powers, physical, intellectual, spiritual, 
 against the ruin threatened from Napoleonic 
 dominion, Germany once more rose to political 
 greatness. A new and exalted conception of the 
 State, a State uniting in itself all spiritual and 
 moral aspirations of the people, stimulating every
 
 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 215 
 
 kind of public and private activity, straining every 
 energy and protecting every resource, subordinat- 
 ing all individual comfort to the one great aim of 
 national achievements, inspired the best Germans 
 throughout the nineteenth century. Since 1870 it 
 has seemed as though Germany, of all nations, was 
 destined to be a leader in everything that makes 
 for good government, for public honesty, for social 
 justice, for personal enlightenment, orderliness and 
 respectability, for wisely organized and wisely 
 directed peaceful activities of every kind. 
 
 And now, for a third time, a fearful cataclysm, 
 more destructive perhaps than even the Thirty 
 Years' War and the Napoleonic invasion threa- 
 tens to sweep away everything that has been won 
 by the work of generations; and the possibility of 
 ruin stares Germany in the face. 
 
 But if history teaches us anything, it certainly 
 teaches us that a people which remains true to its 
 better self cannot be crushed. The present conflict 
 has brought such overwhelming evidence of the 
 German people's determination to sacrifice every- 
 thing in the service of a supreme ideal demand 
 that, whatever may be the fate of the battlefield, 
 this war is certain to usher in a new and greater 
 epoch of German culture. Never before have 
 Germans, without distinction of rank or class or
 
 216 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 party or creed, felt so clearly what it is that makes 
 their national existence, what the ultimate ami is 
 for which they live and for which they are glad to 
 die. This new national consciousness will survive 
 either victory or defeat; it will lead to new na- 
 tional achievements, to new spiritual attainments, 
 to the purging of whatever may be left of weakness 
 or littleness or false conceit in German personality.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Alsfeld Passion Play, 131-137. 
 Amis, the Clerk, 103-105 
 Anninius, 195. 
 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 210. 
 Augsburg, Diet of, 200. 
 
 Bach, Sebastian, 88. 
 Ballad, popular, 90-99. 
 Bamberg, sculptures at Cathedral 
 
 of, 84. 
 
 Beguines, order of, 46, 47. 
 Benediktbeuren Christmas Play, 
 
 117-119. 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, 58, 59. 
 Berthold of Regensburg, 50-58. 
 Bezold, Friedrich von, 184. 
 Bismarck, 210. 
 Bouts, Dirk, 139, 180. 
 Brant, Sebastian, 162. 
 Breughel, Peter, 70. 
 Biicher, Karl, 79. 
 Burckhardt, Jacob, 4, 15. 
 Burgherdom, individualism of, 
 
 43-46. 
 
 Cervantes, 100. 
 
 Charles V, 186, 193, 194, 207. 
 
 Chartres, sculptures at Cathedral 
 
 of, 5- 
 
 Chaucer, 10, 101. 
 Chivalric ideals, 7, 8. 
 Chrestien de Troyes, 28, 29, 33, 
 
 34- 
 
 Cologne school of painting, 70, 
 
 139. 
 Crotus Rubeanus, 187-189, 197. 
 
 Dante, 10, 15. 
 Dionysius Areopagita, 58. 
 DUrer, 28, 72, 138-150. 
 
 Ebernburg, 194, 195, 204. 
 Eckhart, Master, 59-64, 72. 
 Eraser, Hieronymus, 155, 198. 
 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 154-183, 
 
 195, 197-199. 
 his skepticism, 156. 
 his rationalism, 157. 
 his religious toleration, 158, 
 
 159- 
 
 his efforts for popular wel- 
 fare, 160. 
 
 his belief in freedom of the 
 will, 160, 161. 
 
 the " Praise of Folly," 162- 
 170. 
 
 the "Familiar Colloquies," 
 
 171-183. 
 
 Eyck, the brothers van, 70, 72, 99, 
 139. 
 
 Faustus, 153. 
 Flemish painting, 84. 
 Frederick the Great, 214. 
 Frederick the Wise, Elector of 
 Saxony, 194, 196. 
 
 3X9
 
 220 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gengenbach, Pamphilus, 198. 
 Goethe, 19, 22, 64, 77, 90, 191 n., 
 
 214. 
 
 Gottfried von Strassburg, 36-42. 
 Gummere, Francis, 79. 
 
 Hart man von Aue, 22-27. 
 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 64, 105. 
 
 Hegel, 64. 
 
 Heine, 96, 137. 
 
 Helmbrecht, Farmer, 105-114. 
 
 Herder, 79, 84. 
 
 Hessian Christmas Play, 123. 
 
 Hessus, Eobanus, 155. 
 
 Hoffmann, Amadeus, 64. 
 
 Holbein, 138, 195. 
 
 Hugo of St. Victor, 58. 
 
 Humanism, ideals of, 151-153. 
 
 Hutten, Hans von, 189. 
 
 Hutten, Ulrich von, 154, 184-212. 
 
 his political program, 185-187. 
 
 his literary independence, 
 188. 
 
 his patriotic motives, 189- 
 192. 
 
 his participation in the Refor- 
 mation propaganda, 193- 
 
 195- 
 his Dialogues, 198-212. 
 
 Ibsen, 64. 
 
 Individualism, 43-46, 73. 
 Innocent III, 15, 16. 
 
 Jutta, Play of Frau, 121. 
 
 Kant, 214. 
 
 Kleist, Heinrich von, 106, 210. 
 
 Kraft, Adam, 84. 
 
 Leo X, 189, 194, 203. 
 Lessing, 209. 
 Limburg Chronicle, 78. 
 Louis XIV, 214. 
 Love song, popular, 85-89. 
 Lucian, 199. 
 
 Luther, 16, 77, 114, 160, 161, 174, 
 185, 193-I9S, 197, 211. 
 
 Manuel, Niklas, 198. 
 
 Matilda of Magdeburg, 47-49, 53. 
 
 Maximilian I, 186, 189, 207. 
 
 Melanchthon, 154. 
 
 Memlinc, 180. 
 
 Middle Ages, spirit of, 7. 
 
 Murner, Thomas, 162, 198. 
 
 Mutianus, Conrad, 155. 
 
 Napoleon, 214. 
 
 Naumburg, sculptures at Cathe- 
 dral of, 6. 
 
 Nettesheim, Agrippa of, 153. 
 Nietzsche, 44, 77, 210. 
 
 Paracelsus, 153. 
 Paulsen, Friedrich, 184. 
 Pirkheimer, Willibald, 155, 189, 
 
 190. 
 
 Poe, Edgar, 64. 
 Preaching orders, 50. 
 
 Redentin Easter Play, 127-131. 
 Reinke de Vos, 101. 
 Reuchlin, 154, 180. 
 Rheims, sculptures at Cathedral 
 of, 5-
 
 INDEX 
 
 221 
 
 Richard of St. Victor, 58. 
 Rogier van der Weyden, 100, 139. 
 Rousseau, 44, 77, 170. 
 
 Schiller, 19, 64, 77, 214. 
 Schlegel, Friedrich, 165. 
 Schongauer, Martin, 139. 
 Scotus Erigena, 58. 
 Shaw, Bernard, 166. 
 Sickingen, Franz von, 194-196, 
 
 2OS-2O8, 211. 
 
 Strassburg, sculptures at Cathe- 
 dral of, 84. 
 
 Strauss, David Friedrich, 199. 
 Sudermann, Hermann, 137. 
 Suso (Seuse), Heinrich, 64-73. 
 
 Tauler, Johannes, 72-77. 
 Teniers, 124. 
 Theophilus, Play of, 121. 
 Tieck, Ludwig, 165. 
 
 Tolstoi, 69. 
 
 Tours, Mystery Play of, 117. 
 
 Ulrich, Duke of Wurtemberg, 189, 
 
 Valla, Lorenzo, 189. 
 Vienna Easter Play, 124, 125. 
 Virgins, Play of Wise and Foolish, 
 
 122. 
 Voltaire, 170. 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 30, 93. 
 Walther von der Vogelweide, 9- 
 
 19, 83-85, 190. 
 Wilde, Oscar, 137. 
 Wohlgemut, Michael, 139. 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 28-37. 
 Worms, Diet of, 195. 
 
 Zola, 69. 
 Zwingli, 186, 187.
 
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