The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Some time ago, ¹ In these pages, I am reviewing the important book “Idole” by the Viennese writer Rosa Mayreder. This work of art describes the repulsive effect that a young girl experiences as a result of a world view that seeks to determine the relationship between men and women not according to the passions of the soul, but according to the rational, sober principle of racial improvement. According to such a view, the future generation should be decisive for the union of the sexes. In the “Idols”, Dr. Lamaris wants a man to marry only a woman who promises him healthy, strong offspring. The girl at the center of Mayreder's story abhors such a view of life, which puts all the needs of the human soul under the aspect of racial hygiene.

It is interesting that almost simultaneously with this story, another one with a similar theme appeared. In it, the main character is a woman who, through her life experience, has come to the point of view that Dr. Lamaris has formed from his scientific convictions. So we have the complete opposite of the woman that Rosa Mayreder has described.

Helene fell in love with a composer and married him because the storm of passion drove her to do so. She bore him a child, a sick, idiotic child unfit for life. The man soon became unfaithful to his wife with a Russian countess. He ended the broken relationship that his life had brought him to with suicide. The young widow initially lives in complete seclusion. All the ideas that form in her mind are influenced by the unhappy marriage and the existence of the idiot child. She becomes more and more convinced that a social system that fosters such idiotic beings is a reprehensible one. As long as she can believe that medical science will be able to bring the child to his senses, the widow still has some hope. But more and more, this hope is destroyed. And when, after some time, she finds the man who once loved her and whom she gave up for the sake of the composer, the terrible certainty dawns on her soul that the child is incurable, that never a spark of humanity will shine from its stupid, animal eyes. The man she left has preserved her love. She is about to marry for the second time. His attitude and world view can be a guarantee that she will find happiness in a new circle of life. Then she becomes the murderer of her child. She must consider the murder of her child as a duty. Because it can only be a good deed to remove from the world a creature that does not deserve to be called a human being. But for a loving man, marriage with a woman of such a life becomes impossible. He leaves his beloved and seeks oblivion in faraway Japan, where he finds a sphere of activity – far away from the place where he experienced that a woman to whom he is bound by so many ties of the soul is capable of such an abhorrent act.

Another man is contrasted with this young widow. He too feels strongly attracted to her. But he too breaks off all ties between himself and the woman he admires when he learns of her deed. His mind must even approve of this act. But his heart does not allow him to go through life with her.

If we compare Ernst Georgy's story with the much more artistically mature “Idols” by Rosa Mayreder, we see that both works reveal a characteristic symptom of our time. It is remarkable that in both cases a doctor is confronted by two women of such different natures. In the first case, the philosophy of life that makes the duty to one's offspring the guiding principle of one's life is represented by a man, and in his case it is the result of his scientific views. In the second case, the same philosophy is represented by a woman who has been led to it by her experiences.

There is something in the fundamental moral drives of our time that powerfully pushes us towards such a way of life. But there are undoubtedly elements in human nature that say a clear “No” to such views. The doctor, who by virtue of his education is most intimately involved with the physical aspects of life, is most easily led to this point of view. The woman who seeks the guiding principles of life in the depths of her emotional life will most easily be repelled by it. Life must be cruel to the woman if it leads her to it. Ernst Georgy describes such a cruel life. And the author also makes the character of the woman portrayed highly credible in terms of her actions. Through a merciless logic of facts, but also through a keenly developed inclination towards all that is well-formed, healthy and perfect, Helene becomes a child murderer. The forces in the human soul that contradict the ethical views that have developed in her are shown to us by Georgy in the very doctor whose humane character must turn away from this woman. These are the same forces that are at work in the girl of the “idols” and that cause her to recoil from Doctor Lamaris' principles.

It is clearly visible how, in our time, the eyes of all are truly opening to the contemplation of life. For hand in hand with such an unbiased view must go the perception of the opposites of existence. A relationship to the world, such as the Christian one, will seek an artificial reconciliation of these opposites. It builds an ideal realm of harmony above the real realm of opposites. But life does not take place in harmony, but in these opposites themselves. And anyone who wants to erect a harmonious ideal world as the superstructure of life, once and for all, is shrouding humanity in a deceptive fog. For life cannot overcome its contradictions at once; rather, it is itself a continuous, never-ending attempt at overcoming, and the contradictions always arise again and again, even when they seem to have been overcome.

In this sense, Ernst Georgy's story is a product of the new world view. Christianity and the ideal of humanity are pitted against a woman's view of the world, which is aimed at redeeming the world from everything that is incapable of living. Anyone who can gain an interest in this battle between two life-opposing forces that are deeply rooted in the essence of the modern soul will read the book with excitement.

• 1. Ernst Georgy: Die Erlöserin. Berlin 1898. In this issue we are also publishing a novella by the same author. Cf. column 306 [“Magazin für Literatur” No. 12, 24 March 1900].

I had come from a protest rally against the “Lex Heinze”. ¹ I had heard a series of speeches - excellent speeches - against this most savage outgrowth of a reactionary mindset. It is an extremely embarrassing feeling that a person who really lives in the questions and doubts of the present brings home from such gatherings. The judgments that are pronounced there are something so self-evident for such contemporary people that one always has the feeling that the men who speak there descend deeply by uttering such things. The intellectual paucity of the personalities who challenge these judgments is so great that one feels one's soul is being contaminated by dirt if one seriously refutes them. So it was after attending such a meeting that I picked up Carl Hauptmann's “Diary”. It was then that I realized how enormous the gulf is between the struggle that a repugnant current of the times forces upon us and the ideas and feelings that occupy our best minds when they are alone with themselves. For this book gives us an account of such ideas and feelings. One of those who pursue the great problems that bled Friedrich Nietzsche's noble soul dry is Carl Hauptmann. A book that exudes the rarified air of contemporary culture. Nothing seems more inappropriate to me than to write a “review” in the usual sense of the word about such a book. Any judgment about individual aspects, or even about the whole, must cease when the personality reveals itself to us from such depths of the soul. All one can do is to say what such a personality triggers in the reader's own soul. I will therefore say nothing about the book. However, I would like to share a few thoughts that often cross my mind and which I am particularly vividly reminded of after reading this “diary”. An elite of the educated is working today on a new design for our view of life, both in terms of science, religion and art. Everyone is doing their part. What emerges from this will determine our actions. The cultivation of knowledge, truth and artistic views can be the content of common endeavors. It will then automatically result in a common ethic in many things. Let everyone openly state what he knows, let him bring to the public plan what he has achieved; in short, let him express himself in every direction: then he will be more to the whole than if he pretends to be able to tell it how it should behave. Many of our contemporaries are finally tired of the talk about what we should and should not do. They demand insight into the workings of the world. If they have that, then they also know how to behave in the world they have recognized. And anyone who does not have this insight and yet approaches them with their good teachings for our actions is considered a moral sophist. Our task within humanity simply arises from our realization of the essence of the part of humanity to which we belong. For those who recognize the truth of these sentences, efforts aimed at a common ethic are considered unfashionable and backward.

We have much more important things to do than to think about how we should relate to the old religions. Our whole life is in a state of transition because our old views no longer satisfy modern consciousness. We are once again suffering from the great questions of knowledge and the highest artistic problems. The old has become rotten. And when the great solution is found, which many people will be able to believe in for a time, when the new gospel is there, then, as always in such cases, the new moral code will also arise as a necessary consequence. New world views automatically give rise to new moral teachings. A new truth is always the creator of a new moral code. We have no need of popular educators who have much for our hearts but nothing for our heads. The heart follows the head if the latter has a certain direction.

In our time, with its predominantly practical, material tendencies, a certain slackness has crept in with regard to questions of knowledge. The lively interest in questions of knowledge and truth has died in many people. It is therefore convenient for them to be able to make themselves comfortable on the couch of a generally human moral doctrine. What they think about is not inhibited by the stereotyped morality. They do not know the torments of the thinker, nor those of the artist. At least not those who would like to work so hard today to improve our ethical culture. For those who have an ideal life within themselves, who want to move forward in the spiritual realm, the path must be clear and open, not blocked by moral prescriptions and measures of national education. To repeat a frequently used phrase, everyone must be able to find their own way to happiness. It is not only the ideas of moralization that spring from reactionary minds that stand in our way today, but also the moral endeavors of the so-called “liberals”.

Goethe said that he wanted to know nothing of liberal ideas, that only attitudes and feelings could be liberal. When I once quoted this view of the great poet to a sworn liberal, he was soon finished with his judgment: it was just one of the many weaknesses that Goethe had. To me, however, it seems like one of the many views that Goethe shared with all people who energetically engage in intellectual activity: the ruthless advocacy of what is recognized and seen through as true, which is also associated with the highest respect for the individuality of others. Only those who are something themselves can recognize others who are also something. The average person, who wants to be everything and therefore nothing, demands the same nonentities next to his own. Those who live according to a template also want to shape others according to it. That is why all people who have something to say are also interested in others. But those who actually have nothing to say speak of tolerance and liberalism. But they mean nothing more by it than that a general home should be created for everything insignificant and shallow. They should not count on those who have tasks in the world. For these it is hurtful to be expected to bow under the yoke of some generalization, whether it be a general artistic norm or a general morality. They want to be free, to have free movement of their individuality. The rejection of all norms is the very main feature of modern consciousness. Kant's principle: Live in such a way that the maxim of your actions can become generally valid, has been dismissed. In its place must come: Live in a way that best suits your inner being; live yourself out completely, without holding anything back. It is precisely when each individual gives the whole what only he can give, and no one else, that he does the most for it. Kant's principle, however, demands that everyone perform what they can do equally well. But a true human being is not interested in that. For a “free mind” of the present, who thinks in this sense, a book like that of Carl Hauptmann is an attractive reading, a book in which he should not believe, but through which he should look at a personality.

• 1. Carl Hauptmann: Aus meinem Tagebuch. Berlin 1900, S. Fischers Verlag.

“Be true to yourself” ¹ is an often-heard moral demand. It seems to be the same with it as with many other moral demands. They cannot stand up to the scrutinizing gaze of the psychologist. The human soul goes its own way, guided by the great eternal laws of the natural universe, like a flower growing without caring about ethics or moral ideas. One person remains “true to himself”. He is often called a person of character, of principles. The psychologist smiles at this. He knows that it is the rigidity of immutable laws, not free will, that makes people turn back at the threshold, where they could pass from the old to a new path of life. Another is criticized by moralists as being without character, fickle, without “inner support”. The psychologist smiles again. He is not interested in the bare fact of the change, it is not enough for him to know that “this person has become unfaithful to his nature”. He searches for the reasons that have caused the change.

In such research, what is called the “unity of consciousness” usually appears to us as a very questionable thing. Much more often than one would like to assume, the Faustian saying proves true: Two souls live in my breast! And it is not uncommon for there to be moments in life when these two souls wage their significant battles, the battles that imprint their mysterious signature on human existence. What we are is usually the result of such a battle. When I meet someone and let their face speak to me, I usually believe I see a double face. One bears the features of the existence that the person really lives, and hidden within these features, others peer out: a second physiognomy. It speaks of another self. Of one that the person has lost in the struggle of life, that he has fought down on the thresholds where the important existential battles take place. Or it may be that it has remained suppressed, that it speaks only as a faint memory of what man might have become. Often there is only a slight preponderance of one of the two forces over the other, on that threshold where one power pushes us forward into new areas or pushes us back into the old sphere of life. At this point, chance collides with eternal necessity. But it is in this clash that life lies. An eternal contradiction. It had to happen like this, says the adherent of absolute necessity. And who could deny him? And if it had happened differently, then this adherent of absolute necessity would have come along and shown that it had to happen like this. Everything has to happen as it happens. Everything can also turn out differently. The mystery of life can be understood, but existence does not give up its freedom for the sake of its comprehensibility. When man stands “on the threshold”, the eternal contradiction approaches him: chance, necessity, necessity that is chance. I hold in higher esteem the wisdom that honors “chance” than that which ponders an eternal providence. We could understand an eternal providence in every single one of its steps, if need be. Chance leaves something to our amazement. It alone lends life its mystery.

The sketches by Anselm Heine tell of the secrets “on the threshold” of life. The problem that speaks to us in all these stories is multifaceted. We are presented with the girl who, according to modern views, has the social freedom to choose her own path in life, but who is in conflict with the inherited feelings that social constraints have placed in her. We are told of the man who could be happy with the woman he loves if he could overcome the prejudice that a woman should not be the person who provides the material basis of life through her earnings. We meet a man who is to be drawn out of his life by overzealous friends and into the career of an artist, but who turns back “on the threshold” because his original nature breaks through. Ten stories with this problem confront us. Anselm Heine seeks with the finest psychological tact the thin threads on which “on the threshold” the important decisions hang. How aptly he describes the fate of girls who have been given freedom by the new social ideas, but who still feel dependent on their old inheritance: “They stand defenceless in the unfamiliar breath of life, until the modest beauty of their being is twisted and hardened into deformity. Longingly, they sneak past the outer walls of their prison, hoping that someone will take pity on them and let them back into their old life of unpretentiousness, but in vain, for they are compelled to freedom – by the new conscience of the others. The doors have been opened to them – now they are condemned to freedom. Yes, out. Relentlessly pushed out, even the tender ones who need dependence for their own good.»

The story of “Fräulein Bertha” is deeply moving. Here it is not a second self that makes it impossible for the first to cross “the threshold”; here it is physical nature that blocks the passage of the spiritual. Bertha is a born actress in the truest sense of the word. An ugly hump forces her to waste her genius, which was created for the art of the stage, on a miserable existence as a dramatic teacher. The fleeting acquaintance with an important actor, which took place under romantic circumstances, allows her to feel an indescribable happiness for a brief moment, a happiness that would have to accompany her throughout her entire existence if her beautiful soul were to dwell in a beautiful body. From her lips we hear the expression for her hotly desired and at the same time resigned feeling of happiness: “My days would have seeped away grey and monotonous, like those of a thousand others! But then came longing - and then came love - then came pain - and all of this together is happiness!” - She is a martyr of talent, a “heroine of renunciation”.

In Anselm Heine's style, the meaningfulness of the problems is fully realized. A meaningful simplicity characterizes this style and a calmness that shows that the author has come to terms with his questions and doubts. He faces them with the confident feeling of the owner who has long since passed the stages of appropriation. I would like to give just a small sample of this style. Franziska Grothus, who has crossed the threshold by having her music teacher arouse her passion for love to the point of frenzy, is portrayed in her being before the moment of great significance: “She is the daughter of a government official. Her parents had a house in the provinces where lawyers, officers and the occasional more worldly scholar would gather, so that it was easy for the daughters to find suitable partners in their own social circle. In the midst of this normal world, something abnormal had developed, namely Franziska's singing voice, which was a phenomenon in its beauty and richness. Her parents, who abhorred anything out of the ordinary, were long unable to bring themselves to fulfill the obligations that this uninvited gift from the fairy godmother imposed on them. Only when Franziska had turned twenty and still had not become engaged did they take her to the capital city, where she was to be educated, properly educated by a great authority who was not available in their own town. Whether the daughter would actually come out later could still be decided. In any case, she was entrusted to a respectable family boarding school and traveled daily to the idyllic cottage where Master Felix Viktor Grell lived with his small family."

Completely sweetly mature: this is the word I would like to apply to this style, and to Anselm Heine's entire narrative art in general. We are dealing with a distinguished artistic nature that allows us to see the storm of life only in the serene calm of poetic contemplation.

• 1. On the Threshold. Studies and Stories by Anselm Heine. Berlin. Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel 1900.

One of the most remarkable descriptions of the human soul was provided by the English poet Richard Jefferies, who died in 1887, in his book “The Story of My Heart”. How can I process all the impressions and experiences within me in such a way that the powers of my soul are constantly growing? How can I transform all the pains and joys of existence within me in such a way that the life of my spirit becomes ever richer? Jefferies spent most of his life pondering these questions. Anyone who follows Ludwig Jacobowski's career as a poet will find that a similar basic drive can be observed in it. From his first appearance, with the collection of poems “Aus bewegten Stunden” (1889), to his last works, “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (1898) and “Leuchtende Tage. Neue Gedichte” (1900), a passionate struggle to increase his mental powers and to grow his inner life can be seen in his development. Goethe once said to Eckermann: “In poetry, only the truly great and pure is beneficial, which in turn stands like a second nature and either lifts us up to it or spurns us.” Jacobowski felt himself to be both lifted up and spurned when he published his first poems at the age of twenty. “Kontraste” (Contrasts) is the first subtitle of this collection. Dissonances resound from the depths of his soul; he anxiously measures his strength against the ideals he dreams of. He is not one of those personalities who, as mere observers, let world events affect them as if they were not involved themselves. From his very own personal destiny, the destiny of all humanity presents itself to him. The experiences of his mind become symbols of the great struggles that humanity fights to balance the contradictions of life.

From the pain and deprivation of his emotional world, Jacobowski grew the courage of his will, which led him to feel a special joy in overcoming life. In his novel “Werther, the Jew” (1892) and his drama “Diyab, the Fool” (1895), the poet presents us with the true stepchildren of existence. Leo Wolff, the Jewish student at the center of the novel's plot, and Diyab, the son of the sheikh, are in similar situations in life, but they have different strengths of willpower, which nature has given them. In Wolff's case, a delicate and sensitive heart is confronted with a weak will, while in Diyab's case it is confronted with a strong will. This makes the former the loser and the latter the winner. Ludwig Jacobowski's psychological powers of observation can only be properly appreciated if it is taken into account that his aim is to show the influence that life has on a person's will. Wolff can only contrast his idealistic sensibilities and his lofty mind with the world; he is crushed by its wheels. Diyab is a man of will. To the extent that his heart is wounded, his will gains strength.

Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's financial speculations cost the teacher of his son, whom he adores, his fortune. The passion that he feels for the teacher's wife makes Wolff a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, it has a destructive effect on his beautiful love affair with the child of the people, who seeks release from the torments that her affection for the student has brought her by voluntarily taking her own life. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to guide him through the opposing currents into which life has thrown him, through the confusion into which his passions have thrown him. A genuinely humane spirit alienates him from the people to whom natural ties bind him; at the same time, these natural ties weigh like a lead weight on his life. By birth and by his way of thinking, he is repelled by the world and forced to turn to himself; but in the isolation of his soul he does not find the energy to shape his relationship to life on his own.

What a strong will can achieve in this direction is shown by Jacobowski in “Diyab, the Fool”. The son of the sheik is an outcast because he was born of a white mother. He is exposed to the scorn of his entire environment. But he is not affected by this mockery. He is superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides it from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees stand. There he lies between the grasses deep in the forest, living only for himself. Out there he cultivates his strength to the point where he later becomes the savior of the entire tribe, when those who had insulted him shrink back from the enemy. The strong-willed man put on the mask of a fool in order to be master of his fate. Behind this mask, however, the personality matured that takes revenge for the shameful treatment that she and her mother had to endure, and that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength. The artistic execution is absolutely equal to the train of thought of the two works. Ludwig Jacobowski has an open mind and a broad understanding of the great questions of existence. He is not only able to depict the individual fates of individuals, but also to artistically portray the great interrelationships of cultural development. In “Werther, the Jew”, the experience of the young Jew also symbolically expresses a great historical phase of a people's development. The individual is the representative of a rejuvenating Judaism that is struggling to break free from the prejudices and inherited habits of a tribe and to develop a universal human world view. Jacobowski's symbolizing art is particularly evident in the individual stories in the collection “Satan laughed and other stories” (1898). The first sketch, “Satan laughed”, shows how God takes control of the earth from the devil by creating man, his servant, but how the devil still manages to secure his influence. He catches the woman in his nets. A few characteristic lines are used here to symbolically suggest the demonic powers that lie hidden in human sexuality. The short stories in this collection show how an artist can express life with just a few lines, if these lines are characteristic.

Jacobowski's symbolic style reached its zenith in his book “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (Loki. A God's Novel). The poet personifies the two powers that wage an unceasing battle in every human breast in the form of the battling gods. Goodness, love, patience, gentleness and beauty are on one side; hatred and defiance on the other. Maeterlinck has said that man is in all his parts a mystical accomplice of higher divine beings. Jacobowski seeks these beings in the depths of human nature and describes the eternal struggle between them, the scene of which is our soul. Man has a power within him that does not allow him to rest. When he believes he has found peace, when he thinks he has brought order into his existence, then this power suddenly appears and disturbs peace and order, in order to replace the old with the new and to remind us that the true essence of the world can only exist in perpetual becoming. It is true that within peace and order, good human qualities flourish; but it is equally true that the old good must be destroyed from time to time. Thus the actual driving force of the world appears as evil, which drives good out of its possession. The creative appears as an unwelcome intruder into existence. Jacobowski has contrasted it with the figure of Loki in relation to the Asen. Far from Valhalla, an Asin gave birth to this god. Terrible apparitions announce his entry into the world to the other gods. We do not know the mother or the father. He is a child of the gods' sin. This child grows up in pain and deprivation. The goddesses mistreat him and give him glacial milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat to eat. This being, who has grown up in a sphere of suffering, has one thing that all the other gods do not have: wisdom. Loki sees the future of the other gods. In this course of the “Gods' novel”, the connection between suffering and knowledge is expressed in a symbolic way. The Aesir live in happiness. They do not concern themselves with the driving forces of the world. Only those who are in pain from these driving forces look at them. They think about the reasons for this pain. This opens their spiritual eyes. Loki becomes the destroyer of the realm of the gods. He ruthlessly destroys Balder, the personification of love. He must hate him, because the becoming must always be the enemy of the persisting, of the carefree enjoyment of the moment. And from the ruins of the old realm of Balder, a new one arises, not ruled by Loki, but by a new god of love, Balder's son. The deepest conceivable tragedy lies in the figure of Loki. He is the eternal destroyer, necessary for the good elements to be constantly renewed, the demon of misfortune that happiness needs in order to exist. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, the hatred that is indispensable to the existence of love: that is Loki.

Jacobowski poetically depicts the eternal conflict of world events in this “novel of a god”. All our wisdom cannot solve this conflict. For it is precisely this conflict that sustains life. We are enmeshed in it with our whole being. We recognize that it is there, and we must bow to the fact. Jacobowski also expressed this in the character of Loki. He knows the fate of all the other gods; only his own is unknown to him. Wisdom may recognize the whole world; it cannot see itself through; it can only live itself out, as it is driven by its demons.

Jacobowski's last collection of poems, his “Leuchtende Tage” (Shining Days), appeared shortly after this novel. Between this work and the “Bewegte Stunden” there are two more volumes of poetry: “Funken” (1890) and “Aus Tag und Traum” (1895). These collections are a reflection of all the struggles that led the poet to the high vantage point from which he sang the eternal secrets of the world in “Loki.”

Jacobowski's poetry reveals a beautiful relationship between this poet and nature. He has the ability to find the poetic and meaningful in the simplest things and processes. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not believe that the valuable can only be found in the rare, in the remote charms of existence. He becomes aware of it with every step he takes through life. The most ordinary things take on a poetic form for him.

The great world perspective that is Jacobowski's own also gives him the right view for the poetic representation of social conditions. The poets who seek their material in this area often see only a few steps ahead. Jacobowski's descriptions of big-city life and modern social phenomena grow out of the foundations of a more comprehensive worldview. In this sense, “Der Soldat, Szenen aus der Großstadt” (The Soldier, Scenes from the Big City) is a truly modern creation, in which the experiences of a person are described who is transplanted from the countryside to the big city and is destroyed there by fate. A legend, “The Four Robbers”, expresses a significant moral content in a simple form. This poetry speaks for Jacobowski's healthy imagination, which points everywhere to the ideal forces that hold “the world together at its core”, and yet never leaves the realm of fresh, immediate naturalness.

The collection of short stories by Franz Ferdinand Heitmüller, “Tampete” (Berlin S. Fischers Verlag 1899), published some time ago ¹ contains an artistic pearl. It is the novella “Tampete” that gave the volume its name. A mood poet of great narrative and characterization power has created this small work of art. “Tampete“, this Lower Saxony peasant dance, this German tarantella, lives on in this spirited style; the figures stand before us with deepened passion, like people who are not living out their own lives, but a demonic force that possesses them.”

In his recently published volume, Heitmüller has once again given us such a pearl: the novella “Als der Sommer kam”. This time, however, it is not as if a wild nature were speaking from the soul of a human being; this time it is a soul itself that is presented to us in its most intimate destiny, in lonely struggles: a soul that returns to itself from the alienation into which the world has brought it, that grows from smallness to greatness. Eugenie's child has grown up in the hands of strangers. But she herself must be seen as the virgin girl in her social environment. Only in this way can it be imagined that Arthur, her fiancé, who as a public prosecutor has “obligations to society”, will marry her. So Eugenie lives a life of pretense in the city, in the hope that one day she will be able to live a life of pretense at Arthur's side. Her child, however, whom she has hardly seen, lives far away from her, condemned to be disowned by its mother for the rest of its life. An illness of this child calls the mother to it. She hopes - a fatal illness, because with the child, what Arthur is repeatedly concerned about would be eliminated. A mother's soul, completely subjugated by the violence of social conditions, comes to her child, who is so foreign to her that she mistakes him for a stranger at first. And this mother's soul finds all the motherly love she needs at the sickbed, and with this love she finds herself, as a liberated, as an overcomer and victor. She describes this victory to the doctor of the country town, with whom she has become friends during the child's illness; she talks about how she has become free in the rural solitude, and how she now wants to carry this freedom into the city, where people can never understand such things, but where she wants to defy the lack of understanding. “The fact that I am here among people who are more or less indifferent to me and who are of no concern to me, that I am here, in a strange environment, so to speak, confessing my child, is not so bad after all. But there, in my usual sphere, which is no longer to be mine, it means something. Do you think I want to hide here and be secretive with my happiness? No, I want to proclaim it loudly, to shout it out so that everyone can hear it: look, this is me – the real me – and if they spit at me and I still remain in the calm equilibrium of proud love, then you see, only then do I have a right to myself and to the child whose mother I want to be. I want to be free of people and their rules, and that is why I have to go back to them.»

Heitmüller depicts the complete transformation of a human spirit. And he does so on fifty-two pages that are not too densely printed. But he does so with full inner truth. The poet has clearly encountered a problem that speaks to him in a rare way. He has mastered the entire psychology of this problem. And this psychology is worked out from a mood that is fully in harmony with it. Heitmüller knows how to stylishly interweave the girl's process of liberation with her life in nature. “She had rented a few rooms, far out in a somewhat dilapidated country house on the mountain. She had always seen it with its white-painted walls shining from afar. Like a hope. When she discovered a glass-covered veranda at the back of the house, which led to a spacious garden with old shady trees, she quickly came to an agreement with the owner. - And so they lived their quiet, regular lives... And very slowly, as the germs and budding buds stirred and stretched within her, dreamlike, unconscious, diverse, every day, every hour, ever stronger, swelling, a drunken confusion, until her white soul stood in a thousand glowing blossoms: - very slowly and hesitantly, the ground of the child's soul also began to green and to cover itself with the first shy colorful flowers. And on this soft ground her dreaming love wandered, pulling up the weeds everywhere or breaking a flower that had unfolded overnight, greedily inhaling its weak scent – shyly, trembling, dazed. Here and there she bent and cut back the overhanging branches, she drove away the shadow and let in the light, so that the other many buds that were peeping out everywhere from the light green lawn could also develop and unfold in full strength. And the light came from everywhere, for love has a hundred busy hands that never tire of bending aside leaf after leaf so that the sun can shine through...» This is how someone who has the finest sensitivity to the wonderful harmony that exists between the life of nature and the struggling human soul describes it. Who has a lively feeling for how deeply symbolically the human mind's desire for freedom is silently hinted at in the creations of the outside world, and how in the human heart the growth and blossoming, the germination and budding of nature is transformed into the language of the spirit.

I am less satisfied with the first novella in the book: “The Treasure in Heaven”. What Heitmüller achieved so perfectly in “When Summer Came” was to find the right style for his subject: in this novella, he has probably gone wrong. This farmer, who is so clumsily and comically deceived by Resi, the farmer's daughter, is a magnificent character, but he should be drawn with a sharp sense of humor, and we should not have the impression that the lines, which as caricatures we might well like, are being offered to us with complete seriousness. The poet does indeed make attempts at a humorous style throughout. However, it seems to me that the tone of humor does not really venture out. And so we have to accept that Resi deceives the Gaisdorffer farmer, that his deceased daughter writes him letters from heaven asking for loans, that the farmer believes this and really gives his money to help his daughter in heaven find her bridegroom. But Resi, the good girl, wants to use the money to buy herself a very earthly bridegroom, Wastl. The “pious girl” even manages to persuade the farmer that her and Wastl's little offspring is actually the Gaisdorffer farmer's grandchild. Crescence, the deceased daughter, who is still so in need of money in death, brought her the child. The farmer finally marries the “pious girl” with the child that fell from heaven. Wastl goes out into the big wide world, falls in love with someone else, and not without first spending the money that Resi has swindled from the farmer for heavenly purposes.

Heitmüller's skill at drawing simple, undifferentiated people, which we know from “Tampete”, is also evident here. None of these characters, except for the Gaisdorffer farmer himself, has suffered from the mistake of style.

I again place the last novella of the collection, “Abt David”, much higher. Here Heitmüller, the sympathetic poet of mood, lives out fully. Therefore, we are happy to overlook the fact that the idea of the story remains too pale, too abstract. David von Winkelsheim is a real abbot from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With a priestly attitude in which Catholic principles have become completely habitual, he combines a fine sense of art. He decorates his monastery with treasures of beauty, where praying and reading the mass are only done out of old tradition, but precisely and dutifully. With delicate sensitivity, the poet depicts how a general trend of the times is reflected in a small corner of the world. His abbot reflects the attitude of many Catholic priests of the time in which the novella is set. The worldly desires and passions that must be silenced in the soul of a priest take the form of artistic longing in David. And in a meaningful contrast to the abbot stands his brother, the man of the world of that time, who brings the adventurous Johanna, the artist in men's clothing, to him so that she can decorate the monastery with works of art. The abbot sees in Johanna only the artist, but the brother loves her as a woman. And when she finds death in the floods of the Rhine, the full contrast between the natures of the two brothers is revealed. Wolf von Winkelsheim – that is David's brother's name – describes this contrast: “At the time when she lost her father so suddenly in Florence, when she had to return home alone, she may well have had the adventurous idea. Dressed as a man, she could better protect herself from the dangers of the streets and the menfolk. But I know all about that, and the morning we broke in here, it was clear to me that there was a woman in those trousers. But I went along with the pious deception – of course! To finally get rid of my promise to give him the paintings. The brother got what he wanted too, he has his pictures, and his “Herr Johannes” lives on with him and can never die. But I have lost “Frau Johanna” - I paid too much for the pictures.” The poet brings this anecdote to life in such a way that he depicts it as it comes alive in him during a stay in the old monastery, which was secularized around 1529, while he rummages through the archives. In the drawing of the monastery and the nature in which it is set, we encounter Heitmüller's beautiful atmospheric painting again. Those with a sense for genuine poetic novella will follow Heitmüller's stories with heartfelt joy.

• 1. Franz Ferdinand Heitmüller: Der Schatz im Himmel. Novelle. Berlin S. Fischers Verlag, 1900.

Erected by Eugen Reichel in Memory of Gottsched

I

A book ¹ to stir up the minds lies before us. Eugen Reichel has undertaken to redraw the picture of his East Prussian compatriot Gottsched. He considers the image that the world has created of this man to be a distorted one. “The Germans think they know Gottsched; they imagine that they have judged him exhaustively when they repeat what his opponents and their short-sighted or frivolous epigones have said, namely that he was a schoolmaster who, although he may have striven for the good with inadequate strength , but a narrow-minded, conceited schoolmaster who was completely out of touch with life, art and poetry and who knew how to talk eloquently about literature when we still had no literature of our own.» With the boldest courage of thought, Reichel contrasts this judgment with his own, that Gottsched was “not only not a narrow-minded schoolmaster, but rather a thinker and poet who was at the height of life, far ahead of his contemporaries, who were floundering far below him in powerlessness and intellectual narrow-mindedness; a revolutionary in all areas of intellectual life, a courageous fighter, equipped with the sharpest intellectual weapons, against the rigid, dead formalism that prevailed around him in art and literature, in the pulpits and lecture halls, in the schools and intellectual salons; a bold, far-sighted representative of free thought, free research and free speech.» As you can see, this is a re-evaluation on a grand scale!

From: “Ludwig Jacobowski in the Light of Life”

A deep insight into human nature prompted Ludwig Feuerbach to make the significant statement: “God is the manifest inner being, the expressed self of man, the confession of his innermost thoughts, the public confession of his love”. It is the trait in the human soul that this sentence describes that led Ludwig Jacobowski to write the “Novel of a God” when he wanted to portray the dark forces that rule at the bottom of the mind. In doing so, he set himself a task that naturalistic art is bound to fail in. All the individual actions, moods and thoughts of a person seem to point to a struggle in his soul that accompanies him from the moment he becomes conscious until his death. No matter what course the individual events that bring a person to life take, the fundamental struggle always arises anew. It is impossible to depict this struggle in all its magnitude, in its overwhelming scope, if one limits oneself to the reproduction of real facts and real human characters. One would then only be able to show symptoms of this struggle. A personality like Ludwig Jacobowski had to feel this way. For him, it was a matter of constantly deepening his inner life. He wanted to descend into the deepest pits of his own inner being. There he had to encounter the two fundamental forces of the mind that pull people back and forth and mysteriously determine their fate. The one force contains: kindness, love, patience, benevolence, beauty, the other: hatred, hostility, savagery, ugliness, resentment. Anyone who is honest with themselves must admit that there is something of all these elements within them. And the course of world history shows a demonic war that these forces wage, as they emerge from the breast of the individual and guide the destinies of people and nations. The imagination of the poet must go beyond reality if it is to depict the eternal struggle of these powers. From the Nordic pantheon, Ludwig Jacobowski took the superhuman figures he needed to portray the primal demons of the human soul. But the characters that the Nordic sagas had invested in their deities were no more than a starting point for him. He freely developed them in such a way that he could say how modern man feels about the primal struggle that is hinted at.

Balder, the mildness and beauty that has become a god, and Loki, the friend of destruction, are the mythological figures through which Jacobowski was able to express his thoughts poetically. Their fates within the Nordic world of gods became the “apparent inner self” in his novel, the “expressed self of man”. One must point out two main characteristics of Jacobowski as a person if one wants to understand why he was so successful as a poet in his “Loki”: one, the power of plastic creation, and the other, an enchanting lyrical swing. To a great extent, the poet has solved the task of creating mere soul forces so that they do not appear as shadowy allegories, but rather as vivid personalities. This fact is understandable when one knows that these powers of the soul truly detached themselves from his inner being like independent personalities, like demonic entities, and always accompanied him. They played such a role in his life that he felt them like figures that guided him, with whom he held dialogues, and even with whom he fought. And this struggle was so intense that it confused all his feelings, that it stirred up all his passions. The latter circumstance explains the subjective element with which he describes and which naturally sought a lyrical form of expression.

Human nature has within it both the element of selfless devotion and ruthless selfishness. The love of which Goethe says: “No self-love, no self-interest lasts, before its coming they have shrunk away, we call it being pious,” this love has to fight a difficult battle against selfishness, which also appropriates love, according to the words of Max Stirner: “I love people because love makes me happy.” I love because I feel good when I love. In human life, good is followed by evil as a necessary complement. Balder, the all-embracing love, the sun of existence, cannot exist without Loki, selfishness, darkness. Life must proceed in opposites.

It does not seem easy to portray Loki as a sympathetic character. Can one feel sympathy for selfishness, for the desire to destroy? Jacobowski was able to show Loki's character in a sympathetic light, because he knew that good is not only good, but also finite, limited in its goodness. However, the source of the world holds infinite possibilities. A Balder must not seize power. He may spread an immeasurable abundance of good; he must not settle permanently. He must give way to a subsequent Balder who brings new good. One may lament the downfall of good, for one must feel this downfall as an injustice. But this injustice must happen. A power is necessary that destroys good so that new good can arise. The new good needs the destroyer to come into being. Balder needs Loki. And Loki, like the best of gods, can lament that he has to kill Balder; but he kills him out of necessity, and in doing so prepares the way for Balder's son. This is the deeply tragic aspect that Jacobowski has brought out in the character of Loki. It is Loki's fate to be bad, so that new good can always enter the world.

Thus Jacobowski's “Loki” has grown out of a philosophical view of life. And just as a philosophical understanding of life cannot harm man in his full, all-round activity, so the “Novel of a God” is not impaired in its poetic value by the fact that it is steeped in a world of philosophical ideas. Robert Hamerling said of his “Ahasver”: “Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating the crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life – that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver.” And this is how Jacobowski imagined the character of his Loki. The overarching, superior nature of the philosophical ideas gives the constantly plastic characters and the vividly described events of the poem the character of a higher reality, without robbing them of the ordinary one.

One night, the Ases are terrorized by a terrible dream. Things never seen before are happening in the sky. Odin, the father of the gods, is awakened from his sleep. He sees his wife Frigg's bed unoccupied. Black mist rises from the bed. When the Ase rises to look for his wife, she is lying there with drops of sweat on her forehead and breathing heavily, as if she had just returned from a long journey. The other Ase experience similar things. In the morning they share their strange experiences with each other. Only Urd, the goddess of fate, can know what the mysterious events mean. But she cannot be asked, for her mouth only speaks when she is not asked. Urd's messenger, the black mountain falcon, announces that an Aesir child has been born this night. The mother is an Aesir, but Urd does not know who. Nor does she know who the father is. The Aesir women should take turns in nursing the child. It should be called “Loki”. Thus a being is placed in the world of the gods, sprung from it itself, but as a child of sin, the sin of the gods.

High up in the north, far from Valhalla, this child of sin grows up. Frigg, Odin's wife, has made a bed for him in a hut. And every day an Asin has to go to the distant hut to look after the little god. When Frigg was with him for the first time, the child smiled sweetly. But the goddess beats the boy. He learns to forget how to laugh. All the Asinnen mistreat the uncomfortable offspring of the gods. He is fed with glacier milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat. He is to atone for his sinful origin. This origin has made him an enemy of the entire world of gods. Through their treatment, the Asinnen plant the hostile attitude in him.

Soon they no longer bother about the boy. An elven old woman, Sigyn, continues to care for him in a motherly way. He grows up under her protection. He becomes a strong, serious being. The Asinnen have driven all cheerfulness out of him. He has to work hard to gain food from the earth. This is a mystery to him, and he asks Sigyn whether all beings have to create the bread of life in the sweat of their brow. The old woman's reply encompasses the feelings of all those who are burdened and weighed down, the anxious question that the disinherited must ask themselves at all times: “O wise world of the Ases! Some walk above the air and the sun, reaching into the lovely air to the right and to the left and grasping firm fruits and heavy stalks. And the others crawl laboriously over chasms and cliffs; and their hands tear at the rough earth, empty and only moist from their own sweat.” The god of the disinherited must therefore become Loki, and his feelings towards the other Ases are those of the joyless life burdened with toil towards the effortless, joy-producing happiness.

Loki sets out to meet the beings of his own kind who live in the sun of happiness. When he enters their circle, it becomes clear that he possesses something that they all have to do without, something that the one burdened with pain has over the one who enjoys undeserved happiness: true, supreme wisdom. Loki knows the future of the other gods, which remains hidden from them.

The happy man lives in the eternal present. He enjoys the moment, and it is far from his mind to ponder the causes that bring him the happiness of the moment. The one who is pained by the wheels of the world's course asks about their eternal play. From these questions, he gains insight into the course of things. Wisdom is born out of pain and privation. It makes one strong and hard against carefree dullness. Goethe once called (according to “Riemers Mitteilungen”) “dullness” the “beautiful, magical veil that places nature and truth in a more secret light”, and in the poem “To Fate” he praises this “dullness” with the words: “You have met the right measure for us, wrapped us in pure dullness, so that we, filled with the power of life, hope in the lovely presence of the dear future.” But Goethe also found a guiding principle for the other side of life: “Only he who must conquer it daily deserves freedom as well as life” (“Faust”, Part 2). Loki's life had to be conquered by himself from the very beginning. The path to wisdom leads through pain. That is why he also robs those who walk it of selfless love. Those who have not earned their fate through pain can give themselves selflessly. Those who have acquired their own through pain are all too easily reminded of their own suffering by the carefree happy. This is the case with Loki. He does not know love that is born of dull happiness. This love, which comes from the realm of the gods' joy, lives in Balder. But even the connoisseur of pain cannot close his mind to the power of this love. He must recognize its value. Loki trembles before this love, which he must appreciate, despite the fact that fate has denied it to him. He must confront Balder as an enemy; but he can only do so with the bitter feeling that he is fighting something great. The wisdom that comes from pain must thus give birth to new pain.

Why must the knowing Loki hate Balder, who lives in sweet ignorance but is full of love? Loki's wisdom ends before this question. For Loki's own fate is wrapped up in the answer to this question. And this fate of his is as unknown to him as it is to the other gods, but he sees through it with clairvoyance. What is destined for the other deities is open to his wisdom; what the dark powers have in store for him, this wisdom stops short of.

That is the fate of knowledge: it creates a new riddle by solving other riddles. But with happiness it robs us of our impartiality. That is why the happy believe that knowledge can only come from sin. Balder and Loki are always fighting in our soul. We could be completely happy if we were just pleasure-seekers. But then we would have no judgment of our happiness. We would have a joyful life, but one that would be like a dream. It is only through deprivation and misfortune that we learn what happiness is. But at the same time, they rob us of happiness along with insight.

It is a deep feature of Jacobowski's poetry that only two beings love Loki: Balder, the epitome of all happiness, and Sigyn, the elven old woman. Balder can do so because he does not know hatred, and Sigyn because she does not demand requited love. In the saga, Sigyn is a loving wife who naturally wants to be loved in return. In Jacobowski's poetry, she is a being who looks at the world and its happiness with sublime irony. She is equally distant from and close to Sigyn's hatred and love, because for her they are in the distance to which wisdom has pushed her. She is concerned that undeserved happiness should not become overpowering. That is why she cherishes and cares for the advocate of the disinherited in Loki.

The fight for a mere principle could not carry us away as Jacobowski's novel does. This fight would have to have something frosty about it if Loki were the opponent of the gods, just because he is supposed to represent the negating powers within the world plan. Loki does not fight alone for a general cause; he also fights for his own cause. Balder deprives him of the most beloved, the adored woman. And it is precisely from this personal misfortune of Loki that Balder's happiness springs. That Nanna becomes Balder's wife, not Loki's, completes the latter's happiness and thus that of the other Ases. “Nanna and Balder... These two names made the gods of Valhalla tremble with delight. Light came to light, sun to sun, and the love of the two shielded the glorious world of the gods from the fiends of darkness and the giants in icy Jötumheim better than enormous walls of rock and iron. Their name was like a shimmering breastplate and a deep-sounding shield. Misfortune struck against it, but the armor shone on, and the shield sounded deep, as if the blow had been struck with a light willow wand.»

The gods not only enjoy their undeserved luck, they have also stolen Loki's luck. This gives his opponents a personal coloration and personal right. The weaknesses in the lives and characters of the gods, the imperfections in the world they control: Loki uses everything to make life difficult for the Ases. “Loki's Pranks” describes the war of destruction that he wages against his divine enemies. Odin and Thor's way of life is thwarted by these pranks, so that divine omnipotence and strength must give way before the scorn that the wisdom disguised as cunning pours over them. Loki destroys the institutions in the human realm that the gods look upon with favor, indeed, on which they live: he does so with superior mockery. He protects the oppressed; he shakes the slaves from their stupor, so that the “holy”, the “divine” world order betrays its imperfection. The power of the gods over the children of earth is shattered by Loki's cleverness. He brings shame to the realm of the gods itself. Freya, the most beautiful of the Ases, loves the enemy of the Ases. It is precisely this love that Loki uses to bring the bitterest scorn upon Valhalla. He becomes the devil; he has Freya's love exposed by ugly dwarves.

The wildest of Loki's works is the destruction of Baldur and the realm in which only those people live who live according to Baldur's sense. It is the kingdom of a people “in which never a fist was raised against a foreign head, never a lewd word was attached to a maiden's footsteps, like dirty sand to wet heels, never a red gold ring or a brownish amber necklace awakened impure desire. There the stalks shot freely into the air, and clouds and winds, rain and sun, pressed to the mercy of being able to spread their abundance of blessings over Balders land. In the illuminated air, the noblemen strode along, their stately heads proudly raised, their golden locks cascading over their broad shoulders; and their wives walked beside them, their foreheads clear and calm, their gentleness softly illuminated by their eyes.” Loki brings ruin to this land. For everything that reminds people of Balder and his being is to be destroyed. Loki leads the people of the land, where hunger reigns, against the noblemen in Balders territory. The sons of Balders fall under the mighty blows of the oppressed. A dog is placed on Balders throne. “The noblemen bow their heads low before the snarling animal, one after the other, their faces white as linen in the field when the early sun licks over it. Then the women approach. The bright golden hair falls from their round heads and piles up next to the throne, then children again, wailing and weeping over the shame, and they rub their foreheads bloody on the ground out of shame."

With that, Loki has fulfilled his task. Balder and all that belongs to him has been overcome. The other Aesir have also followed Balder into the realm of the dead. But Loki cannot remain the victor. A youth steps out from among the sons of Balder, who are paying homage to the beast. The beast pushes itself down from the throne, glides to the ground and licks the youth's foot. Loki must confess: “Woe to you and to me. This is Balders son. The Lord and King!”... Far out Loki threw himself “into the field, so that his head struck against stones. But he did not pay attention to it. He cried incessantly: “This is Balders son! Balder is not dead! Balder lives, ... eternally like me ..., stronger than me ..., Balder, the sun son! ... Woe to me! ...

Thus the “Novel of a God” ends in the great mystery of the world, which encloses existence and becoming in a riddle. The creative is eternal. And the creative eternally produces its counterpart: destruction. We humans are enmeshed in this course of the world. We live the world's riddle. The creative is eternally right, and so is destruction. Balder and Loki belong together like creation and destruction. Creation is an usurper. But it is its fate that it must have destruction at its side. Balder needs Loki; and Loki must be evil so that new Balders can always arise in the eternal game of the world.

Jacobowski has built his poetry on the basis of great questions of world view. Through it, he has shown how deeply he himself has been gripped by the eternal riddles of existence. One must have seen the threatening abyss of life before one in order to have accomplished a rescue attempt such as the “Novel of a God.”

Novel by Emma Böhmer

Dresden and Leipzig, Verlag von Carl Reißner, 1901

The suffering of the young girl, who, contrary to all healthy nature, has to develop within a “correct” family life, is portrayed by Gabriele Reuter in her well-known novel “Aus guter Familie” with consummate psychological skill. The reader of this novel must be stirred to a lively sense of the depth of this problem. But one also senses that the modern question of fate raised here can be posed in more than one way. In her recently published novel “Inkorrekt”, Emma Böhmer has posed this question in a way that is of the greatest interest to observers of modern social conditions. We get to know the author as a serious artist and a keen observer. She describes with a certain lyrical warmth that reveals in every sentence the degree to which she embraces the figures of her imagination. There is a great deal of compositional talent to be recognized in the way Emma Böhmer contrasts the characters with each other. Two sisters develop from a “good family”. One becomes what is expected according to the family's philosophy of life. She meets people as the customs of her class demand; she strives to please men, but only in the correct mask of well-behaved reserve; she only presents herself to people as the daughter of a “well-educated” family, because she only reads scandalous novels in secret and never forgets to put them away safely when she interrupts her reading. She marries as noble daughters marry, so that nothing of the truth of inner life needs to be said in the hypocritical relationship between bride and bridegroom. Her marriage must be one that has two sides, a barren and empty one at home and a correct one towards society. The other sister, the main character of the novel, asserts the inner truth of her being, no matter how often she is forced to hide it within the circle of her proper family. She seeks ways to develop her artistic impulses. She has to do everything in this direction behind her parents' backs, because they can only see all this as a distortion of the true character of a girl. She finds a man who understands her soul's inclinations. If circumstances were favorable, this man would secure a position for himself and then, although he could never find the full sympathy of his parents as a writer, he would at least find “mercy” from them. And even if this were not the case, the two people would force themselves to live a life that meets their needs. But since an accident causes the man's sudden death, the situation takes a turn that, while it illuminates the unnatural environment in which the girl has developed, forces her personality, which is struggling for independence, to achieve complete liberation. She is found with the just-deceased lover. This means a scandal for all her “proper” relatives. She leaves her house and family and sets out on a “lonesome journey” in search of a life in freedom. As in the course of the preceding events, the peculiarities of the characters of the individual members of the “good family” become particularly apparent at the end, when what can only be considered a “scandal” occurs in their eyes. The personalities of the parents, as well as those of the two sisters, form contrasting figures, subtly differentiated by the way in which the character of each is distorted by a stereotyped way of life. The father is particularly interesting, in whose mind the bureaucrat's way of thinking struggles with a good heart in such a way that the reader also experiences a fierce battle of emotions between sympathy for a basically mild and noble person and aversion to a personality that is completely , but inwardly completely unfree personality.

I don't think anyone will put the novel down without the conviction that the author has given them the opportunity to delve into a few human souls in a stimulating way, which are truly worth the interest. The presentation is characterized by artistic brevity. Nothing is said that is not required by the nature of the task at hand. All of these are characteristics that can be considered good omens for the author's future career.

Treatise on the last seven paragraphs of Lessing's Education of the Human Race. Written by Gustav Hauffe.

Awarded a prize by the Aug. Jenny Foundation through the jury of the German Writers' Association in Leipzig. Borna 1891, A. Jahnke

Lessing's “Education of the Human Race” is a treasure trove of profound thoughts. Gideon Spicker has dealt with this best in his book on Lessing's world view. The last seven paragraphs of the “Education” are, as is well known, about metempsychosis, that is, the appearance of the human soul individuality in progressive forms of development on ever higher levels. This book is dedicated to this idea. The first pages (1-27) contain a useful discussion of the main idea as it appears in Lessing. Every reader will be satisfied with the lucidity of these “preliminary remarks”. The writer of these lines has not been as successful with the following content, which weaves together Hauffe's own thoughts on metempsychosis with the sayings of important thinkers and artists of all times, and which completely lacks clarity and comprehensibility. One consequence of this is the countless repetitions of one and the same thought in the most diverse turns of phrase. The content should be limited to a third of the space and the arrangement should be based on the various pages from which the matter has been understood over the course of time. In this case, even the adherents of completely opposing views, to which I count myself, would have to be grateful for the book. A modern thinker will naturally not understand sentences such as the following: “If our inner being is already reflected in our physical appearance in the present, why should we be deprived of this in the future, since we do not lose any of the essential inner conditions, and the external means for this will also be found, according to the future stage of existence?” The educated classes have long since stopped thinking in terms of questions such as “why not?” One could just as easily write the following sentence: “If a plant has the ability to grow and feed itself, why shouldn't it also have a soul?” These are very vague thoughts. Inaccuracies such as those in the note ($. 183) should not occur: “Goethe also says - according to an old philosopher -: ‘No created spirit penetrates the depths of nature.’” With all due respect, this is not what Goethe says, but rather he quotes the sentence as a philistine one, which he “curses for twenty years” (cf. the essay: Freundlicher Zuruf. Weimar Edition, II. Abt., 6. Bd., S. 244ff). Anyone who thinks that this is a Goethe quote has no understanding of Goethe's world view. In other places, too, passages from philosophical writers are quoted that have nothing whatsoever to do with metempsychosis and that are not understood and are taken out of context.

The comedy of manners “Ledige Leute” (Single People), which has been a great success in Vienna, is to be performed in Berlin by the Dramatische Gesellschaft. A public performance cannot take place because it has been forbidden by the police. Felix Dörmann is a Viennese poet with great talent. Years ago, he became known for his collections of poems. He is the poet of a glowing sensuality and wild passion. He has a particular penchant for the morbid and the weak. He is captivated by an unhealthy-looking face; a healthy complexion and full cheeks are anathema to him. He likes to sing the praises of dark circles under the eyes.