The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[The] Workers' Education School Berlin organized a Freiligrath evening at the trade union building on Sunday, 17 February 1901, which was attended by over 1000 people. Dr. Steiner gave the introductory lecture; he had a masterful way of describing the poet's development. Under the impression of the world trade in Amsterdam, where Freiligrath was to train for the merchant class, he first became a poetic writer of exotic subjects, comparable in the intensity of his coloration to Böcklin. Despite the fact that he then took the view that the poet “must stand on a higher vantage point than on the battlements of the party”, over the years he became a fervent poet of freedom for the socially oppressed. He rejected the royal pension that he had received for several years and in 1844, with the contemporary poems Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (A Confession of Faith), he opened the series of his social poems. Although he was acquitted by the jury in 1848 for his involvement in the revolution, he was forced to flee to London when the reactionaries won. There he had to work as a bookkeeper to earn a living for himself and his family, because the publication of his poems and the masterful translation of foreign poetry did not earn him enough. It was only through the amnesty in 1867 that the poet was able to return to Germany. The speaker concluded his lecture by saying that the best way to characterize the greatest poets of the 19th century was to describe Lenau as the poet of melancholy, Heine as the poet of exuberance and Freiligrath as the poet of heroism. Even though Freiligrath said at the end of his life that his social poems no longer had any agitational effect, he was mistaken. His revolutionary songs of freedom still inspire freedom fighters today. And when the great day of liberation dawns, the name of Ferdinand Freiligrath will shine among the poets of freedom in golden letters. The enthusiastic words of the speaker were met with rich applause.

The following numbers of the excellent program also offered great enjoyment. Exact chamber music, recitations of Freiligrath's poems, performed in an excellent, atmospheric way by Mr. Friedrich Moest, and singing performances by Mr. Friedrichs were well-deserved applause from the numerous listeners. The evening was one of the most enjoyable among those organized by the school so far.

[ 79 ] The "Young Germany" and revolutionary poetry around the middle of the century strove for an intimate interpenetration of the general cultural ideas of political interests with artistic creation. The demands of the time found expression in the works of the poets. In the fifties, a literary movement emerged that took a different stance towards art. People now asked less what they wanted to express in poetry; they focused first and foremost on the most perfect way in which a process, an idea, a feeling could be shaped. What must a drama, a novel, a novella and so on be like? These were questions that preoccupied the consciousness of the time. Strict demands were made with regard to the technical perfection of the individual art forms. Two theoretical works by creative poets are clear testimony to this school of thought: Gustav Freytag's "Technik des Dramas" (1863) and Friedrich Spielhagen's "Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans" (1883). All the details of both types of poetry are carefully discussed in these two writings. In the creations of Friedrich Spielhagen, this basic trait of the artistic attitude is particularly clear. This poet has the most lively need to deal with all the questions and ideas that move his time; but the demands of art are more important to him than this. He strives for inner harmony and organic structure in all his works. In his first major novels "Problematische Naturen" (1860), "Durch Nacht zum Licht" (1861), "In Reih und Glied" (1866), "Hammer und Amboß" (1868), this striving for the pure art form still takes a back seat to the social goals that the poet sets himself. It appears at its most pronounced in "Sturmflut" (1876). In the former novels, the aim is to show the contrasts in the views and lifestyles of different classes and social strata or to portray the relationship of the individual to the whole. In these works, Spielhagen's interest in cultural history and his enthusiasm for freedom and progress have an equal share with his artistic intentions. In "Sturmflut", the phenomena of natural and human life are no longer juxtaposed as they appear to direct observation, but as the purpose of art demands. In the past, the poet was concerned with illustrating which currents in life are capable of defeating others; now he is primarily concerned with creating exciting conflicts and satisfying solutions. Spielhagen has remained true to this direction in his work to the present day. "Plattland" (1879), "Uhlenhaus" (1884), "Ein neuer Pharao" (1889), "Sonntagskind" (1893) are poems that still make a significant impression on those who do not take offense at the fact that art is in a certain sense alienated from real life. To an even greater degree than to Spielhagen, the above is applicable to Paul Heyse. He brought the form of the novella to its most mature development. He is a master in the artful interlinking of mental processes and relationships. He knows how to give the simplest conflicts a highly exciting development by giving them unexpected twists and turns. For him, art has become an end in itself. Heyse does not face reality like an impartial observer, but like a gardener of the plant world, who asks himself with every natural species: in what way can I refine it? He succeeds equally well in portraying the immediate life of the present ("Die kleine Mama") and the sensibilities and perceptions of past times ("Frau Alzeyer", Troubadour-Novellen); his tone sounds with perfect beauty, whether it is serious ("Der verlorene Sohn") or humorous ("Der letzte Centaur"). Heyse is not a creative nature in the highest sense of the word, but a perfecter of inherited artistic vision and outlook on life. The novel with which he achieved great success in the seventies, "Children of the World" (1873), grew out of the movement of thought that Hegel's successors (see page 48 ff.) had aroused. How the children of the world, who seek to satisfy their religious needs through the free views of the present, find their way in life is portrayed here by a poet in whom this new faith has taken on a worldly form. A calm, serene beauty is the basic character of this and the following novels by Heyse: "Im Paradiese" (1875), "Der Roman der Stifisdame" (1886), "Merlin" (1892). A luxuriant sensuality that is able to present itself gracefully, a wisdom that gives no thought to the hardships of existence, confront us everywhere in Heyse's creations, especially in his Iyric poems. Dramatic art is not suited to such a way of looking at things. The lively movement that drama needs can only emerge from the essence of a personality that descends deep into the abysses of life. This is why Heyse was unable to make an impression with his numerous dramas. Adolf Wilbrandt and Herman Grimm move along similar lines. Although the former loves powerful motifs and strong passions that unfold in glaring contrasts, he softens them both as a playwright and as a narrator through the softness of his lines and the dull colors. Herman Grimm is a personality whose whole soul is absorbed in aesthetic contemplation. He is only interested in nature and cultural development to the extent that they can be viewed with the judgment formed by art. His novel "Insurmountable Powers" (1867) and his "Novellas" depict reality as if it had been shaped not by the laws of nature but by the educated taste of a world artist. The pursuit of formal beauty reached its peak with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. With him, the external artistic perfection of his creations corresponds to a significant content. His imagination deals with the strong passions and drives of the soul, and he is able to portray personalities on a characteristically drawn historical background. A novel such as "Jürg Jenatsch" (1876) or novellas such as "The Temptation of Pescara" (1887) and "Angela Borgia" (1890) shine a light into the abysses of the soul and are at the same time of sublime beauty. His Iyrian achievements "Ballads" (1867) and "Poems" (1882) were often marred by his imagination, which was always focused on great contrasts. He was all the more able to express himself in the illumination of heroic natures, as can be seen in his poem "Huttens letzte Tage" (1871). The poems of the Austrian Robert Hamerling are also based on similar points of view. He strives for the perfection of formal beauty as well as for a deep understanding of the world. In his "Ahasuerus in Rome" (1866), he contrasts the eternal, restless struggle of striving humanity, which longs for peace and redemption, with the passionate urge to live; in the epic "The King of Sion" (1869), a cultural-historical poem that combines the classical verse form of hexameter with a colorful, glowing style of depiction, he deals with the urge for a humane existence. In the novel "Aspasia" (1876), he seeks to present us with a picture of the Greek world, drunk with beauty and full of life, and in "Homunculus" (1888) he castigates the excesses of his time in a grotesque manner. His poetry presents itself less as that of a directly feeling poet and more as that of a contemplative, pathetic poet. A pessimistic streak runs through Hamerling's entire oeuvre. The poetry of Hieronymus Lorm (Heinrich Landesmann) is completely dominated by such a world-wearied mood. He combines the ability of a witty feuilletonist with that of an interesting storyteller and a moving lyricist. A hard personal fate has given his gloomy world view an individual character.

[ 80 ] While poets such as Spielhagen, Grimm, Meyer, Heyse and Hamerling differ from the naive view only in their artistic treatment, this is also the case with Hermann Lingg, Felix Dahn and Georg Ebers with regard to the subject matter of their works. In addition to their impulsive imagination, the traditional artistic education of the latter also played a part in their work, while in the latter the learned culture of their time also played a role. In his epic poem "Die Völkerwanderung" (1866-68), Lingg incorporates a wealth of historical ideas and scientific insights, and the tendency towards historical images is also noticeable in his poetry. Felix Dahn searched for content for his poetry in Germanic prehistory and in the events of the migration of peoples, Georg Ebers in the ancient Egyptian world. Neither the one nor the other can deny that arduous study is one of the roots of their works. Dahn's "Kampf um Rom" (1876) and "Odhin's Trost" (1880) as well as Ebers' "Eine ägyptische Königstochter" (1864) are large-scale cultural paintings, but not the result of direct poetic power.

[ 81 ] A poet, on the other hand, who is rooted in real life with all his feelings and thoughts, is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from Galicia. The glaring contradiction between the baseness of human instincts and passions and the noble ideals that the mind dreams of occupies his imagination. Man wants to be a god and yet is only a plaything of his animal desires: this confession speaks from Sacher-Masoch's works. Idealism is a pious delusion that dissolves into nothing when nature is seen in its true form. In order to express this basic sentiment, this poet has at his disposal an imagination directed towards the piquant and garish, which revels in sumptuous images and does not shy away from depicting the wildest processes. Since Sacher-Masoch, in the course of his development, gave in to the latter tendency of his nature and to sensationalist prolific writing, the promising attempts he made in works such as "The Legacy of Cain" (1870) remained without effect. Influenced by him and Hamerling, the Viennese poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie attempted to portray the idealistic dreams of humanity in their worthlessness in the face of the blind, base forces of nature in artistic poems and in a comprehensive epic "Robespierre" (1894).

[ 82 ] An art that cares little for the great questions of existence, but instead seeks to accommodate an educated taste that penetrates little into the depths of things in a virtuoso manner, can be found in Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach. The former's "Wilder Jäger" (1877) and "Tannhäuser" (1880) and the latter's "Zlatorog" (1877), as well as his "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (1878) met the needs of a large audience in the 1980s. For Catholic circles, the Westphalian Friedr. Wilh. Weber provided a historical epic in his "Dreizehnlinden" (1878).

[ 83 ] The poetry of Theodor Storms grew out of the Romantic view of art. This view, however, is in close harmony with a pithy mind firmly rooted in the life and nature of his native Schleswig-Holstein and a gift for observation that sees the outside world in soft, often misty shapes, but always in a healthy, natural way. He is a master at drawing atmospheric pictures. His depictions appear like a landscape covered in a delicate mist. A lyrical undertone speaks from all his creations. The novella "Aquis submersus" (1877) is of shattering tragedy; a powerful art of representation speaks from the "Schimmelreiter". Storm also has a gift for humor. As a lyrical poet, he is a master of expression, finding all tones from the most tender mood to pithy, sharp characterization. Related to Storm in his whole disposition is Wilhelm Jensen. His thinking is rooted in the social, liberal views of the present; his style of depiction is reminiscent of the fantastical spirit of Romanticism. He needs exciting scenes, bright lights to express what he wants. His novels "Um den Kaiserstuhl" (1878), "Nirwana" (1877), "Am Ausgange des Reichs" (1885) depict historical events in such a way that atrocity scenes and gruesome human destinies appear in comfortable breadth. Jensen's poems are characterized by lyrical verve, an artistic language, but also often a peculiar way of feeling.

[ 84 ] As Heyse and Grimm stand by Goethe's conviction of art, Storm and Jensen by that of the Romantics, so the humorist Wilhelm Raabe by that of Jean Paul. Like the latter, Raabe interrupts the course of the narrative and speaks to us in his own person; like his predecessor, he does not develop the plot according to its natural course, but anticipates things or returns to them. His choice of subject matter is also reminiscent of Jean Paul. He moves in a circle of quiet, modest, idyllic sufferings and joys. He always seeks humor in the inner contradictions of human characters. He draws people and situations in sharp outlines, with a decided tendency towards the bizarre. Whether he is depicting nerdiness, as in "Hungerpastor" (1864), or philanthropy, which appears comical because it takes unsuitable paths, as in "Horacker" (1876), Raabe always succeeds in creating clear, distinct physiognomies. Original characters and social contrasts are his field. Hans Hoffmann's importance also lies in the humorous portrayal of characters. The main character in the novel "Ivan the Terrible and his Dog" (1889), a grammar school teacher, is comical because of everything about him: his appearance, his movements, his helplessness towards his pupils. The collection of novellas "Das Gymnasium zu Stolpenburg" (1891) reveals the jovial, serious artist on every page. Fritz Mauthner made a name for himself as a satirist. His talent for parody led him to caricaturingly imitate the style and sensibilities of others in his book "Nach berühmten Mustern" (1879). In his "Villenhof" (1891) he castigates discord in Berlin social life. Among the humorists must also be Friedr. Theod. Vischer, who in his novel "Auch einer" (One too) portrayed the comic type of a person whose mental state is thrown off balance every moment by the small, random disturbances of life. What is interesting about Vischer is the constant interplay between the theoretical results of his aesthetic studies and speculations and an unmistakable original poetic natural disposition. Because he has explored all types of artistic representation, he displays a rare fluency of form and style in many areas in his "Lyrical Walks" - because he is a poet by nature, he captivates us with the expression of his feelings and the bold sweep of his imagination. Vischer's treatises "Kritische Gänge" and "Altes und Neues" are gems of German literature due to the profundity of their ideas, the courage of their thinking that does not shy away from consistency and no less due to their mastery of the essay style. He is a universal mind that reaches out in all directions. He follows the philosophical, artistic, religious and scientific phenomena of the time and comments on them with critical judgments that make him appear as a leader of the intellectual movement of his time and at the same time as a pithy character who follows his own sure path. Vischer's development clearly reflects the turnaround that has taken place in German intellectual culture in recent decades. He started out from the idealistic convictions of Hegel's philosophy. He wrote his "Aesthetics" in the 1940s and 1950s based on this and then retracted important principles of these views in a self-criticism.

[ 85 ] Like Vischer himself, Hegelian philosophy as a whole retreated from new views in the second half of the century. The great scientific results obtained by careful observation of natural facts and by experiment shook the faith in pure thought by which Hegel and his disciples had erected their proud edifice of ideas. Thus it came about that the consciousness of the time opted for philosophical directions that were characterized less by rigour and consistency of thought than by external means such as an easy, popular way of presentation and a spirited approach to things. Schopenhauer, with his dazzling, piquant, coarse style, prepared the ground for this trend. Only in such a mood could philosophical presentations such as Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious" (1869) or Eugen Dühring's writings be applauded. It was not the undoubtedly valuable ideas contained in these works that made an impression, but the way in which they were presented. In the seventies and eighties, the philosophical spirit steadily disappeared from German education. This can be seen very clearly in the writing of literary history and in literary criticism. The subtle literary-historical observation of Hermann Hettner, which was directed through the facts to the driving ideal forces, the kind of Julian Schmidt, Gervinus et al, who searched for the causes of literary phenomena, were abandoned, and they were replaced by the approach of Wilhelm Scherer, who in his "History of German Literature" (1883) confined himself purely to the grouping of facts and to the visible parts of historical development.

[ 86 ] It is understandable that in a period in which the educational materials gained in long intellectual struggles are in the process of dissolution, a wealth of literary products appears that is as unequal in value and effect as possible. Busy prolific writing, which only aims to satisfy the public's need for light entertainment, appears alongside unclear ideological literature; there are writers with a light, witty gift for presentation, as well as serious spirits who are unable to go their own way and cannot find a firm point of reference in the confusion of contemporary trends. Of the latter type is Eduard Grisebach, who uses Heine's style to express Schopenhauerian ideas in his poems "Der Neue Tannhäuser" (1869) and "Tannhäuser in Rom" (1875). Something similar can also be said of the highly ambitious Albert Lindner, who created dramas in a pathetic style, which nevertheless clearly bear the stamp of an epigonism striving for originality. More fortunate was Ernst von Wildenbruch, who created a long series of dramas with a certain poetic verve and excellent skill in scenic construction. A noble enthusiasm for heroic grandeur and an idealizing style of representation are characteristic of Wildenbruch, and in his short stories and poems an intimacy of feeling and a sympathetic disposition come to the fore. Richard Voß is a spirit who, out of an unhealthy nervousness, searches for stirring, strongly arousing motifs and lets them work in a blatant, often bloodcurdling way. But he also has the ability to depict intimate states of mind, which he, however, associates with all too stormy events, as in the dramas "Eva" and "Alexandra". That he also understands the pulse of the present is shown in his drama "Die neue Zeit", in which a pastor's son, who has grown into the free-spirited views of our time, comes into conflict with his father, who clings to the prejudices of the old world. Rudolf Gottschall, who sticks to the academic-aesthetic templates as a playwright and lyricist, Julius Grosse, who has proven himself to be a tasteful but uninspiring artist in drama, novels and poetry, and finally Hans von Hopfen, whose achievements hardly rise above mere light fiction,

[ 87 ] A personality who deserves the highest respect is Adolf Friedrich Graf Schack, a poet who strives for depth and makes the highest demands on form. His ethical and artistic seriousness is admirable. This is expressed not only in his witty essays on literary history and in his self-biography "Half a Century", but also in the generous support he gave to artists and artistic endeavors. Heinrich Leuthold is also a master of strict artistic form, whose melancholy tones are partly the expression of agonizing personal experiences, but also of a deeply pessimistic view of the world. A reflective poet in the fullest sense of the word is the Swiss Dranmor (Ferdinand von Schmid), who is very similar to Leuthold in his passionate, restless manner and his gloomy view of the world. Schack, Dranmor and Leuthold are primarily lyric poets. Isolde Kurz with her "Florentinische Novellen" (1890), which emerged from a refined taste and a vivid imagination, can be seen as a pupil of Conrad Ferd. Artur Fitger appeared as a lyricist and dramatist. The gloomy view of the world that we have found in so many poets of the seventies and eighties is also a basic feature of his lyrical creations. His powerful drama "The Witch" (1876), although not very original in its structure, met with the liveliest applause for a time. The poems of Martin Greif were born out of a tender spirit in which the finest impulses of nature tremble harmoniously. He succeeded in writing songs of genuine Goethean simplicity and naturalness; for dramatic art, in which he also tried his hand, this soft and delicate spirit lacks creative power and sharpness of characterization. The South German Johann Georg Fischer is a sharply characterized poetic physiognomy. With him, one senses healthy strength and a joyful zest for life everywhere, which emerge in splendid language, often with unsought pathos, often with the simplest folksiness. He too is not up to the demands of the dramatic structure.

[ 88 ] A genuine North German poet of austere beauty is Theodor Fontane. As a lyric poet, he is reserved in his feelings and extraordinarily succinct in his expression. He juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings and then leaves us alone with our hearts. His imagination creates in monumental images and has a simple grandeur, which comes into its own in his "Ballads" (1861). Similar peculiarities also characterize him as a storyteller. His style is almost sober, but always expressive. Prussian life and North German nature have found a classic actor in him. He paints equally well in broad strokes as in the smallest details. His novels "Adultera", "Irrungen - Wirrungen", "Stine", "Stechlin" are equally appreciated by the public seeking only interesting reading and by the strictest critics. The Austrian Ludwig Anzengruber is a true dramatist of admirable accuracy in characterization and the ability to portray events in vivid development. His dramas are rooted in the intellectual life of the Austrian peasantry and middle class in the 1970s. In particular, he knew how to portray the striving for a free-minded view of religious ideas and the struggles that the peasant mind had to endure as a result of such goals, for example in "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld" (1870) and "Kreuzelschreibern" (1872). In "Meineidbauer" (1872), "G'wissenswurm" (1874) and "Fleck auf der Ehr" (1888), he showed how deeply he was able to draw motifs from the peasant soul. Ludwig Ganghofer, who wanted to treat Upper Bavarian folk life in plays such as "Der Herrgottschnitzer von Ammergau" and "Der Geigenmacher von Mittenwald" in a similar way to Anzengruber's treatment of Austrian folk life, did not hit the "true-to-nature" notes like Anzengruber did. In contrast, Lower Austria has an epic writer in Joseph Misson, who in his unfortunately unfinished poetic tale "Da Naz, a Niederösterreichischer Bauernbui, geht in d'Fremd" (1850) expressed the mood, imagination and behavior of his people in an incomparable way. The Styrian Peter Rosegger achieved the same to a high degree with his compatriots in a series of prose works that were born of a sensible mind, a brave character and a cozy narrative gift. In the second half of the century, folk poetry, which in most cases also seeks to intimately reflect the form of expression and way of looking at things of the people in the form of dialect poetry, blossomed beautifully. Franz von Kobell and his pupil Karl Stieler produced precious gems of folk poetry in the Upper Bavarian dialect. Franz Stelzhammer created poems in Austrian dialect that are so natural that they seem to have arisen from the spontaneity of the people. The dialect poetry of the Viennese J.G. Seidl is inspired by warm feelings, but of a much lesser power and originality. The Silesian dialect has found a poet of naive, humorous expression in Karl von Holtei, whom we have already mentioned (p. 58) as a storyteller and dramatist. The North German dialect was cultivated by Klaus Groth and Fritz Reuter. Groth, the singer of "Quickborn" (1852), writes like an educated man who has grown out of folk life, but his love of his homeland and his striving to make his dialect heard make up for what he lacks in originality. Fritz Reuter's poems stem entirely from the soul of the people, from their most intimate thoughts and feelings. He is a first-rate character painter. Reuter's first collection of poems, "Läuschen un Rimels" (1853), immediately won him a large circle of admirers. His brilliant narrative talent is at its best when he weaves his own experiences into the narrative, as in "Ut mine Festungstid" (1862) and "Ut mine Stromtid" (1863 to 1864). He vividly depicts the mood of the people before the events of 1812. It is the urge for the primal sources of poetry that is expressed in the rich applause that poems such as Anzengruber's, Rosegger's, Groth's and Reuter's found in almost all circles. People believed that they could find in the simple popular mind what they had distanced themselves from in the highly developed art poetry of the Heyses, Meyers and Hamerlings. At the same time as this trend, there was another, which renounced higher artistic demands and sought satisfaction in amiable wit, in brisk, if not very profound depiction. This direction found its field particularly in the lightly thrown feuilleton and in the skillfully constructed, sensationally exciting drama. Paul Lindau, Oskar Blumenthal, Hugo Lubliner, Adolf l'Arronge, Franz v. Schönthan, Gustav v. Moser, Ernst Wichert and others. were responsible for this taste, which gradually took hold in such wide circles that protests such as that of Hans Herrig, who in his essay "Luxustheater und Volksbühne" (1886) wanted to recapture the theater of true art, were initially ineffective. Above all, Herrig wanted to win over the people to his ideas, and this was also the goal of his Luther Festival.

[ 89 ] However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong receptiveness to genuine art remained clearly perceptible in individual circles. Proof of this is the steadily growing recognition that Gottfried Keller has received. However, the creations that he added, after a long intervening period, to those we had already acknowledged earlier (p. 62) were on a par with them. The "Seven Legends" (1872) represent a reform of the legendary style on a completely new, realistic basis. The "Sinngedicht" (1881) is a warmly felt, mature creation. The "Züricher Novellen" (1878) are cultural pictures from Zurich's past, painted with simplicity and grandeur; "Martin Salander" (1886) depicts the political situation in Switzerland with superior humor. While each new creation by Keller also testified to a higher level of artistry, Gustav Freytag continued to cultivate the style he had once acquired. Neither his "Pictures from the German Past" (1859-67) nor the series of novels "The Ancestors", which appeared after 1870, represented any artistic progress. One personality who reflects the true character of the last four decades in poetry is Wilhelm Jordan. Unfortunately, he lacked the poetic power to give artistic expression to his world view, which was fully in tune with the times. In his "Demiurgos" ($.65), he prophetically proclaimed Darwin's world view in advance; when it was scientifically substantiated, it also appeared with full clarity in his poetic products. The characters in his rewriting of the German heroic epic "Nibelunge" (1868-74) grew out of this view, and his novels "Die Sebalds" (1885) and "Zwei Wiegen" (1887) were written entirely in the spirit of contemporary scientific thought. If Jordan must be described as a genuinely modern spirit because of his world view, it was he who saw the truly poetic in going back to the simple, primitive conditions of cultural development. He wanted the last form of the Song of the Nibelungs that has come down to us to be regarded only as an attenuation of an older, much grander form. This is why he did not base his work on the later German Nibelungenlied, but on the older Nordic sagas. In such striving for the original sources, one can clearly see an echo of Goethe's and Herder's way of looking at things, which sees the root of the poetic in the naive and childlike world of imagination. Wilhelm Jordan's restoration of the stave rhyme can also be traced back to such a view.

[ 90 ] In the 1980s, the younger generation of German poets became convinced that the paths that poetry had taken up to that point were no longer fruitful. They no longer wanted to solve the artistic tasks set by the views of Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics. After all, life and the circles of ideas had changed considerably since the times in which those minds had formed their thoughts. Scientific discoveries had led us to see the processes of the outside world and their relationship to man in a new light. Technical inventions had changed the way of life and the relations of the various classes of people. Entire classes that had previously not taken part in public life entered into it. The social question with all its consequences was at the center of thought. In the face of such a change in culture as a whole, it was felt impossible to hold on to old traditions in poetry. The new life should bring forth a new poetry. This call grew ever stronger. In 1882, the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart led the way with their "Kritische Waffengänge", in which they used harsh language against the traditional, the outdated. They were then followed by other poets of the younger generation. In 1885, a selection of poems entitled "Modern Poetry Characters" was published, in which the striving for a new style of art was resolutely asserted. In addition to the Harts, Wilhelm Arent, Hermann Conradi, Karl Henckell, Arno Holz, Otto Erich Hartleben, Wolfgang Kirchbach participated in the new movement. In the same year, Michael Georg Conrad founded the "Gesellschaft" in Munich, a "Realistische Monatsschrift für Literatur, Kunst und öffentliches Leben", which was guided by the same goals, and Karl Bleibtreu issued a strong rejection of everything traditional in his "Revolution der Literatur". Alongside much immaturity, many a pleasing gift appeared within this movement. Karl Henckell's social songs often pulsate with true passion, despite his preference for party slogans. Hermann Conradi's phrase-like novels vividly reflect the ferment of the times, and in his Iyrian creations one finds the heart-warming tones of a man who unreservedly expresses himself, with all the faults and sins of human nature. Julius Hart's poems also express a genuine empathy with everything that arouses the times. In 1885, Arno Holz published his "Book of the Times", in which he found effective words for social hardship. Above all, it was the artificial, the life in ideas that had lost their connection with life, to which war was declared. They did not want to work according to old templates, according to the artistic sensibilities of a bygone era, but according to the needs and inspirations of their own individuality. Under the influence of such sentiments, a poet came into his own who, however, developed completely independently of the conscious, deliberate striving for something new: Detlev v. Liliencron. He is a nature full of vitality and artistic creativity, a fine connoisseur and depictor of all the charms of existence, a poet who has all tones at his disposal, from the wildest exuberance to the delicate depiction of sublime natural moods. In 1883 he drew attention to himself with his "Adjutant's Rides", and since then he has proved himself to be one of the most outstanding contemporary poets in a series of lyrical collections. Following in his footsteps were Otto Julius Bierbaum and Gustav Falke, the latter in particular having achieved something worthy of recognition through his striving for perfection of form. Karl Busse also made a good impression on his first appearance, but was unable to maintain the same level. Richard Dehmel is an energetic lyricist who, however, cannot find harmony between abstract thought and immediate feeling. The search for new goals generates the most diverse directions in the present. In contrast to idealism, which placed the spirit too high and forgot that sensuality underlies all spirituality, a counter-current emerged which indulged in the latter and sought only the raw animal instincts in every expression of life. Hermann Bahr celebrated true orgies in this area in his stories "Die gute Schule" (1890) and "Dora" (1893). In his drama "Toni Stürmer" (1892), Cäsar Flaischlen also sought to portray the idealism of love as contradictory and to show that only natural passion brings the sexes together. The social movement also had an impact on poetry. Works such as "Schlechte Gesellschaft" (1886) by Karl Bleibtreu, "Die heilige Ehe" (1886) by Hans Land and Felix Holländer and in Max Kretzer's "Die Betrogenen" (1882) and "Die Bergpredigt" (1889) are sharply critical of existing social conditions and the prevailing moral views. In his dramas "Hanna Jagert" (1893), "Erziehung zur Ehe" (1894) and "Sittliche Forderung" (1897), Otto Erich Hartleben shows the self-dissolution of social ideas and depicts human weaknesses with great satirical power in his novellistic sketches. As a lyric poet, he is characterized by a beautiful sculpture of expression and a simple, tasteful naturalness. John Henry Mackay gives expression to the striving for complete liberation of the individual, which has found a philosopher in Max Stirner (p. 5o), in his cultural painting "The Anarchists" (1891), in stories such as "The People of Marriage" (1892) and in his poems, which place the ideal of personal independence above all else (collected and published in 1898). Hermann Sudermann deals with the clash between the moral concepts of different classes in his dramas "Die Ehre", "Die Heimat" and "Glück im Winkel". In his more recent stage works "Johannes" and "Die drei Reiherfedern", he has set himself higher tasks. He portrays the tragedy inherent in human nature itself, a goal he also pursued in his stories "Frau Sorge" and "Der Katzensteg". The influence of the modern scientific world view on the human soul is illustrated by Wilhelm Bölsche in his novel "Mittagsgöttin" (i8g91). The most recent drama strives for the truth of nature in that it does not allow the development of events in poetry to proceed according to higher, artistic laws, but seeks a photographically faithful depiction of reality. Johannes Schlaf and Arno Holz led the way in this direction with their dramas "Meister Olze" and "Familie Selicke", in which the truth of nature is exaggerated to the point of merely copying external events. They were followed by Gerhart Hauptmann, who in his first works "Vor Sonnenaufgang" (1889) and "Das Friedensfest" (1890) still created entirely in this style, but in "Einsamen Menschen" (1891) rose to the level of depicting significant emotional conflicts and cohesive dramatic composition. In his "Colleague Crampton" (1892), he then delivered a character painting that was as true to nature as it was artistic. In "Hanneles Himmelfahrt" and "Versunkene Glocke", his style becomes idealistic and romantic despite its fidelity to nature. In "The Weavers" (1892), the depiction of reality becomes a complete dissolution of all dramatic form; in "Henschel the Carriage Driver", Hauptmann shows that he can unite fidelity to nature and poetic composition. Max Halbe was much acclaimed for his romantic drama "Jugend" (1893) with its atmospheric depiction of youthful passions. When he set himself higher goals, as in his character dramas "Lebenswende" and "Der Eroberer", he was unable to break through. Ludwig Jacobowski set himself a great task in his "Loki" (1898), the "novel of a god", in which he shines a light deep into the abysses of human nature and illustrates its eternal striving through the battle of the destructive Loki against the creative Asen. With his lyrical collection "Shining Days" (1899), he joined the ranks of the most outstanding modern poets. He combines simple beauty of expression with a harmonious view of the world and life. In the last decade, Friedrich Nietzsche exerted an incomparable influence on contemporary thought. Through a radical "revaluation of all values", he sought to portray the entire path that Western culture has taken since the foundation of Christianity as a great idealistic error. Humanity must discard all belief in the hereafter, all ideas that go beyond real existence, and draw its strength and culture purely from this world. Man should not see his ideal in the likeness of higher powers, but in the highest enhancement of his natural abilities up to the "superman". This is the meaning of his main poetic and philosophical work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

[ 91 ] In France, literature in the last third of the century initially continued along the same lines as before. Through Emile Augier, Alexander Dumas the Younger and Victorien Sardou, drama developed into a morality play and social drama. In the latter, the main aim was to illustrate a moralizing tendency through exciting entanglements and corresponding solutions. Alongside this, a dramatic genre developed that placed the main emphasis on witty dialog and social satire. It has its main representative in Edouard Pailleron. The training in skillful scene direction blossomed in Labiche, Meilhac, Bisson. The truth and probability of events play no role in them, only the development of the plot, which is calculated for effect and must be rich in surprising twists and turns. In poetry, the striving for correctness of form, for smooth, pleasing expression prevails in the "school of the Parnassiens". Frangois Coppée, R. F. A. Sully-Prudhomme and Charles Leconte de Lisle particularly cultivated this style. Anatole France also belongs to it with his lyric poetry, which strives for a classical style of representation. In contrast, Charles Baudelaire is a genuinely Romantic poet who prefers to be in a state of intoxication of the soul and loves to depict the uncanny, demonic forces of the human interior. He wants to expose all dark instincts. He literally revels in feelings of fear and lust. A healthier sense can be found in Gustav Flaubert and especially in the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who strive to restrain the artistic imagination through the objective spirit of science. Under their influence, a naturalism emerged that did not want to shape reality according to subjective arbitrariness, but rather to make use of the objective laws of knowledge for the poetic depiction of things. It does not want aesthetic laws, but only those based on the mere observation of facts. This direction found its perfect expression in Emile Zola. He no longer wants to shape things and processes artistically. Just as the scientific experimenter brings substances and forces together in the laboratory and then waits to see what develops as a result of their mutual influence, Zola experimentally juxtaposes things and people and seeks to continue the development as it would have to result if the same things and people stood opposite each other in the same way in objective reality. In this way he develops the experimental novel. In doing so, he leans on the achievements of modern science. Alongside this Zolashian naturalism, another of the Balzacian type continues, which has its main representative in Alphonse Daudet. Guy de Manpassant is a storyteller with a brilliant power of perception that penetrates the depths of the soul. Important cultural phenomena of our time are recorded in his novels and in stylistically masterful novellas. As a draughtsman of character, he portrays people with sharp contours, and his depiction of actions is as much characterized by natural truth as by artful composition. In France, Victor Cherbuliez, Hector Malot and Georges Ohnet satisfied that part of the public which in Germany found its satisfaction in Lindau, Blumenthal and others. A subtle artist with a refined technique is Pierre Loti, who, however, cultivates a style of art that is more suited to the artist's developed taste than to a wider circle.

[ 92 ] In the Dutch language, under the name "Muliatuli", Eduard Douwes Dekker created narrative poems and philosophical works of ideas, which from a bold, out of a bold, free spirit, they make powerful accusations against everything in contemporary culture which, seen from the vantage point of true humanity, is ripe for destruction, but which is preserved by brute force and robs the valuable and noble of the space for free development. Multatuli does not shy away from any sharpness, even one-sidedness of expression, when he wants to hit what he considers necessary for persecution. A kind of leading spirit of Dutch folklore in Belgium is Hendrik Conscience, who made a great impression with his intimate depictions of modest living conditions and has also found imitators in his homeland. The Belgian M. Maeterlinck takes a mystical view of nature and the human soul. He is less interested in clear thoughts and perceptible processes than in the dark forces that we sense in the events of the outside world and in the depths of our unconscious soul. He depicts them in his dramas and seeks to approach them philosophically in his subtle essays.

[ 93 ] The English poetry of this period is characterized by the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. He is of a romantic nature, a fiery depictor of sensuality, a draughtsman of great passions, but also of the tender vibrations of the soul and atmospheric images of nature. The sea with its manifold beauties is a favorite area for him. His lullabies are characteristic of his sensuous mind. In the dramatic field ("Atalanta in Calydon") he strove for Greek perfection of form. In addition to him, Matthew Arnold and Dante Gabriel Rosetti also come into consideration. The former is reminiscent of Byron in his world view and expression, while the latter seeks to achieve a simple style through ancient artistic means. William Morris is an original nature with a powerful gift for depiction. From close observation, Rudyard Kipling depicts Indian-English life in captivating novellas, novels and popular-sounding poems.

[ 94 ] In America, a literature independent of the English mother country has developed since the middle of the century. A universal spirit and strong artist is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. As a lyric poet he has achieved recognition throughout the educated world. His poems speak of a noble, great character. Those of his creations in which he movingly sings of the fate of slaves are characteristic of his humane view of the world. He is also an excellent storyteller with a soft, heartfelt and humorous tone. In "Hiawatha" Longfellow has described the ancient cultural conditions of the Indian people, in "The Golden Legend" he deals with the eternal poetic problem, the striving and wandering man as a symbol of the whole human species. Contemporary English prose has found an outstanding master in Washington Irving. His humor has a sentimental streak. Francis Bret Harte, the author of the world-famous Californian tales, and the thoughtful humorist Mark Twain differ most in style from the mother country. In Walt Whitman, the American imagination and sensibility found a particularly characteristic expression. From the thoughts he expresses to his treatment of language, everything is modern in the most genuine sense.

[ 95 ] In recent decades, the change from old to new views has been most rapid in northern Europe. It developed under the influence of a merciless, unsparing criticism of tradition. Georg Brandes, the intellectual Dane, led the way. A bold, enthusiastic free spirit gave him the broadest impact. His intellectual horizon is of rare greatness. He was able to familiarize himself with the various cultures of Europe with a keen sense and thus acquired a breadth of vision that enabled him to follow the intellectual currents of all countries in their essential characteristics. By seeking out fruitful ideas everywhere and instilling them into the education of Denmark, he became the reformer of the entire world view of his fatherland. In the field of poetry, the lyric poet Holger Drachmann and the great stylistic artist J. P. Jacobsen, who is both a thorough and profound connoisseur of the human soul, and who is able to depict inner processes and abysses of the mind in an atmospheric way, were active in Denmark.

[ 96 ] In Norway, Björnstjerne Björnson, Henrik Ibsen and Arne Garborg are the creators of a type of poetry whose influence can be felt everywhere in Europe today. They were preceded like prophets by Jonas Lie and Alexander Kjelland, the former as an important psychologist and depictor of popular life, the latter as a sharp satirist in the field of moral views and social grievances. Björnson is a poet who serves the liberal ideals of his fatherland with his art. He is a political spirit who always has the progress of culture in mind in all his work and who is able to give his characters clear, clear outlines from his firm convictions. A revolutionary spirit is Henrik Ibsen. He has incorporated everything that is revolutionary in modern culture into his personality. He is a rich, versatile nature. His works therefore show great differences in style and in the means with which he presents his world view. He traces the germs of decomposition that lie in the views, customs and social orders of the present ("Stützen der Gesellschaft" 1877), the lies of life ("Volksfeind" 1882), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), he depicts demonic forces in the human soul as a deep psychologist ("Frau vom Meere" 1888, "Hedda Gabler" 1890, "Baumeister Solneß" 1892), he characterizes the mystical in the soul ("Klein Eyolf" 1894). Ibsen's basic theme is the tragedy of human life in "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867). Pastor Brand is intended to portray the Faustian struggle of man living in the imaginative and emotional mode of the present. The hero knows only one love, that of his rational ideals, and does not allow the language of feeling to come into its own. Instead of taking possession of human hearts in order to achieve the fulfillment of his demands through them in a benevolent manner, he pursues them with ruthless harshness. He becomes intolerant out of idealism. Therein lies the tragedy of his personality. In contrast to him is Peer Gynt, the man of fantasy, whose ideas are not rooted enough in reality to inspire their bearer with the kind of energy that enables people to assert themselves in life. The versatility of Ibsen's art is revealed particularly clearly when we consider the "Comedy of Love" (1862), which shows us the poet as a doubter of life's goals, alongside the "Crown Pretenders", written just one year later, in which certainty and confidence are expressed in the creator's world view. The dependence of man on the external environment, on views within which he lives and which he receives as tradition, is depicted in "Bund der Jugend" (1869), while "Kaiser und Galiläer" (1873) illustrates the determination of the will through the unalterable, natural necessity of all things. "The Wild Duck" (1884) and "Rosmersholm" (1886) are paintings of the soul from which the deeply penetrating psychological connoisseur speaks.

[ 97 ] In place of Greek fate and the divine order of the world, he sets natural law as the driving force of the drama, which does not punish the guilty and reward the good, but governs people's actions as it rolls a stone down a slippery slope ("Ghosts"). Arne Garbor does not, like Ibsen, have the art of depicting broad lines, but he paints the life of the soul faithfully and is a sharp accuser of social institutions. Sexual life is at the center of his approach. The two Swedes August Strindberg and Ola Hansson are also powerful painters of the soul, but they like to take their material from unhealthy nature. Strindberg's pessimism, which, however, stems from deeply painful life experiences, presents itself almost like the distorted image of a healthy world view.

[ 98 ] Russian intellectual life also underwent great spiritual upheavals during this period. While the older Russian literature proved to be an imitator of Western European culture in its ideas and conceptions as well as in its means of expression, the national spirit now deepened and sought to build its views from the depths of its own national essence. Here, too, criticism leads the way. In W. Belinskij Russia has an aesthete and philosopher of great spiritual vision and high aims. From a purely logical point of view, his critical activity lacks consistency; Belinsky is a constant seeker who wants to bring clarity to the confused ideas and dark impulses of his people. In doing so, he is guided more by his sure feelings than by any abstract ideas. The creations of Nicolai Gogol, who hurls the most terrible accusations against his fatherland, but accusations that speak of a deep, heartfelt love, prove how unfathomably deep and at the same time how dreamy and confused the spirit of the people is. A mystical sense underlies his imagination, which drives him restlessly forward without him seeing any clear goal before him. In N. Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and in F. M. Dostoyevsky, this dark urge gradually works its way into clarity. Turgenev is, however, still strongly influenced by Western European ideas. In delicate images, he mainly depicts suffering people who somehow cannot come to terms with life. Goncharov and Pissemsky are depictions of Russian social life, without any further outlook on a world view. Dostoyevsky is an ingenious psychologist who descends into the depths of the soul and reveals the innermost depths of man in brilliant, albeit sometimes gruesome, images. His "Raskolnikov" was regarded throughout Europe as a model of psychological representation. Count Leo Tolstoy is a representative of Russian intellectual life as a whole. He developed from a powerful storyteller ("War and Peace" 1872, "Anna Karenina" 1877) to a prophet of a new form of religion that sought its roots in a somewhat violent interpretation of primitive Christianity and elevated complete selflessness to the ideal of life. Tolstoy also sees all art that is not aimed at human compassion and the improvement of coexistence as a superfluous luxury that a selfless person does not indulge in. In Hungary, we encounter the imaginative storyteller Maurus Jókai and the playwright Ludwig Doczi, as well as Emerich Madách, who provided the Hungarian Faust in his "Tragedy of Man".

[ 99 ] The most successful of the more recent Italian poets is Giosuè Carducci, who strives for classical and beautiful expression. A singer of fiery sensuality is Lorenzo Stecchetti, and the playwright Pietro Cossa is an important characterizer. Giovanni Verga deals with Sicilian peasant life in lively stories. Italy has its social poets in Guido Mazzoni and Ada Negri. In the field of drama, the idealist Felice Cavallotti and the naturalist Emilio Praga stand opposite each other. - From Spain, José Echegaray briefly captured the attention of European audiences, to whom he delivered a much-discussed drama in his "Galeotto", whose structure is reminiscent of the abstract consistency of a calculus.

1. The Literary revolution around the middle of the nineteenth century

[ 1 ] On December 8, I began the cycle of lectures on "The main currents in German literature from the revolutionary period (1848) to the present", which the board of the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" commissioned me to give.

[ 2 ] I do not want to turn the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" into a university college, but I would like to find a middle way in these lectures between the light tone of French conferences and that of university lectures, which follow the strict course of scientific methodology. Nor do I wish to offer the members of the Society a purely historical approach. Anyone who, like myself, wants to contribute to the development of the new world view that has become possible for us through the revolutionization of intellectual life in this century, prefers to look to the future rather than the past, and is only capable of describing the past insofar as it contains the seeds for the present and the future.

[ 3 ] I have said of our present sensations that they are so fundamentally different from the sensations of the most eminent spirits of the first half of the century that we have the feeling that the writings of these spirits are written in an idiom foreign to us. A radical transformation of the world view has taken place in our century, as radical as few in world history have been. If we want to describe this transformation in a few words, we must say that man has gone from being a humble, weak being who wants to be dependent on higher powers to a proud, self-confident being who wants to be the master of his own destiny, who does not want to be ruled but wants to rule himself. Man has learned to draw his best strength not from powers beyond, but from the reality to which he himself belongs. The best minds in the first half of the century were far removed from this view of life. They were still dominated by the old world of imagination, by the old religious views. In their emotional world, they could not get away from the otherworldly God who controls the destinies of mankind. They longed for new ways of life, for new forms of state and society; but their longing was a dull, vague one, because it did not emerge from the driving force of a new world view. Political revolutions can only take place on a large scale if they are linked to a revolution of the entire spiritual life. Christianity brought about such a great, comprehensive revolution. The political revolutions of recent times have not achieved their goal because they lacked the driving force, the revolutionization of the world view. Men like Jahn, Börne, Sallet, Herwegh, Anastasius Grün, Dingelstedt, Freiligrath, Moritz Hartmann, Prutz knew that the old world of ideas had become worn out, overripe, rotten; but they were not able to put a new world of ideas in the place of the old one. They became revolutionaries, not because a new world of ideas lived within them, which they wanted to realize, but because they were dissatisfied with the existing, embittered by the present.

[ 4 ] But the world of imagination and the old form of government belonged together. This truth was expressed by Hegel when he was given a professorship in Berlin. Hegel was the most unproductive mind imaginable. He was incapable of giving birth to a new idea from his imagination. But he was one of the most rational people who ever lived. He therefore penetrated the old world of ideas down to its last nooks and crannies. And he found this world of ideas realized in the Prussian state. That is why he could say: everything real is reasonable. Hegel pronounced the last word of the old world view. It was not possible to revolutionize with this view. This required a new world of ideas. The first herald of such a world was Ludwig Feuerbach. He taught people that all higher powers are idols which man has created in his own breast and which he has transferred out of his own soul into the world in order to worship them as entities acting above him. Feuerbach made man the master of himself. This was the beginning of a completely new world of ideas. The old world of ideas had become an idol, a ghost, a spectre by which man allowed himself to be enslaved. Max Stirner said this in the clearest words that have ever been spoken. Away with all idols was his slogan. And there was nothing left behind but the "I", enslaved by nothing, free and unchained, who stakes his cause on nothing. We, in the second half of the nineteenth century, are working to find the universe in this nothingness. The old ideals lie destroyed at our feet; they are nothing to us, a yawning chasm. The poets, the artists, the naturalists, the thinkers in the second half of the century are endeavoring to fill this nothingness with life again. Darwin and Haeckel brought a new world view, new religious ideas.

[ 5 ] Through Feuerbach, minds have been revolutionized, prepared to understand Darwin and Haeckel. This transformation of the world view is the great revolution of the nineteenth century. Compared with it, the political revolution of 1848 is only an outward sign, a symbol. The spiritual revolution is still going on today. It will be the victorious one.

[ 6 ] I was delighted that so many members and guests of the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" attended this first of my lectures.

2. From Heinrich Laube to Paul Heyse

[ 7 ] Heinrich Laube is to me the type of man of letters who looks at things with a cold gaze that goes little into the depths of the human soul. In his youth, the fire of the revolutionary lived in him, which led him to glorify the Polish uprising. Gradually, the sobriety in his nature overgrew; he became a self-confident man, who approached things with the feeling that he knew how to handle them at the right end. He is the best director of the century because he has a clear eye for the harmony into which the outside of things must be brought if they are to be effective. He is the man of scenic aesthetics. And he is also a scenery artist as a playwright and as a novelist. One misses the soul in his characters, the historical ideas in the events he depicts. Gutzkow is different. He is the most important of the spirits who worked around the middle of the century. If Laube can be described as a social anatomist, Gutzkow is the philosophical observer of his time. His "Ritter vom Geiste" (1850-51) appears as a comprehensive, profound document of this period. Gutzkow presents all the typical figures of society at the time, all the social currents, in order to paint an all-round, perfect picture of his present. The spirit of the time is no less vivid in his novel "The Wizard of Rome" (1858-61). Gutzkow unites the light and dark sides of Catholicism, the sympathetic and unsympathetic characters it produces, into a cultural portrait of the highest value. Gustav Freytag does not seem as important to me as to many others. I see the spirit of journalism in all his creations. Freytag endows his creations with all the inaccuracies, obliquities and half-measures with which the editorialist characterizes people and conditions. In this art of characterization, the contemporary catchphrase applies more than the unclouded view into the ramifications and the fullness of reality. The "journalists" are not true characters, but half-true figures, as they live in the minds of the daily writers. This Bolz, as Freytag describes him, is not to be found in reality; but journalism has to invent him in order to express the thoughts of the time.

[ 8 ] The figures of Laube, Gutzkow and Freytag no longer have much to say to us contemporary people. Forces have revealed themselves to us in the life of the human soul and in history of which the spirits around the middle of the century still knew nothing. The sense in which this assertion is to be understood will be shown in my next lectures.

3. Spiritual life in Germany before the Franco-Prussian War

[ 9 ] The fifties and sixties of this century show a number of parallel currents. One-sided directions of intellectual life went side by side. Only in our time has a confluence of these individual currents taken place. Herman Grimm is a personality in whose intellectual physiognomy one of these currents came to the fore. It is the purely aesthetic world view that he professes. For him, the world is not governed by "eternal, iron laws", by the laws of nature. For him, it is a work of art created by a divine artist, revealing infinite beauty. Alongside this purely aesthetic view of the world, the one based on a broader spiritual foundation, founded by David Friedrich Strauß, is asserting itself. For Strauß, the personality of the Son of God has evaporated into the divine idea, which cannot be realized in a single human individual (Jesus), but only in the whole of humanity. God cannot gain earthly existence in a human being, but only in the life of the human race.

[ 10 ] The third worldview, the one that held the most promise for the future, was introduced by Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (1859). Through him and his student Ernst Haeckel, the worship of nature took the place of the worship of God. There was now no spirit apart from that which nature is capable of producing from itself. Only through it can man come so far as to draw ethical satisfaction from nature itself, which was previously only possible through the prospect of an afterlife. Now his joys spring from this earth.

[ 11 ] The artistic document of these world views is Paul Heyse's "Children of the World". What matters is not what is told in this novel. What matters is that the world views of the fifties and sixties have taken on an artistic form in it.

[ 12 ] The audience that found satisfaction in this novel was one that needed a new world view, a new way of thinking and feeling, but that had no need for a reorganization of social conditions, of the social order.

[ 13 ] Friedrich Spielhagen met the needs of readers who longed for new forms of life. He made the social ideas and trends of his time the subject of his novels.

4. The literary struggles in the new empire

[ 14 ] In the 1970s in Germany, art, philosophy and science are not matters that are at the center of life. Minds are preoccupied by the desire to make themselves as comfortable as possible in the new empire. Politics occupies far more interest than artistic tendencies. The latter are merely a luxury, an addition to life to which people turn during breaks. Poets who sing about things that have nothing to do with the seriousness of life find a large audience. Redwitz, Roquette, Rodenberg, Bodenstedt, Geibel are very much to the taste of the time. One must forget one's higher spiritual interests if one wants to take unalloyed pleasure in these poets. The eternal sadness of the forest, the cuteness of the little birds, the dreamy devotion to the sweet aspects of nature are not for people for whom art is the highest thing in life.

[ 15 ] The further development of the human spirit suffers from the tenacity of human nature. The time of which I speak was not yet so far advanced as to permeate the whole man with that mode of feeling and conception which dominates the scientific view of the world. The old idealism, which seeks to understand the world one-sidedly from the spiritual, still prevails. It could not yet be understood that the spirit is born out of nature, out of immediate reality. Full proof of this is the appearance of Robert Hamerling. He is the type of an artist in an overripe age. He has absorbed the ideas of the occidental world in their entirety. But he is unable to bring the artistic form he gives his works into full harmony with his ideas. The sensual, lush images, the colorful depictions that he gives seem only outwardly grafted onto his ideas. If Hamerling were really a modern spirit, the spiritual content would not have to stand beside and above the reality he describes, but would have to ooze out of it. Sacher-Masoch is the most vivid example of how little the emergence of the spiritual from the sensual-natural could be understood at that time. This poet burrows into the sensual with a subtle way of understanding. He knows all the secrets of the carnal-natural. But his descriptions remain entirely in the realm of raw, naked sensuality. The spiritual appears next to it as an illusion, a bubble of foam which the sensual produces to deceive man. Hamerling is half Christian, half pagan; Sacher-Masoch is the reverse Christian, who practises a religious cult with the carnal. As certain as Sacher-Masoch's art represents a one-sidedness, his works are certainly documents of the seventies, the time that did not have the strength to rise above one-sidedness.

[ 16 ] In Hamerling and Sacher-Masoch lives something that is not exhausted in the merely artistic. For them, poetry is a link within human activity, a means of living out the whole human being, who is more than just an artist. Opposite them are those who cultivate a late art that does not flow directly from human nature, but which has arisen through the transformation and further development of earlier art forms. I count among them: Hermann Lingg, Josef Victor Scheffel, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane.

[ 17 ] The basic character of the artistic sensibility of the seventies is most clearly evident in drama. While Brachvogel still saw the task of drama in a genuinely German way in the shaping of human characters, the most popular playwright of the time became a mere experimenter of dramatic form. And a truly great man like Ludwig Anzengruber remains unnoticed. Under Paul Lindau's leadership, drama ceased to serve a higher spiritual need; it became a gimmick with the forms of dallying stage poetry borrowed from the French.

[ 18 ] Such was the intellectual atmosphere of the time in which the young German Empire was being formed. A thorough dissatisfaction among the young minds is therefore only too understandable. Michael Georg Conrad, Max Kretzer, Karl Bleibtreu, Konrad Alberti became the spokesmen for the dissatisfied. They wanted to put a young, promising art in the place of the old-fashioned, outdated one. It doesn't matter what the young revolutionaries achieved. They all failed to deliver what they promised. What matters is that they gave expression to a basic sentiment that was only too justified among the young generation of the seventies.

5. The significance of Ibsen and Nietzsche for modern intellectual life

[ 19 ] In the fifth of my lectures I tried to describe the significance of Ibsen and Nietzsche for modern intellectual life. Ibsen himself lived through the battles that took place between the spirits in the second half of this century. He was not so happy to be able to devote himself entirely to a one-sided current of thought and to fight everything else from one point of view, like Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Lassalle, David Friedrich Strauss. His soul is a battlefield on which the spiritual battle types all appear and wrestle with each other without one of them being victorious. His spiritual work is a discussion of many individuals who dwell within him.

[ 20 ] Two main currents run through the second half of our century. The first is a radical longing for freedom. We want to be independent of all divine providence, independent of all tradition, of inherited and inherited elements of life, independent of the influence of social and state organization. We want to be masters of our own destiny.

[ 21 ] This longing is countered by the belief, flowing from modern natural science, that we are completely woven into the fabric of a rigid necessity. We are descendants of the most highly developed mammals. What they accomplish is an effect of their organization. And what we humans do, think and feel is also a result of our natural constitution. It is conceivable that natural science will come so far as to be able to prove exactly how the parts of our brain must be organized and move when we have a certain idea, a certain sensation or expression of will. How we are organized is how we must behave. How can we still speak of freedom in the face of this knowledge?

[ 22 ] I believe that natural science can give us the awareness of freedom in a more beautiful form than human beings have ever had. Laws are at work in our souls which are just as natural as those which drive the heavenly bodies around the sun. But these laws represent something that is higher than all the rest of nature. This something is present nowhere else but in human beings. What flows from this something is what makes man free. He rises above the rigid necessity of inorganic and organic lawfulness, obeys and follows only himself. The Christian view, on the other hand, is that divine providence rules in this area, which man has for himself over and above nature.

[ 23 ] Henrik Ibsen was unable to find a balance between the belief in the rigid necessity of nature and the urge for freedom. His dramas show that he wavers back and forth between these two extreme beliefs. Sometimes he lets his characters struggle for freedom, sometimes he lets them be members of an iron necessity.

[ 24 ] It was Friedrich Nietzsche who first taught the emancipation of man from the rest of nature. Man should not follow any supernatural or mere natural laws. He should not be a plaything of divine providence and not a member of natural necessity. He should be the meaning of the earth, that is, the being that lives itself out in full independence. It should develop of its own accord and not be subject to any laws. This is Nietzsche's ethics. This is the basis of his idea of a "revaluation of all values". Until now, people have favoured those who best follow the laws that they believe to be divine or natural. An image of perfection has been held up to man. The person who only wanted to live out of himself, who did not strive for this image, was seen as a troublemaker of the general order. That should change. The type that strives for all the strength, power and beauty that are not predetermined, but lie within itself, should be able to develop freely. Man, who lives only according to the law, should be a bridge between the animal and the superman, who creates the law himself.

[ 25 ] All belief in the hereafter will be overcome when man will have learned to build his existence on himself.

[ 26 ] I would also like to describe Zola as a personality who works in the sense of Nietzsche's world view. In Zola's opinion, the work of art should not represent something higher, something divine in relation to immediate reality, no, the artist should represent this reality as he sees it through his temperament. In this way, he feels himself to be the creator and the one who enjoys him to be the sense of the earth. Both remain within the real, but they depict it in such a way that through their representation they awaken the consciousness that man is a natural being like all other natural things, but a higher one, which is able to give things a free form of its own accord.

6. The influence of the world view of an age on the technique of poetry

[ 27 ] Schiller's dramatic technique is only possible with a poet who believes in a moral world order. In Schiller's sense, the dramatic hero must be brought to the tragic catastrophe through guilt. The catastrophe must appear as a punishment. We, with our purely scientific view of the world, find it absurd if the catastrophe in the drama is linked to guilt. What happens in the human world has for us the same character of moral-free necessity as the rolling of a billiard ball that is hit by another. Such a necessity also satisfies us in drama alone. Following on from this, I developed the connection between the scientific direction of the eighties and the poetic naturalism of the time. The young poets of that time wanted to depict the facts just as externally as the naturalists observed them. They were attached to the outside, which often lies before the senses; the deeper connections in nature and human life, which only reveal themselves to the mind, were not taken into account by either the researchers or the artists at the time. Today we are striving towards a different view of the world and of life. The poet will not link the facts of the world as they appear in the light of a moral or other divine world order, but neither will he link them as they present themselves to mere external, sensory observation. He will assert the right of his personality. His temperament, his imagination will move him to see things in a different context than observation shows him. He will express himself through the things he depicts. Therefore, all aesthetics will dissolve into psychology. The only reason for the way a poet creates will be the peculiarity of his personality. I would like to call the criticism that must necessarily develop from this view individualistic, in contrast to the surviving criticism that applies objective standards. This time I am only giving this brief account of my lecture because I would like to discuss the matter in more detail in this space next time.

7. The spiritual life of the present

[ 28 ] We live in a time in which the revolutionization of the spirits through the world view gained on the basis of natural science exerts its convincing effect on all people who take a remarkable part in spiritual life. But for many, this effect is only on the mind. These many see man as the creature they must regard him as when they draw the necessary conclusions from Darwin's world-changing ideas. But the hearts of these spirits, their sensibilities, are not as advanced as their minds. They think in scientific terms and feel in Christian terms. This causes in them that terribly painful mood of the soul which must arise when one says to oneself that what is valuable is the world beyond, the world of pure ideals and heavenly goods, and when one realizes at the same time that this world is an empty fantasy, an insubstantial dream. One spirit in whom this painful mood has found a grandiose poetic expression is Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. In her admirable poem "Robespierre", she gave words to this pain. To her, the earth is the ruthless all-mother, who uselessly and pointlessly creates new beings and destroys them again just to serve her greed, and who from time to time also creates prophets - Socrates, Christ, Robespierre - who dream of ideals in order to deceive people for a short time about the nothingness of existence. Without these idealistic dreamers, they would prefer annihilation to existence. Through the idealists, people are repeatedly stimulated to a new lust for life, but at the same time deprived of real knowledge.

[ 29 ] The dichotomy between head and heart, between feeling and understanding is the content of most contemporary poetry. Arno Holz, Julius Hart are the singers of this dichotomy. But we also have poets who can draw from the new world view the courage to face life and the joy of existence that flows from it for those who truly recognize it. We do not need a view of the hereafter to get over the tribulations of this world. This was expressed in poignant poems above all by Hermann Conradi, who unfortunately died so young. It also resonates in some of Wilhelm Jordan's poetry and that of many others.

[ 30 ] But we also have a poet to whom the modern way of feeling is as if innate, who has not forced his way into it through struggle and pain, who is naively modern: Otto Erich Hartleben. The others first have to come to terms with Christianity in order to feel modern; he originally feels modern. I like every note in his poetry because I have to feel everything the way he does.

[ 31 ] I have now explained in this lecture what Wilhelm Jensen, Wilhelm Raabe, Richard Dehmel, Detlev von Liliencron mean within the modern world; I have characterized contemporary drama (Max Halbe, Ernst von Wolzogen, Hermann Sudermann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Otto Erich Hartleben). In a short paper I cannot reproduce the content of the lecture, into which I have squeezed everything I have to say about my contemporaries.

[ 32 ] In these lectures I have endeavored to give a picture of the revolutionization of minds in the second half of this century. We are currently celebrating the anniversary of the revolution. But more important to us than the political revolution is the purely spiritual revolution of our world view. We are entering the new century with significantly different feelings than those of our ancestors who were brought up in Christianity. We have truly become "new people", but we, who also profess the new worldview with our hearts, are a small congregation. We want to be fighters for our gospel, so that in the coming century a new generation may arise that knows how to live, satisfied, cheerful and proud, without Christianity, without a view of the hereafter.

I

[ 1 ] The life of an age finds its most intimate expression in poetry. What the spirit of an epoch has to say to the heart of the individual is expressed in his songs. No art speaks such an intimate language as lyrical poetry. Through it we become aware of how intimately interwoven the human soul is with the greatest and the smallest processes of the universe. The mighty genius who walks on the heights of humanity becomes the friend of the simplest mind through his song. How man is drawn to man is revealed with perfect clarity in poetry. For we feel that we have no less claim to the spiritual gifts of our fellow men than to their lyrical creations. What the spirit achieves in other fields seems to belong to all mankind from the outset, and they believe they have a right to share in its enjoyment. The song is a voluntary gift whose communication springs from the selfless need not to possess the secrets of the soul for oneself alone. This basic trait of lyrical art may explain why it is the most beautiful means of reconciliation between the most diverse attitudes of people. The religious mind and the atheistic free spirit will meet sympathetically when the latter sings of his God and the latter sings of freedom. And poetry is also the field in which today the bearers of old, mature artistic ideals and the spirits of a nascent, nascent world view communicate most easily.

[ 2 ] The German sense of art in the second third of our century presents itself as an after-effect of the classical and romantic intellectual currents. The relationship that Goethe, Herder, Schiller and their successors had with nature and art was regarded as exemplary. They set high standards for themselves, but first asked their predecessors whether these standards were the right ones. This way of thinking continues to this day. Gradually, it became second nature to the creative spirits. They were under its spell without being aware of it.

[ 3 ] One such spirit is Theodor Storm. A naive view of nature, a simple, healthy sense are combined with a highly developed feeling for artistic form. Storm owes this feeling to the fact that his youth began soon after Goethe's death. The intellectual atmosphere of his age instilled in him a sense for perfect art forms as if it were innate. Storm poured the atmospheric Iyrian views into these forms, which his sense of nature and his deep feelings brought him.

[ 4 ] The classical sense of art bore different fruit from that of the North German Storm in two Swiss poets, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Gottfried Keller. Natures like Meyer can only flourish in times that were preceded by cultural peaks. They have inherited the need for the highest goals in life and at the same time an artistic seriousness that is not easily satisfied by their own achievements. Meyer wants to experience everything he experiences with dignity. His ideals are so distant that he is in constant fear of never reaching them. He wants to constantly indulge in festive feelings that others only allow themselves at certain times. What he has achieved always falls short of what he desires, so that an incessant alternation of longing and renunciation pervades his soul. He sees pathetic symbols in natural phenomena. He passes by the obvious relationships between things; instead he searches for rare, hidden connections between beings and phenomena. He becomes aware of the strongest contrasts everywhere, because his whole perception strives for the great line.

[ 5 ] Gottfried Keller is an essentially different personality. For him, the attainable is the standard he applies to everything. His whole outlook on life has something bourgeois and unaffected about it. A sound, simple mind and free, receptive senses alone determine his existence. He does not love his homeland out of an ethical instinct, but because he feels most comfortable in his homeland. He strongly emphasizes all the good things about his homeland and benevolently overlooks the unpleasant. He enjoys things as they are and never worries about whether something could be different. His description of nature reflects things as they are; he is not interested in symbols and parables such as those created by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. It is not in his nature to spiritualize feelings and sensations. For him, love always has a sensual trait. But this sensuality is a chaste, coarse and healthy one. He does not love the soul alone, he also loves the mouth; but his love remains childishly naïve.

[ 6 ] The southern German poet Johann Georg Fischer is of a similar nature. He is extremely content with life and its pleasures. He loves his existence so much and knows how to derive so much bliss from it that he only desires the hereafter if it is as beautiful and good as this life. He always feels his healthy strength and is never in doubt that it will lead him safely through life. He also knows how to find something pleasant in the shadows of life. His description of nature is not as simple as Keller's; it has something meaningful and pictorial about it. When he sings of female beauty, we admire the purity of soul that lies in his tones.

[ 7 ] In stark contrast to these southern German poetic natures is the austere beauty of Theodor Fontane's poetry. Meyer, Keller and Fischer never hold back how they feel about things. Fontane meaningfully juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings. He conceals what is going on inside him and leaves us alone with our hearts. He is a brittle person who likes to hide his own ego. Our soul trembles at his descriptions; he never tells us that his soul trembles too. The images his imagination creates have something monumental about them. The seriousness, the majesty of life speak to us from his poems. He sings of significant situations, strong contrasts, proud human characters.

[ 8 ] The poetry of Paul Heyse is post-classical in the truest sense of the word. He has everything from his predecessors: the purest sense of form, the ennobled view, the cheerful artistic spirit directed towards the eternal harmony of existence. Everywhere he dissolves the seriousness of life into the serenity of art. It is his conviction that art should lead man beyond the burdens and oppressiveness of reality. Without doubt, such a view is that of a true artist. But there is a huge difference between a person who has fought his way through the hardships of life, through the dissonances of existence, to the view of harmony that underlies the world, and one who simply accepts this view as tradition. The artist's serenity is only uplifting in the highest sense if it has its roots in the seriousness of life. Goethe, at the time of his perfection, looked at the world with the blissful calm of a sage, having acquired this calm in fierce battles; Heyse jumped unprepared into the field of balanced beauty. He is an epigone through and through. He has a sure eye for the genuine beauties of nature; but his eye has been trained to Goethe's way of looking at things. Heyse knows how to follow the most marvelous paths and make the most wonderful observations; but one always has the feeling that he is following paths blazed by others, and that he is rediscovering what someone else has already found.

[ 9 ] The lyrical poems of Martin Greif are born out of a tender soul, in which the finest impulses of nature and the human soul tremble nobly. He is not moved by the whole of an impression, but only by the soulfulness of it. A pious, devout spirit passes over to us from Greif's creations. Greif brings to life the quiet, modest melodies that rest in things as if enchanted. When we give ourselves over to his poetry, it is as if all the loud, demanding sounds of the world fall silent and a quiet music of the spheres enters our ears. The pious calm of the soul that Goethe loved so much has found a singer in Martin Greif.

[ 10 ] The Viennese Jakob Julius David is a poet whose entire oeuvre is like a single cry for this blessed peace, combined with the painful feeling that the gates to it are closed to him. His imagination paints gloomy pictures that speak vividly of the bitter suffering of a proud soul. The passionate desire, the ardent longing is abruptly replaced by wistful renunciation. As a strong nature, David cannot unlearn desire. A note of displeasure runs through all his poems, which abruptly stands out from the beauty of form that is characteristic of them. He is the representative of those contemporary poets who may have modeled their art on the great role models, but who are not at the same time able to wrestle their way through to the harmonious world view of these role models. David knows that disharmony is not the deepest meaning of life, but harmony does not reveal itself to him. That is why he cannot sing of joy and pleasure, but at best of oblivion and resignation. He is not able to lift anyone up from their suffering, but only to comfort them and exhort them to surrender.

[ 11 ] We see another Viennese poet in a steadily ascending development: Ferdinand von Saar. He is not a distinct personality who shows himself direction and goal out of inner strength. He found himself relatively late in life. By appropriating the unfamiliar, through wise self-education, he reached the point where genius sets in. In the "Nachklänge", which appeared recently, noble artistry and wise contemplation of the world emerge in equal measure. Pictures of noble beauty convey a profound view of nature and people. But nowhere do they bear the stamp of the inspiration of a brilliant imagination; they have gradually matured in a life that has tirelessly striven towards perfection. It is not rapturous enthusiasm that compels Saar's creations, but serious reverence. Saar is one of those artists who have the strongest effect on us when they do not reveal to us the individuality of their own heart, but when they make themselves the spokesperson for what moves all of humanity.

[ 12 ] The same is probably true of another contemporary poet, even if he is as far removed from Saar as possible in many respects: Emil Prinz von Schoenaich-Carolath. Schoenaich-Carolath must be conceded a certain degree of originality; but there is no doubt that he could only reach the artistic heights to which he attained in an epoch in which aesthetic education had reached such a level as in his own. Spirits such as his are only possible within the late culture of a people that had allowed great things to develop from it shortly before. They give back in a refined form what they have received. Schoenaich-Carolath has tones for all human feelings, for all processes of nature. His vision penetrates deep behind the phenomena. He has battles to fight in life, but one notices that during the struggle he never doubts his ultimate victory. If one has called him a Byronic nature, one should not have overlooked the fact that his Byronic restlessness is mixed with a happy confidence.

[ 13 ] In the truest sense of the word, Ernst von Wildenbruch is an afterbloom of classical German art. When he speaks to us, we always hear a great predecessor speaking along with him. It is fair to say that he learned to write poetry, certainly learned it very well. He is more a chosen one than a called one. And that can be said of many today. For this time it can only be applied to Alberta von Puttkammer. She is able, perhaps with just a little too many words, to paint moods of nature with unspeakable beauty. Life seems to her like a blissful elegy. Existence has thorns for her too; but she never lets us forget that the thorns are in rose gardens.

II

[ 14 ] A young generation of poets came onto the scene in Germany at the beginning of the 1980s. It included spirits who were as different as possible in terms of outlook on life and talent. However, they were united in the conviction that a revolution in artistic feeling and creativity was necessary. The rebellion against the prevailing taste of the time, in which Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach were regarded as serious artists, was justified. The principle: "Life is serious, art is cheerful" had been distorted into a caricature in shallow minds. Virtuoso poetic 'dalliance' was no longer distinguished from the noble, beautiful form born from the depths of the soul. The time was struggling for a new world view that wanted to reckon with the great scientific results of the nineteenth century and for a social design that would give those left behind in the struggle for happiness their rightful place. The leading poets knew nothing of such upheavals. This realization brought forth the words of anger in the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart, with which they declared war on contemporary taste in their "Kritische Waffengänge" in 1882. The poets who came together in 1884 to form the collection "Moderne Dichtercharaktere" were inspired by the same sentiment. And this initial rush was followed by the founding of journals and the publication of almanacs, in which disgust at outdated ideas found just as strong an expression as the boldest hopes for the future. Such sentiments gave rise to the recognition that for the past decade and a half has been increasingly accorded to a poet who, unlike many others, does not deliberately follow modern paths, but who naively embraces the circle of emotions that excite contemporary man with a vivid imagination: Detlev von Liliencron. He is a man full of life, who walks through life as a carefree enjoyer and is able to describe all its charms with vivid power. He is capable of all tones, from the most exuberant exuberance to the most fervent adoration of sublime works of nature. He is able to sing hymns of joy to frivolity and carelessness like a child of the world, and he can become pious like a priest when the heath spreads out its silent beauty before him. Liliencron is not a poet who looks at life from one point of view. You will search in vain for a unified world view that could be expressed in clear ideas. At every moment, he is completely absorbed in the impressions to which he has given himself. He does not worry or think about what lies beyond the things of the world. Instead, like a true bon vivant, he savors everything that lies within things. And he always finds the characteristic tone and the most perfect form to express the wealth of perceptions that impose themselves on his senses, which thirst for the whole breadth of reality. He has no need to distinguish between the valuable and the insignificant in this reality, for he is able to draw from the sight of an "old, discarded, torn, half-rotten, abandoned boot" a sentiment whose expression is worthy of a mood that the poet arouses in us. Liliencron draws natural scenes and experiences with rough, masculine lines; he juxtaposes sharp, telling contrasts of color. The strength of his personality is particularly evident in his song lyrics. No intimacy of feeling, no bitter pain is capable of alienating his secure sense of self from himself even for a moment.

[ 15 ] Under Liliencron's influence stands Otto Julius Bierbaum. However, he lacks a secure sense of self; he is a soft, dependent nature that always loses itself in the impressions of the outside world. Nowhere in his work is there any sign of a world view, of a conception that penetrates into the depths of beings. But while Liliencron's sharply defined personality physiognomy compensates for the same lack, Bierbaum's creations are devoid of higher interest. His amiable powers of observation know how to see little meaning in things. His mind is not burdened with the slightest urge for knowledge; what he copies from nature with a careless glance, he depicts in graceful, but sometimes rather uncharacteristic colors. He succeeds in creating charming images of nature; he is able to depict the small impulses of the heart in a magnificent way. Where he aims higher, he becomes unnatural. The big words, the powerful tones to which he often stoops, sound hollow because they have nothing shocking or exciting to communicate. Bierbaum appears like a walker who would like to play a hiker. When he pretends to be boldly and exuberantly pilgrimaging through life, it can't be particularly interesting because he avoids the abysses and dangers.

[ 16 ] Another poet dependent on Liliencron, Gustav Falke, arouses almost opposite feelings. He seeks out life in its mysterious depths, where it raises doubts and poses riddles. He is characterized by a highly developed artistic conscience. In his imagination, the events of the world are transformed into beautiful images. He searches in a serious way for harmony between desires and duties. He strives for the pleasures of existence; but he only wants them if his own merit wins them for him. Victory after a hard struggle is to his liking; he cannot particularly appreciate an easier one. Many an anxious question to fate springs from his serious spirit; a firm belief that man can be content if he adapts himself to the conditions of life leads him out of doubts and puzzles. There is something heavy in Falke's poetry; but this is only a consequence of his conception, which searches for the weighty qualities of things.

[ 17 ] Through serious artistic endeavor, Otto Ernst has worked his way up from a sentimental patheticist to a poet worthy of respect. Although his expression lacks immediacy and independence and his sensibility lacks moderation, there is much in his collections and among his poems published in magazines that reveals a true poetic personality. Especially where he remains in the modest circle of domestic happiness, of everyday events, Otto Ernst succeeds in creating atmospheric creations of a coherent art form. He becomes highly attractive when he lets his humor prevail, which has nothing worldly, but rather something philistine and mischievous, but which hits the nail on the head for those who are able to take the things in question seriously enough. One often has the feeling that Otto Ernst would accomplish far more if he naively abandoned himself to his original feelings and ideas and did not almost always do violence to them through the strict view he has of the tasks of art; he destroys many a charming feeling, many a meaningful image through an added, clever comparison, through a doctrinaire twist, through a philosophical observation that is supposed to say a lot but is usually only trivial.

[ 18 ] Poets of less distinctive character are Arthur von Wallpach, Wilhelm von Scholz and Hugo Salus. Wallpach's feeling for nature and his trust in life are reminiscent of Liliencron. Enchanting mood painting, sometimes in briskly applied, sometimes in intimately graded tones, is characteristic of him. Wilhelm von Scholz is one of those poets in whom every feeling, every idea is distorted when it is to be transformed by the imagination into an image. The word always strives to transcend that which the emotion encompasses. If it has a beautiful image in mind, it spoils it by emphasizing the content twice. His imagination is not content to say what is necessary; it overwhelms us with all the accidental ideas that come to it apart from what is necessary. Hugo Salus sometimes expresses the simple in too strange a way. Anyone who knows how to draw as much pleasure from nature as he does is surprised when he illustrates this pleasure with ideas that are often quite far-fetched. Salus does not focus his eye directly on things, as it were, but seeks out an altered reflection of them.

[ 19 ] The lyrical poems of Otto Erich Hartleben are born of a pure sense of beauty and highly developed taste. His style is characterized by a rare plastic power. Transparent clarity and perfect vividness is a basic trait of his imagination. This is the case despite the fact that his imagination is only slightly fertilized by images taken from external nature. It almost exclusively shapes the inner experiences of his own personality. This poet, who as a novelist and dramatist seeks out the contradictions of reality as objectively as possible and mercilessly reveals the humor inherent in the processes of life, holds a dialogue with his soul in his poetry, making intimate confessions to himself. One has the feeling that these are the most important, the most meaningful moments of his soul's life in which he expresses himself as a lyricist. He is then completely alone with himself and with little that is dear to him in the world. His most beautiful poems were written at turning points in his life, at moments when decisive events were taking place in his heart. And they speak of their creator's sense of calm, simple beauty, style and artistic harmony. Otto Erich Hartleben is more of a contemplative than an active nature. There is nothing impetuous in his nature. He is less a creative than a creative spirit. He prefers to let the content come to him, and then he takes pleasure in shaping it; that is where his productivity unfolds. He lacks Liliencron's verve, but he possesses the quiet grandeur that Goethe claims in his "Winckelmann" is the hallmark of true beauty. In the midst of the Sturm und Drang of the present, Otto Erich Hartleben, the lyricist, can be described as one of those who approach classical artistic ideals. His entire personality is attuned to an aesthetic-artistic view of the world. He only understands the problems of life to the extent that mature taste is called upon to decide them. Philosophy only exists for him insofar as he has a personal relationship to its questions. He can strike soft, intimate tones, but only those that are compatible with a proud, self-assured nature. All pathos is as alien to him as possible.

[ 20 ] Ferdinand Avenarius knows how to harmonize a certain classical-academic form and conception with modern sensibilities. His poetry has grown up on the foundation of theoretical ideas. His feelings do not emerge directly, but allow the ideas of reason to shine through everywhere. He has created a poem "Live!" in which he does not communicate his feelings, but an objective personality communicates his own. This kind of objective poetry will never be cultivated by a completely original spirit. It requires artistic conviction to serve as a support for the artistic imagination.

III

[ 21 ] What we so sorely lack in many of our most important contemporary poets, the prospect of a great, free world view, we encounter in the most beautiful sense in Ludwig Jacobowski. With his recently published collection "Leuchtende Tage", he has placed himself at the forefront of contemporary poets. In this book, the entire scope of human spiritual life is laid out before us as if in a mirror. The sublimity and perfection of the world as a whole, the relationship of the soul to the world, human nature in its most diverse forms, the sufferings and joys of love, the pains and bliss of the cognitive instinct, the mysterious paths of fate, social conditions and their repercussions on the human mind: all these elements of the great organism of life find their poetic expression in this book. Every single thing that this poet encounters, he grasps with receptive senses and with fertile imagination; but again and again he also finds access to the essence of the world that lies behind the flow of individual phenomena. The title of his book "Shining Days" seems to us like a symbol of his whole way of thinking. Like "eternal stars", the "shining days" of life console him for all the suffering and hardship with which the path to our life's goal is covered. Jacobowski formed this sunny world view out of hard struggles. It gives his creations a liberating undertone. His feelings are driven by the highest interests of life with a warmth and intimacy that are personal and immediate in the most beautiful sense. Just as the philosopher's reason distracts him from the individual experience and points him to those bright regions where the transience of everyday life is only a parable for the eternal powers of nature, so his immediate feelings push this poet in the same direction. He is an inventor of the world, just as the philosopher is a thinker of the world. He sees things with childlike, lively senses in their full, fresh tones of color; and he shapes them in the sense of harmony, without the contemplation of which the more deeply inclined person cannot live. Whoever possesses such poetic power, the highest wisdom works like the most loving naivety. The three most monumental forms of the life of the soul are revealed by Jacobowski in their innermost relationship: the childlike, the artistic and the philosophical. Weiler unites these three forms in himself in an original way and succeeds in striking poetic sparks from life everywhere. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not need to search for shells in order to extract precious pearls from them; the seed he reaches out for is enough for him. Jacobowski is far removed from anything artificial or elaborate. He uses the closest, simplest, clearest means. Just as the folk song always finds the simplest expression for the deepest emotional content, so does this poet. He has a feeling for the broad, simple lines of the world's context. He is understood by the naive mind, and he has the same effect on the philosopher who struggles with the eternal riddles of existence. Whether he speaks to us of the experiences of his own soul or describes the fate of a person who is transplanted from the country to the big city to be crushed by life, it will affect us to the same extent. In Jacobowski's nature, there is tenderness alongside substance. He has a firm trust in the direction of his soul. He spurns all the buzzwords of the time, all the favorite ideas of individual currents of the present. What flows from the strength of his personality is the only thing that determines him. In him, we encounter none of the abstruse oddities of those who today turn away from the healthy hustle and bustle of the world and search for all kinds of aesthetic and philosophical-mystical quirks in lonely corners of existence; he can hear the noise of the day because he feels the security within himself to find his way.

[ 22 ] A lyricist whose greatest power lies in the design, in the plastic rounding of the image, is Carl Busse. Within the framework of this image there is rarely anything significant in terms of content, but usually a meaningful mood. This poet is characterized by a fine sense of style for the appearance of form. He knows how to let the basic feeling of a poem come to life in the turns of language, in the harmony of expression. He is not concerned with the deepening of a feeling, but with its vivid, colorful imprint. When Busse paints us a mood, we will not miss a color tone that makes it a rounded whole, nor will we be easily disturbed by a foreign tone. The effervescence of emotion, the urge of passion never appears directly in his work, but is always subdued by artistic moderation. When he speaks of nature, he keeps himself in the middle between the naïve and the pathetic; when he communicates his own emotions to us, they do not come at us in a storm, but in measured steps. Buss's similes and symbols are not meaningful, but concise; his ideas move freely and swiftly from thing to thing; but the poet always knows how to firmly delimit the perimeter within which they are allowed to unfold. Thus Busse's poetry will satisfy those in particular who value external form above all else in poetry; the deeper natures who seek the great, the meaningful content, will not receive any strong impressions from his creations.

[ 23 ] In a most amiable manner, Martin Boelitz finds the expression for the most intimate moods of nature. Transient phenomena, which demand a careful eye if their fleeting, delicate beauty is to be captured, are his domain. His images of nature do not become vivid, but meaningful parables. And he clothes abstract ideas in a sensual garment, so that we may not be able to grasp them, but we believe we can feel them. Thus he lets "all wishes stand still" and "dream the day away"; thus he personifies "longing" and "loneliness". He sings less about the soul that lies in things than about the soul that spreads like a delicate fragrance between things and above them in an ethereal way. When he speaks of himself, he does so in a tone of spirited, serious cheerfulness. His view of life is a cheerful one; but it does not spring from deep thinking, but from a naïve carelessness. He does not overcome the difficulties of life; he takes his paths where there are none. It is not in the possession of strength that he feels happy, but in dreaming of such strength.

[ 24 ] Paul Remer draws on two sources: subtle thinking and a symbolically effective imagination. He is always based on a sentence, a thought; but he knows how to weave it into a symbolic process in such a way that we forget the mystery and are led to believe that he has extracted the symbolic from the process. Whether he depicts the experiences of the human soul symbolically in this way, whether he speaks of natural phenomena or of human actions: he is equally attractive. As he says in a poem about a blind woman: she listens to "the secret confidences of things", so he does it himself. He does not tell us what effects things have on each other, but what their souls have to say to each other. Remer does not describe the bright colors or the loud sounds of nature, but rather the deeper meaning of the colors and sounds.

[ 25 ] The poetry of Kurt Geuckes has sharp, characteristic lines. He does not offer us a unique, individual world of feeling. Thousands felt and feel like him. He is animated by an idealism that is universally human. But he possesses a rare poetic power to express this idealism. Strictly closed, artistic forms do not express an original, but a solid world view. The poet's fiery imagination depicts the darker sides of life in deep, poignant images. However, hope always spreads above the suffering and pain, appearing in a form that can only emerge from the conviction of a true idealist. He also reaches for the symbol when he wants to depict the meaningful in nature, and the symbols always have something masculine about them. But he is also no stranger to the mystical mood, and he always finds a healthy pathos to express it. His mind is turned towards the beautiful and great in the world, for the sake of which he gladly endures the small, ugly and depressing.

[ 26 ] A noble sense of nature and a soul in need of freedom speak from the poems of Fritz Lienhard. But these two traits of his personality are not very pleasing due to the one-sidedness with which they appear. The poet repeats in a rather monotonous way the healthy nature of simple, rural conditions and the depravity of the big city. The magnificent Wasgau forest and the "Venusberg" of Berlin: his love and his hate are enclosed in these two images. His enthusiasm for the fresh country also corresponds to a naive technique that works with the simplest of means.

[ 27 ] Whoever wants to calculate the driving forces of cultural development in recent decades will undoubtedly have to put a high figure on the proportion of women in public life. But perhaps in no other field is this share as clear as in poetry. For while in other fields women appear as fighters and wrestlers, here they are givers and communicators. Otherwise she tells us what she wants to be; here she expresses what she is. This has given us great insights into the female soul. Because the woman felt compelled to shape her inner life artistically, she herself has first become clearly aware of it. Books such as Gabriele Reuter's "Aus guter Familie", Helene Böhlau's "Halbtier" or Rosa Mayreder's "Idole" appear to men like insights into a new world.

[ 28 ] It is understandable that the most intimate art, poetry, also reveals to us the deepest secrets of a woman's heart. The most striking characteristic of modern women's poetry is its frankness about the nature of women. The present age, which has made unreserved truth a requirement of genuine art, has also opened women's mouths. What she once carefully guarded as the sanctuary of the heart, she now entrusts to art. She has gained faith, confidence in her own being, and while the important women of earlier times unconsciously pursued the ideals and goals of men when they wanted to form a view of life, today's women are building one of their own accord.

[ 29 ] The poetic creations of Ricarda Huch show us how clear and inwardly stable such a view of life can be. She has conquered a high, free point of view from which she surveys the phenomena of the world. Although she is not able to see this world in the sun's glare from her height, but only to resign herself to the nothingness of existence, she nevertheless finds in this resignation the inner freedom that an independently inclined person needs in order to find their way in life. Even if she finds the ship of life hurtling towards death, towards annihilation, she draws satisfaction from the awareness that she is allowed to set her sights firmly on the goal. It is not surprising that the female Faustian nature does not know how to create satisfaction for her striving in the first rush, since the male nature has hardly progressed beyond doubtfulness despite thousands of years of struggle. How could a female Nietzsche today elevate the life-affirming "Überweib" to an ideal, since we have experienced Schopenhauer's enthusiasm for nirvana in this century and Novalis' view that death is the true, higher purpose of life?

[ 30 ] The lyrical creations of Anna Ritter are not born out of the great questions of existence, not out of deep doubts and torments, but also out of a genuinely feminine feeling. Something graceful and musical is poured over her poetry. Nowhere does she struggle with form, but she sometimes achieves a perfection in this direction that must silence any critical doubts. Her talent for rhythm and the euphony of language seems so natural that the originality of many a praised nature poet looks like stiltedness in comparison. Love appears in the light that only the true, open-hearted woman can lend it. Sensuality speaks tenderly and chastely from Anna Ritter's songs; feminine desire expresses itself warmly and intimately. The poetry of the mother appears in graceful magic; the life of nature does not emerge powerfully, but all the more sweetly from this poet's soul. Her genuinely feminine disposition comes to the fore in the "Storm Songs". It is not the great male storm that rages in them, but the mysteriousness of the female soul. They are storms that are not overcome by the eternal, but by a happy, spirited optimism of life.

[ 31 ] Marie Stona is gifted with a clear awareness of the nature of women and their relationship to men. The contrast of the sexes and the effect of this contrast on the nature of the feeling of love: these are the ideas that tremble through her soul. Does the man give as much to the woman as she gives to him, that is an anxious question for her. And must not woman give man more than he can return, if she is to increase his strength and not destroy it? How can woman preserve her pride, her self-confidence, and yet sacrifice her self on the altar of love? These are the eternal cultural questions of woman that this poet explores and which she seeks to shape from a mind that is as rich as it is deep.

[ 32 ] The poems of Thekla Lingen express the moods to which the woman of the present day succumbs, who, because of a highly developed sense of freedom and personality, finds the social position offered to her by traditional views uncomfortable. They contain none of the thoughts and tendencies that come to light in modern women's issues. Thekla Lingen only expresses what she thinks and feels individually. But it is precisely this individuality that appears as the elementary content of the cultural struggle of women, which only comes to light in an intellectual way in the emancipation efforts.

IV

[ 33 ] Modern intellectual culture does not make it easy for people with a deep soul to find their way in life. The natural science reformed by Charles Darwin has brought us a new world view. It has shown us that living beings in nature, from the simplest forms up to the most perfect forms, have developed according to eternal, iron laws, and that man has no higher, purer origin than his animal fellow creatures. Furthermore, our intellect cannot close itself to this conviction. But our heart, our emotional life, cannot follow the intellect quickly enough. We still have within us the feeling that thousands of years of education have implanted in the human race: that this natural kingdom, this earthly world, which according to the new view has brought forth from its mother's womb like all other creatures, including man, has a lower existence than what we call "ideal", "divine". We would like to feel like children of a higher world order. It is a burning question of our spiritual development to follow the truth recognized by reason with our hearts. We can only return to peace when we no longer find the natural contemptible, but are able to revere it as the source of all being and becoming. Few of our contemporaries feel this as deeply as Friedrich Nietzsche did. For him, the confrontation with the modern and scientific world view became a matter of the heart that shook his entire emotional life. He began by studying the ancient Greeks and Richard Wagner's philosophical world of thought. And in Schopenhauer he found an "educator". This man of fine mind felt the suffering at the bottom of every human soul to a special degree. And he believed that the ancient Greeks up to Socrates, with their drives and instincts not yet faded by intellectual culture, were particularly afflicted with this suffering. In his view, art had only served them to create an illusion of life within which they could forget the pain that raged within them. Wagner's art, with its high, idealistic impetus, seemed to him to be the means to similarly lead us moderns beyond the deepest suffering of life. For the basic mood of every true human being is tragic. And only the artistic imagination can make the world bearable. Nietzsche had found the tragic human being described in Schopenhauer's philosophy. It corresponded to what he had gained from his studies of the world view in the "tragic age of the Greeks". He approached modern natural science with such attitudes. And it made a great demand on him. It teaches that nature has created the sequence of stages of living beings through development. It has placed man at the pinnacle of development. Should this development stop with man? No, man must continue to develop. He has gone from animal to man without his intervention; he must become superhuman through his intervention. This requires strength, the fresh, unbroken power of instincts and drives. And now Nietzsche became an admirer of everything strong, everything powerful that leads man beyond himself to the superman. He could no longer reach for artistic illusion to deceive himself about life; he wanted to implant as much health, as much strength into life itself as was necessary to achieve a superhuman goal. All idealism, he now believed, sucks this strength out of man, for it leads him away from nature and presents him with an unreal world. Nietzsche now makes war on all idealism. He worships healthy nature. He had tried to absorb the conviction of natural science into his mind. But he absorbed it into a weak, sick organism. His own personality was no carrier, no nursery for the superman. And so, although he could present it to mankind as an ideal, he could speak of it in enthusiastic tones, but he felt the glaring contrast when he compared himself with this ideal. The dream of the superman is his philosophy; his real life of the soul, with its deep dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of his own existence in the face of all superhumanity, generated the moods from which his Iyrian creations sprang. With Nietzsche there is not only a dichotomy between intellect and mind; no, the rift runs right through the life of the mind itself. Everything great comes from strength: that was his confession. A confession that not only his reason recognized, but to which he clung with all his feelings. And the strong man seemed to him like the opposite of himself. The unspeakable pain that overcame him when he looked at himself in relation to his world of ideas, he expressed it in his poems. A soul divided within itself is expressed in them. You have to feel the deep tragedy of Nietzsche's soul if you want to let his poems have an effect on you. One then understands the gloom in them, which cannot come from the joy of life for which he found such beautiful words as a philosopher. Because Nietzsche made the modern world view of natural science his personal cause, he also personally experienced nameless suffering under its influence. He, the thinker of the affirmation of life, who exultantly proclaims that we do not live our lives only once, that all things experience an "eternal return": he became the lyricist of the dying life. He saw the sun setting on his own existence, he saw the weak organism rushing towards a terrible end, and he had to preach the joy of life from within this organism. For him, life meant enduring suffering. And even if existence returns countless times, it can bring him nothing but a never-ending repetition of the same torments.

[ 34 ] The career of Hermann Conradi as a poet began promisingly. A youthful poetry is all he created in the short span of time he was granted to live. It looks like the dawn before a day that is as rich in stormy, exciting events as it is in sublime and beautiful ones. Two things weigh heavily on the bottom of his soul, which thirsts for all pleasures and knowledge. One is the realization of the painful fate of all mankind, whose gaze wanders out to the most distant stars and which would like to embrace the whole world with its life, and yet is condemned to see its existence bound to a small star, to a speck of dust in the universe. The other is the feeling that his own self is too weak to make his own possession of the little that is allotted to man in his limited existence. Man must lag far behind what his mind's eye sees as a distant goal; but I cannot even reach the near goals of mankind: this idea speaks from his poetry. It stirs up feelings in his mind that correspond to the eternal longing of all mankind, and also those that give deeper expression to his personal destiny. These feelings storm through his soul with demonic force. The urge to reach the heights of existence creates in Conradi a boundless desire; but this boundlessness never occurs without a serious longing for harmony of thought and will. The poet's world of thought strives towards the regions of the "great understanding of the world". But again and again he feels himself transported back to banal, worthless life and has to give in to dull resignation. Meagre symbols of the future paint themselves in the soul when it is seized by an ardent urge for satisfaction in the present. Such a change of moods is only possible in a spirit in which the high side of human nature dwells, and yet which also courageously admits to itself that it is not free from the low side of this nature. Conradi had a boundless sincerity towards the instincts in his personality that drew him down from the noble and beautiful. He wanted to bring his own self with all its sins up from the abysses of his inner self. The greatness that lies in the confession of his own misguided feelings and emotions is characteristic of him. Neither the memory of the past nor hope for the future can satisfy him. The former evokes an agonizing feeling of lost innocence and lust for life, the latter becomes a dreamlike nebulous image that dissolves into nothing when he tries to grasp it. And Conradii knows how to speak of all these feelings in his soul in bold and at the same time beautiful poetic forms. He has an extraordinary command of expression. He combines the power of feeling with true artistry. He has an extensive imagination that knows how to fetch ideas from everywhere in order to portray an inner life that wants to traverse all the spaces of the world.

[ 35 ] Richard Dehmel's poetry has its origins in a similar school of thought. He too wants to encompass the whole wide world with his feelings. He wants to penetrate the secrets that rest in the depths of beings like enchanted creatures, and at the same time he longs for the pleasures that are bestowed upon us by the things of everyday life. He is actually a philosophical nature, a thinker who refuses to walk the paths of reason, of the ideal world, because he hopes to pick better fruit in the field of poetry, of the sensual, figurative life of the imagination. And the fruits he finds there are indeed often exquisite ones, even though one notices that they were gathered by someone who would have found others more suited to his nature even easier. He could have the thought in its purest, most transparent form, but he does not want it. He strives for contemplation, for the image. That is why his poetry appears like a symbolic philosophy. It is not the images that reveal to him the essence, the harmony of things, but his thinking that reveals them to him. And then the images spring up around the thought, like the substances in the formation of a crystal in a liquid. But we can seldom stop at these images, at these views, for they are not there for their own sake, but for the sake of the thought. As images, they have something vague about them. We are happy when we see through the image to the thought. Dehmel appears at his most outstanding when he expresses his ideas directly in the meaningful manner of expression that is characteristic of him, and does not first struggle for visualizations. Where he presents ideas in their pure, thought-like form, they appear large and weighty. He also succeeds at times in expressing his ideas in splendid symbols, but only when he puts together in the simplest form a few characteristic ideas of the senses; as soon as he reaches for a richer abundance of such ideas, the strangeness of his imagination, the unpictorial nature of his intuition leaps to the eye. But what reconciles us with him even then is the great seriousness of his will, the depth of his emotional world and the proud height of his points of view. His paths always lead to interesting, captivating destinations. One is happy to follow him even if one is already convinced at the beginning of the journey that it is a wrong path. Dehmel the man always shows himself to be greater than the poet. His grand gestures may often be distracting, indeed they can sometimes seem like posturing, but there can never be any doubt that there is a powerful feeling behind the loud tone.

[ 36 ] A pithy nature is Michael Georg Conrad. The wholesome and folksy lives in his work. He combines strength with naivety. He succeeds in the simple song in a perfect way. He can speak to the heart in a powerful way. A noble enthusiasm for the truly sublime and beautiful can be heard in his creations. His real significance, however, lies in the field of the novel and in the powerful impulses he was able to give to German intellectual life when it was in danger of becoming bogged down in traditional forms. The future historian of our literature, who will not only look at phenomena according to their completed manifestation, but who will also trace the causes at work, must give Conrad a wide berth.

[ 37 ] A poet whose sensations swirl around the world like an uncertain factor is Ludwig Scharf. He knows how to strike warm, touching notes; one must respect the impulses of his wandering soul; but one cannot escape the feeling that he himself is at ease in the labyrinths, that he likes to wander in the labyrinth and does not want the saving thread to lead him out. Scharf is an eccentric of the emotional life. He feels lonely; but his creations lack what could justify his loneliness: the greatness of a personality founded in himself.

[ 38 ] Christian Morgenstern strives for the high points of view, from which all small peculiarities of things disappear and only the meaningful features are visible. His imagination seeks meaningful images, expressive content and saturated tones. Where the world speaks of its dignity, where man feels his self elevated by uplifting sensations: that is where this imagination likes to dwell. Morgenstern searches for the sharp, impressive characterization of feeling. You rarely find simplicity in his work; he needs resounding words to say what he wants.

[ 39 ] The poetic physiognomies of Franz Evers', Hans Benzmanns and Max Bruns' are less pronounced. Franz Evers still lacks his own content and form. It is clear from many of his creations that he strives for the depths of existence and for a proud, self-confident freedom of personality. Yet everything remains nebulous and unclear. But he feels himself to be a seeker and a struggler, and he carries within him the conviction that the riddles of the world can only be solved by those who approach them with holy devotion. Max Bruns is still stuck in the imitation of foreign forms. That is why his sensuous poems, which bear witness to a beautiful feeling for nature, cannot make a significant impression for the time being, but they arouse the best hopes in many quarters. Hans Benzmann is not an independent individuality, but a pleaser who likes to surround the simple with all kinds of colorful decoration, and who seeks the poetic not in the straightforward, the simple, but in the cumbersome. He succeeds in creating many a beautiful image, but he is almost never able to express himself without the superfluous and trivial.

V

[ 40 ] John Henry Mackay is called the "first singer of anarchy" with the publication of his poems "Tempest" in 1888. In the book in which, in 1891, he described the cultural currents of our time with a clear view and from a deep knowledge, he emphasized in "The Anarchists" that he was proud of this name. This lyrical collection is one of the most independent books ever written. The Anarchist view of life, much maligned but little known, has found in Mackay a poet whose powerful feeling is fully equal to its great ideas. "In no field of social life" - he himself says in the "Anarchists" - "is there today a more hopeless confusion, a more naive superficiality, a more dangerous ignorance than in that of anarchism. The very utterance of the word is like the waving of a red scarf - most people rush at it in blind rage, without allowing themselves time for calm examination and reflection." The view of the true anarchist is that one man cannot rule over the actions of another, but that only a state of social life is fruitful in which each individual sets for himself the aim and direction of his actions. Everyone usually believes he knows what is equally pious for all people. Forms of community life - our states - are thought to be justified, which seek their task in supervising and guiding the ways of men. Religion, state, laws, duty, justice and so on are concepts that have arisen under the influence of the view that one should determine the goals of the other. Concern for one's "neighbor" extends to everything; only one thing remains completely unconsidered, namely, that if one person prescribes the ways to another's happiness, he deprives the latter of the possibility of providing for his own happiness. It is this one thing that anarchism regards as its goal. Nothing should be binding on the individual but what he imposes on himself as an obligation. It is sad that the name of the noblest of world views is misused to designate the conduct of the most learned disciples of violent domination, those fellows who believe they are realizing social ideals when they cultivate the so-called "propaganda of action". The follower of this school of thought stands on exactly the same ground as those who try to make their fellow human beings understand what they have to do by means of inquisition, the cannon and the penitentiary. The true anarchist fights against the "propaganda of action" for the same reason that he fights against communal orders based on violent intervention in the circle of the individual. The free, anarchist mode of imagination lives as a personal need in Mackay's emotional life. This need emanates as a mood from his lyrical creations. Mackay's noble feeling is rooted in the basic feeling that the personality has a great responsibility towards itself. Humble, devoted natures search for a deity, for an ideal that they can worship, adore. They cannot give themselves their value and therefore want to receive it from outside. Proud natures only recognize in themselves what they have made of themselves. Self-esteem is a fundamental trait of noble natures. They only want to contribute to the general value of the world by increasing their value as individuals. They are therefore sensitive to any foreign interference in their lives. Their own ego wants to be a world unto itself so that it can develop unhindered. Only from this sanctification of one's own person can the appreciation of another's self emerge. He who claims complete freedom for himself cannot even think of interfering in the world of another. One may therefore assert that this anarchism is the way of thinking that necessarily flows from the nature of the noble soul. He who appreciates the world must, if he understands himself, also appreciate that part of existence in which he directly intervenes in the world, his own self. Mackay is a noble, self-assured nature. And anyone who descends into the abysses of his own soul with such seriousness as he does awakens passions and desires in him of which the unfree have no idea. From the solitary point of view of the free soul, man's view of the world expands. "There the soul rises from brooding dreams to wander the paths of the world as the chosen one." When the gaze penetrates deep within, it also has the gift of wandering over the infinite spaces, and the human being enters the mood that Mackay expresses in his poem "Weltgang der Seele" ("The Soul's World Walk") in the words that the soul's "trembling wings were waved by courage for flight in the eternal spaces".

[ 41 ] How deeply Mackay is able to feel with every human personality is demonstrated by his poignant poem "Helene". The love of a man for a fallen girl is portrayed here by a poet whose feeling and imagination have given him the warmth of expression that can only have its origin in the perfect freedom of the soul. If one pursues the human ego into such abysses, then one also gains the certainty of finding it on the heights.

[ 42 ] Mackay has been called a tendentious poet. Those who do so show that they neither judge the nature of tendency poetry correctly nor know the relationship of the poet Mackay to the world view he represents. His ideals of freedom form the basic mood of his soul in such a way that they appear as an individual expression of his inner self, just as the sounds of love or the glorification of the beauties of nature do for others. And it is certainly no less poetic to give words to man's deepest thoughts than to his inclination towards women or his joy in the green forest and birdsong. To the eulogists of so-called "unintentional creativity", who are quick with their doctrinaire objections when they sense something like a thought in poetry, it should be borne in mind that man's most precious asset, freedom, does not arise in the dullness of the unconscious, but on the bright heights of developed consciousness.

[ 43 ] About fifteen years ago, Karl Henckell turned the great question of contemporary life, the social question, into the basic motif of his poetry out of the stormy fire of an idealistic soul. He wanted to counter the poems of the 1970s, which comfortably proclaimed inherited ideas in new ways, with a "morning wake-up call of the victorious and liberating future". A hopeful idealism shines out of the gloomy feelings that compassion for the longings, aspirations and struggles of his time formed in Henckell. He did not want to serve the mendacious "old beauty", but the new truth, which creates an image of the suffering of the struggling contemporary human being. Plasticity of expression and harmony of tone cannot be the character of this poetry, which oscillates between indignation at the social experiences of the present and vague expectations of the future. The exaggerated hyperbole takes the place of the calmly beautiful metaphor. A stinging glow sprays from the verses, not soothing warmth. Freedom in all its forms becomes the idol to which the poet pays homage. He incorporates science, which allows the spiritual to emerge from the material, into his way of imagining so that it can free him from the bonds of religious bondage, the mythological way of looking at things. But the idea of freedom can also become a tyranny. If it shapes sharply defined life goals, it kills the truly independent life of nature. A heart that constantly cries out for freedom can perhaps mean nothing other than new shackles instead of the old ones. It is a higher development in Henckell's individuality that he also wanted to free himself from freedom again. He found the way to the inner freedom that says: "Let schools and parties teach and shout, you can only flourish as an artist and free yourself alone." The "Tambour", who wanted to serve the free spirit with a loud drumbeat, has transformed himself into the violinist who has found beauty and sings of it. And thus Henckell has also been granted the happiness that can be enjoyed by natures that are strong enough to create a purpose in life from within that meets the stormy desire, the longed-for ideals. It is not the trivial happiness that nourishes a fleeting existence from the superficial pleasures of life; it is the harsh happiness that rises like a proud castle above the steep rock of painful experiences, the happiness that Goethe meant when he had Tasso say: "And when man falls silent in his agony, a god gave me to say what I suffer." Bruno Wille called his Iyrian collection, published in 1897, "Einsiedelkunst aus der Kiefernheide". With this title, he made a significant reference to the basic character of his personality. He sought what his soul thirsted for in people: happiness and perfection. But he could not find them there. That is why he returned to where he had come from, to the hermitage of his soul, and chose nature as his companion, which keeps the loyalty that people talk so much about but do not know how to keep to one another. What he has striven for in vain in alliance with men is granted to him through the friendship of nature. It is not an innate trait of Wille's mind that drove him to hermitage. His soul would not have called out to him from the outset like Nietzsche's: "Flee into your solitude! You live too close to the small and wretched. Flee from their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but revenge." Although a rich inner life and a developed sense of nature were always present in Wille and he had developed a certain self-sufficiency in himself, he threw himself into the hustle and bustle of social community life. What in Nietzsche stems from the hypersensitivity of the organism, from its peculiarity of smelling the many impurities in the souls of people, as it were, was brought about in Wille through rich experience within the hustle and bustle of the "flies of the market". This experience gave rise to a desire that appears in Nietzsche like a prejudice: "Worthy know the forest and the rock to be silent with you. Resemble again the tree you love, the broad-headed one: silent and listening, it hangs over the sea." And Bruno Wille not only knows how to be silent with the forest and the rock, but also how to hold an intimate conversation with them. He knows how to loosen nature's tongue. The silent plants, the mystical blowing of the wind, they reveal to him the intimate secrets of nature, and the distant stars entrust him with great revelations. His gaze rises to the red Mars, whose surface is covered not by naïve popular belief but by serious science with its legendary inhabitants, to spy out where the poor, imperfect children of the earth can find redemption from the old woe. The longing of his soul sucks in the sublime sounds of eternal nature in order to live together with the universe, to weave his own self into the infinite soul of the world. "Endless hosts of worlds shall you, the soul, travel..." And this own self is not the empty, insubstantial self of the enthusiast who seeks outside what he cannot find within himself; it is the full self that longs for a fulfillment that brings him just such riches as it holds within itself. The poor self gives itself away because it is needy; the rich self pours out its abundance into its surroundings. A poetic pantheism speaks to us from Wille's poetry. What Goethe desires and expresses in "Künstlers Abendlied": "How I long for you, nature, to feel you faithful and dear!.... You will cheer up all my powers in my mind, and extend this narrow existence to eternity", that lives as the keynote in Wille's poetry.

[ 44 ] In Julius Hart's soul too, as in Bruno Wilde's, the individual spirit marries with the All-Spirit. But this All-Spirit is not the natural spirit resting blissfully in itself; it is a world spirit ravaged by all the storms of human passion. Its feelings float back and forth between drunken enjoyment, proud joy in eternal becoming and dull renunciation. Birth and death, which nature only shows in its outer shell, which revolves around the deep, eternal, never dying life: we encounter them again and again in Hart's poetry. In this poet we find a sense of nature that does not bring up the noble harmony of the gods from the depths of things, but instead sees its own soul moods embodied in the processes of the outside world. What is going on in his heart is proclaimed to him by nature in large-scale symbolism. And the rhythms with which he sings of this symbolism are captivating. The primordial in the human being, the great, gigantic destiny that does not act from the outside, but which from the abysses of the soul drives individuality demoniacally onwards through good and evil, through truth and error, through joys and pains: Hart finds words for this that resound fully and weigh heavily on our souls. Understandably, such a poet also had to find tones for the feeling that comes from the region of the soul that is most developed in modern man, the social one. This social feeling has awakened feelings in his own heart, as they appear in his poem "On the Journey to Berlin", which provides a reflex image of the unsparing, great world events of the present from a strong, deeply excitable soul. There is a philosophical streak in Hart's personality. It lends his poems seriousness and depth. And this trait is thoroughly Iyrical. Even where he could be philosophical, Hart becomes lyrical. This can be seen in his book "The New God", in which he sets out his world view. What he has in mind as such is not laid out in thought, but sounds out of a lyrical mood.

[ 45 ] Clara Müller has earned the right to be counted among the social poets with her collection "Mit roten Kressen". The appealing thing about these poems is that the social imagination and thinking is thoroughly personal. The poet's own suffering and renunciations have opened her eyes to those of others. And how rich her life was in instructive experiences is also beautifully attested to by the poetry, which appears in form with noble simplicity.

[ 46 ] Gustav Renner and Paul Bornstein may be mentioned when speaking of the personalities on whom one places hopes for the future. The simple, natural tones of the former and the pathos of the latter, which seems to be truthful. The simple, natural tones of the former and the warmth of the latter, which seems like truth, certainly arouse such hopes.

[ 47 ] In his first poems, we encounter more maturity in Emanuel von Bodman. His style evokes an impression reminiscent of Rembrandt's paintings. He loves to juxtapose significant perceptions that form sharp contrasts, so that together they have great expressive power. The epigrammatic brevity that is characteristic of him is heightened in its effect by such juxtapositions.

VI

[ 48 ] "In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing, but the form everything; for through the form alone the whole of man is acted upon, while through the content only individual forces are acted upon. The content, however sublime and far-reaching it may be, therefore always has a restrictive effect on the spirit, and true aesthetic freedom can only be expected from the form. This, then, is the real secret of the master's art, that he extinguishes the material through the form; and the more imposing, presumptuous, seductive the material is in itself, the more arbitrarily it pushes itself forward with its effect, or the more the viewer is inclined to engage directly with the material, the more triumphant is the art that forces it back and asserts its dominion over it." With these words, Schiller described an artistic goal in his letters "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", as envisioned by the poet Stefan George. The sensation, the feeling, the image that tremble in the artist's soul must first be shaped and formed if they are to have artistic value. Every fiber of these primal elements of the soul's life must have been seized by the creative power and made into something other than its natural state. For this only excites man, it is no concern of the artist. He is not concerned with the individual colors, the individual sounds, the individual ideas, but with the way in which they are put together in the work that we enjoy aesthetically. Schiller evidently saw an ideal in this cult of form, but felt that it could easily fall into loneliness, and therefore added that the more imposing and powerful the content, the material, and the more powerful the form that has to cope with it, the more valuable the form is. The more captivating what one has to say is, the greater the skill required to say it in a way that is pleasing as such. In poetry, the artist has to deal with his own soul; his feelings, his emotions are the material. The art will not lie in the fact that these sentiments and feelings have greatness, but that greatness appears in how these emotions of the soul are expressed. Whoever remains within Schiller's mode of conception will, however, have to admit that the more significant the content that is expressed, the more highly the mode of expression, however artful it may be, is to be valued. In poetry, it is the artist's own soul that provides this 'content, the personality. The greater the personality we see through the lyrical work of art, the more valuable it will appear to us. Robert Zimmermann, who as an aesthete radically carried out the view that it is form alone that arouses artistic pleasure, said in order to make this clear: one and the same thing, for example a statue, is a stone to the naturalist, especially the mineralogist, and a demigod to the aesthete. The former is merely concerned with the material, the latter with what has been artistically made from the material. With regard to poetry, one would have to say in the sense of this view: the emotions of the soul of another may be attractive or repulsive to man, they may cause his participation or his antipathy; to the aesthete they can only be harmonious or inharmonious, rhythmic or unrhythmic.

[ 49 ] Stefan George now lives entirely in the element of artistic expression, of form. When the vibrations of his soul emerge, they should no longer cling to anything that merely interests the human being; they should be completely absorbed in the artistic element of form. The world only gains value for this personality insofar as it is rhythmically moving, harmoniously shaped, insofar as it is beautiful. And if others see beauty in the fact that the eternal, the elemental forces of existence appear to us in the transient, Stefan George denies the eternal entities any value if they are not beautiful. His three collections of poems: "Hymns, Pilgrimages, Algabal" - "Books of Pastoral and Prize Poems, of Sagas and Songs of the Hanging Gardens" - the "Year of the Soul", they are the world as rhythm and harmony. The world is my rhythm and my harmony, and what does not flow into this golden realm, I leave behind in the chaos of the worthless: that is George's basic mood.

[ 50 ] One might call this mood drunk with beauty. And Hugo von Hofmannsthal is also drunk with beauty. But if one can say of Stefan George: he forces beauty to come to him, then one must say of Hofmannsthal: this beauty forces him to himself. Like a bee, he flies through the world; and there he stops, where there is the honey of the spirit, the beauty, to collect. And just as honey is not the blossom and fruit itself, but only the juice from it, so Hofmannsthal's art is not a revelation of the eternal secrets of the world, but only a part of this whole. One gladly accepts this part and enjoys it in solitary hours, just as the bee feeds on the collected honey in winter. The Viennese poet's art is as sweet as honey. But the power that gigantically creates the things of the world and animates them is missing in this art. It is not stormed by the power and passion of the elements; it blows in it and weaves a harmony of the spheres that resounds at the bottom of the world's soul. And it must become quite still and silent around us, the storm of world events must cease, the wild will must die for a moment if we want to hear the quiet music of this poet. The strange similes of this lyric poet, his peculiar paraphrases and word combinations only impose themselves on the mind that seeks exquisite beauty. Those who seek the eternal forces of nature in their characteristic manifestations will pass these beauties by. For they are like the revelations of the eternal in the luxury of nature. And yet, even in Hofmannsthal's oddities, one senses the necessity of world phenomena. One will not be able to fend off the accusation of a philistine mode of imagination if one rejects this luxurious art; but it must be conceded that few human creations are such seducers of philistinism as the poems of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

[ 51 ] The mood of devotion, standing in adoration before the eternal riddles of nature, resounds to us from the lyrical poems of Johannes Schlaf. So great, so lofty, so mysterious are the riddles before him that he can only look at them with half-open eyes because he is afraid to allow the fullness of existence to penetrate him. The anticipation pours into his soul enough of the blissful delight of the glories of the world; he wants to avoid full vision, the brightness of perception. He, too, resorts to rare imaginings in order to clothe the imagined in words; but not as a spirit drunk with beauty, but because of his passionate devotion to the truth, whose majesty he does not want to bring too close to the sober senses through the garb of everyday life. This poet, who is one of the prophets of radical naturalism in the field of drama: as a lyric poet, he has made himself a singer of the eternal essences that are hidden deep within things.

[ 52 ] Arno Holz took a different path of development. He turned away from the beautiful, naturalistic poetry to which he was devoted at the beginning of his career. The naturalistic doctrine has gained the upper hand over naturalness. For it is natural that feeling in art rises above direct experience. The style that gives a higher form to perceptions: it springs from a natural longing. From that which feels most satisfied when man finds means of art which stand without precedent in life, which are the soul's own free creation and yet revelations of the eternal elemental forces. Goethe describes this satisfaction by characterizing the impression of music. "The dignity of art is perhaps most eminent in music, because it has no substance that needs to be accounted for. It is entirely form and content and elevates and ennobles everything it expresses." For every inner experience, when it emerges from the depths of the soul, should, in Holz's opinion, bring its own individual form into the world; and only this form, born simultaneously with the content, should be the natural one. Holz does not want to accept the path from the experience to the completed artistic form. It is not, as Schiller says, in the conquest of the material by the form that the true artistic secret of the master lies; rather, the master is the one who is able to eavesdrop on the form lying within the material. In this way, Holz has turned from the inspiring singer, who was moved when he expressed the fate of misery, the longing for a better future, into the careful recorder of immediate impressions, which only give satisfaction to the aesthetic feeling when they are accidentally artistic. However, they very often are, because the poetic spirit lives in wood despite its theory, which is hostile to poetic art in the higher sense.

[ 53 ] The poems of Cäsar Flaischlen are effective due to the deep, cozy personality that expresses itself in them. He is a personality who is not able to take life lightly. He has to fight against the passionate strivings of the soul. It thirsts for satisfaction. Pride wants to conquer it, which keeps it away from its goals. But in the end, it is not unlimited power that she trusts, but a bit of modesty that sets herself manly goals when she sees that the distant ones are unattainable. For Flaischlen would rather be a full man within the narrower circle than half a man within the wider one. To be whole in accordance with his own soul fund, inwardly harmonious and based on himself: that is the basic character of his personality. The things of the world pass before his eyes with dignified simplicity, and his verses and his particularly charming poems in prose flow just as simply, often all too unpretentiously.

[ 54 ] Richard Schaukal has a gift for observation that focuses on the expressive in the world. Things and events are stylized for his gaze. He transforms the sublime into the sublime, and the beautiful into the simply beautiful. For his eye, the slender expands completely into a straight line; the transitions from one thing to another cease, and contrast abruptly replaces contrast. But all this in such a way that we have the impression that in his art things clarify themselves through sharp contours and contrasts; they make their indeterminacy disappear and emphasize their characteristic features. A colorful language is on a par with this way of looking at things. He is able to say meaningfully what he has seen meaningfully. He is at the beginning of his artistic career. It seems to be a meaningful beginning.

[ 55 ] The imagination of Rainer Maria Rilke is wonderfully sensitive to the intimate relationships of natural beings and human experiences. And he has an accuracy of expression that is able to present all the subtle relationships between the things that the poet discovers to us with full, rich tones. This is not the accuracy of the great characterizer, this is that of the nature-loving wanderer who loves the things he encounters on his wanderings and to whom they tell many of their quiet secrets because they too love him and have gained his trust.

[ 56 ] Hans Bethge has sonorous colors of expression and a great capacity for impressing the solemn tones of the outside world. However, neither evokes the feeling that it comes from the poet's very own soul, but appears as an expression of what is felt. This impression is heightened by the coquetry with which this poetry approaches us. It is likely, however, that this strangeness in the poet's personality is only a precursor to his own beautiful achievements, the forerunners of which can be heard in his current creations.

[ 1 ] On December 2, 1900, Ludwig Jacobowski was torn from a busy and hopeful life by a sudden death. Only those who were so close to him that he spoke to them about his ideas and plans in the last days of his life will have any real idea of what was carried to his grave. For one always had to make an addition to everything he had achieved. He made it himself. He was only satisfied with himself when he saw great tasks ahead of him. A twofold belief animated him. One was that life is only worth living if one's personality is restlessly enhanced in its efficiency; the other was that man does not belong to himself alone, but to the community, and that only he who is as useful to others as he can be deserves his existence. Under the influence of such sentiments, he continually widened the circles of his activity. It was a beautiful moment for him and for others when he spoke of what he was about to do. The way he spoke always inspired the belief that he would achieve what he wanted. He did not shy away from any obstacles. Not those that lay within him, nor those that he encountered along the way. There are few people who work so hard on themselves to enable themselves to accomplish their tasks. He had the highest confidence in the foundation of his being. But he never believed that it would be easy for him to work this reason out of himself. He could look back with the deepest satisfaction on the work he had done to work his way up to what he had become. But he probably never felt this satisfaction in itself, but only because it gave rise to the feeling that his working power would be equal to any obstacle in the future. Above his desk hung a piece of paper with core sayings. The Goethe sentences were also written on it:

No sooner are you safe from the grossest deception,
Hardly are you master of the first child's will,
You think yourself superhuman enough,
Fail to fulfill the duty of man! How much are you different from others?
Know yourself, live in peace with the world!

[ 2 ] The essence of his thinking and feeling is expressed in these sentences. Seeing life as a duty was part of his innermost nature. For he lived with this attitude from childhood. It is as if he had already felt as a boy: spare yourself no work, for you will one day demand much of yourself as a man, and woe betide you if you have not made yourself resilient!

[ 3 ] Ludwig Jacobowski was born on January 21, 1868 in Strelno in the province of Poznan, the third son of a merchant. He spent his first five childhood years in the small district town, a few miles from the Russian border. In April 1874, his parents moved to Berlin. The boy first attended the Luther Boys' School here. There he was a diligent, ambitious pupil. This remained the case when he entered the sexta of the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, but things changed from the quinta onwards. His diligence had diminished and he did not enjoy his lessons very much. He had to be returned to the Luther Boys' School. An eye operation that had to be performed on him at that time and the fact that he had to attend a language school because of a speech impediment had a profound influence on the boy's basic mood. The feeling that he had to work his way through a rough, brittle surface was richly nourished during this time. Such sensations caused him countless gloomy hours. A remnant of these hours probably never left his soul. But such feelings were always accompanied by the opposite pole: you have to steel your will, you have to replace out of yourself what fate has denied you. For him, dejection was always just the soil from which his almost unlimited energy grew. When he was twelve years old, he lost his mother. Fate ensured that his life was built on a serious foundation. In his twentieth year he also had to follow his father to the grave; he saw two brothers die in the prime of life. His determined will and his courage to face life grew again and again out of his dark experiences. Goethe's words "Over graves forward" were also among those that could be read on the note above his desk.

[ 4 ] A complete transformation took place in the boy when, from about the age of thirteen, he began to immerse himself in the treasures of German intellectual life. It is indicative of the idealistic trait of his soul that he felt drawn to Schiller's creations with true fervor during this time. Thus he created for himself the objects of his interest, which he had initially been unable to find at school. When he returned to the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, he joined the ranks of the good pupils more and more. He had now found his own way to gain understanding from the outside world. In the top class he had reached the point where he was exempted from the oral Abitur examination on the basis of his good written work. He passed this exam on September 30, 1887.

[ 5 ] The friendship with a boy who died as a senior secondary school student had a great influence on Ludwig Jacobowski's development. This was a gifted boy who developed significant mathematical abilities in particular. This friendship was a good counterbalance to Jacobowski's more purely literary intellectual interests. An understanding of genuine, even exact scientific rigor, which remained with him for life, was planted in Jacobowski at that time. As a result, he always had an open mind for the great achievements of natural research and their far-reaching significance for the entire thinking and feeling of modern mankind. Throughout his later life, he was devotedly faithful to the memory of his childhood friend who had died at an early age. "I am once again erecting a poetic monument to him," were the words I heard from him, accompanied by an indescribable look of gratitude.

[ 6 ] The extent of Ludwig Jacobowski's interests can be seen in the course of his university studies. He was enrolled in Berlin from October 1887 to October 1889, then in Freiburg i. Br. until Easter 1890. He initially attended lectures on philosophy, history and literary history. The circle soon expands. Cultural history, psychology and national economics were added. One can see how a main inclination increasingly emerges. He wanted to understand the development of the human imagination. Everything was driven by this fundamental interest. In 1891, he earned his doctorate in Freiburg with a treatise: "Klinger and Shakespeare, a contribution to the Shakespearean romance of the Sturm und Drang period." It is clear from the concluding sentences what shape his ideas had taken. "Literary history should finally stop praising and blaming. Both belong to a romantic period of criticism. Modern criticism - the first traces of which can be discovered in France with Sainte-Beuve, Taine and others - has to live beyond "good and bad", beyond "praise and blame". Psychological understanding is the only and first thing that criticism can achieve. That is why Klinger's dependence on the great Briton to understand psychologically must be understood as something naturally necessary. And judgments against necessities of a psychological nature are decidedly superfluous and wrong. Therefore, when Hettner says that Klinger saw in Shakespeare "a license for everything strange and outlandish, for everything crude and crude", this judgment must be rejected outright. Klinger only saw in Shakespeare a model of genius. His impressionable, receptive nature, supported by an excellent memory, had to store up, process and reproduce a large number of Shakespearean motifs. In this psychological "must" lies an aesthetic justification of his dependence on Shakespeare."

[ 7 ] From then on, Jacobowski's thinking was focused on the laws of the development of the human spirit. He also carried within him the conviction that poetry arises from a necessity deeply rooted in the human soul. This drew him to the study of folk poetry. He looked everywhere at the primitive cultures of primitive peoples and savages to see how poetry necessarily arises from the imaginative and emotional life of man. From such studies he gained a deep understanding of what truly deserves to be called poetry. One of his peculiarities was that everything he studied scientifically immediately penetrated his feelings and gave him a firm judgment. It was highly enjoyable to listen to him when he showed from the smallest details of a poem to what extent something was really poetic or not. He assumed that in the most developed art poetry the characteristics that can be perceived in the most primitive poetry are repeated. This is not to say, however, that Jacobowski based his own artistic work or even his aesthetic judgment on reflection. For him, knowledge was completely compatible with the originality, even naivety, of creation and feeling.

[ 8 ] In his twenty-first year, Ludwig Jacobowski was already able to publish a volume of poems entitled "Aus bewegten Stunden" (Pierson, Dresden and Leipzig 1889). It is the reflection of a youthful life that was richly wrestled with pain and deprivation, that was driven back and forth between gloomy moods and joyful hopes. A great striving, a life of beautiful ideals that struggles uncertainly and anxiously for form and language. Genuinely youthful poems, but which emerge from a serious mood. One thing is striking about these poems that is deeply characteristic of the poet. He is almost completely free from the passing trends of his surroundings. The day with its buzzwords, the prevailing trends of the literary cliques have no influence on him. Even if he does it in a youthful way, he struggles with ideals that are higher than those of his contemporaries. He is not one of those strikers who, with nothing to support them, immediately count themselves a new epoch of intellectual life.

[ 9 ] These were difficult times for the young man before and after completing his university studies. He also worked in the family's shoe factory at the time. Between business activities were the hours in which he wrote his verses, in which he devoted himself to his studies on the origins and development of poetry. Nevertheless, his first volume of poetry was followed a year later by a second, "Funken" (Pierson, Dresden 1890), and in the same year a magnificent work appeared on "Die Anfänge der Poesie, Grundlegung zu einer realistischen Entwickelungsgeschichte der Poesie" (Dresden 1890). Gustav Theodor Fechner's work in the field of aesthetics had made a deep impression on Jacobowski. He saw this thinker's "Vorschule der Ästhetik" as a fundamental work for all future aesthetic studies. In his opinion, Fechner had taken these studies out of the sphere of arbitrary ideas and placed them on the solid ground of reality. The laws of artistic creation should not be derived from speculation, but from the scientific and psychological observation of human nature. In an essay entitled "Primitive Narrative Art", Jacobowski expressed his views in this regard with the following sentences: "Only recently has psychology learned to look around at wild tribes and children. Let us hope that aesthetics and poetics will follow suit. The beginnings have already been made, but there is still much to be done to recognize the aesthetic functions of the child. Let us hope that time will also bring us ripe fruit in this area. Only then will it be possible to clarify the entire germs of poetry, from which the most glorious tree grew in the paradise of the earth ... For a history of the development of poetry it is always of value to follow attentively the products of the childlike soul as well as the study of primitive peoples." Starting from such points of view, Jacobowski wrote a series of essays on the history of the development of poetry. These include: Fairy Tales and Fables of the Basuto Negroes. Supplement to the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, ii1. March 1896. Arab folk poetry in North Africa. Supplement to the Vossische Zeitung, March 10, 1895. Stories and songs of the Africans. Magazin für Literatur, 1896, No. 30 and Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, July 24, 1896, as well as supplement of the Vossische Zeitung, October 1896. Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten. Globus, Vol. 70, 1896, No. ir and f. - When Karl Bücher's "Arbeit und Rhythmus" then appeared, Jacobowski welcomed in this book a beautiful fruit of the standpoint that he himself had made his own in the history of the development of poetry.

[ 10 ] Everything Jacobowski undertook in this field he regarded as preparatory work for a great work on a realistic history of the development of poetry. He was tireless in collecting material for this work. He was intensively occupied with cultural-historical studies, from which the genesis of poetic creation was to emerge before his eyes. In particular, he was thoroughly familiar with the cultural-historical research of the English. He left behind a wealth of notes on the lives of primitive people. In such works he developed an incomparable diligence, and in the processing of the material he was characterized by a comprehensive sense and unerring judgement. The friends he had in the early nineties were of the opinion that his real talent lay in this field and that he would one day achieve great things as a scholar. - He himself pursued these matters with devoted love and perseverance, with the intention of one day attempting a fundamental work on the "History of the Development of Poetry". However, this scholarly activity did not initially form the focus of his work.

[ 11 ] In this center stood his own poetic achievements. It was for their sake that he wanted to live first and foremost. He never doubted for a moment that he was a poet at the core of his being. Whether this core would penetrate through a hard shell, however, may well have often been an anxious question before his soul.

[ 12 ] Jacobowski's soul was moved back and forth between two extremes. A strong, indomitable will was in him alongside a soft, sensitive mind, in which the processes of the outside world with which he came into contact left sharp traces. And it was his vital need, in the noblest sense of the word, to feel the value of his personality. Anything that got in his way in this direction caused him the deepest resentment. Imagine him with such a disposition in the nineties amidst the brutal outbursts of an anti-Semitism that was simply incomprehensible to finer natures. And imagine his idealistic way of thinking at a time when he saw nerdiness, crude struggles for base goods, frivolous play with sacred feelings becoming more and more insolent every day. His first novel "Werther, the Jew", published in 1892 (Pierson, Dresden), tells in powerful words what moods were stirred in him by the sight of such goings-on. He wrote it in the midst of hardship and true anguish.

[ 13 ] Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's money speculation deprives his son's teacher, to whom he is truly devoted, of his fortune. Wolff's passion for the teacher's wife turns the young man into a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, this same passion destroys his beautiful bond of love with a child of the people, who seeks redemption in voluntary death from the torment that his affection for the student has brought him. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to show him the way through the contrasts into which life throws him and through the confusion into which his own passions have plunged him. His sense of humanity alienates him from the people to whom the natural ties of life bind him. At the same time, these ties weigh heavily on him. The world pushes him back because of his affiliation with people whose faults he himself deeply detests. - Jacobowski allows the fate of the modern Jew to be reflected in this individual fate. The novel is written with heart_ blood. It contains a psychology whose object of study was his own bleeding soul. One might criticize the novel for being written by a young man who has not found the peace and time for objective observation of the soul, because the experiences of his own soul are still striving too hard to find expression. One might also say that Jacobowski's artistic talent for composition was not yet great at the time. One thing must be conceded: we are dealing with the document of a human soul whose tragic undertones must speak to every heart that is not hardened against the suffering of an idealistic mind. Such a heart is compensated for all the faults of the narrative by the profound truth with which a personality unreservedly expresses one side of his nature. - Anyone who was close to Jacobowski knows this side of his nature. It was the side against which the energy of his will had to fight again and again. One can speak of a highly heightened sensitivity towards everything that was directed against the justified claims of his personality to full respect and recognition from his fellow man. At the same time, he had a rare need to share in everything that was worth living for. His devotion to people, his absorption in the outside world instilled in him a constant fear that he might lose himself. Jacobowski is not Werther. But the fate of Werther is one that Jacobowski had to constantly protect himself against. When he wrote "Werther", the possibility of becoming a Werther was clearly before his eyes. That is why the novel is a confrontation with himself.

[ 14 ] A person who has put as much into a work as Jacobowski did into his "Werther" cannot be indifferent if he encounters a deaf fellow world. There was no sign of any recognition of his undoubtedly honest intention and equally undoubted talent. One can sympathize with the pressure that this lack of success exerted on the young poet. Later, when he spoke of those days, he honestly admitted how he had suffered from this lack of success. He was not one of those immodest natures who never doubted their own talent. Encouraging recognition would have been very valuable to him at this time. One may attribute the fact that his poetic work now briefly took a back seat to a strong preoccupation with political issues to the fact that he lacked such recognition. However, his involvement in political issues was not one that was lost in the interests of the day. He always considered the political in connection with the development of culture. The last decade of the nineteenth century was only too suitable for presenting the most diverse questions to sharp minds with a broad horizon. The repeal of the Socialist Law gave the social movement a powerful outward appearance in its cultural significance. The old parties had disintegrated; their ideas and their momentum were no longer equal to the ever-advancing development. Old, reactionary powers believed that their time had come. Slogans and dark instincts began to exert an effect on the wider masses that had not been thought possible for a long time. One of these dark instincts, the anti-Semitic one, particularly caught Jacobowski's attention. It hurt him deeply in his most personal feelings. Not because he was attached to Judaism with these feelings. That was not the case at all. Rather, Jacobowski belonged to those who had long outgrown Judaism in their inner development. But he was also one of those who tragically had to feel the doubts that were cast on such outgrowth out of blind prejudice.

[ 15 ] However, these blind prejudices were only a partial phenomenon. They were part of a powerful current that was increasingly becoming a sum of reactionary ideas. It was believed that an ideal basis for this current could be created by infusing the prevailing world views with Christian ideas anew. The buzzword "practical Christianity" dominated people's minds. And the idea that the state had to be built on Christian foundations seemed to exert a powerful attraction. - This prompted Jacobowski to examine such views. His extensive "Study" on the "Christian State and its Future" (Berlin 1894, published by Carl Duncker) is a result of these debates. His preoccupation with cultural-historical problems provided a solid basis for the "Study". He carefully examines the influence of the church on the states. He lets history speak its important verdict on the extent to which the Church has intervened in the development of Western humanity. And in order to recognize the moral foundations of the state, he examines the changes in the moral concepts of various peoples. The conclusion he comes to can hardly be doubted by those with insight: "The end of the Christian state is a fact for the insightful parties in Germany, against which its appointed representative, the conservative party, will run up a storm in vain. The compelling logic of history has always been stronger than the limited individual wishes and special interests of political parties. And so it is a fact that the Christian state is crumbling more and more in all European states." In the second part of the "Study", Jacobowski pursues the present-day approaches to new foundations of social order: the national, ethical state, the free Christian community, the free ethical community. He conducts a stimulating investigation into the viability of the various young ideals of the future. - Because of the youth of these ideals, such a debate cannot produce a real result. "No one knows who will replace the "Christian state", no one knows whether this replacement will take place under peaceful conditions." For Jacobowski himself, however, the study was of great importance. Through it, he had gained what he could not have lived without, according to his entire disposition: he had acquired an understanding of the world around him.

[ 16 ] The struggle with the environment is also the problem that he makes the subject of a dramatic work in 1894. He wrote "Diyab, the Fool, Comedy in Three Acts" in a short space of time, from April to June of that year. Just as "Werther" represents one side of Jacobowski's nature, his emotional world, "Diyab" represents his willpower, which repeatedly asserts itself against all currents. The "Werther" is based on the more or less unconscious feeling: I have to defend myself against these manifestations of my nature; in the "Diyab", the feeling may speak in the same way: this is how I have to relate to the outside world if I want to make my way. - The sheikh's son, Diyab, was born of a white mother and is therefore regarded as an outcast. The scorn of the whole neighborhood follows him. He saves himself from this mockery by fleeing into the solitude of his inner self, thereby rising above all the mockery of the world around him. He becomes superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides this 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 are. There he lies among the trees of the forest, living only himself and his plans. He cultivates his powers to a strength that will later make him the savior of his tribe. Those who mocked him in the past then shrink back from the power of the enemy, and he, the outcast, overcomes them. The strong-willed man only put on the fool's mask so that he could make his fortune unrecognized by others. Behind the fool's mask matures the personality that takes revenge for the treatment meted out to her and her mother, the personality that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength.

[ 17 ] "Diyab" is not written with a bleeding heart like "Werther", but with a beating heart. It was written at a time when Jacobowski was just finding himself. An inner security breaks through, which protects him from the kind of disgruntlement that followed the limited external success of his "Werther". - From this time onwards, a new period in Jacobowski's endeavors can be assumed. There is also a change in his lifestyle. He broke away from a friend, a lyricist, who was very successful as soon as he appeared on the scene. Jacobowski undoubtedly owed much to this friendship. The criticism that all his achievements received from this side was a constant incentive for self-discipline. He only ever remembered this childhood friendship with gratitude. But it had to end if Jacobowski wanted to find himself completely. The feeling that he needed spiritual solitude, complete dependence on himself, led to Jacobowski's estrangement from his friend.

[ 18 ] The collection of poems "From Day and Dream" (published by S. Calvary, Berlin 1895) is a kind of conclusion to his first creative period. Jacobowski's three lyrical collections are a faithful reflection of all the struggles of his third decade of life. The striving for simplicity, for a popular art form is a fundamental trait of his poetry. A genuine idealism is expressed in atmospheric images that seek vividness and plasticity. A certain symbolic way of imagining things often pervades. The processes of his own soul are symbolized by events in nature. While in the first poems of his youth the intellectual still predominates, later a full view of reality increasingly comes to the fore. At first, it is the poet's own inner self that preoccupies him:

From the day's pleasure and pain
The universe weaves a lullaby,
That draws into tired human hearts,
Bringing sweet peace,
When the soul never approaches
The divine image of truth
Wrapped in the night.

[ 19 ] Afterwards, our poet struggles to shape the outside world. He makes nature speak. He personifies reality. He holds a dialogue with it. The secrets of nature's workings and his own world of emotions intertwine. Poems such as the delicate "Forest Dreams" in "From Day and Dream" stem from this kind of interaction:

The sun spreads its blessing
Like a golden carpet
. Woodruff perfumes the paths,
And redthorn scatters its blossoms.
Only sunshine and sky blue
Shimmer through the cool canopy of leaves.
The peregrine falcon with a bright cry
Keeps me awake on soft moss.
Now he has fallen silent in the sultriness,
I dream sleepily to myself
And dream that in the fragrant puddle
I myself am stalk and blossom...

[ 20 ] Deeply rooted in Jacobowski's nature was always a firm belief in the harmony of the universe, in a sun in the course of every human destiny. It was probably only this belief at the center of his soul that helped him overcome many a bleak moment in his personal destiny. He suffered greatly from these personal experiences, but there was something in his outlook on life that always worked like light. He would not have been able to appreciate himself as he wanted to if he had not felt the strength within himself to bring light into his darkness. So he steeled this strength and worked on himself incessantly. And this work constantly gives him new hope, lifts him above moods, as expressed in the poignant "Why?" in "Out of Day and Dream":

... When I awoke to the first day of summer,
The dark night was already waiting outside.
I looked up at the golden sunlight,
The gray rain cloud shifted in front of it;
And I stretched out my child's hand, rejoicing
To the rose bush that was all in bloom,
Then thorns warded off my exuberance,
And from joy the red blood ran...

[ 21 ] The melancholy cycle "Martha" in "Aus Tag und Traum" points deep into the poet's soul. It encompasses an elegiac undertone that trembled in Jacobowski's heart until his death. A sudden death in 1891 had snatched his childhood sweetheart away from him. From then on, the memory of her was one of the images he returned to again and again. The departed woman lived on in his heart in the most tender way. She was like a presence to him in hours of sadness and joy. It was a lasting loyalty of a very special kind that he retained for her. When he spoke of her, his voice changed. You had the feeling that he sensed her presence. Then you were not alone with him. That's what made all the poems about his childhood sweetheart so intimate.

[ 22 ] His preoccupation with political issues had earned Jacobowski a position with a newspaper and in an association that kept material worries at bay in the last years of his short life. Those who had dealings with him could only praise his diligence and hard work in this position. When one considers that his occupation in this position took him out of his literary work every day anew, then one cannot marvel enough at the sum of what he nevertheless achieved in the literary field. The number of novellistic sketches he wrote is large, and his activity as a critic was extensive. Characteristic of him is the position he took towards his shorter novellistic works. He wrote a large number of such sketches in the mid-nineties. He saw them as works in which he was developing his style as a narrator. The moment he was ready to take on larger works, working on such sketches lost its appeal for him.

[ 23 ] As a critic, Jacobowski is characterized to an outstanding degree by his ability to completely immerse himself in the achievements of others, to immediately feel the core of a foreign personality from their creations. Anything doctrinaire is far removed from him as a critic. His judgments always stem from a fresh, original feeling. You can see everywhere that he is fully involved in what he is talking about. Ultimately, he does not want to judge at all, but only to understand. His pleasure is not in condemning, but in recognizing. One reads with particular pleasure the remarks in which he justifies his approving judgments with his own warmth. - Anyone who wanted to follow Jacobowski's work as a critic closely would see how this man was intensely involved in the intellectual life of his time, how he drew his circles of interest in all directions.

[ 24 ] A collection of sketches has been found in Jacobowski's estate, which he was preparing to publish in book form in 1898. They were to bear the title: "Stumme Welt. Symbols". The collection is indicative of his way of thinking and his entire inner life at this time. When you read through the sketches, you get the impression that Jacobowski was called to be the poet of the modern naturalistic world view. The new understanding of nature initially seems to have something unpoetic and sober about it. Its penetration into the purely natural processes, its commitment to pure, unadorned reality seems to frighten away the poetic imagination. Jacobowski's "Silent World" proves the opposite. He had completely settled into the scientific confession. He was imbued with the greatness of the view that sprouts from his immersion in the eternal, iron laws of the universe. Darwinism and the doctrine of evolution were dear to his heart. It is true that they tore apart the veil that once enveloped nature. But what emerges from behind this veil is not as devoid of poetry for those who are able to see, as people with a conservative outlook would like to claim. The marvelous laws of matter and forces give birth to poetic images that are in no way inferior in grandeur to the images of earlier imaginary worlds that were transferred from the human soul into nature. Modern man no longer wants to let nature speak in a human way. The whole mythical world of spirits is silent when the ear, educated in naturalism, listens to the phenomena of nature. The eternal cycle of matter and forces seems to be a "silent world". But whoever knows how to make this "silent world" speak can hear completely new, wonderful secrets, mysteries of nature whose harmonious music would be drowned out by the former loud voices of anthropomorphic world views. Jacobowski wanted to depict this music of the "silent world" in his collection of sketches.

[ 25 ] The new view of nature rightly invokes Goethe as the progenitor of its ideas. And for those who delve into Goethe's scientific writings, the phenomena of the world become letters from which they learn to read and understand the plan of the cosmos in a new way. Many people read Goethe far too superficially. Jacobowski was one of the few who sought to gain a proper position vis-à-vis Goethe. He treated everything relating to Goethe with a holy shyness. He knew that one grows if one retains the belief that one can always learn something new from Goethe. He immersed himself in Goethe's view of nature at an early age. But even in the last days of his life he could still be heard saying: now I am beginning to understand Goethe. He realized how Goethe could be a guide when it came to making the "silent world" speak. He then did not have the volume published. New approaches emerged from the basic idea that holds the sketches together. A cosmic poem was to grow out of it. He wanted to allow his spirit to mature in order to imbue the seemingly deified world with new life, to conjure up new mysteries from the cosmic processes. The epic of the mysteriously revealed workings of the eternal forces of nature was to be called "Earth". It is not for the editor of the estate to pass judgment on the germ-like sketches of a comprehensive thought to be published as "Stumme Welt" (2nd volume of the estate). I only considered it my task to communicate the poet's intentions.

[ 26 ] It seems that Jacobowski initially saw his profession as a poet in the development of his imagination in the direction he had taken in the "Silent World". This is probably also the reason why he did not initially regard the field of drama, which he had entered so promisingly in "Diyab", as one in which his individuality could fully come into its own. Certainly, like others, he also thought of ultimately living out his artistic intentions in dramatic forms. But his strict self-criticism demanded restraint from him in every field until the moment when he felt he had reached the highest level in the respective sphere according to his ideals. In 1896, he completed a drama in four acts: "Homecoming". It is set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War in central Germany. It is intended as a portrait of the times on a grand scale. After completing the work, the poet heard a wide variety of opinions from those he shared it with. These judgments ranged from bright, unreserved enthusiasm to complete disagreement. Jacobowski initially left the drama in his desk. He waited to see what he himself would say about it at a later point in its development. In the months before his death, the work became worthwhile to him again. He would probably have reworked it. As he was no longer able to do so, it must form part of his estate in its original form. One gets to know the poet from it at a certain time in his life. It will have to be judged from this point of view.

[ 27 ] The stories "Anne-Marie, ein Berliner Idyli" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1896) and "Der kluge Scheikh, ein Sittenbild" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1897) belong to a transitional stage in Jacobowski's development. They show him in his striving for plasticity, for the vividness of the figures. Reading them, it is as if one senses the resignation he imposed on himself. His larger ideas were already living in his soul at that time. In order to give them shape, in order not to lose himself in their schematic form, he had to give his epic style juice and strength. He did this with more or less unpretentious stories.

[ 28 ] The symbolizing aspect of his art is then clearly revealed in the collection of stories "Satan laughed, and other stories" (Franz Wunder, Berlin 1897). One need only consider the basic idea of the first tale, which gave the collection its name, to realize what the main feature here is. God has taken away the devil's dominion over the earth by creating man. Yet the devil secures his influence by seizing the woman. The demonic powers of sexual life are symbolically outlined in a few characteristic strokes.

[ 29 ] In the year 1899, the poet appeared with a work of art that is entirely based on this symbolizing principle, his "Roman eines Gottes: Loki" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). It is fair to say that Jacobowski's various inclinations flow together like branches of a great river in the creation of this work. His urge to eavesdrop on the popular imagination and to understand its quiet weaving led him to take the external plot from the figures and events of Germanic mythology. His observation of social life led him to focus on Loki, the "disinherited god", the revolutionary of the world of the gods. The psychology of man, who can only assert himself through the strength of his inner self, through his strong will, and that against adversity from all sides, made the Loki figure particularly appealing to Jacobowski. Werther and Diyab in one person, but more Diyab is Loki. He is this, as Jacobowski himself wanted to be Diyab.

[ 30 ] No real process, even if it were given in idealistic art form, could have expressed what the poet wanted to say. The eternal struggles of the human soul are before his eyes. The struggles that take place in the deepest recesses of the mind. Place and time, all accompanying phenomena are almost indifferent here. The action must be lifted into a higher sphere. May the individual events that life brings to man have this or that tragic or joyful outcome: they all bear the hallmark of an eternal struggle. "God created man in his own image, which presumably means that man created God in his own image." This is a famous statement by Ludwig Feuerbach. One could expand on it and say: if man wants to represent the deepest processes of his inner being, then he must transform the life of his soul into the life of the gods; the primal battles in the depths of his chest are embodied in the battles of the gods. Because Jacobowski wanted to depict such primal battles, his novel became that of a god. These primal battles take place between the two souls that dwell in each breast, between the soul that gives rise to goodness, love, patience, kindness and beauty, and between the other, from which come hatred, enmity and rage. Balder and Loki face each other in incessant war in every human mind. Hamerling expressed the thought that describes what lived in him when he wrote his "Ahasver" as follows: "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". Jacobowski often emphasized in his conversations that he thought of his "Loki" as so "overarching", so "towering", so "standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life".

[ 31 ] The poet's intentions are revealed most clearly by a trait in Loki's character. Jacobowski has always assured us in conversation that we can only fully understand him when we know how to interpret this trait in the nature of his hero of the gods. Loki, the god born far from Valhalla, the child of the gods' sin, who grows up in pain and deprivation, who does not know his mother or his father: he has something over all the other gods. Happiness and eternal joy are theirs. He has pain and torment. But he has the gift of wisdom before them. He knows the future of the other gods, which is hidden from them. They live, but they do not care about the driving forces on which their lives depend. They do not know where these driving forces are leading them. It is not happiness that opens the mind's eye, it is not joy that makes you clairvoyant, but pain. That is why Loki sees into the future. But there is one thing Loki does not know. He must hate Balder, the god of love. He does not know the reason for this. For his own fate is locked up in it. This also remains hidden from him. This is the point at which Jacobowski's most secret intentions are revealed. Loki's wisdom ends before the question: why must the knowing Loki hate the ignorant but love-filled Balder? This, however, points to the fate of knowledge. It is the greatest riddle to itself.

[ 32 ] No summary or even a judgment is to be given here about "Loki". Only the poet's intentions are to be told, as he gladly communicated them in conversation about the work he loved so much. He felt that with "Loki" he had made a huge leap forward on his path of development. He had come to believe that the affirmative forces within him would triumph. Clarity about everything negative in human destiny was what he sought above all, and what he had achieved in himself through his "Loki" poetry. Beauty, goodness and love are the perfect things in the world. But perfection needs destructive forces if it is to fulfill its full task. Loki is the eternal destroyer that is necessary for the good elements to renew themselves, the demon of unhappiness that happiness needs, the evil spirit of hatred from which love stands out. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his creations, the hatred that creates the ground for all love: that is Loki. - The person who seeks the truth finds the destructive urges of life at the bottom of his soul. The demonic forces of Loki oppress him. They cloud the bright days of life, the moments of happiness. But one understands, one only feels the shining days in their true power when they stand out from the Loki mood. With such feelings in the background, Jacobowski has brought together his poems from the years 1896 to 1898 under the title "Leuchtende Tage" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1900). They are imbued with a luminosity that arises from a dark background, but which makes life all the better for it.

[ 33 ] The fact that he was able to appear before the world with "Loki" and the "Shining Days" brought about an inner transformation in Jacobowski. Only now did he have the feeling that he could approve of his own achievements. He now had the confidence in himself that his strict self-criticism was in harmony with his own creations. An inner balance came over him. The future became ever brighter. He had found himself and his belief that "our stars" would redeem him. If you look at the pictures of the poet from the successive stages of his life, you can also see the expression of his inner transformation in his facial features. A sense of security, of harmony, appears more and more. Jacobowski had to fight many a battle with life before he really reconciled himself with it.

[ 34 ] The certainty, the unity of character also stimulated his urge to work. He was a man who only knew himself to be happy in his work. He saved the contemplative, the solitary, reflective contemplation only for life's moments of celebration. He wrote his "Loki" in a few weeks, in 1898, in Tyrol, as he was detached from the contexts in which life placed him. His poems were only written when his inner self lifted him above reality. Within this reality itself, however, he was compelled to contribute to the spiritual life of his time to the best of his ability. His work on "Zeitgenossen", which he published together with Richard Zoozmann in 1891 and which, however, only had a short existence, arose from this urge. He found a field for this urge when he was able to take over "Gesellschaft" in 1897, the journal that had served the spirits longing for a new era of literary life since the mid-1980s. Jacobowski's need for the all-round cultivation of intellectual interests characterized the volumes that appeared under his editorship. He wanted to honestly serve true cultural progress with all the means at his disposal. Nothing was excluded that could contribute to this goal. It is natural that a pronounced individuality, such as Jacobowski was, had to give a magazine edited by him a strongly personal touch. At the same time, however, he was aware of the editor's duty to allow personal inclinations to recede into the background. And above all, he knew the duty to pave the way for young talents to enter the public eye. He had the courage to evaluate what was not yet recognized. In such evaluation and recognition, he was selfless and very confident in his judgment. He was unique in his concession to every legitimate aspiration. As many as sought his advice, his help: all found him helpful. He did an unspeakable amount of work in silence. And he knew how to do everything with nobility. - You got to know him in all the goodness of his nature through small traits.

[ 35 ] One such small trait is recorded here. He was chairman of the "Neue Freie Volksbühne" for a short time. It was during a summer outing of the members of this association. Jacobowski was in charge of the plays that were organized outdoors. It was heart-warming to see how he romped and jumped with the children, how he took part in the race and how he was even the first to reach the finish line, despite the fact that quite good runners were obviously taking part. And how he then found the right way to hand out the small prizes to the children.

[ 36 ] Jacobowski found inner satisfaction in an enterprise that he launched in 1899 with his "New Songs by the Best Recent Poets for the People". In a booklet for ten pfennigs, he offered a selection of the best creations of contemporary poetry. He soon heard evidence of the usefulness of his enterprise from all sides. The little booklet was received everywhere. He was always happy to tell people how lucky he was with it. He carefully collected everything he heard about the effect. He wanted to write a brochure based on his experiences about the interest in true poetry in the widest circles of the people. For in all this he had a great perspective. He wanted to counteract the bad taste, crudeness and wildness of the people. Stupid ragamuffins and silly jokes were to be replaced by true poetry. He repeatedly said: "I have made the attempt. I would have unreservedly confessed to the public that the first step had failed if that had been the case." But he was able to describe this first step as a thoroughly successful one. The continuous booklets he began to publish under the title "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" (German Poets in Selection for the People), also at ten pfennigs (in Kitzler's publishing house, Berlin), were to serve the same purpose. Two booklets, "Goethe" and "Heine", were published a long time ago, the third, "Grimms Märchen", was ready when he died and was published a few weeks after his death. He worked tirelessly in every direction to make the ideas expressed in these publications fruitful. He also intended to publish a collection of poems for the army. In an interesting essay that he published in the "Nation", he spoke out about the current type of poetry and songs that are prevalent in military life. In such plans, which served charitable aims in the ideal sense, he possessed an admirable strength and a happy handling.

[ 37 ] In connection with his folkloristic studies and his efforts to promote folk culture is the publication of his collection "Aus deutscher Seele. Ein Buch Volkslieder" in 1899 (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). He wanted to bring to life the folk poetic treasures piled up in numerous books in libraries. He says of these treasures in his foreword: "Their content, because it is insufficiently disseminated, gives way to the flat street songs of the big cities and the miserable sentimentalities of stupid operettas. So it seemed to me that the time had come, as far as the strength of an individual and the understanding of my poetic ability would allow, to publish a collection which, arranged according to aesthetic criteria, would present to the German people anew some of the truly valuable and glorious songs from the jumble and confusion of the accumulated mountain of songs." - Jacobowski was able to describe "Aus deutscher Seele" as "the result of these considerations and the fruit of many years of the most intimate occupation with the wonders of the German folk soul and folk poetry".

[ 38 ] The idea of making important "questions of the present and outstanding phenomena of modern culture" accessible to wider circles in a form they liked came from Jacobowski's plan to publish a collection of small writings - in booklets of 32 to 8o pages - in an informal series. Three such booklets were published in 1900 under the title "Freie Warte, Sammlung moderner Flugschriften" (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). They are: "Haeckel und seine Gegner" (by Dr. Rudolf Steiner), "Sittlichkeit!?!" (by Dr. Matthieu Schwann), "Die Zukunft Englands, eine kulturpolitische Studie" (by Leo Frobenius). These and the titles of the writings that were to appear in the near future show how comprehensively Jacobowski thought of the task he had set himself. The following were also announced: "Das moderne Lied", "Die Erziehung der Jugend zur Freude", "Schiller contra Nietzsche", "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?", "Der Ursprung der Moral". The pamphlet "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?" ("Do the German people have a literature?") was written by Jacobowski himself. In it, he wanted to talk about the experiences that led to his Volkshefte and similar endeavors, and also about the results of such undertakings.

[ 39 ] Another link in Jacobowski's efforts to serve his time was the publication of an "Anthology of Romantic Poetry" under the title "The Blue Flower". Together with Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski, he published this collection of Romantic poetry from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century in 1900. The 400-page volume begins with works by Herder and ends with one by the Prince of Schönaich-Carolath. Jacobowski added an essay "On the Psychology of Romantic Poetry" to the "Introduction" compiled by Fr. von Oppeln-Bronikowski. He believed he was doing the best service to the urge of the time to move from naturalism to a kind of neo-romanticism by collecting the pearls of romantic art.

[ 40 ] The qualities of Jacobowski, through which he worked directly from person to person, the stimuli that could emanate from him in this way, came to fruition in a literary society that he had founded with a few friends in the last period of his life. Every Thursday in the "Nollendorf-Kasino" in Kleiststraße, he gathered an artistically and literarily stimulated circle under the name "Die Kommenden". Younger poets had the opportunity to present their creations here, and important questions of art or knowledge were dealt with in lectures and discussions. Artists of all kinds visited the society, which met here informally every week, and Ludwig Jacobowski was constantly striving to come up with new ideas to make the few evening hours they spent here enjoyable for the guests. He had also made plans to compile artistic booklets with the performances from these evenings. The first was in progress when he died. It was completed by his friends after his death and published in his memory with contributions from his estate. The "Kommenden", who still meet every week, faithfully cherish the memory of their founder.

[ 41 ] An external cause led Jacobowski to write a short social drama in one act, "Work", at the end of 1899. Axel Delmar had conceived the plan of dramatically depicting the more important turning points in the development of Germany in a centenary play comprising five one-act plays, to be performed at the "Berliner Theater". Wichert, Ompteda, G. Engel, Lauff and Jacobowski were the five poets. The latter had the task of dramatizing the social thinking and feeling of the present, the most important cultural phenomena at the end of the century. One does the "work" an injustice if one attributes a tendency to it and judges it accordingly. The aim was merely to illustrate how social trends are reflected in different social classes and people.

[ 42 ] In the last months of his life, a painful experience that shook Jacobowski to the depths of his soul found poetic expression in a one-act verse drama entitled "Glück" (Happiness) (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1901). It will only be possible to talk about this experience at a later date. He himself hinted at the mood from which the drama was written in the verses preceding "Zum Eingang":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Who ever trembled in the same affliction,
Accept it and love it!

[ 43 ] Some of the poems in this estate come from the same mood. "Happiness" in dramatic form has come naturally to the poet from the Syriac poems in which he has set down the moments of a tragic experience. These lyrical poems from the last period, united with all the poetry he has produced since the publication of his "Shining Days", appear here as an estate. With regard to the compilation of the poems, the points of view which the poet himself observed in his "Shining Days" have been retained. The headings of the individual sections of the volume of poems are therefore the same as in the "Shining Days". The sharp character that Jacobowski's soul life has taken on in recent years made this section desirable. A second volume will bring together all the sketches he himself compiled in a booklet entitled "Stumme Welt". He did not allow it to appear independently because he wanted to develop the plan in a larger form later and, under the title "Earth", work up the ideas on which the "Silent World" was based into a cosmic poem in a grand style. He considered it necessary to immerse himself deeply in the natural knowledge of the new age before he could begin his great work. A deep inner conscientiousness and shyness prevented him from tackling this fruitful idea too early. He was not destined to carry out the project, which would probably have revealed what Jacobowski's deepest inner self held. A third volume was to contain the above-mentioned drama "Homecoming". A series of "ideas" that are characteristic of Jacobowski's thinking and personality are added to the second volume as an "appendix". As small as their number is, they clearly show the depth of his outlook on life and his humor, as well as the ease of judgment he had towards certain things. They prove that he was one of those people who knew that not everything must be measured with the same yardstick, but that different things must be measured with different yardsticks.

[ 1 ] Life creates troubles and worries; it demands duties and work. But it also brings us joys and beautiful moments. Among the greatest joys are those which great thinkers and writers grant us through their works; among the most beautiful hours we must count those in which we obtain spiritual nourishment through such works. Through these works we strengthen ourselves for the struggle of life. Just as our body cannot be without physical nourishment, neither can our soul be without spiritual nourishment. A person who does not care for the works of poets and thinkers can only have a raw and poor spirit. But he will often have a much harder lot than the one who knows the spiritual creations. For many a sad hour can be helped over by poetry; many a "consolation can be given us by the words of an eminent man. Without us realizing it, our character is ennobled when we absorb the creations of poets.

[ 2 ] Friedrich Schiller is a poet whose every word must penetrate deep into our hearts. For everything he has given us is spoken from the depths of his heart. The more you get to know him, the more you will not only admire his high spirit, but love his noble soul and strengthen yourself by contemplating his wonderful character. He has had a difficult life and has known suffering. In a weak body dwelt a strong spirit, which was only directed towards the sublime and ideal. He was born on November 10, 1759 in the small Württemberg town of Marbach. His father was first a surgeon, then supervisor of the gardens and tree plantations at the pleasure palace of Solitude. His mother, the daughter of an innkeeper, was a pious woman, a true friend of poetry. She also instilled this inclination in her son. His father gave the boy his first lessons. Later, Pastor Moser became Friedrich Schiller's teacher in the village. He received further instruction at the Latin school in Ludwigsburg. His inclination towards noble intellectual activity was evident from an early age. The Psalms and the teachings of the prophets, spiritual songs and poetry stimulated his serious mind. He would have loved to become a clergyman.

[ 3 ] At the instigation of Duke Karl Eugen von Württemberg (1728-1793), however, he was accepted as a pupil at the Karls-Schule, which was first at the pleasure palace of Solitude and then in Stuttgart. He was at this school from 1773 to 1780 and was initially supposed to study law. Later he swapped this science for medicine. He used all the time left to him by the strict military discipline of the school to immerse himself in serious works of poetry. Even then he decided to create a serious poem himself, whose hero was to be Moses. But he soon became fascinated by another subject. While still at school, he wrote his play "The Robbers", which he then completed after becoming a regimental doctor in Stuttgart.

[ 4 ] Duke Karl Eugen saw with dissatisfaction that his military doctor was occupying himself in this way. He forbade him to print anything other than medical works. This forced Schiller to leave his office and his home and create a position for himself in the world. He fled with his friend, the musician Streicher, to Mannheim on September 22, 1782, where his "The Robbers" had already been performed and had met with the greatest acclaim. However, he was unable to find any patrons here. Instead, a high-minded woman, Henriette von Wolzogen, gave him a place of refuge on her Bauerbach estate near Meiningen. Here he was able to work in peace on his second drama "The Conspiracy of Fiesco in Genoa", which was published in 1783. He was also able to complete his third drama "Kabale und Liebe" here and have it published in 1784. The fight against the immorality of his time and the enthusiasm for freedom that these works express won the poet the hearts of his contemporaries. He also won them over with his poems, which appeared in his "Anthology" and were carried by the noblest of impulses. Baron von Dalberg, the director of the theater in Mannheim, who had previously not dared to grant the poet a position in Mannheim because he feared the wrath of the Duke of Württemberg, now made Schiller a theater poet. The latter founded a journal, the "Rheinische 'Thalia". The seriousness with which he took the position of drama was immediately apparent in his first essay, in which he described "Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt". His next poetic work was a great historical play, "Don Carlos". The whole urge for political freedom, which animated the best minds of the time, was expressed in this work. In 1784, the poet was able to read the beginning to Duke Karl August von Weimar, Goethe's friend, in whom he would later find a patron.

[ 5 ] In April 1785, two young admirers of Schiller in Leipzig, Huber and Körner (the father of the freedom singer and freedom poet Theodor Körner), invited the poet to their home. The latter responded to the call and spent the next few days in Gohlis with Huber before moving to Körner, who had meanwhile moved to Dresden. Schiller was now able to devote himself to his work in complete privacy. He completed "Don Carlos" on Körner's estate in Loschwitz near Dresden. He stayed there until the summer of 1787, after which he spent a few months in Weimar and then moved to Volkstedt near Rudolstadt to be near the Lengefeld family who lived there and with whom he had become close friends during a trip to Rudolstadt. On September 9, 1788, Schiller saw Goethe for the first time at Lengefeld's house. They could not yet become friends at that time. But Goethe told himself that something had to be done for Schiller to help him gain an external position. The fact that Schiller soon received a professorship for history at the University of Jena was Goethe's doing. During this time, Schiller's poetic work took a break. He immersed himself in history and philosophy. Earlier, in Dresden, he had already begun a brilliant historical work, the "History of the Apostasy of the Netherlands". It had already been completed in Weimar and described the great struggle for freedom of the Dutch in the sixteenth century. After taking up his teaching post, he wrote the "History of the Thirty Years' War", describing the terrible religious war that spread its devastating effects across Germany from 1618 to 1648. One of the fruits of his philosophical studies is the magnificent "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man", in which he illustrated the education of man through art. He wrote the latter work in gratitude to the Hereditary Prince Christian Friedrich of Holstein-Augustenburg, who, together with the Danish minister Count Schimmelmann, gave him an annual salary of 1000 thalers for three years as a gift when he heard that Schiller was in a difficult situation. Due to his frail health, Schiller was only able to exercise his teaching position for a short time. Despite the enormous amount of work it imposed on him, it only offered him a meagre fee of 200 thalers. He soon devoted all his time to writing again.

[ 6 ] The founding of a new journal, "Die Horen", in which the best minds of the time were to collaborate, brought Schiller together with Goethe. The two greatest poets of the German people soon formed an intimate bond of friendship that lasted until Schiller's early death. The two now worked hand in hand in the most beautiful way. They gave each other advice on their works, encouraged each other and promoted each other in every way. Schiller's magnificent poems "Die Bürgschaft", "Das Lied von der Glocke", "Der Taucher", "Der Graf von Habsburg", "Die Kraniche des Ibykus", "Der Alpenjäger", "Der Ring des Polykrates" and many others were written during this time. Goethe's influence also inspired Schiller to return to the field of poetry in which he had inspired his contemporaries from the very beginning: drama. The great general who played such an important role in the Thirty Years' War had already attracted him to the highest degree when he wrote the history of this war. He therefore made him the hero of a drama entitled "Wallenstein". After completing this work, Schiller moved to Weimar. "Maria Stuart", "The Maid of Orleans", "The Bride of Messina" and "William Tell" were written in quick succession. His last tragedy, "Demetrius", was unfinished when an early death took his weak body on May 9, 1805.

[ 7 ] With his poetry and dramas, Schiller left his people a precious legacy. Few poets can be compared with him in terms of the verve of their language. And what penetrates deep into the soul in all his works is his upholding of ideals. His gaze is always directed towards the highest goods of humanity. He is as great a man as he is a poet. His family life was exemplary. In 1790, he married Charlotte von Lengefeld. In this marriage he found everything his high spirit desired. When you read what Charlotte Schiller wrote about her husband after his death, you marvel at the bond that united two souls, each of whom was unique in their own way.

[ 8 ] Schiller was the strictest judge of himself. What delights us in his poetry was achieved through hard work, and he was constantly working on himself. He had written a series of essays on his "Don Carlos", "Letters on Don Carlos", in which he exposed the faults of this poetry in the most unsparing manner. His unrelenting endeavor was to achieve a higher degree of perfection as a poet with every work. In his dramas he showed himself to be a master in the depiction of human characters: he portrayed human wickedness and human goodness in an equally vivid manner. He was therefore a born playwright in the highest sense of the word. He regarded the theater as a temple in which the audience should not merely be entertained, but edified. He felt himself to be a priest of art, for whom creation was something sacred. We feel this when we sit as spectators in the theater and his figures appear before us. Goethe could not set a more beautiful monument to his friend than the "Epilogue to Schiller's Bell", which he wrote after Schiller's death and in which he says of him: "And behind him, in insubstantial appearance, lay that which subdues us all, the common".

Introduction to "Mary Stuart"

[ 9 ] The first major work that Schiller completed after moving to Weimar was the tragedy "Mary Stuart". At the time, he studied English and Scottish historical works in order to familiarize himself with the life of the Scottish queen, whose fate captivated him to the highest degree. She was born in 1542 as the daughter of Jacob the Fifth, who died in the same year. While her mother reigned, Mary was educated in France and married the heir to the French throne, who later became king as Francis II. After her mother and her husband died, she returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the regency. She married her cousin Darnley, who mistreated her and even killed her privy clerk Rizzio, who enjoyed Mary's trust. The deepest aversion to Darnley took root in her. This led to her being accused of complicity when Darnley was murdered. This suspicion seemed well-founded because she subsequently married Earl Bothwell, who was believed to be Darnley's murderer. The Scots' hatred of their queen grew ever stronger, and she made herself particularly unpopular by ruling strictly according to Catholicism. She was forced to renounce the crown and flee to England. Queen Elizabeth ruled there. She hated Mary because, according to certain legal relationships, she could have claimed the throne of England much sooner than Elizabeth herself. Schiller's tragedy begins with how Elizabeth has her opponent treated as a prisoner in Fotheringhay Castle.

[ 10 ] Maria, although she claims that as queen she can only be judged by her peers, is brought before an English court and accused of having sought the crown of England. She was condemned despite the fact that her secret writers Kurl and Nau, whose testimony was relied upon, had not even been confronted with her. Initially, Elizabeth was not brave enough to sign the death warrant for her hated enemy. Two men use the time during which she hesitates to find ways and means of saving Mary. One is Count Leicester, a confidant of Elizabeth, who is also enchanted by Mary's charms. He arranges a meeting between the two queens. This meeting of the hostile women forms the climax of the tragedy. Mary overcomes herself first and wants to beg her opponent for mercy. But when she encounters only coldness and scorn from her opponent, she ruthlessly reproaches her with all her vices and weaknesses. Mary's death is now decided. The other man who wants to save Maria is a young, passionate character, Mortimer, who plans a conspiracy that fails. Through his plan, he plunges the unfortunate woman, whom he passionately adores, even further into ruin. He provides another pretext for the death sentence which Elizabeth now signs and which Burleigh, the cunning statesman, has swiftly carried out. Schiller has characterized Mary Stuart as a woman who, despite some of the guilt she has brought upon herself, arouses our deepest sympathy. She wins our hearts, even though we cannot absolve her from our moral judgment. Schiller knew how to portray the woman's suffering in such a way that we focus primarily on this suffering and less on the darker sides of her character.

Introduction to "The Robbers"

[ 11 ] The "Robbers" is Schiller's first work. The young man's thirst for freedom runs riot in it. He has juxtaposed two personalities, a noble one, Karl Moor, who is driven to crime by the wickedness of the world, and a vile one, Karl's brother Franz, who is an example of all kinds of wickedness. Karl was guilty of many things at university, but this is forgivable given his youth and his desire for freedom. He also remorsefully asks his father for forgiveness in a letter. Franz uses this to corrupt his brother. He deceives both his father and his brother in order to obtain the inheritance that should actually go to Karl, the older brother. He convinces his father that Karl has done terrible things and writes to him that his father curses him. Karl, who had hoped to win his father's forgiveness and to be able to lead a quiet life in his home with his lover, Amalia, is bitterly disappointed. He despairs of humanity and it is this despair that really drives him onto the path of crime. He puts himself at the head of a gang of robbers and wants to eliminate crime through crime. It is clear that such a plan cannot succeed. Although he preserves his noble character even in the path of guilt and even succeeds in freeing his father, whom the devilish Franz has locked in a tower to take him away from the castle over which he alone wants to rule, Karl must finally admit to himself that it was folly to want to fight injustice through unbridled despotism. He therefore surrenders himself to the arm of the courts.

Introduction to "Kabale Und Liebe"

[ 12 ] Under the most oppressive circumstances, Schiller drafted and executed the plan for his tragedy "Kabale und Liebe". Duke Karl Eugen even punished him with a fourteen-day arrest when he traveled to Mannheim for the first performance of his "The Robbers" without leave. He wrote this tragedy during this period of imprisonment and his subsequent life of wandering. It emerged from Schiller's bitter feelings about the immoral conditions in the highest classes. For him, who wanted to see in every human being nothing but the bearer of human dignity, it was horrible to see how the aristocracy looked down on the commoner and refused to accept him as their equal. That is why he portrayed an action in which these relationships are particularly evident. Ferdinand, the son of President von Walter, loves Louise Miller, the daughter of a town musician. Ferdinand's father has decreed that his son must marry Lady Milford, the Prince's abandoned mistress. The son differs from his peers in that he refuses to recognize any difference between man and man. Von Walter does everything in his power to dissuade his son from his relationship with Louise, which he naturally disapproves of to the highest degree. A ruse is resorted to. The president's secretary, Wurm, persuades Louise to have a letter dictated to her which is intended to rob Ferdinand of the trust he has in his mistress. This letter is then slipped to Ferdinand. The letter is a love letter to the court marshal von Kalb. The diabolical plan succeeds. Ferdinand is forced to believe that his lover has betrayed him. He can no longer live, as he can no longer believe in love and fidelity. He goes to his death with his fiancée. Too late, only when the two lovers are already dying does Louise tell her lover what a terrible web of lies he has been entangled in.

[ 13 ] In a captivating way, Schiller expressed all his resentment against conditions that he abhorred in this tragedy. That is why it was so successful when it was performed. The audience was gripped by the splendid figure of Miller, an honest, straightforward man who does not deign to bow down to those above him and whose position and family happiness are destroyed by the intrigues of such despicable personalities as President von Walter and his secretary Wurm.

Introduction to "Wallenstein"

[ 14 ] When Schiller was writing the "History of the Thirty Years' War" in Jena, he was particularly interested in the personality of the great general Wallenstein. It was therefore Wallenstein whom he chose as his hero when he returned to writing poetry. The fate of this man, who first rendered his emperor the greatest service and then, when he found his ambition unsatisfied, took sides against his master, could not be summarized in a single drama. Schiller therefore portrayed it in three related poems, in a so-called trilogy. The first part, "Wallenstein's Camp", depicts camp life during the Thirty Years' War. It shows how the soldiers are absolutely devoted to their commander. All kinds of characters are portrayed. The real soldier of the time, who follows his lucky star and knows nothing else but it, in Buttler and the Dragoon; the noble soldier, who takes his profession ideally, in Max Piccolomini; the soldier of fortune, who serves sometimes here, sometimes there, in the first hunter and so on. All these different soldier characters are united in persevering with Wallenstein in every situation, even if a conflict should arise between their idol and the Emperor. They decide to write a letter to their commander declaring that they will not abandon him, no matter what happens. The events of the soldiers' lives are interrupted in an excellent way by a sermon on morality preached by a Capuchin in the camp about the immorality of the soldiers and the immorality of the whole time. - The second part, "The Piccolomini", first depicts Wallenstein as he feels he has reached the peak of what his ambition demands. He even strives for the crown of Bohemia, trusting his luck implicitly. He can only achieve such goals if he enters into an alliance with the emperor's enemies. He initially hesitates with this plan for two reasons. Firstly, he cannot immediately decide to betray his emperor, even though he knows that the emperor has long been suspicious of his general's ambitions. And secondly, Wallenstein is superstitious. He has his fortune told by an astrologer. And he does not want to do anything until this astrologer tells him the right time. The generals Illo and Terzky now obtain the signatures of the other commanders for a document in which they pledge to remain loyal to Wallenstein, even if he leaves the Emperor. Octavio Piccolomini, who has been commissioned by the Emperor to monitor Wallenstein, notices this. It is through him that Wallenstein falls. Octavio's son, Max Piccolomini, loves Wallenstein's daughter 'Thekla and is therefore faced with the difficult choice between his father and his fiancée. The outcome is the third part of the drama "Wallenstein's Death". Wallenstein really does join forces with the Swedes. Max Piccolomini, who until then could not believe that the great man could commit treason, now also renounces him and dies in battle. Octavio Piccolomini drives away Wallenstein's most loyal supporters. He finds himself abandoned by everyone. He is forced to retreat to the fortress of Eger. There he is murdered.

German philosophy before Schopenhauer

[ 1 ] The years 1781 and 1807 mark an era of fierce battles within the development of German science. In 1781, Kant woke his contemporaries from their philosophical slumber with his "Critique of Pure Reason" and presented them with riddles which the cognitive power of the nation's best minds endeavored to solve over the next quarter of a century. A philosophical excitement of the highest order can be observed among those involved in these intellectual battles. In rapid succession, one school of thought replaced another. The shallow intellectual clarity that had prevailed in the books of philosophical literature before Kant was replaced by scientific warmth, which gradually grew into the captivating eloquence of Fichte and the poetic verve with which Schelling was able to express scientific ideas. An examination of this intellectual movement reveals an incomparable intellectual wealth, but also a restless, hasty rush forward. Some ideas entered the public domain prematurely. The thinkers did not have the patience to allow their ideas to mature. This restless development ended with the publication of Georg Wilh. Friedr. Hegel's first major work, the "Phenomenology of Spirit", in 1807. Hegel did the last work on this book in Jena in the days when the terrible turmoil of war in 1806 broke over the city. The events of the following years were not conducive to philosophical battles. Hegel's book did not immediately make such a strong impression, challenging the minds to cooperate, as Fichte and Schelling did when they first appeared. But even their influence gradually waned. For both of them, the period of their activity at the University of Jenens was the most brilliant of their lives. Fichte taught at this university from 1794 to 1799, Schelling from 1798 to 1803. The former moved from Jena to Berlin because the accusation of atheism brought against him by envious and unreasonable people had brought him into conflict with the Weimar government. In the winter of 1804/s he gave his lectures on the "Fundamentals of the Present Age" in Berlin, in which he effectively advocated idealistic thinking, and in the winter of 1807/8 his famous "Speeches to the German Nation", which exerted a powerful influence on the strengthening of national sentiment. As a champion of national and liberal ideas, in the service of which he placed his thinking and his eloquence, he achieved a more powerful effect during this period than through the philosophical lectures he gave at the University of Berlin from its establishment in 1810 until his death in 1814. Schelling, who did not make the transition from philosophical to political activity, was soon completely forgotten after his time in Jenens. He moved to Würzburg in 1803 and then to Munich in 1806, where he worked on expanding his ideas, which few people were still interested in. At the end of the first decade of our century, there was no longer any sign of the lively philosophical debate that Kant's revolutionary act had provoked: Fichte and Schelling's time was over, Hegel's era had not yet dawned. Hegel led a quiet existence from 1806 to 1808 as editor of a Bamberg newspaper and then until 1816 as principal of the Nuremberg grammar school. His enormous influence on German intellectual life only began with his appointment to Berlin in 1818.

[ 2 ] This characterizes the circumstances that Arthur Schopenhauer found himself in when, after an eventful youth, he began his philosophical apprenticeship in 1810. He heard echoes of Fichte's, Schelling's and above all Kant's views from the pulpits and from the works of contemporary philosophers. The way in which Schopenhauer turned the views of his great predecessors, especially Kant and Fichte, into elements of his own system of ideas can be understood by examining the period of his life that preceded his preoccupation with philosophy.

Schopenhauer's youthful life

[ 3 ] Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig on February 22, 1788. His father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, lived in this city as a wealthy merchant. He was a man of thorough professional training, great worldly experience, rare strength of character and a sense of independence that nothing could overcome. His mother Johanna Henriette, née Trosiener, was a fun-loving, artistic woman who was extremely open to intellectual pleasures and had a strong penchant for socializing, which she could easily satisfy with her intelligence and intellectual alertness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer was 41 and Johanna 22 years old when Arthur, their first child, was born from their marriage in 1785. He was followed in 1797 by the second and last, Adele. The philosopher's parents had not been driven to marry by rapturous passion. But the relationship, based on mutual respect, must have been a very happy one. Johanna speaks about it with the words: "I could be proud to belong to this man, and I was. I feigned ardent love for him just as little as he laid claim to it."

[ 4 ] In 1793, the previously free city of Danzig was incorporated into the Prussian state. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer did not like the idea of becoming a Prussian subject. He therefore emigrated to Hamburg with his wife and child. In the years that followed, the small family traveled frequently. The reason for this was Johanna's longing for a change in living conditions, for ever new impressions, and her husband's intention to give his son the widest possible knowledge of the world based on his own experience. Arthur's father had decided that he should become a capable merchant and a man of the world. All educational measures were undertaken with this in mind. The boy received his first lessons at a private institute in Hamburg. At the age of ten, he embarked on a long journey with his father to France, where he spent the next two years of his life. After Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer had shown his son Paris, he took him to Havre to leave him with a business friend, Grégoire de Blésimaire. The latter had the young Schopenhauer educated together with his own son. The result of this education was that Arthur returned, to his father's great delight, as a perfect young Frenchman who had acquired a great deal of appropriate knowledge and had forgotten his mother tongue to such an extent that he could only make himself understood with difficulty in it. But the twelve-year-old boy also brought back the most pleasant memories from France. In his 31st year, he said of this stay: "I spent by far the happiest part of my childhood in that friendly town on the Seine estuary and the sea coast." After returning to his parents' home, Arthur Schopenhauer attended a private educational establishment run by Dr. Runge and attended by the sons of wealthy Hamburgers. At this school, pupils were taught what was needed to turn them into capable and socially educated businessmen. Latin was taught for one hour a week, just for the sake of appearances. Arthur Schopenhauer enjoyed these lessons for almost four years. What he was taught here in the sciences was presented to him in a form appropriate to the practical goals of the future merchant. But it was enough to awaken in him a powerful inclination towards a scholarly career. His father did not like this at all. In his opinion, he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to choose between two things: the present wishes of his beloved son and his future happiness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer thought that the academic profession could only bring a man poverty and worry, not happiness and contentment. Forcing his son into a profession was contrary to the nature of his father, who considered freedom to be one of man's greatest possessions. However, he considered a ruse to be appropriate and expedient to dissuade the young man from his inclination. Arthur had to decide quickly: either to go on a long pleasure trip through a large part of Europe, which his parents wanted to undertake, and on his return to devote himself definitively to the mercantile profession, or to stay behind in Hamburg to begin his Latin studies immediately and prepare himself for the learned profession. The wonderful expectations that the thought of the journey aroused in the young Schopenhauer caused him to repress his love of science and choose the profession that appealed to his father. This was a decision that his father foresaw, as he was well aware of his son's desire to see the world. Arthur Schopenhauer left Hamburg with his parents in the spring of 1803. The next destination was Holland, then the journey continued to England. After a stay of six weeks in London, Arthur was left behind in Wimbledon for three months to learn the English language thoroughly with Mr. Lancaster. During this time, his parents traveled to England and Scotland. The stay in England engendered in Schopenhauer the hatred of English bigotry that remained with the philosopher throughout his life, but it also laid the foundation for the thorough mastery of the English language that later made him appear as such in conversation with Englishmen. Life in Lancaster's boarding house did not suit Schopenhauer very well. In letters to his parents, he complained of boredom and the stiff, ceremonial nature of the English. He was overcome by a general mood which, it seems, could only be dispelled by a preoccupation with fine literature, especially the works of Schiller. We can see from his mother's letters that she was worried that her son's fondness for poetic reading might blunt him to the seriousness of life. "Believe me," she wrote to him on July 19, 1803, "Schiller himself would never be what he is if he had only read poets in his youth." From England, the Schopenhauer family traveled to France via Holland and Belgium. They visited Havre again and spent some time in Paris. In January 1804, the journey continued to the south of France. Schopenhauer got to know Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nimes, Marseille, Toulon, the Hyeric Islands and Lyon. From Lyon, the travelers turned to Switzerland, then to Swabia, Bavaria, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin. The impressions that Schopenhauer received during the course of the journey were profound. In Paris, he saw Napoleon shortly before he forced his way to the imperial crown (May 18, 1804). In Lyon, his mind was stirred by the sight of several places that recalled the atrocities of the Revolution. And everywhere it was especially the scenes of human misery that he viewed with deep sympathy for the unfortunate and oppressed. For example, he was seized with an unnameable sense of pain when he saw the terrible fate of six thousand galley slaves in the Bagno of Toulon. He thought he was looking into an abyss of human misfortune. But he was also filled with joy when he saw the magnificent works of nature during his journey, a feeling that increased in Switzerland at the sight of Mont Blanc or the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen to the point of rapture at the sublimity of nature's workings. Later, in Book 3 of Volume II of his main work, he compared genius to the mighty Alpine mountain, because the frequently noted gloomy mood of highly gifted spirits reminded him of the summit, which is usually shrouded in a veil of clouds, and the peculiar cheerfulness that occasionally emerges from the general gloomy mood of genius reminds him of the magical glow of light that becomes visible when the veil of clouds breaks early in the morning and the summit becomes clear. The Krkonoše Mountains in Bohemia, which were visited on the way from Vienna to Dresden, also made a significant impression on Schopenhauer. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer started his journey home from Berlin, while Arthur traveled with his mother to his native city of Danzig, where he was confirmed. In the early days of 1805, the now seventeen-year-old young man arrived back in Hamburg. He now had to keep his father's word and dedicate himself to the commercial profession without refusal. He was apprenticed to Senator Jenisch in Hamburg. Once awakened, his love of the sciences could not be stifled. The merchant's apprentice felt unhappy. After the long journey, on which new images had been presented to the onlooker's eye every day, he could not bear the monotony of his professional work; after the relaxed lifestyle of the past years, the necessary regularity in his 'activities seemed like servitude to him. Without any inner involvement in the duties of his profession, he only did the bare minimum. On the other hand, he used every free moment to read or to indulge in his own thoughts and reveries. He even resorted to cunning pretenses towards his teacher when he wanted to have a few free hours to attend the lectures on craniology given by Doctor Gall, who was in Hamburg at the time.

[ 5 ] This was Arthur Schopenhauer's situation in April 1805, when his father's life ended suddenly when he fell from a loft. Whether the man, who was suffering from memory loss in his final weeks, sought 'death' himself or found it by chance is still unclear today. The son's gloomy mood was heightened by this event to such an extent that it was little short of true melancholy. The mother moved to Weimar with her daughter in 1806, after the business had been liquidated. She thirsted for the intellectual stimuli of this city of art. Arthur's striving for liberation from torturous circumstances now met with no external resistance. He was his own master. His mother exercised no coercion. Nevertheless, there were reasons that prevented him from throwing off the hated shackles immediately after his father's death. He loved his father dearly. It was contrary to his feelings to take a step that the deceased would never have approved of. Also, the overwhelming pain of the sudden loss had so paralyzed his energy that he could not make a quick decision. To all this was added the fact that he believed himself too old to be able to undertake the preliminary studies necessary for the scholarly profession. His ever-increasing aversion to the commercial profession and the belief that he was wasting his life's energies in vain filled his letters to his mother in Weimar with miserable complaints, so that she considered it her duty to ask her friend, the famous art writer Fernow, for advice on what to do in the interests of her son's future happiness. Fernow wrote to her friend with his opinion. He considered the age of eighteen to be no obstacle to devoting oneself to the sciences; indeed, he claimed that it was at this happy age that "memory and judgment unite in the maturing power of the mind, so that what is undertaken with firm resolution can be carried out more easily and quickly, and knowledge can be acquired sooner than in an earlier or later period of life". Schopenhauer, to whom his mother sent Fernow's letter, was so shocked by its contents that he burst into tears after reading it. Fernow's lines brought about what was otherwise not in his nature: to make a decision quickly. The time from the spring of 1807 to the fall of 1809 was enough for Schopenhauer to acquire the knowledge he needed to attend university. He lived in Gotha until the beginning of 1808, where Döring taught him Latin and Jacobs German. He spent the rest of his time in Weimar, where Fernow introduced him to Italian literature. In addition to the old languages, in which the philologist Passow and the grammar school director Lenz were his teachers, he studied mathematics and history. On October 9, he entered the University of Göttingen to study medicine. A year later, he swapped medicine for philosophy.

The student years. Relationship with Kant and Fichte

[ 6 ] As a personality whose character traits were already sharply defined, who had already formed firm opinions on many things on the basis of substantial experiences and a rich knowledge of the world, Schopenhauer entered the study of philosophy. At the beginning of his time at university, he once said to Wieland: "Life is a miserable thing; I have resolved to do mine by thinking about it." Life made him a philosopher. It also determined the philosophical tasks he devoted himself to solving. In this he differs from his predecessors: Kant, Fichte and Schelling, as well as from his antipode Hegel. These were philosophers for whom their tasks arose from the consideration of other people's views. Kant's thinking was given a decisive impetus by delving into Hume's writings, Fichte's and Schelling's work was given direction by Kant's critiques, Hegel's thoughts also developed from those of his predecessors. The ideas of these thinkers are therefore links in a continuous series of developments. Even if each of the philosophers mentioned sought in the foreign systems of thought that inspired him those germs whose further development corresponded precisely to his individuality, it is still possible to trace the series of developments described purely logically, without taking into account the personal bearers of the ideas. It is as if one thought had brought forth another without any human being having been active in the process. For Schopenhauer, on the other hand, a large number of individual doubts and puzzles arose from his experiences, from the direct observation of human conditions and natural events, to which his travels gave him the opportunity, before he knew what others thought about the life of the spirit and the workings of nature. The questions posed to him by his experiences had a thoroughly individual and often coincidental character. This is why he occupies an isolated position in German philosophy. He took the elements for solving his tasks from everywhere: from contemporaries and from philosophers of the past. The question as to why these elements have become elements of a body of thought can only be answered by examining Schopenhauer's individual personality. Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's philosophical systems arouse the feeling that they had to follow Kant's because they were logically demanded by it; of Schopenhauer's, on the other hand, it is quite easy to imagine that we would have missed it entirely in the history of philosophy if the creator's life had taken a different turn by some accident before his productive period. The peculiar charm of Schopenhauer's world of ideas is due to this character. Because it has its sources in individual life, it corresponds to the philosophical needs of many people who, without seeking special expertise, nevertheless want to hear an opinion on the most important questions of life.

[ 7 ] Some of Schopenhauer's philosophical statements are merely views wrapped in a scientific garment, which life before his philosophical studies had produced in him. His starting point is not a principle from which all philosophical science can be derived, but rather individual basic views on various aspects of world events emerge from the whole of his personality, which only later coalesce into a unity. Schopenhauer therefore compares his world of thought to a crystal whose parts shoot together from all sides to form a whole.

[ 8 ] One of these basic views developed in Schopenhauer as a result of the influence that his Göttingen teacher Gottlob Ernst Schulze had on him. The latter described Kant and Plato to the young philosopher as the thinkers he should adhere to first and foremost. Schulze himself had appeared as an opponent of Kant in his 1792 publication "Aenesidemus". Schopenhauer had the good fortune to have Kant pointed out to him by a man who also had the ability to draw attention to the philosopher's contradictions.

[ 9 ] Kant endeavored to seek out the conditions under which the human striving for knowledge can arrive at truths of unconditional and necessary certainty. The Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, of which Kant was a follower until his in-depth study of Hume's writings, believed that such truths could be spun out of pure reason through purely conceptual thinking. It contrasted these pure rational truths with the knowledge of experience gained through observation of the outer life of nature and the inner life of the soul. According to this view, the latter are not made up of clear, transparent concepts, but of confused and dark ideas. Therefore, this philosophical way of thinking wanted to develop the most valuable insights into the deeper connection of natural events, the nature of the soul and the existence of God from pure concepts of reason. Kant professed these views until he was completely shaken in his convictions by Hume's remarks on the concepts of cause and effect. Hume (1711 to 1776) sought to prove that we can never gain insight into the connection between cause and effect through mere reason. According to Hume, the concept of causation comes from experience. We perceive the emergence of fire and then the heating of the air surrounding it. We have observed the same sequence of these perceptions countless times. We get used to it and assume that we will always observe the same thing as soon as the same conditions are met. But we can never gain an objective certainty about this, for it is impossible to see with the help of mere concepts that something must necessarily follow because something else precedes it. Experience only tells us that up to a certain point in time a certain event has always resulted in a certain other event, but not that the one must result in the other, i.e. that it will not be different in the future. All our knowledge about nature and about the life of our soul is made up of complexes of ideas that have formed in our soul on the basis of observed connections between things and events. Reason can find nothing in itself that gives it the right to connect one idea with another, i.e. to make a cognitive judgment. From the moment Kant recognized the significance of Hume's investigations, his thinking took on a completely new direction. But he arrived at different conclusions from Hume himself as a result of Hume's considerations. He agreed with Hume that we cannot gain any information about a connection lying in things from mere reason. What laws things have in themselves, our reason cannot decide; only the things themselves can teach us. He also agreed with Hume that there is no unconditional and necessary certainty in the information that experience gives us about the connection between things. But on this, Kant maintained, we have perfect certainty that things must stand in the relation of cause and effect and in other similar relations. Kant did not lose his belief in absolutely necessary knowledge about reality as a result of Hume's statements. The question arose for him: How can we know something absolutely certain about the connection between things and events in reality, even though reason cannot decide how things relate to each other by their very nature and experience does not provide any absolutely certain information? Kant's answer to this question was: The necessary connection in which we see the things and phenomena we perceive does not lie in these things themselves, but in our organization. It is not because one event necessarily follows from another that we notice such a connection, but because our mind is so organized that it must connect things according to the concepts of cause and effect. Thus it does not depend on the things at all, but on us, in what relations they appear to us. Kant allows only sensations to be given by an external power. Their arrangement in space and time and their connection through concepts such as cause and effect, unity and multiplicity, possibility and reality, is, in his view, only accomplished by our mental organism. Our sensuality is such that it can only look at sensations in space and time, our intellect such that it can only think of them in certain conceptual relationships. Kant is therefore of the opinion that our sensuality and our intellect prescribe the laws of their connection to things and events. Whatever is to become the object of our experience must obey these laws. An examination of our organization reveals the conditions under which all objects of experience must necessarily appear. From this view arose for Kant the necessity of attributing to experience a character dependent on the human faculty of cognition. We do not know things as they are in themselves, but as our organization makes them appear to us. Our experience therefore contains only appearances, not things in themselves. Kant was led to this conviction by the train of ideas that Hume stimulated in him.

[ 10 ] Schopenhauer describes the change brought about in his mind by these thoughts as a spiritual rebirth. They fill him with all the greater satisfaction as he finds them in full agreement with the views of the other philosopher to whom Schulze had pointed him, those of Plato. The latter says: "As long as we relate to the world merely perceptively, we are like people who sit in a dark cave so tightly bound that they cannot turn their heads, and see nothing but by the light of a fire burning behind them, on the wall opposite them, the shadowy images of real things passing between them and the fire, and indeed of each other, and each of themselves only the shadows. Just as these shadows relate to the real things, so our objects of perception, according to Plato's conviction, relate to the Ideas, which are the objects of perception. The objects of perception arise and pass away, the ideas are eternal. Schopenhauer found the same view in Kant as in Plato: that the visible world has no true being. Schopenhauer soon regarded this as an incontrovertible, indeed as the first and most universal truth. For him it took the following form: I gain knowledge of things insofar as I see them, hear them, feel them, etc., in a word: insofar as I imagine them. An object becomes my object of knowledge means: it becomes my imagination. Heaven, earth, etc., are therefore my conceptions, for the thing in itself that corresponds to them has become my object only because it has assumed the character of conception. Schopenhauer took from the thought worlds of Kant and Plato the germ of those parts of his philosophical system in which he treats the world as imagination.

[ 11 ] Schopenhauer considered the distinction between appearance and "thing-in-itself" to be Kant's greatest merit; however, he found Kant's remarks on the "thing-in-itself" itself to be completely misguided. This error also gave rise to Schulze's fight against Kant. According to Kant, things in themselves are the external causes of the sensations that occur in our sensory organs. But how do we arrive at the assumption of such causes, asks Schulze and with him Schopenhauer. Cause and effect are connected merely because our organization demands it, and yet are these concepts to be applied to a realm that is beyond our organism? Can the laws of our organism also be decisive beyond it? These considerations led Schopenhauer to seek a different path to the "thing-in-itself" than the one taken by Kant.

[ 12 ] Such a path is outlined in J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. It took its most mature form in the lectures that Fichte gave at the University of Berlin between 1810 and 1814. Schopenhauer went to Berlin in the fall of 1811 to continue his studies. "He listened very attentively to Fichte lecturing on his philosophy," he later said in the description of his curriculum vitae, which he submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy in Berlin when he wanted to become a private lecturer. We learn the content of Fichte's lectures from his "Sämtliche Werke Vol. 2 und aus seinem Nachlaß Vol. i". The doctrine of science is based on the concept of knowledge, not that of being. For man can only learn something about being through his knowledge. Knowledge is not something 'dead, finished, but a living becoming. The objects of knowledge arise through its activity. It is characteristic of everyday consciousness that it notices the objects of knowledge, but not their emergence. Insight into this emergence comes to those who reflect on their own activity. Such a person sees how he himself creates the entire world existing in space and time. According to Fichte, this creation is a fact that one notices as soon as one pays attention to it. However, one must have an organ that is capable of overhearing knowledge as it is produced, just as one must have an eye in order to see colors. To him who has this organ, the perceptible world appears as a creature of knowledge, arising and passing away with knowledge. Its objects are not permanent beings, but passing images. Everyone can only observe the production of these images in themselves. Through self-perception, each person recognizes in the things given to his knowledge a world of images created by himself. This is only a subjective appearance whose meaning does not extend beyond the individual human being. The question arises: Are these images the only thing that exists? Are we ourselves nothing but this activity that creates the appearance? The question can be answered by reflecting on man's moral ideals. Of these it is clear without further ado that they are to be realized. And it is also absolutely certain that they must be realized not only by this or that human individual, but by all men. This necessity is inherent in the content of these ideals. They are a unity that embraces all individuals. Every human being perceives them as ought. They can only be realized through the will. But if the expressions of the will of the individuals are to harmonize into a unified world order, they must be founded in a single universal will. What wills in any individual is in essence the same as what wills in all others. What the will accomplishes must appear in the corporeal world; it is the scene of its activity. This is only possible if its laws are such that it can absorb the activity of the will into itself. There must be an original correspondence between the driving forces of the corporeal world and the will. The doctrine of science thus leads to a unified world principle, which manifests itself in the physical world as force and in the moral order as will. As soon as man finds the will within himself, he gains the conviction that there is a world independent of his individual. The will is not the knowledge of the individual, but the form of being. The world is knowledge and will. In the realization of moral ideals, the will has a content, and insofar as human life participates in this realization, it acquires an absolute value that it would not have if it existed merely in the images of knowledge. Fichte sees the will as the "thing in itself" independent of knowledge. All we recognize of the world of being is that it is will.

[ 13 ] The view that the will that man encounters in himself is a "thing in itself" is also Schopenhauer's view. He, too, is of the opinion that in our knowledge we have given only the images produced by us, but in our will we have given a being independent of us. The will must remain when knowledge is extinguished. The active will shows itself through the actions of my body. When the organism does something, it is the will that drives it to do it. Now I also learn about the actions of my body through my knowledge, which creates a picture of it for me. Schopenhauer says, according to the expression into which he has put Kant's basic view (cf. p. 245): I imagine these actions. This imagination of mine corresponds to a being independent of me, which is will. What we know of the activity in our own bodies, Schopenhauer also seeks to prove of that of the rest of nature: that it is, according to its being, will. This view of the will is the second of the links that make up Schopenhauer's philosophy.

[ 14 ] In the absence of historical evidence, it is impossible to determine how much of Schopenhauer's doctrine of will was influenced by Fichte. Schopenhauer himself denied any influence on the part of his Berlin teacher. He disliked the way Fichte taught and wrote. Given the striking agreement between the views of the two philosophers and the fact that Schopenhauer listened "attentively" to Fichte's lectures and even once had a lively discussion with him during a consultation, it is difficult to reject the idea of such influence. It was therefore in Göttingen and Berlin that Schopenhauer was first inspired when he based his system of thought on the two principles: "The world is my imagination" and "The world is will."

The influence of Goethe

[ 15 ] In the spring of 1813, Schopenhauer left Berlin due to the unrest of the war and went to Weimar via Dresden. He did not like the conditions in his mother's house, so he initially settled in Rudolstadt. In the summer of 1813, he worked on part of his theory of ideas. All our ideas are objects of our cognizing subject. But nothing existing and independent on its own, nor anything separate and torn off, can become an object for us. The ideas stand in a lawful connection which is given to them by our cognitive faculty and which can be recognized in form from its nature. The ideas must stand in such a relation to each other that we can say: one is grounded in the other. Reason and consequence is the general form of the connection between all ideas. There are four kinds of grounding: the ground of becoming, of cognition, of being and of volition. In becoming, one change is justified by another in time; in cognizing, one judgment by another, or by an experience; in being, the position of one part of time or space by another; in willing, an action by a motive. Schopenhauer gave a detailed account of what he had to say about these propositions in his essay "On the Fourfold Root of the Theorem of the Sufficient Ground", which earned him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Jena on October 2, 1813. In November of that year he returned to Weimar, where he remained until May 1814 and lived in close contact with Goethe. Goethe had read Schopenhauer's first work and was so interested in the author that he personally introduced him to the theory of colors. Schopenhauer found that his philosophical convictions and Goethe's Theory of Colors were in perfect agreement. He decided to justify this in a special treatise, which he began to write after moving to Dresden in May 1814. His thoughts on the nature of sensory perception also developed in the process. Kant was of the opinion that sensations arise from the excitation of the senses by "things in themselves"; these are the simple impressions of color, light, sound, etc. As these come from outside, they are not yet arranged in space and time. For this order is based on an arrangement of the senses. The outer senses arrange the sensations in space, the inner sense in time. This gives rise to perception. According to its nature, the intellect then arranges the perceptions according to the concepts of cause and effect, unity and multiplicity: Cause and effect, unity, multiplicity, etc. In this way a coherent experience is formed from the individual perceptions. Schopenhauer finds the senses quite unsuitable for the production of perception. The senses contain nothing but sensation. The sensations of color, for example, arise through an effect on the retina in the eye. They are processes within the organism. They can therefore only be perceived directly as states of the body and within it. The inner sense initially arranges the sensations in time so that they gradually enter consciousness. They only acquire spatial relationships when they are perceived as effects and an external cause is inferred from them. The arrangement according to cause and effect is a matter for the intellect. It regards sensations as effects and transfers their causes into space. It takes possession of the material of sensation and constructs the views in space from it. These are therefore the work of the intellect and not of the senses*. Since the objects that are seen and felt in space are derived from the senses ¹ Since the colors are first built up from the semantic perceptions, they cannot be derived from them. Therefore, colors, which are sensations, cannot be derived from objects, as Newton does. They are created by the eye and must be explained by the eye's equipment. It must be shown how the retina produces colors. Only the cause of colors, light, which is still entirely uncolored, can be transferred to the outside. Goethe also assumes the uncolored light in his Theory of Colors. Schopenhauer's work "On Sight and Colors" was published in 1816. Goethe had already received the manuscript from the author for review in 1815.

The main work

[ 16 ] Schopenhauer stayed in Dresden until September 1818, a period dedicated to the completion of his main work "The World as Will and Representation". New ideas were added to those developed in Göttingen, Berlin and Weimar and initially recorded in short aphorisms. Frauenstädt published a number of these aphorisms in his book "Aus Schopenhauers Nachlaß". Schopenhauer lived in particularly happy circumstances while he was writing them. His creative energy was stimulated by his contact with men of letters, who held him in high esteem for his abilities. The picture gallery and the collection of antique statues satisfied his aesthetic needs. They stimulated his thinking about art and artistic creation. From March 1817 to March 1818, he summarized the individual ideas of his philosophy into a whole. The remarks on perception, which were already contained in the work on colors, also form the beginning of "The World as Will and Representation". The intellect creates the external world and brings its phenomena into a context according to the law of cause and consequence, which has the four forms indicated. Kant ascribed twelve modes of connection (categories) to the intellect; Schopenhauer can only recognize those of reason and consequence (causality). Through the intellect we have given the vivid world. In addition to the intellect, reason is also active in man. It forms concepts from the views. It seeks out what different views have in common and forms abstract units from them. In this way it brings larger parts of experience under one thought. As a result, man does not merely live in his immediate present view, but can draw conclusions about the future from past and present events. He gains an overview of life and can also organize his actions accordingly. This distinguishes him from the animal. The latter has views, but no concepts of reason. Its actions are determined by the impressions of the immediate present. Man is guided by his reason. But reason cannot generate content on its own. It is only the reflection of the visual world. Therefore, it cannot produce moral ideals that are independent of experience and that shine before action as an unconditionally commanding ought, as Kant and Fichte claim. The rules according to which man organizes his actions are taken from his life experiences. Understanding and reason have their organ in the brain. Without the brain there are no views and no concepts. The whole world of imagination is a phenomenon of the brain. In itself there is only the will. This contains no moral ideals; we know it only as a dark urge, as an eternal striving. It gives rise to the brain and thus to understanding and reason. The brain creates the objective world, which man surveys as experience subject to the law of reason. The ideas are arranged spatially and temporally. They form nature in this order. The will is non-spatial and non-temporal, for space and time are created by the cognizing consciousness. The will is therefore a unity in itself; it is one and the same in all phenomena. As an appearance, the world consists of a multiplicity of things or individuals. As a thing in itself it is a wholeness. The individuals arise when consciousness confronts the object as subject and observes it according to the law of the ground. But there is another way of looking at it. Man can go beyond the mere individual. He can seek in the individual thing that which is independent of space, time and causality. In every individual there is something permanent that is not limited to the individual object. A particular horse is conditioned by the causes from which it emerged. But there is something in the horse that remains, even if the horse is destroyed again. This something that remains is not only contained in this particular horse, but in every horse. It cannot be produced by the causes which only bring about the creation of this one particular horse. That which remains is the idea of the horse. The causes embody this idea only in a single individual. The idea is therefore not subject to space, time and causality. It is therefore closer to the will than the individual. The idea is not directly contained anywhere in nature. Man only sees it when he looks away from the individual nature of things. This happens through the imagination. The material embodiment of ideas is art. The artist does not copy nature, but imprints on matter what his imagination sees. Music is an exception. It does not embody ideas. For even if ideas are not directly contained in nature, the imagination can only extract them from nature by searching for what remains in individuals. These are the models of art. Music, however, has no model in nature. Musical works of art do not depict anything in nature. Man creates them out of himself. But since there is nothing in him, apart from ideas and concepts, that he could represent other than the will, music is the direct image of the will. It speaks so much to the human mind because it is the embodiment of that which constitutes the innermost essence, the true being of man. This view of music is rooted in ideas that we find in Schopenhauer long before he became involved in philosophy. As a Hamburg merchant's apprentice, he wrote to his mother: "How did the heavenly seed find room on our hard soil, on which necessity and shortcomings fight for every little place? We are banished from the primal spirit and are not meant to reach it.... And yet a compassionate angel has implored the heavenly flower for us and it is rooted high in full glory on this soil of misery. - The pulsations of the divine art of music have not ceased to beat through the centuries of barbarism, and a direct echo of the eternal has remained in it, comprehensible to every sense and elevated even above vice and virtue." This idea of youth confronts us in philosophical form in Schopenhauer's main work.

[ 17 ] The same passage in the letter also contains a thought that took on a scientific form in the last section of the book "The World as Will and Representation": that of a general end of the world and of the nothingness of existence. The will is an eternal striving. It is in its nature that it can never be satisfied. For when it reaches a goal, it must immediately continue on to a new one. If it ceased to strive, it would no longer be will. Since human life is by its very nature will, there is no satisfaction in it, but only eternal longing for such satisfaction. Deprivation causes pain. This is therefore necessarily connected with life. All joy and happiness can only be based on illusion. Satisfaction is only possible through illusion, which is destroyed by reflecting on the true nature of the world. The world is void. Only those who fully realize this are wise. The contemplation of eternal ideas and their embodiment in art can for a moment take us beyond the misery of the world, for the aesthetically pleasurable person immerses himself in the eternal ideas and knows nothing of the particular sufferings of his individual. He behaves in a purely recognizing way, not wanting, and therefore not suffering. Suffering, however, returns immediately when he is thrown back into everyday life. The only salvation from misery is not to will at all, to kill the will within oneself. This is done by suppressing all desires, by asceticism. The wise man will extinguish all desires within himself, completely negate his will. He knows no motive that could compel him to will. His striving is directed towards only one thing: redemption from life. This is no longer a motive, but a quest. Every individual will is determined by the general will and is therefore unfree; only the universal will is not determined by anything and is therefore free. Only the negation of the will is an act of freedom, because it cannot be brought about by an individual act of will, but by the one will itself. All individual willing is the willing of a motive, hence the affirmation of the will.

[ 18 ] Suicide does not bring about a negation of the will. The suicide destroys only his particular individual; not the will, but only a manifestation of the will. Asceticism, however, does not merely annihilate the individual, but the will itself within the individual. It must ultimately lead to the complete extinction of all being, to redemption from all suffering. If the will disappears, then every appearance is also destroyed. The world has then entered into eternal rest, into nothingness, in which alone there is no suffering, thus bliss.

[ 19 ] The will is a unity. It is one and the same in all beings. Man is only an individual in appearance, in being only the expression of the general will of the world. One human being is not in truth separate from the other. What the latter suffers, the latter must also regard as his own suffering, he must suffer with it. Compassion is the expression of the fact that no one has a particular suffering, but that everyone feels the general suffering. Compassion is the basis of morality. It destroys egoism, which only seeks to alleviate one's own suffering. Compassion causes people to act in a way that is aimed at eliminating the suffering of others. Morality is not based on the principles of reason, but on compassion, i.e. on a feeling. Schopenhauer rejects all rational morality. Its principles are abstractions that only lead to moral, non-egoistic action through connection with a real driving force: compassion.

[ 20 ] Schopenhauer's doctrine of salvation and compassion emerged from his doctrine of the will under the influence of Indian views: Brahmanism and Buddhism. Schopenhauer studied Indian religious ideas as early as 1813 in Weimar under the guidance of the Orientalist Friedrich Majer. He continued these studies in Dresden. He read the work "Oupnek' hat", which a Persian prince translated from Indian into Persian in 1640 and of which a Latin translation was published by the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron between 1801 and 1802. According to Brahmanism, all individual beings have emerged from a primordial being to which they return in the course of the world process. Through individualization, the evils and the end of the world have arisen, which will be destroyed as soon as the existence of the individual beings has ceased and only the primordial being will still exist. According to Buddhism, all existence is linked to pain. This would not be destroyed even if there were only one single primordial being. Only the destruction of all existence through renunciation and suppression of the passions can lead to salvation, to nirvana, that is, to the destruction of all existence.

[ 21 ] At the end of 1818 (with the date 1819), "The World as Will and Representation" was published by Brockhaus in Leipzig. In the same year, Hegel was appointed to Berlin. Hegel held a completely opposite view to that of Schopenhauer. What for Schopenhauer could only create a reflection of the real, reason, was for Hegel the source of all knowledge. Through reason, man grasps being in its true form, the content of reason is the content of being; the world is the appearance of the rational, and life is therefore infinitely valuable because it is the representation of reason. This doctrine soon became the philosophy of the age and remained so until it had to give way to the rule of the natural sciences around the middle of the century. The latter did not want to justify anything from reason, but everything from experience. The flourishing of Hegelian philosophy prevented any influence of Scho penhauer's philosophy. It remained completely unnoticed. In 1835, Schopenhauer received the following information from Brockhaus in response to an inquiry about the sales of his main work: the work had not been distributed at all. A large part of it had had to be turned into waste paper.

Stay in Berlin

[ 22 ] After completing "The World as Will and Representation", Schopenhauer left Dresden and went to Italy. He saw Florence, Bologna, Rome and Naples. On his return journey, he received news from his sister in Milan that the Hamburg trading house in which his mother and sister had invested their entire fortune, and Schopenhauer himself only part of his fortune, had stopped making payments. This experience made it seem advisable for him to look for a new source of income, as he did not want to depend on his uncertain fortune. He returned to Germany and habilitated at the University of Berlin. He announced the following lecture for the summer semester of 1820: "The whole of philosophy, that is the doctrine of the nature of the world and of the human spirit". He was unable to exert any influence as an academic teacher or as a writer alongside Hegel. For this reason, he did not give any more lectures in the following years, although he continued to announce such lectures in his catalog until 1831. He felt unhappy in Berlin; the location, climate, surroundings, way of life, social conditions: he disliked everything. In addition, he was completely disintegrating due to the property issue with his mother and sister. He himself had lost nothing through his skillful appearance; his mother and sister, on the other hand, had lost 70 percent of their fortune. Embittered by the lack of recognition, loneliness and the rift with his relatives, he left Berlin in May 1822 and spent several years traveling. He went through Switzerland to Italy, spent a winter in Trier, a whole year in Munich and only returned to Berlin in May 1825. In 1831 he moved to Frankfurt am Main. He fled from the cholera that prevailed in Berlin at the time and which he was particularly afraid of because he had a dream on New Year's night from 1830 to 1831 that seemed to point to his imminent death.

The creation of the last writings and the growing Rubm

[ 23 ] With the exception of the period from July 1832 to June 1833, when Schopenhauer sought recovery from an illness in Mannheim, he spent the rest of his life in Frankfurt in complete solitude, filled with deep resentment at his age, which showed so little understanding for his creations. He lived only for his thoughts and his work, aware that he was not working for his contemporaries, but for a future generation. In 1333 he wrote in his manuscript book: "My contemporaries must not believe that I am now working for them: we have nothing to do with each other; we do not know each other; we pass each other by as strangers. - I write for the individuals who are like me, who live and think here and there in the course of time, communicate with each other only through the works they have left behind and are thus each the consolation of the other."

[ 24 ] The publication of "The World as Will and Representation" marked the end of Schopenhauer's production of ideas. What he published later does not contain any new basic ideas, but only expansions of what is already contained in the main work, as well as arguments about his position towards other philosophers and views on particular questions of science and life, from the standpoint of his world view.

[ 25 ] Schopenhauer believed he recognized an ally in the battle for his ideas in the natural sciences. At the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, in addition to his philosophical education, he acquired a thorough education in the natural sciences and later informed himself in detail about all advances in the knowledge of nature. On the basis of these studies, he formed the opinion that natural science was moving in such a direction that it must one day arrive at the results that he himself had found through philosophical thinking. He attempted to provide proof of this in his work "The Will in Nature", published in 1836. All research into nature consists of two parts, the description of the forces of nature and the explanation of the laws of nature. The laws of nature, however, are nothing other than the rules that the imagination gives to phenomena. These laws can be explained because they are nothing but the forms of space, time and causality, which stem from the nature of the cognizing subject.The forces of nature cannot be explained, but only described as they present themselves to observation. If we follow the descriptions that natural scientists give of the forces of nature: gravity, magnetism, heat, electricity, etc., we see that these forces are nothing more than the forms of action of the will at various levels.

[ 26 ] In the same sense as Schopenhauer gave a more detailed exposition of the doctrine of the will in "Will in Nature", so in "The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics" he expanded the views contained in the main work on the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The book is composed of two prize papers: one on the "Freedom of the Will", which was crowned by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 1839, and the other on the "Foundation of Morals", which was carried out at the instigation of the Danish Academy, but was not crowned by it.

[ 27 ] What Schopenhauer still had to say to the world is contained in his last book, "Parerga und Paralipomena", which appeared in 1851. It contained a series of treatises on philosophy, psychology, anthropology, religion and wisdom in a presentation that captivates the reader, because he does not merely read assertions and abstract proofs, but sees through to a personality whose thoughts arise not only from the head, but from the whole person, and who seeks to prove his views not only through logic, but also through feeling and passion. This character of Schopenhauer's last work and the work of some of his followers, whom the philosopher had already won in the forties, made it possible for him to say of himself in the evening of his life: My time has come. Unnoticed for decades, he became a widely read writer in the second half of the century. As early as 1843, F. Dorguth published a pamphlet entitled "The False Root of Ideal Realism", in which he called Schopenhauer "the first real systematic thinker in the entire history of literature". This was followed in 1845 by another by the same author: "Schopenhauer in his truth". Frauenstädt also worked as a writer to spread Schopenhauer's teachings. He had "Letters on Schopenhauer's Philosophy" published in 1854. However, an article by John Oxenford in the "Westminster Review" from April 1853, which Otto Lindner had translated and published in the Vossische Zeitung under the title "Deutsche Philosophie im Auslande", made a particular impression. In it, Schopenhauer is described as a philosophical genius of the first rank; his depth and wealth of ideas are sought to be proven by reprinting individual passages from his works. Lindner himself became an enthusiastic apostle of Schopenhauer's teachings through the "Parerga und Paralipomena", to which he was able to render great service through his position as editor of the Vossische Zeitung. David Asher in particular promoted the understanding of Schopenhauer's ideas on music through essays in German and English journals. And it was these ideas about music that made one of Schopenhauer's most ardent admirers, Richard Wagner, the man who showed the art of music new paths. For him, these ideas were like a new gospel. He saw them as the most profound philosophy of music. The artist, who wanted to express the deepest secrets of existence in musical language, felt a spiritual affinity with the philosopher who declared music to be the image of the will of the world. In December 1854, the sound poet sent the thinker in Frankfurt the text of his "Ring der Nibelungen" with the handwritten dedication: "Out of admiration and gratitude", shortly after Schopenhauer had refused to visit Wagner in Zurich.

[ 28 ] Schopenhauer was able to watch his fame grow for about a decade. On September 21, 1860, he died suddenly as a result of a lung attack.

Bibliography and text treatment

[ 29 ] The last editions of his works published during Schopenhauer's lifetime are: Die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde, 2nd edition 1847; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3rd edition 1859; Der Wille in der Natur, 2nd edition 1854; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd edition 1860; Parerga und Paralipomena, i. edition 1851; Das Sehn und die Farben, 2nd edition 1854. Schopenhauer produced a Latin translation of the latter work in 1829 for the "Scriptores ophthalmologici minores", which was published in the third volume of this journal in 1830 under the title "'Theoria colorum physiologica". After Schopenhauer's death, Julius Frauenstädt, in accordance with the philosopher's last will and testament, produced new editions of the works, for which he used the manuscript bequest. This consists of manuscript books and hand-copies of the works. The manuscript books are Reisebuch (begun September 1818), Foliant (begun January 1821), Brieftasche (begun May 1822), Quartant (begun November 1824), Adversaria (begun March 1828), Cholerabuch (written while fleeing from cholera, begun September 1831), Cogitata (begun February 1830), Pandektä (begun September 1832), Spicilegia (begun April 1837), Senilia (begun April 1852) and the lectures Schopenhauer gave in Berlin. In these manuscript books, as well as on the pages pasted through the manuscript copies, are Schopenhauer's additions which he intended to include in later editions of his works, as well as remarks on philosophical works, aphorisms, etc.. Frauenstädt published what could not be used for the new editions of the works in 1864 under the title: "Aus Arthur Schopenhauers handschriftlichem Nachlaß. Treatises, Notes, Aphorisms and Fragments". After Frauenstadt's death in 1879, the manuscript books passed into the possession of the Royal Library in Berlin, while the hand-copied copies were passed into private hands. For any complete edition of Schopenhauer's works, Frauenstadt's principle must generally be followed: "I have ... I have proceeded in such a way that I have only included the additions in the text, whether they were written down or quoted from the manuscript books, when, after careful consideration, I found a place for them where they fit in without constraint, not only in terms of content but also in terms of form, i.e. diction; in all other cases, however, where either the strict sequence of thought or the pleasing sentence structure of the text did not permit their inclusion in the same, I have placed them in the most appropriate place either as notes below or as appendices after the text. " However, Frauenstädt sometimes did not apply this principle strictly enough. Therefore, in the present complete edition, all those additions that Frauenstädt included in the text have been removed from the text and relegated to the notes, of which it can be assumed that Schopenhauer, in accordance with the strict demands he placed on style, would never have added them to his works in the first version, but only after a complete reworking. As far as the arrangement of the writings in a complete edition is concerned, several statements by Schopenhauer should be taken into consideration: A letter to Brockhaus dated August 8, 1858, in which, should a complete edition become necessary, he speaks of the following order: i. World as will and imagination. 2. parerga. 3. fourfold root; will in nature; basic problems of ethics; sight and colors. On September 22 of the same year, he was already of a different opinion. He wanted to place the Parerga at the end and let the writings listed earlier under 3. precede it. As you can see, Schopenhauer was vacillating with regard to the order. The present Complete Edition therefore follows the statement he made in the draft of a preface to the Complete Edition about the order in which his works should be read. The following arrangement corresponds to this statement: i. Fourfold root of the proposition of the sufficient ground. 2 World as will and imagination. 3. will in nature. 4. basic problems of ethics. 5. parerga and paralipomena. These writings are followed by the work on "Sight and Colors", which Schopenhauer says in the same passage "goes for itself". Next is the aforementioned Latin translation of this work, followed by what has been published from his estate. The four short descriptions of his life written by Schopenhauer himself form the end of the edition: i. The one attached to his application for the doctorate. 2. the Curriculum vitae, which he sent to Berlin for the purpose of his habilitation. 3. the biography he sent to Eduard Erdmann in April 1851 for use in his History of Philosophy, 4. the one he provided for the Meyersche Konversationslexikon in May of the same year.

[ 30 ] A biography of the philosopher was provided by Gwinner in 1862: "Arthur Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgange", which was published in 1878 under the title "Schopenhauers Leben" in a second, revised and much enlarged edition. This biography is an invaluable monument to Schopenhauer's personality due to the wealth of material it contains and its vivid portrayal of Schopenhauer's personality, despite the obvious differences in Gwinner's and Schopenhauer's views. In 1893, Kuno Fischer published an account of Schopenhauer's life, character and teachings as the eighth volume of his "History of Modern Philosophy".

• 1. I have provided a critique of this view in my book "Die Philosophie der Freiheit. Outlines of a modern world view". 1894.

Jean Paul's personality

[ 1 ] There are works of the mind that lead such an independent existence that one can devote oneself to them without thinking for a moment of their author. One can follow the Iliad, Hamlet and Othello, Iphigenia from beginning to end without being reminded of the personality of Homer, Shakespeare or Goethe. These works stand before the viewer like beings with a life all their own, like developed human beings that we accept for themselves without asking about their father. In them, not only the spirit of creation but also that of the creator is constantly before us. Agamemnon, Achilles, Othello, Iago, Iphigenia appear before us as individuals who act and speak for themselves. Jean Paul's characters, these Siebenkäs and Leibgeber, these Albano and Schoppe, Walt and Vult always have a companion who speaks with them, who looks over their shoulders. It is Jean Paul himself. The poet himself also speaks in Goethe's Faust. But he does so in a completely different way to Jean Paul. What has flowed from Goethe's nature into the figure of Faust has completely detached itself from the poet; it has become Faust's own being and the poet steps off the stage after he has placed his double on it. Jean Paul always remains standing next to his figures. When immersing ourselves in one of his works, our feelings, our thoughts always jump away from the work and towards the creator. Something similar is also the case with his satirical, philosophical and pedagogical writings. Today we are no longer able to look at a philosophical doctrine in isolation, without reference to its author. We look through the philosophical thoughts to the philosophical personalities. In the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz, we no longer remain within the logical web of thought. We look for the image of the philosopher. Behind the works we look for the human being struggling with the highest tasks and watch how he has come to terms with the mysteries and riddles of the world in his own way. But this idiosyncrasy has been fully expressed in the works. A personality speaks to us through the works. Jean Paul, on the other hand, always presents himself to us in two forms in his philosophical writings. We believe that he speaks to us from the book; but there is also a person next to us who tells us something that we can never guess from the book. And this second person always has something to say to us that never falls short of the significance of his creations.

[ 2 ] One may regard this peculiarity of Jean Paul's as a shortcoming of his nature. For those who are inclined to do so, I would like to counter Jean Paul's own words with some modification: Every nature is good as soon as it remains a solitary one and does not become a general one; for even the natures of a Homer, Plato, Goethe must not become general and unique and fill with their works "all the halls of books, from the old world down to the new, or we would starve and emaciate from oversaturation; as well as a human race, whose peoples and times consisted of nothing but pious Herrnhutters and Speners or Antonines or Lutherans, would at last present something of dull boredom and sluggish advancement."

[ 3 ] It is true: Jean Paul's idiosyncrasy never allowed him to create works that have the character of perfection through the unity and roundness of their form, through the natural, objective development of the characters and the plot, through the idealistic representation of his views. He never found the perfect stylistic form for his great spiritual content. But he penetrated the depths and abysses of the human soul and scaled the heights of thought like few others.

[ 4 ] Jean Paul was predisposed to a life of the greatest style. Nothing is inaccessible to his fine powers of observation, his high flight of thought. It is conceivable that he would have reached the pinnacle of mastery if he had studied the secrets of art forms like Goethe; or that he would have become one of the greatest philosophers of all time if he had developed his decisive ability to live in the realm of ideas to greater perfection. An unlimited urge for freedom in all his work prevents Jean Paul from submitting to any formal fetters. His bold imagination does not want to be determined in the continuation of a story by the art form it has created for itself at the beginning. Nor does it have the selflessness to suppress inflowing feelings and thoughts if they do not fit into the framework of the work to be created. Jean Paul appears as a sovereign ruler who plays freely with his imaginative creations, unconcerned about artistic principles, unconcerned about logical concerns. If the course of a narrative, a sequence of thoughts, flows on for a while, Jean Paul's creative genius always reclaims his freedom and leads the reader down side paths, occupying him with things that have nothing to do with the main thing, but only join it in the mind of the creator. At every moment, Jean Paul says what he wants to say, even if the objective course of events demands something completely different. Jean Paul's great style lies in this free play. But there is a difference between playing with complete mastery of the field in which one moves, or whether the whim of the player creates formations which give the impression to those who look at things according to their own laws that one part of the formation does not correspond to the other. With regard to the Greek works of art, Goethe bursts out with the words: "I have the suspicion that the Greeks proceeded according to the very laws according to which nature proceeds and which I am on the track of", and: "These high works of art are at the same time the highest works of nature, which have been produced by men according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses; there is necessity, there is God." One would like to say of Jean Paul's creations: here nature has created an isolated area in which it shows that it can defy its own laws and still be great. Goethe seeks to achieve freedom of creation by incorporating the laws of nature into his own being. He wants to create as nature itself creates. Jean Paul wants to preserve his freedom by not paying attention to the laws of things and imagining the laws of his own personality into his world.

[ 5 ] If Jean Paul's nature were not very cozy, his free play with things and feelings would have a repulsive effect. But his interest in nature and people is no less than Goethe's and his love for all beings has no limits. And it is attractive to see how he immerses himself in things with his feelings, with his rapturous imagination, with his lofty flight of thought, without, however, seeing through the essence inherent in these things. essence itself. One would like to apply the saying "love is blind" to the sensuality with which Jean Paul describes nature and people.

[ 6 ] And it is not because Jean Paul plays too little, but because he is too serious. The 'dream that his imagination dreams of the world is so majestic that what the senses really perceive seems small and insignificant compared to it. This tempts him to embody the contradiction between his dreams and reality. Reality does not seem serious enough for him to waste his seriousness on it. He makes fun of the smallness of reality, but he never does so without feeling the bitterness of not being able to enjoy this reality more. Jean Paul's humor springs from this basic mood of his character. It allowed him to see things and characters that he would not have seen in a different mood. There is a way to rise above the contradictions of reality and to feel the great harmony of all world events. Goethe sought to rise to this height. Jean Paul lived more in the regions in which nature contradicts itself and becomes unfaithful in detail to what speaks from its whole as truth and naturalness. Appear therefore

[ 7 ] Jean Paul's creations, measured against the whole of nature, appear to be imaginary, arbitrary, one cannot say to them: "there is necessity, there is God"; to the individual, to the individual, his sensations appear to be quite true. He has not been able to describe the harmony of the whole, because he has never seen it in clear outline before his imagination; but he has dreamed of this harmony and wonderfully felt and described the contradiction of the individual with it. If his mind had been able to vividly shape the inner unity of all events, he would have become a pathetic poet. But since he only felt the contradictory, petty aspects of reality, he gave vent to them through humorous descriptions.

[ 8 ] Jean Paul does not ask: what is reality capable of? He doesn't even get to that. For this question is immediately drowned out by the other: how little this reality corresponds to the ideal. But ideals that are so unable to tolerate the marriage with harsh reality have something soft about them. They lack the strength to live fully and freshly. Those who are dominated by them become sentimental. And sentimentality is one of Jean Paul's character traits. If he is of the opinion that true love dies with the first kiss, or at least with the second, this is proof that his sentimental ideal of love was not created to win flesh and blood. It always retains something ethereal. Thus Jean Paul hovers between a shadowy ideal world, to which his rapturous longing is attached, and a reality that seems foolish and foolish in comparison with that ideal world. Thinking of himself, he says of humor: "Humor, as the inverted sublime, does not destroy the individual, but the finite through the contrast with the idea. For it there is no single folly, no fools, but only folly and a great world; unlike the common joker with his side-swipes, it does not single out individual folly, but humiliates the great, but unlike parody - in order to elevate the small, and elevates the small, but unlike irony - in order to set the great alongside it and thus destroy both, because before infinity everything is equal and nothing is equal." Jean Paul was unable to reconcile the contradictions of the world, which is why he was also helpless in the face of those in his own personality. He could not find the harmony of the forces of the soul that were at work in him. But these forces of the soul have such a powerful effect that one must say that Jean Paul's imperfection is greater than many a perfection of a lower order. Jean Paul's ability may lag behind his will, but this will appears so clearly before one's soul that one feels one is looking into unknown realms when one reads his writings.

Boyhood and grammar school

[ 9 ] Jean Paul spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Joditz an der Saale, not far from Hof. He was born in Wunsiedel on March 21, 1763 as the son of the tertius and organist Johann Christian Christoph Richter, who had married Sophia Rosina Kuhn, the daughter of the cloth maker Johann Paul Kuhn in Hof, on October 16, 1761. Our poet was given the name Johann Paul Friedrich at his baptism. He later formed his literary name Jean Paul by Frenching his first two first names. On i. August 1765, the parents moved to Joditz. The father was appointed pastor there. The family had grown in Wunsiedel with the addition of a son, Adam. Two girls, who died young, and two sons, Gottlieb and Heinrich, were added in Joditz. A last son, Samuel, was born later, when the family was already in Schwarzenbach. Jean Paul describes his childhood in a captivating way in his autobiography, which unfortunately only goes up to 1779. All the traits that later emerged in the man were already evident in the boy. The rapturous fantasy, which is directed towards an ideal realm and which values reality less than this realm, manifested itself at an early age in the form of a fear of ghosts that often tormented him. He slept with his father in a parlor of the Joditz rectory, separated from the rest of the family. The children had to go to bed at nine o'clock. But the hard-working father only came to Jean Paul in the parlor two hours later, after he had finished his night's reading. Those were two difficult hours for the boy. "I lay with my head under the comforter in the sweat of ghostly fear and saw in the darkness the weather light of the cloudy ghostly sky, and I felt as if man himself were being spun by ghostly caterpillars. So I suffered helplessly for two hours at night, until finally my father came up and, like a morning sun, chased away ghosts like dreams." The autobiographer gives an excellent interpretation of this peculiarity of his childhood. "Many a child full of physical fear nevertheless shows courage of mind, but merely for lack of imagination; another, however - like me - trembles before the invisible world, because imagination makes it visible and shapes it, and is easily frightened by the visible, because it never reaches the depths and dimensions of the invisible. Thus, even a quick physical danger -- for example, a running horse, a clap of thunder, a war, the noise of a fire -- only makes me calm and composed, because I fear only with my imagination, not with my senses." And the other side of Jean Paul's nature can also be seen in the boy; that loving devotion to the little things of reality. He had "always had a predilection for the domestic, for still life, for making spiritual nests. He is a domestic shellfish that pushes itself quite comfortably back into the narrowest coils of the shell and falls in love, only that each time it wants to have the snail shell wide open so that it can then raise its four tentacles not as far as four butterfly wings into the air, but ten times further up to the sky; at least with each tentacle to one of the four satellites of Jupiter." He calls this peculiarity of his a "foolish alliance between searching far and searching near - similar to binoculars, which double the proximity or the distance by merely turning around". The boy's attitude towards Christmas is particularly significant for Jean Paul's character. The joys that the near reality offered him could not fill his soul, however great the extent to which they materialized. "For when Paul stood before the tree of lights and the table of lights on Christmas morning and the new world full of splendor and gold and gifts lay uncovered before him and he found and received new things and new and rich things: so the first thing that arose in him was not a tear - namely of joy - but a sigh - namely about life - in a word, even to the boy the crossing or leap or flight from the surging, playful, immeasurable sea of the imagination to the limited and confining solid shore was characterized by a sigh for a greater, more beautiful land. But before this sigh was breathed and before the happy reality showed its powers, Paul felt out of gratitude that he must show himself in the highest degree joyful before his mother; - and this glow he accepted at once, and for a short time too, because immediately afterwards the dawning rays of reality extinguished and removed the moonlight of imagination." Not as a child, nor in later life, could Jean Paul find the bridge between the land of his longing, which his imagination presented to him in unlimited perfection, and the reality that he loved, but which never satisfied him because he could not see it as a whole, but only in detail, in the individual, in the imperfect.

[ 10 ] On behalf of his mother, Jean Paul often visited his grandparents in Hof. One summer's day on his way home, as he looked at the sunny, glistening mountain slopes and the drifting clouds at around two o'clock, he was overcome by an "objectless longing, which was a mixture of more pain and less pleasure and a desire without memory. Alas, it was the whole man who longed for the heavenly goods of life, which still lay unmarked and colorless in the deep darkness of the heart and which were fleetingly illuminated by the incident rays of the sun." This longing accompanied Jean Paul throughout his life; he was never granted the favor of seeing the objects of his longing in reality.

[ 11 ] There were times when Jean Paul wavered as to whether he was born to be a philosopher or a poet. In any case, there is a distinctly philosophical streak in his personality. Above all else, the philosopher needs to reflect on himself. The philosophical fruits ripen in the most intimate inner being of man. The philosopher must be able to withdraw to this. From here he must be able to find the connection to world events, to the secrets of existence. The young Jean Paul also shows a budding tendency towards self-reflection. He tells us: "I have never forgotten the phenomenon within me, which I have never told anyone about, where I stood at the birth of my self-consciousness, of which I know exactly where and when. One morning, as a very young child, I was standing under the front door and looking to the left at the wood, when suddenly the inner face, I am an I, came before me like a flash of lightning from the sky, and remained shining ever since: then my I had seen itself for the first time and forever." All the peculiarities of Jean Paul's character and those of his creations are already to be found in the earliest traits of his nature. It would be wrong to look for the cause of the physiognomy of his spiritual personality in his growth out of the limited conditions of his upbringing. He himself considers it a happy coincidence that the poet spent his childhood not in a big city but in the village. This generalization is certainly daring. For Jean Paul, because of his individual nature, it was fortunate that he received his first impressions in the idyll of Jodice. For other natures, another is certainly the natural one. Jean Paul said: "Let no poet be born and educated in a capital, but where possible in a village, at most in a small town. The overabundance and overstimulation of a big city are for the excitable child's soul like eating dessert, drinking distilled water and bathing in mulled wine. Life exhausts itself in him in boyhood, and he now has nothing more to wish for than at most the smaller things, the villages. If I think of the most important thing for the poet, of love, he must see in the city, around the warm earthy belt of his parental friends and acquaintances, the larger cold turning and icy zones of unloved people, whom he encounters unknown to him and for whom he can kindle or warm himself as little as a ship's people sailing past another strange ship's people. But in the village they love the whole village, and no infant is buried there without everyone knowing its name and illness and sorrow; - and this glorious sympathy for everyone who looks like a human being, which therefore extends even to the stranger and the beggar, breeds a concentrated love of humanity and the right strength of heart."

[ 12 ] There was a real rage for knowledge in the boy Jean Paul. "All learning was my life, and I would have been happy to be taught like a prince by half a dozen teachers at once, but I hardly had the right one." Of course, the father who provided the elementary lessons was not the right man to satisfy this desire. Johann Christoph Christian Richter was an outstanding personality. He inspired his small parish, whose members were connected to him like a large family, with his sermons. He was an excellent musician and even a popular composer of sacred music. Benevolence towards everyone was one of his outstanding character traits. He did some of the work in his field and garden with his own hands. The lessons he gave his son consisted of letting him "merely learn by heart, sayings, catechism, Latin words and Langen's grammar". This was of little avail to the boy, who was thirsting for real spiritual nourishment. Even then, he sought to acquire on his own what was not available to him from outside. He created a box for himself in which he set up a "case library" "made entirely of his own little sedes, which he sewed together and cut out of the wide paper cuttings from his father's octave sermons".

[ 13 ] On January 9, 1776, Jean Paul moved to Schwarzenbach with his parents. His father was appointed pastor there by a patron, Baroness von Plotho. Jean Paul now went to a public school. The lessons there did not meet his intellectual needs any more than those of his father. The principal, Karl August Werner, taught the pupils to read in a way that lacked all thoroughness and immersion in the spirit of the writers. The chaplain Völkel, who gave him private lessons in geography and philosophy, provided a substitute for those in need of knowledge. Jean Paul received a great deal of inspiration from philosophy in particular. However, it was precisely this man to whom the young mind's firmly pronounced, rigid individuality came to the fore in a brusque manner. Völkel had promised to play a game of chess with him one day and then forgot about it. Jean Paul was so angry about this that he ignored his beloved philosophical lessons and never went to see his teacher again. At Easter 1779, Jean Paul came to Hof to attend grammar school. His entrance examination revealed an unusual maturity of mind. He was immediately placed in the middle section of the Prima. Soon afterwards, on April 135, his father died. Jean Paul had no real luck with his teachers in Hof either. Neither principal Kirsch nor deputy principal Remebaum, the primary school teachers, made any particular impression on Jean Paul. And once again he felt compelled to satisfy his mind on his own. Fortunately, his relationship with the enlightened Pastor Vogel in Rehau gave him the opportunity to do so. He placed his entire library at his disposal and Jean Paul was able to immerse himself in the works of Helvetius, Hippel, Goethe, Lavater and Lessing. He already felt the urge to assimilate what he had read and make it useful for his own life. He filled entire volumes with excerpts of what he had read. And a series of essays emerged from this reading. The grammar school pupil set about important things. What our concept of God is like; about the religions of the world; the comparison of the fool and the wise, the fool and the genius; about the value of studying philosophy at an early age; about the importance of inventing new truths: these were the tasks he set himself. And he already had a lot to say about these things. He was already dealing independently with the nature of God, with the questions of Christianity, with the spiritual progress of mankind. We encounter boldness and maturity of judgment in these works. He also ventured to write a poem, the novel "Abelard and Heloise". Here he appears in style and content as an imitator of Miller, the Sigwart poet. His longing for a perfect world that transcended all reality brought him into the path of this poet, for whom there were only tears on earth over broken hearts and dried up hopes and for whom happiness only lies beyond death. The motto of Jean Paul's novel already shows that he was seized by this mood: "The sensitive man is too good for this earth, where there are cold mockers - in that world only, which bears weeping angels, does he find reward for his tears."

[ 14 ] In Hof, Jean Paul already found what his heart needed most, participating friends: Christian Otto, the son of a wealthy merchant, who later became the confidant of his literary works; Johann Richard Hermann, the son of a toolmaker, a brilliant man full of energy and knowledge, who unfortunately succumbed to the efforts of a life rich in deprivation and hardship as early as 1790. Furthermore, Adolf Lorenz von Oerthel, the eldest son of a wealthy merchant from Töpen near Hof. In contrast to Hermann, the latter was a soft, sentimentalist full of sentimentality and enthusiasm. Hermann was realistically inclined and combined practical wisdom with a scientific sense. In these two characters, Jean Paul already encountered the types that he later embodied in his poems in manifold variations, as the idealistic Siebenkäs compared to the realistic Leibgeber; as Walt compared to Vult. On May 19, 1781, Jean Paul was enrolled as a student of theology in Leipzig.

University life

[ 15 ] Conflicting thoughts and feelings waged a fierce battle in Jean Paul's soul when he entered the classrooms of the high school. He had absorbed opinions and views through avid reading; but neither his artistic nor his philosophical imagination wanted to unfold in such a way that what he had absorbed from outside would have taken on a fixed, individual structure. The basic forces of his personality were strong but indeterminate; the energy was great, the creative power sluggish. The impressions he received aroused powerful feelings in him, drove him to make decisive value judgments; but they did not want to form themselves into vivid images and thoughts in his imagination.

[ 16 ] At university, Jean Paul only sought all-round stimulation. As the eldest son of a clergyman, it was part of the family tradition for him to study theology. If the intention of becoming a theologian ever played a role in his life, it did not last long. He wrote to his friend Vogel: "I have made it a rule in my studies to do only what is most pleasant to me, what I am least unskilled at and what I already find useful and consider useful. I have often deceived myself by following this rule, but I have never regretted this mistake. - To study what one does not love is to struggle with disgust, boredom and weariness in order to obtain a good that one does not desire; it is to waste one's powers, which one feels are made for something else, in vain on a thing where one can make no progress, and to withdraw them from the thing in which one would make progress." He lives at the university as a man of spiritual enjoyment who seeks only that which develops his dormant powers. He listens to lectures on St. John by Magister Weber, on the Acts of the Apostles by Morus; on logic, metaphysics and aesthetics by Platner, on morals by Wieland, on mathematics by Gehler; on Latin philology by Rogler. He also read Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Pope, Swift, Young, Cicero, Horace, Ovid and Seneca. The diary pages and studies in which he collects and processes what he has heard and read grow into thick volumes. He developed an almost superhuman capacity for work and a desire to work. He set down his views in essays that reflect his struggle for a free world view, independent of religious and scholarly prejudices.

[ 17 ] The insecurity of his mind, which prevented Jean Paul from finding his own way in the face of the contemplation and appropriation of the foreign, would probably have held him back for a long time from appearing before the public with his attempts at writing if the bitterest poverty had not driven him to the decision: "To write books in order to be able to buy books." Jean Paul did not have time to wait until the bitterness he felt as a Leipzig student about the deplorable state of life and culture had turned into a cheerful, superior sense of humor. Early mature works emerged, satires in which the grumbling, criticizing man and not the poet and philosopher speaks out of Jean Paul. Inspired by Erasmus' "Encomium moriae", he wrote his "Praise of Stupidity" in 1782, for which he was unable to find a publisher, and in the same year the "Greenland Trials", with which he first appeared in public in 1783. When one reads these writings, one has the feeling that here is a man who not only vents his resentment on what he encounters that is wrong, but who painstakingly collects all the weaknesses and dark sides, all the stupidities and foolishness, all the mendacity and cowardice of life in order to pursue them with his wit. The roots through which Jean Paul connected with reality were short and thin. Once he had gained a foothold somewhere, he could easily loosen it again and transplant his roots into other soil. His life was broad, but not deep. This is most evident in his relationship with women. He did not love with the full elemental force of his heart. His love was a game with the sensations of love. He did not love women. He loved love. In 1783 he had a love affair with a beautiful country girl, Sophie Ellrodt in Helmbrechts. One day he wrote to her that her love made him happy; he assured her that her kisses had satisfied the longing that his eyes had aroused in him. But he also writes soon afterwards that he only stayed a little longer in Hof because he wanted to be happy in this place for some time before he would be happy in Leipzig (cf. Paul Nerrlich, Jean Paul, p. 138 £.). As soon as he is in Leipzig, the whole love dream has faded. His later relationships with women were just as playful with the feelings of love, including those with his wife. His love had something ghostly about it; the addition of sensuality and passion had too little elective affinity to the ideal element of his love.

[ 18 ] The insecurity of the mind, the little connection of his being with the real conditions of life made Jean Paul a self-tormentor at times. He just flitted about reality; that is why he often had to go astray and reflect on his own personality. We read of a self-torture that went as far as asceticism in Jean Paul's devotional booklet, which he wrote in 1784. But even this asceticism has something playful about it. It remains stuck in ideal reverie. However profound the individual remarks he writes down about pain, virtue, glory-seeking, anger: one always has the impression that Jean Paul merely wanted to intoxicate himself with the beauty of his rules of life. It was refreshing for him to write down thoughts such as the following: "Hatred is not based on moral ugliness, but on your mood, sensitivity, health; but is it the other's fault that you are ill? ... The offending man, not the offending stone, annoys you; so think of every evil as the effect of a physical cause or as coming from the Creator, who also allowed this concatenation." Who can believe that he is serious about such thoughts, who almost at the same time wrote the "Greenland Trials", in which he wielded his scourge against writing, against clericalism, against ancestral pride in a way that does not betray the fact that he regards the wrongs of life as the effect of a physical cause?

[ 19 ] The bitterest need caused Jean Paul to leave Leipzig like a fugitive on October 27, 1784. He had to secretly evade his creditors. On November 16, he arrived in Hof with his mother, who was also completely impoverished.

Educator and years of travel

[ 20 ] Jean Paul spent two years in Hof surrounded by a housebound mother and the most oppressive family circumstances. Alongside the noisy bustle of his mother, the washing and scrubbing, the cooking and flattening, the whirring of the spinning wheel, he dreamed of his ideals. Only the New Year of 1787 brought partial redemption. He became a tutor to the younger brother of his friend Oerthel in Töpen near Hof. There was at least one person in Chamber Councillor Oerthel's house who was sympathetic to the idealistic dreamer, who had a slight tendency towards sentimentality. It was the woman of the house. Jean Paul remembered her with gratitude throughout his life. Her loving nature made up for some of the things that her husband's rigidity and roughness spoiled for Jean Paul. And even if the boy he had to educate caused the teacher many a worry due to his suspicious character, the latter seems to have clung to his pupil with a certain love, for he later said of the early departed that he had had the most beautiful heart and that the best seeds of virtue and knowledge lay in his head and heart. After two years, Jean Paul left Oerthel's house. We are not informed of the reasons for this departure. Necessity soon forced him to exchange the old schoolmaster's office for a new one. He moved to Schwarzenbach to give elementary lessons to the children of his old friends, the pastor Völkel, the district administrator Clöter and the commissioner Vogel.

[ 21 ] During his time in Hof and Töpen, Jean Paul's need for friendship bore the most beautiful fruit. If Jean Paul lacked the endurance of passion for devoted love, he was made for friendship that lived more in the spiritual element. His friendship with Oerthel and Hermann deepened during this time. And when they were taken from him by death in quick succession, in 1789 and 1790, he erected monuments to them in his soul, the sight of which spurred him on to ever new work throughout his life. The deep glimpses that Jean Paul was granted into the souls of his friends were a powerful stimulus for his poetic creativity. Jean Paul needed to lean on people who were attached to him with all their soul. The urge to transfer his feelings and ideas directly into another human soul was great. He could consider it fortunate that shortly after Oerthel and Hermann had passed away, another friend surrendered to him in loyal love. It was Christian Otto who, from 1790 until Jean Paul's death, lived through his intellectual life with selfless sympathy.

[ 22 ] Jean Paul himself describes how he spent the period from 1783 to 1790. "I enjoyed the most beautiful things in life, autumn, summer and spring with their landscapes on earth and in the sky, but I had nothing to eat or wear and remained anemic and little respected in Hof im Voigtlande." It was during this time that his "Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren nebst einem notwendigen Aviso vom Juden Mendel" was written. In this book, the creative satirist appears alongside the polemicist. The criticism has partly been transformed into narrative. People appear instead of the earlier abstract ideas. But what is still laboriously struggling for embodiment here emerges in a more perfect form in the three stories written in 1790: "Des Amtsvogts Freudel Klaglibell gegen seinen verfluchten Dämon"; "Des Rektors Fälbel und seiner Primaner Reise nach dem Fichtelberg" and in the "Leben des vergnügten Schulmeisterleins Maria Wuz in Auenthal". In these three poems, Jean Paul succeeds in drawing characters in which humanity becomes caricature. Freudel, Fälbel and Wuz appear as if Jean Paul were looking at his ideal image of man in mirrors, which make all the features appear diminished and distorted. But in doing so, he creates afterimages of reality. Freudel depicts the t'ypus of man, who at moments when he needs the greatest seriousness and solemn dignity becomes ridiculous through the trickery of his absent-mindedness or chance. Another kind of human caricature, which judges the whole world from the narrowest perspective of its own profession, is characterized in Fälbel. A schoolmaster who believes that the great French social upheaval would have been impossible if the revolutionary heroes had commented on the old classics instead of reading the evil philosophers. The Auenthal schoolmaster Maria Wuz is a wonderful picture of stunted humanity. In his village idyll, he lives human life on a microscopic scale, but he is as happy and content as none of the greatest sages can be.

[ 23 ] It is difficult to decide whether Jean Paul was a good schoolmaster. If he was able to follow the principles he wrote in his diaries, then he certainly turned his pupils into what they were capable of becoming. But schoolmastering was certainly more fruitful for him than for his pupils. For he gained deep insights into young human nature, which led him to the great pedagogical ideas that he later developed in his "Levana". However, he would hardly have been able to endure the confines of the office for three years if he had not found in his visits to Hof a conductor that was entirely in keeping with his nature. He was a connoisseur of the intellectual pleasures that arise from relationships with talented and excitable people. In Hof, he was always surrounded by a crowd of young girls who swarmed around him and stimulated his imagination. He regarded them as his "erotic academy". He fell in love, as far as he could love, with each of the academy girls, and the intoxication of one love affair had not yet faded when another began.

[ 24 ] This mood gave rise to the two novels "The Invisible Lodge" and "Hesperus". Gustav, the main character of the "Invisible Lodge", is a nature like Wuz, who only outgrows Wuz's existence and is forced to allow his tender heart, which could be content in a narrowly defined circle, to be tortured by harsh reality. The contrast between ideal sensuality and what is really valid in life forms the basic motif of the novel. And this motif becomes Jean Paul's great problem in life. It appears in ever new forms in his creations. In "The Invisible Lodge", the ideal sensuality has the character of a deep emotionalism that tends towards sentimentalism; in "Hesperus" it takes on a more rational form. The protagonist, Viktor, no longer merely raves with his heart like Gustav, but also with his mind and reason. Viktor actively intervenes in the circumstances of life, while Gustav passively allows them to affect him. The feeling that runs through both novels is this: the world is not made for good and great people. They have to retreat to an ideal island within themselves and lead an existence outside and above the world in order to make do with its wretchedness. The great man with a noble nature, a brilliant mind and an energetic will, who weeps or laughs at the world, but never draws a sense of satisfaction from it, is one of the extremes between which all Jean Paul's characters are to be placed. The other is the small, narrow-minded person with a subaltern attitude, who is content with the world because his empty mind does not conjure up dreams of a greater one. The figure of Quintus Fixlein in the 1794 story "Life of Quintus Fixlein drawn from fifteen boxes of notes" approaches the latter extreme; the following poem "Jean Paul's biographical amusements under the brainpan of a giantess", written in the same year, approaches the former. Fixlein is happy with modest plans for the future and the most petty scholarly work; Lismore, the main character of the "Amusements", suffers from the disharmony of his energetic will and weaker ability and from the other between his idealistically lofty ideas of human nature and those of his fellow human beings. The struggle that arises when a strong will that transcends the boundaries of reality and a human attitude that grows out of the limited conditions of a petty existence collide was depicted by Jean Paul in the book "Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten F. St. Siebenkäs im Reichsmarktflecken Kuhschnappel" (Pieces of Flowers, Fruit and Thorns or the Marriage, Death and Wedding of the Poor Lawyer F. St. Siebenkäs in the Imperial Market Town of Kuhschnappel), published at Easter 1795. There are two people here who, because of their higher nature, do not know how to come to terms with the world. One, Siebenkäs, believes in a higher existence and suffers from the fact that this cannot be found in the world; the other, Leibgeber, sees through the nothingness of the world, but does not believe in the possibility of any kind of better. He is a humorist who thinks nothing of life and laughs at reality; but at the same time he is a cynic who cares nothing for higher things and considers all idealistic dreams to be bubbles of foam that rise from the muck of vulgarity as a haze to the scorn of humanity. Siebenkäs suffers at the hands of his wife Lenette, in whom philistine, narrow-minded reality is embodied; and Leibgeber suffers from his faithlessness and hopelessness. But he always rises above it with humor. He demands nothing extraordinary from life; that is why his disappointments are not great and why he does not consider it necessary to make higher demands of himself.

[ 25 ] Even before finishing "Hesperus", Jean Paul had swapped his teaching and educational work in Schwarzenbach for one in Hof. In the summer of 1796, he undertook a trip to Weimar. Like the heroes of his novels in the midst of a reality that did not satisfy them, Jean Paul felt at home in the city of muses. In his opinion, everything that reality could contain in terms of grandeur and sublimity should have been crowded together in this small town. He had hoped to meet giants and titans of spirit and imagination, as he had imagined them in his dreams to the point of superhumanity. And he did find geniuses, but only human beings. He was not attracted to either Goethe or Schiller. Both had already made their peace with the world at that time; both had realized the great world harmony that allows man to make peace with reality after a long struggle. Jean Paul was not allowed to find this peace. His soul was made for the lust of the struggle between ideal and reality. Goethe seemed to him stiff, cold, proud, frozen against all men; Schiller rock-faced and hard, so that foreign enthusiasm bounced off him. Only with Herder did a beautiful bond of friendship develop. The theologian, who sought salvation beyond the real world, could be a comrade to Jean Paul, but not the worldlings Goethe and Schiller, the idolizers of the real. Jean Paul felt the same way about Jacobi, the philosophical fisherman in the murky waters, as he did about Herder. Understanding and reason penetrate reality and illuminate it with the light of the idea; feeling clings to the dark, the unrecognizable, to the world of faith. And Jacobi reveled in the world of faith, as did Jean Paul. This trait of his spirit won him the hearts of women. Karoline Herder raved about the poet of sentimentality, and Charlotte von Kalb admired in him the ideal of a man.

[ 26 ] After his return from Weimar, Jean Paul's poetry lost itself completely in the vagueness of emotional indulgence and in an unworldly way of thinking and attitude in "Jubelsenior" and "Kampanerthal oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele" (1797). If the journey to Weimar had not strengthened his eyes for an unbiased contemplation of life, the varied wanderings that lasted from 1797 to 1804 did even less. He now lived successively in Leipzig, Weimar, Berlin, Meiningen and Koburg. Everywhere he established relationships with people, especially with women; everywhere he was welcomed with open arms. People were intoxicated by his ideas, which flowed from the depths of the emotional world. But the attraction they exerted on him soon wore off. He wrapped thick tentacles around the people he got to know, but soon drew these arms in again. In Weimar, Jean Paul spent happy days in the company of Frau von Kalb, Duchess Amalia, Knebel, Böttiger and others; in Hildburghausen, he carried his love game so far that he became engaged to Caroline von Feuchtersleben, only to part with her again soon afterwards. From Berlin he fetched the woman who really became his wife, Karoline, the second daughter of the senior tribunal councillor Maier. He entered into a marriage with her, which initially lifted him to the highest heights of happiness that a man can climb, and from which all happiness then disappeared to such an extent that Jean Paul only held on to her out of duty and Karoline endured it with submission and self-emptying. On her union with Jean Paul, this woman wrote to her father: "I never thought I would be as happy as I am. It will sound strange to you when I tell you that the high enthusiasm which carried me away when I met Richter, but which subsequently faded away as I descended into a more real life, is revived anew every day." And in July 1820, she confessed that she no longer had any right to his heart, that she felt poor and miserable in comparison to him.

[ 27 ] In Meiningen and Koburg, Jean Paul was able to get to know the peaks from which the world is ruled. The dukes in both places were on the most friendly terms with him. He was not to be missed at any court festival. Anyone seeking intellectual entertainment and stimulation joined him.

[ 28 ] Jean Paul's two most important poems, "Titan" and "Flegeljahre", were written during his years of wandering. His poetic power appears heightened, his imagination works in sharper outlines in these works. The characters are similar to those we encounter in his earlier works, but the artist has gained greater confidence in drawing and more vivid colors. He has also descended from depicting the outside of people into the depths of their souls. While Siebenkäs, Wuz and Fälbel appear like silhouettes, the Albano and Schoppe of the "Titan", the Walt and Vult of the "Flegeljahre" appear as perfectly painted figures. Albano is the man of strong will. He wants great things without asking where the strength to achieve them will come from. He has an addiction to breaking all the shackles of humanity. Unfortunately, it is precisely this humanity that is confined within narrow limits. A soft heart, an over-sensitive sensibility blunt the power of his imagination. He is unable to truly love either the rapturous Liana, with her fine nerves and boundless selflessness, or the ingenious, free-spirited Linda. He cannot love at all because his ideals make him demand more from love than it can offer. Linda wants devotion and nothing but devotion from Albano; but he thinks that he must first win her love through great deeds, through participation in the great war of freedom. He first wants to acquire what he could easily have. Reality in itself is nothing to him; only when he can combine an ideal with it does it become something to him. In view of the great works of art in Rome, it is not the secrets of art that open up to him, but his thirst for action awakens. "How in Rome a person can only enjoy and melt softly in the fire of art, instead of being ashamed and struggling for strength and action," he does not understand. But in the end this 'thirst for action only finds nourishment in the fact that it turns out that Albano is a prince's son and that the throne is his by inheritance. And his need for love is satisfied by the narrow-minded Idoine, who is devoid of any higher impetus. Opposite Albano is Schoppe, who is a body giver in a heightened form. He gives no thought to the nothingness of the world, for he knows that it cannot be otherwise. Life seems worthless to him; nothing has value for him but personal freedom and boundless independence. Only one struggle could have value for him, that for the unconditional freedom of the individual. He derides all other activities. Nothing frightens him more than his own ego. Everything else does not seem worth thinking about to him, not worth enthusiasm and not worth hatred; but he fears his ego. It is the only great mystery that haunts him. In the end, it drives him mad because it haunts him as a single being in the midst of an eerie void.

[ 29 ] Something of this fear of the ego lived in Jean Paul himself. It was an uncanny thought for him to descend into the depths of the mind and see how the human ego is at work to produce all that springs forth from the personality. That is why he hated the philosopher who had shown this ego in its nakedness, Fichte. He mocked him in his "Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberiana" (1801).

[ 30 ] And Jean Paul had reason to shy away from looking into his innermost self. For in it, two egos engaged in a dialog that sometimes drove him to despair. There was the ego with the golden dreams of a higher world order, which mourned over the mean reality and consumed itself in sentimental devotion to an indefinite beyond; and there was the second ego, which mocked the first for its rapture, knowing full well that the indefinite ideal world could never be reached by any reality. The first ego lifted Jean Paul above reality into the world of his ideals; the second was his practical advisor, reminding him again and again that he who wants to live must come to terms with the conditions of life. He divided these two natures in his own personality between two people, the twin brothers Walt and Vult, and portrayed their mutual relationship in the "Flegeljahre". How little Jean Paul's idealism is rooted in reality is best shown in the introduction to the novel. It is not the concatenations of life that are supposed to make the enthusiast Walt a useful person for reality, but the arbitrariness of an eccentric who has bequeathed his entire fortune to the imaginative youth, but on condition that various practical obligations are imposed on him. Any failure to fulfill these practical obligations immediately results in the loss of part of the inheritance. Walt is only able to find his way through life's tasks with the help of his brother Vult. Vult attacks everything he starts with rough hands and a strong sense of reality. The two brothers' natures first complement each other for a while in a beautifully harmonious endeavor, only to separate later on. This conclusion again points to Jean Paul's own nature. Only temporarily did his two natures create a harmonious whole; time and again he suffered from their divergence, from their irreconcilable opposition.

[ 31 ] Never again did Jean Paul succeed in expressing with such perfection what moved him most deeply in poetry as in the "Flegeljahre". In 1803, he began to record the philosophical thoughts he had formed about art over the course of his life. This gave rise to his "Preliminary School of Aesthetics". These thoughts are bold and shed a bright light on the nature of art and artistic creation. They are the intuitions of a man who had experienced all the secrets of this creation in his own production. What the enjoyer draws from the work of art, what the creator puts into it: it is said here with infinite beauty. The psychology of humor is revealed in the most profound way: the hovering of the humorist in the spheres of the sublime, his laughter at reality, which has so little of this sublime, and the seriousness of this laughter, which only does not weep at the imperfections of life because it stems from human greatness.

[ 32 ] Jean Paul's ideas on education, which he set down in his "Levana" (1806), are no less significant. His sense of the ideal benefits this work more than any other. Only the educator really deserves to be an idealist. He is all the more fruitful the more he believes in the unknown in human nature. Every pupil should be a riddle for the educator to solve. The real, the educated should only serve him to discover the possible, the yet-to-be-formed. What we often feel to be a shortcoming in Jean Paul the poet, that he does not succeed in finding harmony between what he wants with his characters and what they really are: in Jean Paul, the teacher of the art of education, this is a great trait. And the sense for human weaknesses, which made him a satirist and humorist, enabled him to give the educator significant hints to counteract these weaknesses.

Bayreuth

[ 33 ] In 1804, Jean Paul moved to Bayreuth to make this town his permanent residence until the end of his life. He felt happy again to see the mountains of his homeland around him and to pursue his poetic dreams in quiet, small circumstances. He no longer created anything as perfect as the "Titan", the "Flegeljahre", the "Vorschule" and the "Levana", although his 'urge to be active took on a feverish character. Upsets about contemporary events, about the miserable state of the German Reich, an inner nervous restlessness that drove him to travel again and again, interrupted the regular course of his life. Half an hour away from Bayreuth, he had made himself a quiet home for a while in the house of Mrs. Rollwenzel, who cared for him like a mother and had made him famous. He needed the change of location in order to be able to create. While it was initially enough for him to leave his family home for hours every day and make the "Rollwenzelei" the scene of his work, this also changed later on. He traveled to various places: Erlangen (1811), Nuremberg (1812), Regensburg (1816), Heidelberg (1817), Frankfurt (1818), Stuttgart, Löbichau (1819), Munich (1820). In Nuremberg he had the pleasure of getting to know his beloved Jacobi, with whom he had previously only written, in person. In Heidelberg, his genius was celebrated by young and old alike. In Stuttgart, he became close to Duke Wilhelm von Württemberg and his talented wife. In Löbichau, he spent the most beautiful days in the house of Duchess Dorothea of Courland. He was surrounded by a society of exquisite women, so that he felt as if he were on a romantic island.

[ 34 ] The fascinating influence that Jean Paul exerted on women, which was evident in Karoline Herder and Charlotte von Kalb and many others, led to a tragedy in 1813. Maria Lux, the daughter of a republican from Mainz who had played a role in the Charlotte Corday catastrophe, fell passionately in love with Jean Paul's writings, which soon turned into an ardent love for the poet she did not know personally. The unhappy girl was dismayed when she saw that her feeling of admiration for the genius was turning more and more stormily into a passionate affection for the man, and gave herself up to death. Sophie Paulus' affection in Heidelberg made a deeply moving impression, if not an equally shattering one. In constant vacillation between moods of fiery love and admirable renunciation and self-control, this girl consumes herself until, at the age of twenty-five and unsure of herself, she offers her hand to the old A. W. Schlegel in a union that is soon shattered by the conflicting natures.

[ 35 ] The cheerful superiority that enabled him to create humorous images of life left Jean Paul completely in Bayreuth. What he still produces has a more serious tone. He is still unable to create characters who lead an existence appropriate to the ideal human nature he has in mind, but he does create characters who have made their peace with reality. Self-satisfied characters are Katzenberger in "Katzenbergers Badereise" (1808) and Fibel in "Leben Fibels" (1811). Fibel is happy, despite the fact that he only manages to write a modest book, and Katzenberger is happy in his study of abortions. Both are distorted images of humanity, but there is no reason to mock them, nor, as with Wuz, to look at their limited happiness with emotion. Schmelzle's "Des Feldprediger Schmelzles Reise nach Flätz", which was written before them (1807), differs from them. Fibel and Katzenberger are content in their indifferent, meaningless existence; Schmelzle is a discontented hare's foot who is afraid of imaginary dangers. But even in this poem there is nothing more of Jean Paul's great problem, of the clash between the ideal, fantastic dream world and actual reality. Nor is there any sense of a struggle between the two worlds in Jean Paul's last great poem, the "Comet", on which he worked for many years (1815 to 1820). Nikolaus Marggraf wants to make the world happy. His plans are indeed fantastic. But he never felt that they were just a dream. He believes in himself and his ideals and is happy in this belief. Essays written with reference to the political situation in Germany and those in which Jean Paul discusses general questions of science and life were written between the larger works. Some of them are collected in "Herbstblumine" (1810, 1815, 1820) and in his "Museum" (1812). The poet appears as a patriot in his "Freiheitsbüchlein" (1805), in the "Friedenspredigt" (1808) and in the "Dämmerungen für Deutschland" (1809).

[ 36 ] During his time in Bayreuth, Jean Paul's humorous mood increasingly gave way to one that took the world and people as they were, even though he only saw imperfections and small things everywhere. He is disgruntled about reality, but he bears the disgruntlement.

[ 37 ] The great humorist was not granted a cheerful old age. Three years before his end, he had to watch his son Max die, with whom he laid to rest a wealth of hopes for the future and most of his personal happiness. An eye ailment that afflicted the poet worsened in his last years until he became completely blind. The old man, who could no longer see the outside world, now immersed himself completely within himself. He now lived the life he thought no longer belonged to this world, even before death, and from the treasure trove of these inner experiences he drew the thoughts for his "Selina" or "On the Immortality of the Soul", in which he speaks like a transfigured person and believes he really sees what he has dreamed of all his life. Jean Paul died on November 14, 1825. "Selina" was not published until after his death.

Uhland and Goethe

[ 1 ] On September 3, 1786, Goethe set off on his Italian journey from Karlsbad. It brought him a rebirth of his intellectual life. Italy satisfied his thirst for knowledge and his artistic needs. He stood in awe before the works of art that gave him a deep insight into the imaginative life of the Greeks. He describes the feeling that these works of art awakened in his soul in his "Italian Journey". "At every moment" he felt called upon to contemplate them in order to "develop from the human form the circle of divine formation, which is perfectly complete, and in which no main character is missing as little as the transitions and mediations." He has "a conjecture that the Greeks proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds, and which he is on the track of". He expresses how he perceives this realization as a spiritual rebirth with the words: "I have seen much and thought even more: the world opens up more and more; even everything that I have known for a long time only becomes my own. What an early knowing and late practicing creature is man!" - His feelings towards the creations of ancient art rise to the level of religious fervor: "These high works of art, as the highest works of nature, were produced by human beings according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses: there is necessity, there is God."

[ 2 ] Since Goethe had immersed himself in such an ideal of art, he saw everything in a new light. For him, this ideal becomes the yardstick for judging every phenomenon. One can observe this even in small things. When he was in Girgenti on April 26, 1787, he described his impressions with the words: "In the wide space between the walls and the sea, there are still the remains of a small temple, preserved as a Christian chapel. Here, too, half-columns are beautifully connected to the ashlar pieces of the wall, and both are worked into each other, most pleasing to the eye. You can feel exactly where the Doric order has reached its perfect measure."

[ 3 ] As chance would have it, on the same day that Goethe expressed his conviction of the high significance of ancient art by linking such words to a subordinate phenomenon, a man was born who summarized his almost opposite creed in the sentence:

Not in cold marble stones,
Not in temples, dull and dead,
In the fresh oak groves,
Weaves and rustles the German God.

Uhland's boyhood

[ 4 ] This man is Ludwig Uhland, who was born in Tübingen on April 26, 1787. When he concluded his poem "Freie Kunst" on May 24, 1812 with the above words, he was certainly not thinking of saying anything against Goethe's view of the world. Nor should they be cited in the sense of presenting a contrast between Goethe and Uhland. But they are indicative of Uhland's whole character. His path in life had to be different from Goethe's. Just as Goethe's whole inner being came to life before the "high works of art" of the ancients, so did Uhland's when he immersed himself in the depths of the German folk soul. Faced with this popular soul, he could have exclaimed: "There is necessity, there is God." He has this feeling when, wandering through the forest, he admires the native nature:

No better pleasure at this time,
Than to penetrate the forest,
Where thrush sings and hawk cries,
o deer and roe deer leap.

[ 5 ] He has the same feeling when he writes about Walther von der Vogelweide, reflecting on the art of German antiquity: "Among the old German singers, he deserves the name of the patriotic one. No one has, like him, recognized and felt the peculiarity of his people, how bitterly we hear him complain and reproach, with proud enthusiasm he sings elsewhere the praise of the German land, above all others, many of which he has wandered through: You shall speak: willekommen!"

[ 6 ] Uhland's ancestry and youthful development were highly conducive to the development of his folkloristic tendencies. His father's family was an old Württemberg family, rooted with all its attitudes and customs in the part of the country to which it belonged. His grandfather was an ornament to the University of Tübingen as a professor of theology, and his father worked as a secretary at this university. Her gentle, imaginative mother came from Eßlingen. These were favorable circumstances in which the quiet, introverted, outwardly awkward, even clumsy, but inwardly cheerful and enthusiastic for everything great and beautiful boy grew up. He was able to spend a lot of time in his grandfather's library and satisfy his thirst for knowledge in various fields. He enjoyed immersing himself in descriptions of important personalities and stories of great world-historical events as much as in descriptions of nature. Serious poems in which the life of the soul of deep people was expressed, such as those of Ossian and Hölty, made a great impression on him early on. This early Ernst Ludwig Uhland was far removed from all cowardice. If his high forehead indicated his sensible disposition, his beautiful blue eyes and cheerful disposition betrayed the deepest joy of life and the interest he could take in the smallest pleasures of existence. He was always there for all the fun games, jumping, climbing and skating. Not only could he spend hours sitting in a corner, engrossed in a book, but he could also wander through the woods and fields and devote himself entirely to the beauties of natural life. All learning was easy for him with such a disposition. Uhland's ability to master the external means of poetry became apparent early on. The occasional poems that he addressed to parents or relatives at parties show how easy verse and stanza form became for him.

Study and inclination. Uhland and Romanticism

[ 7 ] The outward course of study was forced upon Uhland by circumstances. He was only fourteen years old when his father was promised a family scholarship for his son if he studied law. Without having any inclination for this course of study, he took it up. The way he spent his apprenticeship is characteristic of his entire character. He literally split into two personalities. One personality was devoted to his poetic inclinations, his imaginative, cozy world view, his immersion in the history, legends and poetry of the Middle Ages; the other to the conscientious study of law. On the one hand, the Tübingen student lives in a stimulating devotion to everything that his "heart's desire" draws him towards, on the other hand, he appropriates the subjects of his professional studies so perfectly that he can conclude them with a doctoral thesis that has met with the approval of the most competent scholars. -

[ 8 ] The first poems that Uhland incorporated into his works date from 1804. The two ballads "The Dying Heroes" and "The Blind King" reveal a basic trait of his personality. Here he already lives in an imaginary world taken from Germanic prehistory. His love for this world has borne the most beautiful fruit for him. The sources of genuine folklore, the essence of the folk soul, were opened up to him through this love. As a poet and as a scholar, he drew the best strength from this love. And it was almost innate in him. He could say of himself that it was not only through study that German prehistory opened up to him, but that he sensed it when he gazed at the high cathedrals of the old cities. Scholarship only gave him clear, distinct ideas about what he had felt from his youth. - His immersion in the German Middle Ages was one of the characteristics of the literary movement known as Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ludwig Tieck, de la Motte Fouqúe, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim and others were all promoters of this movement. They sought in piety and depth of mind a cure for the damage that the dry and often shallow "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century had done to the spirit. As certain as it is that the pursuit of enlightenment, the recourse to one's own understanding and reason in matters of religion and outlook on life had a beneficial effect on the one hand, it is also certain that the critical stance towards all religious tradition and all old traditions brought about a certain sobriety on the other. The Romantics felt this. That is why they wanted to help the extreme, overly one-sided and understanding spirit of the times by delving into the prehistoric life of the soul. The view of art, which saw its ideal in the ancient Greek world and which had reached its zenith in Goethe and Schiller, also appeared to them to be a danger if it forgot its own people above the foreign antiquity. They therefore endeavored to revive interest in genuine German folklore.

[ 9 ] Such a current of the times must have found an echo in Uhland's heart. He must have felt happy during his university years to live in a circle of friends who shared his inclinations in this direction. Those who live in a pronounced world view easily see only the dark side of an opposing one. And so it was that Uhland and his childhood friends in Tübingen fought in their own way against the excesses of the Enlightenment and old-fashioned views that seemed to them to contradict German folklore. They expressed their resentment against this in a "Sonntagsblatt", which they could only publish by hand. Everything they had to say against the art movement, which was represented in the Stuttgart "Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände", they put down on paper. An essay in the Sonntagsblatt "Über das Romantische" (On Romanticism) provides clarity about Uhland's attitude. Certain traits of his soul, which can already be found here, remained with him throughout his life. "The infinite surrounds man, the mystery of the Godhead and the world. What he himself was, is and will be is veiled from him. These mysteries are sweet and terrible." He did not want to speak about the mysteries of existence with sober reason; he wanted to leave the primal reasons for existence as mysteries to which feeling can indulge in vague intuition, of which only the sensing imagination should form an idea in free images, not sharply outlined ideas through reason. He preferred to seek poetry in the unfathomable depths of the popular soul rather than in the high artistic laws of the Greeks. "Romanticism is not merely a fantastic delusion of the Middle Ages; it is high, eternal poetry that depicts in images what words can scarcely or never express, it is a book full of strange magical images that keep us in contact with the dark world of spirits." To express the secrets of the world through anything other than images of the imagination seemed to him like profaning these secrets. This is the attitude of the twenty-year-old Uhland. He retained it throughout his life. It is also clearly contained in the letter he sent to Justinus Kerner on June 29, 1829. June 1829, when the latter had presented him with his book on the "Seerin von Prevorst": "If you will allow me to express the impression that our last conversations left on me, it is this: what is yours in these works, what emerges pure and unclouded from your observation and view of nature, I am assured of the most beautiful benefit for all those who are aware that one will never penetrate the wonderful depths of human nature and worldly life without the living imagination..."

Circle of Friends

[ 10 ] The times that Uhland spent with his university friends were times that he himself described as "beautiful, joyful". Justinus Kerner, the rapturous Swabian poet, Karl Mayer, Heinrich Köstlin, a physician, Georg Jäger, a naturalist, and Karl Roser, Uhland's later brother-in-law, were all part of the circle. In 1808, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who was personally close to a number of Romantics and lived entirely according to their views, joined the circle. Uhland's poetry during this period bears the hallmark of the Romantic spirit in many respects. He sings of figures and circumstances from the world of medieval legends and history; he immerses himself in the emotional worlds of these prehistoric times and reproduces them characteristically. Even in the poems that do not refer to the Middle Ages, a romantic tone prevails as the basic mood. This tone sometimes takes on a rapturous, sentimental character. It is expressed, for example, in the song "Des Dichters Abendgang". The poet indulges in the delights of the sunset on a walk and then carries the impression of it home with him:

But when around the sanctuary,
The dark clouds roll down,
Then it is done, you turn back,
blessed by the miraculous.
In silent emotion you will go,
You carry the blessing of the song within you;
The light that you saw there,
Shines mildly around you on dark paths.

[ 11 ] Moods of a similarly romantic spirit are expressed in the songs: "An den Tod", "Der König auf dem Turme", "Maiklage", "Lied eines Armen", "Wunder", "Mein Gesang", "Lauf der Welt", "Hohe Liebe", and others from Uhland's student days. And the same romantic imagination prevails in the romances and ballads that Uhland wrote at the time: "Der Sänger", "Das Schloß am Meere", "Vom treuen Walter", "Der Pilger", "Die Lieder der Vorzeit" and others.

[ 12 ] And yet: for all the romantic mood in Uhland's character and for all the sympathy he had for the Romantic movement, there is a contrast between him and Romanticism proper. This grew out of a kind of contradictory spirit. Its main proponents wanted to oppose artistic poetry, as represented by Schiller, and the Enlightenment with something that was deeply rooted in popular life and the mind. Through study and scholarship, they came to the times in which, in their opinion, the spirit of the people and natural piety of the heart prevailed. In Uhland's case, the folkloristic and depth of feeling was present from the outset as a fundamental trait of his nature. If one therefore finds in many Romantics, for example in de la Motte Fouque and Clemens Brentano, that their striving for the Middle Ages, for the original folklore, has something sought after about it, that it often even appears only like an outer mask of their nature, then these traits are something quite natural in Uhland. He had never distanced himself in his thinking and feeling from the simplicity of the folk spirit; therefore he never needed to seek it. He felt comfortable and at home in the Middle Ages because the best aspects of it coincided with his inclinations and feelings. With such inclinations, it must have been quite an experience for him when Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (1805) in Heidelberg, in which they collected the most beautiful flowers of folk poetry.

Journey to Paris. Diary

[ 13 ] In 1810, the poet had completed his studies, his state and doctoral examinations were behind him. He could think about looking around the world and searching for the nourishment for his spirit that he craved. Paris had to attract him. There were the manuscript treasures of old folk and heroic poetry, which could give him the deepest insight into the connections between the life and work of the past. The journey to the French capital and his stay there had a lasting effect on his entire life. He left Tübingen on May 6, i8io and arrived back home on February 14 of the following year. From i810 to 1820, Uhland kept a detailed diary, which was published by J. Hartmann. These notes are invaluable for understanding his personality, especially those relating to the Paris trip. Silent as Uhland generally is, he also proves to be in this diary. Feelings and thoughts are only sparsely interspersed between the purely factual details that are recorded. These are all the more significant. They give us a deep insight into his soul. He traveled via Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Mainz, Koblenz, Trier, Luxembourg, Metz, Verdun and Chalons. He writes: "My stay in Karlsruhe, which lasted from Monday to Sunday (May 7 to 3), will always be a precious memory for me." There he met the poet of the "Alemannic poems", Johann Peter Hebel. This genuinely folksy personality attracted Uhland immensely. He later wrote about his stay in Karlsruhe when he was in Koblenz: "Evening memories of Karlsruhe with tears." A diary entry that refers to the Rhine trip shows how Uhland liked to pursue mysterious connections in life and build his contemplative imagination on them: "Old view of Bacharach. The jolly, unknown journeyman with the post horn, which he blew badly, but whose notes were transfigured in the echo. The traveler from Breslau who suddenly emerged with his flute. Singing and music on the ship. Strange coincidence with my song: the little ship." Three months earlier, he had written the poem "Das Schifflein" ("The Little Ship"), in which he had described the experience, which now really came before his eyes, from his imagination. The diary shows us in many places that Uhland also pursued such things in later life, which cast a mysterious spell on the imagination, although they seem to defy rational contemplation. On April 3, 1813, for example, he wrote down a dream he had had. A girl was tempted by a reckless lover to enter the attic of a house and have herself played on a piano which, according to an old legend, must never be played because the player and the person who hears the notes will immediately age and die. Uhland sees himself in the company of his beloved. He feels the age within him; and the scene ends terribly. Uhland writes: "One could explain this dream as follows: the piano is the sin that lurks hidden somewhere in even the most pious home, waiting to be appealed to. The girl's lover is the devil, he knows how to handle the sin so that at first it sounds quite innocuous, ordinary. The sound becomes sweeter and sweeter, more and more enticing, holds fast with magical power, then it becomes terrible, and in wild storms the once pious and peaceful house perishes." Particularly characteristic in this respect, however, is a note from March i, 1810. "Night's idea for a ballad: the legend that those close to death believe they hear music could be used in such a way that a sick girl thought she heard a spiritual, supernatural serenade outside her window, as it were." This idea stuck so firmly in his mind that he expressed it on October 4 in Paris in a poem entitled "Serenade". This poem describes a dying girl who does not hear "earthly music", but who believes that "angels are calling me with music". Compare this with what Uhland wrote down on 8 June 1828 with reference to a dream, and you will recognize how such traits reveal something lasting in his character: "Among the surprising phenomena of a future world will also be that, just as we will have heavenly thoughts and feelings, so also for the expression of these a new organ will open up to us, a heavenly language will break out of the earthly one. The splendor and pomp of the present language cannot give us an idea of this, nor can the calm and (animated) silence of the language of the older German poets, just as in my song heaven wants to open up in the silence of Sunday morning, just as only when it is completely silent can the sounds of the aeolian harp or the harmonica be heard." At the same time, this shows how Uhland's whole way of imagining things had to lead him to the "silence and language of the older German poets", with whom he felt so closely related.

[ 14 ] In Paris, Uhland found what he was looking for. He immersed himself in old French and Spanish literature. The substantial essay "Das altfranzösische Epos", which appeared in the journal "Die Musen" in 1812, was the first result of these studies. He conceived the idea of a poem: "The King of France's Book of Fairy Tales", which, however, was never realized. He meets the poet Chamisso and spends pleasant days with him. He also meets Varnhagen again. A note dated November 17, 1981 shows what Uhland was pursuing with his studies in Paris: "Certain conception of the tendency of my collection of old French poetry: mainly saga, heroic saga, national saga, living voice, with the artistic, the bourgeois, etc." He is persistent in copying manuscripts. It is hard to say what fruit Uhland would have gained from his stay in Paris if it had not been curtailed from the outside. He needed the permission of the King of Württemberg to stay abroad. Unfortunately, his father had to inform him in December that royal permission for a further stay would not be granted. However, the poet not only became acquainted with the treasures of the Paris library, but also with the other treasures and beauties of the great cosmopolitan city. From his notes and letters we can see how he made it a point to study life and art, and how his view broadened. - What Paris meant to him is clear from the gloomy mood that initially afflicted him after his return. The prospect that he would now have to take up some kind of legal position added to this mood. One bright spot, however, was his acquaintance with Gustav Schwab, the poet of popular romances and songs and splendid writings on virtue, who was studying in Tübingen at the time. He became a loyal, devoted friend to Uhland. The level to which Uhland had worked his way up to in his poetic work is shown by his creations: "Roland's Shield Bearer", "St. George's Knight" and the magnificent "The White Stag", along with many others from this period. However, he had already achieved the high perfection of form that we encounter here earlier, as can be seen from one of his most popular ballads: "Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein", which was written in 1809. On the other hand, the poems written after the Paris period clearly show how his imagination had been enriched by his immersion in the past. He is now not only capable of vividly depicting foreign material, but also of creating a complete harmony of content and manner of presentation in all external aspects of verse and rhythm.

Uhland as a civil servant

[ 15 ] After his return from Paris, Uhland had to look for a job. He had the opportunity to familiarize himself a little with the practical side of the profession by being entrusted with a number of defence cases in criminal matters and also the conduct of civil proceedings in the years i8i1 and 1812. The experience he gained from this did not exactly make the profession of a lawyer seem desirable to him. He was therefore satisfied when he was offered the opportunity to join the Ministry of Justice as an unsalaried secretary, but with the certain assurance that he would receive a salary before the end of the year. He took up his post in Stuttgart on December 22. - The life he now entered had many downsides for him. His official duties brought with them many difficulties. He had the task of dealing with the lectures that the minister gave to the king about the courts. The independent and straightforward manner in which Uhland drafted these lectures caused the minister some concern. After all, he was primarily concerned with creating as favorable an impression as possible with his reports. In addition, Uhland found it very difficult to connect with other people. It so happened that he was not accepted as a member of a circle of friends that met every Monday and Friday evening in a pub under the name "Schatten-Gesellschaft" until September 1813, although he had already attended one of the evenings on December 18, a few days after his arrival. Köstlin, Roser and others belonged to this circle. The strenuous work in the office and the unattractive life meant that Uhland did not feel very encouraged to be creative at the beginning of his stay in Stuttgart. How he nevertheless found his way inwardly and how his personality developed can be seen from statements such as the one in a letter to Mayer dated January 20, 1813: "Of course, I have not yet written any poetry, but in this outward isolation from it, poetry is becoming clearer and more alive to me inwardly, as is often the case with more distant friends."

[ 16 ] External events could only excite Uhland's poetic power to a limited extent. He was able to devote himself completely to them as a character, as a man of action. This is shown by his later self-sacrificing activity as a politician. Poetry was awakened in him, where it bore the most beautiful fruit, by an inner spiritual impulse. That is why the great struggle for freedom, in which his heart was fully involved, inspired him to write only a few songs. However, they show how his personality was interwoven with his people's striving for freedom. The "Lied eines deutschen Sängers", "Vorwärts", "Die Siegesbotschaft" and "An mein Vaterland" are songs with which he joined the chorus of freedom singers. - The salary that Uhland had been promised was not forthcoming for a long time. He grew tired of waiting and was otherwise not very satisfied with his position. For these reasons, he left the service of the state in May 1814. He now set up as a lawyer in Stuttgart. Although this profession also gave him little satisfaction, he felt happier with the external independence he now enjoyed. The source of his poetry also flowed more abundantly again. In 1814, he wrote the "Metzelsuppenlied" and the ballads "Graf Eberstein", "Schwäbische Kunde" and "Des Sängers Fluch".

Edition of the "Gedichtes" and the "Vaterländische Gedichte"

[ 17 ] In the fall of 1815, Uhland was able to publish the collection of his poems. Cotta, who had turned down an initial offer from the publisher in 1809 due to the "circumstances of the time", now agreed to take over the work. If this publication enabled the poet Uhland to become known in wider circles, it would soon provide an opportunity to do so with regard to his personal strength of character and soul. From now on, he actively intervened in the political affairs of his homeland. - In 1805, significant constitutional changes had been introduced in Württemberg. In the course of the turmoil caused by Napoleon in Germany, Duke Friedrich II had succeeded in making Württemberg an independent state and in 1806 he was granted the title of king. During this time, the state had also achieved significant territorial expansion. At the same time, however, the regent deprived the state of its old constitution, which was based on medieval institutions. Even though much of this constitution no longer corresponded to the new times, the Swabian people clung tenaciously to their inherited rights; at least they did not want to have new laws unilaterally imposed on them by the government. An antagonism developed between the king and the people, which lasted through the years of turmoil until the Congress of Vienna in 1815. After the negotiations of this congress, the people hoped for a reorganization of their political conditions in a liberal sense. As early as 1815, the king presented a draft constitution to a convened assembly. However, it met with the approval of neither the nobility nor the people. The latter demanded that completely new conditions should not be created arbitrarily, but that the old conditions should be transformed into new ones by negotiation, with full recognition of the rights of the estates that had been abolished in 1805. A second draft constitution presented by the king in 1816 also failed due to popular resistance. In that year the king died; his efforts to create new conditions in the country, disregarding the old rights, were initially continued by his successor, Wilhelm II. - Uhland's political convictions coincided with those of the people. Just as he clung with reverence to the products of the Middle Ages in intellectual life, so in public life the traditional institutions had something so deeply justified for him that his innermost feelings were outraged when they were arbitrarily and unilaterally shaken. He took the view that no one was authorized to give the people a new right, but that the owners of the "old, good law" must retain it until they themselves create innovations on the basis of it. It was in this sense that he expressed himself in 1816 in the poem: "The old, good right"; he wanted this "right", the "well-deserved fame of centuries proven, which everyone loves and honors from the heart like his Christianity". As in this poem, he expressed his conviction in a number of other poems. They were published from i815 to 1817 in small brochures as "Vaterländische Gedichte". They had a strong effect on his fellow countrymen. People appreciated this man, who was free-minded and democratic at heart, and increasingly revered him as one of the best guardians of Württemberg's national rights. As a result, people longed for the time when he would have reached the necessary age to become a member of the state parliament. Until then, namely until his thirtieth year, he could only work as a writer for the rights and freedom of his country.

"Duke Ernst". Dramatic attempts
"Ludwig the Bavarian". Dramatic plans

[ 18 ] Even before this time, the world also got to know Uhland as a playwright. In 1817, he completed his tragedy "Herzog Ernst", which he had begun in September of the previous year. It deals with the fate of the Swabian Duke Ernst, who repeatedly took up arms against his stepfather, Emperor Conrad II of Franconia (1024-1039), and who met his death in 1030 with his friend Werner of Kyburg while defending his supposed rights against the emperor. Uhland poured all his enthusiasm for the German Middle Ages and his Swabian homeland into this drama. Even if the dramatic liveliness of the work is rightly missed, the warmth of the portrayal and its lyrical power have always been admired. It was performed for the first time in May 1819 at the Stuttgart Court Theater and was a great success. - Uhland developed the greatest dramatic power in the first act, which presents a picture of harrowing entanglements. Gisela, the Emperor's wife, who has given him her sons Ernst and Hermann from her first marriage, asks her husband to release her son Ernst, who has been imprisoned on Gibichenstein for two years, on the day of his coronation as Roman king, where everyone is allowed to beg for favors. Her son had rebelled through youthful exuberance and because he believed he had a right to the Burgundian kingship, because the emperor had claimed this land for the empire. Gisela pleads for a pardon for the sorely tried man, who had a "semblance of right" for himself and whose young heart could easily be outraged. The Emperor is willing to grant the request if Ernst submits and relinquishes Burgundy. The scene in which Ernest appears, gaunt, pale and aged, is poignant. He is to be enfeoffed with Swabia if he renounces Burgundy and hands over his loyal friend Werner, who has always stood by him. He agrees to the first condition; he does not want to become a traitor to Werner under any circumstances. Like Ernst, the Emperor does not abandon the position he has once taken. Ernst and Werner remain loyal to each other. The imperial ban and the church ban hit them both. They are once again at the mercy of misfortune. Everything else now develops with iron consistency until Ernst and Werner's downfall, even if the dramatic life no longer rises to the heights reached in the first act.

[ 19 ] "Herzog Ernst" was not Uhland's first dramatic work, although it was the first that he completed. If you follow his dramatic drafts, you can see how persistently he worked on his perfection in this field of poetry and how he always made new approaches in this direction. One can therefore describe "Herzog Ernst" as the rich fruit of years of striving. At the time of his university studies, he tried his hand at a free adaptation of Seneca's play "Thyestes", which has been preserved. (Cf. Adalbert von Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. r5 ff.) - The plan for an Achilles tragedy dates from the year i805. What Uhland wrote about it to Leo Freiherr von Seckendorf on March 6, 1807, shows how deeply he wanted to delve into the mysteries of life and fate with this drama: "About two years ago I began to draft a tragedy, Achilleus Tod. It was intended to portray the idea that even if fate prevents us from carrying out our decisions, if we have only fully and firmly grasped them within ourselves, they are nevertheless complete. What remains a fragment in reality can be a great whole in the idea. The idea remains untouched by fate. Various reasons, but especially my preference for the romantic, which the Greek ground was not up to, kept me from realizing it." It is a pity that nothing of the draft has survived, for one could gain insight from it into the way in which Uhland's Romantic spirit felt alien to the Greek cultural element. - After less significant dramatic attempts, Uhland became interested in the story of Francesca of Rimini in 1807. He was reading Dante's "Divine Comedy" at the time and thus became familiar with the material. The tragedy he wanted to work out from it occupied him for several years. He abandoned the plan in 1810 for a reason that we learn more about in a letter to Karl Mayer dated February 6, 18io: "I lack the leisure, inner peace and vitality to do anything bigger, for example Franceska; I can only do everything in fragments." The plan and individual scenes have survived (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 91 fl.) - Uhland received the inspiration for a drama "König Eginhard" from an old folk book. As an excerpt book shows, he made excerpts from this folk book in 1809. Justinus Kerner was also attracted to the Eginhard saga. He adapted it into a Chinese shadow play, which was published in Karlsruhe in 1811. The book from which Uhland took the legend is called: "Riesengeschichte oder kurzweilige und nützliche Historie von König Eginhard aus Böhmen, wie er des Kaisers Otto Tochter aus dem Kloster bringen lassen, usw. Item, how the great giants attacked the same kingdom etc. All described in a very useful and instructive way by Leopold Richtern, a native of Lambach in Upper Austria." Part of the Eginhard drama is the dramatic fairy tale "Schildeis", which Uhland published in 1812. - Uhland also attempted to write jocular plays during his student days. "The Uninhabited Island" and "The Bear" are two such plays. The latter is a farce set in Spain, which Uhland wrote together with Justinus Kerner in 1809. The year 1809 also saw the composition of a short comedy, "Die Serenade", which is also set in Spain. On ar. January i810, Uhland informs Kerner in a letter that he is working on a drama entitled "Tamlan and Jannet". It was to be a fairy tale dramatized from a Scottish ballad. A hint in the letter also reveals why this plan did not come to fruition. Uhland writes: "I have worked out the first act and another scene for Tamlan. It is to be three acts. You will receive a few scenes from it. Junker David is a changeling abandoned by the elves instead of the stolen Tamlan. As soon as Tamlan returns, he disappears. The discords dissolve into harmony, Absalon finds the desired music." Uhland drew inspiration for the two poems "Harald" and "Die Elfen" from this material. -

[ 20 ] It is understandable that Uhland had doubts about his dramatic talent after the failure of so many dramatic attempts. We learn of such doubts from a letter to J. Kerner dated 2i. January 1810: "With my inner restlessness, with my other, so varied occupations, nothing greater, more elaborate has been possible for me so far. And my talent for drama?" These words come after the mention of a tragedy sketch, "Benno", which Uhland wrote down in two days at the end of December 1809 (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 289 ff.) - Uhland wanted to deliver a truly romantic drama with his "Eifersüchtiger König" (Jealous King), the idea for which he communicated to his friend Kerner on 2i. January i810: "At last I have sketched a Scottish ballad (in Herder's folk songs) "The Jealous King" into a drama, albeit a slight one at first. The idea is to dissolve the hero and his story into poetry, into legend, precisely into the underlying ballad. Squire Waters leaves his father's house and goes to court; a minstrel joins him as the song that echoes the knightly life of action. Waters pleases the queen. The jealous king throws him into prison and has him executed; the flourishing life has come to an end. The minstrel leaves the court, the song goes out into the country. Water's parents and siblings sit at home by the fireside at night. They have a craving for scary fairy tales. The lost Minstrel enters and sings the ballad of Waters' death. The Queen's love for Waters is to be treated in such a way that she favors her dearest lady-in-waiting's inclination towards Waters, as it were in order to love him directly." Unfortunately, nothing has survived of the execution of this plan, which is rooted entirely in Uhland's romantic sensibility. - In 1814 and 1815, Uhland completed the short drama "Normännischer Brauch". He received the inspiration for it from old French poetry. The basic idea is given by the "Normännischer Brauch", that hospitality is rewarded. - A fragment: "Charlemagne in Jerusalem" was probably written in 1814. A letter from Uhland to J. Kerner dated March 28 reveals that the poet was working on a dramatic adaptation of the Hohenstaufen prince Konradin at the time. The diary shows that in July 1818 he read "Hahn's Reichsgeschichte über Otto von Wittelsbach und Konradin" in order to gain material for his drama. On July 14, he even wrote: "More vivid conception of Konradin". Nevertheless, only one scene was realized. He must have finally convinced himself that the material was not suitable for dramatic adaptation. This can be seen from a letter written on September 30, 1854 to Chief Justice Hein in Ulm, in which he states: "Because I myself, like many others, have once tried my hand at a Konradin, I know from experience that this historical subject seems to be more suitable for drama than it really is." - After so many futile attempts in the field of dramatic art, it must have filled Uhland with deep satisfaction when he wrote the last scene of his "Herzog Ernst" on July 14, 1817. On November 7, 1816, he had complained in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense: "Two poems occupy me, a narrative in stanzas, Fortunat und seine Söhne, on which, however, I have not completed more than two songs in two years, and a 'Trauerspiel', Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, which I cannot begin to complete unless I can hope to work it off in one piece. But my situation still won't allow me to do that." - The legend of the "Weiber von Weinsberg" preoccupied Uhland in 1816 and he wanted to work it into a dramatic farce, but this also remained a fragment. His planned Nibe-Jungen drama, the draft of which dates back to 1817, was also never realized. On the other hand, he was able to send the completed manuscript of the historical play "Ludwig der Bayer" to Munich on May 24, 1818. King Max Joseph had offered a prize for a drama based on Bavarian history, and Uhland had entered his work in the competition. The poet spoke about this drama in a letter to his parents on May 25th: "I have faithfully adhered to history in this and have faithfully used the documents still available. Also, since a play from Bavarian history was expressly requested, there are undoubtedly historians on the commission who are well qualified to judge it." Uhland wanted to express a "symbol of German tribal unity" in the play. It depicts the battle between Duke Ludwig of Bavaria and Frederick the Fair of Austria in 1322. The poet has portrayed a magnificent picture of German loyalty and strength of character in the personality of Frederick, who is captured and released by Louis for the purpose of working for peace in his homeland and who, true to his promise, voluntarily returns to captivity when he fails to mediate. The drama did not receive the prize. But that Uhland himself was satisfied by it is clear from the fact that he devoted himself to new dramatic plans after its completion. One of these is a short play: "Welf", of which only the beginning was written down in 1818, another: "Der arme Heinrich", of which only a small part was also written down in 1818. In 1819, the poet was occupied with "Otto von Wittelsbach" and "Bernardo del Carpio", for which he took the material from Spanish history. He wanted to deal with the heroic deeds of one of the most popular personalities in Spain. He only produced a prose sketch of "Otto von Wittelsbach", a draft of "Bernardo" and two fragments in verse. The last dramatic plan that occupied Uhland was in 1820, when he wanted to deal with the story of Johannes Parricida. From a suggestion he made to Gustav Schwab, we learn that Uhland wanted to put much of his own fate into this play. He said: "It was with him as it was with me. He was unlucky in everything." Nothing is known of an execution of this idea. It was the last to inspire Uhland to create in the dramatic field. The muse of this art never visited the poet again.

Marriage
Uhland as a representative of the people
Walther von der Vogelweide

[ 21 ] The above words about the plan for "Johannes Parricida" show how deeply upset Uhland's soul was at the failure of many a life plan. But just at the time when this disgruntlement seems to have taken hold of the poet's soul most strongly, a happy turnaround occurs in his life. On January 16, 1820, he became engaged to Emilie Vischer, the sister-in-law of his friend Karl Roser. The marriage took place on May 29 of the same year. This marked the beginning of a forty-two-year marriage that made Uhland happy in every respect. One need only read the magnificent work: "Ludwig Uhland's Leben. Compiled from his estate and from his own memory by his widow" to get an idea of the rarest union of souls based on intimate mutual understanding.

[ 22 ] If you want to judge Uhland's character, you need only familiarize yourself with his behaviour on the wedding day. The wedding ceremony was at three o'clock. The bridegroom spent the morning in the Ständehaus, where he also returned after the ceremony. The dutiful man did not want to allow himself a day off, which he would have had to take away from his work as a member of parliament. By this time, the poet was already fully involved in political life. In 1819, he was elected as a deputy from Eßlingen to the Assembly of the Estates, which had been convened to discuss the creation of a constitution. He was also appointed to the commission that had to work on the address of thanks to the king. This address is in fact essentially a work by Uhland. It bears the stamp of his character. It was written in a masculine manner, emphasizing freedom and justice, but sparing all prejudices of those in power. Uhland was a member of the deputation that had to present it. To celebrate the signing of the constitution on September 24, the "Herzog Ernst" was performed in Stuttgart on October 29. Uhland wrote a prologue to it, in which he characterized his relationship to political affairs in a striking and lively manner. In the performance, he brought the events of the present into a meaningful relationship with the facts of his drama. He characterized the time in which his hero lived: "This is the curse of the unhappy land, where freedom and law lie prostrate, that the best and the noblest must consume themselves in fruitless harm ..." "How different, if law and order, freedom and justice had risen up from stormy times and planted themselves firmly!" ... Uhland was also elected to the first state parliament, which convened in January 1820, as a representative of his home town of Tübingen. He held this office for six years with the conscientiousness that characterizes the course of his wedding day.

[ 23 ] In addition to his political work, Uhland devoted himself to the study of German prehistory. During these years, his interest was focused on the great medieval poet Walther von der Vogelweide. He felt a deep affinity with Walther's nature. Like Uhland himself, Walther was also a poetic and political personality. From the German conditions of his time, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he characterized the great singer. But Uhland himself was too pithy a character not to know and to see through everywhere how only a personality of a decidedly individual nature could be affected by the circumstances of the time in the way that Walther was. He knew what belonged to the times and also what belonged to man's own soul. And he took a deep look into the soul of his hero. He portrayed his character with a vividness that is difficult to achieve, how he suffered and what he wanted. How Walther cries out in poetry the cries of pain caused by his time, how he finds solace and healing in his art: Uhland has drawn this with delicate but decisive lines. These are soft outlines through which the image of the personality in Uhland's work presents itself to our souls, but they are outlines that reveal in every point the master of biographical art, who knows exactly how to find the boundary where overly sharp lines distort the character sketch into an arbitrary, if not caricature. And the figure of Walther in Uhland's drawing also becomes a symbol of the German nation. As peculiar as the soul of the individual personality is painted, everywhere we see the threads through which it is connected to the essence of the German national soul. - Uhland was only able to portray Walther von der Vogelweide because his studies were not limited to his narrow circle. He showed the same interest in the whole of German prehistory. During this time, he also worked on a "Representation of the Poetry of the Middle Ages". However, only the section on "Minnegesang" was completed, which was added to his collection "Schriften zur Geschichte und Dichtung" after Uhland's death. The work on "Walther von der Vogelweide" appeared in 1822. How little Uhland pursued these studies as a mere scholar is shown by his behavior on his travels, especially his honeymoon, which he was able to embark on after completing his work for the state parliament on July 8, 1820. The couple traveled throughout Switzerland. Everywhere we find Uhland eagerly endeavoring to get to know the customs, ideas and views of the people, everywhere he pursued the imagination of the country folk in their poetry and legends. What he hears from the mouths of the people themselves enlivens his eager studies, which he undertakes wherever he finds suitable material for his purpose in libraries. - Uhland's research was held in the highest esteem by his learned contemporaries. The explorer of German folklore, Joseph von Laßberg, visited him in 1820 and became his ardent admirer. This was important for Uhland, as Laßberg was in contact with the most important German classical scholars of the time and was also able to arrange written or personal contact with them for Uhland.

Politics and research. University professor

[ 24 ] In addition to the strictest understanding of his duties, Uhland was also characterized by wise moderation in all his actions. This makes his personality appear harmonious in the best sense of the word. Once he had taken on something, he gave himself to it with his whole soul. He put all his energy into it. But he never wanted one side of his profession to be compromised by the other. He lived in his research and at the same time achieved the most extraordinary things as a politician from 1819 to the end of 1826. In the latter year, however, he felt that the politician in him should not be allowed to push back the researcher any further. For this reason, he did not want to be re-elected to parliament in the following years. He wrote to his father in 1825: "It is my considered decision not to accept election this time. By enduring the seven troubled years, I believe I have fulfilled my civic duty in this respect.

[ 25 ] I cannot be expected to exclude myself from any other profession and purpose for another six years, apart from the fact that I would otherwise lack the desire and love that is required above all for such a sphere of activity." He did not allow himself to be re-elected for the time being. All the more reason for his desire to teach to grow ever greater and greater as a result of his research. For a long time, all his hopes in this direction remained unfulfilled. In 1829, the Württemberg government finally decided to appoint Uhland as an extraordinary professor of German language and literature in his home town at the suggestion of the academic senate of Tübingen University. He was now able to move to the latter. His lectures were among the most stimulating imaginable. All who heard them were full of praise and enthusiasm. Uhland was not a brilliant orator; he read his well-thought-out explanations, which were based on the most thorough research, from the manuscripts. Despite this unpretentious manner, he had the most profound effect. He presented his audience with the history of German poetry in the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as the history of legend and myth among the Germanic and Romance peoples. Particularly useful for his students were the "exercises in oral and written presentation" that he set up. Each participant in these could practise reciting speeches he had written himself or declaiming poems under Uhland's careful guidance, or could submit essays which were subjected to detailed criticism by the teacher. - Uhland's lectures were published after his death in his collected

[ 26 ] writings. They offer a complete picture of his academic work. Strangely enough, he did not deliver his inaugural lecture until the third year of his teaching career, on November 22, 1832. It can also be found in his writings. It deals with the saga of Duke Ernst, whom he was able to depict as clearly and vividly as a scholar at the time as he had previously portrayed him dramatically as a poet.

Death of the parents

[ 27 ] The joy that Uhland's parents felt when their son returned to them was great. But this joy was short-lived. In the spring of 1831, the mother fell ill and died on June 1 of the same year. Shortly afterwards, on August 29, the father followed. The warm relationship between the son and his parents is expressed in the poem "Nachruf" (Obituary), which he sent to their graves. It contained the simple but deeply painful lines: "They let the pious funeral song fade away, fade away; in my breast a gentle sound from you never dies away." And rarely has anyone expressed their grief in such haunting words as those in the obituary: "The death knell sounded so sad to me otherwise, so anxious; since you were rung by it, it has been the sound of home to me."

New political activity. Dismissal from the teaching profession.
"On the myth"

[ 28 ] It was not granted to Uhland for long to remain in a profession that would have met his innermost needs like no other. The people, whose advocate he had been in such a devoted manner for years, demanded his strength anew when the election for the Assembly of Estates to be convened the following year took place in 1832. He was elected deputy for the provincial capital and could not reconcile it with his conscience to deny himself the demands of his country. The French July Revolution had also deeply stirred emotions in Germany. For a man who, like Uhland, was prepared to give his life for justice and freedom at any time, important political tasks were once again at hand. He was one of the personalities in the Chamber who resolutely opposed the dangerous measure by which the government was to be granted special powers to maintain order. Since, in the opinion of Uhland and his friends, the way in which these powers were to be granted infringed on the rights of the people, they voted against them. The result was a dissolution of the chamber and new elections. Uhland was once again appointed to represent the people. The government soon found his work uncomfortable. They wanted to get rid of the deputy by saying that he was indispensable at the university and therefore could not be given leave to fulfill his duties as a deputy. Although he was truly devoted to his teaching position, there was no doubt in his mind that in such a case he would have to let his inclination take a back seat to his duties to the country and therefore take his leave as a professor. He was "very gladly" granted his resignation in May. He now devoted himself with all his strength to the office of representative of the people. A number of important bills were introduced at his suggestion. He only retired from this office again in 1838.

[ 29 ] His dismissal from his teaching post did not interrupt the pursuit of his research work. He was able to present his studies on the "Myth of Thor" to the world as early as 1836. In the following years he wanted to treat the "Myth of Odin" in the same way, but he left the manuscript lying around. It was only published after his death. Both works are as perceptive as they are soulful. Uhland pointed to the peculiarities of the creative popular imagination, which expresses a meaningful view of nature and a religiously deepened spiritual life in the form of myth. These works were complemented by the collection of German folk songs, which occupied him well into his forties. In 1844 and 1845 he was able to publish a large number of collected folk songs. He wrote a treatise explaining the essence of the folk song, which was only published from his estate.

The magic of Uhland's poetry

[ 30 ] In the period from 1816 to 1834, Uhland wrote very few poems. Unless there was a strong inner compulsion, he renounced all poetic activity. He is one of those personalities who are true to themselves in the strictest sense of the word. He probably never forced himself to write a poem. And since the muse only spoke to him at certain times, there are large gaps between the epochs of his poetic production. The year 1834 was another fruitful period. Magnificent ballads and romances belong to this period. "Die Geisterkelter", "Das Glück von Edenhall", "Das Singental", "Die versunkene Krone", "Die Glockenhöhle", "Das versunkene Kloster" were written at this time. He also wrote the songs: "Abendwolken", "Die Lerchen", "Dichtersegen", "Maientau", "Wein und Brot", "Sonnenwende", "Die Malve", "Reisen".

[ 31 ] The unique character of Uhland's poetry appears in these poems in a serene manner. The cozy tone of the songs, the meaningful vividness, the expression of a pure, loving feeling for nature appear in an outer form that has increased to the highest artistry. The ballads are imbued with the high ethical core of the poet's personality. It is part of the essence of Uhland's ballad and romance poetry that one always feels his heart beating, his soul rejoicing and suffering, when he tells facts in his simple, true way. Therein lies the magic of Uhland's poetry. He also puts his innermost feelings into his narrative poems; he always says what he feels about things and people. But by expressing his innermost feelings, he also knows how to let his personality recede behind the depiction. His creations reveal the complete unpretentiousness of a highly sensible man who is allowed to live his life to the full because his manner always appears modest and natural to the highest degree. When he talks about things, it seems as if the things alone speak. He feels so much with the nature and the heart of his fellow man that one always follows his sentiments, even when he speaks entirely from his personal point of view. It cannot be denied that the expression of the poet's feelings impairs the dramatic vividness of the narrative; but Uhland expresses himself in such a simple, truthful, thoroughly natural way that one does not feel the expression of his personality to be lacking in his ballads and romances. - And his feeling for nature is just as simple and great as his feeling for human destinies and actions. His eye looks at the creations of the world with serious joie de vivre. Only rarely does he strike a note of exuberance or exuberant cheerfulness. His outlook on life is always directed towards seeing the majesty and harmony in things. The moods of the times of day and seasons, the graceful and terrifying aspects of natural works and processes elicit the same vivid images and sounds that penetrate the soul. There is rarely anything sentimental in his feelings, although they are always characterized by softness and gentleness. Even in the poems in which he expresses his feeling for nature, the visual and emotional content flow into one another in an unforced manner.

Elected to the National Assembly. The year of the revolution.
The last years of his life. Letter to Alexander von Humboldt

[ 32 ] The satisfaction that the poet derived from his political activities diminished. And he may well have felt a sense of redemption when he made the firm decision not to accept another election as a deputy in 1838. He now lived a quiet, secluded life in his home town, completely devoted to his research. In 1836 he had bought his own house with a garden, from which he was granted a charming view of the wonderful Neckar valley. A number of trips to Austria, southern and northern Germany brought variety to his undemanding scholarly life. In 1846, he met Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, the great German linguists and legend researchers, in person in Frankfurt am Main. -- Then came the turmoil of the revolutionary year 1848, and Uhland was one of the first to tremble with hope for a new era of freedom and national happiness. His fatherland was also gripped by the desire for freedom. Uhland's friend and fellow politician, Paul Pfitzer, with whom he had fought through many a storm in the Diet, was a member of the liberal ministry that was appointed. As a result, Uhland was asked to join the committee that was to prepare a new federal constitution in Frankfurt. Soon afterwards, he was elected to the German National Assembly from the districts of Tübingen and Rottenburg. Because he did not want to be both a representative of the people and a representative of the government, he resigned from the committee and devoted himself entirely to the negotiations of the People's Assembly. He belonged to the liberal center party. For a man like Uhland, who was able to see the situation more clearly than others, cherished expectations soon gave way to bitter disappointment. It did not take him long to realize that the various proposals made for the unification of Germany on a liberal basis had little chance of being realized. These proposals were a mixed bag: Prussian hereditary emperor, directorate, elective emperor, republican constitution. Uhland could draw little courage to intervene in the negotiations from all that was being said at the time. He was not a personality who indulged in hopeless radicalism. In addition to a resolute sense of independence and a noble enthusiasm for freedom, he also had the determined will to strive only for what was possible in the circumstances. Within the realm of the possible, however, he always advocated what was most in keeping with his sense of freedom. Thus, on June 29, 1848, he did not vote for Archduke Johann, but for Baron von Gagern for the office of Reichsverweser. Only rarely did he feel compelled to appear as an orator. When he did, he spoke weighty words. His entire feeling and thinking is expressed in the words he uttered on January 22, 1849 in the course of a speech against a hereditary emperor: "No head will shine over Germany that is not anointed with a drop of democratic ole." Following the King of Prussia's rejection of the German imperial dignity, those members of the parliament who were attached to this idea resigned. The rest of the representatives moved to Stuttgart. Uhland persevered in the rump parliament, despite his opposition to its relocation to Stuttgart. He felt it was his duty to remain among the men who wanted to continue fighting for their ideals. The situation in Stuttgart was the most difficult imaginable right from the start. The majority of the rump parliament was in favor of electing a regency of five people to lead the empire. Uhland was the leader of the opponents of this decision. He had only five like-minded people. He expected nothing from such a form of government. In the following days, the Württemberg government tried to prevent the meetings of the people's representatives by military force because they had decided to raise five million as a levy for the formation of a people's army. Uhland and his friends nevertheless wanted to go to the meeting on June 18. The military prevented them from doing so. They had to give way. So Uhland was one of those who fought the parliamentary battle to the last in those memorable days, and who could say to themselves that they had only given way to violence. - Only once more was Uhland called to the political scene, for a very short time. In 1850, he had to take part in the State Court, which had to pass judgment on the government's actions during the revolutionary period. Here, too, he once again stood up for the rights of the people in vain by advocating the condemnation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron von Wächter, who had not submitted important political decisions to the Estates in accordance with the constitution.

[ 33 ] From then on, Uhland lived only for his scientific and literary work. He devoted himself to his research into the history of legends and began collecting folk songs. He also entered a new field. He wanted to work through the legends of his own homeland. He only managed to carry out a small part of this plan.

[ 34 ] Until the last days of his life, Uhland retained the full vigor that was always characteristic of him. His domestic happiness was always unclouded; he took great pleasure in bringing up two foster sons. One was Wilhelm Steudel, whom he took into his home as a fifteen-year-old boy. The father of the prematurely orphaned child was Uhland's friend, Dean Steudel in Tübingen. In 1848, the son of Uhland's sister, who had already died in 1836, lost his father. Uhland also devoted himself to the upbringing of this boy. - The poet was deeply saddened by the death of his old faithful friend Justinus Kerner in February 1862. It is not unlikely that a cold at the funeral was the cause of his fatal illness. He was unable to recover and died on November 13, 1862. The funeral services held in many places proved that Uhland's work had gradually come to be fully appreciated. The poet was loved in the widest circles of the people, the scholar of legends and myths was held in high esteem by his peers, the politician with his genuinely masculine sense of independence was revered as a role model. In the last period of his life, he proved this sense in a rare way. In December 1853, he was made a Knight of the Order pour le m£rite. He rejected the dignity with the significant words: "I would be in irreconcilable contradiction with literary and political principles, which I do not flaunt but have never denied, if I were to accept the honorary position that has been conferred on me and which is also associated with an elevation in rank. This contradiction would be all the more cutting as, after the shipwreck of national hopes, on whose planks I have floated, it would not suit me well to be adorned with decorations, while those with whom I have gone together in many and important things, because they went on in the last disruption, are doomed to the loss of homeland, freedom and civil honor, even to the death sentence." He addressed these proud words to Alexander von Humboldt, who informed him of the award. Humboldt did everything in his power to persuade the poet to accept. He remained unbending. He also rejected the order for science and art intended for him by the Bavarian king.

Wieland's significance

[ 1 ] There are historical figures to whom posterity cannot quite do justice. They seem destined by fate to prepare the way for others. These others become the leaders of humanity. Their names will be inscribed in golden letters in the books of history. What they have produced will be gratefully remembered and will live on from generation to generation. But these leaders of humanity have teachers. And the names of the teachers are often obscured by the students. And that is only natural. For the teachers of great pupils need not be great. But even if they themselves are great, they easily fall into the general fate. - In the great age of German poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, this was the fate of three personalities: Klopstock, Herder and Wieland. They were completely eclipsed by the great triumvirate of Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. And it is not only their age that owes an immeasurable debt to them, but also Schiller and Goethe themselves. Herder was Goethe's teacher in the best sense of the word. And Goethe himself beautifully expressed Klopstock's attitude to the German people and their education: "Our literature would not have become what it is now without these mighty predecessors. With their appearance, they were ahead of their time and, as it were, dragged it after them" (Conversations with Eckermann: November 9, 1824). And Goethe also found the right words about Wieland's importance. "The whole of Upper Germany owes its style to Wieland. It has learned a great deal from him, and his ability to express himself properly is not the least of it" (Conversations with Eckermann: January 8, 1825). This is supplemented by Goethe's words in "Dichtung und Wahrheit". There he also speaks of the influence that he himself had experienced through Wieland. "How many of his brilliant productions fall into the period of my academic years. Musarion had the greatest effect on me, and I can still remember the place and the spot where I saw the first sheet that Oeser gave me. It was here that I thought I saw antiquity alive and new again. Everything that is plastic in Wieland's genius showed itself here in the most perfect way." - Such words clearly describe Wieland's position in German intellectual life. And no one can have a judgment of what was going on in this intellectual life during the second half of the eighteenth century who does not at least acquaint himself with Wieland's most important creations. If one takes a closer look at them, one finds how wonderfully they complement those of Klopstock, Lessing and Herder. Klopstock's cozy religiosity, Lessing's critical severity and Herder's philosophical height are complemented by Wieland's grace and gracefulness. And thus the latter was even closer to the immediate needs of man than the others. In a certain sense, he brought the ideas that those on the heights of humanity represented down into bourgeois thinking and feeling. What they showed in their holiday dress, he put on his everyday coat. It would be unfair to forget the essence of his character above the lighter dress. An impartial examination of his life and his creations can teach us this.

Boyhood

[ 2 ] Wieland grew out of a school of thought that was widespread in Protestant regions in the middle of the eighteenth century. This was expressed in a certain unpretentious piety, which was less concerned with grasping high religious truths than with cultivating the mind and heartfelt intimacy. A "good man" must find the way to honest, sincere piety in his heart, so said this direction. It did not seek lofty doctrines, but the pure soul. This movement is called pietism. One must not close oneself off from either its light or its dark sides if one wants to understand the emergence of a spirit like Wieland's from it. In circles that cannot rise to particular spiritual heights, it promotes a true and healthy ideality and a direct judgment in questions that go beyond the everyday. But it also entails a certain narrow-mindedness. The pietist struggles to make an honest judgment; but he also easily regards this, his judgment, as the only authoritative one, and becomes - without actually wanting to - intolerant of others. - And this also characterizes the pietistic home from which Christoph Martin Wieland grew up - he was born on 5 September 1733 as the second son of the Protestant preacher from Oberholzheim in Upper Swabia, Thomas Adam Wieland. Both his father and his mother, Regina Katharina, were excellent people. When Christoph Martin was three years old, his father was transferred to nearby Biberach. The boy spent his early childhood there until he was fourteen. A sensible, precocious boy grows up in a small middle-class home, whose head is primarily concerned with the souls of his fellow human beings, under conditions that can perhaps be well described by saying that he learns to know the greatness of humanity from a small mirror, rather than in reality. The small mirror is the books. And the boy Wieland was a little bookworm. He absorbed the writings of Cornelius Nepos and Horace and was already busy turning out long Latin poems and German verses in his twelfth year. Among his works was a heroic poem about the destruction of Jerusalem.

[ 3 ] At the age of fourteen, Wieland was able to swap the pietistic atmosphere of his father's house for that of the school in Kloster-Bergen (near Magdeburg). The pious Abbot Steinmetz ran this school. It was probably in the nature of things, given the boy's previous education, that he used the more ample opportunity here to get to know the world through reading. Horace, Xenophon, Cicero, Lucrez, the materialist writer of antiquity, Bayle, the influential doubter of the time, Wolff, the leading philosopher, and the mighty Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire occupied his lively mind. Under such influences, it was inevitable that some of the ideas he had received in his pious father's house or encountered at school would falter. Doubts about Christianity, as he had come to know it, sank into his soul. And it took all the fervent power of Klopstock's "Messiah" to give his mind the stability it needed at that time. The first three cantos of this poem had just been published at that time. Wieland read them, like so many others, with delight. The power of pious feeling that flowed from them was stronger than any ideas that could be aroused by doubters and enlighteners. - But the young man, who was not in a position to transform the material he had absorbed from the books into a secure judgment of his own through any kind of life experience, was assailed by much. He soon became acquainted with Haller's poems, which were based on the view of nature at the time, and with Breitinger's critical studies, which set completely new standards in the evaluation of artistic works. In addition, in 1749 he was allowed to stay temporarily with his relative in Erfurt, Wilhelm Baumer, who was a doctor and professor of philosophy. He introduced him to the most important philosophical doctrines and to Cervantes' "Don Quixote". In this way, the young Wieland was simultaneously introduced to the thought systems through which mankind sought to solve its great mysteries and to the humorous treatment of a rapturous idealism in "Don Quixote".

Student days

[ 4 ] These circumstances determined the state of mind in which Wieland returned to his father's house in 1750 and in which he soon afterwards went to the University of Tübingen. It would be to completely misjudge Wieland's inner life if one were to attach too much importance to a love affair that entered his life at that time. It was with Sophie von Gutermann from Augsburg, who was visiting relatives in Biberach around this time. Although the relationship was an intimate one, it played no more of a significant role in Wieland's development than some later ones. Incidentally, it dissolved of its own accord when Sophie married la Roche, the electoral court councillor, in 1753. Even if this "infidelity" put him in a gloomy mood for a while, it did not have a profound effect on his development. In particular, it should not be attributed to this mood that he took a pious, moralizing direction in the following years. Rather, this had a completely different origin. When he was in Tübingen, he had little interest in the chosen science of law. Instead, he recently immersed himself in Klopstock's "Messiah" and added to this the study of Platonic idealism. He also became acquainted with Leibnizen's philosophical writings. From all this, he drew for himself an idealistic view of the world, which he expressed in the poem "The Nature of Things". His wonderful talent for form, which he had developed from Klopstock, was immediately revealed. The philosopher Meier from Halle, to whom Wieland sent the poem without naming himself, liked it so much that he immediately ordered it to be printed. Wasn't such recognition supposed to bring the young man, who had little stability, completely into the direction that had followed Klopstock at the time? And so it came about that the subsequent poems "Lobgesang auf die Liebe" and "Hermann" ran entirely along Klopstockian lines. - And that was what forged a direct personal relationship between Wieland and the critic of Klopstock's school, Bodmer.

Entrance into literary life. Wieland and Bodmer

[ 5 ] This introduced Wieland to a school of thought that was particularly decisive for German educational life at the time. Among other names, it was also linked to Bodmer's. And it signified a kind of intellectual turnaround in Germany. Until the middle of the century, Gottsched, who worked in Leipzig, had been the guiding spirit in literature. His work was comprehensive. Whatever he said about any contemporary phenomenon was considered authoritative. His position was shaken by two events. One was that he refused to recognize Klopstock. The second was Lessing's rejection of his admiration of France. With regard to Wieland, the first event comes into consideration first. Bodmer had gained the upper hand over Gottsched as a critic. He stood up for Klopstock; and those who went along with Klopstock as a poet naturally gravitated towards the new critical direction, which in Bodmer and his followers enthusiastically advocated the Messiah poet. - It was therefore a great encouragement to Wieland when Bodmer judged the former's "Hermann" in the most favorable way. He virtually portrayed the young man as Klopstock's rival and thus provoked feelings of gratitude in the strongest possible way. As a result, Wieland not only continued to write in the Klopstockian manner, but also, after his return to Biberach in 1752, wrote a treatise on Bodmer's epic poem "Noah", in which he placed the revered man on an equal footing with Milton and Klopstock. How much Bodmer's poetry is really worth, and how much Wieland's judgment was biased, cannot be of interest in a consideration of the latter's development. What matters is that through this process the young Wieland moved to Zurich in 1752 at Bodmer's invitation, and that this stay became immeasurably important to him. He lived in Bodmer's house as a guest for a whole year. That was his first direct contact with life. Whatever one may think of Bodmer, he was in a certain sense a powerful personality, a whole man. For someone who had previously only got to know great people from books, getting to know such a personality meant a lot. It is a different thing to read about important things or to see them spring to life directly from a soul. - This vividness and immediacy matter much more than whether one or the other finds that the personality in question was not really a great one. - But Bodmer was a characteristic figure. He had gradually come to see the moral world view as the deeper foundation of art. The forms of poetry should lead man to his highest ideas. Beauty should be an expression of the highest truth. These views settled in Wieland's soul. And he increasingly came to advocate them quite vigorously himself. It may now please some to think little of this transitional stage in Wieland's development. It has also been suggested that the marriage of his beloved Sophie, which had just taken place, had made him world-weary and driven him into this moralizing manner. But one might mock the fact that he said at the time, in reference to the poet Uz, that "one should prefer even the worst church hymns to the most charming song of Uz an infinite number of times"; precisely in the direction that Wieland's creations later took, this point of passage in his development was infinitely important. He subsequently freed himself completely from any moralizing direction and became a master of a style devoted purely to beautiful forms. Grace and grace in the depiction of the sensual became one of his elements. The fact that he always retained his majesty and firmness is due to the fact that he had really learned to know moralizing judgement from his own life. As a result, he came to know it in a justified way as one-sidedness. You have to have gone through certain things yourself if you want to gain a correct relationship to them.

[ 6 ] In 1754, Wieland accepted a position as court master. He gradually freed himself from Bodmer. He was particularly influenced by his reading of the Englishman Shaftesbury, who saw the morally good as a sister concept to the beautiful. Beauty is what pleases man; and the good is the beautiful in action. The fact that Wieland was able to gain an impression of such a world view shows the direction in which Bodmer's view had taken. This living-in had proved particularly fruitful for the development of very noteworthy pedagogical ideas in Wieland. His "Plan von einer neuen Art von Privatunterweisung", published in 1753, had brought him the above-mentioned position of tutor. In 1758, he added a "Plan for an academy to educate the minds and hearts of young people".

[ 7 ] Wieland's thinking and outlook on life became increasingly free. His epic poem "Cyrus" appeared (as a fragment) in 1759. The ideas of the Enlightenment that were increasingly emerging at the time had taken hold of him in a particular form. He idealized the Persian king as a hero of freedom. For him, it was less a depiction of the historical Cyrus than the idea that an enlightened person has of a ruler who rules in the spirit of an age thirsting for freedom. Wieland also tried his hand at drama. His tragedy "Lady Johanna Gray" was performed to great acclaim in Winterthur in 1758 and even found favor in the eyes of the critical Lessing. - By this time, Wieland had already become known in wider circles as a writer. His outer life changed in 1759 when he exchanged his position as a tutor in Zurich for one in Bern. However, he gave this up after a short time and supported himself for a while by teaching various subjects on a freelance basis.

Wieland in Switzerland

[ 8 ] In Bern, he met an intellectual lady, Mademoiselle Bondeli. She had also become famous as Rousseau's friend. The fact that Wieland became engaged to her is of less importance, as life broke off the engagement. However, it was important to him that in Bern he had the opportunity to engage in animated conversation with a witty personality who was at home in almost all areas of human knowledge and who was able to judge the world from a high point of view. Her image accompanied Wieland throughout his life; many of her features can be found in the female figures in his poems, and as an old man he made the beautiful judgment about her "that she was the most beautiful, brightest, most educated and in every respect most perfect female spirit, which was connected with a heart so regular, at the same time so tender and strong, so loving and so completely free of all weakness".

[ 9 ] The time had come when Wieland had to think about finding a more stable position in life. His relatives and friends at home helped him in this. They made it possible for him to be appointed senator in Biberach on April 30, 1760. Such a senator was entitled to certain positions in the municipal office, which constituted a bread provision. Wieland received one in July of the same year as director of the chancellery. However, the appointment remained provisional for four years. Biberach was divided in religious terms. A Catholic and a Protestant party fought over the appointment of the posts, and Wieland only later became the definitive town clerk. In 1765, he married Dorothea von Hillenbrand from Augsburg, who had been brought to him through the efforts of her relatives. It was a marriage without enthusiasm, but the basis for a lasting happiness in life, a quiet, contented companionship, which lasted until his wife's death in 1801. The keynote of this companionship can be found in the words that Wieland wrote about his wife: "My wife is one of God's most excellent creatures in the world, a model of every feminine and domestic virtue, free from every fault of her sex, with a head without prejudice and a moral character that would do honor to a saint. The twenty-two years that I have now lived with her have passed without my once wishing that I were not married; on the contrary, she and her existence are so interwoven with mine that I cannot be away from her eight days without experiencing something akin to Swiss homesickness. Of the thirteen children she has borne me, ten are living, kind, good-natured creatures, healthy in soul and body, who, together with their mother, constitute the happiness of my life."

Shakespeare translation

[ 10 ] During his time in Biberach, Wieland undertook one of the most important and influential deeds of his life. He began translating Shakespeare's plays in 1762. By 1766, he had succeeded in making twenty-two of these plays accessible to the German public. If one considers that until then Shakespeare had been virtually unknown in Germany and that since that time he had gained an influence on German intellectual life that can only be compared to that of Schiller or Goethe himself, one will see the fundamental importance of Wieland's work in the right light. Lessing therefore immediately paid tribute to it in the right way. And both Goethe and Schiller owe Wieland a debt of gratitude in this respect, for it was through him that Shakespeare was first and foremost communicated to them.

New artistic style

[ 11 ] The petty circumstances in Biberahh were made somewhat more bearable for Wieland by the fact that the former Electorate of Mainz minister Count Stadion had settled in the neighboring castle of Warthausen in 1761, where the government councillor la Roche also lived with his wife Sophie. She was Wieland's former girlfriend. Wieland entered this house as a good friend and always welcome guest. French taste, a certain free, even light view of life and experience of the world was at home here. For the poet, who was also warmly befriended by Sophie la Roche, there was the most wonderful stimulation. What was said was very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment, in many respects had the character of doubtfulness and was based on Voltaire, Rousseau, the French encyclopaedists d'Alembert, Diderot and others. - As a result of all this, Wieland himself lost the heaviness that his lifestyle had still had due to his earlier circumstances. A purely artistic view of the world became more and more prevalent. Sobriety, immersed in grace and graceful beauty, became more important to him than a view of the supernatural heights of the ideal. Such an attitude places life higher than all reflection and contemplation about life. Even if man's reason is not sufficient to exhaust the actual depths of existence, this reason is there, and one abides by it. Even if sensuality is deceptive, this sensuality is given to man and he should rejoice in it. The confession that appears as the background behind Wieland's creations during his time in Biberach can be summarized in words such as these. In 1764 he published the novel "The Victory of Nature over Enthusiasm, or the Adventures of Don Sylvio of Rosalva". In 1765 his "Comic Tales", and in 1766 and 1767, in two volumes, the "History of Agathon". With "Don Sylvio" and the "Comic Tales" he now incurred the disgust of the Klopstockians, just as he had previously been accepted into their circle with joy. - And it was inevitable that the new style of his work would soon find uncalled-for imitators who were not interested in depicting the sensual in an artistic form, but simply in depicting the abject itself. Wieland had to expressly emphasize that he had nothing to do with such unartistic beginnings. - It cannot be said that in the two works mentioned the poet had already achieved what he obviously had in mind. For "Don Sylvio" he had the style of "Don Quixote" in mind. In this style, he wanted to protest against superstition and false idealism in favor of a healthy natural sense. In the "Comic Tales", material from Greek mythology is used to create graceful but nonetheless rather questionable descriptions.

Wieland's idiosyncrasy

[ 12 ] Only a complete impartiality, which does not want to judge but to see into a person's soul with understanding, can do justice to Wieland in this point of his artistic development. The way in which he had to acquire a view of life was not suitable for creating a fixed center in his own personality. He had absorbed the thoughts of many people in the mirror of books. Such a way produces peculiar effects, especially in the case of great talent tending towards artistic perception. Man lets the various opinions of his fellow men pass by his mind more like pictures. Such strong inclinations, such firm judgments are not formed as is the case when life itself is the teacher. One is more partial to the one, less to the other; but one gives up one's whole personality to neither. This remains unstable. People who do not get to know much in this way arrive relatively quickly at a fixed view of life. Life forces such a view on them. After all, life usually only takes hold of people from one side. It makes them one-sided, but firm. People who develop like Wieland are different. They get to know life through its reflections in many people's minds. And every world view has a certain justification. Few people can think of anything that doesn't have some justification within certain limits. Anyone who has to deal with opinions about things rather than with the things themselves will easily have to let firmness take a back seat at the expense of versatility. It would only be worse if he lost all inner stability. But this was not even remotely the case with Wieland. The core of his being was rooted in the noble traits of the German bourgeoisie. - Indeed, in a certain respect, his entire significance was based on this. Through the easy flexibility of his style, he was able to conquer the refinement of French taste and the artistic transfiguration of sensuality in the sense of the Greek view of the world for German intellectual life, and yet remained related to this intellectual life in its popular character through his own essence. He never lost the German spirit over French grace and Greek grace.

[ 13 ] But as a "man of books" he was unsparingly exposed to the impact of living people in the two cases in which he was confronted with a firm world view. So it was in Zurich with Bodmer, so it was in Warthausen with Stadion and the la Roches. There the moralism, here the worldly manner flowed into his own blood.

[ 14 ] Wieland now felt the need to enlighten himself about his change. The poet does this through poetry. This became the novel, the "History of Agathon". However, he presents his own development in the guise of a process from the ancient Greek world of the fourth century BC. The idealist Agathon, who initially lives entirely in Platonic higher worlds, is contrasted with the worldly child Hippias. Hippias stands on the ground of a world view that is based purely on the satisfaction of human selfishness and material well-being. Although Agathon feels repelled by such a view, his contact with it does not remain without consequences for his development. He undergoes the transformation from an idealist who is turned away from the world to a man who surrenders to immediate reality. - In his search for reality, Wieland focused on Greekness. His transformation was not aimed at a common reality, but at an artistically ennobled one, one filled with spirit. Thus it is not arbitrary that he clothed his own path of development in Greek garb. Certainly others have seen Greekness differently. The way in which Wieland saw it corresponded to a necessity in his time. And Goethe, by his own admission, learned a great deal from Wieland in this respect. He also did in other respects. The "Agathon" created a new style of novel. And the seeds that were sown in it were later developed in Goethe's style in "Wilhelm Meister". Goethe also points to such things when he speaks of Wieland having given the German educated a style. In this way Wieland became a pathfinder. He himself bore the fruit of his striving in the beautiful sense when, in 1764, he conceived the plan for the work that was then printed in 1768: "Musarion, oder die Philosophie der Grazien", a poem in three books. Goethe's assessment of this work has already been mentioned above. It rightly bears the significant subtitle "Philosophy of the Graces".

"Musarion"

[ 15 ] Wieland was increasingly confronted with an important question in life: does idealism have any value if it does not come from the innermost nature of man? And this main point was naturally linked to a series of secondary questions: does idealism not often only appear as an inwardly untrue enthusiasm? Should one not prefer the more or less sensual but true enjoyment of life, which moves in lower regions, to untrue idealism? These are the questions at the heart of the "Musarion". This is why Wieland contrasts the Stoic Cleanth and the Pythagorean Theophron with the Musarion, who is devoted to the graceful enjoyment of life. The former is untrue and phrase-like; the latter is true, even if it does not rise to supernatural heights. The grace of a free treatment of verse is poured over the whole. Wieland philosophizes in a playful manner, but the play is art, and philosophy is like a witty conversation. But the conversation is one conducted by a personality who is at the full height of the situation. - One must not for a moment disregard the fact that neither true idealism nor crude sensuality is opposed in the "Musarion". Those who can observe both without bias will not feel their feelings hurt in any direction.

The sensual in Wieland

[ 16 ] A similar question and a similar attitude are expressed in the unfinished poem "Idris and Zenide", written between 1766 and 1767. Here too, in an artistically graceful manner, spiritually refined love is juxtaposed with the supernatural flight of fancy on the one hand and raw sensuality on the other. The fact that the poet at times through his choice of subject matter

[ 17 ] as in "Nadine" has not been able to avoid the impression of lasciviousness, must certainly be admitted. However, it must not be assumed that the poet resorted to Greek paganism clothed in sensual forms in order to offer his readers a frivolous thrill of entertainment. Rather, he was concerned with a serious question of life, namely: what role does and may the sensual play in human existence? The poet's judgment should not depend on how this or that person views such a question. - Some of Wieland's later works also belong to the same period and soul direction: "Grazien" (published in 1770), the "Neue Amadis" (1771) and "Aspasia" (1773); according to the plan and also in the essential parts, they were written some time before their publication.

[ 18 ] The departure of Count Stadion von Warthausen brought about a change in Wieland's life. What had made his work in Biberach bearable for the poet no longer applied. The count also died soon afterwards in 1768.

University teacher. Activity in Erfurt

[ 19 ] Just as the thirty-six-year-old Wieland was beginning to find his work and surroundings rather dull, his life took a turn for the worse. At the court of the Elector of Mainz, attention had long been drawn to the writer, who dealt with the things that interested the worldly circles at the time with such great talent. Elector Emmerich Joseph ruled in Mainz. He saw in Wieland the right man to bring his declining University of Erfurt back to prominence and appointed him professor there. Wieland's acceptance of this appointment could not have been in doubt. He had long had pedagogical inclinations. This had become apparent in the two writings mentioned on the occasion of his stay in Switzerland. And so it was that our poet arrived in Erfurt as professor of philosophy in July 1769. - His work was extraordinarily important for the university. Even if Wieland was not a pioneer in the field of philosophy, he had nevertheless acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the great world questions and intellectual heroes within the limits that had once been set for him. And it always has an invigorating effect when someone is able to speak of these things to his listeners in such a way that they feel something of how the riddles of the world can be not just school questions, but questions of life. Wieland's lectures gave the university a new, fresh impetus. He spoke about philosophical, literary and historical matters. - And it is essential that the whole thing had an effect on Wieland's own style. He had to think things through again in a systematic context that had previously passed through his mind more fragmentarily. In addition, the times made certain demands on every thinker in this direction. It was the high tide of the Enlightenment. The effects of Rousseau, of the French Enlightenment and scientific materialists, of German free-spirited philosophy, had set thought in motion. Wieland's appointment to a philosophical chair coincided with an epoch in which humanity was intensively reflecting on its tasks, its purpose, its freedom and self-determination. It was natural that Wieland had to deal with all this. Rousseau had seen in the state of nature the only possibility of happiness and in all civilization only a development towards unhappy conditions. Whoever did not want to give in to despair at the progress of mankind or to indifference towards it, had to ask himself about the ways in which a higher development is possible. There was a feeling everywhere that mankind had progressed from a kind of immature state to maturity. Ancient beliefs had begun to waver. In an essay on the Enlightenment, Kant answered the question: "What is Enlightenment?" with the words: "Man, make bold to make use of your reason". All of these questions played a part in Wieland's thinking when he was preparing what he had to say to his Erfurt listeners. And they initially took on a form that corresponded to his inclination towards pedagogical tasks. This resulted in the novel "Der goldene Spiegel, oder die Könige von Scheschian", which was published in four volumes in 1772. In the guise of an oriental tale, he presents his thoughts on the best form of government and the education of the people. He shows what can lead to the ruin of a state and what can be a blessing. In the character of Danischmend, he embodies a statesman who also educates his prince. - Wieland wanted to create a thoroughly contemporary book. And he succeeded. For he made a great impression on many. The ideas of the time also play a role in the "Contributions to the Secret History of the Human Mind and Heart. Drawn from the Archives of Nature". The underlying idea is that the happy state of nature painted by Rousseau is an illusion. Humanity should not dream of a bliss that it once possessed and lost, but should see its task in the further development into the future.

[ 20 ] The full wealth of Wieland's humor came to light in the prose work "Socrates mainomenos, oder die Dialoge des Diogenes von Sinope", which was published in 1770. Here he attempts to portray the cynical philosopher Diogenes in a more unbiased light than is usually the case. In Erfurt, he also put the finishing touches to the poem "The Graces", which in a certain respect contains a confession of faith by Wieland. The Graces are portrayed as the creators of sensual and spiritualized beauty. A feeling rather than a thought hovers over the whole. All the difficult questions of life are supposed to find their transfiguration in a lifestyle ennobled and made easy by beauty. And the same feeling is poured out over the "New Amadis", which was also begun in Biberach and completed here. Here, the characters of the heroes are distorted into the foolish, those of the heroines into the tawdry, in order to show the value of spiritualized as opposed to merely sensual beauty in light artistic play.

Calling to Weimar

[ 21 ] As beneficial as Wieland's work in Erfurt was for the university, he found little inspiration for himself there. There was little intellectual activity to be found among the other professors, and they had not exactly welcomed Wieland with joy, as he "did not belong to the subject". There were therefore rays of hope in his life again when he was able to visit the la Roche family in Ehrenbreitstein near Koblenz on a journey in 1771 and make the acquaintance of Georg and Fritz Jacobi, as well as Johann Heinrich Merck in Darmstadt. All of these personalities later became friends of Goethe. In particular, Merck, who was very discerning and well versed in science and life, was a good advisor not only for Wieland but also for Goethe. Of particular importance, however, was the fact that Wieland was introduced to Duchess Anna Amalie of Weimar in November 1771 during one of his excursions there. She was in charge of the government on behalf of her son Karl August, who had not yet reached adulthood. With her own open eye, she recognized Wieland's importance. It suited her fine-minded, refined nature to have such a man close to her. She therefore soon suggested that he take over the education of the hereditary prince. And with Wieland's consent, the first of the four great personalities who would make this city the center of German intellectual life for decades to come moved to the princely court in Weimar. Goethe came in 1775, followed soon after by Herder and finally Schiller. From 1772 to 1775, Wieland was Karl August's tutor. From then on, he lived with a pension as a friend of the court and the Weimar intellectual greats, appreciated and loved by all. His princess had found in him what she was looking for and needed, a loyal friend and advisor who also appealed to her sense of beauty and her need for spiritual entertainment through the lightness of his art. The young hereditary prince gained complete trust in his teacher and retained it in the friendliest and most liberal manner when he outgrew his education and came to the government.

[ 22 ] The combination of Wieland's graceful art and the court's need for entertainment resulted in a series of occasional poems by the poet for festive occasions. This placed his graceful muse in a not unworthy service; and it even resulted in something that was significant in a certain direction: Wieland's Singspiel. In "Aurora" and "Alceste", Wieland provided fine texts, which the talented composer Schweitzer then set to music. What was striven for there is significant because the ideal was to strive for a harmonious unison of poetry and music, an endeavor that led to such great success in the field of musical drama much later.

[ 23 ] Wieland used his muse to accomplish what he was virtually predestined to do by all his talents: he founded a journal for German education in the "Teutscher Mercur". If anyone, he was now called to create such a center of German intellectual endeavor. The way he worked corresponded precisely to what the widest circles needed. He was not a cosmopolitan, but a man who lived at the height of education, who, through his own character, was rooted in the emerging German education, and who, through his immersion in French taste and the beauty of the old world, was able to broaden people's horizons. He may well have annoyed Goethe with the first issues of the "Mercur", who had expected great things in his youthful urge and now thought he was only looking at a medium level of education; however, Wieland met the needs of his time and satisfied them.

"History of the Abderites"

[ 24 ] However, Wieland was not a man who flattered people's weaknesses. He showed this most clearly when he began his novel "Geschichte der Abderiten" in the second volume of "Mercur", although its completion was delayed until 1780. - The plot is also set in a distant place and time. It describes the goings-on in the small Thracian town of Abdera. The well-traveled, well-versed Democritus is placed in the midst of a population who, in their foolishness, understand nothing of his greatness and yet, in their naïve arrogance, judge everything the wise man says and does. The "Abderites" alone are suitable to give Wieland a permanent place in German literary history. Human narrow-mindedness, silliness, arrogance, lack of judgment, nosiness, etc. are portrayed here with the most delicious satire. Abdera is mentioned, but "all the world" is meant. Wieland had experienced enough of this kind of Abderitism in Biberach and Erfurt. This novel not only brilliantly portrays those who understand nothing in the narrowest of parochial politics and participate in everything in order to accomplish the most stupid things, but also those who are least aware of it. After all, they are often the ones who are up to their eyeballs in philistinism and philistinism. They see the philistine in everyone else; their arrogance and self-delusion protect them from discovering it in their own nature. Wieland portrays this type with inexhaustible humor. And the portrayal is really such that it fits all times and countries. All criticism of the unevenness of this novel, all criticism of the poor composition at this or that point should fall silent in the face of the delicious humor that permeates the whole, and above all in the face of the universality with which all sides of more or less open or secret philistinism come into their satirical own.

[ 25 ] A number of other achievements date from Wieland's first Weimar period. The poem "An Psyche", later called "Die erste Liebe", and the story "Der Mönch und die Nonne auf dem Mittelstein", which was later called "Sixt und Klärchen", should be mentioned here. "Die erste Liebe" was written in 1774 for the wedding of the Weimar court maid Julie von Keller to the Gotha chief magistrate von Bechtolsheim. The young lady, who wrote the poem herself, was generally regarded as an extraordinarily charming figure. Wieland, however, put into the poem the feelings he had retained for Sophie la Roche, whom he had loved in his youth. He himself considered the poem to be one of his best. (Cf. his letter to Sophie la Roche of August ro, 1806.)

[ 26 ] In the narrative poem "Sixt und Klärchen", which appeared in the "Teutschen Mercur" in 1775, Wieland draws on a legend linked to the two rocky peaks on the Mittelstein (or Mädelstein) near Eisenach. In these rocky peaks, the imagination can see two people embracing. Legend has it that they are a monk and a nun who were petrified here as punishment for their embrace. This is the only time that Wieland treats a German subject. Otherwise it is old-world or new but foreign material that he deals with. - Duchess Amalie was so pleased with Wieland's creation that he treated it again for her in the cantata "Seraphina", for which the Weimar composer Ernst Wilhelm Wolf provided the music. - In 1776, the poetic story "Gandaliin, oder Liebe um Liebe" was published, whose subtly ironic tone was extremely popular with Wieland's circle of friends.

Goethe in Weimar

[ 27 ] While Wieland was gaining love and esteem in wider circles, especially in his immediate Weimar circle, Goethe appeared in Weimar in 1775 (November 7) at the invitation of Karl August. The first meeting of the two men in the city, where they were to live together as friends for a long time to come, was preceded by something that put Wieland to a hard test and showed his character and essence in the most beautiful light. Shortly before this, Goethe had written the wicked farce "Gods, Heroes and Wieland", in which Wieland had been mocked in the worst possible way. Goethe had probably not originally thought of publishing the mocking poem, but then allowed it to be published. The mockery was provoked by Wieland's imprudence. In 1773, Wieland had written letters to a friend about the German Singspiel "Alceste", in which he placed his Alceste above Euripides in certain respects. In this farce, Goethe bitterly rejected what he considered to be naïve vanity. Wieland had already shown greatness of character in that he brought the farce into the "Mercur" quite objectively and by fully recognizing its good qualities. He was so little swayed by it against Goethe that he did not in the least alter the opinion he had previously formed of the latter's poetic genius. Nevertheless, the way Wieland behaved both inwardly and outwardly at his first meeting with Goethe in Weimar was a masterpiece of strength of soul. The whole of this behavior is illuminated with a bright ray when one considers the letter that the man who had been so badly affected shortly before wrote to Jacobi on io. November 1775 to Jacobi: "Goethe arrived in Weimar on Tuesday, the 7th of this month at 5 o'clock in the morning. O, best brother, what can I tell you? How completely the man was after my heart at first sight! How enamored I became of him as I sat at table that very day at the side of the splendid youth! All I can tell you now, after more than one crisis that has been going on in me these days, is this: since this morning my soul has been full of Goethe, like a drop of dew from the morning sun." Soon afterwards, Wieland wrote to Zimmermann about Goethe: "In all observations and from all sides, he is the greatest, best, most glorious human being that God has created." - A beautiful friendship based on full mutual recognition, respect and love developed between the two personalities, which lasted for a long time. Goethe not only appreciated Wieland as a person and as a poet; he also enjoyed spending time in his house and was always able to emphasize to friends what wonderful times he had had with Wieland and his friends. In his poem "To Psyche", written in 1776, Wieland sketches a brilliant picture of Goethe, completely imbued with true understanding and the most devoted admiration. Both Wieland and Goethe were visiting the estate of Frau von Keller near Erfurt at the beginning of 1776 with the aforementioned Frau Julie von Bechtolsheim. This visit, during which Goethe probably read scenes from his "Faust", inspired Wieland to write the above-mentioned poem.

Poetic tales

[ 28 ] As Goethe was particularly impressed by Wieland's poetic stories, he felt encouraged to write more of this kind. Through the "Winter Fairy Tale", written in 1776, the style and mood of the oriental fairy tale of "One Thousand and One Nights" found its way into German poetry. In contrast, the "Summer Fairy Tale", written a little later (1777), was borrowed from the legend of King Arthur and his Round Table. Wieland found the material in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". This fairy tale is written in the tone of light artistic play, through which Wieland introduced the German public to a circle of legends that had been almost forgotten since the Middle Ages. Goethe and Merck, as well as others, held it in high esteem. The short poem "Hann und Gulpenheh, oder: Zuviel gesagt, ist nichts gesagt" (Hann and Gulpenheh, or: Too much said is nothing said), written in 1778, is based almost exactly on an oriental tale. The story comes from a Turkish novella collection "The Forty Viziers"; and Wieland found it in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". - The poem "Der Vogelsang, oder die drei Lehren" is also from the same period. The material is borrowed from a translation of "One Thousand and One Nights", which Galland had published under the title "Contes Arabes". Here, Wieland has the opportunity to portray a king as he should not be. The content of the story is not unrelated to an essay that Wieland had published shortly before in "Mercur" on "The Divine Right of Authority". In it, he argued against what he considered to be the one-sided view that no power from above should impose a right on a people, but that all rights must emanate from the people themselves. Wieland, on the other hand, argued that the circumstances of life could not be governed by such abstract demands, but that the course of history meant that government fell to one or the other. - "Pervonte, or the Wishes" is adapted from an Italian folk tale. The first two parts were written in the spring of 1778, but the third was not added until 1795. Wieland also found this material in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". But it is precisely this poem by Wieland that shows what free, rich imagination and complete mastery of form can make of a given material. At Wieland's funeral (1813), Goethe said to Falk about this creation: "The sculpture, the willfulness of the poem are unique, exemplary, indeed completely priceless. In these and similar products, it is Wieland's true nature, I would even say at its very best, that gives us pleasure."

"Oberon"

[ 29 ] Wieland reached the pinnacle of his creativity in his "Oberon". This romantic epic was written between November 1778 and February 1780 and was published in "Mercur" in the first months of 1780. Two intellectual currents flowed together in this poetic work. One arose from Wieland's interest in the character of Oberon, the fairy or elf king in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The second came from the "Bibliorh&que universelle des Romans" so often used by our poet. It is the story of a knight from the time of Charlemagne, Huon of Bordeaux. According to an old book of chivalry, it was incorporated into the aforementioned French library through an excerpt prepared by Count Tressan. - Wieland has now interwoven the quarrel and reconciliation of the ghost king Oberon with his wife Titania with the love and knightly adventure of the old Frankish hero, who travels to the Orient to conquer his wife under the greatest dangers and battles, and who then has to undergo the strongest tests of courage, privation and loyalty with the latter before he achieves his happiness. These tests are imposed on him by Oberon himself. For the test of his and his wife's fidelity must also lead to a turn for the better in the fate of Oberon and Titania. - In the most beautiful way, our poet develops these threads, half earthly, half supernatural, in true Romantic style. The whole can be followed like a grandly unfolding dream plot. For just as the dream creates and resolves conflicts, so it happens here. But the progress is always based, if not on an external, then all the more on an inner spiritual necessity and lawfulness. And this regularity is completely dramatic throughout the long twelve cantos. The treatment of verse and language is masterly in every respect. Goethe fully recognized all this and therefore wrote to Lavater after the poem was published: "Oberon will be loved and admired as a masterpiece of poetic art as long as poetry remains poetry, gold gold and crystal crystal." - Many have objected to the composition of the poem, believing that the poet has not fully succeeded in uniting the two plots linked to the couple Huon and Rezia on the one hand and Oberon on the other. Anyone who penetrates into the basic romantic character of the whole cannot make such an assertion. In such a style, the free interplay of motifs, the weaving in a dreamlike twilight, is not only possible, but quite appealing. And with such a style it is inadmissible to demand a strictly realistic motivation, an intellectual, dry clarity. Wieland also felt completely in his element during this work. He wrote to Merck on August 19, 1779: "My fifth and sixth cantos seem to me, entre nous, so good that it only annoys me not to be able to keep such a work until after my death. Then, I am sure, it would make a sensation from its rising to its passing." In a letter to a friend in Zurich, he calls Oberon the best thing that his head and heart have produced together since the former matured and the latter became calmer. When the work was published, Goethe even delighted his friend with a laurel wreath, to which he added the following significant lines: "When reading your Oberon, I would often have wished to testify my applause and pleasure to you quite vividly; there are so many things I have to tell you that I will probably never tell you. But, you know, the soul falls from the manifold into the simple when it thinks long; therefore, instead of everything, I send you here a sign, which I beg you to take in its primitive sense, as it is very significant. Receive from the hands of friendship what fellow and posterity will gladly confirm to you." It is by no means too much to say that many of the best of his age were quite in line with Goethe in their judgment of "Oberon".

[ 30 ] In a style similar to that of Oberon, Wieland then worked on a story whose basis was taken from an Italian novel of the sixteenth century: "Clelia and Sinibald, a legend from the twelfth century." However, he was unable to reach the heights of the former work. - The short story "The Water Skid" was also begun at that time, but was probably not completed until 1795.

[ 31 ] Through the latter creations, Wieland became the father of the important intellectual movement known as "German Romanticism". Even if he is less often mentioned in this context, in essence he certainly belongs in this direction with some of his finest achievements.

[ 32 ] Between all these works lies the three-act Singspiel "Rosamund", which was intended for performance on the Mannheim stage in 1777. In order to attend the latter, Wieland traveled to Mannheim in the winter of 1777 to 1778 and, to his deepest satisfaction, was able to meet the admirer of his muse, Goethe's mother, Frau Rat in Frankfurt am Main, who was a friend of his. - This was a very fruitful time for Wieland's work. The light dramatic works "La Philosophie endormie" and "Pandora" were also written during these years. The inspiration for the essay "Einige Lebensumstände Hans Sachsens", which was written in 1776, came from his correspondence with Goethe.

Wieland and older schools of thought

[ 33 ] Lavater's "Physiognomics" prompted Wieland to write "Thoughts on the Ideals of the Ancients" in 1777. In such prose writings, the richness, diversity and style of his mind became apparent. What can be said of these "Ideals" in this direction also applies to the "Dialogues in Elysium" written in 1780, the "Conversations on Some Recent World Events" (1782), the "Conversations with the Gods" (1789 to 1793) and especially the "Introduction to the Seventh Letter of Horace" (1781 to 1782), the "Epistle to a Young Poet" (1782). In the latter, he turns against immature young poets who turn to famous personalities in the belief that they are special geniuses, often making them quite uncomfortable. As editor of the "Mercur", Wieland naturally had to endure such an onslaught in particular. - The essay "Was ist Hochteutsch" (What is High German) belongs to the year 1782. Wieland also worked as a translator during this time. He published "Horace's Letters" (1781 to 1782), his "Satires" (1784 to 1786) and "Lucian of Samosata's Complete Works" (until 1789). - In his light, witty manner, he treated the much-maligned cynic Peregrinus Proteus (in the "Secret History of the Philosopher pp.") from 1789 to 1791, for whom he acted as advocate, as he did a few years later for the often-attacked Apollonius of Tyana in the novel "Agathodaemon". In this last work, he had the opportunity to address the cultural conditions at the time of the emergence of Christianity and its first form itself. He knew how to treat this difficult subject with spirit and dignity, in his own way. He was no less successful in doing this for the conditions in Greece at the time of the fourth century BC in the novel "Aristipp and some of his contemporaries" (1800). The work is written in epistolary form and shows an in-depth knowledge of the period from which the material originates. And this knowledge has been artistically processed in the free, intelligent drawing of personalities and events. - The poet also chose the epistolary form for two other stories that deal with a somewhat later culture in a similar way: "Menander and Glycerion" (1802) and "Krates and Hipparchia" (1804). In the first work, Wieland wants to give an unvarnished picture of Greek love life; in the second, he wants to show that the idea of a spiritualized conception of love was not at all alien to this life. - A number of novellistic stories are combined under the overall title "Das Hexameron von Rosenhain".

Wieland's last works

[ 34 ] In 1804, "Euthanasia. Conversations on life after death". Here, Wieland turned against the narrow-minded notion that virtue only acquires its value through its reward in a future life, rather than carrying it within itself.

[ 35 ] Of occasional poems, the following are worthy of attention due to the beauty of their language and the warmth of their content: "To Olympia" and "On October 24, 1784". They are addressed to Duchess Amalia, his "Olympian patron queen", while "Merlin's prophesying voice" is addressed to the hereditary princess Maria Pavlovna. The latter poem marks the end of Wieland's poetic career.

[ 36 ] Wieland's patriarchal nature was often emphasized in his circle of friends. And for the quiet nature of his Weimar life, which flowed with participation in all things human, this description is certainly apt. His personal existence is characterized by this calmness and a harmony of soul that is quite congenial within certain limits, and this is also reflected in all his later creations. Only in such a way was it possible to find the tones that we encounter in "Aristippus", only such inner unity can the spiritual irony with which Athenian life at the time of Pericles is richly depicted. The character portrayal of Socrates in this epistolary novel also stems from the same view of life and attitude. - For all the unpretentiousness of his nature, Wieland imprinted his own character on all his works. It has been shown that he borrowed his material either from other literary creations or from cultural and intellectual history. As such, he knew how to put his stamp on the foreign, the appropriated. Its significance lies in the way it is treated. And this form of Wieland's independence can even be seen in his translations of Lucian, Florazen and Cicero.

[ 37 ] Nowhere are his translations literal, but they are always real conquests of the foreign for German intellectual life.

Wieland's last years

[ 38 ] The effect that Wieland achieved is probably best expressed in the fact that the Göschen publishing house in Leipzig was able to begin a complete edition of his works in 1794, even in four different editions. This had grown to 36 volumes by 1802. - From 1797 onwards, the poet was able to live on the Osmannstedt estate, which he had purchased. Wieland's long-desired quiet solitude was marred by the fact that in September 1800 he had to watch Sophie Brentano, the granddaughter of his childhood friend la Roche, who had become very dear to him, pass away at the most beautiful age. She had visited Osmannstedt twice, in 1799 and 1800, the first time with her grandmother. The other loss that hit Wieland was the death of his wife in November 1801. - He was no longer able to stay on his estate alone; he sold it and spent the rest of his life back in Weimar. - He had to mourn loved ones even more often, such as Herder in 1803, to whom he was deeply attached as a friend, Sophie la Roche in February 1807 and the noble woman to whom he owed so much, Duchess Amalie, in April of the same year. In 1806, he also witnessed the storm of war that blew over Germany and, like Goethe, got to know Napoleon personally. The latter even decorated him with the Legion of Honor. In the period that followed, Wieland was even quieter than before, since the friends mentioned were still alive. He also knew how to enjoy and make use of this peace and quiet. And on January 20, 1813, the life of the octogenarian died quietly and calmly. He was buried on the 25th in the Osmannstedt garden, which used to be his property and where Sophie Brentano and his wife are buried. There is a small memorial on the grave with the inscription: "Love and friendship embraced the kindred souls in life / And their mortal lives are covered by this common stone." - Goethe gave a funeral oration honoring his friend in the most beautiful way in the "Amalia" lodge of the Freemasons, which Wieland had joined in 1809.

[ 39 ] If Wieland's posthumous fame could not be fully realized by the great stars Lessing, Schiller and Goethe, the greatest of the three, Goethe himself, did much to ensure that the esteemed contributor to the development of German intellectual life was given his due.