“ Its main purpose is the recommendation of the German middle class as the soundest element in the nation, but it also has a more directly patriotic intention in the contrast which it draws between the homely virtues of the Teuton and the shiftlessness of the Pole and the rapacity of the Jew. As a Silesian, Freytag had no great love for his Slavonic neighbours, and being a native of a province which owed everything to Prussia, he was naturally an earnest champion of Prussian hegemony over Germany. ”

“ At the duke’s request Freytag was attached to the staff of the crown prince of Prussia in the campaign of 1870, and was present at the battles of Wörth and Sedan. Before this he had published another novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864) , in which he endeavoured to do for German university life what in Soll und Haben he had done for commercial life. The hero is a young German professor, who is so wrapt up in his search for a manuscript by Tacitus that he is oblivious to an impending tragedy in his domestic life. ”