Gustav Freytag

“ It is only in accordance with German nature to make the fool the police-officer of the festival. The blow of his baton strikes the lord as well as the peasant boy, and his irony lashes the arrogant prince's son, and brings the colour into the cheeks of the most impudent. The sensitive pride of the Junker,--every offence to which, from a yeoman of the guard, would have been resented as a deadly affront,--unresistingly suffered the pritschmeister, in the exercise of his office, to seize and drag him to the place of punishment. ”

“ In the middle of the sixteenth century, a journey from Nuremburg to Augsburg was neither so easy nor free from danger, as now from Leipsig to Zurich. The birds of prey of the country gladly flew from their castellated eyries into the woods which surrounded, in wide circles, the hospitable city; more than once was the fortunate marksman waylaid and robbed, by noble horsemen, of the beautiful purse with the guldens he had won, and his banner broken. Even to greater companies the road was insecure, and the travelling toilsome ”

“ No individual can give a satisfactory solution to each single question; even the strongest mind can but imperfectly comprehend the great life of his nation: the clearest eye and the most ingenuous judgment is contracted in comparison with the great unity of the people. But, however imperfect may be the portrait given by individuals of the life of their nation, yet each contemporary will discover some main features of the picture lying in his own soul, more especially he who stands in the same grade of cultivation with the delineator. ”

“ The political weakness of Germany, the despotic sway and corruption of the rulers, the servility of the subjects, the immorality of the courts, and the dishonesty of officials, was the sad result, and has often been sufficiently pourtrayed. But with this time begins also the modern State life of Germany. The progress of a nation is not always understood and valued by contemporaries, the necessary changes are not always effected by great men; sometimes the good genius of a nation requires the bad, the insignificant, and the shortsighted, as instruments in a powerful reconstruction. ”

“ The thriving peasant lived on his farm; the young people gambolled about, blythesome and fond of enjoyment, on the village green and in the lanes; the countryman passed through life in the calm consciousness of strength, the preserver of old customs, in contradistinction to the nobleman, with his new-fangled modes, who adorned himself with foreign discourse and language, and with great pretentions set up distinguished court usages in opposition to country manners. ”

“ Six hundred years ago, the poem of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the same lively susceptibility for noble poetry which we now assume as the privilege of the highly educated. ”

“ There lay many cases of state spectacles of different kinds. 'Some, when they are put on, make a thing ten times larger than it is, so that a midge appears like an elephant--a thread like a rope--and a farthing like a rose-noble; they serve to blind the eyes of subjects. If the prince presents them with a couple of timber-trees, remits somewhat of their contribution, or gives them the liberty to appear before him in velvet and silk, they prize this as highly as if he had given them many thousand ducats. ”

“ Thus, the nation in the seventeenth century might be compared to a hopeless invalid, who, free from the excitement of fever, soberly, calmly, and sensibly contemplates his own condition. We know, indeed, that it is our own century which has cured this morbid state of the German people; but we also perceive the cause of the singular, cold, and gloomy objectiveness which became so peculiar to our nation, and of which traces are yet to be discovered in many individuals. ”

“ It was no mere accident that made German men of science, in their wandering meetings, the first to give significant expression to some of the noblest interests of the nation by national association. They were followed by the singers and others, then the gymnasts, finally the shooters. We are now, after more than two centuries of preparation, again treading in the same path in which our ancestors so grandly trod, but with a freer and nobler feeling. It has been a long-denied pleasure for us thus to be able to vaunt ourselves. ”

“ The earliest summer game is with the ball, in the village streets or on the tender grass of the green,--it is thrown by old and young, men and women. Whoever has a coloured feather ball to throw sends it with a greeting to her he loves. The agile movements, the powerful throw, the short cheer to friends and opponents, are the pleasures both of players and spectators. When sunny May comes, then the maidens get their holiday attire from the press, and twine wreaths for their own hair and that of their friends. ”

“ Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys, in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear, shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys, when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the passersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. ”

“ He felt with thousands an eager desire for an object of life which would exalt and animate him, and again he found himself surrounded and shackled by narrow-mindedness and by provincial and local exclusiveness. Whoever should thus feel, may well inquire whether we Germans are old or young, whether it is destined by fate that the German nature should only find expression in the individual virtuosoship of art and science, or whether an harmonious development of the nation in its practical and ideal tendencies, in labour and enjoyment. ”

“ It is on the simple truth, that every man is only valuable to his nation and State in proportion to his work, that the power and pride of citizenship rests; that is to say, in so far as he contributes to the welfare of others. But eighteen hundred years were necessary to establish this principle, and to make it perceptible to Germans, and still does the struggle continue to realize it, to introduce into the cities free competition instead of the corporate privileges of guilds, and into the State the right of personal character against the rights of birth. ”

“ Since the rising of the people in 1813, the life and prosperity of the State has mainly rested on the power and progress of culture in the German citizen. The citizens are no longer, as in the middle ages, a class confronting the other classes; they form the nation. Whoever would place himself in opposition to it by egotistical pretensions, begins a hopeless struggle. All the privileges by which the nobility up to the present day have sought to maintain a separate position among the people, have become a misfortune and fatality to themselves. ”

“ That one must suit oneself in life is a very popular rule of wisdom. The man who proposed to share a respectable position and a certain income with the object of his choice, offered her much, according to the views of that time; she was to show her gratitude by unceasing faithful service, and to lighten his arduous, laborious life--nay, already had a more exalted feeling taken root in the souls of women, which we may well call the poetry of home. The amount of knowledge acquired by a German woman was on the whole small. ”

“ Thus they go, crowned with garlands and adorned with ribbons, the hand-glass as an ornament by their sides, with their playfellows to the green; full a hundred maidens and women are there assembled for the dance. Thither also hasten the men, smart also is their dress, the waistcoat trimmed with coloured buttons, perhaps even with bells, which for a long time had been the most choice attire of persons of distinction; there is no want of silk, nor in winter of fur trimmings. ”

“ The spiritual failings of the various classes and professions, the weakness of women, and the roughness and dishonesty of men were incessantly criticised and chastised, undoubtedly in an uncouth style, and sometimes with pedantry and narrow-mindedness, but in an earnest and upright spirit.
The whole private life of Germany was thrown into a state of restless excitement; new ideas struggled everywhere with old prejudices; everywhere the citizen beheld around and within him a change which it was difficult to withstand. ”

“ The modern Junker is an unfavourable caricature of the nobility; if one observes closely, he is only a pretentious continuation of the old Krippenreiter. Under uniforms and decorations are concealed the same hatred of the culture of the times, the same prejudices, the same arrogance, the same grotesque respect for decaying privileges, and the same rough egotism with regard to the commonwealth. Not a few of these court and country nobles still consider the State like the full store-room of a neighbour, as their ancestors did two centuries ago ”

“ He who follows his plough will seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original, he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and the easy intercourse of a modern salon will scarcely be enlivened by his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must, at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by him. ”

“ That the strength of man was as nothing in this terrible game of overwhelming events, was deeply imprinted on the soul of every one. When the mother with her children hid herself trembling in the high corn whilst a troop of horsemen were passing by, and in that moment of danger murmured a prayer with blanched lips, she naturally ascribed her preservation to the special protection of a merciful God. ”

“ The course of life of a nation consists in the ceaseless working of the individual on the collective people, and the people on the individual. The greater the vigour, diversity, and originality with which individuals develop their human power, the more capable they are of conducing to the benefit of the whole body; and the more powerful the influence which the life of the nation exercises on the individual, the more secure is the basis for the free development of the man. ”

“ Life was undoubtedly poor in love and elevation, but the necessity of loving and honouring which lies so deep in the German nature, after the peace, sought painfully for something high and steadfast, in order to give an aim and an interest to his poor wavering life. Thus the mind clung to the holy conceptions of faith, which it again with quiet reverence endeavoured to realise heartily, affectionately, and confidingly. ”

“ When, on his numerous journeys through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.
Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant, material which could foster a creative spirit. ”

“ The Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages had consecrated the life of every individual by a multitude of pious usages, and shut it up in an aristocratic spiritual state, in which the spirit of the individual was fast bound in rigid captivity, with little spontaneous action. The Reformation destroyed in the greater part of Germany these fetters of the popular mind; it set freedom of decision and mental activity in opposition to the outward constraint and splendid mechanism of the old Church. But Protestantism gave a system of doctrine, as well as freedom and depth, to the German mind. ”

“ The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on the other, in many respects, simple and ignorant; the frequent antagonism of his own will and advantage, to the will and the commands of those above him, implants in his mind the germs of animosity. Thus, if the failings of his class are not counteracted by his personal qualities, he becomes such as the boy described, especially in his demeanour to his superiors. ”