Gustav Freytag

“ In the two centuries from 1648 to 1848, the wonderful restoration of the German nation was accomplished. After an unexampled destruction, its character rose again in faith, science, and political enthusiasm. It is now engaged in energetic endeavours to form for itself the highest of earthly possessions,—a State.
It is a great pleasure to live in such a time. A hearty warmth, and a feeling of youthful vigour fill hundreds of thousands. It has become a pleasure to be a German; and before long it may be considered by foreign nations also to be a high honour. ”

“ When the Reformation first roused the people to an intellectual struggle, it was as if a miracle had been worked upon them; their character became stronger, their morality purer, all the processes of the mind, all human energy had become stronger; and when the awakened need of a common aim was not satisfied in the State life of the German Empire, the people became inert and worse. Again, after a long and sorrowful time, a great Prince had given to at least a part of the Germans new enthusiasm and an ideal aim. ”

“ More than once, both in ancient and modern times, has a city or small nation carried on its desperate death-struggle to the last extremity; more than once we have been filled with astonishment at the wild heroic courage and self-devotion which have led men to voluntary death in the flames of their own houses, or under the fire of the enemy. But this lofty power of resistance is not perhaps free from a certain degree of fanaticism, which inflames the soul almost to madness. ”

“ Almost all who passed through that great time of struggle and self-sacrifice consider the memory of it the greatest possession of their later life, and it encircled the heads of many with a bright glory. And thousands felt what the warm-hearted Arndt expressed, "We can now die at any moment, as we have seen in Germany what is alone worth living for, that men, from a feeling of the eternal, and imperishable, have been able to offer, with the most joyful self-devotion, all their temporalities and their lives as if they were nothing." ”

“ Then the poor little artisan, who could scarcely keep his children from hunger, had never touched a weapon, and had all his life anxiously avoided every kind of fighting, was placed in the position to put the difficult question wistfully to himself—what is cowardice? And when the law further forbade anyone in a city which was occupied by the enemy to visit any play, ball, or place of amusement, not to ring the bells, to solemnise no marriages, and to live as if in deepest mourning, it appeared to the unprejudiced minds of Germans as tyrannical—more Spanish and Polish than German. ”

“ Then came years of trial, seven years of fearful, heart-rending cares; the period when the rich soaring spirit undertook the most difficult task that was ever allotted to man; when almost everything seemed to fall from him which he possessed for himself, of joy and happiness, hopes and egotistical comfort; when everything charming and agreeable to him as man was destined to die to him, that he might become the self-denying Prince of his people, the great official of the State, the hero of a nation. ”

“ There is another thing which appears still stranger to us. Whilst the storm raged convulsively in France, and the flood rolled its waves more wildly every year over Germany; the eyes and hearts of all men of intellect were fixed on a little Principality in the middle of Germany, where, amid the deepest tranquillity, the great poet of the nation, by the wonderful creations of his mind in prose and verse, dispelled all dark forebodings. ”

“ The new acquisition demanded for many years great official power and much government care before it could be moulded into the Prussian commonwealth.
It is manifest that a free press and a constitution were the best means of healing these weaknesses more rapidly, and of bringing a feeling of convalescence and coherence among the people; for warmth and enthusiasm are as necessary to the life of a nation as the light of heaven is to plants and dew to the clouds. The further its development advances, the greater becomes its need of exalted ideas, and of having intellectual interests in common. ”

“ The small gardens on the city walls are embellished; new foreign blossoms shine amongst the old, and cluster round some fragment of a column or a small wooden angel that is painted white; here and there a summer-house rises, either in the form of an antique temple or as a hut of moss-covered bark, as a remembrance of the original state of innocence of the human race, in which the feelings were so incomparably purer and the restraints of dress and convenances were so much less. ”

“ When after the armistice, the glorious time of victories came, Grossbeeren, Hagelsberg, Dennewitz, and the Katzbach; when particular Prussian Generals rose higher in the eyes of the people, and millions felt pleasure and pride in their army and its leaders; when at last the battle of nations was fought, and the great aim attained—the overthrow and flight of the hated Emperor, and the delivery of the country from his armies—then was the highest rapture that could be felt in this world enjoyed with calm intensity. ”

“ The German is not unkind to his enemy.
When anyone carries a wounded countryman to his house, how faithfully and carefully he nurses him. The family treat him as they would their own son or brother who is far away in the king's army. The best room and a soft bed is prepared for him, and the mistress of the house attends him herself with bandages and all necessary care.
The whole people feel like a great family. The difference of classes, the variety of avocations, no longer divide; joy and sorrow are felt in common, and goods and gains are willingly shared. ”

“ For the German, this period in the life of his nation has a special significance. It was the first time that for many centuries political enthusiasm had burst forth in bright flames among the people. For centuries there had been in Germany nations of individuals, living under the government of princes, for which they had no love or honour, and in which they took no active share. Now, in the hour of greatest danger, the people claimed its own inalienable right in the State. It threw its whole strength voluntarily and joyfully into a death-struggle to preserve its State from destruction. ”

“ The poor little Professor Semler, who, in the midst of the deepest emotion, still studied his attitudes and prepared his compliments, and the great King, who, in calm expectation of the hour of death, wrote in finely-formed periods concerning self-destruction, were both sons of that same time in which the pathos that found no worthy expression in art twined like a creeper round real life. But the King was greater than his philosophy; in fact, he never lost his courage, nor the stubborn strength of the German, nor the quiet hope which is needful to man for every great work. ”

“ The conscription is there considered as the death lot. The price of a substitute has risen to two thousand thalers. In all the streets, mourning attire is to be seen, worn by parents for their lost sons. But most violent of all is the hatred in Prussia, in every vocation of life, in every house it calls to the struggle. Everything that is pure and good in Germany—language, poetry, philosophy, and morals—work silently against Napoleon. ”

“ The longer the war lasted, the firmer became the belief in the King's invincibility, so much the more did the self-respect of the Germans rise. After long, long years, they had at last found a hero, of whose warlike fame they could be proud, who would accomplish what was almost more than human. Numberless anecdotes about him circulated through the country; every little trait of his composure, of his good humour and friendliness with the soldiers, or of the fidelity of his army, flew hundreds of miles; how, when in peril of death, he played his flute in his tent ”

“ But bitter corroding misfortune is not a school which develops good alone: it gives birth also to many faults. He learnt to hide his decisions in his own breast, to look with suspicion on men and use them as his tools, to deceive and cajole them with a cold astuteness which was foreign to his nature. He flattered the cowardly, mean Grumbkow, and was glad when he gradually won the bad man to his purposes; he had for years to struggle warily against the dislike and distrust of his hard father. ”

“ The Prussian people paid with its blood to the race of its princes the debt of gratitude that it owed the Hohenzollerns for the greatness and prosperity which they had procured for it. This faithful and dutiful devotion arose from feeling that the life and true interests of the royal house were one with the people.
But in the glow of popular feeling in 1813 there was something peculiar, which already appears strange to us. When a great political idea fills a people, we can now accurately define the stages through which it must pass before it can be condensed into a firm resolve. ”

“ The State also could no longer do without the participation of the people, if it was not to fall back into the old state of feebleness, which only a few years before had brought it to the verge of ruin. Now, when life was impressed with new ideas, when in hundreds of thousands a passionate interest in the State had sprung up, the safest support for the throne itself was a constitution. For the Prussians were no longer a nation without opinions or will, whose destiny an individual could dispose of by his will. ”

“ Austria prepares itself for the most heroic struggle that it has ever undertaken. In Prussia, also, the ground is hollow beneath the feet of the stranger; all is prepared for an outbreak; and the Police President, Justice Grüner, is one of the most active leaders of the movement. But it is not possible to unite Prussia with Austria; the first great rising of the people wastes itself in single hopeless attempts. Schill, Dörnberg, the Duke of Brunswick, and the rising in Silesia fail. The battle of Wagram destroys the last hope of Austria's help. ”

“ The facts of life which surrounded them were often in cutting contrast to their ideal requirements. When the peasant worked like a beast of burden, and the soldier ran the gauntlet before their windows, nothing seemed to remain to them but to shut themselves up in their studies, and to occupy their eyes and mind with times in which they were not wounded by such barbarities. For it had not yet been tried, what the union of men of similar views in a great association would accomplish, in bringing about changes in the State and every sphere of practical interest. ”

“ Our native Prussians and Brandenburgers attacked the Pandours like furies. I myself was almost stupefied with haste and heat, and felt neither fear nor horror. I discharged almost all my cartridges as fast as I could, till my musket was nearly red-hot, and I was obliged to carry it by the strap; meanwhile I do not believe that I hit a living soul, it all went in the air. The Pandours posted themselves again on the plain by the water before the city of Lowositz, and blazed away valiantly up into the vineyard, so that many in front of and near me bit the ground. ”

“ No royal race has gained their State so completely by the sword as they have. Their ancestors have grandly nurtured the people; their ancestors have created the State; their greatness, and their renown in war originated in the time of the fulness of royal power. Thus they naturally feel as a loss what we consider as a gain and an elevation.
The whole political contest of the present day, the struggle against privileges, the constitutional question, and the German question, are all in reality only Prussian questions ”

“ In the great haste it sometimes happened that battalions were ordered to the army which as yet had no weapons and no shoes; the people went barefooted and with poles to the Elbe, resembling in appearance a band of robbers more than regular soldiery, but with cheerful alacrity, singing and giving vent to hurrahs which they had learned from the Cossacks. For some weeks the troops of the line, especially the old officers, looked contemptuously on this newly-established force, none with more wrath than the strict York. ”

“ Since that he had starved, and secretly gnashed his teeth when the foreign conqueror looked down on him as insolently as he had once done on the civilian. If he had no wife or child to maintain, he had lived for years with his companions in sorrow in a poor dwelling, with disorderly housekeeping, and some of the failings of his old officer class still clung to him; this time of deprivation had not made him softer or milder, the ruling feeling of his soul was hate, deep furious hatred against the foreign conqueror. ”

“ The nations which dwelt along the Danube, amongst them Czechs, Moravians, Italians, Slovenes, Magyars, and Slovaks, were a vigorous, powerful race, of ancient German blood; the Thirty Years' War had little injured their stately carriage and personal beauty, but their own rulers had estranged them from Germany. By persecution, not only the heretics, but also the activity and culture of those who remained, had been frightened away; but a life of enjoyment and pleasure still pulsated in the great capital. ”

“ Men became more frank, firmer and better in this time; the morose pedantry of officials, the pride of the nobleman, and even the suspicious egotism of the peasant, were blown away from most, like dust from good metal; selfishness was despised by everyone; old injustice and long-nourished rancour were forgotten, and the hidden good in man came to light. According as every one bestirred himself for his Fatherland, he was afterwards judged. ”

“ And this advance in German civilisation was contributed to, not only by the favoured men who, with gorgets and sashes, sat as comrades with the Colonel Frederic William on the stools of his "collegium," but also by the much tormented soldiers, who were constrained by blows to discharge their guns for their Sovereign's State.
But before speaking of the advantages of the government of a great King, we will give a narrative, by a Prussian recruit and deserter, of the sufferings occasioned by the old military system, in which the life of an insignificant individual is delineated. ”