Gustav Freytag

“ Throughout the country, in politics, in the pulpit, and in the closets of the ecclesiastics, there was more hatred than love. The minds of men languished under a spiritless dogmatism, and the hearts of believers were oppressed by gloomy forebodings. The wisest felt deep anxiety for the unhappy condition of the German Fatherland, and the devout were kept by the ecclesiastics and countless calendar-makers in continued anxiety, and fear that the end of the world was at hand, and the frequent interference of the devil appeared to many as an additional sign of its approach. ”

“ But afterwards God would raise up a new world, more beautiful, more splendid, and more pure, full of peace and blessing; a world in which there would be no devil; where the soul of man would find more enjoyment in the flowers and fruit of the new heavenly trees, than the present race do in gold and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, would give birth to tones more entrancing than the most splendid song of the best singers of this world ”

“ The heroic confidence of Luther is striking; even in his first letter to Leo X., dated the 30th May, 1518, he is still the faithful son of the Church; he still concludes by laying himself at the feet of the Pope; offers him his whole life and being, and promises to respect his voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative he is as sovereign of the Church. But in the midst of all this submission, which became him as a monastic brother, these impassioned words burst forth: "If I have deserved death, I do not refuse to die." ”

“ Herr Max Fugger once invited his Princely Highness to dinner. Such a banquet have I never beheld, the Roman Emperor himself could not have been entertained better: there was superabundant splendour; the repast was spread in a hall where more gold than colour was to be seen; the floor was of marble, and as smooth as if one was walking on ice; there was a sideboard placed along the whole length of the hall, which was set out with drinking-vessels and notably beautiful Venetian glasses; there must have been, as one says, the value of more than a ton of gold. ”

“ Long did the German nation continue to feel itself exalted by the glory and splendour of his government. Charles did his best; he spared the prejudices of the Germans, indulged them more than any of his other people, and even when he sided with a party, he knew how to conciliate his opponents by his benevolent dignity. At last, however, the time came when his pride and pretensions rose so high that the intractable independence of the Protestant party became insupportable to him, and then his long concealed opposition broke forth into hate. ”

“ The only hope of deliverance from misery, was in God; before Him all earthly power, whether of Emperor or Pope, was weak and insignificant, and the wisdom of man was transitory as the flower of the field. By his mercy men might be delivered from the miseries of this life, and compensated by eternal happiness for what they had suffered here; but how were they to obtain this mercy? by what virtues could weak men hope to gain the endless treasure of God's favour? Man had been doomed from the time of Adam to will the good and do the evil. ”

“ The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. ”

“ With the sixteenth century began the greatest spiritual movement that ever roused a nation. This century has for ever impressed its seal on the spirit and temper of the German people. A wonderful time, in which a great nation anxiously yearning after its God, sought peace for the burdened soul, and a moral and mental aim for a life hitherto so poor and joyless. ”

“ Good works are seldom undertaken from wisdom or foresight; they are all brought about unconsciously." To this Philip Melancthon answered, that having carefully studied history, he had observed that no great or remarkable deeds had been done by old people, but at the age when Alexander the Great and St. Augustine did them; later, men became too wise and circumspect. Dr. Martinus said: "Young companions, if you had wisdom the devil could not deal with you; but because you have not, you need ours also, who are now old. Ah, if the old were but strong, and the young wise! ”

“ As God was to Luther the source of all good, so was the devil the producer of all evil and wickedness. He considered that the devil interfered destructively with the course of nature by illness or pestilence, deformity and famine. All that this deep-thinking man preached so firmly and joyfully had formerly pressed with fearful weight upon his conscience; especially when awaking in the night, the devil stood full of malice by his bed, whispering horrors in his ear ”

“ How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon. The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks, enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers to follow them to Poland. ”

“ In this wild time of fire and sword, the spiritual struggle was carried on more nobly and purely by him than by any one else. Every interference of earthly power was hateful to him; he did not choose to be protected even by his own sovereign, and would not have any human support for his teaching. He fought with a sharp pen, alone against his enemies; the only pile that he lighted was for a paper: he hated the Pope as he did the devil, but he had always preached toleration and Christian forbearance towards papists ”

“ Every month brought to the people something new and unheard of.
It was no longer a quarrel between priests, as Hutten had in the beginning contemptuously called the dispute between the Wittenberger and Tetzel; it had become a war of the nation against the Romish supremacy and its supporters. Ever more powerfully rose the image of Luther before his cotemporaries. Banished, cursed, persecuted by Pope and Emperor, by princes and high ecclesiastics, he became in four short years the idolized hero of the people. ”

“ Ever greater became the influence of the individual on the world; powerfully did he draw the whole nation along with him; he became their hero and model; the inward life of millions seemed concentrated in one man.
But a single individual, however powerful in character, however great his aims, could not long dominate over the spirit of a nation, the life, strength, and wants of which are manifold. ”

“ It was in this way that Luther, whilst still in the monastery, attained to inward freedom. The whole of his later teaching, his struggle against the indulgences, his unshaken firmness, and his method of scriptural exposition, all rest on the inward process by which as a monk he had found his God; and one may truly say that the new period of German history began with Luther's cloister prayers. Life soon placed him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul. ”

“ There all the most powerful of Germany were gathered together at the Diet to obtain pardon or reward, to pay court to the most mighty sovereign that for centuries had ruled over Germany, to decide their own future and that of their Fatherland, and to seek pleasure and adventures. Amidst this crowd of sovereigns and dynasties, courtiers, swindlers, soldiers, and deputations of citizens, was one Bartholomew Sastrow, the son of a citizen of Greifswald. ”

“ Had an Emperor arisen who would have sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors. ”

“ There is the same love of feuds, as in the youthful days of the Berlichingen; deeds of violence still continue to abound, and numerous duodecimo wars are planned; but the old feeling of self-dependence is broken, the spirit of public tranquillity and of courts of justice hovers over the disputants, neighbours and kind friends interpose, and the lawless seldom defy the Imperial mandate or the will of the reigning princes without punishment. ”

“ But besides the giants there was in the heathen times a numerous host, of smaller spirits in nature, who hovered around men. The hairy Schrate dwelt in the woods, the Nix sang on the banks of the brooks, a numerous race of dwarfs hammered in the mountains, elves and Idisien, the German fairies, played on the dew in the meadows, and the fighting maidens of Wuotan flew through the air in the form of swans or on magic horses. ”

“ It is extraordinary what this son of the sixteenth century went through in these inward struggles. Every fresh inquiry into the Scriptures, every important sermon upon a new theme, threw him again into this strife of conscience: then he reached such a state of excitement that his soul became incapable of systematic thought, and for whole days he trembled with anguish. When he was occupied with the question of monks and nuns, a text of the Bible startled him, which he thought, in his excitement, placed him in the wrong: his heart died within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. ”

“ He is greater, richer, and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him, either in life or death, makes him a man.
Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought and feeling, is so essentially different. ”

“ The German Bible, together with Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German language; and this language, in which our whole literature and spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession, which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded the different branches of the German race that they belong to one family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. ”