Gustav Freytag

“ To be wounded by the enemy is an honour, but he who injures himself wantonly must expect scorn and derision, and is of no use to any army. Such a fellow must remain all his life a paltry beggar; he roves about the country, begs bread and sells it again, feeds like a wolf, and when the rats and mice are drowned in the countrywoman's milk, he maintains himself on the cheese made from it, and must submit to the rough words of the peasants, and herd with other poor beggars to the end of his life. ”

“ If the house of Austria has done evil, God will truly search it out. As concerns the French, I know well that God will, through them, punish Germany; for we have daily imitated in manners, ceremonies, demeanour, and entertainments, in language and clothing, together with music, this nation of apish behaviour and dress, and frivolous manners. How can we expect better than to fall into their hands? But the Frenchman will not therefore become our Emperor. To him belongs the Lily, the Eagle to the Germans, the East to the Turks, and the West to the Spaniards. None among them can reach higher. ”

“ Whoever could portray the desolation of the German people, would be able to explain to us the striking peculiarities of the modern German character; the remarkable mixture of fresh youth and hoary wisdom, aspiring enthusiasm, and vacillating caution; but above all, why we, among all the nations of Europe, still strive in vain after much which our neighbours, not more noble by nature, not more strongly organized, not more highly gifted, have long secured to themselves. ”

“ The devastation of the country revenged itself fearfully on the army itself; the pale spectre of hunger, the forerunner of pestilence, glided through the lines of the camp, and raised its bony hand against every straw hut. Then supplies from the surrounding districts ceased, the price of provisions was raised so as to be almost unattainable; a loaf of bread, for example, in the Swedish army in 1640, at Gotha, cost a ducat. Hollow-eyed pale faces, sick and dying men, were to be seen in every row of huts; the vicinity of the camp was pestilential from the decaying bodies of dead animals. ”

“ He ruled the minds of men far beyond the boundaries of his limited dominions. In the distant Alpine valleys, among men speaking another tongue, and holding another faith, he was reverenced as a saint both in pictures and writings. He was a powerful ruler, a genial commander, and what was more valued by the Germans, a great man in the highest of earthly positions. It was his personal appearance and manners which made foreigners and even enemies admire him. He inspired the people again with enthusiasm for German greatness, zeal for the highest earthly interests, and sympathy in a German state. ”

“ If electoral Saxony has been wrong, you with your procedures are not less guilty. In short, every one, be he who he may, has sought his own advantage; therefore Magdeburg lies in ashes, Wismar is in ruins, Augsburg is bound with the fetters of servitude, Nuremberg is in peril of death, Ulm is in quotidian fever, Strasburg has passed to the French, Frankfort has the jaundice, and the whole Empire is consumed. The enemy have beaten with rods, but you have chastised with scorpions. ”

“ All the great productions of national power, law, customs, and the constitution of states, are not the work of individual men, but organic creations of a higher life, which in every period shine forth in individuals, yet in all periods seem to unite the intellectual capacities of individuals, in one mighty whole. Each man bears and cultivates within his soul, part of the intellect of the nation ”

“ It demanded the annihilation of free individuality, a rending from all the ties of the world, fanatical devotion, and an unconditional subjection of the individual to a great community. Each one had to make an offering of his life for a great aim, without criticism or scruple. Whilst Protestantism formed a higher standard, and imposed on each individual, the duty of seeking independently by an effort of his own mind, the key to divine and human knowledge, the new Catholicism grasped his whole being with an iron hand. ”

“ The life of each man, even the most insignificant, gives a portion of its substance to the nation, and a portion of the collective powers of the nation lives in each man; he transmits soul and body from one generation to another; he adds to the language, and preserves the consciousness of right; all the results of his labours are beneficial to the nation as well as to himself. The course of life of millions runs smoothly and imperceptibly along with the stream. But important personalities develop themselves from the multitude in all directions, gaining a great influence on the whole body. ”

“ Two special places, open on all sides, are appointed for the lowest classes of the people; and the common crowd, men, women, boys, and unmarried maidens, and the dregs of all that collect together here, make use of them. In these baths there is a partition wall, dividing the two sexes, but this is only put up for the sake of peace; and it is amusing to see how, at the same time, decrepit old beldames and young maidens descend into it naked, before all eyes, and expose their charms to the gaze of the men. ”

“ From this point of view this brochure is to us the first expression of that feeling which still, in the present day, unites hundreds of thousands of Germans. That love of Fatherland took root in the oppressed souls of our ancestors during the Thirty years' war, which has not yet attained to political life by a unity of constitutions. Such a feeling indeed only existed then in the minds of the noblest. But we must honour those who, in a century poor in hope, left in their teaching and writings, as an inheritance to their descendants, the idea of a German Empire. ”

“ Then did Germany become depopulated, and the national life was endangered; but the foreigners who had penetrated into it with such overpowering force, aided its recovery. All that Italians, French, and English had attained to in science and arts, was introduced into Germany, and to these foreign acquisitions did German culture cling, from the Thirty years' war up to the time of Lessing.
It is the task of science to investigate the productive life of nations. To her the souls of nations are the highest fields of investigation that man is capable of knowing. ”

“ Close is the union of the minds of the nations of Europe, though manifold the contradiction of their interests. How constantly does one nationality derive strength, or experience trouble and disturbance from another! Sometimes the energetic development of some particular national characteristic, exercises for centuries a preponderating influence on another. Thus once did the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans. The German nation has experienced this foreign influence, both for good and for evil. ”

“ The Bohemian peasant, who benevolently raised up the sick Jew on the high road, without tormenting the soul of the stranger with efforts to convert him, was more Christian than they; that man of science, who risked his life under the anger of the Church, that he might understand how the lightning was made by God, and the earth caused to revolve, was more a proclaimer of the Eternal, than they; and that citizen who died for his duty, in order to teach that the general weal is of more value than that of individuals, was nearer the most perfect pattern, than they. ”

“ The money is portioned out in their caps, velvet and silk stuffs and cloth are measured out by long spears; a cow is slaughtered for the sake of the hide; chests and trunks are broken open, and when all has been plundered and nothing more remains, the house is set on fire. That is the true Landsknecht's fire, when fifty villages and country towns are in flames. Then they go to other quarters and do the like again; this makes soldiers jolly, and is a desirable life for those who do not pay for it. ”

“ If a town was considered strong enough to resist the enemy's army, it was always filled with fugitives at the approach of the enemy, the number of whom was so great that the citizens could not think of providing for them. There came to Dresden, for example, in 1637, after the capture of Torgau in the course of three days, from the 7th to the 9th of May, twelve thousand waggons with fugitive country people. The enemy surrounded the over-filled place; round the walls the battle raged, and within, not less voracious, hunger, misery and sickness. ”

“ Besides the Imperial nobles, sons of German princes and many of the old nobility of the Empire thronged to the Imperial city, to seek diversion, acquaintances, and fortune at court or in the army.
But in proportion as the devotion of the noble servant to his mistress was great, the hope of a happy conjugal union was insecure. And the prospect was not more favourable in the families of the great princes of the Empire.
The rulers of Germany attained to a comfortable condition, after the peace, sooner than others. Whatever could be done by the people, seemed to be for their advantage. ”

“ Only the Hapsburgers and the Hohenzollerns have understood how to keep together.
The general misfortune of the German Princes was, that they found little in their oppressed subjects to excite awe or regard. For the soul of man is most easily fortified against encroaching passions when his worldly position makes a strong resistance possible for those who surround him. A firm feeling of duty is only formed under the pressure of strong law. Whoever overrides it will find it easier to do great things, but incomparably more difficult to do permanently what is right. ”

“ On his head, not on the German people or Princes, lies the guilt of this endless war. The Protestant chiefs, with the exception of the lesser rulers, only sought to submit and make peace with their Emperor. It was only for a few years they were led into open war, by the arrogance of Wallenstein, the scorn of Vienna, and the warlike pressure of Gustavus Adolphus; the alliance of the great electoral houses of Saxony and Brandenburg with Sweden did not last four years; at the first opportunity they receded, and during the last period of the war, neutrality was their strongest policy. ”

“ From this we may perceive that the 'unhanged, thievish, oath-forgetting, dishonourable,' Kippers and Wippers, though not indeed to be quite exculpated, are not so much to be condemned as if they were the causa principalis of the ruin of the German States. I have, alas! assuredly great fears, that if once there is a delivery to the devil or hangman, the Kippers and Wippers, changers and usurers, Jews and Jew associates, helpers and helpers' helpers, one thief with another, will all be hurled off to the devil, or be hung up at the same time together, like yonder host with his companions. ”

“ With wonderful rapidity the order established itself in Germany, where the old faith still subsisted along with the new; it acquired favour with the higher classes, and a crowd of adherents amongst the people. Some princes gave up to it the spiritual dominion of their countries, above all the Hapsburgers; and besides them, the German princes of the Church, who could not uphold by their own intrinsic strength, the wavering faith of their subjects: and lastly the Dukes of Bavaria, who for more than a century had been in the habit of seeking advantage for their house in a close union with Rome. ”

“ And if it were possible to measure how much in our life is gathered from antiquity, or from primitive German invention, we should still, after the lapse of fifteen centuries, find so much that is Roman in our fields, gardens, and houses, on our bodies, nay, even in our souls, that one may well have a right to inquire whether our primeval ancestors were more under the protection of Father Jove or of the wild Woden. ”

“ Like an individual, a people developes its intellectual capacities in the course of time, but more powerfully and on a grander scale. And further, a people consists of millions of individuals the tide of human life flows in millions of souls, but the conscious and unconscious working together of these millions, produces an intellectual whole, in which the share of individuals often vanishes from our eyes, so that the soul of a whole people seems to us, a self-creative living unity. ”

“ All the misery in the German Empire, the decaying state of the burgher life, the coarse immorality of the politics of that time, the meannesses, pedantry, and helplessness of the Imperial army, are shown to such an extent, that they might be a source of amusement, if they did not give rise to a more serious and better feeling, bringing to light the helplessness of the German Empire. ”