Young Germany

“ The authors of the second rank, the rearguard of Young Germany, men like Gustav Kühne, Hermann Marggraff, and Alexander Jung, are in reality his equals. Their gifts lie, like his, partly in the direction of journalism, partly in that of creative authorship. They are men of character, cultivation, and distinct literary ability, animated by the same fundamental ideas as the men in the front ranks. ”

“ The only mark of the period in which they were youths is the peculiar defiant gloom which lies deep down in both natures. Specially their own is a kind of melancholy keen-sightedness, inclining towards bold realism. They are the heralds of the realism of a later, unpolitical age. But they have not the characteristic common to all the political poets of their own age—sunny enthusiasm, a natural bias towards public life, towards the radical reform, or, if necessary, the complete revolution of society. ”

“ In spite of this, the point which cannot be made too emphatic is that it is middle-aged Germany, the contriver of the war, which is creating these offences. Young Germany is no party to them. It is just that a distinction should be made between the new and the old. The new is fighting our battle for us. In the universities it is fighting the professors who insist on teaching reactionary doctrines. The students being young, are sick and tired of the glorification of the old, bad past. They insist on starting with today and looking forward. ”

“ It is the production of a young, hopeful dreamer, whose faith in a glorious future for Germany was quite as lively and as strong as the pleasure he felt in demolishing with his sarcasm what was decrepit and decayed; the burlesque figures and conceits stand out against an idealistic golden background because the poet sees the sun of the future rising and shining behind them. ”

“ XXIII RAHEL, BETTINA, CHARLOTTE STIEGLITZ
The representation of the relation between literature and politics, the history of literary events, and the delineation of the characters and work of the most eminent of the men who constituted Young Germany, do not sufficiently reveal to us the spirit, the psychical condition of the time.
What is done, and what happens, is its outward manifestation. In books, effect is a first consideration; what is represented in them must be to a certain extent exaggerated, thrown into relief, if only for the sake of distinctness. ”

“ For the younger men especially it was a moment without compare, a sight that intoxicated them, that drove them wild. They shouted, they sang, they rejoiced, and in their wild exultation they felt it a necessity to act, to risk all, to give their lives if need be—anything, everything, except be behindhand in greeting and ushering in the dawning day of liberty. ”

“ It will be seen that so far the German Councils are no political system, but only a surge of spontaneous self-government. If they can be really co-ordinated with the new political machinery, and if they can be concentrated on the economic reconstruction of Germany, it may be the salvation, not only of Germany but of Europe. For, though the years of war have accustomed us to looking on Germans as barbarians and better dead than alive, as a matter of fact this unattractive people is still, as it always has been, the sturdiest and steadiest of the workers of the world ”

“ The one desire of the lower classes of Germany, whether industrial or agricultural, is for peace and plenty. In condemning them to a continuance of war conditions for nine months after their surrender and revolution we turned them from internationalists, ready to welcome us as representatives of democracy and as crusaders for an international ideal, into either nationalists who looked on us as enemies seeking the destruction of all Germans, or into internationalists who looked on us as enemies of the revolution seeking their destruction as we were seeking that of the Russians. ”

“ And the Germany which, under the impulse of a chivalrous and ardent young leader, finds itself thrilled now by this apocalyptic picture of ideals realized, and of government by the best that is in men instead of the worst, is certainly a much pleasanter subject for contemplation than that recent Germany which, under Bismarck, sneered at every spiritualizing ambition or thought, and roughly thrust its visionaries into prison or exile. ”

“ In the Thirties men still believed in an inspiration that could dispense with knowledge, in a morality of the heart which rendered any reform of the old social morality unnecessary, in a defiance of law which allowed all laws to hold good, but kept clear of them all. This state of matters Young Germany was bent upon altering.
During the Forties men had arrived at the persuasion that there was something of greater value than sudden inspiration and a life of pure intellectuality. There was humble and daring work to be done in science and in politics. ”

“ Wienbarg had called the name Young Germany into existence, but as yet it designated no exactly specified group of authors. Strangely enough it was first applied to definite individuals in connection with a public denunciation and harsh legal proceedings.
The facts were as follows: A number of young authors had gradually brought themselves into notice, who were not exactly in league with each other, but whose common watchword was, spiritual emancipation. They all held aloof from Christianity and dreamed of a new, pantheistic religion for the new era. ”

“ The young men of the German upper and middle classes, alive with the new spirit of absolutism and lust for conquest with which boyish memories of 1870 imbued their minds, looked toward him and spoke of him as their leader that was to be when their generation should come into its own—but that seemed something an indefinite way ahead. ”

“ Nor is the danger one of to-day only. In ten years' time when the Blockade will be no more than a memory, but when the surviving childhood of Germany, bodily wasted and mentally warped, comes to maturity, Europe will suffer for it. ”

“ In the struggle with the great enemy they had been obliged at last to resort to every possible method, had been forced to appeal to the people instead of simply commanding, to appeal to their sentiment in place of their allegiance, and even to promise a thing as contrary to all cabinet policy, as youthfully revolutionary, as "the regeneration of Germany." ”

“ But yet more than by this fact, is paid the tribute of recognition of the excellence of the German High-schools, by the great number of young men who, not alone from the European countries, but from distant regions of the earth, hasten to place themselves at the feet of their teachers.
No country has so many and such excellent universities as Germany,--and the proofs of their advantages exist in the great number of illustrious learned men and authors, which quench their thirst of knowledge at these immortal wells of science ”

“ Incidentally, Germany is to-day much more like Turkey than its old, well-fed-up, well-fitted-out self. Dingy soldiers everywhere, dirt, decay and deprivation everywhere, listlessness and laissez-faire on the surface, with unrest and upheaval below.
But once inside the theatre things are not so different from the old days. The young ladies from the pensions can still "schwärmen" for the debonnaire premier Scheidemann or the distingué Brockdorff-Rantzau, or "schauern" at handsome Koenen, the saturnine Tribune of Halle, or at Merges, the hunchback tailor of Brunswick. ”

“ The cult of Goethe leads by degrees, even in the case of women, to the cult of political liberty and social reform.
In 1840 German philosophy begins to develop in the direction of Radicalism, and the poets begin openly to advocate the cause of political liberty. The men of this new generation, too, owe their philosophic training to Hegel, but they have metamorphosed his doctrine into an atheistical, anti-monarchical doctrine. They regard the standpoint of Young Germany with contempt as being purely belletristic, and busy themselves with the nature of Christianity and the idea of the state. ”

“ It exists wherever people feel and act in the spirit that has been the spirit of the best of the country's sons. It has the allegiance of all the thinking youth. Those of low degree have more part and lot in it than those in place and power. ”

“ That is that Germany will have a parliamentary government in which the upper and middle classes will preponderate. This Germany was quite prepared to do, and regarded its revolution chiefly as the qualification for admission to the Allied system on an equal footing. Parliamentary Government meant to Germany last winter not so much liberty as equality and fraternity—equality in the world's markets and fraternity in a League of Nations. ”

“ All Germans have the right of free movement throughout the Realm. Every German has the right of staying and of settling in any part of the Realm he please; he has the right of acquiring property there and of earning his livelihood. This may only be restricted by act of the Realm. ”

“ It has been a common thing for German parents to encourage in their children the idea of German superiority and Germany’s destiny to rule the world. A gentleman whose parents, born in Germany, came to the Middle West fifty years ago told me recently that his father, who left Germany to escape military service, had sought to inculcate these ideas in the minds of his children from their earliest youth. The sneer at American institutions has been very common among Germans of this type. Another young man of German ancestry complained bitterly of this contemptuous attitude toward things American. ”

“ The Liberation Wars, all-important as they are for the young German, were not even mentioned, and it was only, thank God! by means of supplementary and most valuable lectures from my private tutor, Dr. Hinzpeter, whom I rejoice now to see before me, that I got to know anything at all about modern history. How is it that so many of our young Germans are seduced from the path of political virtue? How is it that we have so many muddleheaded would-be world-improvers amongst us? ”

“ I went to Germany the first time under the impression that the Anglo-Saxon had much to learn from German education. I do not think that any observer in Germany itself to-day would find anything valuable to learn in the field of education, except when the German student comes to the time he takes up scientific research, to which the German mind, with its intense industry and regard for detail, is so eminently suited. The German Government gives these young students every advantage. They are not, as with us, obliged to start money-making as soon as they leave school. ”

“ Germany was to have the most liberal of constitutions and that was to be enough for the realisation of the German revolution and for the reconciliation of the enemies of Germany. It was only as the weeks and months passed and it became evident that German Liberalism, whether expressed in the diplomatic ideals or the democratic institutions of Weimar, was doing nothing either for the revolution or the reconciliation, that the German workmen began to pass over to the revolutionaries. ”

“ Descriptions of economic conditions in Germany must therefore be read with the realisation that they are morbid symptoms. Germany may be, no doubt is, working its way through revolution to a saner, sounder condition, but at present is as abnormal and helpless as a snake changing its skin. Meantime, we, using the complete control over Europe that the war has put into our hands, have so interfered with this process as to risk making out of Germany as great a danger to the existing order in Europe as we made out of Russia. ”

“ While we are rapidly getting back to the material and mental conditions of pre-war days, Germany is daily getting farther and farther away from us. It is difficult to express the difference. We all know the curious psychological change that comes over our lives when the doctor tells us we must "give up"; how then in a moment, as we sink into bed, we are changed from responsible personalities, ruling our own and others' lives, to helpless encumbrances ruled by doctors and nurses; and how we only recover our rights through a long convalescence. Germany has given up. ”

“ The handsomest and most intelligent man I've met in Germany was a Spartacist, a film actor by profession. The last time I saw him—with a rifle slung over his shoulder and stick bombs in his belt—he explained what he was fighting for. German militarism, he said, had revived, encouraged by the Entente attitude; the present Government was as much in the hands of reactionary officers as any during the war. ”

“ When the reader has struggled through them, there is left on his mind an impression of the wild ecstatic desire of young, vigorous, hopeful men, and of the resolute self-surrender of young and daring or tender women, the impression of a generation in whose veins glows a desire for liberty—political, social, erotic—which breaks down all forms and all conventions. We see into an imaginary, romantic world, the world of Laube's youthful dreams, where there is abundance of power and of life, and of illusions as to the renovation of the world by means of revolutions of various kinds. ”

“ On our way home we included a German University town, being wishful to obtain an insight into the ways of student life, a curiosity that the courtesy of German friends enabled us to gratify.
The English boy plays till he is fifteen, and works thence till twenty. In Germany it is the child that works; the young man that plays. The German boy goes to school at seven o’clock in the summer, at eight in the winter, and at school he studies. ”

“ There are approximately 85 million Germans in Germany. I do not even include in this figure our Low German Volksgenossen. England, the British Empire, has barely 46 million Englishmen at home. The French Empire has barely 37 million Frenchmen at home. Even the American Union, minus Negroes and Jews and Latinos and Germans, has barely 60 million true Anglo- Saxons. ”