The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

On the condition that I—that I fix the amount of the dowry.

KING

And also that you [embracing the QUEEN] remain close to my heart. Now only Friedrich is lacking. And all this is the result of your—your cotton industries! Baronet Hotham? Thanks for this splendid recruit. [In HOTHAM'S ear, audibly] How did he sober up so soon?

PRINCE

I crave your forgiveness Your Majesty—I am still drunk with joy.

KING

Forgiveness? For your speech, my son? If that which you have said shall one day be written into the book of history, then my old heart is quite content, and has but the wish that they might add: "With his Sword he would be King, but with his Pigtail—merely the first citizen of his State."

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GERMAN LYRIC POETRY FROM 1830 to 1848

BY JOHN S. NOLLEN, PH.D

President of Lake Forest College

The years from 1830 to 1848 were distinctively revolutionary years in Germany, which until then had remained strongly conservative. The spirit of political and social reformation, which had caused the great upheaval of the French Revolution late in the eighteenth century, had made itself felt much more slowly across the Rhine. Even the generous enthusiasm that animated the German people in the War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813 had ebbed away into disappointment and lethargy when the German princes forgot their pledges of internal reform. The policy of the German and Austrian rulers was dominated by the reactionary Austrian Prime Minister, Prince Metternich, a consistent champion of aristocratic ideas and of the "divine right of Kings." The "Revolution of July," 1830, however, which overthrew the Bourbon dynasty in France, had its counterpart in popular movements that forced the granting of constitutions or other liberal concessions in several German states; and, though the policy of Metternich still remained dominant, the liberal sentiment grew in power until the February revolution of 1848 in Paris inspired similar upheavals in all Germany. Metternich himself was now compelled to retire, Frederick William IV. of Prussia granted his people a constitution, and the other German states seethed with revolt; but the great liberal plan to unify Germany under the leadership of Prussia was nullified by Frederick William's refusal to accept the imperial crown from a democratic assembly.

The lyric poetry of Germany in these years inevitably reflected the liberal sentiment of the time; it is always the radical emotion of any revolutionary period that finds the most effective lyric expression, the conservative state of mind being more characteristically prosaic. For the group of ardent spirits who made themselves the heralds of the new day, one of their number, the novelist and dramatist Karl Gutzkow, found the name "Young Germany." Just as the "Storm and Stress" of 1770 to 1780, and the Romantic movement of the opening nineteenth century, represented a spirit of sharp revolt against the then dominant pseudo-classicism and rationalism, so "Young Germany" reacted passionately against the moonlight sentimentality of the popular romantic poets, as well as against the stupid political conservatism of the time. The aim of the Young Germans was to bring literature down from the clouds into vital contact with the immediate problems of the day. Thus there was developed a body of literature strongly polemic in purpose, quite hostile to the ideals of detachment and disinterested worship of beauty that Goethe and Schiller in their classical period had preached and practised. This literature took the form of fiction, drama, and journalism, as well as of poetry. Indeed, the only important lyric poet of the Young German group was HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856), who had begun his career with the most intimate poetry of personal confession, in which the simplicity of the folk-song and the nature-feeling of the romanticist are strongly tinged with wit and cynicism. Heine's impatience with German conditions led him to expatriate himself, and from his retreat in Paris to aim venomous shafts of satire at his native land, with its "three dozen masters" and its philistine conservative nightcaps and dumplings. This brilliant poet, with his marvelous mastery of German lyric tones, expressed a wide range of poetic inspiration; but he loved particularly to conceive of himself as an apostle of liberty, an outpost of the revolutionary army, and none so well as he could tip the barb with biting sarcasm and satire. Heine's personality was full of seemingly inconsistent traits. He was both fanciful and rational, serious and flippant, tender and cynical, reverent and impious; and he could be at once a patriot and an alien. He was, to use his own phrase, an "unfrocked romanticist"—at once a brilliant representative of the poetry of self-expression and personal caprice, and an exemplar and prophet of a new ideal, the "holy alliance of poetry with the cause of the nations."

The different attitudes of thoughtful men toward the influences of the time were variously reflected in the work of three leading poets, all older than Heine, who contributed largely to the lyric output of the period. ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO (1781-1835), of aristocratic French descent, and using all the familiar romantic forms and motives, was yet thoroughly democratic and prophetically modern in his unalloyed sympathy with the impoverished victims of the social order. It was something new for German poetry to find inspiration in the wrath of a beggar who cannot pay his dog-tax, the sardonic piety of an old widow reduced to penury by the exactions of the "gracious prince," or the laborious resignation of an aged washerwoman.—The Silesian nobleman JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF (1788-1857), Prussian officer and civil official, was a consistent conservative in his political attitude, a pious Catholic, and a romanticist in every fibre of his poetic soul. His lyrics are the purest echoes of folk-song and folk-lore, and the simplicity and genuineness of his art give an undying charm to his songs of idyllic meadows and woodlands, post-chaises, carefree wanderers, and lovely maidens in picturesque settings; all suffused with gentle yearning and melting into soft melody. Eichendorff's patriotism was of the traditional type, echoing faintly the battle-hymns of the War of Liberation. For the great liberal movement of the thirties and forties he had neither sympathy nor comprehension.—FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT (1788-1866), endowed with a fatal facility of lyric expression, a virtuoso for whom no tour-de-force was too difficult, lived most of his life aloof from the political and social movements of his time. In his youth his Sonnets in Armor had done sturdy service in the national awakening against Napoleon, but his maturer years were devoted to domestic and academic interests. Every impression of his life, whether deep or fleeting, was material for a poem or a cycle. He handled with consummate skill the odd or complicated metres of eastern and southern lyric forms, and he was most versatile as a translator of foreign poetry, ancient and modern, occidental and oriental. His unusual formal talent and mastery of language were a constant temptation to rapid and superficial versifying; but there are in the vast mass of his production many genuine poems of great beauty.

Two other poets of quite distinctive quality stood aloof from the political interests of the time. The talented Westphalian Catholic poetess ANNETTE VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF (1797-1848) has a place apart in her generation, not only for the fine religious poems of her Christian Year (similar in plan to Keble's cycle), but also for her nature-lyrics and songs of common life, which are marked by minute realistic detail and refreshing originality of observation and sentiment. This pious gentlewoman, usually so maidenly in her reserve, nevertheless expressed something of the spirit of emancipation in her quiet protest against the narrow conventional limits of the feminine life. But she would have recoiled with horror from the reckless propaganda for sex-freedom that was a part of the Young German campaign, as she also repudiated the violence of the revolutionists of 1848.—If there is something masculine in Fräulein von Droste's firm and plastic touch, there is something almost feminine in the finely-chiseled lyrics of the Protestant pastor EDUARD MÖRIKE (1804-1875), whose Poems appeared in the same year (1838), and blended the folk-song simplicity and melody of an Eichendorff with the classical form-sense of a Keats. This Suabian country vicar, the youngest member of the group about Uhland, lived in the utmost serenity amid the troubles of revolutionary agitation, devoted to his art, turning the common experiences of every day into forms of beauty, or reviving with charming naïveté the romantic figures of medieval poetry.

We emerge completely from the quietude and piety of these individualists when we come to a group of men who were distinctively political poets. Here we find the direct lyric expression of the revolutionary movement. The first in the field was ANASTASIUS GRÜN (the pen-name of Count Anton von Auersperg, 1806-1876). This Austrian nobleman boldly attacked the reactionary policy of Metternich in his Saunterings of a Viennese Poet (1831); with biting irony he pictures the fate of the Greek patriot Hypsilantes, broken in health by the "hospitality" of Austrian prison-fortresses, or describes the all-powerful minister-of-state enjoying his social triumphs in the palace ball-room, while Austria stands outside the gate vainly pleading for liberty. In another collection entitled Debris (1836) there are whole-hearted protests against the political martyrdom of the best patriots, and the oppressive despotism under which Italy groaned, with which Grün contrasts the blessings of liberty in America.

Anastasius Grün was the forerunner. The period of the real dominance of political poetry began with 1840, when a petty official in a Rhenish village, Nikolaus Becker, electrified Germany with a martial poem, The German Rhine, inspired by French threats of war with Prussia and of the conquest of the Rhine territory. The same events inspired Max Schneckenburger's Wacht am Rhein, which at the time could not compete in popularity with Becker's poem, but in later years has quite supplanted it as a permanent national song. German officialdom, which had looked askance at all political poetry, easily saw the value to the national defense of such patriotic strains, and now encouraged these national singers with gifts and honors. But political poetry could not be kept within officially recognized bounds. Inevitably it became partisan and revolutionary in character. HEINRICH HOFFMANN (who styled himself VON FALLERS-LEBEN after his birthplace; 1798-1874), one of the most prolific lyric poets of Germany, had the knack of expressing the common feeling in poems that became genuine national songs; the most famous of these, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles (1841), is still sung wherever those who love Germany congregate. But from this expression of the common German tradition Hoffmann went on to espouse the liberal cause, and he had his taste of martyrdom when he lost his professorship at Breslau because of his ironical Unpolitical Songs (1840-42). Hoffmann was essentially an improviser, and sang only too copiously in all the tones and fashions of German verse.

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH (1810-1876) gained immediate fame with the brilliant color and tropical exuberance of his early oriental lyrics, of which the much-declaimed Lion's Ride is an excellent example. But Freiligrath's strongest work was in the field of political poetry. He, too, made sacrifices for the faith that was in him; he gave up a royal pension and twice went into voluntary exile in order to be free to express his liberal sentiments. He began, indeed, with the denial of any partisan bias; but when the Revolution of 1848 broke, no other poet found more daring and eloquent words for the spirit of revolt and of democratic enthusiasm than Freiligrath. And when the war of 1870 again brought new hope of German unity, Freiligrath sang in stirring measures this national awakening.

GEORG HERWEGH (1817-1875), also driven into exile by his opposition to the government, created a sensation with his Poems of the Living (1841), which in ringing refrains incited to revolutionary action. But when the deed followed the word, and Herwegh led an invading column of laborers into Baden in 1848, he lacked the courage of the martyr and fled from the peril of death. GOTTFRIED KINKEL (1815-1882) also took part in the insurrection in Baden, was captured, and condemned to life imprisonment, but escaped with the aid of Carl Schurz in 1850. FRANZ DINGELSTEDT (1814-1881), on the other hand, found his sarcastic Songs of a Political Night-Watchman (1842) no bar to appointment as director of the theatres of Munich, Weimar and Vienna.

While the poets of the revolution were busily at work, the conservatives were not altogether voiceless; nor were the notes of the romantic lyric silenced. Indeed, men like Hoffmann, Herwegh, and Kinkel could not deny the strong influence of the romantic motives and tones upon much of their best poetry. One lyrist greater than any of them was dominated by the romantic tradition—an Austrian nobleman of mingled German, Slavonic and Hungarian blood, NIKOLAUS LENAU (the pen-name of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, 1802-1850). A gifted musician, Lenau was also a master of the melody of words, and his nature-feeling was unusually deep and true. Abnormally proud, self-centred and sensitive as he was, Lenau was born to unhappiness and disillusionment; his journey to America, begun with the most generous anticipations, ended in homesickness and bitter disappointment. Before he had reached middle life, his genius went out in the darkness of insanity. The picturesque and the tragic fascinated Lenau; he could sing with genuine sympathy the fate of dismembered Poland, or the lawless freedom of Hungarian rebels and gipsies; but for the great political movements of the day he had little regard. In the melodious interpretation of nature in sad and quiet moods he had no rival.

Very different was the wholesome and chivalrous nature of the young Moravian Count MORITZ VON STRACHWITZ (1822-1847), whose ballads are unmatched in German literature for spirit and fire. Strachwitz despised the democratic agitation of the revolutionists, and sang with fine enthusiasm the coming of the strong man, who, after all the intrigues of the demagogues, like another Alexander should cut the Gordian knot with the sword.

With EMANUEL GEIBEL (1815-1884) we come to the voice of fair compromise between the extremes. Geibel was a conservative liberal, honestly patriotic without partisanship. Thus his Twelve Sonnets for Schleswig-Holstein (1846) were broadly German in inspiration, and his love of liberty was matched by his aristocratic hatred of the mob. Geibel succeeded in once more gaining the widest popularity, in days filled with partisan clamor, for the pure lyric of romantic inspiration. He was in a true sense the poet-laureate of his generation. Lacking in real originality, he was yet sincere in the expression of his emotion, and his faultless form clothed the utterance of a soul of rare purity and nobility.

As in the days after the War of Liberation, so in the years following the revolutionary movements of 1848, the generous hopes of the people seemed doomed to perish in weariness and disappointment, and the voice of democratic poetry was silenced. In the reaction that followed the intoxication of liberal enthusiasm, with the failure of the attempt to unify Germany under Prussian leadership, the German lands relapsed into dull acquiescence in the old regime. But the seed of the new day had been sown, and the harvest came in due time. Strachwitz's intuition was justified; the strong man did appear, in the person of Bismarck, and the "Gordian knot" was cut with the sword of the war of 1870. But the liberal dream of 1848 was realized, also, in the creation of a unified and powerful German Empire on a constitutional basis.

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ANASTASIUS GRÜN

A SALON SCENE[14 - From Spaziergaenge eines Wiener Poeten. Translator: Sarah T. Barrows.] (1831)

Evening: In the festive halls the light of many candles gleams,
Shedding from the mirrors' crystal thousand-fold reflected beams.
In the sea of light are gliding, with a stately, solemn air,
Honored, venerable matrons, ladies young and very fair.

And among them wander slowly, clad in festive garments grand,
Here the valiant sons of battle, there the rulers of the land.
But on one that I see moving every eye is fixed with fear—
Few indeed among the chosen have the courage to draw near.

He it is by whose firm guidance Austrians' fortunes rise or sink,
He who in the Princes' Congress for them all must act and think.
But behold him now! How gracious, courteous, gentle he's to all,
And how modest, unassuming, and how kind to great and small!

In the light his orders sparkle with a faint and careless grace,
But a friendly, gentle smile is always playing on his face
When he plucks the ruddy rose leaves that some rounded bosom wears,
Or when, like to withered blossoms, kingdoms he asunder tears.

Equally enchanting is it, when he praises golden curls,
Or when, from anointed heads, the royal crowns away he hurls.
Yes, methinks 'tis heavenly rapture, which delights the happy man
Whom his words to Elba's fastness or to Munkacs' prison ban.

Could all Europe now but see him, so engaging, so gallant,
How the ladies, young and old, his winning smiles delight, enchant;
How the church's pious clergy, and the doughty men of war,
And the state's distinguished servants by his grace enraptured are.

Man of state and man of counsel, since you're in a mood so kind,
Since you're showing to all present such a gracious frame of mind,
See, without, a needy client standing waiting at your door
Whom the slightest sign of favor will make happy evermore.

And you do not need to fear him; he's intelligent and fair;
Hidden 'neath his homely garments, knife nor dagger does he wear.
'Tis the Austrian people, open, honest, courteous as can be.
See, they're pleading: "May we ask you for the freedom to be free?"

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NIKOLAUS LENAU

PRAYER[15 - Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.] (1832)

Eye of darkness, dim dominioned,