Chapter II: Part 2

What can we expect of the literature of such times? Popular poetry preserved some of its indestructible charms. The Meistersänger went on composing according to the rules of their guilds, but we look in vain for the raciness and honest simplicity of Hans Sachs. Some of the professors wrote plays in the style of Terence, or after English models, and fables became fashionable in the style of Phædrus. But there was no trace anywhere of originality, truth, taste, or feeling, except in that branch which, like the palm-tree, thrives best in the desert,—sacred poetry. Paul Gerhard is still without an equal as a poet of sacred songs; and many of the best hymns which are heard in the Protestant churches of Germany date from the seventeenth century. Soon, however, this class of poetry also degenerated on one side into dry theological phraseology, on the other into sentimental and almost erotic affectation.

There was no hope of a regeneration in German literature, unless either great political and social events should rouse the national mind from its languor, or the classical models of pure taste and true art should be studied again in a different spirit from that of professorial pedantry. Now, after the Thirty Years’ War, there was no war in Germany in which the nation took any warm interest. The policy pursued in France during the long reign of Louis XIV. (1643-1708) had its chief aim in weakening the house of Hapsburg. When the Protestants would no longer fight his battles, Louis roused the Turks. Vienna was nearly taken, and Austria owed its delivery to Johann Sobiesky. By the treaty of Ryswick (1697), all the country on the left side of the Rhine was ceded to France, and German soldiers fought under the banners of the Great Monarch. The only German prince who dared to uphold the honor of the empire, and to withstand the encroachments of Louis, was Frederick William, the great Elector of Prussia (1670-88). He checked the arrogance of the Swedish court, opened his towns to French Protestant refugees, and raised the house of Brandenburg to a European importance. In the same year in which his successor, Frederick III., assumed the royal title as Frederick I., the King of Spain, Charles I., died; and Louis XIV., whilst trying to add the Spanish crown to his monarchy, was at last checked in his grasping policy by an alliance between England and Germany. Prince Eugene and Marlborough restored the peace and the political equilibrium of Europe. In England, the different parties in Parliament, the frequenters of the clubs and coffee-houses, were then watching every move on the political chess-board of Europe, and criticising the victories of their generals and the treaties of their ambassadors. In Germany, the nation took but a passive part. It was excluded from all real share in the great questions of the day; and, if it showed any sympathies, they were confined to the simple admiration of a great general, such as Prince Eugene.

While the policy of Louis XIV. was undermining the political independence of Germany, the literature of his court exercised an influence hardly less detrimental on the literature of Germany. No doubt, the literature of France stood far higher at that time than that of Germany. “Poet” was amongst us a term of abuse, while in France the Great Monarch himself did homage to his great poets. But the professorial poets who had failed to learn the lessons of good taste from the Greek and Roman classics, were not likely to profit by an imitation of the spurious classicality of French literature. They heard the great stars of the court of Louis XIV. praised by their royal and princely patrons, as they returned from their travels in France and Italy, full of admiration for everything that was not German. They were delighted to hear that in France, in Holland, and in Italy, it was respectable to write poetry in the modern vernacular, and set to work in good earnest. After the model of the literary academies in Italy, academies were founded at the small courts of Germany. Men like Opitz would hardly have thought it dignified to write verses in their native tongue had it not been for the moral support which they received from these academies and their princely patrons. His first poems were written in Latin, but he afterwards devoted himself completely to German poetry. He became a member of the “Order of the Palm-tree,” and the founder of what is called the _First Silesian School_. Opitz is the true representative of the classical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was a scholar and a gentleman; most correct in his language and versification; never venturing on ground that had not been trodden before by some classical poet, whether of Greece, Rome, France, Holland, or Italy. In him we also see the first traces of that baneful alliance between princes and poets which has deprived the German nation of so many of her best sons. But the charge of mean motives has been unjustly brought against Opitz by many historians. Poets require an audience, and at his time there was no class of people willing to listen to poetry, except the inmates of the small German courts. After the Thirty Years’ War the power of these princes was greater than ever. They divided the spoil, and there was neither a nobility, nor a clergy, nor a national party to control or resist them. In England, the royal power had, at that time, been brought back to its proper limits, and it has thus been able to hold ever since, with but short interruptions, its dignified position, supported by the self-respect of a free and powerful nation. In France it assumed the most enormous proportions during the long reign of Louis XIV., but its appalling rise was followed, after a century, by a fall equally appalling, and it has not yet regained its proper position in the political system of that country. In Germany the royal power was less imposing, its prerogatives being divided between the Emperor and a number of small but almost independent vassals, remnants of that feudal system of the Middle Ages which in France and England had been absorbed by the rise of national monarchies. These small principalities explain the weakness of Germany in her relation with foreign powers, and the instability of her political constitution. Continental wars gave an excuse for keeping up large standing armies, and these standing armies stood between the nation and her sovereigns, and made any moral pressure of the one upon the other impossible. The third estate could never gain that share in the government which it had obtained, by its united action, in other countries; and no form of government can be stable which is deprived of the support and the active coöperation of the middle classes. Constitutions have been granted by enlightened sovereigns, such as Joseph II. and Frederick William IV., and barricades have been raised by the people at Vienna and at Berlin; but both have failed to restore the political health of the country. There is no longer a German nobility in the usual sense of the word. Its vigor was exhausted when the powerful vassals of the empire became powerless sovereigns with the titles of king or duke, while what remained of the landed nobility became more reduced with every generation, owing to the absence of the system of primogeniture. There is no longer a clergy as a powerful body in the state. This was broken up at the time of the Reformation; and it hardly had time to recover and to constitute itself on a new basis, when the Thirty Years’ War deprived it of all social influence, and left it no alternative but to become a salaried class of servants of the crown. No third estate exists powerful enough to defend the interests of the commonwealth against the encroachments of the sovereign; and public opinion, though it may pronounce itself within certain limits, has no means of legal opposition, and must choose, at every critical moment, between submission to the royal will and rebellion.

Thus, during the whole modern history of Germany, the political and intellectual supremacy is divided. The former is monopolized by the sovereigns, the latter belongs to a small class of learned men. These two soon begin to attract each other. The kings seek the society, the advice, and support of literary men; whilst literary men court the patronage of kings, and acquire powerful influence by governing those who govern the people. From the time of Opitz there have been few men of eminence in literature or science who have not been drawn toward one of the larger or smaller courts of Germany; and the whole of our modern literature bears the marks of this union between princes and poets. It has been said that the existence of these numerous centres of civilization has proved beneficial to the growth of literature; and it has been pointed out that some of the smallest courts, such as Weimar, have raised the greatest men in poetry and science. Goethe himself gives expression to this opinion. “What has made Germany great,” he says, “but the culture which is spread through the whole country in such a marvelous manner, and pervades equally all parts of the realm? And this culture, does it not emanate from the numerous courts which grant it support and patronage? Suppose we had had in Germany for centuries but two capitals, Vienna and Berlin, or but one; I should like to know how it would have fared with German civilization, or even with that general well-being which goes hand in hand with true civilization.” In these words we hear Goethe, the minister of the petty court of Weimar, not the great poet of a great nation. Has France had more than one capital? Has England had more than one court? Great men have risen to eminence in great monarchies like France, and they have risen to eminence in a great commonwealth such as England, without the patronage of courts, by the support, the sympathy, the love of a great nation. Truly national poetry exists only where there is a truly national life; and the poet who, in creating his works, thinks of a whole nation which will listen to him and be proud of him, is inspired by a nobler passion than he who looks to his royal master, or the applause even of the most refined audience of the _dames de la cour_. In a free country, the sovereign is the highest and most honored representative of the national will, and he honors himself by honoring those who have well deserved of his country. There a poet laureate may hold an independent and dignified position, conscious of his own worth, and of the support of the nation. But in despotic countries, the favor even of the most enlightened sovereign is dangerous. Germany never had a more enlightened king than Frederick the Great; and yet, when he speaks of the Queen receiving Leibnitz at court, he says, “She believed that it was not unworthy of a queen to show honor to a philosopher; and as those who have received from heaven a privileged soul rise to the level of sovereigns, she admitted Leibnitz into her familiar society.”

The seventeenth century saw the rise and fall of the first and the second Silesian schools. The first is represented by men like Opitz and Weckherlin, and it exercised an influence in the North of Germany on Simon Dach, Paul Flemming, and a number of less gifted poets, who are generally known by the name of the _Königsberg School_. Its character is pseudo-classical. All these poets endeavored to write correctly, sedately, and eloquently. Some of them aimed at a certain simplicity and sincerity, which we admire particularly in Flemming. But it would be difficult to find in all their writings one single thought, one single expression, that had not been used before. The second Silesian school is more ambitious; but its poetic flights are more disappointing even than the honest prose of Opitz. The “Shepherds of the Pegnitz” had tried to imitate the brilliant diction of the Italian poets; but the modern Meistersänger of the old town of Nürnberg had produced nothing but wordy jingle. Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein, the chief heroes of the second Silesian school, followed in their track, and did not succeed better. Their compositions are bombastic and full of metaphors. It is a poetry of adjectives, without substance, truth, or taste. Yet their poetry was admired, praised not less than Goethe and Schiller were praised by their contemporaries, and it lived beyond the seventeenth century. There were but few men during that time who kept aloof from the spirit of these two Silesian schools, and were not influenced by either Opitz or Hoffmannswaldau. Among these independent poets we have to mention Friedrich von Logau, Andreas Gryphius, and Moscherosch. Beside these, there were some prose writers whose works are not exactly works of art, but works of original thought, and of great importance to us in tracing the progress of science and literature during the dreariest period of German history. We can only mention the “Simplicissimus,” a novel full of clever miniature drawing, and giving a truthful picture of German life during the Thirty Years’ War; the patriotic writings of Professor Schupp; the historical works of Professor Pufendorf (1631-94); the pietistic sermons of Spener, and of Professor Franke (1663-1727), the founder of the Orphan School at Halle; Professor Arnold’s (1666-1714) Ecclesiastical History; the first political pamphlets by Professor Thomasius (1655-1728); and among philosophers, Jacob Böhme at the beginning, and Leibnitz at the end of the seventeenth century.

The second Silesian school was defeated by Gottsched, professor at Leipzig. He exercised, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the same dictatorship as a poet and a critic which Opitz had exercised at the beginning of the seventeenth. Gottsched was the advocate of French models in art and poetry, and he used his wide-spread influence in recommending the correct and so-called classical style of the poets of the time. After having rendered good service in putting down the senseless extravagance of the school of Lohenstein, he became himself a pedantic and arrogant critic; and it was through the opposition which he roused by his “Gallomania” that German poetry was delivered at last from the trammels of that foreign school. Then followed a long literary warfare; Gottsched and his followers at Leipzig defended the French, Bodmer and his friends in Switzerland the English style of literature. The former insisted on classical form and traditional rules; the latter on natural sentiment and spontaneous expression. The question was, whether poets should imitate the works of the classics, or imitate the classics who had become classics by imitating nobody. A German professor wields an immense power by means of his journals. He is the editor; he writes in them himself, and allows others to write; he praises his friends, who are to laud him in turn; he patronizes his pupils, who are to call him master; he abuses his adversaries, and asks his allies to do the same. It was in this that Professor Gottsched triumphed for a long time over Bodmer and his party, till at last public opinion became too strong, and the dictator died the laughing-stock of Germany. It was in the very thick of this literary struggle that the great heroes of German poetry grew up,—Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. Goethe, who knew both Gottsched and Bodmer, has described that period of fermentation and transition in which his own mind was formed, and his extracts may be read as a commentary on the poetical productions of the first half of the eighteenth century. He does justice to Günther, and more than justice to Liscow. He shows the influence which men like Brockes, Hagedorn, and Haller exercised in making poetry respectable. He points out the new national life which, like an electric spark, flew through the whole country when Frederick the Great said, “_J’ai jeté le bonnet pardessus les moulins_;” and defied, like a man, the political popery of Austria. The estimate which Goethe forms of the poets of the time, of Gleim and Uz, of Gessner and Rabener, and more especially of Klopstock, Lessing, and Wieland, should be read in the original, as likewise Herder’s “Rhapsody on Shakspeare.” The latter contains the key to many of the secrets of that new period of literature, which was inaugurated by Goethe himself and by those who like him could dare to be classical by being true to nature and to themselves.

My object in taking this rapid survey of German literature has been to show that the extracts which I have collected in my “German Classics” have not been chosen at random, and that, if properly used, they can be read as a running commentary on the political and social history of Germany. The history of literature is but an applied history of civilization. As in the history of civilization we watch the play of the three constituent classes of society,—clergy, nobility, and commoners,—we can see, in the history of literature, how that class which is supreme politically shows for the time being its supremacy in the literary productions of the age, and impresses its mark on the works of poets and philosophers.

Speaking very generally, we might say that, during the first period of German history, the really moving, civilizing, and ruling class was the clergy; and in the whole of German literature, nearly to the time of the Crusades, the clerical element predominates. The second period is marked by the Crusades, and the triumph of Teutonic and Romantic chivalry, and the literature of that period is of a strictly correspondent tone. After the Crusades, and during the political anarchy that followed, the sole principle of order and progress is found in the towns, and in the towns the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries finds its new home. At last, at the time of the Reformation, when the political life of the country assumed for a time a national character, German literature also is for a short time national. The hopes, however, which had been raised of a national policy and of a national literature were soon blighted, and, from the Thirty Years’ War to the present day, the inheritance of the nation has been divided between princes and professors. There have been moments when the princes had to appeal to the nation at large, and to forget for a while their royal pretensions; and these times of national enthusiasm, as during the wars of Frederick the Great, and during the wars against Napoleon, have not failed to tell on the literature of Germany. They produced a national spirit, free from professorial narrowness, such as we find in the writings of Lessing and Fichte. But with the exception of these short lucid intervals, Germany has always been under the absolute despotism of a number of small sovereigns and great professors, and her literature has been throughout in the hands of court poets and academic critics. Klopstock, Lessing, and Schiller are most free from either influence, and most impressed with the duties which a poet owes, before all, to the nation to which he belongs. Klopstock’s national enthusiasm borders sometimes on the fantastic; for, as his own times could not inspire him, he borrowed the themes of his national panegyrics from the distant past of Arminius and the German bards. Lessing looked more to his own age, but he looked in vain for national heroes. “Pity the extraordinary man,” says Goethe, “who had to live in such miserable times, which offered him no better subjects than those which he takes for his works. Pity him, that in his ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ he had to take part in the quarrel between the Saxons and the Prussians, because he found nothing better. It was owing to the rottenness of his time that he always took, and was forced to take, a polemical position. In his ‘Emilia Galotti,’ he shows his _pique_ against the princes; in ‘Nathan,’ against the priests.” But, although the subjects of these works of Lessing were small, his object in writing was always great and national. He never condescended to amuse a provincial court by masquerades and comedies, nor did he degrade his genius by pandering, like Wieland, to the taste of a profligate nobility. Schiller, again, was a poet truly national and truly liberal; and although a man of aspirations rather than of actions, he has left a deeper impress on the kernel of the nation than either Wieland or Goethe. These considerations, however, must not interfere with our appreciation of the greatness of Goethe. On the contrary, when we see the small sphere in which he moved at Weimar, we admire the more the height to which he grew, and the freedom of his genius. And it is, perhaps, owing to this very absence of a strongly marked national feeling, that in Germany the first idea of a world-literature was conceived. “National literature,” Goethe says, “is of little importance: the age of a world-literature is at hand, and every one ought to work in order to accelerate this new era.” Perhaps Goethe felt that the true poet belonged to the whole of mankind, and that he must be intelligible beyond the frontiers of his own country. And, from this point of view, his idea of a world-literature has been realized, and his own works have gained their place side by side with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. But, so long as there are different languages and different nations, let each poet think and work and write for his own people, without caring for the applause of other countries. Science and philosophy are cosmopolitan; poetry and art are national: and those who would deprive the Muses of their home-sprung character, would deprive them of much of their native charms.

LIST OF EXTRACTS FOR ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.

FOURTH CENTURY AFTER CHRIST.

_Gothic:_—

Ulfilas, Translation of the Bible; the Lord’s Prayer.

SEVENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Vocabulary of St. Gall.

EIGHTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Interlinear Translation of the Benedictine Rules. Translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Exhortation addressed to the Christian Laity. Literal Translations of the Hymns of the Old Church:— 1. Deus qui cordi lumen es. 2. Aurora lucis rutilat. 3. Te Deum laudamus. The Song of Hildebrand and his son Hadubrand,—in alliterative metre. The Prayer from the Monastery of Wessobrun,—in alliterative metre. The Apostolic Creed.

NINTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

From Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,—the German names of the Months and the Winds fixed by the Emperor. Muspilli, or on the Last Judgment,—alliterative poem. The Oaths of Lewis the German and Charles the Bald, and their armies at Strassburg, 842, in Old Frankish and Old French; from the History of Nithard, the grandson of Charlemagne. The Heliand, or the Saviour,—old Saxon poem, in alliterative metre. The Krist, or the Gospel-book,—poem in rhyme by Otfried, the pupil of Hrabanus Maurus, dedicated to Lewis the German. Translation of a Harmony of the Gospels. Lay on St. Peter. Song on the Victory gained by King Lewis III. at Saucourt, in 881, over the Normans.

TENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Notker Teutonicus of St. Gall,— 1. Translation of the Psalms. 2. Treatise on Syllogisms. 3. Translation of Aristotle. 4. Translation of Boëthius de Consolatione.

ELEVENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Williram’s Explanation of the Song of Solomon. Merigarto, or the Earth,—fragment of a geographical poem.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

The Life of Jesus,—poem by the Nun Ava. Poetical Translation of the Books of Moses. Historical Poem on Anno, Bishop of Cologne. Poetical Chronicle of the Roman Emperors. Nortperti Tractatus de Virtutibus, translated. The poem of Roland, by Konrad the Priest. The poem of Alexander, by Lamprecht the Priest. Poem of Reinhart the Fox. Dietmar von Aist,—lyrics. The Spervogel,—lyrics. The Kürenberger,—lyrics. The Eneid, by Heinrich von Veldecke.

THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Hartmann von Aue; extracts from his “Iwein,”—a heroic poem. The Old Reinmar,—lyrics. Walther von der Vogelweide,—lyrics. Freidank’s Bescheidenheit,—didactic poem. Wolfram von Eschenbach,— 1. Extracts from his “Parcival,”—a heroic poem. 2. Extracts from his “Titurel,”—a heroic poem. Gottfried von Strassburg; extracts from his “Tristan,”—a heroic poem. The poem of the “Nibelunge,”—epic poem. Thomasin von Zerclar; extracts from his poem on manners, called “The Italian Guest.” Neidhart von Reuenthal,—lyrics. Otto von Botenlaube,—lyrics. Gudrun,—epic poem. The Stricker,—extract from his satirical poem, “Amis the Priest.” Rudolf von Ems,—extract from his “Wilhelm von Orleans.” Christian von Hamle,—lyrics. Gottfried von Neifen,—lyrics. Ulrich von Lichtenstein,—lyrics. Sermon of Friar Berthold of Regensburg. Reinmar von Zweter,—lyrics. Master Stolle,—satire. The Marner,—lyrics. Master Konrad of Würzburg,— 1. Poem. 2. Extract from the Trojan War. Anonymous poet,—extract from the life of St. Elizabeth. Herman der Damen. Anonymous poet,—extract from the “Wartburg Krieg.” Marcgrave Otto von Brandenburg,—lyrics. Heinrich, Duke of Breslau,—lyrics. Hugo von Trimberg,—extract from the “Renner.”

FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Heinrich Frauenlob,—lyrics. Master Johann Hadlaub,—lyrics. The Great Rosegarden,—popular epic poem. Master Eckhart,—homily. Hermann von Fritzlar,—life of St. Elizabeth. Dr. Johann Tauler,—sermon. Heinrich Suso. Heinrich der Teichner,—fable. Peter Suchenwirt,—on the death of Leopold, Duke of Austria, 1386. Halbsuter’s poem on the Battle of Sempach, 1386. Fritsche Closener’s Strassburg Chronicle. Jacob Twinger’s Chronicle,—on the Flagellants.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Hugo von Montfort,—lyrics. Oswald von Wolkenstein,—lyrics. Muscatblüt,—lyrics. Hans von Bühel’s Life of Diocletian, or The Seven Wise Masters. Popular Songs. Sacred Songs. The Soul’s Comfort,—didactic prose. Michael Beheim,—Meistergesang. An Easter Mystery. Popular Rhymes. Caspar von der Roen’s Heldenbuch,—Hildebrand and his Son. Niclas von Weyl’s Translations,—Hieronymus at the Council of Constance. Veit Weber’s poem on the Victory of Murten, 1476. Heinrich Steinhöwel’s Fables. Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools.” Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg,—sermon. Emperor Maximilian,—extract from the “Theuerdank.”

SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Martin Luther,— 1. Sacred Song. 2. Letter on the Diet of the Jackdaws and Crows. 3. His Last Sermon. Ulrich Zwingle:— 1. A Poem on his Illness. 2. Criticism on Luther. Philipp Nicolai,—sacred songs. Justus Jonas,—sacred songs. Ulrich von Hutten,— 1. Letter to Franz von Sickingen. 2. Political poem. Sebastian Frank,— 1. Preface to his Germania. 2. Rudolf von Hapsburg. 3. Maximilian der Erste. 4. Fables. Burkard Waldis,—fables. Hans Sachs,— 1. Sacred Song. 2. Poem on the Death of Martin Luther. 3. Poem on the War. Petermann Etterlin’s Chronicle,—William Tell and Rudolf von Hapsburg. Ægidius Tschudi’s Chronicle,—William Tell. Paulus Melissus Schede. Johann Fischart,— 1. Exhortation addressed to the German people. 2. Das glückhafte Schiff. Georg Rollenhagen,—fable. Popular Books,— 1. Tyll Eulenspiegel. 2. Dr. Faust. Popular Songs.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Martin Opitz, and the First Silesian School. Georg Rudolf Weckherlin. Anonymous Poem,—“O Ewigkeit.” Michael Altenburg’s Camp-song (Gustavus Adolphus). Johannes Heermann,—sacred song. Popular Songs. Johann Arndt,— 1. Sacred Song. 2. On the Power and Necessity of Prayer. Jacob Böhme, Mysterium Magnum. Johann Valentin Andreæ. Friedrich Spee. Julius Wilhelm Zinegreff. Friedrich von Logau. Simon Dach and the Königsberg School. Paul Flemming. Paul Gerhard. Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and the Nürnberg School. Johannes Rist. Andreas Gryphius,— 1. Sonnets. 2. From the Tragedy “Cardenio and Celinde.” Joachim Rachel,—satire. Johann Michael Moscherosch,—satires. Christoph von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus,—novel. Johann Balthasar Schupp,—on the German Language. Angelus Silesius. Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein,—Second Silesian School. Abraham a Santa Clara,—sermon. Philipp Jacob Spener,—on Luther. Gottfried Arnold,—sacred poem. Christian Weise. Hans Assmann von Abschatz. Friedrich R. L. von Canitz. Christian Wernicke. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz,—on the German Language.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Johann Christoph Gottsched,—Cato. Johann Jacob Bodmer,—Character of German Poetry. Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Johann Christian Günther. Nicolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf. Christian Ludwig Liscow. Friedrich von Hagedorn. Albrecht von Haller. Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener. Ewald Christian von Kleist. Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. Johann Ludwig Gleim. Johann Peter Uz. Justus Möser. Klopstock. See below. Salomon Gessner. Johann Winckelmann. Lessing. See below. Johann Georg Hamann. Immanuel Kant. Johann August Musæus. Wieland. See below. Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart. Matthias Claudius. Johann Caspar Lavater. Herder. See below. Heinrich Jung, Stilling. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Gottfried August Bürger. Johann Heinrich Voss. Friedrich Leopold und Christian Grafen zu Stollberg. Das Siebengestirn der Dichter des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,— 1. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. 2. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. 3. Christoph Martin Wieland. 4. Johann Gottfried von Herder. 5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 6. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. 7. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.

II. OLD GERMAN LOVE-SONGS.(8)

Seven hundred years ago! What a long time it seems! Philip Augustus, King of France; Henry II., King of England; Frederic I., the famous Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany! When we read of their times, the times of the Crusades, we feel as the Greeks felt when reading of the War of Troy. We listen, we admire, but we do not compare the heroes of St. Jean d’Acre with the great generals of the nineteenth century. They seem a different race of men from those who are now living, and poetry and tradition have lent to their royal frames such colossal proportions that we hardly dare to criticise the legendary history of their chivalrous achievements. It was a time of heroes, of saints, of martyrs, of miracles! Thomas à Becket was murdered at Canterbury, but for more than three hundred years his name lived on, and his bones were working miracles, and his soul seemed as it were embodied and petrified in the lofty pillars that surround the spot of his martyrdom. Abelard was persecuted and imprisoned, but his spirit revived in the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and the shrine of Abelard and Héloise in the Père La Chaise is still decorated every year with garlands of _immortelles_. Barbarossa was drowned in the same river in which Alexander the Great had bathed his royal limbs, but his fame lived on in every cottage of Germany, and the peasant near the Kyffhäuser still believes that some day the mighty Emperor will awake from his long slumber, and rouse the people of Germany from their fatal dreams. We dare not hold communion with such stately heroes as Frederick the Red-beard and Richard the Lion-heart; they seem half to belong to the realm of fable. We feel from our very school-days as if we could shake hands with a Themistocles and sit down in the company of a Julius Cæsar, but we are awed by the presence of those tall and silent knights, with their hands folded and their legs crossed, as we see them reposing in full armor on the tombs of our cathedrals.

And yet, however different in all other respects, these men, if they once lift their steel beaver and unbuckle their rich armor, are wonderfully like ourselves. Let us read the poetry which they either wrote themselves, or to which they liked to listen in their castles on the Rhine or under their tents in Palestine, and we find it is poetry which a Tennyson or a Moore, a Goethe or Heine, might have written. Neither Julius Cæsar nor Themistocles would know what was meant by such poetry. It is modern poetry,—poetry unknown to the ancient world,—and who invented it nobody can tell. It is sometimes called Romantic, but this is a strange misnomer. Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the Romans, the Italians, the Provençals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry as their own. It is Teutonic poetry,—purely Teutonic in its heart and soul, though its utterance, its rhyme and metre, its grace and imagery, show the marks of a warmer clime. It is called sentimental poetry, the poetry of the heart rather than of the head, the picture of the inward rather than of the outward world. It is subjective, as distinguished from objective poetry, as the German critics, in their scholastic language, are fond of expressing it. It is Gothic, as contrasted with classical poetry. The one, it is said, sublimizes nature, the other bodies forth spirit; the one deifies the human, the other humanizes the divine; the one is ethnic, the other Christian. But all these are but names, and their true meaning must be discovered in the works of art themselves, and in the history of the times which produced the artists, the poets, and their ideals. We shall perceive the difference between these two hemispheres of the Beautiful better if we think of Homer’s “Helena” and Dante’s “Beatrice,” if we look at the “Venus of Milo” and a “Madonna” of Francia, than in reading the profoundest systems of æsthetics.

The work which has caused these reflections is a volume of German poetry, just published by Lachmann and Haupt. It is called “Des Minnesangs Frühling,”—“the Spring of the Songs of Love;” and it contains a collection of the poems of twenty German poets, all of whom lived during the period of the Crusades, under the Hohenstaufen Emperors, from about 1170 to 1230. This period may well be called the spring of German poetry, though the summer that followed was but of short duration, and the autumn was cheated of the rich harvest which the spring had promised. Tieck, one of the first who gathered the flowers of that forgotten spring, describes it in glowing language. “At that time,” he says, “believers sang of faith, lovers of love, knights described knightly actions and battles; and loving, believing knights were their chief audience. The spring, beauty, gayety, were objects that could never tire: great duels and deeds of arms carried away every hearer, the more surely, the stronger they were painted; and as the pillars and dome of the church encircle the flock, so did religion, as the highest, encircle poetry and reality; and every heart, in equal love, humbled itself before her.” Carlyle, too, has listened with delight to those merry songs of spring. “Then truly,” he says, “was the time of singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and the simple, men, women, and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in hearing it done. It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray—not, indeed, without infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music—were bidding it welcome.” And yet it was not all gladness; and it is strange that Carlyle, who has so keen an ear for the silent melancholy of the human heart, should not have heard that tone of sorrow and fateful boding which breaks, like a suppressed sigh, through the free and light music of that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the “Nibelunge,” or to Wolfram’s grand poems of the “Parcival” and the “Holy Grail,” it is the same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of hope, and throughout the whole, a silent wondering at this strange world. Here is a specimen of an anonymous poem; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. It was written before the twelfth century; its language is strangely simple, and sometimes uncouth. But there is truth in it; and it is truth after all, and not fiction, that is the secret of all poetry:—

“It has pained me in the heart, Full many a time, That I yearned after that Which I may not have, Nor ever shall win. It is very grievous. I do not mean gold or silver; It is more like a human heart.

“I trained me a falcon, More than a year. When I had tamed him, As I would have him, And had well tied his feathers With golden chains, He soared up very high, And flew into other lands.

“I saw the falcon since, Flying happily; He carried on his foot Silken straps, And his plumage was All red of gold.... May God send them together, Who would fain be loved.”

The key-note of the whole poem of the “Nibelunge,” such as it was written down at the end of the twelfth, or the beginning of the thirteenth century, is “Sorrow after Joy.” This is the fatal spell against which all the heroes are fighting, and fighting in vain. And as Hagen dashes the Chaplain into the waves, in order to belie the prophecy of the Mermaids, but the Chaplain rises, and Hagen rushes headlong into destruction, so Chriemhilt is bargaining and playing with the same inevitable fate, cautiously guarding her young heart against the happiness of love, that she may escape the sorrows of a broken heart. She, too, has been dreaming “of a wild young falcon that she trained for many a day, till two fierce eagles tore it.” And she rushes to her mother Ute, that she may read the dream for her; and her mother tells her what it means. And then the coy maiden answers:—

“No more, no more, dear mother, say, From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day, That falsely smiling Pleasure with Pain requites us ever. I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never.”

But Siegfried comes, and Chriemhilt’s heart does no longer cast up the bright and the dark days of life. To Siegfried she belongs; for him she lives, and for him, when “two fierce eagles tore him,” she dies. A still wilder tragedy lies hidden in the songs of the “Edda,” the most ancient fragments of truly Teutonic poetry. Wolfram’s poetry is of the same sombre cast. He wrote his “Parcival” about the time when the songs of the “Nibelunge” were written down. The subject was taken by him from a French source. It belonged originally to the British cycle of Arthur and his knights. But Wolfram took the story merely as a skeleton, to which he himself gave a new body and soul. The glory and happiness which this world can give is to him but a shadow,—the crown for which his hero fights is that of the Holy Grail.

Faith, Love, and Honor are the chief subjects of the so-called Minnesänger. They are not what we should call erotic poets. _Minne_ means love in the old German language, but it means, originally, not so much passion and desire, as thoughtfulness, reverence, and remembrance. In English _Minne_ would be “Minding,” and it is different therefore from the Greek _Eros_, the Roman Amor, and the French Amour. It is different also from the German _Liebe_, which means originally desire, not love. Most of the poems of the “Minnesänger” are sad rather than joyful,—joyful in sorrow, sorrowful in joy. The same feelings have since been so often repeated by poets in all the modern languages of Europe, that much of what we read in the “Minnesänger” of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries sounds stale to our ears. Yet there is a simplicity about these old songs, a want of effort, an entire absence of any attempt to please or to surprise; and we listen to them as we listen to a friend who tells us his sufferings in broken and homely words, and whose truthful prose appeals to our heart more strongly than the most elaborate poetry of a Lamartine or a Heine. It is extremely difficult to translate these poems from the language in which they are written, the so-called Middle High-German, into Modern German,—much more so to render them into English. But translation is at the same time the best test of the true poetical value of any poem, and we believe that many of the poems of the Minnesängers can bear that test. Here is another poem, very much in the style of the one quoted above, but written by a poet whose name is known,—Dietmar von Eist:—

“A lady stood alone, And gazed across the heath, And gazed for her love. She saw a falcon flying. “O happy falcon that thou art, Thou fliest wherever thou likest; Thou choosest in the forest A tree that pleases thee. Thus I too had done. I chose myself a man: Him my eyes selected. Beautiful ladies envy me for it. Alas! why will they not leave me my love? I did not desire the beloved of any one of them. Now woe to thee, joy of summer! The song of birds is gone; So are the leaves of the lime-tree: Henceforth, my pretty eyes too Will be overcast. My love, thou shouldst take leave Of other ladies; Yes, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them. When thou sawest me first, I seemed to thee in truth Right lovely made: I remind thee of it, dear man!’ ”

These poems, simple and homely as they may seem to us, were loved and admired by the people for whom they were written. They were copied and preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and some of them were translated into foreign languages. The poem which we quoted first was translated as an Italian sonnet in the thirteenth century, and has been published in Franc Trucchi’s “Poesie Italiane Inedite:”—

“Tapina me, che amava uno sparviero; amaval tanto ch’io me ne moria: a lo richiamo ben m’era maniero ed unque troppo pascer no’ l dovia. or è montato e salito sì altero, assai più altero che far non solia; ed è assiso dentro a un verziero, e un’altra donna l’averà in balìa. isparvier mio, ch’io t’avea nodrito; sonaglio d’oro ti facea portare, perchè nell’uccellar fossi più ardito. or sei salito siccome lo mare, ed hai rotti li getti, e seì fuggito quando eri fermo nel tuo uccellare.”

One of the most original and thoughtful of the “Minnesänger” is the old Reinmar. His poems are given now for the first time in a correct and readable text by Lachmann and Haupt, and many a difficult passage has been elucidated by their notes. His poems, however, are not easy to read, and we should have been thankful for some more help than the editors have given us in their notes. The following is a specimen of Reinmar’s poetry:—

“High as the sun stands my heart; That is because of a lady who can be without change In her grace, wherever she be. She makes me free from all sorrow.

“I have nothing to give her, but my own life, That belongs to her: the beautiful woman gives me always Joy, and a high mind, If I think of it, what she does for me.

“Well is it for me that I found her so true! Wherever she dwell, she alone makes every land dear to me; If she went across the wild sea, There I should go; I long so much for her.

“If I had the wisdom of a thousand men, it would be well That I keep her, whom I should serve: May she take care right well, That nothing sad may ever befall me through her.

“I was never quite blessed, but through her: Whatever I wish to her, may she allow it to me! It was a blessed thing for me That she, the Beautiful, received me into her grace.”

Carlyle, no doubt, is right when he says that, among all this warbling of love, there are infinite twitterings which, except their gladness, have little to charm us. Yet we like to read them as part of the bright history of those by-gone days. One poet sings:—

“If the whole world was mine, From the Sea to the Rhine, I would gladly give it all, That the Queen of England Lay in my arms,” etc.

Who was the impertinent German that dared to fall in love with a Queen of England? We do not know. But there can be no doubt that the Queen of England whom he adored was the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Poitou, the Queen of Henry II., who filled the heart of many a Crusader with unholy thoughts. Her daughter, too, Mathilde, who was married to Henry the Lion of Saxony, inspired many a poet of those days. Her beauty was celebrated by the Provençal Troubadours; and at the court of her husband, she encouraged several of her German vassals to follow the example of the French and Norman knights, and sing the love of Tristan and Isolt, and the adventures of the knights of Charlemagne. They must have been happy times, those times of the Crusades! Nor have they passed away without leaving their impress on the hearts and minds of the nations of Europe. The Holy Sepulchre, it is true, is still in the hands of the Infidels, and the bones of the Crusaders lie buried in unhallowed soil, and their deeds of valor are well-nigh forgotten, and their chivalrous Tournaments and their Courts of Love are smiled at by a wiser generation. But much that is noble and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart, the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical taste and its royal patrons, such as Louis XIV., Charles II., and Frederick the Great,—we owe it to those chivalrous poets who dared for the first time to be what they were, and to say what they felt, and to whom Faith, Love, and Honor were worthy subjects of poetry, though they lacked the sanction of the Periclean and Augustan ages.

The new edition of the Poems of the “Minnesänger” is a masterpiece of German scholarship. It was commenced by Lachmann, the greatest critic, after Wolf, that Germany has produced. Lachmann died before the work was finished, and Professor Haupt, his successor at Berlin, undertook to finish it. His share in the edition, particularly in the notes, is greater than that of Lachmann; and the accuracy with which the text has been restored from more than twenty MSS., is worthy of the great pupil of that great master.

1858.

III. YE SCHYPPE OF FOOLES.(9)

The critical periods in the history of the world are best studied in the lives of a few representative men. The history of the German Reformation assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon, and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450 to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation, of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth century, “It was rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of strong thinkers.” We must not look for heroes in so unheroic an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their contemporaries.

One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.” He was born in the year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the German laity as to a _reformatio ecclesiæ in capite et membris_. In the very year of Brant’s birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had addressed his letter to his former friend, Æneas Sylvius,—a national manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet of Luther, “To the Nobility of the German Nation.” Germany seemed to awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the name of Cicero or any other orator. In the eyes of the Italians, the Germans were barbarians; and when Constantine Lascaris saw the first specimen of printing, he was told by the Italian priests that this invention had lately been made _apud barbaros in urbe __ Germaniæ_. They were dangerous neighbors—these barbarians, who could make such discoveries as the art of printing; and Brant lived to see the time when Joh. Cæsarius was able to write to a friend of his: “At this moment, Germany, if she does not surpass Italy, at least need not, and will not, yield to her, not so much on account of her empire, as for her wonderful fecundity in learned men, and the almost incredible growth of learning.”

This period of slow but steady progress, from the invention of printing to the Council of Worms, is bridged over by the life of Sebastian Brant, who lived from 1457 to 1521. Brant was very early the friend of Peter Schott, and through him had been brought in contact with a circle of learned men, who were busily engaged in founding one of the first schools of classical learning at Schlettstadt. Men like Jac. Wimpheling, Joh. Torrentinus, Florentius Hundius, and Johannes Hugo, belonged to that society. Brant afterwards went to Basle to study law. Basle was then a young university. It had only been founded in 1459, but it was already a successful rival of Heidelberg. The struggle between the Realists and Nominalists was then raging all over Europe, and it divided the University of Basle into two parties, each of them trying to gain influence and adherents among the young students. It has been usual to look upon the Realists as the Conservative, and upon the Nominalists as the Liberal party of the fifteenth century. But although at times this was the case, philosophical opinions, on which the differences between these two parties were founded, were not of sufficient strength to determine for any length of time the political and religious bias of either school. The Realists were chiefly supported by the Dominicans, the Nominalists by the Franciscans; and there is always a more gentle expression beaming in the eyes of the followers of the seraphic Doctor, particularly if contrasted with the stern frown of the Dominican. Ockam himself was a Franciscan, and those who thought with him were called _doctores renovatores_ and _sophistæ._ Suddenly, however, the tables were turned. At Oxford, the Realists, in following out their principles in a more independent spirit, had arrived at results dangerous to the peace of the Church. As philosophers, they began to carry out the doctrines of Plato in good earnest; as reformers, they looked wistfully to the early centuries of the Christian Church. The same liberal and independent spirit reached from Oxford to Prague, and the expulsion of the German nation from that university may be traced to the same movement. The Realists were at that time no longer in the good odor of orthodoxy; and, at the Council of Constanz, the Nominalists, such as Joh. Gerson and Petrus de Alliaco, gained triumphs which seemed for a time to make them the arbiters of public opinion in Germany, and to give them the means of securing the Church against the attacks of Huss on one side, and against the more dangerous encroachments of the Pope and the monks on the other. This triumph, however, was of short duration. All the rights which the Germans seemed to have conquered at the Councils of Constanz and Basle were sacrificed by their own Emperor. No one dared to say again what Gregory von Heimburg had said to the Italian clergy,—“Quid fines alienos invaditis? quid falcem vestram in messem alienam extenditis?” Under Æneas Sylvius, the power of the Pope in Germany was as absolute as ever. The Nominalist party lost all the ground which it had gained before. It was looked upon with suspicion by Pope and Emperor. It was banished from courts and universities, and the disciples of the Realistic school began a complete crusade against the followers of Ockam.