(1812-1882)
he author of 'Black Forest Village Stories' and 'On the Heights' stands out in honorable individuality among modern German novelists, even if the latest fashions in fiction make his work already a little antiquated. Auerbach's biography is one of industry rather than of incident. His birth was humble. His life was long. He wrote voluminously and was widely popular, to be half forgotten within a decade after his death. He may perhaps be reckoned the founder of a contemporary German school of tendenz novel writers; a school now so much diminished that Spielhagen--who, however, wears Auerbach's mantle with a difference--is its only survivor.
Of Jewish parentage, his birthplace being Nordstetten, Würtemberg (1812), Auerbach drifted from preparation for the synagogue toward law, philosophy, and literature. The study of Spinoza (whose works he translated) gave form to his convictions concerning human life. It led him to spend his literary talents on materials so various as the homely simplicity of peasant scenes and peasant souls, on the one hand, and on the other the popularization of a high social and ethical philosophy, specially inculcated through his larger fictions. His college education was obtained at Tübingen, Munich, and Heidelberg.
Necessity rather than ambition prompted him to write, and he wrote as long as he lived. A partial list of his works begins with a pseudonymous 'Life of Frederick the Great' (1834-36), and 'Das Judenthum und der Neuste Literatur' (The Jew Element in Recent Literature: 1836), and passes to the semi-biographic novel 'Spinoza' (1837), afterward supplemented with 'Ein Denkerleben' (A Thinker's Life), 'Dichter und Kaufman' (Poet and Merchant: 1839),--stories belonging to the 'Ghetto Series,' embodying Jewish and German life in the time of Moses Mendelssohn; the translation in five volumes of Spinoza's philosophy, with a critical biography, 1841; and in 1842 another work intended to popularize philosophy, 'Der Gebildete Bürger: ein Buch für den Denkenden Menschen' (The Clever Townsman: a Book for Thinking Men).
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
In 1843 came the first set of the famous 'Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten' (Black Forest Village Stories), followed by a second group in 1848. These won instant and wide favor, and were widely translated. They rank among the author's most pleasing and successful productions, stamped as they are with that truth which a writer like Auerbach, or a painter like Defregger or Schmidt, can express when sitting down to deal with the scenes and folk which from early youth have been photographed upon his heart and memory. In 1856 there followed in the same descriptive field his 'Barfüssele' (Little Barefoot), 'Joseph im Schnee' (Joseph in the Snow: 1861), and 'Edelweiss' (1861). His writings of this date--tales, sketches journalistic, political, and dramatic, and other papers--reveal Auerbach's varying moods or enthusiasms, chronicle his residence in different German or Austrian cities, and are comparatively insignificant among his forty or more volumes. Nor is much to be said of his first long fiction, 'Neues Leben' (New Life).
But with 'Auf der Höhe' (On the Heights), a philosophic romance of court life in the capital and the royal country seat of a considerable German kingdom (by no means merely imaginary), inwoven with a minute study of peasant life and character, Auerbach's popular reputation was established. His plan of making ethics the chief end of a novel was here exhibited at its best; he never again showed the same force of conception which got his imperfect literary art forgiven. Another long novel, not less doctrinaire in scope, but dealing with quite different materials and problems, 'Das Landhaus am Rhein' (The Villa on the Rhine), was issued in 1868; and was followed by 'Waldfried,' a long, patriotic, and on the whole inert, study of a German family from 1848 until the close of the Franco-Prussian War.
In spite of his untiring industry, Auerbach produced little more of consequence, though he wrote a new series of Black Forest sketches: 'Nach Dreissig Jahren' (After Thirty Years: 1876); 'Der Forstmeister' (The Head Forester: 1879); and 'Brigitta' (1880). The close of his life was much embittered by the growth of the anti-Semitic sentiment; and his residence in Germany was merely nominal. He died at Cannes, France, in 1882.
'On the Heights' is doubtless Auerbach's best representative. 'The Villa on the Rhine' is in a lower key, with less appealing types, and less attractive local color. Moreover, it is weighted with more philosophizing, and its movement is slower. In 'On the Heights' the emotional situations are strong. In spite of sentimentality, a true feeling animates its technique. The atmosphere of a German royal residence, as he reveals it, appears almost as heavy as the real thing. Auerbach's humor is leaden; he finds it necessary to explain his own attempts at it. But the peasant-nurse Walpurga, her husband Hansei, and the aged grandmother in the family, are admirable delineations. The heroine, Irma von Wildenort, is genuinely human. The story of her abrupt atonement for a lapse from her better self, the gradual process of her fantastic expiation and of her self-redemption,--through the deliberate sacrifice of all that belongs to her treacherous past,--her successful struggle into a high ethical life and knowledge of herself (the element which gives the book its force), offer much that is consistent, and appealing and elevating to the conscience.
Auerbach crowds material into the book, tangles up too many different skeins of plot, offers too many types to study and interests to follow, and betrays a want of perspective in its construction. But in spite of all its defects it is a novel that should not be forgotten. For reflective readers it will always hold a charm, and its latent strength is proved by its triumph over its own faults.
THE FIRST MASS
From "Ivo the Gentleman," in "Black Forest Village Stories"
One Saturday afternoon the busy sound of hammer and adze was heard on the green hill-top which served the good folks of Nordstetten as their open-air gathering-place. Valentine the carpenter, with his two sons, was making a scaffolding, designed to serve no less a purpose than that of an altar and a pulpit. Gregory, the son of Christian the tailor, was to officiate at his first mass and preach his first sermon.
Ivo, Valentine's youngest son, a child of six years of age, assisted his father with a mien which betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers as nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel, to carry the tools where they were wanted, or to rake the chips into a heap. Ivo obeyed all these directions with the zeal and devotion of a self-sacrificing patriot. Once, when he perched upon the end of a plank for the purpose of weighing it down, the motion of the saw shook his every limb, and made him laugh aloud in spite of himself; he would have fallen off but for the eagerness with which he held on to his position and endeavored to perform his task in the most workmanlike manner.
At last the scaffolding was finished. Lewis the saddler was ready to nail down the carpets and hanging. Ivo offered to help him too; but being gruffly repelled, he sat down upon his heap of chips, and looked at the mountains, behind which the sun was setting in a sea of fire. His father's whistle aroused him, and he ran to his side.
"Father," said Ivo, "I wish I was in Hochdorf."
"Why?"
"Because it's so near to heaven, and I should like to climb up once."
"You silly boy, it only seems as if heaven began there. From Hochdorf it is a long way to Stuttgart, and from there it is a long way to heaven yet.
"How long?"
"Well, you can't get there until you die."
Leading his little son with one hand, and carrying his tools in the other, Valentine passed through the village. Washing and scouring was going on everywhere, and chairs and tables stood before the houses,--for every family expected visitors for the great occasion of the morrow.
As Valentine passed Christian the tailor's, he held his hand to his cap, prepared to take it off if anybody should look out. But nobody did so: the place was silent as a cloister. Some farmers' wives were going in, carrying bowls covered with their aprons, while others passed out with empty bowls under their arms. They nodded to each other without speaking: they had brought wedding-presents for the young clergyman, who was to be married to his bride--the Church.
As the vesper-bell rang, Valentine released the hand of his son, who quickly folded his hands; Valentine also brought his hands together over his heavy tools and said an Ave.
Next morning a clear, bright day rose upon the village. Ivo was dressed by his mother betimes in a new jacket of striped Manchester cloth, with buttons which he took for silver, and a newly-washed pair of leathern breeches. He was to carry the crucifix. Gretchen, Ivo's eldest sister, took him by the hand and led him into the street, "so as to have room in the house." Having enjoined upon him by no means to go back, she returned hastily. Wherever he came he found the men standing in knots in the road. They were but half dressed for the festival, having no coats on, but displaying their dazzling white shirt-sleeves. Here and there women or girls were to be seen running from house to house without bodices, and with their hair half untied. Ivo thought it cruel in his sister to have pushed him out of the house as she had done. He would have been delighted to have appeared like the grown folks,--first in negligee, and then in full dress amid the tolling of bells and the clang of trumpets; but he did not dare to return, or even to sit down anywhere, for fear of spoiling his clothes. He went through the village almost on tiptoe. Wagon after wagon rumbled in, bringing farmers and farmers' wives from abroad; at the houses people welcomed them, and brought chairs to assist them in getting down. All the world looked as exultingly quiet and glad as a community preparing to receive a hero who had gone forth from their midst and was returning after a victory. From the church to the hill-top the road was strewn with flowers and grass, which sent forth aromatic odors. The squire was seen coming out of Christian the tailor's, and only covered his head when he found himself in the middle of the street. Soges had a new sword, brightly japanned and glittering in the sun.
The squire's wife soon followed, leading her daughter Barbara, who was but six years old, by the hand. Barbara was dressed in bridal array. She wore the veil and the wreath upon her head, and a beautiful gown. As an immaculate virgin, she was intended to represent the bride of the young clergyman, the Church.
At the first sound of the bell the people in shirt-sleeves disappeared as if by magic. They retired to their houses to finish their toilet: Ivo went on to the church.
Amid the ringing of all the bells, the procession at last issued from the church-door. The pennons waved, the band of music brought from Horb struck up, and the audible prayers of the men and women mingled with the sound. Ivo, with the schoolmaster at his side, took the lead, carrying the crucifix. On the hill the altar was finely decorated; the chalices and the lamps and the spangled dresses of the saints flashed in the sun, and the throng of worshipers covered the common and the adjoining fields as far as the eye could reach. Ivo hardly took courage to look at the "gentleman," meaning the young clergyman, who, in his gold-laced robe, and bare head crowned with a golden wreath, ascended the steps of the altar with pale and sober mien, bowing low as the music swelled, and folding his small white hands upon his breast. The squire's Barbara, who carried a burning taper wreathed with rosemary, had gone before him and took her stand at the side of the altar. The mass began; and at the tinkling of the bell all fell upon their faces, and not a sound would have been heard, had not a flight of pigeons passed directly over the altar with that fluttering and chirping noise which always accompanies their motion through the air. For all the world Ivo would not have looked up just then; for he knew that the Holy Ghost was descending, to effect the mysterious transubstantiation of the wine into blood and the bread into flesh, and that no mortal eye can look upon Him without being struck with blindness.
The chaplain of Horb now entered the pulpit, and solemnly addressed the "permitiant."
Then the latter took his place. Ivo sat near by, on a stool; with his right arm resting on his knee, and his chin upon his hand, he listened attentively. He understood little of the sermon; but his eyes hung upon the preacher's lips, and his mind followed his intentions if not his thoughts.
When the procession returned to the church amid the renewed peal of the bells and triumphant strains of music, Ivo clasped the crucifix firmly with both his hands; he felt as if new strength had been given him to carry his God before him.
As the crowd dispersed, every one spoke in raptures of the "gentleman" and of the happiness of the parents of such a son. Christian the tailor and his wife came down the covered stairs of the church-hill in superior bliss. Ordinarily they attracted little attention in the village; but on this occasion all crowded around them with the greatest reverence, to present their congratulations.
The young clergyman's mother returned thanks with tearful eyes; she could scarcely speak for joyous weeping. Ivo heard his cousin, who had come over from Rexingen, say that Gregory's parents were now obliged to address their son with the formal pronoun "they," by which strangers and great personages are spoken to, instead of the simple "thee and thou," by which German villagers converse with each other.
"Is that so, mother?" he asked.
"Of course," was the answer: "he's more than other folks now."
With all their enthusiasm, the good people did not forget the pecuniary advantage gained by Christian the tailor. It was said that he need take no further trouble all his life. Cordele, Gregory's sister, was to be her brother's housekeeper, and her brother was a fortune to his family and an honor to all the village.
Translation of Charles Goepp.
The following passages from "On the Heights" are reprinted by consent of Henry Holt & Co., holders of the copyright of the translation.
THE PEASANT-NURSE AND THE PRINCE
"There, my boy! Now you've seen the sun. May you see it for seven and seventy years to come, and when they've run their course, may the Lord grant you a new lease of life. Last night they lit millions of lamps for your sake. But they were nothing to the sun up in heaven, which the Lord himself lighted for you this very morning. Be a good boy, always, so that you may deserve to have the sun shine on you. Yes, now the angel's whispering to you. Laugh while you sleep! That's right. There's one angel belongs to you on earth, and that's your mother! And you're mine, too! You're mine, indeed!"
Thus spake Walpurga, the nurse, her voice soft, yet full of emotion, while she gazed into the face of the child that lay in her lap. Her soul was already swayed by that mysterious bond of affection which never fails to develop itself in the heart of the foster-mother. It is a noble trait in human nature, that we love those on whom we can confer a kindness. Their whole life gradually becomes interwoven with our own.
Walpurga became oblivious of herself and of all that was dear to her in the cottage by the lake. She was now needed here, where a young life had been assigned to her loving-charge.
She looked up at Mademoiselle Kramer, with beaming eyes, and met a joyful glance in return.
"It seems to me," said Walpurga, "that a palace is just like a church. One has only good and pious thoughts here; and all the people are so kind and frank."
Mademoiselle Kramer suddenly smiled and replied:--
"My dear child--"
"Don't call me 'child'! I'm not a child! I'm a mother!"
"But here, in the great world, you are only a child. A court is a strange place. Some go hunting, others go fishing; one builds, another paints; one studies a rôle, another a piece of music; a dancer learns a new step, an author writes a new book. Every one in the land is doing something--cooking or baking, drilling or practicing, writing, painting, or dancing--simply in order that the king and queen may be entertained."
"I understand you," said Walpurga; and Mademoiselle Kramer continued:--
"My family has been in the service of the court for sixteen generations;"--six would have been the right number, but sixteen sounded so much better;--"my father is the governor of the summer palace, and I was born there. I know all about the court, and can teach you a great deal."
"And I'll be glad to learn," interposed Walpurga.