In 'The New Heloise' it is the lady who is the aristocrat. Julie d'Etange, the daughter of a baron, wishes to marry the untitled St. Preux, to whom in a transport of passion she has yielded up her honor. But the Baron d'Etange is an implacable stickler for rank and she is a dutiful daughter; whence her marriage to the elderly infidel, Wolmar, and the well-known moral ending of the novel. The thought that concerns us here is best expressed by the enlightened English peer, Lord B., who thus expostulates with Baron d'Etange:
Let us judge of the past by the present; for two or three citizens who win distinction by honest means, a thousand knaves every day get their families ennobled. But to what end serves that nobility of which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the robberies and infamy of their ancestor? There are, I confess, a great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are always twenty to one against a gentleman that he is descended from a scoundrel…. In what consists then the honor of that nobility of which you are so proud? How does it affect the glory of one's country or the good of mankind? A mortal enemy to liberty and the laws, what did it ever produce, in the most of those countries where it has flourished, but the power of tyranny and the oppression of the people? Will you presume to boast, in a republic, of a rank that Is destructive to virtue and humanity? Of a rank that makes its boast of slavery and wherein men blush to be men?[51]
This is of course the language of passion and prejudice (it would not else be Rousseau), but there was enough of truth in it, as in the case of Rousseau's other fervors, to rouse the revolutionary spirit. German literature began to teem with novels and plays which exhibit the sufferings of some untitled hero or heroine at the hands of a vicious aristocracy. The theme is touched upon in 'Werther', but without becoming an Important issue. It appears in Wagner's 'Infanticide', wherein a butcher's daughter, Evchen Humbrecht, is violated by a titled officer, runs away from home in her shame, kills her child and is finally found by the repentant author of her disgrace. We meet it again in Lenz's 'Private Tutor', the tragedy of a German St. Preux who falls in love with his titled pupil and dishonors her, with the result that she too runs away from home and tries to commit suicide, while her lover in his chagrin emasculates himself. These are grotesque tragedies, not devoid of literary power, but devoid of high sentiment and saturated with a woeful vulgarity. We cannot wonder that the high-minded Schiller should have condemned Wagner's malodorous play as a mediocre performance. His incentive came rather from Gemmingen's 'Head of the House', which in turn carries us back to Diderot.
In the hands of Diderot, democrat, moralist and apostle of the genre honnête, it was natural that the drama of class conflict should end happily. In his 'Father of the Family', written in 1758 and first played in 1761, the contrast of high and low is vividly portrayed, but without bitterness. The aristocratic St. Albin d'Orbisson falls in love with a poor girl from the country who lives in an attic and earns her own living. Sophie's beauty and virtue make a man of him and he wishes to marry her, but is opposed by his kind-hearted, querulous father, who argues the case with him at great length, confronting passion with prudential common-sense. St. Albin is also opposed by his rich uncle, the Commandeur, from whom he has prospects. The uncle plots to get Sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a counter-intrigue. Stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it appears that Sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of the purse-proud Commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. With the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation to Diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here directly concerned. What is important to observe is that, as a contribution to the burning social question, its point is blunted by the fact that its heroine is not what she seems to be. The whole matter reduces to a brief misunderstanding in an aristocratic family. Villainy is thwarted, true love comes into its own, and the foundations of society remain as they were.
Diderot's 'Father of the Family' enjoyed a short vogue in France and Italy and met with considerable favor in Germany. Most noteworthy among minor German plays that were influenced by it is Gemmingen's 'Head of the House'. Gemmingen was himself an aristocrat, a baron by title, who was born in 1755. After studying law he settled in Mannheim, where he became deeply interested in the drama, so that in 1778 he was given the position of dramatist to the newly established 'national theater'. Two years later he brought out his 'Head of the House' with great success. The piece is a pendant of Diderot's, but by no means a slavish imitation.
Gemmingen's 'head of the house' is an upright German nobleman of the admirable sort, who returns home after a long absence to find the affairs of his family very much deranged. His eldest son, Karl, has fallen madly in love with Lotte Wehrmann, the daughter of an impecunious artist, gotten her with child, and promised to marry her when his father shall have returned and given his consent. The younger son, Ferdinand, an officer, has taken to gaming, lost heavily and has a duel on his hands. His son-in-law, Monheim, has become infatuated with a dazzling widow, Countess Amaldi, grown cold toward his wife Sophie, and the quarreling pair are eager for a divorce. The tangle is further complicated by the fact that Amaldi, an excellent match, is in love with Karl. The perplexed father sets at work with the tools of common sense and rational argument. He urges Karl to break with Lotte for his career's sake. The irresolute and dutiful Karl consents, saying nothing of Lotte's approaching motherhood, and the rumor of his intended marriage to the countess is spread abroad. When Lotte hears it she rushes to Amaldi and wildly demands her lover in the name of her unborn child. When the father hears the whole story he no longer thinks of rank but of honor. He bids Karl marry his true love and retire to the country, where, as overseer of a large estate, he will be less encumbered by a plebeian wife than in the career which had been planned for him. The magnanimous Amaldi furnishes the bride's dowry, the other domestic complications are easily adjusted and all ends happily.
Dramatically Gemmingen's play is rather tame, though its literary merit is considerable. He had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. His best scenes interest us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. His nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in Diderot. Next one may place the artist Wehrmann. Karl is a poor stick, Amaldi is rather colorless, and Lotte would be quite insipid but for her impending motherhood, on which everything is made to turn. Such as it was, however, the play excited the cordial admiration of Schiller, who read it soon after its appearance. Very likely it may have suggested to him the thought of trying his own hand upon a drama in the bourgeois sphere, but it was not until July, 1782,—just after he had finished reading Wagner's 'Infanticide',—that the plan of 'Louise Miller' began to take shape in his mind. Gemmingen's poor artist, Wehrmann, became the poor fiddler, Miller, and the daughter Lotte was rechristened Louise. The aristocratic lover, Gemmingen's Karl, was named Ferdinand von Walter, and Amaldi was converted into Lady Milford. One of Gemmingen's subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, Dromer, who goes about making compliments to everybody, reappears in Schiller's play as the perfumed tale-bearer and exquisite ladies' man, Chamberlain von Kalb. The places represented are three in number and the same in both plays. Here, however, the parallel ends. Instead of Gemmingen's high-minded paterfamilias we have the rascally President von Walter, who, with his tool Wurm, reminds one of Lessing's Prince and Marinelli. And what is much more important, the relation of the lovers is so portrayed that we get the pure poetry of passion, such as it is, without any tinge of grossness.
In its earliest phase Schiller's plan looked toward a telling tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic satire at the expense of 'high-born fools and scoundrels'. As he worked, the possibilities of his theme developed. An abstract enthusiasm for the rights of man was kindled by honest love of the common people, and by the lingering smart of a personal wrong, into a holy zeal of vengeance. President Walter was painted in colors which were taken largely from the political history and the chronique scandaleuse of the Württemberg court. As this court had its angel of light in soiled garments, Lady Milford was fitted out with the benevolent qualities of Franziska von Hohenheim; and as the portrait grew In firmness its author fell in love with it, like the young Goethe with his Adelheid. When he came to depict the jealousy of Ferdinand, he had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with the green-eyed monster. Thus the play was extracted from the book of life, as Schiller had been able to read it, and that accounts for its vitality. But in his details he is nowhere less original. Not only in the general conception of important characters, but in particular scenes, situations, motives, contrasts and forms of expression, we can see the influence of the literary tradition which he inherited.
To show the exact nature and the full extent of this indebtedness would be a tedious undertaking, which would require pages of quotation from works whose chief interest now is that they served as quarry for Schiller. Three or four illustrations will suffice. Our play begins with a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of Wagner's 'Infanticide'. In both there is a blustering father,—Lessing's Odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere,—discoursing with his silly wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping aristocratic company. In both the domestic thunderer expresses himself in rough, strong language, and is only made the more furious by his wife's efforts to allay his fears. In Wagner's next scene Magister Humbrecht comes to woo Evchen, just as Schiller's Wurm comes to woo Louise, and we hear that the girl's head has been turned by reading novels. Just so Louise, whose father can scarcely find words to express his detestation of the young baron's infernal, belletristic poison. When Wurm arrives at Miller's and asks for Louise, he is informed that she has just gone to church. 'Glad of that, glad of that', he replies, 'I shall have in her a pious Christian wife'. Here is a reminiscence of the scene in which Lessing's Count Appiani exclaims, on hearing that Emilia has just been at church: 'That is right; I shall have in you a pious wife'. The devout heroine was a hardly less hackneyed figure in the dramatic literature of the time than the blustering father of whom Goethe complained.[53] In Schiller's Louise we have the religious sentiment sublimated into something quite too seraphic for human nature's daily food. Her high-keyed sense of duty to God, her natural filial piety and her superstitious reverence for the social order, combine to produce in her a curious distraction which is the real source of the tragic conflict. She feels that her love is holy but that marriage would be sinful; and so she hesitates, responds to her lover's ardor with tremblings and solicitudes, knows not what to do, does the foolish thing and atones tragically for her weakness.
Not before Schiller's time had this conflict between love and filial duty been so powerfully depicted, but it is found in Wagner's 'Remorse after the Deed' (1775), wherein a coachman's daughter, Friederike Walz, is loved by the aristocratic Langen, who is opposed by his mother. Langen goes to his sweetheart, all courage and resolution. He is prepared, like Leisewitz's Julius, to defy his kin, renounce the lures of his rank and flee to the ends of the earth with 'Rikchen'. To which she replies: 'Langen, you are terrible. To marry with the curse of parents is to make one's whole posterity miserable'. So Louise replies to Ferdinand's similar entreaty: 'And be followed by your father's curse! A curse, thoughtless man, which even murderers never utter in vain, and which like a ghost would pursue us fugitives mercilessly from sea to sea.'