Enough, enough! we would never have done, were we to say all that could be said about such a mind. Dare we now really claim his creations, which breathe the highest humanity, as specially German? I think this will be granted us when we add to it the consideration that our greatest poets and thinkers have, in like manner; struck root firmly in their nationality, whence they have grown up—away, beyond—into those regions from which their glance embraced but one nobly striving human family.
It has been often declared that we, for long, felt and recognised our national unity only through the works of our poets, artists, and philosophers; but it has never been fully recognised that it was our first tone-poets in particular, who caused the essential German character to be appreciated by other nations. There are, perhaps, no two German names which can rejoice in a popularity—widely diffused in the most dissimilar nations—equal to that of Mozart and Beethoven. And Haydn, and Weber, and Schubert, and Mendelssohn! what a propaganda have they made for the Fatherland! That they speak a universal language does not prevent their uttering in it the best which we possess as Germans.
Nevertheless, as men are constituted, it is not to be denied that what enchants does not on that account overawe them; they esteem the beautiful, they respect only force and strength, even should these work destroyingly.
Well, then! Germany has now shown what she can do in this way; she will bloom afresh, and follow out her high aims in every direction. The consideration which we could long since have claimed as a people, will then be freely accorded to the German state.
As a musician, I can wish for the nation nothing better than that it should resemble a Beethoven symphony,—full of poetry and power; indivisible, yet many-sided; rich in thought and symmetrical in form; exalted and mighty!
And for the Beethoven symphonies I could wish directors and executants like those of whom the world's history will speak when considering the nineteenth century. But History, if at all true to her task, must also preserve the name of the man who, nearly seventy years ago, created the Eroica,—an achievement in the intellectual life which may place itself boldly by the side of every battle which has left invigorating and formative traces on the destiny of mankind.
Ferdinand Hiller.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This Essay also appeared in Germany in the Salon.
