Behind this indistinct picture lay a far more definitely outlined reality. The youthful life of the hero corresponded pretty accurately, as Friedrich Schlegel's letters show, with that of the author. In those days Berlin had not yet become pious, but was, according to the evidence of contemporaries, a species of Venusberg, which none approached with impunity. The example of the throne sanctioned every species of moral licence. Enthusiasm for art and literature superseded the official morality which a short time before had been so powerful, but from which men were rapidly emancipating themselves.
In the autumn of 1799, the year in which Lucinde was published, Friedrich Schlegel wrote to Schleiermacher: "People here have been behaving so outrageously that Schelling has had a fresh attack of his old enthusiasm for irreligion, in which I support him with all my might. He has composed an epicurean confession of faith in the Hans Sachs-Goethe style." This was Der Widerporst.
"Kann es fürwahr nicht länger ertragen,
Muss wieder einmal um mich schlagen,
Wieder mich rühren mit allen Sinnen,
So mir dachten zu entrinnen
Von den hohen, überirdischen Lehren,
Dazu sie mich wollten mit Gewalt bekehren
Darum, so will auch ich bekennen
Wie ich in mir es fühle brennen,
Wie mir's in allen Adern schwillt,
Mein Wort so viel wie anderes gilt,
Da ich in bös' und guten Stunden
Mich habe gar trefflich befunden,
Seit ich gekommen in's Klare,
Die Materie sei das einzig Wahre.
Halte nichts vom Unsichtbaren,
Halt' mich allein am Offenbaren,
Was ich kann riechen, schmecken, fühlen,
Mit allen Sinnen drinnen wühlen.
Mein einzig' Religion ist die,
Dass ich liebe ein schönes Knie,
Volle Brust und schlanke Hüften,
Dazu Blumen mit süssen Düften,
Aller Lust volle Nährung,
Aller Liebe süsse Gewährung.
D'rum, sollt's eine Religion noch geben
(Ob ich gleich kann ohne solche leben),
Könnte mir vor den andern allen
Nur die katholische gefallen,
Wie sie war in den alten Zeiten,
Da es gab weder Zanken noch Streiten,
Waren alle ein Mus und Kuchen,
Thäten's nicht in der Ferne suchen,
Thäten nicht nach dem Himmel gaffen,
Hatten von Gott'nen lebend'gen Affen,
Hielten die Erde für's Centrum der Welt,
Zum Centrum der Erde Rom bestellt,
Darin der Statthalter residirt
Und der Welttheile Scepter führt,
Und lebten die Laien und die Pfaffen
Zusammen wie im Land der Schlaraffen,
Dazu sie im hohen Himmelhaus
Selber lebten in Saus und Braus,
War ein täglich Hochzeithalten
Zwischen der Jungfrau und dem Alten."[1]
Such a poem from such a hand is a genuine proof of the spirit of the times; and it is instructive to observe that when Wilhelm Schlegel (acting upon Goethe's advice) refuses to publish the poem in the Athenæum, Novalis, against whom it was especially directed, writes: "I cannot understand why Der Widerporst should not be printed. Is it on account of its atheism? Just think of Die Götter Griechenlands!"
The fashions were revolutionary—uncovered bosoms, orientally flowing garments. The tone of the most notable young women of the day was excessively free. No one was more talked of for her beauty at this time than Pauline Wiesel. She was the wife of a highly intellectual man, whose scepticism and satirical, cynical wit made a deep and disturbing impression upon young Tieck (he was the model for Abdallah and William Lovell); and she was one of Prince Louis Ferdinand's many mistresses. The attachment of the dashing young prince, in this case a real passion, still glows in his letters. A contemporary wrote of her: "I look upon her in the light of a phenomenon of Greek mythology." Alexander von Humboldt walked more than thirty miles to see her. It is characteristic of the times that the connection by which Pauline Wiesel compromised herself roused no disapprobation among her more advanced women friends. The irreproachable Rahel, for example, has not a word of blame for it; one might almost imagine that she envied Pauline. As a young girl she writes despondently: "Every means, every possible preparation for living, and yet one must never live; I never shall, and those who dare to do so have the wretched world, the whole world, against them."
The original of Lucinde, however, was certainly superior to her portrait, a woman of an altogether nobler type. She belonged to Rahel's circle, that group of clever young Jewesses who then represented the noblest, freest intellectual life of Berlin—a circle historically important from the fact that it was the only one in which as yet Goethe's fame was really established and true homage paid him.[2] The lady in question was Moses Mendelssohn's clever, self-reliant daughter, Dorothea, who, to please her parents, had bestowed her hand upon the well-known banker, Veit. It was not by beauty but by her wit and her keen intellectuality that she captivated Friedrich Schlegel. He was at the time twenty-five years of age, she thirty-two. There was nothing sensuous or frivolous in either her appearance or manner; she had large piercing eyes and a masculine severity of expression. In his letters to his brother Wilhelm, Friedrich Schlegel praises "her sterling worth." "She is," he says, "very straightforward, and cares for nothing but love, music, wit, and philosophy." In 1789 Dorothea was divorced from her husband and followed Schlegel to Jena. The latter writes at this time: "It has never been our intention to bind ourselves to each other by any marriage contract, though I have long considered it impossible that anything but death should part us. The calculation and adjustment of present and future is antipathetic to me, yet if the detested ceremony were the necessary condition of inseparableness, I should act according to the requirement of the moment and sacrifice my most cherished opinions."
In the arranging of their relations, none of their intimates helped Friedrich and Dorothea more than their clerical friend, Schleiermacher. On none of Schlegel's friends had Lucinde had such a powerful effect. Schleiermacher was at this time chaplain of the Charité Church in Berlin. He had long followed Friedrich's emancipatory endeavours with warm sympathy, and even admiration. In his essay On Diotima, as well as in his harsh criticism of Schiller's Würde der Frauen, Friedrich had attacked the traditional conception of woman's position in society. He had held up to contempt the ordinary marriage, in which the wedded pair "live together with a feeling of mutual contempt, he seeing in her only her sex, she in him his social position, and both in their children their own production and property." What he desired was the moral and intellectual emancipation of women. Intellect and culture, combined with enthusiasm, were the qualities which in his eyes made a woman lovable. The ordinary ideal of womanliness he scorned. He writes with bitterness of the stupidity and criminality of the men who demand ignorance and innocence in women, thereby compelling them to be prudish. Prudery is false pretence of innocence. True innocence in woman he maintains to be perfectly compatible with intellectual culture. It exists wherever there is religion, i.e. capacity for enthusiasm. The idea that noble, enlightened free-thought is less becoming in the case of women than of men is only one of the many generally accepted platitudes set in circulation by Rousseau. "The thraldom of woman" is one of the curses of humanity. His highest desire as an author was, as he naively puts it, "to found a system of morality" (eine Moral zu stiften). He calls opposition to positive law and conventional ideas of right, "the first moral impulse" felt by man.
In his Vernunftkatechismus für edle Frauen ("Catechism of Reason for Noble-minded Women"), a fragment which appeared in the Athenæum, Schleiermacher writes in exactly the same strain, calling upon women to free themselves from the bonds of their sex. Nay, incredible as it may sound, it is quite possible (as Haym has proved) that the frequently quoted saying of Friedrich Schlegel, that there is nothing of serious importance to be urged against a marriage à quatre, really emanated from Schleiermacher. It is levelled at the many degrading and unreal marriages, at the "unsuccessful attempts at marriage," which the State in its foolishness makes binding, and which prevent the possibility of a true marriage. The writer of the fragment in which the saying occurs observes that most marriages are only preparatory and distant approximations to the true marriage; and Schleiermacher, in his Letters, writes that many attempts are necessary, and that "if four or five couples were taken together, really good marriages might result, provided they were allowed to exchange."
The underlying reason for the warm personal interest taken by Schleiermacher in Friedrich and Dorothea is, no doubt, to be found in his own position and circumstances at that time. A devoted attachment existed between him and Eleonore Grunow, the childless and most unhappy wife of a Berlin clergyman.
It seemed to Schleiermacher that the popular indignation roused by Lucinde was largely compounded of philistine and Pharisaical ignorance. The very people who abused it were revelling in Wieland's and Crébillon's immoral tales. "It reminds me," he says, "of the trials for witchcraft, where malice formulated the charge, and pious stupidity carried out the sentence." But what especially led to his ardent championship of the persecuted pair was, he tells us himself, the fact that most of those who complained loudly of offended morality were simply seeking a pretext for a private personal attack on Schlegel.