[6] Thou art the star to which we turn our eyes,
Of monarchs all the last in whom our hope yet lies.
The public of that day overlooked the young poet's want of consistency; his enthusiasm was infectious, his melodious lyrical rhetoric irresistible. He was the first lyric poet who had taken men's hearts by storm since the days of Goethe and Schiller. From the Alps to the Baltic the young men sang: Reisst die Kreuze aus der Erden!
In the autumn of 1842 Herwegh took a tour through Germany, with a practical aim in view. The work which he had begun as a poet, he desired to carry on as a journalist, a political writer; his journey was undertaken for the purpose of securing contributors to a monthly magazine to be entitled Der deutsche Bote aus der Schweiz ("The German Messenger from Switzerland"); but it became a sort of triumphal progress; he was entertained at banquets in Cologne and Leipzig, and serenaded by the students of Jena; never before had such homage been paid to a German poet.
Towards the end of October he arrived in Berlin, where he could not expect to make as great a sensation, especially as he had followed the advice of his companion, Ruge, and refused the advances of a very unprosperous Radical association. But something happened which made far more impression on the public mind than any popular demonstration could have done—the king expressed a wish to make Herwegh's personal acquaintance.
So far the only public manifestation of Frederick William's æsthetic sympathies had been his patronage of Tieck and Rückert, both of whom he had invited to Berlin. Ludwig Tieck, now an old man, crippled with rheumatism, occasionally read aloud at Court and put plays on the stage; Friedrich Rückert was expected to assist in reorganising the study of Oriental languages at the University, but proved unfit for the task. Unprejudiced judgment in literary matters was certainly not traditional in the Hohenzollern family. There was only one possible precedent for the audience granted to Herwegh, and that was to be found in the present king's own private reply to the ode in which Platen conjured him to embrace the cause of unhappy Poland. In a cordial letter to the poet, Frederick William, then Crown Prince, expressed his hearty sympathy with the Poles and bewailed his inability to help. The ode addressed by Herwegh to the king implored him to put down clericalism; it was an agreeable surprise to find that this had given no offence.
The audience took place on the 19th of November 1842. Herwegh was very silent, depressed by the situation. The king was, as usual, eloquent and communicative. He is reported to have said: "You are the second enemy whom I have received this year; the first was M. Thiers (who had threatened war in 1840, because of the support given by the great powers to the Sultan in his quarrel with the Egyptian Pacha); but it gives me greater pleasure to see you. We have our vocations, you and I; mine is to be a king, yours to be a poet. I shall be faithful to mine, as I trust you will be to yours. Nothing is more abhorrent to me than vacillation; I esteem an Opposition which is actuated by real conviction (wenn sie nur gesinnungsvoll ist)." Referring to Herwegh's youth, he prophesied "a Damascus day" for him, concluding with the words: "Until then, let us be honourable enemies."
Such particulars of this meeting of king and poet as reached the ears of the public awakened feelings either of childish envy or childish indignation among the oppositionist writers of the day. It was considered that Herwegh ought (à la Marquis Posa) to have taken advantage of the opportunity to demand political liberty for Prussia.
A few days after the audience, Herwegh left Berlin. At Königsberg, where he was again entertained at a banquet, he was surprised to receive the news that his projected periodical, before its appearance, had been declared contraband in Prussia. It was a prohibition for which he might well have been prepared, for all books published abroad (his own poems included) were contraband, except those for which special licence had been granted. But already irritated by accusations of treason brought against him in one and another Radical newspaper, he was completely upset by this rebuff, and at once addressed an awkward, unmanly, would-be pathetic letter to the king.
He pleaded the king's promise of honourable enmity, a promise which he declared to be broken by this prohibition; he would not ask the king to revoke this edict, though it was hard for him to see the child of his Muse menaced while yet in its mother's womb, and hard to have to live in a state of constant warfare with the law of the country; not that the prohibition did him any harm, for he was fortunate enough to be at that moment preparing the fifth edition of his poems, also a prohibited book; but he felt impelled to address a last, honest, impassioned appeal to the king; an appeal which, though private, was not merely his own, but that of thousands, &c., &c.
The letter itself was stupid and indiscreet; its publication in a Leipzig newspaper a few weeks later was a piece of folly that avenged itself. In Stettin, Herwegh received orders to leave the country; policemen escorted him to the stage-coach, from which he was forbidden to alight in Halle. He had received a festive welcome in Prussia, but his leave-taking was of the coldest.