[6] "Und mit Zehn Ellen Hanf wäre der Welt Friede, Glück, und Ruhe zu geben."
[7] "Das einzige Volk im Norden, das seit dreihundert Jahren nie aufgehört sich für die Freiheit zu erheben, ist das polnische, und es blieb katholisch."
The one nation of the North that for three hundred years has not ceased to make a stand for liberty, is Poland, and Poland remained Catholic.
[8] Heine: Sämmtliche Werke, xii. 153.
[XI]
HEINE
For Heinrich Heine also, as already observed, the present moment in the development of the new German Empire is an unfavourable one. He is reproached with so much, that it is difficult to summarise. First there is his infatuation for France, and his supposed or real frivolity; then his un-German extraction and wit, his sentimentality, his foppery, his wantonness; and lastly, the defiant manner in which he parades his irreligion. New Germany is indifferent in religious matters, but tacitly so, and in the matter of morals it is thoroughly disciplined. In the Germany of to-day the highest virtues, truthfulness, independence, high spirit, and sensitiveness, are of much less account than dutifulness, correctness, social discipline, military smartness—Schneidigkeit, as it is called. In Heine's time the opposite was the case. No value was put on discipline. Piety counted for more than religion, humanity for more than patriotism. The best men of those days did not regard patriotism as an unqualified virtue; nor did they consider that justice ceased to be a virtue when shown to another nation.
To an abstract Radical bent of mind there was added in Heine's case the hatred of Prussia, whose future he did not foresee, whose strength he did not realize—that strength of which Carlyle gives us the best idea in his delineation of the father of Frederick the Great, a strength which lay in the ability, by means of sober severity, to conquer chaos, crush all foolish opposition, and rule. Heine's was no undefined dislike, it was the Rhinelander's mortal enmity to Prussia. Read his lines to the Prussian eagle:
"Du hässlicher Vogel! wirst du einst,
Mir in die Hände fallen,
So rupfe ich dir die Federn aus
Und haue dir ab die Krallen.
Du sollst mir dann in luft'ger Höh'
Auf einer Stange sitzen
Und ich rufe zum lustigen Schiessen herbei
Die rheinischen Bogenschützen."[1]