Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

by Georg Brandes

The first thing that impressed me was Hamburg, and by that I mean the European views prevalent there. At that time, doubtless mainly for national reasons, Denmark hated Hamburg. Different Danish authors had recently written about the town, and in as depreciatory a strain as they could. The description of one amounted to an assertion that in Hamburg people only talked of two things, money and women; that of another commenced: "Of all the places I have ever seen in my life, Hamburg is the most hideous."

The situation of the town could not be compared with that of Copenhagen, but the Alster quarter was attractive, the architecture and the street life not uninteresting. What decided me, however, was not the externals of the town, but the spirit I noticed pervading the conversation. The idea underlying things was that a young man must first and foremost learn to keep himself well and comfortably; if he could not do this in Hamburg, then as soon as possible he must set off to some place across the sea, to Rio, or New York, to the Argentine, or Cape Colony, and there make his way and earn a fortune. The sons of the families I was invited to visit, or heard talked about, had long been away; in the houses I went to, the head of the family had seen other parts of the world. The contrast with Copenhagen was obvious; there the young sons of the middle classes were a burden on their families sometimes until they were thirty, had no enterprise, no money of their own to dispose of, were often glued, as it were, to the one town, where there was no promotion to look forward to and no wide prospect of any sort.

It was a long time since I had been so much struck by anything as by an expression that a Hamburg lady, who had been to Copenhagen and had stayed there some time, used about the young Danish men, namely, that they had l'apparence chétive. I tried to persuade her that life in Copenhagen had only accidentally appeared so wretched to her; but I did not convince her in the least. She demonstrated to me, by numerous examples, to what an extent enterprise was lacking in Denmark, and I was obliged to restrict myself to explaining that the tremendous pressure of political pettiness and weakness had brought a general slackness with it, without people feeling or suspecting it, and had robbed nearly every one of daring and success. The result of the conversation was that Denmark was shown to me in a fresh light.

A Hamburg merchant who had lived for a long time in Mexico invited me to dinner, and at his house I had the same impression of apparent happiness, comfort, enterprise and wide outlook, in contrast to the cares and the narrowness at home, where only the few had travelled far or collected material which might by comparison offer new points of view and give one a comprehensive experience of life. My psychological education in Danish literature, with its idolising of "thoroughness" had imprinted on my mind that whoever thoroughly understood how to observe a man, woman and child in a Copenhagen backyard had quite sufficient material whence to brew a knowledge of human nature. It now dawned upon me that comparative observation of a Mexican and a North German family, together with their opinions and prejudices, might nevertheless considerably advance one's knowledge of human nature, should such comparisons constantly obtrude themselves upon one.

The same man let fall an observation which set me thinking. When the conversation turned upon the strained relations between France and Prussia since the battle of Königgratz, and I expressed myself confident that, in the event of a war, France would be victorious, as she generally was victorious everywhere, he expressed well-supported doubts. Prussia was a comparatively young state, extremely well organised and carefully prepared for war; antiquated routine held great sway in the French army; the Emperor himself, the esteem in which he was held, and his management were on the down grade. These were words that I had never heard in Denmark. The possibility of France being defeated in a war with Prussia was not even entertained there. This merchant showed me an original photograph of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian, taken on the spot a moment before the word to fire was given, and a second taken immediately afterwards. The calm bearing of the Emperor and the two generals compelled admiration. This was the first time I had seen photography taken into the service of history.

In the Hamburg Zoological Gardens I was fascinated by the aquarium, with its multitudes of aquatic animals and fish. There, for the first time in my life, I saw an elephant, and did not tire of gazing at the mighty beast. I was struck by the strange caprice with which the great Being we call Nature goes to work, or, more correctly, by the contrast between the human point of view and Nature's mode of operations. To us, the elephant's trunk was burlesque, its walk risibly clumsy; the eagle and the kite seemed to us, as they sat, to have a severe appearance and a haughty glance; the apes, picking lice from one another and eating the vermin, were, to our eyes, contemptible and ridiculous at the same time; but Nature took everything equally seriously, neither sought nor avoided beauty, and to her one being was not more central than another. That must be deemed Nature's central point which is equidistant from the lowest and from the highest being; it was not impossible, for instance, that the harefish, a great, thick, odd-looking creature, was the real centre of terrestrial existence, in the same way as our celestial sphere has its centre, through which a line reaches the pole of the zodiac in the constellation of the Dragon. And I smiled as I thought of R. Nielsen and his pupils always speaking as if they stood on the most intimate footing with the "central point" of existence, and pouring contempt on others who, it was to be supposed, could not approach it.

I was very unfavourably impressed in Hamburg by German drama and German dramatic art.

At the town theatre, Hebbel's Judith was being performed, with Clara Ziegler in the leading part. At that time this lady enjoyed a considerable reputation in Germany, and was, too, a tall, splendid- looking female, with a powerful voice, a good mimic, and all the rest of it, but a mere word-machine. The acting showed up the want of taste in the piece. Holofernes weltered knee-deep in gore and bragged incessantly; Judith fell in love with his "virility," and when he had made her "the guardian of his slumbers" murdered him, from a long disremembered loyalty to the God of Israel.

At the Thalia Theatre, Raupach's The School of Life was being produced, a lot of silly stuff, the theme of it, for that matter, allied to the one dealt with later by Drachmann in Once upon a Time. A Princess is hard-hearted and capricious. To punish her, the King, her father, shuts a man into her bedroom, makes a feigned accusation against her, and actually drives her out of the castle. She becomes a waiting- maid, and passes through various stages of civil life. The King of Navarra, whose suit she had haughtily rejected, disguised as a goldsmith, marries her, then arrays himself in silks and velvets, to tempt her to infidelity. When she refuses, he allows every possible injustice to be heaped upon her, to try her, makes her believe that the King, on a false accusation, has had her husband's eyes put out, and then himself goes about with a bandage before his eyes, and lets her beg. She believes everything and agrees to everything, until at last, arrived at honour and glory, she learns that it has all been only play- acting, trial, and education.

This nonsense was exactly on a par with taste in Germany at the time, which was undeniably considerably below the level of that in France and Denmark, and it was acted by a group of actors, some very competent, at the chief theatre of Hamburg. Slowly though business life pulsated in Denmark, we were superior to Germany in artistic perception.