Richard Lepsius, a biography

by Georg Ebers

Then, while in bed, he himself corrected the last pages of his “Linear Measures of the Ancients,” and with the same careful, indeed painful, accuracy which had distinguished his work in the days of health. He also directed to what persons this book should be sent. Like a true German scholar, Lepsius died in the midst of his labors. During the last three days he for the first time occasionally lost his clearness of thought, in consequence of bodily exhaustion, as for the five previous weeks he had been able to take very little nourishment. His end was painless, and his failing eyes looked round upon his children, to whom it was granted to stand beside his deathbed. At the end he tried to speak to his eldest son, but the brothers and sisters could only distinguish the name “Richard.”

Lepsius drew his last breath on the tenth of July, at nine o’clock in the morning. With entire interest and consciousness he, together with all his children, had eight days before received the holy sacrament from the faithful pastor of the family, the chief Court Chaplain, Kögel. The words spoken beside the coffin of the deceased by that excellent divine were a model of what a funeral discourse should be, and proved that it had been given to Kögel to recognize fully those great qualities of mind and heart which had ennobled the departed.

RICHARD LEPSIUS AS A MAN.

The reader of this biography, who has followed with us the development and the subsequent life of Richard Lepsius, will think that he has learned in him to know a character whose estimable and tranquil nature needs no closer inspection. He will consider it a simple one, and therefore of little interest. For although he has followed the life of our hero step by step from his school days to the climax of fame, from childhood to an advanced old age, yet he has at no time observed in it any noticeable alteration. The reader has seen no great blows of destiny interrupt the earthly existence of our friend, until a short time before his death. Where obstacles have appeared in his path they have been seen to sink of themselves, as if to be the more readily surmounted. For this man Fortune seemed to have changed her nature, fickleness to have been transformed to fidelity, and treachery to truth. But a perfectly happy life is like summer at the North Pole where there is no night; always bright, and without timidity or terror. Yet, though strange, it is monotonous, and therefore the longer the day endures the more destitute is it of charm.

The great natural talents, and the fullness of years granted to this man, were used by him wisely and prudently. He left school and university with the highest testimonials, and always fulfilled his duty with the same active zeal and conscientious earnestness, whether as a young scholar in Paris, Rome and London, as the prudent chief of a great expedition which was crowned with rare success, as the famous master and leader of a progressive science, as a teacher at the university, as the director of a museum, or as chief librarian. Every honor which it was possible for him to attain fell to his lot, and he conducted great undertakings to their conclusion with circumspection, energy and discernment. From his youth up his superior character, as well as his personal appearance and bearing, secured him esteem and consideration, and where it was necessary for him to lead he commanded wisely, justly, vigorously and discreetly.

When he was six and thirty years old he found an admirable consort, who loved him with all the warmth of an ardent young heart, and never ceased to recognize his superiority with happy pride and to honor his great qualities. In his own home his wife ruled freely, and yet he was ever the absolute master. Four fine sons promised to maintain the honor of his famous name, and his beloved daughters endowed him with charming grandchildren. When he closed his eyes he might say that his work, and with it his fame, would endure as long as the science to which he had rendered such great services. He presented his complete works to his native town, Naumburg, that all which he had accomplished might be preserved at his birthplace in the Bibliotheca Lepsiana.

It is true that the story of this life shows few shadows amid many lights, and he whom it presents to us underwent no marked change during his years of maturity. Nevertheless, he had not, from childhood up, been this unimpassioned and prudent master of himself, who knew how to control every quick impulse, that he might follow or abandon it as his searching mind decided on its worth or worthlessness. No! for him, too, there must have been a time when an honest man could not have affirmed as he did to his wife in his sixtieth year, that he never had anything to repent, because he always did that which he thought right.

He was considered by many to be essentially a cold man of intellect, in whom feeling was overshadowed by the fully developed and carefully polished mind. This opinion sprang from his dispassionate prudence, the well-bred reserve by which he knew how to hide the weaker parts of his nature, the measured dignity with which he met strangers, and the quiet and thoughtful composure which came from his habit of always holding a dominating position and directing his own affairs as well as those of others. To these were added the imposing dignity of his figure, the clear symmetrical outlines of his fine features, the natural grace of his movements, the finished tones of his speech, and especially the earnest and utterly intolerant severity with which he opposed all falsehood and injustice wherever he encountered them. It was impossible to forget, too, with what energy, wherever he held command, he sought to reduce all that was disorderly to order, or with what independence he, when an attempt was made to depreciate his well won right to the directorship of the Museum,[102] unhesitatingly declared that he would resign his professorship and leave Berlin if his well-founded claims were not accorded to him.

Yet in spite of all this those who would deny him warmth of soul are wrong, indeed we can maintain this confidently, although even to his wife the qualities of her husband’s intellect were always more apparent than those of his heart.

Let us hear the judgment which she pronounced on him; not during the first ten years of marriage, when, overflowing with love, she found in him something new to admire every day, but after she had shared the pleasures and pains of life with him for nearly a quarter of a century, and had come to feel with bitterness that she would never succeed in leading him to the same conception of a strictly Christian and contrite life which she had herself arrived at many years before.