About 1790, this method of culture had attained so much value and importance, that these years might be called the industrious sixth-form period of the German people. Eagerly did they learn, and everywhere did active spontaneous labour take the place of the old mechanism. Philanthropically did the learned strive to create educational establishments for every class of the people, and to invent new methods of instruction by which the greatest results could be obtained from those who had least powers of learning. To instruct, to educate, and to raise people from a state of ignorance, was the general desire; not that this was useful to the nation in general, for the lower classes could not enter into the exalted feelings which gave to the literary such enjoyment and elevation of mind.
It is true they themselves felt an inward dissatisfaction. The facts of life which surrounded them were often in cutting contrast to their ideal requirements. When the peasant worked like a beast of burden, and the soldier ran the gauntlet before their windows, nothing seemed to remain to them but to shut themselves up in their studies, and to occupy their eyes and mind with times in which they were not wounded by such barbarities. For it had not yet been tried, what the union of men of similar views in a great association would accomplish, in bringing about changes in the State and every sphere of practical interest.
Thus, with all their philanthropy, there arose a quiet despondency even among the best. They had more soundness and strength of mind than their fathers, the source of their morality was purer, and they were more conscientious. But they were still private men. Interest in their State, in the highest affairs of their nation, had not yet been developed. They had learnt to perform their duties as men in a noble spirit, and they contrasted, sometimes hypercritically, the natural rights of men in a State with the condition under which they lived. They had become honourable and strictly moral men, and endeavoured to cast off everything mean with an anxiety which is really touching; but they were deficient in the power which is developed by the co-operation of men of like views, under the influence of great practical questions. The noblest of them were in danger, when they could not withdraw into themselves, of becoming victims rather than heroes, in the political and social struggle. This quality was very striking in the construction of their poetry. Almost all the characters which the greatest poets produced in their highest works of art were deficient in energy, in resolute courage, and political sagacity; even in the heroes of the drama with whom such characteristics were least compatible, there was a melancholy tendency, as in Galotti, Götz, and Egmont—even in Wallenstein and Faust. The same race of men who investigated with wonderful boldness and freedom the secret laws of their intellectual being, were as helpless and uncertain in the presence of realities, as a youth who first passes from the schoolroom among men.
A sentimentality of character, and the craving for great emotions on insignificant occasions, had not disappeared. But this ruling tendency of the eighteenth century, which has not been entirely cast off even in the present day, was restrained in 1790 by the worthier aims of intellectual life. Even sentimentality had had, since Pietism crept into life, its little history. First, the poor German soul had been strongly affected; it easily became desponding, and found enjoyment in observing the tears it shed. Afterwards the enjoyment of its feelings became more student-like and hearty.
When, in 1750, some jovial companions passed in the extra-post through a village, the inhabitants of which had planted the churchyard with roses, the contrast of these flowers of love and the graves so excited the imagination of these travellers, that they bought a bottle of wine, went to the churchyard, and, revelling in the comparison of roses and graves, drank up their wine.[[28]] But the student flavour of roughness which was evinced in this enjoyment, passed away when manners became more refined and life more thoughtful. When, in 1770, two brothers were travelling in the Rhine country, through a sunny valley among blooming fruit-trees, one clasped the hand of the other, in order, by the soft pressure of his, to express the pleasure he derived from his company; both looked at each other with tender emotion, blessed tears of quiet feeling rose in the eyes of both, and they embraced each other, or, as would then have been said, they blessed the country with the holy kiss of friendship.[[29]] When, about the same period, a society expected a dear friend—it must by the way be mentioned that it was a happy husband and father of a family—the feelings on this occasion also were far more manifold, and the self-contemplation with which they were enjoyed, was far greater than with us. The master of the house, with another guest, went to await the approaching carriage at the house door; the friend arrives and steps out of the carriage, deeply moved and somewhat confused. Meanwhile the amiable lady of the house, of whom in former days the new guest had been an admirer, also comes down the stairs. The new-comer has already inquired after her with some agitation, and seems extremely impatient to see her; now he catches sight of her and shrinks back with emotion, then turns aside, and at the same time throws his hat with vehemence behind him to the ground, and staggers towards her. All this has been accompanied with such an extraordinary expression of countenance, that the nerves of the bystanders are shaken. The lady of the house goes towards her friend with outspread arms; but he, instead of accepting her, seizes her hand and bends over it so as to conceal his face; the lady leans over him with a heavenly countenance, and says in a tone such as no Clairon or Dübois could vie with, "Oh, yes; it is you—you are still my dear friend!" The friend, roused by this touching voice, raises himself a little, looks into the weeping eyes of his friend, and then again lets his face sink down on her arm. None of the bystanders can refrain from tears; they flow down the cheeks of even the unconcerned narrator, he sobs, and is quite beside himself.[[30]] After this gushing feeling has somewhat subsided, they all feel inexpressibly happy, often press each other's hands, and declare these hours of companionship to be the most charming of their life. And those who thus comported themselves were men of well-balanced minds, who looked with contempt on the affectation of the weak, who wept about nothing and made a vocation of their tears and feelings, as did the hair-brained Leuchsenring.
But shortly after this, sentimental nature received a rude shock. Goethe had represented in Werther, the sorrowful fate of a youth who had perished in consequence of these moods; but had himself a far nobler and more sound conception of sentiment than existed in his contemporaries. His narrative was indeed a book for the moulding of finer natures, through which their sentimentality was turned towards the noble and poetic. Immense was the effect; tears flowed in streams; the Werther dress became a favourite costume with sentimental gentlemen, and Lotte the most renowned female character of that year. That same year, 1774, a number of tender souls at Wetzlar, men in high offices and ladies, agreed together to arrange a solemnity at the grave of the poor Jerusalem. They assembled in the evening, read "Werther," and sang the laments and songs on the dead. They wept profusely; at last, at midnight, the procession went to the churchyard. Every one was dressed in black, with a dark veil over the face, and a torch in the hand. Any one who met the procession considered it as a procession of devils. At the churchyard they formed a circle round the grave, and sang, as is reported, the song, "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen;" an orator made a eulogy on the dead, and said that suicide was permitted to love. Finally the grave was strewed with flowers.[[31]] The repetition of this was prevented by prosaic magistrates.
But the tragical conclusion of Goethe's narrative shocked men of sound understanding. It was no longer a question of jest with flowers and doves: it was convulsive earnest. When the respectable son of an official could arrive at such extravagance as suicide, there was an end of jest. Thus this same work gave rise to a reaction in stronger natures, and violent literary polemics, from which the Germans gradually learnt to regard with irony this phase of sentiment, yet without becoming entirely free from it.
For it was undoubtedly only a variation of the same fundamental tendency, when souls that had become weary of sighs and tears threw themselves into the sublime. Even the monstrous appeared admirable. To speak in hyperbolies—to express with the utmost strength the commonest things, to give the most insignificant action the air of being something extraordinary—became for a long time the fashionable folly of the literary circle. But even this exaggeration disappeared About 1790, the past was looked back upon with smiles, and the spirits of men were contented with the homely, modest style in which Lafontaine and Iffland produced emotion.
The growth of a child's mind at this period shall be here portrayed. It is a narrative of his early youth—not printed—left by a strong-minded man to his family. It contains nothing uncommon; it is only the unpretending account of the development of a boy by teaching and home, such as takes place in a thousand families. But it is just because what is imparted is so commonplace, that it is peculiarly adapted to excite the interest of the reader. It gives an instructive insight into the life of a rising family.
In the first years of the reign of Frederic the Great, a poor teacher at Leipzig was lying on his deathbed; the long vexations and persecutions he had endured from his predecessor, a vehement pastor, had brought him there. His spiritual opponent sought reconciliation with the dying man; he promised the teacher, Haupt, to take care of his uneducated children, and he kept his word. He placed one son in the great commercial house, Frege, which was then at the height of prosperity. The young Haupt won the confidence of his principal; and when he wished to establish himself at Zittau, the house of Frege made the needy youth a loan of 10,000 thalers. The year after, the new merchant wrote to his creditor to say that his business was making rapid progress, but that he should get into great difficulties if he had not the same sum again. His former principal sent him the double. After eight years the Zittau merchant repaid the whole loan, and the day on which he sent the last sum, he drank in his house the first bottle of wine. The son of this man, Ernst Friederich Haupt (he who will give an account of his school hours in his father's house), studied law and became a Syndicus, and afterwards Burgomaster of his native town; he was a man of powerful character and depth of mind, and also a literary man of comprehensive knowledge; some Latin poems printed by him are among the most refined and elegant specimens of this kind of poetry. His life was earnest, and he laboured in a very restricted sphere with a zeal which never seemed sufficient to satisfy himself. But the weight of his energetic character became, at the beginning of the political commotions in 1830, burdensome to the young democrats among the citizens. It was in the city where he dwelt that the agitation was carried on by an unworthy man, who later, by his evil deeds, brought himself to a lamentable end. In the bewilderment of the first movement, the citizens destroyed the faithful attachment which for thirty years had subsisted between them and their superior. The proud and strict man was wounded to his innermost soul by heartlessness and ingratitude; he withdrew from all public occupation, and neither the entreaties nor the genuine repentance evinced by his fellow-citizens shortly after, could make him forget the bitter mortification of those years which had left their mark upon his life. When he walked through the streets, looking quietly before him, a noble melancholy old man with white hair, then—it is related by eye-witnesses—the people on all sides took off their caps with timid reverence; but he stepped on without looking to right or left, without thanks or greeting to the crowd. From that time he lived as a private man, given up to his scientific pursuits. But his son, Moriz Haupt, Professor of the University of Berlin, became one of our greatest philosophers, one of our best men.