Almost all who passed through that great time of struggle and self-sacrifice consider the memory of it the greatest possession of their later life, and it encircled the heads of many with a bright glory. And thousands felt what the warm-hearted Arndt expressed, "We can now die at any moment, as we have seen in Germany what is alone worth living for, that men, from a feeling of the eternal, and imperishable, have been able to offer, with the most joyful self-devotion, all their temporalities and their lives as if they were nothing."
But in the churches of the country a simple tablet was put up as a memorial to later generations, on which was the iron cross of the Great Time, and the names of those who had fallen.
As in these pages it has been attempted to portray, in the words of men who have passed away, a picture of the time in which they lived, so here we will give a record from the year 1813.
"Our son George was struck by a ball, at the age of two-and-twenty, on the 2nd of April, at the ever-memorable engagement at Lüneburg. As a volunteer rifleman in the light battalion of the first Pommeranian regiment, he fought, according to the testimony of his brave leader, Herr Major von Borcke, by his side, with courage and determination, and thus, died for his Fatherland, German freedom, national honour, and our beloved King. To lose him so early is hard; but it is comforting to feel that we also have been able to give a son for this great and holy object. We feel deeply the necessity of such a sacrifice.
"The Regierungsrath and Ober-Commissarius Häse and his Wife."[[59]]
"Berlin, 9th April, 1813."
That portion of the people also who were not in the habit of expressing their feelings in writing felt the same. When the Lützower Gutike,[[60]] in the Summer of 1813, was on his march from Berlin to Perleberg, he found at Kletzke the landlady in mourning; she was waiting silently upon him, and at last said suddenly, pointing with her hand to the ground, "I have one there,—but Peter's wife has two." She felt that her neighbour had superior claims to sympathy.