Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II.

by Gustav Freytag

"This was the place where I was presented in the church as schoolmaster, not without the opposition of some pious parties.

"All the powers of resistance were roused to the utmost by the ultramontane party; publicly by the press, privately by every possible means. A heretic to be the only teacher in a Roman Catholic school—that was unheard of! The government, the common council, and I myself, were overwhelmed with abuse; the ecclesiastics in Grenchen were severely blamed for having allowed a wolf to break into the fold, and it was set before them as a duty (not only by the newspapers) to use their utmost efforts to stifle the devil's brood in the germ.

"The pastor of the place was a stately, fine man,—a favourite of the ladies, which gave him influence. But he was not fond of controversy; he loved repose and playing on the violin, and would therefore rather not have taken a part. As far as his influence went he hindered the boys from going to school, and never set his foot in it, so that no religious instruction was given, and the hours appointed for it were filled up with instruction on other subjects. Personally I was on a tolerably good footing with him. It would have given him pleasure if I would have allowed him to baptise my little daughter, who was born two months before at the Grenchen baths, and he would have taken the opportunity of making a quiet effort to convert me, by giving me a book to read, pretending to be written by a Protestant, for the glorification of the Roman Catholic church. Still less than the pastor could his chaplain be used as a battering-ram against the school. He had become a theologian at Würzburg, and knew that Leipzig was a nest of books. He was a good husbandman and rearers of bees, and had about the same amount of education as the people; they, however, did not remain stationary. He did not always succeed in preserving his clerical dignity and avoiding blame from the authorities. He had never felt it necessary to extend his theological knowledge beyond what was absolutely necessary, and I was sometimes astonished at the chaos in his memory; as when, for example, he related how St. Louis had defended Rome against the Huns. If the conversation fell upon books he never ceased to praise a narrative of a mission to Otaheite, and I soon discovered that this volume was very nearly his whole library. In spite of all this he was a good man, and it will not injure him now if I relate why I loved him. We were speaking one day of eternal happiness and the reverse. I told him how impossible I considered it, that the good God could be so cruel as to burn me eternally in hell. It is the Lord's fault, not mine, that I was baptised a Calvinist, and had thus been instructed and confirmed. Our teacher had told us that we were to love our fellow-creatures, and do good to them; and I endeavoured, according to the best of my ability, to follow this teaching, and yet I was to be eternally condemned! This gave the chaplain pain, and he found a theological answer: 'I hope God will deal with you as with one of the heathen, of whom it is written, that they will be judged according to their works.' He was not dangerous to the school.

"If the clerical leaders had been more energetic, the supporters they could have called forth, from out of the population, to oppose the school were not to be despised. Besides the women, who for the most part were attached to the pastor, there were men whom the new rule had deprived of official position in the community. Respectability and family connections still gave them importance, and they were led by their old masters to persuade the more energetic youths that the new constitution would not give them freedom enough; but, on the contrary, more burdens, and that they had no reason to be contented with a condition of things which the new leaders would turn exclusively to their own advantage. These opponents were dangerous. From one of them I was in the habit of getting milk for my household; the children fell sick, and became feverish. Then we learnt that the milk of a sick cow had been given us, and that the seller boasted of it.

"As the party which had just been vanquished in the field of politics could not openly make head against the common council and the majority of the citizens; they endeavoured to influence the parents, and were pleased when, in the beginning, there were only a dozen scholars—a small number for a great parish, surrounded by other villages, to whose sons the district school was open. There was only one means of saving the school from dissolution, and that was, its success. But a circumstance occurred to help us, before it could be ascertained that useful knowledge might be acquired here.

"Grenchen lies on the frontier towards the canton of Berne, about half an hour's distance from the Berne village of Lengnau. The Calvanistic common council of Lengnau inquired of their Roman Catholic Solothurner neighbours whether, and under what conditions, boys from their place would be allowed to attend the district school. The answer was, that their sons would be welcome; the instruction would be given gratuitously, and that the people of Lengnau would only have to take care that the scholars should be quiet and orderly. Hence there was an increase of eight or ten boys from Lengnau; in order to preserve quiet, one of them had been appointed by the mayor as monitor, and was made answerable for their discipline; they marched in military order two and two, and returned home in the same way, and there never was the slightest quarrel between them and the Grencheners. This example worked upon the neighbouring places of the canton; scholars came from Staad, Bettlach, and Selzach, and, later, even from the French Jura. One of them merits special mention. He was a large strong man, two and thirty years of age (a year older than I), from the parish of Ely, in Friburg, a distance of two hours behind the Weissenstein, situated in a wild lonely country of the Bernese Jura mountains, which he had quitted, in order to work on the new high road between Solothurn and Grenchen. When he heard of the district school, he altered his determination; he hired himself as a servant to a peasant for board and lodging, resigning salary for the privilege of being able to attend the school. His desire for knowledge and his iron industry helped him to surmount all difficulties; he afterwards attended the seminary of education at Bünchenbuchsee (Berne); then returned to his home, where he became mayor and teacher; in short, all-in-all. Only one thing Xaver Rais did not become, that was, father of a family; for he always continued his studies, and, as he confided to me afterwards, preferred buying books to a wife. The Grencheners reckon him, up to the present day, as one of them; and even now, when I go to the place, a message is sent to him; then he puts on his satchel, lays hold of his staff, and goes over the mountain with long strides.

"The influx of scholars from the neighbourhood did not fail to have an effect on the opponents in the place; many boys succeeded in overcoming the resistance of their parents, and had the satisfaction of entering the institution, which soon numbered between thirty and forty scholars. In order to regulate the instruction according to the requirements, I was obliged to alter the prescribed plan. I did it on my own responsibility, and when at the close of the first year, I reported this to the government, what I had done was approved, and a wish expressed that the same course might be pursued in the other district schools. In the summer I kept school only from six to ten o'clock in the morning, in order that the boys might be employed in house and field labour. Besides this, the great work of the hay and corn harvest was in the holidays. The objects of study I limited in number, but went more deeply into them; I honestly lamented that the pastor gave no religious instruction, for the boys came from the preparatory school very much neglected in this important branch; they had only been impressed with two points, the indispensableness of the Ecclesiastical order, and the value of relics; of biblical history they were almost entirely ignorant. If the pastor did not teach religion, neither did I teach politics, but left the Fatherland State system to the school of life. On the other hand, the German and French languages, together with practice in composition, history, and geography, arithmetic and geometry, were carried on with great zeal, and it gave me pleasure to observe how forward boys of natural capacity might be brought in a short time, when all bombast was abolished, things represented simply, and each individual suitably assisted in his intellectual work.

"It was my good fortune to have a tolerable number of clever scholars, and for these I always endeavoured to do more than was prescribed. I gave them, therefore, at particular hours, instruction in Latin; and I made use of this to enlarge their views, and to guide and excite their love of learning. They formed a nucleus which gave the school a firm position. To them I owe the absence of anxiety about the discipline of the school, for their earnest orderly characters had an effect on all. During the three years of my office as teacher, I never had recourse to punishment; if a boy was idle or untruthful, I used, after admonishing him to amend, to add the notification, that the other scholars would bear no bad lads amongst them. It certainly sometimes happened that at the end of the lesson, in which I had been obliged to give such a warning, certain sounds which did not mean approbation, would reach my ears; but I forbore inquiring as to the cause. On account of the number of scholars, the institution was removed to another place; the school-room was on the first story immediately over our sitting-room, and my wife often remarked with astonishment, that though thirty peasant boys were assembled above, she never heard the least noise; and that our little children were not disturbed in their morning sleep.

"Before a year had passed, it was discovered in the village that the school was useful; the boys, especially those of the 'guard,' as they called my élite, were in great request, to read and write German and French letters, which were necessary for the traffic in the products of the country; also to examine and draw up accounts, and the like. I willingly overlooked it when here or there one was an hour late, in consequence of having performed these neighbourly acts, for this was of advantage both to them and the school. The people saw us undertaking the measurement of fields, and trigonometrically determining heights and distances with instruments made by ourselves. But the strongest impression was produced, when a boy fifteen years of age begged for permission to speak before the assembled community for his father. The father, a worthy man, well deserving of the community, had, by misfortune, become bankrupt. Ruin impended, if the largest creditor did not act with consideration, and this creditor was the community itself. The son appeared before the assembly, and begged for an abatement of the debt. He described the services, the misfortunes, and the state of mind of his father; his anxieties about his family, and forlorn future; and the advantage it would bring to the community itself, if it preserved to the family its supporter, and to itself a useful citizen. He spoke with an impressiveness, a warmth and depth of feeling, which caused tears to roll down the beards of the most austere men. I can certify that many will say this: and at last the remission of the debt was passed without a dissenting voice. The boy has now long been a professor of Natural Science and Doctor of Philosophy. His speech did even more for the place than the act of another scholar, who knocked out the brains of a mad dog with his wood axe. This they thought was no art, for that every one could do; but the young orator! 'This is the way they learn to speak in the school.' From that time the institution was firmly established. But I still wanted something more.

"In vain had I begged the government to give an examination. They had answered that they were acquainted with the progress of the school, and accorded me their confidence. The second year I urgently repeated my request, and represented that it would be of use to the school if the State took notice of it. The examination was granted, and there appeared at it the magistrate of the district Munzinger, many members of the council of government, the prior Zweili, different teachers, and men of distinction from Solothurn. All went off well; the boys felt themselves raised and encouraged by the signs of satisfaction of the highest State officials. After the business was over, the members of the common council and other gentry, with the officials and friends of the school, assembled at a repast. When the strangers had left, the inhabitants remained long assembled together; even former opponents had joined; very willingly would the chaplain have made his appearance if he had not been afraid of the pastor, and so would the pastor himself if he had been sure that his superiors would not hear of it. The glasses continued to pass round till late in the night, and I was not in a position to let them go by me, so much the less that in the eyes of these men, he who could not drink with them was considered as a weakling, and looked upon as incapable of showing any capacity. From the day of the examination, I could consider the school as having taken root in the community. The time had passed away when my friends and acquaintance at Solothurn had declared to me that they would not be surprised to hear an account of my being killed by the wild Grencheners.