Nor did they lack any opportunities for intellectual improvement in the capital of Baden. The theatre was then excellent, and the 'Lyceists' visited it regularly. Eyen politics agitated the mind of this young generation. It must be remembered that thirty years ago Baden was the focus of political life, to which the eyes of every German patriot was directed; and although Mannheim was the seat of the agitation, the chamber united at Karlsruhe a number of men, whose names will ever be held in respect in Baden: Itzstein, Welcker, Bassermann, Hecker, Mathy, Soiron.
Joseph Victor passed with all the honours, and as one of the best pupils, all the classes of the Lyceum, and then devoted himself to the study of law at the University of Heidelberg. There he joined a so-called academical society of progress, without, however, taking part in the Baden revolution, which drove so many of his comrades into exile.
After having passed the Government examination we find our young poet as 'Rechtspractikant' (practitioner of law) in the little town of Säckingen. Well might the little provincial place appear dull to a student coming from the liveliest university of Germany. Still the splendid scenery of the environs of Säckingen compensated for many shortcomings. With the numerous friends he won there, Scheffel made frequent excursions through the valleys which stretch in all directions from the Feldberg and the Rhine. He proved to be a bold and even reckless swimmer, passing many a time through the bridge of Säckingen, saluting the bystanders as he accomplished this daring feat.
In the office of his court, located in an old convent of nuns, Scheffel found a number of old documents and MSS., and there his first poem was written, based on one of them: 'Der Trompeter von Säckingen. Ein Sang vom Oberrhein.'
The success of this first production was complete. It was published at the time when the 'incense perfume of the pious soul,' as Scheffel calls the poems of Oskar von Redwitz, had its firmest hold on the misguided taste of the public. In comparison with this sickly, effeminate poetry, the simple, natural, and yet intensely poetic production of Scheffel afforded something like the enjoyment of fresh mountain air after that of a hot-house. It is true, Scheffel was at first entirely ignored by the Berlin and Leipzig critics who assume to sit in judgment over modern German literature (he has, up to the present day, not even found a place in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon), but the unsophisticated public recognized the kernel of pure poetry in Scheffel's unpretentious verses; and his 'Trompeter' is at present the most popular poem in Germany. Its story is told with extreme simplicity and humour, in blank trochees with interspersed rhymed poems; it leads us to the forest-town of Säckingen during the second half of the 17th century, and into the neighbouring castle of a baron, whose only daughter is wooed and, at last, won by a young musician, a merry youth, who had been expelled from the University of Heidelberg on account of his noisy behaviour.
Nothing can be more humorous than the account of the ex-student's life at Heidelberg, of his duels and his libations beneath the big tun of the castle,
Bei dem Wunder unserer Tage,
Bei dem Kunstwerk deutschen Denkens,
Bei dem Heidelberger Fass,
or the historical episode of the foundation of Säckingen by Saint Fridolin, an Irish apostle, sent by Chlodwig with the following message to convert the Allemannic Germans:
Hatt' sonst nicht die grösste Vorlieb
Für die Kutten, für die Heil'gen,
Aber seit mir die verfluchten
Scharfen Alemannenspiesse
Allzunah um's Ohr gepfiffen,
Seit der schweren Schlacht bei Zülpich,
Bin ich and'rer Ansicht worden,
--Noth lehrt auch die Könige beten.
Schutz drum geb' ich, wo ihr hinzieht.
Und empfehl' hauptsächlich Euch am
Oberrhein die Alemannen.
Diese haben schwere Schädel,
Diese sind noch trotz'ge Heiden,
Macht mir diese fromm und artig--
or the meditations of the cat of the castle, which, as silent witness of the caresses of the two lovers, thus broods over the enigma of the kiss: