Here, I have to interrupt, to interject a serious, more important remark. I am not writing this book for my opponents' sake, to respond to them or to defend myself against them. I am rather of the opinion that the manner in which I am being attacked renders any kind of response or defence impossible. Nor am I writing this book for my friends, because they know, understand, and comprehend me, so that I have no need to inform them about myself. I rather write it only for my own sake, to become certain of myself and to account to myself what I have done up to now and what I am still planning to do. Thus I write in order to confess. But I am not confessing to people; after all, they would also never think of admitting their sins to me, but rather I am confessing to my God and myself, and whatever these two will say after I have ended, will bear upon me. Thus, these are not ordinary, but sacred, hours in which I write these pages. I am not just talking here for this life, but also for the other life I believe in and I am yearning for. In making this confession, I put myself into this entity and existence as which I will persist after death. Thus, it can be truly, truly irrelevant to me, what my friends or foes will say about this, my book. I place it in very different hands, the right hands, the hands of destiny, of omniscient providence, which knows neither favour nor disfavour, only justice and truth. Here, nothing can be concealed or embellished. Here, everything has to be said and admitted honestly as it is, no matter how unrespectful it may seem or how much it might hurt. Someone had invented the expression "Karl-May-problem". Well then, I accept it and let it stand. This problem will not be solved by any of these people, who have not even read my books or did not understand them and nevertheless pass judgement upon them. The Karl-May-problem is mankind's most fundamental problem, transposed from the huge, all encompassing plural into the singular, into the single individual. And the same way this problem of mankind is to be solved, the Karl-May-problem is also to be solved, there is no other way! Whoever turns out to be incapable of solving the Karl-May-puzzle in a satisfactory, humane manner, shall for God's sake keep his feeble hand and inadequate ideas from grasping beyond his own self and to deal with more difficult questions that concern all of mankind! The key for all of these puzzles exists for a long time. The Christian church calls it "original sin" [a]. To know the forefathers and foremothers is to understand the children and grandchildren; and only with a humane attitude, a truly noble spirit, one will be enabled to be truthful and honest concerning one's ancestors, in order to be able to be just as truthful and honest concerning the descendants. To bring the influence of the deceased on later generations to light, is, on the one hand, a bliss and, on the other hand, a redemption for both parts. And therefore, I too have to describe my family just as they have been in reality, whether this might be regarded as being contrary to child's duty or not. I do not only have to be truthful concerning them and me, but also concerning all of my fellow-men. Perhaps someone else could learn from our example to do the right thing in his own affairs. -- --
[a] "Erbsünde": the German expression for "original sin" suggests rather a meaning of "inherited sin". Actually, the idea of Adam's original sin being inherited by every human being at birth is rather common among Catholics and Protestants (but is rejected by Orthodox Christians). I have been told that this belief is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 5:12 by St. Augustine, who interpreted the words for "sin" and "death" as synonymous in this verse: "as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men".
Entirely unexpectedly, mother had inherited a house as well as a few small, linen money-pouches from a distant relative. One of these money-pouches contained lots of two-pfennig-pieces, another one lots of tree-pfennig-pieces, and a third one lots of groschen [a]. A fourth one contained three score of fifty-pfennig-pieces, and in the fifth and last pouch, ten old pieces of six from Schaffhausen, ten eight-groschen-pieces, five gulden , and four taler [c] were found. This was really a fortune! In our poverty, it seemed almost like a million! Granted, the house was just as wide as three small windows and largely built of wood, but on the other hand, it was three storeys high and had on the very top, right under the ridge of the roof, a pigeonry, which is, of course, not so commonly found. Grandmother, my father's mother, moved into the ground floor, which only consisted of one room with two windows and the entrance. Behind the room was a chamber with an old mangle, which was rented to other people at two pfennig per hour. There were happy Saturdays, when this mangle earned us ten, twelve, yes even fourteen pfennig. This increased our standard of living quite extensively. On the first floor, the parents lived with us. There stood the loom with its reel. On the second floor, we slept with a colony of mice and some larger rodents, who usually lived in the pigeonry and only visited us at night. There also was a cellar, but it was always empty. Once, it held a few bags of potatoes, but they did not belong to us, but rather to a neighbour, who did not have his own cellar. Grandmother remarked that it would be much better, if the cellar belonged to him and the potatoes to us. The yard was just big enough for us five children to stand in it without crowding each other. It adjoined the garden, which contained an elder-bush, an apple-tree, and a plum-tree, as well as small pond, which we called our "lake". The elder-bush supplied us with the tea, we drank in order to get into a sweat, whenever we had caught a cold. But it did not last very long, because as soon as one of us children had caught a cold, all others started coughing as well and wanted to sweat along. The apple-tree always blossomed very beautifully and amply. But since we knew just too well that apples taste best right after the blossoms were gone, all apples were usually harvested as early as the beginning of June. The plums, on the other hand, were taboo to us. Grandmother enjoyed them far too much. They were counted daily, and nobody dared to touch them. Nevertheless, we children got more, much more of them, than what was our rightful share. As far as the "lake" is concerned, it was full of life, but unfortunately not with fish, but with frogs. We knew all of them individually, even by their voices. There were always between ten and fifteen of them. We fed them with earth-worms, flies, beetles, and all kinds of other nice things we could not enjoy ourselves for gastronomic or aesthetic reasons, and they always responded very gratefully. They knew us. They left the water, whenever we approached them. Some even allowed us to hold and pet them. But the full measure of their gratitude could be heard at night, when we were falling asleep. No dairymaid could enjoy her zither more, then we enjoyed our frogs. We knew precisely, which one it was, making his noise, whether it was Arthur, Paul, or Fritz, and when they even began to sing in a duet or in a chorus, we jumped out of our beds, opened the windows, to join the croaking, until mother or grandmother came and put us back where we belonged. Unfortunately, one day, a so-called district-physician came to our small town, to conduct a so-called health-survey. Everywhere, he found something objectionable. This equally weird and callous man clapped his hands over his head, as soon as he saw our garden and our beautiful pond, and declared that his cesspool of pestilence and cholera had to disappear at once. The next day, the policeman Eberhardt brought a note from the town's Judge Layritz, stating that within three days the pond had to be filled in and the population of frogs had to be killed, otherwise a fine of fifteen "good groschen" [d] had to be payed. We children were outraged. To murder our frogs! Well, if Judge Layritz had been a frog, then we would have done it with pleasure! We discussed the matter, and as we decided, so it was carried out. The water was scooped from the pond, until we could catch the frogs. They were put into the large basked, which had a lid, and carried to the large pond of the coal-pit behind the rifle-house, grandmother marching ahead, we followed. There, every frog was individually taken from the basket, lovingly petted, and put into the water. How many sighs could be heard, how many tears were shed, and how many condemning judgements were passed on that so-called district-physician, I can no longer say with certainty now, after more than sixty years have passed. But I still know quite definitely that grandmother assured us, to put an end to our immense sorrow, every one of us would, after precisely ten years had passed, inherit a three times larger house with a garden, five times as large, which would contain a ten times larger lake with twenty times larger frogs. This brought an equally sudden and pleasant change to our disposition. Cheerfully, we marched home with grandmother and the empty basket.
[a] Groschen: a coin worth 10 pfennig.
Gulden, a.k.a. guilder: a coin worth 20 groschen.
[c] Taler (outdated spelling: Thaler), a.k.a. dollar: a coin worth 30 groschen. (The American currency was named after this coin.)
[d] "Guter Groschen" (good groschen): an older type of groschen, worth slightly more (1.25) than the Neugroschen (new-groschen).
This happened at a time, when I was no longer blind and was already able to walk. I was neither born blind, nor was I inflicted with some kind of an inherited physical defect. Father and mother were indeed vigorous and healthy by nature. They have never been sick throughout their lives. To accuse me of atavistic frailties is an act of malice, I have to reject most decisively. That I fell seriously ill shortly after my birth, lost my eyesight, and was ailing for entire four years, was not the consequence of inheritance, but rather only due to the local conditions, the poverty, ignorance, and harmful quackery, the victim of which I became. As soon as I came into the hands of a capable physician, my eyesight returned, and I became a most sound and robust boy, who was strong enough to take on any other boy. But, before I talk about myself, I have to devote some more time to the surroundings, in which I have spent my earliest childhood.
Along with the house, mother had also inherited the debts, associated with it. Interests had to be paid on them. Therefore, all we got out of it was that we had to pay interests instead of rent. Mother was economical, and father was so too in his own way. But just as he was excessive in everything, in his love, his rage, his work, his praise, his reprimand, so he was here as well in is assessment of that small inheritance, which could only be an incentive to continue saving money and to remove the debt from the house. But though he did not take to the belief he had suddenly become rich, he nonetheless presumed he could adopt a different lifestyle, now. He stopped spending his entire life toiling at the loom. After all, he had a house now, and he had money, lots of money. He could turn to something else, which was less strenuous, more worth while than weaving. While lying in his bed, being unable to sleep, and thinking about what he should do, he heard the rats rumbling upstairs in the empty pigeonry. This rumble was repeated day by day, and so, in that manner well known to any psychologist, the decision ripened in him, to drive out the rats and to buy pigeons. He wanted to become a pigeon-dealer, though he knew nothing at all about this trade. He had been told that a lot of money could be made in this business, and was convinced that, even without the necessary special knowledge, he would possess enough intelligence to outsmart any other dealer. The rats were driven out and pigeons were bought.