I would have liked to keep silent about these religious conditions, but was not allowed to, because it is my task, to say everything honestly, what influenced me in my internal and external development. This Christianity of the seminary seemed to me to be without soul to the same extent as it was seeking conflict. It did not satisfy and nevertheless pretended to be the only pure, true teaching. How poor and how godforsaken did this make a person feel! The others did not even accept this as a disaster; they were indifferent; but I, who required religious love, felt sick from the cold and withdrew into my self. Here also, I grew increasingly lonelier, and even more, much more than at home. And here, I became even more of a stranger to my grade than I had been there. This was partially due to the conditions, but also partially due to myself.
I knew much more than my fellow students. I may say so without being suspected of bragging. Because what I knew was nothing but a mess, an unregulated, unsystematic accumulation of knowledge, which did not benefit me in the least, but only burdened me. Whenever I might have let anyone notice something of my unfruitful masses of information, I was stared at in amazement and laughed at. They felt instinctively that I was less enviable than lamentable. The others, most of them the sons of teachers, might not have learnt as much as I, but what they had learnt was firmly stored and well arranged in the chambers of their memory, always ready to be used. I felt that I was very disadvantaged compared to them and yet resisted to admit that much to myself and them. The quiet and busy main part of my work most of all consisted of putting my poor head in order, and this, unfortunately, took more time than I wished. Whatever I built up, kept on falling down. It was like exhaustingly digging through a pile of snow, which kept on caving in. And in all this, there was one contradiction which simply could not be removed. This was the contradiction between my extraordinarily fruitful imagination and the dryness and absolute lack of poetry in the form of teaching practised here. At that time, I was still much too young, to realize, where this dryness came from. They did not teach that much of what had to be learnt, but rather the manner in which we had to learn. We were taught to learn. Once we understood this, the rest was easy. We were given lots of bones; therefore our lessons were so almost painfully dry. But out of these bones, the skeletons of the individual sciences were combined, the flesh of which was to be added later. But with me, the very opposite had occurred up to now: I had gathered a huge amount of flesh, but not a single sustaining, supporting bone to go with it. My knowledge lacked a firm bone-structure. In respect to my mental possessions, I was a squid, which had neither internally nor externally something to hold on to, and therefore also no place to feel at home. And the worst part of it was: The boneless flesh of this squid was not healthy, but sick, severely sick; it had been poisoned by the trashy novels of proprietor of the bowling alley. Just now, I started to realize this properly and felt just the more unhappy with this, as I could not talk to a single human being about it, without embarrassing myself. Most of all it was the dryness and what I guess I would have to call soullessness of the lessons at the seminary, which made me realize that I had been poisoned. I found for the skeletons we had been offered, so that we would breathe life into them, no healthy flesh within myself. Everything I pieced together and tried to build up inside of me, turned out shapeless, ugly, untrue, and unlawful. I started to grow afraid of myself and kept on tinkering with the form of my soul, to have my insides cleansed, purified, rearranged, and uplifted, without having to turn to outside help, which did not exist anyhow. I would very well have liked to confide in one of our teachers, but they were all so elevated, so cold, so unapproachable, and most of all, I sensed this, no one of them would have understood me; they were no psychologists. They would have given me a puzzled look and left without otherwise acknowledging my presence.
In addition, I had an inborn, irresistible urge to keep my mind busy. I learnt very easily and consequentially had much time to spare. So I secretly wrote poetry; I even composed. The few pfennigs I could spare were turned into writing paper. But what I wrote was not supposed to be just a student's essay, but something useful, something really good. And what did I write there? Most naturally story about American Indians! What for? Most naturally to have it printed! By whom? Most naturally by the the "Gartenlaube" <Garden-Arbour>, a magazine which had been founded a few years back, but was already read by everyone. I was sixteen, then. I sent in the manuscript. After a whole week had passed without any reaction, I asked for an answer. I received none. Therefore, after another fortnight, I wrote in a stricter tone, and after another two weeks, I asked for my manuscript back, to send it to another publisher. It arrived. Along with it came a letter, personally written by Ernst Keil, extending over four large quarto pages [a]. I was far from appreciating this as I should have. First, he quite thoroughly put me down, making me really honestly feel ashamed, because he most conscientiously listed all the misdeeds I had committed in the narration, of course without me being aware of it. Near the end, the reproach got milder, and in the end, he cheerfully extended to me, the ignorant boy, his hand and told me that he would not be too excessively appalled, if, after four or five years had passed, another one of my Indian stories should end up on his desk. He did not get any, though not due to my fault, but rather the circumstances would not let me. This was my first success in literature. But then, I certainly regarded it as an absolute failure and felt very unhappy about it. Time passed. I rose from the proseminary into the fourth, third, and second grade of the seminary, and it was in this second grade, when that fate came upon me, which my opponents have so loudly exploited.
[a] quarto: an old paper size. 22.5 × 28.5 cm, 8.86 × 11.22 in.
The grades in German secondary schools used to be numbered backwards.
It was the custom of the seminary that the students had to take turns in performing certain duties for the grade, each one for a week. Therefore, the student concerned was referred to as the "weekner". Furthermore, in the first grade, there was an "enforcing weekner", and in the second grade a "light-weekner", the latter one being in charge of the lighting of the classrooms. In those days, the classrooms were lit by means of tallow-candles, which had to be replaced as soon as they were burnt down. The light-weekner had to clean the old, worthless candlesticks every day, and in particular, he had to clear away the remnants of wicks and tallow from the grooves. These remnants were either just thrown away or molten down to be used boot-polish or some other kind of grease by the janitor. They were generally to be regarded as worthless.
It was in the beginning of the the week of Christmas when it was my turn to be the light-weekner. I performed this work like everybody else. The day before Christmas Eve, our vacation started. The day before, one of my sisters came by, to get my laundry as well as the little luggage I had to take with me on vacation. She always did this whenever the vacation started. The way she had to take from Ernstthal to Waldenburg took two hours. That day was no exception. As she came in this time, I was just busy cleaning the candlesticks. She was sad. Things were not good at home. There was no work and therefore also no income. Mother used to bake at least some cakes for Christmas, as even the poorest people would do. This year, she could hardly afford it. But there would not be any gifts, none at all, because the money just was not there. There were no candles for the Christmas chandelier. Even my smaller sisters' wooden angles were to be without candles. Three little candles were meant to go with these angles, at five or six pfennig per piece; but when those eighteen pfennig were needed for other, more necessary things, they just had to live with that. This hurt me. My sister was almost crying. She saw the remnants of tallow, which I had just scratched out of the grooves and down from the candlesticks. "Couldn't some pfennig-candles be made out of these?" she asked. "Quite easily", I answered. "All it takes is some rolled up paper and a wick, nothing else; but it wouldn't burn so well, because all this stuff is still useful for is as grease." "So what, so what! At least we would have some kind of candles for the three angles. Who owns this garbage?" "Nobody really. I have to get it to the janitor. Whether he throws it out or not, is his business." "So it wouldn't be stealing, if we'd take a bit of it home with us?" "Stealing. Ridiculous! Nobody would think of it! All of this dirt isn't worth three pfennig. I'll wrap some of it in a piece of paper for you. This we'll use to make three little Christmas candles."
Said, done! We were not alone. Another seminarist was with us; someone from the first grade, one grade above mine. I am reluctant to give his name. His father was a gendarme. This upstanding fellow student observed everything. He did not warn me at all, but was quite friendly, left, and -- -- -- reported on me. The principal came in person, to investigate the "theft". I admitted very calmly what I had done and returned the "loot" I had taken. I truly thought nothing bad of it. But he called me an "infernal character" and assembled the faculty, to decide about me and my punishment. Just half an hour later, I was informed of it. I was dismissed from the seminary, I was free to go to wherever I wished. I left right away with my sister -- -- -- for the holy Christmas season -- -- -- without tallow for the Christmas angles -- -- -- these were very gloomy, dark Christmas holidays. I guess, I did already say that especially Christmas had often been for me a time of sadness, not joy. In those days of Christmas, holy flames of my soul were quenched out, lights which I held dear. I learnt to differentiate between Christianity and those who call themselves Christians. I had come to know Christians who had acted less Christianly against me than Jews, Turks, and heathens would have done.
Luckily, the department of culture and public education, I had turned to, proved to be more reasonable and more humane than the seminary's management. Without any objections, I obtained the permission to continue my interrupted studies at the seminary of Plauen. There, I got into the same grade, that is into the second one, and after having finished the first grade, I passed the examination to become a teacher, after which I obtained my first job in Glauchau, but soon got to Altchemnitz into a school, belonging to a factory, where the all of the students were rather grown up factory workers. Here, my confessions have to start. I give them without hesitation, according to the truth, as if I was not dealing with myself, but another person, a stranger.