The name of the Catholic Bible teacher was Kochta. He was just a teacher, without any academic background, but a man of honour in every respect, humane as there is rarely one to be found, and thus rich in experience as an educator and in a psychological regard, that his opinion was much more valuable to me than entire stacks of learned books. He never talked about the peculiarities of the denominations with me. He regarded me as a Protestant and did not make the slightest attempt to influence my religious beliefs. And as he acted towards me, so I acted towards him. I never posed a question concerning Catholicism to him. Whatever I had to know on this matter, I already knew or was able to find out in other ways. The beautiful relationship, which by and by formed between us, not allowing any obstructive differences to sneak into this purely human benevolence, was sacred to me. He served in church, I served at the organ, but otherwise religion remained entirely untouched between us and could thus have its effect just the more directly and purely upon me. It was this, his very silence, which was so eloquent, because it allowed his actions to speak, and these were the actions of a nobly spirited person, who might just work his effect on a small circle of people, but who knows how to treat even small things in a great manner.
I had never played Catholic hymns before; now I got to know them. What pieces of music, especially or the organ, did I get my hands on! I had thought, I would understand music. What a fool I was! This simple Bible teacher gave me many a nut which was very hard for me to crack. What music essentially is, I just now began to get a glimpse of, and music is by no means the lowest tool the church uses to perform its work.
The Catholic priest only came to me when a special arrangement in regard to accompanying the hymns on the organ had to be made. He never spoke more than what was absolutely necessary and never about religion at all; but whenever he entered my cell, I always felt as if the sun started to to shine on me. Such sunny people are rare, and yet, every minister ought to be such a sunny person, because a layman will just too easily regard and judge the church by the way its priest behave towards him. I am going to skip the differences between the Protestant and the Catholic religious services, but to every reasonable person it will be entirely natural and self-evident that I could not participate and even be an active part in the latter for four years, without being influenced by it. After all, we are no rocks, from which all soft things bounce back! And even such a rock becomes warm, when it is hit by a ray of sunshine! And these religious services actually were rays of sunshine! Still today, I feel an infinite gratitude for this warmth and this kindness, which cared for me and had not a single reproach for me, when everything else was against me. I have been blessing it up until this day and will bless it for as long as I will live! How poor must those people be inside who maintain that I would be spreading a Catholic ideology! It is entirely impossible that they should know the human soul and the sacred places which it contains. Besides, I have written nothing at all about the Catholic faith, but entire volumes about Mohammedanism. Thus, the allegation that I would spread the Islam might appear much more justified than the one that I would promote Catholicism! Why am I not accused of this? The Madonna has been depicted by hundreds of Protestant painters and was the topic of hundreds of Protestant poets, even of Goethe. Why are those not said to promote Catholicism? I have thanked the Catholic church for the high-minded hospitality, it granted me, the Protestant, for four years, by means of a single Ave Maria, which I wrote for my novel "Winnetou". Is that a reason for accusing me of religious hypocrisy? And to make matters even worse, to suggest that I did it for money! I repeat: How poor must these people be, how infinitely poor! -- --
I must conclude that those four years of undisturbed seclusion and focused concentration have allowed me to advance very, very much. Every book I needed for my studies was available to me. I completed the schedule of my work and then started to carry it out. I wrote manuscripts. As soon as one of them was finished, I sent it home. My parents then acted as middlemen between me and the publishers. I did not write to them directly, because they were not meant to find out, yet, that the author of these tales, they printed, was a prisoner. But one of them nevertheless found out about it, because he visited my parents in person. This was the bookseller of colportage [a] literature H.G. Münchmeyer from Dresden, about whom there is still much more to be said later. He had been a journeyman carpenter, had blown the key-bugle at village dances, and had then become a colporteur. In this capacity, he also came to Hohenstein-Ernstthal and met a maid servant in a neighbouring village, whom he married. This tied him to this area. He got to know its people and also found out about me. The crazy things he was told here he regarded as extraordinarily well suited for his colportage. He came to see my father and sought his acquaintance. Thus, my manuscripts got into his hands. He read them. Some of it was beyond his comprehension. But other parts of it he liked so much, that it, as put it, delighted him. He asked for the permission to print it and got it. He wanted to pay right away and placed the money on the table. But father did not take it. He pushed it back and told him to give it to me in person, after my release. Münchmeyer was very pleased to agree with this. He assured my father that I was the man he needed; he would come to see me after my return home and discuss all the details with me.
[a] colportage (French): novels published as a series of booklets and sold to subscribers by door-to-door salesmen (colporteurs).
I am telling this and just stating it for a fact for now. For many upcoming events, it is of the utmost importance to know that Münchmeyer did not only precisely know about my past, the truth of it, but had also heard all the lies which had been added to it.
As far as the condition of my soul was concerned, there was quiet, perfect quiet. In the first four weeks of the previous four years, there had still been occasions when the dark characters had tormented me internally and had forced me to listen to what they were shouting at me; but, by and by, this had ceased, and finally it had quieted down, without ever stirring again. When I thought about this, without being sidetracked by psychology, I came to understand that those spectres could only influence me for as long as I was caught in the views which they represented. But once those were overcome, the frightful visions would have to fade. And this seemed to be the right thing; the Bible teacher was of the same opinion. I had not told him about my internal struggle, as I generally never confide in another person concerning purely personal and family matters. But yet, occasionally, a word was dropped, which was not meant to give any indication, but nevertheless did. He started to notice something. At one time in the course of a conversation, I got to talk about my dark characters and their tormenting voices; but I pretended to talk about someone else, not myself. This made him smile. He knew just too well whom I was referring to. The next day, he brought me a little book, the title of which read: "The so-called split of a person's interior, a representation of the split in mankind in general." I read it. What pleasure this was! How much did it clarify matters for me! Now, I knew all of a sudden what was wrong with me! Now, let them return, these voices; I had no cause to fear them any more! Later, when he came to get his book back, I thanked him, according to the joy I felt about it. So, he asked me:
"Isn't it so, it was yourself you were talking about?"