And yet few more momentous events have happened in a century than the union which led one man to give his eloquence to the social cause, and the other to suffer for that cause until his death. Marx had the higher thought, but his disciple Lassalle had the more attractive way of presenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalid cemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises, and that Lassalle—brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for his penetrating genius—should have lived in luxury, but should now know nothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence and ran beside him in the glory of his triumph.
Ferdinand Lassalle was a native of Breslau, the son of a wealthy Jewish silk-merchant. Heymann Lassal—for thus the father spelled his name—stroked his hands at young Ferdinand's cleverness, but he meant it to be a commercial cleverness. He gave the boy a thorough education at the University of Breslau, and later at Berlin. He was an affectionate parent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.
It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step that his son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood, feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he has toiled for the son; the son thinks that if this toil were given for love, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. Young Lassalle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on a university career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to the most cultured circles.
Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against his race. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty years before to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly felt in Germany, as it had already been in France. This was true in general, but especially true of Lassalle, whose features were not of a Semitic type, who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite in many salons. His portraits make him seem a high-bred and high-spirited Prussian, with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a face that has a sense of humor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent thought.
No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so many compeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer as Heinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning Lassalle, had not the latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to Varnhagen von Ense, the German historian:
My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.
No better proof of Lassalle's enthusiasm can be found than a few lines from his own writings:
I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpowering eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!
Lassalle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every one whom he knew. This was often misunderstood. It was misunderstood in his relations with women, and especially in the celebrated affair of the Countess von Hatzfeldt, which began in the year 1846—that is to say, in the twenty-first year of Lassalle's age.
In truth, there was no real scandal in the matter, for the countess was twice the age of Lassalle. It was precisely because he was so young that he let his eagerness to defend a woman in distress make him forget the ordinary usage of society, and expose himself to mean and unworthy criticism which lasted all his life. It began by his introduction to the Countess von Hatzfeldt, a lady who was grossly ill-treated by her husband. She had suffered insult and imprisonment in the family castles; the count had deprived her of medicine when she was ill, and had forcibly taken away her children. Besides this, he was infatuated with another woman, a baroness, and wasted his substance upon her even contrary to the law which protected his children's rights.