My Life and My Efforts, Volume I
[Mein Leben und Streben, Band I]

Autobiography by Karl May (1842-1912)

Translated by Gunther Olesch in 2000 from the 1st edition of 1910

Translator's Introduction

Karl May, born in 1842 under the name Carl Friedrich May, published the first volume of his autobiography in November of 1910. He never found the time to write the planned second volume or any of the other future works he is referring to in this book before he died in 1912.

Rudolf Lebius felt insulted by what Karl May had to say about him in his autobiography, and, less than one month after the sale of this book had started, Lebius succeeded in obtaining an injunction against it, so that it had to be taken out of the shops, and all remaining copies had to be destroyed. Rudolf Lebius is portrayed by Karl May as a villain of the worst kind, a man who changes his political loyalties for money and specialises in blackmailing people, after digging up dirt from their past, in order to control and use them and, most of all, in order to extort money. It is a fact that Lebius had been asking Karl May to "loan" him money, and when Karl May refused to pay, Lebius started publishing ever more aggressive articles against May in a newspaper he owned, full of exaggerated and partially false accusations. Lebius had been working for several newspapers with different political backgrounds before joining the social democratic party and writing for their newspapers. After founding his own newspaper, he left the party and changed his political views into the very opposite. Lebius then focused on anti-Semitic propaganda, and, after the first world war, he even led an anti-Semitic party for a few years. He died in 1946.

Thus, the first edition of Karl May's autobiography could only reach a few hundred people, probably mostly among German speaking readers outside of Germany, e.g. in Austria, where the injunction of the German court did not apply. About three month prior to his death, Karl May wrote to his publisher: "Concerning `My Life and My Efforts' I am willing to do your bidding. I will tackle it." Whether Karl May rewrote some parts of his autobiography, is uncertain, but very soon after his death, his publisher announced that an abridged version would soon be available. Four month after Karl May's death, this abridged version was published. It did not just omit the passages about Rudolf Lebius, but much more, and it even added texts taken from other autobiographical writings by Karl May. This adaptation is credited to Karl May's widow and E.A. Schmid (1884-1951). Little more than a month had passed before someone else, the lawyer Oskar Gerlach, felt insulted by this version and obtained an injunction against its publication. The publisher reacted by printing new, mostly blank, versions of those two pages Gerlach had objected against, instructing booksellers to rip out the offending pages and to glue the new ones in. In December of 1912, the lawsuit was settled, and the remaining copies of the adaptation could be sold with all of its pages, but a new edition would have to be changed. This third, further abridged edition was published in 1914 by E.A. Schmid. In early 1917, a 34th volume was added to the series of Karl May's collected works, of which 33 volumes had been published in the author's lifetime. This 34th volume is titled "Ich" <I>. It contains another abridged version of the autobiography as well as a few other texts, mostly about, but not by, Karl May. By 1995, this book had gone through 39 editions, in which the text of the autobiography had again been revised several times, though the later revisions aimed at a partial restoration of the original text. The compilation of other texts contained in this volume also differs in the various editions. Even the edition of 1995 still omits a large passage (at least 36 pages in the first edition) about Rudolf Lebius. It also moves two passages which had been omitted from the seventh chapter in previous editions to an appendix. In the first one of these passages, Karl May writes about his views on plagiarism.

Though, Karl May insists on being truthful in this book, one should not approach it without scepticism. It is particularly hard to believe that all of his repeated deceptions, assuring his readers that his fictional adventure stories were based on fact, were all just designed to set the scene for some great work, he was all the time planning to write at some later point in his life. Probably, his mind just sought a way to escape his unpleasant past and his present problems with his failing marriage to his first wife by retreating into the fictional persona of the protagonist of his novels.

Furthermore, there are many details where May's memory might have proven slightly unreliable or which he might intentionally or subconsciously try to conceal. For instance, his description of the events due to which he was thrown out of the boarding school completely contradicts the version found in the school's files. He writes that before Christmas he had to clean the candlesticks and kept the tallow he scratched off of them, to make small candles from it, to be used as Christmas decorations. He was watched by a fellow student, who reported this theft of what Karl May regarded as garbage to the principal. According to the school's files, it happened like this: In November, Karl May had to clean the candlesticks and to replace the burnt down candles. Two weeks later, two older students found six complete candles in his unlocked suitcase. They turned them over to the student who was in charge of the candles for that week, but agreed not to tell the teachers. Shortly before Christmas, accusations are made that, at two occasions, money had been stolen. The students who had found the candles came forward and were reprimanded by the teachers for having covered the matter up before. The question of the stolen money was never resolved.

Also, everything Karl May tells us about the life of his father's mother before he was even born is very questionable. It would seem that this grandmother was not just a gifted stroy-teller, but might also have invented a more romantic past for herself, which she then passed off as the truth to her family, just as Karl May later also pretended that his fictional novels were true. Karl May writes that this grandmother lost her mother at an early age. She fell in love with his grandfather, but felt obliged to devote all of her energy to taking care of her ailing father. Thus, she kept her faithful lover waiting until her father had died. After giving birth to two children, she lost her husband in a tragic and rather dramatic accident at Christmas. After some hard times, she found a job as a housekeeper, had a near-death experience, lost her job, and married a poor weaver by the name of Vogel, who also died shorty afterwards. Some aspects of this story plainly contradict the few facts from her life which could be pieced together from old church documents. These facts are: On May the 1st, 1803, she married C.F. May, while both of her parents were still alive. Five months later, their daughter was born. In 1810, her son Heinrich, Karl May's father, was born. The records of his baptism state that Heinrich's father was not his mother's husband. He was baptised under his mother's maiden name. On February the 4th, 1818, C.F. May died due to a "disorderly way of life" (whatever this is supposed to mean). In 1820, the mother of Karl May's grandmother died. In 1822, she married C.T. Vogel. In 1825, her father died. In 1826, C.T. Vogel died. Later in the same year, a church document lists her son Heinrich with the surname May.

There are indications that Karl May was not just aware of the fact that some things he wrote about his grandmother were not literally true, but that he had also invented some of it himself. The most striking indication of this is an old book of oriental myths, entitled "Der Hakawati", which May claims had belonged to his grandmother. He claims that the fable of Sitara, which he tells us in the beginning of his autobiography, had been contained in this book. It seems that neither such a book nor the author Christianus Kretzschmann ever existed. The author's name is strangely similar to May's grandmother's maiden name J. Christiane Kretzschmar. The fable of Sitara seems to be Karl May's own creation. In the end of the fifth chapter, he mentions another book, which he claims he had received from a man who had a great impact on his life while he was in prison. This book also never really existed. Apparently, these books are only meant to serve as symbols for abstract concepts and ideas which he got to know through the persons concerned. Thus, not just Karl May's novels, but also his autobiography, would have to be interpreted in a somewhat allegorical way, not necessarily representing literally true facts, but rather symbolising a spiritual truth.

Karl May's grandmother is of particular interest, because he writes that she had inspired the character of the princess Marah Durimeh, whom May regarded as the female counterpart in the Orient to the Indian chief Winnetou in America. Winnetou is the title character of Karl May's most famous novel and also appears in several others of his books. But Karl May never wrote the planned novel about Marah Durimeh, which he had intended to cover three or four volumes, just like "Winnetou". Thus, Marah Durimeh only plays a comparatively smaller role in his existing novels and we can only guess how he planned to develop this character into the central character of his later, unwritten works.

Though the fifth chapter, relating the darkest part of Karl May's life, is the longest in the book, it still skips many things, which the author obviously does not want to remember. Thus, the question which crimes he had actually committed remains largely unanswered. He also does not tell us anything about the journeys he claims to have taken in those days, promising to disclose this in the second volume, which he never wrote. The rumours he fostered that he had already in this early part of his life travelled to the Orient and to America are definitely not true; he probably never left Germany at this time. Only in his later years, he took a long trip to the Orient and Asia (1899-1900) and a trip to America (1908).

As far as the lawsuits and the events which led up to them are concerned, Karl May, of course, cannot be expected to relate them in an objective manner. After he had resigned his job at H.G. Münchmeyer's publishing company in 1877, he wrote for other publishers and got married in 1880. From 1882 on, we find him working for Münchmeyer again, writing those novels which were to become the reason for his first lawsuit. According to Karl May, Münchmeyer was on the verge of bankruptcy and begged May to save him with his gift for writing bestselling novels. But the truth might have been rather different. Karl May admits himself that the other publisher, he had mainly been working for, did not pay him much: "The royalties I received from Pustet were (...) so insignificant that I cannot bring myself to naming the amount." Having to support a wife, one can easily imagine that May was the one who was in need of some cash. Furthermore, I have read elsewhere that Münchmeyer had payed May an advance of 500 marks, a fact which May fails to mention in his autobiography.

And then there are Karl May's allegations that Münchmeyer, or rather one of employees, had spiced up those novels with indecent passages. Though it is likely that some abridgment had taken place, the claim that those novels were completely rewritten from morally impeccable stories into immoral trash are surely an exaggeration. For almost twenty years after their original publication, nobody seemed to be offended by these so-called "indecent novels". Only after Münchmeyer's widow had sold the rights to these novels, which she did not even own, and was therefore sued by Karl May, articles started appearing in the newspapers denouncing theses novels as highly immoral. These articles were not just designed to destroy Karl May's reputation and thereby ruin his chances in the pending lawsuits, they also increased the demand for the illegally printed copies of these novels. Perhaps, Karl May saw no other way to escape this trap than to pretend that his novels had been altered, and perhaps, his memory of them had also changed, regarding them as closer to his later works than they really were. At any rate, a proof, one way or the other, would be impossible. The original manuscripts had been destroyed, and those who allegedly rewrote these novels were already dead when the lawsuit started.

After Karl May's death, E.A. Schmid obtained the rights to all of his works. He believed in the myth that Karl May's novels had been thoroughly rewritten without the author's consent and made sure that the original versions were no longer published. He then created what he regarded as "improved" versions of all of Karl May's works. Especially the disputed novels, originally published by Münchmeyer, were rewritten rather dramatically; large parts of the plot were removed and new solutions to certain mysteries were invented; characters from Karl May's more popular novels were added; etc. Generations of readers have known Karl May only through Schmid's adaptations. After Karl May's works had entered the public domain, a few editions presenting the original texts have been published, but the vast majority of all books sold in Germany under the name of Karl May still contains the adaptations by Schmid et al.

I have read that Karl May was the most frequently translated German author of all times, but unfortunately this does not apply to the English language. Though even the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as "one of the world's all-time fiction best-sellers", he is virtually unknown by most English speaking readers. The earliest English translation of one of his works came in 1886, probably in the form of a weekly series of booklets under the title "Rosita" (a translation of "Das Waldröschen", the first one of those disputed novels Karl May had written for H.G. Münchmeyer under a pseudonym). I suppose, these booklets were just as quickly discarded and forgotten as they were printed. In 1898, two books entitled "Winnetou, the Apache knight" and "The Treasure of Nugget Mountain" were published, containing a severely abridged and altered translation by Marion Ames Taggart of Karl May's most famous novel "Winnetou". Among other things, the main character is changed from a German, implicitly a Protestant, into an American, whom the translator has named Jack Hildreth and who keeps on emphasising that he was a Catholic. In one place, the translator has even added a line in which the hero is made to point out that the religion of the murderer Rattler was not his own, but that of a non-Catholic, when Winnetou suggests to him that he had the same religion as the murderer. In the original book, the hero simply answers "Yes" and then goes on to explain, as he also does in the translation, that the murderer did not keep the commandments. These liberties of the translation are particular serious since Karl May often had to defend himself against allegations of promoting Catholicism, though being a Protestant, just because he published many of his stories in a Catholic magazine. In 1900, the series of translations by M.A. Taggart was continued with "Jack Hildreth on the Nile", based on Karl May's "Der Mahdi" a.k.a. "Im Lande des Mahdi". You can find these three books on the Internet at: [ http://karlmay.uni-bielefeld.de/kmg/sprachen/englisch/primlit/index.htm]

In 1955, a translation of the beginning of Karl May's big oriental adventure by M.A. de Becker and C.A. Willoughby has been published under the title "In the Desert". I have neither read this, nor any other later translations, but I have read about this translation that it had a tendency to simplify, shorten, and paraphrase the text. It is also peculiar that someone would only translate the first volume of a novel in six volumes. Thus, the reader would witness the hero finding the body of Paul Galingré in the desert and starting on his pursuit of the killers, but he would never solve the mystery and discover the criminal mastermind behind all of it in the end of the last volume. In 1971, two volumes of short stories entitled "Canada Bill" and "Captain Cayman", translated by Fred Gardner, have been published in London. These sold only about 3000 copies each. In 1977, a series of translations by Michael Shaw was published. It included "Ardistan and Djinnistan" (2 volumes), "Winnetou" (2 volumes), and "In the Desert" (1 volume). These translations have been described as faithful to the original. In 1979, the series was continued with 4 books, entitled "The Caravan of Death", "The Secret Brotherhood", "The Evil Saint", and "The Black Persian", continuing the oriental adventure which had started with "In the Desert". Only between 3000 and 4500 copies were sold per volume. In 1980, some of these books were reprinted as pocketbooks, but less than half of the printed books were actually sold, which put an end to all plans for further English translations. (By the way, the German original of "Winnetou" had sold about three million copies in the edition as volumes 7 to 9 of "Karl May's collected works" alone, when I bought it many years ago.) In 1998, there seems to have been a new edition of Michael Shaw's translation of "Winnetou", and in 1999, David Koblick published his abridged translation of the first volume of "Winnetou".

In this first (and only) volume of his autobiography, Karl May describes his life until about 1887/88 and then turns to the current events of 1910, when he had to defend himself against various slanderous accusations, touching only upon those events from the meantime which are somehow connected with these lawsuits. In the time from 1887 to 1899, he wrote most of those novels which have been the foundation of his lasting popularity. In 1899/1900, he went on his long journey through the Orient and, in 1908, he visited America. In the unwritten second volume of his autobiography, Karl May had planned to discuss those novels and his travels in detail. Here, I only want to give a short list of his work and a few events in his life after 1887:

1887: Karl May publishes "Der Sohn des Bärenjägers" <The Son of the Bear-Hunter> in a magazine for boys, published by Wilhelm Spemann. In the course of the following years, he off and on publishes several stories there, which are later collected in seven books. This gets him the reputation of being mainly an author for children, against which he vigorously protests in this autobiography. Nevertheless, these stories, mainly set in the Wild West, still rank among his most popular works.

1888: May finishes his big oriental adventure novel, which he had already started publishing in a magazine called "Deutscher Hausschatz" in 1881. For eight years (with interruptions), the readers of this magazine had been able, to follow the adventures of the first person narrator, whom many readers identified with the author, regarding the imaginative story as a factual account.
On September the 6th, Karl May's father dies.
In early October, he moves from Dresden to one of its suburbs, called Kötzschenbroda.

1889: Karl May meets Richard Plöhn and his wife Klara. They become his closest friends.
In October, the "Hausschatz" starts publishing Karl May's novel "El Sendador".

1890: Karl May can no longer afford to pay the rent on his large house in Kötzschenbroda. He moves to Niederlößnitz.

1891: Karl May moves to Oberlößnitz.
In October, the magazine's publication of "El Sendador" ends, and "Der Mahdi" starts.
F.E. Fehsenfeld becomes May's publisher. This marks the beginning of a series of 33 books, called "gesammelte Reiseerzählungen" <collected traveller's tales>, which are regarded as his most important works.

1892: On April the 6th, H.G. Münchmeyer dies.
The first six volumes of the "collected traveller's tales", containing the big oriental adventure, are published, with one additional chapter in the end of the sixth volume, which was previously unpublished.

1893: Karl May and his wife take a trip to the Black Forest. Afterwards, they visit F.E. Fehsenfeld and his wife, and together they travel to Switzerland. The trip only worsens the deteriorating relationship of Karl and Emma May.
"Winnetou", Karl May's most famous novel, is published as volumes 7 to 9 of his "collected traveller's tales". While the first one of these three volumes was written entirely from scratch by Karl May, only reusing very few ideas from earlier stories, volumes two and three mainly recycle material, which he had previously published as individual stories.
Volumes 10 and 11, published by Fehsenfeld, present collections of earlier stories with a few new passages to tie them together.
In September, the publication of "Der Mahdi" in the "Hausschatz" ends and "Satan und Ischariot" starts (though this title is not used by the magazine).

1894: Karl May's health is suffering. Together with his wife, he visits a health resort in the Harz Mountains.
"El Sendador" is published as volumes 12 and 13 of Karl May's "traveller's tales", with only minor changes, but under new titles. Volume 14 contains the first volume of a new western novel, entitled "Old Surehand".
Karl May rejects an offer by Pauline Münchmeyer, the widow of H.G. Münchmeyer, to write a new novel for her.

1895: Volume 15 is published as the second volume of "Old Surehand", but it does not really continue the story of the first volume, but rather interrupts it with a series of flashbacks to earlier stories, in which the title character does not even occur. In editions published after Karl May's death, these stories have been removed, so that "Old Surehand" no longer covers three, but only two volumes. Most of the contents of the original second volume was then adapted into an additional volume entitled "Kapitän Kaiman".
[The English translations published in 1971 under the titles "Canada Bill" and "Captain Cayman" are based on these stories which Karl May originally incorporated into the second volume of "Old Surehand".]
Karl May is visited by Ferdinand Pfefferkorn and his wife. Karl May had gone to school with Pfefferkorn, who had since then emigrated to Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Pfefferkorns conduct spiritualistic séances with the Mays and probably also the Plöhns.
On December the 30th, Karl May buys a house in Radebeul, which he names "Villa Shatterhand" after his alter-ego "Old Shatterhand" from his western novels. Here, he spends the rest of his life. Nowadays, the house continues to be preserved as a museum.

1896: Karl May further fosters the myth that his fictional adventures were based on facts by commissioning a gunsmith to make three customised rifles for him, which he then passes off as the "actual" weapons used by the two main characters from his novel "Winnetou". He also has himself photographed, dressed in appropriate costumes, as the main character from his adventure stories.
"Der Mahdi" is published under the title "Im Lande des Mahdi" <In the Land of the Mahdi> as volumes 16 to 18 of Karl May's "collected traveller's tales". Originally the story consisted of two parts, which were both too large to fit into one volume each. Karl May shortened the first part and extended the second part to fill two volumes. Thus, most of the third volume presents new material, not included in the magazine's version. Volume 19 contains the third volume of "Old Surehand", not published before and finishing the story which had begun in the first volume.

1897: "Satan und Ischariot" is published as volumes 20 to 22 of the "traveller's tales". In adapting the novel for this edition (in the year before), Karl May had realised that Heinrich Keiter, the editor of the "Hausschatz" magazine, had almost entirely removed a rather long chapter from the novel. May demanded that his original manuscript should be returned to him, but only those pages of the lost chapter which had been ignored in their entirety, as well as most of the last third of the novel, had survived. But still, in spite of all this, he did not completely restore the novel for the edition published by Fehsenfeld. Instead, on about six printed pages, he only gives a summary of the lost chapter, which otherwise would have covered approximately 200 pages. After Keiter's promise that this would never happen again, Karl May writes the beginning of "Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen" <In the Empire of the Silver Lion> for the magazine, but discontinues his work on account of a new controversy. For the next ten years, Karl May publishes no further novels in this magazine.
Karl May and his wife travel through a large part of Germany, Austria, and Bohemia.
Volume 23 of the "collected traveller's tales" presents a collection of earlier short stories, and volume 24 contains a new novel, called "Weihnacht!" <Christmas!>.

1898: On August the 30th, Heinrich Keiter dies.
"Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen" is published as volumes 26 and 27 of the "traveller's tales" with an additional chapter, not published before.

1899: "Am Jenseits" <Near the Afterlife> is published as Karl May's 25th volume for Fehsenfeld.
On March the 26th, Karl May embarks on his big trip to the Orient. In Egypt, the news of the planned illegal printing by Adalbert Fischer of his earlier novels reaches him. He protests and threatens to sue. Furthermore, he has to find out that a smear campaign has been started in several German newspapers against him and his work, while he has been travelling abroad.

1900: May is joined on his journey by his wife Emma, his friend Richard Plöhn, and his wife Klara. He returns home on July the 31th.
Karl May publishes a book of poetry, entitled "Himmelsgedanken" <Thoughts of Heaven>.

1901: On February the 14th, Karl May's friend Richard Plöhn dies.
May writes his pacifist novel "Et in terra pax", but has to interrupt it, since it violates the not so peaceful intentions of the publisher Joseph Kürschner.
The illegal publication of his earlier novels starts, causing those lawsuits, which were to drag on until long after Karl May's death.

1902: Karl May publishes a third volume of "Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen" as the 28th volume of his "traveller's tales", but this is no longer a plain adventure novel like the first two volumes, but rather an allegorical novel with many hidden, autobiographical references.
On September the 10th, Karl May files for divorce.

1903: On March the 4th, the divorce is final.
On March the 30th, he marries Klara, the widow of Richard Plöhn.
The fourth volume of "Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen" is published as the 29th volume of the "traveller's tales".

1904: The lawsuits against Rudolf Lebius start.
The painter Sascha Schneider, a close personal friend of Karl May, creates new cover illustrations for his novels, which reflect the metaphorical interpretation which Karl May now gives to all of his work.
Karl May completes "Et in terra pax" and publishes it as volume 30 of his "collected traveller's tales" under the German title "Und Friede auf Erden" <And Peace on Earth>, upon a suggestion by his publisher.

1905: Karl May meets Bertha von Suttner, who won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

1906: Karl May publishes his drama "Babel und Bibel". It is generally rejected by the critics and has, to my knowledge, never been performed on stage.

1907: On January the 9th, Karl May wins his lawsuit against Adalbert Fischer and Pauline Münchmeyer.
On April the 7th, Adalbert Fischer dies.
Karl May reconciles his differences with the "Hausschatz" magazine and publishes in it his novel "Der Mir von Dschinnistan".

1908: On September the 5th, Karl and Klara May embark on their journey to America. They visit New York, Albany, Buffalo, and the Niagara Falls. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, Karl May meets his old friend Pfefferkorn, who had emigrated to America. On October the 18th, he makes a speech on mankind's big questions: "Who are we? Where do we come from? Where do we go to?" Probably in early November, he returns home, to depart again for London by the end of this month, spending about one week in England. In early December, Karl May and his wife return home.

1909: The magazine's publication of "Der Mir von Dschinnistan" ends. Under the new title "Ardistan und Dschinnistan", this novel becomes volumes 31 and 32 of his "collected traveller's tales".
Karl May adds an fourth volume to his Winnetou trilogy, written in his new, allegorical style. It is published in an supplement to a newspaper called "Augsburger Volkszeitung".

1910: The fourth volume of Winnetou is included into his "traveller's tales" as its 33rd and last volume.
Karl May publishes his autobiography.

1911: Karl May's health is getting worse. From May to July, he spends time in several health resorts in Austria and Italy.
On December the 18th, Karl May wins his lawsuit against Rudolf Lebius.
In the end of the year, May suffers from a severe case of pneumonia.

1912: Against doctor's orders, Karl May accepts an invitation to speak before the academy for literature and music in Vienna. On March the 20th, he arrives in Vienna, and in an interview with a newspaper reporter, he says: "What I have created up to now, I regard as preliminary studies, as études. I have, in a manner of speaking, tested my audience. Only now, I want to approach the actual work of my life."
On March the 22th, he speaks before an enthusiastic audience of about 2000 people.
On March the 30th, back at home in Radebeul, he dies.

About my translation:

This translation is based on the first edition of 1910.

That one footnote from the original text is marked with a ^[1].

Here and there, I have added some footnotes, to explain things which do not translate so well into English or some readers might not be familiar with. These additional footnotes are marked with ^[a], etc. I admit that there are still a few more expressions which might require an explanation, but I could not fully resolve myself.

Names of places and titles of books are often left untranslated, but when they carry a translatable meaning I have added this in angle brackets.

My Life and My Efforts

Autobiography by Karl May

Volume I

Original title: Mein Leben und Streben, Selbstbiographie von Karl May, Band I

[Translated by Gunther Olesch in 2000]

The day this world will cast you from its sight, Go calmly forth from here and don't lament. By means like this, it freed you from your plight, And as it did you wrong, it will repent.

(Karl May "Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen" [a])

^[a] A slightly different version of this poem can be found in "Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen IV" <In the Empire of the Silver Lion, Volume 4> a.k.a. "Das versteinerte Gebet" <The Petrified Prayer>. There, the last line would translate literally as "and therefore it has to bear all of your guilt", whereas here a more literal translation would be "and it now has to bear its guilt (from its offence) against you by itself".

Contents

I. The Fable of Sitara

If someone should go in a straight line from the earth to the sun within three months and proceed beyond the sun for another three months into the same direction, he would reach a star named Sitara. Sitara is a Persarabian word, meaning nothing more than "star".

This star has much, very much, in common with our earth. Its diameter is 1700 miles ^[a] and its equator 5400 miles long. It revolves around itself and simultaneously also around the sun. One movement around itself takes precisely one day, the movement around the sun takes just as precisely one year, not a second more or less. Its surface consists of one part land and two parts water. But, while there are five continents to be found on earth, the land of Sitara is arranged in a different, much simpler manner. It is all connected. It does not form several continents, but just a single one, which consists of the lowland, full of morasses, and the highland, boldly towering up towards the sun. Both are connected by a rather small, steeply ascending strip of jungle. The lowland is a plain. It is unhealthy, rich in poisonous plants and savage beasts, and at the mercy of all the tempests, raging from sea to sea. It is called Ardistan. Ard means earth, soil, a base substance, and figuratively it means the pleasure of mindless existence in filth and dust, the inconsiderate amassing of material possessions, the cruel, destructive fight against everything that does not belong to one's own self, or is not willing to serve it. Thus, Ardistan is the home of the low, selfish ways of life, and in respect to its more evolved inhabitants, the land where persons of violence and egotism live. The highland, on the other hand, is lofty, healthy, eternally young and beautiful, kissed by sunbeams, rich in natural gifts as well as the products of human efforts, a garden of Eden, a paradise. It is called Jinnistan. Jinni means spirit, beneficent ghost, bliss-bringing, unearthly creature, and figuratively it means the inborn yearning for higher goals, the pleasure in mental and spiritual progress, the busy striving for everything which is good and noble, and most of all the joy in promoting one's neighbours' happiness, the well-being of all those who require love and assistance. Thus, Jinnistan is the realm of humanity and neighbourly love, stretching upwards like the mountains, the once promised land of the nobly spirited people.

^[a] This refers to the now outdated old German geographic mile, which had a length of 4.6126 statute miles. Thus, Sitara has precisely the same size as Earth.

Down below, Ardistan is ruled by a line of vile thinking, selfish tyrants, whose most supreme law reads mercilessly short: "You shall be your neighbour's devil, so that you shall become your own angel!" And high above, Jinnistan was ruled for countless ages by a dynasty of generous, genuinely royal-minded regents, whose most supreme law reads delightfully short: "You shall be your neighbour's angel, so that you shall not become your own devil!"

And for as long as this Jinnistan, this land of the nobly spirited people, exists, every citizen had been required to be secretly, without exposing him- or herself, the guardian angel of one other person. So, there is happiness and sunshine for Jinnistan, but in Ardistan, there is just a deep spiritual darkness and the forbidden, and therefore secret, lamentation for liberation from this hell! No wonder that down there, in the lowland, an ever growing desire for the highland developed! No wonder, that the more evolved ones of the souls there sought to free themselves from the darkness and sought redemption! Millions and millions enjoy life in the morasses of Ardistan. They have grown used to the miasmas. They do not want to have it any other way. They would not be able to exist in the clean air of Jinnistan. These are by no means just the poorest and lowest, but even more so the richest and most distinguished inhabitants of the land: the pharisees, who need sinners in order to appear righteous, the prosperous, who require poor people for contrast, the lazy ones, who must have workers for their convenience, and most of all the smart, cunning ones, for whom the stupid, trusting, honest ones are indispensable, to be exploited by them. What would happen to all those privileged ones, if the others were not to exist any more? Therefore, everyone is most strictly forbidden, to leave Ardistan and to escape the pressure of its laws. But the harshest punishment is inflicted upon him who dares to flee to the land of neighbourly love and humanity, to Jinnistan. The border is guarded. He will not get through. He will be apprehended and brought to the "spirits' furnace", to be tortured and tormented, until the pain forces him to beg for forgiveness and to return to the hated oppression.

This is because, between Ardistan and Jinnistan, there is Maerdistan, that steeply ascending strip of jungle where the infinitely dangerous and strenuous way up passes through its labyrinths of trees and rocks. Maerd is a Persian word; it means "man". Maerdistan is the frontier land, where only "men" may dare to venture; anybody else would necessarily perish. The most dangerous part of this almost entirely unknown area is the "forest of Kulub". Kulub is an Arabian word. It means the plural of "heart". Thus, the enemies who have to be conquered one by one, if one would want to escape from Ardistan to Jinnistan, lurk in the depths of the heart. And in the midst of this forest of Kulub, that place of torture is to be found, about which I have written in "Babel and Bible", page 78:

"In Maerdistan, the forest of Kulub,
Lies lonely, hidden well, the spirits' furnace."
"Do spirits forge there?"

"No, but they are forged!
Storms bring them, drag them, here at midnight's time,
When lightnings light the sky, tears pour like floods,
Where hatred comes on them in grim delight,
And envy digs its claws into the flesh.
Remorse will sweat and wail where bellows blow.
The pain is by the block with staring eyes,
A blackened face, the hammer in his hand.
There, now, o sheik, the pliers grab you fast.
They toss you to the blaze; the bellows creak.
The flame flares upwards, far beyond the roof,
And all that you possess and what you are,
The flesh, the mind, the soul, and all the bones,
The sinews, fibres, tendons, flesh and blood,
The thoughts and feelings, everything and all,
Is burnt from you, is tortured and tormented
Up to the whitest blaze -- -- -"

"Allah, Allah!"
"Don't scream, o sheik! I'm telling you, don't scream!
For screamers are unworthy of this pain,
Are thrown away to be the dross and refuse
And must, at last, be molten down again.
But you would want to be the steel, a blade
That glistens in the paraklet's ^[a] own fist.
Be quiet, thus!

"He rips you from the fire -- --
He casts you on the anvil -- -- holds you tight.
It clangs and cracks on you in every pore.
The pain will start its work, the smith, the expert.
He spits into his fists, and then he grasps,
Lifts with both hands, the giant hammer up -- -- --
The blows do strike. Each blow is like a murder,
A murder killing you. You think you're crushed.
Hot scraps spew widely, everywhere around.
Your self gets thinner, smaller, even smaller,
And yet, you must go back into the fire -- --
Again -- -- and yet again, until the smith
Will see the spirit in hell's agony,
Through all the gloom of soot and hammers' blows,
Who smiles at him in calm and grateful joy.
This one is fixed into the vice and ground.
The file does screech, and eats away from you
Whatever still -- -- -"

"Desist! It is enough!"
"It does go on, for now the drill is used,
It spirals deeply -- -- -"
"Silence! Oh, for God's sake!"
etc. etc.

^[a] parakletos (Greek): a person called to one's aid, especially to intercede before God, used in John 14-16 for the Holy Spirit (the King James version translates it as "comforter" here) and in 1John 2:1 for Jesus Christ (the King James version translates it as "advocate" here).

So this is how Maerdistan is like, and this is what is going on inside the "spirits' furnace of Kulub"! Every inhabitant of Sitara knows the tale which says that the souls of all important people, who are to be born, are sent down from heaven. Angels and devils are waiting for them. A soul who is so fortunate to come across an angel will be born in Jinnistan, and all of its paths are smoothened. But the poor soul who falls into the hands of a devil will be dragged to Ardistan by him, and hurled into an even deeper misery, the higher the task was which the soul had been given from above. The devil wants it to perish and rests neither day nor night to turn him, who was destined to be gifted or ingenious, into a rotten and doomed individual. All resistance and rebellion is futile; the poor soul is doomed. And even if he succeeded in escaping from Ardistan, he would still be apprehended in Maerdistan and dragged to the spirits' furnace, to be tortured and tormented, until he loses his last bit of courage to resist.

Only rarely, the heavenly strength, given to such a soul hurled to Ardistan, is thus great and thus inexhaustible that it could bear even the strongest pain of the spirits' furnace and face the smith and his fellows "through all the gloom of soot and hammers' blows, and smile at him in calm and grateful joy." Even the greatest pain is powerless against such a heavenly child, it is immune; it is saved. It will not be destroyed by the fire, but rather purified and fortified. And once all the dross has fallen off, the smith has to keep his distance, because there is nothing left that would belong to Ardistan. Therefore, neither man nor devil can prevent it now, and may all of the lowland burst out in an roar of rage, from rising up to Jinnistan, where everyone is his neighbour's angel. -- -- --

II. My Childhood

I was born in the lowest and deepest part of Ardistan, a favourite of distress, worry, and sorrow. My father was a poor weaver. Both of my grandfathers had met with fatal mishaps. My mother's father died at home, my father's father in the forest. On Christmas day, he had gone to a neighbouring village, to fetch some bread. Nightfall came suddenly. In a raging snowstorm he lost his way and plunged into the ravine of "Krähenholz" <Crows' Wood>, which used to be rather steep, and could not struggle his way out again. His tracks were blown away. He was searched for a long time in vain. Not until the snow had disappeared, his corpse, and also the bread, was found. Generally, Christmas has very often been, for myself as well as my family, not so much a joyous time, but rather a time of tragic misfortune.

I was born on February the 25th, 1842, in the tiny town of Ernstthal <Earnest Valley> in the Erzgebirge <Ore Mountains> ^[a], which was a very poor and small town then, mostly populated by weavers. Now, it has been incorporated into the slightly larger Hohenstein <High Rock>. There were nine of us: my father, my mother, both grandmothers, four sisters, and me, the only boy. My mother's mother scrubbed floors for other people and span cotton. On some occasions, she earned more than 25 pfennig per day. Then, she became generous and gave us five children two tiny rolls of bread, which only cost four pfennig, because they were extremely hard and stale, often even moldy. She was a kind, hard working, silent woman, who never complained. She died, as one would say, of old age. The real reason for her death was probably what is nowadays discretely termed as "being underfed". About my other grandmother, my father's mother, there is more to tell, but not here, at this point. My mother was a martyr, a saint, always quiet, infinitely hard working, constantly willing to make a sacrifice for other, even poorer people in spite of our own poverty. Never ever, I have heard her speak a bad word. She was a blessing for everyone she met, and a special blessing for us, her children. No matter how hard she suffered, she would never let anyone know about it. But at night, when she sat, busily knitting, by the light of the small, smoking oil-lamp and thought no one was watching, it happened that a tear came to her eye to run down her cheek, vanishing even faster than it had appeared. With one movement of the fingertips this trace of her sufferings was instantly wiped away.

^[a] Erzgebirge: the mountain range which forms the border of Saxony with Bohemia.
The name of the town is spelled "Ernsttal" throughout most of the original book. In 1901, there had been a reform of the German spelling system, changing "th" into "t" in all words where it does not transliterate the Greek letter theta. Thus "Thal" <valley> became "Tal". But this change should not be applied to names of places and persons.

My father was a man of two souls: One soul of infinite tenderness and one of tyrannic proportions, knowing no limits in his rage, incapable to control himself. He possessed outstanding talents, all of which remained undeveloped on account of our immense poverty. He had never attended any school, but had learnt through his own efforts to read fluently and to write very well. He was naturally handy in all crafts necessary for daily life. Whatever his eyes saw, his hands could reproduce. Though being just a weaver, he was nevertheless capable to tailor his own coats and trousers, and to sole his own boots. He enjoyed whittling and sculpting, and what he achieved in these field had some appeal and was not too bad. When I wanted a violin, and he did not have the money to buy the bow as well, he swiftly made one himself. Its shape was not so beautifully curved, and it lacked in elegance, but it was entirely fit for its job. Father liked to busy himself with his work, but all of his work was always done in a hurry. What took another weaver fourteen hours, took him only ten. He then used the other four to do things he enjoyed more. During those ten hours of immense strain, he was very bad company, everyone had to keep quiet, no one was allowed to stir. At these times, we lived in constant fear of arousing his rage. Then, woe on us! Attached to his loom, there was a threefold woven rope, which left blue marks on the flesh, and behind the oven, he kept the well known "birch-wood Hans", whom we children particularly feared, because father loved to soak it in the large "oven-pot" before every chastisement, to make it more elastic and therefore more penetrating. But on the other hand, when the ten hours were over, we had nothing to fear any more. We all sighed in relief, and father's other soul smiled at us. He could be downright endearing then, but even in most joyous and peaceful moments, we felt like standing on an active volcano, which might errupt at any given moment. Then we got the rope or the "Hans", until father's strength wore out. Our oldest sister, a highly gifted, kind, happy, conscientious girl, was still disciplined by slaps to the face after she was engaged, because she had come home from a walk with her fiancé just slightly later than she had been permitted.

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.

Unfortunately, this purchase could not be made without spending some money. Mother had to sacrifice one of her pouches, perhaps even two. She did it just reluctantly. The pigeons did not give her the same joy, they gave us children. Our greatest pleasure was to watch the dear animals changing their tender plumage. Father had bought two pairs of very expensive "blue-striped" pigeons. He brought them home and showed them to us. He hoped to make at least three taler of them. Some days later, the blue feathers lay on the ground: they had not been real, but had been glued on. The precious "blue-striped" pigeons turned out to be entirely worthless, common, white ones. Father purchased a very pretty, young, grey cock pigeon for one taler and fifteen good groschen. After a short time, the pigeon turned out to be blind of old age. He never left the pigeonry, his value was zero. Such and similar incidents occurred increasingly. The consequence of this was that mother had to sacrifice another pouch to really get the pigeon-trade going. Of course, father also tried his best. He took no leisure-time. He attended all markets, all inns and bars in order to buy or to find buyers. One time he bought peas, another time vetches, he had obtained "almost for free". He was always on the move, from one village to another, from one farmer to another. He constantly brought home cheese, eggs, and butter, we did not even need. He had bought them over price, just entice the farmers' wives into a deal, and could only unload them with difficulties and at a loss. This restless, unprofitable life yielded no gain, but devoured the happiness of our home. It even ravaged the remaining linen pouches. Mother talked to him kindly, in vain. She worried and kept quiet, until it would have been a sin to bear it any longer. Then, she arrived at a decision and went to Judge Layritz, who turned out to be much, much more reasonable in this case, than at that other time with our frogs. She presented her case to him. She told him that she did love her husband very, very much, but had to consider primarily her children's well-being. She disclosed to him that she owned an additional pouch, she had not shown, but kept from her husband. She asked the judge to be so kind to tell her how she should invest this money in order to achieve security for herself and her children. She presented him with the pouch. He opened it and counted. There were sixty hard, shiny, well polished talers. This caused great astonishment! Judge Layritz thought about it, then he said: "My dear Mrs. May, I know you. You are a good woman, and I will vouch for you. Our midwife is old, we need a younger one. You will go to Dresden and spent your money there on becoming a midwife. I will arrange this! If you'll return with the highest marks, we will hire you right away. I'm giving you my word on this. But if you should return with lesser marks, we will not be able to use you. But now, go back home and tell your husband, he should come and see me right away, I'd have to talk with him!"

So it happened. Mother went to Dresden. She returned with the highest marks, and Judge Layritz kept his word; she was hired. During her absence, father did all of the housework together with grandmother. This was a hard time, a time of suffering, for all of us. There was an outbreak of small-pox. All of us children became ill. Grandmother did almost more than was humanly possible; but father did so too. One of the sisters' head had turned into a shapeless lump on account of the small-pox. Forehead, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin had entirely disappeared. The physician had to probe for the lips with a knife, in order to feed the sick girl with at least some milk. She is still alive today, the most cheerful one of us all, and has never been sick again. The scars are still visible, which resulted from the physician cutting her, while searching for her mouth.

These hard times were not entirely over yet, when mother returned, but her stay in Dresden brought a big stroke of good fortune for me. By her hard work and her quiet, deeply sincere ways, she had gained the favour of the two professors Grenzer and Haase, and had told them about me, her miserable, blinded, and yet spiritually so lively boy. She had been asked to bring me to Dresden, to be treated by these two physicians. This was now done, and with a quite remarkable success. I learnt to see, and returned home healthily in all other respects as well. But all of this required a large, large sacrifice; of course it was only large in respect to our poor conditions. Because of all of the necessary expenses, we had to sell the house, and the small part of the price we were to keep as our own was hardly sufficient to pay for the most urgent things. We moved to a rented place. -- --

And now, I will turn to that person, who had the most profound and extensive influence on my development in a spiritual respect. While our mother's mother had been born in Hohenstein and was therefore called the "Hohensteiner grandmother" by us, my father's mother was from Ernstthal and therefore had to listen to the name "Ernstthaler grandmother". The latter was an entirely peculiar, inscrutable, noble, and, I might almost say, mysterious character. She was to me, from my early youth on, a cherished, blissful puzzle, from the depth of which I could scoop up wisdom without ever running out of it. Where had she obtained all this from. Very simple: She was a soul, nothing but a soul, and modern psychology knows what this means. She was born in the direst need and had grown up in the direst suffering; therefore, she regarded everything with hoping eyes, yearning for deliverance. And whoever is capable to hope and to believe the right way, has already pushed all the misery of earth aside and will only find sunshine and God's peace ahead. She was the daughter of miserably poor folks, had lost her mother at an early age, and to feed her father, who was neither able to stand nor to lie and was tied and bound to an old leather arm-chair for many years, until he died. She took care of him with an endless self-denial, which would move a person to tears. Poverty allowed her only the cheapest of accommodations. Her chamber's window let her see only the cemetery, nothing else. She knew all of the graves, and thought there would only be one course for herself and her father, to be carried out of their humble dying chamber in a coffin towards the churchyard. She had one lover, who had decent and honest intentions, but she gave him up. She wanted to devote her entire time only to her father, and the good fellow agreed with her. He said nothing, but he waited and remained faithful to her.

Upstairs, in the attic, stood an old chest, containing even older books. This were heirlooms, bound in leather, of various contents, both religious and secular. It was told that there had been clerics, scholars, and travellers in our family, when it had been prosperous, of whom we are reminded up to this day by those books. Father and daughter were able to read, they had both learnt it by themselves. At nightfall, after the strife and work of the day was done, the Reifröckchen ^[1] was lit, and one of them read to the other. Once in a while, a pause was made to discuss what had been read. Though having read the books almost twenty times already, they started over again and again, because every time, new ideas were found, which seemed to be better, more beautiful and also truer than those from before. Most frequently, a rather large and very worn-out volume was read, the title of which was:

^[1] a small oil lamp

The Hakawati
i.e.

the story-teller in Asia, Africa, Turkia, Arabia, Persia, and India, including an appendix with interpretation, explanatio & interpretatio, also many a comparison and images

by
Christianus Kretzschmann
who was from Germania.
Printed by Wilhelmus Candidus
A. D.: M. D. C. V.

*
* *

This book contained a large amount of meaningful, oriental tales, which were not to be found in any previous collection. Grandmother knew all of these tales. Usually, she recited them literally, word by word, but in certain instances, whenever it deemed her necessary, she made alterations or added applications, from which became evident that she knew the spirit of the stories she told very well, and made precise use of its effect. Her favourite tale was the fable of Sitara. Later, it also became my favourite, because it dealt with the geography and ethnology of our earth and its inhabitants from a purely ethical point of view. But let this just be a small indication, here.

The father died as a consequence of a series of hemorrhages. Taking care of him was so exhausting that the daughter came close to death herself, but she survived it. After the time of mourning had passed, May, the faithful lover, came and took her on. Now finally, finally she was truly happy! It was a marriage, according to God's will. Two children were born, my father and a sister before him; she later suffered a serious fall and was crippled as a consequence of it. So you see, that we always had our share of afflictions, or rather tests of faith. And you can also see that I do not conceal anything. It must not be my intension, to embellish the ugly parts. But shortly after the birth of the second child, that sorrowful event occurred at Christmas time, I already told about. The good young man plunged at night with the bread into the deep, snowy ravine and froze to death. Grandmother and both of her children had nothing to eat during the Christmas holidays, and only found out after a long time of agony that she had lost her beloved husband, and under such dreadful circumstances. Hereafter came years of mourning and then the hard times of the Napoleonic wars and of famine. Everything was devastated. No work could be found anywhere. Inflation grew; hunger raged. A poor, young journeyman came to beg. Grandmother could not give him anything. She did not even have a single piece of bread for herself and her children. He saw that she was silently weeping. This aroused his compassion. He left and returned after more than one hour. He poured out before her, whatever he had got, pieces of bread, a dozen potatoes, a rutabaga, a small, very ancient cheese, a small bag of flour, an equally small bag of barley, a thin slice of sausage, and a tiny piece of mutton-suet. Then, he swiftly went away to avoid her gratitude. She never saw him again; but there is one who knows him for sure and will not forget him. This one sent even more and better help. The wife of a head forester had died. He lived outside of the town and was known to be as prosperous as he was kind-hearted. His wife had left him with a very large number of children. He wished to employ grandmother as a housekeeper. In this time of need, she would have liked to accept just too well, but declared that she could not possibly part with her own children, even if she found a place to house them. It did not take the good man long to decide. He declared to her, he would not care whether six or eight children ate at his house; they would all be fed. She should just come, not without them, but with them. This saved her from the direst need!

The stay in the quiet, lonely house of the forester was doing the mother and her children a world of good. They grew healthier and stronger from the better nutrition. The head forester saw grandmother doing her best to show her gratitude and to gain his satisfaction. She worked almost more than her strength would allow, but felt good about it. He quietly observed this and rewarded her by granting her children, in every respect, the same things his own children received. Surely, he was an aristocrat and basically proud. He ate alone with his mother-in-law. Grandmother was just a servant, yet she did not eat in the servant's, but the children's room. But when, after some time, he had gained an insight into the peculiar world of her soul, he cared for her spiritual wellbeing as well. He eased the heavy burden of her work, allowed her to read to him and his mother-in-law from her books in the evenings, and permitted her then to look at his own books as well. How much did she enjoy this! And he had such good, such useful books!

The children had, in reasonable limits, a free life. They chased each other through the forest and got strong limbs and red cheeks. Little May was the youngest and smallest of them all, but he joined the others with all of his energy. And he payed attention; he learnt and remembered. He wanted to know everything. He asked about every object he did not know yet. Soon, he knew the names of all plants, all caterpillars and worms, all bugs and butterflies, which existed in his realm. He sought to familiarise himself with their character, their properties and habits. This zest for knowledge, gained him the head forester's special affections, who did not even regard it beneath him, to allow the boy to accompany him. I have to mention this, so that later events become understandable. The following relapse from this sunny, hopeful time of his boyhood into the previous poverty and wretchedness could not possibly have had a positive effect on the boy.

It was at this time that, during lunch, grandmother suddenly fell from her chair and dropped dead to the floor. The whole house became very excited. The physician was called. He diagnosed a heart attack and stated that grandmother was dead and had to be buried within three days. But she was alive. Yet, she could not move a single limb, not even her lips or the not entirely closed eyelids. She saw and heard everything, the weeping, the lamentations for her. She understood every word that was spoken. She saw and heard the carpenter, who came to take her measurements for the coffin. When it was done, she was placed into it and put into a cold chamber. On the day of the burial, she was laid out in the corridor. The pall bearers came, the minister and the cantor with the students' choir. The family started to bid its farewell to her who appeared to be dead. Just imagine their agony! For three days and three nights, she had made every effort, to show by any kind of movement that she was still alive -- -- in vain! Now, the last moment had come, when she could still be saved. Once the coffin had been closed, there was no hope left. Later, she told that in her terrible mortal fear, she had made efforts, quite beyond what is humanly possible, to at least wiggle one finger, when one after another came by to hold her hand for the last time. So also did the head forester's youngest girl, who had always felt particularly close to grandmother. Suddenly, the child startled and screamed: "She has grabbed my hand; she wants to hold on to me!" And really, everyone saw the seemingly deceased, alternatingly opening and closing her hand in a slow motion. The funeral was, of course, called off immediately. Other physicians were brought in; grandmother was saved. But from then on, the way she led her life was even graver and more uplifted than before. Just rarely, she talked about what she had thought and felt in those unforgettable three days on the threshold between life and death. It must have been horrible. But this also just served to strengthen her faith in God and to deepen her confidence in Him. Just as her death had been unreal, from now on she also regarded the so-called actual death as equally unreal, and for many years she sought the right ideas to explain and to prove this. It is thanks to her and her false death that I in general only believe in life, but not in death.

Before she was mentally quite over this experience, grandmother and her two children were hurled back into their previous way of life, on account of the head forester being assigned to another district and getting remarried. She returned to Ernstthal, and again had to earn her living penny by penny. A good man, Vogel by name and also a weaver by trade, proposed to her. Everyone kept urging her, she had to give her children a new father; she owed them that much. She did it, and had no cause to regret it, but unfortunately, she became once more a widow after just a short time. He died and left her everything he owned: poverty and the reputation of a good, hard working man. Hereafter, her life became quiet and even quieter. She got her girl a place with a seamstress, and her boy was sent to a weaver, who kept him working at the reel from dawn to dusk. After all, it was now taken for granted that the boy had to become nothing but a weaver, though he had definitely lost all interest in it during his stay at the forester's house. He had already gained an entirely different image of himself, and it is surely understandable that later, after having been forced into this unloved craft, he got the idea to free himself from it again by means of the pigeon-trade. Nevertheless, he did his duty, both as a boy and as an adolescent. He worked hard and became a capable weaver, whose merchandise turned out so clean and accurate that every businessman liked to have him work for him. But, in this leisure-time, he strolled through forests and meadows, to collect plants and to keep all the knowledge he had gained at the head forester's fast in his memory. Therefore he took great pleasure from the fact that among the previously mentioned inheritance of our mother there were also some old, most interesting books, the contents of which turned out to be of great benefit to him in these leisure-time activities. Here, I am particularly thinking of a large, thick folio, which had about a thousand pages and bore the following title:

Herbal Book

Of the most learned and worldwide famous Dr. Petri Andreae Matthioli. Now again with many beautiful new illustrations, useful medicine also, and other good pieces, for the third time with particular effort enlarged and printed,

by
Joachimum Camerarium,
Doctor of medicine at the praiseworthy city of Nürnberg.

With three, well ordered, useful registers of herbs' Latin and German names, and then the medicine, with the usage of the same included. Also ample information, on distilling and kilns.

With special privilege of His Roman Imperial Majesty,
not to be copied in any format.
Printed in Frankfurt am Main,
M. D. C.

*
* *

It was the most natural thing in the world for father to immediately take this book and to study it eagerly. It contained even more than the title promised. For instance, the names of the plants were often also given in French, English, Russian, Bohemian, Italian, and even in Arabic, which later helped me in particular to a quite extraordinary degree. Father also turned from one page of this delightful book to another, from one plant to another. He added much, much more to the knowledge, he already had; not just about the flaura itself, but also about its nutritious and technical properties and its healing effects. The ancestors had tested these effects and had added very many marginal notes to the volume, telling about the results of these tests. Later, this book became a source of the purest and most natural pleasure for me, and I may well say that father excellently supported me in this.

Another one of these books was a collection of biblical woodcuts, probably from the earliest time of the xylographic art. I own it, just like the Herbal Book, up to this day. It contains very many, quite excellent pictures; some are unfortunately missing. The first one is Moses and the last one the beast from the eleventh chapter of the Revelation of John. The title page has been lost. Therefore, I do not know who the author is or in what year this volume was printed. Grandmother used this book as an aid when telling us the biblical stories. We immensely enjoyed every one of these tales, and this brings me to most outstanding quality, grandmother possessed for us children, this was her incomparable gift for story-telling.

Actually, what grandmother did was not that much story-telling as it was creating, drawing, painting, shaping. Even the toughest subject-matter gained shape and colour, being told by her lips. And when twenty persons listened to her, every single one of these twenty had the impression that she told what she told quite exclusively for him alone. And it stuck, it lasted. Whether she related a passage from the Bible or from the vast realm of her fairy-tales, it always culminated to some profound insight in the relationship between heaven and earth, the victory of good over evil, and the warning that everything on earth was just a parable, because the source of truth was not to be found in this low form of life, but only in a higher existence. I am convinced that she did not do this consciously and with the full intension; she was not sufficiently educated for this, but it was a inborn gift, a genius, and such a beneficial spirit will, as is well known, do its work most surely, when it is neither discovered nor observed. Grandmother was a poor, uneducated woman, but nevertheless a poet with a god-given talent, and therefore a stroy-teller, who created characters from the wealth of her stories, which not just existed in those stories, but truly came alive.

Thinking back at my earliest memory, I do not come across the fable of Sitara first, but rather the fable "of the lost and forgotten human soul". I felt such endless pity for this soul. I have wept for it with my blind, unseeing eyes of a child. To me, this tale contained nothing but truth. But only years later, after I had experienced how life could treat a person and after I had extensively delved into the the heart of mankind, I realized that the knowledge of the human soul had indeed been lost and forgotten and that all of our psychology had not not yet been able to return this knowledge to us. In my childhood, I have spent hours sitting quietly and motionlessly, staring into the darkness of my sick eyes, to contemplate where this lost and forgotten soul might have ended up. I really, really wanted to find it. Then, grandmother took me on her lap, kissed me on the forehead and said: "Be quiet, my boy! Don't be sad for it! I have found it. It is here!" "Where?", I asked. "Here with me", she answered. "You are this soul, you!" "But I am not lost", I objected. "Of course, you are lost. You have been cast down into the poorest, dirtiest Ardistan. But you will be found; because even when everybody and all have forgotten about you, God has not forgotten about you." -- I did not comprehend this, then; I only understood it later, much, much later. Actually, in this time of my early childhood, every living being was just a soul to me, nothing but a soul. I saw nothing. To me, there were neither appearances nor shapes, nor colours, neither locations nor movement from one location to another. I was very well able to feel, hear, and smell the persons and objects, but this was not enough to picture them truly and vividly. I could only imagine them. I did not know how a person, a dog, a table would look like; I could only picture it in my soul, and this picture reflected its soul. Whenever somebody spoke, I did not hear his body, but his soul. Not his external, but his internal appearance approached me. To me, there were only souls, nothing but souls. And so it has continued to be, even after I had learnt to see, from my boyhood on, up to this day. This is the difference between myself and others. This is the key to my books. This is the explanation for everything which has been praised or condemned in me. Only he who had been blind and became seeing again, and only he who possessed such a deeply rooted and powerful world within himself that it, even after he became seeing, dominated the world outside for his entire life, only he will be able to put himself in my place and understand everything what I was planning, what I did, and what I wrote, and only he will have the ability to criticise me, nobody else!

I spent the entire day not with my parents, but with grandmother. She meant everything to me. She was my father, my mother, my teacher, my light, my sunshine which my eyes lacked. Everything that became a part of me, physically and mentally, I got from her. Thus, I most naturally came to resemble her. Whatever she told me, I told back to her, adding what my youthful imagination partially guessed, partially grasped. I told it to my sisters and to others who came to me, because I could not come to them. I told it in grandmother's tone of voice, with her confidence that left no room for any doubt. This sounded precociously and convincingly. It gave me the nimbus of a child well beyond his age in intelligence. Thus, adults came as well, to listen to me, and I might have degenerated into an oracle or miracle child, if grandmother had not been so very modest, truthful, and intelligent, to intervene wherever any kind of danger arose to me. A blind child is given little work. He has more time to think and ponder, than other children. So, he might easily appear more intelligent than he is. Unfortunately, father did not possess grandmother's intelligent modesty, nor mother's silent thoughtfulness. He enjoyed talking very much and exaggerated, as we already know, in everything he did and said. So it happened that this fate, which I escaped here, later, nevertheless, was to come over me, that awful fate, to be praised to death.

When I learnt to see, my inner self was already developed and fixed in its later major features to such an extent that even the world of light, opening now before my eyes, did not possess the power to draw the centre of my inner being outside towards it. I remained a child for all times, just turning into an older child, the older I grew; I remained a child in which the soul dominated and still dominates today, so that no consideration for the world outside and the physical life could ever keep me from doing something, what I have found to be right for the soul. And in all of my life, I have incessantly made the experience that with entire peoples it is in no way different than with me. They preferably act not due to external causes, but on account of themselves, their souls. The greatest and most beautiful deeds of a nation were born out of its inner self. And no matter how strong and how inventive a poet's mind might be, he would still never succeed in forcing the plot of a great, national drama upon the history of a people, if it was not already in the people's soul. And even if we would found hundreds of associations and commissions of authors of books for young people and thousands of libraries for children, students, and the general public, we will arrive at the opposite of what we intent, if we choose books which only satisfy the needs of our pedantry and our methodics, but not the needs of those souls, upon which we force them. I have come to know these souls, have studied them since the time of my youth. I have been such a soul myself, and am it even still today. Therefore I know that the general public and the younger generation must not be given books full of paragons of virtue, simply because there is no person who is a paragon of virtue. The reader wants truth, wants real life. He hates the virtuous dummies, which always stay where they were once placed, possess neither flesh nor blood, and are only clothed in whatever that dress-maker called "textbook morality" has dressed them up with, and nothing more. The task of an author writing for a young audience does not consist of the creation of characters who act so exceedingly delightfully impeccable in every situation that the reader necessarily has to get bored by them, but such an author's art is rather to allow his characters to commit all those errors and stupidities, he wants to save his youthful readers from. It is a thousand times better he would let his fictional characters perish, than to have the disgruntled boy transfer the evil, which did not occur, though it should have occurred in all truthfulness, from the book into the real life. This is the axis around which our literature for the youth and the general public has to revolve. Exemplary boys and men are bad role-models; they repel. Show the negative, but true to life and thrilling, thus you will achieve the positive.

After we had moved into a rented place, we lived at the market, with the church in its centre. This square was the children's favourite playground. In the evenings, the older school-boys gathered at the church gate to tell stories. This was a most exclusive club. Not everyone was allowed to go there. When someone came, they did not like, they made no fuss; he was sent away with a thrashing and surely would not return. I, on the other hand, did not come, nor did I ask, but rather I was invited in, though I was only five years old, while the others were thirteen and fourteen. What an honour! Such a thing had never happened before! I had grandmother and her tales to thank for this! At first, I kept quiet and just listened, until I knew all of the tales which were going around here. They did not hold it against me, because I had learnt to see only a short time ago, kept my eyes still half bandaged, and was treated with some consideration by everyone. But once this was over, I had to take my turn. Every day another fairy-tale, another story, another narration. This was asking much, very much, but I delivered, and with pleasure. Grandmother worked with me. What I was to tell at dusk, we worked out in the early mornings, even before we ate our morning soup. Then, I was well prepared when I reached the church gate. Our beautiful book, "The Hakawati", supplied our stories for a long time. On top of it, this stock of stories increased quite extraordinarily over time, of course not in the book, but in me. This was the very simple and natural consequence of me having to translate, after I had become seeing, the world of my soul, generated by the Hakawati in me, into the visible world of colours, shapes, bodies, and surfaces. By this, innumerable variations and multiplications were created, which I could only put into a fixed shape and form by telling them.

By this time, father had managed to get me the permission to attend school. Normally this permission was only granted after the age of six; but my mother was, in her capacity as a midwife, in frequent contact with the minister, who enjoyed granting her this wish, since he also served as the local school inspector, and father met the elementary school teacher Schulze twice a week to play skat or schafkopf ^[a], and therefore it did not turn out to be difficult to obtain his permission as well. I learnt to read and write very quickly, because father and grandmother helped with it, and then, once I could do this, father thought the time had come to start carrying out the plans he had for me. He wanted to fulfil in me what was not fulfilled in him. At the forester's house, he had been granted a glimpse at better and more humane conditions. And he was always haunted by the idea that there had been important men among out ancestors, about whom we, their descendants, had to say that we were not worthy of them. He wanted to live up to their example, but was violently pushed down by the circumstances. This offended and annoyed him. For himself, he had settled with these circumstances. He had to remain what he was: a poor, uneducated craftsman. But now, he transfered all of his wishes, hopes, and everything else onto me. And he was resolved to do everything possible and not to miss any opportunity to turn me into the man he had been denied to become. This can surely only be regarded as a commendable act of his. But the important thing was what path and manner he gave to my education. He wanted whatever was good and beneficent to me. He could only achieve this with good and beneficent means. But unfortunately, I have to say, without telling too much about future events, that my "childhood" came to an end now, at the age of five. It died in the very moment when I opened my eyes to see. What those poor eyes got to see from then on up to today, was nothing but work and work again, worry and worry again, suffering and suffering again, up to my present agony, like being tied to a stake and being incessantly tortured without any end being in sight. -- -- --

^[a] Skat, Schafkopf: Two popular games of cards. The word "Skat" is derived from the Italian "scarto" (discarding cards), and "Schafkopf" means literally "sheep's head".

III. No Boyhood

Oh dear, beautiful, golden time of youth! How often have I seen you, how often have I found joy in you! With others, always just with others! You have never been with me. You steered clear of me, keeping in a far, far distance. I was not envious, truly not, because there is no room in me for envy at all, but it hurt nonetheless, when I saw the sunshine warming other people's lives, while I stood in the most remote, cold corner of the shadows. Yet, I also had a heart, I also yearned for light and warmth. But even the poorest of all lives requires love, and if this most poor one is sufficiently determined, he can become richer than the rich. He just has to search within himself. There, he will find what fate has denied him, and can pass it out to all, all of those who give him nothing. For truly, truly, it is better to be poor and nevertheless giving, than to be rich and nevertheless do always nothing but receiving!

I guess, this is the right place to clarify a misconception about me from the very start. This is that I am regarded as very rich, a millionaire even; but I am no such thing. Until now, I had just enough "to get along comfortably", nothing more. Even this is most likely to come to an end soon, since the relentless attacks against me will eventually bring about, what was to be brought about by them all along. I am getting used to the idea that I will die just as I was born, as a poor man without any possessions. But this does not matter. This is just externally. This cannot change any part of my inner self and its future.

The lie that I was a millionaire, that my income had amounted to 180.000 marks, was invented by a tricky and very intelligently calculating opponent, who possesses a keen knowledge of human nature, and would not hesitate for a moment to use this knowledge, even if his own conscience should urge him otherwise, to obtain profit and advantages. He knew very well what he did, when placing his lie into the newspapers. By this, he stirred up the very lowest and ultimately worst enemy against me: envy. The previous attacks against me hardly matter any more, now; but since I am believed to be in the possession of millions, I am assaulted quite mercilessly and pitilessly. Even in the articles of otherwise rather respectable and humane critics, this financial vindictiveness plays a part. It causes a boundless feeling of embarrassment to see people, who have proven themselves as courteous knights of literature in every other case, riding around on this vulgar horse! I own a house, not encumbered with debts, I live in, as well as a small amount of money I keep saved for my travels, nothing else. I am left with nothing of my income. It is just barely enough for my modest household and for the hard sacrifices I have to make for the lawsuits I have been forced into. In the past, I could follow my heart and be giving to the poor, especially to poor readers of my books. This has stopped now. Nonetheless, I am now, more than ever, pestered by letters demanding money from me, on account of this cunning lie of being a millionaire, but unfortunately I cannot help any more, and almost everyone I have to turn away, feels disappointed and becomes my enemy. I conclude that this unscrupulous act of depicting me as a filthy rich man, has harmed me more, much more than all adverse criticism and other hostilities put together.

After this digression, which I deemed necessary, I will now turn back to the "boyhood" of this alleged "millionaire", who seeks such a very different kind of treasure than all those who aim to exploit him.

It had been a dreadful time, especially for the poor inhabitants of that area were I was at home. Living in the present times of prosperity, it is almost impossible to imagine how miserably people starved through their days in the end of the 1840s. Unemployment, deformity, inflation, and revolution, these four words explain it all. We lacked almost everything that is required for the body's sustenance and relief. At lunchtime, we asked our neighbour, the innkeeper of the inn called "Zur Stadt Glauchau" <The City of Glauchau's>, for the potato peelings, to use the few scraps that might still be attached to them for a hunger-soup. We went to the "Red Mill", where we got a handful of dust from the empty bags and the spelt that had been thrown out for free, to turn it into something resembling food. We plucked atriplex ^[a] from the rubble dumps, otterzungen from the ridges of the fields, and wild lettuce from the fences, to cook it and to fill our stomachs with it. The leaves of the atriplex felt greasy. This resulted in two or three little drops of fat floating on the surface of the water, when they were cooked. How nutritious and how delicious did this seem to us! Luckily, there were also a few stocking-weavers among the many unemployed weavers of our town, whose business had not stopped entirely. They wove gloves, these extremely cheap, white gloves, corpses are dressed up with, before they are buried. Mother succeeded in getting the job of sewing such burial-gloves together. There we sat, all of us except father, from early in the morning until late at night, stitching away. Mother sewed the thumbs, for this was difficult, grandmother sewed the sides with little finger, and I, together with my sisters, sewed the middle fingers. When we had all worked very hard, we had all together earned eleven or even twelve new-groschen by the end of the week. What a financial stock! For this, we got beetroot-syrup for five pfennig, spread on five tiny rolls of bread; these were very conscientiously divided into pieces and passed around. It was just as much a reward for the past week as it was an incentive for the next.

^[a] Melde = atriplex: some kind of a weed from the goosefoot family (chenopodiaceae), also known as orach or orache in English.
Otterzungen: Germany's most respected dictionary, the "Duden", defines this as a "petrified fish-tooth". This seems a bit strange to me. I would rather guess that it must be some kind of a plant. Literally it would mean "adders' tongues".

While we were busily working at home in this manner, father was just as busy outside; but unfortunately his work was of that kind which yields more honour than sustenance. He joined the effort to save king Frederic August and the entire Saxonian government from certain ruin. Just a short time ago, public opinion had demanded the very opposite: The king was to be dethroned, and the government to be chased out of the country. This was desired by almost all of Saxony, but in Hohenstein and Ernstthal, minds soon changed, and did so for the most excellent reasons: It was too dangerous! Those who were screaming the loudest had joined together and ransacked a bakery. Then, came the Santa Hermandad ^[a] and locked them all up. They regarded themselves as victims and martyrs of politics for a few days though, great and powerful, but their wives were not interested in this kind of heroism; they fought it all the way. They met; they parted; they ran up and down; they convinced the other women; they talked politically, diplomatically, threateningly, beggingly. Calm, reasonable men joined them. The old, venerable, minister Schmidt made speeches for peace; and Judge Layritz, too. The policeman Eberhardt went from house to house, warning people of the terrible consequences of a rebellion; police-sergeant Grabner supported him in this. At the church gate, at dusk, the boys only told stories about being shot, being hanged, and especially about the scaffold, which was described in such a manner that everyone hearing it reached for the front or back of his neck. So it came about that the mood changed quite thoroughly. Dethroning the king was now entirely out of the question. On the contrary, he had to stay, for there could not be a better one than him anywhere in the world. From now on, the object was no longer to drive him out, but rather to protect him. Meetings were held to discuss in what manner this could best be achieved; and since there was talk of fighting, war, and victory all over the place, it came quite naturally that we boys, also, increasingly put ourselves not just in a militant mood, but also in militant clothes, and imagined ourselves in acts of militant heroism. Granted, I did all of this only from a distance, because I was too small for this and had no time; I had to sew gloves. But all the other boys and girls were standing together in all kinds of corners and niches, telling each other what they had heard at home when they were with their parents, and had most important discussions about the manner in which the monarchy was to be preserved and the republic was to be prevented. They were particularly outraged at some old, evil woman. She was to be blamed for everything. Her name was Anarchy, and she lived in the deepest forest; but at night, she came into the towns, to tear down the houses and to burn down the barns; what a beast! Luckily, all of our fathers were heroes, no one of them was afraid of anybody, not even of this boorish Anarchy. It was decided to put all citizens in arms for king and fatherland. In Ernstthal, there had been, for a long time, a company of riflemen and a company of guardsmen. The first shot at a wooden bird and the latter at a wooden disk. In addition to these two, two or three other companies were to be founded, especially a Polish company of scythe-men, to stab the enemy to death from a large distance. And so it turned out, then, that in our little town there was an unusually large number of people with an immensely militant disposition, for both strategical and tactical planning. Every one of them was in great demand. They were counted. There were thirty-three of them. This suited very well and worked out rather smoothly, because: Each company needed one captain, one first lieutenant, and one second lieutenant; if, in addition to the riflemen and the guard, nine new companies were to be founded, this added up to eleven and all thirty-three officers were taken care of. This suggestion was carried out, which of course meant that the number of men in the individual companies could only be rather small; but the drum-major, the master stocking-weaver Löser, who had served in the military and therefore had to train all thirty-three officers, maintained that this could only be advantageous, because the fewer men there were in a company, the fewer could be shot down and lost from that company in a war; and so the decision was left as it was.

^[a] Spanish for "holy brotherhood", an alliance of Spanish cities with their own jurisdiction and police-force. I suppose, the term is used figuratively here.
Meister: a craftsman who has passed a special examination before the chamber of handicrafts, which gives him the right to own a business and to train others in that craft.

My father was the captain of the seventh company. He got a sabre and a signal-whistle; but he was not content with this rank; he had his sights on a higher position. Therefore, he decided that, once he had finished his training, he would secretly, without letting anybody know of it, practice his skills in the "higher command". And since he had chosen me to assist him in this, I was, for the time being, relieved from sewing gloves, and joined him daily for a walk to the forest, where, on a meadow entirely surrounded by bushes and trees, our secret evolution took place. Father changed from a lieutenant, to a captain, a colonel, and a general, while I was the entire Saxonian army. I was first trained as a platoon, then as a an entire company. Thereafter, I became a battalion, a regiment, a brigade, and a division. I had to ride as well as run, forwards as well as backwards, to the right and to the left, advance and retreat. Though I was not dumb and was eagerly and lovingly engaged in the matter, I was nevertheless still rather young and small; and so you might imagine, considering the unpredictable nature of my general's moods, that it was impossible for me to develop within such a short time from a simple, small squad into a complete and powerful army, without having experienced the severity of military discipline firsthand. But I did not cry at any punishment; I was too proud for that. There is no such thing as a crying Saxonian army! Furthermore, the reward also came swiftly. When father had become a vice-commander, he said to me: "My boy, you've had a large part in this. I'll build a drum for you. You shall be an army-drummer!" I was so happy! And there were moments when I was really convinced that I had received all those slaps, pushes, blows, and head-punches only for the benefit and safety of the king of Saxony and his cabinet! If he only knew!

I got my drum, because father always kept his word. Master plumber Leistner, who had his shop at the market of Hohenstein, helped him in building it. It was a solo drum and had turned out very well; it still exists today. Later, when I had grown a bit older, but still being a boy, I had been a drummer for the seventh company; I will have mention this drum once again at a later point. The eleven companies performed their duty. They trained almost daily, having more than enough time on their hands, since there was no work. How we were nevertheless able to exist and what kept us from starvation, I can no longer recall today; it strikes me like a miracle. In other places, they were also out to "save the king". They were in contact with one another and had decided to get on their way to Dresden, as soon as the order was given, and to risk everything for the king, possibly even their lives. And on one beautiful day it came, that order. The bugles sounded; the drums were rolled. From every door, the heroes rushed forward, to gather on the market place. The master butcher Haase was the regiment's adjutant. He had borrowed a horse and sat right on top of it. It was no easy job for him to go between the commander, the vice-commander, and the captains, because the horse constantly disagreed with its rider. Judge Layritz's wife draped her windows with a table-cloth and her Sunday saloppe ^[a]. This was our show of colours. Whoever had something that could serve this purpose did what she had done. By this, the market place gained a festive, joyful face. All around there was nothing enthusiasm. Not even a hint of a sad farewell! No one felt the need to bid his wife and children a special farewell. Only exclamations of joy, a triple cheer, vivat, "hurray" all over the place! The commander had a speech, followed by grand flourish of the wind-instruments and the drums. Then came the commands of the individual captains: "Attention -- -- eyes right, rrrright dress -- -- eyes frrront -- -- order arms -- -- raise arms -- -- present arms -- -- shoulder arms -- -- turn rrrright -- -- forward, marsh!" The adjutant led the way on the borrowed horse, followed by the musicians with the Turkish crescent and the drummers; then came the commander and the vice-commander, thereafter the rifle-men, the guard, and the nine other companies; thus, the entire host marched, left, right -- left, right, leaving town by the alleyway, which was then called "Hintergasse" <Rear Alley>, passing by the coalpit's pond, the same one which had been entrusted with our frogs, marching on to Wüstenbrand, to reach the capitol via Chemnitz and Freiberg. A crowd of friends and relatives followed in their train, to escort the courageous troops up to the border of the small town's jurisdiction. But I was with a man I held particularly dear, Cantor Strauch, who was our neighbour; we stood in the door of his house, together with Friederike, his wife, who was a sister of Judge Layritz. They had no children, and I had been called upon to run many a small errand for them. I worshipped him endlessly; but she was repugnant to me, because the only reward I ever got from her for all of my errands were rotten apples or mushy pears; she also did not permit her husband to smoke more than two cigars, at two pfennig a piece, per month. I had to get them for him from the grocer, because he was ashamed of buying such cheap cigars for himself, and he smoked them in the yard, because Friederike could not stand the smell of tobacco. He was also truly delighted today by the sight of our troops. Watching them leaving, he said:

^[a] Saloppe: I have no idea what this word means.

"Yes, there is something great, something noble in this kind of enthusiasm for God, king, and fatherland!"

"But what does one get out of it?" asked the cantor's wife.

"Bliss is what you get out of it, the genuine, the true kind of bliss!"

With these words, he entered the house; he did not like to argue. I went to our yard. There stood a French apple-tree ^[a]. I sat in its shade and thought about what the cantor had said. So the true kind of bliss was to be found in these words: God, king, and fatherland; I wanted and had to remember that! Later, experience has reshaped and ground down these words for me; but though they might have altered their shapes, the inner essence has remained.

^[a] Franzäpfelbaum: A small kind of apple-tree with hardly any trunk, first grown in France.

Of all those who had moved out today, to perform great heroic deeds, the borrowed horse was first to return. The adjutant had handed it over to a currier, who brought it home, because walking was much healthier than riding, and because the rider did not have enough money saved to replace the horse, in case it would be injured or even shot dead in a fight. The master weaver Kretzschmar followed in the evening. He maintained that he could not have walked any further with his flat-feet; this was a natural defect, beyond his control. After dark, a few others turned up as well, who were dismissed for urgent reasons, bringing news that our corps had put up camp beyond Chemnitz, near Oederan, and that spies had been sent to Freiberg to investigate the battle-field there. In the morning, the surprising, but not at all sad, news arrived that they had been instructed at Freiberg to turn around immediately; they were not needed at all, since the Prussians had moved into Dresden, and therefore, there was not even the slightest danger for the king and the government any more. You can easily imagine that there was no school and no work on that day. I also refused to stitch any gloves. I simply ran away and joined those brave boys and girls, who were to form eleven companies and move out to meet their returning fathers on the way. This plan was carried out. We made our camp at the lakes of Wüstenbrand, and as soon those whom we were waiting for came, we marched with them to the sound of music and the beating of the drums, down the mountain at the rifle-house, where our orphaned wives and mothers stood, to welcome all of us, tall and small, some of them moved to tears, some laughing with joy.

Why do I tell all of this at such length? Because of the deep impression it has made upon me. I have to point out the sources from which the causes of my fate have flown out and joined. The reason why I never wavered for a single moment in my faith in God, in spite of everything that happened later, and why even when fate hurled the rocky tablets of the law at me, I did not lose any part of my respect for that law, is partially rooted in myself, but also partially in those small events of my early boyhood, which all had a more or less marked effect on me. I never forgot those words of my old, dear cantor, which have not just become flesh and blood, but also mind and soul for me.

After this excitement, life returned to its calm previous course. Again, I sewed gloves and went back to school. But father was not satisfied with this school. I was to learn more that what an elementary school education had to offer in those days. My voice developed into a good, resounding, versatile soprano. Therefore, the cantor took me into the students' choir. Soon, I learnt to hit every pitch and grew self-confident before an audience. So it came that I was trusted to sing the solos in church after just a short time. The congregation was poor; they did not have the money to buy expensive sheet-music. The cantor had to copy it manually and I helped him. Wherever this was not appropriate, he composed himself. And he was a composer! And what a composer! But he was from the small, unassuming village of Mittelbach, the son of mortally poor, uneducated parents, he had literally starved his way through music-school, and before he became teacher and cantor his only clothes were a blue linen jacket and a pair of blue linen trousers, he regarded one taler as a fortune, which could support him for weeks. This poverty had deprived him of his self-esteem. He did not know how to make his opinions count. Everything was good enough for him. Being an quite excellent organist, pianist, and violinist, he could also compose for any other musical instrument, and he could have swiftly gained fame and fortune, if he had only possessed more self-confidence and courage. Everyone knew: Wherever in Saxony and across the border a new organ was put into service, there cantor Strauch of Ernstthal was sure to appear, to get acquainted with it and to seek the opportunity to play it once. This was the only pleasure he allowed himself. That is because he did not just lack the guts to seek a higher position than that of cantor in Ernstthal, but most of all he lacked the permission of his very strict wife Friederike, who had been a prosperous girl and therefore dominated the marriage like a thirty-two foot "principal" ^[a], while the cantor was only allowed the voice of a soft "vox humana". Together with her brother, she owned several orchards, and their harvest was exploited down to the last fruit, and as I already mentioned, I only got rotten or mushy apples and pears from her. But she always succeeded in making a face as if she was giving away an entire kingdom. She did not have the slightest concept of her husbands immensely great worth, both as a person and as an artist. She was tied to her orchards, and he was therefore tied to Ernstthal. She did not care about his mental existence and his spiritual needs. She never opened a single one of his books and his many compositions disappeared, as soon as they were finished, at the very bottom of those dusty chests in the attic. After he had died, she had sold all of it as waste-paper to the paper-mill without me being able to prevent it, because I was not at home. What a deep misery, almost beyond an outsider's comprehension, is this to be tied for an entire lifetime to such a female, who only exists in the lowest spheres and prevents even the most talented, or even ingenious, husband from reaching those better heights, this is beyond words. My old cantor could only bear this misery, because he possessed this immense ability to accept whatever life would bring, supplemented by a kind-heartedness which could never forget that he was just a poor devil, but that Friederike was a rich girl and also the sister of the town's judge.

^[a] The main register of an organ, usually eight feet tall.

Later, he taught me to play the organ, the piano, and the violin. I have already said that father made the bow to go with the violin himself. These lessons were most naturally for free, since my parents were too poor to pay for them. His strict wife Friederike did not agree with that at all. The organ lessons were given in church and the violin lessons at school; the cantor's wife could not do anything about that. But the piano was in the living-room, and when I came knocking at the door, to ask about it, nine out of ten times the cantor came out with the answer: "There is no lesson today, dear Karl. My wife Friederike can't abide it; she has a migraine." Sometimes, I was even told "she has vapeurs" ^[a]. I did not know what that was, but regarded it as something even worse than that other thing I also knew nothing about, that migraine. But I still felt uneasy about the fact that it only occurred whenever I came to play the piano. The kind cantor amended this loss by also giving me an introduction to harmonics, whenever there was an opportunity; there was no need for Friederike to find out about this, but this was in the later time of my boyhood, and I am not quite there, yet.

^[a] Vapeurs: gas or hysteric mood-swings (French)

As my father was impatient in all things, he was so too in regard to what he called my "education". Mind you, he "educated" me; he cared less for my sisters. He had placed all of his hopes in me achieving in life, what he could not achieve, which was to obtain not just a happier, but also a mentally higher position in life. In this respect, I have to praise him for at least that much that, in spite of regarding the wish for a so-called good income as the most immediate priority, he saw the greater value in a sound development of the personality in a mental respect. He felt this in his innermost soul to a larger extent and more clearly, than he was able to express in words. I was to become an educated, possibly even a highly educated, man, able to achieve something for the general well-being of humanity; this was his most heartfelt wish, though he might not have expressed it in these words, but differently. It is plain to see that he was asking a lot, but this was no impudence on his part, but rather he always believed in his wishes, and was fully convinced he could realize them. But unfortunately, he was uncertain of the ways and means for achieving this goal, and he underestimated the huge obstacles, opposing his plan. He was willing to make every, even the greatest, sacrifice, but he did not consider that even the very greatest sacrifice of a poor devil does not carry the weight of one gramme, one quentchen ^[a] against the opposition of the general circumstances. And most of all, he never even suspected that it took quite a different man than him for directing someone towards such goals. He was of the opinion that, most of all, I had to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and all of his actions were aiming at this with the greatest energy.

^[a] Quentchen: An outdated German unit of measurement, 3.6515 g, sometimes also a bit less.

I entered school at the age of five, which ended at the age of fourteen. Learning was easy for me. I quickly caught up with my two years older sister. Then, used school books were bought from older boys. At home, I had to solve the problems, they had been given in school. Thus, I soon became a stranger to my grade, a severe psychological calamity for such a small, soft human child, which was of course mostly beyond father's comprehension. I believe that even the teachers did not suspect what a severe mistake had been committed here. They just assumed without much thought that a boy who cannot be taught anything new in his grade simply had to be promoted to the next one in spite of his youth. These gentlemen were all more or less close friends of my father's, and so even the the local school inspector chose to ignore the fact that I, at the age of eight or nine, sat among boys who were eleven and twelve years old. In respect to my mental progress, which, of course, does not mean much in an elementary school, this might very well have been correct; but in respect to my soul, it meant a severe, painful deprivation, I was subjected to. Let me remark here that I make a very sharp distinction between the mind and the soul, between what is mental and what is spiritual (i.e. relating to the soul). What was given to my little mind in those grades, I did not belong to according to my age, was taken away from my soul. I did not sit among children of my own age. I was regarded as an intruder, and all of my little, warm needs of a child's soul were offered nothing to satisfy them. I short, I was a stranger to my grade from the start and became more of a stranger with every year. I had lost the class-mates who had fallen behind, without winning those over who were with me. Please, do not smile at this seemingly tiny, most insignificant fate of a boy. An educator, knowing his way around in the realm of a person's and a child's soul, will not hesitate for a moment in taking this seriously, very seriously. Every grown-up and even more every child wants to stand on firm ground, which he must not lose, no matter what. But I had been deprived of this ground. I have never had what is commonly referred to as "boyhood". I was never granted a genuine, real school-mate and boyhood-friend. The most simple consequence of this is that I am still today, in my old age, a stranger to my home-town, yes even more than any other stranger. They do not know me there; I was never understood there, and so it happened that a web of myths has been spun about me there, which I have to reject most decidedly.

What I had to learn, according to my father, was not at all limited to the lessons at school and the homework. He gathered all kinds of material, without having the ability required to make a selection or to determine any meaningful order. He brought together everything he found. I had to read or even copy it, since he believed that I could remember it better this way. What did I have to endure, then! Old prayer-books, mathematical books, books on natural history, learned treatises, I did not understand a word of. I had to copy the entire 500 pages of a book on the geography of Germany from 1802, in order to remember the numbers better. There were, of course, already outdated for a very long time! I spent entire days and half nights, cramming this unnecessary stuff into my head. I was literally force-fed and over-fed with this. I would probably have perished from it, if my body had not developed such a strength that, in spite of the extremely scarce food, it had been able to withstand even such a strain quite well. And there were also times and hours of relaxation. This was because father did not take a single walk and did not make a single errant to the countryside without taking me along. He used to pose only this one condition, that I would not miss a single moment in school on account of this. The walks through forests and groves were always most interesting, because of his rich knowledge of the flora. But we did not spent all of this time outdoors. There were were certain days for certain inns. There met the teacher Schulze, the principal, the rich man Wetzel, the grocer Thiele, the merchant Vogel, the captain of the rifle-men Lippold, and others for bowling or for playing skat. Father was always one of them, and me too, because I had to. He thought, I belonged to him. He did not like to see me with other boys, since I would have been unsupervised then. He did not have the slightest concept for the fact that being with him, in the company of grown men, was certainly not the best place for me either. There, I could hear things and make observations, which had better been kept from such a youthful boy. By the way, father always practised moderation, even in the most happily drinking company. I have never seen him drunk. Whenever he went to an inn, his regular limit was one glass of simple beer at seven pfennig and one glass caraway-liquor or a double juniper-liquor at six pfennig; I was allowed to sip of this, too. On special occasions he shared a piece of cake for six pfennig with me. No one has ever warned him against bringing me into such a company of adults, not even the principal or the minister, who also joined in occasionally. At least those gentlemen should have known that, even when the conversation centred on permissable and perfectly clean topics, I was, as a silent, but very attentive listener, nonetheless introduced to things and affairs which should have been several decades in the future for me. I did not mature early, since this term is only used in respect to one's sexuality, and I did not get to hear anything about that, but rather something much worse: I was lifted out of my childhood and dragged onto that hard and filthy path on which my feet had to feel like walking on broken glass. How well did I feel afterwards, when I came to grandmother and could escape with her to my dear land of make-believe! Naturally, I was much too young to realize that this land was founded on the truest and firmest part of reality. To me it had no feet; it floated in the air; only later, after I had worked my way up to fully understand it, it could offer me the support, I so desperately needed.

Then came the day, when a world revealed itself to me, which has grabbed hold of me ever since. The theatre came to town. Just an quite ordinary, miserable puppet-show, but a theatre nonetheless. This was at the master weaver's house. First rows three groschen, second rows two groschen, third rows one groschen, children half price. I was permitted to go with grandmother. This cost fifteen pfennig for both of us. The piece was called: "The miller's rose or the battle of Jena." My eyes were burning; I was all ablaze inside. Puppets, puppets, puppets! But for me, they were alive. They talked; they loved and hated; they suffered; they made great, daring decisions; they sacrificed themselves for king and for fatherland. There it was again, what the cantor had said and admired, then! My heart was cheering. After we had returned home, grandmother had to describe to me how the puppets were moved.

"On a wooden cross", she explained to me. "From this wooden cross the strings extend downwards, which are attached to the limbs of the puppets. They move, as soon as the cross above is moved."

"But they do speak!" I said.

"No, but the person holding the cross in his hands speaks. It is just as in real life."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't understand this yet; but you will learn to understand it."

I did not rest, until we were permitted to go once again. The play was "Doctor Faust or God, man, and devil". It would be to no avail, if I attempted to put the impression this play had on me into words. This was not Goethe's Faust, but the Faust of the ancient, traditional tale, not a drama summing up the entire philosophy of a great poet and a bit more, but rather a scream to heaven for redemption from the torment and fear of the worldly life, emerging directly from the deepest depth of the people's soul. I heard, I felt this scream, and I joined in with it, though I was just a poor, ignorant boy, hardly nine years old then. Goethe's Faust would not have been able to tell me, as a child, anything; to be honest, it still does not tell me even today what it probably wanted to tell and should have told mankind; but those puppets spoke loudly, almost too loudly, and what they said was great, infinitely great, because it was so simple, so infinitely simple: a devil, who may only return to God, if he brings that human soul along! And those strings, those strings, which are all reaching upwards, straight into heaven! And everything, everything moving down there is attached to the cross, to pain, torment, the sufferings of this world. Whatever is not attached to this cross is obsolete, is motionless, is dead from heaven's perspective! Of course, the latter thoughts did not occur to me then yet, not for a long time; but grandmother talked in this manner, though not thus clearly, and whatever part of it I did not see vividly before my very eyes, I nevertheless started to sense in some uncertain manner. Being a member of the students' choir, I had to attend church two times on Sundays and holidays, and I enjoyed it. I cannot remember ever having missed any of these religious services. But I am honest enough to say that, in spite of all the spiritually uplifting experiences I had there, I never came home from church with such an indescribably deep impression, as that time from the puppet-show. Since that night, up to this day, I regard the theatre as a place through the gates of which nothing impure, ugly, or unholy must ever intrude. When I asked the cantor, who had thought up and written down this play, he answered that this had not been a single person, but rather the soul of the entire human race, and a great, famous German poet, Wolfgang Goethe by name, had turned it into a wonderful work of art, written not for puppets, but for living human beings. At this point, I quickly interjected: "Cantor, I also want to become such a great poet, writing not for puppets, but for living human beings! How do I have to go about it?" Then, he gave me a long look with an almost pitiful smile and answered: "Go about it however you like, my boy, you'll end up sacrificing your work and your existence for nothing more than puppets most of the time." Of course, I was not able to understand this response until later; but those two nights had undoubtedly a very marked effect on my little soul. God, man, and devil have been and continue to be my favourite topics, and the idea that most people were nothing but puppets, not moving by themselves, but being moved, is always nearby in the background of everything I do. Is it God or the devil, is it another human being, a champion of the mind or a champion of arms, holding the cross in his hands, from which the strings extend downwards, to influence the human race? This is never obvious from the start, but can only be determined later by the consequences.

Shortly afterwards, I also got to know plays which did not come from the souls of the common people, but were written by poets for the theatre, and this is the point where I have to return to my drum. A company of actors came to stay in Ernstthal for a while. So this was not a puppet-show, but rather a genuine theatre. The prices were more than moderate: First rows 50 pfennig, second rows 25 pfennig, third rows 15 pfennig, and fourth rows 10 pfennig, standing room only. But in spite of this inexpensiveness, half of the seats remained empty every day. The "artists" incurred debts. The manager got frightfully scared. He was no longer able to pay the rent for the room which served as the theatre, when a saviour appeared before him, and this saviour was -- -- -- me. While taking a walk, he had met my father and poured out his troubles to him. They discussed the matter. As a result of this, father rushed home and said to me: "Karl, get your drum from the attic; we have to clean it!" "What for?" I asked. "You have to drum Madame Preziosa ^[a] and all of her gipsies three time across the stage." "Who is Madame Preziosa?" "A young, beautiful gipsy girl, who is actually a count's daughter. She has been kidnapped by the gipsies. Then, she returns and finds her parents. You're the drummer boy, and you'll get shiny buttons and a hat with a white feather. This will attract the audience. It will be announced. If the "house" will be sold out, the manager will give you five new-groschen; otherwise you'll get nothing. The rehearsal is tomorrow at 11 a.m."

^[a] The play "Preziosa" was written by Pius Alexander Wolff (1782-1828).

It goes without saying that I was engulfed in joy. A gipsy drummer! A count's daughter! Shiny buttons! A white feather! Going three times around the entire stage! Fife new-groschen! The following night, I slept very little and arrived very punctually at the rehearsal. It worked out very well. All of the artists liked me. The manager's wife petted my cheek. The manager commended me on my intelligent face, my courage, and my swift comprehension; but after all, he said, my part was rather easy. Perhaps I could do it for just forty pfennig; even thirty pfennig would be a generous salary. But father was with me and did not yield a single pfennig, because he had realized my artistic value and was not inclined to haggle. For these fifty pfennig, I had to appear only once, to lead the big parade of the gipsies. I stood by the scenery with all of the gipsies behind me. On the opposite side of the scenery stood the director, who also played the role of Pedro, the old overseer of the castle. When he lifted his right hand, this was the sign for me to start the parade immediately and to disappear back to the same spot in the scenery, after having marched three times across the stage. This was so childishly easy; it was impossible to go wrong. I was given the shiny buttons right after the rehearsal. Mother had to sew them to my clothes. There were more than thirty of them; she had a hard time fitting them all on my waistcoat. In the course of the afternoon, the hat with the white feather was brought to me. It was hung out of the window for publicity and worked its effect. I had to arrive a quarter of an hour before the beginning of the show. I was received be the manager's wife with a bright smile, because the room was already thus full that some "box-seats" were quickly improvised in front, at a price of ten new-groschen per seat. They were also swiftly sold. Father, mother, and grandmother had been given free seats. After all, I was a most valuable little person on that day. This realization was so generally accepted that the manager's wife deemed it necessary, to put my five new-groschen into the right pocket of my trousers, before the curtain had even risen for the first time. This increased my confidence and my artistic enthusiasm enormously.

And now they had come, those grand, uplifting moments of my first performance on stage. The first act was set in Madrid. Here, I had nothing to do. I sat in the dressing-room and listened to what was spoken on stage. Then, they came for me. I strapped on the drum, put on the feathered hat, and went for my place in the scenery. Don Fernando, Donna Klara, and also someone else stood on stage. Overseer Pedro, who had to give me my sign, was leaning against the opposite part of the scenery. He saw me coming on with such a forceful stride that he thought I wanted to go directly and right away out onto the stage. Therefore, he quickly rose his right hand to tell me to stop. But I took this, most naturally, for the agreed sign, though the gipsies were not standing behind me yet, I started to roll my drum, and marched out, all around the stage. Don Fernando and Donna Klara were startled and petrified. "Brat!" the overseer shouted at me, when I marched past him. Standing behind the scenery, he grabbed for me, in oder to seize me and to pull me to him, but I had already marched on. From all kinds of places behind the scenery, they made signs at me, that I should stop and leave the stage; but I insisted on what we had agreed upon, which was to go three times all around the stage. "Brat!" the overseer bellowed, when I passed him by for the second time, and doing this so loudly that, in spite of the roll of the drum, it echoed throughout the entire auditorium. The answer came in the form of loud laughter from there; but I started my third round. "Bravo, bravo!" the cheers of the audience resounded. Now, finally, the startled manager, who was playing the part of Don Fernando, started to move again. He leapt towards me, grasped both of my arms, so that I had to stop and could not roll my drum any more, and roared at me:

"Boy, have you gone entirely mad? Will you stop it!"

"No, don't stop, go on, on and on!" they called from the auditorium laughingly.

"Yes, on and on!" I also answered, freeing myself from his grasp. "The gipsies have to come! Bring out the gang, bring out the gang!"

"Yes, bring out the gang, bring out the gang!" screamed, hollered, and cheered the audience.

But I marched on and started to roll my drum once again. And then they came, the gang, though just reluctantly, Vianda the old gipsy-mother ahead of them, and then all of the others following her. Now, the real parade started, three rounds across the stage and then back to my place in the scenery. But the audience wanted more. They shouted: "Bring out the gang, bring them out!" and we had to start the parade once again, and over and over again. And in the end of the act, I had to appear two more times. What fun was that! After that, there was really nothing else for me to do and I could have left, but the manager would not let me go. He wrote a short speech for me, which I had to learn by heart on the spot and was supposed to recite in the end of the show. In case I would do my job well, he promised me another fifty pfennig. This invigorated my memory immensely. After the play had ended and the applause began to fade away, I marched out once again rolling my drum, to ask, while standing close to the edge of the stage, the "noble ladies and gentlemen" not to depart immediately, because the manager's wife would appear and go from seat to seat to sell season-tickets as cheaply as they could hardly be made available tomorrow, the day after, or anytime thereafter. Reminiscent of words the audience had shouted in applause today, the manager had put the end of this address into the following form: "Thus, rrrreach with your hand into the pouch! And brrrring out the money, brrrring it out!" By no means, the audience was offended by this, but rather reacted with kind laughter, and my speech produced its desired effect. All faces were smiling brightly, the management's as well as those of the rest of the artists including myself, because I did not only receive my other five new-groschen, but on top of it also a free ticket valid for the entire, current stay of the company in our town. I used it repeatedly, this is for plays my father could allow me to see. But with this not at all naughty company the audience hardly faced any danger of moral corruption, because when one day the manager joined the bowlers and was asked at this opportunity what fear caused him to remove all those tender love-scenes from all of his plays, he answered: "It's partially my moral obligation and partially just common sense. Our first and only leading actress is too old and furthermore too ugly for those parts."

In the plays I saw, I sought to find the cross and the strings, suspending the puppets. I was too young to find them. This was left to a later time. I also could not succeed in spotting the influences of God, devil, and man. Even still today, this happens to me very frequently, though these three factors are not just the most relevant, but also the only ones, the interactions of which have to be the building-blocks of a drama. I say this now, as a grown-up, an old man. Then, as a child, I understood none of this and allowed empty, hollow superficialness to impress me tremendously, like any other more or less grown-up child. Those people, who wrote such plays that were performed on stage, seemed to me like gods. If I was such a gifted person, I would not tell of kidnapped gipsy-girls, but of my glorious Sitara-fable, of Ardistan and Jinnistan, of the spirits' furnace of Kulub, of the deliverance from the torments of earth, and all those other, similar things! It is plain to see, once again I had reached one of these points in my life, where I was ripped out off the firm ground which other children have, and which I also needed so desperately, to be lifted up into a world I did not belong to, because only the chosen ones, men of ripe age, may enter here. And there was more than this.

My parents were Lutheran Protestants. Accordingly, I had been baptised in the Lutheran manner, received Lutheran religious education, and had a Lutheran confirmation at the age of fourteen. But this did not lead to an hostile attitude against members of other faiths at all. We neither regarded ourselves as better or more called upon to do God's work than them. Our old minister was a kind, friendly gentleman, who would never have thought of using his office to saw religious hatred. Out teachers thought the same. And those who matter most in these things, father, mother, and grandmother, were all three of a deeply religious background, but of this inborn, not acquired religiosity, which does not seek any kind of confrontation and demands from everyone most of all to be a good person. Once he is this, he can just the more easily prove himself to be a good Christian as well. Once, I heard the minister talking to the principal about religious differences. The first one said: "A fanatic is never a good diplomat." I remembered that. I have already said that I attended church twice on every Sunday and holiday, but without being bigoted or even regarding this as a special merit on my part. I prayed daily, in every situation of my life, and still pray today. As long as I live, there has never been a single moment when I might have doubted in God, his all-mightiness, his wisdom, his love, or in him being just. Today, I am still as steadfast as ever in this, my unwavering faith.

I always had a tendency towards symbolism, and not just the religious kind. Every person and every action which stands for something good, noble, or deep is sacred to me. Therefore, some religious customs, I had to participate in as a boy, made a rather special impression upon me. One of these customs was this: The confirmees, who had received their blessing on Palm Sunday, participated on the following Maundy Thursday, for the first time in their lives, in the Holy Communion. Only during this one celebration of the last supper, and no other one for the entire year, the first four members of the students' choir stood by the altar, two on each side, to offer their assistance. They were dressed just like ministers, a cassock, bands, and a white scarf. They stood between the minister and the communicants, approaching the altar two at a time, and held out black cloths with golden borders, to keep any part of the holy offering from being spilled. Since I joined the students' choir at quite a young age, I had to perform this office several times, before I received the blessing for myself. These godly moments of faith before the altar still continue to have their effect on me today, after so many years have past.

Another one of these customs was that each year on the first day of Christmas the leading boy of the students' choir had to ascent the pulpit during the main religious service, to sing the prophesy of Isaiah, chapter 9, verses 2 to 7. He did this all alone, mildly and quietly accompanied by the organ. This took some courage, and rather often, the organist had to come to the little singer's aid, to keep him from getting stuck. I also have sung this prophesy, and just as the congregation heard me sing it, so it is still impressed upon me and resounds from me to even my most distant reader, though in other words, between the lines of my books. Whoever has stood on the pulpit as little school-boy and has sung with a cheerfully uplifted voice before the attentive congregation that a bright light would appear and that from now on there would be no end to peace, he will, unless he utterly resists against it, be accompanied by this very star of Bethlehem for his entire life, which even keeps on shining when all other stars fade away.

Someone who is not accustomed to see the deeper meanings might say now that here again I have come to such a point, where the support of my fellow men had been pulled out from under my feet, so that spiritually I was finally hovering in thin air. But the very opposite is the case. Nothing has been taken from me, but much, very much has been given, though no support, no save hiding-place down in the soil, but rather a rope, sufficiently strong and firm, to be saved by rising upwards, if ever the abyss should open up beneath me, the abyss I was destined for, as fatalists would say, from the very start. By starting to talk about this abyss, I enter those areas of my so-called boyhood, where the morasses were to be found and still are found, from which all the mists and all the poisons arise, which have turned my life into an uninterrupted, endless torment.

The name of this abyss is, to call it by its proper name right from the start -- -- reading. By no means did I plummet into it, suddenly, surprisingly, and unexpectedly, but rather I descended into it, step by step, slowly and purposefully, always guided by my father's hand. Granted, he suspected as little as I, where this path would lead us. My first reading material consisted of the fairy-tales, the herbal book, and the illustrated Bible with our ancestors' annotations. This was followed by the various school-books of the present and the past, which were to be found in our little town. Then came all sorts of other books, father borrowed from all around. Besides this, there was the Bible. Not just a selection of biblical stories, but the entire, complete Bible, which I have read repeatedly as a boy, from the first word to the last, with all that is in it. Father thought this was a good thing, and no one of my teachers spoke out against him, not even the minister. He did not permit me to even give the appearance of having nothing to keep me busy. And he was against any kind of participation in the "misdoings" of other boys. He brought me up as one would manufacture a prototypical specimen, to promote one's work before others. I had to be at home all the time, to write, to read, and to "learn"! By and by, I was exempt from sewing gloves. Even when he left the house, this did not give me any relief, because he took me with him. When I saw children of my own age jumping, running, playing, and laughing in the market square, I rarely dared to utter the wish to join them, because when father was not in a good mood, this was very dangerous. Then, when I sat sadly or even with a hidden tear with my book, mother occasionally pushed my out of the door and mercifully said: "So just go out for a bit; but be back within ten minutes, or he'll beat you up. I'll say, I'd sent you somewhere!" Oh, this mother, this uniquely good, poor, quiet mother! If you want to know what else I think of her, even today, turn to the poem on page 105 of my book "Himmelsgedanken" <Thoughts of Heaven>. And the poem on page 109 refers to my grandmother, out of whose soul the character of Marah Durimeh has grown, this oriental princess, which symbolises to my and my readers the "soul of mankind".

After I had read so about everything that was to be found in the private households of Hohenstein-Ernstthal in the form of books of every genre, and had also copied or made notes of much, very much of it, father started looking around for new sources. There had been three of them, these were the libraries of the cantor, the principal, and the minister. The cantor proved to be the most reasonable one of the three in this respect as well. He said, he had no books for entertainment, but only books for learning, and I was still far too young for those, then. But nevertheless, he parted with one of them, for the thought, it might be very useful for me as member of the choir to learn how to translate the Latin texts of our hymns into the the German language. This book was on Latin grammar; the title page was missing, but on the next page it read:

"A boy must get his lessons down,
for him to be a dominus, ^[a]
but if he learns just with a frown,
thus he will be an asinus!"

^[a] dominus (Latin) = master, lord
asinus (Latin) = donkey, ass

Father was truly delighted about this four-lined rhyme and stated that I should take good care that would not become an asinus, but rather a dominus. So, now I was to get busy and quickly learn some Latin!

Soon afterwards, some families of Ernstthal arrived at the decision to emigrate to America, in the coming year. Therefore, their children were to learn as much English as possible during this period of time. It goes without saying that I had to join them! And then it happened that in some manner, I do not recall how, a book came into our possession, containing French songs of the Freemasons, both lyrics and melodies. It had been printed in the year 1782 in Berlin and was dedicated to "His Royal Highness, Friedrich Wilhelm, prince of Prussia". Just for that, it had to be good and of a very high value! The title read: "Chansons maçonniques", and the melody I liked the most had seven four-lined stanzas to be sung to it, the first of which I would like to quote here:

"Nous vénérons de l'Arabie
La sage et noble antiquité,
Et la célèbre Confrairie
Transmise à la postérité." ^[a]

^[a] We venerate Arabia, the wise and noble ancient world, and the famous Brotherhood (confrérie), passed on to posterity.

The term "songs of the Freemasons" had a particular attraction. What a delight to be able to delve into the secrets of freemasonry! Luckily, the principal also gave private lessons in French. He permitted me to enter into this "circle", and so it happened that I had to deal with Latin, English, and French now all at the same time.

The principal was less reluctant in respect to borrowing me some of his books than the cantor. His favourite subject was geography. He possessed hundreds of geographic and ethnographic volumes, which he all made available to my father for me. I grasped this treasure with true enthusiasm, and the kind gentleman was glad about it, without having even the most obvious objections against it. Though he contemplated seeking employment as a minister, he was nonetheless in his heart more a philosopher than a theologian, and tended towards a freer way of thinking. But this was less obvious from his words than from the books he owned. At the same time, the minister also allowed me access to his library. He was no philosopher at all, but only and exclusively a theologian, nothing else. I am not referring to our old, kind minister, I mentioned before, but his successor, who first gave me all of his little tracts to read and then added to them all kinds of scriptures by Redenbacher and other good people, to awaken the faith, uplift the spirit, and educate the youth. So it happened that I had received from the principal, for instance, an enthusiastic description of Islamic charity and from the minister a missionary report, which bitterly complained about the obvious decline in Christian compassion, now lying before me side by side. In the first one's library, I got familiar with Humboldt, Bonpland, and all those other "great" men, who trusted more in science than in religion, and in the second one's library there were all those other "great" men, who esteemed religious revelation infinitely higher than all scientific results. And during all this, I was by no means an adult, but a stupid, a very stupid boy; but even much more foolish than I, were those who allowed me to fall and sink into those conflicts, without knowing what they did. Everything that was written in those so diverse books, could have been good, yes even excellent; but for me it had to turn into poison.

But even worse things followed. The private lessons in those foreign languages, which I received now, had to be payed, and I was the one who had to earn this money in one way or another. We looked around. A bar in Hohenstein was looking for a nimble, persevering boy to set up the pins in the bowling alley. I applied, though I had no experience, and got the job. Yes, I did earn money there, very much money, but how! By what pains! And what else did I sacrifice for this! The bowling alley was used often, being located in a closed room with a stove, so that it could be used in summer as well as in winter and in all kinds of weather. They bowled every day. From now on, I could not even find a quarter of an hour of spare time, and in particular not on a Sunday afternoon. Then, it started right after church and lasted until late at night. But the most busy day was Monday, because this was the day of the weekly market, when the inhabitants of the countryside came into town, to bring their products, to do their shopping, and -- last but not least -- to have a game of bowling. But this one game turned into five, ten, twenty, and it could happen on these Mondays that I had to toil from twelve o'clock at noon until after midnight, without even being able to take just five minutes of rest. To strengthen myself, I got in the afternoon and in the evening a buttered slice of bread and and a glass of stale beer, poured together from the left-overs. It also happened that a sympathetic bowler, seeing that I could hardly go on, brought me a glass of hard liquor, to invigorate me. I never complained about this excessive strain at home, because I saw how indispensably what I earned was needed. The amount I got together there on a weekly basis really made a big difference. I received a fixed income for every hour and furthermore a certain amount for every honneur ^[a] that was bowled. If the game was not played in the normal way, but free betting, or even gambling was practised, this amount was doubled or tripled. There have been Mondays, when I brought home more than twenty groschen, but was so tired, I more stumbled than climbed up the stairs to our lodgings.

^[a] Honneur: French for "honour", but here it means striking the middle row of the pins.

But what did my soul gain from this? Nothing at all, it just lost something. The beer they drank was just of a simple and cheap kind, but hard liquor was consumed in particularly large quantities. I will show elsewhere that these were not the kind of people, who would be familiar with what one might describe as consideration or even sensitivity. Everything which might have come into someone's mind was blurted out without restraint. You can imagine the kinds of things I got to hear there! The long enclosure of the bowling alley worked like an ear-trumpet. Every word which was spoken in the front among the players reached me clearly. Everything which grandmother and mother, the cantor and the principal as well, has built up within me, was outraged at what I got to hear here. There was much filth and also much poison in it. There was none of that powerful, utterly healthy gaiety which, for instance, can be found at an upper Bavarian bowling alley, but those were people, who came directly from the mind-numbing atmosphere of their looms into the bar, to have for a few hours the illusion of pleasure, but which was anything less than a pleasure, at least for me it was torture, physically as well as spiritually.

And yet, this bar had even much worse poison to offer than beer and brandy and similar, evil things, this was a rental library, and what a library! Never again have I seen such a filthy, internally and externally perfectly rough, extremely dangerous collection of books like this one! It was extremely profitable, because it was the only one for both small towns. No new books were bought. The only change that came upon it was that the covers grew even filthier and the pages grew even greasier and more worn out. But the contents was eagerly devoured by the readers, again and again, and I have to admit to the truth and confess to my own disgrace that I also, once I had tasted it, totally succumbed to the devil, who was hiding in those volumes. Let some of the titles show what kind of a devil this was: Rinaldo Rinaldini, the Robbers' Captain, by Vulpius, Goethe's brother-in-law ^[a]. Sallo Sallini, the Noble Captain of the Robbers. Himlo Himlini, the Charitable Captain of the Robbers. The Robbers' Den on Monte Viso. ^[c] Bellini, the Admirable Bandit. The Robber's Beautiful Bride or the Victim of the Unfair Judge. The Tower of Starvation or the Cruelty of the Laws. Bruno von Löweneck, der Annihilator of the Clerics. ^[d] Hans von Hunsrück or the Robber-Knight as a Protector of the Poor. Emilia, the Immured Nun. Botho von Tollenfels, the Saviour of the Innocent. The Bride at the Execution. The King as a Murderer. The Sins of the Archbishop etc. etc.

^[a] This is Christian August Vulpius (1762-1827), the brother of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's wife Christiane.
"Sallo Sallini" and "Himlo Himlini" were both written by Georg Carl Ludwig Schöpffer (1811-1876), published in 1828 and 1833.
^[c] "Die Räuberhöhle auf dem Monte Viso", by Theodor Graeber, published in 1834.
^[d] Perhaps this refers to "Bruno von Loeveneck und Clara von Hundsrück", published anonymously in 1825.

When I came to set up the pins and no players had come yet, the owner of the bar gave me one of these books, to read it for the time being. Later, he told me I could read them all, without having to pay for it. And I read them; I devoured them; I read them three or four times! I took them home. I sat for entire nights over them with burning eyes. Father did not object. Nobody warned me, not even those who would have been so very much obliged to warn me. They knew very well, what I read; I did not conceal it. And what an effect this had! I did not even suspect what this caused inside of me; how much collapsed within me; that the few means of support I, the boy who was spiritually hovering in thin air, still had now also fell with the exception of one, this was my faith in God and my confidence in Him.

Psychology is presently in a process of transformation. More and more, the distinction between the mind and the soul is being made. There is an attempt to separate the two, to define them sharply, to prove their differences. It is being said that a human being was not a single entity, but a drama. For the purpose of going along with this view, I must not confuse what affected my small, still growing mind and my boyish soul. All of this extensive reading, I was forced to do up to now, did not profit my soul at all, not in the least; just the ever so tiny mind did bear the effects of this, but what an effects were these! It had been blown up and rolled out into a little, monstrously fat, big-headed freak. The very well, perhaps even extraordinarily, talented boy had transformed into an unshapely, mentally deformed creature, who possessed nothing real except for his helplessness. And spiritually, my soul was without home, without youth, was just held up by this strong, indestructible rope, I mentioned before, and was only tied to the earth below by this more poetic than material high regard for king and fatherland, law and justice, which originated from those days when the eleven companies of heroes had been formed in Ernstthal, to save the severely besieged monarch of Saxony and his government from certain ruin. But now, this support was taken from me as well by reading from this shameful rental library. All of those robber-captains, bandits, and robber-knights, of which I read there, were noble people. Whatever they were now, they had become because of bad people, especially because of unfair judges and the cruel authorities. They possessed the true religious virtues, ardent patriotism, limitless charity, and styled themselves as the knights and saviours of all those who were poor, all those who were downtrodden and oppressed. They imbued the reader with respect and admiration; but all adversaries of these glorious men were to be despised, and in particular the authorities whose designs were foiled again and again. And most of all, there was this fullness of life, of action, of movement, which dominated these books! On every page, something happened, something most interesting, some great, hard, daring deed, which was to be admired. What, on the other hand, had happened in all those books I had read up to now? What happened in the minister's tracts? In his boring, meaningless scriptures for the youth? And what happened in those otherwise rather good and useful books of the principal? They described great, large, and distant countries, but nothing happened in all of this. They told of foreign people and nations, but they did not move, they did nothing. This was all just geography, just geography, nothing else; any kind of a plot was missing. And just ethnography, just ethnography; but the puppets stood still. There was no God, no man, and also no devil, to take the cross with the strings into his hand and to give these dead characters life! And yet, there is one person, who absolutely demands this life, this is the reader. And this is the one, upon whom everything depends, because he alone is the one the books are written for. The reader's soul will turn away from any kind of lack of movement, because this means this soul's death. What a wealth of life was there, on the other hand, in this rental library! And how was it tuned to the peculiarities and requirements of the one who would take such a book into his hands! As soon as he would feel a wish while reading, it is already fulfilled. And what an admirable, unchanging justice rules the scene. Every good, honourable person, may he be the captain of the robbers ten times over, is invariably rewarded. And every evil person, every sinner, may he be ten times a king, general, bishop, or public prosecutor, is invariably punished. This is true justice; this is divine justice! No matter how much Goethe may write in poetry and prose about the glory and irrevocability of divine and human law, he is nonetheless wrong! Only his brother-in-law Vulpius is right, for he has created that Rinaldo Rinaldini!

What was worst about this reading was that it took place in the later phase of my boyhood, when everything which took hold of my soul was to be kept there forever. In addition, there was my inborn naivety, which I still have even today to a large degree. I believed in what I read there, and father, mother, and sisters believed it with me. Only grandmother shook her head, and even the more the longer it lasted; but she was outvoted by the rest of us. In our poverty, we found an great delight in reading about "noble" people, who kept on giving away riches. That they had stolen and robbed those riches from others before, was just their business; this did not irritate us! When we read how many needy people had been supported and saved by such robbers' captain, we were happy about this and imagined how nice it would be, if such a Himlo Himlini would suddenly step through our door, put ten thousand shiny talers on the table, and said: "This is for your boy; let him study and become a dramatic poet!" This was because the latter had become my ideal, since I had seen the "Faust".

I must confess that I not just read those ruinous books, but read them to others as well, first to my parents and sisters and then also to other families, who were so very eager to hear them. It is immeasurable how much damage a single one of these trashy books can cause. Everything positive is lost, and finally, only the miserable negation remains. The concepts and views of the law change; the lie turns into the truth, the truth, into the lie. The conscience dies. The differentiation between good and evil becomes more and more unreliable! This finally leads to the admiration for the forbidden deed, which gives the illusion of relief from want. But with this, a person has by no means reached the very bottom of the abyss yet; it is deeper, even deeper still, leading down to the most extreme criminal existence.

This was the time when the decision had to be made, what I should do after the confirmation. I would have liked so endlessly much to go to a secondary school and then to a university. But for this the means just were not enough. I had to downgrade my wishes and finally arrived at the idea of becoming primary school teacher. But we were even too poor for this. We looked around for help. The merchant Friedrich Wilhelm Layritz, no relation with the town's judge by the same name, was a very rich and very religious man. Though nobody had ever proven him responsible for any charitable act, he never missed church, enjoyed talking about humaneness and neighbourly love, and was connected with our family by means of a godfathership. We had got all of the information and had made a rough estimate. If we worked properly, saved properly, starved properly, and I would not waste a single pfennig at the seminary in vain, we would only need another five to ten taler per year. We had figured this out. Of course it was all wrong; but we thought it to be right. My parents had never borrowed a single pfennig; now they were determined to take a loan for my sake. Mother went to Mr. Layritz. He sat down in an arm-chair, folded his hands, and let her state her case. She told him everything and asked him to borrow us five taler, not right now, but when we would need them, this was when I would have passes the entry exam. Until then, there was still so very much time. To this, he answered without giving it much thought: "My dear friend, it's true, I'm rich and you're poor, very poor. But you have the same God as I, and as He has helped me to get where I am, so He will help you as well. I also have children, like you, and have to provide for them. Thus, I can't lend you these five taler. But be confident and go home, pray frequently, then you can be sure that in time someone will be found who can spare the money and will give it to you!"

This happened late in the evening. I sat at home, reading one of these books about robbers, when mother returned and told what Mr. Layritz had said. It was more her outrage at such a kind of religiousness than the rejection, which made her cry. Father sat still for a long time; then, he got up and left. But while stepping out of the door, he said: "We'll not try anything like this again! Karl will go to seminary, even if I have to work until my hands bleed!" After he had left, the rest of us continued sitting sadly together for a long time. Then we went to bed. But I did not sleep, but stayed awake. I searched for a way out. I struggled to reach a decision. The book I had been reading bore the title: "The Robbers' Den at Sierra Morena or The Angel of All Oppressed". After Father had returned home and had fallen asleep, I got out of bed, sneaked out of the chamber, and got dressed. Then, I wrote on a piece of paper: "You shall not work until your hands bleed; I am going to Spain; I am getting help!" I placed this paper on the table, put a small piece of dry bread into my pocket as well as a few groschen from the money I had earned at the bowling alley, descended down the stairs, opened the door, took another deep breath and sighed, but just quietly, very quietly, lest anybody should hear it, and walked with hushed steps down the market square, leaving town by the Niedergasse <lower alley>, turning to the Lungwitzer road, which lead via Lichtenstein to Zwickau ^[a], towards Spain, to Spain, the land of the noble robbers, the helpers from distress. -- -- --

^[a] Zwickau is the next larger town to the west of Ernstthal, about 17 km (10 miles) away. Lichtenstein is a small town about half way between the two. (Do not confuse this with Liechtenstein.)

IV. My Time at the Seminary and as a Teacher

No plant draws what is to be contained in its cells and in its fruits from itself, but rather from the soil it sprang from and from the atmosphere it breaths. A human being is also a plant in this respect. Though not being physically attached to one spot, we are nevertheless mentally and spiritually rooted, deeply rooted, very deeply, more deeply than many a giant tree in the the Californian soil. Therefore, nobody can be held fully responsible for whatever he does while he is still in the process of development. To hold him fully accountable for all of his mistakes, would be just as wrong as pretending that he had obtained all of his good qualities entirely on his own. Only he who precisely knows and correctly assesses the native soil and the adolescent atmosphere of a "developed" one, is capable to prove with some amount of certainty, which parts of his lot in life are the product of the given circumstances and which of the purely individual intentions of the person concerned. It has been one of the worst cruelties of the past, to burden every poor devil who was led to a violation of the law by his circumstances, in addition to his own, possibly minor, guilt, with the entire, heavy load of the circumstances as well. Unfortunately, there are still more than enough people today who, even now, still commit this cruelty, without even suspecting that they are the ones who would have to share in bearing the responsibility, if there were laws to that effect. And usually, it are not at all the remote people, but even more so the dear "neighbours", who cast stone upon stone on one of them, though the influences he succumbed to where most of all coming from them as well. Thus, they also bear part of the guilt themselves, which they cast upon him.

When I am now taking on the task of putting the circumstances which shaped me through an unbiased examination, this is not done with the intension to cast any part of my own guilt from me and upon others, but only to demonstrate for once by an expressive example how careful someone has to be who would want to endeavour on a precise investigation of the origin and development of a single human being.

At this time, Hohenstein and Ernstthal were two small towns, which were situated so close together that in some parts their narrow alleys intertwined like the fingers of two folded hands. In Hohenstein, the natural philosopher Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert was born, whose earlier work was under the influence of Schelling, but who then turned to pietistic-ascetic mysticism. His native town has built a monument in his honour. From Ernstthal was the accomplished philosopher and author Pölitz, whose library consisted of more than 30.000 volumes, which he had left to the city of Leipzig. Here, I am less concerned with Hohenstein than with Ernstthal, where I, as Hobble-Frank ^[a] would put it, "for the first time saw the light of day". The first and oldest impressions of my childhood are those of a lamentable poverty, and not just in a material, but also in another respect. Never again in my life, I have seen so much mental frugality in one spot as then. The mayor had no university training. There was a night-watchman, but the inhabitants had to take turns in participating in the nightly watch. The main occupation was weaving. The wages could only be described as meagre, often even more than meagre. At certain times, there was little or no work at all for weeks, sometimes even for months. Then, one could see women going to the forest and bringing back baskets full of brushwood, to have something for the fire in winter. At night, on lonely paths, one could come across men, carrying large logs home, which had to be sawn and chopped into firewood the very night, so that nothing could be found, when the premises were searched. The poor weavers had to work hard, in order to fend off hunger. Saturday was payday. Then, everyone brought his "piece to the market". For every flaw, which could be found, a certain amount was subtracted from the wages. So many a man brought home less than he had expected. Then, it was time to relax. Saturday night was devoted to gaiety and -- -- -- booze. One neighbour met with another. The "Bulle" was handed around. "Bulle" is short for bouteille . In some families they sang to this, but what songs were these ever so often! In others the cards ruled the scene. Then, they played "lumpen", "schafkopf", or even "tippen". The latter is an illegal game of chance, on which some men spent the earnings of an entire week. To this, they drank from a single glass. This went from one hand to another, from one mouth to another. Even on the Sunday promenade, just as anytime someone left his house, a supply of brandy was brought along. So they sat at the picnic and drank. Hard liquor was a part of everything; one would not want to do without it. It was regarded as the only relief from worry, and its worst effects were accepted, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

^[a] Hobble-Frank: a character from several of Karl May's novels.
bouteille: bottle (French). Let me offer an alternative etymology for the word "Bulle". It is common for people from Saxony to pronounce a "P" like a "B". Thus, I would guess that "Bulle" is actually just the Saxonian pronunciation of that colloquialism for a bottle which is more correctly pronounced and spelled as "Pulle", which in turn is a degeneration of the Latin "ampulla" according to my etymological dictionary.

Of course, there were also so-called better families, who were not governed by alcohol, but there were only very few of them. There were no patrician dynasties in either town. In Hohenstein lived some families who had a higher reputation than others, but not in Ernstthal. The minister and the physicians were the only persons with an academic education, and then there also was a lawyer, whose liquidations simply would not want to turn into a comfortable income. Thus, the entire way of life was on an extremely low level, and the general tone of conversation was tuned in a way which would seem almost impossible now. In personal relations, nick-names were often more in use than the genuine, real names. Let the name Wolf serve as the only example, I am going to list here. There was a Weißkopfwolf <white head wolf>, a Rotkopfwolf <red head wolf>, a Daniellobwolf, a Schlagwolf, and also lots of wolves by other names. The houses were little, the alleys were narrow. Everyone could look into his neighbour's windows and observe everything what happened. Thus it became almost an impossibility to keep secrets from one another. And since there is no one without fault, everyone has his neighbour in the bag. Everything was known, but nothing was said. Just occasionally, when it was deemed necessary, a small hint was dropped, and this was enough. What this led to was an everlasting, but silent hypocrisy, a low form of irony, a seemingly benevolent sarcasm, which had no real basis. This was unhealthy and spread more and more, without anybody noticing it. This corroded; this was like poison. Thus, the card games of the Saturday nights had turned into a shady undertaking, serving the purpose of carrying out an illegal, yes even cheating, fraudulent game of cards. The persons concerned met, to practise the fabrication and the usage of marked cards. They established themselves in an inn, located out of town. They sent out scouts to bring in their victims. There they sat for entire nights, playing for high stakes. Ever so often, someone came with full pockets and left with empty ones. These goings on were well known in town. The news of every new trick they pulled off spread quickly. The sums they bagged were discussed with pleasure, instead of holding their fraud against them. The card sharpers were treated like honest people. They were supported. Yes, their wits were admired and praised, and not the slightest thing that was known about then was betrayed. It would not have occurred to a single person that, by this, the entire town became an accessory to the fraud, committed against the victims they brought in, and that everyone who knew about these rackets ought to have considered himself as guilty as a receiver of stolen goods. If, at this time, anybody had said that this was a deplorable, general state of immorality, he would probably have been laughed at or perhaps even worse. The general sense for what is right had been misguided. The card sharpers were admired, just as the Rinaldo Rinaldinis and Himlo Himlinis from the old rental library were admired, the volumes of which were eagerly read, because it was the only library for both towns. I have never heard that the mayor, the minister, or any other official, whose duty this might have been, had ever summoned one of these card sharpers to admonish him and to make him cease setting such an evil example for the entire community. It was tolerated. Everyone shut his eyes to it and kept quiet. But the younger generation, seeing and hearing all of this, had to get the impression that these acts of fraud were an admirable and very worth while occupation, and such an impression will never be blurred again. At one time, I have been told by a law-professional, that I had grown up in a filthy swamp. Would you think, that this gentleman was right or not?

Two peculiar outgrowths of this swamp were the two names "Batzendorf" <Batzen Village> and the "Lügenschmiede" <forge of lies>. The first name is derived from the well known, old, South German and Swiss divisional coin, batzen by name. Batzendorf was the community of a non-existent village, which every inhabitant of Ernstthal could join. It was a joke, but a joke which was frequently overdone. Batzendorf had its own council, its own minister, its own administration, but all of this was regarded in a manner which was meant to be humorous. The very smallest house of Ernstthal, the one where the vegetable vendor Dore Wendelbrück lived, had been declared to be the town hall of Batzendorf. One morning, there was a tower on top of it, which had been pieced together from wooden boards and cigar-boxes, und had been placed on old Dore's roof, without even asking her. But she was very proud of it. The innkeeper's wife from the Meisterhaus-inn was the village's night-watchwoman. She had to announce the hours and blow her horn. Every public authority and people from every lower walk of life were represented, down to the potato-watchman and the guardian of the pods, all of this was also a joke. Every Saturday, they held a meeting. Here, the entire community came together and the craziest plans were hatched, to be actually carried out, later on: baptisms of infants at the age of fifty, the wedding of two widows, an exercise of the fire-brigade without water, the election of a new community-goose, a public test of a new remedy against tape-worms, and similar crazy, often even very crazy things. The town's judge Layritz had grown old and did nothing about this. The minister was even older and never thought bad of anything. He always said: "Just don't overdo it, just don't overdo it!" With this, he thought his duty was done. The cantor shook his head. He was too modest, to step forward with a public reproof. But when being alone with my father, he had the courage to warn him: "Don't go along with this, neighbour, don't you go along with this! This isn't good for you, and it's also not good for Karl. What's done there, is nothing but parody, irony, mocking, and jeering of things, the sanctity of which no one should ever question! And especially children should never get to see or to hear something like this!"

He was very, very right. This "Batzendorf", where batzen-money was the only accepted currency, has existed for quite a number of years and had many a quiet, secret, but just the more evil effect. There, "the ties of decent restraint" were loosened. There was something new every week. We children observed the silliness of the adults with huge interest and joined in the mockery and the parody, but of course, without becoming aware of it. This went on like that, until the town's administration and the church came under a new, strict rule, and Batzendorf was ruined by its own doings. But it had benefited no one. This was a swamp of moral degradation to which not only the older ones had turned, but we younger ones were also led right into it and very much of our nature as children got stuck in it and had to be left behind. The untalented ones were less hurt by this; but on the talented ones it continues to have its effect and grows inside of him up to a size which later, once it becomes apparent, cannot be contained any longer.

The "Lügenschmiede" was of a slightly newer date. In talking about it, I intensionally do not give any names. What I have to say, I only want to direct against the matter itself, not against any persons. In Ernstthal, there were several younger people who had much talent for satire. Basically, they were very respectable, kind people, and therefore could have used their talents for their benefit, if they had lived under different, more generous circumstances, but as things were, they got stuck below, in the limited circumstances, and were therefore unable to achieve anything but the petty and the ordinary, often even just the very trivial. This has been a real waste of talent!

One of them, perhaps the most enterprising and most humorous one, got to own his own house and had the audacity to open a delicatessen in this town of Ernstthal, where there was so little appreciation and money for delicacies, but of course, this included a restaurant, because without it, he surely would not have been able to find any customers. At first, this restaurant bore no particular name; but it did not take long, until it got one, and a very fitting one, as well. It had been called the "Lügenschmiede" <forge of lies> and its proprietor was referred to as the "Lügenschmied" <smith of lies>. Why? The proprietor as well as his regulars all liked a good laugh. A stranger might have frequented this place several times, without noticing anything of it. But suddenly, it came over him, suddenly, entirely unexpectedly, and with an irresistible certainty. He was "done", as they called it. They had discovered his weakest spot and his strongest hook, which was used to hang some cleverly devised lie on it, which he had to believe, whether he liked it or not. This lie had to put him into an embarrassing situation, no matter how he might try to avert it, and even if he had been ten or hundred times smarter than those who had decided to trip him. This forge of lies became famous all around. Thousands of strangers came as guests, and everyone who got the idea of getting into an argument with the owner and his regulars, got his thrashing and embarrassedly went on his way.

Ordinary guests got the simple treatment. When someone demanded a beer, he got a cognac. Did he ask for a brandy, he received lemonade. If he wanted to eat a pickled herring, he was presented with unpealed potatoes and apple-sauce. And nobody refused to take it and to pay for it, because they all knew that otherwise embarrassment would follow. Better guests were not in for such ordinary jokes. They were kept waiting. "He isn't quite ripe yet", the Lügenschmied used to say. And everyone got ripe, everyone, whoever or whatever he might be, whether he had studied or not, whether his rank was high or low. The pranks were often quite ingenious, but had always a tendency towards the ordinary. A guest, who wanted to get a shave, had been told, the barber was not at home, but rather here, sitting right next to him. But actually, this man was no barber, but rather a baker. He lathered the man with aniline and shaved him, while all the others kept a straight face. The saved man payed and happily went away, blue all over his face. For weeks, he could not show his face in public; this was his punishment for insisting at the Lügenschmiede that he was smarter than all others and that no one could fool him. Another guest had been told that his brother has had an accident on the fairground the same day before noon. He had come to close too a huge barrel organ, and so his right leg got entangled in the gears; as a consequence, the leg had to be amputated below the knee. The man jumped up in fright and ran off, but very soon, he returned laughing with his entirely healthy brother. The gentlemen of the public authorities also very much enjoyed frequenting the Lügenschmiede, but only at times when they knew they could be alone and unobserved. They also put up with an odd prank, and often it was just due to their influence when the proprietor's pranks, which often went too far, bore no unpleasant consequences. This was because the whole matter was increasingly overdone, like everything which comes from the low-minded way of thinking. The pranks became more ordinary; they lost their attraction. It had all been done to death. And everyone entering the Lügenschmiede, thought he could tell lies and misrepresent the truth. The spirit was gone. What had been real humour, real fun, real kidding and joking, now became obscenity, ambiguity, untruthfulness, forgery, imprudent gossip, and lie. The Lügenschmiede has disappeared by now. The house has been demolished. But unfortunately, the consequences of this inappropriate tomfoolery have not disappeared with it. They still exist today. They continue having their effects. This also was a swamp, a swamp hidden under the brightest green and the most alluring flowers. Not just the town's soul had suffered from it, but its miasmas have also spread around over a larger area of the land, and I deeply, deeply regret that I am also one of those who suffered from it extensively and severely, and still have to suffer up the the present day. What enabled my opponents to turn the Karl May I really and truly am into this most untruthful of all caricatures and to parade me through all of the newspapers as a bandit who robs market-women and a robber-captain was to a large extent the Lügenschmiede; its regulars never even considered what they were doing to me by exposing each other to ever new, made up stories of my supposed adventures and misdeeds. I will return to this elsewhere, but here, I still have to say one very short thing: What I had to report of the card sharpers, of "Batzendorf", and of the "Lügenschmiede", are just a few short insights into the conditions of my native town at that time. I could increase and deepen these insight extensively, to prove that it has really and truly been a very contaminated soil, where my soul had been forced to be rooted in, but I would like to refrain from this with great pleasure, because I have been delighted to see recently, how much has changed there. I had shunned my native town for quite some time and wanted to avoid it furthermore as well, when a legal action forced me to return there one again. I was pleasantly disappointed. I am not referring to external, but to internal matters. I have seen enough towns and places; nothing can surprise me and nothing can disappoint me in that respect. As I, primarily and above anything else, seek to get to know the soul of any stranger I happen to meet, so I also seek to know the soul of every place I enter anew. And though the soul of Hohenstein-Ernstthal was still the same, I saw this right away, it was nevertheless uplifted, it had cleansed itself, it had obtained a different, better, and more dignified appearance. I had the opportunity to observe it for a few days, and might very well say that I enjoyed these observations. I found intelligence, where there had not been any before. I met with a lively respect for the law, which was not as easily misguided as in the past. There was more responsibility for the community, more of a feeling of togetherness. Yes, the material conditions were looking up everywhere, up towards the ideal. The ground on which the people lived was uplifted and presented the ability to better itself furthermore and increasingly. I met old acquaintances, who had really made something of their lives. To me, this was a satisfaction, I had not expected. There were no longer those old, indolent faces with an expression of the disagreeable cunning of uneducated people, but the features showed insight and ability, healthy intelligence and considered judgement. Might this have been just a consequence of new people moving into town? Surely not exclusively, though it cannot be denied that new blood from outside has a invigorating, strengthening, and improving effect on the life of a community. I honestly confess that after this visit and after these observations, I have again a certain fondness for my native town and wish with all of my heart that the presently so clearly visible progress, also in the direction towards spiritual goals, may be a lasting one. The proof had been made that the old times are gone. The people have made the effort, to rise up with youthful energy; this yields success, and along with success, will also come the blessings.

After these general remarks, I can now turn back to myself and to this early morning, when I left Ernstthal, to get help from a noble, Spanish robber-captain. Do not think that had been a "crazy" idea. I was perfectly sane. Though my logic was still that of a child, it was already well trained. My mistake was just that, due to the trashy literature I eagerly consumed, I took the novels for the real life, and therefore I now simply treated life as a novel. The exceedingly rich imagination, nature had gifted me with, turned the possibility of such a delusion into reality.

My trip to Spain lasted only one day. Near Zwickau, lived some relatives of ours. I spent the night with them. They received me kindly and persuaded me to stay. In the meantime, at home, my note had been found and read. Father knew what the direction to Spain was. He instantly thought of those relatives and got going right away, being convinced to surely find me there. When he came, we sat around the table and I told in all of my naive honesty where I wanted to go and also to whom and why. These relatives were poor, simple, honest weavers. There was not a trace of imagination in them. They were simply stunned at my undertaking. Seeking help with a robber-captain! At first, they would not know what to do, what to make of me, and so it was a relief for them to see my father entering the house. He, the hot-tempered man, who at the slightest occasion blew his top, behaved completely differently than usual. His eyes were in tears. He said not a single angry word to me. He hugged me and said: "Never do something like this again, never again!" Then, after a short rest, he left with me -- -- back home.

The walk took five hours. All of this time, we walked silently side by side; he led me by the hand. I never felt more clearly than at this time, how much he actually loved me. Everything he wished and hoped to get out of life, he projected upon me. I solemnly promised myself, never to let him experience such a pain as today through me again. And what about him? What kind of thoughts might that have been which now echoed through his mind? He said nothing. When we reached our home, I had to go to bed, because I, the little fellow I was, had walked for ten hours and was extremely tired. We never said another word about my excursion to Spain; but the work at the bowling alley and the reading of those morally destructive novels did stop. In due time, the necessary help came about, without having to be brought in from the land of the chestnuts. The minister recommended me to the patron of our church, the count of Hinterglauchau, and he agreed to support me with fifteen taler per year, an amount which was regarded as sufficient for me to attend the seminary. At Easter 1856 was my confirmation. On Michaelmas ^[a] I passed the entry exam to the proseminary of Waldenburg and started living at this boarding school.

^[a] September the 29th.

So it was not a secondary school where one did obtain the qualifications to proceed to a university, but just the seminary! There were no academic studies for me, I was to become only a teacher! Only? How wrong! There was no higher position than that of a teacher, and with all of my thoughts, feelings, and actions I was thus concentrated on my present task that I enjoyed everything which was connected with it. Of course, this task was just the foreground. In the background, towering high above it, rose above anything else what had become my ideal since that night when I had seen the Faust: to write plays for the theatre! On the subject of God, man, and devil! Could I not do this as a teacher just as well as if I had been to an academy? Yes, certainly, provided of course that I did not lack talent. How proud was I the first time I wore the green hat! How proud were my parents and sisters as well! Grandmother hugged me and urged:

"Always think of our fable! Now, you are still in Ardistan; but you are supposed to rise to Jinnistan. This journey will start today. You have to ascent. Never turn to those who want to hold you back!"

"And what about the spirits' furnace?" I asked. "Do I have to enter it?"

"If you are worth it, you can't avoid it", she answered. "But if you aren't worth it, your life will proceed without struggle and without pain."

"But I want to enter it; I want to!" I exclaimed courageously.

Then she placed her hand on my head and said with a smile:

"This is up to God. Don't forget Him! Never forget Him as long as you live!"

I did heed this advice, but have to confess, to be honest, that it was never hard on me. I cannot remember any occasion where I had to wrestle with doubt or even disbelief. In a manner of speaking, the conviction that there was a God who also watched out over me and would never leave me has, at all times, been a firm, inalienable ingredient of my personality, and therefore I cannot at all regard it as a special achievement of mine that I have never been unfaithful to this uplifted, beautiful faith of my childhood. Granted, I also was not entirely free of perturbations of my inner self; but the perturbation came from outside and did not become a part of me in such a manner that it could have persisted. It was caused by the very special manner in which theology and religious education were taught at the seminary. Every morning and every evening, there were prayers every student was compelled to participate in. This was quite right so. On Sundays and holidays, the entire student body was brought to church. This was just as right so. Furthermore, there were certain ceremonies for the mission and similar purposes. This was also good and fitting. And there was for all classes of the seminary a well thought out, very extensive curriculum on religion, biblical teachings, and hymns. This entirely goes without saying. But in all this, there was one thing missing, the very thing which is the most important part of all religious matters; this is that there was no love, no kindness, no humility, no forgivingness. The lessons were cold, strict, tough. It did not have the slightest trace of poetry. Instead of causing delight and enthusiasm, it was repelling. The religious lessons were the ones which were the least inspiring. It was always a pleasure when the hand on the clock reached the number twelve. All of these lessons were held year by year with precisely the same contents and precisely the same words and expressions. What was taught on this date, was inevitably to be taught next year on the same day again. This worked like an old cuckoo-clock; this all sounded so wooden, and this all looked so faked, so fabricated. Every single thought had been designated to its place among a dozen ideas and was by no means allowed to turn up in any other spot. This did not allow any trace of a warm feeling to form; this killed the inner self. I have never known a single one among my fellow students who would have ever said one favourable word about this form of religious education. And I have also known no one who would have been religious enough to voluntarily fold his hands to pray. I myself have prayed always and at every occasion; I still do this today, without being ashamed; but at that time, at the seminary, I kept it a secret, because I was afraid of my fellow students' smirks.

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.

I am going to turn back to my parents' poverty. The examination had required a tailcoat, an expensive matter for our circumstances. Furthermore, as a teacher, I could not continue being dressed like a student, and needed at least some modest supply of laundry and other necessary items. My parents did not have this kind of money; I had to take care of this myself; this means, I borrowed it, to pay it back from my salary in installments. So I had to be economical, thinking twice before I would spend a single pfennig! I limited myself to the bare necessities, and had to do without all expenses, unless they were absolutely unavoidable. I did not even own a watch, though this is quite indispensable for a teacher, who has to be punctual by the minute.

The owner of the factory, the school of which had been entrusted to me, was obliged by contract to supply my accommodations. He chose what was most convenient for him. One of his accountants had also been granted free accommodations, a living room and a bedroom. Until now, he had both for himself; now, my quarters were to be at his place; he had to share with me. By this, he lost his independence and his convenience; he was constantly annoyed by my presence, and thus one can easily comprehend that I was not particularly welcome by him, and that the idea had crossed his mind, to get rid of this intrusion in some way. Otherwise, I got along with him rather well. I did him every favour I could and treated him, since I saw that he wanted it this way, as the actual master of the lodgings. This obliged him to return my kindness. An opportunity for this came very soon. He had received a new pocket watch from his parents. His old watch, which he now did not need any more, hang unused on a nail at the wall. Its value was at most twenty marks. He offered to sell it to me, because I did not possess any; but I rejected, because if I would eventually buy a watch, it was supposed to be new, a better one. Of course, this was still a long way to go, because I had to pay back my debts first. Then, he himself suggested to me that I should take his old watch with me to school, since I was required to be punctual. I went for it and was grateful to him for this. At first, I placed the watch back on the nail as soon as I returned from school. Later, I occasionally failed to do this; I kept it in my pockets for several hours more, because to me, it would have seemed not that much conscientious, but rather ridiculous, to put so much emphasis on the fact that it did not belong to me. Finally, I even took it with me when I went out and only hang it back up in its place after I had returned at night. There was no real friendship or even cordial relationship between us. He accepted me, because he had to, and occasionally, he made it a point to let me know that he was not pleased to share his lodgings.

Then, Christmas came. I informed him that I would spend the holidays with my parents and bid him farewell, because I wanted to depart immediately after school, without returning to our lodgings. After the last lesson was over, I went to Ernstthal, which took just one hour by rail, so it was not far to go at all. Being filled with the joy of the holidays, I completely forgot, to leave the watch behind. When I noticed that it was still in my pocket, I did not care about this at all. After all, there was not even the slightest dishonest intension in my mind. This night with my parents was such a happy occasion. My time as a student was behind me; I had a job; I received a salary. The beginning of my career was there. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. We already started preparing for the exchange of the Christmas presents. While doing so, I spoke about my future, my ideals, which all appeared shining most brightly before me in the lustre of Christmas. Father joined my enthusiasm. Mother was quietly happy. Grandmother's old, faithful eyes were shining. After we had finally turned in for the night, I still lay awake for a long time in my bed and contemplated what I had done right and wrong in my life. For the first time, I grew fully aware of my internal uncertainty. I saw the treacherous abyss gaping behind me, but none in front of me, because my path seemed to be, though hard and strenuous, still entirely free from obstacles: to become an author; to achieve great things, but first to learn a great things! To cast off, one after another, all those faults of my inner self, which were the consequence of my wrong upbringing, so that there shall be room for something new, better, righter, noble! With those thoughts, I fell asleep, and when I woke, it was already almost noon, and I had to go to the Hohensteiner Christmas market to buy a few more small gifts for my sisters. There, I came across a gendarme, who asked me, if I was the teacher May. After I had confirmed this, he told me to come to the town hall, to the police, where I they wanted to question me. I went along, not suspecting anything at all. First, I was shown into the living room, not the office. A woman was sitting there and sewing. Please, allow me to keep to myself whose wife she was. She was a close acquaintance of my mother, who had gone to school with her, and now she looked at me with anxious eyes. The gendarme ordered me to sit down and left the room for a short time, to give his report. The woman used this opportunity to ask me hastily:

"You've been arrested! Do you know that?"

"No", I answered, mortally startled. "Why?"

"You're said to have stolen a watch from your roommate! If they'll find it on you, you'll be sent to prison and will be dismissed as a teacher!"

Everything flickered before my eyes. I felt like being hit over the head with a club. I thought of last night, my thoughts before falling asleep, and now all of a sudden there was dismissal and imprisonment!

"But it's not stolen at all, just borrowed!" I stuttered, pulling it out of my pocket.

"They won't believe that! Put it away! Return it to him secretly, but don't let anybody see it now! Quickly, quickly!"

My devastation was indescribable. A single clear, calm thought would have saved me, but it did not occur to me. I just had to show the watch and tell the truth, then everything would have been well; but I was so scared that I was like in a fever and acted like in a fever. I did not put the watch back into my pocket, but into my suit, where it did not belong to, and as soon as this had happened, the gendarme returned to get me. Let be as brief as possible on what had happened now! I committed the insane act of denying the possession of the watch; but it was found, when I was searched for it. Thus, the lie destroyed me instead of saving me; but it always does; I was a -- -- -- thief! I was brought to Chemnitz to appear before the investigating judge, spent the Christmas holidays not with my parents, but locked up, and was sentenced to six weeks in prison. Whether and by what means I defended myself; whether I sought refuge in an appeal, an appellation, any kind of legal remedy, a petition for clemency, a lawyer, I cannot say. My recollection of those days has disappeared, entirely disappeared. For important psychological reasons, I would like to tell everything as openly and comprehensively as possible, but unfortunately, I cannot do this, because all of this has been wiped off my memory, due to rather peculiar psychological conditions, on which I will have to report in the next chapter. I only know that I was entirely lost, and that I found myself again once I was back in the care of my parents and especially of my grandmother. After the strain of recovering, when I had regained enough of my strength, I went to Altchemnitz, to refresh my damaged memory. In respect to the locations, it was in vain; I recognised nothing, neither the factory, nor my former lodgings, nor any other place where I undoubtedly must have been. But suddenly, he stood before me, my roommate, the accountant. He happened to come my way on the street and stopped, once he had reached me. Him, I recognised immediately, he me too, though he assured me that I looked completely different than before, so very ailing. He gave me his hand and asked me, to forgive him. He had not intended for it to come out the way it did at all. He said, he was so infinitely sorry for having spoiled my career! I gave him an astonished look. Having spoiled my career? Would anybody have been able to do this? Even if the government would not want to hire me any more, there are still enough private jobs available, which are even better payed. And it had also never been my intension to remain a teacher of a public or even factory school; I had entirely different plans and still had them on this day. I just left the man standing in the middle of the street and went away, without a word of reproach.

Yes, I left, but where to?! I could not have guessed it, then. I have said just before in this account that a treacherous abyss was behind me, but none in front of me, and that I intended to achieve great things, but first to learn great things. The first thing was wrong. On the very contrary, the abyss was not behind me, but in front of me. And the great thing I had to learn and to achieve was, to tumble into this abyss, without being shattered and to freely ascend it on the other side, without ever relapsing into it again. This is the hardest task there is for a mortal, and I think I have solved it. -- -- --

V. In the Abyss

I now turn to the time which is for me and every compassionate soul the most horrible, but for a psychologist the most interesting of all times. As I take up my pen write this down, I could give this account in such terms of psychology or even criminal psychology, which are most suitable to let an expert comprehend what happened inside of me then; but I am not writing this for a specialist in psychology, but for the general public reading my books, and therefore, I have to abstain from all attempts to practice psychology. Consequentially, I will avoid all technical terms and rather employ an allegoric form of expression than a terminology which is not universally understood.

The event described in the previous chapter had effected me like a blow, like a blow over the head, the impact of which will make a person collapse. And I did collapse! I did rise again, though, but only externally; internally I stayed down in mindless unconsciousness; for weeks, even for months. That it had happened at Christmas out of all times, had doubled the effect. Whether I had turned to a lawyer, whether I appealed, appellated, or had employed any other kind of legal remedy, I do not know. I only remember that I lived in a cell for six weeks, together with two other men. They were prisoners on remand. Apparently, I was regarded as harmless, or else I would not have been locked up together with persons who had not been convicted yet. One of them was a bank official, the other one an hotelier. I did not care why they were investigated. They were kind towards me and made every attempt to lift me out of the state of internal petrification I was in, but in vain. I left the cell, once my imprisonment had ended, with the same lack of emotion with which I had entered it. I went home to my parents.

Neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor the sisters would have thought of reproaching me with something. And this was perfectly horrible! At that time when I, with all the ignorance of a child, wanted to go to Spain and father brought me home, I had promised myself that would never sadden him again anything similar, and now it had turned out so very differently and so much worse! I was not concerned about my future or about a job; I could have obtained this any time. Now, with matters being as they were, the thing for me to do was not to turn sideways off my path, but to set on that course right now and for ever on the other end of which were those ideals which I bore within the deepest depth of my heart since my boyhood: To become an author, to become a poet! Learning, learning, learning! To work myself up by what is great, beautiful, noble, out of my present deep and low state! To get to know the world as a stage, and the people who swarm on it! And in the end of this hard, laborious life, to write for that other stage, for the theatre, to solve, there, the mysteries which had captured me since my earliest childhood and which, though I felt them then, I was still far, far, far from comprehending!

The process which formed those thoughts and intentions within me was not at all clearly, shortly, and concisely expressing itself, oh no, because inside of me there was now the very opposite of clarity; it was night; there were only a few free moments when I saw further than the present day would allow me. This night was not entirely dark; it had the faint light of dawn. And strangely, it only extended over the soul, not the mind as well. My soul was ill, not my mind. I possessed the capability to make every logical conclusion, to solve every mathematical problem. I had the keenest insight in everything unconnected with my inner self; but as soon as something approached me, to interact with me, this insight stopped. I was not able to inspect myself, to understand myself, to guide and control myself. Just occasionally, a moment came which granted me the ability to know what I wanted, and then, this wish was my only desire until the next one of these moments came. This was a condition I had never observed before in another human being and never read about in any book. And mentally, I was very well aware of this condition of the soul, but did not possess the power to alter and even less to overcome it. I developed the realization that I no longer was one whole, but a split personality, very much according to the new doctrine, that man is not an individual, but a drama. In this drama, there were several characters, acting out their parts, who at some time were entirely indistinguishable and then again took on their very well distinguished forms.

First of all, there was myself, this is me, who was observing all of this. But who this "me" actually was and where he was within myself, I could not tell. He very much resembled my father and had all of his faults. A second being within myself always kept at a distance. It resembled a fairy, an angel, one of those impeccable, bliss bringing beings from grandmother's book of fairy-tales. It admonished; it warned. It smiled when I obeyed, and it mourned when I was disobedient. The third entity, of course not a physical one, but an appearance on the soul, was nothing less than abhorrent to me. Fateful, ugly, mocking, repulsive, always gloomy and threatening; I have never seen it any other way, and I have never heard it any other way. This is because I have not just seen it, I also heard it; it spoke. It often spoke to me for entire days and entire nights without interruption. And it never wanted what was good, but always just what was evil and unlawful. It was new to me; I had never seen it before, but only from now on, once my inner being was split. But when, for a short time, it kept silent and I therefore found the time to observe it secretly and attentively, then it struck me as so familiar and well acquainted, as if I had seen it a thousand times before. Then its appearance changed, and its face changed, too. At times, it was from the Batzendorf, then from the bowling alley, or from the Lügenschmiede. One day it looked like Rinaldo Rinaldini, the next day like the robber-knight Kuno of the Eulenburg <owls' castle>, and the day after like the god-fearing principal of the seminary, standing before my tallow-paper.

I did not make these observations of my inner self all at once, but gradually. Many, many months passed, until they had developed to such an extent within me that I was able to behold their image in my mind and commit this to memory. And then, I started to comprehend was all of this was actually about. What occurred within every human being, without him or she being aware of it or even suspecting it, also occurred in me, but with me seeing and hearing it. Was this a benefit, a gift of God? Or was I insane? If so, I was at any rate not insane in the mind, but in the soul, because I made these observations with an objectiveness and cold-bloodedness, as if this would not concern myself, but someone entirely different, a person who was a perfect stranger to me. And I lived my ordinary, every day life just as any sane person would, who is entirely unaffected by such psychological events. The strength and the will to live returned to me. I worked. I taught music and foreign languages. I wrote poetry; I composed. I formed a small group of musicians, to practice and to perform what I had composed. Members of this orchestra are still alive today. I became the chairman of a glee club, which I conducted at public concerts, in spite of my youth. And I began to write fiction. First, I wrote humorous short stories, then "Village-Tales from the Ore Mountains". I had no problems at all in finding publishers. Good, suspenseful, and humorous short stories are extremely rare and are very well paid. My stories were passed from one magazine to another. It was a joy to see how excellently this was developing. But this joy was ruined in a cruel manner by another development, which took place at the same time and in parallel inside of me. The split within me grew further. Every sensation, every feeling seemed to demand its own form. I was full of characters who wanted to worry with me, work with me, create with me, write with me, and compose with me. And every one of these characters spoke; I had to hear them. This was enough to drive a person insane! As there had previously been only two characters aside from myself, the bright one and the dark one, so there were now two groups aside from myself. And as more time passed, they became more distinguished, and I recognised them more clearly. There were two hostile forces, fighting against each other: grandmother's bright, luminous characters from the Bible and her fairy-tales against the filthy daemons of this unfortunate rental library from Hohenstein. Ardistan against Jinnistan. The legacy of thoughts from the swamp, I was born into, against the bliss bringing ideas of the highland, which I was seeking. The miasmas of a poisoned childhood and youth against the pure, redeeming wishes and hopes, with which I looked forward to my future; the lie against the truth; the vice against the virtue; the inborn human beast against the rebirth, which every mortal has to seek to become a person of noble spirit.

Every thinking human being who seeks for advancement has to go through such internal struggles. Normally, these are thoughts and emotions, which are competing against one another. But with me, those thoughts and feelings had taken on shapes of visible and audible characters. I saw them with my eyes closed, and I heard them by day and night; they interrupted my work; they woke me from my sleep. The dark ones were more powerful than the bright ones; when they forced themselves upon me, resistance was useless. At ordinary times, my inner world was quiet; then, there was no conflict. But was soon as I started to work, one character after another woke up. Every one of them wanted to change my work according to its wishes. This also very much depended on the topic I was dealing with. Nobody objected against a funny short story. I could finish something like this without an argument, without interruption. But when working on a serious village-tale, numerous voices spoke out for and against me. In those village-tales, I have proven time and time again that God will not permit any mockery of his power, but punishes precisely according to the sin committed. Against this, certain characters within me rose up. But I met with the greatest resistance, as soon as I rose to even higher paths in my work or in my reading. Whenever I took on a religiously, or ethically, or aesthetically higher topic, the dark character within me rebelled with all of its might against it and tormented me in a manner which is entirely inexpressible. In order to demonstrate in what manner this occurred and what kind of a torment this was, I want to give an explanatory example: I had been commissioned to write a parody of "Des Sängers Fluch" <The Singer's Curse> by Uhland ^[a]. I did so. This parody got the title "The Tailor's Curse". A tailor cursed a shoemaker, his ramshackle hovel, and tiny garden, where only two gooseberry-bushes grew. The curse on the house took on the form of the following lines:

^[a] Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862)

"The mortgage does await this,
that you, today, shall fall.
Damn walls, hear what your fate is:
I will destroy you all!"

I wrote this parody, without being disturbed by my inner voices while doing so. Nothing within me rebelled to the slightest extent against such a base thing. Just the luminous character disappeared; it mourned, because I had enough abilities to do better and nobler things. Some time later, I had to write a didactic poem, of which I now remember nothing more than the following verses:

"Once you will comprehend the teachings,
Which your own saviour taught to you,
And in your country heed his preachings,
Obey and act as you should do,
Then, mankind will unite in one crowd,
From near and far, they'll join in then;
They'll pray to one Lord, all with no doubt;
The world's his church since it began.
Triumphant is the faith which says this:
One God, one Lord for evermore.
The names will fade, and what remains is
That all roads lead to heaven's door."

As soon as I had sat down to construct this ambitious poem, a rare clarity came over me, I saw the joyful smile of the luminous character, and a hundred beautiful, noble thoughts hurried towards me to enter my mind. I reached for the pen. But then, I suddenly felt as if a black curtain had veiled my inner self. The clarity was over; the luminous character disappeared; the dark one entered, laughing sarcastically, and throughout my entire inner being a thousand voices echoed: "The tailor's curse, the tailor's curse, the tailor's curse, etc." So it resounded within me for hours and hours, on and on, endlessly, unrelentingly, and without even the slightest pause, not just in my imagination, but for real, for real. I felt as if those voices spoke not from within me, but right before my very own ear. I tried my best to silence them, but this was all in vain as long as I held the pen in my hand remained on my seat to write. Even after I got up, they echoed forth, and only when I considered to give up all attempts to write this didactic poem, silence instantly followed. But since I had to keep my promise to write it, I soon reached for the pen again. Immediately, this multitude of voiced intoned again: "The tailor's curse, the tailor's curse!" and when, in spite of all this, I focused my thoughts on my task, they additionally loudly roared these sentences: "The mortgage does await this, the mortgage does await this; damn walls, hear what your fate is, damn walls, hear what your fate is!" This went on for the entire day and the entire night and even continued after this. Nobody else saw and heard it; no one suspected of what and how terribly I suffered. Anybody else would have described this as madness, but not me. I remained distant and observed myself. In spite of all opposition, I managed to complete my poem on time. But I always had to pay very dearly for such victories; once it was achieved, my inner self collapsed.

Unfortunately, this violent obstruction of my good intentions did not just extend to my studies and work, but to a much larger degree and quite particularly to my lifestyle, my daily routine, as well. It was as if I had brought quite a lot of invisible criminals back home from this cell, in which I had been incarcerated for six weeks; and those criminals, now, had made it their cause to force their companionship upon me and to turn my mind to their way of thinking. I did not see them; I only saw the dark, mocking, main character from the swamp which was my home town and the trashy novels from Hohenstein; but they persistently talked to me; they influenced me. And when I resisted, they grew louder, to cloud my senses and to tire me, so that I lost the strength to resist. The main point was that was supposed to seek revenge, revenge against the owner of that watch, who had reported me to the police just to get rid of me from his apartment, revenge against the police, revenge against the judge, revenge against the government, against mankind, against basically everybody! I was a model citizen, like a lamb so white, pure, and innocent. The world had cheated me out of my future, my happiness. By what means? By forever regarding me as this what they had turned me into: a criminal.

This was what the tempters inside of me were demanding. I resisted as much as I could, as long as my strength would last. Everything I wrote at this time, especially my village-tales, I gave an ethical, strictly lawful, royalist tendency. I did this not just for the spiritual support of others, but also for my own. But how hard, how infinitely hard was this on me! Whenever I did not do as those loud voices demanded, I was assaulted with mocking laughter, with curses and maledictions, not just for hours, but for half days and entire nights. To escape these voices, I used to jump out of my bed and run out into the rain and the snowstorm. I felt urged to leave, to go so far, so very far away! I quitted my home to save myself, nobody knew where to, but I felt drawn back, again and again. I did not let anyone know what took place inside of me and how inhumanly or even superhumanly I fought, neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor one of the sisters. And even much less someone else, a stranger; I would not have been understood, anyhow; but they would rather have thought that I had just gone crazy. Whether anybody else in my place would have been able to bear this, I do not know, but I hardly think so. I was physically as well as mentally a sturdy, even a very sturdy person, but nevertheless I grew more and more tired. First, there were days, then even entire weeks, when everything within me turned completely dark; then, I sometimes hardly knew and often did not know at all what I did. At these times, the luminous character within me had disappeared completely. The dark entity led me my the hand. It always walked along the edge of the abyss. At times, I was supposed to do this, at another time that, in any case something illegal. In the end, I only resisted like in a dream. If I had only told my parents or at least my grandmother what state I was in, the deep fall I was heading for would surely have been avoided. And it came, not at home, but in Leipzig, to where some business connected with the theatre had brought me. There I have, though I did not need anything of the kind, bought furs and ran off with them, without paying. How I was capable of doing something like this, I can no longer tell; I probably did not even know it then either. This is because I feel sure and certain, that I could not have possibly acted this way while being fully conscious of what I was doing. I remember nothing at all of the ensuing trail, neither any detail nor any general impression. I also cannot recall how the verdict read. Up until now, I had believed that the sentence had been four years of imprisonment; but according to what the newspapers have recently reported, it was even one month more. But this is irrelevant. What matters is that the gaping abyss had not opened for me in vain. I had plunged into it; I was committed to the state penitentiary of Zwickau.

Before I elaborate on my imprisonment, I have to turn against some prejudices and wrong opinions, concerning everything connected with the penal system, which should finally be done away with. I have heard many an educated fellow prisoner threatening with understandable, but unfounded bitterness, that he would, after he had been released, write a book about his imprisonment, to disclose the equally severe as numerous shortcomings of our legal and penal system. A wise man would smile at such threats, which might be expressed, but are hardly ever carried out. Every released prisoner, if he possesses a sense of honour, is glad to have put the time of his punishment behind him. He would never consider making this public, what up to now only a few people knew about, now that he has managed to get through it. Thus, he will remain silent. And this is good, because his book, if he would write it, would surely prove that there is hardly one among a thousand prisoners who would be able to assess himself and his punishment impartially and objectively. But I believe that I have worked my way up to this objectivity and impartiality; I regard my conclusions as well considered and correct and feel obliged to set the following point straight, here:

The times when the prisons could be described as "schools for criminals" are long gone. In our penitentiaries, conditions are not less moral and not less humane than in freedom.

What was one denounced as "the world of the criminals", does not exist any more. The inmates of today's penitentiaries come from all classes of the population. In respect to their professions and intelligence, the same percentages are to be found here as among the "unpunished".

For the act of the individual, the society as a whole is also to blame. For its own sake, it has to take a part of the guilt from him and unto itself.

The German judges are very well aware of this truth. I have not met a single judge, even among those who had decided against me, whom I could accuse of any wrongdoing. The numerous lawsuits, my opponents virtually force me to conduct, give me ample opportunities to make such experiences, and I have to say that I have nothing but the utmost respect for all of these gentlemen, both in the criminal and the civil courts. I have even experienced one case where a judge in Dresden decided in my favour, though all of his relatives and acquaintances were against me and sought to influence him in that respect. What satisfaction and what confidence in all judges this can give, knows only he who has experienced something like I did.

In respect to the penal system, I have express the same thing. During my entire imprisonment, I have not met a single high-ranking official or guard, who had given me cause for any complaint in respect to his fairness and humane treatment of the prisoners. I would even say that the guards feel the harshness of their duties much more than the prisoners. Hundreds of times, I have admired a kindness, a patience and forbearance, which I would not have been capable of. Prison is no concert-hall and no dance-hall, but a very, very serious place, where a person has to discover who he is. The detainee who is wise enough to realize this will never find any cause for complaint, but only all conceivable help, to erase the memory of what he had been accused of. There were officials who became so very dear to me, and I am completely convinced that they not just pretended to return my kindness, but were perfectly honest about it.

With the achievements of our justice and penal system nonetheless not being as we would wish them to be, it are truly not the judges and also not the prison officials who are to blame for this; instead the cause is to be sought in an entirely different place: in a flawed legislation, in the foolish self-righteousness of one's dear neighbour, in certain, too deeply rooted forms of prejudice, and last but not least also in our so-called, highly praised "criminal psychology", in which only certain experts believe, but not those who really know human nature and even much less those, all this is in the end about, these are the so-called -- -- -- criminals.

These are the sources from which ever new crimes and recidivisms spring, though all kinds of measures are being taken, to contain these murky waters and to dry them out one after another. Should I give proof for those sources, starting right away with the latter one, the "criminal psychology", I have several works of this most interesting, extremely disputed subject opened up right in front of me, the contents of which are veritably abundant with evidence for my point. One of the authors, a well known prosecutor, distinguishes himself by means of his numerous attempts to turn the legal and penal system towards a milder, more humane course. He has made a name for himself by this. Whenever and wherever this humanisation is discussed, he is often quoted, and he would be a blessing for this cause, if he would not destroy it all again as a criminal psychologist, which he seeks to build up as a pioneer of humaneness. I will not name any names here as well, because I am not concerned with the person, but with the subject. Being, as a humanitarian, worthy of respect in the highest degree, he can be, as a psychologist (i.e. someone who "investigates the soul"), to an almost even higher degree inconsiderate and cruel. In trying to give evidence for his public assertions, he does not stop at including persons into his "psychiatric" studies, who have been punished thirty or more years ago, and have now, by means of hard work, obtained a public position, and he makes them thus recognisable in his writings that everyone knows whom he is referring to. Having been confronted about this by a lawyer, he answered that he, as a scientist, had the right to do this; there was an article of law which would allow it. I will refrain from adding any critical remarks to this. But even if it were true, that there was such an article, who would force this public prosecutor, for such an article's sake, to act against his own, otherwise evident humaneness and to vivisect with such a knife people who had never done him any harm and whose protection had been his duty as a representative of the government? If this article really exists, it is more than time for parliament, to put it under a serious examination. If every former prisoner, no matter how high he has worked his way up, is forced by this law, to allow those criminal psychologists to publicly put him into their scientific pillory, it is surely not surprising that criminology displays no tendency for improvement. I will have to return to this point in the further course of my discussion.

As far as the flaws in the legislature are concerned, I only need to point out how completely unprotected someone who has been previously convicted is against certain lawyers. The worst scoundrel can, by means of his lawyer, obtain the confidential criminal records of whomever he would like to ruin; these will then be published, and the poor devil is doomed! A. is a villain; B. is an honourable gentleman, but unfortunately with a criminal record. A. has the intention to destroy B.. He just needs to insult him and wait for B. to sue him. Being the accused, he will then demand that the plaintiff's records be presented. This is done. They are read in a public trail. A. is fined ten marks for his insult; but B. has been cast back into his former contempt and into the previous misery, and he will swear that for someone who had once been punished all resolutions to "better" himself are useless. If he would now revert to crime, this would surely be no surprise. Unfortunately, there are not just a few lawyers, who, entirely without scruples, turn to these most unfair of all means, to conduct lawsuits which cannot be won based on the facts in a personally malignant and ruthless manner. I myself was also faced with such opponents, but I have always seen that our judges never allowed themselves to be influenced by this kind of filth. I am convinced that, more than anybody else, those gentlemen would happily be in favour of a removal of these legal regulations, by means of which, as I have already said, every scoundrel is enabled to dig up things again which are long since past and long since atoned for. Then, the extensive number of repeat offenders due to so-called embitterment might soon be a thing of the past.

To list the foolish self-righteousness of our "dear neighbours", I was entire justified. This is and continues to be the main cause of the evils, which are to be discussed here. By no means, I want to assert that this is based on a lack of morality. I rather think that we are faced with old forms of prejudice, which have sunk in so deeply that they are no longer recognisable as prejudice, but are regarded as a truth, which no one dares to question. In old times, a "criminal" was outlawed; and today there is no difference. Everyone keeps picking on him; if it is not done openly, it nevertheless happens in secret. When he is looking for work, for help, for justice, he is always last in line after everyone else. In life, there are hundreds and hundreds of situations in which he is regarded and treated as a person of lower value, and it requires an unusual peace of mind and a rare strength of will on his part, to bear this again and again, without allowing himself to be cast back onto his old course. The greatest danger for him is to be found in the fact that his dear neighbours, by and by, will numb or even kill his sense for honour. Once he allows it to come to this, he is doomed, and criminology will never surrender its victim again, being either embittered or having become completely indifferent. This will not and cannot change at all, as long as the old, equally senseless and cruel prejudice is maintained, that every punished person has to be regarded as a "criminal" for the entire duration of his life. Recently, in Charlottenburg, the case occurred that someone who had been punished more than forty years ago, but had conducted himself well since then, had been described as a "born criminal" by a malicious person. The offended one sued the offender, but the latter was acquitted. Does this not mean that by this a poor man, who has, with all of his willpower, worked his way up out of the abyss and has proven himself for forty years at its top, is cast back down with brutal force? -- --

Down there, I also lay. In continuing to report about this, it is not at all my intention, to do this in a manner which readers who are in need for excitement and lust for sensations would wish. To experience these things only once, is more than enough. When being forced to experience them for a second time, by writing them down for others, it is surely justified to keep it as short as possible. I hereby make use of this right.

Upon my arrival at the penitentiary, I was received strictly, but by no means insultingly. He who is polite, complies with the prison's rules, and is not so stupid to keep on maintaining his innocence, will never have cause to complain about a hard treatment. As far as the occupation is concerned which was chosen for me, I was assigned to the clerical office. You can see from this how carefully the conditions of the prisoners were considered by the warden's office. But unfortunately, this care did not bear the expected success in my case. What happened was, that I failed so completely as a clerk, that I was regarded as useless. Having been a new arrival, I had to do the easiest job there was; but even this I could not cope with. This was noticed. They thought to themselves that there must have been something rather peculiar about me; after all, I must have been able to write! Particular attention was devoted on me. I was given different work, the most decent manual labour which was available. I was assigned to the room of the wallet manufacturers and became a member of a team, which produced fine purses and cigar-cases. Including me, this team consisted of four persons, these were a merchant from Prague, a teacher from Leipzig, and what the fourth one was I could not find out; he never talked about it. These three coworkers were kind, good people. They had already been working together for a longer time, were in a good reputation with the superiors, and did their best to make the training and all the rest of this hard time as easy as possible for me. No ugly or even illegal word was ever said between us. The room we worked in held seventy to eighty people. Among them, I noticed not a single one whose behaviour would have reminded me of the assertion, that prison would be the training ground for criminals. On the contrary! Every single one was constantly trying to make as good an impression as he could on his superiors and his fellow prisoners. During my entire imprisonment, I have never heard anything about hatching evil plans for the future. If anybody had dared to utter anything like this, even if he would not have been reported to the guards, he would nonetheless have been rejected in the most determined manner.