A Year of Revolutions: Fanny Lewald's Recollections of 1848 9781782380436

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A YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS

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A YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS Fanny Lewald’s Recollections of 1848

! Translated, edited, and annotated by

Hanna Ballin Lewis

Berghahn Books Books Berghahn Providence NEW Y O R K • • OOxford X FOR D

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Published in 1997 by

Berghahn Books Editorial offices: 165 Taber Avenue, Providence, RI 02906, USA Bush House, Merewood Avenue, Oxford, OX3 8EF, UK © 1997 Hanna Ballin Lewis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berghahn Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewald, Fanny, 1811–1889. [Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848. English] A year of revolutions : Fanny Lewald’s recollections of 1848 / translated, edited, and annotated by Hanna Ballin Lewis. p. cm. “This translation contains almost all of the 1850 edition of Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848. I have only omitted some brief material which was irrelevant to the basic subject and most of Lewald’s narration of her summer in Helgoland”—Translator’s note. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-57181-099-4 (hbk. : alk. paper). — ISBN (invalid) 1-57181-100-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lewald, Fanny, 1811–1889—Contemporary Germany. 2. Lewald, Fanny, 1811–1889—Political and social views. 3. Authors, German— 19th century—Biography. 4. Germany—History—Revolution, 1848–1849. 5. France—History—February Revolution, 1848. I. Lewis, Hanna Ballin, 1931– . II. Title. PT2423.L3E7513 1997 833'.7--dc21 [B] 96-43633 CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

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For my family

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CONTENTS

! Acknowledgments Introduction

viii 1

1. The Journey from Oldenburg to Paris

21

2. March in the French Republic

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3. Berlin, Spring 1848

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4. Summer in Hamburg and Helgoland

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5. Frankfurt am Main, October 1848

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6. Berlin in November and December 1848

141

Select Bibliography

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Index

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

! For their support of the research and time required for this book, I am indebted to Sam Houston State University and the National Endowment for the Humanities for two research grants. I also want to thank to my son, Paul Ballin Lewis, who edited the first version of this translation, Irene di Maio for sharing difficult-to-obtain material with me, and all my other friends and colleagues interested in German women writers for their help.

Translator’s Note This translation contains almost all of the 1850 edition of Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848. I have only omitted some brief material which was irrelevant to the basic subject and most of Lewald’s narration of her summer in Helgoland, a vacation idyll with lengthy descriptions of landscapes and obscure painters.

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INTRODUCTION

! Fanny Lewald was born on March 24, 1811, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), East Prussia, to the wine merchant David Markus (later changed to Lewald) and his wife, Zipporah Assing Markus. Fanny was the eldest of their eight surviving children. Both parents came from old established Jewish families, her mother’s less assimilated than her father’s secularly inclined one. Fanny was a much-loved and wanted child and received the full attention of her parents until the next child, her brother Otto, was born. But she always remained, as her father said, “my beloved oldest child,” and her gender did not affect her parents’ love for her, although, in the patriarchal climate of Wilhelmine Germany, their expectations for her were naturally quite different from those for their sons. The Markus-Lewald household was strictly run and well administered, though in a manner that was both labor intensive and labor wasteful. This was typical of most large Prussian households of the day, as Fanny points out clearly in her autobiography (Education 85–87). Her father expected absolute obedience and her mother, a loving and submissive wife, was happy to obey. In return, their marriage was a devoted one; Fanny never heard a cross word between her father and mother, David always backed up his wife in her dealings with the children, even when it meant going against his own rational opinion. He was a despot, but a benevolent one, totally devoted to his family and wanting only what was best for it. We might find some of his measures in dealing with his children unnecessarily harsh, but for a father of his generation, he was unusual in the attention he gave his children, who loved and respected him deeply. He stands in sharp contrast to his peers in Georgian and Victorian society, who delegated the care of their children to nannies, never played or conversed with

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them on a personal level, and entrusted their education to “public” schools, tutors, and governesses. David Markus obtained for Fanny the best possible schooling available to girls in East Prussia at the time and supervised her further education at home. Although he did not encourage her writing career at first, David certainly accepted her decision to pursue it when she showed her determination to do so. His philosophy was that no one should start a task he is not able or willing to complete; once Fanny had shown her ability and hard work, he felt that she had earned his approval. However, he considered it the patriarch’s duty to financially support the women in his family completely; Fanny had to publish her first two books anonymously. Her very traditional sisters were most unhappy about the fact that she published under her own name, when David finally permitted her to relinquish her anonymity. Fanny’s formal schooling began with enrollment in the Ulrich School, which seems to have provided an unusually good education for a girl of her generation. The school was coeducational, but some of the classes were not.1 It had a strong Pietistic strain, since many of the teachers were involved with a Pietist-related denomination, the “Muckers.”2 Unfortunately, the school closed when Fanny was fifteen, and there were no secondary educational institutions for women in Königsberg. Fanny was forced to stay at home and perform household chores, while her father set up a rigid schedule for her that included education in the home as well as the hated piano lessons that were her albatross until his death. There were expeditions to parks and parties given by family friends. At one of these, she met a young theological student, Leopold Bock, and they planned to get married. Her father, who had first supported the match, turned against it suddenly and inexplicably, forbidding Fanny and Leopold to see one another again. Leopold died not long afterwards of what we may assume was tuberculosis or cholera. 1. “Boys and girls took their lessons together but sat at separate tables. Another difference was that boys were taught classical languages while we girls were instructed in needlework.” Education 37. 2. Johannes Ebel (1784–1861), a preacher and teacher of religion, history, and Hebrew, formed a Pietism-based charismatic sect in Königsberg, derisively called the “Muckers,” (religious hypocrites or bigots), similarly to the manner in which the Society of Friends were nicknamed “Quakers.” In 1835, Ebel and his sect were the principals in a trial that shocked all of East Prussia, in which the Muckers were accused of unspecified sexual practices. Ebel lost his civil service post and was actually imprisoned for a while.

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Fanny’s parents never converted to Christianity. Her father was not very religious; rationalism was his religion, and conversion would have damaged his business relationships with Polish Jews. Her mother, who had always regarded her Judaism as an unwanted burden, had no choice but to follow her husband’s lead. Their sons, however, were encouraged to convert, and the family name was changed from the obviously Jewish “Markus” to the more neutral “Lewald” to expedite their careers. David Markus (now Lewald) did not consider conversion necessary for his daughters. If they married Jewish men, it would be a hindrance, and if they married a Christian, they could convert later. Fanny was finally allowed to convert after the death of Leopold, perhaps as compensation for her loss. At first she was very enthusiastic, but her essentially pragmatic nature and the results of her father’s rationalistic philosophy of life would not permit her to accept any religion wholeheartedly, especially one that relied more on faith than on reason. Her beliefs became, in essence, a type of Spinozaism or deism, accepting the existence of God, but denying the preeminence or superiority of any organized religion. Seeing her discontent at home, her father took her with him in 1832 on an extended business trip through Germany. They sojourned for several weeks in Berlin and Baden-Baden, where, in the circle of her uncle, Friedrich Jacob Lewald, she met important political figures such as Ludwig Robert (Rahel Varnhagen Von Ense’s brother) and Ludwig Börne.3 In May, she was in the vicinity of the Hambach Festival,4 which her father attended, but she was not permitted to. David Lewald returned alone to Königsberg, while she accompanied her uncle and his family back to Breslau, where she met his many interesting and intellectual friends. It was her first real exposure to the outside political world of Prussia, although her father and her relatives had discussed 3. Rahel Levin Varnhagen von Ense (1771–1833) was an idol of Lewald’s, a Berlin-Jewish hostess of a brilliant salon and friends with all the leading intellectuals of her day. She is the heroine of Lewald’s only historical novel, Prinz Louis Ferdinand (1849). Rahel’s letters were published after her death by her husband August Varnhagen von Ense, who was also a writer and diplomat. 4. On May 27, 1832, a gathering of 25,000 met at Hambach Castle and demanded a republic and German unity. The participants resolved to use armed revolt as well as peaceful means to ensure freedom of the press and the right of assembly. Metternich answered their demands by having the German Confederation adopt six extremely restrictive articles in June. Other measures followed promptly in July.

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various events such as the assassination of Kotzebue5 (whom she had met personally as a child) and the consequent “hep-hep” riots and persecution of the Jews6, the Polish revolution, and the July Revolution in France. David Lewald also was elected to the city council in Königsberg, an honor especially significant because of his religion. Fanny’s uncle, Friedrich Jacob Lewald, not only had politically knowledgeable friends, but an extensive library that contained many of the most important French and German journals. He allowed Fanny free range in the library and participation in the discussions at his home. In Breslau, Fanny also met her father’s eldest sister, Minna Simon, and her family, especially the son, Heinrich. Minna became her favorite female relative, the “mother” Fanny wanted her own to be: well read, tolerant, and supportive of Fanny’s literary aspirations. Her unrequited love for Heinrich lasted for many years, and his involvement on German and Jewish political affairs gave her an inside look at them, long after all hope of a marriage had been destroyed and their relationship had become one of close friendship. Returning to Königsberg after a year’s absence, she found her mother in very poor health. Instead of turning the management of the household completely over to Fanny (as he had done once before during another illness of her mother’s, when Fanny was much younger), David decided that her younger sisters were now old enough so that all could take turns in such domestic managing. This agenda gave Fanny an insufficient outlet for her energies. Her father would not let her take a paid position as a governess or companion, since this would have reflected negatively on his ability to provide for his family. After turning down a marriage of convenience to a provincial lawyer and magistrate, she retreated 5. August von Kotzebue (1761–1819) was a reactionary dramatist and journalist frequently in the Czar’s service. The University of Jena was the center of the extremist liberal student movement, organized into Burschenschaften (University Student Associations). On March 23, 1819, a Jena student, Karl Sand, assassinated Kotzebue in Mannheim as an enemy of liberalism and a traitor to Prussia. Sand was executed on May 20, 1820. Frederick William of Prussia was so alarmed by this event that he formulated the Karlsbad Decrees, which fettered political and press freedom in Germany until well after his death in 1840. 6. The Jewish persecutions in 1819 spread from Würzberg all over Germany, Austria, and Denmark. They were called the “hep-hep” riots because that was the cry of those destroying and plundering Jewish homes and businesses and molesting Jews on the streets. These riots made it very clear to the Jewish community that the reforms of 1812 no longer applied.

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to the hypochondriacal condition so typical of underoccupied and intelligent nineteenth-century women. Like every educated person before the days of easy telephone communications, she conducted a voluminous correspondence, and her cousin, August Lewald, editor of the Stuttgart periodical Europa, published one of her letters about the Mucker trial as an essay. Fanny’s career as a writer had begun. In 1839, Fanny traveled to Berlin again and lived for a longer period of time very uncomfortably with relatives. She was there when Frederick William III died, and returned to Königsberg in time to witness the ceremonies accompanying the assumption of the throne by his son, Frederick William IV, in 1840. Now August Lewald asked Fanny for a special report on these events and of the new monarch’s speech for Europa. Lewald printed this and sent Fanny a check and a letter praising her talent and encouraging her to develop it further. Her first two novels, Clementine and Jenny (both 1843), were, as previously stated, published anonymously in accordance with her father’s wishes. Later works appeared under her own name. Released from her household duties by her mother’s death and her own ability to support herself, she moved into her first apartment alone in Berlin near her brother Otto. In 1845 she ventured abroad for the first time without accompanying relatives to that Mecca of Northern Europeans, Italy. In Rome she became acquainted with a group of German intellectual women, including Adele Schopenhauer (the philosopher Arthur’s very homely sister) and Ottilie von Goethe (Goethe’s daughter-in-law), both already well-established writers. She also met and fell in love with Adolf Stahr, a cultural and art historian from Oldenburg, an unhappily married man with five children. It was not until his divorce in 1855 that they were able to get married. She had by now been recognized as an interesting and readable writer and was able to afford the costs of travel. Fanny traveled extensively in France, the British Isles, Switzerland, and Italy, writing a series of acutely observant travel memoirs discussing the political and cultural conditions in those countries. In Berlin, where she and Stahr made their home, she had a small salon frequented by many of the intellectuals of the day. Adolf Stahr died in 1876 and, in line with the model of Queen Victoria, whom she greatly admired, Fanny mourned him until her own death in 1889. Like many of her fellow nineteenth century writers, Fanny Lewald produced a massive oeuvre of novels, novellas, short stories,

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travel memoirs, essays, and letters. They vary considerably in literary quality. Fanny wrote as a professional, to provide for herself (and eventually her ailing husband and the children of his first marriage). As her reputation grew, she insisted on being paid the highest rate per page offered by her publisher. Both her strength and her weakness as a writer lay in her objectivity; many of her characters do not come to life, but their situations are well and clearly defined. In fact, she claimed she would have probably made as good a physician as a writer, if a university education had been available to women of her generation (Steinhauer 3). She is at her best in nonfictional works, describing political and social events and suggesting answers to various problems. The rationalism imbued in her from early childhood by her father stands her in good stead when writing about the political turmoil in Europe in 1848, national differences, the education of working and middle-class women so that they could earn their own living and not be forced into a marriage of convenience, the establishment of satisfactory boarding and eating facilities for single women, even the running of a well-managed household. Her friendships with the leading liberal and Jewish intellectuals, artists and writers—Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, Heinrich Simon, Eduard von Simson, Johann Jacoby, Berthold Auerbach, Luise Mühlbach, Willibald Alexis, Hermann Hettner, Arnold Ruge, Johanna Kinkel, Franz Liszt, Georg Herwegh, Hermann Althof, among others— gave her a particularly good insight into the political problems of her own country, even though her eventual pragmatic acceptance of and even enthusiasm for Bismarck caused some differences with Johann Jacoby. Her own influence on other writers was not inconsiderable, including among those influenced, Theodor Fontane, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, and Paul Heyse (Education xx, note 5). Because of her emancipatory essays about the education of women and her own literary success, she received much fan mail from young women, who felt that they could also earn their living in a career so suitable to a woman. Her comment on this idea is probably best expressed in her somewhat cynical portrait of the young writer of Adele (1855), the eponymous heroine of which becomes a somewhat successful writer because she has no other skills for earning a living. Fanny herself admitted no actual influence but that of Goethe. There were writers she admired: Heine and Börne, of course; also Berthold Auerbach, Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer Lytton, Honoré de Balzac, Gottfried Keller, Gustav Freytag, Paul Heyse,

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and the young Theodor Fontane. Her youthful pleasure in George Sand had diminished by the time she herself began to write; for other woman writers of her day she had a certain respect (e.g., George Eliot) or severe criticism (e.g., Countess Ida von HanHahn, whose works she mercilessly parodied in Diogena [1847]). In general, Fanny eschewed literary judgments because, as she wrote in a letter to Stahr in 1846, she considered “criticism the destroyer of productivity” (Steinhauer 20). By 1848, Fanny had already attained enough of a reputation as a journalist, novelist, and travel writer that her publisher encouraged her to collect the personal letters she had written to her friends from France and various cities in Germany into a volume depicting the events of that climactic year in a lucid and relatively objective manner. Complete objectivity was impossible given Fanny’s sympathy with her own friends and relatives who held liberal positions. Since her concerns were often with the small details of life abroad and with individual personalities—the type of information of most interest to those with whom she was corresponding—her Recollections of 1848 (Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848) are no substitute for the major histories of the period (e.g., Valentin, Stadelmann, Hamerow, Sheehan, et al., which were all written long after the fact), but rather a supplement which current researchers can respect, appreciate, and learn from. Today’s equivalent would be The New Yorker’s long “letters from” their correspondents in various cities of the world. Fanny is “our correspondent in Paris, Frankfurt, and Berlin.” The immediacy of her letters has its own value and interest. Her comments on the differences between the conflicts in Paris and Berlin, the character of the Germans, her own growing disillusionment and unhappiness with the failure of German hopes for unity, for a constitutional government and substantive reform echo those of her liberal peers. Her prophecies about Germany’s future were to prove amazingly accurate. For a complete understanding of the events covered by the Recollections, a brief summary of German history from the end of the eighteenth century until 1848 is useful. Like earlier German history, this is extremely complex and inextricably interwoven with the history of Austria. One should really call it Germanic history, because a real united Germany did not exist until 1866. The large number of German states other than Austria (kingdoms, duchies, bishoprics, etc.) became increasingly dominated by Prussia beginning with the accession of Frederick III, son of the Great Elector,

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Frederick William, as King Frederick I of Prussia in 1701. His son, Frederick William I, an able monarch but a terrible father, established a standing army of 83,000 men, no mean feat with a population of only ca. 2,500,000, thus establishing Prussia as a major military power. He was succeeded by Frederick II, the Great, who further increased the power and prestige of Prussia with a series of wars against Austria and alliances with other German states. Before his death in 1786, Frederick was able to form the League of the German Princes, which included Prussia, Saxony, Hanover, Brunswick, Mainz, Hesse-Cassel, Baden, Mecklenburg, Anhalt, and the Thuringian states. This League was created to oppose the ambition of Joseph II of Austria to acquire Bavaria for his empire from Charles Theodore, head of the House of Wittelsbach and legal heir to the Bavarian throne. In exchange, Austria was to give Charles a new kingdom of Burgundy to be formed from most of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). France, having its own problems on the eve of the Revolution, apparently did not care. Russia actively supported the Austrian scheme; it even pressured the Wittelsbach heir presumptive, whom Frederick had encouraged to declare his rights to Bavaria, to consent to the exchange. The scheme was finally aborted because of the French Revolution and the death of Joseph II in 1790. In 1792, France annexed Belgium. After Charles Theodore’s death in 1799, his Francophile successor, Max Joseph, was able to gain much additional territory for Bavaria from Napoleon and was allowed to crown himself the first king of Bavaria in 1806. Most German intellectuals welcomed the initial stages of the French Revolution (roughly 1789–91) and hoped that some of its ideas of freedom would spread abroad. In some of the German states there were riots and minor disturbances, but these were easily suppressed by the various governments. Sheehan (217) cites four reasons given by Adolf Freiherr von Knigge in 1793 as to why the revolution did not spread in Germany. In the first place, the various German governments did not seem very repressive to a populace “grown accustomed to a certain degree of poverty and domination.” Second, Germany’s fragmentation and the isolation of each possible rebellion allowed local authorities to deal with each incident separately. Third, there was no independent “Third Estate” to lead the revolutionary efforts; in Germany, the middle class usually depended on the upper class to provide their living. Knigge wrote that they “more or less live from the crumbs that fall from the tables of their betters.” Finally, Knigge considered the

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Germans more “sensible” than the French and hoped for reform by the rulers, rather than revolution by the people. Frederick the Great’s successor was his weak and inept womanizing nephew, Frederick William II, who was deeply under the influence of Rosicrucian advisors. He signed the Declaration of Pillnitz (August, 1791) with Emperor Leopold II of Austria, which committed their two countries to the defense of monarchial rule against the forces of revolution and stated that they would refrain from interfering in French internal affairs unless Russia and England agreed. The French considered this agreement a threat, and war between Austria/Prussia and France began in April of 1792. When the French were able to withstand the Prussian troops in a minor engagement at Valmy on September 20, the Prussians left French soil and the French troops began a series of mostly successful attacks against the German forces. France eventually declared war against England, Holland and Spain, also. Although the French were now plagued with internal dissension, the war continued in a seesaw fashion and culminated in the Treaty of Basel in April, 1795, between France and Prussia. Prussia was now out of the war and France had basically neutralized the northern German states. Prussia accepted the French occupation of the Rhineland, and in return, gained control over a number of states in the north and the center of Germany, excluding Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt, Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate, and Bohemia. Frederick William II was succeeded by his equally weak and ineffectual, but morally unassailable son, Frederick William III, who was to reign for the next forty-three years and whose chief asset was his popular and well-beloved wife, Louise. Prussia remained neutral while the rest of the Continent struggled against the growing power of France under the leadership of Napoleon. With the imminent defeat of the Third Coalition against France (Austria, England, Russia and Sweden) looming, Frederick William had to sign a treaty with France in February, 1806, which he found so humiliating that he began a war against France in September. In less than a year, with the defeat of Prussia, he was forced to sign an even worse treaty, the Treaty of Tilsit on July 9, 1807, which reduced Prussia to only four provinces (from ca. 89,000 square miles to 46,000) and occupation by 150,000 French troops until an indemnity eventually set at 140,000,000 francs had been paid. Prussia was temporarily sidelined from domination of the German states.

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The cessation of hostilities gave the Prussian government a chance to institute some much-needed reforms. Karl von Hardenberg and Karl Freiherr von Stein reorganized the government, liberated industry from many unnecessary restrictions, abolished serfdom, reformed the tax and financial systems, and encouraged reorganization of the army by Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Clausewitz et al., on the basis of universal military service. They changed an absolute monarchy into a bureaucratic monarchy (Sheehan 299). In 1812, Hardenberg also issued an edict granting more civil rights to the Jews, but still not allowing them to be civil servants—a question to be decided at a later date. The reforms were slowed down by the grief of Frederick William and his withdrawal from public life after the death of Queen Louise in 1810 and Prussia’s decision at the end of 1812 to desert the side of France and join Russia in resisting Napoleon. On February 3, 1813, Frederick William roused himself from his mourning and called for the Prussians to form volunteer corps to fight against the French. In March he renewed this appeal and created the Landwehr and the Landsturm. Austria and the Allies, supported by English money, entered the Wars of Liberation and put armies into the field. After numerous battles, Napoleon abdicated unconditionally on April 11, 1814 and was exiled to Elba. With the peace settlements and the Congress of Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815, a period of reaction began, initiated by the restoration to autonomy of the Austrian, Prussian, French, Spanish, Sardinian, Tuscan, Modenan, and Neapolitan monarchies and the Papal States. Much territory changed hands; Prussia received Posen and Danzig, Swedish Pomerania and Rügen, most of Westphalia (which had been a kingdom of its own under the rule of Napoleon’s brother Jerome), Neuchâtel and the greater part of Saxony, and extensive territory in the Rhineland. East Friesland went to Hanover; Ansbach and Bayreuth to Bavaria; part of Poland to Russia; the rest of Poland, formerly the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, became the Kingdom of Poland with the Russian Czar as its king. The German Confederation was formed by the Act of Confederation (June 8, 1815) to replace the Holy Roman Empire. Included were 39 states, four of them free cities, with populations in size ranging from over a million to about 5,000 (Liechtenstein). (Some of these later fused, so that by 1866 there were only 34 members.) These states were to meet in a Bundesversammlung (Federal Diet), either in a small council, composed of the eleven largest members and representatives of the others grouped in six

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voting blocs, or in full assembly (Sheehan 403). Both these assemblies were presided over by Austrian representatives. It would seem that German unification was on its way, but there were too many obstacles. In the first place, some of the states were still under the control of foreign rulers (for example, Hanover’s king was also king of England); secondly, the smaller states were afraid to lose their autonomy and power with the expansion of federal rights; thirdly, since Austria was part of the Confederation, indeed its controlling force, Metternich planned to use this body to limit the power of Prussia by making it subject to the demands of the smaller states. The Confederation became only a diplomatic and defensive alliance, an instrument of reaction, and a tremendous disappointment to the liberal patriots who had thought liberation from Napoleon would mean a new age of nationalism and freedom. Only in Bavaria, Baden, and Saxe-Weimar were there moves toward constitutionalism. In response to this defeat of the hopes of the more liberal elements, the students at various German universities began to organize into the Burschenschaften,7 initially at Jena, under the colors black, red, and gold: the colors of Lützow’s volunteer corps during the Wars of Liberation.8 The most radical branch was led by Karl Follen of Giessen. In October, 1817, the students met for the Wartburg Festival, a joint celebration of the Reformation and the battle of Leipzig. They burned symbols of reaction and spoke for a united Germany. One of Follen’s followers was the Karl Sand who later murdered August von Kotzebue. Metternich used the fears occasioned by this deed to strengthen reactionary control. In July, the Germanic Confederation passed the repressive Karlsbad Decrees, initiated by Metternich and Frederick William. The decrees called for commissioners, to be assigned by the sovereigns as supervisory personnel at the universities, provided strict censorship of all publications, and established an FBI-like force to investigate subversive activities in the member states. There was some light on the horizon with the establishment of the German Zollverein (Customs Union) in October, 1819. Prussia established a uniform tariff for its territories, which had formerly been under a multiple tariff system. Although the smaller states 7. See note 5. 8. Adolf von Lützow (1782–1834) was a Prussian officer who led a group of volunteers, known as the “Black Troop” or “Black Fuseliers,” against Napoleon’s troops. Although they were unsuccessful, their wild and reckless exploits are immortalized in a very famous German folk song.

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feared Prussian control, more and more German states joined the Union and by 1844, it included almost all of Germany except the Austrian states, Hanover, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. It was a major step for Prussia against the domination of Austria. The July Revolution in Paris in 1830 had strong repercussions in Germany. Through the Burschenschaften, secret clubs had been organized at various universities. The rulers of Brunswick, Saxony, and Hesse-Kassel were forced to abdicate and these principalities, along with Hanover, received new constitutions, although Hanover’s lasted only four years. Because of the affection for the monarch in Prussia—he had allowed some government reforms, if not many—there was no rebellion there. Most of the rebellions in other states were easily suppressed. In May 1832, the revival of liberalism was expressed at the Hambach Festival.9 The meeting was very peaceful and there was no advocacy of violence. “The men at Hambach wanted to found newspapers, not build barricades ; they sought to convert rather than destroy their enemies.…” (Sheehan 612). Metternich, however, felt threatened and retaliated by having the German confederation adopt six articles confirming the powers of the sovereigns of the various states as well as other repressive measures that included the prohibition of all public meetings, surveillance of suspicious political characters, and renewal of the edicts against the universities. An abortive attempt by international conspirators to seize Frankfurt, dissolve the Diet and unify the German states in April 1833 collapsed for lack of support. The reactionaries had once again triumphed, even in the states with new constitutions, and their power was exercised through an ever growing and rigid bureaucratic structure. In 1840, Frederick William III was succeeded by his son, Frederick William IV. Hopes for the new king were high with the liberals, but these hopes were dimmed and finally destroyed. Theoretically, he was in favor of greater political freedom and united Germany. But Frederick William IV was a romantic, mystical, artistic, and idiosyncratic ruler, who believed that he knew what was best for his people; he was also mentally unstable. Valentin states that liberalism was “as terrible to Frederick William IV as the Scarlet Woman to the Apocalypse” (1848 45). Stadelmann suggests that, with a different type of ruler, a “Coburg” prince, like Prince Albert 9. See note 4.

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of England, who would have accepted the advice of a liberal “German-minded” ministry in March or April, 1848, the Berlin Revolution would have achieved a unified Germany with a constitutional government in that pivotal year (191–2). Frederick William IV was not really capable of realizing the character of a responsible ministry and transferring to it the management of the country’s affairs. Time and again he interfered in a absolutist manner by giving direct orders to the subordinate organs in the government apparatus. In relations with the military commanders of his army, he did not even allow anyone to advise him, although according to the spirit of the March regime, a responsible minister would have to serve as the constitutional authority (Stadelmann 66). His reign began on a positive note because he immediately loosened strict state press censorship. He soon regretted his decision though, because he thought that his laxity was being abused. He withdrew the new policy and the situation became worse than before, since the press had had a taste of relative freedom. He gave permission for the provincial diets, established in 1823, to elect committees to meet in Berlin and consider legislation for all of Prussia, but when these committees met for the first time, the king informed them that they had no actual mission, but were just to consider themselves a popular assembly. By this time, Frederick William’s subjects had begun to realize that what seemed like goodwill and progressive sympathies was actually rhetorical confusion and political uncertainty. Far from initiating a new era, Frederick William was even more unyielding than his father. Liberals viewed him with disappointment, radicals with anger and contempt (Sheehan 623). Johann Jacoby, Fanny’s friend, a leading Jewish liberal and a doctor from her hometown, published a pamphlet in 1841 entitled “Four Questions Answered by an East Prussian” (“Vier Fragen beantwortet von einem Ostpreußen”), which demanded the right for independent citizens to participate in the government of their country. Jacoby’s work was banned and he was arrested for treason, although he was eventually acquitted after a series of trials. Driven by financial exigency, the king was finally forced to allow more meaningful popular representation. In 1847 he summoned the United Landtag, a combination of the various provincial diets. He presented them with an unrealistic and complicated scheme that still did not give the Landtag any actual legislative power and made no allowance for regularly scheduled meetings.

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The king immediately encountered opposition and demands for the setting of regular meetings. Both the government bills dealing with tax reforms and new loans introduced at this session were rejected and nothing was accomplished. The failure of the Landtag meeting made the king attempt to reform the German Confederation to provide a substitute Diet and to make the system into some semblance of a federal state. This plan was presented at Vienna by Prussia at the end of 1847, but had not been considered when the events of 1848 began. The February 1848 Revolution in Paris, which deposed Louis Philippe and installed the short-lived Second Republic (1848–52), had been brewing for some time and was aggravated by a severe agricultural and industrial depression from 1845–47. This had caused considerable unemployment and suffering among the working class and an unrest which eventually led to the Revolution. The final straw was the prohibition of a great banquet in Paris arranged for February 22, the last of a series of extraparliamentary banquets given by Adolphe Thiers and Odilon Barrot, and other parliamentary leaders opposing the government of Premier François Guizot. Workers and students built barricades and the fighting began. Although Louis Philippe replaced Guizot, the workers continued to fight and soon gained control of Paris. Even after the abdication of the king and the installation of a provisional government under the leadership of Alphonse de Lamartine, fighting continued sporadically until the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as president of the Republic in December. The events in France acted as a catalyst for political ferment throughout Europe. In Germany, beginning in the South and West (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria), popular demonstrations and violence spread to the central states and finally to Prussia, with demands for constitutional change and reform. The peasants rebelled against excessive rents and taxes. However, there was not much bloodshed in these preliminary bouts. In contrast with the revolutionaries in Austria, who were rebelling against a central imperial government and especially against the measures of Metternich, the revolutions in the German states aimed not only for constitutional government but for German unification. The whole social picture in the large German cities was quite different than that in Paris or Vienna. Even the fact that the demonstration took place in so many diverse cities points to the fact that there was no true German capital like those of France, England, and Austria to focus the forces of dissent.

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Valentin divides the German revolution of 1848–49 into five periods: the period of preparation; the first outbreak and apparent victory; social revolutionary and nationalistic threats leading to the beginning of the counterrevolution; the second outbreak; and the victory of the counterrevolution (422). Although the first period could be said to include the French Revolution (always a prime factor in European history after 1789), the Napoleonic era and the Wars of Liberation, (i.e., basically the reigns of Frederick William II and Frederick William III), Valentin limits this period to the eight years before 1849, that is, the beginning of the reign of Frederick William IV and the shattering of the liberal hope for change. He lists as important factors the decay of Metternich’s system with its attendant unrest; the long-frustrated desire for a constitution in Prussia (pointing out that Frederick William III had been dangling this carrot in front of the Prussians since 1810 while Francis I of Austria had never made the mistake of committing himself to it [29–30]); the United Landtag; the crisis in Bavaria caused by the relationship of Ludwig I and Lola Montez—Ludwig ended up being the only ruler to lose his throne in the turmoil of 1848; the differences in the characters of the individual smaller states; the inadequacy of the German Confederation and German national efforts at reform; class differences; unemployment and resulting hunger and disease in the lower classes (e.g., the starvation and “Hungertyphus” caused thereby among the Silesian weavers, or the Berlin “Potato War”);10 and the discontent of the middle class. The second and third periods are the purview of Fanny’s memoirs. The second stage included the March/April Revolutions and their aftermath until June. Here was a time of success, with very little fighting and some political victory. Authoritarianism and militarism suffered defeat in Berlin and elsewhere. Nationalism was in the air and there was confidence in the ability of a constitutional monarchy in Germany to reform society and to prevent a turn to the extreme left and Communism or a republic; the meeting of the 10. In the spring of 1847, there were a number of disturbances in the markets of Berlin. On April 21, the dissatisfaction of the people with the price of potatoes and the anger of the potato merchants at their customers’ refusal to buy at those prices led to riots, plundering, and looting of other shops. When the army was called in to control the crowds, the soldiers were assaulted by stones. In panic, they used their sword blades on the crowd, rather than the flat side as they had been instructed. The next day the initial rioters were joined by a large number of people from the suburbs and soon the whole city was involved. Complete martial law was declared until April 24 and the outdoor markets remained under military protection for some time.

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Frankfurt Parliament in May would herald the beginning of a new nationally united empire, allowing the participation of the representatives of all classes. Fanny was at this point in her life a friend of the leftist oriented liberals, especially of her cousins, Heinrich Simon and August Lewald, and Johann Jacoby. Eventually most of this group (but not Simon, who died young, and Jacoby, who never changed his views) came to grips with political realities and, like Fanny, “from the enthusiastic ‘Fortyeighter’ emerged an equally enthusiastic admirer of Bismarck without basically changing her political ideas” (Schaefer,ed., abridged Erinnerungen 183). Since education rather than revolution (and in the case of Fanny and her friends, complete emancipation for Jews) was the central vision of the liberals, the specter of Communism and the lack of an adequately educated lower class allowed them to settle for social gains at the expense of political ones. They felt that the 1848 revolution had failed because their fellow Germans were just not ready for a democratic republic. Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848 was first published in 1850 and consisted of letters written by Fanny to various friends during the course of the year that they had encouraged her to collect and edit. She apologizes for the impressionistic character of the vignettes, but thought such a personal account would show minor details that might have seemed unimportant at the moment, but would prove significant in the light of later events. Shortly after the fighting began in Paris on February 22, 1848, Fanny left Oldenburg, where she had been visiting Adolf Stahr and his wife, for Paris. Arriving there via Bremen, Cologne, Aachen, and Brussels, with sharp observations about the ambience and conditions in each of the cities through which she passed, she immediately noted the damage done by the recent barricades: loose cobblestones, overturned vehicles, torn-down iron fences, broken windows, burned buildings, felled trees. She remained in Paris visiting friends and recounting events as well as giving a woman’s point of view on life in Paris during a revolution—the furnishing of the homes, the famous people she meets, the quotidian life of the middle class, the performances in the theatre and opera. Then news of the events in Vienna and Berlin began reaching Paris. After a number of demonstrations in Vienna, Metternich was forced to resign on March 15. An uprising began in Berlin that led to the raising of street barricades; skirmishes between citizens and soldiers on March 16 produced some bloodshed. On

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March 17, Frederick William approved certain plans to satisfy moderate demands: the immediate recall of the United Landtag; a constitutional government for Prussia; abolition of press censorship; and some reforms for the Confederation. However, the street fighting intensified after the king’s appointment of a hard-line reactionary as commander of the troops in Berlin. Approximately 300 citizens were killed in the ensuing struggle, some accidentally. On March 19, Frederick William withdrew the troops and issued a proclamation to “my dear Berliners,” urging them to leave the barricades because of this incident. The withdrawal left the palace unprotected, and the king had to endure a humiliating ceremony in which he was forced to salute the bodies of the dead citizens as they were carried past him. On March 20, Mieroslawsky,11 just freed from prison, led his fellow released Polish prisoners, carrying the Polish and the new German red-black-gold flags, through the streets of Berlin. On the 21st, the king issued another proclamation “to my people and the German nation” promising to assume the leadership of the German people and the merging of Prussia into a larger German unity. On the same day he suffered another humiliation by being forced to parade through the streets of Berlin wearing the revolutionary colors and making liberal addresses to the university students. On March 29, the newly appointed liberal ministry of Camphausen and Hansemann signaled the actual end of the revolution in Berlin. On March 30, the Frankfurt Preliminary Parliament met to decide on a legislative body for all of Germany. It ordered the holding of elections by direct manhood suffrage. On May 18, the first meeting of the Frankfurt Parliament was held at St. Paul’s Church. The approximately 800–820 members (some conservatives who had been elected refused to take their seats in such a revolutionary body) were predominantly from the middle class. Van Eyck lists 157 civil servants, 130 lawyers, 123 university or school teachers, 119 judges and public prosecutors, 75 businessmen, 68 landowners, 45 clergy, 36 writers or journalists, 25 physicians, 15 army officers and 6 anonymous members (95). Obviously this was a body heavily weighted with the prosperous and the educated. Just as obviously, there were no women. Heinrich von Gagern was chosen as the first president of this parliament. 11. Ludvik Mieroslawsky (1814–1878) was a Polish revolutionary, who fought in the Polish Revolution of 1830–31 and led the uprising against the Prussian government in Posen in 1846. He was captured and imprisoned but released by the March revolution in Berlin.

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Almost simultaneously (May 22), the Prussians elected a National Assembly under the same voting regulations used to elect their representatives to Frankfurt. This Assembly was more liberal, embraced a larger percentage of farmers and less well-educated and prosperous members, and concerned itself more with internal Prussian matters. During the course of the following summer, it became increasingly radical. In reading the Erinnerungen, we must be aware that when Fanny discussed the legislatures in Frankfurt and Berlin, she was commenting on a completely different legislative body in each city—a detail that would have been obvious to her contemporary readers, but that tends to confuse the modern one. The Parliament in Frankfurt was for all the German states; the Assembly in Berlin represented only Prussia. On June 28, the Parliament, having suspended the Diet of the German Confederation, appointed Archduke John of Austria (uncle of the Emperor) as Imperial Regent to head a provisional executive branch. He appointed a new ministry which had ministers from various member states, e.g., Austria (Schmerling for Foreign Affairs and the Interior), Prussia (Peucker for War), and Hamburg (Heckscher for Justice). After a vacation in Helgoland, where she met her beloved Adolf and examined the artistic scene—always a strong point with Fanny and her readers—she decided in October to go to Frankfurt, where the action was. During the summer, the Bundestag had been dissolved and the Reichstag was opened in Vienna by the Austrian Emperor. However, the whole process of German unification, determining which territories would be included in a united Germany, and the formulation of a constitution were now derailed by events in Schleswig-Holstein. The complex “Schleswig-Holstein question” became a testing ground for the seriousness of the efforts to unite Germany. Briefly stated, it concerned the ownership of the two provinces—Holstein, which was primarily German, and Schleswig, which was half German and half Danish—both of which were ruled by Denmark in 1848. Although the two provinces were legally inseparable, only Holstein was a member state of the German Confederation. Since the provinces were under Salic Law (only a male could be the sovereign), their future was clouded by the fact that the Danes had no male heir to the throne. Many of the German leaders felt this was a propitious time to wrest the provinces from Danish control and make them part of the new Germany. The majority German population, especially in Holstein, revolted, established a provisional

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government at Kiel (March 24) and asked Prussia for help. The Frankfurt Parliament commissioned Prussia to send troops; the Parliament itself had no military force. Despite warnings by England and France, which wanted to limit Prussian access to the North and Baltic Seas, Prussia, under the pressure of strong nationalist feelings, intervened. When victory was not immediate (a simplification of an extremely complex matter), Frederick William lost heart and concluded the Armistice of Malmö on August 28. This treaty was extremely favorable to the Danes and was at first rejected by the Frankfurt Parliament. After a change of ministry in September, the Parliament reluctantly yielded, and in the ensuing unrest, two right-wing representatives (General von Auerswald and Prince Lichnowsky) were murdered and only military intervention restored order (Sheehan 683). These incidents undermined the authority of the Parliament and showed how little actual power it had. The Schleswig-Holstein question dragged on and on, and was not really decided in favor of Germany until 1866 and the Seven Weeks’ War. In the Parliament, at least four parties had been loosely formed: the Right, which wanted an imperial constitution and separate state governments; the Right Center, which supported a constitutional monarchy for all of Germany; the Left, which called for the establishment of a centralized federal republic; and the Left Center (of which most of Fanny’s friends were members), which added the idea of the subordination of the states to the constitutional monarchy. The delay caused by the Schleswig-Holstein crisis and the ensuing dissension allowed the existing governments to regroup and regain their authority. But in Austria, the problems of a rebellious Hungary had caused the brutal lynching by a Viennese mob of the Minister of War, Count Latour, and Emperor Ferdinand had temporarily fled from his capital. General Windischgrätz finally bombarded Vienna into submission and the Imperial troops occupied the city. It was the end of the Reichstag there. The leaders of the Left Party (Blum, Fröbel, and Hartmann), who had been sent by the Frankfurt Parliament to Vienna, were arrested for fomenting revolution and Blum was summarily executed. Emperor Ferdinand abdicated and his son, Franz Joseph I, began the long reign that was only to end with his death in 1916 during World War I. Fanny returned to Berlin immediately after the execution of Robert Blum. Encouraged by the success of the forces of reaction in Austria, Frederick William formed a new ministry at the beginning

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of November and used his troops to exile the Prussian National Assembly to Brandenburg-on-the-Havel. This action was partially in reply to their “radical” measures and the striking of the words “by the grace of God” from his title. In December, the king dissolved the Assembly completely and the government announced adoption of a watered-down constitution. Fanny’s memoirs end on New Year’s Eve with her disillusionment and discouragement about the course of events and her fears for the future. Her story of the aftermath of 1848 continues to some extent in her travel memoirs of the following years, especially England und Schottland (1851). The Frankfurt Parliament did finally write a constitution, but it was never put into force. The imperial crown the Parliament offered to Frederick William was declined because he believed that only God could crown a ruler; this divine right could not be bestowed by a popularly elected assembly. It was not until 1871, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the extensive work of Bismarck, that William I was proclaimed emperor of a united Germany.

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RECOLLECTIONS OF 1848

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Portrait of Fanny Lewald--credit line.

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Chapter 1

JOURNEY FROM OLDENBURG TO PARIS

! Bremen, February 28, 1848 I left Oldenburg early this morning. It seemed, with this first step out of this small quiet capital,1 I was to be transported immediately into a world full of amazement. The Republic proclaimed in Paris! I had wandered through the streets of Oldenburg with a complete sense of peace during the morning. How still and secure that world seemed! All the shops in the little houses, some made of brick, were closed; a stocky postilion, half-asleep, driving four ponderous horses, was heading toward the post office; the stable boy sang a Low German song. The sentry marched back and forth between the two cannons at the main guard house across from the palace. Everything was quiet on the Baumallee, on the spacious palace square; the fantastic palace, with its wings and little turrets, lay dreaming as if in a morning sleep. The peace of quiet conformity lay spread out over Oldenburg. I had felt so at home during my ten-week stay in this atmosphere, that I was almost afraid of the strong excitement, the powerful impressions awaiting me in Paris. There were not many people on the little steamer that was to take us along the Hunte and Weser to Bremen. The moon was still high in the sky and illuminated the narrow harbor, the Dutch windmills and the low meadowlands along the banks of the Hunte. Withered reeds swayed drearily in the morning wind and bent down to the drifting ice floes. After waving a last farewell to those on shore, we went down into the cabin. Almost all we could 1. Oldenburg was the capital of the Archduchy of Holstein-Gottorp. Lewald had been there visiting future husband Adolf Stahr and his first wife, Marie.

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discuss during the journey was Paris. We spoke about the reform banquet, Guizot’s uncompromising adamance and Louis Philippe’s defiant self-confidence.2 Everyone was certain that the reforms would go through and the monarchy would give in. I was expecting an exciting and interesting time in Paris. We finally arrived in Bremen. Hardly had we set foot on solid ground when Doctor Andree approached us with a sheet of newspaper in his hand. “Louis Philippe has fled. The Republic has been proclaimed in Paris. Here, read it yourself!” I took the page and read among the names of the provisional government, “Albert the Worker.”3 A new era begins. What will it bring the French? New battles? Murder and the guillotine? A short epoch of peace and then new tyranny? I cannot believe that. Murderous wars, bloody battles seem impossible to me, unthinkable, when one has actually tried to realize the ideas of socialism and the universal brotherhood of man. To kill someone because he does not share our opinions or because he lives on one side of the river and we on the other, because we have other customs or another language, would be all too sad in our present state of cultural development. War between civilized peoples is the last vestige of brute animal behavior and must vanish from the earth. I believe in mankind, in the future, in the survival of the Republic. There are great hopes and glorious memories attached to the masculine ring of this word: “Republic.”4 More than ever, it draws me to Paris. I would like to see how a nation adapts, how it forms itself into a state, after it has declared itself ripe for free self-determination. What impressions are awaiting us in Paris, this eternally beating heart of Europe!

Bremen, February 29 [Lewald pays a visit to the Rathskeller in Bremen, of which she has often heard glowing reports by male visitors, and which, like the 2. An extraparliamentary series of banquets given by the opposition to Louis Philippe and his prime minister, François Guizot (1787–1874). The opposition was demanding electoral reform and an end to parliamentary corruption. The culminating great banquet in Paris on February 22, 1848, was prohibited by the government. This action led to street disturbances and the February revolution. 3. Pseudonym of Alexander Martin (“Albert l’0uvrier”) (1815–1895), French politician, socialist, and member of the Provisional Government. He was later exiled because of his participation in the May 15th protest. 4. This is an odd statement, since the French “République” and the German “Republik” are both feminine nouns.

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Mermaid Tavern, is prominent in the lives and works of many of Germany’s writers. At first, she is unimpressed and blames this on her perception as a woman; on a second visit, sitting over some wine with a friend, she gets caught up in the atmosphere of the place.]

Düsseldorf, March 3 We are still here, because the railroad tracks to Valenciennes have been destroyed and travel is therefore limited. Düsseldorf is almost as silent as Venice. It even seems noticeably quiet to me in comparison to Oldenburg. In Oldenburg I at least heard the banging of workers, the rolling of market wagons, the cry of playing children; here the long tree-shaded streets are soundless. It is the kind of stillness that I used to find in Fulda, in Bruchsal, in the various small capitals with clerical rulers. It must have been even quieter in Düsseldorf before the railroads and steamships brought life and motion into these areas. You can understand why this is the place where the Jacobis, the Stolbergs and the Princess of Galitzin let themselves be drawn so gently by their mystical pietism into the seductive pale blue mist-shrouded hereafter.5 Here in Düsseldorf the amazing manifesto of the Bundestag about the current revolution came to my attention.6 This is one of the strangest documents of modern times. It reminds me of the behavior of old Mrs. W. She was always quarreling and cursing; but as soon as a storm came, and there was loud thunder, she took her Bible in hand, crossed herself and swore to mend her ways. If it were not so amusing, you would have to be angry about these phrases. And there will certainly be enough Germans who will actually believe the reassuring language and base their hopes on it. 5. Pietism was a charismatic reform movement in the German Lutheran Church during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lewald had gone to a Pietist-influenced school in Königsberg. Johann Georg Jacobi (1740–1814) was an Anacreontic poet. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) was a Storm and Stress philosopher and novelist. Count Christian zu Stolberg-Stolberg (1748–1821) was a member of the Göttinger Hain (a group of nature poets) and a dramatist of the period between Storm and Stress and Classicism. Count Friedrich zu Stolberg-Stolberg (1750–1821) was also a poet and member of the Göttinger Hain and a friend of Goethe’s. He later converted to Catholicism. Adelheid Amalie, Princess of Galitzin (1748–1806) was the leader of an influential charismatic Catholic group in Münster. 6. This patriotic proclamation initiated by the Liberals ignored the interior political problems of the individual German states and called for German unity.

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I hear people being sorry for Louis Philippe every day. I cannot feel any pity for him although I consider his overthrow shattering and am able to find some aspects of his flight touching. I would grant him death—because it must be terrible to outlive yourself— but he has truly earned his fate, his banishment. If you are elected King of the French by the French, you must not only want to be King of France; you must have wider interests than the material enrichment of your own family. Louis Philippe forgot the ordinary umbrella he once carried and the bourgeois handshakes of 1830 so much that he had to leave Paris in a rented coach. In contrast to the great events, the powerful uprising in Paris, the Düsseldorf artists’ studios seem somewhat strange and eerie. Art has become such a minor factor in our lives, not only in Germany, but elsewhere, too, that it is only an abstract concept for the majority. It has not entered our consciousness as a necessary condition of our existence; we are not accustomed to it as we are to the harmony in nature, which does not estrange us because of its familiarity. If everything produced by the hand of man were permeated with the spirit of beauty, we would have a more comfortable relationship with the marvelous products of art which cannot be owned by the individual because of their value. The modern monarchy and the unequal distribution of wealth, as well as the lack of public life in the last decades has greatly contributed to the removal of art from the churches and marketplaces, from the town halls and other public buildings and the concealment of it in locked-up palaces and halls. The common people have certainly lost much by that. Now we must wait to see if the new republic will make art more accessible as a universal educational means for the people, make it a treasure for the man on the streets and in the squares as was the case in antiquity and in the Italian republics. When I speak out against abstraction in art, here, where transcendental Christian art has its great admirers, and find it proper that my countryman and friend, Karl Hübner,7 at least dares to try to draw the contents of everyday life into the realm of his presentations and to penetrate the hearts and minds of people by the pictorial depiction of the evils that prevail now, I receive the reaction, “Art cannot solve the problems of the present.” But mere Christian love and pictures of the Madonna have not done so yet either. It seems to me that it is only a matter of aiming for a great 7. Karl Hübner (1797–1831) was particularly noted for his work in graphic art. He was a lifelong resident of Berlin.

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goal with all your strength, with all the means at your disposal. No one can deny that art is a great means; therefore, it must work as much as possible for the cause of freedom. Yesterday we visited Scheuern, the painter.8 He has tested himself in many, you might even say all, types of painting, and always successfully. I saw his excellent, poetically depicted aquarelles, charming genre pictures and very beautiful landscapes. His landscapes really catch the moods of the present. They have a calming effect, like nature—although genre painting, despite its often touching naivete, seems insignificant when new epochs for mankind are afoot. The fate of the great individual is then lost in that of the general public and seems less significant. All the more so with the little joys and sorrows depicted by this genre: who can think about small whistling birds, playing children, or drumming grandfathers and their little grandsons at times like this! The best picture I saw in Düsseldorf was by a Norwegian, Tidemand:9 Norwegian sectarians gathered together in a farmhouse for worship, with daylight falling from above. There are about twelve figures, men and women of all ages in their drab national costume and with their sharply defined national prominent features. All united for the same purpose, all withdrawn from earthly thoughts into the deepest inner self-appraisal, and yet each with the distinctly individual characteristics that proclaim the great master. From the expression of the spiritualized, visionary beautiful head of the man reading from the Bible, standing on a wooden chair in the middle of the room, to the apathetic self-absorption of an adolescent sitting in the background, the painting covers the whole gamut of human attitudes toward religious ceremony. The picture really held me and touched me deeply. But sometime I would like to see Tidemand paint happy people enjoying life. He himself has, by the way, a very noble appearance. The local painters form two political groups, secular and religious, according to their subjects. The pious and the Romantics are on the side of the establishment; Lessing,10Hübner, and Scheuern have been seized by the spirit of the century and are full of joyful hopes for a free future. They signed the petitions and were active 8. I have been unable to identify some of the more obscure artists mentioned by Lewald. 9. Adolph Tidemand (1814–1876), Norwegian genre painter, who spent most of his life in Düsseldorf. 10. Karl Friedrich Lessing (1808–1880), nephew of the famous writer, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), painted romantic-heroic landscapes.

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in the meetings of the Liberals. Lessing, most of all, bravely urged vigorous progress; the other side held this against him. If there is any place where the rebirth of freedom will be shown to be flourishing, it will first be in art, and those artists here, who have any life in them, are looking forward to this with great anticipation. Hübner wants to go to Paris to see the people’s uprising, the people’s movement with his own eyes, to broaden his perspective.

Cologne (undated) We left Düsseldorf on Monday, March 6 at four in the afternoon. At five-thirty we were in the Holland Court on the Rhine. In the streets, a bright Carnival life, the people, emotional and free, many masks, much singing, and because of this, memories of Italy.11 The unrest in Cologne thus must have been fairly insignificant and have hardly passed the parameters of an ordinary street riot, if the stories that were told at the dinner table and elsewhere were true. In the evening, we went to visit Archbishop von Geissel,12 to whom we had a letter of introduction from Th.13 We reached his residence after dark. The square on which it is situated is spacious and quiet. A large, bleak but modern palace. Stairs and corridors frugally illuminated, quiet and clean. A unliveried manservant lit our way with a modest tallow candle. The archbishop received us in a very large, high-ceilinged study; a table covered with papers and books stood before the sofa, on which he must have just been reading by light of a small work lamp. A large upright secretary desk was placed over against the window and took up a significant portion of the room. A sumptuous embroidered fur spread lay in front of it and bookshelves on the walls completed the impression of the study. 11. Lewald had made her first trip to Italy in 1845–46. She met Adolf Stahr there at that time. She remained a lifelong lover of Italy and made a number of other lengthy trips there. 12. Cardinal Johannes von Geissel (1796–1864), Archbishop of Cologne, who promoted the idea of papal infallibility as early as 1860. Pius IX, newly elected in 1848, was very liberal compared to his predecessor, Gregory XVI, of whom Lewald was very critical. 13. Therese von Bacheracht (1804–1852), a writer of travel books and novels and one of Lewald’s closest friends. She divorced Bacheracht in 1849 to marry her cousin Heinrich von Lützow and accompanied him to Java, where she met an untimely death. Between her marriages she was the mistress of Karl Guzkow (1811–1878), a young German writer and radical politician.

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Archbishop von Geissel is probably about fifty or slightly older. He is tall and portly. His round face with its fine and well-defined features reminds one of the Bourbons. His mouth is small and very attractive in motion; the movements of his hands are also quite noble. He wore the long robe of a monsignor, the red velvet cap, small puffs, a gold cross hanging from a heavy gold chain around his neck and the ring of the Fisherman. After initial pleasantries we began to discuss current events. He told of Louis Philippe’s flight and found it astonishing and harsh that no one in France felt any sympathy for him. He thought that the Republic would last for the time being although the organization of work was an unsolvable problem. “As soon as the financial means are exhausted, there will be a dangerous crisis. The social elements are aroused, are in a ferment and every existing institution is being called into question. The calming of conditions, the solution for those questions will not be accomplished by individuals. Events like the migrations of peoples will produce a radical turnover, a new world order.” The conversation turned to Italy. The archbishop did not believe in the Lombards. “Napoleon said that the Italians looked like men, spoke like women, and acted like children.” I brought up the events in Palermo.14 “The Sicilians are Arabs and Greeks; there is energy and a different race in them.” When the Pope was then mentioned, he said, “The intentions of the Pope are excellent.” To the question, of whether the Germans would arm themselves to defend a legitimate ruler, he answered, “I hope that will not happen; surely we will allow a foreign country the freedom to settle its own problems.” The whole conversation was controlled, but without any of that overlay of piety and monarchism with which our Protestant clerics tend to varnish their words. Von Geissel gave the impression of a prince of the church, and like all the higher Catholic clergy, he is quite at home on earth. On the whole, it seems to me that Protestant Pietism, because it preaches contempt for the world and a complete submission to the spirit, has pulled the ground away from under its own feet, even destroyed its bridge into the future. 14. On January 12, 1848, an uprising broke out in Italy and spread to Naples. With British intervention, the Liberals forced the King of the Two Sicilies, Frederick II, to restore the Constitution of 1812, revised according to the French Charter of 1830. Frederick was deposed by the Parliament on April 13 and a new king was elected, but Sicily was reconquered with the help of Austria and France by May, 1849 and a reactionary government was reinstated.

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Contempt for earthly matters is such a lie that nothing lasting can be built on it. When we were back on the street, the noisiest merriest Carnival bustle surrounded us.

Tuesday Morning, March 7 [Lewald continues describing the Carnival festivities.] Today the people are still having a great time, but nevertheless, we want to leave for Aachen this afternoon and go from there to Paris tomorrow. Every day away from Paris is a loss now and it is becoming more and more impossible to look at pictures and German cathedrals. Who can look at the frozen obstinate monuments to faith, the past imprisoned in stone, when mankind is accomplishing its most important deeds in the present and the world is being reshaped? Besides, I have never felt a connection or sympathy for the pointed-arch Gothic Middle Ages and the contrast between that and antiquity is doubly vivid for me now. In the midst of the excitement of these days, you could look at Roman and Greek sculpture and architecture with pleasure, with exaltation; you would be able then to regard the present more freely and objectively. In the restrained temperate beauty of ancient art there lies the wise teaching of internal and external closure because of the possibility of perfection. Gothic architecture, constantly striving upward without end, since another higher, more pointed little peak can be postulated on the highest little peak of the highest tower, is somehow disquieting. It is never complete but is always striving toward heaven and the unattainable. All the zigs and zags, little crosses, figures of saints and scraps of animals end up looking only like frozen conceits. Later, on the way to the Cologne cathedral, the thought came to me of inquiring at the banker Schaafhausen’s house to ask if Mrs. Sybille Mertens,15 the famous German archaeologist, was in town. “She is staying here,” was the answer. When I saw her again (the last time had been in Rome) with her short hair, her severe black 15. Abraham Schaafhausen (1756–1824) was a banker who founded what eventually became the leading bank in Northwest Germany. Sybille Mertens-Schaafhausen (1787–1857) was an archaeologist, specializing in numismatics. At her home in Rome, she had a salon for many of the German expatriots there and Lewald mentions Mertens (and her problems with her estranged husband) frequently in Römisches Tagebuch (Roman Diary), not published until after Lewald’s death because of its extremely personal content, but written in 1845–46).

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robe, sitting behind a stack of papers at a sturdy desk in her family home in Cologne, I was very happy. She read Lamartine’s manifesto,16 which she had just received, aloud to us. Her clever, angular face, full of character, made the reading a pleasure for me. The manifesto is more restrained than any the French had ever written on similar occasions. It carries the stamp of a new world order, an era of peace as only idealists can imagine it; still, it demonstrates the spinelessness of the theoretician, who is quite aware that he will not actually have to give his theory any form in the real world. The Provisional Government is sitting like a sacred bird of paradise on the swaying palm leaf of peace—and should be nesting like an eagle on a craggy peak, the lightning of genius under its talons. There is a weakness, a lack of faith in the manifesto, which leads involuntarily to the thought that iron fists will take the scepter from the hands of these men—and perhaps may have to take it. Mrs. Mertens offered to accompany us to the cathedral. “I want to escort you there personally, because the cathedral is my home and the three Wise Men are my cousins, as Mistress Jameson used to say.” Here in Cologne I at last understood her great love for the city. Just at the base of the cathedral are four splendid homes in which she and her family have lived for a number of years. She was born and raised here; all the beggars, all the officials and workers in the cathedral greeted her, as she had the construction areas opened to lead us around. As she walked beside us in her black sable coat, a lace-edged veil over her black hat, wearing her glasses and holding her gloves, explaining and including the most minute details, bringing life to the stones, she was again completely the “principessa tedesca” [the German princess] as the people in Rome called her. And she really has a princely nature, which follows its own lonesome path, self-confident and unrestrained through petty and strange concerns. She is misunderstood by many, but beloved by those who could see into her inner wealth; she is completely genuine and true to herself. A woman has to be a great person to be so self-reliant, so committed to serious masculine studies. We proceeded through the city in her company. A true Italian carnival atmosphere prevailed in the market place under a laughing 16. The Romantic poet, Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) was appointed Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government. He was a moderate republican. His “Manifesto to the European Powers,” March 5, 1848, was designed to present the new French foreign policy.

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blue sky. Processions and groups formed in the style of the South and with a Southern rhythm. Mrs. Mertens pointed out to us that this market place was identical in form to that of the Piazza Navona in Rome and had probably also been an old race track. This has caused her to ask the city council for permission to excavate, which has been granted her. Around noon, news of the complete peace in Paris arrived via telegraph. Germany would be trembling after such upheavals! But nations are like individuals; the better their training in citizenship is on one side, the more whole and complete their historical education on the other, the more easily they know how to cope in all circumstances of life. The French, the Italians, with all the advantages of their training, always remain themselves in the midst of these mighty revolutions; they always stay calm.

Aachen (undated) The way to Aachen is charming, because a chain of hills gives variety to the region. The view overlooking Aachen, which lies with its cathedral—amazingly constructed of towers and domes—deep in the valley, is very amiable. The new parts of the city are magnificent. The main streets remind me of the beautiful Rue de la Coraterie in Geneva, but the older parts of Aachen are more populated and therefore more interesting. In Aachen we also saw masks and heard the singing and festive shouts of Carnival, mixed with vulgar noises, until long into the night. Our rooms lay across from the baths. We had barely gone out the door when we were surrounded by beggars, who followed us on our paths through the city and kept steadily adding to their number from all sides. This gave the southern daguerreotype of Carnival the South’s dark side, poverty. The naivete of Aachen’s casino regulations surpasses even the Italian lottery in its simplicity. The casino belongs to the city so the city is the banker. No citizen of Aachen may play; strangers are plundered, and the profits are used for the beautification of the city. Lively demonstrations had already been going on in Aachen for several days. There had been riots in the streets in which the factory workers had played a considerable role and the hatred of the people toward Prussia is said to have been clearly shown. Apparently the word “Prussian” is still an invective for the people. A defendant in one case even said to the court, “I could have ignored

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everything else, but I could not let him call me a Prussian. That’s why I struck him!” There was talk of calling up the militia at the Rhine, of counteraction in the factories. “We would rather let ourselves be killed by the French that to fight for the Prussians against the French,” had been stated. The mood in Aachen is far more agitated that in Cologne; perhaps the carnival spirit in the latter city covered up the actual atmosphere.

March 8 From Aachen to Verviers the train went up a mountain through very lovely areas, which became even more beautiful from Verviers to Lüttich. There are many small valleys formed by fairly high chains of hills almost as if closed off by tunnel gates. Each such valley has a factory on a little river. The factory buildings, the house of the proprietor, the housing for the workers, the church, and the park facilities form a pleasant independent unit. It is just the region and the way it looks as described by George Sand in Le Péché de Monsieur Antoine.17 I keep reminding myself that one day the whole earth will be covered with such self-sufficient communal settlements, if those social changes we now consider our ideal come to pass. This would also be the only way consistent with nature to move from the peak of industrial culture to the natural socialization of the individual in the community. These factory towns have their own doctor and hospital and could easily be developed into independent governing units which would be united in the central government of the country. There is a certain magic in reflecting on such conditions in detail as well as in their connection to the whole. Although Paris was obviously our actual goal, the charm of the peace in these quickly flowing mountain streams, which rushed along bubbling golden in the sunlight, shadowed by the first spring blossoms of the trees, was so strong that we could wish longingly to remain here, to find our sphere of action here. A beautiful spa town, Chaudefontaine, was probably the high point of this lovely region. 17. George Sand, pseudonym of French writer and novelist Baroness Armandine Aurore Lucille Dupin Dudevant. Lewald, especially in her youth, greatly admired Sand’s works and the two writers were often compared, most notably in Marieluise Steinhauer’s dissertation, Fanny Lewald, die deutsche George Sand, Berlin, 1937. See also, Hanna B. Lewis, “George Sand and Fanny Lewald.” George Sand Studies. Vol. VIII, nos. 1 and 2, 1986/1987: 38–45.

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In sharp contrast to the peaceful silence, the conversation in the coaches centered only on the turbulent events of the day, on the French republic, on war and revolution. The newspapers, L’Indépendance and L’Observateur Belge, were on sale at all the coach stops. There were manufacturers, landowners, and merchants on our coach; the conversation was in French. “Fighting is going on all over Germany; the Communists have begun the battle,” said one man. “Communism is not to be feared in France or Belgium; it is only dangerous in Germany. We are far too practical to burn our fingers embracing such chimeras, to believe in such utopias.” “What does Belgium have to fear anyway? A republic? That would be an empty word for us. We are far more free under our monarchy than the French can ever be in their republic. As far as I am concerned, they can call the government despotism, and I will live under despotism, if its institutions are as free as ours, as free as possible.” Those were the comments we heard from all sides. Their great satisfaction with their constitution was clear and the obvious prosperity of the excellently cultivated countryside seemed to justify this satisfaction. These burghers did not believe the Republic would last; they smiled at the Provisional Government; they mocked the Republic of Peace as a “beautiful poetic fiction of Monsieurs Lamartine and Louis Blanc.”18 A manufacturer from the north of France said, “At home in the north where we are really for Henry V.…”19 He was full of contempt for the revolution as being a “folly for street urchins and good-for-nothings,” transfigured and sanctified by men of genius, who were unfortunately only writers and not statesmen. They were just as thoughtless and skeptical when they spoke of the Republic at the dinner table of the Holland Hotel, where we gathered in the afternoon at five at the end of our day’s journey. But 18. Jean Joseph Louis Blanc (1811–1882), French politician and student of SaintSimon. After the outbreak of the February Revolution in 1848, he was a member of the Provisional Government and founder of the Commission of the Luxembourg, a sort of parliament for workers and employers, soon deserted by the employers. A member of the Left Wing, he advocated government guarantees for the right to work and established the national workshops, a large-scale work relief program in Paris. In August, 1848, he fled to exile in Belgium and was not able to return until the fall of Louis Napoleon. He was against economic liberalism and wanted worker oganizations controlled and promoted by the government. 19. Henry Charles d’Artois, Count of Chambord and Duke of Bordeaux (1823– 1883), grandson of Charles X, the last Bourbon king, deposed in 1830. After the death of Charles X in 1836, Henry was considered the legitimate king, Henry V, by supporters of the old monarchy.

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what does this skepticism prove? “The few that knew something about it, who foolishly maintained their true faith, were always martyred and burned at the stake.” The concept of the Republic and the necessity for its existence in accord with reason at this moment will not lose their validity, even if this new attempt to bring it to life should fail because of the inpropitiousness of the effort’s timing or today’s circumstances. The Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Hussites, Savanarola, and thousands of others had to perish. Hundreds of attempts at the reformation of Catholicism failed before Luther’s great deed became possible; and because the time was ripe, the Reformation was accomplishable and effective. Our religious beliefs, which place God in the individual, must therefore necessarily also place self-determination and selfcontrol in the individual. As soon as you declare yourself mature enough for emancipation from the belief in a personal God, you have also to declare yourself mature enough for the Republic. The monarchy is only the political parallel for a personal God, the metamorphosis of that spiritual concept into a political entity. The Belgians want to keep their King Leopold and defend themselves with all their strength against any attempt to force a republic on their country. That is perfectly all right, since they also cling firmly to Catholicism. But this is really not an argument for a constitutional monarchy, nor against a republic. It is only a measure of the cultural development of the Belgians. Any government commensurate with such development is good. A republic, however, demand the highest standards of spiritual development and moral training. If France has reached these standards, the Republic will survive despite all skeptics and mockers.

Brussels, March 9 We made our way through the town yesterday and came into one of the so-called “Passages.” These are passages, halls, covered with glass in which shops and cafes are located on both sides, the ground floor and the mezzanine. There is such a “Passage” in Hamburg, and larger ones in Milan and Naples. On the whole, they are uncomfortable; noisy, very hot in the summer and cold in the winter and moist and airless during rainy weather when the floor becomes dirty and slippery. Paris is said to be full of such “Passages” and I am already convinced that their existence there is caused by some sort of climatic feature, because such arrangements are hardly ever

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the product of a whim, but of necessity. Last night, when it rained steadily like today, the passage was not pleasant, but nevertheless interesting because of the large number of working men with clay pipes in mouth strolling around after work beside and among the “beautiful people.” Almost all other nationalities have a greater desire for recreation than the North Germans do. This morning we went to the cathedral, the Church of St. Gudula. It is a mighty building with unfinished towers; they keep building and renovating it like the cathedral at Cologne. It is curious that there is such a resurgence in faith and a desire to finish these churches. Such enthusiasm was so quenched two hundred years ago, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, that construction was stopped and the churches left unfinished. That which our forefathers honestly and freely admitted was error and gave up, we now take up again with a lie to ourselves, which is doubly reprehensible, because there is so much real poverty, so much pressing need for help. St. Gudula’s has wonderful old and new stained glass windows; the church is beautiful, noble, and simple. The pulpit is a masterwork of woodcarving, almost as excellent as the work in San Severo in Naples. On the front, Adam and Eve are depicted before the Fall with various animals in a very simple execution. But I really have little patience for such art. I have often seen that, regrettably for the old artisans, they could produce work that was very painstaking but not very effective. The naive innocence with which the animals and people of Eden regard the world in thoughtless bliss stands in such sharp contrast to the events of the moment that one is hard put to have any feeling for it. It was surprising to me to see three or four hundred people of all classes in the church on a Thursday. Men and women of the wealthy classes, accompanied by liveried servants, formed the majority of the congregation. A Jesuit, Abbé Delcour, gave the sermon. He began, “We live in a time of development. The beautiful words ‘Brotherhood’ and ‘Humanity’ sound around us. We feel the duty to come to the aid of our fellow men, to satisfy their material needs. Our time, the time of humanity, is also the time of science. Science is spreading over the whole world; it is learning to use the powers of nature, it knows how to take advantage of the magnetic atmosphere and sea and air and fire to fill our material needs. But while we are striving to satisfy these in every possible way, while we endeavor to act well, humanely well and try to raise our fellow man, we hear complaints everywhere about the

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lack of principles in our actions despite this struggle for the principle of good. The materialism we want to satisfy demoralizes us with the hedonism and insatiableness that follow in its path. There have never been greater contradictions between feeling and action, never greater vacillations between justice and injustice, between humanity and barbarism. Never have we heard so many complaints about the lack of basic principles or the true meeting of minds necessary to combine our convictions and the powers of our spirits for harmonious unified action. We are lacking that basic principle which unites the intentions of the giver and the receiver and closes the gap between them as well as that between spiritual and physical needs. The basic principle, which is valid for everything, sufficient for everything, which combines in one idea the solution to all questions and doubts, is Catholicism, the only universal religion.” From there he proceeded to the hope that heaven might grant him the power to illuminate his congregation with this insight and asked that the listeners pray for strength for the preacher and understanding for the congregation. We left during this silent prayer, because it was far too cold in the church. I would have liked to have stayed longer, however, because the Abbé preached so poetically, the effect of his oratory only partly diminished by his annoying dialect and the organ. My interest in the Catholic Church has been greatly stimulated again by Bishop von Geissel and the beginning of this sermon. If any positive dogma has the right to become associated with the future of mankind it is Catholicism.20 It has always remained in close contact with earthly needs, because its symbolism is broad enough to add new elements to its old forms and because it is essentially a transfiguration of materialism. The Madonna will always be a beautiful figure, a lovely image of feminine purity and virginal love, who unites the love of wife and mother in her being in sweet innocence. From St. Gudula’s we returned to the city hall on the Grande Place, where we had already been the previous evening. The city hall and its square are as beautiful in their way as the Palazzo Vecchio and the Piazza del Gran’duca in Florence. Just as in that Italian city, a magnificently tall tower next to the city hall looms over all the buildings in a stately manner. This is the square where twenty-five noble Dutchmen were beheaded in 1568 by command of the Duke 20. Later in her life, Lewald became very anti-Catholic as part of her rejection of organized religion in general and her admiration of Bismarck.

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of Alba, and where Counts Egmont and Horn were executed in June of the same year.21 The night before their deaths they were held in the Maison du Roi. The people call this Maison Du Roi the “Bakery”. It is across from the city hall and is built in a peculiar style, combining the elements of Gothic architecture with that of the mid-eighteenth century. It still has a great and beautiful effect. Under the statue of the Virgin Mary, which adorns the front is the inscription: A peste, fame et bello libera nos Maria pacis. Hoc votum pacis publicae Elisabeth consecravit.22

Alba is said to have watched the execution of Egmont from the windows of this palace. On the left side of the square are the guild houses—the house of the brewers, the house of the boatmen and others—adorned with large emblems, beautiful medieval buildings which, along with the city hall, set an elegant tone for the square. After we had seen old Dudenaard Gobelins23 and the vermeil keys of the city on a beautiful tray of the same metal in the city hall, we drove to the Palace of Justice to see the pictures of Galliat and Biefve—more of that another time. On the way we were shown the small fountain on Eyck Street, the “oldest citizen of Brussels,” which the people call “MannekenPis.”24 It is evidence of the naivete of the times which produced it. According to local custom, it is dressed in native costumes for holidays. It wore a tricolored sash in 1789, later an orange ribbon and since 1830, a blue smock.25 In its simplicity, this smock is much more picturesque and suited to sculpture than our modern clothing, than an overcoat or a dress coat. You can see this from the memorial in St. 21. Lamoral, Count Egmont (1522–1568), Governor of Flanders, defended the rights of the Protestant Netherlanders against their Spanish Catholic rulers. He is the subject of a drama by Goethe and an overture by Beethoven. Along with Philipp Horn, Count of Montmorency-Nivelle (1518–1568), a Netherlander originally in Spanish service, he was executed by the Duke of Alba in June, 1568. 22. “May Mary of Peace deliver us from plague, famine and war. Elisabeth has dedicated this sacred pledge of peace for the people.” 23. The Gobelins factory was established by Louis XV for the production of deluxe furniture and furnishings for the royal palaces and national buildings. The name is mainly associated with fine tapestries. 24. The Manneken-Pis is a small bronze statue of a boy urinating, sculpted by Jerome Duquesnoy and placed southwest of the Grand Place in 1619. The boy has a wardrobe of over 396 suits dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries (e.g., a Boy Scouts of America uniform), which he occasionally wears. The statue is considered a symbol of Brussel’s irreverent spirit. 25. This costume is that of the French workers involved in the July Revolution.

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Gudula’s to the young Count Merrode who fell in the 1830 fight for freedom. The memorial shows him in the blue smock, collapsing from his fatal wound and supporting himself during the fall with his left hand while the right is still trying to fire his pistol. The effect of the folds of the short smock is superb. Through the rain-spotted windows of our coach we saw the park of the royal palace, on the hilly terrain of which the bloody battle for freedom had been fought in 1830.26 Down in the lower part of the city was the great warehouse on the canal to Antwerp and Charleroi. It is so wide, with such a strong current that I thought it was a river. Since then we have been imprisoned in our hotel rooms by pouring rain and I can write nothing further about Brussels except that the rain pours and splashes on the pavement here just as it does in Berlin. I do wish it would stop and not ruin our trip to Paris tomorrow or our arrival there!

26. Stimulated by the July Revolution in Paris, the Belgian Revolution broke out in Brussels on August 26, 1830. Under the leadership of French troops, the city was defended against the Dutch, who did not want to lose control of Belgium. On October 5, the provisional government proclaimed Belgian independence. After many conferences, protocols, battles, etc., Belgium was finally recognized as an “independent and perpetually neutral state” by other European governments on April 19, 1839.

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Chapter 2

MARCH IN THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

! Paris, March 12 The trip from Brussels to Paris is the most boring in the world. The trains were running normally; only in Valenciennes, where they had burned the bridge and obstructed our passage, were we packed into large busses and taken on a small detour through the little country town of Reines. Here, where we were supposed to catch our train again, there was no station; so they had put up wooden sheds and tents, which were completely inadequate for the masses of people and luggage arriving constantly and gave no protection at all against the pouring rain. The topography of the region is that of the flattest, most even plain imaginable. Douay, Amiens, Arras, etc., lie to the sides, and other than the splendid station at Amiens, where an excellent noonday meal can be obtained in the princely environment of the dining room, illuminated from above, there was nothing memorable about the journey. The train station in Paris is surprisingly large, although we expected something grand; the organization is exemplary. Instead of being forced hurriedly into the baggage room and having to peer around anxiously to find our bags, confused by the milling, searching and screaming of the other passengers, officials, and porters, the arriving foreigners remain quietly in a waiting room. Meanwhile, the officials find the pieces of luggage according to a number, arrange them in a group on the large tables along the walls of the baggage area and, only when this is done, admit the foreigners and hand them their belongings upon presentation of a claim check. Our nine pieces, which we had collected elsewhere only with extreme effort, had been heaped up here for us like birthday gifts.

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I mainly want to give you a brief idea of the impression of Paris made on me in the last one-and-a-half days, especially in light of the most recent events. I am still not able to be very surprised at the size of the city, its splendor and its beauty. The boulevards, as far as I have seen them, the inner city, the Place de la Bourse, the Place Vendôme with the statue of Napoleon on its column, the Place de la Concorde, are very significant, filled with people, lined with magnificent shops and splendid buildings. However, Rome and Naples are just as impressive, so that the outward impression any large city makes during the first few days is not very surprising, when you have seen several of them. The bad weather also probably had a negative effect on the physiognomy of the city. The damages caused by the late revolution are evident everywhere. The paving stones are laid loosely at the street corners and not pounded down. Wrecked bread wagons and overturned buses show where the most important barricades were. Most of the iron fencing (except for a few remaining feet giving witness that there had been a fence there) has been torn down around a church. In the Palais Royal—or the Palais National as it is now called according to the sign—all the window panes and many windows and their frames have been broken. The guardhouse—the Chateau d’eau—in which the guards burned to death, lies in smoke-blackened ruins; other guardhouses near the Seine are torn down to their foundations and the National Guards, sitting in front of the best boutiques (which now serve as guardhouses), hold watch in their vicinity. On the boulevards, the trees are felled, the pipes and columns of the fountains torn down. At the Tuileries, tattered white curtains flutter from the paneless windows; over all the doors, on the walls of the palace you can read this inscription, written in chalk or charcoal: “Hôpital des Invalides civiles” [City Hospital]. At the theaters, over the church portals, at all public buildings, the tricolored flag of France flutters bravely in the air over the motto: “Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité.” Those words have been written wherever there was room, as if the people wanted to remind themselves always, that these principles would have to form the basis for their new national legislation in the future, or were afraid they might forget them. Several times yesterday I saw groups of thirty to forty men, almost all workers, proceeding through the streets. They sang the “Marseillaise” and the old Girondist song, which has been taken up by the people again. It goes as follows:

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With the voice of the warning cannons France calls her children. “Let’s go to the fray!” the soldier cries. “She is my mother and I am defending her.” To die for one’s country Is the most beautiful, the most enviable fate. Friends, we who die far away from the battles In obscurity— Let us at least dedicate our funerals To France and to her liberty. To die for one’s country Is the most beautiful, the most enviable fate.

The melody is very lovely, with a rhythm almost as rousing as that of the “Marseillaise.” The workers have still another song, the refrain of which— ”Vive la République!”—frequently awoke me from sleep last night. The melodies were sung so interminably that you think you are hearing them even when everything is quiet. There are giant notices on all corners, fountains, and buildings. The ordinances and posters of the government are printed on white paper; all the others are colored. Yesterday a decree was posted that set the number of daily hours of work at ten, and another that regulated the price of bread. This meant little to me since I did not understand the amount. However, as much as I have been able to find out, food prices are disproportionally higher here than at home. They tell me Paris is dead, the streets deserted. The number of vehicles is certainly very small, yet life in the streets and on the boulevards is still surprising. Everyone is set upon asserting himself, expressing his meaning without reservations. Even eightyear-old boys are yelling “Vive la République!” with the same energy as the adults. This cry has a certain tonal scale: in the first three syllables of the word “République” the tone rises gradually and then sinks with the last syllable. Sometimes when you hear a reverberating, powerful “Vive la République!” and then five or six little boys appear, who have yelled it, you cannot trust your own ears! You soon understand how much political fervor must have pervaded the people for such phrases to have entered into children’s games. As soon as you find yourself on the street, you are surrounded by newspaper vendors—men, women and children. “La Presse! La Presse! Journal du Soir, second edition!—Le Moniteur du Soir, sir!—

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Look here, ladies! La Voix des Femmes! Buy La Voix des Femmes!— Buy La Presse, gentlemen! La Liberté! La Liberté for one sou, sir! La République, the real La République! Crimes of that villain, Louis Philippe and his villainous ministers!—Le Chant de la liberté!—La Voix du Peuple!” are the mingled cries swirling and sounding around you. Newspaper pages, bouquets of violets, matches, figurines are almost pressed into the passerby’s hand, but actually no one is harassed. They know where to draw the line and do not overstep it. Caricatures of Louis Philippe can be seen at every street corner. One, in terra cotta, shows him as a blind beggar. He is sitting on the ground, an umbrella beside him, watched by a dog, and his hand with a round hat stretched out toward the passersby. Beneath it are the words: “Please give me just one little throne, gentlemen!” Another represents him trying to force his way through the door of a very narrow taxicab and bears the inscription, “By the hour, cabbie, not by distance, because I am going a long way.” We have spoken to a large number of people in the last few days, but have never heard an expression of sympathy for Louis Philippe. His greed, this lowest, most wretched passion, has made him an object of scorn everywhere. It is true; just as the immorality of the Bourbons demoralized the people by their bad example, the avarice of Louis Philippe has made the French greedy, and, burying their sense of honor, their sense of justice, has let them sink down to corruptibility. Despite the condemnation of Louis Philippe, there is a strong sense of commiseration for his sons, the Princes Joinville, Montpensier and Aumale, especially for Joinville, who seems to be very popular.1 We had some interesting papers about Joinville in our hands yesterday—the correspondence between his tutor and the king, Duke of Orléans at the time. They dealt with entering the elevenyear-old boy in a secondary school for his further education. With true pedagogical lack of understanding, the tutor misjudges the innocence and free spirits of this boy’s character. He depicts him as a lazy boy whom it is difficult to motivate toward learning. “His propensity toward the low life,” it says in the original letter, “his pleasure in stupid pranks, will immediately make him the center of all the good-for-nothings in the class; he will inevitably find them 1. François Ferdinand Louis Marie d’Orléans, Prince de Joinville (1818–1900), third son of Louis Philippe. Antoine d’Orléans, Duc de Montpensier (1824–1890), fifth son of Louis Philippe. Henri Eugéne, Duc de Aumale (1822–1897), fourth son of Louis Philippe and author of the Histoire des princes de Condé.

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because of his base instincts, join them and acquire all the bad habits he still lacks. What would be appropriate for another prince, what would be excellent for the Princes of Chartres and Nemours2 —to let them be educated with other boys—would have the most serious consequences for this boy because of his boundless frivolity, his bad habits and his obstinacy. Your Majesty will be bitterly displeased, a displeasure the Duke of Joinville will not spare you even without this measure.” This tone, which contains an insolence so coarse, that no village schoolmaster would dare to use it toward his magistrate is used in this letter and several others of similar content, so that you have the deepest sympathy with the unfortunate royal child, because his happy childhood was turned over to such a loveless man with so little understanding. These letters and sixty or seventy others from the king and the royal family were in the possession of one of our acquaintances, who gathered them up in the courtyard the day the Tuileries were stormed. The people had thronged into a small room where the royal family’s private correspondence lay, packed into leather trunks. When these trunks were torn open, the papers were thrown on the ground and out of the window onto the street, where everyone took just what fell into his hand. There was much interesting material in the pages I saw, e.g., a draft by the king for an invitation to Guizot. The card was written with great care and many revisions, to strike just the right note for such an request, which seemed to deal with a reconciliation after strained relations. The words, “I beg you, I invite you,” were crossed out and finally the phrase, “I urge you to come to my home,” remained. I also saw some very significant letters from King Leopold of Belgium concerning the Greek question,3 then more recent pleas from Joinville and the two younger princes to 2. Louis Charles Philippe Raphael d’Orléans, Duc de Nemours (1814–1896), second son of Louis Philippe. He was elected as King of the Belgians in 1831, but British intervention forced him to reject the election. His oldest sister became Queen of the Belgians by her marriage to the winning candidate, Leopold I, an uncle of Queen Victoria. 3. After the Greek War of Independence (1821–31) a monarchy was instituted in 1832 with the election of seventeen-year-old Otto I, son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Until he attained his majority, the country was actually ruled by three Bavarian advisers, who tried to institute a centralized bureaucratic system. This did not satisfy the demands of the former revolutionaries and other dissident elements. In 1843 there was a popular uprising in favor of a constitution. Otto finally yielded to the demands for a national assembly and a constitution in 1844. This did not improve the government as much as expected and Otto was finally deposed in 1862.

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the Duke of Nemours and the queen, to move the king to indulge them in a frivolous measure. On one sheet, Nemours writes, “The king is steadily becoming more hardheaded; it is impossible to sway him!” There were also some letters from the Queen of Belgium, which her husband (who was hunting), had asked her to write to inform her father about actions in London. There was a very extensive diary by the Duke and Duchess of Nemours about their first trip through France. The young princess seems to have been delighted by all the military salutes given to her. Despite the her exhaustion, which her husband bemoans, every bouquet, every speech is mentioned with pleasure. All these formalities are depicted and enjoyed as signs of spontaneous unusual participation. According to these letters the family life of the Orléanses must have been one of the most intimate and noble. Even when the sons criticize their father in letters to one another, they display deep devotion. While the Queen of Belgium was having a baby, there were almost daily notes from the king inquiring about his daughter and letters from the queen giving good advice. The letters from the princes frequently are addressed humorously to “Dear and good Majesty” or even “Tell her dear Majesty.” Particularly amusing were a few letters from the Queen of Portugal to Princess Clementine,4 for whom the former displays great affection. The main topics are the children’s difficulties with their teeth, fashion, discussion of Dumas novels,5 and in the middle of all this, the question, “Ask your father what he thinks of the agreements in London and what is to be done now.” Immediately after that a courtier or artist is recommended with the words, “A completely honest gentleman, but a great fool.” The royal family has saved nothing. All the family portraits, all the thousands of small items that are so important to a family as memorabilia or through long use were left behind in the completely unexpected flight. One feels the greatest pity for the fate of these young men and women, who were plunged from the highest peak of power into all the pains of exile and deprivation by the ambition and the obstinacy of their father. 4. Maria II da Gloria reigned in Portugal from 1834 to 1853 after her uncle Miguel, who had usurped the throne, was deposed by the aftermath of the July Revolution. Princess Clementine d’Orléans, third daughter of Louis Philippe, married to August of Saxe-Coburg. 5. Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), French novelist and playwright, author of The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–45), and numerous other works. His Oeuvres Completes comprise 286 volumes.

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And that ends my first letter from Paris. Finally, I assure you that there is not the least cause to fear for the safety of foreigners and that we are very happy we have come to see the great events of the time in this place where the outbreak happened, where it started. This can only be the beginning of the social revolution, which we have been expecting as an inescapable necessity for years, and for which we have been longing as one longs for spring, fearing the storms and the disasters of the probable ice floes. May we be saved whenever it overwhelms us!

Paris, March 13 There is a real problem in keeping your thoughts focused to get a clear picture of current events when you hear them being analyzed ten times a day from different perspectives. But everyone we have seen agrees that the reign of Louis Philippe with the ministry of Guizot and his doctrines has become an impossibility. Everyone believes in the duration of the Republic, in the maturity of the people for self-government; they are only afraid of the socialist direction the revolution has taken, which has found its expression in Louis Blanc’s promise to organize labor. People consider this organization of labor impossible, especially in the heart of a civilization in which all the neighboring countries persist in the old principles, and see great complications and crises resulting from it. Nevertheless, among many citizens who have forfeited their possessions or their jobs and positions to the revolution, a happy exaltation, a belief in progress is arising, which is certainly a good sign in these times of alarming dissolution. It is amazing how everyone knows how to justify his own opinion from the universally determined facts, how the great cloak of historical necessity has a corner for every party, into which it can creep, which it claims, which it states it has woven, even if this cloak really is finally only the enveloping cloak of the universe, in which the warp and woof of the past necessarily create the present and the future. For years the pressure of the ruling system may have lain heavily on many. It also seems as though there was a party of five to six thousand people who met in individual clubs and only communicated through their leaders. This party wanted the republic and thought that the death of Louis Philippe would be the right time for it. When, after the prohibition of the reform banquet, the workers

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gathered by the hundreds of thousands in the streets just to remind the government of the material strength of the working class and a salvo of rifles replied to their “Down with Guizot!”, killing or wounding a number of people, including women out for a walk on the arms of their husbands, the battle was on. Republicans found it advisable to take advantage of this movement. Still, some say that at that moment a regency for the Duchess of Orléans6 was likelier. What was important was not the establishment of a republic but the introduction of universal suffrage, which would have brought the other reforms in its wake. Only one voice, speaking at precisely the right moment for the regency, would have prevented the introduction of the Republic. Even the French are subject to a belief in the power of chance over world history, a belief which contradicts all of Christianity and paganism, all probability and reason—as if the collision of thunderclouds, which, produced by the powers of nature and moving in predetermined circles, meeting and igniting destructive thunderbolts by necessity, were only a chance! Chance in a world that moves in the parameters of the strictest, most determined regularity, in which every destruction is accompanied by a creation! You are ashamed when you hear the children of the nineteenth century speak of chance in world history. As if anything could turn out other than it must! Where do you find the resignation to console yourself for the personal misfortune caused by blind chance? You can adapt to a necessity, but the stupid vagaries of blind chance, suggested by some simple person—never! The Republic was necessary for France, because it arose. And even if it should be of only short duration this time, it will still have served a needed function and have provided the seeds required for further development. I cling to that and am comforted. No one believes a reign of terror will occur but the monetary crisis is supposed to be very severe. The newspapers, especially the Réforme, blame the capitalists. They say, “The capitalists are betraying you just as the aristocracy did in 1789 by fleeing. The bankers conceal their capital; they are not making any loans; they hold back their funds to frighten you by stopping business. They want to force you to return to your jobs and work for your former wages. Do not believe them and do not work.” The fact is that many of the most important banks have suspended payment and 6. Helene Luise Elisabeth, Duchess of Orléans (1814–1858), daughter of the Archduke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, widow of Ferdinand Philippe d’Orléans . Louis Philippe’s oldest son, who had died in 1842.

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that no banker is paying out for the checks and letters of credit from Germany, even if they are drafted by the heads, the foundations of the stock exchanges. As a consequence, the foreigners are leaving, a large number of tradesmen are without income, many apartments are empty and the situation for the working classes has deteriorated to the extent that no support of the government can help matters any more. The night of the revolutionary battle must have been terrible. They drove the bloody corpses of those that had fallen at Guizot’s ministry on wagons through the streets. Men with burning torches illuminating the gaping wounds with their fiery light surrounded these wagons and the cry, “To arms! They are murdering us!” rang through the night air, drowning out the drumbeats and the sound of the alarm bells. Barricades arose as if by magic and spread through the whole city. The cry rang out continuously, “Give us light, light, or we’ll break the windowpanes! Lanterns in the windows!” Since it was very windy, however, the lights would not burn and they improvised with paper lanterns. On the balcony in front of our window, we found halves of potatoes hollowed out, put there to hold candles. In the Faubourg St. Martin, on one of the narrowest streets, the Rue St. Lazare—we visited a charming German woman, who had been forced to move to the district—the battle is supposed to have raged fiercely. Night and day the men did not leave the barricades; in the houses people prepared lint for bandages according to recipe; on the streets, women and children melted tin utensils and molded bullets. Everyone took part in the feverish excitement of rage. As soon as a troop of soldiers moved up, shots rang out from the barricades. Then the defenders leaped down to conceal themselves behind the breastworks. Every attack left behind dead and wounded on both sides, who were quickly dragged behind houses opened momentarily. Then the doors were immediately closed. Such a battle in the midst of a city, in the middle of the heart of a so-called civilization! “I trembled when I thought of these fighters,” said the lady describing these scenes to us. Everyone agrees the people acted magnificently. No one robbed, no one looted, except in the Tuileries; even there, the damage was limited to the destruction of the royal insignia. The royal throne was burned on the Tuileries square. Street boys and men pranced around, wrapped in the expensive shawls of the princesses and in torn-down velvet draperies and curtains. An old acquaintance,

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Karl Rahl,7 has depicted for me most originally the amazing costumes, made hastily, with high spirits and necessity, that were constructed in those days of battle. Madame Cornu,8 an excellent writer, to whom Bettina9 introduced me, gave us a vivid recounting today of her experiences during the revolution. She is a still young and pleasant lady, who lived for many years in Germany and Italy and is now writing the articles about German and Italian art and literature for an encyclopedia. Her husband is a painter of historical subjects. They have the upper floor of the house in the Faubourg St. Germain on the Rue de Varennes, where the mother of the Duke of Praslin also lives.10 Monsieur Cornu is a member of the National Guard and left his house at the first call in the morning. When the disturbances of the battle and the pealing of the alarm bells increased, his wife was no longer able to endure the torture of the uncertainty in her isolated rooms. She decided to go out on the streets to find out at least where her husband’s company had been sent. “But wherever I went,” she related, “I found barricades. However, on all of these there were men who offered me assistance and helped me over them. ‘Put your foot on my hand! We’ll assist you, we’ll help you, madame!’ the offer came from all sides. Once, a group of street boys stormed right in font of a barricade, loudly singing the ‘Carmagnole’11 and crowding around wildly, so that I was forced to seek shelter in the doorway of a house. Immediately, two men jumped down from the barricade, spread their arms, blackened by work and gunpowder, in front of me protectively, 7. Karl Rahl (1812–1865), Austrian historical painter and printmaker, “precursor of Makart in Vienna.” 8. Hortense Cornu, translator of Goethe and childhood friend of Napoleon III. She is one of the subjects of Lewald’s Zwölf Bilder aus dem Leben (Twelve Pictures from Life), Berlin: Janke, 1888: 157–95. 9. Bettina Brentano von Arnim (1785–1859), member of a family of famous writers. She was the granddaughter of novelist Sophie de la Roche, sister of poet Clemens Brentano and wife of poet Achim von Arnim. Earlier she was recognized primarily for her relationship with Goethe (her mother had been a close friend of his) and the publication of her correspondence with him, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835). She is now esteemed in her own right as a writer. Lewald admired her and her liberal ideas. 10. Charles de Choiseul, Duc du Praslin (1805–1847), center of a famous scandal in which his wife was murdered and he himself was fatally poisoned. The crime was never completely solved. 11. The carmagnole was a long topcoat worn by the men from Marseilles who took part in the storming of the Bastille. The name of the coat then became the name of a song and dance very popular with the revolutionaries after 1793.

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and cried, ‘Let’s have some respect for women! Do you have to hurt women to drive away a king?’” The next day, accompanied by her husband, she went to her usual grocery store. The store was surrounded by men and Monsieur Cornu, thinking that they were planning to loot it, stepped up, intending to foil their plans if possible, when the people left with the friendliest, “Thank you, madame; very obliged.” They had entered quite peacefully with the request, “We have been on the barricades for twenty-four hours. We are dying of hunger. Please let us have just one piece of bread!” The shop was full of sausages and hams hanging along the walls; roasted chickens and cheeses were lying around. But no one touched anything; no one demanded any of these items. When the proprietress voluntarily added a cheese and a few bottles of wine, the men shared them equally and thanked her profusely. Unfortunately, the rich will not believe that. They want to be afraid of their fellow citizens; they want to consider them thieves and make them into such. I have seen the houses of bankers, in which one took down the expensive curtains and draperies, locked up the silverware and gold plate and hid everything in the way of valuables. A goldsmith told me that many had their silverware melted down to save it from the threatened looting and to obtain ready cash. The second reason is very sensible; they are losing only the value of the craftsmanship and certainly less than they would be selling their completely devalued stocks and bonds. It is easy to see that the mood in Paris is not a very cheerful one under the circumstances; still, they believe in the endurance of the Republic and one of the foremost bankers said to me today, “It will be the only possible form of government for France in the future and we must try to maintain it at any cost.”

Paris, March 14 The two people I most wanted to see in Paris were George Sand and Heine.12 Sand is not in Paris but at her estate in Berry, where she is writing individual “Letters to the People.” Two have already appeared, elevated and beautiful as is everything this great soul creates. These letters and another letter by her in the Courrier 12. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), one of Germany’s leading writers, emigrated to Paris in 1831. There he served as corespondent for the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and mingled with all the important intellectuals and artists. He converted from

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français made such a strong impression on me that I was thinking of translating them and sending them quickly to Germany. But there would have been no sense to that. Our circumstances and those here are so completely different that the letters would have no impact on the majority of our people. They would have meaning for the craftsmen’s associations, but these already know what Sand is saying here and the powerful, compelling impression of her prophetic sibylline words would be lost in translation. Political education in France has gradually given the language a certain character, made it capable of expressing republican sentiments concisely. A heroic energy, a certain concentration has arisen in the language, as is demonstrated in the definite cadence of the cry, “Vive la République!” Public life, private conversations, revolutionary speakers over the last century have freed the language of all abstraction, from all academic dust. The French language has been made public property and a spiritual armament created by means of the language. Germans have not reached that point yet by any means. The contrast between the language of the intellectuals and the people’s way of expressing themselves is still very considerable. When we want to speak in everyday language, most of us still make the mistake of descending to the speech of children, of babbling rather than attempting to make the children speak more precisely. Since I could not become acquainted with Madame Sand, I wanted to satisfy my desire to meet Heine as soon as possible. He had left his apartment in town for a healthier atmosphere and had moved to a sanatorium on the Rue de 1’Oursine, far out beyond even the very remote Jardin des Plantes. I had first written him and inquired if I might visit him. However, what one says in such letters of inquiry is usually only a silly mixture of flattery and false modesty. So, without further ado, I made up my mind to go anyway, to send up my card and to let him decide if he would receive me. In the broad quiet court of the sanatorium the porter said, “On the second floor, number twenty-three.” We climbed up. A young housemaid was just leaving Heine’s room. We gave her the cards Judaism to Catholicism and married a Frenchwoman. A Bundestag resolution forbade publication of his writings in Germany after 1835 because of his association with the “young Germany” movement. Lewald was always a great admirer of his writing style, but later lost some of her enthusiasm for him because of her husband’s relatively negative appraisal. By 1848, Heine was already very ill with the spinal tuberculosis that was to kill him.

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and immediately the words “Enter, enter!” sounded from within. In the middle of a large bedroom with a large French canopied bed and blue furniture stood Heine, supporting himself with a table. He greeted us with the words, “My God, you have come all the way out here to see me! How did you ever find me! How I must look to you! I have suffered so much in the last few days that I can’t even consider getting dressed—my nerves could not bear any touch.”—”Please send me away, if you are suffering”—”No, no, please stay; it makes me happy; it cheers me up; it will make me healthy.”—”I didn’t ask you for permission to visit in writing to spare you the effort of a reply and was quite ready to be sent away and come another time, if you would prefer.” His doctor, a German-speaking Hungarian, said, “You wanted to spare him the effort of a note and he has been writing for the Allgemeine Zeitung for hours yesterday and today!” “Writing,” cried Heine, “Oh, I can’t write any more; I can’t, because we have no censorship! How can a person write without censorship, if he has always lived under censorship? All style will cease, all syntax, all good habits. When I used to write something stupid, I would think, “The censor will strike or change this; I relied on good censorship. But now I feel quite unhappy, unfocused. I keep hoping it is really not true and censorship still exists.” He laughed brightly and gaily. We could see that, despite his severe illness, he must have once been very attractive. His profile, his whole visage is delicate, the smoothly lying abundant hair light brown. A full beard, lightly touched by gray, surrounds his chin. The movement of his well-shaped thin hands is very noble. His mouth must have been particularly beautiful, because his expression is so pleasant, despite his crippling illness, that one expects all kinds of poetic words, sparkling playfulness and Aristophenean witticisms to fall from it. I realized how interested I was in him, how grateful for all the hours of immense reading pleasure I owe him. I would have been so happy to have known or done anything that would give him relief, distraction, or joy. Because I always saw him as a young man in spirit, I do not want to give you any picture of his bodily suffering. He is somewhat crippled and complains bitterly about his condition, which has robbed him of the use of his eyes to the extent that he can write only a little and cannot read at all. His wife, a tall beautiful Frenchwoman, truly what they call a “belle femme,” said, “But you’ve been doing better since you’ve been here, my dear.” The doctor confirmed this, promising further

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improvement for the spring. Because of consideration for Heine’s wife, the conversation was partly in German, partly in French. “Mr. Heine has celebrated spring so beautifully that spring would probably have to do something for him,” I said in jest. “I have also written beautifully about the sea and still have always been seasick. And the women most of all. How they have wounded me!” He laughed heartily. We spoke of Germany and of the French revolution. He had just driven to his residence in the city to partake of a small dinner with his wife and doctor, when the first assaults of the battle were heard. The coach ordered for the return to the hospital was overturned to form a barricade and he had had a problem in getting back. He asked many questions about Germany, let me read him a letter about the revolution in Bremen I had just received and still had in my pocket, wanted information about his acquaintances in Germany and kept coming back to the painful lament, “You have no idea what it means to experience such revolutions in my condition. I should have been either healthy or dead!” But despite these complaints he uttered the warmest hopes for Germany and joked simultaneously about the amazement and the terror of the Germans if they were ever to be free. We were at Heine’s almost an hour and finally left so as not to tire him, although he begged us to stay. At our farewell, he promised to come to visit us as soon as he had a good day. Later in the day I spoke to Germans who were suspicious of him, reproaching him for being on Guizot’s pension list and receiving four thousand francs from the government; they felt he had sold out. This gossip is really obnoxious. I can believe that Heine received support from the government just as other political refugees did, but what does that prove against him! Even if many German exiles did not receive this pension, that is explicable without Heine having sold himself for it. It can probably be assumed that France wanted to show its proud magnanimity by supporting a poet like Heine when his fatherland rejected him. The case of Heine is like that of noble natures if they are betrayed by the love of their youth. You can finally become accustomed to thinking of this betrayal and be calm about it, but you do not forget the love nor the pain. You come to regard what you once loved with complete objectivity, to see all its flaws—but you will never slander it. They say that Heine praised France to the detriment of Germany, derided Germany in comparison to France. Every reasonable person must do this; no matter how flawed the

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situation in France was, it was golden compared to ours. If Heine had praised Russia, had ever flattered the hierarchy or any servitude, you could blame him for self-betrayal, but where has he ever done that? Neither the Winter’s Tale nor Atta Troll13 nor any of his other works, lack freedom and those who look eagerly for flaws in him should remember that it was Heinrich Heine who sang of freedom, whose lyrics warbled up to the heavens like the rejoicing of the early-morning larks, when Germany lay captive as if in a leaden shroud in the years from 1826 to 1830. They further state that his admiration of Napoleon is not German and criticize, with the small measure of their limited patriotism, the honor a writer gladly renders the greatest genius of the century without repeating the faults everyone knows. Heine’s detractors should do the same for Heine and never forget that, in spite of his flaws, he is one of our greatest writers and that our language and all German-speakers have very much for which to thank him. It is Heine who removed the golden fetters of Goethe’s despotism14 and valiantly gained the right for Germans to treat our language as the free property of the individual with individuality. That was a considerable achievement for the spiritual development of the language of the people. My old predilection for Heine, going back to my early youth, makes me want to write a long treatise here; many of Heine’s lyrics have accompanied me all my life as favorites—their rhythm has revived me in days of severe suffering and I have been refreshed by their wealth of life. So the encounter with Heine was no ordinary event for me. We went to the Rue de l’Oursine by bus. It was a considerable journey from our apartment and we were forced to change busses three times; that is, the passengers moved to other busses at certain street corners, where the various bus lines intersect. I should think that you do not arrive at your destination the most quickly this way, since each bus line certainly covers the longest possible stretch, but you finally do reach your goal. For me, the detours had the advantage of showing a large part of the city and particularly the smaller, more remote streets. There is much of interest everywhere on these 13. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (1844) is a satire in rhymed verse of contemporary German aesthetics and politics. Atta Troll (1841), another satirical epic, but in unrhymed verse, about a dancing bear, pillories the German radicals of the 1830s and the follies of human beings in general. 14. The language of Germany’s greatest writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) has probably influenced every German writer after him. He was certainly a very strong influence on Lewald, especially in regard to style.

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routes. Yesterday we saw four thousand Swiss who wanted to wish the Republic good luck moving into the city hall. They wore red armbands marked with a white cross.15 Then, followed by a large crowd, they carried the bust of Freedom, a gift from a sculptor, up to the roof. “It is the bust of Madame Roland they are carrying to the Hôtel de Ville! Long live Madame Roland!”16 Next came a group of perhaps fifteen hundred street boys. They all had strips of white paper inscribed with the number of their districts on their caps. They were brought to the city hall to form a mobile guard. That is a strange matter. All these street boys had weapons during the days of the revolution and people were afraid that taking them away would cause a riot. So it was cleverly decided to make the ones to be guarded into guards, the goats into gardeners, the street boys into a regular corps. They are supposed to be mixed with the National Guard and do the job of the deposed Municipal Guard for the time being. In the evening at the Théâtre de Variétés where we saw Bouffé in Le pouvoir d’une femme, this mobile guard was already policing the line before the theater and on all the stairs and entrances. They were dressed in their own clothes but had red armbands. They put all their rifles into a large cabinet in the vestibule and nailed it shut. The saying is current around town that, “Louis Philippe was driven out by one Italian, two Poles and three street boys.” The role these boys are playing here can best be illustrated by an anecdote. When the old Countess d’Agoult sent a servant out during the first disturbances in February to find out what was going on, he returned with the following reply, “Madame, matters are becoming serious; even the street boys are getting involved!” On all the public buildings there is still a “Respect national property” sign next to the “Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité!” and on the Jardin des Plantes and the Sorbonne, “Respect for the arts and sciences.” In front of the Elysée Palace in the Faubourg St. Honoré one reads, “Refuge for the wounded; ambulance.” Everywhere you go, you are reminded of the events. Two street boys are standing guard in front of an artillery barracks—and it is not the end of the world, although the military has left, the Municipal Guard has been abolished and the king has been dethroned. 15. These replicated the colors of the Swiss flag. 16. Jeanne-Marie Roland de Plàtiere (1754–1793) was an enthusiastic republican before and during the French Revolution. She had great influence on the Girondists, one of whom was her husband. After their fall, she was arrested and guillotined. Her memoirs, written in prison, were published in 1820.

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Paris, March 15 Yesterday I saw two of the most famous buildings, St. Madeleine’s and the stock exchange, both built in the most beautiful classical style and therefore wonderfully arresting. The eyes rest with pure pleasure on the long, beautifully attenuated lines of the framework of St. Madeleine’s and on its slender supporting columns rising upward. There is already something very pleasing about the lovely horizontal lines of the steps leading up to the church, because they continually draw your gaze upward and raise the building, the actual work of art, above the earth while at the same time connecting to it. The interior is decorated in the friendly, if not exactly beautiful, style of the modern Italian churches. Rich golden ornaments, many bright pictures, colored marble—all give an impression of cheerful splendor marred only by bad marble statues. Even the statues which fill the niches on the exterior of the church—apostles and saints, I think—are not exactly beautiful. The figures all show some mannerism and look as if their torsos were too short. It must lie in the treatment of the folds of their garments. The church was heated, with the warmth coming up from the floor. There were charitable solicitations, signed by three noblewomen, by all the entrances. One chapel with a confessional bore the inscription, “Property of the Ladies of Charity.” Many ladies belonging to the wealthy class sat in front of the box. One woman spoke for a long time with the confessor before her daughter knelt for confession; the woman, also kneeling, remained at her daughter’s side. Not far from this sat two workers reading the Reformé and the Courrier Satan. So the aristocracy and the people, hierarchy, religion, luxury, comfort, and socialist matters mix here to form a whole. The most striking thing at the Stock Exchange (besides the beautiful architecture) is that mailboxes had been placed there so that you can mail letters (but only those with stamps) here later in the day than at the other city post offices. This is a very good idea, since everybody, not just the businessmen, can make use of them. After viewing the Stock Exchange we made several visits in town. What struck me most was the narrowness and the elegance of the apartments. To be sure, the rich—the banker princes and the aristocracy—live in large mansions built around square courtyards and have a view of the beautiful quiet gardens in the Faubourg St. Germain. But even quite well-to-do people live in very close quarters by German standards—not so much in the number of rooms

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as the square footage. An apartment consists of a salon, a dining room, a bedroom for Madame, which doubles as a reception room, a second for Monsieur and some sort of workroom or boudoir for one or the other. The narrowness of the rooms has led to the invention of special furniture and such a bedroom for Madame is utilized like a cabin on a steamship. All of them have a large bed on a platform. It has hangings and a bedspread of the same material and is fitted up like the throne beds of antiquity with large bolsters at the head and foot. The surface of the bed, already very wide by German standards, can be extended even further at night and forms a very comfortable resting place, since the French mattresses, covers, and feather comforters leave nothing to be desired. In front of the fireplace are small sofas and a few armchairs. On the wall over the fireplace is a mirror. The mantelpiece holds an elegant clock, bronze candelabra, a pair of bellows, and some knickknacks. There is always a silk curtain which is lowered after the fire has died out. So a warm comfortable little area results which probably seems more welcoming to a stranger than our homes in the North. (There, if we are not very rich, we sleep in ice-cold rooms at night and freeze in half-warmed reception rooms during the day, letting our guests freeze with us.) I found the French arrangement of a room even in the home of a seamstress, who lives very comfortably and elegantly in a side street in quite modest quarters. After we left Heine, we visited various other people, some of whom belonged to the shopkeeping class, among them a very skilled optician, a member of the Academy, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and also the owner of a dress shop in the Faubourg St. Honoré. These people naturally had their own opinions about the revolution, which was detrimental to their businesses. The optician, of whom I requested a quick delivery of my order, assured me that this was out of his hands. He and his son had so many demands to perform guard duty and patrols, that they could not find time or quiet for the precision their work required. The dress shop owner was particularly unhappy because she could not keep her assistants busy. However, everyone to whom we spoke agreed that the spirit of the people left nothing to be desired, that workers at every level had shown “the deepest selfsacrifice, the deepest restraint, the noblest unselfishness.” The workers were said to have been reasonable, moderate, not have demanded anything outrageous, only the abolition of the slavery which burdened them. They wanted to breathe more freely, to be

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able to relax after their work and to have that work made more rewarding. That would be cheap, since many workers were paid relatively poorly anyway and their salaries had no relationship with the prices of the most essential elements for living. No one was thinking less of the overturning of class differences than the workers, nor getting rid of luxurious living, the demands of which paid their wages. The resident workers and the small shop owners abhorred communism and disapproved of the abolishment of titles, an act that had driven the aristocracy and the English tourists from Paris and had hurt their businesses. Other people saw the only salvation of France in the abolition of the standing army. They were not afraid of communism, which was nonsense to them, but they did fear an inevitable national bankruptcy as Louis Philippe’s legacy to France. This financial emergency and the fear abroad of military aggression on the part of France would both be allayed by the abolition of the army. A million francs would be saved every day, lowering expenditures and facilitating the lowering of prices for basic goods for the worker. But the threat of war makes it impossible to consider the abolition of the army for a people as warlike as the French. Even their street boys had just vanquished an army of eighty thousand men and ended a revolution in a few days. There was often a great aversion shown to “professional republicans.” “We are all republicans, we want the Republic, to see our businesses, our property preserved and institutions to be created which will make the acquisition of property possible for everyone, but there are foreign republicans, men without a country, who are nothing, who have no standing and who hope to find one in the turmoil of the revolution.” Although these speakers did complete justice to Lamartine and other members of the provisional government, they feared the ideas of Louis Blanc. They spoke of Ledru-Rollin, whom they suspected of embezzlement, asserting that he only formulated the law against the arrest of debtors to protect himself, because he was burdened with debts. “Lamartine is a poet,” they said, “Louis Blanc a historian, Crémieux a skilled attorney; these people can survive even without being members of the government, but Ledru-Rollin, Caussidiere, Flocon17 have to be republicans and make their living 17. Isaac Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880), French politician, was an attorney who had represented many of the dissidents in Paris after the July Revolution. After February 1848, he was a member of the Provisional Government and Minister of Justice. He founded the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

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from that—that is dangerous!” So there are renewed suspicions and division even here; the Provisional Government is somewhat less than united within. Ledru-Rollin would like to overthrow Lamartine, the moderates want to prevent him, and Lamartine fights with almost superhuman strength to restore order.

Paris, March 15 (evening) I have frequently seen Herwegh and his wife.18 Both are in a state of feverish excitement. This is easily explicable, when you think with what desire, with what fervent longing Herwegh has been living in hopes of a republican future. Yet, the more actively I become involved with him, since I met him and learned to respect him three years ago, the more apprehensive I become about his present actions. He is the head of a committee of German republicans who recently presented the government with their congratulations for the freedom it had achieved. That is quite in order, but now they want to proclaim a republic in Germany immediately, too! They demand weapons from the government, which has stated expressly that it does not want to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. They put up astounding signs at street corners, demanding weapons, clothing and money from the French to come to the aid of their German brothers on the other side of the Rhine. Collections were taken up in the churches for the German republicans. The Germans exercise on the Field of Mars. I am constantly hearing, “The Germans are moving in force,” and am (1807–1874) French politician and founder of the periodical La Réforme. He was a member of the Radical Left and was instrumental in forming the Provisional Government on February 24, 1848, in which he served as Minister for Home Affairs. He organized the first elections with universal suffrage. Marc Caussidiere (1808–1871), French politician. In February 1848, after fighting on the barricades, he formed his own police corps. Later he was elected to the National Assembly. After the failure of the revolution, he fled to the United States, where he spent the rest of his life. Ferdinand Flocon (1800–1866), French politician and journalist, editor-in-chief of La Réforme and also a member of the Provisional Government as Minister of Commerce. All the above were exiled after Louis Napoleon came into power. 18. Georg Herwegh (1817–1875), German writer. His radically oriented 1841 book of political poetry, Gedichte einem Lebendigen (Poems by a Living Man) helped pave the way for the revolution. He had been living in Paris since 1844 and became the leader of the German republicans there. In April 1848, he joined a workers’ battalion in a abortive march on Baden and was wounded, but survived to return to Paris. He lived his final years in Baden-Baden.

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always asking, “Why?” without receiving a sensible answer. A few of the German workers I happened to see, because they were representatives of Herwegh, were completely useless. They answered yes and no to everything indiscriminately. The exiled Poles and Russians here are also on the move. They want to “march” somewhere, too; recently I saw some of them sitting and arguing about the borders of Poland. A club of political ex-prisoners has been formed, to which Herwegh and the Poles belong.19 The more you love true freedom, the more confidently you hope to be able to see a republican constitution gradually spreading over the earth as a reality, the more you worry about the confusions in the minds of those who cherish the ideal of the republic in their hearts and whom you value as the carriers, the supports of their own idealism. Herwegh’s restlessness makes me anxious. It obviously has its basis in the fact that he, a poet in the truest sense of the word, now suddenly wants to become a reformer creating history. His imagination makes him believe that Germany is at the same developmental stage that France has just now reached. It is an excusable error, because Herwegh has been gone from our country for years. But he does not want to believe that he is wrong. I am afraid he would create a terrible nightmare if he were to actualize the premature dreams of his mind in real life. Freedom is his religion. He would be glad to be a martyr for the rebirth of mankind. He considers humanity ruined in the upper classes, decadent and not capable of salvation by a moral ideal. Therefore, he would quietly observe their destruction and perish with them, just so that afterwards, mankind, purged of them, could develop toward freedom with the healthy lower classes. This is the reason he does not fear the anarchy, the dissolution that would otherwise seem to be at such complete odds with his natural sense of beauty. I believe firmly that he could sacrifice himself completely unselfishly for the common good and that his wife has the courage and the love to let him sacrifice himself for his idea. You can call it fanaticism; you can fear, as I do, that this fanaticism blinds them to the possibilities of the moment; but you must admit that they are both noble natures if you have the least understanding of character. In addition, Emma Herwegh possesses such a deep love of humankind and such a unreserved devotion to it that that alone makes her beautiful and significant. 19. The problems of Poland occur in several of Lewald’s works, including the epistolary novel, Liebesbriefe aus dem Leben eines Gefangenen (Love Letters from the Life of a Prisoner) (1850), which takes place in 1847.

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Sometimes, when I hear people rail against those men who see the only possibility of a better future in the destruction of the status quo, or when they criticize and condemn those persons who have broken with the past, its practices and its opinions, I become very worried. But what I find most incomprehensible is when one wants to cite temporary failure as proof for the invalidity of a theory. It is as if the people had never heard a word about the past, about world history. No regeneration arrives in finished condition, springing fully armed from the lap of time; all reformers have been called agitators, immoral, rebels; all new sects have been mocked, despised, and where possible, crucified. If such persecutions are not happening now it is certainly not the fault of the few whose existing rights are being attacked by the reformers. Never has a moral truth, which opposed injustice posing as justice, been welcomed by all mankind as truth when it first emerged. When Luther tore the papal bull down from the church doors at Wittenberg, to burn it on the marketplace to the rejoicing of the students, when he, an Augustinian monk, for whom celibacy was a commandment, took the nun Catharina von Bora from her convent and as a bride in the presence of his friends, many probably considered this rebel against religion and state a most immoral man and undoubtedly ascribed such outrages to him as are now heaped upon the socialists. Even Christ Himself, who surrounded himself with workers, who wanted to convert the scribes and Pharisees with uneducated men from the people, who swung the whip with his own hand against the moneychangers in the house of God, was considered an agitator, a rebel and crucified as such! It is hardly surprising that the people who uncover the errors, the terrible contradictions of our conditions and strive to improve them are being vilified even today. How can there still be people who let themselves be misled by the judgment of strangers and who are alarmed that these men are called revolutionary and immoral, because they have the courage to discard the beaten track that has become habit and the appearance of abuse that has become legitimate! Everyone has had to do this, everyone to endure it, who defended truth against a lie and himself from submission to the lie. When Christ purified the Temple, when Luther burned the papal bull, they destroyed fear of the icon, “What will people say?”, for those with wisdom and inner freedom, which still rules the world as the prime god and takes the place of moral conviction for the weak. I doubt that the socialists will achieve their goal now or that they already have the consciousness of

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something better that can replace their consciousness of what is bad at present—something good that can survive. But the problem must be solved because the necessity for the solution exists and it can be that the future will belong to the socialists or their descendants. I was surprised to read the words “Phalansterium Printers”20 over a book store on the Quai d’Orsay and to see only socialist works displayed in the window. In Germany we are not accustomed to having socialism appear as a reality in our lives; even the form in which it appears is strange to us. I recently received a letter from Madame Eugénie Niboyet,21 the editor of the journal, The Women’s Voice. A Socialist and Political Journal: Voice of Everyone’s Interests. A Russian aristocrat of the purest type, living in Paris, a friend of hers, had wanted to introduce the two of us. The letter reads: Mademoiselle! My dearest friend, whom I call my good angel, suggested before her departure that I should make your acquaintance. I would have brought the letter to you immediately, if I could, but I am editing and directing a daily paper, The Women’s Voice and I am the slave of my work. Since you are free, come to me, woman of letters; forgive me for calling you sister. We need to talk to one another, to understand one another. Our mission of peace is beginning; if we are strong, humanity will benefit; come to us! I am sending you an issue of our, of your, publication. Please read it; please publicize it! We need all the help we can get. We must all participate in its publication without regard to our own national origins. We are sisters in the name of humanity.

The subtitle of the paper states: “The Women’s Voice is the first and only serious outlet open to women. Their moral, intellectual and material interests will be openly supported there. And to this end we appeal to everyone’s sympathies.” The first article in the issue I have before me is entitled “Union Makes Strength,” and 20. The Phalansterium was the name given to the cooperative association proposed by French socialist Charles Fourier (1772–1837) in his periodical La Phalanstére. It was to be a union of producer, consumer, and cooperative living group. 21. The Voix des Femmes, together with a club of the same name, was founded by an ex-Saint-Simonian, Eugénie Niboyet, in March 1848. The paper was a four-page daily, appearing six days a week. Niboyet tried to have George Sand elected to the Constituent Assembly, but Sand declined the honor in a very unpleasant letter to the editors of the Réforme. The Voix des Femmes demanded that some unmarried or widowed women be allowed to run in the April 1848 elections and that married women be given civil rights. These demands were totally ignored by the Provisional Government. The newspaper ceased publication in June 1848. The letter is quoted by Lewald in its original French.

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begins: “The elections are approaching. Women’s actions can be powerful. Let them exercise this power. The government of the Republic is their government, too. The time has come to work without respite. Unite, agitate within your family; agitate in the city! Choose those of your brother nominees whom you consider worthy as your candidates. No childish considerations—exercise your rights as citizens and be worthy of that name,” etc. This is followed by an excellently written article, “The Pope,” and a beautiful letter from George Sand, “To the Rich,” which is reprinted here, but was probably not actually written for the paper, since Sand has declared elsewhere that she was not one of the collaborators of The Women’s Voice. Then there are articles about the financial and commercial crisis; the official acts of the Provisional Government; the misery in Germany by Bettina von Arnim—a translation of the report about the people of the Vogtland area from This Book Belongs to the King22; a chapter about the real destiny of women; the usual, but very brief, reviews of French and foreign political newspapers; various news items from Paris itself; some announcements; and a program of events. That completes the issue, printed in the printing shop of Madame Delacombe. I am writing about this in such detail to give you an idea of how such matters are handled here. On the whole, the tone of the newspaper is wildly exaggerated, but there are still many sensible things about it. At any rate, it is interesting as an expression of contemporary life and its aspirations. I am sure that Madame Niboyet is no common or ordinary woman because of the name of the mutual friend whom she mentioned.

Paris, March 16 (evening) This was an extraordinary evening. We had felt uneasy all day and even the previous day, because the majority of the National Guard was demanding the dissolution and absorption of the individual Elite Guards. But the Elite Guards did not want to be dissolved. They are the Grenadiers and the Fusiliers. The former had bearskin busbies like the former Imperial Guard, the latter yellow crests on their helmets. The Elite Guards consist of the inhabitants 22. Dies Buch gehört dem König, published in 1843, presents Bettina’s social, religious, and political views. It is dedicated to Frederick William IV. Bettina considers it the duty of the king to correct the social injustices in his country. She thus tries to familiarize him with some of the problems in Prussia.

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of the first and second arrondisements, the suburbs of St. Honoré, Chaussée d’Antin, etc., and thus represent the aristocracy and so-called “high finance.” At six o’clock we drove to Madame de K.’s for dinner. She entered her house with us immediately, threw her hat off breathlessly and cried, “They are arming in the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Denis; we’ll have a battle tonight! I have just come from the Hôtel de Ville; the square is full of people; they threw stones and yelled curses at the first and second battalions of the National Guard. Women were coming up with aprons full of stones, boys tore the dagger from the hand of General Courtais23 and broke it. There will certainly be a battle.” A Pole and a young Spanish duke, both residents of Paris, both in the National Guard, assured us that there was nothing to fear for the moment despite the great excitement. We sat down to eat so we could leave for a meeting of the Central Club of the Republicans, where, as the men knew, these happenings were to be discussed. The Club was meeting in the Conservatoire de Musique near our apartment. We stopped our coach at some distance. Two Poles, one of whom has been a political science professor here for years, accompanied us. In the large, somewhat neglected main hall of the Conservatoire, where the statues of the Muses stand, some very wild-looking men in smocks and shirtsleeves were on guard. They had tricolored bands on their right arms. “Your tickets?” The Poles showed their tickets. “But the women?” We had none and one of our companions went out find a man from Marseilles, a member of the club he knew. The latter was a handsome, very dark man. He let us open Louis Philippe’s box in the center; others entered with us. I sat in the first row and had an excellent view. The hall is not very attractive. It has three rows of open boxes and some small closed boxes at the top in addition to the orchestra seats. The whole place was full of men, and among them, twenty to thirty working-class women. On the platform sat the officers and several “Commissaires d’ordre” in front of a table set with burning candles; they also wore tricolored bands on their right arms. The large chandelier in the middle of the hall was lighted, but only every fourth candle, and it remained fairly dark in the hall. The great questions being discussed were the removal of paid troops from Paris, the inclusion of the Corps in 23. General Courtais (Vicomte de Courtais), commander of the National Guard. He was a retired cavalry office of Bourbon origin, but a radical republican.

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the National Guard and a declaration of honor, a vote of confidence for the Minister for Home Affairs, Ledru-Rollin, who is in as much disfavor with the old National Guard as he is in favor with the new and the Mobile Guard. All the speakers and most of the audience wore civilian clothes, a very few, the uniform of the National Guard, and still fewer was the number of workers. The president, a elderly, completely baldheaded man, spoke softly but very calmly and distinctly. He said immediately, “I have noticed that those citizens who came here speak for the common good are being interrupted and annoyed with cries of ‘Louder!’ Gentlemen, what you have before you are not paid actors, whom you can force to do as you wish. It is to the interest of every speaker to make himself comprehensible and everyone will certainly speak as loudly as his voice allows. If this is too weak, however, we should be particularly quiet and attentive. You cannot force anyone to damage his voice to be heard above the noise.” The assembly was extraordinarily moved. Finally, when a man spoke against Ledru-Rollin and for Lamartine, it became so passionate and stormy, that an apocalypse was to be feared if you went by German standards. Everyone was screaming, “Down with the aristocrats!” They did not want to let him speak. He raised his hand several times as a signal that he wanted to continue; they hissed, screamed, pounded the floor with their canes; a shrill whistle sounded. Then the president intervened, “Gentlemen, we are all French; we are republicans and reasonable men. We have overthrown one power, because it wanted to enslave our personal freedom; shall we commit the same crime and enslave thoughts and the freedom of speech in an assembly of republicans? Speak up, sir; do us the honor of giving us your opinion.” Each of these words was greeted with a resounding “Bravo!” but the speeches in favor of the good Minister for Home Affairs, the excellent Ledru-Rollin, became more and more lively, the charges against Lamartine and the aristocratic National Guard stronger and stronger. Finally the man from Marseilles began to speak. “It is not a matter of the Guards’ busbies or the Fusiliers’ yellow-crested helmets; it is a question of equality. These gentlemen of the first and second legions do not want to be mistaken for the general run of people. They want to gather around the authorities, no matter who they are, to form a barrier between them and the people and they want to do as much as they can to raise the barrier very high again. We want to stop them, to bring the first stones. It’s not a

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matter of bearskins, under which donkeyskins peek out,”—jubilant laughter—”but a matter of our freedom and equality. I have just received this letter”—he read it aloud—”in this letter a reactionary party from the provinces calls for a protest against the dissolution of the Corps. Here are the signatures.” “Read the names!” cries came from all sides. The man from Marseilles wanted to comply; the president would not permit it. “The names don’t matter; all that matters are the facts. To read the names would be a base denunciation and dangerous, because it would sow dissension at a moment when we need the greatest unity. What would you do if you knew the names? Nobody has killed or punished those who attacked our freedom; you were satisfied to render them harmless and to expose their punishable deeds to scorn and ridicule. The people who invented vaudeville can be satisfied with this type of punishment, when they are as strong as now by the power of their justice.” The names were not read. Then a large, very energetic looking man in an overcoat stepped up to the rostrum. He had a heavy beard around his mouth and chin and his black hair streamed loosely and wildly over his somber forehead. He spoke quietly at best, reviewed everything and finally asked and answered the question of what was to be done. The people should assemble unarmed, quite unarmed—he emphasized this word strongly and repeated it numerous times—present themselves to the provisional government and just show them what a large number of persons demanded the dissolution of the Corps. At the same time, they should declare themselves against “the deplorable weakness of the provisional government and especially that of Monsieur Lamartine.” Great outcries from several sides: “Respect for Lamartine! Moderate your language!” “I know and consider everything I am saying. The government is feckless and indecisive. The members have already taken all control away from the people by dividing all the ministries among themselves, just as Louis Philippe requisitioned offices and honors for his family. The Provisional Government only had to supervise the offices, the ministers supervise the state, until the opening of the National Assembly. It would have been better to have retained the old ministers rather than have the ministries administer themselves, immediately forming a new bureaucracy within the Provisional Government. So we must assemble tomorrow.” “To do what?” a voice from a box asked sarcastically. “My friends!” the speaker thundered. “We are all republicans—but we have false brothers among us!” “Yes, yes!” resounded from every

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corner. A tin whistle which had blown earlier could be heard again. “Down with the whistlers! Down with them. Throw them out!” someone yelled. The president, “These are childish pranks—the street boy type. I am expecting those in the vicinity of the whistler to take care of the matter by throwing him out.” A “commissaire d’ordre” sprang from the platform to the floor. “The whistler is here, no, there!” They looked for him, found him and he was ejected. Finally Monsieur Blanqui24 spoke. A small man with a sharp look and graying smooth black hair cut “à la mécontent,” he was one of the leaders of the revolution in February who had been in prison for a long time because of political conditions. He resembled the pictures of Lucien Bonaparte.25 His dress was painstaking; a brownish overcoat over a dark suit and dark gloves he did not remove while speaking. He propped his arms on the table and said quietly, “Gentlemen, I have been visiting the Republican Clubs of Paris one by one. The workers will assemble on the Place de la Concorde at ten o’clock in the morning, without weapons, their hands in their pockets—without weapons, gentlemen, because we do not need them. Then we shall proceed to the Hôtel de Ville to make the following demands: first, the absorption of the Corps into the National Guard; secondly, a universal arming of the people; finally, the removal of the line troops. They will grant us these if they see that the people all have the same opinion. Finally we want to thank Monsieur Ledru-Rollin for all he has done for the nation. So, ten o’clock, without weapons, gentlemen, on the Place de la Concorde.” That was the end of the meeting, although there was much shouting that continued. Some individual groups formed, but the majority left the place. So tomorrow there will be a great demonstration!

Paris, March 17 (evening) Quite early , single groups with flags moved through our street acting so seriously and quietly that the crowd became quiet, too, and made way for them when they passed. We were in great suspense. We could not bear it in our rooms; so we got dressed and went down to the street at ten. We met several acquaintances on 24. Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881), French socialist. He was active in revolutionary affairs from 1830 on and considered himself a “révolutionnaire professionel.” His followers, the Blanquistes, were active into the twentieth century. 25. Lucien Bonaparte (1775–1840), brother of Napoleon I.

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the Boulevard de la Madeleine who had been driven out of their houses by excitement as we had. On the Boulevards Montmartre, des Italiens, de la Madeleine, peace reigned. The coaches and busses went their way; peddlers, newspaper vendors and the whole petty trade of the streets did their daily jobs unhindered and undisturbed. We wandered through the Rue de la Paix, the end of which is adorned by the statue of Napoleon on its column, turned around, and strolled back along the boulevards toward the Madeleine, through the magnificent Rue Royale to the Place de la Concorde. But it was quiet even there. Children were playing around the Luxor Obelisk and jumping rope in the Tuileries Garden where the trees were budding out. Some corps of workers, latecomers, came along the quay over the Pont Royal to go to the city hall. We kept dawdling along the streets until a lively movement of the people lured us back to the boulevards around three. We had probably gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of the Passage Joufroy when they came along — one hundred thousand of them! They were returning from the Hôtel de Ville and had marched through the boulevards from the Porte St. Denis on. One cannot overemphasize the impression of this mass of people. A hundred thousand men, mainly workers; in front of every guild, the tricolored flag with the inscription, “Message from the nation!”26 They moved by tens, their arms linked. Most of them wore smocks; many workers’ associations wore bourgeois clothing. Fathers had their boys by the hand or in their arms; a few women went arm in arm with the men. Military medals gleamed on many smocks. Students from the Ecole Polytechnique, marines and their officers, numerous priests, especially Irish ones, were in the procession with the people. They sang the “Marseillaise,” the “Carmagnole,” the “Parisienne,” the new national hymns all together. The refrains, “Marchons, ça ira!”—”Les aristocrates á la laterne!”—”Mourir pour la patrie!”—and “Vive la République!” resounded alternately in our ears. When the priests appeared the cry was, “Long live the priests! Oh, the good priests! Long live the clergy; it is fraternizing with the people!” Wild shouts of “Down with the aristocrats! Down with the Elite Corps! Down with black tailcoats! Long live smocks!” were interspersed. On one occasion, two cooks came to the door of one of the coffee houses; everyone laughed and a loud, “Down with the white hats! Vive la République!” vibrated through the air. 26. An ironic play on the words, “Message to the nation,” of previous rulers.

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All the windows were filled with people; many waved the tricolored flag in greeting or tied red, white and blue handkerchiefs together and let them flutter. On the balconies of restaurants the men stood crowded together, swinging their hats, waving greetings with their hands and responding to the cry, “Vive la République!” with a countercry. An impression that cannot be described, let alone grasped. They had received the promise that their demands would be met. How could you resist this mass of people? The rejoicing was boundless. “Tonight, the lanterns! Definitely, the lanterns!” the workers and the street boys yelled in the joy of victory. But mournful voices sounded among the groups standing next to us. They feared a dictatorship by Ledru-Rollin, the resignation of Lamartine. Two recent proclamations posted by the government about the discords in the National Guard and the coming elections were more strongly worded than earlier versions concerning these issues. But these proclamations also seemed pale and colorless in comparison to the power of the actual circumstances; in essence, Lamartine’s decrees made no impression despite their noble intent and language. They seem insipid, whatever you may say against this assertion. In a battle only power counts, only the blare of trumpets and the thunder of cannons; the most beautiful Beethoven symphony seems ineffectual against the attack signal of the war trumpets. Lamartine’s brief noble lyrical language is out of place. He lacks Napoleon’s short epic catchwords to capture the majority. That majority has no real faith in the provisional government; and without faith one is powerless, just as one becomes omnipotent with a belief in one’s own power. Today some people demanded a postponement of the elections until the old officials in the provinces are removed and replaced, because they fear that the former could strengthen Lamartine’s party. Its opponents claim that it is promoting the regency of the Duchess of Orléans. A white flag was planted this morning on the Champs-Elysées. The cry of “Long live Henry V” was met with a beating and a small riot ensued. Everyone thought it was a trick by the government—little attention was paid. At noon I wanted to go to visit Princess G. to bid her farewell, since she is leaving Paris. I had to cross the procession of workers twice, but that created no problem, and although I was in a light-colored formal dress, no one bothered me. On the contrary, they made way very goodnaturedly. You have to believe what you are told about attacks by proletarians, because these are reported by reputable people, but

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why does nothing like that happen to me? The princess complained that one of the women hotel attendants, with whom she had spoken, had sat down in her presence, and upon being rebuked, had said, “Madame, I am your equal.” The prince reported that his carriage had been stopped and that people had yelled, “Look at the rich scoundrels! But soon we will ride in carriages and they will walk!” A woman on the street, begging, barred the way for another lady we know, saying, “Madame, you have two gold bracelets and I don’t even have bread!” A third lady heard the words behind her, “Look, that doll over there is still wearing embroidered skirts and lace handkerchiefs.” That may all be true, but don’t such remarks stem from an arrogant fear of the people, because of the provocative display of fine dress that has become second nature for the rich? We have crossed Paris by day and night, on foot and by coach, almost always without a male companion and often in full formal dress, and have never encountered the slightest problem. Everyone has been courteous and has begged for alms in the most modest way, although their need is probably very great. Meanwhile, the foreigners are blinded as if by fear. They are emigrating in caravans. The Russians have to leave, the British want to leave, and whoever remains only does so because the banks are not giving out any travel money. The British Embassy has issued five thousand passports recently. Mrs. Austin, whom I was supposed to find here, has already left. Paris is conspicuously empty; we can see this by the fact that we are often the only guests in the foremost, most often visited restaurant at six o’clock, the fashionable time to eat. The hotel keepers complain bitterly and the shops are without customers. [Lewald attends a performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 opera, Robert the Devil, which concludes with not only the usual singing of the “Marseillaise,” but a rendition of a new patriotic song.] It had a march tempo and a fresh, forceful drum roll accompanying the chorus. One strophe contained the approximate words, “Even to the depth of its roots/ The old throne was corrupt.” This sounded inappropriate in a place where, only few days ago, these same singers had bowed to this king and sworn him allegiance. The refrain of the song was, “Long live republican France! Liberty is on the wing,” and had a beautiful jubilant sound. — When we came out of the theater near midnight, all Paris was illuminated. Now it is after two in the morning.

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Paris, March 18 [Lewald gives her initial impressions of Paris—not only the Pantheon, Notre Dame, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries, etc., but also the residential areas and small shops on the Ile de la Cité and in the vicinity of the Sorbonne.] Today the revolution was truly in the air, if you can say that. You felt it, you sensed it, like an approaching thunderstorm. The workers were standing all around in groups of three or four again or moving silently in larger bands through the streets. Government posters demand a return to the workplace and explain that the foreign workers cannot participate in the national workshops. In one of the best shawl shops, where we purchased an item and wanted to have something laundered, we asked when we could pick it up. “That depends on the workers, who still haven’t returned,” was the reply. Every day we hear of large banks and manufacturers who have to suspend payments; daily we hear new appeals to “the high-minded people” about their “good sense.” But the people do not want to work; they want to be fed. It seems to me that this situation is getting completely out of government control. In Lamartine’s History of the Girondistes [sic], there is a sentence which could refer to the man himself: “Genius is to be pitied when one sees it battling with the impossible.”27 No one knows, no one can predict, when or where this crisis here will end. It would truly be a miracle if it were to end peacefully and satisfactorily. In the Hôtel de Ville there are still two hundred men with two cannons and plenty of ammunition. They have barricaded themselves there and will not leave. Since they cannot be driven out without risking a riot, everyone acts as if they were only guarding the city hall. A troop of Guards have even been sent to keep them company. The government is treating the people just as indulgent parents treat a weeping child, to whom they say, “Oh, the dear child is so good. It isn’t crying at all any more.” And all the while, the child is still screaming and hitting and kicking around with its hands and feet. It has good reason to scream, too, because it is still suffering. This crisis is like a thunderstorm. It has come to purify the air. Even believing this, though, you can still be very anxious about the lightning, thunder, and hail and afraid at times that you will be struck dead, 27. Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire des Girondins, (1848) v.1: 8.

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even if you assure yourself that, although being struck dead is very unpleasant for the victim, it is quite inconsequential in the entire scheme of things. After our visit to the churches we went to Countess Marie d’Agoult,28 who was the well-known author of Nelida and the “Essai sur la liberté” under the pseudonym of “Daniel Stern.” Since she was a friend to several members of the Provisional Government, we were hoping to gain information from her about the current situation. She gave us the most reliable reassurances— which one still may not believe. When I saw the Countess for the first time, I was surprised by her extraordinary physical beauty, to say nothing of the significant spiritual impression her personality made. Tall, slender but voluptuous, her figure is impressive because of its perfect proportions. Her profile is just as pure. Her strong and distinctly marked facial expressions are emphasized by the fact that she keeps her prematurely graying hair cropped short like a man’s. Add to that a very severe dark garb, a room decorated in medieval style, an elongated white whippet on the dark rug in front of the lighted fireplace and you have the completed splendid picture, just as we saw it. During this morning’s visit there was talk of a charity ball, which was supposed to take place that night at the Comic Opera and which we had decided to attend. The countess strengthened our resolve; and when we came out of the Variety Theater at midnight, where Bouffé had played the role of an academic in Le pouvoir d’une Femme very well, we continued on to the Comic Opera. There we found a brightly lit house; “bright as day,” the Italians would say; very attractive rest rooms; a raffle, presenting each lady with a bouquet in which was concealed a raffle ticket; refreshments; great heat; and all the rest of the paraphernalia of an opera ball. After suffering from the extreme heat for an hour, we came home and I went to sleep with a wonderful feeling, knowing I had satisfied my conscience by going to an opera ball in Paris— or rather, having endured it. This may be very entertaining for young men who know Paris well; for foreign ladies it is as boring as it is tiring.

28. Marie Catharine Sophie, Countess d’Agoult (1805–1876) French writer and novelist under the pseudonym, “Daniel Stern.” She had one of the foremost intellectual and political salons of her day and a long relationship with Franz Liszt, resulting in three children, one of whom was Cosima Wagner. She became a fervent republican and later wrote the Histoire de la Revolution de 1848 (1851–53).

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Paris, March 19 The jokes in Charivari are so amusing because there is no malice in them; at least, I did not find any. I will cite a few here: All the trees were felled on the boulevards during the days of the revolution and used for barricades. A citizen of Paris happens to be standing in front of a tree stump, looks at the empty place with his lorgnon and cries, “No foliage, how strange! The revolution has really changed the climate! The trees are budding out very late this year.” A bureaucrat who has lost his job watches while the rippedout cobblestones are replaced in the street and sighs, “Oh happy pavement! It always gets to return to its old place.” A third person returns to his apartment in pouring rain at night. He has closed his umbrella, to free his hand for unlocking the door; his coat and hat are dripping water. He hurries to insert the key into the lock, but there are gigantic posters, proclamations to the people, pasted over the keyhole. Now he is standing there, trying to remove the paper with his cold stiff fingers crying, “Oh, what a blessing liberty is!” The ceiling in the Opera House seemed even funnier to me than all these jokes recently. It depicts Mount Olympus on which all the gods except Apollo are seated. Lyre in hand, he is climbing laboriously up the mountain through the heavy clouds that separate Olympus from the earth. All the French poets and composers, pictured in the costumes of their age follow him and are toiling up the path of fame just as busily as their divine master. Just picture this mixture of wigs, court dress, pigtails, jabots, revolutionary garb, and Greek nudity; the faces of Voltaire and Boileau raised toward Ceres, toward Venus, toward the divine gods. You cannot imagine anything more comical; one cannot imagine why such a cultured people would suffer such a breach of good taste.29 This morning we were in the Winter Garden, because everyone we met always asked, “Have you been to the Winter Garden yet?” Everyone praised it, called it amazingly beautiful, but it seemed indescribably boring and tawdry to me. At the entrance is a very large hall in which there is a permanent art collection—oil paintings by insignificant painters, excellent daguerreotypes and aquarelles, very bad sculptures and large tastefully arranged flower stands 29. This type of ceiling, glorifying the men of a country and having them march to the heights of Olympus, was repeated in the opera houses of many of the former French colonies, using their particular heroes as members of the procession.

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with blooming plants. Then you walk into a very big conservatory, the first half of which has a tent-like roof of orange and white fabric. Around the top run richly decorated galleries, which lead to small pleasant rooms. Beneath the tented ceiling, against the walls, platforms with benches are placed. In between are trophies, suits of armor, banners, statues, horses with heraldic emblems, all of which, with the addition of the over-dressed men and women, gives a bewildering and confused, rather than beautiful, impression. On that day there happened to be a morning concert by the members of the Comic Opera for the benefit of the wounded. They sang the freedom songs from The Dumb Woman of Portici,30 heroic passages from other operas and, at the end, Körner’s “Sword Song”31chorus (either in French or German—I could not understand the words). Then a lovely brunette actress in a white garment and a laurel crown with a palm frond in her hand declaimed at length about “Liberté, Gloire, Patrie.” Besides these catchwords, we really could not hear anything other than the thunderous applause of the listeners, because we were too far away. The tent is as large as a riding hall and might be difficult to fill up with a voice. The last part of the Winter Garden is the actual garden, a greenhouse in the center of which is a small patch of lawn planted with a few bushes and shrubs. Then there are also some palm trees, miniature ponds with goldfish, stone grottos, little fountains, aviaries, and many canaries fluttering around loose, which are quite startling. In addition, you find a small reading room, refreshment stands, and an excess of chandeliers and lamps. Basically it is all very childish, petty, and boring, especially at a time like the present. The whole Winter Garden seems to be like a display of Christmas gifts for large children; it cannot be considered a place of amusement for the common people as some have called it. We seem to have forgotten completely how to build for the people as the Romans did. The Baths of Caracalla and Titus were open to everyone; the Amphitheater of Marcellus, the Colosseum, were structures into which ten such Winter Gardens would fit. The bare 30. A 1828 comic opera by Daniel François Esprit Auber (1782–1871) with a revolutionary context. 31. Theodor Körner (1791–1813), German patriotic poet and playwright, fell fighting with Lützow’s Free Corps in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon. Lewald first heard some of the songs from Körner’s collection of poems, Leier und Schwert (Lyre and Sword), which includes the “Sword Song,” written only a few hours before his death, from her mother (Lebensgeschichte I, 105). She had been given a copy of that and his drama, Zriny, early in her life.

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walls of these buildings give pleasure and lift the spirit even today. What will remain of these trifling toys of the Parisian fancy in twenty years? When we returned home around five, we noticed that a red, black, and gold flag32 was suddenly waving at the end of the Rue Royale in the boulevard. We hurried to find out what was happening and saw the Germans just returning from exercises on the Field of Mars. The leaders of the procession and the flag bearers were strutting along with the true vanity of officers, despite the principle of equality. Such arrogance must be something in the German character. They anxiously forced themselves to move in step and restricted their youthful freedom carefully as to direction and feeling. This obsessive self-discipline never came to the minds of the hundred thousand French workers a few days ago; everyone just marched as he wanted and the procession still made a very dignified impression. Some of the companies were singing— you could not tell what—but it seemed very sad to me that we Germans do not even have a national anthem, no melody like the “Marseillaise” or “Rule Britannia, rule the waves” [sic] which makes every heart tremble with joyous pride. How Germany has been mistreated, how the Germans have allowed themselves to be mistreated! The Germans stopped in the middle of the boulevards. They cried “Vive le République!” There was a crowd, a demonstration; we remained at a distance. “What’s happening? What are the Germans doing there?” we asked a passerby. “I don’t know, ladies; it is probably the Austrian legation giving the Germans three cheers,” the good citizen answered naively. Meanwhile the cry rolled over all the boulevards. “Take the revolution to Vienna! The Republic to Vienna! The abdication of Prince Metternich!” A newspaper vendor had spread the tricolor over his table; the words, “Vive la République! The revolution to Vienna”! were displayed in the center. We considered this a bluff, and yet it has become a reality. Tyranny is toppled in Vienna in the person of Metternich because of his obstinacy. Louis Philippe is in exile, Metternich in flight. There is a avenging force in world history. Caesar bleeds to death on the Capitol, Louis XIV dies of boredom with the excesses of his life, Napoleon pines away on St. Helena, Louis Philippe goes into exile a poor man and Metternich causes the fall of the tyranny in Germany. 32. The red, black, and gold colors of the German flag were originally used by Lützow and his Free Corps.

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People are speaking of great excitement in Berlin, greater than what our letters from there state, and of unrest in Poland. Here it also looks very ominous. A party is being formed under the leadership of Flocon that considers even Ledru-Rollin too moderate, too much an aristocrat. Flocon is reported to have said in the club, “They want to speed up the elections, because they fear the outbreak of anarchy, if the National Assembly does not meet soon. But we want anarchy, we need anarchy. The artist who wants to make a good new statue from an bad bronze one must first smelt the latter in a fire, dissolve it, bring the metal into a new glowing flow. We will build no new society, no regeneration is possible, as long as monogamy, marriage, and the family create the shackles by which Christianity holds us. Before political freedom begins, before civil freedom can start, human freedom must be established.” The people, that is, the proletarians, say, “We want to have representatives who cannot read or write, because the others have lost their understanding of our circumstances because of books and base their judgments on theories. We want representatives who know nothing about the great affairs of state, who recognize nothing but our suffering and are concerned with nothing but our welfare.” That is what a couple of admirers of the anarchic smelting concept told me yesterday. They were as pleased with this idea as children whose parents are planning to move and who feel happy in the general turmoil because they can act and do as they want. Where will such attitudes lead us? As long as the people are uneducated, the past will set the pattern for the future; misuse of freedom will lead to the dictatorship of a Masaniello or Rienzi,33 to the imperial domination of a Bonaparte. If the French are ready for freedom, if the humanistic education of the people has become a reality, they will find and respect restraint and laws in their freedom. A firm republic will arise, its foundation the seeds of that socialistic future toward which we are doubtlessly heading. 33. Mansienello, i.e., Tommaso Aniello (1620–1647), leader of the uprising against the Habsburg government in Naples and hero of Auber’s opera, The Dumb Woman of Portici. See note 67. Cola de Rienzi (1313–1354), Roman tribune and early humanist, a proponent of Italian unity. he founded a short-lived republic in Rome and was later killed in a popular uprising. Today he is best known as the hero of Richard Wagner’s 1842 opera, Rienzi, based on Bulwer Lytton’s 1835 novel of the same name. Since Lewald was a reader and admirer of Bulwer Lytton, much of her knowledge of Rienzi probably came from the novel.

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Paris, March 20 Yesterday I had a completely new revelation, if we can call a revelation what we have long held as a inner conviction that suddenly materializes—I saw Rachel34 as Pauline in Corneille’s Polyeuct and heard her sing the “Marseillaise” afterwards. [Lewald praises classical French drama to the detriment of the newer dramas of Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas.] And now back to Polyeuct and Rachel. —She is short—at least, not tall—with a very thin figure, a face that is not beautiful, not even bearing the imprint of the beautiful Jewish type, a prominent forehead and small deep-set eyes; the movement of her elbows is almost angular, the posture of the back, of the head somewhat bowed. That is the way she appeared in this role. She plays the wife of a Roman who has turned to Christianity, which she, as an adherent of the old gods, scorns. Forced by her father to marry Polyeuct, she has had to renounce her love for General Severus and has made a cult of her obedience to her father and her faithfulness to her husband. The drama begins with the return of Severus at the moment when Polyeuct, accused of apostasy from the old gods, is sentenced. He is led off to death, after he has willed Pauline, the most virtuous of wives, to Severus, the noblest of Romans. Pauline follows her husband to the place of execution, however. His martyrdom converts her to the new faith. She and her father, a high priest, become Christians, and Severus, separated forever from Pauline because of her actions, magnanimously promises her that he will seek the protection of the Emperor for the Christians. As simple as the plot is, as little as I want to defend the pathos of the old French tragedy with all its excesses, there are still many great and pure motives at work here and a lofty thesis in the development of the individual characters and their demonstration of it. When Stratonice reproaches her friend Pauline for having married against her own will, and Pauline answers with the dignity of inconsolable renunciation, “But I have a father!”, the impression on the spectator surely outweighs the dead “Honor thy father and thy mother,” learned by him long ago by rote. When I saw the actresses of the day raging around in the Berlin Theater, I always asked, “Who rushes around like that when they 34. Elisa Rachel Félix, the Sarah Bernhardt of her day. The French-Jewish actress was famous for her portrayals of the heroines of Racine and Corneille.

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are in pain? Who flings her arms out that way? Who acts like that when she reveals the secret of her love? Who screams that way about her suffering?” Rachel shows no trace of any such errors. The more she suffers, the deeper her pain becomes, the quieter her voice becomes. She only speaks more quickly, more anxiously, more trembling with tears. She does not rush off stage; she leaves with dignity, to hide her pain from the sight of others, in beautiful respect for the individual beauty, the sanctity of suffering. In every movement, in every vibration of her voice I found the verification of my conviction that each art reaches its acme when it follows the rules of sculpture and adheres to the greatest simplicity and restraint. Modern drama, even Shakespeare, even Goethe in Götz35 and others are inferior to the drama of antiquity. They bear the same relationship as genre painting—which can achieve perfection in its own way—does to sculpture. But the drama, which can and should be used for didactic purposes by all nations, is drama as sculpture. Because it causes no external tension nor arouse curiosity, it works on the inner man. Rachel’s costume was perfect. A completely white fine wool garment, falling down to her feet, low at the neck, naturally bloused, without stitched pleats and a sash of the same material forming horizontal pleats, tied under her breasts; the short sleeves were fastened with three jewels as in the statue of the sitting Agrippina. Over this she wore a golden-yellow cloak of wool without any embroidery or decoration, simple as in the pictures of antiquity; it was held together by a brooch on her left shoulder, leaving the right arm free to move. Her hair was bound with some strips of golden ribbon, which surrounded the crown of her head and braided locks. When she returned to the stage after her husband’s death scene, she had taken off the cloak and pushed back the ribbons from her forehead, so that they fluttered loosely around her braids and showed her neglect of external matters. There were none of those feigned comical theatrics, of that loose-tressed, hair-rending despair. The modest white garment hung in long quiet folds from her body like that of the most beautifully draped statue. Entering quickly with a agitated look and stepping firmly to the front, she 35. Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand (Götz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand) (1773), Goethe’s first major dramatic success. A historical play, written in a Shakespearean style rather than a French classical one, it belongs to his “Storm and Stress” period.

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told of her husband’s death and said, “I saw; I know; I believe!” raising both hands in ecstasy toward the heavens, with her radiant eyes looking up transfigured. I trembled with rapture through all my veins as the curtain fell. But now the cry was, “Rachel, the ‘Marseillaise’! The ‘Marseillaise,’ Rachel!” The curtain rose. In the same white garment, a tricolored sash wrapped around her waist under her breast, her hair in the disorder of the last act, she stepped quickly out of the wings onto the stage. The music accompanied her softly, because Rachel does not have much of a voice; now she began. Words cannot describe her. Her face showed what the rage of deepest oppression, what the anger of the dehumanized slave aware of his own humanity can imprint in a ominous expression upon the features of a human face. A Fury in battle, an unchained goddess of vengeance as the Greeks’ concept of beauty had portrayed such creatures, beautiful as the paralyzing, petrifying face of a Medusa. Every nerve in me quivered, as a light muted drumroll was heard behind the scene. Looking firmly at the audience and holding it under the spell of her magnetic gaze, pointing with her right hand into the distance, she sang or spoke the words—it was something in between: “Entendez-vous dans les campagnes mugir ces féroces soldats—Ils viennent, jusque dans vos bras, égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!” A stream of gentle sadness flooded over her anger with these last words and the avenging goddess had a mild soft lament for the fate of the sacrificed. [Rachel continues the singing of the “Marseillaise.”] Her confidence in immortality, in the victory of freedom lay in a single movement of the right arm, which she lifted in proud disdain, as if she were casting every doubt out of the world. Suddenly she gathers herself up, moves with a firm stride to the backdrop where the tricolor was planted, seizes it and holds it aloft with her right hand, unfurling it freely, a free banner. In front of this banner, which she herself raises and holds, in front of this banner, which she clasps with fervent adoration to her breast, she says: Amours sacrés de la patrie Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs, Liberté, liberté chérie, Combats avec tes défenseurs!

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The tone of this “Liberté, liberté chérie! cannot possibly be described. There was the most passionate enthusiasm, the deepest most fervent love of her heart in her voice. Rachel is the personified human Marseillaise, the incarnate concept of the fight for freedom. I kept hearing in my mind: “And the Word was made flesh!” Yes, that is what the Word is supposed to do. It is supposed to, it must become flesh in order to be. And there is a God in the fact that this Marseillaise incarnate is a Jewess, the daughter of the oppressed. A half-hour later, during a performance of a comedy, the powerful, tightly controlled emotion in my soul finally broke out and only then did I dissolve in a flood of burning tears. I shall never, never forget that evening! Since I had not come alone and was therefore dependent on others, I had to stay and watch a comedy by Alfred de Musset, which was admittedly quite good. It was entitled Le caprice [sic] and Mrs. Allen was wonderful in it. Carpets on the floor, the wings closed, the room completely furnished—all these give the stage a quiet coziness which undoubtedly contributes considerably to the good plays of the French. When we left the theater—it was after midnight—we heard a very funny come-on from a newspaper vendor: “La Presse! The newspaper, La Presse, gentlemen! The last night edition, gentlemen! The abdication of the Tsar! Tsar Nicholas abdicates in favor of Louis Philippe!” Such amazing things are happening all the time that one could actually believe this, too.

Paris, March 21 The mail from Berlin has not arrived, thus confirming the rumors of a revolution. The embassy did not have any news and was in just as much suspense as we. [In order to pass the time, Lewald does more sightseeing and theater going. She sees The Count of Monte Cristo, which she finds excessive according to her standards of drama and visits the Louvre. Another excess she deplores is a sculpture of a drunken reeling bacchante—here she cites the opinions of her future husband, art historian Adolf Stahr.] This representation is truly disgraceful and a crime against the purity of art. What would George Sand think of it and how can the French critics praise it! The French are idealists because they are

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founding a republic and making actual the idea of freedom. How can they then let art be so perverted? If you recognize the ideal in one area you must understand and honor it in all areas. Reverence for the ideal will be the religion of the future.

Paris, March 22 Finally, news from Berlin! Late last night the first reliable reports arrived. Mieroslawski36 carried in triumph through the city—cannon shots, slaughter of the people in the Christian capital of the Christian state under the eyes of the king! The white eagle of Poland and the red, black, and gold flag unfurling into the light from a long enslavement. You rejoice but think simultaneously of all the martyrs to oppression who perished in the night before this dawn of freedom broke over the earth. How worried we are away from home. There is something terrible about the distance, and it is very painful to me to be gone in this first great moment that German history has offered since I can recall. What will the coming days accomplish in Germany or Prussia? There are certain things for which the people and the king can never forgive one another and which they can never forget. A true reconciliation between our medievally monarchical king and the idea of freedom of the people is as impossible as the restoration of a internally destroyed marriage. But a nation should not lead a false existence. We are living in a time which seems to break strongly with its past; the battle will be prolonged if the break is only partial, if all the debris of the collapse is not removed. That will create much suffering and trouble; some will become homeless or be buried alive under the ruins; some will be defeated by the necessary work of reconstruction. It will not only be a matter of political change; a social revolution will inevitably follow on its heels. Here there is only an either/or situation. There is something very frightening about that. It is terrible how we are situated on the storm side of world history, between the death of the past and the hour of birth for the future—but this moment had to come! There was an injustice, a falseness in the world which had to be ended, because humanity had begun to feel both of these. Who knows if the great social reformation will not come to completion in Germany of all 36. See note 11.

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places, where the religious Reformation originated, with its precursors in Romanic countries. This morning we had a visit from Heine; his German manservant led him up to our room. He is quite shattered by the events. He said, “I wish they had come earlier or later, because to have to experience them in my condition is very frustrating.” We spoke of Atta Troll, and I told him how amused we were by this part: “The Jews should have full civil rights in the future, too, except the right to dance in the marketplace. I add this amendment in the interest of my art.” He assured us he had taken this incident from real life. During his youth in Göttingen, he had known a very reasonable, completely liberal pharmacist, who had always seriously maintained that the Jews must have complete civil equality and should be able to follow any career they chose, except pharmacy. Later Heine spoke of his life and said it was a fortunate one. How lovely that is, how rarely you hear that from a man who has encountered so much injustice. He said, “I have had such happiness, that I was never ambitious—that was the greatest happiness! I have a wonderful wife, whom I love beyond words, whom I have called my own for thirteen years without a minute’s doubt, without a moment of diminishing love, without jealousy, in immutable understanding and the most complete freedom. No promise, no pressure of outward circumstances bound us together. I often wake up at night frightened by such happiness; I fall back trembling with delight at such wealth of bliss. I have often joked and thrown out witticisms about such matters, and thought about them seriously even more often. A marriage contract cannot constrain love; it needs freedom to survive and flourish.” Afterwards he reminisced about his great indestructible lust for life. “It seems uncanny to me considering my suffering. My lust for life is like the ghost of a fragile nun one senses in some old convent walls; it still occasionally haunts the ruins of my self.” “Why do you choose such a ghastly image? There was so much healthy paganism in you, that the gods should have to grant you joy in living until your last breath.” “Oh, the gods! The pagan gods would never have inflicted such suffering on me; only our old Jehovah would do that! Even my lips, which I used so merrily for singing and kissing, are half paralyzed. Now that I must consider my death at every hour, I often hold serious conversations with Jehovah during the night and he has told me, ‘You may be anything you want to be, my dear doctor, republican and socialist, just not an atheist.’”

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Then the conversation moved to the personal relationship between George Sand and Rachel. All at once he began to laugh. “Here I’ll have to tell you one of my funniest stories. When I was supposed to meet Rachel personally years ago, some friends dragged me to the country, where her family had a summer home. I finally arrive and am seated at a table. Papa Rachel, Mama Rachel, Sister Rachel, Brother Rachel all appear. ‘Where is Rachel?’ I asked. —’She is gone,’ was the answer, ‘but here is her whole family.’ And now I laugh so hard that everybody thinks I have lost my mind. I happened to remember that anecdote about the man who goes out to see a monster that has been reported in the newspaper, which is supposedly the offspring of a carp and a rabbit. When he gets there and asks, ‘Where is the monster,’ he is told: ‘We have sent it to the museum, but here are the carp and the rabbit; satisfy yourself.’ I will never forget my insane laughter and the astonishment of the civilized French.” We chatted for a long time. Heine was very lively, very gay but constantly returned to the seriousness of the questions of the day. I would have enjoyed this hour tremendously, had he not been so ill, so that I always was aware that this gracious, gaily playful spirit, who could yet be so serious, could perhaps cease to exist only too soon. His being and his works are completely identical and the originality of his conversation just like that of his writing. When he left, he assured us that he would return as soon as he was well enough; for our part, we promised to share with him any news we received from Germany.

Paris, March 24 Newspaper vendors were on all the streets with the news of the “imprisonment of the King of Prussia and his ministers,” “the abdication of the King of Prussia.” I doubt that I shall remain in Paris; the suspense, the uncertainty about the events at home are so agonizing that you completely lose your ability to enjoy anything. The Germans here are preparing to decamp; they want to leave as soon as they have the money. But we have been told that the embassy is not issuing them any passports; they will go without such documents—and to their misfortune, as can be feared. When you ask, “What are these people actually supposed to do on the other side of the Rhine?” the reply is “To support their brothers.” But in what? There is no battle in Germany; what are the starving workers there

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supposed to start? “They should promote the social unrest that produces the battle and the republic.” Otherwise reasonable people are actually saying this. No one wants to consider that you can probably change a monarchy onto a republic quite rapidly in a united country and a nation with a generally equal political education, but you cannot chase out thirty-eight rulers and make a whole country out of thirty-eight separate peoples in one fell swoop. How gladly we would want to believe in the possibility of a republican constitution in Germany now—if we only could! Among all the worries there is one bright spot; the fall of the Pietistic bureaucracy in Prussia. I would really like to see the pious government officials now—those servants of the God who chiefly loved the Christian state and absolute monarchy of Prussia and preserved them from assassinations and constitutions that, though only pieces of paper, hover between the king and the people. All of the prayers in the “church for officials” in the Tiergarten will be of no avail now; the Polish eagle flutters despite the Order of the Red Eagle, fourth class37 and the limited comprehension of their subjects has come home to roost. We saw for ourselves today how politically educated the common people in France really are. We were in the “Conservatoire des arts and metiers” (Museum for Arts and Crafts) this evening where a Professor Blanqui, brother of the Blanqui whom we heard in the club the other day, gave a lecture about the financial crisis in France and the structure of banking in different countries. The museum is far up in the Faubourg St. Martin and the audience consisted of about eight hundred men, most of whom were wearing smocks. Although the lecturer made his points on the most pragmatic level, I had to pay close attention to follow him. The audience, however, seemed completely conversant with this complex material, followed with participation and often gave its approval by bravos and the clapping of hands. In the morning we were at Les Invalides, where they are working on the monument to Napoleon. We visited the cathedral, the apartments, saw the individual companies at mess; we were shown the little gardens. The old Guards of imperial times already seem quite legendary compared to the young Mobile Guards; it is an effort to recall that their time ended so recently. Afterwards, when we visited the Luxembourg Gardens to see the chambers of Marie 37. From 1792 to 1918, the Order of the Red Eagle was the second highest Prussian decoration and was divided into four classes with many subclasses. The highest decoration was the Order of the Black Eagle.

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de Medici, the gallery of modern painters and the chapel where the marriages of nobles were celebrated, we noticed a lively commotion in the courtyard leading to Louis Blanc’s council room. Suddenly the crowd parted and a group appeared: a procession of women of different ages in various national costumes. They were the vest makers, “les giletières,” from the large clothing stores, who were demanding the same improvement in their employment that the male garment workers had been granted: higher wages and shorter working hours. No one but we regarded this procession of women as anything extraordinary. In the last few days individual groups of banished Poles and Belgians have left for their homelands with the support of the French government, which is trying to repatriate as many people as possible. But the Belgians were received badly and, we have heard, taken to the fortress in Lille as soon as they revealed their intention of proclaiming the republic in their own country. Nevertheless, a new group plans to cross the border now. The Germans will certainly leave this week, too. They will march over the Rhine at two different places and maintain firmly that everything is ready for them, that the declaration of the republic is certain. Each enthusiasm is something so divine, so holy, that everyone must respect it. So I regarded Herwegh with the respect that I have for every cult, which I have for the Catholic ritual, in which I do not myself believe. Herwegh and his wife are in an ecstasy, that carries within itself happiness in belief. Both are consumed with a joy for self-sacrifice, the like of which I have never seen. The time of religious sacrifices is over. I hope the two will not become sacrifices to political error. They are impervious to any doubt and deaf to any remonstrance because of their enthusiasm.

Paris, March 26 The letters that arrived yesterday strengthened our resolve to return to Germany and leave Paris tomorrow night. You cannot remain in one place when your heart is elsewhere. Because I know I am going to Germany, that I will participate in the events of the times, I have been so calm since yesterday that I decided to seek entertainment at the theater. [She sees two French comedies and contrasts their lighthearted wit to similar German plays.]

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The Germans are as unable to create such pieces, which are truly charming and unbelievably effective, as a slow deep thinker is unable to be witty. One impromptu, one witticism follows another; it is a real rocket shower of inventions; the whole piece is as evanescent, as enchanting and sparkling as fireworks. German actors could not even perform this—at least not the actors of the Court Theater, because the pigtail of their bureaucratic pomposity always strikes the back of their necks and makes them believe that they are damaging their dignity by freeing themselves from the conventional stage fiction and moving like human beings, freely and honestly. If a revolution would be beneficial anywhere, it would be in the German theaters, which are really only nursing homes with seniority lists. I think you must be a grandmother in order to play ingenues in Berlin and if you have not celebrated your silver anniversary, you cannot appear as Wallenstein.38 Another play that lured us to the theater recently presented a number of events of the first Revolution. Danton, Marat, the whole Convention appear in it; cannon shots, speeches about freedom, the “Marseillaise,” the farewell song—all are intermingled. Although the play was bad, the verisimilitude of the costumes was interesting and the idea of using such material for the People’s Theater, to present the people with their history in each character is noteworthy. [Lewald describes a terra cotta figurine of a young officer in the first Revolution.] This then is the last letter from Paris and an important chapter of the present that we have been privileged to experience will be closed for us tomorrow evening. Yesterday, when we came out of the theater, we heard firecrackers here and there. They are planting trees of liberty at the town halls and wherever this happened, the houses were illuminated.

Aachen, March 28 The night journey from Paris to Brussels was very noisy. Three hundred returning Belgians, who were in the convoy, sang the “Marseillaise” continually. All the coaches and train stations were filled 38. Duke Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland and Mecklenburg, Prince of Sagan (1583–1634), leader of the Austrian Imperial forces in

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with Poles with serious, sorrowful faces, tested by life, full of silent restraint, full of disbelief in the possibility of happiness. The fortress walls in Lille were bristling with cannons; the border controls were far stricter that they had been at our previous crossing. The guards were searching for weapons and scrutinized the men’s passports very thoroughly; this caused a long delay. The closer we came to the German border, the more anxiously our hearts pounded. When we came down from Verviers and caught sight of Aachen, we saw the first black, gold, and red flag. It flew proudly over the old German cathedral of Charlemagne. May it bring salvation for Germany!

the Thirty Years’ War and hero of Friedrich Schiller’s dramatic trilogy, Wallenstein (1797–99). Wallenstein was assassinated because his apparent efforts to negotiate with the Protestant enemies were seen as treason.

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Chapter 3

BERLIN, SPRING 1848

! Berlin, April 11, 1848 It has been almost fourteen days since I arrived at my home in Berlin from Paris and the changed physiognomy of Berlin is still a remarkable phenomenon to me. After driving through the Potsdam Gate on the night of April 1, we passed by the War Ministry on on the Leipzigerstraße, in front of which two students with red caps were standing guard instead of the usual military sentries. The students were smoking cigars; I felt as if I were really dreaming. My amazement increased in the following days when I saw the streets of Berlin without the military—no Guard officers eating ice cream at Cafe Kranzler, stretching their legs over the iron railing of the balcony. I noticed the signs missing, which had so proudly proclaimed their “By Special Appointment to His Majesty” only a few weeks ago. Uncensored newspapers, posters, and even cigars were being sold on every street corner, when heretofore smoking on the street had been prohibited and punishable by a two-thaler fine and even the inscription on tombstones had been subject to censorship. I did not notice any signs of destruction by the revolution that could have been caused by the people alone. The traces of shrapnel on the houses, on the other hand, are only too visible. Only in the vicinity of the New Gate have the arsenals been burned, leading to a very regrettable loss of munitions. But the people have never turned on the palaces of the King or the princes, never touched their property; I am satisfied that no trace of barbarism was shown by the people and that even the King himself, in his proclamations, has deemed praiseworthy the nobility and restraint of those fighting. What was painfully obvious to me in looking back was the

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lack of joy or enthusiastic ardor about the victory here which surprised me so much in Paris. No inspiring songs, none of those slogans filled with the elation of winning that went from mouth to mouth with such an electric effect: neither a patriotic song like “Mourir pour la patrie!” nor a shout like the rejoicing “Vive la République!” We have no German patriotic songs, and “Long live defeated absolutism!” (because that is as far as we have gotten right now) is not the type of slogan you shout. That is not the worst of it, though. What worries me is the feeling of insecurity that I perceive in so many people here, of which there was no trace in Paris. The words of the worker on the barricade of whom I wrote you, “Do you have to hurt women to drive away a king?”—in other words, “Do good manners stop when a king must be deposed?”— have a deeper meaning. Such a question denotes the self-sufficiency of a nation that recognizes in a change of government only a change in the upper levels of the bureaucracy. Neither a decline of the existing values nor a complete abrogation of normal civil conditions nor the outbreak of a new barbarism bent on destruction is expected to coincide with a change in government. The French deposed a king in Paris, proclaimed a republic, and yet only stocks fell in value; the courage and confidence of the educated remained unshattered. They were aware of what had happened, what was to be done, and approached the new undertaking with an admirable confidence that they would also be able to satisfy the demands of the fourth estate, the proletariat, in the reorganization of the laws wherever possible. In spite of the sorrowful faces of the new moneyed aristocracy, the mood of most of the French people to whom we spoke was somehow elevated and elevating. I really miss this here. The Parisians are like unpracticed ball players. They let the ball, which almost flew to their hand of its own accord, drop instead of holding on to it firmly because they are so happy they actually caught it. In contrast, the Berliners stand there not knowing what to do. They are as frightened and at a loss as children who have been using a walker too long and are finally set on the ground to walk by themselves. They do not trust their own feet, because they are not being supported any more; they would really like to know if the king, if the various branches of the government are satisfied with what has happened. They would like to reconcile the extremes, make adjustments, soften what is hard and smooth out the rough edges. In order not to offend anyone, to be fair to everyone, they do not speak of the revolution and its results, but of the “achievements” of those days in March, of the necessity of a

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“reconciliation.” As for me, I feel about those newly coined words like the peasant in the fable who does not want to eat anything with which he is not familiar.1 I fear these unfamiliar words, the ambiguity of which allow all sorts of possibilities to be included. It is true that the bureaucracy has become polite; old Minister Kamptz,2 the persecutor of the German Student Associations for many years, is strolling down Unter den Linden with a tricolored red, black, and gold cockade in his hat. In front of the palace of the Prince of Prussia3 which has been declared a national monument, students are standing guard; in the royal palace it is the artists’ corps. The Civil Guard has taken over the remaining posts and security in the streets is complete, even without the supervision of the gendarmes. We, too, have people’s meetings, clubs, in which capable men participate, in which excellent speeches are said to be given. Working-class men and women stand on the street corners, at the fountains, to read the announcements posted there and ask for explanations; they partially understand everything you tell them. The craftsmen, the journeymen, are said to be completely current, completely on top of events. A large part of the population is looking toward the future with an enthusiastic willingness for sacrifice—but the spirit of subservience of a people which has lived under absolutism, the fear of many of the moneyed class of possible losses, and the caste mentality of the vast far-reaching bureaucracy have still not been overcome by any means. Step-great-nieces of a royal appointee, great-grandsons of a court official have until now basked in the rays of the bureaucratic solar system and are suddenly deprived of the nimbus, which reflected on them because of the prominence of the head of the family. Servants who were in the service of court lackeys consider themselves proudly as being “at court.” With tears streaming down, my friend’s nanny copies the poems about the Prince of Prussia published by the Vossische Zeitung, because she once tended the children of Prince Karl’s cook and “belonged to the court for years.” The old order has known how to excite the petty vanity of human beings so much by the bestowal of titles and decorations that a large percentage, particularly of the more prosperous classes, has been totally alienated from any higher humanitarian interest. 1. Lewald is undoubtedly referring to a popular German proverb, “Was der Bauer nicht kennt, das frißt er nicht.” (“What the peasant is not familiar with, he doesn’t eat.”) 2. Karl von Kamptz, reactionary Prussian minister. 3. Prince Karl von Hohenzollern, uncle of King Frederick William IV.

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These find that the state was beautifully organized—because they had their income, honor, and appearance as they wished and in addition, the pleasure of looking down upon the less fortunate with the same pride with which the more fortunate looked down upon them. Such people cannot do without their condescension of the less fortunate without losing a great amount of self-satisfaction. Add to that the actual love of many Prussians for the House of Hohenzollern which, having risen to the level of love of family during the reign of the previous king, extends to all branches of the royal house, and you will have to admit that various dangers threaten the young tree of liberty in Prussia. If that sapling does not find strong supporters in the new ministry and in the representatives of the people, it will have a real problem in putting down firm roots. According to everything I have seen up to now, the German republicans who are returning from France to their fatherland will soon notice how they are deceiving themselves if they assume that Germany, so accustomed to a monarchy, is eager for a republic. As much as Paris stimulated me, as much as I was able to believe in the duration of the conditions there, so little is this the case here. The majority of the people seem to me to lack motivation, to be apathetic. They are confronted by an absolute monarch convinced of his rights, who is suddenly supposed to change himself into a servant of the state in a constitutional system. I hear an inordinate amount of talk about what would have to happen, of the dissolution of the Guards, of the officers’ training schools, of the arming of the people, but it is only talk—because up till now, nothing has been done. A broad-minded young bureaucrat recently showed me the 1807 code of laws to prove to me what kind of laws, phrased in such bold language, had been issued then, while now the lawmakers were certainly very busy but did not seem to accomplish much. Nevertheless much seems to have gained—one might even say everything—because we have the right to form associations for the people and a free press. And since we Germans are schooled according to the maxim, “Peace is the primary duty of the citizens,” we want to await peacefully and patiently what fruits these spring blossoms of the revolution will bring us.

Berlin, June 5 Some things have unjustly gone out of style; one of these is the peepshow. How lovely it would be if, walking down a street in the

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evening, weary of the everyday faces and the bourgeois uniformity, you could suddenly be transported into another world! The magic box took us from Adam and Eve to the Emperor Napoleon and Field Marshals Blücher and Wellington, from Abel’s death to the assassination of Kotzebue. An entire world of new perceptions was offered us in a few moments. People who had only been a shadowy concept to us appeared suddenly in front of our own eyes in solid images and remained impressed upon us in this shape. Compared to that, what are the woodcut illustrations in the newspapers, in which one face seems as flat and as black as another? We still need a representation of the people and the circumstances that arouse our interest. Life lies only in observation by mere description, but I will attempt to do so, to give you a picture of the soirées taking place in the Ministry of Finance. Minister Hansemann4 moved into the Ministry of Finance, located between the prison and the Academy of Vocal Music, at the beginning of March. On May 25, the first of the soirées were given, which are supposed to take place every Tuesday and Friday while the National Assembly is in session. The invitations had only been sent out the previous day, so only about two hundred persons had presented themselves, although the place, consisting of six large reception rooms, could have accommodated three times that number. There were only five or six ladies present beside those who were members of the Hansemann family. Most of the guests this first time were delegates at the Assembly. A few officials of the old regime wandered around alone like the last withered leaves of autumn which have been spared by the storm. They had shriveled into themselves. They did not hold their heads as high; they no longer had that air of absolute infallibility. Even the red eagle on the white and orange flag seemed to have folded its wings since the sun of absolute monarchy had sunk and “Suum cuique”5 had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people finally had what they wanted, their freedom, and the bureaucracy what is deserved, its fall. The subdued bureaucrats gazed with amazement at some of the guests, whose hobnailed boots were ruining the beautiful parquet floors. That is what really happened! This miracle occurred in the year one thousand 4. David Hansemann (1790–1864), moderate liberal German financier and statesman, Finance Minister of Prussia from March to September 1848. After the failure of the revolution, he became the head of the Prussian National Bank and later founded the first modern German bank. 5. “To each his own,” the motto of the Order of the Black Eagle. See note 74.

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eight hundred and forty-eight. Farmers in hobnail boots were advisers to the crown in the ballroom of a minister of the infallible Christian state. There sat Representative Mros from Upper Silesia in his gray overalls, blue canvas vest and blue smock. Right over his waterproof boots he balanced a little glass plate of cherry cake; he was dropping some of the cherries on the floor. His colleague Kiul Bassan, standing next to him, was drinking orangeade. Bassan did not speak one word of German, only Polish. He sat there like Immerman’s giant Schlagadodro,6 who always drank his tea spiked with rum, although it tasted like dishwater to him. And right next to these farmers stood Nothomb,7 the elegant intellectual Belgian diplomat, in a lively conversation with President Camphausen.8 In the next room, Minister Hansemann sat on the sofa. A day laborer, wearing the universal German colors on his blue jacket, sat beside him on the velvet cushions, and the minister was listening attentively to the words of this representative from the working class. I stated that I was delighted about that. “Do you think that these people can be of any use to the state with their advice?” an old official asked me sarcastically. “No, they can’t specify how they are to be helped, but they will specify what they need and they are most useful by their mere presence.” “How is that?” “Because their equality before the law with other classes is being stated and the duty to care for them and their welfare recognized by their presence in the chamber and in the drawing room.” “Do you know how and why this Kiul Bassan was elected?” “Yes. He came to the meeting of the voters drunk and the local magistrate attacked him savagely, because he had not removed his cap. Then Kiul Bassan jumped up furiously against the magistrate and the farmers said: ‘This is our man! If he shows as much courage against the king as against our magistrate, they will listen to us and help us.’” The official, smiling mockingly: “And what do you conclude from this election?” 6. The giant Schlagadodro was a character in the comic verse epic Tulifäntchen (1832) by Karl Immermann (1796–1840). 7. Baron Jean Baptiste de Nothomb (1805–1881), Belgian ambassador to Prussia. 8. Ludolf Camphausen (1803–1890), businessman and president of the Prussian National Assembly in March 1848. A moderate liberal, he resigned in June because of disagreements with the more radical elements in the Assembly.

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“That the voters in the country believed it was necessary to tell the king the truth and that they are still unsophisticated enough to believe that someone has to be blunt and violent to utter such truth.” “So you approve of the fact that this farmer, who speaks no word of German and therefore cannot follow the proceedings has a seat and a vote in the National Assembly?” “Certainly, because he sits there as a representative of the hundred thousand Prussian citizens who also do not understand any German. He reminds the representatives, who have been called to formulate laws because of their educations, that they have a duty to care for the citizens of Slavic descent according to their particular ethnicity. Anyway, Kiul Bassan is an exception in the group; you will find quite knowledgeable people among the farmer representatives from the districts of Eilau, Gerdau and Rudnik.” The official turned away from me like a doctor leaving an incurable patient. Meanwhile, the group had changed. Minister Hansemann stood in the middle of the salon, receiving the Spanish delegates. Mr. Hansemann is in his middle fifties, tall and heavyboned. He has smooth blond hair, mingled with gray. His features are sharp. His eyes, dark brown and closely set together, have a intelligent, sharp and very crafty look, which would often be uncomfortable were it not softened by the good-natured expression of the mouth and the ease of his whole being. Mr. Hansemann’s behavior is completely friendly, comfortable to the point of negligence. He is reputed to be one of the most trusting, most self-sacrificing natures despite his probing intelligence, once he has gained confidence in someone. There is much of the impulsiveness and the untiring energy of the North German farmer in his being. His perception of people, his subtle diplomacy, and his friendliness as well as his movements demonstrate this imprint. He has a certain briefly rejecting hand gesture which he repeats frequently. An actor, playing a cunning farmer, would use it to great advantage. He starts his refutation of any statement with the words, “I really want to tell you,” and then follows them with an explanation which always has a good justification from the viewpoint of the experienced clever pragmatist, although it often does not satisfy the idealist very much—and we must be idealists at the moment to build the work of love here on earth. Hansemann strolls through the rooms carefree and comfortable in his unpretentious black suit. He is not thinking of the fact that he is not an insignificant private citizen, that people are observing his expression and drawing conclusions from it. If he were to think of it, he would have nothing to

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fear, because his face hardly ever loses its expression of artful bonhomie and a serene confidence in the sense of the possession of tremendous power. This knowledge of his own power may be inestimable now in a minister, but it is also a danger for Mr. Hansemann, because no individual effort is sufficient for the work to be done and cooperative work is only possible with total candor. The criticism made of him is that he lacks this, that he schemes and tries to steer his colleagues subtly, to determine matters, although one otherwise admits his significant effectiveness. There stands Count Schwerin,9 the Minister of Culture. He is the tall, strong-looking man in the blue tailcoat with shining buttons, who is holding his hat in his left hand. His head is very massive and sits on a short neck between the two shoulders of his arched back. Large bright prominent eyes, a short blunt nose, a full mouth, brown hair, and an expression of solidity characterize him. His movements are vehement; there is something powerful in the large steps with which he strides through the room. He steps firmly, like someone who is used to standing on his own estate before his subordinates, a medieval feudal lord, as Lukas Cranach and Holbein painted them. This is the way the border knights of the time of the Reformation might have looked, when they sat with full tankards at oak tables and reviled the margraves and the priests and let Dr. Luther live, who at least promised to free them from the dominion of the priests. Blunt honesty is the main feature of Count Schwerin’s appearance and his politics, what one might call manorial liberalism, are equally honest. In 1840, when a spirit of freer movement began to blow through Prussia, people were amazed that such a large portion of the aristocracy gave in to the flow of the times, but this miracle could be explained easily. That aristocratic liberalism was completely personal; it was a striving for personal freedom, for greater independence from the crown. The nobility has always felt equal to royalty at all times and in all countries. Since the absolute monarchies were only able to gain their present form by suppressing the power of the nobility, the dissolution of the absolute monarchies would temporarily let part of the power return to the hands of the nobility, that is, to the hands of the peers and landowners of 9. Count Maximilian von Schwerin (1804–1872), Prussian statesman and member of the Assembly. He was a representative of Prussia at the Frankfurt Parliament and, although a moderate liberal, voted with the Right. He was Minister of Culture during Camphausen’s short-lived ministry. From 1849 to 1855, he was president of the Upper House of the Prussian Parliament.

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the former Landtag, before it returned to the general populace. World history is a self-restricting structure, built by workers handing stones up and down to each other, as required in the building process. That same feeling of necessity which teaches a bird to build its nest and the bee its cell, teaches and compels us to make world history and to develop ourselves in our own work on the basis of the past, while we are creating for the future. When Count Schwerin excused himself to the ladies of the house and left with a certain haste, with a kind of masculine defiance in every movement, I could also imagine him turning his back with such defiance on the king, and self-reliantly departing from the king’s presence because the latter was acting against the opinions of the Count. Count Schwerin is certainly no courtier, no minister who makes concessions to get or keep his portfolio. He acts out of conviction, as a man of honor. Unfortunately, this conviction is as deeply rooted in the past as his ancient family tree is in the times of the Reformation. Count Schwerin is supposed to be orthodox and ecclesiastical. Being orthodox excludes tolerance; yet recognition of freedom of religion—making this principle a law—is the task of a Minister of Culture in present Prussia which cannot continue in the footsteps of Eichhorn’s ministry.10 Yet Count Schwerin seems determined to do so. There in the corner stand the brothers Alfred and Rudolf von Auerswald,11 personal friends of the king, dear to him and treasured because of memories of his youth—men who are always sure of having a portfolio. They are elegant, slim figures with sharply defined features. Their clothes are carefully selected; their gestures, their attitude bear the stamp of the best social forms. Just as Hansemann represents the intelligent classes of the manufacturers and Count Schwerin the landed nobility, the Auerswalds represent the bureaucratic nobility. Hansemann wants to win people to his ideas; he speaks with intensity to convince those with whom you see him conversing. Count Schwerin seems to want to rule the spirits; the friendliness, the grace of the Auerswalds want 10. Johann Albrecht Friedrich Eichhorn (1779–1856), Prussian statesman and Minister of Culture for Frederick William IV from 1840–48, when he was forced to resign. He was a great advocate for church orthodoxy. 11. Alfred (1797–1870) and Rudolf (1795–1866) von Auerswald were both Prussian politicians and Moderate Liberals. Alfred was a member of the United Landtag before 1848 and Minister of Home Affairs from March to June 1848. He was later frequently elected to the Landtag after 1849, where he was a leader of the Old Liberals. Rudolf was minister-president and Foreign Minister from June to September 1848 and later President of the Upper Chamber of the Prussian Parliament.

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to please and do please, because they are charming. But this charm, this kindness will hopefully only prove itself so compliant in social circles. What is a virtue here becomes a crime in political life, where only inflexibility and stubbornness achieve victory. At the coronation in 1840, the Auerswalds were among the first to declare themselves for the liberal movement, the momentum of which was then still regular and slow. It has become stronger, wilder in our days and cannot stop, may not stop, until the right equilibrium has been reached. Will they then join this strong movement also and work on its behalf with their royal friend? It would be their task to mediate between the people and the king. The results will depends upon whether they succeed in this or not. There on the red corner sofa, right in front of the beautiful statue of Melpomene,12 sits Camphausen, the minister-president. The lamplight falls on his pale quiet face. He is fairly tall and lean; he looks like a German intellectual, like a man of spiritual speculation. The external cleanliness, that cleanliness which proceeds from a pure soul, surrounds his whole noble appearance, which has a completely beneficent effect. A few days ago I had the opportunity to observe him more closely at my leisure. Mr. Camphausen was lunching with Mr. Hansemann and had just risen from the table as I entered to inquire if the Hansemann family had been bothered by the disturbances in front of the Armory. As I have said, the Ministry of Finance lies between the Armory and the Academy of Vocal Music. The small stand of chestnut trees in front of the Armory was teeming with workers demanding weapons. The Armory was actually under siege; and the little alley leading to the Spree between it and the foundry was crowded with people. The transfer of a number of rifles to the various garrisons had excited suspicion. This suspicion had risen to the point of madness. It was said that Berlin was being disarmed, that an attack upon the citizens was being planned and that the drawbridges were being nailed down to prevent the people from raising them during the coming battle. The crowd wanted to believe the worst, the most unbelievable rumors, and the always vivid imagination of the people, leaping over all bounds, began to create its own fairy tales. It was said that a tunnel had been dug under the Spree from the palace to the Armory, and that if the authorities could not get the weapons out, they would even blow up the Armory. As proof of this, someone pointed out a string which led from the scaffolding of 12. The Muse of tragedy.

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the new structure on the palace down to the ground. The bridge builders insisted in vain that such spikes were always pounded in to protect against the unfastening of the iron crossbars and the warping of the planks; the master builder of the palace explained in vain that the descending strings were attached to determine the direction of the lightning rod. No one believed them. The crowd urgently demanded the issuing of weapons to protect itself against the expected attacks. The transport of these weapons, that is, their loading onto barges, had to be discontinued. Because the issuance of weapons continued to be denied, the disturbances in front of the Armory kept increasing in intensity. It was Ascension Day, the most beautiful weather, and the number of celebrants, of people on holiday, contributed to not letting the crowd decrease, since everyone was curious to see what was attracting others. Primarily it was the blast furnace workers from the large iron factories, organized as a corps under the supervision of their factory owners, in green smocks and printed red cards on their caps, who demanded weapons and stayed together in mass. During this crowding, a very merry carnival atmosphere was forming in the little chestnut grove. On hastily erected tables covered with white cloths, brandy, cold cuts, and cake were being sold. Mobile kitchens had been set up in moving vans and all sorts of sausage, tempting the merrymakers with its odor, were being roasted in iron ovens. Students with red or white corps caps, daggers at their side, riflemen from the Civil Guard in decorated green smocks, gray felt hats with pert white feathers on their heads, hunting knives on their polished leather belts and muskets over their shoulders, went smoking, eating and demonstrating among the middle-class onlookers and the workers, many of whom were escorting their wives in their Sunday dresses. From time to time there was a mingled outcry, drowned out by the voice of a single speaker. They called out “Bravo” to him and clapped their hands in approval. Then there was silence until the beelike humming rose to new outburst again. Besides the members of the Hansemann household, probably only six or eight persons remained in the chambers of the ministry—some delegates, some officials of the ministry and some friends of the family. Although the ministry had already gained a victory on that day, the first of June, by making the right to address13 a vital question and receiving that right, the majority of 13. The right to address was permission for the Parliament to respond to a dictum from the throne or other administrative political statements pertaining to the monarch.

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those present here saw everything in a very black light. This victory had been won only by surprise, to be sure, since the question had been tossed into the middle of the discussion and the explanation of the representative from the Rhineland, Chaplain von Berg,14 that he was voting for address, but did not want that to indicate he was casting a vote of confidence for the ministry, deprived the crown of victory of much of its glitter. But the ministry still survived, and that meant much in such storms as the present one, which could be heard raging in front of the armory. Upstairs in the rooms of the Ministry of Finance, people walked around chatting, drank coffee, ate ice cream, and glanced from time to time through the lowered blinds to find out what was happening on the square. The contrast was glaring. Mr. Hansemann, one of the quietest and most self-controlled natures, and fearless for himself, seemed more agitated than I had ever seen him, if you were to conclude this about his feelings by the intensified liveliness of his speech and eyes. His family was with him and he had to be concerned about them, because he is the most tender of fathers. An older friend of the minister, an intelligent and experienced man, went from one person to another, speaking eagerly. His energetic nature felt oppressed by the oppressiveness of the circumstances and longed for liberation by battle. “I would wish there would finally be a real conflict around here, that the ferment would develop into a violent explosion, so that matters would be settled; it can’t go on like this,” he said to me. “These eternal riots destroy all orderly social life, dissolve the structure of the state. Bourgeois society perishes in the recklessness of irrationality.” Everyone had some advice or an opinion; everyone went to the window and looked out with concern. Camphausen seemed completely calm. His face did not change expression; he listened to everything quietly; he never stepped to the window. He had sent his wife and daughter back to Cologne and seemed to fear as little for himself as did Hansemann. When he left the ministry, he walked alone right through the mob to his hotel on Wilhelmstraße, although just shortly before, Minister von Arnim15 had 14. Philipp Peter von Berg (1815–1866), member of the United Landtag and delegate to the Frankfurt Parliament. He was a leader of the Left Center and a member of the Catholic clergy. 15. Count Adolf Heinrich von Arnim-Boitsenburg (1803–1868), Prussian statesman. He had been an early Minister for Home Affairs for Frederick William IV, but resigned when he could not implement his plan for a Prussian constitution. He

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been attacked, of course not without provocation on his part, it was said. Camphausen is an aesthetic-idealistic type. As an idealist he loves and in fact embodies freedom but his aesthetic feeling will prevent him from ever reaching those conclusions which demand violent means. He wants conciliatory transitions; he considers them possible. His personal dependence on individual members of the royal family, his sympathy for their difficult situation, prevent him from acting with the energy one could justifiably expect of him. Although this is a flaw in the statesman, there still remains a goodness, which is a credit to the gentle nature of the human being. Camphausen does not look as if he took the portfolio out of ambition. Sorrowful sleepless nights and the hours of struggle are evident on his pale features. The hour in which he decided to take the position of minister-president, with its terrible responsibilities, might have been one of the hardest for him.

Berlin, June 6 My fear of the strange new words, of “achievements” and “agreements” seem not to have been without foundation, because the word “revolution” has already become “unpopular,” as we used to say in the “Vormärz”16 period. Even Minister-President Camphausen himself already calls the battle for freedom on March 18 an “occurrence” in order to avoid the word “revolution,” although Mr. Camphausen and his colleagues should regard this revolution as their mother and preferably think of the Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord God gives you.” To prove to the ministry that the memory of the people is more faithful, that they regard the revolution as a praiseworthy event and honor the sacrifices to freedom, the students had proposed a pilgrimage to the graves of the fallen in Friedrichshain.17 In some circles one spoke played a leading role in the United Landtag and became minister-president in 1848 for only one week, resigning in favor of Camphausen. 16. The period before the revolution of (March) 1848, usually considered a very conservative time. 17. Friedrichshain is now a large city park in the eastern part of Berlin, noted chiefly for its “Märchenbrunnen” (“Fairy-tale Fountain”), surrounded by life-size statues of child characters from fairy tales.

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of this deprecatingly; one called it a new agitation without inner conviction, an empty demonstration by the masses with nothing better to do. Yet just these persons feared this empty demonstration so much that the Civil Guard was forbidden to take part in it as a corps, so this force could be called out against the pilgrims, as was the case for the most insignificant disturbances because of unnecessary apprehension. Even the National Assembly, which, like the Civil Guard, was called upon by the students to join in the pilgrimage, has received instructions that the individual members were at liberty to join the procession as citizens, but forbidden to do so as a body. A wretched compromise! If the ministry had a true understanding of the events taking place before our eyes, if it considered the fact that this is not just a matter of a political revolution, but the beginning of a social metamorphosis, it would chose the only way to salvation; it would place itself at the head of this movement. If someone wants to save a boat that is caught in the current and is heading for dangerous rapids, he has to jump into it bravely and grasp the helm with a firm hand, not stand far away above the stream making critical remarks. The president of the council, the ministers, all the members of the National Assembly, the whole Civil Guard, even the princes themselves, should have joined the procession in order to make the symbolic admission demanded by the symbolism of the pilgrimage—the admission of the sovereignty the people had gained by fighting during the March Days. But the sovereign people are experiencing what the sovereign princes experienced—ingratitude; its favorites are most likely to become its tyrants. The people are earning contempt as a reward for their devoted trust. The pilgrimage was set for the afternoon of June 4. It was a Sunday, bright and sunny, without being so hot that it could be oppressive. On the Gendarmenmarkt, where the coffins of the fallen had stood two months ago, people were gathering for the march through Charlottenstraße, along Unter den Linden, past the palace, through the whole royal city to Friedrichshain, which lies outside Berlin. The streets were full of people; no police supervision or Civil Guard asserted themselves. A police inspector in civilian clothes we met on the way assured us with resigned certainty that everything would proceed peacefully and it would be a very nice procession—without police, I added in my mind. The man’s whole being and demeanor was burdened by his awareness of his own broken authority; you could see that his self-confidence lay buried under the ruins of the shattered police state.

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The first sounds of the festival march were already sounding in the distance when we reached a window in a house on Unter den Linden. When the procession approached, people on the street made way for it; a reverent silence reigned. And now a procession began which I wish the despisers of the people’s movement could see—those from the provinces who describe the democratic party as rabble, led by immature visionaries and impoverished writers, who want to bring about anarchy because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Bearing themselves confidently and surely, elevated by the consciousness of the freedom they had gained, the citizens of Berlin, the founders of the new Prussia, marched out. A troop of Civil Guards on horseback opened the procession. Then came the wives and daughters of the members of the Democratic Club.18 The people watched them with some astonishment. No matter how much one recognizes the intellectual equality of women, their personal presence in a crowd is alien to the German character. Such appearances should therefore not be called for intentionally, because they do not gain anything for the real elevation of the status of women or for the people, and much can be lost. The various clubs followed the women. Each was preceded by martial music and its own flag. On a blackred-gold background, the colors of German unity, the banners carried the insignia of the various groups, giving in this way a symbol for the shape of human bonding in the future, for the free rights of the individual in a united totality. The Democratic Club joined the Constitutional Club and the Reform Club, the leaders of which had decorated themselves somewhat theatrically and (probably with unnecessary pathos) with blood-red feathers and sashes. It would be bad if the seed of peace could not germinate among us without being nourished by the the blood of our citizens; it would be bad if we could still not find a different argument for the truth than the thunder of cannons and the blade of the guillotine. The methods of proof divide mankind by hate and we need unification by love. Among the prosperous citizens, the resident artisans, whose old guild flags and banners, created in the guild compulsion of the Middle Ages, now fluttered, lit by the sun, in the light of the new freedom, marched troops of workers, wearing merry green 18. Various political clubs were formed in European countries before, during, and after the French Revolution. They covered the whole gamut of political allegiances, from radical to reactionary.

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oak twigs on their hats. And what words were on their similarly oak-entwined banner? “The Workers without Bread!” They have no bread, no house nor home, but they have the nature hinted at by their merry decoration. They have no bread, no house nor home, but they have the firm belief that the more prosperous have learned to recognize them as brothers, that those who have good sense will discover a way not only to allot the breadless worker work and bread, but so much work and so much bread that he is able to satisfy the demand of every producing, every existing person to enjoy himself in his own way. Those without bread have not robbed; they have not taken anything from the more prosperous. But they are beginning make urgent demands. That is their duty because it is their right. The workers will be justified in fighting for a place in society and for the enjoyment of life, if we do not find peaceful means to do enough for them. Whoever had a heart must have felt it tremble in his breast when he saw them, the breadless workers marching calmly, adorned with the blooming color of hope, with the green foliage of spring. Do not deceive this hope, do not change this confidence, be clever enough to grant them what they need, if you are not good enough to grant it because of love! The union of militia men appeared with great stateliness. They, who had once fought with servile dependence for God, the king, and their fatherland, marched on with the sounding unison of the goose step as free and independently acting men, decorated with the most splendid kind of medals to honor the heroes who had met death in the fight for freedom for the absolute monarchy; the only decorations of those heroes are the thankful memories of the survivors. The sharpshooters’ guilds, the riflemen of the Civil Guard, with gayly fluttering feathers on their brimmed hats, city councilmen, and militia men, merchants and scholars, artists and factory workers marched in groups united and separately, motivated by the same thoughts, the same pilgrimage, passing by a hundred members of the National Assembly, greeted by the loud approving cry of the people. The students with their red and white corps caps came at the end of the procession which they, with the youngest of them all, had initiated. The enthusiasm of our youth foretells and guarantees the freedom of the future, the eventual brotherly accord of mankind. And this pilgrimage could also be regarded as a sign of this accord. Its procession would have been as sacred and impressive to you as it was to me.

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Berlin, March 8, 1849. Good Friday19 Yesterday, on Good Friday, when the service in the churches was over and the memorial ceremony was held again for the death of the Man who delivered the world from the chains of slavery to the freedom of love eighteen hundred years ago, we went with the last tones of the church bell on the long way toward Königsstadt to visit Friedrichshain,20 where the sacrifices of the fight for freedom in Berlin are buried. It was probably two or three years ago when this grove was laid out to provide the residents of Königsstadt on the other side of the Spree a place to stroll, as Friedrichstadt has in the Tiergarten. The enterprise was a very worthy one, because Berlin is surrounded by a sandy desert bereft of shrubs and trees as far as the eye can see. For the rich and socially prominent, Berlin stops at the Alexanderplatz with the Königsstadt Theater and the Italian opera. Beyond the Alexanderplatz, a “terra incognita” begins, of which the inhabitants of the beautiful world of Unter den Linden and Behrenstraße know as little as they do of Tierra del Fuego, although the small shop owners and artisans, the productive population of Berlin, who make the city rich and significant live in Königstadt and all these parts of the city on the other side of the Spree. We went along the Landsbergerstraße; it was as quiet as on a Sunday. Girls and women sat at the windows; their knitting or reading—recreation after the six-day work week—had slipped from their hands; they were thoroughly enjoying the peace. Propping her head on her arms, a young blonde girl looked dreamily down the street; a couple of children dawdled on a window ledge while their parents watched. Servants stood chatting in front of the doors; boys played marbles and working-class men and women strolled along the street with their children. We finally arrived at the Landsberger Gate. The ground rises a few feet here; this provides a view of the region around it which is completely flat. A few taxi drivers and rented coaches stopped at 19. Note the date—more than a year after the previous entry. This letter was written after the others in the Erinnerungen, but was included in the original edition of 1851, because it pertains to the foregoing text and Lewald wanted to include it here. 20. In a remote corner of Friedrichshain, the graves of the March Martyrs (“die Märzgefallenen”)remain in a circle, many of them still with the original markers described by Lewald in this section. Natives of this part of Berlin can usually direct you to the small cemetery, which has added a statue commemorating the communists, socialists, and workers who died in the 1919 revolution.

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the base of the hill; many people went up at the same time as we did. All at once, we found ourselves at the graves of those who had fallen the previous March. They lie buried in a circle. It was obviously thought then that these would be the first and last sacrifices demanded by Prussian freedom, and the circle was closed without leaving room for a later time. The graves extend in a double row around a round plot of grass; there are about two hundred of them. A young tree soon to be replaced by a memorial adorns the center of the plot. A windmill stands close to the graves and slowly turns its arms in the prevailing breath of air. Silently and yet so eloquently, a closed entity, these graves observed us. At our feet lay Berlin, large and splendid—Berlin crowned by its church spires, by the royal palace’s newly erected proud dome originally intended by its builders to be the keystone of Frederick William IV’s residence and just nearing completion when the revolution struck its first hammer blows against the foundations of this royal house. Nature and world history have the same basic conditions, the same inescapable laws. The time of full bloom is followed by a dispersion of the blossoms so that the fruit can develop and ripen. All around the mound of the dead many thousands of young trees, still leafless, stretch their bare limbs up from the yellow-white sandy soil, begging the nourishment and warmth from the air that this barren soil can offer them only sparsely. But the cold sky was gray and overcast and there was not a ray of sunshine to be discovered by the young trees. You would have to doubt their eventual ability to survive if you were not to count on their internal procreative motivating power. For a few months, the bronze bust of “Old Fritz,”21 after whom the grove was named, has been sitting on a gray marble column in this tree nursery of the future Friedrichshain. A citizen of Berlin donated the bust to honor Friedrichshain and the dead, as if historical instinct had driven him to set a memorial to the most highly gifted absolute ruler next to the memorial to the men who fell in the fight against absolutism. The revolution and absolutism, despotism and rebellion meet here as the extremes must always meet. From observation of the terrain, our eyes soon turned to the graves. What a difference between the verity of these funeral rites and the decorations and inscriptions on the graves in other churchyards! Great upheavals make human beings return to the basics, 21. Frederick the Great (1712–1786) was affectionately referred to as “der alte Fritz” (“Old Fred”).

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help them to a awareness of their true value in contrast to the customary assessment of the privileged classes. Because the people had to learn to perceive themselves as a power in regard to authority, they gained the courage to speak their own language. Each person feels justified in abandoning himself completely to his grief in this place and is entitled to participation and attention because he declares he has the right to these. A maidservant rests next to the marble memorial of the student Gustav von Lenski, erected by his fellows. The committee for the fallen has put up her cross. “She was shot in her room,” it reads next to her name and age. We went from grave to grave, and I want to share with you the inscriptions I copied down. “Here rests my unforgettable second son Karl August Theodor Deichmann (carpenter foreman), born on the twenty-fourth of September, 1823; died the eighteenth of March, 1848 from two bullet wounds in his body during the fight for freedom. He followed his mother, who had died six weeks earlier, into the grave. My third son was wounded five times in the head at the same place, the corner of Friedrichstraße and Dorotheenstraße, but survived. Dedicated by his grieving father.” “Those are the two Deichmanns,” an artisan standing next to us said to his companion. “They seized these innocent boys in their home. The youngest said to the lieutenant, ‘Sir, you see I have no weapons. Protect me!’ But the lieutenant was the first to strike him on the head with his sword hilt and then the other soldiers attacked him. And we are supposed to keep the peace when we have soldiers who fire on unarmed fellow countrymen and attack as if we were enemies and not brothers!” They went on, talking to each other. We walked to a nearby grave. “Here lies the locksmith Julius Frankenberg, age 29. To die in the fight for the people’s freedom—that is the testament by which we inherit.” Another inscription reads, “Here rests with God my dearly beloved husband, the baker Gustav Ripprecht. Shot at my side on March 18 while we were peacefully together. Dedicated by his wife.” “Here rests with God Wilhelm Brüggeman, upholsterer, killed in the battle for freedom on March 18. This memorial is erected by his surviving fiancée.” The manner of speaking, even the grammatical mistakes of the people have gone into these inscriptions and made them touching and holy. Where the means were lacking to place even the smallest wooden cross, love has created new memorials—little wooden boxes with glass lids, covering and showing a written sheet of paper. In one of these boxes lay the following poem, which clearly shows the mark of folk poetry:

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A holy shudder of reverent feeling O’ercomes me always when I near the graves. Here rest the bodies of good noble people Whose course of life has found its ending here. But inspiration flames within my soul Because so many did not fear death’s sting; Ignited by a lightning bolt divine, They sacrificed their own lives here. This place, where now so many slumber, Will be forever sacred in our eyes. Although no tombstone marks this grave, True is the deed that value true bestows.

“These lines were written for the apprentice locksmith Karl Lamprecht by his dear friend.” On March 18, 1849, another sheet of paper was laid upon this grave decorated around the edge with the German colors and inscribed, “You fought for these colors in life; you should wear them in death also.” Other little boxes have the monograms of the dead cut neatly out of colored paper as playing children tend to do. No one has neglected to bring the love offering that was a necessity for his heart and a possibility for his means. The poor won this cemetery on the barricades; they have earned the right to honor their dead free of all conventions in their own way, according to their own feelings. Until now, anyone who did not want to erect the conventional cross was almost always satisfied with wordlessly laying wreaths and flowers on the graves, because that is what the rich did. Because of the false modesty forced upon them, the poor have seldom dared to say in bad handwriting on coarse paper, “So have I loved; that I have lost.” The police would hardly have tolerated it, because even the tombstones and their inscriptions were subject to their scrutiny before March 18. Who could have written about freedom even on a tombstone! How much more touching are these written words on the graves of the first sacrifices for the freedom of our country, how much more sincere than the cold, “Here lies Mr. N.N., deeply mourned by his family,” or one of the other stereotypical fine phrases supported by Bible verses, which are on the majority of our splendid monuments. The difference is like that between the paid-for eulogy of the pastor and the cry of pain of a wounded heart over the corpse of a loved one. Many of the graves had been decorated with black flowers, with new wreaths on their anniversary; others had been consecrated a

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second time, as I have mentioned. One grave showed only a small heart-shaped paper plate on roughly cut pine. But it was painted with the German colors and a blacksmith’s apprentice had placed it on the grave of his fallen fifteen-year-old comrade. Rain and wind had already rolled up the paper, but the hand of true love will surely replace it again and again until the gratitude of our citizens provides a permanent marker for each of these graves. The people came and went between them as if All Souls’ Day were being celebrated in a Catholic country. And that is what it was, March 18, an All Souls’ Day! Soldiers in uniform stood beside us in deep mourning, listening to the tale of a middle-class woman. She told us that the man at whose grave we were standing had been murdered in his home in front of his small children, although he had taken no part in the battle. The woman lived in the same house. She witnessed how the man fled from the invading soldiers to hide behind a fire barrel on the courtyard and how the soldiers had hauled him out and killed him. The inscription on the cross reads, “Here rests with God the citizen and master tailor Löffler, born March 15, 1795. Torn defenselessly from the bosom of his family by the military, riddled with fifteen bullets, which ended his earthly life on March 22.” Next to that you read, “Here rests with God the citizen and master F. W. Schwarz. Dragged defenselessly from Leipzigstraße to Französichestraße and riddled with nineteen bullets which ended his earthly life on March 23.” Next are the graves of two women shot in their rooms. Wherever you look there is the lament of the survivors, the complaint about the rough brutality of the troops, who did not spare the defenseless. And next to these sites stood soldiers of the same regiments who now wept over the dead, now that they felt humanely as human beings, now that constraining words of discipline no longer reduced self-conscious human beings to execution machines. It was uplifting to see how joyous, how courageous the epitaphs sounded that the young had dedicated to their peers and affixed to their graves. Young machinists wrote on the memorial of their comrade: “His last wish was also his last action. He calls to us to follow his path.” The inscription for a student, Weiß, reads, “He fell for the freedom of his brothers on March 18. Your spirit was strong and your life pure; you have always been free and constant in love!” That sounds so confident of freedom, so assured of the future, like the flourish of trumpets in the victory jubilation of the Te Deum. Even with the quietly whispered tales of the strollers, the reverent awe for the peace of the dead, one would have liked to

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have expressed one’s happiness about this cheerfulness, this joyous exaltation at the graves of the deceased. Everywhere people spoke of the atrocities committed by the soldiers against the citizens for eight days before the outbreak of the revolution. These actions were supposed to break that courage which had become so dangerous for the dynastic rulers in Paris and Vienna. Even more lively was the description of the days of the battle, especially of the night illuminated by the flame jets of the shrapnel. The life of the working classes and the middle-class businessman is only meager in destructive experiences compared with that of the wealthy; the memory of the people, however, is more faithful and reliable. The residents of the palaces and stately mansions, who spend the summer months at one or another lively spa, who must think about court celebrations, balls and Carnival in the winter, will easily forget March 18 and the dead in Friedrichshain. The people, however, who have no amusement in the summer except a walk in front of the city gates of their home town on their day off and no pleasure in the winter except an evening of conversation, these people will always return to Friedrichshain. They will forget neither the dead nor the revolution of 1848 nor the events which precipitated this revolution.

Berlin, June 8 I had seen so many artistic achievements occasioned by the revolution in Paris—busts and paintings of the goddess of freedom, poems, hymns, concert performances, plays, vaudeville, figurines, which had all been inspired to some degree by the times and the motivating idea of the moment or whose creator had been captured by this idea—that it was surprising to me that nothing of this sort was happening here. I therefore persuaded S. to visit the studios of various artists in the next few days to find out how it looked there after the revolution. But nothing had changed in the studios, everything was static, as if the eighteenth of March had never happened. Wherever you asked the question, “Why aren’t you painting what you have experienced,” the answer was along the lines of “there are really no genuine themes available; the mode of dress of our day makes things very difficult for the painter and even more so for the sculptor; it’s impossible to paint a historical picture with them. Any attempt to portray the black tailcoats, the narrow overcoats or the round hats in a scene provides the sorriest

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straightline figures and groups like picket fences.” I always listened to this without comment, but I did not believe it. To be honest, the garments are not very attractive, but the fault for not creating any works of art here lies not with the clothing of the subjects, but with the artists themselves. They have treated art up to now as something almost otherworldly (I do not want to use that actual word because they did depict the smallest everyday occurrences often enough). Artists here look upon their works as a luxury for the rich, not as the requirement of every human being. Art in Germany has never passed into real life nor come close to the people as it does in Italy. It has never educated the people in a sense of beauty and has therefore never been able to get the reciprocity of beauty from the people as a stimulus. That is why most of the artists do not know what to do now when it is a matter of using the events of the moment as a subject for art. Two years ago, the complaint that our times are without a theme might have been valid, but there are certainly enough themes now, and I often think of the comic wrath of the painter, Karl Rahl, who railed so violently against an “overmethodical civilization” that has made life feckless. “The reason we cannot paint anything,” he said at that time after finishing his magnificent picture of the persecution of the Christians in the catacombs, “the reason we cannot paint anything with a current theme, is because of our overmethodical civilization and our goddamned proper education. The men we are supposed to paint, the women we see strolling before our eyes, are actually not really individuals, but parts of a mass. They are all dressed alike; they are all dull und listless. In a police state, you need neither character nor energy, because nothing unforeseen can ever happen. If life is rich, wildly active, if it provides the individual with free self-sufficiency and free action, it becomes flexible immediately and provides themes for the artist. On the other hand, if deeds are restricted, and even the mood for them becomes impossible, and if human beings have lived as long under the scourge of police regulations as we have here in Germany—regulations that allow the police to observe and suppress a longer beard, a red cap, or a strange-looking coat—a frozen regularity results. All of life retreats to the interior; the exterior becomes lifeless. Regular, hypocritical forms result which are as of little comfort to the artist or the historical painter as the Dutch and Old French hedges and trees are for the landscape painters. If you want an example, just compare Shakespeare’s tragedies and the dramas of today with the eye of an artist looking

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for themes. Wherever you open Shakespeare, you find a deed, a picturesque scene. You could paint every moment of the plays from the great scenes in King John to the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Now take the works of the new writers, who have actually treated the themes of our times. Wherever you open a book, there are miseries of feelings, phrases about spiritual conditions, tortures of the heart and soul of all kinds—it makes you quite weak just to observe them! People suffer internally like the damned, but externally they don’t lift a finger. Who is going to let a lover climb up to her balcony when the watchman below would call to the police for help? Or who is going to give his rival a true “coltellata”—an honest thrust of the stiletto—when you have to pay a fine of ten thalers for a slap in the face? Only the suppression of the police, only the beginning of a real fistfight, a healthy individual life, can save us!” In Paris, I reminded him of this speech and the fistfight when he delightedly modeled for me the fantastic garb that the first night of the barricades in February had produced. When I saw him a few days ago and told him that I had found no connection at all between art and the outer world in Berlin, he invited me to visit the studio of Heidel, the sculptor, where he himself, as a friend of Heidel’s, was living for the time being. I was there yesterday and saw Rahl’s color sketches for a large picture of the parade of corpses at the palace.22 On the balcony of the inner palace courtyard stand the king and queen; the people are crowding around on all sides. A litter, on which lies the body of a young man, is set down before the eyes of the royal couple. Men in work clothes surround them; a young woman has thrown herself in despair over the corpse while a strong older man in a leather apron and with rolled up shirt sleeves raises his bloodstained arms threateningly against the king, as if he were demanding vengeance for the sacrifice of his child, as if he were hurling the pain and the curses of the young woman at the souls of those who caused this bloody night. Rahl thought that in Paris 22. In the “March Days” (March 15–21, 1848) in Berlin, the raising of street barricades and the intervention of the military caused a number of deaths (c.f. Lewald’s entries about Friedrichshain). Frederick William IV was frightened into making some temporary concessions, including collaboration in giving Germany a constitution. He also prematurely withdrew the military and left the royal palace without protection. He was thus forced to grant the demands of the populace for arms and was publically humiliated by having to salute the corpses of the victims as the mob carried them past him.

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the Provisional Government or the city would immediately order such a picture. Here, where all the officials are doing their best to expunge those memories from the consciousness of the people, it would at best only be purchases by a private citizen—if Rahl completes it at all, which is much to be desired. For his part, the sculptor Heidel has also created excellent reliefs about experiences of the days of battle: barricade fighters making bullets, fathers who are showing their sons the use of the rifle, young men tearing themselves away from the arms of their sweethearts in order to storm the barricades with their flag; and other well-presented themes. Rahl was beaming with satisfaction about our pleasure in these works. “Wasn’t I right,” he asked, “when I said that order is the enemy and a fistfight the best friend of art? Art has nothing to fear from revolutions, but it softens, it perishes under the tender care peace lets it enjoy.” [Lewald describes the costumes Rahl has discovered which will be more pliable and graceful for the artist to depict than the rigid clothing of the day. She then attend the theater and is appalled by the lack of grace in the language used there.] It wrings my heart. I never felt more deeply and with more shame how far our people lag behind the Latin peoples in their cultural development than in this benighted theater. Such a degenerate, ignoble language would be impossible in Italian or French theaters, because it does not actually exist there any more. The coal carrier in Paris and the beggar in Italy speak more nobly than these actors; yet it was not the proletariat that formed the audience, because even the cheapest seat cost two or three groschen, while the best seats were seven and a half groschen—therefore almost a franc—and were completely occupied by well-dressed members of the middle class. [She also again deplores the lack of good German patriotic folk songs.] We have none! The poets still have not found the tone that reflects these times and finds an echo in the hearts of the people. Sometimes they sing “What’s the German fatherland” in the streets and imagine that it is a national song, an elevating anthem. But it is nothing but the pitiful dirge of a divided people, downtrodden and in bondage, seeking a fatherland, because their home has never been a fatherland until now. It is the lament of a nation over

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its shattered nationality, a song which holds an answer only for all those who would like to consider and present the German revolution as the misdeed of individual agitators. And because this song is the only one common to all Germans,23 because it could actually be considered an inspiring national song until now, the Germans still endure these miserable comedies in Moabit; they still don’t see that a noble language is the most precious possession of a people and that it is a crime to dishonor such a possession by debasing it as we have done. It is a harsh condemnation of our existing governments and princes that such comedies seem sufferable to people almost one hundred years after the birth of Goethe.

Berlin, June 12 [Lewald visits Castle Tegel, the country home of Wilhelm von Humboldt,24 of whom she is a great admirer]

Berlin, June 30, 1848 Since the criminal attack on the Armory,25 Berlin has been in a real state of feverish excitement. The gatherings of the people and the posters are increasing; the tone of the opposing parties is becoming more violent on both sides. Even the remembrance of the terrible street fighting in Paris seems to arouse the fury of the contesting factions instead of calming and exhorting them to peace. This battle of the “have-nots” against the “haves” was something that seemed a certain eventuality to me long before this present revolution came upon our horizon. Now it has broken out and one does not know how to deal with it except with the power 23. Lewald seems to ignore Hofmann von Fallersleben’s “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” written in 1841 and sung to the music of F.J. Haydn’s “Kaiserhymne,” which became Germany’s national anthem in 1922. 24. Schloß Tegel, originally the country home of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767– 1835), leading member of Berlin’s intelligentsia, Prussian diplomat and educator, who founded the University of Berlin (renamed Humboldt University under the DDR regime). The castle is now a small museum. Wilhelm’s younger brother Alexander (1769–1859), geographer and scientist, is the one after whom the Humboldt Current and other geographical features are named. 25. On June 14, 1848, there was a demonstration in front of the Armory. Two demonstrators were shot and a riot ensued that ended in an attack on and plundering of the Armory.

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of the bayonet and with cannon balls. Can you kill half of mankind by shooting? Can you force human beings to endure a misery that has become unbearable to them? And if this impossibility were possible, who could be so wretched as to want it? When you pass a huddle of people gathered at this or that street corner listening to some speaker, you often hear deeply excited, passionate words arise. But my male acquaintances who approach these groups assure me that only one word of plain good sense is usually required to convince these aroused gatherings of the futility of unplanned passionate deeds of violence. The people are sensible and cautious and we do them great injustice to confuse them with the ten or twelve overly excited speakers, whose tirades do not reveal any of the deep understanding of our current circumstances possessed by the artisan class. The change of ministers last week made a great impression on the artisans.26 I happened to speak to several of them during this time and found most of them depressed. They had fastened their hopes on the name of Camphausen; they had confidence in him and had counted on him to provide remedies for many evils. Now they find out that he had no solutions either. An older and very calm citizen, who works hard to feed his family, said to me, shaking his head, “Believe me, there is no help coming to us from theory alone.” But everyone has good words for the Civil Guard. No one sides with the people who would like to represent the Guard as a demoralizing institution that would make the artisans return to their customary occupations by force. A shoemaker made the following comment to me recently: “If you are not a drinker and wastrel already, you won’t become that way in the guard room. If they are afraid of that, they should throw the drinkers out of the Guard. If we were not called out unnecessarily for every little problem, serving would not be difficult at all—the exercising and guard duty, outside in the fresh air, are quite good for us. Many of us are far healthier since serving in the Guard than we have been for years.” In so-called “good society,” the fall of the ministry has also created great anxiety. Agitation and tension, bitterness and spineless despair, grip the wealthy more and more. They are tired of the restlessness, the excitement of the revolution, which offers them no reward. They would like to have the return of absolutism “to the last gendarme,” as someone said in my presence recently, so that they can 26. Camphausen resigned as minister-president on June 20, because of the attack on the Armory. He was followed in the post by Rudolf von Auerswald.

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stroll on Unter den Linden again, unhindered by the Linden Club on the corner of Friedrichstraße and the countless posters on the trees themselves. I saw the new ministers at one of Hansemann’s evening receptions. These soirées are really much like a peepshow and this metaphor, which I recently used when I wrote about the first reception, is still remarkably valid. The characters disappear from the scene quickly just as pictures are pulled out of the peepshow. The men you saw on Tuesday as ministers have already had their guiding hand removed from the ship of state by Friday and frequently have been replaced by others by the following Tuesday. The whole new cabinet was there on this Tuesday: Auerswald, Milde, Rodbertus, Märker, Gierke, Kühlwetter, and Schreckenstein,27 not to mention the host, Hansemann. I recently mentioned the minister-president Rudolf von Auerswald to you. He had earlier been Lord Mayor of Königsberg and much beloved there; then he was Chief President in Trier. The Minister of War, Mr. Roth von Schreckenstein, is a tall man with a somewhat bowed but otherwise firm soldierly posture, whose general’s epaulets gleam brightly on the monotonous black of his bourgeois tailcoat. His thick bristling hair is totally white, but under this old man’s hair, under the bushy gray eyebrows, a pair of clever eyes peer firmly and determinedly out at the world. This man knows what he wants and will be able to carry out what he considers right. That makes the wish all the more fervent, the hope all the more necessary that he will really understand what is right and act with an understanding of the present time. The other person who is striding through the rooms so quickly, dressed in the most modern of clothes, slender and yet strong of body, greeting everyone, bestowing a word here and a smile there, calling out a witty remark to the rest of the company—that is the Minister of Commerce, Mr. Milde from Breslau.28 If you want to imagine the Minister of Commerce as a character you already know, picture Pelham, Bulwer’s hero,29 at the time of his candidacy for Parliament with his friendliness guaranteeing and expecting good will. Mr. Milde is the son 27. Baron Ludwig Roth von Schreckenstein (1789–1858), Prussian general, was Minister of War from June to September, 1848. 28. Karl August Milde (1805–1861), representative to the United Diet from Silesia and Minister of Commerce from June to September, 1848). 29. Pelham or the Adventure of a Gentleman (1828), by Edward Bulwer Lytton, often considered his finest novel. It was certainly a favorite of Lewald’s, who used a quotation from it as the motto of her first novel, Clementine (1843).

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of a Breslau cotton manufacturer, who rose from the lowliest class of people to great wealth and the highest esteem. The son was brought up in wealth, was never dependent on others for his income, received a many-sided education and became familiar with a variety of literatures; during long periods of residence in France and England he became acquainted with and learned to value the conditions in constitutional countries. Rich, indolent, high-spirited, he was considered a dandy in his youth like Pelham. But everyone who knew him well saw a strong ambition peering out under this frivolous cover. This was demonstrated as soon as an opportunity for its development came up in Prussian politics. Now the Anglophilic dandy has changed into a hardworking businessman, who appeared in Breslau as a deputy at the previous Landtag and accomplished much. He was elected president of the National Assembly and finally received the post of Minister of Commerce. He seems to find the burden of the office light, judging by his cheerfulness, and it would be very desirable if he could improve Prussian trade as much as his father once did his own factories. The Ministers of Justice and Agriculture, Märker and Gierke30 spent almost the whole evening in quiet conversation on a window seat. They are both probably in their middle forties. Mr. Märker is robust with a large head, a bony face and one of those strong physiognomies which inspire confidence because they look both clever and trustworthy; Mr. Gierke is very blond with sharp features and a quiet demeanor. He is a well-educated man who recognizes this period of history not as uniquely troubled but as a necessity in its connection with the past. Although this awareness seems very simple and natural, it is not shared by many others. People are satisfied with both appointments; all the parties speak of Märker and Gierke’s characters with confidence and expect the best from their performance of their duties. Minister of Culture Rodbertus is a completely noble figure31—a handsome, stately man, whose brown hair, lightly touched with gray, falls modestly over a pure high forehead. He is marked by 30. Märker, Minister of Justice from June to September, 1848. Julius Gierke (1806–1855), Minister of Agriculture from June to September, 1848. 31. Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875), Prussian economist and statesman. He was leader of the Left Center and Minister of Culture for two weeks in June, 1848. He was especially interested in improving the lot of elementary school teachers. He is considered the founder of scientific socialism in Germany, using the ideas of Plato and Fichte rather than those of Marx in promoting the concept of an organic state: capitalism should be overcome by intervention of the government rather than class struggle or unionization of labor.

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candid eyes, a pleasant expression of his mouth when he speaks, noble gestures of his hands and a sure, cosmopolitan attitude. Wherever this man goes, he will know exactly how to act appropriately; culture and quiet self-confidence emanate from every feature of his personality, which undoubtedly belongs to the aristocracy of intelligence. I noticed two other people especially. One man, with gray closely cropped hair and a head strongly resembling that of one of Wallenstein’s portraits, and who held himself in a very manly and military manner, was Mr. von HoltzendorffVietmannsdorf.32 He is well known because of his long battles with the ministry of Bodelschwingh.33 The other was a Catholic clergyman, the brave, dialectically minded skirmisher of the Moderate Left, Chaplain von Berg. He had been a teacher in an officers’ training school before he became a priest. In spite of his youth and his obvious glowing health, which betrays a tendency toward plumpness, his scalp is bald; his lively eyes, though, dissipate this illusion of old age and scan the salon as securely as they challenge the speaker’s platform. This energy, this decisiveness are in sharp contrast to the careful manner of the Protestant clergymen, who are in these halls as deputies and who probably regard Arago34 the republican with the loathing of monarchial indignation. He is presently conducting himself “par excellence” here on the parquet floors of the Christian-monarchial state as envoy of the French Republic. I saw him standing next to the elderly ambassador of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain, to whom Alexander von Humboldt was speaking a few words in his singularly confidential way and his usual smiling pleasant manner. What this new ministry will accomplish is in the lap of the gods. I hope to find it still at the helm when I return in the fall. I am leaving Berlin in the next few days, but with a heavy heart, when I consider how little has been accomplished of all that we expected so confidently a few months ago and believed was so close.

32. Franz von Holtsendorff-Vietmannsdorf (1804–1871), early proponent of a constitution for a united Germany. He became Auerswald’s personal representative at the Frankfurt Parliament. 33. Baron Ernst von Bodelschwingh (1794–1854), Prussian statesman, occupied several ministerial posts, including Finance and Home Affairs until March 1848. He had advised the king to implement liberal reforms and returned to politics in 1849. 34. Emanuel Arago (1812–1896), French politician and ambassador of the Second Republic to the Prussian court. He resigned from that post when Louis Napoleon was elected president in December, 1848.

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Chapter 4

HAMBURG, JULY AND AUGUST, 1848

! Hamburg, July 10, 1848 [Lewald likes Hamburg very much. She finds that its citizens are more conservative than the Berliners and very much involved with the Schleswig-Holstein question since Hamburg is a city of embarcation for the Prussian troops. She compares it favorably to Berlin.] Since the coronation of Frederick William IV, the most significant sums have been spent for new construction at home in Berlin. We have begun to build the cathedral and the new museum; frescos are being designed for the “campo santo” where the bones of the Hohenzollern are to rest. Much has been done that flatters the personal inclinations of the king, but nothing has really happened to benefit the average inhabitants of Berlin besides the improvement of the Spree Canal in front of the gates. The drainage ditches in the streets are as inadequate as they were eight years ago. A recent cloudburst inundated half of Friedrichstadt again so that the taxis could not drive through the flooded streets, while the horses were wading in water up to their bellies. Communication was restricted for some hours. Although such a condition would be understandable in a newly built city, it is completely unconscionable in an old capital, where one is building an unnecessary new cathedral and “campo santo.” We still do not even have market halls while Hamburg has two excellent facilities for central markets. In short, as far as anything that concerns the daily well-being of the individual, the free city of Hamburg is in far better shape than our royal capital, with the exception of our excellent taxis. The old problem of Hamburg’s tollgate was not solved by the city conflagration and only a recent

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riot occasioned the burning of the tollhouse at the Steintor. Otherwise Hamburg is very quiet; and even if there are numerous complaints about the inconvenience of the troops passing through and the damages to trade caused by the Danish war, the enthusiasm in Altona1 is all the greater. The local flag is still waving beside the German flag on the city hall. The wounded who could not be accommodated in the orphanage-turned-hospital are being tenderly cared for in private homes. Young, wealthy women are offering their help in the hospitals. Linens are being provided for the soldiers and wounded; food is being distributed. When the soldiers from Weimar landed by Hamburg steamships in the harbor of Altona, they were greeted with music and loud cries of jubilation. The troops had not rested; they seemed to be hungry. So it was interesting to see everyone hurrying from everywhere to offer the officers bread and wine, which they in turn then immediately shared with their men. I saw one young officer breaking two rather small loaves of white bread into four equal pieces and distributing three of them to the men nearest him; he devoured the fourth so rapidly that you knew he was still hungry afterwards. [Lewald thinks that the aid of other German countries to help Schleswig-Holstein free itself from Danish rule will be a positive factor for the unification of Germany. She visits Hartwig Hesse, an elderly Jewish painter, who is conservative and does not like any civil disturbances. He is especially distressed about the recent events in Paris and reminds her that old people are far more averse to change than younger ones such as she. He takes her to a foundation he has funded for the widows and children of sea captains and jobbers and explains to her the advantages of emigration to solve the poverty problem, since he is also helping to finance a German colony in Australia.]

Hamburg, August 15 [Lewald relates an amusing anecdote about her breakfast at Wilken’s Oyster Cellar and visits Heinrich and Rudolf Lehmann,2 two local painters. One of Lehmann’s paintings inspires her to write a 1. A suburb of Hamburg. 2. Heinrich Lehmann (1814–1882), born in Schleswig-Holstein, painted historical paintings and portraits. He spent most of his life in Paris. Rudolf Lehmann (1819–1905), a historical and genre painter, spent most of his life in London.

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vignette, “From the Life of a Painter.” This vignette has been omitted from the translation.]

Helgoland, September 3, 18483 There is a personal God and seasickness is his means for converting atheists! [Lewald’s experiences on the trip to Helgoland almost make a believer of her. Helgoland is peaceful except for the Danish blockade, which is of little consequence. She visits another local painter, Heinrich Gatke. She stays in Helgoland for several weeks. There is considerable description of the local landscape, people, and customs.]

3. Helgoland, an island in the North Sea, was a favorite resort for Germans, including Heinrich Heine. Lewald’s purpose in going there was a vacation with her lover and future husband, Adolf Stahr, whose family she had previously visited in Oldenburg. See note 1. Stahr’s wife seemed to accept this state of affairs and finally gave him a divorce after their children were grown. Lewald became very close to some of Stahr’s sons, especially since she was the main financial support for them and their father.

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Chapter 5

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, OCTOBER 1848

! Frankfurt a.M., October 12 We spent only a few hours in Bonn. You cannot call the city itself very beautiful. But hardly were we out of the gate and driving through the suburbs along the Rhine, when a flood of southern memories swept over me. [Lewald reminisces about the landscape in Italy.] We went on from Coblenz the next day. The Rhine voyage was pleasant and without any fog, about which we had been cautioned. At five o’clock we were in Mainz and later that evening in Frankfurt. Heinrich Simon was not there. He is at a spa in Scheveningen for his nerves. He is not expected to return until the end of the month, so I will hardly have a chance to see him. In the course of today, we have spoken with various persons and found an even stronger party hatred than in North Germany. The bitterness on the part of the Right, or at least its manifestations, seems to be infinite here, too. These representatives of the old order and of good breeding apparently find a real satisfaction in denouncing their opponents as dishonorable, egotistical traitors to our country. They do not consider that you honor yourself by your choice of opponents and lower yourself when you belittle them. Also belonging to the decisive despisers of the present movement are two old adherents of the late Romantic School, who, lured here by the National Assembly, stroll around in fantastic attire. The reality of the present battle is obviously frightening to

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them and they look as confused as night butterflies in the sunlight. If they would just fold their wings quietly and remain silent like those butterflies, who realize their hour is past during the day! Such resignation may be quite difficult when it is the result of conscious thought rather than instinct, but it must still have a more calming effect than a futile assault on an unconquerable fact. Because the Romantics with their exclusively poetic concepts can have no connection at all to the realistic bourgeois representatives of the people, they have made the murdered Prince Lichnowsky1 the object of their fantastic adulation. I heard the prince spoken of today as if he had been the noblest man of our time, Germany’s highest, purest character. Added to this were bitter denunciations of the Left. They accused the men of the West End Hall,2 represented in their minds by Heinrich Simon, of not repudiating the murder of the prince openly and decisively. By the same absurd logic, they should also repudiate the assassination of Latour,3 with which they had as little to do as with the incidental death of Prince Lichnowsky. The Right describe the prince, who had until now never been considered a spotless character or a very significant man, as a person who, having found himself, would have transformed himself into someone great and high-minded right here in Frankfurt; they are surprised that his opponents do not want to believe in such a miracle without considerable proof, which no one has seen fit to provide so far. Those same Rightist reactionaries say, “We are in a party battle; we are in a bloody civil war!” Yet they are afraid of the symptoms of the ills that they know have overcome them. They are amazed that chills and fever come with the illness; they are surprised by what has already occurred, over 1. Felix Maria, Prince Lichnowsky (1814–1848), Prussian officer and politician who fought in the Spanish Carlist War for Don Carlos. At the Frankfurt Parliament, he was an influential representative of the Right. In the Frankfurt uprising in September, he and General Hans von Auerswald (brother of Rudolf and Alfred) were murdered by adherents of the extreme Left. 2. The parties at the Frankfurt Parliament were distinguished, as is common, by the places where they were seated. The men of the West End Hall were moderate Lefts and were led by Lewald’s cousin, Heinrich Simon, among others. Simon (1805–1860), a lawyer and politician, had been an object of her unrequited love for many years before she became a published writer. He was active in the cause of emancipation for the Jews and died in Swiss exile. 3. Theodor, Count Baillet von Latour (1780–1848), named Austrian Minister of War in May, 1848 and assassinated by Viennese sympathetic to the Hungarian cause during the October revolution.

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circumstances that have been experienced by other nations, just because they have never lived through them themselves. It is appalling that Latour, Lichnowsky and Auerswald were murdered, that agitators demanded the head of the Archduchess Sophie4 during the last revolution in Vienna; any lawlessness is to be condemned and is pernicious. Yet King Charles I in London and Louis XVI in Paris climbed the scaffold, England and France had their days of anarchy, their dictatorships, before they broke the power of absolutism, which had lowered them to serfdom. Now distinguished German professors and senior statesmen who have written long books about revolutions and constitutions are beside themselves thinking that similar causes will create similar consequences here, if hopefully not exactly so violent, that fighting and victory demand sacrifices. Here, every young woman who knows of the experiences of her mother and grandmother and still bears a child is braver and wiser than these men. This act can even cost her her life; the child could be stillborn after she had endured all that pain. Yet she does not despair, but believes and hopes. For if she survives, a new life will be born and others before her have survived. There is something so petty in the cowardly despair of these friends of order, that we must be ashamed of them, if we are counting heavily on the victory of what is inevitable and therefore also the right thing. And on top of that, these very same people are just those who insist they believe in God and the divine rule of the world! In the evening when we went through the city and along the bank of the Main in the moonlight, the state of siege occasioned some very picturesque scenes. On all the city squares, at the main watch post, in front of the city hall, at St. Paul’s Church,5 soldiers on bivouac lay singing and devouring their evening ration in front of large fires. Goethe’s statue is surrounded by wooden barracks, which were erected for the Würtemberg cavalry. The “old gentleman” looks down upon them with an air of divine calm and earnestness; he knows that these events will pass and that he will survive, that no people and no period of time will be able to wrest away from him the laurel wreath he holds in his right hand. 4. Archduchess Sophie of Austria (1805–1872) was the mother of Franz Joseph I, who was proclaimed Emperor in December. 5. The Frankfurt Parliament held its meetings at St.Paul’s Church in Frankfurt am Main. Although badly damaged by bombs in World War II, the exterior has been restored and the interior now houses a museum.

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October 13 We were in St. Paul’s. The building is not at all ecclesiastical but seems as if it were constructed expressly for a national assembly. A beautiful stately rotunda contains a choir stall forming a raised platform at the foot of its supporting columns. The presidential podium is erected at the site of the pulpit and altar. I immediately thought of Herwegh’s much criticized words, “Wrest the cross from the earth!” Here at least it has been done for the benefit of the people; German flags fly where a crucifix formerly hung. Gagern, Simson, and Riesser6 were in their places; since I knew Simson and Riesser, I paid special attention to Gagern. He is tall and strongly built; his facial features are very pronounced and defined by thick bushy hair and unusually bristling eyebrows. All his pictures do him justice. His posture, his voice, his manner of expression all bear the imprint of his masculinity. This impression was strengthened even more later when I heard him speak during the day. The only thing that alienated me is that he, too, did not believe in the good in the lower classes of people but considered them egotistical and without morals. How could he then speak up for the sovereignty of the people or, to state it otherwise, how can he have such an opinion about people he himself has declared sovereign? He did not seem to fear the principles of communism, which are the bugbear of many people here also; he denied the existence of such beliefs among the people, but admitted socialism was taking hold and its ideas were becoming evident everywhere. 6. Edward von Simson (1810–1899), lawyer and politician. A distant relative of Lewald’s and a neighbor in Königsberg during their youth, he attended the same school as she and was often held up to her as an exemplary student. He was first vice-president and the succeeded Gogern as president of the Frankfurt Parliament in December, 1848. Gabriel Riesser (1806–1863), politician and editor of the periodical, The Jew, founded in 1832. He represented the causes of Jewish emancipation and a united Germany at the Parliament and was twice vice-president. He was also part of Simson’s futile delegation to the king. Both he and Simson were members of the Erfurt Parliament in 1850. Baron Heinrich von Gagern (1799–1880), delegate from Hessenand active in politics there, was elected president of the Frankfurt Parliament in May, 1848. In June he was instrumental in having Archduke John of Austria, uncle of Emperor Ferdinand, appointed Imperial Regent to provide provisional executive leadership after the Parliament suspended the Diet of the Germanic Confederation. After this provisional power failed, Gagern took over the executive function, but also had no lasting success. He remained active in politics and was also a member of the unsuccessful Erfurt Parliament.

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That is a consolation, because one cannot imagine how the battles of our times can find an end without the fundamentals of true socialism, without the principle of reciprocity prevailing. It is said that Mr. von Gagern will resign from the presidency and Simson will be elected in his place. As sure of procedure and as endowed with an intelligent overview as Simson is, he will surely make an excellent president, all the more because he is really not very enthusiastic by nature and will probably be less affected by party disputes than the more volatile Gagern. The latter swung his bell with such passion today at times, that we were afraid he might fling it out among the raging assembly like a missile. When he stepped down and Simson presided for him, you felt the difference in the personalities of the two men from just the tone of their voices. Simson’s voice and his way of expressing himself are magnificent. He penetrates the loudest clamor with his firm, clear tone and dominates it because of his calmness. Gagern joins spiritually in the fight even when he presides; he is always standing between the parties, between friend and foe in the fray, and can therefore easily be wounded and injured. He is like an Ajax and Simson like a Ulysses or rather a modern general, who deliberately stays away from the fighters and surveys the course of the battle he is directing from an unassailable position. Doctor Riesser sat on the platform as comfortably as if he had just finished a day’s work and was now relaxing quietly in the presence of his friends. Joy in working, intelligence, candor, and the purest benevolence shine from every expression of his face. There may also be a satisfying feeling for this doughty untiring champion of Jewish emancipation because two Jews are now holding the offices of vice-presidents of the German National Assembly. One of the most striking figures at the Assembly is undoubtedly old Jahn.7 In his long coat reminiscent of Old Germany, his folded-over shirt collar, the little velvet cap on his bald head and his long white beard Jahn looks like a magician from the theater or like Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle, returning from his century-long sleep. He gave a short speech filled with 7. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852), “Old Gymnastics Father Jahn.” He was instrumental in introducing gymnastics into German culture to emphasize physical and moral strength to counteract military and moral oppression. After the Wars of Liberation, from 1815 to 1819 particularly, he participated in the founding of the Burschenschaften. He was arrested and imprisoned as a demagogue and remained under police supervision for many years. In 1848 he was elected to the Frankfurt Parliament.

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anxiety about a new uprising and used in it his “purified” German which sounded very strange to our ears, which were accustomed to the more modern language. Then Mr. von Vincke8 stepped onto the platform. What a strange apparition he is! It is amazing how much certain great talents, some certain important men, gain by appearing only in print. Mr. von Vincke’s manner of speaking is deadly: he rushes over his own words in rattling impetuosity, like an avalanche that becomes bigger the faster it rolls down the mountain. He really does not speak, because he has no control over his speech; anger speaks from him. His voice is a mighty instrument that his strong sharp spirit uses with a wild, gigantic recklessness. This takes so much energy that the blood rushes to his head and he turns completely red. What he said was honest, sharp and clear—but the manner in which he said it was thoroughly disagreeable. It was remarkable to observe the facial expression of old Itzstein9 while Vincke spoke. As small, lean, and pale as the latter is tall, strong, and vigorous, the old man sits on the farthest left, surrounded by nothing but young men. His clever eyes, squinting slightly under the white hair, the sardonically deprecating smile on his lips, often seem somewhat uncanny. He remained in his seat quietly the whole morning, hardly spoke to any of his neighbors and only signaled to the men of his party who went to the speaker’s platform with a look or a nod of his head now and then to show his participation. Just like Mephisto, he sent out his “little ones”10 to carry out his commands. On the ministers’ bench, Mr. von Schmerling11 is the first to catch your attention. An expression of bureaucratic arrogance characterizes his appearance and his speech. An air of deep contempt 8. Baron Georg von Vincke (1811–1875), Prussian politician. He was a compelling orator for the Liberals at the United Diet in 1847, but formed a more liberal splinter group of the Right at the Frankfurt Parliament. He continued in politics and became leader of the Moderate Old Liberals in the Prussian parliament. 9. Johann Adam von Itzstein (1775–1855), politician from Baden. He was tried and forcibly retired from politics because of his opposition to military spending, but was eventually allowed to return to the legislature as the leader of the liberals. Later he headed a more radical faction. In 1848 he was one of Baden’s representatives at the Frankfurt Parliament. 10. Goethe, Faust, ll.1627–34. 11. Anton von Schmerling (1805–1893), Austrian statesman. As a liberal, he was involved in the March Days and represented Austria at the Frankfurt Parliament. He was chosen Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs and then minister-president by Archduke John, the Imperial Regent in July, 1848, but resigned in December, because he was a proponent of the Greater Germany Plan that wished to include

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for mankind hovers over the tightly pursed narrow lips. If he is required to answer an question from the floor, he tosses out the words with the same ill-tempered disdain which harsh persons give a donation to the poor. It is mean-spirited to call a poor man asking for help a beggar; it is just as mean-spirited to perceive people presenting and demanding their rights as criminal rebels. The words “rebel” and “rebellion” will completely disappear from the earth in their present sense when there is an end to serfdom. There is only one rebellion—rebellion against the holy spirit of truth— and none of the men now called rebels and whom Mr. von Schmerling looks down upon so scornfully are waging a battle against that. Compared to him, Mr. Beckerath12 seemed twice as gentle and friendly when he shook hands with Venedey,13 who was just coming from the platform where one of his motions had failed. Jakob Venedey is no oratorical power but even his opponents grant full justice to his personal charisma. Sixteen years of exile in France and England have not altered his German heart. He returned home with great hope for the realization of the freedom he enthused about in his youth. But he found bullets instead of the palm leaves of peace and is now suffering from deep disappointment. The last riot in Frankfurt, the assassinations of Lichnowsky and Auerswald, have made a deep impression on him, especially since these murders were obviously political and premeditated. The opposition wants to lay the blame on him, although all the evidence is against that. He complained about the blunders of both parties and told us yesterday, “I have suffered more from the unworthy, pernicious accusations of the last few days than I ever did from the deprivations of my long exile.” He utters these words the German provinces of Austria including Bohemia in a united Germany. This plan would have radically altered the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (The Lesser Germany Plan proposed leaving Austrian territory alone and making Prussia, with Frederick William IV as monarch, the nucleus of the new Germany.) Schmerling continued representing Austria for a Greater Germany in various capacities. Although Lewald seems to regard him as very conservative, he resigned from the cabinet of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (1800–1852), the iron-willed reactionary Austrian prime minister, because he disagreed with the latter’s policies. 12. Hermann von Beckerath (1801–1870), German politician and banker, member of the Right Center at the Frankfurt Parliament. He was appointed Minister of Finance in the provisional imperial government in August, 1848, resigned in May, 1849, but continued in politics. He was a special confidant of Frederick William IV. 13. Jakob Venedey (1805–1871), German historical writer, was in exile in England and France until 1848. He was a leader of the proponents for the Greater Germany Plan at the Frankfurt Parliament.

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with such a tone of truthfulness and frankness that you, too, suffer all his pain. You cannot help but think of the German “Meistersänger,” because Venedey’s appearance is so typically German. Doctor Vischer, the gifted aesthetics professor from Tübingen, looks equally German with features reminiscent of Peter Vischer’s.14 He has an open face glowing with life and a strong body. Uhland15 sat next to him and we were surprised that this great poet appeared so ordinary, or rather, so extraordinarily ugly. His coarse facial features and the completely bald, pointed cranium are in sharp contrast to the tenderness and power of his works; only his light-blue eyes shine beautifully and look at the world with intelligence and clarity. A young lady sitting next to us, who had cherished a imagined image of the famous man in her heart for years, cried out with comic terror, when first shown Uhland, “That is supposed to be Uhland? Oh, that man never wrote his poems!” These words sounded as naive from her beautiful lips as the amazement of the child in the fable that sweet Philomena should be clothed in such an improbable gray feather garment.16 A great number of those famous personalities we had known hitherto only from their writings and their deeds were pointed out to us. We saw Dahlmann, Grimm17 and other fellow countrymen. 14. Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807–1887), professor of aesthetics at the University of Tübingen, was a Moderate Liberal at the Frankfurt Parliament. Peter Vischer (ca. 1460–1529), Nürnberg sculptor, whose works show the transition from the Late Gothic to the Renaissance styles. His most famous pieces are the memorials for the grave of St. Sebaldus, patron saint of Nürnberg, and the figures of King Arthur and Theoderic for the tomb of Emperor Maximilian in Innsbruck. 15. Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862), German Romantic poet. Many of his poems were inspired by folk poetry. He was briefly a professor of German language and literature at Tübingen, but resigned because of his interest in politics. A liberal delegate at the Frankfurt Parliament, he was for the Greater Germany Plan. His best known poem is undoubtedly “Der gute Kamerad” (“The Good Comrade”) in its musical setting. 16. In Greek mythology, Philomela was turned into a nightingale after being raped by her brother-in-law and having her tongue cut out. 17. Friedrich Christoph Dahlman (1775–1860), professor of history, first at Kiel, then at Göttingen, and finally at Bonn. He wa a liberal member of the Frankfurt Parliament and proponent of the Lesser Germany Plan. At the Erfurt Parliament, he attempted to implement a plan based on English Liberalism. He was one of the “Göttingen Seven,” a group of seven Göttingen University professors who protested the abrogation of the constitution in Hanover by King Ernst August in 1837 and were summarily dismissed from their posts. Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (1785–1863), German philologist and Romantic. He and his younger brother Wilhelm (1786–1859) were prominent folklorists who collected and published the Grimms’ fairy tales. Both brothers were members of the

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There is something very exciting about seeing people, as the Bible says, “with your own eyes.” Our sentient nature longs for that. You feel close to greatness; you see spiritual worthiness incarnate; your reverence find its target. More than once today I thought of Heine’s remarks about his Conditions in France:18 “Our country must thank its great men not for the efficacy and success of their deeds, but for the determination and sacrifice that they demonstrated in them. Even if they had not wished and worked for our country, Germany would have to honor these men after their deaths anyway, because they sanctified her by their very existence, their greatness!” It has caused me much pain in the last few days whenever I entered St. Paul’s and compared modern Frankfurt with the Frankfurt in which a soul like Börne19 had to bear all kinds of suppression and persecution, that Heine cannot follow the events of our times from his sickbed in the Rue de l’Oursine and that Börne did not live to see them at all.

October 15 I am getting very sad and worried about matters in Germany, since I realize more and more how many of the deputies are without faith, how they call the others bad or irresponsible and deny each other any political insight. You hear about what is wrong, impossible or unable to be accomplished from every speaker, but no one tells us what is possible and accomplishable. There is a need for such things to be pointed out: the dissolution of the outdated police state into the elements of individualities can obviously be frightening if we cannot come up with one person here who has the talent to reshape it or the genius for creative organization, if no one knows the form into which the presently fluid elements must “Göttingen Seven.” Jacob Grimm, later professor at the University of Berlin, was also the premier lexicographer of the German language. His dictionary (the German equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary), begun by him in 1852, with the assistance of Wilhelm, was finally completed in 1960. Jacob was a delegate at the Frankfurt Parliament. 18. Französische Zustände, first published serially in the Allgemeine Zeitung and then in toto in 1833. 19. Ludwig Börne (1786–1837), German-Jewish radical journalist. Like Heine, he lived in exile in Paris after the July Revolution. Although not actually a member of the Young Germany movement, he was very sympathetic to their idea and purpose. Lewald admired him and his writings greatly and had met him at the time of the Hambach Festival. Boerne, Texas is named in his honor.

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be poured so that they jell instead of inundating everything catastrophically. Even if you believe that the redemption and reformation of mankind in our times can no longer be accomplished by one person, but that each human being must redeem himself and all of us must obtain freedom together, we still long for a being who will light the way for us in the entire divinity of human nature as a great example and as a beacon of active strength. It is all the more pusillanimous that the deputies here, the Germans in general, take such a childish pleasure in the caricatures which appear here daily. You can take pleasure in mockery when it is strewn like gold dust recklessly over the large impressive Gothic letters of history or when it dares to attack great deeds or names with harmless envy or an ineffectual wish to disparage. But to be happy daily because Mr. von Radowitz20 has ultramontane tendencies, that Mr. Mohl and Mr. Rößler21 have done this or that badly, that many are not up to the job—there is certainly no good reason for that. It is sad and offensive at the same time to make these an opportunity for mockery and to enjoy it. People are still talking about the death of Prince Lichnowsky. Inexplicably, it is discussed and bemoaned in public far more than the death of Mr. von Auerswald, although Auerswald was an honorable man in every regard and left his family unprovided for. Yesterday Councillor … told us of some of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Prince Lichnowsky, which clearly show that it was not in the least a case of a politically premeditated act, but only the result of his disregard for his own safety. He had dined with a Prince von Hohenlohe and a Count Bentheim at noon and suggested to the Count that they should ride out to see if the cavalry was coming. Count Bentheim asked, “Do you want a bullet in your body so badly that you would go for a ride right now, when you know how unpopular you are?” “Bah, the bullet for me has yet to be molded,” laughed Prince Lichnowsky, who had them bring his horse and rode away. His opponents could hardly have known anything about this ride in advance; they probably thought 20. Joseph Maria von Radowitz (1797–1853), Prussian general and statesman. Friend and ambassador of Frederick William IV at the courts of various other German states before 1848. Delegate to the Frankfurt Parliament, where he was a leader of the Right. 21. Robert von Mohl (1799–1875), lawyer and politician. He was a law professor at Tübingen and Heidelberg, delegate to the Frankfurt Parliament and Minister of Justice for Archduke John. Emil Franz Rößler (1815–1863), Austrian delegate at the Frankfurt Parliament. He went into exile after the failure of the revolution.

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he was at home. While it has not occurred to anyone, however, to assert that the assassins looked for Prince Lichnowsky at his home or the home of one of his acquaintances, there is a whole contingent who agrees that his death came as a result of an intentional political plot. I would like to know what magician of the Far Left prevented the prince from fleeing into the open country which stretched for miles around him or into the confines of a gardener’s house. If he had not dismounted, no person on foot could have caught up to him, since he had a fresh strong horse. It could hardly be blamed on the Left that he dismounted. It is striking that the opponents of the prince do so little to discover the truth. Councillor …, who has been all over with his usual agility and the acuity of observation you know so well, assures us that that whole horror story about the mutilation of the prince was an invention. Morever, he came immediately into the care of a doctor after the attack, who shielded him from further mistreatment and brought him to the hospital. A deputy recently spoke of the influence and the death of the prince, saying, “He is dead, so no one should judge him anymore.” This is a lovely idea but not necessarily valid for our time of struggle. The prince’s party is manipulating the fact of his death with such pathos, that his opponents must be careful to do everything to validate their innocence, the prince’s carelessness, and the coincidental aspects of this murder. You have to respect the Right, just as you do the Jesuits, when you see how well organized and well defined all their tactics are—that is, not respect their beliefs, but their astuteness and persistence in advancing them. The churches, the princes and the aristocracy are working together with such harmonious unity that they integrate even the smallest incident, good or bad, into the chains they are again slinging around that part of mankind which has striven to free itself of them. If the Left had only half of this calculated, consistent organization, matters would be entirely different. But there is not only a lack of organization but also of the most elementary relationships. The most prominent personalities of the Left are hardly acquainted with one another, often knowing little of each other but what is reported in the newspapers. They do not become better acquainted at casual meetings because their level of education and the outer form of their personalities is so varied—a condition that is inevitable because the Left is composed of so many different strata of society. Everyone we question realizes that the nucleus of defeat is inherent in the lack of organization and the piecemeal actions—but things do not change. If

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there were one person who could unite these disparate elements and hold them together, he would be the savior of democracy. I never heard any rightist Parisian assert in March what is said here daily by our German Conservatives: “The people have no morals; the whole basic principle of the revolution of 1848 is pernicious egotism.” The better ones, the more “humane,” add a sanctimonious qualifier to this, saying, “But do not think that we therefore have doubts about the ultimate victory of goodness and truth.” That means no more than what one of the Englishwomen fleeing Paris said to us about the Chartist movement in England.22 “Ah,” she cried joyously, “The rich are in such a majority at home that we can easily suppress the poor!” That is also the theory of the current governments and was the theory of the first Prussian ministries after the revolution, of those land and factory owners who can never make amends for the misery that they have brought upon the land by their inaction and vacillation. They call themselves statesmen, practical statesmen, in contrast to those so-called “idealists” who represent an idea and consistently act according to it. And yet their statesmanship was and is no greater than the point of view of Prince Milos,23 who, during a conversation about the way revolutions should be suppressed, struck the table in front of him with his gigantic fist so hard that he smashed the bread lying in front of him and let a significant “Thus!” resound as his only answer. Self-preservation is not humaneness and justice; it means nothing at all that these “statesmen” fight 22. The Chartists were a party of primarily working class social and political reformers in England from 1836 to 1848. They presented a petition or charter to Parliament asking for universal manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, payment of those members, equal electoral districts, and annual parliamentary elections. After Parliament rejected this charter, the movement became temporarily radicalized, but eventually became more moderate again after a number of riots and demonstrations and ensuing repression by the government. After a massive demonstration and a second presentation of the charter to Parliament in 1842 did not yield results, the movement died out in 1848 when a final convention, demonstration, and presentation to Parliament brought no positive action. The more moderate trade union movement took the place of Chartism. 23. Prince Milos Obrenovich, Prince of Serbia (1780–1860), founder of the Obrenovich dynasty. He was the son of a peasant and led the army against the Turks in 1815. After the assassination of Kara George, the previous Lord of Serbia in 1813, he was elected hereditary Prince of Serbia (a much smaller Serbia than the present one). He ruled in an autocratic and repressive manner and was forced to abdicate by his nobles, aided by the Turkish Sultan and Russia, in 1839, but returned to power in 1858. He reigned for two more years after wreaking vengeance on his enemies and died peacefully at the age of 80.

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against the governments, as long as they hoped to gain their own freedom. Now, when freedom for the fourth estate is demanded, they utter a decisive “No!” and call what is more accurately termed egotism, statesmanship. “You cannot help everyone. For the sake of future generations, we must have the courage to let the present generation of the proletariat starve. I want to acknowledge the right to vote of every decent person who demonstrates his worthiness by education and insight to the franchise, but not the right of these beggars, day laborers and dependent servants.” These are the elevated maxims of statesmen uttered from the point of their own absolute power. They do not seem to realize that a royal councillor, or any other official who serves to earn his living, is not really much less dependent than the porter who waits on him. On the contrary: the porter, who has healthy limbs, can obtain his modest needs much more easily if his master should dismiss him than the official can feed himself. The latter’s requirements are far more difficult to satisfy and political judgment does not seem to be harmed any more by a servant’s dependency than by his master’s. How is one to believe in the correctness of axioms whose proponents always have their own advantage in mind, who defend the rights of the prosperous and use bullets as their final argument? I have never learned to believe in that “bullet solution,” not even after the shocking assassinations of recent times. An old wise man used to say, whenever he heard laments about individual deaths, “Thousands of sons, husbands and fathers died at Eylau and Leipzig24 and Germany did not perish but became stronger because of them.” To the individual struck by these blows of fate they are hard, yes, irreparable, but in the long view of the development of all mankind, they are insignificant. Why are all the rich now shouting so anxiously about their fear of being impoverished, as if there had never been another time when the worth of commercial papers had vacillated and property lost its value? As if the same things had not happened in the years from 1806 to 1815?25 The fear of being impoverished of the 24. Battle of Eylau (February 7–8, 1807), fought between the Prussians and Russians on one side, the French on the other. Many lives were lost but the conclusion was indecisive. Battle of Leipzig (October 16–19, 1813), “Battle of the Nations.” One of the last battles of the Wars of Liberation, fought by the Allies (Prussia, Russia, and Austria) against the French. The French were decisively defeated, losing about 30,000 men. 25. The time of Napoleonic hegemony in Europe.

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“haves” is certainly more egotistical than the actions of the proletariat, which has never demonstrated its so often deplored greed anywhere. On the contrary, you only hear praise, when you ask about specific cases, as here in Frankfurt, where proletarians occupied the Rothschild house during the riot. They fired down on the street from the cashier’s room in the offices where masses of gold coins lay about. Hundreds of people for whom a thaler is a fortune went in and out of the house and not a penny was taken. Even the members of the blessed Bundestag admitted that to us. But the men of the Right in St. Paul’s still maintain that the people are bad and that assassinations and disregard for the property of others is becoming more and more common. And holding these attitudes, they want to institute reforms! To reform anything, you need the full power of love, the firmest, most hopeful confidence; they have neither the one nor the other, but only baseless hate and baseless fear. During the day we were told that eighty thousand men had marched on Vienna. There were a considerable number of aristocrats among them. Another lady assured us that it had only been fifty thousand men, but she had been told these were more than sufficient to annihilate all revolutionary movements in Germany forever. The conversation was just like the one Goethe heard in Coblenz;26confidence in the final victory of the governments was just as firm as contempt for the people was great. The words, “the sovereign plebs,” was lisped by beautiful mouths with mocking smiles. I was once more seized by the hair-raising fear I have felt ever since my youth that when the measure is full, the harvest will be the hour of retaliation which can destroy us all. Don’t these unfortunate souls hear and see this? Have the cannon shots of the last June days in Paris not been loud enough for them? The wealthy must turn their naked drive for selfpreservation, their lust for possessions into the path of submission and sacrifice. And if that does not happen, if they persist in their old attitudes, then I am reminded of the words of an old poet, “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first deprive of their senses!”27

26. This probably refers to Goethe’s conversation with Basedow and Lavater during his trip along the Rhine in July, 1774. 27. No one is quite sure of the exact source of this aphorism, which has been repeated by many writers with slight variations. The original seems to be a fragment by Euripides.

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October 16 We were in St. Paul’s most of the day, from eight-thirty until three-thirty when the charges against Zitz, Schlöffel and Simon from Trier28 were heard. Vogt29 from Gießen spoke first, with great liveliness and overpowering warmth. You already know about the speeches and actions from the newspapers and stenographic reports; I can therefore limit myself to describing personalities. Vogt has a strong, thick-set but still quite agile figure: you can see he is used to moving around quickly—and the lightness of the step with which he strides through the hall reveals the doughty climber of the Alps in him, despite his solidity. His round face has excellent features: the forehead is broad and firm; the distance between the eyes, the shape of his nose, the form of his mouth and chin show great strength of character. His voice gives the same impression. He speaks in a lively way, but with complete command of his subject. When he gets truly enthused, he carries you away with his power and a great energy. Once, when he was defending the accused, he used an image which struck me because it was so appropriate. “You know the principles of the fountain,” he said. “The water rises as high on one side as it falls on the other side. Are you surprised that people are finally using daggers and ropes to gain freedom, when shrapnel was used at the beginning to deny them freedom? The shrapnel shot from the throne arises again as dagger and rope against the throne.” With these words, his piercing dark eyes themselves shot out fire. He left the platform with such energy that the famous words, “J’ai dit!” came instantly to mind. One of the men of the Right Center asked me today, “Now, how do you think things are going?” “Oh, the Right will certainly win!” “So, you’ve finally been converted?” “Converted! On the contrary. The old, the unjust is in the majority concerning new ideas or a new faith. In the spring, when the first young green leaves appear, some of the old withered foliage is still hanging from the trees and these limp leftover leaves are in a complete majority, but then summer comes and the withered leaves fall and the new greenery 28. Franz Heinrich Zitz, Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel, and Ludwig Simon were all members of the Left and were accused of complicity in the September uprising, in the course of which Auerswald and Lichnowsky were assassinated. 29. Karl Vogt (1805–1895), zoologist and German politician. A professor at the University of Gießen, he was a delegate of the Left at the Frankfurt Parliament and later a member of the Imperial Regency.

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gains the upper hand.” “Only to be just as withered the next year,” said my opponent. “Yes, quite withered,” I answered, “or do you believe I would have the courage to claim transitoriness for the past if I did not also regard the present as transitory? The injustice of the past, to which your party all belong, is compounded by the belief in the possibility of the permanence of this injustice. I recently read a story somewhere about an old lady who had lived for forty years with a friend of her youth. When this friend finally died, the old lady could not grasp the thought of this death at all, but insisted that her friend was still alive and would soon recuperate. She had her dressed, let the usual meals be prepared for her and seated her with herself at the table. When the spots of corruption and the odor of decay began to appear, she made up her face and perfumed her lifelong companion. She could not be persuaded by either her servants or the complaints of the police to bury the corpse, although its presence could seriously endanger the health of the living. Finally force had to be used, because one could not wait until the devotional madness of the good lady had run its course. That is what is happening everywhere at this moment to the adherents of the old days, especially among us. They all do not notice that the old days died in 1792,30 that they have long fallen into decay. These people make up the face and perfume the corpse of their old state system with ordinances and orders from the cabinet, which are dangerous to the living and still do not retard the process of decay. Finally nothing will avail but to use force at the last despairing end and to help oneself.” “How partisan you are!” cried the man of the Right Center. “And you are not?” “Yes, but do you really think this little bunch of ideologues sitting on the Left here can be called a party?” This simple question once more confirmed the fact, which the governments and their representatives cannot even now completely acknowledge, that they are confronted by an independent, authorized party. They still act as if a sovereign authority had recalcitrant servants, as if their peoples were serfs. They do not know that there are only princes as long as the people want to have them. If we are speaking of a contractual condition or of force here, the people can obviously call off a contract with a prince, but not the reverse. The people can banish the prince, but no prince can banish an entire people. As soon as no one lets himself be ruled, there are no more rulers. It is hard to understand why they are not capable 30. With the first meeting of the National Convention in Paris and the abolition of the monarchy. September 22 was the first day of the French Republic.

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of understanding that. We have heard long speeches about the slanders and the ignoble means employed by the Left; no one thought of the fact that those long speeches were slanders in themselves. Speakers who must have been completely capable of knowing the pure, high-minded personality of Johann Jacoby31 from their previous experiences asked the most tasteless, and in their cases, the most unpardonable questions: if it were true that Jacoby had led the riots in Berlin, that he considered anarchy a necessity, that he was encouraging it? How should one respond to that?

October 17 This morning we were in St. Paul’s again, where Moritz Hartmann32 bade us farewell. He is such an ardent youthful person that you appreciate him especially in these jaundiced times, when few people are born young and so many young persons act too old for their years. Hartmann is going to Vienna with Robert Blum and Julius Fröbel.33 Hartmann and Blum said good-bye to their acquaintances. Fröbel was not there, or at least I did not see him. There was something about the scene that reminded me of the 31. Johann Jacoby (1805–1877), physician from Königsberg, politician, and determined advocate for the rights of the Jews and a constitutional government, delegate at the Frankfurt Parliament. He was a lifelong personal friend and correspondent of Lewald’s and remained so, even after she became more politically conservative and an admirer of Bismarck. Jacoby was always a staunch liberal. He was the model for several of the heroes of Lewald’s early novels. 32. Moritz Hartmann (1821–1872), Austrian writer and politician. As a radical democrat, he had spent time in Paris with the liberals there and represented the Extreme Left at the Frankfurt Parliament. 33. Robert Blum (1807–1848), German politician and member of the German Catholic Movement. He advocated a bourgeois democracy and represented the Left at the Frankfurt Parliament. He was considered a great orator. In October, 1848, he was sent by his party with Julius Fröbel to Vienna to carry a message of support to Democrats there. Unfortunately he became involved in the fighting against Windischgrätz, who was commanding the Imperial forces that quashed the Vienna uprising. Blum was sentenced to death by a military tribunal and shot by a firing squad. This marked a complete break by the reactionary Austrian government with the Frankfurt Parliament. Julius Fröbel (1805–1893), politician and professor of mineralogy at the University of Zürich. In 1842, he founded a radical publishing house there, the Literarisher Comptoir (“Literary Office”). He was a delegate for the Left at the Frankfurt Parliament and accompanied Blum to Vienna. Although also sentenced to death, Fröbel was pardoned by Windischgrätz and went to live in the United States for the next eight years.

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time of the Apostles, as these three set out to fight for their sacred beliefs and to suffer with their brothers in faith. Robert Blum is undoubtedly one of the ugliest men I have ever seen. He is very stout, his head is sunk deep between his shoulders and with his red-brown kinky hair, his small penetrating eyes and his coarse round face, he looks like one of those fauns or satyrs often depicted so repulsively in the Bacchus pictures of Rubens. People who have heard him speak publicly say at those times his face livens up amazingly; he shines with intelligence and resembles Socrates. Just in passing, as I observed him, I could not see that, and can only admit that despite the soft, spongy mass of flesh, the face has character. It is as if Nature had created this man in a mad moment, so amazingly do his facial features contrast with each other and so arbitrarily do they seem to be put together. I was surprised at what I heard about his character, too. He was called a “demonic power!” They say he does not love freedom as much as he cherishes a deadly hatred of oppression and oppressors. He is not a man of concessions, but has the annihilating directness of a cannonball seeking its target to destroy it. G., who is not exactly his friend, admitted that Blum’s speeches, even when improvised in the heat of the moment, have an iron, well–thought out logic. G. also related that Blum seems to be very attractive to women despite his ugliness, because of the force of his intelligence. He himself is well aware of this ugliness and when a woman likes him, he is happier about the triumph of his mind and will over the strictures of the outer appearance imposed on him by Nature than about the love that is offered him. There is something about that appeal that bears an uncanny resemblance to Richard III. But Blum’s whole personality seemed uncanny to me, demonic in both the good and bad sense of the word. I asked others if he were not really a relentless, terrible person. The answer was: he could become one, like any human being who has a goal in mind and tramples down ruthlessly anything that separates him from it. No one denies that he has channeled his hatred of the suppression of the principle of freedom with great tenacity and discretion for years. We can hope this will prove true in Vienna, too. Fröbel’s appearance is in complete contrast to that of Robert Blum. He is tall and slender and, although his very heavy head of black hair and the equally heavy beard give him a somewhat somber look at first glance, his facial features, the expression of his sea-green eyes and the beautiful mouth are so strikingly calm and noble that a painter who saw him the first time called him

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consummately beautiful and compared his head with that of the glorious Capitoline faun, which he actually does much resemble. His way of speaking is conversational (I have never heard him on the platform) and very calm; his voice is powerful, yet strikingly mild. His whole person has the serene repose created by an inner equilibrium of the soul and an aesthetic education. He speaks out against the use of any measure of force, as long as legal solutions are at all feasible. Once, when the conversation happened on political tactics, he uttered a sentence which expressed his social policy to me in all its irrefutable validity: “For every necessity there must be a possibility!” When he said that, his voice was very soft and his person very calm as if he knew that reason would of necessity claim victory in a world ruled by the law of reason. Here in Fröbel, it has again been demonstrated to me that true power is always gentle and the right convictions are always calm; vehemence and irritation must generally be considered a sign of inner instability. I have never heard a severe word of reproach from Fröbel, never a calumny like those his opponents fling so generously at the most noble characters of the Left. Such restraint is truly admirable in this time of hatred and battle. When we emerged from St. Paul’s at about noon, we came upon Mr. von T. and Mr. von O., who both agreed that the National Assembly would regret not having voted against the new election of persons named to be officials. We did not stay for a discussion of this subject, because we wanted to look around the city some more. [Lewald explores more of Frankfurt.] Finally then, the “Jews’ Alley.” If all those in power in the world were drowned in suffering and pain because of this year’s revolutions, they would not compensate with their tears for all the tears of pain that that unfortunate people has shed in its two-thousand-year serfdom in disgraceful suppression. As we went trough the long narrow Jews’ Alley, as I looked into the buildings of these tower-like houses, which are glued to and into each other like the cells of a honeycomb, and as I thought that Börne spent his youth here—this was the place where he had been locked up like a criminal every evening and they had refused to open the gate, even during conflagrations—I shuddered at the inhuman actions of the so often highly praised times gone by. When Goethe utters the terrible curse in Faust and shatters the structure of human existence

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stone by stone, when he curses hope and faith, he ends with the words, “And most of all, a curse on patience!” [I: 1605–06] Yes, the curse of mankind is that patience, which lets it tolerate suffering that only ends when you no longer tolerate it. There can be greatness in enduring the burden of physical pain or the pressure of unavoidable circumstances with a free spirit, but to suffer patiently under a serfdom you recognize as serfdom—that is cowardice and shame. The conservatives state as their final and strongest reproach, whenever they have exhausted the measure of their wrath against the party of the movement, “It was mainly the Jews, the Jewish dissatisfied literati, who began the whole sorry spectacle because of their miserable egotism.” And not one of these accusers realizes what a laurel wreath he twines for the Jews with these words. Yes, it was Börne and Heine who have called to the Germans since the July Revolution and even before: “We are underlings and you are, too!” It was Gabriel Riesser who represented the emancipation of the Jews with great vigor; it was Johann Jacoby and Heinrich Simon who have waged battle unceasingly against the Prussian bureaucracy since 1840 and finally resisted Prussian absolutism almost man against man. It is inspiring that it was just those men who led the way, the most prestigious laurel wreath for the Jewish people that after such long oppression they have not become discouraged or weak, but instead strong enough to step to the forefront of the movement in Germany. The word of the Saviour of the world has become a truth to His people: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner” [Psalm 118:22].34 The patience stemming from cowardice and lethargy may seem like a virtue when seen from the throne, but it is as certainly a shame and a burden as the will-o’-the-wisp, which shines like a pure flame from a distance but is only the product of unhealthy swamp gasses. In the windows of the bookstores everywhere you can see the pictures of Börne and Heine, not only next to each other, but depicted on the same poster—quite a sight in Frankfurt, where they once tried to deny Doctor Börne a position as an assistant attorney!

34. Jews believe this verse refers to Israel, scorned by other nations, becoming central to God’s plan for mankind. Jesus refers to this verse when he confronts the chief priests and elders in the Temple [Matthew 21:42].

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Chapter 6

BERLIN IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 1848

! Berlin, November 8, 1848 Yesterday I returned home after a four-month absence. I have already seen a number of our acquaintances today, who are all very worried about the possibility of a coup d’état, although they consider such an action justified because of the National Assembly’s lack of moderation or call it an injustice by the government, an act of wanton recklessness. Every one agrees that a coup would be disaster for the country. The mood of the people seems even more depressed to me now than last March and the bitterness of the parties seems still harsher. The hatred of the stable friends of order has taken on a ill-concealed character, that now, grinding its teeth, offers only forceful means. They long for a blood bath, in which Basserman’s frightening apparitions1 would drown. They have obviously adopted the latest arguments of the king as their own. The majority probably heartily regrets that this verdict by shrapnel is still the “most enviable privilege” of the crown and that each one of them can not make use of his own private little cannons against the persons and the opinions most 1. Friedrich Daniel Bassermann (1811–1855), German liberal politician, who supported the Lesser Germany Plan at the Frankfurt Parliament. In a speech on November 11, he spoke of conditions in Berlin, the suspicious characters inhabiting the streets and various anarchist groups that were preventing cooperation between Frankfurt and Berlin. These people were thereafter referred to as Bassermann’s “frightening apparitions.”

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abhorrent to him. Brandenburg’s government2 is receiving one vote of no confidence after another, but this does not seem to bother it. After all, it consists of irresponsible ministers who are only carrying out the orders of the king they represent. This is our constitutionalism! Everyone is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the troops and the dissolution of the National Assembly. The fact that neither has yet occurred is probably because the government is awaiting some sort of riot and would like to use that as an excuse for one or the other. If it were known for certain that demonstrations would be caused by the arrival of the troops and that the National Assembly would protest against them and prove itself “obstinate,” the troops would probably be moved in so that the obstinate National Assembly could be attacked with good reason. If there were a hope that the sudden dissolution of the National Assembly would cause an uprising, the government would like such a dissolution to occur as an excuse to let the troops move in “legitimately.” But it is to be feared that the citizenry will not longer act according to the mood of the moment. It has far less to gain by new street battles than the government. This government seems like a false-hearted lover to me. He is bad enough to be faithless and not have the courage to admit his betrayal, but would like to force his beloved to speak the final words of dismissal and farewell by tormenting her. Unfortunately, there are still so many weak elements among the people that the lover can easily reach his objective if he only remains patient and cruel enough. When I asked Johann Jacoby today, “How are matters in Berlin?” he answered me, “Very good for democracy.” I looked at him strangely; he sensed that and added, “The feeling of subservience is still firmly ingrained in many Germans. Nothing can destroy that feeling as effectively as pure absolutism—and it is doing that quite candidly. The princes are wearing out the trust and the faith of the people; they are enlightening the people. That 2. Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (1792–1850), illegitimate son of Friedrich Wilhelm II, Prussian general and statesman. Asked to form a government with Manteuffel by the king on November 2, 1848, he dissolved the Prussian National Assembly and promulgated a new constitution, based on the work of the Assembly but maintaining the ultimate authority of the king. This constitution established a parliament with two chambers, a “Herrenhaus” for the upper classes and the “Landtag” for the middle and lower classes. The Landtag was elected by universal suffrage (no women, of course), but with property restrictions (votes depended on the voter’s tax-paying ability), so that, in effect, 27 percent of the voters controlled two-thirds of the seats.

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is more than can be demanded of them, because they themselves are undermining the ground on which they alone can stand.” In the hot summer of 1846, Vesuvius was completely calm— and people were afraid of this calm, because all the springs in Castellamare, where I was staying at the time, began to dry up. Berlin today seems as frighteningly quiet as Vesuvius seemed calm then.

Berlin, November 10 Today the National Assembly was dissolved—today, on November 10, the birthday of Luther and Schiller, those champions of freedom. The dissolution of the National Assembly by the power of the bayonet quickly followed the naming of Brandenburg’s ministry. It seems that in Potsdam they have forgotten the consequences of using bayonets in the French National Assembly sixty years ago and what events followed the words: “We are here by the will of the people and will only yield to the force of the bayonet.” But the people have not forgotten that fact, and the Prussian National Assembly proved itself worthy of its predecessors and champions. The sympathy of all civilized people must be its reward and its allies, if it can proceed quietly and firmly on this path and stand by the side of its representatives strongly and courageously. For thirty-six hours, since the announcement of Count Brandenburg that the king was moving the chambers from Berlin to Brandenburg-on-the-Havel, the presidium and officials of the National Assembly have not left their meeting place; the deputies have taken turns by sections in spending the night there. Special editions, offered for sale on the streets, informed the people of the decision of the National Assembly not to dissolve itself, since the order to do so was illegal. At the same time, it was learned through these special editions that the king would not admit the presidents of the National Assembly, Mr. von Unruh and Mr. Bornemann3 to his presence when the two gentlemen drove to Potsdam as private citizens to bring the voice of truth to the ear of the king in this moment so decisive for Prussia and so 3. Hans Victor von Unruh (1808–1886), politician and Liberal representative to the Prussian National Assembly, and its last president. Ferdinand Wilhelm Ludwig Bornemann (1798–1864), politician and member of the Prussian National Assembly. He was Minister of Justice for a short period and later a member of the new parliament.

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dangerous for the king. A notice was given to the city council that a troop of 15,000 men would move into the city at noon; the militia had occupied the site of the National Assembly. Groups of citizens gathered all over; there was a mood of serious calm, of firm determination evident everywhere. No street demonstrations of an unruly nature, no loud agitations. People met to look at a new poster or to hear a report from the Assembly and left as soon as they had done so. Around two o’clock there was more activity that announced the arrival of the troops in the city. Around this time we stepped from the brilliant sunlight of the clearest fall day into the hall of the National Assembly. The deputies were called up by name; there were 252 of them there. Mr. Bornemann was presiding. Individual deputies, moved by excitement, walked up and down speaking. Then Mr. Bornemann arose and said, “It seems appropriate to the solemnity of this moment that we await in silence the return of the commission, which went out to formulate a proclamation to the people.” A festive stillness reigned in the chamber. Mr. von Berg then stepped to the podium. “Time is short; the troops are moving in. I have taken back the seal of the National Assembly from the hands of the lower officials and am returning it to the hands of the presidium.” With these words he laid it down on the rostrum. Chaplain von Berg knows from the rites of his church how effectively symbols work upon human beings. His symbolic action had served its purpose when a representative of the commission entered and read aloud the proclamation to the people. It declared that the Assembly did not consider itself dissolved and was just withdrawing, yielding to physical power. This proclamation was adopted unanimously and received by the overflowing galleries with approving “Bravos!” and applause. One of the deputies demanded that the names of the authors should be printed under the proclamation. “Let them print ‘The National Assembly’” under the proclamation,” the reporting deputy suggested. “That would be the worthiest thanks for the authors.” This suggestion was also approved unanimously, as well as the motion to have forty thousand copies of the proclamation printed and distributed in Berlin. After these decisions had been reached, the lamps were lit in the hall, over which the shadows of twilight were already falling; the Assembly proceeded to address the agenda, to deliberate over the laws for commutation. This quiet exercised a charmed power. Two hundred fifty-two deputies of the country were deliberating here about the petty, oppressive forced labor of the poorest inhabitants of the country,

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while the king compelled the children of this country, the sons of these inhabitants, to move in as enemies against the representatives elected by the people themselves, representatives who were striving to preserve the rights of these farmers and day laborers. Along with the measured march step of the troops, the cheers of the inhabitants of Berlin penetrated the hall every now and then. The cheers were for the militia and their commander Rimpler, who declared himself on a poster as the rightful defender of the freedom that had been won and as the protector of the National Assembly. By the waning daylight, the rifle companies of the militia could be seen surrounding the building. Two hundred steps away stood the troops of General von Wrangel4—and in the Assembly they were debating about the commutation of the tax on quill pens, the oats paid per acre for each dog, dog biscuits, kitchen wagons, firewood splitting, and feed for the house cow. They debated very calmly, because they found themselves on the firm ground of true law. Then Mr. von Unruh, the president of the Assembly, appeared and began presiding in Mr. Bornemann’s place. He was greeted by complete silence. “Gentlemen,” he said with a strong voice, “I have received a message from the commander of the militia that regular troops have moved in and surrounded the assembly hall. Upon Mr. Rimpler’s question to the commander of the troops, General von Wrangel, as for what purpose these troops were moved in, he answered they had come for the protection of the National Assembly. Thereupon, by the power vested in me as president of this assembly, I sent a written declaration to Mr. Rimpler that the Assembly felt perfectly safe under the protection of the militia and required no additional protection. I am now awaiting his reply.” “Bravo” resounded from every corner. Immediately following, Mr. Rimpler’s reply arrived in the president’s hands. All eyes were upon him; the moment of decision had arrived. He arose again. “Gentlemen! To the question of how long he was planning to remain here, where his presence was not desired, General von Wrangel has answered that he is not leaving at all, since he recognized neither 4. Count Friedrich Heinrich Ernst von Wrangel (1784–1877), Prussian field marshal. He was commander of the united German troops against the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein and drove them out of Schleswig. He became supreme commander of the Prussian troops and followed the orders of Frederick William IV to occupy Berlin on November 10 and to exile the National Assembly from the capital to Brandenburg-on-the-Havel.

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the National Assembly nor its president. Count Brandenburg has dissolved the Assembly on order of the king; it no longer exists legally. The presence of the gentlemen in the assembly hall is illegal. He will not deny egress to any of the representatives, but, as soon as the last one has left, he will have the assembly hall locked and prevent access to it, even if he should have to stay here for one or two weeks. His troops are used to bivouacking.” Words of disapprobation resounded, but were drowned out by calls for order and the president continued. “The militia has declared, although it is not now accustomed to bivouacking, that it is prepared to become accustomed to it and will only leave its post at the same time as the deputies. But, gentleman, we cannot let ourselves depend on that. They have now used the force of arms against us; we are encircled by a strong military power. I have submitted a protest against this act of force. We want to leave the building together with the militia and our proclamation shall speak for us to our fatherland, which will be the judge. I declare the Assembly adjourned.” “Until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock,” repeated the president. “We want to meet tomorrow and see if we are prevented from entering.” A few moments later, the deputies, surrounded by the militia, left the building. A thunderous cry of approval, the most fervently uttered shouts of agreement, rang out all around. People fastened white cloths to the bayonet points; they waved their hats; they shook the hands of the deputies and accompanied them to all parts of the city as they dispersed in front of the building. Now it is five o’clock. The drum roll of the militia companies returning to their homes, or sending patrols for the preservation of order all through the city, is sounding through the streets. Everything is quiet and General von Wrangel with his troops is in control of the field at the moment.

November 18 I have not written to you, because my heart is so oppressed by the blessings of the “freedom” being prepared for us. A state of siege has been declared; the city is full of soldiers. Since then it seems as though an iron net has been spread out over us and even the sight of the heavens denied us. The gates are open; the streets are free—but you still feel as if you were in prison. The evening of November 10 and the night of November 11 were very eerie. Many people wanted to leave Berlin; they were

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packing. On the streets, taxicabs filled with the boxes and bedding of entire families with wives and children drove toward the gates. The excitement seemed to grow as night fell. Whenever a door was opened, wherever a beam fell, people thought they had heard a shot; every rattle of a wagon sounded like a drum roll. It was the same for everyone here to whom I later spoke, not just me. The horror of that deed of violence so stimulated our imagination that we thought we perceived what our righteous anger saw as a possibility. On the morning of November 11, I found myself at B.’s, across from the theater. As the deputies gathered, entrance was denied them, and they marched away in an orderly file with dignity, accompanied by countless numbers of citizens. General von Wrangel did not dare to hinder this accompanying crowd, although this was illegal according to martial law. The chorus of spirits from Faust sounded unceasingly through my head, while the deputies passed by me, that terrible Woe, woe! You have destroyed it, The beautiful world, With your mighty fist; It plunges, it shatters! A demi-god has destroyed it! We will carry The rubble into the void And mourn Its lost beauty. (I, ll.1607–1616)

It is as if the spirit of peace, reason, and moderation were leaving Berlin at this moment and wild spirits of revenge were swinging the blood-red torches of hatred through the air. The government and we along with it will have to atone someday, if not now, for what it has wrought with this dissolution of the Assembly, the contradiction of its promises in March. Many a seed of grain entrusted by the hand of Man to the earth is scattered by the wind or does not come to fruition. But the seeds of evil, strewn by the princes, always find the soil from which they sprout sooner or later as a climbing weed, which will ensnare, debilitate, and destroy the dynasties of the princes. The city council members had offered the deputies their meeting place, but, since it was too small, the Armory had to be used. The rifle companies are now standing guard in front of it, since General von Wrangel had the National Assembly evicted from this site also. One of the rifleman,

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an artisan who worked for me, indignantly told me about this eviction with tears in his eyes. Many of the officers ordered to carry out this command obeyed only it reluctantly, among them an old major in tears. An old rifleman captain yelled reproachfully at another, who carried out the action willingly, a survivor from old Blücher’s5 times, “Sir, what would old Blücher say if he saw that you were being sent out against the representatives of the people, Prussians against Prussians and that the king was rewarding us like this for our wounds of 1813?” “I am a soldier and am doing my duty,” the officer answered. Duty and obedience, these are the two words behind which power can still entrench itself, power which has embedded itself softly and yet so firmly upon the terrible Christian principle: Be subservient to the authority which has power over you. This Christian principle prepared victory for the French in Germany from 1800 to 1813; this Christian principle with its blind subservience to power will bring immeasurable misery to us one of these days, if the young people growing up today are again brought up to be obedient Christians instead of thinking people—to be subjects of power-wielding authorities instead of citizens of the state. I have seen women crying, whose children and household usually left little interest in the problems of the times and in politics, when smoking soldiers stuck their heads out of public buildings— the Mint, the Armory and the Academy—and sang lewd songs. I have seen them weeping when the streets were barricaded, when wagons and constables stopped at the corners and troops of five to six soldiers entered houses to seize the weapons of the militia. The weapons were loaded on the wagons and carried away. Young officers were in command of this glorious campaign. All the royal buildings are filled to the roof with soldiers. There are four to five hundred men in the Bank and in the Admiralty. In the halls, women hawkers are selling bread, brandy, sausages, and tobacco. In the evenings, the soldiers lounge around on the stair steps, so that you almost have to climb over them when you walk through the smoke-filled rooms. Even the Museum6 has been turned into barracks. If you pass by it, you hear a sound like a thundering waterfall. It is the singing and speaking of the soldiers in the splen5. Gebhardt Leberecht, Prince Blücher of Wahlstatt (1742–1819), Prussian field marshal, who led the victorious Prussian troops at Waterloo. 6. The then “New Museum” is now the Old Museum, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), Berlin’s great architect, who is responsible for many of the major buildings in Berlin.

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did rotunda, where the echo multiplies the sound a thousand times. Soldier are scuffling in front of the Medici Venus, tearing up the floor with their hobnailed boots. The Capitoline Faun has a forage cap on its head, helmets sit propped on the most beautiful antiques, bayonets lean against the Minerva Medica and the boy pulling a thorn from his foot is completely hidden by knapsacks, army bread, and cartridge pouches. That is what an acquaintance of mine told me. The bureaucrats, the nobility, and the large number of “peace-loving” citizens, as Berthold Auerbach7 called them, seem seized by a ecstasy of happiness. They are making life particularly comfortable for the soldiers in many homes and in the barracks, although the latter are hardly lacking in most creature comforts anyway. These worthy citizens are delivering woolen blankets, woolen socks, soup, white bread, cold beer punch, and tobacco. A cousin of mine, an infantryman, who is living in a barrack, told me that a confectioner sent him whole buckets full of chocolate last Sunday. Really, the only thing lacking is making formal visits to them, holding lectures for them and arranging parties, so they will not be so bored in Berlin. Meanwhile discipline is loosening considerably. As long as I have lived, I have never seen so many intoxicated soldiers on the streets as now; that was something unheard of in previous times. Even the tone of the officer has become—not more humane, because that would be something positive—but more familiar toward the troops. The soldiers are being cared for and flattered because they are needed. The “beautiful people” are returning with the soldiers. The ladies are beginning to go to the boutiques again with their liveried footmen to buy articles of clothing and to arm themselves for the salons, which had been closed during the days of democracy. Blouses and collars are being embroidered with the entwined monograms of the Prince, the Princess of Prussia, and General von Wrangel; the ladies are designing stylish outfits in black and white and undoubtedly envy zebras, who have had received their black and white stripes naturally by the grace of God. Even the councillors of the pre-March ministries, who have been quite invisible, are appearing under the linden trees like nocturnal birds after sunset. They look as if they were constantly and silently singing “Hail to you with the victor’s wreath!” If they 7. Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882), German-Jewish novelist and short story writer, who advocated the emancipation of the Jews in his novels. He was a friend and lifelong correspondent of Lewald’s.

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were not singing so thoughtlessly, they would probably stop at the beautiful and true verse that says Neither horse nor mounted soldiers Can make secure the steep heights Where princes stand!8

There is a way to support old buildings which is very questionable, because the weight of the materials used for that support can easily create a considerable danger for the tottering house, and that is the method the princes are using now.

December 20 Berlin now seems to me like Rome when Easter Week has passed, when all the trunks are being packed and the people who have spent the winter there and have become good friends, feel the hour of parting hovering closer and closer without knowing when they will see each other again. Easter Week, the time of resurrection, seems to be irretrievably over for this year. Many people who live far from here and are married have already left Berlin to spend Christmas with their families; those who remain are in very different moods. Johann Jacoby, after whom you inquired, is still in Berlin. He is taking the events as calmly and collectedly as he always does. Remember that once, when we were all together, he saw T. quite beside himself because of a painful personal experience he had just remembered. Jacoby said at that time with his soft calm voice, “Dear friend, at our age, we must no longer yield to despair.” So he does not despair even now. When he came to see me at the usual hour on November 11, I asked, “Well, Jacoby, did you expect this?” “Not expect, exactly, but I thought it was possible and thus prepared myself for it.” “And what is going to happen now?” “What I always thought would. In politics you can always predict what must happen; only the when is unpredictable. For the moment we will go home to the provinces. It is true we will have the problem of starting the work again from the beginning, but it will not be as difficult as before. The ground has been prepared; that is a great deal already.” “And 8. Lines of the Prussian national anthem, which is sung to the same tune as “God Save the King” and “America.” The words were written by Heinrich Harries for the King of Denmark in 1790 and adapted by B.G. Schumacher for Prussia in 1793.

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you believe in the victory of democracy.” “More confidently than ever. I told you just the other day that absolutism was working for it.” “But will we live to see this victory?” Jacoby looked at me with a smile. “Are you already getting impatient? That is a weakness you have to get rid of if you look at the totality of world events.” Then he was silent for a while and began again on his own, “Don’t worry, it will end with the victory of what is truth to us. Every people makes its long wilderness journey from the realm of slavery into the blessings of the Promised Land. And if we all don’t live until the day of arrival, what does it matter? Like Moses, we have all seen the Promised Land in our minds, in our firm belief. We all know it exists; we know it will be reached and should be willing to participate patiently in the journey through the wilderness without thinking of ourselves.” You know how sparing of words he is, on the whole, and how seldom he makes such pronouncements. That is why it made such a deep impression on me. There was something of the seer in him at that moment. He seemed larger to me, his light blue eyes more shining and penetrating than usual. The expression of clarity, gentleness and goodness so characteristic of him seemed even stronger if possible. His faith has something so convincing, so enthusiastic about it—I cannot express it in any other way—that I became a believer deep in my heart. He spoke slowly and quietly as always and still his voice held the greatest warmth. I remembered an argument he had used years ago against me. There was talk going on that many people considered him a cold man of reason, some even a fanatic or perhaps a dreamer, and I made fun of these contradictions. But Jacoby thought that all those people could be right. “A true unity of understanding, which has matured to complete clarity, always includes enthusiasm and warmth. Reflection makes you enthusiastic. If a person is for an idea which seems right to him in theory, but has no warmth for it in practice, it is because the idea is not yet completely clear to him. True conviction forces us to pursue it in our actions with total devotion and unselfishness!” I have never seen him irritated under any circumstances; I have never heard a harsh judgment from him. That is the way it is now. Where other are hurling reproaches with bitterness, disdain and anger, he shows only a smiling regret. He looks down at all attempts at reaction with the patient confidence of an adult watching the unrestrained wild behavior of a child, that he knows must end when the child’s strength is exhausted. When it was pointed out to him recently

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that he was a permanent item on the pages of the Kreuzzeitung,9 that this periodical claimed that he was being paid by the Russians, that he was accepting Russian bribes from a mercantile company in Königsberg, and that he should at least defend himself against these charges, he replied, “I want to make an offer to the editor of the paper to trade my Russian money for ten percent of his earnings; that is all I can do. By the way, I will soon be able to say as O’Connell10 once could, ‘I am the most vilified man in the kingdom’ and that is a considerable comfort.” Probably he will also leave in the next few days, partly to resume his medical practice in Königsberg, which was being covered by friends, partly to be effective there and to work where he can actually exert influence. Some of the deputies elected to the Frankfurt Parliament want to return to Frankfurt and it will depend on the coming elections whether we see them in Berlin again. The city is completely quiet. Here and there there is talk of house searches for concealed weapons, but otherwise nothing interesting is happening, since we are already accustomed to the fact that Berlin is like an armed camp full of soldiers, who completely obliterate the civilian element in the theater and on the promenades. Since you have not seen Berlin since autumn, you would find it very changed. The fog of this time of year seems to have spread more dismally than usual, but we must remember that it will not remain winter forever, that spring and sunshine will eventually return.

New Year’s Eve K. used to maintain that celebrating New Year’s Eve was a childish endeavor—not just the party with which one celebrates a successfully completed year with dances and masked processions, but also that quiet account-taking of the road traveled and the wishes and achievements of the period of time that just has passed. On that evening a year is ending. But he is wrong. Not on every evening do you have the leisure time or the mood for introspection 9. Die Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung, extremely reactionary daily Berlin newspaper that represented the views of the ultraconservatives. It was known as the “Cross Newspaper,” because it had a picture of the Iron Cross in the title head. 10. Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), Irish politician, leader of the Irish Catholics, and one of the first Catholic members of Parliament. He advocated the independence of Ireland from British rule. He was considered an outstanding orator.

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and the evaluation of your own work, your own development, and to be aware of your existence, which rushes by so rapidly, other than in the fleeting enjoyment of a moment, an evanescent memory, or a vague hope. We have only lived that which we consciously possess within ourselves as having lived. That is why I love memorial days of any kind. They are high points, boundary markers, which we should hold on to and survey the world as far as our eyes can see. The view becomes clearer that way. We see the individual boulders that barred our progress, the wild torrent that was an obstacle to us, as necessary features of the landscape. The hut in which we rested, the tree we planted—they do not seem major features to us anymore. We realize that we are not the center but only an atom in all creation. We must regard this last year especially, more than all others, as a whole from the heights, in order not to shudder in horror at the streams of blood, the traces of which will not soon be obscured by the newly sprouting seeds of freedom. Fortunate is the person who bears no responsibility for the sufferings of this year, who does not have to tell himself, “If I had paid attention to the signs of the times, had not rejected the modest pleas of the people for years, had not been obstinately deaf to their urgent demands, I could have prevented untold misery and the outbreak of battles, which no one can end or exorcise now.” In this hour, I would not like to be one of the princes, one of the ministers or statesmen who imagine that they can retard the wheel of time with their arms or their will power. What has happened could have been predicted long ago by anyone actually willing to look. Five years ago I wrote in a novella, “If you are too narrowminded to give satisfaction to the poor man here on earth, send him to Heaven where the grace of a god will give him the happiness denied him. And even this happiness will be his only if he has the extraordinary courage to withstand all the temptations our miserable institutions expose him to. He is left in misery; he is not protected from despair; nothing is done to keep him from committing crimes. Then they are impudent enough to say that the god they offer him as solace will be just as unforgiving, as shortsighted as earthly justice.” At the time many of my acquaintances found this statement “extravagant.” The world was not so bad; I saw matters too pessimistically. The Berlin censor brought charges against the innocent genealogical calendar in which the novella appeared. It was said that the novella contained a provocation by the lower classes

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against the upper ones. As if the starving men and women on large estates who collect rags on the streets for the paper manufactures read genealogical calendars with gilt edges and steel engravings! As if their trembling limbs, as if the whimpering of their starving children did not proclaim such facts relentlessly and far more clearly to them! Finally the Higher Board of Censors permitted the publication of the book and Mr. von Z…, the chairman at the time, declared that the cited passage was illegal, to be sure, but since a woman had written it, one should not censor it any further and release the calendar.11 I often thought of this when the Berlin Potato Riots started a few years later and the suffering cry of the starving Silesian weavers was stilled by bullets, because those people could no longer be appeased by mere promises.12 I thought of this when the battle was raging in the streets of Paris in June; I am thinking of it now when the well-to-do, the “politically educated,” that is, those of the establishment who have become desensitized to social reality because of their hard-shelled egotism, tell me, “Are you still hoping for socialist Utopias? Do you still expect to see mankind happy? Do you still believe that society can exist without poverty and suffering?” I only have one answer then: “I believe it and would have to believe because of egotism, if I did not do so because of love.” The heathens happily brought sacrifices to the gods to allay their envy. We must bring sacrifices to atone for the suffering of the starving, because this suffering will turn against us even more strongly than it already has. The sacrificial act must begin from the throne, if the throne and its possessors are not to fall as the first sacrifices of the long-quiescent nemesis. I sometimes see in my mind’s eye the outbreak of a catastrophe so bloody, so terrifying, that I would like to throw myself down in front of those in power and implore them: “Save! Intervene! 11. Fanny Lewald, Der dritte Stand (The Third Estate). Berlin: Reimarus, 1845, then Berlin: Gerschel, 1862: 95–96. Lewald discusses her problems with her publisher, Reimarus, and the Berlin censor in more detail in Meine Lebensgeschichte III, 110 ff. 12. In 1844, the Silesian weavers rioted to protest their wages, which had been consistently lowered because of competition engendered by the Industrial Revolution. Troops brought in by the frightened merchants, who were the middlemen between the weavers and the mill owners, fired on the rioters, killing eleven and wounding a large number. Heine’s 1844 poem, “Die schlesischen Weber,” made their problem a universal symbol for the revolt of the poor against the rich in Germany. In more recent times Gerhart Hauptmann’s 1892 naturalistic drama, Die Weber, first written in Silesian dialect (Hauptmann was a native Silesian) and then rewritten in standard German, brought their story to an even wider audience.

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Concede what you will not be able to refuse forever! Do not try to be gods here on earth, because you are not omnipotent, not omniscient. No individual being can be that to the equally entitled, cognizant millions. Be satisfied to be the agents of the will of the people, the embodiment of the law.” But they would call the cry of fear “extravagant” again and dismiss it on the grounds that a woman uttered it. And yet, that earlier prediction, made at a time when I knew little of the world other than what I had seen at home and from my windows, has become all too actual. And now, in this hour, I ask myself: “What will the coming years bring us?” But I shudder to hear the answer my consciousness gives me—I tremble at the thought of the journey through the wilderness, as much as I believe in the Promised Land of freedom and a happier future.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

! Primary Sources This is only a partial listing of Lewald’s works—those that are particularly relevant to the Recollections.

EDITIONS OF LEWALD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Lewald, Fanny. Meine Lebensgeschichte. 3 vols. Berlin: Janke, 1860–61. ———. Meine Lebensgeschichte. 3 vols. Revised. Berlin: Janke, 1871. ———. Meine Lebensgeschichte. Ed. and intro. by Gisela Brinker-Gabler. Frankfurt a.M. Fischer, 1980 (an abridged version). ———. Meine Lebensgeschichte. 3 vols. Ed. Ulrike Helmer with essay by Regula Venske. Frankfurt a.M.: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 1988.

OTHER WORKS Lewald, Fanny. Adele. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1855. ———. Auf rother Erde (On Red Soil). Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1850. ———. Bunte Bilder (Brightly Colored Pictures). Berlin: Janke, 1862. ———. Der dritte Stand (The Third Estate). Berlin: Reimarus, 1845. ———. Dünen- und Berggeschichten (Dune and Mountain Stories). Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1851. ———. England und Schottland. 2 vols. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1851, 1852. ———. Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848. (Recollections of 1848). 2 vols. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1850. ———. Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848 (Recollections of 1848). Abridged and ed. Dietrich Schaefer. Frankfurt: Insel, 1969. ———. Für und wider die Frauen (For and against Women). Berlin: Janke, 1870.

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———. Gefühltes und Gedachtes (Emotions and Thoughts). Ed. Ludwig Geiger. Dresden and Leipzig: Minden, 1900. ———. Jenny. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1843. ———. Letters to Hermann Althof. Nachlaß Lewald/Stahr. Berlin: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek. ———. Letters to Johann Jacoby. Nachlaß Lewald/Stahr. Berlin: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek. ———. Liebesbriefe aus dem Leben eines Gefangenen (A Prisoner’s Love Letters). Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1850. ———. Osterbriefe für die Frauen (Easter Letters for Women). Berlin: Janke, 1863. ———. Politische Schriften für und wider die Frauen. (PoliticalWritings for and against Women). Ed. and intro. Ulrike Helmer. Frankfurt a.M.: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 1989. (Contains Osterbriefe and Für und wider die Frauen). ———. Der Seehof. (The Lake House). In Neue Romane I. Berlin: Janke, 1859. ———. Prinz Louis Ferdinand. Breslau: Max u. Co., 1847. ———. Wandlungen (Changes). Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1853.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF LEWALD BOOKS ———. The Education of Fanny Lewald. An Autobiography. (Meine Lebensgeschichte). Trans. Hanna Ballin Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ———. Hulda or the Deliverer (Die Erlöserin). Trans. Mrs. A. L. Wister. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874, 1875, 1881, 1896, 1897. ———. Italian Sketchbook (Italienisches Bilderbuch). London: Simms, 1852. ———. The Italians at Home (Italienisches Bilderbuch). Trans. Countess D’Avigdor. London: Newby, 1848. ———. The Lake-House (Der Seehof). Trans. Nathaniel Green. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1861. ———. The Mask of Beauty (Das Mädchen von Hela). Trans. Mary M Pleasants. New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1894. ———. Prince Louis Ferdinand. Trans. Linda Rogols-Siegel. Lewiston/ Queenstown: Edwin Mellen, 1988. ———. Stella. Trans. Beatrice Marshall. New York: Seaside Library, 1882; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1884; New York: G. Munro, 1885. ———. Stories and Novels: “The Aristocratic World” (Vornehme Welt) and “The Maid of Oyas” (Das Mädchen von Oyas). (A bilingual edition of Novellen, Humoresken, und Skizzen no. 2, published in two small paperback volumes at $.20 and $.25 respectively so that the readers could teach themselves German!). Chicago: Louis Schick, 1885.

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Selected Secondary Literature Bäumer, Konstanze. “Reisen als Moment der Erinnerung: Fanny Lewalds (1811–1889) ‘Lehr- und Wanderjahre’.” In Out of Line/Ausgefallen: The Paradox of Marginality in the Writings of Nineteenth-Century German Women. Ed. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Marianne Burkhard. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989: 137–57. Beaton, Kenneth Bruce. “Fontanes Irrungen, Wirrungen und Fanny Lewald.” Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft (1984): 208–24. Blackwell, Jeannine, and Susanne Zantop, eds. Bitter Healing: German Women Writers, 1700–1830. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Brinker-Gabler, Gisela. “Fanny Lewald.” In Frauen. Ed. Hans Jürgen Schultz. Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1981: 72–87. Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed. Literatur von Frauen. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1988. Duveau, Georges. 1848. The Making of a Revolution. Trans. Anne Carter. New York: Pantheon, 1967. Di Maio, Irene S. “Reclamation of the French Revolution: Fanny Lewald’s Literary Response to the ‘Nachmärz’ in ‘Der Seehof’.” Geist und Gesellschaft; Zur deutschen Rezeption der Französischen Revolution. Ed. Eitel Timm. Munich: Fink Verlag, 1990. 149–64. Eyck, Frank. The Frankfurt Parliament 1848–49. New York: St. Martin’s, 1968. Fout, John, ed. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History. New York/London: Holmes and Meier, 1984. Frederiksen, Elke, and Archibald, Tamara. “Der Blick in die Ferne: Zur Reiseliteratur von Frauen.” Frauen-Literatur-Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Hiltrud Gnüg and Renate Möhrmann. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985: 104–22. Frederiksen, Elke, ed. Women Writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: An Annotated Biobiographical Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989. Frenzel, Karl. Erinnerungen und Strömungen. Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1890. Göhler,Rudolf, ed. and intro. Großherzog Carl Alexander und Fanny Lewald —Stahr in ihren Briefen 1848–1889. Berlin: Mittler, 1932. Goodman, Katherine. Dis/Closures. Women’s Autobiography in Germany between 1790 and 1914. New York, Berne, Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1986. Hamerow, Theodore S. Restoration, Revolution, Reaction: Economics and Politics in Germany 1815–1871. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. Jacobi-Dittrich, Juliane. “Growing up Female in the Nineteenth Century.” In German Women in the Nineteenth Century: 197–217. Jennings, Lawrence C. France and Europe in 1848. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

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Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher. “1848 from a Distance. German Women Writers on the Revolution.” Modern Language Notes 97 (1982): 590–614. ———. Ed. with Mary Jo Maynes. German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. ———. “Self-Conscious Histories: Biographies of German Women in the Nineteenth Century.” German Women in the Nineteenth Century: 172–96. Lewis, Hanna B. “Fanny Lewald and George Sand.” George Sand Studies. Vol. VIII, nos. 1 and 2, 1986/1987: 38–45. ———. “Fanny Lewald and the Revolutions of 1848.” Horizonte. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990: 79–91. ———. “Fanny Lewald and the Emancipation of Women.” Continental, Latin-American and Francophone Women Writers III. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, forthcoming. ———. “The Misfits: Jews, Soldiers, Women and Princes in Fanny Lewald’s Prinz Louis Ferdinand.” Crossings/Kreuzungen. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1989: 195–207. ———. ”The Women’s Novel Parodied: Fanny Lewald’s Diogena.” Continental, Latin-American and Francophone Women Writers I. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987: 107–18. Maurer, Doris. “Nähe nicht—lebe!” Die Zeit (32) 11 August 1989: 19. Möhrmann, Renate. Die andere Frau. Emanzipationsansätze deutscher Schriftstellerinnen im Vorfeld der Achtundvierziger Revolution. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976. ———. Ed. Frauenemanzipation in deutschen Vormärz. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978 ———. “The Reading Habits of Women in the ‘Vormärz’.” German Women in the Nineteenth Century: 104–17. ———. “Women’s Work As Portrayed in Women’s Literature.” German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 61–77. Moses, Claire Goldberg. French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. Noyes, P. H. Organization and Revolution: Working Class Associations in the German Revolution of 1848–1849. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Pazi, Margarita. “Fanny Lewald—das Echo der Revolution von 1848 in ihren Schriften.”Juden im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848. Ed. Walter Grab and Julius H. Schoeps. Stuttgart/Bonn: Burg, 1983: 233–71. Price, Roger. The French Second Republic: A Social History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1972. Prutz, Robert. Schriften zur Literatur und Politik. Ed. Bernd Hüppau. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973. Rheinberg, Brigitte van. Fanny Lewald: Geschichte einer Emanzipation. Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1990.

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Schlüpmann, Grete. “Fanny Lewalds Stellung zur sozialen Frage.” Dissertation, Münster, 1920. Secci, Lia. “German Women Writers and the Revolution of 1848.” German Women in the Nineteenth Century: 151–71. Segebrecht, Ruth. “Fanny Lewald und ihre Auffassung von Liebe und Ehe.” Dissertation, Munich, 1922. Sheehan, James J. German History: 1770–1866. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Stadelmann, Rudolf. Social and Political History of the German 1848 Revolution. Trans. James G. Chastain. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975. Steinhauer, Marieluise. Fanny Lewald, die deutsche George Sand. Dissertation, Berlin, 1937. Thieme, Ulrich and Becker, Felix. Allgemeine Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Leipzig: E.A. Seeman, 1964. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Recollections. London: H. Henry & Co., 1896. Valentin, Veit. Geschichte der deutschen Revolution von 1848–1849. 2 vols, Berlin: Ullstein, 1930–31. Venske, Regula. “Alltag und Emanzipation. Eine Untersuchung über die Romanautorin Fanny Lewald.” M.A. thesis, Hamburg, 1981. ———. Ach Fanny! Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1988. ———. “Discipline and Daydreaming in the Works of a Nineteenth Century Woman Author: Fanny Lewald.” In German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 175–92. ———. “‘Ich hätte ein Mann sein müssen oder einen groß Mannes Weib.’ Widersprüche im Emanzipationsverständnis der Fanny Lewald.” In Frauen in der Geschichte IV. Düsseldorf, 1983: 368–96. Ward, Margaret. “‘Ehe und Entsagung’: Fanny Lewald’s Early Novels and Goethe’s Literary Paternity.” Women in German Yearbook 2. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1986: 57–77. Watt, Helga S. “Fanny Lewald und die deutsche Misere nach 1848 im Hinblick auf England.” German Life and Letters. New Series VXLVI, 3 (1993): 220–35. Weber, Marta. Fanny Lewald. Dissertation. Zürich, 1921.