"Singe, unsterbliche Seele
der sdudigen Menschen Erldsung" [2]
[Sing, immortal soul
the redemption of fallen
mankind] -- through Gottfried Kinkel.

Gottfried Kinkel was born some 40 years ago. The story of his life has been made available to us in an autobiography, Gottfried Kinkel. Truth without Poetry. A Biographical sketch-book. Edited by Adolph Strodtmann. (Hamburg, Hoffmann & Campe, 1850, octavo.)
Gottfried is the hero of that democratic Siegwart [3] epoch that flooded Germany with endless torrents of tearful lament and patriotic melancholy. He made his debut as a simple lyrical Siegwart.

We are indebted to Strodtmann the Apostle, whose "narrative compilation" we follow here, both for the diary-like fragments in which his pilgrimage on this earth is paraded before the reader, and for the glaring lack of discretion of the revelations they contain.

"Bonn, February -- September 1834

Like his friend, Paul Zeller, young Gottfried studied Protestant theology and his piety and industry earned him the admiration of his celebrated teachers" (Sack, Nitzsch and Bleck, p. 5).

From the very beginning he is "obviously immersed in weighty speculations" (p. 4), he is "tormented and gloomy" as befits a budding genius. "Gottfried's gloomily flashing brown eyes" "lit upon" some youths "in brown jackets and pale-blue overcoats"; he at once sensed that these youths wished "to make up for their inner emptiness by outer show" (p. 6). He explains his moral indignation by pointing out that he had "defended Hegel and Marheinicke" when these lads had called Marheinicke a "blockhead"; later, when he himself goes to study in Berlin and is himself in the position of having to learn from Marheinicke he characterises him in his diary with the following belletristic epigram (p. 61):

"Ein Kerl ,der spekuliert,
ist wie ein Tier auf dürrer Heide
von einem loosen Geist im Kreis herumgeführt,
und ringsumher ist schöne grüne Weide."
[I tell you a chap who's intellectual
Is like a beast on a blasted heath
Driven in circles by a demon
While a fine green meadow lies round beneath.] [4]

Gottfried has clearly forgotten that other verse in which Mephistopheles makes fun of the student thirsting for knowledge:

"Verachte nur Verstand und Wissenschaff!"
[Only look down on knowledge and reason!] [5]

However, the whole moralising Student Scene serves merely as an introduction enabling the future Liberator of the World to make the following revelation (p. 6).
Listen to Gottfried:

"This race will not perish, unless a great war comes.... Only strong remedies will raise this age up from the mire!"
"A second Flood with you as a second and improved edition of Noah!" his friend replied.

The light brown overcoats have helped Gottfried to the point where he can proclaim himself the "Noah in a new Flood". His friend responds with a comment that might well have served as the motto to the whole biography.

"My father and I have often had occasion to smile at your passion for unclear ideas!"

Throughout these Confessions of a Beautiful Soul [6] we find repeated only one "dear idea", namely that Kinkel was a great man from the moment of his conception. The most trivial things that occur to all trivial people become momentous events; the petty joys and sorrows that every student of theology experiences in a more interesting form, the conflicts with bourgeois conditions to be found by the dozen in every consistory and refectory in Germany become world-shaking events from which Gottfried, overwhelmed by Weltschmerz, fashions a perpetual comedy.
[Thus we find that these confessions consistently present a double aspect -- there is firstly the comedy, the amusing way in which Gottfried interprets the smallest trivia as signs of his future greatness and casts himself in relief from the outset. And then there is the rodomontade, his trick of complacently embellishing in retrospect every little occurrence in his theologico-lyrical past. Having established these two basic features we can return to the further developments in Gottfried's story.]

The family [of his "friend Paul" leaves Bonn and] returns to Württemberg. Gottfried stages this event in the following manner.

Gottfried loves Paul's sister and uses the occasion to explain that he has "already been in love twice before"! His present love, however, is no ordinary love but a "fervent and authentic act of divine worship" (p. 13). Gottfried climbs the Drachenfels together with friend Paul and against this romantic backcloth he breaks into dithyrambs:

"Farewell to friendship! -- I shall find a brother in our Saviour; -- Farewell to love -- Faith shall be my bride; -- Farewell to sisterly loyalty -- I am come to the commune of many thousands of just souls! Away then, O my youthful heart, learn to be alone with your God; struggle with him until you conquer him and force him to give you a new name, that of Holy Israel which no-one knows but he who receives it! I give you greetings, you glorious rising sun, image of my awakening soul!" (p. 17).

We see how the departure of his friend gives Gottfried the opportunity to sing an ecstatic hymn to his own soul. As if that were not enough, his friend too must join in the hymn. For while Gottfried exults ecstatically he speaks "with exalted voice and glowing countenance", he "forgets the presence of his friend", "his gaze is transfigured", "his voice inspired", etc. (p. 17) -- in short we have the vision of the Prophet Elijah as it appears in the Bible complete in every detail.

"Smiling sorrowfully Paul looked at him with his loyal gaze and said: 'You have a mightier heart in your bosom than I and will surely outdistance me -- but let me be your friend -- even when I am far away.' Joyfully Gottfried clasped the proferred hand and renewed the ancient covenant" (p. 18).

Gottfried has got what he wants from this Transfiguration on the Mount. Friend Paul who has just been laughing at "Gottfried's passion for unclear ideas" humbles himself before the name of "holy Israel" and acknowledges Gottfried's superiority and future greatness. Gottfried is as pleased as Punch and graciously condescends to renew the ancient covenant.
The scene changes. It is the birthday of Kinkel's mother, the wife of Pastor Kinkel of Upper Cassel. The family festival is used to proclaim that "his mother, like the mother of our Lord, was called Mary" (p. 20) -- certain proof that Gottfried, too, was destined to be a saviour and redeemer. Thus within the space of twenty pages our student of theology has been led by the most insignificant events to cast himself as Noah, as the holy Israel, as Elijah, and, lastly, as Christ.

*

Inevitably, Gottfried, who when it comes to the point has experienced nothing, constantly dwells on his inner feelings. The Pietism that has stuck to this parson's son and would-be scholar of divinity is well adapted both to his innate emotional instability and his coquettish, preoccupation with his own person. We learn that his mother and sister were both strict Pietists and that Gottfried was powerfully conscious of his own sinfulness. The conflict of this pious sense of sin with the "carefree and sociable joie de vivre" of the ordinary student appears in Gottfried, as befits his world-historical mission, in terms of' a struggle between religion and poetry. The pint of beer that the parson's son from Upper Cassel downs with the other students becomes the fateful chalice in which Faust's twin spirits are locked in battle. In the description of his pietistic family life we see his "Mother Mary" combat as sinful "Gottfried's penchant for the theatre" (p. 28), a momentous conflict designed to prefigure the poet of the future but which in fact merely highlights Gottfried's love of the theatrical. The harpy-like puritanism of his sister Johanna is revealed by an incident in which she boxed the ears of a five-year-old girl for inattention in, church -- sordid family gossip whose inclusion would be incomprehensible were it not for the revelation at the end of the book that this same sister Johanna put up the strongest opposition to Gottfried's marriage to Mme. Mockel.

One event held to be worthy of mention is that in Seelscheid Gottfried preached "a wonderful sermon about the wilting wheat".

*

The Zelter family and "beloved Elise" finally take their departure. We learn that Gottfried "squeezed the girl's hand passionately" and murmured the greeting, "Elise, farewell! I must say no more". This interesting story is followed by the first of Siegwart's laments.

"Destroyed!" "Without a sound." "Most agonising torment!" "Burning brow." "Deepest sighs," "His mind was lacerated by the wildest pains", etc. (p. 37).

It turns the whole Elijah-like scene into the purest comedy, performed for the benefit of his "friend Paul" and himself. Paul again makes his appearance in order to whisper into the ear of Siegwart who is sitting there alone and wretched: "This kiss is for my Gottfried" (p. 38).

And Gottfried at once cheers up.

"My plan to see my sweet love again, honourably and not without a name, is firmer than ever" (p. 38).

Even amid the pangs of love he does not fail to comment on the name he expects to make, or to brag of the laurels he claims in advance. Gottfried uses the intermezzo to commit his love to paper in extravagant and vainglorious terms, to make sure that the world is not deprived of even his diary-feelings. But the scene has not yet reached its climax. The faithful Paul has to point out to our barnstorming maestro chat if Elise were to remain stationary while he continued to develop, she might not satisfy him later on.

"O no!" said Gottfried. "This heavenly budding flower whose first leaves have scarcely opened already smells so sweetly. How much greater will be her beauty when... [ -- ] the burning summer ray of manly vigour unfolds her innermost calix!" (p. 40).

Paul finds himself reduced to answering this sordid image by remarking chat rational arguments mean nothing to poets.

"'And all your wisdom will not protect you from the whims of life better than our lovable folly' Gottfried replied with a smile" (p. 40).

What a moving picture: Narcissus smiling to himself! The gauche student suddenly enters as the lovable fool, Paul becomes Wagner [7] and admires the great man; and the great man "smiles", "indeed, he smiles a kind, gentle smile". The climax is saved.
Gottfried finally manages to leave Bonn, He gives this summary of his educational attainments to date.

"Unfortunately I am increasingly unable to accept Hegelianism; my highest aspiration is to be a rationalist, at the same time I am a supernaturalist and a mystic, if necessary I am even a Pietist (p. 45).

This self-analysis requires no commentary.

"Berlin, October 1834-August 1835."
Leaving his narrow family and student environment Gottfried arrives in Berlin. In comparison with Bonn Berlin is relatively metropolitan but of this we find no trace in Gottfried any more than we find evidence of his involvement in the scientific activity of the day. Gottfried's diary entries confine themselves to the emotions he experiences together with his new compagnon d'aventure, Hugo Dünweg from Barmen, and also to the minor hardships of an indigent theologian: his money difficulties, shabby coats, employment as a reviewer, etc. His life stands in no relation to that of the public life of the city, but only to the Schlössing family in which Dünweg passes for Master Wofram [von Eschenbach] and Gottfried for Master Gottfried von Strasbourg (p. 67). [8] Elise fades gradually from his heart and he conceives a new itch for Miss Maria Schlössing. Unfortunately he learns of Elise's engagement to someone else and he sums up his Berlin feelings and aspirations as a "dark longing for a woman he could [call] wholly his own.

However, Berlin must not be abandoned without the inevitable climax:

"Before he left Berlin Weiss, the old theatre producer, took him once again into the theatre. A strange feeling came over the youth as the friendly old man led him into the great auditorium where the busts of German dramatists have been placed and with a gesture towards a few empty niches said meaningfully:
'There are still some vacant places!'"

Yes, indeed, there is still a place vacant awaiting our Platenite [9] Gottfried who solemnly allows an old clown to flatter him with the exquisite pleasure of "future immortality".

"Bonn, Autumn 1835 -- Autumn 1837"

"Constantly balancing between art, life and science, unable to reach a decision, active in all three without firm commitment, he resolved to learn, to gain and to be creative in all three as much as his indecision would permit" (p. 89).

Having thus discovered himself to be an irresolute dilettante Gottfried returns to Bonn. Of course, the feeling that he is a dilettante does not deter him from taking his Licentiate examination and from becoming a Privatdozent at the university of Bonn.

"Neither Chamisso nor Knapp [10] had published the poems he had sent them in their magazines and this upset him greatly" (p. 99).

This is the public debut of the great man who in private circles lives on intellectual tick on the promise of his future eminence. From this time on he definitely becomes a hero of dubious local significance in belletristic student circles until the moment when a glancing shot in Baden suddenly turns him into the hero of the German Philistines.

"But more and more there arose in Kinkel's breast the yearning for a firm, true love, a yearning that no devotion to work could dispel" (p. 103).

The first victim of this yearning is a certain Minna. Gottfried dallies with Minna and sometimes for the sake of variety he acts the compassionate Mahadeva [11] who allows the maiden to worship him while he meditates on the state of her health.

"Kinkel could have loved her had he been able to deceive himself about her condition; but his love would have killed the wilting rose even more quickly. Minna was the first girl that could understand him; but she was a second Hecuba and would have borne him torches and not children, and through them the passion of the parents would have burnt down their own house as Priam's passion burned Troy. Yet he could not abandon her, his heart bled for her, he was indeed wretched not through love, but through pity."

The godlike hero whose love can kill, like the sight of Jupiter, is nothing but an ordinary self-regarding young puppy who in the course of his marriage studies tries out the role of the cad for the first time. His revolting meditations on her health and its possible effects on children become the occasion for the base decision to prolong the relationship for his own pleasure and to break it offonly when it provides him with the excuse for yet another melodramatic scene.
Gottfried goes on a journey to visit an uncle whose son has just died; at the midnight hour in the room where the corpse is laid out he stages a scene from a Bellini opera with his cousin, Mlle. Elise II. He becomes engaged to her, "in the presence of the dead" and on the following morning his uncle gladly accepts him as his future son-in-law.

"Now that he was lost to her forever, he often thought of Minna and of the moment when he would see her again. But he was not afraid as she could have no claims on a heart that was already bound" (p. 117).

The new engagement means nothing but the opportunity to bring about a dramatic explosion in his relationship with Minna. In this crisis we find "duty and passion" [12] confronting each other. This explosion is produced in the most philistine and rascally way because our bonhomme denies Minna's legal claims upon his heart which is already committed elsewhere. Our virtuous hero is of course not at all disturbed by the need to compound this lie to himself by reversing the order of events in the matter of his "bound heart".
Gottfried has plunged into the interesting necessity of being forced to break "a poor, great heart".

"After a pause Gottfried went on: 'At the same time, Minna, I feel I owe you an apology -- I have sinned against you -- the hand which I let you have yesterday with such feelings of friendship, that hand is no longer free -- I am engaged!'" (p. 123).

Our melodramatic student takes good care not to mention that this engagement took place a few hours after he had given her his hand "with such feelings of friendship".

"Oh God! -- Minna -- can you forgive me?" (loc. cit.)
"I am a man and must be faithful to my duty -- I may not love you! But I have not deceived you" (p. 124).

After re-arranging his duty after the fact it only remains to produce the unbelievable. He dramatically reverses the whole relationship so that instead of Minna forgiving him, our moral priest forgives the deceived woman. With this in mind he conceives the possibility that Minna "might hate him from afar" and he follows this supposition up with this final moral:

"'I would gladly forgive you for that and if that were the case you can be assured of my forgiveness in advance. And now farewell, my duty calls me, I must leave you!' He slowly left the harbor ... from that hour on Gottfried was unhappy" (p. 124).

The actor and self-styled lover is transformed into the hypocritical priest who extricates himself from the affair with an unctuous blessing; Siegwart's sham conflicts of love have led to the happy result that he is able in his imagination to think himself unhappy.
It finally becomes apparent that all of these arranged love stories were nothing but Gottfried's coquettish infatuation with himself. The whole affair amounts to no more than that our priest with his dreams of future immortality has produced Old Testament stories and modern lending-library phantasies after the manner of Spiess, Clauren and Cramer [13] so that he may indulge his vanity by posing as a romantic hero.

"Rummaging among his books he came across Novalis' Ofterdingen [14] the book that had so often inspired him to write poetry a year before. While still at school he and some friends had founded a society by the name of Teutonia with the aim of increasing their understanding of German history and literature. In this society he had assumed the name of Heinrich von Ofterdingen.... Now the meaning of this name became clear to him. He saw himself as that same Heinrich in the charming little town at the foot of the Wartburg and a longing for the 'Blue Flower' took hold of him with overwhelming force. Minna could not be the glorious fairy-tale bloom, nor could she be his bride, however anxiously he probed his heart. Dreaming, he read on and on, the phantastic world of magic enveloped him and he ended by hurling himself weeping into a chair, thinking of the 'Blue Flower'."

Gottfried here unveils the whole romantic lie which he had woven around himself; the carnival gift of disguising oneself as other people is his authentic "inner being". Earlier on he had called himself Gottfried von Strasbourg; now he appears as Heinrich von Ofterdingen [14] and he is searching not for the "Blue Flower" but for a woman who will acknowledge his claims to be Heinrich von Ofterdingen. And in the end he really did find the "Blue Flower", a little faded and yellow, in a woman who played the much longed-for comedy in his interest and in her own.
The sham Romanticism, the travesty and the caricature of ancient stories and romances which Gottfried re-lives to make up for the lack of any inner substance of his own, the whole emotional swindle of his vacuous encounters with Mary, Minna and Elise I & II have brought him to the point where he thinks that his experiences are on a par with those of Goethe. Just as Goethe had suddenly rushed off to Italy, there to write his Roman Elegies after undergoing the storms of love, so too Gottfried thinks that his day-dreams of love qualify him for a trip to Rome. Goethe must have had a premonition of Gottfried:

Hat doch der Walfsch seine Laus,
Kann ich auch meine haben.
[And if the whale has his lice
I can have them too] [15]

"Italy, October 1837 -- March 1838"

The trip to Rome opens in Gottfried's diary with a lengthy account of the journey from Bonn to Coblenz. This new epoch begins as the previous one had concluded, namely with a narrative richly embellished by allusions to the experiences of others. While on the steamer Gottfried recalls the "splendid passage in Hoffmann" where he "made Master Johannes Wacht produce a highly artistic work immediately after enduring the most overwhelming grief". As a confirmation of the "splendid passage" Gottfried follows up his "overwhelming grief" about Minna by "meditating" about a "tragedy he had long since intended to write" (p. 140).

During Kinkel's journey from Coblenz to Rome the following events take place:

"The friendly letters he frequently receives from his fiancee and which he answers for the most part on the spot, dispel his gloomy thoughts" (p. 144).
"His love for the beautiful Elise II struck root deeply in the youth's yearning bosom" (p. 146).

In Rome we find:
"On his arrival in Rome Kinkel had found a letter from his fiancee awaiting him which further intensified his love for her and caused the image of Minna to fade even more into the background. His heart assured him that Elise could make him happy and he gave himself up to this feeling with the purest passion.... Only now did he realize what love is" (p. 151).

We see that Minna whom he only loved out of pity has re-entered the emotional scene. In his relationship with Elise his dream is that she will make him happy, not he her. And yet in his "Blue Flower" fantasy he had already said that the fairy-tale blossom which had given him such a poetic itch could be neither Elise nor Minna. His newly aroused feelings for these two girls now serve as part of the mis-en-scène for a new conflict.

"Kinkel's poetry seemed to be slumbering in Italy" (p. 151).

Why?

"Because he lacked form" (p. 152).

We learn later that a six-month stay in Italy enabled him to bring the "form" back to Germany well wrapped up. As Goethe had written his Elegies in Rome so Kinkel too meditated on an elegy called "The Awakening of Rome" (p. 153).
Kinkel's maid brings him a letter from his fiancee. He opens it joyfully --

"and sank back on his bed with a cry. Elise announced that a wealthy man, a Dr. D. with an extensive practice and even a riding horse had asked for her hand in marriage. As it would probably be a long time before he, Kinkel, an indigent theologian, would have a permanent position she asked him to release her from the bonds that tied her to him".

A scene taken over lock, stock and barrel from [Kotzebue's] Misanthropy and Remorse. [16]
Gottfried "annihilated", "foul putrefaction", "dry eyed", "thirst for revenge", "dagger", "the bosom of his rival", "heart-blood of his enemy", "cold as ice", "maddening pain", etc. (p. 156 and 157).

The element in these "Sorrows end Joys of a poor Theologian" that gives most pain to our unhappy student is the thought that she had "spurned him for the sake of the uncertain possession of earthly goods" (p. 157). Having been moved by the relevant theatrical feelings he finally rises to the following consolation:

"She was unworthy of you -- and you still possess the pinions of genius that will bear you aloft high above this dark misery! And when one day your fame encircles the globe the false woman will find a judge in her own heart! -- Who knows, perhaps one day in the years to come her children will seek me out to implore my aid and I would not wish to miss that" (p. 157).

Having, inevitably, enjoyed in advance the exquisite pleasure of "his future fame encircling the globe" he reveals himself to be a common philistinic cleric. He speculates that later on Elise's children will come to beg alms from the great poet -- and this he would "not wish to miss". And why? Because Elise prefers a horse to the "future fame" of which he constantly dreams, because she prefers "earthly goods" to the farce he intends to perform with himself in the role of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Old Hegel was quite right when he pointed out that a noble consciousness always transposes into a base one. [17]

"Bonn. Summer 1838 -- Summer 1843"
(Intrigue and Love)

Having furnished a caricature of Goethe in Italy, Gottfried now resolves on his return to produce Schiller's Intrigue and Love. [18] Though his heart is rent with Weltschmerz Gottfried feels "better than ever" physically (p. 167). His intention is "to establish literary fame for himself through his works" (p. 169), which does not prevent him from acquiring a cheaper fame without works later on when his "works" failed to do what was expected of them.

The "dark longing" which Gottfried always experiences when he pursues a woman finds expression in a remarkably rapid succession of engagements and promises of marriage. The promise of marriage is the classical method by which the strong man and the superior mind "of the future" seeks to conquer his beloved and bind her to him in reality. As soon as the poet catches sight of a little blue flower that might assist him in his efforts to become Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the gentle mists of emotion assume the firm shape of the student's dream of perfecting the ideal affinity by the addition of the bond of "duty". No sooner are the first greetings over than offers of marriage fly in all directions à tort et à travers towards every Daisy and Water Lily in sight. This bourgeois hunt puts in an even more revolting light the unprincipled tail-wagging coquetry with which Gottfried constantly opens his heart to reveal all "the torments of the great poet".

Thus after his return from Italy Gottfried naturally has to "promise" marriage yet again. The object of his passion on this occasion was directly chosen by his sister, the pietistic Johanna whose fanaticism has already been immortalised by the exclamations in Gottfried's diary.

"Bögehold had just recently announced his engagement to Miss Kinkel and Johanna who was more importunate than ever in her meddling in her brother's affairs of the heart now conceived the wish, for a number of reasons concerning the family, that Gottfried should reciprocate and marry Miss Sophie Bögehold, her fiance's sister" (p. 172). It goes without saying that "Kinkel could not but feel drawn to a gentle girl.... And she was indeed a dear, innocent maiden" (p. 173). "In the most tender fashion" -- it goes without saying -- "Kinkel asked for her hand which was joyfully promised him by her parents as soon as" -- it goes without saying -- "he had established himself in a job and was in a position to lead his bride to the home of -- it goes without saying -- a professor or a parson."

On this occasion our passionate student set down in elegant verses an account of that tendency towards marriage that forms such a constant ingredient of his adventures.

"Nach anders nichts trag' ich Verlangen
Als nur nach einer weissen Hand!"
[Nought else can stir my passion
So much as a white hand]

Everything else, eyes, lips, locks is dismissed as a mere "trifle".

"Das alles reizt nicht sein Verlangen
Allein die kleine weisse Handl" (p. 174)
[All these fail to stir his passion
Nought does so but her small, white hand]

He describes the flirtation that he begins with Miss Sophie Bögehold at the command of "his meddling sister Johanna" and spurred on by the unquenchable longing for a hand, as "deep, firm and tranquil" (p. 175). Above all "it is the religious element that predominates in this new love" (p. 176).
In Gottfried's romances we often find the religious element alternating with the novelistic and theatrical element. Where he cannot devise dramatic effects to achieve new Siegwart situations he applies religious feelings to adorn these banal episodes with the patina of higher meaning. Siegwart becomes a pious Jung-Stilling [19] who had likewise received such miraculous strength from God that even though three women perished beneath his manly chest he was still able repeatedly to lead a new love to his home.

*

We come finally to the fateful catastrophe of this eventful life-history, to Stilling's meeting with Johanna Mockel, who had formerly borne the married name of Mathieux. Here Gottfried discovered a female Kinkel, his romantic alter ego. Only she was harder, smarter, less confused and thanks to her greater age she had left her youthful illusions behind her.

What Mockel had in common with Kinkel was the fact that her talents too had gone unrecognised by the world. She was repulsive and vulgar; her first marriage had been unhappy. She possessed musical talents but they were insufficient to enable her to make a name with her compositions or technical mastery. In Berlin her attempt to imitate the stale childhood antics of Bettina [von Arnim] [20] had led to a fiasco. Her character had been soured by her experiences. Even though she shared with Kinkel the affectation of inflating the ordinary events of her life so as to invest them with a "more exalted, sacred meaning", owing to her more advanced age she nevertheless felt a need for love (according to Strodtmann) that was more pressing than her need for the "poetic" drivel that accompanies it. Whereas Kinkel was feminine in this respect, Mockel was masculine. Hence nothing could be more natural than for such a person to enter with joy into Kinkel's comedy of the misunderstood tender souls and to play it to a satisfying conclusion, i.e. to acknowledge Siegwart's fitness for the role of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and to arrange for him to discover that she was the "Blue Flower".

Kinkel, having been led to his third or fourth fiancee by his sister was now introduced into a new labyrinth of love by Mockel.

Gottfried now found himself in the "social swim", i.e. in one of those little circles consisting of the professors or other worthies of German university towns. Only in the lives of Teutonic, christian students can such societies form such a turning point. Mockel sang and was applauded. At table it was arranged that Gottfried should sit next to her and here the following scene took place:

"'It must be a glorious feeling', Gottfried opined, 'to fly through the joyous world on the pinions of genius, admired by all' -- 'I should say so', Mockel exclaimed. 'I hear that you have a great gift for poetry. Perhaps people will scatter incense for you also ... and I shall ask you then if you can be happy if you are not...' -- 'If I am not?' Gottfried asked, as she paused" (p. 188).

The bait has been put out for our clumsy Iyrical student.
Mockel then informed him that recently she had heard

"him preaching about the yearning of Christians to return to their faith and she had thought about how resolutely the handsome preacher must have abandoned the world if he could arouse a timid longing even in her for the harmless childhood slumber with which the echo of faith now lost had once surrounded her" (p. 189).

Gottfried was "enchanted" (p. 189) by such politeness. He was tremendously pleased to discover that "Mocker was unhappy" (loc. cit.). He immediately resolved "to devote his passionate enthusiasm for the faith of salvation at the hands of Jesus Christ to bringing back this sorrowing soul too into the fold" (loc. cit.). As Mockel was a Catholic the friendship was formed on the imaginary basis of the task of recovering a soul "in the service of the Almighty", a comedy in which Mockel too was willing to participate.

"In 1840 Kinkel was appointed as an assistant in the Protestant community in Cologne where he went every Sunday to preach" (p. 193).

This biographical comment may serve as an excuse for a brief discussion of Kinkel's position as a theologian. "In 1840" the critical movement had already made devastating inroads into the content of the Christian faith; with Bruno Bauer [21] science had reached the point of open conflict with the state. It is at this juncture that Kinkel makes his debut as a preacher. But as he lacks both the energy of the orthodox and the understanding that would enable him to see theology objectively, he comes to terms with Christianity on the level of Iyrical and declamatory sentimentality à la Krummacher. That is to say, he presents a Christ who is a "friend and leader", he seeks to do away with formal aspects of Christianity that he proclaims to be "ugly", and for the content he substitutes a hollow phraseology. The device by means of which content is replaced by form and ideas by phrases has produced a host of declamatory priests in Germany whose tendencies naturally led them finally in the direction of [liberal] democracy. But whereas in theology at least a superficial knowledge is still essential here and there, in the democratic movement where an orotund but vacuous rhetoric, nullite sonore, makes intellect and an insight into realities completely superfluous, an empty phraseology came into its own. Kinkel whose theological studies had led to nothing beyond the making of sentimental extracts of Christianity in the manner of Clauren's popular novels, was in speech and in his writings the very epitome of the fake pulpit oratory that is sometimes described as "poetic prose" and which he now comically made the basis of his "poetic mission". This latter, moreover, did not consist in planting true laurels but only red rowan berries with which he beautified the highway of trivia. This same feebleness of character which attempts to overcome conflicts not by resolving their content but by clothing them in an attractive form is visible too in the way he lectures at the university. The struggle to abolish the old scholastic pedantry is sidestepped by means of a "hearty" attitude which turns the lecturer into a student and exalts the student placing him on an equal footing with the lecturer. This school then produced a whole generation of Strodtmanns, Schurzes and suchlike who were able to make use of their phraseology, their knowledge and their easily acquired "lofty mission" only in the democratic movement.

*

Kinkel's new love develops into the story of Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia. [22]

The year 1840 was a turning point in the history of Germany. On the one hand, the critical application of Hegel's philosophy to theology and politics had brought about a scientific revolution. On the other hand, the coronation of Frederick William IV saw the emergence of a bourgeois movement whose constitutional aspirations still possessed a wholly radical veneer, varying from the vague "political poetry" of the period to the new phenomenon of a daily press with revolutionary powers.

What was Gottfried doing during this period? Together with Mockel he founded the "Maybug" (Maikäfer) "a Journal for non-Philistines" (p. 209) and the Maybug Club. The aim of this paper was nothing more than "to provide a cheerful and enjoyable evening for a group of friends once a week and to give the participants the opportunity to present their works for criticism by a benevolent, artistically-minded audience" (pp. 209-1O).

The actual purpose of the Maybug Club was to solve the riddle of the Blue Flower. The meetings took place in Mockel's house, where, surrounded by a group of insignificant students Mockel paraded as "Queen" (p. 210) and Kinkel as "Minister" (p. 225). Here our two misunderstood beautiful souls found it possible to make up for the "injustice the harsh world had done them" (p. 296); each could acknowledge the right of the other to the respective roles of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the Blue Flower. Gottfried to whom the aping of other people's roles had become second nature must have felt happy to have created such a "theatre for connoisseurs" (p. 254). The farce itself acted as the prelude to practical developments:

"These evenings provided the opportunity to see Mockel also in the house of her parents" (p. 212).

Moreover, the Maybug Club copied also the Göttinger Hain [23] poets, only with the difference that the latter represented a stage in the development of German literature while the former remained on the level of an insignificant local caricature. The "merry Maybugs" Sebastian Longard, Leo Hasse, C. A. Schlönbach, etc., were, as the biographical apologia admits, pale, insipid, indolent, unimportant youths (pp. 211 and 298).
Naturally, Gottfried soon began to make "comparisons" (p. 221) between Mockel and his fiancee, but he had "had no time hitherto" -- much against his usual habit -- "to reflect at all about weddings and marriage" (p. 219). In a word, he stood like Buridan's ass between the two bundles of hay, unable to decide between them. With her greater maturity and very practical bent Mockel "clearly discerned the invisible bond" (p. 225); she resolved to give "chance or the will of God" (p. 229) a helping hand.

"At a time of day when Kinkel was usually prevented by his scientific labours from seeing Mockel, he one day went to visit her and as he quietly approached her room he heard the sound of a mournful song. Pausing to listen he heard this song:

"Du nahstl Und wie Morgenröte
Bebt's über die Wangen mein, usw. usw.
Viel namenlose Schmerzen:
Wehe Dufühlst es nicht!
[You draw nigh! And like the dawn
There trembles on my cheeks, etc. etc.
Many a nameless pain.
Alas, you feel them not!]

A long drawn-out, melancholy chord concluded her song and faded gradually in the breeze" (pp. 230 and 231).

Gottfried crept away unobserved, as he imagined, and having arrived home again he found the situation very interesting. He wrote a large number of despairing sonnets in which he compared Mockel to the Lorelei (p. 233). In order to escape from the Lorelei and to remain true to Miss Sophie Bögehold he tried to obtain a post as a teacher in Wiesbaden, but was rejected. This accident was compounded by a further intervention by Fate which proved to be decisive. Not only was the "sun striving to leave the sign of Virgo" (p. 236), but also Gottfried and Mockel took a trip down the Rhine in a skiff; their skiff was overturned by an approaching steam-boat and Gottfried swam ashore bearing Mockel.

"As he drew towards the shore he felt her heart close to his and was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that only this woman would be able to make him happy" (p. 238).

On this occasion the experience that Gottfried has undergone is from a real novel and not merely an imaginary one: it is to be found in [Goethe's] Elective Affinities. This decided the matter; he broke off his engagement to Sophie Bögehold.

*

First love, then the intrigue. In the name of the Presbytery Pastor Engels protested to Gottfried that the marriage of a divorced Catholic woman to a Protestant preacher was offensive. Gottfried replied by appealing to the eternal rights of man and made the following points with a good deal of unction.

"1. It was no crime for him to have drunk coffee with the lady in Hirzekümpchen" (p. 249).
"2. The matter is ambiguous as he had neither announced in public that he intended to marry the lady, nor that he did not intend to do so" (p. 251).

"3. As far as faith is concerned, no-one can know what the future holds in store" (p. 250).

"And with that out of the way, may I ask you to step inside and have a cup of coffee" (p. 251).

With this slogan Gottfried and Pastor Engels, who could not resist such an invitation, left the stage. In this way, quietly and yet forcefully Gottfried was able to resolve the conflict with the powers that be.
The following extract serves to illustrate the effect of the Maybug Club on Gottfried:

"It was June 29, 1841. On this day the first anniversary of the Maybug Club was to be celebrated on a grand scale" (p. 253). "A shout as of one voice arose to decide who should carry off the prize. Modestly Gottfried bent his knee before the Queen who placed the inevitable laurel wreath on his glowing brow, while the setting sun cast its brightest rays over the transfigured countenance of the poet" (p.285).

The solemn dedication of the imagined poetic fame of Heinrich von Ofterdingen is followed by the feelings and the wishes of the Blue Flower. That evening Mockel sang a Maybug anthem she had composed which ends with the following strophe symptomatic of the whole work:

"Und was lernt man aus der Geschicht'?
Maikäfer, flieg!
Wer alt ist krieyt kein Weiblein mehr
Drum hör', bedenk' dich nicht zu sehr!
Maikäfer, flieg!
[And what's the moral of the tale?
Fly, Maybug, fly!
A man who's old will ne'er find wife,
So make haste, do not waste your life,
Fly, Maybug, fly!]

The ingenuous biographer remarks that "the invitation to marriage contained in the song was wholly free of any ulterior motives" (p.255). Gottfried perceived the ulterior motives but "was anxious not to miss" the opportunity of being crowned for two further years before the whole Maybug Club and of being an object of passion. So he married Mockel on May 22, 1843 after she had become a member of the Protestant Church despite her lack of faith. This was done on the shabby pretext that "definite articles of faith are less important in the Protestant church than the ethical spirit" (p. 315).

Und das lernt man aus der Geschicht',
Traut keiner blauen Blume nicht!
[So that's the moral of the tale:
The Bluest Flower will soon grow stale.]

Gottfried had established the relationship with Mockel on the pretext of leading her out of her unfaith into the Protestant Church. Mockel now demanded the Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss and lapsed into paganism,

"while with heavy heart he followed her on the path of doubt and into the abysses of negation. Together with her he toiled through the labyrinthine jungle of modern philosophy" (p. 308).

He is driven into negation not by the development of philosophy which even at that time began to impinge on the masses but by the intervention of a chance emotional relationship.
What he brings with him out of the labyrinth is revealed in his diaries:

"I should like to see whether the mighty river flowing from Kant to Feuerbach will drive me out into -- Pantheism!" (p. 308).

He writes just as if this particular river did not flow beyond pantheism, and as if Feuerbach were the last word in German philosophy!

"The corner-stone of my life", the diary goes on to say, "is not historical knowledge, but a coherent system, and the heart of theology is not ecclesiastical history but dogma" (ibid.).

This brings to a close the first Act of the drama of Kinkel's life and nothing worthy of mention then occurs before the outbreak of the February Revolution. The publishing house of Cotta accepted his poems but without offering him a royalty and most of the copies remained unsold until the celebrated stray bullet in Baden gave a poetic nimbus to the author and created a market for his products.

Incidentally, our biographer omits mention of one momentous fact. The self-confessed goal of Kinkel's desires was that he should die as an old theatre director: his ideal was a certain old Eisenhut who together with his troupe used to roam up and down the Rhine as a travelling Pickelhäring [clown] and who afterwards went mad.

Alongside his lectures with their rhetoric of the pulpit Gottfried also gave a number of theological and aesthetic performances in Cologne from time to time. When the February Revolution broke out, he concluded them with this prophetic utterance:

"The thunder of battle reverberates over to us from Paris and opens a new and glorious era for Germany and the whole continent of Europe. The raging storm will be followed by Zephyr's breezes with their message of freedom. On this day is born the great, bountiful epoch of -- constitutional monarchy!"

The constitutional monarchy expressed its thanks to Kinkel for this compliment by appointing him to a professorial chair. Such recognition could however not suffice for our grand homme en herbe. The constitutional monarchy showed no eagerness to cause his "fame to encircle the globe". Moreover, the laurels Freiligrath had collected for his recent political poems prevented our crowned Maybug poet from sleeping. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, therefore, resolved upon a swing to the left and became first a constitutional democrat and then a republican democrat (honnête et modéré). He set out to become a deputy but the May elections took him neither to Berlin nor to Frankfurt. Despite this initial setback he pursued his objective undismayed and it can truthfully be said that he did not spare himself. He wisely limited himself at first to his immediate environment. He founded the Bonner Zeitung [Bonn News], a modest local product distinguished only by the peculiar feebleness of its democratic rhetoric and the naivete with which it aspired to save the nation. He elevated the Maybug Club to the rank of a democratic Students' Club and from this there duly flowed a host of disciples that bore the Master's renown into every corner of the district of Bonn, importuning every assembly with the fame of Professor Kinkel. He himself politicked with the grocers in their club, he extended a brotherly hand to the worthy manufacturers and even hawked the warm breath of freedom among the peasantry of Kindenich and Seelscheid. Above all he reserved his sympathy for the honourable caste of master craftsmen. He wept together with them over the decay of handicrafts, the monstrous effects of free competition, the modern dominance of capital and of machines. Together with them he devised plans to restore the guilds and to prevent the violation of guild regulations by the journeymen. So as to do everything of which he was capable he set down the results of his pub deliberations with the petty guild masters in the pamphlet entitled Handicraft, save yourself!
Lest there be any doubt as to Mr. Kinkel's position and to the significance of his little tract for Frankfurt and the nation he dedicated it to the "thirty members of the economic committee of the Frankfurt National Assembly".

Heinrich von Ofterdingen's researches into the "beauty" of the artisan class led him immediately to the discovery that "the whole artisan class is at present divided by a yawning chasm" (p. 5). This chasm consists in the fact that some artisans "frequent the clubs of the grocers and officials" (what progress!) and that others do not do this and also in the fact that some artisans are educated and others are not. Despite this chasm the author regards the artisans' clubs, the assemblies springing up everywhere in the beloved fatherland and the agitation for improving the state of handicrafts (reminiscent of the congresses à la Winkelblech [24] of 1848) as the portent of a happy future. To ensure that his own good advice should not be missing from this beneficent movement he devises his own programme of salvation.

He begins by asking how to eradicate the evil effects of free competition by restricting it but without eliminating it altogether. The solutions he proposes are these:

"A youth who lacks the requisite ability and maturity should be debarred by law from becoming a master" (p. 20).
"No master shall be permitted to have more than one apprentice (p. 29)

"The course of instruction in a craft shall be concluded by an examination" (p. 30).

"The master of an apprentice must unfailingly attend the examination" (p. 31).

"On the question of maturity it should become mandatory that henceforth no apprentice may become a master before completion of his twenty-fifth year" (p. 42).

"As evidence of ability every candidate for the title of master should be required to pass a public examination" (p. 43).

"In this context it is of vital importance that the examination should be free" (p. 44). "All provincial masters of the same guild must likewise submit themselves to the same examination" (p. 55).

Friend Gottfried who is himself a political hawker desires to abolish the "travelling tradesman or hawker" in other, profane wares on the grounds of the dishonesty of such work. (p. 60.)

"A manufacturer of craft goods desires to withdraw his assets from the business to his own advantage and, dishonestly, to the disadvantage of his creditors. Like all ambivalent things this phenomenon too is described by a foreign word: it is called bankruptcy. He then quickly takes his finished products to a neighbouring town and sells them there to the highest bidder" (p. 64). These auctions -- "in actual fact like a sort of garbage that our dear neighbour, Commerce, disposes of in the garden of Handicraft" -- must be abolished. (Would it not be much simpler, Friend Gottfried, to go to the root of the matter and abolish bankruptcy itself?).
"Of course, the annual fairs are in a special position" (p. 65). "The law will have to be flexible so as to allow the various places to call an assembly of all the citizens to decide by majority vote (!) whether permanent annual fairs should be retained or abolished" (p. 68).

Gottfried now comes to the "vexed" question of the relationship between manufacture and machine industry and produces the following:

"Let everyone sell only those goods that he himself produces with his own hands." (p. 80.) "Because machines and manufacture have gone their own ways they have strayed from their true paths and now both are in a sorry plight." (p. 84).

He wishes to unite them by getting artisans such as the bookbinders, to band together and maintain a machine.

"As they only use the machine for themselves and when it is required they will be able to produce more cheaply than the factory owner" (p. 85). "Capital will be broken by association" (p. 84). (And associations will be broken by capital.)

He then generalises his ideas about the "purchase of a machine to rule lines, and to cut paper and cardboard" (p. 85) for the united certificated bookbinders of Bonn and conceives the notion of a "Machine-Chamber".

"Confederations of the various guild masters must set up businesses everywhere, similar to the factories of individual businessmen though on a smaller scale. These will work to order, exclusively for the benefit of local masters. They will not accept commissions from other employers" (p. 86).

What distinguishes these Machine Chambers is the fact that "a commercial management" will only "be needed initially" (ibid). "Every idea as novel as this one", Gottfried exclaims "ecstatically", "can only be put into practice when all the details have been thought out in the most sober, matter of fact way". He urges "each and every branch of manufacture to perform this analysis for itself"! (pp. 87, 88).
There follows a polemic against competition from the state in the shape of the labour performed by the inmates of prisons, reminiscences about a colony of criminals ("The creation of a human Siberia" (p. 102)), and finally an attack on the "so-called handicraft companies and handicraft commissions" in the armed forces. The aim here is to ease the burdens imposed by the army on the artisan classes by inducing the state to commission goods from the guild masters that it could itself produce more cheaply.

"This deals satisfactorily with the problems of competition" (p. 109).

Gottfried's second important point touches on the material aid due to the manufacturing classes from the state. Gottfried regards the state solely from the point of view of an official and hence arrives at the opinion that the easiest and surest way to help the artisan is by direct subsidy from the Treasury to erect trade halls and set up loan-funds. How the funds reach the Treasury in the first place is the "ugly" side of the problem and naturally enough, cannot be investigated here.
Lastly, our theologian inevitably lapses into the role of moral preacher. He reads the artisan class a moral lecture on self-help. He firstly condemns the "complaints about long-term borrowing and about discounts" (p. 136), and invites the artisan to inspect his own conscience: "Do you always fix the same, unchanging price, my friend, for every job of work that you undertake?" (p. 132). On this occasion he also warns the artisan against making extortionate demands on "wealthy Englishmen". "The whole root of the evil", according to the fantasies that inhabit Gottfried's mind, "is the system of annual accounts" (p. 139). This is followed by Jeremiads about the way in which the artisans carry on in the taverns and their wives indulge their love of finery (p. 140 ff.).

The means by which the artisan class is to better itself are "the corporation, the sickness fund and the artisans' court" (p. 146); and lastly, the workers' educational clubs (p. 153). Here is his closing statement about these educational clubs.

"And finally the union of song and oratory will create a bridge to dramatic performances and the artisan theatre which must constantly be kept in view as the ultimate objective of these aesthetic strivings. Only when the labouring classes learn once more how to move on the stage will their artistic education be complete (pp. 174-175).

Gottfried has thus succeeded in changing the artisan into a comedian and has arrived back at his own situation.
This whole flirtation with the guild aspirations of the master craftsmen in Bonn did not fail to achieve a practical result. In return for the solemn promises to promote the cause of the guilds Gottfried's election as Member for Bonn in the Lower Chamber under the dictated constitution [25] was contrived. "From this moment on Gottfried felt happy."

He set off at once for Berlin and as he believed that it was the intention of the government to establish a permanent "corporation" of approved masters in the craft of legislation in the Lower Chamber, he acted as if he were to stay there for ever and even decided to send for his wife and child. But then the Chamber was dissolved and Friend Gottfried, bitterly disappointed, had to leave his parliamentary bliss and go back to Mockel.

Soon afterwards conflicts broke out between the Frankfurt Assembly and the German governments and this led to the upheavals in South Germany and on the Rhine. The Fatherland called and Gottfried obeyed. Siegburg was the site of the arsenal for the province and next to Bonn Siegburg was the place where Gottfried had sown the seed of freedom most frequently. He joined forces with his friend, Anneke, a former lieutenant and summoned all his loyal vassals to a march on Siegburg. They were to assemble at the rope ferry. More than a hundred were supposed to come but when after waiting a long time Gottfried counted the heads of the faithful there were barely thirty -- and of these only three were students, to the undying shame of the Maybug Club! Undaunted, Gottfried and his band crossed the Rhine and marched towards Siegburg. The night was dark and it was drizzling. Suddenly the sound of horses' hooves could be heard behind our valiant heroes. They took cover at the side of the road, a patrol of lancers galloped by: miserable knaves had talked too freely and the authorities had got wind of it. The march was now futile and had to be abandoned. The pain that Gottfried felt in his breast that night can only be compared with the torments he experienced when both Knapp and Chamisso declined to print the first flowering of his poetic talent in their magazines.

After this he could remain no longer in Bonn but surely the Palatinate would provide great scope for his activities? He went to Kaiserslautern and as he had to have a job he obtained a sinecure in the War Office (it is said that he was put in charge of naval affairs). But he continued to earn his living by hawking around his ideas about freedom and the people's paradise among the peasants of the region and it is said that his reception in a number of reactionary districts was anything but cordial. Despite these minor misfortunes Kinkel could be seen on every highroad, striding along purposefully, his rucksack on his back and from this point on he appears in all the newspapers accompanied by his rucksack.

But the upheavals in the Palatinate were quickly terminated and we discover Kinkel again in Karlsruhe where instead of the rucksack he carries a musket which now becomes his permanent emblem. This musket is said to have had a very beautiful aspect, i.e. a butt and stock made of mahogany and it was certainly an artistic, aesthetic musket; there was also an ugly side to it and this was the fact that Gottfried could neither load, nor see, nor shoot nor march. So much so that a friend asked him why he was going into battle at all. Whereupon Gottfried replied: Well, the fact is that I can't return to Bonn, I have to live!

In this way Gottfried joined the ranks of the warriors in the corps of the chivalrous Willich. As a number of his comrades in arms have reliably reported. Gottfried served as a common partisan, sharing all the vicissitudes of this company with humility. He was as merry and friendly in bad times as in good, but he was mostly engaged in marauding. In Rastatt, [26] however, this unsullied witness to truth and justice was to undergo the test from which he would emerge unblemished and as a martyr to the plaudits of the whole German nation. The exact details of this exploit have never been established with any accuracy. All that is known is that a troop of partisans got lost in a skirmish and a few shots were fired on their flank. A bullet grazed Gottfried's head and he fell to the ground with the cry "I am dead". He was not in fact dead but his wound was serious enough to prevent him from retreating with the others. He was taken to a farm house where he turned to the worthy Black Forest peasants with the words "Save me -- I am Kinkel!" Here he was discovered by the Prussians, who dragged him off into Babylonian captivity.

III

With his capture a new epoch opened in Kinkel's life and at the same time there began a new era in the history of German Philistinism. The Maybug Club had scarcely heard the news of his capture than they wrote to all the German papers that Kinkel, the great poet, was in danger of being summarily shot and exhorting the German people, especially the educated among them, and above all the women and girls to give their all to save the life of the imprisoned poet. Kinkel himself composed a poem at about this time, as we are told, in which he compared himself to "Christ, his friend and teacher", adding: "My blood is shed for you." From this point on his emblem is the lyre. In this way Germany suddenly learned that Kinkel was a poet, a great poet moreover, and from this moment on the mass of German Philistines and aestheticising drivellers joined in the Farce of the Blue Flower put on by our Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

In the meantime the Prussians brought him before a military tribunal. For the first time after a long interval he saw his opportunity to try out one of those moving appeals to the tear ducts of his audience which -- according to Mockel -- had brought him such applause earlier on as an assistant preacher in Cologne. Cologne too was destined soon to witness his most glorious performance in this sphere. He made a speech in his own defence before the tribunal which thanks to the indiscretion of a friend was unfortunately made available to the public through the medium of the Berlin Abendpost. In this speech Kinkel "repudiates any connection between his activities and the filth and the dirt that, as I well know, has latterly attached itself to this revolution".

After this rabid revolutionary speech Kinkel was sentenced to twenty years detention in a fortress. As an act of grace this was reduced to prison with hard labour and he was removed to Naugard where he was employed in spinning wool and so just as formerly he had appeared with the emblem first of the rucksack, then the musket and then the lyre, he now appears in association with the spinning wheel. We shall see him later wandering over the ocean accompanied by the emblem of the purse.

In the meantime a curious event took place in Germany. It is well known that the German Philistine is endowed by Nature with a beautiful soul. Now he found his most cherished illusions cruelly shattered by the hard blows of the year 1849. Not a single hope had become reality and even the fast-beating hearts of young men began to despair about the fate of the fatherland. Every heart yielded to a lachrymose torpor and the need began to be felt for a democratic Christ, for a real or imagined Sufferer who in his torments would bear the sins of the Philistine world with the patience of a lamb and whose Passion would epitomise in extreme form the unrestrained but chronic self-pity of the whole of Philistinism. The Maybug Club, with Mockel at its head, set out to satisfy this universal need. And indeed, who better fitted for the task of enacting this great Passion Farce than our captive passion 'dower, Kinkel at the Spinning Wheel, this sponge able to absorb endless floods of sentimental tears, who was in addition preacher, professor of fine arts, deputy, political colporteur, musketeer, newly discovered poet and old impresario all rolled into one? Kinkel was the man of the moment and as such he was immediately accepted by the German Philistines. Every paper abounded in anecdotes, vignettes, poems, reminiscences of the captive poet, his sufferings in prison were magnified a thousandfold and took on mythical stature; at least once a month his hair was reported to have gone grey; in every bourgeois meeting-place and at every tea party he was remembered with grief; the daughters of the educated classes sighed over his poems and old maids who knew what unrequited passion is wept freely in various cities at the thought of his shattered manhood. All other profane victims of the revolutionary movement, all who had been shot, who had fallen in battle or who had been imprisoned disappeared into naught beside this one sacrificial lamb, beside this one hero after the hearts of the Philistines male and female. For him alone did the rivers of tears flow, and indeed, he alone was able to respond to them in kind. In short, we have the perfect image, complete in every detail of the democratic Siegwart epoch which yielded in nothing to the literary Siegwart epoch of the preceding century and Siegwart-Kinkel never felt more at home in any role than in this one where he could seem great not because of what he did but because of what he did not do. He could seem great not by dint of his strength and his powers of resistance but through his weakness and spineless behaviour in a situation where his only task was to survive with decorum and sentiment. Mockel, however, was able and experienced enough to take practical advantage of the public's soft heart and she immediately organised a highly efficient industry. She caused all of Gottfried's published and unpublished works to be printed for they all suddenly became fashionable and were much in demand; she also found a market for her own life-experiences from the insect world, e.g., her Story of a Firefly; she employed the Maybug Strodtmann to assemble Gottfried's most secret diary-feelings and prostitute them to the public for a considerable sum of money; she organised collections of every kind and in general she displayed undeniable talent and great perseverance in converting the feelings of the educated public into hard cash. In addition she had the great satisfaction "of seeing the greatest men of Germany, such as Adolf Stahr, meeting daily in her own little room". The climax of this whole Siegwart mania was to be reached at the Assizes in Cologne where Gottfried made a guest appearance early in 1850. This was the trial resulting from the attempted uprising in Siegburg and Kinkel was brought to Cologne for the occasion. As Gottfried's diaries play such a prominent part in this sketch it will be appropriate if we insert here an excerpt from the diary of an eyewitness.

"Kinkel's wife visited him in gaol. She welcomed him from behind the grill with verses; he replied, I understand, in hexameters; whereupon they both sank to their knees before each other and the prison inspector, an old sergeant-major, who was standing by wondered whether he was dealing with madmen or clowns. When asked later by the chief prosecutor about the content of their conversation he declared that the couple had indeed spoken German but that he could not make head nor tail of it. Whereupon Mrs. Kinkel is supposed to have retorted that a man who was so wholly innocent of art and literature should not be made an inspector."

Faced with the jury Kinkel wriggled his way out by acting the pure tearjerker, the poetaster of the Siegwart period of the vintage of Werther's Sufferings. [27]

"Members of the Court, Gentlemen of the Jury -- the blue eyes of my children -- the green waters of the Rhine -- it is no dishonour to shake the hand of the proletarian -- the pallid lips of the prisoner -- the peaceful air of one's home" -- and similar crap: that was what the whole famous speech amounted to and the public, the jury, the prosecution and even the police shed their bitterest tears and the trial closed with a unanimous acquittal and a no less unanimous weeping and wailing. Kinkel is doubtless a dear, good man but he is also a repulsive mixture of religious, political and literary reminiscences."

It's enough to make you sick.
Fortunately this period of misery was soon terminated by the romantic liberation of Kinkel from Spandual gaol. His escape was a re-enactment of the story of Richard Lionheart and Blondel with the difference that this time it was Blondel who was in prison while Lionheart played on the barrel-organ outside and that Blondel was an ordinary music-hall minstrel and the lion was basically more like a rabbit. Lionheart was in fact the student Schurz from the Maybug Club, a little intriguer with great ambitions and limited achievements who was however intelligent enough to have seen through the "German Lamartine"! Not long after the escape student Schurz declared in Paris that he knew very well that Kinkel was no lumen mundi, whereas he, Schurz, and none other was destined to be the future president of the German Republic. This mannikin, one of those students "in brown jackets and pale-blue overcoats" whom Gottfried had once followed with his gloomily flashing eyes succeeded in freeing Kinkel at the cost of sacrificing some poor devil of a warder who is now doing time elevated by the feeling of being a martyr for freedom -- the freedom of Gottfried Kinkel.

IV

We next meet Kinkel again in London, and this time, thanks to his prison fame and the sentimentality of the German Philistines, he has become the greatest man in Germany. Mindful of his sublime mission Friend Gottfried was able to exploit all the advantages of the moment. His romantic escape gave new impetus to the Kinkel cult in Germany and he adroitly directed this onto a path that was not without beneficial material consequences. At the same time London provided the much venerated man with a new, complex arena in which to receive even greater acclaim. He did not hesitate: he would have to be the new lion of the season. With this in mind he refrained for the time being from all political activity and withdrew into the seclusion of his home in order to grow a beard, without which no prophet can succeed. After that he visited Dickens, the English liberal newspapers, the German businessmen in the City and especially the aesthetic Jews in that place. He was all things to all men: to one a poet, to another a patriot in general, professor of fine arts to a third, Christ to the fourth, the patiently suffering Odysseus to the fifth. To everyone, however, he appeared as the gentle, artistic, benevolent and humanitarian Gottfried. He did not rest until Dickens had eulogised him in the Household Words, until the Illustrated News had published his portrait. He induced the few Germans in London who had been involved in the Kinkel mania even at a distance to allow themselves to be invited to lectures on modern drama. Once he had organised them in this way tickets to these lectures flooded into the homes of the local German population. No running around, no advertisement, no charlatanism, no importunity was beneath him; in return, however, he did not go unrewarded. Gottfried sunned himself complacently in the mirror of his own fame and in the gigantic mirror of the Crystal Palace of the world. And we may say that he now felt tremendously content.

There was no lack of praise for his lectures (see Kosmos).

Kosmos: "Kinkel's Lectures"
"While looking once at Dobler's paintings of misty landscapes I was surprised by the whimsical question of whether it was possible to produce such chaotic creations in words, whether it was possible to utter misty images. It is no doubt unpleasant for the critic to have to confess that in this case his critical autonomy will vibrate against the galvanized nerves of an external reminiscence, as the fading sound of a dying note echoes in the strings. Nevertheless I would prefer to renounce any attempt at a bewigged and boring analysis of pedantic insensitivity than to deny that tone which the charming muse of the German refugee caused to resonate in my sensibility. This ground note of Kinkel's paintings, this sounding board of his chords is the sonorous, creative, formative and gradually shaping 'word' -- 'modern thought'. To 'judge' this thought is to lead truth out of the chaos of mendacious traditions, to constitute it as the indestructible property of the world and as such to place it under the protection of spiritually active, logical minorities who will educate the world leading it from a credulous ignorance to a state of more sceptical science. It is the task of the science of doubt to profane the mysticism of pious deceit, to undermine the absolutism of an atrophied tradition. Science must employ scepticism, that ceaselessly labouring guillotine of philosophy, to decapitate accepted authority and to lead the nations out of the misty regions of theocracy by means of revolution into the luscious meadows of democracy" (of nonsense). "The sustained, unflagging search in the annals of mankind and the understanding of man himself is the great task of all revolutionaries and this had been understood by that proscribed poet rebel who on three recent Monday evenings uttered his subversive views before a bourgeois audience in the course of his lectures on the history of the modern theatre."

"A Worker"

It is generally claimed that this worker is a very close relation of Kinkel's -- namely Mockel -- as indeed seems likely from the use of such expressions as "sounding-board", "fading sound", "chords" and "galvanized nerves".
However, even this period of hard-earned pleasure was not to last forever. The Last Judgement on the existing world-order, the democratic day of judgement, namely the much celebrated May 1852 [28] was drawing ever closer. In order to confront this day all booted and spurred Kinkel had to don his political lionskin once more: he had to make contact with the "Emigration".

So we come to the London "Emigration", this hotchpotch of former members of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Berlin National Assembly, and Chamber of Deputies, of gentlemen from the Baden Campagne, Gargantuas from the Comedy of the Imperial Constitution, [29] writers without a public, loudmouths from the democratic clubs and congresses, twelfth-rate journalists and so forth.

The heroes of the 1848 revolution in Germany had been on the point of coming to a sticky end when the victory of ''tyranny'' rescued them, swept them out of the country and made saints and martyrs of them. They were saved by the counter-revolution. The course of continental politics brought most of them to London which thus became their European centre. It is evident that something had to happen, something had to be arranged to remind the public daily of the existence of these world-liberators. At all costs it must not become obvious that the course of universal history might be able to proceed without the intervention of these mighty men. The more this refuse of mankind found itself hindered by its own impotence as much as by the prevailing situation from undertaking any real action, the more zealously did it indulge in spurious activity whose imagined deeds, imagined parties, imagined struggles and imagined interests have been so noisily trumpeted abroad by those involved. The less able they were to bring about a new revolution the more they discounted the importance of such an eventuality in their minds, while they concentrated on sharing out the plum jobs and enjoying the prospect of future power. The form taken by this self-important activity was that of a mutual insurance club of the heroes-to-be and the reciprocal guarantee of government posts.

V

The first attempt to create such an "organisation" took place as early as the Spring of 1850. A magniloquent "draft circular to German democrats" was hawked around London in manuscript form together with a "Covering Letter to the Leaders". It contained an exhortation to found a united democratic church. Its immediate aim was to form a Central Office to deal with the affairs of German émigrés, to set up a central administration for refugee problems, to start a printing press in London, and to unite all patriots against the common enemy. The Emigration would then become the centre of the internal revolutionary movement, the organisation of the Emigration would be the beginning of a comprehensive democratic organisation, the outstanding personalities among the members of the Central Office would be paid salaries raised by taxes levied on the German people. This tax proposal seemed all the more appropriate as "the German Emigration had gone abroad not merely without a respectable hero but what is even worse, without common assets". It is no secret that the Hungarian, Polish and French committees already in existence provided the model for this "organisation" and the whole document is redolent of envy of the privileged position of these prominent allies.

The circular was the joint production of Messrs. Rudolph Schramm and Gustav Struve, behind whom lay concealed the merry figure of Mr. Arnold Ruge, a corresponding member living in Ostend at the time.

Mr. Rudolph Schramm -- a rowdy, loudmouthed and extremely confused little mannikin whose life-motto came from Rameau's Nephew: "I would rather be an impudent windbag than be nothing at all."

When at the height of his power, Mr. Camphausen [30] would gladly have given the young forward Crefelder an important post, had it been permissible to elevate a junior official. Thanks to bureaucratic etiquette Mr. Schrarnm found only the career of a democrat open to him. And in this profession he really did advance at one point to the post of President of the Democratic Club in Berlin and with the support of some left-wing Members of Parliament he became the Deputy for Striegau in the Berlin National Assembly. Here the normally so loquacious Schramm distinguished himself by his obstinate silence, which was accompanied, however, by an uninterrupted series of grunts. After the Assembly had been dissolved [31] our democratic man of the people wrote a pamphlet in support of a constitutional monarchy but this did not suffice to get him re-elected. Later, at the time of the Brentano government he appeared momentarily in Baden and there in the "Club for Resolute Progress" he became acquainted with Struve. On his arrival in London he declared his intention of withdrawing from all political activity for which reason he then published the circular referred to above. Essentially a bureaucrat Mr. Schramm imagined that his family relations qualified him to represent the radical bourgeoisie in exile and he did indeed present a fair caricature of the radical bourgeois.

Gustav Struve is one of the more important figures of the emigration. At the very first glimpse of his leathery appearance, his protuberant eyes with their sly, stupid expression, the matt gleam on his bald pate and his half Slav, half Kalmuck features one cannot doubt that one is in the presence of an unusual man. And this first impression is confirmed by his low, guttural voice, his oily manner of speaking and the air of solemn gravity he imparts to his gestures. To be just it must be said that faced with the greatly increased difficulties of distinguishing oneself these days, our Gustav at least made the effort to attract attention by using his diverse talents -- he is part prophet, part speculator, part bunion healer -- centring his activities on all kinds of peripheral matters and making propaganda for the strangest assortment of causes. For example, he was born a Russian but suddenly took it into his head to enthuse about the cause of German freedom after he had been employed in a minor capacity in the Russian embassy to the Federal Diet and had written a little pamphlet in defence of the Diet. Regarding his own skull as normal he suddenly developed an interest in phrenology and from then on he refused to trust anyone whose skull he had not yet felt and examined. He also gave up eating meat and preached the gospel of strict vegetarianism; he was, moreover, a weather-prophet, he inveighed against tobacco and was prominent in the interest of German Catholicism and water-cures. In harmony with his thoroughgoing hatred of scientific knowledge it was natural that he should be in favour of free universities in which the four faculties would be replaced by the study of phrenology, physiognomy, chiromancy and necromancy. It was also quite in character for him to insist that he must become a great writer simply because his mode of writing was the antithesis of everything that could be held to be stylistically acceptable.

In the early Forties Gustav had already invented the Deutscher Zuschauer, a little paper that he published in Mannheim, that he patented and that pursued him everywhere as an idée fixe. He also made the discovery at around this time that Rotteck's History of the World and the Rotteck-Welcker Lexicon of Politics, the two works that had been his Old and New Testaments, were out of date and in need of a new democratic edition. This revision Gustav undertook without delay and published an extract from it in advance under the title The Basic Elements of Political Science. He argued that the revision had become "an undeniable necessity since 1848 as the late-lamented Rotteck had not experienced the events of recent years".

In the meantime there broke out in Baden in quick succession the three "popular uprisings" that Gustav has placed in the very centre of the whole modern course of world history. Driven into exile by the very first of these revolts (Hacker's) and occupied with the task of publishing the Deutscher Zuschauer once again, this time from Basel, he was then dealt a hard blow by fate when the Mannheim publisher continued to print the Deutscher Zuschauer under a different editor. The battle between the true and the false Deutscher Zuschauer was so bitterly fought that neither paper survived. To compensate for this Gustav devised a constitution for the German Federal Republic in which Germany was to be divided into 24 republics, each with a president and two chambers; he appended a neat map on which the whole proposal could be clearly seen. In September 1848 the second insurrection began in which our Gustav acted as both Caesar and Socrates. He used the time granted him on German soil to issue serious warnings to the Black Forest Peasantry about the deleterious effects of smoking tobacco. In Lörrach he published his Moniteur with the title of Government Organ -- German Free State -- Freedom, Prosperity, Education. This publication contained inter alia the following decree:

"Article 1. The extra tax of 10 per cent on goods imported from Switzerland is hereby abolished;
Article 2. Christian Müller, the Customs Officer is to be given the task of implementing this measure."

He was accompanied in all his trials by his faithful Amalia who subsequently published a romantic account of them. She was also active in administering the oath to captured gendarmes, for it was her custom to fasten a red band around the arm of every one who swore allegiance to the German Free State and to give him a big kiss. Unfortunately Gustav and Amalia were taken prisoner and languished in gaol where the imperturbable Gustav at once resumed his republican translation of Rotteck's History of the World until he was liberated by the outbreak of the third insurrection. Gustav now became a member of a real provisional government and the mania for provisional governments was now added to his other idées fixes. As President of the War Council he hastened to introduce as much muddle as possible into his department and to recommend the "traitor" Mayerhofer for the post of Minister for War (vice Goegg, Retrospect, Paris 1850). Later he vainly aspired to the post of Foreign Minister and to have 60,000 Florins placed at his disposal. Mr. Brentano soon relieved Gustav of the burdens of government and Gustav now entered the "Club of Resolute Progress" from which he became leader of the opposition. He delighted above all in opposing the very measures of Brentano which he had hitherto supported. Even though the Club too was disbanded and Gustav had to flee to the Palatinate this disaster had its positive side for it enabled him to issue one further number of the inevitable Deutscher Zuschauer in Neustadt an der Haardt -- this compensated Gustav for much undeserved suffering. A further satisfaction was that he was successful in a by-election in some remote corner of the uplands and was nominated member of the Baden Constituent Assembly which meant that he could now return in an official capacity. In this Assembly Gustav only distinguished himself by the following three proposals that he put forward in Freiburg: (1) On June 28th: everyone who enters into dealings with the enemy should be declared a traitor. (2) On June 30th: a new provisional government should be formed in which Struve would have a seat and a vote. (3) On the same day that the previous motion was defeated he proposed that as the defeat at Rastatt had rendered all resistance futile the uplands should be spared the terrors of war and that therefore all officials and soldiers should receive ten days' wages and members of the Assembly should receive ten days' expenses together with travelling costs after which they should all repair to Switzerland to the accompaniment of trumpets and drums. When this proposal too was rejected Gustav set out for Switzerland on his own and having been driven from thence by James Fazy's stick he retreated to London where he at once came to the fore with yet another discovery, namely the Six scourges of mankind. These six scourges were: the princes, the nobles, the priests, the bureaucracy, the standing army, mammon and bedbugs. The spirit in which Gustav interpreted the lamented Rotteck can be gauged from the further discovery that mammon was the invention of Louis Philippe. Gustav preached the gospel of the six scourges in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung [German London News] which belonged to the ex-Duke of Brunswick. He was amply rewarded for this activity and in return he gratefully bowed to the ducal censorship. So much for Gustav's relations with the first scourge, the princes. As for his relationship with the nobles, the second scourge, our moral and religious republican had visiting cards printed on which he figured as "Baron von Struve". If his relations with the remaining scourges were less amicable this cannot be his fault. Gustav then made use of his leisure time in London to devise a republican calendar in which the saints were replaced by right-minded men and the names "Gustav" and "Amelia" were particularly prominent. The months were designated by German equivalents of those in the calendar of the French Republic and there were a number of other commonplaces for the common good. For the rest, the remaining idées fixes made their appearance again in London: Gustav made haste to revive the Deutscher Zuschauer and the Club of Resolute Progress and to form a provisional government. On all these matters he found himself of one mind with Schramm and in this way the circular came into being.
The third member of the alliance, the great Arnold Ruge with his air of a sergeant-major living in hopes of civilian employment outshines in glory the whole of the emigration. It cannot be said that this noble man commends himself by his notably handsome exterior; Paris acquaintances were wont to sum up his Pomeranian-Slav features with the word "ferret-face" (figure de fouine). Arnold Ruge, the son of peasants of the isle of Rugen, had endured seven years in Prussian prisons for democratic agitation. He embraced Hegelian philosophy as soon as he had realised that once he had leafed through Hegel's Encyclopaedia he could dispense with the study of all other science. He also developed the principle (described in a Novelle and which he attempted to practice on his friends -- poor Georg Herwegh can vouch for the truth of this), of profiting from marriage and he early acquired a "substantial property" in this manner.

Despite his Hegelian phrases and his substantial property he did not advance beyond the post of porter to German philosophy. In the Hallische-Jahrbücher [Halle Annals] and the Deutsche-Jahrbücher [German Annals] it was his task to announce and to trumpet the names of the great philosophers of the future and he showed that he was not without talent in exploiting them for his own purposes. Unfortunately, the period of philosophical anarchy soon supervened, that period when science no longer had a universally acknowledged king, when Strauss, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbadh fought among themselves and when the most diverse alien elements began to disrupt the simplicity of classical doctrine. Ruge looked on helplessly, he no longer knew which path to take; his Hegelian categories had always operated in a vacuum, now they ran completely amok and he suddenly felt the need for a mighty movement in which exact thought and writing were not indispensable.

Ruge played the same role in the Hallische Jahrbücher as the late bookseller Nicolai had done in the old Berliner Monatsschrft [Berlin Monthly Magazine]. Like the latter his ambition was to print the works of others and in so doing, to derive material advantage and also to quarry literary sustenance for the effusions of his own brain. The only difference was that in this literary digestive process with its inevitable end product Ruge went much further than did his model in rewriting his collaborators' articles. Moreover, Ruge was not the porter of German Enlightenment, he was the Nicolai of modern German philosophy and thus was able to conceal the natural banality of his genius behind a thick hedge of speculative jargon. Like Nicolai he fought valiantly against Romanticism because Hegel had demolished it philosophically in the aesthetics and Heine had done the same thing from the point of view of literature in The Romantic School. Unlike Hegel he agreed with Nicolai in arrogating to himself the right as an anti-Romantic to set up a vulgar Philistinism and above all his own Philistinic self as an ideal of perfection. With this in mind and so as to defeat the enemy on his own ground Ruge went in for making verses. No Dutchman could have achieved the dull flatness of these poems which Ruge hurled so challengingly into the face of Romanticism.

And in general our Pomeranian thinker did not really feel at ease in Hegelian philosophy. Able as he was in detecting contradictions he was all the more feeble in resolving them and he had a very understandable horror of dialectics. The upshot was that the crudest possible contradictions dwelt peaceably together in his dogmatic brain and that his powers of understanding, never very agile, were nowhere more at home than in such mixed company. It is not unknown for him to read simultaneously two articles by two different writers and to conflate them into a single new product without noticing that they had been written from two opposing viewpoints. Always riding firmly between his own contradictions he sought to extricate himself from condemnation by the theorists by declaring his faulty theory to be "practical", while at the same time he would disarm the practical by interpreting his practical clumsiness and inconsequentiality as theoretical expertise. He would end by sanctifying his own entanglement in insoluble contradictions, his chaotically uncritical faith in popular slogans by regarding them as proof that he was a man of "principle".

Before we go on to concern ourselves with the further career of our Maurice of Saxony, as he liked to style himself in his intimate circle or friends, we would point to two qualities which made their appearance already in the Jahrbücher. The first is his mania for manifestos. No sooner had someone hatched a novel opinion that Ruge believed to have a future than he would issue a manifesto. As no-one reproaches him with ever having given birth to an original thought of his own, such manifestos were always suitable opportunity to claim this novel idea as his own property in a more or less declamatory fashion. This would be followed by the attempt to form a party, a "mass" which would stand behind him and to whom he could act as sergeant-major. We shall see later to what unbelievable heights of perfection Ruge had developed the art of fabricating manifestos, proclamations and pronunciamentos. The second quality is the particular diligence in which Arnold excels. As he does not care to study overmuch, or as he puts it "to transfer ideas from one library into another", he prefers "to gain his knowledge fresh from life". He means by this to note down conscientiously every evening all the witty, novel or bright ideas that he has read, heard or just picked up during the day. As opportunity arises these materials are then made to contribute to Urge's daily stint which he labours at just as conscientiously as at his other bodily needs. It is this that his admirers refer to when they say that he cannot hold his ink. The subject of his daily literary production is a matter of complete indifference; what is vital is that Ruge should be able to immerse every possible topic in that wonderful stylistic sauce that goes with everything just like the English who enjoy their Soyer's relish or Worcester Sauce equally with fish, fowl, cutlets or anything else. This daily stylistic diarrhoea he likes to designate the "all-pervading beautiful form" and he regards it as adequate grounds for passing himself off as an artist.

Contented as Ruge was to be the Swiss guard of German philosophy he still had a secret sorrow gnawing at his innermost vitals. He had not written a single large book and had daily to envy the happy Bruno Bauer who had published 18 fat volumes while still a young man. To reduce the discrepancy Ruge had one and the same essay printed three times in one and the same volume under different titles and then brought out the same volume in a number of different formats. In this way Arnold Ruge's Complete Works came into being and even today he derives much pleasure from counting them every morning volume by volume as they stand there neatly bound in his library, whereupon he exclaims joyfully: "And anyway, Bruno Bauer is a man without principles!"

Even though Arnold did not manage to comprehend the Hegelian system of philosophy, he did succeed in representing one Hegelian category in his own person. He was the very incarnation of the "honest consciousness" and was strengthened in this when he made the pleasant discovery in the Phenomenology -- a book that was otherwise closed to him and bound with seven seals -- that the honest consciousness "always has pleasure in itself". Though he wears his integrity on his sleeve the honest consciousness uses it to conceal the petty malice and crotchetiness of the Philistine; he has the right to allow himself every kind of base action because he knows that his baseness springs from honest motives. His very stupidity becomes a virtue because it is an irrefutable proof that he stands up for his principles. Despite every arrière pensée he is firmly convinced of his own integrity and however base or filthy an intended act may be it does not prevent him from appearing sincere and trusting. Beneath the halo of good intentions all the petty meannesses of the citizen become transformed into as many virtues; sordid self-interest appears as an innocent babe when dressed up to look like a piece of self-sacrifice; cowardice appears disguised as a higher form of courage, baseness becomes magnanimity, and the coarse manners of the peasant become ennobled, and indeed transfigured into the signs of decency and good humour. This is the gutter into which the contradictions of philosophy, democracy and the cliché industry all pour; such a man is moreover richly endowed with all the vices, the mean and petty qualities, with the slyness and the stupidity, the greed and the clumsiness, the servility and the arrogance, the untrustworthiness and the bonhomie of the emancipated serf, the peasant; Philistine and ideologist, atheist and slogan worshipper, absolute ignoramus and absolute philosopher all in one -- that is Arnold Ruge as Hegel foretold him in 1806.

After the Deutsche Jahrbücher were suppressed Ruge transported his family to Paris in a carriage specially designed for the purpose. Here, his unlucky star brought him into contact with Heine who honoured him as the man who "had translated Hegel into Pomeranian". Heine asked him whether Prutz was not a pseudonym of his which Ruge could deny in good conscience. However, it was not possible to make Heine believe that anyone but Arnold was the author of Prutz's poems. Heine also discovered very soon that even though Ruge had no talent he knew very well how to give the appearance of being a man of character. Thus it came about that Friend Arnold gave Heine the idea for his Atta Troll. If Ruge was not able to immortalise his sojourn in Paris by writing a great work he at least deserves our thanks for the one Heine produced for him. In gratitude the poet wrote for him this well-known epitaph:

Atta Troll, Tendenzbar; sittlich
Religios; als Gatte brunstig;
Durch Verfuhrtsein von dem Zeitgeist
Waldursprduglich Sansculotte;
Sehr schlecht tanzend, doch Gesinnung
Tragend in der zoutgen Hochbrust;
Manchmal auch gestunken habend;
Kein Talent, doch ein Charakter!
[Atta Troll, reforming bear,
Pure and pious; a passionate husband,
By the Zeitgeist led astray
A backwoods sansculotte,
Dances badly but ideals
Dwell within his shaggy breast
Often stinking very strongly --
Talent none, but Character]

In Paris our Arnold experienced the misfortune of becoming involved with the Communists. He published articles by Marx and Engels in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher that contained views running directly counter to those he had himself announced in the Preface, an accident to which the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung drew his attention but which he bore with philosophical resignation.
To overcome an innate social awkwardness Ruge has collected a small number of curious anecdotes that could be used on any occasion. He calls these anecdotes jokes. His preoccupation with these jokes, sustained over many years, finally led to the transformation of all events, situations and circumstances into a series of pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, important or trivial, interesting or boring jokes. The Paris upheavals, the many new impressions, socialism, politics, the Palais-Royal, the cheapness of the oysters -- all these things wrought so powerfully on the mind of this unhappy wretch that his head went round and round in a permanent and incurable whirl of jokes and Paris itself became an unlimited storehouse of jokes. One of the brightest of these jokes was the idea of using wood shavings to make coats for the proletariat and in general he had a foible for industrial jokes for which he could never find enough share-holders.

When the better known Germans were expelled from France Ruge contrived to avoid this fate by presenting himself to the minister, Duchâtel, as a savant sérieux. He evidently had in mind the scholar in Paul de Kock's Amant de la lune, who established himself as a savant by means of an original device for propelling corks through the air. Shortly afterwards Arnold went to Switzerland where he joined forces with a former Dutch NCO, Cologne writer and Prussian tax subinspector, called Heinzen. Both were soon bound together by the bonds of the most intimate friendship. Heinzen learnt philosophy from Ruge, Ruge learnt politics from Heinzen. From this time on we detect in Ruge a growing necessity to appear as a philosopher par excellence only among the coarser elements of the German movement, a fate that led him down and down until at last he was accepted as a philosopher only by non-conformist parsons (Dulon), German catholic parsons (Ronge) and Fanny Lewald. At the same time anarchy was growing apace in German philosophy. Stirner's The Self and its Own, Stein's Socialism, Communism, etc., all recent intruders, drove Ruge's sense of humour to breaking-point: a great leap must be ventured. So Ruge escaped into humanism, the slogan with which all Confusionists in Germany from Reuchlin to Herder have covered up their embarrassment. This slogan seemed all the more appropriate as Feuerbach had only recently "rediscovered man" and Arnold fastened on to it with such desperation that he has not let go of it to this day. But while still in Switzerland Arnold made yet another, incomparably greater discovery. This was that "the ego by appearing frequently before the public proves itself a character". From this point on a new field of activity opened for Arnold. He now erected the most shameless meddling and interfering into a principle. Ruge had to poke his nose into everything. No hen could lay an egg without Ruge "commenting on the reason underlying the event". Contact had to be maintained at all cost with every obscure local paper where there was a chance of making frequent appearances. He wrote no newspaper articles without signing his name and, where possible, mentioning himself. The principle of the frequent appearance had to be extended to every article; an article had first to appear in letter form in the European papers (and after Heinzen's emigration, in the American papers also), it was then reprinted as a pamphlet and appeared again finally in the collected works.

Thus equipped Ruge could now return to Leipzig to obtain definitive recognition of his character. But once arrived all was not a bed of roses. His old friend Wigand, the bookseller, had very successfully replaced him in the role of Nicolai and as no other post was vacant Ruge fell into gloomy reflections on the transitoriness of all jokes. This was his situation when the German Revolution broke out.

For him too it came in the hour of need. The mighty movement in which even the clumsiest could easily swim with the current had finally got underway and Ruge went to Berlin where he intended to fish in troubled waters. As a revolution had just broken out he felt that it would be appropriate for him to come forward with proposals for reform. So he founded a paper with that name. The pre-revolutionary Réforme of Paris had been the most untalented, illiterate and boring paper in France. The Berlin Reform demonstrated that it was possible to surpass its French model and that one need not blush at offering German public such an incredible journal even in the "metropolis of intelligence". On the assumption that Ruge's defective grasp of style contained the best guarantee for the profound content lying behind and beneath it Arnold was elected to the Frankfurt Parliament as Member for Breslau. Here he saw his chance as editor of the democratic Left-wing to come forward with an absurd manifesto. Apart from that he distinguished himself only by his passion for issuing manifestos for European People's Congresses, and hastened to add his voice to the general wish that Prussia should be absorbed into Germany. Later, on his return to Berlin he demanded that Germany should be swallowed up by Prussia and Frankfurt by Berlin and when he finally decided to become a peer of Saxony he proposed that Prussia and Germany should both be swallowed up by Dresden.

His parliamentary activity brought him no laurels other than the fact that his own party despaired at so much folly. At the same time his Reform was going downhill, a situation that could only be remedied, as he thought, by his personal presence in Berlin. As an "honest consciousness" it goes without saying that he also discovered an urgent political reason for taking such a step and in fact he demanded that the whole of the Left should accompany him there. Naturally, they refused and Ruge went to Berlin alone. Once there, he discovered that modern conflicts can best be resolved by the "Dessau method" as he termed the small state, a model of constitutional democracy. Then during the siege [of Vienna] he again drew up a manifesto in which General Wrangel was exhorted to march against Windischgraetz and free Vienna. He even obtained the approval of the democratic Congress for this curious document by pointing out that the type had been set up and that it was already being printed. Finally, when Berlin itself came under siege, Ruge went to Manteuffel and made proposals concerning the Reform, which were, however, rejected. Manteuffel told him that he wished all opposition papers were like the Reform, the Neue Preussische Zeitung [32] was much more dangerous to him -- an utterance which the naive Ruge, with a tone of triumphant pride, hastened to report through the length and breadth of Germany. Arnold became an enthusiastic advocate of passive resistance which he himself put into practice by leaving his paper, editors and everything in the lurch and running away. Active flight is evidently the most resolute form of passive resistance. The counter-revolution had arrived and Ruge fled before it all the way from Berlin to London without stopping.

At the time of the May uprising in Dresden [33] Arnold placed himself at the head of the movement in Leipzig together with his friend Otto Wigand and the city council. He and his allies issued a vigorous manifesto to the citizens of Dresden urging them to fight bravely; Ruge, Wigand and the city fathers, it went on, were sitting watching in Leipzig and whoever did not desert himself would not be deserted by Heaven. Scarcely had the manifesto been published than our brave Arnold took to his heels and fled to Karlsruhe.

In Karlsruhe he felt unsafe even though the Baden troops were standing on the Neckar and hostilities were a long way from breaking out. He asked Brentano to send him to Paris as ambassador. Brentano permitted himself the joke of giving him the post for I2 hours and then revoking it just when Ruge was about to depart. Undaunted, Ruge still went to Paris together with Schutz and Blind, the official representatives of the Brentano government, and once there made such a spectacle of himself that his former editor announced in the official Karlsruhe Zeitung that Mr. Ruge was not in Paris in any official capacity but mercy "on his own initiative". Having once been taken along by Schutz and Blind to see Ledru-Rollin Ruge suddenly interrupted the diplomatic negotiations with a terrible diatribe against the Germans in the presence of the Frenchmen so that his colleagues finally had to withdraw discomfited and compromised. June 13th [34] came and dealt our Arnold such a severe blow that he took to his heels and did not pause to take breath again until he found himself in London, on free British soil. Referring to this fight later he compared himself to Demosthenes.

In London Ruge first attempted to pass himself off as the Baden provisional ambassador. He then tried to gain acceptance in the English press as a great German writer and thinker but was turned away on the grounds that the English were too materialistic ever to understand German philosophy. He was also asked about his works -- a request which Ruge could answer only with a sigh while the image of Bruno Bauer once again rose up before his eyes. For even his Collected Works, what were they but reprints of pamphlets? And they were not even pamphlets but merely newspaper articles in pamphlet form, and basically they were not even newspaper articles but only the muddled fruits of his reading. Action was necessary and so Ruge wrote two articles for the Leader in which under the pretext of an analysis of German democracy he declared chat in Germany "humanism" was the order of the day as represented by Ludwig Feuerbach and Arnold Ruge, the author of the following works: (1) The Religion of our Age, (2) Democracy and Socialism, (3) Philosophy and the Revolution. These three epoch-making works which have not appeared in the bookshops to this day are, it goes without saying, nothing more than new titles arbitrarily applied to old essays of Ruge's. Simultaneously he resumed his daily stints when for his own edification, for the benefit of the German public and to the horror of Mr. Brüggemann [35] he began to retranslate articles into German that had somehow got out of the Kölnische Zeitung and into the Morning Advertiser. Not exactly burdened with laurels he withdrew to Ostend where he found the leisure necessary to his preparations for the role of universal sage, the Confucius of the German Emigration.

Just as Gustav was the vegetable and Gottfried the sensibility of the German petty-bourgeois Philistine, Arnold is representative of its understanding or rather its non-understanding. Unlike Arnold Winkelried [36] he does not open up a path to freedom [der Freiheit eine Gasse]; he is in his own person the gutter of freedom [der Freiheit eine Gosse]; Ruge stands in the German revolution like the notices seen at the corner of certain streets: It is permitted to pass water here.

We return at last to our circular with its covering letter. It fell flat and the first attempt to create a united democratic church came to nought. Schramm and Gustav later declared that failure was due solely to the circumstance chat Ruge could neither speak French nor write German. But then the heroes again set to work.

Che ciascun oltra moda era possente,
Come udirete nel canto seguente.
[For puissant were they all beyond compare,
As in our next canto you shall hear.] [37]

VI

Together with Gustav, Rodomonte Heinzen had arrived in London from Switzerland. Karl Heinzen had for many years made a living from his threat to destroy "tyranny" in Germany. After the outbreak of the February Revolution he went so far as to attempt, with unheard-of courage, to inspect German soil from the vantage point of Schuster Island [near Basle]. He then betook himself to Switzerland where from the safety of Geneva he again thundered against the "tyrants and oppressors of the people" and took the opportunity to declare that "Kossuth is a great man, but Kossuth has forgotten about explosive silver". His horror of bloodshed was such that it turned him into the alchemist of the revolution. He dreamt of an explosive substance that would blast the whole European reaction into the air in a trice without its users even getting their fingers burnt. He had a particular aversion to walking amid a shower of bullets and in general to conventional warfare in which principles are no defence against bullets. Under the government of Brentano he risked a revolutionary visit to Karlsruhe. As he did not receive the reward he thought due to him for his heroic deeds he resolved to edit the Moniteur [38] of that "traitor" Brentano. But as the Prussians advanced he declared that Heinzen would not "let himself be shot" for that traitor Brentano. Under the pretext of forming an elite corps where political principles and military organisation would mutually complement each other, i.e. where military cowardice would pass for political courage, his constant search for the ideal free corps made him retrace his steps until he had regained the familiar territory of Switzerland. Sophie's Journey from Memel to Saxony [39] was a good deal more bloody than Heinzen's revolutionary expedition. On his arrival in Switzerland he declared that there were no longer any real men in Germany, that the authentic explosive silver had not yet been discovered, that the war was not being conducted on revolutionary principles but in the normal fashion with powder and lead, and that he intended to revolutionise in Switzerland as Germany was a lost cause. In the secluded idyll of Switzerland and with the tortured dialect they speak there it was easy for Rodomonte to pass for a German writer and even for a dangerous man. He achieved his aim. He was expelled and dispatched to London at Federal expense. Rodomonte Heinzen had not directly participated in the European revolutions; but, undeniably, he had moved about extensively on their behalf When the February Revolution broke out he took up a collection of "revolutionary money" in New York, hastened to the aid of his country and advanced as far as the Swiss border. When the March Club's [40] revolution collapsed he retired from Switzerland to beyond the Channel at the expense of the Swiss Federal Council. He had the satisfaction of making the revolution pay for his advance and the counter-revolution for his retreat.

At every turn in the Italian epics of chivalry we encounter mighty, broad-shouldered giants armed with colossal staves who despite the fact that they lash about them wildly and make a frightening din in battle, never manage to kill their foes but only to destroy the trees in the vicinity. Mr. Heinzen is such an Ariostian giant in political literature. Endowed by nature with a churlish figure and huge masses of flesh he interpreted these gifts to mean that he was destined to be a great man. His weighty physical appearance determines his whole literary posture which is physical through and through. His opponents are always small, mere dwarfs, who can barely reach his ankles and whom he can survey with his kneecap. When, however, he should indeed make a physical appearance, our uomo membruto takes refuge in literature or in the courts. Thus scarcely had he reached the safety of English soil than he wrote a tract on moral courage. Or again, our giant allowed a certain Mr. Richter to thrash him so frequently and so thoroughly in New York that the magistrate, who at first only imposed insignificant fines relented and in recognition of Heinzen's doggedness he sentenced the dwarf Richter to pay 200 dollars damages. The natural complement to this great physique so healthy in every fibre is the healthy commonsense which Heinzen ascribes to himself in the highest possible degree. It is inevitable that a man with such commonsense will turn out to be a natural genius who has learnt nothing, a barbarian innocent of literature and science. By virtue of his commonsense (which he also calls his "perspicacity" and which allows him to tell Kossuth that he has "advanced to the extreme frontiers of thought"), he learns only from hearsay or the newspapers. He is therefore always behind the times and always wears the