9. K. Marx and F. Engels. The Great Men of the Exile
I
"Sing, immortal soul, the redemption of fallen mankind"3— 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. Wahrheit ohne Dichtung. Biographisches Skizzenhuch^ Edited by Adolph Strodtmann (Hamburg, Hoff mann & Campe, 1850, octavo) .<;
Gottfried is the hero of that democratic Siegwart epoch[156] that flooded Germany with endless torrents of patriotic melancholy and tearful lament. He made his debut as a commonplace lyrical Siegwart.
We are indebted to Strodtmann the Apostle, whose "narrative compilation" we follow here, both for the diary-like fragments in which Gottfried's pilgrimage on this earth is presented to the reader, and for the glaring lack of discretion of the revelations they contain.
1
"Like his friend, Paul Zeller, young Gottfried studied Protestant theology and his industry and piety earned him the respect of his celebrated teachers (Sack, Nitzsch and Bleek)" (p. 5).
From the very beginning he is "obviously immersed in weighty speculations" (p. 4), he is "cross and gloomy" (p. 5) as befits a grand homme en herbe? "Gottfried's gloomily flashing brown eyes"
"observed" 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). His moral indignation is explained by the fact that Gottfried had "defended Hegel and Marheineke" when these lads had called Marheineke a "blockhead"; later, when he goes to study in Berlin and is himself in the position of having to learn from Marheineke, he character-ises him in his diary with the following belletristic dictum (p. 61):
I tell you what: your groping theorist
Is like a beast led round and round and round
By evil spirits on a barren ground
Near to the verdant pastures he has missed.[3]
Gottfried has clearly forgotten that other verse in which Mephistopheles makes fun of the student thirsting for knowledge:
So, knowledge and fair reason you'll despise.
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).
Gottfried:
"This race will not perish, unless a war comes.... Only strong remedies can raise this age up from the mire!"
"A new Flood with you as a second and improved edition of Noah!" his friend replied.
The pale-blue overcoats have helped Gottfried to the point where he can proclaim himself the "Noah in a new Flood". His friend adds the following 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 ideasl"
Throughout these confessions of a beautiful soulc we find repeated only one "clear 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 seminary and consistory in Germany become world-shaking events from which Gottfried, overwhelmed by Weltschmerz, fashions a perpetual comedy.[a]
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 say 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).
Thus 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 must also sing a hymn. For while Gottfried exults ecstatically he speaks "with solemn 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 "the lady, like the mother of our Lord, wa« called Mary" (p. 20)—certain proof that Gottfried, too, was destined to be a saviour and redeemer. Thus in the first twenty pages the most insignificant events have been used to present our student of theology in the role of Noah, the holy Israel, Elijah, and, lastly, Christ.
* * *
Inevitably, Gottfried, who on the whole has experienced nothing, constantly dwells on his inner feelings. The pietism that has stuck to this parson's son and budding 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 very 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 pietism of his sister Johanna is said to be shown by an incident in which she is supposed to have 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 Frau Mockel.
The fact that in Seelscheid Gottfried preached "a wonderful sermon about the wilting wheat" is recounted as an event.
* * *
The Zeller family and "beloved Elise" at last take their> departure. We learn that Gottfried "squeezed the girl's har/id
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!" "Silent." "Most agonising torment!" "Burning brow." "Deepest sighs." "His mind was lacerated by the wildest pains," etc. (p. 37).
It turns the whole Elijah 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 cheers up.
"My plan to see my sweet love again, honourably and not without a name, is firmer than ever" (p. 38).
Neither considerations about the name he expects to make nor bragging of the laurels he claims in advance are wanting even amid the pangs of love. 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 the world-storming maestro that 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 calixl" (p. 40).
Paul finds himself reduced to answering this sordid image by remarking that 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 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 there:
"Unfortunately I am gradually moving further away from Hegelianism; although my greatest wish is to be a rationalist, I am at the same time 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'aven-ture, 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 the public life of the city, but only to the Schlössing family, in which Dünweg passes for Master Wolfram[3] and Gottfried for Master Gottfried von Strasbourg (p. 67). Elise fades gradually from his heart and he conceives a new itch for Fräulein 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 making the inevitable point:
"Before he left Berlin old Weiss" (the 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 Gottfried who solemnly allows an old farceurb to present him with the exquisite pleasure of "future immortality".
Bonn, Autumn 1835-Autumn 1837
"Constantly vacillating between art, life and science, unable to reach a decision, active in all three without firm commitment, he intended to learn, to gain and to be creative in all three as much as his indecision would permit" (p. 89).
Wolfram von Eschenbach.— Ed. Comedian.— Ed.
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 had published the poems he had sent them in their pocket almanacs[3] and this hurt 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 dubious local celebrity in belletristic student circles until the moment when a grazing shot in Baden suddenly turns him into the hero of German philistinism.
"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 who allows the maiden to worship him[a] 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 burned 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 is supposed to kill, like the sight of Jupiter, is nothing but an ordinary self-regarding young coxcomb who in the course of his marriage-studies tries out the role of the cad for the first time. Moreover, his revolting meditations on her health and its possible effects on any future children are turned into base speculations by the fact that he prolongs the relationship for his own pleasure and breaks it off only 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, Mile Elise II. He becomes engaged to her, "in the presence of the dead", and on the following morning he is fortunately accepted by his uncle 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 did not fear this moment as she could have no claims on a heart that was already pledged" (p. 117).
The new engagement means nothing but the opportunity to bring about a dramatic collision in his relationship with Minna, in which "duty and passion" confront each other. This collision is produced in the most philistine and rascally way because in his own mind our bonhomme denies Minna's legal claims upon his heart which is already "pledged". The virtuous man is of course not at all disturbed by the need to compound this cowardly lie to himself by reversing the order of events in the matter of his "pledged 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, dear Minna, I feel I owe you an apology—I have perhaps 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 must not love you! But I have not deceived you" (p. 124).
After this moral duty which has been contrived after the event, it only remains to produce the unbelievable, a theatrical reversal of 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 should happen you can be assured of my forgiveness in advance. And now farewell, my duty calls me, I must leave you!' He slowly left the arbour.... From that hour on Gottfried was unhappy" (p. 124).
The actor and conceited 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 flirtation with himself. The whole affair amounts to no more than that our priest, who dreams of his future immortality, has enacted Old Testament stories and modern lending-library phantasies after the manner of Spiess, Clauren and Cramer so that he may indulge his vanity by posing as a romantic hero.
"Rummaging among his books he came across Novalis' Ofterdingen, 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 blossom, nor could 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 pursuit 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 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 and II have brought him to the point where he thinks that his experiences are on a par with those of Goethe. Just as Goethe after experiencing the storms of love suddenly set out for Italy and there wrote his [Roman] Elegies, so too Gottfried thinks that his day-dreams of love qualify him for an expedition to Rome. Goethe must have had a premonition of Gottfried:
And as the whale has his lice I can have them too.[a]
Italy, October 1837-March 1838
The expedition 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".[158] 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 received from his fiancée and which he answered for the most part on the spot, dispelled 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 fiancée 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 realise what love is" (p. 151).
We see that Minna, whom formerly he only loved "out of pity", has re-entered the emotional scene. In his relationship with Elise his dream is that she can 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. But his newly aroused feelings for these two girls now serve as part of the mise en scène for a new conflict.
"Kinkel's poetry seemed to be slumbering in Italy" (p. 151).
Why?
* # * Kinkel's maid brings him a letter from his fiancée. 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 complete reminiscence of Menschenhais und Reue?
Gottfried "annihilated", "terrible petrification", "dry eyed", "thirst for revenge", "dagger", "the bosom of his rival", "heart-blood of his enemy", "cold as ice", "maddening pain", etc. (pp. 156 and 157).
In these "sorrows and joys of a poor theologian" it is the thought that she had "spurned" him for the sake of the "uncertain possession of earthly goods" (p. 157) that gives most pain to our unhappy student. Having been moved by the obligatory 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 evade that rashly" (p. 157).
Having, inevitably, enjoyed in advance the exquisite pleasure of "his future fame encircling the globe", he thus reveals himself to be a common clerical philistine. He speculates that later on Elise's children might perhaps come to beg alms from the great poet—and he would "not wish to evade that rashly". And why? Because Elise "prefers a riding 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 turns into a base one.b
Bonn, Summer 1838-Summer 1843 (Intrigue and Love)c
Having furnished a caricature of Goethe in Italy, Gottfried now resolves on his return to enact Schiller's Kabale und Liebe.
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 however prevent him from acquiring a cheaper fame without work later on when his "works" failed to do what was expected of them.
The "dark longing" which Gottfried always experiences when he pursues a "female of the species" finds expression in a remarkably rapid succession of promises of marriage and engage-ments. 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 ones and bind them to him in reality. As soon as he thinks he has found a little blue flower that might help him to play the part of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the poet's gentle and hazy sentimentality assumes the firm shape of the student's dream of adding to the ideal affinity 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 feeble wheedling coquetry with which Gottfried constantly opens his heart to reveal "the great torments of the 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 lady Johanna, whose fanatical pietism has already been immortalised by the exclama-tions in Gottfried's diary.
"Bögehold had just recently announced his engagement to Fräulein Kinkel, and Johanna, who interfered more obtrusively than ever in her brother's affairs of the heart, now conceived the wish, for a number of reasons and family considerations which are better passed over in silence, that Gottfried should reciprocate and marry Fräulein 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 happy parents as soon as"—it goes without saying—"he had obtained a secure post and was in a position to lead his bride home as"—it goes without saying—"a professor or owner of a quiet parsonage."
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.
Everything else, eyes, lips, locks, is dismissed as a mere "trifle".
All these fail to stir his passion But her shapely, small white hand (p. 174).
He describes the flirtation that he begins with Fräulein Sophie Bögehold at the command of "his more than ever obtrusive sister Johanna" and because of the constant stimulus of his 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 the religious element takes the place either of the novelistic or of the 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, 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 home" a new love.
* * *
We come finally to the fateful catastrophe of this eventful story of his life, to Sailing'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 mature 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 not enough to make a great stir with her compositions or technical mastery. In Berlin her attempt to imitate the stale childhood antics of Bettina[3] had led to a fiasco. Her character had been soured by her experiences. Even though she shared with Kinkel the foppish affectation of inflating the ordinary events of her life so as to invest them with "greater solemnity", 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 beautiful souls
and to play it to a mutually satisfying conclusion, i.e. to acknowledge Siegwart's fitness for the role of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and to allow him to discover that she was the "blue flower".
Kinkel, having been led to his third or fourth fiancée by his sister, is noW introduced into a new labyrinth of love by Mockel.
Gottfried now finds himself in the "social swim" (p. 190), 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 mark a new epoch. Mockel sings and is applauded. At table it is arranged that Gottfried should sit next to her and here the following scene takes place:
"'It must be a glorious feeling,' Gottfried opined, 'to fly through the joyous world on the pinions of genius, admired by all.'—'That's what you imagine,' 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 whether you are happy, if you are not...'—'If I am not?' Gottfried asked, as she paused" (p. 188).
The bait had been put out for our clumsy lyrical student. Mockel then informs him that she had recently heard
"him preaching about the yearning of Christians to return to their faith and she had thought about how resolutely the handsome youth must have renounced the world who had aroused 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 "Mockel 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 morning to preach" (p. 193).
This comment of the biographer may serve as an excuse for a brief discussion of Kinkel's position as a theologian. "In 1840" the critical movement had already mercilessly dissected the content <of the Christian faith; with Bruno Bauer scientific [criticism] 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 lyrical and declamatory sentimentality à la Krummacher. He presents Christ as a "friend and leader", he seeks to do away with "ugliness" in the formal aspects of Christianity, 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 last offshoots had of course to lead to 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, nullité sonore,[3] 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, was in speech and in his writings the epitome of this fraudulent pulpit oratory that is also described as "poetic prose" and which he oddly enough now made the basis of his "poetic mission". His poetastering, moreover, is [not][a] aimed at planting true laurels but only red rowan berries with which he beautifies the highway of trivia. This same feebleness of character which attempts to overcome conflicts not by resolving their content but by clothing them in a facile 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 "free and easy" 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 eventually were able to make use of their phraseology, their knowledge and their unexacting "lofty mission" only in the democratic movement.
* * *
The new love-affair develops into the story of Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia.[c] 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, from Frederick William IV's accession to the throne dates the emergence of a bourgeois movement whose constitutional aspirations still had a wholly radical appearance— from the vague "political poetry" of the period to the new phenomenon of a daily press which constituted a revolutionary power.
What was Gottfried doing during this period? Together with Mockel he founded the Maikäfer, eine Zeitschrift für Nicht-Philister* (p. 209) and the May-Bug 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. 209-10).
The real purpose of the May-Bug Club was to solve the riddle of the blue flower. The meetings took place in Mockel's house, and their object was the acclamation of Mockel as "Queen" (p. 210) and of Kinkel as "Minister" (p. 255) by a group of insignificant literary students. Here the two misunderstood beautiful souls found it possible to make up for the "injustice the harsh world had done them" (p. 296); they could recognise each other in the roles of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the blue flower. Gottfried, to whom the copying of other people's roles had become second nature, must have felt happy to have at last created a real "amateur theatre" (p. 254). The farce was itself the prelude to practical developments:
"These evenings provided the opportunity to see Mockel also in the house of her parents" (p. 212).
Moreover, the May-Bug Club copied also the Hainbund[159] in Göttingen, 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 May-Bugs" (p. 254), for instance, Sebastian Longard, Leo Hasse, C. A. Schlönbach, were, as the apologetic biographer admits, pale, insipid, indolent, unimportant youths (pp. 211 and 298).
* * *
Naturally, Gottfried soon began to make "comparisons" (p. 221) between Mockel and his fiancée, but he had "had no time hitherto"—much against his habit—"for the customary reflections on weddings and matrimony" (p. 219). In a word, he stood like Buridan's ass between the two bundles of hay, unable to decide between them. But 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 Gottfried was usually prevented by his scholarly work as a teacher 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:
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 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 Fräulein 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).
This time Gottfried at last experienced not an imaginary but a real scene from a novel, from the Wahlverwandtschaften.[a] 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 woman and a Catholic 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 was ambiguous as he had not announced in public either that he intended to marry the lady, or that he did not intend to do so" (p. 251).
3. "As far as faith was concerned, no one can know what the future holds in store" (p. 250).
"And now, may I ask you to step inside and have a cup of coffee" (p. 251).
With this cliché 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 existing conditions.
* * *
The following extract serves to illustrate the effect of the May-Bug Club on Gottfried:
"It was June 29, 1841. On this day the first anniversary of the May-Bug 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 May-Bug anthem she had composed which ends with the following stanza summarising the whole trend:
And what's the moral of the tale?
Fly, May-Bug, fly!
A man who's old will ne'er find a wife,
So make haste, do not waste your life,
for two further years before the whole May-Bug 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 absurd pretext that "definite articles of faith are less important in the Protestant Church than the ethical idea" (p. 315).
So that's the moral of the tale: Trust not blue flowers, bright or pale.
* * *
Gottfried had entered into the relationship with Mockel on the pretext of leading her out of her unbelief into the Protestant Church. Mockel now demanded Das Leben Jesu* by Strauss and lapsed again into her unbelief,
"and with a heavy heart he followed her on the path of doubt 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 was already having an effect on the masses but by the intervention of a chance emotional relationship.
What he brings with him out of the labyrinth of philosophy is revealed in his diaries:
"I should like to see whether the mighty current flowing from Kant to Feuerbach will drive me out into—pantheism!!" (p. 308).
As though this current did not go beyond pantheism, and as though Feuerbach were the last word in German philosophy!
"The key-stone of my life," the diary goes on to say, "is not historical knowledge, but a coherent system, and the core of theology is not ecclesiastical history, but dogma" (ibid.).
As if German philosophy had not dissolved the coherent systems into historical knowledge and the core of dogma into ecclesiastical history! These confessions clearly reveal the counter-revolutionary democrat for whom the movement is nothing more than a means by which to arrive at a few incontrovertible eternal truths as worthless points of rest.
However, Gottfried's apologetic book-keeping of his whole development will enable the reader to judge which revolutionary factor lay concealed in this melodramatic, play-acting theologian.
Endnotes
[156] [Editorial note 156: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[158] [Editorial note 158: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[159] [Editorial note 159: text not recovered from the source scan.]