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406
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
the barbaric Cosmos, and raised into an independent object of
speculation. Once “ differentiated’ it begins itself to unfold, and
at the same time to gather round it the at first alien facts of
sensation, appetite, and bodily feeling generally. These are in
creasingly matter of inquiry, and theories respecting them take the
hue and shape of the sciences which relate to the material world.
The science of motion evolves, and the idea of orderly sequence
enters into Psychology. Natural Philosophy rises from motion to
force, and Psychology passes from conjunction to causation. Che
mistry tears aside a corner of nature’s veil, and a shaft is sunk in a
mysterious field of mind. The sciences of organic nature receive
a forward impulse, and mind and life are joined in inextricable
union. A philosophy of the universe, incorporating all the
sciences, is created, and Psychology, while attaining increased
independence as regards the adjacent sciences, is merged in that
deductive science of the Knowable which has more widely
divorced, and yet more intimately united, the laws of matter
and of mind.
Art. VII.—The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
1. Deutsche Glassiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und SacherJcldrungen. Begriindet von Franz Pfeiffer. Erster
Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus. 18*70.
2. Das Lehen Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig : B. G.
Triibner. 1865.
TN the history of German literature no period is more inteJl resting, than that short classical epoch at the end of the twelfth
century and the beginning of the thirteenth, which gave rise to the
literature written in Middle High German. More especially does
it attract attention, because within very narrow limits it com
prises many and great names, but above all it is remarkable
because within these limits it saw the birth and death of a new
kind of poetry, a poetry of an entirely different character from
that of the old epic poems. They were grand, massive, and
objective ; the new style was light, airy, plaintive, aod subjective.
To this style belongs the German Minnesong. The songs of three
hundred Minnesingers are preserved all belonging to this short
period. In their themes there is not much variety. The changes
of the seasons, and the changes of a lover’s mood do not in fact
present a wide range of subjects to the lyric poet. And most of
the Minnesongs are confined to these. But the following simile
seems true. If any one enters a wood in summer time, and listens
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
407
to the voices of innumerable birds, he hears at first only a con
fused mixture of strains. In time, however, he distinguishes
now a petulant cry, now a deep bell-like reiterated note, and now
the unbroken song of some joyous chorister. Finally he recog
nises the individual character of each strain, the music runs
clearly in ordered threads,
“ E come in voce voce si discerne
Quan do una e ferme e l’altra va e riede.”
And the Minnesong of this period exhibits a phenomenon not
dissimilar from that described. The subjects and the songs them
selves are likely at first to seem monotonous. Lamentations at
winter, the russet woodlands, and ashen grey landscapes, no less
than the joyous welcomes to spring, are repeated over and over
again. But notwithstanding this, the German Minnesong, as the
rich and peculiar growth of an extraordinary literature, is worthy
of attention. As in the former instance so now in this forest of
song, the listener soon discovers that some notes are clearer and
more solemn than others, and that in them he may follow a
music well worthy the hearing.
The Minnesong is entirely distinct from the lyrics of the Pro
vencal Troubadours. A feminine character has been attributed
to it, and a masculine character to the songs of the South. To a
certain extent this description expresses the difference between
them, but it does so only partially. The Minnesong is certainly
more reticent and coy. It sighs deeply, it smiles and blushes;
it seldom laughs aloud. It is pervaded by an innocent shame.
But it is bold and brave too. It has a scornful contempt for
danger, a profound belief in honour and virtue, and an unutter
able longing for love and beauty.
This is how the Minnesong came to be born. When
Conrad III. led his people to the Holy Land, Louis VII. of
France brought to the same place his French hosts. There,
amidst the magnificence of the East, the German knights
and soldiers listened to the songs of the troubadours who accom
panied the French armies. The “gay science,” as the trou
badours named their art, was then in its bloom. The soldiers
of Conrad were enchanted with the soft melodies and musical
rhymes; they could not forget the rich colours and gallant
romances of the Southern singers when they went back to the
North. They felt indeed that such poetry was not for them. It
had not the deep sentiment, and that inner soul of song which
their sterner natures required. But the Minnesong sprang from
this contact of Teuton and Celt under Eastern skies.
The greatest of the Minnesingers was Walther von der
Vogelweide, with whose life and poems it is proposed to deal
ee2
�408
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
briefly in this paper. And as his works cannot be understood
without reference to the events of his life, and as those events
were controlled by the wider movements of political affairs, it
will be necessary to speak in some detail of the circumstances
which mark the decadence and follow the fall of the illustrious
Hohenstaufen dynasty.
*
. The place and date of Walther’s birth have been matters of
dispute. The former may now be considered as settled, the
second difficulty can only be approximately solved. For while
we are thrown back to Walther’s poems for most of our infor
mation in reference to the events of his life, those poems are by
no means autobiographical, and it is only partially that we can
construct a connected history of the poet’s life.
Quite as many countries have contended for the honour of
being Walther’s birthplace as strove to enrol Homer amongst
their citizens. Switzerland, Suabia, the Rhineland, Bavaria,
Bohemia, Austria, the Tyrol and others have claimed him.
There is scarcely a district of Germany that has not sought the
honour of being connected with him. All this, however, is a
point of minor interest in the face of his own words—Ze
Osterriche lernt ich singen und sagen. But as a matter of
fact the question has been recently set at rest by the discovery,
in the Royal Library at Vienna, of a MS., which shows the
revenue of the Count of Tyrol towards the end of the 13th
century. Amongst the returns therein recorded is found the
yearly sum paid by the Vogelweide estate, namely, three pounds.
This entry is between those of Mittelwald and Schellenberch,
* The first edition of Walther’s poems, founded upon the Paris MS., was
that by Bodmer and Breitinger, published at Zurich in 1758. In 183S Von
der Hagen sent out a second edition. It was of little value. The first really
critical edition was that of Carl Lachman. Wacknernagel’s edition of 18G2
was also good. Pfeiffer’s edition of 1864 is perhaps, upon the whole, the best.
Its speciality is the excellent commentary which accompanies it, but it is
admirable from every point of view. It is the first edition which has laid the
treasures of Walther’s poetry open to the ordinary German reader. The intro
duction is good, and the prefatory remarks to each poem are well and judi
ciously written. It is provided with explanatory notes, and the glossaries
and index are models of arrangement. Middle High German has been so
long the monopoly of a few students that it is desirable it should be known
that, with a fair knowledge of German, a moderate acquaintance with some
good Middle High German grammar, and Herr Pfeiffer’s book. Walther von
der Vogelweide is easily accessible to all who are interested in Minne song.
There has sprung up rapidly in the last few years a whole body of literature
around the name of Walther von der Vogelweide. Uhland’s book is perhaps
the most widely known: Pfeiffer uses it freely. The best and completest life of
the poet is that by Dr. Menzel. The book is complete and instructive, but
fails to be popularly interesting through abundance of minute historical
details. Where Menzel and Pfeiffer differ, the preference has been given
in this paper to Pfeiffer’s theories. All the references are to Pfeiffer’s edition.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
409
places ten miles apart upon the Eisach. The exact site of the
poet’s house cannot be pointed out, but a wood divided into two
parts still bears, according to investigations made in the winter
of 1863, the double name of Upper and Lower Vogelweide. Of
all the places previously suggested, this alone corresponds with
the indications which the poet gives of his early home.
There is nothing to fix the exact date of his birth; a con
sideration of his poems leads Dr. Menzel to place it earlier than
1168 by, perhaps, ten or twelve years. His life thus comprises
the period of at least sixty years, for we find him in 1228 a bowed
and venerable pilgrim from the Holy Land, ready to lay his head
in its last resting-place. These sixty years were filled by impor
tant events not uninfluenced by the poet.
It is probable that he belonged to the lower ranks of the
nobility. The name of his family and the land-tax which they
paid prevent us from ranking them with the great families of
the time. Probably, too, his childhood was passed amongst the
bowery solitudes of the Tyrol, where a free and happy boyhood,
which he never forgot, grew amid the songs of birds and the
music of waters into a manhood no less musical and free.
Somewhere between the years 1171 and 1183 Walther left
his home for the ducal Court at Vienna. It was then a general
practice for the younger sons of noble families to seek education by
such means as this, and the renown which the Court of Vienna
acquired for the splendour of its pageants and the patronage
which it bestowed upon music and poetry, made it peculiarly
attractive to a youth whose imagination had already been
awakened. And no eager dreams which Walther had dreamed
in the woods of Tyrol were to be rudely banished when he
reached the ducal Court. The star of the German empire never
shone brighter than it did at that time. Then it was that the
old Barbarossa finished his Italian wars. The Church was deve
loping her powers. Chivalry had reached its highest point and
had not begun to decline, and over all Europe swept that in
spiring breeze which hurried away warriors and priests to do
pious duty in the Holy Land. Everywhere there was a keen
atmosphere of new and large ideas. The contact with the East,
even at that time, lent more of magnificence to the national
pomp, and the great festival which Frederick celebrated in
Mayence, at Whitsuntide of the year 1184, stands out still as
the greatest national festival which Germany has celebrated.
All the spiritual and temporal lords of Germany were present.
Princes from far lands, from Italy, France, Illyria, and Sclavonia
assembled with innumerable followers. And it is no wonder if
the centre figure of such an assembly kindled then an enthu
siasm over all the Empire which has never since been extin-
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
guished, however hidden the sparks have lain. For, as a con
temporary averred, “ The flower of chivalry, the strength of do
minion, the greatness of the nation, and the glory of the empire
were united in his single majestic person.” With these great
events the Court of Vienna was closely connected. The Duke
Leopold VI. took the most active interest in the policy of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, and was a conspicuous sharer in the
Mayence pageant. Nor was his own Court behind any other of
that time in such knightly display. With Leopold’s two sons,
the young and promising princes, Frederick and Leopold,
Walther was, as we may divine from later poems, upon terms
of intimacy and affection, which, at least in the case of Frederick,
never suffered change.
But if the stirring spirit of the times did much to give the
poet a love for magnificent energy, the Court at which he resided
furnished him with modes of culture which scarcely another
could. Whatever was graceful and chivalric in life flourished
here, and here the Minnesong was oftenest sung. The master
poet of this early time was Reinmar, the “ nightingale of
Hagenau,” as they delighted to call him, and in him Walther
found the best model for his poems. But it was only for the
lighter poems that Reinmar could serve as a model. Walther's
earnest political lays belong to the sphere of poetry, which
Reinmar’s flight never reached.
Yet the education which
Walther derived from his residence at the Court was gained by
no system of learned instruction, nor at that time (any more
than at present) did courtly culture deem learning requisite.
Life, action, the free circulation of ideas, and a readiness to
receive them were the means of instruction, by using which
Walther acquired the deep knowledge of mankind, and the
perfect command over artistic material which are exhibited in
his poems.
Leopold died in 1194, and was succeeded in Austria by his
son Frederick the Catholic, a youth twenty years of age. For
four years Walther enjoyed under his patronage all that a poet
and a patriot could desire, for the Empire was yet in its splendour,
which seemed to wax rather than to wane. But this splendour
was to meet with a speedy and long-lasting eclipse ; and never
again do we find in the poems of Walther the bright
and careless happiness with which they open. Henry VI. the
successor to Barbarossa, succeeded likewise to that idea of the
Empire, which filled the mind of Frederick. He swayed an
Empire greater than any since the time of Charlemagne, and
possessed qualities which rendered him likely to sway one yet
greater. Regarding himself as the heir of the old Caesars, he
deemed his Empire incomplete until all that belonged to them
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers*
411
should own him as its liege lord. Once more the East should be
won back to the West and far-away kings hold their power only
as vassals to the Kaiser. To follow out this idea, and advance
his power in the East he announced a crusade. All preparations
had been made, part of the Eastern countries had acknowledged
his authority, and much more was about to yield, when suddenly,
on the 25th of September, 1197, at Messina, Henry died.
With him died too the splendour of the German Empire; but
it was to this, as it sank lower and lower, that Walther continually
turned his gaze, and it is this which colours his political
poems, and gives them their significance in the eyes of his
countrymen. Yet it was not only the destruction of so much
glory that caused the change in the tone of Walther’s song.
With the national catastrophe his own fall at the Court of
Vienna was nearly contemporaneous. The exact cause of the
Prince’s disfavour is uncertain, but with the departure of
Frederick the Catholic, on Henry’s crusade, Leopold, who was
Regent, began to withdraw the Court patronage from Walther,
and at Frederick’s death in 1198, Walther found himself com
pelled to leave Vienna.
And here it will be well, before we follow him out into the
dark and troublous times which follow, to refer to those poems
which are associated with this period of his life—associated with
it, though it is impossible to assert with certainty that all the
songs of “ Minnedienst ” which we still have were composed
before he left Vienna.
Walther’s poems fall into two divisions. They are either
Minnesongs, such as court-singers of the time were wont to sing,
differing only in degree of excellence from contemporary lays, or
they are poems of an earnest, religious, and political tendency.
Of these latter we shall presently see something. But certainly
the greater part of the former class belong to the Vienna period.
All the fairest and freshest of these' were written before the
trouble came, and possess that charm of conscious happiness
which does not recur. And although, from the nature of the
poems, it is not possible to refer them to a fixed date, a process
of growth and development is to be traced in them. In Wal
ther’s youth court-poetry had not as yet crystallized into those
rigid forms in which development ceases. Nor was the first
inspiration of a young poet’s fancy likely to exhibit itself in the
mould of artificial excellence, at least as long as that freedom
from care, which external circumstances guaranteed, favoured a
spontaneous and happy production of works of art. For this
reason Menzel, unlike Pfeiffer, is inclined to place many of the
“ Lieder” in a later period. He is inclined to think that Walther
did not submit to conventional trammels until the necessity of
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
finding an audience and patrons became dominant. Be this as
it may, the songs of the early period are undoubtedly pleasing,
and amongst them may be reckoned the exquisite lyrics:—
“ Undei* der linden, an der lieide,”
and
“ So die bluomen uz dem grase dringent.”
We have altogether about eighty of Walther’s “ Lieder,” but
probably many of the earliest are lost. With those that remain,
some German critics (as was to be expected) have endeavoured
to build up a consistent history of Walther’s youth. Little
success, however, has attended the attempt, and the best critics
dismiss the autobiographical theory altogether. Nor is it
necessary to literary enjoyment that the theory should be estab
lished ; it is better to regard these exquisite poems as blossoms
of a happy period. If indeed we think of him as the laureate
of a dazzling and polite Court, the friend and favourite of a
prince only a little younger than himself, amidst the circum
stances of an Empire whose highest glory did not yet seem to
have been reached, in enjoyment of a reputation that was ever
growing, we shall be more prepared to understand the change
that came over the spirit of his verse when the Empire was
racked by internal dissension, and he himself was sent from the
light and kindliness of a Court into the uncertainty of a wander
ing life.
The condition of the Empire was now such that it might well
leave him in doubt where he should find a home. The rightful
heir to the Imperial throne, Frederich the Second, was a child
three years of age. Besides him Henry had left two brothers,
Otto of Burgundy and Philip of Suabia. Henry’s death set
free all those elements of disorder which his iron hand had kept
in subjection. The Pope would not recognise the claims of
Frederick, and Otto and Philip became competitors for the
crown. Philip was indeed willing to act as regent for the child,
but the partisans of the Hohenstaufen dynasty were cold in
their interest for Frederick, and desired to see Philip himself
Emperor. Meanwhile confusion was universal, the Empire was
wasted in a destructive war, its wealth squandered, and its
power broken. The Court of Vienna took the side of Philip,
and Walther became his poet-champion. It was now that he
commenced those poems or “Sprucke ” which were the first of
their kind, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth, exercised
considerable influence upon events. In the Paris manuscript of
his works there is a picture of the poet musing upon the disorder
of the times. He is represented as a bearded man in the prime
of life; a cap covers his curly hair; he wears a rich blue cloak
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
413
and a red coat, and looks pensively to the ground, whilst in his
right hand he holds a scroll of his poems, which winds upwards
between the escutcheon and crested helm of Vogelweide. And
in somewhat similar attitude the first “ Sprtich ” represents him.
“ I sat upon a stone and mused, one leg thrown over the other; my
elbow rested upon my knee, and upon my hand I leant my head,
cheek, and chin. There I mused with much despair what profit it
were to live now in the world. I saw no way by which a man might
win three things that are good. Two of them are Honour and
Wealth, which often injure each other. The third is God’s Favour,
which is more excellent than the two. Would that I might bring
these into one life. But, alas ! it may not be that Wealth and
Honour and God’s Favour should ever come to one heart again ; the
ways and paths are closed against them. Untruth lies in ambush;
Might rules in the highways, and Peace and Justice are wounded sore.
So the Three can come no more till the Two are healed ” (p. 81).
. To Walther, the only method of healing the wounds of Peace
And Justice seemed to be in electing Philip king. In him he
Irecognised a man strong enough and good enough to stay the
disorders of Germany. And his song gave no uncertain sound.
He says:—
“ The wild beast and the reptile, these fight many a deadly fight.
Likewise, too, the birds amongst themselves. Yet these would hold
themselves of no esteem had they not one common rule. They make
strong laws, they choose a king and a code, they appoint lords and
lieges. So woe to you, ye of the German tongue ; how fares order in
your land ? when now the very flies have their queen, and your honour
perishes ! Turn ye, turn ye. The Coronets grow your masters, the
petty kings oppress you. Let Philip wear the Orphan-diadem, and bid
the princes begone ” (pp. 81-2).
The “petty kings’' are the other competitors for the crown.
The “orphan ” is a jewel in the crown of the Roman emperors.
Albertus Magnus, according to Menzel, says of it:—“ Orphanus est lapis, qui in corona Romani imperatoris est, neque unquam alibi visus; propter quod etiam orphan us vocatur.”
Philip’s chief competitor seemed to be Berthold, of Zuriugen,
and he had on his side Adolphus, the Archbishop of Cologne ;
but as Berthold did not prove an open-handed candidate, Adol
phus entered into negotiations with Richard of England, and
(after being well paid for his trouble), consented to crown
Richard’s nephew, Otto of Poitou, on the 12th of July, 1198.
Previously to this, Otto had taken Aix-la-Chapelle, which had
refused to recognise him, and Philip seeing that there was now
no time to be lost, was crowned in the following September, at
Mayence, by the Archbishop of Treves. This coronation, subse
quently deemed insufficient, was performed with great splendour,
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
and gave hopes to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of once more be
holding an united empire.
The diadem of Charlemagne wherein glittered the peerless z
“ orphan” was placed upon Philip’s head, and amongst those
who swelled the train of the young King and his wife Irene was
Walther. The crown, said Walther, seemed made for him.
“ Older though it be than the king, yet never smith wrought crown
to fit so well. And his imperial head no less becomes the diadem, and
none may part the twain. Each lights the other. The crown is
■brighter by its sweet young wearer, for the jewels gladly shine upon
the true prince. Ah! if any one doubts now to whom the Empire
belongs of right, let him but see if the ‘ Orphan’’ so shines upon
another brow. This jewel is a star that finds the true prince.”
Walther’s enthusiasm for the “sweet young” king seems justi
fied by contemporary evidence. An old chronicle says with quaint
.Latinity ;—“ Erat Phillippus animo lenis, mente mitis, erga homi
nes benignus, debilis quidem corpore, sed satis virilis in quantum
confidere poterat de viribus suorum, facie venusta et decora,
capillo flavo, statura mediocri, magis tenui quam grossa.”
We have, however, now two emperors ou the stage. The
Chronicle has described Philip: Otto presented a complete contrast
to the gentle brother of Henry. Nearly the same age as his
rival, he was a man of lofty and commanding stature and
resembled both in person and character his uncle Richard.
His bravery was rash and impetuous, and his unyielding
severity alienated more hearts than his courage could retain.
The literary tastes of the two Emperors exhibited a contrast
no less striking than that presented by their persons. Otto
listened with pleasure to the masculine strains of the Trouba
dours. Philip heard with delight the soft complaining rhymes of
the Minnesingers. It was by these rhymes that Walther won
the favour of Philip and found admission to his court. But there
was need of something else to be done than to listen to the
strains of troubadour or minnesinger, before either of the rival
Emperors could deem his empire safe. Philip had the wider
support, and Otto, perhaps, the more valuable foreign assistance.
Philip had on his side all South Germany, Bohemia, and Saxony.
He was supported, moreover, by many Episcopal princes both in
the south and in the north. Abroad France was his ally. The
centre of Otto’s power was Cologne, then the chief town of Ger
many, and though his kingdom was more contracted than that
of Philip, the inequality was rendered less dangerous by the effi
cient help which his uncle Richard of England was ready to
supply. Thus all Europe was divided into two parts awaiting
the decision of its destiny. This seemed to hang upon the word
a power which had not yet spoken the Papacy.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
415
Now Walther saw clearly enough, nor yet more clearly than the
Pope himself, that whatever dissensions arose between native
princes, the real antagonistic power to the German Empire was
the papal supremacy. For a man now sat upon the papal chair
whose ambition was even more imperial than that of Henry VI.,
and who possessed an energy of character and a subtle power of
statecraft that seemed likely to bring his designs into effect.
Innocent III. had inherited the ambition and the ideas of
Gregory VII. With him he looked upon the Pope as the
rightful source of all power, as above all kings, emperors and
princes, who received from him their unction and their virtue,
and who held their possessions as vassals of the Bishop of Rome.
This notion he caused to prevail in Italy, and there the papal
power regained all it had lost. The two candidates for the Empire
he contrived for some time to keep without a decisive answer, by
means of evasions and deceptions as unscrupulous as they were
diplomatic. Yet he left no doubt in the minds of Otto’s friends
that he preferred the candidature of their monarch, though it
may have escaped their notice that his chief object was the dis
solution of the Empire, which had stood so firmly under the
dynasty to which Philip belonged. It did not escape the notice
of Walther, and he set himself to work against the papal machi
nations with that patriotic and impassioned enthusiasm with
which his love for the German Empire had inspired him. The
Pope seemed to him the incarnation of the anti-national spirit,
and only that king to be worthy of the name who strove once
more to realize the imperial ideal which had animated Germany
under Barbarossa and Henry. Such a monarch he thought at
this time he recognised in Philip. And since Philip, after his
coronation, had met with some successes in the field, and his
rival had been deprived of his chief support by the death of
Richard, it was not unnatural that he should look upon the
festival which Philip held, Christmas, 119.9, as the dawn of a
better era. The dawn of a better era, however, it was not, in
spite of Walther’s joyous song. The war which Philip was now
waging did not advance his cause, and once more we find
Walther at Vienna, reconciled to Leopold, perhaps, through the
intervention of Philip, or, perhaps, with some political commis
sion to the Duke. Meanwhile (1201) Otto advanced as far as
Alsace, and Philip invaded the district of Cologne, when the
long delayed decision of the Pope fell like a thunderbolt. Otto
was declared Emperor by the title of Otto IV., and Philip, with
his followers, was excommunicated. But though this bull
caused more anger than terror amongst the partisans of Philip,
its practical consequences were serious. Many supporters fell
away, and Walther gave utterance to his grief in a poem
�416
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
which deprecates the use of religious weapons for political
purposes.
“ I saw,” he says, “ with mine eyes the secrets of the hearts of men
and women. I heard and saw what each one says and does. At
Rome I found a Pope lying, and two kings (Philip and Frederick)
deceived. Then arose the greatest strife that has been or shall be.
The priests and the people began to take opposite sides, a grief beyond
all griefs. The priests laid down their swords and fought with their
stoles. They laid the bann on whom they would and not on whom
they should, and the Houses of God were desolate ” (pp. 81-3).
In March, of this year, those of Philip’s party who were faith
ful, renewed their oath of allegiance, and a formal protest against
the Pope’s decision was sent to Rome. The Pope received it
with consideration but firmness, and fresh successes followed the
arms of Otto. Philip sought to strengthen his connexion with
France, by an embassy, to which Walther was attached. As we
are at present more interested in Walther than in the history of
events, it will be well to mention a conjecture of some critics,
that it was upon his return from this journey that he wrote his
celebrated song (39) in praise of German ladies:—
i.
“ Ye should bid me welcome, ladies,
He who brings a message, that am I.
All that ye have heard before this,
Is an empty wind, now ask of me.
But ye must reward me.
If my wage is kindly,
Something I can tell you that[will please ;
See now what reward ye offer.
ii.
“ I will tell to German maidens
Such a message that they all the more
Shall delight the universe,
And will take no great payment therefor.
What would I for payment ?
They are all so dear,
That my prayer is lowly, and I ask no more
Than that they greet me kindly.
in.
“ I have seen many lands,
And saw the best with interest.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
417
Ill must it befall me
Could I ever bring my heart
To take pleasure
In foreign manners.
Now what avails me if I strive for falsehood ?
German truth surpasses all.
IV.
“ From the Elbe to the Rhine,
And back again to Hungary,
These are the best lands
Which I have seen in the world.
This I can truly swear,
That, for fair mien and person,
So help me heaven, to look upon,
Our ladies are fairer than other ladies.”
Philip’s supporters continued to fall away and to swell the
ranks of Otto ; his ecclesiastical adherents, terrified by the fulminations of the Pope, were amongst the earliest deserters.
Indeed, at one time it seemed likely that the whole party would
be broken up, but the judicious concessions which Philip made
to the Pope turned the current, and Philip’s cause was strength
ened by the accession of the Bishop of Cologne, who, perhaps,
found Otto ungenerous. At any rate he was now willing (upon
the receipt of pecuniary remuneration) to crown Philip and his
wife. This second coronation took place in 1205. We have no
poem by Walther in reference to it. In fact, he was losing faith
in Philip. The Emperor of Germany should have been a man
firm in will and ready in deed. Philip was not realizing this
ideal. A second coronation was in itself a confession of weak
ness. Bachmann imagines that there had even been a per
sonal quarrel between the king and the poet, but the ground
for such a belief seems hard to find. In J 208 Philip was
assassinated, and Otto was now universally recognised as
Emperor.
Without doubt Walther had been much disappointed in
Philip. He had grown up under Barbarossa and Henry, and
the magnificent ideas of the Empire had grown strong with his
growth. Those brilliant anticipations of supreme dominion in
German hands he expected to see fulfilled by Philip, and they
had not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the papal power, which
he detested, was leaving everywhere a contracted sphere for
another Empire, and, when a year before his death Philip be
came, as a matter of political necessity, reconciled to Innocent,
�418
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Walther, whose ideal monarch was no king, but an emperor,
saw with a despair which is reflected in his poems, the dissolu
tion of his hopes.
From 12O4j to 1207 Walther resided at the Thuringian Court.
This is to be gathered from certain indications in his poems,
and from a consideration, of the history of events. Until 1204
Hermann the Landgrave had been on Otto’s, and Walther upon
Philip’s side. The poet’s residence at the Landgrave’s Court
could not, therefore, have belonged to an earlier period. The
exact length of its duration is uncertain : it was probably three
years. And had Walther been able to see the Empire in a
prosperous state, his days might have been as bright under the
“gentle Landgrave” as they had been at the Court of Vienna.
The Landgrave was not only gentle but generous. His Court
was a regular caravansary of warriors and minstrels. “ Day and
night,” says Walther, “there is ever one troop coming in, and
another going out. Let no one who has an earache come hither,
for the din will assuredly drive him wild.” The Landgrave’s
hospitality was, indeed, unbounded. “ If a measure of good
wine cost a thousand pounds no knight’s beaker would be
empty” (p. 99). And later too, upon another occasion, Walther
sings of his host, that he does not change like the moon, but
that his generosity is continuous. When trouble comes, he re
mains still a support. “ The flower of the Thuringians blossoms
through the snow” (p. 109).
About the year 12Q7 Walther found it necessary to leave the
Court. He had not been without enemies there, especially
amongst those of his own craft. Hermann was not to blame
for this, nor did Walther lose his favour; for later on we find
him again at the Thuringian Court. There seems to have been
two parties amongst the Minnesingers, and Walther was in the
minority. For the next two years Vienna was again his home,
and Leopold forgot or forgave the old quarrel that had been
between them. But he did not long remain here, and his life
until 1211 was unsettled, and was spent at various Courts. But
it will be necessary to bring down the history of the nation to
this period, for several great and important events had occurred.
The death of Philip was followed by an interval, in which
lawlessness and crime prevailed throughout the country. Pillage
and incendiarism desolated the inheritance of the Hohenstaufens,
and recalled to the recollection of the superstitious the comets
and eclipses which had appalled them during the previous year.
Many persons thought that the last day was approaching, and Wal
ther found the signs in the heavens corroborated by the unnatural
wickedness of man. “ The sun,” he says, “ has withheld his
light. Falsehood has everywhere scattered her seeds along the
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
419
way. The father finds treachery in his child; brother lies to
brother. The hooded priest, who should lead us to heaven, has
turned traitor.” It was indeed a dark time for Germany, nor
did it at first appear from what quarter amendment should come.
The real representative of the Hohenstaufen line was the young
Frederick, who was now fourteen years old, but this was no time
for a boy-emperor. Many of those who might have protected
his interests had already joined the party of Otto, a party that
openly took the supremacy when Otto declared his intention of
espousing Beatrice, the daughter of Philip, and the storm of
party passion for awhile abated. The interests of the Empire,
too, clearly pointed to Otto as Emperor. Walther saw this, for
Otto was by no means a man who would not follow up the advan
tages which his position gave him. Personally the poet could
feel little cordiality towards the new monarch, whose patronage
of song would little benefit the Minnesingers. And when Otto
received the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope, in
Rome, it was accompanied by no strain of triumph from Walther.
This coronation was in the autumn of 1209. But Otto, instead
of leaving Italy to its ghostly monarch, remained there for a
year, in which time he restored the imperial authority in Nor
thern and Central Italy, and then marched into Southern Italy.
One result of this policy was inevitable. He was excommuni
cated by the Pope, who now put forward the young Frederick, as
king in his stead. Then first, when Otto was under the Papal
bann, did Walther step forward as his fellow combatant for the idea
of the Empire. As reconciliation with the Pope had estranged
him from Philip, so now it was a variance from the same autho
rity that was to place him upon close terms of sympathy with
Otto. And for the next two years we find Walther at the height
of his political influence. .
The Pope, not contented with the declaration of excommuni
cation, set in motion other measures for Otto’s destruction. Once
more he fanned the subsiding embers of civil discord in Ger
many. At the Pope’s call the Archbishops of Mayence and
Magdeburg, the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Meissen, and
the Landgrave of Thuringia, formed a confederation, whose
object was the deposition of Otto, and the elevation of Frederick
to the throne. This confederation was accomplished in the
autumn of 1211, and was joined by the Archbishop of Treves, and
the Dukes of Bavaria and Austria. In February of the following
year Otto returned from his victorious campaign in Italy once
more to German soil, and held a parliament at Frankfort.
In the political complications which followed these circum
stances, we find Walther an influential diplomatist, for it was
undoubtedly through his influence that the two princes of
�420
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Meissen and Bavaria returned to their allegiance to Otto ; and
the princes themselves thanked him for his services upon that
occasion. Further : through his negotiations the crown of Bohe
mia was given to the Margrave's nephew, and to the Duke’s son
as consort the daughter of the Count Palatine, by which union
the Palatinate afterwards passed into the ducal family. These
important negotiations, and the results which attended them,
give us an adequate notion of Walther’s position at this crisis.
The time came when he found the Margrave forgetful (as even
monarchs may be) of former services, but he could still refer with
conscious dignity to the benefits he had conferred upon the Mar
grave’s family: “ Why should I spare the truth ?” he asks, “ for
had I crowned the Margrave himself the crown had even yet
been his” (p. 157).
But Otto had still important ’enemies. Amongst them was
the Landgrave of Thuringia. Whilst engaged in operations
against him he heard of the approach of Frederick, who with a
gathering retinue of supporters was gradually winning the whole
of the Rhineland and North Germany. In 1213 Frederick
ratified his submission to the Pope, and resigned all German
pretensions to the disputed territory in Italy. Thus for awhile
we have the curious spectacle of a Guelph fighting for that
Imperial idea which should have been the heirloom of the
Hohenstaufens, and a Hohenstaufen carrying the banner of the
Papacy.
Whilst thus the power of Frederick was increasing, and the
followers of Otto were falling away, Walther struggled both as
poet and politician against the Pope, and the corrupt use of
ecclesiastical power for political purposes. That he himself
respected the office of the clergy, and that his own religious
convictions were deep-seated, is certain. He viewed, however,
with aversion the struggle of the Papacy for temporal power,
and the humiliation of the German national spirit In a struggle
of this kind he seemed to see the decay of faith, and the immi
nent ruin of the Church herself, and his language to the Pope
was outspoken from the first. He bade him remember that he
himself had crowned and blessed the Emperor (p. 131) ; he
reminded the people that the same mouth which had pronounced
the bann had declared the blessing (p. 132) ; and he referred the
Pope to the scriptural command, that he should render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's (p. 133). The corruption of
the clergy he rebuked almost with the fire which afterwards was
to belong to Luther.
“ Christendom,” he says, “ never lived so carelessly as now. Those
who should teach are evil-minded. Even silly laymen would not com
mit their crimes. They sin without fear, and are at enmity with
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
421
God. They point us to heaven and themselves go down to hell. They
bid us follow their advice, and not their example.”
Again :—
“ The Pope our father goes before us, and we wander not at all from
his way. Is he avaricious ? So are we all with him. Does he lie ?
We all lie, too. Is he a traitor ? We all follow the example of his
treachery.”
And then he calls him a modern Judas. He accuses him of
simony, and hints at his collusion with infernal powers. Against
the Pope’s attempt to collect tithes in Germany he spoke out
strongly, and not without effect, for his poem on this subject
(116) aroused much bitterness.
Yet even in Otto, the Pope’s enemy, Walther did not find an
Emperor like those whose names he loved. His star waned
before that of Frederick. His manners were marred by an
unroyal boorishness; his Court was the scene of drunken and
disorderly revels, and the flower of poetry no longer blossomed
in its ungracious precincts. In 1214 Walther joined the party
of Frederick. With this new allegiance closes the dependent
period of Walther’s life, for Frederick presented him with a
small estate, which he enjoyed until his death. His first feeling
was one of intense delight, and he celebrated the event in a
strain of fervent gratitude (150). However, in the interval
stretching from 1217 to 1220 he does not appear to have resided
there. Probably he did not find it so valuable as he at first
imagined it to be, when he sang his paean as a landholder.
There were ecclesiastical claims upon it, and he was in no mood
to satisfy them with equanimity. At any rate he determined,
after the residence of a year or two, to betake himself to the
Court of Vienna. It was no longer that brilliant home of poets
and fair women which it had once been. The Duke Leopold
was absent in the Holy Land: his two youthful sons were in
need of an instructor and guardian, and it is probable that until
the return of their father Walther undertook their instruction.
In 1219 Walther greeted the Duke with an ode of welcome
(152), and this is followed by a sarcastic poem (120) directed
against the miserly habits of the Austrian nobility. This poem
may perhaps indicate the reason why Walther left the Court of
Vienna, but all reasoning here rests upon conjecture. A quarrel
between himself and Leopold has been surmised, but upon
insufficient grounds. Then, in 1220, we find him at the Court
of Frederick II. His political muse had been silent since
his adoption of Frederick’s cause: his vehement protestations
against the papal influence were hushed : he aided in no agita
tion for the imperial cause. This silence was probably in
[Vol. CI. No. CO. J—New Series, Vol. XLV. No. II.
TF
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
accordance with Frederick’s wishes. Honorius III. was now
upon the Papal throne, a man of a different disposition from
that of Innocent.
Four important subjects were still matters of consideration
between the Papal and Imperial Courts:—Firstly, the separation
of the Italian and German crowns; secondly, the supremacy of
Lombardy; thirdly, the succession to Matilda; and fourthly,
the fulfilment of Frederick’s promise to enter upon a crusade.
And so long as no open breach had been made in the friendship
of Pope and Emperor, and whilst Frederick was furthering his
views more by policy than war, there was no room for the efforts
of Walther. From this time, however, till 1223 we find several
political odes dictated by his sympathy with Frederick. After
this period he returned to his own estate, and henceforth his
mind seems to have been occupied with religious ideas and the
support of the Crusaders. He did not cease to urge the German
princes to that holy undertaking. Frederick had, long before,
promised Innocent that he himself would lead an army to the
East; he had delayed to do so during the life of Honorius; he
was punished for his delay with excommunication by Gregory IX.,
and set out upon the crusade in 1228. Amongst his followers
was Walther the Minnesinger.
For it is clear that the bright dream of a restored Empire,
which once filled the poet’s mind, had now given place to
another feeling. Fainter and fainter the hope had grown
which inspired so many of his songs. Barbarossa could not
come again; at least not now, and there was no comfort remain
ing, except in religion. An overwhelming longing for the Holy
Land seized him. The last winter a terrible storm had swept
over the country. What else could it denote than the anger of
God at the negligence of Christians who left the Infidel in
undisturbed possession of his Holy City ? The bands of pilgrims
who passed through town and village did not fail to warn those
who lingered that they were incurring the divine wrath. Terror
and enthusiasm took possession of all, and Walther, old and
worn as he was, left once more his home and his repose. His
steps were turned towards the Alps. He travelled through the
Bavarian Oberland, and the Inn Valley, until he came to the
Brenner Pass. There at the foot of the hills lay the place of his
birth, a place which he had not visited since his boyhood. And.
here he wrote the renowned poem (188) which touchingly and
truthfully depicts his feelings:—
“Ay me! Whither are vanished all my years ? Has my life been
indeed a dream, or is it all true ? Was that aught whereof I
believed it was something? Nay, I have slept and knew it
not.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
423
“ Now I have awakened, and no longer know that which of old was as
familiar to me as mine own hand. People and land where I grew
up from a child, these are become strange to me, as though what
is past had never been.
“ They who were playmates of mine are feeble and old; that which
was wild land is planted and trained; the woods are felled. Only
the rivulet flows as it flowed of old ; otherwise my sorrow were
fulfilled.
“ I scarce win a greeting from those who once knew me well; the
World has become ungracious. Of old I had here many a happy
day ; all has fallen away like the print of a stone on the waters,
alas! for evermore.
“ Ay me ! there is a poison in all sweetness. I see the gall above the
honey. Outwardly the World is fair hued, white and green,
inwardly she is black and dark, and coloured with the colour of
death.
“ Yet if she has misled any one, let him take this to heart, for he may
with slight service be free from great sin. Look to it, knights ;
this touches you. Bear the light helm and thering-linked pano
ply of arms;
“ Also the strong shield, and consecrated sword. Would God that I,
too, were worthy to join in the Crusade. Then should I, for all
my poverty, become most rich, though not in land nor lordly
gold;
“ But I should wear that eternal crown, which the simple soldier may
win by his own spear. Could I but fare that happy journey
oversea, then would my song be ‘Joy!’ and never more ‘Ay
me !’ nor ever more ‘ Alas !’ ”
If Walther sang joyous songs after his return from the
Crusade, these songs are no longer to be found. We cannot
doubt, as has been doubted, that he accompanied the expedition
to the Holy City. Two devotional poems (78, 79) remain, which
were probably written later, but they are not songs of triumph.
His voice does not reach us any more; only the grave at
Wurzburg gives further indications of his fate. For he died,
as they say, in 1229, at the age of seventy-two.
Yet another pleasing memorial. In his will the poet left
a sum of money to provide seed which the birds might gather
every day upon his grave. And four holes for water (still to be
seen) were scooped in the stone that covered him. The birds
no longer derive any benefit from his legacy, it is commuted
into a dole which upon his birthday is given to the choristers of
the Church.
It has already been indicated that Walther’s poems fall into
Ff2
�424
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
two divisions, “Lieder” (songs) and “Spriiche” (poems.) These are
different both in form and purpose. A Lied was intended to be
sung to a musical accompaniment; a Spruch was to be read
or recited. The form of a Lied was artistic and severe, that
of a Spruch admitted of anomalies. Their subjects were also
different. The Lied chanted a lover’s hopes and fears, welcomed
the Spring and Summer, bemoaned the Winter, or a lady’s cold
ness ; the Spruch dealt with ethical situations, or, as is mostly
the case in Walther’s poems, expressed strong political convic
tions. A Minnelied was a complex work of art. It comprised
three elements, which may be named, after the German analysis,
the tone, the time, and the text. The tone was the rhythmical
form or metre into which it was thrown ; the tune was the melody
to which it was sung; the text was the verbal wordingof the poem.
A Minnesinger must, therefore, be artist, musician, and poet. Of
the three elements the tone was almost the most important, for it
was no traditional lyric form, but in each case the invention of the
individual poet. No poet could creditably appropriate another’s
metre, nor could any poet repeat without danger to his reputa
tion the same tone upon several occasions. Hence the infinite
variety of tones which characterize the poems of Walther. But
in all this variety one rule prevails—the rule that each stanza
should have three parts (two Stollen and an Abgesang). Each
stanza begins with corresponding portions, and concludes with a
third, differing metrically from the others. To some of Walther’s
poems this triple character is wanting. We may unhesitatingly
assign them to a very early period of the writer’s life. The
following simple little Minnelied is an example :—
“ Winter has injured us every way :
Copseland and woodland are russet and grey,
Where many voices rang merry and gay.
Ah, would that the maidens could come forth to play,
And the birds again carol their roundelay.
“ Would I could slumber the winter through ;
Now, when I waken my heart is low,
In winter’s kingdom of ice and snow.
God knows that at last the winter must go;
Where the ice lingers now flowers will grow.”
To an early period also belongs the poem already referred to,
“ Under der Linden.” It is, perhaps, impossible to reproduce in
English verse the delicate music of this airy lyric. The follow
ing is a literal translation. It preserves the triple division of the
tone:—
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
i.
“ Under the lindens,
On the heather,
Where the couch of us two was,
You may discover,
Both beautiful
Broken flowerbells and grass,
By the woodside in the vale.
Tandaradei,
Sweetly sang the nightingale.
ii.
“ I went, I hastened
To the meadow;
Thither my love had gone before.
There was I welcomed
Lady Mary!
That I am happy evermore.
Did he kiss me ? A thousand times,
(Tandaradei),
See how red my lips are yet.
hi.
“ There he had fashioned
A beautiful
Flowercouch and bed of flowers ;
And laughter arises
In inmost heart,
If any one passes that way;
By the roses he may well
(Tandaradei)
See yet where my head was laid.
IV.
“ That he lay beside me,
Should any know,
(0 God forbid !) I were ashamed.
And what he did with me,
No one—never—
Shall know but he and I alone,
And one dear little bird that sang
Tandaradei,
And he will ever be true.”
425
�426
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
In reference to this poem, Simrock has remarked that the
folksong also is not without instances of lyrics, whose simplicity
throws the magic light of innocence upon situations which would
be intolerable in any other. But in reality to raise a moral
question upon this artless song is wholly inappropriate: the
difficulty for a modern reader is to appreciate the subtle delicacy
and infinite reserve which characterize Minne poetry. To name
his lady’s name was deemed a shameless breach of good taste in a
lover ; and Walther has one indignant poem addressed to those
who sought with some importunity to win such a secret from
him (19). In another graceful little poem (21), he speaks of
his eyes as ambassadors to his lady, ambassadors that return
always with a kindly message. But these eyes are not those of
his corporal vision, for they have long been unblessed by behold
ing her ; they are the eyes of his mind.
“ Es sint die gedanke des herzen min.”
“ Shall I,” asks the poet, “ ever be so happy a man as that she
shall gaze upon me with eyes like mine?”
It was not much, indeed, that the Minnesinger asked from his
lady. That she should smile upon him when he greeted her, or
that, if others were by, she should at least look toward the place
where he stood. A glance threw him into an ecstacyof delight,
yet if his lady endured the presence of other admirers he sank
into the depths of despair. Thence again he rose buoyantly
with the slightest straw of hope. Here is the immemorial
love-oracle (24):
i.
“ In a despairing mood,
I sat me down and pondered.
I thought I would leave her service,
Had not a certain solace restored me.
Solace it may not rightly be called. Alas, no,
It is indeed scarcely a tiny comfort,
So tiny that if I tell you you will mock me,
Yet one is comforted by a little, he knows not why.
ii.
“ Me a blade of grass has made happy,
It tells me that I shall find favour.
I measured this selfsame little blade,
As of old I have seen children do.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
427
Now listen and mark if it does so again.
‘ She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she does not, she does.’
As oft as I have done it, the result is good,
That comforts me ; but one must have faith, too.”
Who the lady was whom Walther wooed is unknown now, if
it was known in his time. It has been conjectured that she
was of low birth, and the following poem (14) gives some
ground for the conjecture. Walther’s treatment of the sub
ject is different from the way in which Horace handled a subject
of similar nature.
i.
“ Maiden, heart beloved of me,
God give thee ever help and aid ;
And were there any dearer name,
That would I gladly call thee.
What can I dearer say than this,
That thou art well beloved of me ? Alas! ’tis this that pains me.
n.
“ They taunt me oft that I
Turn to a lowly maid my song.
That they can never know
What love is, is their punishment.
Love never came to those
Who woo for wealth or beauty. 0 what love is theirs ?
ill.
“ Hate often follows beauty ;
Be none too eager for it.
Love is the heart’s best tenant,
Beauty stands after love.
’Tis love makes lady fair,
Beauty can not do this, it never made lady fair.
IV.
“ I bear it as I have borne
And as I shall ever bear it.
Thou art fair and wealthy enough,
What can they tell me of this ?
�4'28
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Say what they will, I love thee.
The crystal ring that thou givest is better than royal gold.
*
v.
“ If thou art faithful and true,
Then I am thine without fear;
Thine—that no sorrow of heart
Can come against me by thy will.
If thou art neither of these,
Then thou canst never be mine. Ah me, should this happen to be!”
In another poem (17), however, he praises his lady’s beauty
with much enthusiasm. The following stanza runs more lightly
into the mould of English verse :—
“ God formed with care her cheeks so bright
And laid such lovely colours there,
Such perfect red, such perfect white,
Here tinted rose, there lily fair,
That I will almost dare to say
On her with greater joy I gaze
Than on the sky and starry way.
Alas ! what would my foolish praise ?
For if her pride should grow,
My lip’s light word might work my heart some bitter woe.”
But in fact it is useless arguing from these poems to the actual
circumstances of the poet’s life. The Minne of this period was
after all rather a subject of the imagination than a passion of
the heart. The nameless lady whose praise a poet sang, be
longed to the ideal portion of his life. We find nowhere among
the poems of the Minnesingers songs which celebrate what we call
“ domestic happiness,” or which look forward to nuptial union.
The ideal and the real were kept widely sundered by the knights
and poets of Minne. In actual life the poet composed and sang
these Lieder at the court of some noble patron, whose approval
was his reward. Often he sang, too, with the hope of receiving
a more substantial recognition, the gift, perhaps, of a small estate
where he might settle, and marry the daughter of a neighbour
ing vassal landholder. For her, however, there were certainly
neither Stollen nor Abgesang. She reared his children, and
directed his frugal household. She managed the estate in sum* A glass ring for pledging a lover’s faith was not unfrequently used in the
Middle Ages by the poorer classes.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
429
mer whilst he visited his patrons, gave orders to his servants and
herself set arrow to bow, if any burglarious miscreant attacked
the house. Possibly the poet appreciated what she did, and was
a good husband and father. But the domestic life lacked poeti
cal utterance ; it was not within the region of the art of the
time. Hence there is an artificial atmosphere about the whole
circle of Minnesong. It does not come into close contact with
real life. It is, if not in opposition, at least in contrast with the
masculine and adult energy by which the German character of
the Middle Ages was marked. Minnesong was of the court,
courtly. It sprang, it is true, from the same source as the great
folk-epic of Siegfried and Brunhild, but the waters of that fer
tilizing stream were diverted now to rise in the private fountains
and tinkling cascades of royal gardens. If Walther’s muse had
been confined to this line of poetry alone, the poems which he
has left us would amply have justified the title which has been
assigned him in this paper. But his large and earnest nature is
inadequately commemorated in such a title. He was the
greatest of the Minnesingers, and he was much more. He
was a politician penetrated with the idea of the necessity of
German union. In his maturer years he applied himself more
and more rarely to the composition of Lieder, and in the later
works there is breathed a very different spirit from that which
animates the lyrics of the Court of Vienna. We find in them
the real life of the poet, as we should expect to find it, when a
poet is possessed by an idea which is neither selfish nor small.
The idea which possessed Walther was a great one, and has
never been absent from the best minds of Germany, the idea of
national union. What suffering, what immense power run to
waste would have been spared that noble country, if the dream of
our Minnesinger had been realized five centuries ago. This
was not to be. Perhaps even now the full attainment is distant.
But it is well for his countrymen to look back upon his pen
sive figure seated, as shown in the Paris manuscript, in the atti
tude of deep thought.
M Ich saz uf eime steine
Und dahte bein mit beine,
Bar uf sast’ ich den ellenbogen;
Ich hete in mine hant gesmogen
Min kinne und ein min wange.
Do dahte ich mir vil ange,
Wes man zer werlte solte leben.”
For strangely enough, the ecclesiastical and political contest
of the present day, has much resemblance to that which was
fought in the times of Walther. To-day, as then, Rome and the
�430
Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.
Empire dispute the point of supremacy. The question at issue
may be disguised and deceive even the wise and far-sighted.
But the present is not the first time that Rome has learnt to
throw an appearance of right over audacious and transcendant
injustice. Five hundred years ago she failed to blind to her
designs the vision of our Minnesinger, and now-a-days, happily
there are men numerous enough and strong enough to be true to
the spirit of these poems of Walther, and to insist upon wrest
ing from the hands of Rome, at least the national education
of their children.
“ Tiuschiu zuht gat vor in alien.”
Art. VIII.—Moral Philosophy
at
Cambridge.
First Principles of Moral Science. A Course of Lectures
delivered in the University of Cambridge. By Thomas
Rawson Birks, Knightsbridge, Professor of Moral Philo
sophy. London : Macmillan and Co. 1873.
EARLY forty years have passed since Mr. Mill, in his review
of Professor Sedgwick’s celebrated Discourse, declared that
“ the end, above all others, for which endowed universities exist,
or ought to exist, is to keep alive philosophy.” The “ studies of
the University of Cambridge” in 1835 were not the studies of
the present year. In every department there has been progress.
Great reforms have been instituted from without: those which
have proceeded from within have still been greater. Unattached
students have received recognition. Dissenters, at first admitted
within college precincts for study and then allowed to graduate,
after many years of probation have been placed on a footingof equa
lity in the competition for college fellowships. The badge ofcreed
has been abolished: the stigma of sex is passing away. Lec
tures and Examinations for Women have been inaugurated, and
there is a fair prospect of the entire removal, at no distant time,
of the intellectual disabilities under which they still labour.
University influence has been extended far beyond the boundaries
of Cambridge by the institution of Local Examinations; and
more recently still, by the official establishment of Courses of
Lectures by university men in provincial towns. New professor
ships have been founded. Degrees are conferred for proficiency
n Moral and in Natural Science. The course of study for the
�1875]
The Civil Service.
of obtaining a good article. By the
time this number is in the reader’s
hands the intentions of the Govern
ment may possibly have been ex
pressed, and whether it determines
to try the scheme of the Commis
sioners at first upon some one office
as an experiment, or to let the
matter drop as one beyond its
energies and strength, it is certain
that the warm thanks both of the
Civil Service and the public are
due to Dr. Lyon Playfair and his
colleagues for the ability with which
they have sifted an almost over
whelming mass of evidence, and for
the courage with which they have
exposed what the real grievances
are under which the public service
suffers.
But though, in our opinion, such
thanks are due, it is evident that,
so far as the Civil Service is con
cerned, they have not been generally
accorded. Mr. Farrer, in the Fort
nightly Review for May has forcibly
answered the three principal objec
tions which appear to have been taken
to the recommendations of the Com
missioners, and though he seems to
attach more weight than we should
to such of the opinions of the Service
as a.re ‘ expressed by their organs
in the press,’ it is undoubtedly a
fact that the report has been re
ceived with much disfavour.
In this, however, the Com
missioners have only shared the
VOL. XI.—NO. LXVI.
NEW SERIES.
729
common fate of all who attempt to
reform professions. The obstinate
resistance offered by the Proctors
to the reformation in Doctors’
Commons will be remembered by
many ; the gloomy predictions with
which the Abolition of Purchase
was greeted by the Colonels in and
out of Parliament are still fresh in
the memory of all. But it is to
be hoped and expected that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, if
clearly convinced that the proposals
of the Commissioners are really
sound and salutary, will have the
courage of his opinion, and will not
sacrifice a national reform to noisy
professional clamour.
Individual
cases of hardship should be met by
liberal or even lavish compensation,
rather than be allowed to constitute
arguments for continuing abuses in
the Public Service.
The Civil Service of England
deserves good and generous treat
ment at the hands of the country.
It has never been servile like that
of Russia; it has never been
‘ bureaucratic ’ like that of France ;
it has never been corrupt like that
of America ; and if the abuses in it
be swept away and steps be taken
to supply it with proper organisation
and payment, it will be in the future,
even more than it has been in the
past, a legitimate source of pride
and strength to the Nation and
Sovereign it serves.
A. C. T.
3 E
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The greatest of the Minnesingers
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 406-430 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Review of Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und Sacherklarungen. Begrundet von Franz Pfeiffer, Erster Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1870 and Des Leben Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: B.G. Trubner, 1865. From Westminster Review 45 (April 1874).
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[s.n.]
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[n.d.]
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CT38
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[Unknown]
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Book reviews
Germany
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The greatest of the Minnesingers), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
German Literature
Germany
Minnesingers
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193
pKETCHES
OF
J" RAVEL
IN
pERyViANY,
By Professor Blackie.
An hour and a half’s pleasant swing in the Hanoverian train brought
me to Göttingen. I had been introduced here to German things and
German thoughts forty years ago, when Blumenbach and Heeren and
Ottfried Müller, and other mighty names now departed, were the great
ornaments of the Georgia Augusta. As to external appearance, I found
everything pretty much as I had left it; only the Professors, who in my
Burschen days used to lecture in their own private houses, have now
been provided with lecture-rooms in a university building of im
posing and tasteful exterior. The town itself is lightsome, clean,
and pleasant; the architecture exhibiting that quaint combination of a
Certain clumsy unwieldiness in the mass with a light and painted
gaiety in the detail, so characteristic of all those German towns that
have maintained their original mediaeval character in the face of
modern encroachments and transformations. Of course there is a
gross incongruity in this, but there is a pleasant variety also ; and
anything certainly is preferable to those long monotonous rows of
stone or brick walls, with square holes cut in them, which constitute
some of the most prominent streets in certain parts of Edinburgh and
London. The town is surrounded by a vallum (wall) or rampart,
which forms a breezy walk all round, shaded with green trees, outside
of which the old fosse has now been turned into gardens—public and
private—where the nightingales keep up their lively nocturnal concert,
quite close to the screaming whistle of the Hanoverian railway. As to
the University, there can be no doubt that it will suffer to some extent
from the provincial character which must now belong to it, in com
parison with the great central University of Berlin. The division of
the Fatherland into so many petty independent states, which Bismark,
by two great strokes, has put an end to, carried with it at least this
great advantage, that Germany contained more centres of independent
and original culture than any country in Europe, and had its intellec
tual equilibrium less disturbed by the overgrowth of centralisation.
But these minor German universities still present, and will no doubt
�194
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
continue to present, a strong well-orderecl phalanx of teaching power
which our proudest British universities may not look on without
blushing. In the single University of Gottingen, which does not contain
more than 800 students, there are eighty persons officially employed in
the work of teaching, arranged in the three grades of ordinary professors,
extraordinary professors, and privatim docentes—that is, in our language,
licensed graduates—the consequence of which rich provision is, that
instead of the rigid routine of traditional classes which we have in
Scotland, there is scarcely a subject of any conceivable human interest
which may not find its niche in the scheme of teaching for a German
winter and summer session. During the week I spent in Gottingen I
attended four lectures from different professors, each of which was of
a kind that it would have been impossible to have heard in any
university of Scotland. The two first were on special periods of
history : on the political relations of Northern Europe during the second
half of the seventeenth century, by Dr. Pauli, and on the history of
Germany, from the year 1806 downwards, by Professoi* Waitz. Our
professors of history—and it is only exceptionally that in Scotland they
exist at all—could not lightly indulge in various specialties of this kind,
as, like most public teachers in Scotland, they are tied down to some
prescribed scheme, which they must exhaust, and from which they
cannot depart. This mechanical arrangement of university work is a
public proclamation of poverty and meanness which requires no
comment. The other two lectures which I heard were equally signi
ficant of the variety, richness, and flexibility of the German academical
scheme. The one was by Professor Hermann Lotze, ‘On the Philosophy
of Religion,’ a subject that might possibly find a place in a course of
lectures on moral philosophy such as we have in Scotland, but which
certainly could not be taken up by the Professor of Logic and Meta
physics without raising grave discussions in the church courts, and
being productive of very perilous consequences to the University. The
other lecture was by Professor Sauppe ; or rather’ it was a lecture by
the students, over which the Professor presided, pretty much in the
fashion of the tutorial classes in England, or the general style of the
Greek and Latin classes in the Scottish universities. Only, so far as
Scotland is concerned, the sad contrast must be fairly stated: that
whereas in our universities the Professor superintends the drill of
young men as ip. a school, that they may acquire a mastery of the two
learned languages, in Gottingen the Professor trains those who have
already acquired a mastery of those languages in the scientific princi
ples of interpretation and criticism. A notable thing also was that the
whole performances took place through the medium of the Latin
language ; a practice which should never have been allowed to fall
into academical disuse, as it has altogether in Edinburgh (the natural
consequence of the inherent weakness of our classical training), and as I
suspect in Oxford also, for which there can be no excuse. Whatever
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
195
languages are taught at school or college ought not only to be read
and written, but to be spoken ; for the ear is the great natural avenue
through which sounds are received into the familiar citizenship of the
brain ; and it is not, of course, the dead rule of a gray book, but the
living power of a human voice, that can convey to the ear, at once,
most easily, and most effectively, the impressions which, in the acquisi
tion of language, it has a natural claim to expect.
B The most remarkable thing that I saw in Gottingen was a professor
of geology who had been forty-one times on Mount Etna, and, as the
fruit of his various visits, had constructed a map of its lava streams,
as accurate and detailed as any of Graf Moltke’s strategic schemes.
This is German thoroughness in the grand style. Whatever a German
does he does with system and calculation ; and Deutschland certainly has
a better claim than France to boast that she is la patrie de VorganisaEW». For the rest, I have only to note that in Gottingen living is
cheap, that it is thoroughly German in all its ways and habits, and
that it has not suffered any elegant corruption—like Heidelberg and
Bonn—from the presence of a regular English colony. I therefore
think it a most advisable place for young Scotsmen who may wish to
take a taste of German language and learning for a sewiesire or two.
As for Englishmen, they will naturally go where living is more expen
sive, and where they will meet with more of their own countrymen.
The plain Scot fraternises more easily with the homely German.
From Gottingen, being bent for Berlin, I took the route which led
through the two famous sites hallowed by the names of Luther and
Melancthon, viz., Eisleben and Wittenberg. The former town lies on
the railway line betwixt Gottingen and Halle, between twenty and
thirty English miles to the west of the latter town. Of the country
betwixt Gottingen and Eisleben there is little to be said. As we
approached Eisleben, dark heaps of ashes and débris, and smoking
vents on the slopes of the long monotonous ridges of elevated ground,
indicated clearly enough the miners’ country which the well-known
history of Luther’s parentage leads one to expect here. The town of
Eisleben lies in the low ground to the south of the gradual ascent that
leads northward and eastward to the Harz mountains ; it is a place of
small size and pretensions. The market-place presents the usual
strange mixture of the quaint and the unwieldy already mentioned as
so characteristic of old German architecture ; but the great attraction,
of course, is the little lange gasse, or ‘long-gate,’ in which stands the
house in which the great doctor of the Reformation was born. An
effigy of the venerable Martin—as well known as Henry VIII.—stands
Oa the wall, with the superscription :
Luther's Wort ist Gottes Lehr',
Durum stirbt sie nimmermehr.
Luther’s word is gospel lore :
Therefore it lives for evermore.
�196
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
The house is now inhabited in the upper story by one of the school
masters belonging to the Normal Seminary adjacent; but the room in
which the prophet greeted the light is, of course, kept sacred, and left
in all the barrenness of desolation which naturally belongs to a mouldy
old memorial. There is nothing particularly worthy of seeing in this
old house, and yet one could not be in Eisleben without visiting it |
such consideration belongs to the bones, and even the nail-parings, of
the saints.
Thou, too, art great among Germania’s towns,
Little Eisleben ! for from thee came forth
The free-mouthed prophet of the thoughtful North,
Whose word of power with mitres and with crowns
Waged glorious war, and lamed the strength of lies:
As when a bird long time in cage confined
First flaps free vans, and on the roaming wind
Floats jubilant and revels in the skies,
So did thy word, thou strong-souled Saxon man,
Lift up our wings of prisoned thought, and give
New scope of venture to our human clan,
While we did learn from thy great work to live
Erect, and make no league with juggling lies,
Looking right forward with unflinching eyes.
Another stage brought me to Halle, and thence a journey of two
hours to Wittenberg, about half-way between Halle and Berlin. Here
I stayed a night, that the scenery of the greatest drama of modern times
might have time to paint itself leisurely on my imagination. I had not
far to go, however, before the most prominent witnesses of the sacred
traditions of the place stood before me ; the bronze statues of Luther
and Melancthon, on pedestals of granite, after a model which I after
wards found universal in Berlin. This granite, I was informed, came
from no quarry, but is the product of those huge boulders which are
found in various places of the vast flats of North Germany, dropt no
doubt from the floating icebergs of the great pre-Adamitic Sea that
once covered the whole of Brandenburg, Pomerania, and the adjacent
districts. Everywhere in Wittenberg, where Luther appears, as here in
the market-place, Melancthon appears with him. Never were two
contrasts more useful or more necessary to one another.
Two prophets stand forth in the market-place
At Wittenberg to draw the wise regard,
Both broad-browed thinkers of the Teuton race,
Both crowned with Fame’s unbought, unsought reward.
Two prophets like, yet how unlike ! the same
In work, but not in function ; he to fan
The strength more apt of the long smothered flame,
To temper he, and guide with chastened plan.
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
197
Tlius fiery Peter, erst at gospel call,
Drew in one yoke with gentle-thoughted John ;
Thus toiled beneath, one battle’s sulphurous pall
Hot-blooded Bliicher and cool Wellington;
And they are wise who read this text in all—
Man’s ways are many, but God’s work is one.
The market-place in Wittenberg, independently of these two bronze
preachers, is really an imposing combination; on one side the city church,
ia the middle the Town Hall, with hotels, and other buildings with a
definite well-marked German character all round.
The great historical monument, however, at Wittenberg, unquestion
ably is the Schlosskirche, to the door of which the famous ninety-five
theses were affixed that shook the foundation of the most gigantic
Spiritual despotism that ever exercised authority over the free soul of
fiiaa. The church stands quite close to the north wall of the town
(for Wittenberg is a regular fortress), a remarkably plain and almost
ttgly building, beside the two round towers of the old castle, in no
respect more remarkable for architectural effect. But, however little
©an be said of the church, the door has received due honour. Frederick
Wilhelm IV., the predecessor of his present Majesty, who was a man of
great taste and religious sensibility, caused a new door to be cast in
bronze, with the whole ninety-five theses, word for word, in solid scrip
ture, to preach in the eye of day against the vile traffic in sacred things
as long as iron shall endure. In the inside of the church, on the floor,
the spots are shown where the bodies of Luther and Melancthon lie. To
gether in life, in death they should not be sundered ; and so the Elector
of Saxony in those days took care that the body of Luther, who had died
at his own birthplace, should be transported to the place where the
principal scene of his evangelic activity had been. The mass-book
[Which he used as a priest is also shown in the vestry. Having paid
my respects to this most notable of old churches, I had to retrace the
hvhole length of the town to the Elster Thor, which leads out to the
Halle and Berlin Railway. The name of this street, Collegien Strasse,
bears on its face the tradition of the University whose learning added
its authority to the moral weight of the great Reformer’s protest; and
at the end of it, just where it abuts on the fosse of the fortress, stand
the University buildings, still used for educational purposes. The
inscription Bibliotheca Académica, on the left, as you enter, declares
the identity of the spot. In the court behind, a building originally a
cloister, contains the room where Luther dwelt when Professor in the
University. It remains in its original condition, with antique panels,
worn old timber floor, and two pieces of furniture of rude strength and
antique simplicity. The one is the table at which so many sermons
and manifestoes were hammered with such Vulcanian fervour into
Shape: and the other a curious chair in which Martin and his Kate
�198
SKETCHES OE TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
used to sit together and hold domestic chirrupings in the most
connubial and irreproachable way imaginable. The chair has two seats*
looking one another in the face, but made of one block of wood, so as
to present the perfect type of that union of man and wife which is
both one and two ; and it is so constructed that, foi- perfect ease and
comfort, it must be placed close to the window, otherwise there is no
proper resting-place for the arm. The window beside which it stands
looks out into the court-yard, so that the most vivid picture of the
fulminant doctor in his quiet ruminating moments is here presented in
rude significant literalness to the eye.
In the afternoon at Wittenberg, having nothing particular to do
(people dine here, and in the small towns of Germany generally, at
1 p.m.), I took a stroll beyond the Elster Thor, meaning to go a mile or
two into the country, to see if any object might present itself to relieve
the wide expanse of flat green monotony, which, to an English or
Scottish eye, in this part of the world, is apt to convey such an expression
of dreariness. Scarcely, however, had I passed the railway terminus,
when my steps were led into the churchyard ; and there, finding it
as pleasant as any other field of promenade in the cold weather—for
it was a chill May everywhere—I walked up and down for an hour.
The pious care which the Germans bestow on the resting-places of
the dear departed—shown in the frequently renewed flowers of
various kinds planted in the mould—is only one phase of the richer
vein of feeling and genuine human kindliness which distinguishes them,
not less from the lofty reserve of the Englishman and the unde
monstrative gravity of the Scot than from the finely and somewhat
affectedly cultivated mannerism of the French. Not a few pious
hands, even in this cold evening, were busied with these kindly
sepulchral decorations. But my attention was drawn from them to
some continuous beds of apparently recent graves —to the number
of above 150 —over which one stone stood, with the following
inscription :
Les Officiers français
A leurs
Compatriotes
Morts en captivité
A Wittemberg,
1870-1.
.
On enquiry in the town afterwards, I found that 7,000 of the French
prisoners, principally from Metz, had been quartered here ; and that,
partly from the extremes to which they had been reduced in the
fortress, partly from the general distastefulness of German captivity
to Frenchmen, they had died here, one or two every day, till the
number which I mentioned was summed up. Upon such a theme,
in such a place, at such an hour, just before sunset, one could scarcely
help moralising. How some of my Edinburgh German-haters and
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
199
peace-gospellers would have burst out here in indignant blasts of
commercial or evaugelic wrath against that ‘ hoary blood-monger ’
the King of Prussia, whom, along with Mephistopheles Bismark, it
pleases them to regard as the cause of this effusion of Frankish blood!
But my vein was nothing indignant; it was only pitiful. I could not
help feeling infinite sorrow that such a highly gifted people as the
French should have allowed themselves so long to be deluded with
that Will o’ the Wisp called Glory, which after a short season of
flashing prosperity has led them into such swamps of national degra
dation and shame. Is man a reasonable animal ? Certainly, if in
all wars love is extinct, in not a few reason has either been absent
from home, or has rudely been kicked out at the back door. I have
seldom felt so humiliated in presence of frail human nature as in
contemplation of this war, which was the pure and unmingled product
of French jealousy, French vanity, French insolence, and French
ignorance, and should preach a lesson to that people for all time, if
Frenchmen are capable of being taught.
I laud them not; but I must weep for all,
Poor ’wildered Franks, beneath Heaven’s bright blue dome
Who might have reaped home-harvests, but the call
Of Glory, elfish idol, bade them roam,
And here they lie. 0 ! if there be in France
Wise for one hour to nurse a sober theme,
Let such come here, and from this tearful stance,
Spell the true meaning of their juggling dream.
What thing, from reason’s sway divorced, is man,
Vain man, whose epics swell the trump of Fame ?
A monkey gamboling on a larger plan,
A moth that, fluttering with a mightier name,
Drawn by the dear seduction of his eyes,
Bounces into the scorching flame and dies.
I suppose it is not possible to enter Brandenburg, the cradle of
Prussian greatness, from any quarter, without passing through barren
ness, long leagues of unfriendly barrenness and monotony. In fact,
Brandenburg is barrenness; a mere waste of sand deserted by the
primeval brine, and shaping itself by help of rain, vegetable remains,
and scientific skill, through the slow process of the ages, into a
human and habitable trim. But this harshness of the natural con
ditions with which Nature has surrounded him is precisely that which
has made the Brandenburger great; like the Scot, he works hard, be
cause to live at all he must work hard, and work is the price, as
wise old Epicharmus says, ‘ for which the gods sell all things to men.’
The best of us are apt at times to put up the foolish prayer that
the gods might perhaps have done a little more for us. Nay; but, my
good brother, the fact may rather be that they have done too much
�200
SKETCHES OK TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
already. Certainly we can learn to be like to them, in a subordinate
way, only by doing as much as possible for ourselves, and creating, so
to speak, our own world ; making a Prussian monarchy out of a wilder
ness of Brandenburger sand wreaths.
Sand, sand, long leagues of heath and barren sand !
Long formal lines of dark unlovely pine !
Know thus the cradle of the mighty land
Whose lord now sways from Danube to the Rhine.
Blest in their barrenness full sure were they,
Lords of a harsh soil and a frosty clime,
Where thrift and virtue, and in frugal way
To live, sowed seeds of strength for ripening time.
Wise, if they keep the memory of their birth,
And grow, severely strong, as Frederick grew,
Not shaking wanton wings of sensual mirth
Rampant, but to the manful maxim true
That made men wonder at their mounting star—
Still strive for peace, but never flinch from war.
A pleasant rattle of two hours on the rail brought us through
this redeemed sea-bottom to the once little cradle of the Prussian
Electorate, and the now mighty metropolis of the regenerate German
Empire, Berlin. As we approached the town long lines of houses,
stretching towards the south-west, showed distinctly the direction
in which the recent great increase of the city has taken place. When
I was here as a student, some forty years ago—in the days when Boeckh,
Schleiermacher, and Neander were in the zenith of their academical
glory—the population of Berlin was generally stated at about 300,000 ;
it is now nearly triple that figure, and the increase latterly, they say,
has been to the amount of 30,000 annually. This is, to use the
favourite expression of the Germans, something quite ‘ colossal ’—
something quite analogous to the enormous growth of Manchester,
Glasgow, London, and other busy cities of Great Britain, during the
last century. What have been the causes of this phenomenon, which
even more than the needle-guns of Sadowa should have made such an
astute man as Louis Napoleon think twice before he plunged his
people, or allowed his people to plunge him, into a war with the
united strength of Germany ? Prussia alone in her present prosperous
condition, and with her well-organised military system, was quite
strong enough to have made a repetition of Jena and Auerstadt im
possible. The causes of this extraordinary stride made by Prussia, of
which Berlin is the greatest symbol, though not altogether on the
surface, do not certainly lie so deep as to have been beyond the ken of
a cool calculator like the ex-Emperor of France. Prussia, as a Protes
tant Power, was peculiarly marked out as destined to take the lead in
Protestant Germany. Austria might preside at the Diet while the
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
201
Holy Alliance lasted, and while princes conld still continue to rule
without regard to the spirit of the times ; but, if government really
meant the effective hold and control of the public mind, such a
government in Germany could proceed only from Prussia. The other
Protestant States were too small either to originate or to maintain any
movement that could pass the bounds of their own particular province.
To Prussia, therefore, all who longed for the unity of the Patherland
instinctively turned; and this great instinct found its realisation in
the person of Prince Bismark, and in the bold stroke of policy that
prostrated Austria and annexed the recalcitrant minor States in the
1866. With the Protestantism of Prussia was intimately con
nected its intelligence, its comparative freedom of opinion, its patronage
of science, its nursing of speculation, its substructure of popular
education, its truly national and popular and democratic system of
military drill. All this had come tto glorious growth and blossom,
first, from the genius and character of the great Pritz, and then
from the social regeneration that, under the stimulant guidance of
Baron Stein, had followed the terrible prostration of Jena in 1806.
Moreover, the men of Brandenburg, as already mentioned, were a sturdy
race, forced by hard labour to subdue the obstinacy of a barren soil,
and from their poverty acquiring habits of wealth-producing industry.
Th® Northern Germans are characteristically a hard-working people ;
hence the manufacturing industry of the Rhine district, which,
by the aid of railways and their concentrating action, has recently
shown itself on a great scale also in Berlin. Rich merchants, full
cousins to those whose palatial homes fringe the banks of the Mersey
and the Clyde, now raise their high-tiered warehouses and pile their
pictured halls on the banks of the Spree. Berlin is no more a cold,
formal, anlic, and military residence, but a populous capital, full of
lusty pulsation, of fervid energy, and, especially since the grand stroke
of 1866, of vivid nationality. The manifest signs of this are not only
the extraordinary increase in magnitude, but, what is much more
significant, the great rise in prices, and especially the enormous mount
ing of house rents. With regard to this latter item, I learned details
from various quarters which convinced me that houses in Berlin are
even dearer than in London. One evil result of this, naturally, is, that
public servants who live on small salaries, and men of moderate
fortunes generally, find it difficult to live in Berlin and keep up their
natural position in society; an evil, no doubt, but which is balanced
by its consequence, that men of moderate fortunes expelled from the
metropolis will serve to maintain and to enrich the social centres of
the provinces. It is not desirable that Germany should be swallowed
Up in Berlin, and that Gottingen, Bonn, and Halle should assume the
same servile attitude to it that the provincial cities of France do to
Paris.
My object in coming to Berlin was not to see the town, but to see
'
VOL. IL—-NO. VIII.
L
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
Bismark. The town, however, is well worth considering to those
whose eye has been trained to know the significance of places. No
doubt its situation as a dead flat is bad ; the river which waters it, or
rather tinctures with some humidity its immense sand-beds, is neither
large, nor beautiful, nor salubrious ; and the horizontal lines of its
streets draw themselves out, notwithstanding the stateliness of their
edifices, into a wearisome and oppressive monotony. Nevertheless
there is something of a grand imperial conception about it; the great
soul of the great Frederick seems to be typed in its plan; and in
impressing the idea of vastness it is second .only to St. Petersburg.
To me, however, it seems to possess a certain moral significance that
dominates over all gesthetical considerations; I think of Plato and
Pythagoras, and look upon it as the stone-impersonation of the principle
of law and order.
Look here, and ponder well, and know the land
That by the sword of crowned captains grew ;
In rank and file the streets well ordered stand,
And like a serried host stretch forth to view.
Here Order, primal Demiurge supreme,
Sways with firm will and uncontrolled command,
Nor fears, to lame the action of his scheme,
The lagging foot, or the rebellious hand.
Come here who love mad liberty, the dance
Of wanton wills divorced from sacred awe,
Come from your fiery maelstrom in hot France,
And learn how great, how strong a thing is Law.
Ye would be free—poor fools; be tigers, then,
Or monkeys, and forget that ye are men !
But, as I have said, I was eager’ to see Bismark; and as the Diet of
the Empire was then sitting (about the middle of May), there could
not be much difficulty about that. I attended the Diet regularly, both
at that time and afterwards, about the middle of June, on my return
from a short flight into Russia, and had the good luck to see and hear
the great Chancellor on several occasions. I did not, indeed, hear any
of his- great speeches, but, both from what I have read and from what
I heard from others, can form a good idea of his character as a speaker.
He is not an orator, in any sense, like Gladstone, Brougham, Bright,
Canning, and that class of men. He is specifically a man of action
and of business, who speaks, as Socrates says every man ought to speak,
without art, directly, and boldly, and emphatically, when he has got
anything to say. He will nevei- be found, like Cicero or Dr. Guthrie,
rolling out grand pictorial and sonorous periods; he only knows
what he is talking about, and hits hard; yes, hard, and directly in
the face, too, not at all concerned whether your nose purples or not at
the blow. He is sometimes found struggling for the proper word to
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
203
clothe his thoughts, but that hesitation is the growling thunder, which
'preludes a flash. Whatever faults you may find with his oratory, you
must listen to what he says ; and you feel in every sentence that he is
A 'tame man, and no glittering sophist or astute pleader of a bad case.
If he thinks it necessary to pluck your beard, he comes right up and
does it; blatant democracy, with its thousand brazen throats, has no
terrors for him; he stands alone in front of a storm of babblers, and
overawes them by his cool display of intellectual fibre and iron volition.
There is nothing •of German subtlety or German ideality about him;
in this respect Gladstone is much more a German than Bismark;
and Bismark, as I have heard an intelligent German public man
remark, has something essentially English in his character and attitude.
He is pre-eminently a man of deeds ; a man of direct broad views, of
practical sagacity, of firm determination, of unflurried coolness, of
fearless audacity, of commanding survey, with a touch of hot im
periousness, no doubt, in his temper, and of occasional irritability
which in a great statesman is a great fault. But it is
not necessary to hear him speak in order to be impressed by the
feeling that you are in the presence of a great man. His personal
appearance at once stamps him as the leader of the congregation.
When I saw him first I was sitting in the gallery behind the Speaker,
directly opposite to the elevated bench on the side of the House where
the members of the Imperial Council or Senate (JReichsrath') sit. On
this bench the central seat belongs to the Chancellor, and it was empty
when I entered the gallery. I had not watched long, however, before
a tall, broad-browed, broad-chested, truly Neptunian man, in a military
dress, entered and took possession of the empty seat. I asked, Is that
Bismark ? and received the answer which I anticipated. I then set
myself to watch and study him with as much scientific observation as I
was capable of. I had read his life by Hezechiel, and thought I
understood something of the stuff of which he was made. He sat for
an hour, the image of concentrated business and energy, signing papers,
reading telegrams, giving intimations to attendants, now looking to
the right hand, now to the left; again crossing his arms before his
breast, as if buckling down his natural impatience of a sedentary posi
tion, altogether as if he preferred the rattling thunder-car of Jove to the
soft-padded chair of the Chancellor. Such a man certainly will never
fall asleep, nor allow any other person to fall asleep, wherever you
plant him. When he was a young man they called him der toile
Sismark (mad Bismark) : that means, at an age when he had energy
without regulation, and without a suitable field of action, he did many
Strange and, it may be, some very improper things; as young Clive,
they tell us, distinguished his boyhood by climbing up to the top of
Shrewsbury steeple. Such men are not made to do common things ;
for red tape, official grooves, and traditional shams of all kinds, they
testify a despotic impatience; they are intensely real, and can only
L2
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SKETCHES OP TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
work where working means a real growth and a ripe fruitage. Such
a man, the living image of such a man, its very proper type and embodi
ment, the great German Chancellor, now stood before me.
There stands he now, amid the flock the ram,
A visible king by natural right to reign,
Whose high commission, from the great I AM
Direct, makes other seals and sanctions vain.
He stands as one who hath a steadfast will,
He looks as one whose survey lords the field,
At whose sure-darted glance of practised skill
The doubtful waver and the feeble yield.
Even such I knew from Homer’s regal song,
Jove-born, broad-breasted, lofty-fronted kings,
Who like Jove’s bird careered both swift and strong,
And boldly soared with venture on their wings:
But he who boldly ventures grandly wins,
And earns a brilliant pardon for all sins.
Less prominent than Bismark, but very regular in his attendance
as a member of the Diet, was Von Moltke. I never heard him speak ;
I believe he speaks seldom ; and is even less than Bismark, naturally,
a speaking man. His handsome physiognomy is known to all Europe
from the windows of the printsellers; if Bismark has somewhat the
look of an English bull-dog, Von Moltke has certainly the look of
an English gentleman; tall, slender, somewhat stiff and formal to
appearance; not in manner, perhaps, to those who know him, but
merely in outward attitude. He does not look like a soldier (Bismark
has much more of that), but rather smacks of the student, the literary
man, the professor; he is the thoughtful strategist, not the stormy
combatant; the mathematician, not the engineer; the architect, not the
builder; not the woodman who fells the trees, but the master of the
forest, who, according to a well-calculated plan, marks out and numbers
the trees that are to be felled.
[To be continued.']
��
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Sketches of travel in Germany
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Blackie, John Stuart
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Collation: 193-204 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Germany
Travels
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820
KETCHES
OF
J RAVEL
IN JcrERMANY.
By Professor Blackie.
PART III.
Having learnt at Berlin that the grand triumphal entry of the troops
■returned from the late war, was not to take place till about the middle
of June, I made a short excursion to Russia, and on my way thither
passed through the good old Prussian town of Königsberg, known
to corn merchants by its flourishing corn trade, but to me interesting
chiefly for very different things.
Here, first I called on Professor
Lehrs, and found in his powerful eye and strong well-chiselled features
exactly those evidences of fine Roman strength which I had derived, at
a distance, from the perusal of his ‘ Aristarchusa work which for
soundness of view, and masculine vigour of expression, will maintain its
place in the libraries alongside of the great Latin masterpieces of
Wolf, Hermann, Ruhnken, and Wyttenbach.
After being ciceronized
by this excellent scholar through the stately and commodious new
buildings of the University, I passed through the small narrow street
which contains the house once inhabited by Immanuel Kant, a meta
physician, who had the singular merit of teaching European thinkers to
believe in their souls, after my subtle, self-puzzling countryman, David
Hume had fairly lost his identity in a whirl of unstable impressions
and ideas which he had spun out of the juggling phraseology of the
schools. Rounding the corner of this little street, I came suddenly, at
the top of a short descent, called Kant Street, on the bronze statue of
the venerable thinker. Here he stood, with his cocked hat under his
left arm, and bag-wig on his head, peering out curiously into the unsym
pathetic world of merchants, corn-dealers, and ship captains, in the
midst of whom it was his destiny, for so many years, persistently to
philosophise.
But Immanuel was too wise a man to complain of this
want of sympathy, as a mere technical metaphysical professor might
have done. As not only a thinker, but a really wise man, he knew that
nothing is so prejudicial to sound thinking as habitual confined inter
course with only one class of men. ‘ Nothing,’ he said, ‘ is so intolerable
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
321
as a company Consisting only of learned men;’ so he dined every day
at the common table of the principal inn, 'with sailors and ship captains,
and in this singular way added to the narrow limits of his solitary
thinking the large range of experience which belongs to the mercantile
and commercial classes.
After taking off my hat before this most
reputable philosopher, I proceeded to make an inspection of the old
Schloss, Castle, or Palace of the Prussian kings. I had in my memory
the humorous picture drawn by Carlyle of the coronation which took
place here of the first King of Prussia, in the first year of the last
■century, on which august occasion, his philosophical spouse, Sophia,
solaced her soul for the extreme weariness of the prolonged ceremonial
by publicly injecting a familiar pinch of snuff into her nose, beneath
the sublime frown of her royal lord.
So what fixed itself in my
memory principally was the room in which this coronation took place,
with the very throne on which self-created majesty placed the crown
{like the Czar of Russia) with his own hands on his own head, and a
¿significant environment of royal portraits hung on the walls. But my
■.eye was also attracted by a splendid dining hall or reception room, nearly
.three hundred feet long, or as long as some of our finest cathedrals,
which, with a necessary addition to its height (expected to be realised
when the present Crown Prince becomes kaiser-king), will certainly be
■ one of the largest and most imposing halls in Europe.
So much for
Königsberg. Want of time prevented me from an intended visit to the
battle-field of Eylau, which lies some considerable distance to the south
east of the town ; so I proceeded on through a grey and grim monotony
•of sand, and bogs, and blasted pines, for a space of nearly six hundred
miles, to the city of the Czar, and on the road, according to my custom,
.amused myself by spinning into verse my meditations on Immanuel
Kant, as follows :
Who’s here? a strange, old-fangled German Heir,
With hat three-cornered and bag-wig behind ;
Who peers with curious gaze, as if he were
New wafted from the moon by some stray wind
On the strange earth ! Ah ! now I know the man,
The sage who from this outmost Teuton station,
Marked their just bounds to all the thinking clan,
And pruned their wings to sober speculation.
Happy who, humanly, with human kind,
Works human work, well pleased from day to day,
Nor dares with high-plumed venture unconfined
Through trackless voids to push his plunging way !
God laughs at lofty thoughts ; but whoso proves
His ponder’d j ath, and walks by faith, He loves.
■vol.
II.—NO.
IX.
R
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
After a fortnight of very magnificent panoramic views of a. great
country, and very suggestive glimpses into social states, very far
removed from British, I returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg,
through Warsaw, to Berlin.
At Warsaw, the whole style of architec
ture, and the long rows of poplar trees along the turnpike roads,,
declared plainly enough that, though still under Russian sway, I was.
no longer in a Russian atmosphere. The civilization of Poland comes,
from the west, that of Moscow from the east ; and this contrast spoke
plainly out from every house-top, and from every street corner,
notwithstanding the forced Russian appearance given to the signs of
thé shops, which, by police order, are printed first in Russian charac
ters, and then in the native Polish, as of inferior dignity, below. But
my business here is only with Germany.
A railway rattle of about
fifteen hours’ duration brought us to Berlin, early on Wednesday
morning (the 14th), two days before the great military entry, and in.
time to learn that apartments in the best inns had risen from a dollar
a night—their usual rate—to a Frederick d’or.
I, of course, had
expected this, and, by travelling second class (contrary to Murray’s,
advice), all through Russia, had left my pocket in a comfortable flow
of cash, quite up to the need of the great foreseen pressure on the.
hotels.
But I am a Sonntagskind, as the Germans say, and always,
fall on my feet.
A kind friend took compassion on me, and opened,
his door for my shelter ; so that a week’s stay in Berlin cost me
nothing in the way of cash, and was a great gain to me in the way of
balmy and brilliant sociality. Now, no one, of course, expects that I
am here to attempt a detailed description of the grand patriotic display
which we call the Einzug : the newspapers have done the thing to satis
faction, and even to satiety ; and achtnn agere is as little my business at.
any time as it can be anybody’s pleasure at this time ; so with regard to
this matter, I will only set down one or two remarks with regard to the
general tone, effect, and significance of the affair, as it struck me. My
German friend had kindly procured for me a seat on the platform or
gallery raised in front of the University, and looking into the grand
open place, circled writh palaces and monuments, into which the Unter
den Linden opens at its east end : certainly the most pictorial point in
the otherwise somewhat monotonous and wearisome stateliness of Berlin
architecture. From this post—for which I paid only three dollars—I
had a broad unhindered view of the different regiments of the Guard,
that to the number of between forty and fifty thousand came spreading
forth their steely ranks from the comparatively narrow line of the Lin
den j and unquestionably, for the eye of a grey civilian accustomed only
to sober sights, this was a grand spectacle to see. For nearly three
hours the mighty palatial space filled and emptied itself again with
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
323
close-packed glittering rows, now of the severe bine infantry, now of the
^bright mailed Cuirassiers gleaming in the sun, now of the rapid-trotting
Uhlans, with their black and white pennons fluttering on their long
lances. These last were not only the most picturesque, but the most
loudly cheered : cheers well merited, as anyone who has even hastily
gleaned the newspaper history of the war will understand. If in the
first decisive battles of the campaign the Germans knew what they were
about while the French did not, it was all owing, after Moltke’s admirable
geographic and strategic studies, to the dexterity and daring shown by
thefr reconnoitring horsemen. If this, thought I, be only some forty or
fifty thousand men, what a spectacle must the military array of a great
battle be,' such a battle as that at Leipzig in October, 1813, when Napo
leon, with 150,000 men, stood in an inner circle, with 400,000 Prussians,
Russians, Austrians, and Swedes in his front. Nevertheless, as a mere
spectacle, one could not but say that the Einzug was deficient in two
important respects—in colour and variety. I have seen not a few more
brilliant shows. But the real show, perhaps, was not the march of the
military, with their arms glittering in the sun, but the pomp of festal
decoration in the town, the endless rows of flag and banner and historic
picture, patriotic sculpture, significant device, and suggestive motto of
every kind. This really was a burst of vivid gaiety well calculated both
to please the eye and to satisfy the mind anywhere, but especially in the
grey and grave regions of the frosty North. Of the illuminations which
closed the great festive day I will say nothing; they were good, very
good, perhaps, of their kind; but I am Stoic enough to think there is
something childish in this cumbrous attempt to light up the night with
an artificial imitation of the day. But what chiefly moved me in this
affair of the Einzug, and will remain with me among the deepest and
most fruitful experiences of my life, was the moral and political signifi
cance of the display. Many shows are mere shows, with emptiness or
even hollow, false pretence behind; mere gilded lies, beneath which the
scratch of a pin will expose the depth of foulness and rottenness which
such rare varnish was necessary to conceal. But the Berlin show was
all reality, and the sign of a greater reality. The reality before me was
effective military strength; the reality of which it was the sign is the
solidity, firmness, and systematic consistency of the German people and
the Prussian Government. There rode the stout old soldier King, pre
ceded by his three mighty men, all dressed in the white livery of his
favourite Cuirassiers, Bismark, Moltke, and Roon, the one the eye of his
policy, the second the brain, and the third the arm of his soldiership.
What a reality was there! What a speaking commentary on the famous
words of Bismark (which some hasty people were forward to misunder
stand), that great social revolutions of a certain kind are not to be
R 2
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY
achieved by mere talking, but that the obstinacy of the tough old ma
terial can be moulded into a new shape only by the stern compulsion of
‘blood and iron.’ Now everybody admits that Bismark and the King,
or rather the King and Bismark (for if the King had been a weakling in
the ‘conflict of 62’ Bismark would have had no game to play), were
right in keeping up the strength of the army against the peddling eco
nomies of the Berlin Liberals; the success of the war, therefore, and the
glory of the triumphal entry, were the legitimate fruit of clear counsel,
firm will, and manly consistency of purpose on the part of those who
had the guidance of public affairs in Prussia. Whatever other excel
lencies the champions of the French in this country may see or imagine
in their petted friends, they must at least confess to two great faults—
their fretful irritability took high offence from no sufficient occasion, and
their hasty insolence_made war without adequate preparation. But no
faults of this kind can be laid to the charge of the Germans. They
knew they had an insolent and treacherous neighbour to contend with;
they had known him in this character for four hundred years; and they
were determined that, so soon as the real outbreak of his itching vanity
and imperious insolence should take place, it would not find them, as in
1806, unprepared and divided. The outbreak did come sooner than
even Bismark’s astuteness had anticipated; he was taken by surprise no
less than his European enemies, who accused him of complicity; but he
was surprised in the midst of his earnestness, as the French in their
insolence; and backed by the firm resolve of a serious, honest, and
laborious people, the whole character of the war on his side was as
satisfactory to the moralTas to the intellectual nature of the impartial
observer. The same attitude of reality and honesty was presented in
the person of the stout old King, a monarch in all points the antipodes
of the French Emperor, who was driven into an unequal war by the
necessity of a position which his own unscrupulous ambition and utter
want of political conscience had created. Only continued success could
seem to justify a rule which every one knew was founded on a crime;
and the dramatic necessity of getting up some glory, to titillate French
vanity and gratify French ambition, sent him with a light start and boast
ful parade into the midst of a struggle, of which the issue, even with
the most complete preparation and most thoughtful circumspection, was
extremely doubtful. How different the moral position of the King of
Prussia ! The hereditary holder of a throne firmly rooted in the loyal
allegiance of a sober-minded and intelligent people, who knew how to
value the strength derived from a firm central rule, even when it
pressed a little severely sometimes on individual liberty, he neither
needed to cater by unworthy means for a popularity which he already
possessed, nor if a storm of adverse fortune should seize the state, was
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
325
he in danger of being thrown ont as a Jonah to propitiate the wrath
of the sea-god. He was known to be a soldier and a lover of soldiers ;
but he did not require to pander to a fretful appetite, either in his army
or his people, by aggressive acts upon the territories of his neighbours.
The wars in which he had been engaged were purely matters of
domestic arrangement between Germans and Germans ; the changes
which, by the instrumentality of ‘blood and iron,’ he had effected
within the limits of Fatherland, if violent, were absolutely necessary for
the restoration of that imperial unity the loss of which had been
historically identical with the humiliation of Germany beneath the
fraud and force of unscrupulous kingcraft in France. To this firm
political position King William added the wTeight of a personal character
such as the solid and sober-minded Germans knew how to respect. In
‘the conflict ’ with the Parliament in 1862 he showed a firmness of will
which, whatever else may be wanting, must ever be held as a prime
requisite in a ruler of men; in his habits, like his excellent father, he
was plain and unostentatious ; and, like his father also, he was sincerely
and unaffectedly religious. This element in his character I am, of
course, aware it has been the fashion in this country to deride; but
there is not a man in Germany, to what ever party he belongs, who
would insinuate that the devout expressions of thankfulness used by the
King in his despatches were anything else than the genuine utterance
of a natural and unaffected piety. It is indeed a vulgar habit of the
English mind to honour the expression of devout feeling only when it
appears in the stereotyped forms of the national Liturgy ; and beyond
the conventional homage of a Sunday forenoon service, or the question
able zeal for church paraded on the political platform at an election,
many an Englishman seems more than half ashamed of his religion, and
carries no more natural fragrance of piety about him than a cold tulip
does of warm vegetable aroma.
Hence the uncharitable judgments
passed upon good King William : judgments that only prove, if not the
absolute ungenerousness and ungentlemanliness, certainly the frigid
narrowness and formalism of the persons who made them. The real
fact of the matter is, both that there is a fundamental vein of devout
feeling (a portion of their characteristic Gemiitli) in the German mind,
and that the late war, in its motive and occasion essentially a repetition
of the great national struggle of 1813, was inspired by the same fine
combination of devout and patriotic feeling which distinguished its
prototype. The sure instinct of this led the King at the outbreak of
the struggle to re-establish the Order of the Iron Cross, a decoration
which symbolises in the most chaste and significant way that combina
tion of manly endurance, public spirit, and active piety by which the
campaigns of 1813 and 1870 have been so prominently characterised.
�326
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
Sitting in the railway carriage one day, between Gottingen and Halle, I
had before me a young soldier decorated with this expressive symbol,
which, if widely distributed, is so only because, as Bismark said, it is
v’idely deserved ; and, as I am not a smoker, I amused the tedium of the
road by articulating the following lines :
Prussian, that iron cross upon thy breast,
Which thou with manhood’s modest pride dost wear,
I ask not by what deed above the rest,
Dashing or daring, it was planted there ;
I know that when the insolent heel of Gaul
Tramped on all rights to thee and Deutschland dear,
Thou rose regenerate from thy plunging fall
By vows devout and discipline severe.
Thus blazed thy bright noon from a tearful morn,
Blessing from bane sprang, and great gain from loss,
While in thy hand the avenging steel was borne,
And in thy heart was stamped the patient cross :
Thus Spartan pith and Christian grace were thine,
Born in one day, and bodied in one sign.
And now, what more have I to say ? I might tell Mr. Bull not only that
he ought to believe reverently in the moral grandeur of the Iron Cross,
whether as symbolical of the great struggle of 1813, in which himself
took a prominent part, or of the yet greater struggle of 1870, in which
he took no part ; but I would tell him also that the universal arming
of the people, however Lord Derby might call it a retrogression, is a
part of social organisation equally congruous with Spartan discipline,
Athenian freedom, Roman strength, and Christian grace ; that, in fact,
it is a grand nursery of national virtue and patriotic devotion, more
powerful than schools and churches, because it deals in deeds, and not in
words. But I know well that Mr. Bull would not listen to me in this
matter. If I had M.P. after my name, perhaps he might be willing to
lend me a respectful audience for an hour; as it is, I am silent.
�PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH.
835
un cleanness of every kind, let us tear-down the fever-nests and open up
the pauper warrens to the free light and blithe air, let us sternly treat
as public crime the avarice that distributes poisoned water to swell divi
dends, and that "which refuses to drain villages lest the rates should rise.
Resolute war against dirt, waged under the conduct of scientific enemies
of disease, would soon make this a different country for the poor at least
to live in. If we decline to accept this issue how shall we justify our* solves to the helpless masses whom we are allowing to perish like rotten
sheep ?
Edward D. J. Wilson.
It is just to say here that though the common theory of cholera and its propaga
tion is popularly summarised above, it does not pass unchallenged. - Dr. Chapman, in
a very ingenious work, with the logic oj: which no fault can be found, but which may
be thought to rest on too narrow an induction, has endeavoured to show that cholera
is generated not by any morbid poison but by hyperasmia of the nervous centres dis
tributed along thej spine. He maintains that the disease can be controlled by modify
ing the temperature of these nervous centres, and cites some remarkable cases in which
he has recovered patients far gone in choleraic collapse by the application of ice to the
spine. The method may be useful, even though Dr. Chapman’s theory be unsound,,
and as medical science is confessedly powerless to cope with cholera when once it has
seized on a patient, it will be worth while to give the proposed treatment a fair trial/'
in the public hospitals in case of another cholera epidemic.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Sketches of travels in Germany. Part 3
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Blackie, John Stuart
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 320-326 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Germany
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Conway Tracts
Germany
Travels
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Text
1875]
243
ARMIN, THE LIBERATOR OF GERMANY.
N August the 16th, a great
festive gathering will be held
near Detmold, at the unveiling
the colossal statue of Arminius, or
Hermann,1* Deliverer of Germany
S
the
from the Roman yoke. In the
midst of the Teutoburg Forest—on
the brow of a lofty hill, surrounded
by beech and fir-wood—stands the
figure of this national hero, on a
granite pedestal: with a foot placed
on the eagle of a Roman legion ;
holding a raised sword in his right
hand. The hill rises to an emi
nence of 1,300 feet.
The enor
mous statue itself towers some
sixty feet high.
It is turned
towards the Rhine: a doubly
significant position in our days!
Far and wide will it be visible—as
far as the Drachenfels, famed by
Siegfried’s mythic struggle; as far as
the Brocken, the traditionary seat
ofancient heathen witchcraft. Thirtysix years have passed since Ernst
von Bandel, the patriotic sculptor,
to whom the work has been a labour
of love, conceived the idea of this
great monument. Now, at last,
thanks to Bandel’s unflagging zeal
during a lifetime, the gigantic Statue
—made of iron, and screwed together
in its several parts—is finished : a
remarkable memento of the famed
battle in which the legions of Varus
were annihilated, about the year 9 of
our era.
The country all round the Grotenburg, near which the monument
stands, is replete with myth and
history. The whole mountain-range
goes by a name (‘ Osning ’) that
brings back remembrances of early
Germanic worship. There are
Hiinen-Hinge—Giant Circles—mys
O
terious remnants of large stone
structures. There are woods and
of
homesteads which, if the antiquity
of their names could be proved,
would show an unbroken link of
tradition with the very days of the
Teutoburg Battle. In more than
one sense is the ground between
the Weser and the Rhine strangely
hallowed. In the Osning stood
the Irmin-sul, or Irmin’s Column,
which Karl the Great destroyed in
his struggle against the Saxons.
That popular rhyme in Low German
speech, which is yet current:
Her men! slaDermen;
Sla Pipen ; sla Trummen !
De Keiser will kumen
Met Hamer an Stangen,
Will Her men uphangen—
is by some referred back, not to the
contest against Witukind, but to
that against Armin or Hermann him
self. Not far from the scene of the
great battle—in the cloister of Korvei—there were found, for the first
time, in the sixteenth century, those
Annals of Tacitus which contain a
graphic record of Armin’s deeds.
Again, in the Abbey of Verden,
at the end of the same century,
the Gothic translation of the Bible
by Ulfilas was discovered—the oldest
record of German speech. Truly,
in Massmann’s words, a trilogy of
things full of Teutonic interest!
A most romantic career that of
the Cheruskian Chieftain was, who
wrought the signal victory. As a
youth, he had learnt the art of war
among his country’s foes; was
placed at the head of a legion of
German auxiliaries; and by his
valour, perhaps on Danubian battle
fields in Pannonia (Hungary),
1 The modern rendering of Arminius by ‘ Hermann,’ though generally accepted, is
probably an error. More likely is the connection of that na me with Irmin (AngloSaxon: Eormen-; Old Norse: Iormun-). It may, in Simrock’s opinion, simply have
meant the common leader of the Cheruskian League—even as Irmin was perhaps a com
mon War-God of allied German tribes. Dio Cassius writes the name : ’Apglwos; Strabo:
’Amiewos.
S 2
�244
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
obtained Roman, citizenship and the
rank of a knight. The Romans that
saw him describe him as coming
from a noble stock; strong and
brave; of quick perception, and
of penetrating judgment—more so
than might be expected from a
‘barbarian’ (ultra barbarum prompltus ingenio). The ardour of his
mind was said to glow from his
face and from the glance of his
eyes. He was the son of Segimer
.—in modern German : Siegmar—
a Cheruskian leader. Armin’s wife,
whose name we learn from a Greek
source, was Thusnelda ;2 originally
betrothed against her will to another
chieftain, but secretly carried off
by her daring swain, between
whom and his father-in-law, Segest,
there was thenceforth a deadly feud.
In those days, it was the en
deavour of the Romans, after
they had conquered Gaul, and gra
dually come up from the Danubian
side, to subject also the country
between the Rhine and the Elbe.
A hundred thousand of their sol
diers kept watch and ward along
the Rhine : one half of them sta
tioned between Mainz and Bonn;
the other half between Koln and
Xanten, and down to the very shores
of the German Ocean.
Pushing
forward from the Rhine in an east
ern direction, they succeeded in
establishing, near the Lippe, a strong
fort, called Aliso—probably what is
now Else, near Paderborn. Drusus
even ventured with an expedition
as far as the Elbe; but, terrified by
the weird appearance of a gigantic
Teuton prophetess, who foretold his
approaching death, he returned, and
soon afterwards died through being
thrown from his horse. Armin’s
merit it is, by his triumph in the
Teutoburg Forest, and by a struggle
carried on for years afterwards,
to have freed this north-western
[August
region, and thus, step by step, to
have driven back the ever-encroach
ing Latin power.
It was under the Emperor Au
gustus that Quinctilius Varus, the
former Quaestor in Syria—who
had, in that capacity, put down
a Jewish insurrection with great
cruelty—was sent to the Lower
Rhine to complete the enslave
ment of the German tribes there.
A man of sybaritic tastes; who
had entered Syria poor, and left
it loaded with riches.
Not
distinguished by a statesman’s
wisdom; but apt to charm the
chieftains of a simple people
into submission to a seductive civi
lisation. This Sardanapalus on a
small scale, whilst exerting himself
to morally fetter and corrupt the
leaders, rode rough-shod over the
people ; disregarding their native
customs; dispensing Roman law
like a praetor; making the Latin
tongue resound near the Cheruskian
homesteads as the language of the
administration and of the tribunals.
His aim was, to push the wedge of
Roman dominion into the very
heart of Germany. The old plan
of Drusus was to be carried out: the
lictor’s fasces were to be promenaded
from the Rhine to the Elbe.
Of the German chieftains placed
with Varus as a means of influencing
the surrounding tribes, Armin,
Segimer, and Segest were the most
prominent—the latter a staunch
adherent of Roman rule; the two
former, as events proved, good
patriots at heart. Young Armin,
then but twenty-five years of age,
became the soul of the national
conspiracy for the overthrow of the
foreign yoke. Segest, his fatherin-law, who afterwards bore him
so deep a grudge because Thus
nelda had become Armin’s wife
in spite of the paternal pro-
2 Thusnelda’s name has been variously interpreted. The explanation given, that it
means ‘A Thousand Graces’ (Tausendhold), is no doubt a mistaken one. Others have
suggested ‘ Thursinhiid,’ which would give a martial, Bellona-like meaning of the word.
�1875]
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
test,, was excluded from the se
cret patriotic council. Soon get
ting, however, an inkling of the
occult doings, Segest,by denouncing
them to Varus, very nearly brought
about the failure of the whole
movement. On the eve of the out
break, as an earnest of his fidelity
to the Romans, he even asked to
be placed in chains, together with
Armin and the other German leaders,
until the truth would become patent.
Fortunately, Varus disbelieved the
timely warning. Under cover of
raising some auxiliaries for the
quelling of an alleged insurrection,
Armin was enabled to depart, and
at once put himself at the head of
the national rising.
Enough had the young Cheruskian seen of the superior armament
and the military science of the Ro
mans ; too well was he acquainted
with the difficulties of meeting at
one and the same time their excel
lent warlike organisation and the
strength they derived from the
bravery of German, Gaulish, and
other troops in their pay, for him
not to lay his plan cautiously, so as
to balance, to some extent, these
immense advantages of the hostile
army. His design therefore was, to
lure Varus into the depths of the
pathless Teutoburg Forest. By a
series of stratagems he fully suc
ceeded in this.
The Roman Governor, at the head
of his legions, encumbered with a
long train of baggage, was made
to enter a ground where at every
step a clearance had to be ef
fected with the axe; where thick
woods, narrow gorges, impetuous
forest-brooks offered numberless ob
stacles, and the swampy soil often
became slippery from torrents of rain.
Nature conspired, on this memorable
occasion, to render the terrors of the
wilderness more ghastly. A tem
pest of unusual fierceness broke
over the primeval forest, when Varus
245
stuck in the middle of the thicket.
Mountain-spates inundated the
ground. Trees of enormous age
fell, shaken by the storm and struck
by the lightning. The roar of
thunder smothered the cries of
those that staggered under the
weight of falling branches. In short
intervals, the blue zigzag light of
heaven lit up the mysterious re
cesses of the wood, only to fill the
minds of the Roman soldiers with
greater fear when, in the next mo
ment, all was dark again. At last,
a glimpse of sun shone through
the dark forest. Then, of a sudden,
the encircling hills resounded with
the terrific war-cries of the Ger
mans who barred every issue,
compelling their foe to a contest
in which military science went for
nothing.
We know that the Germans of
that time, though a nation of
warriors, given to continued war
like practice, and tolerably advanced
also in several branches of industry,
were armed in a very poor way.
Few wore a helmet, or harness.
Not many even had good swords ;
the quality of the iron used being
such that, after a few strokes, it
easily bent. Their shields, of great
size, were made of thin wicker
work, or of wood, not even covered
with iron or leather; but painted
over with figures—the only orna
ment they used in their war-array.
The infantry and cavalry alike car
ried a shield and a number of short
spears, which could be thrown, or
used for hand-to-hand fight. The
first ranks of their infantry used
lances of great length. The hind
ranks had only short wooden
spears, the points of which were
hardened in the fire;3 and not tipped
with iron. In a regular attack the
Germans massed their forces in
wedge-shape; but by preference
they fought in loose order, each
man displaying his gymnastic agi-
See the speech of Germanicus, in Tacitus’ Annals, ii. 14.
�246
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
lity, of which Roman writers
have noted down some remarkable
instances. The more well-to-do
among those fur- or linen-clad
Teutonic warriors wore tight suits,
which seemed to hamper them
in fighting. When their blood was
up, they therefore often put aside
their upper garments, rushing into
battle in true Berserker style—
singing their wild heroic songs.
Such was the foe that Varus had
to meet.
I rapidly pass over the details of
the Teutoburg Battle—how a hail
of short spears and arrows came
down from the hill-sides upon the
troops of Varus; ho w, after a carnage,
they gained an open space, and
hurriedly erected a fortified camp ;
how, having burnt many of the
vehicles and less necessary imple
ments, they continued their march,
but were once more led into thick
woods, when a new massacre
occurred—the foot soldiery and
the horse being wedged together in
helpless confusion. Bor three days
the attacks were resumed. The third
day brought the crowning misery of
the Romans. Many cast away their
weapons. Varus, in despair, threw
himself on his sword, and died. Of
the Prefects, Lucius Eggius bravely
defended himself to the last. His
colleague, Cejonius, surrendered.
Vala Numonius, the legate, was
killed in an attempted flight.
Caldus Caelius, made prisoner, beat
his own brains out with the chains
with which he was manacled. Three
legions were destroyed. Two eagles
fell into German hands. A third
eagle was saved from them by the
banner-bearer, who covered it with
his belt, and trod it into the morass.
The rear-guard, led by Lucius Asprenas, the nephew of Varus, fled
towards the Rhine, and was able
yet to restrain the populations on
the other side of the river from
rising in rebellion against Roman
rule.
On hearing of the disaster, Au-
[ August
gustus pushed his head against the
wall, and exclaimed: ‘ Varus! Varus I
give me back my legions!’ Such
was the fear of a new invasion of Teu
tons andKimbrians that all Germans
were removed from Rome, even
the Emperor’s bodyguard ; the city
was placed in a state of defence;
and the Imperator, letting his hair
and beard grow as a sign of dejec
tion, vowed to Jupiter a temple and
solemn games, if he would grant
better fortune to the Commonwealth.
Tiberius, then at the head of the
army in Pannonia, was in all haste
recalled for the better security of
Rome.
This great Teutoburg Battle had
freed the land between the Lower
Rhine and the Weser ; but no ad
vantage was taken of the victory
by the much-divided German tribes.
A few years afterwards, the Romans
were enabled to make a sudden
attack upon the Marsians (near
Osnabriick), during a nocturnal fes
tival of that German tribe. On the
occasion of this raid, the famous
Tanfana temple was destroyed, the
name of which has given so much
trouble to archaeologists, and which
was one of the few temples the
forest-worshipping Germans pos
sessed. Osnabriick, like the Osning
range of hills, no doubt derives its
name from the Asen, Osen, or Aesir,
the Teutonic gods: so that there
was probably a great sanctuary in
that neighbourhood, similar to the
one on Heligoland (Holy Land), or
perhaps in the isle of Riigen.
Another unexpected raid was ef
fected by young Germanicus, five
years after the Teutoburg Battle,
into Chattian (Hessian) territory.
Most probably he crossed the Rhine
near Mainz; followed the road to
wards what is now Homburg; thence
to the country where Giessen and
Marburg now are, which latter may
be what the Roman and Greek au
thors called Mattium and Marriak-dr.
Others believe Mattium to be the
present Maden, near Gudesberg.
�1875]
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
According to their cruel practice,
the Romans, during this inroad,
‘ captured or killed all that were
defenceless on account of age or
sexi The German youth had en
deavoured to offer resistance by
swimming over the river Adrana
(evidently the Edder of to-day),
and trying to prevent the erection
of a bridge; but, received by a
shower of arrows and spears, they
were driven back into the forests.
On returning from their expedition,
the Romans destroyed Mattium, the
chief place of the Chattians, and
devastated the fields. So Tacitus
himself relates.
Soon afterwards we come upon a
tragic incident in Armin’s career.
His father-in-law, Segest, compelled
by the people’s voice to side with
the national cause, had once more
turned traitor. After having suc
ceeded for a time in capturing and
placing chains upon the Liberator,
Segest was, in his turn, beleaguered
in his stronghold, with a great
many of his blood relations and fol
lowers. Among the noble women
in his fort was his own daughter,
Thusnelda, of whom he seems to
have got possession during this in
ternecine warfare. Pressed hard by
his besiegers, Segest, by a secret
message, asked the Roman general
to bring relief. Segest’s own son,
Segimund, who once had been or
dained as a priest among the Ro
mans in Gaul, but who in the year of
the great rising had torn the priestly
insignia from his forehead, and gone
over to the ‘ rebels,’ was made,
against his own conscience, to
carry the father’s message to the
Romans. In this way relief came,
and Segest was freed. But Thus
nelda was led into Roman capti
vity—‘having more of her hus
band’s, than of her father’s, spirit;
not moved to tears; not of imploring
voice; her hands folded under her
bosom; her eyes glancing down on
her pregnant body ’ (gravidum
uterum intuens).
247
Stepping forth—a man of great
personal beauty, and of towering
height,—the very image of a proud
German warrior, yet a renegade to
his fatherland—Segest held forth
in a speech which Tacitus has pre
served. In it, an attempt is made
to rebut the charge of unfaithful
ness to his country ; the traitor as
suming the part of a mediator be
tween the Romans and the Germans
—if the latter would prefer repent
ance to perdition. The speech, in
which Segest prides himself on his
Roman citizenship, conferred upon
him by the ‘ divine Augustus,’ and
in which he accuses Armin of being
‘ the robber of his daughter, the
violator of the alliance with the
Romans,’ winds up with a prayer
for an amnesty to his son Segi
mund. With regard to Thusnelda,
the heartless father added the cold
remark that she had to be brought
by force before the Roman General,
and that he may ‘judge which cir
cumstance ought by preference to
be taken into account—whether the
fact of her being pregnant by Armin,
or the fact of her being his own.
(Segest’s) offspring.’
The Romans went, in their judg
ment, by the former circumstance,
and carried Thusnelda to Ravenna,
a place of banishment for many of
their state-prisoners. It seems that
afterwards she had to reside at
Rome. Pining away under the
Italian sky, she gave birth to a son,
of the name of Thumelicus, who was
educated at Ravenna. A ‘ mocking
fate,’ Tacitus says, befel afterwards,
this son of Armin. Unfortunately,
the book containing the record is
lost.
A German drama, written
some years ago, about the real au
thorship of which there has been
much contest, but which is no
doubt by Friedrich Halm, has for
its theme the assumed fate of
Thumelik. It is called Der Fechter
von Ravenna—1 The Gladiator of
Ravenna ’—and made considerable
stir.
�248
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
Thusnelda’s misfortune forms the
subject of a splendid canvas of vast
dimensions by Professor Piloty, of
Munich. It represents her as being
led along in a triumphal entry of
Roman soldiers before the Emperor
Tiberius. At the Vienna Exhibi
tion, last year, this powerful picture
created a deep impression. We
know that in the triumph of Germanicus, Thusnelda figured with her
little son, then three years old.
Together with her, there were her
brother Segimund ; the Chattian
priest Libys ; Sesithak, the son of
the Cheruskian chief Aegimer, and
his wife Hramis, the daughter of
the Chattian chieftain Ukromer;
Deudorix (Theodorich,or Dietrich),
a brother of the Sigambrian chief
tain Melo ; and various other
German captives. Even Segest
had to show himself before the Ro
man populace, in order to swell the
triumph. There are sculptures ex
tant which Gottling thinks can be
recognised as contemporary images
of Thusnelda and Thumelik ;
Armin’s wife being represented
as wrapped up in melancholy
thoughts.
The statue of what is supposed
to be a representation of Thusnelda
is above life-size. It stands at
Florence, in the Loggia de' Lanzi.
Casts of it are at Rome and at
Dresden. Gottling regards it as
the work of the sculptor Kleomenes,
from Athens. The statue has the
German dress, as described by
Tacitus; the flowing hair of Ger
man women of old ; and the
peculiar shoes, which we know to
have been worn by Franks and
Longobards, and even later by the
[August
German people in the Middle Ages.
That which Millin, Tolken, and
Thiersch consider a smaller repre
sentation of Thusnclda, Thumelik,
and some of the other prisoners in
Germanicus’ triumph—in the Cameo
de la Sainte Chapelle at Paris—
Gottiing does not recognise as such.
In the British Museum (Roman
Antiquities, No. 43) there is a bust
which the same author looks upon
as that of Thumelik;4 but this I
believe to be a most improbable
guess.
I may mention here also that the
Teutoburg Battle, during which
Varus ran upon his own sword,
has been the subject of various
poetical attempts ; for instance, by
Klopstock and Grabbe. Heinrich
von Kleist’s drama, Die HermannsSchlacht, was written more than
sixty years ago, at the time of Ger
many’s deepest degradation, when
Napoleon ruled supreme. Kleist,
who also died from his own hand,
never had the satisfaction of seeing
his play even in print; much less
on the stage. It is, however, being
acted at present at Berlin with a
great display of scenic effects ; some
of the best German archaeologists
having lent their aid to get up a
most faithful and correct represen
tation of the costumes, arms, and
habitations of the early Teutonic
race. The run of the public on
the theatre is stated to surpass all
previous experience.
But to return to Armin’s achieve
ments. After Thusnelda had fallen
into the hands of the Romans, we
see her valiant husband, with fiery
energy, at work to rouse the Ger
man tribes. The thought of his
4 The name of Thumelicus somewhat baffles etymologists. It has been explained as
‘ Tummlichfrom tammeln—to run about quickly, or to be active and bustling; so that
it would mean Swift or Nimble. Born in captivity, Thumelicus became by law a Roman
slave; and Thymelicus was a frequent slave’s name, referring to the performances of
such slaves in the Tbymele
the open theatrical place. I would, however,
observe that Strabo gives the name of Armin’s son not as Thymelikos, but Thoumelikos
(&ovp.t\uc6s'), which he would certainly not have done, had he, as a Greek, connected it
with the Thymele. Strabo probably saw, as an eye-witness, the triumphal entry in
which Thusnelda and her son figured as captives; and he wrote before there could have
been a fixed decision as to whether little Thumelik was to become a public performer of
any kind.
�1875]
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
fatherland and his desolate home
drove him to frantic fury. In the
words of the historian, he was urged
on by the impetuosity of his nature,
as well as by his feelings of indig
nation at the fate of his wife, and
the prospect of a child of theirs
having to be born in captivity.
He sped through the Cheruskian
districts, calling for war against
Segest; for war against the Caesar.
‘ 0 the noble father I ’—he exclaimed,
in one of his patriotic harangues—
‘ 0 the great Imperator! O the
valiant Army, whose countless hands
laid hold of, and carried away, a
helpless woman ! Three legions, as
many legates, had gone down into
the dust before him (Armin). But
notin cowardly manner—not against
helpless women—but openly, against
armed men, did he make war.
There were still to be seen, in Ger
man forests, the banners of the
Romans which he had hung up
there in honour of his country’s
gods. A Segest might cultivate
the banks of a river conquered by
a foreign foe, and make his own
son resume the functions of a Ro
man priest. But the Germans as
a people would never forget that
between the Rhine and the Elbe
they had seen the fasces, the lictor’s
axes, and the togas. Other nations
there were that lived without know
ledge of Roman dominion—un
aware of its cruel executions ; un
acquainted with its oppressive im
posts. But they who had freed
themselves from such tyranny ; they
before whom Augustus, who was said
to be received into the circle of the
gods, and that egregious Tiberius,
had been unable to achieve anything
—they should not stand in fear of an
inexperienced youth and his re
bellious army. If they preferred
249
their fatherland, their parents,
their ancient laws, to a Lord and
Master, and to the new colonies
he would set up among them, then
they should rather follow Armin,
the leader of glory and freedom,
than Segest, the herald of dis
graceful bondage!’
Tacitus says of this speech that
it contains words of abuse. It con
tained only a truth not palatable to
a race which aimed at the dominion
over the world. The result of
Armin’s energetic agitation was,
that neighbouring tribes, besides
the Cheruskians, were inflamed
with patriotic ardour, and that
his uncle, Inguiomer,4 a man of
5
high standing, and of great author
ity with the Romans themselves,
was drawn into the League. True
to their policy, the Romans en
deavoured to get the better of
this new German rising by enlisting
auxiliaries among the Chaukians,
who inhabited the country now
called Eastern Friesland, and by
coming down upon the League
formed by Armin from the side of
the river Ems, as well as from the
Rhine. A colossal army and fleet
were at the command of the Roman
General. ‘ In order to divide the
enemy,’ Caecina led forty Roman
cohorts through Brukterian terri
tory to the Ems. The cavalry was
led by the Prefect Pedo to the
frontier of the Frisians. Caesar
Germanicus himself went by sea,
along the Frisian coast, at the head
of four legions. At the Ems, the
place of general appointment, the
fleet, the infantry, and the cavalry
met. Then began the work of
devastation in the country between
the Ems and the Lippe—‘ which is
not far from that Teutoburg Forest
where, according to common report,
4 Many German names have been written down by the Romans in a form which it is
difficult to recognise now. Inguiomer’s name is among the exceptions. Among the
sons of Mannus (i.e. Man), the mythic progenitor of the three chief German tribes,
there is one whose name corresponds with the first part of the name of Armin’s uncle.
In the Edda (Oegisdrecka) we find the sunny god called Ingvi-Freyr; and again, in the
heroic song of Helgakhvida, we find an Ingvi. So again, in an Anglo-Saxon genea
logical table. The ending syllable ‘ mer,’ or ‘mar,’ occurs in many German names.
�250
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
Varus and the remnants of the
legions still lay unburied.’6
The plan evidently was to sur
round the Cheruskian League; to
annihilate it at the very scene of
its earlier great triumph; or to
drive it towards the Rhine—thus
crushing it between an attack from
the East and the West. Through
swamps and morasses, over which
bridges and embankments had to
be raised, the Roman army marched
towards the fatal Tentoburg Forest.
A deep emotion seized the soldiers
when they came to the place so
hideous to them by its aspect and
memory. It was a terrible sight.
The first camp of Varus could yet
be recognised, showing, by its wide
extent and its divisions, the strength
of three legions. There was the half
sunken wall—the low ditch; indi
cating the place where the beaten
remnants of the legions had once
more attempted a resistance. In
the open spaces, bleached bones
were to be seen—scattered, or iu
heaps, even as the troops had fled,
or withstood an attack.7 Broken
spears, skeletons of horses, heads
nailed to trees; in the groves near
by, rude altars where sacrifices had
taken place : all this brought back
the harrowing incidents of the Teutoburg Battle. Some of the survivors
of the defeat, who had escaped from
the battle or from their fetters,
pointed out the most noteworthy
spots. There the legates had fallen !
There .the eagles were lost! There
Varus had received his first wound !
There he had found his death by a
sword-thrust from his own hand!
Here, Arminius had spoken from a
raised scaffolding ! Here, a gallows
had been erected for prisoners!
Here there were pits of corpses 1
On yonder spot, Arminius had wan
tonly scoffed at the Roman banners
and eagles !
[August
In melancholy mood, yet full of
wrath—as Tacitus says—the Roman
Army buried the sorry remnants of
the legions of Varus. Germanicus
himself raised the first sod for a
grave-mound. Brooding Tiberius,
always nourishing suspicion, strong
ly blamed this expedition to the
scene of the lost battle; thinking,
perhaps not without reason, that
the sight of the dead and unburied
must impress the army with greater
fear of its foe. Indeed, the new
battle which now followed was, ac
cording to Roman testimony, again
very near being lost, and remained
‘indecisive.’ That is to say, Ger
manicus hurriedly returned with
his legions to the Ems, re-embark
ing them on his fleet, whilst a por
tion of his cavalry was ordered to
follow along the shore of the Ger
man Ocean, towards the Rhine;
thus remaining wi thin hail. Caecina,
in the meanwhile, was to march
over the so-called Long Bridges—
probably the same dykes which, for
eighteen hundred years afterwards,
still led from Lingen to Kovorden,
through the Bourtang Moor.
Finding the dykes partly decayed,
Caecina had to use the shovel as well
as the sword in presence of the ha
rassing enemy. A fearful struggle
began. The Germans, with their
powerful limbs and long spears,
fought on the slippery ground and in
the morasses with wonderful agility.
From the neighbouring hill-sides,
waters were made to deviate, by
German hands, towards the place of
contest. In their heavy armature, the
Romans felt unequal to this strange
water-battle. Night at last gave
some respite, but was made hideous
by the jubilant songs of the carous
ing enemy, who filled the valleys
and the forests with the echo of their
deep-chested voices. The Romans,
‘more sleepless than watchful,’ lay
6 Tacitus, Annals, i. 6o.
7 Not far from the village of Stuckenbrock, there is a brook that still bears the name
of Knochenbach (Bones’-brook). Tradition says of it that it is so called on account of
the human bones that were frequently washed out of the ground by its waters.
�1875]
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
drearily near their palisades, or wan
dered about despairingly between the
tents. It was during that night of
terrors that Caecina, in his dream,
saw and heard Quinctilius Varus—
he rose, blood-covered, from the
morass, calling for help; yet not
accepting, but pushing back, the
proffered hand of help.
When day broke, Armin rushed
upon the Romans, shouting : c Ho !
Varus again ! and, by the same fate,
twice-vanquished legions !’ With a
body of picked men, he in person
cuts through the Roman troops; in
flicting wounds especially on their
horses. They, throwing their riders,
and trampling on the fallen men,
create confusion throughout the
ranks.
Caecina himself, flung
from his horse, is nearly surrounded,
and with difficulty saved by the
first legion. After a prolonged
massacre, darkness even brings no
end to the misery. There are no
sapper’s tools ; no tents ; no band
ages for the wounded. The food is
soiled with blood and dirt. Wail
ing and despair everywhere.
A
night alarm is created by a horse
that has got loose. The Romans,
believing that the Germans have
broken into the camp, fly towards
the gate on the opposite side, and
are only stopped at last by Caecina,
whose admonitions and prayers
had been fruitless, throwing himself
bodily on the ground to bar the
gate, whilst the tribunes and the
centurions assure the soldiers that
the alarm was a groundless one.
Had Armin’s more prudent tac
tics been carried out to the last; had
not Inguiomer’s passionate advice
to storm the Roman camp pre
vailed in the German council of
war, the legions of Caecina would
have been annihilated as those of
Varus had been. As it was, the
fortune of battle was restored to
the Romans; Armin leaving the
ground of contest unharmed, whilst
Inguiomer received a severe wound.
Caecina’s troops effected their re
251
treat. The fleet of Gernianicus,
who had taken the remainder of
the army with him, was in the
meanwhile wrecked in the German
Ocean by a storm-flood, and gene
rally believed to be lost, until that
part of the army also came back,
after many sufferings and losses.
On the Rhine, the rumour that
the Roman army was hemmed in,
and that the Germans were march
ing towards Gaul, gave rise to such
fears that the bridge over which the
retreating legions were to come
would have been pulled down, had
not Agrippina, the granddaughter
of Augustus, and wife of Germanicus, placed herself there with her
little son, the future Emperor Cali
gula, whom she had dressed in the
garb of a legionary. By personally
receiving and encouraging the re
turning soldiers, she stayed the
apprehensions, and prevented the
destruction of the bridge. So miser
ably ended a campaign which had
been destined to be a War of Re
venge for the Battle in the Teutoburg Forest.
Again we find the Romans re
turning to their plan of conquering
the country between the Rhine and
the Weser by a simultaneous attack
from the land side and from the
shores of the German Ocean. An
even more colossal army and fleet is
under the orders of their General.
Again they come with auxiliaries of
Teuton origin; but some of these—
the Angrivarians—rise in their rear.
On the Roman side there is, this
time, Armin’s own brother, Flavus —so called on account of his
flaxen or golden hair. Like Segest,
he had kept with his country’s
enemies, even after the great victory
of the German arms. There is a
pathetic account, in Tacitus’ Annals,
of an interview between the two
brothers, standing on the opposite
banks of the Weser, when Armin
endeavoured to gain over Flavus
to the national cause. The inter
view took place with Roman per-
�252
Arinin, the Liberator of Germany.
mission. Armin, after having saluted
his brother, who had lost an eye in
battle, asked him whence that dis
figuration of his face ? On hearing
of the cause, and of the reward
received for it—namely, a neck
chain, a crown, and other insignia
—the Liberator laughs scornfully
at ‘ those contemptible prizes of
slavery.’ Thereupon they speak
against one another : Flavus extol
ling Latin power, pointing to the
severe punishments that await the
vanquished, and to the mercy ex
tended to the submissive. On his
part, Armin speaks to his brother
of his country’s rights; of their
ancient native freedom; of Ger
many’s own gods; of the prayers
of their mother; of the calls of their
kith and kin. ‘Is it better,’ he
exclaims, ‘ to be a deserter from, and
a traitor against, your people, than
to be their leader and their chief
tain ? ’
Filled with anger, Golden-Hair
hurriedly asks for his horse and
weapons from those near him;
wishing to cross over with fratri
cidal purpose. With difficulty is he
restrained. Armin answers with
threats, announcing new battles;
and many sentences he uttered, be
tween his German speech, in Latin,
so that the Romans also might
understand him.
Soon the struggle recommences.
We see Cariovalda (probably ‘Heerwalt,’ i.e. Army-leader), the chief
of the Batavian auxiliaries, falling
under Cheruskian blows in a plain
surrounded by wooded hills. News
comes to the Roman General by a
German runaway that Armin has
fixed the place where he will give
battle to the Romans; that other
tribes also are assembled in the
‘Grove of Hercules’ (undoubtedly
a grove devoted to Thunar, the God
of the Tempests) ; and that a noc
[August
turnal attack upon the Roman camp
is intended. Meanwhile the bold
ness of the Germans becomes such
that one of their men who knows the
Latin tongue, spurs on his horse to
the camp wall, and with powerful
voice, in the name of Armin, makes
sundry joyful promises to those
who will desert from the Roman
Army. We hear Germanicus rousing
the courage of his troops ; Armin
on his part asks his men what else
there is to be done than ‘ to main
tain their freedom, or to die before
falling into bondage ? ’
We then see the Roman Army,
composed of many legions, and
with picked cavalry, marching for
ward with Gallic and German
auxiliaries to the Battle of Idistaviso. The locality of that battle
is not clearly fixed. Maybe, that
‘Idistaviso’ means Leister-Wiese —
the Meadow of the Deister Hills.8
In this case, the battle-field would
be near Minden. Others place it
near Vegesack, in the vicinity of
Bremen. It is reported that in
this battle Armin, easily to be
distinguished by his bravery, his
voice, and his wound, for some
time maintained the contest; rush
ing through the enemy’s bowmen,
and only stopped by the Rhaetian,
the Vindelician, and the Gallic co
horts-—all men of other nationality
than the Roman. In danger of beingsurrounded, he breaks away from
his foes by his vehement valour
and the impetuosity of his charger.
His face is smeared over with
blood—perhaps purposely done, to
avoid recognition. Some say that
the Chaukian auxiliaries of the
Romans did recognise him, but let
him pass through unhurt. Though
mercenaries themselves, they could
not harm the Deliverer—a touching
trait! In similar manner, Inguiomer saved himself. The result of
* A mythological explanation of the name of that field is, that it means the Meadow
of the Divine Virgins; or of the Walkyres—Virgins of Battle. Instead of Idistaviso,
Idiasa-Viso has been suggested to sustain this interpretation.
�1875]
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
the battle was claimed as a victory
by the Romans, who boast of a
great massacre among the van
quished Germans.
But another battle presently
followed ; the German tribes being
roused to fury by the sight of a
triumphal monument which the
Romans had raised, with an in
scription of the names of the popula
tions they thought they had van
quished. ‘The people, the nobles,
the youth, the old men, suddenly
fell upon the Roman Army,
throwing it into confusion.’ So
Tacitus says.
Armin, suffering
from a wound, is not present
during this new engagement. Inguiomer, who rushes through the
ranks, with words of cheer, is
forsaken by Fortune rather than by
his courage. Germanicus recom
mends his troops ‘ not to make any
prisoners, but to continue the carn
age, as the war could be ended only
by the extermination of that people.’
The main victory was again claimed
by the Romans, although their
cavalry fought, according to their
own testimony, indecisively.
Raising a monument of arms,
a mendacious inscription on which
spoke of a victory over ‘ the na
tions between the Rhine and the
Elbe,’ the Roman General re
turned, by way of the Ems, to
the German Ocean, when the
fleet was again wrecked, and
Germanicus, in a trireme, driven
to the Chaukian shore. With diffi
culty was he restrained from seek
ing death, accusing himself of this
misfortune. Some of his wrecked
soldiers found shelter on the Frisian
islands. Many had to be freed by
ransom from captivity among the
inhabitants of the interior. Some,
driven as far as the British shores,
were sent back by the kinglets of
that country.
Barring a few fresh Roman inroads
into Chattian and Marsian territory,
there was an end, henceforth, of
Latin power in those regions of
north-western Germany. The fol
253
lowing years are filled with the
struggle between Marobod, the
German ruler in Bohemia, who had
assumed the title of King, and
Armin, the ‘Championof Freedom.’
Suevian tribes, Semnones and
Longobards, dissatisfied with Marobod’s royal pretensions, went over
to the Liberator, whose influence
would now have been paramount,
had not dissension once more
broken out by the defection of
Inguiomer.
Priding himself on
the superior wisdom of older age,
he would not obey his younger
nephew, Armin, and went over to
Marobod; thus helping to divide
Germany from within. In the words
of the Roman historian, the different
tribes had, ‘ after the retreat of the
Romans, and being no longer
apprehensive of foreign enemies,
become jealous of each other’s
glory, and turned their weapons
against themselves, in accordance
with the custom of that nation.
The strength of the contending
populations, the bravery of the
chiefs, were equal. But Marobod’s
royal title was hateful to his
countrymen, whilst Armin, the
Champion of Freedom, possessed
their favour.’
With an army of 70,000 men and
4,000 horse, organised and officered
on the Roman system, the Markoman
King opposed the Cheruskian leader.
North and South were ranged as
foes against each other—a spectacle
too often seen in later centuries!
It is reported that Marobod, though
for some time looked upon and
treated by the suspicious Romans
as a possible enemy, who might
threaten their possessions south of
the Danube, and even Italy itself,
yet endeavoured to keep on good
terms with them. When Armin,
after the defeat of Varus, sent the
head of the Roman general as a
pledge of victory to Marobod, the
latter hastened to return it to the
Romans for honourable burial. In
the hour of Marobod’s misfortune
the Romans, however, only re-
�254
Armin, the Liberator of Germany.
membered that he had not aided
them in their contest against the
Clieruskians. Imploring—after an
indecisive battle, and much weak
ened by desertion—some succour
from Tiberius, the Markoman ruler
was refused all help ; and becoming
a fugitive, had to go, more as a
prisoner than as an exile, to that
same Ravenna, where Thusnelda
ended her days in grief, far from
her northern forest-home.
The
young Gothic duke Catualda, or
Chatuwalda, who in the meanwhile
stormed Marobod’s capital, was in
his turn expelled by another German
tribe, the Hermundures ; and flying
also to the Romans, died in distant
Gaul. Verily, a series of sad pic
tures of such discord as made the
Roman historian say that if the
gods wished to stay the impending
fate of his own nation, they should
for ever keep up dissension among
the Germans.
Still, even these dissensions,
albeit delaying, could not prevent,
the fall of the Roman Empire.
Frisian, Batavian,Markoman risings,
the latter lasting for twenty years,
followed, in course of time, upon
Armin’s struggles. And who knows
whether in the later Germanic on
slaught on Rome, the hosts of Goths,
Herulians, Longobards, may not
have marched forth to the sound of
heroic songs that praised Armin’s
deeds ?—songs probably still extant
in the ninth century, under the
Frankish Karl ; forming part of
those collected by him, but unfor
tunately lost for us.
We now rapidly come to Armin’s
end. We hear of a knavish pro
posal for poisoning him, made to
the Roman Senate by a Chattian
chieftain, Adgandester. The same
historian who describes the refusal
of the Senate to accede to poison,
considers it a simple matter that a
Chaukian leader, Gannask, was got
rid of by means not very dissimilar.
[August
The last days of the Victor of the
Teutoburg Battle are enveloped in
doubt and mystery. It is said that,
after the withdrawal of the Romans
and the overthrow of Marobod,
he, too, was suspected of aiming at
dominion, and was opposed by his
freedom-loving countrymen, against
whom he struggled with varying
success. Roman report states this
in a few lines. But it would be
difficult, in the absence of all
further testimony, to decide whe
ther the ‘ love of freedom ’ of his
opponents was a people’s spirit
of self-government, or merely
the jealousy of minor chief
tains whom the Romans would
gladly have seen fritter away all
German national cohesion.
At
last, Armin, at the age of thirty
seven, ‘ fell by the treachery of his
relations ’—that is to say, was mur
dered.
Of him Tacitus writes:—‘With
out doubt, Arminius was Germany’s
Deliverer (Arminius Liberator baud
dubie Germaniae)—one who had not
warred against the early beginnings
of the Roman people, like other
princes or army-leaders, but against
the Empire at the height of its
power. Of chequered fortune in
war, he was never vanquished in
battle. Thirty-seven years of hislife,
twelve of his power did he com
plete : his glory is still sung among
the barbarian nations ; unknown he
is to the annals of the Greeks,9 who
only admire tlieir own deeds; not
sufficiently praised is his name by
the Romans, it being our custom
to extol the past, and not to care
for the events of more recent days.’
This prai se, coming from an enemy,
is the greatest that could have been
given; and no prouder inscription
could be placed on the Memorial
which is to be inaugurated in the
Teutoburg Forest than the Latin
words : ‘ Liberator Germaniae.’
9 Still, Strabo—before the time of Tacitus—mentions Armin,
later by Dio Cassius.
Karl Blind.
The same was done
�The Development of Psychology.
405
of that theory of the secular transmission of mental acquisitions
which has become so familiar that it is now difficult to appreciate
its daring originality. Feeling, like Reason, arises out of instinct;
and emotions of the greatest complexity, power, and abstractness
are formed out of the simple aggregation of large groups of
emotional states into still larger groups through endless past ages.
Thus out of the feeble beginnings of life have been woven all
the manifestations of mind, up to the highest abstractions of
a Hegel and the infinitely complex and voluminous emotions
of a Beethoven. Well may a French writer say :—“ Si on la rapproche par la pensee des tentatives de Locke et de Condillac sur ce
sujet, la genese sensualiste paraitra d’une simplicity eufantine.”*
Hitherto the psychologist, proceeding objectively, has made no
use of consciousness ; and it is now necessary, in order to justify
the findings of the synthetic method, to examine consciousness in
the only possible way—by analysis. Setting out with the highest
conceivable display of mind, compound quantitative reasoning, he
tracks all the mental phenomena down to that which is only a
change in consciousness, the establishment of the relation of
sequence, and proves that the genesis of intelligence has advanced
in the same way as was shown in the synthesis—by the establish
ment and consolidation of relations of increasing complexity. Thus
throughout all the phenomena of mind there exists a unity of
composition; and the doctrines of innate ideas, intuitions by gift
of God, supernatural revelations, mysticism of all kinds, have the
ground cut from under them.
The very great extension of plan which Mr. Spencer’s work
received between 1855 and 1870-2 was due solely to the creation
of his own philosophy of evolution. That in its turn had its
initiative in the theory of the correlation of forces advanced by
Grove in 1842. As the new philosophy conceived all existence
to result from evolution through differentiation and integration, it was incumbent on Mr. Spencer to show that mental
phenomena, or at least the physical correlatives of them, can be
interpreted in terms of the redistribution of matter and motion,
and explained by a series of deductions from the persistence of
force. This is the task of a Physical Synthesis, which shows the
structure and functions of the nervous system to have resulted
from intercourse between the organism and its environment.
And thus is laid the coping-stone of a treatise which has defini
tively constituted Psychology a science.
With the definitive constitution of the science our inquiry,
which began with the differentiation of its subject-matter, comes
to an end. We have seen mind slowly emancipating itself from
* Ribot, “ La Psycbologie Anglaise,” p. 215.
[Vol. CI. No. CC.j—New Series, Vol. XLV. No. II.
EE
�406
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
the barbaric Cosmos, and raised into an independent object of
speculation. Once “ differentiated’ it begins itself to unfold, and
at the same time to gather round it the at first alien facts of
sensation, appetite, and bodily feeling generally. These are in
creasingly matter of inquiry, and theories respecting them take the
hue and shape of the sciences which relate to the material world.
The science of motion evolves, and the idea of orderly sequence
enters into Psychology. Natural Philosophy rises from motion to
force, and Psychology passes from conjunction to causation. Che
mistry tears aside a corner of nature’s veil, and a shaft is sunk in a
mysterious field of mind. The sciences of organic nature receive
a forward impulse, and mind and life are joined in inextricable
union. A philosophy of the universe, incorporating all the
sciences, is created, and Psychology, while attaining increased
independence as regards the adjacent sciences, is merged in that
deductive science of the Knowable which has more widely
divorced, and yet more intimately united, the laws of matter
and of mind.
Art. VII.—The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
1. Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und Sacherkldrungen. Begriindet von Franz Pfeiffer. Erster
Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus. 1870.
2. Das Leben Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig : B. G.
Triibner. 1865.
N the history of German literature no period is more inte
resting, than that short classical epoch at the end of the twelfth
century and the beginning of the thirteenth, which gave rise to the
literature written in Middle High German. More especially does
it attract attention, because within very narrow limits it com
prises many and great names, but above all it is remarkable
because within these limits it saw the birth and death of a new
kind of poetry, a poetry of an entirely different character from
that of the old epic poems. They were grand, massive, and
objective ; the new style was light, airy, plaintive, and subjective.
To this style belongs the German Minnesong. The songs of three
hundred Minnesingers are preserved all belonging to this short
period. In their themes there is not much variety. The changes
of the seasons, and the changes of a lover’s mood do not in fact
present a wide range of subjects to the lyric poet. And most of
the Minnesongs are confined to these. But the following simile
seems true. If any one enters a wood in summer time, and listens
I
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Armin, the liberator of Germany
Creator
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Blind, Karl
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 243-254 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed in double columns. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Fraser's Magazine 12 (August 1875).
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[s.n.]
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1875
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CT37
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Germany
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English
Arminius
Conway Tracts
Germany
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1G4
AND
By Karl Blind.
The German nation, which is not a political product of to-day, as someappear to think, but which was knit together nearly a thousand years
ago, in a union far more efficient than the incomplete one at present
existing, has, like its western neighbour, enjoyed an early literary
development. A rugged, heroic poetry, and some religious chaunts,
which have come down to us in a fragmentary form, mark the most
ancient time. Between the twelfth and the fourteenth century, Ger
many has had her minnesinger, or troubadours. After that, a school of
meistersinger flourished in the towns, until that gigantic cataclysm
occurred—the Thirty Years’ War, during which the nation’s life-blood
ebbed out whilst its soul was panting for spiritual freedom.
Then the ‘princes,’1 who by law were mere provincial governors, but
who had for some time past aspired to sovereignty and endeavoured to
set up particular dynasties, began to tear the Empire to shreds. The
popular forces which in the various Republican (Eidgenossen) Leagues,
and in the War of the Peasants during the Reformation movement,
had sought to reorganise the nation on a democratic basis, were no
longer in the field. The princes thus had it all their own way; and
Germany who once had undoubtedly been an indivisible union—not a
mere confederacy of sovereign states, but a real Union—became split
up into a medley of petty principalities over whom merely a shadow of
Imperial rule flitted, until that shadow, too, was formally done away
with in 1806, when the Corsican conqueror lorded it over Continental
Europe.
During the colossal misfortune which befel Germany in consequence
of the terrible struggle of the seventeenth century, it seemed for a while1
as if her intellectual light were extinguished. Her very language, with
1 Fiirsten, which originally did not mean sovereign rulers, but simply the first or
foremost of the high aristocracy—a meaning that word still had at Luther’s time.
�GERMAN TROUBADOURS.
165
its combined strength and aptitude for musical development, becamebarbarised. It sank down to the level of a rude dialect. Only gradually,,
oui’ literature, which had had so promising a beginning, recovered the
lost ground, but at last attained once more a development the extent,
beauty, grandeur, and richness of which is now universally acknowledged
even by a nation in which an unapproachable poetical master-mind has
risen.
There is a great break between the Master-singer epoch and the litera
ture of which Goethe and Schiller are the foremost representatives. Yetz
Goethe was, as he himself confesses, deeply indebted to that particular
poet of the Master-singer school who is best known by name, though
not by his works, namely, to Hans Sachs, the much-vilified ‘ shoemaking
rhymester’ of Nuremberg. ‘ In order to find a congenial poetical soil on
which we could plant our foot, in order to discover an element on which
we could breathe freely’—says the author of Wahrheit und Dichtung—
‘we had to go back a few centuries, when solid capabilities rose splendidly
from a chaotic condition; and thus we entered into friendly intercourse;
with the poetry of those bygone ages. The minne-singers were too far
removed from us. We would first have had to study their language
and that did not suit us. Our object was to live, and not to learn..
Hans Sachs, the truly masterly poet, was nearest to us. A genuine talent,,
although not in the manner of those knights and courtiers; but a quaint
citizen, even as we boasted of being ! His didactic realism agreed with
our tendency; and we used, on many occasions, his easy rhythm, his
facile rhyme.’
So Goethe, who, moreover, in his ‘ Poetical Mission of Hans Sachs,’1
has fervently sung the praise of the citizen poet, uttering strange curses
against ‘the folk that would not acknowledge their master,’ and con
demning them to ‘ be banished into the frog-pond,’ instead of dwelling
on the serene heights where genuine bards throne in glory.
If a Goethe could thus speak of a master-singer, that often-despised
school of town’s-poets may, after all, merit some notion. The proper
judgment of the rise and origin of the Meister-singer is, however, gene
rally obscured at the very outset by the unduly sharp division made between
their early representatives and the chivalric Minstrels of Love. Minnesong and Master-song are reckoned to bear their antagonistic difference
in their very appellations. Yet, the apparently distinctive name of
£ Meister’ was applied already to poets in the period in which we gene
rally assume that the German troubadours flourished. On the other
hand, the word 1 minne-singer ’ is of quite recent date. It was Bodmer
who first used it in the last century : and this comparatively new word
1 Hans Sachsens poetische Sendung.
�16G
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
then gave rise to 'an over-strained division-line which is detrimental to
a proper understanding. Grimm at least, the great authority, has deci
dedly laid it down’as his’opinion that the Troubadour-song and the Master
song in Germany are not only not to be thus divided, but that they have
a close affinity in their essential points. Docen and von der Hagen
■have upheld the contrary view. ‘The Minne andMeister-song,’—Grimm
says ‘ are one plant, which at first was sweet; which in its older age
•developed into a degree of acerbity; and which at last necessarily became
woody. But unless we go back to the days of its youth, we shall never
comprehend the branches and twigs which have sprouted forth from it.’
Even the usual separation into ‘ chivalric’ poets and ‘civic’poets must
be accepted with some caution. Among the crowd of lyric bards whose
songs have been handed down to us in that famous collection attributed
to Riidger von Maness, the splendid manuscript of which is still, in spite
-of the Peace of Frankfort, retained by the French, there are not a few
singers of humble descent and calling. We there meet with a clerk, a
schoolmaster, a fisherman, a smith, and other mechanics—even a poet
■of the much persecuted race of the Hebrews, namely, the Jew Siisskind,
of Trimberg. That which we possess of him, is poetry of a more abstract,
philosophical character, a kind of Solomonic wisdom, not untinged with
melancholy. In the midst of priestly fanaticism, he sings of the free
dom of thought. ‘ Thought penetrates through stone and steel; Thought
travels quicker over the field than the quickest glance of eyes ; Thought
rises high up in the air above the soaring eagle.’ No doubt, this Jewish
Marquis Posa had, as he himself relates, at last to leave the poetic art,
finding little favour among its noble patrons. In bitter disappointment
he- complains that he is travelling on the fool’s high-road (ich var ilf der
toren vart), and says he will give it up, grow a long beard of gray hairs,
live in the manner of the old Jews, clad in a long mantle, with a capa’
■cious hood, walking along with lowly gait, and trying to forget that he
had ever sung at courts.
The vast majority of those whom we now call minne-singers were no
doubt of noble descent. Some of our emperors were befriended by the
muse. Even Henry VI., that iron ruler, is reckoned among the trouba
dours ; his lay : ‘ Ich grueze mit gesang die suezen, die ich vermiden niht
wil, noch enmac ’ is one of the most touching :
I greet with song that sweetest lady
Whom I can ne’er forget;
Though many a day is past and gone
Since face to face we met.
Frederick II, too, another German ruler of the Suabian house of
Hohenstaufen, struck the lyre; but as he composed in the Italian
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
167
tongue, he cannot be included among our own troubadours. Great
depth of feeling marks his song: i Di dolor mi conviene cantare.' An
excellent English translation, under the title of ‘ My Lady in Bondage,’
is to be found in ‘ The Early Italian Poets, from Ciullo D’Alcamo to
Dante Alghieri,’ by G. D. Rossetti. Some have fancied to see in this
song of the free-thinking German emperor an allusion to the captivity of
the Church, a Symbolisation of religious ideas. This view is undoubtedly
a most erroneous one; Frederick’s lay has as much to do with the
Church as the Song of Solomon has.
But though king-emperors, dukes, princes and counts, had a slight part
in the literary productions of that age, the main strength of the minnesinging brotherhood resided in men of less ambitious descent, who had
sprung from the lower nobility, and who were generally gifted with very
small worldy goods, if with any at all. Uhland, in his otherwise so
beautiful Tale of German Poesy (Mahrchen), which describes the dif
ferent periods of our literature in a charming Dornröschen allegory, calls
German poesy a ‘princely child,’1 and a ‘princess.’ The great connois
seur of our ancient literature, who knew better when he wrote in prose,
allowed himself, in his ‘ Tale,’ to be beguiled into this mis-statement
by the seduction which the Dornröschen myth naturally offered. The
truth is, the mass of our early lyric bards were, in rank, only removed a
degree from the generality of freemen. Some of them pass even wrongly
1 Zwo macht’ge Feen nahten
Dem schönen Fürstenkind;
An seine Wiege traten
Sie mit dem Angebind ....
Und als es kam zu Jahren,
Ward es die schönste Frau,
Mit langen, goldnen Haaren,
Mit Augen dunkelblau ....
Viel stolze Ritter gingen
Der Holden Dienste nach:
Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Sie gingen in Stahl und Eisen,
Goldharfen iij der Hand;
Die Fürstin war zu preisen,
Die solche Diener fand.
Von alter Städte Mauern
Der Wiederhall erklang ;
Die Bürger und die Bauern
Erhüben frischen Sang.
�168
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
as members of the nobiliary order. For instance, it is by no moanssure that Walter von der Vogelweide was of aristocratic origin; the con
trary is more probable in fact. Again, as I have above remarked, there
were, among the poets of that period, not a few whose civic character is.
beyond question. These circumstances have to be mentioned, in order
to show how difficult it is to draw a strong line of demarcation between
minnesinger and meistersinger, at least in the intermediary stage dur
ing which they blend, whilst afterwards no doubt a change occurs—im
perceptible at first, and only later of the most pronounced kind.
The master-singers regarded themselves as the continuators of the old
poetry. Among the 1 Twelve Masters ’ who, the legend says, founded
the poetical schools in the cities, Frauenlob, Klingsor, Walter von der
Vogelweide, the Marner, and Reinmar von Zweter are named—all un
doubtedly troubadours, although by no means all belonging to the nobili
ary order. I need not say that this alleged formal foundation of a
master-singer guild is as much a myth as Arthur’s Round Table. Chrono
logically, the Twelve Masters could not have acted together ; nor
could they have done what the fable relates, in the reign of Otto the
Great under whom the event is said to have taken place. Nevertheless,,
even that myth shows that the Meister-singer felt some contact with their
predecessors. And indeed there are, among what are now called the
Minne-singer, several who are remarkably like some of the later didac
tic, sententious master-singers. Again, among the towns’-poets, especially
among those who are reckoned as precursors of the school, some by far
excel, in fervour and chivalric colouring, their aristocratic prototypes. The
master-singers called their own art ‘ die holdselige Kzmstfl an appellation
reminding us of the ‘ science gaye ’ of the Provençal troubadours, among,
which latter however—in the words of Gorres—‘the ardent breath of
Moorish poetry is felt,’ whilst among the minne-singer, and still more
among the majority of the meister-singer, a colder tone prevails.
Territorially also, the Master-song coincides with the Minne-song.
It extended from the Upper Rhine, from Alsace, then a very cradle of
German culture, into Franconia, Bavaria, Thuringia, and partly alsoLowei' Germany, or Saxony, as it was then called. It was mainly the
South and the West on which both forms of poetry grew up—the one sprout
ing forth from the other. At Toulouse also, as Grimm remarks, the last
remnants of Provençal poetry, the jeuxfloraux, lingered on the same spot
where they had flourished of old.
And even as the later master-singers composed their lays according
to set rules, so we find 1 rules ’ and ‘ masters ’ already among the chivalric
poets in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Nor could it well be
otherwise if we remembei- the form and figure of the Poetic Art of those
early ages. Now-a-days, in thinking of poems, we have a notion
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
169
of some book that is to be read, of some production composed in the
solitude of a study, and destined to be conveyed into the mind of others
through the medium of the eye. But the minne-singer were yet bards
in the ancient Orphic fashion. They really sang; their delivery was
essentially a chaunting one. Hence the birds on the flowery meadow
play such a part in their lays. Hence those poets, not quite inaptly,
Called themselves ‘ nightingales.’ In this respect also, the two poetic cir
cles have a point of contact which ought to be kept in mind, for the
Meister-Singer, like their predecessors, never delivered their productions
■Otherwise than in singing. Their name, therefore, was not a mere figure
of speech.
Germany was then, even in a higher degree than now, a country full
•of song. The melodies, some of which have been preserved, were simple
•enough; but the whole nation delighted in the repetition of those strains ;
•and song, which was but another word for poetry, was almost invariably
•connected with dance. Dance, among all nations of ancient time, is
not simply an amusement, but at the same time an act of consecration :
in the earliest ages a religious, sacrificial performance. It is as if the
harmony of the many-winded movements had been considered an image
•of the variegated, and yet orderly, cycle of Nature ; of the recurrence,
rafter many changes, of the same phenomena on this planet, as well as on
th® starry skies.
A 1 wandering society ’ (fahrende diet) of minne-singer consisted, at
least, of the poet, the declamator (sager), the fiddler, and the dancer.
When the poet himself was unable to sing, he was represented by another,
called the little songster (das singerlein). A player on some wind-instru
ment (blasgeselle) is also mentioned by some of the minne-singer; he
probably played on the flute. Now, in order to get a proper conception
of the character of these migratory poetical associations, we must dismiss
the remembrance of our modern manners and views, and rather think
of the most ancient Greek, or, for the sake of that, Teutonic life, and we
■shall at once look upon the matter in a very different light. It will be
seen at a glance that where such a co-operation was required as is indi
cated by the appellations of the various members of a i Fahrende Diet,’ a
sort of poetical school would gradually be formed, with distinct rules—
a «school in which there would be masters and pupils, and various
■degrees.
i From whom have you learnt your art ? ’ asks Klingsor, in wrathful
■contempt, his rival, Wolfram von Eschenbach, during the famous Tourna
ment of Song known as the Wartburg Contest, in which the rival minne
singer were represented as contending for the palm. The ironical ques
tion can only be understood when one knows that the then united arts
•of poetry and of singing were already at that time taught in regular
�170
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
school, or guild, fashion, even as was later the case among the burgher
poets. Klingsor is probably but a mythic personage, a sort of early
medieval Faust. But the author of the ‘Wartburg War’ has certainly
not put an anachronistic remark into his mouth.
There were many gradations in these poetical fellowships. The high
born dukes and members of ruling houses who occasionally turned to theharp, did not, of course, belong to the singer class properly speaking.
The veritable singers, or poets, according to the customs of the age, led
a migratory life, going from one court, or nobleman’s mansion, to the
other, expecting reward for what they gave. Their poetry is by them
selves called ‘courtly song’ fiovdicher sang). The expression had, how
ever, not the unpleasant meaning that would now be evoked by the term
‘courtly.’ Hof, from which ‘hovelich’ (courtly) is derived, then meant
any country seat. The word is even now used in Germany as well for a
prince’s court as for a peasant freeholder’s dwelling. The habit of taking
reward, wages (gniete), for their poems, was openly acknowledged by
these minstrels. So distinguished a poet as Walter von der Vogelweide
did not scruple to say that he expected his ‘ wages.’ Still, in the
beautiful lay in which he sings the praise of German women—
German men are nobly bred;
E’en as angels our women are ....
Virtue and pure love,
He who seeks for them,
May he come to our land so full of bliss—
0, long would I live therein !
the poet has the good taste (that is to say, according to the courtesy of
the time) of declaring that womankind is far too sublime for him to
expect any other ‘ wages ’ from them than amiable greetings (schone
grueze). The same Walter, some time afterwards, obtained a feudal
tenure in reward for his exertions during an election contest for the
German' crown. The poetical effusion in which he expresses his un
bounded gratitude for this liberal act of the ruler whom he had helped
to place on the Imperial Throne, is rather comic in its exuberance.
He says he no longer fears to ‘ feel frosty winter in his toes,’ nor does he
mind what wicked lords think of him. He now has ‘ air in summer, and
fuel in the cold season; ’ his neighbours consider him a most excellent
man, whereas formerly they looked quite bearishly at him. His poems,
once regarded as bitter, grumbling, and scolding utterances (his satires on
Church and State are here alluded to), are now thought quite clean and
fit for a court:
Icb was so voile scheltens, daz mm aten stanc;
Daz hat der kiinec gemachet reine, und dar zuo minen sane.
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
171
A rather realistic expression for a tender minne-singer ! But trouba
dour language, generally so fragrant, sometimes breaks out into utter
ances totally unfit for a modern drawing-room.
Between the various poetical associations, and the different rivals in the
art, angry feuds occasionally sprang up, according to the excitable
nature which has from olden times been attributed to the poetical
genius. The angriest words were exchanged between those who looked
down upon each other as being of an inferior degree in the poetical
guild. There were bards who carefully cultivated the ancient and purer
traditions ; others who descended to the lowest humdrum versification.
As taste degenerated in consequence of the nobility assuming more
and more a lansquenet and even robber character, and becoming,
therefore, unable to enjoy true poetry, the inferior caste of poet
asters rose to the surface. Even as the minstrels in England, and theConfrerie des Menestriers and the Troubadours in Northern and
Southern France, gradually became mere street-bawlers and jongleurs,
so also in Germany a gradual deterioration took place in the character of
the wandering bards. So-called ‘ sentence-savers ’ (spruch-sprecJier) and
court fools (liofschalke) began to introduce themselves in the castles and
mansions and to obtain the chief hold on the people at large. A great
many complaints are yet extant of later minne-singer, who utter their
grief at the decaying art.
They charge that decay upon the miserly habits which had grQwn up
among the nobility, as well as upon the increase of 1 court foolery.’
Thus Konrad von Wurzburg complains of these ‘ untutored fools ’ (kunstelose schalke), whom he calls a bastard cross-breed between a wolf and
a fox, and of whom he says that they steal from the real poets (the
kiinstereichen) both the language and the melody. In a symbolical
representation he leads True Art into a wood before the throne of Jus
tice. Clad in tattered, beggarly garments, True Art utters her griev
ance. The verdict of Justice is, that he who confers upon the vile
poetasters the rewards which rightfully belong to the veritable bards,,
shall for all time to come be shunned by Love.
Much stronger are the expressions of the minne-singer Boppo, with the
furname of ‘the Strong.’ He was famed for his bodily strength; nor
was his language deficient in massiveness. In abusing the inferior versifex
class, he runs through the whole animal kingdom, and through every
imaginable scolding term, in order to fix strange denominations upon
them—as for instance : herr esel, dunkelgut, ehrenneider, galgenschwengel,.
niemands freund, wiedehopf, schwalbennest, entenschnabel, affenzagel,
schandendeckebloss. That power which our language possesses of coiningnew terms, had evidently been concentrated in a remarkable degree in the
hands of Boppo, who, albeit a troubadour, is supposed to have originally
�172
GERMAN TROUBADOURS.
been a glass-blower, and who subjected his antagonists to a most unmer
ciful fire of vituperative appellations.
The Minne-song hadflourished in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth,
partly still in the fourteenth century. Even in the fifteenth we yet
meet with wandering poets ; but they are few and far between ; and the
castle-gates generally remain locked to them. The nobles change into
robber knights. The chase, plundering expeditions, petty feuds, and
gross carousals, are now their only occupations. The Empire is distracted
and convulsed by the aristocratic leagues of the 1 Cudgellers’ (Bengeler),
the ‘ Grim Lions,’ and other brigand associations of the nobility. Mean
while, in the towns, a new power rises. There, a spirit of freedom makes
its way ; there, trade and commerce expand; a lofty architecture combines
with the development of the pictorial art. In the towns, therefore,
Poetry also takes its refuge. The lyre is little heard now in the courts
and the castles; the bardic guilds are henceforth established in the
-cities.
The transition is a gradual one. The old poetical forms remain at
first the same as before : the Master-song is, as it were, evolved from
the Troubadour song, and appears, at least in the beginning, so mixed
up with the latter that in some cases it is impossible to make a distinct
classification one way or the other. Even as in nature there is no abrupt
break in the forms of life, so also on the domain of intellectual develop
ment. The lines of division are generally less marked in reality than
we assume them to be for the sake of finding our way through the maze
of multiform phenomena. Epic poetry is, through a process of conden
sation, evolved from the ballad form, and gradually dissolves again into
the latter. The drama arises from the lyric strophe and antistrophe.
Chivalric poetry in Germany takes its rise from a previous populai and
monkish literature. The master-song, too, sprouts up from the ancient
stem: a later blossom, of less fragrancy, amidst the shed leaves of the
decaying minne-song. On the emblematic Tneistcrtafcl at Nuremberg,
the Rose Garden was depicted in which the errant chivalry once sang ;
and Hans Sachs, in the sixteenth century, still composed many of his
lays on the melodies of Walter von der Vogelweide and other trouba
dours.
•
Generally, Oswald von Wolkenstein and Hugo von Montfort are re
garded as the last representatives of the Minne-song ; Muscatbliit and
Michael Beheim, who lived at the end of the fourteenth and the begin
ning of the fifteen centuries, as the chief precursors of the Master-song.
Wolkenstein and Muscatbliit are the more important of the four. Their
poetical character, it seems to me, is almost invariably indicated in the
wrong way, even in standard works like those by Gervinus and
Vilmar. Both these eminent historians of our literature reckon Oswald
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
173
von Wolkenstein among those who once more raised the old troubadour
song, while they accuse Muscatbliit of affectation and triviality. I con
sider this statement a very unwarranted one. The opinion of Gervinus
that Muscatbliit was ‘ as far from the breath of free nature as his arti
ficial tone is from the artless strophes of Montfort,’ can at most be
applied to his Lays on The Virgin Mary. In them we meet with a com
plicated versification, an affected rhyme, an offensive superabundance of
imagery. Still, it ought not to be forgotten that even in this he kept
within the taste of his time. On the other hand we frequently find in
his productions a wealth of sentiment, rendered in such simple words
that it is not too much to say that some of his poems may be placed at
the side of the best of all times and nations.
Who has not admired Gretchen’s Song at the Spinning Wheel as a
true master-piece 1 On looking more closely, we meet, in ancient Ger
man literature, poems coming so near to it that we may assume without
disrespect that Goethe, who had studied the old Faust plays and bor
rowed much from them, had also embodied many a lyric jewel of that
time in his dramatic treasure. Has not Gretchen’s plaint: 1 My peace is
gone, my heart is sore ’ a striking affinity to a poem by Muscatbliit,1 in
which a lover thus pours forth his grief:
■ Herz, Muth unci Sinn
Sehnt sich dahin,
Wo meine Gewalt
So mannigfalt
Sich ganz hat hingekehret.
Mein freier Will’
1st worden still;
Mein stater Muth
Mich trau’ren thut:
Mein Herz ist ganz versehret.
I fear it will be found impossible to render in English the pathetic
simplicity of these quaint lines. The following 2 gives, however, some
idea of the poet’s power :
With grief o’erborne,
And anguish-torn,
My soul and heart
Would fain depart
Where each sad thought a captive dwells.
My once free will
Is quelled and still;
My constant breast
By woe oppressed;
My heart with hopeless mis’ry swells.
1 I give it but slightly changed in orthography, so as to render it more accessible
to the student of modern German.
2 I am indebted for this version, as well as for one or two others, to the kindness
of a friend, Miss Garnett.
VOL. III.—NO. XIV.
N
�174
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
Somewhat in the tone of the popular Parting-songs (Scheidelieder), but
at the same time reminding one of Gretchen’s : (Ach neige, du Schmerzens
reiche,' are the following passages in the same poem by Muscatblüt :
Ach Gott, erkenn,
Warum und wenn
Ich sehnender Mann
Verdienet han,
Dass ich muss von ihr scheiden ....
Dass Lieb’ mit Leid
Von Liebe scheid’,
Das heisst doch wohl ein Leiden.
Denn Lieb ohne Leid nicht kann sein;
Lieb’ bringet Pein,
So Mann und Weib
Mit betrübtem Leib
Hie von einander scheiden.
Wie möcht mein Herz
In solchem Schmerz
Fröhlich sein,
Dass ich die Reine
Soll ewiglich vermeiden.
Ach, Scheiden, dass du je wardst erdacht;
Scheiden thut mich kränken.
Scheiden hat mich zu Sorgen gebracht,
Thut Muscatblüt bedenken.
Scheiden hat mich
Gemachet siech;
Scheiden will mich verderben.
Daran gedenk’, traut selig Weib !
Is there a want of natural truthfulness, a want of deep feeling, in
this? Undoubtedly Gervinus’ Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung has
rendered great service by showing the intimate connexion between the.
political and the intellectual life of the nation. But Gervinus has not, to
my knowledge, made very profound studies in our ancient writers. I
am afraid that in the case of Muscatbliit he rendered his verdict off
hand, without being intimately acquainted with the subject. The same
might be said with regard to the judgment he passed on Wolkenstein—
again a most erroneous one, giving a false notion both of Wolkenstein’s,
particular bent and of his general capabilities.
In saying this, I am surely far from endeavouring unduly to raise
Muscatbliit, the commoner, above Wolkenstein, the knight. Muscatbliit
certainly does not attract our sympathies by anything else than his lyric
merits. Whilst Walter von der Vogelweide boldy denounces papal
tyranny and priestly arrogance with a truly reformatory energy, Muscat
glut, the precursor of the Master-song, combines a voluptuous Mariolatry
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
175
with, an ardent hatred against all reformatory aspirations, for instance,
of the Hussites. It is true, the Czechian movement in Bohemia, even
at that time, created already much bitterness in Germany on national and
political grounds; and John Huss, besides being a reformer, was a
Representative of this Czechian, anti-German movement. But Muscatbliit
attacked the memory of Huss on Church grounds, giving his assent in
Äther a brutal manner to the fiendish act of the inquisitorial assembly
at Constance. With an allusion to the name of the Bohemian leader,
which in Czechian signifies 1 goose,’ he exclaimed : ‘ There is yet many
8» Unroasted gosling to be examined !’ 1 To examine,’ in those days, was
the technical term for ‘ putting on the rack ! ’
Altogether, some of the fore-runners of the Master-singer school were
rather characterised by this dark spirit of opposition to the reformatory
movement, which was strongly coming up long before Luther. How
ever, at Augsburg, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we already
find considerable enlightenment among the master-singer school there; for,
in a reactionary satire against the boldness of the towns, which dates
from that time, there is the following ironical praise of Augsburg :
.
Augsburg hat einen weisen Rath;
Das sieht man an ihrer kecken That
Im Singen, Dichten und Klaffen.
Sie haben errichtet eine Singschul,
Und setzen oben auf den Stuhl
Den, der übel redt von den Pfaffen.
Thus, heretical views already were a recommendation, in 1450, for
the position of chairman among the civic bards of that free town.
That was before Luther was born ! We here see the beginning of that
Protestant movement which afterwards became a very law to the master
singers ; the Bible, in opposition to the legendary cycle of the Catholic
- Church, serving them as a text-book and a guide in their poetical pro
ductions.
Michael Beheim, that other precursor of the Meister-singer school,
was one of the last wandering poets who tried their luck by singing at
courts. He however met with many rebuffs, and then, ill-humoured
and full of anger against those who would not be his patrons, broke out
I into pungent satires against the princes and the nobility. In this he
certainly was far from representing in any way the character of the later
k'meister-singer who never asked for princely or aristocratic favour, much
less for pecuniary reward from courts. Following their trade for a live
lihood, they sought in poetry, so far as they understood it, merely a
satisfaction for the mind and the heart, endeavouring to render their
I* schools ’ a means of raising the intellectual and moral standard of their
Qwn class and of the popular classes in general. As to Beheim’s effun
2
�176
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
sions, they were rather of that artificial and somewhat tasteless style
which Gervinus wrongly attributes to Muscatbliit. Yet it must not be
forgotten that even in such stiff and strangely-set devices as we meet
with, for instance, in his praise of a lady, who is said to be—
ein Balsamgarten
Der Lilien ein
Violensprengel,
Und auch. Zeitlos,’
Der Seligkeit Ruhm,
Maienblüthe,
rein,
Stengel,
Ros’,
Blum’,
Güte,
des Sommers Zier—
he is not too far removed from some troubadour prototypes.
On the contrary, how distant, in spirit and tone, is Oscar von Wol
kenstein from the Minne-poets, whilst yet it has been said of him that
he had continued the old chivalric song ! I, for my part, cannot con
ceive a more erroneous judgment. A few songs of a more delicate
nature there are no doubt to be found in Wolkenstein, who is a queer
mixture of a venturesome, heroic ritter, of a Don Quixote, and of a
Sancho Pansa. But the bulk of his poems, which fill a goodly volume,
is surely not of the nobler troubadour kind. His dancing songs espe
cially are of a broad-grinning comicality. There is a boorish bacchanalianism in them which sometimes verges upon satyr-like grossness, or
seeks relief in mere senseless outcries. What could be less like a minnesong than the poem which begins with the words ‘ Mine host, we feel a
jolly thirst,’ and in which one of the tamest verses, utterly untranslat
able in their unbridled hop-and-jump wildness, runs thus :
Pfeifauf, Heinzel, Lippel, Jäckel!
Frisch, froh, frei! Frisch, froh, frei 1 Frisch, froh, frei!
Zweit euch; rührt euch ; schnurra bäckel!
Hans, Luzei! Kunz, Katrei! Benz, Clarei!
Spring kälbrisch drunter, Jäckel!
Ju hei hei! Juhei! hei! Ju hei hei!
Or take the following bit of a nonsensical jumble of words ! Barringtwo or three lines, no meaning can be detected in them, except a fierce
animalism that breaks out into a .rapid utterance of inarticulate cries :—
Da zysly, musly,
fysly, fusly,
henne, klusly,
kumbt in’s husly,
werffen ain tusly,
susa, susly,
negena grusly
well wir sicher han.
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
177
Clerly, metzly,
elly, ketzly,
thuont ein setzly,
richt eur letzli,
tula hetzly,
trutza tretzly,
vacht das retzly,
der uns freud vergan.
Unless I greatly err, the minne-singers had a somewhat different
style.
In other poems, Wolkenstein, who on his adventurous expeditions in
Europe, Asia, and Africa, had become something of a linguist in a rather
unscientific sense, heaps together, in the absurdest manner, odds and
ends of various languages, so as to produce a perfect maze of gibberish.
A few biographical notes on this vagabond freelance, to whom in all
histories of our literature a totally wrong place is assigned, may per
haps prove of interest; the more so because in his character there is
such an eccentric medley of the old and the beginning modern time, a
mixture of chivalry and of very Nether-Dutch ‘ popular ’ ways and
manners.
He was a Tyrolese by birth, and lived between 1354 and 1423. As a
boy, he lost an eye by a shot; but with his other eye he peered only the
more deeply into the romantic ‘ ritter ’ literature of his time. At the
age of ten he left his father’s castle, in order to participate in a crusade
against the heathen Sclavonians in Prussia. His parents let him depart
without much ado ; for his support they handed him three-farthings and
a piece of bread. On the march he gained his livelihood as a groom.
At night the roystering boy slept in a stable-corner, or covered by the
starry canopy. For eight years he served as a common baggage-boy,
went through Prussia, Lithuania, Poland, Red Russia; became a cap
tive, was almost mortally wounded, went to Norway, Denmark, Sweden,
Flanders, England, Scotland, Ireland, mostly serving—in what later
became the lansquenet character—in various armies and countries. In
the company of German merchants he went through Poland to the
shores of the Black Sea, and into the Crimea; became a cook on board
ship, then a common boatswain ; saw Armenia and Persia ; sailed, again
as a ship’s cook, to Candia; took part in an expedition against the
Turks; fled from a lost battle, wandering through Dalmatia, and return
ing to the Tyrol, At the age of twenty-five, his hair had become grey ;
his face was deeplyffurrowed ; but he had learnt no less than ten lan
guages.
When he resolved to marry, he met with a tragi-comic misfortune.
Wooing a certain Sabina Jäger, a citizen’s daughter, he was told by her
�178
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
that, to prove his true love, he ought, as a first chivalric duty, to make
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Which he did; but on returning
he found Sabina Jäger married ! Later he turns up in the struggles of
the Tyrolese nobles against the dukes in Austria; then again in Spain,
Holland, England, Portugal; in a crusade against the Moors ; afterwards
as a wandering -singer in the Moorish Kingdom of Granada and in the
Provence. Meanwhile his castles had been burnt down; still, immediately afterwards, he celebrates a marriage. But his former love, Sabina
aforesaid, who now resided at the Court of Innsbruck, allures him to a
rendezvous under the pretext of a pilgrimage ; and as Don Quixote
Wolkenstein unsuspectingly meets her, she has him captured and bound,
in order to extort from him a ransom of six thousand gulden. The iron
fetters which the false fair one imposed upon him, made him a cripple
for life; nevertheless, after the death of his wife, we see him once more
in the field, and once more in captivity. For a long time he pines in
a loathsome dungeon. On issuing from it, he marries again ! Then he
goes to war against the Hussites. But at last he can move neither foot,
nor arm; neither walk, nor stand; and thus he dies an inglorious
death from dropsy. In the wars in which he played a part, he
always kept on the losing side—a born bird of ill-luck. Even after
his death, there was an evil star shining over his remains ; for on the
church, near which he was buried, being rebuilt, his tomb-stone became
accidentally transposed, and the whereabouts of his burial-place were
forgotten.
Such was the chequered career of the strange man -who erronously is
represented as one of the last 1 Minne ’ poets, but whose lays generally
resemble the troubadour style as much as a broom-stick does a forgetme-not.
However, Wolkenstein, as a poet, does not stand alone in this exuber
ant hilarity. Between Minne and Meister-song, we find a third element
interposing at that time—an element of gross joviality, which, strange
to say, makes its appearance even on clerical ground. This peculiar
phenomenon is to be observed in many spiritual Church poems of the
fifteenth century. Whilst the Minne-singer, when they yielded to re
ligious enthusiasm, exhibit a melancholy, brooding mood, a mystically
ardent adherence to sacred traditions; whilst the Meister-singer,
about the time of Hans Sachs, are characterised by a profound but
quiet profession of faith, there is, in that age of transition when
the Master-song only begins to rise, a certain hilarious form of spiritual
poetry.
Many of those clerical poems sound almost like a student’s Gaudeamus
igitur. Were it not known that they are Church songs, they might be
mistaken for satires against the clergy. The mixture of Latin and
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
179
German, in itself not unapt to produce a risible effect, is very much used
in those poems:
In dulci jubilo—
Nun singet und seid froh!
All unsre Wonne
Liegt in praesepio;
Sie leuchtet mehr als die Sonne
Matris in gremio ;
Qui est A et 0,
Qui est A et 0!
-
*
0 Jesu parvule,
Nach dir ist mir weh!
Tröst’ mir mein Gemüthe,
0 puer optime,
Durch aller Jungfrau’n Güte,
0 princeps glorise,
Trahe me post te !
Trahe me post te !
Mater et filia
Ist Jungfrau Maria.
Wir waren gar verdorben
Per nostra crimina:
Nun hat sie uns erworben
Coelorum gaudia.
Quanta gratia!
Quanta gratia!
Ubi sunt gaudia ?
Wo die Engel singen
Nova cantica,
Und die Glöcklein klingen
In regis curia.
*
Eia, qualia!
Eia, qualia!
This, surely, is not a very austere triumphal song on the birth of the
Saviour. A clerical May-song in honour of the Thom-crowned is also
extant, in which the faithful are invited to assemble under the Tree of
the Cross:
Unter des Kreuzes Aste,
Da schenkt man Cyperwein ;
Maria ist die Kellnerin,
Die Engel schenken ein ;
Da sollen die lieben Seelen
Von Minne trunken sein.
�180
GERMAN TROUBADOURS
Under tlie branches of the Cross
Is poured forth Cyprus wine ;
Maria bears the goblet round,
The angels pour the wine ;
There all dear souls shall drunken be
With juice of Love’s own vine.
In the 1 Bath-Song,’ another clerical lay, the pilgrimage of the faithful tothe Saviour is literally described as a journey to a Spa, nay as a
voyage to Baden-Baden. Even the effect of the water, the bleeding
nceessary for the cure, and other mundane matters, are strangely
mixed up with the religious subject. The five introductory verses,
run thus:
Wohlauf ! ini Geist gen Baden,
Ihr zarten Fraulein ;
Dahin hat uns geladen
Jesus der Herre mein.
Hie quillt der Gnaden Bronnen,
Der Freuden Morgenröth ’;
Da glänzt die ewige Sonne,
Und alles Leid zergeht.
Da hört man süss erklingen
Der Vögelein Getön,
Und auch die Engelein singen
Ihre Melodie gar schön.
Da führt Jesus den Tanz
Mit aller Mädchen Schaar ;
Da ist die Liebe ganz
Ohn’ alles Ende gar.
Da ist ein lieblich Kosen1
Und Lachen immermehr ;
Da kann die Seel ’ hofiren
Mit Freuden ohn’ alles Weh !
The following I believe to be a fair translation :—
Up ! haste to the Baden spring,
Ye tender maidens fair !
Jesus, our Lord and King,
Himself invites us there.
The well of grace supernal,
Joy’s rosy dawn is there ;
There shines a sun eternal—
Banished are pain and care.
1 Smiren, in the old text,
�AND MASTER-SINGERS.
181
There soundeth, sweetly singing,
Of birds the harmony ;
There angels’ voices are ringing
Celestial melody.
There the Lord doth lead the measure
’Mid troops of damsels bright’;
And there the heavenly pleasure
Of love is infinite.
There caresses sweet are given,
And unending laughter is heard ;
There the souls may go a-courting,
With gladness undeterred.
And let it not be too hastily assumed that in these extraordinary
verses, 'which partake so strongly of the erotic character and even of
the erotic terminology, the spirit of the later pietists, or ‘ Mucker,’ is
already visible. On the contrary, strange as it may seem, the proba
bility rather is that this Bath-song, which describes the well, the dawn,
the crowd of young girls, and the chirping of the feathered songsters in
a region where all grief ceases, is a dim echo of the worship of the
Germanic Goddess of Love, whose place, after the introduction of
Christianity, was occupied by the Virgin Mary. In the Freia myth also,
we have the well of eternal rejuvenation—the rosy dawn which ever
lastingly pervades the region of this goddess—the crowd of children
that move joyously on a flowery meadow filled with the song of birds ;
in short, the whole outer structure of a legend in which afterwards only
names were changed.
In this way, ancient Germanic paganism, with its mystic poetical
charms, once more flickers up from beneath the Roman Catholic integu
ment, ere the Meistersinger intone the sadly serious chaunts of the
‘ Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ :
0 sacred Head, surrounded
By crown of piercing thorn !
0 bleeding Head, so wounded,
Reviled and put to scorn !
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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German troubadours and master-singers
Creator
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Blind, Karl
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 163-181 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 3 (April, 1872). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
Publisher
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[British and Colonial Publishing]
Date
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[1872]
Identifier
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G5340
Subject
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Music
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (German troubadours and master-singers), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Germany
Singing
Songs
Troubadours
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Fire-burial among our German forefathers: a record of the poetry and history of Teutonic cremation
Creator
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Blind, Karl
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in double columns. Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New Street Square and Parliament Street, London. Includes bibliographical references.
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Longmans, Green, and Co.
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1875
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G5170
CT39
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Death
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Fire-burial among our German forefathers: a record of the poetry and history of Teutonic cremation), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Burial
Conway Tracts
Cremation
Death
Germany
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599
JFiw-JdM flje
Ortass of Jobe.
Familiarity with the classical gods of Greece and Rome is considered a
matter-of-course accomplishment in polite education. To show ignorance
on that point, would render a person liable to be placed in the Kimmerian
circle of outer barbarians. But how few are there who have even so
much as a faint notion of the Germanic Pantheon, in which the creed of
that race was once embodied, from which Englishmen have in the main
sprung! “ Bay after day, as the weeks run round,” says the author of
Words and Places, the Rev. Isaac Taylor—“we have obtruded upon our
notice the names of the deities who were worshipped by our pagan fore
fathers. This heathenism is indeed so deeply ingrained into our speech that
we are accustomed daily to pronounce the names of Tiu, Woden, Thunor,
Frea, and Saetere. These names are so familiar to us that we are apt to
forget how little is really known of the mythology of those heathen times.”
Sun- and star-worship was, according to Roman testimony, among the
earliest forms of creed of the Germanic tribes. The dies Solis, and the
dies Luna, had therefore no difficulty in being translated into a Sun-day
and Moon- or Mon-day. In Tuesday we have the name of the Germanic
god of war, Tyr, Tiu, or Ziu—in some Teutonic dialects also called Era
or Erich, the root of which word is no doubt the same as in the Hellenic
Ares. Hence Tuesday, in High German Pinstag, is in some Alemannic
and Bavarian districts called Zistig, Erschtag, or Erichstag. Wodan, the
All-father, furnishes the name for Wednesday. Thursday is derived from
the God of Thunder. Friday represents the day of the Germanic Venus.
In Saturday, the derivation of which was formerly traced to Saturnus, a
god Saetere is probably hidden—that name being, to all appearance, an
aZius for Loki, or Lokko, the evil-doing god, of whose malicious mind the
Edda gives so graphic an account in the song called “ The Banquet of
Oegir” [Oegisdrekka e^a Lokasennai)—a Titanic satire upon the dwellers
in Asgard.
If we look over the topography of all countries in which the Germanic
race dwells, or through which it has passed in the course of its migrations,
what deep imprints do we find of its ancient creed in the very appellations
of dwelling-places ! The God of War ; the All-father who rules the winds
and the clouds; the God of Thunder; the Goddess of Love ; the deity
who represents insidious mischief and destruction—they are all to be met
with, not only in Germany, Scandinavia, and other Continental lands, but
on English soil, too, where Tewesley, Tewin, and Dewerstone; Wanborough, Wednesbury, Woodnesborough, Wansdike, and Woden Hill;
�600
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
Thundersfield, Thurscross, and Thurso; Frathorpe, Fraisthorpe, and
Freasley ; Satterleigh, and Satterthwaite, in all probability bear -witness to
a decayed cultus. Even so Balderby and Balderton ; Easterford, Easterleake, and Eastermear ; Hellifield, Hellathyrne, and Helagh, are no doubt
referable to the worship of Balder, the god of light and peace; of Eostre,
or Ostara, the goddess of Spring; of Hel, the mistress of the underworld.
And again, when in this country we meet with places called Asgardby and
Aysgarth, we have no difficulty in referring them to Asgard, the Germanic
Olympus.
Still, with all these traces of a pagan religion—which had its grandeur
and even some traits of charm—strewn thickly around us, how many are
there who think it worth while to read the thoughts of their own ancestors
in the mythic system so amply elaborated by them ? Among a large class
of people of highly cultivated mind, where are the readers of the powerful
text-book of heathen Germanic religion ? where the students of that folk
lore in which precious fragments of ancient creed are embedded, even as
glittering shells, of brilliant hue, are concealed beneath the incrustated
slime of the sea ?
Yet, on the mere plea of poetical enjoyment, an extended knowledge
of these subjects might be urged. Assuredly—as Mannhardt puts it, who
with Simrock, Kuhn, Schwarz, and others, has ably and laboriously
continued the immortal labours of Grimm, and of the many Norse scholars
—there is not, in the Germanic world of Gods, the perfect harmony and
plastic repose of the Olympian ideals of Greece. But their forms and
figures tower in lofty greatness through the immensity of space; and if
they are not so well rounded off as the deities of the later Greek epoch—
if they are somewhat apt to float, before the mind’s eye, like fantasticallyshaped storm-clouds, or like bright-coloured visions of dawn and sunset,
they are, on the other hand, less liable to be taken for mere idols of ivory,
brass, and stone.
Can it be said, however, that there is a lack of poetical conception in
the figure of Wodan, or Odin, the hoary god of the clouds, who, clad in
a flowing mantle, careers through the sky on a milk-white horse, from
whose nostrils fire issues ? Is there a want of artistic delineation in
Freia, who changes darkness into light wherever she appears—the
goddess with the streaming golden locks, and the siren voice, who hovers
in her snow-white robe between heaven and earth, making flowers sprout
along her path, and planting irresistible longings in the hearts of men ?
Do we not see in bold and well-marked outlines the figure of the redbearded, steel-handed Thor, who rolls along the sky in his goat-drawn car,
and who smites the mountain giants with his magic hammer ? Are these
dwellers in the Germanic Olympus mere spectres, without distinct con
tour ? And if their strength often verges upon wildness ; if their charms
are sometimes allied to cruel sorcery—are they not, even in their uncouth
passions, the representatives of a primitive race, in which the pulse throbs
with youthful freshness ?
�FEEIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
601
Again, what a throng of minor deities—surpassing in poetic conception
even Hellenic fancy—have been evolved by the Teutonic mind out of all
the forces of nature! Look at the crowd of fairies, and wood-women,
and elfin, and nixes, and dwarfs, and cobolds, that dance in the moon
light, and whisk through the rustling leaves, or dwell enchanted in trees,
or hide in glittering mountain-caves, or waft enthralling songs from
beneath the water, or bustle day and night through the dwellings of man!
The Greeks had all, or nearly all, this—for the elements of mythology
are the same in all Aryan lands : but there is a greater depth in the
corresponding Teutonic tales : they coil themselves round the heart like
invisible threads ; they seem so familiar and homely, and yet lead the
imagination into a strange dreamland.
Then, what a dramatic development Germanic mythology has ! The
Hellenic gods sit in ambrosian quiet in their lofty abodes ; they are
eternal gods, inaccessible to the corroding power of Time. True, there
are some faint indications of a final change when Jupiter himself is to
make place for a juster ruler. But, in the main, the deities of classic
antiquity live on in an unbroken, immortal life ; they are, as it has been
aptly said, like so many statues ranged along a stately edifice, each statue
perfect in itself—no idea of action, of tragic complication, arising out of
the whole.
How different is the Germanic view of the Universe! There, all is
action, struggle: and the world of gods itself is from the very beginning
destined to a catastrophe.. So long as the Aesir last, they are regarded as
the girders and pillars of the Universe. But at the end of time, the world
is to be consumed in a mighty conflagration ; the heavens and the earth
stand in a lurid blaze; Asgard and Walhalla, the abodes of gods and
heroes, are doomed to destruction; the Universe breaks down in a
gigantic crash :—
The sun darkens ;
Earth in Ocean sinks ;
From Heaven fall
The bright stars.
Fire’s breath assails
The all-nourishing Tree ;
' Towering flames play
Against Heaven itself.
That cataclysm shall be preceded by—
An axe-age, a sword-age ;
Shields shall be cloven—
A wind-age, a wolf-age,
Ere the world sinks !
Only after this terrible convulsion shall have ended, will there be
introduced a new and peaceful reign, with eternal bliss. Then the white
god of peace, whose death Loki had encompassed, will triumphantly
29—5
�602
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
return. In the Voluspa, the prophetess foresees the coming of that
golden age—
She sees arise,
A second time,
Earth from Ocean,
Beauteously green ...
Unsown shall
The fields bring forth,
All evil be amended ;
Balder shall come,
Hoder and Balder,
The heavenly gods!
A mythic system of such poetic sublimity is as much worth being
studied as that of classic antiquity, or as the Hindoo Pantheon, where we
meet with the germs of the pagan religion of all Aryans. I have pro
posed to myself, in this present essay, to treat especially of Freia, who, in
Norse mythology, appears already divided into two distinct figures,
namely: Frigg, the consort of Odin; and Freyja, the goddess of love:
whilst among the Germans, properly speaking, Freia combines the
characters of Juno and of Venus—the motherly and the erotic element.
It may be prefaced here that, in the Norse system, a duodecimal series
of gods and goddesses is clearly discernible, to whom the figure of the
fiendish Loki is to be added. Germany, so rich in tales which contain the
ancient deities under a strange disguise, has in all probability had the same
duodecimal system of polytheism. Laborious researches strongly tend to
establish that hypothesis as a fact. .1 will not enter here more deeply into
this point to show the scientific mode of procedure, but will only quote a
passage from Max Muller’s work, which bears upon it. “ It might seem
strange, indeed,” he wrote, i£ that so great a scholar as Grimm should
have spent so much of his precious time in collecting his Mahrchen, if
those Mdlivchen had only been intended for the amusement of children.
When we see a Lyell or Owen pick up pretty shells and stones, we may
be sure that, however much little girls may admire these pretty things,
this was not the object which these wise collectors had in view. Like the
blue, and green, and rosy sands which children play with in the Isle of
Wight, those tales of the people, which Grimm was the first to discover
and collect, are the detritus of many an ancient stratum of thought and
language, buried deep in the past. They have a scientific interest.”
Out of a mass of such popular tales and traditions, the fair form of the
German Venus may be reconstructed with a great degree of certainty.
There is good ground for believing that the deities whom we afterwards
find in Asgard, gradually arose out of an elementary worship—that, like other
pagan gods, they are simply the result of a successive anthropomorphic
condensation of ideas connected with the worship of the forces of Nature,
and with cosmogonic speculations. That historical elements entered into
the formation of their divine images, I readily acknowledge. In fact, it
seems to me most probable that there is a mixed origin of all mythic
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
603
figures. At any rate, the worship of the forces of Nature appears to be
the prevailing element in their composition ; and thus the first glimpse we
obtain of Freia, or Freia-Holda, shows her under the shape of a storm
goddess—that is, as the female counterpart of Wodan, the ruler of the
cloudy region, who was originally conceived as the storm himself—as the
dtma, or Great Breath, which pervades the universe.
Now, it speaks much for an early culture of the heart among the
Germanic race, that the vague idea of a storm-goddess should have so
swiftly become refined, as it actually did, into the form of Freia-Holda,
whose very name indicates friendliness, love, and benevolent grace. The
process of shaping and polishing the images of the other divinities of the
cloudy sky was a longer one. For a considerable time they seem to have
retained their floating and somewhat less circumscribed character. Even
when they had assumed that form which, under a more developed reign of
art, would have rendered them fit for sculptured representation, popular
fancy exhibited a marked inclination towards dissolving them, ever and
anon, into their aboriginal chaotic substance. Not so with Freia. Round
her, also, the most variegated myths clustered. Moreover, the various
attributes conferred upon her, were apt to give rise to a number of special
figures, ranging—extraordinary to say—from the typification of charms to
that of hideous witchcraft, from beauty to that of its very contrast.
Nevertheless, there is, as with the Greek deities, a clear, unmarred, central
picture, which shows Freia-Holda under an aspect of well-marked, noble
beauty. The mind of the people who revered her, fondly dwelt upon the
portraiture of her attractions and virtues, always adding new traits, and
elaborating it with fresh touches. Hence the mythic circle which
surrounds the worship of Freia, is in every respect one of the richest in
German folk-lore.
Lapse of time and local tradition have certainly given us a multiform
variety of Freia-Holda images. The Gods of Homer and Hesiod were not
exactly those of ¿Eschylus and Euripides. In the same way, the Germanic
Pantheon was not at all times fitted with the identical forms. The tribal
differences among the German race also went far to give a different
colouring to the original character of a deity. But even as we have a welldefined idea of the character and attributes of Jupiter, of Juno, of Mars,
of Venus, quite irrespective of the special myths, which vary considerably
according to time and locality, so also do we possess an average image
of Wodan, of Thunar, but most particularly of Freia.
Whilst other deities are heard in the tempest that bends the rustling
tree-tops of primeval forests, or hurriedly pass along the vault of Fleaven :
the Goddess of Love gladdens more visibly the glance of men, as she
glides slowly over flowery meadows, amidst a rosy sheen.
She is represented as being of entrancing beauty, with long-flowing,
thick, golden hair of great heaviness. Her body is snow-white; she is
©lad in a white garment, which spreads a rosy effulgence. On her
forehead hangs a single tangled lock of hair. She is covered, over her
�604
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
white robe, with a light veil, from head to foot. Round her neck she
wears a chain of shining jewels, from which a light streams forth, as of the
dawn of morn. Rose-bushes and willow-trees are her favourite resorts :
willow-trees overhanging crystal lakes. Her voice, full of melodious song,
enthralls men. Rs heavenly strains transport the listener to spheres of
unknown bliss ; he is drawn along, in rapture, in spite of his will. Whereever she walks, flowers sprout up on her path, and the merry sound of
golden bells is heard tinkling. A radiance of ethereal worlds follows
her footsteps. In the depth of night, the wanderer who has lost his way,
guides his walk after her beneficent apparition. The fields over which she
passes, are blessed with fruit.
About Twelfth-night time—that is, at the winter solstice—when the
German tribes were accustomed to celebrate one of their sun-worship rites,
Freia-Holda visits the households, looking after the industry of the maidens
at the spinning-wheel. She is the goddess of amorousness, but also of
housewifely accomplishments. She has a virgin-like appearance; in her
qualities, however, the two womanly elements are blended.
Her
residence is beyond the azure skies, in a sunny region behind the clouds ;
limpid waters divide her reign from the outer world. There she dwells
in a garden, where fragrant flowers and luscious fruits grow, and the song
of birds never ceases.
On the meadows, and amidst the foliage of that garden, the souls
of the Unborn—whose protectress Freia is—are playing their innocent,
unconscious games, gathering food from the chalices of flowers, until the
heavenly messenger comes who calls them into human birth. In that
garden, there is also the Fountain of Rejuvenescence—the Jungbrunnen
or Quickborn, where the sources of life are incessantly renovated, and
decrepit age once more changes into blooming youth.
Such, with a few strokes, is the image of the Goddess whose worship
was most deeply rooted among our forefathers—so much so, that it was
found impossible to overthrow her reign except by a substitution which
preserved the substance of her attributes.
Indeed, the German Mariolatry of the middle ages is to a large degree
traceable to these previous heathen customs. There are a number of
highly coloured hymns to the Virgin, the imagery of which is almost
literally taken from similar Freia songs, fragmentary pieces of which latter
have come down to us in children’s rhymes. Many of these hymns would
be perfectly unintelligible if we did not know the poetical surroundings of the
pagan goddess. Freia, the Queen of the Heavens, the sorrowing mother
of Balder, that god of peace who met with his death through the traitor
Loki, was transfused into the Mater dolorosa, the ‘ ‘ Mother of God ” of
the Roman Church; but in this transfusion she retained much of her
original character. However, in order to create a division-line, a notion
was fostered that Freia’s day, Friday—originally the favourite marriageday—was an unlucky day ; a superstition which prevails to this moment
arqong large numbers of uneducated people. Nevertheless, there are some
�FEEIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
605
Woks and corners where, even now, Friday is regarded as the proper
wedding-day—clearly a remnant of the old religion.
It was “ das ewig Weiblichef the worship of which the Germanic race
tenaciously clung to, though under strange forms of superstition. Out of
this frame of mind grew up the chivalric view about womankind, which in
Germany had its lyric representation in the poetry of the minnesinger.
The fervour with which that view was held, often assumed the shapeof an abstract principle, leading to the most ardent evolutions of thought
and sentiment, quite irrespective of individual passion and amatory
reality. It would be an error to suppose that aristocratic chivalry had
created this whole world of woman-worship. It was a trait characteristic
of the Germanic races as such—even at a time when they were only
just emerging into historical light. The early Roman authors mention
the veneration in which womankind was held by our forefathers. The
ancient Germans ascribed to woman a kind of sacred and prophetic
character.—(Tacitus, Germ., cap. viii.) And, no doubt, the institution
of monogamy, which was but occasionally broken through by the aris
tocratic chieftains ; the influence exercised not only by the priestesses
and prophetesses, such as Aurinia and Veleda, but by the German women
in general : an influence of persuasion, of wise counsel, and of heroic,
patriotic conduct, not an influence obtained by equality of political rights
■—all this points to the fact of an early development of more tender
sentiments, of which the Freia cultus was the religious outcome.
The name of the goddess appears in different forms, as Freia, Friia,
Frea, Frigga, Frikka, Frikk. It is traceable to a root meaning “to
love.” In Gothic, frijon means “ to love; ” hence the German
“Freund,” friend; hence, perhaps, also “freien,” to woo, and Frau.
In Low German, the verb “friggen ” is still extant, in the sense of “ to
love.” Thus Freia is a loving, befriending divinity; and through the
fertilising character,' naturally connected with these qualities, as well as
through the sunny effulgence which envelops her attractive picture, she
easily merges into the form of Ceres. There are indications, at least, that
she may have been revered also as a goddess of agriculture, and that
healing powers were attributed to her. Her sister was Voila (Fulness),
of whom we get a glimpse in the famous incantation song of Merseburg
*
—a divinity evidently typifying the abundance of Nature.
I have endeavoured, out of a confusing wealth of legends, to draw
the form of Freia in clear colours, choosing that type which the goddess
must have assumed at a certain period in the early life of the German
nation, when vague conceptions about the struggle of elementary forces
had been fused into more plastic expression, whilst the process of decay
and deterioration had not yet set in, which afterwards reduced the figure
of Freia-Holda to that of a mere sorceress, nay, even hag. But how,
* It begins with the words :— •
Phol ende Uodan
Vuoron zi holza,
�606
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
it will be asked, was the goddess of love and domestic virtue wrought from
the crude idea of a divinity of the clouds who flits along the horizon ?
As the wife of the storm-god Wodan, she is, in the early form of the
tale, chased by him, even as the cloud is by the wind. Minor cloud
goddesses, or cloud-women, environ her; in some myths they are con
ceived as horses or swans.
They are the swift-running, fast-sailing
clouds, of sombrer or of more silvery hue. The flight of the goddess from
before her consort, and the representation of her companions as mares,
remind us of the Hindoo myth, in which a similar female deity flies before
the Ruler of the skies in the shape of a mare.
Soon the tale assumes a more poetic form; It is now no longer the
Ruler of the skies who chases his stormy spouse ; but, by an inversion not
unfrequent in the process of mythological formation, it is henceforth she
who wanders, wailing and in tears, over hill and dale in search of her
long-lost lover. The lamenting wind and the rain, which were connected
with the notion of a tempest-deity, are here converted into the plaints and
the weeping of the longing goddess. The howling storm softens into
loving grief, and the somewhat dark and dim deity which represented the
first, necessarily undergoes a corresponding transfiguration.
The same is the case with her cloudy retinue. The white and silvery
specks on the welkin come to the foreground; from swans, under which
form they were at first conceived, they change into swan-virgins. Nor do
they career or sail along the sky any more. They now act as the
embellishing suite of the loving goddess, who, after having scarcely met
with her eagerly-sought friend, loses him once more, and has, Isis-like, to
start on a new heart-rending peregrination. It would appear that the
ever-repeated change of the junction and the separation of the productive
and receptive faculties in nature is here shadowed forth under the guise
of loving satisfaction and grief. In this gradual alteration of imagery,
the successive humanization of the character of the myth is clearly
discernible.
Later on—I will here remark in passing—when the period of mythic
decay arrives, the early form and'character of the swan-virgins is entirely
lost. Of the swan, nothing then remains but the foot, which is tacked on
to the body of an elf, or even a gnome. The tales in which swan’s feet
occur, are very valuable for the attentive inquirer. The imprint of these
birds' feet serves as a trace leading back to the sanctuary of the Teutonic
Aphrodite, and thus helps to reconstruct our knowledge of the once wide
spread cultus.
To look upon the sky as a “ sea of ether,” as a“ heavenly ocean”—
samudra in Sanskrit—is an ancient Vedic notion. Freia, who resides
beyond the azure sky, at the bottom of a crystal well, is, however, in
more than one sense a water-goddess, for she belonged originally to that
circle of Vana-deities who in Norse tradition are said to have been
engaged in a long and fierce struggle with the Asa-gods, until peace was
concluded between the rival and hostile dynasties of gods, when Freia, with
�FBEIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
607
some others, was received into Asgard. Whether this tale refers to two
different cosmogonic systems held by different races in pre-historic times,
or whether it marks a religious struggle among separate Germanic tribes,
it is impossible now to decide. But the original character of Freia-Holda
as a water-goddess of the Vana-circle is still apparent in the fairy tale,
current to this day among the German peasantry, about 11 Frau Hoile,”
who is represented as walking up a hill with a golden, bottomless pail, a
kind of Danaides tub, from which water incessantly flows.
In another tale, Frau Hoile is said, when it snows, to have spread and
shaken her white mantle. It is the white robe which the Germanic god
dess once wore. Again, when white, shimmering cloudlets—called to this
day “lambs” (Lämmer) in German—make their appearance, Hoile is
said to drive her flock.
The former character of the protectress of
agriculture appears in this form of the legend.
The sunny attributes of the original water-goddess linger in another
legend, which says that when there has been rain during the whole week,
it is expected to cease on Friday—Freia’s day—when Frau Hoile has to
dry her veil, which she spreads for that purpose over rose-bushes and
willows, the trees anciently sacred to that northern Venus. In the same
way, the conception of Freia as a solar deity lingers in a Low German
children’s rhyme, which, though slightly deteriorated, describes with
wonderful fidelity the heavenly abode of the goddess in all its typical
particulars. In that rhyme, the water-carrying goddess, who walks up
the hill with the golden bucket, is called “ the little sun,”—
Wo dat sönneken den berg herop geit.
In German children’s rhymes, tales, plays, and dances, the last shreds
and fragments of the old heathen system of religion are wonderfully pre
served. The rhymes constitute a sort of poetised mythology for the use
of the nursery. They are the traditionary oral catechism of a creed which
is no longer understood. The Freia worship ; the adoration of the Nomes,
the weird Sisters of Fate ; the belief in a coming downfall of Asgard;—
all these pagan notions have left their vestiges in childish ditties. The
quaint Cockchafer ditties, to which I have yet to allude, are among the
most important in this respect. It is often difficult to sort out the mere
dross which has crept in by the misapprehension of words, leading to new
associations of ideas, in which the original meaning of the myth disap
pears. Yet these infantile songs, often apparently devoid of sense, are a
rich mine, from which ancient forms of religious thought may be dug out.
One of these rhymes runs thus :
Mutter Gottes thut Wasser tragen
Mit goldenen Kannen
Aus dem goldenen Brünnei.
Da liegen Viel' drinne.
Sie legt sie auf die Kissen,
Und thät sie schön wiegen
Auf der goldenen Stiegen.
�608
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
The “ golden buckets ” of Freia are, in this ditty, already carried by
the “ Mother of God.” The mother of Balder, of the transfixed deity
■who has died, but who will hereafter introduce a millennium of peace, is,
under Roman Catholic influence, changed into Mutter Gottes. But her
heathen paraphernalia still cling to her. She still resides in the golden,
or sunlit, well. She is still the water-goddess; and “the many that are
lying ” in her celestial abode, behind the azure waves of the ethereal
ocean, are still the Unborn who dwell in Freia’s fragrant domain.
If we follow that train of ideas, in which Freia was regarded as a
representative of warmth, of light, of fire, we find it fabled that the
souls of the Unborn, when awaiting their human embodiment, are carried
earthwards in flashes of lightning. The soul, in other words, was con
sidered a heavenly ray or flash. In connection with this idea is the
sanctification of many things and beings who, on account of their colour
being that of lightning,—namely, red,—are received into the special
service of the Goddess of the Unborn. The red-billed and red-legged
stork and the red-winged lady-bird must here specially be mentioned.
They were once nearly worshipped. A halo of inviolability still protects
in Germany the stork. The lady-bird also continues to be held, by
children at least, in some sort of friendly reverence.
The lady-bird was supposed to aid in carrying, on its red wings, the
souls of children to their terrestrial destination. The very name “ lady
bird” points to the former goddess: the “Lady” originally was the
Germanic Queen of the Heavens, for whom the Virgin Mary was afterwards
substituted. In a Low-German dialect, the lady-bird is called Mai-Katt
(May-cat), which name points to the time of the year that was sacred to
Freia, and to the cat, a team of whom drew the car of the goddess.
*
Other names are : Sonnenkalb, Sonnenkdfer, Sonnenhithnchen, SonnemcendKafer, bringing us back to Freia’s sunny domain. The lady-bird is also
called Marien-Kafer, from the Virgin Mary; or lastly, Herrgotts-Kdfer,
the Lord (Herrgott') being, in this case, substituted for the Lady, a trans
position frequently observable in mythology, the male and female forms of
the ruling spirit of the Universe (“ Woden ” and “ Frau Gaude ”) often
taking each other’s place.
There is a Suabian song, in which the lady-bird {Herrgotts-Moggela') is
called upon to fly into heaven, there to fetch, on a golden basin, a golden
baby. In other tales, children are supposed to come from a “hollow
tree ”—aus holdem Baum, or aus dem Ilollenbaum. This strange notion
of the origin of mankind from the vegetable reign, which appears in
* There is a children’s rhyme in the Austrian dialect, representing the cat as going
to Hollabrunn,—that is, the well of Holda—where she finds a baby “in the sun.”
The Freia-Holda worship, in its bearings upon a Neptunic and a solar cultus, is in
this verse given in a few quaint words :—
Hop, hop, Heserlmann!
Unsa Katz hat Stieferln an,
Rennt damit nach Hollabrunn,
Findt a Kindla in da Sunn!
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
609
Wrious German doggrels, is to be met with also among the ancient Greeks,
aS the saying shows : “ ou yap airo bpvoQ tart iraXaityarov ovS’ airo irkrpriQ.” In
the “ hollow ” tree we have, however, unquestionably Holda’s, or Hoile’s,
¡tree, on whose branches the unborn sat.
We shall afterwards see how a similar deterioration of terms led to the
idea of Holda as a witch who was charming in the face, but hollow in the
back, similar to an excavated stem with gnarly bark. In Hessian trials of
witches, long after the middle ages, we read of “ FrawHolt ” under such a
description ; the name of Holda, Hoile, or Holt, having, by a double
assimilation of sounds, given rise to the comparison of the sorceress with
a hollow tree—holt or holz signifying wood or tree. The corruption of
words is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of new mythical
formations.
Even as the lady-bird, so the stork also was in the service of Freia.
His red colours, too, made him the representative of lightning, of electricity,
of the principle of vivification. He helped in carrying the souls of the
unborn earthwards. His mythic name, therefore, was “Adebar” or
“ Odebar ”—carrier of children, bringer of souls. Even now, he has that
name in various German dialects ; but its meaning is obliterated or
obscured in the popular memory.
As the typification of the spark of heaven, the stork was connected
with sun-worship. Hence, he was doubly sacred to our forefathers,
and is still partly so to our village folk, who frequently place a wheel for
him on house-tops and chimneys, that he may the more commodiously
build his nest on them. In solar worship, the wheel particularlyrepresents
the orb of the sun. It is used as such in the solstice-fires (SonnenwendFeuer), which German peasants light to this day amidst great jubilation.
When the peasant boys of Upper Bavaria and the Tyrol roll their
tarred wheels, which are set on fire, in the dark night down the mountains,
making them describe most wonderful gyrations, they sing songs in honour
of their loves. There are set rhymes to that effect, which have been
handed down through generations, and in which, according to the occasion,
the name of the particular sweetheart has only to be inserted. The solar
8>nd the Aphroditean cultus of Freia were blended in early mythology;
the traces of this connection are yet visible in such boorish merryBiakings !
So late down as the sixteenth century, the Roman Church thought it
advisable to take the heathen myth of Freia’s well, within which the
unborn are playing, and of Adebar the bringer of children, under its own
protection. So-called Kindlein's-Brunnen, to which women proceeded, in
ftrder to drink the consecrated water, were erected, or changed into holy
places of the Catholic Church, in many towns and villages of Germany.
Bishop John, of Saalhausen, had a chapel built, in 1512, over one of
these old places of Freia worship. Numbers of women congregated there,
doing reverence to the “ holy and chaste virgin at the Fountain of Life ”
{Qu&ckbrunneri). The weather-vane of the chapel was a stork, who carried
�610
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
a child in his bill—even as is still to be seen in the toys of German
children, who are much given to the notion that a fresh arrival of a brother
or sister is due to the obliging stork.
The cockchafer, too, seems to have been a hallowed insect of yore. It
is called Mai-Käfer in German, from the period of the year when it gene
rally comes first out of the ground ; and that period, as said before, was
the sacred time of the Goddess of Love. German children have a custom
of placing that beetle on their left hand, to which they generally attach it
by a thread, and then they sing a verse the meaning of which has long
puzzled investigators. Mannhardt has collected quite a variety of such
verses, all taken direct from the lips of German boys, in order to prove
that they refer to that final catastrophe when the gods and their giant
antagonists are warring with each other, and the Asa-world collapses in a
fearful tumult and universal conflagration. All the rhymes collected until
now make it extremely probable that they refer to the danger which
envelops, and finally destroys, Holda’s reign. Still, Mannhardt was not
able to give any verse in which her name is distinctly traceable.
Now, in the same way, it had formerly been rendered very probable
that all the Holda myths were Freia myths ; Holda being simply one of
the appellatives of the Goddess, which had branched out into a well-nigh
identical form. For a while, the hypothesis of the original identity of the
two forms seemed unsubstantiated. At last, however, in a Latin manu
script preserved at Madrid, the name of the deity was discovered in the
form “ Friga-Holda,” when the substantial unity of the two mythic
figures was placed beyond doubt.
Even so, I believe I can supply the missing link in regard to the
curious Cockchafer Songs, which are of such high mythological interest.
I distinctly remember a ditty sung by children, in which the cockchafer is
bidden to fly to his father (presumably Wodan, the consort of FreiaHolda),who is said to be “ at war,” and to his mother who is “in Holler
land,” where a conflagration has broken out, which consumes Holler
land :—
Maikäfer, flieg’!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Hollerland—
Hollerland ist abgebrannt!
Iuchhe1
The latter joyful exclamation may be supposed to be the Christian
“ Io triumphe," the utterance of joy over the destruction of the heathen
Asa-world. I need scarcely remind the reader that the song which is sung
in Germany about the cockchafer, is also sung in some parts of this
country about the lady-bird. (“ Lady-bird, lady-bird, hie thy way home !
Thy house is on fire I Thy children all roam ! ” Or : “ Lady-bird, lady
bird, fly away home ! Your house is on fire ! Your children will burn! ”
See, for instance, Jamieson’s Northern Antiquities.')
In the folk-lore still current in Germany, the name of “ Freia ” is only
�FREÏA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
611
preserved yet among the people of the Ukermark and the Altmark. Other
wise, we meet with it in some Suabian, Franconian, Alemannic, and Lower
Saxon designations of villages, and different places, where her worship
once flourished. Thus there are several Frickenhausen, situated near
lakes—quite in keeping with the myth which makes the Goddess haunt
the water, even as Aphrodite rose from the waves of the sea. In other
parts of Germany the goddess is called Holda ; Frau Gode, Gauden, or
Gaue (that is, Woden’s wife, the “W” being changed into “G”—even
as war, in old-German werra, becomes, in French, guerre'); or Frau
Hera, or Harke ; Mother Rose ; Perchta, or Bertha. All these seemingly
distinct fairy figures arose from the personification of Freia’s attributes
and appellatives.
There is a multiform mass of legends, of a mixed heathen and Chris
tian character, in which the image of Freia is recognisable under the
oddest masks. As “Mother Rose” she has been received into the
legendary circle of the Roman Church. But why, many will wonder,
should the Virgin pass under the name of Mother Rose ? I forego
entering into the etymological explanation, which traces that name to a
cognomen of Freia, and will only mention an old pagan sorcery song,
clearly referable to that goddess, which says :—•
Kam eine Jungfer aus Engelland;
Eine Rose trug sie in ihrer Hand.
This “Engelland” is not, as some misunderstand it, England, but
the land of the white elfs, the fairyland of Freia. The “ Jungfer,” or
Virgin, who reigns over it, became the Virgin Mary; and the favourite
flower of the German goddess of love was converted into a symbol of the
Madonna.
As Mother Rose, Freia appears in a Christianised garb. But under
the names of Holda, Gode, Hera, and Perchta, she preserves, in the
tales, her heathen character as a fay—in a good or an evil sense. Most
astonishing are the transformations she undergoes under these various
appellations. Even as the storm-god Wodan, who led the departed
heroes into Walhalla, became changed, after the introduction of Chris
tianity, into a wild huntsman who careers along the sky with his ghostly
retinue, so Freia-Holda also becomes a wild huntress, who hurries round
at night with the unfortunate souls. Through this same association with
hobgoblin devilry, she is converted into a Mother Haule, or Ilaule-mutter,
a howling utterer of mournful wails about the dead. By way of direct
contrast, the once white-robed goddess with the snow-white body changes,
as Hera, into a white dove, a typification of loving innocence. At a first
glance, such quid pro quo's and metamorphoses into the very opposite
would appear incredible; but he who has studied the effect of misapprehended words and sounds upon the untutored mind of man will not be
astonished at these changeling substitutions.
The way in which the souls of the unborn were supposed to be called
from Freia s garden, is to this day represented in various children’s games
�612
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
in Germany, by words and expressive mimicry.
In the Perchta, or
Bertha myths, that linger in some secluded valleys, the crowd of the
unborn still appear as a suite of elfs, called Heimchen, who follow the
goddess. The Perchta legends are of a somewhat wild—occasionally
Bacchantic and Korybantic—-character, in which the gloomy element is,
however, not wanting. The goddess, who once typified the purest beauty,
assumes in them rather motley and multiform shapes : there are beautiful
Perchtas as well as “ wild- Perchteln,” the latter with a satyr-like appear
ance, running about with dishevelled hair. The Bacchantic and Korybantic
character of the goddess appears even from a passage in Luther’s writings.
He calls her, not Perchta, but with her softer name, “Frau Hulda,”
makes a Dame Nature of her, who rebels against her God, and describes
her as “ donning her old rag-tag livery, the straw-harness, and singing
and dancing whilst fiddling on the violin ” (liengt um sick iren alten trewdelmarkt, den stroharnss, Jiebt an und scharret daher mit irer geigen). The
straw-harness may be supposed to symbolize the former character of the
Teutonic Cythere as a Ceres, a goddess of productiveness and fertility in
every sense.
Representations of the Perchta myth have until lately been going on,
at stated times of the year, among the peasantry of Southern Germany;
and are, no doubt, still in vogue here and there. Near Salzburg, a
“Perchtel” is represented, in such masquerades, with a sky-blue dress,
wearing a crown of tinkling bells, and singing in highly jubilant manner.
The goddess, or fairy, here shows something of a vulgivaga character; a
trait cropping up already in the Eddie Hyndlu-Song.
The decay of the Freia myth may be said to have begun when her
powers of entrancing men made her to be looked upon as a dangerous
sorceress, as the incarnation of witchcraft. Still, before the goddess
simply became a hag—an ole Moder Tarsclie, that is, Old Mother Sorceress
—popular fancy wove some charming legends about her magic qualities.
On the banks of the river Main, there are Hulli-steine, Holda’s stones, or
hollow stones, on which a fairy form sits at night, bewailing the loss of
her betrothed one who has left her. There she sits, sunk in sorrow,
shedding tears over the rock until it is worn down and becomes hollowed
out. In another Franconian tale, the bewitching fay sits on a rock in the
moon-light, when the bloom of the vine fills the mountains and the valleys
with sweet ffagrancy; she is clad in a white, shining garment, pouring
forth heart-enthralling songs. The children, in those parts of the country,
are warned not to listen to the seductive voice, but ardently to pray their
pater-noster, lest they should have to remain with “ Holli ” in the wood
until the Day of Judgment. From this legend, Heine took the subject
of his Lorelei song, transplanting it from the Main to the Rhine. Holda
appears, in this Franconian version, with faintly-indicated surroundings
of a Bacchic nature ; and her abode is described as “in the wood,
whither many pagan deities were relegated after Christianity had obtained
the upper-hand.
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
613
Some myths of later growth convert Freia into a “Venus ” who has
lost all the attributes of domestic virtue, connected with the earlier image
of the goddess ; nay, into a sort of grim Lakshmi, half Venus, half infernal
deity, who sits in a mountain cave, where there is much groaning of souls
suffering damnation. Other legends, though painting her as a she-devil,
do not depict the “ Venusinne ’’-grotto as a place of torment, but rather
as one of magic attractiveness, from which even the repentant sinner, who
has been allowed to leave it for a pilgrimage to Rome, cannot break loose
for ever.
This view of the abode of Venus we get in the famed
Tannhäuser legend, about which we possess various ancient poems, dating
from the fifteenth century.
The identity of the German Venus legends with the Freia-Holda
cycle is proveable from various facts. There is a “Venus-Berg” in
Suabia, situated close to a “ Hollenhof.” In a Swiss version of the
Tannhäuser song, Frau Venus is called “Frau Frene,” a name evoking
the memory of Frea or Freia. The IIorseel-Berg, near Eisenach, an old
place of Freia worship, was especially pointed out as containing the under
ground abode of Venus. And in the same way as Wodan’s wife, when
she left the mountain at midnight, as a wild huntress, with her army of
souls, was preceded by a grey-bearded man, the trusty Eckhart, who with
a white staff warned off all people not to obstruct the path of the goddess ;
so also Venus, when she leaves the mountain, is preceded by the trusty
Eckhart. The identity is therefore fully established.
To complete the picture of strange transformations, I ought to speak
of Freia-Bertha becoming the Ahn-frau and the ueisse Frau of German
princely families and royal castles. The presiding female deity of the
Asa-dynasty is changed into the ancestress of kings who, with the pride of
rulers by right divine, trace their pedigree to celestial origin. In the same
way, the white-robed goddess, who once exercised a powerful influence, is
metamorphosed into a spectral “ woman in white,” whose appearance
foretells the coming of great events, or is even a harbinger 'of royal death.
I will not treat here of the curious chapter of Berthas, ancestresses- of
kings, who were represented as swan-footed, flat-footed, large-footed, or
club-footed, a characteristic which brings us back to the bevy of swan
damsels who surrounded Freia. I will only, in conclusion, speak of the
strange transfiguration of Holda into a Hel, of a goddess of Love into
a goddess of Death, whose name afterwards furnished the designation for
the infernal region, or hell.
And here it is first to be observed that Hel, the Germanic mistress of
the under-world, originally was a mother of life, like Holda, as well as a
mother of death. Her natne, which comes from lielen or hehlen—in
Latin celare—indicates that she is a deity who works in darkness and
secrecy. Hence, she represents, in the beginning, the forces of nature
that are active beneath the hiding soil. Consequently, she is not, properly
speaking, destructive ; she rather aids in nature’s rejuvenation. She
typifies the idea of life emerging from death, and of death being only a
�614
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
transformation of life. In the Edda, Hel is half dark or livid, half of the
hue of the human skin (bld half en half me# horundur lit); similar to the
Hindoo Bhavani or Maha Kali, the mother of nature and life, the goddess
who creates and destroys, the representative of love and of death, whose
face alternately is radiant with beauty, like that of Aphrodite, or expressive
of hideous terrors. In her beneficent quality, Bhavani carries a lotos
flower in her hand, even as Freia the rose ; and the waters of the Ganges
murmur her praise, as crystal lakes may have done that of the Germanic
deity. In her destroying and avenging character, the Hindoo goddess is
Kali the bloodthirsty, who rides a hellish horse. So Holda is converted
into a fiendish Hel.
Thus the images of life and death, of creation and destruction, of
beauty and of horrors, touch each other in a mysterious twilight. It is
an idea which may be followed through many religious systems ; for is
not Apollo also, the sunny'god, a typification of the pernicious power as
well as of ideal beauty ? and does not his very name bear the trace of the
destructive force ascribed to him ? The deep meaning contained in these
contradictory combinations attaches also to the mythological fancies of our
ruder forefathers ; and though it may sometimes be difficult to grasp the
sense that is enclosed in the veiling legends, they have, irrespective of
the philosophical significance which they struggle to express, a poetical
merit of their own, often exhibiting a bold and many-coloured imagery,
and a power of fashioning forms, such as we are wont to admire in the
products of classic antiquity.
KARL BLIND.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Freia-Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love
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Blind, Karl [author]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 599-614 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the Cornhill Magazine 25 (May 1872). Attribution from Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[Smith, Elder & Co.]
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[1872]
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G5349
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Mythology
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English
Conway Tracts
Freia-Holda
Germany
Goddesses
Mythology
Paganism