The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag
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the privileges of his order; he lounges in antechambers, and by bribery endeavours to secure for his relations some appointment about the court. He unwillingly allows his son to study law, with the hope that he may, as royal counsellor, advance the interests of his family; in short, he looks upon the court and the government as wine vats to be tapped, so as to afford him a good draught. Germany is to him a mere geographical spot, which he neither loves nor hates; his family or his order are all that he serves or cares for, and if one abstracts from him his high pretensions, and compares the remains of the kernel with the men of our own time, we should find more sense and rectitude in the stubborn head of a corporation of the smallest town than in him.
Again a century has passed, a time of little energy or national strength, and yet great changes have taken place. The year 1759 is in the youth of our grandfathers; numberless remembrances cling to our hearts; it will be sufficient to recall a few. The squire's house has no longer a bare front: a porch has been added, supported by stone pillars; the staircase is ornamented with vases; over the hall door a rudely carved angel holds the family arms emblazoned on a spiral shell. On one side of the building lies the farm-yard, on the other the garden, laid out with trim beech hedges and obelisks of yew. The old whitewashed walls are almost all covered with plaster-of-paris, and some are highly ornamented. There is an abundance of household furniture beautifully carved in oak or walnut; near the ancient family portraits hang modern pastil pictures, amongst them perhaps the daughter of the house as a shepherdess with a crook in her hand. In the apartments of the lady of the house there is a porcelain table with coloured tankards, small cups, pug-dogs, and Cupids of this newly discovered material. Propriety reigns everywhere with a strict stern rule; women and servants speak low, children kiss their parents' hands, the master of the house calls his wife "ma chère," and uses other French phrases. The hair is powdered, and the ladies wear stiff gowns and high head-dresses; violent emotions or strong passions seldom disturb the stiff formality of their carriage or the tranquillity of the house.
The squire has become economist, and looks a little after the farming; he tries by selecting choice breeds to improve the wool of his flocks, and raises carefully the new bulb called the potato, which is to be a source of unfailing nourishment to man and beast. The mode of life is quiet, simple, and formal. The mother shakes her head about Gellert's 'Life of the Swedish Countess;' the daughter is delighted with Kleist's 'Spring,' and sings to the harpsichord of violets and lambs; and the father carries in his pocket the 'Songs of a Grenadier.' Coffee is placed before the visitors, and on high holidays chocolate makes its appearance. Everything is managed by government officials, and much is required of the country gentleman, who has to pay taxes without being consulted: he is a person of more consideration than the citizen, but is now far removed from the prince. The great noble looks with contempt on him, and it is well for him if he does not feel the weight of his stick: the officials of the capital interfere with his farming; they order him to dig a drain, to build a mill, even to plant mulberry-trees, and send him the eggs of silkworms, insisting upon his rearing them. It is a weary time; the third, or Seven years', war is raging between the king and emperor; the squire is walking about his room, wringing his hands and weeping. How is it that this hard man has so completely lost his composure? The letter on the table has informed him that his son, an officer in the king's army, has come unscathed out of the fight at Cunnersdorf; why then does he weep and wring his hands? His King is in distress; the state to which he belongs is in danger of destruction, and it is for this that he grieves. He is greater, richer, and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him, either in life or death, makes him a man.
Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought and feeling, is so essentially different. The reason of this difference is, that at all periods of the past the mind of the individual was less free and more subordinate to the spirit of the nation; we may see this especially in the middle ages, but it may still be observed in the last century.
There was no such thing as public opinion. The individual submitted his conscience to the approbation of those with whom he lived; he committed to them his honour, interests, and safety, and only felt that he existed as a member of the society, thus rendering the necessity of union more urgent. How strikingly this tendency of the old times was exemplified in the clubs of Hanseatic stations! The constraint within their closed walls was almost monkish. Every word and gesture at the dinner-table was regulated, and this rule was maintained by severe punishments. The soldiers who roamed about together in troops from all parts of Germany, made laws for themselves, by which they kept the strictest discipline, each being accuser and judge of the other. Upon a sea voyage the passengers selected from amongst themselves a magistrate, judge, and police-officer, who declared the law, imposed fines, and awarded even bodily punishment; and if at the conclusion of the journey any individual wished to free himself from this control, he had to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for any annoyance or injury he might have suffered under the ship's law; and it was the same with pilgrimages to the Holy Land, especially where it was question of any dangerous enterprise. For instance, when, in the year 1535, five-and-twenty men from Amberg undertook to explore the cavern of the "awful" mountains, their first act at the entrance to the caverns was to choose two leaders, and take an oath of obedience to stand by one another in life or death.
The same feature is to be found amongst the artists of the middle ages: thus did the life of individuals first find its full expression, in association with others.
One peculiar charm which we find in the national character of those early ages, is the union of a strong love of freedom with a spirit of obedience. To this characteristic of the old times may be added another. All, from the emperor to the wandering beggar, from their birth to their death, from morning till night, were fenced in by customs, forms, and ceremonies. A wonderful creative genius produced endless pictures and symbols, by which everything on earth was idealized. By these means was expressed the way in which the people understood their relations with God, and the right direction of all human energy; there were also many mysterious rituals which served as means of defence against the supposed influence of unearthly powers. Even in law mimic and figurative proceedings were laid down. Whoever sought revenge before a court of justice for the murder of a relative, had everything as to garments and gestures, the very words of the accusation, and even their complaints, prescribed to them. Every transfer of property, every investiture and contract, had its significant forms and precise words, on which its legality depended. The knights were summoned to the lists by the herald; the bride was claimed and the guests invited to the wedding by fixed forms of speech; it was considered of importance which foot was placed first on the ground in the morning, which shoe was first put on, and what stranger was first met on going out; also, how the bread was laid on the table at each meal, and where the salt-cellar was placed. All that concerned the body, the cutting of the hair, baths, and bleeding, had their appointed time and appropriate regulations. When the agriculturist turned up the first clod, when he brought in the last sheaf, leaving a truss of corn in the field, in short, all the incidents of labour had their peculiar usages; there were customs for every important day of the year, and they abounded at every festival. Many relics of these remain to our day; we maintain some for our amusement, but most of them appear to us useless, senseless, and superstitious.
Many of these practices had been derived in Germany from the heathen faith and ancient laws and customs. The Church of the middle ages followed in the same track, idealizing life. The services became more frequent, the ceremonials more artificial. In the same way that it had sanctified the great epochs of life by the mystery of its sacraments, it tried, rivalling the heathen traditions, to influence even the trifling actions of every-day life. It consecrated fountains and animals, and professed that it could stop the effusion of blood and turn away the enemy's shot by its blessing. Its endeavours to make the spiritual perceptible to the senses of the multitude, produced many proverbs and symbolical actings, which gave rise to the dramas of the middle ages. But whilst it thus met the imaginative tendencies of the people, its own spiritual and moral character was injured by all these outward observances; and when Luther accused the Church of thirty-seven errors, from the sale of indulgences, to the consecrated