The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag
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the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers, the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province. Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and 2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice, von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much the King favoured the nobility when it was serviceable to the State, yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in elevating the mass of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present his petition, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system was felt which so assiduously raised the strength of the people, in order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.
Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant, material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote "Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however, before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the burgher classes, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular, uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable foundation of the other classes of human society.
One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution. The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he makes for the elevation of the class are sensible, but unsatisfactory; as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet, when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant, but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity, coarseness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and a multitude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought in this despised and ruined class; that the condition of things under which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly feeling, and of the noble consciousness of independence--was impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work, therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation. The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but the literary class. Garve speaks as follows:--
"One circumstance has great influence on the character of the peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They associate like soldiers, and thus get an esprit de corps; many results arise from this: first, they become polished after their fashion, and more acute through this association. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and they have better notions than the common artisan of many of the relations of social life; that is to say, of all those which occur in their class and in their own mode of life. This constant intercourse, this continual companionship, is with them, as with soldiers, what lightens their condition. It is a happy thing to hare much and constant companionship with others, if they are your equals; it gives rise to an intimate acquaintance and a reciprocal confidence, at least in outward appearance, without which no intercourse can be agreeable. The noble enjoys this advantage; he associates for the most part only with his equals, being separated by his pride from those below him, and he and his equals live much together, as leisure and wealth enable him to do so. The peasant enjoys singular advantages from opposite reasons. His insignificance is so great that it prevents his having the wish, still more the opportunity, of associating with those above him; he hardly ever sees anything but peasants, and his servitude and his work bring him frequently in companionship with these his equals.
"But this very circumstance causes the peasants to act in a body; thus the inconveniences of a democratic constitution are introduced, so that a single unquiet head from their own body exercises great power over them, and often influences the whole community. It is, moreover, the reason why persons of another class have so little influence over them, and can only sway them by authority and compulsion. They seldom see or hear the judgments, conceptions, and examples of the higher orders, and only for a brief space.
"I have long studied the special signification of the word tückisch, which I have never heard so frequently as when the talk has been of peasants. It denotes, without doubt, a mixture of childish character, of simplicity, and weakness, with spite and cunning.
"Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys, in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear, shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys, when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the passersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. But as soon as the stranger is a little way off, they run to their comrades, and burst out laughing.
"The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on the other, in many respects,