Debit and Credit. Gustav Freytag
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so small, that they considered themselves entitled to the monopoly of all the higher offices of state, and regarded every citizen of culture, fortune, and consideration with jealousy, as an upstart. The new monarchic constitution of 1808–12, which has immortalized the names of Frederick William III., and of his ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, altered this system, and abolished the vassalage and feudal service of the peasants in those provinces that lie to the east of the Elbe. The fruits of this wise act of social reform were soon apparent, not only in the increase of prosperity and of the population, but also in that steady and progressive elevation of the national spirit which alone made it possible in 1813–14 for the house of Hohenzollern to raise the monarchy to the first rank among the European powers.
The further development in Prussia of political freedom unfortunately did not keep pace with these social changes; and so—to say no more—it happened that the consequences of all half measures soon resulted. Even before the struggles of 1848, down to which period the story of our novel reaches, the classes of the more polished nobility and citizens, instead of fusing into one band of gentry, and thus forming the basis of a landed aristocracy, had assumed an unfriendly attitude, in consequence of a stagnation in the growth of a national lower nobility as the head of the wealthy and cultivated bourgeoisie, resulting from an unhappy reaction which then took place in Prussia. The feudal proprietor was meanwhile becoming continually poorer, because he lived beyond his income. Falling into embarrassments of every sort, he has recourse for aid to the provincial banks. His habits of life, however, often prevent him from employing these loans on the improvement of his property, and he seldom makes farming the steady occupation and business of his life. But he allows himself readily to become involved in the establishment of factories—whether for the manufacture of brandy or for the production of beet-root sugar—which promise a larger and speedier return, besides the enhancement of the value of the land. But, in order to succeed in such undertakings, he wants the requisite capital and experience. He manifests even less prudence in the conduct of these speculations than in the cultivation of his ancestral acres, and the inevitable result ensues that an ever-increasing debt at length necessitates the sale of his estate. Such estates are ever more and more frequently becoming the property of the merchant or manufacturer from the town, or perhaps of the neighboring proprietor of the same inferior rank, who has lately settled in the country, and become entitled to the exercise of equal rights with the hereditary owner. There is no essential difference in social culture between the two classes, but there is a mighty difference between the habits of their lives. The mercantile class of citizens is in Germany more refined than in any other country, and has more political ambition than the corresponding class in England has yet exhibited. The families of public functionaries constitute the other half of the cultivated citizen class; and as the former have the superiority in point of wealth, so these bear the palm in respect of intellectual culture and administrative talent. Almost all authors, since the days of Luther, have belonged to this class. In school and college learning, in information, and in the conduct of public affairs, the citizen is thus, for the most part, as far superior to the nobleman as in fashionable manners the latter is to him. The whole nation, however, enjoys alike the advantage of military education, and every man may become an officer who passes the necessary examination. Thus, in the manufacturing towns, the citizens occupy the highest place, and the nobility in the garrison towns and those of royal residence. This fact, however, must not be lost sight of—that Berlin, the most populous city of Germany, has also gradually become the chief and the richest commercial one, while the great fortress of Magdeburg has also been becoming the seat of a wealthy and cultivated mercantile community.
Instead of desiring landed property, and perhaps a patent of nobility for his children, and an alliance with some noble country family, the rich citizen rather sticks to his business, and prefers a young man in his own rank, or perhaps a clergyman, or professor, or some municipal officer as a suitor to his daughter, to the elegant officer or man of noble blood; for the richest and most refined citizen, though the wife or daughter of a noble official, is not entitled to appear at court with her husband or her father. It is not, therefore, as in England or Scotland, the aim of a man who has plied his industrious calling with success to assume the rank and habits of a nobleman or country squire. The rich man remains in town among his equals. It is only when we understand this difference in the condition of the social relations in Germany and in England that the scope and intention of our novel can be apprehended.
It would be a mistake to suppose that our remarks are only applicable to the eastern provinces of Prussia. If, perhaps, they are less harshly manifested in the western division of our kingdom, and indeed in Western Germany, it is in consequence of noble families being fewer in number, and the conditions of property being more favorable to the citizen class. The defective principle is the same, as also the national feeling in regard to it. It is easily understood, indeed, how this should have become much stronger since 1850, seeing that the greater and lesser nobility have blindly united in endeavoring to bring about a reaction—demanding all possible and impossible privileges and exemptions, or compensations, and are separating themselves more and more widely from the body of the nation.
In Silesia and Posen, however, the theatres on which our story is enacted, other and peculiar elements, though lying, perhaps, beneath the surface, affect the social relations of the various classes. In both provinces, but especially in Posen, the great majority of noblemen are the proprietors of land, and the enactment under Hardenberg and Stein in 1808–10, in regard to peasant rights, had been very imperfectly carried out in districts where vassalage, as in all countries of Slavonic origin, was nearly universal. Many estates are of large extent, and some, indeed, are strictly entailed. These circumstances naturally give to a country life in Silesia or Posen quite a different character than that in the Rhine provinces. In Posen, besides, two foreign elements—found in Silesia also in a far lesser degree—exercise a mighty influence on the social relations of the people. One is the Jewish, the other the Polish element. In Posen, the Jews constitute in the country the class of innkeepers and farmers; of course, they carry on some trade in addition. The large banking establishments are partly, the smaller ones almost exclusively, in their hands. They become, by these means, occasionally the possessors of land; but they regard such property almost always as a mere subject for speculation, and it is but rarely that the quondam innkeeper or peddler settles down as a tiller of the soil. In Silesia, their chief seat is in Breslau, where the general trade of the country, as well as the purchase and the sale of land, is for the most part transacted. It is a pretty general feeling in Germany that Freytag has not dealt altogether impartially with this class, by failing to introduce in contrast to the abandoned men whom he selects for exhibition a single honest, upright Jew, a character not wanting among that remarkable people. The inextinguishable higher element of our nature, and the fruits of German culture, are manifested, it is true, in the Jewish hero of the tale, ignorant alike of the world and its ways, buried among his cherished books, and doomed to early death; but this is done more as a poetic comfort to humanity than in honor of Judaism, from which plainly in his inmost soul he had departed, that he might turn to the Christianized spirit and to the poetry of the Gentiles.
The Polish element, however, is of still far greater importance. Forming, as they once did, with the exception of a few German settlements, the entire population of the province, the Poles have become, in the course of the last century, and especially since the removal of restrictions on the sale of land, less numerous year by year. In Posen proper they constitute, numerically, perhaps the half of the population; but in point of prosperity and mental culture their influence is scarcely as one fourth upon the whole. On the other hand, in some districts, as, for instance, in Gnesen, the Polish influence predominates in the towns, and reigns undisputed in the country. The middle class is exclusively German or Jewish; where these elements are lacking, there is none. The Polish vassal, emancipated by the enactment of 1810, is gradually ripening into an independent yeoman, and knows full well that he owes his freedom, not to his former Polish masters, but to Prussian legislation and administration. The exhibition of these social relations, as they were manifested by the contending parties in 1848, is, in all respects, one of the most admirable portions of our novel. The events are all vividly depicted, and, in all essential points, historically true. One feature here appears, little known in foreign lands, but deserving careful observation, not only on its own account, but as a key to the meaning and intention of the attractive narrative before us.
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