The Great Men of the Exile

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I (Gottfried Kinkel)

Passages marked between [ ] square brackets were crossed out by Marx in the final draft.

"Singe, unsterbliche Seele,

der sündigen Menschen Erlösung

[Sing, immortal soul

the redemption of fallen

mankind] — through Gottfried Kinkel.

Gottfried Kinkel was born some 40 years ago. The story of his life has been made available to us in an autobiography, Gottfried Kinkel. Truth without Poetry. A Biographical sketch-book. Edited by Adolph Strodtmann. (Hamburg, Hoffmann & Campe, 1850, octavo.)

Gottfried is the hero of that democratic Siegwart epoch that flooded Germany with endless torrents of tearful lament and patriotic melancholy. He made his debut as a simple lyrical Siegwart.

We are indebted to Strodtmann the Apostle, whose "narrative compilation" we follow here, both for the diary-like fragments in which his pilgrimage on this earth is paraded before the reader, and for the glaring lack of discretion of the revelations they contain.

"Bonn, February — September 1834"

"Like his friend, Paul Zeller, young Gottfried studied Protestant theology and his piety and industry earned him the admiration of his celebrated teachers" (Sack, Nitzsch and Bleck, p. 5).

From the very beginning he is "obviously immersed in weighty speculations" (p. 4), he is "tormented and gloomy" as befits a budding genius. "Gottfried's gloomily flashing brown eyes" "lit upon" some youths "in brown jackets and pale-blue overcoats"; he at once sensed that these youths wished "to make up for their inner emptiness by outer show" (p. 6). He explains his moral indignation by pointing out that he had "defended Hegel and Marheinicke" when these lads had called Marheinicke a "blockhead"; later, when he himself goes to study in Berlin and is himself in the position of having to learn from Marheinicke he characterises him in his diary with the following belletristic epigram (p. 61):

"Ein Kerl ,der spekuliert,

ist wie ein Tier auf dürrer Heide

von einem loosen Geist im Kreis herumgeführt,

und ringsumher ist schöne grüne Weide."

[I tell you a chap who's intellectual

Is like a beast on a blasted heath

Driven in circles by a demon

While a fine green meadow lies round beneath.]

Gottfried has clearly forgotten that other verse in which Mephistopheles makes fun of the student thirsting for knowledge:

"Verachte nur Verstand und Wissenschaff!"

[Only look down on knowledge and reason!]

However, the whole moralising Student Scene serves merely as an introduction enabling the future Liberator of the World to make the following revelation (p. 6). Listen to Gottfried:

"This race will not perish, unless a great war comes.... Only strong remedies will raise this age up from the mire!"

"A second Flood with you as a second and improved edition of Noah!" his friend replied.

The light brown overcoats have helped Gottfried to the point where he can proclaim himself the "Noah in a new Flood". His friend responds with a comment that might well have served as the motto to the whole biography.

"My father and I have often had occasion to smile at your passion for unclear ideas!"

Throughout these Confessions of a Beautiful Soul we find repeated only one "dear idea", namely that Kinkel was a great man from the moment of his conception. The most trivial things that occur to all trivial people become momentous events; the petty joys and sorrows that every student of theology experiences in a more interesting form, the conflicts with bourgeois conditions to be found by the dozen in every consistory and refectory in Germany become world-shaking events from which Gottfried, overwhelmed by Weltschmerz, fashions a perpetual comedy.

[Thus we find that these confessions consistently present a double aspect — there is firstly the comedy, the amusing way in which Gottfried interprets the smallest trivia as signs of his future greatness and casts himself in relief from the outset. And then there is the rodomontade, his trick of complacently embellishing in retrospect every little occurrence in his theologico-lyrical past. Having established these two basic features we can return to the further developments in Gottfried's story.]

The family [of his "friend Paul" leaves Bonn and] returns to Württemberg. Gottfried stages this event in the following manner.

Gottfried loves Paul's sister and uses the occasion to explain that he has "already been in love twice before"! His present love, however, is no ordinary love but a "fervent and authentic act of divine worship" (p. 13). Gottfried climbs the Drachenfels together with friend Paul and against this romantic backcloth he breaks into dithyrambs:

"Farewell to friendship! — I shall find a brother in our Saviour; — Farewell to love — Faith shall be my bride; — Farewell to sisterly loyalty — I am come to the commune of many thousands of just souls! Away then, O my youthful heart, learn to be alone with your God; struggle with him until you conquer him and force him to give you a new name, that of Holy Israel which no-one knows but he who receives it! I give you greetings, you glorious rising sun, image of my awakening soul!" (p. 17).

We see how the departure of his friend gives Gottfried the opportunity to sing an ecstatic hymn to his own soul. As if that were not enough, his friend too must join in the hymn. For while Gottfried exults ecstatically he speaks "with exalted voice and glowing countenance", he "forgets the presence of his friend", "his gaze is transfigured", "his voice inspired", etc. (p. 17) — in short we have the vision of the Prophet Elijah as it appears in the Bible complete in every detail.

"Smiling sorrowfully Paul looked at him with his loyal gaze and said: 'You have a mightier heart in your bosom than I and will surely outdistance me — but let me be your friend — even when I am far away.' Joyfully Gottfried clasped the proferred hand and renewed the ancient covenant" (p. 18).

Gottfried has got what he wants from this Transfiguration on the Mount. Friend Paul who has just been laughing at "Gottfried's passion for unclear ideas" humbles himself before the name of "holy Israel" and acknowledges Gottfried's superiority and future greatness. Gottfried is as pleased as Punch and graciously condescends to renew the ancient covenant.

The scene changes. It is the birthday of Kinkel's mother, the wife of Pastor Kinkel of Upper Cassel. The family festival is used to proclaim that "his mother, like the mother of our Lord, was called Mary" (p. 20) — certain proof that Gottfried, too, was destined to be a saviour and redeemer. Thus within the space of twenty pages our student of theology has been led by the most insignificant events to cast himself as Noah, as the holy Israel, as Elijah, and, lastly, as Christ.

*

Inevitably, Gottfried, who when it comes to the point has experienced nothing, constantly dwells on his inner feelings. The Pietism that has stuck to this parson's son and would-be scholar of divinity is well adapted both to his innate emotional instability and his coquettish, preoccupation with his own person. We learn that his mother and sister were both strict Pietists and that Gottfried was powerfully conscious of his own sinfulness. The conflict of this pious sense of sin with the "carefree and sociable joie de vivre" of the ordinary student appears in Gottfried, as befits his world-historical mission, in terms of' a struggle between religion and poetry. The pint of beer that the parson's son from Upper Cassel downs with the other students becomes the fateful chalice in which Faust's twin spirits are locked in battle. In the description of his pietistic family life we see his "Mother Mary" combat as sinful "Gottfried's penchant for the theatre" (p. 28), a momentous conflict designed to prefigure the poet of the future but which in fact merely highlights Gottfried's love of the theatrical. The harpy-like puritanism of his sister Johanna is revealed by an incident in which she boxed the ears of a five-year-old girl for inattention in church — sordid family gossip whose inclusion would be incomprehensible were it not for the revelation at the end of the book that this same sister Johanna put up the strongest opposition to Gottfried's marriage to Mme. Mockel.

One event held to be worthy of mention is that in Seelscheid Gottfried preached "a wonderful sermon about the wilting wheat".

*

The Zelter family and "beloved Elise" finally take their departure. We learn that Gottfried "squeezed the girl's hand passionately" and murmured the greeting, "Elise, farewell! I must say no more". This interesting story is followed by the first of Siegwart's laments.

"Destroyed!" "Without a sound." "Most agonising torment!" "Burning brow." "Deepest sighs," "His mind was lacerated by the wildest pains", etc. (p. 37).

It turns the whole Elijah-like scene into the purest comedy, performed for the benefit of his "friend Paul" and himself. Paul again makes his appearance in order to whisper into the ear of Siegwart who is sitting there alone and wretched: "This kiss is for my Gottfried" (p. 38).

And Gottfried at once cheers up.

"My plan to see my sweet love again, honourably and not without a name, is firmer than ever" (p. 38).

Even amid the pangs of love he does not fail to comment on the name he expects to make, or to brag of the laurels he claims in advance. Gottfried uses the intermezzo to commit his love to paper in extravagant and vainglorious terms, to make sure that the world is not deprived of even his diary-feelings. But the scene has not yet reached its climax. The faithful Paul has to point out to our barnstorming maestro that if Elise were to remain stationary while he continued to develop, she might not satisfy him later on.

"Oh no!" said Gottfried. "This heavenly budding flower whose first leaves have scarcely opened already smells so sweetly. How much greater will be her beauty when... the burning summer ray of manly vigour unfolds her innermost calix!" (p. 40).

Paul finds himself reduced to answering this sordid image by remarking that rational arguments mean nothing to poets.

"'And all your wisdom will not protect you from the whims of life better than our lovable folly' Gottfried replied with a smile" (p. 40).

What a moving picture: Narcissus smiling to himself! The gauche student suddenly enters as the lovable fool, Paul becomes Wagner and admires the great man; and the great man "smiles", "indeed, he smiles a kind, gentle smile". The climax is saved. Gottfried finally manages to leave Bonn. He gives this summary of his educational attainments to date.

"Unfortunately I am increasingly unable to accept Hegelianism; my highest aspiration is to be a rationalist, at the same time I am a supernaturalist and a mystic, if necessary I am even a Pietist (p. 45).

This self-analysis requires no commentary.

"Berlin, October 1834-August 1835."

Leaving his narrow family and student environment Gottfried arrives in Berlin. In comparison with Bonn, Berlin is relatively metropolitan but of this we find no trace in Gottfried any more than we find evidence of his involvement in the scientific activity of the day. Gottfried's diary entries confine themselves to the emotions he experiences together with his new compagnon d'aventure, Hugo Dünweg from Barmen, and also to the minor hardships of an indigent theologian: his money difficulties, shabby coats, employment as a reviewer, etc. His life stands in no relation to that of the public life of the city, but only to the Schlössing family in which Dünweg passes for Master Wolfram [von Eschenbach] and Gottfried for Master Gottfried von Strasbourg (p. 67). Elise fades gradually from his heart and he conceives a new itch for Miss Maria Schlössing. Unfortunately he learns of Elise's engagement to someone else and he sums up his Berlin feelings and aspirations as a "dark longing for a woman he could [call] wholly his own.

However, Berlin must not be abandoned without the inevitable climax:

"Before he left Berlin Weiss, the old theatre producer, took him once again into the theatre. A strange feeling came over the youth as the friendly old man led him into the great auditorium where the busts of German dramatists have been placed and with a gesture towards a few empty niches said meaningfully:

'There are still some vacant places!'"

Yes, indeed, there is still a place vacant awaiting our Platenite Gottfried who solemnly allows an old clown to flatter him with the exquisite pleasure of "future immortality".

"Bonn, Autumn 1835 — Autumn 1837"

"Constantly balancing between art, life and science, unable to reach a decision, active in all three without firm commitment, he resolved to learn, to gain and to be creative in all three as much as his indecision would permit" (p. 89).

Having thus discovered himself to be an irresolute dilettante Gottfried returns to Bonn. Of course, the feeling that he is a dilettante does not deter him from taking his Licentiate examination and from becoming a Privatdozent at the university of Bonn.

"Neither Chamisso nor Knapp had published the poems he had sent them in their magazines and this upset him greatly" (p. 99).

This is the public debut of the great man who in private circles lives on intellectual tick on the promise of his future eminence. From this time on he definitely becomes a hero of dubious local significance in belletristic student circles until the moment when a glancing shot in Baden suddenly turns him into the hero of the German Philistines.

"But more and more there arose in Kinkel's breast the yearning for a firm, true love, a yearning that no devotion to work could dispel" (p. 103).

The first victim of this yearning is a certain Minna. Gottfried dallies with Minna and sometimes for the sake of variety he acts the compassionate Mahadeva who allows the maiden to worship him while he meditates on the state of her health.

"Kinkel could have loved her had he been able to deceive himself about her condition; but his love would have killed the wilting rose even more quickly. Minna was the first girl that could understand him; but she was a second Hecuba and would have borne him torches and not children, and through them the passion of the parents would have burnt down their own house as Priam's passion burned Troy. Yet he could not abandon her, his heart bled for her, he was indeed wretched not through love, but through pity."

The godlike hero whose love can kill, like the sight of Jupiter, is nothing but an ordinary self-regarding young puppy who in the course of his marriage studies tries out the role of the cad for the first time. His revolting meditations on her health and its possible effects on children become the occasion for the base decision to prolong the relationship for his own pleasure and to break it off only when it provides him with the excuse for yet another melodramatic scene. Gottfried goes on a journey to visit an uncle whose son has just died; at the midnight hour in the room where the corpse is laid out he stages a scene from a Bellini opera with his cousin, Mlle. Elise II. He becomes engaged to her, "in the presence of the dead" and on the following morning his uncle gladly accepts him as his future son-in-law.

"Now that he was lost to her forever, he often thought of Minna and of the moment when he would see her again. But he was not afraid as she could have no claims on a heart that was already bound" (p. 117).

The new engagement means nothing but the opportunity to bring about a dramatic explosion in his relationship with Minna. In this crisis we find "duty and passion" confronting each other. This explosion is produced in the most philistine and rascally way because our bonhomme denies Minna's legal claims upon his heart which is already committed elsewhere. Our virtuous hero is of course not at all disturbed by the need to compound this lie to himself by reversing the order of events in the matter of his "bound heart". Gottfried has plunged into the interesting necessity of being forced to break "a poor, great heart".

"After a pause Gottfried went on: 'At the same time, Minna, I feel I owe you an apology — I have sinned against you — the hand which I let you have yesterday with such feelings of friendship, that hand is no longer free — I am engaged!'" (p. 123).

Our melodramatic student takes good care not to mention that this engagement took place a few hours after he had given her his hand "with such feelings of friendship".

"Oh God! — Minna — can you forgive me?" (loc. cit.)

"I am a man and must be faithful to my duty — I may not love you! But I have not deceived you" (p. 124). After re-arranging his duty after the fact it only remains to produce the unbelievable. He dramatically reverses the whole relationship so that instead of Minna forgiving him, our moral priest forgives the deceived woman. With this in mind he conceives the possibility that Minna "might hate him from afar" and he follows this supposition up with this final moral:

"'I would gladly forgive you for that and if that were the case you can be assured of my forgiveness in advance. And now farewell, my duty calls me, I must leave you!' He slowly left the harbor ... from that hour on Gottfried was unhappy" (p. 124).

The actor and self-styled lover is transformed into the hypocritical priest who extricates himself from the affair with an unctuous blessing; Siegwart's sham conflicts of love have led to the happy result that he is able in his imagination to think himself unhappy. It finally becomes apparent that all of these arranged love stories were nothing but Gottfried's coquettish infatuation with himself. The whole affair amounts to no more than that our priest with his dreams of future immortality has produced Old Testament stories and modern lending-library phantasies after the manner of Spiess, Clauren and Cramer so that he may indulge his vanity by posing as a romantic hero.

"Rummaging among his books he came across Novalis' Ofterdingen the book that had so often inspired him to write poetry a year before. While still at school he and some friends had founded a society by the name of Teutonia with the aim of increasing their understanding of German history and literature. In this society he had assumed the name of Heinrich von Ofterdingen.... Now the meaning of this name became clear to him. He saw himself as that same Heinrich in the charming little town at the foot of the Wartburg and a longing for the 'Blue Flower' took hold of him with overwhelming force. Minna could not be the glorious fairy-tale bloom, nor could she be his bride, however anxiously he probed his heart. Dreaming, he read on and on, the phantastic world of magic enveloped him and he ended by hurling himself weeping into a chair, thinking of the 'Blue Flower'."

Gottfried here unveils the whole romantic lie which he had woven around himself; the carnival gift of disguising oneself as other people is his authentic "inner being". Earlier on he had called himself Gottfried von Strasbourg; now he appears as Heinrich von Ofterdingen and he is searching not for the "Blue Flower" but for a woman who will acknowledge his claims to be Heinrich von Ofterdingen. And in the end he really did find the "Blue Flower", a little faded and yellow, in a woman who played the much longed-for comedy in his interest and in her own. The sham Romanticism, the travesty and the caricature of ancient stories and romances which Gottfried re-lives to make up for the lack of any inner substance of his own, the whole emotional swindle of his vacuous encounters with Mary, Minna and Elise I & II have brought him to the point where he thinks that his experiences are on a par with those of Goethe. Just as Goethe had suddenly rushed off to Italy, there to write his Roman Elegies after undergoing the storms of love, so too Gottfried thinks that his day-dreams of love qualify him for a trip to Rome. Goethe must have had a premonition of Gottfried:

Hat doch der Walfisch seine Laus,

Kann ich auch meine haben.

[And if the whale has his lice I can have them too]

"Italy, October 1837 — March 1838"

The trip to Rome opens in Gottfried's diary with a lengthy account of the journey from Bonn to Coblenz. This new epoch begins as the previous one had concluded, namely with a narrative richly embellished by allusions to the experiences of others. While on the steamer Gottfried recalls the "splendid passage in Hoffmann" where he "made Master Johannes Wacht produce a highly artistic work immediately after enduring the most overwhelming grief". As a confirmation of the "splendid passage" Gottfried follows up his "overwhelming grief" about Minna by "meditating" about a "tragedy he had long since intended to write" (p. 140).

During Kinkel's journey from Coblenz to Rome the following events take place:

"The friendly letters he frequently receives from his fiancee and which he answers for the most part on the spot, dispel his gloomy thoughts" (p. 144).

"His love for the beautiful Elise II struck root deeply in the youth's yearning bosom" (p. 146).

In Rome we find:

"On his arrival in Rome Kinkel had found a letter from his fiancee awaiting him which further intensified his love for her and caused the image of Minna to fade even more into the background. His heart assured him that Elise could make him happy and he gave himself up to this feeling with the purest passion.... Only now did he realize what love is" (p. 151).

We see that Minna whom he only loved out of pity has re-entered the emotional scene. In his relationship with Elise his dream is that she will make him happy, not he her. And yet in his "Blue Flower" fantasy he had already said that the fairy-tale blossom which had given him such a poetic itch could be neither Elise nor Minna. His newly aroused feelings for these two girls now serve as part of the mis-en-scène for a new conflict.

"Kinkel's poetry seemed to be slumbering in Italy" (p. 151).

Why?

"Because he lacked form" (p. 152).

We learn later that a six-month stay in Italy enabled him to bring the "form" back to Germany well wrapped up. As Goethe had written his Elegies in Rome so Kinkel too meditated on an elegy called "The Awakening of Rome" (p. 153). Kinkel's maid brings him a letter from his fiancee. He opens it joyfully —

"and sank back on his bed with a cry. Elise announced that a wealthy man, a Dr. D. with an extensive practice and even a riding horse had asked for her hand in marriage. As it would probably be a long time before he, Kinkel, an indigent theologian, would have a permanent position she asked him to release her from the bonds that tied her to him".

A scene taken over lock, stock and barrel from [Kotzebue's] Misanthropy and Remorse.

Gottfried "annihilated", "foul putrefaction", "dry eyed", "thirst for revenge", "dagger", "the bosom of his rival", "heart-blood of his enemy", "cold as ice", "maddening pain", etc. (p. 156 and 157).

The element in these "Sorrows and Joys of a poor Theologian" that gives most pain to our unhappy student is the thought that she had "spurned him for the sake of the uncertain possession of earthly goods" (p. 157). Having been moved by the relevant theatrical feelings he finally rises to the following consolation:

"She was unworthy of you — and you still possess the pinions of genius that will bear you aloft high above this dark misery! And when one day your fame encircles the globe the false woman will find a judge in her own heart! — Who knows, perhaps one day in the years to come her children will seek me out to implore my aid and I would not wish to miss that" (p. 157).

Having, inevitably, enjoyed in advance the exquisite pleasure of "his future fame encircling the globe" he reveals himself to be a common philistinic cleric. He speculates that later on Elise's children will come to beg alms from the great poet — and this he would "not wish to miss". And why? Because Elise prefers a horse to the "future fame" of which he constantly dreams, because she prefers "earthly goods" to the farce he intends to perform with himself in the role of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Old Hegel was quite right when he pointed out that a noble consciousness always transposes into a base one.

"Bonn. Summer 1838 — Summer 1843"

(Intrigue and Love)

Having furnished a caricature of Goethe in Italy, Gottfried now resolves on his return to produce Schiller's Intrigue and Love. Though his heart is rent with Weltschmerz Gottfried feels "better than ever" physically (p. 167). His intention is "to establish literary fame for himself through his works" (p. 169), which does not prevent him from acquiring a cheaper fame without works later on when his "works" failed to do what was expected of them.

The "dark longing" which Gottfried always experiences when he pursues a woman finds expression in a remarkably rapid succession of engagements and promises of marriage. The promise of marriage is the classical method by which the strong man and the superior mind "of the future" seeks to conquer his beloved and bind her to him in reality. As soon as the poet catches sight of a little blue flower that might assist him in his efforts to become Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the gentle mists of emotion assume the firm shape of the student's dream of perfecting the ideal affinity by the addition of the bond of "duty". No sooner are the first greetings over than offers of marriage fly in all directions à tort et à travers towards every Daisy and Water Lily in sight. This bourgeois hunt puts in an even more revolting light the unprincipled tail-wagging coquetry with which Gottfried constantly opens his heart to reveal all "the torments of the great poet".

Thus after his return from Italy Gottfried naturally has to "promise" marriage yet again. The object of his passion on this occasion was directly chosen by his sister, the pietistic Johanna whose fanaticism has already been immortalised by the exclamations in Gottfried's diary.

"Bögehold had just recently announced his engagement to Miss Kinkel and Johanna who was more importunate than ever in her meddling in her brother's affairs of the heart now conceived the wish, for a number of reasons concerning the family, that Gottfried should reciprocate and marry Miss Sophie Bögehold, her fiance's sister" (p. 172). It goes without saying that "Kinkel could not but feel drawn to a gentle girl.... And she was indeed a dear, innocent maiden" (p. 173). "In the most tender fashion" — it goes without saying — "Kinkel asked for her hand which was joyfully promised him by her parents as soon as" — it goes without saying — "he had established himself in a job and was in a position to lead his bride to the home of — it goes without saying — a professor or a parson."

On this occasion our passionate student set down in elegant verses an account of that tendency towards marriage that forms such a constant ingredient of his adventures.

"Nach anders nichts trag' ich Verlangen

Als nur nach einer weissen Hand!"

[Nought else can stir my passion So much as a white hand]

Everything else, eyes, lips, locks is dismissed as a mere "trifle".

"Das alles reizt nicht sein Verlangen

Allein die kleine weisse Handl" (p. 174)

[All these fail to stir his passion Nought does so but her small, white hand!]

He describes the flirtation that he begins with Miss Sophie Bögehold at the command of "his meddling sister Johanna" and spurred on by the unquenchable longing for a hand, as "deep, firm and tranquil" (p. 175). Above all "it is the religious element that predominates in this new love" (p. 176).

In Gottfried's romances we often find the religious element alternating with the novelistic and theatrical element. Where he cannot devise dramatic effects to achieve new Siegwart situations he applies religious feelings to adorn these banal episodes with the patina of higher meaning. Siegwart becomes a pious Jung-Stilling who had likewise received such miraculous strength from God that even though three women perished beneath his manly chest he was still able repeatedly to lead a new love to his home.

*

We come finally to the fateful catastrophe of this eventful life-history, to Stilling's meeting with Johanna Mockel, who had formerly borne the married name of Mathieux. Here Gottfried discovered a female Kinkel, his romantic alter ego. Only she was harder, smarter, less confused and thanks to her greater age she had left her youthful illusions behind her.

What Mockel had in common with Kinkel was the fact that her talents too had gone unrecognised by the world. She was repulsive and vulgar; her first marriage had been unhappy. She possessed musical talents but they were insufficient to enable her to make a name with her compositions or technical mastery. In Berlin her attempt to imitate the stale childhood antics of Bettina [von Arnim] had led to a fiasco. Her character had been soured by her experiences. Even though she shared with Kinkel the affectation of inflating the ordinary events of her life so as to invest them with a "more exalted, sacred meaning", owing to her more advanced age she nevertheless felt a need for love (according to Strodtmann) that was more pressing than her need for the "poetic" drivel that accompanies it. Whereas Kinkel was feminine in this respect, Mockel was masculine. Hence nothing could be more natural than for such a person to enter with joy into Kinkel's comedy of the misunderstood tender souls and to play it to a satisfying conclusion, i.e. to acknowledge Siegwart's fitness for the role of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and to arrange for him to discover that she was the "Blue Flower".

Kinkel, having been led to his third or fourth fiancee by his sister was now introduced into a new labyrinth of love by Mockel.

Gottfried now found himself in the "social swim", i.e. in one of those little circles consisting of the professors or other worthies of German university towns. Only in the lives of Teutonic, christian students can such societies form such a turning point. Mockel sang and was applauded. At table it was arranged that Gottfried should sit next to her and here the following scene took place:

"'It must be a glorious feeling', Gottfried opined, 'to fly through the joyous world on the pinions of genius, admired by all' — 'I should say so', Mockel exclaimed. 'I hear that you have a great gift for poetry. Perhaps people will scatter incense for you also ... and I shall ask you then if you can be happy if you are not...' — 'If I am not?' Gottfried asked, as she paused" (p. 188).

The bait has been put out for our clumsy Iyrical student. Mockel then informed him that recently she had heard

"him preaching about the yearning of Christians to return to their faith and she had thought about how resolutely the handsome preacher must have abandoned the world if he could arouse a timid longing even in her for the harmless childhood slumber with which the echo of faith now lost had once surrounded her" (p. 189).

Gottfried was "enchanted" (p. 189) by such politeness. He was tremendously pleased to discover that "Mocker was unhappy" (loc. cit.). He immediately resolved "to devote his passionate enthusiasm for the faith of salvation at the hands of Jesus Christ to bringing back this sorrowing soul too into the fold" (loc. cit.). As Mockel was a Catholic the friendship was formed on the imaginary basis of the task of recovering a soul "in the service of the Almighty", a comedy in which Mockel too was willing to participate.

"In 1840 Kinkel was appointed as an assistant in the Protestant community in Cologne where he went every Sunday to preach" (p. 193).

This biographical comment may serve as an excuse for a brief discussion of Kinkel's position as a theologian. "In 1840" the critical movement had already made devastating inroads into the content of the Christian faith; with Bruno Bauer science had reached the point of open conflict with the state. It is at this juncture that Kinkel makes his debut as a preacher. But as he lacks both the energy of the orthodox and the understanding that would enable him to see theology objectively, he comes to terms with Christianity on the level of Iyrical and declamatory sentimentality à la Krummacher. That is to say, he presents a Christ who is a "friend and leader", he seeks to do away with formal aspects of Christianity that he proclaims to be "ugly", and for the content he substitutes a hollow phraseology. The device by means of which content is replaced by form and ideas by phrases has produced a host of declamatory priests in Germany whose tendencies naturally led them finally in the direction of [liberal] democracy. But whereas in theology at least a superficial knowledge is still essential here and there, in the democratic movement where an orotund but vacuous rhetoric, nullite sonore, makes intellect and an insight into realities completely superfluous, an empty phraseology came into its own. Kinkel whose theological studies had led to nothing beyond the making of sentimental extracts of Christianity in the manner of Clauren's popular novels, was in speech and in his writings the very epitome of the fake pulpit oratory that is sometimes described as "poetic prose" and which he now comically made the basis of his "poetic mission". This latter, moreover, did not consist in planting true laurels but only red rowan berries with which he beautified the highway of trivia. This same feebleness of character which attempts to overcome conflicts not by resolving their content but by clothing them in an attractive form is visible too in the way he lectures at the university. The struggle to abolish the old scholastic pedantry is sidestepped by means of a "hearty" attitude which turns the lecturer into a student and exalts the student placing him on an equal footing with the lecturer. This school then produced a whole generation of Strodtmanns, Schurzes and suchlike who were able to make use of their phraseology, their knowledge and their easily acquired "lofty mission" only in the democratic movement.

*

Kinkel's new love develops into the story of Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia.

The year 1840 was a turning point in the history of Germany. On the one hand, the critical application of Hegel's philosophy to theology and politics had brought about a scientific revolution. On the other hand, the coronation of Frederick William IV saw the emergence of a bourgeois movement whose constitutional aspirations still possessed a wholly radical veneer, varying from the vague "political poetry" of the period to the new phenomenon of a daily press with revolutionary powers.

What was Gottfried doing during this period? Together with Mockel he founded the "Maybug" (Maikäfer) "a Journal for non-Philistines" (p. 209) and the Maybug Club. The aim of this paper was nothing more than "to provide a cheerful and enjoyable evening for a group of friends once a week and to give the participants the opportunity to present their works for criticism by a benevolent, artistically-minded audience" (pp. 209-10).

The actual purpose of the Maybug Club was to solve the riddle of the Blue Flower. The meetings took place in Mockel's house, where, surrounded by a group of insignificant students Mockel paraded as "Queen" (p. 210) and Kinkel as "Minister" (p. 225). Here our two misunderstood beautiful souls found it possible to make up for the "injustice the harsh world had done them" (p. 296); each could acknowledge the right of the other to the respective roles of Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the Blue Flower. Gottfried to whom the aping of other people's roles had become second nature must have felt happy to have created such a "theatre for connoisseurs" (p. 254). The farce itself acted as the prelude to practical developments:

"These evenings provided the opportunity to see Mockel also in the house of her parents" (p. 212).

Moreover, the Maybug Club copied also the Göttinger Hain poets, only with the difference that the latter represented a stage in the development of German literature while the former remained on the level of an insignificant local caricature. The "merry Maybugs" Sebastian Longard, Leo Hasse, C. A. Schlönbach, etc., were, as the biographical apologia admits, pale, insipid, indolent, unimportant youths (pp. 211 and 298). Naturally, Gottfried soon began to make "comparisons" (p. 221) between Mockel and his fiancee, but he had "had no time hitherto" — much against his usual habit — "to reflect at all about weddings and marriage" (p. 219). In a word, he stood like Buridan's ass between the two bundles of hay, unable to decide between them. With her greater maturity and very practical bent Mockel "clearly discerned the invisible bond" (p. 225); she resolved to give "chance or the will of God" (p. 229) a helping hand.

"At a time of day when Kinkel was usually prevented by his scientific labours from seeing Mockel, he one day went to visit her and as he quietly approached her room he heard the sound of a mournful song. Pausing to listen he heard this song:

"Du nahst! Und wie Morgenröte

Bebt's über die Wangen mein, usw. usw.

Viel namenlose Schmerzen:

Wehe Du fühlst es nicht!

[You draw nigh! And like the dawn

There trembles on my cheeks, etc. etc.

Many a nameless pain.

Alas, you feel them not!]

A long drawn-out, melancholy chord concluded her song and faded gradually in the breeze" (pp. 230 and 231). Gottfried crept away unobserved, as he imagined, and having arrived home again he found the situation very interesting. He wrote a large number of despairing sonnets in which he compared Mockel to the Lorelei (p. 233). In order to escape from the Lorelei and to remain true to Miss Sophie Bögehold he tried to obtain a post as a teacher in Wiesbaden, but was rejected. This accident was compounded by a further intervention by Fate which proved to be decisive. Not only was the "sun striving to leave the sign of Virgo" (p. 236), but also Gottfried and Mockel took a trip down the Rhine in a skiff; their skiff was overturned by an approaching steam-boat and Gottfried swam ashore bearing Mockel.

"As he drew towards the shore he felt her heart close to his and was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that only this woman would be able to make him happy" (p. 238).

On this occasion the experience that Gottfried has undergone is from a real novel and not merely an imaginary one: it is to be found in [Goethe's] Elective Affinities. This decided the matter; he broke off his engagement to Sophie Bögehold.

*

First love, then the intrigue. In the name of the Presbytery Pastor Engels protested to Gottfried that the marriage of a divorced Catholic woman to a Protestant preacher was offensive. Gottfried replied by appealing to the eternal rights of man and made the following points with a good deal of unction.

"1. It was no crime for him to have drunk coffee with the lady in Hirzekümpchen" (p. 249).

"2. The matter is ambiguous as he had neither announced in public that he intended to marry the lady, nor that he did not intend to do so" (p. 251).

"3. As far as faith is concerned, no-one can know what the future holds in store" (p. 250).

"And with that out of the way, may I ask you to step inside and have a cup of coffee" (p. 251).

With this slogan Gottfried and Pastor Engels, who could not resist such an invitation, left the stage. In this way, quietly and yet forcefully Gottfried was able to resolve the conflict with the powers that be. The following extract serves to illustrate the effect of the Maybug Club on Gottfried:

"It was June 29, 1841. On this day the first anniversary of the Maybug Club was to be celebrated on a grand scale" (p. 253). "A shout as of one voice arose to decide who should carry off the prize. Modestly Gottfried bent his knee before the Queen who placed the inevitable laurel wreath on his glowing brow, while the setting sun cast its brightest rays over the transfigured countenance of the poet" (p.285).

The solemn dedication of the imagined poetic fame of Heinrich von Ofterdingen is followed by the feelings and the wishes of the Blue Flower. That evening Mockel sang a Maybug anthem she had composed which ends with the following strophe symptomatic of the whole work:

"Und was lernt man aus der Geschicht'?

Maikäfer, flieg!

Wer alt ist kriegt kein Weiblein mehr

Drum hör', bedenk' dich nicht zu sehr!

Maikäfer, flieg!

[And what's the moral of the tale?

Fly, Maybug, fly!

A man who's old will ne'er find wife,

So make haste, do not waste your life,

Fly, Maybug, fly!]

The ingenuous biographer remarks that "the invitation to marriage contained in the song was wholly free of any ulterior motives" (p.255). Gottfried perceived the ulterior motives but "was anxious not to miss" the opportunity of being crowned for two further years before the whole Maybug Club and of being an object of passion. So he married Mockel on May 22, 1843 after she had become a member of the Protestant Church despite her lack of faith. This was done on the shabby pretext that "definite articles of faith are less important in the Protestant church than the ethical spirit" (p. 315).

Und das lernt man aus der Geschicht',

Traut keiner blauen Blume nicht!

[So that's the moral of the tale: The Bluest Flower will soon grow stale.]

Gottfried had established the relationship with Mockel on the pretext of leading her out of her unfaith into the Protestant Church. Mockel now demanded the Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss and lapsed into paganism,

"while with heavy heart he followed her on the path of doubt and into the abysses of negation. Together with her he toiled through the labyrinthine jungle of modern philosophy" (p. 308).

He is driven into negation not by the development of philosophy which even at that time began to impinge on the masses but by the intervention of a chance emotional relationship. What he brings with him out of the labyrinth is revealed in his diaries:

"I should like to see whether the mighty river flowing from Kant to Feuerbach will drive me out into — Pantheism!" (p. 308).

He writes just as if this particular river did not flow beyond pantheism, and as if Feuerbach were the last word in German philosophy!

"The corner-stone of my life", the diary goes on to say, "is not historical knowledge, but a coherent system, and the heart of theology is not ecclesiastical history but dogma" (ibid.).

He is clearly ignorant of the fact that the whole achievement of German philosophy lies in its dissolution of the coherent systems into historical knowledge and the heart of dogma into ecclesiastical history! — In these confessions the image of the counter-revolutionary democrat stands revealed in every detail. For such a person movement is nothing more than a means by which to arrive at a few irremovable eternal truths and then to subside into a slothful tranquillity.

However, Gottfried's apologetic book-keeping of his whole development will enable the reader to judge the intensity of the revolutionary impulse that lay concealed in the melodramatic hamming of this theologian.

II (The February Revolution)

This brings to a close the first Act of the drama of Kinkel's life and nothing worthy of mention then occurs before the outbreak of the February Revolution. The publishing house of Cotta accepted his poems but without offering him a royalty and most of the copies remained unsold until the celebrated stray bullet in Baden gave a poetic nimbus to the author and created a market for his products.

Incidentally, our biographer omits mention of one momentous fact. The self-confessed goal of Kinkel's desires was that he should die as an old theatre director: his ideal was a certain old Eisenhut who together with his troupe used to roam up and down the Rhine as a travelling Pickelhäring [clown] and who afterwards went mad.

Alongside his lectures with their rhetoric of the pulpit Gottfried also gave a number of theological and aesthetic performances in Cologne from time to time. When the February Revolution broke out, he concluded them with this prophetic utterance:

"The thunder of battle reverberates over to us from Paris and opens a new and glorious era for Germany and the whole continent of Europe. The raging storm will be followed by Zephyr's breezes with their message of freedom. On this day is born the great, bountiful epoch of — constitutional monarchy!"

The constitutional monarchy expressed its thanks to Kinkel for this compliment by appointing him to a professorial chair. Such recognition could however not suffice for our grand homme en herbe. The constitutional monarchy showed no eagerness to cause his "fame to encircle the globe". Moreover, the laurels Freiligrath had collected for his recent political poems prevented our crowned Maybug poet from sleeping. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, therefore, resolved upon a swing to the left and became first a constitutional democrat and then a republican democrat (honnête et modéré). He set out to become a deputy but the May elections took him neither to Berlin nor to Frankfurt. Despite this initial setback he pursued his objective undismayed and it can truthfully be said that he did not spare himself. He wisely limited himself at first to his immediate environment. He founded the Bonner Zeitung [Bonn News], a modest local product distinguished only by the peculiar feebleness of its democratic rhetoric and the naivete with which it aspired to save the nation. He elevated the Maybug Club to the rank of a democratic Students' Club and from this there duly flowed a host of disciples that bore the Master's renown into every corner of the district of Bonn, importuning every assembly with the fame of Professor Kinkel. He himself politicked with the grocers in their club, he extended a brotherly hand to the worthy manufacturers and even hawked the warm breath of freedom among the peasantry of Kindenich and Seelscheid. Above all he reserved his sympathy for the honourable caste of master craftsmen. He wept together with them over the decay of handicrafts, the monstrous effects of free competition, the modern dominance of capital and of machines. Together with them he devised plans to restore the guilds and to prevent the violation of guild regulations by the journeymen. So as to do everything of which he was capable he set down the results of his pub deliberations with the petty guild masters in the pamphlet entitled Handicraft, save yourself!

Lest there be any doubt as to Mr. Kinkel's position and to the significance of his little tract for Frankfurt and the nation he dedicated it to the "thirty members of the economic committee of the Frankfurt National Assembly".

Heinrich von Ofterdingen's researches into the "beauty" of the artisan class led him immediately to the discovery that "the whole artisan class is at present divided by a yawning chasm" (p. 5). This chasm consists in the fact that some artisans "frequent the clubs of the grocers and officials" (what progress!) and that others do not do this and also in the fact that some artisans are educated and others are not. Despite this chasm the author regards the artisans' clubs, the assemblies springing up everywhere in the beloved fatherland and the agitation for improving the state of handicrafts (reminiscent of the congresses à la Winkelblech of 1848) as the portent of a happy future. To ensure that his own good advice should not be missing from this beneficent movement he devises his own programme of salvation.

He begins by asking how to eradicate the evil effects of free competition by restricting it but without eliminating it altogether. The solutions he proposes are these:

"A youth who lacks the requisite ability and maturity should be debarred by law from becoming a master" (p. 20).

"No master shall be permitted to have more than one apprentice (p. 29)

"The course of instruction in a craft shall be concluded by an examination" (p. 30).

"The master of an apprentice must unfailingly attend the examination" (p. 31).

"On the question of maturity it should become mandatory that henceforth no apprentice may become a master before completion of his twenty-fifth year" (p. 42).

"As evidence of ability every candidate for the title of master should be required to pass a public examination" (p. 43).

"In this context it is of vital importance that the examination should be free" (p. 44). "All provincial masters of the same guild must likewise submit themselves to the same examination" (p. 55).

Friend Gottfried who is himself a political hawker desires to abolish the "travelling tradesman or hawker" in other, profane wares on the grounds of the dishonesty of such work. (p. 60.)

"A manufacturer of craft goods desires to withdraw his assets from the business to his own advantage and, dishonestly, to the disadvantage of his creditors. Like all ambivalent things this phenomenon too is described by a foreign word: it is called bankruptcy. He then quickly takes his finished products to a neighbouring town and sells them there to the highest bidder" (p. 64). These auctions — "in actual fact like a sort of garbage that our dear neighbour, Commerce, disposes of in the garden of Handicraft" — must be abolished. (Would it not be much simpler, Friend Gottfried, to go to the root of the matter and abolish bankruptcy itself?).

"Of course, the annual fairs are in a special position" (p. 65). "The law will have to be flexible so as to allow the various places to call an assembly of all the citizens to decide by majority vote (!) whether permanent annual fairs should be retained or abolished" (p. 68).

Gottfried now comes to the "vexed" question of the relationship between manufacture and machine industry and produces the following:

"Let everyone sell only those goods that he himself produces with his own hands." (p. 80.) "Because machines and manufacture have gone their own ways they have strayed from their true paths and now both are in a sorry plight." (p. 84).

He wishes to unite them by getting artisans such as the bookbinders, to band together and maintain a machine.

"As they only use the machine for themselves and when it is required they will be able to produce more cheaply than the factory owner" (p. 85). "Capital will be broken by association" (p. 84). (And associations will be broken by capital.)

He then generalises his ideas about the "purchase of a machine to rule lines, and to cut paper and cardboard" (p. 85) for the united certificated bookbinders of Bonn and conceives the notion of a "Machine-Chamber".

"Confederations of the various guild masters must set up businesses everywhere, similar to the factories of individual businessmen though on a smaller scale. These will work to order, exclusively for the benefit of local masters. They will not accept commissions from other employers" (p. 86).

What distinguishes these Machine Chambers is the fact that "a commercial management" will only "be needed initially" (ibid). "Every idea as novel as this one", Gottfried exclaims "ecstatically", "can only be put into practice when all the details have been thought out in the most sober, matter of fact way". He urges "each and every branch of manufacture to perform this analysis for itself"! (pp. 87, 88). There follows a polemic against competition from the state in the shape of the labour performed by the inmates of prisons, reminiscences about a colony of criminals ("The creation of a human Siberia" (p. 102)), and finally an attack on the "so-called handicraft companies and handicraft commissions" in the armed forces. The aim here is to ease the burdens imposed by the army on the artisan classes by inducing the state to commission goods from the guild masters that it could itself produce more cheaply.

"This deals satisfactorily with the problems of competition" (p. 109).

Gottfried's second important point touches on the material aid due to the manufacturing classes from the state. Gottfried regards the state solely from the point of view of an official and hence arrives at the opinion that the easiest and surest way to help the artisan is by direct subsidy from the Treasury to erect trade halls and set up loan-funds. How the funds reach the Treasury in the first place is the "ugly" side of the problem and naturally enough, cannot be investigated here.

Lastly, our theologian inevitably lapses into the role of moral preacher. He reads the artisan class a moral lecture on self-help. He firstly condemns the "complaints about long-term borrowing and about discounts" (p. 136), and invites the artisan to inspect his own conscience: "Do you always fix the same, unchanging price, my friend, for every job of work that you undertake?" (p. 132). On this occasion he also warns the artisan against making extortionate demands on "wealthy Englishmen". "The whole root of the evil", according to the fantasies that inhabit Gottfried's mind, "is the system of annual accounts" (p. 139). This is followed by Jeremiads about the way in which the artisans carry on in the taverns and their wives indulge their love of finery (p. 140 ff.).

The means by which the artisan class is to better itself are "the corporation, the sickness fund and the artisans' court" (p. 146); and lastly, the workers' educational clubs (p. 153). Here is his closing statement about these educational clubs.

"And finally the union of song and oratory will create a bridge to dramatic performances and the artisan theatre which must constantly be kept in view as the ultimate objective of these aesthetic strivings. Only when the labouring classes learn once more how to move on the stage will their artistic education be complete (pp. 174-175).

Gottfried has thus succeeded in changing the artisan into a comedian and has arrived back at his own situation.

This whole flirtation with the guild aspirations of the master craftsmen in Bonn did not fail to achieve a practical result. In return for the solemn promises to promote the cause of the guilds Gottfried's election as Member for Bonn in the Lower Chamber under the dictated constitution was contrived. "From this moment on Gottfried felt happy."

He set off at once for Berlin and as he believed that it was the intention of the government to establish a permanent "corporation" of approved masters in the craft of legislation in the Lower Chamber, he acted as if he were to stay there for ever and even decided to send for his wife and child. But then the Chamber was dissolved and Friend Gottfried, bitterly disappointed, had to leave his parliamentary bliss and go back to Mockel.

Soon afterwards conflicts broke out between the Frankfurt Assembly and the German governments and this led to the upheavals in South Germany and on the Rhine. The Fatherland called and Gottfried obeyed. Siegburg was the site of the arsenal for the province and next to Bonn Siegburg was the place where Gottfried had sown the seed of freedom most frequently. He joined forces with his friend, Anneke, a former lieutenant and summoned all his loyal vassals to a march on Siegburg. They were to assemble at the rope ferry. More than a hundred were supposed to come but when after waiting a long time Gottfried counted the heads of the faithful there were barely thirty — and of these only three were students, to the undying shame of the Maybug Club! Undaunted, Gottfried and his band crossed the Rhine and marched towards Siegburg. The night was dark and it was drizzling. Suddenly the sound of horses' hooves could be heard behind our valiant heroes. They took cover at the side of the road, a patrol of lancers galloped by: miserable knaves had talked too freely and the authorities had got wind of it. The march was now futile and had to be abandoned. The pain that Gottfried felt in his breast that night can only be compared with the torments he experienced when both Knapp and Chamisso declined to print the first flowering of his poetic talent in their magazines.

After this he could remain no longer in Bonn but surely the Palatinate would provide great scope for his activities? He went to Kaiserslautern and as he had to have a job he obtained a sinecure in the War Office (it is said that he was put in charge of naval affairs). But he continued to earn his living by hawking around his ideas about freedom and the people's paradise among the peasants of the region and it is said that his reception in a number of reactionary districts was anything but cordial. Despite these minor misfortunes Kinkel could be seen on every highroad, striding along purposefully, his rucksack on his back and from this point on he appears in all the newspapers accompanied by his rucksack.

But the upheavals in the Palatinate were quickly terminated and we discover Kinkel again in Karlsruhe where instead of the rucksack he carries a musket which now becomes his permanent emblem. This musket is said to have had a very beautiful aspect, i.e. a butt and stock made of mahogany and it was certainly an artistic, aesthetic musket; there was also an ugly side to it and this was the fact that Gottfried could neither load, nor see, nor shoot nor march. So much so that a friend asked him why he was going into battle at all. Whereupon Gottfried replied: Well, the fact is that I can't return to Bonn, I have to live!

In this way Gottfried joined the ranks of the warriors in the corps of the chivalrous Willich. As a number of his comrades in arms have reliably reported. Gottfried served as a common partisan, sharing all the vicissitudes of this company with humility. He was as merry and friendly in bad times as in good, but he was mostly engaged in marauding. In Rastatt, however, this unsullied witness to truth and justice was to undergo the test from which he would emerge unblemished and as a martyr to the plaudits of the whole German nation. The exact details of this exploit have never been established with any accuracy. All that is known is that a troop of partisans got lost in a skirmish and a few shots were fired on their flank. A bullet grazed Gottfried's head and he fell to the ground with the cry "I am dead". He was not in fact dead but his wound was serious enough to prevent him from retreating with the others. He was taken to a farm house where he turned to the worthy Black Forest peasants with the words "Save me — I am Kinkel!" Here he was discovered by the Prussians, who dragged him off into Babylonian captivity.

III (Kinkel's Trial and Escape)

With his capture a new epoch opened in Kinkel's life and at the same time there began a new era in the history of German Philistinism. The Maybug Club had scarcely heard the news of his capture than they wrote to all the German papers that Kinkel, the great poet, was in danger of being summarily shot and exhorting the German people, especially the educated among them, and above all the women and girls to give their all to save the life of the imprisoned poet. Kinkel himself composed a poem at about this time, as we are told, in which he compared himself to "Christ, his friend and teacher", adding: "My blood is shed for you." From this point on his emblem is the lyre. In this way Germany suddenly learned that Kinkel was a poet, a great poet moreover, and from this moment on the mass of German Philistines and aestheticising drivellers joined in the Farce of the Blue Flower put on by our Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

In the meantime the Prussians brought him before a military tribunal. For the first time after a long interval he saw his opportunity to try out one of those moving appeals to the tear ducts of his audience which — according to Mockel — had brought him such applause earlier on as an assistant preacher in Cologne. Cologne too was destined soon to witness his most glorious performance in this sphere. He made a speech in his own defence before the tribunal which thanks to the indiscretion of a friend was unfortunately made available to the public through the medium of the Berlin Abendpost. In this speech Kinkel "repudiates any connection between his activities and the filth and the dirt that, as I well know, has latterly attached itself to this revolution".

After this rabid revolutionary speech Kinkel was sentenced to twenty years detention in a fortress. As an act of grace this was reduced to prison with hard labour and he was removed to Naugard where he was employed in spinning wool and so just as formerly he had appeared with the emblem first of the rucksack, then the musket and then the lyre, he now appears in association with the spinning wheel. We shall see him later wandering over the ocean accompanied by the emblem of the purse.

In the meantime a curious event took place in Germany. It is well known that the German Philistine is endowed by Nature with a beautiful soul. Now he found his most cherished illusions cruelly shattered by the hard blows of the year 1849. Not a single hope had become reality and even the fast-beating hearts of young men began to despair about the fate of the fatherland. Every heart yielded to a lachrymose torpor and the need began to be felt for a democratic Christ, for a real or imagined Sufferer who in his torments would bear the sins of the Philistine world with the patience of a lamb and whose Passion would epitomise in extreme form the unrestrained but chronic self-pity of the whole of Philistinism. The Maybug Club, with Mockel at its head, set out to satisfy this universal need. And indeed, who better fitted for the task of enacting this great Passion Farce than our captive passion dower, Kinkel at the Spinning Wheel, this sponge able to absorb endless floods of sentimental tears, who was in addition preacher, professor of fine arts, deputy, political colporteur, musketeer, newly discovered poet and old impresario all rolled into one? Kinkel was the man of the moment and as such he was immediately accepted by the German Philistines. Every paper abounded in anecdotes, vignettes, poems, reminiscences of the captive poet, his sufferings in prison were magnified a thousandfold and took on mythical stature; at least once a month his hair was reported to have gone grey; in every bourgeois meeting-place and at every tea party he was remembered with grief; the daughters of the educated classes sighed over his poems and old maids who knew what unrequited passion is wept freely in various cities at the thought of his shattered manhood. All other profane victims of the revolutionary movement, all who had been shot, who had fallen in battle or who had been imprisoned disappeared into naught beside this one sacrificial lamb, beside this one hero after the hearts of the Philistines male and female. For him alone did the rivers of tears flow, and indeed, he alone was able to respond to them in kind. In short, we have the perfect image, complete in every detail of the democratic Siegwart epoch which yielded in nothing to the literary Siegwart epoch of the preceding century and Siegwart-Kinkel never felt more at home in any role than in this one where he could seem great not because of what he did but because of what he did not do. He could seem great not by dint of his strength and his powers of resistance but through his weakness and spineless behaviour in a situation where his only task was to survive with decorum and sentiment. Mockel, however, was able and experienced enough to take practical advantage of the public's soft heart and she immediately organised a highly efficient industry. She caused all of Gottfried's published and unpublished works to be printed for they all suddenly became fashionable and were much in demand; she also found a market for her own life-experiences from the insect world, e.g., her Story of a Firefly; she employed the Maybug Strodtmann to assemble Gottfried's most secret diary-feelings and prostitute them to the public for a considerable sum of money; she organised collections of every kind and in general she displayed undeniable talent and great perseverance in converting the feelings of the educated public into hard cash. In addition she had the great satisfaction "of seeing the greatest men of Germany, such as Adolf Stahr, meeting daily in her own little room". The climax of this whole Siegwart mania was to be reached at the Assizes in Cologne where Gottfried made a guest appearance early in 1850. This was the trial resulting from the attempted uprising in Siegburg and Kinkel was brought to Cologne for the occasion. As Gottfried's diaries play such a prominent part in this sketch it will be appropriate if we insert here an excerpt from the diary of an eyewitness.

"Kinkel's wife visited him in gaol. She welcomed him from behind the grill with verses; he replied, I understand, in hexameters; whereupon they both sank to their knees before each other and the prison inspector, an old sergeant-major, who was standing by wondered whether he was dealing with madmen or clowns. When asked later by the chief prosecutor about the content of their conversation he declared that the couple had indeed spoken German but that he could not make head nor tail of it. Whereupon Mrs. Kinkel is supposed to have retorted that a man who was so wholly innocent of art and literature should not be made an inspector."

Faced with the jury Kinkel wriggled his way out by acting the pure tearjerker, the poetaster of the Siegwart period of the vintage of Werther's Sufferings.

"Members of the Court, Gentlemen of the Jury — the blue eyes of my children — the green waters of the Rhine — it is no dishonour to shake the hand of the proletarian — the pallid lips of the prisoner — the peaceful air of one's home" — and similar crap: that was what the whole famous speech amounted to and the public, the jury, the prosecution and even the police shed their bitterest tears and the trial closed with a unanimous acquittal and a no less unanimous weeping and wailing. Kinkel is doubtless a dear, good man but he is also a repulsive mixture of religious, political and literary reminiscences."

It's enough to make you sick.

Fortunately this period of misery was soon terminated by the romantic liberation of Kinkel from Spandua gaol. His escape was a re-enactment of the story of Richard Lionheart and Blondel with the difference that this time it was Blondel who was in prison while Lionheart played on the barrel-organ outside and that Blondel was an ordinary music-hall minstrel and the lion was basically more like a rabbit. Lionheart was in fact the student Schurz from the Maybug Club, a little intriguer with great ambitions and limited achievements who was however intelligent enough to have seen through the "German Lamartine"! Not long after the escape student Schurz declared in Paris that he knew very well that Kinkel was no lumen mundi, whereas he, Schurz, and none other was destined to be the future president of the German Republic. This mannikin, one of those students "in brown jackets and pale-blue overcoats" whom Gottfried had once followed with his gloomily flashing eyes succeeded in freeing Kinkel at the cost of sacrificing some poor devil of a warder who is now doing time elevated by the feeling of being a martyr for freedom — the freedom of Gottfried Kinkel.

IV (Kinkel in London)

We next meet Kinkel again in London, and this time, thanks to his prison fame and the sentimentality of the German Philistines, he has become the greatest man in Germany. Mindful of his sublime mission Friend Gottfried was able to exploit all the advantages of the moment. His romantic escape gave new impetus to the Kinkel cult in Germany and he adroitly directed this onto a path that was not without beneficial material consequences. At the same time London provided the much venerated man with a new, complex arena in which to receive even greater acclaim. He did not hesitate: he would have to be the new lion of the season. With this in mind he refrained for the time being from all political activity and withdrew into the seclusion of his home in order to grow a beard, without which no prophet can succeed. After that he visited Dickens, the English liberal newspapers, the German businessmen in the City and especially the aesthetic Jews in that place. He was all things to all men: to one a poet, to another a patriot in general, professor of fine arts to a third, Christ to the fourth, the patiently suffering Odysseus to the fifth. To everyone, however, he appeared as the gentle, artistic, benevolent and humanitarian Gottfried. He did not rest until Dickens had eulogised him in the Household Words, until the Illustrated News had published his portrait. He induced the few Germans in London who had been involved in the Kinkel mania even at a distance to allow themselves to be invited to lectures on modern drama. Once he had organised them in this way tickets to these lectures flooded into the homes of the local German population. No running around, no advertisement, no charlatanism, no importunity was beneath him; in return, however, he did not go unrewarded. Gottfried sunned himself complacently in the mirror of his own fame and in the gigantic mirror of the Crystal Palace of the world. And we may say that he now felt tremendously content.

There was no lack of praise for his lectures (see Kosmos).

Kosmos: "Kinkel's Lectures"

"While looking once at Dobler's paintings of misty landscapes, I was surprised by the whimsical question of whether it was possible to produce such chaotic creations in words, whether it was possible to utter misty images. It is no doubt unpleasant for the critic to have to confess that in this case his critical autonomy will vibrate against the galvanized nerves of an external reminiscence, as the fading sound of a dying note echoes in the strings. Nevertheless I would prefer to renounce any attempt at a bewigged and boring analysis of pedantic insensitivity than to deny that tone which the charming muse of the German refugee caused to resonate in my sensibility. This ground note of Kinkel's paintings, this sounding board of his chords is the sonorous, creative, formative and gradually shaping 'word' — 'modern thought'. To 'judge' this thought is to lead truth out of the chaos of mendacious traditions, to constitute it as the indestructible property of the world and as such to place it under the protection of spiritually active, logical minorities who will educate the world leading it from a credulous ignorance to a state of more sceptical science. It is the task of the science of doubt to profane the mysticism of pious deceit, to undermine the absolutism of an atrophied tradition. Science must employ scepticism, that ceaselessly labouring guillotine of philosophy, to decapitate accepted authority and to lead the nations out of the misty regions of theocracy by means of revolution into the luscious meadows of democracy" (of nonsense). "The sustained, unflagging search in the annals of mankind and the understanding of man himself is the great task of all revolutionaries and this had been understood by that proscribed poet rebel who on three recent Monday evenings uttered his subversive views before a bourgeois audience in the course of his lectures on the history of the modern theatre."

"A Worker"

It is generally claimed that this worker is a very close relation of Kinkel's — namely Mockel — as indeed seems likely from the use of such expressions as "sounding-board", "fading sound", "chords" and "galvanized nerves".

However, even this period of hard-earned pleasure was not to last forever. The Last Judgement on the existing world-order, the democratic day of judgement, namely the much celebrated May 1852 was drawing ever closer. In order to confront this day all booted and spurred Kinkel had to don his political lionskin once more: he had to make contact with the "Emigration".

So we come to the London "Emigration", this hotchpotch of former members of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Berlin National Assembly, and Chamber of Deputies, of gentlemen from the Baden Campagne, Gargantuas from the Comedy of the Imperial Constitution, writers without a public, loudmouths from the democratic clubs and congresses, twelfth-rate journalists and so forth.

The heroes of the 1848 revolution in Germany had been on the point of coming to a sticky end when the victory of tyranny rescued them, swept them out of the country and made saints and martyrs of them. They were saved by the counter-revolution. The course of continental politics brought most of them to London which thus became their European centre. It is evident that something had to happen, something had to be arranged to remind the public daily of the existence of these world-liberators. At all costs it must not become obvious that the course of universal history might be able to proceed without the intervention of these mighty men. The more this refuse of mankind found itself hindered by its own impotence as much as by the prevailing situation from undertaking any real action, the more zealously did it indulge in spurious activity whose imagined deeds, imagined parties, imagined struggles and imagined interests have been so noisily trumpeted abroad by those involved. The less able they were to bring about a new revolution the more they discounted the importance of such an eventuality in their minds, while they concentrated on sharing out the plum jobs and enjoying the prospect of future power. The form taken by this self-important activity was that of a mutual insurance club of the heroes-to-be and the reciprocal guarantee of government posts.

V (Draft Circular to German Democrats)

The first attempt to create such an "organisation" took place as early as the Spring of 1850. A magniloquent "draft circular to German democrats" was hawked around London in manuscript form together with a “Covering Letter to the Leaders”. It contained an exhortation to found a united democratic church. Its immediate aim was to form a Central Office to deal with the affairs of German émigrés, to set up a central administration for refugee problems, to start a printing press in London, and to unite all patriots against the common enemy. The Emigration would then become the centre of the internal revolutionary movement, the organisation of the Emigration would be the beginning of a comprehensive democratic organisation, the outstanding personalities among the members of the Central Office would be paid salaries raised by taxes levied on the German people. This tax proposal seemed all the more appropriate as “the German Emigration had gone abroad not merely without a respectable hero but what is even worse, without common assets”. It is no secret that the Hungarian, Polish and French committees already in existence provided the model for this “organisation” and the whole document is redolent of envy of the privileged position of these prominent allies.

The circular was the joint production of Messrs. Rudolph Schramm and Gustav Struve, behind whom lay concealed the merry figure of Mr. Arnold Ruge, a corresponding member living in Ostend at the time.

Mr. Rudolph Schramm — a rowdy, loudmouthed and extremely confused little mannikin whose life-motto came from Rameau's Nephew: “I would rather be an impudent windbag than be nothing at all.”

When at the height of his power, Mr. Camphausen would gladly have given the young forward Crefelder an important post, had it been permissible to elevate a junior official. Thanks to bureaucratic etiquette Mr. Schrarnm found only the career of a democrat open to him. And in this profession he really did advance at one point to the post of President of the Democratic Club in Berlin and with the support of some left-wing Members of Parliament he became the Deputy for Striegau in the Berlin National Assembly. Here the normally so loquacious Schramm distinguished himself by his obstinate silence, which was accompanied, however, by an uninterrupted series of grunts. After the Assembly had been dissolved our democratic man of the people wrote a pamphlet in support of a constitutional monarchy but this did not suffice to get him re-elected. Later, at the time of the Brentano government he appeared momentarily in Baden and there in the “Club for Resolute Progress” he became acquainted with Struve. On his arrival in London he declared his intention of withdrawing from all political activity for which reason he then published the circular referred to above. Essentially a bureaucrat Mr. Schramm imagined that his family relations qualified him to represent the radical bourgeoisie in exile and he did indeed present a fair caricature of the radical bourgeois.

Gustav Struve is one of the more important figures of the emigration. At the very first glimpse of his leathery appearance, his protuberant eyes with their sly, stupid expression, the matt gleam on his bald pate and his half Slav, half Kalmuck [a western mongol people] features one cannot doubt that one is in the presence of an unusual man. And this first impression is confirmed by his low, guttural voice, his oily manner of speaking and the air of solemn gravity he imparts to his gestures. To be just it must be said that faced with the greatly increased difficulties of distinguishing oneself these days, our Gustav at least made the effort to attract attention by using his diverse talents — he is part prophet, part speculator, part bunion healer — centring his activities on all kinds of peripheral matters and making propaganda for the strangest assortment of causes. For example, he was born a Russian but suddenly took it into his head to enthuse about the cause of German freedom after he had been employed in a minor capacity in the Russian embassy to the Federal Diet and had written a little pamphlet in defence of the Diet. Regarding his own skull as normal he suddenly developed an interest in phrenology and from then on he refused to trust anyone whose skull he had not yet felt and examined. He also gave up eating meat and preached the gospel of strict vegetarianism; he was, moreover, a weather-prophet, he inveighed against tobacco and was prominent in the interest of German Catholicism and water-cures. In harmony with his thoroughgoing hatred of scientific knowledge it was natural that he should be in favour of free universities in which the four faculties would be replaced by the study of phrenology, physiognomy, chiromancy and necromancy. It was also quite in character for him to insist that he must become a great writer simply because his mode of writing was the antithesis of everything that could be held to be stylistically acceptable.

In the early Forties Gustav had already invented the Deutscher Zuschauer, a little paper that he published in Mannheim, that he patented and that pursued him everywhere as an idée fixe. He also made the discovery at around this time that Rotteck's History of the World and the Rotteck-Welcker Lexicon of Politics, the two works that had been his Old and New Testaments, were out of date and in need of a new democratic edition. This revision Gustav undertook without delay and published an extract from it in advance under the title The Basic Elements of Political Science. He argued that the revision had become "an undeniable necessity since 1848 as the late-lamented Rotteck had not experienced the events of recent years".

In the meantime there broke out in Baden in quick succession the three "popular uprisings" that Gustav has placed in the very centre of the whole modern course of world history. Driven into exile by the very first of these revolts (Hacker's) and occupied with the task of publishing the Deutscher Zuschauer once again, this time from Basel, he was then dealt a hard blow by fate when the Mannheim publisher continued to print the Deutscher Zuschauer under a different editor. The battle between the true and the false Deutscher Zuschauer was so bitterly fought that neither paper survived. To compensate for this Gustav devised a constitution for the German Federal Republic in which Germany was to be divided into 24 republics, each with a president and two chambers; he appended a neat map on which the whole proposal could be clearly seen. In September 1848 the second insurrection began in which our Gustav acted as both Caesar and Socrates. He used the time granted him on German soil to issue serious warnings to the Black Forest Peasantry about the deleterious effects of smoking tobacco. In Lörrach he published his Moniteur with the title of Government Organ — German Free State — Freedom, Prosperity, Education. This publication contained inter alia the following decree:

"Article 1. The extra tax of 10 per cent on goods imported from Switzerland is hereby abolished;

Article 2. Christian Müller, the Customs Officer is to be given the task of implementing this measure."

He was accompanied in all his trials by his faithful Amalia who subsequently published a romantic account of them. She was also active in administering the oath to captured gendarmes, for it was her custom to fasten a red band around the arm of every one who swore allegiance to the German Free State and to give him a big kiss. Unfortunately Gustav and Amalia were taken prisoner and languished in gaol where the imperturbable Gustav at once resumed his republican translation of Rotteck's History of the World until he was liberated by the outbreak of the third insurrection. Gustav now became a member of a real provisional government and the mania for provisional governments was now added to his other idées fixes. As President of the War Council he hastened to introduce as much muddle as possible into his department and to recommend the "traitor" Mayerhofer for the post of Minister for War (vice Goegg, Retrospect, Paris 1850). Later he vainly aspired to the post of Foreign Minister and to have 60,000 Florins placed at his disposal. Mr. Brentano soon relieved Gustav of the burdens of government and Gustav now entered the "Club of Resolute Progress" from which he became leader of the opposition. He delighted above all in opposing the very measures of Brentano which he had hitherto supported. Even though the Club too was disbanded and Gustav had to flee to the Palatinate this disaster had its positive side for it enabled him to issue one further number of the inevitable Deutscher Zuschauer in Neustadt an der Haardt — this compensated Gustav for much undeserved suffering. A further satisfaction was that he was successful in a by-election in some remote corner of the uplands and was nominated member of the Baden Constituent Assembly which meant that he could now return in an official capacity. In this Assembly Gustav only distinguished himself by the following three proposals that he put forward in Freiburg: (1) On June 28th: everyone who enters into dealings with the enemy should be declared a traitor. (2) On June 30th: a new provisional government should be formed in which Struve would have a seat and a vote. (3) On the same day that the previous motion was defeated he proposed that as the defeat at Rastatt had rendered all resistance futile the uplands should be spared the terrors of war and that therefore all officials and soldiers should receive ten days' wages and members of the Assembly should receive ten days' expenses together with travelling costs after which they should all repair to Switzerland to the accompaniment of trumpets and drums. When this proposal too was rejected Gustav set out for Switzerland on his own and having been driven from thence by James Fazy's stick he retreated to London where he at once came to the fore with yet another discovery, namely the Six scourges of mankind. These six scourges were: the princes, the nobles, the priests, the bureaucracy, the standing army, mammon and bedbugs. The spirit in which Gustav interpreted the lamented Rotteck can be gauged from the further discovery that mammon was the invention of Louis Philippe. Gustav preached the gospel of the six scourges in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung [German London News] which belonged to the ex-Duke of Brunswick. He was amply rewarded for this activity and in return he gratefully bowed to the ducal censorship. So much for Gustav's relations with the first scourge, the princes. As for his relationship with the nobles, the second scourge, our moral and religious republican had visiting cards printed on which he figured as "Baron von Struve". If his relations with the remaining scourges were less amicable this cannot be his fault. Gustav then made use of his leisure time in London to devise a republican calendar in which the saints were replaced by right-minded men and the names "Gustav" and "Amelia" were particularly prominent. The months were designated by German equivalents of those in the calendar of the French Republic and there were a number of other commonplaces for the common good. For the rest, the remaining idées fixes made their appearance again in London: Gustav made haste to revive the Deutscher Zuschauer and the Club of Resolute Progress and to form a provisional government. On all these matters he found himself of one mind with Schramm and in this way the circular came into being.

The third member of the alliance, the great Arnold Ruge with his air of a sergeant-major living in hopes of civilian employment outshines in glory the whole of the emigration. It cannot be said that this noble man commends himself by his notably handsome exterior; Paris acquaintances were wont to sum up his Pomeranian-Slav features with the word "ferret-face" (figure de fouine). Arnold Ruge, the son of peasants of the isle of Rugen, had endured seven years in Prussian prisons for democratic agitation. He embraced Hegelian philosophy as soon as he had realised that once he had leafed through Hegel's Encyclopaedia he could dispense with the study of all other science. He also developed the principle (described in a Novelle and which he attempted to practice on his friends — poor Georg Herwegh can vouch for the truth of this), of profiting from marriage and he early acquired a "substantial property" in this manner.

Despite his Hegelian phrases and his substantial property he did not advance beyond the post of porter to German philosophy. In the Hallische-Jahrbücher [Halle Annals] and the Deutsche-Jahrbücher [German Annals] it was his task to announce and to trumpet the names of the great philosophers of the future and he showed that he was not without talent in exploiting them for his own purposes. Unfortunately, the period of philosophical anarchy soon supervened, that period when science no longer had a universally acknowledged king, when Strauss, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbadh fought among themselves and when the most diverse alien elements began to disrupt the simplicity of classical doctrine. Ruge looked on helplessly, he no longer knew which path to take; his Hegelian categories had always operated in a vacuum, now they ran completely amok and he suddenly felt the need for a mighty movement in which exact thought and writing were not indispensable.

Ruge played the same role in the Hallische Jahrbücher as the late bookseller Nicolai had done in the old Berliner Monatsschrft [Berlin Monthly Magazine]. Like the latter his ambition was to print the works of others and in so doing, to derive material advantage and also to quarry literary sustenance for the effusions of his own brain. The only difference was that in this literary digestive process with its inevitable end product Ruge went much further than did his model in rewriting his collaborators' articles. Moreover, Ruge was not the porter of German Enlightenment, he was the Nicolai of modern German philosophy and thus was able to conceal the natural banality of his genius behind a thick hedge of speculative jargon. Like Nicolai he fought valiantly against Romanticism because Hegel had demolished it philosophically in the aesthetics and Heine had done the same thing from the point of view of literature in The Romantic School. Unlike Hegel he agreed with Nicolai in arrogating to himself the right as an anti-Romantic to set up a vulgar Philistinism and above all his own Philistinic self as an ideal of perfection. With this in mind and so as to defeat the enemy on his own ground Ruge went in for making verses. No Dutchman could have achieved the dull flatness of these poems which Ruge hurled so challengingly into the face of Romanticism.

And in general our Pomeranian thinker did not really feel at ease in Hegelian philosophy. Able as he was in detecting contradictions he was all the more feeble in resolving them and he had a very understandable horror of dialectics. The upshot was that the crudest possible contradictions dwelt peaceably together in his dogmatic brain and that his powers of understanding, never very agile, were nowhere more at home than in such mixed company. It is not unknown for him to read simultaneously two articles by two different writers and to conflate them into a single new product without noticing that they had been written from two opposing viewpoints. Always riding firmly between his own contradictions he sought to extricate himself from condemnation by the theorists by declaring his faulty theory to be "practical", while at the same time he would disarm the practical by interpreting his practical clumsiness and inconsequentiality as theoretical expertise. He would end by sanctifying his own entanglement in insoluble contradictions, his chaotically uncritical faith in popular slogans by regarding them as proof that he was a man of "principle".

Before we go on to concern ourselves with the further career of our Maurice of Saxony, as he liked to style himself in his intimate circle or friends, we would point to two qualities which made their appearance already in the Jahrbücher. [Deutsche Jahrbücher, edited by Ruge] The first is his mania for manifestos. No sooner had someone hatched a novel opinion that Ruge believed to have a future than he would issue a manifesto. As no-one reproaches him with ever having given birth to an original thought of his own, such manifestos were always suitable opportunity to claim this novel idea as his own property in a more or less declamatory fashion. This would be followed by the attempt to form a party, a "mass" which would stand behind him and to whom he could act as sergeant-major. We shall see later to what unbelievable heights of perfection Ruge had developed the art of fabricating manifestos, proclamations and pronunciamentos. The second quality is the particular diligence in which Arnold excels. As he does not care to study overmuch, or as he puts it “to transfer ideas from one library into another”, he prefers to gain his knowledge “fresh from life”. He means by this to note down conscientiously every evening all the witty, novel or bright ideas that he has read, heard or just picked up during the day. As opportunity arises these materials are then made to contribute to Ruge's daily stint which he labours at just as conscientiously as at his other bodily needs. It is this that his admirers refer to when they say that he cannot hold his ink. The subject of his daily literary production is a matter of complete indifference; what is vital is that Ruge should be able to immerse every possible topic in that wonderful stylistic sauce that goes with everything just like the English who enjoy their Soyer's relish or Worcester Sauce equally with fish, fowl, cutlets or anything else. This daily stylistic diarrhoea he likes to designate the “all-pervading beautiful form” and he regards it as adequate grounds for passing himself off as an artist.

Contented as Ruge was to be the Swiss guard of German philosophy he still had a secret sorrow gnawing at his innermost vitals. He had not written a single large book and had daily to envy the happy Bruno Bauer who had published 18 fat volumes while still a young man. To reduce the discrepancy Ruge had one and the same essay printed three times in one and the same volume under different titles and then brought out the same volume in a number of different formats. In this way Arnold Ruge's Complete Works came into being and even today he derives much pleasure from counting them every morning volume by volume as they stand there neatly bound in his library, whereupon he exclaims joyfully: “And anyway, Bruno Bauer is a man without principles!”

Even though Arnold did not manage to comprehend the Hegelian system of philosophy, he did succeed in representing one Hegelian category in his own person. He was the very incarnation of the “honest consciousness” and was strengthened in this when he made the pleasant discovery in the Phenomenology — a book that was otherwise closed to him and bound with seven seals — that the honest consciousness “always has pleasure in itself”. Though he wears his integrity on his sleeve the honest consciousness uses it to conceal the petty malice and crotchetiness of the Philistine; he has the right to allow himself every kind of base action because he knows that his baseness springs from honest motives. His very stupidity becomes a virtue because it is an irrefutable proof that he stands up for his principles. Despite every arrière pensée he is firmly convinced of his own integrity and however base or filthy an intended act may be it does not prevent him from appearing sincere and trusting. Beneath the halo of good intentions all the petty meannesses of the citizen become transformed into as many virtues; sordid self-interest appears as an innocent babe when dressed up to look like a piece of self-sacrifice; cowardice appears disguised as a higher form of courage, baseness becomes magnanimity, and the coarse manners of the peasant become ennobled, and indeed transfigured into the signs of decency and good humour. This is the gutter into which the contradictions of philosophy, democracy and the cliché industry all pour; such a man is moreover richly endowed with all the vices, the mean and petty qualities, with the slyness and the stupidity, the greed and the clumsiness, the servility and the arrogance, the untrustworthiness and the bonhomie of the emancipated serf, the peasant; Philistine and ideologist, atheist and slogan worshipper, absolute ignoramus and absolute philosopher all in one — that is Arnold Ruge as Hegel foretold him in 1806.

After the Deutsche Jahrbücher were suppressed Ruge transported his family to Paris in a carriage specially designed for the purpose. Here, his unlucky star brought him into contact with Heine who honoured him as the man who "had translated Hegel into Pomeranian". Heine asked him whether Prutz was not a pseudonym of his which Ruge could deny in good conscience. However, it was not possible to make Heine believe that anyone but Arnold was the author of Prutz's poems. Heine also discovered very soon that even though Ruge had no talent he knew very well how to give the appearance of being a man of character. Thus it came about that Friend Arnold gave Heine the idea for his Atta Troll. If Ruge was not able to immortalise his sojourn in Paris by writing a great work he at least deserves our thanks for the one Heine produced for him. In gratitude the poet wrote for him this well-known epitaph:

Atta Troll, Tendenzbär; sittlich

Religiös; als Gatte brünstig;

Durch Verführtsein von dem Zeitgeist

Waldursprünglich Sansculotte;

Sehr schlecht tanzend, doch Gesinnung

Tragend in der zott'gen Hochbrust;

Manchmal auch gestunken habend;

Kein Talent, doch ein Charakter!

[Atta Troll, performing bear,

Pure and pious; a passionate husband,

By the Zeitgeist led astray

A backwoods sansculotte,

Dances badly but ideals

Dwell within his shaggy breast

Often stinking very strongly —

Talent none, but Character]

In Paris our Arnold experienced the misfortune of becoming involved with the Communists. He published articles by Marx and Engels in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher that contained views running directly counter to those he had himself announced in the Preface, an accident to which the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung drew his attention but which he bore with philosophical resignation.

To overcome an innate social awkwardness Ruge has collected a small number of curious anecdotes that could be used on any occasion. He calls these anecdotes jokes. His preoccupation with these jokes, sustained over many years, finally led to the transformation of all events, situations and circumstances into a series of pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, important or trivial, interesting or boring jokes. The Paris upheavals, the many new impressions, socialism, politics, the Palais-Royal, the cheapness of the oysters — all these things wrought so powerfully on the mind of this unhappy wretch that his head went round and round in a permanent and incurable whirl of jokes and Paris itself became an unlimited storehouse of jokes. One of the brightest of these jokes was the idea of using wood shavings to make coats for the proletariat and in general he had a foible for industrial jokes for which he could never find enough share-holders.

When the better known Germans were expelled from France Ruge contrived to avoid this fate by presenting himself to the minister, Duchâtel, as a savant sérieux. He evidently had in mind the scholar in Paul de Kock's Amant de la lune, who established himself as a savant by means of an original device for propelling corks through the air. Shortly afterwards Arnold went to Switzerland where he joined forces with a former Dutch NCO, Cologne writer and Prussian tax subinspector, called Heinzen. Both were soon bound together by the bonds of the most intimate friendship. Heinzen learnt philosophy from Ruge, Ruge learnt politics from Heinzen. From this time on we detect in Ruge a growing necessity to appear as a philosopher par excellence only among the coarser elements of the German movement, a fate that led him down and down until at last he was accepted as a philosopher only by non-conformist parsons (Dulon), German catholic parsons (Ronge) and Fanny Lewald. At the same time anarchy was growing apace in German philosophy. Stirner's The Self and its Own, Stein's Socialism, Communism, etc., all recent intruders, drove Ruge's sense of humour to breaking-point: a great leap must be ventured. So Ruge escaped into humanism, the slogan with which all Confusionists in Germany from Reuchlin to Herder have covered up their embarrassment. This slogan seemed all the more appropriate as Feuerbach had only recently "rediscovered man" and Arnold fastened on to it with such desperation that he has not let go of it to this day. But while still in Switzerland Arnold made yet another, incomparably greater discovery. This was that "the ego by appearing frequently before the public proves itself a character". From this point on a new field of activity opened for Arnold. He now erected the most shameless meddling and interfering into a principle. Ruge had to poke his nose into everything. No hen could lay an egg without Ruge "commenting on the reason underlying the event". Contact had to be maintained at all cost with every obscure local paper where there was a chance of making frequent appearances. He wrote no newspaper articles without signing his name and, where possible, mentioning himself. The principle of the frequent appearance had to be extended to every article; an article had first to appear in letter form in the European papers (and after Heinzen's emigration, in the American papers also), it was then reprinted as a pamphlet and appeared again finally in the collected works.

Thus equipped Ruge could now return to Leipzig to obtain definitive recognition of his character. But once arrived all was not a bed of roses. His old friend Wigand, the bookseller, had very successfully replaced him in the role of Nicolai and as no other post was vacant Ruge fell into gloomy reflections on the transitoriness of all jokes. This was his situation when the German Revolution broke out.

For him too it came in the hour of need. The mighty movement in which even the clumsiest could easily swim with the current had finally got underway and Ruge went to Berlin where he intended to fish in troubled waters. As a revolution had just broken out he felt that it would be appropriate for him to come forward with proposals for reform. So he founded a paper with that name. The pre-revolutionary Réforme of Paris had been the most untalented, illiterate and boring paper in France. The Berlin Reform demonstrated that it was possible to surpass its French model and that one need not blush at offering German public such an incredible journal even in the “metropolis of intelligence”. On the assumption that Ruge's defective grasp of style contained the best guarantee for the profound content lying behind and beneath it Arnold was elected to the Frankfurt Parliament as Member for Breslau. Here he saw his chance as editor of the democratic Left-wing to come forward with an absurd manifesto. Apart from that he distinguished himself only by his passion for issuing manifestos for European People's Congresses, and hastened to add his voice to the general wish that Prussia should be absorbed into Germany. Later, on his return to Berlin he demanded that Germany should be swallowed up by Prussia and Frankfurt by Berlin and when he finally decided to become a peer of Saxony he proposed that Prussia and Germany should both be swallowed up by Dresden.

His parliamentary activity brought him no laurels other than the fact that his own party despaired at so much folly. At the same time his Reform was going downhill, a situation that could only be remedied, as he thought, by his personal presence in Berlin. As an “honest consciousness” it goes without saying that he also discovered an urgent political reason for taking such a step and in fact he demanded that the whole of the Left should accompany him there. Naturally, they refused and Ruge went to Berlin alone. Once there, he discovered that modern conflicts can best be resolved by the "Dessau method" as he termed the small state, a model of constitutional democracy. Then during the siege [of Vienna] he again drew up a manifesto in which General Wrangel was exhorted to march against Windischgraetz and free Vienna. He even obtained the approval of the democratic Congress for this curious document by pointing out that the type had been set up and that it was already being printed. Finally, when Berlin itself came under siege, Ruge went to Manteuffel and made proposals concerning the Reform, which were, however, rejected. Manteuffel told him that he wished all opposition papers were like the Reform, the Neue Preussische Zeitung was much more dangerous to him — an utterance which the naive Ruge, with a tone of triumphant pride, hastened to report through the length and breadth of Germany. Arnold became an enthusiastic advocate of passive resistance which he himself put into practice by leaving his paper, editors and everything in the lurch and running away. Active flight is evidently the most resolute form of passive resistance. The counter-revolution had arrived and Ruge fled before it all the way from Berlin to London without stopping.

At the time of the May uprising in Dresden Arnold placed himself at the head of the movement in Leipzig together with his friend Otto Wigand and the city council. He and his allies issued a vigorous manifesto to the citizens of Dresden urging them to fight bravely; Ruge, Wigand and the city fathers, it went on, were sitting watching in Leipzig and whoever did not desert himself would not be deserted by Heaven. Scarcely had the manifesto been published than our brave Arnold took to his heels and fled to Karlsruhe.

In Karlsruhe he felt unsafe even though the Baden troops were standing on the Neckar and hostilities were a long way from breaking out. He asked Brentano to send him to Paris as ambassador. Brentano permitted himself the joke of giving him the post for 12 hours and then revoking it just when Ruge was about to depart. Undaunted, Ruge still went to Paris together with Schutz and Blind, the official representatives of the Brentano government, and once there made such a spectacle of himself that his former editor announced in the official Karlsruhe Zeitung that Mr. Ruge was not in Paris in any official capacity but merely “on his own initiative”. Having once been taken along by Schutz and Blind to see Ledru-Rollin Ruge suddenly interrupted the diplomatic negotiations with a terrible diatribe against the Germans in the presence of the Frenchmen so that his colleagues finally had to withdraw discomfited and compromised. June 13th came and dealt our Arnold such a severe blow that he took to his heels and did not pause to take breath again until he found himself in London, on free British soil. Referring to this fight later he compared himself to Demosthenes.

In London Ruge first attempted to pass himself off as the Baden provisional ambassador. He then tried to gain acceptance in the English press as a great German writer and thinker but was turned away on the grounds that the English were too materialistic ever to understand German philosophy. He was also asked about his works — a request which Ruge could answer only with a sigh while the image of Bruno Bauer once again rose up before his eyes. For even his Collected Works, what were they but reprints of pamphlets? And they were not even pamphlets but merely newspaper articles in pamphlet form, and basically they were not even newspaper articles but only the muddled fruits of his reading. Action was necessary and so Ruge wrote two articles for the Leader in which under the pretext of an analysis of German democracy he declared that in Germany "humanism" was the order of the day as represented by Ludwig Feuerbach and Arnold Ruge, the author of the following works: (1) The Religion of our Age, (2)Democracy and Socialism, (3)Philosophy and the Revolution. These three epoch-making works which have not appeared in the bookshops to this day are, it goes without saying, nothing more than new titles arbitrarily applied to old essays of Ruge's. Simultaneously he resumed his daily stints when for his own edification, for the benefit of the German public and to the horror of Mr. Brüggemann he began to retranslate articles into German that had somehow got out of the Kölnische Zeitung and into the Morning Advertiser. Not exactly burdened with laurels he withdrew to Ostend where he found the leisure necessary to his preparations for the role of universal sage, the Confucius of the German Emigration.

Just as Gustav was the vegetable and Gottfried the sensibility of the German petty-bourgeois Philistine, Arnold is representative of its understanding or rather its non-understanding. Unlike Arnold Winkelried he does not open up a path to freedom [der Freiheit eine Gasse]; he is in his own person the gutter of freedom [der Freiheit eine Gosse]; Ruge stands in the German revolution like the notices seen at the corner of certain streets: It is permitted to pass water here.

We return at last to our circular with its covering letter. It fell flat and the first attempt to create a united democratic church came to nought. Schramm and Gustav later declared that failure was due solely to the circumstance chat Ruge could neither speak French nor write German. But then the heroes again set to work.

Che ciascun oltra moda era possente,

Come udirete nel canto seguente.

[For puissant were they all beyond compare, As in our next canto you shall hear.]

VI (Karl Heinzen)

Together with Gustav, Rodomonte [the nickname refers back to the quotation closing the former chapter] Heinzen had arrived in London from Switzerland. Karl Heinzen had for many years made a living from his threat to destroy "tyranny" in Germany. After the outbreak of the February Revolution he went so far as to attempt, with unheard-of courage, to inspect German soil from the vantage point of Schuster Island [near Basle]. He then betook himself to Switzerland where from the safety of Geneva he again thundered against the “tyrants and oppressors of the people” and took the opportunity to declare that “Kossuth is a great man, but Kossuth has forgotten about explosive silver”. His horror of bloodshed was such that it turned him into the alchemist of the revolution. He dreamt of an explosive substance that would blast the whole European reaction into the air in a trice without its users even getting their fingers burnt. He had a particular aversion to walking amid a shower of bullets and in general to conventional warfare in which principles are no defence against bullets. Under the government of Brentano he risked a revolutionary visit to Karlsruhe. As he did not receive the reward he thought due to him for his heroic deeds he resolved to edit the Moniteur of that "traitor" Brentano. But as the Prussians advanced he declared that Heinzen would not "let himself be shot" for that traitor Brentano. Under the pretext of forming an elite corps where political principles and military organisation would mutually complement each other, i.e. where military cowardice would pass for political courage, his constant search for the ideal free corps made him retrace his steps until he had regained the familiar territory of Switzerland. Sophie's Journey from Memel to Saxony was a good deal more bloody than Heinzen's revolutionary expedition. On his arrival in Switzerland he declared that there were no longer any real men in Germany, that the authentic explosive silver had not yet been discovered, that the war was not being conducted on revolutionary principles but in the normal fashion with powder and lead, and that he intended to revolutionise in Switzerland as Germany was a lost cause. In the secluded idyll of Switzerland and with the tortured dialect they speak there it was easy for Rodomonte to pass for a German writer and even for a dangerous man. He achieved his aim. He was expelled and dispatched to London at Federal expense. Rodomonte Heinzen had not directly participated in the European revolutions; but, undeniably, he had moved about extensively on their behalf. When the February Revolution broke out he took up a collection of “revolutionary money” in New York, hastened to the aid of his country and advanced as far as the Swiss border. When the March Club's revolution collapsed he retired from Switzerland to beyond the Channel at the expense of the Swiss Federal Council. He had the satisfaction of making the revolution pay for his advance and the counter-revolution for his retreat.

At every turn in the Italian epics of chivalry we encounter mighty, broad-shouldered giants armed with colossal staves who despite the fact that they lash about them wildly and make a frightening din in battle, never manage to kill their foes but only to destroy the trees in the vicinity. Mr. Heinzen is such an Ariostian giant in political literature. Endowed by nature with a churlish figure and huge masses of flesh he interpreted these gifts to mean that he was destined to be a great man. His weighty physical appearance determines his whole literary posture which is physical through and through. His opponents are always small, mere dwarfs, who can barely reach his ankles and whom he can survey with his kneecap. When, however, he should indeed make a physical appearance, our uomo membruto takes refuge in literature or in the courts. Thus scarcely had he reached the safety of English soil than he wrote a tract on moral courage. Or again, our giant allowed a certain Mr. Richter to thrash him so frequently and so thoroughly in New York that the magistrate, who at first only imposed insignificant fines relented and in recognition of Heinzen's doggedness he sentenced the dwarf Richter to pay 200 dollars damages. The natural complement to this great physique so healthy in every fibre is the healthy commonsense which Heinzen ascribes to himself in the highest possible degree. It is inevitable that a man with such commonsense will turn out to be a natural genius who has learnt nothing, a barbarian innocent of literature and science. By virtue of his commonsense (which he also calls his "perspicacity" and which allows him to tell Kossuth that he has "advanced to the extreme frontiers of thought"), he learns only from hearsay or the newspapers. He is therefore always behind the times and always wears the coat that literature has cast off some years previously, while rejecting as immoral and reprehensible the new modern dress he cannot find his way into. But when he has once assimilated a thing his faith in it is unshakable; it transforms itself into something that has grown naturally, that is self-evident, that everyone must immediately agree to and that only malicious, stupid or sophisticated persons will pretend not to believe. Such a robust body and healthy commonsense must of course have also some honest, down-to-earth principles and he even shows to advantage when he takes the craze for principles to extremes. In this field Heinzen is second to none. He draws attention to his principles at every opportunity, every argument is met by an appeal to principle, everyone who fails to understand him or whom he does not understand is demolished by the argument that he has no real principles, his insincerity and pure ill-will are such that he would deny that day was day and night night. To deal with these base disciples of Ahriman [Zoroastrian demon who returns to earth every 1000 years to wreak havoc] he summons up his muse, indignation; he curses, rages, boasts, preaches, and foaming at the mouth he roars out the most tragicomical imprecations. He demonstrates what can be achieved in the field of literary invective by a man to whom Börne’s wit and literary talent are equally alien. As the muse is, so is the style. An eternal bludgeon, but a commonplace bludgeon with knots that are not even original or sharp. Only when he encounters science does he feel momentarily at a loss. He is then like that Billingsgate fishwife with whom O'Connell became involved in a shouting match and whom he silenced by replying to a long string of insults: "You are all that and worse: you are an isosceles triangle, you are a parallelepiped".

From the earlier history of Mr. Heinzen mention should be made of the fact that he was in the Dutch colonies where he advanced not indeed to the rank of general but to that of NCO, a slight for which he later on always treated the Dutch as a nation without principles. Later we find him back in Cologne as a sub-inspector of taxes and in this capacity he wrote a comedy in which his healthy commonsense vainly strove to satirise the philosophy of Hegel. He was more at home in the gossip columns of the Kölnische Zeitung, in the feuilleton where he let fall some weighty words about the quarrels in the Cologne Carnival Club, the institute from which all the great men of Cologne have graduated. His own sufferings and those of his father, a forester, in his conflicts with superiors assumed the proportions of events of universal significance, as easily happens when the man of healthy commonsense contemplates his little personal problems. He gives an account of them in his Prussian Bureaucracy, a book much inferior to Venedey's and containing nothing more than the complaints of a petty official against the higher authorities. The book involved him in a trial and although the worst he had to fear was six months in gaol he thought his head was in danger and fled to Brussels. From here he demanded that the Prussian government should not only grant him a safe conduct but also that they should suspend the whole French legal system and give him a jury trial for an ordinary offence. The Prussian government issued a warrant for his arrest; he replied with a “warrant“ against the Prussian government which contained inter alia a sermon on moral resistance and constitutional monarchy and condemned revolution as immoral and jesuitical. From Brussels he went to Switzerland. Here, as we saw above, he met Friend Arnold and from him he learnt not only his philosophy but also a very useful method of self-enrichment. Just as Arnold sought to assimilate the ideas of his opponents in the course of polemicising against them, so Heinzen learned to acquire ideas new to him by reviling them. Hardly had he become an atheist than with all the zeal of the proselyte he immediately plunged into a furious polemic against poor old Follen [August Follen, German poet who wrote a collection of sonnets aimed against Heinzen and Ruge] because the latter saw no reason to become an atheist in his old age. Having had his nose rubbed in the Swiss Federal Republic our healthy commonsense developed to the point where it desired to introduce the Federal Republic into Germany too. The same commonsense came to the conclusion that this could not be done without a revolution and so Heinzen became a revolutionary. He then began a trade in pamphlets which in the coarsest tones of the Swiss peasant preached immediate revolution and death to the rulers from whom all the evils of the world stem. He sought out committees in Germany who would drum up the cost of printing and distributing these pamphlets and this led naturally to the growth of a begging industry on a large scale in the course of which the party workers were first exploited and then reviled. Old Itzstein could tell a story or two about that. These pamphlets gave Heinzen a great reputation among itinerant German wine salesmen who praised him everywhere as a bonny little fighter.

From Switzerland he went to America. Here, although his Swiss rustic style enabled him to pass as a genuine poet he nevertheless managed to ride the New York Schnellpost to death in no time at all

Having returned to Europe in the wake of the February revolution he sent despatches to the Mannheimer Zeitung announcing the arrival of the great Heinzen and he also published a pamphlet to revenge himself on Lamartine who together with his whole government had refused to acknowledge him as an official representative of the American Germans. He still did not wish to go to Prussia as he still feared for his head despite the March Revolution and the general amnesty. He would wait until the nation summoned him. As this did not happen he resolved to stand in absentia for the Hamburg constituency to the Frankfurt Parliament: his hope was that he would compensate for being a bad speaker by the loudness of his voice — but he lost the election.

Arriving in London after the collapse of the Baden uprising he fell into a rage with the young people who knew nothing of this great man of before the revolution and of after the revolution, and who caused him to sink into oblivion. He had always been nothing more than l'homme de la veille or l'homme du lendemain, he was never l'homme du jour or even de la journée. As the authentic exploding silver had still not been discovered new weapons had to be found to combat the reaction. He called for two million heads so that he could be a dictator and wade up to the ankles in blood — shed by others. His real aim was, of course, to create a scandal; the reaction had brought him to London at its own expense, by means of an expulsion order from England it would now, so Heinzen hoped, expedite him gratis to New York. The coup failed and its only consequence was that the radical French papers called him a fool who shouted for two million heads only because he had never risked his own. To complete the picture it should be pointed out that his bloodthirsty article had been published in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung owned by the ex-Duke of Brunswick — in return for a cash payment, of course.

Gustav and Heinzen had admired each other for a considerable time. Heinzen praised Gustav as a sage and Gustav praised Heinzen as a fighter. Heinzen had scarcely been able to wait for the end of the European revolution so that he could put an end to the “ruinous disunity in the democratic German emigration” and to re-open his pre-revolutionary business. He called for discussion of a draft programme of the German Revolutionary Party. This programme was distinguished by the invention of a special ministry “to cater for the all-important need for public playgrounds, battlegrounds” (minus hail of bullets) “and gardens”, and was notable also for the article abolishing “the privileges of the male sex especially in marriage” (and also in thrusting maneuvers [Stosstaktik] in war, see Clausewitz). This programme was actually no more than a diplomatic note from Heinzen to Gustav as no-one else was clamouring for it. And instead of the hoped for unification it brought about the immediate separation of the two warriors. Heinzen had demanded that during the “revolutionary transition period” there should be a single dictator who would moreover be a Prussian and, to preclude all misunderstandings, he added: “No soldier can qualify as dictator.“ Gustav, on the other hand, argued for a triumvirate comprising two Badeners and himself. Moreover, Gustav found that Heinzen had included in his prematurely published programme an “idea” stolen from him. This put an end to the second attempt at unification and Heinzen, denied recognition by the whole world, receded into obscurity until, in Autumn 1850, he found English soil too hot for him and sailed off to New York.

VII (Gustav and the Colony of Renunciation)

After the indefatigable Gustav had made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Central Refugee Committee together with Friedrich Bobzin, Habegg, Oswald, Rosenblum, Cohaheim, Grunich and other "outstanding" men, he made his way towards Yorkshire. For here, so he believed, a magic garden would flower and in it, unlike the garden of Alcine, virtue would rule instead of vice. An old Englishman with a sense of humour who had been bored by Gustav's theories took him at his word and gave him a few acres of moor in Yorkshire on the express condition that he would there found a “colony of renunciation”, a colony in which the consumption of meat, tobacco and spirits would be strictly prohibited, only a vegetarian diet would be permitted and where every colonist would be obliged to read a chapter from Struve's book on Constitutional Law at his morning prayers. Moreover, the colony was to be self-supporting. Accompanied by his Amalia, by Schnauffer, his Swabian canary and by a few other good men and true, Gustav placed his trust in God and went to found the “Colony of Renunciation”. Of the colony it must be reported that it contained little prosperity, much culture and unlimited freedom to be bored and to grow thin. One fine morning Gustav uncovered a dreadful plot. His companions who did not share Gustav's ruminant constitution had resolved behind his back to slaughter the old cow, the only one and one whose milk provided the chief source of income of the “Colony of Renunciation”. Gustav wrung his hands and shed bitter tears at this betrayal of a fellow creature. He indignantly dissolved the colony and decided to become a "wet" Quaker if he were unable to revive the Deutscher Zuschauer or to establish a “provisional government” in London.

VIII (Arnold)

Gustav and the Colony of Renunciation

Arnold, who was anything but content in his retreat in Ostend and who longed for a “frequent appearance” before the public, heard of Gustav's misfortune. He resolved to return to England at once and by climbing on Gustav's shoulders, to hoist himself into the pentarchy of European democracy. For in the meantime the European Central Committee had been formed consisting of Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin and Darasz. Mazzini of course was the soul of the enterprise. Ruge thought he could smell a vacant position. In his Proscrit Mazzini had indeed introduced General Ernst Haug, his own invention, as the German associate but for decency’s sake it was not possible to nominate such a completely unknown person onto the Central Committee. Ruge was not unaware of the fact that Gustav had had dealings with Mazzini in Switzerland. He himself was acquainted with Ledru-Rollin but unfortunately Ledru-Rollin was not acquainted with him. So Arnold took up residence in Brighton and flattered and cajoled the unsuspecting Gustav, promised to help him found a Deutscher Zuschauer in London and even to undertake as a joint venture the democratic publication of the Rotteck-Welcker Lexicon of Politics with Ruge paying the costs. At the same time he introduced Gustav as a great man and collaborator into the local German paper which in accordance with his principles he always had on tap (this time the blow fell on the Bremer Tages-Chronik of the nonconformist parson Dulon). One good deed deserves another: Gustav presented Arnold to Mazzini. As Arnold's French was wholly incomprehensible there was nothing to prevent him from introducing himself to Mazzini as the greatest man in Germany and above all as her greatest “thinker”. The canny Italian idealist at once realised that Arnold was the man he was looking for, the homme sans conséquence who would provide the German countersignature of his anti-papal Bulls. Thus Arnold Ruge became the fifth wheel on the state coach of European democracy. When an Alsatian asked Ledru what on earth possessed him to make an ally of such a bête, Ledru replied brusquely: “He is Mazzini's man.” When Mazzini was asked why he became involved with Ledru, a man bereft of all ideas, he answered slyly: “I took him for that very reason.” Mazzini himself had every reason to avoid people with ideas. But Arnold Ruge saw his wildest dreams come true and for the moment he even forgot Bruno Bauer.

When the time came for him to sign Mazzini's first manifesto he sadly recalled the days when he had presented himself to Professor Leo in Halle and old Follen in Switzerland as a Trinitarian on one occasion and as a humanist atheist on another. This time he had to declare himself for God and against the princes. However, Arnold's philosophic conscience had been enfeebled by his association with Dulon and other parsons among whom he passed for a philosopher. Even in his best days Arnold could not entirely suppress a certain foible for religion in general and moreover his “honest consciousness” kept on whispering to him: Sign, Arnold! Paris vaut bien une messe. One does not become fifth wheel on the coach of the provisional govemment of Europe in partibus for nothing. Reflect, Arnold! all you have to do is sign a manifesto every two weeks, and as a member of the German Parliament, in the company of the greatest men in all Europe. And bathed in perspiration Arnold signs. A curious joke, he murmurs. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. He had copied this last sentence into his notebook the previous night. However, Arnold had not come to the end of his trials. The European Central Committee had issued a series of manifestos to Europe, to the French, the Italians, the Poles and the Wallachians and now, following the great battle at Bronzell, it was Germany’s turn. In his draft Mazzini attacked the Germans for their lack of cosmopolitan spirit, and in particular, for their arrogant treatment of Italian salami vendors, organ-grinders, confectioners, dormouse tamers and mouse-trap sellers. Taken aback Arnold confessed that it was true. He went further. He declared his readiness to cede the Austrian Tirol and Istria to Mazzini. But this was not enough. He had not only to appeal to the conscience of the German people, but also to attack them where they were most vulnerable. Arnold received instructions that this time he was to have an opinion, as he represented the German element. He felt like the student Jobs. He scratched himself thoughtfully behind his ear and after long reflection he stuttered: “Since the age of Tacitus the voices of German bards and baritones can be heard. In winter they kindle fires on all the mountains so as to warm their feet.” The bards, the baritones and fires on all the mountains! That will put a bomb under German freedom! thought Mazzini with a grin. The bards, baritones, fires on all the mountains and German freedom to boot went into the manifesto as a sop for the German nation. To his astonishment Arnold had passed the examination and understood for the first time with what little wisdom the world is governed. From that moment on he despised Bruno Bauer more than ever for all his eighteen hefty tomes written while he was still young.

While Arnold in the wake of the European Central Committee was signing warlike manifestoes with God, for Mazzini and against the princes, the peace movement was raging not only in England, under the aegis of Cobden, but even beyond the North Sea. So that in Frankfurt/Main the Yankee swindler, Elihu Burritt together with Cobden, Jaup, Girardin and the Red Indian Ka-gi-ga-gi-wa-wa-be-ta organised a Peace Congress. Our Arnold was just itching to be able to make one of his “frequent appearances” and to give birth to a manifesto. So he proclaimed himself the corresponding member of the Frankfurt Assembly and sent over an extremely confused Peace Manifesto translated out of Cobden's speeches into his own speculative Pomeranian. Various Germans drew Arnold's attention to the contradiction between his warlike attitude in the Central Committee and his peaceful Quakerism. He would reply: “Well, there you have the contradictions. That's the dialectic for you. In my youth I studied Hegel.” His “honest consciousness” was eased by the thought that Mazzini knew no German and that it was not hard to pull the wool over his eyes.

Moreover, his relationship with Mazzini promised to become even more secure thanks to the protection of Harro Harring who had just landed in Hull. For with Harring a new and highly symptomatic character steps onto the stage.

IX (Harro Harring)

The great drama of the democratic emigration of 1848-52 had been preceded by a prelude eighteen years previously: the democratic emigration of 1830-31. Even though with the passage of time most of the players had disappeared from the stage there still remained a few noble ruins who, stoically indifferent to the course of history and their own lack of success, continued their activities as agitators, devised comprehensive plans, formed provisional governments and hurled proclamations into the world in every direction. It is obvious that these experienced swindlers were infinitely superior to the younger generation in business know-how. It was this very know-how acquired through eighteen years practice in conspiring, scheming, intriguing, proclaiming, duping, showing off and pushing oneself to the fore that gave Mr. Mazzini the cheek and the assurance to install himself as the Central Committee of European democracy supported only by three straw men of much smaller experience in such matters.

No one was more favoured by circumstances to become the very type of the émigré agitator than our friend Harro Harring. And indeed he did become the prototype whom all our heroes of the Exile, all the Arnolds, Gustavs and Gottfrieds strove more or less consciously and with varying success to emulate. They may even equal him if circumstances are not unfavourable, but they will hardly surpass him.

Harro who like Caesar has himself described his own great deeds (London 1852) was born on the “Cimbrian peninsula” and belongs to that visionary North Frisian race which has already been shown by Dr. Clement to have produced all the great nations of the world.

“Already in early youth” he attempted to “set the seal of action upon his enthusiasm for the cause of the peoples“ by going to Greece in 1821. We see how Friend Harro had an early premonition of his mission to be everywhere where confusion reigned. Later on “a strange fate led him to the source of absolutism, to the vicinity of the Czar and he had seen through the Jesuitism of constitutional monarchy in Poland“.

So Harro fought for freedom in Poland also. But “the crisis in the history of Europe following the fall of Warsaw greatly perplexed him”, and his perplexity led him to the idea of “the democracy of nations”, which he at once “documented in the work: The Nations, Strasbourg, March 1832”. It is worth remarking that this work was almost quoted at the Hambacher Fest. At the same time he published his “republican poems: Blutstropfen [Drops of Blood]; The History of King Saul or the Monarchy; Male voices on Germany's Freedom” and edited the journal Deutschland in Strasbourg. All these and even his future writings had the unexpected good fortune to be banned by the Federal Diet on November 4, 1831. This was the only thing he still lacked, only now did he achieve real importance and also the martyr's crown. So that he could exclaim “My writings were everywhere well received and echoed loudly in the hearts of the people. They were mostly distributed gratis. In the case of some of them I did not even receive enough to cover the Costs of printing.”

But new honours still awaited him. In 1831 Mr. Welcker had vainly attempted in a long letter “to convert him to the vertical horizon of constitutional monarchy”. And now, in January 1832, there came a visit from Mr. Malten, a well-known Prussian agent abroad, who proposed that he should enter Prussian service. What double recognition this was — and from the enemy too! Enough, Malten's offer “triggered off the idea that in the face of this dynastic treachery he should give birth to the concept of Scandinavian nationality”, and “from that time on at least the word Scandinavia was reborn after having been forgotten for centuries”.

In this manner our North Frisian from South Jutland who did not know himself whether he was a German or a Dane acquired at least an imaginary nationality whose first consequence was that the men of Hambach would have nothing to do with him.

With all these events behind him Harro's fortune was made. Veteran of freedom in Greece and Poland, the inventor of “democracy of nations”, re-discoverer of the word “Scandinavia”, poet acknowledged by the ban of the Federal Diet, thinker and journalist, martyr, a great man esteemed even by his enemies, a man whose allegiance constitutionalists, absolutists and republicans vied with each other to possess and, with all that, empty-headed and confused enough to believe in his own greatness — what then was needed to make his happiness complete? But Harro was a conscientious man and as his fame grew so did the demands which he made upon himself What was missing was a great work that would present in an entertaining and popular form the great doctrines of freedom, the idea of democracy, and of nationality and all the sublime struggles for freedom on the part of the youthful Europe arising before his very eyes. None but a poet and thinker of the very first rank could produce such a work and none but Harro could be this man. Thus arose the first three plays of the “dramatic cycle” The People, of which there were twelve parts in all, one of them in Danish, a labour to which the author devoted ten years of his life. Unfortunately eleven of these twelve parts have “hitherto remained in manuscript”.

However, this dallying with the muse was not to last forever.

“In the winter of 1832-1833 a movement was prepared in Germany — which was brought to a tragic end in the skirmish in Frankfurt. I was entrusted with the task of taking the fortress (?) in Kehl on the night of 6 April. Men and weapons were at the ready.“

Unfortunately it all came to nothing and Harro had to retire to the depths of France where he wrote his Words of a Man. From there he was summoned to Switzerland by the Poles arming themselves for their march on Savoy. Here he became “attached to their General Staff”, wrote a further two parts of his dramatic cycle The People, and made the acquaintance of Mazzini in Geneva. The whole band of fire-eaters consisting of Polish, French, German, Italian and Swiss adventurers under the command of the noble Ramorino then made their famous attack on Savoy. In this campaign our Harro "discovered the value of his life and strength". But as the other freedom fighters felt “the value of their lives” no less than Harro and no doubt had just as few illusions about their “strength&lrquo; the exploit ended badly and they returned to Switzerland beaten, dishevelled and in disarray. This campaign was all that was needed to give our band of emigrant knights a complete insight into the terror they inspired in the tyrants. As long as the aftermath of the July Revolution could still be felt in isolated insurrections in France, Germany or Italy, as long as they felt someone or other standing behind them our émigré heroes felt themselves to be but atoms in the seething masses — more or less privileged, prominent atoms, to be sure, but in the last analysis they were still atoms. But as these insurrections gradually grew feebler, as the great mass of “lackeys”, of the “half-hearted” and the “men of little faith” retired from the putschist swindles and as our knights felt increasingly lonely, so did their self-esteem grow in proportion. If the whole of Europe became craven, stupid and selfish, how could our trusty heroes fail to grow in their own estimation, for were they not the priests who kept the sacred fires of hatred for all tyrants burning in their breasts and who maintained the traditions of virtue and love of freedom for a more vigorous generation yet to come! If they too deserted the flag the tyrants would be safe for ever. So like the democrats of 1848 they saw in every defeat a guarantee of future victory and they gradually transformed themselves more and more into itinerant Don Quixotes with dubious sources of income. Once arrived at this point they could plan their greatest act of heroism, the foundation of “Young Europe” whose Charter of Brotherhood was drawn up by Mazzini and signed in Berne on 15 April 1834. Harro appears in it as

“initiator of the Central Committee, adoptive member of Young Germany and Young Italy and also as representative of the Scandinavian branch” which he “still represents today”.

The date of the Charter of Brotherhood marks for Harro the great epoch from which calculations are made forwards and backwards, thus replacing the birth of Christ. It is the highpoint of his life. He was co-dictator of Europe in partibus and although the world knew nothing of him he was one of the most dangerous men alive. No one stood behind him but his many unpublished works, a few German artisans in Switzerland and a dozen political speculators who had seen better days — but for that very reason he could claim that all the people of the world were on his side. For it is the fate of all great men not to be recognised by their own age whereas the future belongs to them. And Harro had taken care of the future — he had it in black and white in his bag in the form of the Charter of Brotherhood.

But now began Harro's decline. His first sorrow was that “Young Germany split off from Young Europe in 1836”. But Germany was duly punished for that. Because of the split “nothing had been prepared for a national movement in Germany early in 1848” and this is why everything ended so miserably.

But a much greater sorrow for Harro was the growth of communism. We learn from him that the founder of communism was none other than

“the cynic Johannes Müller from Berlin, the author of a very interesting pamphlet on Prussian policy, Altenburg 1831”. Müller went to England where “the only available opening for him was in Smithfield Market where he had to tend swine at the crack of dawn”.

Communism soon began to spread among the German artisans in France and Switzerland and it became a very dangerous enemy for Harro as it cut off the only market for his writings. This was due to the “indirect censorship of communism” from which poor Harro has suffered to this very day and indeed it is now worse than ever as he sadly confesses and “as the fate of my drama The Dynasty proves”. This indirect communist censorship even succeeded in expelling Harro from Europe and so he went to Rio de Janeiro (in 1840) where he lived for a time as a painter. “Using his time conscientiously here as everywhere” he brought out a new work: "Poems of a Scandinavian (2000 copies) which has been distributed so widely among sea-faring people as to have become an oceanic best-seller".

However, his “scrupulous sense of obligation towards Young Europe” unfortunately led him to return to the Old World.

He “hastened to Mazzini in London and soon perceived the danger that threatened the cause of the peoples from communism”.

New deeds awaited him. The Bandiera brothers were preparing for their expedition to Italy. To support them and to divert the forces of despotism Harro “returned to South America where in union with Garibaldi he dedicated himself to furthering the idea of a United States of South America”.

But the despots had got wind of his mission and Harro took to his heels. He sailed to New York.

“During the voyage I was very active intellectually and wrote among other things a drama: The Power of Ideas, which belonged to the dramatic cycle The People — this too has remained in MS. up to now!”

From South America he brought with him to New York a programme from a group alleged to be affiliated with Humanidad.

The news of the February Revolution inspired him to produce a pamphlet in French, La France réveillée and while embarking for Europe “I documented my love for my country once again in some poems, Scandinavia”.

He went to Schleswig-Holstein. Here, after an absence of twentyseven years, he “discovered an unheard of conceptual confusion in the sphere of international law, democracy, republicanism socialism and communism, a chaos which lay like rotting hay and straw in the Augean stables of party factions and national hatred”.

No wonder, for his “political writings” like his “whole striving and activities since 1831 had remained alien and unknown in those frontier provinces of my home country”.

The Augustenburg Party had suppressed him for eighteen years by means of a conspiracy of silence. To deal with this he girt on a sabre, a rifle, four pistols and six daggers and called for the formation of a free corps, but in vain. After various adventures he finally arrived in Hull. Here he hastened to issue two circulars to the peoples of Schleswig-Holstein, Scandinavia and Germany and even sent a note, as has been reported, to two communists in London with this message: "Five thousand workers in Norway send you fraternal greetings through me.

Despite this curious appeal he soon became a sleeping partner of the European Central Committee again, thanks to the Charter of Brotherhood, and he also became “nightwatchman and employee of a young firm of brokers in Gravesend on the Thames where my task was to drum up trade among ships’ captains in nine different languages until I was accused of fraud, a thing which the philosopher Johannes Müller was at least spared in his capacity as swineherd”.

Harro summarised his action-packed life as follows:

“It can easily be calculated that apart from my poems I have given away more than 18,000 copies of my writings in German (varying from 10 shillings to 3 Marks in price, and hence amounting to around 25,000 Marks in toto) to the democratic movement. I have never even been reimbursed for the printing costs, let alone received any profit for myself.”

With this we bring the adventures of our demagogic Hidalgo from the South Jutland Mancha to a close. In Greece and Brazil, on the Vistula and La Plata, in Schleswig-Holstein and in New York, in London and in Switzerland: the representative of Young Europe and of the South American Humanidad, painter, nightwatchman and employee, peddler of his own writings; among Poles one day and gauchos the next, and ship’s captains the day after that; unacknowledged, abandoned, ignored but everywhere an itinerant knight of freedom with a thoroughgoing dislike of ordinary bourgeois hard work — our hero at all times in all countries and in all circumstances remains himself; with the same confusion, the same meddlesome pretensions, the same faith in himself He will always defy the world and never cease to say, write and print that since 1831 he has been the mainspring of world history.

X (Exiles from France, Switzerland and Belgium)

Despite his unexpected successes hitherto Arnold had not yet arrived at the goal of his labours. As Germany's representative by the grace of Mazzini, he was under the obligation on the one hand to obtain confirmation of his appointment at least by the German emigration and, on the other hand, to present the Central Committee with people who respected his leadership. He did indeed claim that in Germany there was “a clearly defined part of the people behind him” but this hind portion could scarcely inspire much confidence in Mazzini and Ledru as long as they could see nothing but the Ruge front portion. Suffice it to say that Arnold had to look around among the émigrés for a “clearly defined” tail.

At about this time Gottfried Kinkel came to London and together with him or soon afterwards a number of other exiles partly from France, partly from Switzerland and Belgium: Schurz, Strodtmann, Oppenheim, Schimmelpfennig, Techow, etc. These new arrivals some of whom had already tried their hand at forming provisional governments in Switzerland, infused new life into the London emigration and for Arnold the moment seemed more favourable than ever. At the same time Heinzen again took over the Schnellpost in New York and so Arnold could now make his “frequent appearances” on the other side of the ocean and not just in the local Bremen paper. Should Arnold ever find his Strodtmann the latter would surely declare the monthly numbers of the Schnellpost from the beginning of 1851 on to be a priceless source of information. One has to see this infinitely feeble mixture of gossip, silliness and nastiness, this ant-like self-importance with which Arnold deposits his dung, for otherwise one would not believe it. While Heinzen portrays Arnold as a European Great Power, Arnold treats Heinzen as an American newspaper oracle. He tells him the secrets of European diplomacy and in particular the latest events in the history of world emigration. Arnold sometimes figures as the anonymous correspondent in London and Paris in order to keep the American public informed of some of the great Arnold's fashionable movements.

“Once again Arnold Ruge has the communists by the throat” — “Arnold Ruge yesterday (dated from Paris so that the dating gives the old joker away) made an excursion from Brighton to London.” And again: “Arnold Ruge to Karl Heinzen: Dear Friend and Editor .... Mazzini sends his greetings ... Ledru-Rollin gives his permission to translate his pamphlet on the June 13th” and so on.

A letter from America has this comment to make:

“As I see from Ruge's letters in the Schnellpost Heinzen must be writing Ruge (privately) all sorts of funny stories about the importance of his paper in America, while Ruge seems to act as if he were a major European govemment. Whenever Ruge imparts a momentous piece of information to Heinzen he never omits to add: You can ask other newspapers to reprint this. As if they would hesitate to print news regardless of Ruge’s authorisation. Incidentally, I have never seen these momentous reports actually appear anywhere else despite Ruge's advice and permission.”

Father Ruge employed both this paper and the Bremer TagesChronik to win over new arrivals by flattery: Kinkel is here now, the patriot and poet of genius; Strodtmann, a great writer; Schurz, a young man as amiable as he is bold, and a whole array of distinguished revolutionary warriors.

Meanwhile in contrast to the Mazzini Committee a plebeian European Committee was formed with the support of the “inferior refugees” and the émigré dregs of the various European nations. At the time of the battle of Bronzell this committee had issued a manifesto that included the following outstanding German signatories: Gebert, Majer, Dietz, Schärttner, Schapper, Willich. This document was couched in peculiar French and contained the information that at that moment (10 November 1850) the Holy Alliance of Tyrants had assembled 1,330,000 soldiers backed by another 700,000 armed lackeys in reserve; that “the German papers and the Committee’s own contacts” had revealed the secret intentions of the Warsaw Conferences and that these were to massacre all the republicans of Europe. This was followed by the inevitable call to arms. This “manifeste-Faneron-Caperon-Gouté” as it was described by the Patrie (to whom they sent it) was overwhelmed with ridicule by the reactionary press. The Patrie called it “the manifesto of the dii minorum gentium, written without chic, without style and equipped with only the most banal clichés, ‘serpents’, ‘sicaires’ and ‘égorgements’”.

The Indépendence Belge states that it was written by the most obscure soldiers of democracy, poor devils who had sent it to their correspondent in London even though their paper was conservative. Greatly as they longed to get into print, they would nevertheless not publish the names of the signatories as a punishment. Despite their attempts to beg from the reaction these noble people did not manage to obtain recognition as dangerous conspirators.

The establishment of this rival firm spurred Arnold on to even greater efforts. Together with Strave, Kinkel, R. Schramm and Bucher, etc. he tried to found a Volksfreund, or, if Gustav were to insist, a Deutscher Zuschauer. But the plan fell through. Partly because our “good-humoured” Gottfried demanded payment in cash whereas Arnold shared Hansemann's view that in money matters there is no room for good humour. Arnold's particular aim was to impose a levy on the Reading Circle, a club of German watchmakers, well-paid workers and petty bourgeois, but in this too he was frustrated.

But soon there arose another opportunity for Arnold to make one of his “frequent appearances”. Ledru and his supporters among the French émigrés could not let 24 February (1851) pass without celebrating a “Fraternal Feast” of the nations of Europe. In fact only the French and the Germans attended. Mazzini did not come and excused himself by letter: Gottfried who was present went home fuming because his mute presence failed to produce the magical effect he expected; Arnold lived to see the day when his friend Ledru pretended not to know him and became so confused when he arose to speak that he kept quiet about the French speech he had prepared and which had been approved in high places; he just stammered a few words in German and retreated precipitately, exclaiming: Àla restauration de la révolution! to the accompaniment of a general shaking of heads.

On the same day a rival banquet took place under the auspices of the competing committee referred to above. Annoyed that the Mazzini-Ledru committee had not invited him to join them from the beginning Louis Blanc took himself off to the refugee mob, declaring that “the aristocracy of talent must also be abolished”. The whole lower emigration was thus assembled. The chivalrous Willich presided. The hall was festooned with flags and the walls were emblazoned with the names of the greatest men of the people: Waldeck between Garibaldi and Kossuth, Jacoby between Blanqui and Cabet, Robert Blum between Barbès and Robespierre. That coquettish ape Louis Blanc read out in a whining voice an address from his old yes men [German: Ja Brüder], the future peers of the social republic, the delegates of the Luxemburg of 1848. Willich read out an address from Switzerland the signatures to which had partly been collected under false presences. Later he was indiscreet enough to publish the address, which resulted in the mass expulsion of the signatories. From Germany no message had arrived. Then speeches. Despite the eternal brotherhood boredom could be seen on every face.

The banquet gave rise to a highly edifying scandal which like the heroic deeds of the European central mob-committee, unfolded within the pages of the counter-revolutionary press. It had struck observers as very strange that during the banquet a certain Barthélemy should have given an extremely grandiose eulogy of Blanqui in the presence of Louis Blanc. The puzzle was now elucidated. The Patrie printed a toast that Blanqui had sent from Belle-Île in response to a request from the orator at the banquet. In the toast he aimed some rough blows at the whole provisional government of 1848 and at Louis Blanc in particular. The Patrie expressed astonishment that this toast had been suppressed in the course of the banquet. Louis Blanc at once wrote to The Times declaring that Blanqui was an abominable intriguer and had never sent such a toast to the Banquet committee. The committee consisting of Messrs, Blanc, Willich, Landolphe, Schapper, Barthélemy and Vidil, announced simultaneously in the Patrie that they had never received the toast. The Patrie, however, did not allow the declaration to be printed until they had made inquiries of M. Antoine, Blanqui's brother-in-law, who had given them the text of the toast. Beneath the declaration of the Banquet committee they printed M. Antoine's reply: he had sent the toast to Barthélemy, one of the signatories of the declaration and had received an acknowledgement from him. Whereupon Mr. Barthélemy was forced to admit that it was true that he had lied. He had indeed received the toast but had thought it unsuitable and so had not informed the committee of it. But before this, behind Barthélemy's back his co-signatory, the French ax-captain Vidil had also written to the Patrie saying that his honour as a soldier and his sense of truth compelled him to confess that not only he but also Louis Blanc, Willich and all the other signatories of the first declaration had lied. The committee had consisted of 13 members and not 6. They had all seen Blanqui's toast, they had discussed it and after a long debate agreed to suppress it by a majority of 7 votes to 6. He had been one who had voted in favour of reading it in public.

It is easy to imagine the joy of the Patrie when it received Barthélemy's declaration after Vidil's letter. They printed it with this preface:

“We have often asked ourselves, and it is a difficult question to answer, whether the demagogues are notable more for their stupidity or their boastfulness. A fourth letter from London has increased our perplexity. There they are, we do not know how many poor wretches, who are so tormented by the longing to write and to see their names published in the reactionary press that they are undeterred even by the prospect of infinite humiliation and mortification. What do they care for the laughter and the indignation of the public — the Journal des Débats, the Assemblée rationale and the Patrie will find space for their stylistic exercises; to achieve this no cost to the cause of cosmopolitan democracy can be too high.... In the name of literary commiseration we include the following letter from ‘Citizen’ Barthélemy — it is a novel, and, we hope, the last proof of the authenticity of Blanqui’s famous toast whose existence they first all denied and now fight among themselves for the right to acknowledge.”

XI (Ruge and the Anniversary of the March Revolution)

“The actual force of events”, to use one of Arnold's all-pervading beautiful forms, now took the following course. On 24 February, Ruge had compromised himself and the German émigrés in the presence of foreigners. Hence the few émigrés who still felt inclined to go along with him felt insecure and without any support. Arnold put the blame on the division in the emigration and pressed harder than ever for unity. Compromised as he was, he still reached eagerly for the chance to compromise himself further.

Hence the Anniversary of the March revolution in Vienna was used to give a German banquet. The chivalrous Willich declined the invitation; as he belonged to “citizen” Louis Blanc he could not collaborate with “citizen” Ruge who belonged to “citizen&lrquo; Ledru. Likewise the ex-deputies Reichenbach, Schramm, Bucher, etc., recoiled from Ruge’s presence. Not counting the silent guests there appeared Mazzini, Ruge, Struve, Tausenau, Haug, Ronge and Kinkel — all of whom spoke.

Ruge filled the role of “the complete fool” as even his friends admitted. The German public was however to experience even greater things. Tausenau’s clowning, Struve’s croaking, Haug’s meanderings, Ronge’s litanies turned the whole audience to stone and the majority drifted away even before that flower of rhetoric, Jeremiah-Kinkel, who had been saved for the dessert, could begin his speech. “In the name of the martyrs” for the martyrs, Gottfried spoke as a martyr and uttered lachrymose words of reconciliation to all ’from the simple defender of the constitution down to the red republican”. At the same time as all these republicans, and even red republicans, like Kinkel, groaned away in this fashion, they also knelt down before the English constitution in humble adoration, a contradiction to which the Morning Chronicle politely drew their attention the following morning.

The same evening Ruge saw the fulfilment of his desires as can be seen from a proclamation whose most brilliant sections we offer here:

To the Germans!

“Brothers and friends in Germany! We, the undersigned, constitute at present and until such time as you decide differently, the committee for German affairs" (irrespective which affairs).

“The Central Committee of the European democratic movement has sent us Arnold Ruge, the Baden revolution has sent Gustav Struve, the Viennese revolution has sent us Ernst Haug, the religious movement has sent us Johannes Ronge and prison has sent us Gottfried Kinkel, we have invited the social-democratic workers to send a representative to our midst.

“German brothers! Events have deprived you of your freedom ... we know that you are incapable of abandoning your freedom for ever and we have omitted nothing" (in the way of committees and manifestoes) "that might accelerate your recovery of it.

“When we ... when we gave our guarantee and our support to the Mazzini loan, when we ... when we invoked the Holy Alliance of peoples against the unholy alliance of their oppressors, we only did, as you know, what you wished with all your hearts to see done.... The tyrants have been arraigned before the universal court of mankind in the great trial of freedom” (and with Arnold as public prosecutor, the “tyrants” can sleep in peace) ... “arson, murder, pillaging, hunger and bankruptcy will soon be widespread throughout Germany.

“You have the example of France before your eyes — Smouldering with fury it is more united than ever in its determination to liberate itself (I ask you, who on earth could have foreseen the 2 December!) — look at Hungary, even the Croats have been converted” (thanks to the Deutscher Zuschauer and Ruge’s wood-shaving coats) — “and believe us, for we know, when we say that Poland is immortal” (Mr. Darasz confided this piece of information to them under solemn oath of secrecy).

“Force against force — that is the justice that is being prepared. And we shall leave nothing undone to bring into being a more effective provisional government” (aha!) “than the Vorparlament and a more potent arm of the people than the National Assembly” (see below what these gentlemen brought into being when they attempted to lead each other by the nose).

“Our draft proposals concerning the finances and the press” (Articles 1 and 2 of the strong provisional government — the Customs Officer, Christian Müller, is to be given the task of implementing this measure) “shall be presented separately. We wish only to say that every purchase for the Italian Loan will be of immediate benefit to our Committee and to our cause and that for the moment you can help in a practical way above all by ensuring a liberal supply of money. We shall then know how to translate this money into public opinion and public violence. (With Arnold as translator) ”... We say to you: Subscribe 10 million Francs and we shall liberate the Continent!

“Germans, remember...” (that you sing baritone and light fires on the mountains) "... Lend us your thoughts" (which we need almost as badly as your money), “your purse” (yes, don't forget that) “and your arm! We expect your zeal to increase with the intensity of your sufferings and that the Committee shall be adequately strengthened for the hour of decision by your present contributions.” (If not, they would have to resort to spirituous liquor which would be against Gustav's principles.)

“All democrats are instructed to publicise our appeal” (the Customs Officer, Christian Müller, will take care of the rest).

“London, 13 March 1851

The Committee for German Affairs

Arnold Ruge, Gustav Struve, Ernst Haug, Johannes Ronge, Gottfried Kinkel”

Our readers are now acquainted with Gottfried, they are also acquainted with Gustav; Arnold's "frequent appearances" have likewise been repeated often enough. So there remain but two members of the “effective provisional government” whom we have still to introduce.

Johannes Ronge or Johannes Kurzweg as he likes to be known in his intimate circle, is certainly not the author of the Book of Revelations. There is nothing mysterious about him, he is banal, hackneyed, as insipid as water, luke-warm dish-water. As is well known Johannes became famous when he refused to permit the Holy Mantle in Trier to intercede for him — though it is wholly unimportant who intercedes for Johannes. When Johannes first made his appearance the elderly Paulus expressed his regrets that Hegel was dead as he would no longer be able to regard him as shallow were he alive and he added that the late lamented Krug was lucky to be dead as he thereby escaped the danger of acquiring a reputation for profundity. Johannes is one of those phenomena often met with in history who only begin to understand a movement centuries after its rise and fall and who then like children reproduce the content of the movement as if it had just been discovered, regurgitating it in the most feeble, colourless and philistinic manner imaginable. Such craftsmanship does not last very long and soon our Johannes found himself in a daily deteriorating situation in Germany. His watered-down version of the Enlightenment went out of fashion and Johannes made a pilgrimage to England where we see him reappear, without any notable success, as the rival of Padre Gavazzi. The ungainly, sallow, tedious village parson naturally paled by the side of the fiery, histrionic Italian monk and the English bet heavily that this arid Johannes could not be the man who had set the deep-thinking German nation in motion. But he was consoled by Arnold Ruge who found that the German-Catholicism of our Johannes was remarkably similar to his own brand of atheism.

Ludwig von Hauck had been a captain of engineers in the Imperial Austrian army, then co-editor of the Constitution in Vienna, later still leader of a battalion in the Viennese National Guard, where he defended the Burgtor against the Imperial army on October 30 with great courage, abandoning his post only after all was lost. He escaped to Hungary, joined up with Bem's army in Siebenburgen where in consequence of his velour he advanced to the rank of colonel in the general staff. After Görgy surrendered at Vilagos Ludwig Hauck was taken prisoner and died like a hero on one of the many gallows that the Austrians erected in Hungary to avenge their repeated defeats and to express their fury at the protection Russia had extended and which they so bitterly resented. In London Haug was long thought to be the incarcerated Hauck, an officer, who had so distinguished himself in the Hungarian campaign. However, it now seems to be established that he is not the late Hauck. Just as he was unable to prevent Mazzini from improvising him into a general after the fall of Rome, so too he could do nothing to stop Arnold Ruge from transforming him into the representative of the Viennese revolution and a member of the strong provisional government. Later he gave aesthetic lectures about the economic foundations of the cosmogony of universal history from a geological standpoint and with musical accompaniment. Among the émigrés this melancholic man is known as "the poor wretch", or as the French say, "la bonne bête".

Arnold could not believe his good fortune. He had a manifesto, a strong provisional government, a loan of ten million francs and even a homunculus to produce a weekly magazine with the modest title Kosmos, edited by General Haug.

The manifesto came and went unread. The Kosmos died of malnutrition in the third number, the money failed to roll in, the provisional government dissolved into its components once more.

At first, the Kosmos contained advertisements for Kinkel's lectures, for the worthy Willich's appeals for money for the Schleswig-Holstein refugees and for Göhringer's saloon. It contained further a lampoon by Arnold. The old joker invented a certain hospitable friend called Müller in Germany whose guest, Schulze, he pretended to be. Müller expresses astonishment at what he reads in the papers about English hospitality; he fears that all this “sybaritism” may distract Schulze from his “affairs of state” — but he does not grudge him this as when Schulze returns to Germany he will be so overwhelmed by state affairs that he will have to deny himself the pleasures of Müller's hospitality. Finally, Müller exclaims: “Surely it was not the traitor Radowitz, but Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Citizen Willich, Kinkel and yourself” (Arnold Ruge) "who were invited to Windsor Castle?"

If after all this the Kosmos folded up after the third issue the failure could not be put down to lack of publicity, for at every possible English meeting the speakers would find it pressed into their hands with the urgent request to recommend it as they would find their own principles specially represented in it.

Scarcely had the subscriptions for the ten-million-Franc loan been opened than the rumour went around that a list of contributors to a fund to dispatch Struve (and Amalia) to America, was circulating in the City.

“When the Committee resolved to publish a German weekly with Haug as editor, Struve protested as he wanted the post of editor for himself and wished the journal to bear the title Deutscher Zuschauer. Having protested he resolved to go to America.”

Thus far the report in the Deutsche Schnellpost of New York. It remains silent about the fact (and Heinzen had his reasons for this) that as Gustav was a collaborator on the Duke of Brunswick’s Deutscher Londoner Zeitung Mazzini had struck his name off the list of the German Committee. Gustav soon acclimatised his Deutscher Zuschauer in New York. But soon after came the news from over the ocean: “Gustav’s Zuschauer is dead.” As he says, this was not for the lack of subscribers, nor because he had no leisure for writing but simply because of a dearth of paying subscribers. However, the democratic revision of Rotteck's Universal History could not be postponed any longer, so great was the need for it, and as he had already begun it 15 years previously he would give the subscribers a corresponding number of issues of the Universal History instead of the Deutscher Zuschauer. He would have to request payment in advance for this to which in the circumstances no one could object. As long as Gustav had remained on this side of the Atlantic Heinzen regarded him along with Ruge as the greatest man in Europe. Scarcely had he reached the other side than a great scandal arose between them. Gustav writes:

“When on 6 June in Karlsruhe Heinzen saw that cannon was being brought up he left for Strasbourg with female companions.”

Whereupon Heinzen called Gustav “a soothsayer”. Arnold was busy broadcasting the virtues of the Kosmos in the journal of his faithful disciple Heinzen, when it failed to appear, and at about the time when the strong provisional government was disintegrating Rodomonte-Heinzen was busy proclaiming “military obedience” towards it in his journal. Heinzen is famous for his love of the military in peacetime.

“Shortly after Struve's departure Kinkel too resigned from the Committee which was thereby reduced to impotence.“ (Deutsche Schnellpost, No. 23.)

With this the strong provisional government dwindled still further and only Messrs. Ruge, Ronge, and Haug remained in it. Even Arnold realised that with this Trinity nothing at all could be brought into existence, let alone a cosmos. Nevertheless through all the permutations, variations and combinations it remained the nucleus of all his subsequent attempts to form committees. An indefatigable man, he saw no reason to throw in his hand; after all his aim was merely to do something that would have the appearance of action, the semblance of profound political schemes, something that, above all, would provide matter for self-important consultations, frequent appearances and complacent gossip.

As for Gottfried, his dramatic lectures for respectable city merchants did not allow him to compromise himself. But on the other hand, it was altogether too evident that the purpose of the manifesto of March 13 was none other than to provide support for the place Arnold had usurped in the European Central Committee. Even Gottfried could not fail to realise this: but it was not in his interest to grant Ruge such recognition. So it came to pass that shortly after the manifesto had been published, the Kölnische Zeitung printed a declaration by that dama acerba, Mockel. Her husband, she wrote, had not signed the appeal, he was not interested in public loans and had resigned from the newly-formed committee. Whereupon Arnold gossiped in the New York Schnellpost to the effect that Kinkel had been prevented by illness from signing the manifesto, but he gave his approval, the plan to issue it had been conceived in his room, he had himself taken responsibility for despatching a number of copies to Germany and he only left the committee because it elected General Haug president in preference to himself. Arnold accompanied this declaration with angry attacks on Kinkel's vanity, calling him “absolute martyr” and “the Beckerath of the democrats” and affirming his suspicions of Mrs. Johanna Kinkel who had access to such prohibited journals as the Kölnische Zeitung.

In the meantime, Arnold's seed had not fallen on stony soil. Kinkel's “beautiful soul” resolved to turn the tables on his rivals and to raise the treasure of revolution alone. Johanna's statement dissociating him from this hare-brained scheme had scarcely appeared in the Kölnische Zeitung when Gottfried launched his own appeal in the transatlantic papers with the comment that the money should be sent to the man “who inspires the most confidence”. And who could this man be but Gottfried Kinkel? For the time being he demanded an advance payment of 500 pounds sterling with which to manufacture revolutionary paper money. Ruge, not to be outdone, had the Schnellpost declare that he was the treasurer of the Democratic Central Committee and that Mazzini notes were already available and could be purchased from him. Whoever wished to lose 500 pounds sterling would do better to take the available notes than to speculate in something that did not even exist. And Rodomonte-Heinzen roared that unless Mr. Kinkel abandoned his manoeuvres he would be branded publicly as an “enemy of the revolution”. Gottfried had counter-articles published in the New-Yorker Staatszeitung, the direct rival of the Schnellpost. In this way full-scale hostilities were in progress on the other side of the Atlantic while kisses of Judas were still being exchanged in this side.

By issuing an appeal for a national loan in his own name Gottfried had shocked the democratic rank and file, as he soon realised. To make good his blunder he now declared that “this appeal for money, for a German national loan did not proceed from him. In all likelihood what had happened was that some all too zealous friends in America had made free with his name.”

This declaration provoked the following answer from Dr. Wiss in the Schnellpost:

“It is generally known that the appeal to agitate for a German Loan was sent to me by Gottfried Kinkel with the urgent request to publicise it in all the German newspapers and I am ready and willing to show this letter to anyone who is in doubt on this point. If Kinkel has now really alleged the contrary the only honourable course for him to pursue is to retract his statements publicly and to publish my correspondence with him from which it will become plain to the Party that I was quite independent and certainly that I did not exhibit ‘an excess of zeal’. Should he not have been guilty of these allegations it was Kinkel's duty to denounce the journalist responsible for printing them as an evil slanderer, or if there had been a misunderstanding, as an irresponsible and unscrupulous gossip. For my part I am unable to believe Kinkel capable of such unmitigated perfidy. Dr. C. Wiss.” (Weekly supplement of the Deutsche Schnellpost.)

What was Kinkel to do? Once again he thrust his aspra donzella into the breach, he denounced Mockel as the “irresponsible, unscrupulous gossip”, he claimed that his wife had promoted the loan behind his back. It cannot be denied that this tactic was highly “aesthetic”.

Thus did Gottfried sway like a reed, now advancing, now retreating, now launching a project, now dissociating himself from it, always tacking to adjust to the wind of popularity. While he officially allowed the aesthetic bourgeoisie to fete and feast him in London as the martyr of the Revolution behind the backs of the same people he indulged in forbidden commerce with the mob of the Emigration as represented by Willich. While living in circumstances that could be described as luxurious in comparison with his modest situation in Bonn, he wrote to St. Louis that he was living as befitted the "representative of poverty". In this way he behaved towards the bourgeoisie as etiquette required, while at the same time he deferred humbly to the taste of the proletariat. But as a man whose imagination far outweighed his understanding he could not help falling into the bad manners and the arrogant postures of the parvenu and this alienated many a pompous bonhomme from him. Wholly characteristic of him was the article on the Great Exhibition that he wrote for Kosmos. He admired nothing so much as the giant mirror that was exhibited in the Crystal Palace. The objective world reduces itself to a mirror, the subjective world to a cliché. Under the pretext of seeing only the beautiful side of things he aestheticises everything and this process he designates poetry, self-sacrifice or religion, as the occasion demands. Fundamentally, everything is used to exalt himself. It is inevitable that in practice the ugly side should make its appearance, as imagination turns into lies and enthusiasm into baseness. In any case it was to be expected that Gottfried would soon cast off his lion's skin when he fell into the hands of old, experienced clowns like Gustav and Arnold.

XII (The Great Industrial Exhibition)

The Great Industrial Exhibition inaugurated a new epoch in the Emigration. The great throng of German Philistines that flooded into London during the summer, felt ill at ease in the bustle of the great Crystal Palace and in the even larger town of London with its noise, its din and its clamour. And when the toil and the labour of the day, the dutiful inspection of the Exhibition and the other sights had been completed in the sweat of his brow, the German Philistine could recover at his ease with Schärttner at the Hanau or Göhringer at the Star, with their beery cosiness, their smoke-filled fug and their public-house politics. Here “the whole of the fatherland could be seen” and in addition all the greatest men of Germany could be seen gratis. There they all sat, the members of parliament, the deputies of Chambers, the generals, the Club orators of the halcyon days of 1848 and 1849, they smoked their pipes just like ordinary people and debated the loftiest interests of the fatherland day after day, in public and with unshakeable dignity. This was the place where for the price of a few bottles of extremely cheap wine the German citizen could discover exactly what went on at the most secret meetings of the European cabinets. This was the place where he could learn to within a minute when “it would all start”. In the meantime one bottle after another was started and all the Parties went home unsteadily but strengthened in the knowledge that they had made their contribution to the salvation of the fatherland. Never has the Emigration drunk more and cheaper than during the period when the solvent masses of German Philistines were in London.

The true organisation of the Emigration was in fact this tavern organisation presided over by Silenus-Schärttner in Long Acre which experienced its heyday thanks to the Exhibition. Here the true Central Committee sat in perpetual session. All other committees, organisations, party-formations were just trimmings, the patriotic arabesques of this primeval German tavern society of idlers.

In addition the Emigration was strengthened numerically at the time by the arrival of Messrs. Meyen, Faucher, Sigel, Goegg and Fickler, etc.

Meyen was a little porcupine who had come into the world without any quills and who under the name Poinsinet, was once described by Goethe in this way:

“In literature, as in society, one often encounters such curious little mannikins. Endowed with some small talent they endeavour always to claim the attention of the public and as they can easily be seen through by all they are the source of much amusement. However, they always manage to profit sufficiently. They live, produce, are mentioned everywhere and are even accorded a favourable reception. Their failures do not disconcert them; they regard them as exceptional and look to the future for greater success. Poinsinet is a figure of this sort in the French literary world. It goes almost beyond belief to see what has been done with him, how he has been fooled and mystified and even his sad death by drowning in Spain does not diminish the ridiculous impression made by his life, just as a frog made of fireworks does not attain to dignity by concluding a lengthy series of sputters with a loud bang.”

Writers contemporary with him pass on the following information: Eduard Meyen belonged to the “Resolute” group which represented the Berliner intelligentsia as against the mass stupidity of the rest of Germany. He too had a Maybug Club in Berlin with his friends Mügge, Klein, Zabel, Buhl etc. Each of these maybugs sat on his own little leaf [Blättchen — "leaf" and "newspaper"]. Eduard Meyen’s paper was called the Mannheimer Abendblättchen and here, every week, after enormous efforts, he deposited a small green turd of correspondence. Our Maybug really did progress to the point where he was about to publish a monthly periodical; contributions from various people landed on his desk, the publisher waited but the whole project collapsed because Eduard after eight months in cold sweat declared that he could not finish the prospectus. As Eduard took all his childish activities seriously he was widely regarded in Berlin after the March Revolution as a man who meant business. In London he worked together with Faucher on a German edition of the Illustrated London News under the editorship and censorship of an old woman who had known some German twenty years before, but he was discarded as useless after he had attempted with great tenacity to insert a profound article about sculpture that he had had published ten years previously in Berlin. But when, later on, the Kinkel-emigration made him their secretary he realised that he was really a practical homme d'état and he announced in a lithographed leaflet that he had arrived at the “tranquillity of a point of view”. After his death a whole heap of titles for future projects will be found among his papers.

Conjointly with Meyen we must necessarily consider Oppenheim, his co-editor and co-secretary. It has been claimed that Oppenheim is not so much a man as an allegorical figure: the goddess of boredom it is reported, came down to Frankfurt on Main and assumed the shape of this son of a Jewish jeweller. When Voltaire wrote: “Tous les genres vent loons, excepté legenre ennuyeux”, he must have had a premonition of our Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim. We prefer Oppenheim the writer to Oppenheim the orator. His writings may be avoided, but his spoken delivery — c’est impossible. The pythagorean metempsychosis may have some foundation in reality but the name borne by Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim in former ages can no longer be discovered as no man ever made a name for himself through being an unbearable chatterbox. His life may be epitomised by its three climactic moments: Arnold Ruge’s editor — Brentano’s editor — Kinkel’s editor.

The third member of the trio is Mr. Julius Faucher. He is one of those Berlin Huguenots who know how to exploit their minor talent with great commercial adroitness. He made his public debut as the Lieutenant Pistol of the Free Trade Party in which capacity he was employed by Hamburg commercial interests to make propaganda. During the revolutionary disturbances they allowed him to preach free trade in the apparently chaotic form of anarchism. When this ceased to be relevant to the times he was dismissed and, together with Meyen, he became joint editor of the Berlin Abendpost. Under the presence of wishing to abolish the state and introduce anarchy he refrained from dangerous opposition towards the existing government and when, later on, the paper failed because it could no longer afford the deposit, the Neue Preussische Zeitung commiserated with Faucher, the only able writer among the democrats. This cosy relationship with the Neue Preussische Zeitung soon became so intimate that Faucher began to act as its correspondent in London. Faucher’s activity in the London Emigration did not last long; his free trade inclined him towards commerce where he found his true calling, to which he returned with great energy and in which he achieved wonders never seen before: namely a price-list that assesses goods according to a completely sliding scale. As is well known, the Breslauer Zeitung was indiscreet enough to inform the general public of this document.

This three-star constellation of the Berlin intelligentsia can be contrasted with the three-star constellation of wholesome South German principles: Sigel, Fickler, Goegg. Franz Sigel, whom his friend Goegg describes as a short, beardless man, bearing a strong resemblance to Napoleon, is, again according to Goegg, “a hero”, “a man of the future”, “above all a genius, intellectually creative and constantly hatching new plans”.

Between ourselves, General Siegel is a young Baden lieutenant of principle and ambition. He read in an account of the campaigns of the French Revolution that the step from sub-lieutenant to supreme general is mere child's play and from that moment on this little beardless man firmly believed that Franz Sigel must become supreme commander in a revolutionary army. His wish was granted thanks to the Baden insurrection of 1849 and a popularity with the army arising from a confusion of names. The battles he fought on the Neckar and did not fight in the Black Forest are well known; his retreat to Switzerland has been praised even by the enemy as a timely and correct manoeuvre. His military plans here bear witness to his study of the [French] Revolutionary Wars. In order to remain faithful to the revolutionary tradition Hero Sigel, ignoring the enemy and operational and withdrawal lines and similar bagatelles, went conscientiously from one Moreau position to the next. And if he did not manage to parody Moreau's campaigns in every detail, if he crossed the Rhine at Eglichau and not at Paradies, this was the fault of the enemy who was too ignorant to appreciate such a learned manoeuvre. In his orders of the day and in his instructions Sigel emerges as a preacher and if he has an inferior style to Napoleon, he has more principle. Later, he concerned himself with devising a handbook for revolutionary officers in all branches of warfare from which we are in a position to offer the following important extract:

“an officer of the revolution must carry the following articles according to regulations: 1 head-covering and cap, 1 sabre with belt, 1 black, red and yellow camel-hair sash, 2 pairs of black leather gloves, 2 battle coats, 1 cloak, 1 pair cloth trousers, 1 tie, 2 pairs of boots or shoes, 1 black leather travelling case — 12" wide, 10" high, 4" deep, 6 shirts, 3 pairs of underpants, 8 pairs of socks, 6 handkerchiefs, 2 towels, 1 washing and shaving kit, 1 writing implement, 1 writing tablet with letters patent, 1 clothes brush, 1 copy of service regulations.”

Joseph Fickler —

“the model of a decent, resolute, imperturbably tenacious man of the people whom the people of the whole Baden upland and the Lake District supported as one man and whose struggles and sufferings over many years had earned him a popularity approaching that of Brentano” (according to the testimony of his friend Goegg).

As befits a decent, resolute, imperturbably tenacious man of the people, Joseph Fickler has a fleshy full-moon face, a fat craw and a paunch to match. The only fact known about his early life is that he earned a livelihood with the aid of a carving from the 15th century and with relics relating to the Council of Constance. He allowed travellers and foreign art-lovers to inspect these curiosities in exchange for money and incidentally sold them “antique” souvenirs of which Fickler, as he loved to relate, would constantly make up a new supply in all their authentic “antiquity”.

His only deeds during the Revolution were firstly his arrest by Mathy after the Vorparlament, and, second, his arrest by Romer in Stuttgart in June 1849. Thanks to these arrests he was happily deprived of the opportunity to compromise himself. The Württemberg democrats deposited 1000 guilders as bail for him, whereupon Fickler went to Thurgau incognito and to the great distress of his guarantors no more was heard of him. It is undeniable that he successfully translated the feelings and opinions of the lakeside peasants into printers' ink in his Lake Journals; for the rest he shares the opinion of his friend Ruge that much study makes you stupid and for this reason he warned his friend Goegg not to visit the library of the British Museum.

Amandus Goegg, lovable, as his name indicates, is no great orator, but “an unassuming citizen whose noble and modest bearing earns him the friendship of people everywhere” (Westamerikanische Blätter). From sheer nobility Goegg became a member of the provisional government in Baden, where, as he admits, he could do nothing against Brentano and in all modesty he assumed the title of Dictator. No one denies that his achievements as Finance Minister were modest. In all modesty he proclaimed the “Social-democratic Republic” in Donaueschingen the day before the final retreat to Switzerland actually took place, although it had been decreed before. In all modesty he later declared (See Janus by Heinzen, 1852) that the Paris proletariat had lost on December 2 because it did not possess his own Franco-Badenese democratic experience nor the insights available elsewhere in the frenchified Germany of the South. Anyone who desires further proofs of Goegg’s modesty and of the existence of a “Goegg Party” will find them in the book The Baden Revolution in Retrospect. Paris 1850, written by himself. A fitting climax to his modesty came in a public meeting in Cincinnati when he declared that “reputable men came to him after the bankruptcy of the Baden Revolution and had announced that in that revolution men of all the German tribes had taken an active part. It was therefore to be regarded as a German matter just as the Rome uprising was of concern to the whole of Italy. As he was the man who had held out they said that he must become the German Mazzini. His modesty compelled him to refuse.”

Why? A man who was once “dictator” and who to cap it all, is the bosom friend of “Napoleon” Sigel, could surely also become the “German Mazzini”.

Once the Emigration was augmented by these and similar, less noteworthy arrivals, it could proceed to those mighty battles that the reader shall learn of in the next canto.

XIII (The Great War between the Frogs and the Mice)

Chi mi dara la voce e le parole,

E un proferir magnanimo e profondo!

Che mai cosa piufiera sotto il sole

Nonfu veduta in tutto quanto il mondo;

L'altre battagliefur rose e viole,

Al raccontar di questa mi confondo;

Perche il valor, e'l pregio della terra

Afronte son condotti in questa guerra.

(Boiardo, Orlando Inamorato, Canto 27)

[Now who will give me words and who the tongue,

To sing of such brave deeds in sonorous sounds!

For ne'er was strife upon this earth begun

More proudly fought on bloodier battle grounds;

Compared to this all other wars are roses

To tell of it my Iyric art confounds

For on this earth there ne'er was seen such glory

Or noble velour bright as in this story]

The latest fashionable arrivals had made up the full complement of the Emigration and the time had now come for a more comprehensive “organisation”, to round it off upwards to a full dozen. As might have been expected these attempts degenerated into bitter feuds. The paper war conducted in the transatlantic journals now reached its climax. The privations of individuals, intrigues, plots, self-praise — the heroes spent their energies in such paltry activities. But the Emigration did have one achievement to its credit: a history of its own, lying outside world history, with its own political petti-foggery running parallel to public affairs. And the very fact that they fought each other so bitterly led each to believe in the importance of the other. Beneath the façade of all these strivings and conflicts lay the speculation in democratic party funds, “the Holy Grail”, and this transformed these transcendental rivalries, these disputes about the Emperor’s beard, into ordinary quarrels among fools. Anyone who wishes to pursue the study of this great war between the frogs and the mice will find all the decisive original documents in the New-Yorker Schnellpost, the New York Deutsche Zeitung, the Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung and the Staatszeitung, in the Baltimore Correspondent, in the Wecker [Clarion] and in other German-American papers. However, this display of alleged connections and imagined conspiracies, this whole hue and cry raised by the émigrés was not without serious consequences. It provided the governments with the pretext they needed to arrest all sorts of people in Germany, to suppress the indigenous movements and to use these wretched strawmen in London as scarecrows with which to frighten the German middle classes. Far from constituting any danger to existing circumstances these heroes of the exile wished only that everything should die down in Germany so that their voice might be heard the better and that the general level of thought should decline so far that even men of their stature might appear outstanding.

The newly-arrived South German bonhommes, lacking in any definite commitment, found themselves in an excellent position to mediate between the various cliques and, at the same time, to gather the mass of émigrés around the leaders as a kind of chorus. Their sturdy sense of duty impelled them not to forgo this opportunity.

At the same time, however, they could already see Ledru-Rollin where he saw himself, namely in the chair of the president of France. As the most important neighbours of France it was vital for them to obtain recognition from the provisional government of France as the provisional overlords of Germany. Sigel especially wished to see his supreme command guaranteed by Ledru. But the way to Ledru led over Arnold’s corpse. However, they were still impressed by Arnold’s persona and he still passed as the philosophical Northern Light who would illumine their South German twilight. So they turned to Ruge.

On the opposing side stood in the first instance Kinkel with his immediate entourage — Schurz, Strodtmann, Schimmelpfennig, Techow etc.; then came the former deputies and members of parliament, led by Reichenbach with Meyen and Oppenheim as the representatives of literature; and, lastly, Willich with his host which, however, remained in the background. The roles were distributed as follows: Kinkel playing a passion-flower represented the German Philistines in general; Reichenbach playing a Count represented the bourgeoisie; Willich, playing Willich represented the proletariat.

The first thing to say about August Willich is that Gustav always felt secretly mistrustful of him because of his pointed skull signifying that the enormous overgrowth of self-esteem had stunted all other qualities.

A German Philistine who once caught sight of ex-Lieutenant Willich in a London pub snatched up his hat and fled exclaiming: My God, he looks just like Jesus Christ! In order to increase the similarity Willich became a carpenter for a while before the Revolution. Later on he emerged as a partisan leader in the campaign in Baden and the Palatinate.

The partisan leader, a descendant of the old Italian condottiere is a peculiar phenomenon of more recent wars, especially in Germany. The partisan leader, accustomed to act on his own initiative, is reluctant to subordinate himself to a more general command. His men owe their allegiance only to him, but he is likewise wholly dependent on them. For this reason the discipline in a free corps is somewhat arbitrary; according to circumstances it may be savagely strict, but mostly it is extremely lax. The partisan leader cannot always act the martinet, he must often flatter his men and win them over individually with the aid of physical caresses; the normal military practices are of little use here and boldness must be supplemented by other qualities if the leader is to retain the respect of his subordinates. If he is not noble he must at least have a noble consciousness to be complemented as always by cunning, the talent for intrigue and a covert practical baseness. In this way he not only wins over his soldiers but also bribes the inhabitants, surprises the enemy and contrives matters so that even his opponents acknowledge his strength of character. But all this does not suffice to hold together a free corps whose members either come from the Lumpenproletariat or are soon assimilated into it. What is needed in addition is a higher ideal. The partisan leader must therefore have a nucleus of idées fixes, he must be a man of principle in permanent pursuit of his mission to redeem the world. By means of sermons at the front and sustained didactic propaganda he must impart a consciousness of this higher ideal to every man individually and in this way he will transform the whole troop into sons within the faith. If this higher ideal is tinged with philosophy or mysticism or anything that surpasses normal understanding, if it is something Hegelian by nature (as was the case with the ideas that General Willisen tried to infuse into the Prussian army), then so much the better. For this ensures that the noble consciousness will enter into each and every partisan and the deeds of the whole corps thereby attain to a speculative consecration which exalts them far above the level of ordinary unreflecting courage and in any case the fame of such an army depends less on its achievements than on its messianic calling. The strength of a corps can only be enhanced if all the warriors are made to swear an oath that they will not survive the destruction of the cause for which they are fighting and would prefer to be massacred to the last man beneath the apple tree on the frontier while singing a hymn. Of course, such a corps and such a leader inevitably feel degraded by contact with ordinary profane soldiers and they will make every effort either to keep at a distance from the army or else to shake off the society of the uncircumcised. They hate nothing more than a large army and a large war where their cunning buttressed by spiritual faith can achieve little if the normal rules of war are disregarded. The partisan leader must then be a crusader in the full sense of the word, he must be Peter the Hermit and Walther von Habenichts rolled into one. Faced with the heterogeneous elements and the informal mode of life of his corps he must always uphold virtue. He must not allow his men to drink him under the table and so he must only drink in solitude, for instance at night in bed. If it should happen to him, as it might to any fallible human being, that he find himself returning to barracks late at night after inordinate indulgence in the pleasures of this life, he will take care not to enter through the main gate, but to go round the side and climb over the wall to avoid giving offence. Feminine charms should leave him cold, but it will make a good impression if he, like Cromwell, takes his NCOs or a tailor's apprentice into his bed from time to time. In general he cannot lead too strict and ascetic a life. Behind the cavalieri della ventura in his corps stand the cavalieri del dente who live mainly from requisitions and free quarters to all of which Walther von Habenichts has to turn a blind eye so that Peter the Hermit has always to be at hand with the consolation that such unpleasant measures contribute to the salvation of the nation and so are in the interest of the victims themselves.

All the qualities that the partisan leader must possess in wartime reappear in peacetime in a modified form but one that can scarcely be regarded as an improvement. Above all else he must preserve the core of the regiment for later on and hence keep his recruiting officers in a state of constant activity. The core consisting of the remnants of the free corps and the general mob of émigrés is put into barracks either at government expense (as in Besançon) or by some other means. The consecration in the service of an ideal must not be lacking and it is provided by a barracks-communism that ascribes a higher significance to the custom of holding ordinary civic actions in contempt. As this communist barracks is no longer subject to the articles of war, but only to the moral authority and the dictates of self-sacrifice, it is inevitable that quarrels should break out over the communal funds. From these disputes moral authority does not always emerge unscathed. If there is an artisan’s club anywhere in the vicinity it can be employed as a recruiting base and the artisans are given the prospect of a jolly life full of adventures in exchange for the oppressive work of the present. By pointing to the higher ethical significance of the barracks for the future of the proletariat, it is even possible to induce the club to make financial contributions. In both the barracks and the club the sermonising and the patriarchal and gossipy style of personal relations will not fail to impress. Even in peacetime the partisan does not lose his indispensable assurance and just as in wartime every setback spurred him on to proclaim victory on the morrow, so now he is for ever expounding on the moral certainty and the philosophical inevitability with which "it" will start to happen within the next fortnight. As he must needs have an enemy and as the noble man is necessarily opposed by the ignoble ones he discovers in them a raging hostility towards himself, he imagines that they hate him merely because of his well-deserved popularity and would gladly poison him or stab him. With this in mind he resolves always to conceal a long dagger beneath his pillow. Just as the partisan leader in war will never succeed unless he assumes that the population reveres him, likewise in peace he will not indeed manage to form any lasting political groupings but he will constantly suppose them to exist and from this all sorts of strange mystifications can arise. The talent for requisitioning and obtaining free quarters appears again in the form of a cosy parasitism. By contrast, the strict asceticism of our Orlando, like everything that is good and great, is subject to terrible temptations in times of peace. Boiardo says in Canto 24:

Turpin behauptet, daß der Graf von Brava

Jungfräulich war auf Lebenszeit und keusch.

Glaubt ihr davon, was euch beliebt, ihr Herren —

[Turpin claims that the Count of Brava

Was virginal and chaste his whole life long.

Of that you may believe, Sirs, what you will — ]

But we also learn that later on Count Brava lost his reason at the sight of the beautiful Angelica and Astolf had to go to the moon to recover it for him, as Master Lodovico Ariosto so charmingly narrates. Our modern Orlando, however, mistook himself for the poet who tells how he, too, loved so greatly that he lost his reason and tried to find it with his lips and hands on the bosom of his Angelica and was thrown out of the house for his pains.

In politics the partisan leader will display his superiority in all matters of tactics. In conformity with the notion of a partisan he will go from one party to the next. Petty intrigues, sordid hole-and-corner activities, the occasional lie, morally outraged perfidy will be the natural symptoms of the noble consciousness. His faith in his mission and in the higher meaning of his words and deeds will induce him to declare emphatically: "I never lie!" The idées fixes become a splendid cloak for his secret treachery and cause the simpletons of the Emigration, who have no ideas at all, to conclude that he, the man of fixed ideas, is simply a fool. And our worthy slyboots could desire nothing better.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rolled into one, as much in love with his knapsack as with his idées fixes, with the free provisions of the itinerant knight as much as with renown, Willich is the man of the duodecimal war and the microscopic intrigue. He conceals his cunning beneath the mask of character. His real future lies in the prairies of the Rio Grande del Norte.

Concerning the relations between the two wings of the Emigration we have described, a letter from Mr. Goegg in the Deutsche Schnellpost in New York is very revealing:

“They (the South Germans) resolved to bolster up the reputation of the moribund central committee by attempting to unite with the other factions. But there is little prospect of success for this well intentioned idea. Kinkel continues to intrigue, has formed a committee consisting of his rescuer, his biographer and a number of Prussian lieutenants. Their aim is to work together in secret, to expand, if possible to gain possession of the democratic funds, and then suddenly tear off their mask and appear publicly as the powerful Kinkel party. This is neither honest nor just nor sensible!”

The “honesty” of the intentions of the South Germans can be seen from the following letter from Mr. Sigel to the same newspaper:

“If we, the few men with honourable intentions, have in part resorted to conspiracies, this is due to the need to protect ourselves against the terrible perfidy and the presumptuousness of Kinkel and his colleagues and to show them that they are not born to rule. Our chief aim was to force Kinkel to come to a large meeting in order to prove to him and to what he calls his close political friends that not all that glitters is gold. The devil take the instrument” (i.e. Schurz), “and the devil take the singer too” (i.e. Kinkel). (Weekly edition of the New-Yorker Deutsche Zeitung, September 24 1851).

The strange constitution of the two factions that rebuke each other for being “north” and “south” can be seen from the fact that at the head of the South German elements stood the “mind” of Ruge, while at the head of the North German side were the “feelings” of Kinkel.

In order to understand the great struggle that was now waged we must waste a few words on the diplomacy of these two world-shaking parties.

Arnold (and his henchmen likewise) was concerned above all to form a “closed” society with the official appearance of “revolutionary activity”. This society would then give birth to his beloved “Committee for German Affairs” and this committee would then propel Ruge into the European Central Committee. Arnold had been indefatigable in his efforts to realise this aim since the summer of 1850. He had hoped that the South Germans would provide “that happy medium where he could dominate in comfort”. The official establishment of the Emigration and the formation of committees was the necessary policy of Arnold and his allies.

Kinkel and his cohorts, on the other hand, had to try and undermine everything that could legitimise the position Ruge had usurped in the European Central Committee. In reply to his appeal for an advance of £500 sterling Kinkel had received the promise of some money from New Orleans, whereupon he had formed a secret finance committee together with Willich, Schimmelpfennig, Reichenbach, Techow and Schurz, etc. They reasoned: once we have the money we shall have the Emigration; once we have the Emigration we shall also have the government in Germany. Their aim, therefore, was to occupy the whole Emigration with formal meetings but to undermine any attempt at setting up an official society that went beyond a “loose organisation” and above all to undermine all proposals to form committees. This would delay the enemy faction, block their activities and enable them to manoeuvre behind their backs.

Both parties, i.e. all the “distinguished men” had one thing in common: they both led the mass of émigrés by the nose, they concealed from them their real objectives, used them as mere tools and dropped them as soon as they had served their purpose.

Let us take a look at these democratic Machiavellis, Talleyrands and Metternichs and take note of their actions.

Scene 1. July 14, 1851. — After a "“private understanding with Kinkel to make common cause” had fallen through, Ruge, Goegg, Sigel, Fickler and Ronge invited the distinguished men of all shades of opinion to a meeting in Fickler’s home on July 14th. Twenty-six people appeared. Fickler proposed that a “private circle” of German refugees should be formed and this in turn would give birth to a “business committee for the advancement of revolutionary objectives”. This was opposed mainly by Kinkel and six of his supporters. After a violent debate lasting several hours Fickler’s motion was passed (16 votes to 10). Kinkel and the minority declared themselves unable to participate any further and took their departure.

Scene 2. July 20th. — The above majority constituted itself as a society. Joined, among others, by Tausenau, who had been introduced by Fickler.

If Ronge was the Luther and Kinkel the Melanchton then Tausenau is the Abraham a Sancta Clara of the Gemman democrats. If the two augurs in Cicero could not look each other in the face without laughing then Mr. Tausenau cannot catch sight of his own earnest features in the mirror without bursting into laughter. If Ruge had discovered in the Badeners people whom he impressed, Fate now had its revenge when it introduced him to the Austrian Tausenau, a man who impressed him.

At the suggestion of Goegg and Tausenau the negotiations were postponed in order to try once again to bring about a union with Kinkel's faction.

Scene 3. July 27th. — Session in the Cranbourne Hotel. The “distinguished” Emigration there to a man. Kinkel's group appeared but not with the intention of joining the society already in existence; on the contrary, they pressed for the formation of an “open discussion club without a business committee and without definite objectives”. Schurz who acted as Kinkel's mentor throughout all these parliamentary negotiations, proposed:

“The present company should form itself into a private political society with the name German Émigré Club and should accept as new members other citizens from among the German refugees on the nomination of a member and after a majority vote in favour.”

Passed unanimously. The society resolved to meet every Friday.

“The passing of this motion was welcomed with general applause and with the cry: ‘Long live the German republic!!!’ Everyone felt that they had done their duty by being generally open-minded and that they had achieved something positive serving the cause of revolution.” (Goegg, Weekly edition of the Deutsche Schnellpost, August 20, 1851.)

Eduard Meyen was so delighted with this success that he waxed ecstatic in his lithographed report:

“The whole Emigration now form a coherent phalanx up to and including Bucher and with the sole exception of the incorrigible Marx clique.”

This same notice of Meyen’s can be found also in the Berliner lithographische Korrespondenz.

In this way, thanks to a general open-mindedness and to the accompaniment of three cheers for the German Republic the great Émigré Club which was to hold such inspiring meetings and which was to dissolve in satisfaction a few weeks after Kinkel’s departure for America, came into being. Its dissolution did not of course prevent it from playing an important part as a living entity in America.

Scene 4. August 1st. — Second meeting in the Cranbourne Hotel.

“Unfortunately we must already report today that the expectations raised by the formation of this club have been sadly disappointed.” (Goegg, loc. cit., August 27th.)

Kinkel introduced six Prussian refugees and six Prussian visitors to the Great Exhibition into the club without obtaining a majority decision. Damm (President, former president of the Baden Constituent Assembly) expressed his astonishment at this treacherous infringement of the statutes. [“Damm is here!” “Who is here?” “Damm is here!” “Who?” “Damm, Damm, surely you know Damm?”]

Kinkel explained: “The Club is only a loosely organised society with no other purpose than for people to get to know each other and to have discussions that are open to everyone. It is therefore desirable for visitors to be admitted to the Club in large numbers.”

Student Schurz attempted to cover up quickly for the Professor’s lack of tact by moving an amendment to permit the admission of visitors. Motion passed. Abraham a Sancta Clara Tausenau rose and put the two following motions with a perfectly straight face:

“1. A commission (the committee) ‘should be set up to report weekly on current affairs, particularly in Germany. These reports are to be preserved in the archive of the Club and published at an appropriate time. 2. There should be a commission (the committee) to deposit in the archive all possible details concerning violations of the law and acts of cruelty towards the supporters of democracy committed by the servants of the reaction during the last three years and at the present time.’

“Reichenbach opposed this vigorously: ‘He saw suspicious motives lurking behind these seemingly harmless proposals and also the wish to use the election of the members of this commission as a device to give the Club an official character not desired by himself or his friends.’

“Schimmelpfennig and Schurz: ‘These commissions could arrogate powers unto themselves that might be of a conspiratorial nature and gradually lead to an official committee.’

“Meyer: ‘I want words, not deeds.’”

According to Goegg's account the majority seemed inclined to accept the motion; Machiavelli Schurz proposed an adjournment. Abraham a Sancta Clara Tausenau agreed to the proposal so as not to seem unfriendly. Kinkel expressed the opinion that the vote should be postponed until the next meeting chiefly because his supporters were in the minority that evening and so he and his friends would be unable in the circumstances to regard the vote as “binding on their conscience”. Adjournment agreed.

Scene 5. August 8th. — Third meeting in the Cranbourne Hotel. Discussion of the Tausenau motions. — Ignoring the agreement, Kinkel/Willich had brought along the “rank and file refugees”, le menu peuple, so as to “bind their consciences” this time. — Schurz moved an amendment proposing voluntary lectures on current affairs and in accordance with a previous arrangement Meyen immediately volunteered to speak on Prussia, Schurz on France, Oppenheim on England and Kinkel on America and the future (since his immediate future lay in America). Tausenau's proposals were rejected. He declared movingly that his only wish was to sacrifice his just anger on the altar of the nation and to remain within the bosom of his allies. But the Ruge/Fickler contingent at once assumed the outraged indignation of beautiful souls who have been swindled.

Intermezzo. — Kinkel had finally received £160 sterling from New Orleans and together with other distinguished heroes he had set about investing it for the revolution. The Ruge/Fickler faction, already embittered by the recent vote, now learned of this. They had no time to lose, action was essential. They founded a new cesspool and concealed its foul stagnation under the name of the Agitation Club. Its members were Tausenau, Frank, Goegg, Sigel, Hertle, Ronge, Haug, Fickler and Ruge. The Club immediately announced in the English press:

“Its aims are not to discuss but to work, it would produce not words but deeds and above all it appeals to likeminded comrades to make donations. The Agitation Club appoints Tausenau to be its executive leader and its foreign minister. It also recognises Ruge's position in the European Central Committee” (as Imperial Administrator) “as well as his previous activity on behalf of and in the name of the German people.”

The new combination does not conceal the original constellation: Ruge, Ronge and Haug. After the struggles and the efforts of so many years Ruge had finally reached his goal: he was acknowledged to be the fifth wheel on the central carriage of democracy and had a clearly — all too clearly — defined part of the people behind him, consisting of eight men in all. But even this pleasure was poisoned for him as his recognition was purchased at the cost of an indirect slight and was agreed to only on the condition imposed by the peasant Fickler that Ruge should henceforth cease to “broadcast his rubbish to the whole world”.

The coarse Fickler regarded as “distinguished” only those writings by Ruge which he had not read and did not need to read.

Scene 6. August 22nd. — The Cranbourne Hotel. Firstly, there was a “diplomatic masterstroke” (vide Goegg) on the part of Schurz: he proposed the formation of a general refugee committee to comprise six members taken from the different factions together with five co-opted members of the already existing refugee committee of the Willich Artisan Club. (This would have given the Kinkel/Willich wing a permanent majority). Agreed. The elections were carried out but rejected by the members of the Rugean part of the state, which meant the complete collapse of the diplomatic master stroke. How seriously this refugee committee was meant to be taken can be seen from the fact that four days later Willich resigned from the committee of artisans and refugees which had only had a nominal existence for a long time, following upon repeated, wholly disrespectful revolts on the part of the “rank and file refugees” which had made the dissolution of the committee an inevitability. — Interpellation concerning the emergence in public of the Agitation Club. Motion: that the Émigré Club should have nothing to do with the Agitation Club and should publicly dissociate itself from all its actions. Furious attacks on the “Agitators” Goegg and Sigel junior (i.e. senior, see below) in their presence. Rudolph Schramm declared that his old friend Ruge was a minion of Mazzini and a “gossipy old woman”. Tu quoque, Brute! Goegg retorted, not as a great orator but as an honest citizen and he launched a bitter attack on the ambiguous, slack, perfidious, unctuous Kinkel.

“It is irresponsible to prevent those who wish to work from doing so, but these people want a fictitious, inactive union that they can use as a cover for certain purposes.”

When Goegg referred to the public announcement about the Agitator Club in the English papers Kinkel arose majestically and said that “He already controlled the whole American press and had taken steps to ensure his control of the French press too.”

The motion of the German faction was passed and provoked a declaration from “the Agitators” that the members of their club could no longer remain within the Émigré Club.

Thus arose the terrible gulf between the Émigré Club and the Agitators' Club which gapes through the whole history of the modern world.

The most curious fact about it is that both creatures only survived until their separation and now they vegetate in the Kaulbachian battle of the ghosts that still rages in German-American meetings and papers and no doubt will continue to rage to the end of time.

The whole session was all the more stormy as the undisciplined Schramm went so far as to attack Willich, claiming that the Émigré Club degraded itself by its connections with that knight. The chairman, who happened to be the timorous Meyen, had already lost control several times in despair. But the debate about the Agitators' Club and the resignation of its members brought the tumult to a climax. To the accompaniment of shouts, drumming, crashes, threats and raging the edifying meeting went on until 2 a.m. when the landlord turned off the gas and so plunged the heated antagonists into darkness. This brought all plans to save the nation to an abrupt end.

At the end of August the chivalrous Willich and the cosy Kinkel made an attempt to smash the Agitators' Club by putting a proposal to the worthy Fickler.

“He should join with them and their closer political friends in forming a Finance Committee to manage the money that had come in from New Orleans. This committee should continue to function until it is superseded by a general finance committee of the< revolution. However, the acceptance of this offer would imply the dissolution of all German revolutionary and agitatorial societies that had existed hitherto.”

The worthy Fickler rejected the idea of this “imposed, secret and irresponsible committee” with indignation.

“How”, he exclaimed, “can a mere finance committee hope to unite all the revolutionary parties around it? The money that has arrived and that is still to come can never suffice to persuade the widely divergent strands of the democrats to sacrifice their autonomy.”

Thus instead of achieving the hoped-for destruction of the opposition this attempted seduction enabled Tausenau to declare that the breach between the two mighty parties of Emigration and Agitation had become irreparable.

XIV (Agitation and Emigration)

To show how pleasantly the war was waged between Emigration and Agitation we append here a few excerpts from the German-American papers.

Agitation.

Ruge declared that Kinkel was an “agent of the Prince of Prussia”. Another agitator discovered that the outstanding men of the Émigré Club consisted of “Pastor Kinkel together with three Prussian lieutenants, two mediocre Berlin literati and one student”.

Sigel wrote: “It cannot be denied that Willich has gained some support. But when a man has been a preacher for three years and only tells people what they wish to hear, he would have to be very stupid not to be able to win some of them over. The Kinkelites are attempting to take these supporters over. The Willich supporters are whoring with the Kinkel supporters.”

A fourth agitator declared that Kinkel's supporters are “idolators”. Tausenau gave this description of the Émigré Club.

“Divergent interests beneath the mask of conciliatoriness, the systematic gerrymandering of majorities, the emergence of unknown quantities as organising party leaders, attempts to impose a secret finance committee and all the other slippery manoeuvres with which immature politicians of all ages have tried to control the fates of their country in exile, while the first glow of the revolution disperses all such vanities like a morning mist.”

Lastly, Rodomonte-Heinzen announced that the only reputable refugees in England personally known to him were Ruge, Goegg, Fickler and Sigel. The members of the Émigré Club were “egoists, royalists and communists”. Kinkel was “an incurably vain fool and an aristocratic adventurer”, Meyen, Oppenheim and Willich, etc. were people “who do not even come up to his, Heinzen's, knee and as for Ruge, they do not even reach to his ankle”. (New York Schnellpost, New-Yorker Deutsche Zeitung, Wecker, etc. 1851.) Emigration

“What is the purpose of an imposed committee, that stands firmly in mid-air, that confers authority on itself without consulting the people whom it claims to represent or asking them whether they wish to be represented by such people?” — “Everyone who knows Ruge, knows that the mania for proclamations is his incurable disease.” — “In parliament Ruge did not even acquire the influence of a Simon of Trier or a Raveaux.” “Where revolutionary energy in action, talent for organisation, discretion or reticence are necessary, Ruge is downright dangerous because he cannot hold his tongue, he cannot hold his ink and always claims that he represents everybody. When Ruge meets Mazzini and Ledru-Rollin this is translated into Rugean and published in all the papers as: Germany, France and Italy have banded together fraternally to serve the revolution.” — “This pretentious imposition of a committee, this boastful inactivity determined Ruge’s most intimate and intelligent friends, such as Oppenheim, Meyen and Schramm to join forces with other men.” “Behind Ruge there is no clearly defined section of the people, but only a clearly outlined pigtail of peace.” — “How many hundreds of people ask themselves daily who is this Tausenau and there is no one, no one who can give an answer. Here and there you can find a Viennese who will assure you that he is one of those democrats with whom the reaction used to reproach the Viennese democrats so as to put them in a bad light. But that is the concern of the Viennese. At any rate Tausenau is an unknown quantity, and whether he is a quantity of any kind is

“Let us take a look at these worthy men who regard everyone else as an immature politician. Sigel, the supreme commander. If anyone ever asks the muse of history how such an insipid nonentity was given the supreme command she will be completely at a loss for a reply. Sigel is only his brother's brother. His brother became a popular officer as a result of his critical remarks about the government, remarks which had been provoked by his frequent arrests for disorderly behaviour. The younger Sigel thought this reason enough in the early confusion prevailing at the outbreak of revolution to proclaim himself supreme commander and minister of war. The Baden artillery which had often proved its worth had plenty of older and more experienced officers who should have taken precedence over this young milksop Lieutenant Sigel, and they were more than a little indignant when they had to obey an unknown man whose inexperience was only matched by his incompetence. But there was Brentano, who was so mindless and treacherous as to permit anything that might ruin the revolution .... The total incapacity that Sigel displayed during the whole Baden campaign .... It is worthy of note that Sigel left the bravest soldiers of the republican army in the lurch in Rastatt and in the Black Forest without the reinforcements he had promised while he himself drove around Zurich with the epaulettes and the carriage of Prince von Furstenberg and paraded as an interesting unfortunate supreme commander. This is the true magnitude of this mature politician who, understandably proud of his earlier heroic deeds, imposed himself as supreme commander for a second time, on this occasion in the Agitators’ Club. This is the great hero, the brother of his brother.”

“It is really laughable when such people” (as the Agitators) “reproach others with half-heartedness, for they are political nonentities who are neither half nor whole.” — “Personal ambition is the whole secret of their fundamental position.” — “As a club the Agitators’ Club has meaning only as a private institution, like a literary circle or a billiard club, and therefore it has no claim to be taken into consideration or given a voice.” — “You have cast the dice! Let the uninitiated be initiated so that they may judge for themselves what kind of people you are!” — (Baltimore Correspondent.)

It must be confessed that in their understanding of each other these gentlemen have almost achieved an understanding of themselves.

XV (London and New York)

In the meantime the secret finance committee of the “Émigrés” had elected an executive committee consisting of Kinkel, Willich and Reichenbach and it now resolved to take serious measures in connection with the German loan. As reported in the New York Schnellpost, the New-Yorker Deutsche Zeitung and the Baltimore Correspondent at the end of 1851, Student Schurz was sent on a mission to France, Belgium and Switzerland where he sought out all old, forgotten, dead and missing parliamentarians, Reichregents, deputies and other distinguished men, right down to the late lamented Raveaux, to get them to guarantee the loan. The forgotten wretches hastened to give their guarantee. For what else was the guarantee of the loan if not a mutual guarantee of government posts in partibus; and in the same way Messrs. Kinkel, Willich and Reichenbach obtained by this means guarantees of their future prospects. And these sorrowing bonhommes in Switzerland were so obsessed with “organisation” and the guarantee of future posts that they had long before worked out a plan by which government posts would be awarded according to seniority — which produced a terrible scandal about who were to have Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Suffice it to say that Student Schurz brought back the guarantee in his pocket and so they all went to work. Some days earlier Kinkel had, it is true, promised in another meeting with the “Agitators” that he would not go ahead with a loan without them. For that very reason he departed taking the signatures of the guarantors and carte blanche from Reichenbach and Willich — ostensibly to find customers for his aesthetic lectures in the north of England, but in reality to go to Liverpool and embark for New York where he hoped to play Parzival and to discover the Holy Grail, the gold of the democratic parties.

And now begins that sweet-sounding, strange, magniloquent, fabulous, true and adventurous history of the great battles fought on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean between the Émigrés and the Agitators. It was a war waged with renewed bitterness and with indefatigable zeal. In it we witness Gottfried's crusade in the course of which he contends with Kossuth and after great labours and indescribable temptations he finally returns home with the Grail in the bag.

Or bei signori, io vi lascio al presente,

E se voi tornerete in questo loco,

Diro questa baffaglia dov'io lasso

Ch'un altra nofu mai di tal fracasso.

(Boiardo, Bk I, Canto 26)

[And there, kind Sirs, I leave you for the present,

If one day you return unto this place

I'll give you further news of this great war

So full of mighty deeds ne'er done before.]