The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Viii Part 48

The dyer who since the marriage of his daughter had never been in Gschaid decided to accompany the men to the village.

When they approached the red post where the side-road began they saw the sleigh waiting for them which the shoemaker had ordered there, whatever the outcome. They let mother and children get into it, covered them well up in the rugs and furs provided for them and let them ride ahead to Gschaid.

The others followed and arrived in Gschaid by afternoon. Those who still were on the mountain and had only learned through the smoke that the signal for returning had been given, gradually also found their way into the valley. The last to appear in the evening was the son of the shepherd Philip who had carried the red flag to the Krebsstein and planted it there.

In Gschaid there was also grandmother waiting for them who had driven across the "neck."

"Never, never," she cried, "will I permit the children to cross the 'neck' in winter!"

The children were confused by all this commotion. They received something more to eat and were put to bed then. Late in the evening, when they had recovered somewhat, and some neighbors and friends had a.s.sembled in the living-room and were talking about the event, their mother came into the sleeping-room. As she sat by Sanna's bed and caressed her, the little girl said: "Mother, last night, when we sat on the mountain, I saw the holy Christ-child."

"Oh, my dear, darling child," answered her mother, "he sent you some presents, too, and you shall get them right soon."

The paste-board boxes had been unpacked and the candles lit, and now the door into the living-room was opened, and from their bed the children could behold their belated, brightly gleaming, friendly Christmas tree.

Notwithstanding their utter fatigue they wanted to be dressed partly, so that they could go into the room. They received their presents, admired them, and finally fell asleep over them.

In the inn at Gschaid it was more lively than ever, this evening. All who had not been to church were there, and the others too. Each related what he had seen and heard, what he had done or advised, and the experiences and dangers he had gone through. Especial stress was laid on how everything could have been done differently and better.

This occurrence made an epoch in the history of Gschaid. It furnished material for conversation for a long time; and for many years to come people will speak about it on bright days when the mountain is seen with especial clearness, or when they tell strangers of the memorable events connected with it.

Only from this day on the children were really felt to belong to the village and were not any longer regarded as strangers in it but as natives whom the people had fetched down to them from the mountain.

Their mother Sanna also now was a native of Gschaid.

The children, however, will not forget the mountain and will look up to it more attentively, when they are in the garden; when, as in the past, the sun is s.h.i.+ning beautifully and the linden-tree is sending forth its fragrance, when the bees are humming and the mountain looks down upon them beautifully blue, like the soft sky.

WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL

By OTTO h.e.l.lER, PH.D.

Professor of the German Language and Literature, Was.h.i.+ngton University

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was born May 6, 1823, in Bieberich on the Rhine, of parents so poor that after his father's early death his mother had to deprive herself of every comfort in order to enable the lad to go to the university. At Bonn he swerved from his theological bent--chiefly through the influence of two of his professors, Ernst Moritz Arndt and Ch. F. Dahlmann--and made up his mind to devote his studies henceforth to the scientific as well as patriotic purpose of comprehending the character and history of his own people. Even in the many articles concerning popular ways and manners which he had already contributed to periodicals he revealed a thorough firsthand acquaintance with the land and the people, in particular the peasantry, as he had observed them in the course of numerous holiday tramps.

Soon after leaving the university he drifted into professional journalism. He held a number of responsible editorial positions, nor did he wholly withdraw from such work when in 1859 he was called to the newly created chair of the History of Civilization and of Statistics at Munich. Both in his professional and publicistic capacity he wrote prolifically to the very end of his life, November 16, 1897. His works are cla.s.sifiable, roughly, under three headings: History of Culture, Sociology, and Fiction. Of the large number, the following, chronologically enumerated, are considered the most important.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL]

_The Natural History of the People, being the Elements of German Social Politics_ (1851-1869), in four volumes; _Musical Character-Portraits (1853); Culture-historical Stories (1856); The Palatine People (1857); Studies in the History of Culture, from Three Centuries (1859); German Work (1861); Tales of the Olden Time (1863); New Story-Book (1868); From my Nook (1874); At Eventide (1880); Riddles of Life (1888); Religious Studies of a Worldling (1892-1893); A Whole Man (1897)._

Riehl's position in the literature of Germany cannot be defined solely, nor even mainly, on the basis of his imaginative writings. As a romancer he falls far short of Gustav Freytag, whose _Pictures of the German Past_ served Riehl obviously for a model, and of Jeremias Gotthelf, in whose manner, though perhaps unconsciously, he likewise strove to write.

It is characteristic of his tales that they invariably play against a native background, which, however, stretches across more than full ten centuries, and that, while failing to prove any high poetic vocation for their author, they demonstrate his singularly acute perception of cultural tendencies and values. Equally keen is the appreciation shown in these stories of the dominant national traits, whether commendable or otherwise: German contentiousness, stubbornness, envy, jealousy and _Schadenfreude_, i.e., the malicious joy over calamities that befall others, are impartially balanced against German self-reliance, st.u.r.diness, love of truth, sense of duty, sincerity, unselfishness, loyalty, and depth of feeling.

On the whole, the inclusion of Riehl among the most eminent German writers of the nineteenth century is due far less to his works of fiction than to a just recognition of his primacy among historians of culture, on account of the extraordinary reach of his influence. This influence he certainly owed as much to his rare art of popular presentation as to his profound scholars.h.i.+p. Nevertheless the intrinsic scientific worth of these more or less popular writings is vouched for by the consensus of leading historians and other specially competent judges who, regarding Riehl's work as epoch-making and in some essential aspects fundamental, recognize him as one of the organizers of modern historical science and in particular as the foremost pioneer in the exploration of the widest area within the territory of human knowledge; in fine, as the most efficient representative of the History of Civilization.

_Kulturgeschichte_, as Riehl used the term, connoted a rather ideal conception, namely, that of an interpretative record of the sum total of human civilization. It required a high challenge like that to energize and unify the requisite laborious research in so many different directions art, letters, science, economics, politics, social life, and what not. The History of Civilization, as understood by Riehl, embraces the results gained in all the special branches of historical study, political history included.

By a formulation so comprehensive and exacting, Riehl himself stood committed to the investigation of the national life not only in the breadth and variety of its general aspect, but also in its minuter processes that had so far been left unheeded. But under his care even the study of seemingly trite details quickened the approach to that fixed ideal of a History of Civilization that should have for its ultimate object nothing less than the revelation of the spirit of history itself. The goal might never be attained, yet the quest for it would at all events disclose "the laws under which racial civilizations germinate, mature, bloom, and perish."

Personally Riehl applied the bulk of his labors to the two contiguous fields of Folklore and Art History. Folklore (_Volkskunde_) is here taken in his own definition, namely, as the science which uncovers the recondite causal relations between all perceptible manifestations of a nation's life and its physical and historical environment. Riehl never lost sight, in any of his distinctions, of that inalienable affinity between land and people; the solidarity of a nation, its very right of existing as a political ent.i.ty, he derived from h.o.m.ogeneity as to origin, language, custom, habitat. The validity of this view is now generally accepted in theory, while its practical application to science must necessarily depend upon the growth of special knowledge. In _The Palatine People_ Riehl presented a standard treatise upon one of the ethnic types of the German race, an ill.u.s.tration as it were of his own theorems.

Among Riehl's contributions to the History of Art, the larger number concern the art of music. He was qualified for this work by a sure and sound critical appreciation rooted in thorough technical knowledge. Here again, following his keen scent for the distinguis.h.i.+ng racial qualities, he gave his attention mainly to the popular forms of composition; at the same time his penetrating historic insight enabled him to account for the distinctive artistic character of the great composers by a due weighing of their individual attributes against the controlling influences of their time. It is hardly necessary to add that in his reflections music was never detached from its generic connection with the fine arts, inclusive of industrial, decorative, and domestic art.

Like many another student and lover of the past Riehl was a man of conservative habits of mind, without, however, deserving to be cla.s.sed as a confirmed reactionary. His anti-democratic tendency of thought sprang plausibly enough from convictions and beliefs which owed their existence, in some part at least, to strained and whimsical a.n.a.logies.

His defense of a static order of society rested at bottom upon a st.u.r.dy hatred of Socialism, then in the earliest stage of its rise. This ingrained aversion to the new, suggested to him a rather curious sort of rational or providential sanction for the old. He discerned, by an odd whim of the fancy, in the physical as well as the spiritual const.i.tution of Germany a preeestablished principle of "trialism.". According to this queer notion, Germany is in every respect divided _in partes tres_. The territorial conformation itself, with its clean subdivision into lowland, intermediate, and highland, demonstrates the natural tri-part.i.tion to which a like "threeness" of climate, nationality, and even of religion corresponds. Hence the tripart.i.tion of the population into peasantry, bourgeoisie, and n.o.bility should be upheld as an inviolable, foreordained inst.i.tution, and to this end the separate traditions of the cla.s.ses be piously conserved. Educational agencies ought to subserve the specific needs of the different ranks of society and be diversified accordingly. Riehl would even hark back to wholly out-dated and discarded customs, provided they seemed to him clearly the outflow of a vital cla.s.s-consciousness. For instance, he would have restored the trade corporations to their medieval status; inhibited the free disposal of farming land, and governed the German aristocracy under the English law of primogeniture.

Altogether, Riehl's propensity for spanning a fragile a.n.a.logy between concrete and abstract phenomena of life is apt to weaken the structural strength of his argumentation. Yet even his boldest comparisons do not lack in illuminative suggestiveness. Take, for example, the following pa.s.sage from _Field and Forest:_ "In the contrast between the forest and the field is manifest the most simple and natural preparatory stage of the multiformity and variety of German social life, that richness of peculiar national characteristics in which lies concealed the tenacious rejuvenating power of our nation." (See p. 418 of this volume.)

The predisposition to draw large inferences coupled with that p.r.o.nounced conservatism detract in a measure from the authenticity of Riehl's work in the department of Social Science, which to him is fundamentally "the doctrine of the natural inequality of mankind." (See p. 417 of this volume.)

That Riehl, despite his conservative bias, is not a reactionary out and out has already been stated. He stands for evolutionary, not revolutionary, social reform; in his opinion the social-economic order can be bettered by means of the gradual self-improvement of society, and in no other way. Unless, moreover, the improvement be effected without the sacrifice of that basic subdivision of society, the needful social stability is bound to be upset by the "proletariat"--namely, the entire "fourth estate" reinforced by the ever increasing number of deserters, renegades, and outcasts who have drifted away from their appointed social level.

Notwithstanding this rather dogmatic att.i.tude of which, among other things, a sweeping rejection of "Woman Emanc.i.p.ation," was one corollary, Riehl's organic theory of society as explicitly stated in his _Civic Society_ has a great and permanent usefulness for our time because of its thoroughgoing method and its clear-cut statement of problems and issues. The leader of the most advanced school of modern historians, Professor Karl Lamprecht, goes so far as to declare that the social studies of W.H. Riehl const.i.tute the very corner stone of scientific Sociology. In this achievement, to which all of his scholarly endeavors were tributary, Riehl's significance as a historian of culture may be said to culminate.

WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL

FIELD AND FOREST[11]

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

The intimate connection between a country and its people may well start with a superficial survey of the external aspects of a country. He sees before him mountain and valley, field and forest--such familiar contrasts that one scarcely notices them any longer; and yet they are the explanation of many subtle and intimate traits in the life of the people. A clever schoolmaster could string a whole system of folklore on the thread of mountain and valley, field and forest. I will be content to invite further meditation by some thoughts on field and forest, the _tame_ and the _wild_ cultivation of our soil.

In Germany this contrast still exists in all its sharpness, as we still have a real forest. England, on the contrary, has practically no really free forest left--no forest which has any social significance. This, of necessity, occasions at the very outset a number of the clearest distinctions between German and English nationality.

In every decisive popular movement in Germany the forest is the first to suffer. A large part of the peasants live in continual secret feud with the masters of the forest and their privileges; no sooner is a spark of revolution lighted, then, before everything else, there flares up among these people "the war about the forest." The insurgent rural proletariat can raise no barricades, can tear down no royal palaces, but, instead, lay waste the woodland of their masters; for in their eyes this forest is the fortress of the great lord in comparison with the little unprotected plot of ground of the small farmer. As soon as the power of the State has conquered the rebellious ma.s.ses, the first thing it proceeds to do is to restore the forest to its former condition and again to put in force the forest charters which had been torn up. This spectacle, modified in accordance with the spirit of the age, repeats itself in every century of our history, and it will no doubt be of constant recurrence, always in new forms, for centuries to come.

The preservation, the protection of the forest, guaranteed anew by charter, is at present (1853) once again a question of the day, and in German legislative a.s.semblies in recent years weighty words have been uttered in favor of the forest from the point of view of the political economist. Thus it is again becoming popular to defend the poor much-abused forest. The forest, however, has not only an economic, but also a social-political value. He who from liberal political principles denies the distinction between city and country should also, after the English model, seek to do away with the distinction between the field and the forest. Wherever common possession of the forest continues to exist side by side with private possession of the field, there will never be any real social equality among the people. In the cultivation of the soil the forest represents the aristocracy; the field represents the middle cla.s.s.

The concessions made by the different governments in the matter of forest-clearing, of the preservation of game, the free use of the forest, etc., form a pretty exact instrument with which to measure the triumphant advance of the aristocratic or the democratic spirit. In the year 1848 many a vast tract of forest was sacrificed in order to purchase therewith a small fraction of popularity. Every revolution does harm to the forest, but, provided it does not wish to strangle itself, it leaves the field untouched.

After December 2, 1851, the gathering of fallen leaves in the forest was countenanced in Alsace in order to make the Napoleonic _coup d' etat_ popular. It was cleverly thought out; for the never-resting war about the forest can be for a government a mighty lever of influence on a cla.s.s of the people which is, in general, hard enough to swing round.

The concession permitting the gathering of leaves, and manhood suffrage, are one and the same act of shrewd Bonapartist policy, only aimed at different cla.s.ses. Thus social politics lurks even behind the forest-trees and beneath the rustling red leaves of last autumn--a strange circle of cause and effect! The immoderate cultivation of potatoes contributes not a little to saddle the modern State with the proletariat, but this same cultivation of potatoes, which deprives the small peasant of straw, drives him into the forest to seek for withered leaves in place of straw for his cattle, and thus places again in the hands of the State authorities a means--based upon the strange historic ruin of our forest-franchises--of curbing a powerful part of the proletariat.

Popular sentiment in Germany considers the forest to be the one large piece of property which has not yet been completely portioned off. In contrast to field, meadow, and garden, every one has a certain right to the forest, even if it consists merely in being able to run about in it at pleasure. In the right, or the permission, to gather wood and dry leaves and to pasture cattle, in the distribution of the so-called "loose-wood" from the parish forests, and such acts, lie the historic foundation of an almost communist tradition. Where else has anything of the kind been perpetuated except in the case of the forest? The latter is the root of truly German social conditions. In very truth the forest, with us, has not yet been completely portioned off; therefore every political agitator who wishes to pay out in advance to the people a little bit of "prosperity" as earnest-money of the promised universal prosperity, immediately lays hands upon the forest. By means of the forest, and by no other, you can substantially preach communism to the German peasant. It is well known that the idea of the forest as private property was introduced at a late date and gained ground gradually among the German people.

Forest, pasturage, water, are, in accordance with a primitive German principle of jurisprudence, intended for the common use of all inhabitants of the same district. The old alliteration "wood, wold and water," has not yet been entirely forgotten by the people. Thus a dim and feeble memory, a well-nigh forgotten legend, looking upon the common claim to general use of the forest as a natural right which had been in force since the beginning of time, confirms the conclusions of the historian, according to whom community of possession of the forest was a true old Germanic idea. Such a line of argument, however, could also bring us to the further conclusion that this community of possession has only once been fully realized--namely, by and in the primeval forest.

In times of excitement men have worked out on paper wonderful arithmetical problems concerning the part.i.tion of the soil of the forest into small plots of ground for the poor. Paper is very forbearing, and it looks very idyllic and comfortable to see, carefully calculated before our eyes, how many hundreds of dear little estates could be made out of the meagre soil of the forest, on which the proletarian could settle down to the contented patriarchal existence of a farmer.

Practical attempts along this line have not been wanting, but, instead of diminis.h.i.+ng the proletariat, such an increase of small farms only served to augment it all the more; practice is ahead of theory. The people should have thanked G.o.d that the forest, almost alone, had not been parceled out; yet, instead, they were ready even to destroy the forest in order to a.s.sist the small farmer! In many parts of Germany the poor farmer would starve if the traditional free use of the forest did not form a steady annuity for him. The forest helps in a hundred ways to place the petty farms on a solid foundation; if, therefore, men destroy the forests in order to increase the number of petty farms, they are undermining firmly rooted existences in order, in their place, to plant new ones upon the sand.