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Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

W >> Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks >> Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4



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GERMANY

FROM THE

EARLIEST PERIOD

BY

WOLFGANG MENZEL

TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION

By MRS. GEORGE HORROCKS

WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER OF RECENT EVENTS

By EDGAR SALTUS

VOLUME IV



THE HISTORY OF GERMANY

PART XXI

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

(CONTINUED)

CCXLIV. Art and Fashion


Although art had, under French influence, become unnatural,
bombastical, in fine, exactly contrary to every rule of good taste,
the courts, vain of their collections of works of art, still emulated
each other in the patronage of the artists of the day, whose
creations, tasteless as they were, nevertheless afforded a species of
consolation to the people, by diverting their thoughts from the
miseries of daily existence.

Architecture degenerated in the greatest degree. Its sublimity was
gradually lost as the meaning of the Gothic style became less
understood, and a tasteless imitation of the Roman style, like that of
St. Peter's at Rome, was brought into vogue by the Jesuits and by the
court architects, by whom the chateau of Versailles was deemed the
highest chef-d'oeuvre of art. This style of architecture was
accompanied by a style of sculpture equally unmeaning and forced;
saints and Pagan deities in theatrical attitudes, fat genii, and
coquettish nymphs peopled the roofs of the churches and palaces,
presided over bridges, fountains, etc. Miniature turnery-ware and
microscopical sculpture also came into fashion. Such curiosities as,
for instance, a cherry-stone, on which Pranner, the Carinthian, had
carved upward of a hundred faces; a chessboard, the completion of
which had occupied a Dutchman for eighteen years; golden carriages
drawn by fleas; toys composed of porcelain or ivory in imitation of
Chinese works of art; curious pieces of mechanism, musical clocks,
etc., were industriously collected into the cabinets of the wealthy
and powerful. This taste was, however, not utterly useless. The
predilection for ancient gems promoted the study of the remains of
antiquity, as Stosch, Lippert, and Winckelmann prove, and that of
natural history was greatly facilitated by the collections of natural
curiosities.

The style of painting was, however, still essentially German, although
deprived by the Reformation and by French influence of its ancient
sacred and spiritual character. Nature was now generally studied in
the search after the beautiful. Among the pupils of Rubens, the great
founder of the Dutch school, Jordaens was distinguished for brilliancy
and force of execution, Van Dyck, A.D. 1541, for grace and beauty,
although principally a portrait painter and incapable of idealizing
his subjects, in which Rembrandt, A.D. 1674, who chose more extensive
historical subjects, and whose coloring is remarkable for depth and
effect, was equally deficient. Rembrandt's pupil, Gerhard Douw,
introduced domestic scenes; his attention to the minutiæ of his art
was such that he is said to have worked for three days at a
broomstick, in order to represent it with perfect truth. Denner
carried accuracy still further; in his portraits of old men every hair
in the beard is carefully imitated. Francis and William[1] Mieris
discovered far greater talent in their treatment of social and
domestic groups; Terbourg and Netscher, on the other hand, delighted
in the close imitation of velvet and satin draperies; and Schalken, in
the effect of shadows and lamplight. Honthorst[2] attempted a higher
style, but Van der Werf's small delicious nudities and Van Loos's
luxurious pastoral scenes were better adapted to the taste of the
times. While these painters belonged to the higher orders of society,
of which their works give evidence, numerous others studied the lower
classes with still greater success. Besides Van der Meulen and
Rugendas, the painters of battle-pieces, Wouvermann chiefly excelled
in the delineation of horses and groups of horsemen, and Teniers,
Ostade, and Jan Steen became famous for the surpassing truth of their
peasants and domestic scenes. To this low but happily-treated school
also belonged the cattle-pieces of Berchem and Paul de Potter, whose
"Bull and Cows" were, in a certain respect, as much the ideal of the
Dutch as the Madonna had formerly been that of the Italians or the
Venus di Medici that of the ancients.

Landscape-painting alone gave evidence of a higher style. Nature,
whenever undesecrated by the vulgarity of man, is ever sublimely
simple. The Dutch, as may be seen in the productions of Breughel,
called, from his dress, "Velvet Breughel," and in those of Elzheimer,
termed, from his attention to minutiae, the Denner of landscape-
painting, were at first too careful and minute; but Paul Brill, A.D.
1626, was inspired with finer conceptions and formed the link between
preceding artists and the magnificent Claude Lorraine (so called from
the place of his birth, his real name being Claude Gelee), who resided
for a long time at Munich, and who first attempted to idealize nature
as the Italian artists had formerly idealized man. Everdingen and
Ruysdael, on the contrary, studied nature in her simple northern garb,
and the sombre pines of the former, the cheerful woods of the latter,
will ever be attractive, like pictures of a much-loved home, to the
German. Bakhuysen's sea-pieces and storms are faithful representations
of the Baltic. In the commencement of last century, landscape-painting
also degenerated and became mere ornamental flower-painting, of which
the Dutch were so passionately fond that they honored and paid the
most skilful artists in this style like princes. The dull prosaic
existence of the merchant called for relief. Huysum was the mosrt
celebrated of the flower-painters, with Rachel Ruysch, William von
Arless, and others of lesser note. Fruit and kitchen pieces were also
greatly admired. Hondekotter was celebrated as a painter of birds.

Painting was, in this manner, confined to a slavish imitation of
nature, for whose lowest objects a predilection was evinced until the
middle of the eighteenth century, when a style, half Italian, half
antique, was introduced into Germany by the operas, by travellers, and
more particularly by the galleries founded by the princes, and was
still further promoted by the learned researches of connoisseurs, more
especially by those of Winckelmann. Mengs, the Raphael of Germany,
Oeser, Tischbein, the landscape-painters Seekatz, Hackert, Reinhardt,
Koch, etc., formed the transition to the modern style. Frey,
Chodowiecki, etc., gained great celebrity as engravers.

Architecture flourished during the Middle Ages, painting at the time
of the Reformation, and music in modern times. The same spirit that
spoke to the eye in the eternal stone now breathed in transient melody
to the ear. The science of music, transported by Dutch artists into
Italy, had been there assiduously cultivated; the Italians had
speedily surpassed their masters, and had occupied themselves with the
creation of a peculiar church-music and of the profane opera, while
the Netherlands and the whole of Germany were convulsed by bloody
religious wars. After the peace of Westphalia, the national music of
Germany, with the exception of the choral music in the Protestant
churches, was almost silent, and Italian operas were introduced at all
the courts, where Italian chapel-masters, singers, and performers were
patronized in imitation of Louis XIV., who pursued a similar system in
France. German talent was reduced to imitate the Italian masters, and,
in 1628, Sagittarius produced at Dresden the first German opera in
imitation of the Italian, and Keyser published no fewer than one
hundred and sixteen.

The German musicians were, nevertheless, earlier than the German
poets, animated with a desire to extirpate the foreign and degenerate
mode fostered by the vanity of the German princes, and to give free
scope to their original and native talent. This regeneration was
effected by the despised and simple organists of the Protestant
churches. In 1717, Schroeder, a native of Hohenstein in Saxony,
invented the pianoforte and improved the organ. Sebastian Bach, in his
colossal fugues, like to a pillared dome dissolved in melody,[3]
raised music by his compositions to a height unattained by any of his
successors. He was one of the most extraordinary geniuses that ever
appeared on earth. Handel, whose glorious melodies entranced the
senses, produced the grand oratorio of the "Messiah," which is still
performed in both Protestant and Catholic cathedrals; and Graun, with
whom Frederick the Great played the flute, brought private singing
into vogue by his musical compositions. Gluck was the first composer
who introduced the depth and pathos of more solemn music into the
opera. He gained a complete triumph at Paris over Piccini, the
celebrated Italian musician, in his contest respecting the comparative
excellencies of the German and Italian schools. Haydn introduced the
variety and melody of the opera into the oratorio, of which his
"Creation" is a standing proof. In the latter half of the foregoing
century, sacred music has gradually yielded to the opera. Mozart
brought the operatic style to perfection in the wonderful compositions
that eternalize his fame.

The German theatre was, owing to the Gallomania of the period, merely
a bad imitation of the French stage. Gottsched,[4] who greatly
contributed toward the reformation of German literature, still
retained the stilted Alexandrine and the pseudo-Gallic imitation of
the ancient dramatists to which Lessing put an end. Lessing wrote his
"Dramaturgy" at Hamburg, recommended Shakespeare and other English
authors as models, but more particularly nature. The celebrated
Eckhof, the father of the German stage, who at first travelled about
with a company of actors and finally settled at Gotha, was the first
who followed this innovation. He was succeeded by Schroeder in
Hamburg, who was equally industrious as a poet, an actor, and a
Freemason. In Berlin, where Fleck had already paved the way, Iffland,
who, like Schroeder, was both a poet and an actor, founded a school,
which in every respect took nature as a guide, and which raised the
German stage to its well-merited celebrity.

At the close of the eighteenth century, men of education were seized
with an enthusiasm for art, which showed itself principally in a love
for the stage and in visits for the promotion of art to Italy. The
poet and the painter, alike dissatisfied with reality, sought to still
their secret longings for the beautiful amid the unreal creations of
fancy and the records of classical antiquity.

Fashion, that masker of nature, that creator of deformity, had, in
truth, arrived at an unparalleled pitch of ugliness. The German
costume, although sometimes extravagantly curious during the Middle
Ages, had nevertheless always retained a certain degree of picturesque
beauty, nor was it until the reign of Louis XIV. of France that dress
assumed an unnatural, inconvenient, and monstrous form. Enormous
allonge perukes and ruffles, the fontange (high headdress), hoops, and
high heels, rendered the human race a caricature of itself. In the
eighteenth century, powdered wigs of extraordinary shape, hairbags and
queues, frocks and frills, came into fashion for the men; powdered
headdresses an ell in height, diminutive waists, and patches for the
women. The deformity, unhealthiness, and absurdity of this mode of
attire were vainly pointed out by Salzmann, in a piece entitled,
"Charles von Carlsberg, or Human Misery."

[Footnote 1: Also his brother John, who painted with equal talent in
the same style.--_Trans_.]

[Footnote 2: Called also Gerardo dalle Notti from his subjects,
principally night-scenes and pieces illuminated by torch or
candle-light. His most celebrated picture is that of Jesus Christ
before the Tribunal of Pilate.--_Ibid_.]

[Footnote 3: Gothic architecture has been likened to petrified music.]

[Footnote 4: He was assisted in his dramatic writings by his wife, a
woman of splendid talents.--_Trans_.]



CCXLV. Influence of the Belles-Lettres


The German, excluded from all participation in public affairs and
confined to the narrow limits of his family circle and profession,
followed his natural bent for speculative philosophy and poetical
reverie; but while his thoughts became more elevated and the loss of
his activity was, in a certain degree, compensated by the gentle
dominion of the muses, the mitigation thus afforded merely aggravated
the evil by rendering him content with his state of inaction. Ere
long, as in the most degenerate age of ancient Rome, the citizen,
amused by sophists and singers, actors and jugglers, lost the
remembrance of his former power and rights and became insensible to
his state of moral degradation, to which the foreign notions, the vain
and frivolous character of most of the poets of the day, had not a
little contributed.

After the thirty years' war, the Silesian poets became remarkable for
Gallomania or the slavish imitation of those of France. Unbounded
adulation of the sovereign, bombastical _carmina_ on occasion of the
birth, wedding, accession, victories, fêtes, treaties of peace, and
burial of potentates, love-couplets equally strained, twisted
compliments to female beauty, with pedantic, often indecent, citations
from ancient mythology, chiefly characterized this school of poetry.
Martin Opitz, A.D. 1639, the founder of the first Silesian school,[1]
notwithstanding the insipidity of the taste of the day, preserved the
harmony of the German ballad. His most distinguished followers were
Logau, celebrated for his Epigrams;[2] Paul Gerhard, who, in his fine
hymns, revived the force and simplicity of Luther; Flemming, a genial
and thoroughly German poet, the companion of Olearius[3] during his
visit to Persia; the gentle Simon Dach, whose sorrowing notes bewail
the miseries of the age. He founded a society of melancholy poets at
Königsberg, in Prussia, the members of which composed elegies for each
other; Tscherning and Andrew Gryphius, the Corneille of Germany, a
native of Glogau, whose dramas are worthy of a better age than the
insipid century in which they were produced. The life of this
dramatist was full of incident. His father was poisoned; his mother
died of a broken heart. He wandered over Germany during the thirty
years' war, pursued by fire, sword, and pestilence, to the latter of
which the whole of his relations fell victims. He travelled over the
whole of Europe, spoke eleven languages, and became a professor at
Leyden, where he taught history, geography, mathematics, physics, and
anatomy. These poets were, however, merely exceptions to the general
rule. In the poetical societies, the "Order of the Palm" or
"Fructiferous Society," founded A.D. 1617, at Weimar, by Caspar von
Teutleben, the "Upright Pine Society," established by Rempler of
Löwenthal at Strasburg, that of the "Roses," founded A.D. 1643, by
Philip von Zesen, at Hamburg, the "Order of the Pegnitz-shepherds,"
founded A.D. 1644, by Harsdörfer, at Nuremberg, the spirit of the
Italian and French operas and academies prevailed, and pastoral
poetry, in which the god of Love was represented wearing an immense
allonge peruke, and the coquettish immorality of the courts was
glowingly described in Arcadian scenes of delight, was cultivated. The
fantastical romances of Spain were also imitated, and the invention of
novel terms was deemed the highest triumph of the poet. Every third
word was either Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, or English. Francisci
of Lübeck, who described all the discoveries of the New World in a
colloquial romance contained in a thick folio volume, was the most
extravagant of these scribblers. The romances of Antony Ulric, duke of
Brunswick, who embraced Catholicism on the occasion of the marriage of
his daughter with the emperor Charles VI., are equally bad.
Lauremberg's satires, written A.D. 1564, are excellent. He said with
great truth that the French had deprived the German muse of her nose
and had patched on another quite unsuited to her German ears.
Moscherosch (Philander von Sittewald) wrote an admirable and cutting
satire upon the manners of the age, and Greifenson von Hirschfeld is
worthy of mention as the author of the first historical romance that
gives an accurate and graphic account of the state of Germany during
the thirty years' war.

This first school was succeeded by a second of surpassing
extravagance. Hoffman von Hoffmannswaldau, A.D. 1679, the founder of
the second Silesian school, was a caricature of Opitz, Lohenstein of
Gryphius, Besser of Flemming, Talander and Ziegler of Zesen, and even
Francisci was outdone by that most intolerable of romancers, Happel.
This school was remarkable for the most extravagant license and
bombastical nonsense, a sad proof of the moral perversion of the age.
The German character, nevertheless, betrayed itself by a sort of naïve
pedantry, a proof, were any wanting, that the ostentatious absurdities
of the poets of Germany were but bad and paltry imitations. The French
Alexandrine was also brought into vogue by this school, whose
immorality was carried to the highest pitch by Günther, the lyric
poet, who, in the commencement of the eighteenth century, opposed
marriage, attempted the emancipation of the female sex, and, with
criminal geniality, recommended his follies and crimes, as highly
interesting, to the world. To him the poet, Schnabel, the author of an
admirable romance, the "Island of Felsenburg," the asylum, in another
hemisphere, of virtue, exiled from Europe, offers a noble contrast.

Three Catholic poets of extreme originality appear at the close of the
seventeenth century, Angelus Silesius (Scheffler of Breslau), who gave
to the world his devotional thoughts in German Alexandrines; Father
Abraham a Sancta Clara (Megerle of Swabia), a celebrated Viennese
preacher, who, with comical severity, wrote satires abounding with wit
and humorous observations; and Balde, who wrote some fine Latin poems
on God and nature. Prätorius, A.D. 1680, the first collector of the
popular legendary ballads concerning Rübezahl and other spirits,
ghosts and witches, also deserves mention. The Silesian, Stranizki,
who, A.D. 1708, founded the Leopoldstadt theatre at Vienna, which
afterward became so celebrated, and gave to it the popular comic style
for which it is famous at the present day, was also a poet of extreme
originality. Gottsched appeared as the hero of Gallomania, which was
at that time threatened with gradual extinction by the Spanish and
Hamburg romance and by Viennese wit. Assisted by Neuber, the actress,
he extirpated all that was not strictly French, solemnly burned
Harlequin in effigy at Leipzig, A.D. 1737, and laid down a law for
German poetry, which prescribed obedience to the rules of the stilted
French court-poetry, under pain of the critic's lash. He and his
learned wife guided the literature of Germany for several years.

In the midst of these literary aberrations, during the first part of
the foregoing century, Thomson, the English poet, Brokes of Hamburg,
and the Swiss, Albert von Haller, gave their descriptions of nature to
the world. Brokes, in his "Earthly Pleasures in God," was faithful,
often Homeric, in his descriptions, while Haller depictured his native
Alps with unparalleled sublimity. The latter was succeeded by a Swiss
school, which imitated the witty and liberal-minded criticisms of
Addison and other English writers, and opposed French taste and
Gottsched. At its head stood Bodmer and Breitinger, who recommended
nature as a guide, and instead of the study of French literature, that
of the ancient classics and of English authors. It was also owing to
their exertions that Müller published an edition of Rudiger Maness's
collection of Swabian Minnelieder, the connecting link between modern
and ancient German poetry. Still, notwithstanding their merit as
critics, they were no poets, and merely opened to others the road to
improvement. Hagedorn, although frivolous in his ideas, was graceful
and easy in his versification; but the most eminent poet of the age
was Gellert of Leipzig, A.D. 1769, whose tales, fables, and essays
brought him into such note as to attract the attention of Frederick
the Great, who, notwithstanding the contempt in which he held the
poets of Germany, honored him with a personal visit.

Poets and critics now rose in every quarter and pitilessly assailed
Gottsched, the champion of Gallomania. They were themselves divided
into two opposite parties, into Anglomanists and Græcomanists,
according to their predilection for modern English literature or for
that of ancient Greece and Rome. England, grounded, as upon a rock, on
her self-gained constitution, produced men of the rarest genius in all
the higher walks of science and literature, and her philosophers,
naturalists, historians, and poets exercised the happiest influence
over their Teutonic brethren, who sought to regain from them the vigor
of which they had been deprived by France. The power and national
learning of Germany break forth in Klopstock, whose genius vainly
sought a natural garb and was compelled to assume a borrowed form. He
consecrated his muse to the service of religion, but, in so doing,
imitated the Homeric hexameters of Milton; he sought to arouse the
national pride of his countrymen by recalling the deeds of Hermann
(Armin) and termed himself a bard, but, in the Horatian metre of his
songs, imitated Ossian, the old Scottish bard, and was consequently
labored and affected in his style. Others took the lesser English
poets for their model, as, for instance, Kleist, who fell at
Kunersdorf, copied Thomson in his "Spring"; Zachariä, Pope, in his
satirical pieces; Hermes, in "The Travels of Sophia," the humorous
romances of Richardson; Müller von Itzehoe, in his "Siegfried von
Lindenberg," the comic descriptions of Smollett. The influence of the
celebrated English poets, Shakespeare, Swift, and Sterne, on the tone
of German humor and satire, was still greater. Swift's first imitator,
Liscow, displayed considerable talent, and Rabener, a great part of
whose manuscripts was burned during the siege of Dresden in the seven
years' war, wrote witty, and at the same time instructive, satires on
the manners of his age. Both were surpassed by Lichtenberg, the little
hump-backed philosopher of Göttingen, whose compositions are replete
with grace. The witty and amiable Thümmmel was also formed on an
English model, and Archenholz solely occupied himself with
transporting the customs and literature of England into Germany. If
Shakespeare has not been without influence upon Goethe and Schiller,
Sterne, in his "Sentimental Journey," touched an echoing chord in the
German's heart by blending pathos with his jests. Hippel was the first
who, like him, united wit with pathos, mockery with tears.

In Klopstock, Anglo and Graecomania were combined. The latter had,
however, also its particular school, in which each of the Greek and
Roman poets found his imitator. Voss, for instance, took Homer for his
model, Ramler, Horace, Gleim, Anacreon, Gessner, Theocritus, Cramer,
Pindar, Lichtwer, Æsop, etc. The Germans, in the ridiculous attempt to
set themselves up as Greeks, were, in truth, barbarians. But all was
forced, unnatural, and perverted in this aping age. Wieland alone was
deeply sensible of this want of nature, and hence arose his
predilection for the best poets of Greece and France. The German muse,
led by his genius, lost her ancient stiffness and acquired a pliant
grace, to which the sternest critic of his too lax morality is not
insensible. Some lyric poets, connected with the Graecomanists by the
_Göttingen Hainbund_, preserved a noble simplicity, more particularly
Salis and Hòlty, and also Count Stolberg, wherever he has not been led
astray by Voss's stilted manner. Matthison is, on the other hand, most
tediously affected.

The German, never more at home than when abroad, boasted of being the
cosmopolite he had become, made a virtue of necessity, and termed his
want of patriotism, justice to others, humanity, philanthropy.
Fortunately for him, there were, besides the French, other nations on
which he could model himself, the ancient Greeks and the English, from
each of whom he gathered something until he had converted himself into
a sort of universal abstract. The great poets, who shortly before and
after the seven years' war, put an end to mere partial imitations,
were not actuated by a reaction of nationality, but by a sentiment of
universality. Their object was, not to oppose the German to the
foreign, but simply the human to the single national element, and,
although Germany gave them birth, they regarded the whole world
equally as their country.

Lessing, by his triumph over the scholastic pedants, completed what
Thomasius had begun, by his irresistible criticism drove French taste
from the literary arena, aided Winckelmann to promote the study of the
ancients and to foster the love of art, and raised the German theatre
to an unprecedented height. His native language, in which he always
wrote, breathes, even in his most trifling works, a free and lofty
spirit, which, fascinating in every age, was more peculiarly so at
that emasculated period. He is, however, totally devoid of patriotism.
In his "Minna von Barnhelm," he inculcates the finest feelings of
honor; his "Nathan" is replete with the wisdom "that cometh from
above" and with calm dignity; and in "Emilia Galotti" he has been the
first to draw the veil, hitherto respected, from scenes in real life.
His life was, like his mind, independent. He scorned to cringe for
favor, even disdained letters of recommendation when visiting Italy
(Winckelmann had deviated from the truth for the sake of pleasing a
patron), contented himself with the scanty lot of a librarian at
Wolfenbüttel, and even preferred losing that appointment rather than
subject himself to the censorship. He was the boldest, freest, finest
spirit of the age.

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