The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

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СКАЧАТЬ was with the oppressed: he blamed the peasants sometimes for their obduracy and their usuriousness, but he commended their class, regarded their vices with heartfelt compassion, and remembered that he sprang from them. These were his views on worldly government, but he served the spiritual: he held firmly the popular idea, that there should be two ruling powers,--the Church, and the princes, and he thought he was justified in proudly placing the domination of the former above that of worldly politics. He strove indignantly to prevent the governing powers from assuming the control in matters pertaining to the care of souls and to the autonomy of his communities. He estimated all politics with reference to the interests of his faith and according to the laws of his Bible. When the Scripture seemed to be endangered by worldly politics, he raised his voice, indifferent where it hit: it was not his fault that he was strong and the princes weak, and it ought to be no reproach to him, the monk, the professor, and the shepherd of souls, if the allied Protestant princes withstood the cunning statesmancraft of the Emperor, like a herd of deer; he himself was so conscious that politics were not his business, that when on one occasion the active Landgrave of Hesse would not follow ecclesiastical advice, he was the more esteemed for it by Luther: "He has a good head of his own; he will be successful; he thoroughly understands the world."

      Since Luther's return to Wittenberg a democratic agitation had been fermenting amongst the people. Luther had opened the cloisters, and now people desired to be delivered from many other social evils, such as the destitution of the peasants, the ecclesiastical imposts, the malversation of the benefices, and the bad administration of justice. The honest heart of Luther sympathized with this movement, and he exhorted and reproved the landed proprietors and princes; but when the wild waves of the Peasant war poured over his own country, when deeds of bloody violence wounded his spirit, and he found that factious men and enthusiasts exercised a dominion over the multitudes which threatened his doctrines with destruction, he threw himself with the deepest indignation into the struggle against the rough masses. Wild and warlike was his appeal to the princes; he was horrified at what had taken place: the gospel of love had been disgraced by the headstrong wilfulness of those who had called themselves its followers. His policy was right; there was in Germany, unfortunately, no better power than that of the princes; on them, in spite of everything, rested the future of the father-land, for which neither the peasant serfs, nor the rapacious noblemen, nor the dispersed cities of the empire, which stood like islands in the midst of the surging sea, could give a guarantee: he was entirely in the right; but in the same headstrong unbending way, which had hitherto made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular, he now turned against the people. A cry of dismay and horror was raised among the masses. He was a traitor. He, who for eight years had been their hero and darling, suddenly became the most unpopular of men: again his life and liberty were threatened; even five years afterwards it was dangerous for him to visit his sick father at Mansfeld, on account of the peasants. The anger of the multitude worked also against his teaching; the field preachers and new apostles treated him as a lost, corrupt man.

      He was excommunicated and outlawed by the higher powers, and cursed by the people; even many well-meaning men had been displeased with his attack on celibacy and monastic life. The nobility of the country threatened to waylay the outlaw on the high-roads, because he had destroyed the convents in which, as in foundling hospitals, the respectable daughters of poor nobles were thrown in early childhood. The Romish party triumphed; the new heresy was deprived of that which had hitherto made it powerful; Luther's life and doctrines seemed doomed to destruction.

      It was at this time that Luther determined to marry. Catherine von Bora had lived at Wittenberg for two years in the house of Reichenbach, the town clerk, afterwards burgomaster. She was a fine young woman of stately manners, the deserted daughter of a noble family of Meissen. Twice had Luther endeavoured to obtain a husband for her, as with fatherly care he had already done for many of her companions; at last Catherine declared that she would not marry any man, unless it were Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was astonished, but he came to a rapid decision. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he went to woo her, and was married to her on the spot. He then invited his friends to his marriage feast, begged for venison from the court, which it was the habit of the prince to present to the professors on their wedding days, and received from the city of Wittenberg, as a bridal present, wine for the feast. We would fain understand what passed through Luther's soul at that time; his whole being was strained to the uttermost; his strong and wild primitive nature was excited on all sides; he was deeply shaken by the evils arising up everywhere around him, the burning villages and slaughtered men. If he had been a mere fanatic he would have ended in despair; but above the stormy disquiet, which is perceptible in him up to his marriage, a bright light shone; the conviction that he was the guardian of the divine law amongst the Germans, and that in order to protect social order and morals, he was bound to guide and not to follow the opinions of men. However eagerly and warmly he might declaim in individual cases, he appears now decidedly conservative and more firmly self-contained than ever. He had, moreover, the impression that it was ordained that he should not live much longer, and many were the hours in which he looked forward with a longing to martyrdom. He concluded his marriage in full harmony with his convictions. He had entered fully into the necessity of marriage and its conformity with Scripture, and he had for some years pressed all his acquaintances to marry, at last even his own opponent the Archbishop of Mentz. He himself gives two reasons for his decision. He had robbed his father for many years of his son; it would be to him a kind of expiation, in case he should die first, to leave old Hans a grandson. Besides this, it was also an act of defiance; his opponents triumphed that Luther was humbled, all the world was offended with him, and by this he would give them still more offence.

      He was a man of strong passions, but there was no trace of coarse sensuality; and we may assume that the best reason, which he did not, however, avow to any of his friends, was yet the most decisive, and that was, that there had long been gossip amongst people, and he himself knew that Catherine was favourably disposed towards him. "I am not passionately in love, but am very fond of her," he writes to one of his dearest friends. And this marriage, concluded contrary to the opinion of his cotemporaries, and amidst the derision of his opponents, was an act to which we Germans owe as much, as we do to all the years in which, as an ecclesiastic of the old Church, he had by deeds supported his theology. For from henceforth the father, husband, and citizen became also the reformer of the domestic life of his nation; and that which was the blessing of his earthly life, in which Roman Catholics and Protestants to this day have an equal interest, arose from a marriage contracted between an outcast monk and a fugitive nun. He had still, for one-and-twenty laborious years, to carry out the moulding of his nation. His greatest work, the translation of the Bible, which he had now brought to a conclusion, in union with his Wittenberger friends, gave him an entire mastery over the language of the people, a language, the richness and power of which first became practically known by this book. We know in how noble a spirit he undertook the work: he wished to produce a book for the people, for that purpose he studied assiduously the forms of speech, proverbs, and technical expressions used by them. The Humanitarians still continued to write clumsy and involved German, a bad resemblance to the Latin style. The nation now obtained for its daily reading a work which in simple words and short sentences gave expression to the deepest wisdom and the highest spiritual treasures. The German Bible, together with Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German language; and this language, in which our whole literature and spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession, which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded the different branches of the German race that they belong to one family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. Not less was done by this same man for the social life of Germany. Private devotion, marriage, the education of children, corporate life, school life, manners, amusements, all feelings of the heart, all social pleasures were consecrated by his teachings and writings; everywhere he endeavoured to place new boundary stones and to dig deeper foundations. There was no sphere of human duty over which he did not constrain his countrymen to meditate. By his numerous sermons and essays he worked on the public; by countless letters in which he gave counsel and comfort to inquirers he worked on individuals. He urged incessantly upon all the necessity of self-examination, СКАЧАТЬ