The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

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СКАЧАТЬ quickly increased; soon they required, not only exemption from tenths and soccage service, but also the reimbursement of fines that had been paid. The peasants collected in troops of more than a thousand men; they threatened the town of Meissen, and attacked small detachments. But they never withstood larger divisions of military. The most daring bands threw their caps and clubs away, as soon as the cavalry were ordered to charge through them. One of the chief leaders, a stubborn, daring old man of seventy years of age, while still in chains, complained of the faintheartedness of his bands. The movement was suppressed without much bloodshed. It was characteristic of the time, that the landowners, from fear, did everything in their power to bring about a mutual forgiveness and forgetfulness, and that the condemned, during their penal labour, were separated from other criminals and treated with leniency; they were also excused the prison dress. From records of that period it may clearly be seen how general was the feeling among the higher magistrates, that the position of the peasant did not come up to the requirements of the times.

      Two years later, also, the German peasants in the Palatinate and in the Electorate of Mainz danced round the red cap on the tree of freedom. Incessantly did French influence overspread Germany. The State of the Great Frederick was shattered; Germany became French up to the Elbe. In the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished, with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to the new dominion. The Princes of the Rhine Confederation followed this example, with greater consideration for those whom they patronised; but still under the strong influence of French ideas. In Prussia the Governments and people saw, with alarm, how insecure was the constitution of a State which employed so much the bodies and working powers of the peasants, and took so little account of their souls. In the year 1807 the great change in the relations of the country people began in Prussia; the definition of the rights of the landowners and peasants has lasted there, with many fluctuations and interruptions, for half a century, and has not yet arrived at a full conclusion.

      At this period the position of the countryman throughout Germany has so improved, that no other progress of civilization can be compared to it. The villein of the landowner has--with the exception of Mecklenburg, where the condition of the middle ages still exists--become the free citizen of his State; the law protects and punishes him and the landowner alike; he sends representatives, not of his class only, but of the nation, in union with the other classes of voters, to the capital; he has legally ceased everywhere to be a separate order in the State--in many provinces he has laid aside, with his present dress, his old frowardness; he begins to dress himself à la mode, and--sometimes in a clumsy, unpleasing form--to take his share in the inventions and enjoyments of modern civilization. But, however great these changes may be, they are not yet great enough generally, in Germany, to give the countryman that position which, as a member of the State, a citizen, and an agriculturist, he must attain, if the life of the people is to give an impression in all respects of perfect soundness and power. His interest in, and comprehension of, that highest earthly concern of man--the State--is much too little developed; his craving for instruction and cultivation, considered on the whole, is too small; and in the larger portion of the Fatherland his soul is still encumbered by some of the qualities which are nurtured by long oppression, hard egotism, distrust of men differently moulded, litigiousness, awkwardness, and a deficient understanding of his rights and position as a citizen. The minds which have shaken off the old spell are still in the form of transition which gives them a specially unfinished and unpleasing aspect.

      The agriculture of the German peasantry may still be considered as not having, on the whole, reached that point which is necessary for an energetic development of our national strength; nevertheless, we have reason to rejoice in having made great progress in this direction. Intellect is everywhere incessantly occupied in introducing to the simple countryman new discoveries--machines, seeds, and a new method of cultivation. In some favoured districts the agriculture of the small farmer can scarcely be distinguished from the well-studied system of the larger model farms. Nor has the German peasant, in the times of the deepest depression, like the oppressed Slavonian, ever lost the instinct of self-acquisition. For the very qualities which are his characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists, however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The noble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons, frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy, technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures, trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies, and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our industry. If this circumstance is perhaps a surety for our stability, on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other classes of the German people.

      If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not yet gained, comparatively with the other classes of the people, the independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened that the strength of the nation has passed from the rural districts into cities, and that the nobleman has raised himself so much above his neighbour the peasant, must beware of asserting, that this depression of the country-people is the natural consequence of the establishment of a higher culture and more artistic forms of life by the side of the simple agriculture of the lower class. He who follows his plough will seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original, he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and the easy intercourse of a modern salon will scarcely be enlivened by his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must, at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by him.

      Is it necessary that our neighbour the countryman should so seldom read a good book, and still less often buy one? Is it necessary that he should, as a rule, take in no other newspaper than the small sheet of his own district? Is it necessary that it should be unknown to him, and unfortunately sometimes also to his schoolmaster, how an angle is determined, a parallelogram measured, and an ellipse drawn? Whoever would now place a poem of Goethe's in the hand of a peasant woman, would probably do a useless thing, and raise a dignified smile in a "well-educated spectator." Must all that we possess of most beautiful be incomprehensible to half our nation? Six hundred years ago, the poem of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the same lively susceptibility for noble poetry which we now assume as the privilege of the highly educated. Is it necessary that the peasant of the present day should be deficient in it? The Bohemian village musician still plays with heartfelt delight the harmonious tones produced by the genius of Haydn and Mozart; is it necessary that few other musical sounds should be permitted to the German peasant than the stale measures of spiritless dances? All this is not necessary; something of the same barbarism benumbs our life which we perceive with astonishment in the time of Christian Garve.

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