IV INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY IN 1830, while things were in this state of stagnation, oppression, and ferment, the news of the Paris Revolution of July arrived, and acted upon public feeling in Germany like an electric shock. All eyes were turned towards Paris, and among thinking people real enthusiasm was felt. The effect was perhaps most plainly observable among the quite young men. Two months before the Revolution, Karl Gutzkow, then nineteen, had, as he himself has told us, no understanding whatever of European politics. He neither knew who Polignac was, nor what it meant to violate la Charte (the French constitution). He only knew that in spite of all the persecution of the German student unions (Burschenschaften), they were still alive, and that the object to be attained was the unification of Germany. If he thought at all of upheavals which might hasten the march of events, he looked for them rather from the direction of Erlangen or Jena than from Paris; at the utmost he conceived it possible that a troop of returning Philhellenes landing armed at Stralsund, might take forcible possession of the town and call the Pomeranian militia (Landwehr) to arms, and that the peasants, driven to it perhaps by famine, might join in the revolt. At this time the French author, Saint-Marc Girardin, had come to Berlin to study the German language, the Prussian school system, and also the University theology as represented by Schleiermacher and Neander, and the Pietism emanating from Halle. As a contributor to the Journal des Débats, he received his newspaper regularly from Paris, and with the eager interest of the aspirant to office, followed the progress of the Opposition in France. Gutzkow gave him a German lesson daily; they read one of Kotzebue's comedies, which the Frenchman preferred as practice to Goethe or Schiller, but they invariably drifted into political discussions. Gutzkow made no attempt to conceal from Saint-Marc Girardin the slight general significance he attached to the French constitutional struggle, openly ascribing a greater influence on the course of history to the student union in Jena than to the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. Girardin smilingly gave a polite answer. From time to time these conversations were interrupted by Eduard Gans, the famous Prussian professor, Hegel's most renowned disciple in the faculty of law, Varnhagen's and Heine's friend, who in fluent French joined in the political argument, and made a great impression on Girardin by his woolly black hair and his whiskers. Gutzkow, who had heard the fashionably dressed, subtle and sarcastic professor ridicule the student movement from his professorial chair, and laughingly confess that he too once on a day, on the banks of the Saale, had deliberated upon the best means of helping Germany to an imperial crown, entreated the French politician not to believe that the youth of Germany thought with Gans. "I am quite aware of it," answered Girardin, "you intend to liberate the world with Sanscrit." On the 3rd of August 1830, the king's birthday was celebrated with song and speech in the great hall of the Berlin University. The students stood crowded together in front of the barrier behind which sat professors, officials, and officers of high rank. The famous philologist Boekh was the orator, and from the gallery above his head songs were sung by the University choir, under the leadership of Music-Director Zelter, Goethe's correspondent. The Rector of the University, Professor Schmalz, with queue and sword, went from chair to chair, exchanging a few words with the most honoured guests. But Gans, excited and impatient, passed round letters from Friedrich von Raumer, who had just come from Paris. The Crown Prince, afterwards Frederick William IV., sat and smiled; but all knew that a few days ago in France a king had been dethroned. It was as if the thunder of the barricade cannonade were booming through the festive hall. Boekh's speech on the subject of the fine arts did not succeed in arousing attention, and when Hegel read from the chair the names of the prizewinners of the year, no one except the medallists listened. Gutzkow did hear with one ear that he had taken the prize in the faculty of philosophy, but with the other he heard of a people that had deposed a king, of cannonades, of thousands fallen in the fight. He was oblivious to the congratulations offered him; he did not even open the case which contained the gold medal with the king's portrait; he had forgotten the hope of a professorship which he had connected with the thought of winning this medal; he stood dazed, thinking of Saint-Marc Girardin and his prophecies, and of what he himself had prophesied of the German Burschenschaft. Then he rushed off to a confectioner's shop in Unter den Linden, and for the first time in his life read a newspaper with avidity. He could hardly await the publication of the official gazette that evening; not because he was impatient to see his name in the list of medallists; all he wished was to know the state of matters in Paris, whether or not the barricades were still standing, whether France was to come forth from Lafayette's hands a republic or a + monarchy. "Science lay behind me," he writes, "history before me." And Gutzkow is a type of the youngest generation of the Germany of that day-the young men of twenty. Almost simultaneously with Karl Gutzkow's political awakening, there occurred a memorable misunderstanding in the study of the octogenarian Goethe. A visitor, greeted by the old man with exclamations of joy over the great event in Paris, at first believed that he meant the Days of July, and only gradually came to understand that he was talking of the decision of the scientific dispute between Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire in favour of the latter. This famous misunderstanding has long enough been regarded as only a symptom of Goethe's limitation in matters political; it is 1 Karl Gutzkow: Das Kastanienwäldchen in Berlin.-Rückblicke auf mein Leben, p. 7. but fair to point out that the anecdote is also an indication of the old sage's justifiable indifference to over-estimated political events. The scientific dispute was, by reason of the idea involved, and its transforming effect on the spiritual map of the world, a weightier matter than the French Revolution of July. Does not Saint-Hilaire's theory of the "unity of plan" herald The Origin of Species! But the picture of the overwhelming effect of the French political catastrophe on the youngest generation stands out all the sharper against the background of Goethe's impassibility.1 The impression made on eminent individuals belonging neither to the youngest nor the oldest generation was very deep. The most intellectual and open-minded woman of the day, the most distinguished of Goethe's female admirers, Rahel, who by this time was sixty, was in entire sympathy with the Revolution. To her, as a woman, the social side was of more interest than the political. Saint-Simonism takes strong hold upon her; her marvellously youthful mind perceives its possibilities, and in the events of July she sees the beginning of the triumph of its social theories. To the reviving, inspiriting impression of the Revolution of July was now added another, which gave a sharp edge to the passionate political feeling of the younger generation -the impression, to wit, made by the outbreak of the Polish revolt. It is most plainly observable in the case of Platen, who in wild excitement addresses a poetical adjuration to the Crown Prince of Prussia (said to be the most favourably disposed) to take the part of unhappy Poland, and also writes the Polenlieder, the only poems of his that rise to the height of passion, proud songs of liberty, full of outspoken scorn of the autocrat who was worshipped at the German courts as an almighty being, and of those who allowed themselves to be bribed and bought with his roubles. On Ludwig Börne's mind the news of the Revolution of July acted with the effect of a flash of lightning. In the summer of 1830 he was at the watering-place of Soden, near Frankfort-on-Main, recovering from a long bout of rheumatic fever and repeated attacks of hemorrhage. His Journal shows that his political hopes were almost extinguished, his desires stifled. A soul like his, whose aspiration after liberty was a passion, whose hunger and thirst after righteousness consumed his vital force, was unable permanently to bear the heavy weight of political reaction. He was now forty-four, and since the time of the War of Liberation, that is to say as youth and grown man, had had experience of nothing but the triumphs of baseness and its persecution of all rectitude, all freedom of opinion. He had never been able to lift his eyes from the sheet of paper he was writing on, without seeing pallid fear of every great passion, of ideals, of youth itself, enthroned in high places, side by side with the animal instinct of self-preservation and animal self-indulgence - the Metternich and Gentz principle. He had given up none of the convictions of his youth and manhood, but the world to him was draped in mourning weeds. He had the feeling in Germany of sitting at the bottom of the sea, a diving-bell providing him with just enough air to keep him from suffocation. In Paris he had breathed fresh air. There the light of the sun, human voices, the sounds of life had enraptured him. Now, down among the fishes, he shivered with cold. He suffered the most terrible ennui. The stillness made him ill; the narrowness of everything galled him to the quick. He describes himself as one of those natures which cannot in the long run endure the "solo music" of existence. "Symphonies of Beethoven or thunder-storms" were a necessity to him. He was one of the people who feel themselves out of place in a box at the theatre, who sit from choice in the pit, in the middle of the crowd. It seemed to him as if in Germany the bullion of life were minted underground, in the silence of midnight, like counterfeiters' coin. Those who worked did not enjoy, and those who enjoyed, who in the light of day set the money in circulation that had been coined in fear and trembling in the darkness, did not work. In France a man of health and |