The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From: “Ludwig Jacobowski in the Light of Life”

A deep insight into human nature prompted Ludwig Feuerbach to make the significant statement: “God is the manifest inner being, the expressed self of man, the confession of his innermost thoughts, the public confession of his love”. It is the trait in the human soul that this sentence describes that led Ludwig Jacobowski to write the “Novel of a God” when he wanted to portray the dark forces that rule at the bottom of the mind. In doing so, he set himself a task that naturalistic art is bound to fail in. All the individual actions, moods and thoughts of a person seem to point to a struggle in his soul that accompanies him from the moment he becomes conscious until his death. No matter what course the individual events that bring a person to life take, the fundamental struggle always arises anew. It is impossible to depict this struggle in all its magnitude, in its overwhelming scope, if one limits oneself to the reproduction of real facts and real human characters. One would then only be able to show symptoms of this struggle. A personality like Ludwig Jacobowski had to feel this way. For him, it was a matter of constantly deepening his inner life. He wanted to descend into the deepest pits of his own inner being. There he had to encounter the two fundamental forces of the mind that pull people back and forth and mysteriously determine their fate. The one force contains: kindness, love, patience, benevolence, beauty, the other: hatred, hostility, savagery, ugliness, resentment. Anyone who is honest with themselves must admit that there is something of all these elements within them. And the course of world history shows a demonic war that these forces wage, as they emerge from the breast of the individual and guide the destinies of people and nations. The imagination of the poet must go beyond reality if it is to depict the eternal struggle of these powers. From the Nordic pantheon, Ludwig Jacobowski took the superhuman figures he needed to portray the primal demons of the human soul. But the characters that the Nordic sagas had invested in their deities were no more than a starting point for him. He freely developed them in such a way that he could say how modern man feels about the primal struggle that is hinted at.

Balder, the mildness and beauty that has become a god, and Loki, the friend of destruction, are the mythological figures through which Jacobowski was able to express his thoughts poetically. Their fates within the Nordic world of gods became the “apparent inner self” in his novel, the “expressed self of man”. One must point out two main characteristics of Jacobowski as a person if one wants to understand why he was so successful as a poet in his “Loki”: one, the power of plastic creation, and the other, an enchanting lyrical swing. To a great extent, the poet has solved the task of creating mere soul forces so that they do not appear as shadowy allegories, but rather as vivid personalities. This fact is understandable when one knows that these powers of the soul truly detached themselves from his inner being like independent personalities, like demonic entities, and always accompanied him. They played such a role in his life that he felt them like figures that guided him, with whom he held dialogues, and even with whom he fought. And this struggle was so intense that it confused all his feelings, that it stirred up all his passions. The latter circumstance explains the subjective element with which he describes and which naturally sought a lyrical form of expression.

Human nature has within it both the element of selfless devotion and ruthless selfishness. The love of which Goethe says: “No self-love, no self-interest lasts, before its coming they have shrunk away, we call it being pious,” this love has to fight a difficult battle against selfishness, which also appropriates love, according to the words of Max Stirner: “I love people because love makes me happy.” I love because I feel good when I love. In human life, good is followed by evil as a necessary complement. Balder, the all-embracing love, the sun of existence, cannot exist without Loki, selfishness, darkness. Life must proceed in opposites.

It does not seem easy to portray Loki as a sympathetic character. Can one feel sympathy for selfishness, for the desire to destroy? Jacobowski was able to show Loki's character in a sympathetic light, because he knew that good is not only good, but also finite, limited in its goodness. However, the source of the world holds infinite possibilities. A Balder must not seize power. He may spread an immeasurable abundance of good; he must not settle permanently. He must give way to a subsequent Balder who brings new good. One may lament the downfall of good, for one must feel this downfall as an injustice. But this injustice must happen. A power is necessary that destroys good so that new good can arise. The new good needs the destroyer to come into being. Balder needs Loki. And Loki, like the best of gods, can lament that he has to kill Balder; but he kills him out of necessity, and in doing so prepares the way for Balder's son. This is the deeply tragic aspect that Jacobowski has brought out in the character of Loki. It is Loki's fate to be bad, so that new good can always enter the world.

Thus Jacobowski's “Loki” has grown out of a philosophical view of life. And just as a philosophical understanding of life cannot harm man in his full, all-round activity, so the “Novel of a God” is not impaired in its poetic value by the fact that it is steeped in a world of philosophical ideas. Robert Hamerling said of his “Ahasver”: “Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating the crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life – that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver.” And this is how Jacobowski imagined the character of his Loki. The overarching, superior nature of the philosophical ideas gives the constantly plastic characters and the vividly described events of the poem the character of a higher reality, without robbing them of the ordinary one.

One night, the Ases are terrorized by a terrible dream. Things never seen before are happening in the sky. Odin, the father of the gods, is awakened from his sleep. He sees his wife Frigg's bed unoccupied. Black mist rises from the bed. When the Ase rises to look for his wife, she is lying there with drops of sweat on her forehead and breathing heavily, as if she had just returned from a long journey. The other Ase experience similar things. In the morning they share their strange experiences with each other. Only Urd, the goddess of fate, can know what the mysterious events mean. But she cannot be asked, for her mouth only speaks when she is not asked. Urd's messenger, the black mountain falcon, announces that an Aesir child has been born this night. The mother is an Aesir, but Urd does not know who. Nor does she know who the father is. The Aesir women should take turns in nursing the child. It should be called “Loki”. Thus a being is placed in the world of the gods, sprung from it itself, but as a child of sin, the sin of the gods.

High up in the north, far from Valhalla, this child of sin grows up. Frigg, Odin's wife, has made a bed for him in a hut. And every day an Asin has to go to the distant hut to look after the little god. When Frigg was with him for the first time, the child smiled sweetly. But the goddess beats the boy. He learns to forget how to laugh. All the Asinnen mistreat the uncomfortable offspring of the gods. He is fed with glacier milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat. He is to atone for his sinful origin. This origin has made him an enemy of the entire world of gods. Through their treatment, the Asinnen plant the hostile attitude in him.

Soon they no longer bother about the boy. An elven old woman, Sigyn, continues to care for him in a motherly way. He grows up under her protection. He becomes a strong, serious being. The Asinnen have driven all cheerfulness out of him. He has to work hard to gain food from the earth. This is a mystery to him, and he asks Sigyn whether all beings have to create the bread of life in the sweat of their brow. The old woman's reply encompasses the feelings of all those who are burdened and weighed down, the anxious question that the disinherited must ask themselves at all times: “O wise world of the Ases! Some walk above the air and the sun, reaching into the lovely air to the right and to the left and grasping firm fruits and heavy stalks. And the others crawl laboriously over chasms and cliffs; and their hands tear at the rough earth, empty and only moist from their own sweat.” The god of the disinherited must therefore become Loki, and his feelings towards the other Ases are those of the joyless life burdened with toil towards the effortless, joy-producing happiness.

Loki sets out to meet the beings of his own kind who live in the sun of happiness. When he enters their circle, it becomes clear that he possesses something that they all have to do without, something that the one burdened with pain has over the one who enjoys undeserved happiness: true, supreme wisdom. Loki knows the future of the other gods, which remains hidden from them.

The happy man lives in the eternal present. He enjoys the moment, and it is far from his mind to ponder the causes that bring him the happiness of the moment. The one who is pained by the wheels of the world's course asks about their eternal play. From these questions, he gains insight into the course of things. Wisdom is born out of pain and privation. It makes one strong and hard against carefree dullness. Goethe once called (according to “Riemers Mitteilungen”) “dullness” the “beautiful, magical veil that places nature and truth in a more secret light”, and in the poem “To Fate” he praises this “dullness” with the words: “You have met the right measure for us, wrapped us in pure dullness, so that we, filled with the power of life, hope in the lovely presence of the dear future.” But Goethe also found a guiding principle for the other side of life: “Only he who must conquer it daily deserves freedom as well as life” (“Faust”, Part 2). Loki's life had to be conquered by himself from the very beginning. The path to wisdom leads through pain. That is why he also robs those who walk it of selfless love. Those who have not earned their fate through pain can give themselves selflessly. Those who have acquired their own through pain are all too easily reminded of their own suffering by the carefree happy. This is the case with Loki. He does not know love that is born of dull happiness. This love, which comes from the realm of the gods' joy, lives in Balder. But even the connoisseur of pain cannot close his mind to the power of this love. He must recognize its value. Loki trembles before this love, which he must appreciate, despite the fact that fate has denied it to him. He must confront Balder as an enemy; but he can only do so with the bitter feeling that he is fighting something great. The wisdom that comes from pain must thus give birth to new pain.

Why must the knowing Loki hate Balder, who lives in sweet ignorance but is full of love? Loki's wisdom ends before this question. For Loki's own fate is wrapped up in the answer to this question. And this fate of his is as unknown to him as it is to the other gods, but he sees through it with clairvoyance. What is destined for the other deities is open to his wisdom; what the dark powers have in store for him, this wisdom stops short of.

That is the fate of knowledge: it creates a new riddle by solving other riddles. But with happiness it robs us of our impartiality. That is why the happy believe that knowledge can only come from sin. Balder and Loki are always fighting in our soul. We could be completely happy if we were just pleasure-seekers. But then we would have no judgment of our happiness. We would have a joyful life, but one that would be like a dream. It is only through deprivation and misfortune that we learn what happiness is. But at the same time, they rob us of happiness along with insight.

It is a deep feature of Jacobowski's poetry that only two beings love Loki: Balder, the epitome of all happiness, and Sigyn, the elven old woman. Balder can do so because he does not know hatred, and Sigyn because she does not demand requited love. In the saga, Sigyn is a loving wife who naturally wants to be loved in return. In Jacobowski's poetry, she is a being who looks at the world and its happiness with sublime irony. She is equally distant from and close to Sigyn's hatred and love, because for her they are in the distance to which wisdom has pushed her. She is concerned that undeserved happiness should not become overpowering. That is why she cherishes and cares for the advocate of the disinherited in Loki.

The fight for a mere principle could not carry us away as Jacobowski's novel does. This fight would have to have something frosty about it if Loki were the opponent of the gods, just because he is supposed to represent the negating powers within the world plan. Loki does not fight alone for a general cause; he also fights for his own cause. Balder deprives him of the most beloved, the adored woman. And it is precisely from this personal misfortune of Loki that Balder's happiness springs. That Nanna becomes Balder's wife, not Loki's, completes the latter's happiness and thus that of the other Ases. “Nanna and Balder... These two names made the gods of Valhalla tremble with delight. Light came to light, sun to sun, and the love of the two shielded the glorious world of the gods from the fiends of darkness and the giants in icy Jötumheim better than enormous walls of rock and iron. Their name was like a shimmering breastplate and a deep-sounding shield. Misfortune struck against it, but the armor shone on, and the shield sounded deep, as if the blow had been struck with a light willow wand.»

The gods not only enjoy their undeserved luck, they have also stolen Loki's luck. This gives his opponents a personal coloration and personal right. The weaknesses in the lives and characters of the gods, the imperfections in the world they control: Loki uses everything to make life difficult for the Ases. “Loki's Pranks” describes the war of destruction that he wages against his divine enemies. Odin and Thor's way of life is thwarted by these pranks, so that divine omnipotence and strength must give way before the scorn that the wisdom disguised as cunning pours over them. Loki destroys the institutions in the human realm that the gods look upon with favor, indeed, on which they live: he does so with superior mockery. He protects the oppressed; he shakes the slaves from their stupor, so that the “holy”, the “divine” world order betrays its imperfection. The power of the gods over the children of earth is shattered by Loki's cleverness. He brings shame to the realm of the gods itself. Freya, the most beautiful of the Ases, loves the enemy of the Ases. It is precisely this love that Loki uses to bring the bitterest scorn upon Valhalla. He becomes the devil; he has Freya's love exposed by ugly dwarves.

The wildest of Loki's works is the destruction of Baldur and the realm in which only those people live who live according to Baldur's sense. It is the kingdom of a people “in which never a fist was raised against a foreign head, never a lewd word was attached to a maiden's footsteps, like dirty sand to wet heels, never a red gold ring or a brownish amber necklace awakened impure desire. There the stalks shot freely into the air, and clouds and winds, rain and sun, pressed to the mercy of being able to spread their abundance of blessings over Balders land. In the illuminated air, the noblemen strode along, their stately heads proudly raised, their golden locks cascading over their broad shoulders; and their wives walked beside them, their foreheads clear and calm, their gentleness softly illuminated by their eyes.” Loki brings ruin to this land. For everything that reminds people of Balder and his being is to be destroyed. Loki leads the people of the land, where hunger reigns, against the noblemen in Balders territory. The sons of Balders fall under the mighty blows of the oppressed. A dog is placed on Balders throne. “The noblemen bow their heads low before the snarling animal, one after the other, their faces white as linen in the field when the early sun licks over it. Then the women approach. The bright golden hair falls from their round heads and piles up next to the throne, then children again, wailing and weeping over the shame, and they rub their foreheads bloody on the ground out of shame."

With that, Loki has fulfilled his task. Balder and all that belongs to him has been overcome. The other Aesir have also followed Balder into the realm of the dead. But Loki cannot remain the victor. A youth steps out from among the sons of Balder, who are paying homage to the beast. The beast pushes itself down from the throne, glides to the ground and licks the youth's foot. Loki must confess: “Woe to you and to me. This is Balders son. The Lord and King!”... Far out Loki threw himself “into the field, so that his head struck against stones. But he did not pay attention to it. He cried incessantly: “This is Balders son! Balder is not dead! Balder lives, ... eternally like me ..., stronger than me ..., Balder, the sun son! ... Woe to me! ...

Thus the “Novel of a God” ends in the great mystery of the world, which encloses existence and becoming in a riddle. The creative is eternal. And the creative eternally produces its counterpart: destruction. We humans are enmeshed in this course of the world. We live the world's riddle. The creative is eternally right, and so is destruction. Balder and Loki belong together like creation and destruction. Creation is an usurper. But it is its fate that it must have destruction at its side. Balder needs Loki; and Loki must be evil so that new Balders can always arise in the eternal game of the world.

Jacobowski has built his poetry on the basis of great questions of world view. Through it, he has shown how deeply he himself has been gripped by the eternal riddles of existence. One must have seen the threatening abyss of life before one in order to have accomplished a rescue attempt such as the “Novel of a God.”

Novel by Emma Böhmer

Dresden and Leipzig, Verlag von Carl Reißner, 1901

The suffering of the young girl, who, contrary to all healthy nature, has to develop within a “correct” family life, is portrayed by Gabriele Reuter in her well-known novel “Aus guter Familie” with consummate psychological skill. The reader of this novel must be stirred to a lively sense of the depth of this problem. But one also senses that the modern question of fate raised here can be posed in more than one way. In her recently published novel “Inkorrekt”, Emma Böhmer has posed this question in a way that is of the greatest interest to observers of modern social conditions. We get to know the author as a serious artist and a keen observer. She describes with a certain lyrical warmth that reveals in every sentence the degree to which she embraces the figures of her imagination. There is a great deal of compositional talent to be recognized in the way Emma Böhmer contrasts the characters with each other. Two sisters develop from a “good family”. One becomes what is expected according to the family's philosophy of life. She meets people as the customs of her class demand; she strives to please men, but only in the correct mask of well-behaved reserve; she only presents herself to people as the daughter of a “well-educated” family, because she only reads scandalous novels in secret and never forgets to put them away safely when she interrupts her reading. She marries as noble daughters marry, so that nothing of the truth of inner life needs to be said in the hypocritical relationship between bride and bridegroom. Her marriage must be one that has two sides, a barren and empty one at home and a correct one towards society. The other sister, the main character of the novel, asserts the inner truth of her being, no matter how often she is forced to hide it within the circle of her proper family. She seeks ways to develop her artistic impulses. She has to do everything in this direction behind her parents' backs, because they can only see all this as a distortion of the true character of a girl. She finds a man who understands her soul's inclinations. If circumstances were favorable, this man would secure a position for himself and then, although he could never find the full sympathy of his parents as a writer, he would at least find “mercy” from them. And even if this were not the case, the two people would force themselves to live a life that meets their needs. But since an accident causes the man's sudden death, the situation takes a turn that, while it illuminates the unnatural environment in which the girl has developed, forces her personality, which is struggling for independence, to achieve complete liberation. She is found with the just-deceased lover. This means a scandal for all her “proper” relatives. She leaves her house and family and sets out on a “lonesome journey” in search of a life in freedom. As in the course of the preceding events, the peculiarities of the characters of the individual members of the “good family” become particularly apparent at the end, when what can only be considered a “scandal” occurs in their eyes. The personalities of the parents, as well as those of the two sisters, form contrasting figures, subtly differentiated by the way in which the character of each is distorted by a stereotyped way of life. The father is particularly interesting, in whose mind the bureaucrat's way of thinking struggles with a good heart in such a way that the reader also experiences a fierce battle of emotions between sympathy for a basically mild and noble person and aversion to a personality that is completely , but inwardly completely unfree personality.

I don't think anyone will put the novel down without the conviction that the author has given them the opportunity to delve into a few human souls in a stimulating way, which are truly worth the interest. The presentation is characterized by artistic brevity. Nothing is said that is not required by the nature of the task at hand. All of these are characteristics that can be considered good omens for the author's future career.

Treatise on the last seven paragraphs of Lessing's Education of the Human Race. Written by Gustav Hauffe.

Awarded a prize by the Aug. Jenny Foundation through the jury of the German Writers' Association in Leipzig. Borna 1891, A. Jahnke

Lessing's “Education of the Human Race” is a treasure trove of profound thoughts. Gideon Spicker has dealt with this best in his book on Lessing's world view. The last seven paragraphs of the “Education” are, as is well known, about metempsychosis, that is, the appearance of the human soul individuality in progressive forms of development on ever higher levels. This book is dedicated to this idea. The first pages (1-27) contain a useful discussion of the main idea as it appears in Lessing. Every reader will be satisfied with the lucidity of these “preliminary remarks”. The writer of these lines has not been as successful with the following content, which weaves together Hauffe's own thoughts on metempsychosis with the sayings of important thinkers and artists of all times, and which completely lacks clarity and comprehensibility. One consequence of this is the countless repetitions of one and the same thought in the most diverse turns of phrase. The content should be limited to a third of the space and the arrangement should be based on the various pages from which the matter has been understood over the course of time. In this case, even the adherents of completely opposing views, to which I count myself, would have to be grateful for the book. A modern thinker will naturally not understand sentences such as the following: “If our inner being is already reflected in our physical appearance in the present, why should we be deprived of this in the future, since we do not lose any of the essential inner conditions, and the external means for this will also be found, according to the future stage of existence?” The educated classes have long since stopped thinking in terms of questions such as “why not?” One could just as easily write the following sentence: “If a plant has the ability to grow and feed itself, why shouldn't it also have a soul?” These are very vague thoughts. Inaccuracies such as those in the note ($. 183) should not occur: “Goethe also says - according to an old philosopher -: ‘No created spirit penetrates the depths of nature.’” With all due respect, this is not what Goethe says, but rather he quotes the sentence as a philistine one, which he “curses for twenty years” (cf. the essay: Freundlicher Zuruf. Weimar Edition, II. Abt., 6. Bd., S. 244ff). Anyone who thinks that this is a Goethe quote has no understanding of Goethe's world view. In other places, too, passages from philosophical writers are quoted that have nothing whatsoever to do with metempsychosis and that are not understood and are taken out of context.

The comedy of manners “Ledige Leute” (Single People), which has been a great success in Vienna, is to be performed in Berlin by the Dramatische Gesellschaft. A public performance cannot take place because it has been forbidden by the police. Felix Dörmann is a Viennese poet with great talent. Years ago, he became known for his collections of poems. He is the poet of a glowing sensuality and wild passion. He has a particular penchant for the morbid and the weak. He is captivated by an unhealthy-looking face; a healthy complexion and full cheeks are anathema to him. He likes to sing the praises of dark circles under the eyes.

The literary calendar for 1898 by Joseph Kürschner has recently been published. The incomparable care with which Kürschner works on such works has long been so well known that I can spare myself the task of praising it again this time. No less well known is the indispensability of this handbook for anyone who has to maintain a connection with the world of writers. But it is remarkable that Kürschner has to complain every year about how little writers remember this indispensability at the right moment. “The writing man” - says Kürschner in the preface - “seems to have a preference for treating his address lightly, to his own detriment! Writing is also subject to the same rules of communication, and the same man who protects his clothes from moth damage before going on a journey does nothing to ensure that his mail is received in his absence. If he is constantly in arrears, he is even less likely to think about staying in touch and sinks irretrievably into the quagmire of unreliable contacts for editors and calendar publishers. And then there is the - well, let's call it laziness in answering, in simply returning a form, the consequences of which usually have to be suffered by the innocent. There is a gentleman from Leipzig, the owner of two rubber stamps with addresses on them, who is therefore practically predestined to take care of his formalities, who has gradually fallen into the drain (i.e. is no longer in the literary calendar), because his existence could no longer be proven to me. Now, at last, he reports to my “highborn” using the aforementioned rubber stamps, expressing his particular “astonishment at having fallen under the table. He is neither ‘proud’ nor ‘conceited, to be ’stingy” after being included, but believes he “can claim a right” that “others are undeservedly granted”. The veil of modesty in which the offended innocence had been wrapped up until then now becomes a toga, in whose folds war and peace rest. In a tone that not only I, but also the rules of Alberti's feud, the renegade concludes his epistle: “Of course I will not find myself obliged to work for a cause that - as I must believe - fights with superficiality or partiality.”» There can truly be no question of superficiality here. The literary legal relationships, the literary associations and foundations, and everything that one would like to know about these things are listed with admirable thoroughness. The “literary chronicle” of the past year is carefully treated, and the names, titles, works and addresses, as well as the age of the writers, are recorded in a way that cannot be praised enough in this literary address book. And no authority could proceed more impartially when it comes to compiling an address book. The directory of publishers, magazines and newspapers, German theaters and their boards, agencies, etc. is also useful. In short, Kürschner does what he can. One can only hope that his justified complaints about the lack of support from his colleagues in the field will become less frequent from year to year.

I

Dear reader, I cannot find the words to describe to you the impression that the poems that came to me today have made on me. Listen to the poet himself:

Year after year...
In the park
I tease the young girls,
who no longer blush, no longer smile.
Don't make a bad face!
They just keep quiet, look past me.

Cross their arms.
The distant sound of
chattering happiness.

Here,
where my sweetheart fell into my arms,
loud

Love sobbed
the red mouth of a flower is silent,
it was quiet around me.
My mother's coffin collapses under the earth!

And if you still haven't had enough, dear reader, I'll give you a second sample:

This morning I sang three love songs
over the melting snow
into the soft air.

At noon I was so hungry;
my dreams almost fell into my peas.
I stuffed.

Now the moon is shining.

From my heart
three hundred cats are screaming.

But now I won't bring you another sample. I love you too much, dear reader. But I had to tell you about the latest volume of poetry, “Neues Leben” by Georg Stolzenberg, which has just been published in Berlin by Johann Sassenbach. If you think it is intended to compete with the “Kladderadatsch”, which contains many a cheerful stylistic experiment in its “Correspondence of the Editorial Office”, you are mistaken. It is really and truly serious “modern poetry”, and the booklet is dedicated to no less a person than Mr. Stolzenberg's “friend” Arno Holz.

Mr. Georg Stolzenberg has truly discovered the new lyricism with his singing. On May 7, 1898, he announced this in the “Zukunft”, which is so suitable for “self-advertisements”. He says that he has been searching for many years to be able to put his feelings into the appropriate form. “Then I read some of the newest poems by Arno Holz. As soon as I grasped their essence, it was clear to me what had held back the development of a truly contemporary art of verse for so long: the thick tangle of words that even those of our poets who have long since been beyond criticism had to stuff by the cartload into their verse buildings so that there were no too large cracks, the compulsion to twist the reluctant thread of thought through the rhyme ear each time, the necessity to constantly make the word dance. With the technique created by Arno Holz, in which, as he himself puts it, ultimate simplicity is the highest law and [possible] naturalness seems to be the most intense form of art, lyric poetry is beginning anew, as it were.” And now enough. Stolzenberg's prose is worthy of his ‘poetry.’

II

Poetry is now blossoming in new ways. The editors of this journal have not yet reformed their tastes enough to be able to pass judgment on this latest artistic direction. Therefore, without passing judgment, they present readers with a few samples of these latest achievements. However, it should be noted that these lyrical creations are meant to be taken seriously by their creators.

The master, Arno Holz, leads the way. In his latest collection, “Phantasus” (Berlin, Sassenbach. Second issue 1899) contains:

I ride my winged steed
I whip my winged steed.
through!

Beyond shattered planetary systems, beyond glaciated
primeval suns, behind deserts of night and nothingness
shimmering new worlds grow - trillions of crocus flowers!

Now the students: Georg Stolzenberg, “Neues Leben” (Second Issue. Berlin 1899):

Spring wind
touches the skirts.
All the girls are beautiful.
They buy little bunches of violets
and laugh for no reason.
I
twirl my beautifully curled
Maikaterbart! [ruffled]

*

Robert Hess writes in his “Fables” (Berlin 1899):

The evening sky is shining metallic.
Under dark branches
a shepherd is blowing.
The goats are still gambolling.
mosquitoes dance.
A sheep looks at the setting sun.
Yuck!

Rolf Wolfgang Martens “Befreite Flügel” (Berlin 1899) contains:

In water boots,
with rolled-up sleeves,
he roams the primeval forests.
His gaze
measures the giant trees.
On the summit of Gaurisankar
he proudly builds himself a castle.
There he carouses with Ramses, Timur and Alexander the Great. I approach
I approach him and show him a colorful, shimmering
Indignant [meadow flowers]
he throws me down the stairs!

The stormy national struggles within Austria have meant that today, more than even a short time ago, the complicated cultural conditions of this state are also being examined outside its borders. However, the ideas that have been formed by the increased attention paid to the thoughts and feelings of the Austrian peoples are still very deficient. A large part of the German Reich knows nothing about these thoughts and feelings. I would like to point out one thing. The struggle that the Germans are waging for their nationality has produced a German national battle poetry that is hardly ever spoken of outside of Austria. The poetic fighters of the present include: Aurelius Polzer - who publishes his poems under the pseudonym Erich Fels -, Adolf Harpf - under the name Adolf Hagen -, Keim, Naaff and many others. The artistic value of the poems created in this area is, however, not very high. Nevertheless, the whole movement deserves attention. For it sings of how a large and important part of the Austrian Germans think and feel. There is a lot of character, strength and heart in the songs of these German poets of Austria. We would like to draw your attention to a work by one of these poets. Adolf Hagen has just published a booklet entitled “Über deutschvolkliches Sagen und Singen” (Leipzig 1898). He describes the nature of the German national soul from the point of view of the German-nationalist Austrian. The booklet is a good way to learn many things about Austria that are difficult to find out about in Germany in any other way.

The memorial service for Theodor Fontane, which was organized by the Berlin association “Freie Bühne” on October 16 [1898], included an interesting commemorative speech by Otto Brahms, director of the Deutsches Theater. Brahm was one of the first to put his critical talent at the service of the new literary movements that were emerging in Germany in the 1880s, and Theodor Fontane, although he was already one of the “old guard” at the time, warmly welcomed the “young” and showed them an understanding as if he had become young again with them. The critic Brahm had personal connections with Theodor Fontane, and in his speech he was able to share memories and passages from letters that shed a beautiful light on the poet's personality. After the establishment of the “Freie Bühne”, Fontane immediately pointed out Gerhart Hauptmann as the artist of the future and followed every further step of the same with heartfelt interest. He expressed this interest in his letters in a way that testifies to the high artistic sense as well as the fine humor of the poet. Fontane found significant and also witty words for what Sudermann, Georg Hirschfeld and other younger poets have achieved. Otto Brahm shed light on the relationship between the “Poet of the Mark” and the “Nordic liberator” Henrik Ibsen in a somewhat dry but nonetheless subtle manner. He showed how close the two poets were to each other in their understanding of human relationships and mental processes, and how they touched on social criticism in their works. Otto Brahm has excellently brought out the artistic and human physiognomy of Fontane. He counts the poet among the naturalists because he never believed in a legislative aesthetic in his whole life, but left himself to the free rule of his nature. Nobody can be more convinced than Fontane was that the ethical and artistic standards of people are constantly changing. He never asked how a work of art related to general rules, but always based his judgment on the individual impression it made on him. Even when the “young” behaved somewhat boisterously, Fontane did not confront them with the aesthetic rules in a blustering manner, as other “old” people did. He understood them even in their excesses, for he knew that many futile attempts must be made if something fruitful and future-proof is to develop in the end. For him, even the rejection of the younger generation by his contemporaries was incomprehensible. He could not really understand why the old trees did not want to tolerate the young offspring that had grown from the seeds they themselves had ripened.

The latest issue of the Viennese weekly Die Zeit contains a report that deserves to be read by as many people as possible. The poet Wilhelm Schäfer published a novella entitled “The Murderer” in this weekly several months ago. He describes the events leading up to a murder and the subsequent fate of the murderer. What does the public prosecutor do? The poet himself writes about it: “I based my story on an actual murder that took place in my home country a few decades ago and that caused great excitement among us children. The murdered man was found exactly as I described it: naked and without a head. In this story, the public prosecutor has found a series of events that, strangely enough, correspond exactly to what the investigation has only recently brought to light, and what no one except the investigator could have known, but which I invented in order to draw the refined reflection of my murderer. In this way, I have fallen under suspicion of complicity as a brash fabulator. And so much so that the day before yesterday I was interrogated in the matter of the “murder in the Aaperwald”."

The Vienna Academy of Sciences has not only awarded Gerhart Hauptmann the Grillparzer Prize for his “Fuhrmann Henschel” as befits its status. It has also done him a special honor beyond that. Prof. Süß, the president of the academy, who is at the forefront of contemporary scientific thought, gave a speech on the great poet of scientific thought. It is a spiritual event of the highest order that an academy shows such understanding for one of the most progressive artists. If only that were a good sign!