The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Benno Diederich, the author of the biography of Zola in the Leipzig Biographical People's Books, has now published two essays in the Virchow Collection, which previously contained nothing about the famous Frenchman. They formed a lecture that Diederich gave at the Hamburg Literary Society, and are being made available in this form to the widest possible audience, and will certainly find a grateful readership at a time when the name Zola is on everyone's lips. In the first part, they provide an overview of the great novelistic work of the Rougon-Macquarts, which vividly orientates Zola's readers about the context of the individual novels. In the second part, they describe a characteristic side of the poet's writing style, which, explained by a variety of examples, provides an interesting contribution to the understanding of his art. In line with the tendency of Virchow's collection, the author has avoided all abstract, literary theorizing; he does not assume any knowledge and introduces his readers to the great series of novels in a completely unbiased way; he also deals with the difficult the difficult subject of the theory of environment, he treats it in such a way that the reader, without being held up by academic undergrowth, can follow a clear path step by step and orient himself on the numerous examples. All in all, a booklet that many will read with interest.

Under this title, Gusti Reichel has published a small work of art, which, although it occupies only a modest place within modern art, touches the reader pleasantly precisely because of its modesty and naivety, and can count on quiet understanding, especially from women. The small work consists of ten drawings, each of which is accompanied by an aphorism, united in a tastefully designed folder. The image and text are the property of the artist. The sheets are photolithographed from the originals and, with all their individual characteristics, have a very friendly effect. Six sheets offer motifs from the Black Forest, the remaining motifs from the Mark. The most beautiful sheets include “View from the Georgenturm in Calw”, “Mountain Ruin Liebenzell”, “Gable, Market Fountain and Forest Motif” and “Ruin of the Hirsau Monastery”. The whole thing has something special and can be recommended to quiet women's souls.

in response to the article: My “imagined” revolution, by Arno Holz

Every psychologist knows the type of person who is only capable of understanding his own laboriously constructed train of thought; and who is absolutely obtuse to everything that someone else says from his point of view. Arno Holz is a good example of this type. He also has a characteristic mental trait of these people. They start to swear when they hear something that contradicts their assertions. They cannot remain in a factual discussion because they are simply unable to understand the other person.

I only mention these misunderstandings because of the nature of Arno Holz's mind. The tone in which these remarks appear would also make it understandable if I refrained from replying to each one.

I see that in order to be understood by Mr. Holz's way of thinking, I would have had to be much more detailed. Holz has no idea of the sense in which I use the word “primal lyricism”. Well, I use it in the same sense in which Goethe used the words “primal plant” and “primal animal”. Everything I said about Holz in the essay “On the Modern Soul” proves that - though only, it seems, for differently organized thought processes than those of Mr. Holz. “Urlyrik” is for me the essence of lyric poetry, the sum of everything that is common to all types of lyric poetry, regardless of the forms in which they appear. This essence will be common to all future lyric poetry with all past. Goethe says that there must be an Urpflanze, because otherwise how would one recognize that this or that is a plant.

He also says that from the idea of this original plant, one can imagine as many plant forms as one likes, all of which have the potential to live. The very first plant form that ever appeared in reality is also a special form of this original plant, a real realization. It was the same with the earliest lyrical productions. They are related to what I have called “original lyric poetry” like an outer appearance to an inner essence. This primal lyricism was never really there, but is extracted from real forms by our knowledge, just as Goethe extracted the idea of the primal plant from real plant forms. Someone can stand on the ground of a different world view from the one I stand on. Then he can dispute the justification for establishing such a concept of “primal lyricism” as I do. But Holz thinks that when I speak of primal lyricism, I am thinking of the initial stages of lyric production. If I did that, then my remarks would be downright nonsensical. And Holz is polemicizing against nonsense that I did not say, but that only haunts his head as a distorted image of my assertions. The basis of lyricism is the content of feeling and imagination and the rhythmic forms inherent in it. This basis is what constitutes the idea of “primal lyricism” in my sense. What comes in addition is the particular form in detail. Since nothing real corresponds completely to the idea on which it is based, no real lyricism will correspond to the idea of “primal lyricism”. An external rhythm will be added to the immanent rhythm. If in the Korriborrilieder and other chronologically first lyrical productions the outer form hardly allows the idea of lyric poetry to be recognized, if there, because of the outer rhythm, downright nonsense comes to light, then that corresponds completely to another fact: also the chronologically first animal and plant forms correspond in their sensory reality only little to what one can call in the sense of Goethe the Urtier or Urpflanze. Mr. Wood, you have not understood what I mean by primal poetry. I understand that, because I have known for a long time that when it is not a matter of concrete things but of abstract things, most people cannot tell a button from a lamppost. I was talking about a lamppost; you thought it was a button.

But what I would not have expected of you, you have done. Certainly not intentionally. But perhaps because you did not see my thoughts above the ghost image that has taken root in your head from my remarks. You falsify my sentences in order to refute me. I said: “Poetry will certainly discard the forms it has used up to now and will reveal itself in new forms at a higher level of development. But it cannot become primal poetry in the course of its development.” Why? In my opinion, it cannot, because primal poetry is the essence of poetry that runs through all individual poetic forms. Look at my sentence carefully. It says that. But you quote: “But it cannot become the original lyric again in the course of development.” That is nonsense from my point of view. I cannot say “again”, which you attribute to me, because “original lyric” has never existed. I have not said it either. So you have falsified my sentence.

But you don't care about understanding me at all. Otherwise you wouldn't lump together what I have carefully separated: your lyrical production and your theoretical explanations about poetry.

But to do that, you falsify again. You claim that I said: “The critic has only to understand the ‘author’, but not to patronize him.” Where did I say that? Please read: “If a ‘poet’ stops at this original form of lyric poetry, that is his business. The critic has only to understand him, but not to patronize him.” Mr. Holz, you are also an author in your theoretical book, Revolution der Lyrik. But you are not a poet in it. I have polemicized against the “author” of a theoretical book; I have tried to understand the “poet”. Whether I have succeeded in doing so in your sense is a matter for itself.

But what are you doing with my sentences! You say that I claimed that you wanted to define the “original form” of lyric poetry. Not a word of that is true either. I said, in essence, that what you give as a definition of new lyric poetry is, in my opinion, the “original form” of lyric poetry.

Whether you reject my judgment of your poetry or not is of no interest to me. Nor do I care whether you claim that I understand the biogenetic law or not. What interests me is your admission that you do not fully understand the metaphor of “midwives of criticism”. Since you do not understand this, it is understandable to me why you do not understand my other sentences either.

But now I'm done. Not just for this time. Anyone who polemicizes like you can continue to enrich my collection of psychological curiosities. I will not engage with you further. You can claim that I am the worst idiot in Europe for all I care.

A few words

[on the article “Schluss” (Conclusion)] by Mr. Arno Holz I have only a few words to say. You do not force me to be untrue to my words: “I will not argue with you any further,” which I addressed to Mr. Holz in my reply to his attack in No. 9 of the “Magazin”. However, as editor, I must first apologize to the readers of the magazine for including Holz's comments. I believe that people of this ilk should not be given the right to complain that they are being cut off. As we all know, children always want to have the last word. What would be the point of all the arguing! Mr. Holz lacks the necessary education to engage in a serious discussion of these matters. One can be an excellent poet and yet be too uneducated to have an opinion on certain things, for example, the relationship between Haeckel's and Goethe's world view. However, since Mr. Holz is so sure of victory, I must state a few “facts” here:

Mr. Holz, who in his first article distorted the wording of my assertions in the most arbitrary manner, and who tries to conceal this distortion by comparing it with the harmless reversal of the words “work” and “rhythm” in Bücher's book, now claims that I subsequently claimed, in order to justify myself, that my remarks were meant in the Goethean sense. This is a slander that Mr. Holz is most likely committing unwittingly. I have always used the words “original form”, “primordial animal” and so on in a series of works, for example in my book “Goethe's Weltanschauung”, which was published in 1897, in the sense in which I use them in the article about Mr. Arno Holz. In the latter book, I have clearly expressed how the actual (temporal) first form relates to the ideal original form. I am therefore quite indifferent to what Holz says about these things, of which he understands nothing. However, it must be firmly established that this gentleman will use any means to defend his elementary statements, which I have not even disputed, but only returned to their true meaning, against things that do not enter his head. If I wanted to accuse someone of claiming such nonsense as Mr. Holz does, I would first feel obliged to familiarize myself with the views of the person in question, especially if he has been expressing these views in a series of writings for the past fifteen years. Mr. Holz slanders in the blue. This is the escalation in the nature of his polemic: first forgery, then slander. If all this were not based on an almost touching ignorance, one would be tempted to call it frivolous. I would be ashamed to have forfeited the right to frivolity through ignorance in such a way of fighting.

“Genius and Philistine” by Hermann Türck

I had not originally intended to respond to Hermann Türck's “reply”. I know how difficult it is to dissuade someone from their pet ideas in such cases, which they have - as is undoubtedly the case with Türck - acquired through years of diligent research. I would also avoid these few words if, to my sincere regret, Türck had not taken a very peculiar path in his polemic. At the end of my remarks on the “genius” (Magazin No. 20, p. 516), I indicated the easiest way in which I could be misunderstood and therefore apparently refuted. I do not quite understand why Hermann Türck is taking the easy way out that I myself have pointed out. No, words are not important to me; but they are to Hermann Türck. He wants to save the words that he has used to characterize the genius in his book. The genius is supposed to be characterized by selfless action, in contrast to the philistine, who acts selfishly. But I have now shown that the supposed selflessness of the genius is nothing but egoism, which is only directed at other things than the egoism of the everyday person. Hermann Türck thinks he can agree with this: if I distinguish between egoism a (in the philistine) and egoism b (in the genius). He calls only the egoism b selflessness. But I do not distinguish between egoism a and egoism b. Rather, the egoism of the genius is exactly the same as that of the everyday person. When the king of Persia offers Alexander half of his kingdom and he is not satisfied with it, while Parmenion would be, then Alexander is undoubtedly the more brilliant, but Parmenion is undoubtedly the more selfless. But that only proves that the degree of egoism or selflessness has nothing to do with genius. But Alexander has a greater intellectual power of procreation, a greater productivity of action than Parmenion. This power of procreation wants to be discharged. Therefore he chooses the greater, which gives his power of procreation more opportunity for activity. But in terms of the degree of egoism, he is no different from the Philistine, of whom, as is well known, the saying also says: if you give him an inch, he will take a yard. I knew a person who was the most selfless person imaginable. He was not absorbed in caring for his own self, but completely absorbed in altruistic work for others. However, this person, who was selfless in the most eminent sense, had nothing at all that was ingenious. He was an excellent – nanny. No, if you want to explain genius, egoism and altruism are of no concern to you; it is only the procreative power of man. This, and not selflessness, is highly developed in people of genius. I was right to use the example of Darwinism as a reinterpretation of the story of creation. For there are people who would prefer to speak like this: It pleased the Almighty to create man from ape-like mammals in the struggle for existence. If a Haeckelian now comes along and says: not the Almighty, but causal necessity created man, then Türck, if he were to speak in the same style as he fights me, could reply: What you call causal necessity is just another almighty creator. I have nothing against your distinguishing between Creator a (wise, almighty God) and Creator b (causal necessity). Now, I think that Hermann Türck should not have voluntarily fallen into the trap of the “play on words” that I set up at the end of my essay.

The third lecture evening took place on Wednesday, February 12, [1902] at the [Berlin] literary art salon, Lutherstraße. Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture that was characterized by its brevity and spirit, and he succeeded in awakening a lively interest in the great sufferer Multatuli in his listeners. Multatuli's works, which can only be understood by those who know the torments suffered by a man of action who is condemned to inactivity, belong to those great poet-prophets and warners whose voice should and will be heard. Miss Marie Holgers, the excellent artist, read some of Multatuli's poems and prose sketches, which inspired the audience with their moving content, which deals with the mismanagement in the Dutch colonies, as well as with the masterful way in which they were read. Afterwards, Dr. Poritzki, Fens Stammer Hetland and Spohr read further samples from Multatuli's works, which all met with great interest and lively applause. It was certainly a very rewarding task to bring this great man and poet closer to his fellow countrymen. May Multatuli, the great martyr of a great and holy cause, find friends and admirers! Our time needs such voices in the struggle.

[The] Workers' Education School Berlin organized a Freiligrath evening at the trade union building on Sunday, 17 February 1901, which was attended by over 1000 people. Dr. Steiner gave the introductory lecture; he had a masterful way of describing the poet's development. Under the impression of the world trade in Amsterdam, where Freiligrath was to train for the merchant class, he first became a poetic writer of exotic subjects, comparable in the intensity of his coloration to Böcklin. Despite the fact that he then took the view that the poet “must stand on a higher vantage point than on the battlements of the party”, over the years he became a fervent poet of freedom for the socially oppressed. He rejected the royal pension that he had received for several years and in 1844, with the contemporary poems Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (A Confession of Faith), he opened the series of his social poems. Although he was acquitted by the jury in 1848 for his involvement in the revolution, he was forced to flee to London when the reactionaries won. There he had to work as a bookkeeper to earn a living for himself and his family, because the publication of his poems and the masterful translation of foreign poetry did not earn him enough. It was only through the amnesty in 1867 that the poet was able to return to Germany. The speaker concluded his lecture by saying that the best way to characterize the greatest poets of the 19th century was to describe Lenau as the poet of melancholy, Heine as the poet of exuberance and Freiligrath as the poet of heroism. Even though Freiligrath said at the end of his life that his social poems no longer had any agitational effect, he was mistaken. His revolutionary songs of freedom still inspire freedom fighters today. And when the great day of liberation dawns, the name of Ferdinand Freiligrath will shine among the poets of freedom in golden letters. The enthusiastic words of the speaker were met with rich applause.

The following numbers of the excellent program also offered great enjoyment. Exact chamber music, recitations of Freiligrath's poems, performed in an excellent, atmospheric way by Mr. Friedrich Moest, and singing performances by Mr. Friedrichs were well-deserved applause from the numerous listeners. The evening was one of the most enjoyable among those organized by the school so far.

[ 79 ] The "Young Germany" and revolutionary poetry around the middle of the century strove for an intimate interpenetration of the general cultural ideas of political interests with artistic creation. The demands of the time found expression in the works of the poets. In the fifties, a literary movement emerged that took a different stance towards art. People now asked less what they wanted to express in poetry; they focused first and foremost on the most perfect way in which a process, an idea, a feeling could be shaped. What must a drama, a novel, a novella and so on be like? These were questions that preoccupied the consciousness of the time. Strict demands were made with regard to the technical perfection of the individual art forms. Two theoretical works by creative poets are clear testimony to this school of thought: Gustav Freytag's "Technik des Dramas" (1863) and Friedrich Spielhagen's "Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans" (1883). All the details of both types of poetry are carefully discussed in these two writings. In the creations of Friedrich Spielhagen, this basic trait of the artistic attitude is particularly clear. This poet has the most lively need to deal with all the questions and ideas that move his time; but the demands of art are more important to him than this. He strives for inner harmony and organic structure in all his works. In his first major novels "Problematische Naturen" (1860), "Durch Nacht zum Licht" (1861), "In Reih und Glied" (1866), "Hammer und Amboß" (1868), this striving for the pure art form still takes a back seat to the social goals that the poet sets himself. It appears at its most pronounced in "Sturmflut" (1876). In the former novels, the aim is to show the contrasts in the views and lifestyles of different classes and social strata or to portray the relationship of the individual to the whole. In these works, Spielhagen's interest in cultural history and his enthusiasm for freedom and progress have an equal share with his artistic intentions. In "Sturmflut", the phenomena of natural and human life are no longer juxtaposed as they appear to direct observation, but as the purpose of art demands. In the past, the poet was concerned with illustrating which currents in life are capable of defeating others; now he is primarily concerned with creating exciting conflicts and satisfying solutions. Spielhagen has remained true to this direction in his work to the present day. "Plattland" (1879), "Uhlenhaus" (1884), "Ein neuer Pharao" (1889), "Sonntagskind" (1893) are poems that still make a significant impression on those who do not take offense at the fact that art is in a certain sense alienated from real life. To an even greater degree than to Spielhagen, the above is applicable to Paul Heyse. He brought the form of the novella to its most mature development. He is a master in the artful interlinking of mental processes and relationships. He knows how to give the simplest conflicts a highly exciting development by giving them unexpected twists and turns. For him, art has become an end in itself. Heyse does not face reality like an impartial observer, but like a gardener of the plant world, who asks himself with every natural species: in what way can I refine it? He succeeds equally well in portraying the immediate life of the present ("Die kleine Mama") and the sensibilities and perceptions of past times ("Frau Alzeyer", Troubadour-Novellen); his tone sounds with perfect beauty, whether it is serious ("Der verlorene Sohn") or humorous ("Der letzte Centaur"). Heyse is not a creative nature in the highest sense of the word, but a perfecter of inherited artistic vision and outlook on life. The novel with which he achieved great success in the seventies, "Children of the World" (1873), grew out of the movement of thought that Hegel's successors (see page 48 ff.) had aroused. How the children of the world, who seek to satisfy their religious needs through the free views of the present, find their way in life is portrayed here by a poet in whom this new faith has taken on a worldly form. A calm, serene beauty is the basic character of this and the following novels by Heyse: "Im Paradiese" (1875), "Der Roman der Stifisdame" (1886), "Merlin" (1892). A luxuriant sensuality that is able to present itself gracefully, a wisdom that gives no thought to the hardships of existence, confront us everywhere in Heyse's creations, especially in his Iyric poems. Dramatic art is not suited to such a way of looking at things. The lively movement that drama needs can only emerge from the essence of a personality that descends deep into the abysses of life. This is why Heyse was unable to make an impression with his numerous dramas. Adolf Wilbrandt and Herman Grimm move along similar lines. Although the former loves powerful motifs and strong passions that unfold in glaring contrasts, he softens them both as a playwright and as a narrator through the softness of his lines and the dull colors. Herman Grimm is a personality whose whole soul is absorbed in aesthetic contemplation. He is only interested in nature and cultural development to the extent that they can be viewed with the judgment formed by art. His novel "Insurmountable Powers" (1867) and his "Novellas" depict reality as if it had been shaped not by the laws of nature but by the educated taste of a world artist. The pursuit of formal beauty reached its peak with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. With him, the external artistic perfection of his creations corresponds to a significant content. His imagination deals with the strong passions and drives of the soul, and he is able to portray personalities on a characteristically drawn historical background. A novel such as "Jürg Jenatsch" (1876) or novellas such as "The Temptation of Pescara" (1887) and "Angela Borgia" (1890) shine a light into the abysses of the soul and are at the same time of sublime beauty. His Iyrian achievements "Ballads" (1867) and "Poems" (1882) were often marred by his imagination, which was always focused on great contrasts. He was all the more able to express himself in the illumination of heroic natures, as can be seen in his poem "Huttens letzte Tage" (1871). The poems of the Austrian Robert Hamerling are also based on similar points of view. He strives for the perfection of formal beauty as well as for a deep understanding of the world. In his "Ahasuerus in Rome" (1866), he contrasts the eternal, restless struggle of striving humanity, which longs for peace and redemption, with the passionate urge to live; in the epic "The King of Sion" (1869), a cultural-historical poem that combines the classical verse form of hexameter with a colorful, glowing style of depiction, he deals with the urge for a humane existence. In the novel "Aspasia" (1876), he seeks to present us with a picture of the Greek world, drunk with beauty and full of life, and in "Homunculus" (1888) he castigates the excesses of his time in a grotesque manner. His poetry presents itself less as that of a directly feeling poet and more as that of a contemplative, pathetic poet. A pessimistic streak runs through Hamerling's entire oeuvre. The poetry of Hieronymus Lorm (Heinrich Landesmann) is completely dominated by such a world-wearied mood. He combines the ability of a witty feuilletonist with that of an interesting storyteller and a moving lyricist. A hard personal fate has given his gloomy world view an individual character.

[ 80 ] While poets such as Spielhagen, Grimm, Meyer, Heyse and Hamerling differ from the naive view only in their artistic treatment, this is also the case with Hermann Lingg, Felix Dahn and Georg Ebers with regard to the subject matter of their works. In addition to their impulsive imagination, the traditional artistic education of the latter also played a part in their work, while in the latter the learned culture of their time also played a role. In his epic poem "Die Völkerwanderung" (1866-68), Lingg incorporates a wealth of historical ideas and scientific insights, and the tendency towards historical images is also noticeable in his poetry. Felix Dahn searched for content for his poetry in Germanic prehistory and in the events of the migration of peoples, Georg Ebers in the ancient Egyptian world. Neither the one nor the other can deny that arduous study is one of the roots of their works. Dahn's "Kampf um Rom" (1876) and "Odhin's Trost" (1880) as well as Ebers' "Eine ägyptische Königstochter" (1864) are large-scale cultural paintings, but not the result of direct poetic power.

[ 81 ] A poet, on the other hand, who is rooted in real life with all his feelings and thoughts, is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from Galicia. The glaring contradiction between the baseness of human instincts and passions and the noble ideals that the mind dreams of occupies his imagination. Man wants to be a god and yet is only a plaything of his animal desires: this confession speaks from Sacher-Masoch's works. Idealism is a pious delusion that dissolves into nothing when nature is seen in its true form. In order to express this basic sentiment, this poet has at his disposal an imagination directed towards the piquant and garish, which revels in sumptuous images and does not shy away from depicting the wildest processes. Since Sacher-Masoch, in the course of his development, gave in to the latter tendency of his nature and to sensationalist prolific writing, the promising attempts he made in works such as "The Legacy of Cain" (1870) remained without effect. Influenced by him and Hamerling, the Viennese poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie attempted to portray the idealistic dreams of humanity in their worthlessness in the face of the blind, base forces of nature in artistic poems and in a comprehensive epic "Robespierre" (1894).

[ 82 ] An art that cares little for the great questions of existence, but instead seeks to accommodate an educated taste that penetrates little into the depths of things in a virtuoso manner, can be found in Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach. The former's "Wilder Jäger" (1877) and "Tannhäuser" (1880) and the latter's "Zlatorog" (1877), as well as his "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (1878) met the needs of a large audience in the 1980s. For Catholic circles, the Westphalian Friedr. Wilh. Weber provided a historical epic in his "Dreizehnlinden" (1878).

[ 83 ] The poetry of Theodor Storms grew out of the Romantic view of art. This view, however, is in close harmony with a pithy mind firmly rooted in the life and nature of his native Schleswig-Holstein and a gift for observation that sees the outside world in soft, often misty shapes, but always in a healthy, natural way. He is a master at drawing atmospheric pictures. His depictions appear like a landscape covered in a delicate mist. A lyrical undertone speaks from all his creations. The novella "Aquis submersus" (1877) is of shattering tragedy; a powerful art of representation speaks from the "Schimmelreiter". Storm also has a gift for humor. As a lyrical poet, he is a master of expression, finding all tones from the most tender mood to pithy, sharp characterization. Related to Storm in his whole disposition is Wilhelm Jensen. His thinking is rooted in the social, liberal views of the present; his style of depiction is reminiscent of the fantastical spirit of Romanticism. He needs exciting scenes, bright lights to express what he wants. His novels "Um den Kaiserstuhl" (1878), "Nirwana" (1877), "Am Ausgange des Reichs" (1885) depict historical events in such a way that atrocity scenes and gruesome human destinies appear in comfortable breadth. Jensen's poems are characterized by lyrical verve, an artistic language, but also often a peculiar way of feeling.

[ 84 ] As Heyse and Grimm stand by Goethe's conviction of art, Storm and Jensen by that of the Romantics, so the humorist Wilhelm Raabe by that of Jean Paul. Like the latter, Raabe interrupts the course of the narrative and speaks to us in his own person; like his predecessor, he does not develop the plot according to its natural course, but anticipates things or returns to them. His choice of subject matter is also reminiscent of Jean Paul. He moves in a circle of quiet, modest, idyllic sufferings and joys. He always seeks humor in the inner contradictions of human characters. He draws people and situations in sharp outlines, with a decided tendency towards the bizarre. Whether he is depicting nerdiness, as in "Hungerpastor" (1864), or philanthropy, which appears comical because it takes unsuitable paths, as in "Horacker" (1876), Raabe always succeeds in creating clear, distinct physiognomies. Original characters and social contrasts are his field. Hans Hoffmann's importance also lies in the humorous portrayal of characters. The main character in the novel "Ivan the Terrible and his Dog" (1889), a grammar school teacher, is comical because of everything about him: his appearance, his movements, his helplessness towards his pupils. The collection of novellas "Das Gymnasium zu Stolpenburg" (1891) reveals the jovial, serious artist on every page. Fritz Mauthner made a name for himself as a satirist. His talent for parody led him to caricaturingly imitate the style and sensibilities of others in his book "Nach berühmten Mustern" (1879). In his "Villenhof" (1891) he castigates discord in Berlin social life. Among the humorists must also be Friedr. Theod. Vischer, who in his novel "Auch einer" (One too) portrayed the comic type of a person whose mental state is thrown off balance every moment by the small, random disturbances of life. What is interesting about Vischer is the constant interplay between the theoretical results of his aesthetic studies and speculations and an unmistakable original poetic natural disposition. Because he has explored all types of artistic representation, he displays a rare fluency of form and style in many areas in his "Lyrical Walks" - because he is a poet by nature, he captivates us with the expression of his feelings and the bold sweep of his imagination. Vischer's treatises "Kritische Gänge" and "Altes und Neues" are gems of German literature due to the profundity of their ideas, the courage of their thinking that does not shy away from consistency and no less due to their mastery of the essay style. He is a universal mind that reaches out in all directions. He follows the philosophical, artistic, religious and scientific phenomena of the time and comments on them with critical judgments that make him appear as a leader of the intellectual movement of his time and at the same time as a pithy character who follows his own sure path. Vischer's development clearly reflects the turnaround that has taken place in German intellectual culture in recent decades. He started out from the idealistic convictions of Hegel's philosophy. He wrote his "Aesthetics" in the 1940s and 1950s based on this and then retracted important principles of these views in a self-criticism.

[ 85 ] Like Vischer himself, Hegelian philosophy as a whole retreated from new views in the second half of the century. The great scientific results obtained by careful observation of natural facts and by experiment shook the faith in pure thought by which Hegel and his disciples had erected their proud edifice of ideas. Thus it came about that the consciousness of the time opted for philosophical directions that were characterized less by rigour and consistency of thought than by external means such as an easy, popular way of presentation and a spirited approach to things. Schopenhauer, with his dazzling, piquant, coarse style, prepared the ground for this trend. Only in such a mood could philosophical presentations such as Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious" (1869) or Eugen Dühring's writings be applauded. It was not the undoubtedly valuable ideas contained in these works that made an impression, but the way in which they were presented. In the seventies and eighties, the philosophical spirit steadily disappeared from German education. This can be seen very clearly in the writing of literary history and in literary criticism. The subtle literary-historical observation of Hermann Hettner, which was directed through the facts to the driving ideal forces, the kind of Julian Schmidt, Gervinus et al, who searched for the causes of literary phenomena, were abandoned, and they were replaced by the approach of Wilhelm Scherer, who in his "History of German Literature" (1883) confined himself purely to the grouping of facts and to the visible parts of historical development.

[ 86 ] It is understandable that in a period in which the educational materials gained in long intellectual struggles are in the process of dissolution, a wealth of literary products appears that is as unequal in value and effect as possible. Busy prolific writing, which only aims to satisfy the public's need for light entertainment, appears alongside unclear ideological literature; there are writers with a light, witty gift for presentation, as well as serious spirits who are unable to go their own way and cannot find a firm point of reference in the confusion of contemporary trends. Of the latter type is Eduard Grisebach, who uses Heine's style to express Schopenhauerian ideas in his poems "Der Neue Tannhäuser" (1869) and "Tannhäuser in Rom" (1875). Something similar can also be said of the highly ambitious Albert Lindner, who created dramas in a pathetic style, which nevertheless clearly bear the stamp of an epigonism striving for originality. More fortunate was Ernst von Wildenbruch, who created a long series of dramas with a certain poetic verve and excellent skill in scenic construction. A noble enthusiasm for heroic grandeur and an idealizing style of representation are characteristic of Wildenbruch, and in his short stories and poems an intimacy of feeling and a sympathetic disposition come to the fore. Richard Voß is a spirit who, out of an unhealthy nervousness, searches for stirring, strongly arousing motifs and lets them work in a blatant, often bloodcurdling way. But he also has the ability to depict intimate states of mind, which he, however, associates with all too stormy events, as in the dramas "Eva" and "Alexandra". That he also understands the pulse of the present is shown in his drama "Die neue Zeit", in which a pastor's son, who has grown into the free-spirited views of our time, comes into conflict with his father, who clings to the prejudices of the old world. Rudolf Gottschall, who sticks to the academic-aesthetic templates as a playwright and lyricist, Julius Grosse, who has proven himself to be a tasteful but uninspiring artist in drama, novels and poetry, and finally Hans von Hopfen, whose achievements hardly rise above mere light fiction,

[ 87 ] A personality who deserves the highest respect is Adolf Friedrich Graf Schack, a poet who strives for depth and makes the highest demands on form. His ethical and artistic seriousness is admirable. This is expressed not only in his witty essays on literary history and in his self-biography "Half a Century", but also in the generous support he gave to artists and artistic endeavors. Heinrich Leuthold is also a master of strict artistic form, whose melancholy tones are partly the expression of agonizing personal experiences, but also of a deeply pessimistic view of the world. A reflective poet in the fullest sense of the word is the Swiss Dranmor (Ferdinand von Schmid), who is very similar to Leuthold in his passionate, restless manner and his gloomy view of the world. Schack, Dranmor and Leuthold are primarily lyric poets. Isolde Kurz with her "Florentinische Novellen" (1890), which emerged from a refined taste and a vivid imagination, can be seen as a pupil of Conrad Ferd. Artur Fitger appeared as a lyricist and dramatist. The gloomy view of the world that we have found in so many poets of the seventies and eighties is also a basic feature of his lyrical creations. His powerful drama "The Witch" (1876), although not very original in its structure, met with the liveliest applause for a time. The poems of Martin Greif were born out of a tender spirit in which the finest impulses of nature tremble harmoniously. He succeeded in writing songs of genuine Goethean simplicity and naturalness; for dramatic art, in which he also tried his hand, this soft and delicate spirit lacks creative power and sharpness of characterization. The South German Johann Georg Fischer is a sharply characterized poetic physiognomy. With him, one senses healthy strength and a joyful zest for life everywhere, which emerge in splendid language, often with unsought pathos, often with the simplest folksiness. He too is not up to the demands of the dramatic structure.

[ 88 ] A genuine North German poet of austere beauty is Theodor Fontane. As a lyric poet, he is reserved in his feelings and extraordinarily succinct in his expression. He juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings and then leaves us alone with our hearts. His imagination creates in monumental images and has a simple grandeur, which comes into its own in his "Ballads" (1861). Similar peculiarities also characterize him as a storyteller. His style is almost sober, but always expressive. Prussian life and North German nature have found a classic actor in him. He paints equally well in broad strokes as in the smallest details. His novels "Adultera", "Irrungen - Wirrungen", "Stine", "Stechlin" are equally appreciated by the public seeking only interesting reading and by the strictest critics. The Austrian Ludwig Anzengruber is a true dramatist of admirable accuracy in characterization and the ability to portray events in vivid development. His dramas are rooted in the intellectual life of the Austrian peasantry and middle class in the 1970s. In particular, he knew how to portray the striving for a free-minded view of religious ideas and the struggles that the peasant mind had to endure as a result of such goals, for example in "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld" (1870) and "Kreuzelschreibern" (1872). In "Meineidbauer" (1872), "G'wissenswurm" (1874) and "Fleck auf der Ehr" (1888), he showed how deeply he was able to draw motifs from the peasant soul. Ludwig Ganghofer, who wanted to treat Upper Bavarian folk life in plays such as "Der Herrgottschnitzer von Ammergau" and "Der Geigenmacher von Mittenwald" in a similar way to Anzengruber's treatment of Austrian folk life, did not hit the "true-to-nature" notes like Anzengruber did. In contrast, Lower Austria has an epic writer in Joseph Misson, who in his unfortunately unfinished poetic tale "Da Naz, a Niederösterreichischer Bauernbui, geht in d'Fremd" (1850) expressed the mood, imagination and behavior of his people in an incomparable way. The Styrian Peter Rosegger achieved the same to a high degree with his compatriots in a series of prose works that were born of a sensible mind, a brave character and a cozy narrative gift. In the second half of the century, folk poetry, which in most cases also seeks to intimately reflect the form of expression and way of looking at things of the people in the form of dialect poetry, blossomed beautifully. Franz von Kobell and his pupil Karl Stieler produced precious gems of folk poetry in the Upper Bavarian dialect. Franz Stelzhammer created poems in Austrian dialect that are so natural that they seem to have arisen from the spontaneity of the people. The dialect poetry of the Viennese J.G. Seidl is inspired by warm feelings, but of a much lesser power and originality. The Silesian dialect has found a poet of naive, humorous expression in Karl von Holtei, whom we have already mentioned (p. 58) as a storyteller and dramatist. The North German dialect was cultivated by Klaus Groth and Fritz Reuter. Groth, the singer of "Quickborn" (1852), writes like an educated man who has grown out of folk life, but his love of his homeland and his striving to make his dialect heard make up for what he lacks in originality. Fritz Reuter's poems stem entirely from the soul of the people, from their most intimate thoughts and feelings. He is a first-rate character painter. Reuter's first collection of poems, "Läuschen un Rimels" (1853), immediately won him a large circle of admirers. His brilliant narrative talent is at its best when he weaves his own experiences into the narrative, as in "Ut mine Festungstid" (1862) and "Ut mine Stromtid" (1863 to 1864). He vividly depicts the mood of the people before the events of 1812. It is the urge for the primal sources of poetry that is expressed in the rich applause that poems such as Anzengruber's, Rosegger's, Groth's and Reuter's found in almost all circles. People believed that they could find in the simple popular mind what they had distanced themselves from in the highly developed art poetry of the Heyses, Meyers and Hamerlings. At the same time as this trend, there was another, which renounced higher artistic demands and sought satisfaction in amiable wit, in brisk, if not very profound depiction. This direction found its field particularly in the lightly thrown feuilleton and in the skillfully constructed, sensationally exciting drama. Paul Lindau, Oskar Blumenthal, Hugo Lubliner, Adolf l'Arronge, Franz v. Schönthan, Gustav v. Moser, Ernst Wichert and others. were responsible for this taste, which gradually took hold in such wide circles that protests such as that of Hans Herrig, who in his essay "Luxustheater und Volksbühne" (1886) wanted to recapture the theater of true art, were initially ineffective. Above all, Herrig wanted to win over the people to his ideas, and this was also the goal of his Luther Festival.

[ 89 ] However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong receptiveness to genuine art remained clearly perceptible in individual circles. Proof of this is the steadily growing recognition that Gottfried Keller has received. However, the creations that he added, after a long intervening period, to those we had already acknowledged earlier (p. 62) were on a par with them. The "Seven Legends" (1872) represent a reform of the legendary style on a completely new, realistic basis. The "Sinngedicht" (1881) is a warmly felt, mature creation. The "Züricher Novellen" (1878) are cultural pictures from Zurich's past, painted with simplicity and grandeur; "Martin Salander" (1886) depicts the political situation in Switzerland with superior humor. While each new creation by Keller also testified to a higher level of artistry, Gustav Freytag continued to cultivate the style he had once acquired. Neither his "Pictures from the German Past" (1859-67) nor the series of novels "The Ancestors", which appeared after 1870, represented any artistic progress. One personality who reflects the true character of the last four decades in poetry is Wilhelm Jordan. Unfortunately, he lacked the poetic power to give artistic expression to his world view, which was fully in tune with the times. In his "Demiurgos" ($.65), he prophetically proclaimed Darwin's world view in advance; when it was scientifically substantiated, it also appeared with full clarity in his poetic products. The characters in his rewriting of the German heroic epic "Nibelunge" (1868-74) grew out of this view, and his novels "Die Sebalds" (1885) and "Zwei Wiegen" (1887) were written entirely in the spirit of contemporary scientific thought. If Jordan must be described as a genuinely modern spirit because of his world view, it was he who saw the truly poetic in going back to the simple, primitive conditions of cultural development. He wanted the last form of the Song of the Nibelungs that has come down to us to be regarded only as an attenuation of an older, much grander form. This is why he did not base his work on the later German Nibelungenlied, but on the older Nordic sagas. In such striving for the original sources, one can clearly see an echo of Goethe's and Herder's way of looking at things, which sees the root of the poetic in the naive and childlike world of imagination. Wilhelm Jordan's restoration of the stave rhyme can also be traced back to such a view.

[ 90 ] In the 1980s, the younger generation of German poets became convinced that the paths that poetry had taken up to that point were no longer fruitful. They no longer wanted to solve the artistic tasks set by the views of Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics. After all, life and the circles of ideas had changed considerably since the times in which those minds had formed their thoughts. Scientific discoveries had led us to see the processes of the outside world and their relationship to man in a new light. Technical inventions had changed the way of life and the relations of the various classes of people. Entire classes that had previously not taken part in public life entered into it. The social question with all its consequences was at the center of thought. In the face of such a change in culture as a whole, it was felt impossible to hold on to old traditions in poetry. The new life should bring forth a new poetry. This call grew ever stronger. In 1882, the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart led the way with their "Kritische Waffengänge", in which they used harsh language against the traditional, the outdated. They were then followed by other poets of the younger generation. In 1885, a selection of poems entitled "Modern Poetry Characters" was published, in which the striving for a new style of art was resolutely asserted. In addition to the Harts, Wilhelm Arent, Hermann Conradi, Karl Henckell, Arno Holz, Otto Erich Hartleben, Wolfgang Kirchbach participated in the new movement. In the same year, Michael Georg Conrad founded the "Gesellschaft" in Munich, a "Realistische Monatsschrift für Literatur, Kunst und öffentliches Leben", which was guided by the same goals, and Karl Bleibtreu issued a strong rejection of everything traditional in his "Revolution der Literatur". Alongside much immaturity, many a pleasing gift appeared within this movement. Karl Henckell's social songs often pulsate with true passion, despite his preference for party slogans. Hermann Conradi's phrase-like novels vividly reflect the ferment of the times, and in his Iyrian creations one finds the heart-warming tones of a man who unreservedly expresses himself, with all the faults and sins of human nature. Julius Hart's poems also express a genuine empathy with everything that arouses the times. In 1885, Arno Holz published his "Book of the Times", in which he found effective words for social hardship. Above all, it was the artificial, the life in ideas that had lost their connection with life, to which war was declared. They did not want to work according to old templates, according to the artistic sensibilities of a bygone era, but according to the needs and inspirations of their own individuality. Under the influence of such sentiments, a poet came into his own who, however, developed completely independently of the conscious, deliberate striving for something new: Detlev v. Liliencron. He is a nature full of vitality and artistic creativity, a fine connoisseur and depictor of all the charms of existence, a poet who has all tones at his disposal, from the wildest exuberance to the delicate depiction of sublime natural moods. In 1883 he drew attention to himself with his "Adjutant's Rides", and since then he has proved himself to be one of the most outstanding contemporary poets in a series of lyrical collections. Following in his footsteps were Otto Julius Bierbaum and Gustav Falke, the latter in particular having achieved something worthy of recognition through his striving for perfection of form. Karl Busse also made a good impression on his first appearance, but was unable to maintain the same level. Richard Dehmel is an energetic lyricist who, however, cannot find harmony between abstract thought and immediate feeling. The search for new goals generates the most diverse directions in the present. In contrast to idealism, which placed the spirit too high and forgot that sensuality underlies all spirituality, a counter-current emerged which indulged in the latter and sought only the raw animal instincts in every expression of life. Hermann Bahr celebrated true orgies in this area in his stories "Die gute Schule" (1890) and "Dora" (1893). In his drama "Toni Stürmer" (1892), Cäsar Flaischlen also sought to portray the idealism of love as contradictory and to show that only natural passion brings the sexes together. The social movement also had an impact on poetry. Works such as "Schlechte Gesellschaft" (1886) by Karl Bleibtreu, "Die heilige Ehe" (1886) by Hans Land and Felix Holländer and in Max Kretzer's "Die Betrogenen" (1882) and "Die Bergpredigt" (1889) are sharply critical of existing social conditions and the prevailing moral views. In his dramas "Hanna Jagert" (1893), "Erziehung zur Ehe" (1894) and "Sittliche Forderung" (1897), Otto Erich Hartleben shows the self-dissolution of social ideas and depicts human weaknesses with great satirical power in his novellistic sketches. As a lyric poet, he is characterized by a beautiful sculpture of expression and a simple, tasteful naturalness. John Henry Mackay gives expression to the striving for complete liberation of the individual, which has found a philosopher in Max Stirner (p. 5o), in his cultural painting "The Anarchists" (1891), in stories such as "The People of Marriage" (1892) and in his poems, which place the ideal of personal independence above all else (collected and published in 1898). Hermann Sudermann deals with the clash between the moral concepts of different classes in his dramas "Die Ehre", "Die Heimat" and "Glück im Winkel". In his more recent stage works "Johannes" and "Die drei Reiherfedern", he has set himself higher tasks. He portrays the tragedy inherent in human nature itself, a goal he also pursued in his stories "Frau Sorge" and "Der Katzensteg". The influence of the modern scientific world view on the human soul is illustrated by Wilhelm Bölsche in his novel "Mittagsgöttin" (i8g91). The most recent drama strives for the truth of nature in that it does not allow the development of events in poetry to proceed according to higher, artistic laws, but seeks a photographically faithful depiction of reality. Johannes Schlaf and Arno Holz led the way in this direction with their dramas "Meister Olze" and "Familie Selicke", in which the truth of nature is exaggerated to the point of merely copying external events. They were followed by Gerhart Hauptmann, who in his first works "Vor Sonnenaufgang" (1889) and "Das Friedensfest" (1890) still created entirely in this style, but in "Einsamen Menschen" (1891) rose to the level of depicting significant emotional conflicts and cohesive dramatic composition. In his "Colleague Crampton" (1892), he then delivered a character painting that was as true to nature as it was artistic. In "Hanneles Himmelfahrt" and "Versunkene Glocke", his style becomes idealistic and romantic despite its fidelity to nature. In "The Weavers" (1892), the depiction of reality becomes a complete dissolution of all dramatic form; in "Henschel the Carriage Driver", Hauptmann shows that he can unite fidelity to nature and poetic composition. Max Halbe was much acclaimed for his romantic drama "Jugend" (1893) with its atmospheric depiction of youthful passions. When he set himself higher goals, as in his character dramas "Lebenswende" and "Der Eroberer", he was unable to break through. Ludwig Jacobowski set himself a great task in his "Loki" (1898), the "novel of a god", in which he shines a light deep into the abysses of human nature and illustrates its eternal striving through the battle of the destructive Loki against the creative Asen. With his lyrical collection "Shining Days" (1899), he joined the ranks of the most outstanding modern poets. He combines simple beauty of expression with a harmonious view of the world and life. In the last decade, Friedrich Nietzsche exerted an incomparable influence on contemporary thought. Through a radical "revaluation of all values", he sought to portray the entire path that Western culture has taken since the foundation of Christianity as a great idealistic error. Humanity must discard all belief in the hereafter, all ideas that go beyond real existence, and draw its strength and culture purely from this world. Man should not see his ideal in the likeness of higher powers, but in the highest enhancement of his natural abilities up to the "superman". This is the meaning of his main poetic and philosophical work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

[ 91 ] In France, literature in the last third of the century initially continued along the same lines as before. Through Emile Augier, Alexander Dumas the Younger and Victorien Sardou, drama developed into a morality play and social drama. In the latter, the main aim was to illustrate a moralizing tendency through exciting entanglements and corresponding solutions. Alongside this, a dramatic genre developed that placed the main emphasis on witty dialog and social satire. It has its main representative in Edouard Pailleron. The training in skillful scene direction blossomed in Labiche, Meilhac, Bisson. The truth and probability of events play no role in them, only the development of the plot, which is calculated for effect and must be rich in surprising twists and turns. In poetry, the striving for correctness of form, for smooth, pleasing expression prevails in the "school of the Parnassiens". Frangois Coppée, R. F. A. Sully-Prudhomme and Charles Leconte de Lisle particularly cultivated this style. Anatole France also belongs to it with his lyric poetry, which strives for a classical style of representation. In contrast, Charles Baudelaire is a genuinely Romantic poet who prefers to be in a state of intoxication of the soul and loves to depict the uncanny, demonic forces of the human interior. He wants to expose all dark instincts. He literally revels in feelings of fear and lust. A healthier sense can be found in Gustav Flaubert and especially in the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who strive to restrain the artistic imagination through the objective spirit of science. Under their influence, a naturalism emerged that did not want to shape reality according to subjective arbitrariness, but rather to make use of the objective laws of knowledge for the poetic depiction of things. It does not want aesthetic laws, but only those based on the mere observation of facts. This direction found its perfect expression in Emile Zola. He no longer wants to shape things and processes artistically. Just as the scientific experimenter brings substances and forces together in the laboratory and then waits to see what develops as a result of their mutual influence, Zola experimentally juxtaposes things and people and seeks to continue the development as it would have to result if the same things and people stood opposite each other in the same way in objective reality. In this way he develops the experimental novel. In doing so, he leans on the achievements of modern science. Alongside this Zolashian naturalism, another of the Balzacian type continues, which has its main representative in Alphonse Daudet. Guy de Manpassant is a storyteller with a brilliant power of perception that penetrates the depths of the soul. Important cultural phenomena of our time are recorded in his novels and in stylistically masterful novellas. As a draughtsman of character, he portrays people with sharp contours, and his depiction of actions is as much characterized by natural truth as by artful composition. In France, Victor Cherbuliez, Hector Malot and Georges Ohnet satisfied that part of the public which in Germany found its satisfaction in Lindau, Blumenthal and others. A subtle artist with a refined technique is Pierre Loti, who, however, cultivates a style of art that is more suited to the artist's developed taste than to a wider circle.

[ 92 ] In the Dutch language, under the name "Muliatuli", Eduard Douwes Dekker created narrative poems and philosophical works of ideas, which from a bold, out of a bold, free spirit, they make powerful accusations against everything in contemporary culture which, seen from the vantage point of true humanity, is ripe for destruction, but which is preserved by brute force and robs the valuable and noble of the space for free development. Multatuli does not shy away from any sharpness, even one-sidedness of expression, when he wants to hit what he considers necessary for persecution. A kind of leading spirit of Dutch folklore in Belgium is Hendrik Conscience, who made a great impression with his intimate depictions of modest living conditions and has also found imitators in his homeland. The Belgian M. Maeterlinck takes a mystical view of nature and the human soul. He is less interested in clear thoughts and perceptible processes than in the dark forces that we sense in the events of the outside world and in the depths of our unconscious soul. He depicts them in his dramas and seeks to approach them philosophically in his subtle essays.

[ 93 ] The English poetry of this period is characterized by the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. He is of a romantic nature, a fiery depictor of sensuality, a draughtsman of great passions, but also of the tender vibrations of the soul and atmospheric images of nature. The sea with its manifold beauties is a favorite area for him. His lullabies are characteristic of his sensuous mind. In the dramatic field ("Atalanta in Calydon") he strove for Greek perfection of form. In addition to him, Matthew Arnold and Dante Gabriel Rosetti also come into consideration. The former is reminiscent of Byron in his world view and expression, while the latter seeks to achieve a simple style through ancient artistic means. William Morris is an original nature with a powerful gift for depiction. From close observation, Rudyard Kipling depicts Indian-English life in captivating novellas, novels and popular-sounding poems.

[ 94 ] In America, a literature independent of the English mother country has developed since the middle of the century. A universal spirit and strong artist is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. As a lyric poet he has achieved recognition throughout the educated world. His poems speak of a noble, great character. Those of his creations in which he movingly sings of the fate of slaves are characteristic of his humane view of the world. He is also an excellent storyteller with a soft, heartfelt and humorous tone. In "Hiawatha" Longfellow has described the ancient cultural conditions of the Indian people, in "The Golden Legend" he deals with the eternal poetic problem, the striving and wandering man as a symbol of the whole human species. Contemporary English prose has found an outstanding master in Washington Irving. His humor has a sentimental streak. Francis Bret Harte, the author of the world-famous Californian tales, and the thoughtful humorist Mark Twain differ most in style from the mother country. In Walt Whitman, the American imagination and sensibility found a particularly characteristic expression. From the thoughts he expresses to his treatment of language, everything is modern in the most genuine sense.

[ 95 ] In recent decades, the change from old to new views has been most rapid in northern Europe. It developed under the influence of a merciless, unsparing criticism of tradition. Georg Brandes, the intellectual Dane, led the way. A bold, enthusiastic free spirit gave him the broadest impact. His intellectual horizon is of rare greatness. He was able to familiarize himself with the various cultures of Europe with a keen sense and thus acquired a breadth of vision that enabled him to follow the intellectual currents of all countries in their essential characteristics. By seeking out fruitful ideas everywhere and instilling them into the education of Denmark, he became the reformer of the entire world view of his fatherland. In the field of poetry, the lyric poet Holger Drachmann and the great stylistic artist J. P. Jacobsen, who is both a thorough and profound connoisseur of the human soul, and who is able to depict inner processes and abysses of the mind in an atmospheric way, were active in Denmark.

[ 96 ] In Norway, Björnstjerne Björnson, Henrik Ibsen and Arne Garborg are the creators of a type of poetry whose influence can be felt everywhere in Europe today. They were preceded like prophets by Jonas Lie and Alexander Kjelland, the former as an important psychologist and depictor of popular life, the latter as a sharp satirist in the field of moral views and social grievances. Björnson is a poet who serves the liberal ideals of his fatherland with his art. He is a political spirit who always has the progress of culture in mind in all his work and who is able to give his characters clear, clear outlines from his firm convictions. A revolutionary spirit is Henrik Ibsen. He has incorporated everything that is revolutionary in modern culture into his personality. He is a rich, versatile nature. His works therefore show great differences in style and in the means with which he presents his world view. He traces the germs of decomposition that lie in the views, customs and social orders of the present ("Stützen der Gesellschaft" 1877), the lies of life ("Volksfeind" 1882), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), he depicts demonic forces in the human soul as a deep psychologist ("Frau vom Meere" 1888, "Hedda Gabler" 1890, "Baumeister Solneß" 1892), he characterizes the mystical in the soul ("Klein Eyolf" 1894). Ibsen's basic theme is the tragedy of human life in "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867). Pastor Brand is intended to portray the Faustian struggle of man living in the imaginative and emotional mode of the present. The hero knows only one love, that of his rational ideals, and does not allow the language of feeling to come into its own. Instead of taking possession of human hearts in order to achieve the fulfillment of his demands through them in a benevolent manner, he pursues them with ruthless harshness. He becomes intolerant out of idealism. Therein lies the tragedy of his personality. In contrast to him is Peer Gynt, the man of fantasy, whose ideas are not rooted enough in reality to inspire their bearer with the kind of energy that enables people to assert themselves in life. The versatility of Ibsen's art is revealed particularly clearly when we consider the "Comedy of Love" (1862), which shows us the poet as a doubter of life's goals, alongside the "Crown Pretenders", written just one year later, in which certainty and confidence are expressed in the creator's world view. The dependence of man on the external environment, on views within which he lives and which he receives as tradition, is depicted in "Bund der Jugend" (1869), while "Kaiser und Galiläer" (1873) illustrates the determination of the will through the unalterable, natural necessity of all things. "The Wild Duck" (1884) and "Rosmersholm" (1886) are paintings of the soul from which the deeply penetrating psychological connoisseur speaks.

[ 97 ] In place of Greek fate and the divine order of the world, he sets natural law as the driving force of the drama, which does not punish the guilty and reward the good, but governs people's actions as it rolls a stone down a slippery slope ("Ghosts"). Arne Garbor does not, like Ibsen, have the art of depicting broad lines, but he paints the life of the soul faithfully and is a sharp accuser of social institutions. Sexual life is at the center of his approach. The two Swedes August Strindberg and Ola Hansson are also powerful painters of the soul, but they like to take their material from unhealthy nature. Strindberg's pessimism, which, however, stems from deeply painful life experiences, presents itself almost like the distorted image of a healthy world view.

[ 98 ] Russian intellectual life also underwent great spiritual upheavals during this period. While the older Russian literature proved to be an imitator of Western European culture in its ideas and conceptions as well as in its means of expression, the national spirit now deepened and sought to build its views from the depths of its own national essence. Here, too, criticism leads the way. In W. Belinskij Russia has an aesthete and philosopher of great spiritual vision and high aims. From a purely logical point of view, his critical activity lacks consistency; Belinsky is a constant seeker who wants to bring clarity to the confused ideas and dark impulses of his people. In doing so, he is guided more by his sure feelings than by any abstract ideas. The creations of Nicolai Gogol, who hurls the most terrible accusations against his fatherland, but accusations that speak of a deep, heartfelt love, prove how unfathomably deep and at the same time how dreamy and confused the spirit of the people is. A mystical sense underlies his imagination, which drives him restlessly forward without him seeing any clear goal before him. In N. Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and in F. M. Dostoyevsky, this dark urge gradually works its way into clarity. Turgenev is, however, still strongly influenced by Western European ideas. In delicate images, he mainly depicts suffering people who somehow cannot come to terms with life. Goncharov and Pissemsky are depictions of Russian social life, without any further outlook on a world view. Dostoyevsky is an ingenious psychologist who descends into the depths of the soul and reveals the innermost depths of man in brilliant, albeit sometimes gruesome, images. His "Raskolnikov" was regarded throughout Europe as a model of psychological representation. Count Leo Tolstoy is a representative of Russian intellectual life as a whole. He developed from a powerful storyteller ("War and Peace" 1872, "Anna Karenina" 1877) to a prophet of a new form of religion that sought its roots in a somewhat violent interpretation of primitive Christianity and elevated complete selflessness to the ideal of life. Tolstoy also sees all art that is not aimed at human compassion and the improvement of coexistence as a superfluous luxury that a selfless person does not indulge in. In Hungary, we encounter the imaginative storyteller Maurus Jókai and the playwright Ludwig Doczi, as well as Emerich Madách, who provided the Hungarian Faust in his "Tragedy of Man".

[ 99 ] The most successful of the more recent Italian poets is Giosuè Carducci, who strives for classical and beautiful expression. A singer of fiery sensuality is Lorenzo Stecchetti, and the playwright Pietro Cossa is an important characterizer. Giovanni Verga deals with Sicilian peasant life in lively stories. Italy has its social poets in Guido Mazzoni and Ada Negri. In the field of drama, the idealist Felice Cavallotti and the naturalist Emilio Praga stand opposite each other. - From Spain, José Echegaray briefly captured the attention of European audiences, to whom he delivered a much-discussed drama in his "Galeotto", whose structure is reminiscent of the abstract consistency of a calculus.

1. The Literary revolution around the middle of the nineteenth century

[ 1 ] On December 8, I began the cycle of lectures on "The main currents in German literature from the revolutionary period (1848) to the present", which the board of the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" commissioned me to give.

[ 2 ] I do not want to turn the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" into a university college, but I would like to find a middle way in these lectures between the light tone of French conferences and that of university lectures, which follow the strict course of scientific methodology. Nor do I wish to offer the members of the Society a purely historical approach. Anyone who, like myself, wants to contribute to the development of the new world view that has become possible for us through the revolutionization of intellectual life in this century, prefers to look to the future rather than the past, and is only capable of describing the past insofar as it contains the seeds for the present and the future.

[ 3 ] I have said of our present sensations that they are so fundamentally different from the sensations of the most eminent spirits of the first half of the century that we have the feeling that the writings of these spirits are written in an idiom foreign to us. A radical transformation of the world view has taken place in our century, as radical as few in world history have been. If we want to describe this transformation in a few words, we must say that man has gone from being a humble, weak being who wants to be dependent on higher powers to a proud, self-confident being who wants to be the master of his own destiny, who does not want to be ruled but wants to rule himself. Man has learned to draw his best strength not from powers beyond, but from the reality to which he himself belongs. The best minds in the first half of the century were far removed from this view of life. They were still dominated by the old world of imagination, by the old religious views. In their emotional world, they could not get away from the otherworldly God who controls the destinies of mankind. They longed for new ways of life, for new forms of state and society; but their longing was a dull, vague one, because it did not emerge from the driving force of a new world view. Political revolutions can only take place on a large scale if they are linked to a revolution of the entire spiritual life. Christianity brought about such a great, comprehensive revolution. The political revolutions of recent times have not achieved their goal because they lacked the driving force, the revolutionization of the world view. Men like Jahn, Börne, Sallet, Herwegh, Anastasius Grün, Dingelstedt, Freiligrath, Moritz Hartmann, Prutz knew that the old world of ideas had become worn out, overripe, rotten; but they were not able to put a new world of ideas in the place of the old one. They became revolutionaries, not because a new world of ideas lived within them, which they wanted to realize, but because they were dissatisfied with the existing, embittered by the present.

[ 4 ] But the world of imagination and the old form of government belonged together. This truth was expressed by Hegel when he was given a professorship in Berlin. Hegel was the most unproductive mind imaginable. He was incapable of giving birth to a new idea from his imagination. But he was one of the most rational people who ever lived. He therefore penetrated the old world of ideas down to its last nooks and crannies. And he found this world of ideas realized in the Prussian state. That is why he could say: everything real is reasonable. Hegel pronounced the last word of the old world view. It was not possible to revolutionize with this view. This required a new world of ideas. The first herald of such a world was Ludwig Feuerbach. He taught people that all higher powers are idols which man has created in his own breast and which he has transferred out of his own soul into the world in order to worship them as entities acting above him. Feuerbach made man the master of himself. This was the beginning of a completely new world of ideas. The old world of ideas had become an idol, a ghost, a spectre by which man allowed himself to be enslaved. Max Stirner said this in the clearest words that have ever been spoken. Away with all idols was his slogan. And there was nothing left behind but the "I", enslaved by nothing, free and unchained, who stakes his cause on nothing. We, in the second half of the nineteenth century, are working to find the universe in this nothingness. The old ideals lie destroyed at our feet; they are nothing to us, a yawning chasm. The poets, the artists, the naturalists, the thinkers in the second half of the century are endeavoring to fill this nothingness with life again. Darwin and Haeckel brought a new world view, new religious ideas.

[ 5 ] Through Feuerbach, minds have been revolutionized, prepared to understand Darwin and Haeckel. This transformation of the world view is the great revolution of the nineteenth century. Compared with it, the political revolution of 1848 is only an outward sign, a symbol. The spiritual revolution is still going on today. It will be the victorious one.

[ 6 ] I was delighted that so many members and guests of the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" attended this first of my lectures.

2. From Heinrich Laube to Paul Heyse

[ 7 ] Heinrich Laube is to me the type of man of letters who looks at things with a cold gaze that goes little into the depths of the human soul. In his youth, the fire of the revolutionary lived in him, which led him to glorify the Polish uprising. Gradually, the sobriety in his nature overgrew; he became a self-confident man, who approached things with the feeling that he knew how to handle them at the right end. He is the best director of the century because he has a clear eye for the harmony into which the outside of things must be brought if they are to be effective. He is the man of scenic aesthetics. And he is also a scenery artist as a playwright and as a novelist. One misses the soul in his characters, the historical ideas in the events he depicts. Gutzkow is different. He is the most important of the spirits who worked around the middle of the century. If Laube can be described as a social anatomist, Gutzkow is the philosophical observer of his time. His "Ritter vom Geiste" (1850-51) appears as a comprehensive, profound document of this period. Gutzkow presents all the typical figures of society at the time, all the social currents, in order to paint an all-round, perfect picture of his present. The spirit of the time is no less vivid in his novel "The Wizard of Rome" (1858-61). Gutzkow unites the light and dark sides of Catholicism, the sympathetic and unsympathetic characters it produces, into a cultural portrait of the highest value. Gustav Freytag does not seem as important to me as to many others. I see the spirit of journalism in all his creations. Freytag endows his creations with all the inaccuracies, obliquities and half-measures with which the editorialist characterizes people and conditions. In this art of characterization, the contemporary catchphrase applies more than the unclouded view into the ramifications and the fullness of reality. The "journalists" are not true characters, but half-true figures, as they live in the minds of the daily writers. This Bolz, as Freytag describes him, is not to be found in reality; but journalism has to invent him in order to express the thoughts of the time.

[ 8 ] The figures of Laube, Gutzkow and Freytag no longer have much to say to us contemporary people. Forces have revealed themselves to us in the life of the human soul and in history of which the spirits around the middle of the century still knew nothing. The sense in which this assertion is to be understood will be shown in my next lectures.

3. Spiritual life in Germany before the Franco-Prussian War

[ 9 ] The fifties and sixties of this century show a number of parallel currents. One-sided directions of intellectual life went side by side. Only in our time has a confluence of these individual currents taken place. Herman Grimm is a personality in whose intellectual physiognomy one of these currents came to the fore. It is the purely aesthetic world view that he professes. For him, the world is not governed by "eternal, iron laws", by the laws of nature. For him, it is a work of art created by a divine artist, revealing infinite beauty. Alongside this purely aesthetic view of the world, the one based on a broader spiritual foundation, founded by David Friedrich Strauß, is asserting itself. For Strauß, the personality of the Son of God has evaporated into the divine idea, which cannot be realized in a single human individual (Jesus), but only in the whole of humanity. God cannot gain earthly existence in a human being, but only in the life of the human race.

[ 10 ] The third worldview, the one that held the most promise for the future, was introduced by Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (1859). Through him and his student Ernst Haeckel, the worship of nature took the place of the worship of God. There was now no spirit apart from that which nature is capable of producing from itself. Only through it can man come so far as to draw ethical satisfaction from nature itself, which was previously only possible through the prospect of an afterlife. Now his joys spring from this earth.

[ 11 ] The artistic document of these world views is Paul Heyse's "Children of the World". What matters is not what is told in this novel. What matters is that the world views of the fifties and sixties have taken on an artistic form in it.

[ 12 ] The audience that found satisfaction in this novel was one that needed a new world view, a new way of thinking and feeling, but that had no need for a reorganization of social conditions, of the social order.

[ 13 ] Friedrich Spielhagen met the needs of readers who longed for new forms of life. He made the social ideas and trends of his time the subject of his novels.

4. The literary struggles in the new empire

[ 14 ] In the 1970s in Germany, art, philosophy and science are not matters that are at the center of life. Minds are preoccupied by the desire to make themselves as comfortable as possible in the new empire. Politics occupies far more interest than artistic tendencies. The latter are merely a luxury, an addition to life to which people turn during breaks. Poets who sing about things that have nothing to do with the seriousness of life find a large audience. Redwitz, Roquette, Rodenberg, Bodenstedt, Geibel are very much to the taste of the time. One must forget one's higher spiritual interests if one wants to take unalloyed pleasure in these poets. The eternal sadness of the forest, the cuteness of the little birds, the dreamy devotion to the sweet aspects of nature are not for people for whom art is the highest thing in life.

[ 15 ] The further development of the human spirit suffers from the tenacity of human nature. The time of which I speak was not yet so far advanced as to permeate the whole man with that mode of feeling and conception which dominates the scientific view of the world. The old idealism, which seeks to understand the world one-sidedly from the spiritual, still prevails. It could not yet be understood that the spirit is born out of nature, out of immediate reality. Full proof of this is the appearance of Robert Hamerling. He is the type of an artist in an overripe age. He has absorbed the ideas of the occidental world in their entirety. But he is unable to bring the artistic form he gives his works into full harmony with his ideas. The sensual, lush images, the colorful depictions that he gives seem only outwardly grafted onto his ideas. If Hamerling were really a modern spirit, the spiritual content would not have to stand beside and above the reality he describes, but would have to ooze out of it. Sacher-Masoch is the most vivid example of how little the emergence of the spiritual from the sensual-natural could be understood at that time. This poet burrows into the sensual with a subtle way of understanding. He knows all the secrets of the carnal-natural. But his descriptions remain entirely in the realm of raw, naked sensuality. The spiritual appears next to it as an illusion, a bubble of foam which the sensual produces to deceive man. Hamerling is half Christian, half pagan; Sacher-Masoch is the reverse Christian, who practises a religious cult with the carnal. As certain as Sacher-Masoch's art represents a one-sidedness, his works are certainly documents of the seventies, the time that did not have the strength to rise above one-sidedness.

[ 16 ] In Hamerling and Sacher-Masoch lives something that is not exhausted in the merely artistic. For them, poetry is a link within human activity, a means of living out the whole human being, who is more than just an artist. Opposite them are those who cultivate a late art that does not flow directly from human nature, but which has arisen through the transformation and further development of earlier art forms. I count among them: Hermann Lingg, Josef Victor Scheffel, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane.

[ 17 ] The basic character of the artistic sensibility of the seventies is most clearly evident in drama. While Brachvogel still saw the task of drama in a genuinely German way in the shaping of human characters, the most popular playwright of the time became a mere experimenter of dramatic form. And a truly great man like Ludwig Anzengruber remains unnoticed. Under Paul Lindau's leadership, drama ceased to serve a higher spiritual need; it became a gimmick with the forms of dallying stage poetry borrowed from the French.

[ 18 ] Such was the intellectual atmosphere of the time in which the young German Empire was being formed. A thorough dissatisfaction among the young minds is therefore only too understandable. Michael Georg Conrad, Max Kretzer, Karl Bleibtreu, Konrad Alberti became the spokesmen for the dissatisfied. They wanted to put a young, promising art in the place of the old-fashioned, outdated one. It doesn't matter what the young revolutionaries achieved. They all failed to deliver what they promised. What matters is that they gave expression to a basic sentiment that was only too justified among the young generation of the seventies.

5. The significance of Ibsen and Nietzsche for modern intellectual life

[ 19 ] In the fifth of my lectures I tried to describe the significance of Ibsen and Nietzsche for modern intellectual life. Ibsen himself lived through the battles that took place between the spirits in the second half of this century. He was not so happy to be able to devote himself entirely to a one-sided current of thought and to fight everything else from one point of view, like Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Lassalle, David Friedrich Strauss. His soul is a battlefield on which the spiritual battle types all appear and wrestle with each other without one of them being victorious. His spiritual work is a discussion of many individuals who dwell within him.

[ 20 ] Two main currents run through the second half of our century. The first is a radical longing for freedom. We want to be independent of all divine providence, independent of all tradition, of inherited and inherited elements of life, independent of the influence of social and state organization. We want to be masters of our own destiny.

[ 21 ] This longing is countered by the belief, flowing from modern natural science, that we are completely woven into the fabric of a rigid necessity. We are descendants of the most highly developed mammals. What they accomplish is an effect of their organization. And what we humans do, think and feel is also a result of our natural constitution. It is conceivable that natural science will come so far as to be able to prove exactly how the parts of our brain must be organized and move when we have a certain idea, a certain sensation or expression of will. How we are organized is how we must behave. How can we still speak of freedom in the face of this knowledge?

[ 22 ] I believe that natural science can give us the awareness of freedom in a more beautiful form than human beings have ever had. Laws are at work in our souls which are just as natural as those which drive the heavenly bodies around the sun. But these laws represent something that is higher than all the rest of nature. This something is present nowhere else but in human beings. What flows from this something is what makes man free. He rises above the rigid necessity of inorganic and organic lawfulness, obeys and follows only himself. The Christian view, on the other hand, is that divine providence rules in this area, which man has for himself over and above nature.

[ 23 ] Henrik Ibsen was unable to find a balance between the belief in the rigid necessity of nature and the urge for freedom. His dramas show that he wavers back and forth between these two extreme beliefs. Sometimes he lets his characters struggle for freedom, sometimes he lets them be members of an iron necessity.

[ 24 ] It was Friedrich Nietzsche who first taught the emancipation of man from the rest of nature. Man should not follow any supernatural or mere natural laws. He should not be a plaything of divine providence and not a member of natural necessity. He should be the meaning of the earth, that is, the being that lives itself out in full independence. It should develop of its own accord and not be subject to any laws. This is Nietzsche's ethics. This is the basis of his idea of a "revaluation of all values". Until now, people have favoured those who best follow the laws that they believe to be divine or natural. An image of perfection has been held up to man. The person who only wanted to live out of himself, who did not strive for this image, was seen as a troublemaker of the general order. That should change. The type that strives for all the strength, power and beauty that are not predetermined, but lie within itself, should be able to develop freely. Man, who lives only according to the law, should be a bridge between the animal and the superman, who creates the law himself.

[ 25 ] All belief in the hereafter will be overcome when man will have learned to build his existence on himself.

[ 26 ] I would also like to describe Zola as a personality who works in the sense of Nietzsche's world view. In Zola's opinion, the work of art should not represent something higher, something divine in relation to immediate reality, no, the artist should represent this reality as he sees it through his temperament. In this way, he feels himself to be the creator and the one who enjoys him to be the sense of the earth. Both remain within the real, but they depict it in such a way that through their representation they awaken the consciousness that man is a natural being like all other natural things, but a higher one, which is able to give things a free form of its own accord.

6. The influence of the world view of an age on the technique of poetry

[ 27 ] Schiller's dramatic technique is only possible with a poet who believes in a moral world order. In Schiller's sense, the dramatic hero must be brought to the tragic catastrophe through guilt. The catastrophe must appear as a punishment. We, with our purely scientific view of the world, find it absurd if the catastrophe in the drama is linked to guilt. What happens in the human world has for us the same character of moral-free necessity as the rolling of a billiard ball that is hit by another. Such a necessity also satisfies us in drama alone. Following on from this, I developed the connection between the scientific direction of the eighties and the poetic naturalism of the time. The young poets of that time wanted to depict the facts just as externally as the naturalists observed them. They were attached to the outside, which often lies before the senses; the deeper connections in nature and human life, which only reveal themselves to the mind, were not taken into account by either the researchers or the artists at the time. Today we are striving towards a different view of the world and of life. The poet will not link the facts of the world as they appear in the light of a moral or other divine world order, but neither will he link them as they present themselves to mere external, sensory observation. He will assert the right of his personality. His temperament, his imagination will move him to see things in a different context than observation shows him. He will express himself through the things he depicts. Therefore, all aesthetics will dissolve into psychology. The only reason for the way a poet creates will be the peculiarity of his personality. I would like to call the criticism that must necessarily develop from this view individualistic, in contrast to the surviving criticism that applies objective standards. This time I am only giving this brief account of my lecture because I would like to discuss the matter in more detail in this space next time.

7. The spiritual life of the present

[ 28 ] We live in a time in which the revolutionization of the spirits through the world view gained on the basis of natural science exerts its convincing effect on all people who take a remarkable part in spiritual life. But for many, this effect is only on the mind. These many see man as the creature they must regard him as when they draw the necessary conclusions from Darwin's world-changing ideas. But the hearts of these spirits, their sensibilities, are not as advanced as their minds. They think in scientific terms and feel in Christian terms. This causes in them that terribly painful mood of the soul which must arise when one says to oneself that what is valuable is the world beyond, the world of pure ideals and heavenly goods, and when one realizes at the same time that this world is an empty fantasy, an insubstantial dream. One spirit in whom this painful mood has found a grandiose poetic expression is Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. In her admirable poem "Robespierre", she gave words to this pain. To her, the earth is the ruthless all-mother, who uselessly and pointlessly creates new beings and destroys them again just to serve her greed, and who from time to time also creates prophets - Socrates, Christ, Robespierre - who dream of ideals in order to deceive people for a short time about the nothingness of existence. Without these idealistic dreamers, they would prefer annihilation to existence. Through the idealists, people are repeatedly stimulated to a new lust for life, but at the same time deprived of real knowledge.

[ 29 ] The dichotomy between head and heart, between feeling and understanding is the content of most contemporary poetry. Arno Holz, Julius Hart are the singers of this dichotomy. But we also have poets who can draw from the new world view the courage to face life and the joy of existence that flows from it for those who truly recognize it. We do not need a view of the hereafter to get over the tribulations of this world. This was expressed in poignant poems above all by Hermann Conradi, who unfortunately died so young. It also resonates in some of Wilhelm Jordan's poetry and that of many others.

[ 30 ] But we also have a poet to whom the modern way of feeling is as if innate, who has not forced his way into it through struggle and pain, who is naively modern: Otto Erich Hartleben. The others first have to come to terms with Christianity in order to feel modern; he originally feels modern. I like every note in his poetry because I have to feel everything the way he does.

[ 31 ] I have now explained in this lecture what Wilhelm Jensen, Wilhelm Raabe, Richard Dehmel, Detlev von Liliencron mean within the modern world; I have characterized contemporary drama (Max Halbe, Ernst von Wolzogen, Hermann Sudermann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Otto Erich Hartleben). In a short paper I cannot reproduce the content of the lecture, into which I have squeezed everything I have to say about my contemporaries.

[ 32 ] In these lectures I have endeavored to give a picture of the revolutionization of minds in the second half of this century. We are currently celebrating the anniversary of the revolution. But more important to us than the political revolution is the purely spiritual revolution of our world view. We are entering the new century with significantly different feelings than those of our ancestors who were brought up in Christianity. We have truly become "new people", but we, who also profess the new worldview with our hearts, are a small congregation. We want to be fighters for our gospel, so that in the coming century a new generation may arise that knows how to live, satisfied, cheerful and proud, without Christianity, without a view of the hereafter.

I

[ 1 ] The life of an age finds its most intimate expression in poetry. What the spirit of an epoch has to say to the heart of the individual is expressed in his songs. No art speaks such an intimate language as lyrical poetry. Through it we become aware of how intimately interwoven the human soul is with the greatest and the smallest processes of the universe. The mighty genius who walks on the heights of humanity becomes the friend of the simplest mind through his song. How man is drawn to man is revealed with perfect clarity in poetry. For we feel that we have no less claim to the spiritual gifts of our fellow men than to their lyrical creations. What the spirit achieves in other fields seems to belong to all mankind from the outset, and they believe they have a right to share in its enjoyment. The song is a voluntary gift whose communication springs from the selfless need not to possess the secrets of the soul for oneself alone. This basic trait of lyrical art may explain why it is the most beautiful means of reconciliation between the most diverse attitudes of people. The religious mind and the atheistic free spirit will meet sympathetically when the latter sings of his God and the latter sings of freedom. And poetry is also the field in which today the bearers of old, mature artistic ideals and the spirits of a nascent, nascent world view communicate most easily.

[ 2 ] The German sense of art in the second third of our century presents itself as an after-effect of the classical and romantic intellectual currents. The relationship that Goethe, Herder, Schiller and their successors had with nature and art was regarded as exemplary. They set high standards for themselves, but first asked their predecessors whether these standards were the right ones. This way of thinking continues to this day. Gradually, it became second nature to the creative spirits. They were under its spell without being aware of it.

[ 3 ] One such spirit is Theodor Storm. A naive view of nature, a simple, healthy sense are combined with a highly developed feeling for artistic form. Storm owes this feeling to the fact that his youth began soon after Goethe's death. The intellectual atmosphere of his age instilled in him a sense for perfect art forms as if it were innate. Storm poured the atmospheric Iyrian views into these forms, which his sense of nature and his deep feelings brought him.

[ 4 ] The classical sense of art bore different fruit from that of the North German Storm in two Swiss poets, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Gottfried Keller. Natures like Meyer can only flourish in times that were preceded by cultural peaks. They have inherited the need for the highest goals in life and at the same time an artistic seriousness that is not easily satisfied by their own achievements. Meyer wants to experience everything he experiences with dignity. His ideals are so distant that he is in constant fear of never reaching them. He wants to constantly indulge in festive feelings that others only allow themselves at certain times. What he has achieved always falls short of what he desires, so that an incessant alternation of longing and renunciation pervades his soul. He sees pathetic symbols in natural phenomena. He passes by the obvious relationships between things; instead he searches for rare, hidden connections between beings and phenomena. He becomes aware of the strongest contrasts everywhere, because his whole perception strives for the great line.

[ 5 ] Gottfried Keller is an essentially different personality. For him, the attainable is the standard he applies to everything. His whole outlook on life has something bourgeois and unaffected about it. A sound, simple mind and free, receptive senses alone determine his existence. He does not love his homeland out of an ethical instinct, but because he feels most comfortable in his homeland. He strongly emphasizes all the good things about his homeland and benevolently overlooks the unpleasant. He enjoys things as they are and never worries about whether something could be different. His description of nature reflects things as they are; he is not interested in symbols and parables such as those created by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. It is not in his nature to spiritualize feelings and sensations. For him, love always has a sensual trait. But this sensuality is a chaste, coarse and healthy one. He does not love the soul alone, he also loves the mouth; but his love remains childishly naïve.

[ 6 ] The southern German poet Johann Georg Fischer is of a similar nature. He is extremely content with life and its pleasures. He loves his existence so much and knows how to derive so much bliss from it that he only desires the hereafter if it is as beautiful and good as this life. He always feels his healthy strength and is never in doubt that it will lead him safely through life. He also knows how to find something pleasant in the shadows of life. His description of nature is not as simple as Keller's; it has something meaningful and pictorial about it. When he sings of female beauty, we admire the purity of soul that lies in his tones.

[ 7 ] In stark contrast to these southern German poetic natures is the austere beauty of Theodor Fontane's poetry. Meyer, Keller and Fischer never hold back how they feel about things. Fontane meaningfully juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings. He conceals what is going on inside him and leaves us alone with our hearts. He is a brittle person who likes to hide his own ego. Our soul trembles at his descriptions; he never tells us that his soul trembles too. The images his imagination creates have something monumental about them. The seriousness, the majesty of life speak to us from his poems. He sings of significant situations, strong contrasts, proud human characters.

[ 8 ] The poetry of Paul Heyse is post-classical in the truest sense of the word. He has everything from his predecessors: the purest sense of form, the ennobled view, the cheerful artistic spirit directed towards the eternal harmony of existence. Everywhere he dissolves the seriousness of life into the serenity of art. It is his conviction that art should lead man beyond the burdens and oppressiveness of reality. Without doubt, such a view is that of a true artist. But there is a huge difference between a person who has fought his way through the hardships of life, through the dissonances of existence, to the view of harmony that underlies the world, and one who simply accepts this view as tradition. The artist's serenity is only uplifting in the highest sense if it has its roots in the seriousness of life. Goethe, at the time of his perfection, looked at the world with the blissful calm of a sage, having acquired this calm in fierce battles; Heyse jumped unprepared into the field of balanced beauty. He is an epigone through and through. He has a sure eye for the genuine beauties of nature; but his eye has been trained to Goethe's way of looking at things. Heyse knows how to follow the most marvelous paths and make the most wonderful observations; but one always has the feeling that he is following paths blazed by others, and that he is rediscovering what someone else has already found.

[ 9 ] The lyrical poems of Martin Greif are born out of a tender soul, in which the finest impulses of nature and the human soul tremble nobly. He is not moved by the whole of an impression, but only by the soulfulness of it. A pious, devout spirit passes over to us from Greif's creations. Greif brings to life the quiet, modest melodies that rest in things as if enchanted. When we give ourselves over to his poetry, it is as if all the loud, demanding sounds of the world fall silent and a quiet music of the spheres enters our ears. The pious calm of the soul that Goethe loved so much has found a singer in Martin Greif.

[ 10 ] The Viennese Jakob Julius David is a poet whose entire oeuvre is like a single cry for this blessed peace, combined with the painful feeling that the gates to it are closed to him. His imagination paints gloomy pictures that speak vividly of the bitter suffering of a proud soul. The passionate desire, the ardent longing is abruptly replaced by wistful renunciation. As a strong nature, David cannot unlearn desire. A note of displeasure runs through all his poems, which abruptly stands out from the beauty of form that is characteristic of them. He is the representative of those contemporary poets who may have modeled their art on the great role models, but who are not at the same time able to wrestle their way through to the harmonious world view of these role models. David knows that disharmony is not the deepest meaning of life, but harmony does not reveal itself to him. That is why he cannot sing of joy and pleasure, but at best of oblivion and resignation. He is not able to lift anyone up from their suffering, but only to comfort them and exhort them to surrender.

[ 11 ] We see another Viennese poet in a steadily ascending development: Ferdinand von Saar. He is not a distinct personality who shows himself direction and goal out of inner strength. He found himself relatively late in life. By appropriating the unfamiliar, through wise self-education, he reached the point where genius sets in. In the "Nachklänge", which appeared recently, noble artistry and wise contemplation of the world emerge in equal measure. Pictures of noble beauty convey a profound view of nature and people. But nowhere do they bear the stamp of the inspiration of a brilliant imagination; they have gradually matured in a life that has tirelessly striven towards perfection. It is not rapturous enthusiasm that compels Saar's creations, but serious reverence. Saar is one of those artists who have the strongest effect on us when they do not reveal to us the individuality of their own heart, but when they make themselves the spokesperson for what moves all of humanity.

[ 12 ] The same is probably true of another contemporary poet, even if he is as far removed from Saar as possible in many respects: Emil Prinz von Schoenaich-Carolath. Schoenaich-Carolath must be conceded a certain degree of originality; but there is no doubt that he could only reach the artistic heights to which he attained in an epoch in which aesthetic education had reached such a level as in his own. Spirits such as his are only possible within the late culture of a people that had allowed great things to develop from it shortly before. They give back in a refined form what they have received. Schoenaich-Carolath has tones for all human feelings, for all processes of nature. His vision penetrates deep behind the phenomena. He has battles to fight in life, but one notices that during the struggle he never doubts his ultimate victory. If one has called him a Byronic nature, one should not have overlooked the fact that his Byronic restlessness is mixed with a happy confidence.

[ 13 ] In the truest sense of the word, Ernst von Wildenbruch is an afterbloom of classical German art. When he speaks to us, we always hear a great predecessor speaking along with him. It is fair to say that he learned to write poetry, certainly learned it very well. He is more a chosen one than a called one. And that can be said of many today. For this time it can only be applied to Alberta von Puttkammer. She is able, perhaps with just a little too many words, to paint moods of nature with unspeakable beauty. Life seems to her like a blissful elegy. Existence has thorns for her too; but she never lets us forget that the thorns are in rose gardens.

II

[ 14 ] A young generation of poets came onto the scene in Germany at the beginning of the 1980s. It included spirits who were as different as possible in terms of outlook on life and talent. However, they were united in the conviction that a revolution in artistic feeling and creativity was necessary. The rebellion against the prevailing taste of the time, in which Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach were regarded as serious artists, was justified. The principle: "Life is serious, art is cheerful" had been distorted into a caricature in shallow minds. Virtuoso poetic 'dalliance' was no longer distinguished from the noble, beautiful form born from the depths of the soul. The time was struggling for a new world view that wanted to reckon with the great scientific results of the nineteenth century and for a social design that would give those left behind in the struggle for happiness their rightful place. The leading poets knew nothing of such upheavals. This realization brought forth the words of anger in the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart, with which they declared war on contemporary taste in their "Kritische Waffengänge" in 1882. The poets who came together in 1884 to form the collection "Moderne Dichtercharaktere" were inspired by the same sentiment. And this initial rush was followed by the founding of journals and the publication of almanacs, in which disgust at outdated ideas found just as strong an expression as the boldest hopes for the future. Such sentiments gave rise to the recognition that for the past decade and a half has been increasingly accorded to a poet who, unlike many others, does not deliberately follow modern paths, but who naively embraces the circle of emotions that excite contemporary man with a vivid imagination: Detlev von Liliencron. He is a man full of life, who walks through life as a carefree enjoyer and is able to describe all its charms with vivid power. He is capable of all tones, from the most exuberant exuberance to the most fervent adoration of sublime works of nature. He is able to sing hymns of joy to frivolity and carelessness like a child of the world, and he can become pious like a priest when the heath spreads out its silent beauty before him. Liliencron is not a poet who looks at life from one point of view. You will search in vain for a unified world view that could be expressed in clear ideas. At every moment, he is completely absorbed in the impressions to which he has given himself. He does not worry or think about what lies beyond the things of the world. Instead, like a true bon vivant, he savors everything that lies within things. And he always finds the characteristic tone and the most perfect form to express the wealth of perceptions that impose themselves on his senses, which thirst for the whole breadth of reality. He has no need to distinguish between the valuable and the insignificant in this reality, for he is able to draw from the sight of an "old, discarded, torn, half-rotten, abandoned boot" a sentiment whose expression is worthy of a mood that the poet arouses in us. Liliencron draws natural scenes and experiences with rough, masculine lines; he juxtaposes sharp, telling contrasts of color. The strength of his personality is particularly evident in his song lyrics. No intimacy of feeling, no bitter pain is capable of alienating his secure sense of self from himself even for a moment.

[ 15 ] Under Liliencron's influence stands Otto Julius Bierbaum. However, he lacks a secure sense of self; he is a soft, dependent nature that always loses itself in the impressions of the outside world. Nowhere in his work is there any sign of a world view, of a conception that penetrates into the depths of beings. But while Liliencron's sharply defined personality physiognomy compensates for the same lack, Bierbaum's creations are devoid of higher interest. His amiable powers of observation know how to see little meaning in things. His mind is not burdened with the slightest urge for knowledge; what he copies from nature with a careless glance, he depicts in graceful, but sometimes rather uncharacteristic colors. He succeeds in creating charming images of nature; he is able to depict the small impulses of the heart in a magnificent way. Where he aims higher, he becomes unnatural. The big words, the powerful tones to which he often stoops, sound hollow because they have nothing shocking or exciting to communicate. Bierbaum appears like a walker who would like to play a hiker. When he pretends to be boldly and exuberantly pilgrimaging through life, it can't be particularly interesting because he avoids the abysses and dangers.

[ 16 ] Another poet dependent on Liliencron, Gustav Falke, arouses almost opposite feelings. He seeks out life in its mysterious depths, where it raises doubts and poses riddles. He is characterized by a highly developed artistic conscience. In his imagination, the events of the world are transformed into beautiful images. He searches in a serious way for harmony between desires and duties. He strives for the pleasures of existence; but he only wants them if his own merit wins them for him. Victory after a hard struggle is to his liking; he cannot particularly appreciate an easier one. Many an anxious question to fate springs from his serious spirit; a firm belief that man can be content if he adapts himself to the conditions of life leads him out of doubts and puzzles. There is something heavy in Falke's poetry; but this is only a consequence of his conception, which searches for the weighty qualities of things.

[ 17 ] Through serious artistic endeavor, Otto Ernst has worked his way up from a sentimental patheticist to a poet worthy of respect. Although his expression lacks immediacy and independence and his sensibility lacks moderation, there is much in his collections and among his poems published in magazines that reveals a true poetic personality. Especially where he remains in the modest circle of domestic happiness, of everyday events, Otto Ernst succeeds in creating atmospheric creations of a coherent art form. He becomes highly attractive when he lets his humor prevail, which has nothing worldly, but rather something philistine and mischievous, but which hits the nail on the head for those who are able to take the things in question seriously enough. One often has the feeling that Otto Ernst would accomplish far more if he naively abandoned himself to his original feelings and ideas and did not almost always do violence to them through the strict view he has of the tasks of art; he destroys many a charming feeling, many a meaningful image through an added, clever comparison, through a doctrinaire twist, through a philosophical observation that is supposed to say a lot but is usually only trivial.

[ 18 ] Poets of less distinctive character are Arthur von Wallpach, Wilhelm von Scholz and Hugo Salus. Wallpach's feeling for nature and his trust in life are reminiscent of Liliencron. Enchanting mood painting, sometimes in briskly applied, sometimes in intimately graded tones, is characteristic of him. Wilhelm von Scholz is one of those poets in whom every feeling, every idea is distorted when it is to be transformed by the imagination into an image. The word always strives to transcend that which the emotion encompasses. If it has a beautiful image in mind, it spoils it by emphasizing the content twice. His imagination is not content to say what is necessary; it overwhelms us with all the accidental ideas that come to it apart from what is necessary. Hugo Salus sometimes expresses the simple in too strange a way. Anyone who knows how to draw as much pleasure from nature as he does is surprised when he illustrates this pleasure with ideas that are often quite far-fetched. Salus does not focus his eye directly on things, as it were, but seeks out an altered reflection of them.

[ 19 ] The lyrical poems of Otto Erich Hartleben are born of a pure sense of beauty and highly developed taste. His style is characterized by a rare plastic power. Transparent clarity and perfect vividness is a basic trait of his imagination. This is the case despite the fact that his imagination is only slightly fertilized by images taken from external nature. It almost exclusively shapes the inner experiences of his own personality. This poet, who as a novelist and dramatist seeks out the contradictions of reality as objectively as possible and mercilessly reveals the humor inherent in the processes of life, holds a dialogue with his soul in his poetry, making intimate confessions to himself. One has the feeling that these are the most important, the most meaningful moments of his soul's life in which he expresses himself as a lyricist. He is then completely alone with himself and with little that is dear to him in the world. His most beautiful poems were written at turning points in his life, at moments when decisive events were taking place in his heart. And they speak of their creator's sense of calm, simple beauty, style and artistic harmony. Otto Erich Hartleben is more of a contemplative than an active nature. There is nothing impetuous in his nature. He is less a creative than a creative spirit. He prefers to let the content come to him, and then he takes pleasure in shaping it; that is where his productivity unfolds. He lacks Liliencron's verve, but he possesses the quiet grandeur that Goethe claims in his "Winckelmann" is the hallmark of true beauty. In the midst of the Sturm und Drang of the present, Otto Erich Hartleben, the lyricist, can be described as one of those who approach classical artistic ideals. His entire personality is attuned to an aesthetic-artistic view of the world. He only understands the problems of life to the extent that mature taste is called upon to decide them. Philosophy only exists for him insofar as he has a personal relationship to its questions. He can strike soft, intimate tones, but only those that are compatible with a proud, self-assured nature. All pathos is as alien to him as possible.

[ 20 ] Ferdinand Avenarius knows how to harmonize a certain classical-academic form and conception with modern sensibilities. His poetry has grown up on the foundation of theoretical ideas. His feelings do not emerge directly, but allow the ideas of reason to shine through everywhere. He has created a poem "Live!" in which he does not communicate his feelings, but an objective personality communicates his own. This kind of objective poetry will never be cultivated by a completely original spirit. It requires artistic conviction to serve as a support for the artistic imagination.

III

[ 21 ] What we so sorely lack in many of our most important contemporary poets, the prospect of a great, free world view, we encounter in the most beautiful sense in Ludwig Jacobowski. With his recently published collection "Leuchtende Tage", he has placed himself at the forefront of contemporary poets. In this book, the entire scope of human spiritual life is laid out before us as if in a mirror. The sublimity and perfection of the world as a whole, the relationship of the soul to the world, human nature in its most diverse forms, the sufferings and joys of love, the pains and bliss of the cognitive instinct, the mysterious paths of fate, social conditions and their repercussions on the human mind: all these elements of the great organism of life find their poetic expression in this book. Every single thing that this poet encounters, he grasps with receptive senses and with fertile imagination; but again and again he also finds access to the essence of the world that lies behind the flow of individual phenomena. The title of his book "Shining Days" seems to us like a symbol of his whole way of thinking. Like "eternal stars", the "shining days" of life console him for all the suffering and hardship with which the path to our life's goal is covered. Jacobowski formed this sunny world view out of hard struggles. It gives his creations a liberating undertone. His feelings are driven by the highest interests of life with a warmth and intimacy that are personal and immediate in the most beautiful sense. Just as the philosopher's reason distracts him from the individual experience and points him to those bright regions where the transience of everyday life is only a parable for the eternal powers of nature, so his immediate feelings push this poet in the same direction. He is an inventor of the world, just as the philosopher is a thinker of the world. He sees things with childlike, lively senses in their full, fresh tones of color; and he shapes them in the sense of harmony, without the contemplation of which the more deeply inclined person cannot live. Whoever possesses such poetic power, the highest wisdom works like the most loving naivety. The three most monumental forms of the life of the soul are revealed by Jacobowski in their innermost relationship: the childlike, the artistic and the philosophical. Weiler unites these three forms in himself in an original way and succeeds in striking poetic sparks from life everywhere. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not need to search for shells in order to extract precious pearls from them; the seed he reaches out for is enough for him. Jacobowski is far removed from anything artificial or elaborate. He uses the closest, simplest, clearest means. Just as the folk song always finds the simplest expression for the deepest emotional content, so does this poet. He has a feeling for the broad, simple lines of the world's context. He is understood by the naive mind, and he has the same effect on the philosopher who struggles with the eternal riddles of existence. Whether he speaks to us of the experiences of his own soul or describes the fate of a person who is transplanted from the country to the big city to be crushed by life, it will affect us to the same extent. In Jacobowski's nature, there is tenderness alongside substance. He has a firm trust in the direction of his soul. He spurns all the buzzwords of the time, all the favorite ideas of individual currents of the present. What flows from the strength of his personality is the only thing that determines him. In him, we encounter none of the abstruse oddities of those who today turn away from the healthy hustle and bustle of the world and search for all kinds of aesthetic and philosophical-mystical quirks in lonely corners of existence; he can hear the noise of the day because he feels the security within himself to find his way.

[ 22 ] A lyricist whose greatest power lies in the design, in the plastic rounding of the image, is Carl Busse. Within the framework of this image there is rarely anything significant in terms of content, but usually a meaningful mood. This poet is characterized by a fine sense of style for the appearance of form. He knows how to let the basic feeling of a poem come to life in the turns of language, in the harmony of expression. He is not concerned with the deepening of a feeling, but with its vivid, colorful imprint. When Busse paints us a mood, we will not miss a color tone that makes it a rounded whole, nor will we be easily disturbed by a foreign tone. The effervescence of emotion, the urge of passion never appears directly in his work, but is always subdued by artistic moderation. When he speaks of nature, he keeps himself in the middle between the naïve and the pathetic; when he communicates his own emotions to us, they do not come at us in a storm, but in measured steps. Buss's similes and symbols are not meaningful, but concise; his ideas move freely and swiftly from thing to thing; but the poet always knows how to firmly delimit the perimeter within which they are allowed to unfold. Thus Busse's poetry will satisfy those in particular who value external form above all else in poetry; the deeper natures who seek the great, the meaningful content, will not receive any strong impressions from his creations.

[ 23 ] In a most amiable manner, Martin Boelitz finds the expression for the most intimate moods of nature. Transient phenomena, which demand a careful eye if their fleeting, delicate beauty is to be captured, are his domain. His images of nature do not become vivid, but meaningful parables. And he clothes abstract ideas in a sensual garment, so that we may not be able to grasp them, but we believe we can feel them. Thus he lets "all wishes stand still" and "dream the day away"; thus he personifies "longing" and "loneliness". He sings less about the soul that lies in things than about the soul that spreads like a delicate fragrance between things and above them in an ethereal way. When he speaks of himself, he does so in a tone of spirited, serious cheerfulness. His view of life is a cheerful one; but it does not spring from deep thinking, but from a naïve carelessness. He does not overcome the difficulties of life; he takes his paths where there are none. It is not in the possession of strength that he feels happy, but in dreaming of such strength.

[ 24 ] Paul Remer draws on two sources: subtle thinking and a symbolically effective imagination. He is always based on a sentence, a thought; but he knows how to weave it into a symbolic process in such a way that we forget the mystery and are led to believe that he has extracted the symbolic from the process. Whether he depicts the experiences of the human soul symbolically in this way, whether he speaks of natural phenomena or of human actions: he is equally attractive. As he says in a poem about a blind woman: she listens to "the secret confidences of things", so he does it himself. He does not tell us what effects things have on each other, but what their souls have to say to each other. Remer does not describe the bright colors or the loud sounds of nature, but rather the deeper meaning of the colors and sounds.

[ 25 ] The poetry of Kurt Geuckes has sharp, characteristic lines. He does not offer us a unique, individual world of feeling. Thousands felt and feel like him. He is animated by an idealism that is universally human. But he possesses a rare poetic power to express this idealism. Strictly closed, artistic forms do not express an original, but a solid world view. The poet's fiery imagination depicts the darker sides of life in deep, poignant images. However, hope always spreads above the suffering and pain, appearing in a form that can only emerge from the conviction of a true idealist. He also reaches for the symbol when he wants to depict the meaningful in nature, and the symbols always have something masculine about them. But he is also no stranger to the mystical mood, and he always finds a healthy pathos to express it. His mind is turned towards the beautiful and great in the world, for the sake of which he gladly endures the small, ugly and depressing.

[ 26 ] A noble sense of nature and a soul in need of freedom speak from the poems of Fritz Lienhard. But these two traits of his personality are not very pleasing due to the one-sidedness with which they appear. The poet repeats in a rather monotonous way the healthy nature of simple, rural conditions and the depravity of the big city. The magnificent Wasgau forest and the "Venusberg" of Berlin: his love and his hate are enclosed in these two images. His enthusiasm for the fresh country also corresponds to a naive technique that works with the simplest of means.

[ 27 ] Whoever wants to calculate the driving forces of cultural development in recent decades will undoubtedly have to put a high figure on the proportion of women in public life. But perhaps in no other field is this share as clear as in poetry. For while in other fields women appear as fighters and wrestlers, here they are givers and communicators. Otherwise she tells us what she wants to be; here she expresses what she is. This has given us great insights into the female soul. Because the woman felt compelled to shape her inner life artistically, she herself has first become clearly aware of it. Books such as Gabriele Reuter's "Aus guter Familie", Helene Böhlau's "Halbtier" or Rosa Mayreder's "Idole" appear to men like insights into a new world.

[ 28 ] It is understandable that the most intimate art, poetry, also reveals to us the deepest secrets of a woman's heart. The most striking characteristic of modern women's poetry is its frankness about the nature of women. The present age, which has made unreserved truth a requirement of genuine art, has also opened women's mouths. What she once carefully guarded as the sanctuary of the heart, she now entrusts to art. She has gained faith, confidence in her own being, and while the important women of earlier times unconsciously pursued the ideals and goals of men when they wanted to form a view of life, today's women are building one of their own accord.

[ 29 ] The poetic creations of Ricarda Huch show us how clear and inwardly stable such a view of life can be. She has conquered a high, free point of view from which she surveys the phenomena of the world. Although she is not able to see this world in the sun's glare from her height, but only to resign herself to the nothingness of existence, she nevertheless finds in this resignation the inner freedom that an independently inclined person needs in order to find their way in life. Even if she finds the ship of life hurtling towards death, towards annihilation, she draws satisfaction from the awareness that she is allowed to set her sights firmly on the goal. It is not surprising that the female Faustian nature does not know how to create satisfaction for her striving in the first rush, since the male nature has hardly progressed beyond doubtfulness despite thousands of years of struggle. How could a female Nietzsche today elevate the life-affirming "Überweib" to an ideal, since we have experienced Schopenhauer's enthusiasm for nirvana in this century and Novalis' view that death is the true, higher purpose of life?

[ 30 ] The lyrical creations of Anna Ritter are not born out of the great questions of existence, not out of deep doubts and torments, but also out of a genuinely feminine feeling. Something graceful and musical is poured over her poetry. Nowhere does she struggle with form, but she sometimes achieves a perfection in this direction that must silence any critical doubts. Her talent for rhythm and the euphony of language seems so natural that the originality of many a praised nature poet looks like stiltedness in comparison. Love appears in the light that only the true, open-hearted woman can lend it. Sensuality speaks tenderly and chastely from Anna Ritter's songs; feminine desire expresses itself warmly and intimately. The poetry of the mother appears in graceful magic; the life of nature does not emerge powerfully, but all the more sweetly from this poet's soul. Her genuinely feminine disposition comes to the fore in the "Storm Songs". It is not the great male storm that rages in them, but the mysteriousness of the female soul. They are storms that are not overcome by the eternal, but by a happy, spirited optimism of life.

[ 31 ] Marie Stona is gifted with a clear awareness of the nature of women and their relationship to men. The contrast of the sexes and the effect of this contrast on the nature of the feeling of love: these are the ideas that tremble through her soul. Does the man give as much to the woman as she gives to him, that is an anxious question for her. And must not woman give man more than he can return, if she is to increase his strength and not destroy it? How can woman preserve her pride, her self-confidence, and yet sacrifice her self on the altar of love? These are the eternal cultural questions of woman that this poet explores and which she seeks to shape from a mind that is as rich as it is deep.

[ 32 ] The poems of Thekla Lingen express the moods to which the woman of the present day succumbs, who, because of a highly developed sense of freedom and personality, finds the social position offered to her by traditional views uncomfortable. They contain none of the thoughts and tendencies that come to light in modern women's issues. Thekla Lingen only expresses what she thinks and feels individually. But it is precisely this individuality that appears as the elementary content of the cultural struggle of women, which only comes to light in an intellectual way in the emancipation efforts.

IV

[ 33 ] Modern intellectual culture does not make it easy for people with a deep soul to find their way in life. The natural science reformed by Charles Darwin has brought us a new world view. It has shown us that living beings in nature, from the simplest forms up to the most perfect forms, have developed according to eternal, iron laws, and that man has no higher, purer origin than his animal fellow creatures. Furthermore, our intellect cannot close itself to this conviction. But our heart, our emotional life, cannot follow the intellect quickly enough. We still have within us the feeling that thousands of years of education have implanted in the human race: that this natural kingdom, this earthly world, which according to the new view has brought forth from its mother's womb like all other creatures, including man, has a lower existence than what we call "ideal", "divine". We would like to feel like children of a higher world order. It is a burning question of our spiritual development to follow the truth recognized by reason with our hearts. We can only return to peace when we no longer find the natural contemptible, but are able to revere it as the source of all being and becoming. Few of our contemporaries feel this as deeply as Friedrich Nietzsche did. For him, the confrontation with the modern and scientific world view became a matter of the heart that shook his entire emotional life. He began by studying the ancient Greeks and Richard Wagner's philosophical world of thought. And in Schopenhauer he found an "educator". This man of fine mind felt the suffering at the bottom of every human soul to a special degree. And he believed that the ancient Greeks up to Socrates, with their drives and instincts not yet faded by intellectual culture, were particularly afflicted with this suffering. In his view, art had only served them to create an illusion of life within which they could forget the pain that raged within them. Wagner's art, with its high, idealistic impetus, seemed to him to be the means to similarly lead us moderns beyond the deepest suffering of life. For the basic mood of every true human being is tragic. And only the artistic imagination can make the world bearable. Nietzsche had found the tragic human being described in Schopenhauer's philosophy. It corresponded to what he had gained from his studies of the world view in the "tragic age of the Greeks". He approached modern natural science with such attitudes. And it made a great demand on him. It teaches that nature has created the sequence of stages of living beings through development. It has placed man at the pinnacle of development. Should this development stop with man? No, man must continue to develop. He has gone from animal to man without his intervention; he must become superhuman through his intervention. This requires strength, the fresh, unbroken power of instincts and drives. And now Nietzsche became an admirer of everything strong, everything powerful that leads man beyond himself to the superman. He could no longer reach for artistic illusion to deceive himself about life; he wanted to implant as much health, as much strength into life itself as was necessary to achieve a superhuman goal. All idealism, he now believed, sucks this strength out of man, for it leads him away from nature and presents him with an unreal world. Nietzsche now makes war on all idealism. He worships healthy nature. He had tried to absorb the conviction of natural science into his mind. But he absorbed it into a weak, sick organism. His own personality was no carrier, no nursery for the superman. And so, although he could present it to mankind as an ideal, he could speak of it in enthusiastic tones, but he felt the glaring contrast when he compared himself with this ideal. The dream of the superman is his philosophy; his real life of the soul, with its deep dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of his own existence in the face of all superhumanity, generated the moods from which his Iyrian creations sprang. With Nietzsche there is not only a dichotomy between intellect and mind; no, the rift runs right through the life of the mind itself. Everything great comes from strength: that was his confession. A confession that not only his reason recognized, but to which he clung with all his feelings. And the strong man seemed to him like the opposite of himself. The unspeakable pain that overcame him when he looked at himself in relation to his world of ideas, he expressed it in his poems. A soul divided within itself is expressed in them. You have to feel the deep tragedy of Nietzsche's soul if you want to let his poems have an effect on you. One then understands the gloom in them, which cannot come from the joy of life for which he found such beautiful words as a philosopher. Because Nietzsche made the modern world view of natural science his personal cause, he also personally experienced nameless suffering under its influence. He, the thinker of the affirmation of life, who exultantly proclaims that we do not live our lives only once, that all things experience an "eternal return": he became the lyricist of the dying life. He saw the sun setting on his own existence, he saw the weak organism rushing towards a terrible end, and he had to preach the joy of life from within this organism. For him, life meant enduring suffering. And even if existence returns countless times, it can bring him nothing but a never-ending repetition of the same torments.

[ 34 ] The career of Hermann Conradi as a poet began promisingly. A youthful poetry is all he created in the short span of time he was granted to live. It looks like the dawn before a day that is as rich in stormy, exciting events as it is in sublime and beautiful ones. Two things weigh heavily on the bottom of his soul, which thirsts for all pleasures and knowledge. One is the realization of the painful fate of all mankind, whose gaze wanders out to the most distant stars and which would like to embrace the whole world with its life, and yet is condemned to see its existence bound to a small star, to a speck of dust in the universe. The other is the feeling that his own self is too weak to make his own possession of the little that is allotted to man in his limited existence. Man must lag far behind what his mind's eye sees as a distant goal; but I cannot even reach the near goals of mankind: this idea speaks from his poetry. It stirs up feelings in his mind that correspond to the eternal longing of all mankind, and also those that give deeper expression to his personal destiny. These feelings storm through his soul with demonic force. The urge to reach the heights of existence creates in Conradi a boundless desire; but this boundlessness never occurs without a serious longing for harmony of thought and will. The poet's world of thought strives towards the regions of the "great understanding of the world". But again and again he feels himself transported back to banal, worthless life and has to give in to dull resignation. Meagre symbols of the future paint themselves in the soul when it is seized by an ardent urge for satisfaction in the present. Such a change of moods is only possible in a spirit in which the high side of human nature dwells, and yet which also courageously admits to itself that it is not free from the low side of this nature. Conradi had a boundless sincerity towards the instincts in his personality that drew him down from the noble and beautiful. He wanted to bring his own self with all its sins up from the abysses of his inner self. The greatness that lies in the confession of his own misguided feelings and emotions is characteristic of him. Neither the memory of the past nor hope for the future can satisfy him. The former evokes an agonizing feeling of lost innocence and lust for life, the latter becomes a dreamlike nebulous image that dissolves into nothing when he tries to grasp it. And Conradii knows how to speak of all these feelings in his soul in bold and at the same time beautiful poetic forms. He has an extraordinary command of expression. He combines the power of feeling with true artistry. He has an extensive imagination that knows how to fetch ideas from everywhere in order to portray an inner life that wants to traverse all the spaces of the world.

[ 35 ] Richard Dehmel's poetry has its origins in a similar school of thought. He too wants to encompass the whole wide world with his feelings. He wants to penetrate the secrets that rest in the depths of beings like enchanted creatures, and at the same time he longs for the pleasures that are bestowed upon us by the things of everyday life. He is actually a philosophical nature, a thinker who refuses to walk the paths of reason, of the ideal world, because he hopes to pick better fruit in the field of poetry, of the sensual, figurative life of the imagination. And the fruits he finds there are indeed often exquisite ones, even though one notices that they were gathered by someone who would have found others more suited to his nature even easier. He could have the thought in its purest, most transparent form, but he does not want it. He strives for contemplation, for the image. That is why his poetry appears like a symbolic philosophy. It is not the images that reveal to him the essence, the harmony of things, but his thinking that reveals them to him. And then the images spring up around the thought, like the substances in the formation of a crystal in a liquid. But we can seldom stop at these images, at these views, for they are not there for their own sake, but for the sake of the thought. As images, they have something vague about them. We are happy when we see through the image to the thought. Dehmel appears at his most outstanding when he expresses his ideas directly in the meaningful manner of expression that is characteristic of him, and does not first struggle for visualizations. Where he presents ideas in their pure, thought-like form, they appear large and weighty. He also succeeds at times in expressing his ideas in splendid symbols, but only when he puts together in the simplest form a few characteristic ideas of the senses; as soon as he reaches for a richer abundance of such ideas, the strangeness of his imagination, the unpictorial nature of his intuition leaps to the eye. But what reconciles us with him even then is the great seriousness of his will, the depth of his emotional world and the proud height of his points of view. His paths always lead to interesting, captivating destinations. One is happy to follow him even if one is already convinced at the beginning of the journey that it is a wrong path. Dehmel the man always shows himself to be greater than the poet. His grand gestures may often be distracting, indeed they can sometimes seem like posturing, but there can never be any doubt that there is a powerful feeling behind the loud tone.

[ 36 ] A pithy nature is Michael Georg Conrad. The wholesome and folksy lives in his work. He combines strength with naivety. He succeeds in the simple song in a perfect way. He can speak to the heart in a powerful way. A noble enthusiasm for the truly sublime and beautiful can be heard in his creations. His real significance, however, lies in the field of the novel and in the powerful impulses he was able to give to German intellectual life when it was in danger of becoming bogged down in traditional forms. The future historian of our literature, who will not only look at phenomena according to their completed manifestation, but who will also trace the causes at work, must give Conrad a wide berth.

[ 37 ] A poet whose sensations swirl around the world like an uncertain factor is Ludwig Scharf. He knows how to strike warm, touching notes; one must respect the impulses of his wandering soul; but one cannot escape the feeling that he himself is at ease in the labyrinths, that he likes to wander in the labyrinth and does not want the saving thread to lead him out. Scharf is an eccentric of the emotional life. He feels lonely; but his creations lack what could justify his loneliness: the greatness of a personality founded in himself.

[ 38 ] Christian Morgenstern strives for the high points of view, from which all small peculiarities of things disappear and only the meaningful features are visible. His imagination seeks meaningful images, expressive content and saturated tones. Where the world speaks of its dignity, where man feels his self elevated by uplifting sensations: that is where this imagination likes to dwell. Morgenstern searches for the sharp, impressive characterization of feeling. You rarely find simplicity in his work; he needs resounding words to say what he wants.

[ 39 ] The poetic physiognomies of Franz Evers', Hans Benzmanns and Max Bruns' are less pronounced. Franz Evers still lacks his own content and form. It is clear from many of his creations that he strives for the depths of existence and for a proud, self-confident freedom of personality. Yet everything remains nebulous and unclear. But he feels himself to be a seeker and a struggler, and he carries within him the conviction that the riddles of the world can only be solved by those who approach them with holy devotion. Max Bruns is still stuck in the imitation of foreign forms. That is why his sensuous poems, which bear witness to a beautiful feeling for nature, cannot make a significant impression for the time being, but they arouse the best hopes in many quarters. Hans Benzmann is not an independent individuality, but a pleaser who likes to surround the simple with all kinds of colorful decoration, and who seeks the poetic not in the straightforward, the simple, but in the cumbersome. He succeeds in creating many a beautiful image, but he is almost never able to express himself without the superfluous and trivial.

V

[ 40 ] John Henry Mackay is called the "first singer of anarchy" with the publication of his poems "Tempest" in 1888. In the book in which, in 1891, he described the cultural currents of our time with a clear view and from a deep knowledge, he emphasized in "The Anarchists" that he was proud of this name. This lyrical collection is one of the most independent books ever written. The Anarchist view of life, much maligned but little known, has found in Mackay a poet whose powerful feeling is fully equal to its great ideas. "In no field of social life" - he himself says in the "Anarchists" - "is there today a more hopeless confusion, a more naive superficiality, a more dangerous ignorance than in that of anarchism. The very utterance of the word is like the waving of a red scarf - most people rush at it in blind rage, without allowing themselves time for calm examination and reflection." The view of the true anarchist is that one man cannot rule over the actions of another, but that only a state of social life is fruitful in which each individual sets for himself the aim and direction of his actions. Everyone usually believes he knows what is equally pious for all people. Forms of community life - our states - are thought to be justified, which seek their task in supervising and guiding the ways of men. Religion, state, laws, duty, justice and so on are concepts that have arisen under the influence of the view that one should determine the goals of the other. Concern for one's "neighbor" extends to everything; only one thing remains completely unconsidered, namely, that if one person prescribes the ways to another's happiness, he deprives the latter of the possibility of providing for his own happiness. It is this one thing that anarchism regards as its goal. Nothing should be binding on the individual but what he imposes on himself as an obligation. It is sad that the name of the noblest of world views is misused to designate the conduct of the most learned disciples of violent domination, those fellows who believe they are realizing social ideals when they cultivate the so-called "propaganda of action". The follower of this school of thought stands on exactly the same ground as those who try to make their fellow human beings understand what they have to do by means of inquisition, the cannon and the penitentiary. The true anarchist fights against the "propaganda of action" for the same reason that he fights against communal orders based on violent intervention in the circle of the individual. The free, anarchist mode of imagination lives as a personal need in Mackay's emotional life. This need emanates as a mood from his lyrical creations. Mackay's noble feeling is rooted in the basic feeling that the personality has a great responsibility towards itself. Humble, devoted natures search for a deity, for an ideal that they can worship, adore. They cannot give themselves their value and therefore want to receive it from outside. Proud natures only recognize in themselves what they have made of themselves. Self-esteem is a fundamental trait of noble natures. They only want to contribute to the general value of the world by increasing their value as individuals. They are therefore sensitive to any foreign interference in their lives. Their own ego wants to be a world unto itself so that it can develop unhindered. Only from this sanctification of one's own person can the appreciation of another's self emerge. He who claims complete freedom for himself cannot even think of interfering in the world of another. One may therefore assert that this anarchism is the way of thinking that necessarily flows from the nature of the noble soul. He who appreciates the world must, if he understands himself, also appreciate that part of existence in which he directly intervenes in the world, his own self. Mackay is a noble, self-assured nature. And anyone who descends into the abysses of his own soul with such seriousness as he does awakens passions and desires in him of which the unfree have no idea. From the solitary point of view of the free soul, man's view of the world expands. "There the soul rises from brooding dreams to wander the paths of the world as the chosen one." When the gaze penetrates deep within, it also has the gift of wandering over the infinite spaces, and the human being enters the mood that Mackay expresses in his poem "Weltgang der Seele" ("The Soul's World Walk") in the words that the soul's "trembling wings were waved by courage for flight in the eternal spaces".

[ 41 ] How deeply Mackay is able to feel with every human personality is demonstrated by his poignant poem "Helene". The love of a man for a fallen girl is portrayed here by a poet whose feeling and imagination have given him the warmth of expression that can only have its origin in the perfect freedom of the soul. If one pursues the human ego into such abysses, then one also gains the certainty of finding it on the heights.

[ 42 ] Mackay has been called a tendentious poet. Those who do so show that they neither judge the nature of tendency poetry correctly nor know the relationship of the poet Mackay to the world view he represents. His ideals of freedom form the basic mood of his soul in such a way that they appear as an individual expression of his inner self, just as the sounds of love or the glorification of the beauties of nature do for others. And it is certainly no less poetic to give words to man's deepest thoughts than to his inclination towards women or his joy in the green forest and birdsong. To the eulogists of so-called "unintentional creativity", who are quick with their doctrinaire objections when they sense something like a thought in poetry, it should be borne in mind that man's most precious asset, freedom, does not arise in the dullness of the unconscious, but on the bright heights of developed consciousness.

[ 43 ] About fifteen years ago, Karl Henckell turned the great question of contemporary life, the social question, into the basic motif of his poetry out of the stormy fire of an idealistic soul. He wanted to counter the poems of the 1970s, which comfortably proclaimed inherited ideas in new ways, with a "morning wake-up call of the victorious and liberating future". A hopeful idealism shines out of the gloomy feelings that compassion for the longings, aspirations and struggles of his time formed in Henckell. He did not want to serve the mendacious "old beauty", but the new truth, which creates an image of the suffering of the struggling contemporary human being. Plasticity of expression and harmony of tone cannot be the character of this poetry, which oscillates between indignation at the social experiences of the present and vague expectations of the future. The exaggerated hyperbole takes the place of the calmly beautiful metaphor. A stinging glow sprays from the verses, not soothing warmth. Freedom in all its forms becomes the idol to which the poet pays homage. He incorporates science, which allows the spiritual to emerge from the material, into his way of imagining so that it can free him from the bonds of religious bondage, the mythological way of looking at things. But the idea of freedom can also become a tyranny. If it shapes sharply defined life goals, it kills the truly independent life of nature. A heart that constantly cries out for freedom can perhaps mean nothing other than new shackles instead of the old ones. It is a higher development in Henckell's individuality that he also wanted to free himself from freedom again. He found the way to the inner freedom that says: "Let schools and parties teach and shout, you can only flourish as an artist and free yourself alone." The "Tambour", who wanted to serve the free spirit with a loud drumbeat, has transformed himself into the violinist who has found beauty and sings of it. And thus Henckell has also been granted the happiness that can be enjoyed by natures that are strong enough to create a purpose in life from within that meets the stormy desire, the longed-for ideals. It is not the trivial happiness that nourishes a fleeting existence from the superficial pleasures of life; it is the harsh happiness that rises like a proud castle above the steep rock of painful experiences, the happiness that Goethe meant when he had Tasso say: "And when man falls silent in his agony, a god gave me to say what I suffer." Bruno Wille called his Iyrian collection, published in 1897, "Einsiedelkunst aus der Kiefernheide". With this title, he made a significant reference to the basic character of his personality. He sought what his soul thirsted for in people: happiness and perfection. But he could not find them there. That is why he returned to where he had come from, to the hermitage of his soul, and chose nature as his companion, which keeps the loyalty that people talk so much about but do not know how to keep to one another. What he has striven for in vain in alliance with men is granted to him through the friendship of nature. It is not an innate trait of Wille's mind that drove him to hermitage. His soul would not have called out to him from the outset like Nietzsche's: "Flee into your solitude! You live too close to the small and wretched. Flee from their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but revenge." Although a rich inner life and a developed sense of nature were always present in Wille and he had developed a certain self-sufficiency in himself, he threw himself into the hustle and bustle of social community life. What in Nietzsche stems from the hypersensitivity of the organism, from its peculiarity of smelling the many impurities in the souls of people, as it were, was brought about in Wille through rich experience within the hustle and bustle of the "flies of the market". This experience gave rise to a desire that appears in Nietzsche like a prejudice: "Worthy know the forest and the rock to be silent with you. Resemble again the tree you love, the broad-headed one: silent and listening, it hangs over the sea." And Bruno Wille not only knows how to be silent with the forest and the rock, but also how to hold an intimate conversation with them. He knows how to loosen nature's tongue. The silent plants, the mystical blowing of the wind, they reveal to him the intimate secrets of nature, and the distant stars entrust him with great revelations. His gaze rises to the red Mars, whose surface is covered not by naïve popular belief but by serious science with its legendary inhabitants, to spy out where the poor, imperfect children of the earth can find redemption from the old woe. The longing of his soul sucks in the sublime sounds of eternal nature in order to live together with the universe, to weave his own self into the infinite soul of the world. "Endless hosts of worlds shall you, the soul, travel..." And this own self is not the empty, insubstantial self of the enthusiast who seeks outside what he cannot find within himself; it is the full self that longs for a fulfillment that brings him just such riches as it holds within itself. The poor self gives itself away because it is needy; the rich self pours out its abundance into its surroundings. A poetic pantheism speaks to us from Wille's poetry. What Goethe desires and expresses in "Künstlers Abendlied": "How I long for you, nature, to feel you faithful and dear!.... You will cheer up all my powers in my mind, and extend this narrow existence to eternity", that lives as the keynote in Wille's poetry.

[ 44 ] In Julius Hart's soul too, as in Bruno Wilde's, the individual spirit marries with the All-Spirit. But this All-Spirit is not the natural spirit resting blissfully in itself; it is a world spirit ravaged by all the storms of human passion. Its feelings float back and forth between drunken enjoyment, proud joy in eternal becoming and dull renunciation. Birth and death, which nature only shows in its outer shell, which revolves around the deep, eternal, never dying life: we encounter them again and again in Hart's poetry. In this poet we find a sense of nature that does not bring up the noble harmony of the gods from the depths of things, but instead sees its own soul moods embodied in the processes of the outside world. What is going on in his heart is proclaimed to him by nature in large-scale symbolism. And the rhythms with which he sings of this symbolism are captivating. The primordial in the human being, the great, gigantic destiny that does not act from the outside, but which from the abysses of the soul drives individuality demoniacally onwards through good and evil, through truth and error, through joys and pains: Hart finds words for this that resound fully and weigh heavily on our souls. Understandably, such a poet also had to find tones for the feeling that comes from the region of the soul that is most developed in modern man, the social one. This social feeling has awakened feelings in his own heart, as they appear in his poem "On the Journey to Berlin", which provides a reflex image of the unsparing, great world events of the present from a strong, deeply excitable soul. There is a philosophical streak in Hart's personality. It lends his poems seriousness and depth. And this trait is thoroughly Iyrical. Even where he could be philosophical, Hart becomes lyrical. This can be seen in his book "The New God", in which he sets out his world view. What he has in mind as such is not laid out in thought, but sounds out of a lyrical mood.

[ 45 ] Clara Müller has earned the right to be counted among the social poets with her collection "Mit roten Kressen". The appealing thing about these poems is that the social imagination and thinking is thoroughly personal. The poet's own suffering and renunciations have opened her eyes to those of others. And how rich her life was in instructive experiences is also beautifully attested to by the poetry, which appears in form with noble simplicity.

[ 46 ] Gustav Renner and Paul Bornstein may be mentioned when speaking of the personalities on whom one places hopes for the future. The simple, natural tones of the former and the pathos of the latter, which seems to be truthful. The simple, natural tones of the former and the warmth of the latter, which seems like truth, certainly arouse such hopes.

[ 47 ] In his first poems, we encounter more maturity in Emanuel von Bodman. His style evokes an impression reminiscent of Rembrandt's paintings. He loves to juxtapose significant perceptions that form sharp contrasts, so that together they have great expressive power. The epigrammatic brevity that is characteristic of him is heightened in its effect by such juxtapositions.

VI

[ 48 ] "In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing, but the form everything; for through the form alone the whole of man is acted upon, while through the content only individual forces are acted upon. The content, however sublime and far-reaching it may be, therefore always has a restrictive effect on the spirit, and true aesthetic freedom can only be expected from the form. This, then, is the real secret of the master's art, that he extinguishes the material through the form; and the more imposing, presumptuous, seductive the material is in itself, the more arbitrarily it pushes itself forward with its effect, or the more the viewer is inclined to engage directly with the material, the more triumphant is the art that forces it back and asserts its dominion over it." With these words, Schiller described an artistic goal in his letters "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", as envisioned by the poet Stefan George. The sensation, the feeling, the image that tremble in the artist's soul must first be shaped and formed if they are to have artistic value. Every fiber of these primal elements of the soul's life must have been seized by the creative power and made into something other than its natural state. For this only excites man, it is no concern of the artist. He is not concerned with the individual colors, the individual sounds, the individual ideas, but with the way in which they are put together in the work that we enjoy aesthetically. Schiller evidently saw an ideal in this cult of form, but felt that it could easily fall into loneliness, and therefore added that the more imposing and powerful the content, the material, and the more powerful the form that has to cope with it, the more valuable the form is. The more captivating what one has to say is, the greater the skill required to say it in a way that is pleasing as such. In poetry, the artist has to deal with his own soul; his feelings, his emotions are the material. The art will not lie in the fact that these sentiments and feelings have greatness, but that greatness appears in how these emotions of the soul are expressed. Whoever remains within Schiller's mode of conception will, however, have to admit that the more significant the content that is expressed, the more highly the mode of expression, however artful it may be, is to be valued. In poetry, it is the artist's own soul that provides this 'content, the personality. The greater the personality we see through the lyrical work of art, the more valuable it will appear to us. Robert Zimmermann, who as an aesthete radically carried out the view that it is form alone that arouses artistic pleasure, said in order to make this clear: one and the same thing, for example a statue, is a stone to the naturalist, especially the mineralogist, and a demigod to the aesthete. The former is merely concerned with the material, the latter with what has been artistically made from the material. With regard to poetry, one would have to say in the sense of this view: the emotions of the soul of another may be attractive or repulsive to man, they may cause his participation or his antipathy; to the aesthete they can only be harmonious or inharmonious, rhythmic or unrhythmic.

[ 49 ] Stefan George now lives entirely in the element of artistic expression, of form. When the vibrations of his soul emerge, they should no longer cling to anything that merely interests the human being; they should be completely absorbed in the artistic element of form. The world only gains value for this personality insofar as it is rhythmically moving, harmoniously shaped, insofar as it is beautiful. And if others see beauty in the fact that the eternal, the elemental forces of existence appear to us in the transient, Stefan George denies the eternal entities any value if they are not beautiful. His three collections of poems: "Hymns, Pilgrimages, Algabal" - "Books of Pastoral and Prize Poems, of Sagas and Songs of the Hanging Gardens" - the "Year of the Soul", they are the world as rhythm and harmony. The world is my rhythm and my harmony, and what does not flow into this golden realm, I leave behind in the chaos of the worthless: that is George's basic mood.

[ 50 ] One might call this mood drunk with beauty. And Hugo von Hofmannsthal is also drunk with beauty. But if one can say of Stefan George: he forces beauty to come to him, then one must say of Hofmannsthal: this beauty forces him to himself. Like a bee, he flies through the world; and there he stops, where there is the honey of the spirit, the beauty, to collect. And just as honey is not the blossom and fruit itself, but only the juice from it, so Hofmannsthal's art is not a revelation of the eternal secrets of the world, but only a part of this whole. One gladly accepts this part and enjoys it in solitary hours, just as the bee feeds on the collected honey in winter. The Viennese poet's art is as sweet as honey. But the power that gigantically creates the things of the world and animates them is missing in this art. It is not stormed by the power and passion of the elements; it blows in it and weaves a harmony of the spheres that resounds at the bottom of the world's soul. And it must become quite still and silent around us, the storm of world events must cease, the wild will must die for a moment if we want to hear the quiet music of this poet. The strange similes of this lyric poet, his peculiar paraphrases and word combinations only impose themselves on the mind that seeks exquisite beauty. Those who seek the eternal forces of nature in their characteristic manifestations will pass these beauties by. For they are like the revelations of the eternal in the luxury of nature. And yet, even in Hofmannsthal's oddities, one senses the necessity of world phenomena. One will not be able to fend off the accusation of a philistine mode of imagination if one rejects this luxurious art; but it must be conceded that few human creations are such seducers of philistinism as the poems of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

[ 51 ] The mood of devotion, standing in adoration before the eternal riddles of nature, resounds to us from the lyrical poems of Johannes Schlaf. So great, so lofty, so mysterious are the riddles before him that he can only look at them with half-open eyes because he is afraid to allow the fullness of existence to penetrate him. The anticipation pours into his soul enough of the blissful delight of the glories of the world; he wants to avoid full vision, the brightness of perception. He, too, resorts to rare imaginings in order to clothe the imagined in words; but not as a spirit drunk with beauty, but because of his passionate devotion to the truth, whose majesty he does not want to bring too close to the sober senses through the garb of everyday life. This poet, who is one of the prophets of radical naturalism in the field of drama: as a lyric poet, he has made himself a singer of the eternal essences that are hidden deep within things.

[ 52 ] Arno Holz took a different path of development. He turned away from the beautiful, naturalistic poetry to which he was devoted at the beginning of his career. The naturalistic doctrine has gained the upper hand over naturalness. For it is natural that feeling in art rises above direct experience. The style that gives a higher form to perceptions: it springs from a natural longing. From that which feels most satisfied when man finds means of art which stand without precedent in life, which are the soul's own free creation and yet revelations of the eternal elemental forces. Goethe describes this satisfaction by characterizing the impression of music. "The dignity of art is perhaps most eminent in music, because it has no substance that needs to be accounted for. It is entirely form and content and elevates and ennobles everything it expresses." For every inner experience, when it emerges from the depths of the soul, should, in Holz's opinion, bring its own individual form into the world; and only this form, born simultaneously with the content, should be the natural one. Holz does not want to accept the path from the experience to the completed artistic form. It is not, as Schiller says, in the conquest of the material by the form that the true artistic secret of the master lies; rather, the master is the one who is able to eavesdrop on the form lying within the material. In this way, Holz has turned from the inspiring singer, who was moved when he expressed the fate of misery, the longing for a better future, into the careful recorder of immediate impressions, which only give satisfaction to the aesthetic feeling when they are accidentally artistic. However, they very often are, because the poetic spirit lives in wood despite its theory, which is hostile to poetic art in the higher sense.

[ 53 ] The poems of Cäsar Flaischlen are effective due to the deep, cozy personality that expresses itself in them. He is a personality who is not able to take life lightly. He has to fight against the passionate strivings of the soul. It thirsts for satisfaction. Pride wants to conquer it, which keeps it away from its goals. But in the end, it is not unlimited power that she trusts, but a bit of modesty that sets herself manly goals when she sees that the distant ones are unattainable. For Flaischlen would rather be a full man within the narrower circle than half a man within the wider one. To be whole in accordance with his own soul fund, inwardly harmonious and based on himself: that is the basic character of his personality. The things of the world pass before his eyes with dignified simplicity, and his verses and his particularly charming poems in prose flow just as simply, often all too unpretentiously.

[ 54 ] Richard Schaukal has a gift for observation that focuses on the expressive in the world. Things and events are stylized for his gaze. He transforms the sublime into the sublime, and the beautiful into the simply beautiful. For his eye, the slender expands completely into a straight line; the transitions from one thing to another cease, and contrast abruptly replaces contrast. But all this in such a way that we have the impression that in his art things clarify themselves through sharp contours and contrasts; they make their indeterminacy disappear and emphasize their characteristic features. A colorful language is on a par with this way of looking at things. He is able to say meaningfully what he has seen meaningfully. He is at the beginning of his artistic career. It seems to be a meaningful beginning.

[ 55 ] The imagination of Rainer Maria Rilke is wonderfully sensitive to the intimate relationships of natural beings and human experiences. And he has an accuracy of expression that is able to present all the subtle relationships between the things that the poet discovers to us with full, rich tones. This is not the accuracy of the great characterizer, this is that of the nature-loving wanderer who loves the things he encounters on his wanderings and to whom they tell many of their quiet secrets because they too love him and have gained his trust.

[ 56 ] Hans Bethge has sonorous colors of expression and a great capacity for impressing the solemn tones of the outside world. However, neither evokes the feeling that it comes from the poet's very own soul, but appears as an expression of what is felt. This impression is heightened by the coquetry with which this poetry approaches us. It is likely, however, that this strangeness in the poet's personality is only a precursor to his own beautiful achievements, the forerunners of which can be heard in his current creations.

[ 1 ] On December 2, 1900, Ludwig Jacobowski was torn from a busy and hopeful life by a sudden death. Only those who were so close to him that he spoke to them about his ideas and plans in the last days of his life will have any real idea of what was carried to his grave. For one always had to make an addition to everything he had achieved. He made it himself. He was only satisfied with himself when he saw great tasks ahead of him. A twofold belief animated him. One was that life is only worth living if one's personality is restlessly enhanced in its efficiency; the other was that man does not belong to himself alone, but to the community, and that only he who is as useful to others as he can be deserves his existence. Under the influence of such sentiments, he continually widened the circles of his activity. It was a beautiful moment for him and for others when he spoke of what he was about to do. The way he spoke always inspired the belief that he would achieve what he wanted. He did not shy away from any obstacles. Not those that lay within him, nor those that he encountered along the way. There are few people who work so hard on themselves to enable themselves to accomplish their tasks. He had the highest confidence in the foundation of his being. But he never believed that it would be easy for him to work this reason out of himself. He could look back with the deepest satisfaction on the work he had done to work his way up to what he had become. But he probably never felt this satisfaction in itself, but only because it gave rise to the feeling that his working power would be equal to any obstacle in the future. Above his desk hung a piece of paper with core sayings. The Goethe sentences were also written on it:

No sooner are you safe from the grossest deception,
Hardly are you master of the first child's will,
You think yourself superhuman enough,
Fail to fulfill the duty of man! How much are you different from others?
Know yourself, live in peace with the world!

[ 2 ] The essence of his thinking and feeling is expressed in these sentences. Seeing life as a duty was part of his innermost nature. For he lived with this attitude from childhood. It is as if he had already felt as a boy: spare yourself no work, for you will one day demand much of yourself as a man, and woe betide you if you have not made yourself resilient!

[ 3 ] Ludwig Jacobowski was born on January 21, 1868 in Strelno in the province of Poznan, the third son of a merchant. He spent his first five childhood years in the small district town, a few miles from the Russian border. In April 1874, his parents moved to Berlin. The boy first attended the Luther Boys' School here. There he was a diligent, ambitious pupil. This remained the case when he entered the sexta of the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, but things changed from the quinta onwards. His diligence had diminished and he did not enjoy his lessons very much. He had to be returned to the Luther Boys' School. An eye operation that had to be performed on him at that time and the fact that he had to attend a language school because of a speech impediment had a profound influence on the boy's basic mood. The feeling that he had to work his way through a rough, brittle surface was richly nourished during this time. Such sensations caused him countless gloomy hours. A remnant of these hours probably never left his soul. But such feelings were always accompanied by the opposite pole: you have to steel your will, you have to replace out of yourself what fate has denied you. For him, dejection was always just the soil from which his almost unlimited energy grew. When he was twelve years old, he lost his mother. Fate ensured that his life was built on a serious foundation. In his twentieth year he also had to follow his father to the grave; he saw two brothers die in the prime of life. His determined will and his courage to face life grew again and again out of his dark experiences. Goethe's words "Over graves forward" were also among those that could be read on the note above his desk.

[ 4 ] A complete transformation took place in the boy when, from about the age of thirteen, he began to immerse himself in the treasures of German intellectual life. It is indicative of the idealistic trait of his soul that he felt drawn to Schiller's creations with true fervor during this time. Thus he created for himself the objects of his interest, which he had initially been unable to find at school. When he returned to the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, he joined the ranks of the good pupils more and more. He had now found his own way to gain understanding from the outside world. In the top class he had reached the point where he was exempted from the oral Abitur examination on the basis of his good written work. He passed this exam on September 30, 1887.

[ 5 ] The friendship with a boy who died as a senior secondary school student had a great influence on Ludwig Jacobowski's development. This was a gifted boy who developed significant mathematical abilities in particular. This friendship was a good counterbalance to Jacobowski's more purely literary intellectual interests. An understanding of genuine, even exact scientific rigor, which remained with him for life, was planted in Jacobowski at that time. As a result, he always had an open mind for the great achievements of natural research and their far-reaching significance for the entire thinking and feeling of modern mankind. Throughout his later life, he was devotedly faithful to the memory of his childhood friend who had died at an early age. "I am once again erecting a poetic monument to him," were the words I heard from him, accompanied by an indescribable look of gratitude.

[ 6 ] The extent of Ludwig Jacobowski's interests can be seen in the course of his university studies. He was enrolled in Berlin from October 1887 to October 1889, then in Freiburg i. Br. until Easter 1890. He initially attended lectures on philosophy, history and literary history. The circle soon expands. Cultural history, psychology and national economics were added. One can see how a main inclination increasingly emerges. He wanted to understand the development of the human imagination. Everything was driven by this fundamental interest. In 1891, he earned his doctorate in Freiburg with a treatise: "Klinger and Shakespeare, a contribution to the Shakespearean romance of the Sturm und Drang period." It is clear from the concluding sentences what shape his ideas had taken. "Literary history should finally stop praising and blaming. Both belong to a romantic period of criticism. Modern criticism - the first traces of which can be discovered in France with Sainte-Beuve, Taine and others - has to live beyond "good and bad", beyond "praise and blame". Psychological understanding is the only and first thing that criticism can achieve. That is why Klinger's dependence on the great Briton to understand psychologically must be understood as something naturally necessary. And judgments against necessities of a psychological nature are decidedly superfluous and wrong. Therefore, when Hettner says that Klinger saw in Shakespeare "a license for everything strange and outlandish, for everything crude and crude", this judgment must be rejected outright. Klinger only saw in Shakespeare a model of genius. His impressionable, receptive nature, supported by an excellent memory, had to store up, process and reproduce a large number of Shakespearean motifs. In this psychological "must" lies an aesthetic justification of his dependence on Shakespeare."

[ 7 ] From then on, Jacobowski's thinking was focused on the laws of the development of the human spirit. He also carried within him the conviction that poetry arises from a necessity deeply rooted in the human soul. This drew him to the study of folk poetry. He looked everywhere at the primitive cultures of primitive peoples and savages to see how poetry necessarily arises from the imaginative and emotional life of man. From such studies he gained a deep understanding of what truly deserves to be called poetry. One of his peculiarities was that everything he studied scientifically immediately penetrated his feelings and gave him a firm judgment. It was highly enjoyable to listen to him when he showed from the smallest details of a poem to what extent something was really poetic or not. He assumed that in the most developed art poetry the characteristics that can be perceived in the most primitive poetry are repeated. This is not to say, however, that Jacobowski based his own artistic work or even his aesthetic judgment on reflection. For him, knowledge was completely compatible with the originality, even naivety, of creation and feeling.

[ 8 ] In his twenty-first year, Ludwig Jacobowski was already able to publish a volume of poems entitled "Aus bewegten Stunden" (Pierson, Dresden and Leipzig 1889). It is the reflection of a youthful life that was richly wrestled with pain and deprivation, that was driven back and forth between gloomy moods and joyful hopes. A great striving, a life of beautiful ideals that struggles uncertainly and anxiously for form and language. Genuinely youthful poems, but which emerge from a serious mood. One thing is striking about these poems that is deeply characteristic of the poet. He is almost completely free from the passing trends of his surroundings. The day with its buzzwords, the prevailing trends of the literary cliques have no influence on him. Even if he does it in a youthful way, he struggles with ideals that are higher than those of his contemporaries. He is not one of those strikers who, with nothing to support them, immediately count themselves a new epoch of intellectual life.

[ 9 ] These were difficult times for the young man before and after completing his university studies. He also worked in the family's shoe factory at the time. Between business activities were the hours in which he wrote his verses, in which he devoted himself to his studies on the origins and development of poetry. Nevertheless, his first volume of poetry was followed a year later by a second, "Funken" (Pierson, Dresden 1890), and in the same year a magnificent work appeared on "Die Anfänge der Poesie, Grundlegung zu einer realistischen Entwickelungsgeschichte der Poesie" (Dresden 1890). Gustav Theodor Fechner's work in the field of aesthetics had made a deep impression on Jacobowski. He saw this thinker's "Vorschule der Ästhetik" as a fundamental work for all future aesthetic studies. In his opinion, Fechner had taken these studies out of the sphere of arbitrary ideas and placed them on the solid ground of reality. The laws of artistic creation should not be derived from speculation, but from the scientific and psychological observation of human nature. In an essay entitled "Primitive Narrative Art", Jacobowski expressed his views in this regard with the following sentences: "Only recently has psychology learned to look around at wild tribes and children. Let us hope that aesthetics and poetics will follow suit. The beginnings have already been made, but there is still much to be done to recognize the aesthetic functions of the child. Let us hope that time will also bring us ripe fruit in this area. Only then will it be possible to clarify the entire germs of poetry, from which the most glorious tree grew in the paradise of the earth ... For a history of the development of poetry it is always of value to follow attentively the products of the childlike soul as well as the study of primitive peoples." Starting from such points of view, Jacobowski wrote a series of essays on the history of the development of poetry. These include: Fairy Tales and Fables of the Basuto Negroes. Supplement to the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, ii1. March 1896. Arab folk poetry in North Africa. Supplement to the Vossische Zeitung, March 10, 1895. Stories and songs of the Africans. Magazin für Literatur, 1896, No. 30 and Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, July 24, 1896, as well as supplement of the Vossische Zeitung, October 1896. Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten. Globus, Vol. 70, 1896, No. ir and f. - When Karl Bücher's "Arbeit und Rhythmus" then appeared, Jacobowski welcomed in this book a beautiful fruit of the standpoint that he himself had made his own in the history of the development of poetry.

[ 10 ] Everything Jacobowski undertook in this field he regarded as preparatory work for a great work on a realistic history of the development of poetry. He was tireless in collecting material for this work. He was intensively occupied with cultural-historical studies, from which the genesis of poetic creation was to emerge before his eyes. In particular, he was thoroughly familiar with the cultural-historical research of the English. He left behind a wealth of notes on the lives of primitive people. In such works he developed an incomparable diligence, and in the processing of the material he was characterized by a comprehensive sense and unerring judgement. The friends he had in the early nineties were of the opinion that his real talent lay in this field and that he would one day achieve great things as a scholar. - He himself pursued these matters with devoted love and perseverance, with the intention of one day attempting a fundamental work on the "History of the Development of Poetry". However, this scholarly activity did not initially form the focus of his work.

[ 11 ] In this center stood his own poetic achievements. It was for their sake that he wanted to live first and foremost. He never doubted for a moment that he was a poet at the core of his being. Whether this core would penetrate through a hard shell, however, may well have often been an anxious question before his soul.

[ 12 ] Jacobowski's soul was moved back and forth between two extremes. A strong, indomitable will was in him alongside a soft, sensitive mind, in which the processes of the outside world with which he came into contact left sharp traces. And it was his vital need, in the noblest sense of the word, to feel the value of his personality. Anything that got in his way in this direction caused him the deepest resentment. Imagine him with such a disposition in the nineties amidst the brutal outbursts of an anti-Semitism that was simply incomprehensible to finer natures. And imagine his idealistic way of thinking at a time when he saw nerdiness, crude struggles for base goods, frivolous play with sacred feelings becoming more and more insolent every day. His first novel "Werther, the Jew", published in 1892 (Pierson, Dresden), tells in powerful words what moods were stirred in him by the sight of such goings-on. He wrote it in the midst of hardship and true anguish.

[ 13 ] Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's money speculation deprives his son's teacher, to whom he is truly devoted, of his fortune. Wolff's passion for the teacher's wife turns the young man into a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, this same passion destroys his beautiful bond of love with a child of the people, who seeks redemption in voluntary death from the torment that his affection for the student has brought him. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to show him the way through the contrasts into which life throws him and through the confusion into which his own passions have plunged him. His sense of humanity alienates him from the people to whom the natural ties of life bind him. At the same time, these ties weigh heavily on him. The world pushes him back because of his affiliation with people whose faults he himself deeply detests. - Jacobowski allows the fate of the modern Jew to be reflected in this individual fate. The novel is written with heart_ blood. It contains a psychology whose object of study was his own bleeding soul. One might criticize the novel for being written by a young man who has not found the peace and time for objective observation of the soul, because the experiences of his own soul are still striving too hard to find expression. One might also say that Jacobowski's artistic talent for composition was not yet great at the time. One thing must be conceded: we are dealing with the document of a human soul whose tragic undertones must speak to every heart that is not hardened against the suffering of an idealistic mind. Such a heart is compensated for all the faults of the narrative by the profound truth with which a personality unreservedly expresses one side of his nature. - Anyone who was close to Jacobowski knows this side of his nature. It was the side against which the energy of his will had to fight again and again. One can speak of a highly heightened sensitivity towards everything that was directed against the justified claims of his personality to full respect and recognition from his fellow man. At the same time, he had a rare need to share in everything that was worth living for. His devotion to people, his absorption in the outside world instilled in him a constant fear that he might lose himself. Jacobowski is not Werther. But the fate of Werther is one that Jacobowski had to constantly protect himself against. When he wrote "Werther", the possibility of becoming a Werther was clearly before his eyes. That is why the novel is a confrontation with himself.

[ 14 ] A person who has put as much into a work as Jacobowski did into his "Werther" cannot be indifferent if he encounters a deaf fellow world. There was no sign of any recognition of his undoubtedly honest intention and equally undoubted talent. One can sympathize with the pressure that this lack of success exerted on the young poet. Later, when he spoke of those days, he honestly admitted how he had suffered from this lack of success. He was not one of those immodest natures who never doubted their own talent. Encouraging recognition would have been very valuable to him at this time. One may attribute the fact that his poetic work now briefly took a back seat to a strong preoccupation with political issues to the fact that he lacked such recognition. However, his involvement in political issues was not one that was lost in the interests of the day. He always considered the political in connection with the development of culture. The last decade of the nineteenth century was only too suitable for presenting the most diverse questions to sharp minds with a broad horizon. The repeal of the Socialist Law gave the social movement a powerful outward appearance in its cultural significance. The old parties had disintegrated; their ideas and their momentum were no longer equal to the ever-advancing development. Old, reactionary powers believed that their time had come. Slogans and dark instincts began to exert an effect on the wider masses that had not been thought possible for a long time. One of these dark instincts, the anti-Semitic one, particularly caught Jacobowski's attention. It hurt him deeply in his most personal feelings. Not because he was attached to Judaism with these feelings. That was not the case at all. Rather, Jacobowski belonged to those who had long outgrown Judaism in their inner development. But he was also one of those who tragically had to feel the doubts that were cast on such outgrowth out of blind prejudice.

[ 15 ] However, these blind prejudices were only a partial phenomenon. They were part of a powerful current that was increasingly becoming a sum of reactionary ideas. It was believed that an ideal basis for this current could be created by infusing the prevailing world views with Christian ideas anew. The buzzword "practical Christianity" dominated people's minds. And the idea that the state had to be built on Christian foundations seemed to exert a powerful attraction. - This prompted Jacobowski to examine such views. His extensive "Study" on the "Christian State and its Future" (Berlin 1894, published by Carl Duncker) is a result of these debates. His preoccupation with cultural-historical problems provided a solid basis for the "Study". He carefully examines the influence of the church on the states. He lets history speak its important verdict on the extent to which the Church has intervened in the development of Western humanity. And in order to recognize the moral foundations of the state, he examines the changes in the moral concepts of various peoples. The conclusion he comes to can hardly be doubted by those with insight: "The end of the Christian state is a fact for the insightful parties in Germany, against which its appointed representative, the conservative party, will run up a storm in vain. The compelling logic of history has always been stronger than the limited individual wishes and special interests of political parties. And so it is a fact that the Christian state is crumbling more and more in all European states." In the second part of the "Study", Jacobowski pursues the present-day approaches to new foundations of social order: the national, ethical state, the free Christian community, the free ethical community. He conducts a stimulating investigation into the viability of the various young ideals of the future. - Because of the youth of these ideals, such a debate cannot produce a real result. "No one knows who will replace the "Christian state", no one knows whether this replacement will take place under peaceful conditions." For Jacobowski himself, however, the study was of great importance. Through it, he had gained what he could not have lived without, according to his entire disposition: he had acquired an understanding of the world around him.

[ 16 ] The struggle with the environment is also the problem that he makes the subject of a dramatic work in 1894. He wrote "Diyab, the Fool, Comedy in Three Acts" in a short space of time, from April to June of that year. Just as "Werther" represents one side of Jacobowski's nature, his emotional world, "Diyab" represents his willpower, which repeatedly asserts itself against all currents. The "Werther" is based on the more or less unconscious feeling: I have to defend myself against these manifestations of my nature; in the "Diyab", the feeling may speak in the same way: this is how I have to relate to the outside world if I want to make my way. - The sheikh's son, Diyab, was born of a white mother and is therefore regarded as an outcast. The scorn of the whole neighborhood follows him. He saves himself from this mockery by fleeing into the solitude of his inner self, thereby rising above all the mockery of the world around him. He becomes superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides this from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees are. There he lies among the trees of the forest, living only himself and his plans. He cultivates his powers to a strength that will later make him the savior of his tribe. Those who mocked him in the past then shrink back from the power of the enemy, and he, the outcast, overcomes them. The strong-willed man only put on the fool's mask so that he could make his fortune unrecognized by others. Behind the fool's mask matures the personality that takes revenge for the treatment meted out to her and her mother, the personality that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength.

[ 17 ] "Diyab" is not written with a bleeding heart like "Werther", but with a beating heart. It was written at a time when Jacobowski was just finding himself. An inner security breaks through, which protects him from the kind of disgruntlement that followed the limited external success of his "Werther". - From this time onwards, a new period in Jacobowski's endeavors can be assumed. There is also a change in his lifestyle. He broke away from a friend, a lyricist, who was very successful as soon as he appeared on the scene. Jacobowski undoubtedly owed much to this friendship. The criticism that all his achievements received from this side was a constant incentive for self-discipline. He only ever remembered this childhood friendship with gratitude. But it had to end if Jacobowski wanted to find himself completely. The feeling that he needed spiritual solitude, complete dependence on himself, led to Jacobowski's estrangement from his friend.

[ 18 ] The collection of poems "From Day and Dream" (published by S. Calvary, Berlin 1895) is a kind of conclusion to his first creative period. Jacobowski's three lyrical collections are a faithful reflection of all the struggles of his third decade of life. The striving for simplicity, for a popular art form is a fundamental trait of his poetry. A genuine idealism is expressed in atmospheric images that seek vividness and plasticity. A certain symbolic way of imagining things often pervades. The processes of his own soul are symbolized by events in nature. While in the first poems of his youth the intellectual still predominates, later a full view of reality increasingly comes to the fore. At first, it is the poet's own inner self that preoccupies him:

From the day's pleasure and pain
The universe weaves a lullaby,
That draws into tired human hearts,
Bringing sweet peace,
When the soul never approaches
The divine image of truth
Wrapped in the night.

[ 19 ] Afterwards, our poet struggles to shape the outside world. He makes nature speak. He personifies reality. He holds a dialogue with it. The secrets of nature's workings and his own world of emotions intertwine. Poems such as the delicate "Forest Dreams" in "From Day and Dream" stem from this kind of interaction:

The sun spreads its blessing
Like a golden carpet
. Woodruff perfumes the paths,
And redthorn scatters its blossoms.
Only sunshine and sky blue
Shimmer through the cool canopy of leaves.
The peregrine falcon with a bright cry
Keeps me awake on soft moss.
Now he has fallen silent in the sultriness,
I dream sleepily to myself
And dream that in the fragrant puddle
I myself am stalk and blossom...

[ 20 ] Deeply rooted in Jacobowski's nature was always a firm belief in the harmony of the universe, in a sun in the course of every human destiny. It was probably only this belief at the center of his soul that helped him overcome many a bleak moment in his personal destiny. He suffered greatly from these personal experiences, but there was something in his outlook on life that always worked like light. He would not have been able to appreciate himself as he wanted to if he had not felt the strength within himself to bring light into his darkness. So he steeled this strength and worked on himself incessantly. And this work constantly gives him new hope, lifts him above moods, as expressed in the poignant "Why?" in "Out of Day and Dream":

... When I awoke to the first day of summer,
The dark night was already waiting outside.
I looked up at the golden sunlight,
The gray rain cloud shifted in front of it;
And I stretched out my child's hand, rejoicing
To the rose bush that was all in bloom,
Then thorns warded off my exuberance,
And from joy the red blood ran...

[ 21 ] The melancholy cycle "Martha" in "Aus Tag und Traum" points deep into the poet's soul. It encompasses an elegiac undertone that trembled in Jacobowski's heart until his death. A sudden death in 1891 had snatched his childhood sweetheart away from him. From then on, the memory of her was one of the images he returned to again and again. The departed woman lived on in his heart in the most tender way. She was like a presence to him in hours of sadness and joy. It was a lasting loyalty of a very special kind that he retained for her. When he spoke of her, his voice changed. You had the feeling that he sensed her presence. Then you were not alone with him. That's what made all the poems about his childhood sweetheart so intimate.

[ 22 ] His preoccupation with political issues had earned Jacobowski a position with a newspaper and in an association that kept material worries at bay in the last years of his short life. Those who had dealings with him could only praise his diligence and hard work in this position. When one considers that his occupation in this position took him out of his literary work every day anew, then one cannot marvel enough at the sum of what he nevertheless achieved in the literary field. The number of novellistic sketches he wrote is large, and his activity as a critic was extensive. Characteristic of him is the position he took towards his shorter novellistic works. He wrote a large number of such sketches in the mid-nineties. He saw them as works in which he was developing his style as a narrator. The moment he was ready to take on larger works, working on such sketches lost its appeal for him.

[ 23 ] As a critic, Jacobowski is characterized to an outstanding degree by his ability to completely immerse himself in the achievements of others, to immediately feel the core of a foreign personality from their creations. Anything doctrinaire is far removed from him as a critic. His judgments always stem from a fresh, original feeling. You can see everywhere that he is fully involved in what he is talking about. Ultimately, he does not want to judge at all, but only to understand. His pleasure is not in condemning, but in recognizing. One reads with particular pleasure the remarks in which he justifies his approving judgments with his own warmth. - Anyone who wanted to follow Jacobowski's work as a critic closely would see how this man was intensely involved in the intellectual life of his time, how he drew his circles of interest in all directions.

[ 24 ] A collection of sketches has been found in Jacobowski's estate, which he was preparing to publish in book form in 1898. They were to bear the title: "Stumme Welt. Symbols". The collection is indicative of his way of thinking and his entire inner life at this time. When you read through the sketches, you get the impression that Jacobowski was called to be the poet of the modern naturalistic world view. The new understanding of nature initially seems to have something unpoetic and sober about it. Its penetration into the purely natural processes, its commitment to pure, unadorned reality seems to frighten away the poetic imagination. Jacobowski's "Silent World" proves the opposite. He had completely settled into the scientific confession. He was imbued with the greatness of the view that sprouts from his immersion in the eternal, iron laws of the universe. Darwinism and the doctrine of evolution were dear to his heart. It is true that they tore apart the veil that once enveloped nature. But what emerges from behind this veil is not as devoid of poetry for those who are able to see, as people with a conservative outlook would like to claim. The marvelous laws of matter and forces give birth to poetic images that are in no way inferior in grandeur to the images of earlier imaginary worlds that were transferred from the human soul into nature. Modern man no longer wants to let nature speak in a human way. The whole mythical world of spirits is silent when the ear, educated in naturalism, listens to the phenomena of nature. The eternal cycle of matter and forces seems to be a "silent world". But whoever knows how to make this "silent world" speak can hear completely new, wonderful secrets, mysteries of nature whose harmonious music would be drowned out by the former loud voices of anthropomorphic world views. Jacobowski wanted to depict this music of the "silent world" in his collection of sketches.

[ 25 ] The new view of nature rightly invokes Goethe as the progenitor of its ideas. And for those who delve into Goethe's scientific writings, the phenomena of the world become letters from which they learn to read and understand the plan of the cosmos in a new way. Many people read Goethe far too superficially. Jacobowski was one of the few who sought to gain a proper position vis-à-vis Goethe. He treated everything relating to Goethe with a holy shyness. He knew that one grows if one retains the belief that one can always learn something new from Goethe. He immersed himself in Goethe's view of nature at an early age. But even in the last days of his life he could still be heard saying: now I am beginning to understand Goethe. He realized how Goethe could be a guide when it came to making the "silent world" speak. He then did not have the volume published. New approaches emerged from the basic idea that holds the sketches together. A cosmic poem was to grow out of it. He wanted to allow his spirit to mature in order to imbue the seemingly deified world with new life, to conjure up new mysteries from the cosmic processes. The epic of the mysteriously revealed workings of the eternal forces of nature was to be called "Earth". It is not for the editor of the estate to pass judgment on the germ-like sketches of a comprehensive thought to be published as "Stumme Welt" (2nd volume of the estate). I only considered it my task to communicate the poet's intentions.

[ 26 ] It seems that Jacobowski initially saw his profession as a poet in the development of his imagination in the direction he had taken in the "Silent World". This is probably also the reason why he did not initially regard the field of drama, which he had entered so promisingly in "Diyab", as one in which his individuality could fully come into its own. Certainly, like others, he also thought of ultimately living out his artistic intentions in dramatic forms. But his strict self-criticism demanded restraint from him in every field until the moment when he felt he had reached the highest level in the respective sphere according to his ideals. In 1896, he completed a drama in four acts: "Homecoming". It is set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War in central Germany. It is intended as a portrait of the times on a grand scale. After completing the work, the poet heard a wide variety of opinions from those he shared it with. These judgments ranged from bright, unreserved enthusiasm to complete disagreement. Jacobowski initially left the drama in his desk. He waited to see what he himself would say about it at a later point in its development. In the months before his death, the work became worthwhile to him again. He would probably have reworked it. As he was no longer able to do so, it must form part of his estate in its original form. One gets to know the poet from it at a certain time in his life. It will have to be judged from this point of view.

[ 27 ] The stories "Anne-Marie, ein Berliner Idyli" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1896) and "Der kluge Scheikh, ein Sittenbild" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1897) belong to a transitional stage in Jacobowski's development. They show him in his striving for plasticity, for the vividness of the figures. Reading them, it is as if one senses the resignation he imposed on himself. His larger ideas were already living in his soul at that time. In order to give them shape, in order not to lose himself in their schematic form, he had to give his epic style juice and strength. He did this with more or less unpretentious stories.

[ 28 ] The symbolizing aspect of his art is then clearly revealed in the collection of stories "Satan laughed, and other stories" (Franz Wunder, Berlin 1897). One need only consider the basic idea of the first tale, which gave the collection its name, to realize what the main feature here is. God has taken away the devil's dominion over the earth by creating man. Yet the devil secures his influence by seizing the woman. The demonic powers of sexual life are symbolically outlined in a few characteristic strokes.

[ 29 ] In the year 1899, the poet appeared with a work of art that is entirely based on this symbolizing principle, his "Roman eines Gottes: Loki" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). It is fair to say that Jacobowski's various inclinations flow together like branches of a great river in the creation of this work. His urge to eavesdrop on the popular imagination and to understand its quiet weaving led him to take the external plot from the figures and events of Germanic mythology. His observation of social life led him to focus on Loki, the "disinherited god", the revolutionary of the world of the gods. The psychology of man, who can only assert himself through the strength of his inner self, through his strong will, and that against adversity from all sides, made the Loki figure particularly appealing to Jacobowski. Werther and Diyab in one person, but more Diyab is Loki. He is this, as Jacobowski himself wanted to be Diyab.

[ 30 ] No real process, even if it were given in idealistic art form, could have expressed what the poet wanted to say. The eternal struggles of the human soul are before his eyes. The struggles that take place in the deepest recesses of the mind. Place and time, all accompanying phenomena are almost indifferent here. The action must be lifted into a higher sphere. May the individual events that life brings to man have this or that tragic or joyful outcome: they all bear the hallmark of an eternal struggle. "God created man in his own image, which presumably means that man created God in his own image." This is a famous statement by Ludwig Feuerbach. One could expand on it and say: if man wants to represent the deepest processes of his inner being, then he must transform the life of his soul into the life of the gods; the primal battles in the depths of his chest are embodied in the battles of the gods. Because Jacobowski wanted to depict such primal battles, his novel became that of a god. These primal battles take place between the two souls that dwell in each breast, between the soul that gives rise to goodness, love, patience, kindness and beauty, and between the other, from which come hatred, enmity and rage. Balder and Loki face each other in incessant war in every human mind. Hamerling expressed the thought that describes what lived in him when he wrote his "Ahasver" as follows: "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". Jacobowski often emphasized in his conversations that he thought of his "Loki" as so "overarching", so "towering", so "standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life".

[ 31 ] The poet's intentions are revealed most clearly by a trait in Loki's character. Jacobowski has always assured us in conversation that we can only fully understand him when we know how to interpret this trait in the nature of his hero of the gods. Loki, the god born far from Valhalla, the child of the gods' sin, who grows up in pain and deprivation, who does not know his mother or his father: he has something over all the other gods. Happiness and eternal joy are theirs. He has pain and torment. But he has the gift of wisdom before them. He knows the future of the other gods, which is hidden from them. They live, but they do not care about the driving forces on which their lives depend. They do not know where these driving forces are leading them. It is not happiness that opens the mind's eye, it is not joy that makes you clairvoyant, but pain. That is why Loki sees into the future. But there is one thing Loki does not know. He must hate Balder, the god of love. He does not know the reason for this. For his own fate is locked up in it. This also remains hidden from him. This is the point at which Jacobowski's most secret intentions are revealed. Loki's wisdom ends before the question: why must the knowing Loki hate the ignorant but love-filled Balder? This, however, points to the fate of knowledge. It is the greatest riddle to itself.

[ 32 ] No summary or even a judgment is to be given here about "Loki". Only the poet's intentions are to be told, as he gladly communicated them in conversation about the work he loved so much. He felt that with "Loki" he had made a huge leap forward on his path of development. He had come to believe that the affirmative forces within him would triumph. Clarity about everything negative in human destiny was what he sought above all, and what he had achieved in himself through his "Loki" poetry. Beauty, goodness and love are the perfect things in the world. But perfection needs destructive forces if it is to fulfill its full task. Loki is the eternal destroyer that is necessary for the good elements to renew themselves, the demon of unhappiness that happiness needs, the evil spirit of hatred from which love stands out. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his creations, the hatred that creates the ground for all love: that is Loki. - The person who seeks the truth finds the destructive urges of life at the bottom of his soul. The demonic forces of Loki oppress him. They cloud the bright days of life, the moments of happiness. But one understands, one only feels the shining days in their true power when they stand out from the Loki mood. With such feelings in the background, Jacobowski has brought together his poems from the years 1896 to 1898 under the title "Leuchtende Tage" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1900). They are imbued with a luminosity that arises from a dark background, but which makes life all the better for it.

[ 33 ] The fact that he was able to appear before the world with "Loki" and the "Shining Days" brought about an inner transformation in Jacobowski. Only now did he have the feeling that he could approve of his own achievements. He now had the confidence in himself that his strict self-criticism was in harmony with his own creations. An inner balance came over him. The future became ever brighter. He had found himself and his belief that "our stars" would redeem him. If you look at the pictures of the poet from the successive stages of his life, you can also see the expression of his inner transformation in his facial features. A sense of security, of harmony, appears more and more. Jacobowski had to fight many a battle with life before he really reconciled himself with it.

[ 34 ] The certainty, the unity of character also stimulated his urge to work. He was a man who only knew himself to be happy in his work. He saved the contemplative, the solitary, reflective contemplation only for life's moments of celebration. He wrote his "Loki" in a few weeks, in 1898, in Tyrol, as he was detached from the contexts in which life placed him. His poems were only written when his inner self lifted him above reality. Within this reality itself, however, he was compelled to contribute to the spiritual life of his time to the best of his ability. His work on "Zeitgenossen", which he published together with Richard Zoozmann in 1891 and which, however, only had a short existence, arose from this urge. He found a field for this urge when he was able to take over "Gesellschaft" in 1897, the journal that had served the spirits longing for a new era of literary life since the mid-1980s. Jacobowski's need for the all-round cultivation of intellectual interests characterized the volumes that appeared under his editorship. He wanted to honestly serve true cultural progress with all the means at his disposal. Nothing was excluded that could contribute to this goal. It is natural that a pronounced individuality, such as Jacobowski was, had to give a magazine edited by him a strongly personal touch. At the same time, however, he was aware of the editor's duty to allow personal inclinations to recede into the background. And above all, he knew the duty to pave the way for young talents to enter the public eye. He had the courage to evaluate what was not yet recognized. In such evaluation and recognition, he was selfless and very confident in his judgment. He was unique in his concession to every legitimate aspiration. As many as sought his advice, his help: all found him helpful. He did an unspeakable amount of work in silence. And he knew how to do everything with nobility. - You got to know him in all the goodness of his nature through small traits.

[ 35 ] One such small trait is recorded here. He was chairman of the "Neue Freie Volksbühne" for a short time. It was during a summer outing of the members of this association. Jacobowski was in charge of the plays that were organized outdoors. It was heart-warming to see how he romped and jumped with the children, how he took part in the race and how he was even the first to reach the finish line, despite the fact that quite good runners were obviously taking part. And how he then found the right way to hand out the small prizes to the children.

[ 36 ] Jacobowski found inner satisfaction in an enterprise that he launched in 1899 with his "New Songs by the Best Recent Poets for the People". In a booklet for ten pfennigs, he offered a selection of the best creations of contemporary poetry. He soon heard evidence of the usefulness of his enterprise from all sides. The little booklet was received everywhere. He was always happy to tell people how lucky he was with it. He carefully collected everything he heard about the effect. He wanted to write a brochure based on his experiences about the interest in true poetry in the widest circles of the people. For in all this he had a great perspective. He wanted to counteract the bad taste, crudeness and wildness of the people. Stupid ragamuffins and silly jokes were to be replaced by true poetry. He repeatedly said: "I have made the attempt. I would have unreservedly confessed to the public that the first step had failed if that had been the case." But he was able to describe this first step as a thoroughly successful one. The continuous booklets he began to publish under the title "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" (German Poets in Selection for the People), also at ten pfennigs (in Kitzler's publishing house, Berlin), were to serve the same purpose. Two booklets, "Goethe" and "Heine", were published a long time ago, the third, "Grimms Märchen", was ready when he died and was published a few weeks after his death. He worked tirelessly in every direction to make the ideas expressed in these publications fruitful. He also intended to publish a collection of poems for the army. In an interesting essay that he published in the "Nation", he spoke out about the current type of poetry and songs that are prevalent in military life. In such plans, which served charitable aims in the ideal sense, he possessed an admirable strength and a happy handling.

[ 37 ] In connection with his folkloristic studies and his efforts to promote folk culture is the publication of his collection "Aus deutscher Seele. Ein Buch Volkslieder" in 1899 (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). He wanted to bring to life the folk poetic treasures piled up in numerous books in libraries. He says of these treasures in his foreword: "Their content, because it is insufficiently disseminated, gives way to the flat street songs of the big cities and the miserable sentimentalities of stupid operettas. So it seemed to me that the time had come, as far as the strength of an individual and the understanding of my poetic ability would allow, to publish a collection which, arranged according to aesthetic criteria, would present to the German people anew some of the truly valuable and glorious songs from the jumble and confusion of the accumulated mountain of songs." - Jacobowski was able to describe "Aus deutscher Seele" as "the result of these considerations and the fruit of many years of the most intimate occupation with the wonders of the German folk soul and folk poetry".

[ 38 ] The idea of making important "questions of the present and outstanding phenomena of modern culture" accessible to wider circles in a form they liked came from Jacobowski's plan to publish a collection of small writings - in booklets of 32 to 8o pages - in an informal series. Three such booklets were published in 1900 under the title "Freie Warte, Sammlung moderner Flugschriften" (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). They are: "Haeckel und seine Gegner" (by Dr. Rudolf Steiner), "Sittlichkeit!?!" (by Dr. Matthieu Schwann), "Die Zukunft Englands, eine kulturpolitische Studie" (by Leo Frobenius). These and the titles of the writings that were to appear in the near future show how comprehensively Jacobowski thought of the task he had set himself. The following were also announced: "Das moderne Lied", "Die Erziehung der Jugend zur Freude", "Schiller contra Nietzsche", "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?", "Der Ursprung der Moral". The pamphlet "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?" ("Do the German people have a literature?") was written by Jacobowski himself. In it, he wanted to talk about the experiences that led to his Volkshefte and similar endeavors, and also about the results of such undertakings.

[ 39 ] Another link in Jacobowski's efforts to serve his time was the publication of an "Anthology of Romantic Poetry" under the title "The Blue Flower". Together with Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski, he published this collection of Romantic poetry from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century in 1900. The 400-page volume begins with works by Herder and ends with one by the Prince of Schönaich-Carolath. Jacobowski added an essay "On the Psychology of Romantic Poetry" to the "Introduction" compiled by Fr. von Oppeln-Bronikowski. He believed he was doing the best service to the urge of the time to move from naturalism to a kind of neo-romanticism by collecting the pearls of romantic art.

[ 40 ] The qualities of Jacobowski, through which he worked directly from person to person, the stimuli that could emanate from him in this way, came to fruition in a literary society that he had founded with a few friends in the last period of his life. Every Thursday in the "Nollendorf-Kasino" in Kleiststraße, he gathered an artistically and literarily stimulated circle under the name "Die Kommenden". Younger poets had the opportunity to present their creations here, and important questions of art or knowledge were dealt with in lectures and discussions. Artists of all kinds visited the society, which met here informally every week, and Ludwig Jacobowski was constantly striving to come up with new ideas to make the few evening hours they spent here enjoyable for the guests. He had also made plans to compile artistic booklets with the performances from these evenings. The first was in progress when he died. It was completed by his friends after his death and published in his memory with contributions from his estate. The "Kommenden", who still meet every week, faithfully cherish the memory of their founder.

[ 41 ] An external cause led Jacobowski to write a short social drama in one act, "Work", at the end of 1899. Axel Delmar had conceived the plan of dramatically depicting the more important turning points in the development of Germany in a centenary play comprising five one-act plays, to be performed at the "Berliner Theater". Wichert, Ompteda, G. Engel, Lauff and Jacobowski were the five poets. The latter had the task of dramatizing the social thinking and feeling of the present, the most important cultural phenomena at the end of the century. One does the "work" an injustice if one attributes a tendency to it and judges it accordingly. The aim was merely to illustrate how social trends are reflected in different social classes and people.

[ 42 ] In the last months of his life, a painful experience that shook Jacobowski to the depths of his soul found poetic expression in a one-act verse drama entitled "Glück" (Happiness) (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1901). It will only be possible to talk about this experience at a later date. He himself hinted at the mood from which the drama was written in the verses preceding "Zum Eingang":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Who ever trembled in the same affliction,
Accept it and love it!

[ 43 ] Some of the poems in this estate come from the same mood. "Happiness" in dramatic form has come naturally to the poet from the Syriac poems in which he has set down the moments of a tragic experience. These lyrical poems from the last period, united with all the poetry he has produced since the publication of his "Shining Days", appear here as an estate. With regard to the compilation of the poems, the points of view which the poet himself observed in his "Shining Days" have been retained. The headings of the individual sections of the volume of poems are therefore the same as in the "Shining Days". The sharp character that Jacobowski's soul life has taken on in recent years made this section desirable. A second volume will bring together all the sketches he himself compiled in a booklet entitled "Stumme Welt". He did not allow it to appear independently because he wanted to develop the plan in a larger form later and, under the title "Earth", work up the ideas on which the "Silent World" was based into a cosmic poem in a grand style. He considered it necessary to immerse himself deeply in the natural knowledge of the new age before he could begin his great work. A deep inner conscientiousness and shyness prevented him from tackling this fruitful idea too early. He was not destined to carry out the project, which would probably have revealed what Jacobowski's deepest inner self held. A third volume was to contain the above-mentioned drama "Homecoming". A series of "ideas" that are characteristic of Jacobowski's thinking and personality are added to the second volume as an "appendix". As small as their number is, they clearly show the depth of his outlook on life and his humor, as well as the ease of judgment he had towards certain things. They prove that he was one of those people who knew that not everything must be measured with the same yardstick, but that different things must be measured with different yardsticks.