WOLFGANG MENZEL.*

ON April the 23rd, 1873, . there died at Stuttgart a man well known and also much abused in German literature. Tolerance • Denkanirdigkeiten. Reransgegeben on dem Bohn, Conrad Menzel. Leipzig and Bielefeld: Velhagen u. Klaeing. 1877.

he had no right to claim, for he had himself been unrelenting .to-- wards those whose tendencies he condemned, and his entrance into public life had been marked by attacks on no less a personage than Goethe. It was a proof of his own intellectual vitality that this arrow did not recoil upon the shooter. His name was Wolf- gang Menzel, poet, novelist, critic, historian, and besides a polemical and political writer, who for many years edited a well-

known review. He was a man of an energetic, indefatigable mind, who, although he ended in mere book-making, deserves to be remem-

bered. What makes us allude to him now is the publication, by his son, of his posthumous " memoirs," which he, who wrote so much, wished to leave to the nation among which his life had been spent, and to which, from his youth to an advanced age, he gave the

example of an unselfish, enthusiastic patriotism, at a time when an exalted, faithful reverence like his for German-greatness and for

the German mind was neither easy nor commonly practised by his countrymen. It was to be foreseen that theabove-named book could contain but little that was new about the author's views, or his per- sonal relations with many remarkable or famous contemporaries.

In this respect, various writings, and particularly the Literatur- blatt, which he edited, with two years' interval (1850-51), from

1825 to 1869, had given him-ample opportunity to judge men and

events. This he had done in accordance with his nature, which was honest, original, and highly gifted, but also sharp and one-

sided, and in which the course of so many years worked little change, and thus failed to awaken the absolutely essential know- ledge of the limits of his own powers.

As Wolfgang Menzel tells us, he was born in 1798, at Walden- burg, in Silesia, and was the son of a doctor, of a wealthy family of merchants. Having lost his father when still an infant, he was brought up chiefly by two grandmothers, who not only stood in perfect contrast to each other, but also influenced the child in different ways. It was, however, to the religious tone of mind which prevailed in his mother's house that he owed his steadfast adherence to positive Christianity. Another fact of these early years worth noticing is this,—that the childish recol- lections of the future ardent patriot did not differ from what was then the universal feeling in Germany ; the French troops were admired as the type of military virtue, in contrast with the " Parade- soldaten " of Berlin ; and the hatred of the Silesians concentrated itself not on the French, but on the Bavarians, who committed cruel- ties and had to suffer from the revengeful feeling they excited. It was only towards 1810 that these feelings underwent a thorough change. Menzel was too young to fight in the war of independence, but he, too, had his sacrifice to offer on the altar of the Fatherland. The distress of those days brought ruin upon his family, and the young man, finding himself without resources, bore the sudden change with a rare fortitude, and neither asked for support nor complained, but resolutely began the course of his hard-working life. It was at Breslau that he completed his school-course, and became not only a distinguished scholar, but also first-rate in every physical exercise, and one of the chief followers of Jahn, who, notwith- standing a bad temper and a narrow mind, excited in those days an extraordinary enthusiasm amongst the German youth. It is highly creditable to Menzel's good-sense that while rivalling his master's performances in gymnastics and as a pedestrian, he absolutely refused to adopt his political ideas. In 1818 he left Silesia, after having vowed to himself that ere fifty years were passed he would not return to his native place, where he had lost and suffered much, a promise which was faithfully kept. He began his university studies at Jena, "where," as he tells us, "the spirit had very nearly conquered the flesh," and where he found celebrated teachers in the two branches of science—philosophy and history—which interested him most ; and many friends, amongst whom was Sand, who soon after murdered Kotzebue. This deed of the misguided young man compelled Menzel, as a Prussian subject, to exchange the Saxon for a Prussian university. He selected Bohn, but there, again, his connection with the Ger- mano-Christian Association, " Die Burschenschaft," fixed • on him the attention of an ever-suspecting police, and to avoid a prison, he was driven to take refuge in Switzerland, where his- literary work began. The first book he wrote, his History of the Germans, is still considered his best, and brought back to the minds of his countrymen the great history of the past, told with sincere enthusiasm and a lofty confidence in the future destinies of Germany.

It was at the same time that he composed his well-known, Streckverse, which inaugurated the reaction against Goethe, "the great idol," as he called him, who was merely " sin Talent," and of whom he went so far as to say that he had never, created in poetry the type of a true man, a judgment which is, perhaps, less paradoxical than at first sight it would seem to be. Impossible as the whole undertaking was, it proved useful, in so far as it was directed against the mass of imitators, who did not understand the hero they blindly worshipped. Menzel's antagonism against Goethe was in itself easy enough to explain. His highly moral and sincere but narrow and exclusive patriotic ideal was the very reverse of Goethe's conception of life, which ignored frontiers and cared little for nationalities. As a critic in general, Menzel seems to have chosen for his motto the line of the Streck- verse, " Der Erdenlauf ist eine Bastonnade," for whoever excited his indignation was punished accordingly. The sensation produced at his entrance on that rather dangerous career led to his appointment by Cotta as the editor of the Literaturblatt, which periodical formed part of a newspaper called the Morgenblatt, and was published at Stuttgart. It was there that, with the exception of short journeys to Vienna, Switzerland, Berlin, and Italy, Menzel spent nearly fifty years, founded a home for himself, and brought up a large family, protecting his sons, who afterwards became soldiers or priests, against the ever-encroaching influence of German school-pedants, and providing not only for his children, but also for distant relatives and friends, in a truly patriarchal way.

In his Review he acquired an influence which for years had to be taken into serious account by authors in Germany, and which, on the whole, must be considered as having been beneficial. While nearly every one around him seemed to have forgotten the great days of the national revival, he remained invariably true to them and to the feelings of his youth. He counteracted the destructive tendencies of German rationalism, and particularly of Hegelian philosophy, by appealing to the sound and active influence of Christian thought ; and combated the reigning formula of Continental Liberalism, which were hateful to him, as a French importation, by a German national programme, which excluded everything like levity in morals or superficiality in the mind, and from which he expected an ultimate triumph, as well over foreign influence in religion, as in politica, literature, and art. These convictions caused him to throw his whole moral authority into the scale against men like Heine and Borne, the latter of whom revenged himself by directing against him his well- known book, Menzel der Franzosenfresser. The attacked critic met with the singular bad-luck of being too well defended ; Men- zel's warfare against the so-called "lunge Deutschland" induced the German Diet to suppress their works, and thus the reproach of having caused that measure by his denunciations rested upon Menzel. This episode influenced to a certain degree his whole future career. His position in the literary world was shaken, and his political life was in so far affected by it that, instead of re- maining a member of the moderate Liberal party in the Wiirtem- berg Parliament, be went over to the Conservative side and de- fended its interests on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. He went to Berlin, and there tried to promote an understanding between Prussia and South Germany, on the basis of necessary reforms, of the convocation of a national Parliament, and of the defence of the German frontiers against every foe. In an inter- view with Frederick 'William IV., late at night, on March 17, he found the King full of sympathy for his proposals, but still irresolute. Early on the next day, the outbreak of the Revolution had entirely changed the situation ; and when Menzel witnessed the victorious troops marching out of town by the King's com- mand, "silent and dissatisfied, but faithful," it became at once clear to him on which side the real power of the State would in future have to be looked for, and he greeted the representatives of the nation assembled at Frankfort with the prophetic words, "Yon won't be able to create an Emperor. If Germany ever finds• one, she will find him on the field of battle."

In questions of foreign politics, Menzel's point of view, though partial for Prussia, was, on the whole, also a correct one. In a pamphlet, the Task of Prussia, published in 1854, he strongly urged the necessity of giving up neutrality for an energetic policy against Russia, and never ceased to advocate the alliance between Prussia and Austria, based on the great German interests to be defended on the Danube. Remarkable, and most likely new to the public at large, is Menzel's statement of another interview he bad on the eve of Easter, 1866, with the present German Emperor, in which that monarch told him that the insur- mountable obstacle to an amicable understanding with Austria was the latter's claim to Silesia. " Rather face the worst," added the King, " than submit to this." In another conversation, this time with Bismarck, the Prussian Premier expressed the deepest regret at the fall of Count Rechberg, Minister of Foreign Affairs at Vienna, and Menzel interpreted those feelings in a way most flattering to that adviser of Francis Joseph. Con- vinced as we feel of the sincerity of these regrets, we rather doubt the motive to which Menzel ascribes them. Bismarck had indeed reason to be sorry for the retreat of the Minister whose thoughtless policy, from the day of the meeting of the German Princes at Frankfort, 1863, to the Schleswig-Holstein expe- dition, and up to the very eve of the war of 1866, contributed so largely to alleviate for the Prussian Premier the difficulties of his task.

Four years later, Wolfgang Menzel experienced the well-deserved satisfaction of seeing the dream of his life realised, and after having written The History of the Germans, The History of Europe from 1789 to 1815, A Universal History, A History of the Last Forty Years, another of The Last One Hundred and Twenty Years, and one of The Campaign of1866, he had the pleasure of claiming in August, 1870, that which was, in his eyes, the undoubted right of Germany —Alsace and Lorraine—and of telling the story of one of the most victorious campaigns recorded in history. When he recalled the changes he had witnessed, both in the position and in the opinions of his country, he was justified in exclaiming, as he does at the conclusion of these memoirs, " Must a people be compared to a poplar-tree, the leaves of which are shining in the light or remain dark, as the wind plays with them ?"

Of his purely literary work, there remains little to say. A letter from J. Grimm, communicated in the memoirs (p. 499), confirms our opinion that, clever and interesting as Menzel's studies on German mythology were, they did not exceed the limits of in- telligent dilettanteism. In his youth he had written two charming little romances, Riihezahl and Narciss, and a novel, Furore. His Literaturgeschichte is everything but a history of German literature. More important than these and various other works were his con- tributions to the religious discussions of the time. Here, also, the national point of view was predominant with him, and in so far as the Catholic Church had for centuries been the centre of German Christianity, and as the Romantic school had renewed the traditions of the past, Menzel's own sympathies were un- doubtedly on the aide of Catholicism. But as time went on, and as the spirit of the Church, in becoming more and more exclu- sively Roman, became also more anti-national, Menzel's irenical tendencies gave way, and almost his last work, Rom's Unrecht, was a violent attack on Ultramontanism, and on the revival of the spirit of the sixteenth century and the Renaissance, which to his mind conveyed the notion of unmixed evil. So partial was he on that point that the apotheosis of Christian art, the cupola of the pantheon crowning the Church of St. Peter, always remained for him the symbol of the victory of Paganism over Christianity, accomplished with the consent of the Popes. (p. 290.) On the whole, we think that Menzel's memoirs are worth read- ing, and perhaps all the more so because they have not only a historical, but also a purely human interest. They tell the story of so many, whose fate it was to go before their work seemed done, and be forgotten accordingly. And there is nobody who, con- sulting his memory and looking at the past, does not agree with the author when he mourns " over so many blossoms which were condemned to wither without ripening into fruit," over so many gifted minds and noble hearts which broke down in the hard struggle of life and had to make room for others.

This book would be still pleasanter reading if the editorhad been more careful in his work, and if repetitions were not so frequent. Large as the range of our sympathies may be, it is hard to be told twice on the same page (p. 359) how the distinguished philologist Schmeller was so neglected by the Bavarian Govern- ment that he had to print his excellent Bavarian dictionary on the very coarsest paper. Further on (p. 431) the Queen of Holland will be astonished to hear that Menzel, who highly appreciated her keen intelligence, found her " exceedingly amiable, although very thin." It must also be mentioned that, with a very few exceptions, the witty sayings recorded in the book are of a deplorable kind.

It is recorded of Menzel that when still a boy, he had such an insurmountable aversion for dolls that more than once he came to grief because he could not resist the temptation of breaking their noses. The childish whim passed away, but the characteristic remained throughout life ; he never ceased to combat what to his straightforward conscientiousness seemed false and artificial, and he offers the rare instance of a German writer who made a fortune with his pen, notwithstanding that he was nearly always in con- tradiction with the judgment of the multitude or the prejudice of the day. His work ceased only with his life. Feeling that the end was drawing near, he summed up his religious convictions (mein Glaubensbekenntniss), and prepared for the great passage, of which he hoped, as he once expressed it to his friend Passavant, that it would lead him, not to eternal repose, but to renewed and immortal activity.