Four Public Lectures Given in Konigsberg 
by Ludwig Walesrode. Kénigsberg, H. L. Voigt, 1842* 

It is now several years since Kénigsberg in Prussia acquired an 
importance which must be gratifying to all Germany. Formally 
excluded from Germany by the Federal Act, the German 
element there has rallied its strength and claims to be recognised 
as German and respected as Germany’s representative vis-d-vis the 
barbarism of the Slavonic East. And, indeed, the East Prussians 
could not represent Germany’s culture and nationhood vis-a-vis 
the Slavs better than they have done. Intellectual life, political 
awareness have there reached a height of animated activity, a 
loftiness and freedom of standpoint as in no other city. Rosenkranz 
with his versatile and lively intelligence represents German 
philosophy there in a most gratifying manner, and even if he has 
not the courage of ruthless consistency, his knowledge and talent 
combined with a fine sense of tact and an unprejudiced approach 
rank him very high. Jachmann and others discuss the questions of 
the day in a liberal spirit and now we are presented in the above 
publication with new proof of the high degree of culture which 
the public there possesses. 

It consists of four humorous lectures given to a large audience 
on subjects taken from the immediate living present, which the 
talented author has brought together here. Truly, they reveal such 
a gift for genre-painting, such ease, elegance and clarity of 
presentation, such sparkling wit that one cannot deny the 
author’s considerable talent as a humourist. He has an eye which 

seizes on that aspect of current events through which they can be 
shown most effectively, and he introduces his innumerable refer- 
ences and allusions so cleverly that even the person who is their 
butt has to smile; moreover, allusions follow in quick succession 
and in the end no one can take offence at the mockery because 
everybody has had his share of it. The first lecture, Die Masken des 
Lebens, introduces us to Munich, Berlin, the German Michel, the 
hollowness of the hereditary aristocracy, the disunion, and a party 
of German celebrities from the description of which I have taken 
the following passage: 

“Sitting at a table not far from us is a young man drinking his wine from a 
heavy silver goblet. Once, with a single song, he dismantled twenty French batteries 
aimed against the free nymphs of the green, free Rhine, and with his four-foot 
iambics drove back in headlong flight to Thionville several cavalry regiments of the 
French advance guard who had already got as far as Andernach. For this bold 
deed he was rewarded with a silver goblet and a participial construction even 
bolder than his song, so marvellously gigantic that all the grammar schoolteachers 
in Germany blenched and the third-formers jumped up from their seats and 
shouted jubilantly: ‘Now we can have hot weather holidays!’” * 

A little further on it says: 

“Then a censor’s mask approaches us. Should it discover an uncensored 
ink-stain on our fingers, we should be lost. A censor looks like any other human, 
but his post is more than human. He judges the spirit and the thoughts and carries 
the scales which only eternal justice should hold. In literature he is employed to 
execute the pharaonic law that all male-born literary infants must be killed or at 
least abelarded” The censorship in ancient Rome consisted in strict moral 
judgment on the citizens of the Republic; it came to an end when, as Cicero says, it 
could do no more than make a man blush. Our censorship can only come to an 
end when the entire nation can blush for it as one man!”* 

The second lecture, Unser goldenes Zeitalter, discourses in the 
same light vein on the moneyed aristocracy; the third, Literarisches 
Don-Quixote-Tournier, tilts with lance in rest at all kinds of 
absurdities of our time, first and foremost German political style. 

“The German language,” it says in this lecture, “was born free and republican; 
it scales the highest Alpine peaks and glaciers of poetry and thought, to soar with 
the eagle to the sun. But, like the Swiss, it also enrols in the bodyguard of 
despotism. What the King of Hanover told his people in the worst German could 
not have been expressed in the best English. In short, our language, like Morison’s 
pills, is good and usable for everything: but it lacks something which it needs very 
badly: political style! Of course, in times of greatest peril, when Cologne Cathedral 
mirrors itself in the Rhine, which usually it does only in very serious circumstances, 

it takes on a sort of political verve, with high official approval; every potato patch is 
then called a Gau, and respectable small townsfolk are promoted to Mannen, and 
every seamstress is suddenly transformed overnight into a German Maid. But that is 
only the style of political defensive and is usually mobilised at the same time as the 
people’s militia; taking offensive action is something our language has yet to learn. 
When a German wants to assert his simplest political right, which is pledged to him 
by a stamped paper as legally as his wife is by the marriage contract, he wraps his 
demand in so many clauses, legal flourishes, incidental expressions of high esteem, 
exclamation marks of respect, and assurances of undying love and loyalty that one 
might take the whole thing for a ceremonious love letter from a tailor’s apprentice 
rather than a just demand. For the German has not enough courage—to have the 
right, and therefore he begs pardon a thousand times for having dared believe, 
think, suppose or even merely suspect that he had a political demand outstanding 
with a high customer. Do not most of the petitions for freedom of the press, for 
example, recall exactly the Marquis Posa, completely rigged out from the theatrical 
wardrobe, throwing himself at the feet of King Philipp with the words: ‘Sire, give 
us freedom of thought!’* Is it any wonder, then, that such »SuPplications are 
likewise dismissed with King Philipp’s words: ‘Curious dreamer! and laid aside ad 
acta? The few Germans who had the courage as their Fatherland’s advocates to put 
forward its political rights in the clear and terse language becoming to real men, 
have only the cowardice of our political style to thank for the fact that they fell 
victim to the state inquisition. For where cowardice is the norm, courage is a crime! 
It could very easily happen that for mere stylistic sins, for having let his words and 
thoughts be seen in naked truth, not clothed in the costume prescribed by the 
master of ceremonies, a political writer of our time would be gently broken on the 
wheel from top to toe, and that in the name of the law. Just as German style is as 
cowardly as a eunuch when it has to assert political rights, so it is no less clumsy 
when it swings the censer round the ears of the high and mighty. If somewhere a 
prince says: ‘I shall do right and justice’ whole swarms of newspaper phrases at 
once descend on the speck of honey like wild bees and buzz with delight at the 
precious find on the desolate political wasteland. But is-there anything more 
insulting for a prince than when the mere expression of the intention to execute a 
ruler’s prime duty, without which his name would have to be equated with Nero 
and Busiris, is trumpeted through all the newspapers as an extraordinary, 
unheard-of princely virtue? And this happens in official gazettes, under the eyes of 
the censors, under the auspices of the Federal Diet! Should not paragraph 92 of 
the Criminal Law be applied to such clumsy eulogists in all its severity?” © 

The fourth lecture gives Variationen tiber beliebte Zeit- und 
Nationalmelodien which include Ein Ordenskapiiel, beginning as 
follows: 

“Princes are the peoples’ shepherds, as Homer has already said, and therefore 
the peoples are, of course, the princes’ sheep. And the shepherds love their sheep 
very much and lead them on gay, silken leading-strings, so as not to lose them, and 
the sheep in turn are pleased with the pretty iridescent ribbon and don’t notice that 
this decoration is at the same time their fetter, because they are mere sheep”, etc 

With these four lectures Walesrode has demonstrated his ability 
as a humourist. But that is not enough. So long as they fulfil their 
purpose as lectures, such things have the right to be loosely 
constructed, disjointed, without unity; the genuine humourist, 
however, would have given even more stress than Walesrode has 
done to the background of a great, positive vision of the world in 
which all mockery and all negation are completely and satisfyingly 
dissolved. In this respect, Walesrode has taken a duty upon 
himself by publishing the above small work; he must as soon as 
possible justify the expectations which he has aroused here and 
prove that he can equally well concentrate and work his views into 
a whole as he has here allowed them separate expression. And 
that is all the more necessary as his derivation from Borne, his 
vision of the world and his style are evidence of close kinship with 
the authors of the Young Germany of yore; almost all the authors 
who belonged to that category, however, have failed to justify the 
expectations they aroused and have sunk into lethargy, the 
inevitable consequence of a fruitless striving for inner unity. The 
inability to produce something whole was the rock on which they 
were wrecked, since they themselves were not whole people. 
Walesrode, on the other hand, gives us a glimpse here and there 
of a higher, more perfect standpoint and so justifies the demand 
that he bring his individual judgments into balance with each 
other and with the height of the philosophy of his time. 

For the rest, we must congratulate him on the audience, which 
was able to appreciate such lectures, and on the censor, who did 
not prevent them from being published. We cherish the hope that 
such handling of censorship as evidenced by this book will 
overcome all other, vacillating principles in its application, at least 
for Prussia, and win general approval; that censorship may 
everywhere be exercised by such people as in Kénigsberg, where, 
our author says, the censors are men 

“who have taken on the most hateful of all offices in painful self-sacrifice so 

that it should not fall into the hands of those who would take it on with pleasure” 2 

No. 145, May 25, 1842 Published in English for the first 

Signed: F. O. 

From the Hasenheide, May. What Hegelian philosophy, according 
to the enlightened judgment of the Literarische Zeitung, has been 
unable to achieve, namely, construct a system of natural sciences 
based upon its principles, the Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung is now 
undertaking most successfully from its standpoint. On the occasion 
of a book by Professor Leupoldt in Erlangen, an essay in its latest 
issues signed H. L. (Leo) develops the programme of a total 
revolution in medicine the consequences of which are not yet 
foreseeable.’ As always, Leo begins here with the Hegelings, 
although without naming them, speaks of the pantheistic, heathen 
trend which is said to have taken hold of modern natural science, 
and the “philosophical fondling of nature and subtle reconciliation 
of systems”, castigates the anatomistic view which would cure the 
individual man instead of whole generations and nations, and 
finally comes to the conclusion 

“that sickness is the wages of sin, that physically connected generations answer 
jointly for their sins, and even spiritually, unless belief, given through God’s mercy, 
breaks the chain of punishment. Just as the individual is not, through his 
conversion, physically freed from punishment for the sin committed, e. g., if he has 
lost his nose as a result of sinful debauches he will not get it back through his 
conversion, so even today the teeth of the grandchildren quite naturally are set on 
edge by the sour grapes which their grandparents have eaten, and where firm 
belief does not intervene, not even the spiritual punishments cease. How often has 
a man, who lived in opulence and sin and withal appeared to have a happy end, 
left his son and grandson the seed of the most nerve-destroying morbidity which 
continued to rage in them until, in the most depressive stage of the abdominal 
disease, the great-grandson, in whom no word of mercy had yet found fertile soil, 
seized the razor in despair and executed on his own throat the punishment which 
the originator of his sufferings, his great-grandfather, deserved”. 

Were it not for these views, the history of the world would seem 
to be the most crying injustice— Leo then continues: 
“The repentant noseless sinner can see in his mutilation only a memorial to 

God’s justice, and that which for the unbeliever was a punishment, becomes for the 
believer a new foundation for his faith.” 

It is the same with nations: 

“Spiritual as well as bodily diseases and disorders of the age are from a certain 
standpoint divine judgments, today just as much as in the age of the prophets.” 

These are the philosophical—I meant to say religious principles 
on which Leo, who would be worthy to fraternise with a Ringseis, 
bases his new medical practice. What use is all that petty, 
piecemeal curing of single individuals, nay, of the single limb? 
Whole. families, whole nations must be cured by the lump! If 
grandfather has a fever, the entire family, sons, daughters, 
grandchildren with wife and child, must swallow Peruvian bark! If 
the king has pneumonia every province should send a delegate to 
be bled, if you don’t prefer to take an ounce of blood per head 
from the entire population of so and so many millions straight- 
away as a precaution! And what results might this not have for the 
sanitary police! Nobody is to be allowed to marry who does not 
produce a doctor’s certificate that he is healthy, and that all his 
ancestors back to his great-grandfather were of sound constitution, 
and a certificate from the preacher saying that he and his 
ancestors, back to his great-grandfather, have kept strictly to a 
Christian, godfearing and virtuous way of life, so that, as Leo says, 
it shall not come to pass that 

“the sins of the fathers are visited on the children down to the third and fourth 
generation!” 

Hence, the doctor has 

“a position most dreadful in its responsibility and most terrifying in its 
consequences, for he can equally well be a messenger of God to the individual who 
exempts him as far as possible from joint suffering for sin, or a servant of the devil 
who with his power seeks to oppose God’s punishment and to make it ineffective”. 

Again results for the state! The prescribed philosophical course 
for medical men must be abolished and replaced by a theological 
one; before his examination the medical student must submit a 
testimonial of his faith, and the practice of Jewish medical men, if 
it is not to be completely abolished, must at least be limited to 
their fellow believers. Leo goes on: 

“The sick man, like the criminal, is sacer, the holy hand of God lies upon 
him — he who can heal, let him do so! But let him not fear the red-hot steel or the 

sharp iron, or the fierce hunger, where these alone can help. Feeble help is as 
harmful in medicine as in civil society.” 

So cut and burn with a will! Where they used to do a miserable 
trepanning we now help by simply cutting the head off; where a 
heart condition is revealed, which is usually punishment for sins of 
love committed by the sick man’s mother, and the blood causes too 
much pressure on the heart, we provide an outlet for it by a stab 
with a knife in the heart; if someone is suffering from stomach 
cancer, we cut out his whole stomach—the old doctor Eisenbart of 
whom the people sing was really not so bad, it was only that his 
age did not understand him. It is the same, Leo concludes, with 
criminals; they are not alone culpable, but the nation is responsible 
with them, and the punishments which our easy-going time metes 
out are not harsh enough; there must be more beheading and 
torturing, otherwise we shall have more criminals than there is 
room for in the workhouses. Quite right! If a man murders, his 
whole family must be rooted out and every citizen of his home 
town receive at least twenty-five strokes with the rod for his joint 
culpability in this murder; where a brother lives in sin, all his 
brothers must be c——with him. And nothing but good can come 
from making punishments more severe. Now that beheading, as 
we have seen above, is no longer a punishment but merely a 
medical amputation to save the body, this manner of death must 
be deleted from the criminal codes and replaced by breaking on 
the wheel, quartering, piercing with the spit, burning, pinching 
with red-hot tongs, etc. 

Thus Leo opposes a system of medicine and jurisprudence that 
has become heathenish with a Christian one, which will indubitably 
soon prevail everywhere. We all know how, in accordance with the 
same principles, he introduced Christianity into history and thus, 
for example, made the Hegelings, whom he sees as the children of 
the men of the French Revolution, responsible for the blood shed 
in Paris, Lyons and Nantes, even for the actions of Napoleon 
himself, and I only mention it here to demonstrate the delightful 
many-sidedness of the indefatigable man. We understand that a 
German grammar based on Christian principles is soon to be 
expected from him.