{Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 93, November 21, 1847] 

Herr Grin relaxes after the exertions of his “Soziale Bewegung in 
Frankreich und Belgien” by glancing at the lack of social movement in 
his native land. For the sake of variety, he decides to take a look at 
“the human aspect” of the elderly Goethe. He has exchanged his 
seven-league boots for carpet-slippers, donned his dressing-gown 
and stretches himself, full of self-satisfaction, in his arm-chair: 

“We are not writing a commentary, we are only picking out what is there for all to 
see” (p. 244). 

He has made things really snug for himself: 

“I had put some roses and camellias in my room, and mignonette and violets by the 
open window” (p. III). “And above all, no commentaries! ...But here, the complete 
works on the table and a faint scent of roses and mignonette in the room! Let us just 
see where we get to.... Only a rogue offers more than he has!” (pp. IV, V). 

For all his nonchalance, Herr Grün nevertheless performs deeds 
of the stoutest heroism in this book. But this will not surprise us 
when we have heard him himself say that he is the man who “was on 
the point of despairing at the triviality of public and private affairs” 
(p. III), who: “felt Goethe’s restraining hand whenever he was in 
danger of being submerged by extravagance and lack of form” 
(ibid.), whose heart is “full with the sense of human destiny”, “who 
has listened to the soul of man—though it should mean descending 
into hell!” (p. IV). Nothing will surprise us any more after learning 
that previously he had “once addressed a question to Feuerbachian 

* In German there is a pun on the words Bewegung— movement and Siill- 
stand— lack of movement.— Ed. 

man” which was indeed “easy to answer” but which nevertheless 
appears to have been too difficult for the man in question (p. 277); 
and when we see how Herr Grün on p. 198 “leads self-awareness out 
of a cul de sac’’, on p. 102 even plans to visit “the court of the Russian 
Emperor” and on p. 305 cries out to the world with a voice of 
thunder: “Anathema upon any man who would proclaim new and 
permanent social relations by law!” We are prepared for anything 
when Herr Grün undertakes on p. 187 “to take a closer look at 
idealism” and “show it up for the guttersnipe it is”, when he 
speculates on “becoming a man of property”, 

a “rich, rich man of property, to be able to pay the property tax, to obtain a seat in 

the Chamber of Representatives of mankind, to be included in the list of jurymen who 
judge between what is human and what is not”. 

How could he fail to achieve this, standing as he does, “‘on the 
nameless ground of the universally human”? (p. 182). He does not 
even tremble before “the night and its horrors” (p. 312), such as mur- 
der, adultery, robbery, whoring, licentiousness and puffed-up pride. 
It is true that on p. 99 he confesses he has also “known the infinite 
pang of man as he discovers himself at the very point of his own 
insignificance”, it is true he “‘discovers” himself before the public eye 
at this “point” on the occasion of the lines: 

You compare but with the spirit in your mind, 
Not me? 

to be precise, as follows: 

“These words are as when thunder and lightning occur together, with the earth 
opening up at the same time. These words are like the veil of the temple being rent in 
twain and the graves being opened ... the twilight of the Gods is upon us and the chaos 
of old is come again ... the stars collide, in an instant a single comet tail incinerates our 
little earth, and all that exists is henceforth but billowing smoke and vapour. And if 
one imagines the most atrocious destruction, ... it is all but as nothing against the 
annihilation contained in these eleven words!” (pp. 235, 236). 

It is true, “at the furthermost frontier of theory”, namely on p. 
295, Herr Grin has a sensation “of icy water running down his back, 
real terror quivers through his limbs’”—but he overcomes all this 
with ease, for after all he is a member of the “great order of 
freemasons of mankind”! (p. 317). 

Take it all in all, with such qualities Herr Grün will perform 
valiantly on any field of battle. Before we proceed to his productive 

“ J. W. Goethe, Faust, Part I, Scene 1 (“Night”).— Ed. 

B Engels gives this phrase in English. (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2 
[paraphrased]).—Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 251 

examination of Goethe, let us accompany him to some of the 
secondary areas of his activity. 

Firstly to the field of the natural sciences, for according to p. 247 
“the understanding of nature” is “the sole positive science” and at 
the same time “nonetheless the fulfilment of humanistic” (vulgo: 
human) “man”. Let us carefully collate the positive pronouncements 
Herr Grtin makes concerning this sole positive science. He does not 
actually go into the subject at all extensively, he merely lets fall a few 
remarks while pacing his room, so to speak, in the interval between 
daylight and darkness, but the miracles he performs are “nonethe- 
less” the “most positive” for that. 

In connection with the Systéme de la Nature ascribed to Holbach, 
he reveals: 

‘“‘We cannot here expound how the System of Nature breaks off half-way, how it 

breaks off at the point where freedom and self-determination had to break out from the 
necessity of the cerebral system” (p. 70). 

Herr Grün could indicate the precise point at which this or that 
“breaks out” “from the necessity of the cerebral system” and man 
would thus be slapped on the inside of his skull as well. Herr Grtin 
could give the most certain and most detailed information on a point 
which has hitherto escaped all observation, in other words the pro- 
ductive processes of consciousness in the brain. But alas! In a book 
on the human aspect of Goethe we “cannot expound this in detail”. 

Dumas, Playfair, Faraday and Liebig have hitherto innocently 
subscribed to the view that oxygen is a gas which has neither taste nor 
smell. Herr Grtin, however, who of course knows that the prefix 
“oxy-” means sharp to the taste, declares on p. 75 that “oxygen” is 
“sharp-tasting”. In the same way, on p. 229 he contributes new facts 
to acoustics and optics; by postulating a “purifying uproar and 
brightness”, he places the purificatory power of sound and light 
beyond all doubt. 

Not content with such dazzling contributions to the “sole positive 
science’, not content with the theory of inward slaps, on p. 94 Herr 
Grün discovers a new bone: 

“Werther is the man who has no vertebra, who has not yet developed as subject.” 

Until now it had been mistakenly thought that man had some two 
dozen vertebrae. Herr Grün reduces these numerous bones not just 
to the normal singular form but goes on to discover that this one and 
only vertebra has the remarkable property of making man “subject”. 
The “subject” Herr Grün deserves an extra vertebra for this 
discovery. 

Finally our casual naturalist summarises his “‘sole positive science” 
of nature as follows: 

“Is not the core of nature 
Mankind at heart?* 

“The core of nature is mankind at heart. At the heart of mankind is the core of 
nature. Nature has its core at mankind’s heart” (p. 250). 

To which we would add, with Herr Grtin’s permission: Mankind at 
heart is the core of nature. At heart the core of nature is mankind. At 
the heart of mankind nature has its core. 

With this eminently “positive” piece of enlightenment we leave the 
field of natural science, and turn to economics, which unfortunately, 
according to the above, is not a “‘positive science”. Regardless of this, 
Herr Gritin, hoping for the best, proceeds extremely “positively” 
here too. 

“Individual set himself against individual, and thus universal competition arose” 
(p. 211). 

In other words, that obscure and mysterious conception German 
socialists have of “universal competition” came into being, “and thus 
competition arose”. No reasons are indicated, no doubt, because 
economics is not a positive science. 

“In the Middle Ages base metal was still bound by fealty, courtly love and piety; the 
sixteenth century burst this fetter, and money was set free” (p. 241). 

MacCulloch and Blanqui, who have hitherto been under the 
misapprehension that money was “bound in the Middle Ages” by 
deficient communications with America and the granite masses that 
covered the veins of “base metal” in the Andes,’ MacCulloch and 
Blanqui will be addressing a vote of thanks to Herr Grin for this 
revelation. . 

Herr Grin seeks to give a positive character to History, which is 
likewise not a “positive science”, by juxtaposing the traditional facts 
and a series of facts‘of his imagination. 

On p. 91, “Addison’s Cato stabbed himself on the English stage a 
century before Werther”, thereby testifying to a remarkable 
weariness of life. For by this account, he “stabbed” himself when his 
author, who was born in 1672, was still a babe in arms.!” 

On p. 175 Herr Grin corrects Goethe’s Tag- und Jahreshefte to the 
effect that the freedom of the press was by no means “declared” by 
the German governments in 1815 but only “promised”. So the 

: J. W. Goethe, “Ultimatum” (Zyklus “Gott und Welt”).—Ed. 
The reference is to the books: J. R. MacCulloch, The Principles of Political 
Economyand A. Blanqui, Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe.—Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 253 

horrors retailed to us by the philistines of the Sauerland and 
elsewhere concerning the four years of press freedom from 1815 to 
1819, are all just a dream: how at that time the press exposed ail their 
dirty linen and petty scandals to the light of day and how finally the 
Federal Decrees of 1819! put an end to this reign of terror by 
public opinion. 

Herr Grün goes on to tell us that the Free Imperial City of 
Frankfurt was not a state at all but “no more than a piece of civil 
society” (p. 19). Germany, he says, has no states of any kind, and 
people are at last beginning “to realise increasingly the peculiar 
advantages of this stateless condition of Germany” (p. 257), which 
advantages consist especially in the cheapness of flogging. The 
German autocrats will thus be obliged to say: “la société civile, c’est 
mov’*—although they fare badly in this, for according to p. 101, civil 
society is only “an abstraction”’. 

If, however, the Germans have no state, they have instead “a 
massive bill-of-exchange on truth, and this bill-of-exchange must be 
realised, paid up and changed for jingling coin” (p. 5). This 
bill-of-exchange is no doubt payable at the same office where Herr 
Grin pays his “property tax”, “to obtain a seat in the Chamber of 
Representatives of mankind”. 

[Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 94, November 25, 1847] 

The most important “positive” things he enlightens us about 
concern the French Revolution, on whose “significance” he delivers 
a special “digression”. He begins with the oracular utterance that the 
contradiction between historical law and rational law is indeed 
important, for both are of historical origin. Without wishing in any 
way to belittle Herr Grun’s discovery, which is as new as it is 
important, that rational law too arose in the course of history, we 
would diffidently venture the observation that a quiet encounter in 
the quiet of his chamber with the first volumes of Buchez’s Histoire 
parlementaire should show him what part this contradiction played in 
the Revolution. 

Herr Grün, however, prefers to give us an extensive proof of the 
evil nature of the Revolution which eventually boils down to the one, 
ponderously massive complaint against it: that it “did not examine 
the concept of man” [p. 195]. Indeed such a grievous sin of omission 
is unforgivable. If only the Revolution had examined the concept of 
man, there would have been no question of.a ninth Thermidor or an 

eighteenth Brumaire’”; Napoleon would have contented himself 

2 IT am civil society.— Ed. 

with his general’s commission and maybe in his old age written 
drilling regulations “from the human aspect”.—We further learn, in 
the course df our enlightenment, “about the significance of the 
Revolution”, that basically there is no difference between deism and 
materialism, and why not. From this we see with some pleasure that 
Herr Grin has not yet quite forgotten his Hegel. Cf. for example 
Hegel’s Geschichte der Philosophie, III, pp. 458, 459 and 463, second 
edition.—Then, likewise to enlighten us “about the significance of 
the Revolution”, a number of points about competition are made, of 
which we anticipated the most important above; further, long 
excerpts from the writings of Holbach are given, in order to prove 
that he explained crime as having its origin in the state; “the 
significance of the Revolution” is similarly elucidated by a generous 
anthology from Thomas More’s Utopia, which Utopia is in turn 
elucidated to the effect that in the year of 1516 it prophetically 
portrayed no less than—“ present-day England” (p. 225), down to the 
most minute details. And at last, after all these vues and considérants, 
on which he digresses at length over 36 pages, the final verdict 
follows on p. 226: “The Revolution is the realisation of Machiavel- 
hanism.”” An example which is a warning to all those who have not 
yet examined the concept of “man”! 

By way of consolation for the unfortunate French, who have 
achieved nothing but the realisation of Machiavellianism, on p. 73 
Herr Grün dispenses one little drop of balm: 

“In the eighteenth century the French people was like a Prometheus among the 
nations, who asserted human rights as against those of the gods.” 

Let us not dwell on the fact that it must presumably have 
“examined the concept of man” after all, nor on the fact that it 
“asserted” human rights not “as against those of the gods” but those 
of the king, the aristocracy and the clergy, let us pass over these 
trifles and veil our heads in silent grief: for something “human” has 
happened to Herr Grün himself here. 

Herr Grun, you see, has forgotten that in previous publications (cf. 
for instance the article in Volume I of the Rheinische Jahrbiicher,* “Die 
soziale Bewegung” etc.) he had not merely expatiated upon and 
“popularised” a certain argument concerning human rights that is to 
be found in the Deutsch-Franzésische Jahrbiicher, but with the truest 
plagiaristic zeal had even carried it to nonsensical extremes. He has 
forgotten that there he had pilloried human rights as the rights of 

* K. Grtin, “Politik und Socialismus”.— Fd. 
© See Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” (present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 160-68).— Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose . 255 

the épicier, the philistine, etc.; here he suddenly transforms them 
into “human rights”, the rights of “man”. The same thing happens to 
Herr Grin on pp. 251 and 252, where “the right with which we were 
born and which, alas, is universally ignored”, from Faust, is turned 
into “your natural right, your human right, the right to translate 
one’s ideas into practice and enjoy the fruits of one’s labours”; 
although Goethe opposes it directly to “law and rights”, which “are 
passed on from generation to generation like an everlasting disease” ,> in 
other words the traditional law of the ancien régime, with which only 
the “innate, ageless and inalienable human rights” of the Revolution, 
but by no means the rights of “man” conflict. This time, it is true, 
Herr Grin had to forget his previous point, so that Goethe should 
not forfeit his human aspect. 

Herr Grun has however not yet completely forgotten what he 
learned from the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbticher and other publica- 
tions of the same tendency. On p. 210 he defines the freedom in 
France at that time, for example, as “the freedom of unfree (!), 
common (!!) beings (!!!)”. This non-being has arisen from the 
common being on pp. 204 and 205 of the Deutsch-Franzosische 
Jahrbiichere and from the translations of these pages into the 
current language of German socialism of that time. Arguments 
which make abstract of philosophy and contain expressions from 
law, economics, etc., are incomprehensible to the true socialists, who 
therefore have the general habit of condensing them in the twinkling 
of an eye into a single brief catchphrase, studded with philosophical 
expressions and then committing this nonsense to memory for use 
on any conceivable occasion. In this way, the legal “common being” 
in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbticher has been transformed into the 
above philosophico-nonsensical “general being”; political liberation, 
democracy, has acquired its philosophical short formula in “libera- 
tion from the unfree general being”, and this the true socialist can 
put in his pocket without having to fear that his erudition will prove 
too heavy for him. 

On p. XXVI Herr Grun exploits what is said in the Holy Family 
about sensationism and materialism¢ in a manner similar to that 
which he uses in respect of the above-mentioned quotations from 
Holbach and their socialist interpretation, the hint contained in that 
publication that links with the socialist movement of the present day 

* Grocer, shopkeeper.— Ed. 

b J. W. Goethe, Faust, Act I, Scene 4 (“Faust’s Study”).—Ed. 

© K. Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 165-66).— 
Ed. 

4 See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 124-34.—Ed. 

are to be found in the materialists of the eighteenth century, 
including Holbach. 

Let us pass on to philosophy. For which Herr Grun has a 
thorough-going contempt. As early as p. VII he informs us that he 
“has no further use for religion, philosophy and politics”, that these 
three “have existed and will never rise again from their dissolution” 
and that from all of them and from philosophy in particular he “will 
retain nothing more than man himself andthe social being capable of 
social activity”. The social being capable of social activity and the 
above-mentioned human man are, it is true, sufficient to console us 
for the irreversible downfall of religion, philosophy and politics. But 
Herr Grun is far too modest. He has not only “retained” 
“humanistic man” and various “beings” from philosophy, but he is 
also the proud possessor of a considerable, if confused, mass of 
Hegelian tradition. How could it be otherwise, when several years 
ago he knelt in reverence on a number of occasions before the bust 
of Hegel? We shall be asked not to introduce such scurrilous and 
scandalous personal details; but Herr Grün himself confided this 
secret to the man from the press. We shall not at this juncture say 
where. We have already quoted Herr Grün’s sources with chapter 
and verse so frequently that we may for once request a like service of 
Herr Grin. To give him at once further proof of our kind intentions 
towards him, we will confide to him the fact that he took his final 
verdict in the free-will controversy, which he gives on p. 8, from 
Fourier’s Traité de l’Association, section “du libre arbitre”’. Only 
the idea that the theory of free will is an “aberration of the German 
mind” is a peculiar ‘“‘aberration” on the part of Herr Grin himself. 

We are at last getting closer to Goethe. On p. 15 Herr Grun allows 
Goethe the right to exist. For Goethe and Schiller are the resolution 
of the contradiction between “pleasure without activity”, i. e., 
Wieland, and “activity without pleasure”, 1. e., Klopstock. “Lessing 
first based man on himself.” (One wonders whether Herr Grin can 
emulate him in this acrobatic feat.)—In this philosophic construc- 
tion, we have all of Herr Grtin’s sources together. The form of the 
construction, the basis of the whole thing is Hegel’s world-famous 
stratagem for the reconciliation of contradictions. “Man based on 
himself” is Hegelian terminology applied to Feuerbach. “Pleasure 
without activity” and “‘activity without pleasure”, this contradiction 
on which Herr Grun sets Wieland and Klopstock to play the above 
variations, is borrowed from the Complete Works of M[oses] Hess. 
The only source which we miss is literary history itself, which has not 
the remotest inkling of the above hotch-potch and is therefore 
rightly ignored by Herr Grin. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 257 

Whilst we are on the subject of Schiller, the following observation 
_of Herr Grün’s should be apposite: “Schiller was everything one can 
be, insofar as one is not Goethe” (p. 311). Beg pardon, one can also 
be Herr Grun.—Incidentally, our author is here ploughing the same 
furrow as Ludwig of Bavaria: 

Rome, thou art lacking in Naples’ gifts, she in those 
that thou layst claim to; 
Were but the two of you one, it had been too much for the earth.’ 

This historical construction prepares the way for Goethe’s entry 
into German literature. “Man based on himself” by Lessing can 
continue his evolution only in Goethe’s hands. For to Herr Grin 
belongs the credit of having discovered “man” in Goethe, not 
natural man, begotten by man and woman in the pleasures of the 
flesh, but man in the higher sense, dialectical man, the caput 
mortuum? in the crucible, in which God the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost have been calcined, the cousin germain of Homunculus in 
Faust—in short, not man as Goethe speaks of him, but man as such, as 
Herr Grtin speaks of him. Who is “man as such”, then, of whom 
Herr Grun speaks? 

“There is nothing in Goethe that is not human content” (p. XVI).—On p. XXI we 
hear “that Goethe so portrayed and conceived of man as such as we wish to realise him 
today” —On p. XXII: “Goethe today, and that means his works, is a true compendium 
of humanity.”—Goethe “is humanity fulfilled” (page XXV).—“Goethe’s literary 
works are (!) the ideal of human society” (p. 12).—‘Goethe could not become a 
national poet because he was destined to be the poet of all that is human” (p. 25).—Yet, 

according to p. 14, “our nation” —that is, the Germans—is nevertheless supposed to 
“discern its own essence transfigured” in Goethe. 

This is the first revelation about “the essence of man”, and we may 
trust Herr Grun all the more in this matter because he has no doubt 
“examined the concept of man” with the utmost thoroughness. 
Goethe portrays “man” as Herr Grtin wishes to realise him, and at 
the same time he portrays the German nation transfigured—“man” 
is thus none other than “the German transfigured”. We have 
confirmation of this throughout. Just as Goethe is not “a national 
poet” but “the poet of all that is human”, so too the German nation is 
not a “national” nation, but the nation “of all that is human”. For 
this reason we read on p. XVI again: “Goethe’s literary works, 
emanating from life, ... neither had nor have anything to do with 
reality.” Just like “man”, just like “the Germans”. And on p. 4: “At 
this very time French socialism aims to bring happiness to France, 

* Ludwig I of Bavaria, “Florenz” (paraphrased).— Ed. 
> Distillation product, distillate — Ed. 

German writers have their eyes on the human race.” (While “the 
human race” is for the most part accustomed to “having” them 
not before “their eyes” but before a somewhat opposite part of the 
anatomy.) On innumerable occasions Herr Grün therefore expresses 
his pleasure at the fact that Goethe wanted “‘to liberate man from 
within” (e. g., p. 225), which truly Germanic form of liberation has so 
far refused to emerge from “within”! 

Let us duly note this first revelation then: “Man” is the German 
“transfigured”’ . 

[ Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 95, November 28, 1847] 

Let us now observe how Herr Grün pays homage to “the poet of 
all that is human”, the “human content in Goethe”. We shall thereby 
best discover who “man” is, of whom Herr Grun is speaking. We 
shall find that Herr Grin here reveals the most secret thoughts of 
true socialism, which is typical of the way his general craving to 
outshout all his cronies leads him rashly to trumpet out to the world 
matters which the rest of the band prefer to keep to themselves. His 
transformation of Goethe into “the poet of all that is human” was 
incidentally facilitated for him by the fact that Goethe himself had a 
habit of using the words “man” and “human” with a special kind of 
emphasis. Goethe, it is true, used them only in the sense in which 
they were applied in his own day and later also by Hegel, for instance 
the attribute “human” was bestowed on the Greeks in particular as 
opposed to heathen and Christian barbarians, long before these 
expressions acquired their mystically philosophical meaning through 
Feuerbach. With Goethe especially they usually have a most 
unphilosophical and flesh-and-blood meaning. To Herr Grin 
belongs the credit of being the first to have turned Goethe into a 
disciple of Feuerbach and a true socialist. 

We cannot of course speak of Goethe himself in any detail here. 
We would just draw attention to one point. In his works Goethe’s 
attitude to contemporary German society is a dual one. Sometimes 
he is hostile towards it; he attempts to escape from what he finds 
repulsive in it, as in Iphigenie and above all throughout the Italian 
journey; he rebels against it as Gotz, Prometheus and Faust, he 
lashes it with his bitterest satire as Mephistopheles. But then 
sometimes he is on friendly terms with it, “accommodates” himself 
to it, as in the majority of the Zahme Xenien and many prose writings, 
he celebrates it, as in the Maskenztige, even defends it against the 
oncoming movement of history, as particularly in all the writings in 
which he comes to speak of the French Revolution. It is not just some 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 259 

aspects of German life which Goethe accepts in contrast to others 
which are repugnant to him. More frequently it is a question of the 
different moods he is in; there is a continuing battle within him 
between the poet of genius who feels revulsion at the wretchedness 
of his environment, and the cautious offspring of the Frankfurt 
patrician or the Weimar privy-councillor who finds himself com- 
pelled to come to terms with and accustom himself to it. Goethe is 
thus at one moment a towering figure, at the next petty; at one mo- 
ment an obstinate, mocking genius full of contempt for the world, at 
the next a circumspect, unexacting, narrow philistine. Not even 
Goethe was able to conquer the wretchedness of Germany; on the 
contrary, it, conquered him, and this victory of wretchedness over the 
greatest of Germans is the most conclusive proof that it cannot be 
surmounted at all “from within”. Goethe was too universal, too 
active a nature, too much a man of flesh and blood to seek refuge 
from this wretchedness in a Schillerian flight to the Kantian ideal; he 
was too keen-sighted not to see how ultimately such a flight 
amounted to no more than the exchange of a prosaic form of 
wretchedness for a grandiloquent one. His temperament, his 
energies, his whole mental attitude disposed him to the practical life, 
and the practical life he found around him was wretched. This 
dilemma of having to exist in an environment which he could only 
despise, and yet being bound to this environment as the only one in 
which he could be active, this dilemma always faced Goethe, and the 
older he became, the more the mighty poet withdrew de guerre lasse: 
behind the insignificant Weimar minister. Unlike Borne and Menzel, 
we do not criticise Goethe for not being liberal» but for being capable 
of occasional philistinism as well, not for being unsusceptble to any 
enthusiasm for German freedom but for sacrificing his spasmodical- 
ly erupting and truer aesthetic instinct to a petty-bourgeois fear of all 
major contemporary historical movements, not for being a man of 
the court but for being capable of attending with such solemn gravity 
to the pettiest affairs and menus plaisirs of one of the pettiest of the 
little German courts, at the time when a Napoleon was flushing out 
the great Augean stable that was Germany. We criticise him not from 
a moral or from a party point of view, but at the very most from the 
aesthetic and historical point of view; we measure Goethe neither by 
moral nor by political nor by “human” standards. We cannot here 
involve ourselves in a description of Goethe’s relationship to his 

* Tired of the struggle.—Ed. 
> L. Borne, Pariser Briefe; W. Menzel, Die deutsche Literatur.— Ed. 
© Little entertainments (involving supplementary expenditure). Ed. 

1N—1826 

whole age, his literary precursors and contemporaries, his process of 
development and his station in life. We therefore restrict ourselves 
simply to noting the facts. 

We shall see in respect of which of these aspects Goethe’s works are 
a “true compendium of humanity”, “humanity fulfilled” and the 
“ideal of human society”. 

Let us first of all take Goethe’s critique of the existing society and 
then move on to the positive description of the “ideal of human 
society”. In view of the wealthy content of Grün’s book, it goes 
without saying that in either area we are only highlighting a few 
points of characteristic brilliance. 

As a critic of society Goethe does indeed perform miracles. He 
“condemns civilisation” (pp. 34-36) by giving voice to a few romantic 
complaints that it blurs everything that is characteristic and 
distinctive about man. He “prophesies the world of the bourgeoisie” 
(p. 78) by depicting in Prometheus tout bonnemenf the origin of private 
property. On p. 229 he is “judge over the world..., the Minos of civil- 
isation’’. But all these things are mere trifles. 

On p. 253 Herr Gruin quotes Catechisation: 

Reflect, my child! From whom have you these talents? 
You cannot have them from yourself, you know.— 
Why, father gave me everything.— 

And who gave them to him?—My grandfather.— 

No, no! From whom could he, your grandfather, receive them? — 
Well, he just took them. 

Hurrah! trumpets Herr Grün at the top of his voice, la propriété, 
c’est le voP—Proudhon in person!< 

Leverrier can go back home with his planet and surrender his 
medal to Herr Grün—for this is something greater than Leverrier, 
this is something greater even than Jackson and his sulphuric ether 
fumes. For the man who condensed Proudhon’s theft thesis, which is 
indeed disquieting for many peaceful members of the bourgeoisie, to 
the innocuous dimensions of the above epigram by Goethe—the only 
reward for him is the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour. 

The Burgergeneral presents more difficulties. Herr Grun gazes at it 
for a while from every side, makes a few doubtful grimaces, which is 
unusual for him, and begins to cogitate: “true enough ... somewhat 
wishy-washy ... this does not amount to a condemnation of the 
Revolution” (p. 150).... Wait! now he has it! What is the object at 

4 Quite simply.— Ed. 
b Property is theft — Ed. 
© An allusion to P. J. Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? — Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose . 261 

issue? A jug of milk'!° and so: “Let us not ... forget that here once 
again ... it is the property question that is being brought to the fore” 
(p. 151). 

If two old women are quarrelling beneath Herr Grün’s window 
over the head of a salted herring, may Herr Grün never find it too 
much trouble to descend from his room with its fragrance of “‘roses” 
and mignonette to inform them that for them too “it is the property 
question that is being brought to the fore”. The gratitude of all 
right-thinking people will be the best reward for him. 

[ Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 96, December 2, 1847] 

Goethe performed one of the greatest feats of criticism when he 
wrote Werther. Werther is not by any means merely a sentimental 
love-story, as those who have hitherto read Goethe “from the human 
aspect” believed. 

In Werther “the human content has found so fitting a form that nothing can be 
found in any of the literatures of the world which might even remotely deserve 
to be set beside it” (p. 96). “Werther’s love for Lotte is a mere instrument, a 
vehicle for the tragedy of the radical pantheism of emotion.... Werther is the man 
who has no vertebra, who has not yet become a subject” (p. 93 [p. 94]). Werther 
shoots himself not from infatuation but “because he, that unhappy pantheistic spirit, 
could not come to terms with the world” (p. 94). “ Werther depicts the whole rotten 
condition of society with artistic mastery, it seizes the wrongs of society by their 
deepest roots, by their philosophico-religious basis” (which “basis’’ everybody knows 
to be of more recent origin than the “wrongs’”), “by the vague and nebulous 
understanding.... Pure, well-ventilated conceptions of true human nature” (and above 
all vertebra, Herr Grün, vertebra!) ‘would be the death of that state of wretchedness, 
those worm-eaten, crumbling conditions which we call bourgeois life!” [p. 95]. 

An example of how “ Werther depicts the rotten condition of society 
with artistic mastery”. Werther writes: 

“Adventures? Why do I use this silly word ... our false bourgeois relationships, they 
are the real adventures, they are the real monstrosities!" 

This cry of lamentation from a lachrymose emotionalist at the 
discrepancy between bourgeois reality and his no less bourgeois 
illusions about this reality, this faint-hearted sigh which derives solely 
from a lack of the most ordinary experience, is given out by Herr 
Grün on p. 84 as incisive social criticism. Herr Grin even asserts that 
the “despairing agony of life” which the above words express, “this 

* J. W. Goethe, “Briefe aus der Schweiz” (written in the form of excerpts from 
letters supposedly found among the papers of the main character of Die Leiden des 
jungen Werthers).— Ed. 

10* 

unhealthy urge to turn things on their heads so that they should at 
least acquire a different appearance” (!) “ultimately dug for itself the 
burrow of the French Revolution”. The Revolution, previously the 
realisation of Machiavellianism, here becomes merely the realisation 
of the sufferings of young Werther. The guillotine of the Place de la 
Révolution is only a pale imitation of Werther’s pistol. 

By the same token it is self-evident, according to p. 108, that in 
Stella too Goethe is dealing with “social material”, although here only 
“the most disreputable circumstances” (p. 107) are depicted. True 
socialism is much more broad-minded than our Lord Jesus. For 
where two or three are forgathered—they need not even do so in its 
name—then it is in the midst of them and there is “social material”. 
Like its disciple Herr Grin, it generally bears a striking resemblance 
to “that kind of dull-witted, self-satisfied nosey-parker who makes 
everything his business but gets to the bottom of nothing” (p. 47). 

Our readers will perhaps remember a letter Wilhelm Meister 
writes to his brother-in-law? in the last volume of the Lehrjahre, in 
which, after a few rather trite comments on the advantages of 
growing up in well-to-do circumstances, the superiority of the 
aristocracy over the narrow-minded bourgeoisie is acknowledged 
and the subordinate position of the latter as well as of all other 
non-aristocratic classes is sanctioned on the grounds that it is not 
possible to change it for the present. It is said that only the individual 
is able in certain circumstances to attain a level of equality with the 
aristocracy. Herr Grün remarks apropos of this: 

“What Goethe says of the pre-eminence of the upper classes of society is absolutely 
true if one takes upper class as identical with educated class, and in Goethe’s case this is 
30” (p[p]. 264[-65)). 

And there let the matter rest. 

Let us come to the much-discussed central point: Goethe’s attitude 
to politics and to the French Revolution. Here Herr Grün’s book 
provides an object lesson in what it means to endure through thick 
and thin; here Herr Grün’s devotion gives a good account of itself. 

So that Goethe’s attitude towards the Revolution may appear 
justified, Goethe must of course be above the Revolution and have 
transcended it even before it took place. As early as p. XXI we 
therefore learn: 

“Goethe had so far outstripped the practical development of his age that he felt he 
could only adopt towards it an attitude of rejection, a defensive attitude.” 

a Werner.— Ed. 
> J. W. Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Buch 5, Kap. 3.—Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 263 

And on p. 84, apropos of Werther, who, as we saw already, 
embodies the whole Revolution in nucé: “History shows 1789, 
Goethe shows 1889.” Similarly on pp. 28 and 29 Goethe is obliged in 
a few brief words “radically to dispose of all the shouting about 
liberty” since back in the seventies he had an article’ printed in the 
Frankfurter Gelehrie Anzeigen which does not at all discuss the liberty 
which the “shouters” are demanding, but only engages in a few 
general and fairly sober reflections on liberty as such, the concept of 
liberty. Furthermore: because in his doctoral dissertation’ Goethe 
propounded the thesis that it was actually the duty of every legislator 
to introduce a certain form of worship—a thesis which Goethe 
himself treats merely as an amusing paradox, inspired by all manner 
of small-town clerical bickering in Frankfurt (which Herr Grin 
himself quotes)—because of this “the student Goethe discarded 
the whole dualism of the Revolution and the present French 
state like an old pair of shoes” (pp. 26 and 27). It would appear as if 
Herr Grun has inherited “the student Goethe’s worn-out shoes” and 
used them to sole the seven-league boots of his “social movement” 
with. 

This of course now sheds a new light for us on Goethe’s statements 
about the Revolution. It is now clear that being high above it, having 
‘disposed of it” as long as fifteen years previously, having “discarded 
it like an old pair of shoes” and being a hundred years in 
advance of it, he could have no sympathy with it and could take no 
interest in a nation of “shouters for liberty”, with whom he had 
settled his accounts way back in the year seventy-three. Herr Grun 
now has an easy time of it. Goethe may turn as much trite inherited 
wisdom into elegant distiches, he may philosophise upon it with as 
much philistine narrow-mindedness, he may shrink with as much 
petty-bourgeois horror from the great ice-floes which threaten his 
peaceable poet’s niche, he may behave with as much pettiness, 
cowardice and servility as he will, but he cannot carry things too far 
for his patient gloss-writer. Herr Gran lifts him up on his tireless 
shoulders and carries him through the mire; indeed he transfers the 
whole mire to the account of true socialism, just to ensure that 
Goethe’s boots stay clean. From the Campagne tn Frankreich to the 
Nattirliche Tochter, Herr Grin takes on responsibility (pp. 133-170) 
for everything, everything without exception, he shows a devotion 

* In the germ.— Ed. 

b J. W. Goethe, “Alexander von Joch uber Belohnung und Strafen nach 
turkischen Gesetzen” .— Ed. 

© J. W. Goethe, “De Legislatonbus” — Ed. 

which might move a Buchez to tears. And if all this does not help, if 
the mire is just too deep, then a higher social exegesis is harnessed to 
the task, then Herr Grün [p. 137] paraphrases as follows: 

The sad destiny of France, let the mighty think on it, 
But verily the lowly should ponder it more. 

The mighty perished; but who defends the multitude 
From the multitude? The multitude was tyrant to itself.* 

“Who defends”, shouts Herr Grün for all he is worth, with italics, 
question marks and all the ‘vehicles of the tragedy of the radical 
pantheism of emotion” [p. 93], “who, in particular, defends the 
unpropertied multitude, the so-called rabble, against the propertied 
multitude, the legislating rabble?” (p. 137). “Who in particular 
defends” Goethe against Herr Grun? 

In this way Herr Grin explains the whole series of worldly-wise 
bourgeois precepts contained in the Venetian Epigramme: 

they “are like a slap in the face delivered by the hand of Hercules which only now” 
(after the danger is past for the philistine) “appear to us to smack home really 

tolerably now that we have a great and bitter experience” (bitter indeed for the 
philistine) “behind us” (p. 136). 

From the Belagerung von Mainz Herr Grin 

“would not wish to pass over the following passage for anything in the world: “On 
Tuesday ... I hastened ... to pay homage to his Highness, and had the great good fortune to 
wait upon the Prince ... my ever gracious Lord”, etc. [p. 147]. 

The passage in which Goethe lays his humble devotion at the feet 
of Herr Rietz, the King of Prussia’s» Gentleman, Cuckold and Pimp 
of the Bedchamber, Herr Grtin does not think fit to quote. 

[Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 97, December 5, 1847] 

Apropos of the Biirgergeneral and the Ausgewanderte we read: 

“Goethe’s whole antipathy towards the Revolution, whenever it was expressed in 
literary form, was concerned with the eternal lament at seeing people driven out from 
circumstances of well-deserved and well-accustomed property, which intriguers and 
envious men, etc., then usurped ... this same injustice of robbery. ...His peaceful, 
domesticated nature became indignant at this violation of the right of property, which, 
being arbitrarily inflicted, made destitute refugees of whole masses of people” 
(p. 151). 

Let us without more ado put this passage to the account of “man” 
whose “peaceful, domesticated nature” feels so much at ease in 

2 J. W. Goethe, “Venezianische Epigramme” .— Ed. 
> Frederick William II.— Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 265 

“well-deserved and well-accustomed”, to put it bluntly, well-earned 
“circumstances of property” that it declares the tempest of the 
Revolution which sweeps away these circumstances sans facon to be 
“arbitrary” and the work of “intriguers and envious men”, etc. 

In the light of this it does not surprise us that Herr Grin “finds 
the purest pleasure” (p. 165) in the bourgeois idyll Hermann und 
Dorothea, its timid, worldly-wise small-townsfolk and lamenting 
peasants who take to their heels in superstitious fear before the sans- 
culotte army and the horrors of war. Herr Grün 

“even accepts with relief the pusillanimous role which is assigned at the end ... to 
the German people: 

It befits not a German to be at the head of a movement 
Fleeing in terror, nor to waver first this way, then that.”* 

Herr Grün is right to shed tears of sympathy for the victims of 
cruel times and to raise his eyes to heaven in patriotic despair at such 
strokes of fate. There are enough ruined and degenerate people 
anyway, who have no “human” heart in their bosoms, who prefer to 
join in singing the Marseillatse in the Republican camp and perhaps 
even make lewd jokes in Dorothea’s deserted bedchamber. Herr 
Grün is a decent fellow who waxes indignant at the lack of feeling 
with which for instance a Hegel looks down on the “little, dumb 
flowers” which have been crushed underfoot by the onrush of 
history and mocks at the “litany of private virtues of modesty, 
humility, love of one’s fellow-men and charity” which is heid out 

“against the deeds of world history and those who perform them” » 
Herr Grin is right to do this. He will no doubt receive his reward in 
heaven. 

Let us conclude these “human” remarks on the Revolution with 
the following: “A real humorist might well take the liberty of finding 
the Convention itself infinitely ridiculous’, and until this “real 
humorist” is found, Herr Grin meanwhile promges the necessary 
instructions (pp. 151, 152). 

Herr Grin similarly sheds some surprising ight upon Goethe’s 
attitude towards politics after the Revolution. Just one example. We 
already know of the profound resentment “man” feels in his heart 
towards the liberals. The “poet of all that is human” must of course 
not be allowed to go to his rest without having specifically had it out 
with them, without having pinned an explicit memorandum on 
Messrs Welcker, Itzstein and ,their cronies. This memorandum our 

. W. Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea, 9. Gesang (“Urania”’).— Ed. 
. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Geschichte, Einleitung — Ed. 

“self-satisfied nosey-parker” unearths in the following of the Zahme 
Xenien (p. 319): 

All that is just the same old tripe, 

Do acquire some savvy! 

Don’t be forever just marking time, 

But make some progress! 

Goethe’s verdict: “Nothing is more repulsive than the majority, for 
it consists of a few strong leaders, of rogues who accommodate 
themselves, of weaklings who adapt themselves, and the mass 
jogging along behind without having the faintest idea what it 
wants’*—this verdict so typical of the philistine, whose ignorance 
and short-sightedness are only possible within the narrow bounds of 
a petty German principality, appears to Herr Grün as “the critique 
of the later” (i-e. modern) “constitutional state” .»> How important it is 
one may discover “for instance in any Chamber of Deputies you care 
to choose” (p. 268). According to this, it is only out of ignorance that 
the “belly” of the French Chamber looks after itself and its like in 
such an excellent manner. A few pages later, on p. 271, Herr Grün 
finds “the July Revolution” “misbegotten”, and as early as p. 34 the 
Customs Union''' is sharply criticised because it “makes yet more 
expensive the rags the unclothed and the shivering need to cover their 
nakedness, in order to make the pillars of the throne (!!), the 
liberal-minded money-masters” (whom everyone knows to be 
opposed to “the throne” throughout the Customs Union) “some- 
what more resistant to decay”. Everyone knows how in Germany the 
philistines always bring out the “unclothed” and “shivering” when- 
ever it is a question of combating protective tariffs or any other 
progressive bourgeois measure, and “man” joins their number. 

What light does Goethe’s critique of society and the state, as seen 
through Herr Grun’s eyes, now shed on “the essence of man’? 

Firstly, “man”, according to p. 264, exhibits a most marked respect 
for “the educated estates” in general and a seemly deference 
towards a high aristocracy in particular. And then he is distinguished 
by a mighty terror of any great mass movement and any determined 
social action, at the approach of which he either scuttles timidly back 
into his fireside corner or takes to his heels with all his goods and 
chattels. As long as it lasts, such a movement is “a bitter experience” 
for him; scarcely is it over than he takes up a dominant position at 
the front of the stage and with the hand of Hercules delivers slaps in 

4 J. W. Goethe, Uber Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen, einzelne Betrachtungen und 
Aphorismen.— Ed. 
> The German original has: “‘Gesetzesstaat” — Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 267 

the face which only now appear to him to smack home really 
tolerably, and finds the whole business “infinitely ridiculous”. And 
throughout he remains wholeheartedly attached to ‘“‘circumstances 
of well-deserved and well-accustomed property”; apart from that he 
has a very “peaceful and domesticated nature”, is undemanding and 
modest and does not wish to be disturbed in his quiet little pleasures 
by any storms. “Man is happy within a restricted sphere” (p. 191, as 
the first sentence of Part Two has it); he envies no one and gives 
thanks to his maker if he is left in peace. In short, “man”, who, as we 
have already seen, is German by birth, is gradually beginning to turn 
into the spit image of a German petty bourgeois. 

What actually does Goethe’s critique of society as conveyed by 
Herr Grun amount to? What does “man” find in society to take 
exception to? Firstly that it does not correspond to his illusions. But 
these illusions are precisely the illusions of an ideologising philistine, 
especially a young one, and if philistine reality does not correspond 
to these illusions, this is only because they are illusions. For that very 
reason they correspond all the more fully to philistine reality. They 
differ from it only as the ideologising expression of a condition in 
general differs from that condition, and there can therefore be no 
further question of them being realised. A striking example of this is 
provided by Herr Grun’s commentary on Werther. 

Secondly “man’s” polemic is directed against everything that 
threatens Germany’s philistine régime. His whole polemic against 
the Revolution is that of a philistine. His hatred of the liberals, the 
July Revolution and protective tariffs is the absolutely unmistak- 
able expression of the hatred an oppressed. inflexible petty bourgeois 
feels for the independent, progressive bourgeois. Let us give two 
further examples of this. 

Every one knows that the guild system marked the period of 
efflorescence of the petty bourgeoisie. On p. 40 Herr Grun says, 
speaking on behalf of Goethe, in other words, of “man”: “In the 
Middle Ages the corporation brought together one strong man in 
defensive alliance with other strong men.” The guildsmen of those 
days are “strong men” in the eyes of “man”. 

But in Goethe’s day the guild system was already in decay, 
competition was bursting in from all sides. As a true philistine, 
Goethe gives voice to a heart-rending wail at one point in his 
memoirs? which Herr Grin quotes on p. 88, about the rot setting 
among the petty bourgeoisie, the ruination of well-to-do families, the 
decay of family life associated with this, the loosening of domestic 

a J. W. Goethe, “Aus meinem Leben”, Teil 2, Buch 7.— Ed. 

bonds and other petty-bourgeois lamentations which in civilised 
countries are treated with well-deserved contempt. Herr Grtin, who 
scents a capital criticism of modern society in this passage, can so 
little moderate his delight that he has its whole “human content” 
printed in italics. 

Let us now turn to the positive “human content” in Goethe. We 
can proceed more quickly now that we are on the track of “man”. 

Before all else let us report the glad tidings that “Wilhelm Meister 
deserts his parental home” and that in Egmont “the citizens of 
Brussels are demanding privileges and liberties” for no other reason 
than to “become men” (p. XVII). 

Herr Grin has detected affinities with Proudhon in the elderly 
Goethe once before. On p. 320 he has this pleasure once again: 

“What he wanted, what we all want, to save our personalities, anarchy in the true 
sense of the word, on this topic Goethe has the following to say: 

Now why should anarchy have for me 
Such attraction in modern times? 

Each lives according to his lights 

And that is profit for me as well’, etc. 

Herr Grün is beside himself with joy at finding in Goethe that 
truly “human” social anarchy which was first proclaimed by 
Proudhon and adopted by acclamation by the German true socialists. 
This time he is mistaken however. Goethe is speaking of the already 
existing “anarchy in modern times”, which already “is” profit for 
him and by which each lives according to his lights, in other words of 
the independence in sociable intercourse which has been brought 
about by the dissolution of the feudal system and the guilds, by the 
rise of the bourgeoisie, and the exclusion of patriarchalism from the 
social life of the educated classes. Simply for grammatical reasons 
there can therefore be no question of the Herr Grün’s beloved future 
anarchy in the higher sense. Goethe is here not talking at all about 
“what he wanted” but about what he found around him. 

But such a little slip should not disturb us. For we do have the 
poem: Figentum. 

I know that nothing is mine own 
Save the idea that peacefully 
Secretes itself from my spirit, 
And every instant of happiness 
Which destiny beneficent 

Gives me to savour fully. 

2 J. W. Goethe, Zahme Xenien, 1V.— Ed. 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 269 

If it is not clear that in this poem “property as it has existed up to 
now vanishes into smoke” (p. 320), Herr Grün’s comprehension has 
come to a standstill. 

[Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 98, December 9, 1847] 

But let us leave these entertaining little exegetical diversions of 
Herr Grun’s to their fate. They are in any case legion and each 
invariably leads on to others still more surprising. Let us rather 
resume our search for “man”. 

“Man is happy within a restricted sphere,” as we have read. So is 
the philistine. 

“Goethe’s early works were of purely social’ (i.e. human) “character.... Goethe 
clung to what was most immediate, smallest, most domesticated” (p. 88). 

The first positive thing we discover about “man” is his delight in 
the “smallest, domesticated” still-life of the petty bourgeoisie. 
“If we can find a place in the world,” says Goethe, as summarised by Herr Grin, 

“where to rest with our possessions, a field to provide us with food, a house to shelter 
us—is that not a Fatherland for us?” 

And, exclaims Herr Grün, 
“How these words express our deepest thoughts today!” (p. 32). 

Essentially “man” is dressed in a redingote a la propriétaire and by 
that too reveals himself as a thoroughbred épicier.? 

The German bourgeois, as everyone knows, is a fanatic for 
freedom at most for a brief moment, in his youth. That is 
characteristic of ‘“‘man” too. Herr Grun mentions with approval how 
in his later years Goethe ‘“damns” the “urge for freedom” which still 
haunts Gotz, that “product of a free and ill-bred boy”, and even 
quotes this cowardly recantation in extenso on p. 43. What Herr 
Grtin understands by freedom can be deduced from the fact that in 
the same passage he identifies the freedom of the French Revolution 
with that of the free Switzers at the time of Goethe’s Swiss journey, in 
other words, modern, constitutional and democratic freedom with 
the dominance of patricians and guilds in medieval Imperial Cities 
and especially with the early Germanic barbarism of cattle-rearing 
Alpine tribes. The montagnards of the Bernese Oberland even have 

* Grocer.— Ed. 
Play on words: “montagnards” — literally ‘““mountain-dwellers”; this was also the 
name taken by the Jacobins, the representatives of the Mountain Party in the 
Convention during the French Revolution.— Ed. 

The respectable bourgeois is a sworn enemy of all frivolity and 
mockery of religion: “man” likewise. If Goethe on various occasions 
expressed himself in a truly bourgeois manner on this topic, Herr 
Grün takes this as another aspect of the “human content in Goethe”. 
And to make the point quite credible, Herr Grun assembles not 
merely these grains of gold, but on p. 62 even adds a number of 
meritorious sentiments of his own, to the effect that “those who 
mock religion ... are empty vessels and simpletons”, etc. Which does 
much credit to his feelings as ‘““man” and bourgeois. 

The bourgeois cannot live without a “king he loves”, a father to his 
_ country whom he holds dear. Nor can “man”. That is why on p. 129 
Karl August is for Goethe a “most excellent Prince”. Stout old Herr 
Grün, still enthusing for “most excellent Princes” in the year 1846! 

An event is of interest to the bourgeois insofar as it impinges 
directly on his private circumstances. 

“To Goethe even the events of the day become alien objects which either add to or 

detract from his bourgeois comforts and which may arouse in him an aesthetic or human 
but never a political interest” (p. 20). 

Herr Grun “thus finds a human interest in a thing” if he notices 
that it “either adds to or detracts from his bourgeois comforts”. Herr 
Grun here confesses as openly as possible that bourgeois comforts 
are the chief thing for “man”. 

Faust and Wilhelm Meister provide Herr Grun with an occasion for 
special chapters. Let us take Faust first. 

On p. 116 we are told: 

“Only the fact that Goethe came upon a clue to the mystery of the organisation o! 
plants” enabled him “to complete his delineation of humanistic man” (for there is no 
way of escaping “human” man) “Faust. For Faust is brought to the peak of his own 
nature (!) just as much as by natural science.” 

We have already had examples of how that “humanistic man”, 
Herr Grun, “is brought to the peak of his own nature by natura! 
science”. We observe that this is inherent in the race. 

Then on p. 231 we hear that the “bones of brute and human 
skeletons” in the first scene signifies “the abstraction of our whole 
life’”—and Herr Grin treats Faust in general exactly as though he 
had the Revelation of St. John the Theologian before him. The 
macrocosm signifies “Hegelian philosophy”, which at the time when 
Goethe was writing this scene (1806) happened to exist only in 
Hegel’s mind or at most in the manuscript of the Phanomenologie 
which Hegel was then working on. What has chronology to do with 
“human content’? 

The depiction of the moribund Holy Roman Empire in the Second 
Part of Faust Herr Grün (p. 240) imagines without more ado to be a 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 271 

depiction of the monarchy of Louis XIV, “in which,” he adds, “we 
automatically have the Constitution and the Republic!” “Man” 
naturally “of himself has” everything that other people first have to 
provide for themselves by dint of toil and exertion. 

On p. 246 Herr Grun confides to us that the Second Part of Faust 
has become, with regard to its scientific aspect, “the canon of 
modern times, just as Dante’s Divine Comedy was the canon of the 
Middle Ages”. We would commend this to natural scientists who 
have hitherto sought very little in the Second Part of Faust, and to 
historians, who have sought something quite other than a “canon of 
the Middle Ages” in the Florentine’s pro-Ghibelline poem!'”? It 
seems as though Herr Grin is looking at history with the same eyes 
as Goethe, according to p. 49, looked at his own past: “In Italy 
Goethe surveyed his past with the eyes of the Belvedere Apollo”, eyes 
which pour comble de malheur do not even have eyeballs. 

Wilhelm Meister is ““a Communist”, i.e. “in theory, on the basis of 
aesthetic outlook” (!!) (p. 254). 

On nothing does he set great store, 
And yet the whole wide world is his (p. 257). 

Of course, he has enough money, and the world belongs to him, as 
it belongs to every bourgeois, without his needing to go to the 
trouble of becoming “a communist on the basis of aesthetic 
outlook”.—Under the auspices of this “nothing” on which 
Wilhelm Meister sets great store and which, as we see from p. 256, is 
indeed an extensive and most substantial “nothing”, even hangovers 
are eliminated. Herr Grün “drains every cup to the lees, without ill 
effect, without a headache’’. So much the better for “man” who may 
now quietly worship Bacchus with impunity. For the day when all 
these things shall come to pass, Herr Grin has meanwhile already 
discovered the drinking song for “true man” in On nothing do I set 
great store—‘‘this song will be sung when mankind has arranged its 
affairs in a manner worthy of itself”; but Herr Grin has reduced it 
to three verses and expunged those parts unsuitable for youth and 
“man”. 

In Wilhelm] Mf[eister] Goethe sets up 

“the ideal of human society”. “Man is not a teaching but a living, acting and 
creating being.” “Wilhelm Meister is this man.” “The essence of man is activity” 
(an essence he shares with any flea) pp. 257, 258, 261. 

Finally the Wahlverwandtschaften. This novel, moral enough in itself, 
is moralised even more by Herr Grün, so that it almost seems as 

* As the final misfortune.— Ed. 
b J. W. Goethe, “Vanitas! Vanitatum vanitas!” (paraphrased).—Ed. 

though he were concerned to recommend the Wahlverwandtschaften 
as a suitable text-book for schools for young ladies. Herr Grin 
explains that Goethe 

“distinguished between love and marriage, so that for him love was a search of mar- 
riage and marriage was love foundand fulfilled” (p. 286). 

By this token, then, love is the search of “love that has been found”. 
This is further elucidated to the effect that after “the freedom of 
youthful love”, marriage must come about as “the final relationship 
of love” (p. 287). Exactly as in civilised countries a wise father first 
allows his son to sow his wild oats for a few years and then finds him a 
suitable wife as a “final relationship”. However, whilst people in 
civilised countries have long passed the stage of regarding this “final 
relationship” as something morally binding, whilst on the contrary in 
those countries the husband keeps mistresses and his wife retaliates 
by cuckolding him, the philistine once again rescues Herr Grun: 

“If man has had a really free choice, ... if two people base their union on their 
mutual rational wishes” (there is no mention here of gassion, flesh and blood) “it 
would require the outlook of a libertine to regard the upsetting of this relationship as a 
trifle, as not so fraught with suffering and unhappiness as Goethe did. But there can 
be no question of libertinism with Goethe” (p. 288). 

This passage qualifies the timid polemic against morality which 
Herr Grtin permits himself from time to time. The philistine has 
arrived at the realisation that there is all the more reason for having 
to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of the young since it is precisely 
the most dissolute young men who afterwards make the best 
husbands. But if they should misbehave themselves again after the 
wedding—then no mercy, no pity on them; for that “would require 
the outlook of a libertine”. 

“The outlook of a libertine!” “Libertinism!” One can just picture 
“man” as large as life before one, as he places his hand on his heart, 
and overflowing with pride exclaims: No! I am pure of all frivolity, 
of “fornication and licentiousness”’,, I have never deliberately ruined 
the happiness of a contented marriage, I have always practised 
fidelity and honesty and have never lusted after my neighbour’s 
wife—I am no “libertine”! 

“Man” is right. He is not made for amorous affairs with beautiful 
women, he has never turned his mind to seduction and adultery, he 
is no “libertine”, but a man of conscience, an honourable, virtuous, 
German philistine. He is 

..l’épicier pacifique, 
Fumant sa pipe au fond de sa boutique; 
I] craint sa femme et son ton arrogant; 

German Socialism in Verse and Prose 273 

De la maison il lui laisse ’empire, 
Au moindre signe obéit sans mot dire 
Et vit ainsi cocu, battu, content.? 

(Parny, Goddam, chant III.) 

There remains just one observation for us to make. If above we 
have only considered one aspect of Goethe, that is the fault of Herr 
Grin alone. He does not present Goethe’s towering stature at all. He 
either skims hurriedly over all works in which Goethe was really 
great and a genius, such as the Romische Elegieen of Goethe the 
“libertine”, or he inundates them with a great torrent of trivialities, 
which only proves that he can make nothing of them. On the other 
hand, with what is for him uncommon industry he seeks out every 
instance of philistinism, petty priggery and narrow-mindedness, 
collates them, exaggerates them in the manner of a true literary 
hack, and rejoices every time he is able to find support for his own 
narrow-minded opinions on the authority of Goethe, whom he 
furthermore frequently distorts. 

History’s revenge on Goethe for ignoring her every time she 
confronted him face to face was not the yapping of Menzel nor the 
narrow polemic of Borne. No, 

Just as Titania in the land of fairy magic 
Found Nick Bottom in her arms,» 

so one morning Goethe found Herr Grin in his arms. Herr Grün’s 
apologia, the warm thanks he stammers out to Goethe for every 
philistine word, that is the bitterest revenge which offended history 
could pronounce upon the greatest German poet. 

Herr Grin, however, “can close his eyes in the awareness that he 
has not disgraced his destiny of being a man” (p. 248).