The Blue Flower (3 page)

W
HILE
they were living at Oberwiederstadt, the Hardenbergs did not invite their neighbours, and did not accept their invitations, knowing that this might lead to worldliness. There was also the question of limited means. The Seven Years’ War was expensive - Friedrich II was obliged to open a state lottery to pay for it - and for some of his loyal landholders, quite ruinous. In 1780 four of the smaller Hardenberg properties had to be sold, and at another one, Mockritz, there was an auction of the entire contents. Now it stood there without crockery, without curtains, without livestock. As far as the low horizon the fields lay uncultivated. At Oberwiederstadt itself, you saw through the narrow ancient windows row after row of empty dovecotes, and a
Gutshof
too vast to be filled, or even half-filled, which had once been the convent chapel. The main building was pitiable, with missing tiles, patched, weather-beaten, stained with water which had run for years from the loosened guttering. The pasture was dry over the old plague tombstones.
The fields were starved. The cattle stood feeding at the bottom of the ditches, where it was damp and a little grass grew.

Smaller and much more agreeable was Schloben-bei-Jena, to which the family sometimes made an expedition. At Schloben, with its mill-stream and mossy oaks, ‘the heart,’ Auguste said tentatively, ‘can find peace’. But Schloben was in almost as much difficulty as the other properties. There is nothing peaceful, the Freiherr told her, about a refusal to extend credit.

As a member of the nobility, most ways of earning money were forbidden to the Freiherr, but he had the right to enter the service of his Prince. In 1784 (as soon as the existing Director had died) he was appointed Director of the Salt Mines of the Electorate of Saxony at Durrenberg, Kosen and Artern, at a salary of 650 thaler and certain concessions of firewood. The Central Saline Offices were at Weissenfels, and in 1786 the Freiherr bought the house in the Kloster Gasse. It was not like Schloben, but Auguste wept with relief, praying that her tears were not those of ingratitude, at leaving the chilly solitude and terribly out-of-date household arrangements of Oberwiederstadt. Weissenfels had two thousand inhabitants - two thousand living souls - brickyards, a prison, a poor-house, the old former palace, a pig-market, the river’s traffic and the great clouds reflected in the shining reach, a bridge, a hospital, a Thursday market,
drying-meadows and many, many shops, perhaps thirty. Although the Freifrau had no spending allowance of her own and had never been into a shop, indeed rarely left the house except on Sundays, she received a faltering glow, like an uncertain hour of winter sunshine, from the idea of there being so many things and so many people quite close at hand.

It was at Weissenfels that the Bernhard was born, in the bitter February of 1788. Fritz by then was nearly seventeen, and was not at Weissenfels on this occasion, but at his Uncle Wilhelm’s, in Lucklum in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel. The boy had outgrown his tutor, who had to sit up late into the night reading mathematics and physiology in order to catch up with him. ‘But this is not wonderful, after all,’ the uncle wrote. ‘Tutors are a poor-spirited class of men, and all this Herrnhuterei is nothing but hymn-singing and housework, quite unsuitable for a von Hardenberg. Send Fritz, for a time at least, to live in my household. He is fifteen or sixteen, I don’t know which, and must learn to understand wine, which he can’t do at Weissenfels, where the grapes are only fit to make brandy and vinegar, and to find out what grown men talk about when they are in decent company.’ The Freiherr was, as always, infuriated by his brother’s remarks and still more by their tone. Wilhelm was ten years older than himself, and appeared to have been sent into the world primarily to irritate
him. He was a person of great distinction - ‘in his own eyes’ the Freiherr added - Governor of the Saxon division of the German Order of Knighthood (Lucklum branch). Round his neck, on very many occasions, he wore the flashy Maltese cross of the order, which was also embroidered, in plush and braid, on his greatcoat. The Hardenberg children knew him as the ‘Big Cross’, and His Mightiness. He had never married, and was graciously hospitable not only to his fellow landowners but to musicians, politicians, and philosophers - those who should be seen round the table of a great man, to offer their opinions and to agree with his own.

After a stay of only a few months, Fritz was returned to his father at Weissenfels, taking with him a letter from his uncle.

Lucklum, October 1787

I am glad that Fritz has recovered himself and got back on to the straight path, from which I certainly shall never try to remove him again. My way of life here is pitched too high for his young head. He was much too spoiled, and saw too many strange new people, and it could not be helped if a great many things were said at my table which were not helpful or salutary for him to know …

The Freiherr wrote to his brother to thank him for his hospitality, and to regret that he could not thank him
more. The white waistcoat, breeches and broad-cloth coat which had been made for Fritz by his uncle’s tailor, apparently because those he had brought with him were not considered smart enough for the dinner-table, would now be sent to the Moravian Brethren for distribution to charity. There would be no occasion for him to wear them in Weissenfels, where they lived simply.

‘Best of Fritzes, you were lucky,’ said fourteen-year-old Erasmus.

‘I am not sure about that,’ said Fritz. ‘Luck has its rules, if you can understand them, and then it is scarcely luck.’

‘Yes, but every evening at dinner, to sit there while these important people amused themselves by giving you too much to drink, to have your glass filled up again and again with fine wines, I don’t know what … What did they talk about?’

‘Nature-philosophy, galvanism, animal magnetism and freemasonry,’ said Fritz.

‘I don’t believe it. You drink wine to forget things like that. And then at night, when the pretty women come creaking on tiptoe up the stairs to find the young innocent, and tap at your door,
TRIUMPH
!’

‘There were no women,’ Fritz told him. ‘I think perhaps my uncle did not invite any.’

‘No women!’ cried Erasmus. ‘Who then did the washing?’

W
ERE
things worse at Weissenfels when a letter from the Big Cross arrived, or when the Mother’s elder brother, Captain August von Boltzig, happened to come to the house? Von Boltzig had fought in the same battalion as the Freiherr in the Seven Years’ War, but had come to totally different conclusions. The King of Prussia, whom he admired without reservations, had supported total freedom in religious belief, and the Prussian army was notably fearless and morally upright. Must one then not conclude -

‘I can see what you have in mind to say next,’ said the Freiherr, his voice still just kept in check. ‘You mean that you accept my reasoning,’ said von Boltzig. ‘You admit that there is no connection, or none that can be demonstrated, between religion and right conduct?’

‘I accept that you, August von Boltzig, are a very great fool.’ The Freifrau felt trapped between the two of them, like a powder of thinly-ground meal between the millstones. One of her night fears (she was a poor sleeper)
was that her brother and the Uncle Wilhelm might arrive, unannounced, at the same time. What would she be able to do or say, to get decently rid of one of them? Large though the house was, she always found guests a difficulty. The bell rang, you heard the servants crossing the hall, everything was on top of you before you could pray for guidance.

In 1790, by which time the young Fritz had matriculated at the University of Jena, the forces of history itself seemed to take a hand against Auguste. But here her narrowness of mind was an advantage, in that she saw them as no more and no less important than the worn bed-linen, or her brother’s godlessness. Like the damp river-breeze, which made the bones ache, the disturbances in France seemed to her no more than a device to infuriate her husband.

Breakfast at Weissenfels was taken in a frugal style. On the dining room stove, at six o’clock in the morning, there were ranks of earthenware coffee-pots, the coffee being partly made, for economy’s sake, out of burnt carrot powder. On the table stood large thick cups and saucers and a mountain of white rolls. The family, still in their nightclothes, appeared in ones and twos and, like sleepwalkers, helped themselves from the capacious earthenware pots. Some of the coffee they drank, some they sucked in through pieces broken off from the white rolls. Anyone who had finished turned his or her
cup upsidedown on the saucer, calling out decisively, ‘
Satt
!’

As the boys grew older, Auguste did not like them to linger in the dining room. ‘What are you speaking of, young men?’ Erasmus and Karl stood warming themselves, close to the stove. ‘You know that your father does not like …’

‘He will be quite happy with the Girondins,’ said Karl.

‘But Karl, these people may perhaps have new ideas. He does not like new ideas.’

In the January of 1793, Fritz arrived from Jena in the middle of the breakfast, in a blue cloth coat with immense brass buttons, patched across the shoulder-blades, and a round hat. ‘I will change my clothes, and come and sit with you.’

‘Have you brought a newspaper?’ Erasmus asked. Fritz looked at his mother, and hesitated. ‘I think so.’ The Freiherr, on this occasion, was sitting in his place at the head of the table. He said, ‘I think you must know whether you have brought a newspaper or not.’ Fritz handed him a copy, many times folded, of the
Jenaer Allgemeine Zeitung
. The paper was still cold from the freezing journey, in Fritz’s outside pocket, from Jena.

The Freiherr unfolded it and uncreased it, took out his spectacles and in front of his silent family bent his attention on the closely printed front page. At first he said, ‘I don’t understand what I am reading.’

‘The convention have served a writ of accusation on Louis,’ said Fritz courageously.

‘Yes, I read those words, but they were altogether beyond me. They are going to bring a civil action against the legitimate king of France?’

‘Yes, they accuse him of treason.’

‘They have gone mad.’

The Freiherr sat for a moment, in monumental stillness, among the coffee-cups. Then he said, ‘I shall not touch another newspaper until the French nation returns to its senses again.’

He left the room. ‘
Satt! Satt! Satt
!’ shouted Erasmus, drumming on his saucer. ‘The revolution is the ultimate event, no interpretation is possible, what is certain is that a republic is the way forward for all humanity.’

‘It is possible to make the world new,’ said Fritz, ‘or rather to restore it to what it once was, for the golden age was certainly once a reality.’

‘And the Bernhard is here, sitting under the table!’ cried the Freifrau, openly weeping. ‘He will have heard every word, and every word he hears he will repeat.’

‘It is not worth listening to, I know it already,’ said the Bernhard, emerging from the tablecloth’s stiff folds. ‘They will cut his head off, you will see.’

‘He does not know what he is saying! The king is the father, the nation is his family.’

‘When the golden age returns there will be no fathers,’ murmured the Bernhard. ‘What is he saying?’ asked poor Auguste.

She was right, however, in believing that with the French Revolution her troubles would be greatly increased. Her husband had not absolutely forbidden the appearance of newspapers in the house, so that she would be able to say to herself, ‘It is only that he wants not to catch sight of them at table, or in his study.’ For some other way had to be devised by which he could satisfy his immense curiosity about the escapades of the French which meant - if she was to tell the truth - nothing to her whatsoever. At the Saline offices, she supposed, and at the club - the Literary and Scientific Athenaeum of Weissenfels - he would hear the topics of the day discussed, but she knew, with the insight of long habit, so much more reliable than love, that whatever had happened would not be real to him - that he would not be able to feel he truly possessed it until he had seen it on the grey pages of a daily newspaper. ‘Another time, dear Fritz, when you give your greatcoat to the servants to be brushed, you could leave your newspaper showing, just a few inches.’

‘Mother, after all these years you don’t know my Father. He has said he will not read the paper, and he will not.’

‘But Fritz, how will he inform himself? The Brethren
won’t tell him anything, they don’t speak to him of worldly matters.’

‘
Weiss Gott
!’ said Fritz. ‘Osmosis, perhaps.’

T
HE
Freiherr thought it best for his eldest son to be educated in the German manner, at as many universities as possible: Jena for a year, Leipzig for a year, by which time Erasmus would be old enough to join him, then a year at Wittenberg to study law, so that he would be able, if occasion arose, to protect whatever property the family had left through the courts. He was also to begin on theology, and on the constitution of the Electorate of Saxony. Instead of these subjects, Fritz registered for history and philosophy.

As a result he attended on his very first morning in Jena a lecture by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte was speaking of the philosophy of Kant, which, fortunately, he had been able to improve upon greatly. Kant believed in the external world. Even though it is only known to us through our senses and our own experience, still, it is there. This, Fichte was saying, was nothing but an old man’s weakness. We are all free to imagine what the world is like, and since we probably all imagine it
differently, there is no reason at all to believe in the fixed reality of things.

Before Fichte’s gooseberry eyes the Students, who had the worst reputation for unruliness in Germany, cowered, transformed into frightened schoolboys. ‘Gentlemen! withdraw into yourselves! Withdraw into your own mind!’ Arrogant and drunken in their free time, they waited, submissive. Each unhooked the little penny inkwell on a spike from behind a lapel of his jacket. Some straightened up, some bowed themselves over, closing their eyes. A few trembled with eagerness. ‘Gentlemen, let your thought be the wall.’ All were intent. ‘Have you thought the wall?’ asked Fichte. ‘Now, then, gentlemen, let your thought be
that
that thought the wall.’

Fichte was the son of a linen-weaver, and in politics a Jacobin. His voice carried without effort. ‘The gentleman in the fourth seat from the left at the back, who has the air of being in discomfort …’

A wretched youth rose to his feet.

‘Herr Professor, that is because the chairs in the lecture-rooms of Jena are made for those with short legs.’

‘My appointment as Professor will not be confirmed until next May. You are permitted to ask one question.’

‘Why …?’

‘Speak up!’

‘Why do we imagine that the wall is as we see it, and not as something other?’

Fichte replied, ‘We create the world not out of our imagination, but out of our sense of duty. We need the world so that we may have the greatest possible number of opportunities to do our duty. That is what justifies philosophy, and German philosophy in particular.’

Late into the windy lamp-lit autumn night Jena’s students met to
fichtisieren
, to talk about Fichte and his system. They appeared to be driving themselves mad. At two o’clock in the morning Fritz suddenly stood still in the middle of the Unterer Markt, letting the others stagger on in ragged groups without him, and said aloud to the stars, ‘I see the fault in Fichte’s system. There is no place in it for love.’

‘You are outside his house,’ said a passing student, sitting down on the cobblestones. ‘His house is 12a. 12a is where Professor Fichte lives.’

‘He is not a Professor until May,’ said Fritz. ‘We can serenade him until then. We can sing beneath his window, “We know what is wrong with your system … There is no place in it, no place in it for love.”’

There were lodgings of all sorts in Jena. Some of the very poor students were entitled to eat free, as a kind of scholarship. They chose their eating-house, and could have their dinner only there and only up to a certain amount, a frightening sight, since the inn-keepers hurried them on, in order to clear the tables, and they were obliged to cram and splutter, snatching at the chance,
like fiends in hell, of the last permitted morsel. But every one of them, no matter how wretched, belonged to a
Landsmannschaft
, a fellowship of their own region, even if that was only a hometown and numberless acres of potatoes. In the evenings, groups of friends moved from pothouse to smoky pothouse, looking for other friends and then summoning them, in the name of their
Landsmannschaft
, to avenge some insult or discuss a fine point of Nature-philosophy, or to get drunk, or, if already drunk, then drunker.

Fritz could have lived at Schloben, but it was two hours away. He lodged at first - since she charged him nothing - with his Aunt Johanna Elizabeth. Elizabeth complained that she saw very little of him. ‘I had so much looked forward to having a poet at my table. I myself, when I was a young woman, composed verses.’ But Fritz, that first winter, had to spend an undue amount of time with his history teacher, the celebrated Professor Schiller. ‘Dear Aunt, he is ill, it is his chest, a weakness has set in, all his pupils are taking it in turns to nurse him.’

‘Nephew, you haven’t the slightest idea how to nurse anyone.’

‘He is a very great man.’

‘Well, they are the most difficult to nurse.’

The Professor of Medicine and principal doctor to the University, Hofrat Johann Stark, was called in. He was a
follower, like most of his colleagues, of the Brownian system. Dr Brown, of Edinburgh, had cured a number of patients by refusing to let blood, and by recommending exercise, sufficient sex, and fresh air. But he held that to be alive was not a natural state, and to prevent immediate collapse the constitution must be held in perpetual balance by a series of stimuli, either jacking it up with alcohol, or damping it down with opium. Schiller, although himself a believer in Brownismus, would take neither, but propped himself up against the bedstead, calling on his students to get paper and ink and take down notes at his dictation: ‘To what end does man study universal history?’

It was at this time, when Fritz was emptying the sick room chamberpots, and later, watching the Professor at length put a lean foot to the floor, that he was first described in a letter by the critic Friedrich Schlegel. Schlegel was writing to his much more successful, elder brother, August Wilhelm, a professor of literature and aesthetics. He was in triumph at having discovered someone of interest whom his brother did not know. ‘Fate has put into my hands a young man, from whom everything may be expected, and he explained himself to me at once with fire - with indescribably much fire. He is thin and well-made, with a beautiful expression when he gets carried away. He talks three times as much, and as fast, as the rest of us. On the very first evening he told
me that the golden age would return, and that there was nothing evil in the world. I don’t know if he is still of the same opinion. His name is von Hardenberg.’