Friedrich Schleiermacher · 2 of 30

Biographical Sketch. · Part 2

In the following year he published his Monologues, which he describes as “a man’s deepest and most intimate communings with himself.” These gained him many friends among the best kind of people. Indeed he found it necessary more than once to explain that the Monologues presented the ideal to which he desired to attain, not the picture of what he really was. Amiel, in his Journal, after a criticism of the Monologues at considerable length, thus winds up. “What a life! what a man! These glimpses into the inner regions of a great sould do one good. Contact of this kind strengthens, restores, refreshes. Courage returns as we gaze; when we see what has been, we doubt no more that it can be again. At the sight of a man, we too say to ourselves, Let us also be men!”

In the first year of the new century the first collection of Schleiermacher’s sermons was given to the world, dedicated to his good uncle Stubenrauch. This must have been done at the urgent desire of his friends; for even so late as 1824, in referring to the fourth collection which had then been published, he says: “I am still opposed to the publication of the sermons in a printed form; because all sermons, and mine more especially, are only intended to be heard.” Something of this he expresses in the dedication to his uncle, and adds, among other interesting explanations: “Others will be offended that the distinction between moral and immoral men, between the pious and the worldly- minded, is so strictly drawn, as among our theologians it has for a long time been supposed to be no longer the fashion to do so; but you know that I could not avoid this offence without being unfaithful to what I hold to be the essential part of Christianity.”

In addition to all his other labours, Schleiermacher undertook, jointly with Schlegel, the translation of Plato, from which, however, the latter soon withdrew; and Schleiermacher, after years of toil, completed the task alone.

Schlegel remained only a short time in Berlin, and the increasing difference of their views on various subjects, and perhaps, above all, on religion, gradually made the tie between the two much less close, though Schleiermacher never ceased to speak with warm affection of his early friend.

It should be noted that Schleiermacher carried on all these labours under the burden of wretched health, from which he suffered during most of his life. His eyesight also was weak, and at one time he seemed in danger of losing it altogether; but his resolute will refused to allow even severe physical pain to put a stop to his work, or hinder his enjoyment of social intercourse.

About the same time that Schlegel left Berlin, Schleiermacher was introduced, during a visit in the island of Rügen, to an earnest young preacher, Ehrenfried von Willich, with whom he at once formed a warm friendship—a friendship that was to lead to very important results for his own future life. His remarks to Charlotte show how much more congenial to him was the Christian pastor than the brilliant philosopher. “Willich has not Friedrich Schlegel’s great, deep and all-comprehensive intellect; but he is in many respects nearer to my heart, and his sentiments regarding life are more similar to my own.” And after each of them had visited him in Berlin: “Willich has been here. . . . That I derive more enjoyment from his presence than from Schlegel’s you may easily guess.”

One portion of his experience, which began during those six years so full of import and of progress for him, must not be omitted; not only because it for the time so deeply and powerfully affected him, but because it illustrates so strange a state of society, as well as some peculiar views of his own.

One of his most intimate friends was Eleanore Grunow, a highly cultured and gifted woman, most unhappily married to a clergyman in the city. Schleiermacher held very strongly that a marriage in which there is nothing but the outward tie—no inward oneness, no heart union—is an immoral connection, and no real marriage; and that therefore the dissolution of such a connection is a moral duty. Most right-thinking men and women will grant his premisses; but to admit his condition would open the door to dangerous consequences. From keen sympathy with the daily sufferings of his friend, as well as the congeniality of mind that had first drawn them together, Schleiermacher’s feeling deepened into a strong attachment, which, so far from being frowned on by his conscience, was mixed with his most sacred thoughts and plans. The law of Prussia permitted divorce on the ground of mutual consent, without any criminality on either aide; public opinion attached no stigma to the practice; there were instances of it in Schleiermacher’s immediate circle; and it was his earnest desire that Eleanore shonld obtain a dissolution of her miserable union and become his wife. All his intercourse and correspondence with her was carried on with perfect openness, and his best friends, good and pure men and women, knew and sympathised with his wishes. But Eleanore could not come to a decision; and in the distress and trouble of his mind, he accepted, in the spring of 1802, an appointment as court-preacher at Stolpe in Pomerania, thus voluntarily going into what he felt to be banishment.

At Stolpe he consoled himself with long letters to various friends, filled with details of his work, literary and pastoral, criticisms of books read in his solitude, or of prominent literary men, and of course, above all, with minute accounts of mental experiences, or comments on such accounts received. It would be pleasant, if apace permitted, to give large extracts from those letters, which present so much more vividly than any description a picture of the man; his unceasing mental activity, his quiet, playful humour, his warm, deep sympathy. The letters are not the less interesting in that they are in some respects so utterly unlike the letters of an Englishman, and still more those of a Scotchman. The effusiveness, the sentimentality, if one may so speak, is probably quite as much a national characteristic as a specialty of Schleiermacher individually. But it seems to us more like a school-girl than a profound philosopher when wo read how he, as it were, fell in love with some of his male friends at first sight, as for instance with Willich, with whom he “communed in silence,” while the rest of the company sang. Speaking of another, with whom ho had exchanged a few letters before they met, he says, when they mot accidentally, “We exclaimed in one breath, ‘What, this is Hülsen!’ and, ‘What, this is Schleiermacher!’ And then we fell into each other’s arms. After having gazed at each other in silence a few moments, it was as though wo had been in the habit of seeing each other daily for years.” And of his friend Reimer, who published his works, he tells Charlotte, “Yesterday a sudden action took place within us, . . . during which we took possession, as it were, of each other as intimate heart-friends. Do not ask me at present to describe this. I am too much overwhelmed and too perplexed. . . . He folded me in his arms, with the words, ‘Henceforward let there be no thing concealed between us!’”

One quotation of another character we must give, as showing both the state of the Church at the time, and Schleiermacher’s position and feeling in regard to it. “Last Wednesday the synodal assembly of this diocese took place, and the dean was so kind as to invite mo to be present. This occupied almost the whole day. How sad it made me! Ah, dear friend, to find yourself among thirty-live such clergymen! I did not feel ashamed of belonging to the profession, but with my whole heart I longed for and I pictured to myself those future times which, I trust, are not far distant, when such an assembly will be impossible. I shall not live to see it, but could I only in some way contribute to bring it about! Of the openly disreputable among them I will not speak; . . . but the universal degradation, the entire unsusceptibility to all higher influences, the base and sensuous views depend upon it, I was the only one among them who mourned in heart, the only one; for had there been another I must have found him, I knocked and searched so earnestly.”

During his stay at Stolpe, in the autumn of 1803, Schleiermacher published his Critical Enquiry into the Existing Systems of Ethics, criticising especially the systems of Kant and Fichte, and giving the highest place to Plato and Spinoza, but formulating no completed system of his own.

But his mind was still disturbed and unsettled, and his heart often deeply distressed in connection with Eleanore, who seemed, just at this time, to have given him up, though the correspondence was resumed for two years more. He calls this book his tombstone—a remnant of the happy past. And yet it was at this very time he undertook to carry on alone the translation of Plato! But it is only fair to add, that he explains his doing this, though with the prospect of a speedy death before him, by saying that, “just as a man ought to do nothing because of death, so also he ought to leave nothing undone because of death.”

In May, 1804, Schleiermacher was appointed preacher to the University at Halle, and professor extraordinarius of theology. In the interval of comparative leisure, before turning his steps southward, he paid a short visit to Willich, now settled at Stralsund; and in Rügen, where they had first met, was introduced to Willich’s betrothed bride, Henriette von Mühlenfels, a charming and beautiful girl of sixteen, then living in the house of her married sister, Charlotte von Kathen. Schleiermacher entered with joyful sympathy into their happiness. Ho and the young bride forthwith adopted each other as father and daughter, and from that time there was a frequent interchange of letters overflowing with affection on both sides. In October he was settled at Halle, and there, in H. Steffens, professor of natural philosophy, he found another friend in whose companionship he took great delight. He writes about him: “Steffens profound and inexhaustible mind, joined to his childlike and amiable nature, so susceptible of every generous emotion, gives me new pleasure every time I spend a few hours with him.” And again: “Never have I with such sincerity of heart placed another man as high above myself in every respect as I do this one, whom, were it seemly between man and man, I could almost adore. . . . The man is altogether so indescribably attractive—as deep, as spontaneous and as witty as Friedrich Schlegel at his best.” And so on, with much more in the same strain. And the feeling was thoroughly reciprocated.

In speaking of a night spent together on a pedestrian excursion, Steffens says: “This night will be to me ever memorable. . . . Never did Schleiermacher seem to me intellectually greater, morally purer. Even to this day that night appears to me one of the most remarkable of my life, as if sanctified. . . . I have a testimony of the impression this night made upon him, in a letter to his dear friend Mrs. Herz. It was the reflection of his own purity that made me appear to him in a glorified light during these truly holy hours. Never did the deep religiosity of his morality strike me more forcibly. The Saviour was with us, as He has promised to be ‘when two or three are gathered together in His name.’”

The following Easter Schleiermacher made the visit to Barby which has already been referred to; and later in the summer took another little tour, in the course of which he visited his dear Lotte, and made acquaintance for the first time with his younger half-sister, Nanni, whom he brought with him to Halle, thus making for himself, at last, a little home. One very characteristic passage in his account of the pedestrian portion of this tour may be quoted. “Our longest and most interesting day’s journey I went through under intense suffering from cramps in the stomach; yet I did not give in, or allow the state of my health to cause us one hour’s delay, nor did the difficulties and sufferings in any way impair my enjoyment, and now they seem as nothing compared with the glorious and lasting impression which the sight of nature in its sublimity has made upon me.”

And now, October, 1805, occurred the crisis which Schleiermacher regarded as an unspeakable calamity, but which was in reality a merciful deliverance from a great evil. Eleanore seemed to have decided on the final step. Schleiermacher writes to the Willichs of visiting them again, and adds his hope that it may be “with the excellent Eleanore,” “the best loved of all my belongings.”

She had gone to the house of her brother, who had under taken to conduct the business of the divorce, the husband had given his consent, when Eleanore was suddenly overcome by scruples of conscience, and returned to her husband’s house, and all communication between her and Schleiermacher was thenceforward at an end.

It came upon him as a crushing, heart-sickening blow; he spoke of it as having destroyed his life and made it utterly worthless; but he lived to take a wiser and sounder view of the position, and to thank, God who had reserved some better thing for him.

But neither sorrow nor any other personal interest was allowed to hinder his work. His influence extended rapidly, especially among the students. He devoted an evening weekly to receiving in his house any of them who chose to come, and of this plan he says, “I do not know which party gains most, the young people or myself.”

In the beginning of 1806 he published anonymously the Christmas Festival, a delightful little book in the form of a dialogue, in which he introduces several of his friends—Henriette von Willich, with her baby daughter; her sister, Charlotte von Kathen, with her sick child, and others. The book is pervaded with earnest Christi an feeling, and bears on the condition of the country in consequence of the French invasion. For now the troubles of war were pressing heavily; and when, in October, the battle of Jena threw Prussia for the time entirely under the heel of the conqueror, the University was suppressed, the students dispersed, and Schleiermacher’s professional occupation was gone. He writes to his friend Reimer an account of the pillage of the town by the French, humorously describing his own part in it, in which he and Steffens were deprived of their watches, besides “all my shirts, with the exception of five, and all the silver spoons, with the exception of two.” After this he and Nanni united their housekeeping with Steffens and his family; a measure which he says “was imperative, for I had only very little money, which I had borrowed, and Steffens had none at all.” And thus they economized fuel and light as well as other items, though Nanni did not enjoy it, as what housekeeper would? But he still held to his post, in hope of better times for the University, and exerted all his influence, which was not small, to stir up a true and noble patriotism and a spirit of determined resistance in defence of all that the nation held dear. A few extracts from his letters during this stirring time may be given.

“Would you desire to be spared any danger, any suffering, at the cost of the conviction of having delivered over future generations to base servitude, and of having exposed them to be inoculated with the despicable sentiments of an utterly corrupted people? Believe me, sooner or later, a great and universal struggle must ensue, the objects of which will be as much our sentiments, our religion, and our mental culture, as our outward liberty and worldly goods, . . . a struggle which will unite sovereigns and people by a more beautiful bond than has existed for centuries.” “The general demoralization is fearful; on all sides yawning abysses of infamy and cowardice stare you in the face. Only a few, and fore most among these the king and the queen, form glorious exceptions.” “The rod of wrath must fall upon every German land; only on this condition can a strong and happy future bloom forth. Happy they who live to see it; but they who die, let them die in faith.” “I have no fear, except, sometimes, of a dishonourable peace, which may save the appearance—but only the appearance—of a national existence and freedom. But even in regard to this I feel tranquil; for if the nations submit to it, it will prove that they are not yet ripe for better things; and the severer visitations, amid which they are to mature, will not fail soon to fall upon them.” “The king alone, in his steadfastness, it is gratifying to behold; and I trust, now that he has got over the capture of his capital and the surrender of his fortresses without suing for peace, he will not think of separating his fate from that of the rest of Europe. . . . The conflict must become wider and deeper, if new life and prosperity are to rise out of the universal desolation.”

In the following spring, February, 1807, during the siege of Stralsund, young Willich, who had refused to desert his flock, was smitten by a fever that raged in the town, and died after a week’s illness. The poor young wife, still only nineteen, turned in her desolation to her “dear father, Schleier,” for comfort; and few real fathers could have entered more fully into the sorrows of a stricken child. Henriette returned to Rügen, to be near her relatives, and during the unsettled, troublous times that followed, Schleiermacher maintained a steady correspondence with her and her sister, so far as the distracted state of the country permitted. He lingered in Halle until the winter, in the hope that the University might be restored; but when, in December, prayers were ordered in the churches for Jerome Bonaparte and his wife as king and queen of Westphalia, it was more than his patriotic spirit could brook, and he betook himself to Berlin, to preach and to lecture in the meantime as he might find opportunity.

Once more, in the following summer, Schleiermacher found his way to Rügen. In personal intercourse, his fatherly affection for Henriette easily and naturally developed into a deeper and warmer feeling, and he carried back with him to Berlin her promise to be his wife when more settled times should come.

Early in 1809 he was appointed pastor of Trinity Church in Berlin, and when, in May, he brought home his bride with her two little children, he felt that his happiness was complete. Even in his much younger days he had delighted in studying family life, and often spoke of it as man’s most perfect state; and now he wrote to his old friend Mrs. Herz: “I have taught so much about the beauty and holiness of family life that I ought to have an opportunity of showing that what I have taught has been to me more than empty words, and that the doctrine has in truth sprung from my deepest feelings and from my inward energy.” And though he was nearly twenty years older than his Jette, nowhere could he have found a wife more thoroughly suited for him. Thoughtful and intelligent, she grew and developed in contact with his strong nature, while yet retaining her individual character; and their deep, mutual love only deepened through the years until the end. And when, in addition to the two little ones whom he had so fully taken to his fatherly heart, children of his own came to make it a complete family, his cup of joy overflowed. Now at last he had found a sphere in which his rich nature and his great intellect had full scope. His genial, loving, social disposition made him the centre of a wide and ever-increasing circle of warmly attached friends of all classes. He went much into society, and received much at home; not merely because of his unceasing delight in intercourse with his fellows, but because he believed that intimate personal association was the most effective medium of influence for good. And in this he seems to have judged correctly; for those who knew him agree in their testimony that great as was the effect of his written works, and still greater that of his preaching, it was the whole living personality of the man that told most powerfully on all who came in contact with him.

In 1810, when the University of Berlin was re-constituted, with Fichte as rector, Schleiermacher was called to a chair of theology, and the next year became Secretary to the Academy of Science. One public office after another was thrust upon him; while preaching, writing and lecturing went on with unabated diligence. It fatigues the mind even to read the list of the subjects on which he lectured: New Testament exegesis; introduction to and interpretation of the New Testament, ethics, both philosophic and Christian, dogmatic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy, psychology, dialectics (logic and metaphysics), politics, pedagogy and aesthetics. His preaching drew in creasing crowds, not only of the more intellectual classes, but from among the poor and uneducated, who found that they received in it food for the hunger of their hearts, guidance from Scripture for the practical affairs of daily life, and comfort in its sorrows.

It has already been said that Schleiermacher considered all sermons, and his own more especially, as intended only to be heard, not read. The specialty in his own case arose from the fact that his sermons were never written; all his published discourses being printed from notes taken during delivery. They were very deeply thought out; but a few very brief notes were all that he committed to paper; leaving his already well-defined thoughts to take shape as his feelings warmed with his theme and took a special tone from the sympathetic reflex influence of the people assembled before him. This habit of speaking without previous arrangement, with the wealth of ideas that would flow in upon him—one thought suggesting still another—probably accounts in part for the strange, often obscure style of his sermons—the long, involved sentences, reaching occasionally the fearful length of a page and a half; sentences in which, however, one of his constant hearers says he never lost his way (which is much more than can be said of all his readers), and in which he always arrived with certainty at the right conclusion. His friend Wilhelm von Humboldt says of him: “Those who may have read his numerous writings ever so diligently, but who have never heard him speak, must, nevertheless, remain unacquainted with the most rare power and the most remarkable qualities of the man. His strength lay in the deeply penetrative character of his words, when preaching or engaged in any other of his ecclesiastical functions. It would be wrong to call it rhetoric, for it was so entirely free from art. It was the persuasive, penetrative, kindling effusion of a feeling, which seemed not so much to be enlightened by one of the rarest intellects as to move side by side with it in perfect unison.” A recent writer says of his eloquence, that it was almost as golden as that of Plato; and a short German notice of him gives the much more valuable testimony, that by his preaching thousands were won to the Saviour. Another criticism from Ami el may here be quoted. u While some shock me by their sacerdotal dogmatism, others repel me by their rationalizing laicism. It seems to me that good preaching ought to combine, as Schleiermacher’s did, perfect moral humility with energetic independence of thought; a profound sense of sin with respect for criticism and a passion for truth.”

In the pulpit as elsewhere, Schleiermacher was, during those troubled times, a fearless patriot, and laboured unceasingly, in conjunction with Fichte and other noble-hearted men, to arouse in the people a true spirit of freedom, that should lead them to unite in casting off the foreign yoke; his friend Moritz Arndt, who had been obliged, after the battle of Jena, to flee from the wrath of Napoleon, but had now returned, greatly aiding the cause by his stirring patriot songs, especially the one, popular wherever the German language is spoken, “What is the German’s Fatherland?”

Schleiermacher’s second collection of sermons, published in 1808, twelve in number, all bear on the special circum stances of the country. Eight of them were preached in Halle, and the rest in Berlin. In his preface to them he says: “May this work contribute something to effect what we so greatly need, to arouse and animate pious courage and true desire for thorough improvement, and to make it clear whence alone true prosperity can come to us, and how each one must help towards it.”

When at length, in the spring of 1813, Europe began to feel that she had had “enough of Bonaparte”; when Prussia at last aroused herself to cast off her humiliating chains; Schleiermacher felt that Berlin was no longer a safe place for his most precious treasures, and sent his wife and children for some weeks into Silesia, remaining himself, and taking an active part in all the exciting events of those stormy days. He writes to his wife, “As for regular study, that is not to be thought of till the immediate crisis is over. I am continuing my lectures, but I believe I am the only professor who does so.” The danger to Berlin, however, blew over; and he was able again to gather his little flock around him. Among the sermons in this volume is one preached at the calling out of the Landwehr in that eventful year; and we transcribe a part of Bishop Eilert’s eloquent account of one which does not appear in the published collection.

“The students of the University and the gymnasium, who were about to start for Breslau as volunteers, in uniform and armed, had in a body requested Schleiermacher to deliver a sermon and administer the sacrament to them immediately before their departure, thus to consecrate them for their holy undertaking. Their firearms were piled in front or rested against the walls of the church of the Holy Trinity. The beautiful old hymn, ‘In all my acts,’ sung with heartfelt effusion, had attuned the minds of the congregation to the proper pitch of solemnity. After having pronounced a short prayer, full of unction, Schleiermacher went up into the pulpit. . . . There, in this holy place, and at this solemn hour, stood the physically so small and insignificant man, his noble countenance beaming with intellect, and his clear, sonorous, penetrating voice ringing through the overflowing church. Speaking from his heart with pious enthusiasm, his every word penetrated to the heart, and the clear, full, mighty stream of his eloquence carried every one along with it. His bold, frank declaration of the causes of our deep fall, his severe denunciation of our actual defects, as evinced in the narrow-hearted spirit of caste, of proud aristocratism, and in the dead forms of bureaucratism, struck down like thunder and lightning, and the subsequent elevation of the heart to God on the wings of solemn devotion was like harp-tones from a higher world. . . . And when, at last, with the full fire of enthusiasm, he addressed the noble youths already equipped for battle, and next, turning to their mothers, the greater number of whom were present, he concluded with the words, ‘Blessed is the womb that has borne such a son! blessed the breast that has nourished such a babe!’ a thrill of deep emotion ran through the assembly, and amid loud sobs and weeping, Schleiermacher pronounced the closing Amen.”

When the country was once more restored to freedom, Schleiermacher shared the experience of many another public-spirited man who has cared more for his country’s real welfare than for his own advancement. The men who had stirred the people to assert their liberties against a foreign tyrant were regarded with suspicion by the government, as being equally likely to encourage resistance to an undue exercise of power on the part of their lawful ruler. Fichte’s pure, beautiful life had already closed, during the war, at the comparatively early age of fifty-one, stricken down by hospital fever caught from his wife, who, with loving devotion, nursed the war-patients for five months, and all but fell a victim as well as her husband. But Arndt and many others of the leading patriots were deprived of office or suspended, and Schleiermacher himself, often in danger of dismissal, probably escaped only because the authorities feared to deprive the city of so bright an ornament, and of a teacher so greatly beloved. Those things did not greatly disturb his equanimity. He calmly and earnestly went on with his work, enjoying the society of his friends, at perfect rest in his happy home circle, and often recruiting health and spirits by a summer tour, sometimes with wife and children, sometimes alone, or in the company of a congenial friend. In 1817 a little change took place in his household. Nanni, who had continued to live with him after his marriage, became the wife of Arndt, and her place was supplied by his own sister Charlotte, the gentle play fellow of his childhood, and his life-long trusted friend, who at last left her retreat among the Brethren to spend the evening of her days beside her beloved Fritz.