George Cross · 8 of 40

A. A Sketch of Schleiermacher’s Life. · INFLUENCE OF NEW FRIENDSHIPS

Shortly after coming to Berlin he became acquainted with the family of Dr. Marcus Herz. Dr. Herz was a Jewish physician of some distinction and a man of learning. His wife, a woman of unusual beauty united with splendid intellectual gifts and a fine culture, made their home a center of attraction to many men and women of good breeding and high literary attainment. The social gatherings at their home were characterized by intimate personal inter course and the free, informal discussion of those questions of science, philosophy, politics, literature, and religion in which educated people are commonly interested. Among the members of this social club were Friedrich Schlegel, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Moritz, the elder and the younger Spalding, Nicolai, Reichhardt the composer, Schadow the sculptor, Count Christian Bernsdorff, the Danish-Prussian statesman Count Alexander von Schlobitten, eldest son of the Dohna family where Schleiermacher had been tutor (later he became minister of state in Prussia), Brinkmann, and Fessler. Of these talented men none excelled Schleiermacher in sparkling wit, quiet humor, keen penetration into the heart of every question, and power of deep reflection. With these qualities were united a warmth of personal feeling and a cherished regard for the ties of friendship that won for him the firm confidence and the admiration of men and women alike and soon made him the center of attraction to the company. His nature craved for sympathy and as freely gave it out. The unstinted measure in which he poured his affectionate regards upon his friends of both sexes sounds rather sentimental to the colder-hearted Anglo-Saxon and at times seems reprovable, but, as he said himself, such was his nature, there was no remedy for it, and if there were he should not wish to employ it. A less unselfish man would have been more guarded and sparing in his self-expression.

Such a man was likely to find his most intimate acquaintances among women. His refined, delicately constructed, sensitive nature was best understood by them. This he was aware of, and at the same time he felt that he was a debtor to them principally for the most ennobling influences he had experienced. Once he wrote: “It is through the knowledge of the feminine heart and mind that I have learnt to know what real human worth is.” But we are not to regard him as lacking in manliness, for the letters to his intimate women friends of those days, while not clear of emotional excess and some rather dull moralizing, are always characterized by a pure and deep respect for them and by the utterance of noble sentiments.

His sister Lotte, whom he kept closely informed of all his experiences, from her cloister at Gnadenfrei viewed these intimacies with misgivings and wrote to him rather deprecatingly. In reply he went carefully over his whole course and assured her that all was well. But, though he was unconscious of it, she was partly right. At Mrs. Herz’s he met Friedrich Schlegel, the Romanticist, and at once entered into friendly relations with him. With his customary exaggeration of a friend’s good qualities fie was full of admiration for Schlegel’s really powerful intellect and soon came to confide deeply in him. When at length they took up adjoining rooms in one house this intimacy increased. The consequences were of a mixed nature. Schlegel was probably the first to impart to Schleiermacher an incentive to high literary effort. It began in the form of contributions to the Athenaeum, a periodical edited by the brothers Schlegel. This was in 1798. During the next year he published anonymously the work that first brought him fame, Discourses on Religion to the Educated among Its Despisers, of which we shall speak again. He and Schlegel next began in collaboration a translation of Plato’s Dialogues, but Schlegel, rather dishonorably, abandoned the work before it had gone far, and Schleiermacher, with his accustomed perseverance, completed the undertaking, though it involved many years of hard labor. This translation of Plato remains one of Schleiermacher’s great literary monuments. So much to the credit of Schlegel’s influence. But, on the other hand, some of Schleiermacher’s friends viewed with disfavor his friendship for a man whose character was so opposite to his own, and not unreasonably; for the latter’s morality was open to serious objection. Great was the astonishment of many when Schleiermacher wrote a defense of Schlegel’s Lucinde, a work regarded as immoral. He claimed to find in this novel a higher meaning than appeared on the surface, but his comment appeared to his friends like a good sermon on a bad text. This cost him the loss of the favor of Sack, the influential court preacher. Notwithstanding Schleiermacher’s error of judgment as to Schlegel’s faults, we cannot but admire his unwillingness to turn away from a man simply because others did so. In the Studien und Kritiken of 1850 their correspondence on the subject is published and Schleiermacher’s reply to Sack’s reproaches brings out the essential nobility of his own soul. He wrote, in part:

Never will I be the friend of a man of disreputable principles; but never either will I, out of fear of the world, with draw the consolations of my friendship from anyone who has innocently incurred its bann; never will I, on account of my profession, allow myself to be guided in my actions by the false appearances which determine others, instead of by the true nature of the circumstances. Were this maxim to be allowed sway, we ecclesiastics would be outlaws in the domain of sociability; for every calumny against a friend, provided it were invented with sufficient cleverness to secure belief, would banish us from his society. Far from submitting to this, the aim which I propose to myself is to lead a life uniformly blameless, that in time I may bring it so far, that no unfavorable light shall fall upon men on account of any undeserved evil repute in which my friends may stand; but that, on the contrary, my friendship may shed a favorable light on their reputation [Miss Rowan’s translation].

Yet as time passed Schleiermacher became aware of the incompatibility between his temper and Schlegel’s. In a letter of June, 1801, he speaks of “the utter dissimilarity of our sensitive natures,” and adds presently, “Ever in my inmost soul [there are] secrets which I cannot impart to him.” That year he found in a new friend, Pastor Ehrenfried von Willich, a man whose heart and mind accorded well with his own. Of him Schleiermacher wrote: “Von Willich has not Schlegel’s deep comprehensive intellect, but he is in many respects nearer to my heart.” From whatever cause, Schlegel and his influence gradually receded and gave place to this higher friendship. Years later Schlegel became a Roman Catholic.

Schleiermacher’s doctrinal views flowed so directly from his religious life and the latter was so largely affected by his friendships that it will be proper to refer at some length to an episode that constituted the only moral shadow that passed over his career, and that is fairly traceable, in a measure, to his association with Schlegel. The latter had married a Mrs. Dorothea Veit, a member of the club referred to above after she had secured a divorce from a husband with whom she had no fault to find, but whom she did not love. Schleiermacher came very near perpetrating a similar wrong, but under different conditions. At Mrs. Herz’s he met Eleanore Grünow, the ill-matched wife of a Lutheran clergyman. Her husband was not only a coarse man, but, as Dilthey affirms, immoral. This lady communicated the fact of her unhappiness to Schleiermacher though, it seems, without mentioning the charge which Dilthey makes. In those days it was a custom in Prussia for parents to arrange marriages for their daughters without consulting their wishes. The law offered a recompense of equally doubtful character by permitting the divorce by mutual consent of persons who were unhappy in their union, even if no further cause of complaint existed. Schleiermacher’s view of the primacy of the affections, perhaps unconsciously strengthened by his admiration for the lady, led him to view such an unloving union with horror. He considered it immoral in itself and properly to be dissolved. He advised Mrs. Grünow to obtain a divorce and, to secure her from want, offered to marry her himself. She promised, and then changed her mind. Schleiermacher’s retirement to distant Stolpe in 1802 is said to have been occasioned by his desire to leave the matter to Mrs. Grünow herself. The correspondence went on at intervals for years and was closed by her decision to remain as she was. This experience brought Schleiermacher unspeakable misery and left him broken-hearted and broken in health. It was a bitter lesson he learned, but its sobering effect appeared in a saner view of ethical relations. Long years after his own marriage to a wife more worthy of him he met Mrs. Grünow in a large company and, taking her hand, he said, “Eleanore, God has been good to us both.”

The reason for adverting to such an unhappy episode in this good man’s life is that it brings out some of the characteristics of his mind. In the first place it indicates a defect in his cast of thought--namely, an unsatisfactory view of the nature of the moral law. Not that Schleiermacher took an easy view of moral obligation so far as his own conduct is concerned, for no man ever forced himself more sternly to the doing of duty. But any system of thought which gives the primacy to the affectional, rather than the volitional side of human nature, is sure to intro duce moral confusion.

However, except in respect to moral judgment, Schleiermacher appears to advantage in this whole affair. His independence of the conventional, merely as conventional, his utter transparency of purpose, and his uprightness of character appear in his whole correspondence in this connection. He mentioned the matter freely to his sister Lotte and to his intimate; friends, and made known his intentions to them. He could countenance nothing that was surreptitious. When Mrs. Grünow requested, after he had gone to Stolpe, that his letters be not addressed directly to her house, she promptly received a flat refusal, and the declaration that she would receive no more letters from him. When his hopes at length were blasted he poured out his grief as openly in letters to his friends.