Heinrich Heine on Religion

Translated with notes

by

Anthony Alcock

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) wrote a long essay, entitled "Religion und Philosophie" for an issue of Revue des
deux mondes, a periodical founded in 1829 that quickly became a cultural bridge between the Old and New
Worlds. In his foreword Heine explains that he had already published work introducing Geman culture to a
French public and, for various reasons, this present essay was only a fragment of a much larger whole. It was
published in French but originally written in German.

The translation presented here is of the part that deals with religion. His impressive knowledge of early
Christianity, clearly derives from extensive reading on the subject, bearing in mind of course that the written
'discourse' on almost any subject was considerably smaller in the early 19th cent. than it is in the 21st cent.
Heine refers to various people and events connected with the early Church, naturally using the sources available
to him. Several years elapsed between his baptism and the publication of this text. He seems eager, and perhaps
somewhat defensively so, to explain various facets of German culture to the French, so the tone of apologia is
never too far away. But then one cannot discount the possibility that Heine's 'deference' to the French is slightly
tongue-in-cheek.

He was born a Jew, but at the age of 28 he became a Christian. The ostensible reason for the conversion,
according to one his several stray remarks on the subject, was: The baptismal certificate is my admission ticket
to European culture' (Der Taufzettel ist das Entre-Billet zur europischen Kultur). What he meant by this is not
clear to me, not least because he has left so many comments on Christianity and Judaism made at various times
and under various circumstances. In some of these comments it is clear that he felt Judaism to be a gloomy faith,
'das tausendjhrige Familienbel' (the thousand year-old family sickness), as he calls it it in the Das neue
israelitische Hospital zu Hamburg, written for the inauguration of the hospital that still exists, so generously
endowed by his uncle Salomon in 1839. One can only wonder what Uncle Salomon made of Heine's poem.

There is an entertaining section explaining to the French German popular belief in malevolent spirits, which were
felt to be quite real creatures, and this leads Heine neatly into the main actor in this text: Luther. More than half of
the text is devoted in one way or another to Martin Luther and his work, of which there are two important
aspects which can scarcely be separated from each other: one of these aspects concerns Luther as the reformer of
the Church, who succeeded in achieving the reform work initiated by others; the other as a formative figure in
the development of the modern German language. As for the first, Luther was fortunate enough to secure the
political support of relatively powerful princes who saw this as an opportunity to detach themselves from Rome.
As for the second, Luther was fortunate enough to have at his disposal the relatively new invention of movable
type to disseminate his works,1 an invention that also of course initiated the process of the gradual
disappearance of written German dialects. Luther of course did not 'create' a new German language out of thin
air: he produced in his own language an intelligible version of texts that had already been formulated in other
languages, and since his translation was of a text that many people consumed, in all likelihood, with great
rapidity, Luther's formulation spread rapidly and, in keeping with the text itself, probably acquired a status that
became almost impregnable.

The initial discussion of religion and belief is followed in the later pages by considerations of freedom: how the
freedom of thought and belief so crucial to the idea of the Reformation inevitably led on to a secular
understanding of freedom, which was clearly not as welcome to some as it was to others. Heine spent a good
part of his life outside his native country beyond the reach of people who disliked his exercise of intellectual
freedom.

A peculiar omission in Heine's account of Luther is any reference to the curiously virulent indictment of the Jews
in a pamphlet written by the great reformer towards the end of his life. 2

1 Luther, like others, was able to make use of the broadsheet (Flugschrift) and did so to great effect: his
broadsheet known as Adelschrift cf. Thomas Kaufmann An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des
christlichen Stands Besserung (To the Christian nobility of German nation concerning the improvement of the
Christian condition) 2014, asking the nobility to support the reforms he was proposing, was issued at the
beginning of August 1520 and within about two weeks had sold 4,000 copies. It is said in the Wikipedia
article 'Flugschrift' that Luther earned money with his work, but the statement is unsourced and I have found
no confirmation of it.
2 Von den Juden und ihren Lgen (Of the Jews and their lies), published in 1543. Twenty years earlier he had
written a pamphlet that was very sympathetic to the Jews Dass Jesus Christus ein geborener Jude sei (Jesus
Christ was born a Jew). He seems to have become disillusioned that Jews spurned his attempts to persuade
them to convert to Christianity. Luther died in 1546.
The French have recently come to believe that they have succeeded in understanding Germany by
making themselves familiar with the products of our literature. But they are quite mistaken. They have
merely scratched the surface. As long they continue to be unacquainted with the importance of religion
and philosophy in Germany, the products of our literature will continue to be for them silent flowers
and German thought an unprofitable puzzle.

In my attempt to explain both I believe that this work of mine will prove to be useful. It is not an easy
work. The first thing is to avoid expressions used in a school language that is quite unknown to the
French. At the same I have avoided the subtleties of theology and metaphysics in such a way that I
might be able to use formulations that are short and simple enough to satisfy the needs of the French
reading public. I will therefore deal only with the major questions that have been raised in German
studies of the sacred and secular world. I will shed light on their social significance and I will take into
account the limitations of my ability to explain and the ability of the French reader to understand.

Great German philosophers who might happen to glance at these pages will shrug their distinguished
shoulders over the somewhat meagre picture that I have produced here. But I hope they will bear in
mind that the little I do say is expressed clearly and concisely. Their own works, on the other hand,
thorough, immeasurably thorough, and profound, stupendously profound, are also immeasurably and
stupendously unintelligible. What is the use of locked grain-stores to which no-one has a key ? People
are hungry for knowledge and they will be grateful for the small piece of intellectual sustenance that I
am prepared to share with them honestly.

I think that it is not a lack of talent that prevents most German scholars from making popular
statements about religion and philosophy. I think it is a certain fear of the results of their own thinking,
which they dare not share with the people. I have none of this fear. I am not a scholar. I am 'the people'.
I am not a scholar and I am not one of the seven hundred wise men of Germany. I am one of the great
horde at the gates of their wisdom, and if a truth has somehow slipped through and found its way to
me, it has come far enough: I write it on paper in a fair hand and give it to the typesetter, who sets it in
type, and he gives it to the printer, who prints it, and from there it passes into the possession of the
whole world.
The religion we enjoy in Germany is Christianity. So I will have to say what Christianity is, how it
became Roman Catholicism, how Protestantism emerged from Catholicism and how German
philosophy emerged from Protestantism. I will start with a review of religion and will start by asking
all those who firmly believe not to have the slightest anxiety. Have no fear, firm believers. Your ears
will not be offended by blasphemous witticisms. They are to be sure still useful in Germany when it is a
matter of neutralizing for the moment the power of religion. For we are in the same position as we
were before the revolution, when Christianity and the ancien rgime were indistinguishable and
inseparable from each other. The pact between them was indestructible as long as it was able to
influence the majority of people. Voltaire had to cackle his loudest before Sanson 3 was able to let the
axe fall. But, as with the axe, so with the cackling, nothing was basically proved, but only effected.
Voltaire was able to injure only the body of Christianity. All his witticisms, drawn from church history,
all his jokes about teaching and ceremony, the Bible, the holiest book of mankind, the Virgin Mary, that
most beautiful flower of creative art, the entire armoury of philosophical weapons he directed against
the clergy and the priesthood, were able to injure only the mortal body of Christianity, not its inner
being or its deeper spirit or its eternal soul. Christianity is an idea and as such indestructible and
immortal, like every idea. But what is this idea ?

Precisely because this idea has not yet been clearly understood and externals have been mistaken for
the core, there is still no history of Christianity. Two opposing parties are writing church history and
constantly contradicting each other, but neither will ever state the idea that is at the heart of
Christianity, that is striving to reveal itself in the symbolism, teaching, performance and entire history
of Christianity and has manifested itself in the day-to-day life of Christian peoples.

Neither Baronius,4 the Catholic Cardinal nor the Protestant court official Schrckh 5 tells us what that
idea really was. Even if you leaf through all the pages of Mansi's 6volumes of church council
proceedings, Assemani's7 collection of liturgies in various languages and the entire Church History of
Saccarelli. 8So what do you see in the histories of the oriental and western churches ? In the oriental
church you see nothing but dogmatic casuistry, a renewed form of classical Greek sophistry. In the
western church you see nothing but conflicts about church discipline, in which classical Roman legal
casuistry resurfaces with new formulae and new sanctions. Indeed, as people in Constantinople fought
each other over the Logos and the nature of the godhead, people in Rome fought each over over the
relationship between sacred and secular power in the early church and later in the medieval church.
But the Byzantine questions of whether the Logos is of the same substance as God the Father or

3 Sanson et Compagnie was Voltaire's publisher

4 Cesare Baronio (1538-1607) who also wrote 12 volumes of Annales Ecclesiastici up to the year 1198.
5 Johann Mathias Schrockh (1733-1808), who wrote a history of the Church in 1777.
6 Giovanni Domenico Mansi (1692-1769), whose 22 vols of Church Council Proceedings were continued after
his death to vol. 53. They contain probably as much as there is to know about the proceedings of every church
council held to the time of the last volume.
7 Giusepe Simone Assemani (1687-1768), a Maronite who published the Oriental texts of the Vatican in 4 vols
between 1719 and 1728.
8 Gaspare Saccarello Historia Ecclesiastica (1794)
whether Mary was the mother of God or man or whether Christ had to fast for lack of food or did so
because he wanted to, all these questions have something of court intrigue at the back of them, where
the solution depends on what is being whispered or sniggered at in the chambers of the Sacred Palace,
whether for example Eudoxia9 or Pulcheria10 had fallen. Pulcheria was hostile to Nestorius, the one
who betrayed her love-affairs, while Eudoxia hated Cyril, who protected Pulcheria, and none of this has
anything to do with anything except the gossip of women and eunuchs, and persecution or promotion
of a dogma is entirely a personal matter. The same is true of the west. Rome wanted to rule, "as its
legions fell, dogmas began to accumulate in the provinces", and all religious disputes being
fundamentally political, it was essential to consolidate the supremacy of the Roman bishop.

In matters of belief this latter tended to be broad in outlook but, as soon as the rights of the church
were challenged, began to spit fire and flame. He did not argue much about the persons in Christ, but
became quite voluble on the subject of the consequences of the Decree of Isidore. He centralized his
power by means of church law, appointment of bishops, degrading princely power, monastic orders,
celibacy and so on. But was this Christianity ? Does the idea of Christianity reveal itself by reading
these stories ? What is this idea ?

How this idea was formed historically and manifested itself in the phenomenal world might be known
from the first few centuries after Christ if we investigate without prejudice the history of the
Manichaeans and Gnostics.11 Although the former have been hereticized and the latter abused and
condemned by the Church, their influence on dogma continues, Catholic art has developed from its
symbolism and their way of thinking has penetrated the entire life of Christian peoples. Manichaeans
are basically not very different from Gnostics. Both share the doctrine of the two principles, Good and
Evil, in conflict with each other. The Manichaeans took their religion from Persia, where Ormuz, the
light, is the enemy of Ariman, the darkness. The real Gnostics, on the other hand believed in the pre-
existence of the good principle and explained the emergence of the bad principle through emanations,
generations of aeons that become gloomier as they become more distant from their origin. According
to Cerinthus12 the creator of our world was not the highest God but only an emanation, an aeon, the

9 The wife of Emperor Theodosius II, who is best known for his corpus of laws, Codex Theodosianus
10 The second child, born in 399 AD, of the Emperor Arcadius. The principal theological debate of the first half of
the 5th cent. involved the question of whether Mary should be given the titles Theotokos (God-bearer) At he
Council of Ephesus in 431 Cyril the Patriarch of Alexandria pushed through his favourable view in favour of
the Theotokos, while his opponent Nestorius the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had bee. appointed by
Theodosius in 428, favoured the title Christotokos (Christ-bearer) was forced into exile.
11 The information available to Heine has been comprehensively overhauled since then by finds of written
materal generated by the groups in question, but his characterization of the two here is bascially right. An
organizational difference is that Manichaeism is named after its founder, Mani, and in that sense has a much
coherent set of beliefs than Gnosis, a relatively loose group of 'schools' who probably had certain things in
common but not much more than that.
12 Cerinthus was active about 100 AD. If he wrote anything, it has not survived identifiably as his. There is
speculation that the Coptic Gnostic text known as the Apocryphon of James (in Nag Hammadi Codex I) may
have been addressed to him, but the name is illegible. He is also mentioned as a 'false apostle', along with
Simon Magus, in the Coptic Epistula Apostolorum, possibly a 2nd cent. text.
real demiurge, who gradually became deformed and stood in hostile opposition to the Logos, who
came directly from the highest God, the principle of good. This gnostic view of the world is primeval
Indian.13 With the doctrine of the incarnation of God, mortification of the flesh and spiritual
introspection, it gave birth to the ascetically contemplative monastic life, which is the purest flower of
the Christian idea. This idea, however, became very confused amid the dogmas and was able to express
itself only dimly in worship. But we see everywhere the teaching of the two principles manifest itself.
The good Christ is opposed by the evil Satan. The world of the spirit is represented by Christ, the world
of matter by Satan. To the former belong our souls, to the latter our body. The entire phenomenal
world, nature, is accordingly evil in origin, and Satan, the prince of darkness, wants to entice us to
corruption, and it is essential that we abjure all the sensual pleasures of life and chastise our body, the
lien of Satan, so that the soul might rise all the more gloriously to heaven, to the radiant kingdom of
Christ.

This view of the world, the real idea of Christianity, spread with incredible speed throughout the
Roman Empire, like a contagious disease. The Middle Ages was pervaded by the suffering Christianity
brought, sometimes feverish rage, sometimes exhaustion, and we still have a feeling of cramp and
weakness in our limbs. But even those of us who are cured can still not escape from the air of the
hospital and feel weak in their limbs. And even when we feel recovered, we can still not escape the
hospital air and we feel uncomfortable as the only healthy person surrounded by the sick. One day,
when humanity regains its complete health, when peace is restored between body and soul and there
is once again harmony between them, we will have difficulty understanding the artificial conflict that
Christianity created between them. The more fortunate and more attractive generations, the product of
a free choice, will bloom in a religion of joy and smile wistfully at their poor ancestors, who gloomily
deprived themselves of all the pleasures of this beautiful planet and, by mortifying their warm and
colourful sensuality, became almost cold faded spectres.

Yes, I am sure that our children will be more beautiful and happier than we are. For I believe in
progress and I believe that people are destined for happiness. I have a more magnanimous opinion of
God than those pious souls who wrongly imagine that man was created to suffer. I wish to establish in
the here and now, with the help of the blessings of political and industrial institutions, that happiness
which, according to the pious, can be achieved only on the Last Day in heaven. Both are perhaps
unrealistic hopes, and there is no Resurrection of Souls, either in the political-moral or the apostolic-
catholic sense.

13 Isaac Schmidt (1179-1847), a Moravian missionary and Oriental scholar, suggested the connection between
Indian religions, especially Buddhism, and Gnosis in a work ber die Verwandtschaft der gnostisch-
theosophischen Lehren mit den Religionssystemen des Orients, vorzglich dem Buddhaismus published in 1828,
which Heine would have been able to read.
Mankind is perhaps destined for eternal misery, peoples are perhaps forever condemned to be crushed
by despots, exploited by their accomplices and derided by lackeys. But even so, one ought to try to
preserve Christianity, even if one sees that it an error, and, dressed in the monk's habit, walk through
Europe barefoot, preach the emptiness of all worldly goods, hold the comforting crucifix before the
scourged and ridiculed and promise them after death, up there, the full complement of seven heavens.

It may be precisely because the grandees of this world are secure in their power and have inwardly
decided to misuse it to make us forever unhappy that they are convinced of their peoples' need for
Christianity and it is essentially a tender feeling of humanity that they make such efforts to sustain this
religion.

The final fate of Christianity thus depends on whether we still need it.This religion was a boon for
suffering humanity for eighteen centuries, providential, divine, sacred. Whatever use it has been to
civilization, taming the strong and strengthening the tame, binding peoples through a common feeling
and a common language, and whatever else its apologists praise it for, all of that is relatively
unimportant in comparison with the solace that it has granted to people through its existence. The
suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as it were
the soothing balm that ran down into the wounds of humanity, the eternal glory of these symbols
cannot be denied. The poet in particular will recognize the frightful sublimity of this symbol with awe.

The entire system of symbols, expressed in the art and life of the Middle Ages, will always arouse the
admiration of the poet. Indeed, look at the colossal results in Christian art, the Gothic cathedrals and
how they harmonize with the liturgy and how the idea of the Church itself is revealed in them.

Everything is striving upwards, complete transubstantiation. The stone sprouts in branches and foliage
and becomes a tree. The fruit of the vine and the ear become flesh and blood. Man becomes God. God
becomes pure spirit. For the poet Christian life in the Middle Ages is a rich source of inexhaustible and
invaluable material. Only Christianity has been able to create conditions on this earth that contain such
bold contrasts, such variegated pains and such adventurous beauty that one has the impression that
these things never really existed before and it is all just a mighty feverish dream, the dream of a manic
divinity.

Nature itself seemed to adopt a fantastic disguise. But, even though man, caught up in abstract
musings, peevishly turned away from nature, it sometimes woke him up with a voice, so eerily sweet,
dreadfully caring, enchantingly violent that man involuntarily obeyed, smiled and was frightened and
even fell mortally ill. The story of the Basel nightingale comes to mind, and I will relate it for the benefit
of those who are perhaps not familiar with it.
In May 1433. at the time of the Council, a party of clerics went for a walk in a wood near Basel, prelates,
doctors, monks of all orders. They disputed theological controversies. They made distinctions between,
presented arguments and disagreed about payments of benefice holders to their bishops (Annaten),
expectations of office (Expectativen) and claims of authority to act made the papacy (Reservationen)
or examined the subject of whether Thomas Aquinas was a greater philosopher than Bonaventura, and
all sorts of other things ! But suddenly, in the middle of their dogmatic and abstract discussions, they
stopped and stood as if rooted to the spot in front of a flowering lime tree, on which a nightingale was
perched, emotionally warbling the softest, most tender melodies. The scholarly gentlemen felt such
wonder at this that the warm sounds of spring penetrated their scholastically opaque hearts. Their
feelings awoke from dull hibernation and they looked at each with astonished pleasure. When one of
them finally made the astute observation that this could not be right, that the nightingale might well be
a demon and that this demon, with his lovely music, wanted to divert them from their Christian
colloquies and tempt them into the regions of voluptuousness and all manner of sweet sinning, he
embarked on an exorcism, probably using the formula typical of the time: 'I conjure you by Him Who is
to come to judge etc.'

On hearing this, the bird is said to have replied: 'Yes, I am an evil spirit' and flew off laughing. But those
who heard the song became ill that day and shortly afterwards died.

This story needs no comment. it has all the gruesome imprint of a period that decried all that was
sweet and soft as diabolical. The nightingale was even vilified and people crossed themselves
whenever one sang. The true Christian went about like a ghost, whose senses were anxiously
impervious to the beauties of nature. When I come to fundamentally address the subject of popular
belief in order to understand neo-Romantic literature, I will perhaps examine the relationship of the
Christian to nature. For the moment all I can say is that French writers, misled by German authorities,
make a serious mistake when they suppose that popular belief in Europe during the Middle Ages was
everywhere the same. The same views were entertained about the good principle, about the realm of
Christ, all over Europe. The Catholic Church made sure of this, and anyone who deviated from the
prescribed opinion was a heretic. There were various opinions in the various countries about the evil
principle, the realm of Satan, those of the Germanic north being quite different from those of the Latin
south. The reason for this was that the Christian priests did not reject the existing national gods as the
meaningless products of a diseased imagination but accepted them as real, albeit devils that had lost
their power over man through the victory of Christ and were now intent on seducing the poor creature
into sin and delusion. The entire Olympus was now an empty cave, and, however beautifully a
medieval poet were to sing of the Greek stories of the gods, the pious Christian would still see them
only as spooks and devils. The gloomy insanity of the monks hit poor Venus hardest. They regarded her
in particular as a daughter of Beelzebub, and even the good knight Tannhser was able to sing to her
face:

Oh Venus, beautiful woman of mine,

Thou art a demon.14

Tannhser had been lured into that wonderful cave called Venusberg and, according to the saga, the
beautiful goddess led a most immoral life with her young men and women, playing and dancing. Even
poor Diana, in spite of her chastity, was not immune to a fate of this sort: she was made to go through
the woods at night with her nymphs, and hence the saga of the raging army, the wild hunt. Here once
again one recognizes clearly the gnostic view of the deterioration of the formerly divine, and this new
form of the previous national belief reveals in the most profound sense the idea of Christianity.

National belief in Europe, in the north much more than the south, was pantheistic. Its mysteries and
symbols were connected with serving nature. In each element the wonderful was worshipped. In each
tree was a living breathing divinity. The entire phenomenal world was made divine. This view was
overturned by Christianity, and divinized nature was replaced by a thoroughly diabolicized one. The
happy images, beautified by art, of Greek mythology that prevailed in the south with Roman
civilization could not be so easily transformed into hideous and ugly Satanic larvae as the Germanic
gods, which of course had not been the subject of artistic modelling and continued to be as morose and
gloomy as the indeed the north itself was. So, you French had never experienced such darkly terrible
devilry as we did and the world of spirits and magic was able to appear a happier place than it was for
us. How beautifully clear and colourful your folk tales are in comparison with ours, abortions of blood
and mist that grin at us with such grey horror.

Our medieval poets, by selecting material conceived or first treated by you in Brittany and Normandy,
have endowed their works. perhaps deliberately, as far as possible with the lightness of the old French
spirit. But our national literary creations and orally transmitted folk tales continued to harbour that
gloomy northern spirit of which you have almost no idea. You have, as we do, several sorts of elemental
spirits, but ours are as different from yours as the the French are from the Germans. The demons in
your fables and tales of magic - how clear and pure they are in comparison with the grey and often
14 From a 17th cent. 'Tannhuser-Lied', cited later by Heine Elemenargeister (Elemental Spirits), published in
1834.
bawdy scoundrels of our spirit world. Your fairies and elemental spirits, whether they come from the
Antarctic or Arabia, have been fully naturalized, and a French spirit is as distinct from a German one as
a French dandy sauntering along the Boulevatd Coblence, with his golden shining gloves, is from a
clumsy workman. Your mermaids, for example the melusines, are as different from ours as a princess
from a washerwoman. Morgana, what a fright she would get to meet a German witch, naked and
smeared with ointments, riding her broomstick to the Brocken, which is no Avalon but a mountain
where all things ugly meet. On the summit is Satan in the form of a black buck.Each witch approaches
him holding a candle and kisses his bottom. The mad sisters then dance around him, singing:
Donderemus, Donderemus! The buck complains, the infernal noise gets louder. It is a bad omen for
the witches if they lose a shoe when dancing and it means that they will be burned in the same year.
But they are all seized by the mad terrifying Berlioz-like Sabbath music. When the poor witch awakes
in the morning from her frenzy, she is lying naked and exhausted in the ashes next to the still flickering
fire.

The best treatment of these witches is that of the well-respected scholar, Nicolas Rmy, the eminent
French magistrate, in his book Demonology. This astute man, having presided over the trial of these
women and indeed sent of 800 of them in Lorraine alone to their death at the stake, certainly had
ample opportunity to become familiar with the practices of witches. Proof of witchcraft: The hands and
feet of the accused were bound together, who was then thrown into water. If she sank and drowned,
she was pronounced innocent, but if she floated, she was found guilty and burned. This was the logic of
the time. A basic characteristic of German demons appears to be that they have been stripped of all
traces of the 'ideal' and that they are a mixture of the base and the abominable. The more cloddish
their attempts at establishing intimacy, the ghastlier the effect of those attempts. There is nothing
more sinister than our noisy ghosts, gremlins and imps. In his 'Anthropodemus Plutonicus' the 17th
cent. Johannes Praetorus15 makes the following comment, (quoted here in its entirety from the edition
of Dobeneck):

'The ancients were unable to believe that poltergeists were anything other than human beings in the
form of small children with gaily coloured skirts or dresses. Quite a few also thought that some had
knives behind their backs and some were deformed and misshapen after having been killed in the dim
and distant past with this or that instrument. The superstitious think that they are the souls of
previous residents of the house who have been murdered. And they tell many stories about gremlins
and make themselves popular with the servant girls in the house and cooks in the kitchen by helping
them out and stories of how people become so affectionate towards these imps that they conceive a
passionate desire to see the little fellows and feel wanted by them. But the poltergeists refuse, saying

15 1630-1680. This book is subtitled 'A New World Description'. He wrote and published 50 books, including a
geography of the Block Mountain, dealing with Walpurgis Night, a plenary assembly of German witches on
May 1st.
that no-one can see them without being horrified by them. But when the lustful girls are unable to
accept this, the imps are said to name a part of the house in which they will present themselves in
bodily form. But they have to bring a bucket of cold water, because an imp has been known to lie naked
on the floor in a pillow with a large knife in his back. The sight of this so terrifies some girls that they
faint. The thing jumps up, grabs the bucket and pours it over the poor girl so that she regains
consciousness. The girl loses her appetite for this game and hopes never to see the wretched Chimgen
ever again. Imps are said to have all sorts of names, but they are commonly known as Chim. These
creatures are to do all the work of the servant boys and girls to whom they submit themselves, whether
it is in the stables or the house, and ensure that the livestock prospers. In return the imps expect to be
cossetted by the servants, that they come to no harm, are not subjected to ridicule and are always
provided with ample amounts of food. If a cook enlists the services of one of these creatures, she has
to fill his plate with plenty to eat every day at a certain time and in a certain place and then leave.
Afterwards she can laze around and go to bed early in the evening. In the morning she will find that
her work has been done. But if she fails to feed the little fellow, she will discover that her work has not
been done and that she has to do it herself and that all sorts of things go wrong: she scalds herself with
hot water, breaks the crockery, spills the food or drops it on the floor, and so on, she is scolded by the
master or mistress of the house and deservedly punished. It is said that one can often hear the imp
giggling or laughing. In this way an imp will stay in te house even after the servants have left. Indeed, a
servant girl about to leave has had to recommend the imp to her replacement and instruct her to look
after the creature. If she refuses, she is continually plagued by misfortune and she too has to leave the
house before her time.

The following short story is perhaps one of the most horrific: A servant girl had an invisible spirit for
many years sitting at her fire place, where she had made a place especially for him and would talk to
him through the long winter evenings. She once asked little Heinz, which was his name, to let her see
him as nature had made him. But little Heinz refused. Finally, however, he agreed and and asked to go
down into the cellar, where she could see him. She took a light, went down into the cellar and there, in
an open barrel, she saw a dead baby swimming in its own blood. Many years before the girl had given
birth to an illegitimate child and secretly killed it and put it in a barrel.

However, Germans, being what they are, often find amusement in gloomy areas, and the folk tales of
imps are sometimes full of amusing character traits. Particularly amusing are the stories of Hdeken, a
12th cent. sprite in Hildesheim, a frequent character in many yarns and ghost stories. The following is
a frequently printed passage about him from an old chronicle:

Around 1132 many people in the bishopric of Hildesheim seemed to be plagued for a long time by an
evil spirit in the form of a farmer wearing a hat, and this is why he was called Hdeken in the Saxon
dialect. The spirit used to amuse himself by making himself visible and the invisible to people, by
asking them questions and then answering them. He would insult no-one without cause. But if anyone
made fun of him or insulted him, he would punish the wrongdoer properly. When Count Burchard de
Luka was defeated by Count Hermann von Wiesenburg and the county threatened with plunder from
those wishing revenge, the Hdeken awoke the bishop Bernhard von Hildesheim 16 and said to him: 'Get
up, baldy. The county of Wiesenburg has been abandoned and is finished as a result of murder and will
be easy for you to occupy.' The bishop quickly assembled his warriors, invadedthe county of the guilty
Count and annexed it, with the agreement of the Emperor, to his bishopric.The spirit often uninvited
warned the bishop of imminent dangers and frequently appeared in the castle kitchen, where he would
chat to the cooks and perform all sorts of services for him. People gradually got used to Hdeken, and
kitchen servants was bold enough to tease him and even pour dirty water over him as soon as he
appeared. The spirit asked the head cook or chef to forbid the naughty boy to be so impertinent. The
chef replied: 'You a spirit, afraid of a boy ?! The Hdeken replied threateningly: 'If you do not punish
the boy, I will show you in twenty days how afraid of him I am.' Shortly afterwards the boy who had
insulted the spirit was sitting asleep on his own in the kitchen. The spirit seized him, throttled him,
tore him into pieces and put them in pots on the fire. The cook discovered this and cursed the spirit, so
Hdeken decided, over the next few days, to spoil all the meat to be roasted by sprinkling the blood
and poison of toads over it. This act of revenge spurred the cook to more insults, and the spirit caused
him to fall from a non-existent magic bridge into a deep pit. At the same time he spent the whole night,
on the walls and towers of the town, making his rounds and urging the watch to be constantly vigilant.
A man whose wife was unfaithful, as he was about to go on a journey, once said jokingly to Hdeken:
'My good friend, I recommend my wife to you. Watch over her carefully.' As soon as the man was away,
the adulterous wife took one lover after another. But Hdeken would not let anyone near her, because
he kept them throwing out of the bed onto the floor. When the husband returned from his travels, the
spirit went up to him and said: 'I am glad that you are back to relieve me of this onerous duty. I have
done my best to keep your wife from real unfaithfulness. Please do not ask me to do this again. I would
rather be a swineherd in Saxony than look after a woman that tries to trick her way into the arms of
her lovers.'

For the sake of accuracy I have to note that Hdeken's headwear was quite unlike that of the usual
clothing of imps. They mostly wear grey with a red cap. This at least is how they are seen in Denmark,
where they are said nowadays to live in the largest numbers. I used to think that imps liked living in
Denmark because they were very fond of Rote Grtze (a sort of red fruit dessert). But I am assured by a
young Danish poet, Mr Andersen, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making this summer here
16 Bishop from 1130 to 1153.
in Paris,17 that Danish imps were most fond of eating a sort of butter mash. Once they have taken up
residence in a house they are reluctant to leave it. However, they do not arrive unannounced, and if
they want to live somewhere, they let the homeowner know in the following way: At nigh they carry all
sorts of wood shavings into the house and they throw cow dung into the milk churns. If the
homeowner does not throw away the wood shavings or if he drinks from the spoiled milk with his
family, the imps remain with him forever. Some have found this very unpleasant. A poor Jutlander
finally became so vexed by the company of such an imp that he was ready to give up his house and
loaded his belongings on to a cart and went off to the next village to take up residence there. But on his
ways he turned around to see the red-capped imp looking out of one of the empty vats and shouting
out: 'We're moving out.'

I have probably dwelt on these little demons too long, and it is time to move on to the big ones. But
these stories all illustrate the belief and character of the German people. That belief was in centuries
gone by as strong as belief in the church. As the learned Dr Rmy completed his monumental work on
witchcraft, he believed himself so knowledgeable about his subject that he came to imagine that he
himself could practise witchcraft. Conscientious man that he was, he often went into court as a
sorcerer, and it was for using this title that he himself was burned. 18

These horrors did not emerge directly from the Christian Church, but rather indirectly from a
malicious perversion by the old Germanic national religion of a pantheistic world view into a
pandemonic one that converted the earlier shrines of the people into ugly devilry. People do not easily
give up what was precious to and popular with their ancestors and they secretly hang on to it, even if it
is rotten and deformed. So that perverse popular belief has been more persistent over a longer period
in Germany than Christianity, which is not as deeply as the former. At the time of the Protestant
reformation of the Church the belief in Catholic legends disappeared quickly, but not the belief in magic
and witchcraft.

Luther no longer believed in Catholic miracles, but he still believed in devilry. His Table Talks
(Tischreden) are full of curious stories of the Satanic arts, imps and witches. He himself in his
difficulties sometimes believed that he was struggling in a situation where the physical presence of
God was necessary. When he was translating the New Testament on the Wartburg, he was being so
disturbed by the devil that he threw his ink pot at his head. The devil subsequently developed a great
dread of ink and an even greater dread of print. The aforementioned work of Luther contains many an
amusing anecdote about the slyness of the devil, and this one I have to tell.

17 Heine is said to have written one of his poems, Lebensfahrt, in an album that Andersen kept.
18 Rmy appears to have retired from Paris in 1592 to avoid the plague and spent the rest of his life in the
country writing up his notes for Demonolatry.
Doctor Martin Luther once told a story of how good apprentices had sat together drinking. Now, there
was a wild ill-behaved youth among them, who said that he would sell his soul for a decent drop of
wine. Shortly afterwards, someone came into the tavern, sat down beside him, drank and spoke to
various people, including the young man: 'Listen, you said before, that you would sell your soul for a
drop of wine ? The child said: 'Yes, that's right, just let me drink and get drunk and be happy.' The
human devil then said, 'Yes', and shortly afterwards slid from him. The rascal happily drank the whole
day and the man, the devil, returned and sat down with him and asked his drinking companions:
'Gentlemen, what would you think if someone bought a horse but without the saddle and the bridle.'
They all took fright. Finally the man spoke: 'So, what do you say ?' They said: 'Yes, the saddle and the
bridle also belong to him.' The devil took the youth away through the ceiling, and nobody knew where
he had gone.

Although I have the greatest respect for the great teacher Martin Luther, I cannot escape the feeling
that he had misunderstood the character of the devil. Satan does not think of the body with such
contempt, as related here. Whatever evil one may tell of the devil, nobody has ever been able to say of
him that he was a spiritualist. But Luther mistook not only the disposition of the devil, but, far more
importantly, the disposition of the Pope and Catholic Church. As an impartial observer I feel obliged to
protect both of the latter, as well the devil, against this impetuous man. If asked in all conscience I
would have to admit that Pope Leo X was really much more reasonable than Luther and the latter did
not understand the ultimate reasons of the Catholic Church, for he had failed to grasp that the idea of
Christianity, the elimination of sensuality, was far too deeply opposed to human nature ever to be fully
achievable, that Catholicism was a sort of concordat between God and the devil, i.e. between the spirit
and matter, according to which the autarchy of the spirit in theory is stated, but matter is placed in a
position to exercise in practice all the rights taken away from it.

Accordingly, an intelligent system of concessions, which the Church has made for the benefit of
sensuality, though always in forms that criminalize every act of sensuality and guarantee the spirit its
sneering claims. You may heed the tender inclinations of your heart and embrace an attractive girl, but
you have to confess that it was a shameful sin, for which you have do penance. That penance could be
performed by means of money was as beneficial to people as it was useful to the Church. The Church
imposed, as it were, 'wergeld' on every corporeal pleasure, and so there emerged a taxation system for
all sorts of sins. There were sacred hawkers, who in the name of the Roman Church sold indulgences
for every sin that was taxed. One of these was Tzetzel, the first person to be targeted by Luther. 19 Our
historians believe that this protest against the indulgence trade was a small matter and it was only
because of Roman intransigence that Luther, who initially campaigned against abusive practices of the

19 Johannes Tzetzel (1460-1519) was a Dominican friar, who studied at Leipzig. The sale of indulgences had
already been attacked in the 14th cent. by John Wycliffe in the dialogue known as the Trialogus, published in
1381. Most of Wycliffe's literary production was directed against the abuses in the Church.
Church, was driven to attack Church authority as a whole at the highest level. But Luther was mistaken.
The indulgence trade was not an abuse but the result of the whole church system. When Luther
attacked the trade, he attacked the entire Church itself and had to be condemned as a heretic. Leo X,
the sophisticated Florentine, the pupil of Politian,20 the friend of Raphael, the Greek philosopher with
the triple crown, awarded to him by the conclave perhaps because he suffered from an illness that had
nothing whatever to do with Christian abstinence and was at that time very dangerous. Leo de Medici,
how he must have smiled at the poor, chaste, simple monk, in his ravings that the Gospel was the
charter of Christianity and that this charter must be the truth ! Perhaps he had not noticed what Luther
wanted because he was too busy with the building of St Peter's, the costs of which were being defrayed
by indulgence money, so it was really sin that was providing the money for the construction of the
church, which became as it were a monument to sensual pleasure, much like the pyramid which a
daughter of Cheops is said to have partially financed by prostituting herself. This church, even more so
than the Cologne Cathedral, may be said to have been built by the devil. In the German north people
did not understand this triumph of spirituality, that sensuality had to build this temple for it, that for
the number of concessions made to the flesh that provided the financial means for glorifying the spirit.
Here, far from the burning skies of Italy, it was possible to practise a Christianity that made the fewest
concessions to sensuality. People of the north are more cold-blooded and require fewer indulgence
tickets for sins of the flesh than those sent to us out of fartherly concern by Leo. The climate enables us
to exercise the Christian virtues, and on 31st October 1517, when Luther posted his theses against
indulgences on the doors of the Augustinian church, the city moat of Wittenberg was probably already
frozen and one could skate on it, a very cold pleasure that is not a sin.

I have already used the words 'spirituality' and 'sensuality' several times. The words refer not, as
among French philosophers, to the two different sources of knowledge. I use them rather, as is clear
from what I have written, to indicate two different ways of thinking, one glorifying the spirit by
attempting to destroy matter, the other trying to vindicate the natural rights of matter against the
encroachment of the spirit.

I must draw particular attention to the beginnings mentioned above of the Lutheran reform that
reveal the whole spirit of that reform, since here in France the old misconceptions of the reform are
still widespread, as can be seen in Bossuet's 21 Histoire des Variations and in the works of contemporary

20 Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), who played a formative role in the dissemination of classical literature, for
example translating parts of the Iliad into Latin when he was 16. It is thought he he died from a fever
aggravated by standing outside too long in the cold, perhaps under the window of a boy he was infautated
with.
21 Jacques Bnigne Bossuet (1627-1704). The full title is Histoire de Variations des glises Protestantes (1688),
whic examined the fragmentation of the Church in th wake of Protestantism. This induced people such
Gottfried Leibniz, a contemporary with whom Bossuet had initiated a dialogue, to wonder if fragmentation
was such a bad thing after all.
writers. The French understood only the negative side of the Reformation, seeing it only as a struggle
against Catholicism, a struggle on the other side of the Rhine carried out for the same reasons as on
this side in France. But the reasons there were quite different from those here, indeed they were quite
opposite. The struggle against Catholicism in Germany was nothing more than a war started by
spirituality when it realized that its claim to supremacy was merely de jure, in contradistinction to
sensuality, which had fraudulently come to occupy a de facto supremacy. The indulgence sellers were
driven out, the pretty priests' concubines exchanged for the partners of cold matrimony, the charming
pictures of the Madonna destroyed, and here and there a sensually hostile puritanism emerged. The
struggle against Catholicism in France during the 17th and 18th centuries was by contrast a war
started by sensuality, when it realized it was de facto in control but still every act of its supremacy,
which was trying to assert itself as de jure, was mocked as illegitimate and branded in the most
sensitive way. Whereas Germans struggled with chaste earnestness, the struggle in France was
conducted with almost bawdy fun. While the Germans held theological disputations, the French wrote
humorous satires. The object of the latter was commonly to reveal the contradiction in which a person
finds himself when he wishes to be all spirit. It gives rise to the most delicious stories of pious men
who are automatically subject to their animal nature or wish to save the appearance of sanctity and
take refuge in hypocrisy. The Queen of Navarre22 has described in her novellas such deficiencies. The
relationship of monks to women is a favourite theme of hers and she wants to stir up not only our
insides but also monkhood. The most mischievous example of this type of comic polemics is
undoubtedly Molire's23 Tartuffe, which is aimed not only at contemporary Jesuits but also Christianity
itself, indeed the idea of Christianity, against spirituality. Indeed, the simulated anxiety before the
naked bosom of Dorine, the words

Le ciel dfend, de vrai, certains contentements,

Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements,
(Truly, heaven prohibits certain satisfactions,
But with it one finds arrangements)

.not only mock the customary sanctimoniousness but also the universal lie that of necessity arises from
the impossibility of the Christian idea. The whole system of concessions, necessarily made by
spirituality to sensuality, is ridiculed. To be sure, Jansenism 24 always had far more reason to feel
impugned by the representation of Tartuffe than Jesuitism. Molire might be just as uncomfortable for

22 Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549). One of her poems is called Miroir de l'me pcheresse (Mirror of the
Sinful Soul), which is thought to have circulated in early protestant England and perhaps had an influence of
English Protestantism
23 1622-1673. Many of Molire's plays mocked various aspects of contemporaneous society. Tartuffe lampooned
the Church, which denounced the play, but it was socially rehabilitated by royal command in the early 1670s.
24 Cornelius Jansen was a Dutch theologian who died in 1638 and achieved postumous fame in France. The
movement named after him split the Church in France: essentially everyone ws to love Godm but ony a select
few were 'predestined' to salvation and divine grace will be awarded to some people whether they like it or
not, so the notion of free will wwas rejected. Their main opponents in the Church were Jesuits.
today's Methodists as he was then for Catholics. That is why Molire is so great: like Aristophanes and
Cervantes, he ridicules not only temporal contingencies but also the eternally ridiculous, the primal
weaknesses of humanity. Voltaire, who attacks only the temporal and insubstantial, has to be placed
after him in this respect.

Voltairesque ridicule has done its job in France, and those who wish to continue it are as unseasonable
as they are unintelligent. If you want to expunge the last visible remains of Catholicism, it might easily
happen that the idea of doing so takes refuge in another form, as it were another body, and, putting
aside even the name of Christianity, in this transformation might plague us even more vexatiously as in
its contemporary broken, ruined and generally discredited form. Yes, of course, one of its good points is
that spirituality is represented by a religion and priesthood, of which the former has already become
enfeebled and the latter stands directly opposed to the enthusiasm for freedom of our time. But why
then is spirituality so repellent to us ? Is it so bad ? Not at all. Rose oil is precious and a small bottle of
it refreshing, if one has to spend one's times in the closed rooms of a harem. But we do not want all the
roses of life to be trampled and squeezed to gain a few drops of their oil, however comforting the effect
might be. We are more like nightingales, which are enthralled by the rose itself and as cheered by the
blush of its bloom as by its invisible perfume.

I said earlier that it was spirituality that among us attacked Catholicism, but only from the beginning of
the Reformation. As soon as it had breached the old church structure, sensuality broke out with all its
long bottled-up fervour, and Germany became the most unbridled stomping ground of ecstatic
freedom and sensual pleasure. The oppressed peasants in their new teaching had found spiritual
weapons with which to fight the aristocracy, but the desire to fight had been there for about 150 years.
At Mnster sensuality ran naked through the streets in the form of Jan van Leiden, 25who lay with his
twelve women in a large bed that can still be in the Town Hall. The monastery doors opened on all
sides and nuns and monks rushed into each other's arms and embraced. The external history of the
time is one of almost total sensual renewal. We will see later how little of this remained, how the
merrymakers were once again subdued by spirituality, which resumed its dominance in the north but
was fatally wounded by the enemy nurtured within its own breast, philosophy. It is a very complicated
story, difficult to unravel. The Catholics found it easy to give prominence, as it suited them, to the worst
motives, and would say that it was only about legitimizing the most audacious sensuality and
plundering Church property. Of course, the spiritual interests always have to make an alliance with
material interests in order to be victorious. But the devil had shuffled the cards in such a way that it is
impossible to say anything more certain about intentions.

In 1521 there was a gathering of the illustrious in the Reichssaale at Worms, who probably had all

25 He preached anabaptism (re-baptism of adults who confess their faith in Christ) and polygamy.
sorts of concerns on their that were at odds with what they said. The young emperor, with all the
madness of a young ruler in his purple cloak, secretly glad that the proud Roman, who had so often
maltreated his predecessors and still continued to be arrogant, was now being rebuked in the most
effective way. The representative of that Roman, for his part, was also enjoying the spectacle of a rift
between those Germans, who had so often as drunken barbarians attacked and looted beatiful Italy
and continually threatened renewed attacks and lootings. The secular princes were glad that the new
teaching, at the same time, allowed them to look at the old church property. The elevated prelates
were already wondering if they might not marry their cooks and bequeath their imperial properties,
their bishoprics and their monasteries to their male children. The deputies of the towns were looking
foward to increased independence. Each one had something to gain and was secretly thinking of
earthly advantages.

But there was a man there, of whom I am convinced that he did not think of himself but only of the
divine interests he was to represent. This man was Martin Luther, the poor monk, chosen by
providence to break Roman world power, against which the strongest emperors and boldest sages had
fought in vain. But providence knows very well on whose shoulders to places its burdens. Here not
only spiritual strength but also physical strength was required. It needed a body steeled by the
discipline and chastity of the monastery to bear the difficulties of such an office. Our dear master
looked so ill-fed and pale and with the well-fed gentlemen with their rosy complexions of the Imperial
Diet looked down on the poor creature with his black habit. But he was healthy and had good nerves
able to withstand any trouble, and he must have had a strong voice. After his long defence, he had to
repeat everything in Latin because the emperor did not understand German. Every time I think of this
it annoys me that our master was standing next to an open window, exposed to the draught, while the
sweat was dripping from his brow. The long speech probably made him and his mouth must have been
dry. The Duke of Braunschweig must have thought he was thirsty, because he sent Luther three
tankards of best beer. The House of Braunschweig is in our debt for this act of nobility. The French have
very misplaced ideas about the Reformation. as indeed they do about their heroes. The immediate
cause is that Luther was not only the greatest but the also the most German man in our history,
combining all the virtues and faults in the most spectacular way, so that he personally represents the
wonder of Germany. He had characteristics that we seldom find in combination and even regard as
mutually hostile. He was both a mystic dreamer and a practical man of action. His thoughts not only
had wings, they also had hands. He spoke and acted. He was the voice and the sword of his time. He
was a sober scholar and an inspired prophet. His daily work of clarifying dogmatic distinctions was
followed by an evening of musical flute playing and thoughtful star-gazing. The man who could swear
like a trooper could also be as soft as a tender young virgin. He was at times as wild as a storm that
could uproot an oak and the become as mild as the west wind. He was full of the most terrible fear of
God, full of self-sacrifice in hnour of the Holy Spirit. He could submerge himself in to the purest
spirituality, but also appreciated the wonder of this earth: "He who does not love wine, women and
song will remain all his life long." He was complete, absolute, a person in whom tere was no distinction
between spirit and matter. To call him him spiritual would be as wrong as calling him sensual. I would
say that he had something original, unfathomable, miraculous that one finds in all men of providence, a
combination of the terrible and naive, idiot and clever, sublime and plain, indomitable and demonic.

Luther's father was a miner and the boy often went with him to the places of the great ore seams and
underground springs. His young heart had perhaps unconsciously absorbed the forces of nature or
perhaps was even enchanted by the spirits. This may be the origin of the earthiness and passion
clinging to him for which he was reproached all his life. But people were wrong, because without this
he would not have been a man of action. Pure spirits cannot act. The ghost theory of Jung-Stilling 26
teaches us that the spirits are quite coloured and can certainly appear, as living people learn how to
walk, run. dance and do all sorts of gestures, but are unable to move anything material, not even the
smallest side table, from its position.

Praise to Luther ! Eternal praise to the dear man to whom we are grateful for our most noble goods and
from whoe good deeds we still live today. It ill suits us to complain about the limitations of his views.
The dwarf on the shoulders of the giant can of course see much further, especially if he is wearing
glasses. But the higher view is denied to us by the elevated feeling, the big heart that we cannot make
our own. It is still less seemly for us to judge his mistakes too severly. These mistakes have been more
beneficial to us than the virtues of thousands. The elegance of Erasmus and the mildness of
Melanchthon would never have brought us as far as the brutality of Luther. The mistake I mentioned
earlier has yielded valuable fruits for the life of mankind. The court, at which he rejected papal
authority and declared that his teachings could be contradicted only by biblical sources or good
reasons, was the beginning of a new era in Germany. The chain used by Boniface to link the German
Church with Rome was broken. This Church, a formerly important integrating part of the great
hierarchy, split into religious democracies. Religion itself becomes something else and from it
disappears the Indian-Gnostic element, and we see how the Judaic-Deist element arises. Evangelical
Christianity is born. Because the most necessary claims of matter are not simply taken into account but
also legitimized, religion once again becomes a truth. The priest becomes a man and marries and has
children, as God requires. God himself becomes a heavenly confirmed bachelor without family. The
legitimacy of his son is disputed. The saints are pensioned off. The angels have their wings clipped. The
mother of God loses all claim to the heavenly throne and she is prevented from performing miracles.
From now on, especially since the natural sciences are making such great progress, there are no more
miracles. Whether God is annoyed that physicists look too sceptically at his work or whether he is not

26 Johann-Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817)

eager to compete with Bosco,27 even recently, when religion is endangered, God has not deigned to
perform a spectacular miracle.

Perhaps from now on he will dispense with all sacred stunts in all the new religions he introduces on
earth and allow the truth of the new doctrine to become evident through reason, which would be the
most reasonable. At least in the case of St Simonism, the latest reigion, there was no miracle, except
perhaps that the old tailor's bills which St Simon left unpaid on earth wer settled by his students in
cash ten years after his death. I stll see how the estimable Pre Olinde enthusiastically stands up in the
Salle Taitbout and holds out the paid-up account to an astonished community. Young grocers were
baffled by this supernatural testimony. But the tailors began to believe !

Even if, with the old miracles. we lost a great deal of poetry through Protestantism, we were amply
compensated in various ways. People became more virtuous and nobler. Protestantism had a beneficial
effect on the purity of morals and strictness in the exercise of duties, which we generally call morality.
Protestantism in some communities took a direction in which ultimately it collapsed with this morality
and the Gospels remained only nice stories. We are now witnessing an agreeable change in the life of
the clergy. Along with celibacy pious corruption and monastic vice disappeared. Among the protestant
clergy we often find the most virtuous people, people who wuld have commanded the respect of the
Stoics. One has to walk, as a poor student, through northern Germany to discover how much virtue,
one might add, evangelical virtue is sometimes to be found in an unassuming clergyman's house. How
often, of a winter evening, have I found an hospitable welcome, I, a stranger with nothing to
recommend him, apart from being hungry and tired. After having eaten and slept well, I prepared to
continue my journey when the pastor in his nightgown would come in and bless me on my way, which
never brought me bad luck. The well-meaning chatty wife would put some sandwiches into my bag,
which always fortified me. In the silent distance stood the pretty pastor's daughters with their
blooming cheeks and innocent eyes, whose shy fieriness, still in my memory, would warm my heart the
whole winter's day.

By maintaining that his teaching could be controverted only by the Bible or intelligent reasoning,
Luther was giving human reason the right to explain the Bible, and reason came to be recognized as
the supreme judge in all matters of religious dispute. As a result Germany saw the emergence of so-
called intellectual freedom, or freedom of thought as it was later called. Thinking became a right, and
the powers of reason became legitimate. Of course, people had been able to think and speak freely for
several centuries, and the scholastics disputed matters the mere utterance of which in the Middle Ages
seems barely comprehensible to us now. But this was all possible thanks to the distinction made

27 St John Bosco (1815-1888), known for his work with street children and juvenile delinquents in the poorer
parts of the newly industrialized Turin
between theological philosophical truth, by means of which one declared oneself to be against heresy.
It all took place in university lecture halls in a Gothically abstruse Latin not generally understood, so
that there was little damage from it to the Church. Nevertheless, the Church had never really allowed
this, and occasionally a poor scholastic was burned for heresy. But now, after Luther, a distinction
between theological and philosophical truth was no longer made and disputes were held in the market
place and in the vernacular without fear of any sort. The princes who accepted the Reformation
legitimized this free thinking, and a product of it is the globally significant flower of German
philosophy.

Indeed, not even in Greece was one able to speak as freely as in Germany from the middle of the last
century to the French invasion. In Prussia there was unbounded freedom of thought. The Marquis of
Brandenburg had realized that he could become a legitimate King of Prussia only by means of the
Protestant principle and so had to maintain the Protestant freedom of thought.

Things of course have changed since then, and the natural protector of Protestant free thought came to
an understanding with the ultramontane28 party to suppress this freedom and often made use of the
weapon devised by the Pope against us: censorship.

Amazing ! We Germans are the strongest and cleverest people. Our princely families occupy the
thrones of Europe. Our Rothschilds control all the exchanges of the world. Our scholars rule in the
academic disciplines. We invented powder and movable type printing. But still, anyone who shoots a
pistol pays a fine fine of three talers, and if we want to write in the Hamburger Korrespondent: My
dear wife has just given birth to a daughter as beautiful as freedom, Dr Hoffmann reaches for his red
pen and deletes 'freedom'.

Will this be possible for much longer ? I do not know. But I do know that the question of press freedom,
which so hoty debated in Germany, is related in an important way to theose observation made earlier. I
believe that the solution to this question is not if one considers that press freedom is nothing other
than the result of freedom of thought and consequently a Protestant right. For rights of this sort
Germans have already spilled blood and may be compelled to go once again to the barricades.

The same can also be said of the question of academic freedom, which is now so passionately moving
German spirits. Since it is thought to have been discovered that political agitation, namely love of
freedom, is prevalent mainly in universities, it has been suggested to sovereigns from all sides that
these institutions should be suppressed or at least transformed into common teaching institutes. Plans
are being made and the pros and contras discussed. Neither the public opponents of universities nor
the public defenders we have spoken to appear understand what is fundamentally at stake. The
opponents do not understand that young people everywhere and in all disciplines are enthusiastically

28 A term with a long history, the only relevant section of which in this context is the reference to conflicts
between Church and State, where it would be used of those who supported the former against the latter: it
means 'beyond the mountains', the latter being the Alps and the area beyond Italy, the home of the Catholic
Church.
committed to freedom and that, if the universities are suppressed, those same young people will go
elsewhere and perhaps, in combination with young people in trade and industry, will express
themselves more vigorously. The defenders seek merely to prove that if the universities go under, the
flower of German scholarship will go with it, that academic freedom is beneficial to study and that with
it young people have such a good opportunity to improve themselves and so on. As if it were just a
matter of a few Greek words or smoothing out a few rough edges.

And how would all the scholarship, study or education help the princes if the sacrosanct safety of their
thrones were endangered. They were heroic enough to sacrifice all those relative goods for the single
absolute, for their absolute autocracy. For this has been entrusted to them by God, and when heaven
commands, all earthly considerations must yield.

Misunderstanding attaches to both sides: the poor teachers, who publicly represent the universities
and government officials, who publicly oppose them. Only Catholic propaganda in Germany
understands what propaganda really means: the pious obscurantists are the most dangerous
opponents of universities, working treacherously as they do with lies and deceit, and even if one of
them appears to be amiable enough to defend universities, Jesuitical intrigue comes to light. These
cowardly hypocrites know perfectly well what is at stake here. If the universities collapse, so does the
Protestant Church, which has been rooted only in them since the Reformation, so that the entire
history of the Protestant Church of the last few centuries consists of the theological disputes of
university academics in Wittenberg, Leipzig, Tbingen und Halle. The consistories are merely the weak
reflection of the Theology Faculty. Without the latter they lose their solidity and character and fall into
odious dependency on ministries or even the police.

But let us not dwell too long on these melancholy considerations, not least because we still have to
speak abou the man sent by providence who has done so much for the German people. I showed
earlier how we achieved the greatest freedom of thought through him. But Luther gave us not only
freedom of movement but also the means to move: he gave the spirit a body. He also gave speech to
thought. He created the German language. This happened when he translated the Bible.

In fact the author of this book seems to have known as well as we do that it is by no means
unimportant who translates one's book, and he himself chose his translator and gave him the
miraculous strength to translate from dead languages, which were so to speak buried, into another
language that was not yet alive.

Of course there was the Vulgate, which one understood, and the Septuagint, which one could
understand.29 But the knowledge of Hebrew in the Christian world had been completely extinguished.
Only Jews, secreted here and there in a corner of this world, kept the traditions of this language. Like a
ghost watching over the treasure that has been entrusted to him, this people, the object of murderous
violence, this people-ghost, sat in dark ghettoes and retained the Hebrew Bible. German scholars

29 There seems to be some distinction intended by Heine, but I do not understand it.
could be seen secretly descending into these notorious hiding places to raise this treasure, to acquire a
knowledge of the language. As the Catholic clergy noticed that it was being threatened from this
quarter, that the people would be able to find their way to the real word of God by means of this side
road and uncover Roman falsehoods, there was also a desire to suppress Jewish tradition. The idea of
destroying all books in Hebrew books was conceived, and book persecution started on the Rhine, an
activity against which the estimable Dr Reuchlin 30 struggled so gloriously. The Cologne theologians
who at the time took action, in particular Hoogstraeten, were by no means as intellectually limited as
Reuchlin's fellow activist, Ulrich von Hutten, described them in his Litteris obscurorum virorum. It was
a matter of suppresing Hebrew. When Reuchlin succeeded in his struggle, Luther was able to start his
work. In a letter to Reuchlin Luther seems to have felt how important this victory was that Reuchlin
had won, and won in a dependently difficult situation, while he, the Augustinian canon, remained quite
independent. His naive assertion in this letter: I fear nothing because I have nothing.

How Luther came to the language he used for his translation of the Bible is still something of a mystery
to me. The old Swabian dialect, with its courtly poetry of the Hohenstaufen imperial period, has
disappeared completely. The old Saxon dialect, so-called Low German, was prevalent only in one part
of northern Germany and despite all efforts never lent itself to literary production. If Luther used the
language now spoken in Saxony, Adelung would have been right to say that Saxon, the dialect of
Meien, is our real High German, i.e. literary language. But this is no longer accepted. I have to stress
this, because it is a commonly held belief in France. Modern Saxon was never a dialect of the German
people, any more than Silesian was. Like the latter Saxon developed with Slavic elements in it. So, I
openly confess that I do not know how the language we find in Luther's Bible came into being. But I
know that this Bible, of which the newly-invented printing press circulated thousands of copies among
the people, carried Luther's language in just a few years across the whole of Germany and made it into
the standard written language. This written form still dominates in Germany and provides this
politically and religiously divided country with a literary unity. Such an invaluable service may
compensate us for lacking in its present formation something of that inner quality that we normally
find in languages formed from a single dialect. The language of Luther's Bible, however, does not by
any means dispense with such an inner quality and this ancient tome is an eternal source for the
renewal of of our language. All expressions and formulations in Luther's Bible are German: the
professional writer can still use them and because the book is read by everbody, including the poorest,
it needs no special instruction from learned people to make its literary point.

This circumstance will have remarkable consequences when the political revolution breaks out.
Freedom will be able to sppeak everywhere and its language will be biblical.

30 Johann von Reuchlin (1455-1522) wrote a grammar of Hebrew, which he had begun to study after learning
about the Kabbala from Pico della Mirandola in the 1490s. It is possible that Luther learned Hebrew from his
book. The move to destroy Hebrew books seems to have originated with Johannes Pfefferkorn, a convert from
Judaism who joined the Dominican order in 1506. Generally speaking, it is probably true that knowledge of
Hebrew was largely confined to Jews in northern Europe in the early Middle Ages, but for a brief survey of
scholars in England familiar with Hebrew from the 11th cent. cf. Biblical Repository 6 (1835) p. 469
Luther's original writings have also contributed to establishing the German language. With their
polemic passion they penetrated deeply into the heart of the time. Their tone is not always clean. But
religious revolutions are not made with orange blossom. A rough situation sometimes requires
measures. In the Bible Luther's language is always relatively dignified out of respect for the spirit of
God. In his polemical work, on the other hand, he lets himself go with plebeian coarseness, which is
often as repugnant as it is grandiose. His expressions and images are like those enormous stone figure
that one sees in Indian or Egyptian temples and whose harsh complexion and bold ugliness both repels
and attracts us at the same time. Through this baroque style the bold monk sometimes appears to us as
a religious Danton,31 a preacher of the mountain, who rains down his colourful words on the heads of
his opponents.

More remarkable and significant than the prose writings are Luther's verse wrtitings, the songs that
poured forth from his soul in struggles and adversity. They are sometimes like a flower that grows on a
rock face, sometimes like a moonbeam that flickers over the rough sea. Luther loved music and even
wrote an essay on it, so his melodies are extraordinarily tuneful. He deserves his name: the swan of
Eisleben. In some songs he was nothing less than a gentle swan, encouraging his people and firing
himself to the wildest combativeness. It was with a battle song that he and his companions made their
way to Worms. The old Cathedral shuddered and the crows took fright in their dark tower nests when
they heard these new songs, the Marseillaise of the Reformation. The text of this hymn still has its
uplifting strength even today.32

Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,

Ein' gute Wehr und Waffen,

Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not,

Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.

Der alte bse Feind,

Mit Ernst er's jetzt meint,

Gro Macht und viel List

Sein grausam Rstung ist,

Auf Erd' ist nicht sein'sgleichen.

( God is our stronghold/A good defence and weapon/He helps free us from all distress/That has beset us/The old
enemy/He is now serious/Great power and much cunning/His armour is fearful/Thee is nothing like him on earth)

31 Georges Danton (1759-1794), a major figure in the French Revolution, who had a reputation as a ferocious
orator who never wrote out his speeches.
32 First published in Klugsches Gesangbuch (Klug's Hymn Book) in 1533. I have summarized as literally as
possible the contents of each stanza in brackets following the German text.
Mit unsrer Macht ist nichts getan,

Wir sind gar bald verloren,

Es streit't fr uns der rechte Mann,

Den Gott selbst hat erkoren.

Fragst du, wer es ist?

Er heit Jesus Christ,

Der Herr Zebaoth,

Und ist kein andrer Gott,

Das Feld mu er behalten.

(Our power is finished/We are soon even lost/The upright man fights for us/Whom God has chose/Who is he ? you
ask/His name is Jesus Christ/The Lord of Hosts /There is no ther God/He must keep the field)

Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wr

Und wollten uns verschlingen,

So frchten wir uns nicht so sehr,

Es soll uns doch gelingen;

Der Frst dieser Welt,

Wie sauer er sich stellt,

Tut er uns doch nicht,

Das macht, er ist gericht't,

Ein Wrtlein kann ihn fllen.

(And even if the world were full of devils/Who wanted to gobble us up/ We are not too afraid/ We shall
succeed/The prince of this world/However bitter he may be/ Can do nothing to us/This means, he is finished/A short
word can bring him down)

Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn,

Und keinen Dank dazu haben,

Es ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan

Mit seinem Geist und Gaben.

Nehmen sie uns den Leib,

Gut, Ehr', Kind und Weib,

La fahren dahin,

Sie haben's kein Gewinn,

Das Reich mu uns doch bleiben.

(The word they shall let it stand/And have no thanks for it/It is with us in the plan/With its spirit and gifts/They
may take from us body/Property, honour, child and wife/Let them/It benefits them not/The kingdom has to remain
ours)

I have shown how grateful we are to the good Doctor for the freedom of spirit that recent literature
needed for its development. I have shown how he created for us the word, the language in which this
new literature was able to express itself. I would merely add that he initiated this sort of writing, that
this and fine writing itself really began with him, that his spiritual songs reveal the first important
manifestations of this style and already announce the particular character of the new writing. Anyone
wishing to say something about modern German literature has to start with Luther and not the
Nuremberg writer Hans Sachs,33 as some Romantic writers have done. Sachs was a troubador and
member of the honourable cobblers' guild, whose songs were an anaemic parody of the medieval long
songs known as Minnelieder and whose plays were an absurd travesty of the mystery plays. This fool,
who anxiously lampoons the open naivet of the Middle Ages, is probably the last poet of an earlier age
but by no means the first one of the new age. All that remains for me to say is that I will now
summarize the contrast between the new and the old literature using certain language.

The following points emerge from an examination of German literature that predates Luther:

1. Its material, like life itsef, is a mixture of two different elements that consume each other in a long
struggle so violently that they eventually merge into one: the Germanic national element and the
Indian-Gnostic element, so-called Catholic Christianity.

2. The treatment, or rather the spirit of the treatment in older literature, is romantic. The same is said
contemptuously of the material of that literature, of all manifestations of the Middle Ages which
emerged from the blending of the two elements mentioned earlier, German nationality and Catholic
Christianity. The romantic treatment of Greek history and mythology by medieval writers allows one
to see medieval customs and legends in classical form. The expressions 'classical' and 'romantic' refer
only to the spirit of the treatment. The treatment is classical if the form of that which is represented is
identical to that which is to be represented, as is the case with the art works of the Greeks, in which
the identity and the great harmony between form and idea are to be found. The treament is romantic

33 1494-1576. Sachs was a Meistersinger, that is, he belonged to a guild of lyricists and composers that held
competitions and awarded prizes. The guilds died out in 1875. He is said to have written over 6,000 works.
when the form revels the idea not through identity but when the identity can be guessed through
parables. I use the term 'parable' rather than 'symbol'. Greek mythology has many divine figures, all of
whom could receive a symbolic meaning despite identity and form. But in Greek religion it was only
the figure of the gods that was specific, whereas everything else, life and activity, was left to the
discretion of the poets for any treatment they wanted. In Christianity, however, there are no specific
figures but rather specific facts, specific sacred events and deeds, about which parables can be written
by the creative genius of human beings. It is said that Homer invented the Greek gods. In fact, they
already existed in outline, but he created stories about them. The medieval artists, on the other hand,
never dared to make up the slightest detail in the historical part of their religion: the Fall, Incarnation,
Baptism, Crucifixion and so on were sacrosannct facts, which could not be tinkered with, but about
which parables could be written by the creative genius of human beings. All of the arts of the Middle
Ages used this spirit of the parable treament, and this treatment is romantic. This, in medieval poetry
that mystic generalization, the figures are so shadowy and what they do is so unspecific, everything is
unclear, as if illuminated by alternating moonlight. The idea is suggested in the form merely like a
puzzle, and we see a vague form, of the sort that is suitable for spiritualist literature. There is no
crystal clear harmony between form and idea, as in Greek literature. But sometimes the idea outstrips
the given form, the latter trying in vain to reach the former, and we then see a strange and amazing
sublimity. Sometimes the form completely outgrows the idea, a trivial thought mutates into something
colossal, and we see groteque farce, and almost always we see formlessness.

3. The general character of that literature is that all products of it revealed the same secure and certain
belief prevailing at that time in all secular and sacred things. All views of the time were based
authorities. The poet made his way with the sureness of a mule, skirting the abyss of doubt, and his
works reveal a bold peace, a blessed confidence that was later impossible when the power of those
authorities, viz. those of the Pope, had been broken and everything else collapsed in its wake. So,
medieval poems all have the same character: they are all objective, epic and naive, as if they have been
written by the entire people and not an individual.

In the writing that blossomed after Luther, however, we find the opposite:

1. The material that is to be treated is the struggle of reformation interests and views with the old
order of things. The new sensitivity found the syncretism of the two elements previously mentioned,
German national beliefs and and Indian-Gnostic Christianity, repellent.The latter was regarded by this
new sensitivity as pagan idol worship, which was to be replaced by the true religion of the Judaic-Deist
gospel. A new order of things began to take shape. The spirit makes new inventions that promote the
well-being of matter. With the growth of industry and with philosophy spiritualism is discredited in the
minds of people. The third 'estate' emerges. Revolution is growling in hearts and minds. What the age
feels and thinks and wants is spoken aloud, and this is the stuff of modern literature.

2. The spirit of treatment is no longer romantic but classical. As a result of the renascence of the old
literature a joyful enthusiasm for classical writers spread throughout Europe. The scholars of the time
tried to adopt the spirit of classical antiquity or, at least, imitate the classical forms in their writings. If
they were unable, like the Greeks, to achieve a harmony of form and idea, they kept more strictly to the
externals of the Greek treatment. they separated various genres, as the Greeks did, and dispensed with
any sort of romantic extravagance and, in this sense, we call them 'classical'.

3. The general character of modern literature consists in the elevation to supremacy of individuality
and scepticism. The authorities have crumbled. Only reason is left to enlighten man, and his conscience
is his only staff to guide him through the aberrations of life. Man stands alone before his creator and
praises him in song. This is why this literature begins with spiritual songs of praise. But also later,
when the secular comes to dominate, the most heartfelt self-confidence, the feeling of being a personal
is uppermost in it. Creative writing is no longer objective, epic and naive, but subjective, lyrical and
reflective.