Sunday, February 2:
Although R. is very worn out, he receives the committee of the Academic Wagner Society; and in the afternoon he pays calls, among others to Herr von Hülsen!
At 6 o'clock dinner at Frau von Schleinitz's house with General Tresckow, Count Solms, Marie Muchanoff, etc. Not a very pleasant atmosphere; R. plays for Marie Schl. part of the Prelude and the “Shepherd's Air” from Tristan — incomparably beautiful!
In the evening Bucher visits us; we are sincerely pleased to see him. We talked a lot about the German Reich and our worries concerning it. The Crown Prince is very ill; some say poisoned, and they may very well be right. The Empress and the Crown Princess are hostile to Germans, the former having made it a condition that her servants wear black beards and be Catholics.
Bucher tells us of a conversation between Bismarck and the Crown Princess, who said to him in her abrupt way, “You would like to be the Cromwell here, no doubt.” Whereupon B.: “A foreign princess may be excused from knowing how the German nobility stands in relation to its princes, or that, just as my fathers lived and died for their princes, I, too, live and die for the Emperor. Yet I must add that this feeling will disappear with me—my sons, for example, do not possess it, and it is quite possible that one of them might think himself a Cromwell!”
Bucher relates how worried Bismarck is about the future of the German Reich, how he is strengthening the trade connections. “Only ideality is lacking,” R. says. “All this fibbing about Strassburg University, this neglect of all artistic institutions—don't you feel this will have its revenge?”
Regret that Bismarck does not have the right wife—his wife is loyal and robust, but totally lacking in enterprise. Talked about Constantin Frantz, who has grievously compromised himself in the lawsuit concerning Pastor Grote in Hanover—he seems to have been accepting Guelph money.