Monday, April 7:
Sore foot. R. goes with our friends to the theater, which Gedon thinks very fine, too.
At lunch the two professors, the mayor, and the dean, who makes a fine speech to the three “men of the future,” as he calls R. and his two young friends, about what awaits them in joy and sorrow. Very affecting.
Dispute between him and R. over the Jews; the dean feels that intermarriage is the solution to the problem, but R. maintains that the Germans would then cease to exist, since the fair German blood is not strong enough to withstand this “al kali.” We can see, he says, how the Franks and the Normans were turned into Frenchmen, and Jewish blood is far more corrosive than Latin blood. R. goes on to say that his only hope is that “these fellows” will become so arrogant that they will no longer form misalliances with us; they might even give up speaking German—we should then learn Hebrew, in order to keep things running smoothly, but we should still remain Germans. With this joke the conversation is concluded.
The dean then declares that R. goes nowhere because he does not wish to be separated from me, to which R. replies that he got me too late.
Loser is continuing to advertise the concert in Berlin, and it really looks as if he is trying to put R. in an embarrassing position, whether it be, if he goes, an empty hall due to the ridiculous prices, or, if he does not go, an unpleasant scandal. It all reminds me of Dr. J. Lang!
In the evening Prof. Nietzsche reads us a new and interesting paper about the philosophers before Plato.
Connection with a murder, and I was angry that R. had no tears of sympathy for him! R. works out a plan which I find very good; since there is no prospect of the nation’s participating in his undertaking, he intends to hand the whole thing over to a banker, who will recover his interest from the price of the seats. This would preserve the artistic idea; as for the national aspect, R. cannot take care of that singlehanded.
Our friends stay for the afternoon and evening; I have to lie on my back throughout because of my foot. In the evening continuation of the reading.
Prof. Nietzsche tells me of a Prof. Paul Lagarde who, on account of a book on church and state, has been completely ostracized. A book by Karl Hillebrand on France and the French, dedicated to Hans von Bülow, seems to me the best that has been written on this subject.