Thursday, May 29:
R. went with our girl to see our old friend [Alwine] Frommann; I, meanwhile, was with the friendly ladies Marie Much and Schleinitz. My father arrived, worn out and preoccupied. He took me and Lusch to the Bojanowskis, relations of Hans, whom I was glad to have meet my girl. Frau v. B. was less friendly than last summer and made no great fuss over her, probably on subsequent instructions from Hans’s sister. Lunch with my father; afterward many Hungarians, who had come to hear Christus.
At 6 o’clock to the church; the performance went on until 9. A remarkable, peculiar impression, best summed up in the words R. said to me in the evening: “He is the last great victim of this Latin-Roman world.” During the very first bars, R. said to me, “He conducts splendidly, it will be magnificent.” It is a formulation of faith in the new church order, which dispenses with pomp, although in the church this pomp is only a cruel net in which such feelings are trapped. The whole work is thoroughly German, and only made possible by appealing to German sensibilities at their best; it could only be performed by Germans.
R.’s reaction covers all extremes, from ravishment to immense indignation, in his attempt to do it both profound and loving justice. After the performance we went with my father to the Bürger-Ressource - very popular! R. wanted to make a speech, but is unable to say a word before all these beer mugs and knitting women. “They are poor people,” says my father, of whom R. declares that one can understand him only if one sees him as he is here, a thoroughly popular and friendly German figure.