Wednesday, July 2:
“You have been sent to me from heaven, that is what I have just been telling myself,” R. calls out to me in the morning, “and everything else has had to give way to that.”
At breakfast we discuss the reports we have just heard that Count Roon has sold all his estates in Mark Brandenburg and all the rights belonging to them, worth 400,000 thalers, to Herr Bleichroder, while he himself is retiring to South Germany! The Brandenburg nobleman abandons the Prussian monarchy, and a Jew takes his place! And Bismarck? He is said to have proposed to King Wilhelm that he take over the government again, and the latter is said to have refused. R. considers the situation of Bismarck, who is now in solitary retirement in Varzin, a tragic one; he is breaking up the Prussian monarchy and he is right to do so, but where is he heading, what has happened to the German idea?
R. says, if only they had declared in the press law their intention of preserving the German language from complete destitution and setting up a commission to impose fines for distortions in the newspapers! Even in Uhland we find completely false constructions and senseless word formations. The individual can do hardly anything more to stem the tide of this decadence, and, however much energy is spent on research and knowledge, little attention is given to the presentation. R. says that even Grimm paid no attention in his grammar to the logic of syntax.
Replied to Alwine Frommann, who has written to me in her own unique way. R. writes business letters in connection with the Haase affair. The weather is cold, but we go to the new house, where Fidi has a conversation with the mason; he is now quite different since his hair has been cut short, more conscious of his maleness; he will not go with the other children to the mayor’s in spite of cake and strawberries, or with me either, insists on being called Helferich, and hits Eva, telling her, “My name is now Helferich!”
Read Uhland in the evening, much pleasure in the many different characters, in particular the monk Ilsan diverts us greatly; the Nibelungenlied still makes a powerful impact on us, particularly the second part. Whoever wrote it was greater than Wolfram, because he was inspired by folk poetry and by figures close to the common people. Wolfram by foreign influence; the poet of the Nibelungenlied was on his own home ground. The pitifulness of Hebbel and Geibel!
R. concludes the day with the verse, “None is of freedom or of life deserving unless he daily conquer it anew.” “This daily struggle to achieve one’s aim - the devil take all else!”