Wednesday, November 26:
R. was very dismayed yesterday by the conductor Zumpe; he had been through both the Egmont Overture and the Mozart Symphony with him, and the good man had taken in nothing, or he overdid it all. “I will talk to them again about tempi,” R. says, and wonders whether he was perhaps like that himself in his youth, so dense and inattentive.
He works; I go to see Malwida, and since she feels wretched in her apartment, I beg her urgently to move in with us, which, since she finally accepts, means for me some rearrangements in the house. Visit from the dean, who talks very impressively about the wretchedness of the Protestant church today: the clergymen cannot bring themselves to consent to be pastors and no longer officials; he seeks in vain to prove to them that they can never be deprived of their influence over children, the poor, and the sick. All they do is abuse Prussia and Bismarck and look to their “dear God, who is still in charge and can put his foot down!” A reform cannot be achieved since, through our own fault, people have become indifferent.
The dean speaks of the King with great concern. Alas, worries everywhere!
In the mornings R. is now reading Freytag’s Bilder aus der Vorzeit and is very content with this light fare; he relates to us features of the life and civilization of the ancient Germans which are very gripping. “A pity that it has all vanished—Moltke is perhaps the last true representative of this German character.”