Wednesday, March 11:
R. talks in the morning about a capital city for the German Reich - how he would like to see it built where the river Main flows into the Rhine. “One can’t blame the Alsatians for preferring Paris to Berlin. Cultural ideas have been forgotten, and all that remains of the Reich is the Prussian uniform.”
Much delight in Fidi; R. says, “He is the finest testimony to our love.” When I tell him that, because of the shade our boy had placed aslant on his head, I had managed to see one of his eyes singly and had been very surprised by its beauty and brilliance, R. says, “Yes, a single eye would certainly make more effect than two, and the fact that Nature gave us two shows that in this connection it was more interested in the question of seeing than in that of being seen.”
Letter from Marie Schl.; the excellent woman is arranging tableaux in Berlin for the benefit of Bayreuth. In the evening read some of Tieck’s critical studies and much enjoyed his account of a popular play. R. told me that his uncle once spoke about the essays on Goethe and Shakespeare which Tieck was planning to write and had told him that all the things Tieck wanted to say sounded wonderful; but Tieck was “lazy,” never completed anything.