* First love, then the intrigue. In the name of the Presbytery Pastor Engels protested to Gottfried that the marriage of a divorced Catholic woman to a Protestant preacher was offensive. Gottfried replied by appealing to the eternal rights of man and made the following points with a good deal of unction.
"1. It was no crime for him to have drunk coffee with the lady in Hirzekümpchen"(p. 249).
"2. The matter is ambiguous as he had neither announced in public that he intended to marry the lady, nor that he did not intend to do so"(p. 251).
"3. As far as faith is concerned, no-one can know what the future holds in store" (p. 250).
"And with that out of the way, may I ask you to step inside and have a cup of coffee" (p. 251).
With this slogan Gottfried and Pastor Engels, who could not resist such an invitation, left the stage. In this way, quietly and yet forcefully Gottfried was able to resolve the conflict with the powers that be.
The following extract serves to illustrate the effect of the Maybug Club on Gottfried:
"It was June 29, 1841. On this day the first anniversary of the Maybug Club was to be celebrated on a grand scale" (p. 253). "A shout as of one voice arose to decide who should carry off the prize. Modestly Gottfried bent his knee before the Queen who placed the inevitable laurel wreath on his glowing brow, while the setting sun cast its brightest rays over the transfigured countenance of the poet" (p.285).
The solemn dedication of the imagined poetic fame of Heinrich von Ofterdingen is followed by the feelings and the wishes of the Blue Flower. That evening Mockel sang a Maybug anthem she had composed which ends with the following strophe symptomatic of the whole work:
"Und was lernt man aus der Geschicht'?
Maikäfer, flieg!
Wer alt ist krieyt kein Weiblein mehr Drum hör', bedenk' dich nicht zu sehr!
Maikäfer, flieg!
[And what's the moral of the tale?
Fly, Maybug, fly!
A man who's old will ne'er find wife, So make haste, do not waste your life, Fly, Maybug, fly!]
The ingenuous biographer remarks that "the invitation to marriage contained in the song was wholly free of any ulterior motives" (p.255). Gottfried perceived the ulterior motives but "was anxious not to miss" the opportunity of being crowned for two further years before the whole Maybug Club and of being an object of passion. So he married Mockel on May 22, 1843 after she had become a member of the Protestant Church despite her lack of faith.
This was done on the shabby pretext that "definite articles of faith are less important in the Protestant church than the ethical spirit"(p. 315).
Und das lernt man aus der Geschicht', Traut keiner blauen Blume nicht!
[So that's the moral of the tale:
The Bluest Flower will soon grow stale.]
Gottfried had established the relationship with Mockel on the pretext of leading her out of her unfaith into the Protestant Church. Mockel now demanded the Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss and lapsed into pagani**, "while with heavy heart he followed her on the path of doubt and into the abysses of negation. Together with her he toiled through the labyrinthine jungle of modern philosophy" (p. 308).
He is driven into negation not by the development of philosophy which even at that time began to impinge on the masses but by the intervention of a chance emotional relationship.
What he brings with him out of the labyrinth is revealed in his diaries:
"I should like to see whether the mighty river flowing from Kant to Feuerbach will drive me out into -- Pantheism!" (p. 308).
He writes just as if this particular river did not flow beyond pantheism, and as if Feuerbach were the last word in German philosophy!
"The corner-stone of my life", the diary goes on to say, "is not historical knowledge, but a coherent system, and the heart of theology is not ecclesiastical history but dogma" (ibid.).
He is clearly ignorant of the fact that the whole achievement of German philosophy lies in its dissolution of the coherent systems into historical knowledge and the heart of dogma into ecclesiastical history! -- In these confessions the image of the counter-revolutionary democrat stands revealed in every detail. For such a person movement is nothing more than a means by which to arrive at a few irremovable eternal truths and then to subside into a slothful tranquillity.
However, Gottfried's apologetic book-keeping of his whole development will enable the reader to judge the intensity of the revolutionary impulse that lay concealed in the melodramatic hamming of this theologian.
