Peter Rosegger
A Biographical Note
By Dr. Julius Petersen
I
In the heart of Austria lies Steiermark (Styria), a rough mountaincountry on the eastern slope of the Alps. Its inhabitants, protectedfrom the levelling influences of modern civilisation and cut off fromthat mingling with other peoples which destroys racial character, haveretained their old individuality and customs longer than any otherGerman people. Rough though the climate is, the soil stony, thestruggle for existence hard, these sons of the mountains have grownstubbornly inseparable from their home; it is with difficulty that theytake root in other soil--they are evermore drawn back to the placewhere once their cradle stood. In former centuries the Swiss soldiersin French service could not hear the home-like chime of cow-bellswithout a temptation to desert their colours; and time after time sonsof Steiermark have been driven back to their free hills by theconstraint of garrison life. The deserters were always easily caught:the sergeant in pursuit had simply to look for the culprit in hisfather's house. The _Heimweh_ (other languages can hardly express themeaning of this word) is the national sickness to which all natives ofthe Alps driven into foreign parts are subject, and it is but the otherside of that impassioned joy in the home, which finds expression injubilant songs and shouts rising for ever from the mountains to thesky.
Peter Rosegger is the national poet of Styria. If it can be said thatall men on their way through life carry with them a clod of home-soil,as the pious pilgrim carries a handful of sacred earth, then one maysay that this poet is home personified. "Styria on two legs," he iscalled by his own people. All that can move the soul of this people,from the lightest jest to the deepest longings and searchings, hasfound expression in his writings.
He has passed through many phases of life, from peasant to craftsman,to schoolmaster, to theologian, and all these phases are reflected inhis life-work. The son of the peasant, who on his journey has attainedthe heights of humanity, is always turning back to his starting-point.Like the old giant Ant?us, he draws new strength from his mother Earth.Close touch with the home soil is for him a condition of life. WhenRosegger was on a lecturing tour through the great German cities, wherehe was enthusiastically greeted by audiences of thousands, there neverleft him the longing for the silent peace of the mountains; and_Heimweh_ drove him away even from the shining Gulf of Naples. EvenGraz, the beautiful capital of Steiermark, where Rosegger has hisvine-covered house, cannot take the place of home for him. In thesummer months he escapes to Krieglach in the M?rztal; there he livesamong his native people, and from his window he looks out to thoseheights where, out of sight, stands a deserted farm--his birthplace.
In Alpl, near Krieglach, a forest community which has now almost ceasedto exist and even at the time of his birth consisted only oftwenty-three farms, Rosegger came into the world on July 31st, 1843. Itwas almost by accident that he learnt to read and to write. An oldschoolmaster, whom the Church had dismissed from his office because ofhis leanings towards freedom in 1848, wandered a beggar through themountains, and when he came to the peasants of Alpl they said: "Beggarswe have anyhow in plenty, but a schoolmaster we have not and neverhave had since the world began. He shall be schoolmaster here, and ourchildren shall learn to read and to write; if it does no good, it cando no harm." And so the old schoolmaster went hawking his learning fromhouse to house, and his school fees consisted of the right to eat asmuch as ever he liked.
Peter, the son of the _Wald-bauer_ (forest peasant),[1] was soon knownfor his learning. Once in the dead of winter he was taken to one of thehighest-lying farms, where the old peasant owner wanted to make herwill. There being neither paper nor ink, he wrote the will withcharcoal inside a coffer lid, for the boy was gifted with a brightmother-wit which never left him at a loss. He read everything printedthat he could lay hands on, but as he did not find enough to read, hebegan to write himself; stories of saints, sermons, works of devotionand calendars. These he illustrated with drawings of his own invention.A student who had spent his holidays in the mountains had left him alittle box of watercolours. The boy cut a lock of hair from his ownhead, bound it to a little stick, and so made himself a brush withwhich to paint his pictures of his saints. This story is a symbol ofall Rosegger's achievement of learning. However much outside help hemay have received, he may thank himself for the best, after all. "Mylittle saddle-horse," says he, "has never fed upon the dry hay ofschool-knowledge, but only on the green grass of life itself. Thelittle that I know, Life has taught me, and the little that I can do,Necessity. The inability to express myself by word of mouth has taughtme to write, and my desire to share that written word with otherstaught me to read. As the father of a family, with a very uncertainincome, I learnt arithmetic; as a herdsman on the pasture land,zoology; as farmer and stonecutter, mineralogy; as hay-maker andwoodcutter, botany. Geography I learnt in travelling; history fromevents which followed one another as cause and consequence; folklore Ilearnt as a travelling journeyman; and astronomy in sleepless nights,when I lay and looked up at the stars. Thoughts about physiology,anatomy, medicine, and patience have come to me in illness; theology Ihave turned to in times of need and loneliness; and law has been learntin self-examination. Music became dear to me from the birds of thewoods and the sound of waterfalls. The telling of stories I neverlearnt at all. My first baby stammer--so says our old cousin--was astory in Styrian dialect; and my life, according to the belletristicnewspapers, was a romance."
His life, indeed, is rich in wonders, and the evolution of the peasantboy a sort of fairy tale. Rosegger has described for us his youth inthe form of a novel, _Heidepeters Gabriel_ (1872), in which it allreads like an impossible romance. Later he has published the story ofhis life in a series of autobiographical writings, _Waldheimat_ (_TheForest Home_, 1875); _Als Ich jung noch war_ (_When I was still young_,1895); _Mein Weltleben_ (_My Life in the World_, 1898); in these thesame course of events is given with a wonderful truth to life. Asdocuments of a rare human evolution they may stand on a level withRousseau's _Confessions_; they are more lovable, though no less honest.
The boy very early saw something of the world. As a little fellow hisfather took him with him on a pilgrimage to Maria Zell; his godfather,on another pilgrimage, pointed out to him the first railway as anuncanny bit of devil's invention; and on one occasion theeleven-year-old boy set out alone for Vienna, reaching the Imperialcity after a several days' tramp. His aim was to visit the Kaiser JosefII, of whose friendliness so many stories were going about among hispeople. As a matter of fact, Josef II had been lying in his grave formore than sixty years, and his visitor was conducted to his mausoleum.Later, as he was again wandering in the streets and casting about howto get home (for of his travelling money--the proceeds of the sale of alamb--only just the equivalent of the little beast's tail was left), abearded man came up to him and offered him five florins if he wouldpose for half an hour in his studio. And, wonder on wonder, thewater-colour which the artist painted from this sketch now hangs in theRosegger Room at M?rzzuschlag, which is the nucleus of a futureRosegger Museum! Here also is preserved the tailor's goose, which laterthe boy, then in his apprenticeship, had to carry after his master; andbeside it is a peasant's waistcoat--the same apprentice's claim tojourneymanship! It appears that, though his brothers and sisters allbecame farm-workers, the Waldbauer's first-born proved to be too sicklyfor the ancestral calling. He was to become a priest. The parish priestof Birkfeld offered to instruct him in Latin. Peter, as a candidate forholy orders, was entrusted to the care of a peasant in that parish.After three days he ran away in the night--home-sickness was too muchfor him. So in 1860 he became apprentice to a master-tailor of his owndistrict, and played his part in his itinerant trade. He worked on morethan sixty farms in the neighbourhood, and in this way learned to knowthe life of the people in Styria more intimately than would have beenpossible in any other calling. The inexhaustible wealth of strangecharacter and peasant originality and the unique acquaintance with themost ancient
and characteristic native customs which Rosegger displaysin his later writings, are the fruit of those years of closeobservation.
With the passion for reading grew the desire to write. One day hismaster set out, leaving his carefully guarded paper-patterns lyingabout. He was accustomed to apprentices, anxious to become independent,making use of such an opportunity to copy the patterns for themselves.His apprentice Peter seized on them too, concerning himself with theirshape not at all, but only with the contents of the cut-out newspaperswhose stale news he devoured. This made his master almost despair ofhim. "Honesty's a very fine thing, Peter," he said, "but I can clearlysee you'll never be much of a credit to me. Here you are, waiting fromweek to week for the end of your time, and have never yet stolen onepattern from your master!"
Others, too, prophesied to the youth that he would never make a propertailor. Once he had to share quarters with a shoemaker's apprentice.Then it was that the little note-book in which he used to write songsof his own making was discovered. The song which made Roseggercelebrated, and which as a genuine folk-song is not only sung inStyria, but all over Germany, was amongst them: "Darf ih's Dirndlliabe." The beauty of this song, which is inseparable from its dialect,can scarcely be rendered in a translation: without the charming formthe idea is almost too primitive. The boy goes in succession to priest,father, and mother, and puts the question to them, whether he may lovethe maid? Each puts him sharply off until at last he goes to the LordGod Himself, and there finds sympathy with his inquiry.
"Why yes, of course," He smiled and said; "Because of the boy I have made the maid."
The shoemaker's apprentice found this moral most enlightening anddetermined to send the song to his sweetheart, but could not believethat the young tailor could make such verses without having asweetheart of his own. "Get along--and look here, you tell me of anyoneelse who can turn out verses like that!" he said admiringly. "And don'tbe angry, tailor; I don't understand much of your trade, but afterlooking at your father's new jacket I don't mind telling you thatyou'll never make a first-rate tailor. Your song now, _that's_ amasterpiece if you like. Now, don't you forget, that down here on theplain and in the farmer's oat-straw I told you how it would be--you'llnever remain a tailor. You'll go to the towns and become somebody;you'll be a bookbinder! Mark my word, in the end you'll become abookbinder!"
That was the highest the shoemaker's apprentice could conceive of. Butit soon happened otherwise. Passing tourists had come across the verseswhich the country folk had already set to music, and they encouragedthe author to send certain of them to town. As a result, the editor ofthe Graz _Daily Post_ took an interest in the people's poet, and askedhim to send him all the poetry he had written and to give him anaccount of his life. Peter packed up, and, carrying a bundle ofmanuscripts weighing fifteen pounds, set off on his way to Graz. Thepostage for such a parcel would have been quite beyond his means.
II
At the end of 1864 an article appeared in the Graz _Daily Post_,entitled _A Styrian Poet of the People_, in which a largerpublic was called upon to assist the young talented writer. Andnow from all quarters sendings poured into the post office inKrieglach--congratulations, books, small sums of money, and provisions.A bookseller in Leibach offered him an apprenticeship. Roseggeraccepted it, but after a few days _Heimweh_ again drove him from theunfamiliar district. However, a free scholarship was found for him atthe Graz Commercial Academy; friends and teachers were not wanting, andhere, between the years 1865-9 the farmer's son, not yet able, when heentered it, to write correctly, received an intellectual training whichleft him no longer inferior to the well educated. In the same year thathe left this institution his first book, a volume of poems in dialect,and entitled _Zither und Hackbrett_ (_Zither and Dulcimer_), waspublished. A second collection, _Tannenharz und Fichtennadeln_(_Pine-resin and Fir-needles_), came out in the following year; and in1870 also appeared his first picture of Styrian peasant life,_Sittenbilder aus dem Steierischen Oberlande_. These won him some fame;already publishers began to approach him with offers. And now once moremiracle entered his life. In the summer of 1872 a young and beautifulGraz lady, accompanied by a friend, made a pilgrimage to the birthplaceof her favourite poet; there by chance she and her poet met, and a yearlater they were married. Their happy life together lasted but a shorttime; after the birth of a second child the young wife died. Six yearsafter his sad loss Rosegger made a second and equally happy marriage.
About his life since then there is not much to tell. One fact, however,should be emphasised; namely, that Rosegger, who in his early years hadbecome indebted to so many friends, very soon began to pay them back,and the account has long since been balanced in his favour and nowshows a debit on the other side. Many a time has he introduced the workof young writers to the literary world with warm words ofrecommendation, just as the distinguished poet Robert Hammerling oncedid for his first collection of poems. The greater part of the profitsof his extensive lecture tour have been used for the public good.Through him, a Catholic, M?rzzuschlag has got a Protestant church; hishome-parish, Alpl, has for some years now had a school-house of its ownfor which it has to thank Rosegger. And only a short time ago it washis eloquent intervention that obtained a large contribution for theGerman School-Society--a society which aims at preservingrace-characteristics and culture where they are threatened on thelanguage frontiers. Were I to give data of his public life during thelast ten years, they would consist of such services as these, and ofthe grateful homage which is rendered him by the many who love andhonour him. But his inner development is revealed in the writings ofhis maturity; for Rosegger has written nothing but what in his inmostheart he has experienced. Since 1876 he has edited a monthly magazine,_Heimgarten_, which is his public diary. "Heimgarten," he tells us, "isthe name given in various districts to that house in the Alpine villagein which of an evening the village folk come together, bringing insmall handwork to do and enjoying one another's company. Here are to befound the brightest of the inhabitants, those readiest in storytellingand description, those who are men of the world, or who would like tobe such, assembled for educative and stimulating intercourse. In theHeimgarten, stories and legends, tragic and comic incidents from lifeare repeated; songs and ballads are sung; poems are improvised; farcesand comedies are given, or incidents of the day and important events inthe life of the village or the wide world are discussed by the villagewiseacres. Intercourse in the Heimgarten enlightens and enriches themind, quickens, warms, and ennobles the heart. This homely type fromAlpine village life furnishes the title and programme for my monthlymagazine."
And to this programme the paper, which has become a home for truenational education, has held faithfully for thirty-four years. Here allstories, articles, and poems of Rosegger's first appeared, and in thispaper he expresses his views on all vital questions of the day.
"All we poets are foresters and woodwards in the great forest ofmankind," said once Berthold Auerbach, another poet of the people, toRosegger. Such a one the editor of the _Heimgarten_ feels himself tobe, expending, as he does, all his ripe experience and loving care uponthe husbandry which has been entrusted to him. To protect the vanishingtraditional customs of his forefathers, their natural conceptions ofright and wrong, the blessing of family life, their healthycontentment--the outcome of bodily toil and the love of thehome--against the demoralisation of modern hyperculture, is his mostearnest aim.
The principal heroes of his romances are by preference those whosecalling involves the task of cherishing and teaching the people:schoolmasters and priests. The _Writings of the Forest Schoolmaster_(1878) is the name of Rosegger's most popular work, which already in1908 appeared in its seventy-eighth edition, and which, let us hope,may within the author's lifetime still reach its hundredth edition. Thetheme is the gradual emergence of a forest parish from a group ofdemoralised and utterly uneducated men to a social organisation, to alawful and religiously organised community. A similar _Kulturroman_ is_Der Gottsucher_ (_The God-seeker_, 1883), which l
eads us back intopast centuries. A parish has been excommunicated by the Church formurdering its priest. The people cannot exist without religion, and,deprived of their old church, they create a new one, a religion ofNature, by means of which the leader of the community brings back orderand industry to the village. The third novel belonging to this series,_Das Ewige Licht_ (_The Light Eternal_, 1897), is a pessimisticcounterpart to the _Waldschulmeister_. This treats of the dangers toreligion which arise from modern civilisation. The faithful priest of amountain parish has to look on helplessly while the modern worldthrusts itself into the mountain idyll; while the atmosphere of thegreat cities, brought up by mountain climbers and summer visitors, andthe smoke from the chimneys of the ever-spreading industrialism in thevalleys below, poison the pure air, and, morally and economically, ruinthe old inhabitants.
But the peasantry has yet another enemy: the love of sport among thenobility. As once Karl Marx, the theorist of collectivism, studied inScotland the expropriation of man from the soil in favour of deer, andin his _Kapital_ exposed the tragic consequences of such excessivesport, so now Rosegger in his home must look on at the depopulating ofentire villages. By this means his own birthplace has been nearlyruined. In his first novel, _Heidepeters Gabriel_, he already shows thehopeless struggle of the peasant against the devastation of his fieldsby game, a struggle which leads to poaching and to prison. And in hisnovel _Jacob der Letzte_ (1888), which, from an artistic point of view,is perhaps the most complete of his works, the principal character, thelast descendant of an old peasant family, who clings tenaciously to theold soil, is beaten and goes under in the struggle. Such a single casebecomes for Rosegger an alarming symptom of the universal decline ofthe free peasantry. "What will come of it?" he asks, when he receivesfrom numerous parts of Germany letters all witnessing to the samefacts: "I am no practical teacher of political economy, I am only apoet; but they say that poets are seers, and I verily see that futuregenerations will have to go home to the land again, that only on theland can the social question be peacefully and lastingly solved. Heremaster and man live on far more friendly footing than in the city, andcome humanly nearer together. For twenty-five years I have beenpreaching in every way the return to natural living. I have built mylittle house in a peasant village and I live right among thepeasants.--I am utterly dissatisfied with the leading spirits of ourtime: they don't teach us to live, they teach us only to think. Onething we have still to learn--to forget what they have taught us. Ourtrue Mother is the Earth: from her spring our bread and our ideals."
The return of the townspeople to nature forms the theme of two laternovels, _Erdsegen_ (_The Earth and the Fullness Thereof_, 1900) and_Weltgift_ (_The Poison of the World_, 1903). In the former the editorof a paper pledges himself to live a whole year as farm-labourer inthe country. He not only earns his wager, but in the course of theyear so richly experiences and realises the blessedness of life on theland that, cured of the fever of city life, he marries a village girland starts his own farm. This thesis, with its obvious strong purpose,aroused opposition. The chief objection brought forward was that itwould be impossible for a thoroughly town-bred person to take such deeproot in the country. In reply to this, Rosegger points in the othernovel to the fate of a townsman, who, unlike the character in theformer book, is too full of the city virus for recovery. The poison ofthe world has eaten right into him, and he cannot escape his doom.
Rosegger can only compare town and country by the strongest contrast oflight and shade. And in the talks which he collected in 1885 under thetitle of _Mountain Sermons, delivered in these latter days in the openair, and dedicated to the reviling and derision of our Enemies, theWeaknesses, the Vices and the Errors of Civilisation_, a fanaticalanger is occasionally apparent: one misses the beatitudes which thetitle leads one to expect.
And yet love is the gospel which Rosegger proclaims at all times, andreligious questions pervade his writings from first to last. He ishimself, like the chief character in his book, a God-seeker. "Mancreates for himself an ideal, an always nobler image of himself, callsit God and strives after it. So he climbs as if on a rope ladder,throwing the upper end higher and higher up the rugged wall of rockstowards the heaven of perfection. But who taught him to do this? SurelyHe who has put the power and spirit of growth in His creature's heart,God the Father, who from everlasting created the world and will createit to everlasting."
These conceptions are not exactly canonical, and it has been Rosegger'sexperience to have an article of his, _How I picture to myself thepersonality of Christ_, confiscated by the licensing authorities asblasphemous. This induced him twice afterwards openly to state hisconvictions; once in _Mein Himmelreich_ (_My Kingdom of Heaven_, 1900),and again in _I.N.R.I: Frohe Botschaft eines armen S?nders_ (_TheGospel of a poor Sinner_, 1904). These much-discussed writings give usan image of Christ as Rosegger made it, putting it together from thefour gospels: a Christ rejoicing in God, intimate with man's heart,filled with joy of the earth, with mighty creative energy, withconsuming wrath in due season; the Superman, the God-man in the highestsense.
Rosegger is as strongly opposed to all the violent "Missions" movementsin the Church as to the faith-destroying tendency of the modern world'spoint of view. He holds piously by many an old belief, not because itis for him an article of faith, but because it is a piece of poeticchildhood's remembrance; and he has saved many a dogma for himself byinterpreting it symbolically and not literally. To the most poetic ofhis interpretations belongs that of the Cross: "The Cross has a footrooted in Earth; that means 'Man, make use of the Earth.' The Cross hasa head that towers up into the air of heaven; that means 'Man, rememberthy ideals.' The Cross has two arms stretching out to right and left,not to chastise men, but to embrace all the world; that means 'Man,love thy brothers.' Love, Joy,--those are the two beams of our Cross.The world is not here as a penance, but a joy." In such sentences asthese is contained Rosegger's whole Gospel of Joy, which looks for itsfulfilment on this side. For him the highest aim of civilisation, as ofreligion, is the happiness of mankind.
This brings us to a conclusion. We have now seen Rosegger develop frompeasant to craftsman, to teacher, to preacher. And now another questionarises: Has he not possibly reached a greater height still--is he aprophet? Of that only late generations may judge; to them it is givento see whether the new birth of mankind, which Rosegger, like Tolstoy,looks for from a return to the simplicities of life on the land, willbe realised. With Rosegger's prophecy, which we shall do well toconsider, I close this paper. "The future generations will find peaceand happiness again when they turn back to Nature and give themselvesup to the healthy influences of the life of the soil. As yet, when theleaves turn yellow, the townsfolk hurry back into their walls; butthere will come a time when the well-to-do citizens will buy land andfarm it themselves like peasants, and when artisans will clear andreclaim such land from the wilderness itself. They will renouncehyper-intellectualism, and find pleasure and new vigour in bodily toil;and they will make laws under which a firm-rooted and honourablepeasantry can once more thrive."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _Wald-bauer_, one whose farm included forest-land.