Truths. Prodosh Aich
we did not understand as yet the deeper meaning of Christ and of His words, we had at least nothing to unlearn in later times ...“
His memories of the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian written a little before he will die are yet remarkable. We find on pages 67-69 of his autobiography:
“A large number of Jews had been received at Dessau by a former duke; ...he stipulated that they should only settle in certain streets. These streets were by no means the worst streets of the town; on the contrary, they showed greater comfort and hardly any of the squalor which disgraced the Jewish quarters in other towns in Germany. As children we were brought up without any prejudice against the Jews, though we had, no doubt, a certain feeling that they were tolerated only, and were not quite on the same level with ourselves. We also felt the religious difficulty sometimes very strongly. Were the Jews not the murderers of Christ? And had they not said: ‘the blood be on us and on our children’? ...I knew several Jewish families, and received much kindness from them as a boy. Many of these families were wealthy, but they never displayed their wealth, and in consequence excited no envy. All that is changed now. The children of the Jews who formerly lived in a very quiet style at Dessau, now occupy the best houses, indulge in most expensive tastes, and try in every way to outshine their non-Jewish neighbours. They buy themselves, and, when they can, stipulate for stars and orders as rewards for successful financial operations, carried out with the money of princely personages. Hence the revulsion of feeling all over Germany, or what is called Anti-Semitism, which has assumed not only a social, but also a political significance. I doubt whether there is anything religious in it, as there was when we were boys. ...One cannot blame the Jews or any other speculator for using their opportunities, but they must not complain either if they excite envy, and if that envy assumes in the end a dangerous character.”
On page 77 ff we read:
“The very idea of death never came near me till my grandfather died (1835), but even then I was only about twelve years old, and though I had seen much of him, particularly during the years that my mother lived again in his house, yet he was too old to take much share in his grandchildren’s amusements. ...He made no secret that he cared more for the son of his son who was the heir, and was to perpetuate the name of Basedow, than for the son of his daughter.”
As indicated earlier Adelheid is keen maintaining her social duties. She sends her children to visit both families. She does not visit them. What Max Müller lets us know in the following sub-sentence is puzzling: “particularly during the years that my mother lived again in his house”. We keep this small puzzle in mind.
When Friedrich Maximilan has just passed twelve, Adelheid sends him to one Professor Carus at Leipzig, a friend of late Wilhelm Müller. It seems, Adelheid loses control over him and feels that he needed the guidance of a male authority. So it is handed-down. Professor Carus admits him to the best school at Leipzig. His son Victor is of the same age and visits the same school. We turn again to Max Müller‘s autobiography, to the chapter “Childhood at Dessau”, p. 79:
“As far back as I can remember I was a martyr to headaches. No doctor could help me, no one seemed to know the cause. It was a migraine, and though I watched carefully I could not trace it to any fault of mine. The idea that it came from overwork was certainly untrue. It came and went, and if it was one day on the right side it was always the next time on the left, even though I was free from it sometimes for a week or a fortnight, or even longer. It was strange also that it seldom lasted beyond one day, and that I always felt particularly strong and well the day after I had been prostrate. For prostrate I was, and generally quite unable to do anything. I had to lie down and try to sleep. After a good sleep I was well, but when the pain had been very bad I found that sometimes the very skin of my forehead had peeled off. In this way I often lost two or three days in a week and as my work had to be done somehow, it was often done anyhow, and I was scolded and punished, really without any fault of mine own.”
All in all, the child-life of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau has been depressive which demanded strategies to stand the adversities he faces. Max Müller closes this chapter in his Autobiography with the words, p. 92/93:
“My narrow Dessau views became a little widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at Berlin. Still, during all this time I saw but little of what is called society, I only knew of people whom I loved and of people whom I disliked. There was no room as yet for indifferent people, whom one tolerates and is civil to without caring whether one sees them again or not. Of the simplest duties of society also I was completely ignorant. No one ever told me what to say and what to do or what not to say and what not to do. What I felt I said, what I thought right I did. There was, in fact, in my small native town very little that could be called society.
*****
We have put together the factors that engraved the basic personality of Friedrich Maximilian at Anhalt-Dessau mostly in the words written by Max Müller. We have not commented or analysed contradictions in them or on Friedrich Maximilian’s internalized strategies to compensate his agonies experienced in child-life, nor on repressions exercised by social facts. We feel we should not conceal our conclusions before we close this chapter, i.e. “Childhood at Dessau” as it has been chaptered by Max Müller.
As mentioned earlier, the surname Müller is extremely frequent all over Germany. Friedrich Maximilian does not feel comfortable to be a “Müller”. His paternal grandfather was a poor tailor. His grandfather marries a relatively rich widow of a master butcher to provide education for his son Wilhelm, the only child alive out of seven children. Well, a butcher become quite well to do in terms of money, but is not considered to be a respected occupation in Dessau or elsewhere either.
As a child, he identifies more with the family of his mother and glorifies “achievements” of his father. Thus, he represses the background of being a “Müller” and all that goes with it. We recall that Wilhelm Müller dies early at the age of 33. He becomes a schoolteacher when he passed his 25. Shortly later, he becomes the librarian of the small Duchy Anhalt-Dessau. He does not have much time to excel as a writer and a poet. Yet we find the following lines (Autobiography, p. 47-48) in the beginning pages of the same chapter “Childhood at Dessau”.
“There is curious race of people, who, as soon as a man of any note dies, are ready to found anything for him – a monument, a picture, a school, a prize, a society – to keep alive his memory. Of course societies want presidents, members of council, committees, secretaries &c., and at last, subscriptions also. Thus it has happened that the name of founder (Gründer) has assumed particularly in Germany, a perfume by no means sweet. Those who are asked to subscribe to such testimonials know how disagreeable it is to decline to give at least their name, deeply as they feel that in giving it they are offending against the rules of historical perspective. I should not say that my father was one of the great poets of Germany, though Heine, no mean critic, declared that he placed his lyric poetry next to that of Goethe. ... His poems became popular in the true sense of the word, and there are some which the people in the street sing even now without being aware of the name of their author. Schubert’s compositions also have contributed much to the wide popularity of his Schöne Müllerin and his Winterreise, ... In the company of Mendelsohn, the philosopher and of F. Schneider, the composer, a monument of my father in the principal street of his native town, and before the school in which he had been a pupil and a teacher, could hardly seen out of place.”
Well, it is more than a “Freudian slip”, it is more than “going the extra mile”; it is more than “bigger, nicer, better”. We keep in mind; whatever we know about the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian, we know a little from the archives, from “My Autobiography” written by Max Müller in 1898–99, a little before he dies and those two volumes written by Georgina Max Müller.