by Lyndon Orr
FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON DONNIGES
The middle part of the nineteenth century is a period which has becomemore or less obscure to most Americans and Englishmen. At one end thethunderous campaigns of Napoleon are dying away. In the latter partof the century we remember the gorgeousness of the Tuileries, the fouryears' strife of our own Civil War, and then the golden drift of peacewith which the century ended. Between these two extremes there is astretch of history which seems to lack interest for the average studentof to-day.
In America, that was a period when we took little interest in themovement of affairs on the continent of Europe. It would not be easy,for instance, to imagine an American of 1840 cogitating on problems ofsocialism, or trying to invent some new form of arbeiterverein. GeneralChoke was still swindling English emigrants. The Young Columbian wasstill darting out from behind a table to declare how thoroughly hedefied the British lion. But neither of these patriots, any more thantheir English compeers, was seriously disturbed about the interests ofthe rest of the world. The Englishman was contentedly singing "God Savethe Queen!" The American, was apostrophizing the bird of freedomwith the floridity of rhetoric that reached its climax in the "PogramDefiance." What the Dutchies and Frenchies were doing was little more toan Englishman than to an American.
Continental Europe was a mystery to English-speaking people. Those whotraveled abroad took their own servants with them, spoke only English,and went through the whole European maze with absolute indifference. Tothem the socialist, who had scarcely received a name, was an imaginarybeing. If he existed, he was only a sort of offspring of the Napoleonicwars--a creature who had not yet fitted into the ordinary course ofthings. He was an anomaly, a person who howled in beer-houses, and whowould presently be regulated, either by the statesmen or by the police.
When our old friend, Mark Tapley, was making with his master a homewardvoyage to Britain, what did he know or even care about the politics ofFrance, or Germany, or Austria, or Russia? Not the slightest, you may besure. Mark and his master represented the complete indifference of theEnglishman or American--not necessarily a well-bred indifference, butan indifference that was insular on the one hand and republican onthe other. If either of them had heard of a gentleman who pillaged anunmarried lady's luggage in order to secure a valuable paper for anotherlady, who was married, they would both have looked severely at thisabnormal person, and the American would doubtless have added a remarkwhich had something to do with the matchless purity of Columbia'sdaughters.
If, again, they had been told that Ferdinand Lassalle had joined in thegreat movement initiated by Karl Marx, it is absolutely certain thatneither the Englishman nor the American could have given you theslightest notion as to who these individuals were. Thrones mightbe tottering all over Europe; the red flag might wave in a score ofcities--what would all this signify, so long as Britannia ruled thewaves, while Columbia's feathered emblem shrieked defiance threethousand miles away?
And yet few more momentous events have happened in a century than theunion which led one man to give his eloquence to the social cause, andthe other to suffer for that cause until his death. Marx had the higherthought, but his disciple Lassalle had the more attractive way ofpresenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalidcemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises,and that Lassalle--brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for hispenetrating genius--should have lived in luxury, but should now knownothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence andran beside him in the glory of his triumph.
Ferdinand Lassalle was a native of Breslau, the son of a wealthyJewish silk-merchant. Heymann Lassal--for thus the father spelled hisname--stroked his hands at young Ferdinand's cleverness, but he meant itto be a commercial cleverness. He gave the boy a thorough education atthe University of Breslau, and later at Berlin. He was an affectionateparent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.
It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step thathis son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood,feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he hastoiled for the son the son thinks that if this toil were given forlove, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. YoungLassalle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on auniversity career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to themost cultured circles.
Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against hisrace. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty yearsbefore to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly felt inGermany, as it had already been in France. This was true in general, butespecially true of Lassalle, whose features were not of a Semitic type,who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite in many salons.His portraits make him seem a high-bred and high-spirited Prussian,with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a face that has a sense ofhumor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent thought.
No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so manycompeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer asHeinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning Lassalle, had notthe latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to Varnhagenvon Ense, the German historian:
My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man ofremarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, withthe widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have everknown, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy ofwill and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I foundunited so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.
No better proof of Lassalle's enthusiasm can be found than a few linesfrom his own writings:
I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpoweringeloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kissesrose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; hecalls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that isfiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!
Lassalle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every onewhom he knew. This was often misunderstood. It was misunderstood in hisrelations with women, and especially in the celebrated affair of theCountess von Hatzfeldt, which began in the year 1846--that is to say, inthe twenty-first year of Lassalle's age.
In truth, there was no real scandal in the matter, for the countess wastwice the age of Lassalle. It was precisely because he was so young thathe let his eagerness to defend a woman in distress make him forgetthe ordinary usage of society, and expose himself to mean and unworthycriticism which lasted all his life. It began by his introduction tothe Countess von Hatzfeldt, a lady who was grossly ill-treated by herhusband. She had suffered insult and imprisonment in the family castles;the count had deprived her of medicine when she was ill, and hadforcibly taken away her children. Besides this, he was infatuatedwith another woman, a baroness, and wasted his substance upon her evencontrary to the law which protected his children's rights.
The countess had a son named Paul, of whom Lassalle was extremely fond.There came to the boy a letter from the Count von Hatzfeldt ordering himto leave his mother. The countess at once sent for Lassalle, who broughtwith him two wealthy and influential friends--one of them a judge of ahigh Prussian court--and together they read the letter which Paul hadjust received. They were deeply moved by the despair of the countess,and by the cruelty of her dissolute husband in seeking to separate themother from her son.
In his chivalrous ardor Lassalle swore to help the countess, andpromised that he would carry on the struggle with her husband to thebitter end. He took his two friends with him to Berlin, and then toDusseldorf, for they discovered that the Count von Hatzfeldt was not faraway. He was, in fact, at Aix-la-Chapelle with the baroness.
Lassalle, who had the scent of a greyhound, pried about until hediscovered that the count had given his mistress a legal document,assigning to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinarycourse of
law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess atonce hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured apromise that the deed would be destroyed.
No sooner, however, had she left him than he returned to the baroness,and presently it was learned that the woman had set out for Cologne.
Lassalle and his two friends followed, to ascertain whether the documenthad really been destroyed. The three reached a hotel at Cologne, wherethe baroness had just arrived. Her luggage, in fact, was being carriedupstairs. One of Lassalle's friends opened a trunk, and, finding acasket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge.
Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when thebaroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in thepossession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. Hewas, therefore, arrested, as were the other two. There was no evidenceagainst Lassalle; but his friends fared badly at the trial, one of thembeing imprisoned for a year and the other for five years.
From this time Lassalle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himselfup to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt's battle against her husbandin the law-courts. The ablest advocates were pitted against him. Themost eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but hemet them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won forhim verdict after verdict. The case went from the lower to the highertribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of appeal,where Lassalle wrested from his opponents a magnificently conclusivevictory--one that made the children of the countess absolutely safe.It was a battle fought with the determination of a soldier, with thegallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual acumen of a learnedlawyer.
It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that Lassalle's feelingtoward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one. A scandalouspamphlet, which was published in French, German, and Russian, andwritten by one who styled herself "Sophie Solutzeff," did much to spreadthe evil report concerning Lassalle. But the very openness and franknessof the service which he did for the countess ought to make it clear thathis was the devotion of a youth drawn by an impulse into a strife wherethere was nothing for him to gain, but everything to lose. He denouncedthe brutality of her husband, but her letters to him always addressedhim as "my dear child." In writing to her he confides small love-secretsand ephemeral flirtations--which he would scarcely have done, had thecountess viewed him with the eye of passion.
Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had manyaffairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting. That heshould have made a favorable impression on the women whom he met isnot surprising, because of his social standing, his chivalry, hisfine manners, and his handsome face. Mr. Clement Shorter has quoted anofficial document which describes him as he was in his earlier years:
Ferdinand Lassalle, aged twenty-three, a civilian born at Breslau anddwelling recently at Berlin. He stands five feet six inches in height,has brown, curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes,well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin.
We ought not to be surprised, then, if he was a favorite indrawing-rooms; if both men and women admired him; if Alexander vonHumboldt cried out with enthusiasm that he was a wunderkind, and ifthere were more than Sophie Solutzeff to be jealous. But the ratherungrateful remark of the Countess von Hatzfeldt certainly does notrepresent him as he really was.
"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," shesnarled at him; but the sneer only shows that the woman who uttered itwas neither in love with him nor grateful to him.
In this paper we are not discussing Lassalle as a public agitator oras a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who mostseriously affected his life. The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt,who, as we have seen, occupied--or rather wasted--nine of the best yearsof his life. Then came that profound and thrilling passion which endedthe career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous.
Lassalle had joined his intellectual forces with those of Heine andMarx. He had obtained so great an influence over the masses of thepeople as to alarm many a monarch, and at the same time to attract manya statesman. Prince Bismarck, for example, cared nothing for Lassalle'schampionship of popular rights, but sought his aid on finding that hewas an earnest advocate of German unity.
Furthermore, he was very far from resembling what in those early dayswas regarded as the typical picture of a Socialist. There was nothingfrowzy about him; in his appearance he was elegance itself; his mannerswere those of a prince, and his clothing was of the best. Seeing him ina drawing-room, no one would mistake him for anything but a gentlemanand a man of parts. Hence it is not surprising that his second love wasone of the nobility, although her own people hated Lassalle as a bearerof the red flag.
This girl was Helene von Donniges, the daughter of a Bavariandiplomat. As a child she had traveled much, especially in Italy and inSwitzerland. She was very precocious, and lived her own life withoutasking the direction of any one. At twelve years of age she had beenbetrothed to an Italian of forty; but this dark and pedantic personalways displeased her, and soon afterward, when she met a youngWallachian nobleman, one Yanko Racowitza, she was ready at once todismiss her Italian lover. Racowitza--young, a student, far from home,and lacking friends--appealed at once to the girl's sympathy.
At that very time, in Berlin, where Helene was visiting her grandmother,she was asked by a Prussian baron:
"Do you know Ferdinand Lassalle?"
The question came to her with a peculiar shock. She had never heard thename, and yet the sound of it gave her a strange emotion. Baron Korff,who perhaps took liberties because she was so young, went on to say:
"My dear lady, have you really never seen Lassalle? Why, you and he weremeant for each other!"
She felt ashamed to ask about him, but shortly after a gentleman whoknew her said:
"It is evident that you have a surprising degree of intellectual kinshipwith Ferdinand Lassalle."
This so excited her curiosity that she asked her grandmother:
"Who is this person of whom they talk so much--this Ferdinand Lassalle?"
"Do not speak of him," replied her grandmother. "He is a shamelessdemagogue!"
A little questioning brought to Helene all sorts of stories aboutLassalle--the Countess von Hatzfeldt, the stolen casket, the mysteriouspamphlet, the long battle in the courts--all of which excited her stillmore. A friend offered to introduce her to the "shameless demagogue."This introduction happened at a party, and it must have been anextraordinary meeting. Seldom, it seemed, was there a better instanceof love at first sight, or of the true affinity of which Baron Korffhad spoken. In the midst of the public gathering they almost rushed intoeach other's arms; they talked the free talk of acknowledged lovers; andwhen she left, he called her love-names as he offered her his arm.
"Somehow it did not appear at all remarkable," she afterward declared."We seemed to be perfectly fitted to each other."
Nevertheless, nine months passed before they met again at a soiree. Atthis time Lassaller gazing upon her, said:
"What would you do if I were sentenced to death?"
"I should wait until your head was severed," was her answer, "in orderthat you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I shouldtake poison!"
Her answer delighted him, but he said that there was no danger. Hewas greeted on every hand with great consideration and it seemed notunlikely that, in recognition of his influence with the people, he mightrise to some high position. The King of Prussia sympathized with him.Heine called him the Messiah of the nineteenth century. When he passedfrom city to city, the whole population turned out to do him honor.Houses were wreathed; flowers were thrown in masses upon him, while thestreets were spanned with triumphal arches.
Worn out with the work and excitement attending the birth of theDeutscher Arbeiterverein, or workmen's union, which he founded in 1863,Lassalle fled for a time to Switzerland for rest. Helene h
eard of hiswhereabouts, and hurried to him, with several friends. They met againon July 25,1864, and discussed long and intensely the possibilities oftheir marriage and the opposition of her parents, who would never permither to marry a man who was at once a Socialist and a Jew.
Then comes a pitiful story of the strife between Lassalle and theDonniges family. Helene's father and mother indulged in vulgar words;they spoke of Lassalle with contempt; they recalled all the scandalsthat had been current ten years before, and forbade Helene ever tomention the man's name again.
The next scene in the drama took place in Geneva, where the familyof Herr von Donniges had arrived, and where Helene's sister had beenbetrothed to Count von Keyserling--a match which filled her mother withintense joy. Her momentary friendliness tempted Helene to speak of herunalterable love for Lassalle. Scarcely had the words been spoken whenher father and mother burst into abuse and denounced Lassalle as well asherself.
She sent word of this to Lassalle, who was in a hotel near by. Scarcelyhad he received her letter, when Helene herself appeared upon the scene,and with all the intensity of which she was possessed, she begged himto take her wherever he chose. She would go with him to France, toItaly--to the ends of the earth!
What a situation, and yet how simple a one for a man of spirit! It isstrange to have to record that to Lassalle it seemed most difficult. Hefelt that he or she, or both of them, had been compromised. Had she alady with her? Did she know any one in the neighborhood?
What an extraordinary answer! If she were compromised, all the moreought he to have taken her in his arms and married her at once, insteadof quibbling and showing himself a prig.
Presently, her maid came in to tell them that a carriage was ready totake them to the station, whence a train would start for Paris in aquarter of an hour. Helene begged him with a feeling that was beginningto be one of shame. Lassalle repelled her in words that were to stamphim with a peculiar kind of cowardice.
Why should he have stopped to think of anything except the beautifulwoman who was at his feet, and to whom he had pledged his love? What didhe care for the petty diplomat who was her father, or the vulgar-tonguedwoman who was her mother? He should have hurried her and the maid intothe train for Paris, and have forgotten everything in the world but hisHelene, glorious among women, who had left everything for him.
What was the sudden failure, the curious weakness, the paltriness ofspirit that came at the supreme moment into the heart of this hithertostrong man? Here was the girl whom he loved, driven from her parents,putting aside all question of appearances, and clinging to him with awild and glorious desire to give herself to him and to be all his own!That was a thing worthy of a true woman. And he? He shrinks from herand cowers and acts like a simpleton. His courage seems to have dribbledthrough his finger-tips; he is no longer a man--he is a thing.
Out of all the multitude of Lassalle's former admirers, there isscarcely one who has ventured to defend him, much less to laud him; andwhen they have done so, their voices have had a sound of mockery thatdies away in their own throats.
Helene, on her side, had compromised herself, and even from theview-point of her parents it was obvious that she ought to be marriedimmediately. Her father, however, confined her to her room until itwas understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then her family'ssupplications, the statement that her sister's marriage and even herfather's position were in danger, led her to say that she would give upLassalle.
It mattered very little, in one way, for whatever he might have done,Lassalle had killed, or at least had chilled, her love. His failure atthe moment of her great self-sacrifice had shown him to her as he reallywas--no bold and gallant spirit, but a cringing, spiritless self-seeker.She wrote him a formal letter to the effect that she had becomereconciled to her "betrothed bridegroom"; and they never met again.
Too late, Lassalle gave himself up to a great regret. He went abouttrying to explain his action to his friends, but he could say nothingthat would ease his feeling and reinstate him in the eyes of theromantic girl. In a frenzy, he sought out the Wallachian student, Yankovon Racowitza, and challenged him to a mortal duel. He also challengedHelene's father. Years before, he had on principle declined to fight aduel; but now he went raving about as if he sought the death of everyone who knew him.
The duel was fought on August 28, 1864. There was some trouble aboutpistols, and also about seconds; but finally the combatants left asmall hotel in a village near Geneva, and reached the dueling-grounds.Lassalle was almost joyous in his manner. His old confidence had comeback to him; he meant to kill his man.
They took their stations high up among the hills. A few spectators sawtheir figures outlined against the sky. The command to fire rang out,and from both pistols gushed the flame and smoke.
A moment later, Lassalle was seen to sway and fall. A chance shot,glancing from a wall, had struck him to the ground. He sufferedterribly, and nothing but opium in great doses could relieve his pain.His wound was mortal, and three days later he died.
Long after, Helene admitted that she still loved Lassalle, and believedthat he would win the duel; but after the tragedy, the tenderness andpatience of Racowitza won her heart. She married him, but within ayear he died of consumption. Helene, being disowned by her relations,prepared herself for the stage. She married a third husband namedShevitch, who was then living in the United States, but who has sincemade his home in Russia.
Let us say nothing of Lassalle's political career. Except for his workas one of the early leaders of the liberal movement in Germany, it hasperished, and his name has been almost forgotten. As a lover, his storystands out forever as a warning to the timid and the recreant. Let mendo what they will; but there is just one thing which no man is permittedto do with safety in the sight of woman--and that is to play the craven.
