Adolph Freiherr Knigge’s Über den Umgang mit Menschen, on dealing with people, first appeared in 1788. Knigge advises: Rede also nicht zu viel von Dir selber, außer in dem Zirkel Deiner vertrautesten Freunde. So do not talk too much about yourself, except in the circle of your most trusted friends. He gives two reasons for not being too open with people. The first is the fear of revealing one’s weakness and being misused. The second is that once people are used to being told everything, they zuletzt von jedem unsrer kleinsten Schritte Rechenschaft verlangen, end up demanding an account of our smallest steps.
literature
A Friendship in Sie
The friendship between Goethe and Schiller is one of the best known in German literature. They addressed each other as Sie. Goethe told Schiller: Sie haben mir eine zweite Jugend verschafft und mich wieder zum Dichter gemacht. You have given me a second youth and made me a poet again. The music writer Graham Johnson notes that Goethe never said du even to Schiller. Goethe did move to du with the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter. This happened in 1812, when Zelter’s stepson had shot himself. In his reply to Zelter’s letter, Goethe addressed him for the first time with the brotherly du.
In Black and White
In the study scene of Goethe’s Faust I, a young student asks for advice. Mephistopheles tells him to take notes as if the Holy Spirit were dictating. The student answers: Denn, was man schwarz auf weiß besitzt, / Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen. For what one has in black and white, one can carry home with confidence. Schwarz auf weiß, black on white, is the everyday German phrase for something in writing.
In the play the line is usually read as ironic. Mephistopheles is teasing a student who trusts paper.
Lessing Against Gottsched
In 1759 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published the 17th of his Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend, letters concerning the newest literature. In it he attacked Johann Christoph Gottsched, who had led the reform of the German theater. Lessing wrote: Es wäre zu wünschen, dass sich Herr Gottsched niemals mit dem Theater vermengt hätte. It would have been better if Mr. Gottsched had never involved himself with the theater.
What Must Not Be Cannot Be
In Christian Morgenstern’s poem Die unmögliche Tatsache, the impossible fact, Palmström reasons his way out of something that happened to him. The poem ends: Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: / Nur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. / Weil, so schließt er messerscharf, / nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. He comes to the result that the experience was only a dream, because, as he concludes with razor-sharp logic, what must not be cannot be. The poem appeared in the collection Palmström in 1910. Its last lines became a common saying.
The Town Hall Without Windows
The Lalebuch, printed anonymously in 1597, became known through its second edition of 1598 as Die Schiltbürger. It tells of the citizens of Schilda. They build a triangular town hall with a large gate but no windows. To bring light inside, they try to catch sunlight in buckets and sacks and carry it in. Duden defines a Schildbürgerstreich as an action that misses its actual purpose in a foolish way. Today the word is used for absurd rules and the excesses of bureaucracy.
Goethe Against Newton
Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, Theory of Colors, appeared on 16 May 1810. One part of it is a polemic against Newton’s theory of color. Between 1810 and 1832 many natural scientists and mathematicians commented on the work. Almost half of them opposed Goethe. Among the statements from natural science, a third supported him. Hermann von Helmholtz admired Goethe’s scientific work, but he called its main thesis simply wrong. Goethe himself valued his research on color more than all his literary work. He told Johann Peter Eckermann: Auf alles, was ich als Poet geleistet habe, bilde ich mir gar nichts ein. (I think nothing of all that I have achieved as a poet.) What made him proud, he said, was that he was the only one in his century who knew the truth in the difficult science of color.
In Praise of Doubt
Around 1939 Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem called Lob des Zweifels, In Praise of Doubt. It begins: Gelobt sei der Zweifel! Ich rate euch, begrüßt mir / Heiter und mit Achtung den / Der euer Wort wie einen schlechten Pfennig prüft! (Praised be doubt! I advise you, greet cheerfully and with respect the one who tests your word like a bad coin.) He goes on: Ich wollte, ihr wäret weise und gäbt / Euer Wort nicht allzu zuversichtlich. (I wish you were wise and did not give your word too confidently.)
I Hear the Message
In the first scene of Goethe’s Faust, the scholar Faust sits alone at night and raises a cup to his lips. Easter bells ring, and a choir announces the resurrection. Faust answers: Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube (I hear the message well, but I lack the faith). The line became a familiar quotation in German, a skeptical answer to good news.
The Bridge on the Tay
On 28 December 1879 the new railway bridge over the Firth of Tay in Scotland collapsed under a train. In the first days of January 1880 Theodor Fontane wrote the ballad Die Brück’ am Tay, The Bridge on the Tay. In it Johnie, the bridge keeper’s son on the train, trusts his engine: Ein fester Kessel, ein doppelter Dampf, / Die bleiben Sieger in solchem Kampf. (A solid boiler, a double steam, they will win in such a fight.) Three witches frame the poem, and one of them has the last word: Tand, Tand / Ist das Gebilde von Menschenhand! (A trinket, a trinket is the work of human hands.) Today the ballad is a classic of German lessons in school. German Wikipedia calls it a warning against a hubris that believes in technology.