39. Herman Grimm Died on June 16, 1901

Herman Grimm died on June 16. Those who appreciated the nature of his spirit were overcome with the feeling at the news of his passing that with him one of the personalities has departed from us to whom those who have traveled their educational path in the last third of the past century owe unspeakable things. For us, he was a living link to the age of Goethe. Those who follow us will have no contemporaries who know how to talk about Goethe like Herman Grimm. Even though he was only four years old when Goethe himself died, Herman Grimm can be spoken of as a contemporary of Goethe. He was Bettina's son-in-law, who was completely absorbed in Goethe's world of ideas and of whom we have the beautiful book "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child". And Herman Grimm himself was completely at home within a world of ideas that drew its nourishment from a direct personal relationship with Goethe. He judged all things from this world of ideas, not just Goethe himself. The way he wrote his books about Michelangelo and Raphael could only be written by a man who stood by Goethe like Herman Grimm. One will also be able to judge these geniuses differently, and one will have to judge them differently from other perspectives on art and other needs of the time. But hardly any age will be able to come closer to them in their way of understanding than that of Goethe. The fact that they are written in the spirit of Goethe's age will forever give Herman Grimm's works an incomparable value.

Those who knew Herman Grimm personally felt to the highest degree as if Goethe himself were still speaking to them indirectly through this man. - This impression was also shared by those whose personal contact with Herman Grimm was as brief as that of the writer of these lines. I often think of the wonderful hours I was able to spend with him in Weimar. I have a particularly vivid memory of a conversation I had with him alone when he once asked me to join him for lunch in a Weimar hotel. He spoke of his History of the German Imagination as a work in which he summarized what he had thought about the development of the German people. How well he knew how to point to the characteristic passages in which the cultural content of an age was concentrated as if in focal points. One might think more or less differently about something than he did: the feeling that his point of view was in some way justified and highly significant and fruitful struck one in a flash with each of his remarks. I am of the opinion that nothing could make one see the true nature of German culture in the second third of the nineteenth century as clearly as hearing personalities like Herman Grimm speak. I got to know another man for whom something similar was true, my highly esteemed teacher Karl Julius Schröer. He died a few months ago in Vienna. It is my heartfelt wish to soon paint a picture of this misunderstood personality as it lives in my soul. In a somewhat different way from Herman Grimm, he too lived entirely in Goethe's way of thinking. It is in the nature of our age that those who are only eight or ten years younger than my contemporaries have to form a completely different picture of such personalities than we do. In a certain sense, Herman Grimm was far removed from the basic needs of our time. The social disturbances of our day were beyond his understanding, and the views of Darwin and Haeckel must have always made him feel shivery. But precisely for this reason - as paradoxical as it may seem at first glance to say so - his book on Goethe is a historical document like no other. No one will be able to write about Goethe like this again. Not our contemporary culture and no future culture will make that possible. Goethe's generation had to be followed by a generation that still had so much of Goethe that it was able to hold on to his image unperturbed by everything that followed. Herman Grimm belonged to this generation. Whatever else is said about Goethe, Grimm's "Goethe" cannot be overtaken. No one will ever be able to feel about Goethe the way he did; but it was in these feelings about Goethe that the age of Goethe was fully realized.

Those who call themselves scholars in the "true sense" did not want to count Herman Grimm among their number. They denied him the "strict method". He was allowed to smile about it. He did not want to be compared with these "scholars" and did not want to be counted among them. He knew too well what the "method" was all about. It is mostly a crutch for all those who cannot walk on their own two feet due to a lack of personal strength and who get nowhere by their own efforts. He knew that only those who "have nothing but method" can deny him method. His conviction was: "The personality of the individual within his limited circle will always remain the valuable thing."