4. Hoffmann von Fallersleben

On the centenary of his birth

April 2 evokes the memory of an endearing German poet. The singer of "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" was born on this day in 1798. Hoffmann von Fallersleben was not an imposing, great personality, this singer, not one of the leading spirits who set the tone for his era. Rather, he owed everything he was to his time. He expressed what moved them. He did not lead the way energetically, but devotedly expressed what moved them. He was not a mover, but a driven man. The circumstances and the people gave him direction.

Hoffmann spent his childhood in Fallersleben; his father and brothers held government offices. They were good, moderate people with a thoroughly liberal attitude. No extreme ideas were at home in Hoffmann's family. Important political events took place while Hoffmann was growing up. Napoleon's deeds set the tone of the time. Hoffmann's family was not one of those who vigorously took sides. The boy was only able to observe weak passions. Strong sympathies and antipathies could therefore not take hold of his soul. His will therefore always remained a weak one. He wanted to study theology in 1816. He did not like the professors in Göttingen. Without much struggle, he switched to philology. He wanted to travel to Italy and Greece to continue Winckelmann's work. An encounter with Jacob Grimm was enough to free him from this weak passion and persuade him to study German linguistics, literature and cultural studies. And precisely because he is not a strong personality, he achieves something worthy of recognition in this field. As a gentle spirit, he immerses himself in the expressions of the spirit of the people and delivers exemplary scholarly studies on this spirit. And as a malleable nature, he succeeds in creating his own poetry out of this folk spirit, in which this spirit lives.

And when the revolutionary spirit began to stir in Germany, our Hoffmann was again supple and devoted enough to give words to the new ideals, defiance and dissatisfaction in full-sounding poems. In the most correct self-awareness, he gave himself the certificate when he lost his professorship in Breslau because of his "Unpolitical Songs". He apologized to the strict ministry, which drove him out of office because of his revolutionary poetry, by saying that he had only lent words to the urge of his time.

A less devoted personality would not have been able to immerse himself as deeply in the child's soul and express it as he did. We must therefore agree with the strong Treitschke when he says approvingly of the weak character of Hoffmann: "Who could agree with him, who in good times looked so deeply into the loyal heart of his people, who, himself without a home or hearth, sang so warmly, so truly, so simple-mindedly in his children's songs about the sweet twilight happiness of the German children's world without a single false note of modern cuteness?"