96. A Free Council Evening

[The] Workers' Education School Berlin organized a Freiligrath evening at the trade union building on Sunday, 17 February 1901, which was attended by over 1000 people. Dr. Steiner gave the introductory lecture; he had a masterful way of describing the poet's development. Under the impression of the world trade in Amsterdam, where Freiligrath was to train for the merchant class, he first became a poetic writer of exotic subjects, comparable in the intensity of his coloration to Böcklin. Despite the fact that he then took the view that the poet “must stand on a higher vantage point than on the battlements of the party”, over the years he became a fervent poet of freedom for the socially oppressed. He rejected the royal pension that he had received for several years and in 1844, with the contemporary poems Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (A Confession of Faith), he opened the series of his social poems. Although he was acquitted by the jury in 1848 for his involvement in the revolution, he was forced to flee to London when the reactionaries won. There he had to work as a bookkeeper to earn a living for himself and his family, because the publication of his poems and the masterful translation of foreign poetry did not earn him enough. It was only through the amnesty in 1867 that the poet was able to return to Germany. The speaker concluded his lecture by saying that the best way to characterize the greatest poets of the 19th century was to describe Lenau as the poet of melancholy, Heine as the poet of exuberance and Freiligrath as the poet of heroism. Even though Freiligrath said at the end of his life that his social poems no longer had any agitational effect, he was mistaken. His revolutionary songs of freedom still inspire freedom fighters today. And when the great day of liberation dawns, the name of Ferdinand Freiligrath will shine among the poets of freedom in golden letters. The enthusiastic words of the speaker were met with rich applause.

The following numbers of the excellent program also offered great enjoyment. Exact chamber music, recitations of Freiligrath's poems, performed in an excellent, atmospheric way by Mr. Friedrich Moest, and singing performances by Mr. Friedrichs were well-deserved applause from the numerous listeners. The evening was one of the most enjoyable among those organized by the school so far.