Eingeschneit | Page 2

to pay homage to the popular pastor of the "Garnisonkirche." His wedding-, christening-, and burial-sermons were masterpieces of oratory; though plainly conceived and plainly delivered and free from all and every unctious pathos, they abounded with thought, true feeling, and poetical beauty. Frommel was destined to speak at the graves of most of the great leaders of the war of 1870-71, including Prince August of Württemberg, Moltke, Roon, Alvensleben, Kirchbach, and Kameke; the danger to become, on such occasions, a panegyrist, he has always judiciously avoided, thanks to his delicate taste and independence of conviction.
It would be a great mistake to suspect that the adulation of those foremost in life and society had been able to dazzle even for a moment Frommel's sound judgment or make him turn his back to the other half of humanity. Quite the contrary! His generous heart beat warmest of all for the great community of the poor and afflicted. The thousands of Berlin cab-drivers were his most devoted friends, and to the amelioration of the deplorable lot of the German waiters he directed his loving interest. The endless train of mendicants who at all times besieged the parsonage, never knew him but "from his very best side." For an old vagabond tailor who had seen better days, he secures work, thus laying a solid foundation for an honest and certain existence; in the superannuated sick and penniless actor, who salutes him as "a colleague in an allied profession," he readily discovers a parson's scion, and dismisses him with a most positive proof of his generosity.
What wonder that the pastor of the "Garnisonkirche" had gradually grown to be one of the most popular figures of the national capital of Germany, and this all the more so as he, the southerner by birth, education, and mode of viewing things, had so completely caught the peculiar Berlin humor and ready wit in address and reply, that in no wise he differed from the true-born Berliner! And on what excellent terms was he with the young folks not only of his immense congregation, but of Berlin, nay, of the whole country, wherever he met them on his extended tours through the Empire!
Amidst the most various and trying engagements, Frommel lived in Berlin for twenty-six years. What an immense amount of work he accomplished within that time, can be understood from his own statement in his farewell sermon of Sunday, April 19, 1896, where he said: "While in Berlin, I have baptized 1838 children, united in wedlock 1526 couples, confirmed 1980 school-children, and buried 1709 dead. Of the churches in Berlin, I have preached in all but one, and in sixty-five cities all over Germany I have delivered either sermons or lectures." So we cannot much wonder that on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his installation as pastor of the "Garnisonkirche," he submitted to his Imperial master the petition for retirement from his charge. His request was most graciously complied with, and at the same time he was commissioned by Imperial brevet as an "officer à la suite of the army," a distinction never before in the history of Germany conferred upon a military chaplain.--Soon after, in the spring of 1896, Emperor Wilhelm II. called him to his castle, Ploen, charmingly situated upon the shore of the Ploener Lake in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, to superintend the tuition of his two oldest sons, Crown-Prince Wilhelm and Prince Eitel Friedrich. Full of happy anticipation of a quiet and restful evening of life in one of the most idyllic parts of Germany, Frommel entered upon his new and honorable duties with a truly youthful vigor and enthusiasm, but alas--after a few months' stay at Ploen, owing to an old ailment which had reappeared under more alarming symptoms than ever before, he had to submit to a chirurgical operation, and it was under the knives of the surgeons that on the 9th day of November, 1896, Emil Frommel breathed his last, at the age of sixty-eight years.
Frommel's personal appearance was the harmonious representation of his inner life. His kind and youthful face, brightened by benevolent blue eyes, was encircled by long and full silver-white hair and made such a deep impression, that once seen it could not easily be forgotten.
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As a writer, Frommel is best known as the author of a long series of stories for the masses, which on account of their unaffected piety, vigorous language and healthy humor have become exceedingly popular with all classes. They are published by Wiegandt & Grieben (Berlin), in eleven volumes under the general title, {?Gesammelte Schriften--Erz?hlungen, Aufs?tze und Vortr?ge.?} Our story {?Eingeschneit?} taken from the sixth volume ({?Aus der Sommerfrische?}) relates a humorous travelling adventure from the author's own merry college-life, when a student of divinity at the university