The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX | Page 9

of divine concern.
That play of Hebbel's in which the dualism of all being is most
conspicuously tragic is Agnes Bernauer. Agnes is the daughter of a
barber and surgeon, and is so beautiful that she is commonly known as
the angel of Augsburg. Albrecht, the son and sole heir of the reigning
duke Ernst, comes to Augsburg, falls in love with her, and, in spite of

friendly warning, marries her; for she has loved him at first sight, too.
As persons, they do what is right for them to do; their marriage has
been performed by a priest of the church; and they feel that it has
divine sanction. But Albrecht is not an ordinary person; he is the heir to
the throne, and public exigencies require that the succession shall be
guaranteed. This marriage, however, is illegal--a board of incorruptible
judges so finds it; it causes sedition and threatens interminable strife.
Duke Ernst is deliberate and patient in dealing with the unprecedented
case. He waits until he can wait no longer. Albrecht will not give up
Agnes, nor Agnes give up him; Ernst respects the sacrament of
wedlock by which they are united, and only after two and a half years
does he sign the warrant by which Agnes was duly condemned to death.
Agnes dies in perfect innocence and constancy, a victim of social
convention. But Albrecht, whose disregard of this convention was
rebellion, and whose vengeance for his wife's death brings him to the
point of parricide, is made to see, not merely because excommunication
accompanies the ban of the empire on him as a rebel, but also because
of the instructive words and actions of his father, that the social
organization he has defied has itself a divine sanction, and that a prince,
standing by common consent at the head of that organization, cannot
with impunity undermine the basis of his sovereignty. Devotion to him
is like loyalty to the national ensign. The ensign is nothing in itself, but
it symbolizes the idea of the State; and the prince is also the
representative of an idea, which he must continue to represent in its
entirety, or he ceases to be the prince. This lesson Albrecht learns when,
like Kleist's _Prince of Homburg_, he is made judge in his own case,
and when he perceives at the cost of what personal sacrifice his father
has done his duty. The State prevails over Albrecht as it prevails over
Agnes, whose only fault was that she did not immure her beauty in a
nunnery.
The sanction of tradition and custom which Albrecht and Agnes could
not break in Agnes Bernauer Hebbel most impressively demonstrated
in Gyges and his Ring. Kandaules, King of Lydia, is a rash innovator in
both public and private life. He despises rusty swords and
uncomfortable crowns, he means to do away with silly prejudices, and,
like Herod, regarding his wife as a precious possession only, he
procures for his friend Gyges an opportunity to see her unveiled. But

she, an Indian princess, is, in Christine Hebbel's words, a convolution
of veils; her veil is inseparable from herself; and the brutal violation of
her modesty is a less forgivable crime than the taking of her life would
be. The wearing of a veil may be a foolish custom; but use and want
hallow even the trivial. Half of our law is based upon precedent, and we
are protected at every turn by unwritten law, which is nothing else than
precedent. Mankind needs to repose in the security of this protection.
Woe to him, said Hebbel, who disturbs the sleep of the world! Changes
must come, but rarely in the way of revolution.
The tragedy of the Nibelungen Hebbel approached somewhat
differently from the other subjects that he treated. He had his own
conception of the tragic content of the matter, of course; but he found
that the author of the _Nibelungenlied_, a dramatist from head to foot,
has so clearly presented the tragic aspects of the story that the modern
dramatist need only make himself the interpreter of the medieval epic
poet. Herewith Hebbel's trilogy is at once distinguished from such other
modern treatments of the subject as Geibel's Brunhild or Wagner's
Nibelungen Ring. Geibel eliminated everything supernatural; Wagner
made use chiefly of the Old Norse versions of the story; Hebbel, on the
contrary, dramatized what he regarded as the significant content of the
Middle High German poem, retaining its mythological, Christian,
chivalrous, historical, and legendary elements. The mythological
elements of the epic are indeed indistinct survivals of earlier ages.
Hebbel leaned somewhat upon Norse myths in his reproduction of them,
though it was part of his plan to preserve a certain indistinctness and
mystery in these undramatic presuppositions. Similarly, he made more
of the element of