Freytag's orderly treatment of his themes affords constant pleasure to
the reader. He proceeds as steadily toward his climax as the builder
does toward the highest point of his roof. He had learned much about
climaxes, so he tells us himself, from Walter Scott, who was the first
to see the importance of a great final or concluding effect.
We have touched as yet merely on externals. Elegance of style,
orderliness of arrangement, consecutiveness of thought alone would
never have given Freytag his place in German literature. All these had
first to be consecrated to the service of a great idea. That idea as
expressed in _Debit and Credit_ is that the hope of the German nation
rests in its steady commercial or working class. He shows the dignity,
yes, the poetry of labor. The nation had failed to secure the needed
political reforms, to the bitter disappointment of numerous patriots;
Freytag's mission was to teach that there were other things worth
while besides these constitutional liberties of which men had so long
dreamed and for which they had so long struggled.
Incidentally he holds the decadent noble up to scorn, and shows how he
still clings to his old pretensions while their very basis is
crumbling under him. It is a new and active life that Freytag
advocates, one of toil and of routine, but one that in the end will
give the highest satisfaction. Such ideas were products of the
revolution of 1848, and they found the ground prepared for them by
that upheaval.
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