Freytag, as Fichte had done in 1807 and 1808,
inaugurated a campaign of education which was to prove enormously
successful. A French critic writes of _Debit and Credit_ that it was
"the breviary in which a whole generation of Germans learned to read
and to think," while an English translator (three translations of the
book appeared in England in the same year) calls it the _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ of the German workingman. A German critic is furious that a
work of such real literary merit should be compared to one so flat and
insipid as Mrs. Stowe's production; but he altogether misses the
point, which is the effect on the people of a spirited defense of
those who had hitherto had no advocate.
Freytag has been called an opportunist, but the term should not be
considered one of reproach. It certainly was opportune that his great
work appeared at the moment when it was most needed, a moment of
discouragement, of disgust at everything high and low. It brought its
smiling message and remained to cheer and comfort. _The Journalists_,
too, was opportune, for it called attention to a class of men whose
work was as important as it was unappreciated. Up to 1848, the year of
the revolution, the press had been under such strict censorship that
any frank discussion of public matters had been out of the question.
But since then distinguished writers, like Freytag himself, had taken
the helm. Even when not radical, they were dreaded by the
reactionaries, and even Freytag escaped arrest in Prussia only by
hastily becoming a court official of his friend the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha--within whose domains he already owned an estate
and was in the habit of residing for a portion of each year--and thus
renouncing his Prussian citizenship.
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