Eingeschneit: Eine StudentengeschichteFrommel, Emil
General
Eingeschneit: Eine Studentengeschichte
Frommel, Emil
Austria -- Fiction; German language -- Readers -- English; Travelers -- Fiction
It was by no means in the Imperial household alone that Frommel was so
exceptionally honored; the highest circles of Berlin society, artists,
diplomats, literary and military men, religious and infidels, all
strove in rivalry 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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Eingeschneit: Eine Studentengeschichte — John Shaqi
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