“The immediate effect of the Wittenberg preaching,” wrote in 1908 the Protestant theologian F. M. Schiele in the “Preussische Jahrbücher” of Berlin, in a strongly worded but perfectly true account of the situation, “was the collapse of the educational system which had flourished throughout Germany; the new zeal for Church reform, the growth of prosperity, the ambition in the burghers, the pride and fatherly solicitude of the sovereigns who were ever gaining strength, had resulted in the foundation on all sides of school after school, university after university. Students flocked to them in multitudes, for the prospects of future gain were good. Scholasticism provided a capable teaching staff, Humanism a brilliant one. Humanism also set up as the new ideal of education a return to the fountain-head and the reproduction of ancient civilisation by means of original effort on similar lines. Wide tracts of Germany lay like a freshly sown field, and many a harvest seemed to be ripening. Then, suddenly, before it was possible to determine whether the new crops consisted of wheat or of tares, a storm burst and destroyed all prospects of a harvest. The upheaval that followed in the wake of the Reformation, and other external causes which coincided with it, above all the reaction among the utilitarian-minded laity against the unpopular scholarship of the Humanists emptied the class rooms and lecture halls.… Now all is over with the priestlings; why then should we bind our future to a lost and despised cause?… Nor was this merely the passing result of a misapprehension of Luther’s preaching, for it endured for scores of years.”[82] As to the common opinion among Protestants, viz. that “Luther’s reformation gave a general stimulus to the schools and to education generally,” Schiele dismisses it in a sentence: “The alleged ‘stimulus’ is seen to melt away into nothing.”[83] Eobanus Hessus, a Humanist friendly to Luther, who lectured at Erfurt University, was so overcome with grief at sight of the decline that was making itself felt there that, in 1523, he composed an Elegy on the decay of learning entitled “_Captiva_” and sent it to Luther. The melancholy poem of 428 verses was printed in the same year under the title “Circular letter from the sorrowful Church to Luther.” Luther replied, praising the poem and assuring the sender that he was favourably disposed towards the humanistic studies and practices. He even speaks as though still full of the expectation of a great revival; his depression is, however, apparent from the very reasons he gives for his hopes: “I see that no important revelation of the Word of God has ever taken place without a preliminary revival and expansion of languages and erudition.” The present decline might, however, he thought, be traced to the former state of things when they did not as yet possess the “pure theology.”[84]