Authors, German -- 19th century -- Biography; May, Karl Friedrich, 1842-1912
Where I went, I intend to report
extensively in the second volume, where I will be giving an
account of my travels. For now, there is nothing more to tell
than what I have mentioned before, this is that my soul became
just the more free, the more I distanced myself from my home, that
out there, far from home, I was seized by an irresistible urge to
return home, and that I was just the more freed from this, the
closer I came again to the place where I was born. Is there
anybody who could get to the bottom of this? I partly followed
that incomprehensible compulsion, partly I returned out of my own
free will, for the sake of my good plans and my future. If I had
sinned, I had to do penance for it; this went entirely without
saying. And before this penance was not done away with, there
could not be any profitable work and no future for me. So, I
returned home five months later, to give myself up to the court of
law, but unfortunately, I did not do this straight away, as it
would have been the right thing to do, but I was again subdued by
these forces within me, which appeared again and prevented me from
doing what I had been planning. The consequence of this was that
I was apprehended, instead of being able to give myself up
voluntarily. This worsened my situation to such an extent that I
fully comprehend the severity which the judge, who was pronouncing
my sentence, applied. But just as much, the behaviour of the
lawyer, who had been appointed by the court as my defence
attorney, cannot be comprehended. He did not defend, but
incriminate me, and did so in the worst way. He had the delusion
that he could or should practice criminal psychology at this
welcome opportunity, and yet, he lacked basically everything which
is needed to solve such a task even to some extent. I very well
might have denied it all, but rather confessed to everything I was
accused of straight out. I did this, to get rid of this affair,
no matter what the price may be, and to lose as little time as
possible. The lawyer was unable to comprehend me or what was
going on in any other not entirely commonplace soul. The verdict
was four years in prison and two years under police supervision.
However hard it is for me to write this down for the public to
read, I cannot relieve myself of this duty; it has to be this
way. I do not feel sorry for myself, but for my poor, law-abiding
parents and sisters, my parents whom I still feel sorry for in
their graves, because their son, for whom they had such great,
perhaps not entirely unfounded hopes, had been forced by the
infinite cruelty of the facts and conditions to make such
confessions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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