A Jew from Brunswick had also told Richard’s landlord that his
remarkable new friend was the most famous of all living chess-players.
As he also proved to be “pleasant, and anything but conceited,” and
showed himself “an industrious man of excellent moral principles, and at
the same time always cheerful and interesting in his conversation,”
Richard supposed he could derive nothing but benefit from intercourse
with him. All that he writes to his father of the Brunswicker proves the
brilliant talents of the latter, but also shows that he tried to win his
younger fellow-student by boasting. Silberschmidt had spoken to Lepsius
about his demagogic associations, and as soon as the father had warned
his son against this dangerous man, Richard knew how to withdraw from
the connection with tact and address. Here, as in every similar case,
the youth, scarcely past his boyhood, shows himself entirely submissive
to the superior wisdom of his father, and at the same time he already
evinces the discretion which he afterwards exhibited in every position
in which he was placed during a long life in the midst of the world,
where there could not fail to be conflicts and collisions of every kind.
At the end of the second term at Leipsic he debated with his father
whether he should not exchange the Leipsic University for another, and
in this consultation also we see him weigh the pros and cons with a
clear head and great circumspection. To Leipsic he was attached by many
a good comrade and many a pleasant family, from whom he had received
kindness, and beneath whose roof he had sung and danced and been
treated like a son of the house. Of the academic instructors, Hermann
alone detained him on the Pleisse, and as the latter intended to travel
during the coming summer term, he decided on a change of University. At
first his father had some objection, we can no longer fathom what, to
Göttingen, whither Richard most desired to go. He therefore weighed
Berlin, to which he was particularly attracted by Böeckh, Lachmann, C.
Ritter and Bopp, against Bonn, where he had the highest expectations of
Welcker and Niebuhr. In his last letter from Leipsic the son decides for
the Rhenish University, but during the vacation, which brought him and
his father once more together, he seems to have succeeded in inducing
the latter to accede to his desire to enter the Georgia Augusta, and so
we see him, in the spring of 1830, proceed to Göttingen by way of
Eisenach and Cassel, where he saw Spohr conduct a performance of “The
White Lady.”
GÖTTINGEN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account