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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 116: 110. HUMBOLDT TO FRIEDRICH WILHELM IV.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

110.
HUMBOLDT TO FRIEDRICH WILHELM IV.

As early as eight o’clock this morning I sent to the Koethener Strasse, to have an interview with Professor Massmann, after the confiding communications of your Majesty, concerning the decision of his situation. He has just gone, leaving me again with an excellent impression of his solidity, clear perceptions, and enthusiastic vigor for influencing our youth (the indelible, primæval, self-restoring institution of mankind). To be afraid of every enthusiastic energy is to take from the life of a State its nourishing, preserving power. Professor M. did not see Minister von Bodelschwingh for two years, but the Minister then treated him very kindly, and Massmann desires very much, without intruding, to give a candid answer to every question. In view of the noble and frank character of Minister von Bodelschwingh I have great hopes of the result of such a conversation, and therefore I have to beg of your Majesty, most submissively, to communicate to me, whether, according to the orders of your Majesty, the Minister will send for Professor M., or whether he may go to the Minister on his own account, not called for, but animated by some words of your Majesty. I wonder how it could be forgotten how much Massmann has done for the poetry of the Hohenstaufen times, and how talented a lecturer he was at the University. I find praised in Gervinus Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur: Massmann’s Denkmaeler Deutscher Sprache, 1828; his Gedichte des Zwoelften Jahrhunderts, his Legenden and Ritterliche Poesie. How could a man be dangerous to youth whom the King of Bavaria appointed for the education of his princes, and by whom above all others the Crown-Prince declares himself to have been animated with the love of culture and intellectual freedom, and the true appreciation of his impending kingly duties? We live not in a sad, but in an earnest time. All action and energy are paralysed, if backbiting is permitted to deprive us of our most useful men. Enthusiastically attached to your person, to the splendor of your reign, and to the glory of our country, it makes me sad to see the most noble purposes in danger of being misunderstood. No doubt there are very honorable men who, from pure love of your Majesty, would like to see me also under the column at Tegel, or at least on the other side of the Rhine.

In grateful submission,
Your Royal Majesty’s most faithful
Humboldt.
Berlin, March 29, 1846.
The King wrote on the fly-leaf:

My warmest thanks, dearest Humboldt. M. Bodelschwingh will send for Massmann.

In all haste, as ever.

Your faithful
F. W.
Alexander v. Humboldt, Present.