THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
keep me above water until something better could be found. Thus I believed to perceive some bright spots in the fogs of the future.
My most remarkable acquaintance of those days was Richard Wagner, who, in consequence of his participation in the revolutionary uprising in Dresden, had been obliged to leave Germany, and now lived as one of the refugees in Zürich. He had then already written some of his most important creations, but his greatness was appreciated only by a very small circle of friends. Among the refugees at Zürich he was by no means popular. He passed for an extremely arrogant, domineering character, with whom nobody could long associate, and who treated his wife, the first one—a stately, good-natured, but mentally not highly gifted woman—very neglectfully. If anyone among us had then prophesied his magnificent career he would have found little credence. As an insignificant and reticent young man, of course, I did not come close to him. Although I met him and spoke with him occasionally, he probably never noticed me sufficiently to remember me.
In the course of time I should probably have succeeded in obtaining some position as teacher, if not at the university, at least at some other minor institution, had not my life of quiet study had been interrupted by an event that was destined to turn it into very different channels. The unhappy lot of my friend, Professor Kinkel, was constantly in my mind, all the more as it had taken an unexpected and particularly shocking turn. After having been wounded in the head and taken prisoner by the Prussians, Kinkel was carried first to Karlsruhe, and then after the surrender of Rastatt, to that fortress, where he was to be tried by a court-martial. On the 4th of August Kinkel appeared before that tribunal, which was composed of Prussian officers. Sentences
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