THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
but to change the sentence of confinement in a fortress, such as I have described, into something infinitely more cruel, something loaded with debasement and infamy—a sentence of penal servitude—and this to Kinkel, the art-historian, who had opened the realms of the beautiful to so many a youthful mind; the poet, who had cheered and lifted up so many a German heart; the genial, refined, amiable, warm-hearted gentleman, whom only enthusiasm for liberty and fatherland had made to do what they called his crime! Even if he had, according to the law, deserved punishment after fighting in a lost cause, the sound sense and the human sympathy of many of his opponents revolted at the brutal arbitrariness which, overriding the obvious sense of a court-martial verdict, would not only punish, but degrade him and bury him amid the dregs of the human kind. Even death, which would have left to him his dignity as a man, would have seemed less inhuman than such an “act of grace.”
Kinkel was first taken to the prison at Bruchsal in Baden, and soon afterwards to the penitentiary at Naugard in Pomerania. It was evidently intended to remove him as far as possible from the Rhineland, where sympathy for him was warmest. With shorn head, clothed in a gray prison jacket, he spent his days in spinning wool. On Sundays he had to sweep his cell. He was denied, so far as possible, all mental activity. His diet was that of the criminal in the penitentiary. From the day of his arrival in Naugard, October 8, 1849, until April, 1850, he received altogether only one pound of meat. But he moved the heart of the director of the penitentiary, and his treatment assumed gradually a more considerate character, a few small favors being granted to him. He was permitted more frequent correspondence with his wife, his letters being opened and read, however, by the officers; and he was relieved of the task of
[ 249 ]
