THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
made upon me was simply overpowering. I wept hot tears at the leave-taking of Count Siegfried from his wife and even more over their reunion, and could hardly restrain a cry of delight when husband and wife returned to the castle and the wicked Golo met his well-deserved fate. I do not believe that ever in my life at a play was my imagination so active and the effect on my mind and emotions so direct and overwhelming. This doll with a plume on its hat was to me the real Count Siegfried; that one there with the red face and black beard the real treacherous Golo; this one with the white gown and the yellow hair the beautiful Genovefa, and the little red thing with the wriggling legs a real live doe. The impression was the same when I saw the play a second time. I knew the whole story and how it was to end; but when the count took leave of his wife and departed for the Holy Land I could hardly refrain from calling out to him not to go, for if he did, something terrible was sure to happen. How happy that naïve condition of childhood in which the imagination surrenders itself so unresistingly, without being in the least disturbed by the critical impulse!
But this faculty of naïve enjoyment received with me an early and a vicious shock. When I was about nine years old I saw for the first time live human beings on the stage in a play called “Hedwig, the Bandit Bride,” by Körner. It was played in Brühl by a traveling company. The chief character, that of the villain Rudolph, was acted with all the teeth-gnashing grimaces customary on a little provincial stage. But as I still took this to be the genuine thing, it did not fail to make a strong impression, although not nearly as strong as that at the puppet-show when the fair Genovefa was played. I began to criticise, and this inclination received a tremendous impulse when in the company of my father I saw
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