Friedrich Spielhagen was a popular, highly acclaimed German novelist … in the mid-to-late 19th century. His novels from Problematic Characters (1861) to The Breaking of the Storm (1877) were all rapidly translated into English at the time, though they do not appear to have been reprinted since. In their 1882 anthology Half Hours with Foreign Novelists, Helen and Alice Zimmern write that “Spielhagen has been unanimously considered as the greatest of contemporary German novelists; and rightly so, for he embodies in his works all the merits and failings of his countrymen’s romances, their careful observation and thoroughness, their inordinate length and tendency to sentimentalism.” (Their verdict at that late period of the author’s career turns notably more negative from there.) From that time, as Jeffery Sammons argues in the only recent English-language study of the author I’ve been able to find, Spielhagen “was decanonized and driven to the periphery of literary history in his own lifetime.” Judging from the first part of Problematic Characters, I think it is understandable why this may be.

But why take up such a now-obscure author and novel? But the Project Gutenberg edition of Professor Schele de Vere’s English translation contains such buffo blurbs in the Critical Notices section that precedes it as to either compel one to read it or cast doubt forever and again on the value of contemporary blurb sections so praise-laden. To offer just two examples, Putnam’s Magazine is quoted as saying of Problematic Characters:

Such a novel as no English author with whom we are acquainted could have written, and no American author except Hawthorne. … If [Germany] has not produced a Thackeray, or a Dickens, it has produced, we venture to think, two writers who are equal to them in genius, and superior to them in the depth and spirituality of their art—Auerbach and Spielhagen.

Better than Thackeray and Dickens! A book of such depth as could be matched by no other anglophone writer but Hawthorne! That’s some praise. Even the now-venerable New York Times (granted, in the 19th century a much younger, more impetuous publication) wrote of the book:

No one, that is not a pure egoiste, can read Problematic Characters without profound and solemn interest. It is an altogether tragic work, the tragedy of the 19th century—greater in its truth and earnestness, and absence of Hugoese affectation, than any tragedy the century has produced.

My conclusion, having read Part I of Problematic Characters (and not having come anywhere close to the tragic part of the tragedy), is that The New York Times may have regarded the book as “the tragedy of the 19th century,” because it, like Spielhagen, has a circumscribed view of what is tragic (one that today, ironically, we might regard as itself more than a little egoiste), a view that would ultimately be drastically expanded by the realists who would supercede Spielhagen’s brand of realism. (Which is not at all to say his kind was without merit.)

My biggest problem with Problematic Characters so far is that the book opens strong, but then dissipates its energy when the story ought to be getting more interesting. The opening I found extremely interesting: a young man named Oswald arrives in a coach to the estate of the Baron and Baroness Grenwitz. From the beginning, the narration is descriptive and full of emotional shading; there is all the promise of a German Balzac or even Flaubert in the delicate coloring of the environment, the attention to suggestive details like the frightened expressions of the servants: there is a clear class delineation in this household between the noble family and the servants, and Spielhagen shows that without telling us. So far, so Flaubertian.

The dialogue is quite sharp between Oswald and the Baroness, who we are told was “a tall, elegant lady” with “a deep sonorous voice, which was not exactly in harmony with the cold light of her dark gray eyes.” How can a book not be entertaining, when it begins with such a cracking exchange as this?

“You are late, Doctor Stein,” said the baroness.

“As early, madam,” replied the young man, cheerfully, “as the contrary wind, which delayed the ferry-boat in the morning for several hours, and the baron’s driver, whose patience I had ample time to admire on the way, would permit me.”

“Patience is a noble virtue,” said the baroness, when she had resumed her seat on the sofa, while the others took chairs around the table; “a virtue which you no doubt value very highly, as you need it so much in your vocation. I am afraid the two boys will give you but too frequent opportunities to practise this virtue to its fullest extent.”

“I promise myself everything that is good from my future pupils, and am quite sure, in advance, that the trials which they will make of my patience will be no fiery trials.”

“I hope so,” said the baroness, resuming her work, which she had laid aside when the young man entered. “But you will find the boys just now rather neglected, as your arrival has been retarded for several days, and your predecessor could not, or would not, do us the favor to delay his departure for a few days.”

“I should not think fairly of the character of the boys,” replied Oswald, “and still less so of the ability of Mr. Bauer, whom I have heard much praised, if I were really to fear that his influence had not survived a week.”

“Well, Mr. Bauer had his virtues, but also his foibles,” said the baroness, counting the stitches in her work.

“That is the fate of men,” replied Oswald.

There is wonderful energy and tension in these lines! The Baroness comes charged with her opinions about the unmanageable nature of the two boys, and Oswald (who, we shall find out, secretly despises the nobility) comes back at her not just with wit (such as a court jester might offer), but also dismal hints of philosophy: “That is the fate of men,” for example, is the kind of line no bourgeois ever expects to hear from an inferior; it immediately establishes an intolerable right to philosophize (not to mention it puts all classes on an equal level called Men) and throws the aristocratic person for a loop, because a key component of their unspoken ideology is that only the rich and wellborn should have that right, and the mere possibility of the intellectual superiority of an inferior poses a latent threat to that ideology—so yes, at its beginning this book definitely seems woke.

The Baron steps in and interrupts this exchange before it turns explosive, and then Oswald is shown to his quarters, but not before he steps into the boys’ bedroom and observes them sleeping. From just their appearance we get a excellent introduction to Bruno the “wild, unruly” older boy who is but a “distant relative” (i.e. a poor relation) according to the Baroness, and Malte, the younger and “somewhat spoiled” child.

In the bed with the silver watch lay a boy who might have been a year older than the other, but who looked at least three years his senior, and formed in every way the most singular contrast with him. While the arms of the younger lay languidly on the coverlet, those of the other were firmly crossed on his chest. The compressed lips and the slightly frowning eyebrows, drawn together perhaps by a troublesome dream, gave to the irregular but not unattractive face an expression of dark defiance and pride, which would not have been amiss in the heir to a throne.

The next chapter, taken up with a letter Oswald writes concerning the great Professor Berger, the hearty old Brahmin who first induces Oswald to take the position at Grenwitz, reveals even more of the author’s winning qualities, such as this mischievous exchange about fooling the nobility:

On the morning of the decisive day, Berger said to me: ‘Do you know, dear Stein, I have a great mind to reject you?’

“‘Why?’

“‘Because I fear to lose you–to lose you twice. Great God! what changes may not happen to a man whom we seat in the easy-chair of an office, and whom we crown with the night-cap of a dignity! You may actually see the day when you will consider Horace a great poet and Cicero a distinguished philosopher–why, you may in due time, and from sheer disgust of life, become a learned professor like myself.’

“The examination had been held, and I had received, as Berger called it, license to thresh empty straw. One day he came to me, an open letter in his hand, and asked:

“‘Would you like to become a tutor in a nobleman’s family?’

“‘I hardly think I would.’

“‘Perhaps so; but the offer is so tempting that it is at least worth your while to consider the matter. You would have to bind yourself for four years.’

“‘And you call that a tempting offer? Four years? Not four weeks!’

“‘Just listen. Of these four years, two only will be spent at the house; the other two you are to travel with your pupil. You want to see the world, and you ought to see it, even if it were only in order to learn that men have a right to like dogs everywhere. You have no means of your own, and you are too civilized to be a good vagabond. Well now, here you have the finest opportunity, such as may not present itself a second time in all your life.’

“‘And who is the Alexander whose Aristotle I am to be?’

“‘A young lord, like the hero of Macedonia. I have seen the noble race last year in Ostend. The father, a Baron Grenwitz, is a nullity; the baroness, an unknown quantity, which I could not ascertain. At all events, she is a clever woman. I know that that is no small attraction for you. She speaks three or four modern languages, to say nothing of her mother tongue. I even suspect her of having secretly read Latin and Greek with her present tutor, a certain Bauer, who has studied here, and was a thoroughly well-educated youth.’

“‘And you, who have told me yourself that you have written a book about the nobles and against the nobles, which, unfortunately, cannot be printed anywhere in Germany, although specially intended for Germany–you advise me, who hold the same pariah notions about this Brahmin caste, to go over to the army of our hereditary enemies?’

“‘That is exactly the fun,’ laughed Berger. ‘I want you to go there like a Mohican into the camp of the Iroquois, and I am delighted at the spoil you will bring back with you. We will hang them up in our wigwams, and enjoy them heartily.’

Who can resist this rakish old schemer with his knowing references to Aristotle, James Fenimore Cooper, and Balzac’s Illusions Perdues? How can a story that begins so winningly fail to satisfy?

All this sets the reader up for a lovely teacher-pupil-adversial other adults storyline—and yet, that is not what we get. Instead, the bulk of the first third of Problematic Natures will concern Oswald’s pursuit of a love affair with the local noble lady Melitta—who, to be fair, is described in incandescent terms by Dr. Berger, as his final inducement to draw Oswald to Grenwitz. This lady’s husband Baron von Oldenburg is currently on the outs with her and (at least for now) is conveniently offstage in foreign lands. Oswald’s relationship with the two boys—especially with Malte—is very annoyingly underdeveloped, which is all the more odd since it is evidently inspired by Spielhagen’s own time as a tutor on a noble family’s estate in Pomerania. Oswald starts with admiration and then quickly falls to love for the dashing but (we are told) rebellious Bruno, but rather than showing us the progress and development of this relationship, Spielhagen skips a bunch of steps and makes Oswald and Bruno almost immediately smitten by each other. (As I was reading this book, I saw the movie Call Me By Your Name, a movie that was as careful and elegant in its handling of the infatuation between a teenager and an older man as this book is hamhanded and lazy.) Nor does Spielhagen invest much time in demonstrating Bruno’s “problematic” qualities in action—as might’ve been seen, for example, had Spielhagen deigned to show him interacting at all with with his host parents—and instead we are reduced to hearing about them at second-hand. What’s more (and entirely out of canon in the teacher-savior stories) Oswald seems overwhelmingly biased (and actually Spielhagen, as he gives no indication that this is not in earnest) in favor of Oswald, and entirely indifferent to Malte:

Bruno was tall for his years, but slender and agile, swift like a deer. Malte, the young heir, looked stunted and sickly by the side of his proud companion. He was narrow-chested and hollow-breasted; his angular, awkward movements contrasted strangely with the marvellously graceful carriage of Bruno, and the effect was still greater when the latter was running or leaping. Malte shrank back from every danger, from every exertion, conscious of his feeble strength, and from native or acquired cowardice; for Bruno no tree was too high, no rock too steep, no ditch too broad; it seemed almost as if he were trying to subdue the passionate heat of his soul by bodily exhaustion.

This is not an inconsequential difference in attitude; in essence, Oswald judges the boys by their relative beauty, but Bruno’s is a proletarian beauty: its purpose is to prove that Bruno is every bit as noble as the people who persecute him. For this very same reason (later on at the ball) Oswald himself is depicted as taller, more handsome, and more charming (and infinitely more attractive to women) than all the snooty nobles he’s surrounded by. He even defeats one of them, Odysseus-like, in a pistol-shooting contest. Spielhagen very clearly is weaponizing these character traits in order to prove a point about how the nobility are no better than the rest of us, and wouldn’t it be cool if a commoner could be better than them in every way that matters? But he does this in such a schematic, unsubtle way that it feels like wish fulfillment, and lacks the delicate sympathy (or at least comprehension of human diversity) that one gets in all sorts of different characters—however short, ugly, or middling in appearance—that one gets in more committed realists like the Goncourts, Flaubert, Zola, and Chekhov.

Instead of being about these two boys and their human qualities, the action in Problematic Natures is focused mainly on Oswald—a quite egoiste choice, given his obvious status as the author’s autobiographical stand-in—and the major plotline is his romance with Melitta. This is not to say that the direction Spielhagen chose to take the story (as opposed to that I would have preferred) does not have its own charms, though they do proceed at a leisurely (perhaps excessively so) pace. So in chapter IV we get one of those luxuriant descriptions of Castle Grenwitz and its environs. Then there are lovely scenes where Oswald encounters Melitta for the first time, visits the town and meets a pseudo-intellectual preacher and in one extended comic scene endures his wife’s putrid poetry. The scenes where Oswald gets lost and meets a gypsy lady and her son and then finally makes it to Melitta’s estate are all gorgeously written. There is a scene on the road that has something of the excitement of the man-under-the-carriage scene in Les Miserables. Finally, the aforementioned ballroom scene is a piece of well-orchestrated excitement, with the delicious twist that Baron Oldenburg turns up (Melitta’s erstwhile lover) and is the rare intellectually rebellious noble who believes the nobles are no better than anyone else, and who takes an admiration for (his unknown rival) Oswald’s manliness and beauty.

Overall, I disagree with some of Spielhagen’s narrative decisions and think his worldview limits him in certain ways. However, he is still a very interesting and at times very compelling writer, and I think I will read this book to the end despite its frustrating aspects.