in the German Universities, to those poor students who fill various minor offices for the sake of eking out their means by the small salaries attached to them.
21. Wagner.
The name—and perhaps also the primal suggestion of the character—of Faust’s Famulus is taken from the old legend, in which Christopher Wagner (see Appendix I.), after Faust’s tragic end, succeeds to his knowledge and enters on a similar, if not so brilliant a career.
It is an interesting coincidence that one of Goethe’s early associates, during his residence in Strasburg and Frankfort, was Heinrich Leopold Wagner (who died in 1779), and who was also an author. Goethe not only read to him the early scenes of Faust, but imparted to him, in confidence, the fate of Margaret, as he meant to develop it; and Wagner was faithless enough to make use of the material for a tragedy of his own—The Infanticide—which was published in 1776. Schiller’s poem, with the same title (apparently suggested by Wagner’s play), and Bürger’s ballad of “The Pastor of Taubenheim’s Daughter,” in which the subject is very similar, were both written in the year 1781.
According to Hinrichs, Faust represents Philosophy, and Wagner Empiricism. Düntzer calls the latter “the representative of dead pedantry, of knowledge mechanically acquired”; while other critics consider that he symbolizes the Philistine element in German life,—the hopelessly material, prosaic, and commonplace. Deycks says of Wagner: “His thoroughly prosaic nature forms the sharpest contrast to Faust, and it is impossible for him to enter into any relation with Mephistopheles, because he restricts himself to beaten tracks, and is repelled by all tricksy wantonness, even by all fresh, natural indulgence. He is the driest caricature of pure rational, formal knowledge, without living thought or poetry, and especially without religion.”
It was probably enough for Goethe that Wagner furnishes a dramatic contrast of character,—a foil to the boundless ideal cravings of Faust. He betrays his nature in the very
