THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN
Joseph Schafer
IV. SOME SOCIAL TRAITS OF TEUTONS}}
The year 1832, celebrated in Wisconsin history as the time when the lead miners and other pioneers destroyed the power of the Rock River Indians, was remembered by later-coming German immigrants for a very different reason. It was toward the end of March in that year, the place Trier (Treves), the ancient capital of the western "Cæsars," a city which is still rich in the massive ruins of its Roman foretime. As the story goes, the boys of one form in the old Gymnasium were being entertained at the house of a professor, where, boy-like, they were playing indoor games accompanied with much laughter and general hilarity. Suddenly one of their younger classmates rushed breathless into the room, exclaiming: "Goethe is dead!"[1] During the balance of the evening, the less serious of the youngsters having returned to their interrupted play, this boy engaged with his instructors in eager discussion of Goethe's life and writings.
The youth in question was Karl Marx, whose later history exhibits a wide divergence from the exclusively literary career prophesied by his boyhood scholastic interests. The classmate who is authority for this incident continued in Marx's company the Gymnasium studies; he then performed his one year minimum of military service, and having secured some business experience sailed away as an immigrant to the new world, settling on a Wisconsin farm. In the course of a long life he often reverted to the story of Goethe, whose works, as well as those of Schiller and Lessing, made a part of his home library. These great names never failed to kindle his pride in the
- ↑ The death of Goethe occurred on the twenty-second of March. The news must have taken several days in travel.
