Wilhelm Raabe was born on the eighth of September, 1831, in the little town of Eschershausen in the Duchy of Braunschweig. He received his schooling at the Gymnasiums in Holzminden and WolfenbÜttel; from 1849-53 he was employed in a bookstore in Magdeburg; then, while living with his mother in WolfenbÜttel, he prepared for the university, and later went to Berlin, where he studied chiefly history, philosophy, and literature. After the success of his first book, Records of Sparrow Lane (1857), he turned entirely to authorship. In 1862 he married and moved to Stuttgart, where he remained till 1870. From then on until his death in 1910 he lived in Braunschweig. Raabe was an extraordinarily productive writer, yet during the last ten years of his life he entirely gave up all literary activity, and left his last work, Old Folks in the Old Home, unfinished.

The underlying theme of Raabe's writings is the inner life of the individual man and his specifically human sphere of family, society, community, nation. With this he combines a strong preference for what is characteristically German, which he loves just as much where it is merely German, in fact, German to the point of being odd and bizarre, as where it merges into the universally human. Raabe believes, however, that both the peculiarly German and the broadly human types are found with greater richness and depth among the Germans of the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century than among those of the last third. The period before the development of modern Germany is that in which he loves best to linger. When he forsakes it, he does so to go still farther back, into the realm of history proper.

What was it that interested Raabe in history? Not so much the causal connection of events; not so much historical growth, as historical conditions. And, moreover, to him the outward circumstances are merely the necessary premises for what he really wishes to grasp, the spirit of a period, the constitution of the folk-soul. The great historical figures who led up to a period and stand out prominently in it he pushes into the background. It is the forgotten men and women that he seeks, and he pictures how circumstances or events ordered their lives, whether the individual lived apart from his age and contrasted with the mass, or whether the "milieu" wrought in him a particular condition of mind and heart, so that he was drawn into situations and events, into the "Zeitgeist," without actually exercising any decisive influence. In Else von der Tanne the German peasants, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, are sunk in "brutish stupor," inwardly and outwardly coarsened and demoralized, filled with boundless suspicion. When Else, "the purest, holiest flower in the horrible devastation of the earth," appears among them, they look upon her as something monstrous, they make a witch of her, and under their stoning the gentle miracle falls stricken at the threshold of the house of God. In Sankt Thomas the struggle between Spain and the Netherlands kindles heroism in the heart of a woman who, like a phenomenon, interposes in the fight, in which she perishes after all, without being able to give its course a favorable turn. "That was no longer that Camilla who had swung in the hammock. * * * She now appeared as the beautiful but deadly genius of this island; it was as if the destructive power of the tropical sun had become embodied in her. * * * Camilla Drago, in league with the fire from heaven, defended the castell Pavaosa." In The Crown of the Realm the heroine feels the necessity of making her lover go through the campaigns in Bohemia and Hungary from where he returns afflicted with leprosy. He gives up his happiness for lost, but the girl, from whom he has hidden, finds him, acknowledges her love for him, nurses him until his death and becomes in the end the mother-nurse of the exiled lepers.

We do not really feel this last story to be historical; for the spirit of the age, all the events and even the fate of the hero and heroine are far eclipsed by the triumphant strength of those powers that, standing above all time, are able to determine human life. The Crown of the Realm was indeed written after Raabe had tried in The People of the Forest and in his trilogy The Hunger Pastor, Abu Telfan, and The Dead-Wagon—works round which all Raabe's writings circle as round a pole—to comprehend the eternally problematical in human life and to take up some attitude toward it.

"Gib Acht auf die Gassen!" (Watch the Streets), and "Blick auf zu den Sternen!" (Look up to the Stars), are the mottos at whose point of intersection lies the life-wisdom of The People of the Forest. To wrestle with the factors of every-day life, to have a clear eye for the different values of these factors, and in general to respect the dignity of the common are indispensable to every real human life. But, if one is to attain the goals that lie in the land of promise, one's gaze must not remain fixed on the ground. For the universe and the human soul are, in themselves, dark, and receive their light only from the shining spheres that we call stars. In man's sky these are love, friendship, faith, patience, mercy, courage, humility, honor. Still more wonderful, however, than the existence of these stars is perhaps the fact that originally we did not possess them at all, but have only found them in the course of thousands of years. And how did they become ours? Through life's suffering and distress and infamy. Here, indeed, we arrive at the centre of Raabe's thought and work. All that is high in the world has developed through friction with what is low, all that is high requires the low. For just as white is seen in all its intensity only in contrast with black, so, too, depth of love, nobility of mind, strength to aspire are best manifested and unfolded in the conflict with selfishness, baseness, indifference, and every kind of distress and pain. That is why Hans Unwirrsch has Moses Freudenstein for a companion; that is why the author lays so many and such different obstacles in his way; that is why he allows him to attain only to such a modest happiness at last; for the satisfied do not hunger, and hunger for all that is noble is the meaning of our existence. That is why, too, a book like The Hunger Pastor exercises, on the whole, no liberative influence; it does, however, strengthen and edify our souls and warms our hearts with its inner glow.

But how is it? If the antagonism of those elements that increase life and those that weaken it is necessary, must they therefore exist eternally beside each other, and to which side will the final victory incline? "If ye knew what I know, ye would weep much and laugh little:" with these words of Mohammed's Abu Telfan closes. Accordingly the ideal, symbolized in The Hunger Pastor by the cobbler's luminous ball that accompanies Hans Unwirrsch everywhere, here finds only a place of refuge in the secluded "KatzenmÜhle" (cat's mill). Deep resignation is the predominant mood of this work. And in the The Dead-Wagon the place of the shining ball is taken even by the hearse, and the motto of this book is, "The Canaille is lord and remains lord." Antonie HÄusler falls into the power of her rascally grandfather, and attempts to rescue her fail. Nevertheless chevalier von GlÄubigern reports to Jane Warwolf: "I got there in time, she is happy! Believe no one who tries to tell you that she died in misery. * * * Pay no attention to Hennig and those others about us, they know nothing * * *" The chevalier is right. Antonie died, but in the triumph of martyrdom, and this triumph, still and unnoticed as it was, continues to burn in the hearts of the three old people whom we leave at the end of the novel in the home for the old and sick in Krodebeck.

The circle of our trilogy is closed. Light and darkness war against each other in all three parts. In The Hunger Pastor love and work finally win both external and internal victory; in Abu Telfan we are left full of worry that light is diminishing more and more; in the The Dead-Wagon the deepest shadows prevail, the noble and the life-affirming forces experience external defeat, but they remain unconquerable in themselves.

Further than in the The Dead-Wagon a wise author who is just to the world may not go in his pessimism, in spite of his study of Schopenhauer, if he would not appear to indulge in mannerism, to be one-sided. Raabe does not fall a victim to his deep penetration into the hardship and infamy of life; it finally becomes to him merely the means to an end. For he thus obtains from his strict conscience the right from now on to develop for its own sake a side of his talent which had already flashed through almost all his works—his humor. In whatever relation good and evil, happiness and suffering may stand to one another, man can not entirely get rid of either of these sides of life. The idealist or pessimist seeks to emphasize one of the two sides, the realist simply takes them as they are and bears them, the humorist tries to reconcile one with the other. This reconciliation must, of course, be subjective in its nature. It takes place in the mind and heart of the man. A humorist like Raabe allows the oppressive a place within him, and is untroubled because he recognizes that it is an integral part of his lot, of humanity's lot. He does not bear it with ridicule or bitterness, indifference or resignation, because he knows he must, but rather he rejoices in the strength of his soul, he rejoices that he can do it. In the consciousness of this ability he has cast away "the fear of the earthly" and looks down smiling on the mysterious play of the forces of life. He smiles at those who allow themselves to be consumed by distress, he smiles at his own distress which he has to overcome again and again, and is yet affected by grief, is full of the deepest sympathy for all creation, for he knows that he is fighting a common battle with it all. Humor is hearty, humor is brave, humor is full of sunny, smiling wisdom. We have works and characters in German literature that are more pronouncedly and purely humorous than Raabe's. But probably in no other German writer has humor become such a controlling mood of life as in him. With no one else do we feel the faithful humorous personality of the author behind and in his works as we do with Raabe. Horacker (1876), Old Familiar Corners (1879), The Hold-All (1890) may be quoted here.

By virtue of its elevation Raabe's humor has a quiet and certain glance, and is apt to spend its all-embracing sympathy on what is overlooked, what is insignificant, and in all it finds greatness and light hidden and operative. The apparently contradictory attracts him whether it appears to be contradictory in itself or contradictory to what is generally accepted and traditional. He makes friends with originals and oddities; he leads us into the isolation of small German towns, and we feel at home in their sociability and narrowness, in their affection for things and customs of olden times, in their solidity and singularity, in all their local joys and sorrows. Among his many stories we may refer in this connection to: Der DrÄumling (1872), Wunnigel (1878), The Horn of Wanza (1880).

Even in Germany Raabe became known only slowly. This was due to his quiet character that disdained all striving after effect, to the intentional mixture of various elements in his art which sometimes makes it difficult to grasp the purpose of a work as a whole, to his persistent pursuit of ends that lay outside the ruling interests of his time. When once his countrymen began to come to themselves again, however, he did not lack homage. And so it will probably continue to be. An age whose interests are centered largely in the external side of life will think little of him and pass him by, while one whose gaze is directed rather within will take the pains to understand and appreciate him. May his image never be blotted out entirely! For he belongs to those who feel ever rising within them the question, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"