Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist (19 page)

Wittenberg, etc.

Martin Luther.

Holed up in his stronghold at Lützen Castle, Kohlhaas was just then mulling over in his seething breast a plan to burn Leipzig to the
ground – for he gave no credence to the placards posted in villages maintaining that Junker Wenzel was in Dresden, since they were anonymous, lacking, in particular, the signature of the town magistrate, as he had demanded – when, altogether taken aback, Sternbald and Waldmann discovered the placard that had been nailed at the entrance to the castle compound in the dead of night. In vain did they hope for several days that Kohlhaas, to whom they preferred not to broach the matter, would see it himself; but brooding and preoccupied, he appeared every evening to issue his brief orders and noticed nothing; so finally, one morning, when he intended to string up a couple of his men who had been plundering in the region against his orders, the two decided to bring it to his attention. He had just returned from the place of execution, as the crowd of hangers-on he'd attracted ever since the last mandate timidly made way, parting to left and right; a great cherub-bedecked sword on a red leather pillow adorned with golden tassels was presented to him, and twelve men with flaming torches followed him, when Sternbald and Waldmann, clasping their swords under their arms in a manner that must have seemed strange to him, circled the pillar to which Luther's placard was attached. Hands folded behind his back, lost in thought, Kohlhaas passed under the portal, looked up and stopped short; and when, at the sight of him, the two men respectfully stepped aside, he absently gazed in their direction, and with a few swift steps approached the pillar. But who can describe his state of mind when he caught sight of the placard whose contents accused him of acts of injustice, signed by the man he held in greatest esteem and reverence, Martin Luther! His face flushed a dark red; removing his helmet, he read it through twice from beginning to end; he
turned around and looked at his men with a wavering expression, as though he wanted to say something, and said nothing; he took the sheet down from the wall and read it through again, and cried out: “Waldmann! Saddle my horse!” And thereafter: “Sternbald, come with me into the castle!” Whereupon he disappeared. It did not take more than these few words for him to suddenly feel utterly disarmed by the direness of his situation. He donned the disguise of a Thuringian tenant farmer, told Sternbald that a business matter of pressing importance compelled him to go to Wittenberg, entrusted him, in the presence of some of his most stout-hearted men, with the command of the force left behind in Lützen; and with the assurance that he'd be back in three days, during which time no attack was to be feared, he rode off to Wittenberg.

He registered with a false name at an inn, from whence, come nightfall, sheathed with a coat and armed with a pair of pistols he'd taken from Tronkenburg Castle, he made his way to Luther's house. Luther, who sat at his writing table surrounded by papers and books, and observed the door being opened and locked again behind a stranger, an oddly dressed man, asked him who he was and what he wanted. And no sooner had the latter, respectfully holding his hat in his hands, and well aware of the terror his words would arouse, quietly replied: “I am Michael Kohlhaas, the horse trader,” then Luther cried out: “Be gone from here!” and leaping up from his table, reaching for a bell, added: “Your breath is the plague and your proximity rack and ruin!” Without budging from the spot, Kohlhaas pulled out a pistol and said: “Most honored Sir, this pistol, should you touch the bell, will lay me dead at your feet! Be seated and please listen to me; for you are no safer among the angels, whose psalms
you record, than you are with me.” Sitting himself back down, Luther asked: “What do you want?” Kohlhaas replied: “Only to refute the opinion you hold of me, that I am an unjust man! You said on your placard that my liege lord knows naught of my dispute: Very well then, assure me safe passage and I will go to Dresden to present my case to him.” “You desperate and depraved man!” cried Luther, both disconcerted and calmed by his own words: “Who gave you the right to attack Junker von Tronka in pursuit of your own judgment, and not finding him at his castle, to comb with sword and fire the entire region for hide or hair of him?” Kohlhaas replied: “Honored Sir, no one from this day forth! Misinformation I received from Dresden lead me in the wrong direction! The war I wage with society would indeed be a misdeed, were I not, as you have just assured me, cast out of it!” “Cast out!” cried Luther, peering at him. “What madness took hold of your mind? Who would have cast you out of the collectivity of the country in which you live? Tell me a single case, as long as countries have existed, of a man, whoever he may be, cast out of his country?” “I call him an outcast,” Kohlhaas replied, pressing his hands together, “who's been deprived of the protection of the law! Since I depend on this protection for the peaceful pursuit of my trade; for its sake alone do I put myself and all that I've earned in society's safe haven; and whosoever denies me that legal recourse casts me out to live among the beasts of the wild; he puts the cudgel in my hand with which I must protect myself.” “Who in God's name denied you the protection of the law?” cried Luther. “Did I not tell you in writing that the complaint you filed is unknown to the Elector? If civil servants suppress legal proceedings behind his back or in some other way dishonor his hallowed name behind his back, who
else but God dare call him to account for the selection of such servants, and are you, you damned and terrible man, entitled to pass judgment over him?” “So be it,” replied Kohlhaas, “if the Elector has not cast me out, then I will return to the social order he is sworn to protect. Get me, I repeat, safe passage to Dresden, and I will dissolve the army I've gathered at the castle at Lützen, and once again bring the rejected complaint before the High Tribunal.” With a vexed expression, Luther flung the papers on his desk one on top of another and fell silent. The defiant stance this strange man took to the state annoyed him; and as to the judgment he passed from Kohlhaasenbrück on the Junker, Luther inquired: “What do you expect of the tribunal in Dresden?” Kohlhaas replied: “Punishment of the Junker, according to the law; return of my horses in their former condition; and compensation for the injuries that I, as well as my stable hand Herse, who died at Mühlenberg, suffered from the violence done to us.” Luther cried out: “Compensation for the damages! What of the damages in the thousands that you incurred in trade and pledges from Jews and Christians alike in wreaking your wild revenge! Will you add these damages to the bill at the inquiry?” “God forbid!” replied Kohlhaas. “I'm not asking to have my house and lands back, or the good life I once led, far less the cost of my wife's funeral! Herse's old mother will calculate the cost of his care and convalescence and prepare a tally of his losses at Tronkenburg Castle, and the state can have an expert calculate the damages I suffered from not being able to sell the horses.” Luther looked him in the eye and said: “You mad, unfathomable and terrible man! Now that your sword has taken the fiercest revenge one could possibly imagine on the Junker, what in heaven's name impels you to demand
a judgment against him, the severity of which, should the punishment finally be enacted, would be light in comparison?” Kohlhaas replied, a tear running down his cheek: “Honored Sir, it cost me my wife; Kohlhaas will show the world that she did not die for an unjust cause. Yield to my will in this matter, and let the court decide; and in all other matters of dispute I will yield to your will.” Luther said: “Look here, had matters taken a different turn, and based on everything I've heard, what you demand would be right and just; and had you been wise enough to bring the entire matter to the Elector's attention and let him decide the matter before taking it into your own hands and wreaking revenge, I don't doubt that every single one of your demands would have been granted. But all things considered, would you not have done better, in the eyes of your Redeemer, to forgive the Junker and lead the nags, haggard and careworn as they were, back to your stable in Kohlhaasenbrück, where they could eat their fill?” Walking to the window, Kohlhaas replied: “That may be! And then again it might not! Had I known that those nags would cost me the lifeblood of my beloved wife, it may well be, honored Sir, that I would have done as you say, and not begrudged them a bushel of oats! But because I had to pay so dearly for those nags, let justice take its course: let the judgment I'm due be spoken, and let the Junker feed my nags.” Reaching again for his papers, mulling many things over in his mind, Luther said that he would take the matter up with the Elector. In the meantime, he bid Kohlhaas hold his peace at Lützen Castle; if His Lordship acceded to his request for safe passage then he would be informed of it by a posted placard to that effect. “However,” Luther continued, as Kohlhaas bent down to kiss his hand, “I do not know if the Elector will be favorably inclined to
grant you a pardon under the present circumstances, since I have heard that he has amassed an army and stands ready to launch an assault on Lützen Castle. In the meantime, as I have already told you, the outcome won't depend on my efforts.” At that, Luther got up from the table and bid him farewell. Kohlhaas said that he was altogether confident that his intercession would help, whereupon Luther waved goodbye, but the horse trader sank to one knee before him and said: “I have another heartfelt wish. On Pentecost, for which it had always been my custom to visit the altar of the Lord, my battles kept me from attending church; would you, Sir, without any further ado, have the kindness of hearing my confession, and thereafter grant me the blessing of the holy sacraments?” After a moment's hesitation, Luther looked him in the eye and said: “Yes, Kohlhaas, I will do it. But the Lord, whose body you crave, forgave his enemy. Will you,” he added, as the latter responded with a startled look, “likewise forgive the Junker who offended you, go to Tronkenburg Castle, saddle your nags and ride them home to Kohlhaasenbrück to be fed?” “Most honored Sir,” said Kohlhaas, turning red in the face, reaching for Luther's hand, “the Lord did not forgive
all
his enemies. Let me forgive the Elector, both the overseer and the manager, as well as Messrs. Hinz and Kunz, and whosoever else gave me offense in this matter-but let the Junker, if it please, be obliged to feed my nags.” At these words, Luther gave him an angry look, turned his back and rang the bell. In answer to the bell, a servant appeared with a light in the antechamber; Kohlhaas stood there, struck dumb, wiping the tears from his eyes; and since the servant fiddled with the door to no avail, it being locked, and Luther had returned to his writing table, Kohlhaas opened the door for him.
“Light his way out!” Luther said with a nod in the stranger's direction; whereupon, a bit befuddled by the presence of the visitor at this late hour, the man took the house-key down from the wall and turned it in the lock, and retreating behind the half-opened door, awaited the stranger's departure. Fiddling with his hat in his hands, Kohlhaas said: “Am I then not to be accorded the kindness for which I asked, most noble Sir, the blessing of absolution?” Luther replied curtly: “Your Savior's absolution, no! As to the Elector's ruling, that will depend on his reaction to the propositions in my letter, as I promised. And thereupon, Luther motioned to his servant to do as he was told without any further delay. With a pained look, Kohlhaas lay both hands on his breast; followed the man, who lighted his way down the stairs, and disappeared.

The following morning, Luther drafted a letter to the Prince Elector of Saxony, in which, following a bitter interjection concerning Messrs. Hinz and Kunz von Tronka, his chamberlain and cupbearer, who had, as was common knowledge, suppressed Kohlhaas' complaint, he told the Lord straight out, as was his wont, that under such troublesome circumstances, he had no choice but to accept the horse trader's proposition, and to accord him amnesty to pursue his legal case. Public opinion, Luther remarked, had turned dangerously in this man's favor, such that even in the thrice-torched Wittenberg there were those who defended his cause; and since he would most assuredly bring his appeal to the public's attention in the most hateful terms, should it be denied, the whole business could easily flare up to such a degree that the forces of law and order would no longer be able to hold him in check. Luther concluded that, in this extraordinary case, one had to overlook the dangerous risk of
dealing with a citizen who had taken up arms; that the man in question had indeed, in a certain sense, on account of the measures taken against him, been cast out of the social contract; in short, so as to get ourselves out of this bind, we must view him as an invading foreign power – which is how, as a foreigner, he qualifies his own tenuous status – rather than as a rebel rising up against the throne. The Prince Elector received the letter just as Prince Christiern von Meissen, High Commander of the Reich, uncle of Prince Friedrich von Meissen, the latter beaten by Kohlhaas at Mühlberg and still suffering from his wounds; Count Wrede, the Lord High Chancellor of the Tribunal; Count Kallheim, president of the State Chancellery; and the aforementioned Messrs. Hinz and Kunz von Tronka, the former chamberlain, the latter cupbearer, childhood friends and confidants of His Lordship, all happened to be present at his castle. The Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, who, in the capacity of a Privy Councilor, saw to the Elector's private correspondence with the authority to use his name and seal, was the first to speak up, and after once again establishing at length that he had indeed submitted the horse trader's complaint against the Junker, his cousin, to the tribunal, noted that he would certainly never have taken it upon himself to suppress it by injunction, had he not, misled by false assertions, taken it to be a wholly groundless and capricious attempt at extortion, whereupon he came to the current state of affairs. He remarked furthermore that, simply because of this regrettable blunder, neither divine nor human laws justified that the horse trader resort to the kind of inconceivable acts of revenge he had committed; he warned that to enter into negotiations with him as a legitimate warring power would bleach the dark stain of his standing in the public eye;
and the consequent dishonor to the hallowed person of the Prince Elector would be so intolerable that, all things considered, he could sooner conceive, as worst case scenario, a verdict favoring the raging rebel, wherein the Junker, his cousin, were obliged to go to Kohlhaasenbrück and personally feed his nags, rather than an acceptance of Doctor Luther's recommendation. Half-turned toward the chamberlain, the Lord High Chancellor of the Tribunal, Count Wrede, expressed his regret that the mindful consideration his colleague now displayed for the reputation of the Prince Elector in the resolution of this admittedly awkward matter had not been taken right from the start. He presented his position that the Elector would be obliged to enlist the supreme power of the state to enforce a patently unjust measure; remarked, with a telling look, on the horse trader's continuing popularity in the country, that under these circumstances the trail of enormities threatened to go on without end, and concluded that only a simple act of justice, an immediate and unstinting restitution for the wrongs done him could make him stop and extricate the administration from this sordid tit for tat. In answer to the Elector's question as to what he made of the matter, Prince Chistiern von Meissen turned with reverence to face the Lord High Chancellor: “I have the greatest respect for the high-minded views espoused by my esteemed colleague, in wishing to see Kohlhaas find justice, however, the Lord High Chancellor does not take into consideration all the damage the horse trader himself has done in Wittenberg and Leipzig and in the entire country while seeking redress or at least punishment for the injustice he suffered. The state of law and order in the land has been so disrupted by this man that in holding to a high-minded principle of jurisprudence we would be hard-pressed
to repair the damage. Therefore, concurring with the views of the chamberlain, I would urge that all necessary military measures be taken, that an army be gathered of sufficient size to arrest or crush the horse trader, now holed up in Lützen.” Dragging chairs from against the wall for himself and the Prince Elector and setting them ceremoniously in the room, the chamberlain said he was glad that a man of such integrity and such a discerning mind shared his view of the way to settle this dubious matter. Grabbing hold of the proffered chair without sitting down, the Prince looked at his chamberlain and assured him that he had absolutely no reason to rejoice, since legal protocol necessarily demanded that a warrant for his arrest be issued first and that he be brought to trial for misuse of my name and title. For if necessity demanded that the veil be lowered before the throne of justice to cover up a series of outrages that followed ineluctably one after the other, the bar of justice would not be long enough to encompass them all, nor would the person who provoked these outrages be exempt from judgment; and the state would first have to seek the horse trader's indictment for capital crimes before being empowered to crush a man whose cause was, after all, as everyone knew, a just one, and into whose hands the sword he wielded had been thrust. At these words, the Prince Elector, whom the Junker regarded with a pained expression, turned red in the face and strode to the window. Following a long disconcerted silence in the room, Count Kallheim remarked that such a course of action would not get them out of the vicious circle in which they were caught. “By the same logic,” he said, “one would be likewise obliged to bring my nephew, Prince Friedrich, to trial, for he, too, in the curious campaign he waged against Kohlhaas, had more than once overstepped
the bounds of his orders; such that if one were to seek out the growing group of those responsible for the predicament in which we now find ourselves, he too would have to be included among them, and be called by the Elector to account for what happened at Mühlberg.” While the prince cast uncertain glances at his worktable, his cupbearer, Sir Hinz von Tronka, cleared his throat and declared: “I cannot fathom how the obvious state solution could have eluded men as astute as those gathered here. In exchange for safe passage to Dresden and the reopening of his legal case, the horse trader has, to my knowledge, promised to dissolve the army with which he has terrorized this land. It did not, however, necessarily follow that he would have to be granted amnesty for his vengeful acts”: two legal premises which both Dr. Luther and the Lord High Chancellor appeared to have confused. “Even if,” he continued, with a finger touching his nose, “the Dresden Tribunal were to recognize his rightful claim regarding the treatment of the nags, this would not preclude locking up Kohlhaas for his murderous rampage and pillaging” – an expedient take on the situation that combined the benefits of the views of both of the aforementioned statesmen and would surely be applauded by the people and by posterity. Seeing as Prince von Meissen and the Lord High Chancellor responded with nothing but a blank look to the cupbearer's recommendation, and, consequently, the parley appeared to have come to an end, the Elector said: “I will mull over the various opinions presented here until the next state council meeting.” It seemed that the preliminary disciplinary measure mentioned by the count so touched the heart of the Elector, a heart prone to friendship, that it dispelled his desire to send out the military force he had already amassed to fight Kohlhaas.
Thanking all the others, he only asked the Lord High Chancellor, Count Wrede, whose opinion seemed to him to be the most expedient, to remain; and since the latter showed him dispatches reporting that the horse trader's force had, in fact, already grown to four hundred men, and that, moreover, given the public displeasure at the unseemly comportment of the chamberlain, one could count on that force soon doubling or tripling in size – the Elector decided without any further delay to accept the advice of Dr. Luther. Whereupon he put Count Wrede in charge of the entire matter concerning Kohlhaas; and shortly thereafter, a placard was posted in public places, the essential details of which were as follows: