t in
Hoelderlin's writings, Scherer's judgment is correct when he states: "Die
Grundstimmung war eine tiefe Verbitterung gegen die Versunkenheit des
Vaterlands."[40] The reason is not far to seek, especially when we
consider the impossible demands of the poet's extravagant idealism. The
conditions in Germany which had called forth the terrible arraignment of
petty despotism, crushing militarism, and political rottenness
generally, in the works of Lenz, Klinger and Schubart, had not abated.
Schubart was one of Hoelderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter
was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow
stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and
experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41]
he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which
his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance
of "Fuerstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So too in
"Maennerjubel," 1788:

Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Goettlichen!
Und diesen Funken soll aus der Maennerbrust
Der Hoelle Macht uns nicht entreissen!
Hoert es, Despotengerichte, hoert es![42]

Perhaps nowhere outside of his own Wuerttemberg could he have been more
unfavorably situated in this respect. Under Karl Eugen (1744-1793) the
country sank into a deplorable condition. Regardless of the rights of
individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his
reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in
order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his
autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of
constitutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and
the selling of troops. These things Hoelderlin attacks in one of his
youthful poems "Die Ehrsucht" (1788):

Um wie Koenige zu prahlen, schaenden
Kleine Wuetriche ihr armes Land;
Und um feile Ordensbaender wenden
Raete sich das Ruder aus der Hand.[43]

Another act of gross injustice which this petty tyrant perpetrated, and
which Hoelderlin must have felt very painfully, was the incarceration of
the poet's countryman Schubart from 1777 to 1787 in the Hohenasperg. But
not only from within came tyrannous oppression. Following upon the
coalition against France after the Revolution, Wuerttemberg became the
scene of bloody conflicts and the ravages of war. Under the regime of
Fri