edrich Eugen (1795-97) the French gained such a foothold in
Wuerttemberg that the country had to pay a contribution of four million
gulden to get rid of them. These were the conditions under which
Hoelderlin grew up into young manhood. But deeper than in the mere
existence of these conditions themselves lay the cause of the poet's
most abject humiliation and grief. It was the stoic indifference, the
servile submission with which he charged his compatriots, that called
forth his bitterest invectives upon their insensible heads. His own
words will serve best to show the intensity of his feelings. In 1788 he
writes, in the poem "Am Tage der Freundschaftsfeier:"

Da sah er (der Schwaermer) all die Schande
Der weichlichen Teutonssoehne,
Und fluchte dem verderblichen Ausland
Und fluchte den verdorbenen Affen des Auslands,
Und weinte blutige Thraenen,
Dass er vielleicht noch lange
Verweilen muesse unter diesem Geschlecht.[44]

Ten years later he treats the Germans to the following ignominious
comparison:

Spottet ja nicht des Kinds, wenn es mit Peitsch' und Sporn
Auf dem Rosse von Holz, mutig und gross sich duenkt.
Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seid
Thatenarm und gedankenvoll.[45]

With his friend Sinclair, who was sent as a delegate, he attended the
congress at Rastatt in November, 1798, and here he made observations
which no doubt resulted in the bitter characterization of his nation in
the closing letters of Hyperion. This convention, whose chief object was
the compensation of those German princes who had been dispossessed by
the cessions to France on the left bank of the Rhine, afforded a
spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit
even less proud and sensitive than Hoelderlin's. The French emissaries
conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes
vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant
Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hoelderlin
conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused
him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion:
"Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch
Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfaehig jedes goettlichen
Gefuehls--beleidigend fuer jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos,
wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefaesses--das, mein Bellarmin!
waren meine Troester.