“Ah! what bliss is the aspiration
          To dangle from a lamp-post
          As a martyr for the nation!”

During these vacations politics was naturally a matter of utter indifference to us, and toward their close we usually paid a visit to my grandmother and aunt in Dresden.

So the years passed till Easter (1852) came, and with it our confirmation and my separation from Ludo, who was to follow a different career.  We had double instruction in confirmation, first with the village boys from the pastor of Eichfeld, and afterwards from Middendorf at the institute.

Unfortunately, I have entirely forgotten what the Eichfeld clergyman taught us, but Middendorf’s lessons made all the deeper impression.

He led us through life to God and the Saviour, and thence back again to life.

How often, after one of these lessons, silence reigned, and teachers and pupils rose from their seats with tearful eyes!

Afterwards I learned from a book which had been kept that what he gave us had been drawn chiefly from the rich experiences of his own life and the Gospels, supplemented by the writings of his favourite teacher, Schleiermacher.  By contemplation, the consideration of the universe with the soul rather than with the mind, we should enter into close relations with God and become conscious of our dependence upon him, and this consciousness Middendorf with his teacher Schleiermacher called “religion.”

But the old Lutzow Jager, who in the year 1813 had taken up arms at the Berlin University, had also sat at the feet of Fichte, and therefore crowned his system by declaring, like the latter, that religion was not feeling but perception.  Whoever attained this, arrived at a clear understanding of his own ego (Middendorf’s mental understanding of life), perfect harmony with himself and the true sanctification of his soul.  This man who, according to our Middendorf, is the really religious human being, will be in harmony with God and Nature, and find an answer to the highest of all questions.

Froebel’s declaration that he had found “the unity of life,” which had brought Middendorf to Keilhau, probably referred to Fichte.  The phrase had doubtless frequently been used by them in conversations about this philosopher, and neither needed an explanation, since Fichte’s opinions were familiar to both.

We candidates for confirmation at that time knew the Berlin philosopher only by name, and sentences like “unity with one’s self,” “to grasp and fulfil,” “inward purity of life,” etc., which every one who was taught by Middendorf must remember, at first seemed perplexing; but our teacher, who considered it of the utmost importance to be understood, and whose purpose was not to give us mere words, but to enrich our souls with possessions that would last all our lives, did not cease his explanations until even the least gifted understood their real meaning.