Letter 421 – Caroline Schelling

• 421. Caroline to Luise Wiedemann in Kiel: Munich, 31 January 1807

Munich, 31 Jan[uary] [1807]

|487| Your letter took a long time to get here this time, my dear Luise (is it always necessary for you to send it by way of Wesel? After all, routes are open by way of Hamburg and Frankfurt) [1] —

While I was reading it, it was my greatest comfort to anticipate that in these 3 weeks you surely would have gotten further along in your recovery and would have gotten through that particular time. [2] My precious soul, could I but assist you! Assistance in the real sense often means merely being with someone; a friendly, loving presence is itself a great help. Such is indeed emerging for you in your children, and I hope otherwise in Kiel as well; circumstances everywhere are unfavorable now as far as making new acquaintances is concerned, and certainly for all of you there in every way. [3] Try at least to remain healthy!

I myself admittedly know exactly what a slow convalescence involves. [4] At the time, I honestly did not believe |488| I would ever be able to work my way out of it. One feels caught in a deep well and must climb up sheer vertical walls to escape; one feels as weak today as yesterday, and precisely that weakness causes the wheels in one’s head to spin unbearably fast, making it impossible to sustain any reflection or think any thoughts with pristine clarity. At best, what happens is that after several weeks one notices that several weeks earlier it was indeed worse. [4a]

You are probably not doing as poorly as I was at the time, for after all, you have a calm disposition even though in general you are a rather restive creature — and yet there is nothing definite burdening your soul just now. And please also try to will yourself to be calm, try not to voluntarily make yourself anxious for any reason; it is incredible what a person can do through a strong will alone. What I myself have feared for you is the quiet after the storm, the quiet after the year in which so much happened and passed before you. It can never leave a pleasant impression when one suddenly sees nothing after having seen so much for so long. What is past is then merely the vision of a dream. [5] —

But truly, that emptiness can indeed be filled if you have two or three halfway decent people who come see you each evening, people with whom you can converse and to whom you can gradually relate all that you have collected together in that time. Were I in your place, then instead of all the social contact with families I would instead only take things that far, and since there must always be some among the more settled who are in Kiel for the sake of study and who could be cultivated for such things, that would probably be the most expedient solution. Here I have social contact with more families than in any other place I have lived, and yet what I nonetheless miss, and Schelling as well, is seeing the door open each evening and a couple of familiar faces walk in. [5a]

We are currently caught in the midst of carnival — strangely enough, all public assemblies, |489| balls, etc. are restricted to the short period from the Feast of the Three Magi to Ash Wednesday. [6] Right now there is something every day, but then nothing at all, not even a single concert during the entire winter. When I see how backward everything here is now with regard to such social resources, I can only imagine how wretchedly barbaric things were 10 or 20 years ago. They do have one really nice institution, what they call the Académie masquée.

There is a grand hall (though still not really large enough, since not a single locale here is genuinely large enough to accommodate even the most modest requirements, all the way from the king’s palace, [7] the art gallery, the theater, [8] on down to the very smallest site) at one end of which they set up a theater, before which there are then 3–4 rows of chairs, then gaming tables dispersed throughout the hall; a gallery encircles it above with seats for spectators. [9]

Anyone may attend, and indeed everyone does so; the king and queen along with the members of the court, ministers, etc. are there almost every time and usually sit at the first gaming tables just behind the chairs, holding playing cards and watching a pantomime that is always performed in two acts on the theater stage, Italian farces, including some quite earthy ones, with Arlekin, Pierrot, Pantalone, Colombine in their characteristic costumes. [10] Some corpulent brewer’s wife or other will be sitting right up close to the king wearing a golden bonnet and with chains on her breast bib [11] — and although the crush of the crowd is dreadful, everyone moves about and mingles together.

Most of the gentlemen spend the evening playing domino because there they can keep their hats on, without a mask except perhaps on the hat itself, while the ladies, in the most beautiful finery, go about without any mask at all, or at most they bind a couple of black silk eyes around their white arms. Full masques are granted admission, and there are always some who come with the idea of playing some joke or other, |490| which, of course, is kept in check by the presence of the royal family. I greatly enjoy the pantomimes, in particular one extraordinarily delightful Pierrot who is able to come up with such unprecedented faces and gestures. [12] As one might guess, Tiek could always be found here. [13] —

Head colds and headaches have prevented me from going out much elsewhere, for which I was extremely sorry on January 27, when we had made plans with a group to dine at a ball; although it was Schelling’s birthday, [14] I came down with an absolutely lethal headache and thus sent him there alone. —

But what a rencontre I had recently! I was in a store for fashion accessories along with 2 other ladies whose accents and charming mannerisms soon betrayed them to me as being — not from Munich [15] — after we had been there for a quarter hour, one of them turned to me. “We can no longer hold ourselves back, for we are almost sure we know you — do you not recognize us?” — But I could not think clearly. — “Are you not Madame Böhmer who once lived in Marburg?” — “Yes, indeed I am.” — “And you no longer recognize Caroline Hanstein and Antoinette, who was at the Schulers?” [16] —

Then the scales finally fell from my eyes, and there was a tumultuous scene of greetings. Little Antoinette lives here and is married to the Württemberg envoy, von Bothmer, already has 6 children, and is an extremely charming woman about whom I have variously heard and even seen but whom, since I had not seen here since she was 12 or 13 years old, I did not recognize. She had already noticed me at the Académie masquée and thought she recognized me; she was playing with the queen; afterwards she got up, and I noticed quite clearly that she did not let me out of her sight — she had asked quite a few people about me but had only learned my present name. [17]

Caroline is living with her, unmarried; Minette is in a convent |491| in Westphalia and has allegedly gotten quite fat; the brothers are all married and have a great many children, and the other sisters, none of whom is married other than Antoinette, live with them. The Schulers are in Hildburghausen and will perhaps be coming here this summer. [18] They very much requested that I pay them a visit, and it is only indisposition that has since prevented me from doing so. Both they and I greatly enjoyed catching up. —

Several weeks ago Baron von Knorring also passed through from Rome and paid us a visit. [18a] As you know, he went there with Tiek and the latter’s sister. Madame Bernhardi the Insufferable remained behind there with the sculptor Tiek. Knorring will also be returning; I believe he was merely fetching financial support, and perhaps there will even be a divorce from Herr Bernhardi, since Knorring is utterly ensnared in the clutches of this pale, gaunt, toothless, eyebrowless, and hairless woman with her imperious, obstinate, essentially evil character — but with Tiekean visions. Schlegel is perhaps in England with Madame de Staël. [19] —

I want to relate to you and especially to Wiedemann what we have been involved in here for some time now. Back in the autumn, Ritter (the Galvanist who was in Jena earlier and is now also a member of the Academy here) received reliable news that at the Tyrolean and Italian border there lived a young man out in the country who possessed the ability — one that has already appeared before but which has invariably been rejected, opposed, and persecuted — to sense water and metals beneath the earth precisely at the places where they are located, and for whom the so-called divining rod genuinely twists in his hands etc. [20]

Ritter pondered day and night how he himself might possibly investigate the phenomenon. — The incessant urging of Franz Baader, a divinatory physicist whom we have here and who is one of the most magnificent persons |492| and intellects not just in Bavaria but in all of Germany, persuaded the government to finance sending Ritter there himself. The result was that Ritter became completely convinced that the matter was indeed just as alleged — and anyone who knows Ritter cannot doubt the keenness and cold objectivity of his investigations.

He took the young man (Campetti by name) with him to Milan and Pavia, spoke with many Italian physicists and received especially from the Abbot Amoretti in Milan, librarian of the Ambrosian Library there, a wealth of information about a phenomenon that, while no more wondrous than any other revelation of nature, is nonetheless extraordinarily interesting and promising. Amoretti himself, along with several members of his family, possessed the same ability as Campetti, and as an educated physicist he was also able to carry out various investigations, whereas Campetti is really nothing more than a human divining rod.

Ritter brought him along here (that is, Campetti), albeit not to perform signs and wonders, but as an instrument for scientific discovery. [21] Then, however, he came upon the idea that this particular phenomenon, one that generally appears only in individual instances, might be connected with a much more universally widespread and thus also more universally verifiable ability, and he came upon the extraordinarily felicitous idea of associating it with the pyrite pendulum of Abbé Fortis [1741–1803]. (Wiedemann will know what I am talking about.) This experiment was immediately successful, and with few exceptions — exceptions not, however, demonstrably consistent — succeeds with everyone.

It consists in one taking a small cube of pyrite, affixing it to a strong thread, and holding that thread, lightly moistened, between two fingers over any sort of metal, water, |493| or something of that sort, but steady enough so that it is not being moved mechanically — as soon as it comes to complete rest and is completely free of mechanical movement, it will start to liven up on its own and rotate in perfectly regular, round oscillations, either inwardly or outwardly depending on the composition of the object over which it is rotating.

That characteristic depends on whether the object corresponds to the north or south pole of a magnet. Wiedemann may want to try the experiment first over a magnet shaped like a horseshoe on which the two poles are already designated; he will then know how to take the experiment further. N.B. the experiments must always be conducted uniformly insofar as the cube is always brought toward the object either from above or from the side — for this polarity inhering in all things is, of course, not something fixed, but rather something that shifts very subtly, but always with perfect regularity.

If you draw the cube away from the object for a moment in the same way as you originally brought it over it, either from the side or from above, and then bring it back over the object again in the same way, it will rotate in the opposite direction. Between two pieces of the same metal, it stands still — and otherwise probably also changes its rotation only if the person’s ability is considerable. — The continuous polarity of the human body is quite strange (by the way, every plant and fruit that is still fresh has its own such polarity) —

Although Amoretti had already discovered it, he always used that disdained instrument, the baguette, [22] in doing so — Ritter is now maintaining that the baguette is nothing more than such a double pendulum, something that does seem quite plausible. — Hold the pendulum over your head, and it swings as it does in the case of the south pole — the same if held before the forehead and eye — in the case of the nose, it turns and rotates as in the case of the north pole, |494| the same before the mouth, and before the chin it rotates again as was the case before the forehead.

Thus does it always indicate the symmetry of the right and left side in opposite oscillations. The most fascinating thing is to let it rotate over each fingertip — it rotates differently over the fourth, or ring finger, than above the others — here an opposite quality must be at work. For Campetti, who admittedly does possess this ability to set things in motion to a truly remarkable degree, a small iron rod, a bean, rotates around in a circle between the index and ring fingers. When he hangs the guard of a sword over these two fingers, the sword itself rotates in a circle, which otherwise happens only if two people each lay one finger beneath the guard. —

All these experiments have already been taken much further than I can describe for you in a letter; here I am merely giving you the ABCs. The best thing is that anyone can demonstrate to himself the authenticity of this force, of this effect that human beings must apparently have over so-called dead materials, which in their own turn must thus probably also be alive. This must be the same force that drives the planets around the sun; the human being is the sun with respect to the constituent parts of the earth, parts with which he is on intimate terms, just as he is, if one thing be certain here, with the entire universe to the extent the tiny point of his own existence permits. One cannot but be ecstatic, knowing thus about the magnificence attaching to all things and about the presence of God within all of them.

I can assure you, during this whole time it has seemed to me that although earthly empires have indeed been perishing, divine ones are emerging [23] — although I have already often felt thus alongside Schelling, now, however, it is all emerging before my very eyes, and I am tempted to say that at the same time, his own magnificent mind has also thereby become visible. —

I have been party to many interesting meetings between Baader, Ritter, and Schelling, |495| among them also our good Campetti, a strong, upright young man with his straightforward, cheerful countenance who clearly sincerely enjoys all these phenomena but who otherwise does not understand a single word of any of it, or indeed even a single word of German. You can also well imagine how I engaged my sense for the element of the pittoresque in all this, [24] and, really, a painter such as that of the school of Athens should have been present to capture these extraordinarily expressive heads on canvas. [25] —

What follows from the aforementioned is that the ability to sense hidden metals and water, and that the way the baguette becomes animated when held in the hand over metals, coal, etc., [26] is merely a higher degree of a certain universally human characteristic that genuinely can be developed through practice. At first the baguette would not incline for Ritter except when Campetti laid his hands on Ritter’s shoulders; now, however, it does indeed beat [27] —

Schelling did not need this mediation, it beats quite forcefully for him; when an opposing mechanical force is applied to it, the rod itself crackles so loud that one can hear it (they have hitherto used a thin, flexible reed that has been bent as follows , held firmly on a table with the back of the hands and a piece of metal [e.g., a coin placed beneath the hand], where it then inclines either inwardly or outwardly depending on the metal). —

I have related all this to you merely for your evening’s entertainment and hope you have found it as interesting as have I. By the way, it goes without saying that one does not even need the pyrite; any metal, pure sulfur, a gold ring will behave this way. —

Please be so kind as to pass these pages along to Philipp right away. I suspect he will recall that precisely when he himself was in Italy, a certain Pennet, [28] under the guidance of Dr. Thouvenel, was traveling about conducting these experiments — at the time, they were persecuted, mocked, and perhaps driven a bit too one-sidedly by their promoters, |496| with an insufficient overall view of the phenomenon. Whereas Thouvenel claimed it was merely a manifestation of electricity, my physicists believe a much more immediate process of nature is at work. A dreadful war broke out in Italy because of it; I read about its history under the title La guerra di dieci anni. [29]

Although the thing finally died down, it will now presumably never die down again. There is no need to remind physicians of the sort all of you there are that animal magnetism is also connected with all this. Nonetheless I would like to mention one phenomenon in this context. Schelling’s brother, our Karl, reports that he saw how with a person suffering from cramps it was the iron that made the person himself rotate instead of the person the iron as is usually the case. When one balanced a key with the person, his arm began to rotate so irresistibly that it could be dislocated if not stopped. [29a]

You remember Frau Ziegesar’s illness, whom Himly had for the cure in Jena (although it occurs to me that at that time you had already left; but you do remember the elderly Frau Ziegesar); she regularly lay in a somnambulant condition for several hours at a time, her eyes tightly closed, and fell into convulsions whenever this or that metal was brought near; [30] although not all of them had ill effects on her, she could distinguish them all if one placed them on her stomach. I wonder that Himly did not say anything publicly about this entire illness; it lasted for an extremely long time, and his wife spent several weeks with the ill woman.

You can tell Reinhold that Jacobi, too, has seen quite a few of Campetti’s experiments and, though disinclined to believe, did observe what happened — for him, too, the baguette rotated when Campetti placed his hands on him. Schelling was with him again just yesterday, and they did quite a bit of |497| experimentation. [31] —

But only a few people have actually seen Campetti so far; this is the wrong season to conduct experiments outdoors with metals buried beneath the earth of the sort Ritter was still able to conduct at Lago Maggiore around Christmas; the ground is quite frozen, and we have a great deal of snow.

That said, people both at court and in town have gotten quite into the “swing” of these pendulum swings. Diamond and gold rings are all being set into motion, and only few people are not able to make things rotate in this way, e.g., a few rather obdurate people at court who have already become rather fusty themselves and who presumably are more subject to the power of the metal than the metal is to them (like a person with cramps). This alternation reminds me of the joujous de Normandie, so I have already suggested calling it the joujous de Campetti. [32]

The old Academy of Sciences and Humanities has been abolished and is now closed. The new one will open with Jacobi as its president, which pleases Schelling greatly — one of the first reports at and by this new Academy will be the one concerning this new ability to raise those who are believed to be dead. [32a] —

They say that our blood circulation, assimilation, etc. are based on the same process.

Once I got started, I, too — as you see — have spared not a single sheet of paper. If Wiedemann has something crazy lying around ready for publication, he should go ahead and get it out; after all, one of his friends is a bookseller, and it will not be awkward or anything like that. Cotta is publishing a Morgenblatt now, [33] a newspaper something like the Elegante Zeitung. [34] If Wiedemann thinks he might be able to get some of his own craziness out to readers in a seemly fashion through this newspaper, he should get it to them either directly or indirectly. Der Freimüthige has for the time being gotten very quiet.

I embrace your sweet children. [35] Stay well and please do send me news again soon. Schelling sends his greetings.

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Notes

[1] Caroline is referring to the postal routes throughout Germany that had been closed or otherwise restricted because of the still unresolved war between France and Prussia and the latter’s allies. Wesel is located ca. 465 km southwest of Kiel; concerning Wesel’s status, see Caroline’s letter to Luise Gotter and her daughters on 4 January 1807 (letter 420), note 46. To wit, Wesel was now in French hands, Bavaria’s ally.

Traveling to Munich from Kiel by way of Wese involved another 665 km, i.e., altogether over 1100 km, whereas the more direct route by way of Hamburg and Frankfurt is just over 1000 km, a lengthy route in any case (“Central Europe: Wars of the Third Coalition 1805–7,” Cambridge Modern History Atlas [Cambridge 1912]):

Kiel_Wesel_Munich