I had alarming dreams during the early hours of the morning: I was wandering in the garden of the Luisenstift, and it seemed to me that all the schoolgirls were phantoms; Boni seemed to me to be especially melancholy; I woke up feeling very sad and with a heavy heart. I shall probably have not a single moment of peace until the children leave—and afterward?? . . . —
R. works; he receives a letter from Herr Friedlander, the publisher of the ‘‘Kaisermarsch’’ offering him 9,000 marks for an overture—simply in order to wrest from Schott’s the prestige of being Wagner’s publisher. —
R. sends C. Frantz a number of pamphlets (Nietzsche, etc.) to show him that he does not belong to the National Liberals! The more we discuss the works of this man who is certainly by no means insignificant, the I more indignant we become over them—they impede the good cause in a thoroughly unpatriotic way.
The poor mathematics teacher, Vogler here (he is giving Lusch lessons in arithmetic); he is pleased with the new coinage, saying it is handsome and noble and a German can be proud of it, even if he knows very well that it will increase his expenses and not his income. — To give vent to such feelings is a sin when one does not have the power to create something better than that which one censures. The powerless person who is discontented must keep silent. At the same time he knows South Germany and particularly Bavaria just as little as the attackers and present-day defenders of Christianity know Christianity. —
The church councilor brings me The Self-Destruction of Christianity—a very pitiful affair. In the evening I read Tyndall’s address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science to R. He is very tired.