Mr Schultze

A Fairy Tale

by Torsten Schwanke

The time of miracles is over

And the world no longer believes
In the supernatural,
For it wants to have everything in sober,
Down-to-earth reality
In order to be able to understand it
From the bottom of its heart,
That is, to be able to touch it.
If something ghostly really does happen,
If a decent, proper ghost
Shows itself to an individual,
The chosen one, in a quiet midnight hour,
He could later swear by all the saints,
And moreover swear stone and bone,
That no one would believe a word of it.
Either it would be said,
The good man had dreamed with waking eyes,
Or the unloving brothers and sisters
Might judge even more severely
And in the end even say,
He is a fool
That he can think that sensible people
Should allow themselves to be led
To believe something like that!

Now what on earth is to be done

With such a world? -
Nothing at all.

Not so long ago

God himself
Was in such a similar embarrassment.
On earth, and especially in the German state,
Things looked windy and bad in every respect.
The lords and servants of the chambers
Were satisfied with the politics of the chambers,
But no one else was either;
Religion, too, was threatening to become
Completely irreligious,
Precisely because of religion,
For even the laity no longer felt safe
To go to sleep as ordinary people
And to rise again as apostles -
And as far as the harvests were concerned,
It was truly despairing.
Once it seemed too dry, once too wet,
Once a lot of mildew, another time hail,
In short, every year something else
Came along which drove up the price of grain,
Made bread and meat more expensive
And so depressed the poor -
Those who had not known how to become rich -
That there was no end
To the prayers and supplications.
The needy then turned partly to him personally,
Partly they tormented and tortured
The poor saints and patron saints
To the point of blood.

In addition, God really began

To feel pitty for them.
He would have liked to help them so much! -
But how to begin?
He could not and would not change
The laws of nature,
And it would have been asking too much
To disturb the tremendous action
Of those elemental forces
That work and create,
Because of the few inhabitants of the earth.
But there were natural means,
And they should help here.

Nothing was easier than religion -

He had already dictated
The whole thing to Moses
In a quarter of an hour -
In this respect he hoped soon to make peace;
Politics, too, had to be put in order -
After all, they were all his children,
And even if some, as brothers and sisters often do,
Had oppressed the others
And appropriated things
That were not meant for them alone,
That - and he had just given them reason to do so -
Could soon be put right.

Finally, as far as the many crop failures were concerned,

The earth itself produced remedies
Against these evils,
For it carried and still carries
Within itself the germ
To improve everything
And to lead it to its highest degree of perfection.
Now the question arose
As to how this could be made known
To the people themselves,
And in what way it could be hoped
To be understood by them.

By a fiery writing in the sky? -

The free spirits and professors
Would have declared such a writing
To be something natural,
And the theologians would have given it
A quite different interpretation.
By a voice from above? -
In the first place, that had already happened,
And then people would have said at most,
Today it thundered once,
So that one could understand words properly. -
It was exasperating.

Then God the Father,

Out of infinite love for the human race,
Decided to write a book
About the conditions
That needed to be improved
And especially about agriculture
And animal husbandry,
In which two branches
He was particularly interested,
And to descend to earth himself with it.

He had time for the moment:

The world generally ran on calmly
In its eternal circles,
And if a comet did not sometimes burn through him
And, with a tail of rough fellows on its heels,
Rage through the quiet streets of the firmament
With open lanterns and pitch torches
In a way dangerous to the state,
Then there was no disorder to fear.
But even in this respect, the calculations
Of the best astronomers had reassured him,
As they had postponed the appearance
Of the next one until x years.

His plan was therefore,

Hardly intended, already executed.
With the speed of thought,
The times flew down on the paper
With the revelation of those divine
Elemental forces of the earth's body
That are still unknown to us,
And even if God
Had no longer occupied himself
With literary works
Since he drafted the Ten Commandments
At that time, the matter nevertheless proceeded
Relatively immensely quickly.

That done, he rushed down

To our beautiful earth,
Love for his often disobedient children
In his loyal Father's heart,
To look for a publisher for his work,
And, as goes without saying,
He stayed in Leipzig,
In the first inn there.

In order to avoid any fuss,

However, he naturally had to assume
The form of a man -
The noble, beautiful form of man
He had earlier created in his own image -
And dressed very simply,
But nevertheless according to the prevailing fashion.
Several hackney carriages
Stopped in front of the hotel,
And one of them soon brought him
To the bookseller Mr. Pain,
Whom he entered without further ado
And, after a few introductory words,
Offered him his finished manuscript.

Mr. Pain - a long, lean man with deep-set, dark eyes -

Very kindly made him sit down,
Then read the title of the manuscript
And asked, bowing slightly to the stranger,

To whom have I the honour?

Now this was a very natural question;
Every bookseller wants to know
Who he is dealing with.
Nevertheless, it came unexpectedly to God,
For he was not allowed to tell the man who he was;
Mr Pain would not have believed him in his life.
So he kept it short and answered
By returning the bow
So as not to seem naughty,

Schultze!

Ah - Mr. Schultze - a pleasure!

And so you wish to have this printed?

I wish thereby to meet an urgent need,

Said the good Lord,
And Mr. Pain quickly opened the manuscript,
For he probably believed
That the proposal for a new theatre business office
Or for an illustrated newspaper was lurking within;
He soon saw, however, that he was mistaken,
And asked - already somewhat reassured,

And what is it about?

The title is somewhat - somewhat comprehensive:
Revelations of the most secret
And beneficial elemental forces of the globe...

About everything -
Animal husbandry and agriculture -
Religion and politics.

You are a man of letters?

Not really; I'm more of an economist,

But I wrote this work
Out of pure love for the cause,
Because I love people
And know what a service I'll be doing them.

Mr Pain leafed through the manuscript a little

To read individual sentences in it,
Shaking his head significantly.

Very cursorily written that, very, -

Mister - Mister.

Schultze, said the Lord.

Ah yes, Mr Schultze - very cursory -

The typesetters always complain like that!
I should think
It would depend more on the content
Than the writing here! said the stranger.
How inconspicuous a potato looks, for instance,
And what does it not contain?
Inside it lives and works a small world,
Self-contained, but therefore no less artistic;
Forces and life instincts unknown to man
Flow through it,
And breathing beings move in this firm,
Juicy mass of flesh
With the same ease
With which men move through the air,
And when in spring the sprouts...

You have imagination, Mr Schultze,

Mr Pain interrupted him somewhat impatiently -
But might I ask you to give me a little more detail
About the contents of this writing?

With pleasure. -
It is, as the title tells you, a revelation
Of secret, hitherto unknown,
Perhaps not even imagined forces of nature,
To counteract first of all the misgrowth
And the cattle plagues,
And at the same time to order
And regulate the moral work
And activities of the people -
Of whom the great majority
Now lives into the day.
As far as the first chapter -
Misgrowth and epidemics - is concerned,
Different conditions existed in earlier times.
The population of the globe was too weak,
And the earth produced more
Than its inhabitants could consume.
Therefore I had to seek to remedy
This evil by natural means.

You?

I - mean Nature.
But now that cause has ceased,
And therefore the effect shall also abate.
The human race has so increased in number
That, at least in Europe, it can produce
Everythinmg that it needs.
And I now wish to see this obstacle,
Which is becoming a disadvantage, lifted.
But you cannot ask me to change
The eternal laws of nature in order to...

No! said Mr. Pain.

At first, God looked at him in astonishment,

But he quickly recollected himself
And relented, In order to remedy such evils,
One cannot, as I wanted to say,
Demand that the once existing laws
Of nature should be changed.
On the other hand, the remedy
For these no longer necessary reductions in growth
Lies in its own forces,
In its most secret, innermost fibres of life,
And I have written all this down here,
Briefly and succinctly,
But also easily comprehensible.
Print it and give the usual fee for it
To the local poor fund. -
You will benefit enough from it.

Mr Pain, perhaps aroused by this

Far from ordinary behaviour,
Or perhaps because the stranger's
Whole appearance
Inspired a certain awe in him,
Shied away from giving a definite answer immediately
And only asked to leave the manuscript
With him until tomorrow,
When he promised to decide on it.

At the appointed hour the next day,

The stranger turned himself in again
And asked for his answer.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pain looked extremely worried today
And looked down at the manuscript
He held in his hand, shaking his head
And with raised eyebrows.

I have come to hear your decision

About printing my work, said the stranger.

Yes, you see - best Mr Schultze,

The bookseller began at last after a short pause -
It's one thing to print this booklet.
For one thing, I honestly don't believe
That the book will make any money.
There is too much fantasy in it
For a purely scientific work, -
Too much science for fantasy, and then -
If we didn't print it extremely splendidly,
So that there would be over twenty sheets,
The censor would cancel the whole story.
They don't stick to the existing at all,
Throw everything overboard
That is there after all,
And talk about things
That are almost beyond human comprehension.
I leafed through it -
A somewhat old-fashioned style - well,
Such things could be changed - but -
Don't hold it against me -
The whole thing is written a little too pretentiously.
You go on and on:
This must be like this and that like that,
Here do this and there do that,
The effect will then be like this
In the first year, like this in the second,
And like this in the third
And the following ones;
The kind of treatment of A
Has an effect on B,
And the omission would be like this
Again for three years,
And like this again for another ten.
No, that won't do, my dear Mr. Schultze,
We can't get away with it any more.
Yes, in the old days,
One put up with it,
As if it only took a somewhat bold forehead
To make the world believe what one wanted;
But now we'll get to the bottom of the matter.

Moreover, you allow yourself

To make statements about politics,
And especially about religion,
Which I would not even like
To represent myself
Under the name of Schultze.
In the end, we wouldn't need priests
And preachers any more;
And then the illumination
Of your social circumstances?
No, my good Mr. Schultze:
If I were to actually print the book,
Which certainly betrays the spirit,
First of all no one would believe a word
Of what is written in it;
Then we would come
Under the most beautiful criminal investigation
Because of one part,
And afterwards the reviewers
Would fall over the other part like madmen.
The least they would say is
That I had published
A new hundred-year calendar.
And if they only bought it then -
If it were still possible!
But I truly wouldn't even get my money's worth,
Because it's not a lending library book.

No, indeed it isn't, said the stranger -

But go ahead and publish it;
I guarantee you'll do good business with it.

You guarantee me that?

What guarantee, then,
Could you give me for it?

My Name!

Best Mr. Schultze! exclaimed Mr. Pain.

Yes so! said the Lord -

So you don't want it?
You reject it?

I am really immensely indebted to you

For the confidence you have placed in me,
But I have indeed so many manuscripts
Lying there now, -
One so crowds the other; -
But my neighbour Mr Snappy
Will certainly make a pleasure of it, -
He has moreover brought several agricultural
And scientific works.

And you believe that Mr. Snappy...

Oh, I am firmly convinced; just try it! -

Oh - no compliments, my dear Mr. Schultze! -
This is the exit, if you please;
The door here leads into the kitchen.
Have the honour to recommend me most obediently!

The Lord immediately found himself in the street

With his manuscript wrapped in waste paper,
On which was written in large red-pencil letters
Mr. Schultze, and for the first moment
He really did stop, somewhat surprised.
He had not expected that! -
He wanted to make people happy,
And encounters such difficulties to do so.
Well, Mr. Snappy will definitely take it!

But lo and behold -

Here too it seemed as if he had knocked in vain;
New difficulties, new excuses.
Again he was sent to another,
And in the afternoon he took a cab for an hour,
So that he could get from one publishing house
To the other more quickly.

He had been lying on the pavement

For a full six days,
Always with the same success;
So he decided to rest the seventh
And to visit the remaining fifty-five booksellers
On the following Monday,
So as not to be able to reproach himself later.
Just as the bells began to ring,
There was a soft knock at his door.

Come in! he called,

Not in the best of moods.

I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr Schultze?

That's what they call me here.

Your passport, if you please.

I've already told the landlord

That I don't carry one.

Then of course I must ask you to follow me.

But, sir...

I am very sorry - but you know - my duty.

I'm not going with you in any case!

Surely you don't want to defy the authorities?

What was the Lord going to do now?

Start a scandal on the day
Consecrated to Himself?
What an example he would have set!
He put on his hat and followed.

In the police office, of course,

He was treated with the greatest kindness,
For there was something so noble
And awe-inspiring in his whole nature
That ensured him friendliness
And courtesy everywhere;
However, as he knew from his own experience,
Nothing could be done against the existing laws -
He did not have a passport -
The place he had indicated as his origin -
Heavens‘ City in Angel-Land -
Could not be found on any map of Albion,
And so, as could be foreseen,
He had to be instructed to obtain a passport
Within twenty-four hours or -
To leave the city.

But now the Lord had had enough of the matter.

He had gone through all this just
For the sake of people,
And now new obstacles were coming at him
From every corner.
He could have made himself a passport at the moment,
But was he allowed to do so
In someone else's name?
That would again have been against his own laws
As well as those of the people. -
No, he now saw
That mortals deserved no better;
They wanted to keep everything
That oppressed and tormented them -
They didn't want any light,
Even if it meant banging their heads against the walls.
So he decided to return to Heaven
And destroy the work
Spurned by the blind in the fire.

His will was deed.

In blazing embers the divine manuscript consumed itself -
This autograph alone worth millions -
And the mischievous spirits of air and fire
Exultantly whirled the ash atoms
Into the pure sunny blue of the firmament,
And played and danced with them in mad,
Wild wantonness high,
High up to the endless height.
But the Lord looked after them pensively
And finally murmured to himself
With a good-natured smile,

If I were not omniscient,

I could at best have imagined it!

Then, melting into light,

He ascended again to the pure,
Divine spaces of light,
To the primal source of the universe
Flooded with rays.
Rosy clouds crowded around him
And lifted and carried the God,
Joy glowing and peace shining,
Up into the etheric sea of infinity,
Into the circling sun worlds
Of Eternal Being.