WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL
FIELD AND FOREST[11]
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING
The intimate connection between a country and its people may well start
with a superficial survey of the external aspects of a country. He sees
before him mountain and valley, field and forest--such familiar
contrasts that one scarcely notices them any longer; and yet they are
the explanation of many subtle and intimate traits in the life of the
people. A clever schoolmaster could string a whole system of folklore on
the thread of mountain and valley, field and forest. I will be content
to invite further meditation by some thoughts on field and forest, the
_tame_ and the _wild_ cultivation of our soil.
In Germany this contrast still exists in all its sharpness, as we still
have a real forest. England, on the contrary, has practically no really
free forest left--no forest which has any social significance. This, of
necessity, occasions at the very outset a number of the clearest
distinctions between German and English nationality.
In every decisive popular movement in Germany the forest is the first to
suffer. A large part of the peasants live in continual secret feud with
the masters of the forest and their privileges; no sooner is a spark of
revolution lighted, then, before everything else, there flares up among
these people "the war about the forest." The insurgent rural proletariat
can raise no barricades, can tear down no royal palaces, but, instead,
lay waste the woodland of their masters; for in their eyes this forest
is the fortress of the great lord in comparison with the little
unprotected plot of ground of the small farmer.
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