In the highest circles of society people often believed they could not
amuse themselves better than by voluntarily submitting to the most
severe despotism of an external constraint, in order to allow the utmost
latitude to personal whims. Herein lies the colossal humor, the deep
self-mockery of the age. One of the most remarkable monuments of this
self-mockery was founded by a Margrave of Baireuth in the Hermitage near
Baireuth. In order to enjoy the pleasures of a sojourn in the country
the whole Court had to play at being monks and nuns. By silence and
solitude, by painfully shackling themselves with all sorts of wearisome
rules imitated from religious orders, the "hermits" had to prepare for
social pleasures and Court festivities. In order to enjoy Court life in
a new way people disguised it under the serious mask of the cloister;
people tortured and bored themselves in order to be merry, and buckled
social intercourse into a straitjacket, in order to give it the
appearance of an entirely new and free movement.
Even German Pietism, which in the beginning of the eighteenth century
gained so many adherents in the world of fashion, showed a piece of
Rococo in the Pigtail. It, too, was founded, in part, on a mixture of
the most subjective freedom and arbitrariness with the most rigid
constraint of a new religious order; therefore it often appeared
revolutionary, reformatory, and reactionary, all at the same time.
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