The fateful year 1813 had now begun.  All men grasped weapons, and called on one another to fly to arms to defend the Fatherland.  I, too, had a home, it is true, a birthplace, I might say a Motherland, but I could not feel that I had a Fatherland.[77] My home sent up no cry to me; I was no Prussian,[78] and thus it came about that the universal call to arms (in Berlin) affected me, in my retired life, but little.  It was quite another sentiment which drew me to join the ranks of German soldiers; my enthusiasm was possibly small, but my determination was firmly fixed as the rocks themselves.

This sentiment was the consciousness of a pure German brotherhood, which I had always honoured in my soul as a lofty and sublime ideal; one which I earnestly desired might make itself felt in all its fulness and freedom all over Germany.

Besides the fidelity with which I clung to my avocation as an educator also influenced my action in this matter.  Even if I could not say truly that I had a Fatherland, I must yet acknowledge that every boy, that every child, who might perhaps later on come to be educated by me would have a Fatherland, that this Fatherland was now requiring defence, and that the child was not in a position to share in that defence.  It did not seem possible to imagine that a young man capable of bearing arms could become a teacher of children and boys whose Fatherland he had refused to defend with his blood and even with his life if need were; that he who now did not feel ashamed to shrink from blows could exist without blushing in after years, or could incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacrifice and for unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and contempt.  Such was the second main reason which influenced me.

Thirdly, this summons to war seemed to me an expression of the general need of the men, the land, and the times amidst which I lived, and I felt that it would be altogether unworthy and unmanly to stand by without fighting for this general need, and without taking my share in warding off the general danger.

Before these convictions all considerations gave way, even that of my bodily constitution, which was far too weakly for such a life.

As comrades I selected the Luetzowers; and at Eastertide 1813 I arrived at Dresden on my road to join the infantry division of Luetzow’s corps at Leipzig.[79] Through the retired nature of my self-concentrated life it came about naturally that I, although a regularly matriculated student, had held aloof from the other students, and had gained no settled acquaintance amongst them; thus, out of all the vigorous comrades whom I met at Dresden, many of whom were like myself, Berlin students, I did not find one man I knew.  I made but few new friends in the army, and these few I was fated to encounter on the first day of my entrance into my new work of soldiering.  Our sergeant at the first morning halt after our march out from