instruction.

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