Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist (20 page)

We, etc. etc., Elector of Saxony, in exceptional merciful consideration of the recommendation made to us by Dr. Luther, herewith grant Michael Kohlhaas, horse trader from Brandenburg, within three days following his laying down of the arms he took up, and our sight thereof, safe passage to Dresden in order to pursue his legal case; with, however, the restriction, in the unlikely eventuality that his suit concerning the nags should be turned down by the Dresden Tribunal, that, on account of his rash actions, wherein he took the law into his own hands, he be made to face justice according to the full severity of the law; conversely, however, should his suit be sustained, let it be so decided that he and his entire force be mercifully granted complete amnesty for the violent acts perpetrated by them in Saxony.

No sooner had Kohlhaas received from Dr. Luther a copy of this placard posted in all public places in the country, as conditional
as the terms herein enumerated were, than he called together his entire army, and showering them with gifts, expressions of his profound gratitude and pointed warnings, promptly disbanded them. He deposited all that he had amassed in the way of money, weapons and implements, declaring it the Elector's property at the court of law in Lützen; and after sending Waldmann with letters of inquiry to the magistrate in Kohlhaasenbrück regarding the reacquisition of his dairy farm, should that be possible, and sending Sternbald to Schwerin to fetch his children whom he once again wished to have by his side, he left the castle at Lützen and traveled incognito to Dresden with the rest of his meager fortune, comprising mostly documents and deeds.

It was daybreak and the entire city was still asleep when he knocked on the door of the small property he still retained, thanks to the integrity of the magistrate, in the outlying district of Pirnais, and said to Thomas, the old superintendent in charge of its upkeep, who opened the door, in stunned amazement: “Please inform Prince von Meissen in the commander's palace that Kohlhaas the horse trader is here.” Hearing the news, Prince von Meissen, who deemed it advisable to immediately inquire into the agreement that had been made with this man, and soon thereafter came riding up the street with a retinue of knights and foot soldiers, found a considerable crowd of people already gathered in front of the house. The news of the arrival of the avenging angel, the man who had fought the people's oppressors with fire and sword, brought all of Dresden, the city and its suburbs, to its knees; the horse trader's front door had to be bolted in the face of this throng of curious spectators, and youths climbed up to the window ledge to catch a glimpse of the famous killer in the
flesh having his breakfast. As soon as the prince had, with the aid of a guard, pressed his way through the crowd into the house and entered Kohlhaas' room, he asked the man seated, bare-chested, at table: “Are you Kohlhaas, the horse trader?” Whereupon, removing from under his belt a satchel of papers relating to his case and respectfully passing them to the prince, the latter said: “Yes!” And added: “After dissolving my army, compliant with the terms of the Elector's right of passage, I am here in Dresden to plead my case against Junker Wenzel von Tronka in the matter of the nags.” With a fleeting glance that took the man in from head to foot, the prince flipped through the papers; asked him to explain the pertinence of an attestation issued by the court of Lützen concerning his deposition regarding objects of value belonging to the Elector; and after sounding him out with questions regarding his children, his possessions and the lifestyle he henceforth intended to follow, and being satisfied that there was nothing more to fear from him, he returned his satchel and said: “Nothing stands in the way of your legal proceedings. Permit me then without further ado to personally accompany you to the Lord High Chancellor Count Wrede.” And after a pause, during which he strode to the window and took in the crowd that had gathered outside, the prince added: “You will have to accept a guard for at least the first few days to protect you at home and when you go out!” Kohlhaas cast a dejected look at the floor and remained silent. “In any case,” said the prince, stepping away from the window, “come what may, you have yourself to blame”; whereupon he turned back to the door, intending to take his leave. Pulling himself together, Kohlhaas spoke: “Most gracious Sir, do with me what you will! If you will give me your word that you will withdraw the guard
when I so wish, then I have no objection to this precautionary measure!” The prince replied: “That goes without saying.” And after telling the three armed men assigned to this detail that the man at whose house they stood guard was not a prisoner, and that they were only to follow him when he went out for his own protection, he bid the horse trader farewell with a wave of the hand and walked out the door.

Toward noon Kohlhaas set out in the company of the three armed guards to see the Lord High Chancelor Count Wrede; they were followed by an immense crowd, but no one dared harm the horse trader, having been warned by the police. The Lord High Chancellor, who graciously and kindly received him in his antechamber, conversed with him for a full two hours, and after being fully informed of the entire matter from beginning to end, immediately directed him to a famous barrister to prepare and file his complaint. Kohlhaas proceeded post haste to the barrister's office, and as soon as the suit was drafted true to the trader's account, calling for the punishment of the Junker as specified by the law, the reinstatement of Kohlhaas' horses in their original condition, and compensation for damages, as well as for the injuries incurred by his stable hand Herse who fell at Mühlberg, the money to be paid to his old mother, he made his way back home, still followed by the gaping crowd, having resolved not to leave the house again, save for some pressing matter.

In the meantime, the Junker was released from house arrest in Wittenberg, and after recuperating from a foot infection caused by the prick of a rose bush, was issued a peremptory summons by the provincial court to be judged in Dresden in the suit brought against him by the horse trader Kohlhaas in the matter of his confiscated and
ravaged nags. The brothers Lord Chamberlain and Cupbearer von Tronka, cousins bound by blood ties to the Junker, in whose house he stopped off, received him with the greatest resentment and contempt; they called him a miserable cur and wastrel who had brought scandal and dishonor upon the entire family, informed him, furthermore, that he would surely lose his trial, and pressed him to immediately fetch the nags which he would be condemned to feed their fill in the face of public ridicule. The Junker replied with a feeble and trembling voice that he was the most pitiable man in the world. He swore that he had little knowledge of the whole accursed business that had brought his ruin and that the overseer and the manager of his estate were guilty of everything, in that they used the horses for the harvest without his knowledge and accord, and had worn them down with excessive work, some on their own fields. Having said this, he sat down, and begged his cousins not to willfully fling him back with their insults and ill-chosen words into the sorry state from which he'd just emerged. The next day, at their cousin, Junker Wenzel's request, having no other choice, Messrs. Hinz and Kunz, who themselves had land holdings in the vicinity of the besieged Tronkenburg Castle, sent word to their foremen and tenant farmers inquiring as to the whereabouts of the nags that had been lost on that unhappy day and never found again. But all that they could find out in the wake of the total leveling of castle and the slaughter of its inhabitants was that a stable hand had saved them from the burning stall in which they stood, rescuing them from the murderer's savage onslaught, yet in answer to the question of where he had lead them and what he had done with them, the truculent lout responded with a swift kick. The Junker's aged, gout-plagued housekeeper,
who had fled to Meissen, swore in response to a written query that on the morning after that terrible night the stable hand took the horses with him across the border into Brandenburg; yet all subsequent cross-border inquiries were in vain, and the housekeeper's testimony seemed to be based on an error, for the Junker had no stable hand who lived in or on the way to Brandenburg. Residents of Dresden who had been in Wilsdruff a few days after the burning of Tronkenburg Castle testified that at the said moment a stable hand arrived leading two horses by the halter, and because they were in miserable condition and could not be made to walk any farther, had left them in the cowshed of a shepherd who wanted to keep them. It appeared for various reasons very likely that these were the nags in question; but as other people who had been there since assured, the shepherd from Wilsdruff had resold them, though to whom they did not know; and according to a third rumor, the source of which remained unidentified, the horses had since given up the ghost and were buried in the boneyard in Wilsdruff. Messrs. Hinz and Kunz, for whom, as one can readily understand, this was the most welcome explanation, in that, given their cousin Junker Wenzel's lack of a stall, it spared them the necessity of feeding the nags in their own, wished to confirm for certain that this was indeed what happened. Consequently, Sir Wenzel von Tronka, in his capacity as rightful feudal heir and lord of the manor, sent word to the court in Wilsdruff, wherein, following a precise description of the nags, which, as he put it, were entrusted to him and accidentally lost, he called for an official inquiry into the circumstances of their stay and their current whereabouts, and demanded that their owner, whoever he may be, and whom he promised to generously compensate for all expenses,
return them forthwith to the stables of the Lord High Chamberlain Sir Kunz in Dresden. Whereupon, a few days later, the man to whom the shepherd had sold them in Wilsdruff did indeed lead them, tied to his oxcart, spindly and tottering as they were, to the city's market square; but unfortunately for Sir Wenzel, and better than the honest Kohlhaas could have wished for, the man who brought them was none other than the horse skinner of Döbbeln.

As soon as Sir Wenzel, in the presence of his cousin, the Lord Chamberlain, got wind of an uncertain rumor that a man with two black horses saved from the fire at Tronkenburg Castle had arrived in town, the two men, accompanied by a hastily gathered group of Sir Kunz's manservants, hurried to the square to meet him, and should the horses prove to be those belonging to Kohlhaas, to reimburse the cost of their care and bring them home. But imagine their embarrassment when, on their way there, the two noblemen saw an ever growing crowd attracted by the spectacle of the pitiful creatures tied to a two-wheel oxcart, the spectators snickering to each other that the horses tottered in readiness for the skinner's knife. The Junker who circled the oxcart, eyeing the miserable beasts that looked like they might at any moment drop dead, muttered, greatly disconcerted, that these were not the horses Kohlhaas had left in his care; but Sir Kunz, the Chamberlain, casting at him a look of anger beyond words, which, were it fashioned in iron, would have torn him to shreds, strode forward to the horse skinner, opening his coat to reveal the insignia of his office dangling from a chain, and asked: “Are these the nags that the shepherd of Wilsdrufff gave you and which Junker Wenzel von Tronka, to whom they belong, requisitioned in court?” To which the horse skinner, who at that moment
was busy, with a bucket of water in hand, giving the strong and healthy workhorse that pulled his cart a drink, replied: “You mean the black ones?” He set down the bucket, and removed the bit from the workhorse's mouth, and continued: “The swineherd from Hainichen sold me them black nags. Couldn't say where he got them, or if they belonged to the shepherd from Wilsdrufff. I was ordered by a court clerk back in Wilsdruff,” he said, picking up the bucket again and resting it between carriage shaft and knee, “to bring them to Dresden to the house of the von Tronkas, but the Junker I'm supposed to see is called Kunz.” And with these words, he turned away with the rest of the water the horse had left in the bucket and emptied it out on the cobblestones. Ringed by the jeering mob, the Chamberlain, who could not manage to make the horse skinner look at him, consumed as he was with a senseless zeal by the tasks at hand, cleared his throat and spoke up: “I am the Lord Chamberlain, Kunz von Tronka, but the nags must surely be those belonging to my cousin, Junker Wenzel, the ones a stable hand saved from the fire at Tronkenbug Castle and sold to the shepherd from Wilsdruff, the very same horses that originally belonged to the horse trader Kohlhaas!” He asked the fellow who stood there with legs spread wide, hoisting up his pants: “Don't you know anything about it?” And: “Mark my words, my good man, for this is the important part. Might they not be the very same horses that the swineherd from Hainichen bought from the shepherd from Wilsdruff, or from some third party who bought them from the shepherd?” Leaning against the cart, having knocked the last drops of water out of the bucket, the horse skinner said: “All's I was told was to bring them horses to Dresden to the house of the von Tronkas, who'd pay me money. Damned if I
know a thing about the rest, who they belonged to before the swineherd from Hainichen, to Peter or Paul or the shepherd from Wilsdrufff, it don't make a difference, since, far as I know, nobody stole ‘em.” And with those words, the horsewhip resting round his broad shoulders, he strode off to a tavern on the square, hungry as he was for breakfast. The Chamberlain who did not for the life of him know what to do with horses that the swineherd of Hainichen sold to the horse skinner of Döbbeln, if it wasn't those on which the devil himself rode through Saxony, pressed the Junker to say something; but when the latter replied with pale, trembling lips: “We'd best buy them, whether they belonged to Kohlhaas or not!” – the Chamberlain backed away from the snickering crowd, buttoning up his coat, cursing the father and mother who put him on this earth, with not the slightest idea of what to do or not do. He called to the Baron von Wenk, an acquaintance of his who just happened to be crossing the street. And determined as he was not to leave the square, precisely on account of the sneering mob, who seemed to be awaiting his departure with handkerchiefs pressed over their mouths to burst out laughing, he asked him to stop by the home of Lord High Chancellor, Count Wrede, to bid him bring Kohlhaas by to inspect the horses. It just so happened that Kohlhaas, fetched by a court clerk, was already there in the Chancellor's chambers, no doubt to furnish a clarification requested of him regarding the deposition in Lützen, at the very moment when, with the aforementioned purpose, the Baron entered the room; and while the Chancellor rose from his chair with a look of consternation, and bid the horse trader, whom the newcomer had never met, step aside with the papers in hand, the Baron informed him of the embarrassing predicament in which Sir
von Tronka found himself. It appeared that, due to an erroneous requisition from the Wilsdruff tribunal, the horse skinner from Döbbeln had shown up in town with horses in such a miserable condition that Junker Wenzel had to hold off recognizing them as those belonging to Kohlhaas; furthermore, that should his cousin, Junker Wenzel, and he, nevertheless, decide to accept them from the horse skinner and take them into his, the Lord High Chamberlain's stables, and attempt to fortify and return them to their former state, a personal identification by Kohlhaas would be necessary to resolve the situation beyond a shadow of a doubt. “Please be so kind,” he concluded, “as to send a guard to fetch the horse trader from his house and have him brought to the market square where the horses are tied up.” Removing the spectacles from his nose, the Lord High Chancellor replied that the Baron was twice mistaken: first, if he believed that said situation could not be resolved, save by Kohlhaas' personal identification; and second, if he imagined that he, the Chancellor, was empowered, via the intermediary of a guard, to dispatch Kohlhaas wherever the Junker pleased. Whereupon he presented the horse trader, standing right there behind him, and sitting down again and replacing the spectacles on his nose, bid the Baron address himself directly to Kohlhaas. With no indication in his expression of the tumult in his soul, Kohlhaas said that he was willing to follow him to the market place to inspect the nags the horse skinner had brought to town. While the Baron spun around with a disconcerted look, Kohlhaas returned to the Chancellor's writing table, and after searching through the papers in his briefcase and handing him a few more relating to the deposition in Lützen, bid him farewell. Meanwhile, the Baron, who strode to the window
all red in the face, likewise took his leave; and the two men, accompanied by the three guards assigned by the Prince of Meissen, and trailed by a crowd of townspeople, made their way to the market square. Contrary to the advice of numerous friends who had in the meantime gathered around him, the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, had stubbornly remained standing there face to face with the horse skinner from Döbbeln, and as soon as the Baron appeared with the horse trader, approached the latter and clutching his sword under his arm with all the pride and dignity he could muster, inquired if the horses standing behind the cart belonged to him. Doffing his hat in a reserved salute to the unknown man who'd asked him the question, and without answering, the horse trader approached the skinner's cart, accompanied by all the highborn gentlemen in attendance, and stopping at a distance of twelve paces, cast a fleeting glance at the creatures standing there on trembling legs, heads bowed, not even strong enough to eat the hay the skinner had set before them. “Most gracious Sir,” he turned back to the Lord Chamberlain, “the horse skinner is absolutely right; the horses tied to his cart are mine!” Whereupon, gazing around at the circle of gentlemen surrounding him, he once again doffed his hat, and left the Junker with the guards following after him. At these words, the Lord Chamberlain rushed toward the horse skinner with a pace that ruffled the plumes on his helmet, and flung him a pouch of money; and while the latter, money in hand, combed back hair from his forehead with a leaden comb, all the while peering at the money, the former ordered a servant to untie the horses and lead them back to his stable. The servant, who, following his master's orders, left a circle of friends and relatives in the crowd, and indeed, himself a bit red in the face, stepped over a huge
heap of dung toward the beasts that had produced it; but no sooner had he reached for their halters to tie them loose than a certain Master Himboldt, his cousin, grabbed his arm and tugged him away from the cart, crying: “Don't lay a hand on those sorry jades!” And clambering with uncertain steps over the dung heap toward the Chamberlain, who stood there, speechless, said: “Go hire yourself a flayer's lackey to do your sordid business!” Seething with rage, the befuddled Chamberlain eyed Master Himboldt a moment, then turned and called over the heads of the lords surrounding him to the guard. And as soon as an officer emerged from the castle with several of the Prince Elector's gentlemen at arms, at the request of Baron von Wenk, and after offering a brief summation of the scandalous rabblerousing of the townspeople, the Chamberlain ordered them to arrest the ringleader Master Himboldt. Grabbing him by his collar, the Lord Chamberlain accused him of shoving aside and manhandling his servant, who was in the process of untying the horses from the cart. Master Himboldt, who managed with a deft move to break free of his grip, declared: “Most gracious Sir, to tell a twenty-year-old boy what to do is not rabblerousing! Just ask him if, contrary to custom and decorum, he wants to deal with the horses bound to the cart; if he wishes to do so after what I've said, then, for heaven's sake, let him butcher and skin them!” At these words, the Chamberlain turned to his servant and asked him if he had any objections to following his orders and untying the horses that belong to Kohlhaas and leading them to his stable. And when the lad, mingling with the crowd, replied: “The horses have got to be put out of their misery before I touch 'em!” the Chamberlain overtook him from behind,
tore off his hat on which was emblazoned the family crest, stomped on it, and with furious swings of his sword chased the lad from the square and duly dispatched him from his service. Master Himboldt cried out: “Tackle the murdering tyrant!” And when, all fired up at the sight of this, the townspeople gathered together and pushed back the guards, Master Himboldt caught hold of the Chamberlain from behind, tore off his coat, collar and helmet, wrestled the sword out of his hand and hurled it with a mighty toss far across the square. To no avail did Junker Wenzel, who'd managed to break free of the tumult, cry out to the knights to come to his cousin's aid; before they could take a single step they were already scattered by the press of the mob, such that the Chamberlain, who'd injured his head in falling, had to face the raging fury of the crowd. Nothing but the appearance of a troop of armed men on horseback that happened to be passing at that moment and which the commanding officer of the Prince Elector's men had dispatched could save the Chamberlain. After managing to scatter the rabble, the officer grabbed hold of the fuming Master Himboldt, and while a handful of guards dragged the man off to prison, two of the Chamberlain's friends picked up the poor bloodied fellow from the ground and brought him home. Such was the unfortunate conclusion to this well-intended and sincere attempt to obtain redress for the injustice that had been done to the horse trader. Once the crowd started to disperse, the horse skinner from Döbbeln, his task having been accomplished and seeing no further cause to stick around, hitched the nags to a lamppost. There they remained standing all day, and since nobody took care of them, they were the butt of street urchins' and hooligans' pranks; consequently,
abandoned as the poor beasts were, the police had to take charge of them, and come nightfall, called for the horse skinner of Dresden to take them in until further notice.