om had
delivered the oration at a students' political meeting, had established
the school; that Barop had been persecuted as a demagogue on account of
his connection with a students' political society; and, finally,
Froebel's relations with Switzerland and the liberal educational methods
of the school, had roused the suspicions of the Berlin demagogue-hunters,
and therefore demagogic tendencies, from which in reality it had always
held aloof, were attributed to the institute.

Yes, we were free, in so far that everything which could restrict or
retard our physical and mental development was kept away from us, and our
teachers might call themselves so because, with virile energy, they had
understood how to protect the institute from every injurious and
narrowing outside influence. The smallest and the largest pupil was free,
for he was permitted to be wholly and entirely his natural self, so long
as he kept within the limits imposed by the existing laws. But license
was nowhere more sternly prohibited than at Keilhau; and the deep
religious feeling of its head-masters--Barop, Langethal, and
Middendorf--ought to have taught the suspicious spies in Berlin that the
command, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," would never
be violated here.

The time I spent in Keilhau was during the period of the worst reaction,
and I now know that our teachers would have sat on the Left in the
Prussian Landtag; yet we never heard a disrespectful word spoken of
Frederick William IV, and we were instructed to show the utmost respect
to the prince of the little country of Rudolstadt to which Keilhau
belonged. Barop, spite of his liberal tendencies, was highly esteemed by
this petty sovereign, decorated with an order, and raised to the rank of
Councillor of Education. From a hundred isolated recollections and words
which have lingered in my memory I have gathered that our teachers were
liberals in a very moderate way, yet they were certainly guilty of
"demagogic aspirations" in so far as that they desired for their native
land only what we, thank Heaven, now possess its unity, and a popular
representation, by a free election of all its states, in a German
Parliament. What enthusiasm for the Emperor William, Bismarck, and Von
Moltke, Langethal, Middendorf, and Barop would have inspired in our
hearts had they been permitted to witness the great events of 1870 and
1871!

Besides, politics were kept from us, and this had become kn