I have just seen in the Telegraph a review of the poems of Winkler, the Barmen missionary. If the paper comes to Barmen, that will be the end of Gutzkow's reputation there, which is already low. I am despairing more and more about Barmen. It is finished as far as literary matters are concerned. What is printed there is, at best, piffle, with the exception of the sermons.
Religious things are usually nonsense.
Truly, it is not without justification that Barmen and Elberfeld are cried down as obscurantist and mystic. Bremen has the same reputation and resembles them in many ways. Philistinism linked with religious zealotry, with, moreover, in Bremen's case, a vile constitution, hinders any uplifting of the spirit, and one of the most outstanding hindrances is F. W. Krummacher. Blank is complaining so terribly about the Elberfeld preachers, especially Kohl and Hermann, that I should like to know whether he is right. He attacks them for their dryness more than anything else, with the sole exception of Krummacher.