Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1900-08-09
THE PLArT-DaursCa SINGER.
Klaus Groth, Whom It is Proposed to
MemOrialize.

! A purpose is entertained OF convert
ing tae house in KEEL, where Klaus
Grot5 died into a museum like the
! Goethe house in Weinar. to keep alive
tie memory Of one who was often
called the Burns OF Germany
he was no such poet, and no such man,
and only resembled him in preserving
the pat5is Of his people. the Hal-
steiners. in graphic dialect verse. That
interesting Scottish newspaper, rhe
People, thus describes Groth and gives
examples of his Verse;
Groth's great ambition in composing
Quickbon, the volume containing his
best and most popular poems, was to
rescue the Plattdutsch or Low German
dialect from oblivion. 1t bears exactly
the same relation TO High, or ordinary
German as our homely Doric to Eng
lish. II was the crude but vilie lang
uage OF a simple, kindly, but unedu-
Gated people characterized like our
selves by deep passion for the little
corner of land in Holstein for whose
| freedom they had struggled as bravely
as Scotchmen under Wallace or Bruce,
and for whose independence their
| heroes and warriors had bled and
died rhepoet was full of the old Hol-
stein legends and folklore which were
taught him, along with the rudiments
Of education, by his grandfather fine
kindly old man.
The father had a little farm or croft
at Heide, where the poet was born on
| the oath of April. 1919. The family
lived very happily if rrugally, in that
| quiet out-of-the-w way district, where
the traveller happens all unaware on
| the queer little houses surrounded by
| the great deep bitches, which, instead
OF our familiar hedges, mark off DC
| farms from each other Klaus hel ed
| his father in his work greatly against
| his tastes which were all in the di-
| rection of literature, until he was 10,
when he became the clerk or secre-
tary of a local dignltary Whilst in
| this employment he studied most dill
gently in order to qualify himself, IL
possible, for the university, but he had
to rest content with a normal school
! training on the completion of which
he was appointed schoolmaster or
! Heide, and again took up his abode I'M
der the parental rooftree. He was an
early riser, and the story goes that he
retired to rest each night with one end
of rope attached to a limb and the
other thrown out at his bedroom win
dow so that the first villager who
CHANGED to be about pulled the rope
until the diligent student appeared at
! his easement to thank him for the
neighborly attention, Over-study broke
down his health, so he abandoned
teaching, retired to the dreary island
of Femarn, and gave himself up en-
tirely to the production of the book
which brought him fame and honor 1t
took him 10 years to arrange the ma
terials he had been amassing from boy
hood and to express in poetical Ian
guage the homely joys and sorrows and
ambitions of his own people,
The dialect in which they spoke had
never been utilized in this fashion be-
fore. No one had attempted to sing
the praises of the Dltmarch maidens, or
to extol the bravery of warrior an
cestors, and the young poet expert
enced the greatest difficulty in express
ing his sentiments and polishing his
! gems Of though in these rude harbaric
accents. After studying several poets
he CHANGED on Burns ram o'Shanter'
and discovered there a model for
! Quickborn, which means living foun-
tain. or better still. The well that
neer runs dry" The influence of
Burns is readily detected in the follow
ing poem:-
| My Annies Ike the rose so red.
My own sweet flower is she;
As swallows light, nay Annies tread,
My Armies cheeks with crimson shed,
Like apple on the tree.
The Squire has fields Of apples full
! And beds Of roses blown;
And let the squire his apples pull,
! And let the Squire his roses Gull,
My Annie's still my own'
/ She Is my own she is my all,
And more than all to me;
/ And when at windy winters call
| The roses fade and apples fall
Nor fade nor fall will she
An, nod, she'll never faded grow,
| She'll still be bright and gay;
And while life through my heart shall
flow,
Ny Annie there it's flowers shall blow,
Until my dying day.
One feels Klaus Groth was a good
man ln the highest and best sense Of
the term. A pure moral tone peryades
the entire atmosphere OF his poems as
Iuncousci1usiy and sweetly as wild