DRESDEN, March 6th, 1872
My dear Mr. Siebold:
IT was a double pleasure to receive your kind letter after so long a silence. I am quite sure I wrote you after the biography appeared in lllustr: Zeitung; immediately afterward the war broke out, I went to Copenhagen, and all interest was entirely taken up by the grand world events. I assure you I often thought of you during that turbulent time; for I did not know whether or not you were an officer in the militia, and I imagined all kinds of possibilities. Fortunately they were only imaginings, and I thank you that you now have seriously set about introducing “Brand” to the German reading world.
I have not received the book yet; I am very desirous to see it, but do not doubt at all that the translation will satisfy me. It is high time, though, that your work should appear, for here in Dresden there is another translation ready that should even now be at the printer’s. This translation is by the novelist Julie Ruhkopf, who has sent me the manuscript for approval. I consider it a matter of course that she — under the present circumstances — will not publish it. In a Berlin bookseller’s periodical is announced a translation of “The Pretenders” and “The League of Youth” at the same time that this latter play is being localized for the theatre in Vienna. I do not know that you have heard of my having been involved this winter in a controversy with the magazine Im neuen Reich, which appears in Leipsic under the direction of Dr. A. Dowe and Gustav Freitag. It was occasioned by some utterances in my poems with regard to Prussian politics. The controversy is conducted in a very chivalrous manner, however; the explanation which I have given of my standpoint has been considered satisfactory, and the matter, which was at first very disagreeable to me, will only — as my literary friends here assure me — advertise the translation of my work.
You are mistaken when you think that I do not recognize the greatness of a man like Bismarck; but I see in him an essential obstacle to a good and friendly relation between Germany and Scandinavia. The present estrangement is unnatural between two people so nearly related; there must and ought to be a closer alliance; the interest of both parties demands that. On the whole, during my long stay in Germany I have changed my views in many respects, but that subject is too long to take up in a letter; I shall have to save it until I again have the pleasure of meeting you personally. And so, for this time, a hearty farewell from Yours truly, HENRIK IBSEN