Chamisso was by birth a Frenchman, having been born at the castle of Bon-Court in Champagne, on January 27, 1781.¹ On the outbreak of the French Revolution our author left France with his parents; and in 1795 we find them in Bayreuth, which then belonged to the King of Prussia, the Margrave of Anspach having sold the town to his Prussian Majesty in 1791. Chamisso's parents at last came to Berlin, and young Adelbert was appointed page to Queen Louise. This famous queen, wife of Frederic William II. and mother of Frederic William III., took a lively interest in the young page and decided to complete his somewhat neglected education. A commission in the army was secured for him, he was made ensign and soon afterwards lieutenant. Napoleon having in the meantime become First Consul, he recalled the French emigrants, and Chamisso's parents availed themselves of the permission and returned to their home, but they nevertheless advised their son to remain in Prussian service. Adelbert obeyed them, although he felt far from happy in Berlin. The service of page did not please him, and his correspondence is full of passages revealing the melancholy state of his mind. The court atmosphere was stifling him, and his poverty caused him a great deal of humiliation. We see him, at that time, as a young man of a serious and independent disposition, a dreamer and a sceptic, timid and naive, dissatisfied with his position as page and as soldier, unhappy in his exile, his misery and his solitude!

But at last Chamisso found consolation in work. With great ardour he applied himself to the study of the German language and literature, and particularly to poetry and philosophy. He learned Greek, and the Iliad became his constant companion. Klopstock and Schiller attracted him greatly; but he also read J. J. Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. He published several poems in the language of his adopted country, compositions distinguished by an originality of style and a peculiar vigour. Chamisso's first work is supposed to have been "The Count de Comminges," written in 1801 or 1802. It is not an original work, but rather an imitation or translation of a drama from the pen of Baculard d'Arnaud, produced in 1790. Later on he read Wieland and Goethe, and in 1803 appeared his Faust, in which the influence of the philosophy of Fichte made itself felt. It was also in this year that love, by the side of poetry and metaphysics, occupied the mind and heart of the young lieutenant. Chamisso fell in love with Madame Cérès Duvernay, a young French coquette widow, of whom--unlike Sam Weller--he did not learn to beware. He had made her acquaintance in the salon of the banker Ephraim, and asked her to marry him. Madame Duvernay, however, was a practical Frenchwoman and refused the legitimate love of the poor lieutenant! This love affair and its sad ending increased Chamisso's melancholy and his inclination for solitude. The war with France then broke out, and Chamisso tasted the bitterness which is so often the lot of that unhappy product of modern civilization and political circumstances: the naturalized alien! He found himself in an anomalous position which caused him great distress, for it isolated him among many millions. Although a naturalized German, nay, at heart attached to Germany and animated--like so many of his confrères--by the spirit of liberty--he was nevertheless of French parentage. It was not only a question whether he should take up arms on behalf of Germany, but also, whether he should fight against France and the people with whom he was connected by ties of blood and family relationship. Hence arose a struggle in his breast. "I, and I alone," he exclaimed in his despair, "am forbidden at this juncture to wield a sword!" Very few people understand the tragedy of those exiles who are compelled to seek a new home and adopt a new country which they love as much, if not more, than the people among whom they have come to dwell. Instead of meeting with sympathy on account of his peculiar situation, Chamisso was frequently doomed to hear, in the Capital of Prussia, the headquarters of the confederation against France and Napoleon, expressions of hatred and scorn directed against his countrymen. He was himself too fair-minded to mistake the cause of such expressions, which were, after all, only natural in the circumstances, but they nevertheless deeply hurt the sensitive poet when they reached his ears.

After the treaty of Tilsit had been signed by Napoleon and the King of Prussia, Chamisso visited France, where his family regained possession of part of their estates, and our author secured, for a short time, the post of professor at the school at Napoléonville in the Vendée. It was during his stay in France that Chamisso was drawn into the circle of Madame de Stael, and he followed her to Coppet, where she had been exiled by Napoleon in 1811. In the house of this "magnificent and wonderful woman," as he calls her in his letters, he passed incomparable days in the company of August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Madame Récamier and other celebrities. It was also then that he began to study botany on the advice of an English friend. Soon, however, Chamisso returned to Berlin, which was to him what Delphi once was to the ancient Athenians. He continued his botanical studies and at the age of 31 entered the University as a student of medicine. Again the war broke out, and the uprising of the Germans against Napoleon involved Chamisso once more in the popular hatred against the French. Anyone who lays claim to some historical knowledge and a dash of culture is acquainted with the events of 1813. A wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept over Germany, and Germans rose like one man, in answer to the appeal of Frederic William, King of Prussia. Houses, streets and universities resounded with the clash of arms and the shouts of war-like patriots. In the midst of this effervescence Chamisso suffered greatly. He loved Germany and liberty, but he also cherished France, his native land; moreover, he could not help admiring Napoleon, in spite of the latter's tyranny. While the German poets Koerner and Eichendorff took up arms, while Arndt, Rückert and Uhland fired the courage of their compatriots by their warlike songs, Chamisso not only stood alone, but was even exposed to danger. His friends therefore decided to remove him from Berlin. Lichtenstein, his professor at the University, found him a position as teacher in the family of Count Itzenplitz, where he taught French and botany. He was sufficiently near to the capital to be kept acquainted with the gradual development of the all-important crisis, and yet remained free from any unpleasant personal contact with it! Here, at Kunnersdorf, the family seat of Count Itzenplitz, scarcely a day's journey from Berlin, while occupied with the study of botany and other sciences, Chamisso conceived the idea of "The Shadowless Man," and with rapid pen completed the story.

One day, to divert himself and to amuse the wife and children of his friend Hitzig, whom Heine calls Der Dekan der Schlemihle, he wrote Peter Schlemihl.

In 1814, this wonderful narrative was brought to the notice of Baron de la Motte Fouqué, the celebrated author of Undine, under whose auspices the book was published with the following letter from de la Motte Fouqué to Julius Edward Hitzig, by way of introduction:--

FROM THE BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE TO JULIUS EDWARD HITZIG.

We should take care, my dear Edward, not to expose the history of poor Schlemihl to eyes unfit to look upon it. That would be a bad experiment. Of such eyes there are plenty; and who is able to predict what may befall a manuscript, which is almost more difficult to guard than spoken language? Like a person seized with vertigo,