As for Eisenschmidt, the pathetically ill teacher whose room was smoked up by his pupils, Fet has nothing else to say about him. In reality, Heinrich Eisenschmidt (1810-64) was Fet’s teacher of German literature, a fact one might have thought the poet would consider worth mentioning, especially since Fet made his 1840 debut with a book that gave prominent place to Fet’s translations of poetry by Schiller and Goethe: these were the great classics especially emphasized in Eisenschmidt’s classes, and the teacher considered himself something of an authority on them. Eisenschmidt arrived at the school the same year as Fet and stayed until 1844. He went on to become director of a prestigious school for girls in Pàrnu (1844-53) and then (1853-57) of the Tartu Seminar for Elementary School Teachers [Laul: 555]. In 1860 Eisenschmidt published a memoir about his years at the Werro school, and in the memoir he recalls Fet as a schoolboy [Eisenschmidt: 47–48]. The recollection is friendly but it probably annoyed Fet, who avoided revelations about his past, and presented his background idiosyncratically. Eisenschmidt also discusses his own illnesses, since he blames them for his suddenly resigning his teaching post in Werro. He even provides such details as the medical advice he got from his “worthy friend, Dr. Kreutzwald” [Eisenschmidt: 78]. Eisenschmidt does not refer to Kreutzwald’s literary activities, which he would probably have been aware of by the time he was writing the memoir, but which he would almost surely not have known or at least thought much about during his decade in Werro, when he was personally acquainted with Kreutzwald. In fact, if there is a hidden theme to Eisenschmidt’s memoir it is his own unawareness of what was going on around him: he states that he had no idea that Fet, for example, was already writing poetry, even though he felt he knew the boy rather well, and the same is true for his recollection of another pupil, J. von Sivers (1823-79),14 who later published poetry in German. He also claims to have known surprisingly little about Krümmer and some of the other teachers and dissociates himself from their Moravian connections, which another witness says everyone there was fully cognizant of [Maydell: 2]. The source of Eisenschmidt’s naïveté may have been his youth and inexperience: he was only 25 when he arrived at Werro, and it was his first job and experience of life in the region. Yet since Eisenschmidt, who by the time he left the school was one of its most experienced senior teachers, did depart suddenly during a period of crisis, his emphasis on his illness has a self-justificatory ring, especially since he went immediately to a better job with far better prospects for advancement through official channels. Eisenschmidt and Fet not only talk about each other in their memoirs of the Krümmer school, but also naturally refer, from different perspectives, to a number of the same realia: sketches of personalities and routines that both encountered at the school, as well as such specific details as celebration of the headmaster’s birthday and long walks to Munamàgi and other destinations in the area. The coincidence of subject matter is natural, but it is also quite possible that Fet’s recollections about the school respond directly to Eisenschmidt’s. Such a direct connection might help explain the reference to Fet not having encountered any sign of a doctor at the school, even when someone fell ill – specifically, Eisenschmidt, who clearly could have benefited from medical assistance. Just as Eisenschmidt uses the reference to evoke the by-then respected Dr. Kreutzwald, Fet implicitly disparages the reference, while making Eisenschmidt himself a figure of fun.
But is it likely that Fet really never did hear the word ‘doctor’? There seems to exist no documentation of Kreutzwald’s activities at Krümmer’s school at exactly the time Fet was there, but there is ample evidence that Kreutzwald was then the doctor for both the town and the school, that teachers called on his services in that capacity, and that Eisenschmidt, who arrived at the school the same year Fet did, afterward claimed a close enough relationship with Kreutzwald to trust his medical advice and refer to him as a friend. Fet also recalls Eisenschmidt’s being ill, and he himself even as a relatively young man was often ill and often complains of his illnesses. In his three years at school, did he really never hear of Kreutzwald’s existence? And if he did not, why bother to mention that he never heard the word ‘doctor,’ when, by the time he wrote his memoirs, he really could not have avoided knowing who the doctor was, and could perfectly well have said, if the subject of doctors interested him, that he never encountered Kreutzwald, although he might have? Fet may have had his reasons for making Eisenschmidt an object of fun. But Kreutzwald he erases.
