participation is not compulsory.

I soon, however, seized, or rather created, an opportunity of
forcing a breach with the Kreuz Grammar School, and thus
compelled my family to let me go to Leipzig. In self-defence
against what I considered an unjust punishment with which I was
threatened by the assistant headmaster, Baumgarten-Crusius, for
whom I otherwise had great respect, I asked to be discharged
immediately from the school on the ground of sudden summons to
join my family in Leipzig. I had already left the Bohme household
three months before, and now lived alone in a small garret, where
I was waited on by the widow of a court plate-washer, who at
every meal served up the familiar thin Saxon coffee as almost my
sole nourishment. In this attic I did little else but write
verses. Here, too, I formed the first outlines of that stupendous
tragedy which afterwards filled my family with such
consternation. The irregular habits I acquired through this
premature domestic independence induced my anxious mother to
consent very readily to my removal to Leipzig, the more so as a
part of our scattered family had already migrated there.

My longing for Leipzig, originally aroused by the fantastic
impressions I had gained there, and later by my enthusiasm for a
student's life, had recently been still further stimulated. I had
seen scarcely anything of my sister Louisa, at that time a girl
of about twenty-two, as she had gone to the theatre of Breslau
shortly after our stepfather's death. Quite recently she had been
in Dresden for a few days on her way to Leipzig, having accepted
an engagement at the theatre there. This meeting with my almost
unknown sister, her hearty manifestations of joy at seeing me