Fink acts his part in the author's philosophy as a contrast to the Baron von Rothsattel. Although a nobleman, he has adapted himself to the conditions of the century, and is free from any hallucinations of his hereditary rank, even while he is perfectly awake to its traditions. He has entered upon a commercial career not from choice, but from necessity; but he has accepted his fate and has made successful use of his opportunities. Anton marries the sister of T. O. Schröter, and becomes a partner in the business. Fink is however really the one who gains the princess in this modern tale, and is plainly to have the more important share as an actual social force in the future. The old feudal nobility has played its part on the stage of the world; and being so picturesque, and full of romantic opportunity, its loss is doubtless to be regretted. The tamer realities of the modern industrial state have succeeded it. As Freytag solves the problem in 'Soll und Haben,' it is the man who works, the man of the industrial classes alone, to whom the victory belongs in the modern social struggle, be his antecedents bourgeois or aristocratic.
Freytag's second great novel, 'Die Verlorene Handschrift' (The Lost Manuscript), which appeared in 1864, concerns itself with another phase of the same problem. This time, however, instead of the merchant and man of affairs, it is the scholar about whom the action centres. Felix Werner, professor of philology, has come upon unmistakable traces of the lost books of Tacitus, whose recovery is the object of his life. In his search for the manuscript in an old house in the country he finds his future wife Ilse, one of the finest types in all German literature of the true German woman, both while at home a maid in her father's house and subsequently as the professor's wife in the university town. Werner, in his scholarly absorption, unwittingly neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of the prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously to involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial humor, unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent enough in 'The Journalists.' The professorial life is admirably drawn with all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambitions, its peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more understandingly treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit and Credit,' displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The plot is so confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes lost sight of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which as a German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in these pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraordinary novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel with them; and as a picture of German university life from the point of view of the professor, 'The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than in the mercantile environment of the first.