BERLIN.--OUR HERBERGE.
Fairly in Prussia! We have passed the frontier town of Perleberg, and
press onward in company with a glovemaker of Berlin, last from
Copenhagen, whom we have overtaken on the road towards Wusterhausen.
"Thou wouldst know, good friend, the nature of my prospects in Berlin
when I arrive there? Have I letters of recommendation--am I provided in
case of the worst? Brother, not so! I am provided for nothing. I dare
the vicissitudes of fortune. I had a friend in Hamburg, a Frenchman, who
departed thence five months ago for Berlin, under a promise to write to
me at the lapse of a month. He has never written, and he is my hope.
That is all. Let us go on."
"I have a cousin," says the glovemaker, "who is a jeweller in Berlin. I
will recommend you to him. His name is Kupferkram."
"Strange! I knew a Kupferkram in Hamburg; a short, sallow man, with no
beard."
"A Prussian?"
"Yes."
"It cannot be that my cousin was in Hamburg and I not know it. I was
there twelve months."
"Why not? A German will be anywhere in the course of twelve months
except where you expect to find him."
"His name is Gottlob--Gottlob Kupferkram."
"The very man! Does he not lisp like a child, and his father sell
sausages in the stadt?"
"Donnerwetter! Ja!"
This may not appear to be of much importance, but to me it is everything;
for upon the discovery of this vender of sausages depends my meeting with
my best and only friend in Berlin, Alcibiade Tourniquet, of Argenteuil,
the Frenchman before mentioned. It is at least a strange coincidence.
We came into the capital of Prussia in the eil-wagen from Wusterhausen.
We had tramped the previous day a distance of good two-and-thirty English
miles, through a flat, uninteresting country, and being dead beat, had
made an anxious bargain with the driver of the "Fast-coach," to carry us
to Berlin for a dollar a-head. It was late in the evening as we rumbled
heavily along the dusty road, and through the long vista of thick
plantations which skirt the public way as you enter the city from
Spandau. We dismounted, cramped and weary, from our vehicle, and my
companion, a native of Berlin, unwilling to disturb his friends at that
late hour, and in his then travel-worn guise; and I myself being unknown
and unknowing in the huge capital, led the way at once to "Our Herberge."
The English term "House of Call" is but an inadequate translation of the
German "Herberge." It must be remembered that the German artisan is
ruled in everything by the state; for while English workmen, by their own
collective will, raise up their trade or other societies, in whatever
form or to whatever purpose their intelligence or their caprices may
dictate to them, the German, on the contrary, discovers among his very
first perceptions that his position and treatment in the world is already
fixed and irrevocable. He becomes numbered and labelled from the hour of
his birth, and the gathering items of his existence are duly
recorded--not in the annals of history--but in the registry of the
police. Thus he finds that the State, in the shape of his Zunft or
Guild, is his Sick Benefit Club and his Burial Society, his Travellers'
Fund and his Trade Roll-Call; aspires indeed to be everything he ought to
desire, and certainly succeeds in being a great deal that he does not
want.
I have a little paper at my hand presented to me by the police of
Dresden, which may help to elucidate the question of associations of
workmen in Germany. It is an "Ordinance" by which "We, Frederick
Augustus, by God's grace King of Saxony, &c., &c., make known to all
working journeymen the penalties to which they are liable should they
take part in any disallowed 'workmen's unions, tribunals, or
declarations;'" the said penalties having been determined on by the
various governments of the German Union. "Independently," says the
Ordinance, "of the punishment" (not named) "which may be inflicted for
the offence, the delinquent shall be deprived of his papers, which shall
be sealed up and sent to his home Government. On his release from
prison(!) he shall receive a restricted pass for his immediate and direct
return home; and on his arrival there he shall be strictly confined
within its limits, nor ever be permitted to travel into the other states
of the German Union, until by a long course of repentance and good
behaviour his home government may think him worthy of such a favour." It
will easily be understood from this that mechanics' or other
institutions, independent of the government, are unknown.
The German Herberge is the home of the travelling workman. It should be
clean and wholesome; there should he be provided, together with simple
and nutritious food, every necessary information connected with his
trade, and such aid and reasonable solace as his often wearisome
pilgrimage requires. All this is to be rendered at a just and
remunerative price, and it is usually supposed that the fulfilment of
these requisites is guaranteed by the care and surveillance of the
police. But this is a fiction.
Our Herberge is in the Schuster-gasse; and a vile, ill-conditioned,
uncleanly den it is; nor, I am sorry to say, are its occupants, in
appearance at least, unworthy of their abode. But we must not be
uncharitable; it is a hard task this tramping through the length and
breadth of the land; and he is a smart fellow who can keep his toilet in
anything like decent condition amid the dust, the wind, the pelting rain
or the weltering sunshine that beset and envelope him on the implacable
high road. As there is no help, we take our places among the little herd
of weary mortals without a murmur; among the ragged beards and uncombed
locks; the soiled blouses and travel-worn shoe-leather; the horny hands
and embrowned visages of our motley companions. We are duly marshalled
to bed at eight o'clock with the rest; huddled into our loft where nine
beds await some sixteen occupants; and having undergone the customary
examination as to our freedom from disease and vermin, are safely locked
in our dormitory, to be released only at the good will of the "Vater" in
the morning.
Your German is truly a patient animal; the laws of his Guild compel him
to wander for a period of years, but the laws of his country do not
provide him with even the decencies of life upon the road. With his
humble pack, and his few hoarded dollars, he sets forth upon the road of
life; he is bullied and hustled by the police upon every step of his
journey; burdened with vexatious regulations at every halting-place; and
while the law forbids him to seek any other shelter than that of his
Herberge, it leaves it to the mercy of his host to yield him the worst
fare, spread for him the vilest litter, and to filch him of his scanty
savings in the bargain. What, in Heaven's name! are the accommodations
for which we in the Schuster-gasse are called upon to pay? There is the
common room with its rude benches and tables; a stone-paved court-yard
with offices, doubtless at one period appropriated as stabling, but the
ground floor of which is now penned off for some few choice biped
occupants; while the story above, reached by a railed ladder, and, in
fact, no more than a stable loft, is nightly crammed to the door with
sweltering humanity. For the purpose of cleanliness there is no other
toilette apparatus than the iron pump in the yard; and for the claims of
nature and decency, no better resource than is afforded by the sheltering
arch of the nearest bridge over the Spree.
The goldsmiths and jewellers in Berlin are too inconsiderable a body to
have a Herberge of their own, and therefore we crowd in with the turners,
the carpenters, and the smiths; the glove-makers, bookbinders, and others
who claim the hospitalities of the asylum in the Schuster-gasse. Let us
take a sketch or two among them that may serve as a sample of the whole.
We have a sturdy young carpenter from Darmstadt, bound to Vienna, or
wherever else he may find a resting-place, who makes his morning and
almost only meal of _Kummel_--corn spirit prepared with caraways--and
brown bread; and whose great exploit and daily exercise is that of
lifting the great table in the common room with his teeth. An iron-jawed
fellow he is, with every muscle in his well-knit body to match.
Fortunately, though a Goliath in strength, he is as simple-minded and
joyous as a child.
Then comes a restless pigmy of a Hungarian, a jeweller, last from
Dresden, full of life and song, but who complains ruefully that the
potatoes of Berlin are violently anti-dyspeptic. This suffering wanderer
from the banks of the Theiss is also vehemently expressive in his opinion
that the indiscriminate use of soap is injurious to the skin, and, as a
matter of principle, never uses any.
Near him stands a lank native of Lubeck, a fringe-maker, whose whole
pride and happiness is concentrated in his ponderous staff of pilgrimage;
a patriarchal wand, indeed! rightly bequeathed as an heirloom from father
to son, and in its state and appearance not unworthy of the reverence
with which it is regarded. It is no flimsy cane to startle flies with,
but a stout stem some six feet long, duly peeled, scraped and polished,
and mounted with a chased head of massive silver.
Close by his side an effeminate leather-dresser from Carlsruhe sits
stroking his yellow goat's beard. Instead of strapping his knapsack to
his back like a stalwart youth, after the manly fashion of his
forefathers when on the tramp, he trundles behind him as he goes, a
little iron chaise loaded with his pack and worldly equipage.
There broods a sombre cordwainer from Bremen, gloating over his enormous
pipe, in form and size like a small barrel, raising an atmosphere for
himself of the fumes of coarse uncut _knaster_. He has doffed his white
kittel (blouse), and has wriggled himself into a short-waisted,
long-skirted, German frock-coat, which, having been badly packed in his
knapsack, exhibits every crease and wrinkle it has acquired during a
three weeks' march. Know, friend, that the skilful folding of apparel,
to be worn on his arrival in every important town, is one of the
necessary acquirements of the German wanderer.
Add to these a rollicking saddler from Heldesheim, who figures in a full
beard, a rich cluster of crisp, brown curls, his own especial pride, and
the object of deep envy to his less hirsute companions; and who, far too
fond of corn brandy-wine, goes about singing continually the song of the
German tramp, "_Ich Liebe das liederliche Leben_!"--This vagabond life I
delight in!--an earnest, quiet student, who, for reasons of economy, has
made the Schuster-gasse his place of refuge; and a dishevelled
button-maker, last from Hamburg, who has just received his geschenck, or
trade-gift, amounting to fifteen silver groschens, about eighteenpence in
English money; and who ponders drearily over it as it lies in the palm of
his hand, wondering how far this slender sum will carry him on the road
to Breslau, his native place, still some two hundred miles away.
We have among us the wily and the simple, the boisterous and the patient,
the taciturn and the unruly; but though they will sing songs before they
go to sleep, and swagger enormously among themselves, they become as
still and meek as doves at the voice of the Herberges-Vater (the father
of the Herberge), and quake like timid mice beneath the eye of the
police.