SOME GERMAN SUNDAYS.
Of how Sunday is really spent by the labouring classes in some towns in
Germany, I claim, as an English workman who has worked and played on
German ground, some right to speak. It is possible that I may relate
matters which some do not suspect, and concerning which others have
already made up their minds; but, as I shall tell nothing but truths, I
trust I may not very much disconcert the former, nor put the latter
completely out of patience; nor offend anybody.
To begin with Hamburg. I spent seven months in this free, commercial
port. I came into Hamburg on a Sunday morning; and, although everything
was new and strange to me, and a number of things passed before my eyes
which could never be seen in decorous London, yet there were unmistakable
signs of Sunday in them all--only it was not the Sunday to which I had
been born and bred. The shops were closed, and there was stillness in
the houses, if not in the streets. I passed by the fore-courted entrance
to a theatre, and its doors were shut; but one could easily guess by the
bills at the door-posts that it offered histrionic entertainment for the
evening. Wandering through some beautifully-wooded walks which encircle
the city, I met many promenaders, trim, well-dressed, and chatty; and
when I turned back into the city, was once or twice absorbed in the
streams of people which flowed from the church doors. One thing was
certain; the people were not at work. It struck me at once; for I met
them at every turn in their clean faces and spruce clothes--the veritable
mechanic may be known in every country--and there was the happy look and
the lounging gait in all, which told that they had laid down their
implements of trade for that day, and were thoroughly at leisure. When I
came to be domiciled and fairly at work, I learned to discriminate more
clearly between many apparently irreconcilable things; and will here
roughly set down what we did, or did not, on Sundays, in the emporium and
outlet of Northern Germany; which, it will be well to remember, is
thoroughly Lutheran-Protestant in its faith.
There was a church not far from our workshop--I think the
Jacobi-Kirche--which had the sweetest set of Dutch bells that ever rung
to measure, and these played at six o'clock in the morning on every day
in the week; but, to our minds, they never played so beautiful a melody
as when they woke us on the Sunday morning, to the delightful
consciousness of being able to listen to them awhile, through the drowsy
medium of our upper feather bed. Once fairly roused, properly attired,
and breakfasted with the Herr, what did we next? Sometimes we worked
till mid-day, but that was a rarity; for our ordinary day's labour was
thirteen hours, with scarcely a blink of rest at meal-times, and often we
had not stirred from the house during the whole week, but had worn out
the monotonous hours between bed and workboard. When, however, orders
pressed, we did work; but this again was no new thing to me, for I had
done the same thing in London; had toiled deep into the Saturday night,
and had been up again to work on the Sunday morning, because some
gentleman or lady who was engaged, I dare say, in their morning
devotions, could not bide the ordinary time for their trinkets. If we
did work, which as I have said was a rarity, our ordinary pay of two
schillinge, scarcely twopence per hour, was increased to three.
Sometimes we went to church; and we always found a goodly congregation
there. The service was in good honest German; and the preacher--quaintly
conspicuous to an English eye by his velvet skull-cap, and a wonderfully
plaited frill which bristled round his neck--was always earnest and
impressive, and often eloquent. Among other religious services, I well
remember that of the Busse and Bet-Tag (day of Repentance and Prayer);
the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic; and a remarkable sermon
preached on St. Michael's Day, and of which I bought a copy after the
service of a poor widow who stood at the church door. If the weather
were fine, we strolled along the banks of the beautiful Alster, or made
short excursions into the country; and here again all was repose, for I
recollect having once had pointed out to me as a matter of wonder a woman
who was toiling in the field. Or, if the weather were stormy and wet, we
stayed in the workshop and read, or made drawings, or worked in the
manufacture of some favourite tool. Often, again, we had especial duties
to perform on that day in the shape of visiting some sick craftsman in
the hospital, to pay him his weekly allowance, or convey him a book, or
some little creature comforts. The Sunday morning was an authorised
visiting time, and the hospital was usually crowded--too crowded with
patients, as we thought--and each had his cluster of cheering friends.
Or we paid friendly visits to fellow workmen; smoked quiet pipes, and
told travellers' stories; or listened to the uncertain essays of our
brethren of the Mannergesangverein as they practised their part music.
There was one piece of business transacted on the Sunday morning which
may have been sinful, although we did not view it in that light. We paid
our tailors' bills on the Sunday morning if we had the money, or ordered
new garments if we had credit; and I believe it is a practice more
generally prevalent even in England than gentlefolks are apt to imagine.
We dined with the Herr at noon, and at one o'clock were at liberty for
the day. I have seen a Danish harvest-home on a Sunday afternoon in the
pretty village of Altona; watching its merry mummers as they passed by
the old church-yard wall, where Klopstock lies buried. I have attended a
funeral as a real mourner, followed by the mourning professionals in the
theatrical trappings with which the custom of Hamburg usually adorns
them. If we bent our steps, as we sometimes did, through the Altona gate
to Hamburger Berg, we came upon a scene of hubbub and animation which was
something between Clare Market on Saturday night, and High Street,
Greenwich, at fair time. Stalls, booths, and baskets lined the way;
flowers, fruit, and pastry disputed possession of the side-paths with
sugar-plums, sticks and tobacco-pipes; and, although Franconi's Circus
was not open yet, it gave every promise of being so; and the air already
rang with voices of showmen, and the clangour of instruments. In the
Summer there were gay boats on the Alster, and nautical holiday-makers
were busy with oar and sail; while, in the Winter months, if the ice held
well, there was no end of skating and sledging; and then we had a
pleasant winter-garden near the Tivoli, with orange-trees in tubs, the
mould so covered over as to form extemporary tables, and the green leaves
and pale fruit shining above our heads. At the upper end was a
conservatory of choice plants, which was more particularly appropriated
to the ladies and children. The cafe pavilions on the Alster steamed
odoriferously; punch and hot coffee were in the ascendant; and there were
more cigars smoked in an afternoon on the Jungfern Stieg (the Maiden's
Walk) than would have stored the cases of a London suburban tobacconist.
These may, perhaps, be reckoned mere idlings, but there were occasionally
official doings on the Sunday, which might have been national, if Hamburg
had been a nation, and which no doubt were eminently popular. Two such,
I remember; one a grand review of the Burger Militar; the other the
public confirmation of the apprentices and others, and the conscription
of the youth of the city. The former was a trying affair. Some twelve
thousand citizen-soldiers had to turn out, fully rigged and equipped, by
early dawn, ready for any amount of drill and evolution. Many were the
stories--more witty than generous--of the whereabout of their uniforms
and accoutrements; as to their being deposited in Lombardian hands, or
wholly used up since the last grand field-day some three years before.
Such furbishing as there was of brass ornaments and metal-buttons; such
an oiling and sand-papering of brown muskets, and such a rearrangement of
blue tunics which, after all, did not match in colour, length, nor
appointments! Fortunately our warriors did not burn powder; and there
was enough of military ardour among them to carry them through the
fatigue of the day. It required a great deal; for, like other military
bodies of a late day, the commissariat department totally broke down, and
citizens were kept hungering and thirsting upon the blank, dusty plain,
within half-a-mile of stored-up abundance. The confirmation of the
apprentices and the conscription of the young men was a more serious
matter. It took place in the great square, where a stage and pavilion
were erected; all the authority of the senate, and the services of the
church were united to render it solemn and impressive. It was a source
of deep interest to many of my own acquaintances, more especially to the
young cooper who worked underground at our house, and who, just released
from his apprenticeship, had the good or ill fortune to be drawn for the
next year's levy.
There was one institution, not precisely of Hamburg, but at the very
doors of it, which exercised considerable influence upon its habits and
morals, and that of no beneficial kind. This was the Danish State
Lottery, the office of which was at Altona, where the prizes were
periodically drawn upon Sunday. The Hamburgers were supposed to receive
certain pecuniary advantages from this lottery in the shape of benefits
bestowed upon the Waisenkinder of the town, who, like our own blue-coat
boys of the old time, were the drawers of the numbers; but the advantages
were very questionable, seeing that the bulk of speculators were the
Hamburgers themselves, and the great prizes of the undertaking went to
swell the Danish Royal Treasury. Portions of shares could be purchased
for as low a sum as fourpence, and the Hamburg Senate, in self-defence,
and with a great show of propriety, prohibited the traffic of them among
servants and apprentices: which prohibition passed, of course, for next
to nothing, seeing that the temptation was very strong, and the
injunction very weak. It was a curious sight to witness the crowd upon
the occasion of a public drawing in the quaint old square of Altona; a
pebble-dotted space with a dark box in the centre, not unlike the
basement of a gallows. On this stood the wheel, bright in colours and
gold, and by its side two orphan boys in school-costume, who officiated
at the ceremony. One boy turned the wheel, the other drew the numbers,
and called them aloud as he held them before the spectators; while the
blast of a trumpet heralded the announcement. What feverish anxiety,
what restless cupidity might be fostering among that crowd no man could
calculate, and certainly, to my mind, there was no worse thing done on
the Sunday in all Hamburg than this exhibition of legalised gambling.
Of course the theatres were open, and we of the working people were not
unfrequent visitors there. But let us thoroughly understand the nature
of a German theatrical entertainment. There is rarely more than one
piece, and the whole performance is usually included in the period of two
hours--from seven till nine. The parterre, or pit, is a mere promenade
or standing place, in which the few seats are let at a higher price than
the rest of the space. The whole of the arrangements are conducted with
the utmost decorum: so much so, that they would probably disappoint some
people who look upon the shouting, drovers' whistling, and "hooroar" and
hissing of some of our theatres as part of the legitimate drama. On the
Christmas day, when I had the option of getting gloriously fuddled with a
select party of English friends, or of entertaining myself in some less
orthodox way, I preferred to witness the opera of "Norma" at the Stadt
Theatre, and think I was the better for the choice. "Hamlet" was the
source of another Sunday evening's gratification (an anniversary play of
the Hamburgers, and intensely popular with the Danes), although with
unpardonable barbarity the German censors entirely blotted out the
gravediggers, and never buried the hapless, "sweet Ophelia." In the
gallery of the Imperial Opera House at Vienna, liveried servants hand
sweetmeats, ices, and coffee about between the acts; and although the
Hamburger theatricals have not yet reached this stage of refinement,
there is much in the shape of social convenience in their arrangement,
which even we might copy.
Sometimes, we workmen spent a pleasant hour or two in the concert-rooms,
of which there were several admirably conducted; or pored hours long over
the papers, chiefly literary, in the Alster Halle; sipping our coffee,
and listening in the pauses of our reading to the band of choice
musicians, who played occasionally through the evening. Sometimes we
dived into snug cellars, where they sold good beer, or mixed odoriferous
punch; and here again music would come, though in a more questionable
shape, her attendant priestesses being the wandering harp-players, who
sang sentimental ditties to the twanging of their instruments. Other
places there were, some in the city, and some outside the walls, where an
abominable medley of waltz, smoke, wine, and lotto made up the evening's
entertainment. The larger of these establishments had some pretensions
to gentility, seeing that they did not allow gentlemen to dance with
their hats on; but whatever other claims they set up to the respect of
the community may be briefly set down as worth very little. It will not
unnaturally follow that where there is much liberty there will be some
licence, and with respect to Hamburg, it is in her dance-houses that this
excess is to be found. But where is the wonder? The Hamburger
authorities in this, and some other cases, set up a sort of excise
officer, and grant permits for this frivolity, and that vice, at a
regular scale of charges.
In spite of these half-incentives and whole encouragements to laxity of
behaviour, what is the general character of the Hamburger population? I
venture to call them provident, temperate, and industrious. Let it be
remembered that we speak of a mercantile port, in some parts a little
like Wapping, and into and out of which there is a perpetual ebb and flow
of seamen of all nations, full of boisterous humour, of strong life, and
wilful in their recent escape from ship restraint. The worst of the
dance-houses are situated near the water's edge, and are almost wholly
frequented by sailors; while the other resorts which are open to the
charge of licentiousness, have also a strong proportion of maritime
frequenters, and the rest is mostly made up of the wandering workmen of
Germany, to many of whom Hamburg is a culminating point, and who are, as
it were, out on leave. But, after all, these cancer spots are few
indeed, when compared with the great proportion of the means of amusement
thrown open, or, rather never closed to the people. Wander on the Sunday
when and where you will; in theatre, concert-room, or coffee-house; in
public garden or beer-cellar; you will find them joyous indeed, sometimes
loud in song or conversation, and taking generally a sort of pride in a
dash of rudeness, calling it independence, but you will never find them
sottish; nowhere cumbering the footway with their prostrate carcases;
nowhere reeling zigzag, blear-eyed and stupid, to a miserable home.
On tramp towards the South, we rested on the Sunday in Schwerin, the
capital of Mecklenburg; but there was public mourning in the city for a
death in the ducal family, and the usual Sunday festivities were
forbidden. On attending church in the evening I found a large
congregation, and the service similar to that of Hamburg. In the
afternoon, as there was no military parade or music, over the absence of
which the chambermaids of Der Gross-Herzog moaned dolorously, we rambled
through the ducal garden, admiring the quaintly-shaped basin in its
centre, its numerous statues, and fresh grass. The town was dull and
methodical enough, but would have been rejoicing, if it had not been
respectfully mournful.
Our next resting-place was Berlin, where we stayed two months; and here,
according to our experience, the Sunday afternoon recreations differed
only in tone from those of Hamburg, being less boisterous in their gaiety
than in the former seaman's paradise. We never worked on Sunday in
Berlin, nor did any of our artizan friends, although there were very
pressing orders in the shape of those unvarying German court douceurs,
diamond-circled snuff boxes, and insignia of the Red and Black Eagle.
Once, we accompanied our principal, by special invitation, to the
Hasenheide, to witness the rifle practice, civil and military, among its
heather and sandy hollows. Officers and rank and file alike were there;
the officer practising with the private's heavy gewehr, and the private
in his turn with the light weapon of his superior in grade. There were
some capital shots among them. Thence, on the same day, we waded through
the sand to Tegel, to visit the residence and private grounds of Baron
Humboldt; and from a mound in his garden beheld the beautifully
picturesque view of Lake Tegel, and the distant towers of Spandau. I
have been present on the Sunday at a review of the Royal Guard in their
striking uniform of black and dazzling white.
Once, we made a river voyage in a huge tub of a boat along the weedy
banks of the Spree, under the command of a female captain--a jolly
matron, weighing I am afraid to guess how many stone. I am told it was a
very plebeian piece of business, but we were very happy notwithstanding.
We had a Tafel-lieder party on board, with a due proportion of guitars,
and they played and sang all the way to Treptow and back again. Once
arrived at our destination, we sat upon the grass, and watched the merry
groups around, or sauntered along the margin of the stream, sipping
occasionally very inconsiderable quantities of feeble cordials; and when
the evening drew near, we re-embarked, and, under the safe conduct of our
female commodore--who was skilled in the difficult navigation of the
shallow river--returned soberly home. The environs of Berlin are of no
great beauty, the city being built on a sandy plain, with the single
eminence of the Kreutzberg, from which it can be viewed with advantage;
but in and about the city there are beautiful gardens, private and of
royal foundation, and these are invariably open to the public. One happy
Sunday afternoon we spent in Charlottenburg, the pleasure-palace of the
king; and one other in the noble botanical gardens in the city; while on
a fine day the avenue of lime trees, Unter-den-Linden, in its crowd of
promenaders, and social groups at the refreshment tables, presented an
animated, and, to my mind, a recreative and humanising spectacle. Music
was everywhere; and in the theatres, in the display of pyrotechnic
eccentricities, or perhaps in ballooning--but that was English--the
evening was variously spent. There may be dance-houses and other
abominations in Berlin, as in Hamburg, but I never heard of them, and if
they existed, more was the pity. For my own part, I was happy in
enjoying the moderate pleasures of life in company with the majority of
my fellow-workmen, who, I must again say, and insist upon, were not at
work, but at rest, on the Sunday. It is true that here, as elsewhere,
tailors and boot-makers (master-men) were content to take measures, and
receive orders from the workmen, for very little other opportunity
presented itself for such necessary service.
A few hours' whirl on the railway on a Sunday saw us in Leipsic. This
was at the Easter festival; and we stayed two months in this Saxon market
of the world, embracing in their course the most important of the three
great markets in the year. If ever there was a fair opportunity of
judging the question of Sunday labour and Sunday rest, it was in Leipsic,
at this period. If Sunday work be a necessary consequence of Sunday
recreation--an absurd paradox, surely--it would have been exhibited in a
commercial town, at a period when all the elements of frivolity, as
gathered together at a fair; and all the wants of commerce compressed
into a few brief weeks, were brought into co-existence. Yet in no town
in Germany did I witness so complete a cessation from labour on the
Sunday. There was no question of working. Early in the morning there
was, it is true, a domestic market in the great square, highly
interesting to a stranger from the number of curious costumes collected
together; the ringletted Polish Jew, old Germans from Altenburg, seeming
masqueraders from the mining districts of the Erzgeberge, and country
folks from every neighbouring village, who flocked to Leipsic with their
wares and edibles. But all this was at an end long before the church
service commenced. I have been in the Nicolai-Kirche (remarkable for its
lofty roof, upheld by columns in the form of palm trees), and the
congregation thronged the whole edifice. And at a smaller church, I was
completely wedged in by the standing crowd of unmistakable working
people, whose congregational singing was particularly effective. The
German Protestant church service is not so long as our own. There are
only a few pews in the body of the building; and the major part of the
audience stand during the service. I was not so well pleased with one
sermon I heard in the English church, for it happened to be the effort of
a German preacher; a student in our tongue, whose discourse was indeed
intrinsically good, and would have been solemn, if the pauses and
emphases had only been in the right places.
I never worked on Sunday in Leipsic, nor was I acquainted with any one
who did. The warehouses were strictly closed; and a few booths, with
trifling gewgaws, were alone to be seen. The city was at rest. Leipsic
has but one theatre, and to this the prices of admission are doubled in
fair-time, which placed it out of our reach. Thus we were forced to be
content with humbler sources of amusement, and to find recreation, which
we readily did, in the beautiful promenades round the city, laid out by
Dr. Muller; in country rambles to Breitenfeld, and other old
battle-fields; in tracing the winding paths of a thin wood, near the
town, wonderful to us from the flakes of wool (baumwolle) which whitened
the ground. Or again, among the bands of music and happy crowds which
dotted the Rosenthal--a title, by the bye, more fanciful than just,
seeing that the vale in question is only a grassy undulating plain. Here
we sometimes met the "Herr," with wife on arm, and exchanged due
salutations.
The fair, such as we understand by the name, commenced in the afternoon,
and was a scene of much noise and some drollery. The whole town teemed
with itinerant musicians, whose violent strains would sometimes burst
from the very ground under your feet, as it appeared, issuing as they did
from the open mouths of beer and wine-cellars. Quiet coffee-houses there
were, in which grave citizens smoked and read; and admirable concerts in
saloons, and in the open air. To one of these latter I was seduced by
the mendacious announcement of a certain Wagner of Berlin, that a whole
troop of real Moors would perform fantastic tricks before high heaven;
and on paying the price of admission, I had to run the gauntlet through a
score of black-headed Teutons, who salaamed and grinned as they ushered
me into the blank space beyond, containing nothing more interesting than
a few tables and chairs, a dumb brass band, and a swarm of hungry
waiters. I saw no dance-houses, such as there were in Hamburg; and by
nine o'clock the festivities of the day were at an end. The Easter fair
lasted some five or six weeks, and at its termination its merriment
disappeared. The wandering minstrels wailed their last notes as they
departed, and the quiet city was left to its students and the pigeons.
So much for my experiences of Protestant Germany as regards Sunday
occupation. I have, however, said nothing of museums or picture
galleries. I should be sorry to misrepresent the kindred commercial
cities of Hamburg and Leipsic; but I think they may shake hands on this
question, seeing that, at the period of my visit, they possessed neither
the one nor the other. I do not say that there were no stored-up
curiosities, dignified with the title of museums. But, as far as the
public instruction was concerned, they were nearly useless, being little
known and less visited, and certainly not accessible on the Sunday.
Schwerin, in Mecklenburg, possesses a noble ducal museum of arts and
sciences, but this also was closed on the weekly holiday; and in Berlin,
where the museum, par excellence, may vie with any in Europe, and which
city is otherwise rich in natural and art collections, the doors of all
such places were, on the Sunday, strictly closed against the people. Of
the good taste which authorises the display of stage scenery and
decorations (and that not of the best), and yet forbids the inspection of
the masterpieces of painting; of the judgment which patronises beer and
tobacco, yet virtually condemns as unholy the sight of the best evidences
of nature's grandeur, and the beautiful results of human efforts in art,
it is not necessary to treat here.