TRAVELING WITH GOETHE AND FREDERIC THE GREAT
“Ici toute liberté, Monsieur, comme si nous étions au cabaret.”
FREDERIC THE GREAT.
There is a surprising parallelism between the fathers of these two
greatest men of the eighteenth century. These fathers, whom
narrow-minded critics usually call pedants, transmitted to their sons
the great gift of “life’s serious conduct.” Rarely has the old
Councillor Goethe found so much just appreciation as Carlyle has shown
for Frederic William I. The character of both the sons constitutes a
happy combination of this serious paternal heritage and the joyful
element of sanguine optimism. Both, although they owe perhaps most to
their fathers, feel themselves drawn to the softer natures of their
mothers, who hardly ever refused them any wish. And most of us prefer
to share with them the love of their charming mothers, Frau Rath and
Sophie Dorothea,--because it is always more agreeable to be loved
than to be educated,--and reserve for the fathers at best a cool
esteem.
Travel for pleasure or sport was unknown to the old Spartan King of
Prussia, as indeed it was to his greater son, who did not even
appreciate the sport of hunting. When they traveled it was for the
inspection of the administration of their country or to review their
troops. Old Frederic William, in his great simplicity, preferred even
to pass the night in airy barns than to sleep in stuffy rooms.
“Dinner-table to be spread always in some airy place, garden-house,
tent, big clean barn,--Majesty likes air, of all things;--will sleep
too, in a clean barn or garden-house: better anything than being
stifled, thinks his Majesty.” We never hear that he stopped at inns,
and Frederic, too, we meet only rarely in taverns, once in
Braunschweig in Korn’s Hotel, where he was received one night in the
Freemasons’ lodge very secretly because his severe papa despised such
childish fooleries utterly. Occasionally, perhaps, while in Potsdam he
visits inns like “The Three Crowns,” where one could find better food,
he says, than at the table of his Mecklenburg cousins in their castle
Mirow. In the first year of his reign, when he traveled _incognito_
to French Alsace, he had very distressing experiences in different
taverns. In a letter to Voltaire he describes in French verses the
various accidents of this trip:--
“Avec de coursiers efflanqués
En ligne droite issus de Rosinante,
Et des paysans en postillons masqués,
Butors de race impertinente,
Notre carosse en cent lieux accroché,
Nous allions gravement, d’une allure indolente,
Gravitant contre les rochers.”
Traveling all day in the worst of weathers, as if the last day of
judgment had come, and in the evening to get a poor meal in a
miserable tavern--and a large bill:--
“Car des hôtes intéressés
De la faim nous voyant pressés,
D’une façon plus que frugale
Dans une chaumière infernale
En nous empoisonnant, nous volaient nos écus.
O siècle différent des temps de Lucullus!”
The landlord of the “Post” in Kehl demands passes from Frederic and
his companions, and Frederic fabricates them himself with his Prussian
seal. Again in Strassburg they present the same passes to the custom
officials, not without adding a gold coin:--
“L’or, plus dieu que Mars et l’Amour,
Le même or sut nous introduire,
Le soir, dans les murs de Strassbourg.”
Here they stop at “The Raven,” where Frederic immediately began to
study the French people. His judgment is not very flattering, although
he communicates it to his French friend:--
“Non, des vils Français vous n’êtes pas du nombre,
Vous pensez, ils ne pensent point.”
In the evening he invites even French officers to dine with him and
the following morning goes to a military review. Here one of his own
soldiers, a Prussian deserter, “un malheureux pendard,” recognizes
him; he quickly hurries back to “The Raven,” pays his bill, and leaves
Strassburg, never to see it again.
Like the old king, Frederic preferred to stop in rectories when
traveling through the Prussian lands, but sometimes was prevented from
doing so by his very faithful but very independent coachman Pfund. If
the pastor had forgotten to give this important person his due tip on
the last visit, Pfund would surely cut him on future occasions, and
force his old master to go on to the next town, where he was sure to
find a host of better manners. This sin of omission was rarely
committed by pastors who received the honor of a royal visit, because
they could very well afford to humor old Pfund a little, when they
themselves received from the otherwise economical king the handsome
“royalty” of fifty dollars for a dinner and one hundred dollars for
dinner and a night’s lodging. General von der Marwitz has told us the
story of how Pfund once opposed the king, who was tired and wanted to
stop in the rectory of Dolgelin, by saying the sun was not yet down
and they could well reach the next town, and how the old king
patiently submitted to the will of his Automedon. But there is a limit
even to the patience of old kings, and on one occasion, when Pfund
went too far in his rudeness, Frederic rebelled, and, to teach his
coachman morals, ordered him forthwith to cart manure and fagots with
a team of donkeys. After a year the king happened to meet him, busily
engaged in his new and modest occupation, and kindly inquired: “How
d’ye do?” The coachman’s classic answer August Kopisch has celebrated
in a song which we venture to translate:--
“‘Well, if I can drive,’ says Pound,
On his box quite firm and round,
‘I do not care
How I fare,
If with horses or with asses, carting
Fagots or His Majesty the King.’
“Then old Frederic, taking snuff,
Looked at Pound and told the rough:
‘Well, if you don’t care
How you really fare,
If with horses or with asses, logs or kings you cart,
Quick unload, drive ME again, and take a start!’”
Goethe’s father, although himself the son of a landlord, disliked inns
and public-houses very keenly, as we read in Goethe’s autobiography,
“Dichtung und Wahrheit”: “This feeling had rooted itself firmly in him
on his travels through Italy, France, and Germany. Although he seldom
spoke in images, and only called them to his aid when he was very
cheerful, yet he used often to repeat that he always fancied he saw a
great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn, so ingeniously that the
insects could indeed fly in but that even the privileged wasps could
not fly out again unplucked. It seemed to him something horrible, that
one should be obliged to pay immoderately for renouncing one’s habits
and all that was dear to one in life and living after the manner of
publicans and waiters. He praised the hospitality of the olden time,
and reluctantly as he otherwise endured even anything unusual in the
house, he yet practiced hospitality....” This excessive aversion to
all inns the great son inherited from his father, although he admitted
it was a weakness. We are therefore not surprised to see the student
Goethe, when he for the first time traveled full of longing to Dresden
in the yellow coach, lodge in the modest quarters of a philosophical
cobbler, whose home seemed to him as romantic and picturesque as an
old Dutch painting. Perhaps it was the memory of this interior that
inspired Goethe later, when he was called “Doktor Wolf” by his proud
mother, to arrange in “The Star” at Weimar, in honor of the Duchess
Anna Amalie, a “festivity in clair-obscure” with the distinct purpose
of creating a Rembrandt scene.
But before we wander in the far world with the student and doctor, let
us take a stroll through the Frankfurt of his childhood and admire the
many signs that still decorated, not inns alone, but also, houses of
private citizens. The “Goldene Wage,” situated on the Domplatz and
built in 1625, as well as the “Grosse Engel,” opposite the Römer, are
still standing, and are filled to-day with the treasures of art-loving
antiquarians. Recollections of his childhood passed through Goethe’s
mind when he described in “Hermann und Dorothea” the pharmacy “Zum
Engel,” near the “Golden Lion” on the market-place, and the old
bachelor chemist who was too stingy to regild his angel-sign:--
“Who now-a-days can afford to pay for the numerous workmen?
Lately I thought to have new-gilt the figure which stands as my
shop-sign,
The Archangel Michael with horrible dragon around his feet
writhing:
But as they are I have left them all dingy, for fear of the
charges.”
The father of some boy friends of Goethe’s, a Herr von Senckenberg,
“lived at the corner of Hare Street, which took its name from a sign
on the house that represented one hare at least if not three hares.”
Von Senckenberg’s three sons were consequently called the “three
hares,” which nickname they could not shake off for a long while.
[Illustration: AVX TROIS LAPINS]
It was in the “Golden Lion” at Frankfurt that Voltaire was arrested
and interned on his word of honor until his luggage containing the
stolen “Œuvre de Poésies” of Frederic the Great should arrive. In
these poems the king had ridiculed several crowned heads, and it was
of the utmost importance for him to get them back before the
revengeful Frenchman could make use of them against him. But for some
reason or other the trunks did not arrive, and Voltaire, losing
patience and “without warning anybody, privately revoked said word of
honor” and tried to escape, an attempt that failed and ended in a
tragic-comic fashion. Father Goethe, who loved to tell this story to
his children as a warning example never to seek the favors of princes,
does not agree here with Carlyle in the name of the tavern, but says
it was “The Rose” in which “this extraordinary poet and writer was
held as a prisoner for a considerable time.” When the fugitive was
brought back, the landlord of the tavern refused to take him in again,
and the “Bock” became for the rest of the time his involuntary
lodging-place.
In spite of this bad example and his father’s distinct warnings,
Goethe in 1778 accepted the invitation of the Duke of Weimar to the
“Römische Kaiser” in Frankfurt, where he was “joyfully and graciously”
received, and where definite arrangements were made for his removal to
Weimar.
After the death of Goethe’s father, Mutter Aja sold the old homestead
on the Hirschgraben and took a flat in the “Goldenen Brunnen” on the
Rossmarket, where the golden fountain of her good humor continued to
flow for all her friends, but where she no longer had such facilities
for entertaining guests as in the roomy house of old. When, therefore,
her daughter-in-law and her grandson, the “liebe Augst,” came to
visit her, she ordered rooms for them in “The Swan.” Her apartment in
the “Golden Fountain” we know from her own lively description in a
letter to her son, who visited her here several times before her death
in 1808.
Let us now accompany the student Goethe to Strassburg and pay a visit
to the inn “Zum Geist,” where his friendship with Herder, so important
for his future development, was formed. “I visited Herder morning and
evening, I even remained whole days with him ... and daily learned to
appreciate his beautiful and great qualities, his extensive knowledge,
and his profound views.” In Leipzig, the next university where Goethe
studied, he lived in a house, between the old and the new market,
which was called after its sign “Die Feuerkugel.” One of the first
calls he made was to the literary dictator Gottsched, who “lived very
respectably in the first story of the ‘Golden Bear,’ where the elder
Breitkopf, on account of the great advantage which Gottsched’s
writings had brought to the trade, had assured him a lodging for
life.” This Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf was the inventor of music
printing and the founder of the famous publishing firm of to-day. His
house, the “Golden Bear,” number 11 Universitätsstrasse, is to-day the
home of the Royal Saxon Institute for universal history and the
history of civilization, founded by the distinguished historian
Lamprecht. In Goethe’s day Breitkopf’s son built a great new house
opposite the “Golden Bear” which was called “Zum Silbernen Bären.”
A very popular sign in those days, in Germany, and especially in the
neighborhood of Frankfurt, was the pentacle. Goethe calls it simply
the beer-sign in his autobiography, where he tells us a charming story
based on an ingenious and humorous interpretation of the two triangles
which compose the sign. While still living as a young lawyer in Mutter
Aja’s house, he entertained two distinguished visitors, the famous
Lavater and the educational reformer Basedow. To amuse them he
arranged carriage drives in the pleasant country around his native
town. We see the young fire-brand sitting between these two dignified
men:--
“The prophets sat on either side,
The world-child sat between them.”
On one of these excursions Basedow had offended the pious and
sweet-tempered Lavater by his cynical remarks about the Trinity and so
spoiled the pleasant atmosphere of good comradeship. Goethe punished
him in the following humorous manner. “The weather was warm and the
tobacco smoke had perhaps contributed to the dryness of Basedow’s
palate; he was dying for a glass of beer. Seeing a tavern at a
distance on the road he eagerly ordered the coachman to stop there.”
But Goethe urged him to go on without seeming to mind the furious
protest of the thirsty Basedow, whom he simply calmed with the words:
“Father, be quiet, you ought to thank me! Luckily you didn’t see the
beer-sign! It was two triangles put together across each other. Now,
you commonly get mad about one triangle, and if you had set your eye
on two we should have had to put you in a strait-jacket.”
On his first journey to Switzerland, in company with the Stollbergs,
he stayed at the hotel “Zum Schwert,” which is still standing. “The
view of the lake of Zürich which we enjoyed from the Gate of the Sword
is still before me.” On the Rigi they lodged in the “Ochsen,” and
here from the window of his room, he sketched one Sunday morning the
chapel of the “Madonna in the Snow.” In the evening they sat before
the tavern door, under the sign, and enjoyed the music of the gurgling
fountain and a substantial meal consisting of baked fish, eggs, and
“sufficient” wine. On his second trip to Switzerland in 1779-80 we
meet him, together with his noble friend the Duke of Weimar, in “The
Eagle” at Constance, where Montaigne had lodged more than two hundred
years before.
We could mention many other hospitable thresholds which the great
genius crossed: “The Red Cock” in Nuremberg, now an elegant building
that reminds us little of the ancient low house with its large gate;
or the “Hotel Victoria” in Venice, whose owner recalls to the modern
traveler Goethe’s visit in a proud memorial tablet. “I lodged well in
the ‘Königin von England,’ not far from the market-place, the greatest
advantage of the inn.” But if he could find private quarters he
preferred them to public-houses; so in Rome, where he was very glad to
be received in the home of the painter Tischbein.
There is sufficient evidence that Goethe took an artistic interest in
signs, since he invented one himself for his puppet play “Hanswurst’s
Hochzeit,” where we read the bewitching rhyme:--
“The wedding-feast is at the house
Of mine host of the Golden Louse.”
In “Truth and Poetry” he has given us the scheme of the play, which
was never really executed. Like a born stage manager, he proposed a
kind of turning stage: “The tavern with its glittering insignia was
placed so that all its four sides could be presented to view by being
turned upon a peg.” This patent idea of a turning inn showing its
golden sign and its door open to travelers from the four quarters of
the globe, might please the modern landlord too, even if he did not
care exactly for the super-sign of a “Golden Louse,” “magnified by the
solar-microscope!”