feeling as he spoke to those near him. After some time passed in
talking and drinking together, varied by an occasional air from the
musicians, the president beat order with the sword, and the whole
company joined in one of their glorious songs, to a melody at the same
time joyous and solemn. Swelled by so many manly voices, it rose up
like a hymn of triumph; all other sounds were stilled. Three times
during the singing all rose up, clashed their glasses together around
the table, and drank to their Fatherland, a health and blessing to the
patriot, and honor to those who struggle in the cause of freedom, at
the close thundering out their motto,--
"Fearless in strife, to the banner still true!"
After this song the same order as before was continued, except that
students from the different societies made short speeches accompanied
by some toast or sentiment. One spoke of Germany, predicting that all
her dissensions would be overcome, and she would rise up at last like
a phoenix among the nations of Europe; and at the close gave "Strong,
united, regenerated Germany!" Instantly all sprang to their feet,
and, clashing the glasses together, gave a thundering "Hoch!" This
enthusiasm for their country is one of the strongest characteristics
of the German students; they have ever been first in the field for her
freedom, and on them mainly depends her future redemption.
Cloths were passed around, the tables wiped off, and preparations made
to sing the "_Landsfather_" or consecration song. This is one of the
most important and solemn of their ceremonies, since by performing it
the new students are made _burschen_, and the bands of brotherhood
continually kept fresh and sacred. All became still a moment; then they
commenced the lofty song,--
"Silent bending, each one lending
To the solemn tones his ear,
Hark, the song of songs is sounding,
Back from joyful choir resounding;
Hear it, German brothers, hear!
"German, proudly raise it, loudly
Singing of your fatherland.
Fatherland! thou land of story,
To the altars of thy glory
Consecrate us, sword in hand!
"Take the beaker, pleasure-seeker,
With thy country's drink brimmed o'er;
In thy left the sword is blinking;
Pierce it through the cap, while drinking
To thy Fatherland once more!"
With the first line of the last stanza the presidents sitting at the
head of the table take their glasses in their right hands, and at the
third line the sword in their left, at the end striking their glasses
together and drinking.
"In left hand gleaming, thou art beaming,
Sword from all dishonor free!
Thus I pierce the cap, while swearing,
It in honor ever wearing,
I a valiant Bursch will be!"
They clash their swords together till the third line is sung, when each
takes his cap, and piercing the point of the sword through the crown,
draws it down to the guard. Leaving their caps on the swords, the
presidents stand behind the two next students, who go through the same
ceremony, receiving the swords at the appropriate time, and giving them
back loaded with their caps also. This ceremony is going on at every
table at the same time. These two stanzas are repeated for every pair
of students till all have gone through with it, and the presidents
have arrived at the bottom of the table, with their swords strung full
of caps.
[While the song goes on, the president restores the caps, one
by one, a consecration verse being chanted as each student
receives his cap. When all are restored, the ceremonies end with
a concluding verse, in which the singers pledge themselves to the
service of their Fatherland.]
The Landsfather being over, the students were less orderly; the smoking
and drinking began again, and we left, as it was already eleven
o'clock, glad to breathe the pure cold air.
In the University I heard Gervinus, who was formerly professor
in Göttingen, but was obliged to leave on account of his liberal
principles. He is much liked by the students and his lectures are very
well attended. They had this winter a torchlight procession in honor of
him. He is a stout, round-faced man, speaks very fast, and makes them
laugh continually with his witty remarks. In the room I saw a son of
Rückert, the poet, with a face strikingly like his father's. The next
evening I went to hear Schlosser, the great historian. Among his pupils
are the two princes of Baden, who are now at the University. He came
hurriedly in, threw down his portfolio, and began instantly to speak.
He is an old, gray-headed man, but still active and full of energy. The
Germans find him exceedingly difficult to understand, as he is said to
use the English construction almost entirely; for this reason perhaps I
understand him quite easily. He lectures on the French Revolution, but
is engaged in writing a Universal History, the first numbers of which
are published.
Two or three days after, we heard that a duel was to take place at
Neuenheim, on the opposite side of the Neckar, where the students have
a house hired for that purpose. In order to witness the spectacle, we
started immediately with two or three students. Along the road were
stationed old women, at intervals, as guards, to give notice of the
approach of the police, and from these we learned that one duel had
already been fought, and they were preparing for the other. The Red
Fisherman was busy in an outer room grinding the swords, which are made
as sharp as razors. In the large room some forty or fifty students
are walking about, while the parties were preparing. This was done by
taking off the coat and vest and binding a great thick leather garment
on, which reached from the breast to the knees, completely protecting
the body. They then put on a leather glove reaching nearly to the
shoulder, tied a thick cravat around the throat, and drew on a cap with
a large vizor. This done, they were walked about the room a short time,
the seconds holding out their arms to strengthen them; their faces all
this time betrayed considerable anxiety.
All being ready, the seconds took their stations immediately behind
them, each armed with a sword, and gave the words, "_Ready--bind your
weapons--loose!_" They instantly sprang at each other, exchanged two or
three blows, when the seconds cried "Halt!" and struck their swords up.
Twenty-four rounds of this kind ended the duel, without either being
hurt, though the cap of one of them was cut through and his forehead
grazed. All their duels do not end so fortunately, however, as the
frightful scars on the faces of many of those present testified. It
is a gratification to know that but a small portion of the students
keep up this barbarous custom. The great body is opposed to it; in
Heidelberg, four societies, comprising more than one-half the students,
have been formed against it. A strong desire for such a reform seems
to prevail, and the custom will probably be totally discontinued in a
short time.
This view of the student-life was very interesting to me; it appeared
in a much better light than I had been accustomed to view it. Their
peculiar customs, except duelling and drinking, of course, may be
better tolerated when we consider their effect on the liberty of
Germany. It is principally through them that a free spirit is kept
alive; they have ever been foremost to rise up for their Fatherland and
bravest in its defence. And though many of their customs have so often
been held up to ridicule, among no other class can one find warmer,
truer, or braver hearts.
THE STREETS OF BERLIN.
MATTHEW WOODS.
[Among the object-lessons which the cities of Europe have
for Americans there is none more evident and impressive than
the beauty and cleanliness of the streets of many of these
municipalities, as compared with those of the land beyond the
ocean. Dr. Woods, in his "Rambles of a Physician," draws a
striking picture of the aspect of the principal street of Berlin,
which we reproduce for the benefit of our readers.]
To-day I have been riding on tramways through wide, smooth, perfectly
clean streets, lined on each side by magnificent houses, mostly with
their fronts a complete net-work of graceful carvings. In building here
the custom is to use rough stones, and when the house is erected, carve
over it the development of some legend, the illustrations of some
classic tale, or it may be, the story of the rise and progress of the
builder, or the man for whom it is being built; or, perhaps, simply a
reproduction in stone of some Pompeiian wall decoration, so that merely
a stroll through the streets, or a ride on a car, exhibits sights that
I imagine are seldom if ever seen outside of Germany. To write down
all worthy of perpetual remembrance and praise, during a walk through
its splendid ways, would require much time, and I will therefore only
say that amid a profusion of ornamentation, you seldom see anything
meaningless or incapable of pointing a moral or adorning a tale.
The street wherein I write, what words could record its splendors!
From the happy moment I passed the Royal National Gallery, with its
great front covered with the commanding pictures by Cornelius, with
background of gold, and crossed the handsome bridge, _Schloss Brücke_,
ornamented with colossal marble statues, full of action and life, that
spans the lovely embanked Spree, until now, with a charming park and
the Cathedral at my back, the University in front, on my left, in the
middle of the street Rauch's wonderful statue of Frederick the Great,
said to be the grandest monument in Europe, and by my side the plain
palace of the Emperor, I have been amazed; words cannot describe the
splendor of the place. The tops of the houses--cornices--are lined with
marble figures larger than life; the pediments are alive with men,
women, children, and horses, in high relief; and along the sidewalks
are sitting and standing celebrities in stone, whose very pedestals
contain enough to employ the admiration for weeks; and yet this is but
the approach to the famous street that, beginning at the castle of the
Kaiser, ends in the Brandenburg Gate,--I am merely within the Garden
of Eden, with long vistas of prospective bliss extending interminably
before.
I stand for a few moments in front of Rauch's stupendous statue of
Fritz surrounded by his friends. I use the word "stupendous" not in
reference to its size, although it is enormous, but to its effect. It
occupies a position in the middle of the street, in front of the plain
two-story-and-a-half castle of Kaiser William, now in his ninetieth
year, and well. Where is there another avenue in the world that would
not be obstructed by this massive group? The Monuments--clustered
around a granite pedestal twenty-five feet high, on which is placed an
equestrian statue of Frederick the Great--are bronze groups, life size,
of the leading generals and statesmen during the Seven Years' War,
standing or mounted on horses as they lived, in animated discussion or
thought, forming a glorious aureole around their chief. From where I
stand I count nineteen people and four horses, all apparently endowed
with immortal life; besides these, on this side (there are three others
like it) are cannon, armor, trumpets, helmets, muskets, and trees,
which, although of metal, to say of them that they look real would be
short of the truth; they exceed reality, at least as we ordinary beings
understand that most complimented word. I would venture to say that
outside of Prussian Germany _models_ for these magnificent figures
could not be found, and that a sculptor producing such would have
to create them himself; and yet these are the men of the streets of
Frankfort, Weimar, and Berlin, as splendid-looking fellows as the sun
ever shone upon,--the very street-sweepers even exhibiting a bearing
and dignity commanding respect.
The subject is too prolific in suggestions; I cannot proceed. It is
also too great for my limited time, especially as other attractions
are luring me on. What a street! what shops! filled with wonders in
metal and precious stones. What bronzes and jewels! Why do we never
see such exquisite productions in our palatial stores? Lingerers
around shop-windows find a paradise in this promenade; but here is an
"Arcade," the stone sides carved to the lofty cornices, arches of
glass stretching across the way from eave to eave, the street paved in
mosaic, and here and there in recesses clusters of exotics and palms.
What wares are exhibited in this virtuoso's Eden! I stand in front of
the window, lost in thought, until tired with the contemplation of
unspeakable things.
Seeing a shrubbery and seats, I sit down by a little table for repose,
when in a moment, from some invisible source overhead, like the
orchestra in Wilhelm Meister, there bursts forth the most bewitching
music. I am in heaven. I hear the hosannas of the celestial hosts. The
shops are where the redeemed work for love of men.
The people passing to and fro know nothing of accounts, nor the
perplexities of trade. They have ceased from their troubles--are at
home--at rest. I am brought to eat ambrosia and drink the nectar and
hear the music of the gods, and yet I am but a novice in this celestial
city, and wait for the loving hands that shall lead me to the friends
gone before....
I have made the tour of "Unter den Linden," and am sitting here just
long enough to collect my wandering thoughts before moving on. I feel
as if I had been the victim of one of De Quincey's dreams, and wait
the awakening that will release me from its spell. As I recline here
at my leisure, with a sandstone fountain making music at my feet, and
grapevines and beeches embowering me about, I get a good view of the
famous Brandenburg Gate and the statue of Victory, with her chariot and
four, on the top. As I look on the magnificent group from where I am on
the Thiergarten side, Victory has her back to me, her horses galloping
with full speed towards the palace of the king. I had supposed, from
pictures I had seen, that she was driving towards the park. I cannot
have been mistaken. If so, why was such a ponderous mass turned around?
While endeavoring to explain to myself what seemed so strange, a young
man took a seat by my side. Addressing him, "How is it? Isn't Victory
reversed?" "_Ja wohl!_" he replies. How assuring the affix "_wohl_"
in the hearty German expression of assent! It is the abracadabra that
drives out fear, and fills up the great gulf between the stranger and
yourself, enabling your sympathies to run over and interchange. Long
live the noble people that always say, "Yes, well," and never, "Yes,
ill."
"_Ja wohl!_" he replies. "Why?" "Well, you see,"--I knew by the
expression lighting up his face that he was going to tell me of
something that pleased,--"it was before the last struggle that Victory
was driving her horses in the direction of Paris. The war came. The
French were victors, and carried off our statue as a trophy to flatter
their vanity and decorate their capital at the same time. Good, but in
'70 it was our turn. The whipped became whippers. We beat the French
and brought our Victory home, replanted her on her original site,
with her back to Frankreich, her face looking proudly towards the
Fatherland, as if she were glad and happy to be at home."
[Here we pass over pages of description of what was to be seen
in the galleries and churches, to come again to the traveller's
out-door impressions.]
In the first place, the climate, to my surprise, is perfect. I am
sitting here at noon in August--smothering with us--in an atmosphere
exhilarating and cool; men are passing with light overcoats, as if
they were a trifle anxious to anticipate the September winds, and this
is what the weather has been since leaving Erin, where it was, to my
surprise, too dry and warm. Remember, that all I say about countries
and people is only what _I_ have felt and seen. Every evening I wear
a light overcoat, and find it about right. In the second place,
there is no dust in Berlin, simply because the streets, which are
better--all of them--than the concrete around the Philadelphia City
Hall, are never allowed to get dirty; are _flooded with water_ and
_dried_ every morning, and kept so. Nothing objectionable is permitted
to remain on them for a moment. _Clean, uniformed men_--and handsome,
gentlemanly-looking fellows they are, too--are constantly moving along
with enclosed wheelbarrows, shovels, and brooms, removing whatever may
offend; even their instruments for cleaning are designed artistically
and free from soil. I can imagine the wheelbarrows attractive as flower
receptacles at large gatherings, so graceful are they. You would tie
bows on the shovels and hang them on the wall.
With these whatever is offensive on the streets is at once emptied into
cast-iron receptacles, in themselves ornamental, arranged along the
thoroughfares, and which are emptied before daybreak every day. The
streets, as I said before, are many of them flooded with water daily,
then dried with enormous squilgees (that's what they are called on
shipboard),--that is, a band of rubber fitted into a socket of wood,
something like what, with us, careful housewives use to dry windows,
except that these are a yard wide, and one sweep of them over a wet
street leaves a band its width as dry as a board and as clean as a
dinner plate. In order to do this, of course the streets have to be
absolutely smooth,--as they are, not the slightest indentation being
visible. Then neatly-painted and handsomely-designed water-carts
traverse _every_ street a number of times daily, ejecting showers
of _misty_ spray; a work of supererogation, you say, to prevent any
particle of dust that may be left from getting into the air. It is
actually true that a child with a cambric dress could roll in the
middle of any crowded thoroughfare with as much security from soil as
if occupying a chair in a summer boarding-house.
The cleanliness and order exceeds even that of England or Scotland,
than which, until you come to Germany, you think nothing can exceed.
If, for example, a gentleman in lighting a cigar throws a match on the
street, it is picked up; a leaf from a tree, a bit of paper from a
store, a blade of grass, all are at once removed, and by men, too, that
are Germans; that is,--clean, respectful, reputable, and intelligent.
Even in the business avenues, and around the wholesale stores, the
pavements and streets are as clean as the white steps of the homes of
Philadelphia. Most of the streets are as wide as our Broad Street, some
wider; as, for example, Unter den Linden.
That you may see for yourself this noble highway of the capital, allow
me to conduct you across. "When I speak of horses imagine that you
see them." Just suppose we are crossing together, and because of the
many vehicles and people on horseback, I will take you by the hand,
so. We have been admiring the trees and flowers in front of Prince
Blücher's palace, one of a series of palaces on each side of the street
near the Brandenburg Gate; they stand back from the pavements, and
have extensive flower-gardens in front, the only separation between
these and the very wide pavement being a low hedge of delicate, almost
thornless, magenta roses. You remember--or did I tell you?--with what
genial pride the old gardener, yesterday, told us that this same
was a perpetual bloomer,--summer and winter,--that it was a German
creation,--the development of its efflorescent peculiarity having
been begun away back; but that he himself it was, by crossing it
with _Rosa centifolia_, that had added the apex to the temple of its
perfection,--namely, duplication of petals, diminution of stamen,
heliotropism,--turning its face towards the sun, by which acquired
habit the winter bloom has become as profuse as that of summer.
Well, we have been looking over this two-foot-high blooming hedge-row,
and have decided to cross to the gardens on the other side; so now hold
my hand and fear not, for life is sacred in the Fatherland, and we are
under the protection of the police. You see that the gardens in front
of the palaces used by the nobility and foreign ministers are about
as wide as Broad Street, the pavement for the public forty feet more.
We leave this and cross a strip as wide as an ordinary avenue, paved
with square blocks,--this is exclusively for wagons, drays, and all
vehicles of trade,--then a row of trees; after this we cross a band
about the same width, but as smooth and as hard as granite; this is
for pleasure-carriages only; then another row of trees; then a road
the width of an ordinary street, which is neither concrete nor Belgian
blocks, but a mixture of loam and sand, soft enough to be easy for
horses' feet, and damp enough to keep it from being converted into
clouds of dust; this is used by equestrians only, and a beautiful
sight the lady and gentleman riders present every afternoon on their
way to the park. We cross this soft way, and are in a wide promenade,
perhaps eighty feet broad, arched over with the branches of lofty oaks,
chestnuts, butternuts, lindens, beeches, and the like,--originally
lindens only, hence the name "Under the Lindens,"--with elegant seats
arranged along its entire length, on one of which we will sit down
and rest, for we are half-way across the avenue, or rather series of
avenues, which up here is flanked with lofty palaces and gardens of
delight. On one side you go to, on the other you come from, the park.
The lower part of this multiple avenue, instead of palaces and gardens,
has the most magnificent residences, shops, and hotels that I have ever
seen....
Germany seems one great family with no foreign help, where each member
recognizes and respects the position of the other, and are united in
the training of their children and the development of their own minds;
but not as though, like other people, they had to _resolve_ to be good;
this, as a matter of course; virtue appears to come to them by nature.
Everything they do seems a pleasure rather than a task, as if they said
that industry and thrift are essential to happiness, labor the prelude
to enjoyment; besides, they are never in a hurry. They take an hour
to drink a glass of beer, and talk of heaven, earth, and the waters
under the earth while sipping it. The gesticulating German, outside of
books, I have not yet seen; what they do they do well; they enjoy doing
it, and they do it that it may be a joy to others, and it always is.
This feeling enters into every service, from the making of a pin to
the concocting of a new system of theology, or a free-and-easy way of
getting to heaven; and then the universality of culture that prevails,
thanks to the standing army and the omnipresent public schools,--they
have private schools too, to be sure, but then these snob and
denominational affairs, unlike with us, just as the public schools,
are under strict _governmental inspection_, and their managers are not
permitted to teach what they please, unless what they please is for the
good of the pupils, the country, and the people at large. It is because
of this national surveillance that the private schools of Germany are
said to be as good as those under the direct control of the government.
Familiarizing the pupil with music and the natural sciences is an
important part of German education, especially the study of _animal
organisms_, "birds, beasts, and reptiles," as we used to say of
Goldsmith's "Animated Nature." As an illustration at hand, since
sitting here in front of a garden near the Kaiser's palace, putting
upon record the above traits, a workman watering a lawn noticed me
looking up for a moment, just as he had enveloped the top of a lofty
spruce with spray. Of course, as the sun was shining, and each particle
of water becoming a prism, the disintegration of the white rays of
light resulted in a rainbow, curved partially around the trees. I look
at it, racking my memory at the same time for the word I need; he sees
I observe it and am pleased; he nods, and says, "_Schön_" (beautiful);
I reply, "Very." In a few moments, dragging the hose towards me,
throwing the water over a weeping birch, and making another rainbow, he
points towards it. "Our Herr Professor Helmholtz," pointing towards the
University, "says there are but three prismatic colors, and yet I can
now see seven, can't you?--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
and violet; and I suppose a Frenchman could see seventy, for it is
said that they can see colors where other people only see shades." He
continues to water the grass, and I, having found my missing link, to
write.