Tiergarten purlieus are cooling themselves in their villa gardens,
and the middle-class man is beaming at the band at the Zoo, where the
restaurant-terraces are overflowing into the flowered walks among the
trees. There is a boisterous coterie of shouting children to every prim
fountain in the prim squares. Out under the pines and cypresses of
Grunewald crowds returning from the races are gazing admiringly at the
pretty white villas that rim the verges of the placid forest lakes; and
others are turning aside for the spectacular amusements of Luna Park.
At Steglitz the bicycle races are ending and merrymakers are swarming
into the Botanic Gardens to marvel over the cacti and palms of the long
hot-houses. Capital boating is in progress on the Spree, and sailing at
Wannsee, and steamer trips all through the suburbs. Bands are crashing
in the noisy penny-shows of the tumultuous Zeltern; they are having
beer in crowded _Weinhandlungen_, chocolate at dainty _Conditoreien_,
and much besides in the jolly Vienna cafés that open out invitingly to
the street. In every part of the city rise music and laughter and the
sound of early revelry in pretty, tree-shaded summer gardens. It is an
audible expression of the Berliners’ joy of living—their cherished
_Lebensfreude_.
Could we rise with Zeppelin we should find it the same now at
Charlottenburg, and over at Potsdam. Charlottenburg the Prosperous is
having its serene and dignified companies sauntering in quiet evening
talk along the broad, handsome streets. The gay are at the lively
_Orangerie_, the philosophic in the trim, pert little parks, and the
sentimental among the flaming roses and fragrant trellises of the
charming Palace Garden. In solemn and conscious superiority the great
Technical High School and famed Reichanstalt shroud their learned
cornices in the gloaming of tree-tops, and that chiefest mecca of
all, the royal mausoleum, embowers its gleaming marble walls in heavy
shrubbery at the bottom of its avenue of pines. No loiterer, you may be
sure, but thinks reverently of the recumbent snowy effigies of the dead
rulers that lie in the hushed gloom of that dim interior.
Potsdam, Germany’s Versailles, steeped in the melancholy beauties of
the Havelland pine forests, redolent of old Frederick the Great and his
dream of an earthly Sans Souci, thinks nothing of drawing Berliners
twenty miles to its twilight peace and calm. Exuberance tempers to the
dignity and beauty of those parks and palaces where the Kaiser has his
favorite royal seat. Up the broad Hauptweg they stroll by hundreds
and gladden their patriotic eyes with the colonnades, porticoes, and
statues of the vast New Palace that proved to the foes of defiant old
Fritz that the sturdy warrior was far from bankrupt despite the Seven
Years’ War. Nor do they forget that it was here the late emperor,
beloved “Unser Fritz,” learned how
“unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
The classic Town Palace of Potsdam is receiving its compliments,
as usual, and no less the artistic Lustgarten, opulent in marbles
and fountains; and many will be wandering even out to the cool and
spacious park that lies about the charming Babelsberg Château. But old
Frederick remains the local hero, and there is sure to be a crowd at
the venerable lime-tree where petitioners used to stand to catch the
eye of the king, and a kind of procession will be passing reverently
before the garrison church, where lie his remains in the vault before
which Napoleon outdid himself in eulogy the while he pilfered the old
warrior’s sword. And the leaping column of the Great Fountain will
be the centre of an admiring throng, and scores will be going up and
down the vista of broad stairs and fruited terraces that lead to the
long, low palace of Sans Souci. As to the latter, a stranger might be
pardoned if he were to mistake it for a casino, which it strikingly
resembles, with its flat-domed entrance, line of caryatids like
pedestal busts, and the row of stone urns on the balustraded top of the
façade. At this hour there is no admission, but one may peer through
the low French windows and, in fancy, people Voltaire’s room with a
miserly ghost of the crafty old philosopher, see him fraternizing and
quarreling with the king, imagine a royal _soirée_ in progress with
Frederick playing skillfully on the flute, recall the brilliant talk of
the Round Table, and think with pity of the cheerless, childless old
soldier toiling wearily on those histories that Macaulay praised, and
winding his big clock, and yearning all the while to lie buried among
his dogs out on the terrace. To many will come visions wrought from
the extravagant fiction of Luise Mühlbach. What moral observations and
theatrical posings fell to poor Frederick’s lot in her “Berlin and Sans
Souci,” sandwiched in among the woeful loves of Amelia and Baron Trenck
and of the dancer Barbarina and the High Chancellor’s son! But perhaps
such literature helps one to understand the application to Frederick
of the celebrated characterization of a very different personage, the
“wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.”
In Berlin proper there are two fine squares that best serve the
well-advised as start-and-finish places for the most interesting
evening walk to be had in the city—the Lustgarten before the Royal
Palace and the Königs-Platz at the Tiergarten corner. By this notable
route one arrives, within the smoking of two cigars, at something like
an intelligent comprehension of Berlin and Berliners.
The gracious expanse of the Lustgarten is so appealing in the
melancholy light of sunset that one almost feels, at the very beginning
of the stroll, like going no farther for fear of faring worse, but
rather remaining where he is among the trees and fountains and artistic
shrubbery and watching the children playing _Hashekater_ around the
colossal Granite Basin, or _Ringer-Ringer-Rosa_ at the marble stairs of
Frederick William’s lofty statue. Soft splashes of deep colors warm
the long rows of blinking windows in the Royal Palace on the left, and
flush the domes of the cathedral and the columns of the Old Museum’s
Ionic portico. Hundreds of Berliners are idling along the asphalt walks
that entice to the Palace Bridge that arches the Spree in a double line
of marble groups and so opens up the long, tree-shaded perspective
of the Linden. To see it at this hour one would not guess that this
fair Lustgarten had once been a neglected palace-close and even a
dusty drill-ground; no more than one could believe that the occasional
decrepit church or twisting, narrow street in the district in the rear
is all that marks antiquity in the whole of the city. For the furious
_tempo_ of Berlin’s development has swept everything before it. Three
out of every four buildings, all over town, are garishly modern.
Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment that it is hard to
believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could have stood here
beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago. Were one to see no
more of Germany than its capital he might very easily imagine a Chicago
or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly not a Nuremberg.
Sunset imparts an air of cordiality to the ponderous, baroque,
seven-hundred-roomed Royal Palace, whose four stories of regular window
lines suggest an ornate and elaborate factory that had been diverted
from its original purpose by the addition of the chapel dome on the
west wing. However, for those who cross its low terrace and enter the
sculptured portals there awaits a revelation of pomp and majesty, of
throne-room splendors and saloon magnificence, that rivals the best
of Versailles and Vienna. Unhappily we cannot here see the windows of
the royal family’s apartments, for they are on the second floor of the
opposite wing; whence the Kaiser looks out on the Neptune fountain of
the Schloss-Platz and the elaborate façade of the royal stables when
the purple banner that denotes his presence flies from the palace
standard.
In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,” and
shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old Museum
gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming grace and
effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum Island, just
beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the arts in the
affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or cathedral,
dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in the modest
and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architectural _débutante_
of only six seasons—though that is quite long enough for a building to
become _passé_ in Berlin. Its granite walls, copper domes, high-vaulted
portals, elaborately carved cornices, and profusion of statuary stand
out in beautiful relief against the darkness of the trees beyond.
At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridge is thronged with
loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons
of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the
languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way
from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the
road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque
forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in
outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals
and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the
capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected;
and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement
and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant
evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal
indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and
important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these
urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between
the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful little
_rivas_ along the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the swift,
pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to take note
of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low bridges.
Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service uniforms on
floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These invariably
have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing from end to
end, while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage by means of a
long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and inserts the
other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire length of
the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.
Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array
of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista
suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and
the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily
to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a
more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have
dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration,
and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect
of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees
that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as
London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings,
the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up
admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the
Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the
Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor
William I, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan
used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people.
With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over
the heads of the crowds at the University across the way—the proper
toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story
and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding
statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great
William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel
under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and
ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters
as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From
contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns
to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue
of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and
observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand
lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great
ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period
whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty
pedestal.
And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted
Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the
children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the
night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres,
cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this
hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about
the poster pillars that they call “Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper
kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but
suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street
intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital
boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always
on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like,
but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the
conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn
just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for
“nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere
“men.”
But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of
Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated
Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where
you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a
balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets
and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the
fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.
The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants
the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more
of café life than many others, as being an institution essential
to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and
friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vital with
the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and
with continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and
“Bitte!” and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially,
“Prosit!” There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps
and shouts of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries
respond with “Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off
in haste, to return at leisure. The gold that falls in _Trinkgeld_
passes belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is
said that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will
see few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a
national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende
Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand
publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom
he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus.
Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once
in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business
house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking,
is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up,
and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of
them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered
until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your
hat, and go about your business.
From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the
diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless
observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that
so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed,
narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing
at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his
mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he
approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away
and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he
would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the
pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is
whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song
he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed
“Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or
other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming
about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the
dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet
with its _Pickelhaube_ top spike. You learn to distinguish the corps,
in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.
Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are
paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for
dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread.
They carry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and
any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been
squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection
and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second
lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives
twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must
live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first
requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must
be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war
cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains
an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost
of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in
consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the
empire.
On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the
tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants,
government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of
the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students
go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and
the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions
are coming and going—_Droschken_, stages, double-decked omnibuses,
motor-cars, _et al._ The corner of Leipzigerstrasse is a whirlpool
through which traffic moves like so much drifting pack-ice. Trolley
cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron posts marked
“Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of safety” in the
middle of the street have each its representative of the omnipresent
police, dressed up like major-generals in military long coats and
nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that Leipzigerstrasse is
just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous Potsdam Gate, where
on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets ponderous hotels
project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on spits. I say the
policemen _could_ tell you that, if they wanted to, but the probability
is they would only wave excited hands and shout “Verboten!”
And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in
Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons
ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is
second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become
uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched,
but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated,
as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility
where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the
police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine
to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the
balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or the
authorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you
up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two
cents up.
Parenthetically, again, it is the people’s fault. They are
government-mad; intoxicated with bureaucracy. Not for all the gold
reserve at Spandau would they abate one jot of this supervision. There
is a law for everything. Some one has said that for every pfennig the
German pays in taxes he expects and receives a pfennig’s worth of
government. You see it on every hand. Each bus and car is placarded to
announce its exact seating capacity, as well as the precise amount of
standing-room on the platforms; once that space is occupied it would
not stop for you, though you go on your knees. Have you ever taken
notice of the little metallic racks at each end of a Berlin street
car? That is where you leave the cigar you may be smoking when you
enter; putting it anywhere else is absolutely “verboten.” It is the
spirit of the time. Berlin is a “touch-the-button” town—a machine-made
community of deadly rote and rule. System is the thing. Street numbers
have arrows indicating which way they run; letter boxes are cleared
every fifteen minutes; a letter goes by the pneumatic _Rohrpost_ with
the speed of a telegram; packages are sent by the parcel delivery
more quickly and more cheaply than by express; hotels have electric
elevators and vacuum cleaning. It is so all over Germany. Who ever sees
a picture of Düsseldorf, these days, without a Zeppelin airship in the
background? How eloquent it is of the thoroughness of this people whose
boastful “Made in Germany” is expressive of the rankest materialism,
that their warlike capital should be distinguished for the quality and
quantity of its artistic feeling, and excel, besides, in usefulness,
as exemplified in scores of museums that are admittedly the most
instructive of any in the world.
As the last of daylight disappears, Friedrichstrasse’s shops blaze out
brilliantly in every guise of electricity, the present pet scientific
rage. The window dressings are highly attractive, but seldom the
interiors behind them. Americans are finding home products in the kodak
and sewing-machine stores, in penny-in-the-slot establishments, and
at alleged American soda-fountains and bars—all displayed for sale
in business buildings that are better built than the battlements of
Jericho. People need not go out of a single block on Friedrichstrasse
to secure every comfort they require, for in so small a space one finds
fashionable hotels, _hôtels garnis_, _pensions_, or the exemplary
_hospices_ affected by ladies traveling alone; where also you may
dine at establishments to suit your purse—at extravagant cost, or on
the lightest of repasts at a _Conditorei_, or on a heavy seven-course
dinner at a popular restaurant for twenty cents, with a glass of
beer in the bargain. One finds the dance halls largely supported by
foreigners and tourists, of which latter America sends fully forty
thousand annually. It is also speedily apparent that the undertow of
the feverish stream brings its wreckage to the surface, where the
rouged cheek and carmined lip betray the presence of fiercer kinds of
“questing bestes” than ever were recorded in the “Morte d’Arthur.”