though chaste and modest edifice in the gardens of Monbijou Palace.
The site, presented by the Emperor William I., is in the heart of the
city, surrounded, in this quiet and beautiful place, by many
interesting historic associations. The edifice was built chiefly
through the efforts of the Crown Princess Victoria, who raised in
London in a few hours a large part of the necessary funds, and who
also devoted to this object, so dear to her English heart, presents
received at her silver wedding. The service attracts on Sunday
mornings, of course, all adherents of the Church of England, as well
as many Americans, to whom the magnet of an Episcopal service is
greater than that of the association of Christians of all
denominations in the devout and simple worship of the Chapel in Junker
Strasse, where the Union American and British service is held. One of
the first places we essayed to find in Berlin was the chapel at
present used by this organization. Our German landlady had unwittingly
misdirected us, and we insisted on her direction, to the bewilderment
of our cabman. Up one strange street and down another he drove, with
sundry protests and shakes of the head on our part. We insist on
"Heulmann Strasse." He stops and inquires. "Nein! nein!" he says,
"Junker Strasse." "No! no!" we reply. He holds a conference with two
brother drosky-men. Three Germans "of the male persuasion" outside
insist on "Junker Strasse." Three Americans "of the female persuasion"
inside insist on "Heulmann Strasse." "Nein!" says the man, with a
determined air, and takes the reins now as though he means business.
We lean back in our seats, resigned to going wrong because we cannot
help ourselves, when lo! we draw up at the door of the building used
by the American church in Junker Strasse. Those barbarous men were
right, after all! Late; but how our hearts were warmed and cheered by
the sight of a plain audience-room, holding about two hundred
English-speaking people; the pulpit draped in our dear old American
flag, and another on the choir-gallery! How precious were the simple
devout hymns and prayers in our own tongue wherein we were born! There
was an American Thanksgiving sermon,--eloquent, earnest, magnetic.
Strangers in a strange land, we felt that we could never be homesick
in a city where was such a service. This Union Church service was
established some twenty-five or thirty years ago, Governor Wright,
then United States Minister to Germany, being prominently connected
with its beginnings. There is now a regular church organization, with
the Bible and the Apostles' Creed as its doctrinal basis. For eight or
nine years past, the present pastor, the Rev. J.H.W. Stückenberg,
D.D., born in Germany, but a loyal and devoted soldier and citizen of
the American Republic, has, with his accomplished wife, been
indefatigable in caring for the services, and administering to the
needs--physical, social, and religious--of Americans in Berlin. The
first gathering which we attended in the city was an American
Thanksgiving Banquet, under the auspices of the "Ladies' Social Union"
connected with this "American Chapel." Invitations were issued to an
"American Home Gathering," for Thanksgiving evening, to be held in the
Architectenhaus at six o'clock. Greetings, witty and wise, were
extended to the assembled company of some two hundred, by a lady from
Boston; grace was said by Professor Mead, formerly of Andover, and the
American Thanksgiving dinner was duly appreciated, though some of us
had in part forestalled its appetizing pleasures by attendance at a
delightful private afternoon dinner-party, where the true home flavors
had been heightened by the shadow of the American flag which draped
its silken folds above the table, depending from candelabra in which
"red, white, and blue" wax lights were burning.
Only the initiated can know what such an American Thanksgiving dinner
as that given in this public entertainment in Germany must mean to the
painstaking ladies, who need to direct every detail in contravention
of the established customs of the country. Turkey was forthcoming, but
cranberries were sought far and wide in vain, until Dresden at last
sent an imitation of the American berry, to keep it company. Mince
pies were regarded as essential to the feast. As pies are here
unknown, the pie-plates must be made to order after repeated and
untold minuteness of direction to the astonished tinman. The ordinary
kitchen ranges of Germany are without ovens, and all cake and pastry,
as well as bread, must emerge from the baker's oven. So to the shop of
the baker two ladies repaired, to mix with their own hands the pastry
and to prepare the mince-meat, graciously declining the yeast and
eggs offered them for the purpose. The delicious results justified in
practical proof the tireless endeavor for a real home-like American
dinner. Our German friends laughed at the "dry banquet" where only
lemonade and coffee kept the viands company, but right good cheer was
not wanting. Before the guests rose from table, the pastor read
letters of regret from Minister Pendleton (absent in affliction) and
others, and proposed the health of the President of the United States
and of Mrs. Cleveland, who, as Miss Folsom, shared in the Berlin
festivities of Americans at Thanksgiving the year before. The toast
which followed--to the aged Emperor William--was most cordially
responded to by a member of the Empress's household, Count Bernsdorff,
endeared to many in both hemispheres by his active interest in
whatsoever things are true and of good report. Rare music was
discoursed at intervals, from a band in the gallery, alternating with
amateur performers on the violin and piano, from under the German and
American flags intertwined at the opposite end of the handsome hall.
The good name of American students of music in Berlin was well
deserved, judging from their contributions to the enjoyment of this
occasion. The evening's programme closed with our national airs in
grand chorus, cheering and inspiring all. To some hearts the dear
melody of "The Suwanee River," which afterwards floated out on the
evening air of the busy city, mingled a pathos before unsuspected with
the good-nights and the adieus, and brought an undertone of sadness
caused by the knowledge that we were far from home, and that our loved
ones, from Atlantic to Pacific, were returning from their Thanksgiving
sermon, or later gathering about the festal board, at the hour when
we, wanderers, were clustered in the heart of the German Empire with
like purpose and in like precious faith and memory.
The Sunday services of this enterprise are now held in an edifice
belonging to a German Methodist church, which can be had for one
service only, at an hour which will not interfere with the uses which
have a prior claim. The Sunday evenings, when a goodly congregation
might be gathered if a suitable audience-room could be had, are times
of loneliness and homesickness to many American youth and others far
from home and friends. Dr. and Mrs. Stückenberg have generously
opened their own pleasant home at 18 Bülow Strasse for Sunday-evening
receptions to Americans. Their large and beautiful apartments were
much too small to accommodate all who would gladly have gathered
there. But in the course of the season there were few Americans
attending the morning service who were not to be met, one Sunday
evening or another, in the parlors of the pastor and his wife; and
many others, students, were nearly always there. A half-hour was given
on these occasions to social greetings; then followed familiar hymns,
led by the piano and a volunteer choir of young people, after which an
informal lecture was given by the pastor. Dr. Stückenberg emigrated
with his parents to America in early childhood, but has studied in the
Universities of Halle, Göttingen, Berlin, and Tübingen. His large
acquaintance with German scholars enabled him to give most interesting
reminiscences of the teaching and personality of some of these, his
teachers and friends. Among the talks which we remember vividly were
those on Tholuck, Dörner, and Von Ranke. At another time Dr.
Stückenberg gave a series of lectures on Socialism,--a theme whose
manifold aspects he has studied profoundly, and which, in Germany as
elsewhere, is the question of the hour, the day, and the century, and
perhaps of the next century too. After the lecture there generally
followed prayer and another hymn, and always slight refreshments,--tea
and sandwiches, or little cakes,--over which all chatted and were free
to go when they would. Many were the occasions when, in these
gatherings, every heart seemed to partake of the gladness radiated by
the magnetic host and hostess; and all Europe seemed brighter because
of these homelike, social, Christian Sunday evenings which lighted up
the sojourn in Berlin. The effort now being made to build a permanent
and commodious church edifice for Americans in Berlin is a pressing
necessity.
Dr. Christlieb, the eminent Professor of Theology and University
Preacher in Bonn, asserts that the number of American students in
Berlin is now by far the largest congregated in any one place in
Germany. The number, as stated in 1888 by Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, was
about four hundred, besides the numerous American travellers there
every year for a longer or shorter time. Seventeen denominations have
been represented in this church in a single year, and any evangelical
minister in good standing in his own church is eligible to election as
its pastor. From the beginning these union services have been entirely
harmonious; and Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians,
Baptists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians have been chiefly active in
promoting them.
The churches of the royal suburb of Potsdam possess an interest quite
equal to that of those in Berlin. The Potsdam Garrison Church, in
general interior outlines, reminds one of some quaint New England
meeting-house of the early part of the eighteenth century. But here
the resemblance ceases. The ancient arrangement of windows and
galleries impresses one only at the moment of entering, attention
being presently diverted to the flags clustered on the gallery pillars
and on either side the pulpit, in two rows,--the lower captured from
the French in the wars with the First Napoleon, the upper taken in the
late contests with Austria and with Napoleon III. Altar-cloths and
other furnishings are heavily embroidered with the handiwork of
vanished queens. But the chief interest centres in the vault under the
handsome marble pulpit. In this vault, on the left, are the mortal
remains of the old Prussian King, Frederick William I.,--father of
Frederick the Great,--a character hard to understand, and interpreted
differently as one surveys him in the light of Macaulay's genius or
that of Carlyle. But one cannot help hoping that the final verdict
will be with the latter; and as we stand in this solemn place, memory
recalls the day--the midnight, rather--when this same oak coffin, long
before the death of the King made ready by his orders in the old
Palace of Potsdam close at hand, at last received its burden, and was
borne in Spartan simplicity to this place, the torch-lighted band
playing his favorite dirge,--
"Oh, Sacred Head, now wounded!"
On the right, separated from the coffin of his father only by the
short aisle, is that of Frederick the Great. Three wreaths were lying
upon it,--placed there by the Emperor and by the Crown Prince and the
Crown Princess on the hundredth anniversary of the death of this
founder of Prussia's greatness, August 17, 1886. Fortunate is the
visitor to Potsdam who does not altogether overlook this Garrison
Church, misled by the brief mention usually accorded to it in the
guide-books.
The Friedenskirche, near the entrance to the park of Sans Souci, has a
detached high clock-tower adjoining, and cloisters beautiful, even in
winter, with the myrtle and ivy and evergreens of the protected court
which they surround. In the inner court is a copy of Thorwaldsen's
celebrated statue of Christ (the original at Copenhagen); also,
Rauch's original "Moses, supported by Aaron and Hur," and a beautiful
_Pieta_ is in the opposite colonnade. The church is in the form of the
ancient basilica, which is not favorable to much adornment. A crucifix
of _lapis lazuli_ under a canopy resting on jasper columns--a present
from the Czar Nicholas--stands on the marble altar. A beautiful angel
in Carrara marble adorns the space before the chancel, above the
burial-slabs of King Frederick William IV., founder of the church, and
his queen; and the apse is lined with a rare old Venetian mosaic. But
the chief interest of this "Church of Peace" will henceforth centre
around it as the burial-place of the Emperor Frederick III. In an
apartment not formerly shown to the public, his young son, Waldemar,
was laid to rest at the age of eleven years, deeply mourned by the
Crown Prince, the Crown Princess, and their family. Here in this
church, beside his sons Waldemar and Sigismund, who died in infancy,
it was the wish of the dying father to lie buried. Here the quiet
military funeral service was held; here the last look of that noble
face was taken amid the tears of those who loved him well, while the
sunlight, suddenly streaming through an upper window, illuminated as
with an electric light that face at rest, as the Court-preacher Koëgel
uttered the words of solemn trust,--
"What God doeth is well done."
Fitting it is that in this "Church of Peace" should rest all that was
mortal of the immortal Prince who could say, as he entered Paris in
the flush of victory: "Gentlemen, I do not like war. If I should
reign, I would never make it."
V.
MUSEUMS.
The chief art treasures of Berlin are found in the Royal Museums, Old
and New, and in the National Gallery. There are few more
characteristic and inspiring sights in Europe than that which greets
the eye in a walk on a sunny afternoon in winter from the palace of
Kaiser Wilhelm I. through the Operahaus Platz and the Zeughaus Platz,
across the Schloss Brücke and the Lustgarten, to the peerless building
of the Old Museum,--with the grand equipages, the brilliant uniforms,
and the busy but not overcrowded life which throng the vast spaces of
these handsome thoroughfares. The Old Museum is not so rich in
masterpieces as some other and older art galleries, but there are many
fine original works. The Friezes from the Altar of Zeus, excavated
within a few years at Pergamus, are extremely interesting, and are
exhibited with all the adjuncts which the most thorough German
scholarship can supply for their elucidation. The celebrated Raphael
tapestry, woven for Henry VIII. from the cartoons now in the South
Kensington Museum, and long the foremost ornament of the palace of
Whitehall, hangs in the great upper rotunda, which is a setting not
unworthy of its fame. Michael Angelo's "John the Baptist as a Boy,"
one of his early works, is quite unlike most of this master's work, in
conception and execution, and is interesting especially on this
account. The "Altar-piece of the Mystic Lamb" is remarkable for its
merits and because it is reputed to be the first picture ever painted
in oils. Murillo's "Ecstasy of Saint Anthony" is a picture of rare
sweetness and power. In one room are five of Raphael's Madonnas, but
only one of them is in his better style. "The collection of pictures
in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which
remain in the imagination,--'Titian's Daughter,' Correggio's 'Jupiter
and Io,' and his 'Head of Christ on a Handkerchief.' I was pleased,
also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which
Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandschaften' as the model of a
_tableau vivant_ presented by Lucian and her friends. It is the
daughter being reproved by her father, while the mother empties her
wine-glass."
The department of the Museum known as the Antiquarium has its
treasures. Here is the original silver table service, supposed to be
that of a Roman General, dug up in 1868 near the old German mediæval
town of Hildesheim. A handsome copy of this service is among the
beginnings of Chicago's Art collections. Here are the exquisite
terra-cotta statuettes from the ancient Grecian Colony of Tanagra,
which no modern work of plastic art can imitate in grace of form and
delicacy of color,--dating three or four hundred years before the
Christian era; and in other rooms, a fabulous collection of jewels,
and numberless precious vases, illustrating especially the progress of
Ancient Grecian Art.
The New Museum, connected by a colonnade with the Old, is not, like
it, remarkable for architectural beauty; but its vast collections,
especially in marble, already need and are to have a new building.
The masterpieces of ancient sculpture gathered at Munich, Vienna,
Paris, Rome, Naples, and elsewhere, are here reproduced in casts,
making up a collection said to be, in its way, unrivalled in the
world. The collection of originals in Renaissance sculpture is also
extensive and valuable.
Referring to sculpture in Berlin, George Eliot wrote: "We went again
and again to look at the Parthenon Sculptures, and registered a vow
that we would go to feast on the originals [in the British Museum] the
first day we could spare in London." At the date before mentioned, her
opinion was that "the first work of art really worth looking at that
one sees in Berlin is the 'Horse-Tamers' in front of the [Old] palace.
It is by a sculptor [Baron Clodt, of St. Petersburg] who made horses
his especial study; and certainly, to us, they eclipsed the famous
Colossi at Monte Cavallo, casts of which are in [before] the New
Museum."
The Department of Coins has 200,000 specimens, many very old and rare;
and that of Northern Antiquities illustrates with great fulness the
prehistoric and Roman periods. The Cabinet of Engravings is extremely
interesting, and has some specimens of very great value; but it is
open to the general public for a few hours on Sunday only, and even
then the greater part of its collections is reserved to art students,
who have the entire monopoly of its treasures on other days of the
week. It well repays persistent effort, however, to make a few quiet
visits to this rare cabinet. Some of the finest works are hung on the
walls of the pleasant rooms.
The famous mural paintings by Kaulbach adorning the upper staircase
walls of the New Museum are widely admired, but critics differ in the
estimate of their place as works of art. The upper saloons reached by
this staircase show the cartoons of Cornelius, and foreshadow a
grandeur in German art not yet realized.
The third building in the group which holds the chief art treasures of
Berlin is the National Gallery, its pictures partaking, as such a
collection should, strongly of the German spirit as shown in modern
German art. The paintings are of various degrees of merit, many being
of value chiefly as reflecting the national life. A fine portrait of
Mommsen arrested me, on one visit; a striking picture, "Christ healing
a Sick Child in its Mother's Arms," by Gabriel Max, was a continual
favorite; and many others were among those to which we went frequently
and before which we lingered long.
The crowning excellence of all the Royal Art Collections is their
singular method and completeness. The Old Museum, especially, in its
arrangement and illustration of the history of painting in all
schools, is without a peer, and it is particularly rich in the early
Italian masters. The National Gallery in London has been compared in
arrangement with the Berlin Museum, but our observation showed nowhere
else in Europe so great facility for systematic study of art as here.
Quite recently, a writer in the "London Art Journal," in comparing
European art galleries, characterizes the Italian galleries, except
the Pitti, as mere storehouses of pictures, so great have been the
accessions, in late years, of altar-pieces from suppressed convents;
while, on the other hand, the Louvre, and the galleries of Munich,
Dresden, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Madrid still retain their
original characteristics as collections made by persons of taste and
discrimination. "The Berlin Gallery," says this writer, "is neither a
storehouse nor a collection. It stands on a footing of its own. The
studious and organizing Prussian mind soon handed over the management
of all its collections to a body of specialists, trained to study the
objects in their keeping and to arrange them not so much for the
delight as for the information of a studious public. The Berlin
Gallery has been thus arranged, and its additions have been purchased
under the direction of scholars and historians rather than artists and
_dilettanti_. Historical sequence and historical completeness have
been aimed at. The collection is intended to exemplify the development
of the art of painting in mediæval and renascence Europe. It is
impossible to enter the Museum gallery and not be struck with this
fact. The visitor finds himself turned into a student of the history
of painting, as he wanders from room to room. The ordering of the
pictures, the information contained in the catalogue,--everything
points in the same direction. So clearly has the Museum come to be
understood at Berlin as a kind of art-history branch of a university,
that a portion of the funds devoted to it is annually spent upon the
publication of a periodical universally recognized as the leading
magazine in the world devoted to the history of art. By means of it,
students in all countries are informed from year to year of the new
acquisitions and discoveries made by the staff of the Museum, or by
the leading authors and students of the subject, of all nationalities.
The Berlin collection has thus won for itself a place as the
historical collection _par excellence_."
The Museums are under the care of a Director-General, with nine or
more Directors of Departments. Dr. Julius Meyer, Director of the
Picture-Gallery, is said to be probably unequalled by any living
writer for a wide and philosophic grasp of the whole subject of Art
History, to which his life has been devoted; while the names of
distinguished scholars and professors at the head of the other
departments are guaranties of similar excellence. A series of four
illustrated volumes is now in process of publication, which will
present, in photographs and engravings, large or small, every picture
of importance in the gallery. The text of these volumes, by Drs. Meyer
and Bode, will be extremely valuable, and the whole will doubtless
stand foremost among publications designed as exponents of European
galleries.
The fine and massive building of the Arsenal, opposite the palace of
the late Crown Prince, dates from the time of Frederick I., last of
the Electors and first of the Prussian Kings. The grand sculptures of
the German artist Schlüter, who was afterwards called to the aid of
Peter the Great in the creation of St. Petersburg, adorn the exterior
of the edifice. Any chance walk along the Linden will arrest the
attention to this building, with the remarkable heads of dying
warriors carved in the keystones of its window arches. In the
renovation of the Arsenal a few years since, no improvement was made
on the exterior, except to remove the accumulations of smoke and dust
which a hundred and seventy years had deposited there. After the close
of the Franco-Prussian War, it was the thought of the aged Emperor to
make this Arsenal, already crowded with an immense collection of arms,
armor, and trophies, into a kind of Walhalla,--a National Hall of
Fame. This was fully carried out. In rooms on the ground floor one may
read the whole history of ordnance, old and new, including the famous
Armstrong and Krupp guns. A portion of this floor is devoted to models
of fortresses, plans of battles, and captured flags. There is a war
library; and the celebrated pictures of the Giant Grenadiers, painted
with his own hand by Frederick William I., father of Frederick the
Great, are also to be seen.
A magnificent double staircase under a glass roof leads to the second
floor (in Germany called the first), where one portion is devoted to
an interesting collection of arms, which is, however, inferior to
those of one or two other European cities. The chief attraction to the
visitor, as well as a permanent magnet to the patriotic Berlinese, who
come hither in whole families, is the "Hall of Fame," consisting of
three sections, all splendid in mosaic floors and massive marble
pillars, and adorned with sculpture and fine historical frescos. One
of the latter represents the Coronation of the first King of Prussia
at Königsberg, and another has for its subject the Proclamation of the
German Empire at Versailles. The Central Hall is adorned with bronze
statues of the Great Elector, of the Fredericks and Frederick-Williams
of the Prussian royal line, and of the Emperor William I. The "Halls
of the Generals," on either side of this "Hall of the Rulers," have
busts of the military leaders, including a fine one of the Crown
Prince. Here are also several historical paintings; prominent among
which are "The Battle of Turin," "The Emperor William and the Crown
Prince at Königgrätz," and "The Capitulation at Sedan."