fortified on the river-side more than four hundred years ago by one of
the early Electors of Brandenburg to maintain his rights of conquest,
has received many later additions. It now has seven hundred
apartments, and reached perhaps its greatest glory in the time of
Frederick the Great, who was born here. It was then the central seat
of the royal family; and here were deposited the records and treasures
of the Government. It is now used only as the permanent residence of a
few officials, but is the place of entertainment for many royal guests
and their retinues when the great State pageants occur, of which
Berlin has seen so many. It is popularly said to be haunted. There is
a story that the Countess Agnes of Orlamünde, many, many years ago,
murdered her two children in order that she might marry the man of her
choice, and that in penance her ghost is condemned to haunt the Old
Palace of Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that
this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the
Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's
picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he
thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read
"Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to
get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an inner court; and
parties who wish to see the interior are taken every half-hour, by an
official in charge, for a tour of the palace. The waxed floors of
inlaid wood are very handsome; and, as in other parts of Central
Europe, they are protected from the tramp of visitors by immense felt
slippers, into which all are required to thrust their shoes, and in
which one goes gliding noiselessly over the polished surfaces in a way
to save the floors, but not always to conserve the dignity or gravity
of those unaccustomed to the process. Many of the rooms are highly
decorated, and memorials of the history of Prussia abound. There are
many paintings, of which most are portraits or battle scenes, the
picture gallery proper containing the pictures connected with Prussian
history, and the Kings' and Queens' chambers the portraits of all the
sovereigns. The Chamber of the Cloth of Gold and the Old Throne Room
are highly ornamented, and contain massive gold and silver mementos of
former kings and of Emperor William's long career. Here also is the
great crystal chandelier which once hung in the Hall of the Conclave
at Worms, and under which Luther stood when he made the immortal
declaration, "Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht andere; helfe mir Gott.
Amen." In the White Hall court balls are held, and here sometimes has
gathered the Parliament to be opened by the Emperor. It is said that
when lighted up by its nearly three thousand wax candles for a court
festival, the scene in this hall is extremely brilliant.
Charlottenburg has been anew endeared to the public by the pathos of
the home-coming of Emperor Frederick III., who took up his first
Imperial residence in this suburban palace, and from an upper window
of which he watched the funeral procession of his venerable sire as it
passed to the mausoleum. This only son and heir to a great throne
might not follow the bier of the father to its resting-place, but
gazed alone from the palace at the mournful pageant, knowing that the
time could not be far distant when the same sad ceremonials would be
repeated for himself. Who shall say what were the thoughts of the
manly Frederick III., as, when wife and children had joined the sad
procession which wound its way northward through that grand but sombre
avenue of stately pines which leads from the palace of Charlottenburg
to the beautiful marble mausoleum where Kaiser Wilhelm was laid to
rest beside his mother and his father, the sick man stood immovably at
that upper window, following only with his eyes, and with no spoken
word, the drama in which himself was the central and most pathetic
figure!
Charlottenburg is a suburb some two or three miles southwest of
Berlin, practically now a part of the capital, but with a corporation
and a quiet life of its own. Sophia Charlotte, Queen of the first King
of Prussia, founded for herself a country residence here at the
village of Lietzow, nearly two hundred years ago; and this has given
the palace and the present suburb its name. Here the idolized Queen
Louise in the early part of this century lived much, and here are many
portraits and marbles bearing her likeness. The palace and front
garden are in unattractive "rococo" style, especially the rooms
occupied by Frederick the Great; but the gardens in the rear of the
palace are large and most attractive. The fame of the place arises
chiefly from the beautiful Doric mausoleum to Frederick William III.
and Queen Louise, created by the taste of their son, King Frederick
William IV., brother and predecessor of the late Emperor William. The
exquisite reposing figure of Queen Louise in Carrara marble lies under
light falling through stained glass in the dome; and the tomb of the
King (her husband) lying beside her is hardly less attractive. Both
are surrounded by excellent accessories in marble and fresco, and it
is a place where one gladly lingers long. The great avenue leading
from the palace to the mausoleum has ivy-mantled trunks of giant trees
for sentinels, and greensward and forest on either hand make a quiet
which beseems one of the loveliest of resting-places for the dead. It
was here that King William came to pray, beside the tomb of the mother
who had suffered so much at the hands of the First Napoleon, on the
eve of going out to the war with Napoleon III.; and here, when
returning in the flush of victory as Emperor of United Germany, with
Louis Napoleon a prisoner in the German castle of Wilhelmshöhe, the
old man came again to kneel in silent prayer beside the form of that
mother whom the fortunes of war had so signally avenged more than
sixty years after her death. What wonder that in this sacred spot only
did William I. wish to be laid, when death should gather him to his
fathers!
Sixteen miles southwest of Berlin, "that amphibious Potsdam" of
Carlyle holds out manifold attractions by land and water ways. It is a
city of fifty thousand inhabitants, besides a garrison of soldiers
which guard its royal palaces and their lovely grounds. There are many
interesting public buildings and historical monuments. It was early in
our Berlin residence that, taking advantage of a bright morning when
bright mornings were not too frequent, two Americans were set down at
the station in Potsdam, armed only with a well-studied guide-book and
a few words of conversational German. We did not wish to be shown
everything, and so, declining the offered services of guides, engaged
a drosky by the hour, with a kindly-faced young man for driver. He
took the greatest interest in us, and supplied us with such
information as we wished. For the rest we were set down at Sans Souci,
free to stroll through its rooms in charge of the palace official,
with our freshly read Macaulay and Carlyle in mind, striking the
balance for ourselves between these two differing estimates of
Frederick the Great, with every particular standing out vividly in the
light of the object-lessons from that monarch's life which crowded on
every hand. It was fortunate for us that we were the only visitors
that morning, for this was the first palace we had entered, and the
dreams of childhood were realizing themselves like the lines of a
remembered fairy poem. The sympathy which spoke or was silent at will,
sure of being always understood, gave the final touch of perfection to
a memorable day. Beautiful for situation, the long, domed, one-storied
building, the favorite residence of Frederick the Great, is impressive
because of its history. As we wandered through the suites of elegant
rooms and heard the stories connected with Frederick and Voltaire,
their shades seemed everywhere to flit before us. The first terrace
leads to the spot where the King buried his favorite horses and dogs,
and where, before the palace was built, he once expressed a wish to
lie at the last. "When I am there I shall be without care," he said in
French; and so the palace afterwards built for him here took the name
"Sans Souci." The great iron gates at the north of the palace had
been but twice opened, we were told,--once by the force of the First
Napoleon, and once when the greater monarch, Death, had laid his hand
on King Frederick William IV., who was carried hence to his last home.
The great fountain was not playing that day; but the drive through the
vast and famous park, with its enticing views and bewitching beauty,
left nothing to be desired except a convenient place for physical
refreshments. Past the orangery, with its wide views over land and
lake, and Bornstedt (the favorite country home of the Crown Prince) to
the north; past the "old windmill" known to history, to the New
Palace, with its magnificence, its great extent, and its curious shell
grotto,--we leave the simple charms of Charlottenhof and its
neighborhood for another visit, and hasten to stand beside the coffin
of Frederick the Great beneath the pulpit of the Potsdam Garrison
Church.
Nearer to the station is the Old Schloss of Potsdam. An old lime-tree
opposite the entrance is shown as the place where the petitioners for
the favor of Frederick the Great used to station themselves, in order
to attract his Majesty's attention from the window of his bedroom, or
as he went in and out of the palace. Here we were almost bewildered by
the number and extent of the rooms, and the multitude of historical
associations connected with them. Here lived Frederick William I.,
father of Frederick the Great, in Carlyle's word-painting inferior to
no other figure in that great composition. Here are the rolling chairs
and the inclined planes along which that monarch was wheeled in the
course of his long and painful illness; in his study are the pictures
painted by him _in tormentis_, and looking forth from the south
windows we see the parade-ground where he used to drill his giant
soldiers. There stands a statue of this strange, eccentric monarch,
who, notwithstanding all that was bad, had so much in him that was
good and true. It was from this palace that his lifeless remains were
carried forth to rest in the Garrison Church, not far away.
As at Sans Souci, remembrance of Frederick the Great crowds upon us in
the Old Schloss also. Here is his round-corner room, with walls of
famous thickness, and a dumb-waiter lifting up through the floor the
table and all its viands, that here he might dine alone with his
intimates and no tell-tale sounds escape. Here is the heavy
solid-silver balustrade which separates his library from his
sleeping-room. In this place, not long before our visit, Prince and
Princess Wilhelm, whose winter residence was on an upper floor of this
palace, had brought their youngest son for baptism. All the later
sovereigns have occupied, at one time or another, apartments in this
interesting old palace, and here many souvenirs of the present as well
as former royal families are shown.
Charlottenhof, in the southern part of the grounds of Sans Souci, is
an unpretending villa, beautiful in its simplicity, and with all its
charms enhanced by its having been granted by the King as a summer
residence to Alexander von Humboldt while working at his "Kosmos."
Near this is the beautiful Roman Bath, adorned with fine works of art.
The New Palace, now known as Friedrichskron, built on a vast scale by
Frederick the Great after the Seven Years' War, to show that he was
not impoverished, has henceforth its immortality as the birthplace of
Frederick III.; and here he expired, on the morning of a June day,
scarce a twelvemonth after he had ridden among the foremost of that
dazzling throng of potentates which graced the imperial progress of
Queen Victoria to Westminster Abbey on the celebration of her regal
Jubilee.
In the days of their happy summer life, lived in great simplicity and
homelikeness, the Crown Princess once wrote, in a little pavilion
here,--
"This plot of ground I call my own,
Sweet with the breath of flowers,
Of memories, of pure delights,
And toil of summer hours."
Alas! henceforth these domestic memories have an element of
unspeakable pathos added by the remembrance of the last fortnight of
that devoted life which vanished in this memorable spot, whence the
funeral procession went forth, through the park of Sans Souci, to lay
all that was mortal of the beloved Frederick III. beside the graves of
their young sons Waldemar and Sigismund, in the Peace Church of
Potsdam.
Babelsburg, the summer home of Emperor William I., is to many visitors
more charming than any of the historic castles and palaces of Potsdam.
Distant two or three miles from these, it is in striking contrast
with them all. It is a modern villa in the Norman style, in a
beautiful and extensive park northeast of Potsdam. One does not wonder
that it was dearest of all his residences to the heart of the aged
Emperor. Here, more than elsewhere, are the evidences and atmosphere
of a simple yet courtly home life. Babelsburg should be visited in the
early summer, when the trees of its great forest are showing their
first leaves, clothed, and yet not obstructing the unrivalled view by
land and water, and when the sward is embroidered by daisies and
buttercups. Here the private rooms of Emperor William I. and Empress
Augusta were freely shown, with scattered papers, work-basket, fires
laid in the grates ready to light for the cool mornings and evenings,
halls, staircases, reception-rooms, library, study, and
sleeping-rooms, as homelike and everyday-looking as though they were
those of any happy family in any part of the land. Of special interest
to English travellers is the suite of rooms fitted up for the
reception of the Princess Royal when she came to Germany as a bride in
1858. The chambers are hung with chintz of pale pink and other
delicate colors, such as one sees in England, and with the same
dainty arrangements which make English bedrooms a synonym for spotless
comfort the world around. Here were arranged the pictures of father
and queen-mother and brothers and sisters, and the little souvenirs of
home with which, as an English girl of seventeen, she fought the
homesickness inevitable to a stranger in a foreign land; and here many
of them remain, in the rooms still called by her name.
The "Marble Palace" is seen to fine advantage, in the midst of lovely
waters, from the road which leads from Potsdam to Gleinicke. It was
the summer home of the present Emperor, while Prince William, and is
not open to visitors.
XI.
THE HOMES OF THE HUMBOLDTS.
An hour by tramway, northwest of Berlin, lies Tegel, the hereditary
estate of the Humboldt family. About two hundred years ago its hills
and dales, pine forests and sandy plains, were the property of the
Great Elector. Some eighty years later, a Pomeranian Major in the army
of Frederick the Great was high in favor with the King on account of
his distinguished service in the Seven Years' War, and was rewarded by
gifts and promotions. To William von Humboldt, eldest son of this
Major and Royal Chamberlain, descended the château and lands of the
former royal hunting-lodge of Tegel. Though this was not, in strict
sense, the home of the more famous younger brother, Alexander, these
were his ancestral acres. Here he often came to this brother, whose
death in his arms in 1835 cast a lasting shadow over his lonely life;
and here, beside the brother and his family, his mortal part lies
buried.
A bright April morning was the time of our visit. The outskirts of a
great city are seldom more free from unpleasant sights than the
northern suburb through which we passed. Here and there, in the plain
which surrounds Berlin, sandy knolls appear; now and then the tall
chimney of a manufactory or a brewery pierces the sky; but the city
insensibly gives place to the country. Clean-swept garden paths, trim
hedges of gooseberry bushes just bursting into leaf, and hens
scratching the freshly turned furrows, brought back a childlike
delight in the spring-time; while the antiquarian tastes of later
years were fed by glimpses of delicious old houses which raised their
drooping eyelids in quaint gable-windows looking forth over
ivy-mantled walls, as if in sleepy surprise at all the bustle and stir
of this work-a-day world.
One or two hamlets had been passed, and the camp, from which we had
met a train of artillery and many companies of soldiers on their way
to the city, when the tram-conductor announced the village of Tegel,
the end of the route. A few rods, and a turn to the left past some
mills brings us to the entrance of the castle park. An obelisk,
battered and ancient-looking enough to belong to the age of Cleopatra,
stands beside the modest iron gate of the entrance. An old
peasant-woman passing with a pack on her back answers our question by
saying that this is an ancient milestone which formerly stood a little
above its present site; and we surmise that its mutilated condition is
due to relic-hunters. Inside the gate we see a grassy plain with sandy
patches; here and there are deep open ditches for drainage; and
avenues stretch off in several directions, bounded by rows of great
overarching trees. We follow one reaching toward higher ground and
forest-covered hills. On an elevation a few rods farther on stands the
château,--the old hunting-lodge no more, but a two-story Roman villa,
rectangular, with square towers at the corners, on each face of which
is a carved frieze with a Greek inscription. Back of this "Schloss,"
but not hidden by it, on a smooth slope, is a large ancient one-story
dwelling with side front, in good preservation. Its ivy mantle does
not conceal the frame, which is filled in with stuccoed brick, and
which alone would proclaim the age of the building. The long slope of
the mossy roof must hide a wonderful old attic, for it is full of
tiled "eyes" to admit light and air, and two or three single panes of
glass are inserted in different places for the same purpose. Three
windows on each side the low doorway in the front look forth on the
quiet scene, the lace curtains within revealing glimpses of a cosey,
homelike interior. On one side are supplementary buildings fit for
companionship with this quaint home, and a fenced garden and ancient
orchard, beyond which five woodmen were leisurely sawing an
old-fashioned woodpile of immense size;--only princely estates can
supply such a luxury in these degenerate days.
The shadow of death was in the villa. Two days before, Frau von Bülow,
the last of the Humboldts, had been carried forth, to rest beside her
husband and children, her father William, and her uncle Alexander von
Humboldt. The gnarled and twisted stem of a venerable ivy clasps with
two arms one of the most majestic of the tall trees before the house,
one branch bearing large leaves of a tender green, the other small and
beautifully outlined leaves of dark maroon exquisitely veined. Beds
bordered with box are bright with pansies. We wander onward, along the
great shaded avenue, with level green fields on either side. An
opening suddenly sets a study in color before our eyes. The unbroken
stretch of sward southward is in most vivid spring green; there is a
gleam of blue water beyond the tender purple of a distant forest,
overhung by the fleecy cumuli of a perfect but constantly changing
sky. It is simple and beautiful beyond description. We approach some
wooded hills, well cared for, but lifting themselves upward in the
beauty of Nature, not art. Buttercups and star-grass and chickweed
arrest us occasionally by the roadside, until a wooded pathway brings
us to a plot surrounded by an iron fence. Within, an old woman is
trimming the ivy overspreading a grave, and there are eight or ten
other mounds, all ivy or flower covered, and with low headstones. At
the west end of the enclosure is a semicircular stone platform, with a
stone seat skirting the circumference. From the centre rises a lofty
shaft of polished granite, bearing on its summit a statue of Hope, by
Thorwaldsen. On the pedestal are the names of William von Humboldt and
his noble wife, and near it the newly closed grave of this daughter,
who at the age of eighty-five, after a distinguished life, sleeps here
beneath the funeral wreaths which hide the mound, and bear, on long
black or white ribbons, the names of societies and eminent families
who have sent these tributes of remembrance and affection. White
hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley perfume the air, and palm-branches
lie on the new-made grave, above the flowers. I treasure an ivy leaf
or two, given by the workwoman, and pick up a cone which has just
fallen from a fir-tree upon the grave of Alexander, as I read the
inscription on his headstone: "Thou too wilt at last come to the
grave; how art thou preparing?" This simple epitaph, with name and
age, is all, except his earthly work, that speaks for him who was
once, after Napoleon Bonaparte, the most famous man in Europe, and
who, in learning and in devotion to Nature, was as great as he was
famous.
From the little burial-ground we took a hill-path, hoping for a more
distant view than we had found but hardly expecting it. Ascending
gradually, there were glimpses of forests and hills far to the
northward; and a porter's lodge, and stables, in a vale amid the
trees, revealed only by the distant baying of a hound, and the blue
smoke curling upward. Still we wound along, over the hillsides and
under the trees, pausing occasionally to rest on simple rustic seats,
on which were carved the initials of former pilgrims to these scenes.
Faring onward, there came a sudden burst of light and beauty.
"Far, far o'er hill and dale"
shines the blue expanse of the Tegeler See, with sunshine flooding all
the broad acres between. The fortress spires of Spandau and the dome
of the royal palace of Charlottenburg spring from the purple,
forest-rimmed horizon; and beyond is a tangle of history written on
the sky in domes and palaces and spires, I know not what, nor how
many. To the delight of this sudden vision is added the thought of the
generations of men and women who have trod this forest path, and whose
eyes have been gladdened by this sight, until a file of mounted
knights and nobles, from the Great Elector through a line of kings and
emperors, of grand dames and fair princesses, has swept in stately
procession down the hill-side to be followed in imagination by the
footsteps of many of the greatest men in literature, science, and
philosophy which Europe has brought forth, and by those of statesmen
and diplomatists from every quarter of the globe.
Returning to the château, we passed between it and the ancient house,
when lo! a glance at the rear of the modern villa toward a
second-story bay window under the spreading shade of a venerable tree
told a new tale. I did not then know the history of the buildings, and
it had seemed that only the low cottage was ancient, and the Roman
villa comparatively modern. But here was a tell-tale slope of ancient
roof, with a square port-hole of a window just beneath it, peeping
forth behind the modern bay-window under the tree-tops, all out of
harmony with the lines of Roman towers and roofs; and so we knew that
the château was only modern in appearance, but ancient in reality.
A day full of quiet beauty, not unmingled with delight, this had
proved; worth to the heart, in some moods, acres of canvas and
chiselled marble within the walls of royal museums. But we were not
yet quite satisfied. In the Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin stands a
city house of the last century. Here, with a serving-man as the real
master of his house,--with no wife, no child,--the author of "Kosmos"
did much of his best work.
"I was often with my father in Humboldt's house during his lifetime,"
said my German hostess to me, after my return from these visits. "He
lived among his books, in his study in the back of the house,--the
second story, looking into the court; for he could not bear the noise
of the street in the front rooms."
To this place we found our way in returning from Tegel. We stood
before it in the street, and read the inscription on the marble tablet
in the front wall: "In this house lived Alexander von Humboldt from
the year 1842 till _he went forth_, May 6, 1859."
Entering the street door, we inquired of the bright-eyed little
daughter of the porter, who had been left in charge, if we could see
the second floor, where Humboldt used to live. "No," said the child;
"there is nothing to see. Others live there now. As for Humboldt, you
can see his statue before the University!"
The privilege of looking upon the home surroundings of Humboldt in
Berlin was accorded us later, by an American gentleman into whose
possession they had come. His massive old writing-desk, with a great
mirror behind it, and deep drawers,--each bearing his seal,--where he
kept his most valued curiosities and correspondence, and where now
repose many of his autograph papers, is worth going far to see. Here,
too, are a smaller writing-desk, his champagne glasses, quill pens,
lamp-screen, candlestick, snuffers, and the last candle which he used.
These and other significant and home-like memorials belong not to
Germany, but to America, unless Germany repurchase them, as she
should. Only in the house so long the home of their master will they
fittingly repose, as the memorials of Goethe and Schiller adorn the
homes that were theirs at Weimar.
During the conversation with the child of the porter at the house in
Oranienburger Strasse, I had looked into the large and pleasant court,
and saw the great vine clambering up over the wall which must have
been in sight from the study. Here doubtless it was that Bayard
Taylor, the famous young traveller visiting the famous old traveller,
had the interview which he described so vividly that at the distance
of more than thirty years recorded bits of the conversation remain
distinctly traced in our memory.