SPORT AND GAMES
The word Sport has been taken into the German language lately, but
Germans use it when we should use "hobby." "It is my sport," says an
artist when he shows you furniture of his own design. He means that
his business in life is to paint pictures, but his pleasure is to
invent beautiful chairs and tables. When the talk turns on the absurd
extreme to which the Marthas of Germany carry their housekeeping zeal,
a German friend will turn to you in defence of his countrywomen. "It
is their 'sport,'" says he, and you understand his point of view. Yet
another will tell you that the English have only become sportsmen in
modern times, and that the Germans are rapidly catching them up; but
this is the kind of information you receive politely, disagree with
profoundly, and do not discuss because you have not all the facts at
your fingers' ends. But you know that the British love of sport, be it
vice or virtue, is as ingrained in Britons as their common sense, and
as old as their history.
In Germany the country gentleman is a sportsman. He rides, he shoots,
he hunts the wild boar which he preserves in his great forests. "You
have no country (_Land_)," said a German to me, using the word as
opposed to town. "In Germany we have country still." He meant that
England is thickly populated, and that we have no vast tracts of
heath and forest where wild animals live undisturbed. I told him there
were a few such places still in Scotland, but that they all belonged
to American and Jewish millionaires; however, he would not believe it.
He said he had spent a fortnight in England and had not heard of them.
It is not such a matter of course with Germans of a certain class to
ride as it is with us. You see a few men, women, and children on
horseback in Berlin, but not many; and in most German towns you see no
one riding except cavalry officers. I am told that the present Emperor
tried to institute a fashionable hour for riding in the Tiergarten,
but that it fell through partly because there were not enough people
to bring decent carriages and horses. On the great estates in East
Prussia the women as well as the men of the family ride, and go great
distances in this way to see their friends; but in cities you cannot
fail to observe the miserable quality and condition of the horses and
the scarcity of private carriages. In fact, the German does not make
as much of animals as the Englishman does. If he lives in the country,
or if he means to be a man of fashion, he will have dogs and horses,
but he will not have one or both, by hook or by crook, whether he is
rich or poor, as the Briton does. You see dogs in any German city that
remind you of a paragraph that once appeared in an Italian paper, a
paragraph about a case of dog stealing. The dog was produced in court,
said the paper, and was either a fox terrier or a Newfoundland. But
you often see a fine Dachs; in Heidelberg the students are proud of
their great boar-hounds, and in the Black Forest there are numbers of
little black Pomeranians.
In German towns where there is water, the traffic on it both for
business and amusement is as busy as with us, and in some respects
better managed. Hamburg life, for instance, is largely on the basin of
the Alster; either in the little steamers that carry you from city to
suburb, or in the small craft that crowd its waters on a summer night.
It is as usual in Hamburg as on the Thames to own boats and understand
their management, and there are the same varieties to be seen there:
the pleasure boats with people of all ages, the racing outrigger full
of strenuous, lightly clad young men, and the little sail boats
scurrying across the water before the breeze. On the Rhine the big
steamers do a roaring traffic all the summer, and catch the public
that likes a good dinner with their scenery; and on the Rhine, as well
as on most of the other rivers of Germany, there are a great many
swimming baths; for every German who has a chance learns to swim. In
Hamburg on a summer evening you meet troops of little boys and girls
going to the baths, many of them belonging to the poorer classes; for
where there are no swimming baths attached to the school they get
tickets free or at a very low rate. About fishing I can only speak
from hearsay, for I have never caught a minnow myself, but I have met
Germans who are keen anglers, and I have found that they knew every
London shop beloved of anglers, and the English name of every fly.
Germans get more amusement out of their water-ways in winter than we
do, for the winters there are long and hard, so that there is always
skating. I have seen the Alster frozen for weeks, and the whole city
of Hamburg playing on the ice. It was not what we call good ice, and
not what we call good skating. For the most part people were content
to get over the ground, to mix with their friends, to have hot drinks
at the booths that sprang up in long lines by the chief track, and
even to stroll about without skates and watch the fun. All classes,
all ages, and both sexes skate nowadays, but some fifty or sixty years
ago German ladies were not seen on the ice at all. Skating, like most
exercises that are healthy and agreeable, was considered unfeminine,
and men had the fun to themselves. In the mountain districts of
Germany winter sports are growing in favour every year, and people go
to the Riesengebirge or to the Black Forest for tobogganing and
ski-ing. The German illustrated papers constantly have articles about
these winter pastimes, and portraits of the distinguished men and
women who took part in them. The history of cycling in Germany is not
unlike its history here. The boom subsided some years ago, but a
steady industry survives. In Berlin you see officers in uniform on
bicycles, but you see hardly any ladies. That is because the Emperor
and Empress disapprove of cycling for women, and their disapproval has
made it unfashionable. Ten years ago, two years, that is, after the
English boom, no woman on a bicycle had ever been seen in the remoter
valleys of the Black Forest. One who ventured there used to be
followed by swarms of wondering children, who wished her _All Heil_ at
the top of their voices. They did not heave bricks at her.
Tennis has not been blighted by the imperial frown, and is extremely
popular in Germany. Hockey, as far as I know, is not played yet;
certainly not by women. Cricket and football are played, but not very
much. An Englishman teaching at a gymnasium, told me that the
authorities discouraged outdoor games, as they were considered waste
of time. Gymnastics is the form of athletics really enjoyed and
practised by Germans. Every boy, even every girl, begins them at
school, and the boy when he leaves school joins a _Turnverein_. For
wherever Germans foregather, and whatever they do, you may be sure
they have a _Verein_, and that the _Verein_ has feasts in winter and
_Ausflüge_ in summer. When a man is young and lusty, the delights of
the _Verein_, the _Ausflug_, the feast, and the walking tour are often
combined. You meet a whole gang of pleasure pilgrims ascending the
broad path that leads to the restaurant on the top of a German
mountain, or you encounter them in the restaurant itself making
speeches to the honour and glory of their _Verein_; and you find that
they are the gymnasts or the fire brigade, or the architects or what
not of an adjacent town, and that once a year they make an excursion
together, beginning with a walk or a journey by rail or by steamer,
and culminating in a restaurant where they dine and drink and
speechify. Every age, every trade, and every pastime has its _Verein_
and its anniversary rites. I was much amused and puzzled in Berlin one
afternoon by a procession that filed slowly past the tram in which I
sat, and was preceded and attended by such a rabble of sightseers that
the ordinary traffic was stopped for a time. I thought at first it was
a demonstration in connection with temperance or teetotalism, because
there were so many broad blue ribbons about, and I was surprised,
because I know that Germans club together to drink beer and not to
abstain from it, and that they are a sober nation. At the head of the
procession came a string of boys on bicycles, each boy carrying a
banner. Then came four open carriages garlanded with flowers. There
was a garland round each wheel, as well as round the horses' necks and
the coachmen's hats, and anywhere else where a garland would rest. In
each carriage sat four damsels robed in white, and they wore garlands
instead of hats. After them walked a large, stout, red-faced man in
evening dress, and he carried a staff. After him walked the music, men
puffing and blowing into brass instruments, and, like their leader,
wearing evening dress and silk hats. They were followed by a
procession that seemed as if it would stretch to the moon, a
procession of elderly, portly men all wearing evening dress, all
wearing broad blue ribbons and embroidered scarves, and all marching
with banners bearing various devices. The favourite device was _Heil
Gambrinus_, and when I saw that I knew that the blue ribbons had
nothing to do with total abstention. The next banner explained things.
It was the _Verein_ of the _Schenkwirte_ of Berlin,--the publicans, in
fact, of Berlin having their little holiday.
All through the summer the German nation amuses itself out of doors,
and leads an outdoor life to an extent unknown and impossible in our
damp climate. A house that has a garden nearly always has a garden
room where all meals are served. Sometimes it is a detached summer
house, but more often it opens from the house and is really a big
verandah with a roof and sides of glass. In country places the inn
gardens are used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you may
if you choose have everything you eat and drink brought to you out of
doors. Most inns have a skittle alley, for skittles are still played
in Germany by all classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons,
and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and spends an evening
there once a week. The favourite card game of Germany is still _Skat_,
but bridge has been heard of and will probably supersede it in time.
_Skat_ is a good game for three players, with a system of scoring
that seems intricate till you have played two or three times and got
used to it. In Germany it is always _die Herren_ who play these
serious games, while the women sit together with their bits of
embroidery. At the Ladies' Clubs in Berlin there is some card playing,
but these two or three highly modern and emancipated establishments do
not call the tune for all Germany. Directly you get away from Berlin
you find that men and women herd separately, far more than in England,
take their pleasures separately, and have fewer interests in common.
It is still the custom for the man of the family to go to a beer-house
every day, much as an Englishman goes to his club. Here he meets his
friends, sees the papers, talks, smokes, and drinks his _Schoppen_.
Each social grade will have its own haunts in this way, or its own
reserved table in a big public room. At the Hof Bräuhaus in Munich one
room is set apart for the Ministers of State, and I was told some
years ago that the appointments of it were just as plain and rough as
those in the immense public hall where anyone who looked respectable
could have the best beer in the world and a supper of sorts.
It is dull uphill work to write about sport and outdoor games in
Germany, because you may have been in many places and met a fair
variety of people without seeing any enthusiasm for either one or the
other. The bulk of the nation is, as a matter of fact, not interested
in sport or in any outdoor games except indifferent tennis, swimming,
skating, and in some places boating. When a German wants to amuse
himself, he sits in a garden and listens to a good band; if he is
young and energetic, he walks on a well-made road to a restaurant on
the top of a hill. In winter he plays skat, goes to the theatre or to
a concert, or has his music at home. Also he reads a great deal, and
he reads in several tongues. This, at any rate, is the way of Germans
in cities and summer places, and it is a very small proportion of the
educated classes who lead what we call a country life. "Elizabeth"
knows German country life, and describes it in her charming books;
perhaps she will some day choose to tell us how the men in her part of
the world amuse themselves, and whether they are good sportsmen. I
must confess that I have only once seen a German in full sporting
costume. It was most impressive, though, a sort of pinkish grey bound
everywhere with green, and set off by a soft felt hat and feathers. As
we were having a walk with him, and it was early summer, we ventured
to ask him what he had come to kill. "Bees," said he, and killed one
the next moment with a pop-gun.