What next! A glass of good Münchner beer, and away we go to Munich on
the “Schnell Zug” (fast train), over a rolling, pleasant country, past
pretty railway stations covered with vines and gay with flowers, as all
German windows are; past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who
stand at the switches, raising their hand to their temple in a military
salute as we go by. As you travel by rail through Bavaria you see the
conductors and guards dismount from the train at the little country
stations to replenish their mugs. Beer takes the place of water. When
you arrive at Munich, pre-eminently the beer capital of the world, the
porters set their mugs down on the platforms anywhere to solicit your
custom. The ever-present stein stands beside the cab-wheel. Next to
London, Paris, and Berlin, Munich is visited by more travellers than
any other European city. Gradually this influence has modernized it,
but there still remain sufficient of the old Bavarian curiosities of
life to entertain and instruct the travelled worldling. Nobody here
thinks of doing anything without an accompaniment of beer. It is always
in order: before breakfast, after dinner, the inevitable nightcap. The
youngsters sit at table and sip it when they are too young to leave
their mothers’ laps. We have listened to loud yelps go up over the
contention for the stein between babies; still they are not a nation of
drunkards. The law prescribes how much beer you shall give your
servants daily. Thank fortune, it has no power to regulate the appetite
of the private consumer. You sweeten all chores, whether to chop wood,
shovel coal, or chaperon a party to an art gallery, with a glass or
stein of beer. Strange as it seems here, where art has attained its
highest, the consumption of beer seems to be the prime business. One of
the curious decorations of Munich streets is its mugs and bottles; some
full, some empty, hem one in on all sides. They are left indifferently
by the owners, but none are ever stolen. The cardinal command for every
Bavarian is, “You shall not steal my beer.” It is a panacea, food, and
drink. If you don’t drink beer at all, the Bavarian does not think you
are merely odd, but he thinks you are in danger in mind and body.
Munich was rebuilt after the great fire, and extended by Emperor
Ludwig, the Bavarian. Indeed, the rulers of Bavaria have spared neither
pains nor expense to make their capital beautiful and attractive.
Artistic buildings and monuments are distributed everywhere. The
“Propylæn,” a magnificent gateway across the handsome “Brienner
Strasse,” is an imitation of that on the Acropolis at Athens, with its
Doric columns on the outside and Ionic within; the pediment groups are
scenes in modern Greek history. Wherever you go, through churches,
palaces, galleries, streets, parks, and gardens, you find frescoes so
crowded out of the way, and rooms so overloaded with statuary and
pictures, all so good, as to sacrifice all effect. Such overproduction
as this gives one the feeling that art has been forced beyond use in
Munich. But when you consider the army of artists there in the way of
painters, sculptors, and plasterers, working with that great unrest and
desire to do something, it is no wonder that everything is painted and
bedecked; seemingly determined to leave nothing for the sweet growth
and blossoming of time. It is the cheapest thing in the world to
criticise when you are filled with their foaming beer (three and a half
cents a quart), which is said by antiquarians to be a good deal better
than the mead drunk in Odin’s Halls; then view the city in a cheerful,
open light, cram-jam full of works of art, ancient and modern, and its
architecture a study of all styles. The long, wide “Ludwig Strasse” is
a street of palaces, built up by the old king. All the buildings, in
Romanesque style, are, in a degree, monotonous. A street with no pretty
shop windows, neither shade nor fountain, leading nowhere, never
attracts, no matter how many kings dictated it.
It has so much that could be criticised, but should not be, by a
passing tourist, if he is a little wearied by repetition. Munich seems
to be the home of the dove; a regular colony is domesticated in the
decorations on the façades of the buildings; they, too, seem seized
with the decorative spirit. My companion differed with me again, when I
thought it added to the artistic interest; the fact that they were
doves seemed to make no difference, “Wouldn’t want them ruining a home
of mine.”
The royal palace is a building of great solidity, but plain. The
Emperor’s room contains valuable jewels and precious stones, including
a large blue diamond called the “Hausdiamant,” and the “Palatinate
Pearl”; an interesting relic of Mary Stuart; also a work ascribed to
Michael Angelo. After you make an effort to see these things, with
slippers drawn over your shoes to protect their highly polished floor,
you are easily satiated. A visit to our own Tiffany is much more to our
taste, with the musty smell and sliding feet barred out. The palace,
built in late Renaissance style, has its main façade toward the Hof
Garden. In a suite of six rooms, strikingly frescoed, representing
scenes from the “Odyssee,” are reliefs by Schwanthaler; portraits of
thirty-six beautiful women are in the banquet hall, with forty-one
paintings of various battles. Its throne-room contains twelve large
gilded statues by Schwanthaler. The Royal Chapel is built in Byzantine
style (1837). North of this is the Hof Garden, a beautiful square whose
two sides have arcades, decorated with frescoes by Kaulbach, Rottmann,
and others. Attached to it are the premises of the Art Union,
containing a permanent exhibition of work of leading masters. To the
west lies the “Odeonplatz,” embellished with an equestrian Statue of
King Ludwig I. Opposite the Palace rises the handsome “Theatiner
Kirche,” in Italian baroque style (1675 A.D.), with all its portals
bestatued and bedecked. The palace of Duke Max has a porch embellished
with statues of the four Evangelists, by Schwanthaler. It contains
celebrated frescoes of the “Day of Judgment,” the most important of
Cornelius’s pictures. Cornelius is of the “Düsseldorf” school, a rival
of the Munich schools.
It seems strange to see these same people, with their steins in hand
and abdomens much in evidence, enjoying these gems of art—largely
Biblical subjects—and the most classic music. A seat under the trees,
with open arcades on two sides for shops, decorated with frescoes and
landscapes of historical subjects, is more interesting. The arcade is
eight hundred feet long, in the revived Italian style, with a fine
Ionic porch, and good Münchener beer to order. The color was not a
pleasing one to me, as it was the royal dirty yellow, an imitation, not
fully carried out, of the Pitti Palace at Florence, so I have heard.
They try hard to imitate the classic and Italian in Munich. They boast
that their Royal Court Chapel’s interior resembles St. Mark’s in
Venice; but the building needs southern sunlight to get the right
quality. The “Glyptothek,” a Grecian structure of one story, erected to
hold the treasures of classic sculpture that the extravagant Bavarian
kings have collected, has a beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. The
outside niches are filled with statues. In the pure sunshine and under
a deep blue sky its white marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty.
Don’t think Munich is all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian,
built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modern
style of architecture, that reminds one of the new portions of Paris
(the only part of Paris that we did see). It begins with the
Post-Office, with its long colonnade and Pompeian-red lining; then the
Hof Theatre, with its pediment frescoes, the largest opera house in
Germany, and so on. Here we saw the opera, “Die Zauberflote,” beginning
at 6.30 summer evenings.
The English Garden must not be forgotten. This was laid out originally
by the munificent American, Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), born in
Vermont. Why this should be called English Garden, I don’t know;
perhaps because it is different from their Continental style. Paris has
nothing to compare with it for natural beauty. We have our Central
Park, New York. Wearied tourists generally go to some of the huge beer
gardens and surrender themselves to the divine influence of music, and
watch the honest Germans drink beer and gossip in friendly fellowship.
I have referred before to the great regiments of soldiers mounted and
on guard at all times in Germany. But nowhere outside of Berlin are
they so thick as in Munich. This little kingdom of Bavaria is full of
them. Thousands of troops are in line. Every male must serve three
years continuously; every man between the age of twenty-one and
forty-five must go with his regiment into camp or barracks several
weeks each year, no matter if the harvest rots in the fields or the
customers desert the shops, leaving the unsold wares on shelves. The
service takes three of the best years of a young man’s life. You can
see young soldiers with their hot-looking uniforms, until you feel
everybody is “soldiering” for a living. You meet these young officers
everywhere, most of them fine-looking fellows—good figures—in what, I
suppose, they think handsome-looking uniforms. On the street, salutes
between officers and men are perpetual; the hand being raised to the
temple and held there a second. Their politeness impresses you as much
more sincere than the French. At hotels the landlord, wife, and servant
join in wishing you a good night’s sleep, while the “Deutsche Mädchen
‘Bitte schöne’s’” everything. The most polite I ever knew, with one
exception, at Hotel Windsor in London: the maid there thanked us for
bringing us a pitcher of hot water. The young German is much more
stylish and prepossessing in appearance than his fraulein. A young
officer in his shining uniform, white kids, long sword clanking on the
walk, raising his hand in a condescending salute to a lower in rank or
with affable grace to a superior, is pleasant to see.
One always turns to the strains of the military band and views the
mounted musicians, as well as the uniformed soldiers, mounted as if
born to the saddle, with invariably fine horses that prance in the
sunshine. The clatter of their hoofs on the cobble pavement, the jingle
of bit and sabre, an occasional word of command, the onward sweep of
the well-trained cavalcade, continued for so long a time that I turned
to a gentleman on the sidewalk and said, “How many men are in line?” He
shrugged his shoulders in that detestable fashion, an imitation of the
French, I suppose. I then said, “Wie viel?”—“Zehn tausend.” I then
remarked, “What a foolish waste of time and money”; he no doubt would
have responded to this if he could.
Their chief use (the soldiers), as far as I could see, was to make
pageants in the streets and to furnish music for the public squares.
The Isar River is one of the curiosities of Munich. It is chiefly noted
for running rapidly, and for being nowhere near the battlefield of
Hohenlinden, the poet to the contrary notwithstanding. They say it is a
river sometimes as white as milk, at others as green as grass; and it
is probably the only river of its size in the world that has no boats
on it; nor may one bathe in it, on account of the swiftness of the
current. Its principal use is for people to drown themselves in. They
do use it, however, for the Isar is turned into this beautiful English
Garden. Art takes hold of it and turns it to use, causing it to flow
into more than one stream with its mountain impetuosity, forming lakes
gracefully overhung with trees, which present ever-changing aspects of
loveliness as you walk along its banks.
There are always idlers everywhere. Everybody has leisure in Europe.
One can easily learn how to be idle and let the world wag. They are not
troubled with “Americanitis.” They have found out that the world will
continue to turn over every twenty-four hours without their valuable
aid. They give so many hours to recreation and amusement.
[Illustration]
Munich has developed remarkably in commerce and art. As an industrial
town it is celebrated principally for its enormous breweries. A German
statistician—Germans seem to be mostly statisticians—has recently
calculated that the tramways of Munich get two thirds of their income
in conveying people to the cafés from their homes and places of
business. Once a Münchener finds a café to his taste, he goes there the
rest of his life, and is followed by his progeny, no matter how
inconvenient or how far distant. The women spend afternoons in their
favorite cafés, taking off their wraps and bonnets and doing a little
knitting or crocheting. This industry is indulged in even on the
Sabbath. Here we see peasant women mere beasts of burden, carrying
great loads of wood on their backs up stairways, and doing all kinds of
the heaviest menial service. Woman and her status is really the most
interesting study in all Bavaria. But the short time one has there, he
can only note the most striking things. Dogs come in, in
importance—regular summer dogs, so long that one chills while they
pass in and out of doorways. Dogs everywhere, following after the
streetcars, long trails of dogs, where owners are passengers. They seem
a little lower than the children and a little higher than woman; but
Munich, like the rest of the world, is changing. “Americanisiert,” they
say, but there are still a few places which retain many old forms and
customs and curious sights. Munich attempts to be an architectural
reproduction of classic times. In order to achieve any success in this
direction it is necessary to have the blue heavens and golden sunshine
of Greece. Its prevailing color is gray, but its many-tinted and
frescoed fronts go far to relieve this cheerless aspect. The old
portion of the city has some remains of other days of splendor, as it
abounds in archways and rambling alleys, that suddenly become broad
streets, then contract again; portions of old wall and city gates, old
feudal towers standing in the market-place, still remain. But the
Munich of to-day is as if built to order. King Ludwig I.’s
flower-wreathed bust stands in these days to remind them that he gave
the impulse for all this. The new city is laid out on a magnificent
scale of distances, with wide streets, fine open squares, and plenty of
room for gardens and art.