FROM MANNHEIM TO FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAINE.
[Illustration: RÖMER.]
[Illustration: ESCHENHEIM TOWER.]
[Illustration: LUTHER'S HOUSE.]
We had a great deal of trouble to get out of Mannheim. All German
railroad officials are in uniform, and the regulations are about as
strict in the railroad service as in the military. The train we were
compelled to take left at six o'clock in the morning, and we were at the
station promptly. That is, we had four of five minutes in which to get
our tickets, see to our baggage and go on. We hurried to the little
window in the ticket-office, but it was down. Through the window we
could see the official in an ordinary coat, and we knocked on the glass.
He did not open it, but sat there, nervously consulting his watch. The
minutes were rushing on, tumbling over each other with frightful
rapidity. But still he did not open the window, and we were ticketless,
and the train was within a minute of departure.
[Sidenote: RED-TAPE.]
What was the matter? Why simply this: The ticket agent had sent his
uniform coat out to be brushed and the boy had not returned with it. He
would no more think of selling a ticket except with that blue coat on,
buttoned up to the chin, and with every button there, than he would have
thought of cutting off his right hand. It mattered not that passengers
were waiting, it mattered not that the engine was whistling its last
warning notes, that coat was not brushed and on the official's back, and
no tickets could be sold till it was.
Fortunately the boy came with the coat, the official got it on somehow,
the train waited two or three minutes, tickets were sold hurriedly and
we did get away.
What would have happened if the boy had not come back with the coat at
all, no one can answer.
Certainly no one would have got tickets till he got his coat, and we
should all have missed our train.
Red-tape is a great institution, and nowhere do you see more of it than
in Germany. But we got away finally to Frankfort.
Contrasting strangely with Mannheim's straight streets and quiet
unpretentious business blocks, is the very peculiar city of Frankfort,
where within a stone's throw of each other are streets so entirely
different, that in one you may imagine yourself on Broadway, while in
the other you may with equal propriety consider yourself set back five
or six hundred years.
New Frankfort is the newest city I know of. It is more fresh and recent
than Broadway. It is very like Broadway, except that its buildings are
less garish, and more solidly built.
The line between the old and the new is only a street, and the old is
the oldest in Europe, as the new is the newest. The contrast is
wonderful. It is the fourteenth century and the nineteenth shaking hands
across the chasm of time. It is the mediæval knight and the London
exquisite side by side. The same may be seen in all European cities, but
nowhere so striking as in Frankfort.
Approaching the city you see the old watch towers high on the hills that
surround the environs of Frankfort, those remaining monuments of the
reign of force, when the people, ruled mercilessly by the nobles,
erected these towers from which the usurpers watched each other. Germany
is not yet free from this kind of rule; it has merely taken a different
form. Gunpowder changed the form of force, but not its spirit. These
once impregnable fortresses would not stand a minute before the
artillery of the present, and so they are abandoned. But in their stead
are the regiments we saw in Mannheim and everywhere else, each one a
fortress of flesh and blood. Germany will get rid of the whole of it one
of these days, and the million of men employed to support that one
unmitigated curse of the world, royalty, will be added to the productive
power of the country instead of living upon it.
[Illustration: STREET ON THE RÖMERBERG.]
[Sidenote: SOLID BUILDINGS.]
As we leave the fine station and enter the wide "Anlagen," or public
grounds, that completely encircle the city and are lined with handsome
buildings, it is hard to realize that the city of Frankfort dates from
the time of Charlemagne, and that it has for centuries played an
important part in the history of Germany. From the year 1152 the German
emperors were chosen in Frankfort.
The Kaiser-strasse leads directly to the center of the city, and is
lined with magnificent business blocks and dwellings. The street is wide
and well kept, the buildings are all of the modern style of
architecture, built of cut stone, and they present a fresh and
attractive appearance.
Speaking of buildings in European cities, it would be fortunate for us
of America if we could imitate them ever so slightly. In London I
visited a steam fire engine house, and was amused at the clumsiness of
the apparatus, and the slowness in general of the entire concern. The
horses, for instance, were stabled around a corner! In New York the
horses are in the same room with the engine, fastened so they may be
unhitched by electricity, the men sleep in their clothes above, and
everything is arranged so that in one second the engine is on the
street, and on its way to the fire on a run.
"How long does it take you to get out upon the street?" I asked.
"From seven to ten minutes."
"Why, in America we get out in two and one-half seconds."
"Y-a-a-s, and so would we, _if we built tinder boxes_."
There he had me and had me badly. There is no necessity for rapid and
extensive fire departments in Europe, for the houses are not mere lumber
yards, as with us. When a man wants to build in a European city he has
to get a license. His plans are submitted to the authorities, and, if
approved, a proper authority stands over the work and sees that it is
properly built. You are not permitted to run up a fire trap in the midst
of valuable property; you are not permitted to build a showy sham that
may be burned to the ground in ten minutes. Nothing of the sort. Your
walls must be solid, your staircases of stone, and open, not of pine
with the space under them for coal-oil depositories, there must be so
many escapes from the building, the roof must be metal or slate, and the
walls must be so built that a fire cannot get beyond the room in which
it originates, and the only damage that can possibly result is the
destruction of the contents of the room, and such damage as smoke and
water may inflict. When a fire occurs in one room in a house, the
people in the other rooms keep on as usual. It does not annoy them, for
the fire cannot spread.
[Illustration: FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAINE--THE JEWS' STREET.]
[Sidenote: THE JEWS' STREET.]
No one dreads to occupy a room on the fourth floor of a European hotel,
for the idea of fire never occurs to one. They seldom have fires, and
when one occurs it is counted a misdemeanor on the part of the owner of
the premises.
This all comes of solid and substantial buildings, to begin with. As a
matter of course, a house costs something at the start, but when you get
through you have a house for all time. The modern buildings in Frankfort
will be standing and in good repair centuries hence. I wish I could live
to verify this assertion, but I suppose I shall not.
Going on through the Kossmarkt, where there is a fine monument to
Gutenberg, we came to the Zeil, a very beautiful street, and then,
turning to the right, found ourselves in the celebrated Judengasse, or
Jews' street, one of the most dingy, wretched, forlorn quarters that can
well be imagined.
The street is narrow, dirty, and squalid. The houses are high structures
in the last stages of decay, many of them having great props to keep
them from falling. The inmates of these apologies for houses are as
dirty and squalid as the street itself. There are little pawn shops,
dirty shops where old clothes are sold, an occasional tenement house,
and very many liquor stores. It is the very acme of squalor and is in
great contrast with the elegance of the Zeil, only a block or two away.
A dirty, squalid, beggarly-looking street is Judengasse, but who knows
what wealth is hidden behind all this apparent poverty? The Jew of
to-day is no less acute than the Jew of the fourteenth century. He has
all the wisdom of his ancestors in money getting, with the added
experience of time. He can no longer be hauled up by a mailed knight,
and compelled to disgorge; but in the stead of the robber, by the strong
hand, there is the tax-gatherer; and, in his passion for the
accumulation of wealth and disinclination to part with it, the Frankfort
Israelite hates the one as heartily as his ancestor did the other. The
American Israelite lives as bravely and ostentatiously as any man, and
even more so, but the habit in the old European cities is to conceal
wealth, to live meanly, and to find enjoyment, not in the using of money
but its accumulation.
This street has always been set apart for Jews, and down to the year
1806 it was closed every evening, and on Sundays and holidays,
throughout the entire day, and no one of its inhabitants were allowed
in any other part of the city, under heavy penalty. Until the time of
the Prince Primate, in 1806, no Jew was ever allowed to enter the
Römerberg, or market place in front of the town hall. It is said that
while the persecutions of the Jews from the twelfth to the seventeenth
century throughout the continent was merciless, it continued longer in
Germany than any other country, coming down, in Frankfort, even to the
present century.
Notwithstanding the abridgement of their rights, a great many of the
Jews attained wealth and distinction. The house is still pointed out in
Judengasse where the Rothschilds, the founders of the present great
banking house, lived during those troublous times.
It is the same old story. The Jews, despised, persecuted and outraged in
every way, bore everything patiently, waiting for the time for their
revenge. And their revenge has come in every country. In the olden days,
in all the countries of Europe, the Jew had no rights which any other
nationality or blood was bound to respect. He was outside of the law. He
was taxed at the caprice of every prince and power. He had no chance in
any court where a Christian was opposed to him, and when they differed
among themselves, it was made a pretext to rob him. The most absurd laws
were made against them, and it really seemed as though the native rulers
and their subjects laid awake nights to invent ways to oppress them.
All this has changed. With a power of endurance simply wonderful, they
bowed their heads to their oppressors, and, as all oppressed people do,
substituted cunning for brute strength, and trained minds for lusty
thews and sinews. They won in the end.
The despised family of Rothschild, once compelled by the haughty
citizens to confine themselves to one quarter of the city, is now its
boast. The Frankforter takes more pride to-day in the fact that the city
was the home of the Rothschilds, than it does in the fact that it was
for centuries the seat of government of the German Empire. The Jew in
Europe, while yet under something of a ban, is not the despised creature
he was. The world has learned to respect him.
[Sidenote: SOMETHING ABOUT JEWS.]
There is not a calling in Europe that a Jew is not at the very head and
front of. He has composed all the great operas, the sons and daughters
of Judea are the great actors and singers of the world; in law and
divinity, and learning of all kinds, they stand at the head, and in
finance they are the world's creditors. A convention of Jew bankers
could be called together who could shake every throne in Europe.
Kings and nobles don't pull the teeth of Jews any more to extract loans.
On the contrary, they come into the presence of these great financiers
with hat in hand and humble step. The Jew holds the forceps now, and it
is the noble's teeth that are pulled. How, in the absence of all law,
hated, despised and contemned, and persecuted, they could amass wealth,
is a mystery, but they did it.
When persecution in one State got too warm for them they always had
enough wealth to get away to another, and they always found a prince who
needed money badly enough to give them protection, for a time, at least,
and these same princes were wont to become silent partners with the Jews
in the work of eating up their own subjects with usury, which held until
the Jews got the upper hand, when the prince always made a raid upon
them, paying his debts to them in this way, and they flitted.
Finally they got some measure of rights, when they made themselves felt.
The hatred of Jews continues in Germany and Russia, for the reason that
their superior energy and acuteness has made them the masters of the
trade of those countries. There is no business that they do not control.
A great people are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They
live where all others die, they wax rich where others starve. It is so
in Europe, it is so in America, it is so everywhere. There is no village
so small that it has not its Jew, precisely as in America. The Jew with
his goods is the first man in a new town--he progresses a little faster
than progress. He was in the front or in the rear of the armies going
southward; he was at the western end of every rail laid on the Pacific
Road; he is essentially the pioneer in money and trade. They are a
wonderful people.
The Jew of the fifteenth century and the Jew of to-day are practically
the same. They use different methods, but the underlying principle that
moves them remains unchanged. We had two of them in the cars coming to
Frankfort, an elderly Israelite with the regular nose, and his nephew,
who was the exact picture of his uncle. The old man was giving the boy
sage counsel:
"Vot is necessary for a peesnis man, Abram, is berseverance more ash
anyting else. Berseverance is vot vins, every dime. Ven I livet in
Shalesfille, shust back mit Vicksberg, (I vas in clodink), der vash
Cohen and Lilienthal both in groceries. Cohen vas doin der besht
peesness and it made Lilienthal mat. Lilienthal mate a special ding oof
mackarel and Cohen unterselt him. Den Lilienthal put down sugar but
Cohen unterselt him. Lilienthal put rice down mit almosht nottin, unt
Cohen almosht gif it avay. Cohen het de peesnis, and no matter how much
Lilienthal sanded hees sugar and vatered hees vishkey Cohen alvays beet
him. Dot Cohen vas a goot peesnis man.
"But Lilienthal vash de most berseverin' man ash ever vash, and he vash
pound to beat Cohen anyhow, and so vun day he notist dot Cohen het a
fery fine delivery mule. So Lilienthal he sait to Cohen:
"'Shake, dit you efer dink dot oof dot mule oof yours hed dot wart off
his hint leg he wood pring you more ash dwice vot he vood now?'
"'Dot wart? It don't look vell. But how ish dot wart to be got off? Der
hint leg oof a helty mule isn't der pesht blace to go foolin rount.'
"Lilienthal vas a most berseverin' man. He sait:
"'It's der easiest ting vot efer vos. You come up behint dot mule mit a
red hot iron and burn off der wart. De mule is vort a huntret tollars
more ash he vas.'
"Cohen triet it der next tay, unt hish funeral vash der piggest vot dey
efer hat in Shalesfille. Lilienthal attented it hisself in two
carriages, an' he vent right along and did all de peesness, and at a
goot brofit, vor he hedn't no gompetishun. Lilienthal vosh a berseverin'
man, Abram. Der ain't notting in peesness like berseverance. Remember
dot."
[Sidenote: THE RÖMER.]
In a historic point of view, very interesting is the Römer, or Council
Hall, erected about the year 1406. It faces the Römerberg, and its three
pointed gables give it a picturesque appearance. In the principal hall
on the second floor are "Portraits of the Emperors," beginning with
Charlemagne (768-814),
[Illustration: "DER HINT LEG OOF A HELTY MULE ISN'T DER PESHT BLACE TO
GO FOOLIN' ROUNT."]
and Conrad I. (911-918), and coming down to Ferdinand III. (1637-1658).
It was in this room the new emperor dined with the electors and then
showed himself to the people assembled in the market place in front.
Adjoining this room is a smaller one, in which the electors used to meet
to consult on the choice of an emperor. It is still preserved in the
style of the olden days.
Of course Frankfort has fine churches and a cathedral, but there is no
especial merit in them.
Near the monument erected on the Friedberger Thor by Frederick William
II. to the memory of the Hessians who fell in 1792, during the attack on
Frankfort, is a small circular building which contains one of the most
beautiful as well as most celebrated works of art in Germany, if not in
Europe.
A wealthy banker, named Bethman, purchased from the artist, Dannecker,
of Stuttgart, his masterpiece, the exquisite "Ariadne on the Panther,"
and erected this building for its exhibition. In one part of the room is
a recess, separated from the room by a crimson curtain. The ceiling is
of glass, across which is stretched some heavy crimson cloth stuff. This
filters the light, soft and subdued upon the group, producing a most
beautiful effect. The figure of Ariadne, nearly life-size, is half
sitting, half reclining on the back of the panther, one elbow resting on
the animal's head. The position is one of grace itself, and the modeling
is perfect. As the soft light is shed upon the pure white marble, one
can almost believe that it is the figure of a living, breathing woman
before him. The effect is greatly heightened by the arrangement of the
pedestal which allows the statue to be slowly revolved, thus giving the
peculiar light and shade effect to every part. It is truly a most
marvelous piece of statuary, and is worthy the admiration and praise
bestowed upon it by the most eminent critics.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Frankfort derived the
most of her importance from the great fairs that were held there
annually. Merchants came from all parts of the country, with their
stuffs, and made the old city, for the time being, a great commercial
center, a position its excellent location especially adapted it for. But
later, these fairs lost their prestige, and finally died away
altogether, though occasionally they have an industrial exposition. But
they are nothing compared to the fairs of the olden time.
[Sidenote: THE LOVELY GARDENS.]
While we were in Frankfort an Industrial Exposition was in progress
which, of course, we visited, and spent at least two hours very
pleasantly, wandering around the different buildings and the beautiful
grounds. The display was about equal to an ordinary State Fair in
Western America. The most enjoyable portion of it all was the ride back
to the depot, through the floral gardens, with their magnificent flowers
and plants and shrubs, and along the broad Anlagen, with their handsome
residences and well kept lawns.
[Illustration: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL.]