THE BERGISCHE LAND
One of the real advantages of life in Cologne is the charm of the
surrounding neighbourhood. Not that the neighbourhood to which I refer
is near at hand or very accessible except by train or by motor car.
Cologne lies in the centre of a great fertile plain, through which the
Rhine flows nobly in that last stage of its career before entering the
mud flats of Holland. At a distance varying from ten to fifteen miles
the plain east and west is bounded by a chain of low hills broken up,
especially on the eastern side, by delicious valleys. Here are woods
and trout streams, meadows and flowers. No district with which I am
acquainted is more adapted to walks, delightful without being arduous,
or to longer expeditions by motor. These low hills commanding the plain
abound in views of extraordinary vastness and extent. The hills are so
easily climbed! Yet from their summits the wanderer has the impression
that the kingdoms of the earth lie spread at his feet. For very little
real exertion, therefore, he has the impression of having mastered some
Alpine peak--an observation for which I hope I may be pardoned by any
member of the Alpine Club.
From the eastern ridge, known as the Bergische Land, the sunset view
is one of special beauty. The cultivated slopes and pasture lands fall
away gently to the plain below, in spring fresh with the vivid green
of young grass or corn, in autumn rich with harvest gold. In the
distance, chimneys stretching north and south reveal the course of the
Rhine, whose waters are hidden from view. Far away to the left is the
outline of the Siebengebirge mounting guard over Bonn and the entrance
to the romantic reach of the stream known as the Rheingau. Above the
chimneys and the remote huddle of houses and factories, the twin spires
of Cologne Cathedral, their clumsiness softened by distance, raise
their symbol of man’s hope and aspiration to heaven.
The low range lying on the west side of Cologne known as the
Vorgebirge is less attractive than the Bergische Land to the east.
Industry preponderates on this side, for the Vorgebirge is of special
importance owing to the famous black coal extracted from the hills.
Here is dug, without any apparatus of shafts or sinking, a special
brown deposit which, pressed and pounded, turns into the briquettes on
which Cologne relies for its light and heat. The presence in the near
neighbourhood of this ample supply of cheap fuel has been a factor of
the utmost importance in the commercial development of Cologne. We of
the Occupation have learnt to bless the black briquettes, which feed
the central heating in winter and give us abundant electric light
throughout the year.
How well these people manage their industrialism! That is a reflection
borne in upon me time and again in the Rhineland. Prussianism, however
bad for the soul, was very efficient in the organisation of daily life.
Wages in Germany before the war were not high; the liberty and rights
of the worker were restricted in many directions. On the other hand, no
country in the world could approach Germany in the excellence of its
municipal organisation and the many advantages of the population as
regards public services. German authorities excelled in arrangements
concerned with health, communication, and amusement. Town planning and
building operations were controlled; cities were laid out and houses
built on lines destined to promote the welfare of the whole community.
The speculative builder was not allowed to wax fat at the expense of
his neighbours. Electric light is supplied even in small villages, and
an admirable service of trams and light railways brings the amenities
of life within reach of the poorest.
Amusements are dealt with in a rational spirit, which makes for
happiness and self-respect. Cafés, beer gardens with concert rooms
attached, are decent places, where a man does not drink furtively but
takes his glass of wine or beer in the company of his family. Not
only have large towns a first-rate opera house and theatre, but good
music and good drama can be heard in quite small places. Industry in
particular has been brought to heel. Factory chimneys are not allowed
to pollute a district at will or to poison the air with noxious fumes.
A modern school of painters has taught us to see qualities of strength
and even beauty in certain aspects of industry. But those qualities
cannot be obvious to the working-class wife who has to struggle with
the intolerable grime and dirt produced. The strength of a nation
is rooted in the homes of a nation, and there are many districts in
England where no man can be proud of his home. Men and women whose lot
in life is cast in the Black Country, or who are forced to dwell in
the long, mean street of dirty houses which extends from Nottingham to
Leeds, might well envy the better conditions of existence which obtain
in Germany.
I have never seen any information as to the stages of the Industrial
Revolution in Germany. Naturally it came at a later date than our own
and was able to benefit by our mistakes. But to what influence does it
owe a character so different? Here in the lower Rhineland there are big
industrial towns and great factories. These places are not beautiful,
but they lack the overpowering dirt and ugliness of the manufacturing
districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All along the lower Rhine one
factory succeeds another, but they consume their own smoke and fumes
and are not allowed to tyrannise over the district. Düsseldorf even
more than Cologne is a great manufacturing centre, and among other
industries has large machine and puddling works in its suburbs. But
the public gardens of the town, which are of great extent and beauty,
might be a hundred miles removed from a factory. Leverkusen, the great
dyeworks near Cologne, has the appearance of a model village. It is
all to the credit of Germany that she has not allowed herself to be
obsessed by that spirit of helpless fatalism which has descended on
too many of the manufacturing districts and towns in England. Men and
women’s lives are spent amid this grime, to the detriment of soul as
well as body. It is a valuable object lesson to learn that, granted
energy and a will to be clean, some of the drawbacks of an ugly
industrialism can be avoided for the workers.
Lancashire and Yorkshire have one feature in common with the German
industrial centres on the lower Rhine. Both have their own beautiful
hinterland. The German hinterland in question has nothing so grand and
so austere to show as the great heather-clad moors and rugged dales
of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. But withal the rural districts of this
smiling Bergische Land, with its wooded valleys and running streams and
black and white houses buried deep among orchards, lie, so it seems,
within a stone’s throw of factories and workshops. Full of charm are
these little valleys, divided one from another by narrow watersheds.
All of a family, yet each possesses its own features and has the
impress of its own personality. A trout stream almost invariably
meanders along the valley, sometimes finding its way through meadows
of long lush grass, Alpine in its greenness, sometimes flowing among
overhanging woods where the murmur of the waters mingles with the
rustling of the leaves or the deeper, more melancholy note of the fir
boughs. It is a smiling, almost park-like land, richly cultivated and
well populated. There are no wild or desert places. Everything perhaps
is a trifle sophisticated. Many of the black and white cottages, gabled
and romantic, might have stepped off the light-comedy stage. Here and
there the moated tower of some ruined Burg or an eighteenth-century
country house set back in a walled garden strikes the same note.
This is not Nature in her strength and power, but Nature laughing,
gay, forthcoming, a sylvan goddess of woods and streams and meadows.
“Intime” is the word which best expresses her charm. Last, but not
least, Nature in the Bergische Land is a goddess of the fruits of the
earth.
Spring is a season of wonder and beauty in the Rhineland. The villages
disappear in a cloud of pink and white blossom. White and pink too
are the country roads lined with fruit trees. Beech trees abound; and
has Nature in her great spectacle of the changing year any sight more
beautiful than the first shy unfolding of the young beech leaves? A
little later come the chestnuts, stately and self-important, carrying
their white candles on broad green candlesticks and lighting up the
countryside with so brave an illumination. Then follows the deep-red
blossom of the thorn, mingled with the purple and yellow of lilac and
laburnum. Under foot the emerald green of the meadows is flecked yellow
with cowslips. Yellow too are the great fields of mustard, which in
turn yield place to carmine stretches of clover. It is a riot of colour
and beauty throughout the Bergische Land. The high midsummer pomps find
the cottage gardens a mass of roses and other homely flowers. Finally
the white promise of spring gives way to the golden fulfilment of
autumn. The orchards bend low under the weight of pear and apple and
plum. And winter is no harsh thing in the valleys, where the delicate
tracery of the leafless woods, detached against a frosty sky, has a
charm as great as the young foliage of spring.
Though so little removed from the neighbourhood of industry, there
is practically neither grime nor contamination about the Bergische
Land. The German housewife, as I have said, is happily spared that
hand-to-hand struggle with dirt which embitters existence for many
an English working woman. The decentralisation of industry is much
practised in Germany, and frequently isolated factories will be
found in country surroundings which give employment to the immediate
neighbourhood. It is perhaps for this reason that the game is not a
hopeless one, that the extraordinary cleanliness of the German village
is due. It is quite an experience to walk or motor through the
villages on a Saturday evening when cleaning operations are in full
swing. The whole population is out in the street tidying up. The oldest
and the youngest inhabitant alike are hard at work with buckets and
besoms. I am now able to appreciate why the Besom Binder always figures
so largely in German fairy tales. As soon as a child can stagger it is
provided with a besom three times the size of itself and turned out to
sweep. Tiny children flourishing brooms will remain one of my permanent
impressions of Germany.
Not only the doorstep of each individual house and the strip of
pavement in front of the door, but the street itself is cleaned up
thoroughly on Saturday night. There are rinsings and scrubbings and
washings and sweepings. The midden is tidied and made as neat and trim
as a haystack. The woodstack is similarly squared, the blocks piled
with mathematical exactness one on the top of the other. From the
street itself every vestige of dirt and dust is removed. You are almost
afraid to breathe lest anything should be disturbed. As for a motor
car, its intrusion on the scene is little short of a sacrilege. Until
dusk and after, the Saturday cleaning lasts. Then on Sunday the village
in its best clothes sits about at ease on doorsteps and contemplates
the fruits of its labours.
Sunday in this Catholic land is a true feast day. It is impossible
not to admire the simple, wholesome way in which the people, town
and country alike, take their pleasures. Churches are crowded in
the morning, and it is clear that the Catholic hierarchy keeps in
very close touch with its flock. But religious festivals, which are
frequent, have a pleasant social aspect and the population from
oldest to youngest clearly enjoy them. Sometimes in the valleys of
the Bergische Land you may meet a long procession going on pilgrimage
to a neighbouring shrine. The sound of chanting and music is borne
on the wind as the company wind up the hillside. It is like a scene
in a play as you watch the distant view of banners and crucifixes
and white-robed acolytes. Especially attractive are the children’s
processions held on White Sunday--the Sunday following Easter--when
the ceremony of first communion takes place. No steps are omitted to
make the occasion impressive. Every little child in Cologne down to
the poorest wears a white frock and a wreath of white roses. They come
with their parents in large numbers during the morning to say a prayer
in the cathedral--tiny children, so they seem, to be struggling with
the great mysteries of faith. We passed a small hillside church in the
Bergische Land on the afternoon of White Sunday at the moment when a
procession of children was coming out. It was a pretty sight: the fair
heads crowned with flowers and every child carrying a gold-and-white
lily in its hand; fond and anxious parents shepherding their lambs, and
provided with cloaks and umbrellas in the event of rain.
These simple ceremonies give warmth and character to the countryside,
but quite apart from religious exercises of the nature I have
described, the whole of Cologne pours into the Bergische Land in
the course of a fine Sunday afternoon. Various light railways issue
from the city and, running across the plain, penetrate the valleys
at various points. From the Dom Platz at Cologne you may, if fired
by the spirit of adventure, take your choice of three trams to the
Bergische Land. One will carry you in some forty minutes to the
Königsförst, formerly a royal forest at the foot of the hills;
another in fifty minutes to Bensberg, a charming old town crowned by
an eighteenth-century castle in the Palladian style. The castle with
its domes has dignity and character; it is now used as a barracks for
French coloured troops. From the tiny acropolis to which the city
clings--in spring half smothered by the white and pink of its cherry
and plum and apple orchards--is the finest of all the views over the
plain. Or you may journey for an hour northwards along the Rhine,
passing through Mülheim--a widely scattered district of factories--till
you come to the pleasant little town of Berg Gladbach. Here through a
third gateway you may enter the wooded hills and valleys stretching to
the east.
Only there will be certain disadvantages if you conduct these
explorations on the Sabbath, for the Boche in his best clothes is of
the same mind, and the trams are crowded to a point of suffocation hard
to endure on a hot summer’s day. But all the same the experience of
a Sunday excursion is by no means to be missed, for then you see the
life of the people as it is. What light-hearted, cheerful crowds they
are! Families, father, mother, and children, out for the day together,
troops of young people with knapsacks and mandolines tramping for miles
through the woods, singing as they march, and as often as not waving
their hands and calling out “Good day” in English.
The group instinct of the German is very noticeable in his
holiday-making. Picnic parties abound, clatches of children in the
care of nuns and priests; more prosperous families out for the day in
wonderful chars-à-bancs and wagonettes which are covered with green
boughs and wreaths of flowers. In summer it is a point of honour for
picnic parties to decorate their carriages in this way. I have often
seen horses drawn up by the roadside in the neighbourhood of the
Königsförst or Bensberg while the occupants were employed in cutting
down branches and converting the conveyance into a green bower.
Village feasts are common, and great is the excitement when a Kermess
is held. The village is decorated from end to end, and the principal
street is lined with booths and stalls. Merry-go-rounds, swing-boats,
shooting-galleries cater for the amusement of the spectators, while
dancing goes on in the inns and cafés. May-day festivities are a
feature of the countryside, and the village belle may find her house
decorated on May morning with a may-bush hung on a tall pole by an
admiring suitor. If there is competition between suitors, more than
one bush may be hung on the house, and the various lovers under such
circumstances endeavour each to carry his bush into the air at a higher
point than that of his rival or rivals. One fair lady this last year,
so the story runs, found her may-bush decorated with a miniature figure
in khaki hanging head downwards. Intimacy with British soldiers was
frowned upon in the locality, and the village applauded the reproof
thus administered to an erring beauty who had fraternised with the
enemy.
One-horse cabs of archaic design survive in the more remote villages,
and on Sunday afternoons the elderly local plutocrats may be seen
solemnly taking the air in a conveyance of this character. The
aged horse does his work in leisurely fashion, and if the rate of
progression is slow, the dignity of the passengers loses nothing by
the fact. No village is really remote, owing to the network of light
railways spread about the country. Yet despite the proximity of Cologne
and the constant influx from the industrial districts on the Rhine,
the village people appear to retain their simple habits and rustic
outlook on life. They work hard, but they also enjoy life thoroughly in
a simple way. It is this high standard of simple enjoyment among town
and country people alike with which any traveller must be struck in the
Rhineland, a better state of affairs surely than the enforced gloom of
many an English village, where feasts and dancing would be regarded
as a desecration of the Sabbath, and men are forced to drink and loaf
for lack of something better to do. German education is open to grave
indictment as regards the spirit and temper it has bred, but withal the
Germans are an educated people, and an educated people knows how to
employ its leisure.
The longer you live in the Occupied Area, the more sphinx-like the
riddle it presents--the riddle of reconciling the behaviour of these
decent, self-respecting people among whom you find yourself with the
actions of that collective entity, Germany, who figures as the outcast
of Europe. “It’s all put on,” some people say. But this theory of
sustained hypocrisy becomes ridiculous over a period of many months,
especially when you have mixed unknown in the crowd and seen the
Germans at work and play among themselves. Some other explanation must
be found for a psychology so bewildering. Love of God’s out-of-doors is
always a redeeming element in every human being, and it is an element
which can in no sense be denied to our late enemies. The town folk
enjoy the beauties of the country in a quiet, self-respecting way with
a minimum of rowdiness. It is not a question just of hanging about
cafés and beerhouses. These places on a fine day are crowded, but
they are crowded with parties whose dusty boots and draggled clothes
show they have been far afield. The children carry bunches of flowers
or green boughs. Sometimes a tired little one rides on a father’s
shoulder. Knapsacks are produced, from which a meal sadly frugal in
quality and quantity emerges. Coffee or beer is ordered, and the party
sit down to eat and take a rest.
As at every other point in German life, children play a great part in
these excursions. Hard though the times, parents pinch and save to see
the children are well and neatly dressed. A white frock in summer for
the girls--a bit of fur round the collar of the coat in Winter for
the boys--these things are a point of honour. But boots have become a
terrible problem to most working-class homes, as many a peasant has
told us. It is certainly not easy to associate ideas of hunger and
defeat with these respectable Sunday pleasure-seekers. But as I have
said before, superficial impressions must be discounted in Germany, and
there are always the thin legs and pasty faces of the children to pull
you up short if you try to thrust aside ugly memories of reports and
statistics and official inquiries.
Often as I have sat among the Sunday crowds in the little hill towns
have I reflected on the worldly wisdom of Machiavelli, who, like
Bismarck, if bad was long-headed. Machiavelli took the view that you
must either destroy your enemy or so behave that you may turn him
into a good neighbour. One thing is very clear: Germany will never be
destroyed. What steps, if any, are we taking to turn her into a good
neighbour?