Würzburg -- The University -- Red, Green, and Orange Caps
-- The Marienkapelle -- The Market -- The Cathedral -- The
Palace -- Spacious Cellars -- A Professor's Hospitality --
To Bamberg -- Frost -- Hof -- A Shabby Peace -- The
Arch-Poisoner -- Dear Bread -- A Prime Minister Hanged --
Altenburg -- The Park -- The Castle -- Reminiscences and
Antiquities -- The Chapel -- The Princes' Vault -- Wends --
Costumes in the Market-place -- Female Cuirassiers -- More
about the Wends -- Grossen Teich -- The Plateau -- The
Cemetery -- Werdau.
Würzburg is now the chief town of the Circle of the Lower Main; it was
once the capital of a principality governed by a line of eighty
bishops, and figures prominently in German history. The University,
founded in 1403, is deservedly famous, having numbered among its
professors many of first-rate abilities: a distinction it still
retains. What with schools, with resources in art and science,
cultivated society, and ample means of recreation, the old city is an
agreeable residence.
Under the guidance of Professor Kölliker, I visited the botanic
garden, the anatomical museum, and the medical school, which is one of
the best in Europe. The Julius Hospital, a noble institution, founded
by one of the Prince-Bishops, whose statue is erected not far from the
building, affords opportunities for study seldom found in provincial
towns. The students, after the manner of their kind, form themselves
into societies distinguished by the colour of their caps, as you will
soon discover by meeting continually in the streets little groups of
red, green, or orange caps, marking the three divisions.
Then, while the Professor lectured to his class, I strolled away to
the market-place, and saw how the women, leaving their shoulder-baskets
at the door of the _Marienkapelle_--Mary Chapel--went in and recited a
few prayers, kneeling on the floor. A commendable preparation, I
thought, for the work of buying and selling. The mounds of vegetables
in frequent rows, and numerous baskets of cherries and strawberries,
with heaps of fresh dewy flowers between, the many red kerchiefs and
moving throng, and the wares displayed at the wooden booths, made up
an animated spectacle. Live geese roosting contentedly in shallow
baskets awaiting their sale without an effort to escape, were
remarkable among the enticements of the poultry-market. A few yards
farther were little stalls with rolls of butter, resembling in shape a
ship's topsail-yard, alternating with piles of lumps or rather dabs of
butter, each wrapped in a piece of old newspaper. These were bought by
poor folk.
The _Marienkapelle_ is a fine specimen of pointed Gothic, with a
graceful spire, which having become dilapidated and unsafe, was
undergoing repair at the time of my visit. The inside is spoiled by
overmuch whitewash, and the outside by an irregular row of petty
shops--an uncouth plinthe--around the base; and this is not the only
church in the city which has its character and fair proportions marred
by such clustering barnacles.
On the spot where the cathedral now stands rearing its four towers
aloft, St. Killian, an Irish missionary, was martyred more than a
thousand years ago. The lofty arched nave is supported by square
columns, of which the lower portions are hidden by pictures. Marble
statues of the Bishops, with sword and crosier in hand, betokening
their twofold character of priest and warrior, are ranged along the
walls; and the whole interior has a bright and cheerful aspect.
Of the other churches, I need not say more than that the New Minster
enjoys the honour of possessing St. Killian's bones; that St. Peter's
at Rome is reproduced in the church of St. John; and that St.
Burkhardt's, at the foot of the citadel-hill, is built in the round
style.
The spacious grounds and gardens of the palace are well laid out.
There are umbrageous avenues, terraces, fountains, paths winding among
flower-beds and away under the trees and through the shrubberies to
nooks of complete solitude. In some parts the plantations are left
untrimmed, and give an air of wildness to the scene. In the rear,
steps lead to the top of the wall, from whence you may look over
greater part of the grounds, and fancy yourself in a region of forest.
The townsfolk have free access; and you meet now and then a solitary
student poring over his book, or groups of strollers, or nursemaids
with troops of children. The palace, which dates from the year 1720,
shows the consequences of neglect. Hohenschwangau has greater
attractions for the royal family than Würzburg; and now, after a view
of the staircase and chapel, there is nothing in the rusty and faded
apartments that once exhibited the magnificence of the Bishops to
detain you. The cellars are large enough to contain 2200 tuns of wine.
What rollicking nights the retainers must have had!
The Professor proved himself not less hospitable than learned. We
dined together, and he introduced me to one of his colleagues, the
Bohemian mentioned in the second page, who gave me a letter to his
father at Prague. And then, after a sojourn of twenty-four hours, I
departed.
To see Nuremberg, and journey from thence into Bohemia, across the
_Böhmerwaldgebirge_, had been in my thoughts; but finding on inquiry
that more time would be required for that route than I could spare, I
decided for Saxony. So, away to Bamberg, sixty miles distant, the
starting-place of the Leipzig and Nuremberg trains. There was an hour
to wait, and then in deep twilight on we went for Altenburg.
Although the night was in July, I shivered with cold. The temperature,
indeed, was remarkable. Three days previously I had seen white frost
between Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, and for the first ten nights of
the month frosts occurred all over Germany. At two o'clock we came to
Hof, where there was a change of train, and time to drink a cup of
coffee, doubly acceptable under the circumstances. The country around
is bleak, a region of bare low hills, of unfavourable repute owing to
its cold. A farmer who came into the train told us there was thin ice
on the ponds. Here and there the hollows were filled with a dense
mist, and resembled vast lakes, and the outlook was so cheerless that
I was glad to sleep, till sunrise, with its splendours, woke up our
drowsy party to welcome light and warmth.
What a change since the former year! Then the war was all the topic
among those who were thrown together while travelling. Now, Sebastopol
and the Crimea seemed clean forgotten, and no one had a word to say
even about the Sick Man at Constantinople. No, all was changed, and
talkers busied their tongues concerning the "shabby peace," as they
called it, the dearness of food, and--William Palmer. The
simple-minded Bavarians could not understand why England should have
been so magnanimous towards her Muscovitish antagonist, until it was
suggested to them that France, having come to the bottom of her purse
notwithstanding all the flourishes to the contrary, the war had to be
ended.
"And could England have kept on?"
"Yes, for forty years, if necessary."
"What a country!" they exclaimed--"what gigantic wealth!" And then
they wondered that peace had not brought lower prices, and talked with
grave faces and timorous forebodings about the dearness of bread.
Scarcely a place did I visit where bread was not dearer than in
London.
But the arch-poisoner was the prevailing theme; and eager discussions
on the incidents of his trial and execution showed how widespread was
the excitement he had occasioned. Even in little towns I saw _Prozess
gegen William Palmer_ for sale in the booksellers' windows. The
Germans, however, thought theirs the best law, as it inflicts
perpetual imprisonment only, and not death, in cases where the poison
is not discovered in the body of the victim; and they would by no
means agree that to hang a villain out of the way whether or no, was
the preferable alternative. While the talk was going on, some one was
sure to tell of what took place when the news of the execution was
flashed from England. _Palmer is hanged_, was the brief yet fearful
despatch. The clerk who received it, by some strange fatality, read
_Palmer_ as an abbreviation of _Palmerston_; and within an hour all
Germany was startled by the news, and bewildered with speculations as
to the causes which had induced the exemplary English nation to get
rid of their Prime Minister by so summary a process. "_Palmerston
gehänget!_" ejaculated one after another, with a chuckle.
At seven o'clock we arrived at Altenburg. A night in a railway train
is not the best preparation for a day of sight-seeing. However, after
the restorative of a wash and breakfast at the _Bayerische Hof_, the
first hotel that presented itself, I crossed the road to the grounds
belonging to the castle. By a bold undulating slope, laid out as an
English park, you mount to a plateau, where a well-kept garden
contrasts agreeably with the tall avenues and grouped masses of
foliage. Small pleasure-houses stand here and there among the trees,
and you see a pavilion built in the style of a Greek temple. A little
farther, and there are the ducal opera-house, the orangery, and the
stables--a handsome range of buildings. And beyond is the Little
Forest--_Wäldchen_--enclosed by a wall, where, among the stately
trees, you may see two, the Princes' Oaks--_Prinzeneichen_--so named
from an interesting event in Saxon history, of which we shall perhaps
have some particulars by-and-by. The plateau, moreover, commands views
of a fertile and well-wooded country all broken up by low hills, the
lowest slopes of the Ore mountains--_Erzgebirge_--which show their
dark swelling outlines far away in the south.
You descend suddenly into a gap, which isolates an eminence--the hill
of Stirling in miniature--terminating in a porphyry cliff, crowned by
the castle. A convenient ascent brings you into an irregular
court-yard, shut in on opposite sides by the oldest and newest parts
of the building. Architecture of the thirteenth century mated
curiously with that of the eighteenth; and both occupying the site of
what was already a fortress in the tenth. The castle owes its present
form to the Dukes Friedrich the Second and Third, who, in 1744,
completed their thirty-eight years of alterations.
The place is a strange medley. Gray, weatherbeaten walls, with square
towers and jutting turrets, intruded on by modern masonry--Neptune in
his cockle-shell car in the midst of a fountain, and sentries pacing
up and down, and soldiers lounging about their shabby-looking
quarters--grim passages, and uncomfortable chambers. The Austrian
arms, which you may yet see cut in the stone over a doorway, mark the
granary built by the Electress Margaret for stores of corn, in order
that, when grain became dear, she might save the townsfolk from
hunger. A little farther and you come to the _Mantelthurm_, a round
tower, with walls seven yards thick, commonly called the _Bottle_,
from the form of its slated roof. It has two ugly chambers, which
were used as dungeons up to 1641, after which it did duty as a
magazine; and now the lower part is a cinder-hole. Adjoining is the
_Jünkerei_--once the pages' quarters--in which are certain official
apartments and the armoury. The Imperialists plundered the castle,
during the Thirty Years' War, of most of its treasures and
curiosities; and later, many specimens of mediæval armour were carried
off to Coburg, leaving little besides objects which have an intimate
relation with Saxon history. Weapons old and new, banners, garments,
paraphernalia used in ducal funerals, and many things which belonged
to persons connected with the Robbery of the Princes (_Prinzenraub_).
In recent times a museum of antiquities has been added: articles of
furniture, books, and other rarities which perpetuate the memory of
eminent individuals--urns and other funereal remains dug up in the
neighbourhood--ethnographical specimens chiefly from Australia and the
Sunda Islands--and a collection of china, presented by the Minister
Baron von Lindenau.
The palace, or modern portion of the castle, dates from 1706. The
castellan will conduct you through the throne-room, the great hall,
where hang life-size pictures of the dukes on horseback by whom the
place was built, and paintings of historical scenes, and other
apartments bright with gilding and hung with elegant draperies.
The church, built in the old German style, on the spot once occupied
by the castle chapel, contains banners, and paintings, and numerous
monuments and tablets to the memory of the princely personages buried
beneath, and some admirable specimens of oak carving. To read their
names as you pass along is a lesson in Saxon genealogy. Among them is
that of the Electress Margaret, whose remains, after a rest of more
than three centuries, were removed to the Princes' Vault, the door to
which, studded with iron stars, you may see in the nave. But, in 1846,
Duke Joseph caused the old tomb to be cleared out and repaired, and
honouring the memory of her whose name is yet revered in Saxony, had
her coffin restored to its former place with solemn ceremony.
From the balconies or the tower you have a good view of the town lying
beneath on a steep hill-slope, with its large ponds, and many ups and
downs. And all around lie fields, and gardens, and rich pastures,
bearing fruitful testimony to the good husbandry of the Wends.
The main approach to the castle is by a road winding with an easy
slope up the steep side of the hill. Its upper extremity is crowned by
a gateway in the Romanesque style, and where its lower end sinks to
the level of the road stand two obelisks--pyramids as they are
called--bearing on their pedestals a statue of Hercules and Minerva.
The streets were full of life and bustle, for it was market day, and
the Wends coming into the town from all quarters increased the novelty
of the sight by their singular costume. The men wear a flat cloth cap,
a short tight jacket drawn into plaits behind, and decorated in front
with as many buttons as may be seen on the breast of a Paddingtonian
page, loose baggy breeches, and tight boots up to the knee. You will,
perhaps, think it a misfortune that the breeches are not longer, for
all below is spindle-shanky, in somewhat ludicrous contrast with the
amplitude above, and the broad, big foot. How such a foot finds its
way through so narrow a boot-leg is not easy to guess. The men are
generally tall, with oval faces of a quiet, honest expression.
But the women!--they are something to wonder at. Most of them are
bareheaded: some wear a close plain cap, which throws out their round
chubby faces in full relief; some display a curiously padded blue
horseshoe, kept in place by a belt that hides the ears, from which two
red streamers hang down their back; and others content themselves with
a ribbon, tying their hair behind in a flat wide bow. Their gown is
long in the sleeves and short in the skirt--short as a Highlander's
kilt, which it very much resembles, and is in most instances of a
carpet-like texture. Plum-colour, blue, pink, and green, dotted with
bright flowers or crossed by stripes, are the prevailing patterns;
their gay tints relieving the sombre blue and black of the men. The
skirt is made to fit pretty closely, much more so, indeed, than the
men's breeches, and as it descends no lower than the knee, you can see
that if Nature is niggard to the men she is generous to the women.
Such an exhibition of well-developed legs in blue worsted stockings I
never before witnessed.
Some of the younger ones had put on their summer stockings of white
cotton, and, with bodice and skirt of different patterns, went
strutting about apparently well pleased with themselves. But they
have another peculiarity besides the kilt: they all, young and old,
wear a species of cuirass, secured at the waist and rising to their
chin. I judged it to be made of light wood, covered with black stuff.
It gives them a grotesque appearance when looked at from the front or
sideways; suggesting an idea of human turtles, or descendants of a
race of Amazons. Some sat at their stalls with their chin resting on
it, or face half hidden behind; and many times did I notice the
breastplate pushed down to make room for the mouth to open when the
wearer wished to speak--the pushings down being not less frequent than
the shrugs of ladies in other places to keep their silly bonnets on.
Even little girls wear the cuirass, and very remarkable objects they
are.
The spacious area of the market-place, enclosed by antique houses, was
thronged. Wendish women sitting in long rows behind their baskets of
cherries and heaps of vegetables; others arriving with fresh supplies
on low wheelbarrows, their white legs twinkling everywhere in the
sunshine. And many more who had come to buy roving busily from one
wooden booth to another among all sorts of wares--books, ironmongery,
jewelry, cakes and confectionery, coarse gray crockery, tubs and
buckets, deep trays and kneading troughs chopped from one block; but
the drapers and haberdashers, with their stores of gaudy kerchiefs and
gay tartans and piles of stockings, attracted the most numerous
customers. There was a brisk sale of sausages and bread--large, flat,
round loaves (weighing 12lb. English) of black rye bread, at one
groschen the pound, which was considered dear.
The men wandered about among the scythes, rakes, and wooden shovels,
or the stalls of pipes and cutlery, or gathered round the ricketty
wagons laden with small sacks of grain and meal which were continually
arriving, led by one of the tribe in dusty boots. And all the while
the townsfolk came crowding in to make their weekly purchases till
there was scarcely room to move.
Such a scene is to me far more interesting than a picture-gallery. I
went to and fro in the throng hearkening with pleasure to the various
voices, watching the buying and selling, and noting the honest,
cheerful faces of many of the women. Then escaping, I could survey the
whole market-place from the rising ground at its upper end, and
contemplate at leisure the living picture, framed by houses and shops
in the olden style, among which, on one side, rises the ancient
_Rathhaus_. It was built in 1562 with the stones of a church given to
the corporation by Duke Johann, whose portrait you may see hanging in
the hall inside among electors and dukes, and their wives; and, ever
since, it has been used for weddings, dances, and religious meetings,
as well as for the grave business of the council and police. Opposite
the entrance, the date 1770, inserted with black pebbles into the
paving, marks the spot where the last beheading took place under
authority of the council.
The Wends are the descendants of a Sclavonic tribe, which, according
to ethnologists, migrated from the shores of the Adriatic more than a
thousand years ago, carrying in their name (_Wend_ or _Wand_) a proof
of having once lived by the sea. They are remarkable for the tenacity
of their adherence to ancient habits and customs, which may, perhaps,
account for their still being a distinct people among the Germans by
whom they are surrounded. And they are not less remarkable for
honesty, health, and an amount of agricultural skill, which
distinguishes them from their neighbours. They are clever and
successful in rearing cattle; they get on, and save money; and the
women have the reputation of being most excellent nurses. The Bohemian
peasant on the farther side of the mountains used, if he does not now,
when his children were born, to stretch them out, sometimes at the end
of a pole, towards the country of the Wends, that the infant might
grow up as able and lucky as they. One of their immemorial practices,
still kept up, is to talk to their bees, and tell them of all
household incidents, and especially of a death in the family. Their
number is two hundred thousand, all within the limits of Lusatia.
A much-frequented promenade is the dam of the Great Pond--_Grossen
Teich_--on the southern side of the town, which, planted with
chestnuts and limes, forms a series of green and shady alleys, with a
pleasant prospect across gardens and meadows to the village of
Altendorf. Swans glide about on the surface of the water, which covers
sixteen acres, and a gondola plies to a small wooded island in the
centre, resorted to by lovers and picnic parties. A short distance
northwards lies the Little Pond, bordered by rows of poplars, and
three other ponds in different parts of the town are also made to
contribute to its attractions.
Another pleasure-ground is the "Plateau," on an eminence between the
railway station and the road to Leipzig, from which you may wander
through shady alleys to the old ruin of Alexisburg. The cemetery, on a
hill to the west of the town, is worth a visit for a sight of some of
the tombs, among which appears the entrance to the new Princes' Vault,
constructed in 1837, in the form of a small chapel, lighted by
richly-stained glass windows, through the floor of which the coffins
are lowered to the vault beneath. On St. John's Day the cemetery is
thronged by the townsfolk, decorating the graves of their departed
friends with flowers.
After a visit to all these places, and a peep into the two churches in
which Luther once preached--the Bartholomäikirche and the
Brüderkirche--I travelled on to Zwickau, and as there is little to be
seen on the way besides fields, low hills, and the tall-chimneyed,
smoking, stocking-weaving town of Werdau, we will glance at an
interesting event in Saxon history incidentally alluded to in the
foregoing pages.