head, half protruding from the wall, surmounted by a crown of
flower-work, similar to that worn by the kings of the eleventh century.
I looked at it; it had a mild countenance; yet it possest something of
severity in it--a face imprinted with that august beauty which the
workings of a great mind give to the countenance of man. The hand of
some peasant had chalked the name "Frauenlob" above it, and I instantly
remembered the Tasso of Mayence, so calumniated during his life, so
venerated after his death. When Henry Frauenlob died, which was in the
year 1318, the females who had insulted him in life carried his coffin
to the tomb, which procession is chiseled on the tombstone beneath. I
again looked at that noble head. The sculptor had left the eyes open;
and thus, in that church of sepulchers--in that cloister of the
dead--the poet alone sees; he only is represented standing, and
observing all.
The market-place, which is by the side of the cathedral, has rather an
amusing and pleasing aspect. In the middle is a pretty triangular
fountain of the German Renaissance, which, besides having scepters,
nymphs, angels, dolphins, and mermaids, serves as a pedestal to the
Virgin Mary. This fountain was erected by Albert de Brandenburg, who
reigned in 1540, in commemoration of the capture of Francis the First by
Charles the Fifth.
Mayence, white tho it be, retains its ancient aspect of a beautiful
city. The river here is not less crowded with sails, the town not less
incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. People
walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the
quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. At
night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at Mayence but the
murmurings of the Rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water
mills, which are fixt to the piles of the bridge of Charlemagne.
[Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.]
FRANKFORT-AM-MAIN[A]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
Frankfort is a genuine old German city. Founded by Charlemagne,
afterward a rallying-point of the Crusaders, and for a long time the
capital of the German Empire, it has no lack of interesting historical
recollections, and, notwithstanding it is fast becoming modernized, one
is everywhere reminded of the past. The cathedral, old as the days of
Peter the Hermit, the grotesque street of the Jews, the many quaint,
antiquated dwellings and the moldering watch-towers on the hills around,
give it a more interesting character than any German city I have yet
seen. The house we dwell in, on the Markt Platz, is more than two
hundred years old; directly opposite is a great castellated building
gloomy with the weight of six centuries, and a few steps to the left
brings me to the square of the Römerberg, where the emperors were
crowned, in a corner of which is a curiously ornamented house formerly
the residence of Luther. There are legends innumerable connected with
all these buildings, and even yet discoveries are frequently made in old
houses of secret chambers and staircases. When you add to all this the
German love of ghost-stories, and, indeed, their general belief in
spirits, the lover of romance could not desire a more agreeable
residence.
Within the walls the greater part of Frankfort is built in the old
German style, the houses six or seven stories high and every story
projecting out over the other; so that those living in the upper part
can nearly shake hands out of the windows. At the corners figures of men
are often seen holding up the story above on their shoulders and making
horrible faces at the weight. When I state that in all these narrow
streets, which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no
sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories have iron gratings extending
a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to
pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through
them, to say nothing of the piles of wood and market-women with baskets
of vegetables which one is continuously stumbling over. Even in the
wider streets I have always to look before and behind to keep out of the
way of the cabs; the people here get so accustomed to it that they leave
barely room for them to pass, and the carriages go dashing by at a
nearness which sometimes makes me shudder.
As I walked across the Main and looked down at the swift stream on its
way from the distant Thuringian Forest to join the Rhine, I thought of
the time when Schiller stood there in the days of his early struggles,
an exile from his native land, and, looking over the bridge, said in the
loneliness of his heart, "That water flows not so deep as my
sufferings."
From the hills on the Darmstadt road I had a view of the country around;
the fields were white and bare, and the dark Taunus, with the broad
patches of snow on his sides, looked grim and shadowy through the dim
atmosphere. It was like the landscape of a dream--dark, strange and
silent.
I have seen the banker Rothschild several times driving about the city.
This one--Anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers--holds a mortgage
on the city of Jerusalem. He rides about in style, with officers
attending his carriage. He is a little baldheaded man with marked Jewish
features, and is said not to deceive his looks. At any rate, his
reputation is none of the best, either with Jews or Christians. A
caricature was published some time ago in which he is represented as
giving a beggar-woman by the wayside a kreutzer--the smallest German
coin. She is made to exclaim, "God reward you a thousand fold!" He
immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head, "How much have I
then? Sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!"...
The Eschernheim Tower, at the entrance of one of the city gates, is
universally admired by strangers on account of its picturesque
appearance, overgrown with ivy and terminated by the little pointed
turrets which one sees so often in Germany on buildings three or four
centuries old. There are five other watch-towers of similar form, which
stand on different sides of the city at the distance of a mile or two,
and generally upon an eminence overlooking the country. They were
erected several centuries ago to discern from afar the approach of an
enemy, and protect the caravans of merchants, which at that time
traveled from city to city, from the attacks of robbers.
The Eschernheim Tower is interesting from another circumstance which,
whether true or not, is universally believed. When Frankfort was under
the sway of a prince, a Swiss hunter, for some civil offense, was
condemned to die. He begged his life from the prince, who granted it
only on condition that he should fire the figure nine with his rifle
through the vane of this tower. He agreed, and did it; and at the
present time one can distinguish a rude nine on the vane, as if cut with
bullets, while two or three marks at the side appear to be from shots
that failed.
[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
HEIDELBERG[A]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
Here in Heidelberg at last, and a most glorious town it is. This is our
first morning in our new rooms, and the sun streams warmly in the
eastern windows as I write, while the old castle rises through the blue
vapor on the side of the Kaiserstuhl. The Neckar rushes on below, and
the Odenwald, before me, rejoices with its vineyards in the morning
light....
There is so much to be seen around this beautiful place that I scarcely
know where to begin a description of it. I have been wandering among the
wild paths that lead up and down the mountain-side or away into the
forests and lonely meadows in the lap of the Odenwald. My mind is filled
with images of the romantic German scenery, whose real beauty is
beginning to displace the imaginary picture which I had painted with the
enthusiastic words of Howitt. I seem to stand now upon the Kaiserstuhl,
which rises above Heidelberg, with that magnificent landscape around me
from the Black Forest and Strassburg to Mainz, and from the Vosges in
France to the hills of Spessart in Bavaria.
What a glorious panorama! and not less rich in associations than in its
natural beauty. Below me had moved the barbarian hordes of old, the
triumphant followers of Arminius and the cohorts of Rome, and later full
many a warlike host bearing the banners of the red cross to the Holy
Land, many a knight returning with his vassals from the field to lay at
the feet of his lady-love the scarf he had worn in a hundred battles and
claim the reward of his constancy and devotion. But brighter spirits had
also toiled below. That plain had witnessed the presence of Luther, and
a host who strove with him. There had also trodden the master-spirits of
German song--the giant twain with their scarcely less harmonious
brethren. They, too, had gathered inspiration from those scenes--more
fervent worship of Nature and a deeper love for their beautiful
fatherland....
Then there is the Wolfsbrunnen, which one reaches by a beautiful walk up
the bank of the Neckar to a quiet dell in the side of the mountain.
Through this the roads lead up by rustic mills always in motion, and
orchards laden with ripening fruit, to the commencement of the forest,
where a quaint stone fountain stands, commemorating the abode of a
sorceress of the olden time who was torn in pieces by a wolf. There is a
handsome rustic inn here, where every Sunday afternoon a band plays in
the portico, while hundreds of people are scattered around in the cool
shadow of the trees or feeding the splendid trout in the basin formed by
a little stream. They generally return to the city by another walk,
leading along the mountain-side to the eastern terrace of the castle,
where they have fine views of the great Rhine plain, terminated by the
Alsatian hills stretching along the western horizon like the long
crested swells on the ocean. We can even see these from the windows of
our room on the bank of the Neckar, and I often look with interest on
one sharp peak, for on its side stands the castle of Trifels, where
Coeur de Lion was imprisoned by the Duke of Austria, and where Blondel,
his faithful minstrel, sang the ballad which discovered the retreat of
the noble captive.
From the Carl Platz, an open square at the upper end of the city, two
paths lead directly up to the castle. By the first walk we ascend a
flight of steps to the western gate; passing through which, we enter a
delightful garden, between the outer walls of the castle and the huge
moat which surrounds it. Great linden, oak and beech trees shadow the
walk, and in secluded nooks little mountain-streams spring from the side
of the wall into stone basins. There is a tower over the moat on the
south side, next the mountain, where the portcullis still hangs with its
sharp teeth as it was last drawn up; on each side stand two grim knights
guarding the entrance. In one of the wooded walks is an old tree brought
from America in the year 1618. It is of the kind called "arbor vitae,"
and uncommonly tall and slender for one of this species; yet it does not
seem to thrive well in a foreign soil. I noticed that persons had cut
many slips off the lower branches, and I would have been tempted to do
the same myself if there had been any I could reach. In the curve of the
mountain is a handsome pavilion surrounded with beds of flowers and
fountains; here all classes meet together in the afternoon to sit with
their refreshments in the shade, while frequently a fine band of music
gives them their invariable recreation. All this, with the scenery
around them, leaves nothing unfinished to their present enjoyment. The
Germans enjoy life under all circumstances, and in this way they make
themselves much happier than we who have far greater means of being so.
At the end of the terrace built for the Princess Elizabeth of England is
one of the round towers which was split in twain by the French. Half has
fallen entirely away, and the other semicircular shell, which joins the
terrace and part of the castle-buildings, clings firmly together, altho
part of its foundation is gone, so that its outer ends actually hang in
the air. Some idea of the strength of the castle may be obtained when I
state that the walls of this tower are twenty-two feet thick, and that a
staircase has been made through them to the top, where one can sit under
the lindens growing upon it or look down on the city below with the
pleasant consciousness that the great mass upon which he stands is only
prevented from crashing down with him by the solidity of its masonry. On
one side, joining the garden, the statue of the Archduke Louis in his
breastplate and flowing beard looks out from among the ivy.
There is little to be seen about the castle except the walls themselves.
The guide conducted us through passages, in which were heaped many of
the enormous cannon-balls which it had received in sieges, to some
chambers in the foundation. This was the oldest part of the castle,
built in the thirteenth century. We also visited the chapel, which is in
a tolerable state of preservation. A kind of narrow bridge crosses it,
over which we walked, looking down on the empty pulpit and deserted
shrines. We then went into the cellar to see the celebrated tun. In a
large vault are kept several enormous hogsheads, one of which is three
hundred years old, but they are nothing in comparison with the tun,
which itself fills a whole vault. It is as high as a common two-story
house; on the top is a platform upon which the people used to dance
after it was filled, to which one ascends by two flights of steps. I
forget exactly how many casks it holds, but I believe eight hundred. It
has been empty for fifty years....
Opposite my window rises the Heiligenberg, on the other side of the
Neckar. The lower part of it is rich with vineyards, and many cottages
stand embosomed in shrubbery among them. Sometimes we see groups of
maidens standing under the grape-arbors, and every morning the
peasant-women go toiling up the steep paths with baskets on their heads,
to labor among the vines. On the Neckar, below us, the fishermen glide
about in their boats, sink their square nets fastened to a long pole,
and haul them up with the glittering fish, of which the stream is full.
I often lean out of the window late at night, when the mountains above
are wrapt in dusky obscurity, and listen to the low, musical ripple of
the river. It tells to my excited fancy a knightly legend of the old
German time. Then comes the bell rung for closing the inns, breaking the
spell with its deep clang, which vibrates far away on the night-air till
it has roused all the echoes of the Odenwald. I then shut the window,
turn into the narrow box which the Germans call a bed, and in a few
minutes am wandering in America.
Halfway up the Heidelberg runs a beautiful walk dividing the vineyards
from the forest above. This is called "The Philosopher's Way," because
it was the favorite ramble of the old professors of the university. It
can be reached by a toilsome, winding path among the vines, called the
Snake-way; and when one has ascended to it, he is well rewarded by the
lovely view. In the evening, when the sun has got behind the mountain,
it is delightful to sit on the stone steps and watch the golden light
creeping up the side of the Kaiserstuhl, till at last twilight begins to
darken in the valley and a mantle of mist gathers above the Neckar.
We ascended the mountain a few days ago. There is a path which leads up
through the forest, but we took the shortest way, directly up the side,
tho it was at an angle of nearly fifty degrees. It was hard enough work
scrambling through the thick broom and heather and over stumps and
stones. In one of the stone-heaps I dislodged a large orange-colored
salamander seven or eight inches long. They are sometimes found on these
mountains, as well as a very large kind of lizard, called the
"eidechse," which the Germans say is perfectly harmless, and if one
whistles or plays a pipe will come and play around him.
The view from the top reminded me of that from Catskill Mountain House,
but is on a smaller scale. The mountains stretch off sideways, confining
the view to but half the horizon, and in the middle of the picture the
Hudson is well represented by the lengthened windings of the "abounding
Rhine." Nestled at the base below us was the little village of
Handschuhheim, one of the oldest in this part of Germany. The castle of
its former lords has nearly all fallen down, but the massive solidity of
the walls which yet stand proves its antiquity. A few years ago a part
of the outer walls which was remarked to have a hollow sound was taken
down, when there fell from a deep niche built therein, a skeleton clad
in a suit of the old German armor.
We followed a road through the woods to the peak on which stands the
ruins of St. Michael's chapel, which was built in the tenth century and
inhabited for a long time by a company of white monks. There is now but
a single tower remaining, and all around is grown over with tall bushes
and weeds. It had a wild and romantic look, and I sat on a rock and
sketched at it till it grew dark, when we got down the mountain the best
way we could....
We have just returned from a second visit to Frankfort, where the great
annual fair filled the streets with noise and bustle. On our way back we
stopt at the village of Zwingenberg, which lies at the foot of the
Melibochus, for the purpose of visiting some of the scenery of the
Odenwald. Passing the night at the inn there, we slept with one bed
under and two above, and started early in the morning to climb up the
side of the Melibochus. After a long walk through the forests, which
were beginning to change their summer foliage for a brighter garment, we
reached the summit and ascended the stone tower which stands upon it.
This view gives one a better idea of the Odenwald than that from the
Kaiserstuhl at Heidelberg.
This is a great collection of rocks, in a wild pine wood, heaped
together like pebbles on the seashore and worn and rounded as if by the
action of water; so much do they resemble waves that one standing at the
bottom and looking up can not resist the idea that they will flow down
upon him. It must have been a mighty tide whose receding waves left
these masses piled up together. The same formation continues at
intervals to the foot of the mountains. It reminded me of a glacier of
rocks instead of ice.
A little higher up lies a massive block of granite called the Giant's
Column. It is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter,
and still bears the mark of the chisel. When or by whom it was made
remains a mystery. Some have supposed it was intended to be erected for
the worship of the sun by the wild Teutonic tribes who inhabited this
forest; it is more probably the work of the Romans. A project was once
started to erect a monument on the battlefield of Leipsic, but it was
found too difficult to carry into execution.
After dining at the little village of Reichelsdorf, in the valley
below--where the merry landlord charged my friend two kreutzers less
than myself because he was not so tall--we visited the castle of
Schönberg, and joined the Bergstrasse again. We walked the rest of the
way here. Long before we arrived the moon shone down on us over the
mountains; and when we turned around the foot of the Heiligenberg, the
mist descending in the valley of the Neckar rested like a light cloud on
the church-spires.
[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
STRASSBURG[A]
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
I left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. The first thing I
saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. We climbed the spire; we
gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world in itself; a
panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and
Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside--a
forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many-hued as the
Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious
existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In
this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was
a composite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm,
expressing in vast proportions and gigantic masonry those ideas of
infinite duration and existence which Christianity opened before them.
The ethereal eloquence of the Greeks could not express the rugged
earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of
suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and
revelation. This architecture is Hebraistic in spirit, not Greek; it
well accords with the deep ground-swell of the Hebrew prophets. "Lord,
thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. A
thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. And as
a watch in the night."
The objection to Gothic architecture, as compared with Greek, is, that
it is less finished and elegant. So it is. It symbolizes that state of
mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws
of exact proportions and architectural refinement. It is Alpine
architecture--vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting
into flowers at every interval. The human soul seems to me an imprisoned
essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is a struggle in it, as
of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting,
now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and
fissures, but the flame is one.
Moreover, as society grows from barbarism upward, it tends to
inflorescence, at certain periods, as do plants and trees; and some
races flower later than others. This architecture was the first
flowering of the Gothic race; they had no Homers; the flame found vent
not by imaged words and vitalized alphabet; they vitalized stone, and
their poets were minster-builders; their epics, cathedrals.
This is why one cathedral--like Strassburg, or Notre Dame--has a
thousandfold the power of any number of Madeleines. The Madeleine is
simply a building; these are poems. I never look at one of them without
feeling that gravitation of soul toward its artist which poetry always
excites. Often the artist is unknown; here we know him; Erwin von
Steinbach, poet, prophet, priest, in architecture. We visited his
house--a house old and quaint, and to me full of suggestions and
emotions. Ah, if there be, as the apostle vividly suggests, houses not
made with hands, strange splendors, of which these are but shadows, that
vast religious spirit may have been finding scope for itself where all
the forces of nature shall have been made tributary to the great
conceptions of the soul. Save this cathedral, Strassburg has nothing
except peaked-roofed houses, dotted with six or seven rows of gable
windows.
[Footnote A: From "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." Mrs. Stowe
published this work in 1854, after returning from the tour she made soon
after achieving great fame with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." During this visit
she was received everywhere with distinction--and especially in
England.]
FREIBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST[A]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
The airy basket-work tower of the Freiburg minster rises before me over
the black roofs of the houses, and behind stand the gloomy pine-covered
mountains of the Black Forest. Of our walk to Heidelberg over the
oft-trodden Bergstrasse, I shall say nothing, nor how we climbed the
Kaiserstuhl again, and danced around on the top of the tower for one
hour amid cloud and mist, while there was sunshine below in the valley
of the Neckar. I left Heidelberg yesterday morning in the "stehwagen"
for Carlsruhe. The engine whistled, the train started, and, altho I kept
my eyes steadily fixt on the spire of the Hauptkirche, three minutes hid
it and all the rest of the city from sight. Carlsruhe, the capital of
Baden--which we reached in an hour and a half--is unanimously pronounced
by travelers to be a most dull and tiresome city. From a glance I had
through one of the gates, I should think its reputation was not
undeserved. Even its name in German signifies a place of repose.