once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and
Afra. I should think that there is no portion of the present building
older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper
part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly
globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number
of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the
Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see,
as I saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied
in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common
Creator.
Augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as
for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid
martyrological roll. At the present day, all is comparatively dull and
quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many
of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets;
while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect
of the whole. The population of Augsburg is supposed to amount to about
thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian and Charles V. it was, I make
no doubt, twice as numerous.[B]
[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Taur,"
published in 1821.]
[Footnote B: Augsburg has now (1914) a population of 102,000. Woolen and
cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.]
RATISBON[A]
BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and, having been recommended to
the Hotel of the Agneau Blanc, we drove thither, and alighted--close to
the very banks of the Danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream,
turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. The master
of the hotel, whose name is Cramer, and who talked French very readily,
received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated
room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber
which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor
of Austria himself, on his way to Aix-la-Chapelle. The next morning was
a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern,
from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the
Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully
undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite
side--and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of
which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. The whole
had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance.
The Town Hall was large and imposing; but the Cathedral, surrounded by
booths--it being fair-time--was, of course, the great object of my
attention. In short, I saw enough within an hour to convince me that I
was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with
antiquities, and including several of the time of the Romans, to whom it
was necessarily a very important station. Ratisbon is said to contain a
population of about 20,000 souls.[B]
The cathedral can boast of little antiquity. It is almost a building of
yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially
on the west, between the towers--and is considered one of the noblest
structures of the kind in Bavaria. The interior wants that decisive
effect which simplicity produces. It is too much broken into parts, and
covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. Near it I
traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now
demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. The
streets of Ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their
undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the
houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a
pleasant intermixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more
recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English
fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the
late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also
an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of
these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Kepler, the astronomer;
which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town by the
French in 1809.
But these are, comparatively, every-day objects. A much more interesting
source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of
the once celebrated monastery of St. Emmeram--and a great portion of the
remains of another old monastery, called St. James--which latter may
indeed be designated the College of the Jacobites; as the few members
who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the
Pretender, James Stuart. The Monastery or Abbey of St. Emmeram was one
of the most celebrated throughout Europe; and I suspect that its
library, both of MSS. and printed books, was among the principal causes
of its celebrity. Of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity
in Ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly--and, indeed, none is in itself
so curious and singular--as the Monastery of St. James. The front of
that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an
extremely remote antiquity. It is the ornaments, or style of
architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. The ornaments,
which are on each side of the doorway, or porch, are quite
extraordinary.
[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour,"
published in 1821.]
[Footnote B: Ratisbon has now (1914) a population of 53,000. Its
manufactured products consist chiefly of pottery and lead pencils.]
IV
BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE
A LOOK AT THE GERMAN CAPITAL[A]
BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER
The train spins along across great plains gilded by the setting sun;
soon night comes, and with it, sleep. At stations remote from one
another, German voices shout German names; I do not recognize them by
the sound, and look for them in vain upon the map. Magnificent great
station buildings are shown up by gaslight in the midst of surrounding
darkness, then disappear. We pass Hanover and Minden; the train keeps on
its way; and morning dawns.
On either side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing
a singular mirage. We seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense
lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the
edge of the embankment. Here and there a group of trees or a cottage,
emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was. A
sheet of bluish mist, floating a little above the ground and curling up
along its upper surface under the rays of the sun, caused this aqueous
phantasmagoria, resembling the Fata Morgana of Sicily. In vain did my
geographical knowledge protest, disconcerted, against this inland sea,
which no map of Prussia indicates; my eyes would not give it up, and
later in the day, when the sun, rising higher, had dried up this
imaginary lake, they required the presence of a boat to make them admit
that any body of water could be real.
Suddenly upon the left were massed the trees of a great park; Tritons
and Nereids appeared, dabbling in the basin of a fountain; there was a
dome and a circle of columns rising above extensive buildings; and this
was Potsdam....
A few moments later we were in Berlin, and a fiacre set me down at the
hotel. One of the keenest pleasures of a traveler is that first drive
through a hitherto unknown city, destroying or confirming his
preconceived idea of it. All that is peculiar and characteristic seizes
upon the yet virgin eye, whose perceptive power is never more clear.
My idea of Berlin had been drawn in great measure from Hoffman's
fantastic stories. In spite of myself, a Berlin, strange and grotesque,
peopled with Aulic councillors, sandmen, Kreislers, archivist Lindursts,
and student Anselms, had reared itself within my brain, amid a fog of
tobacco-smoke; and there before me was a city regularly built, stately,
with wide streets, extensive public grounds, and imposing edifices of a
style half-English, half-German, and modern to the last degree.
As we drove along I glanced down into those cellars, with steps so
polished, so slippery, so well-soaped, that one might slide in as into
the den of an ant-lion--to see if I might not discover Hoffman himself
seated on a tun, his feet crossed upon the bowl of his gigantic pipe,
and surrounded by a tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented
in the vignette of the French translation of his stories; and, to tell
the truth, there was nothing of the kind in these subterranean shops
whose proprietors were just opening their doors! The cats, of benignant
aspect, rolled no phosphorescent eyeballs, like the cat Murr in the
story, and they seemed quite incapable of writing their memoirs, or of
deciphering a score of Richard Wagner's.
These handsome stately houses, which are like palaces, with their
columns and pediments and architraves, are built of brick for the most
part, for stone seems rare in Berlin; but the brick is covered with
cement or tinted stucco, to simulate hewn stone; deceitful seams
indicate imaginary layers, and the illusion would be complete, were it
not that in spots the winter frosts have detached the cement, revealing
the red shades of the baked clay. The necessity of painting the whole
façade, in order to mask the nature of the material, gives the effect of
enormous architectural decorations seen in open air. The salient parts,
moldings, cornices, entablatures, consoles, are of wood, bronze, or
cast-iron, to which suitable forms have been given; when you do not look
too closely the effect is satisfactory. Truth is the only thing lacking
in all this splendor.
The palatial buildings which border Regent's Park in London present also
these porticoes, and these columns with brick cores and plaster-fluting,
which, by aid of a coating of oil paint, are expected to pass for stone
or marble. Why not build in brick frankly, since its water-coloring and
capacity for ingeniously varied arrangement furnish so many resources?
Even in Berlin I have seen charming houses of this kind which had the
advantage of being truthful. A fictitious material always inspires a
certain uneasiness.
The hotel is very well located, and I propose to sketch the view seen
from its steps. It will give a fair idea of the general character of the
city. The foreground is a quay bordering the Spree. A few boats with
slender masts are sleeping on the brown water. Vessels upon a canal or a
river, in the heart of a city, have always a charming effect. Along the
opposite quay stretches a line of houses; a few of them are ancient, and
bear the stamp thereof; the king's palace makes the corner. A cupola
upon an octagonal tower rises proudly above the other roofs, the square
sides of the tower adding grace to the curve of the dome.
A bridge spans the river, reminding me, with its white marble groups, of
the Ponte San Angelo at Rome. These groups--eight in number, if my
memory does not deceive me--are each composed of two figures; one
allegorical, winged, representing the country, or glory; the other, a
young man, guided through many trials to victory or immortality. These
groups, in purely classic taste, are not wanting in merit, and show in
some parts good study of the nude; their pedestals are ornamented with
medallions, whereon the Prussian eagle, half-real, half-heraldic, makes
a fine appearance. Considered as a decoration, the whole is, in my
opinion, somewhat too rich for the simplicity of the bridge, which opens
midway to allow the passage of vessels.
Farther on, through the trees of a public garden of some kind, appears
the old Museum, a great structure in the Greek style, with Doric columns
relieved against a painted background. At the corners of the roof,
bronze horses held by grooms are outlined upon the sky. Behind this
building, and looking sideways, you perceive the triangular pediment of
the new Museum.
On crossing the bridge, the dark façade of the palace comes in view,
with its balustraded terrace; the carvings around the main entrance are
in that old, exaggerated German rococo which I have seen before and have
admired in the palace in Dresden. This kind of barbaric taste has
something charming about it, and entertains the eye, satiated with chefs
d'oeuvre. It has invention, fancy, originality; and tho I may be
censured for the opinion, I confess I prefer this exuberance to the
coldness of the Greek style imitated with more erudition than success in
our modern public buildings. At each side stand great bronze horses
pawing the ground, and held by naked grooms.
I visited the apartments of the palace; they are rich and elegant, but
present nothing interesting to the artist save their ancient recessed
ceilings filled with curious figures and arabesques. In the concert-hall
there is a musicians' gallery in grotesque carving, silvered; its effect
is really charming. Silver is not used enough in decorations; it is a
relief from the classic gold, and forms admirable combinations with
colors. The chapel, whose dome rises above the rest of the building, is
well planned and well lighted, comfortable, reasonably decorated.
Let us cross the square and take a look at the Museum, admiring, as we
pass, an immense porphyry vase standing on cubes of the same material,
in front of the steps which lead up to the portico. This portico is
painted in fresco by various hands, under the direction of the
celebrated Peter Cornelius. The paintings form a broad frieze, folding
itself back at each end upon the side wall of the portico, and
interrupted in the middle to give access to the Museum. The portion on
the left contains a whole poem of mythologic cosmogony, treated with
that philosophy and that erudition which the Germans carry into
compositions of this kind; the right, purely anthropologie, represents
the birth, development, and evolution of humanity.
If I were to describe in detail these two immense frescoes, you would
certainly be charmed with the ingenious invention, the profound
knowledge, and the excellent judgment of the artist. The mysteries of
the early creation are penetrated, and everything is faultlessly
scientific. Also, if I should show you them in the form of those fine
German engravings, the lines heightened by delicate shadows, the
execution as accurate as that of Albrecht Dürer, the tone light and
harmonious, you would admire the ordering of the composition, balanced
with so much art, the groups skilfully united one to another, the
ingenious episodes, the wise selection of the attributes, the
significance of each separate thing; you might even find grandeur of
style, an air of magisterial dignity, fine effects of drapery, proud
attitudes, well-marked types, muscular audacities à la Michel Angelo,
and a certain Germanic savagery of fine flavor. You would be struck with
this free handling of great subjects, this vast conceptive power, this
carrying out of an idea, which French painters so often lack; and you
would think of Cornelius almost as highly as the Germans do. But in the
presence of the work itself, the impression is completely different.
I am well aware that fresco-painting, even in the hands of the Italian
masters, skilful as they were in the technical details of their art, has
not the charm of oil. The eye must become habituated to this rude,
lustreless coloring, before we can discern its beauties. Many people who
never say so--for nothing is more rare than the courage to avow a
feeling or an opinion--find the frescoes of the Vatican and the Sistine
frightful; but the great names of Michel Angelo and Raphael impose
silence upon them; they murmur vague formulas of enthusiasm, and go off
to rhapsodize--this time with sincerity--over some Magdalen of Guido, or
some Madonna of Carlo Dolce. I make large allowance, therefore, for this
unattractive aspect which belongs to fresco-painting; but in this case,
the execution is by far too repulsive. The mind may be content, but the
eye suffers. Painting, which is altogether a plastic art, can express
its ideal only through forms and colors. To think is not enough;
something must be done....
[Illustration: BERLIN: UNTER DEN LINDEN]
[Illustration: BERLIN: THE BRANDENBURG GATE]
[Illustration: BERLIN: THE ROYAL CASTLE AND EMPEROR WILLIAM BRIDGE]
[Illustration: BERLIN: THE WHITE HALL IN THE ROYAL CASTLE]
[Illustration: BERLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND FREDERICK'S BRIDGE]
[Illustration: BERLIN: THE GENDARMENMARKT]
[Illustration: THE COLUMN OF VICTORY IN BERLIN]
[Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG]
[Illustration: THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM]
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF SANS SOUCI, POTSDAM]
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE]
[Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE OF SCHÖNBRUNN, NEAR VIENNA
(The man on the sidewalk at the left is the Emperor Francis Joseph)]
[Illustration: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA]
I shall not now give an inventory of the Museum in Berlin, which is rich
in pictures and statues; to do this would require more space than is at
my command. We find represented here, more or less favorably, all the
great masters, the pride of royal galleries. But the most remarkable
thing in this collection is the very numerous and very complete
collection of the primitive painters of all countries and all schools,
from the Byzantine down to those which immediately precede the
Renaissance. The old German school, so little known in France, and on
many accounts so curious, is to be studied to better advantage here than
anywhere else. A rotunda contains tapestries after designs by Raphael,
of which the original cartoons are now in Hampton Court.
The staircase of the new Museum is decorated with those remarkable
frescoes by Kaulbach, which the art of engraving and the Universal
Exposition have made so well known in France. We all remember the
cartoon entitled "The Dispersion of Races," and all Paris has admired,
in Goupil's window that poetic "Defeat of the Huns," where the strife
begun between the living warriors is carried on amidst the disembodied
souls that hover above that battlefield strewn with the dead. "The
Destruction of Jerusalem" is a fine composition, tho somewhat too
theatrical. It resembles a "close of the fifth act" much more than
beseems the serious character of fresco painting. In the panel which
represents Hellenic civilization, Homer is the central figure; this
composition pleased me least of all. Other paintings as yet unfinished
present the climacteric epochs of humanity. The last of these will be
almost contemporary, for when a German begins to paint, universal
history comes under review; the great Italian painters did not need so
much in achieving their master-pieces. But each civilization has its
peculiar tendencies, and this encyclopedic painting is a characteristic
of the present time. It would seem that, before flinging itself into its
new career, the world has felt the necessity of making a synthesis of
its past....
This staircase, which is of colossal size, is ornamented with casts from
the finest antiques. Copies of the metopes of the Pantheon and friezes
from the temple of Theseus are set into its walls, and upon one of the
landings stands the Pandrosion, with all the strong and tranquil beauty
of its Caryatides. The effect of the whole is very grand. At the present
day there is no longer any visible difference between the people of one
country and of another. The uniform domino of civilization is worn
everywhere, and no difference in color, no special cut of the garment,
notifies you that you are away from home. The men and women whom I met
in the street escape description; the flâneurs of the Unter den Linden
are exactly like the flâneurs of the Boulevard des Italiens. This
avenue, bordered by splendid houses, is planted, as its name indicates,
with lindens; trees "whose leaf is shaped like a heart," as Heinrich
Heine remarks--a peculiarity which makes Unter den Linden dear to
lovers, and eminently suited for sentimental interviews. At its entrance
stands the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great. Like the
Champs-Elysées in Paris, this avenue terminates at a triumphal arch,
surmounted by a chariot with four bronze horses. Passing under the arch,
we come out into a park in some degrees resembling the Bois de Boulogne.
Along the edge of this park, which is shadowed by great trees having all
the intensity of northern verdure, and freshened by a little winding
stream, open flower-crowded gardens, in whose depths you can discern
summer retreats, which are neither châlets, nor cottages, nor villas,
but Pompeiian houses with their tetrastylic porticos and panels of
antique red. The Greek taste is held in high esteem in Berlin. On the
other hand, they seem to disdain the style of the Renaissance, so much
in vogue in Paris; I saw no edifice of this kind in Berlin.
Night came; and after paying a hasty visit to the zoological garden,
where all the animals were asleep, except a dozen long-tailed paroquets
and cockatoos, who were screaming from their perches, pluming
themselves, and raising their crests, I returned to my hotel to strap
my trunk and betake myself to the Hamburg railway station, as the train
would leave at ten, a circumstance which prevented me from going, as I
had intended, to the opera to hear Cherubini's "Deux Journées," and to
see Louise Taglioni dance the Sevillana....
For the traveler there are but two ways: the instantaneous proof, or the
prolonged study. Time failed me for the latter. Deign to accept this
simple and rapid impression.
[Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By permission of, and by
arrangement with, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.
Since Gautier wrote, Berlin has greatly increased in population and in
general importance. What is known as "Greater Berlin" now embraces about
3,250,000 souls. Many of the quaint two-story houses, which formerly
were characteristic of the city, have given way to palatial houses and
business blocks. Berlin is a thoroughly modern commercial city. It ranks
among European cities immediately after London and Paris.]
CHARLOTTENBURG[A]
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Then we drove to Charlottenburg to see the Mausoleum. I know not when I
have been more deeply affected than there; and yet, not so much by the
sweet, lifelike statue of the queen as by that of the king, her husband,
executed by the same hand.[B] Such an expression of long-desired rest,
after suffering the toil, is shed over the face--so sweet, so heavenly!
There, where he has prayed year after year--hoping, yearning,
longing--there, at last, he rests, life's long anguish over! My heart
melted as I looked at these two, so long divided--he so long a mourner,
she so long mourned--now calmly resting side by side in a sleep so
tranquil.
We went through the palace. We saw the present king's writing desk and
table in his study, just as he left them. His writing establishment is
about as plain as yours. Men who really mean to do anything do not use
fancy tools. His bedroom, also, is in a style of severe simplicity.
There were several engravings fastened against the wall; and in the
anteroom a bust and medallion of the Empress Eugenie--a thing which I
should not exactly have expected in a born king's palace; but beauty is
sacred, and kings can not call it parvenu. Then we went into the queen's
bed-room, finished in green, and then through the rooms of Queen Louisa.
Those marks of her presence, which you saw during the old king's
lifetime, are now removed; we saw no traces of her dresses, gloves, or
books. In one room, draped in white muslin over pink, we were informed
the Empress of Russia was born.