RATISBON TO PASSAU
“On one side far the fruitful plain extends;
The other’s wooded steeps,
Around the base of which in sinuous bends
The Danube grandly sweeps.”
_From the German_
From the Walhalla we have a glimpse of the kind of country through
which for many miles the Danube winds its tortuous length. On the left
bank are generally the lower hills of the Bayerischer Wald, though for
a part of the way these recede to some distance; on the right, “low
sedgy and Dutch like,” is an almost unbroken plain extending far to the
south. This plain is now well cultivated, and here and there is broken
by groups of farm buildings, by small villages consisting frequently
of but a few houses (many of them with wooden balconies like those of
typical chalets) dominated by white churches, the warm red minaret-like
steeples of which--“Little Kremlin-looking cupolas” one visitor has
termed them--form a notable feature in the landscape. On this plain we
have great stretches of various crops merging the one into the other
without any hedges or other division. Cattle may be seen ploughing the
fields, and perchance a man sauntering along a road driving a couple of
pigs--a cord from the right hind leg of one to the left hind leg of the
other, each thus checking the other’s wanderings.
Along the ever-winding river on either bank are occasional villages,
but there is no place of special interest for some distance along the
stream, which here and there almost doubles upon itself, and here and
there receives the water of some small tributary. At Wörth, on the left
bank--to which point the Walhalla railway runs--used to be a palace of
the bishops of Ratisbon, later a residence of the Princes of Thurn and
Taxis. Beyond Wörth the country on the left also becomes flat.
The great plain of Bavaria is known as the Dunkelboden (dark soil) and
also as the granary of Bavaria, from the nature of its rich cultivable
earth. It is suggested that this was once a great morass--it may
perhaps be the bed of some ancient lake. In the days when education was
a luxury reserved for the few, the words Bauern von Dunkelboden, or
peasants of the dark soil, were used as a term synonymous with boor.
Sossau, a village on the left bank as we approach Straubing, is chiefly
remarkable for a miracle that is supposed to have happened in the year
1534, when a picture of the Virgin was brought thither by angels. The
story runs that the picture was originally in another church in a
village where the Lutheran doctrine had been adopted, and that angels
took it by boat up the Danube and deposited it at Sossau as a more
orthodox place. Sossau belonged to the monks of Kloster Windberg, and
they were duly authorized to publish an account of the miracle, and for
the benefit of those who could not read a pictorial representation of
the transporting of the picture was duly painted on the walls of their
monastery at Straubing.
Straubing is an interesting old place on the right bank of a right
arm of the Danube, which some distance before reaching the town forks
round a large island. It is said of the people that they “ploughed
the Danube,” because they dammed up the old bed of the river and so
diverted the stream so that it should flow directly by their walls--in
proof of which the town arms are decorated with a plough. It is, as
has been said, an old town--it has indeed been identified by some
historians as Castra Augustana one of the many Danubian stations of the
Romans. There are a number of picturesque old buildings, including the
tall quadrangular turreted Town Tower, erected early in the fourteenth
century. The Gothic churches have notable monuments and stained glass,
and in the graveyard of St. Peter’s on the high bank to the east is
a chapel to which a romantic and tragical story belongs. This is the
Agnes Bernauer Chapel, the name of which is that of a girl who loved
too well but not wisely, seeing that she was of humble origin and her
lover was heir to the Dukedom of Bavaria. The story may be borrowed
from Planché who declared that he doted upon old stories.
“Albert, the only son of Duke Ernst of Bavaria, was one of the most
accomplished and valiant princes of the age he lived in. His father
and family had selected for his bride the young Countess Elizabeth
of Würtemberg. The contract was signed and the marriage on the point
of taking place, when the lady suddenly eloped with a more favoured
lover--John, Count of Werdenberg. The tidings were brought to Albert
at Augsburg, where he was attending a grand tournament given in honour
of the approaching nuptials; but they fell unheeded on his ear, as
his heart, which had not been consulted in the choice of his bride,
had just yielded itself, ‘rescue or no rescue,’ to the bright eyes of
a young maiden whom he had distinguished from the crowd of beauties
that graced the lists. Virtuous as she was lovely, Agnes Bernauer, had
obtained amongst the citizens of Augsburg, the appellation of ‘the
angel’; but she was the daughter of a bather, an employment considered
at that period, in Germany, as particularly dishonourable. Regardless
of consequences, however, he divulged his passion, and their marriage
was shortly afterwards privately celebrated in Albert’s castle at
Vohberg. Their happiness was doomed to be of short duration. Duke
Ernst became possessed of their secret, and the anger of the whole
house of Munich burst upon the heads of the devoted couple. Albert
was commanded to sign a divorce from Agnes, and prepare immediately
to marry Ann, daughter of Duke Erich of Brunswick. The indignant
prince refused to obey, and being afterwards denied admission to a
tournament at Regensburg, on the plea of his having contracted a
dishonourable alliance, he rode boldly into the lists upon the Heide
Platz, before the whole company declared Agnes his lawful wife and
duchess, and conducted her to his palace at Straubing, attended as
became her rank. Every species of malice and misrepresentation was
now set at work to ruin the unfortunate Agnes. Albert’s uncle, Duke
Wilhelm, who was the only one of the family, inclined to protect her,
had a sickly child, and she was accused of having administered poison
to it. But the duke detected the falsehood and became more firmly her
friend. Death too soon deprived her of this noble protector, and the
fate of the poor duchess was immediately sealed. Taking advantage of
Albert’s absence from Straubing, the authorities of the place arrested
her on some frivolous pretext, and the honest indignation with which
she asserted her innocence was tortured into treason by her malignant
judges. She was condemned to die, and on Wednesday, 12 October, 1436,
was thrown over the bridge into the Danube, amidst the lamentations
of the populace. Having succeeded in freeing one foot from the bonds
which surrounded her, the poor victim, shrieking for help and mercy,
endeavoured to reach the bank by swimming, and had nearly effected a
landing, when a barbarian in office, with a hooked pole, caught her by
her long fair hair, and dragging her back into the stream, kept her
under water until the cruel tragedy was completed. The fury and despair
of Albert on receiving these horrid tidings were boundless. He flew to
his father’s bitterest enemy, Louis the Bearded, at Ingolstadt, and
returned at the head of a hostile army to his native land, breathing
vengeance against the murderers of his beloved wife. The old duke,
sorely pressed by the arms of his injured son, and tormented by the
stings of conscience, implored the mediation of the Emperor Sigismund,
who succeeded after some time in pacifying Albert, and reconciling
him to his father, who, as a proof of his repentance, instituted a
perpetual mass for the soul of the martyred Agnes Bernauer.”
The bridge from which this terrible tragedy--one of the most terrible
of the many recorded in the annals of the Danube--took place no longer
exists. The date 1436 on the tomb of the murdered Agnes is supposed
to be an error, as her husband married Ann of Brunswick in that year.
The present bridge connecting the island with the town is of later
date. The island, known as Donauwiese (or Danube Meadow) was at one
time the annual scene of an eight-day’s fair--known as the Sossau
Fair--beginning on the Sunday after Michaelmas. The good folk of
Straubing do not seem in the Middle Ages to have been particularly
intelligent, for about forty years before the tragedy just chronicled
the town was destroyed by fire, and as this originated in a joiner’s
shop, no joiner was permitted to reside in the place afterwards; and
this regulation was maintained for about a century and a half! The
wisdom shown seems to have been similar to that of the Hamelin folk,
who would listen to no itinerant musicians after the Pied Piper had
(in consequence of their own municipal meanness) spirited away their
children.
Like so many other towns that we shall have to visit, Straubing had
to bear the brunt of much fighting in the olden times. In 1332 it was
besieged for about six weeks by the Bavarians (having been taken by
the Austrians about a dozen years earlier) before being captured. In
1663 it had again to stand a severe siege when attacked by the Duke of
Saxe-Weimar; and on that occasion the burgomaster of the town, a noted
marksman, himself shot upwards of thirty of the duke’s best officers.
In 1704 it was again taken by the Austrians. Possibly the reputation
of Burgomaster Höller’s marksmanship saved the place from being one of
the scenes of fighting in the Napoleonic wars. The Gothic castle--long
since converted into barracks--was built in 1356 by Duke William of
Bavaria who had married an English princess. On the south side of the
castle is a portrait-memorial to a distinguished native of Straubing,
Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826) a celebrated optician. Fraunhofer,
the son of a poor glazier, being left an orphan when young, was
apprenticed to a glass polisher, and when fourteen years of age nearly
lost his life, but the accident was indirectly the means which led him
to success. On 21 July, 1801 the house in which he was lodging fell
down and, fortunately for the poor lad, at the moment that he was being
extricated from the ruins, the Elector Maximilian Joseph happened to be
passing, and salved his wounds with a present of money which enabled
him to obtain release from the last few months of his apprenticeship
and to purchase a glass-polishing machine for himself, and so to start
upon a distinguished career of study and invention.
North-east of Straubing--in which general direction the devious river
flows for some distance--is to be seen the pyramidal Bogenberg about
half a dozen miles away. Before reaching it, however, the river
receives some further of the many small tributaries that flow down from
the Wald, and passes several pleasant, but not otherwise remarkable
villages, notably, where the little Aitrach comes in from the south,
the triplet-village of Unter-, Mittel-, and Ober-Öbling. The beautiful
hills are here again closer to the river on the left, while the plain
on the right becomes more diversified. The first place of interest is
found shortly before the point at which the railway from Straubing
crosses the Danube to Bogen, where on the left stand the conspicuous
buildings of the ancient Benedictine monastery of Ober-Altaich. So many
were the Benedictine establishments along this river that Schultes,
in his “Handbuch für Reisende auf der Donau,” published nearly a
century ago, coming to describe one of them wrote: “‘So soon another!’
I think I hear the traveller and the reader exclaim, who may not be
acquainted with the magnitude of this Order.” And he then goes on to
summarize thus, in a way to delight those with a taste for statistical
tit-bits, the number of notables who had belonged to the Benedictine
Order up to the time of Hemmauer: “Sixty-three popes, two hundred and
twenty-three cardinals, two hundred and fifty-five patriarchs, sixteen
thousand archbishops, forty-six thousand bishops, twenty-one emperors,
twenty-five empresses, forty-eight kings, fifty-four queens, one
hundred and forty-six imperial and royal children, and four hundred and
forty-five sovereign princes and dukes.”
The “Kloster” of Ober-Altaich was first founded in the eighth century
by a duke who brought Benedictines from Reichenau to people it, and
it was built where a chapel had been erected earlier by “the Holy
Parminius.” Here, still earlier, had stood a Druidical altar, and
Parminius, having destroyed it and with his own hands cut down its
sheltering oak, built the chapel which was succeeded by the first
Kloster. That was destroyed by the Hungarians in 907, and a couple
of centuries passed before it was rebuilt by the Count of Bogen and
started on a long period of continuous prosperity. When the Thirty
Years’ War was devastating so much of the Continent, Ober-Altaich was
not spared, for in 1634 it was destroyed by the Swedes, only to rise,
phœnix-like, more splendid than before, thanks to the wealth possessed
by the monks. The fresco-paintings in the monastery church illustrate
the old-time feeling against Lutheranism, for “monks are drawn
exorcising Straubing, and Luther is seen running away in the shape of
an unclean spirit, riding on a hog, with the Bible under his arm, a
sausage in one hand, and a beer glass in the other.”
Beyond the railway bridge is seen the Bogenberg at the foot of which
is the pleasant village of Bogen. On the top of the ’berg is an old
pilgrimage church, erected in consequence of one of the various
miracles that belong to the neighbourhood, and the ruins of a castle,
at one time the seat of one of those robber-nobles who must have made
travelling in these parts a terrible thing in the olden days. To Sossau
we have seen--and with the particularity of a date not often attached
to such happenings--a picture was brought by angels; to Bogen there
floated, up-stream, on the waters of the Danube a hollow stone image
of the Virgin. Here it grounded, and the hill-top chapel was duly
built to house it, and in course of time became famous as a pilgrimage
church. Sometimes, it is recorded, as many as eight thousand pilgrims
at a time have journeyed to Our Lady of Bogen. Owing to its exposed
position--the hill-top is nearly four hundred feet above the river--the
church has often been damaged by storm, and once when it was crowded
with pilgrims. This was on Whit Tuesday, 1618, when the tower was
struck by lightning, and the congregation, in the panic that ensued,
crushed several of their number to death. Æmilius Hemmauer, a prior of
Ober-Altaich, who recorded the tragedy in verse, describes how--
“In one thousand six hundred and eighteen,
On the third day of Whitsun near midnight.”
when the church was closely crowded the tower was struck and fell in;
two people were killed outright, and in the subsequent struggle--
“The great force crushed without sparing
Four men and ten women,
There lay ye in two graves, dead,
Three men, seven women; console ye, God.”
The account is not very explicit; presumably one of the men and three
of the women recovered.
The ruins of the castle which once proudly dominated the hill-top speak
of a past when the lords of Bogen were possessors of the country north
of the Danube from the Regen to the Ilz and far up into Bohemia; when
they were welcomed as allies, and feared as enemies, by the monarchs
of near-by principalities. In the Middle Ages there seem to have been
periods of terrible lawlessness in the various German states, and the
nobles whose castled homes were perched on the crags bordering the
great rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, appear to have been some of
the most lawless people of the time. “The terms noble and robber were
synonymous, and the higher the rank the more lawless and rapacious were
the deeds of the titled ruffian. The castle of Bogen was admirably
adapted for a bandit’s hold. Seated upon the apex of a pyramidical
rock, inaccessible but by one narrow pass on its eastern side, which a
handful of determined men might keep against a host, and commanding a
view over nearly half the dukedom of Bavaria, its lawless lord watched
from its battlements, like a vulture, the approach of his unsuspecting
prey, and, pouncing upon it, bore it up in triumph to his mountain
aerie, where he feasted at his leisure in security.” The miraculous
arrival of the stone figure of the Virgin at Bogen made the Count of
that day repent somewhat of his evil ways and, possibly on receiving a
hint as to the best way of cancelling some of his sins, presented this
castle on the Bogenberg to the monks of Ober-Altaich; having done what
they would on the earth, it may have appeared prudent to seek to ensure
a comfortable reception in heaven.
The Counts of Bogen seem to have married women well fitted to be their
mates, if we may judge by the story that is told of the mother of the
last of these nobles--the family became extinct about the middle of
the thirteenth century. This lady was Ludmilla, a Bohemian princess,
who had married Count Albert the Third of Bogen. After the death of
her husband, Duke Louis the Second of Bavaria heard so much about
Ludmilla that he offered her marriage, but, like a shrewd man, knowing
the unveracity of Rumour, and her sister Report, he made the offer
conditional upon his liking her when they became personally acquainted.
In other words he expressed a desire to meet the Countess “with a view
to matrimony.” The lady agreed to the terms, and duly received her
ducal visitor and prospective suitor. Doubtful as to the impression
that she had really made upon him, and suspicious of the sincerity of
her wooer, she one day, in seeming playfulness, suggested that they
should plight their troth in the tapestried chamber in which they
happened to be, and that the three knights figured in the tapestry
might be regarded as witnesses. The Duke, unsuspecting any trick,
humoured the apparently playful widow, and took the oath required of
him--and on the instant three living knights stepped out from behind
the hangings, and compelled him to ratify his pledge! Had Duke Louis
but suspected that there was a “a rat i’ the arras,” the story might
have had another ending.
A little beyond Bogen the Danube trends in a southerly direction,
and once more the hills of the Wald recede for a time, though after
a few miles the stream turns again towards the mountains, the wooded
heights of which are never many miles away from the left bank. Among
the villages along the banks, Wischelburg is worthy of mention as being
the modern representative of the Roman Bisonium destroyed by Attila and
his Huns. As the river nears Deggendorf, there is on the right bank
the Natternberg, an isolated hill nearly three hundred feet above the
river, and notable as the first hill of any size that has broken the
plain for many miles--eighty, says one stickler for the definite--on
that side of the river. The great mass of granite certainly seems to
belong more fittingly to the north side, and if geologists fail to
explain its state of splendid isolation on the south, folk-lore is more
resourceful. The legend runs that the devil, having a grudge against
the too-good people of Deggendorf, brought this little hill all the way
from Italy for the purpose of destroying the town. Having reached the
south side of the Danube with his burden, he heard the ringing of the
Ave Maria bell at the monastery on the other side of the river, and so
was compelled to drop it just short of the mark.[5] On the top of the
Natternberg are the ruins of an old castle, never restored after its
destruction by the triumphing Swedes during the Thirty Years’ War.
Another similar legend of this part of the Danube concerns a large
flotilla carrying crusaders towards the Holy Land, a sight which so
enraged the devil “that he plucked up rocks from the neighbouring
cliffs, and pitched them right into the channel of the river, thereby
hoping to arrest their progress. But in this he was completely
deceived; for after the first rock came plunging down amongst them,
every man made the sign of the cross, and uniting their voices in a
holy anthem, the fiend was instantly paralysed, and slunk away without
further resistance. So huge, however, was the first stone which he
threw, that for ages it caused a swirl and swell in this part of
the river, which nothing but the skill and perseverance of Bavarian
engineers could remove.”
At the river-side foot of the Natternberg, is the village of
Fischerdorf, and across the stream, beautifully situated, is
Deggendorf, backed, as it were, by terraced hills, each semicircle
rising higher than that in front. These mountains of the Bayerischer
Wald, which rise at their highest to nearly five thousand feet, are
still largely covered with forests in which pine and beech are the
preponderating trees.
Kloster-Metten, the ringing of the bells at which caused the devil to
drop the Natternberg, and so saved Deggendorf from destruction, is on
the left bank where the Unternbach joins the Danube. The monastery owes
its origin, says legendary lore, to the following series of strange
occurrences. A herdsman, belonging to the village of Michaelbuch,
Gamelbert by name, having been sleeping for some time under a tree,
awakened to find that a book was lying on his breast. This book was
written in English, of which language the simple herdsman was, of
course, wholly ignorant, but, nevertheless, he at once began reading
it, and, reading it, was so greatly edified, that abandoning his simple
labour as herdsman, he journeyed to Rome and became a priest. On his
way he baptized a boy named Utto, desiring that when he became a man
the lad should seek him out. This in due time Utto did, when Gamelbert
made him priest of Michaelbuch; but Utto did not care for his new task,
and so, deserting his flock, he crossed the river and wandered into the
woods, and there--close to a spring since known as Utto’s spring--built
a hermitage which he dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
It came to pass that the mighty Emperor Charlemagne hunting in the
neighbourhood discovered the holy hermit engaged in the curious whim
of hanging his axe upon a sunbeam! Astonished greatly by what he saw,
and recognizing in it proof of Utto’s holiness, the emperor offered to
grant the hermit any request that he might prefer. Utto asked that a
convent might be built, and Kloster-Metten was in due course erected
in fulfilment of Charlemagne’s promise. Those who are inclined to be
sceptical can see the monastery, can visit the spring and the little
church of Uttobrunn near by! If these do not persuade them of the truth
of the legend, they will, at least, readily admit that the beautiful
wooded hills hereabouts, and the delightful mountain streams, form an
appropriate setting for the mediæval story.
Deggendorf has the usual tale to tell of suffering during wars, indeed
it suffered more than some of its neighbours, for not only was it
partly destroyed by the Swedes, but much of what the enemy spared fire
destroyed a few years later--including all the town records. But some
good old buildings, including the Rathaus and a fourteenth century
pilgrimage church escaped destruction. This church is said to date from
the year 1337, when a woman and some Jews were concerned in stealing
and insulting the Host. Their efforts to destroy the consecrated
wafer, by eating, by hammering on an anvil, and other means were
miraculously frustrated; and when they flung it down a well, the well
was immediately surrounded by a nimbus. However the story arose, the
fanatical passions of the populace were aroused against the Jews, and
a horrible indiscriminate massacre of those people took place, after
which the miraculously preserved wafer was solemnly taken back to the
church from which it had been stolen. The massacre took place on the
day after that dedicated to St. Michael and a century and a half later
the Pope issued a Bull giving general absolution to those who paid
a Michaelmas pilgrimage to the Gnaden-Kirche or Church of Grace. In
consequence of that, many thousands of pilgrims annually visited--and
I believe still visit--Deggendorf. A hundred years ago the pilgrims on
one occasion are said to have numbered fifty thousand.
Near to this pleasant old town of unpleasant memories are a number of
“bergs” offering easy climbs and magnificent views up and down the
Danube and over the Bayerischer and Böhmer Wälder. Indeed there are not
wanting enthusiasts who regard this as one of the most beautiful bits
of the beautiful river. One feels so often tempted to say this while at
a “bit” which is specially pleasing that such a summing up has really
but little value. Beautiful indeed is much of the journey between here
and Passau--to say nothing of the further beauties beyond--but to pick
out the best would be difficult.
Just below Deggendorf, comes in on the right another of those sixty
navigable tributaries which, as Gibbon pointed out, go to swell the
volume of the mighty river. This is the Isar, the river on which,
some eighty miles away, stands Munich. Across the level land about
the Isar’s many mouths may be seen the spires of the old market
town of Plattling--the last town upon that river. It is inevitable,
when mentioning the Isar, that one should think of Campbell’s
“Hohenlinden,” with its opening verse--
“On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.”
It has not much to do with the Danube, perhaps, but it may be pointed
out here that Hohenlinden is about twenty miles as the crow flies
from the nearest point on the Isar, and that the river nearest the
battlefield is the Isen. Either Campbell misspelt the name of the river
and was a little “out” in his geography, or else his printers made Isen
into Iser--and since then the misprint has been generally adopted.
The poet’s sojourn in Bavaria in the year 1800, was indeed fruitful
of several verses besides the famous “Hohenlinden,” which was written
after his return to London, while three years earlier he had written
“The Wounded Hussar” a piece of mechanical romanticism which was at one
time widely popular--
“Alone to the banks of the dark rolling Danube
Fair Adelaide hied when the battle was o’er:
‘Oh, whither,’ she cried, ‘hast thou wandered, my lover?
Or here dost thou welter and bleed on the shore?’”
Where the Isar joins the Danube we may more fittingly recall the poet’s
“Song translated from the German.”
“Sweet Iser! were the sunny realm
And flowery gardens mine,
Thy waters I would shade with elm
To prop the tender vine;
My golden flagons I would fill
With rosy draughts from every hill;
And under every myrtle bower
My gay companions should prolong
The laugh, the revel, and the song,
To many an idle hour.
Like rivers crimsoned with the beam
Of yonder planet bright
Our balmy cups should ever stream
Profusion of delight;
No care should touch the mellow heart,
And sad or sober none depart;
For wine can triumph over woe,
And love and Bacchus brother powers
Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers
A paradise below.”
About this bit of the Danube there are a number of islands caused by
the small branches of the Isar where it reaches the greater river.
Still with the beautiful hills on the left and the plain on the right,
the river goes on past small villages and hamlets. The next place with
an arresting story is Nieder-Altaich, the site of another Benedictine
monastery, and that at one time the most important of all which this
powerful Order held in Bavaria. Here St. Parminius went through the
same performance as at Ober-Altaich--destroying a Druid altar and
cutting down its sheltering oak with his own hands--and here, also
as at the other place, came the destroying Hungarians in the tenth
century. The Benedictines showed again their great recuperative power,
for the monastery was rebuilt and re-endowed before the close of the
same century. Hither came St. Gotthard (born at Reichersdorf in 965)
as a barefoot candidate for a monk’s cell; here he rose to be abbot,
until he was transferred as bishop to Hildesheim, where he died in
1035. Two and a half centuries later the monastery seems to have had a
less worthy head, for it is said that in the year 1232, the monks of
Nieder-Altaich lay in ambush and shot their abbot with arrows as he was
crossing to Thundorf on the other side of the river.
The chronicles of the place have to tell of another unpopular
abbot--one, however, who was removed from the post in a less drastic
fashion, for in an old Bavarian history there is record of an abbot
of Nieder-Altaich who seems to have interpreted the rules of the
Benedictine Order in a very liberal fashion, so far as he himself was
concerned: “Besides his valet he had two pages. On his name-day all the
principal persons of the government of Straubing assembled in the grand
refectory of Nieder-Altaich. A band of trumpets and kettle-drums was
in attendance from daybreak, facing his chamber window, and the moment
his Excellency (for he had purchased the title of a privy councillor)
opened his eyes, the pages undrew the curtains of cloth of gold, amidst
a flourish from the trumpets and kettle-drums without, while a battery
of small mortars proclaimed in thunder to the surrounding country,
the dawning of the name-day of this important personage.” It is said
that not only did this worthy spend upwards of ninety thousand florins
a year, but when he was made to retire he had run his monastery into
a debt of over a hundred thousand florins. In his retirement he was
reduced to an annuity of two hundred ducats. This abbot may well have
thought that he was only ordering his life in a manner befitting the
head of so magnificent an establishment, for it is recorded that ten
times was the “Kloster” burnt down, and each successive destruction was
only made the occasion for rebuilding it more splendidly than before,
until “the very oxen of the community eat out of marble mangers.” It
is, perhaps, not surprising to find that this worthy was one of the
last of the abbots of Nieder-Altaich.
The winding river goes by village after village, with here and there
fresh ruins testifying to the past importance of the natural frontier
afforded by the Danube. Inland, on the left, is the old castle of
Hengersberg, said to have belonged to a mediæval St. Maurice, who
is not to be confused with the Theban Christian martyred with his
legion by the orders of that Cæsar whom he sought to serve. Where the
stream takes a short semi-circular bend to the south, a little way
inland, on a low hillside, is Osterhofen, which is described as one of
the oldest towns in Bavaria and the Castra Petrensia of the Romans,
where a notable victory was won over the long-victorious Avars, who,
introduced by Rome to Europe as allies, remained to be a standing
menace to the Roman power. These Avars, who seem finally to have merged
in the Huns, are described as at first appearing at Constantinople
with their long hair hanging in tresses down their backs, and the
description suggests that the gipsies to be met lower down the Danube
may be their descendants. The defeat of the Avars at Osterhofen is said
to have happened upon an Easter Sunday--in consequence of which the
town gained its present name and right to bear a paschal lamb as its
insignia. In the Oster-Wiese--or Easter Meadow--on which the battle
was won, that Duke Uttilo, who had founded the monasteries of Ober-
and Nieder-Altaich, is said to have erected yet another Benedictine
monastery--only to have it destroyed by the vengeance-seeking Avars in
765.
Bending north again from Osterhofen the river soon reaches Winzer,
with the ruins of a castle reduced to their present state by “the
whiskered Pandoors and the fierce hussars” of Maria Theresa in 1741.
At Hofkirchen, also on the left, we reach the ruined castle of another
of those families of robber barons who were a law unto themselves,
for Hofkirchen was the seat of the Counts of Ortenburg renowned as
the persistent enemies of the Counts of Bogen, whose ruined place
the Danube passed some distance to the west, and who were, as well,
a standing danger to those who went down the Danube in boats. The
quarrels between Bogen and Ortenburg were not of the kind of falling
out among thieves by which honest men come to their own, for the
Counts of Ortenburg seem, indeed, to have been some of the most
notorious of the powerful nobles who from their strongholds on the
Danube enforced the predatory laws which they themselves enacted. Among
their ingenuities, they devised or interpreted in their own fashion
the “right” of “grundwehr,” by which any vessel that grounded anywhere
within their domain became confiscated, with all its cargo and _crew_.
It had but to grate the sand or brush the shore, to touch in passing
any island bank or shoal, to be captured by the Count’s henchmen, who
were ever on the watch. It is even said that these same henchmen did
not scruple to chase any passing boat until they forced it to ground,
and so could establish a “rightful” claim to it and all it contained!
Well might Froissart say of the German barons of old “they are people
worse than Saracens or Paynims; for their excessive covetousness
quencheth the knowledge of honour.”
On the right bank, a little inland on the rising ground, where the
little Angerbach nears the Danube, is Kinzing or Künzing, another link
with the Rome of old; for in place of its present short name is said
to have been the earlier one of Castra Quintana or Augusta Quintanorum
Colonia. Here is said to have lived in the fifth century a hermit
saint, Severinus, though Gibbon makes that saint’s dwelling place
somewhere in Noricum, which was bounded on the west by the Inn and on
the east by the Save. He is one of the two saints of this name, and
is associated with the story of Odoacer, the first barbarian who was
ruler of Italy on the downfall of the Western empire. “After the death
of Odoacer’s father, a leader of the Scyrri and officer of Attila’s,
the youth,” says Gibbon, “led a wandering life among the barbarians
of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate
adventures; and when he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the
cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his
approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the
lofty stature of Odoacer: he was obliged to stoop; but in that humble
attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness;
and addressing him in a prophetic tone, ‘Pursue,’ said he ‘your design;
proceed to Italy; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins;
and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind.’”
Among the miracles associated with the name of this St. Severinus is
one that tells how in a time of flood he saved Kinzing from inundation
by planting a cross on the Danube bank--succeeding by holiness and
faith where mere pride, as in the case of Cnut, failed.
Another of the saint’s doings suggests that workers of miracles have
sometimes performed but thankless tasks. Severinus had a great friend
named Sylvin, and when Sylvin died, the body was laid in a little
wooden church outside the walls of the town. Severinus, going to the
church to mourn his friend, bethought to restore him to life, and the
miracle was duly performed--to the great annoyance of Sylvin, who
reproached the saint saying, “I beg of thee, I conjure thee, not to
rouse me from the rest which God has appointed for me! Why hast thou
awakened me? Why hast thou brought me back into a world into which I
never more wish to return?” Whether the saint had his way and Sylvin
lived on, or whether the _revenant_ was allowed to die again forthwith,
we are not told.
The right bank of the Danube now begins to take on the more variedly
picturesque beauty of the left as the ground becomes hillier.
Pleinting, a small town, is passed on the right bank--from which
point the railway from Ratisbon keeps closely along the river to
Passau--and a little beyond on the left are the picturesque ruins of
Hildegartsburg, “the hold of some robber knight, noble, or priest, of
the Middle Ages” destroyed by the Duke of Austria as long ago as the
middle of the fourteenth century. The next town, Vilshofen, which is on
the right bank disputes with Osterhofen the claim to be considered as
the Castra Quintana of the Romans. Here two streams the Vils and the
Wolfbach empty themselves into the Danube. Though there is low-lying
marshy land in the neighbourhood, the low hills from the south are
sensibly drawn in to meet those on the further bank and so to form
a beautiful stretch of the river. Vilshofen like so many other of
the places along the Danube, in the days when the making of history
largely followed the course of the great rivers, was the scene of
much fighting. It seems to have belonged to the Counts of Ortenburg,
and thus to have been assured of such a fate. Here, in the fourteenth
century, one Heinrich Tuschl founded a religious house for men. Having
discovered his wife to be unfaithful to him, he revenged himself, not
by any mere method of divorce, but by having her walled up alive; and
thereafter (it is not surprising to learn) he abjured the company and
shunned the sight of women. When he died he left his property to build
this place in Vilshofen and on the charter of it he wrote--
“Zwei Hund an ain Bain
Ich Tuschl bleib allain;”
or,
“Two dogs to one bone;
I, Tuschl, stand alone.”
The canons of the place he thus founded bore the word “allain” on their
arms, their clothes and their houses, and this, says Schultes, was
latinized as “Solus cum sola.” Beyond Vilshofen and on to Passau is
a lovely stretch of the river, with wooded hills on either side and
occasional villages. The swift stream, here broken up by submerged
rocks, “boils” and foams along in a manner that is seen again and again
on the journey. At points where the disturbance is more particularly
marked the hurrying waters receive some special name, until they
reach the most remarkable manifestation of their brokenness at the
world-famous Iron Gate. Below Vilshofen, near the village of Sandbach
the troubled waters are known as “the terrible Sandbach”; but as we
see boats passing these places--among them being ferry boats taken by
girls across the swirling waters--the terror is more in seeming than in
reality, when experience and care are employed in navigation. Indeed
the temerarious Englishmen who took out the “Water Lily” said that
they found nothing dreadful, nothing their shallow craft could not
negotiate with ordinary care. As their chronicler wrote of this stretch
of the river, which had been described to them as one of the bugbears
of the Danube: “On we went alone, and found that it was just what we
had expected, a most exceedingly dangerous place for a heavily laden
boat, but by no means so for our little cockle-shell, that only drew a
few inches of water; rocks were scattered about the bed of the river in
every direction, some above water, and some below; the white breakers
surrounded us on every side; we came rather unpleasantly near one, but
with steady pulling, careful steering, and quick obedience to the word
of command, we came safely through.”
Some way beyond “the terrible Sandbach” the road was cut more or less
through the very rock right along the river-side, and here is to be
seen another of the Danube memorials in the form of a couchant lion
on a pedestal placed upon a jutting rock above an inscription which
records that the road was made by order of Maximilian Joseph, the first
king of Bavaria. From near Heining--where a branch of the railway is
carried across the Danube, to the valley of the Ilz and the villages
of the Wald--the towers of Mariahilf by Passau may be seen, and soon
after the towers of Passau itself and the buildings on the high hills
on the left bank to the north of the town.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] A similar story belongs to Kent, for it is said that the devil,
wishing to destroy the city of Canterbury, took a great part of it up
intending to drop it in the sea, but just as he reached the shore, he
heard the ringing of the cathedral bell, and had to drop his load, and
so instead of destroying the city of Canterbury, he started the town of
Whitstable.
II
THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE