PASSAU TO LINZ
“Romance and History, hand in hand
Pass with us as we journey through the land
Where rocky heights with ruined castles crowned
Rise o’er the mighty stream.”
_From the German_
Though Passau is a Bavarian city, it may fittingly be taken as the
starting point of the Austrian Danube, because the frontier is but a
little way farther down-stream, and it is here that the navigation
of the Danube, so far as passengers are concerned, begins. It is a
fascinating and beautiful old city, beautifully and even fascinatingly
situated on a narrow, pointed peninsula formed by the confluence of the
Inn with the Danube, for it is here that the stream that rises in the
Engadine, after its long journey through the Tyrol and Upper Bavaria,
reaches the great river of which it is a tributary. It is only fitting
that it should be an attractive old town that is situated at such an
important meeting of the waters, and it seems only fitting, too, that
it should be a town of no inconsiderable importance both in history and
in legend. But Passau has also a third river, for immediately opposite
the tree-grown point of the peninsula the Ilz from the Böhmer Wald
comes in appropriately between well-wooded hills.
Passau itself, as has been said, is wonderfully situated on the long
tongue of land on either side of which the waters of the Danube and of
the Inn rush to their junction. The old town with its iron-shuttered
houses and shops, its beautiful “grilles,” its houses more or less
terraced upon the rising ground between the rivers, its narrow and
tortuous ways, is full of fascinating bits, and every short walk brings
us in sight of one or other of the rivers and their widely different
further banks. On the north is a steep, densely wooded hillside with
picturesque red-tiled buildings, and to the right, at the mouth of
the Ilz, is the small town of Ilzstad--a medley of gabled houses,
many chalet-like with their wooden balconies, and mostly painted or
weathered various soft tints of pink, mauve, green or yellow; above is
a simple church and the tree-grown hillside.
The wooded Georgsberg and Sturmberg on the north side offer many
attractive walks and, from the outlook tower above the group of
buildings known as the Oberhaus, a grand view. Two bridges--to which
a third is being added--connect the old town with this precipitous
hill, while another crosses the Inn. Across the latter river--here
nearly fifty yards wider than the Danube--which may well seem the more
important, are lower green hills with, on the bank, another “suburb” of
Passau named Innstadt, above which are to be seen the twin towers of
the Mariahilf Chapel.
Among the more notable of the “sights” which the city has to offer,
first mention should perhaps be made of the massive-looking cathedral
with its triple domes. Originally founded as early as the fifth
century, it has been several times rebuilt--twice after destruction by
fire. The central dome, choir and transept date from the fifteenth,
but the main portion from the seventeenth century. To the west of the
cathedral is the old Canon’s Residence, on the site of an earlier
building in which the Treaty of Passau was signed on 2 August, 1552;
by that treaty the Lutherans were to be permitted the free exercise
of their religion, so that the city of Passau occupies an important
place in the history of liberal opinion and freedom of conscience.
Yet it has also its memories of the terrors of intolerance; for in the
one-time palace of the bishops of Passau was a special dungeon in which
in the Middle Ages all Jews found in the town were incarcerated and
left to die of starvation, while other dungeons were later given over
to the merciless stamping out of the “Anabaptists.”
[Illustration: OBERHAUS AND NIEDERHAUS, PASSAU]
To the east of the cathedral is the handsome Bishop’s Palace with the
ornate Wittelsbach Fountain in front.
On the Danube side--near to where the steamers of the Donau
Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft start--stands the old Rathaus, with a
handsome modern clock-tower, within which the sight-seer may visit the
town museum and see a series of paintings by Herr F. Wagner depicting
scenes in the history of Passau. On the further side of the town
is a grand old cone-roofed tower--known as the Inn Tower or Powder
Tower--forming a picturesque feature in the river view.
Above the wooded side of the Danube’s left bank, the roofs and walls
of the barrack-like Oberhaus are visible, dating from the early part
of the thirteenth century, when it was built by a bishop as a fort
to keep the people of Passau in becoming awe. From this a wall shows
through the trees connecting it with the Niederhaus, a picturesque
red-roofed group of buildings on the bank at the point where the Ilz
runs into the Danube. The Oberhaus is a military prison, the Niederhaus
was presented by the grateful townsfolk of Passau to the Munich artist
Herr Wagner on the completion of his series of historical paintings in
the Rathaus. The journey up the Ilz to Hals and beyond is said to be
particularly beautiful. Innstadt, connected with Passau by a long iron
bridge--though the old Roman Boisdurum--is mostly a modern place owing
to its having been destroyed by fire during the Napoleonic wars. On the
hill above it, is the pilgrimage chapel of Mariahilf, to be reached
by a long flight of steps--up which I believe pilgrims used to journey
on their knees. The centre of the pilgrim’s interest is a “miraculous”
figure of the Virgin with the Infant Jesus at one breast, while from
the other, out of a little silver pipe, flowed water to which, not
unnaturally, the devout of old ascribed great virtues. From the top
of the steps is to be had a grand view of the town and its two great
rivers; but indeed every eminence near affords such views in pleasing
variety, and in each direction attractive excursions are to be made, so
that Passau is not only a delightful place with a mediæval atmosphere,
but a capital centre from which to make excursions into the Bayerischer
Wald and the Böhmer Wald.
Passau was the Castra Batava of the Romans, and here probably a town
has been ever since it was made a colony of Batavian veterans. For
many centuries the place belonged to the bishops of Passau, so that
the story of the city is largely a story of squabbles between the
citizens and their episcopal lords. And it was not only Passau to which
the bishops laid claim, but to a goodly extent of the surrounding
country--down-stream to beyond Linz and northwards far into the Wald.
Their princely rule over the dominions only came to an end in 1802.
It is said of one of these worthies that, despite his great revenues,
he got into much debt, while in his affected contempt for pomps and
vanities he had inscribed on the walls of his palace the line--
“O Welt! O böse Welt!”
(“O world! O evil world!”)
To this it is said one of his officers added--
“Wie übel verzehrst Du des Hochstifts Geld!”
(“How ill consumeth thou the Chapter’s gold!”)
Better it is to remember that bishop of Passau who, as uncle of
Kriemhilda, met her, entertained her and speeded her on the way to her
new kingdom. We saw that at Pförring the royal cavalcade from the Rhine
reached the Danube and the next verses of the “Lay of the Nibelungs”
tell how it reached Passau:
“Thence rode they swiftly forward down through Bavarian land
The people told the tidings of how a mickle band
Of unknown guests were coming, nigh where a cloister still
Doth stand, and where Inn river the Danube’s flood doth fill.
“Within the town of Passau there was a bishop’s see.
The hostels and the palace stood empty presently:
To meet the guests men hied them on to Bavarian ground,
Where Pilgerin the bishop the fair Kriemhilda found.
“The warriors of the country no whit displeased were
To see behind her coming so many ladies fair,
Their eyes upon these daughters of noble knights did rest,
Good lodging was provided for every noble guest.
“The bishop into Passau, his niece beside him, rode;
And when among the burghers the news was noised abroad
That coming was Kriemhilda, their prince’s sister’s child,
Right gladly was she welcomed by all the merchant guild.”
Not only does a bishop of Passau thus play his small part in the
wonderful epic of the Nibelungs, but to one of their number, it is
said, we owe it that the poem was ever written--that the legends on
which it was based were rescued from oblivion. Says Planché, “Pelegrin,
or Pilgerin, Bishop of Passau, who died in 991, collected the then
current legends of the Nibelungen, which he committed to writing in
the favourite Latin tongue, with the assistance of his scribe, Conrad,
whose name has occasioned the Swabian poems to be sometimes ascribed to
Conrad of Wurtzburg, who lived long after.” This reference to Bishop
Pelegrin as rescuer of the legends might seem curious, seeing that it
is a bishop of the same name, who, as uncle of Kriemhilda, welcomes
her to Passau in the poem; but it is thus explained by Mr. Edward
Bell in the introduction to the translation in Bonn’s Libraries,
from which the above passage is quoted:[6] “It is known that, at the
request of Bishop Pilgerin of Passau in the tenth century, the story
was translated into Latin prose by Conrad, called ‘the Scribe;’ and
to him is attributed the inclusion of the name of the said bishop as
that of an actor in events which, so far as they are historical, belong
to the fifth century.” Kriemhilda’s cavalcade we shall meet again on
the journey down the river, for her bishop uncle accompanied her the
greater part of the way onwards from Passau.
During the Thirty Years’ War a “spell” by means of which fainthearted
warriors secured themselves against sword and bullet, was associated
with Passau. The Passau spell is like that of some primitive peoples
who cure diseases by swallowing articles inscribed with magic words.
All the soldier who feared his fate too much had to do, was to swallow
a slip of paper containing certain potent sentences concluding: “Teufel
hilf mir; Leib und Seel geb ich dir” (Devil help me; body and soul
give I thee). The spell needed twenty-four hours of digestion before
becoming operative--the penalty being that if the swallower died within
those hours of disgrace, he went straight to the Devil whose aid he had
sought!
The dark waters of the Ilz, the “murky yellow” of the Inn, and the
“milky tint” of the Danube, are said to be recognizable some distance
after they have joined their streams in one, but such differentiation I
must confess I did not observe; certainly they combine to make a noble
stream where it sweeps past the closely wooded Klosterberg just below
the town, on the left bank. Most Danube travelers--other than those
with time and energy for walking--will from this point see the river
from the deck of one of the pleasantly appointed steamers of the Danube
Steamship Company, and looking backwards as the swift stream carries
the vessel to the bend which cuts the view from sight, they have a
fine general view of Passau and its surroundings. In the centre of the
picture are the roofs and towers of Passau, to the left the spires of
the chapel of Mariahilf above Innstadt, and to the right the Oberhaus
upon its tree-grown rocky height, and between the two rivers rushing to
form one.
Passau is, as has already been said, the starting place for the
passenger steamers of the Danube Steamship Navigation Company. From
here we may on these vessels--changing now and again into larger
boats as we proceed--journey the many hundred miles of waterway that
lie between here and the Black Sea. And very pleasant journeying it
is, the steamers being thoroughly well equipped and providing within
their necessarily circumscribed space, all the comforts of a good and
moderate hotel. I feel impelled to say this because readers of some
old books on Danube travel might fancy that conditions had not changed
since the authors of those books wrote their strong condemnations. In
a work published in 1854, on “Frontier Lands of the Christian and the
Turk,” the following emphatic words appear: “The Danube steamers are a
disgrace to Austria. Nothing could be worse than the manner in which
they are conducted. The want of civility towards strangers is most
offensive, the imposition of the stewards in their charges for food is
quite shameful, the irregularity and disorder in the arrangements on
board are exceedingly annoying, and the total contempt of cleanliness
everywhere visible is altogether disgusting.” To-day those words are
merely ridiculous. Every sentence should now be rewritten in the very
opposite sense. I journeyed on many of the steamers--the appointments
of which may well make Londoners wish that the Thames had a service
of steamers in any way comparable! The boats are, indeed, thoroughly
up-to-date; the cost of living in them is anything but extravagant, and
the standard of comfort excellent. They are as far removed from the
style described by the writer I have quoted, as our third-class railway
carriages are from the open trucks in which our grandparents journeyed
when railways were new.
It is interesting to learn that it was as early as 1819 that patent
rights were first granted for navigation of the Danube by steam
vessels, though little seems to have been done for ten years. Then in
1828, a new patent for fifteen years was granted to two Englishmen,
John Andrews and Joseph Pritchard, through whose energies the Danube
Steamship Company was formed. In 1830, the first steamer was put on
the river, and thenceforward the development was rapid. Four years
later the first steamer safely passed the Iron Gate and voyaged down
to Galatz. Now the Danube Steamship Company has an immense fleet of
passenger boats and tugs navigating the Danube from Ratisbon to Sulina,
as well as some of the chief tributaries of the great river; Hungary
has another fine river steamship service as well, and so also has
Rumania.
The coming of the steamers meant the passing of the old “ordinari” or
mixed passenger and merchandise boats which bygone travellers describe,
and we no longer see these cumbersome but picturesque craft with the
cabins like floating wooden huts, their many men at the oars, or long
oar-steering work, drifting mostly with the stream downwards and being
towed upwards--sometimes by a body of men and sometimes by large teams
of horses. The men who hired out these horses were known as “Jodelen”
and it is said that there would sometimes be as many as thirty or forty
horses drawing four or five boats fastened together. These “Jodelen”
are described as having had a superstition that some of their number
must every year be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Water, and as a
consequence when an accident occurred they would all scramble for the
drowning man’s hat but never think of “stretching a finger to save
him whom they look upon as a doomed and demanded victim.” Less than a
hundred years ago a traveller declared that he had seen five “Jodelen”
with their horses precipitated into the river, when their companions
hastily cut the ropes to prevent the rest of the team from following,
and drove on, leaving the poor wretches to their fate. The coming of
the steamers must, it may well be believed, have greatly lessened
the toll of life taken by the Danube, though when we see the timber
rafts floating down with three or four men at either end using their
great steering sweeps, and remember some of the places where the swift
current “boils” at the various rapids, we cannot help feeling that it
must be hazardous work.
Once round the bend to the left immediately below the beautiful old
city, and with the view of Passau cut off, we naturally look forwards,
and find that we are entering newly grand scenery, where both sides
of the river are high, rocky and pine-clad. Where the railway bridge
crosses the river, we pass, so far as the right bank is concerned, from
Bavaria into Austria. The left bank for some time yet continues to be
Bavarian.
As the river takes us through lovely scenery, past several tree-grown
islands, we get glimpses now and again of villages, but nothing to
call for special mention before the castle of Krämpelstein is seen on
the abrupt rocky cliff of the right bank, backed by pine woods. This
castle was long the property of the powerful bishops of Passau, who,
in virtue of its possession, took “toll from all passing boats.” Local
tradition gives it the name of “Schneiderschlössl” and, in various
forms, tells of an unhappy tailor who, in throwing a dead goat from
the building into the river, himself toppled over and was killed, his
mangled body being immediately swept away by the rapid current--and
that in the very presence of the Bishop of Passau, lord of the castle,
for whom he had just been engaged in cutting out a new suit. Soon it
came to be rumoured that it was no genuine goat that the tailor had
thrown over but the Devil himself, who had taken on the semblance of
a dead goat the easier to make a victim, and that directly the tailor
fell the supposed defunct quadruped was seen half flying, half running
up the precipitous rocks. As soon as this portentous news was made
known the bishop’s chaplain made the sign of the cross, and sprinkled
holy water down the face of the cliff--and, alive or dead, the goat was
seen no more. Pity for the poor tailor was soon turned into “serve him
right” for “early in the morning when the brocade was measured, it was
discovered that in cutting it out for the bishop’s robe, as already
stated, the crafty _schneider_ had cabbaged at least a third of the
precious material. All were amazed; and now the sudden destruction that
had overtaken the delinquent was no longer a mystery; for the goat, as
the chaplain clearly explained, had here acted the part both of judge
and executioner, and carried off the tailor in the very midst of his
wickedness. “And so will it ever happen,” he added, “to all who shall
attempt thus impiously and dishonestly to curtail the bishop either
in his robe or his revenue.” That same year, as it was afterwards
proved, the offerings made to the bishop at Krämpelstein, were nearly
doubled; rents and imposts were paid three days before they became
due; while the story of the “brocade” had so good an effect upon the
schneider-craft, that thenceforward little more than half the former
quantity of buckskin was found sufficient for the stoutest knight in
Bavaria.
The castle of this legend occupies a grandly picturesque position on
a jutting spur of rock, close neighboured by other pine-clad rocky
heights. From this beautiful point the river sweeps leftwards again,
and soon on the lower ground of the left side is seen the town of
Obernzell, the first “port of call,” backed by hills and trees. This
place has long been famous “all the world over” for its manufacture of
crucibles and for its graphite quarries. Beyond, the scenery becomes
again more mountainous. On the right is seen the village of Kasten, and
a little further the high-perched castle of Viechtenstein forms another
picturesque feature in the landscape, another reminder of the olden
times when all along the river powerful nobles had their strongholds.
Before the bishops of Passau got hold of it, the castle had belonged to
the Counts of Wassenburg--worthy fellows, it is said of those who ruled
at Bogen and elsewhere on the river. One of these Counts, on setting
out for the Crusades had pledged Viechtenstein to the Bishop of Passau
with the understanding that if the Count did not return the bishop
might at once take possession. The Count did return, however, and when
he died, left the castle to his widow. The bishop laid claim to it, and
sought to get possession, only to be defeated and taken prisoner. But
the episcopal voice was more powerful than the episcopal arms, and by
pronouncing a ban of excommunication against all who had withstood him,
the bishop not only succeeded in winning his freedom but the castle to
boot!
A little further down-stream, a rock, standing about thirty feet above
the stream and dividing the channel, takes the attention. This is the
Jochenstein, a natural boundary as it were; north of it is Bavaria,
south of it is Austria, and on either side of it the arms of these
countries were long since duly placed. From time to time, the Danube
water sprite Isa--“a harmless sister of the Lorelei of the Rhine”--is
said here to make her appearance.
A little below the Jochenstein, where the ruined tower of Ried shows
above the trees, and where a small stream the Dirndlbach, flows into
the Danube is the actual boundary; after passing which we have Austria
on either hand. Beyond the fact that it is said to have been destroyed
by the conquering Swedes in the seventeenth century, tradition seems to
have nothing to say of this old castle on the fir-clad hill; although
its name is supposed to be the only survival of an old tribe, the
Rheadarii, who inhabited the district. Just beyond, on the right, is
Engelhartzell, the first of the steamer stopping places in Austrian
territory, and the one-time seat of an old Cistercian monastery once
known as that of the Angels. The monastery has in modern times come to
be used as the residence of a noble family.
On between beautiful wooded hills the rapid river passes, the next
object to attract particular attention being the high-perched castle of
Ranariedl. This old castle, which has the distinction of being still
inhabited overlooks the delightful valley of the Ranna Bach which
here in mountainous haste reaches the Danube by the village of Nieder
Ranna. Though still inhabited, the castle saw its share of fighting
in the Middle Ages, when the powerful bishops of Passau and various
Counts successively struggled for its possession. Shortly beyond, and
again on the left, is another and similar hill-top castle--that of
Marsbach--with a similar story of disputed ownership. This, too, passed
into the hands of the bishops of Passau, not, however, before it had
been a bone of contention between father and son; for in the thirteenth
century, Ortulph of Marsbach was turned out by his son Otto and only
regained the place by paying his rebellious son, a sum “which so
reduced his finances that he was compelled to give up the castle after
all to Passau, in order to relieve himself from his difficulties.” Its
later history accords well with that of other lordly homes that we pass
on the banks of the river, for in the fifteenth century it was owned
by certain lords of Oberhaimer, who carried on such plundering ways as
their fellows did further up and lower down the stream.
With robber-nobles every few leagues along the Danube one may well
wonder, indeed, how any travellers or merchants ever got themselves or
their merchandise safely to the journey’s end. One of these grasping
Oberhaimers is said to have attacked the boat of one Valentine
Rottenburgher, a councillor of Steyr, and at one fell swoop to have
carried off booty amounting to seven hundred florins. In 1626--it
would be pleasant to believe as vengeance for such deeds as that
just mentioned--a peasant-leader named Spatt attacked the castle
successfully and put the garrison to the sword.
At Wesenufer is a huge wine-cellar--so huge that it is asserted that
a coach-and-four might be turned in it--said to have been hewn in the
living rock by the command of the Chapter of the cathedral of Passau,
and the story runs that in 1626 Duke Adolf von Holstein with several
thousand soldiers hurrying to the relief of some besieged place landed
here with disastrous results. His soldiers commandeered the contents
of the cellar and drank not wisely but too well, so that “the armed
peasantry, descending from the hills before daybreak, fell on the
fuddled Swabians, as they lay ‘somno vinoque sepulti,’ and slaughtered
the greater part of them. The Duke himself narrowly escaped in his
doublet, and with the loss of all his property.”
The beautiful river becomes more impressively beautiful as it passes
on here through some of the most remarkable of its tortuous windings,
which continue from a little beyond Marsbach to Aschach. This, the
Schlägen, is indeed generally acknowledged to afford the grandest
series of varied views between Passau and Linz. Before the river takes
its first abrupt turn round the precipitous mountain on the left, the
ruin on the summit of that mountain stands sentinel as it were over
the entrance to the serpentine defile. This is the remains of another
robber-knight’s stronghold, known as Haichenbach to which the vague
tradition attaches of an owner in the thirteenth century who, having
slain his brother, retired here to end his days in solitude relieved
only by the presence of his daughter. The castle was reduced to its
present state by the Emperor Maximilian the First.
A little way beyond, and the Danube whirls and swirls round the long
jutting mountain on which the ruin stands, and so far “doubles in its
tracks” that soon Haichenbach again comes in sight. The Schlägen, with
its ever-rushing flood of water, its rocky sides now precipitous, now
broken and pinnacled, now bare and craggy, now grown with fir and other
trees, offers a succession of impressive scenes before which “the
grandest views upon the Rhine sink into insignificance.”
Planché, taking a passage from Burke’s famous essay, suggests that
where the Rhine stands for the beautiful the Danube represents the
sublime. As one knowing little more of the Rhine than can be seen
from the railway, I am scarcely qualified to make any comparison; but
I should wish to amend Planché’s finding so as to credit the Danube
with beauty as well as sublimity, for it assuredly has both. “From
Mayence to Cologne there is scarcely one mile of uninterrupted wild
scenery; and even if there were, the charm would be broken by some
pert galley, with its white awning and gaudy flag, some lumbering
Dutch beurtschiff, or, worse than all, the monstrous anachronism of
a steamboat, splashing, spluttering and fuming along at the rate of
twelve miles an hour.[7] The mouldering towers that totter upon the
crags of the Danube, on the contrary, are surrounded by scenery rude
as the times in which they were reared, and savage as the warriors who
dwelt in them. Nothing seems changed but themselves. The solitary boat
that now and then glides by them, is of the same fashion as that on
which their marauding masters sallied down, perhaps three hundred years
ago. The humble cottages that here and there peep through the eternal
firs, and the church that rears its dusky spire upon some neighbouring
hill, are of the same age. The costume of the poor straggling fishermen
and woodcutters around them is scarcely altered; and, indeed, one
cannot look upon their own walls, blackened by fire and crumbling in
the blast, without conjuring up the form of their ancient lord newly
returned from Palestine, and finding his mountain-fastness burnt
and pillaged by some neighbouring knight or prelate, with whom he
was at feud, and on whom he now stands meditating swift and bloody
retribution. For hours and hours the traveller may wind through these
rocky defiles without meeting one object to scare the spirit of
romance, which rises here in all her gloomy grandeur before him.”
The sentimentalist who needed gloomy grandeur as a necessary setting
for romance went on to say that he would almost weep to see a post road
cut beside the lonely Schlägen, or a steamboat floundering and smoking
through the Strudel and the Wirbel. There is as yet no post road along
the Schlägen--there is little likely to be, it may well be thought--but
daily steamers “flounder and smoke” through the lovely scenery of the
Strudel and Wirbel.
Schlägen is the name of the village on the right bank where the first
turn of the river sweeps round Haichenbach’s rocky ridge, into the
“gloomy defile” where the precipitous cliffs rise in some places as
much as a thousand feet above the river, here greatly contracted in
width. Says the chronicler of the adventurous boat journey: “on turning
the sharp corner of Schlägen, where the river almost runs back in the
contrary direction to that which it did immediately before, we found
ourselves in the most imposing part of this splendid pass, the hills
on each [side] rising nearly one thousand feet from the water’s edge;
the water was boiling and seething as if over a fire, which imparted
a motion to our boat, somewhat like that which one feels when sitting
in the back seat of a dog-cart, with the horse galloping; which is
a peculiar sensation, I assure you, fair reader, and if you have a
brother and he has such a vehicle, make him take you a turn in that
fashion, and you will understand how we felt as we swung round the
rocky corners of the confined and tortuous defile.” The journey is less
exciting, but no less memorable, taken on a steamer to-day.
After passing the northern side of the ridge on which Haichenbach
stands the Danube swerves again almost as sharply round the rocky cliff
of the right bank--the sinuosities of its course are so complicated,
that within the space of twelve or fifteen miles it flows towards all
the four points of the compass, only to bend again to the right as it
nears the pleasant village of Ober Mühl at the foot of a hill where the
Kleine Mühlbach flows in from the mountains. Again it sweeps round a
kind of peninsula-point to the left, and so past Unter Mühl to a sight
of Neuhaus, high on its almost perpendicular rock. This is also known
as the Schloss Schaumburg from the name of the Counts who once owned
it, but who lost it to Austria.
When the Turks invaded Hungary and threatened Austria this castle
was utilized as an asylum of refuge for women and children. In 1626
during the Peasants’ Revolt the insurgents got possession of Neuhaus,
imprisoning the Countess-owner in the castle, and drew great chains
across the river to intercept all boats and stop supplies from reaching
Linz; but even cables of twenty pounds to a link failed, for the
Bavarian boats broke through them. Beyond this old rocky stronghold the
hills rapidly decrease in height as we near, on the right, Aschach,
which was the headquarters of the Peasants’ Revolt. This is a pleasant
little town stretching along the river bank close to the commencement
of the flat stretch of country through which the river now passes for
some miles. The not very lofty Pöstlingberg, ten miles away by Linz,
can be seen from here.
The story of this little town is the story of a succession of warlike
troubles. In 1626 it was captured and plundered by the revolted
peasantry, and again in another rising half a dozen years later. A
century ago, too, the town is said to have suffered greatly from friend
and foe alike in the Napoleonic wars. In the tenth century the Duke of
Bavaria gave the monks of Krems-Münster certain vineyards at Aschach,
and the town long had the reputation of being the most easterly point
on the Danube for wine-growing. “The wine made in its neighbourhood
is remarkable only for its badness, and is the standing joke of the
inhabitants themselves; we must suppose, therefore, that it has either
sadly degenerated since Thassilo made the vineyards a present to his
friends at Krems-Münster, or that the fraternity were in want of an
immediate supply of vinegar.”
Behind is an extensive castle of the Schaumburgs, with a lofty tower,
the chief seat of a powerful family at once dreaded and courted by
neighbouring rulers. Tradition says that the river once ran by the
walls of the castle, and also that it played a tragic part in the fate
of one of the Counts, who, though invincible in battle or tournament,
could not resist the charms of a fair maiden, “armed at both eyes,”
the daughter of a miller in the valley of Aschach. One night as he
was riding to a rendezvous with her, his horse started at the sudden
appearance of a fiery dragon that rushed out of a thicket before him,
and plunged with his master over a precipice into the swollen torrent
below; the first objects that met the unfortunate maiden’s sight when
she opened her casement in the morning, were the floating corses of her
noble lover and his favourite steed. A stone pillar near a brook in the
valley before the castle duly commemorated the tragic incident.
Below Aschach the river widens out and branches about around
innumerable wooded islands and islets which cut off the view across the
flat wide valley, though the mountains in the distance are still at
times to be glimpsed. Just below the town where the Aschach Bach comes
in behind a long island, are the ruins of Stauf, an old castle of the
Counts of Staumberg--its picturesque white tower backed by the green
hills. On a clear day, too, from this southward turn of the Danube
may be had a glimpse of the far Styrian Alps. For some distance the
journeyer along the Danube has the view cut off by the many islands
formed by the branches of the river. A number of villages are passed on
either side. To the south is Efferding where Kriemhilda rested on her
journey from Passau, and where, in 1626, Count Pappenheim inflicted a
crushing defeat on the insurrectionary peasants--of whom he is said to
have slain 40,000 in putting down the revolt. “It was,” he declared,
“as if my cavalry had to combat the massive rocks; for these peasants
fought not like men, but like infernal furies!” The peasants, it should
be said, fought for that freedom to exercise their Protestant religion
which had been granted at Passau three-quarters of a century earlier.
In this defeat at Efferding the leader of the peasants, a hatter named
Stephen Fidinger, was slain; and subsequently his body was taken from
the grave and gibbeted as a warning to those of his followers who still
stubbornly resisted. Some distance inland on the left, on a rocky spur,
is the castle of Freudenstein. But nothing much that is noteworthy is
visible beyond the labyrinth of willow-grown islands through which the
river finds its way.
Approaching hillier country as it nears Linz, the Danube trends
again to the north-east, and Ottensheim is seen on the left with its
handsome chateau rising from among a leafy mass of trees and forming a
picturesque “bit.” The town was mostly destroyed by fire about a dozen
years ago. A little further along on the right is Kloster Wilhering
with an extensive and once widely powerful Cistercian Abbey founded
in the twelfth century, but the present buildings were erected in the
eighteenth. It is backed by the Kirnbergwald--the pines of which are
seen for most of the rest of the journey to Linz. Here the river enters
a beautiful valley with varied woodland-grown hills on either side,
with the high Pöstlingberg crowned with its pilgrimage church showing
ahead. Beyond Buchenau, with its compact church on the left, is seen on
the right the Kalvarienberg, or Mount Calvary, the little chapels and
crucifix of which together offer a place of pilgrimage for the citizens
of Linz. With its falling waters, its craggy rocks and pine trees, it
forms a pleasantly picturesque spot. From Ottensheim to Linz, it may be
added, the railway keeps closely along the left bank. By wooded hills,
the high Pöstlingberg on the left, and the lower yet steeply impressive
height, close-grown with fir, on the right, the river reaches Linz on
the right bank, having Urfahr on the opposite side, with which it is
connected by an ugly lattice iron bridge, over nine hundred feet in
length.
Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, is a clean, prosperous-looking
town, the straight lines of its buildings contrasting strongly with
the delightful irregularity of Passau; and its air of modernity
gives no suggestion that as Lentia it was one of the Roman stations
on the Danube. Possibly when the Huns destroyed it they did so with
thoroughness. At the western end of the broad valley through which
the river continues for many miles, and backed by the hills, Linz is
picturesquely situated, though it is necessary to climb the hills to
appreciate this properly. There are a number of churches, a handsome
museum, and other fine buildings, but the town itself does not claim
long attention, except as an admirable centre for beautiful excursions
on both sides of the river. The fine Franz Joseph Platz is seen at
its best when, crowded with the stalls and carts of market time, it
presents a lively and picturesque scene. The Trinity Column in the
centre of it was erected early in the eighteenth century to commemorate
the deliverance of the town from two scourges--the Turks and the
plague. Pestilence in the olden times seems, indeed, to have been so
constant a menace to many of these towns that it is matter for wonder
that people were left to take part in the no less constant warfare.
Looking up-stream from the bridge, we have a view reminiscent of the
Highlands of Scotland, the rocky hill rising from the water, dark with
its close-grown trees is surmounted by the Franz Joseph Watch-tower,
an observation point from which grand views are to be had both up
and down the river. There are other fine views from different parts
of this hill, if the watch tower is approached from the town by way
of the Freinberg, but the most delightful way of reaching the tower
is by following the Danube-side road and taking the steep path up
through the woodland, or from the Kalvarienberg. _The_ view-point of
the neighbourhood, however, is the summit of the Pöstlingberg on
the north side of the river, which may be reached by tramway from
Linz, and thence by the mountain railway which ascends the berg from
Urfahr. For the lover of fine prospects--and we do not know a tract of
country properly unless we can now and again get some approximation
to a bird’s-eye view--the outlook from the Pöstlingberg is one of the
grandest along the Danube--
“Afar the Salzburg and the Styrian Alps
In forms gigantic rear their frozen scalps:
And there the rugged Trauntstein loves to throw
His mingling shadows o’er the lake below.
While mountain, river, forest, field proclaim
A glorious landscape in a magic frame.”
Whether as ancient Lentia when it was destroyed by the conquering
Huns, or as modern Linz, the town has seen more than its share of
warlike trouble. Again and again it was besieged during the disturbed
Middle Ages. Its great benefactor was the Emperor Frederick the
Third, who when it was rebuilt after a disastrous fire, made it, in
1490, the capital of Upper Austria. Here, three years later, after
a reign of more than half a century he died, having--at the age of
seventy-eight--to suffer amputation of the leg. The story told of
him suggests that he must have been a vigorous old man, for it is
said that, taking the severed limb in his hand, he remarked: “What
difference is there between an emperor and a peasant? or, rather, is
not a sound peasant better than a sick emperor? Yet I hope to enjoy
the greatest good which can happen to man: a happy exit from this
transitory life.” In the Napoleonic wars Linz suffered greatly, being
thrice within a decade one of the storm centres. In 1805, during his
rapid advance on Vienna, Napoleon made this town his headquarters.
To turn from warfare to more peaceful matters--for the full story of
Danubian warfare would make a volume by itself larger than this--it is
interesting to find that John Kepler, one of the founders of modern
astronomy, lived here for some years, and here married in 1613, a
portionless orphan named Susanna Reutlinger. In a letter to a friend,
Kepler reviewed the various qualifications of no fewer than eleven
“candidates for his hand,” and explained the reasons that decided him
in his choice. It seems so curiously unromantic a beginning, that it is
pleasant to learn from the astronomer’s biographers that the marriage
turned out well. We get a glimpse of the scientist at home in a letter
which Sir Henry Wotton wrote to Francis Bacon in 1620:--
“For a beginning let me tell your Lordship a pretty thing which I saw
coming down the Danuby, though more remarkable for the application
than for the theory. I lay a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the
higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken
by the Duke of Bavaria, who, _blandiente fortuna_, has gone on to the
late effects. There I found Kepler, a man famous in the sciences, as
your Lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence [Vienna]
one of your books, that he may see that we have some of our own that
can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his _Harmonica_. In
this man’s study I was much taken with the draft of a landscape on a
piece of paper, methought masterly done: whereof inquiring the author,
he bewrayed with a smile it was himself; adding, he had done it, _non
tanquam pictor, sed tanquam mathematicus_. This set me on fire. At
last he told me how. He hath a little black tent (of what stuff is not
much importing) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field,
and it is convertible (like a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure,
capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no
great ease; exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch
and a half in diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk,
with a convex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out
at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected
tent, through which the visible radiations of all the objects without
are intromitted, falling upon a paper which is accommodated to receive
them: and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance,
turning his little tent round by degrees, till he hath designed the
whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your Lordship,
because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography: for
otherwise to make landscapes of it were illiberal, though surely no
painter can do them precisely.” The thing upon which Wotton dilated was
the camera obscura of which he had evidently not heard before, though
it had been described sixty years earlier by Baptista Porta, to whom
the invention is sometimes attributed.
Though I did not notice that the womenfolk of other places along the
Danube were, speaking generally, less beautiful than those of Linz,
it should perhaps be mentioned that most writers about the town draw
attention to the beauty of the Linz women, or at least to their
being long celebrated for beauty. One writer goes so far as to say
that transcendentally beautiful women are so carefully guarded from
the public eye that a month may be spent in the town by the most
susceptible tourist without his “seeing a face that could endanger
his peace. Poets nevertheless,” continues the same writer after that
ungallant assertion, “have caught much inspiration on the spot and
found a prolific theme in the fair maids of Linz, and tourists under
the old regime have lent their willing aid in propagating their fame.
The annexed ballad relates the fate of one, who, in her day, was the
“pride of Linz.”
“Her cheek was bright, her eye was blue,
Her smile inspired such nameless rapture,
That not a swain who met her view
But she could fascinate and capture.
By men of war and men of fame,--
By ‘stars and medals’ she was courted:
But still the fair and cruel dame
With all their wounds and sorrows sported;
For her the soldiers fought and swore,
The statesman lied, the lawyer cheated;
And bards their rhymes in anguish tore,
To find their schemes were so defeated!--
But years flew by--the homage ceased;
And now with age and sorrow laden,
In cloister weeds she tells her beads--
Alas! for Linz’s fairest maiden!”
The moral seems to be that in affairs of the heart there is safety in
one rather than in numbers.
Before leaving Linz it may be as well to recall a very clever acrostic
which I am told Mr. H. R. Lewis wrote in a visitors’ book when visiting
the town about a quarter of a century ago. It ran thus:--
“Mit ein-und-fünfzig fängt es an
Nach tausend Kommst das nächste;
Und, kennst Du wohl Dein alphabet
So findest Du das letzte.”
This may be roughly Englished as follows:--
“First one-and-fifty [LI], then the next
A thousand is just past [N];
And, if you know your alphabet,
At once you find the last [Z].”
It is rarely indeed that the entries made in visitors’ books--shrines
in which inky offerings to the belly-gods are mostly inscribed--are
quite as happy as this.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] “The Lay of the Nibelungs.” Metrically translated from the old
German text by Alice Horton, and edited by Edward Bell, M.A., 1898.
[7] Planché journeyed down the Danube in 1827; three years later the
first of his “monstrous anachronisms” was plying on it!