IN GERMANISED ALSACE.
Who would quit Alsace without a pilgrimage to Saverne and the country
home in which Edmond About wrote his most delightful pages and in which
he dispensed such princely hospitality? The author of “Le Fellah “ was
forced to forsake his beloved retreat after the events of 1870-1; the
experiences of this awful time are given in his volume “Alsace,” and
dedicated to his son--_pour qu’il se souvienne_--in order that he might
remember. Here also as under that Lorraine roof I felt myself in France.
At the time of my visit the property was for sale. French people,
however, are loth to purchase estates in the country they may be said
to inhabit on sufferance, while rich Germans prefer to build palatial
villas within the triple fortifications and thirteen newly constructed
forts which are supposed to render Strasburg impregnable.
The railway takes us from Strasburg in an hour to the picturesque old
town of Saverne, beautifully placed above the Zorn. Turning our backs
upon the one long street winding upwards to the château, we follow a
road leading into the farthermost recesses of the valley, from which
rise on either side the wooded spurs of the lower Vosges. Here in
a natural _cul-de-sac_, wedged in between pine-clad slopes, is as
delightful a retreat as genius or a literary worker could desire. On the
superb September day of my visit the place looked its best, and warm
was the welcome we received from the occupiers, a cultivated and
distinguished French Protestant family, formerly living at Srasburg, but
since the events of 1870-1 removed to Nancy. They hired this beautiful
place from year to year, merely spending a few weeks here during the
Long Vacation. The intellectual atmosphere still recalled bygone days,
when Edmond About used to gather round him literary brethren, alike
French and foreign. Pleasant it was to find here English-speaking,
England-loving, French people. Nothing can be simpler than the house
itself, in spite of its somewhat pretentious tower of which About wrote
so fondly. His study is a small, low-pitched room, not too well lighted,
but having a lovely outlook; beyond, the long, narrow gardens, fruit,
flower and vegetable, one leading out of another, rising pine woods and
the lofty peaks of the Vosges. So remote is this spot that wild deer
venture into the gardens, whilst squirrels make themselves at home
close to the house doors. Our host gave me much information about the
peasants. Although not nearly so prosperous as before the annexation,
they are doing fairly well. Some, indeed, are well off, possessing
capital to the amount of several thousand pounds, whilst a millionaire,
that is, the possessor of a million francs or forty thousand pounds, is
found here and there. The severance from France entailed, however, one
enormous loss on the farmer. This was the withdrawal of tobacco culture,
a monopoly of the French State which afforded maximum profits to the
cultivator. With regard to the indebtedness of the peasant-owner, my
informant said that it certainly existed, but not to any great extent,
usury having been prohibited by the local Reichstag a few years before.
Again I found myself among French surroundings, French traditions,
French speech. Let me add, however, that I heard none of the passionate
regrets, recriminations, and wishes that had constantly fallen on my
ears ten years before. One prayer, and one only, seems in every heart,
on every lip, “Peace, peace--only let us have peace!” It must be borne
in mind that 20,000 French Alsatians quitted Strasburg alone, and that
those of the better classes who were unable to emigrate sent their young
sons across the frontier before the age of seventeen. Thus, by a gradual
process, the French element is being eliminated from the towns, whilst
in the country annexation came in a very different guise.
This will be seen from the account of another excursion made with French
friends living in Strasburg.
It is a beautiful drive to Blaesheim, southwest of the city, in a direct
line with the Vosges and Oberlin’s country. We pass the enormous public
slaughterhouses and interminable lines of brand-new barracks, then under
one of the twelve stone gates with double portals that now protect the
city, leaving behind us the tremendous earthworks and powder magazines,
and are soon in the open plain. This vast plain is fertile and well
cultivated. On either side we see narrow, ribbon-like strips of maize,
potatoes, clover, hops, beetroot, and hemp. There are no apparent
boundaries of the various properties and no trees or houses to break
the uniformity. The farm-houses and premises, as in the Pyrenees, are
grouped together, forming the prettiest, neatest villages imaginable.
Entzheim is one of these. The broad, clean street, the large
white-washed timber houses, with projecting porches and roofs, may stand
for a type of the Alsatian “Dorf.” The houses are white-washed outside
once a year, the mahogany-coloured rafters, placed crosswise, forming
effective ornamentation. No manure heaps before the door are seen
here, as in Brittany, all is clean and sightly. We meet numbers of
pedestrians, the women mostly wearing the Alsatian head-dress, an
enormous bow of broad black ribbon with long ends, worn fan-like on
the head, and lending an air of great severity. The remainder of the
costume--short blue or red skirt (the colours distinguishing Protestant
and Catholic), gay kerchief, and apron--have all but vanished. As
we approach our destination the outlines of the Vosges become more
distinct, and the plain is broken by sloping vineyards and fir woods.
We see no labourers afield, and, with one exception, no cattle. It is
strange how often cattle are cooped up in pastoral regions. The farming
here is on the old plan, and milch cows are stabled from January to
December, only being taken out to water. Agricultural machinery and new
methods are penetrating these villages at a snail’s pace. The division
of property is excessive. There are no lease-holds, and every farmer,
alike on a small or large scale, is an owner.
Two classes in Alsace have been partly won over to the German rule; one
is that of the Protestant clergy, the other that of the peasants.
The Third Empire persistently snubbed its Protestant subjects, then,
as at the time of the Revocation, numbering many most distinguished
citizens. No attempts, moreover, were made to Gallicise the
German-speaking population of the Rhine provinces. Thus the wrench was
much less felt here than in Catholic, French-speaking Lorraine. Higher
stipends, good dwelling-houses and schools, have done much to soften
annexation to the clergy. An afternoon “at home” in a country parsonage
a few miles from Strasburg, reminded me of similar functions in an
English rectory.
At the parsonage of Blaesheim we were warmly welcomed by friends, and
in their pretty garden found a group of ladies and gentlemen playing at
croquet, among them two nice-looking girls wearing the Alsatian _coiffe_
that enormous construction of black ribbon just mentioned. These young
ladies were daughters of the village mayor, a rich peasant, and had been
educated in Switzerland, speaking French correctly and fluently. Many
daughters of wealthy peasants marry civilians at Strasburg, when they
for once and for all cast off the last feature of traditional costume.
After a little chat, and being bidden to return to tea in half an hour,
we visited some other old acquaintances of my friends, a worthy peasant
family residing close by. Here also a surprise was in store for me. The
head of the house and his wife--both far advanced in the sixties and
who might have walked out of one of Erckman-Chatrian’s novels--could not
speak a word of French, although throughout the best part of their lives
they had been French subjects!
Admirable types they were, but by no means given to sentiment or
romance. The good man assured me in his quaint patois that he did not
mind whether he was French, German, or, for the matter of that, English,
so long as he could get along comfortably and peacefully! He added,
however, that under the former _régime_ taxes had been much lower and
farming much more profitable. The good folk brought out bread and wine,
and we toasted each other in right hearty fashion. Over the sideboard
of their clean, well-furnished sitting room hung a small photograph of
William II. On our return to our first host we found a sumptuous five
o’clock tea prepared for the ladies, whilst more solid refreshments
awaited the gentlemen in the garden.
Even in a remote corner of Alsace, memorialized by Germany’s greatest
poet, we find pathetic clinging to France.
Everyone has read the story of Goethe and Frederika, how the great poet,
then a student at the Strasburg University, was taken by a comrade to
the simple parsonage of Sesenheim, how the artless daughter of the house
with her sweet Alsatian songs, enchanted the brilliant youth, how he
found himself, as he tells us in his autobiography, suddenly in the
immortal family of the Vicar of Wakefield. “And here comes Moses too!”
cried Goethe, as Frederika’s brother appeared. That accidental visit has
in turn immortalised Sesenheim. The place breathes of Frederika. It has
become a shrine dedicated to pure, girlish love.
A new line of railway takes us from Strasburg in about an hour over the
flat, monotonous stretch of country, so slowly crossed by diligence in
Goethe’s time. The appearance of the city from this side--the French
side--is truly awful: we see fortification after fortification, with
vast powder magazines at intervals, on the outer earthworks bristling
rows of cannon, beyond, several of the thirteen forts constructed since
the war. The bright greenery of the turf covering these earthworks does
not detract from their dreadful appearance. Past the vast workshops
and stores of the railway station--a small town in itself--past market
gardens, hop gardens, hayfields, beech-woods, all drenched with a
week of rain, past old-world villages, the railway runs to Sesenheim,
alongside the high road familiar to Goethe. We alight at the neat,
clean, trim station (in the matter of cleanliness the new _regime_ bears
the palm over the old), and take the flooded road to the village. An
old, bent, wrinkled peasant woman, speaking French, directs us for full
information about Frédérique--thus is the name written in French--to the
auberge. First, with no little interest and pride, she unhooks from
her own wall a framed picture, containing portraits of Goethe, and
Frederika, and drawings of church and parsonage as they were. The former
has been restored and the latter wholly rebuilt.
As we make our way to the little inn over against these, we pass a
new handsome communal school in course of erection. On questioning two
children in French, they shake their heads and pass on. The thought
naturally arises--did the various French Governments, throughout the
period of a hundred and odd years ending in 1870, do much in the way of
assimilating the German population of Alsace?
It would not seem so, seeing that up till the Franco-Prussian war the
country folk retained their German speech, or at least patois. Under
the present rule only German is taught in communal schools, and in
the gymnasiums or lycées, two hours a week only being allowed for the
teaching of French. At the Auberge du Bouf, over against the church and
parsonage, we chat with the master in French about Goethe and Frederika;
his womankind, however, only spoke patois. Here, nevertheless, we find
French hearts, French sympathies, and occasionally French gaiety.
Unidyllic, yet full of instruction, is the drive in the opposite
direction to Kehl. We are here approaching friendly frontiers, yet the
aspect is hardly less dreadful. True that cannon do not bristle on the
outer line of the triple fortifications; otherwise the state of things
is similar. We see lines of vast powder magazines, enormous barracks
of recent construction, preparations for defence, on a scale altogether
inconceivable and indescribable. Little wonder that meat is a shilling
a pound, instead of fourpence as before the annexation, that bread has
doubled in price, taxation also, and, to make matters worse, that trade
has remained persistently dull!
A tremendous triple-arched, stone gate, guarded by sentinels, has been
erected on this side of the lower Rhine, over against the Duchy of
Baden. No sooner are we through than our hearts are rejoiced with signs
of peace and innocent enjoyment, restaurants and coffee gardens, family
groups resting under the trees. Beyond, flowing briskly amid wooded
banks to right and left, is the Rhine, a glorious sight, compensating
for so many that have just given us the heartache.
Of Strasburg I will say little. Full descriptions of the new city, for
such an expression is no figure of speech, are given in the English,
French, and German guide books. The first care of the German Government
after coming into possession was to repair the havoc caused by the
bombardment, the rebuilding of public buildings, monuments and streets
that had been partially or entirely destroyed in 1871. Among these were
the Museum and Public Library, the Protestant church, several orphanages
and hospitals, lastly, incredible as it may seem, the beautiful
octagonal tower of the Cathedral. The incidents of this vandalism have
just been graphically described in the new volume of the brothers’
Margueritte prose epic, dealing with the Franco-Prussian War, entitled
“Les Braves Gens.”
I remember writing on the occasion of my first visit to Strasburg, a few
years after these events--“There is very little to see at Strasburg now.
The Library with its priceless treasures of books and manuscripts, the
Museum of painting and sculpture, rich in _chefs d’oeuvre_ of the French
school, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de
Justice, were all completely destroyed by the Prussian bombardment,
not to speak of buildings of lesser importance, four hundred private
dwellings, and hundreds of civilians killed and wounded by the shells.
Nor was the cathedral spared, and would doubtless have perished
altogether also but for the enforced surrender of the heroic city.”
Since that sad time a new Strasburg has sprung up, of which the
University is the central feature. A thousand students now frequent this
great school of learning, the professorial staff numbering a hundred.
One noteworthy point is the excessive cheapness of a learned or
scientific education. Autocratic Prussia emulates democratic France.
I was assured by an Alsatian who had graduated here that a year’s fees
need not exceed ten pounds! Students board and lodge themselves outside
the University, and, of course, as economically as they please. They
consist chiefly of Germans, for sons of French parents of the middle and
upper ranks are sent over the frontier before the age of seventeen in
order to evade the German military service. They thus exile themselves
for ever. This cruel severance of family ties is, as I have said, one
of the saddest effects of annexation. Without and within, the group
of buildings forming the University is of great splendour. Alike
architecture and decoration are on a costly scale; the vast corridors
with tesselated marble floors, marble columns, domes covered with
frescoes, statuary, stained glass, and gilded panels, must impress the
mind of the poorer students. Less agreeable is the reflection of the
taxpayer. This new Imperial quarter represents millions of marks, whilst
the defences of Strasburg alone represent many millions more. One of
the five facultés is devoted to Natural Science. The Museum of Natural
History, the mineralogical collections, and the chemical laboratories
have each their separate building, whilst at the extreme end of the
University gardens is the handsome new observatory, with covered way
leading to the equally handsome residence of the astronomer in charge.
Thus the learned star-gazer can reach his telescope under cover in
wintry weather. In addition to the University library described above,
the various class-rooms have each small separate libraries, sections
of history, literature, etc., on which the students can immediately lay
their hands. All the buildings are heated with gas or water.
Just beyond these precincts we come upon a striking contrast--row after
row of brand-new barracks, military bakeries, foundries, and stores;
piles of cannon balls, powder magazines, war material, one would
think, sufficient to blow up all Europe. Incongruous indeed is
this juxtaposition of a noble seat of learning and militarism only
commensurate with barbaric times. A good way off is the School of
Medicine. This, indeed, owes little or nothing to the new régime, having
been founded by the French Government long before 1870. It is a vast
group of buildings, one of which can only be glanced at with a shudder.
My friend pointed out to me an annexe or “vivisection department.” Here,
as he expressed it, is maintained quite a menagerie of unhappy animals
destined for the tortures of the vivisector’s knife. The very thought
sickened me, and I was glad to give up sight-seeing and drop in for
half-an-hour’s chat with a charming old lady, French to the backbone,
living under the mighty shadow of the Cathedral. She entertained me with
her experiences during the bombardment, when cooped up with a hundred
persons, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, all passing fifteen days in a
dark, damp cellar. Many horrible stories she related, but somehow
they seemed less horrible than the thought of tame, timid, and even
affectionate and intelligent creatures, slowly and deliberately tortured
to death, for the sake, forsooth, of what? Of this corporeal frame
man himself has done his best to vitiate and dishonour, mere clayey
envelope--so theologians tell us--of an immortal soul!
Strasburg, like Metz, is one vast camp, at the time of this second
visit the forty thousand soldiers in garrison here were away for the
manoeuvres. In another week or two the town would swarm with them.
I will now say a few words about the administration of the annexed
provinces, a subject on which exists much misapprehension.
As I have explained, no liberty, as we understand it, exists for the
French subjects of the German Emperor, neither freedom of speech, nor of
the press, nor of public meeting are enjoyed in Alsace and the portion
of Lorraine no longer French. A rigorous censorship of books as well
as newspapers is carried on. Even religious worship is under perpetual
surveillance. One by one French pastors and priests are supplanted
by their German brethren. A much respected pastor of Mulhouse, long
resident in that city and ardently French, told me some years ago that
he expected to be the last of his countrymen permitted to officiate.
Police officers wearing plain clothes attend the churches in which
French is still permitted on Sunday. There is nothing that can be called
representative or real parliamentary government. The Stadtholder or
Governor is in reality a dictator armed with autocratic powers. He
can, at a moment’s notice, expel citizens, or stop newspapers. As to
administration, it rests in the hands of the State Secretariat or body
of Ministers, three in number. There is a pretence at home rule, but
one fact suffices to explain its character and working. Of the thirty
members forming the local Reichstag, sitting at Strasburg, fifteen are
always named by the Stadtholder himself. This little Chamber of Deputies
deliberates upon provincial affairs, all Bills having to pass the
Chamber at Berlin and receive the Imperial sanction before becoming law.
As to the party of protest in the Reichstag itself, formerly headed by
the late Jean Dollfuss, I was assured that it had ceased to exist.
Years before, then burdened with the weight of care and years, the great
patriot of Mulhouse had said to me, “I no longer take my seat at Berlin.
Of what good?” And were he living still, that great and good man,
burning as was his patriotism, inextinguishable as was his love for
France, would doubtless echo the words I now heard on every lip, “Peace,
peace; only let us have peace!”
Whilst at Strasburg German has crowded out French, at Mulhouse I found
French still universally spoken. The prohibition of native speech in
schools is not only a domestic but a commercial grievance. As extensive
business relations exist between the two countries, especially near the
frontier, a knowledge of both French and German is really necessary
to all classes. Even tourists in Alsace-Lorraine nowadays fare badly
without some smattering of the latter language. Hotel-keepers especially
look to the winning side, and do their very utmost to Germanise their
establishments. Shopkeepers must live, and find it not only advantageous
but necessary to follow the same course. Sad indeed is the spectacle
of Germanised France! Nemesis here faces us in militarism, crushing
the people with taxation and profoundly shocking the best instincts of
humanity.
In conclusion I must do justice to the extreme courtesy of German
railway and other officials. Many employés of railways and post
offices--all, be it remembered, Government officials--do not speak any
French at all, especially in out-of-the-way places. At the same time,
all officials, down to the rural postman, will do their very best to
help out French-speaking strangers with their own scant vocabulary of
French words.
My Alsatian hosts, one and all, I found quite ready to do justice to
the authorities and their representatives, but, as I have insisted
upon before, an insuperable barrier, the fathomless gulf created by
injustice, exists between conquerors and conquered. And only last year
dining with my hosts of Germanised Lorraine in Paris, I asked them if in
this respect matters had changed for the better. The answer I received
was categoric--“Nothing is changed since your visit to us. French and
Germans remain apart as before.”
“East of Paris” has led me somewhat farther than I intended, but to
a lover of France, no less than to a French heart, France beyond the
Vosges is France still!
THE END.