BERLIN6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.
6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.
Whilethe sun is still sinking behind the Potsdam hills that victorious old Fighting Fritz loved so well, and the hero himself, astride his bronze charger, in cloak and cocked hat in the statue group on the Linden, seems riding slowly home to his neighboring palace with the lengthening shadows, the vast industrial army of the German capital issues in myriad units from its individual barracks and debouches on the spacious squares and broad avenues in quest of the evening’s diversions. It is the lull hour. The long, hard day’s work over, the amusements of the night are shortly to begin. In this pleasant interval the bustling, aggressive city seems pervaded with a spirit of relaxation, and no more opportune moment presents for catching the Berliner off his guard and really seeing him as his intimates know him.
This man, it should be borne in mind, is a type unto himself. The light-hearted Rhinelander, the solemn Bavarian, and the plodding, self-reliant Saxon are only half-brothers to the energetic, systematic, masterful Prussian whose most boisterous and irrepressible development is the Berliner. He plays as hard as he works,yielding to none in the thoroughness of either. He has a strong individuality, but with something of coarseness in feeling. He is enormously self-assertive, indefatigable, and patient, but scratch through his veneer of culture and you find a basis that is rude and often boorish. His optimism is sublime and his spirits correspondingly high. At work he is engrossed and determined, but when it is laid aside for the day he enters as eagerly upon his pastimes; and it is then one finds him witty and merry to a degree, but, at times, with the loudness and ostentation of a mischievous, unruly schoolboy. He is the sort of man that has a great time in zoölogical gardens, and goes picnicking in his best clothes. Intellectually, he is still as Buckle described him in the “History of Civilization in Europe,” the foremost man in the world when he is a scholar and the most ordinary in the main. Europeans dub him “a practical hedonist”; in America we should refer to him as “rough and ready.”
As soon as supper is over these joyous and virile people display their primitive scorn of roofs and flock into the open for fun and frolic; yet supper, itself, has been one of Gargantuan proportions at which an observer, recalling Rabelais, might well have trembled for palmers in the cabbage. From the four quarters they gather in force to hang about the fountains in the roomy squares or loaf on the Linden benches until the call of the concert-hall or the comfortable, tree-shaded beer-garden allures to those bibulous indulgences that old Tacitus,eighteen centuries ago, noted as peculiarly their own. For silent now are the forges and furnaces of Spandau, the clothingFabriksof the northeast suburbs, the factories of the east end, and all the skilled industries of the south. The artist colony of Moabit may no longer complain of drilling regiments, and the mammoth business blocks they callHöfehave swelled the throng of clerks on Friedrich and Leipziger Strassen. All have supped; and merchant and laborer fare forthen familleto take the evening air.
With what heartiness and placidity does this multitude enjoy its ease! It is a trick your highstrung peoples beyond the borders can never get the hang of. It calms one merely to look on at the contentment and satisfaction with which they stroll slowly and merrily along, chattering animatedly in their deep guttural speech, and greeting friends with punctilious bows and infinite hat-raisings. With every other word they “bend their backs and they bow their heads,” like the celebrated character of “Dorothy.” There is an agreeable absence of rush and hurry. Ponderous and massive, but with an erectness bred of military training, they wear their sombre, loose-fitting clothes with palpable relish, for comfort and inconspicuousness are virtues of price with the Teuton. The statelygnädige Frautreads heavily in rustling silk, the mincingFräuleinfavors ribbons and flounces, andmein Sohnis dapper in a tight suit, lavender gloves, and the indispensable little cane. Chaperons, of course,abound; for if a young man were to walk abroad alone with an unmarried girl in Berlin he would be consigning her at once to a plane with the paintednymphe de pavé.
The surroundings are animated. Motor-cars roll sedately along with the least din possible and with scrupulous regard for speed limits, and a prodigious assortment of cheap and comfortableDroschkecabs hovers expectantly about with their drivers decked out in long coats and patent-leather hats. From time to time an officer in brilliant uniform or a diplomat in severe black, with a row of orders across his breast, posts past hurriedly to dine out in formal state; and with knowledge of the terrifying discomfort of a German social function comes confidence that most of them look from their smart broughams with profound envy at the jovial, care-free crowds that are so boisterously happy along the way.
The visitor, who is struggling with an uncomfortable suspicion that he may be missing something in the other two rings of the circus, might do well to climb the Kreuzberg and take the whole show in like a map. He has probably already learned that although the city lies prostrate on a level sandy plain as guiltless of a hill as a billiard table, yet the indomitable Berliner has repaired this oversight of nature by himself building a fine little mountain at a convenient spot due south. That is one of the advantages in rearing your own hills—you can have them where you want them.
In the sullen red of the dying day one beholds fromthe battlements of the Kreuzberg’s Gothic tower a monster plain, twenty-five miles in an irregular circle, smothered in house-tops, and barred and seamed with an intricate entanglement of carefully made streets. He sees parks and squares in surprising profusion, and an abundance of foliage in spite of the sand; and there is a sluggish river winding a serpentine course, aRingbahnencircling the suburbs, an elevated road that dives underground and becomes a subway, and surface lines without number. One could fancy a great cross in the centre of the city, whose upright is the long Friedrichstrasse and whose broad crosspiece is the splendid Unter den Linden. The last rays of the sun gild the roofs and spires of each of the “town districts,” which the Prussian Diet has recently merged into a Greater Berlin of four million souls—Wilmersdorf, whose “millionaire peasants” became rich overnight by selling their lands to speculators; Charlottenburg the Pampered, that has increased tenfold in thirty years; Rixdorf the Prosperous; and Schöneberg the Renowned—which is well worth a sentimental journey to the graves of the Brothers Grimm under the cypresses of St. Matthew’s Cemetery, if only out of gratitude for the familiar versions of “Cinderella,” “Tom Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and so many others of our childhood’s companions. The sunset glory falls where glory is due—on a region at our feet of ancient martial fame; the little village that the Knights Templar held for centuries, and the broadTempelhofer Feld,—Prussian drill-ground for two hundred years,—whither all Berliners turn holiday-faces when the Kaiser reviews the Guards in spring and autumn, and journey cockishly homeward when the show is over, “snapping their fingers at the foeman’s taunts.”
In every section that the Kreuzberg looks down upon, and still farther away under the fading western skies, pleasant signs of recreation abound. The Linden overflows, the lesser streets are swollen streams, and every open square is a ruffled lake of leisurely humanity. A strong tide of loiterers sets through the most popular of Berlin’s breathing-places—the stately Tiergarten—and ripples there about the bases of statues and monuments, the marble settles of the Sieges-Allée, and the sculptured benches of theAnlagenof the Brandenburg Gate. There is the usual deep eddy before the graceful statue of the adored Queen Louise, which is half-buried in flowers by a grateful people every March 10. The bridle-paths teem with lines of aristocratic riders, with possibly the Kaiser himself among them. Indeed, no other part of the city may compare with the Tiergarten at this hour, so beautiful is it in turf and tree and so delightful in heavy fragrance. No wonder that Berliners have so long regarded it as the best last glimpse of life—to fight duels in by dawn in other days, and to take their own lives in now.
BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN
BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN
All Berlin is now out of doors. The millionaires of the exclusive Tiergarten purlieus are cooling themselves intheir villa gardens, and the middle-class man is beaming at the band at the Zoo, where the restaurant-terraces are overflowing into the flowered walks among the trees. There is a boisterous coterie of shouting children to every prim fountain in the prim squares. Out under the pines and cypresses of Grunewald crowds returning from the races are gazing admiringly at the pretty white villas that rim the verges of the placid forest lakes; and others are turning aside for the spectacular amusements of Luna Park. At Steglitz the bicycle races are ending and merrymakers are swarming into the Botanic Gardens to marvel over the cacti and palms of the long hot-houses. Capital boating is in progress on the Spree, and sailing at Wannsee, and steamer trips all through the suburbs. Bands are crashing in the noisy penny-shows of the tumultuous Zeltern; they are having beer in crowdedWeinhandlungen, chocolate at daintyConditoreien, and much besides in the jolly Vienna cafés that open out invitingly to the street. In every part of the city rise music and laughter and the sound of early revelry in pretty, tree-shaded summer gardens. It is an audible expression of the Berliners’ joy of living—their cherishedLebensfreude.
Could we rise with Zeppelin we should find it the same now at Charlottenburg, and over at Potsdam. Charlottenburg the Prosperous is having its serene and dignified companies sauntering in quiet evening talk along the broad, handsome streets. The gay are at the livelyOrangerie, the philosophic in the trim, pert little parks, and the sentimental among the flaming roses and fragrant trellises of the charming Palace Garden. In solemn and conscious superiority the great Technical High School and famed Reichanstalt shroud their learned cornices in the gloaming of tree-tops, and that chiefest mecca of all, the royal mausoleum, embowers its gleaming marble walls in heavy shrubbery at the bottom of its avenue of pines. No loiterer, you may be sure, but thinks reverently of the recumbent snowy effigies of the dead rulers that lie in the hushed gloom of that dim interior.
Potsdam, Germany’s Versailles, steeped in the melancholy beauties of the Havelland pine forests, redolent of old Frederick the Great and his dream of an earthly Sans Souci, thinks nothing of drawing Berliners twenty miles to its twilight peace and calm. Exuberance tempers to the dignity and beauty of those parks and palaces where the Kaiser has his favorite royal seat. Up the broad Hauptweg they stroll by hundreds and gladden their patriotic eyes with the colonnades, porticoes, and statues of the vast New Palace that proved to the foes of defiant old Fritz that the sturdy warrior was far from bankrupt despite the Seven Years’ War. Nor do they forget that it was here the late emperor, beloved “Unser Fritz,” learned how
“unto dying eyesThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
“unto dying eyesThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
“unto dying eyesThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
“unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
The classic Town Palace of Potsdam is receiving its compliments, as usual, and no less the artistic Lustgarten, opulent in marbles and fountains; and many will be wandering even out to the cool and spacious park that lies about the charming Babelsberg Château. But old Frederick remains the local hero, and there is sure to be a crowd at the venerable lime-tree where petitioners used to stand to catch the eye of the king, and a kind of procession will be passing reverently before the garrison church, where lie his remains in the vault before which Napoleon outdid himself in eulogy the while he pilfered the old warrior’s sword. And the leaping column of the Great Fountain will be the centre of an admiring throng, and scores will be going up and down the vista of broad stairs and fruited terraces that lead to the long, low palace of Sans Souci. As to the latter, a stranger might be pardoned if he were to mistake it for a casino, which it strikingly resembles, with its flat-domed entrance, line of caryatids like pedestal busts, and the row of stone urns on the balustraded top of the façade. At this hour there is no admission, but one may peer through the low French windows and, in fancy, people Voltaire’s room with a miserly ghost of the crafty old philosopher, see him fraternizing and quarreling with the king, imagine a royalsoiréein progress with Frederick playing skillfully on the flute, recall the brilliant talk of the Round Table, and think with pity of the cheerless, childless old soldier toiling wearily on those histories that Macaulaypraised, and winding his big clock, and yearning all the while to lie buried among his dogs out on the terrace. To many will come visions wrought from the extravagant fiction of Luise Mühlbach. What moral observations and theatrical posings fell to poor Frederick’s lot in her “Berlin and Sans Souci,” sandwiched in among the woeful loves of Amelia and Baron Trenck and of the dancer Barbarina and the High Chancellor’s son! But perhaps such literature helps one to understand the application to Frederick of the celebrated characterization of a very different personage, the “wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.”
In Berlin proper there are two fine squares that best serve the well-advised as start-and-finish places for the most interesting evening walk to be had in the city—the Lustgarten before the Royal Palace and the Königs-Platz at the Tiergarten corner. By this notable route one arrives, within the smoking of two cigars, at something like an intelligent comprehension of Berlin and Berliners.
The gracious expanse of the Lustgarten is so appealing in the melancholy light of sunset that one almost feels, at the very beginning of the stroll, like going no farther for fear of faring worse, but rather remaining where he is among the trees and fountains and artistic shrubbery and watching the children playingHashekateraround the colossal Granite Basin, orRinger-Ringer-Rosaat the marble stairs of Frederick William’s lofty statue. Softsplashes of deep colors warm the long rows of blinking windows in the Royal Palace on the left, and flush the domes of the cathedral and the columns of the Old Museum’s Ionic portico. Hundreds of Berliners are idling along the asphalt walks that entice to the Palace Bridge that arches the Spree in a double line of marble groups and so opens up the long, tree-shaded perspective of the Linden. To see it at this hour one would not guess that this fair Lustgarten had once been a neglected palace-close and even a dusty drill-ground; no more than one could believe that the occasional decrepit church or twisting, narrow street in the district in the rear is all that marks antiquity in the whole of the city. For the furioustempoof Berlin’s development has swept everything before it. Three out of every four buildings, all over town, are garishly modern. Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment that it is hard to believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could have stood here beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago. Were one to see no more of Germany than its capital he might very easily imagine a Chicago or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly not a Nuremberg.
Sunset imparts an air of cordiality to the ponderous, baroque, seven-hundred-roomed Royal Palace, whose four stories of regular window lines suggest an ornate and elaborate factory that had been diverted from its original purpose by the addition of the chapel dome onthe west wing. However, for those who cross its low terrace and enter the sculptured portals there awaits a revelation of pomp and majesty, of throne-room splendors and saloon magnificence, that rivals the best of Versailles and Vienna. Unhappily we cannot here see the windows of the royal family’s apartments, for they are on the second floor of the opposite wing; whence the Kaiser looks out on the Neptune fountain of the Schloss-Platz and the elaborate façade of the royal stables when the purple banner that denotes his presence flies from the palace standard.
In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,” and shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old Museum gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming grace and effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum Island, just beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the arts in the affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or cathedral, dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in the modest and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architecturaldébutanteof only six seasons—though that is quite long enough for a building to becomepasséin Berlin. Its granite walls, copper domes, high-vaulted portals, elaborately carved cornices, and profusion of statuary stand out in beautiful relief against the darkness of the trees beyond.
At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridgeis thronged with loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected; and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful littlerivasalong the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the swift, pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to take note of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low bridges. Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service uniforms on floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These invariably have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing from end to end,while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage by means of a long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and inserts the other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire length of the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.
Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration, and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings, the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor WilliamI, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people. With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over the heads of the crowdsat the University across the way—the proper toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty pedestal.
And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres, cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about the poster pillars that they call“Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like, but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for “nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere “men.”
But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.
The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more of café life than many others, as being an institution essential to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vitalwith the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and with continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and “Bitte!” and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially, “Prosit!” There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps and shouts of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries respond with “Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off in haste, to return at leisure. The gold that falls inTrinkgeldpasses belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is said that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will see few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus. Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking, is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up, and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your hat, and go about your business.
From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed, narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed “Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet with itsPickelhaubetop spike. You learn to distinguish the corps, in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.
Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread. Theycarry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the empire.
On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants, government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions are coming and going—Droschken, stages, double-decked omnibuses, motor-cars,et al.The corner of Leipzigerstrasseis a whirlpool through which traffic moves like so much drifting pack-ice. Trolley cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron posts marked “Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of safety” in the middle of the street have each its representative of the omnipresent police, dressed up like major-generals in military long coats and nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that Leipzigerstrasse is just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous Potsdam Gate, where on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets ponderous hotels project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on spits. I say the policemencouldtell you that, if they wanted to, but the probability is they would only wave excited hands and shout “Verboten!”
And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched, but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated, as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or theauthorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two cents up.
Parenthetically, again, it is the people’s fault. They are government-mad; intoxicated with bureaucracy. Not for all the gold reserve at Spandau would they abate one jot of this supervision. There is a law for everything. Some one has said that for every pfennig the German pays in taxes he expects and receives a pfennig’s worth of government. You see it on every hand. Each bus and car is placarded to announce its exact seating capacity, as well as the precise amount of standing-room on the platforms; once that space is occupied it would not stop for you, though you go on your knees. Have you ever taken notice of the little metallic racks at each end of a Berlin street car? That is where you leave the cigar you may be smoking when you enter; putting it anywhere else is absolutely “verboten.” It is the spirit of the time. Berlin is a “touch-the-button” town—a machine-made community of deadly rote and rule. System is the thing. Street numbers have arrows indicating which way they run; letter boxes are cleared every fifteen minutes; a letter goes by the pneumaticRohrpostwith the speed of a telegram; packages are sent by the parcel delivery more quickly and more cheaply than by express; hotels have electric elevators and vacuum cleaning. It is so all over Germany. Who ever sees a picture of Düsseldorf, these days, without a Zeppelinairship in the background? How eloquent it is of the thoroughness of this people whose boastful “Made in Germany” is expressive of the rankest materialism, that their warlike capital should be distinguished for the quality and quantity of its artistic feeling, and excel, besides, in usefulness, as exemplified in scores of museums that are admittedly the most instructive of any in the world.
As the last of daylight disappears, Friedrichstrasse’s shops blaze out brilliantly in every guise of electricity, the present pet scientific rage. The window dressings are highly attractive, but seldom the interiors behind them. Americans are finding home products in the kodak and sewing-machine stores, in penny-in-the-slot establishments, and at alleged American soda-fountains and bars—all displayed for sale in business buildings that are better built than the battlements of Jericho. People need not go out of a single block on Friedrichstrasse to secure every comfort they require, for in so small a space one finds fashionable hotels,hôtels garnis,pensions, or the exemplaryhospicesaffected by ladies traveling alone; where also you may dine at establishments to suit your purse—at extravagant cost, or on the lightest of repasts at aConditorei, or on a heavy seven-course dinner at a popular restaurant for twenty cents, with a glass of beer in the bargain. One finds the dance halls largely supported by foreigners and tourists, of which latter America sends fullyforty thousand annually. It is also speedily apparent that the undertow of the feverish stream brings its wreckage to the surface, where the rouged cheek and carmined lip betray the presence of fiercer kinds of “questing bestes” than ever were recorded in the “Morte d’Arthur.”
Out again under the rustling trees of the Linden one strolls on in increasing delight. In the growing zest of the evening the prosperous crowds toss pfennigs to the begging old “Linden Angels” and patronize the flower-venders and newsboys. Of the Linden’s fivefold boulevard, the outer streets are rumbling with heavy wagons and cabs, the drive with carriages, the bridle-path is lively with belated riders and the broad middle promenade is overflowing with pedestrians. Good Americans, on passing the United States Embassy headquarters, at the corner of Schadowstrasse, raise their hats in a sudden welling of patriotic reverence, and very likely with a wistful sympathy for theheimwehthat must frequently oppress the two thousand members of the American colony that tarry in the pleasant environs of Victoria Louise Platz. Diplomats are coming and going on aristocratic Wilhelmstrasse, which sweeps southward at this point, and where the lights are beginning to sparkle before the double line of government department buildings, royal palaces, and foreign embassy houses. The famous palace of mellow gray stone, in which the Iron Chancellor lived and held court like a king in theheyday of his power, shrouds itself proudly in the deep green of its garden of thick shrubbery.
But all this fails to hold the stroller’s attention when he glances about and sees he is at the end of the Linden and that a dozen steps will carry him to a sudden widening into stately Pariser-Platz, at the bottom of which, flanked by fountained lateral lawns and light-flecked in the twilight blur, rises one of Berlin’s chiefest features—the famed Brandenburg Gate. When the Berlin exile is homesick this is the picture he always sees—the imposing five-arched gateway, creamy against the misty deep green of the Tiergarten tree-tops, the dignified fronts of surrounding embassy houses, flowered grass plots on either hand, leaping fountains, the long lines of the trees of the Linden, and through the gateway-portals glimpses of colonnades and white statues in the cool, duskyalléesof the park.
It is an inspiring spot. The classic grace of Greece is present in the gate itself,—a copy of the Athenian Propylæa,—and the eventualities of warfare are suggested in Schadow’s bronze Quadriga above it, which the envious Napoleon carried off to his Paris. These old trees of the Linden know much of the turning of the wheel of fortune; they shook to the tread of the conquering legions of Napoleon the Great, after Jena, when Queen Louise and her little ten-year-old son fled in want and humiliation; but they also rocked, threescore and five years later, to the shouting of the armies of a unitedand triumphant Germany when that same little boy, become Emperor WilliamI, returned from the annihilation of Napoleon the Little.
Any German student, adequately inspired, will tell the legend of the Quadriga; how the Goddess of Victory each New Year’s Eve drives her chariot and four up the Linden, pays her respects to Frederick the Great on his bronze horse and is back in her place by 1A.M.And that is the night, by the way, that the Great Elector rides his charger all over the city, taking note of the year’s changes, and returns to his position on the Kurfürsten Brücke before the stroke of one. Out of the same Nibelungen Land comes the legend of the White Lady that goes moaning through the Royal Palace when a Hohenzollern is about to die. Now we are on Berlin traditions, it may be said that there is more agreeable flesh and blood to the custom of receiving bouquets from the witches of the Blocksberg on Walpurgis Nacht (May 1), and an altogether human foundation for the ancient torch dances at Hohenzollern weddings, of which Carlyle has given so enthusiastic a description.
Beyond the gate, we face a beautiful picture. The sweeping arc of theAnlagen, rimmed with marble benches, balustrades, and statues, is spirited with pleasure seekers, and its thick lines of lights are all glowing brightly, and carriages and cabs are speeding noiselessly across it. An attractive dilemma presents, as to whether we choose to reach the adjoining Königs-Platz by theembowered and vernal Path of Peace—the tree-arched Friedens-Allée through this corner of the Tiergarten—or by the celebrated War-Way—the Sieges-Allée—between the double lines of the thirty-two marble groups portraying the rulers of the House of Brandenburg. There are advantages to either; the first is shorter and supremely sylvan, but the second presents an opportunity of settling for one’s self the violent difference of opinion as to the artistic merits of this elaborate gift of the Kaiser to his capital. Each of the groups of the latter has a heroic statue of a Prussian ruler half encircled by a marble bench whose ends are Hermes busts of eminent men of that period. We are entitled to an opinion. Some pronounce it incomparable; others think it pompous and insipid, and very much like a stone cutter’s yard.
In either event one soon reaches the Königs-Platz, and beholds envisioned the power and glory of the Fatherland. At no hour does it appear to such advantage as at twilight. The dusky shadows lie heavy about the great circular field of trees and shrubbery, shrouding the sculptured mass of the vast Reichstag building until its huge glass dome looms like a colossal moon in a lake of emerald. Bismarck and Von Moltke rise above their statue-groups like demigods of bronze, and the lofty Column of Victory, studded with captured cannon, rears its brisk and lightly-poised angel to acclaim the glories of Germany to an invisible world among the skies. Kroll’s neighboring summer garden is gay in hundreds of coloredlights that glow in the grass plots and dim arbors and hang like pendent fruit from the branches of the trees. The dusk deepens into gloom, and twilight plays Whistler-tricks with fountain spray and statue. Distant domes pass, in night wizardry, for ghostly war-tents of Von Moltke. Faint vapors steal among the trees of the lower levels, and the dark of dim retreats is deeper for the brilliance of groups of lights that fade surrounding foliage into shades of pale olive. Music drifts softly over from Kroll’s, and the subdued hum of engulfing Berlin conveys a pleasant sense of companionship and a feeling of admiration and affection.
In the vivid appreciation of all we have just been seeing, one thinks in amazement,What a people!Harveyized against everything but progress, they are bending their tremendous energy to the enormous task of transforming Berlin from the capital of a kingdom into the capital of an empire. To see what they are accomplishing is to whip one’s wastrel forces and holystone his resolution. Here is energy and power of a kind to move mountains. Foreign critics bite their nails in envy and decry Berlin as “a parvenu among capitals”; they say it lacks distinction, is solemnly conscious of its new dignity, is “big without being cosmopolitan, and imposing without being impressive.” That it is garishly modern is true enough, as in the light of its sudden apotheosis it could not have otherwise been, and its own people are first to admit frequent grave errors in artistictaste. But taken all in all, a fairer, more substantial or more worthy city has never before been reared in the same length of time in the history of mankind. Nor is the end yet. The soaring impetus of the capital waxes with its own effort; gathers strength with each fresh achievement. Germany may be pardoned for taking pride in having risen as a world power to the very van of the nations, with her war-lord one of the foremost figures of the era. That his capital is his special pride is well known, and there are many who feel that he has gone far to realizing his expressed determination to make Berlin the most beautiful city of Europe.
One rests in the Königs-Platz, at the foot of Bismarck’s statue, and regards with wonder the stern features of that man of “blood and iron,” to whose prescience and indomitable resolution these vast results are so largely due. The best of Bismarck is not dead, but lives and increases in the activities of his countrymen. As was said of another, “Would you see his monument, look about you.” The destiny Germany is working out is the one he bequeathed her; all this fair fruition is the flower of his seeding. The Kaiser may continue his idolatry of his grandfather by sowing the empire with statues of the war emperor, but the people do not for a moment forget that the man who previsioned and compelled these results was he at the feet of whose grim statue we uncover in deep respect in the evening calm of the Königs-Platz. The hand was the hand of Bismarck.