In and Around Berlin Part 7

We were much interested in the School of Industry. Here were girls and women, mostly young, in bright, cheery, and well-lighted rooms, going through all stages of graded and scientific instruction in the cutting and making of dresses, mantles, and underwear, plain needlework, and in all kinds of embroidery and lace-work. The use of a sewing-machine is taught in a term of two months, six lessons each week. Millinery in all branches, the making of the finest artificial flowers by French methods, glove-making by machinery, and hair-dressing are practically carried on for the instruction of those who wish to learn these industries.

A school of cookery, in which we were allowed to inspect the scientific cla.s.sification and a.n.a.lysis of provisions and to test the appetizing results of numerous ladylike pupils in various stages of proficiency, impressed us with the inestimable value of its training.

In all these departments the pupils are expected to pay moderate fees, varying from twenty-five cents to one dollar per week; and entrance to any department can be made on the first of every month.

Two lessons per week are given in the science of teaching, for a term of six months.

The Employment Bureau has a vast correspondence, and is an agency of great good, as a medium of communication between women and girls in want of positions, and the employers of labor.

A school and lodging-house for the training of servant-girls has been much called for, and has lately been started.

The Drawing-School has a seminary for the training of teachers, and a school for teaching the different branches of industrial drawing.

There are free-hand drawing from copies and plaster models, perspective and geometrical drawing, the drawing and painting of ornamental and practical designs, and flower-painting on wood, china, and paper, with thorough courses of one and two years in the History of Art. Modelling in clay, wax, and designs for gold and silver industry, bronzes, etc., are given eight hours in each week.

There is also a school of type-setting in connection with the Berlin Typographical Company, in which female compositors over the age of sixteen may be received, to the number of thirty-six, under the close supervision of the Lette-Verein, and at which, after an apprenticeship of six months, all pupils are paid for their work.

There is a boarding-house, called the Victoria-Stift, in connection with this inst.i.tution, with a _cafe_ or refreshment-room, where the tables are supplied, to ladies, at economical prices, from the cooking-school. It has also a lending-library and a Victoria Bazar, where all kinds of needlework done by the pupils are offered for sale, and orders are taken for family sewing.

XIII.

AROUND BERLIN.

Berlin, on account of its general healthfulness and its combination of economical and other attractions, is esteemed by many experienced travellers as, on the whole, the continental city best adapted to an extended residence abroad. To the visitor with limited time, the city itself and Potsdam--"the Prussian Versailles"--monopolize the attention. But to those who can spend more time there, the attractive environs and places which may be seen within the limits of a day's excursion are many and varied.

Grunewald, not far beyond Charlottenburg, is the seat of a royal hunting-lodge, and its fine old woods are most attractive. It may be reached by railway and steam-tram, and also, in summer, by water. The extensive forest occupies a great stretch of country below the junction of the Spree with the Havel, which here, on the west, loiters and meanders and turns upon itself; now spreading out into wide lakes, now narrowing to a thread, but finally reaching in its dubious course the wide-flowing Elbe. The great bay into which the Havel here expands has pretty islands and sh.o.r.es. Pichelsberg, at the northern extremity of the bay, is a place of popular resort, where observation of Nature is rather concentrated on that branch known as human nature. Wansee, at the southern extremity, is picturesque and rural,--a delightful place in which to spend a quiet day in early summer.

Spandau, eight miles west of Berlin, at the junction of the Spree with the Havel, has much historical and military interest. Here, surrounded by immense fortifications, is the workshop of the German army; and here in the citadel, or old "Julius tower," are kept "the sinews of war," in the form of a reserve military fund of from fifteen million to thirty million dollars.

The railway toward Hanover leads on from Spandau to the long-settled region near the crossing of the Elbe, which here flows northward between high banks. Not far from the Elbe is the railway station of Schonhausen, some two hours' ride from Berlin. The estate of Schonhausen had been in the Bismarck family two hundred and fifty years, when the Chancellor was born there in 1815. Later, this old family inheritance pa.s.sed to other ownership; but the numerous friends and admirers of the great diplomatist repurchased it, and presented it to him on his seventieth birthday, April 1, 1885. The great gratification of possessing this ancient home hardly induces Prince von Bismarck to spend much time there. Possibly it is within too easy reach of his cares in the capital. The distant Friedrichsruh in the forest of Sachsenswald, within a dozen miles of Hamburg, and more than one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Berlin, is his favorite residence; and Varzin, upwards of two hundred miles to the northeast, in Baltic Pomerania, sometimes wins him to its still greater quiet and seclusion. Here Bismarck received our countryman, the historian Motley, and his daughter, with the delightful welcome to companionship and the simple and informal family life so charmingly portrayed in Motley's correspondence.

The whole region of Schonhausen was as early settled as Berlin itself.

Fine old churches, castles, and mediaeval town walls mark the neighboring towns of Stendal and Tangermunde, the latter the long-time seat of the Margraves of Brandenburg.

A short detour from the main line to the northwest of Berlin brings one to Fehrbellin, where the Great Elector defeated a Swedish army double the size of his own. In the same region are Neu Ruppin and Rheinsberg, each connected with many memories of the youth of Frederick the Great. At the Castle of Rheinsberg he spent the comparatively happy years of his unhappy married life. His neglected queen, who never saw his favorite palace at Sans Souci, and who was wife and queen only in name for many long years, said that the early days at Rheinsberg were her happiest. Though these places are hardly more than thirty miles northwest of Berlin, lack of railway connections renders it impracticable to visit them in a single day.

The most direct thoroughfare to Copenhagen, that by way of Rostock, pa.s.ses, outside the elevated railway known as the Ringbahn, the village of Pankow, also reached by tramway, and also once the residence of the Queen of Frederick the Great. This road leads north from Berlin, at first through a country dotted with lakes. Our memory of these is of beautiful sheets of water, surrounded by the green of mid-June, and over-arched by the blue sky and the fleecy c.u.muli of a perfect summer day. The characteristic North German landscape was here seen to fine advantage. The color of the cottages and farm-houses harmonizes or contrasts beautifully with the landscape. Roofs of brown weather-beaten thatch or of dull red tiles, in the midst of embowering trees and shrubbery, formed for us pictures of beauty long to be remembered. Frienwalde, to the northeast, has mineral springs in the most attractive part of Brandenburg, and is growing as a place of summer resort. The fine old monastery, and the ruined early Gothic abbey-church of Chorin on the Stettin Railway, the burial-place of the Margraves of Brandenburg, are interesting to all students of architecture.

An eastern suburb of Berlin is Kopenick, in the chateau of which the youthful Frederick the Great was tried for his life by court-martial, by order of his tyrannical father; and in the same direction, an hour from Berlin by express-train, is Custrin, whose strong castle was the scene of his subsequent imprisonment, and where, in sight from his window, his n.o.ble friend, Lieutenant von Katte, was beheaded on the ramparts for no other crime than fidelity to his young master.

Another most interesting excursion is that to Frankfort-on-the-Oder, two hours eastward of Berlin. This largest city of Brandenburg outside the capital has a varied history, dating from before the time when this region was won from the heathen Slavs to Germany and Christianity. This old stronghold of the Wendish race saw many vicissitudes in the great wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, being the last important place on the great trading-route from Poland to Berlin. It has annual fairs which are relics of these olden times, interesting mediaeval churches, and a town-house bearing on its gable the device of the Hanseatic League,--an oblique rod supported by a shorter perpendicular one.

To the southeast, a few miles out on the Gorlitz Railway, is Wusterhausen, in the picturesque region of the frequented Muggelsberge,--itself made memorable by an episode in Carlyle's pages.

No more fascinating trip can be taken in summer, after Berlin and Potsdam have been visited, than to the wild and beautiful Spreewald,--a combination of forest and mora.s.s not yet wholly redeemed to the civilization of Europe, but holding in its remoter depths a genuine relic of the old barbarism. The Gorlitz Railway skirts this forest for twenty-five miles before reaching Lubben, some two hours from Berlin in a southerly direction. This is the best point of departure from the train for a visit to the forest, which is cut by more than two hundred arms of the Spree, some parts of the wood only to be reached by boats or skates. Here, in their villages reclaimed from the swamps, live the descendants of the aboriginal Wends, who have preserved intact their language, their manners, and their modes of dress. This Venice of North-central Germany has for streets the water-ways of the Spree, and for palaces the log huts of the aboriginal race; but no views of Nature are more exquisite than some of those in the Upper and Lower Spreewald.

Twenty-two miles west of Potsdam, on the Havel, is the city of Brandenburg,--the old Brennabor of the Slavic people who fortified it before the beginning of modern history. The Castle of Brandenburg may share with the celebrated and beautiful one of Meissen, near Dresden, the honor of being the oldest in Germany. Conquered from the original owners by the Emperor Henry I. in 927, it was by them retaken. More than two centuries afterwards, Albert the Bear captured and kept it, and thenceforth styled himself First Margrave of Brandenburg. For six hundred years this old town shared in all the strifes of that turbulent and pa.s.sionate time between the midnight of the Dark Ages and the dawn of modern history, and its old buildings will tell much of its forgotten story to any one who lays his ear beside their ancient stones to hear.

At Steglitz, a southwest suburb, may be seen the mulberry plantation and the one silk manufactory of Berlin. It was not our lot to find the large nurseries and hot-houses which make the flower-shops and market-places of Berlin exquisitely radiant with blossoms at all seasons,--beyond even the famous Madeleine flower-market at Paris in the season when we visited it--and, if so, surpa.s.sing in this respect all other cities.

One of the two routes to Dresden and Leipsic pa.s.ses Lichterfelde, five miles from Berlin, where conspicuous buildings are the seat of the chief cadet-school in Germany. Here are accommodations for eight or nine hundred cadets, the flower of German youth. Neither pains nor expense has been spared in the erection and embellishment of these extensive buildings. The "Flensburg Lion," erected by the Danes to commemorate a former victory in Schleswig-Holstein over the Prussians, and later captured by the latter, stands here before the house of the Commandant.

Five or six miles farther on is Gross-Beeren, a Napoleonic battlefield where Bulow won a victory over the French in 1813; and about an hour and a half from Berlin, in the same direction, is the little city of Juterbok, with interesting old edifices. The student of the Reformation will feel most interest in this place as that where Tetzel was selling his famous "indulgences" when Luther, protesting in righteous wrath, nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Church the ninety-five theses which set all Germany ablaze. One of these "indulgences" is kept for inspection in the Nicolai Kirche of Juterbok. Near by are the old Cistercian abbey of Zinna, and another battlefield, Dennewitz, an important strategic point in one of the campaigns against the First Napoleon, where the victory of Bulow over Ney and Oudinot saved Berlin from the hands of the enemy.

No student of history--especially no Protestant--can afford to visit Berlin without an excursion to Wittenberg, which may either be compressed into a single day, with a few hours in this old University town which was the cradle of the Reformation, or may be pleasantly prolonged to days full of musing on the manifold phases of that unparalleled movement in the history of religious thought, amid the very scenes with which they were most intimately a.s.sociated. Not alone that Germany is to-day what Luther, more than any other man, has made it, but as heirs to the inheritance which he bequeathed to all lands and ages, are Americans called to the profound study of the epoch which Luther shaped, and of which our age is but a part. Of all intense pleasures, none to us was greater than a humble pilgrimage through Germany where our feet were set in the footprints of the Reformer.

Quaint Eisleben, with the house where he was born, and that in whose chamber he was suddenly stricken with mortal pain, while his companions watched with awe the pa.s.sing to higher service of that valiant soul, we had visited before we looked upon Wittenberg. Mansfield, too, with its flaming forges and its vast cinder-heaps,--where Hans Luther, the miner, toiled to feed his wife and babes,--we had seen; and historic Erfurt, with memories of the University where he studied and the monastery into which he went, taking with him, of all his books, only his Plautus and his Virgil, to study the Latin Bible chained to its post, and to fight that mental battle which toughened his sinews for the world-conflicts awaiting him; and whence he emerged at the call of his Superior, a young priest of twenty-five years, to take the professorship offered him at the new University of Wittenberg. At lovely Eisenach we had tarried for days; had entered the door of the once grand house of the burgomaster Cotta, before which little Martin, with the other charity boys of the school near by, had sung Christmas carols for his bread, and where he had been taken to the heart and the home of Mother Ursula; had peeped into the room there that was his, and been driven up the mountain-side beyond the village whose crown is the fine old castle of the Wartburg; had stood at the solitary cas.e.m.e.nt of the room where he fought with the devil, and looked out over the magnificent panorama of wooded mountains and beautiful valley where he looked forth day after day of those ten months of mysterious imprisonment, into which friendly hands had thrust him from the thick of the fight,--where he saw the miracle of spring-time creeping over the hills and waving trees far beneath him, and heard and felt the wintry winds howl around his solitude. He was only thirty-five, but he had already come into conflict with the mightiest power on earth, and his life was forfeited, when here he slowly came to know that G.o.d had thoughts of good and not of evil concerning him; and here he began another work,--the translation of the New Testament,--for which he never would have had time if left to himself. Eisenach, with its dramatic situation, perhaps lingers longest in the memory of men of any place connected with that great story. But if it bore a more poetic share, it was not the most important. It was neither at Leipsic nor at Heidelberg, at Nuremberg nor at Speyer, at Augsburg nor even at Worms, that the great drama had its chief location, though memories of Luther were to us among the conspicuous attractions of these places.

From the time when the young monk emerged from Erfurt, where his preparation for life was made, until at sixty-three he had "finished his course," Wittenberg was his only home. For thirty-eight long years here his heart was, and here, like the needle to the pole, the direction of his activities constantly turned. Here, in the old Augustinian monastery, is the lecture-room and the ancient "cathedra"

from which he delivered those lectures which laid the foundation of his fame in the early years of his professorship. Here he quietly wrought at his translation of the Bible and discharged the duties of his position, while his voice shook the world, and all Europe was swaying in the storm, himself the calm centre of the whirlwind. Here, at the age of forty-two, he brought his bride, the nun Katherine von Bora; and in this monastery, presented to him by his friend the Elector, his six children were born. Hither, when his work was done, his lifeless form was borne, followed by a weeping funeral procession which stretched across Germany; and here in the church which had been the scene of so many great sermons, he was laid to rest, with room for Melanchthon beside him. Here one may enter that other church where he first administered the communion in both kinds to the laity; may read the immortal theses, now in enduring bronze on the doors of the castle church; may pluck a leaf from the oak-tree planted on the spot outside the city gate where he burned the papal bull; may sit in the window-seat of his family-room, surrounded by his table, his bench, and his stove, and listen where that family music seems still to echo; may wander in the old garden, amid the representatives of the trees which shaded him, and the flowers and birds he loved; may sit at the stone table in Melanchthon's garden where the names of the friends are inscribed; may stand before their statues in the market-place and hear his voice: "If it be G.o.d's work, it will endure; if man's, it will perish."

As we live over these days and realize afresh all that history can tell us of the wondrous story, we know that not the polish and the learning of its scientists, its philosophers, and its men of letters, not the prowess of its soldiers and its military leaders, have made United Germany possible, but that Bible which Luther translated for the German people,--that standard of the German tongue which through all the conflicts of three centuries and a half has defied the power of diverse interests, and cemented and preserved the integrity of the nation.