Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume V Part 4

In these curious old chambers, it was to be expected that I should see some Wohlegemuths--as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured countenances. In a room, pretty plentifully enc.u.mbered with rubbish, I saw a charming Snyders; being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. There is here a portrait of Albert Durer, by himself; but said to be a copy.

If so, it is a very fine copy. The original is supposed to be at Munich.

There was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see particularly deserving of being recorded; but, when I was told that it was in this Citadel that the ancient Emperors of Germany used oftentimes to reside, and make carousal, and when I saw, now, scarcely anything but dark pa.s.sages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted chambers--I own that I could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly grandeur. With a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its support--situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look frowningly down over a vast sweep of country--the Citadel of Nuremberg should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every a.s.sault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the casual traveler--who is frequently startled at the echo of his own footsteps.

While I am on the subject of ancient art--of which so many curious specimens are to be seen in this Citadel--it may not be irrelevant to conduct the reader at once to what is called the Town Hall--a very large structure--of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old pictures. Many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the collection is the "Triumphs of Maximilian I.," executed by Albert Durer--which, however, has by no means escaped injury. I was accompanied in my visit to this interesting collection by Mr. Boerner, and had particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions, and by the intelligence of his observations. A great number of these pictures (as I understood) belonged to a house in which he was a partner; and among them a portrait, by Pens, struck me as being singularly admirable and exquisite. The countenance, the dress, the att.i.tude, the drawing and coloring, were as perfect as they well might be. But this collection has also suffered from the transportation of many of its treasures to Munich. The rooms, halls, and corridors of this Hotel de Ville give you a good notion of munic.i.p.al grandeur.

In the neighborhood of Nuremberg--that is to say, scarcely more than an English mile from thence--are the grave and tombstone of Albert Durer.

The monument is simple and striking. In the churchyard there is a representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone. It was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert Durer; and I shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. The silence of the spot--its retirement from the city--the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead--together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by the colossal crucifix--but yet, perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet--all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described. If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, Albert Durer was surely that man. He was, in truth, the Shakespeare of his art--for the period.

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour."

Dibdin's tour was made in 1821.]

NUREMBERG TO-DAY[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

Nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an undulating, sandy plain, some 900 feet above the sea. Here and there on every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted chateaux, with gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the new-grown forest of factory chimneys.

The railway sets us down outside the walls of the city. As we walk from the station toward the Frauen Thor, and stand beneath the crown of fortified walls three and a half miles in circ.u.mference, and gaze at the old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been realized. There, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between ma.s.sive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers. Still to reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide.

True, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots. True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric tram.

But let us for the moment forget these gratifying signs of modern prosperity and, turning to the left ere we enter the Frauen Thor, walk with our eyes on the towers which, with their steep-pitched roofs and myriad shapes and richly colored tiles, mark the intervals in the red-bricked, stone-cased galleries and mighty bastions, till we come to the first beginnings of Nuremberg--the Castle. There, on the highest eminence of the town, stands that venerable fortress, crowning the red slope of tiles. Roofs piled on roofs, their pinnacles, turrets, points and angles heaped one above the other in a splendid confusion, climb the hill which culminates in the varied group of buildings on the Castle rock. We have pa.s.sed the Spittler, Mohren, Haller and Neu Gates on our way, and we have crossed by the Hallerthorbrucke the Pegnitz where it flows into the town. Before us rise the bold scarps and salient angles of the bastions built by the Italian architect, Antonio Fazuni, called the Maltese (1538-43).

Crossing the moat by a wooden bridge which curls round to the right, we enter the town by the Thiergartnerthor. The right-hand corner house opposite us now is Albert Durer's house. We turn to the left and go along the Obere Schmiedga.s.se till we arrive at the top of a steep hill (Burgstra.s.se). Above, on the left, is the Castle.

We may now either go through the Himmels Thor to the left, or keeping straight up under the old trees and pa.s.sing the "Mount of Olives" on the left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. This is the Kaiserstallung, as it is called, the Imperial stables, built originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the land) on the east, and the Funf.e.c.kiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower, at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening movements on his part.

To some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. The granary or Kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in 1494, and is referred to by Hans Behaim as lying between the Five-cornered and the Luginsland Towers. Inside the former there is a museum of curiosities (Hans Sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments of torture and the Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau). The open s.p.a.ce adjoining it commands a splendid view to the north. There, too, on the parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the robber-king, Ekkelein von Gailingen. Here for a moment let us pause, consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet remain.

Stretching to the east of the rock on which the Castle stands is a wide plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. Westward the rock rises by three shelves to the summit. The entrance to the Castle, it is surmised, was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and through a tower which no longer exists.

Opposite this hypothetical gate-way stood the Five-cornered tower. The lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh century. It is referred to as Alt-Nurnberg (old Nuremberg) in the Middle Ages. The t.i.tle of "Five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals the fact that it is quadrangular. The pentagonal appearance of the exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the old castle of the Burggrafs. The Burggrafliche Burg stood below, according to Mummenhof, southwest and west of this point. It was burned down in 1420, and the ruined remains of it are supposed to be traceable in the eminence, now overgrown by turf and trees, through which a sort of ravine, closed in on either side by built-up walls, has just brought us from the town to the Vestner Thor.

The Burggraf's Castle would appear to have been so situated as to protect the approach to the Imperial Castle (Kaiserburg). The exact extent of the former we can not now determine. Meisterlin refers to it as a little fort. We may, however, be certain that it reached from the Five-cornered tower to the Walpurgiskapelle. For this little chapel, east of the open s.p.a.ce called the Freiung, is repeatedly spoken of as being on the property of the Burggrafs. Besides their castle proper, which was held at first as a fief of the Empire, and afterward came to be regarded as their hereditary, independent property, the Burggrafs were also entrusted with the keeping of a tower which commanded the entrance to the Castle rock on the country side, perhaps near the site of the present Vestner Thor. The guard door may have been attached to the tower, the lower portion of which remains to this day, and is called the Bailiff's Dwelling (Burgamtmannswohnung). The exact relationship of the Burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the Empire on the other, is somewhat obscure. Originally, it would appear, he was merely an Imperial officer, administering Imperial estates, and looking after Imperial interests. In later days he came to possess great power, but this was due not to his position as castellan or castle governor as such, but to the vast private property his position had enabled him to ama.s.s and to keep.

As the scope and ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content to sell their rights and possessions there to the town. Beside the guard door of the Burggrafs, which together with their castle pa.s.sed by purchase into the hands of the town (1427), there were various other similar guard towers, such as the one which formerly occupied the present site of the Luginsland, or the Hasenburg at the so-called Himmels Thor, or a third which once stood near the Deep Well on the second plateau of the Castle rock. But we do not know how many of these there were, or where they stood, much less at what date they were built.

All we do know is that they, as well as the Burggrafs' possessions, were purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came the whole property of the Castle rock. Above the ruins of the "little fort" of the Burggrafs rises the first plateau of the Castle rock. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower against which leans the Walpurgiskapelle.

The path to the Kaiserburg leads under the wall of the plateau, and is entirely commanded by it and by the quadrangular tower, the lower part of which alone remains and is known by the name of Burgamtmannswohnung.

The path goes straight to this tower, and at the foot of it is the entrance to the first plateau. Then along the edge of this plateau the way winds southward, entirely commanded again by the wall of the second plateau, at the foot of which there probably used to be a trench. Over this a bridge led to the gate of the second plateau. The trench has been long since filled in, but the huge round tower which guarded the gate still remains and is the Vestner Thurm. The Vestner Thurm of Sinwel Thurm (sinwel = round), or, as it is called in a charter of the year 1313, the "Middle Tower," is the only round tower of the Burg. It was built in the days of early Gothic, with a sloping base, and of roughly flattened stones with a smooth edge. It was partly restored and altered in 1561, when it was made a few feet higher and its round roof was added. It is worth paying the small gratuity required for ascending to the top. The view obtained of the city below is magnificent. The Vestner Thurm, like the whole Imperial castle, pa.s.sed at length into the care of the town, which kept its Tower watch here as early as the fourteenth century.

The well which supplied the second plateau with water, the "Deep Well,"

as it is called, stands in the center, surrounded by a wall. It is 335 feet deep, hewn out of the solid rock, and is said to have been wrought by the hands of prisoners, and to have been the labor of thirty years.

So much we can easily believe as we lean over and count the six seconds that elapse between the time when an object is dropt from the top to the time when it strikes the water beneath. Pa.s.sages lead from the water's edge to the Rathaus, by which prisoners came formerly to draw water, and to St. John's Churchyard and other points outside the town. The system of underground pa.s.sages here and in the Castle was an important part of the defenses, affording as it did a means of communication with the outer world and as a last extremity, in the case of a siege, a means of escape.

Meanwhile, leaving the Deep Well and pa.s.sing some insignificant modern dwellings, and leaving beneath us on the left the Himmelsthor, let us approach the summit of the rock and the buildings of the Kaiserburg itself. As we advance to the gateway with the intention of ringing the bell for the castellan, we notice on the left the Double Chapel, attaching to the Heathen Tower, the lower part of which is encrusted with what were once supposed to be Pagan images. The Tower protrudes beyond the face of the third plateau, and its prominence may indicate the width of a trench, now filled in, which was once dug outside the enclosing wall of the summit of the rock. The whole of the south side of this plateau is taken up by the "Palast" (the vast hall, two stories high, which, tho it has been repeatedly rebuilt, may in its original structure be traced back as far as the twelfth century), and the "Kemnate" or dwelling-rooms which seem to have been without any means of defense. This plateau, like the second, is supplied with a well. But the first object that strikes the eye on entering the court-yard is the ruined limetree, the branches of which once spread their broad and verdant shelter over the whole extent of the quadrangle.

On leaving the Castle we find ourselves in the Burgstra.s.se, called in the old days Unter der Veste, which was probably the High Street of the old town. Off both sides of this street and of the Bergstra.s.se ran narrow crooked little alleys lined with wooden houses of which time and fire have left scarcely any trace. As you wander round the city tracing the line of the old walls, you are struck by the general air of splendor. Most of the houses are large and of a ma.s.sive style of architecture, adorned with fanciful gables and bearing the impress of the period when every inhabitant was a merchant, and every merchant was lodged like a king. The houses of the merchant princes, richly carved both inside and out, tell of the wealth and splendor of Nuremberg in her proudest days. But you will also come upon a hundred crooked little streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of yet other days and other conditions.

They tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. Only here and there a stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. The streets were narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. In wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they remained mere swamps and mora.s.ses. In dry weather the dust was even a worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly better when survived.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

A glance at the map will show us that Nuremberg, as we know it, is divided into two almost equal divisions. They are called after the names of the princ.i.p.al churches, the St. Lorenz, and the St. Sebald quarter.

The original wall included, it will be seen, only a small portion of the northern or St. Sebald division. With the growth of the town an extension of the walls and an increase of fortification followed as a matter of course. It became necessary to carry the wall over the Pegnitz in order to protect the Lorenzkirche and the suburb which was springing up around it. The precise date of this extension of the fortifications can not be fixt. The chronicles attribute it to the twelfth century, in the reign of the first Hohenstaufen, Konrad III. No trace of a twelfth-century wall remains; but the chroniclers may, for all that, have been not very wide of the mark. The mud and wood which supplied the material of the wall may have given place to stone in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However that may be, it will be remembered that the lower part of the White Tower, which is the oldest fragment of building we can certainly point to dates from the thirteenth century.

All other portions of the second wall clearly indicate the fourteenth century, or later, as the time of their origin....

Beyond the White Tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section of it opposite the Unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than the rest, and was called the Klettengraben, because of the burdocks which took root there. Hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the Waizenbrauhaus was built in 1671, which is now the famous Freiherrlich von Tuchersche Brewery. Here, too, the Unschlitthaus was built at the end of the fifteenth century as a granary. It has since been turned into a school.

We have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of Nuremberg. Once more we have to cross the Pegnitz, whose banks are overhung by quaint old houses. Their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich ma.s.ses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the Henkersteg. The wall was carried on arches over the southern arm of the Pegnitz to the point of the Saumarkt (or Trodelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like manner over the northern arm. The latter portion of it alone survives and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the Wa.s.serthurm, which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported by two arches over the stream, which was the Henkersteg, the habitation of the hangman, and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which joined the Unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in 1595 by the high flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by an iron bridge.

Somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the reign of Karl IV., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, altho destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and entrances, is still fairly well preserved, and secures to Nuremberg the reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger German towns the characteristics of a medieval town. The fortifications seem to have been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the Hussites soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. In times of war and rumors of war all the peasants within a radius of two miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of barriers and ramparts. The whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches was practically finished by 1452, when with pardonable pride Tucher wrote, "In this year was completed the ditch round the town. It took twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of trouble to cross it." Part of the ditch had been made and perhaps revetted as early as 1407, but it was not till twenty years later that it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts to-day. The size of it was always a source of pride to Nurembergers, and it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as 1869 it was left perfectly intact. On the average it is about 100 feet broad.

It was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the little Fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern Sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. The construction of the ditch was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had to pay a subst.i.tute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. There were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor, official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, tho the amount of the payment was gradually reduced....

At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible would increase their effect. In practise the plunging fire from platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches, since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack.

The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than effective defenses.

The round towers, however, were not the sole defenses of the gates.

Outside each one of them was a kind of fence of pointed beams after the manner of a chevaux-de-frise, while outside the ditch and close to the bridge stood a barrier, by the side of which was a guard-house. Tho it was not till 1598 that all the main gates were fitted with drawbridges, the wooden bridges that served before that could doubtless easily be destroyed in cases of emergency. Double-folding doors and portcullises protected the gateways themselves. Once past there, the enemy was far from being in the town, for the road led through extensive advanced works, presenting, as in the case of the Laufer Thor outwork, a regular "place d'armes." Further, the road was so engineered as not to lead in a straight line from the outer main gates to the inner ones, but rather so as to pursue a circuitous course. Thus the enemy in pa.s.sing through from the one to the other were exposed as long as possible to the shots and projectiles of the defenders, who were stationed all round the walls and towers flanking the advanced tambour. This arrangement may be traced very clearly at the Frauen Thor to-day. The position of the round tower, it will be observed, was an excellent one for commanding the road from the outer to the inner gate.

At intervals of every 120 or 150 feet the interior wall is broken by quadrilateral towers. Some eighty-three of these, including the gate towers, can still be traced. What the number was originally we do not know. It is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. The Hartmann Schedel Chronicle, for instance, gives Nuremberg 365 towers in all. The fact that there are 365 days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this a.s.sertion! The towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. They are now used as dwelling-houses. On some of them there can still be seen, projecting near the roof, two little machicoulis turrets, which served as guard-rooms for observing the enemy, and also, by overhanging the base of the tower, enabled the garrison to hurl down on their a.s.sailants at the foot of the wall a hurricane of projectiles of every sort. Like the wall the towers are built almost entirely of sandstone, but on the side facing the town they are usually faced with brick. The shapes of the roofs vary from flat to pointed, but the towers themselves are simple and almost austere in form in comparison with those generally found in North Germany, where fantasy runs riot in red brick. The Nuremberg towers were obviously intended in the first place for use rather than for ornament.

At the end of our long perambulations of the walls it will be a grateful relief to sit for a while at one of the "Restaurations" or restaurants on the walls. There, beneath the shade of acacias in the daytime, or in the evening by the white light of incandescent gas, you may sit and watch the groups of men, women, and children all drinking from their tall gla.s.ses of beer, and you may listen to the whirr and ting-tang of the electric cars, where the challenge of sentinels or the cry of the night-watchman was once the most frequent sound. Or, if you have grown tired of the Horn- and the Schloss-zwinger, cross the ditch on the west side of the town and make your way to the Rosenau, in the Furtherstra.s.se. The Rosenau is a garden of trees and roses not lacking in chairs and tables, in bowers, benches, and a band. There, too, you will see the good burgher with his family drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking contentedly.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

ALBERT DuRER[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

Among the most treasured of Nuremberg's relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the Thiergartnerthor, in which Albert Durer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. The works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. It is in Vienna and Munich, in Dresden and Berlin, in Florence, in Prague, or the British Museum, that we find splendid collections of Durer's works.

Not at Nuremberg. But here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled--no genius ever took more pains--and the surroundings which imprest his mind and influenced his inspiration.