William of Germany Part 14

At Bonn in April the Emperor attended the matriculation (immatriculation, the Germans call it) of his eldest son, the Crown Prince, at the university. He was in civil dress, one of the rare public occasions during the reign when he has not been in uniform, but this did not prevent him delivering a martial address to the Borussians. "I hope and expect from the younger generation," he said to the students,

"that they will put me in a position to maintain our German Fatherland in its close and strong boundaries and in the congeries of German races--doing to no one favour and to no one harm. If, however, anyone should touch us too nearly, then I will call upon you and I expect you won't leave your Emperor sitting."

A great shout of "Bravo!" went up when the Emperor ceased, and the students doubtless all thought what a fine thing it would be if he would only lead them straightway against those cheeky Englanders.

At the end of June, on board the Hamburg-American pleasure-steamer _Princess Victoria Luise_, the Emperor p.r.o.nounced the famous sentence--"Our future lies on the water." The year before he had said something like it, and it is worth quoting as the Emperor's first explicit allusion to Weltpolitik. "Strongly," he exclaimed,

"dashes the beat of ocean at the doors of our people and compels it to preservation of its place in the world, in a word, to Weltpolitik. The ocean is indispensable for Germany's greatness. The ocean testifies that on it and far beyond it no important decision will be taken without Germany and the German Emperor."

His words on the present occasion were:

"My entire task for the future will be to see that the undertakings of which the foundations have been laid may develop quietly and surely. We have, though as yet without the fleet as it should be, achieved our place in the sun. It will now be my task to hold this place unquestioned, so that its rays may act favourably on trade and industry and agriculture at home inside, and on our sail-sports on the coast--for our future lies on the water. The more Germans go on the sea--whether travelling or in the service of the State--the better. When the German has once learned to look abroad and afar he will lose that 'hang' towards the petty, the trivial, which now so often seizes him in daily life."

And he closed: "We must now go out in search of new spots where we can drive in nails on which to hang our armour."

Early in August the Emperor was called to the death-bed of his mother, the Empress Frederick, at her castle in Cronberg. She died on the afternoon of her son's arrival, on August 5th. The Emperor ordered mourning throughout the Empire for six weeks, and forbade all "public music, entertainments, theatrical or otherwise" until after the funeral. The Empress was buried in the mausoleum attached to the Friedenskirche in Potsdam on the 13th of the month.

The delivery of a famous speech on art by the Emperor in December brings the chronicle of 1901 to a close, but perhaps it will not displease the reader if a new chapter is opened for the purpose of quoting it and of considering the Emperor in what is a traditional Hohenzollern relationship.

X.

THE EMPEROR AND THE ARTS

Art is a favourite subject of conversation on the Continent, where it is more popularly discussed than in England and where authorities of all kinds are more alive to its educative capabilities. It is eminently "safe" ground, does not savour of gossip, and no one need leave the field of discussion with the feeling that he has been driven from it. Hence it is the salvation of diplomatists who are apprehensive of committing their Governments or themselves when mixing in general society, and it doubtless does good service for the Emperor also upon occasion. Indeed it is a topic on which he speaks willingly and well.

Unfortunately for precision of thought and speech, though useful for the man in the street, the word "art" has been pressed into the service of metaphor more than almost any other word in language. We are told in turn that everything is an art--hair-dressing, salad-dressing (a different kind), lying, flying, dying. The Germans are trying to make an art of life. Whistler wrote about the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies." One hears of "artful hussies" and "artful dodgers." People are described as "artful" in the small diplomacies of intercourse. Jugglers, acrobats, sword-swallowers, "supers" at the theatre, the men who play the elephant in the pantomime would all be mortified if they were not addressed as "artists," In short, everything may be called an art.

But what, truly, is art? The question is as hard to answer satisfactorily as the questions what is truth or what is beauty? The notion "art" usually occurs to the mind as contrasted with the notion "nature"; the word is derived from the Sanskrit root _ar_, to plough, to make, to do; and accordingly art may be taken to be something made by man, as contrasted with something made, or grown, or given by G.o.d.

How art came into existence it is of course impossible to do more than conjecture. The necessities of primitive man may have stimulated his inventive powers into originating and developing the useful arts for his physical comfort and convenience; and his desire for recreation after labour, or the mere ennui of idleness, may have urged the same powers into originating and developing the fine and plastic arts for the entertainment of his mind. Or, lastly, if no better reason can be found, and though Sir Joshua Reynolds laid it down that all models of perfection in art must be sought for on the earth, it may be that seeing and feeling instinctively the glory and beauty of the Creation, mankind began gradually, as its intelligence improved, to burn with a longing to imitate, reproduce, and represent them.

However art arose, it seems true to say, as a German writer has well said, that when a work of art, whether a poem or a picture or a statue, causes in us the thought that so, and in no other way, would we ourselves have expressed the idea, had we the talent, then we may conclude that true art is speaking to us, whatever the idea to be expressed may be. Everything demands thought, but our thoughts are an unruly folk, which never keep long on the same straight road, and love to wander off to left and right, here finding something new and there throwing away something old. The artist, when he conceives a plan, has to fight with the host of his thoughts and find a way through them.

They often threaten to divert him from it, but on the other hand they often lead him to his goal by novel paths along which he finds much that is new and valuable.

This is a doctrine that, sensible though it is, would hardly be subscribed to by the Emperor, to whom no new movement in art strongly appeals, and who thinks that such movements, unless founded on the old cla.s.sical school, the Greek and Roman school of beauty, ought, in the public interest, to be discouraged. However, let him speak for himself. He set forth his art creed in a speech which he delivered on December 18, 1901, to the sculptors who had executed the Hohenzollern statues in the famous Siegesallee at Berlin, and which ran substantially as follows:--

"I gladly seize the occasion, first of all, to express my congratulations and then my thanks for the manner in which you have a.s.sisted me to carry out my original plan. The preparation of the plan for the Siegesallee has occupied many years, and the learned historiographer of my House, Professor Dr. Poser, is the man who put me in a position to set the artists clear and intelligible tasks. Once the historic basis was found the work could be proceeded with, and when the personalities of the princes were established it was possible to ascertain those who had been their most important helpers. In this manner the groups originated and, to a certain extent, conditioned by their history, the forms of them came into existence.

"The next most difficult question was--Was it possible, as I hoped it was, to find in Berlin so many artists as would be able to work together harmoniously to realize the programme?

"As I came to consider the question, I had in view to show the world that the most favourable condition for the successful achievement of the work was not the appointment of an art commission and the establishment of prize compet.i.tions, but that in accord with ancient custom, as in the cla.s.sical period, and later during the Middle Ages, was the case, it lay in the direct intercourse of the employer with the artists.

"I am therefore especially obliged to Professor Reinhold Begas for having a.s.sured me, when I applied to him, that there was absolutely no doubt there could be found in Berlin a sufficiency of artists to carry out the idea; and with his help, and in consequence of the acquaintances I have made by visiting exhibitions and studios in Berlin, I succeeded in getting together a staff, the majority of whom I see around me, with whom to approach the task.

"I think you will not refuse me the testimony that, in respect of the programme I drew up I have made the treatment of it as easy as possible, that while I ordered and defined the work I gave you an absolute freedom not only in the combination and composition, but precisely the freedom to put into it that from himself which every artist must if he is to give the work the stamp of his own individuality, since every work of art contains in itself something of the individual character of the artist. I believe that this experiment, if I may so call it, as made in the Siegesallee, has succeeded.

"... I have never interfered with details, but have contented myself with simply giving the direction, the impulse.

"But to-day the thought that Berlin stands there before the whole world with a guild of artists able to carry out so magnificent a project fills me with satisfaction and pride.

It shows that the Berlin school of art stands on a height which could hardly have been more splendid in the time of the Renaissance.

"Here, too, one can draw a parallel between the great artistic achievements of the Middle Ages and the Italians--that, namely, the head of the State, an art-loving prince, who offered their tasks to the artists also found the master round whom a school of artists could gather.

"How is it, generally speaking, with art in the world? It takes its models, supplies itself from the great sources of Mother Nature, who, spite of her apparently unfettered, limitless freedom, still moves according to eternal laws which the Creator ordained for himself and which cannot be pa.s.sed or violated without danger to the development of the world.

"Even so it is in art; and at the sight of the beautiful remains of old cla.s.sical times comes again over one the feeling that here too reigns an eternal law that is always true to itself, the law of beauty and harmony, of the aesthetic. This law is given expression to by the ancients in so surprising and overpowering a fashion, in so thoroughly complete a form that we, with all our modern sensibilities and with all our power, are still proud, when we have done any specially fine piece of work, to hear that it is almost as good as it was made nineteen hundred years ago.

"But only almost! Under this impression I would earnestly ask you to lay it to heart that sculpture still remains untainted by so-called modern tendencies and currents--still stands high and chastely there! Keep her so, don't let yourselves be misled by human criticism or any wind of doctrine to abandon the principles on which she has been built up.

"An art which transgresses the laws and limits I have indicated is art no more. It is factory work, handicraft, and that is a thing art should never be. Under the often misused word 'freedom' and her flag one falls too readily into boundlessness, unrestraint, self-exaggeration. For whoever cuts loose from the law of beauty, and the feeling for the aesthetic and harmonious, which every human breast feels, whether he can express it or not, and in his thought makes his chief object some special direction, some specific solution of more technical tasks, that man denies art's first sources.

"Yet again. Art should help to exercise an educative influence on the people. She should offer the lower cla.s.ses, after the hard work of the day, the possibility of refreshing themselves by regarding what is ideal. To us Germans great ideals have become permanent possessions, whereas to other peoples they have been more or less lost.

Only the German people remain called to preserve these great ideas, to cultivate and continue them. And among these ideals is this, that we afford the possibility to the working cla.s.ses to elevate themselves by beauty, and by beauty to enable them to abstract themselves and rise above the thoughts they otherwise would have.

"When Art, as now often occurs, does nothing more than represent misery as still more unlovely than it is already, by so doing she sins against the German people. The cultivation of the ideal is at the same time the greatest work of culture, and if we wish to be and remain an example in this to other nations the whole people must work together to that end; if Culture is to fulfil her task she must penetrate to the lowest cla.s.ses of society. That she can only do when art comes into play, when she raises up, instead of descending into the gutter.

"As ruler of the country I often find it extremely bitter that art, through its masters, does not with sufficient energy oppose such tendencies. I do not for a moment fail to perceive that many an aspiring character is to be found among the partisans of these tendencies, who are perhaps filled with the best intentions but who are on the wrong path. The true artist needs no advertis.e.m.e.nt, no press, no patronage. I do not believe that your great protagonists in the domain of science, either in ancient Greece or in Italy or in the Renaissance period ever had recourse to a _reclame_ such as nowadays is often made in the press in order to bring their ideas into prominence, but worked as G.o.d inspired them and let others do the talking.

"And so must an honest, proper artist act. The art which descends to _reclame_ is no art be it lauded a hundred or a thousand-fold. A feeling for what is beautiful or ugly has every one, be he ever so simple, and to educate this feeling in the people I require all of you. That in the Siegesallee you have done a piece of such work, I have specially to thank you.

"This I can even now tell you--the impression which the Siegesallee has made on the foreigner is quite an overpowering one; everywhere respect for German sculpture is making itself perceivable. May you always remain on these heights, may such masters stand by my sons and sons' sons, should they ever come into existence! Then, I am convinced, will our people be in a position to love the beautiful and honour lofty ideals."

At the Berlin Art Museum next year, after praising the devotion of his parents to art, and especially of his mother, "a nature," he said, "about which poesy breathed," he continued:--

"The son of both stands before you as their heir and executor: and so I regard it as my task, according to the intention of my parents, to hold my hand over my German people and its growing generation, to foster the love of beauty in them, and to develop art in them; but only along the lines and within the bounds drawn strictly by the feelings in mankind for beauty and harmony."

The Emperor's speech to the sculptors, if it contains some questionable statements, is a thoughtful address by one who is himself an artist, though not perhaps an artist of a high cla.s.s. His artistic endowments, transmitted from his parents, have been already indicated.

In reference to them he said to the official conducting him over the Marienburg in later years, when the official expressed surprise at the Emperor's art-knowledge:--

"There is nothing wonderful in it. I was brought up in an artistic atmosphere. My mother was an artist, and from my earliest youth I have been surrounded by beautiful things.

Art is my friend and my recreation."

The highest praise of a work of art is to say of it that it pleased, or would have pleased; his mother. Of her he said, "Every thought she had was art, and to her everything, however simple, which was meant for the use of life, was penetrated with beauty." When giving his sanction to a plan, a park, a statue or a building he always thinks--"Would it have pleased my parents--what would they have said about it?" The Kaiser Friedrich Museum and the Kaiser Friedrich Memorial Church, both in Berlin, testify to the Emperor's grat.i.tude to his parents for their artistic legacy.

He went, as we have seen, through the ordinary art drudgery of the school, recognizing, no doubt, with Michael Angelo, with all good artists, that correct drawing is the foundation of every art into which drawing enters and applying himself industriously to it. As a young soldier at Potsdam he spent a good deal of his time, during the three years from 1880 to 1883, practising oil-painting under the guidance of Herr Karl Salzmann, a distinguished Berlin painter. Among the results of this instruction was a picture which the princely artist called "The Corvette--Prince Adalbert in the Bay of Samitsu,"

now hanging in the residence of his brother, Prince Henry, at Kiel; and two years later, as his interest in the navy grew, a "Fight between an Armoured Ship and a Torpedo-boat." Innumerable aquarelles and sketches, chiefly of marine subjects, were also the fruit of this period.

The Emperor has constantly cultivated free and friendly intercourse with the best artists of his own and other nations, and been continually engaged devoting time and money to the art education of his people. The admirable art exhibitions in Berlin of the best examples of painting by English, French, and American artists, which he personally promoted and was greatly interested in, may be recalled as instances. If his efforts in encouraging art among his people have not been so successful as his imperial activities in other directions, the reason is not any fault on his part, but simply that art refuses to be, in Shakespeare's phrase, "tongue-tied by authority."

This was shown by the chorus of unfavourable criticism which the speech to the sculptors drew forth. No one questioned the sincerity of the Emperor or the magnanimity of his aims, nor was the criticism wholly caused by the suspicion that it savoured of the "personal regiment" under which the people were growing impatient; but many thought he was pushing the dynastic principle too far and unduly interfering with liberty of thought and judgment, and that there was something Oriental as well as selfish in occupying with a gallery of his ancestors, the majority of whom were, after all, very ordinary people, one of the fairest spots in the capital. Perhaps, however, what was most objected to was his trying to drive the art of the nation into a groove, the direction given by himself: in trying to inspire it with a particular spirit and that an ancient not a modern spirit, when he ought to let the spirit come of its own accord out of the mind of the people--the mind of many millions, not the mind of one man, however high his rank. Politics and government might be things in which he had a right to an authoritative voice, but art, like religion, the people considered to be a matter for individual taste and judgment.

Yet something may be advanced in favour of the Emperor. His recommendation, for in fact it was and could be only that, was quite in keeping with the traditions of his office and the people's own view of royal government. The speech, as was admitted, was suggested by no mere dilettante's vanity, but, as is evident from his words at the Art Museum, by the conviction that just as it is the imperial duty to provide an efficient army and navy, so it is the imperial duty to use every personal and private, as well as every public and official, effort to provide the people with an art as efficient, as honest, and as clean; and it was inevitable that the art the Emperor recommended was that which he believed, and still believes, to be in conformity with the ideals, as he interprets them, or would have them to be, of the Germanic race.

The speech itself is interesting as showing the Emperor's att.i.tude towards art and artists and his personal conception of art and its nature. His att.i.tude is evidently that of the art-loving prince of whom he speaks in the address, a royal Maecenas or di Medici, who gathers artists round him; but he means to use them, not so much perhaps for art's sake, as for the instruction and elevation of his folk. A very laudable aim; only, as it happens, the folk in this matter desire themselves to decide what is improving and elevating for them and what is not. They are not willing to leave the exclusive choice to the Emperor.