The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 2

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Other cities project new things, and grow with a modern impetus:
Nuremberg lives in the past, and traffics on its ancient reputation.
Of course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived,
and the works of art they have left behind them,--things seen and
described by everybody. The stone carving about the church portals
and on side buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and naive. The
subjects are sacred; and with the sacred is mingled the comic, here
as at Augsburg, where over one portal of the cathedral, with saints
and angels, monkeys climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that of
our Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, who could not
watch one hour, are sleeping in various attitudes of stony
comicality. All the stone-cutters seem to have tried their chisels
on this group, and there are dozens of them. The wise and foolish
virgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,--the
one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with a
penitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment. Over the
great portal of St. Lawrence--a magnificent structure, with lofty
twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved "The Last Judgment."
Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins; above
sits the Judge, with the attending angels. On the right hand go away
the stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms and harps,
up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St. Peter opens for
them; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and
distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devil
is dragging them by their stony hair.

The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other I
remember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising and
foliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stained
glass, glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirely
round the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, too,
is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the most
exquisite thing I ever saw in stone. The color is light gray; and it
rises beside one of the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet,
growing to a point, which then strikes the arch of the roof, and
there curls up like a vine to avoid it. The base is supported by the
kneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored on
it for four years. Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing little
children, and other beautiful tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire
grows up and around these, now and then throwing out graceful
tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant than
inanimate stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for
it; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strike
the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion.
So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of letting
it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.

He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full
haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is
so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the
stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember
that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We
left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in the
morning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock in the afternoon: the
distance cannot be more than a hundred miles. That is quicker than
by diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogs
along. There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion;
nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station. But
there are express trains.

We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run
twenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifth
higher than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and the
officials, who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and
obliging than officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms.
So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital
of Bavaria.

OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH

I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead
leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the
summer weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather
for a week now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn
feeling in the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must
have shivering listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do,
play within doors. The line of droschke drivers, in front of the
post-office colonnade, hide the red facings of their coats under long
overcoats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketed
horses, which must need twice the quantity of black-bread in this
chilly air; for the horses here eat bread, like people. I see the
drivers every day slicing up the black loaves, and feeding them,
taking now and then a mouthful themselves, wetting it down with a
pull from the mug of beer that stands within reach. And lastly (I am
still speaking of the weather), the gay military officers come abroad
in long cloaks, to some extent concealing their manly forms and smart
uniforms, which I am sure they would not do, except under the
pressure of necessity.

Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is only a rough
visit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences. We
came up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting to
find Munich a furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said.
So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till the
expected rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heat
overpowering. But the first week of August in Munich it was
delicious weather,--clear, sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in
it and no languor in it, just as you would say it ought to be on a
high, gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea. Then
came a week of what the Muncheners call hot weather, with the
thermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the white wide
streets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since then, weather
of the most uncertain sort.

Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better spare it than
grimy London; for its prevailing color is light gray, and its
many-tinted and frescoed fronts go far to relieve the most cheerless
day. Yet Munich attempts to be an architectural reproduction of
classic times; and, in order to achieve any success in this
direction, it is necessary to have the blue heavens and golden
sunshine of Greece. The old portion of the city has some remains of
the Gothic, and abounds in archways and rambling alleys, that
suddenly become broad streets and then again contract to the width of
an alderman, and portions of the old wall and city gates; old feudal
towers stand in the market-place, and faded frescoes on old
clock-faces and over archways speak of other days of splendor.

But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order,--raised in a day by
the command of one man. It was the old King Ludwig I., whose
flower-wreathed bust stands in these days in the vestibule of the
Glyptothek, in token of his recent death, who gave the impulse for
all this, though some of the best buildings and streets in the city
have been completed by his successors. The new city is laid out on a
magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open
squares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the
art buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a
stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask every
passer what it was put there for. Then, again, some of the new
adornments lack fitness of location or purpose. At the end of the
broad, monotonous Ludwig Strasse, and yet not at the end, for the
road runs straight on into the flat country between rows of slender
trees, stands the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation of the
Constantine arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a splendid group in
bronze, by Schwanthaler, Bavaria in her war-chariot, drawn by four
lions; and it is in itself, both in its proportions and its numerous
sculptural figures and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor
"of the Bavarian army," to whom it is erected. Yet it is so dwarfed
by its situation, that it seems to have been placed in the middle of
the street as an obstruction. A walk runs on each side of it. The
Propylaeum, another magnificent gateway, thrown across the handsome
Brienner Strasse, beyond the Glyptothek, is an imitation of that on
the Acropolis at Athens. It has fine Doric columns on the outside,
and Ionic within, and the pediment groups are bas-reliefs, by
Schwanthaler, representing scenes in modern Greek history. The
passageways for carriages are through the side arches; and thus the
"sidewalk" runs into the center of the street, and foot-passers must
twice cross the carriage-drive in going through the gate. Such
things as these give one the feeling that art has been forced beyond
use in Munich; and it is increased when one wanders through the new
churches, palaces, galleries, and finds frescoes so prodigally
crowded out of the way, and only occasionally opened rooms so
overloaded with them, and not always of the best, as to sacrifice all
effect, and leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest has
driven painters and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adorn
the city at a stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it
with marbles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet
growth and blossoming of time.

You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open,
light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and
modern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer,
said by antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in
Odin's halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich has
so much, that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised.
The long, wide Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,--a street built
up by the old king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all
the buildings are in the Romanesque style,--a repetition of one
another to a monotonous degree: only at the lower end are there any
shops or shop-windows, and a more dreary promenade need not be
imagined. It has neither shade nor fountains; and on a hot day you
can see how the sun would pour into it, and blind the passers. But
few ever walk there at any time. A street that leads nowhere, and
has no gay windows, does not attract. Toward the lower end, in the
Odeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig, a royally commanding
figure, with a page on either side. The street is closed (so that it
flows off on either side into streets of handsome shops) by the
Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the beautiful
Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two statues,
which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry, comes
a military band to play for half an hour; and there are always plenty
of idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves is
domesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheeling
round the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and
perching on the heads of the statues on the facade.

The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, that
I think nobody can describe or understand, built at different times
and in imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a
grassless square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for
shops, and partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes and
historical subjects, is "a building of festive halls," a facade eight
hundred feet long, in the revived Italian style, and with a fine
Ionic porch. The color is the royal, dirty yellow.

On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, a
seated figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of
the palace, the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried out, of
the Pitti Palace, at Florence. Between these is the old Residenz,
adorned with fountain groups and statues in bronze. On another side
are the church and theater of the Residenz. The interior of this
court chapel is dazzling in appearance: the pillars are, I think,
imitation of variegated marble; the sides are imitation of the same;
the vaulting is covered with rich frescoes on gold ground. The whole
effect is rich, but it is not at all sacred. Indeed, there is no
church in Munich, except the old cathedral, the Frauenkirche, with
its high Gothic arches, stained windows, and dusty old carvings, that
gives one at all the sort of feeling that it is supposed a church
should give. The court chapel interior is boastingly said to
resemble St. Mark's, in Venice.

You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is carried here
in Munich; so, as I said, the buildings need the southern sunlight.
Fortunately, they get the right quality much of the time. The
Glyptothek, a Grecian structure of one story, erected to hold the
treasures of classic sculpture that King Ludwig collected, has a
beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are niches filled
with statues. In the pure sunshine and under a deep blue sky, its
white marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty. Opposite stands
another successful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture,--a
building with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. These, with
the Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out wonderfully against a blue
sky. A few squares distant is the Pinakothek, with its treasures of
old pictures, and beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works of
modern artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescoes, from
designs by Kaulbach: these certainly appear best in a sparkling
light; though I am bound to say that no light can make very much of
them.

Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian,
built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modern
style of architecture, not an imitation, though it may remind some of
the new portions of Paris. It runs for three quarters of a mile,
beginning with the postoffice and its colonnades, with frescoes on
one side, and the Hof Theater, with its pediment frescoes, the
largest opera-house in Germany, I believe; with stately buildings
adorned with statues, and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowing
Isar, which is spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by two
bridges, for the Isar is partly turned from its bed above, and made
to turn wheels, and drive machinery. At the lower end the street
expands into a handsome platz, with young shade trees, plats of
grass, and gay beds of flowers. I look out on it as I write; and I
see across the Isar the college building begun by Maximilian for the
education of government officers; and I see that it is still
unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with unsightly
scaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete it; but
the young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only a
mason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exterior
frescoes. At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and
decay before this is built. On either side of it, on the elevated
bank of the river, stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, fine
trees, and well-kept walks.

Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspects
of the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originally
by the munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, I
suppose, because it is not in the artificial Continental style.
Paris has nothing to compare with it for natural beauty,--Paris,
which cannot let a tree grow, but must clip it down to suit French
taste. It is a noble park four miles in length, and perhaps a
quarter of that in width,--a park of splendid old trees, grand,
sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing grass, with delicious,
shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water. For the Isar is
trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under bridges and
over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting even a
lake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite in
the classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the many
spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play every
Saturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, and
the promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; and
while the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, and
the fashionably attired young men walk round and round the, circle,
and the smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, and
stride about with clanking swords.

We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when we
came to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only just
begun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first
the military bands: there is continually a parade somewhere, and the
streets are full of military music, and finely executed too. Then of
beer-gardens there is literally no end, and there are nightly
concerts in them. There are two brothers Hunn, each with his band,
who, like the ancient Huns, have taken the city; and its gardens are
given over to their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera medleys.
Then there is the church music on Sundays and holidays, which is
largely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums and
trumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of our
stay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor.
I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the
great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself
up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands;
and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or
fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting and
blowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging,
since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circus
band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long,
and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; at least, the
bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indistinctly. You
know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort of caravan tune.
That was it.

The English Caf‚ was not far off, and there the Hunns and others also
made night melodious. The whole air was one throb and thrump. The
only refuge from it was to go into one of the gardens, and give
yourself over to one band. And so it was possible to have delightful
music, and see the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly
fellowship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early and
late. We expected quiet in our present quarters. The first morning,
at six o'clock, we were startled by the resonant notes of a military
band, that set the echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment
of cavalry went clanking down the street. But that is a not
unwelcome morning serenade and reveille. Not so agreeable is the
young man next door, who gives hilarious concerts to his friends, and
sings and bangs his piano all day Sunday; nor the screaming young
woman opposite. Yet it is something to be in an atmosphere of music.

THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH

This morning I was awakened early by the strains of a military band.
It was a clear, sparkling morning, the air full of life, and yet the
sun showing its warm, southern side. As the mounted musicians went
by, the square was quite filled with the clang of drum and trumpet,
which became fainter and fainter, and at length was lost on the ear
beyond the Isar, but preserved the perfection of time and the
precision of execution for which the military bands of the city are
remarkable. After the band came a brave array of officers in bright
uniform, upon horses that pranced and curveted in the sunshine; and
the regiment of cavalry followed, rank on rank of splendidly mounted
men, who ride as if born to the saddle. The clatter of hoofs on the
pavement, the jangle of bit and saber, the occasional word of
command, the onward sweep of the well-trained cavalcade, continued
for a long time, as if the lovely morning had brought all the cavalry
in the city out of barracks. But this is an almost daily sight in
Munich. One regiment after another goes over the river to the
drill-ground. In the hot mornings I used quite to pity the troopers
who rode away in the glare in scorching brazen helmets and
breastplates. But only a portion of the regiments dress in that
absurd manner. The most wear a simple uniform, and look very
soldierly. The horses are almost invariably fine animals, and I have
not seen such riders in Europe. Indeed, everybody in Munich who
rides at all rides well. Either most of the horsemen have served in
the cavalry, or horsemanship, that noble art "to witch the world," is
in high repute here.

Speaking of soldiers, Munich is full of them. There are huge caserns
in every part of the city, crowded with troops. This little kingdom
of Bavaria has a hundred and twenty thousand troops of the line.
Every man is obliged to serve in the army continuously three years;
and every man between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five must go
with his regiment into camp or barrack several weeks in each year, no
matter if the harvest rots in the field, or the customers desert the
uncared-for shop. The service takes three of the best years of a
young man's life. Most of the soldiers in Munich are young one meets
hundreds of mere boys in the uniform of officers. I think every
seventh man you meet is a soldier. There must be between fifteen and
twenty thousand troops quartered in the city now. The young officers
are everywhere, lounging in the cafes, smoking and sipping coffee, on
all the public promenades, in the gardens, the theaters, the
churches. And most of them are fine-looking fellows, good figures in
elegantly fitting and tasteful uniforms; but they do like to show
their handsome forms and hear their sword-scabbards rattle on the
pavement as they stride by. The beer-gardens are full of the common
soldiers, who empty no end of quart mugs in alternate pulls from the
same earthen jug, with the utmost jollity and good fellowship. On
the street, salutes between officers and men are perpetual,
punctiliously given and returned,--the hand raised to the temple, and
held there for a second. A young gallant, lounging down the
Theatiner or the Maximilian Strasse, in his shining and snug uniform,
white kids, and polished boots, with jangling spurs and the long
sword clanking on the walk, raising his hand ever and anon in
condescending salute to a lower in rank, or with affable grace to an
equal, is a sight worth beholding, and for which one cannot be too
grateful. We have not all been created with the natural shape for
soldiers, but we have eyes given us that we may behold them.

Bavaria fought, you know, on the wrong side at Sadowa; but the result
of the war left her in confederation with Prussia. The company is
getting to be very distasteful, for Austria is at present more
liberal than Prussia. Under Prussia one must either be a soldier or
a slave, the democrats of Munich say. Bavaria has the most liberal
constitution in Germany, except that of Wurtemberg, and the people
are jealous of any curtailment of liberty. It seems odd that anybody
should look to the house of Hapsburg for liberality. The attitude of
Prussia compels all the little states to keep up armies, which eat up
their substance, and burden the people with taxes. This is the more
to be regretted now, when Bavaria is undergoing a peaceful
revolution, and throwing off the trammels of galling customs in other
respects.

THE EMANCIPATION OF MUNICH

The 1st of September saw go into complete effect the laws enacted in
1867, which have inaugurated the greatest changes in business and
social life, and mark an era in the progress of the people worthy of
fetes and commemorative bronzes. We heard the other night at the
opera-house "William Tell" unmutilated. For many years this liberty-
breathing opera was not permitted to be given in Bavaria, except with
all the life of it cut out. It was first presented entire by order
of young King Ludwig, who, they say, was induced to command its
unmutilated reproduction at the solicitation of Richard Wagner, who
used to be, and very likely is now, a "Red," and was banished from
Saxony in 1848 for fighting on the people's side of a barricade in
Dresden. It is the fashion to say of the young king, that he pays no
heed to the business of the kingdom. You hear that the handsome boy
cares only for music and horseback exercise: he plays much on the
violin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom,
and is gone for days together. He has composed an opera, which has
not yet been put on the stage. People, when they speak of him, tap
their foreheads with one finger. But I don't believe it. The same
liberality that induced him, years ago, to restore "William Tell" to
the stage has characterized the government under him ever since.

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