In and Around Berlin Part 5

The great City Prison, on a modern plan, is in Moabit, a northwestern suburb. This region received its name, "Pays de Moab," from French immigrants on account of its sterile soil; but a part of it is becoming an attractive and beautiful residence quarter. To the north of this is a model state-prison, accommodating twelve hundred prisoners.

The Insane Asylum is said also to be a model inst.i.tution. It has accommodations for fifteen hundred patients; and its buildings are near Dalldorf, a short distance east of the route to the northwestern suburb of Tegel. The Medical Department of the University has large buildings in different parts of the city. Connected with these is the great Carite Hospital, founded a hundred years ago, and richly endowed by public and private funds. In its many wards more than fifteen hundred patients are constantly under treatment. Another interesting hospital is the Stadtische Krankenhaus, completed about fifteen years ago, on the "pavilion" plan, with the best modern appliances. This is situated in the beautiful park known as the Friedrichshain, in the northeastern part of the city. The Bethanien, in the southeastern quarter, is a large inst.i.tution for the training of nurses, admirably managed, under the care of the deaconesses, or Protestant Sisters.

X.

PALACES.

The palaces lately occupied by Emperor William I. and Crown Prince Frederick were formerly shown to the public during the absence of the occupants at their country residences; but as this was usually in the summer, when comparatively few strangers are in Berlin, they were not commonly included in a sight-seeing programme. They are pleasant homes, without great magnificence, but containing many interesting memorials of the lives of their Imperial masters. The palace of the Crown Prince was not used by him after he became Emperor Frederick III. The hundred days of pain which remained to him of life were spent at Charlottenburg and in the Castle of Friedrichskron at Potsdam.

The Old Schloss of Berlin, dating back in its foundation to the castle fortified on the river-side more than four hundred years ago by one of the early Electors of Brandenburg to maintain his rights of conquest, has received many later additions. It now has seven hundred apartments, and reached perhaps its greatest glory in the time of Frederick the Great, who was born here. It was then the central seat of the royal family; and here were deposited the records and treasures of the Government. It is now used only as the permanent residence of a few officials, but is the place of entertainment for many royal guests and their retinues when the great State pageants occur, of which Berlin has seen so many. It is popularly said to be haunted. There is a story that the Countess Agnes of Orlamunde, many, many years ago, murdered her two children in order that she might marry the man of her choice, and that in penance her ghost is condemned to haunt the Old Palace of Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read "Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an inner court; and parties who wish to see the interior are taken every half-hour, by an official in charge, for a tour of the palace. The waxed floors of inlaid wood are very handsome; and, as in other parts of Central Europe, they are protected from the tramp of visitors by immense felt slippers, into which all are required to thrust their shoes, and in which one goes gliding noiselessly over the polished surfaces in a way to save the floors, but not always to conserve the dignity or gravity of those unaccustomed to the process. Many of the rooms are highly decorated, and memorials of the history of Prussia abound. There are many paintings, of which most are portraits or battle scenes, the picture gallery proper containing the pictures connected with Prussian history, and the Kings' and Queens' chambers the portraits of all the sovereigns. The Chamber of the Cloth of Gold and the Old Throne Room are highly ornamented, and contain ma.s.sive gold and silver mementos of former kings and of Emperor William's long career. Here also is the great crystal chandelier which once hung in the Hall of the Conclave at Worms, and under which Luther stood when he made the immortal declaration, "Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht andere; helfe mir Gott.

Amen." In the White Hall court b.a.l.l.s are held, and here sometimes has gathered the Parliament to be opened by the Emperor. It is said that when lighted up by its nearly three thousand wax candles for a court festival, the scene in this hall is extremely brilliant.

Charlottenburg has been anew endeared to the public by the pathos of the home-coming of Emperor Frederick III., who took up his first Imperial residence in this suburban palace, and from an upper window of which he watched the funeral procession of his venerable sire as it pa.s.sed to the mausoleum. This only son and heir to a great throne might not follow the bier of the father to its resting-place, but gazed alone from the palace at the mournful pageant, knowing that the time could not be far distant when the same sad ceremonials would be repeated for himself. Who shall say what were the thoughts of the manly Frederick III., as, when wife and children had joined the sad procession which wound its way northward through that grand but sombre avenue of stately pines which leads from the palace of Charlottenburg to the beautiful marble mausoleum where Kaiser Wilhelm was laid to rest beside his mother and his father, the sick man stood immovably at that upper window, following only with his eyes, and with no spoken word, the drama in which himself was the central and most pathetic figure!

Charlottenburg is a suburb some two or three miles southwest of Berlin, practically now a part of the capital, but with a corporation and a quiet life of its own. Sophia Charlotte, Queen of the first King of Prussia, founded for herself a country residence here at the village of Lietzow, nearly two hundred years ago; and this has given the palace and the present suburb its name. Here the idolized Queen Louise in the early part of this century lived much, and here are many portraits and marbles bearing her likeness. The palace and front garden are in unattractive "rococo" style, especially the rooms occupied by Frederick the Great; but the gardens in the rear of the palace are large and most attractive. The fame of the place arises chiefly from the beautiful Doric mausoleum to Frederick William III.

and Queen Louise, created by the taste of their son, King Frederick William IV., brother and predecessor of the late Emperor William. The exquisite reposing figure of Queen Louise in Carrara marble lies under light falling through stained gla.s.s in the dome; and the tomb of the King (her husband) lying beside her is hardly less attractive. Both are surrounded by excellent accessories in marble and fresco, and it is a place where one gladly lingers long. The great avenue leading from the palace to the mausoleum has ivy-mantled trunks of giant trees for sentinels, and greensward and forest on either hand make a quiet which beseems one of the loveliest of resting-places for the dead. It was here that King William came to pray, beside the tomb of the mother who had suffered so much at the hands of the First Napoleon, on the eve of going out to the war with Napoleon III.; and here, when returning in the flush of victory as Emperor of United Germany, with Louis Napoleon a prisoner in the German castle of Wilhelmshohe, the old man came again to kneel in silent prayer beside the form of that mother whom the fortunes of war had so signally avenged more than sixty years after her death. What wonder that in this sacred spot only did William I. wish to be laid, when death should gather him to his fathers!

Sixteen miles southwest of Berlin, "that amphibious Potsdam" of Carlyle holds out manifold attractions by land and water ways. It is a city of fifty thousand inhabitants, besides a garrison of soldiers which guard its royal palaces and their lovely grounds. There are many interesting public buildings and historical monuments. It was early in our Berlin residence that, taking advantage of a bright morning when bright mornings were not too frequent, two Americans were set down at the station in Potsdam, armed only with a well-studied guide-book and a few words of conversational German. We did not wish to be shown everything, and so, declining the offered services of guides, engaged a drosky by the hour, with a kindly-faced young man for driver. He took the greatest interest in us, and supplied us with such information as we wished. For the rest we were set down at Sans Souci, free to stroll through its rooms in charge of the palace official, with our freshly read Macaulay and Carlyle in mind, striking the balance for ourselves between these two differing estimates of Frederick the Great, with every particular standing out vividly in the light of the object-lessons from that monarch's life which crowded on every hand. It was fortunate for us that we were the only visitors that morning, for this was the first palace we had entered, and the dreams of childhood were realizing themselves like the lines of a remembered fairy poem. The sympathy which spoke or was silent at will, sure of being always understood, gave the final touch of perfection to a memorable day. Beautiful for situation, the long, domed, one-storied building, the favorite residence of Frederick the Great, is impressive because of its history. As we wandered through the suites of elegant rooms and heard the stories connected with Frederick and Voltaire, their shades seemed everywhere to flit before us. The first terrace leads to the spot where the King buried his favorite horses and dogs, and where, before the palace was built, he once expressed a wish to lie at the last. "When I am there I shall be without care," he said in French; and so the palace afterwards built for him here took the name "Sans Souci." The great iron gates at the north of the palace had been but twice opened, we were told,--once by the force of the First Napoleon, and once when the greater monarch, Death, had laid his hand on King Frederick William IV., who was carried hence to his last home.

The great fountain was not playing that day; but the drive through the vast and famous park, with its enticing views and bewitching beauty, left nothing to be desired except a convenient place for physical refreshments. Past the orangery, with its wide views over land and lake, and Bornstedt (the favorite country home of the Crown Prince) to the north; past the "old windmill" known to history, to the New Palace, with its magnificence, its great extent, and its curious sh.e.l.l grotto,--we leave the simple charms of Charlottenhof and its neighborhood for another visit, and hasten to stand beside the coffin of Frederick the Great beneath the pulpit of the Potsdam Garrison Church.

Nearer to the station is the Old Schloss of Potsdam. An old lime-tree opposite the entrance is shown as the place where the pet.i.tioners for the favor of Frederick the Great used to station themselves, in order to attract his Majesty's attention from the window of his bedroom, or as he went in and out of the palace. Here we were almost bewildered by the number and extent of the rooms, and the mult.i.tude of historical a.s.sociations connected with them. Here lived Frederick William I., father of Frederick the Great, in Carlyle's word-painting inferior to no other figure in that great composition. Here are the rolling chairs and the inclined planes along which that monarch was wheeled in the course of his long and painful illness; in his study are the pictures painted by him _in tormentis_, and looking forth from the south windows we see the parade-ground where he used to drill his giant soldiers. There stands a statue of this strange, eccentric monarch, who, notwithstanding all that was bad, had so much in him that was good and true. It was from this palace that his lifeless remains were carried forth to rest in the Garrison Church, not far away.

As at Sans Souci, remembrance of Frederick the Great crowds upon us in the Old Schloss also. Here is his round-corner room, with walls of famous thickness, and a dumb-waiter lifting up through the floor the table and all its viands, that here he might dine alone with his intimates and no tell-tale sounds escape. Here is the heavy solid-silver bal.u.s.trade which separates his library from his sleeping-room. In this place, not long before our visit, Prince and Princess Wilhelm, whose winter residence was on an upper floor of this palace, had brought their youngest son for baptism. All the later sovereigns have occupied, at one time or another, apartments in this interesting old palace, and here many souvenirs of the present as well as former royal families are shown.

Charlottenhof, in the southern part of the grounds of Sans Souci, is an unpretending villa, beautiful in its simplicity, and with all its charms enhanced by its having been granted by the King as a summer residence to Alexander von Humboldt while working at his "Kosmos."

Near this is the beautiful Roman Bath, adorned with fine works of art.

The New Palace, now known as Friedrichskron, built on a vast scale by Frederick the Great after the Seven Years' War, to show that he was not impoverished, has henceforth its immortality as the birthplace of Frederick III.; and here he expired, on the morning of a June day, scarce a twelvemonth after he had ridden among the foremost of that dazzling throng of potentates which graced the imperial progress of Queen Victoria to Westminster Abbey on the celebration of her regal Jubilee.

In the days of their happy summer life, lived in great simplicity and homelikeness, the Crown Princess once wrote, in a little pavilion here,--

"This plot of ground I call my own, Sweet with the breath of flowers, Of memories, of pure delights, And toil of summer hours."

Alas! henceforth these domestic memories have an element of unspeakable pathos added by the remembrance of the last fortnight of that devoted life which vanished in this memorable spot, whence the funeral procession went forth, through the park of Sans Souci, to lay all that was mortal of the beloved Frederick III. beside the graves of their young sons Waldemar and Sigismund, in the Peace Church of Potsdam.

Babelsburg, the summer home of Emperor William I., is to many visitors more charming than any of the historic castles and palaces of Potsdam.

Distant two or three miles from these, it is in striking contrast with them all. It is a modern villa in the Norman style, in a beautiful and extensive park northeast of Potsdam. One does not wonder that it was dearest of all his residences to the heart of the aged Emperor. Here, more than elsewhere, are the evidences and atmosphere of a simple yet courtly home life. Babelsburg should be visited in the early summer, when the trees of its great forest are showing their first leaves, clothed, and yet not obstructing the unrivalled view by land and water, and when the sward is embroidered by daisies and b.u.t.tercups. Here the private rooms of Emperor William I. and Empress Augusta were freely shown, with scattered papers, work-basket, fires laid in the grates ready to light for the cool mornings and evenings, halls, staircases, reception-rooms, library, study, and sleeping-rooms, as homelike and everyday-looking as though they were those of any happy family in any part of the land. Of special interest to English travellers is the suite of rooms fitted up for the reception of the Princess Royal when she came to Germany as a bride in 1858. The chambers are hung with chintz of pale pink and other delicate colors, such as one sees in England, and with the same dainty arrangements which make English bedrooms a synonym for spotless comfort the world around. Here were arranged the pictures of father and queen-mother and brothers and sisters, and the little souvenirs of home with which, as an English girl of seventeen, she fought the homesickness inevitable to a stranger in a foreign land; and here many of them remain, in the rooms still called by her name.

The "Marble Palace" is seen to fine advantage, in the midst of lovely waters, from the road which leads from Potsdam to Gleinicke. It was the summer home of the present Emperor, while Prince William, and is not open to visitors.

XI.

THE HOMES OF THE HUMBOLDTS.

An hour by tramway, northwest of Berlin, lies Tegel, the hereditary estate of the Humboldt family. About two hundred years ago its hills and dales, pine forests and sandy plains, were the property of the Great Elector. Some eighty years later, a Pomeranian Major in the army of Frederick the Great was high in favor with the King on account of his distinguished service in the Seven Years' War, and was rewarded by gifts and promotions. To William von Humboldt, eldest son of this Major and Royal Chamberlain, descended the chateau and lands of the former royal hunting-lodge of Tegel. Though this was not, in strict sense, the home of the more famous younger brother, Alexander, these were his ancestral acres. Here he often came to this brother, whose death in his arms in 1835 cast a lasting shadow over his lonely life; and here, beside the brother and his family, his mortal part lies buried.

A bright April morning was the time of our visit. The outskirts of a great city are seldom more free from unpleasant sights than the northern suburb through which we pa.s.sed. Here and there, in the plain which surrounds Berlin, sandy knolls appear; now and then the tall chimney of a manufactory or a brewery pierces the sky; but the city insensibly gives place to the country. Clean-swept garden paths, trim hedges of gooseberry bushes just bursting into leaf, and hens scratching the freshly turned furrows, brought back a childlike delight in the spring-time; while the antiquarian tastes of later years were fed by glimpses of delicious old houses which raised their drooping eyelids in quaint gable-windows looking forth over ivy-mantled walls, as if in sleepy surprise at all the bustle and stir of this work-a-day world.

One or two hamlets had been pa.s.sed, and the camp, from which we had met a train of artillery and many companies of soldiers on their way to the city, when the tram-conductor announced the village of Tegel, the end of the route. A few rods, and a turn to the left past some mills brings us to the entrance of the castle park. An obelisk, battered and ancient-looking enough to belong to the age of Cleopatra, stands beside the modest iron gate of the entrance. An old peasant-woman pa.s.sing with a pack on her back answers our question by saying that this is an ancient milestone which formerly stood a little above its present site; and we surmise that its mutilated condition is due to relic-hunters. Inside the gate we see a gra.s.sy plain with sandy patches; here and there are deep open ditches for drainage; and avenues stretch off in several directions, bounded by rows of great overarching trees. We follow one reaching toward higher ground and forest-covered hills. On an elevation a few rods farther on stands the chateau,--the old hunting-lodge no more, but a two-story Roman villa, rectangular, with square towers at the corners, on each face of which is a carved frieze with a Greek inscription. Back of this "Schloss,"

but not hidden by it, on a smooth slope, is a large ancient one-story dwelling with side front, in good preservation. Its ivy mantle does not conceal the frame, which is filled in with stuccoed brick, and which alone would proclaim the age of the building. The long slope of the mossy roof must hide a wonderful old attic, for it is full of tiled "eyes" to admit light and air, and two or three single panes of gla.s.s are inserted in different places for the same purpose. Three windows on each side the low doorway in the front look forth on the quiet scene, the lace curtains within revealing glimpses of a cosey, homelike interior. On one side are supplementary buildings fit for companions.h.i.+p with this quaint home, and a fenced garden and ancient orchard, beyond which five woodmen were leisurely sawing an old-fas.h.i.+oned woodpile of immense size;--only princely estates can supply such a luxury in these degenerate days.

The shadow of death was in the villa. Two days before, Frau von Bulow, the last of the Humboldts, had been carried forth, to rest beside her husband and children, her father William, and her uncle Alexander von Humboldt. The gnarled and twisted stem of a venerable ivy clasps with two arms one of the most majestic of the tall trees before the house, one branch bearing large leaves of a tender green, the other small and beautifully outlined leaves of dark maroon exquisitely veined. Beds bordered with box are bright with pansies. We wander onward, along the great shaded avenue, with level green fields on either side. An opening suddenly sets a study in color before our eyes. The unbroken stretch of sward southward is in most vivid spring green; there is a gleam of blue water beyond the tender purple of a distant forest, overhung by the fleecy c.u.muli of a perfect but constantly changing sky. It is simple and beautiful beyond description. We approach some wooded hills, well cared for, but lifting themselves upward in the beauty of Nature, not art. b.u.t.tercups and star-gra.s.s and chickweed arrest us occasionally by the roadside, until a wooded pathway brings us to a plot surrounded by an iron fence. Within, an old woman is tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the ivy overspreading a grave, and there are eight or ten other mounds, all ivy or flower covered, and with low headstones. At the west end of the enclosure is a semicircular stone platform, with a stone seat skirting the circ.u.mference. From the centre rises a lofty shaft of polished granite, bearing on its summit a statue of Hope, by Thorwaldsen. On the pedestal are the names of William von Humboldt and his n.o.ble wife, and near it the newly closed grave of this daughter, who at the age of eighty-five, after a distinguished life, sleeps here beneath the funeral wreaths which hide the mound, and bear, on long black or white ribbons, the names of societies and eminent families who have sent these tributes of remembrance and affection. White hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley perfume the air, and palm-branches lie on the new-made grave, above the flowers. I treasure an ivy leaf or two, given by the workwoman, and pick up a cone which has just fallen from a fir-tree upon the grave of Alexander, as I read the inscription on his headstone: "Thou too wilt at last come to the grave; how art thou preparing?" This simple epitaph, with name and age, is all, except his earthly work, that speaks for him who was once, after Napoleon Bonaparte, the most famous man in Europe, and who, in learning and in devotion to Nature, was as great as he was famous.

From the little burial-ground we took a hill-path, hoping for a more distant view than we had found but hardly expecting it. Ascending gradually, there were glimpses of forests and hills far to the northward; and a porter's lodge, and stables, in a vale amid the trees, revealed only by the distant baying of a hound, and the blue smoke curling upward. Still we wound along, over the hillsides and under the trees, pausing occasionally to rest on simple rustic seats, on which were carved the initials of former pilgrims to these scenes.

Faring onward, there came a sudden burst of light and beauty.

"Far, far o'er hill and dale"

s.h.i.+nes the blue expanse of the Tegeler See, with suns.h.i.+ne flooding all the broad acres between. The fortress spires of Spandau and the dome of the royal palace of Charlottenburg spring from the purple, forest-rimmed horizon; and beyond is a tangle of history written on the sky in domes and palaces and spires, I know not what, nor how many. To the delight of this sudden vision is added the thought of the generations of men and women who have trod this forest path, and whose eyes have been gladdened by this sight, until a file of mounted knights and n.o.bles, from the Great Elector through a line of kings and emperors, of grand dames and fair princesses, has swept in stately procession down the hill-side to be followed in imagination by the footsteps of many of the greatest men in literature, science, and philosophy which Europe has brought forth, and by those of statesmen and diplomatists from every quarter of the globe.

Returning to the chateau, we pa.s.sed between it and the ancient house, when lo! a glance at the rear of the modern villa toward a second-story bay window under the spreading shade of a venerable tree told a new tale. I did not then know the history of the buildings, and it had seemed that only the low cottage was ancient, and the Roman villa comparatively modern. But here was a tell-tale slope of ancient roof, with a square port-hole of a window just beneath it, peeping forth behind the modern bay-window under the tree-tops, all out of harmony with the lines of Roman towers and roofs; and so we knew that the chateau was only modern in appearance, but ancient in reality.

A day full of quiet beauty, not unmingled with delight, this had proved; worth to the heart, in some moods, acres of canvas and chiselled marble within the walls of royal museums. But we were not yet quite satisfied. In the Oranienburger Stra.s.se in Berlin stands a city house of the last century. Here, with a serving-man as the real master of his house,--with no wife, no child,--the author of "Kosmos"

did much of his best work.

"I was often with my father in Humboldt's house during his lifetime,"

said my German hostess to me, after my return from these visits. "He lived among his books, in his study in the back of the house,--the second story, looking into the court; for he could not bear the noise of the street in the front rooms."

To this place we found our way in returning from Tegel. We stood before it in the street, and read the inscription on the marble tablet in the front wall: "In this house lived Alexander von Humboldt from the year 1842 till _he went forth_, May 6, 1859."

Entering the street door, we inquired of the bright-eyed little daughter of the porter, who had been left in charge, if we could see the second floor, where Humboldt used to live. "No," said the child; "there is nothing to see. Others live there now. As for Humboldt, you can see his statue before the University!"

The privilege of looking upon the home surroundings of Humboldt in Berlin was accorded us later, by an American gentleman into whose possession they had come. His ma.s.sive old writing-desk, with a great mirror behind it, and deep drawers,--each bearing his seal,--where he kept his most valued curiosities and correspondence, and where now repose many of his autograph papers, is worth going far to see. Here, too, are a smaller writing-desk, his champagne gla.s.ses, quill pens, lamp-screen, candlestick, snuffers, and the last candle which he used.

These and other significant and home-like memorials belong not to Germany, but to America, unless Germany repurchase them, as she should. Only in the house so long the home of their master will they fittingly repose, as the memorials of Goethe and Schiller adorn the homes that were theirs at Weimar.

During the conversation with the child of the porter at the house in Oranienburger Stra.s.se, I had looked into the large and pleasant court, and saw the great vine clambering up over the wall which must have been in sight from the study. Here doubtless it was that Bayard Taylor, the famous young traveller visiting the famous old traveller, had the interview which he described so vividly that at the distance of more than thirty years recorded bits of the conversation remain distinctly traced in our memory.

"Humboldt showed me a chameleon," wrote Taylor, "remarking on its curious habit of casting one eye upward and the other downward at the same time,--'a faculty possessed also by some clergymen,'" added the facetious old man, as though he had discovered a new fact in natural history. Turning to a map of the Holy Land, Humboldt gave the young guest minute directions for his contemplated journey, until the very stones by the wayside seemed to grow familiar to the listener. "When were you there?" asked Mr. Taylor. "I was never there," replied Humboldt. "I prepared to go in 18--," naming a date thirty or forty years before. In such preparation for work lies an open secret of greatness.

In the little cemetery at Tegel, which has now no vacant place, Humboldt's epitaph speaks to the living. His virtues and his faults are left to the judgment of the Omniscient. In the gallery of her great men Germany places the colossal figure of Humboldt beside that of Goethe. More than one century must pa.s.s before the place of either is finally determined in the perspective of history.

XII.

PHILANTHROPIC WORK.

This has many departments,--educational, humane, and religious.

Although the churches of Berlin are sufficient for only a very small per cent of the population, many private and semi-public enterprises carried on by Christian people show a true spirit of devotion to the good of humanity.