Germany and the Germans Part 10

No one knows his Berlin better than that prince of German literary Bohemians, Paul Lindau, and he makes a character in one of his novels say of it: "untidy and orderly, so boisterous and so regulated, so boorish and so kindly, so indescribable?so Berlinish?just that!" [1]

[1] "Staubig und ordentlich, so Taut und geregelt, so grob und gemutlich, so unbeschreiblich, so berlinerisch, gerade so!"

In another place the same author writes: "Berlin as the Capital of the German Empire! There are many respects in which it nevertheless hasn't yet succeeded in taking on the character of a cosmopolitan city." [2]

Not even literature finds material for a city novel. There is no Balzac, no Thackeray. Germany is still dominated by the village and the town. Goethe, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Heyse, Gottfried Keller, Freytag, my unread favorite "Fritz" Reuter, deal not with the life of cities. There is as yet no drama, no novel, no art, no politics born of the city. There is no domineering Paris or London or New York as yet.

[2] "Berlin als Haupstadt des deutchen Reiches: in mancher Beziehung hatte es sich dem weltstadtischen Charakter doch noch nicht aneignen konnen."

After some years of acquaintance with Germany as school-boy, as student at the universities, and lately as a most hospitably received guest by all sorts and conditions of men, I do not remember meeting a fop. A German Beau Brummel is as impossible as a French Luther, an American Goethe, or an English Wagner. We have had attempts at foppery in America, but no real fops. A genuine fop, whether in art, in literature, or in costumes, must have brains, ours have been merely effigies, foppery taking the dull commercial form of a great variety of raiment. It is a strange contradiction in German life that while they are as a people governed minutely and in detail, forbidden personal freedom along certain lines to which we should find it hard to submit, they are freer morally, freer in their literature, their art, their music, their social life, and in their unself-conscious expression of them than other people. There is a curious combination of legal and governmental slavery, and of spiritual and intellectual freedom; of innumerable restrictions, and great liberty of personal enjoyment, and that enjoyment of the most naf kind. They seem to have done less to destroy life's palate with the condiments of civilization, and therefore, still find plain things savorous.

I am not sure that the ec.u.menical sophistication, known as world-etiquette, marks a very high degree of knowledge or usefulness anywhere. To know which hat goes with which boots, and what collar and tie with what coat and waistcoat, and what costume is appropriate at 10 A. M., and what at 10 P. M., and to know the names of the head-waiters of the princ.i.p.al restaurants, are minor matters. These are the conveniences of the gentleman, but the characteristic burdens of the a.s.s. Such a mental equipment is not the stuff of which soldiers, sailors, statesmen, explorers, or governors are made.

We must not overrate the value of this feminine worldliness in judging the Germans. This effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette has not influenced them greatly as yet. But on the other hand, one must claim for the amenities of life that they have their value, that they are, after all, the external decorations of an inward discipline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of material things, but rather a keen sense of moral and physical efficiency, which pays due heed to wherewithal ye shall be clothed, at any rate outside of Palestine.

Those who dream and discuss may wear anything or nothing. It mattered not what Socrates wore. But men of action must wear the easy armor that fits them best for their particular task. Men who toil either at their pleasure or at their work must change their raiment, if only for the sake of rest and health. Now that government is in the hands of the vociferators rather than the meditaters, even politicians must look to their costumes, merely out of regard to cleanliness. Evening clothes with a knitted tie dribbling down the s.h.i.+rt front; a frock-coat as a frame for a colored waistcoat, such as at shooting, or riding, or golf, we permit ourselves to break forth in, as a weak surrender to the tailor, or to the ingenuity of our womenfolk who are not "unbred to spinning, in the loom unskilled"; the extraordinary indulgence in personal fancies in the choice of colored ties, as though the male citizens of Berlin had been to an auction of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of a rainbow; the little melon-shaped hats with a band of thick velvet around them; the awkward slouching gait, as of men physically untrained; the enormous proportion of men over forty, who follow behind their stomachs and turn their toes out at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, whose necks lie in folds over their collars, and whose whole appearance denotes an uncared-for person and a negligence of domestic hygiene: these things are significant. No man who walks with his toes pointing southwest by south, and southeast by south, when he is going south, will ever get into France on his own feet, carrying a knapsack and a rifle. Cranach's painting of Duke Henry the Pious, in the Dresden Gallery, gives an accurate picture of the way many Germans still stand and walk; while every athlete knows that runners and walkers put their feet down straight, or with a tendency to turn them in rather than out. The Indians of northwest India, and the Indians of our own West are good examples of this.

It is evident that the orderliness of Berlin is enforced orderliness and not voluntary orderliness. Both pedestrians and drivers of all sorts of vehicles, take all that is theirs and as much more as possible. There is none of the give and take, and innate love of fair play and instinctive wish to give the other fellow a chance, so noticeable in London streets, whether on the sidewalks or in the roadway. There is a general chip-on-the-shoulder att.i.tude in Prussia, which may be said, I think not unfairly, to be evident in all ranks, from their recent foreign diplomacy, down to the pedestrians and drivers.

Many people whom I have met, not only foreigners but Germans from other parts of Germany, are loud in their denunciations of the Berliners. "Frech" and "roh" are words often used about them. There is a surly malice of speech and manner among the working cla.s.ses, that seems to indicate a wish to atone for political impotence, by braggart impudence to those whom they regard as superior. When we played horse as children, we champed the wooden bit, s.h.i.+ed, and balked and kicked, and the worse we behaved the more spirited horses we thought ourselves. There is a certain social and political radicalism verging upon anarchy, which plays at life in much the same way, with no better reason, and with little better result. Shying, balking, and kicking, and champing the political bit, are only spirited to the childish.

Their awkward and annoying attentions to women alone on the streets; their staring and gaping; their rudeness in pus.h.i.+ng and shoving; the general underbred look, the slouching gait, the country-store clothes, hats, and boots; the fearful and wonderful combinations of raiment; the sweetbread complexions, as of men under-exercised and not sufficiently aired and scrubbed; their stiff courtesy to one another when they recognize acquaintances with hat-sweeping bows; their fierce gobbling in the restaurants; their lack of small services and attentions to their own women when they go about in public with them; their selfish disregard of others in public places, their giving and taking of hats, coats, sticks, and umbrellas at the garde-robes of the theatres, for example; their habit of straggling about in the middle of the streets, like the chickens and geese on a country road: all these things I have noted too, but I must admit the surprising personal conclusion that I have grown to like the people. A good pair of shoulders and an engaging smile go far to mitigate these nuisances.

It makes for good sense in this matter of criticism always to bear in mind that delicious piece of humor of the psalmist: "Let the righteous rather smite me friendly; and reprove me. But let not their precious balms break my head." The "precious balms" of the lofty and righteous critic are not of much value when they merely break heads.

I have been all over Berlin, and in all sorts of places, by day and by night. I have found myself seated beside all sorts of people in restaurants and public places, and I have yet to chronicle any rudeness to me or mine. I like their innocent curiosity, their unsophisticated ways, their b.u.mpkin love-making in public; and many a time I have found entertainment from odd companions who seated themselves near me, when I have strayed into the cheaper restaurants, to hear and to see something of the Berliner in his native wilds.

Their malice and rudeness and apparent impertinences are due to lack of experience, to the fact that their manners are still untilled, I believe, rather than to intentional insult. They are not house-broken to their new capital, that is all, and that will come in time. Their malicious jealousy peeps out in all sorts of ways. In the lower house of the Prussian Diet, recently, a member protested vigorously against the employment of an American singer in the Opera House! Chauvinism carried to this extreme becomes comic, and is noted here only to indicate to what depths of farm-yard provinciality some of the citizens of this great city can descend.

They are dreamers and sentimentalists too. There are more kissing, more fondling, more exuberance of affection, more displays of friendliness in Germany in a week than in England and America in six months. I confess without shame that I like to see it, and when it comes my way, as beyond my deserts it has, I like to feel it. How lasting is this friendliness I have no means of knowing till the years to come tell me, but that it is a pleasant atmosphere to live in there can be no doubt.

The driving is of the very worst. A man behind a horse, or horses, who knows even the elements of handling the reins and the whip and the brake, would be a curiosity indeed. I have not seen a dozen coachmen, private or public, to whom my youngest child could not have given invaluable suggestions as to the bitting, harnessing, and handling of his cattle. On the other hand, I one day saw a street sign twisted out of its place. I was fascinated by this unexampled mark of negligence.

I determined to watch that sign; alas, within forty-eight hours it was put right again.

Let it not be understood that there are no fine horses to be seen in Berlin. You will go far to find a better lot of horse-flesh, or better-looking men on the horses, than you will see when the Kaiser rides by to the castle after his morning exercise; and he sits his horse and manages him with the easy skill of the real horseman, and looks every inch a king besides. It is told of Daniel Webster, walking in London, that a navvy turned to his companion and remarked: "That bloke must be a king!" You would say the same of the Kaiser if you saw him on horseback.

At horse shows and in the Tiergarten, and in riding-places in other cities, I have looked at hundreds of horses, and, if I mistake not, Germany is both buying and breeding the very best in the way of mounts, though their civilian riders are often of the scissors variety. There are comparatively few harness horses, and in Berlin scarcely a dozen well-turned-out private carriages, outside the imperial equipages, which are always superbly horsed and beautifully turned out; so my eyes tell me at least, and I have watched the streets carefully for months. The minor details of a properly turned-out carriage (bits, chains, liveries, saddle-cloths, and so on) are still unknown here. I have had the privilege of driving and riding some of the horses in the imperial stables; and I have seen all of them at one time or another being exercised in harness and under the saddle. I have never driven a better-mannered four, or ridden more perfectly broken saddle-horses. There are three hundred and twenty-six horses in his Majesty's stables, and for a private stable of its size it has no equal in the world. I may add, too, that there is probably no better "whip" in the world to-day, whether with two horses, four horses, or six horses, than the gentleman who trains the harness horses in the imperial stables. This German coachman would be a revelation at a horse show in either New York or London. If the citizens of Berlin were as well-mannered as the horses in the imperial stables, this would be the most elegant capital in the world. It is to be regretted that his Majesty's very accomplished master of the horse cannot also hold the position of censor morum to the citizens of Berlin. Individual prowess in the details of cosmopolitan etiquette has not reached a high level, but in all matters of mere house-keeping there are no better munic.i.p.al housewives than these German cities and towns.

As a further example, the statues of Berlin are carefully cleaned in the spring, but what statues! With the exception of the Lessing, the Goethe, and the Great Elector statues, the statue of Frederick the Great, and the reclining statues of the late emperor and empress, by Begas, and one or two others, one sees at once that these citizens are no more capable of ornamenting their city than of dressing themselves.

Poor Bismarck! Grotesque figures (men, women, animals) surround the base of his statue in Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in a corrugated golf costume, with a colossal two-handed sword in front of him, he is a melancholy figure, gazing out over a tumble-down beer-garden.

At Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must admit, a really fine bust of Bismarck. On a solid square pedestal of granite, covered with ivy and surrounded by the whispering, or sighing, or creaking and cracking trees that he loved, and facing the setting sun, and alone in a secluded corner, just the place he would have chosen, there are the head and shoulders of the real Bismarck. Here for once he has escaped the fussy attentions of the artistry that he detested. Lehnbach, who painted Bismarck so many scores of times, never gave him the color that his face kept all through life, and with the exception of this bust, of the scores of Bismarck memorials one sees all commiserate the lack of artist ability; they do not commemorate Bismarck. If this is what they do to the greatest man in their history, what is to be expected elsewhere? What has poor Joachim Friedrich done that he should pose forever in the Sieges Allee as an intoxicated hitching-post?

What, indeed, have his companions done that they should stand in two rows there, studies in contortion, with a gilded Russian dancer with wings at one end of their line, and a woodeny Roland at the other? But there they are, simpering a paltry patriotism, insipid as history and ridiculous as art. What has become of Lessing, and Winckelmann, and Goethe, and their teachings? Is this the price that a nation must pay for its industrial progress?

The German, with all his boasting about the "centre of culture," has not discovered that the beauty of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the royal troops near Lake Loffrey in March, 1815; that is strength of soul. The moral qualities with which we are concerned are no longer the same as in the days of the Greeks. Before this c.o.c.kney sculpture was planned, there should have been a closer study of the history and philosophy of art in Berlin.

It is true that we in America are living in a gla.s.s house to some extent in these matters, but where in all Germany is there any modern sculpture to compare with our Nathan Hale, our Minute Man, and that most spirited bit of modern plastic art in all the world, the Shaw Monument in Boston? You cannot stand in front of it without keeping time, and here lips of bronze sing the song of patriotism till your heart thumps, and you are ready to throw up your hat as the splendid young figure and his negro soldiers march by--and they do march by!

It is almost a consolation for what Boston has done to that gallant soldier and humble servant of G.o.d, that modest gentleman, Phillips Brooks. In a statue to him they have travestied the virtues he expounded, slain the ideal of the Christ he preached, theatricalized the least theatrical of men, and placed this piece of mortifying misunderstanding in bronze under the very eaves of the house that grew out of his simple eloquence. There is in Leipsic a similar misdemeanor in a statue of Beethoven. He sits, naked to the waist, in a bronze chair, with a sort of bath-towel drapery of colored marble about his legs, and an eagle in front of him. He has a chauffeurish expression of anxious futility, as though he were about to run over the eagle.

Men are without great dreams in these days, and art is elaborate and fussy and self-conscious. The technical part of the work is predominant. One sees the artist holding up a mirror to himself as he works. Pygmalion congratulates the statue upon the fact that he carved it, instead of being lost in the love of creating. It is as though a lover should sing of himself instead of singing of his lady. The subtle poison of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt has crept in, and peers like a satyr from the picture and from the statue. Even the most prominent name in German music at this writing is that of a man who is notorious as an expert salesman of symphonic sensationalism.

Though the streets are so well kept, the buildings in these miles of new streets are flimsy-looking, and evidently the work of the speculative builder. The more pretentious buildings ape a kind of Nuremberg Renaissance style, and are as effective as a castle made of cardboard. This does not imply that there are not simple and solid buildings in Berlin and, in the case of the new library and a score of other buildings, worthy architecture; but the general impression is one of haste multiplied by plaster.

The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A certain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even on the bal.u.s.trades of the castle, where the good Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Empress Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as Mars, and his wife as Minerva! On the facades of houses, on the bridges, on the roofs of apartment houses, on the hotels even, and scattered throughout the public gardens, are scores of statues, and they are for the most part what hastily ordered, swiftly completed art, born of the dollar instead of the pain and travail of love and imagination, must always be.

A certain literary sn.o.b taken to task by Doctor Parr for p.r.o.nouncing the one-time capital of Egypt "Alexandria," with the accent on the long i, quoted the authority of Doctor Bentley. "Doctor Bentley and I," replied Doctor Parr, "may call it 'Alexandria,' but I should advise you to call it 'Alexandria.'" It was all very well for the Medici, to ornament their cities and their homes with the fruit of the great artistic springtime of the world, but I should strongly advise the Berliners to p.r.o.nounce it "Alexandria" for some years to come. No matter how fervid the lover, nor how possessed he may be by his mistress, he cannot turn out every day, even,

"A halting sonnet of his own poor brain, Fas.h.i.+on'd to Beatrice."

All this pretentious over-ornamentation is cosmeticism, the powder and paint of the vulgarian striving to conceal by a futile advertis.e.m.e.nt her lack of refinement. Paris was teaching the world when there was no capital in Germany; London has been a commercial centre for a thousand years, and Oxford was a hundred years old before even the University of Prague, the first in Germany, was founded by Charles IV in 1348.

You may like or dislike these cities, but, at any rate, they have a bouquet; Berlin has none.

When Germany deals with the inanimate and amenable factors of life, she brings the machinery of modern civilization well-nigh to the point of perfection. As a munic.i.p.al and national housewife she has no equal, none. But art has nothing to do with brooms and dust-pans, and human nature is woven of surprises and emergencies, and what then? An interesting example in the streets of Berlin is the difference between the perfection of the street-cleaning, which deals with the inanimate and with accurately calculable factors, and the governing of the street traffic. Horses and men and motor-driven vehicles are not as dependable as blocks of pavement. When the traffic in the Berlin streets grows to the proportions of London, Paris, and New York, one wonders what will happen. Nowhere are there such broad, well-kept streets in which the traffic is so awkwardly handled.

The police are all, and must be, indeed, noncommissioned officers of the army, of nine years service, and not over thirty-five years of age. They are armed with swords and pistols by night, and in the rougher parts of the town with the same weapons by day as well. After ten years service they are ent.i.tled to a pension of twenty-sixtieths of their pay, with an increase of one-sixtieth for each further year of service. They are not under the city, but under state control, and the chief of police is a man of distinction, nearly always a n.o.bleman, and nominated by, and in every case approved by, the Emperor. In Berlin he is appointed by the King of Prussia. He is a man of such standing that he may be promoted to cabinet rank. The men are well-turned out, of heavy build, very courteous to strangers, so far as my experience can speak for them, and quiet and self-controlled. Under the police president are one colonel of police, receiving from 6,000 to 8,500 marks, according to his length of service; 3 majors, receiving from 5,400 to 6,600 marks; 20 captains, receiving from 4,200 to 5,400 marks; 156 lieutenants, receiving from 3,000 to 4,500 marks; 450 sergeants, receiving from 1,650 to 2,300 marks; and 5,382 patrolmen, receiving from 1,400 to 2,100 marks. There are also some 300 mounted police, receiving from 1,400 to 2,600 marks. The colonel, majors, and captains receive 1,300 marks additional, and the lieutenants 800 marks additional, for house rent. The mounted police are well-horsed, but it is no slight to them to say, however, that their horses are not so well trained and well mannered, nor the men such skilful hors.e.m.e.n, as those of our mounted squad in New York, who, man for man and horse for horse, are probably unequalled anywhere else in the world.

The demand for these non-commissioned officers of nine years of army discipline, who cannot be called upon to serve in the army again, has grown with the growth of the great city, with its need of porters, watchmen, and the like, and so valuable are their services deemed that the present police force of Berlin is short of its proper number by some seven hundred men.

The examination of those about to become policemen extends over four weeks, and includes every detail of the multiplicity of duties, which ranges from the protection of the public from crime, down to tracking down truants from school, and the regulation of the books of the maid-servant cla.s.s. The policeman who aspires to the rank of sergeant undergoes a still more rigorous examination, extending over twenty weeks of preparation, during which time he studies--note this list, ye "young barbarians all at play," German, rhetoric, writing, arithmetic, common fractions, geography, history, especially the history of the House of Hohenzollern from the time of the margraves to the present time (!), political divisions of the earth, especially of Prussia and Germany, the essential features of the const.i.tution of the Prussian Kingdom and German Empire, the organization and working of the various state authorities in Prussia and Germany, elementary methods of disinfection, common veterinary remedies, the police law as applicable to innumerable matters from the treatment of the drunk, blind, and lame, to evidences of murder, and the press law. The man who pa.s.ses such an examination would be more than qualified to take a degree, at one of our minor colleges, if he knew English and the cla.s.sics were not required, and could well afford to sniff disdainfully at the pelting shower of honorary degrees of Doctor of Divinity, which descend from the commencement platforms of our more girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy.

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was 2,494,722 marks; in 1890, 3,007,879 marks; in 1900, 6,065,975 marks; and in 1910, 8,708,165 marks.

I fancy that after an accident has taken place the literary, legal, and hygienic details are cared for by the Berlin police as nowhere else. In their management of the traffic they are distinctly lacking in decision and watchfulness. On the western side of the Brandenburger Tor there is seldom an hour, without a tangle of traffic which is entirely unnecessary if the police knew their business. On the Tiergarten Stra.s.se, a rather narrow and much used thoroughfare in the fas.h.i.+onable part of the town, trucks, cabs, and other vehicles are not kept close to the curbs, often they drive along in pairs, slowing up all the traffic, and at the east end of the street is a corner which could easily be remedied by the building of a "refuge," and an authoritative policeman to guard the three approaches. Not once, but scores of times, at the very important corner of Unter den Linden and Wilhelm Stra.s.se I have seen the policeman talking to friends on the curb, quite oblivious to a scramble of cabs, wagons, and motors at cross purposes in the street. Potsdamer Platz presents a difficult problem at all times of the day, especially when the crowds are coming from or going toward home, but a few ropes and iron standards, and four alert Irish policemen, would make it far plainer sailing than now it is. It is to be remembered, too, that the traffic is a mere dribble as compared to a torrent, when one remembers Paris, New York, and London. In 1909 the street accidents in Paris numbered 65,870, and there was one summons for every 77 motor taxicabs, but Paris is now without a rival as the dirtiest, worst-paved capital in Europe, and the home of social anarchy; a place where adventurous spirits will go soon rather than to Africa, or to the Rocky Mountains, for excitement in affrays with revolvers, vitriol, and chloroform.

In London, in 1909, there were 13,388 accidents. In Berlin there was a total of 4,895 accidents in 1900; 4,797 in 1905; and 4,233 in 1910.

One hundred persons were killed in 1900; 115 in 1905; and 136 in 1910.

In this connection it is to be said, that Berlin has fewer and much less adventurous inhabitants, very much less complicated traffic, much broader and better streets, and far fewer problems than the older cities. If the citizens of Berlin were anything like as capable of taking care of themselves in the streets, as they should be, there would be hardly any accidents at all. The new police regulation of the traffic has been only some four or five years in existence in its more rigid form, and perhaps neither people nor police are accustomed to it. Even then, out of the total of 4,233 accidents in 1910, 1,876 of them were caused by the street-railway cars. This shows of itself how light the traffic must be, for worse driving and more awkward pedestrians one would go far to find.

The cost of Berlin housekeeping increases by leaps and bounds. The total city expenses were: 45,221,988 marks in 1880; 89,364,270 in 1890; 121,405,356 in 1900; and 355,424,614 in 1910. The debt of Berlin has risen from 126,161,605 marks in 1880, and 272,912,350 in 1900, to 475,799,231 in 1910, with a very considerable addition voted for 1912.

In the ten years alone between 1897 and 1907 the debt of German cities including only those with a population of more than 10,000, increased by $1,050,000,000. Munic.i.p.al expenditure in Paris has risen in the last ten years from $59,200,000 to $76,000,000. The budget expenditure of France has reached $1,040,000,000. In 1898 it was only $600,000,000.

It cannot be expected that the best-kept, cleanest, and most orderly cities in the world, and there need be no hesitation in saying this of the German cities, should not spend much money, and the states in which they are situated much money as well. The various states of the empire spent, according to a report of four years ago, $1,352,500,000; and the empire itself $738,250,000, or a total of $2,090,750,000. From the various state or empire controlled enterprises, such as railways, forests, mines, post and telegraph, imperial printing-office, and so on, the states and empire received a net income of $216,525,000, and the balance was, of course, raised by direct and indirect taxation.

One may put appropriately enough under this heading, the invaluable and unpaid services of a host of honorary officials, who render expert service both in the state and city governments. There are over ten thousand honorary officials in the city of Berlin alone, more than three thousand of whom serve under the school authorities. They are chosen from citizens of standing, education, wealth, and ability, and a.s.sist in all the departments with advice and expert knowledge, and sit upon the various committees. The German citizen has not only his pocket taxed, but his patriotism also, and a capital philosophy of government this implies.

A friend, a large landholder in Saxony, gives, between his services as a reserve officer in the army and his magisterial and other duties, something over nine weeks of his time to the state every year, and he is by no means an exception, he tells me. A certain amount of this is required of him by the state, with a heavy fine for nonperformance of these duties. The same is true of the many members of the various standing committees in the cities. Each citizen is compelled to contribute a certain proportion of his mental and moral prowess to the service of his state and city, but he receives a return for it in his beautifully kept city, in the educational advantages, in the theatres, concerts, opera, and in the peaceful orderliness, the value of which only the foreigner can fully appreciate.

Almost all the court theatres, for example, throughout Germany are under a director who works in harmony with the reigning prince. The King of Prussia gives for his theatres in Berlin, Wiesbaden, Hanover, and Ca.s.sel, more than $625,000 a year from his private purse; the Duke of Anhalt, $75,000 a year to the Dessauer theatre. The players have a sure position under responsible and intelligent government, and feel themselves to be not mere puppets, but educational factors with a certain pride and dignity in their work.

There are more Shakespeare plays given in Germany in a week than in all the English-speaking countries together in a year. This is by no means an exaggeration. The theatre is looked upon as a school. Fathers and mothers arrange that their older children as well as themselves shall attend the theatre all through the winter, and subscribe for seats as we would subscribe to a lending library. During the last year in Germany, the plays of Schiller were given 1,584 times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the music-dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times. There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when an Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugarcoats Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to go, in the belief that we are after all not wasting our time, since the performance tastes a little of the more gorgeous music halls. The scenery and costumes are sufficient, and the performance always worth intelligent attention, for the reason that both the director and his players have given time and scholars.h.i.+p to its interpretation. The acting is often indifferent as compared to the French stage, but it is at least always in earnest and intelligent. The theatre prices in Berlin are high, even as compared with New York prices, but in other cities and towns of Germany cheaper than in England, France, or America.

Pericles pa.s.sed a law in Athens by which each citizen was granted two oboli, one to pay for his seat at the theatre, the other to provide himself with refreshment. In Athens the play began at 6 or 7 A. M., and during the morning three tragedies and a satirical drama were played, followed in the afternoon by a comedy. The theatre of Dionysius seated 30,000 people, who brought their cus.h.i.+ons, food, and drink, and occasionally used them to express their dislike of the performance or the performers. At one of the larger industrial towns in Germany, during a Sunday of my visit, there were three performances; one at 11 A. M., of a patriotic melodrama, "Glaube und Heimat"; another, at 3.30 P. M., of "Der Freischutz"; and another, at 7.30 P. M., of Sudermann's play, "Die Ehre." The prices of seats for the morning performance ranged from eight cents to forty-five cents; a little more in the afternoon; and from seventeen cents to $1.15 in the evening. At the performance I attended the house was crowded and attentive. I was not enough of an Athenian to attend all three. Even at the Music Hall in Berlin, where, as in other cities, the thinly covered salacious is ladled out to the animal man, there was a capital stage caricature of Oedipus, which atoned for the customary ewig Legliche, which now rules in these resorts. If for some untoward reason women ceased to have legs, what would the British and American theatrical trust managers do!

The German takes his theatre and his music, as from the beginnings of these it was intended we all should do. They are not a distraction merely, but an education, an education of the senses, and through the senses of the whole man. There are music-lovers and serious playgoers in America; but for the most part our theatres cater to, and are filled by, a public seeking a soothing and condimented mental atmosphere, in which to finish digestion. Theatrical salmagundi is served everywhere, and seems to be the dish best suited to the American aesthetic palate as thus far educated. We cannot complain, since other wares would be quickly provided did we but ask for them.

America has suffered because she was overtaken by a great material prosperity before she had a sufficient spiritual and intellectual development, and up to now the material side of life has had the upper hand. We buy the best pictures, the rare books and ma.n.u.scripts, armor and silver and porcelain, and it must be said that there is a fine idealism here, because they are bought almost without exception by uncultured, often almost unlettered, rich men, who know nothing and care very little for these things, but who are providing rare educational opportunities for another generation. In 1910 objects of art to the value of $22,000,000 were imported, in 1911 $36,000,000 worth, and in 1912 sixty per cent. more than in 1911. In the same way we hire the best musicians and singers, but our surroundings and the powerful circ.u.mambient ambitions, have not tempted us as yet to live contentedly and understandingly in any such atmosphere as the Germans do. It is a striking contrast, perhaps of all the contrasts the most interesting to the student, this of America growing from industrialism toward idealism, of Germany growing out of idealism into industrialism.

Germany floats in music; in America a few, a very few, float on it. In Germany everybody sings, almost everybody plays some instrument, and from the youngest to the oldest everybody understands music; at least that is the impression you carry away with you from the land of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms, and Beethoven, and Wagner, and I might fill the page with the others.

You are at least on the ramparts of Paradise, in the Thomas Kirche in Leipsic at the weekly Sat.u.r.day concert of the scholars of the Thomas Schule. The worldliness is melted out of you, as you sit in the cool, quiet church with the sunlight slanting in upon you, and the atmosphere alive with sweet sounds. And this is only one of hundreds of such experiences all over Germany. At the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden, at the great Dom church in Berlin at Easter time, for the asking you may have the oil and wine of music's Good Samaritan poured upon the wounds of those sore-pressed travellers, your hopes and ideals, your dreams and ambitions, that have fallen among thieves, on the long, long way from Jericho to Jerusalem.

It is, I must admit, a drab and dreary crowd to look at, these Germans at the theatre, at the opera, in the concert halls. They do not dress, or if they are women undress, for their music as do we; their music dresses for them. They come, most of them, in the clothes that they have worn all day, each quidlibet induitus. They have many of them a meal of meat, bread, and beer during the long pause between two of the acts, always provided for this purpose. Some of them bring little bags with their own provisions, and only buy a gla.s.s of beer. They are solemnly attentive, an educated and experienced audience there for a purpose, and not to be trifled with, the most competently critical audience in the world. I wonder as I look at them whether the fact that they have no backs to their heads, emphasized nowadays by the fact that many men wear their hair clipped close to the head, and no chins (the lack of chins in Germany is almost a national peculiarity) has any physiological or psychological relation to their prowess in, and love of, and critical appreciation of, the more nebulous arts: music, poetry, philosophy, and the serious drama.