My years of exile; reminiscences of a socialist

Author's Preface

AT the request of the editor of the Weisse Blatter, Rene Schickele, I decided, in the late autumn of 1915, to place on record a few reminiscences of my years of wandering and exUe. These reminiscences made their first appearance in the above periodical, and now, with the kind permission of the editor, for which I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere thanks, I offer them in volume form to the reading public, with a few supplementary remarks and editorial revisions. My principal thought, in writing these chapters, as I remarked at the time of their first appearance, and repeat to-day, was to record my impressions of the peoples whose countries have given me a temporary refuge. At the same time I have also made passing allusion to the circumstances which caused me to make the acquaintance of these peoples and countries. And, further, it seemed to me not amiss to add, from time to time, and by the way, a few touches of self-portraiture. For I have made no attempt to produce a learned or instructive volume which should possess an objective value, but have only sought to give utterance to personal impressions and experiences, and, for good or ill, to tell something of the character of the writer. Reminiscences are fragments of our Uves, and it is not easy to relate incidents which are closely connected with the development of one's own character without reference to the latter.

6 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

These reminiscences begin with the journey which in 1878 led to my leaving my country for over twenty years. The first pages tell of a journey made by many, which was not accompanied by any events that could of themselves excite the reader's interest. My justification for speaking of it resides, I think, in the fact that the most important part of this journey to the South was made in a fashion imknown to the present generation. It made a very deep impression on me, which Uves in my memory even to-day, and I can only hope that I have succeeded in convesdng something of this impression to my reader.

NOTE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

I must ask my English and American readers to remember that the chapters of this book were written and first published, as was the book itself, dtiring the war, when the miUtary censorship was in force and national prejudices and worse were running very high.

ED. B.

Berlin Schoneberg, September 1920.

Contents

CHAP.

I. Across the St. Gotthard in 1878 . 11. In and about Lugano Thirty Years ago

III. A Bitter Winter in Lugano .

Chapter I Across The St. Gotthard In 1878

IN the late summer of 1878 Karl HSchberg — since deceased — inquired whether I should care to accompany him on his travels as secretary on the staff of the Socialist periodical, Die Zukunft, of which he was then the publisher. It was an enticing offer for one who, like myself, had done very Uttle travelling, and except for a visif to Vienna, in the summer of 1873, had so far seen nothing of foreign countries. So I set aside tj^e material considerations which might have deterred me : the danger of giving up a safe, and — ^in respect of my requirements — a suificiently well-paid post in a bank in exchange for a position which would probably be only a temporary one ; and I accepted. Hochberg, who was compelled, owing to a chronic affection of the lungs, to seek a warmer climate, wrote to me saying that he was going in the first place to Lugano, and that he would expect me there. My knowledge of the beautiful city on the banks of the Ceresio was at that time extremely slight. But the mere sound of the word had a magical effect upon me, and I joyfully set forth, on the 12th October 1878, on the journey which was to take me for the first time into Switzerland. But I had no. foreboding that this journey was also to exile me from my native country, and the city of my birth, BerHn, for more than twenty years.

The journey to Basle occupied two nights and a day ; the day I spent in Frankfort-on-the-Main, in order to visit, at Hochberg's wish, his family and two of his friends. One of these friends — ^who died only recently — was weU known, as a sociologist and poUtician, to the people's party; this was Dr. Karl Flesch, a town councillor, a deputy to the Landtag, and a newly fledged barrister : the other was G. Schnapper-Amdt, a man of letters, whose knowledge of social politics was the fruit of a mass of valuable research work. My visit to Frankfort was made as pleasant as could be by these two gentlemen, as weU as by Hochberg's family — which did not prevent my passing the second night of my journey, as well as the first, absolutely without sleep. But I slept on the third night.

On the morning of the 14th October we came to Basle, and thence we proceeded by way of Olten to Lucerne. From Lucerne we had to take the boat to Fliielen, and thence we set forth by dUigence over the St. Gotthard Pass, for the St. Gotthard Railway was then only in course of construction. Fortunately so, I may say, for I had to thank this circumstance for one of the most beautiful memories of my Ufe.

My first impression of Switzerland, obtained through the window of the railway carriage, and later from^the deck of the steamer, was something of a disillusion. The morning was cold, wet, and misty, and the lower slopes of the Alps, through which we were then traveUing, —and which since then, with their wealth of alluring and constantly changing landscapes, have become, for me, an ever-renewed soiurce of rapturous delight, — ^by no means came up to the conceptions of the Swiss mountains which my imagination had painted for me. So far my eye was completely unable to form an estimate of mountain and valley, and because the apparent height of the mountains did not correspond with my anticipations, the beauties of their wooded slopes, and the charm of their surrounding plains and meadows, escaped me. Consequently the Rigi and even Pilatus fell short of my expectations, and my disillusion was of course increased by the fact that the highest peaks of these mountains were hidden in cloud. Owing to the dullness of the day even the Lake of the Fom: Cantons was not seen all at once in its full beauty. But when we had left Beckenried and Gersau behind us the weather suddenly cleared, and near Brunnen, as the steamer entered the last limb of the lake — ^the Urner section — the lake was suddenly unrolled before me, shining with the most wonderful blue, and surrounded by the everaspiring mountains, with the mighty Uri-Rotstock and the Bristenstock in the backgroimd. So enchanting was the picture that only one thing was lacking to raise the exaltation that took possession of me to the highest conceivable degree : the ss^mpathetic human soul beside me, to whom I could have expressed all that filled my mind and struggled for release. Although the vessel was well filled with passengers I had not made any close acquaintance among them, which was less their fatilt than mine, and on my part it was assuredly due less to any lack of goodwill than to a lack of social dexterity. To strike up a conversation with a fellowtraveller, or for that matter with any stranger, is to me almost always a matter of insuperable difilci^.j,.. And in those days especially I belonged to that category of travellers which I am to-day in the habit of calling the passive category.

I am not aware whether any one has anticipated me in making this division, but at the risk of repeating what has already been said I should hke here in passing to remark that of all the many classes of travellers two in particular may be sharply distinguished : they are, the active travellers and the passive travellers. The first are the true artists of travel : they know everything worth knowing about the journey they are about to make, and they see ever3i:hing that repas^ a glance. They find their way about everjnvhere and at all times, as easily as possible, and they contrive to manage their fellow-travellers as it suits their wishes or their needs. Very different is the class of those whom I call the passive travellers, because they allow themselves to be dispatched rather than travel in the true sense of the word. At best they know only the most necessary things, which one must know if one isn't to get completely lost, and they see only that which pushes itself, so to speak, right in front of them. In such matters as securing seats, in carriage or coach, choosing the right hotel, getting the right room, etc., they rely more or less upon hazard, and if it comes to a question of give and take between them and their fellow-travellers, they are the givers.

When Mother Nature so created me that I belong to the second category of travellers rather than to the first, she also gave me, in compensation, a higher degree of susceptibility than that which the average person is blessed with, and as makeweight the cognate disposition to reconcile myself readily with any situation. This last is an attribute which from the general point of vi^ew cannot be called a virtue. For if it were innate ul'k^ of us it would go ill with social and cultural progress. The gift of susceptibility, however, is a gift that hurts no one, but helps one over many a blunder.

As I had applied in Fluelen for a voucher for the journey over the St. Gotthard Pass, and had left it to the mail contractor to allot me a place. Fate had been very kind to me. Like most of the mountain diligences, the old Gotthard diligence had three sorts or classes of sitting accommodation. The dearest of these was the " Imperial," a seat above or behind the coach proper, which allowed the traveller a full view of the landscape through which he was travelling. Next in rank and price was the " coupe," three seats under the driver, with a limited but still extensive outlook forwards. The cheapest or " interior " places were the seats inside the coach, from which the traveller could at best see a portion of the landscape, but never a full view of it. In order to save money I had taken an " interior," but was given a place in the " extra coach," which was nothing more than an open carriage with four seats, which were perhaps not quite so soft as the seats of the " Imperial," but if possible afforded an even better view. So I was able to enjoy the journey across the St. Gotthard to the full.

And what a journey it was ! First of all came the wonderful Reussthal with its luxuriant vegetation. As on the Lake of the Four Cantons memories of Schiller's Tell had been awakened by the Ruth and the TeUsplatte, so here, as we passed, behind Fliielen, the old market-town of Altdorf, the place of the legendary shooting of the apple, it was impossible not to think of the great poet, who had sung of this neighbourhood to such wonderful effect, although he had never seen it. What a power over the emotions had the legend to which he had given enduring life, and how completely the heart failed to respond to the historical truth, established by careful research ! We ought sorely to lament this victory of the glorified legend over the unveiled truth, were it not at the same time a victory of the struggle to preserve the ideals which upUft us above the littleness and the doubts of every day. The men of the Four Cantons who revolted against the government of the Hapsburgs may in reality have been ignorant stock-farmers, who, historically considered, in comparison with that Government, were reactionaries ; yet their fight was none the less a fight for right, and, as such, is worthy of commemoration. Men see in Wilhelm Tell the ideal avenger of an oppressed people, and it is well for them that they refuse to allow him to be taken from them.

Such reflections thronged into my mind at the sight of the pictures on the house-fronts which one sees on driving through Altdorf, many of which depict incidents of the struggle of the Four Cantons. The inscriptions on the shops and inns, on the other hand, told us that it was the proletarian children of Italy who were building the St. Gotthard Railway, which was then under construction. There was hardly one of these inscriptions that had not the Italian version under the German. From the main highway the coach road climbed upwards in innumerable windings, continually crossing the Reuss on stone bridges, so that the traveller had the river now on his right hand, now on his left, but always deep below him, where it made its way onward, foaming and roaring, over a bed full of blocks of stone of every size. The weather was glorious ; it was a clear autumn day, the air cool but not cold, so that aU the men of the party (for women such behaviour was not at that time considered seemly) left their seats and proceeded to climb upwards by the short cuts or connecting paths, which shortened the distance so greatly that one could keep weU ahead of the diligence without making any extraordinary effort. When the road became more level and the post-horses were in consequence able to gallop we resumed our seats, only to leave them again when we came to a fresh rise, to repeat the former process. These intervals of actual climbing were the best parts of the journey.

On either side, continually assuming fresh forms, were the mighty, upward-shouldering moimtains, stili wooded here and there ; above was the cloudless vault of heaven; by the wayside was the lovely Alpine vegetation ; and below us, framed in luxuriously overgrown bajiks, was the roaring Reuss. The buoyant air was faintly aromatic. All this together worked Uke magic on the emotions. The fairy-tales which one reads in childhood rose to one's mind ; one foimd one's self in the world which they described; the stillness all around — ^for I kept, for the most part, at a respectful distance from the other travellers — gave rise to a mood which realised the words of the poet, false as a matter of natural history, yet containing so much truth from the standpoint of human history :

" The world is perfect everywhere Where man is not with his pain and care."

The evening fell much too early, compelling us to travel uninterruptedly by coach. As we drove through Goschenen we saw at a short distance above us what looked Uke moving glow-worms. The Italian workmen employed on the construction of the tunnel were seeking their quarters with their Uttle hand-lanterns. In other ways too we realised, although our eyes, strain them as we would, could make out very Uttle of it, that here one of the marvels of human achievement was in process of construction, A young Swiss engineer, employed by the Gotthard Railway Company, who had hitherto traveUed with us, told us that difficult as were the problems which the building of the great tunnel set the engineering experts, those which had to be solved in the construction of the track leading thither surpassed them in the demands which they made upon the staff, and indeed to-day the mysterious corkscrew tunnels and loops impress the initiated more deeply than the long stretch of Une leading under the old giant. In this connection we must not forget the splendid performances of the instruments of precision, and their utiUsation, thanks to which the boring gangs, progressing simultaneously from the north and the south, in strict conformity with the plans, met accurately in the middle of the tunnel at the appointed time.

In complete darkness we drove through the most magnificent portion of the St. Gotthard road, known as the Schollenen, where the highway narrows to a narrow pass enclosed by gigantic and precipitous cliffs of granite. Here the Reuss roars with a deeper, fiercer voice, and only a few isolated trees still struggle up the massive rock. Here, as at the Devil's Bridge and the Urner Loch, we drove past without seeing anything more than a dim outHne which scarcely enabled us to divine what it concealed, and at last, at ten o'clock, arrived in Andermatt, where, after supper, I soon retired to my bedroom, for I now felt thoroughly tired out.

When I awoke it was broad daylight, and somewhere below me a terrific uproar was going on. But the noise had no human origin. When I looked into the question of its cause I found that close to the inn and just under my window the Reuss tumbled over the rocks in quite a respectable waterfall. As it was then nine o'clock I had slept eleven hours without in the least noticing this noise. My nerves had demanded tribute for two sleepless nights on the railway, for I was already past the age at which one enjoys a good thing under any circumstances. But I have noticed that, even at my age, unless bodily suffering, chronic neurasthenia, or tormenting anxieties rob us of sleep, one need not be greatly excited to induce Morpheus to take a night off. But he gives in on the second or third night, although not always under such pleasant circumstances as on this day in Andermatt.

Downstairs in the dining-room I found I had missed nothing. The diligence started at one o'clock, and the passengers had gone for a walk in the meantime.

I myself followed suit as soon as I had breakfasted, and turned back along the road by which we had travelled in the darkness, whereby I unfortunately but unavoidably had to take in the unfolding of the pass, as described by Schiller, backwards. First came the " smiling regions " of the Ursenertal, here spreading to a width of two-thirds of a mile :

" The smiling land where spring and autumn wed."

SmiUng indeed it lay before me in the freshness of morning, surrounded by the last heights of the giant mountains, watered by the hurrying, green, foaming Reuss, overgrown with the grasses and flowers of the Alpine world, and inhabited by grazing cattle, the sound of whose bells, unmusical as it is, yet acquires a charm of its own from the circumstances and surroundings. The Umer Loch was disappointing. Even for the imtravelled it had nothing of the black rocky gateway which

" No day has yet illumed."

And rather than " in the kingdom of the shadows," one might have thought oneself in the Saxon Switzerland, whose rocky gateway, known as the " Cowshed," wiU well bear comparison with this old tunnel. But the Devil's Bridge and the SchoUenen, on the contrary, more than justified their reputation ; they were beyond description. Seen inland from the wide and magnificent St. Gotthard highway they awaken only wonder and a pleasant horror. But if one looked down from the old pack-horse track, the only road over the Gotthard in Schiller's time, and imagined the travellers with laden pack-mules passing along this ancient highway, one realised the accuracy of the Unes :

" O'er the abyss goes the dizzy way.

It runs between life and death ;

For the giants bar it, the lonely way.

With a deadly threat in their breath.

If thou wouldst not the lioness vex in her sleep.

Thro' the pass of terror in silence creep." 2

On this narrow track the oppressive weight of the towering granite giants, and the fierce might of the Reuss, pla57fully casting aside all human opposition, and driving down, as though lashing onwards, the rugged masses of rock, must have thrust all other feeUngs into the background, leaving only the consciousness of danger, and we understand how this mountain pass lived in the memories of the men of former centuries only as the " road of terror."

In Goethe's Travels in Switzerland, 1797, we read, where he describes the road over the Gotthard, how often in those days part of the track had to be closed on account of landslips.^

1 1 cannot refrain from subjoining here a passage from Felix Mendelssohn - Bartholdy's Letters of Travel, which I first came upon since the above was penned. It is taken from the letter written at Pliielen, on the loth August 1831, to Mendelssohn's sister, and describes the impression which the famous composer, who had hitherto travelled by the old pass, had received of the present pass, which was then new :

" You know the Gotthard Pass in its beauty ; one loses much if one travels hither from above instead of journeying upwards from this place ; for the gr^at surprise of the Umer Loch is quite lost, and the new road, which is reckoned next to the Simplon route for splendour and convenience, has done away with the effect of the Devil's Bridge, while beside it another, newer, much bolder and larger span has been constructed, which makes the old bridge quite invisible ; and the old masonry looks much wilder and more romantic.

" But if one loses also the view of Andermatt, and if the new Devil's Bridge is less poetical, yet one travels all day joyfully downhill on the smoothest of highways, positively flying past the landscape, and instead of being sprinkled by the waterfall and imperilled by the wind on the bridge, as formerly, one now crosses safely, high above the stream and between strong masonry parapets."

That over a certain section of the pass the descent does not permit the charm of the journey to be realised so efiectually as the ascent is undoubtedly correct, as every pedestrian will have discovered for himself. I had the same experience on the Via Mala as Mendelssohn on the St. Gotthard. When on a walking tour from Chiavenna across the Splugen I tramped through the Via Mala from above downwards, not only did it seem, when compared with the majesty of the Splugen Pass, like a miniature of the latter, but the beauties of the landscape he waterfalls, etc., made only a faint impression on me. As for the

To-day people speak of avalanches {Lawinen) almost as they would of tamed Uonesses {Lowinnen). The tracks above whose higher portions they He in wait serve for traffic mostly in those seasons of the year when the avEilanches caused by the breaking loose of masses of snow occur as seldom as the escape of Hons from menageries. The terrors of nature are conquered ; our so-caUed civilisation prides itself on the fact, and — altogether outdoes them. We must go back tens and tens of thousands of years before we come upon catastrophes in which the bhndly raging elements have accomplished as much destruction and destroyed as much Ufe as civihsed humanity is doing in the catastrophe which we are witnessing as contemporaries.

Thoughts of another nature fiUed my mind when on the 15th October 1878 I wandered along the Schollenen. Yet even there an inscription reminded one of war and the extermination of men by men. It told of the battle between the Russians and the French in September 1799, when Suvoroff carried out his devastating crossing of the St. Gotthard. But that lay three generations behind us. Who would dream nowadays of a battle between French and Russians ? Yet in the spring of 1878 it had nearly come to a war between England and Austria-Hungary on the one side, and Russia on the other, for the first-named States had mobilised in order to annul the concessions which Russia had wrung from Turkey in concluding the Peace of San Stefano. The conflict was after all averted by the then recently held Congress of Berlin (June to July 1878), which is the only good thing that can be recorded of that Congress. But the summer of 1878

Devil's Bridge, it has in its present form lost only the one efiEect of a romantic ruin. But its principal effect, the impression of the tremendous fall of the Reuss beneath it, has in my opinion gained in beauty what it has lost in wildness.

had been marked, in Germany, by the attempts of two madmen — the semi-anarchist Max Hodel and the crazy Karl Nobiling — on the Ufe of WUhehn i., which brought to a head a terrible baiting of the Social Demor crats, and the dissolution of the Reichstag, with the result of the numerical and moral weakening of the Left in the Reichstag ; and one of the " exceptional laws " against Social Democracy, introduced by the Imperial Government, had already received a majority at its second reading and was now being read for the third time before acceptance. How far would the party suffer under the law ? Before I left Berlin we had, in a secret conference, discussed this question, and had come to the conclusion that the circumstances would compel us to adopt, for the time being, an expectant attitude. The party's means of authority were stiU comparatively modest ; its Press, with few exceptions, was not in anything like a position to compete with the bourgeois Press, and the extreme depression of trade, with the corresponding unemployment, had everywhere reduced the strength of the Labour opposition. The immediate future of the party depended on the form which the " exceptional law " would assume in the final statute, and the way in which it would be executed by the authorities. Although most of us by now had some suspicion of the height of interpretative skill which the Court of Appeal would display, we were yet prepared for severe blows ; so that the party, to which I was devoted heart and soul, saw threatening weather ahead of it. As I wandered on beside the Schollenen all this passed once again through my mind, and I was oppressed by distressing thoughts.

Fortunately I was considerably younger than my years in the matter of temperament, as I was in experience of life. These melancholy reflections vanished as I stood once more, on the way back, before the Devil's

Bridge, where, lit by the sun, now fairly hig^ in the heavens, the rising particles of spray came boiling up from the gorge of the downward-tumbling Reuss, glittering hke innumerable diamonds, and in their midst, according to the position of the onlooker, rainbows appeared in the most beautiful blaze of colour. A picture of frantic, irresistible movement, which momentarily completed itself, and by this ever-unremitting completion achieved at the same time permanence. Always the same river, stormily plunging hitherward, shattering itself into dust in its ponderous fall, but never precisely the same combination of the countless particles of water, which one will never grow weary of watching. Although Schiller sang of the old Devil's Bridge :

" There sways a bridge in the mountain land O'er the terrible gorge outsweeping ; It was not built by human hand, No man such arch could e'er have planned . . ."

it was not long before events gave the poet the lie. Even the old bridge was binlt by human hands, and here, in 1830, human hands constructed, at a stUl greater height, a much wider and more massive bridge. More accurately do the poet's words depict the mutable permanence of the pictmre :

" Beneath it the raging stream for ever Leaps at it foaming, but shatters it never."

At last, as it was time to make ready for the continuation of the journey, I tore myself away from this spectacle. People left the inn rather earlier than the coach in order to travel the whole of the way through the Ursenertal and a goodly portion of the upper Gotthard Pass on foot. Nevertheless the charm of the pass was soon greatly diminished. The vegetation became ever scanty, the road more monotonous, and only the very poor and sordid-looking houses of refuge by the roadside — they were known as cantonments — ^provided landmarks for the traveller ; taking the place of the villages— Erstfeld, Wasen, Goschenen— which we passed between Altdorf and Andermatt. Accordingly we drove through the greater part of this section of the pass in the coach, nor did our interest revive to any great extent until we reached the summit of the pass, whence we were able to get a view of the Tomasee, which is no other than " the home of the Rhine." It was not a very inspiring view — a silent lake with flat, unattractive banks, on which nothing was happening. But a httle of the magic which the name of the stream that flowed out of it possessed for us fell upon the lake itself, and we regarded it with that respect which is owing to the grandparent of a famous personality. At the hospice on the summit is the halting-place of the post. We got out, obtained some food, and proceeded to begin the descent on the south side.

I now had a seat in the coup^ given me. My neighbour was a young Frenchman, who soon proved to be a profitable companion, since he put an end to a feehng that otherwise might easily have spoiled the pleasure of the downward journey for me. Wherever the road downwards turned upon itself one had the impression that any farther advance must be perilous. The track ran down the steep slopes in great loops, but the horses, of which the driver controUed only the two leaders, by means of a slender bridle, pressed downwards with restless haste, so that in spite of the width of the roadway it seemed that only a trifling mistake at one of the turns would hurl us all into the depths. In reahty the position was not so dangerous as it appeared from the window of the coup^. But there it seemed as if every turn must throw us over the precipice. I must confess that at first I felt rather uncomfortable. But then I noticed that my neighbour had the same feeling in a very much greater degree than I. Again and again he seized hold of me, and emitted, in a somewhat husky voice, a flood of words which were intended to express admiration, but betrayed anxiety, and, curiously enough, instead of proving contagious, these outbursts had a contrary effect upon me. I was sorry for the fellow, but it suddenly flashed upon my mind : " Since he is worrying himself enough for two you can save your share of anxiety." With a greater inward calm than I had previously felt, I allowed my eyes to wander over the surrounding landscape and the road l57ing before us. The granite walls of the mountains seemed to me to fall even more precipitously than on the northern side, and the ravines beside us were visibly deeper. At moderate intervals stones of something less than a yard in height bordered the mountain road ; at best they might, if the coach were really driven to the edge of the road, delay the fall a little, but they would hardly prevent it. Moreover, such a weight as that of our coach would have needed a thoroughly strong wall to support it. But were we then really in danger ? We were certainly moving forward at a rapid pace, but we had the mental illusion that the pace was greater than it really was, and the turns of the road were sufiiciently far apart to give the driver time to wheel the horses quietly. Even so, it was a long while before we reached the next stage of our journey, Airolo. But, alas ! afternoon gave way to evening, and the darkness fell, and even before we reached Airolo, which we were able to see in the distance long before we got there, we saw from the coach that the lamps were being lighted beneath us.