The Germans

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Reason of It— Introductory . . i

II. South German Towns in General and

Chapter I The Reason Of It — Introductory

In these nervous days, when peaceful British householders retire to bed with the black possibility before them of waking up to find themselves overwhelmed by German airships, German dreadnoughts, German soldiers, and — worst of all — German policemen, in other words, to find that their dear Motherland has been transformed into a German colony, there is "of making many books no end" on the subject of our future conquerors and oppressors. The authors are sometimes intensely serious — as becomes the situation. They belabor us with statistics and calculations — differing according to their own political opinions — which show with horrible clearness how our cousins are growing mentally and physically. They lead us into a maze of German law and German politics ; they give us vague scraps on German art

i and literature, and leave us with the bewildered impression that we have been shown the internal workings of a huge, ugly piece of machinery which excites alarm, a certain amount of admiration — certainly no love.

And then comes the second class of what might be called "German Literature." It is the book that is written by the peaceful British householder himself in leisure hours after his fortnight's trip abroad. He has been to Berlin, and stayed perhaps at a not very expensive boarding-house, and has therefore every right to speak on German society, German manners, and German customs, and to condemn everything offhand. He has strayed into some German theater, so he can talk fluently on the German drama of to-day; he has had a furious discussion with a postal official who obstinately refuses to understand his own language, so he can with all justice complain of German officialdom; in the restaurant he has discovered that his reiterated "Kellner!" is treated with less respect than the raised finger of a smart young Prussian officer, so German militarism forms a big heading, with significant side-shots at conscription in general. He ends up with a broad survey of his impressions, which are, as a matter of fact, no im-

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pressions at all, but the crystallization of his own prejudices. On the whole, this second book is a sort of extension on the text, "God, I thank Thee I am not as other men," and it leaves us smugly self-satisfied and aggressively contemptuous; it is pleasant to find that our preconceived ideas of the mannerless heathen which it describes were after all fully justified.

Then comes the third type. It is frankly humorous, and has cast off all didactic pretensions. We laugh from beginning to end at the funny fat German baron, the funny fat German policeman, the funny fat German officer. The author has somehow or other picked up some stray peculiarities, and turns them to admirable comic effect; and though we are still contemptuous, our contempt has become mingled with a humorous pity.

Of these three kinds we vastly prefer the last two. The first is altogether too serious. It excites our anxiety, and presents us with facts which we would much rather not know, and, naturally enough, awakens no sort of kindly feeling in our hearts for the people it has set out to describe. We are not fond of machines which, to all appearances, are created solely for the purpose of reducing us and our national pride to pulp. The other two books do not alarm us ; the one is mildly instructive — we feel that we can afterward found our instinctive dislike for the Germans on definite authority — the other amuses us. We read both with chastened appetite.

And so we go on, hating, despising, tolerating, or ignoring the race to which we are so closely connected, not according to our knowledge, which is often nil, but according to our characters and our inherited prejudices. The many books have not helped us; our short travels have done less than nothing to clear our outlook, overhung as it usually is with insular self-satisfaction. We have stayed at hotels and judged the Germans by so-called "types," which, if they were Englishmen in England, we should ignore as exceptions. Of the inner life of the real "types" the average Englishman knows and sees next to nothing, and he goes home to his own country with the sincere conviction that there is no man like an Englishman, and no country like England.

"Germany without the Germans would be all right" is the text to a caricature in some German comic paper of a check-suited, flat-footed, muchbewhiskered Englander on the tour of inspection, and such is, as a matter-of-fact, the conscious or

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unconscious opinion of most of us. And yet — although I would never dare suggest that there is any man like an Englishman — I would venture to point out the possibility that a man may be unlike and still perfectly agreeable, even — be it said in whispers — with his certain advantages. Whereby I have betrayed my standpoint, and let the incorrigible anti-German beware! It is a standpoint, I must hasten to add, taken not out of prejudice nor as the result of unusual circumstances. Ordinary experience alone has led me to regard the people among whom I live with respect and affection, but ordinary experience is, paradoxically, the most difficult experience to obtain,. This applies not only to Germany but to every country. Nowadays it is within the means of nearly every one, even of the poorest clerk, to travel at least once in a lifetime and see something of foreign lands, but just such a traveler can of necessity only see things from an unusual standpoint — that of an outsider and a guest. Whether he is rich or poor makes no difference. Whether he stays at a cheap boarding-house or at a first-class hotel makes no difference either. The fact remains — he is a guest. Even if he has introductions, and is allowed to penetrate into the circle of certain families, he can not rid himself of that one great disadvantage, and let no Englishman, be he ever so observant, imagine because he has dined twice at Herr B.'s table, that he really knows what sort of a man Herr B. is, or what sort of life he leads. Herr B., like every other human being, does not carry his heart on his sleeve, and he does not turn out his household gods for the inspection of a stranger. He may be worse, and he may be a great deal better than he seems — of that his guest can not judge with any certainty.

Perhaps this sounds very obvious, but it is surprising how many people there are who would rightly hesitate to give their opinion on an acquaintance of a fortnight's standing, and who are yet ready not only to criticize but to condemn a whole nation on evidence stretching over an equally short period of time, and based probably on still more superficial observation. This mistake, or whatever you please to call it, is not by any means confined to English people. I suppose it was first brought home to me by an absurd book on England, written by a German after a six weeks' sojourn in my country, during which time he had strayed from one horrible experience to another, under the impression that they were the natural and inevitable experiences of every one. Of course one is indignant

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over the consequent criticisms, because they are based on — for us — obviously false data. But we must remember that in six weeks an honest, painstaking student of national habits and customs can gather together enough perfectly genuine material on which — unless he is blessed with an extraordinary degree of tolerance — he will consider himself justified in founding a most condemnatory criticism.

I have experienced this, alas! in my own person. A year or two ago I was traveling in England with a German friend. I had been foolish enough to boast to her about the politeness of our policemen, the obligingness of the people in general, the excellent "moral" of our soldiers and sailors. In one month we encountered nothing but offhand, sulky policemen, insolent cab-drivers, disobliging shop-people, and on one fatal occasion a whole trainful of reeling soldiers on their way to India. Of course, these were exceptions — I knew it; but could I expect my German friend to believe it? That gave me a lesson which I shall not forget, and it has since been more deeply engraved on my memory by the specimens of English people I have met abroad. They have all too often brought small credit to their nation, and I have often wished, when listening to the criticism of fellowcountrymen over the land in which I live, that they could suffer some of the humiliations I have had to suffer! I believe then that they would be more careful of delivering judgment even on the most — apparently — convincing evidence. I believe they would then realize that people can only be judged from the inside, and that it is only possible to judge from the inside after years of intimate acquaintance with their ordinary life. That is what I call learning by experience. It is not learning by experience to travel through a country with a note-book and pencil in hand, picking up statistics and characteristics and building up generalities on what might easily prove to be exceptions. Statistics have no meaning whatever until one has learnt to understand the temper of the people they concern, and, as I must repeat, understanding can only come with years.

This leads me to the reason of it — the reason why I have ventured to add a modest volume to the pile that has been written on the same subject. It is not in everybody's power — much less to everybody's taste — to make their home abroad in order to learn to appreciate the foreigner. It has been my lot to do so, and I feel that a less preten-

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tious effort, made neither by a diplomatist nor a journalist nor a business man, but by an ordinary private person, living the ordinary German life in an ordinary German town, might do more than a dozen heavy statistic-laden reports to reveal the fact that one can be English and yet sincerely, warmly attached to one's German cousins, both as individuals and as a nation.

I do not pretend that my experience is everybody's experience, or that my German year is the year of every distant corner of the Empire. I merely claim that it is typical, that the Germans I have met are typical, and that my impressions are sincere and unbiased.

Chapter II South German Towns In General And Karlsruhe In Particular

If I venture to describe Karlsruhe, I do so with two, I hope, sufficiently good excuses — firstly, that I can not give an account of my German year without the correct mise en scene; secondly, that Karlsruhe is in itself a good type of most German towns. I dare say a great many Germans will protest against this statement. Karlsruhe typical! Karlsruhe representative! I can almost hear the indignation of the Munchener, the Frankfurter, the Mannheimer, and all the rest of those who look upon Karlsruhe and such small "residenz" as the dullest spots on earth. And yet there is, I trust, method in my madness. To take a great commercial center as "typically German" seems to me a self-admitted error, because the typical German is not commercial. He is not fundamentally a moneymaker, and is only acquiring that talent by force of circumstance and through imitation of others.

SOUTH GERMAN TOWNS u

Moreover, where there is commerce in Germany there are always two Jews to one Christian, and the Jew is not a German, much as he would like to be, and it is not in his power or in the scope of his character to live the typical German life. Therefore we can safely put Frankfurt — of which it is said that every third person may be a Christian, but more probably is not — on one side, together with all similar towns, and look elsewhere. As to Munchen, it is the city of the musician and the artist, and consequently stamped with very marked and individual qualities, not in the least typical of the average German. And then the Miinchener, like the Berliner, like the Londoner, is above all things a Gross-Stadter, a man of the world who has rubbed off the original characteristics of his race; and his home and his surroundings, as a natural result, have, in retaining a certain local color, lost their national distinctiveness. It is in the lesser towns, in the miniature capitals, that one finds the German in his native state, working and living undisturbed and uninfluenced by the foreign stream which flows past to the great cities. Just such a capital is Darmstadt, Stuttgart, Nurnberg — lastly, Karlsruhe.

With its own palace, its parliament, its mint, its polytechnicum, its State theater, its own special laws and ordinances, it is a German town pur sang, and the Germans who inhabit it, from the aristocrat of the Court circle down to the little tradesman, are genuine types. I feel, therefore, that in giving a brief description of Karlsruhe, I am giving a fair idea of dozens of middle-sized South German towns. I emphasize South German, because South Germans are in many respects a distinct race from their northern compatriots, and the difference in character naturally leaves its trace upon their surroundings. I shall come back to this point later when I speak of the people themselves. For the present it is sufficient to remark that there is a difference, and that I am concerning myself chiefly with the race with which I am personally best acquainted.

It is a little difficult to draw an arbitrary line between North and South, and there is a large part which belongs distinctly neither to the one nor the other, and must therefore be roughly described as Central Germany. Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden form the decidedly southern element. Of the three states, Bavaria is the most important — if only because of its famous capital— but Baden reckons itself, and, to do it justice, is reckoned,

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Freiburg, one of Baden's most beautiful old towns

"the model state," and in its comparatively small dimensions embraces the most beautiful and richest tracts of Germany. Adorned by the glories of the Black Forest, watered by mighty rivers, blessed with a fertile soil, an intelligent people, a liberal-minded Grand Duke, a liberal-minded government, it is indeed an enviable little country, and deserves the many flattering epitaphs which it bestows upon itself and also receives. Its capital is Karlsruhe — a fact which, as Macaulay would have said, every school-boy knows. But I have taken into consideration that not everybody is a school-boy, and that it is just conceivable that the name "Karlsruhe" may awaken, at least in some minds, little but a vague notion that Karlsruhe is, well, somewhere in Germany. Such is my German home, therefore — a town of something over 100,000 inhabitants. If you asked any one of them what they thought of the place, they would tell you without hesitation that it is the dullest place on earth, that there is nothing doing, that the people are stiff and "langweilig," that the theater is not what it was, that the shops are twenty years behind-hand in everything, that the living generally is bad and expensive — en fin, that anybody who lives there willingly is an acknowledged fool. After which description you would naturally expect to find the trains filled to overflowing with emigrating crowds. This, however, is not the case. Without any apparent reason Karlsruhe grows from day to day, and the people who once settle never seem to move on. I know indeed of one lady who argued herself into such a state of indignation that there was nothing left for her to do but to go. She tried Munchen, and then she came back. This is the only case that I know of. My German friend — she may occur often in my narrative, so under this title let her be henceforth known — declares that when she first settled in Karlsruhe, twenty-five years ago, she felt that she was taking the first step into her grave. I fancy her opinion remains unchanged, but somehow, though we are constantly considering other places with an eye to "moving on," we never really get any farther, and I doubt if we ever shall.

As a matter of fact, when the inhabitants have cleared the atmosphere with a good inevitable German grumble, they will generally admit that Karlsruhe has its advantages — especially for a certain class of people. I doubt if the commercial folk enjoy them to the full extent, for, as is natural in a Grand-Ducal "residenz," the privileged classes — the military and official circles — have by far the best of it, but for these latter, Karlsruhe has indeed a good deal to offer. It is just big enough to allow for social festivities on a moderately grand scale, and it is just small enough to allow each small personage to play a big and brilliant part in the public eye. And apart from its social advantages, there are certain other points in its favor which even the most determined grumbler would find it hard to deny. In the first place, it is a comparatively new town. Some two hundred years ago a certain Grand-Duke Karl, having quarreled with his parliament and, generally speaking, come to loggerheads with his capital, turned his back on the whole troublesome society, and went in search of "peace at any price." He believed that he had found it in a lovely sylvan spot a few miles away from his original "residenz," so, to spite his parliament, and also to repair his shattered nervous system, he set to work and built a castle in the midst of the forest, thereby hoping to have created for himself a refuge from the bickering and nagging of his unruly subjects. Under the mistaken impression that he had succeeded he christened the place Karlsruhe (Karl's Rest or Peace). Alas! this action proved all too premature, for within a short time his renegade people, weary of their loneliness, deserted the old capital, and a few years later their disconsolate ruler awoke to the fact that his peaceful refuge had become a veritable town, and the name "Karlsruhe" a bitter irony. The poor Duke's feelings must have been very keen on the subject, for the stone at the entrance to the old Schloss bears the following melancholy if resigned inscription —

"In Anno Domini 171 5 I was wandering in a wood, the abode of wild beasts. A lover of peace, I wished to pass my time in the study of creation, despising vanity, and paying a just homage to the Creator. But the people came also, and built what you here see. Thus there is no peace so long as the sun shines, except the peace which is in God, and which you can, if you will, enjoy in the middle of the world. 1728."

Surely an irrefutable argument against the democrat who would prove that princes are an unloved and unsought-after race!

At any rate, willingly or unwillingly, the good Karl had laid the foundation of a new capital ; the old one languished as a punishment for its unruliness, and is to-day an historical but somewhat dirty and uninteresting village, which in time will probably be swept clean and incorporated with the capital as a suburb. Karlsruhe, on the other hand, grew and prospered. In the beginning no more than a semicircle of houses surrounding the Schloss-Platz, it spread out in regular fan-like order until it reached its present dimensions.

Thanks, therefore, to its recent foundation, it is exceptionally clean and well kept. When I say "exceptionally" I mean a good deal, for my impression of German towns as a whole is of cleanliness and order. The clearer, drier climate may account for this to some extent, but I think the real explanation lies in the stern rule of the state or — in this particular instance — of the Town Council, whose lynx-like glance pierces into the uttermost corner, and sees to it that that corner is made as habitable and as decent as is humanly possible. I do not think that the Englishman would fancy that lynx-eye, although its interference is on the whole quite paternal, and not half so objectionable as is made out by people who wish to prove that the German is the most police-bullied man on earth. As a matter of fact he is not bullied — he is "looked after."

You can best imagine the situation if you consider every state in Germany as a "House" in some big college, with its esprit de corps, its own laws and customs, but under one all-uniting head. To carry the analogy to the end, the people are of course the students, divided into higher and lower classes, the masters the ministers, the ushers — if you like — the police. And the maxim which rules the whole organization is "that everything is for everybody's good." Of course, this may seem a somewhat humiliating system for grown-up people ; but when it is taken into consideration that there are more fools than wise men in the world, and that the folly of fools can be infinitely more harmful than the wickedness of the wicked, it is surely one that has its justification. Be it as it may, this system exists in Germany, and its results are to be seen in every department of life, and not least in the town organization. I do not say that it is a perfect organization — there are sometimes quite startling if human lapses — but it is certain that it is an organization which is toiling laboriously, if steadily, along the path of self-improvement. It is animated, too, by a certain amount of rivalry between the towns — especially between the capitals of the various states. So much exists still of old divided Germany, and so much is undoubtedly beneficial. The consequences are that each town

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Women street cleaners does its best to attain the highest standard of law, order, and progress.

From these points of view Karlsruhe justly reckons itself among the first — if not the first. Certainly, to walk through its symmetrically well-built streets is to gain an impression of light, fresh air, and cleanliness. A whole army of neatly uniformed individuals are busy morning, noon, and night; sweeping, watering, and sand-strewing according to orders. Sometimes the orders clash with unforeseen circumstances, as when a watering-cart is seen devotedly performing its duty in the teeth of a deluging thunderstorm, but on the whole they are carried out to the general benefit. And over everything the policeman watches with a paternal, wakeful eye. If you wish to prove his wakefulness you need only leave your own particular piece of pavement in an untidy state, and in a few minutes a polite but firm arm of the law will spring apparently from nowhere to recall you to a sense of duty.

I dare say he is very glad of something to do, for his life must be one of deadly monotony. Nothing ever seems to happen. The very horses, when it occurs to them to enliven proceedings by running away, do so at an easy jog-trot, and stop of themselves; a burglary causes as much sensation as a full-grown revolution; the so-called slums are places which, compared to our notions of the term, are paradises of law and order. So the policeman, except on rare occasions, has practically nothing to do but stand about and wait and hope. On the above-mentioned "rare occasions," such as at the time of the Hau trial, when emotions ran high, the military turns out, and there is a quick end to the matter. The military, in fact, is a sort of active maid-of-all-work to the law, and is ready to assist at a revolution or a fire or an accident with the same excellent results. But, as I have said, these occasions are rare. Placidity and general propriety is in the atmosphere, and that is no doubt why a certain class of people find such middle-sized towns as Karlsruhe "langweilig." There are amusements enough, but of a sober type, which would scarcely suit the wilder spirits. A sternly classical Hof- Theater, a couple of music-halls — mere cafes, where acrobats and a mild vulgarity help to wile away the evenings for a lower class paterfamilias, and even for the family itself — and a cinematograph of perfectly respectable and even didactic tendencies, are not forms of entertainment likely to lead the unsteadiest into mischief. Whether it is this lack of temptation or the character of the peopie themselves, or a little of both, I do not know, but certain it is that the streets of Karlsruhe are safe at all hours for people not on the look-out for trouble, and in six years I have not seen either by day or night an intoxicated man, much less an intoxicated woman. I should think the latter does not exist.

There are no beggars ; begging is absolutely forbidden in all its forms except at the time of the Fair, and even then there are only one or two cripples, who are neither starved-looking nor illclothed. Street organs, German bands, all forms of public nuisance, are unknown. The only noise one ever hears issues from the Wirts-Hauser, where a Gcsangs-Verein (a choral society) is gathered together over the beer glass to practice — perhaps a Bach oratorio!

Very little is left to public enterprise, and the people seem satisfied that even their pleasures and recreation should be in the hands of the municipality. They do not consider it any particular privation to be without a private garden. A big shady garden, as we understand it and love it, is practically unknown — not on account of expense, the richest man in Karlsruhe has no more than a front patch — but simply because no one feels the need of such a thing. They are not in the least exclusive, and the pleasure of sitting shut of! from the world in your own little bit of private property has no charm for them. The average South German prefers to live and breathe and take his pleasure with others, and since the municipality provides him with woods and parks and public garden, why should he bother to spend money on something which he must enjoy in comparative solitude? So he keeps his little plot, if he has one, in fair order, and plants a few flowers in it to keep up the cheerful appearance of the street, and spends his free time and his spare money drinking his glass of beer with his family in the Stadt-garten, and listening to the band and greeting his friends. Or, if he wishes for peace, there is the forest and the Wild Park open to him. In this respect Karlsruhe is perhaps unusually fortunate, for so much remains of the poor Duke Karl's first surroundings that it is possible in five minutes from the center of the town to lose oneself in what seems an endless pine-forest, and forget that trams and motors and crowds ever existed. Bicycling and footpaths are beautifully kept, and one can, I believe, walk in the cool pinescented shade as far as Mannheim, some thirty miles away. (This is mere hearsay, as personally

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Listening to music in the public gardens

I have never made the experiment.) All this is public property, and on Sunday it is made good use of by the sociable holiday folk who can not afford the necessary 20 pf. which gains an entrance into the Stadt-garten, where a military band, a good restaurant, and a beautifully kept flower-garden, help to bring refreshment to the hard-working German. It is always crowded, and I think the point that strikes a foreigner most in a walk through the unprotected flower paths, even on a grand holiday when children and people of all classes abound, is that no one is rough, no one ill-mannered, no one attempts to touch the flowers or trample on the lawns. There is no paper-throwing or any form of disorder. I am sure, after the fullest day, the gardens are as tidy, as well kept, as they were in the early hours of the morning. Everything, like the people themselves, is orderly and clean and peaceful.

Then, if you are more select, and wish to leave the crowds behind you, there is the Wild Park, the property of the Grand-Duke, who allows you an entrance for the sum of ten marks yearly as a sort of guarantee. No motors are allowed, and a sylvan peace inhabits the long straight allies of mingled pine and oak. A rider galloping along the horsepath, a green-coated forester with his dog and gun, a woodcutter or two, the Grand-Duke himself — such are the only people you are likely to meet on your rambles. Numberless squirrels will scuttle across your path, herds of deer will watch you curiously from amidst the trees, and perhaps toward evening a family of wild boars — wild only in name, be it said for your reassurance — will jog comfortably from one shady glade to another, but these accentuate rather than disturb your loneliness. It is as though the place were your own private property, and who can be surprised, therefore, if the Karlsruher neglects to acquire gardens of his own when he can enjoy so much for a modest ten mark piece? And even if that sum can not be spared, there is enough to be had for nothing.