Long ago royal plans were made to replace it by an edifice more worthy, but these have not been carried out, though since the accession of Emperor William II. measures have been taken looking toward the erection of a new cathedral.
The usual hour for Sunday-morning service is ten o"clock. The lat.i.tude of Berlin is over ten degrees farther north than that of New York and Chicago, and the sun at ten o"clock in winter is about as high as at nine o"clock in the latter cities. So it is only by special effort that a midwinter sojourner in Berlin can be at morning service. Within three minutes of the time appointed, on my first visit, the aged Emperor William entered the _Dom_ and stood for a few minutes in the att.i.tude of devotion, as did the other members of the Imperial household. The gallery on the left of the preacher was occupied by three boxes,--one for the Emperor, one for the Crown Prince and his family, and one for their retinues. The service proceeded in the language of the people,--that language created and preserved to Germany by Luther"s translation of the Bible. A finely trained choir of some sixty singers led the music, all the people joining in the psalms and hymns; the Imperial family taking part in the service with simplicity and appearance of sincerity, as those who stood, with all present, in the presence of Him with whom is no respect of persons.
The plain interior of the _Dom_ has a painting behind the altar, and the large candles in immense candlesticks on either side were burning before a crucifix throughout the entire service. This we found true also in most of the other churches,--a reminder that, wide as was the gulf between the Lutheran Church and that of Rome, the former retained some customs which Puritanism discarded. Pews fill the central part of this cathedral, and the broad aisle skirting the side at the left of the front entrance has a few seats for the delicate and infirm of the throng which always stands there at the time for the morning service.
It was in this church that the departed Emperor William I. lay in state for the great funeral pageant when his ninety-one years of life were over. Here in the vaults many members of Prussia"s royal family repose, and here many stately ceremonies have taken place. At the door of this cathedral Emperor William I., then Prince Regent, stood with uncovered head to receive the remains of Alexander Von Humboldt, which here lay in state in May, 1859, after the great scholar "went forth"
for the last time from his home in the Oranienburger Stra.s.se.
We attended a service at the oldest of the Berlin churches, the Nicolai Kirche, and found the spa.r.s.eness of the audience in striking contrast with the crowds which frequented most of the other churches where we went. Standing-room is usually at a premium in the Cathedral, the Garrison Church, and the place, wherever it may be, in which Dryander preaches; and in nearly all the churches unoccupied seats are hard to find. This is due, not to the large numbers of church-going people in Berlin, but to the comparatively limited church accommodations. It is not too soon that the present Emperor has given order that the number of churches and sittings be immediately increased. In this city of about a million and a half inhabitants, there are only about seventy-five churches and chapels, all told; none very large, and some quite small. It is said that Dryander"s parish numbers forty thousand souls, and that there are other parishes including eighty thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand each.
Only about two per cent of the population attend church. Ties to a particular church seem scarcely to exist in many cases; those who go to Divine service following their favorite preacher from place to place as he ministers now in one part, now in another, of his vast parish, or going to the Court Church to see the Imperial family, or to some other which happens to offer fine music or some special attraction for the day. Churches do not need, however, to offer special attractions nor to advertise sensational novelties in order to be filled, and of course there are many humble and devout Christians found in the same places from week to week.
The Nicolai Kirche dates from before 1250 A.D. and the great granite foundations of the towers were laid still earlier. At this period the savage Wends and the robber-castles of North Germany were yielding to the prowess of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, and the powerful Hanseatic League was uniting its free cities and cementing its commercial interests, of which Berlin was erelong to be a part,--a League which was to sweep the Baltic by its fleets, and to set up and dethrone kings by its armies. Already the Crusades had broken the long sleep of the Dark Ages, and stirred the people with that mighty impulse which brought the culmination, in the thirteenth century, of the great church-building epoch of Europe in the Middle Ages. No great churches which they could not live to finish were begun by he frugal burghers of Berlin; but they had a style of their own in the brick Gothic, which is the most truly national architecture of North Germany. The Nicolai Kirche is a representative of these early times and of this national architecture, but its interior decorations show every variety of adornment which prevailed during five centuries after its founding. Not alone the history of art is represented on the inner walls of this venerable and unique edifice, but the munic.i.p.al history, and the history of the "Mark of Brandenburg," and the Kingdom of Prussia as well.
Almost as ancient as the Nicolai Kirche is the Heiliggeist Kirche, behind the Borse. Near this is the Marien Kirche, with its high spire, its Abbot"s Cross--the emblem of Old Berlin--before the entrance, and on the inner walls its frescos of the Dance of Death, painted to commemorate the plague which ravaged Berlin in 1460. Adjoining this church, in the Neue Markt, Berlin"s statue of Luther is to be erected.
Of the same old time, and in the same old heart of Berlin, is the fine Kloster Kirche of the Franciscan monks, who had once a monastery adjoining. A morning"s stroll or two enables one to inspect all these interesting old churches,--pa.s.sing first to the Nicolai Kirche from the end of the tramway in the Fisch Markt, and then, by a convenient circuit, to each of the others, returning by the Museums and the l.u.s.tgarten. The Jerusalems Kirche, about three quarters of a mile south, is said to have been founded by a citizen at the end of the Crusades as a memento of his journey to Palestine; but its present ornamented architecture belongs to a modern reconstruction. An effective architectural group is formed by the two churches in the Schiller Platz, with the great _Schauspielhaus_, or Royal Theatre, between them,--a view which soon becomes familiar to one pa.s.sing often through the central part of the city. The French Church, on the north side of the Theatre, we did not enter, and of the "New Church"--a hundred years old and recently rejuvenated--our most abiding memories are of an exquisite sacred concert given there in aid of a local charity. We made a pilgrimage to see the effect of this group by moonlight, but, perhaps because it had been too highly praised, we found the view rather disappointing. But we shall long remember a walk at evening twilight through this place, when early dusk and gleaming gas-jets around and within the square had taken the place of departing sunlight, which still bathed in radiance the gilded figures surmounting the domes in the clear upper air. Few of the hurrying mult.i.tudes stopped to look upward, but those who did could hardly fail to gain an impressive lesson from the inspiring and suggestive sight.
Frommel, the good man and attractive preacher who usually officiates in the Garrison Church, is one of the four Court-preachers, each of whom is eminent in his way. We sat one morning, with many others, on the steps to the chancel in the Garrison Church, as the house was crowded in every part. The s.p.a.cious galleries were filled with soldiers in Prussian uniform, and many also were in the pews below.
The soldiers were not there merely in obedience to orders. They listened intently, for Court-preacher Frommel has a message to the minds and hearts of men. His oratory is eloquent, scintillating; from first to last it holds captive the crowded audience. Never have I witnessed gestures which were so essentially a part of the speaker; hands so incessantly a.s.sisting to convey subtle thought and feeling from the brain and heart of the orator to the magnetized audience, whose faces unconsciously testified to a mental and spiritual uplifting. It was told me that the aged Emperor never travelled from his capital without the attendance of this chaplain, as well known for his simple Christian integrity and his ceaseless good deeds as for his wonderful eloquence.
Trinity Church, where for a quarter of a century Schleiermacher preached and wrought, is now ministered to by the worthy Dryander and his colleagues, who faithfully do what they can for the spiritual welfare of the immense parish. The edifice, of a peculiar model, stands in a central portion of Berlin, almost under the shadow of the lofty and famous hotel known as the Kaiserhof. On the Sunday mornings when Dryander preaches here, aisles, vestibules, and stairways are crowded until there is no standing-room, much less a seat, within sight or hearing of the popular preacher. His manner is simple, but very forceful and sympathetic, his earnest face and voice holding the audience like a spell.
The finest religious music in Berlin is rendered on Friday evenings at sunset, in the great Jewish synagogue in the Oranienburger Stra.s.se, built at a cost of six million marks, and said to be the best in Europe. The s.p.a.cious interior seats nearly five thousand, with pews on the main floor for men only, and galleries for the women. Three thousand burning gas-jets above and behind the rich stained gla.s.s of the dome and side windows give an effect remarkable both for beauty and weirdness. The building without loses much by its close surroundings of ordinary houses, but the Moorish arches and decorations within are unique and effective. Over the sacred enclosure, where a red light always burns, and which contains the ark "of the law and the testimony," a gallery across the eastern end holds the fine organ, and accommodates the choir of eighty trained singers.
Christmas eve happened in 1886 on a Friday; so, before the later German Christian home festival to which we were invited, we wended our way to the Jewish weekly sunset service. Neither among the men nor the women was there much outward evidence of devotion. In the female countenances around me in the gallery the well-known Jewish physiognomy was almost universal. While the rabbi read the service, with his back to the audience, most followed in their Hebrew books; but one by one many men slipped out, as though they were "on "Change"
and did not care to stay any longer to-day. The women remained, but with a slightly perfunctory air in most cases. One old crone before me seemed touched with the true pathos which belongs to her race and its history. She followed the service intently, swaying her body back and forth in time with the beautiful music, and ever and anon breaking forth in a low, sweet, plaintive strain with her own voice. Oh the longing of such lives, waiting to find through the centuries the realization of a hope never fulfilled and growing ever more and more dim! My Puritanism had been scarcely reconciled to the crucifix and the candles of the Protestant churches in Berlin, but now, if my life and hopes had depended on the religion of this Jewish ceremonial, I would have given worlds to find a crucifix in the vacant s.p.a.ce above their Sacred Ark. These sweet strains of exquisite music seem to give voice without articulation to the unrevealed, imprisoned longing of the Jewish heart for something better than it knows. I could only compare the feeling, in this cold, mechanical worship of the Fatherhood of G.o.d, as it seemed to me, with the vague disappointment of climbing stairs in the dark, and stretching out foot and hand for another which is not there. The Christmas torches were burning in the Schloss-platz and the market-places without, crowded for days and nights past with a busy mult.i.tude, making ready for the Christ-festival which was to light a Christmas-tree that night in every home in Germany. Even Jews could not resist the gladness; and their homes, like the rest, had every one its Christmas-tree and its fill of cheer, paying their tribute to the world-wide joy, even though they would not. But as I sat among them and went forth with them, I thought also of their ancestral line stretching back to Abraham through centuries of the most wonderful history which belongs to any race. Beside these Israelites, how puerile the fame and deeds of the Hohenzollerns! The sixty or seventy thousand Jews of Berlin hold in their hands, it is said, a large part of the wealth of the city; but they are proscribed, and it is thought by many, unjustly treated before the law.
The one English church in Berlin rejoices in a new and beautiful though chaste and modest edifice in the gardens of Monbijou Palace.
The site, presented by the Emperor William I., is in the heart of the city, surrounded, in this quiet and beautiful place, by many interesting historic a.s.sociations. The edifice was built chiefly through the efforts of the Crown Princess Victoria, who raised in London in a few hours a large part of the necessary funds, and who also devoted to this object, so dear to her English heart, presents received at her silver wedding. The service attracts on Sunday mornings, of course, all adherents of the Church of England, as well as many Americans, to whom the magnet of an Episcopal service is greater than that of the a.s.sociation of Christians of all denominations in the devout and simple worship of the Chapel in Junker Stra.s.se, where the Union American and British service is held. One of the first places we essayed to find in Berlin was the chapel at present used by this organization. Our German landlady had unwittingly misdirected us, and we insisted on her direction, to the bewilderment of our cabman. Up one strange street and down another he drove, with sundry protests and shakes of the head on our part. We insist on "Heulmann Stra.s.se." He stops and inquires. "Nein! nein!" he says, "Junker Stra.s.se." "No! no!" we reply. He holds a conference with two brother drosky-men. Three Germans "of the male persuasion" outside insist on "Junker Stra.s.se." Three Americans "of the female persuasion"
inside insist on "Heulmann Stra.s.se." "Nein!" says the man, with a determined air, and takes the reins now as though he means business.
We lean back in our seats, resigned to going wrong because we cannot help ourselves, when lo! we draw up at the door of the building used by the American church in Junker Stra.s.se. Those barbarous men were right, after all! Late; but how our hearts were warmed and cheered by the sight of a plain audience-room, holding about two hundred English-speaking people; the pulpit draped in our dear old American flag, and another on the choir-gallery! How precious were the simple devout hymns and prayers in our own tongue wherein we were born! There was an American Thanksgiving sermon,--eloquent, earnest, magnetic.
Strangers in a strange land, we felt that we could never be homesick in a city where was such a service. This Union Church service was established some twenty-five or thirty years ago, Governor Wright, then United States Minister to Germany, being prominently connected with its beginnings. There is now a regular church organization, with the Bible and the Apostles" Creed as its doctrinal basis. For eight or nine years past, the present pastor, the Rev. J.H.W. Stuckenberg, D.D., born in Germany, but a loyal and devoted soldier and citizen of the American Republic, has, with his accomplished wife, been indefatigable in caring for the services, and administering to the needs--physical, social, and religious--of Americans in Berlin. The first gathering which we attended in the city was an American Thanksgiving Banquet, under the auspices of the "Ladies" Social Union"
connected with this "American Chapel." Invitations were issued to an "American Home Gathering," for Thanksgiving evening, to be held in the Architectenhaus at six o"clock. Greetings, witty and wise, were extended to the a.s.sembled company of some two hundred, by a lady from Boston; grace was said by Professor Mead, formerly of Andover, and the American Thanksgiving dinner was duly appreciated, though some of us had in part forestalled its appetizing pleasures by attendance at a delightful private afternoon dinner-party, where the true home flavors had been heightened by the shadow of the American flag which draped its silken folds above the table, depending from candelabra in which "red, white, and blue" wax lights were burning.
Only the initiated can know what such an American Thanksgiving dinner as that given in this public entertainment in Germany must mean to the painstaking ladies, who need to direct every detail in contravention of the established customs of the country. Turkey was forthcoming, but cranberries were sought far and wide in vain, until Dresden at last sent an imitation of the American berry, to keep it company. Mince pies were regarded as essential to the feast. As pies are here unknown, the pie-plates must be made to order after repeated and untold minuteness of direction to the astonished tinman. The ordinary kitchen ranges of Germany are without ovens, and all cake and pastry, as well as bread, must emerge from the baker"s oven. So to the shop of the baker two ladies repaired, to mix with their own hands the pastry and to prepare the mince-meat, graciously declining the yeast and eggs offered them for the purpose. The delicious results justified in practical proof the tireless endeavor for a real home-like American dinner. Our German friends laughed at the "dry banquet" where only lemonade and coffee kept the viands company, but right good cheer was not wanting. Before the guests rose from table, the pastor read letters of regret from Minister Pendleton (absent in affliction) and others, and proposed the health of the President of the United States and of Mrs. Cleveland, who, as Miss Folsom, shared in the Berlin festivities of Americans at Thanksgiving the year before. The toast which followed--to the aged Emperor William--was most cordially responded to by a member of the Empress"s household, Count Bernsdorff, endeared to many in both hemispheres by his active interest in whatsoever things are true and of good report. Rare music was discoursed at intervals, from a band in the gallery, alternating with amateur performers on the violin and piano, from under the German and American flags intertwined at the opposite end of the handsome hall.
The good name of American students of music in Berlin was well deserved, judging from their contributions to the enjoyment of this occasion. The evening"s programme closed with our national airs in grand chorus, cheering and inspiring all. To some hearts the dear melody of "The Suwanee River," which afterwards floated out on the evening air of the busy city, mingled a pathos before unsuspected with the good-nights and the adieus, and brought an undertone of sadness caused by the knowledge that we were far from home, and that our loved ones, from Atlantic to Pacific, were returning from their Thanksgiving sermon, or later gathering about the festal board, at the hour when we, wanderers, were cl.u.s.tered in the heart of the German Empire with like purpose and in like precious faith and memory.
The Sunday services of this enterprise are now held in an edifice belonging to a German Methodist church, which can be had for one service only, at an hour which will not interfere with the uses which have a prior claim. The Sunday evenings, when a goodly congregation might be gathered if a suitable audience-room could be had, are times of loneliness and homesickness to many American youth and others far from home and friends. Dr. and Mrs. Stuckenberg have generously opened their own pleasant home at 18 Bulow Stra.s.se for Sunday-evening receptions to Americans. Their large and beautiful apartments were much too small to accommodate all who would gladly have gathered there. But in the course of the season there were few Americans attending the morning service who were not to be met, one Sunday evening or another, in the parlors of the pastor and his wife; and many others, students, were nearly always there. A half-hour was given on these occasions to social greetings; then followed familiar hymns, led by the piano and a volunteer choir of young people, after which an informal lecture was given by the pastor. Dr. Stuckenberg emigrated with his parents to America in early childhood, but has studied in the Universities of Halle, Gottingen, Berlin, and Tubingen. His large acquaintance with German scholars enabled him to give most interesting reminiscences of the teaching and personality of some of these, his teachers and friends. Among the talks which we remember vividly were those on Tholuck, Dorner, and Von Ranke. At another time Dr.
Stuckenberg gave a series of lectures on Socialism,--a theme whose manifold aspects he has studied profoundly, and which, in Germany as elsewhere, is the question of the hour, the day, and the century, and perhaps of the next century too. After the lecture there generally followed prayer and another hymn, and always slight refreshments,--tea and sandwiches, or little cakes,--over which all chatted and were free to go when they would. Many were the occasions when, in these gatherings, every heart seemed to partake of the gladness radiated by the magnetic host and hostess; and all Europe seemed brighter because of these homelike, social, Christian Sunday evenings which lighted up the sojourn in Berlin. The effort now being made to build a permanent and commodious church edifice for Americans in Berlin is a pressing necessity.
Dr. Christlieb, the eminent Professor of Theology and University Preacher in Bonn, a.s.serts that the number of American students in Berlin is now by far the largest congregated in any one place in Germany. The number, as stated in 1888 by Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, was about four hundred, besides the numerous American travellers there every year for a longer or shorter time. Seventeen denominations have been represented in this church in a single year, and any evangelical minister in good standing in his own church is eligible to election as its pastor. From the beginning these union services have been entirely harmonious; and Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians have been chiefly active in promoting them.
The churches of the royal suburb of Potsdam possess an interest quite equal to that of those in Berlin. The Potsdam Garrison Church, in general interior outlines, reminds one of some quaint New England meeting-house of the early part of the eighteenth century. But here the resemblance ceases. The ancient arrangement of windows and galleries impresses one only at the moment of entering, attention being presently diverted to the flags cl.u.s.tered on the gallery pillars and on either side the pulpit, in two rows,--the lower captured from the French in the wars with the First Napoleon, the upper taken in the late contests with Austria and with Napoleon III. Altar-cloths and other furnishings are heavily embroidered with the handiwork of vanished queens. But the chief interest centres in the vault under the handsome marble pulpit. In this vault, on the left, are the mortal remains of the old Prussian King, Frederick William I.,--father of Frederick the Great,--a character hard to understand, and interpreted differently as one surveys him in the light of Macaulay"s genius or that of Carlyle. But one cannot help hoping that the final verdict will be with the latter; and as we stand in this solemn place, memory recalls the day--the midnight, rather--when this same oak coffin, long before the death of the King made ready by his orders in the old Palace of Potsdam close at hand, at last received its burden, and was borne in Spartan simplicity to this place, the torch-lighted band playing his favorite dirge,--
"Oh, Sacred Head, now wounded!"
On the right, separated from the coffin of his father only by the short aisle, is that of Frederick the Great. Three wreaths were lying upon it,--placed there by the Emperor and by the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess on the hundredth anniversary of the death of this founder of Prussia"s greatness, August 17, 1886. Fortunate is the visitor to Potsdam who does not altogether overlook this Garrison Church, misled by the brief mention usually accorded to it in the guide-books.
The Friedenskirche, near the entrance to the park of Sans Souci, has a detached high clock-tower adjoining, and cloisters beautiful, even in winter, with the myrtle and ivy and evergreens of the protected court which they surround. In the inner court is a copy of Thorwaldsen"s celebrated statue of Christ (the original at Copenhagen); also, Rauch"s original "Moses, supported by Aaron and Hur," and a beautiful _Pieta_ is in the opposite colonnade. The church is in the form of the ancient basilica, which is not favorable to much adornment. A crucifix of _lapis lazuli_ under a canopy resting on jasper columns--a present from the Czar Nicholas--stands on the marble altar. A beautiful angel in Carrara marble adorns the s.p.a.ce before the chancel, above the burial-slabs of King Frederick William IV., founder of the church, and his queen; and the apse is lined with a rare old Venetian mosaic. But the chief interest of this "Church of Peace" will henceforth centre around it as the burial-place of the Emperor Frederick III. In an apartment not formerly shown to the public, his young son, Waldemar, was laid to rest at the age of eleven years, deeply mourned by the Crown Prince, the Crown Princess, and their family. Here in this church, beside his sons Waldemar and Sigismund, who died in infancy, it was the wish of the dying father to lie buried. Here the quiet military funeral service was held; here the last look of that n.o.ble face was taken amid the tears of those who loved him well, while the sunlight, suddenly streaming through an upper window, illuminated as with an electric light that face at rest, as the Court-preacher Koegel uttered the words of solemn trust,--
"What G.o.d doeth is well done."
Fitting it is that in this "Church of Peace" should rest all that was mortal of the immortal Prince who could say, as he entered Paris in the flush of victory: "Gentlemen, I do not like war. If I should reign, I would never make it."
V.
MUSEUMS.
The chief art treasures of Berlin are found in the Royal Museums, Old and New, and in the National Gallery. There are few more characteristic and inspiring sights in Europe than that which greets the eye in a walk on a sunny afternoon in winter from the palace of Kaiser Wilhelm I. through the Operahaus Platz and the Zeughaus Platz, across the Schloss Brucke and the l.u.s.tgarten, to the peerless building of the Old Museum,--with the grand equipages, the brilliant uniforms, and the busy but not overcrowded life which throng the vast s.p.a.ces of these handsome thoroughfares. The Old Museum is not so rich in masterpieces as some other and older art galleries, but there are many fine original works. The Friezes from the Altar of Zeus, excavated within a few years at Pergamus, are extremely interesting, and are exhibited with all the adjuncts which the most thorough German scholarship can supply for their elucidation. The celebrated Raphael tapestry, woven for Henry VIII. from the cartoons now in the South Kensington Museum, and long the foremost ornament of the palace of Whitehall, hangs in the great upper rotunda, which is a setting not unworthy of its fame. Michael Angelo"s "John the Baptist as a Boy,"
one of his early works, is quite unlike most of this master"s work, in conception and execution, and is interesting especially on this account. The "Altar-piece of the Mystic Lamb" is remarkable for its merits and because it is reputed to be the first picture ever painted in oils. Murillo"s "Ecstasy of Saint Anthony" is a picture of rare sweetness and power. In one room are five of Raphael"s Madonnas, but only one of them is in his better style. "The collection of pictures in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which remain in the imagination,--"t.i.tian"s Daughter," Correggio"s "Jupiter and Io," and his "Head of Christ on a Handkerchief." I was pleased, also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which Goethe describes in the "Wahlverwandschaften" as the model of a _tableau vivant_ presented by Lucian and her friends. It is the daughter being reproved by her father, while the mother empties her wine-gla.s.s."
The department of the Museum known as the Antiquarium has its treasures. Here is the original silver table service, supposed to be that of a Roman General, dug up in 1868 near the old German mediaeval town of Hildesheim. A handsome copy of this service is among the beginnings of Chicago"s Art collections. Here are the exquisite terra-cotta statuettes from the ancient Grecian Colony of Tanagra, which no modern work of plastic art can imitate in grace of form and delicacy of color,--dating three or four hundred years before the Christian era; and in other rooms, a fabulous collection of jewels, and numberless precious vases, ill.u.s.trating especially the progress of Ancient Grecian Art.
The New Museum, connected by a colonnade with the Old, is not, like it, remarkable for architectural beauty; but its vast collections, especially in marble, already need and are to have a new building.
The masterpieces of ancient sculpture gathered at Munich, Vienna, Paris, Rome, Naples, and elsewhere, are here reproduced in casts, making up a collection said to be, in its way, unrivalled in the world. The collection of originals in Renaissance sculpture is also extensive and valuable.
Referring to sculpture in Berlin, George Eliot wrote: "We went again and again to look at the Parthenon Sculptures, and registered a vow that we would go to feast on the originals [in the British Museum] the first day we could spare in London." At the date before mentioned, her opinion was that "the first work of art really worth looking at that one sees in Berlin is the "Horse-Tamers" in front of the [Old] palace.
It is by a sculptor [Baron Clodt, of St. Petersburg] who made horses his especial study; and certainly, to us, they eclipsed the famous Colossi at Monte Cavallo, casts of which are in [before] the New Museum."
The Department of Coins has 200,000 specimens, many very old and rare; and that of Northern Antiquities ill.u.s.trates with great fulness the prehistoric and Roman periods. The Cabinet of Engravings is extremely interesting, and has some specimens of very great value; but it is open to the general public for a few hours on Sunday only, and even then the greater part of its collections is reserved to art students, who have the entire monopoly of its treasures on other days of the week. It well repays persistent effort, however, to make a few quiet visits to this rare cabinet. Some of the finest works are hung on the walls of the pleasant rooms.
The famous mural paintings by Kaulbach adorning the upper staircase walls of the New Museum are widely admired, but critics differ in the estimate of their place as works of art. The upper saloons reached by this staircase show the cartoons of Cornelius, and foreshadow a grandeur in German art not yet realized.
The third building in the group which holds the chief art treasures of Berlin is the National Gallery, its pictures partaking, as such a collection should, strongly of the German spirit as shown in modern German art. The paintings are of various degrees of merit, many being of value chiefly as reflecting the national life. A fine portrait of Mommsen arrested me, on one visit; a striking picture, "Christ healing a Sick Child in its Mother"s Arms," by Gabriel Max, was a continual favorite; and many others were among those to which we went frequently and before which we lingered long.
The crowning excellence of all the Royal Art Collections is their singular method and completeness. The Old Museum, especially, in its arrangement and ill.u.s.tration of the history of painting in all schools, is without a peer, and it is particularly rich in the early Italian masters. The National Gallery in London has been compared in arrangement with the Berlin Museum, but our observation showed nowhere else in Europe so great facility for systematic study of art as here.
Quite recently, a writer in the "London Art Journal," in comparing European art galleries, characterizes the Italian galleries, except the Pitti, as mere storehouses of pictures, so great have been the accessions, in late years, of altar-pieces from suppressed convents; while, on the other hand, the Louvre, and the galleries of Munich, Dresden, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Madrid still retain their original characteristics as collections made by persons of taste and discrimination. "The Berlin Gallery," says this writer, "is neither a storehouse nor a collection. It stands on a footing of its own. The studious and organizing Prussian mind soon handed over the management of all its collections to a body of specialists, trained to study the objects in their keeping and to arrange them not so much for the delight as for the information of a studious public. The Berlin Gallery has been thus arranged, and its additions have been purchased under the direction of scholars and historians rather than artists and _dilettanti_. Historical sequence and historical completeness have been aimed at. The collection is intended to exemplify the development of the art of painting in mediaeval and renascence Europe. It is impossible to enter the Museum gallery and not be struck with this fact. The visitor finds himself turned into a student of the history of painting, as he wanders from room to room. The ordering of the pictures, the information contained in the catalogue,--everything points in the same direction. So clearly has the Museum come to be understood at Berlin as a kind of art-history branch of a university, that a portion of the funds devoted to it is annually spent upon the publication of a periodical universally recognized as the leading magazine in the world devoted to the history of art. By means of it, students in all countries are informed from year to year of the new acquisitions and discoveries made by the staff of the Museum, or by the leading authors and students of the subject, of all nationalities.
The Berlin collection has thus won for itself a place as the historical collection _par excellence_."
The Museums are under the care of a Director-General, with nine or more Directors of Departments. Dr. Julius Meyer, Director of the Picture-Gallery, is said to be probably unequalled by any living writer for a wide and philosophic grasp of the whole subject of Art History, to which his life has been devoted; while the names of distinguished scholars and professors at the head of the other departments are guaranties of similar excellence. A series of four ill.u.s.trated volumes is now in process of publication, which will present, in photographs and engravings, large or small, every picture of importance in the gallery. The text of these volumes, by Drs. Meyer and Bode, will be extremely valuable, and the whole will doubtless stand foremost among publications designed as exponents of European galleries.
The fine and ma.s.sive building of the a.r.s.enal, opposite the palace of the late Crown Prince, dates from the time of Frederick I., last of the Electors and first of the Prussian Kings. The grand sculptures of the German artist Schluter, who was afterwards called to the aid of Peter the Great in the creation of St. Petersburg, adorn the exterior of the edifice. Any chance walk along the Linden will arrest the attention to this building, with the remarkable heads of dying warriors carved in the keystones of its window arches. In the renovation of the a.r.s.enal a few years since, no improvement was made on the exterior, except to remove the acc.u.mulations of smoke and dust which a hundred and seventy years had deposited there. After the close of the Franco-Prussian War, it was the thought of the aged Emperor to make this a.r.s.enal, already crowded with an immense collection of arms, armor, and trophies, into a kind of Walhalla,--a National Hall of Fame. This was fully carried out. In rooms on the ground floor one may read the whole history of ordnance, old and new, including the famous Armstrong and Krupp guns. A portion of this floor is devoted to models of fortresses, plans of battles, and captured flags. There is a war library; and the celebrated pictures of the Giant Grenadiers, painted with his own hand by Frederick William I., father of Frederick the Great, are also to be seen.
A magnificent double staircase under a gla.s.s roof leads to the second floor (in Germany called the first), where one portion is devoted to an interesting collection of arms, which is, however, inferior to those of one or two other European cities. The chief attraction to the visitor, as well as a permanent magnet to the patriotic Berlinese, who come hither in whole families, is the "Hall of Fame," consisting of three sections, all splendid in mosaic floors and ma.s.sive marble pillars, and adorned with sculpture and fine historical frescos. One of the latter represents the Coronation of the first King of Prussia at Konigsberg, and another has for its subject the Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. The Central Hall is adorned with bronze statues of the Great Elector, of the Fredericks and Frederick-Williams of the Prussian royal line, and of the Emperor William I. The "Halls of the Generals," on either side of this "Hall of the Rulers," have busts of the military leaders, including a fine one of the Crown Prince. Here are also several historical paintings; prominent among which are "The Battle of Turin," "The Emperor William and the Crown Prince at Koniggratz," and "The Capitulation at Sedan."
Perhaps no collection, among many more which might be mentioned, better ill.u.s.trates the practical working of the German mind than the Royal Post Museum in the Leipziger Stra.s.se. Here is shown everything of interest connected with the transmission of intelligence, and poetry as well as prose has entered into the heart of this Government exhibit. On the walls of the first saloon entered by the visitor are copies in stone of a.s.syrian bas-reliefs showing a warrior with chariot and arrows. This suggests to us a scene in the lives of David and Jonathan; but communication by means of arrows is probably much older than the time of David. Earlier than even the a.s.syrian stone must have been the model for the Egyptian wicker and wooden post-chariot. In this room, under a gla.s.s case, is an exquisite marble statuette, found at Tanagra, of a Grecian girl seated, and writing on a tablet; and not far away is a Roman warrior, carrying his message. Entering the next hall, we pa.s.s a beautiful bronze statue of Philip, the Grecian soldier, bearing a laurel spray, stretching his athletic limbs in breathless strides as he goes toward the capital to announce the battle of Marathon, and to fall dead on his entrance to the city, with the single word "Victory!" on his lips. Here on the walls are four emblematic pictures: "The Land-Post," representing a knight with a sealed missive in his hand, standing beside and curbing his fiery steeds; "The Sea-Post," showing a mail-carrier on the back of a dolphin in the midst of stormy waves far out at sea; "The Telegraph,"
with Jove and his lightnings as its central figure: and "The _Rohrpost_,"--a maiden, blowing into an orifice with "the breath of all the winds." This last is emblematic of that postal arrangement in Berlin by which letters and postal cards are sent with great speed through pneumatic tubes from which the air is exhausted by means of pumps, and which makes it possible to receive a written message from a distant part of the city within a few minutes after it is written.
Among the ancient representations are models of the boats in which the old Nors.e.m.e.n sailed the seas, and of those by which our Anglo-Saxon ancestors invaded England from Germany. These are strikingly contrasted, in their simplicity and clumsiness, with a fully equipped model, from four to six feet long, of a modern North German Lloyd Atlantic mail steamship, than which no better equipped boat sails the main. One goes on, past a Gobelin tapestry representing a mail-scene at Nuremberg in the Middle Ages, through long halls and corridors where are hundreds of models of post-office buildings of the most convenient and approved plans, in all parts of the world. These are of every variety of architecture, from the great general post-office in London, the handsome Hanover post-office building, those of the central and district post-offices in Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Heidelberg, and many others in South Germany, to the modern edifices which adorn, and yet seem strangely out of keeping with, the picturesque old North German towns. These models are miniature copies of the exteriors of post-office buildings, varying in length from one and a half to six or eight feet, and of corresponding height. One most interesting model shows the interior of a modern post-office, each floor showing an exact copy of its department of the service, with all appliances and conveniences.
In another room are miniature mail-coaches of different kinds. In the centre of this apartment stands a life-size figure of a mail-carrier in Germany of four hundred years ago. He is a wild-looking official, reminding one by his bronzed features and general appearance of some trusty Indian scout, as he holds his gun in an att.i.tude of suspicion and menace, while a bear-cub opens a capacious mouth at his feet.
Model mail and post-office cars occupy the side of another large room; but this exhibit is so vast and varied that the memory refuses to retain its cla.s.sification, and holds side by side Alaskan sledges drawn by dogs, Russian post-chaises with reindeer teams, mail-boats on Norwegian fiords, carrier-pigeons and balloons, camels and elephants, and the model mail-coach of the lightning express of the New York Central Railroad. The working appliance used in America for catching off a mail-bag without stopping the train attracts much attention.
There is a complete set of the weights and measures used in British post-offices, and two gla.s.s cases show the forms of horseshoes best adapted to the speed of horses carrying mails. Tablets, pens, and pencils have cases to themselves, as well as parchments, ancient rolls and ink-horns, reeds and papyrus. Here are the primitive postal arrangements of some of the East Indies; there is the yellow satin missive with a scarlet seal which carries the royal mandates of Siam.
Pictures and models of mail-carrying elephants come next, their gay saddle-cloths filled with pockets and parchment rolls. A model of a j.a.panese post-office is finished in all its interior with the perfection of detail and delicacy of execution which characterize the best j.a.panese work. A framed engraving of the International Postal Congress at Berne in 1874 hangs near one of the Congress at Paris in 1878. There is a room devoted to the exhibition of postal stamps, cards, and envelopes of every kind, and there are several rooms where models of the most approved kinds of telegraphic apparatus are shown.
In a corridor are all varieties of submarine cables, with the ore and the Bessemer steel of which they are spun. In one of the rooms a small crowd is collected about an operator who speaks through a telephone, records the sound of his own voice on strips of foil, which he tears into fragments and distributes to those who eagerly reach for them. In the centre of this room there is a tiny circular railway, with a coach, but no locomotive, standing on the track. By turning the wheel of an electro-magnet the official produces an electric light at the extremity of a model burner; then, applying the same power to the little railway, propels the coach at a rapid rate by means of the invisible agent. One goes forth into the street, past wax figures of armed and mounted mail-messengers in the Middle Ages, past the model street mail-boxes and carriages which help to make so wonderful the Berlin postal arrangements, in a maze at what may here be seen in a single half-hour of the history of mail-carrying in all lands and ages. The originator of this "Post Museum" is Dr. Stephan, the inventor of the postal card and the chief promoter of the International Postal Union. His is the "power behind the throne" which has made the German postal system a marvel of efficiency, unsurpa.s.sed, if not unrivalled, in the world.