Part 5

The romantic story of Francisca von Hohenheim and many interesting facts in Schiller's early life, during his attendance at the Carlsschule, a famous military academy, instituted by, and under the patronage of, Carl Eugen, are inevitably interwoven in any history of the Solitude; but both need more time than can be given at the close of so hasty a sketch. And indeed, from almost any point that might be taken here, threads wind off into a mass of stories and traditions far too wide-reaching to be more than hinted at when one is only making a little _Ausflug_ and carelessly following one's will on a fair April day.

A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST.

"Zu Hirsau in den Truemmern Da wiegt ein Ulmenbaum Frischgruenend seine Krone Hoch ueberm Giebelsaum."

--_Uhland._

One of the loveliest spots in all Wuertemberg is Hirsau. It lies deep down in a valley on the Nagold, over which is a pretty stone bridge. High around rise the noble pines of the Black Forest, whose impenetrable gloom contrasts with the tender green of spring meadows basking in the sunshine, and makes, with the fringe of elms and birches and willows along the banks of the stream, a most magical effect of light and shade.

Blessings on the one of us who first said, "Let us see the old cloister at Hirsau!" An ideal spring day, a particularly well-chosen few, a trip by rail to Alt-Hengstett, then a long, lovely tramp over the moss carpet of the Black Forest, inhaling the sweet breath of the pines, finding each moment a more exquisite flower, catching bewitching glimpses between the trees of silver streams hurrying along far down below us,--this is what it was like; but the softness, the sweetness, the exhilaration of it all is not easy to indicate. The name itself, "Black Forest," sounds immensely gloomy and mysterious. Goblins and witches and shrieks and moans and pitfalls and all uncanny weird things haunted the Black Forest of which we used to read years ago. And what does it mean to us now? Magnificent old woods, paths that beckon and smile, softly whispering, swaying tree-tops, turf like velvet, sunlight playing fitfully among the stately pines, seeking entrance where it may, and air that must bring eternal youth in its caresses. It means forgetfulness of trammels and all sordid, petty things, and being in tune with the harmonies of nature. It means freedom and peace; a "temple," indeed, with the pines continually breathing their sweet incense and singing their sacred chants. There were in our party a professor or two, more than one poet,--indeed, it is said every other man in Suabia is a poet,--and a world-renowned art scholar and critic. They shook the dust of every-day life from their feet, and were happy as boys; one of them lay among the daisies, smiling like a child with the pure delight of living in such air and amid such peaceful beauty.

At the little _Gasthaus_ in Hirsau, with the sign of the swan, we refreshed ourselves after our tramp. It is remarkable that poets, like clergymen, must also eat. After a few merry, graceful toasts and cooling draughts of the pleasant _Landwein_, we went to the cloister ruins. The work of excavation is still going on, much that we saw being but recently brought to the light. There were a few massive old walls at wide distances apart; the pavement of the aisles quite grass-grown between the low, broad, gray stones; fair fields of tall grass bright with daisies and buttercups, and starry white flowers,--a fascinating mass of variegated brightness, catching the sunshine and swaying in the breeze; a row of fine old Gothic windows; a tower in the Romanisch style of the twelfth century, which we, I believe, call Norman; a deep cellar where the monks of old stored their wines. Up a flight of stairs is a great bare room, where against the walls stand heavy wooden cases with carved borders, and in the ceiling is the same quaint carving slightly raised on a darker ground.

The whole effect of the ruins conveys the idea of immense size. The church was, indeed, the largest in Germany except the cathedral at Ulm. It is here an unusually lovely, peaceful scene. The cloister ruins would be, anywhere, picturesque and interesting in themselves; lying as they do above the village, framed by the beautiful Schwarzwald, they form a picture not easily forgotten. No far-extending view, nothing grand or imposing, only the exquisite, peaceful picture shut in by the dark-green hills; quaint homes nestling among rosy apple-blossoms; the great gray stone Bruennen, where for years and years maidens have come to fill their buckets and chat in the twilight after the day's work is done; the Nagold, silver in the sunlight; the cloister, with its old-time traditions,--all so very, very far from the madding crowd.

And the sweet legend of the origin of the cloister should be sung or spoken as one sees the picture: How there was, in the year 645, a rich, pious widow, a relative of the knight of Calb, named Helizena, who was childless, and who had but one wish, namely, to devote herself to the service of God. She constantly prayed that God would open to her a way acceptable in his sight. Once in a dream she saw in the clouds a church, and below in a lovely valley three beautiful fir-trees growing from one stem; and from the clouds issued a voice telling her that her prayer was heard, and that wherever she should find the plain with the three fir-trees she was to erect a church, the counterpart of that which she saw in the clouds. Awaking, the good Helizena, with holy joy and deep humility, took a maid and two pages and ascended a mountain from whose summit she could see all the surrounding country, and presently espied the quiet plain and the three firs of her dream. Hurrying to the spot, weeping for joy, she laid her silken raiment and jewels at the foot of the tree, to signify that from that moment she consecrated herself and all she possessed to the work. In three years the beautiful cloud-church stood in stone in the fair valley, and afterwards, in 838, a cloister was erected with the aid of Count Erlafried of Calb. Under Abbot Wilhelm, in 1080, it was at the height of its prosperity, and was the model of peace and goodly living among all the other Benedictine monasteries. The abbot gathered so many monks about him that the cloister at last grew too narrow, and he resolved to build a more spacious one. This was indeed a labor of love, and the work was done entirely by his own people, his monks and laity. Noble lords and ladies helped to bring wood and stone and prepared mortar in friendly intercourse with peasants, their wives and daughters,--such zeal and Christian love did the abbot instil into the hearts of his flock. It is the ruins of this cloister which we see to day.

An old German chronicle represents the place as little less than an earthly paradise:--

"There was here a band of two hundred and sixty, full of love for God and one another. No discussion could be found there, no discontented faces. Everything was in common. No one had the smallest thing for himself; indeed, no one called anything his own. Each went about his work in sweet content; of disobedience no one even knew. Not only was there no rebuke and angry word, but also no idle, frivolous, mirth-provoking talk. Among this great mass of men within the cloister walls could be heard only the voices of the singers and of them who knelt in prayer, and the sounds that came from the busy workrooms."

These monks used to write much about music and poetry, and many learned, strong men were gathered there. The cloister was full of pictures, and the _Kreuzgang_ had forty richly painted windows, with biblical scenes. A story is told of an old monk, Adelhard, who was twenty-three years blind, and received in his latter days the gift of second-sight. He foretold the day and hour of his death three years before it occurred, and also the destruction of the monastery.

As Koerner's poem says:--

"In the cells and apartments sit fifty brothers writing many books, spiritual, secular, in many languages,--sermons, histories, songs, all painted in rich colors.

"In the last cell towards the north sits a white-haired old man, leans his brow upon his hand, and writes, 'The enemy's hordes will break in, in seven years, and the cloister walls will be in flames.'"

Whether the old gray monk was ever there or not, at least we know that the French, in 1692, destroyed the beautiful cloister, and its paintings and carvings and works of art were all lost, except some of the stained glass, a few of its painted windows being at Monrepos, near Ludwigsburg.

The famous Hirsau elm, about which half the German poets have sung, is the most significant, touching, poetical thing imaginable. You feel its whole life-story in an instant, as if you had watched its growth through the long years; how the young thing found itself, it knew not why, springing up in the damp cloister earth, surrounded by four tall, cold, gray walls, above which indeed was a glimpse of heaven; how it shot up and up, ever higher and higher, with the craving of all living things for sunlight and free air, never putting forth leaf or twig until it had attained its hope and could rest. Within the high walls is only the strong, tall, bare trunk, and far above, free and triumphant, the noble crown of foliage.

Brave, beautiful elm, that dared to grow, imprisoned in cruel stone; that did not faint and die before it reached the longed-for warmth and light and sweetness!

THE LENNINGER THAL.

Pilgrims were we recently, making a day's journey, not to gaze upon bones, rusty relics, and mouldy garments, but to see something fresh, fair, and altogether adorable,--the cherry-trees of the Lenninger Thal in full blossom. From Stuttgart we went by rail to Kirchheim unter Teck, a railway terminus, where we were shown the palace occupied by Franciska von Hohenheim after the death of Herzog Carl, and a Denkmal erected to Conrad Widerhold, that brave and very obstinate German hero who held the famous Hohentwiel fortress against the enemy, when even his own duke, Eberhard III., had ordered him to surrender it. Widerhold and his wife stand side by side, and you must look twice before you can tell which is the warrior. Kirchheim lies prettily in the Lauter Thal among the mountains. From there in an open carriage we drove on into the charming Lenninger Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Alb, with the whole landscape smiling benignly beneath a wonderful sky, and air deliciously pure and soft; past little brooks where the young, tender willows were beginning to leave out, through the little village of Dettingen, on and on over the broad _chaussee_, until we were fairly among the cherry-orchards. Bordering the road, running far back on the hill-slopes, shadowy, feathery, exquisite, the snowy blossoms lay before our eyes, with the range of the Suabian Alb beyond, and many a peak and ruin old in story. This was the fresh morning of a perfect spring day, where the peace and loveliness of the scene--the fields of pure whiteness reaching out on both sides of us, with now and then a dash of pink from the rosy apple-blossoms--made us feel that a special blessing had fallen upon us as devotees at the shrine of Ceres. At evening, returning by another route, with the varying lights and golden bars and heavy, piled-up purple cloud-masses in the western sky, it was lovely with yet another loveliness. The same mountains showed us other outlines and assumed new expressions, and bold, proud Teck rose from the foam of blossoms at its feet, like a stern rock towering above surging waters.

One of our experiences that day was becoming acquainted with Owen. Owen is not a man, as you may imagine, but only a very little village with crooked streets and queer old women, and that curious aspect to all its belongings which never grows less curious to some of us, though we ought to have become unmindful of it long ago. Owen is picturesque and dirty. "Ours at home aren't half so dirty or half so nice," we endeavor to explain to our German friends.

At the inn where we drew up we were received by an admiring group of children,--three yellow heads rising above three great armfuls of wood, of the weight of which the little things seemed utterly unconscious in the excitement of seeing us. They stood, one above the other, on the dilapidated, crazy stone steps, while a bushy dog, whose hair looked as yellow and sun-faded as the children's, also made "great eyes" at us from the lowest stone. Out came mine host, and cleared away children and dog and woodpiles in a twinkling. This flattering reception occurred at the Krone. A large gilt crown adorned with what small boys at home call "chiney alleys" makes a fine appearance above these same tumble-down steps; and directly beside them is a great barn-door, so near that you might easily mistake one entrance for the other and wander in among the beasties; and benign Mistress Cow was serenely chewing her cud in her boudoir under the front stairs, we observed as we entered the house.

Let no one faint when I say we ate our dinner here. Indeed, we have eaten in much worse places, and the dinner was far better than we thought could be evolved from a house with so many idiosyncrasies, so very prominent barn-door qualities, such mooings and lowings in undreamed-of corners and at unexpected moments. However, we experienced an immense lightening of the spirits when trout were served, for it seemed as if we knew what this dish at least was made of. They were pretty silvery things with red spots, and had just been gleaming in the brook near by, beneath elms and birches and baby willows, and now they were butchered to make our holiday.

The little restored Gothic church at Owen is more than a thousand years old, and its walled Kirchhof recalls the times when the villagers with their wives and children sought refuge here from the descent of robber knights. The dukes of Teck are buried within the church, and their arms and those of other old families, with quaint inscriptions about noble and virtuous dames, are interesting to decipher. The prettiest thing in the church was a spray of ivy which had crept through a hole in the high small-paned window, completely ivy-covered without, and came seeking something within the still stone walls, reaching out with all its tendrils, and seemed like the little, adventurous bird that flutters in through a church window on a hot summer afternoon, and makes a sleepy congregation open its heavy eyes.

The altar-pictures are edifying works of art. Behind the little group in the "Descent from the Cross" rise a range of hills that look astonishingly like the Suabian Alb, with a genuine old German fortress perching on a prominent peak. Saint Lucia is also an agreeable object of contemplation, with a sword piercing her throat up to the hilt, the blade coming through finely on the other side, while her mildly folded hands, smirking of superior virtue and perfect complacency, make her as winning as a saint of her kind can be.

Beyond Owen is the Wielandstein, or a Wielandstein I should perhaps say, for Wielandsteins are as common in Germany as lovers' leaps in America; and the story is always how the cruel king murdered the wife and children of Wieland the smith and took him captive, granting him his life merely because of his skill in fashioning wonderful things from metals, but imprisoning him and maiming his feet that he might never escape. Wieland lived some time at court, and grew in favor with the king on account of his deft hands and clever designs. At length the king's young sons were missing and could not be found, though they were searched for many days, and the king was anxious and sorrowful. Then Wieland presented him with two beautiful golden cups, at the sight of which the king was so pleased that he gave a feast; and as he was drinking from the golden bowls and feasting with his nobles, Wieland flew away by means of two great golden wings he had for a long time been secretly fashioning, and, poising himself in mid-air, cried to the horrified king that he was drinking from the skulls of his sons, whom he, Wieland, had murdered out of revenge. The people shot many arrows after him, but he soared away unharmed, his golden wings gleaming in the sunlight until he disappeared behind the hills.

The ruin of the old Teck castle is in this neighborhood, and the _Sybillen Loch_, a grotto where a celebrated witch used to dwell, who differed from her species in general, inasmuch as she was a _good_ witch. The old chronicles say she was an exemplary person, always delighting in good deeds. Her sons, however, were bad, quarrelled, stole from the world and one another, and even, upon one occasion, from her, and then ran away. Sybilla in her fiery chariot went in pursuit, and to this day a fair, bright stripe over orchard, field, and vineyard, always fresher and greener than the surrounding country, marks her course. How a fiery chariot could produce this beautifying effect is not to be questioned by an humble individual whose home is in a land where ruined castles and legend upon legend _do not_ rise from every hill-top. Another story is that the fertile stripe was made by Sybilla's chariot-wheels, as she left forever the family to which she had always belonged. The last duke of Teck lay after a battle resting under a tree, and saw her passing with averted face, his arms lying at her feet, while she extended a stranger's in her hands, which signified ruin to his house; and the prophecy was fulfilled, for the duke outlived his twelve sons, and his arms and title were adopted by the counts of Wuertemberg, who then became dukes of Wuertemberg and Teck. All these interesting things are visible to the naked eye. The fresh green stripe is unmistakable; and the point in the air where Wieland hovered on his golden wings above the cliff can easily be discerned with a very little imagination.

A visit to a typical Suabian pastor, in another little village on this road, was a pleasant episode. A hale, handsome old gentleman of seventy, with a small black cap on his silvery locks and an inveterate habit of quoting Greek, looking at us with a simple, childlike air, as if we too were learned. His house has stone floors, low square rooms, severely simple in their appointments. The arms of a bishop of some remote century are on the inner wall by the front entrance, and a little farther on is an aperture, through which the cow of the olden time was wont to placidly gaze out upon hurrying retainers. The cow of that period seems to have had comfortable apartments in the middle of the house. The Suabian cow of the present time earns her hay by the sweat of her brow, toiling in the fields.

The good old pastor has a love amounting to adoration for his garden, every inch of which he has worked over and beautified, till it seems to be the expression of all the poetry and romance which the outward conditions of his frugal, rigid life repress. Full of nooks and arbors, comfortable low chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots look as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers; trees whose great drooping branches close around retreats which can only be designed for tender _tete-a-tetes_; irregular little paths, wandering up and down and about, always ending in something delightful, always beckoning, inviting, smiling, amid flowers and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that every petal and leaf is known and loved by the white-haired old man. His favorite seat is at the end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a magnificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the brook that sings to his sweet roses and pansies, upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain extending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth of beauty and meaning and tradition. He sleeps and rests and thinks there after dinner, he tells us, and perhaps that is all; but I believe, when the old man is gone, a volume of manuscript poems will be discovered hidden away among his sermons and Greek tomes,--a volume of love poems, sonnets, dreamings of all that his life crowds out into his garden, and that only in his garden he has been able to express,--all the unspoken sweetness, all the unsung songs.

FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM.

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus is a personage whom we know, it must be confessed, more through the medium of Robert Browning than through our own historical researches; and we were therefore filled with wonder to learn that, in addition to the modest cognomen above, _de Hohenheim_ also belonged to his name. This same Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus never lived there, to be sure, and was born far away in Switzerland. Browning puts him in Wuerzburg, in Alsatia, in Constantinople; and a solid German authority declares he lived in Esslingen, where his laboratory is still exhibited, and in proof mentions that in this neighborhood was, not many years ago, a Weingaertner whose name was Bombastes von Hohenheim, a descendant of Paracelsus. However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and anywhere, I presume, as best suited such a conjurer, alchemist, philosopher, and adventurer, and went wandering about from land to land, remaining in one place so long as the people would have faith in his learning, his incantations and magic arts; but what concerns us now is simply that he was connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the old days, occupied the estate which still bears its name.

To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as you please, from Stuttgart. A castle, adjacent buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is to see at the first glance,--at the second, many practical things in the museum connected with the Agricultural College, which is what Hohenheim at present is; models, and collections of stones and birds and beasts, bones and skeletons, and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain, seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth come here, and from all ranks,--sons of rich peasants and also young men of family. An Hungarian count is here at present, and youths from Wallachia, Russia, Sweden, America, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Greece,--China too, for all I know to the contrary,--with of course many Germans, learning practical and theoretical farming. We sat under the pear-trees which were showering white blossoms around us, ate our supper to fortify us for our homeward walk, watched the sheep come home and the students walking in from the fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue blouses and high boots, and cracked their long whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in "Martha" than veritable farmers. From the balcony opening from the largest _salon_ we looked upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the Suabian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other points of interest to be studied through a telescope.