Chapter 9
Leaving this, I came out to the Marian Platz, where stands the column, with the statue of the Virgin and Child, set up by Maximilian I. in 1638 to celebrate the victory in the battle which established the Catholic supremacy in Bavaria. It is a favorite praying-place for the lower classes. Yesterday was a fete day, and the base of the column and half its height are lost in a mass of flowers and evergreens. In front is erected an altar with a broad, carpeted platform; and a strip of the platz before it is inclosed with a railing, within which are praying-benches. The sun shines down hot; but there are several poor women kneeling there, with their baskets beside them. I happen along there at sundown; and there are a score of women kneeling on the hard stones, outside the railing saying their prayers in loud voices. The mass of flowers is still sweet and gay and fresh; a fountain with fantastic figures is flashing near by; the crowd, going home to supper and beer, gives no heed to the praying; the stolid droschke-drivers stand listlessly by. At the head of the square is an artillery station, and a row of cannon frowns on it. On one side is a house with a tablet in the wall, recording the fact that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden once lived in it.
When we came to Munich, the great annual fair was in progress; and the large Maximilian Platz (not to be confounded with the street of that name) was filled with booths of cheap merchandise, puppet-shows, lottery shanties, and all sorts of popular amusements. It was a fine time to study peasant costumes. The city was crowded with them on Sunday; and let us not forget that the first visit of the peasants was to the churches; they invariably attended early mass before they set out upon the day's pleasure. Most of the churches have services at all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and military music. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of the simple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy edifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then went away. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high, round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there was anything amiss in bringing their big baskets into church with them. At least, their simple, unconscious manner was better than that of many of the city people, some of whom stare about a good deal, while going through the service, and stop in the midst of crossings and genuflections to take snuff and pass it to their neighbors. But there are always present simple and homelike sort of people, who neither follow the fashions nor look round on them; respectable, neat old ladies, in the faded and carefully preserved silk gowns, such as the New England women wear to “meeting.”
No one can help admiring the simplicity, kindliness, and honesty of the Germans. The universal courtesy and friendliness of manner have a very different seeming from the politeness of the French. At the hotels in the country, the landlord and his wife and the servant join in hoping you will sleep well when you go to bed. The little maid at Heidelberg who served our meals always went to the extent of wishing us a good appetite when she had brought in the dinner. Here in Munich the people we have occasion to address in the street are uniformly courteous. The shop-keepers are obliging, and rarely servile, like the English. You are thanked, and punctiliously wished the good-day, whether you purchase anything or not. In shops tended by women, gentlemen invariably remove their hats. If you buy only a kreuzer's worth of fruit of an old woman, she says words that would be, literally translated, “I thank you beautifully.” With all this, one looks kindly on the childish love the Germans have for titles. It is, I believe, difficult for the German mind to comprehend that we can be in good standing at home, unless we have some title prefixed to our names, or some descriptive phrase added. Our good landlord, who waits at the table and answers our bell, one of whose tenants is a living baron, having no title to put on his doorplate under that of the baron, must needs dub himself “privatier;” and he insists upon prefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the ennobling von; and at the least he insists, in common with the tradespeople, that I am a “Herr Doctor.” The bills of purchases by madame come made out to “Frau----, well-born.” At a hotel in Heidelberg, where I had registered my name with that distinctness of penmanship for which newspaper men are justly conspicuous, and had added to my own name “& wife,” I was not a little flattered to appear in the reckoning as “Herr Doctor Mamesweise.”
THE GOTTESACKER AND BAVARIAN FUNERALS
To change the subject from gay to grave. The Gottesacker of Munich is called the finest cemetery in Germany; at least, it surpasses them in the artistic taste of its monuments. Natural beauty it has none: it is simply a long, narrow strip of ground inclosed in walls, with straight, parallel walks running the whole length, and narrow cross-walks; and yet it is a lovely burial-ground. There are but few trees; but the whole inclosure is a conservatory of beautiful flowers. Every grave is covered with them, every monument is surrounded with them. The monuments are unpretending in size, but there are many fine designs, and many finely executed busts and statues and allegorical figures, in both marble and bronze. The place is full of sunlight and color. I noticed that it was much frequented. In front of every place of sepulcher stands a small urn for water, with a brush hanging by, with which to sprinkle the flowers. I saw, also, many women and children coming and going with watering-pots, so that the flowers never droop for want of care. At the lower end of the old ground is an open arcade, wherein are some effigies and busts, and many ancient tablets set into the wall. Beyond this is the new cemetery, an inclosure surrounded by a high wall of brick, and on the inside by an arcade. The space within is planted with flowers, and laid out for the burial of the people; the arcades are devoted to the occupation of those who can afford costly tombs. Only a small number of them are yet occupied; there are some good busts and monuments, and some frescoes on the panels rather more striking for size and color than for beauty.
Between the two cemeteries is the house for the dead. When I walked down the long central alle of the old ground, I saw at the farther end, beyond a fountain, twinkling lights. Coming nearer, I found that they proceeded from the large windows of a building, which was a part of the arcade. People were looking in at the windows, going and coming to and from them continually; and I was prompted by curiosity to look within. A most unexpected sight met my eye. In a long room, upon elevated biers, lay people dead: they were so disposed that the faces could be seen; and there they rested in a solemn repose. Officers in uniform, citizens in plain dress, matrons and maids in the habits that they wore when living, or in the white robes of the grave. About most of them were lighted candles. About all of them were flowers: some were almost covered with bouquets. There were rows of children, little ones scarce a span long,--in the white caps and garments of innocence, as if asleep in beds of flowers. How naturally they all were lying, as if only waiting to be called! Upon the thumb of every adult was a ring in which a string was tied that went through a pulley above and communicated with a bell in the attendant's room. How frightened he would be if the bell should ever sound, and he should go into that hall of the dead to see who rang! And yet it is a most wise and humane provision; and many years ago, there is a tradition, an entombment alive was prevented by it. There are three rooms in all; and all those who die in Munich must be brought and laid in one of them, to be seen of all who care to look therein. I suppose that wealth and rank have some privileges; but it is the law that the person having been pronounced dead by the physician shall be the same day brought to the dead-house, and lie there three whole days before interment.
There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Munich, especially in the Catholic portion of the population. Shortly after the death, there is a short service in the courtyard of the house, which, with the entrance, is hung in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich. The body is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended by the priests, the male members of the family, and a procession of torch-bearers, if that can be afforded. Three days after, the burial takes place from the dead-house, only males attending. The women never go to the funeral; but some days after, of which public notice is given by advertisement, a public service is held in church, at which all the family are present, and to which the friends are publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly here as in America; but everything is here regulated and fixed by custom. There are as many as five or six classes of funerals recognized. Those of the first class, as to rank and expense, cost about a thousand guldens. The second class is divided into six subclasses. The third is divided into two. The cost of the first of the third class is about four hundred guldens. The lowest class of those able to have a funeral costs twenty-five guldens. A gulden is about two francs. There are no carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only at those of Protestants and Jews.
I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A considerable portion of the daily newspapers is devoted to these announcements, which are printed in display type, like the advertisements of dry-goods sellers with you. I will roughly translate one which I happen to see just now. It reads, “Death advertisement. It has pleased God the Almighty, in his inscrutable providence, to take away our innermost loved, best husband, father, grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr---, dyer of cloth and silk, yesterday night, at eleven o'clock, after three weeks of severe suffering, having partaken of the holy sacrament, in his sixty-sixth year, out of this earthly abode of calamity into the better Beyond. Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as well as his patience in suffering, will know how justly to estimate our grief.” This is signed by the “deep-grieving survivors,”--the widow, son, daughter, and daughter-in-law, in the name of the absent relatives. After the name of the son is written, “Dyer in cloth and silk.” The notice closes with an announcement of the funeral at the cemetery, and a service at the church the day after. The advertisement I have given is not uncommon either for quaintness or simplicity. It is common to engrave upon the monument the business as well as the title of the departed.
THE OCTOBER FEST THE PEASANTS AND THE KING
On the 11th of October the sun came out, after a retirement of nearly two weeks. The cause of the appearance was the close of the October Fest. This great popular carnival has the same effect upon the weather in Bavaria that the Yearly Meeting of Friends is known to produce in Philadelphia, and the Great National Horse Fair in New England. It always rains during the October Fest. Having found this out, I do not know why they do not change the time of it; but I presume they are wise enough to feel that it would be useless. A similar attempt on the part of the Pennsylvania Quakers merely disturbed the operations of nature, but did not save the drab bonnets from the annual wetting. There is a subtle connection between such gatherings and the gathering of what are called the elements,--a sympathetic connection, which we shall, no doubt, one day understand, when we have collected facts enough on the subject to make a comprehensive generalization, after Mr. Buckle's method.
This fair, which is just concluded, is a true Folks-Fest, a season especially for the Bavarian people, an agricultural fair and cattle show, but a time of general jollity and amusement as well. Indeed, the main object of a German fair seems to be to have a good time and in this it is in marked contrast with American fairs. The October Fest was instituted for the people by the old Ludwig I. on the occasion of his marriage; and it has ever since retained its position as the great festival of the Bavarian people, and particularly of the peasants. It offers a rare opportunity to the stranger to study the costumes of the peasants, and to see how they amuse themselves. One can judge a good deal of the progress of a people by the sort of amusements that satisfy them. I am not about to draw any philosophical inferences,--I am a mere looker-on in Munich; but I have never anywhere else seen puppet-shows afford so much delight, nor have I ever seen anybody get more satisfaction out of a sausage and a mug of beer, with the tum-tum of a band near, by, than a Bavarian peasant.
The Fest was held on the Theresien Wiese, a vast meadow on the outskirts of the city. The ground rises on one side of this by an abrupt step, some thirty or forty feet high, like the “bench” of a Western river. This bank is terraced for seats the whole length, or as far down as the statue of Bavaria; so that there are turf seats, I should judge, for three quarters of a mile, for a great many thousands of people, who can look down upon the race-course, the tents, houses, and booths of the fair-ground, and upon the roof and spires of the city beyond. The statue is, as you know, the famous bronze Bavaria of Schwanthaler, a colossal female figure fifty feet high, and with its pedestal a hundred feet high, which stands in front of the Hall of Fame, a Doric edifice, in the open colonnades of which are displayed the busts of the most celebrated Bavarians, together with those of a few poets and scholars who were so unfortunate as not to be born here. The Bavaria stands with the right hand upon the sheathed sword, and the left raised in the act of bestowing a wreath of victory; and the lion of the kingdom is beside her. This representative being is, of course, hollow. There is room for eight people in her head, which I can testify is a warm place on a sunny day; and one can peep out through loopholes and get a good view of the Alps of the Tyrol. To say that this statue is graceful or altogether successful would be an error; but it is rather impressive, from its size, if for no other reason. In the cast of the hand exhibited at the bronze foundry, the forefinger measures over three feet long.
Although the Fest did not officially begin until Friday, October 12, yet the essential part of it, the amusements, was well under way on the Sunday before. The town began to be filled with country people, and the holiday might be said to have commenced; for the city gives itself up to the occasion. The new art galleries are closed for some days; but the collections and museums of various sorts are daily open, gratis; the theaters redouble their efforts; the concert-halls are in full blast; there are dances nightly, and masked balls in the Folks' Theater; country relatives are entertained; the peasants go about the streets in droves, in a simple and happy frame of mind, wholly unconscious that they are the oddest-looking guys that have come down from the Middle Ages; there is music in all the gardens, singing in the cafes, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell of cheese, that goes up to heaven. If the eating of cheese were a religious act, and its odor an incense, I could not say enough of the devoutness of the Bavarians.
Of the picturesqueness and oddity of the Bavarian peasants' costumes, nothing but a picture can give you any idea. You can imagine the men in tight breeches, buttoned below the knee, jackets of the jockey cut, and both jacket and waistcoat covered with big metal buttons, sometimes coins, as thickly as can be sewed on: but the women defy the pen; a Bavarian peasant woman, in holiday dress, is the most fearfully and wonderfully made object in the universe. She displays a good length of striped stockings, and wears thin slippers, or sandals; her skirts are like a hogshead in size and shape, and reach so near her shoulders as to make her appear hump-backed; the sleeves are hugely swelled out at the shoulder, and taper to the wrist; the bodice is a stiff and most elaborately ornamented piece of armor; and there is a kind of breastplate, or center-piece, of gold, silver, and precious stones, or what passes for them; and the head is adorned with some monstrous heirloom, of finely worked gold or silver, or a tower, gilded and shining with long streamers, or bound in a simple black turban, with flowing ends. Little old girls, dressed like their mothers, have the air of creations of the fancy, who have walked out of a fairy-book. There is an endless variety in these old costumes; and one sees, every moment, one more preposterous than the preceding. The girls from the Tyrol, with their bright neckerchiefs and pointed black felt hats, with gold cord and tassels, are some of them very pretty: but one looks a long time for a bright face among the other class; and, when it is discovered, the owner appears like a maiden who was enchanted a hundred years ago, and has not been released from the spell, but is still doomed to wear the garments and the ornaments that should long ago have mouldered away with her ancestors.
The Theresien Wiese was a city of Vanity Fair for two weeks, every day crowded with a motley throng. Booths, and even structures of some solidity, rose on it as if by magic. The lottery-houses were set up early, and, to the last, attracted crowds, who could not resist the tempting display of goods and trinkets, which might be won by investing six kreuzers in a bit of paper, which might, when unrolled, contain a number. These lotteries are all authorized: some of them were for the benefit of the agricultural society; some were for the poor, and others on individual account: and they always thrive; for the German, above all others, loves to try his luck. There were streets of shanties, where various things were offered for sale besides cheese and sausages. There was a long line of booths, where images could be shot at with bird-guns; and when the shots were successful, the images went through astonishing revolutions. There was a circus, in front of which some of the spangled performers always stood beating drums and posturing, in order to entice in spectators. There were the puppet-booths, before which all day stood gaping, delighted crowds, who roared with laughter whenever the little frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and set him to tend the baby, who continued to wail, notwithstanding the man knocked its head against the doorpost. There were the great beer-restaurants, with temporary benches and tables' planted about with evergreens, always thronged with a noisy, jolly crowd. There were the fires, over which fresh fish were broiling on sticks; and, if you lingered, you saw the fish taken alive from tubs of water standing by, dressed and spitted and broiling before the wiggle was out of their tails. There were the old women, who mixed the flour and fried the brown cakes before your eyes, or cooked the fragrant sausage, and offered it piping hot.
And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,--a full array of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorry quartette, the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himself out through the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and the robust and thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music; the air was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that there was nothing wanting to the most complete enjoyment. The crowd surged round, jammed together, in the best possible humor. Those who could not sit at tables sat on the ground, with a link of an eatable I have already named in one hand, and a mug of beer beside them. Toward evening, the ground was strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gave as perfect evidence of the battle of the day as the cannon-balls on the sand before Fort Fisher did of the contest there. Besides this, for the amusement of the crowd, there is, every day, a wheelbarrow race, a sack race, a blindfold contest, or something of the sort, which turns out to be a very flat performance. But all the time the eating and the drinking go on, and the clatter and clink of it fill the air; so that the great object of the fair is not lost sight of.
Meantime, where is the agricultural fair and cattle-show? You must know that we do these things differently in Bavaria. On the fair-ground, there is very little to be seen of the fair. There is an inclosure where steam-engines are smoking and puffing, and threshing-machines are making a clamor; where some big church-bells hang, and where there are a few stalls for horses and cattle. But the competing horses and cattle are led before the judges elsewhere; the horses, for instance, by the royal stables in the city. I saw no such general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at your fairs. The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a very serviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and admirable in the cavalry service. The bulls and cows seemed also native and to the manor born, and were worthy of little remark. The mechanical, vegetable, and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in the city, and was very creditable in the fruit department, in the show of grapes and pears especially. The products of the dairy were less, though I saw one that I do not recollect ever to have seen in America, a landscape in butter. Inclosed in a case, it looked very much like a wood-carving. There was a Swiss cottage, a milkmaid, with cows in the foreground; there were trees, and in the rear rose rocky precipices, with chamois in the act of skipping thereon. I should think something might be done in our country in this line of the fine arts; certainly, some of the butter that is always being sold so cheap at St. Albans, when it is high everywhere else, must be strong enough to warrant the attempt. As to the other departments of the fine arts in the glass palace, I cannot give you a better idea of them than by saying that they were as well filled as the like ones in the American county fairs. There were machines for threshing, for straw-cutting, for apple-paring, and generally such a display of implements as would give one a favorable idea of Bavarian agriculture. There was an interesting exhibition of live fish, great and small, of nearly every sort, I should think, in Bavarian waters. The show in the fire-department was so antiquated, that I was convinced that the people of Munich never intend to have any fires.
The great day of the fete was Sunday, October 5 for on that day the king went out to the fair-ground, and distributed the prizes to the owners of the best horses, and, as they appeared to me, of the most ugly-colored bulls. The city was literally crowded with peasants and country people; the churches were full all the morning with devout masses, which poured into the waiting beer-houses afterward with equal zeal. By twelve o'clock, the city began to empty itself upon the Theresien meadow; and long before the time for the king to arrive--two o'clock--there were acres of people waiting for the performance to begin. The terraced bank, of which I have spoken, was taken possession of early, and held by a solid mass of people; while the fair-ground proper was packed with a swaying concourse, densest near the royal pavilion, which was erected immediately on the race-course, and opposite the bank.