Darmstadt

“ Added to these qualities, the rich, subdued, and harmonious colour gives a still greater truth and beauty to the whole. In the panel at Darmstadt, indeed, the painter has reached the full perfection of his art, and that he painted nothing more of this nature must always be a source of deep regret to all who admire him. ”

“ Unhappily, before our party left Darmstadt, an incident happened which tended to verify beyond dispute the opinion of Merck.
Among the extravaganzas which grew out of the notion that [Pg 632] we should try to transport ourselves into a state of nature, was that of bathing in public waters, in the open air; and our friends, after violating every other law of propriety, could not forego this additional unseemliness. Darmstadt, situated on a sandy plain, without running water, had, it appeared, a pond in the neighbourhood, of which I only heard on this occasion. ”

“ Living in this dutchy is very cheap: a bachelor can keep a horse, dine at the first table d’hôte, and drink a bottle of wine a day, and mingle in the best circles, upon one hundred pounds per annum. The society in Darmstadt is very agreeable. As the minds of the men and women are so highly cultivated and accomplished in Germany, every party presents some mode or other, equally delightful and blameless, to make Time smile, and to strew over his passage with flowers. ”

“ Arrived at Darmstadt at half-past one o'clock. I was much pleased with the cleanliness and elevated situation of this town, which is said to contain above twenty thousand inhabitants; the houses are handsomely built, the streets wide, and in good proportion to the height and size of the houses; they have also flag pavements, which is a rarity in Germany. The opera-house is a splendid building, as well as the cathedral. The palace is also a fine old building, and has attached to it an extensive pleasure ground and kitchen garden. ”

“ Of the eight churches (seven Evangelical) only the Roman Catholic is in any way imposing. There are two synagogues. The town possesses a technical high school, having (since 1900) power to confer the degree of doctor of engineering, and attended by about 2000 students, two gymnasia, a school of agriculture, an artisans’ school and a botanical garden. The chemist, Justus von Liebig, was born in Darmstadt in 1803. Among the chief manufactures are the production of machinery, carpets, playing cards, chemicals, tobacco, hats, wine and beer. ”

“ We have a sturdy young carpenter from Darmstadt, bound to Vienna, or wherever else he may find a resting-place, who makes his morning and almost only meal of Kümmel—corn spirit prepared with caraways—and brown bread; and whose great exploit and daily exercise is that of lifting the great table in the common room with his teeth. ”

“ The delightful custom of having Wald Haeuse at convenient distances in every direction round the city, makes these expeditions a great pleasure. The coffee is usually good, and the cakes always so.
Darmstadt is on the Bergstrasse, almost a highway through that part of Germany, and we were pestered one year with a constant stream of beggars. They were usually ex-theatre people they said, and I found they only came to me and not to my colleagues, so word must have been passed round that an "easy" and extremely rich American lived in the town, who was good for at least a mark. ”

“ A very handsome avenue of stately poplars, of nearly two English miles, forms the approach to the city, which is nearly surrounded by a lofty wall, not capable of affording much protection against an enemy. The suburbs contain some handsome houses, in which, as the principal hotel in the city was 296full, we took up our quarters at the post-house, a very excellent inn.
For a capital, Darmstadt is small, and its palace infinitely too large: of the latter the Emperor Joseph sarcastically observed, that it was big enough to accommodate himself and the nine electors. ”

“ All those precautions recalled to my memory the garrison of Darmstadt, of which I gave you an account in a letter from that place, where the strictest duty is kept up by day and night, in winter as well as summer, and every precaution used, as if an enemy were at the gates; though no mortal has the smallest design against the place, and though it is perfectly understood by all the inhabitants, that if an army was in reality to come with hostile intentions, the town could not hold out a week. ”

“ The central position of this city gives it a decided advantage for trade and commerce. The activity of the eighty thousand inhabitants is striking in comparison with the ducal residence of Darmstadt, an hour’s ride by railway, with its long broad streets and population of thirty thousand, but looking dull and dreary as a village. The railroad in an hour conveys one to Wiesbaden, in a half hour to Mayence, and in an hour’s ride by omnibus and rail one arrives at Homburg. ”

“ By night and by day an eye upon him! Friedrich Wilhelm was, no doubt, glad to get away on the morrow afternoon; fairly out into the Berg-Strasse, into the summer breezes and umbrageous woods, with all his pertinents still safe about him; rushing towards Darmstadt through the Sunday stillness, where he will arrive in the evening, time enough. ["Sunday Evening arrive at Darmstadt," says Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 3) , but by mistake calls it the "7th" instead of "6th."] ”

“ The dinner was capital, and when it had been disposed of by the hungry students, they were in condition to hear Professor Mapps.
"Darmstadt, where we spent an hour this forenoon," said the professor, "is the capital of Hesse Darmstadt, which consists of two divisions of territory, separated by a strip of land belonging to Hesse Cassel and Frankfurt. It has an area of thirty-two hundred square miles,—being about two thirds of the size of Connecticut—and a population of about eight hundred and fifty thousand. ”

“ In 1670 he was called to Darmstadt as Kapellmeister to the Landgrave of Darmstadt, where he remained till his death in 1710. Among the remains of Emanuel Bach was a portrait of Briegel, engraved by Nessenthaler; it represents a man of about sixty-five, of healthy and jovial aspect, and with no trace of the labour involved in so many serious compositions. ”

“ He opened his third school of music at Darmstadt, one of his pupils being Weber, another Meyerbeer, a third Gänsbacher. The affection of these three young students for their master was ‘unbounded.’ He was indefatigable in the pursuit of his art to the last, genial, kind and pleasant to all; he lived for music, and died in harness, of apoplexy, at Darmstadt, May 6th, 1814.”
[The Poem.] The musician has been extemporising on his organ, and as the performance in its beauty and completeness [Pg 3] impresses his mind with wonderful and mysterious imagery, he wishes it could be permanent. ”

“ The Darmstadt soldiers are tall, tolerably clothed, and above all things remarkably well powdered. They go through their manœuvres with that dexterity which may be expected of men who are continually employed in the same action, under the eye of their prince, who is an admirable judge, and severe critic in this part of the military art. ”

“ “Yes, yes, how was it now?” he thought, going over his dream. “Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too,” he remembered. ”

“ The crops through all these glorious Rhine valleys right away up to Heidelberg look splendid, particularly the herb pantagruelion, which is more largely grown than when I was last here. Rope enough will be made this year from hemp grown between Darmstadt and Heidelberg to hang all the scoundrels in the world, and the honest men to boot; and the tobacco looks magnificent. They were gathering the leaves as we passed. A half-picked tobacco field, with the bare stumps at one end, and the rich-leaved plants at the other, has a comically forlorn look. ”

“ Under Ernest Louis and his son and successor, Louis VIII. (d. 1768) , another dispute occurred between Darmstadt and Cassel; this time it was over the succession to the county of Hanau, which was eventually divided, Hesse-Darmstadt receiving Lichtenberg. During the 18th century the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War dealt heavy blows at the prosperity of the landgraviate, which was always loyal to the house of Austria. ”

“ We often went ourselves to Frankfurt for tea, or a wild American craving would come over me for lobster or chicken salad, and we would up and away to Wiesbaden for supper. Darmstadt was very conveniently situated for short trips, surrounded as it is by interesting towns—Heidelberg only a short distance south of us, or Mannheim close enough for a day's visit. I sang Niklaus in "Hoffmann" in Mannheim for the first time without a rehearsal, having learnt the part in my room at the piano without a Kapellmeister to give me the tempi, and never having seen the opera. ”

“ At last the brother arrived, and of course as soon as he appeared in uniform he was bowed down to and served as only a uniform is served in Germany by such brutal types.
During the second year in October word came to us that the Czar of Russia was coming to rest with his family at the Grand Duke's hunting lodge, just outside Darmstadt. We were nervous at the thought of all the Russian students who always throng the Technical School at Darmstadt. It seemed such an easy thing to bomb a man in such a small quiet town. ”

“ And yet on a sudden he found himself, as his sketches for the portrait of Jacob Meier and Dorothea Kannegiesser testify. Darmstadt and Dresden hold the ripe fruits of his friendship with Jacob Meier, and it would seem that his earliest commission there served to bring him the measure of inspiration that lifts uncertain talent to the height of a great achievement, never to fall back to the ranks of those who struggle year in year out, achieving nothing of permanent value. Certainly he was well served by his sitters, for the man and the woman seem to have been born to be painted. ”

“ It is a constitutional monarchy in its government, the Grand Duke Ludwig III. being the sovereign. The word Hesse, applied to several of the German states, indicates that they are parts of the original territory which bore that name. One of its rulers divided his country into four unequal parts, and gave them to his sons. Two of the descendants of these sons dying without children, there remained only Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt. Hesse Homburg formerly belonged to Darmstadt, but was ceded to another branch of the reigning family in 1622. ”

“ It is perfectly evident from the receipts last year that Hesse-Darmstadt ought not to be stricken out.
Mr. SUMNER. Is not Hesse-Darmstadt the center of a great wine district?
Mr. SCHURZ. The facts of the case are these: formerly all the business that is now transacted at Hesse-Darmstadt was transacted at another point. I think Hesse-Darmstadt is the center of a great wine district; but if we preserve the consulate at Carlsruhe we accommodate a large tract of country, from which there has been lately a great deal of immigration coming to this country. ”

“ She was born in 1792, studied the science of midwifery at the Universities of Göttingen and Giessen, and took her doctor's degree in 1817; not, honoris causâ, by favor of the Faculty, but, like any other German student, by writing the customary Latin dissertation, as well as by bravely defending, in public disputation, a number of medical theses. After that, she took up her permanent abode at Darmstadt, indefatigable in the exercise of her special branch of science, and universally honored as one of its first living authorities. ”

“ Hesse-Homburg patriotism, if there was any, must have been retrimmed in quick succession into a Darmstadt patriotism, a Nassau patriotism, a Prussian and an Imperial German patriotism.
Where the great street broke off at Kurhaus Square, a side street turned to the right, running opposite the Kursaal to the park. Here was the foremost hotel of the place, Hotel Bellevue, and around the corner, where the park was already beginning, stood the large three-story Weckerlin house, on the ground floor of which I had many a joyous hour—of this more anon. ”

“ Little Jacob was less mortified by this incident than was his poor teacher, Weber. He took the manuscript, and, after a faithful study of its contents, wrote another eight-part fugue, which he sent himself to Vogler. The result was precisely as he desired: he became a pupil of the old musician.
Among the central towns of Germany, few are more pleasing, and, perhaps, none at all more utterly neglected, than Darmstadt. ”

“ In richness and harmony of colour the Darmstadt version is far finer. In the Dresden copy the Virgin’s dress is green, which proves that it was painted at some time considerably later than the original, when the blue of the latter had taken on a greenish tint from the discoloration of the varnish. Again, the extraordinary delicacy and precision of the draughtsmanship of all the details of dress is far more marked in the original work, in which, too, there is much greater expression and animation in the faces. ”