Essen

“ The next morning at 8 o’clock, we arrived at Essen, the town where the famous Krupp works are situated. Here we had [207] to change trains. The incoming train was late, and the officer and I had to pace up and down the platform of the station of that great city for fifteen or twenty minutes before the train, which was to convey us near the frontier, arrived. ”

“ Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses ”

“ The express from Cologne to Berlin passed through Essen, where the Krupp guns are made, the coal and iron country of Westphalia, and the plains of the west. It is a country of large cities whose borders often almost touch, where some tall factory chimney is almost always on the horizon. ”

“ Superintendent of the Household, Villa Huegel.
BERLIN, SCHLOSS, Christmas.
HONOURED HERR L——,—This Schloss is a big pigsty, excuse the hard words, and I can tell Gracious Lady only half our troubles. There is no bathroom for Fraulein, no running water—our poorest cottagers in Essen are better off. It takes about half an hour to get a cupful of lukewarm water from the kitchen, and the maid looks daggers if you don't tip up the tin every time. ”

“ From 1904 to 1910 the Krupps spent, for beneficial institutions of all kinds, $14,250,000, or 56 per cent. of the dividends during that time. I have passed many hours at Essen, and seen thoroughly, from cellar to attic, this truly noble institution for the comfortable and safe guardianship of men, women, and children who are at the same time factors in a huge and successful industrial enterprise. ”

“ Pictures and personalia you'll bring to the Neues Palais this afternoon, and maybe I will run over to Essen in the night to show the crème de votre crème to the Baroness. This folly about Franz must be nipped in the bud, and with a girl the better and handsomer man does the trick every time. ”

“ Fraulein won't tell you, so I do, that the three of us rode to the Schloss in a hired coach, because Uncle Majesty was too mean to send a carriage for us—and to think of what at home we always provide for his twenty and more attendants and the fine time we give them!
I see now why they are always so greedy in Essen. They never get such meat and vittel as we give them, in Berlin or Potsdam; they hardly have enough peas in the husks and potatoes in the jackets. ”

“ In 1900, before his marriage, Herr von Bohlen was an attaché at the German embassy at Washington. Bertha Krupp is the second richest person in the German empire, running the Kaiser a close second, 221 and when this war is over her wealth may surpass his.
Community Houses in Essen.
Essen lies twenty-two miles north of Düsseldorf on the main railway to Berlin. This is a very thickly populated district, and the center of a network of railways which makes it accessible to the Westphalia coal fields. It is a gloomy-looking town of gray slate roofs, only brightened by emerald green shutters. ”

“ Among other things he in 1896 leased the “Germania” shipbuilding yard at Kiel, and in 1902 it passed into the complete ownership of the firm. In the latter year, which was also the year of his death, on the 22nd of November, the total number of men employed at Essen and its associated works was over 40,000. ”

“ In 1873 the firm of Friedrich Krupp erected a central bath house in its well known steel works at Essen. The bathrooms are furnished with tubs, hot and cold water, and shower appliances. Free baths are provided in various parts of the Esssen works for particular classes of workmen, as furnace men. ”

“ Saying these words, the old man departed and left me still sitting by the well. But, as it was not yet the third hour of the day (and the Essene village was distant not much more than a two hours' journey, or three hours' at the most) , it came into my mind that I would hearken unto the voice of Jonathan, and visit the village of the Essenes that very day. So I arose straightway and set out on my journey. I rested often during the heat of the day, for I was weary with long watching and fasting ”

“ For the community of workers there are many stores, twenty-five grocery stores, two slaughter-houses, a bakery, a flour mill, an ice plant, a brush factory, two tailors, two shoemakers, a laundry, a hotel, eleven restaurants, three cafés, nine beerhalls and two clubhouses.
A Street in Essen at the Entrance of the Krupp Works.
There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions. ”

“ Like De Rossi, Bellermann, Gfrörer and others, Dähne derives the name from the Chaldee ‏אסא‎ to heal, and says “accordingly the term Essenes denotes spiritual physicians, or men who strive in the highest sense to lead back the spirit to its natural (i.e. truly divine) character and activity.”88
1846.—A new epoch began in the history of the Essenes with the investigation of Frankel on this subject, which [73] appeared in his Zeitschrift für die religiözen Interesse des Judenthums, 1846. ”

“ While the northern plains are marked off into great divisions, by such rivers as the Lower Rhine, the Weser, and the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this central region is cut up like a mosaic by the capricious lines of valleys and rivers. Here is the region in which you find those famous roofs from which the rain-water runs toward two different seas, and the mountain-tops from which you may look into eight or ten German states. The abundance of water-power and the presence of extensive coal-mines allow of a very diversified industrial development in Middle Germany. ”

“ The whole city after its day's work has turned out for air and music and to talk with friends. And as you watch the scene you know that in every city, even in every village of the empire, there is some such gala going on: in gardens going down to the Rhine from the old Rhenish towns; in the gardens of ancient castles set high above the stifling air of valleys; in the forest that comes to the very edge of so many little German towns; even in the streets of towns where a table set on the pavement will be pleasanter than in a room on such a night as this. ”

“ Let us proclaim loudly to-day how truly we love the country where our cradles rocked. With tender yearning we see in memory the green waters of our native Rhine, where are reflected the castles gray with age, around which legendary poetry has woven its magic—where grows the precious grape—where man is gay, often without knowing why—where German song seems doubly poetic—where the victorious figure of Germania looks proudly from the Niederwald across the border. ”

“ In the village, lying low in the clear dusk, scattered lights began to appear, the smoke of evening fires to ascend, and the aromatic odour of the burning wood strayed towards them up the wind.
Falbe, whose hand lay in the crook of Michael’s arm, pointed downwards to the village that lay there sequestered and rural.
“That’s Germany,” he said; “it’s that which lies at the back of every German heart. There lie the springs of the Rhine. It’s out of that originally that there came all that Germany stands for, its music, its poetry, its philosophy, its kultur. ”

“ In the goodly town-cellar of Bremen.
How pleasantly and cordially
The world is mirrored in the wine-glass.
And how the waving microcosm
Pours sunnily down into the thirsty heart!
I see everything in the glass,—
Ancient and modern tribes,
Turks and Greeks, Hegel and Gans,
Citron groves and guard-parades,
Berlin and Schilda, and Tunis and Hamburg.
Above all the image of my belovèd,
The little angel-head against the golden background of Rhine-wine.
Oh how beautiful! how beautiful thou art, belovèd!
Thou art like a rose. ”

“ Dogs, parrots, ornamental birds and animals are for sale in the Garden.
How wonderfully well built these German cities are! There is scarcely a town in England which can compare in beauty and picturesqueness with such cities as Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, or Frankfort-on-the-Main, with their great wide streets avenued with trees, their artistic buildings, the lavish display in public places of statuary of a high order, and the ease with which one can find one’s way about. ”

“ The harvesting and hay-making just begun, but not a blade yet taken off the piled lap of mother earth. At our feet were the peasants' dwellings, little brown cottages, almost hidden in fruit-trees; beyond, the gay villas of the noblesse; and still farther, the lively-looking town of Bonn, with its five-towered Cathedral. Still farther, on one side Cologne, on the other the seven mountains, with the ruins of Drachenfels; fine wide roads—those unquestionable marks of an old civilisation—traversing the country in every direction, and, as far as your eye could reach, that king of roads, the Rhine. ”

“ I do not know exactly how to present to your imagination the appearance of these German towns. The streets are wide; and thus, though the houses are high, they look airy, and, though badly paved, clean: the houses are white, and have not the air of antiquity. As I have said once or twice before, an appearance of order and tranquillity is their characteristic. We visited the abodes of Wieland, Schiller, and Göthe, who are the great people here: that is, we saw the outside of the houses in which they had dwelt; for, being inhabited by a fresh generation, the insides are not show-places. ”

“ I’ll neither eat you up, like your English footmen, nor sell you to the landlord, like your German courier, nor give you over to brigands, like your Italian valet. It’s a bargain, then; and here we are at Bonn.
It is one o’clock, and you can’t do better than sit down to the table d’hôte: call it breakfast, if your prejudices run high, and take your place. I have supposed you at ‘Die Sterne’ (The Star) , in the little square of the town; and, certes, you might be less comfortably housed. The cuisine is excellent, both French and German, and the wines delicious. ”

“ The bleak, icy winter of North Germany is past. We have trodden its accumulated snows as they lay in crisp heaps in the streets of Hamburg; and have watched the muffled crowd upon the frozen Alster, darting and reeling, skating, sliding, and sleighing upon its opaque and motionless surface. We have alternately loved and execrated the massive German oven, which warmed us indeed, but never showed us a cheerful face. ”

“ Rhenish Prussia (4,710) , the most westerly and most densely populated of the Prussian provinces, lies within the valleys of the Rhine and the Lower Moselle, and borders on Belgium and the Netherlands; is mountainous and forest-clad, except in the fertile plains of the N. and in the rich river valleys, where vines, cereals, and vegetables are extensively cultivated; large quantities of coal, iron, zinc, and lead are mined; as an industrial and manufacturing province it ranks first in Germany. Coblenz (capital) , Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, and Cologne are among its chief towns ”

“ From Empfelde, a village half way from Ratzeburg, I walked to Hamburg through deep sandy roads and a dreary flat: the soil everywhere white, hungry, and excessively pulverised; but the approach to the city is pleasing. Light cool country houses, which you can look through and see the gardens behind them, with arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in cloisters and piazzas, each house with neat rails before it, and green seats within the rails. Every object, whether the growth of nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial. ”

“ The aristocratic Bernese officials of those days had under their door-bells written: “Ici on sonne et attend.” Bern is in the centre of one of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe; the country is broken, but cultivated like a garden, and so well wooded as to resemble a vast park. Every town in Switzerland possesses some feature of originality, and none are destitute of lovely and refreshing walks; but there is none richer in umbrageous roads, or where they are kept in better repair, than Bern. ”

“ It was the joy of living, joy in people old and young, and, above all things, joy in the development of the young German Empire!
It is therefore my wish at this moment, when I place my dear son among you, that he, too, may have as happy a time as a student as was once vouchsafed to me. And, indeed, how could it be otherwise? For Bonn, the lovely city, is so accustomed to the presence of young men full of life and seems by nature to have been designed [176] to no other end. ”

“ On leaving the fertile valley, where the quaint old city of Toul clusters by the bank of the blue Moselle, surrounded by a chain of hills, that are covered to their summits by teeming vineyards, green foliage, and fertility—on leaving it, we took the road direct to Strasbourg and the Rhine, every night engirding our camp and cantonments with strong out-picquets, as we drew nearer the vicinity of the foe. ”

“ A mile or more below the Hohenzollern bridge, where four kings of Prussia on their bronze horses survey a world fashioned now on other lines than those contemplated by Prussian arrogance, the Rhine flows along a ribbon of green strand which serves as a recreation ground for the children of the district. Here on a summer evening we sometimes walk and watch young Germany at play: children of all ages bathing, paddling, shouting, laughing, amusing themselves in a hundred different ways, while their parents sit in little groups, the women sewing or knitting, the men with their pipes. ”