Frankfurt am Main

“ The houses were free to persons of rank, and were especially prepared by the city when it had to entertain great persons. Women who were natives of the city were not admitted. This is the only feature which is not entirely cynical and shameless.1878 In 1501 a rich citizen of Frankfurt am Main bequeathed to the city a sum of money with which to build a large house into which all the great number of harlots could be collected,1879 for the number increased greatly. ”

“ My first stopping place was Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where I was to find several persons who had been designated to me by the directors of my club at Zürich as worthy of confidence. From them I obtained various information about the condition of things in the western and middle part of Germany, and reported back what I learned to my friends in Switzerland. ”

“ Frankfurt-on-the-Maine, so called to distinguish it from Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, is a free city, and the capital of the Germanic Confederation. It is a little nationality by itself, having the right to make its own local laws, levy duties, and other powers belonging to a state. It is represented in the Federal Diet. This territory includes nine villages, besides the city proper, with a population of about seventy-five thousand. It is a very old city, and is mentioned in history in the time of Charlemagne, who had a palace here. ”

“ Frankfurt ist das Silber-und Goldloch, dadurch aus Deutschem Lande fleisst, was nur guillet und wüchst, gemünzt oder geschlagen wird bei uns; wäre das Loch zuegestopft, so dürft man itzt der Klage nicht hören, die allethalben eitel Schuld und kein Geld, alle Land und Städte ausgewuchert sind. ”

“ One day at the end of December, 1631, the king gave a splendid banquet in Frankfurt on account of the queen's arrival. Great crowds of people filled the place outside the castle, the high Gothic windows at night shone bright as day. Ale and wines flowed constantly from big casks for the people's entertainment; around the tap-holes workmen and soldiers jostled each other, holding out tankards and goblets, which were quickly filled and as suddenly empty again. The good citizens of Frankfurt were beside themselves with admiration for the great king. ”

“ This city is the original home of the Rothschilds, the great bankers, upon whom even princes wait—when they are short of money. The family are Jews, who form a considerable part of the population of Frankfurt. ”

“ THE DOCTOR DISCOVERS HEIDI'S HOME-SICKNESS
"Yes, I dream every night, and always about the same things. I think I am back with grandfather, and I hear the sound in the fir trees outside, and I see the stars shining so brightly, and then I open the door quickly and run out, and it is all so beautiful! But when I wake I am still in Frankfurt." ”

“ In these German trains another little discord jarred with some regularity: the German passengers they brought from Berlin, or were taking back to Berlin, were of a heavy impenetrable rudeness—quite another breed than the kindly Hessians of Frankfurt.
We know the saying of a floor—that it is so clean "you could eat your dinner off it." All the streets of Frankfurt, that I saw, were clean like this. The system of street cars was lucid—and blessedly noiseless!—and their conductors informed with the same adequate gravity I have already noted. ”

“ Altogether Frankfurt has improved in appearance; it [282] looks much more like a capital than it did formerly; new shops have sprung up, old ones are improved, and the whole town looks gay and busy; all this does not prevent it from being highly antipathetic to me, which is, I daresay, in some measure attributable to the hideous jargon that one hears wherever one turns. I have seen Gogel and Koch, who were both very civil, the former asking me to dine with him, which, however, I could not do, being already engaged to Steinle. And you, dearest Mamma, how are you? and Papa and the girls? ”

“ Frankfurt, 18th May, ’51.
Frankfurt is wretchedly wearisome; I am so spoilt with having so much affection about me, and a great deal to do; and I now first perceive how unthankful I have been towards many people in Berlin—for I will not take you and yours into the question. Even the coolness of fellow-countrymen and party associates I had in Berlin is an intimate connection compared with the relations one makes here; being, in fact, nothing more than mutual suspicious espionage. If one had any thing indeed to detect or to conceal! The people here worry themselves about the merest trifles ”

“ But they seldom strained themselves with toil, and in exchange were they 201not growing efficient in baseball and enhancing their Tataric beauty with the silk hats and red neckties furnished by an all-providing Red Cross?
The station platform of Frankfurt, strewn pellmell with Polish refugees and their disheveled possessions, recalled the halcyon days of Ellis Island. A “mixed” train of leisurely temperament wandered away at last toward the trunk line to the east which I had fortunately not taken that morning. ”

“ The young merchant pays a flying visit to Frankfurt, is presented to the most beautiful creature in Germany, finds her passable, has a talk to her father as business-like as a talk between two solicitors, proposes, is accepted, and at once becomes the most ardent lover the world has ever seen. ”

“ From there I turned eastward along the highway to Frankfurt. Strange and varied had been my sleeping-places in Germany. The innkeepers of the Fatherland, fearful of punishment for lodging those who turn out to be “wanted” by His Majesty’s officers, are chary of offering accommodations to strangers. Whether it was due to the garb that stamped me as a wanderer or to a foreign accent, it was my fate to be treated in the Kaiser’s realm as an extremely suspicious member of society. ”

“ Keep me in remembrance.—Your grateful pupil,
Fred Leighton.
Again to Steinle he writes:—
Paris, Rue Pigalle 21.
No one could sympathise better than I with your melancholy loneliness in the hermitage of Frankfurt; in that air an artist breathes with difficulty; I confess I should be entirely paralysed by the lack of models and other resources in Frankfurt; one all too easily loses sight of the infinite importance of a complete material representation, which is always the special mark of the artist; I often see with amazement how even quite clever people behave in this respect. ”

“ Berlin, 3d May, 1852.
I am really tired of being here, and long for the day of departure. Chamber intrigues I find terribly shallow and undignified; if one lives always amongst them, one deceives one’s self, and they seem wonders. When I come straightforwardly from Frankfurt I feel like a sober man who has suddenly fallen amongst tipplers, I wish they would send me to Constantinople; it would not be necessary to be returning here every minute.
Vienna, 11th June, 1852. ”

“ Among this brilliant assemblage ought to be included the members of the common council of the city of Frankfurt, and many of its most prominent citizens, with their wives and daughters, as well as a large number of ladies, from the high-born duchess down to the scarcely less proud councillor's wife. Yes, and one saw here even a small number of Catholic prelates, easily recognisable by their bald heads; for the king wished to proclaim religious freedom by word and deed; the prelates, although in their hearts cursing the paltry rôle they played here, once invited, did not dare to stay away. ”

“ Above all, the burning issue of the purchase of the site and of the construction of the Mother Temple of Europe must be resolutely faced, and, once and for all, definitely settled, even if it becomes necessary to abandon Frankfurt, situated in the heart of their country, and the national administrative headquarters of their Faith, and substitute for it Stuttgart, as a site, for their first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár. Whatever is to be done should be expeditiously carried out, for time is fast running out and the Ten-Year Crusade is rapidly and inexorably approaching its midway-point. ”

“ If he doesn’t feel Frankfurt singing in his ears, he has no ear-drums. In a week he has been degraded from a worthy liberal conservative in the imaginations of his eventual colleagues, to a scarlet tiger—helper’s helper of Kinkel and D’Ester. ”

“ Our stay here was but very poor in art-enjoyments. During the whole time, not a single concert besides our own, not one musical party! While eight years ago, on our first coming here we scarcely could find time to satisfy all the invitations to musical-soireés, now, not one of the Frankfurt musical amateurs (if indeed there are any left) takes it into his head to make a single demand upon our talents. ”

“ At the first hamlet beyond Frankfurt the car slowly filled with peasants and laborers in heavy boots and rough smocks, who carried sundry farm implements ranging from pitchforks to young plows. Sunburned women, on whose backs were strapped huge baskets stuffed with every product of the countryside from cabbages to babies, packed into the center of the car, turned their backs upon those of us who occupied the benches, and serenely leaned themselves and their loads against us. ”

“ On October 31 the Prussian Constituent Assembly gave voice to the general sympathy with the struggling people of Vienna and resolved to request his Majesty's government “to take speedy and energetic steps to induce the German central power in Frankfurt to effectually protect the imperiled liberties of the people in the German districts of Austria, and to restore peace.” The president of the ministry, General von Pfuel, supported this resolution. ”

“ Wunsch with his Party had, early in the afternoon, laid hold of Frankfurt, as ordered; made the garrison prisoners, blocked the Oder Bridge; poor Frankfurt tremulously thanking Heaven for him, and for such an omen. In spite of their Wagenburg and these Pontoon-Bridges, it appears, there would have been no retreat for the Russians except into Wunsch's cannon: Wagenburg way, latish in the afternoon, there was such a scramble of runaways and retreating baggage, all was jammed into impassability; scarcely could a single man get through. ”

“ We have got the room with the best view in the hotel, Harry, thanks to my tact. We'll leave in the morning and do Mainz and Frankfurt. There is a very graceful female statue in the private house of a nobleman in Frankfurt. Also a zoo. Next day, Nuremberg! finest collection of instruments of torture in the world.
TRENCH All right. You look out the trains, will you? [He takes out a Continental Bradshaw, and tosses it on one of the tables] .
COKANE [baulking himself in the act of sitting down] Pah! the seat is all dusty. These foreigners are deplorably unclean in their habits. ”

“ His position at Frankfurt gave Bismarck an advantage not lightly esteemed by the statesman. Frankfurt lies like a great hotel on the road into which the great European travelling guild especially loves to call in the summer time. Not only did the representative of Prussia entertain princely guests, related or friendly to the Royal House of Prussia, but gradually became acquainted with a great number of the ministers and diplomatists of all European States. ”

“ This, unconsciously to me, and therefore quite disregarded by me, was the real position of my inner life when I arrived at the goal of my journey, Frankfurt, from whence my life was so soon to develop so largely. My energies at the moment were devoted towards attaining some definite professional position for myself.93 But in proportion as I began to examine my profession more closely in its practical aspect, so did it begin to prove insufficient of itself to satisfy me as the occupation of my life. ”

“ Frankfort lies at the junction of lines of railway connecting it directly with all the important cities of south and central Germany. Here cross and unite the lines from Berlin to Basel, from Cologne to Würzburg and Vienna, from Hamburg and Cassel, and from Dresden and Leipzig to France and Switzerland. The river Main has been dredged so as to afford heavy barge traffic with the towns of the upper Main and with the Rhine, and cargo boats load and unload alongside its busy quays. ”

“ After leaving Berlin, Schopenhauer settled at Frankfurt, {31} and with the exception of one year, which was spent at Mannheim, he lived there until his death twenty-seven years later. For twenty years after coming to Frankfurt he lived in entire isolation. ”

“ We’d have to be patient.
Charlie Kuhn and Colonel Webb had moved up to Frankfurt and were established at SHAEF headquarters in the I. G. Farben building. Their office was only a few blocks from mine, and during my negotiations for the use of the university building I was in daily communication with them.
While waiting for the Engineers to make the promised inspection, I made a couple of field trips with Buchman. The first was a visit to Schloss Kronberg, a few kilometers from Frankfurt. It was a picturesque medieval castle, unoccupied since the first part of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Second, the construction of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of Europe in the city of Frankfurt, the heart of Germany, which occupies such a central position in the continent of Europe. Third, the purchase of land for the future construction of two Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs, one in the north in the city of Stockholm, and one in the south in the city of Rome, the seat and stronghold of the most powerful Church in Christendom. ”

“ He established schools, fostered new branches of industry, and sought to build up the higher civilization which follows peace and order. He was very fond of the German language, and by his orders a complete collection was made of the songs and poetical legends of the people. Forsaking Paris, which had been the Frank capital for nearly three centuries, he removed his Court to Aix-la-Chapelle and Ingelheim, near the Rhine, founded the city of Frankfort on the Main, and converted, before he died, all that war-wasted region into a peaceful and populous country. ”