Greifswald

“ There all the most powerful of Germany were gathered together at the Diet to obtain pardon or reward, to pay court to the most mighty sovereign that for centuries had ruled over Germany, to decide their own future and that of their Fatherland, and to seek pleasure and adventures. Amidst this crowd of sovereigns and dynasties, courtiers, swindlers, soldiers, and deputations of citizens, was one Bartholomew Sastrow, the son of a citizen of Greifswald. ”

“ Dr. Johannes Knipstrow having announced from the pulpit, in the name and by order of the prince, that Master J. Runge was going to succeed him in the office of superintendent, the Greifswald council considered the nomination as an infringement of its rights. Its syndicus at Stralsund, Dr. Gentzkow, formulated before me, a public notary convened for the purpose, both a verbal and written protest, of the latter of which I delivered a duly executed duplicate to the council of Greifswald, the legitimate charge for the same being three crowns. ”

“ In north German regions a combination of the Evangelic faculties of Rostock and Kiel at Kiel is planned.
Finally I should like to combine the faculties of Berlin and Greifswald in Greifswald. A double purpose would be achieved. Greifswald's weak enrollment would be improved and the Berlin faculty would not have to be included in the new university city of Berlin. I am sure this proposal will rouse the Berlin faculty but believe I can handle that problem. ”

“ I am going to the burgomaster at once to deposit the earnest-money on his daughter's table. She'll know right enough to whom to hand it. After which I shall get into the saddle and take the road to Stralsund." Thereupon the council was summoned.
I went to tell my wife, her brother, and my sister whom he had married. My wife, not satisfied with shedding tears, declared categorically that she should not leave Greifswald. She would take a room somewhere and earn her living knitting. My sister and her husband were also much excited. "What shall you do with your nice house?" said my sister. ”

“ The theological faculties in Koenigsberg and Kiel should be quite sufficient. I do not believe special consideration for Greifswald in regard to the northern states to be necessary since the university of Kiel has made the furthering of ties with the north its particular mission.
9. For Bavaria I request that more extensive measures be carried out than were provided for in your communication of the 6.4.1939. In the future the preservation of the five state philosophic-theological universities in Bavaria will no longer be necessary. ”

“ In 1550, however, Sastrow became aware that his position was being undermined by the councillors at Stettin. He accordingly gave up his ducal appointment, and determined to confine himself to private practice. He marries a wife (January 5, 1551) , settles at Greifswald, and builds up a prosperous business, and from this date his memoirs are mostly concerned with the cases in which he was engaged. ”

“ Stettin, the capital, and Stralsund are important trading centres; a university is at Greifswald; the Slavic population embraced Christianity in the 12th century; shortly afterwards the duke joined the German Empire; after the Thirty Years' War much of the province fell to Sweden, and the whole was not finally ceded to Prussia till 1815.
Pomona, or Mainland, the largest island in the Orkneys, has a low treeless surface, many lakes, and extensive pasture-land; agriculture has of late improved, and, with stock-raising and fishing, is the chief industry; the only towns are Kirkwall and Stromness. ”

“ Gradually the beauty of the fruitful plain with its cornfields and rich orchards, the mystery of the far-off hills on the horizon, the poetry of the distant, dark-blue line of the forests, the song of the wind murmuring through those few trees which had sprung up on the fortress terraces and ramparts unabashed by warfare; gradually this peace came to the Grävenitz, and she grew calm. True, she agonised when her eyes fell upon Ludwigsburg, and she raged when the prison governor told her of the march of events in Stuttgart ”

“ No one could predict what day the Greifensteins would choose for one of their occasional visits, and in the time of the vacations no one could foresee when Greif might make his appearance, striding over the wooded hills with his gun and his dog to spend a quiet afternoon with Hilda in their favourite sunny corner at the foot of the dismantled tower. When poverty is to be concealed, his shadow must not be caught lurking at the door by chance visitors. ”

“ On a sudden he was captive to the enthusiasm of the mountains, and hastened along the valley of the Rhine by Alt Breisach and Basle, unrepelled by a thousand difficulties, to Swiss farmhouses and lonely villages, solemn still, and untouched by strangers. At Grindelwald, sleeping at last in the close neighbourhood of the greater Alps, he had the sense of an overbrooding presence, of some strange new companions around him. Here one might yield one's self to the unalterable imaginative appeal of the elements in their highest force and simplicity—light, air, water, earth. ”

“ The color of the cottages and farm-houses harmonizes or contrasts beautifully with the landscape. Roofs of brown weather-beaten thatch or of dull red tiles, in the midst of embowering trees and shrubbery, formed for us pictures of beauty long to be remembered. Frienwalde, to the northeast, has mineral springs in the most attractive part of Brandenburg, and is growing as a place of summer resort. The fine old monastery, and the ruined early Gothic abbey-church of Chorin on the Stettin Railway, the burial-place of the Margraves of Brandenburg, are interesting to all students of architecture. ”

“ See Riemann, Geschichte der Stadt Greifenberg (1862) .
GREIFENHAGEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Pomerania, on the Reglitz, 12 m. S.S.W. of Stettin by rail. Pop. (1905) 6473. Its prosperity depends chiefly on agriculture and it has a considerable trade in cattle. There are also felt manufactures and saw mills. Greifenhagen was built in 1230, and was raised to the rank of a town and fortified about 1250. ”

“ Greif was deeply attached to the University town. He had spent many happy hours within its walls, and had passed through many exciting moments of his young life amidst its high, narrow streets and ancient buildings. Such a place naturally exercised a greater influence over him than over most men of his age. Born and bred in the heart of the Black Forest, brought up in the house that had sheltered his race for centuries, he would have felt uneasy and out of his element if he had been all at once transported to a modern capital. But in Schwarzburg he felt that he was at home. ”

“ We halt in quiet villages, snug and neat even in their poverty; or wend our way, in the midst of sunshine, through endless vistas of fruit-laden woods, the public road being one rich orchard of red-dotted cherry-trees: purchasable for a mere fraction, but not to be feloniously abstracted. Through Altenburg, Zwickau, Oederon, and Chemnitz; up steep hill paths, and by the side of unpronounceable villages, until, on the morning of the fourth day, we straggle into Freiberg.
Freiberg is the walled capital of the Saxon ore mountains, the Erzgebirge; the centre of the Saxon mining administration. ”

“ Upwards of a year had elapsed when, one winter day, the Knight of Greifenstein, pursuing the chase, lost his way in the mazes of a wilderness on the banks of the Danube. A savage-looking being, half clothed in skins, conducted him to a cavern, in which a woman similarly attired was seated on the ground, with an infant on her knees, and greedily gnawing the bones of a wolf—Sir Reinhard recognised in the squalid form before him his once beautiful Etelina. ”

“ From that day the life at Greifenstein became even more drearily monotonous than it had been before, for all the party excepting Greif and Hilda. To any one not accustomed to the atmosphere the existence would have been unbearable, but humanity can grow used to anything by degrees. A stranger finding himself unexpectedly at the castle would have felt that the sweet air of the forest was poisoned at that one point by some subtle and undefinable element, that appealed to none of the senses in particular, but oppressed them all alike. ”

“ But a short journey from Vienna, it is small wonder that this is a popular point for holiday makers to seek. Beyond Greifenstein the river sweeps in a southerly curve round the hills, and inland on the left, on a hill, but hidden by trees is the interesting castle of Kreuzenstein—a place which was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, but which has been fully restored by a modern owner, and filled with old furniture and weapons, so that it appears handsomely suggestive of what the many castle ruins we see in a journey down the river must have looked like in the days of their prosperity. ”

“ We passed through Greiffenberg about eight o'clock, and found it by no means the formidable sort of place which our fears,—the offspring of our poverty,—had represented it to be. An old town, built irregularly along the side of a hill, it seems to possess neither trade nor manufactures ”

“ These morning excursions allowed me to explore a great deal of the neighbourhood, which I should otherwise have been unable to see. All this district of Holstein is rather flat, but beautifully wooded, with many lakes which add a wistful calm beauty to the sleepy landscape. There is something reminiscent of England in the farm-houses and the hedgerows, which are never seen in Brandenburg, where the fields are unfenced.
At one o’clock I was at the Schloss for luncheon, where I had to talk English with the Prince and his cadets—charming boys, some of whom I had met in Potsdam, where they lived. ”

“ Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed on our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Münster; whence we started a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according to the present German Emperor, humanity stops. Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress with the river now on one side of it and now on the other—for in its inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its way,—must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the lover of change and excitement. ”

“ The commonest man takes off his hat as you pass, and if you go by a group of rollicking school-boys every hat comes off courteously.
Gebhardsberg is the first place to which people usually go from Bregenz. We went, as in duty bound. It is a mountain—a castle—a pilgrimage church—a view; and to say that one commands a view of the entire lake, the valley of the Bregenzer Ach and the Rhine, the Alps, the snow mountains of Appenzel and Glarus, with mountains covered with pine forests in the foreground, conveys a very faint idea of the beauty before our eyes. ”

“ Through a narrow and beautiful valley the river goes on by wooded hills and pleasant, picturesque villages, with ruined castles now and again standing boldly on the rocky heights. Near Gutenstein are the towering rocks of Rabenfels and Heidenfels. The river, winding to and fro among the hills, is more or less closely neighboured, as has been said, by the railway; while from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen the course of the stream may be followed by the pedestrian who has leisure—and to him alone is it given to enjoy all the beauties of this picturesque stretch of the Danube. ”

“ With pugnacious Prussia on the North, with rapacious Austria on the South, with insolent Bavaria hanging off on the Southwest, and the others fighting tooth and nail for the land, that will eventually fall to the strongest—the German problem became an exhibition over many years of the noblest, likewise of the darkest, passions of the human breast. ”

“ The whole of Lower Silesia; the River Neisse for the boundary; the city of Neisse for us, as also Glutz; on the other side of the Oder, the ancient boundary between the Duchies of Brieg and Oppeln. Namslau for us. The affairs of religion in statu quo. No dependence upon Bohemia. Cession eternal. In exchange we will go no farther. We will besiege Neisse for form. The commandant shall surrender and depart. We will quietly go into winter quarters; and they (the Austrians) can take their army where they will. ”

“ The Spreewald, to the S.E. of Berlin, is one of the most remarkable districts of Germany. As the Spree divides itself there into innumerable branches, enclosing thickly wooded islands, boats form the only means of communication. West of Berlin the Havel widens into what are called the Havel lakes, to which the environs of Potsdam owe their charms. In general the soil of the North German plain cannot be termed fertile, the cultivation nearly everywhere requiring severe and constant labour. ”

“ The present province of Brandenburg, the basis of the Prussian kingdom, was conquered by Henry in 928; and then, after a successful invasion of Bohemia, he gradually extended his annexation to the Oder. The most of the Slavonic population were slaughtered without mercy, and the Saxons and Thuringians, spreading eastward, took possession of their vacant lands. Finally, in 932, Henry conquered Lusatia (now Eastern Saxony) ; Bohemia was already tributary, and his whole eastern frontier was thereby advanced from the Baltic at Stettin to the Danube at Vienna. ”