Lower Saxony

“ Lower Saxony shook off the yoke of Austria, the enemy abandoned Mecklenburg, and the imperial garrisons retired from the banks of the Weser and the Elbe. In Westphalia and the Upper Rhine, William, Landgrave of Hesse, rendered himself formidable; the Duke of Weimar in Thuringia, and the French in the Electorate of Treves; while to the eastward the whole kingdom of Bohemia was conquered by the Saxons. The Turks were preparing to attack Hungary, and in the heart of Austria a dangerous insurrection was threatened. ”

“ The Bavarians migrated from Bohemia to the Danube; the Suevi, Allemanni, and Burgundians, southwards to their present localities. The names of old nationalities have disappeared, and new ones have spread themselves far across the Rhine. But nearly half the Germany which was known to the Romans--the wide territory from the North Sea to the Thuringian woods and the Rhone, from the Saal to near the Rhine--retains, on the whole, its old inhabitants; for the Thuringians, the Chattens, and indeed most of the races of Lower Saxony, only came in partial swarms ”

“ A sultry atmosphere loured over the country; throughout the empire, in every class, men armed themselves, and anxiety for the future pervaded all. But intercourse with the provinces in which the war was at first located, was then comparatively small. The countries exposed to its fury were, with the exception of the Palatinate, provinces belonging to the Emperor; and on the Elbe and lower Rhine, in Thuringia, Franconia, and the territories of lower Saxony, it was still a question whether the danger was approaching home. ”

“ To have followed him thither would have been to renew the war in Lower Saxony, which had scarcely recovered from the ravages of the last. It was therefore determined to carry the war into the enemy's country, which, open and defenceless as far as Vienna, invited attack. On their right, they might fall upon the territories of the Roman Catholic princes, or penetrate, on the left, into the hereditary dominions of Austria, and make the Emperor tremble in his palace. ”

“ From 1166 onwards there was a Saxon count at Schwerin. Frisian and Saxon merchants from Soest, Bardowiek and other localities in Lower Germany, who already navigated the Baltic and had their factory in Gotland, settled in the new town, where Wendish speech and customs never entered. About 1157 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, forced his vassal, the count of Holstein, to give up Lübeck to him ”

“ It was one of the chief emporiums on the early trading route between Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Its code of municipal laws (Schran; jus susatense) , dating from 1144 to 1165, was one of the earliest and best, and served as a model even to Lübeck. ”

“ Saxony, rich in picturesque beauty; the valley of the Elbe, in many respects finer than the Rhine itself; the proud summit of the Bastey; the rock-crowned fortress of Koenigstein,—are all succeeded by monotonous tracts of dark forest, or still more dreary plains, disfigured, not enlivened by villages of wretched hovels, poor, I have heard, as the dwellings of the Irish peasant. What a contrast, too! the people, the haggard faces and sallow cheeks of the swarthy Bohemian, with the blue eye and ruddy looks of the Saxon! ”

“ For though the Franks had long been the greatest power in Germany, yet Germany could not be said to form a single whole as long as the Saxons, the greatest people of Northern Germany, remained independent. The conquest of Saxony brought the Frankish power for the first time in contact with the Danes and the other people of Scandinavia. ♦Boundary of the Eider.♦ The dominions of Charles took in what was then called Saxony beyond the Elbe, that is the modern Holstein, and the Eider was fixed as the northern boundary of the Empire. ”

“ Owing to the gradual way in which the various members of the Empire grew into practical sovereignty—owing to the constant division of principalities among many members of the same family—no country has undergone so many internal geographical changes as Germany has. In few countries also has the nomenclature shifted in a more singular way. ♦Ancient and modern Saxony and Bavaria.♦ To take two obvious examples, the modern kingdom of Saxony has nothing but its name in common with the Saxony which was brought under the Frankish dominion by Charles the Great. ”

“ In Saxony, the impression is as if the tops of the hills were the outer circumference of the globe, strangely fissured and worn away by the action of water. We plunge into depths of the earth; we might fancy some sprite of upper air had forced a passage so to reach the abode of subterranean spirits. The mystic imagination of the Germans has indeed peopled this region with gnome and kobold, who watch over hidden treasure. A thousand romantic legends are associated with scenes whose aspect awakens the fancy. ”

“ For aught we know there may be only three or four thousand men facing us and, while we are waiting here, the whole Austrian army may have crossed over again, and be marching up the river bank to form a junction with the Saxons; or they may have gone by the defiles we traversed the last two days, and may come down into Saxony and fall on the rear of our camp watching Pirna, while the Saxons are attacking in front. No wonder his majesty paces backwards and forwards like a wild beast in a cage. ”

“ I believe that a much greater proportion of the labouring classes of Saxony possess some ‘stake in the hedge’ than those of England. ... I am sorry, however, to add, that Saxony appears to me, by the increase that is taking place in her population, and by her efforts to push her manufactures, to be approaching the evil which we have long suffered under in England, that of having the sole interest of a great portion of her people dependent entirely on the amount of weekly wages that they can obtain. ”

“ The more I see of the people here, the more I like them. The national character of the Germans is integrity, tho' sometimes cloaked under a rough exterior as in Bavaria and Austria; but here in Saxony it is combined with a suavity of manners that is very striking, for the Saxons are the Tuscans of Germany in point of politeness, and they are far more accomplished because they take more pains in cultivating their minds.
A savant in Italy is a man who writes a volume about a coin, filled with hypotheses, when, with all his learning forced into the service, he proves nothing ”

“ Saxony (3,502) , a kingdom of Germany, lies within the basin of the Elbe, facing on the E., between Bavaria (S.) and Prussia (N.) , the mountainous frontier of Bohemia; a little less in size than Yorkshire, but very densely inhabited; spurs of the Erzgebirge, Fichtelgebirge, and Riesengebirge diversify the surface; is a flourishing mining and manufacturing country ”

“ Now your name, my lady. MIN. Fraulein von Barnhelm. LAND. (writes) . "Von Barnhelm." Coming from.... where, your ladyship? MIN. From my estate in Saxony. LAND. (writes) . "Estate in Saxony." Saxony! Indeed, indeed! In Saxony, your ladyship? Saxony? FRAN. Well, why not? I hope it is no sin in this country to come from Saxony! LAND. A sin? Heaven forbid! That would be quite a new sin! From Saxony then? Yes, yes, from Saxony, a delightful country, Saxony! But if I am right, your ladyship, Saxony is not small, and has several—how shall I call them? ”

“ Yet the fact of beholding it now for the second time, had no influence in lessening the pleasure which we derived from the scenery around us. Without partaking in any degree of the character of a mountain district, this mid-space between Saxony and Bohemia is highly picturesque; for it is one continued succession of valleys, with well-wooded hills enclosing them; and the bold summits of Lilienstein and Königstein are rarely out of sight.
A Saxon eilwagen is a machine nowise deserving of reprobation. ”

“ But the possession of Wismar and a part of Pomerania still gave the Swedish kings a position as German princes down to the dissolution of the Empire.
These are the chief powers which rose to historical importance within the bounds of Saxony, in the widest sense of that word. To trace every division and union which created or extinguished any of the smaller principalities, or even to mark every minute change of frontier among the greater powers, would be impossible. ♦Free cities of Saxony. ”

“ He therefore returned to Dresden; and Napoleon took up his grand position the whole length of the Elbe, from the mountains of Bohemia to Hamburgh, thus covering the whole of Saxony with his army. Austria however at last comes forward to join the coalition. Fortune changes; the Saxon troops, tired of beholding their country the perpetual theatre of war and trusting to the generosity of the Allies, go over to them in the middle of a battle, and decide, thereby, the fate of the day at Leipzig. The King of Saxony is made a prisoner, and then he is punished for what he could not help. ”

“ Let every impartial man therefore review the whole of this proceeding and then say whether the King of Saxony, so proverbial for his probity, so adored by his subjects, deserved to be insulted by such an unfeeling letter as that of Castlereagh. No! the King of Saxony better deserves to reign than any King of them all. ”

“ Unfortunate chief merchants of Leipzig,—with Bruhl and Polish Majesty little likely to indemnify them! Unfortunate Country altogether. An intelligent Saxon, who is vouched for as impartial, bears witness as follows: 'And this I know, that the oppressions and plunderings of the Austrians and Reichsfolk, in Saxony, turned all hearts away from them ”

“ Germany is reckoned by some to have lost one-half, by others, two-thirds, of her entire population during the Thirty Years’ War. In Saxony 900,000 men had fallen within ten years; in Bohemia the number of inhabitants at the demise of Frederick II, before the last deplorable inroads made by Barier and Torstenson, had sunk to one-fourth. Augsburg, instead of 80,000 had 18,000 inhabitants. Every province, every town throughout the Empire had suffered at an equal ratio, with the exception of Tyrol.... ”

“ What majestic treasures are these!—The sapphires and rubies beat those of Bavaria, but the Electress’s pearls at Munich are unrivalled yet. Saxony is a very rich country in her own bosom it seems; the agates and jaspers produced here are excellent, nor are good amethysts wanting; the topazes are pale and sickly.
Nothing can be finer, or in its way more tasteful, than a chimney-piece made for the Elector, entirely from the manufacture and produce of his own dominions; that part which we should form of marble is white porcelane, with an exquisite bas-relief in the middle copied from the antique ”

“ Modern Bohemian resistance to their spread toward the plain persists unflinchingly. Northward, the Erzgebirge uplift is also a German ethnographic conquest. For centuries its mineral wealth has attracted artisans from Franconia, Thuringia and Saxony. The mountain slopes re-echo today to the sound of the dialects of these ancient countries. The Saxon element prevails particularly among the inhabitants of the Elbe valley.
Farther east, descendants of Lusatian and Silesian peasants still use the vernacular of their ancestors in the upland formed by the Iser Gebirge and the Riesen Gebirge. ”

“ In connexion with suicides, it is interesting to observe that the highest rates prevail in some of the smaller and more prosperous states of the empire—for example, in Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Altenburg (on a three years’ average of figures) , while the Roman Catholic country Bavaria, and the impoverished Prussian province of Posen show the most favourable statistics. For Prussia the rate is 20, and for Saxony it is as high as 31 per 100,000 inhabitants. The large cities, notably Berlin, Hamburg, Breslau and Dresden, show, however, relatively the largest proportion. ”

“ I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse. What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! ”

“ Most noble king, Saxony, which is one of the countries of Germany, was the place of our birth; and the occasion of our coming was to offer our service to you or some other prince. For we were driven out of our native country, for no other reason, but that the laws of the kingdom required it. It is customary among us, that when we come to be overstocked with people, our princes from all the provinces meet together, and command all the youths of the kingdom to assemble before them ”

“ As we shall see, however, the barbarous and heathen Saxons in the lands between the Lower Rhine and the Elbe, representing the Teutonic spirit in its fiercest and most stubborn moods, represented an even more formidable obstacle to that remodelling of Europe in the likeness of the old Roman Empire which was the aim of the great statesman with whose life we have to deal. ”

“ Yet the prophet would have been right, for Saxony suffered so much from her connection with the Austrians in Frederick the Great's time that she never recovered therefrom; and in the late contest she was lost before a shot was fired, and her troops, after fighting valiantly in Bohemia, shared the disasters of the power upon which she had relied for protection. Bavaria was another German country that seemed more likely to rise to greatness than Brandenburg; but, though her progress has been respectable, it must be pronounced insignificant if compared with that of Prussia. ”