Mainz

“ In 1792 the citizens welcomed the ideas of the French Revolution; they expelled their archbishop, Friedrich Karl Joseph d’Erthal, and opened their gates to the French troops. Taken and retaken several times during the next few years, Mainz was ceded to France by the treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, and again by the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. In 1814 it was restored to Germany and in 1816 it was handed over to the grand duke of Hesse ”

“ The entrance of the Elector of Mainz, which we have refused to describe more completely, was magnificent and imposing enough to suggest to the imagination of an eminent man the advent of a great prophesied world-ruler: even we were not a little dazzled by it. But now our expectation was stretched to the utmost, as it was said that the emperor and the future king were approaching the city. At a little distance from Sachsenhausen, a tent had been erected in which the entire magistracy remained, to show the appropriate honour, and to proffer the keys of the city to the chief of the empire. ”

“ In these intestine struggles of Mainz, the young Gutenberg, himself a gentleman, and naturally fighting for the cause most holy in a son's eyes—that of his father—was defeated by the burgesses, and banished, with all the knights of his family, from the territory of Mainz. His mother and sisters alone remained there in possession of their property, as innocent victims on whom the faults of the nobility should not be visited. ”

“ Nobody, not even the most malicious skeptic of a democrat, believes what quackery [229] and self-importance there is in this diplomatizing. Well, I have railed long enough, and now I will tell you that I am very well. Yesterday I was in Mainz: the neighborhood is lovely. The rye is in full ear, although it is infamously cold all night and in the mornings. Excursions by railroad are the best here. One can reach Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Odenwald, Homburg, Soden, Wiesbaden, Bingen, Rüdesheim, and Niederwald comfortably in one day, stop five or six hours, and return here in the evening. ”

“ In 1122, Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz took refuge here from the Emperor Henry V., and surrounded the town with walls, and built a strong castle. The town remained subject to the Electors of Mainz till 1803, when it became the capital of a principality. The conditions under which the Confederacy of the Rhine was formed made its territory a grand duchy, which lasted until the fall of Napoleon, when it was ceded to Bavaria, which retains it now. ”

“ Travelling along the Rhine from Mainz in the opposite direction we come to Cologne, and here Ulrich Zell, like Berthold Ruppel, a native of Hanau, but who calls himself in his books a “clerk of the diocese of Mainz,” enrolled his name on the register of the University in June, 1464, doubtless for the sake of the business privileges which the Senate had it in its power to confer. ”

“ Schreibers work on German illustrated books acquainted me with the existence of an Agenda Moguntinensis of 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister’s press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. The Agenda and its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the Meditationes must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also. ”

“ The Archbishopric of Mainz, one of the seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire, became a powerful state during the middle ages and retained some of its importance until the dissolution of the empire in 1806. Its archbishop was president of the electoral college, arch-chancellor of the empire and primate of Germany. Its origin dates back to 747, when the city of Mainz was made the seat of an archbishop, and a succession of able and ambitious prelates, obtaining lands and privileges from emperors and others, made of the district under their rule a strong and vigorous state. ”

“ The frontispiece of the book, on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated, while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are joyously climbing. With the Mainz Breidenbach we feel that we have passed away from the naive craftsmanship 116 of the earliest illustrated books into a region of conscious art. ”

“ You spent money in their cafés, that was what they wanted; and you gave them chocolate and soup, that’s what they were after.” I have not the slightest doubt that a great many Germans attached themselves to us solely for ulterior purposes. But as a whole I believe that the civilians in Mainz were quite honestly pleased to be able to do for us anything they could, as a sort of proof that they had altered their Government, that the war was over, and that they had no wish to nourish any ill-feeling against us. ”

“ MAINZ (Fr. Mayence) a city, episcopal see and fortress of Germany, situated on the left bank of the Rhine, almost opposite the influx of the Main, at the junction of the important main lines of railway from Cologne to Mannheim and Frankfort-on-Main, 25 m. W. of the latter. Pop. (1905) , 91,124 (including a garrison of 7500 men) , of whom two-thirds are Roman Catholic. The Rhine, which here attains the greatest breadth of its upper course, is crossed by a magnificent bridge of five arches, leading to the opposite town of Castel and by two railway bridges. ”

“ No one has ever yet managed to escape from Mainz, and even if the war had lasted for another twenty years, I believe it would have retained its impregnability. For the citadel had been constructed so as to resist the old-fashioned frontal assault, in which infantry without the aid of a barrage endeavoured to demolish vertical walls. Round the buildings ran stone battlements{153} usually fifty feet high. ”

“ Even among themselves the subjects of the small rulers did not live in peace; insulting language and blows were common; the Mainzers attacked the inhabitants of the Palatinate, and when the French occupied Electoral Mainz, the inhabitants of the Palatinate and Darmstadt rejoiced in the sufferings of their neighbours. [34]
The mass of the people in the Empire lived quietly to themselves. The peasant performed his service, and the citizen worked ”

“ The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; ”

“ His successor, however, again acknowledged the papal supremacy.―In Germany, since the time of Charlemagne, new metropolitan sees had been created at Salzburg, Cologne, Treves and Hamburg-Bremen. Mainz, however, still claimed the primacy and represented the unity of the German church. The Isidorian forgery availed not here as in the land of its birth to stop the contention of the archbishop. The German metropolitanate to the advantage of the empire maintained its rights untouched for centuries. ”

“ They adopted their ancestors' profession, writing letters and sending messengers to all the Rhineland communities, that they should fast, sit in abstinence, and beg for mercy from He who dwells on high, that He save the French Jews from the Christians' hands. When the letters reached those holy ones, the distinguished pillars of the world, the people of Mainz, they wrote a letter back to France as follows: "All the communities declared fasts: we have done what is ours to do. ”

“ Mainz should be made the metropolis of a grand Humanist movement, the centre of good style and literary form. But the murder in 1515 of his relative Hans von Hutten by Ulrich, duke of Württemberg, changed the whole course of his life; satire, chief refuge of the weak, became Hutten’s weapon ”

“ The site of Mainz would seem to mark it out naturally as a great centre of trade, but the illiberal rule of the archbishops and its military importance seriously hampered its commercial and industrial development, and prevented it from rivalling its neighbour Frankfort. It is now, however, the chief emporium of the Rhenish wine traffic, and also carries on an extensive transit trade in grain, timber, flour, petroleum, paper and vegetables. The natural facilities for carriage by water are supplemented by the extensive railway system. ”

“ In favour of Mainz, especial stress was laid on the fact that it was the country of Benedictus Levita, the compiler of the False Capitularies, to which the False Decretals are closely related. But Benedict, the deacon of Otgar of Mainz, is as much of a hypothetical personage as Isidorus Mercator; moreover, in the middle of the 9th century the condition of the province of Mainz was not disturbed, nor were the chorepiscopi menaced. ”

“ In the eighteenth century, as in our time, Germany had great and splendid cities, but not until 1753 was the first scientifically constructed road built. Misson found the roads between Cologne and Mainz so bad that he went by the Rhine "notwithstanding the extreme slowness of the passage." [42] In speaking of the road between Augsburg and Munich he says: "The country is extremely rough for coaches, by the straight road; they are very apt to overturn, and the passengers are often constrain'd to alight, by reason of the continual ascending and descending among the mountains." ”

“ At this time there was a very great deal of sickness in Mainz, and the hospitals were crowded both with civilians and British officers. It was also a time at which congestion of the railroads had delayed the arrival of our Red Cross parcels. The British authorities in the camp had in consequence collected as large a supply of food as possible, to be sent to the hospital and divided not only among our own invalids, but among those of the civilian population whose condition was really critical. This consignment was loaded on a handcart, and surrounded, by sentries, was to proceed into the town. ”

“ Mainz or Mayence (72) , in Hesse-Darmstadt, on the Rhine, opposite the mouth of the Main, is an important German fortress and one of the oldest cities in Germany; it has a magnificent cathedral, restored in 1878, and is a stronghold of Catholicism; a large transit trade is done, and the making of furniture, leather goods, and machinery are important industries; Gutenberg was a native.
Maistre, Count, Joseph de, a keen and extreme Ultramontanist, born at Chambéry, of a noble French family; accompanied the king of Sardinia in his retreat while the French occupied Savoy in 1792 ”

“ FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN (Ger. Frankfurt am Main) , a city of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, principally on the right bank of the Main, 24 m. above its confluence with the Rhine at Mainz, and 16 m. N. from Darmstadt. Always a place of great trading importance, long the place of election for the German kings, and until 1866, together with Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, one of the four free cities of Germany, it still retains its position as one of the leading commercial centres of the German empire. ”

“ Homery, and were reclaimed by him in 1468. The distance from Eltvil to Mainz is only some five or six miles, and the Rhine afforded easy means of communication between the two places, so that the difficulty of the transference of type backwards and forwards seems, as a rule, very much overstated. Although we have no evidence of printing at Eltvil before 1467, still it will be best to give an account of the press in this chapter, since it was [37] so intimately connected with the early press at Mainz.
In 1467, on the 4th November, an edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was published. ”

“ The Austrians constructed, among other places, Linz and Verona. The Germanic Confederation reinforced Mainz with improved works, and reorganized entirely Rastatt and Ulm. The Bavarians built Germersheim and Ingolstadt. While all these works were conceived in the spirit of Rimpler and Montalembert, they showed the differences of national temperament. The Prussian works, simple in design, relied upon powerful artillery fire, and exposed a good deal of masonry to the enemy’s view. The Austrians covered part of their masonry with earth and gave more attention to detail. ”

“ They thought that the French would demand revenge for every indignity and injustice they had suffered in 1871; and when they realised that the Entente was not prepared to treat with the Kaiser, they clamoured for his abdication. It was an ignoble business. Even the Frankfurter Zeitung joined in the tumult. There was a general terror which gave birth to the revolution.
§ 2
The revolutionists arrived at Mainz on Friday, November 8th, and the first intimation we received of their presence was the arrival on morning parade of the German adjutant in a civilian suit. ”

“ Of the numerous affluents here the largest are the navigable Neckar and the Main from the right, and the navigable Ill from the left. A little below Mainz, the Rhine (six hundred and eighty-five yards wide) is turned west by the Taunus range; but at Bingen it forces a passage through, and pursues a northwesterly direction across Rhenish Prussia, past Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Ruhrort, and Wesel as far as the Dutch frontier; here it is one thousand and eighty-five yards wide and thirty-six feet above sea-level. ”