Southern Germany

“ By the exclusion of Austria from Germany, the Alps have become the southern frontier, and only two comparatively small branches (the Algau Alps between the Rhine and the Lech, and the Bavarian Alps between the Lech and the Salzach) belong to the German empire. 2. The terraced country of central Germany has its nucleus near the junction of the boundaries of Saxony, Bohemia, and Bavaria, about lat. 50°, in the Fichtelgebirge, the watershed of the tributaries of the Rhine, Danube, and Elbe. Thence a number of mountain chains of the secondary order radiate in all directions. ”

“ Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany.
♦Internal geography of Germany.♦
The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. ”

“ Germany, including a considerable part of the Austrian Empire, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is in a far better condition in this respect than its more southern neighbors ”

“ Switzerland—or at least that portion of it which is the chief scene of the rambles of tourists and travellers—consists substantially of a long and deep valley, extending from east to west through the centre, and bordered by a range of mountains on each side. The range of mountains on the northern side of this valley is, [Pg 56] of course, towards Germany; the one on the southern side is towards Italy. On the north side of the northern range of mountains is a broad slope of land, extending a hundred miles towards the German frontier. ”

“ Further N. the Ardennes send into Rhenish Prussia the ridge of the Eifel (2,500 ft.) and the Hohe Venn. Northeastern offshoots of the Jura cross the southern frontier of Alsace. 3. The great plain of northern Germany extends over the entire breadth of the country N. of a line drawn from the Holland frontier to Osnabrück and Minden, thence E. S. E. to Leipsic, thence S. by E. to a point where the head waters of the Oder and Vistula approach one another. ”

“ Professor John Rhys, on his part, says:—"Nobody now regards the bulk of the South Germans as of the same race as the tall, light-haired people of North Germany, or the Teutonic element of a somewhat similar type in this country." This sweeping assertion wants a great deal of modification. Compared with the North, the South of Germany shows, no doubt, a greater percentage of men of middle height, with brown hair and dark eyes. ”

“ 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 South German loves to tell you that his country is ein gesegnetes Land, a blessed country, flowing with milk and honey; and whether you are reading Auerbach's peasant stories or actually staying amongst his peasant folk, you get this impression of their natural surroundings. Nature is kind here, grows forest for her people on the hill-tops, and wine, fruit and corn in her sheltered valleys, ripens their fruit in summer, gives them heavy crops of hay, and sends soft warm rain as well as sun to enrich their pastures. ”

“ In South Germany you find men and women who can dance, and sing, hunt and shoot—make love, and amuse themselves like human beings. Given “a man,” as the basis of sound calculation, you may look for a result—but what can be expected from a formula in uniform? If the Italian affairs were settled; if a certain degree of liberty were granted to the various provinces of the Austrian empire; and if the ambition of Austrian statesmen were directed to the Danubian banks, in place of the Italian Peninsula, we might still hope for a renewal of the old cordiality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ South Germany... all those disconnected, discontented states, crushed under the heel of the Prussian Charlemagne, but restless and ready to throw off the yoke at any moment.... Do you understand all that a man like myself can do in the midst of that, all the aspirations that he can kindle, all the hatred that he can produce, all the angry rebellion that he can inspire? ”

“ In the great cities of Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the seaports of the German Hanse Towns, there was a peculiar development of the patrician order; but it was the patrician families of the great commercial cities of South Germany, and amongst these more especially those of Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Frankfort on the Maine, and Cologne, that exercised the greatest influence on the luxury, industry, and learning of Germany. ”

“ I shall curse them both if they prevent you from tearing yourself away from the Donnish atmosphere and bachelor life of Oxford, and from throwing yourself into the fresh mental atmosphere of Germany and of German mind and life. You must take other journeys besides lake excursions and Highland courses. Why don't you go to Switzerland, with an excursion (by Berlin) to Breslau, to the German Oriental Congress? There is nothing like the German spirit, in spite of all its one-sidedness. ”

“ Beyond these limits the former United Provinces, with the whole oceanic coast of Germany as far as the Elbe, and the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck, were incorporated with France. France now stretched to the Baltic, and, as Holstein was now incorporated with Denmark, France and Denmark had a common frontier. The Confederation of the Rhine was a protected state, and the Kingdom of Prussia and the self-styled ‘Empire’ of Austria could practically hardly claim a higher place. ”

“ He wrote to a friend: “The real charm of the Rhine, beyond the fascination that all rivers and riverine scenery have for most people, is that of literary and historical romance. The Rhine is in this respect the Nile of Europe: though probably none but Germans feel thus strongly. For myself I cannot but think it ought not [170] to be a wholly German river, but from every point of view be the Franco-German boundary.... Germany has much to gain from a true communion with its more charming neighbour. ”

“ The French-German linguistic frontier in Switzerland crosses the upper Rhone Valley just above Sierre, but the whole canton of Valais above the elbow of the river at Martigny shows fundamental ethnic unity, indicated by identity of head form, stature and coloring.692 Where the Elbe flows through the low plains of North Germany, its whole broad valley is occupied by a pure Teutonic population—fair, tall, long-headed; a more brunette type occupies its middle course across the uplands of Saxony, and speaks German like the downstream folk ”

“ Every appeal to force finds a loud response in the hearts of all. Not merely in the North, where a proud, efficient, hard-working race with glorious traditions has grown up under the laurel-crowned banner of Prussia, does this feeling thrive as an unconscious basis of all thought, sentiment, and volition, in the depth of the soul; but in the South also, which has suffered for centuries under the curse of petty nationalities, the haughty pride and ambition of the German stock live in the heart of the people. ”

“ The decline of the imperial power and the growing opposition between the towns and the territorial princes justified these defensive town alliances, which in South Germany took on a peculiarly political character. ”

“ ENTERING GERMANY If a preliminary glance at Switzerland suggested to me a high individuality, primarily Teutonic but secondarily national and distinctive, all I saw afterwards in Germany and Holland with which I contrasted it, confirmed my first impression. I believe that the Swiss, for all that they speak the German language and have an architecture that certainly has much in common with that of medieval Germany, are yet of markedly diverging character. ”

“ The people of Northern Germany, therefore, though radically differing from them in most other respects, partake more of the general bodily features of Anglo-Saxon nations than those of the South of Germany, who are positively opposed to them. ”

“ The rule is that the growing people slowly but continually overflow their political boundary, which then advances to cover the successive flood plains of the national inundation, or yet farther to anticipate the next rise. This has been the history of Germany in its progress eastward across the Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula and the Niemen. The dream of a greater empire embraces all the German-speaking people from Switzerland, Tyrol and Steiermark to those outlying groups in the Baltic provinces of Russia and the related offshoot in Holland.314 [See map page 223.] ”

“ These men trained to solitude in small bands, owing to the geographical exigencies of their northern country, become the founders of the particularist or individualistic nations, Great Britain and the United States among others. Those who had gone south, driven by pressure from behind, follow the Danube to the north and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what is now southwestern Europe. ”

“ The greater number of the more recent emigrants was from the agricultural provinces of northern Germany—West Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, and sometimes the emigration reached 1% of the total population of these provinces. ”

“ Custom-houses were to be erected along the whole frontier of the Empire, which was defined for the purpose. Switzerland refused its consent and was excluded, and so^were Bohemia and Prussia, the latter as being a fief of Poland, but the Netherlands were reckoned as an integral part of the Empire; and, had the project been carried out, it would have provided not only the revenues which were its immediate object, but an invaluable lever for the unification of Germany. ”

“ France, Germany, England, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, too, grew out of these German tribes, who poured down from the territory roughly included between the Rhine, the North Sea, the Oder, and the Danube.
As we know these countries to-day, the definite thing about them is their difference. You cross the channel in fifty minutes from Dover to Calais, you cross the Rhine in five minutes, and the peoples seem thousands of miles apart. ”

“ South and North Germany had marched side by side to the battlefield, every difference of race or creed forgotten, and the honor of the German fatherland the sole watchword. The time seemed to have arrived to close the breach between north and south, and obliterate the line of the Main, which had divided the two sections. North Germany was united under the leadership of Prussia, and the honor in which all alike shared now brought South Germany into line for a similar union. ”

“ Even the population and wealth of the German towns have probably been exaggerated. Careful statistical investigation suggests that none of the cities of upper Germany had more than 20,000 inhabitants, and those which may have been of larger size, such as Cologne or Bremen or Lübeck, are of more importance in the commercial than in the political history of Germany. ”

“ Celtic tales of the migrations westward which brought them into their European seats are but lying legends, mere echoes of their later knowledge of the countries and nations to the eastward. Germany is, from the first, the home of the Germans: they are a seething mass; south-eastward as well as southwestward rove their restless hordes, disturbing for centuries the peace of the civilized world ”

“ The first appearance of this people in the history of the world is the moment of its fall; their conquerors first gave them a political existence. The extensive region which is bounded by Germany on the east, on the south by France, on the north and northwest by the North Sea, and which we comprehend under the general name of the Netherlands, was, at the time when the Romans invaded Gaul, divided amongst three principal nations, all originally of German descent, German institutions, and German spirit. The Rhine formed its boundaries. ”

“ The heart of modern Germany is the great north central plain which comprises practically all of the original kingdom of Prussia, stretching northward from the Saxon and Hartz mountains to the North and Baltic seas. It is from this dreary and infertile plain that for many centuries conquering military races have poured over Europe. The climate is not so cold in winter as that of the northern part of the United States. There is much rain and the winter skies are so dark that the absence of the sun must have some effect upon the character of the people. ”