Würzburg

“ Knowing how hard it was to obtain building materials for even the most historic monuments when people didn’t have a roof over their heads, we couldn’t reassure him with much conviction.
The spectacle of ruined Würzburg had a depressing effect upon us, so we weren’t very talkative on our way back to Frankfurt. We passed through only one town of any size, Aschaffenburg, which, like Würzburg, had suffered severe damage. Although I had not been long in Germany and had seen but few of her cities, I was beginning to realize that the reports of the Allied air attacks had not been exaggerated. ”

“ Würzburg was long the stronghold of Jesuitism in Germany, and the Roman Catholic theological faculty still attracts a large number of students. The university has a library containing 300,000 volumes, and is attended by about 1400 students. In no other university city of Germany has so much of the medieval academic life been preserved. ”

“ Würzburg is surrounded by vineyards, which yield some of the best wine in Germany. Its principal industries are the manufacture of tobacco, furniture, machinery, scientific instruments and railway carriages. ”

“ This is to be a real wedding-journey day, with no extraneous acquaintance to bother; the more strangers the better. Wurzburg is richer than anything I imagined. I've looked it all up; I've got the plan of the city, so that we can easily find the way. We'll walk first, and take carriages whenever we get tired. We'll go to the cathedral at once; I want a good gulp of rococo to begin with; there wasn't half enough of it at Ansbach. Isn't it strange how we've come round to it? ”

“ Her mother was Princess Würtemberg, related to the Electoral House of Bavaria, and her still living uncle, the Right Reverend Bishop of Würzburg, is lord of Marienburg, and the town of Würzburg, with all the lands belonging to it. You take advantage of us because your heretic king has taken our land and town, and made us prisoners; but the day will come when St. George and the Holy Virgin will descend and destroy you, you heathen; and if you harm a hair of our heads, this castle shall be levelled to the ground, and you, miserable witch, and your whole town, annihilated ... ”

“ Every party professes to abhor the dirt of the German Republic, and the Opposition now forming give themselves honest trouble not to have it—that is, the dirt. A figure of speech so much wider than the requirements of the time, either means nothing, or conceals what people do not desire to say. I myself am in doubt whether the authors of the programme do not really stand at the pure Würzburg point of view. Among our best friends, we have so many doctrinaires who ask from Prussia an identical duty of protecting foreign princes and countries as she protects her own subjects. ”

“ The sealed orders were to be opened on the 13th, and on that day the stroke was to be dealt. Already Ludwigsburg was full of Würzburg soldiers. A courier of the Duke with a letter had, in a drunken squabble, been deprived of the dispatch; this was opened and shown to the Assembly, which assembled in all haste and alarm. It revealed the plot. At once some of the notables hastened to Ludwigsburg to have an interview with their prince. ”

“ I'm too tired; but you go. And get all the maps and guides you can; there's so very little in Baedeker, and almost nothing in that great hulking Bradshaw of yours; and I'm sure there must be the most interesting history of Wurzburg. Isn't it strange that we haven't the slightest association with the name?"
"I've been rummaging in my mind, and I've got hold of an association at last," said March. "It's beer; a sign in a Sixth Avenue saloon window Wurzburger Hof-Brau."
"No matter if it is beer. Find some sketch of the history, and we'll try to get away from the Stollers in it. ”

“ We always delight to grant the reasonable requests of suppliants, and we have no wish to disturb the arrangements made by former emperors, unless there is some need of correction. In this case it is apparent that the settlement made by the former emperors is just, and that the lands have been held unquestioned for a long time by the church and the duchy of Würzburg. ”

“ Thus Fulda, the greatest of German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish name. In north-eastern Francia, the Hessian principalities grew up to the north-west. Within the{215} Franconian circle lay Würzburg, the see of the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other great bishopric of Bamberg, together with the free city of Nürnberg, and various smaller principalities. ♦Ecclesiastical States on the Rhine.♦ In the Rhenish lands, both within and without the old Francia, one chief characteristic is the predominance of the ecclesiastical principalities, Mainz, Köln, Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. ”

“ Machinery increases production and economizes labor, and as the wages of labor have not diminished, the number of those who could live without working has increased.
Würzburg possesses an ancient University. It is a very old sixteenth-century building, situated in the centre of the town. As they recently did me the honor to confer on me the degree of Doctor honoris causa, I wished to see the Rector to offer him my thanks, but I had not the good fortune to meet him. On the Boulevard, special institutes have been constructed for each separate science, for chemistry, physics, and physiology. ”

“ The chief among these were the four Kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, and Westfalia. ♦Kingdoms of Saxony and Westfalia.♦ Saxony had become a kingdom under its own Elector presently after the dissolution of the Empire: the new-made kingdom of Westfalia had a French king in Jerome Buonaparte. ♦Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.♦ Besides Mecklenburg, Baden—now a Grand Duchy—Berg, Nassau, Hessen, and other smaller states, there were now among its members the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and also a Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, the possession of the Prince Primate, once of Mainz, afterwards of Regensburg. ”

“ May 9 he slept at Châlons; the 10th he entered Metz, where he at once got on horseback, reviewed the troops, and visited the fortifications. The 11th he was at Mayence, where he received the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess of Hesse Darmstadt, as well as the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. The 13th he crossed the Rhine, stopped a moment to see the Prince Primate at Aschaffenburg, met in the course of the day the King of Würtemberg and the Grand Duke of Baden, and spent the night at Würzburg, the sovereign of which was the former Grand Duke of Tuscany, the brother of the Emperor of Austria. ”

“ The Duke stopped his horse, and looked about him in the dead silence which afterwards succeeded. The fifer then came forward, knelt down, holding his stirrup for him to dismount, and said, "Here's to good Würtemberg for ever!"
"Ha! are you there, Hans, my trusty companion in misfortune, the first to salute me in Würtemberg? I expected my nobles would have been the foremost to greet my arrival in my country, my chancellor and my council--where are the dogs? Where are the representatives of my estates? will they not welcome me to my home? Is no one here to hold my stirrup but this peasant?" ”

“ From the old castle towers floated the banners of the Duchy and the Empire—for Würtemberg three stag-horns quartered with the Hohenstauffen black lions. The Duke was not young: he was hard on fifty—an age when a man has got the better of youthful impetuosity and regrets early indiscretions—an age at which, if a man has stuff in him, he is at his best.
The land of Würtemberg is a favoured and smiling land. At the period of which we write, it was not so ample as the present kingdom, but fruitful, favoured, and called the Garden of the Empire. For twenty years this Duchy had been badly governed ”

“ Canton Zürich is, after Berne, the most populous, and beyond comparison the most wealthy of the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland; and the city of Zürich, one of its most beautiful and most flourishing cities. Since the walls of its fortifications have been removed by order of the Grand Council, it has extended and developed itself daily in every direction, like a vigorous tree in the spring. Science, industry, benevolent institutions increase, as if in emulation of each other; and gardens and plantations encircle the increasing city with beauty. ”

“ The Forest cantons were communes of peasant proprietors, dwelling in inaccessible valleys, and their Diet was an assembly of all the male heads of families. Zurich was a manufacturing and commercial town which had grown up under the protection of an old ecclesiastical settlement whose foundation went back to an age beyond that of Charles the Great. Bern was originally a hamlet, nestling under the fortified keep of an old feudal family. In Zurich the nobles made one of the “guilds” of the town, and the constitution was thoroughly [Pg 23] democratic. ”

“ And every good Würtemberger had a right to be glad and proud of the new duke, who had stormed Belgrade under Prince Eugene, and was held to be one of the bravest, noblest minded, and most generous of the German princes of his time.
As he rode through the streets of Stuttgart all admired his stately form, his rich fair hair flowing over his shoulders, his bright commanding eye, and the pleasant smile on his lip; every Würtemberger waved his hat, and shouted, and leaped with enthusiasm. Now at last the Garden of Germany would blossom and be fruitful under so noble a duke. ”

“ An expression of deep seriousness lies like a mask on his powerful face. Is it not enough to be the Emperor of the German federation, with its four kingdoms, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Würtemberg, its six grand duchies, its many duchies and electorates, its imperial territory, Alsace-Lorraine, and its three free towns, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen? Does he not rule over sixty-five million people, over 207 towns of more than 25,000 inhabitants, and seven of more than half a million, namely Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Breslau, and Cologne? ”

“ If any one wants to talk to the burgomaster, I say he is not at home. If they say they saw him at the window, I answer that it makes no difference, he is still not at home. People in Hamburg know at once what that answer means; they slip a thaler into Henrich's hand, and his Honor promptly comes home. If he has been ill, he recovers at once; if he has had visitors, they leave at once; if he has been lying down, he gets up at once. I run about with the lackeys of the gentry, now and then, and I know well enough what goes on in those houses. ”

“ We cross the Donau at Dillingen, at Gunzberg, or I know not where; and by to-morrow's sunset, being rapid travellers, find ourselves at Ludwigsburg,—clear through Canstatt, Stuttgard, and certainly no Katte waiting there! Safe across the intermediate uplands, here are we fairly in the Neckar Country, in the Basin of the Rhine again; and old Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wurtemberg bidding us kindly welcome, poor old bewildered creature, who has become the talk of Germany in those times. ”

“ Put your hand on your heart, direct your gaze into the distance, and from time to time give a backward glance for memory to the old Emperor and his time, and I am convinced that, as Hamburg is progressing in the world, so will our Fatherland progress along the road of enlightenment, the road of improvement, the road of practical Christianity: a blessing for mankind, a bulwark of peace, the wonder of all countries! ”

“ When the administration began to require increased attention she enlarged its council, and presided at its meetings. This curious state of things continued till the thirteenth century, which saw the rise of a general political emancipation in German cities. Though apparently under a thraldom, yet the citizens really grew beneath the mild and equitable female rule into a powerful and thriving body, and at length began to contest with their mistress for self-rule.
To Frederick II. they owed their emancipation. By him Zurich became a free imperial city, governed by its own council. ”

“ He instituted the Volksfest as a sort of memorial, and Cannstatt is proud and prosperous, while Ludwigsburg is like a city of the dead. So the coachman affirms; and once conversation is opened between us it flows without intermission. His head is over his shoulder all the way as we roll back to the city under the beautiful trees of the palace grounds. "If the old king had been living, Würtemberg would never have joined in the last war: he would have told Prussia to fight it out by herself." ”

“ But the following morning the storm showed symptoms of dissolution, and the Professor and I sallied forth to see the city. Every city is worthy of a hundred books; for every city is full of human beings, [Pg 436] or else of history, or both. Zürich has nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants and also has its history. I had seen lying on the library table a beautifully printed and well illustrated pamphlet describing the restoration of the Fraumünster, which was completed in 1912. That venerable building settles Zürich’s historic solidity. ”

“ Vienna, 1814.
for many long years, are known to all who take an interest in the inner and domestic history of Austria during the period of its then ruler's omnipotence. Thirty years of age when he first took his place in the society of the capital, he was a handsome man, slender and well built, attractive in manner, refined and elegant, with an open countenance which united liveliness with good nature, full of chivalrous courtesy of bearing. Even in advanced years he retained something very winning, which gave expression both to his consistent high breeding, and to his kindness of heart. ”