Berline

“ But a much more conspicuous cause, if not the main one, is the fact that Berlin has grown up to Welt-Stadt prominence, overnight, as it were, and the good Berliners have not [Pg 141] yet untangled their feet sufficiently to keep an orderly pace under the new order of things. Two-thirds of them are still living under the old horse-car régime, and when they come to congested corners, where the trolley's clang and the automobile's "toff-toff" prevail, they very willingly lend a hand in increasing the general confusion. ”

“ If it be true that the word German, philologically dissected, means a shouter in battle, then the word Berliner means two shouters talking about a battle. The incessant ya-yaing and nein-neining in the streets, the perspiring and nervous self-consciousness that comes to a large-boned populace suddenly advanced to Welt-Stadt significance, the reckless driving of the cabbies, the screams of the cabbies' victims, these all contribute to the present provinciality of the metropolis, in spite of the modern trolleys, automobiles, half-Londonized policemen, and taxameter cabs. ”

“ It is comforting to reflect that horses will doubtless soon be too old-fashioned for Berlin, and that all the cabs and vans of the future will be motors. The cars run early enough in the morning for the workmen, and late enough at night for people who have had supper at a popular restaurant after the theatre or a glass of beer [303] at one of the Zelten, the garden restaurants that in the time of Frederick the Great were really tents, and where the Berliners flocked then as they do now to hear a band, look at the trees of the Tiergarten, and enjoy light refreshments. ”

“ This peculiarity of Berlin ought to be examined closer; it indicates a strong stratum of undeveloped greatness, and may, when positively brought forth to a point, bring the highest honor on Berlin; but if allowed to act negatively, it 100will, of course, become a shame to this city. ‘The Berliners are such a daring race of men,’ said Goethe, once. That is much the same definition.”
53.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. ”

“ All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner." ”

“ In the Berlin cafés and restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three. Yet most of the people who frequent them are up again at seven. Either the Berliner has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do without sleep, or, with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to eternity. ”

“ TO MRS. ELLIOT,
DRESDEN. Berlin, Feb., 1801.
We are all living here in a very contracted circle, as we are shut out by politics from the chief part of the houses of strangers, and the Berliners themselves are more polite and flattering than hospitable. I do not know whether the Carnival has been here what is comparatively called very brilliant; but certainly, after having witnessed the varied, tumultuous, and luxurious dissipation of London, it appears ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.’ I sacrificed to it neither my health nor my time ”

“ We thus arrive at this monstrous condition of affairs [p. 474] that this city Berlin has no less than a fifth, indeed nearly a fourth, of the entire effective representation of Germany, including Alsace-Lorraine; and even in the largest attendance—which may be put at about 310—the Berliners form 15 per cent. of the whole. There is one Berliner for every million inhabitants of the German Empire, and if the sense of intolerable boredom created among many members by the infliction of speeches from Messrs. ”

“ Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner." ”

“ Berlin cabs are first-class and second-class. The first-class cab is one in which the united ages of the driver, the horse, and the cab are under one hundred years. As soon as they are more than that they become second class.
Berlin is, I should fancy, now the cleanest and the best-lighted city in Europe. After months of darkest London, brightest Berlin is a distinct relief to me. From end to end in every street and in every shop it is a blaze of electric light and clean white colour. ”

“ Berlin is the increasingly important capital of the German Empire,—growing rapidly, but still the royal impersonation of Prussia and [10] the Hohenzollerns; seated in something of mediæval costume and quiet beside the river Spree; as content to cast a satisfied glance backward to Frederick the Great and the Electors of Brandenburg as to look forward to imperial supremacy among the Great Powers, and the championship of continental Protestant Europe. ”

“ When the River Spree is amethystine under springtime skies and the city's lights are yellow in the linden trees, I like best the Berlin that sips its beer in the peace of the little by-streets, the Berlin that laughs in the Tiergarten near the Lake of the Goldfish and on the Isle of Louisa, where watch throughout eternity the graven images of Friedrich Wilhelm the Third and of Wilhelm the First in the years of his boyhood. ”

“ The history and character of Berlin and its people give powerful testimony about human nature and its capabilities. After three-quarters of a millennium and many shocks and reversals through the ages, Berlin is yet a young city-young with all the capacity of the human spirit to renew itself, to strive and to seek, to build anew and create, and, most of all, to hope. Time and again, Berlin has overcome desolation and isolation with will, energy, and courage. ”

“ We reached Berlin in the twilight, the landscape of hill and meadow being softened in the golden glow. The better portion of this beautiful little city of forty-five hundred inhabitants is situated on a ridge, closely skirted by the river, with the poorer quarters on the flats spreading away on either side. There are many charming homes and the main business street has an air of active prosperity. ”

“ BERLIN COMPARED WITH LONDON.
Berlin, a mere village a century ago, is the third city of Europe in point of population, and its growth since 1870 has been phenomenal, as we shall see. Yet the technical barriers which enclose the city remain precisely what they were more than forty years ago, and Berlin is still as it was in 1861, compressed within twenty-eight square miles, six miles long and five and a half wide. At the close of the Franco-Prussian War Berlin, now the capital of a new empire, became a paradise for builders. ”

“ Berlin, I suppose, is the most American-looking city in Europe. In the quarter which I inhabit, the streets are all at right angles, very broad, with dusty trees growing in them, houses all new and flat-roofed, covered with stucco, and of every imaginable irregularity in height, bleak, ugly, unsettled-looking—werdend. ”

“ As we near the end of the 20th century, we see that Berlin, though ancient, is a city of the future. We know that the courageous and freedom-loving spirit that has guided so much of Berlin's past will help ensure a future of freedom for all mankind in the years to come. "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin-Berlin is still Berlin." ”

“ Berlin's famous street, owes its name, fame and shade to the handsome European species, the white-lined leaves of which turn up in the faintest breeze, to show silvery against the deep green of their upper surfaces. ”

“ But modern Berlin, with all its beauty, does not impress me seriously. It tells nothing of the history of the country or the character of its inhabitants; and these beautiful new houses seem to be destined only for the comfortable gatherings of business or industry. The most beautiful palaces of Berlin are built of brick. Prussia's capital resembles Prussia herself; its buildings and institutions have the age of one generation, and no more, because one man alone is their creator. ”

“ Berlin a century ago, no different from Berlin of today, had broad avenues, beautiful public gardens, spacious boulevards, gaudy palaces, luxurious homes, busy restaurants, noisy cafés, all immaculately kept with the orderliness of an army on parade, and with a palpable newness that made one feel that the city and all her gardens, avenues, boulevards, palaces, were laid out by cord and line, chiefly after the design of an individual, without the least indication of the character or ideas of the inhabitants. ”

“ Whatever may come in the future, it is undeniable that the author now cuts a poor figure in Berlin. The city’s drift is toward material things—toward business, official rank, and martial perfection. Even the most prosperous and popular writers of books in Berlin strive to obtain some small post in the civil service in order to command social position. ”

“ When you look away from this, and regard Berlin on its aesthetic, side you are again in that banished Paris, whose captive art-soul is made to serve, so far as it may be enslaved to such an effect, in the celebration of the German triumph over France. Berlin has never the presence of a great capital, however, in spite of its perpetual monumental insistence. ”

“ All that autumn Berlin danced. Berlin flirted. Berlin laughed. Berlin spent money like water. And the clique in the Wilhelm Strasse, the rulers of Germany, helped it along. They realized their own danger. They decided that there should be no national, wholesale awakening to the fact that the huge business colossus of modern Germany had feet of clay, a heart that was hollow, and empty pockets, that over-speculation had drained the imperial exchequer and that the most gigantic national failure and bankruptcy was imminent. ”

“ For the furious tempo of Berlin’s development has swept everything before it. Three out of every four buildings, all over town, are garishly modern. Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment that it is hard to believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could have stood here beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago. Were one to see no more of Germany than its capital he might very easily imagine a Chicago or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly not a Nuremberg. ”

“ I well remember how large I thought Berlin when first I saw it from the steeple of St. Mary, and from the Temple Yard Hills, but how did it now sink and fall in my imagination, when I compared it with London!
It is, however, idle and vain to attempt giving you in words, any description, however faint and imperfect, of such a prospect as I have just been viewing. He who wishes at one view to see a world in miniature, must come to the dome of St Paul’s. ”

“ Berlin has a splendid and cheerful appearance, with fine broad streets, superb white buildings and Palaces, for the most part in the Grecian taste; it has quite the appearance in short of an Italian city. Nearly all the streets are at right angles; they are kept very clean and the shops make a brilliant display. I felt so much pain in my legs, from the effect of my pedestrian journey, that I was obliged to remain in my chamber one entire day. There is a very good table d'hôte at my bin for twelve Groschen. ”

“ Yes, Berlin is an imposing city, but in it, as in all large aggregations of humanity on our planet, luxury and squalor are such near neighbors that the songs and laughter of the fortunate do not drown the moans of the wretched. ”

“ They looked from their windows down into a gardened square, peopled with a full share of the superabounding statues of Berlin and frequented by babies and nurse maids who seemed not to mind the cold any more than the stone kings and generals. The aspect of this square, like the excellent cooking of the hotel and the architecture of the imperial capital, suggested the superior civilization of Paris. Even the rows of gray houses and private palaces of Berlin are in the French taste, which is the only taste there is in Berlin. ”

“ Our coachman fortunately drove through Old Berlin and Köln, as a preliminary to the evening's sight-seeing. Long arcades filled with Jews' shops were worthy the pen of Dickens. This festal day made this most ancient portion of the city also one of the most picturesque. Houses with quaint dormer windows roofed by "eyelids," of an architecture dating back two or three hundred years, gleamed with candles in every window. Almost no house or shop was so poor as to dispense with its share of the universal illumination. ”

“ People on foot. People on horseback. Many in motor-cars of rakish shapes. A very few in carriages.
Berlin taking its swagger Sunday promenade in the year 1913, proud of itself, enormously certain of the fact that it was ahead of the rest of the world in art and civilization and culture!
Berlin a twelve-month before a mad Kaiser, helped by mad Junkers, mad professors, a mad army, a mad clergy, assaulted the decencies of the world ... A year before the free world rose in self-defense and struck back at the crazed Beast! ”

“ Berlin is a city of reason, not a city of faith. You cannot get people to try and do the impossible there. It loves to grade itself upon the possible and do that. Hence the apathy regarding Germany's resurrection. Here all is measured and planned and square and self-poised. No buildings aspire. The golden angels and the other things which are high—are perched there. Some one put them up; they did not fly so high. All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old Berlin to help her. ”

“ For them, shall be no memory of that vast and insuperable gemütlichkeit, that superb and pacific democracy, that dwells and shall dwell forever by night in the spirit of the German people. They will never know the Berlin that lifts its seidel to the setting sun, the Berlin that greets the moonrise, the Berlin that meets the dawn. The Berlin that they know is a Berlin of French champagnes, Italian confetti, Spanish dancers, English-trained waiters, Austrian courtesans and American hilarities. They interpret a city by its leading all-night restaurant ”