workmen in hamburg.

Here amid the implements of labor, in the dingy werkstube in Johannis Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered details about the German workmen in Hamburg.

German workmen! do not the very words recall to your memory old amber-coloured engravings of sturdy men, with waving locks, grasping the arm of the printing-press, by the side of Faust, Schoeffer, and Gottenberg? Or, perhaps, the words of Schiller’s “Song of the Bell” may not be unknown to you, and hum in your ears:

Frisch, gesellen, seyd zur hand!
Von der stirne heiss,
Rinnen muss der schweiss.

Briskly, comrades to your work!
From the flushing brow
Must the sweatdrops flow.

But your modern German workman is somewhat of a different stamp; he points his moustaches with black wax, trims his locks À la FranÇaise, and wears wide pantaloons. He tapers his waist with a leathern strap, and wears a blouse while at his labors. He discards old forms and regulations as far as he can or dare, and thus the old word “Meister” has fallen into disrepute, and the titles “Herr” and “Principal” occupy its place. Schiller, like a true poet, calls his workmen “gesellen,” which is the old German word meaning companion or comrade, but modern politeness has changed it into “gehÜlfe,” assistant; and “mitglied,” member. In some places, however, the words “knecht” and “knappe,” servant or attendant, are still in use to signify journeyman; as “schusterknecht,” shoemaker; “schlÄchterknecht,” butcher’s man; “muhlknappe,” miller; “bergknappe,” miner; but these terms are employed more from habit than from any invidious distinction.

Well! we live and work on the fourth floor of a narrow slip of a house in Johannis Strasse. Herr Sorgenpfennig, our “principal,” occupies the suite of four rooms, and devotes a central one (to which no light can possibly come save at second hand through the door), to his “gesellen.” We are three; a quiet Dane, full of sage precepts, and practical illustrations of economy; a roystering Bavarian from Nuremberg, who never fails to grieve over the thin beer of Hamburg, and who, as member of a choral union near Das Johanneum, delights in vigorous and unexpected bursts of song; and myself.

Workmen in Hamburg are still in a state of villanage; beneath the roof of the “Herr” do they find at once a workshop, a dormitory, and a home. We endeavour so far to conform to the rules of propriety as to escape the imprisonment and other penalties that await the “unruly journeyman.” The table of Herr Sorgenpfennig is our own, and a very liberal one it is esteemed to be. Let me sketch you a few of its items: delicious coffee, “white bread and brown,” or rather black, and unlimited butter, make up our breakfast. Dinner always commences with a soup, usually made from meat, sometimes from herbs, lemon, sweet fruit, or other ingredients utterly indescribable. Meat, to be fit for a German table, must be carefully pared of every vestige of fat; if boiled it is underdone, unless expressly devoted to the soup, when the juiceless shreds that remain are served up with plums or prepared vegetables; if it be baked (roasting is almost unknown) it is dry and tasteless. Bacon and sausages, with their inevitable accompaniment, sourkraut, is a favourite dish; but not so unvaryingly so as some choose to imagine. Acids generally are much admired in German cookery. In nothing, perhaps, are the Hamburgers more to be envied, in a gastronomic view, than in their vegetables. Singularly small as are these products of the kitchen garden, they are sweeter and more delicately flavoured than any I ever tasted elsewhere. As entremets, and as accompaniments to meat, they are largely consumed. The Hamburgers laugh at the English cooks who boil green peas and potatoes in plain water, for here boiled potatoes are scarcely known—that nutritious vegetable being cut into slices and fried; while green peas are slowly stewed in butter or cream, and sweetened with fine sugar. But we “gesellen” have plebeian appetites, and whatever dish may be set before us, as surely vanishes to its latest shred. The little patches of puff-paste, smeared with preserve, sent to us as Sunday treat, or the curious production in imitation of our English pie, and filled with maccaroni, are immolated at once without misgiving or remorse. If we sup at all, it is upon pasty, German cheese, full of holes, as if it had been made in water, or a hot liver sausage, as an extraordinary indulgence.

And our “Licht Braten?” Herr Sorgenpfennig rubs his short, fat hands, and his round eyes twinkle again, as he tells his little cluster of “Herren Gesellen” that there will be a feast, a sumptuous abendbrod, to inaugurate the commencement of candle-light. The “Licht Braten,” as this entertainment is called, is one of the old customs of Hamburg now falling into disuse. It would be doing Herr Sorgenpfennig an eternal injustice did we pass over it in silence, more especially as he boasts of it as real “North German fare.” Here we have it: raw herrings to begin with. Bah! I confess this does not sound well upon the first blush; but, then, a raw dried herring is somewhat different to one salted in a barrel. To cook it would be a sacrilege, say the Germans. And then the accompaniments! We have two dishes of wonderful little potatoes, baked in an oven, freshly peeled and shining; and in the centre of the table is a bowl of melted butter and mustard well mixed together. You dip your potato in the butter, and while you thus soften the deep-sea saltness of your herring, the rough flavour of the latter relishes and overcomes the unctuous dressing of your potato. I swear to you it is delicious!

But where is our “braten,” the “roast,” in fact? Oh, thou unhappy Peter! I see thee still, reeking over the glowing forge fire, cooking savoury sausages thou art forbidden to taste! I see thee still, struggling in vain to “bolt” the blazing morsel, rashly plucked (in the momentary absence of Sorgenpfennig), from the bubbling, hissing fat, and thrust into thy jaws. Those burning tears! those mad distortions of limb and feature! God pity thee, Peter, but it was not to be! Those savoury sausages are our “braten,” and they smack wonderfully after the herrings. If there is one item in our repast to be deplored, it is the Hamburger beer, which, however, is as good as it can be, I suppose, for the money—something under an English penny a bottle. But here is wine; good, sound wine, not indeed from the Rhine, nor the Moselle, but red, sparkling, French vin ordinaire, at a mark—fourteen-pence the bottle.

Truly, Hamburg, thou art a painstaking, industrious, money-making city, with more available wealth among thy pitch and slime than other towns can boast of in their trimness and finery, but spendthrift, and debauched, and dissolute withal art thou!

Punch, du edler trank der Britten!
Punch, thou noble drink of Britons—

the outburst of some exhilarated poet—should be inscribed upon thy double-turreted gate, good Hamburg! The odorous steam of rum and lemon contends in thine open streets with the fumes of tobacco; the union of these two perfumes make up thine atmosphere; while thy public walks are strewn with the unsmoked ends of cigars, thick as the shrivelled leaves in autumn.

Seriously, the Hamburger toils earnestly, and takes his pleasure with a proportionate amount of zeal. His enjoyments, like his labours, are of a strong and solid description. The workmen trundle kegle balls in long, wooden-built alleys; and down in deep beer cellars, snug and warm, do they cluster, fondling their pipes like favoured children; taking long gulps of well-made punch, or deeper draughts of Bairisches beer. If they talk, they do so vehemently, but they love better to sit and listen to some little troop of harfenisten—street harp-players—as they tone the waltzes of Lanner, or sing some chivalrous romance. Sometimes they form themselves into bands of choristers, and sing with open windows into the street, or play at billiards as if it were for life, or congregate in the dance-houses, and waltz by the hour without a pause. In all they are hearty, somewhat boisterous, but never wanting in good temper.

As marriage is out of the question with the workman in Hamburg, whether stranger or native—unless indeed the latter may have passed through the probationary course of travel and conscription, and be already on the verge of mastership—so also is honourable courtship. His low wages and dependent position form an impassable barrier to wedlock, and a married journeyman is almost unknown. By the law of his native city he must travel for two or three years, independently of the chances of conscription, and thus for a period at least he becomes a restless wanderer, without tie or home. No prudent maiden can listen to his addresses, and thus it is that Hamburg swarms with unfortunates; and this it is which gives them rights and immunities unknown in any other city.