berlin.—our herberge.

Fairly in Prussia! We have passed the frontier town of Perleberg, and press onward in company with a glovemaker of Berlin, last from Copenhagen, whom we have overtaken on the road towards Wusterhausen.

“Thou wouldst know, good friend, the nature of my prospects in Berlin when I arrive there? Have I letters of recommendation—am I provided in case of the worst? Brother, not so! I am provided for nothing. I dare the vicissitudes of fortune. I had a friend in Hamburg, a Frenchman, who departed thence five months ago for Berlin, under a promise to write to me at the lapse of a month. He has never written, and he is my hope. That is all. Let us go on.”

“I have a cousin,” says the glovemaker, “who is a jeweller in Berlin. I will recommend you to him. His name is Kupferkram.”

“Strange! I knew a Kupferkram in Hamburg; a short, sallow man, with no beard.”

“A Prussian?”

“Yes.”

“It cannot be that my cousin was in Hamburg and I not know it. I was there twelve months.”

“Why not? A German will be anywhere in the course of twelve months except where you expect to find him.”

“His name is Gottlob—Gottlob Kupferkram.”

“The very man! Does he not lisp like a child, and his father sell sausages in the stadt?”

“Donnerwetter! Ja!”

This may not appear to be of much importance, but to me it is everything; for upon the discovery of this vender of sausages depends my meeting with my best and only friend in Berlin, Alcibiade Tourniquet, of Argenteuil, the Frenchman before mentioned. It is at least a strange coincidence.

We came into the capital of Prussia in the eil-wagen from Wusterhausen. We had tramped the previous day a distance of good two-and-thirty English miles, through a flat, uninteresting country, and being dead beat, had made an anxious bargain with the driver of the “Fast-coach,” to carry us to Berlin for a dollar a-head. It was late in the evening as we rumbled heavily along the dusty road, and through the long vista of thick plantations which skirt the public way as you enter the city from Spandau. We dismounted, cramped and weary, from our vehicle, and my companion, a native of Berlin, unwilling to disturb his friends at that late hour, and in his then travel-worn guise; and I myself being unknown and unknowing in the huge capital, led the way at once to “Our Herberge.”

The English term “House of Call” is but an inadequate translation of the German “Herberge.” It must be remembered that the German artisan is ruled in everything by the state; for while English workmen, by their own collective will, raise up their trade or other societies, in whatever form or to whatever purpose their intelligence or their caprices may dictate to them, the German, on the contrary, discovers among his very first perceptions that his position and treatment in the world is already fixed and irrevocable. He becomes numbered and labelled from the hour of his birth, and the gathering items of his existence are duly recorded—not in the annals of history—but in the registry of the police. Thus he finds that the State, in the shape of his Zunft or Guild, is his Sick Benefit Club and his Burial Society, his Travellers’ Fund and his Trade Roll-Call; aspires indeed to be everything he ought to desire, and certainly succeeds in being a great deal that he does not want.

I have a little paper at my hand presented to me by the police of Dresden, which may help to elucidate the question of associations of workmen in Germany. It is an “Ordinance” by which “We, Frederick Augustus, by God’s grace King of Saxony, &c., &c., make known to all working journeymen the penalties to which they are liable should they take part in any disallowed ‘workmen’s unions, tribunals, or declarations;’” the said penalties having been determined on by the various governments of the German Union. “Independently,” says the Ordinance, “of the punishment” (not named) “which may be inflicted for the offence, the delinquent shall be deprived of his papers, which shall be sealed up and sent to his home Government. On his release from prison(!) he shall receive a restricted pass for his immediate and direct return home; and on his arrival there he shall be strictly confined within its limits, nor ever be permitted to travel into the other states of the German Union, until by a long course of repentance and good behaviour his home government may think him worthy of such a favour.” It will easily be understood from this that mechanics’ or other institutions, independent of the government, are unknown.

The German Herberge is the home of the travelling workman. It should be clean and wholesome; there should he be provided, together with simple and nutritious food, every necessary information connected with his trade, and such aid and reasonable solace as his often wearisome pilgrimage requires. All this is to be rendered at a just and remunerative price, and it is usually supposed that the fulfilment of these requisites is guaranteed by the care and surveillance of the police. But this is a fiction.

Our Herberge is in the Schuster-gasse; and a vile, ill-conditioned, uncleanly den it is; nor, I am sorry to say, are its occupants, in appearance at least, unworthy of their abode. But we must not be uncharitable; it is a hard task this tramping through the length and breadth of the land; and he is a smart fellow who can keep his toilet in anything like decent condition amid the dust, the wind, the pelting rain or the weltering sunshine that beset and envelope him on the implacable high road. As there is no help, we take our places among the little herd of weary mortals without a murmur; among the ragged beards and uncombed locks; the soiled blouses and travel-worn shoe-leather; the horny hands and embrowned visages of our motley companions. We are duly marshalled to bed at eight o’clock with the rest; huddled into our loft where nine beds await some sixteen occupants; and having undergone the customary examination as to our freedom from disease and vermin, are safely locked in our dormitory, to be released only at the good will of the “Vater” in the morning.

Your German is truly a patient animal; the laws of his Guild compel him to wander for a period of years, but the laws of his country do not provide him with even the decencies of life upon the road. With his humble pack, and his few hoarded dollars, he sets forth upon the road of life; he is bullied and hustled by the police upon every step of his journey; burdened with vexatious regulations at every halting-place; and while the law forbids him to seek any other shelter than that of his Herberge, it leaves it to the mercy of his host to yield him the worst fare, spread for him the vilest litter, and to filch him of his scanty savings in the bargain. What, in Heaven’s name! are the accommodations for which we in the Schuster-gasse are called upon to pay? There is the common room with its rude benches and tables; a stone-paved court-yard with offices, doubtless at one period appropriated as stabling, but the ground floor of which is now penned off for some few choice biped occupants; while the story above, reached by a railed ladder, and, in fact, no more than a stable loft, is nightly crammed to the door with sweltering humanity. For the purpose of cleanliness there is no other toilette apparatus than the iron pump in the yard; and for the claims of nature and decency, no better resource than is afforded by the sheltering arch of the nearest bridge over the Spree.

The goldsmiths and jewellers in Berlin are too inconsiderable a body to have a Herberge of their own, and therefore we crowd in with the turners, the carpenters, and the smiths; the glove-makers, bookbinders, and others who claim the hospitalities of the asylum in the Schuster-gasse. Let us take a sketch or two among them that may serve as a sample of the whole.

We have a sturdy young carpenter from Darmstadt, bound to Vienna, or wherever else he may find a resting-place, who makes his morning and almost only meal of KÜmmel—corn spirit prepared with caraways—and brown bread; and whose great exploit and daily exercise is that of lifting the great table in the common room with his teeth. An iron-jawed fellow he is, with every muscle in his well-knit body to match. Fortunately, though a Goliath in strength, he is as simple-minded and joyous as a child.

Then comes a restless pigmy of a Hungarian, a jeweller, last from Dresden, full of life and song, but who complains ruefully that the potatoes of Berlin are violently anti-dyspeptic. This suffering wanderer from the banks of the Theiss is also vehemently expressive in his opinion that the indiscriminate use of soap is injurious to the skin, and, as a matter of principle, never uses any.

Near him stands a lank native of LÜbeck, a fringe-maker, whose whole pride and happiness is concentrated in his ponderous staff of pilgrimage; a patriarchal wand, indeed! rightly bequeathed as an heirloom from father to son, and in its state and appearance not unworthy of the reverence with which it is regarded. It is no flimsy cane to startle flies with, but a stout stem some six feet long, duly peeled, scraped and polished, and mounted with a chased head of massive silver.

Close by his side an effeminate leather-dresser from Carlsruhe sits stroking his yellow goat’s beard. Instead of strapping his knapsack to his back like a stalwart youth, after the manly fashion of his forefathers when on the tramp, he trundles behind him as he goes, a little iron chaise loaded with his pack and worldly equipage.

There broods a sombre cordwainer from Bremen, gloating over his enormous pipe, in form and size like a small barrel, raising an atmosphere for himself of the fumes of coarse uncut knaster. He has doffed his white kittel (blouse), and has wriggled himself into a short-waisted, long-skirted, German frock-coat, which, having been badly packed in his knapsack, exhibits every crease and wrinkle it has acquired during a three weeks’ march. Know, friend, that the skilful folding of apparel, to be worn on his arrival in every important town, is one of the necessary acquirements of the German wanderer.

Add to these a rollicking saddler from Heldesheim, who figures in a full beard, a rich cluster of crisp, brown curls, his own especial pride, and the object of deep envy to his less hirsute companions; and who, far too fond of corn brandy-wine, goes about singing continually the song of the German tramp, “Ich Liebe das liederliche Leben!”—This vagabond life I delight in!—an earnest, quiet student, who, for reasons of economy, has made the Schuster-gasse his place of refuge; and a dishevelled button-maker, last from Hamburg, who has just received his geschenck, or trade-gift, amounting to fifteen silver groschens, about eighteenpence in English money; and who ponders drearily over it as it lies in the palm of his hand, wondering how far this slender sum will carry him on the road to Breslau, his native place, still some two hundred miles away.

We have among us the wily and the simple, the boisterous and the patient, the taciturn and the unruly; but though they will sing songs before they go to sleep, and swagger enormously among themselves, they become as still and meek as doves at the voice of the Herberges-Vater (the father of the Herberge), and quake like timid mice beneath the eye of the police.