MENDELSSOHN’S GRAVE AND HUMBOLDT’S HOME.
By the Author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.
I wish this article could be accompanied by a pen and ink sketch made on the spot of Mendelssohn’s grave and that of his sister Fanny. The simplicity of it would surprise you, as it astonished me, on one Sunday afternoon when, in company with a friend, I wandered in search of the resting place of him whose songs need no words. We had both imagined some lofty monument would mark the spot, and that in order to find it, it would only be necessary to inquire of some one in the vicinity. Pursuing this plan, to our utter amazement we only received an ignorant stare from plebeian and patrician. Finally being told by an old gentleman, “if we would go beyond the Canal-strasse in the direction of the Belle-alliance Platz down the Schöneberger Ufer through a narrow street,” we would come to a gate opening into a cemetery, which we must pass through, before reaching a smaller cemetery, in which Mendelssohn was buried. After many efforts we roused the old porter who kept the key to the latter gate. We walked rapidly in, expecting to see something in monumental art worthy of the name, but the artless old porter pointed to a grave in the corner and there, overshadowed by some trees, stood the plain slabs with the names of Felix, Fanny and August Mendelssohn.
A curious sense of the incongruous came over us while standing by the simple stones and recalling the solemn and appropriate demonstration at the time of Felix Mendelssohn’s death, made in every city and town where his genius had been known. Was it true that here in this small, unknown grave-yard they had left him? Was it to yonder small gate the four horses in black accoutrements drew the carriage containing the coffin covered with palm-branches, laurel-wreaths and flowers? And did the great choirs and orchestras of the city pass through with the grand choral, “Jesus my trust,” preceded by all Germany’s musicians, the clergy, civil officers, professors, officers of the army, and the immense throng of admirers? Perplexed by such thought we followed the old porter, who had started with a watering pot to the grave beyond, and asked if a monument was to be erected to Mendelssohn’s memory. “Ach, nein, er war einer Jude, und deshalb ist er vernachlässigt.” A Jew, therefore is his grave neglected.
When Paul and Barnabas turned to the Gentiles it was because the Jews “had judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life.” But we are never told that a penitent Jew was treated differently from any one else in the days of the Apostles. Although a Jew by birth, Felix Mendelssohn’s character wanted no principle of the genuine Christian. Never was feeling more sacred and profound, expressed in harmonious strain than he expressed in his great oratorio of “St. Paul” and “Elijah,” nor can the praise of God be more grandly heard on earth than in the double chorus of his XLII. Psalm, when well rendered, or again, when with his pious heart he wished to show the triumph at the creation of light over darkness, which ends with a beautiful duet, “Therefore I sing thy everlasting praise, thou faithful God.”
We are told that Mendelssohn spent his last days laboring over a new oratorio—“Christ.” It was commenced during his stay in Italy, and while rambling among the mountains of Switzerland he is said to have been inspired with the theme for his work, which he hoped to make his best. Never was wealth used more wisely and religiously than his. Not only did he clothe the naked and feed the hungry, but every one who came near him with aspirations for an ennobling life he advanced. He undertook a tremendous amount of labor in giving concerts in Leipzig, the proceeds of which were devoted to the statue of Bach. At first he undertook to erect such a monument out of his own means, saying “that it was only right that John Sebastian Bach, who had labored so usefully and with such distinguished honor as cantor at the Thomas school at Leipzig, should have a monument in the streets of the city in which he had lived, as an immortal spirit of harmony.” At these concerts he allowed only Bach’s music to be produced, intending in this way, he said, to make the rising generations of musicians more familiar with the works of one to whom he felt under the greatest weight of obligation, and whom he is said to have resembled in the severity of his studies as well as the loftiness of his aims. But this is the expression of Mendelssohn’s best friends; adverse criticism has much to say, and while his motives were pure and his compositions genuine and vivacious, yet in sublime combinations and serious themes Bach and Beethoven can alone be compared.
Every winter in Berlin the oratorios of “Elijah” and “St. Paul” are given in the Sing-Academy. This old music hall is a place of memorial scenes, the directorship of which Mendelssohn once applied for, at the earnest solicitation of his friends, and was refused. The enthusiastic audiences which now assemble there to hear his music seem to be as forgetful of this as they are ignorant of the little secluded grave-yard in the outskirts of the city where his immense throng of friends and admirers left him twenty years ago.
In beautiful imitation of his noble efforts for Bach’s monument could an appropriation of the money secured by the rendering of his great oratorio be made—an idea which occurs to the mind of strangers in Berlin, but unfortunately not to the citizens, who are less disposed in this case than the Greeks to honor their dead, and who more readily ridicule in Mendelssohn’s death than praise such sentiment as the following:
“By the sea’s margin, by the sea’s strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles shall stand;
By it directed to thy native shore,
The merchant shall convey his freighted store,
And when her fleets are summoned to the fight,
Athens shall conquer with thy grave in sight.”
It had never occurred to the Berliners to raise a monument to Goethe until two years ago, and Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt have just been recognized in this way. “Tegel,” the grand old home of Alexander, is seldom seen by visitors, that is to say, it is not frequented by the traveler as Potsdam and Charlottenburg. An interesting place, and an interesting master it had, “who had trod many lands, known many deeds, probed many hearts, beginning with his own, and was far in readiness for God.” His grave is just beyond the house, at the end of an avenue. His home has been inherited by a niece, and is kept up in all the elegance of former years. The grounds are very handsome, so densely covered in places with magnificent old trees along avenues stretching beyond the house and grave. These forest trees are very rare in this low sandy region. After driving for miles through barren land with only occasional forests of stiff pines, to come suddenly upon trees which somewhat resemble our American oak, bestows a happy home-like feeling to the American who has wandered from her primeval forests.
The house at “Tegel” is built in the most rigid style, relieved on the outside by niches filled with good pieces of statuary. Within every room is painfully neat—the formality with which the furniture is placed shows evidence that the owner had no wife and no children. It is an attempt at an Italian villa, but seems too cold and formal for such a climate as Berlin. There is certainly taste displayed and cultivation evinced in the selection of many things. The library is filled with books, principally works of Humboldt and Voltaire. On the tables are large portfolios containing maps and cartoons. The desk with the pen and inkstand remain just as he left them. Indeed, there is only a suggestion here and there, that the niece is living and owning the place—it seems as if she were a ghost and her life a myth—so still and so orderly are the rooms, and so undisturbed hang the red apples by the house. Indeed, the house seems as silent as the stately avenue of oaks that leads to the grave. Humboldt left a handsome fortune to this niece, for he lived and died a bachelor.
He owned many valuable pieces of statuary. The original of Thorwaldsen’s Venus was purchased by Humboldt with much pride, it is said, and placed in his collection with other rare pieces found at various places in his travels. Among other curious possessions a mutilated old fountain from Pompeii stands in the hall. The floors are tiles, as one generally finds in Germany, and the saloon which contains the finest statuary suggests Goethe’s lines in “Mignon:”
“Und Marmor Bilder stehen und sehen mich an.”
What is there in the make up of literary men which prompts them almost invariably to isolate themselves in some far removed country place? The explanation which is generally given by themselves is, that their time being so precious they can not be interrupted; their ideas will not grow and flourish in the midst of the talkative world. Emerson tells of the literary man who declared “the solitary river was not solitary enough; the sun and moon put him out. When he bought a house the first thing he did was to plant trees. He could not enough conceal himself.” ’Tis worse, and tragic Emerson goes on to remark that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. “At a distance he is admired, but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple.” He affects to be a good companion; but is he entitled to marry? But happily for our love of Emerson, in the same essay he observes, “A man must be clothed with society or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty.” “For behavior, men learn it as they take diseases, one of another.” “But people are to be taken in small doses.” “Solitude is impracticable and society fatal.” Whoever talked more to the point than this wise philosopher? Carlyle talked more wisely, because his spiritual sky was less nebulous, perhaps—but who shall judge of this? All men who have written have subjected themselves to criticism, and criticism is desirable, provided it originates with good and honest intentions. Madame d’Staël wanted to hear it, not to read it! and if more authors and literary people would live as Goethe, as Macaulay, as Madame d’Staël, as the recent German novelist, Berthold Auerbach, in the midst of their friends or foes as they may chance to be, hearing the arguments for and against them, would they not have fewer words and paragraphs to regret at the end of their career? Goethe wanted to hear all that could be said of him, that he might the more cleverly understand what he was, what he was writing for, and where his lessons were to be honored.
Berthold Auerbach was in hearty sympathy with all about him—always living in the heart of the city, seeing his friends once a week through special invitation, as well as whenever they called, and observing his birthdays with a childish interest. One day, finding him sitting on a sofa, back of a table covered with flowers and fruits and presents of various kinds, we at once knew it was his birthday, and expressed a regret that we had not come in with an offering. “Oh, that does not matter, so you bring yourselves; the presents are only from those who did not come; they can not take the place of the absent ones, but they signify love! and love is what we live for!” How much more admirable than the rigid solitary scholar who sits far removed from the voice of the people! Franz Liszt is another German who, although so old, and one would think so exhausted with the voice of praise and adoration from the world, retains an intense longing for his friends and society, and they for him. When he reaches Weimar in the summer, after his winter in Pesth, every one knows or feels his presence. The Berliners even rejoice that he is the nearer to them. We are glad that Longfellow and Buchanan Read and Healy, and a host of Americans have felt his magic friendship, and watched his Saturn fingers so full of knots. His Sixth Rhapsodie, “Les Cloches de Geneve”—“etûdes d’exécution transcendante”—tell how great is his heart, and have most lasting influence upon the mind and feelings. Wagner, Liszt, Auerbach, Knaus and many other artists, musicians and writers of Germany, show that it is possible to live for one’s friends, while living also for fame. But, alas! in America reputation and success are coupled with such secluded habits and such insatiable work that the personal influence of our literary and scientific men can not be known or estimated. Either overwork or small means keeps most of them tied down to a most prosaic life. The wife of one of our distinguished poets, in speaking of the state of society in New York City, said there had not been for years what one could call a literary coterie; that Bryant during his lifetime could have had such a salon, but he was personally too cold and indifferent to devote his leisure hours to the light and easy-going talk of the salon; but she went on to say that had one lamented one lived, he with his warm and generous nature, his wide and untiring interest in others, could have been the center, the heart and soul of such a circle. Alas! in the last few years how are the great about us fallen—Longfellow, Emerson, Bayard, Taylor, Bryant, Ticknor, Motley. Bancroft, who came in with the beginning of the century, may be spared us until its end.
