MUNICH IN WAR TIME.
No matter what you want to do in Germany if you are a foreigner, even a neutral, you have to go to the police. If you want to take a trip, the first thing that you do is to go to the police and ask them if you are allowed to go where you want to go, and then if you are allowed to go you must return to the police exactly twenty-four hours before you start and get your passport stamped.
Then you take your bread card, your butter card, your meat card and your potato card to the bread commission. They cut off tickets for as long as you are to be away, and in return they give you a traveling bread card, a little book with twenty tickets in it. Each ticket is good for either a roll or a piece of black bread, and for each week you receive forty tickets. In the hotels where you stop you receive a meat card on the days when meat is served.
The Son of the Bavarian Crown Prince.
As soon as you arrive at your destination you must go to the police and register. Here they write your whole history down on a field-gray card. One would think that it was an easy matter to slip away and the police would never know. This can be done very easily, but if you are caught you get in an awful muddle. Police come through the trains unexpectedly and ask to see your passport. If it is not in order you are liable to be imprisoned, and you must pay a fine for every day that you are not registered. Sensible people follow all the police rules. They are well advertised and one cannot fail to know them.
The Wittelsbach Fountain in Munich.
An American lady I know went from Berlin to Munich without registering at the police station. A man came through the train and asked her for her pass, and when he saw that it was not stamped she was ordered to report to the Munich police at once. When she got to Munich she forgot to go to the police for three days, and when she went there the good-natured Bavarian policeman let her off.
"I am so glad," she said, "I would not know what to wear if I went to jail.'"
It was in September, 1916, that I made my last trip to Munich. One seldom sees French prisoners in Berlin, but all the way from Berlin to Munich I saw them working in the fields. All of these prisoners had on blue coats and their famous bright red trousers. They made gay spots on the dull German landscapes.
Every little farm had geese, and every little town had its little garrison of soldiers, training. In some places the soldiers were out in the fields drilling. They were running, jumping and shooting.
The Frauenkirche, the Symbol of Munich.
The center of attraction of our whole train was a young sailor from the "Deutschland." He was a fine young fellow and he smiled at everybody. At every station he got out and bought something to eat. He seemed to have an endless appetite and a very long purse.
King Ludwig of Bavaria.
As one gets farther and farther into Bavaria, the wayside shrines begin to appear. They are everywhere along the roads and in the fields. At different places harvest workers could be seen gathered around the shrines in prayer.
When one is many, many miles away from Munich, one can see the two towers of the Frauenkirche, red towers with green tops. These towers are the symbol of Munich.
Outwardly, the only change that one can see in Munich is the substituting of soldiers for students, and it really spoils the place, for while the military spirit suits Berlin so well, it seems out of place with these more gentle southern people. The Bavarian uniforms are trimmed around the collar with a blue and white braid that looks like the edging on a child's petticoat. It is hard to understand how such artistic people could choose such a thing, but a Bavarian's artistic sense is in his mind and not in his dress. The Bavarian soldiers have a reputation all over Germany for being very fine warriors.
The loss of the old Prince Regent Luitpold meant much to these people, and his son can never hope to be as popular even if he did have to wait seventy years before he came to the throne. The Crown Prince Rupert is more popular than his father. He is nearly always with his troops at the front, and even when his eldest boy died, he felt that he could not get away. He said, "This is no time for a soldier not to be attending to his duty." His next son, Prince Albert, is now the heir to the throne. He is a beautiful little boy and is tremendously popular in Munich. The old Müncheners say that he is very much like what Ludwig II was when he was a boy.
Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, "The Fighter of Metz."
Most things to eat are much more plentiful in Munich than in Berlin. For instance, a man can have a pint of milk every day and a woman can have more than that. Ham costs only seventy cents a pound without a card, and on meat days it can be bought in any of the restaurants. The meat portions in the Munich restaurants are one hundred and eighty grams while in Berlin they range from fifty to forty grams; and in Bavaria the price for the portion is no higher.
Vegetables and fruit are very plentiful, but butter and eggs are scarcer than in Berlin. One person gets only fifty grams of butter each week and one egg. In Berlin we generally got eighty grams of butter and never less than an egg and a half a week.
In Bavaria everything is divided among the people. For instance, if a man who lives in the country near Munich has a load of hay for sale, he brings that load of hay to Munich to what they call the central station. They have all kinds of central stations in Munich, for grain, for meat, for eggs, for vegetables, and for butter. The load of hay which the man brings is divided up and given out where it is most needed; he does not dare to sell the load of hay himself.
National Museum at Munich.
It is just the same with eggs. Suppose that you had a brother in the country, and he wanted to send you one hundred eggs to pack for the winter. He could not send you the eggs direct. He would have to send them first to the central station, and if eggs were plentiful that week, the central station would let you have the eggs; but if eggs were scarce and were needed elsewhere, you are given only a small part of the eggs. This plan is followed in everything. Even if you raise a pig, you cannot keep all the meat yourself, you must sell a part of it to your neighbor if he needs it.
The rolls in Munich are much better than in Berlin, and they seem to be made of entirely white flour. Cheese is very scarce in Berlin, but in Munich there is plenty of cheese, and it is very cheap. Pure coffee can be bought at a dollar a pound without a card, and although there is a sugar card the same as in Berlin, still all the restaurants and cafés serve pure sugar.
The price of beer has not been affected much by the war and beer that was twenty-eight pfennigs before the war is now thirty-four pfennigs, and the Hofbräu beer, or the beer made by the royal brewery, is thirty-two pfennigs. Fine malt beers such as Bock Beer and Märzen Beer are prohibited from being made, as they take too much malt and saccharine.
Karl's Gate.
One evening when I was there we walked through the Mathazerbräu, the greatest beer hall in the world. The place was one mass of people drinking beer, soldiers and officers and women. Most of the guests brought their supper with them, and everybody was smoking. It was like walking through a thick fog, there was so much smoke.
Franz von Stuck.
We went to a lot of theaters, cafés and cabarets, and they were always full. Everywhere we went we had trouble in getting a seat. Everybody seemed to be having a very nice time. They were not hilarious, but they seemed to think that staying at home and moping would not help matters. The most astonishing part was the vast amount of money spent everywhere. Some cabarets only served champagne, and the spenders ordered it by the quart. No one got drunk in spite of the amount of fluid they poured into them.
The art show at the Glass Palace was on when I was there, but I did not find it as interesting as the great show I had seen there the year before the war. There were too many landscapes of a dull color. This did not interfere with the sale of the pictures, and one-tenth of them were marked sold.
The Home of Franz von Stuck in Munich.
One day I paid a visit to the studio of Herr Franz von Stuck. He was very cordial. He is a splendid, big, strong man. Lately he has built an addition to his house so that he can have more room for his work, and he has one of the finest studios I have ever seen. The first floor is for modeling, and the second floor is for painting. He said that it was very hard to get good models now as all the men of fine physique were in the war.
"Do you get the same amount of bread as an ordinary man?" I asked him.
"Exactly the same," he answered. "The poorest workingman in the streets gets the same as I. That is why our system is so splendid."
He hardly mentioned his work at all, indeed he seemed quite shy about it. On his table was a dish made of Brazilian butterflies. He picked it up and turned it so that it showed blue, then brown, and then green. "Isn't it beautiful!" he said enthusiastically, "Look at it now!"
I looked around the room at all his wonderful pictures. I thought of all the fame that was his and of all the honors that had been heaped at his feet, and yet there he was admiring a butterfly's wing. I had the feeling that a great man stood before me.