INTRODUCTION.
Ludwig, King of Bavaria, first conceived the idea of raising a monument to the national glory of Germany. In the year 1807, he planned the Walhalla, a grand hall for the reception of the statues and portrait-busts of celebrated Germans, borrowing the title of the structure from the old Norse language, the name being that of the palace into which Odin, the Scandinavian Jupiter, received the souls of the slain heroes. The idea, however, remained undeveloped until the important part played by the soldiers of Germany in the final overthrow of Napoleon gave a new impulse to the great scheme of the king. In 1821, he entrusted his architect, Leo von Klenze, with the execution of his plan. But it was not until 1830 that the design was sufficiently matured for building; and, after the laying of the first stone, twelve years were occupied in consummating the work. The Walhalla was inaugurated October 18th, 1842.
The Walhalla stands in a commanding position on the banks of the Danube, close to the little town of Donaustauf, and not far from Regensburg. It is a noble building of the Doric order, resembling the Parthenon of ancient Greece, 230 feet long, 108 feet broad, and 64 feet high, having a colonnade on every side. It is based upon a massive structure of Cyclopean stone work formed into three terraces, and is approached by a grand flight of steps.
The pediments at each end are filled with marble statues by Ludwig Schwanthaler. The south, pediment, looking over the river, contains an allegorical subject designed by Rauch, and sculptured by Schwanthaler. Germany is here as a female figure surrounded by young warriors, who represent the different States of Germany, presenting to her the chief fortresses under the form of young women. The north pediment is entirely by Schwanthaler. It represents the battle between Hermann and Varus.
The interior forms a noble highly-decorated hall in the Ionic style, with polished marble walls and painted mouldings, the floor being also richly inlaid with marbles. The hall is 168 feet long, 48 feet broad, and 53 feet high. The entablature is supported by 14 Caryatides, treated as Walkyren, the Chusers of Slaughter in the old Germanic mythology, each being 10 feet 9 inches high. They are modelled by Schwanthaler, and executed in marble by his pupils; the figures being painted in the manner supposed to have been practised by the Greeks: the hair is brown, the flesh ivory colour, the tunics are of violet colour, the upper drapery white with red and gilt edges, and the bearskins gilt. A frieze runs round the hall, on which is sculptured the history of the Germans, from their origin in the mountains of the Caucasus to their baptism by Bonifazio. This frieze is the work of Martin Wagner, a Bavarian sculptor, living at Rome, assisted by Schopf and Pettrich. It is in marble, and measures 3 feet 4 inches in height, by 292 feet long.
Six statues of Victory, larger than life, and sculptured by Rauch, are arrayed round the hall. Between these are placed the busts of the great men of Germany, in six groups, numbering, in all, 96. They begin, chronologically, with Arminius, who repelled the Romans, and King Harry I. (A.D. 876-936), and come down to Blucher and Schwarzenberg. The Poets are represented from the medieval Minne and Meister-singers, down to Goethe and Schiller. All these busts are however modern works of art, the earliest dating from 1794.
The “Ruhmeshalle” (or “Hall of Fame”), at Munich, contains another collection of portrait-busts of celebrated Germans. This, like the Walhalla, was established by Ludwig, King of Bavaria, and built by the architect Klenze. It was commenced in 1843, and completed in 1853. It is well situated upon a hill which rises from a flat of some extent near Munich, called after the Queen of Louis, “die Theresen-Wiese.” It is in the Doric style of Greek architecture, 230 feet long, by 150 feet broad, and 60 feet high, and is surrounded by 48 columns, 24 feet in height. Within the 92 metopes are 44 figures of Victory, and 48 representations of the principal events in the progress of Bavaria, designed and executed by Schwanthaler. The pediments also are ornamented with statues in marble by the same artist, personifying the provinces of the present kingdom of Bavaria. The statue of Bavaria, a cast from the head of which is in the Crystal Palace (See No. 205 of the Handbook of Modern Sculpture), stands in front of the building.
Some of the German portraits enumerated in the following pages are copies from portraits in both collections above referred to. There are also some portrait-busts of which the originals exist in the “Royal Museum,” and in the “Lager-Haus” at Berlin.
(The German Portraits begin immediately behind the Statue of Sir Robert Peel at the south-west angle of the Great Transept and Nave.)
ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS.
313. Peter Paul Rubens. Painter.
[Born at Cologne, in Germany, 1577. Died at Antwerp, in Flanders, 1640. Aged 63.]
One of the most prolific and famous painters; not of the Flemish school only, but of the world. His life as untroubled as his genius was grand. Crowned heads courted him, wealth followed him, and until immediately before his death he knew not the sorrow of sickness. He passed happily through life, multiplying with astonishing rapidity those marvellous pictures which have associated his name for ever with the idea of glorious colour. He left paintings in France and in Spain, and both countries vied with each other in loading the great artist with well merited honours. He came to England in the reign of Charles I. as Envoy from the Spanish court, and in England fresh dignities awaited him. As a painter, he is memorable for the harmony, beauty, and mellow richness of his colouring, which flings a surpassing charm over every one of his productions. His men are always powerfully drawn and characterized with wonderful variety; but for the graceful and ideal representation of the more delicate sex, we have only the coarse type of his countrywomen. His portraits are fresh, vigorous, and carefully executed. His most celebrated work, The Descent from the Cross, at Antwerp, is a wonderful creation, both for expression and feeling. In landscapes, Rubens was also most happy. In all his works there is a luxuriance of life and vigour and passionate expression. In person he was tall, majestic, and extremely handsome; in temperament energetic and enthusiastic; in his manner of living plain and moderate; in his dealings with his brother artists, gentle and munificent as a prince. Amongst his pupils he reckoned Vandyke, Teniers the younger, Jordaens, and Sneyders.
[For a description of this noble statue, see No. 107, Handbook of Modern Sculpture.]
314. Georg Friedrich Handel. Musical Composer.
[Born at Halle, in Saxony, 1684. Died 1759. Aged 75.]
This magnificent musician, the dominant characteristics of whose genius are grandeur, spirituality, and solemnity, was the son of a surgeon. Having in his youth displayed a passionate love for music, and having travelled much with the view of gaining instruction in Germany and Italy, he went to London, at the age of twenty-six, and there composed, by order of Queen Anne, the “Te Deum” and “Jubilate,” which, in 1714, were performed at St. Paul’s. Subsequently became Director of the Opera, in the Haymarket, for the production of his own works: a large subscription, headed by George I., enabling him to open the theatre. The scheme falling to the ground, in consequence of the quarrels of the singers, Handel abandoned the stage, and devoted his powers to the production of those sublime oratorios that have immortalized his name. In 1740, he composed “Saul;” in 1741, “The Messiah;” the last a three weeks’ work. Other great oratorios followed. In 1750, he lost his sight, and from that time until his death he gradually declined. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. This mighty musician was infirm of temper, and imperfectly educated. When roused, he was violent and ungovernable. A singer once refused to sing one of his airs. Handel, seizing the man in his arms, and pale with rage, threatened to throw him out of the window if he persisted in the refusal. His countenance wore a rough expression, though he was good-natured when not agitated. He stands at the head of the greatest masters of music; and, as a performer on the organ, he was without a rival.
[In the Musical Collection of the Royal Library at Berlin. The artist is not known, but it bears many evidences of being a truthful portrait, and is altogether a more characteristic head than the conventional portrait by Roubiliac No. 314A.]
314A. Georg Friedrich Handel. Musical Composer.
[From the marble by Roubiliac.]
315. Johan Joachim Winckelmann. Antiquary.
[Born at Steindal, in Germany, 1717. Died at Trieste, in Austria, 1768. Aged 51.]
The son of a shoemaker, and self-educated. At thirty became a Roman Catholic, and journeyed to Rome, where he studied the antique, and published his celebrated. “History of Art.” At Trieste he was murdered by a felon, for the sake of the medals conferred upon him by the Courts of Austria and Bavaria. His investigations into the true principles and significance of high art, more especially of antique sculpture, led the way to the enlightened criticism of Lessing and Goethe.
[By Doel. It was placed in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, by Geo. F. Reiffenstein.]
315*. Anthony Raphael Mengs. Painter.
[Born at Aussig, in Bohemia, 1728. Died at Rome, 1771. Aged 43.]
Surnamed, but without much reason, the Rafaelle of Germany. He studied assiduously at the Vatican. Upon his return to Germany he was appointed at Dresden painter to the King. Revisiting Rome he fell in love with a beautiful peasant girl, and became a Roman Catholic in order to marry her. In 1757, he commenced painting in fresco, and his works of this kind will bear comparison with some of the best of the Italian masters. In 1761, he was invited by Charles III. to Spain, where he painted for the palace at Madrid, the “Apotheosis of Trajan.” This is his chef d’œuvre. He died leaving scarcely sufficient to pay his funeral expenses, and the King of Spain provided for his seven children. The works of Mengs display correctness of drawing, vigour of colouring, finished execution, and studied grace: but the loftier qualities of mind, demanded by historical painting, are wanting. He was a writer on art as well as an artist: and a generous, warm-hearted man.
[Bust to come.]
316. Franz Joseph Haydn. Musical Composer.
[Born in Rohrau, on the frontiers of Austria and Hungary, 1732. Died at Vienna, 1809. Aged 77.]
The son of very poor and humble parents, who cheered their poverty and supported their labour by home music. The family concerts constituted Haydn’s initiation into Art. He was a passionate neophyte. At the age of thirteen, he had composed a mass, which he was unable to write correctly. Taken into the service of the great master Porpora, he submitted to menial drudgery in order to have the advantage of his instruction. In 1760, he entered the better service of Prince Esterhazy, with whom, as Court Musician, he continued for the space of twenty-five years. During that period, some of his finest symphonies were produced. In 1791, he went, on invitation, to London, and continued there for thirteen years, sending forth his inimitable works, and receiving honour on every side. In 1794, he returned to Germany, established himself in the suburbs of Vienna, and composed the oratorio of “The Creation.” He died in 1809, from agitation, it is said, induced by the advance upon Vienna of the French army. Haydn is one of the greatest of modern musicians. He set free the spirit of instrumental music, and purified his art by the purity, simplicity, and beauty of his works. He is remarkable for lucid melody and for his power of effective painting. His labours were enormous and his compositions countless. He could himself reckon up to 800 works, large and small, and there he stopped.
317. Johann Wolfgang Mozart. Musical Composer.
[Born at Salzburg in Austria, 1756. Died at Vienna, 1791. Aged 35.]
The most renowned of German musical composers. His father was a musician, and he himself the greatest musical prodigy that ever lived. It is alleged upon authority that at four years old, he could already play and even compose. It is certain, that before he was eight a harvest was in reaping by his family, who travelled over Germany to exhibit his astounding performances. In 1764, he was in England playing before the King and Court. In 1769, he produced an opera, being then 13 years of age. At 15, he was in Italy, creating wonder by works which rivalled those of the great Italian masters. Medals were struck in honour of young Orpheus in the land of art and song. He was not 17 years old when he could count as his productions four operas, an oratorio, two masses, and many other compositions. Mozart grew in years, and did not suffer the ordinary penalty of precocity. In him “the child was father to the man.” The blossom became ripe fruit. In 1781, he produced his opera of “Idomeneo.” Then followed the “Marriage of Figaro,” and in 1787, his masterpiece “Don Giovanni”—a work composed in an incredibly short space of time. Now came sickness—and the threatening of a complaint allied too frequently to unnatural intellectual development. Symptoms of consumption gave rise to melancholy—melancholy to inordinate labour—inordinate labour to speedy death. Mozart had the grave already in sight when he composed his exquisite “Requiem.” This illustrious man was the founder of the school in which Beethoven was a faithful disciple. His fertility of creation, the rich luxurious beauty of his music, his purity and melody, can hardly be excelled. In all the relations of life Mozart was blameless. He had a generous soul, and we are pained to think so rare and so richly endowed a genius should at any period of his career have suffered anguish from poverty and distress.
318. Karl Friedrich Zelter. Musician.
[Born at Berlin, 1758. Died 1832. Aged 74.]
The son of a master mason, whose trade he followed. Forsaking masonry for music, he became the pupil of Fasch, at whose death he was appointed Director of the Royal Institute of Music, and Professor of music in the Academy of Fine Arts at Berlin. Zelter’s works are chiefly songs and compositions for men’s voices, without accompaniment. He also wrote on the theory of music. He will be chiefly remembered as the friend and correspondent of Goethe, and the early instructor of Mendelssohn.
[By Rauch, March, 1825. Modelled as a present from the sculptor to Goethe, the friend of Zelter. The Academy of Music had it executed in marble for their institution, Rauch again charging nothing for his services.]
319. Johann Gottfried Schadow. Sculptor.
[Born at Berlin, 1764. Died there, 1850. Aged 86.]
The son of a poor tailor. He evinced, at an early age, a great love for the fine arts, but he was one of many children, and there was small hope of gratifying fine-art tastes in the needy household. Fortune brought the youngster in contact with a sculptor, who taught him drawing, and from that moment his destiny was fixed. Whilst receiving instruction, he ran off with a girl to whom he was attached, married her at Vienna, and with the consent and at the expense of his stepfather, proceeded to Rome. There for two years he laboured hard as a sculptor, in the Vatican and in the Capitol. In 1788, he had already advanced far enough to be appointed Court Sculptor at Berlin. In 1822, he was made Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in the same city. His works, numerous and of a high order, are found in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. He was one of the first who opposed to the insipid and conventional idealism of the eighteenth century, a vigorous and truthful representation of nature, heightened by noble intellectuality. This is especially visible in his portrait statues. He was a worthy precursor of Rauch, who is one of his most famous followers. To his eldest son, Rudolph Schadow, also a distinguished sculptor, belong the specimens of modern sculpture which appear under the name of Schadow in this collection. The second son, Wilhelm Schadow, is one of the most celebrated painters in Germany, and President of the Academy at Düsseldorf. Both have a greater name as artists than the father.
[By Rauch, 1811. Plaster. The original is in the studio of Rauch.]
320. Albert Bartholomäus Thorwaldsen. Sculptor.
[Born 1770. Died 1844. Aged 74.]
He was born, as he said, at Copenhagen: some say in Iceland: some at sea, between. His father, an Icelander, was employed in carving heads for ships in the Royal Dockyard, on which the great sculptor practised his young hand: his mother was a priest’s daughter. He was educated, as all the children of workmen, in the Holm, or dockyard, at the King’s expense. At 11, Thorwaldsen was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. At 17, he first secured attention, and gained the small silver medal; at 19, the large. At 21, he won the small, at 23, the large gold medal. His birthday he did not know, but he called it March 8th, the day of his arriving at Rome in 1796. In the Eternal City he addicted himself to the antique. He brought introductions to Zoega the Dane, then living at Rome, a learned and antiquarian connoisseur. Zoega dealt kindly and hardly with the young sculptor, severely criticizing his labours; and Thorwaldsen, under his critic’s censure, and from his own dissatisfaction, destroyed numerous attempts. His first “Jason with the Golden Fleece,” of the natural size, made no impression, and he broke it in pieces. He made it again, 81⁄2 feet high. It secured general admiration, and this time he did not destroy his work. He had, however, made up his mind to go home; his small preparation was completed; Jason was to be sent after him; but a mistake in a passport created a day’s delay. During the short interval, Thomas Hope, a well-known name in England, entered the artist’s studio, and saw the “Jason.” The price was asked. “Six hundred zecchini.” “I will give eight hundred,” answered Thomas Hope. Thorwaldsen stopped in Rome, and now began and went on, his mightier career. His chief works are classical subjects—some Christian, to which he drew late in life. The most popular of all his productions is the bas-relief of “Priam and Achilles.” In 1819, he returned to Copenhagen, but not permanently until 1838. In Rome he was the friend of Canova, who acknowledged his merit. His health was often very weak, and he died suddenly at a theatre. He was simple in his manners, and beloved. In fire and grandeur he resembled Michael Angelo. The old Scandinavian energetic blood rolled in his veins. The family tradition made him descended from one of those early warrior-kings: a more glorious, innocent conqueror.
[By Rauch. Plaster. 1816. Done at Rome. A fine artist-like head. The original is in the studio of Rauch.]
321. Ludwig van Beethoven. Musical Composer.
[Born at Bonn, in Rhenish Prussia, 1770. Died at Vienna, 1827. Aged 57.]
This great composer was taught music from his childhood; but it was not until his twelfth year that he at all developed his genius. Sent to Vienna, he was placed there under the care of the Chapel-Master, Albrechtsberger, in spite of whose cold and conventional instruction he advanced in knowledge and strength, and excited general attention by his extraordinary gift of improvisation, and marvellous execution. In 1805, he composed “Fidelio;” then followed his oratorio of “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” the “Heroic” and “Pastoral” symphonies, and his pianoforte Concertos. At this time Beethoven had scarcely the means of subsistence, and to save him from want, a pension of four thousand florins was settled upon him by the Austrian government. He fixed his abode at the village of Baden, near Vienna, and his life became one of retirement and self-nurture. He composed his music in his solitary rambles. The wildest scenery to him was the choicest, for he shrank from intercourse with men. His habits were known and respected. He died unmarried. From his twenty-sixth year he had been deaf; but he was otherwise robust. He was passionately fond of Scott’s romances, and these works, with the “Odyssey” of Homer, were his consolations during the illness of which he died. His fertility and variety of production are marvellous. The passionate soul of melody possessed him. His works are rich in harmony, tinctured it may be with the delicate mysticism that ruled his genius in its silent haunts.
[By Ernst Hähnel, of Dresden. Plaster. 1847. In the possession of the artist, who executed the large statue of Beethoven in bronze, which stands in the Place at Bonn. This was the study from the life, for the head of the statue.]
321*. Ferdinando Paer. Musical Composer.
[Born at Parma, in Italy, 1771. Died 1839. Aged 68.]
At sixteen, Paer began to write for the stage. Before he was twenty-six he had already produced twenty-two operas, all in the conventional style of the old Italian operas, and after the manner of Cimarosa and Paisiello. After 1797, a laudable change is remarked in his style—more force in the harmonies, more variety in the modulations, with richer and more effective instrumentation. In 1801, appointed by the Elector of Saxony Chapel-Master in Dresden, and, favoured by the repose afforded here, Paer still improved his style. In 1806, Dresden was taken by the French. The musician transferred his services to Napoleon, and accompanied his new master to Paris. In 1810, revisited his native city, and there composed his master-piece, the opera of Agnèse. His subsequent career is remarkable for little more than for petty intrigues against rival composers, and—after his appointment as Director of the Italian Opera in Paris in 1812—for miserable squabbles with actors and musicians. He ceased to be an artist, and condescended to become a mere courtier and “homme de salon.” His death was accelerated by long-continued habits of intemperance. Paer was gifted with great fluency, and his works have brilliancy and spirit; but he is without originality, force, and dramatic power.
[Bust to come.]
322. Christian Friedrich Tieck. Sculptor.
[Born 1776. Died at Berlin, 1850. Aged 74.]
Of the school of Schadow. Brother to the celebrated poet and critic, and the friend of Rauch, with whom he was engaged in illustrating in sculpture the glories of the late war. His productions are in various parts of Germany, and are held in high estimation. He is the sculptor of the statue of Frederic William at Ruppen, and of the front gate of the cathedral at Berlin.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1825. Given by Rauch to his friend Tieck, and now in the possession of his widow.]
323. Christian Rauch. Sculptor.
[Born 1777. Still living.]
The leading German sculptor of his day—endowed with great imaginative powers, and excelling in portraits, which, under his treatment, exhibit truth and nature, intimately associated with poetic elevation. In 1804, he took his way from Berlin to Rome, and presently secured the friendship of Thorwaldsen, whose love for the antique greatly influenced and directed his taste. Whilst at Rome he executed “Mars and Venus wounded by Diomedes,” a colossal bust of the King of Prussia, and other celebrated works. In 1811, invited by the King of Prussia to Berlin, he produced many colossal statues and countless busts. His colossal “Victories,” for the Walhalla, and the equestrian monument of Frederic the Great, are well known efforts of his genius. A great artist—competent to express vigorously, truthfully, and naturally, historical rather than ideal conception.
[By F. Tieck. Plaster. 1825. Modelled, to be given to his friend Rauch, but the marble bust not finished. From Lager-Haus.]
324. Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Architect and Painter.
[Born at Neuruppin, in Germany, 1781. Died at Berlin, 1841. Aged 60.]
Styled by his countrymen the Luther of architecture. Employed by the King of Prussia to erect those structures in his capital which have stamped a new character on Berlin, and endowed it with high architectural claims. He gave a new impulse to his art, both by his influence and his example, and was besides a generous and amiable man.
[By F. Tieck, 1819. The marble bust is in the Berlin Museum. A copy in bronze is on the staircase of the Royal Theatre, Berlin.]
325. Leo von Klenze. Architect.
[Born at Hildesheim, in Hanover, 1784. Still living.]
The architect, in Munich, of “The Glyptothek,” and the constructor of many works, Royal and otherwise, in the same city. Also the designer of the plans for the “Walhalla.” Author of some literary productions bearing upon his art. In 1844, accompanied Ludwig I. to Greece to examine the plans already made for the improvement of Athens, and to suggest original designs. Klenze possesses great decorative skill, and a comprehensive knowledge of the history of architecture; but the true genius and high faculty of composition appears on few of his productions. He does not take what is universal in the various styles with which his mind is familiar, in order to form a style expressive of his own spirit, and suitable to the country and climate in which it is his business to exhibit it, but he borrows his structures from Greece and Italy, and deposits them in Munich, loading the city with specimens of foreign styles of architecture. His effects are undoubtedly picturesque, and the decorations of his buildings always beautiful, but fault is found with the internal arrangements of his edifices, with the lowness of the apartments, and with the bases of his façades, which are occasionally mean and even vulgar.
[By J. Halbig. Plaster. 1846. Executed for King Ludwig.]
326. Peter Cornelius. Painter.
[Born at Düsseldorf, in Prussia, 1787. Still living.]
A renowned painter of the later German school. He studied under Langer, a disciple of the old school, who made enormous efforts to suppress the romantic tendencies of his pupil, to check his imagination, and to restrain his boldness. By a visit to Italy, however, Cornelius confirmed the bent of his genius, and rendered the good intentions of Herr Langer of no avail. His indomitable perseverance, hard study, and rare gifts, soon enabled him to outstrip all rivalry. Whilst still young he was invited to direct at Düsseldorf the School of Painting, which has proved itself one of the most careful and successful nursing-mothers of Art in Germany. In 1819, engaged by the King of Bavaria to decorate the Museum of Sculpture then constructing at Munich. The subjects painted by Cornelius in fresco for this Museum from the heroic myths of Homer and Hesiod, are conceived with a rich imagination, and executed with superior power. His cartoons illustrating the old “Nibelungen-Lied,” and the “Faust” of Goethe, are equally remarkable. In 1825, appointed Director of the Academy of Painting at Munich. In 1841, summoned to Berlin by the King of Prussia, for whom Cornelius designed the “Shield of Faith,” presented by his Majesty to his godson, the Prince of Wales. Cornelius paints with the passionate sensibility and delicate perception of a true poet. His copious imagination is never at fault, and his ability to produce is as striking as his faculty of conception. Yet he never oversteps the modesty of nature, or the confines of true art. He is the worthy leader of a daily increasing school in Germany, which attempts, and not unsuccessfully, to unite in art earnestness of thought, activity, boldness, and freedom.
[By E. Hähnel. Plaster. 1852. In the possession of the artist. This was the study for the head of the large statue of Cornelius which Hähnel was commissioned to execute for the new museum at Dresden, and which stands on the outside, amongst the artists of Germany.]
327. Christoph Gluck. Musician.
[Born in the early part of the 18th century. Died at Vienna, 1787.]
The great merit of Gluck is that he emancipated music from the trammels of conventionalism and false taste, and made it the exponent and minister of poetry and the drama. Gluck, invited to London in 1745 to celebrate in music the butcheries of the Duke of Cumberland, found that the operas represented there were mere concerts, for which the drama was a pretext. Sound was everything, meaning nothing. His own music was set to words with which it had no connexion, and, torn from its original context, lost all its effect. This fact led him to the discovery of the great principle which is the key to the rest of his life: viz., that music is not merely a pleasant arrangement of sounds intended to gratify the ear, but a subsidiary language, able to exalt and strengthen the emotions, raised by the measure and force of the spoken language to which it is allied. In 1761, he composed his opera of “Alceste,” as an illustration of his idea. It was followed in 1762 and 1763 by “Paris and Helena” and “Orpheus.” In 1779, he composed the “Iphigenia in Tauride,” the greatest of his works. Wieland has happily expressed Gluck’s claim upon our respect in a sentence. “He preferred,” he says, “the Muses to the Syrens.” His works are not so much operas, in the ordinary sense of the term, as poems, in which music is employed for producing and sustaining emotion. Off the stage Gluck was nothing, but upon it the musician was himself a poet. The manners of Gluck, like those of Beethoven and Handel, were rough and blunt. He was large in person; and his habits were indolent and somewhat sensual. The bust discloses the man.
[From the Terracotta, by Houdon. In the musical collection of the Royal Library at Berlin. The only bust taken from the life.]
327A. Christoph Gluck. Musician.
[From the Terracotta by Houdon, in the Louvre.]
327B. Christoph Gluck. Musician.
[From the bust by Francin (Fils) in the Louvre.]
327C. Christoph Gluck. Musician.
[From a bust by R. Wagner of Berlin.]
328. Friedrich Gärtner. Architect.
[Born 1792. Died 1847. Aged 55.]
The chief architect in Munich since the withdrawal of Klenze. His most important work is the new Library in that city, which is remarkable for the simple magnificence of its façade. He designed the Palace of King Otho at Athens, and he re-opened the quarries of Pentelicus, which had not been employed since the days of Hadrian. Upon the departure of Cornelius from Munich, Gärtner received the appointment of Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
[By Johann Halbig.]
329. Julius Schnorr. Painter.
[Born at Leipzig, in Saxony, 1794. Still living.]
First studied under his father, who was Director of the Academy at Leipzig. In 1811, went to Vienna to get instruction there; but found little to gratify his taste, or to encourage his genius. In 1817, travelled into Italy, and there made the acquaintance of Ludwig, then Crown Prince of Bavaria. At Rome worked at the Villa Massimi, where Cornelius was also employed, and where he produced in the space of five years his eleven frescos from the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. Called to Munich in 1827, he received there the appointment of Professor of Historical Painting in the Academy, and painted for the King of Bavaria his admirable frescos illustrating “The Nibelungen-Lied.” In 1846, accepted an invitation to Dresden. Schnorr is chiefly known to us by his beautiful illustrations of the Bible. Amongst all the fresco painters of Munich he stands unrivalled for combining individual life with ideal composition.
[From the plaster model by Ernst Rietschel, dated 1848. In the possession of the sculptor.]
330. Ludovic Schwanthaler. Sculptor.
[Born at Munich, in Bavaria, 1802. Died there, 1848. Aged 46.]
Most of his numerous and admirable works adorn his native city. His masterpiece is the colossal statue of Bavaria, cast in bronze, 54 feet high. The noble head of this figure forms a remarkable object in our Court of German and English Sculpture. Before its inauguration the artist had died, having been an invalid for the last fifteen years of his life. Many casts from the works of Schwanthaler may be found in the Court of Modern German Sculpture. He had the advantage of being an excellent classical scholar, and was besides a warm-hearted, unassuming man, simple in his manners, full of wit and humour, and a true friend. As an artist he had a fine classic feeling, great spirit and fire, a strong imagination, a vigorous and creative genius.
[By Xavier Schwanthaler. Marble, 1849. The original is in the “Ruhmeshalle” (Hall of Fame), at Munich. It was modelled from the life in 1837.]
331. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Musician.
[Born at Berlin 1809. Died at Leipzig 1847. Aged 38.]
The grandson of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of an eminent banker. Like Mozart he exhibited an astonishing precocity. In his twentieth year he was already a musical composer of great originality. Then setting out on his travels, he visited London, Paris, and various parts of Italy. In 1834, appointed Chapel-Master at Düsseldorf. In that city he produced, when 27 years old, his oratorio of “St. Paul.” It won the success it merited. In 1839, he composed his “Lobgesang,” or “Hymn of Praise,” by many regarded as his masterpiece. In 1846, his marvellous oratorio of “Elijah” was produced at Birmingham. From this period his mental activity was prodigious, and his production ceaseless. He died, literally consumed by the fire within him. He was a great man. His faculties, of the highest order, were engaged in the advancement of the purest art. His manner was unaffected, his heart warm and affectionate. He loved England. His earliest works indicate his genius; his latest compositions are tinged with a deeper, and more solemn hue—but all he did was beautiful—like his mind.
[By E. Rietschel. Marble. 1848. In the possession of Alexander Mendelssohn, the banker, of Berlin, for whom it was executed.]
332. Johann Halbig. Sculptor.
[Still living.]
An excellent German sculptor, who studied under Schwanthaler, at Munich. The grand colossal figure of Franken (Franconia), in the German Court of Modern Sculpture (No. 173), is by this artist.
[Modelled by himself. 1850. A commission from King Ludwig.]
333. Moritz von Schwind. Painter.
[Born at Vienna, 1804. Still living.]
Studied under Ludwig Schnorr; then under Cornelius. Since the year 1828, has been employed in decorating with frescos the Palace of the King of Bavaria, at Munich, and the Palace of the Grand Duke of Baden, at Carlsruhe. His compositions from the classical mythology, and from the modern poets, particularly from Tieck and Goethe, are amongst the finest things which have been produced in modern times.
[From a medallion by Ernst Rietschel.]
333*. Edward Devrient. Player.
[Born 1801. Still living.]
One of a family remarkable, like that of the Kembles in England, for dramatic genius. His uncle was a famous actor of his time; his elder brother is a player of repute in Hanover, and his younger brother, Emile (born in 1803) is known in England, as one of the best representatives of Hamlet at the present day. Edward is rather a studious and careful artist, than a man of genius. He is also an author of ability, his dramatic works having obtained considerable favour.
[From a medallion by Ernst Rietschel, dated 1852. In the possession of the sculptor.]
POETS AND DRAMATISTS.
334. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. Epic and Lyric Poet.
[Born at Quedlinburg, in Prussian Saxony, 1724. Died at Hamburgh, 1803. Aged 79.]
Goethe said well of Klopstock, that to him German literature owed a debt of gratitude, for he was in advance of his time, although he lived long enough for his time to be in advance of him. He is the classical epic poet of Germany, as Milton of England, but with a difference. Milton was nurtured on the overflowing bosom of English poesy. Klopstock had imbibed no such strength at a native fount. The sublime utterance of the one still reverberates through a world that is still the wiser and the better for the heavenly strain. The sonorous rhapsodies of the other already weary the ear of the land on which they originally fell with weight and power. Few were the admirers of England’s blind poet when he sang “of Man’s first disobedience.” To-day they are countless. When Klopstock published the first part of “The Messiah,” Germany was enthusiastic. The learned were at his feet, kings craved his companionship, and the people worshipped a prophet. To-day, a young German critic has the hardihood to say—without being stoned for his heresy—that Klopstock’s poems are like nothing so much as translations from some unknown author, by an erudite but somewhat unpoetical philologist. With the early admiration for the poet, was mingled awe for the sanctity with which his subject had enveloped his person. He became in a nation, what Pollock, the author of “The Course of Time,” has been amongst a class. If he is now taken down from his undue eminence, his just claims to respect must not be disregarded. If Luther constituted an epoch in the moral and intellectual emancipation of his country, Klopstock marked an era in the progress of her poesy. Both names are landmarks, in the history of the language, as cultivated in the service of letters. The latter was, also, a pioneer and a reformer. His odes are striking and lofty; his learning extensive; his piety fervent; and his poetic sensibility profound. The thirst of communing with the soul of his native Germany—since, a widely-possessing enthusiasm—announced itself as a literary virtue, first in Klopstock’s writings. It spoke in the selection of some of his themes: but was chiefly operative in his profound and enamoured study of the language which begins, in his verse, to discover and lavish exuberant wealth.
[By Dannecker.]
335. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Man of Letters.
[Born at Camentz, in Saxony, 1729. Died at Brunswick, 1781. Aged 52.]
A philosopher and a poet, but more of an investigator than of a creator. Nevertheless, a strong renovator. He is named by Germany of to-day with gratitude, amongst those who loosened the old chains of imitation from her literature, and summoned her to think and to write, self-conscious, from her own deep and powerful spirit. Powerlessly enough, her drama, till his time, was borrowed from that of a people, geographically divided from her by a river—intellectually, her antipodes. Lessing showed her, in place of Corneille and Racine, a foreigner, in whose kindred veins her own blood ran; and called her to Nature and to herself, in calling her to Shakspeare. Lessing was a critic in plastic art; witness his “Laocoon.” He was a fabulist of great invention, fancy, and humour: witness his “Fables,” which may take rank with those of Æsop. He was a dramatist of skill, power, and pathos: witness his “Nathan the Wise,” and his “Emilia Galotti.” Above all, he was an independent thinker; and a style clear, precise, and masterly, runs through all his writings. He is one of those now elder classics through whom the language of the country has risen into literary rank and service.
[By Ernst Rietschel. Bronze. 1849. Erected by subscription at Brunswick. For further account of this statue, see Handbook to Modern Sculpture. No. 200.]
336. Christoph Wieland. Poet.
[Born in Suabia, 1733. Died 1813. Aged 80.]
An exquisite artist in words, herein resembling though more enchanting than, Lessing, whose contemporary he was. He might seem to be a transitionist; softening the passage from the imitative French school in Germany, to the pure German. Or you may suspect that the foreign element is not French, but Italian, if modern,—or Attic, if ancient. For he was a student of classic antiquity, and a lightness of grace, and a mobile sensibility to the beautiful, which are not German, reign over his numerous writings in prose and verse. Some of his works are direct imitations from the Greek—as his Dialogues after Lucian. His elaborate philosophical romance, “Agathon,” lays the scene in old Greece. But his gift is an unrivalled ease in the flow of his narrative verse—lively or serious—made alluring by perpetual representation to the eye; and roving with predilection amidst romantic scenes and adventures. His poem of “Oberon” is a masterpiece in this kind. He seems to have prepared for it in studying Ariosto, but engrafting upon the Italian style the more picturesque of his own northern and later poetry. The qualities missed in this rich, enticing, and luxurious word-painter, are profound passion, intellectual might, and the more solemn contemplation of the universe, natural and spiritual. Wieland was a scholar: you feel the influence of his reading at every step; but the springs in his own bosom well freely.
[The original marble, by Schadow, is the property of Henry Crabbe Robinson, Esq. of London. Flaxman declared it “a perfect work, never surpassed by any artist, living or dead.” When Mr. Robinson visited Goethe at Weimar, and informed him that he possessed this bust, Goethe related the circumstances under which it had been lost to Germany, and added: “You have made me as happy as though I had recovered a lost child.” Mr. Robinson promised Goethe to bequeath the bust to the Public Library at Weimar, where Wieland had lived for many years. One cast has been allowed to be taken for the Crystal Palace; and the mould has been destroyed.]
337. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Poet.
[Born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in Germany, 1749. Died at Weimar, in Germany, 1832. Aged 83.]
For comprehensiveness and grasp of thought, for profound knowledge of human life and dealings, for intellectual prowess, for intimate acquaintance with various and opposing arts and sciences, Goethe stands alone in Europe throughout the period which he elevated by his presence and swayed by his achievements. He was a great poet, an excellent dramatist, a fine novelist, a skilled naturalist; with chemistry, botany, and anatomy he was familiar. In truth, it is not easy to limit the immense domain through which his giant mind ranged at its will, conquering and acquiring wherever it touched. His productions are voluminous, corresponding to the wealth of his overflowing brain. His “Faust” predominates far above his other works in popular impression. It is the one in which he seems the most resolutely to have committed himself to his subject. Wild, audacious, lying as this does desperately out of the Real and the Possible, he throws himself into his enterprise, doing it justice, with all his gathered might. We have a feeling persuasion of this having been his own favorite work, to which he most confided, with love, the intimacies of his genius. The recognition of Faust, as a high work of art, must, however, be restrained to the first part. In the second the poet seems as though self-bewitched. Certainly, Germany never has possessed so consummate a master, in art, of her words. His lyrics are gems of music. They have the felt charm of grace, rather than demonstrable worth. In the verse of Schiller it is the other way. Ask of his Germany what constitutes the all-extolled merit of Goethe, and you will hear for answer:—“He is the great world-sage.” But some of the elements of true wisdom he unquestionably lacked. Admit all his strength, his knowledge, his skill, his intuition, and you still miss the heart lodged by Mother Nature in the bosoms of Homer, of Shakspeare, of the compatriot and contemporary Schiller; which, warm and large, embraced with loving and devout sympathy all that is great and high in the souls of men. You desire, in many of his personages, the beating pulses of simple, natural, human affection; the exuberance of genial and generous passion;—in himself, the possessing and tyrannizing enthusiasm, proper to the vowed follower of the Muse. His judgments of the world show distinguished capacity, but his pictures are not generic representations of Man, either as reality gives him in experience to every one of us, or as poesy would select him. Goethe promulgated speculations on plants and colours that have been received into science. He made other speculations during his mighty and protracted career, which passed into the spirit of more than one generation, to influence, guide, advance, fashion, and direct it.
[By Alexander Frippel, 1789. Modelled from the life when Goethe was in his prime. It was done at Rome, by order of the Prince Waldeck, in whose castle at Aroldsen the original exists. Goethe at that time allowed his hair to grow in all its natural luxuriance. “I remember him well,” says a distinguished friend and countryman of his; “he was then as handsome as Apollo.”]
337A. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Poet.
[This bust is by Rauch, from the marble, dated 1820. It was a commission from the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar, and occupies its place in his palace.]
337B. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Poet.
[This bust is from the colossal statue, the work of Steinhauser, executed by order of the Grand Duchess of Saxe Weimar.]
338. Friedrich Christoph von Schiller. Poet.
[Born at Marbach, in Germany, 1759. Died at Weimar, 1805. Aged 46.]
According to the Germans, Schiller stands second in the list of their great poets, Goethe being the first; but in the esteem of the rest of the world, Schiller is pre-eminently the greatest of German poets. In universality, breadth and power, his genius yields to that of his illustrious rival; but in delicacy of perception, refinement of feeling, intense sympathy with the passions he represents, exquisite purity of thought and diction, and in the treatment of ideal beauty, he is without a competitor in his own country. His manifest delight in the delineation of pure and generous characters is not the least grateful of his excellences. His poetry is the bright intellectual reflexion of his own chastened spirit, as the writings of Goethe constitute the masculine and mighty expression of his essentially sensual nature. The German stage was formed by Schiller, whose later tragedies gave to the drama of his country a rank that it had never held before. At the outset of his career Schiller studied law, then medicine; and whilst his own tastes would have led him to the pastoral office, he found himself, at the age of 30, appointed to the Chair of History at Jena. His acknowledged greatest work is the tragedy of “Wallenstein.” He died of consumption, and was buried with public honours. He conferred dignity upon the literature of his country, and helped, more than any other man of his time, to bring it abreast of the poetry of other nations; but the originality, beauty, and force of his productions are not more worthy of contemplation, than the aspiring grandeur and nobility of his moral character. He was the friend and pupil of Goethe. The teacher was the more consummate artist, the disciple was the purer man. Schiller exalts our idea of humanity, Goethe lowers it.
[By Dannecker. Marble. 1805. The original was bequeathed by the artist to King William of Würtemberg, who presented it to the Museum at Stuttgart.]
338A. Friedrich Christoph von Schiller. Poet.
[This colossal bust was executed by order of King Louis of Bavaria for the Walhalla.]
339. Ludwig Tieck. Author.
[Born at Berlin, 1773. Recently deceased.]
A writer in literature and art, who has exercised a sensible influence upon the minds of contemporary authors. His narratives reveal a powerful imagination and a profound sense of the beautiful. In his “Zerbino” he exhibited his ideas on general æsthetics. A visit to England in 1818 inspired him with the idea of translating the plays of Shakspeare, and he undertook this labour in conjunction with W. Schlegel. The translation is perhaps the best that has ever been made in any language of our great poet. At the early period of his literary career, Tieck delighted in the marvellous and fantastic. In 1820, his genius took a new direction, and built upon an historical foundation, and upon observation of actual life. The present King of Prussia charged Tieck with the direction of the theatre at Berlin, and conferred upon him a pension. Many of his works have been translated into English—two by Bishop Thirlwall.
[By F. Tieck. Plaster. 1836. In the Lager-Haus. The original model was done at Dresden.]
340. Berthold Auerbach. Poet and Novelist.
[Born 1812. Still living.]
Of Jewish parents, and originally intended for theological pursuits. Completing his education in 1832, he abandoned Rabbinical lore for the study of history, philosophy, and general literature. In 1841, he published a life of Spinosa, to whose doctrines he was deeply attached, and a translation of that philosopher’s complete writings. In 1843, he produced a much more popular and generally interesting work, “Village Histories of the Black Forest,” which has been translated into English, Dutch, and Swedish. Since 1845, Auerbach has resided either at Weimar or Leipzig. He is zealous in the cause of popular education, and, during the commotions of 1848, took part with the moderate democrats.
[By Ernst Rietschel. Medallion. 1847. In the possession of the sculptor.]
SCIENTIFIC MEN AND WRITERS.
341. Johann Gutenberg. Inventor of Printing.
[Born at Mayence, in Germany, between 1395 and 1400. Died there, 1468.]
Nothing is known of the early history of Gutenberg, save that he was born of a patrician family. In 1427, he resided at Strasburgh. When and where his first attempt at printing was made, it is impossible to say, for he never affixed his name, nor the date of printing to any of his productions. About 1438 he first employed moveable types made of wood. In 1443, he quitted Strasburgh, and returned to his native place. There he met with one John Faust, a rich goldsmith, and engaged with him to establish a printing-press, Faust finding the money for the undertaking. The press was established, and then, for the first time, the Bible was printed in Latin. Business went on prosperously for a time. But, four hundred years ago, it fared with great discoverers and great speculations as at the present hour. Faust had made large advances, and Gutenberg could not meet the claim. The pair went to law; and, as it falls out in these cases, the goldsmith got the verdict. He retained the business. Gutenberg was thrown upon the world. There he found a friend, was set upon his feet, and established another press. In 1837, a splendid monument, by Thorwaldsen, was erected to the memory of Gutenberg in his native town, where the members of the Gutenberg Society—to which many of the writers of the Rhenish provinces belong—meet to celebrate his mighty discovery, and to do honour to his name. Who shall fix the merit or assess the claims, or tell the influence exercised in the world by the portentous labours, of “The Inventor of Printing?”
[By E. Von Launitz. Plaster. 1840. Modelled gratuitously by the artist, for the celebration of the invention of printing in 1840. For an account of the very line monument erected to Gutenberg at Frankfort by E. Von Launitz, see No. 175 of Handbook to Modern Sculpture.]
342. Immanuel Kant. Metaphysician.
[Born at Königsberg, in Prussia, 1724. Died there, 1804. Aged 80.]
The founder of a new philosophy in Germany. After twelve years’ meditation, he produced, in the space of five months, his celebrated “Criticism of Pure Reason.” His main theory is, that there is only one source of knowledge, viz., the union of subject and object; that is to say, our knowledge is partly mental, partly physical,—one half of it coming from the mind, or subject, the other half from the object. The mind has its own forms which it gives to objects. Time and space are forms of the mind, not things existing out of it. By thus restoring to mind its independent activity he was able to oppose Locke, proving that we have ideas independently of experience, and to oppose Hume, by proving that these ideas have a character of universality, necessity, and irresistibility. Hume insisted that the understanding is treacherous. Kant declared it is only limited. For a time, Kant’s philosophy superseded every other system in the Protestant Universities of Germany. A man of high intellectual endowment; his life rigorously philosophical. He lived and died a type of the German Professor. The cathedral clock of Königsberg, which town he never once quitted during his long life, was not more punctual, it was said, than Immanuel Kant.
[By Fried. Hagemann. The original in marble is in the University of Königsberg. F. Hagemann was a pupil of G. Schadow; he was born in 1773, and died at Berlin in 1806. He executed this bust at Königsberg.]
343. Heinrich Pestalozzi. Educator.
[Born in Switzerland, 1745. Died there, 1827. Aged 82.]
In a year of great dearth and distress to a Swiss Canton, he found himself in charge of half a hundred ragged and wretched children—in an empty barn for a school—with hardly bread for them and him, and wholly without books, or any other usual implements of that industry; but with a heart yearning and overflowing in love towards his little helpless ones, and with an intellect singularly given to resolve the complex forms of knowledge into the primitive elements fitted, by their evidence and their simplicity, for the tender and opening mind to receive. So driven and so gifted “he made every child its own book.” These emphatic words of the narrative tell the secret of that genius with which he afterwards renovated instruction for the schools of Europe. To draw forth power—to invite the native energies into spontaneous action—to lead on the pupil, step after step, in creating thought, in investigating and constructing, how slowly soever, knowledge for himself—to foster intelligence under the kindliest influences, like a plant that wins growth in dews and sunshine, in soft airs and showers—was the new and living scholastic art which Pestalozzi opposed to the old tyranny of inflexible rote, rule, and routine. But intellectual training alone, he held for vain and pernicious. The roots must strike and feed in the soil of the religious, rightly-governed will.
[Marble. 1809. A commission from King Louis of Bavaria. The original is in the Walhalla.]
343.* Johann Peter Frank. Physician.
[Born at Rotalben, in Germany, 1745. Died at Vienna, 1821. Aged 76.]
One of the greatest practical physicians that Germany has produced. In 1779, he published the first volume of his most famous work, the “System of Medical Police,” which he states to have cost him ten years intense study. Was Professor of medicine at Göttingen. In 1795, invited to Vienna by the Emperor with commission to reform the medical department of the army. In 1804, charged by the Emperor Alexander with the formation of a chemical school at Wilna; and subsequently received many tempting offers from Napoleon to establish himself in France. Has written many interesting works in connexion with his profession; but his fame as a writer rests upon the publication already mentioned.
[The bust, which is to come, is by Rauch, in bronze. 1841. The original belongs to the monument raised to Frank by subscription, in the House of the Orphans at Halle on the Saale.]
344. Friedeich Heinrich Jacobi. Philosopher and Poet.
[Born at Düsseldorf, 1743. Died at Munich, 1819. Aged 76.]
The son of a merchant whose business he followed in spite of his great fondness for literature, until an official appointment in his native city enabled him to devote his whole time to study. In 1777, he published “Friendship and Love,” a philosophical poem, and in the same year was invited to Munich, where he was made Privy Councillor. In 1781, he had a sharp controversy with Mendelssohn, respecting the doctrines of Spinosa. In 1804, he assisted in the formation of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, of which institution he became President in 1807. His work published in 1811, upon “Divine Things and Revelation,” involved him in bitter discussion with Schelling. Jacobi was a philosophical critic, rather than the founder of a distinct philosophical system, and his polemical works did good service to philosophy by weeding false theories from systems already in existence. He was an honest, diligent, and penetrating inquirer after truth, and carried a reverent mind and a sincerity of purpose into all his investigations. He affirmed that all our knowledge of the divine world comes by spiritual intuition, and that all demonstrative systems tend to fatalism.
[By Tieck, 1809. In plaster. Modelled at Munich, and now in the Royal Museum, Berlin.]
345. Albrecht Thaer. Physician and Agriculturist.
[Born at Celle, in Hanover, 1752. Died at Mœglin, near Frankfort, 1828. Aged 76.]
Educated for the medical profession at Göttingen, where in 1774, he took his doctor’s degree. From his youth upwards of a serious and reflective turn, engaged in philosophical studies, and in brooding over plans for the amelioration of his kind. He passed some time in England, at the University of Oxford, and there attracted the notice of George III., to whom he was appointed Physician in Ordinary. After making a pedestrian tour through England, he visited Scotland, and closely investigated the system of agriculture there pursued. Henceforth he belonged to agricultural science. In 1794, he published his introduction to English agriculture. Retiring to Celle upon the death of his father, he founded in his native place an institution for the education of young agriculturists. Implements instantly improved, and a rational system of cultivation spread throughout the Communes bordering on that of Celle. Invited to Berlin, he quitted Hanover in 1804. Obtaining a property at Mœglin on the Oder, through the generosity of the King of Prussia, he began a course of oral instruction in agriculture to classes of youth collected from all parts of Germany. His Institution rapidly rose to the rank of an Academy, and all its Professors were paid by the Prussian government. As an agricultural writer, the name of Thaer is worthy of being placed beside that of our own Arthur Young, and of the meritorious Frenchman, Olivier de Serres. He is the reformer of husbandry in his own country, and an enlightened expounder of the great principles upon which agricultural prosperity in modern times rests.
[By Carl Wichmann. Marble. In the possession of Thaer’s family at Mœglin.]
346. Samuel Hahnemann. Physician and Founder of Homœopathy.
[Born at Meissen, in Saxony, 1755. Died in Paris, 1843. Aged 88.]
He began life under good auspices. His father, a porcelain painter, an upright and instructed man, in straitened circumstances, is said to have been assiduous in inculcating upon him his own principles of integrity. When, unable to support further the expenses of his education, he was about putting him to a trade, the Meissen professors, struck by the lad’s talents, resolved to continue his education gratuitously, and afterwards obtained for him the same favour at Leipzig. He embarked in his profession, and gained such distinction, that for a whole twelvemonth, during the illness of the celebrated Wagner, all the hospitals of Dresden were placed under his direction. His eminence offered the fairest prospects, when he was visited by a growing distrust of the science which he practised. He found in it no settled and commanding principles. He saw the ablest men, groping their way between experience and conjecture. One law, as he thought, dawned on him; that the cure of the disease is to be effected by the same agent which, in the healthy body, would have produced it. On this basis he re-constructed medicine, giving to his new system the name of “Homœopathy,” or “The Science of Like Affections.” His disciples devoted themselves to the creation of a suitable Materia Medica, by experimenting upon their own healthy bodies; and it is a second discovery of Hahnemann, if a discovery, that infinitesimal doses may be effectual in the cure of disease. The system of Hahnemann waged war to the knife, and it met with war to the knife. As an historical point it is worthy of remark, that Homœopathy has spread, and is spreading, its conquests. The honesty of the founder may stand on the single plain fact, that by denouncing and renouncing established doctrines, he stepped down from the safe height of his profession, into hazard of the poverty which he had tasted, and from which he had laboriously risen.
[By Rauch. The original bust is in marble, in the Library at Bremen.]
346A. Samuel Hahnemann. Physician and Founder of Homœopathy.
[This is a colossal bust representing the homœopathist at a more advanced age.]
347. Heinrich Wilhelm Mathias Olbers. Astronomer.
[Born at Abergen, in Germany, 1758. Died at Bremen, in Germany, 1840. Aged 82.]
In 1779, whilst studying medicine at Göttingen, he became known as an astronomer by his observations on the comet of that year. He then discovered a new method of calculating the orbits of comets. In 1802, he discovered the planet Pallas; and in 1807, after an arduous search of three years, the planet Vesta. Olbers was by profession a physician, and he divided his time between the practice of medicine, and the pursuit of his darling study. His observatory was the most complete known in Germany at his time. He wrote but little, and his works are on abstruse subjects. His valuable library was purchased at his death by the Emperor of Russia, and deposited in the University of Pultowa.
[For description of this statue, see Handbook to Modern Sculpture.]
348. Friedrich Augustus Wolf. Philologist.
[Born at Hainrode, in Germany, 1759. Died at Marseilles, 1824. Aged 65.]
Son of the organist of Hainrode. In 1777, he entered the University of Göttingen, where he gave private lessons to his fellow-students in English and Greek, and published an edition of Shakspeare’s Macbeth. In 1807, he went to Berlin, and took an active part in the foundation of the University shortly afterwards created there. Is honourably known to literature, for his erudite and admirable editions of the classical authors, and for his bold elucidation of many obscure points in ancient learning. His most celebrated work, the “Prolegomena ad Homerum,” published in 1795, was directed to overthrowing the opinion, previously universal, which saw in the “Iliad,” the entire creation of a single mind. He argues that it is the contexture of distinct traditionary songs, the productions, probably, of many distinct singers: thus dissolving at once the unity of the poem and of the poet, and making out of one many Homers. An earlier suspicion had already separated the authorship of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” Both questions are still in full debate amongst the learned. He may be regarded as the founder of the modern philological school of Germany; and his “Prolegomena” undoubtedly exercised a greater influence upon modern scholarship than any work that has yet appeared.
[By F. Tieck. Marble. 1822. In the Royal University, Berlin.]
349. Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Philosopher and Metaphysician.
[Born at Rammenau, in Germany, 1762. Died at Berlin, 1814. Aged 52.]
He was an humble private teacher in Leipzig when he first made acquaintance with the writings of Kant, whose views he eagerly adopted and cherished. He subsequently (1792) introduced himself to Kant by a work which he wrote in eight days, “A Critique upon every possible Revelation.” This publication procured for its author the Chair of Philosophy at Jena, in 1793, which he was obliged to resign in consequence of his heterodox religious principles. Finding an asylum in Prussia, he was appointed to the Philosophical Chair first at Erlangen, then at Berlin. In 1813, he joined a corps of volunteers, and took part in the memorable campaign of that year, his wife accompanying him, and performing many heroic and womanly services to the wounded. Husband and wife both took fever in the discharge of their duties, and died. It has been said of Fichte that he erected the temple which Kant declined to build. His great aim was to construct a science out of Consciousness, and to found upon it a system of morals. He endeavoured to establish the identity of Being and Thought, and is therefore the great advocate of Idealism, which, however, he understood in a different sense from that taught by Berkeley. According to his theory, the realization of the world is the complete development of ourselves—which should tend to the beautiful, the useful, and the good. His life and death were both honourable to his nature. Before he died, he was doomed to see his system in a great measure superseded by that of Schelling.
[Bust by Ludwig Wichmann. Marble. The original is in the hall of the University of Berlin. Executed for the University.]
350. Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland. Physician.
[Born at Langensalze, in Saxony, 1762. Died, 1836. Aged 74.]
Professor of medicine at Jena in 1793, and physician to the King of Prussia. The author of several works, the most celebrated being “The Art of prolonging Human Life,” a book translated into many languages. His fame in his own country was very great, and he is styled the Nestor of German practitioners.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1833. A commission from the University of Berlin, where the original exists.]
351. Alexander von Humboldt. Naturalist and Traveller.
[Born at Berlin, 1769. Still living.]
The mighty traveller of our own day. Filled with literature and science, as if he had spent one life in the library, the laboratory, and the observatory, he performed the work of another in treading visited and unvisited plain, valley and mountain of the eastern and western hemisphere; uniting an ardour of spirit and a vigour of intellect rarely mated, and not often, singly matched. An author of books that have advanced existing science, and the creator of new sciences. His writings, conveying an account of his world-wide journeys and scientific exploits, and treating profoundly and originally of general physics, zoology, comparative anatomy, astronomy, mineralogy, magnetism, and botany, are without parallel for richness of materials, and in respect of their value as manuals for all enlightened explorers of the marvels of nature. After a life of almost superhuman labour, and inconceivable results, the grey-headed sage sums up the diligence of his lengthened years, in a survey which registers, along every line of human inquiry, the point of progress attained in the contemplation of the Universe,—the first half of the teeming nineteenth century having elapsed. Who else could have achieved—who but he could have attempted—the Atlantean service? Who but the philosopher, to whom the whole cycle of the physical sciences is familiar—who walks hand in hand, a friend and fellow-labourer, with their most distinguished inquirers? Who but the scholar, before whose eyes the lore of old time lies unrolled? Who but the workman whose strength toil cannot quell, and whose fire age does not quench?—Spread his “Kosmos” before a young and ardent intelligence, which has just then accomplished its regular liberal nurture, and say “Read and comprehend.” The comprehension exacted will, when acquitted, have added an education.
[By Rauch. Executed in marble at Rome, 1823.]
351A. Alexander von Humboldt. Naturalist and Traveller.
[This medallion, by F. Tieck, was modelled gratuitously for a medal struck at the expense of those who had attended a course of lectures delivered by Humboldt, and by them presented to him.]
352. Gottfried Hermann. Philologist and Critic.
[Born at Leipzig, 1772. Still living.]
This distinguished scholar evinced, at a very early age, a taste for classical literature, but was compelled by his father to study law at Jena. Returning to his native city, he resolved to abandon the career of jurisprudence for that of literature. In 1798, he became Professor of philosophy. The foundation of his reputation was his fine work on Greek metres, well known to English students. He translated “The Clouds” of Aristophanes, and some tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles. His academic dissertations are numerous, and his Latin poems are admirable specimens of antique composition. Hermann has rendered invaluable service to the cause of letters. Goethe said of him, that he was “a true Sçavant, for he knew how to renew the old and to revive the dead.” Dr. Parr placed him at the head of the great contemporary critics.
[By Ernst Rietschel. Marble. 1846. Executed for the University of Leipzig, and placed in the hall there.]
353. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Metaphysician.
[Born at Leonberg, in Germany, 1775. Still living.]
At Leipzig, where he studied medicine and philosophy, became the pupil of Fichte. Afterwards filled Fichte’s vacant Chair at Jena, where he lectured with great success. Continued in Bavaria until 1842, when he was invited by the King of Prussia to Berlin. Is still there, occupying as lecturer the philosophical Chair once held by Hegel. Is often styled the German Plato. It has been suggested that he should rather be called the German Plotinus. Schelling proclaims the incapacity of reason to solve the problems of philosophy, and calls in the aid of a higher faculty—“intellectual intuition.” He is the founder of a new school of scientific thinkers, called the Nature Philosophers, of whom Oken is the most illustrious example. He treats Newton’s speculations upon light with disdain, although they have led to many practical discoveries. Schelling’s views on light and philosophy, generally, will probably lead to little more than endless disputation. His works, nevertheless, indicate a vivid imagination conjoined with, subtle dialectics. Coleridge, in his philosophical writings, has often adopted and adapted the ideas of Schelling. In many respects, Schelling’s head and face resemble those of Socrates.
[By J. Halbig. Marble. 1852. The original is in the Royal Palace at Munich. It was executed by order of King Maximilian II.]
354. Jan Jacob Berzelius. Chemist.
[Born at Ostgothland, in Sweden, 1779. Died at Stockholm, 1848. Aged 69.]
The son of a village schoolmaster, and educated for the medical profession. Cultivated with ardour the science of chemistry, which then scarcely drew the attention of the medical student. Appointed Professor of Chemical Pharmacy in the University of Stockholm, and retained the Chair for the space of forty-two years. At home and abroad he attained to great honour and distinction. In Sweden he was made a noble, and he could boast of connexion with eighty-eight scientific societies of Europe and America. His patient investigations helped largely to lay the foundations of organic chemistry; and to him pre-eminently belongs the honour of applying the great principles of inorganic chemistry. He invented the use of symbols for chemical formulæ, an invaluable method of representing chemical changes; and was as distinguished for his researches in analytical chemistry, as for his philosophical views of the science. His personal appearance was that of a strong, healthy man, and gave no indication of his intellectual power. An early riser, devoting all his mornings to his scientific labours, and his evenings to social relaxation. He was beloved in Stockholm.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1822.]
355. Sulpitz von Boisserée. Architect and Archæologist.
[Born at Cologne, 1775. Still living.]
A man to whom, as to his brother, Germany is indebted for one of its most interesting and valued picture galleries. The two brothers, and a friend named Bertram, in 1803, formed a resolution to collect the artistic antiquities of Germany, and for years all three pursued their object with the utmost vigour, intelligence, and zeal. In 1814 “The Boisserée Collection” already reckoned 200 works of art, and was arranged at Cologne. It was ultimately transferred to Stuttgart, on the invitation of the King of Wurtemburg. Many valuable masterpieces of old masters were thus brought to light. In 1827, the collection was ceded to Louis, King of Bavaria, for 120,000 dollars, and in 1836 conveyed to Munich, in which city Sulpitz and his brother established themselves. A writer upon the “Architectural Monuments of the Lower Rhine,” and an indefatigable, as well as a successful, day labourer in the field of his early and later discoveries.
[Bust. Plaster. By L. Schwanthaler. 1840. The original is in the Palace at Munich.]
356. Peter Kaspar Wilhelm Beuth. Member of the Council of State in Prussia.
[Born 1782. Died 1853. Aged 71.]
Director in Berlin of the Government department of trade, commerce, and buildings, and head of the Great Industrial Society of Prussia. In his public service he endeavoured to advance the principles of Free-trade, and always acted upon the idea that the regulative intervention of government in matters of commerce should be restricted to cases of general danger. He established many useful institutions in connexion with his department, and caused the issue of several works of instruction for industrial schools and for artisans. He also introduced into Prussia valuable improvements in manufactures, brought home by himself from the United States, England, and France, into which countries he had travelled. An active promoter of enlightened industry.
[By F. Tieck. 1847. Modelled for a large gold medal struck by the Great Society for the Encouragement of Industry in Berlin, and presented to Mr. Beuth.]
357. Karl Gustav Carus. Physician and Anatomist.
[Born at Leipzig, 1790. Still living.]
The son of a painter. Intended for a dyer,—he devoted himself to the study of chemistry; but, widening his sphere, applied himself to medicine, and, subsequently, to anatomy. In 1811, appointed to the Chair of Comparative Anatomy in Leipzig; and, in 1815, to the Directorship of Clinical Midwifery, at the Medico-Surgical Academy of Dresden. Has acquired great reputation by his lectures on Psychology. Also a painter of considerable talent, and the author of numerous works on Medicine, and upon Art. His Letters on Landscape-painting are valuable to artists; their merit was recognised by Goethe. No less important is his book on the “Proportions of the Human Body,”—just published. In him severe science and beautiful art—a rare union—are happily combined.
[By Ernst Rietschel. Plaster. 1846. In the possession of the sculptor.]
358. Karl Gutzkow. Journalist and Dramatist.
[Born at Berlin, 1811. Still living.]
A German author, who, after the breaking out of the Revolution of 1830, exerted himself to advance the interests of his countrymen by publishing one work against Revelation, for which he received three months’ imprisonment, and another against Marriage, which was scarcely issued before he himself entered the marriage state. The dramas of Gutzkow have fared better than his polemical writings, some of his plays being very popular. He is a prolific author, and has cleverness and wit, which he brings to the illustration of every topic of the day; but his vanity and conceit surpass his abilities, and perpetually mislead him.
[By Ernst Rietschel. Plaster. 1850. In the possession of the sculptor.]
SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN.
359. Hans Joachim von Ziethen. Prussian General.
[Born at Ruppin, in Germany, 1699. Died at Berlin, 1786. Aged 87.]
One of the bravest and best of the great Frederic’s generals. Served with great honour in the campaign of Silesia, 1742; secured the victory of Hennesdorf by the eminent skill displayed in the retreat from Bohemia. As lieutenant-general, made the campaign in Saxony, 1756, and won further distinction in 1760 at Torgau. When 80 years old still eager for action, and kept out of battle only by the kind interdict of the king. He died honoured by his sovereign, beloved by his inferiors, and worshipped with enthusiastic admiration by the great mass of the people. Frederic the Great was fond of proposing military problems to his officers, asking them, in such or such an imaginary situation,—“What would you do?” to which the other officers replied, as they best might. All that he could ever get from old Ziethen was: “Sire, only let me see the enemy coming, and I shall know well enough what to do with him.”—So he did.
360. Gebhardt Lebrecht von Blucher, Prince of Wahlstadt. Prussian Field Marshal.
[Born at Rostock, in Germany, 1742. Died in Silesia, 1819. Aged 77.]
First entered the Swedish army. Taken prisoner by the Prussians, whom he joined, but expelled from this service for duelling and dissipation. Retired to the country, married, and, after fourteen years’ quiet, returned to the army as Major of the very regiment which he had quitted as Captain. Then commenced a glorious military career, proudly terminating with his opportune appearance on the field of Waterloo. In 1814, visited England with the allied sovereigns, and was enthusiastically received. A rough and fearless soldier, brave, honest, free, beloved by his comrades, devoted to his country, and a bitter hater of his country’s foes. As a general, daring, reckless, and impetuous, to the detriment of otherwise high military qualifications. In temper he was vehement and irascible, and an ardent lover of pleasure. His soldiers gave him the nickname of “Marshal Forwards.”
[Bust, by Rauch. 1816. Marble. This is the bust presented by King Frederic William III. to the Duke of Wellington, and is in the gallery at Apsley House. The large intaglio (No. 360A) is from the monument at Kriblowitz, a small village near the city of Kant, in Silesia, and about ten English miles from Breslau. It was erected about six years ago by order of King Frederic William IV. of Prussia, and is designed after the ancient Roman sepulchre of Cæcilia Metella, but on a smaller scale, being thirty feet high. It is constructed entirely of granite, and the ceiling is formed of one large block. A marble sarcophagus within contains the remains of Blucher. The monument at Löwenberg, on the river Bober in Silesia, was erected by King Frederic William IV. to commemorate the battle of Katsbach, won by Blucher over the French in 1813. It consists of a colossal bust in marble upon a pedestal of grey marble, bearing an inscription. The bust, No. 360B, was sculptured by Berger, a pupil of Rauch’s, after the head of the colossal statue in bronze by Rauch, which stands in the Place at Breslau.]
360A. Gebhardt Lebrecht von Blucher, Prince of Wahlstadt. Prussian Field Marshal.
360B. Gebhardt Lebrecht von Blucher, Prince of Wahlstadt. Prussian Field Marshal.
361. Friedrich Wilhelm Bulow. Prussian General.
[Born in Mecklenburgh, 1755. Died at Königsberg, 1816. Aged 61.]
A brave man and a distinguished general. He fought under Blucher in the battles of Eylau, Friedland, and Tilsit. In 1813, he three times saved Berlin from the advancing French army. He was in the great battle of Leipzig; and in 1815, he repulsed Vandamme and Grouchy on the heights of Wavre. The marvellous rapidity with which he brought up his division to the field of Waterloo won high commendation from the Duke of Wellington. He had great taste in the Fine Arts, and a cultivated mind. He composed some pieces of sacred music, which have been much admired.
[By Rauch. Bronze. 1824. In the Pleasure Garden near the Palace at Potsdam.]
362. Karl Baron Von Stein. Prussian Minister of State.
[Born at Nassau, 1756. Died 1831. Aged 75.]
A great Minister of modern times. Though rough and uncouth in his manners, his honour was unimpeachable, his integrity without a flaw, and his devotion to the interests of Prussia patriotic and enlightened. He was Prussian Minister of Finance in 1804: but resigning in consequence of some differences with the King, he retired to his patrimony in Nassau. Thence recalled after the peace of Tilsit, he resumed his functions, and commenced a series of great social, economical, and material reforms, which led directly to the resuscitation of the Prussian monarchy, and to her present eminence. Napoleon, jealous of the useful activity of this Minister, demanded and obtained his exile. In 1813, the banished man proceeded to St. Petersburg, where his counsels directed the Emperor Alexander through the crisis of that dreadful year. Nor did Prussian interests suffer, in consequence of the sagacious advice that came from time to time to Berlin from the exile’s retreat in Courland.
363. Gebhardt David Scharnhorst. General.
[Born in Hanover, 1756. Died at Prague, 1813. Aged 57.]
A very distinguished general of his day. He served first in the Hanoverian service, then in the army of the King of England, and finally in that of Prussia. In the war with France, in 1806, he contributed greatly to the brilliant retreat on Lübeck, effected by Blucher. After the peace of Tilsit, he was named President of the Commission for the re-organization of the Prussian army, and his energy and wisdom enabled Prussia to bring a finely appointed army of 200,000 men into the field, after Napoleon’s Russian reverses. He was wounded at Lutzen, and died at Prague shortly afterwards. In 1804, he had been appointed by the King of Prussia, conjointly with Baron Knesebeck, instructor to the Prince Royal: and at one time of his life he wrote several works on military subjects, which gained him great repute.
[By Rauch. Modelled in 1819, and executed in bronze by order of King Frederic William III. It stands in the Pleasure Garden near the Royal Palace at Potsdam. A colossal bust, taken from the same model, was done by Rauch, by order of King Louis of Bavaria, for the Walhalla.]
364. Yorck, Count von Wartenburg. Prussian Field Marshal.
[Born at Königsberg, 1759. Died 1830. Aged 71.]
One of the ablest Prussian generals in the wars with Napoleon. He fought under the British flag in the American revolution. When commanding subsequently in the Prussian service, he concluded in 1812, on his own responsibility, the celebrated Convention which separated the Prussian troops from the French, and proved one of the main causes of Napoleon’s overthrow. He gained many victories at various times, and was honoured with the title of Wartenburg for the battle fought at that place. In 1821, he was created Field-Marshal. A brave man, endowed with great military talent; a shrewd observer of men, ambitions, violent, yet devoted to his country.
[By Rauch. Bronze. 1818. In the Pleasure Garden near the Palace at Potsdam.]
365. Friedrich Heinrich von Nollendorf. Prussian Field-Marshal.
[Born at Berlin, 1763. Died there, 1823. Aged 60.]
A distinguished Prussian officer. Commanded a brigade in the Prussian contingent to Napoleon’s disastrous expedition to Russia, and bore an honourable part in the wars subsequently undertaken against Napoleon. Accompanied Frederic William of Prussia on his visit to England. He died on the same day as Buonaparte. All the sovereigns of the coalition had conferred honours upon him, and Napoleon himself decorated him with the cross of the Legion of Honour.
[By Rauch. Bronze. 1819. In the Pleasure Garden near the Palace at Potsdam.]
366. Augustus, Count Herdart de Gneisenau. Field-Marshal.
[Born at Schilda, in Upper Saxony, 1760. Died at Posen, in Prussia, 1832. Aged 72.]
An eminent soldier, who served first under the Margrave of Anspach-Bayreuth; then in the English, then in the Prussian service. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, he was placed at the head of Blucher’s staff, and was mainly instrumental in bringing up the Prussian troops at Waterloo, where he ably conducted the pursuit. In 1831, took the command of the Prussian army on the breaking out of the Polish insurrection, and died of cholera the same year. A great master of strategy.
[By F. Tieck. Bronze. 1821. In the Pleasure Garden near the Palace at Potsdam.]
367. Karl Wilhelm Baron von Humboldt. Statesman and Philologist.
[Born at Potsdam, in Prussia, 1767. Died near Berlin, 1835. Aged 68.]
In William Von Humboldt the highest qualities of a scholar were united to the talents of a statesman and man of the world. He discharged the functions of Ambassador at Vienna and in London, and served his country on more than one grave and diplomatic mission. He was extensively learned in languages dead and living; but that is common in Germany. His originality, as a philologist, lies in a delicacy of abstruse thought—a philosophical vein, as fine as profound, which he brings to bear on all questions of the literary field, from the rigid investigation of grammatical forms and laws, to the most feeling and comprehensive criticisms of taste. A rare power of sifting analysis, a strong impulse to tread, alone and self-guided, unfrequented grounds, and an eye to seek out new truth on ground the most trodden, may be read in his various masterly writings. He was a poet also.
[Modelled by Thorwaldsen, at Rome, in 1807. It has since been executed in marble by order of King Frederic William III., and placed in the Museum at Berlin.]
368. Hermann Von Boyen. Prussian Minister of War.
[Born at Kreutzburg, in Prussia, 1771.]
Commenced his military career as corporal in an infantry regiment, 1784, and gradually rose until, in 1799, appointed Staff-Captain. In his youth a great student of the works of Frederic the Great; and from 1794 to 1796, during the war with Poland, the adjutant and friend of the celebrated General Von Günther, whose military disciple he became, and whose memoirs he subsequently composed. In his twenty-eighth year he wrote a treatise upon military law, which eminently conduced to the more humane treatment and greater comfort of the common soldier. Served in all the later wars against Napoleon. Major-general at the Peace of Paris, when he became Minister of War. In that capacity, established in connexion with the service a number of organic laws, which display great practical wisdom, and a manly consideration for the well-being of the army. Retired from office in 1819, and occupied himself in literary pursuits. Reinstated by the present King of Prussia in 1841, he at once pursued his former energetic course of improvement on behalf of his country and of its loyal defenders, to the great joy of the soldiers, and with the honour, good-will, and affection of the people.
[By Hopfgarten. The original bronze is in the Palace at Potsdam.]
369. Otto-Feodor Freiherr von Manteuffel. Prussian Minister.
[Born, 1805. Still living.]
Educated at the University of Halle. In 1827, went to Berlin, where he was employed in the Administration. In 1841, appointed Chief Counsellor of State and Director of the Home Department in the government of Königsberg. When, in 1847, the first united Prussian Chamber met, Manteuffel powerfully defended the existing system against the liberal attempts of the day; and in April, 1848, protested and voted against universal suffrage. In November, 1848, appointed chief Administrator for Brandenburg, since which time his ministerial activity has become matter of Prussian history. Manteuffel took an active part in framing the constitution of December 5, 1848. After the death of Count Brandenburg, he was entrusted provisionally with the direction of foreign affairs; and in 1850 was elected President of State. He is in high favour with the king, but not so popular with the liberal party.
[By Vollgold. Bronze. 1850. In the Pleasure Garden near the Palace at Potsdam. First executed by the artist for his own gratification. Has since been cast in bronze by order of King Frederic William IV.]
370. Count Joseph Radetzky. Austrian General.
[Born in Bohemia, 1766. Still living.]
Has been a soldier, and in active service, for upwards of seventy years. He took part in the great struggle against Napoleon. In 1809, distinguished himself at Agram, and in the battles of 1813, 1814, and 1815, won fresh laurels. In 1822, appointed Commander-General of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. His last great service for Austria was after the Revolution of 1848, when he opposed and defeated the vacillating attempts made by Charles Albert of Sardinia, on behalf of Italian liberty. When it is said that Radetzky is a brave soldier, an able general, a loyal subject, and, as many aver, a courteous gentleman, his claims to respect are enumerated. He is rigid and severe, if not cruel, as he is certainly regardless of all human considerations that presume to interpose between him and the duty which he owes as a soldier to his king.
[By Rauch. Considered to be a very exact likeness.]
PRELATES AND THEOLOGIANS.
371. Martin Luther. The Great Reformer.
[Born at Eisleben, in Saxony, 1483. Died there, 1546. Aged 63.]
The Lion of the Reformation. One of the men who, by coming to their time, have made an epoch in the world’s history. Assuredly the abuses of Rome,—in her second supremacy, as the spiritual mistress of the world,—must have aroused their effectual remedy; for partial resistances, before Luther rose, showed how deeply the mind of mankind resented and resisted the oppression and the spiritual malversation, and how fast the time was ripening for general revolt. Europe, since the overthrow of the Roman Empire, had been gradually rising with the inward vigour of her renewed life. The restored study of classical letters came as a powerful external impulse. Rome had but slowly established her domination, and only then securely given herself up to licence. Thus the strengthening of the evil on the one hand, and of the resisting life on the other, met: and then Luther came. He was fit for his Herculean labour. He had stepped from the very heart of the people, and his strong nature bespoke his hardy origin. He was fearless as one who could not feel fear in the midst of the most terrible danger; he was zealous as one who labours under the sense of Divine appointment, who knows that to die may be to live, to live may be to suffer worse than death: and who rejoices equally at every turn of fortune. He was threatened with the stake: he persisted in his crusade all the more for the menace. The Pope excommunicated him in the face of all the world. He denounced the Pope before as large an audience. The Pope publicly burned all his writings: he publicly burned the Bull of excommunication, the Canon Law, and the Pope’s Decretals. Before Luther died,—and he fell asleep tranquilly, worn out with labour, not with age,—his doctrines had already taken deep root in the wide world. We are all the debtors of his work; and we may remember with gratitude the generous protection of the Elector of Saxony, who again and again refused to give the Lion up, when the hunters loudly demanded his blood at the gate.
[By G. Schadow. Marble. The original placed in the Walhalla by order of King Louis. Luther was excluded from the Walhalla till 1848, when he was admitted, and inscribed as Dr. Martin Luther. In the Berlin Museum there is a portrait of him from the life, by L. Cranach, as the Junker Georg, with moustaches, painted when he was concealed in the Castle of Wartburg.]
372. Philip Melancthon. German Divine and Reformer.
[Born at Bretten, in the Palatinate of the Rhine, 1497. Died at Wurms, in Germany, 1560. Aged 63.]
The wise and gentle sharer with Martin Luther in the glory of the Reformation. Melancthon was Professor of Greek in the University of Wittemberg in 1518, when Luther was there teaching Theology. They united their great gifts and powers to do the perilous labour of their lives, and each proceeded to his mission in the spirit created within him for the accomplishment of a seemingly superhuman task. Luther raged furiously against the error he encountered on his path. Melancthon strove to entice it into the right road by gentle words and mild remonstrance. The one exhibited the resolute bearing of a soldier fighting for the church militant; upon the face of the other beamed the quiet heroism of the Christian saint. Luther upbraided his companion-in-arms for his lukewarmness. Melancthon met the rebuke by continuing his steadfast course of conciliation, caution, and thoughtful zeal. Luther found no friend in the camp of the enemy. The most intolerant of his foes respected the mild virtues of Melancthon. Both were fit instruments for the hour in which they were summoned to action, and for the sacred cause they arose to defend: and, as was fitting, both were buried side by side in death, as they had laboured side by side, and hand to hand, in life. Melancthon compiled the celebrated Augsburg Confession. He was a great scholar, attached to the study of mathematics, and to scientific studies generally. He had no desire for worldly honours and distinctions. He was a true hero.
[From the marble by G. Schadow. Placed in the Walhalla by order of King Louis.]
373. Friedrich Ernest Daniel Schleiermacher. Theologian.
[Born at Breslau, in Prussia, 1768. Died at Berlin, 1834. Aged 66.]
His parents were of the Moravian brotherhood, which he quitted at the age of 18, and began to study philology and divinity at the University of Halle. In 1802, he taught the same subjects in the same University of Halle. In 1833, he visited England, and opened the German chapel of the Savoy. The author of several works distinguished for profound thought, conveyed perspicuously to those he is addressing. He was an excellent theologian, a distinguished philologist, a profound critic, and an admirable translator. His translation of Plato, unfortunately not completed, is the best extant. He had a pure and pious mind.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1822. A commission from the University of Berlin. The same bust was placed over his tomb by the friends of Schleiermacher.]
KINGS AND QUEENS.
374. Frederic William. Elector of Brandenburg.
[Born at Cologne, 1620. Died 1688. Aged 68.]
Surnamed the Great Elector, and father of the first King of Prussia. He succeeded to the government in 1640, and found his dominions exhausted by war and mismanagement. He restored the public finances, and corrected abuses. In 1655, he joined the Swedes in the invasion of Poland. In 1678, he completed the conquest of Pomerania. He then fought against the Swedes, and involved himself in war with France, because, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he had befriended 20,000 French Protestants who sought protection at his door. In 1686, he helped the Emperor against the Turks, and two years afterwards assisted William of Orange in his invasion of England. He left his territory as rich, fruitful, and well-governed, as he had found it poor and distracted. He has been censured for his frequent change of party, but he deserves his name of “Great,” no less for the victories he won abroad, than for the good services performed at home. He is described as a generous, kind-hearted man.
[By Ludwig Wichmann. Bronze. At Treptow.]
375. Frederic William I. King of Prussia.
[Born at Berlin, 1688. Died there, 1740. Aged 52.]
The son of Frederic I. and the father of Frederic the Great. The best that can be said of him is, that he left behind him a full treasury and an efficient army of 66,000 men. He was rough and rude in his manners, a hater of luxury, and parsimonious in all things but his expenditure for the increase of his military resources. He had a childish desire to fill all his regiments with very tall men, and was unscrupulous in his methods of gratifying the whim. An amusing story is told in connexion with this passion. Meeting with a fine, tall, and strong young peasant woman, who was on errand to the quarters of a regiment, he gave her a letter to deliver to the commanding officer, ordering him to marry the bearer to his tallest grenadier. The girl, hindered on her way, and not knowing the purport of her mission, entrusted it to a little old woman, and the marriage was effected accordingly. His contempt for science and literature was supreme, and he made no secret of his want of all respect for their professors. He was feared, not loved, in his country, and his death caused no regret.
[By Hopfgarten. Bronze. At Treptow. Done within the last ten years.]
376. Frederic II., Surnamed the Great. King of Prussia.
[Born at Berlin, 1712. Died 1786. Aged 74.]
The greatest soldier of his time, and the most famous king that Prussia has given to her throne. At the commencement of his reign, in 1740, his dominions contained two and a quarter millions of inhabitants. At the end of its 46 years, Prussia counted six millions of subjects. He held the field singly against Russia, Saxony, Sweden, France, and Austria; and came with honour and rich booty out of the conflict. A great worker, whether in the field or in the cabinet. His custom was to rise at five in the morning to read “papers.” These he dispatched with a word or two, written on the margin: the rest of the day was marked out with exact precision, a part of it being invariably devoted to literary pursuits, and to the cultivation of music, of which he was fond. No man ever gave less of his time to frivolity or inaction. His dress was plain, and never other than military; his toilet, when he rose, occupied him only a few minutes; he always wore high jack boots, and he never changed his dress during the day. An able administrator, a liberal encourager of art, science, and industry, and the personal friend of D’Alembert, Condorcet, and Voltaire, with all of whom he personally corresponded. His conversation was lively and brilliant, not unfrequently sarcastic: but, in action, he was not cruel. A free thinker, rejoicing in his intellectual independence. Besides his other acquisitions, he was one of the guilty sharers in the dismemberment of Poland. Nevertheless, dying, he left an illustrious name to his country, and a throne to his successor worthy the acceptance of a European monarch.
[For an account of the admirable and unique monument, by Rauch, of which this is the life-size model, see No. 195 in Handbook to Modern Sculpture.]
377. Frederic Louis Henry. Prince of Prussia.
[Born at Berlin, 1726. Died at Rheinsberg, in Prussia, 1802. Aged 76.]
The son of Frederic William I., of Prussia, and brother of Frederic the Great. A student in his youth, and a distinguished soldier in his manhood. He held important command during the Seven Years’ War. In later life, when he withdrew into retirement, he erected in his garden a monument on a huge mound of earth. It was raised in memory of his companions in arms, and underneath, it, in a vault, he directed that his own remains should be interred.
[By Emil Wolff. Marble. 1847. It was modelled at Rome. The original is in the Palace at Berlin.]
378. Maximilian Joseph I. King of Bavaria.
[Born 1756. Died 1825. Aged 69.]
From 1799, Elector, and from 1806, King of Bavaria. The year that he saw his Duchy raised to the dignity of a kingdom, Maximilian, who for some years was the faithful ally of Napoleon, gave his daughter in marriage to Eugène Beauharnois. In 1813, the Bavarian king, acting in the true interests of his country and of humanity, joined the allies against France, and helped with them to rescue Germany from the fangs of the French invader. In public as well as private life, Maximilian was courteous, benevolent, simple-minded, and true-hearted.
[By Stiglmayer. In marble. It is in the Palace at Munich. Stiglmayer was for a long time at the head of the Royal Foundry for bronze casting.]
379. Frederic William III. King of Prussia.
[Born 1770. Died 1840, aged 70.]
The grand nephew of Frederic the Great. He succeeded to the throne in 1797, and, in 1806, was involved in a war with France, which, before its close, almost extinguished his kingdom. The peace of Tilsit, in 1807, left him little more than a nominal sovereignty. In 1810, he founded the University of Berlin; in 1812, took part with France against Russia; and in 1813, again declared war against France. His army shared in the triumphal entry into Paris in 1814; and in 1815, his soldiers under Blucher partook of the glory of Waterloo at the crisis of the battle. A man of domestic virtues, but of small capacity. Napoleon’s judgment of this King was somewhat harsh. “He is,” said Buonaparte, “the greatest idiot on the face of the earth—without intelligence, and incapable of sustaining a conversation for the space of five minutes—a true Don Quixote.” The present King of Prussia is the son of Frederic William III.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1826. In the Royal Palace at Berlin.]
380. Louis Ferdinand. Prince of Prussia.
[Born 1772. Died at Saalfeld, in Germany, 1806. Aged 34.]
A soldier of great distinction, and beloved by the Prussian army. In the war of 1806, he commanded the advanced guard of Prince Hohenlohe, and was killed in that year, whilst covering the evacuation of Saalfeld, in Central Germany. He died bravely. He was of a generous and vehement nature, a great advocate of the war, and frequently a violent opponent of the government. He was impatient of the fact, that the accident of his birth prevented the full exercise of energy and activity, which meaner men were permitted.
[By L. Wichmann. Bronze. 1822. At Potsdam.]
381. Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia. Queen of Prussia.
[Born at Hanover, 1776. Died at Hohenzieritz, 1810. Aged 34.]
The honoured wife of Frederic William III. of Prussia. Napoleon admired her for her wit, tact, and singular address, and Europe applauded her for her heroic character, and true nobility of soul. On the breaking out of the war with France, in 1806, she was inspired with enthusiasm, and was frequently seen in the streets of Berlin at the head of her Hussars, whose uniform she wore. On the defeat of her husband at Auerstadt, she shared his perilous retreat, and evinced great firmness and resignation. She was also with her husband at the Conference of Tilsit, and was earnest in her entreaties to Napoleon for easier conditions on behalf of her unfortunate country. She was beautiful in person, calm and constant in reverses, with great dignity and grace of manner. She was beloved by her people.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1824.]
382. Ludwig I. Ex-King of Bavaria.
[Born 1786. Still living.]
The eldest son and successor of King Maximilian Joseph. As Crown Prince he took little interest in public affairs, but confined himself to the zealous patronage of the fine arts. Frugal in his personal expenditure, he was extravagant in his purchases of works of art, and in the construction of his celebrated Glyptothek, a building devoted to the reception of the finest works of sculpture. Ascending the throne in 1825, he commenced many economical reforms, but still drew around him, by his munificent patronage, the most celebrated artists of Germany, for the adornment and elevation of his capital. More than one stately edifice and exquisite collection in Munich bear testimony to his love for art and zeal in its promotion. He would have done still more for his city had he been permitted. He lodged the munificent sum of £30,000 in the hands of an English banker to purchase the Elgin marbles, in the event of their rejection by the English government. The sum actually paid for the marbles by England was £35,000. A grandeur is reflected upon this—the finest side of Ludwig’s character. On the other hand, he has lived to become a bigot, to forget his early political reforms, to deal with a rough hand in matters of religion and state, and to shock public opinion by illicit alliances, at the very moment he is expressing a pious anxiety for the restoration of monasteries. In 1848, Ludwig I. abdicated in favour of his son Maximilian, the reigning king. The ex-king is a ruler fit for the middle ages, when the love of art was intense and passionate, when manners were rude and unformed, and the people in fetters, spiritual and bodily.
[By Halbig, 1848.]
382A. Ludwig I. Ex-King of Bavaria.
[Colossal bust, by Ludwig Schwanthaler. Marble. 1840. The original is in the Royal Palace at Munich.]
383. Leopold I. King of the Belgians.
[Born 1790. Still living.]
Head of the House of Coburg. He was educated in Germany, and in 1816, married Charlotte, the daughter of George IV. of England. She died the following year. In 1832, he married a daughter of Louis Philippe of France; and in 1850, she also died. He was called to the sovereignty of Belgium in 1832. Although a foreign prince, and a Protestant ruling over a Catholic country, he has succeeded in winning the respect of all political parties, and the sympathies of all religious sects. He is the type of a constitutional king on the continent of Europe, and his personal influence, in European politics, is considered to be weightier than in proportion to the size of his dominions. He is the uncle of Queen Victoria.
[From the marble by G. Geefs, in Windsor Castle.]
383.* Louise Marie. Queen of the Belgians.
[Died 1850.]
She was the daughter of Louis Philippe, King of the French, and second wife of King Leopold I. of Belgium.
[From the marble by G. Geefs, in Windsor Castle.]
384. Frederic William IV. Reigning King of Prussia.
[Born 1795. Still living.]
A king whose good intentions and fair-sounding promises seem invariably to overbalance his powers of performance. Anxious for popularity, yet always vacillating on the path that leads to it. Manifestly ambitious, but kept aloof from the great prizes of ambition by want of moral courage, of earnestness, and vigorous action. He commenced his reign with many advantages, and might have rendered himself the most powerful sovereign of Germany, and the most popular of its rulers. He has missed the power, and parted with the popularity. He promised his people a constitution: they have never received it. In the Revolution of 1848 he sided with the extreme liberals, but only to bound back again—further than ever—into the arms of absolutism. In his conduct towards Russia and England in the momentous dispute of 1854, Frederic William IV. is faithful to his character and his antecedents.
[By Rauch. Marble. 1845. In the Royal Palace at Berlin.]
385. Nicholas Paulovitch. Reigning Emperor of all the Russias.
[Born 1896. Still living.]
The third son of Paul I. and of Maria Feodorowna, and the eighth sovereign of the Holstein-Gottorp dynasty, which is of German origin. Succeeded to the throne in 1825, upon the death of Alexander—his elder brother Constantine renouncing the throne in his favour. In 1826, declared war against Persia; in 1828, the war closed in his favour. In the same year found occasion for a quarrel with the Turks, crossed the Balkan mountains, which Russian troops had never before passed, and imposed hard conditions upon the Sultan—amongst others, the so-called Protectorate of the Danubian Principalities. The insurrection in Poland, after the French Revolution of 1830, the commencement of the war in the Caucasus, are familiar events. Still more recent is the interference of Nicholas in the war between Hungary and Austria—an interference that restored Hungary to Austrian rule—and, later still, the invasion of the Danubian principalities, on the plea of securing the rights of the Greek Church in the Turkish dominions. A fanatic in his adherence to Russian customs, language, and religion, and glorying in his title of Spiritual Chief of the Orthodox Church. The incarnation of despotism, and the stern hater of all liberal ideas. His rule military and absolute. Like Frederic the Great, he never shows himself but in military costume. Is of great height, and said to be very proud of his size. His life one of feverish activity. He gets through more work in a day than other monarchs can manage in a month. He rides, walks, holds a review, superintends a sham fight, goes on the water, exercises the navy, gives a fête, takes his meals, and enjoys his rest, all within the twenty-four hours. He is a wondrous traveller—travelling faster and getting over more ground than everybody else—and has an absolute passion for military evolutions. Since the days of the Empress Catharine, Constantinople—called in Russia Czarapol (city of the Czars)—has been regarded as the future capital of the Russian empire. Nicholas, after much diplomacy, cozening, double-dealing, menace, and display of anger, has put forth his massive hand to seize it. The world waits to see whether that greedy hand shall grasp its prize, or recoil smitten and maimed for its unauthorized rapacity.
[By C. Rauch. Marble. 1820. In the Palaces at St. Petersburg and Berlin.]
386. Alexandra. Empress of Russia.
[Born 1798. Still living.]
The wife of Nicholas, the reigning Emperor of Russia, and the sister of Frederic William IV., King of Prussia.
[By Rauch. From the marble. 1816. A commission from the Emperor. It is in the Palace at St. Petersburg, and another copy is in the Royal Palace at Berlin.]
387. Francis Joseph. Reigning Emperor of Austria, and King of Hungary.
[Born 1830. Still living.]
Succeeded to the throne on the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand, in 1848, (the epoch of revolutions), his father, Francis Charles, having refused the Crown. At the time of his accession, Vienna had just been recovered from the insurgents, but Hungary was in arms against Austria. In 1849, a new constitution, of a more liberal character, was promulgated by the Emperor, and, in the same year, Hungary was reduced to submission by the assistance of Russia. In 1850, the young Emperor returned to the old system of absolute government. In 1852, his life was attempted by a Hungarian whilst walking on the ramparts of Vienna. Francis Joseph is personally popular. He is bold and soldier-like, possessed of strong will and independent judgment. His experience is beyond his years.
[By Halbig. Marble. 1850. The original is in the Imperial Palace at Vienna.]