In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,” and shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old Museum gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming grace and effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum Island, just beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the arts in the affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or cathedral, dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in the modest and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architectural débutante of only six seasons—though that is quite long enough for a building to become passé in Berlin. Its granite walls, copper domes, high-vaulted portals, elaborately carved cornices, and profusion of statuary stand out in beautiful relief against the darkness of the trees beyond.
At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridge is thronged with loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected; and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful little rivas along the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the swift, pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to take note of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low bridges. Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service uniforms on floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These invariably have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing from end to end, while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage by means of a long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and inserts the other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire length of the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.
Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration, and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings, the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor William I, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people. With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over the heads of the crowds at the University across the way—the proper toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty pedestal.
And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres, cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about the poster pillars that they call “Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like, but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for “nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere “men.”
But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.
The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more of café life than many others, as being an institution essential to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vital with the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and with continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and “Bitte!” and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially, “Prosit!” There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps and shouts of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries respond with “Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off in haste, to return at leisure. The gold that falls in Trinkgeld passes belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is said that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will see few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus. Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking, is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up, and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your hat, and go about your business.
From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed, narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed “Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet with its Pickelhaube top spike. You learn to distinguish the corps, in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.
Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread. They carry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the empire.
On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants, government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions are coming and going—Droschken, stages, double-decked omnibuses, motor-cars, et al. The corner of Leipzigerstrasse is a whirlpool through which traffic moves like so much drifting pack-ice. Trolley cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron posts marked “Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of safety” in the middle of the street have each its representative of the omnipresent police, dressed up like major-generals in military long coats and nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that Leipzigerstrasse is just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous Potsdam Gate, where on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets ponderous hotels project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on spits. I say the policemen could tell you that, if they wanted to, but the probability is they would only wave excited hands and shout “Verboten!”
And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched, but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated, as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or the authorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two cents up.