Therefore we lift our hands and hearts to Heaven,
And humbly here its blessing we await,
Praying for peace and safety as is due,
That Love and Light and Spirit may be given
Our handiwork henceforth to consecrate,
That this the home may be a temple true!
On the twelfth of July, 1856, Lepsius with his own hand wrote the following maxims in a new diary of his wife’s.
God’s peace from Heaven
To this house be given.
Unless God’s grace we gain
Our building is in vain.
Within this little book be you
To these, our house’s mottoes, true.
The second motto was cut in stone, in Gothic letters and surrounded by arabesques, over the broad projecting window of the wife’s room, on the side of the building towards the street; the first was over the front door. The palms over the entrance gate were intended to call to memory the Palm Sunday on which Lepsius and his wife had been betrothed. The wish expressed in the first motto was fulfilled, for the house in Bendler Street was truly a temple of peace, under the visible favor of God. Until the growing city of Berlin laid claim to the broad extent of the beautiful garden and Lepsius felt himself forced to sell it, their house was the home of true love, intimate family life, steadfast reverence for God—in the man no less than in the wife,—and earnest, unwearied labor, as well as cheerful song and music, and a happy hospitality.
The father of Lepsius died before the house was completed, but he was able to invite his mother to come and live with him “at Berlin, in the country.” However, the beautiful outlook “towards the canal and Schöneberg” was soon built up. The house was constructed in the English Gothic style, which he had learned to like in Great Britain, and which few understood as well as he (see page 131). To his delight, its pleasing appearance, with the slightly-pointed arches over windows and doors, and the balcony, with its Gothic parapet of sandstone, proved so attractive that, as he wrote to his mother: “our neighbor has also built in the Gothic style, and, indeed, two houses at once.” “I am to assist him with money,” he continued, “for the third, on the corner, and the man on the other corner will also build a Gothic house. That makes a whole Gothic quarter.”
But how differently things turned out! The stately building which was to have been a home for remote descendants has vanished from the earth, and only a few traces remain of the Bendler Street Gothic. During the first years after they moved into the new house they improved every opportunity which offered to exhibit the beauty of the chosen style of architecture. When for example it was necessary, on account of any festivity, to “illuminate,” they lit up the whole front, and especially the large balcony, with little lamps which followed the lines of the arches.
The fine garden gave special pleasure to Lepsius. After he had had tea at his writing table he always took a walk there, in winter as well as in summer, and whether the weather was good or bad. He felt a “special interest in it, and knew it all by heart.” The trees which soon overshadowed it had been planted on various happy occasions by dear guests and friends of the household, in memory of the delightful hours which they had passed under the roof of Lepsius, and as a visible symbol and token of the friendship which burgeoned and blossomed anew with each year. Alexander von Humboldt, Bunsen, the Grimms, Ehrenberg, E. Curtius and many others had planted their trees, and on each was a little tablet which bore the name of him who had set it in the earth. Foreign friends too, who could not come to Berlin and attend to the planting themselves, sent small trees to be set out. For example, the Director of the museum at Leyden, already mentioned several times, (see pages 123 and 245) sent a variety of Betula which had been named after him Betula Lemansiana, by a nursery gardener at Warmond. As the trees which he first sent did not arrive he despatched others, and these throve and long reminded the Lepsius family of their Dutch friend. The garden was a living and shady temple of friendship, and what beautiful festivals were celebrated there!