CHAPTER VI.
BISMARCK’S HOUSE AT BERLIN.
’Tis but a hut or little more,
The threshold narrow, slim the door—
And yet within this space so wee,
Proudly uprears the laurel-tree.
Bismarck’s House in ordinary Costume.—Its History.—“Sultan Uilem and Grand Vizier Bi-Smarck.”—“Bismarck, grand homme, Bakschisch!”—The Cuckoo Clock.—Daily Habits.—Sunday at Bismarck’s.
In that portion of the Wilhelms-Strasse at Berlin, which has remained comparatively quiet, although it is bounded on one side by the animated and famous street Unter den Linden, and on the other by the noisy and busy Leipziger-Strasse, one of the arteries of Berlin circulation, not far from the Wilhelms-Platz, stands a plain one-storied house, with twelve windows in the front—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—since 1862 the official residence of Count Bismarck.
It is the most modest ministerial residence in Berlin; in no large State of Europe does the Foreign Minister live so quietly as Count Bismarck does here. To the right of the Minister-President is the Hotel of Prince Radziwill—entre cour et jardin—with its railings and stately front court; to the left is the building of the Royal Privy Court Printing-office of Messrs. Von Decker; opposite the former Palace of the Order of St. John of Balley Brandenburg, so magnificently restored by Schinckel, and now the property of Prince Carl of Prussia. One advantage Bismarck’s dwelling enjoys, with all the aristocratic houses of the Wilhelms-Strasse—it has a large garden with fine old trees in it, which extends as far as the Königsgrätzer-Strasse.
The whole extent of the Wilhelms-Strasse, from the Linden to the Leipziger-Strasse, formerly belonged to the Thurgarten—the freehold being the King’s. On the enlargement of the city by Frederick William I., this site was given to the generals and higher officials as free building-ground, and was supported by the King with his well-known energy by building materials and other subventions. The present site of Wilhelms-Strasse and Königsgrätzer-Strasse, by the privilege of the 21st of September, 1736, was covered by a free house, respecting the builder of which there is still some question. It was unquestionably the work of one General von Pannewitz; probably Wolf Adolf von Pannewitz, born the 13th March, 1679, at Great-Gaglov, in Lower Lausitz, who had been Page and Equerry to King Frederick I., and had joined the regiment of Gensdarmes in 1714, from the disbanded Garde du Corps. He became lieutenant-colonel of this regiment in 1719, in 1725 commander, and in 1728, after the death of Field-Marshal General von Natzmer, its Chief. Pannewitz had gained renown on the Rhine, in Italy, and Brabant, and had so distinguished himself in the first Silesian war, that the great King allowed him to retire from the service on account of bodily illness, very honorably, with a pension of three thousand thalers. How the ownership of this old hero, who had honestly served three Kings of Prussia, passed to the well-known Countess Barbara Campanini, the married Presidentess von Cocceji, we can not tell; but according to the register she sold the house on the 10th April, 1756, to the Actual Privy State and Directing War Minister and Grand Master of the Robes, Herr Count von Eickstedt. After the death of this nobleman it became the property of his widow, the Countess von Eickstedt-Peterswaldt, Caroline-Friedrike, born von Grumbkow; then that of her daughter, the widowed Obermarshallin von Wangenheim, Philippine Juliane, born Countess von Eickstedt-Peterswaldt. This lady was, however, Bismarck’s grand-aunt, having been married first to the Royal Captain Ernst Friedrich von Bismarck, at Schönhausen (born 1729, died 1775), a grand-uncle of the Minister-President—so that in the last century a Bismarck lived both at Schönhausen and in the Wilhelms-Strasse. In the year 1804 the Hanoverian Councillor of Finance, Johann Crelinger, bought the house, but soon sold it to the wife of the Russian Imperial Minister and Ambassador at the Royal Prussian Court, Herr Maximilian von Alopeus, Luise Charlotte Auguste Friedrike, born a Von Veltheim. From her it passed into the possession, in 1815, of her husband, Baron Alopeus, who sold it in 1819 to the Government.