Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

LETTER XLV.

WITTENBERG.

MY DEAR:—

I am here in the station house at Wittenberg. I have been seeing and hearing to-day for you, and now sit down to put on paper the results of my morning. "What make you from Wittenberg?" Wittenberg! name of the dreamy past; dimly associated with Hamlet, Denmark, the moonlight terrace, and the Baltic Sea, by one line of Shakspeare; but made more living by those who have thought, loved, and died here; nay, by those who cannot die, and whose life has been life to all coming ages.

How naturally, on reaching a place long heard of and pondered, do we look round for something uncommon, quaint, and striking! Nothing of the kind was here; only the dead flat of this most level scenery, with its dreary prairie-like sameness. Certainly it was not this scenery that stirred up a soul in Luther, and made him nail up his theses on the Wittenberg church door.

"But, at any rate, let us go to Wittenberg," said I; "get a guide, a carriage, cannot you?" as I walked to one window of the station house and another, and looked out to see something wonderful. Nothing was in sight, however; and after the usual sputter of gutturals which precedes any arrangement in this country, we were mounted in a high, awkward carriage, and rode to the town. Two ancient round tower and a wall first met my eye; then a drawbridge, arched passage, and portcullis. Under this passage we passed, and at our right hand was the church, where once was laid the worn form that had stood so many whirlwinds—where, in short, Luther was buried. But this we did not then know; so we drove by, and went to a hotel. Talked English and got German; talked French with no better success. At last, between W., G., and the dictionary, managed to make it understood that we wanted a guide to the Luther relics. A guide was after a time forthcoming, in the person of a little woman who spoke no English, whom, guide book in hand, we followed.

The church is ancient, and, externally, impressive enough; inside it is wide, cold, whitewashed, prosaic; whoever gets up feeling does it against wind and tide, so far as appearances are concerned. We advance to the spot in the floor where our guide raises a trap door, and shows us underneath the plate inscribed with the name of Luther, and by it the plate recording the resting-place of his well-beloved Philip Melanchthon; then to the grave of the Elector of Saxony, and John the Steadfast; on one side a full length of Luther, by Lucas Cranach; on the other, one of Melanchthon, by the same hand. Well, we have seen; this is all; "He is not here, he is risen." "Is this all?" "All," says our guide, and we go out. I look curiously at the old door where Luther nailed up his theses; but even this is not the identical door; that was destroyed by the French. Still, under that arched doorway he stood, hammer and nails in hand; he held up his paper, he fitted it straight; rap, rap,—there, one nail—another—it is up, and he stands looking at it. These very stones were over that head that are now over mine, this very ground beneath his feet. As I turned away I gave an earnest look at the old church. Grass is growing on its buttresses; it has a desolate look, though strong and well kept. The party pass on, and I make haste to overtake them.

Down we go, doing penance over the round paving stones; and our next halt is momentary. In the market-place, before the town house, (a huge, three-gabled building, like a beast of three horns,) stands Luther's bronze monument; apple women and pear women, onion and beet women, are thickly congregated around, selling as best they may. There stands Luther, looking benignantly, holding and pointing to the open Bible; the women, meanwhile, thinking we want fruit, hold up their wares and talk German. But our conductress has a regular guide's trot, inexorable as fate; so on we go.

Wittenberg is now a mean little town; all looks poor and low; yet it seems like a place that has seen better days. Houses, now used as paltry shops, have, some of them, carved oaken doors, with antic freaks of architecture, which seem to signify that their former owners were able to make a figure in the world. In fact, the houses seem a sort of phantasmagoria of decayed gentlefolk, in the faded, tarnished, old-fashioned finery of the past. Our guide halts her trot suddenly before a house, which she announces as that of Louis Cranach; then on she goes. Louis is dead, and Magdalen, his wife, also; so there is no one there to welcome us; on we go also. Once Louis was a man of more consequence.

Now we come to Luther's house—a part of the old convent. Wide yawns the stone doorway of the court; a grinning masque grotesquely looks down from its centre, and odd carvings from the sides. A colony of swallows have established their nests among the queer old carvings and gnome-like faces, and are twittering in and out, superintending their domestic arrangements. We enter a court surrounded with buildings; then ascend, through a strange doorway, a winding staircase, passing small, lozenge-shaped window. Up these stairs he oft trod, in all the moods of that manifold and wonderful nature—gay, joyous, jocose, fervent, defiant, imploring; and up these stairs have trod wondering visitors, thronging from all parts of the world, to see the man of the age. Up these stairs come Philip Melanchthon, Lucas Cranach, and their wives, to see how fares Luther after some short journey, or some new movement. Now, all past, all solitary; the stairs dirty, the windows dim.