Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

In short, my travels were growing more and more a constant foraging expedition, with success never quite overhauling appetite. The country, indeed, was changing in character, and with it the inhabitants. I had entered a region noted for its slate quarries, and in place of the attractive little villages, with their red-tile roofs and masses of flowering bushes, there came dismal, slate-built black hamlets, almost treeless in setting and peopled by less progressive, more slovenly citizens. The only public hostess of Lahm refused to take me in for the night because her husband was not at home, a circumstance for which I was duly thankful after one glimpse of her slatternly household. A mile or more farther on my eyes were drawn to an unusual sight. An immense rounded hillock ahead stood forth in the sunset like an enameled landscape painted in daring lilac-purple hues. When I reached it I found acres upon acres closely grown with that species of wild pansy which American children call “snap-heads.” Similar fields followed, until the entire country-side had taken on the-same curious color, and the breeze blowing across it carried to the nostrils a perfume almost overpowering in its intensity. They were not, as I supposed, meadows lying fallow and overrun with a useless, if attractive, weed, but another example of the German’s genius for discovering Ersatz species of nourishment. Sown like wheat in the spring, the flowers were harvested, stem and all, in the autumn, and sent to Hamburg to be made into “tea.”

Effelter was as black as any African tribe, but its Gasthaus was homelike enough within. By the time darkness had thoroughly fallen its every table was closely surrounded by oxlike, hob-nailed countrymen who had stamped in, singly or in small groups, as the last daylight faded away. The innkeeper and his family strove in vain to keep every mug filled, and sprinkled the floor from end to end with drippings of beer. The town was Catholic. While the church-bell tolled the end of evening vespers, the entire gathering sat silently, with bared heads, as is the Bavarian custom, but once the tolling had ceased they did not resume their interrupted conversation. Instead they rose as one man and, each carrying his beer-mug, filed solemnly across the hallway into an adjoining room. The landlord disappeared with them, and I was left entirely alone, except for one horny-handed man of fifty at my own table. He slid bit by bit along the bench on which we both sat, until his elbow touched mine, and entered into conversation by proffering some remark in the crippled dialect of the region about the close connection between crops and weather.

From the adjoining room rose sounds of untrained oratory, mingled with the dull clinking of beer-mugs. The innkeeper and his family had by no means abandoned their service of supply; they had merely laid out a new line of communication between spigots and consumers. Gradually the orderly discussion became a dispute, then an uproar in which a score of raucous voices joined. I looked questioningly at my companion.

“They are electing a new Bürgemeister,” he explained, interrupting a question he was asking about the “peasants” of America. “It is always a fight between the Bürger and the Arbeiter—the citizens and the workers—in which the workers always win in the end.”

One could easily surmise in which class he claimed membership by the scornful tone in which he pronounced the word “citizen.”

“I live in another town,” he added, when I expressed surprise that he remained with me in the unlighted Gastzimmer instead of joining his fellows.

I slipped out into the hallway and glanced in upon the disputants. A powerful young peasant stood in an open space between the tables, waving his beer-mug over his head with a gesture worthy of the Latin race, at the same time shouting some tirade against the “citizens.” An older man, somewhat better dressed, pounded the table with his empty glass and bellowed repeatedly: “Na, da’ is’ giene Wahrhied! Da’ is’ giene Wahrhied, na!” The other twoscore electors sipped their beer placidly and added new clouds to the blue haze of tobacco smoke that already half hid the gathering, only now and then adding their voices to the dispute. It was evident that the youthful Arbeiter had the great majority with him. As I turned away, my eyes caught a detail of the election that had so far escaped my attention. In a corner of the hallway, huddled closely together, stood a score or more of women, dressed in the gloomy all-black of church service, peering curiously into the room where their husbands smoked, drank, and disputed, and preserving the most absolute silence.

I mentioned the detail to my companion of the guest-room, recalling frequent assertions by Germans in a position to know that the women had been quick to take advantage of the granting of equal suffrage to both sexes by the new “republican” government.

“Certainly,” he replied, “they have the right to vote, but the German Frau has not lost her character. She is still satisfied to let her man speak for her. Oh yes, to be sure, in the large cities there are women who insist on voting for themselves. But then, in the cities there are women who insist on smoking cigarettes!”

In contrast with this conservative, rural viewpoint I have been assured by persons worthy of credence that in the more populous centers some 80 per cent. of the women flocked to the polls for the first election in which suffrage was granted them.