Carlsruhe
Carlsruhe is modern, very modern, and is a favourite resting-place with those who would study the language and customs of Germany. In fact, there is not much else to attract one, except a certain conventional society air, which seems to pervade all of its two score thousand inhabitants.
The architectural treasures of the city mostly bear eighteenth-century dates, from the great monumental gateway, by which one enters the city, and on which one reads, "Regnante Carolo Frederico, M.B., S.R.I.P.E.," to the Academy of Fine Arts, really the most beautiful structure of the city, which dates only from 1845, though reproducing the Byzantine style of the early ages.
The great palace designed by Weinbrunner branches out like the leaves of a fan, and, if not the equal of Versailles or Fontainebleau,[{135}] suggests them not a little in general effect.
The two chief churches of Carlsruhe are in no way great ecclesiastical edifices, or of any intrinsic artistic worth whatever. Both the principal Protestant place of worship and the Catholic edifice are from the designs of Weinbrunner, and are a confused mixture of pretty much all the well recognized details of style, with no convincing features of any. They are pretentious, gaudy, and quite out of keeping with religious feeling.
The Catholic edifice is a poor, ungainly imitation of the Pantheon at Rome, which reflects no dignity upon its author or the religion which it houses.
The Protestant church has its façade ornamented with six Corinthian columns—a weakly pseudo-classic style—which lead up to a tower which would be suitable enough to a country-side German parish church, but which, in a prosperous and gay little metropolis of pleasure, like Carlsruhe, is unappropriate and unfeeling, particularly when one recalls that it is a modern building which one contemplates. The window openings, too, recall rather those of a dwelling-house than of a religious edifice. So, when all is said and[{136}] done, there is not much in favour of Carlsruhe's churches.
One link binds Carlsruhe with the traditions of ecclesiastical art in Germany, and that is a most acceptable statue of Ervin von Steinbach, the master-builder of Strasburg's cathedral. It flanks the principal portal of the Polytechnic School.
Darmstadt
Though more ancient than Carlsruhe, Darmstadt has a prosperous modern appearance, and consequently lacks those lovable qualities of a tumble-down mediæval town which usually surround architectural treasures of the first rank.