A Traveler at Forty

by Theodore Dreiser

A German dance hall, Berlin

But to return to Berlin. I saw it first jogging down Unter den Linden from the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof (station) to Cook’s Berlin agency, seated comfortably in a closed cab behind as fat a horse and driver as one would wish to see. And from there, still farther along Unter den Linden and through the Wilhelmstrasse to Leipzigstrasse and the Potsdamer Bahnhof I saw more of it. Oh, the rich guttural value of the German “platzes” and “strasses” and “ufers” and “dams.” They make up a considerable portion of your city atmosphere for you in Berlin. You just have to get used to them—just as you have to accept the “fabriks” and the “restaurations” and the “wein handlungs,” and all the other “ichs,” “lings,” “bergs,” “brückes,” until you sigh for the French and Italian “-rics” and the English-American “-rys.” However, among the first things that impressed me were these: all Berlin streets, seemingly, were wide with buildings rarely more than five stories high. Everything, literally everything, was American new—and newer—German new! And the cabbies were the largest, fattest, most broad-backed, most thick-through and Deutschiest looking creatures I have ever beheld. Oh, the marvel of those glazed German cabby hats with the little hard rubber decorations on the side. Nowhere else in Europe is there anything like these cabbies. They do not stand; they sit, heavily and spaciously—alone.

The faithful Baedeker has little to say for Berlin. Art? It is almost all in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, in the vicinity of the Kupferdam. And as for public institutions, spots of great historic interest—they are a dreary and negligible list. But, nevertheless and notwithstanding, Berlin appealed to me instantly as one of the most interesting and forceful of all the cities, and that solely because it is new, crude, human, growing feverishly, unbelievably; and growing in a distinct and individual way. They have achieved and are achieving something totally distinct and worth while—a new place to go; and after a while, I haven’t the slightest doubt, thousands and even hundreds of thousands of travelers will go there. But for many and many a day the sensitive and artistically inclined will not admire it.

My visit to Cook’s brought me a mass of delayed mail which cheered me greatly. It was now raining pitchforks but my bovine driver, who looked somehow like a segment of a wall, managed to bestow my trunk and bags in such a fashion that they were kept dry, and off we went for the hotel. I had a preconceived notion that Unter den Linden was a magnificent avenue lined shadily with trees and crowded with palaces. Nothing could have been more erroneous. The trees are few and insignificant, the palaces entirely wanting. It is a very wide business street, lined with hotels, shops, restaurants, newspaper offices and filled with a parading throng in pleasant weather. At one end it gives into an area known as the Lustgarten crowded with palaces, art galleries, the Berlin Cathedral, the Imperial Opera House and what not; at the other end (it is only about a mile long) into the famous Berlin Thiergarten, formerly a part of the Imperial (Hohenzollern) hunting-forest. On the whole, the avenue was a disappointment.

For suggestions of character, individuality, innate Teutonic charm or the reverse—as these things strike one—growth, prosperity, promise, and the like, Berlin cannot be equaled in Europe. Quite readily I can see how it might irritate and repel the less aggressive denizens of less hopeful and determined realms. The German, when he is oppressed is terribly depressed; when he is in the saddle, nothing can equal his bump of I-am-ity. It becomes so balloon-like and astounding that the world may only gaze in astonishment or retreat in anger, dismay, or uproarious amusement. The present-day Germans do take themselves so seriously and from many points of view with good reason, too.

I don’t know where in Europe, outside of Paris, if even there, you will see a better-kept city. It is so clean and spruce and fresh that it is a joy to walk there—anywhere. Mile after mile of straight, imposing streets greet your gaze. Berlin needs a great Pantheon, an avenue such as Unter den Linden lined with official palaces (not shops), and unquestionably a magnificent museum of art—I mean a better building. Its present public and imperial structures are most uninspired. They suggest the American-European architecture of 1860–1870. The public monuments of Berlin, and particularly their sculptural adornments are for the most part a crime against humanity.

I remember standing and looking one evening at that noble German effort known as the memorial statue of William I, in the Lustgarten, unquestionably the fiercest and most imposing of all the Berlin military sculptures. This statue speaks loudly for all Berlin and for all Germany and for just what the Teutonic disposition would like to be—namely, terrible, colossal, astounding, world-scarifying, and the like. It almost shouts “Ho! see what I am,” but the sad part of it is that it does it badly, not with that reserve that somehow invariably indicates tremendous power so much better than mere bluster does. What the Germans seem not to have learned in their art at least is that “easy does it.” Their art is anything but easy. It is almost invariably showy, truculent, vainglorious. But to continue: The whole neighborhood in which this statue occurs, and the other neighborhood at the other end of Unter den Linden, where stands the Reichstag and the like, all in the center of Berlin, as it were, is conceived, designed, and executed (in my judgment) in the same mistaken spirit. Truly, when you look about you at the cathedral (save the mark) or the Royal Palace in the Lustgarten, or at the Winged Victory before the Reichstag or at the Reichstag itself, and the statue of Bismarck in the Königs-Platz (the two great imperial centers), you sigh for the artistic spirit of Italy. But no words can do justice to the folly of spending three million dollars to erect such a thing as this Berlin Dom or cathedral. It is so bad that it hurts. And I am told that the Kaiser himself sanctioned some of the architectural designs. And it was only completed between 1894 and 1906. Shades of Brabante and Pisano!

But if I seem disgusted with this section of Berlin—its evidence of Empire, as it were—there was much more that truly charmed me. Wherever I wandered I could perceive through all the pulsing life of this busy city the thoroughgoing German temperament—its moody poverty, its phlegmatic middle-class prosperity, its aggressive commercial, financial, and, above all, its official and imperial life. Berlin is shot through with the constant suggestion of officialism and imperialism. The German policeman with his shining brass helmet and brass belt; the Berlin sentry in his long military gray overcoat, his musket over his shoulder, his high cap shading his eyes, his black-and-white striped sentry-box behind him, stationed apparently at every really important corner and before every official palace; the German military and imperial automobiles speeding their independent ways, all traffic cleared away before them, the small flag of officialdom or imperialism fluttering defiantly from the foot-rails as they flash at express speed past you;—these things suggest an individuality which no other European city that I saw quite equaled. It represented what I would call determination, self-sufficiency, pride. Berlin is new, green, vigorous, astounding—a city that for speed of growth puts Chicago entirely into the shade; that for appearance, cleanliness, order, for military precision and thoroughness has no counterpart anywhere. It suggests to you all the time, something very much greater to come which is the most interesting thing that can be said about any city, anywhere.

One panegyric I should like to write on Berlin concerns not so much its social organization as a city, though that is interesting enough, but specifically its traffic and travel arrangements. To be sure it is not yet such a city as either New York, London or Paris, but it has over three million people, a crowded business heart and a heavy, daily, to-and-fro-swinging tide of suburban traffic. There are a number of railway stations in the great German capital, the Potsdamer Bahnhof, the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof, the Anhalter Bahnhof and so on, and coming from each in the early hours of the morning, or pouring toward them at evening are the same eager streams of people that one meets in New York at similar hours.