The Jews believed that the sacred waves of the Jordan were powerful to wash away all human suffering, either of the soul or body. Faith was necessary to this pious healing. To the Münchener beer is the river of health. His faith in it dates from his earliest infancy, and he resorts to its beneficent influence at least seven times a day, and drinks his last Krügl with apparently the same relish as the first. The quantity which Germans drink is something incredible. Bavarian students usually take from five to seven masses per day. (At the German Jesuit seminary in Prague the novices are allowed daily seven, the clericos ten, and the priests twelve pints of beer.)
Beer is considered good not only for men, but for women, for girls and boys, and even unweaned infants.
"Mein Krügl" the Münchener speaks of as of his natural and human rights. He was born with a right to his beer, and his Krügl, as "man is born with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and equally with these the State must look after this right. The krügls, or beer mugs, of each brewery are inspected by the police, to see if the measure is correct, and if the ware has no poisonous lead in its composition. The royal K is stamped on them by the King's authority. The police also examine the contents of the beer with the same zeal as the water or the condition of the sewers.
The Germans as a nation are patient of wrong and peace-loving, but the rumor of a tax on beer raises a frightful commotion, and a riot is often the consequence. As well tax air, water, and fire as beer, the fifth element.
In an ancient neighborhood of Munich, behind the post, and best entered from Maximilian street, is a little square remarkable for its ugliness. All the houses are old, and one feels upon entering it as if one had suddenly walked back into the middle ages. On the east side stands a time-gray, low, irregular building, resembling in architecture, or by its want of it, nothing of the present age. This is the royal Hof Brauerei. After 10 A. M. a constant stream of thirsty souls flows along the streets and narrow alleys leading toward its dismal-looking portals. Its beer is celebrated as being the finest in the world, and is the standard by which all other beers are judged. It is the poetry of beer; it is to all other brewings what Shakespeare is to the drama; what the Coliseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold; it is all drunk on the spot, and when it gives out no other brewery can supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every luxury, from the poles to the tropics, in their capital of the world, have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a cask of it. It is said that Maximilian II. resolved that the best beer in the world should be made at the royal brewery in Munich. It has never been expected that it would yield any revenue, but merely pay its expenses. It is now under the protection of the present King, and the ingredients are inspected by an officer of the royal household.
For its dirt, its darkness, and its utter want of service, the Hof Brauerei is unequalled in the world, and nowhere else can be found such a mixed society. Entering the low-vaulted room, each one looks anxiously about for an empty mug. These are of gray stone, containing a mass, the price of which is seven and a half kreutzers. Spying one, he hastens to secure it from other competitors. The first who reaches it carries it off in triumph to the spring in the anteroom, rinses it, and presents himself behind a queue of predecessors at the shank window, where several pairs of hands are occupied all day long in filling mugs from the great casks within. This accomplished, he returns to the guest room and searches for a seat. If found, it is certainly not luxurious—a wooden bench of pine, stained by time and continual use to a dark dirt color, behind an ancient table. The walls and ceiling are grim with age, and the atmosphere hazy with smoke. The scene baffles description. All classes of society are represented. Side by side with the noble or learned professor, one sees the poorest artisan and the common soldier. Here and there the picturesque face of an artist is in close proximity to a peasant, and through the smoky atmosphere one catches the gleam of the scarlet or sky-blue cap of a German student, or the glitter of an epaulette. The Catholic of the most ultramontane stamp is there, as well as the Jew, the Protestant, and the freethinker. Here stands a pilgrim from far America, armed with a Bädeker, and there an Englishman with the inevitable Murray under his arm, too amazed or disdainful to search for a mass. Remarkable also are the steady habitués of the place, with Albert Dürer-like features which look as if hastily hewn out of ancient wood with two or three blows of a hatchet, or with smoke-dried physiognomies having a tint like that of a meerschaum pipe, acquired by years of exposure to the thick atmosphere of smoky breweries. They are there morning, noon, and night, year in and year out. Some talk over the news of the day, but most sit in silence. Not a few make a meal with bread and radishes, or a sausage brought from the nearest pork shop.
In Munich a singular and ancient custom prevails. If by chance the cover of a mug is left up, any individual who chooses may seize it, and drink the contents. At the Hof Brauerei I once saw a newly arrived Englishman, carrying the usual red guidebook, quit the room for an instant, leaving uncovered his just acquired mass of beer. There came along a seedy-looking old gentleman, evidently a Stammgast. A gleam of satisfaction stole over his wooden features as he espied the open mug. Pausing a moment, he lifted it to his lips and slowly drank the contents. Setting it down empty, with a face mildly radiating satisfaction, he went his way. Presently the owner of the beer returned, took his seat, and lifted the mass, without looking, to his lips. With intense astonishment he put it down again, appeared not to believe the evidence of his senses, applied his glass to his eye, looked with anxiety into his mug, and became satisfied of its emptiness. At his neighbors he cast a quick glance of indignant suspicion—the look of a Briton whose rights were invaded. No one even looked up; apparently the occasion was too common to excite attention. Gradually his face regained its composure. He procured a new supply, and as the wonderful barley juice disappeared became again calm and happy. Miraculous mixture! Who would not, under thy benign influence, forget all rancor and bitterness, even though his deadliest enemy sat opposite?
In the Haupt und Residenz Stadt München, as Munich is always called in official documents, many of the breweries bear the names of orders of monks, because there the friars in olden days made particularly good beer. The breweries borrowed from them the receipt and the name. Hence the brewery to the Augustiner, to the Dominikaner, to the Franciskaner, and the Salvator.
New beer is in all cities of America and Europe a simple fact. In Munich it is an important public and private family event, concerning each house as well as the entire city.
The opening of the Salvator brewery in the suburbs of Munich, for its brief season of a month in the spring, assumes for the inhabitants the importance of a long anticipated holiday. Thither an eager crowd of townspeople make pilgrimage. I was present on one of these auspicious occasions, and found a joyous multitude of more than two thousand persons, filling to overflowing the capacious building gayly trimmed with evergreens interspersed with the national colors. A band discoursed excellent music, that necessary element, without which no German scene is complete. The waiters, more than usually adroit in supplying the wants of the crowd, carried in their hands fourteen glasses at a time with professional dexterity. The peculiar delicacy of the occasion, aside from the beer, seemed to be cheese, plentifully sprinkled with black pepper.