WEIMAR : PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.
V 0 en old resident, whose memory can &nee back over the
beat part of half-r.-century, the choice of Weimer as the scat of Republican Germany's first National Awl-eddy his come as a surprise, one had almost said a shock. An-1 yet on second thoughts the whole thing does not Peens so incon- gruous after all : the (haat Game of Polities, with its sordid underside, has, it is true, never before been played there —of quite another kind have tress Weinser's best traditions. Possibly, however, the very et inoephere of gram/edam ,. which st ill to a oertein extent pervades her, should act benefieielly on the heterogeneous crowd now shout to foregether within this little Reridenz-strall. Anywey, the choice eneblee her to reassert her shim to special consideeetion. " Athens-seethe-11m - has in this instance certainly scored one over that pervenn Kaiser-stadt, Berlin
In the days when the present writer first lived there as a smell child, Weimar had not yet quite outgrown her "first" Liszt period, while there were middle-egad people in plenty who he their firsthand recollections of the times of We;sner's greetness. when Certhe had teen the brightest end most pert ieusler ate,. in the literary galesy brought together by Grand Duke Kell August. The Coethellesis is now, as ell visitors to Weimer will know, a Museum, but in my time, though the main portion was let, some rooms were still reserved by the port's grandsons, two quiet and unobtrusive old gentlemen, on whom the weight of their grandsire's name seemed to rest oppressively. I can remember Walter best ; he heel a charming missitsst talent and wrote numerous songs. His brother wits mostly in Vienna, holding the post of equerry to the Emperor Francis Joseph.
The ter ' lion of the first Liszt perks' had come about in consequence of the lied reception accorded to Cornelitss's Barber of Bagdad, an opera which Liszt. then holding the prod of Con- ductor of the Crawl Ducal U elsestre, had been instrumental in getting staged. Liszt consequently regerded the opposition as an affront to himself. Nevertheless, most of the tritest Is had lusown how to draw together remained, acting for many a year as a " school " indeed, or nucleus to whit+ fresh tPlellt was constantly being drawls. The Weisner Opera lied seen the first performence of Wegner's; Fliegeorler liollander, with Ross von Milde as Seats, this singer, a prima donna of Weimer birth and of almost entirely lord training, having been Wegner's own choice. The Milde was, I believe, also the first interpreter of Else in Lohengria ; at all events her conception of the ride became the accepted one, end there smelt to this day still to singers who owe their rendering to the reaching they may have enjoyed in the days when both this great artist and her equally famous husband, t'eoslor von Milde, were known as tw•o of the greatest teachers of singing in Germany. You Mildo himself w•as the "erector" of the mile of Hans Sechs in The Meistersinger—also the most ideal of Wolfram von Esehen- bachs in Tannin:tome. Those were the reigning days of (trend Duke Alexander, the worthy euccessor to Goethe's patron. The theatre inaugurated by the poet had in those earliest days not met with the whole-heerted approval of older Weimereners; it had teen regarded more its R mere hobby. Yet hed Weissusr's first hdendase- with the enthusiastic co.operation of his friend Schiller--builder even letter than lie perhaps knew• when he reused the first building actually devoted to the drama to come into being on that open space ever since then known as the "Theater Plats." Earlier eerformences had, es readers of Goethe Memories will know, been given at Tiefurt, that idyllic little summer resort, with its tiny &Mom, within easy walk of the Residen:. The square, unsightly building thet served 111 the home of both drama and opera during both the Liszt period t, as also during the years when Eduard Lessen wielded the bitten, replaced the first, which was burnt down. It has now given say to a fee worthier edifice, around which little save the fins
monument to those twin geniuses, Schiller and Goethe, remains untouched to remind one of Weimar's more unsophisticated yet infinitely greater days.
It was not till after the Franco.German War that Liszt— by that time wearing the priest's garb, and known as the Abbe Liszt—returned to spend his declining years at the Garten- Henschel', known to many a musical pilgrim of the late " seventies " and " eighties." Those were the times of which I have a very distinct " child's memory," having indeed been then on most friendly terms with the Herr Abb6, as he was generally called. Liszt's absence from German soil during the " Seventy " war was duo to his pronounced French sym- pathies, but he returned shortly after peace had been restored, and when a great musical festival was held for which 1311:1133C- !ovum from all parts assembled at Weimar. One there was I can remember who, though his heart bled for France and his beloved -Alsace, yet accounted the Republic of Art a common meeting-ground for all. This was Eduard Schen% the veteran writer and member of the French Academy. It is pleasant to think of his having lived to see his country avenged. And, talk- ing of wars, even Weimar has in ita day tasted something of modern warfare. In the Schtitzengasse may still he seen a house plugged by a cannon-ball—a souvenir of one or other of the armies that took part in the " Jena affair "—while, later on, something that might be likened to the " Shadow on the Wall " was afforded in the summer of " sixty-four," when a detachment of the Prussian Army passed through Weimar and " gooae-stepped " to the amusement and amazement of the beholders on that picturesque, cobble-atoned old market-place known to many a reader of Vanity Fair, where Weimar masquerades under the name of Pumpernickel. There, beneath the shadow of the house of Johann Sebastian Such (where the peasant women, with their curious Thuringian basketa, were wont to sit beneath gaudy- coloured umbrellas in rain and shine), that market-place, across which Thackeray sent Dobbin speeding from his rooms in the " Elefant " to call on Emily, when that lady resided as a widow in lodgings hard by—there did those Prussians do their now well-known "prance" before marching on into their own territory. The next time they honoured Weimar was not so amusing for the inhabitants. It was in Juno, '66, and while Grand Duke Alexander had desired to maintain strict neutrality. This did not suit Bismarck's book : " Come in, or we'll take you on too " was practically the message received at the Schloss in Weimar on one of those sweltering June days when the Hanoverian» were metering their troops near Langensalza, and the dilatory movements of the Bavarians caused the initial success of tho blind Kiug's troops to end in defeat and capitulation.
Prussian troops had during those weeks of uncertainty and suspense drawn a cordon round Weimar—the little town was practically in a state of siege, her Sovereign to all intents and purposes a prisoner. Bowing to the Prussian bully meant saving the town from shot and shell, and the occupation super- vened. Then followed the greatest insult of all : the loyal Weimar troops, only one regiment in all, were marched up to the station (the victors having feared a mutiny) and entrained as captives, being sent to the fortress of Mayence " for the duration," which was until Kfiniggratz had turned Austria out of Germany and the Peace of Frankfurt had been signed. The colours of the Grand Duchy, dark green and yellow, had also been those of the Weimar uniform ; " spinach and eggs" there- fore, was the particular dish Woimaraners of every class elected, most ostentatiously, to set before the unwelcome guests billeted on them. Our regiment then became metamorphosed into the "94th Tidiringer Infantry" and absorbed into the Prussian machine, and the majority of the men who had smarted under the indignity I have described fell at Weissenburg and Worth, Prussia's way of honouring her awkward customers having ever been to put that newly acquired "cannon-fodder" in the forefront of the battle, since dead men tell no tales.
Modern Weimar has long outgrown those walls which still encircled her in the days of Goethe (and Dobbin !), and of which but fragmentary evidences now remain. Behind thom in olden times the stout-hearted Weimaraners had defied the onslaughts of many a tribe invading fair Thuringia—notably the Wends, that strange offshoot of the Celtic people. The wide Graben close to the Karls-Platz leads past one portion of that ancient• wall, and upon it, in this writer's childhood, was the garden belonging to a private residence. The old town is now honey- combed with tramway lines, and many an erstwhile country road has been turned into a decorous suburban thoroughfare, Yet, though " National Assemblies " hold their heated con- ferences in the stately and reposeful apartments of Weimar's once sleepy old palace, that very personification of " etiquette and decorum," we can never believe that she, our "Dm Athen," in spite of " going Republican," will ever really lose her " dia. tinotivenesa," or, caught in the excitement of the times, flaunt the bonnet rouge too aggressively, faithless to, and forgetful of, the " powder and patches " she (metaphorically speaking) wore with such infinite grace long after the rest of the world had relegated all such things to limbo ! Come, therefore, what may of the now impending confabulations, the fact that Weimar, the Mecca of so many, the haven to which the gradually darkening genius of Nietzsche retired, there finding rest and final release (he passed away to the accompaniment of a thunderstorm such as the "oldest inhabitants" had never experienced the like of), should have been chosen for her present purpose cannot, I am inclined to think, be without some subtle effect upon those now assembled there. We who have known another and a very different Germany would be glad to believe that the worst has spent itself, that all good Germans (and there must still be some), gazing towards Weimar, may feel a yearning for the fulfilment of Goethe's last recorded words : " Light, more Light ! ", taking heart also in the remembrance of Nietzsche's utterance, so prophetic in these times—that it has needed chaos in order to
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