SOCIAL LIFE IN MUNICH.*
Timm are few German towns which make such pleasiug im- pression at first sight upon travellers, particularly upon tra- vellers from England, than the capital of Bavaria. It is a town which, more than almost any other on the Continent, bears the impress that art has taken up its quarters there. A recent traveller, well known to the readers of this journal, describes Munich in a few lines.-f- "On every side," he says, " there are magnificent new streets, and public buildings and statues; the railway terminus is the finest I have over seen ; every church, from the cathedral downwards, is in beautiful order, and highly decorated ; and it is not in public buildings only that one meets with evidences of care and taste." This warm praise the author of Social Life in Munich does not feel inclined to endorse. Mr. Edward Wilberforce has seen more of the art city, that is, has been much longer there, than " Vacuus Viator," and he owns that things are not altogether so pleasant as they appear on the first look, but that there is much rottenness below all the outward paint and gilding. Nevertheless, Mr. Wilberforce also has much to say in favour of Munich ; the more valuable, as it is clearly dis- criminate praise, not lightly bestowed nor fancifully withheld. The Social Life is altogether an admirable photographic picture, sharp, and clear, and true in every line of light and shade.
Mr. Wilberforce sketches Munich from a threefold point of view ; as seat of a Court ; as dwelling-place of some hundred thousand cockneys, much addicted to beer and tobacco ; and as residence of about a thousand disciples and professors of art. It is the last-named part of the community which im- parts its golden hue to the capital of Bavaria, hiding a world of misery, littleness, and absurdity, to be found in the other strata of society. Of the aspect of royalty in Munich the author gives a very amusing account, the more interesting, as the description fits to a dot the thirty and odd " Residenzstiidte " in which dwell the potentates of united Germany. Bavaria, it must be known, is more supremely blessed in the matter of kingship than any other country of the civilized world; for the royal family includes three kings, six queens, one empress, and a countless number of herzogs, princes, and other "highest and all-highest lordships"—hiichste und allerliSchste Herrschaften. This super- abundance of royalty, so far from destroying its value in the eyes of the faithful Bavarians, has, on the contrary, the effect of increasing the warmth of admiration. The loyalty of the good people of Munich closely approaches worship. Whenever any of the members of the Wittelsbach family walk the streets, all the people in the road, whether in carriages or on foot, stop, draw up in a line, take off their hats, and bow to the ground. "This is done," says Mr. Wilberforce, "to young princesses of a distant branch, when they are walking with their governesses, and to the young princes, when they are walking with their tutor. On snowy days, when the Queen [Queen number one, we suppose] walks up and down the arcades, with two footmen behind her, the strollers there have to draw up in a line every time she passes. And, as these ar- cades are the great resort of Munich in bad weather, and the turns taken by the Queen are many, it may almost be calculated that every walk of hers costs her subjects six or eight hats. It is not sufficient to raise the hat, as is done in countries of more advanced (if that be possible) civilization ; but each hat has to be pulled off and held crown downwards, in which position all the weight is thrown on the brim." Who's your hatter? must be a natural question at the Bavarian Residenzstadt. The hat-off performance, it is neces- sary to state, is not exactly a free gift of loyalty, but strictly exacted by all the members of the Wittelsbach family. On one occasion, we are told, Prince Charles, uncle of the reigning King, abused a gentleman for only slightly raising his bat, in- stead of holding it "crown downwards," with "all the weight thrown on the brim." Old King Ludwig, high patron of art, went a step further by snatching away the bat of somebody who did not salute him properly, and flinging the poor beaver into the mud. It is a pity the thing did not happen to some muscular Christian of Old England—say, one of Barclay and Perkins' draymen.
Mr. Wilberforce's verdict on the two Wittelsbach Kings, the old and the new one, is that "King Max seems somewhat prosy, and King Ludwig partially cracked,"—a most true descrip- tion undoubtedly, and one in which all will agree who know anything about Bavaria and Bavarian royalty. The chief aim
• Social Life in Mania. By Edward Wilberforce. London : W. IL Allen and Co.
1863, pp. 340. "Vac= Vlator," Spectator, Sept 6,1862. of King Max is said to be the elevation of Munich in science and literature to an equal height with that to which his father raised it in art ; and as the ex-King ran up huge piles of masonry on the sandy plains on the Isar, so his present Majesty has big museums stocked with antediluvian animals, and waggon-loads of parchment filled with records of the Middle Ages. Unfor- tunately, over the middle ages his Majesty forgets the present age. The mediaeval institutions of Bavaria require mending more than almost any other of central Europe ; but of social science in this direction King Max will not hear. More iniquit- ous laws than the Bavarian statutes upon marriage it is not possible to imagine ; yet the enlightened Government does not take one step towards their repeal. Under the scientific sceptre of King Max, the police have absolute power to prevent every marriage, unless it has been previously proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that both contracting parties have ample and sufficient means to bring up a family of children. The result may be given in the simple statement that in the beautiful city of Munich, where high art flourishes to such an extraordinary degree, the number of illegitimate children born in one year has been repeatedly greater than that of the legitimate offspring. The illustrations given on this subject by Mr. Wilberforce are very curious. "If you inquire of the servants in Munich," lie says, "you will find that almost every one is engaged, and almost every female servant above a certain age has one or two children. One cook that I had was engaged eighteen years, and had two child- ren out at nurse." Such facts somewhat detract from the admiration one might be otherwise inclined to pay to artistic and scientific kingship.
The laws of marriage form but a small item of all the other restrictive and mediaeval laws of Bavaria. From the moment of his birth till be has drawn his last breath, nay, not unfrequently for some time after, the native of this happy country is under the supervision of the police, and cannot take one step nor do one single act without the written permission of somebody in authority. The police regulate the school hours; the police see after the young man or woman, that they are confirmed; the police superintend their learning a trade ; the police send the lad for a few years upon compulsory travels, or" Wanderschaft," care- fully specifying the countries to which he may go, and where he must not go—Switzerland is in the prohibitory index, and so is the little city of Bremen, with the terrible word "free'' prefixed —and the police finally domineer more arbitrarily than ever over the grown-up citizen's settlement in life. No man, however clever, however virtuous, or harmless, or bold, or possessed of any other positive or negative qualities, can establish himself in business without the permission of the lawful Bavarian authori- ties. To obtain it, a process more complicated and nearly as ex- pensive as a British Chancery suit has to be gone through ; the humble applicant has to bring a bushel of written, sealed, and in every way duly authenticated certificates, proving that he has been born ; that he has been vaccinated; that he has been to school ; that he has mastered the rule of three and various other rules ; that he has been travelling as a " Wanderbursche," and has not been travelling into prohibited Bremen and Switzerland ; and that, last not least, he is provided with money enough to pay all official fees and emoluments for permission to settle, and retain something for his own use. If the least of these conditions fail to be proved, the unhappy subject is doomed to vagrancy ; but even if all the certificates are scrupulously correct, the required permission to settle is frequently withheld under some futile pretext. "The great majority of those who apply for permis- sion to settle are met with a refusal," says Mr. Wilberforce. He mentions an unhappy cobbler who had the patience to repeat his applications for thirty years ; and he adds that "ten years is no unfrequent period." Nor are the troubles over when the solicited permission is finally granted. All trades in Bavaria are jealously fenced in with restrictions and limitations, carefully guarded by the authorities, and woe to the goldsmith who manufactures a silver spoon, or to the dressmaker who stitches together a bonnet ! There is a story of a man who wanted a wheelbarrow, and who ordered it of a carpenter. The wheelbarrow came home, but without the wheel ; and the man had to carry it to a wheelwright. But the latter, after fitting the wheel, could not put the iron on it, and the barrow had to wander further on to a blacksmith. He duly furnished the metal ; but the wheel- barrow still wanted a coat of paint, and had to go further in its road of circumnavigation to a painter. The same process was— so says Mr. Wilberforce—once gone through by an Englishman who wanted a bucket. He found that the man who made the staves could not make the hoops ; the man who made the hoops
could not make the handle ; the man who made the handle could not paint the bucket, and well, the story and the feelings of the Englishman need not be enlarged upon. Certain it is, that a sovereign presiding over the execution of such laws may truly be called a "scientific king."
One of the most pleasant chapters in Mr. Wilberforce's inte- resting book is that upon beer. He well remarks, and all who know Munich will agree with the dictum, that the people of- Munich care nothing for art or science—" art has had no civi- lizing or ennobling effect upon them; their knowledge of it is
small and their appreciation small, and the chief names in Munich art are of men from other countries? Even their great scientific star, Liebig, "is more known in England than in Munich ; and the only feeling a true Bavarian has for Liebig is jealousy ; is he not a North German and a Protestant ?" It is beer, and beer alone, which arouses the enthusiasm of old and young, learned and ignorant, rich and poor. "Listen," Mr. Wilberforce exclaims, "to the conversation of Bavarians—it turns on beer. See to what the thoughts of the exile recur—to- the beer of his country. Sit down in a coffee-house or eating- house, and the waiter brings you beer unordered, and when you have emptied your glass, replenishes it without a summons.
Tell a doctor the climate of Munich does not agree with you, and he will ask you if you drink enough beer. Arrive at a place before the steamer or train is due, and you are told you have so-
long to drink beer." It is impossible not to feel some sympathy with this worship of beer on the part of the poor Bavarians ; for
certainly their ale is as excellent as their Government is execrable.
What can a man do who is persecuted by the police for the term of his natural life ; driven from one corner to another like a dog ; unable to marry, unable to settle in life, with nothing more legal to do but to bow daily and hourly before "highest and all-highest lordships," with "the crown of his hat down- wards, and the whole weight thrown on the brim "—what can such a man do, we say, but commit either of three things—to- hang himself; or to rise in single-handed insurrection against the police, and the whole lot of artistic, scientific, and illus- trious lordahips; or, finally, to get drunk? The philosophic Bavarians, it appears, choose the last of the three alternatives.
They get drunk in as thorough, and steady, and regular a manner as it is possible to do. Everybody in Munich drinks strong beer —8 per cent. of alcohol in " Bockbier " and other popular brews—and drinks beer always, and drinks nothing else but beer. Bavarian babies, probably, are brought up on small beer,. and diligently tended from the jug till their stomach is fit for the Salvator beer, the crown of all Munich liquors, and in strength something like whiskey. Luckily, the famous Salvator is only brewed and sold in March, at especially appointed houses, and
people who leave these places are said to be "under the influence of the season." It is unnecessary to state that the Bavarian Government superintends the manufacture and con- sumption of beer, as of everything else. Twice a year the ad- ministration—instructed, no doubt, by the King and his Cabinet Council in a matter of such importance—fix the price at which beer is to be sold ; one price for summer beer, and another for winter beer. The sliding scale is apt to serve political purposes. Whenever slight signs of discontent show themselves in the people, down goes the price of beer, up goes the consumption, and stronger thereupon grows the mild "influence of the season." There are those who maintain that King Ludwig had to resign his crown, not on account of his attachment to Lola Mentes and to high art in low latitudes, but because he fixed the price of Bockbier at one kreutzer the quart too high. Even Mr. VVilber- force is of opinion that Ludwig has sinned much in this respect. "How much more genuine," he says, " it would have been, in Mr. Buskin's sense of the word, if King Ludwig had built a large beer-hall, and let all his artiste adorn it with frescoes that could speak to the people, instead of all his temples and Italian copies, and histories of saints and mediaeval Germans I" The author's summary of Social Life in Munich is, that "when the traveller- looks back gratefully on his summers abroad, Munich is associated solely with his stone mug of beer."
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