Hamburg, and a German House, 1850s
Hamburg is a much more interesting city, in appearance, than I had any reason to suppose from the accounts of travels and guide books.
From: 1850 C.E. To: 1860 C.E.
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From “Hamburg, and a German House” in Home-Life in Germany by Charles Brace.
October 9,1860
Hamburg is a much more interesting city, in appearance, than I had any reason to suppose from the accounts of travels and guide books.
The contrast between “the old city" and the new, is very striking. The quiet antique alleys, like those of the Dutch cities, with canals and shade trees, and fantastic gables and rather anomalous statuary in the niches of the walls in one quarter, and in the other, the grand, new, bustling streets, built in the finest style of modern architecture, and opening out imposingly around the wide Basin of the Alster.
In May, of the year 1842, a great fire occurred here, which raged for four days, and reduced the finest part of the city to ashes. Over seventeen hundred houses were destroyed, and the flames were only checked by the skilful exertions of an English engineer, Mr. Lindley, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. After the fire, the town was rebuilt under the direction of this gentleman, and in a very complete and splendid manner. The narrow, unhealthy alleys were widened; new streets laid out; the old stagnant ditches filled up, and some of the most imposing lines of buildings erected, which are to be seen in Europe.
In fact, I know no city on the continent, whose business-streets make so fine an impression at first sight. Stone is very scarce here, so that nearly all the houses are built of brick, with a hard cement or stucco over it. Either the climate is more favorable, or it is a much better cement than with us,—certainly the stuccoed houses look far better than in our cities; and it has afforded an opportunity for something which is extremely needed in our country, that is, giving to each house its own peculiar ornament. One becomes so heartily tired of long rows of monotonous houses, exactly corresponding to each other, without an attempt at variety or character.
Here I passed through streets of high, handsome houses, where they had all the advantage which ours have—and undoubtedly it is an advantage—of a succession of similar parallel lines of structure on the front, one above the other; but, besides, peculiar independent ornaments to each building. Every house had a character. Every man could show his own peculiar taste on the front of his home. And this cement gives a beautiful opportunity for all kinds of graceful moulding and ornament, and even for small statuary. The Hamburgers have improved it well.
I found the public walks, also, and gardens of the city, very pleasing. The old bastions are laid out into agreeable promenades, which were gay on this day with merry parties. At length, in the evening after my arrival, after much pleasant rambling about the city, I resolved to deliver one of my letters of introduction, and while away an hour or two. With some delay, I found the house; the servant carried up my card with the letter; a friendly, hearty voice bade me welcome in English, and I found myself in company with a genial old gentleman and two younger ones, engaged over a decanter of Teneriffe and a round of cold beef. A place was made for me at once, and we were all soon in animated conversation. They spoke English well, and were very much interested to hear anything of America, and especially of our recent extravagancies about Jenny Lind. Punch seemed the great authority about us, and they asked if "Barnum would really smoke at her concerts, at he is there pictured!"
After the supper was thoroughly disposed of, cigars were lighted without ceremony, and we spent a long evening in very pleasant talk.
They entered into my objects of seeing German life, rather than the usual sights, with much interest; and at the close, I had engaged to spend the next day with the old gentleman, and to submit myself entirely to his guidance. It was late in the evening when I groped my way to my hotel, very happy at the friendly welcome I had found so soon, in a German home.
October—1850
"There is certainly a kind of simplicity about these Germans, which one does not see in America," I thought to myself, as I sat in my friend's parlor, the next morning, in a comfortable house, looking out over the Alster. It was the house of a man of fortune, a retired merchant; yet the whole, though bearing tokens of a cultivated taste, showed a remarkable plainness. The parlor in which I sat—a high, handsome room, with prettily-painted ceiling and tasteful papering, had no carpet. The furniture was simple; there was no grand display of gilt and crimson anywhere; and it was evident very little had been laid out on mere splendor.
Yet one could not but notice how carefully even very common implements had been chosen with reference to grace of form. The candle-stands, the shade-lamps, and even the pitcher, or the common vase, had something exceedingly graceful and almost classical in their shape. The designs of the music-holders, and of the table ornaments, caught the eye at once—every article seemed to have a meaning. The pictures on the walls or the table were not expensive—often mere sketches; yet they were very pleasant to look at, and had not been placed there, evidently, merely because "pictures must be hung in every respectable parlor."
The figures of the daguerreotypes showed the same traits; not formidable ranks of stiff forms, but easy groups around some animal, or in some natural position. There were flowers, too, everywhere; and especially that most graceful of all flower vessels, which I have seen alone in Germany, though I believe it came from Italy, called the "Ampel" It is simply a half vase, very much like the old Grecian lamp, hung with cords from the ceiling, with some flowering vine in it, which twines and wreaths around it; yet the beauty of it all can hardly be imagined. The only exception in this house to the general good taste, was the high white Berlin stove, looking like a porcelain tower with gilt battlements; but possibly one who is accustomed to our quiet, sombre machines, must need a little discipline to get used to these gay articles.
While noticing all this, my friend came in and welcomed me cordially, as he had hardly expected I would be up early enough to accept his invitation to breakfast "We keep much earlier hours," said he, "than you English. Business begins here at eight, where it would not in England till ten, and breakfast is even earlier than ours—usually at seven."
The breakfast was simply coffee and Brödchen—little bread-rolls—for which Hamburg is famous. The coffee was made at the table by the ladies, as it is in France, and sometimes with us, by pouring boiling water over the coffee and letting it drain for a few minutes in a machine for the purpose; the principal care being that it should drain slowly, through both a sieve and some tissue paper.
After breakfast, we went out to look at the garden. The house below—and I shall not fear to offend my friend by particularising, as the description would apply to two-thirds of the houses in Germany—resembles the upper part in its plainness of appearance. There are no carpets or matting on the stairway. On one side of the hall is a long dining-room, lined with portraits, with gilt moldings and tasteful papering, but the floor again, bare, though scrupulously neat. There are handsome curtains at the windows and a few substantial articles of furniture, but, altogether, it has a rather naked appearance, and probably serves as a dancing-room. The other side of the hall opens into a small room, looking out on the garden, and connected with a pleasant grapery, which is warmed from within, as grapes cannot be raised here without artificial heat. This room is used, perhaps, as a smoking or coffee-room—a cool, shaded room for the summer.
Like most of the buildings here, the house stands directly upon the street The outer door is left unlocked, but the opening it stirs a bell; and the inner door is unfastened by a servant. The garden was tasteful and pleasant, with the fruits and flowers of a northern climate. It is singular that the apples here, as almost everywhere in Europe, are small and poor in flavor, compared to ours. My friend, like the English, considers our American pippins one of the rarest and most beautiful additions to a dessert-table.
The other parts of the house, so far as I saw them, had the same general air of simplicity and good taste. The bedrooms are without carpets, too, at least in the summer.
Not having tried my friend's beds, I may claim without discourtesy, a traveller's privilege, in saying something here of German beds. The whole nation, with all their intellectual progress, have not made the first step in the philosophy of beds. And to one coming from England, Germany presents a most deplorable contrast in England, the bed is considered almost a sacred spot. It is carefully and nicely made; it is curtained off from the world; and there are very few inns so poor, as not to have many ornaments and comforts about their beds. But in Germany, it does not seem to be considered a place where an important part of life is to be spent.
It is only a narrow, open lounge—always too short for a long man, and too narrow for a restless one. The mattress is a most light, flimsy affair, which is attempted to be counter-balanced by an immense hard pillow, reaching half way down the bed, so that one is obliged to lie at a half-sitting posture. And to crown all, for a coverlid, is a large, light feather-bed or pillow, which makes one intolerably warm under it, and leaves one very cold without it. These beds have been the subject of malediction with travellers, since Coleridge's feeling remarks on the subject but they do not appear to have changed much, except in a few places on the Rhine, where the English have fairly grumbled them away.
The remainder of the morning my friend kindly devoted to showing me the principal sights of the town; and in the afternoon, I presented my other letters. One was to Mr. Lindley, the English engineer. Mr. L, is the last one to wish his name brought out in this conspicuous way, but I cannot forbear expressing my thanks for his many attentions to me, and my admiration for what he is accomplishing in Hamburg. A free-minded, untiring, hopeful man—one who believes that God's world is not quite a stagnant pool of wretchedness, bat that something can be done to clear it and make it flow on again—and who is doing his part for this in a very thorough way. I had the pleasure of meeting him frequently, and the account of all his efforts in the city, his attempts to stop the progress of "the great fire" by the general blowing up of buildings; his struggles with the lower classes, who at first believed him almost a demoniac man, plotting the destruction of the city; his gigantic plans for rebuilding, and endeavors to inspire the Germans with something of the English practical spirit, would form an interesting history in itself.
He has just offered, I was told in private, $10,000 to the city corporation, if they would subscribe the rest, for building several large bath-houses for the poor, after the manner of the London houses. At his suggestion, and by his plan, some grand water- works have been erected, which supply the whole city with pure water, and the pipes from which can be used for the engines in every block, in case of another fire. He has constructed, too, an immense building and machinery, with a very high tower, for the gas-works—much of it contrived on new principles. He was superintending, while I was there, some new extensive docks, laid out by himself. One of the best quarters of the city, on the right bank of the Elbe, has been gained by him, from the marsh, by thorough drainage and by pumping out the water with a steam-engine, and filling in the space with the rubbish from the fire.
Mr. Lindley has been the rebuilder of Hamburg; and all agree, that to his improvements a great change in the health of the poorest quarters, is due. The first feelings, as I said, towards him during the fire, by the lower classes, were of intense suspicion and hatred. Under his direction, some of the finest buildings in the city had been blown into the air. The crowd cried out that "the foreigner was trying to ruin Hamburg," and he hardly escaped with his life. But afterwards as they say the fire subsiding through these measures, and when later they beheld his unceasing exertions to rebuild and improve the city, they began almost to idolize him. And now, by workmen and Bürschen, no man is better beloved than Mr. Lindley, the English engineer.
October 18, 1850.
I went out to-day in company with one of my friends, to visit a wealthy gentleman, living in the outskirts of Hamburg. I preferred to walk, and was well repayed by the opportunity it gave me for examining the pleasant villas which surround the city. For some time, I wondered to myself what it was that gave so different an air to them all, from that of our country-seats. They were built not unlike them, of wood or stuccoed brick, in rectangular forms, or with slightly varied outline. The grounds in general did not seem especially "foreign" in their designs. I concluded finally, the, difference was in the universal tendency to make the most of the open air. The houses were all surrounded with pleasant balconies, opening into the sitting-rooms; there were porticoes, leafy boudoirs connecting with the inside ; the gardens were full of arbors, and summer-houses and seats, where people were eating and drinking, as if it were as habitual there as within doors.
We found the family we, would visit just sitting down to "lunch,” and we were at once placed at the table. There was a little company accidentally assembled; and the lunch, though it was only eleven, o'clock, presented itself as a rather formidable meal—steaks, bread-cakes, fish and claret, with a close of some beautiful grapes and pears from the gentleman's conservatories, and decanters of choice pale sherry. There was little form, though several servants were in waiting.
The great topic of conversation was the war then going on in Schleswig-Holstein, against Denmark. All seemed to sympathise most deeply with the insurgents. I was somewhat surprised to notice, too, considerable conversation on religious subjects. My German is rather limited yet, and a very rapid conversation, where there is a confusion of voices, I find it difficult to follow; but I was struck with the earnest, practical tone of what was said; The subject seemed generally connected with something they called the "Inner Mission” which I did not at the time understand. My neighbors at the table were very polite, and very much was asked about America, where many of them seemed to have friends.
Our time, the remainder of the day till dinner, at five o'clock—for they would not hear of our returning till after we had dined with them—was spent in examining the very handsome estate of the gentleman, and in talking with the various friends who chanced to come in. As a considerable company of the neighbors had assembled, in part through invitation of the host, to compliment us, the dinner proved quite a formal affair. The ladies in full dress; a splendid dining-hall with flowers and lights; and a line of respectable-looking servants. I was curious to see what the arrangement of courses would be. Soup, as everywhere, the first—then a Rhine wine poured out to each one who would take it; the second course, boiled beef; next, fish with a red wine; then pigeons and Saxony larks, a little delicacy much valued here; pudding; and champagne served; and last of the solid courses, roast venison. The dessert was black bread and cheese, with port wine.
The especial enjoyment of the meal was evidently in the conversation, and there was little hard drinking. The ladies did not drink wine at all. The principal person at table, and one to whom all listened with marked attention, was a strong-featured, earnest-looking man, who, though he made a keen joke occasionally, was talking mostly of very serious matters. His voice was deep and fervid, and as he spoke some times of the social evils in Germany; of the wrongs of the poor; of the little hold which religion has upon them; and of the utter want through the nation of any practical piety, I could see from the deep stillness of the company, that they felt they were listening to great truths, uttered by an earnest man. He spoke of the "Inner Mission" again, as a means of reform.
Brace, Charles Loring. Home-Life in Germany. Charles Scribner, 1853.
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