Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Wetzlar on the Lahn - Part 1

by George Carless Swayne

WETZLAR ON THE LAHN.

PART I.

To those whose admiration of Goëthe amounts to a sort of religious reverence (and they are not a few among his countrymen), Frankfort-on-the-Maine is the Mecca, and Weimar the Medina of Germany. At Frankfort, where he drew breath in 1749, his memory is honoured by a square named after him, and a statue in the midst of it, which represents the poet as if he had lain down to sleep in his clothes, and got up suddenly to write down his thoughts, taking the blankets with him. At Weimar, besides the double statue, which sensibly represents him in his ordinary dress, with his arm supporting the less physically strong Schiller, there is a sort of church in the park. On entering it, instead of a crucifix, or an altar-piece, one is struck by the sight of a colossal statue of Goëthe in a sitting position, looking like a Greek god: and ministered to by a miniature nude woman, who represents a Psyche, or the Spirit of Poetry. But between the Mecca and Medina of Goëthe, at a short distance out of the direct road from one to the other, not as the crow flies, but as the train goes (for modern pilgrims travel by rail), is a halting-place which has been immortalised by Goëthe in his “Sorrows of Werther.” This is Wetzlar. Here Goëthe abode in his youth, and in a lunar month wrote off that poetically beautiful, but very youthful romance. Here is to be seen, on the left of a large gloomy building which once belonged to the Teutonic Order, and is now used as a charity school, the little house where that Lottchen lived who charmed the imagination of the poet by cutting brown bread and butter for her eight little brothers and sisters; the latter are seen in an engraving, stretching their little hands up to her, as little birds do their bills to their mother when they are hungry. Here, too, is to be seen, in the lower town, a house by no means remarkable, where that Jerusalem committed suicide for the love of a married lady, from whom Goëthe took his idea of Werther, while he mixed the story up with that of his own passing attachment, from which he seems to have very soon recovered.

The Lahn rises in the so-called Red-Hair Mountains of Westphalia; first runs to the east, then takes a sudden turn to the south, and washes the old walls of the university town of Marburg, in Electoral Hesse; then goes to pay a visit to another university, Giessen, in Hesse-Darmstadt territory; turning a sharp corner to the west, it becomes Prussian for a time, passing Wetzlar; then it winds about through Nassau, by Limburg and Ems, ending in the Rhine at Oberlahnstein, not far above the mouth of the Moselle. Between Giessen and Wetzlar, and a little farther on, it is a sluggish stream, sauntering through water-meadows, and sometimes overflowing them, which makes the walk between Giessen and Wetzlar a very long one in winter. Wetzlar itself, as Goëthe bears witness, is an unpleasant town; the streets are narrow and tortuous, with few open spaces, running with red mud when it rains; the houses are very high; and, although all ancient and gabled, for the most part monotonous in look, and often washed with a sickly green colour, and many of the streets are steep and awkward as they rise against the face of the hill; but the whole town is crowned by an ancient and most interesting cathedral, which is itself crowned by the semblance of an imperial crown in masonry, unfortunately not quite in harmony with the rest of the structure. The country round Wetzlar is as lovely as every possible variety of undulating hilly outline can make it, especially to the north, where first occur little outcropping hummocks, with old castles and churches at their tops backed by wavy hills, which are again backed by hills of a more mountainous character. These are not so universally wooded as are most of the mountains of central Germany, but there is wood enough upon them to produce variety of colour, light and shade.

The Lahn, winding through its water-meadows, is a fair object in the foreground. Wetzlar is rich in walks and pleasant places; though one of these, a favourite resort of the inhabitants, was destroyed by a selfish proprietor turning the trees into money, an act of Vandalism similar to that of the Frankfurters, when they gave up the glory of their town, the Mainlust Garden, to the use of the goods department of the railway. It was on an excursion to one of these pleasant places that the mischief occurred to Werther’s heart which ended in his suicide, by his coming to the conclusion that, as one of three persons must die, (which he somewhat unnecessarily assumed,) it was less a crime to kill himself than either of the others.

The Cathedral, Wetzlar. See page 420.

But Wetzlar has an interest quite separate from Goëthe and Werther, and that is, it was one of the Ancient Imperial Free Towns of Germany, owning no liege lord but the Emperor, and relying upon him for protection against all the petty feudal nobles of the neighbourhood, by whom its territory, however was singularly hemmed in and overlooked. It is also famous as having been, in the oldest historic time, as is generally supposed, the most advanced post of the Romans in the country of the Catti; and the square tower on Kalsmunt, a hill contiguous to the town, is attributed by antiquaries to the epoch of the Roman dominion. Wetzlar with Frankfort, Friedburg, and Gelnhausen, formerly formed one of the four Imperial towns of the Wetterau, possessing the same rights and privileges as the rest. It now belongs, with the surrounding territory, to the crown of Prussia, by a stipulation of the Congress of Vienna. In 1802, it had been given to the Elector of Mayence, afterwards Prince Primate of the Rhenish Confederacy and Grand Duke of Frankfort, and who had altered all the laws and customs to the French model, until the victory of the Allies restored the ancient constitution. In early times it was very inaccessible, in consequence of the bad state of the roads; the journey to Frankfort could scarcely be accomplished in a day, and old people relate that those who made it were accustomed to make their wills previously. It is now approached by good roads on all sides, and the railroad from Giessen to Coblentz is now open as well as that from Giessen to Deutz, which run together as far as the town. On the Giessen side, on the top of the hill on which the town stands, there are handsome gardens and promenades. The first object of note on entering from that side by the road is the Cathedral, shown on the previous page.

The origin of the town is obscure. It is probable that the church with its foundation stood there in very ancient times, and by the right of sanctuary attracted a numerous population to seek refuge in its neighbourhood; and then there was an ancient Villa Regia in the lower part of the town, which is indicated by the Sala or Selhöfen, the dependents of which would have formed, in course of time, a considerable community, which, by degrees, obtained the privileges of an imperial city. The first date of this, in an old record, is 1180, when Frederick I. grants the town the same privileges as Frankfort. In the times of the ancient Germans all the heights were covered, with few exceptions, with impenetrable woods; it was only in the valleys of the rivers or the slopes of the hills that farm-houses and villas were built, and settlements gathered round them. The common property in the surrounding forests was called a “Mark,” and was administered for the common good by definite rules. A place bare of trees on the side of a hill, such as that on which Wetzlar is partly built, was called a “Lar,” i. e., a “leer,” or void space, and the rest of the name is derived from the Wetzle, a brook flowing at the foot. Near Wetzlar are places called Aslar and Dorlar, possibly resulting from the compound of the same termination with the German words for “ash” and “thorn.”

The church probably stood alone on its site in the first instance, for the steep below it is inconvenient for houses. They grew up round it as the building gradually was proceeded with, for this, like most gothic churches, was not built in a day, but was the growth of centuries. As spots devoted to rural pursuits were taken in within the limits of the town, we find near the church two streets, called Duck Lane and Goose Pasture, just as in the heart of London we still have Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden.

At the time of this early settlement there seems to have sprung up a population below, on the bank of the Lahn, who lived under the protection of the Church, and subsisted on gardening and fishing. This settlement was called Husen, “the houses,” and when the town extended itself to meet it, it was included in the limit of the fortifications under the name of the Haüser suburb.

Another settlement formed itself round the ancient royal “Sala” or Palatium, which at first was independent, but afterwards joined with the town under the protection of the Church. Here was the ancient castle where the royal or imperial governor lived, till he found it convenient from the growth of the town to transfer his residence to the castle on the Kalsmunt Hill, whence he could watch over it more independently. Immediately about the cathedral, as time went on, a number of artisans congregated, and they were formed by the imperial government into guilds on strictly protective principles; which served for purposes of co-operation and defence in early times, but which, in the present day, are a great hindrance to improvements in trade, and, as all residents in Frankfort know, a great objection to residence in a so-called free city.