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[NOTE TO THE READER: This is the OCR scan of the beginning of the book, which I've called "Section 1" for the purposes of this transcription. The beginning pages are not numbered, but I've given them a number to make this easier to understand. Scanning a book can sometimes produce unexpected characters; I've tried to proof this, but if you notice anything that I've missed, please feel free to send me an e-mail, and I'll fix it. -- Linda Braund]
"Section 1"
Page 1 By the Author of: Vanished Towers and Chimes of Flanders Vanished Halls and Cathedrals of France Holland of To-Day Brittany and the Bretons Some Old Flemish Towns Marken and its People The Forest of Arden Etc.
Page 2 A childhood land of mountain ways, Where earthly gnomes and forest fays, Kind foolish giants, gentle bears, Sport with the peasant as he fares Affrighted through the forest glades, And lead sweet wistful little maids Lost in the woods, forlorn, alone, To princely lovers and a throne.
Dear haunted land of gorge and glen, Ah, me! the dreams, the dreams of men!
A learned land of wise old books And men with meditative looks, Who move in quaint red-gabled towns And sit in gravely folded gowns, Divining in deep-laden speech The world’s supreme arcana—each A homely god to listening Youth. Eager to tear the veil of Truth;
Mild votaries of book and pen— Alas, the dreams, the dreams of men!
A music land, whose life is wrought In movement of melodious thought; In symphony, great wave on. wave— Or fugue, elusive, swift, and grave; A singing land, whose lyric rimes Float on the air like village chimes; Music and verse—the deepest part Of a whole nation’s thinking heart!
0h, land of Now, oh, land of Then! Dear God! the dreams, the dreams of men!
Oh. depths beneath sweet human ken God help the dreams, the dreams of men! ANON. From the London Punch, 1917
Page 3 To My Beloved Lady Anne
Page 4 Frontispiece (see illustrations)
Page 5 Title Page (see illustrations)
Page 6 Copyright 1918 by George Wharton Edwards All rights reserved
Page 7
Alsace-Lorraine By George Wharton Edwards
“Open my heart and you will see The land all emblazoned with Fleurs des Lys.”
Page 8 (Intentionally Blank)
Page 9 Forward The one dominating purpose of the people of Alsace-Lorraine is their reunion with the mother country: France. A temporary or final autonomy for the Lost Provinces, this “Land of Unshed Tears, is out of the question. The people do not want it. It would be most impracticable to establish it. They would not even discuss it. The people of Alsace-Lorraine consider themselves French and a part of France.
The creation of even a temporary autonomy would be nothing more than a makeshift, a deferring of the whole question, and history shows conclusively that there is no attempted settlement so dangerous to ultimate peace as such a makeshift; a temporary autonomy such as Germany proposes. The only logical way to settle the matter is to sever completely the enforced, undesired and unnatural connection between the provinces and Germany, and return them, with as good grace as they can assume, to their natural place as part of France.
There is no way of causing the self-expatriated inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, who fled rather than live under the Prussian rule, to return to it under an autonomy.
Page 10 In the United States, in England, and in France, there are half a million of Alsatians who would not consent to leave their adopted homes and new occupations for the doubtful opportunity of taking part in a plebiscite in the country of their birth. They know too well the touch of the iron hand.
The seizure in 1871 of Alsace-Lorraine is regarded by the Germans as the crowning triumph and victory of the Bismarckian era of conquest, and it must be made for them by ourselves and our Allies one of the reasons for their defeat in the present war, which that blood-steeped war master of Europe has precipitated upon the nations for their domination.
The wrong done to Belgium is not greater than that done to Alsace-Lorraine, save that the latter country has not yet been so wrecked by fire and sword.
How can the wrong to either nation be righted save by restoration?
How else than by France’s recovery of the provinces so wrongfully seized, can Germany be defeated?— Treaties with a government which contemptuously regards them as “scraps of paper” is play for children or Bolsheviki.
Indemnity without a return of such territory is not to be considered. Germany must not merely be made to give up what she has seized; she must lose as well the material resources upon which her iniquitous enterprise was based.
Page 11 In 1871 no plebiscite was taken, although both France and Alsace-Lorraine vainly urged it. Why, then, should there be one now, or at a period after the end of the present war? “Has there not even been a continuous plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine from the protests of the elected representatives of these provinces at the National Assembly in Bordeaux in 1871 and in the Reichstag in Berlin in 1874, and on up to the popular protests of Savern (Zabern) in 1913?” (Clement Rueff.)
The possibility of even a fair competition between Germany and France to an autonomous Alsace-Lorraine is unbelievable. After what has happened to Belgium and other countries no one can believe in such a suggestion. It must be won upon the battlefield where France stands an even chance, at least. Germany can be intimidated or won over only by a show of force. She cannot comprehend gentler methods. A people who glory in such acts as the sinking of the Lusiiania; the murder of Edith Cavell, and Captain Fryatt; the placing of young children and their mothers before the marching soldiers; the assault upon undefended towns; the bombing of hospitals; the slavery of French and Belgian women. Those who applaud the acts of Von Bernstorff and Luxburg, would hardly stop at similar methods in their dealings
Page 12 with Alsace-Lorraine if they thought necessary. France would perish before using such means to subjugate.
Concerning the treatment of Germans in the provinces when they are eventually returned to France, witness how France treated Alsace in 1648 after it became French.
Both Protestants and Jews were baited and persecuted in Paris and throughout France, yet in Alsace they were tolerated, even protected from interference, and allowed to worship according to their peculiar tenets.
“The very question of language, which has so often been raised by Germany to prove that Alsace is German, is it not a conclusive demonstration of the extreme tolerance of France? If France had used the same methods that Germany has used since 1871, can one think for a moment that the Alsatian dialect could have remained the popular language of Alsace after 200 years of French occupation? And let us not forget that an appreciable part of Alsace, with such towns as Thann, St. Amarin, Massevaux, Dannemarie, has been occupied by France since 1914 and has been incorporated with that other part of the Department of the Haut-Rhin, Belfort and surroundings, which remained a part of France after 1871.
“The French Government since 1914 has not ceased to give this question of the period of transition the most
Page 13 earnest thought, and to this effect a special and official commission has been created, composed of prominent Alsatians and Lorrainers of all standings, with the purpose of studying this question from all points of view and of elaborating the means of preventing all friction with the people of Alsace-Lorraine regarding their religious, political and economical relations after their reunion with France.
“And I can find no better demonstration as to what will be the attitude of the mother country toward her recovered children than by repeating the words of the great and good Joffre to the people of Thann when he first came to that old Alsatian city; words that made the tears rise to the eyes of all old Alsatians who heard him, and that still make the tears rise to mine, when he said: “Je vous apporte le baiser de la France.” (Clement Rueff). 1
And so that the reader may know just what sort of people are these Alsace-Lorrainers—how some of them live, and under what conditions—I have gathered these random notes together, and ransacked my sketch books for types of people, and pictures of the old castles in the mountainous districts; the nestling small towns in the thick forests; the great rivers flowing through lovely meadow lands lined with marvelous old towns and villages, which transport one who tarries there into the middle age. 1 V. P. Association Générale des Alsaciens-Lorraine d’ Amérique.
Page 14 Then there is such a wealth of medieval churches and abbeys, ruined turreted castles glorified in legend, and exquisite old châteaux embowered in the shade of great trees. . . And so, dear reader, may it charm you as it has the author.
Greenwich, Conn., May 22, 1918.
Page 15
(page 16 intentionally blank)
Page 17 [NOTE: Even though the illustrations were not included on the index of the original book, I have included thumbnails of them here for ease of use. Click on the small thumbnail to see the full picture.]
Page 18
Page 19 The Lost Provinces
Page 20 (Intentionally Blank)
Page 21 The Lost Provinces WHEN we get to the top of the road, M’sieur, we shall be in Alsace. There is a post there to mark the boundary—the frontier—’bien ‘entendu.’ On this side one sees the shield of France, but, ‘toute au coup,’ once one has passed, one sees that it bears the black ‘bête’ of Germany on the other side, and then one is in Alsace!”
Thus the driver of our auto, not really our own, but one that we had hired for the day at Belfort for the thirty odd mile drive to Mulhouse. Through this green-gold hay-and-honeysuckle-breathing afternoon the low valley welcomes
Page 22 us along perfect roads to the boundary. Occasionally drowsy laborers, despite Sunday, are loitering in the fields; we pass two huge cream colored oxen hitched to an immense hay cart, a peasant lolling in a doze high on the fragrant hay—a small white stoned cemetery with the majestic Crucified Figure above a blazing labyrinth of hollyhock and sunflower; then a village of some score or more of creamy-walled homes topped by a gray old spire. Then a fringe of purplish gray poplars, sentinel-like, on either hand. The wooded heights grow into mountains all crested with ancient gray ruin of historical strongholds. The Dukes of Lorraine coveted these; took by force, and sometimes married them with their Chatelaines. Louis XIV likewise coveted them, and ravaged them with fire and blood by the iron hand of Boufflers. The Barons were given little or no notice of his coming; the family might be at breakfast over the second cup of whatever it was they used instead of coffee, or the sleepy sentinel on the tower might be aroused by the clatter of approaching cavaliers and cannon along the winding road. Cannon and powder brought the doom of the great strongholds so long deemed impregnable. The massive towers fell like ninepins under the blast, and many vanished into dust, leaving hardly a trace to mark the site now so exquisitely draped in ivy. Thus the whole region became what the tourist calls “picturesque.”
Page 23 No two agree as to just what constitutes a state of picturesqueness, but perhaps dilapidation forms an essential part of it. Certainly these ruins are as dilapidated as one could wish, and this warrior Boufflers was the cause of it.
The unfortunate peasants of the region, who then eked out wretched existences, as it were, between hammer and anvil, chased hither and yon by the marauders, dodging the bolts and the chance morsels of bastion or tower that flew about during these busy days when Bouffiers demolished their humble homes, have made way for a posterity that now enjoys jingling the freely given francs of the appreciative tourist. Everywhere there was this day a look of smiling contentment; little gardens where are flowing brooks, and buff or heliotrope colored cottage walls, with windows bright with fuchsias, roses and dahlias, and here and there the flower framed face of a woman glancing out at us as we passed. “V’la, les louristes. —They have come! The sun shining with spendthrift glory flooded the long smooth road and the low houses.
The eye passed over nests of sweet clover; over the tops of apple and peach trees now frosted with blossoms. The fields were full of cattle, and the women who watched them ceaselessly knitted. They were broad hipped figures clad in coarse skirts of blue or brown stuff, with (lark bodices and bright pink or orange kerchiefs.
Page 24 Some of these toiled from the fields bearing full jugs of milk, which they carried not ungracefully. in the distance were the figures of ploughmen, rising and falling with the rolling of the land, turning the fertile sod for the new crop. All was peaceful on the Alsatian border that sunny afternoon of 1910.
“At the top of the road, M’sieur and Madame, just above, is the boundary line between France and Alsace,” said the chauffeur. “On this side you will see a monument, on the top of which is a cock in bronze looking towards France. Below, M’sieur and Madame will see a bronze figure of Victory with wreaths in each hand, and on the stone shaft is carved the words, ‘To the Soldiers of France, who died for their Country.’ There fell my father in 1870. Always there are wreaths of fresh flowers on the mounds hereabouts, but those who lay them there are mainly the children of exiles from German Alsace now living in France.”
Here lies the frontier, its boundary marked by the tall iron pole, striped with black and white, and bearing on a shield at the top, on one side the arms of France with the letters R. F. and on the reverse, the sprawled out and crowned eagle of Prussia, over which are the Words “Deutsches Reich,” the mark of the Usurper, the oppressor, which the children of the country-side call “La Chauve-Souris” (The Bat) —not aloud, you understand, but in half whispers among themselves. Upon the occasion
Page 25 of my first visit, twenty years after the Franco-Prussian war, such frankness was inadvisable on the border. Crossing the Vosges at that time into Alsace-Lorraine, it was then difficult for the tourist to “get at” the people; they were still too sore at heart to talk much even if they trusted one,—and the painter is ever trusted by the peasants, and cordially welcomed to the house and a place at the fireside freely offered to him. At these firesides one has sat quietly listening to the discussions of the elders, who at times forgot the presence of the stranger, and voiced their feelings freely. One has thus listened to their opinions of the annexation; of the Protestation of 1874 at Strassburg and Mulhouse; of the agitations of 1887; of the dissolution of the Reichstag; of the Boulangist movement in Paris; the Schnaebele incident, and the passport regulations, down to the Zabern outrage. But even after this intimacy it is not proper to say that one knows the people, so that these notes must not be taken in a more serious vein than that in which they are written, the object being perhaps to entertain rather than to instruct. The route followed is haphazard, and this book is quite useless as a guidebook. With this warning the reader may be content to proceed.
One may well pardon the Alsatians for saying and believing that their country is the most beautiful on earth, for it offers to the eye a panorama of exquisite hill and valley and silvery streams. Lying between the Vosges
Page 26 and the Jura and bordered by the curve of the Rhine lies this little country, the land of unshed tears. Mulhouse is at the entrance or foyer, Belfort (Vosges) at one side and Huningue (Jura) at the other. The railway parallels the Rhine from Wissembourg-Hagenau to Strassburg, branching off to Schlestadt-Ribeauville and returning to Mulhouse. The whole length of the Vosges one sees the evidences of the ancient torrents, in the sandy plateaus and the talus left by the glaciers.
The mountains and high hills are crowned by heavy forests of oak and pine, in which are yet found the ancient altars of the Druids, and dotted here and there with the ruins of great castles of the Barons of Alsace, which in the olden days resounded with the melodious notes of the hunter’s horn, and the baying of hounds on the scent of the fleet footed stag.
Northward one finds the plains of the Zorn, bordered by the forest of Brumath; the picturesque valley of the Moder; the ancient sylvan haunt of the Hagenaus, where in the middle ages the great Charlemagne was wont to gather his knights for hunt and feast. One may follow the many charming streams throughout the province with great artistic return; for instance, the various tributaries of the Ill, such as La Laich and the Grand-Ballon. The former serves as a silver setting for the charming little industrial town of Guebwiller, whose smoking chimneys are curtained by splendid trees massed against sloping
Page 27 hillside vineyards all gold and green in the sunlight. Farther on is the old turreted town of Soultz, with ancient houses of quaint outside staircases, and dim streets blocked by lavishly sculptured stone fountains. They say that the old walls which formerly surrounded the town were pulled down and used in the construction of many of the houses~ which indeed have no aspect of newness that one can now discover. This river La Laich empties into the Ill at Colmar.
The river Fecht, of swiftly running water, is used to run countless mills along its course to the interesting old town of Türckheim, with its old gateway—a comfortable halting place for the voyager. Within the mossy walls of the “Deux Clefs” (The Two Keys) in the sleepy square of a half forgotten town is a community of about two thousand quaintly costumed people, who are well nigh all engaged in the neighboring vineyards. One could live here in great comfort and enjoyment at a cost of three or four marks a day. Near by, on the other side of the valley, are the ruins of the castle of Hohlandsburg, destroyed in 1635, and said to be haunted by a stone throwing ghost, who, however, failed to cast one at the present chronicler.
On the river Weiss is Kaysersburg, a town noted as one of the Imperial Appanages of the ancient Décapole of Alsatia. The sketch which I made of it one Sunday morning shows better than description the character of
Page 28 the old byway and the quaint peaked roofed houses against the dark green hillside. See, through the old arched gateway, the entrance to the small church with its mellow-toned and creamy whitewashed walls; the lace curtained windows of the high gabled house beyond, and the iron work Initials on the house tops.
Here the peasants, clad in opera bouffe costumes, linger after church, along the walled roadway bordering the half dried streamlet, discussing the sermon, the day’s happenings, or what not.
At Ribeauville flows the Strengbach, called the “Pearl of the Vosges,” and at Liepvrette the babbling stream laves Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, said to be one of the richest and fairest of the towns of Haute-Alsace, rivaling Mulhouse for industry.
Beyond the valley the Leipvrette joins the Giessen, and flows into the Landgraben, an ancient ditch dug, it is said, by order of Charlemagne to delimit the Nordgau and the Sundgau departments.
“The river Rhine is the natural limit of the great Alsatian plain, but it is the river Ill which dominates it. 1
This river Ill is born, lives and vanishes in Alsace. It has its source at a small place called Trinkel near the hamlet of Ferrette, where in a dim dark wood dwell the strange sect of Anabaptists, and the hermit-like families 1 “Provinces Perdues,” Ardouin-Dumazet.
Page 29 of the wood cutters (Schlitteztrs). Lost lower down in wild rocky fissures, it appears again below the village of Ligsdorf. Turning abruptly eastward toward Bale, it again changes its erratic course to the northwest toward Altkirch and Mulhouse. At Largue it receives the waters of a small affluent coming from the Jura, passing the villages of Seppois-le-Bas, Moos and Dannemarie— consecrated names in the province through their great part in the bloody war of deliverance. At Mulhouse the river assumes worthily her name and justifies her fame. All the streams descending from the Vosges flow to her, and on their way do their part in furnishing power to the countless mills on their banks.
The greatest of these tributaries is of course the Doller, born in the small lake called the Serven, lying among the plateaus of the ancient moraines formed by the glaciers. In its passage the Doller winds about such charming villages as Mase-vaux, Laun, Aspach, Burnhaupt and Dornach. There is too, the Thur, another very important tributary on which are the quaint and busy towns of Wesscrling, Saint-Amarine and Malmerspach in the high valley, and in the lower one, Ville, Biltchwiller, Thann (see picture), and Vieux-Thann, all manufacturing places of great activity and prosperity. Then that vast plain of twenty thousand acres, the Champs-des-Boeufs (Ochsenfeldt), which gives name to a kind of pudding much esteemed by the people and sold at a great yearly cattle
Page 30 fair, which draws great crowds of peasants and visitors from far and near.
The river Ill flowing through Strassburg empties into the Rhine near the charming village of the Wantzenau called by Edmund About the “pays des bonnes poules.” He continues: “I have spoken at length of the Ill, because it is more than any other the great vital artery of Alsace. The three most populous towns, Mulhouse, Colmar and Strassburg, were born upon its banks. All the noble valleys of the Vosges open upon the plain through which it runs; all the other rivers, all the mountain torrents, the brooks unite with it, and it is thus with reason that the country lying between the Vosges and the Rhine is named Alsace—El-sass—-the country of the Ill. Uniting all the streams, it penetrates to the noble city of Strassburg, where beats the heart of Alsace.”
Northward of Schlestadt between Hochfelden and Strassburg one enters the gently undulating country called the Kocherberg, the rural and agricultural section where are best preserved the quaint usages and customs of ancient Alsace; where painters such as Kauffman, Henri Loux, Dove, Theophile Schuler, to mention only a few of the long list of famous names, found their genre subjects. . . . One could continue this description for pages without more than touching upon the attractions of the little community.
Of legend there are unwritten volumes to be listened
Page 31 to if one is interested, and considering the important place that the culture of the grape has in the life of the province, it is not strange that most of them are connected in some way with the product. There is too great rivalry between the different vineyards. One of the local songs is as follows:
“A Thann dans la ‘Rangen’ A Guebwiller dans la ‘Wann’ A Türckheim dans Ia ‘Brand’ Croissant les meilleurs du pays, Mais a Riquewihr le ‘Sporen’ Leur dame a tous le pion.”
At Hunawihr there is a most curious specimen of fortified church, near which gushes forth a fountain dedicated to and named for Saint Huna, who was, according to the legend, a chatelaine of the place. Follows the legend: Once upon a time the blight fell upon the vineyards here, and there were no grapes to be gathered. The people in consequence were near starvation, and in their extremity flocked to the Saint, beseeching succor at her hands. They came in procession through the crooked streets of the town crying aloud their woes. It may be imagined that Saint Huna could not remain deaf to such piteous supplications on the part of her people, and lo! even as the first peasant set foot upon the threshold of the church, the miracle happened. From the four spouts of the old fountain before the door gushed forth
Page 32 good red wine, in such profusion that every receptacle, cask, tub, pail and pitcher in the town was filled to the brim and “there never was so much wine before or since in the community.” So fell the legend from the lips of an old dame, who sat knitting in the sun on the steps of the sacred fountain of Hunawihr.
The natural chasm of the Vosges is heightened by countless ruins of the great feudal castles and monasteries with which it abounds. Perhaps no other region in Europe contains so many as are to be found on these rugged high hills, which form something of a natural defense against the German enemy. These ruined “Châteaux-fortes” reveal to the educated eye of the antiquary Celtic, Gallic, or Romanic types of construction, in all their varieties. One may study the ruins of the Châteaux of Spesburg; of Girbaden; Birkenfels; d’Andlau; Driestein and Landsberg; all near Sainte-Odile, crowned with its great convent.
“In the Belfort region alone there are at least a hundred noble ruins to be found, where great courts are carpeted now with green moss, and the walls are curtained with ivy. At Engelburg the great Donjon is still to be seen, where through the hole in the large mass of stone set upright on its side, which is called by the superstitious peasantry ‘The Eye of the Sorcerer,’ a magnificent view of the dim valley is to be had. Near Guebwiller are the remains of the renowned Abbey of Murbach
Page 33 of the Roman period, with two great towers surmounting a transept. Also the ‘Trois-châteaux’ of Eguisheim, where Leon IX, son of Hugues IV, Count of Eguisheim and Ida of Dagsbourg, descendants of Charlemagne in the maternal line, and Ethicon, Duke of Alsace, father of Sainte Odile, and ancestor of five dynasties of Europe—Hapsburg, Suabia, Bourbon, Lorraine and Baden, was born.” 1
The list of châteaux is far too long to include here, but one must name Sainte-Odile, with its ancient “murpaien,” called the heart of mystic Alsace, from whose summit is revealed the smiling valleys of Sainte-Marie and Ville, of Ortenberg and the Ramstein, and the deep dark forests of Lutzelbourg, Kapfel, Klingenthal, Hagelschloss, Ratsamhausen, Hagenfels, Birkenfels, Driestein, Andlau, Spesburg and Landsberg.
At Hoh-Bar Château in the Savern country dwelt the great Bishops of Strassburg. This castle dominates the whole valley of the Zorn. Here is the famed mount of Savern, still bordered by the row of venerable poplars so admired by Louis XIV.
But this little sketch cannot pretend to give a complete list of the famous places and ancient castles of Alsace, nor to describe their glories. Suffice it if one can simply whet. the appetite, for the feast that is offered, by this account of a little known region. 1 ‘L’AIsace.” Leon Boll (Directeur du Journal d’Alsace-Lorraine~, Paris.
Page 34 In a chapter written by M. Daniel Blumenthal, former Mayor of Colmar, for the book “L’Alsace-Lorraine,” he says: “The Germans and the Alsatians can never meet upon common ground because the Teutonic mind is absolutely irreconcilable with the delicate sensibility of that of the Alsatian. The Teuton has absolutely no sense of humor and lacks tact. When the Germans took possession of the provinces after the war, the various officials sought to rule by force, and with entire disregard of the established usages and traditions of the country. This lack of grace and tact wounded the spirits of the Alsatians, and killed at once and forever whatever feeling of tolerance they may have had for the invaders. The Teuton is ever and above all a man of violence, and the new official heads of the various municipal departments began at once a regime of persecution and punishment against the unfortunate people for the most petty and futile causes. The singing of the tune or words of the ‘Marseillaise,’ or having in one’s possession the colors of France, was sufficient to cause the arrest and punishment of the offender.”
He continues, “I recall the case of the two young fellows, who being a trifle the worse for drink during a ‘patronale fête,’ cried ‘Vive la France’ in the hearing of a gend’arme, who thereupon arrested and haled them before the German magistrate, who promptly sentenced them to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The German
Page 35 administrators of ‘Justice’ are repeatedly shown by well-known cases to be absolutely incapable of impartiality where an Alsatian is concerned.”
Concerning the humor of the Alsatians he says: “The people never fail to seize the opportunity to make fun of the invaders. For instance, there is the legend of the mouse, which as an ‘Ex voto,’ may be seen hung up beside the altars of the small country churches and chapels. One day, during a ‘pilgrimage,’ as these fete days are called, a German officer, drawn thither by curiosity, encountered an old peasant woman near an altar, where, among the other objects and offerings, was a silver mouse. ‘And what, my good woman, is that for?’ he asked. The peasant explained that the country was being ravaged by rats, and in supplication to the Saint, the silver mouse was an offering and a prayer for succor and release from the pest. ‘But come now, contemptuously asked the burly officer, ‘do you believe, seriously, in such incredible idiocy?’ ‘My good Monsieur,’ responded she with a shy smile, ‘if we were absolutely sure that our prayers would be granted we would long ago have hung up a solid gold Prussian!’”
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