Chapter III

Passau--The Inn-stadt--The Fair--The Cathedral--The Bridge--Fortress of Oberhaus--Celebrated View--Maria-hilf--The Ilz-stadt--The Sword Cutlery--Present Manufactures and Commerce of Passau--Talismans--Goitres--Excursions into the Environs of Passau--Confluence of the Inn and the Danube--Krempenstein--Hafner Zell--Its Manufactories--Fichtenstein--The Jochenstein--The Ruin of Ried.

A spot where three rivers meet, amidst a quadruple chain of mountains, rising four hundred feet above the level of the water, was not likely to escape the notice of the ancient lords of the world, and consequently the Romans built, upon the promontory between the Inn and the Danube, their “Castra Batava.” The Inn-stadt, on the right bank of the Inn, and which is connected with Passau by a bridge across that river, was the Roman Bojodurum. In St. Severin’s time it was called Boitro. The saint saved the city from the wrath of Gibuld, King of Swabia, but it was destroyed by Chunimund, the successor of Gibuld, while Severin was at his kloster near Vienna, A.D. 475. Bibilo, Bishop of Lorch, flying from the destroying Avars, was received with open arms by Uttilo II., who built for him here, at the eastern end of the city, the Nonnen-kloster of Nidernburg, A.D. 739. About one hundred and fifty years later, the successors of this bishop modestly laid claim to the whole city; and kept it in defiance of king and kaiser, till the year 1802, shortly after which period it was secularized and given to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The bishopric of Passau, under its ecclesiastical princes, included (besides the city of Passau, the Inn-stadt, and the Ilz-stadt,) the castles of Marsbach and Rana-riedl, the market-towns of Ebersberg and Ips, the towns of Mautern, Amstetten, Greifenstein, Stockerau, St. Andre, and many other places in Austria, nearly the whole of the present bishopric of Linz, and a large portion of Bohemia. One of these sovereign prelates, of the family of Hohenloe, ran the bishopric; notwithstanding its immense revenues, into considerable debt, while, with great affectation of piety and contempt for the pomps and vanities of this life, he caused to be inscribed on the walls of his palace, “O Welt! O böse Welt!” (“O world! O wicked world!”) upon which a waggish dean wrote under, as in continuation of the sentence, “Wie übel verzehrst Du des Hochstifts Geld!” (“How ill dost thou consume the chapter’s gold!”) At the same time let us not forget that we are, perhaps, indebted to a Bishop of Passau for the preservation of that most interesting, as well as most ancient, specimen of Teutonic romance, the Nibelungen-lied. Pelegrin, or Pilgerin, Bishop of Passau, who died in 991, collected the then current legends of the Nibelungen, which he committed to writing in the favourite Latin tongue, with the assistance of his scribe Conrad, whose name has occasioned the Swabian poem to be sometimes ascribed to Conrad of Wurtzburg, who lived long after.[27] On the 2d of August, 1552, was signed here the celebrated treaty, or pacification of Passau, by the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, as representative of his brother, the Emperor Charles V., and Maurice of Saxony, in the name of the Protestant party.

In 1610, the Emperor Rudolph raised a body of troops in the diocese of Passau, which, on his reconciliation the same year with his brother Matthias, he affected to disband, at the same time purposely withholding their pay, in order to afford them a pretext for invading Bohemia. The troops accordingly, under the command of their leader Ramée, burst into Upper Austria, spreading themselves over the country beyond the Danube, and after committing every species of devastation, passed into Bohemia, where they were at last defeated near Prague, after they had extorted three hundred thousand florins from the Emperor[28].

On entering the city we found it was fair time, and the square before the cathedral was filled with booths, and gay with peasantry in their holiday dresses. Prints and pipe-heads, cotton handkerchiefs of the most staring colours, and the splendid gold and silver caps worn by the women of the neighbourhood, amongst which we saw, for the first time, the magnificent and tasteful Linzer Haube, were the principal articles for sale; but it did not appear to us that there were many purchasers. The cathedral has nothing to boast of in the way of architecture or painting. The present building dates from the year 1662, the former edifice having been destroyed by fire. Not having much time to spare, we hastened across the bridge over the Danube into the Ilz-stadt, on the left bank, and ascended the winding staircase cut in the rock, to the fortress of Oberhaus, the Ehrenbreitstein of Passau. It was a broiling business, under a vertical sun, but we were told the view from the summit would amply repay us for any fatigue we might endure in the ascent; and breathless with expectation, as well as exertion, we stood at length upon the brow of the mountain. But little was to be seen from that spot, except the tops of the towers, and the houses of Passau, and we walked on through ploughed fields, a curious sight in such a situation, to the fortress, from the walls of which we expected to realize our excited hopes. But though permitted to enter the building, sentinels at each angle checked every attempt to gain a commanding situation, with their eternal “es ist verboden;” and hot, weary, and disappointed, we prepared to “march down again,” when a fortunate chance led us to the wished-for spot. Whether it was not the right one, or that our previous annoyances had rendered us captious and discontented, I cannot pretend to say, but certainly the view, though extraordinary enough in character, fell woefully short of our expectations in point of extent and beauty. The Inn is seen writhing through its mountain gorge, to join the Danube, which at this point it much exceeds in width, and the church of Maria-hilf, on its bluff rock above the Inn-stadt, forms a fine object in the fore-ground. But the hills are too lofty, notwithstanding the elevation on which one is placed, to permit the eye to follow the windings of the two rivers to any distance, and the view from the water, at the point of their confluence, is, in my opinion, far preferable. The old fort of Oberhaus was built in 1219, by Bishop Ulrich, to keep the citizens of Passau in awe[29]. Maria-hilf was once, and I believe is still, a celebrated place of pilgrimage; and here is the miraculous image of the Virgin, up to which the pilgrims used to crawl upon their knees. The infant Jesus is clasped to one breast, and from the other, water flows out of a little silver pipe, into the mouth of the pious votary. The image of the Virgin in the church of Maria-hilf at Vienna, was made from this model; but the Viennese have had the good taste to dispense with the water-pipe. In 1781, a vessel, with two hundred pilgrims, was wrecked on the Inn, and one hundred and fifty unfortunate beings perished.

Descending into the Ilz-stadt, (the suburb of Passau, on the left bank, so called from the Ilz, that rolls its dark waves into the Danube, beneath the fortress of Oberhaus,) we hailed a little market-boat that was just leaving the shore, and were speedily ferried over by a stout wench to the eastern end of Passau, where our bark lay moored while the passports of ourselves and crew were undergoing the regular inspection, etc. Notwithstanding it was fair time, there was little bustle either on the banks or in the town. Commerce, which once flourished so greatly at Passau, has of late years, from various circumstances, sadly declined. Its sword-cutlery, celebrated as early as the thirteenth century for the famous Wolfs-klingen (_i. e._ Wolf-blades,) was destroyed by religious persecutions, about the close of the sixteenth, when nearly all the workmen, two hundred of whom lived in the Inn-stadt alone, sought refuge in Austria. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a manufactory of striped paper was established, which supplied, in some degree, the loss of the sword-cutlery; and Passau is still the stapel-platz, or principal depôt for the salt of Bavaria, which is brought down the Salza and the Inn, from the works at Hallein; but the benefit which now accrues to the inhabitants from this privilege is little or nothing, compared with what the salt trade produced to them in the middle ages, when they carried it on, on their own accounts. During the thirty years’ war, talismans were sold here, which the venders professed would render the wearers invulnerable. A safer speculation could scarcely have been imagined, as, until they had tried them, no one had a right to complain of imposition, and those who did try them and found them ineffectual, generally made the discovery too late to expose or punish the impostor. The people of Passau and its neighbourhood might be considered particularly good-looking, were it not for the hideous goitre, which is exceedingly common in this part of Germany. The appearance of this excrescence is most disgusting to the eye of the unaccustomed traveller, but the natives take no measures to prevent or to conceal it: and, indeed, both here, as in some parts of Switzerland, it is considered by many a beauty, instead of a deformity. Schultes recommends, to those who have the time to make them, excursions to Formbach, Wernstein, and several other places in the environs of Passau, and a ramble up the wild valley of the Ilz, to the ruins of the old castle of Halz, the seat of an ancient family, that, rising into fame through the deeds of Albert the Valiant, in the time of Rudolph of Hapsburg, became extinct with the death of Count Luitprand, in 1375. We, however, had too long a journey in perspective to venture on including ourselves in that number, so late in the season, and with particular objects in view; and as our steersman made his appearance a few moments after we returned to the boat with our papers “en régle,” we were soon in the middle of the stream again, and rapidly bidding adieu to the Coblentz of the Danube.

The view down the two rivers, (the Inn and the Danube,) from the point of their confluence, is, as I have already mentioned, in my opinion, far more beautiful though not so extraordinary as that obtained from the heights above them. Standing in the stern of the boat, and looking back on the too rapidly disappearing scene, on our right arose the long walls and round towers of Oberhaus, upon a range of precipices richly hung with wood, and full four hundred fathoms high; on our left stood the Maria-Hilf-berg, crowned with its church, and the houses of the Inn-stadt picturesquely grouped at its foot,--in the centre, the town of Passau, forming a salient angle upon a plane of water, nearly two thousand feet in width, and standing like an island between two of the noblest rivers in Germany. The time allowed us to contemplate this lovely scene, was as brief as the enjoyment was exquisite. The Danube, reinforced by the waves of the Inn and the Ilz, rushes, with redoubled speed round a rocky cape, and presto! your boat is gliding between banks so savage and solitary, that you can scarcely believe some necromantic spell has not transported you, in the twinkling of an eye, thousands of miles from that “peopled city,” the hum of which still lingers in your ear. In its eccentric course, the river now forms itself, as it were, into a chain of beautiful lakes, each apparently shut in on all sides by precipitous hills, clothed with black firs that grow down to the very water’s edge, while from amongst them peeps out, here and there, one of the little Swiss-looking cottages I have before mentioned, with perhaps a rustic bridge thrown across a small cleft or chasm, through which a mountain rivulet falls like a silver thread into the flood below. On doubling one of the abrupt points which produce this lake-like appearance, we came suddenly upon the chateau of Krempenstein, or Grampelstein, perched on a mass of rock, jutting out from a fir-clad precipice, that rises majestically behind it. It belonged, for nearly four hundred years, to the bishops of Passau, who, in conformity with the general practice of the time, levied contributions upon the passing vessels, translating the awkward term of robbery into the more legal epithet of toll. The peasantry and schiffers in the neighbourhood call it the Schneider-Schlossel, and tell a story of some poor tailor who, in flinging a dead goat into the river from the walls of the building, fell over with it and was drowned, a circumstance which they think exceedingly comical. The age of the building, and the terrific beauty of its situation, deserve a more interesting tradition. On turning another sharp corner,--forgive, gentle reader, the unnautical expression, for I know of none other that will so well describe the acute angles that present themselves at almost every thousand yards upon this extraordinary river,--you perceive Bürnwang, or Birchenwang, with its mill; and in the distance, on the left bank, the small market-town of Hafner or Oberzell. Little would a traveller imagine, on looking at this unpretending town, that its manufactures have been, from time immemorial, eagerly sought throughout the civilized world--that, from the banks of the Ganges to the Gulf of Mexico, from St. Petersburg to Peru, there are no articles of commerce more generally circulated and esteemed, than those which are fabricated in this sequestered nook by the hands of a few German potters. The famous crucibles, known by the name of Ipser or Passauer-Tiegel, are all made at Hafner-zell. About three hundred persons are constantly employed in this manufacture; but as the towns of Passau and Ips are of greater consequence in the map, their names have been connected with the ware; and the goldsmith and chemist, while reaping the benefit of its industry, are ignorant probably of the existence of such a place as Hafner-zell. There are also here manufactories of black-lead pencils, and a particular sort of black earthenware, the materials for both of which are found in the neighbourhood, which is rich in mineral and other productions, worthy the attention of the geologist and natural historian.

Not far from Hafner-zell, on the right bank, stands the chateau of Fichtenstein, on the summit of a stupendous hill, clothed, like the rest of its giant brethren, with forests of pine and fir. A modern mansion is near it; and at the foot of the hill are a few poor cottages, with a little church, the spire of which is just visible above the trees. Fichtenstein belonged anciently to the Counts of Wasserburg, another race of knightly plunderers. Conrad, Count of Wasserburg and Fichtenstein, on quitting Germany for the Holy Land, pledged this stronghold to Ulric, Bishop of Passau, in 1218, who advanced a considerable sum of money on the extra condition that the castle should be forfeited entirely if the Count did not return from Palestine. Conrad, however, did return, and, dying soon afterwards, left his castle to his lady. Bishop Gebhard, the successor of Ulric, immediately set up some claim to the property, and declared war against the countess. He was defeated, however, and taken prisoner by a gallant knight, upon which he proceeded to excommunicate the whole party. The spiritual weapon had considerably more effect than the temporal, and the unfortunate countess was obliged to surrender her castle to the bishopric of Passau, A.D. 1226[30]. Further on, a rock rises out of the middle of the river, and upon it stands a small building like a sentry-box. It is called the Jochenstein; and from the arms of the town of Passau and those of the empire being cut on the sides of it, is generally considered by the Schiffers, the Gränze, or boundary stone between Bavaria and Austria. Schultes, however, denies this, and tells us, that the real Gränze is the old tower of Ried, upon a rock facing Engelhard’s-zell. Be this as it may, we considered ourselves, upon the faith of our steersman, entering the Austrian dominions as we passed the rock; and, accordingly, drank three bumpers of excellent Stein-wine to their imperial and royal majesties of Austria, Bavaria, and England, with the sincere wish that no mistaken policy might disturb the friendship so happily existing between the three nations, or the general peace and prosperity of Europe. We soon came in sight of Engelhard’s-zell, where the Austrian custom-house is established; and opposite to which rises the old tower already mentioned, upon the end of a long fir-clad hill. Nothing is known of the ancient history of this little ruin; which, according to the peasantry of the neighbourhood, was reduced to its present state by the Swedes. The whole district from Marsbach to this spot is called the Riedermark, and is supposed to have been, in the ninth century, the seat of the Rheadarii.

FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER III)

[27] Vide ‘Lays of the Minnesingers, or German Troubadours.’ 12mo. Lond. 1825, p. 113, and the Appendix to the ‘Nibelungen-lied’, called “Die Klage,” _i. e._ the Lament.

[28] Coxe’s ‘History of the House of Austria,’ vol. ii. pp. 419, 20. I have mentioned these circumstances, as the devastations committed by these troops, who are called by the German writers the Passauer Volk, are still but too visible upon the banks of the Danube, and will be alluded to hereafter.

[29] The Austrian commander Plantini was beheaded at Ingolstadt, in 1743, for delivering this fortress up to the Bavarians, without firing a shot.

[30] Mr. Russel, in his tour in Germany, speaking of the number of abbeys, monasteries, etc., has taken up the cause of these holy locusts, and contends, with all that ingenuity and talent which characterize his excellent work, that it is wrong to accuse the princes, or pious individuals who endowed them, of having been imprudently liberal to the church. "Thousands of acres were given, _but they were acres of wood and water, utterly unproductive to the public_, and which would probably have remained for centuries in the same wild state, if they had been the property of a quarrelsome baron, instead of belonging to _the peaceful sons of the church_. The monks, though idle themselves, were not encouragers of idleness in their subjects. Their leisure allowed them to instruct, and their love of gain led them to aid, their vassals in agricultural science, rude as it was, while, at the same time, the sacred character which they enjoyed, placed their peasantry beyond the reach of the oppressions practised by feudal nobles. It has long been a current proverb in Germany, 'Man lebt gut unter dem Krummstab[_30a_].' It is true that one is apt to feel provoked when he is told that these fruitful vallies and the pasture hills which rise along their sides, belong to a congregation of idle monks. But monks were the very men who made the vallies fruitful, and the hills useful. They received them _covered with trees_, and rocks--_no very liberal boon_[_30b_], and it was they who planted them with corn and stored them with sheep." This is all very true, as far as regards the benefits which mankind has eventually received from these establishments; for we have likewise to thank the cowl and crosier, for much if not all the valuable information respecting the days of our fathers and "the old time before them," which the chronicles, written and illuminated in abbey and convent, contain. But let the praise be given to that Providence, "from seeming evil still producing good," in whose hands these monks were the unconscious instruments of spreading that very light and information which it was their constant study and employment to extinguish and contract. The hypocrisy and cupidity of these self-elected saints are far less pardonable than the brutal ferocity of the barons, whose pitiable ignorance and superstition; the roots of the evil, they fostered for their own advantage. Instead of employing the influence which their superior education and sacred character gave them over the minds of these uncultivated men, in the truly Christian task of curbing their passions, enlightening their understandings, and bringing them to a sense of the folly and wickedness of their ways, they meanly exerted it for the purposes of self-aggrandizement, utterly careless of the pitiable state of destitution and degradation in which, by their rapacious demands and disgusting mummeries, they were daily sinking their poor, besotted, bigoted, but often truly noble benefactors. The knave who swindles a silly heir out of his property may wonderfully improve the estate and build an hospital with the money; but he is no less a knave because the poor and the sick are eventually gainers; nor is the folly of the unfortunate dupe an excuse, in the eye of honour and honesty, for his crime; which is, on the contrary, aggravated by the advantage taken of the victim's imbecility. Avarice and ambition, however, sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The Church of Rome might have flourished to this day, had not its grasping hand pressed so heavily upon its subjects, as at length to rouse them from their trance and open their eyes, not so much to its errors as to its wealth. Truly does Schiller remark, that "Had it not been closely backed with private advantages, and state interests, the arguments of theologians, and the voice of the people, would never have met with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines have found so numerous, so brave, and so obstinate champions!"... "The desire of independence, the rich plunder of monastic institutions, gave charms to the Reformation in the eyes of princes, and strengthened not a little their inward conviction of its necessity."... "Without the imposition of the tenth and twentieth pennies, the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands." The question, "Why the Pope, who is richer than several Crœsus's, cannot build the Church of Saint Peter with his own money, but does it at the expense of the poor?" was more staggering than that of his infallibility. The _sale_ of indulgences first induced men to inquire into the power of the Church to _grant_ them. The heavy coffers of the abbots, and the glittering ornaments of their shrines and altars drew the swords of such adventurers as Christian, Duke of Brunswick, who issued a coinage composed of church-plate, and bearing the motto--"A friend to God and an enemy to the priesthood." "Woe unto them," says the inspired Isaiah, "_that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth_.

"_Which justify the wicked for reward_, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.

"_Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them_, and the hills did tremble, and _their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets_. For all this his anger is not turned away, _but his hand is stretched out still_."

Such were the crimes of the Church of Rome; such has been its punishment, and "His anger," indeed, "is not turned away"--"His hand is stretched out still." Who can look upon its fallen state, and listen to the cry of its unfortunate remnant, without exclaiming in the words of Jeremiah, "How is she become as a widow; she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces! How is she become tributary!"

[30a] “One lived well under the crosier.”

[30b] _No very liberal boon, Mr. Russel!_ What! In a country where
wood is to this day the staple commodity? where the greater part of
the revenue of many of the nobles, and the entire incomes of thousands
of the peasantry, are derived from the sale of the trees with which
nature has so lavishly clothed the land? from the produce of those
very “acres of wood,” which you, from some strange slip of memory,
describe as “utterly unproductive to the public.” The “_peaceful sons
of the church_,” amongst whom, of course, you number the warlike
bishops of Passau, Strasburgh, Bamberg, Freysingen, Ratisbon, et hoc
genus omne, knew uncommonly well the value of those _unproductive_
acres.

AUSTRIA.