CHAPTER IV
PASSAU TO LINZ
Though Passau is a Bavarian city, it may fittingly be taken as the starting point of the Austrian Danube, because the frontier is but a little way farther down-stream, and it is here that the navigation of the Danube, so far as passengers are concerned, begins. It is a fascinating and beautiful old city, beautifully and even fascinatingly situated on a narrow, pointed peninsula formed by the confluence of the Inn with the Danube, for it is here that the stream that rises in the Engadine, after its long journey through the Tyrol and Upper Bavaria, reaches the great river of which it is a tributary. It is only fitting that it should be an attractive old town that is situated at such an important meeting of the waters, and it seems only fitting, too, that it should be a town of no inconsiderable importance both in history and in legend. But Passau has also a third river, for immediately opposite the tree-grown point of the peninsula the Ilz from the Böhmer Wald comes in appropriately between well-wooded hills.
Passau itself, as has been said, is wonderfully situated on the long tongue of land on either side of which the waters of the Danube and of the Inn rush to their junction. The old town with its iron-shuttered houses and shops, its beautiful “grilles,” its houses more or less terraced upon the rising ground between the rivers, its narrow and tortuous ways, is full of fascinating bits, and every short walk brings us in sight of one or other of the rivers and their widely different further banks. On the north is a steep, densely wooded hillside with picturesque red-tiled buildings, and to the right, at the mouth of the Ilz, is the small town of Ilzstad—a medley of gabled houses, many chalet-like with their wooden balconies, and mostly painted or weathered various soft tints of pink, mauve, green or yellow; above is a simple church and the tree-grown hillside.
The wooded Georgsberg and Sturmberg on the north side offer many attractive walks and, from the outlook tower above the group of buildings known as the Oberhaus, a grand view. Two bridges—to which a third is being added—connect the old town with this precipitous hill, while another crosses the Inn. Across the latter river—here nearly fifty yards wider than the Danube—which may well seem the more important, are lower green hills with, on the bank, another “suburb” of Passau named Innstadt, above which are to be seen the twin towers of the Mariahilf Chapel.
Among the more notable of the “sights” which the city has to offer, first mention should perhaps be made of the massive-looking cathedral with its triple domes. Originally founded as early as the fifth century, it has been several times rebuilt—twice after destruction by fire. The central dome, choir and transept date from the fifteenth, but the main portion from the seventeenth century. To the west of the cathedral is the old Canon’s Residence, on the site of an earlier building in which the Treaty of Passau was signed on 2 August, 1552; by that treaty the Lutherans were to be permitted the free exercise of their religion, so that the city of Passau occupies an important place in the history of liberal opinion and freedom of conscience. Yet it has also its memories of the terrors of intolerance; for in the one-time palace of the bishops of Passau was a special dungeon in which in the Middle Ages all Jews found in the town were incarcerated and left to die of starvation, while other dungeons were later given over to the merciless stamping out of the “Anabaptists.”
OBERHAUS AND NIEDERHAUS, PASSAU
To the east of the cathedral is the handsome Bishop’s Palace with the ornate Wittelsbach Fountain in front.
On the Danube side—near to where the steamers of the Donau Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft start—stands the old Rathaus, with a handsome modern clock-tower, within which the sight-seer may visit the town museum and see a series of paintings by Herr F. Wagner depicting scenes in the history of Passau. On the further side of the town is a grand old cone-roofed tower—known as the Inn Tower or Powder Tower—forming a picturesque feature in the river view.
Above the wooded side of the Danube’s left bank, the roofs and walls of the barrack-like Oberhaus are visible, dating from the early part of the thirteenth century, when it was built by a bishop as a fort to keep the people of Passau in becoming awe. From this a wall shows through the trees connecting it with the Niederhaus, a picturesque red-roofed group of buildings on the bank at the point where the Ilz runs into the Danube. The Oberhaus is a military prison, the Niederhaus was presented by the grateful townsfolk of Passau to the Munich artist Herr Wagner on the completion of his series of historical paintings in the Rathaus. The journey up the Ilz to Hals and beyond is said to be particularly beautiful. Innstadt, connected with Passau by a long iron bridge—though the old Roman Boisdurum—is mostly a modern place owing to its having been destroyed by fire during the Napoleonic wars. On the hill above it, is the pilgrimage chapel of Mariahilf, to be reached by a long flight of steps—up which I believe pilgrims used to journey on their knees. The centre of the pilgrim’s interest is a “miraculous” figure of the Virgin with the Infant Jesus at one breast, while from the other, out of a little silver pipe, flowed water to which, not unnaturally, the devout of old ascribed great virtues. From the top of the steps is to be had a grand view of the town and its two great rivers; but indeed every eminence near affords such views in pleasing variety, and in each direction attractive excursions are to be made, so that Passau is not only a delightful place with a mediæval atmosphere, but a capital centre from which to make excursions into the Bayerischer Wald and the Böhmer Wald.
Passau was the Castra Batava of the Romans, and here probably a town has been ever since it was made a colony of Batavian veterans. For many centuries the place belonged to the bishops of Passau, so that the story of the city is largely a story of squabbles between the citizens and their episcopal lords. And it was not only Passau to which the bishops laid claim, but to a goodly extent of the surrounding country—down-stream to beyond Linz and northwards far into the Wald. Their princely rule over the dominions only came to an end in 1802. It is said of one of these worthies that, despite his great revenues, he got into much debt, while in his affected contempt for pomps and vanities he had inscribed on the walls of his palace the line—
To this it is said one of his officers added—
Better it is to remember that bishop of Passau who, as uncle of Kriemhilda, met her, entertained her and speeded her on the way to her new kingdom. We saw that at Pförring the royal cavalcade from the Rhine reached the Danube and the next verses of the “Lay of the Nibelungs” tell how it reached Passau:
Not only does a bishop of Passau thus play his small part in the wonderful epic of the Nibelungs, but to one of their number, it is said, we owe it that the poem was ever written—that the legends on which it was based were rescued from oblivion. Says Planché, “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 poems to be sometimes ascribed to Conrad of Wurtzburg, who lived long after.” This reference to Bishop Pelegrin as rescuer of the legends might seem curious, seeing that it is a bishop of the same name, who, as uncle of Kriemhilda, welcomes her to Passau in the poem; but it is thus explained by Mr. Edward Bell in the introduction to the translation in Bonn’s Libraries, from which the above passage is quoted:[6] “It is known that, at the request of Bishop Pilgerin of Passau in the tenth century, the story was translated into Latin prose by Conrad, called ‘the Scribe;’ and to him is attributed the inclusion of the name of the said bishop as that of an actor in events which, so far as they are historical, belong to the fifth century.” Kriemhilda’s cavalcade we shall meet again on the journey down the river, for her bishop uncle accompanied her the greater part of the way onwards from Passau.
During the Thirty Years’ War a “spell” by means of which fainthearted warriors secured themselves against sword and bullet, was associated with Passau. The Passau spell is like that of some primitive peoples who cure diseases by swallowing articles inscribed with magic words. All the soldier who feared his fate too much had to do, was to swallow a slip of paper containing certain potent sentences concluding: “Teufel hilf mir; Leib und Seel geb ich dir” (Devil help me; body and soul give I thee). The spell needed twenty-four hours of digestion before becoming operative—the penalty being that if the swallower died within those hours of disgrace, he went straight to the Devil whose aid he had sought!
The dark waters of the Ilz, the “murky yellow” of the Inn, and the “milky tint” of the Danube, are said to be recognizable some distance after they have joined their streams in one, but such differentiation I must confess I did not observe; certainly they combine to make a noble stream where it sweeps past the closely wooded Klosterberg just below the town, on the left bank. Most Danube travelers—other than those with time and energy for walking—will from this point see the river from the deck of one of the pleasantly appointed steamers of the Danube Steamship Company, and looking backwards as the swift stream carries the vessel to the bend which cuts the view from sight, they have a fine general view of Passau and its surroundings. In the centre of the picture are the roofs and towers of Passau, to the left the spires of the chapel of Mariahilf above Innstadt, and to the right the Oberhaus upon its tree-grown rocky height, and between the two rivers rushing to form one.
Passau is, as has already been said, the starting place for the passenger steamers of the Danube Steamship Navigation Company. From here we may on these vessels—changing now and again into larger boats as we proceed—journey the many hundred miles of waterway that lie between here and the Black Sea. And very pleasant journeying it is, the steamers being thoroughly well equipped and providing within their necessarily circumscribed space, all the comforts of a good and moderate hotel. I feel impelled to say this because readers of some old books on Danube travel might fancy that conditions had not changed since the authors of those books wrote their strong condemnations. In a work published in 1854, on “Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk,” the following emphatic words appear: “The Danube steamers are a disgrace to Austria. Nothing could be worse than the manner in which they are conducted. The want of civility towards strangers is most offensive, the imposition of the stewards in their charges for food is quite shameful, the irregularity and disorder in the arrangements on board are exceedingly annoying, and the total contempt of cleanliness everywhere visible is altogether disgusting.” To-day those words are merely ridiculous. Every sentence should now be rewritten in the very opposite sense. I journeyed on many of the steamers—the appointments of which may well make Londoners wish that the Thames had a service of steamers in any way comparable! The boats are, indeed, thoroughly up-to-date; the cost of living in them is anything but extravagant, and the standard of comfort excellent. They are as far removed from the style described by the writer I have quoted, as our third-class railway carriages are from the open trucks in which our grandparents journeyed when railways were new.
It is interesting to learn that it was as early as 1819 that patent rights were first granted for navigation of the Danube by steam vessels, though little seems to have been done for ten years. Then in 1828, a new patent for fifteen years was granted to two Englishmen, John Andrews and Joseph Pritchard, through whose energies the Danube Steamship Company was formed. In 1830, the first steamer was put on the river, and thenceforward the development was rapid. Four years later the first steamer safely passed the Iron Gate and voyaged down to Galatz. Now the Danube Steamship Company has an immense fleet of passenger boats and tugs navigating the Danube from Ratisbon to Sulina, as well as some of the chief tributaries of the great river; Hungary has another fine river steamship service as well, and so also has Rumania.
The coming of the steamers meant the passing of the old “ordinari” or mixed passenger and merchandise boats which bygone travellers describe, and we no longer see these cumbersome but picturesque craft with the cabins like floating wooden huts, their many men at the oars, or long oar-steering work, drifting mostly with the stream downwards and being towed upwards—sometimes by a body of men and sometimes by large teams of horses. The men who hired out these horses were known as “Jodelen” and it is said that there would sometimes be as many as thirty or forty horses drawing four or five boats fastened together. These “Jodelen” are described as having had a superstition that some of their number must every year be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Water, and as a consequence when an accident occurred they would all scramble for the drowning man’s hat but never think of “stretching a finger to save him whom they look upon as a doomed and demanded victim.” Less than a hundred years ago a traveller declared that he had seen five “Jodelen” with their horses precipitated into the river, when their companions hastily cut the ropes to prevent the rest of the team from following, and drove on, leaving the poor wretches to their fate. The coming of the steamers must, it may well be believed, have greatly lessened the toll of life taken by the Danube, though when we see the timber rafts floating down with three or four men at either end using their great steering sweeps, and remember some of the places where the swift current “boils” at the various rapids, we cannot help feeling that it must be hazardous work.
Once round the bend to the left immediately below the beautiful old city, and with the view of Passau cut off, we naturally look forwards, and find that we are entering newly grand scenery, where both sides of the river are high, rocky and pine-clad. Where the railway bridge crosses the river, we pass, so far as the right bank is concerned, from Bavaria into Austria. The left bank for some time yet continues to be Bavarian.
As the river takes us through lovely scenery, past several tree-grown islands, we get glimpses now and again of villages, but nothing to call for special mention before the castle of Krämpelstein is seen on the abrupt rocky cliff of the right bank, backed by pine woods. This castle was long the property of the powerful bishops of Passau, who, in virtue of its possession, took “toll from all passing boats.” Local tradition gives it the name of “Schneiderschlössl” and, in various forms, tells of an unhappy tailor who, in throwing a dead goat from the building into the river, himself toppled over and was killed, his mangled body being immediately swept away by the rapid current—and that in the very presence of the Bishop of Passau, lord of the castle, for whom he had just been engaged in cutting out a new suit. Soon it came to be rumoured that it was no genuine goat that the tailor had thrown over but the Devil himself, who had taken on the semblance of a dead goat the easier to make a victim, and that directly the tailor fell the supposed defunct quadruped was seen half flying, half running up the precipitous rocks. As soon as this portentous news was made known the bishop’s chaplain made the sign of the cross, and sprinkled holy water down the face of the cliff—and, alive or dead, the goat was seen no more. Pity for the poor tailor was soon turned into “serve him right” for “early in the morning when the brocade was measured, it was discovered that in cutting it out for the bishop’s robe, as already stated, the crafty schneider had cabbaged at least a third of the precious material. All were amazed; and now the sudden destruction that had overtaken the delinquent was no longer a mystery; for the goat, as the chaplain clearly explained, had here acted the part both of judge and executioner, and carried off the tailor in the very midst of his wickedness. “And so will it ever happen,” he added, “to all who shall attempt thus impiously and dishonestly to curtail the bishop either in his robe or his revenue.” That same year, as it was afterwards proved, the offerings made to the bishop at Krämpelstein, were nearly doubled; rents and imposts were paid three days before they became due; while the story of the “brocade” had so good an effect upon the schneider-craft, that thenceforward little more than half the former quantity of buckskin was found sufficient for the stoutest knight in Bavaria.
The castle of this legend occupies a grandly picturesque position on a jutting spur of rock, close neighboured by other pine-clad rocky heights. From this beautiful point the river sweeps leftwards again, and soon on the lower ground of the left side is seen the town of Obernzell, the first “port of call,” backed by hills and trees. This place has long been famous “all the world over” for its manufacture of crucibles and for its graphite quarries. Beyond, the scenery becomes again more mountainous. On the right is seen the village of Kasten, and a little further the high-perched castle of Viechtenstein forms another picturesque feature in the landscape, another reminder of the olden times when all along the river powerful nobles had their strongholds. Before the bishops of Passau got hold of it, the castle had belonged to the Counts of Wassenburg—worthy fellows, it is said of those who ruled at Bogen and elsewhere on the river. One of these Counts, on setting out for the Crusades had pledged Viechtenstein to the Bishop of Passau with the understanding that if the Count did not return the bishop might at once take possession. The Count did return, however, and when he died, left the castle to his widow. The bishop laid claim to it, and sought to get possession, only to be defeated and taken prisoner. But the episcopal voice was more powerful than the episcopal arms, and by pronouncing a ban of excommunication against all who had withstood him, the bishop not only succeeded in winning his freedom but the castle to boot!
A little further down-stream, a rock, standing about thirty feet above the stream and dividing the channel, takes the attention. This is the Jochenstein, a natural boundary as it were; north of it is Bavaria, south of it is Austria, and on either side of it the arms of these countries were long since duly placed. From time to time, the Danube water sprite Isa—“a harmless sister of the Lorelei of the Rhine”—is said here to make her appearance.
A little below the Jochenstein, where the ruined tower of Ried shows above the trees, and where a small stream the Dirndlbach, flows into the Danube is the actual boundary; after passing which we have Austria on either hand. Beyond the fact that it is said to have been destroyed by the conquering Swedes in the seventeenth century, tradition seems to have nothing to say of this old castle on the fir-clad hill; although its name is supposed to be the only survival of an old tribe, the Rheadarii, who inhabited the district. Just beyond, on the right, is Engelhartzell, the first of the steamer stopping places in Austrian territory, and the one-time seat of an old Cistercian monastery once known as that of the Angels. The monastery has in modern times come to be used as the residence of a noble family.
On between beautiful wooded hills the rapid river passes, the next object to attract particular attention being the high-perched castle of Ranariedl. This old castle, which has the distinction of being still inhabited overlooks the delightful valley of the Ranna Bach which here in mountainous haste reaches the Danube by the village of Nieder Ranna. Though still inhabited, the castle saw its share of fighting in the Middle Ages, when the powerful bishops of Passau and various Counts successively struggled for its possession. Shortly beyond, and again on the left, is another and similar hill-top castle—that of Marsbach—with a similar story of disputed ownership. This, too, passed into the hands of the bishops of Passau, not, however, before it had been a bone of contention between father and son; for in the thirteenth century, Ortulph of Marsbach was turned out by his son Otto and only regained the place by paying his rebellious son, a sum “which so reduced his finances that he was compelled to give up the castle after all to Passau, in order to relieve himself from his difficulties.” Its later history accords well with that of other lordly homes that we pass on the banks of the river, for in the fifteenth century it was owned by certain lords of Oberhaimer, who carried on such plundering ways as their fellows did further up and lower down the stream.
With robber-nobles every few leagues along the Danube one may well wonder, indeed, how any travellers or merchants ever got themselves or their merchandise safely to the journey’s end. One of these grasping Oberhaimers is said to have attacked the boat of one Valentine Rottenburgher, a councillor of Steyr, and at one fell swoop to have carried off booty amounting to seven hundred florins. In 1626—it would be pleasant to believe as vengeance for such deeds as that just mentioned—a peasant-leader named Spatt attacked the castle successfully and put the garrison to the sword.
At Wesenufer is a huge wine-cellar—so huge that it is asserted that a coach-and-four might be turned in it—said to have been hewn in the living rock by the command of the Chapter of the cathedral of Passau, and the story runs that in 1626 Duke Adolf von Holstein with several thousand soldiers hurrying to the relief of some besieged place landed here with disastrous results. His soldiers commandeered the contents of the cellar and drank not wisely but too well, so that “the armed peasantry, descending from the hills before daybreak, fell on the fuddled Swabians, as they lay ‘somno vinoque sepulti,’ and slaughtered the greater part of them. The Duke himself narrowly escaped in his doublet, and with the loss of all his property.”
The beautiful river becomes more impressively beautiful as it passes on here through some of the most remarkable of its tortuous windings, which continue from a little beyond Marsbach to Aschach. This, the Schlägen, is indeed generally acknowledged to afford the grandest series of varied views between Passau and Linz. Before the river takes its first abrupt turn round the precipitous mountain on the left, the ruin on the summit of that mountain stands sentinel as it were over the entrance to the serpentine defile. This is the remains of another robber-knight’s stronghold, known as Haichenbach to which the vague tradition attaches of an owner in the thirteenth century who, having slain his brother, retired here to end his days in solitude relieved only by the presence of his daughter. The castle was reduced to its present state by the Emperor Maximilian the First.
A little way beyond, and the Danube whirls and swirls round the long jutting mountain on which the ruin stands, and so far “doubles in its tracks” that soon Haichenbach again comes in sight. The Schlägen, with its ever-rushing flood of water, its rocky sides now precipitous, now broken and pinnacled, now bare and craggy, now grown with fir and other trees, offers a succession of impressive scenes before which “the grandest views upon the Rhine sink into insignificance.”
Planché, taking a passage from Burke’s famous essay, suggests that where the Rhine stands for the beautiful the Danube represents the sublime. As one knowing little more of the Rhine than can be seen from the railway, I am scarcely qualified to make any comparison; but I should wish to amend Planché’s finding so as to credit the Danube with beauty as well as sublimity, for it assuredly has both. “From Mayence to Cologne there is scarcely one mile of uninterrupted wild scenery; and even if there were, the charm would be broken by some pert galley, with its white awning and gaudy flag, some lumbering Dutch beurtschiff, or, worse than all, the monstrous anachronism of a steamboat, splashing, spluttering and fuming along at the rate of twelve miles an hour.[7] The mouldering towers that totter upon the crags of the Danube, on the contrary, are surrounded by scenery rude as the times in which they were reared, and savage as the warriors who dwelt in them. Nothing seems changed but themselves. The solitary boat that now and then glides by them, is of the same fashion as that on which their marauding masters sallied down, perhaps three hundred years ago. The humble cottages that here and there peep through the eternal firs, and the church that rears its dusky spire upon some neighbouring hill, are of the same age. The costume of the poor straggling fishermen and woodcutters around them is scarcely altered; and, indeed, one cannot look upon their own walls, blackened by fire and crumbling in the blast, without conjuring up the form of their ancient lord newly returned from Palestine, and finding his mountain-fastness burnt and pillaged by some neighbouring knight or prelate, with whom he was at feud, and on whom he now stands meditating swift and bloody retribution. For hours and hours the traveller may wind through these rocky defiles without meeting one object to scare the spirit of romance, which rises here in all her gloomy grandeur before him.”
The sentimentalist who needed gloomy grandeur as a necessary setting for romance went on to say that he would almost weep to see a post road cut beside the lonely Schlägen, or a steamboat floundering and smoking through the Strudel and the Wirbel. There is as yet no post road along the Schlägen—there is little likely to be, it may well be thought—but daily steamers “flounder and smoke” through the lovely scenery of the Strudel and Wirbel.
Schlägen is the name of the village on the right bank where the first turn of the river sweeps round Haichenbach’s rocky ridge, into the “gloomy defile” where the precipitous cliffs rise in some places as much as a thousand feet above the river, here greatly contracted in width. Says the chronicler of the adventurous boat journey: “on turning the sharp corner of Schlägen, where the river almost runs back in the contrary direction to that which it did immediately before, we found ourselves in the most imposing part of this splendid pass, the hills on each [side] rising nearly one thousand feet from the water’s edge; the water was boiling and seething as if over a fire, which imparted a motion to our boat, somewhat like that which one feels when sitting in the back seat of a dog-cart, with the horse galloping; which is a peculiar sensation, I assure you, fair reader, and if you have a brother and he has such a vehicle, make him take you a turn in that fashion, and you will understand how we felt as we swung round the rocky corners of the confined and tortuous defile.” The journey is less exciting, but no less memorable, taken on a steamer to-day.
After passing the northern side of the ridge on which Haichenbach stands the Danube swerves again almost as sharply round the rocky cliff of the right bank—the sinuosities of its course are so complicated, that within the space of twelve or fifteen miles it flows towards all the four points of the compass, only to bend again to the right as it nears the pleasant village of Ober Mühl at the foot of a hill where the Kleine Mühlbach flows in from the mountains. Again it sweeps round a kind of peninsula-point to the left, and so past Unter Mühl to a sight of Neuhaus, high on its almost perpendicular rock. This is also known as the Schloss Schaumburg from the name of the Counts who once owned it, but who lost it to Austria.
When the Turks invaded Hungary and threatened Austria this castle was utilized as an asylum of refuge for women and children. In 1626 during the Peasants’ Revolt the insurgents got possession of Neuhaus, imprisoning the Countess-owner in the castle, and drew great chains across the river to intercept all boats and stop supplies from reaching Linz; but even cables of twenty pounds to a link failed, for the Bavarian boats broke through them. Beyond this old rocky stronghold the hills rapidly decrease in height as we near, on the right, Aschach, which was the headquarters of the Peasants’ Revolt. This is a pleasant little town stretching along the river bank close to the commencement of the flat stretch of country through which the river now passes for some miles. The not very lofty Pöstlingberg, ten miles away by Linz, can be seen from here.
The story of this little town is the story of a succession of warlike troubles. In 1626 it was captured and plundered by the revolted peasantry, and again in another rising half a dozen years later. A century ago, too, the town is said to have suffered greatly from friend and foe alike in the Napoleonic wars. In the tenth century the Duke of Bavaria gave the monks of Krems-Münster certain vineyards at Aschach, and the town long had the reputation of being the most easterly point on the Danube for wine-growing. “The wine made in its neighbourhood is remarkable only for its badness, and is the standing joke of the inhabitants themselves; we must suppose, therefore, that it has either sadly degenerated since Thassilo made the vineyards a present to his friends at Krems-Münster, or that the fraternity were in want of an immediate supply of vinegar.”
Behind is an extensive castle of the Schaumburgs, with a lofty tower, the chief seat of a powerful family at once dreaded and courted by neighbouring rulers. Tradition says that the river once ran by the walls of the castle, and also that it played a tragic part in the fate of one of the Counts, who, though invincible in battle or tournament, could not resist the charms of a fair maiden, “armed at both eyes,” the daughter of a miller in the valley of Aschach. One night as he was riding to a rendezvous with her, his horse started at the sudden appearance of a fiery dragon that rushed out of a thicket before him, and plunged with his master over a precipice into the swollen torrent below; the first objects that met the unfortunate maiden’s sight when she opened her casement in the morning, were the floating corses of her noble lover and his favourite steed. A stone pillar near a brook in the valley before the castle duly commemorated the tragic incident.
Below Aschach the river widens out and branches about around innumerable wooded islands and islets which cut off the view across the flat wide valley, though the mountains in the distance are still at times to be glimpsed. Just below the town where the Aschach Bach comes in behind a long island, are the ruins of Stauf, an old castle of the Counts of Staumberg—its picturesque white tower backed by the green hills. On a clear day, too, from this southward turn of the Danube may be had a glimpse of the far Styrian Alps. For some distance the journeyer along the Danube has the view cut off by the many islands formed by the branches of the river. A number of villages are passed on either side. To the south is Efferding where Kriemhilda rested on her journey from Passau, and where, in 1626, Count Pappenheim inflicted a crushing defeat on the insurrectionary peasants—of whom he is said to have slain 40,000 in putting down the revolt. “It was,” he declared, “as if my cavalry had to combat the massive rocks; for these peasants fought not like men, but like infernal furies!” The peasants, it should be said, fought for that freedom to exercise their Protestant religion which had been granted at Passau three-quarters of a century earlier. In this defeat at Efferding the leader of the peasants, a hatter named Stephen Fidinger, was slain; and subsequently his body was taken from the grave and gibbeted as a warning to those of his followers who still stubbornly resisted. Some distance inland on the left, on a rocky spur, is the castle of Freudenstein. But nothing much that is noteworthy is visible beyond the labyrinth of willow-grown islands through which the river finds its way.
Approaching hillier country as it nears Linz, the Danube trends again to the north-east, and Ottensheim is seen on the left with its handsome chateau rising from among a leafy mass of trees and forming a picturesque “bit.” The town was mostly destroyed by fire about a dozen years ago. A little further along on the right is Kloster Wilhering with an extensive and once widely powerful Cistercian Abbey founded in the twelfth century, but the present buildings were erected in the eighteenth. It is backed by the Kirnbergwald—the pines of which are seen for most of the rest of the journey to Linz. Here the river enters a beautiful valley with varied woodland-grown hills on either side, with the high Pöstlingberg crowned with its pilgrimage church showing ahead. Beyond Buchenau, with its compact church on the left, is seen on the right the Kalvarienberg, or Mount Calvary, the little chapels and crucifix of which together offer a place of pilgrimage for the citizens of Linz. With its falling waters, its craggy rocks and pine trees, it forms a pleasantly picturesque spot. From Ottensheim to Linz, it may be added, the railway keeps closely along the left bank. By wooded hills, the high Pöstlingberg on the left, and the lower yet steeply impressive height, close-grown with fir, on the right, the river reaches Linz on the right bank, having Urfahr on the opposite side, with which it is connected by an ugly lattice iron bridge, over nine hundred feet in length.
Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, is a clean, prosperous-looking town, the straight lines of its buildings contrasting strongly with the delightful irregularity of Passau; and its air of modernity gives no suggestion that as Lentia it was one of the Roman stations on the Danube. Possibly when the Huns destroyed it they did so with thoroughness. At the western end of the broad valley through which the river continues for many miles, and backed by the hills, Linz is picturesquely situated, though it is necessary to climb the hills to appreciate this properly. There are a number of churches, a handsome museum, and other fine buildings, but the town itself does not claim long attention, except as an admirable centre for beautiful excursions on both sides of the river. The fine Franz Joseph Platz is seen at its best when, crowded with the stalls and carts of market time, it presents a lively and picturesque scene. The Trinity Column in the centre of it was erected early in the eighteenth century to commemorate the deliverance of the town from two scourges—the Turks and the plague. Pestilence in the olden times seems, indeed, to have been so constant a menace to many of these towns that it is matter for wonder that people were left to take part in the no less constant warfare.
Looking up-stream from the bridge, we have a view reminiscent of the Highlands of Scotland, the rocky hill rising from the water, dark with its close-grown trees is surmounted by the Franz Joseph Watch-tower, an observation point from which grand views are to be had both up and down the river. There are other fine views from different parts of this hill, if the watch tower is approached from the town by way of the Freinberg, but the most delightful way of reaching the tower is by following the Danube-side road and taking the steep path up through the woodland, or from the Kalvarienberg. The view-point of the neighbourhood, however, is the summit of the Pöstlingberg on the north side of the river, which may be reached by tramway from Linz, and thence by the mountain railway which ascends the berg from Urfahr. For the lover of fine prospects—and we do not know a tract of country properly unless we can now and again get some approximation to a bird’s-eye view—the outlook from the Pöstlingberg is one of the grandest along the Danube—
Whether as ancient Lentia when it was destroyed by the conquering Huns, or as modern Linz, the town has seen more than its share of warlike trouble. Again and again it was besieged during the disturbed Middle Ages. Its great benefactor was the Emperor Frederick the Third, who when it was rebuilt after a disastrous fire, made it, in 1490, the capital of Upper Austria. Here, three years later, after a reign of more than half a century he died, having—at the age of seventy-eight—to suffer amputation of the leg. The story told of him suggests that he must have been a vigorous old man, for it is said that, taking the severed limb in his hand, he remarked: “What difference is there between an emperor and a peasant? or, rather, is not a sound peasant better than a sick emperor? Yet I hope to enjoy the greatest good which can happen to man: a happy exit from this transitory life.” In the Napoleonic wars Linz suffered greatly, being thrice within a decade one of the storm centres. In 1805, during his rapid advance on Vienna, Napoleon made this town his headquarters.
To turn from warfare to more peaceful matters—for the full story of Danubian warfare would make a volume by itself larger than this—it is interesting to find that John Kepler, one of the founders of modern astronomy, lived here for some years, and here married in 1613, a portionless orphan named Susanna Reutlinger. In a letter to a friend, Kepler reviewed the various qualifications of no fewer than eleven “candidates for his hand,” and explained the reasons that decided him in his choice. It seems so curiously unromantic a beginning, that it is pleasant to learn from the astronomer’s biographers that the marriage turned out well. We get a glimpse of the scientist at home in a letter which Sir Henry Wotton wrote to Francis Bacon in 1620:—
“For a beginning let me tell your Lordship a pretty thing which I saw coming down the Danuby, though more remarkable for the application than for the theory. I lay a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken by the Duke of Bavaria, who, blandiente fortuna, has gone on to the late effects. There I found Kepler, a man famous in the sciences, as your Lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence [Vienna] one of your books, that he may see that we have some of our own that can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his Harmonica. In this man’s study I was much taken with the draft of a landscape on a piece of paper, methought masterly done: whereof inquiring the author, he bewrayed with a smile it was himself; adding, he had done it, non tanquam pictor, sed tanquam mathematicus. This set me on fire. At last he told me how. He hath a little black tent (of what stuff is not much importing) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field, and it is convertible (like a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure, capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease; exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk, with a convex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected tent, through which the visible radiations of all the objects without are intromitted, falling upon a paper which is accommodated to receive them: and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance, turning his little tent round by degrees, till he hath designed the whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your Lordship, because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography: for otherwise to make landscapes of it were illiberal, though surely no painter can do them precisely.” The thing upon which Wotton dilated was the camera obscura of which he had evidently not heard before, though it had been described sixty years earlier by Baptista Porta, to whom the invention is sometimes attributed.
Though I did not notice that the womenfolk of other places along the Danube were, speaking generally, less beautiful than those of Linz, it should perhaps be mentioned that most writers about the town draw attention to the beauty of the Linz women, or at least to their being long celebrated for beauty. One writer goes so far as to say that transcendentally beautiful women are so carefully guarded from the public eye that a month may be spent in the town by the most susceptible tourist without his “seeing a face that could endanger his peace. Poets nevertheless,” continues the same writer after that ungallant assertion, “have caught much inspiration on the spot and found a prolific theme in the fair maids of Linz, and tourists under the old regime have lent their willing aid in propagating their fame. The annexed ballad relates the fate of one, who, in her day, was the “pride of Linz.”
The moral seems to be that in affairs of the heart there is safety in one rather than in numbers.
Before leaving Linz it may be as well to recall a very clever acrostic which I am told Mr. H. R. Lewis wrote in a visitors’ book when visiting the town about a quarter of a century ago. It ran thus:—