Part 23

And he closed: "We must now go out in search of new spots where we can drive in nails on which to hang our armour."

Early in August the Emperor was called to the death-bed of his mother, the Empress Frederick, at her castle in Cronberg. She died on the afternoon of her son's arrival, on August 5th. The Emperor ordered mourning throughout the Empire for six weeks, and forbade all "public music, entertainments, theatrical or otherwise" until after the funeral. The Empress was buried in the mausoleum attached to the Friedenskirche in Potsdam on the 13th of the month.

The delivery of a famous speech on art by the Emperor in December brings the chronicle of 1901 to a close, but perhaps it will not displease the reader if a new chapter is opened for the purpose of quoting it and of considering the Emperor in what is a traditional Hohenzollern relationship.

THE EMPEROR AND THE ARTS

Art is a favourite subject of conversation on the Continent, where it is more popularly discussed than in England and where authorities of all kinds are more alive to its educative capabilities. It is eminently "safe" ground, does not savour of gossip, and no one need leave the field of discussion with the feeling that he has been driven from it. Hence it is the salvation of diplomatists who are apprehensive of committing their Governments or themselves when mixing in general society, and it doubtless does good service for the Emperor also upon occasion. Indeed it is a topic on which he speaks willingly and well.

Unfortunately for precision of thought and speech, though useful for the man in the street, the word "art" has been pressed into the service of metaphor more than almost any other word in language. We are told in turn that everything is an art--hair-dressing, salad-dressing (a different kind), lying, flying, dying. The Germans are trying to make an art of life. Whistler wrote about the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies." One hears of "artful hussies" and "artful dodgers." People are described as "artful" in the small diplomacies of intercourse. Jugglers, acrobats, sword-swallowers, "supers" at the theatre, the men who play the elephant in the pantomime would all be mortified if they were not addressed as "artists," In short, everything may be called an art.

But what, truly, is art? The question is as hard to answer satisfactorily as the questions what is truth or what is beauty? The notion "art" usually occurs to the mind as contrasted with the notion "nature"; the word is derived from the Sanskrit root ar, to plough, to make, to do; and accordingly art may be taken to be something made by man, as contrasted with something made, or grown, or given by God. How art came into existence it is of course impossible to do more than conjecture. The necessities of primitive man may have stimulated his inventive powers into originating and developing the useful arts for his physical comfort and convenience; and his desire for recreation after labour, or the mere ennui of idleness, may have urged the same powers into originating and developing the fine and plastic arts for the entertainment of his mind. Or, lastly, if no better reason can be found, and though Sir Joshua Reynolds laid it down that all models of perfection in art must be sought for on the earth, it may be that seeing and feeling instinctively the glory and beauty of the Creation, mankind began gradually, as its intelligence improved, to burn with a longing to imitate, reproduce, and represent them.

However art arose, it seems true to say, as a German writer has well said, that when a work of art, whether a poem or a picture or a statue, causes in us the thought that so, and in no other way, would we ourselves have expressed the idea, had we the talent, then we may conclude that true art is speaking to us, whatever the idea to be expressed may be. Everything demands thought, but our thoughts are an unruly folk, which never keep long on the same straight road, and love to wander off to left and right, here finding something new and there throwing away something old. The artist, when he conceives a plan, has to fight with the host of his thoughts and find a way through them. They often threaten to divert him from it, but on the other hand they often lead him to his goal by novel paths along which he finds much that is new and valuable.

This is a doctrine that, sensible though it is, would hardly be subscribed to by the Emperor, to whom no new movement in art strongly appeals, and who thinks that such movements, unless founded on the old classical school, the Greek and Roman school of beauty, ought, in the public interest, to be discouraged. However, let him speak for himself. He set forth his art creed in a speech which he delivered on December 18, 1901, to the sculptors who had executed the Hohenzollern statues in the famous Siegesallée at Berlin, and which ran substantially as follows:--

"I gladly seize the occasion, first of all, to express my congratulations and then my thanks for the manner in which you have assisted me to carry out my original plan. The preparation of the plan for the Siegesallée has occupied many years, and the learned historiographer of my House, Professor Dr. Poser, is the man who put me in a position to set the artists clear and intelligible tasks. Once the historic basis was found the work could be proceeded with, and when the personalities of the princes were established it was possible to ascertain those who had been their most important helpers. In this manner the groups originated and, to a certain extent, conditioned by their history, the forms of them came into existence.

"The next most difficult question was--Was it possible, as I hoped it was, to find in Berlin so many artists as would be able to work together harmoniously to realize the programme?

"As I came to consider the question, I had in view to show the world that the most favourable condition for the successful achievement of the work was not the appointment of an art commission and the establishment of prize competitions, but that in accord with ancient custom, as in the classical period, and later during the Middle Ages, was the case, it lay in the direct intercourse of the employer with the artists.

"I am therefore especially obliged to Professor Reinhold Begas for having assured me, when I applied to him, that there was absolutely no doubt there could be found in Berlin a sufficiency of artists to carry out the idea; and with his help, and in consequence of the acquaintances I have made by visiting exhibitions and studios in Berlin, I succeeded in getting together a staff, the majority of whom I see around me, with whom to approach the task.

"I think you will not refuse me the testimony that, in respect of the programme I drew up I have made the treatment of it as easy as possible, that while I ordered and defined the work I gave you an absolute freedom not only in the combination and composition, but precisely the freedom to put into it that from himself which every artist must if he is to give the work the stamp of his own individuality, since every work of art contains in itself something of the individual character of the artist. I believe that this experiment, if I may so call it, as made in the Siegesallée, has succeeded.

"... I have never interfered with details, but have contented myself with simply giving the direction, the impulse.

"But to-day the thought that Berlin stands there before the whole world with a guild of artists able to carry out so magnificent a project fills me with satisfaction and pride. It shows that the Berlin school of art stands on a height which could hardly have been more splendid in the time of the Renaissance.

"Here, too, one can draw a parallel between the great artistic achievements of the Middle Ages and the Italians--that, namely, the head of the State, an art-loving prince, who offered their tasks to the artists also found the master round whom a school of artists could gather.

"How is it, generally speaking, with art in the world? It takes its models, supplies itself from the great sources of Mother Nature, who, spite of her apparently unfettered, limitless freedom, still moves according to eternal laws which the Creator ordained for himself and which cannot be passed or violated without danger to the development of the world.

"Even so it is in art; and at the sight of the beautiful remains of old classical times comes again over one the feeling that here too reigns an eternal law that is always true to itself, the law of beauty and harmony, of the aesthetic. This law is given expression to by the ancients in so surprising and overpowering a fashion, in so thoroughly complete a form that we, with all our modern sensibilities and with all our power, are still proud, when we have done any specially fine piece of work, to hear that it is almost as good as it was made nineteen hundred years ago.

"But only almost! Under this impression I would earnestly ask you to lay it to heart that sculpture still remains untainted by so-called modern tendencies and currents--still stands high and chastely there! Keep her so, don't let yourselves be misled by human criticism or any wind of doctrine to abandon the principles on which she has been built up.

"An art which transgresses the laws and limits I have indicated is art no more. It is factory work, handicraft, and that is a thing art should never be. Under the often misused word 'freedom' and her flag one falls too readily into boundlessness, unrestraint, self-exaggeration. For whoever cuts loose from the law of beauty, and the feeling for the æsthetic and harmonious, which every human breast feels, whether he can express it or not, and in his thought makes his chief object some special direction, some specific solution of more technical tasks, that man denies art's first sources.

"Yet again. Art should help to exercise an educative influence on the people. She should offer the lower classes, after the hard work of the day, the possibility of refreshing themselves by regarding what is ideal. To us Germans great ideals have become permanent possessions, whereas to other peoples they have been more or less lost. Only the German people remain called to preserve these great ideas, to cultivate and continue them. And among these ideals is this, that we afford the possibility to the working classes to elevate themselves by beauty, and by beauty to enable them to abstract themselves and rise above the thoughts they otherwise would have.

"When Art, as now often occurs, does nothing more than represent misery as still more unlovely than it is already, by so doing she sins against the German people. The cultivation of the ideal is at the same time the greatest work of culture, and if we wish to be and remain an example in this to other nations the whole people must work together to that end; if Culture is to fulfil her task she must penetrate to the lowest classes of society. That she can only do when art comes into play, when she raises up, instead of descending into the gutter.

"As ruler of the country I often find it extremely bitter that art, through its masters, does not with sufficient energy oppose such tendencies. I do not for a moment fail to perceive that many an aspiring character is to be found among the partisans of these tendencies, who are perhaps filled with the best intentions but who are on the wrong path. The true artist needs no advertisement, no press, no patronage. I do not believe that your great protagonists in the domain of science, either in ancient Greece or in Italy or in the Renaissance period ever had recourse to a réclame such as nowadays is often made in the press in order to bring their ideas into prominence, but worked as God inspired them and let others do the talking.

"And so must an honest, proper artist act. The art which descends to réclame is no art be it lauded a hundred or a thousand-fold. A feeling for what is beautiful or ugly has every one, be he ever so simple, and to educate this feeling in the people I require all of you. That in the Siegesallée you have done a piece of such work, I have specially to thank you.

"This I can even now tell you--the impression which the Siegesallée has made on the foreigner is quite an overpowering one; everywhere respect for German sculpture is making itself perceivable. May you always remain on these heights, may such masters stand by my sons and sons' sons, should they ever come into existence! Then, I am convinced, will our people be in a position to love the beautiful and honour lofty ideals."

At the Berlin Art Museum next year, after praising the devotion of his parents to art, and especially of his mother, "a nature," he said, "about which poesy breathed," he continued:--

"The son of both stands before you as their heir and executor: and so I regard it as my task, according to the intention of my parents, to hold my hand over my German people and its growing generation, to foster the love of beauty in them, and to develop art in them; but only along the lines and within the bounds drawn strictly by the feelings in mankind for beauty and harmony."