the “strong dwarf” Alberich on the left. It struck me that these 
bas-reliefs are not mentioned in Wilhelm Grimm’s Deutsche Helden- 
sage, where everything else relating to the subject is collected. Nor 
do I recall having read of them anywhere else, although they are 
among the most important pieces of evidence for the local 
connections of the legend in the Middle Ages. 

I passed through the echoing Gothic vaulted gateway and stood 
before the church. Greek architecture is clear, gay consciousness; 
Moorish is mourning; Gothic is holy ecstasy; Greek architecture is 
bright, sunny day; Moorish is star-spangled dusk; Gothic is dawn. 
Here in front of this church I sensed as never before the power of 
the Gothic style. Not when it is seen among modern buildings, like 
Cologne Cathedral, still less when it is built round with houses 
clinging to it like swallows’ nests, as with the churches in the 
North-German towns, does a Gothic cathedral make its most 
powerful impression; only between wooded hills, like the Alten- 
berg church in the Berg country, or at least separated from 
everything alien, modern, between monastery walls and old build- 
ings, like Xanten Cathedral. Only there does one feel deeply what 
a century can accomplish when it throws itself with all its might 
into a single, great aim. And if Cologne Cathedral, in all its 
gigantic dimensions, stood free and open to the gaze from all 
sides, like the church of Xanten, truly the nineteenth century 
would have to die of shame that for all its super-cleverness it 
cannot complete this building. For we no longer know the 
religious deed and so we marvel at a Mrs. Fry, who would have 
been a most commonplace phenomenon in the Middle Ages. 

I entered the church; high mass was just being celebrated. The 
notes of the organ thundered down from the choir, a jubilant 
throng of heart-storming warriors, and raced through the echoing 
nave until they died away in the farthest aisles of the church. You, 
too, son of the nineteenth century, let your heart be conquered by 
them—these sounds have enthralled stronger and wilder men 
than you! They drove the old German gods from their groves, 
they led the heroes of a great age across the stormy sea, through 
the desert, and their unconquered children to Jerusalem, they are 
the shadows of hot-blooded centuries which thirsted for action! 
But when the trumpets announce the miracle of the transubstanti- 
ation, when the priest raises the glittering monstrance and the 
whole consciousness of the congregation is intoxicated with the 
wine of devotion, rush out, save yourself, save your reason from 
this ocean of feeling that surges through the church and pray 
outside to the God whose house is not made by human hands, 

who is the breath of the world and who wants to be worshipped in 
spirit and in truth. 

I went away shaken and asked to be shown the way to an inn, 
the only one in the little town. When I entered the inn parlour I 
could feel that I must be close to Holland. A quaintly mixed 
exhibition of paintings and engravings on the wall, landscapes cut 
into the window-panes, goldfish, peacock feathers and the ribbed 
leaves of tropical plants in front of the mirror clearly showed the 
host’s pride in possessing things which others do not have. This 
passion for rarities which in decidedly bad taste surrounds itself 
with products of art and nature, be they beautiful or ugly, and 
which feels most at home in a room full to bursting with such 
absurdities, is the Dutchman’s besetting sin. But what a shudder 
seized me when the good man took me into his so-called 
picture-gallery! A small room, all the walls densely covered with 
paintings of little value, although he claimed that Schadow had 
declared one of the portraits, which was actually much prettier 
than the rest, to be a Hans Holbein. A few altar pieces by Jan van 
Calcar (from a neighbouring small town) had lively colouring and 
would be of interest to an expert. But as for the rest of the room’s 
decorations! Palm leaves, coral branches and the like protruded 
from every corner; there were stuffed lizards everywhere, a couple 
of figures made of coloured seashells, such as one finds frequently 
in Holland, stood on the stove; in a corner was a bust of the 
Cologne Wallraf, and beneath it hung, desiccated like a mummy, 
the dead body of a cat, with one forepaw treading right on the 
face of a painted Christ on the cross. If my reader should ever 
stray into this one hotel in Xanten, let him ask the obliging host 
about his beautiful ancient gem; he possesses an exquisite Diana 
cut in an opal, which is worth more than his entire collection of 
paintings. 

In Xanten one should not miss seeing the collection of anti- 
quities in the possession of Mr. Houben,’ a solicitor. It includes 
almost everything that has been dug up or found at Castra vetera. 
The collection is interesting, but it does not contain anything of 
particular artistic value, as is to be expected of a military station, 
which Castra vetera was. The few beautiful gems which were found 
here are dispersed all over the town; the one piece of sculpture of 
any considerable size is a sphinx, about three feet long, in the 
possession of the innkeeper already mentioned; it is made of 

* The Telegraph für Deutschland has “Huber”, which is a misprint Ed. 

Siegfried’s Native Town 135 

ordinary sandstone, badly preserved, and was never particularly 
beautiful. 

I went out of the town and up a sandy rise, the only natural 
elevation for miles around. This is the mountain on which, 
according to the legend, Siegfried’s castle stood. At the entrance to 
a pine grove I sat down and looked at the town below. Sur- 
rounded on all sides by earthworks, it lay as it were in a cauldron, 
only the church rising majestically over the brim. On the right the 
Rhine embracing a green island with broad, gleaming arms, on the 
left the hills of Cleves in the blue distance. 

What is it about the legend of Siegfried that affects us so 
powerfully? Not the plot of the story itself, not the foul treason 
which brings about the death of the youthful hero; it is the deep 
significance which is expressed through his person. Siegfried is the 
representative of German youth. All of us, who still carry in our 
breast a heart unfettered by the restraints of life, know what that 
means. We all feel in ourselves the same zest for action, the same 
defiance of convention which drove Siegfried from his father’s 
castle; we loathe with all our soul continual reflection and the 
philistine fear of vigorous action; we want to get out into the free 
world; we want to overrun the barriers of prudence and fight for 
the crown of life, action. The philistines have supplied giants and 
dragons too, particularly in the sphere of church and state. But 
that age is no more; we are put in prisons called schools, where 
instead of striking out around us we are made with cruel irony to 
conjugate the verb “to strike” in Greek in all moods and tenses, 
and when we are released from that discipline we fall into the 
hands of the goddess of the century, the police. Police for 
thinking, police for speaking, police for walking, riding and 
driving, passports, residence permits, and customs docu- 
ments —the devil strike these giants and dragons dead! They have 
left us only the semblance of action, the rapier instead of the 
sword; but what use is all the art of fencing with the rapier if we 
may not apply it with the sword? And when the barriers are finally 
broken down, when philistinism and indifference are trodden 
underfoot, when the urge to action is no longer checked —do you 
see the tower of Wesel there across the Rhine? The citadel of that 
town, which is called a stronghold of German freedom, has 
become the grave of German youth, and has to lie right opposite 
the cradle of the greatest German youth! Who sat there in prison? 
Students who did not want to have learnt to fence to no purpose, 
vulgo duellists and demagogues.” Now, after the amnesty of 
Frederick William IV, we may be permitted to say that this 

amnesty was an act not only of mercy but of justice. Granted all 
the premises, and in particular the need for the state to take 
measures against the student fraternities, nevertheless, everyone 
who sees that the good of the state does not lie in blind obedience 
and strict subordination will surely agree with me that the 
treatment of the participants demanded that they should be 
rehabilitated in honour and dignity. Under the Restoration and 
after the July days* the demagogic fraternities were as under- 
standable as they are now impossible. Who then suppressed every 
free movement, who placed the beating of the youthful heart 
under “provisional” guardianship? And how were the unfortunates 
treated? Can it be denied that this legal case is perfectly cal- 
culated to show in the clearest light all the disadvantages and 
errors of both public and secret judicature, to make manifest the 
contradiction that paid servants of the state, instead of independent 
jurors, try charges of offending against the state; can it be denied 
that all the sentencing was done summarily, “in bulk”, as mer- 
chants say? 

But I want to go down to the Rhine and listen to what the waves 
gleaming in the sunset tell Siegfried’s mother earth about his 
grave in Worms and about the sunken hoard. Perhaps a friendly 
Morgan le Fay will make Siegfried’s castle rise again for me or 
show my mind’s eye what heroic deeds are reserved for his sons of 
the nineteenth century. .