Karlsbad, 19 August 1876 
Germania 

Dear Frep, 

I am writing to your London address since I don’t know 
whether you are still living at the seaside.’ 

First, our adventures en route.’ As I had planned, we spent a 
night in Cologne—left there at 6 o’clock in the morning, our next 
staging post being Nuremberg. We arrived in Nuremberg at about 
five in the afternoon, not intending to leave for Karlsbad until the 
following evening (it was the 14th and we had informed our 
Karlsbad landlady that we would be arriving on the 15th). Our 
cases were unloaded and entrusted to a man with a barrow who 
was to accompany us to the nearest inn, just beside the railway 
station on the outskirts of town. But at the said inn we were told 
there was only one room left, and at the same time the landlord 
conveyed to us the awful tidings that we were unlikely to find 
accommodation elsewhere since the town was overcrowded, partly 
as a result of a millers’ and bakers’ convention, partly by people 
from all over the world who were on their way to state musician 
Wagner’s Festival of Fools at Bayreuth.’** And such was the case. 
We spent ages wandering about the town with the barrow beside 
us; neither the smallest beer-house nor the biggest hotel could 
offer us asylum; all we gained was a nodding acquaintance with 
the (highly interesting) birthplace of German handicraftsmen. So 
we returned to the station; there we were told that the town 
closest to Karlsbad, whither we might still be transported by rail, 
was Weiden. We took tickets for Weiden. However, the worthy 
guard had already had one (if not more) over the eight; instead of 
making us get out at Neunkirchen, from which there was a new 
branch line to Weiden, he carried us on as far as Irrelohe (that’s 
roughly what the beastly place is called)* and we had to spend two 
whole hours travelling back (in the direction opposite to that from 
which we had come) so that we finally arrived at Weiden at 
midnight. Here again the only hostelry in the place was full to 
overflowing so that we had to possess our souls in patience on the 

a The correct name is Irrenlohe. 

hard chairs at the railway station until four o’clock in the morning. 
Altogether, the journey from Cologne to Karlsbad took us 28 
hours! Add to which, it was outrageously hot! 

Next day at Karlsbad (where it hasn’t rained for six weeks) what 
everybody was talking about, and what we experienced in our own 
persons, was the excessive heat! Likewise the water shortage; the 
Tepl looks as though it’s been almost completely drained. 
Deforestation has reduced it to a sorry state; at times of heavy rain 
(as in 1872) it floods everything, in hot years it disappears 
altogether. 

Incidentally, the excessive heat has let up during the past three 
days and, even on really hot days, we found wooded glens, long 
familiar to me, where it was bearable. 

Tussychen, who was rather unwell during the journey, is 
recovering visibly here and, as always, Karlsbad is having a 
wonderful effect on me. During the past months the horrible 
feeling of heaviness in the head had shown signs of returning, but 
now it’s completely gone again. 

Dr Fleckles passed on a piece of news that astonished me very 
much. I had asked him whether his cousin, Madame Wollmann 
from Paris, was here; I met her last year—a most interesting lady. 
In reply he said that her husband had lost the whole of his own 
fortune, as well as his wife’s, speculating on the Paris Bourse so 
that the family, now in desperate straits, was forced to retire to 
some German backwater. The curious thing about this affair is 
that Mr Wollmann had made a large fortune in Paris as a 
dyestuffs manufacturer; he had never gambled on the Bourse but 
had soberly invested the money not required for his business (as 
also that of his wife) in Austrian state bonds. All of a sudden he 
went a bit wrong in the head; he regarded the state of Austria as 
unsound, sold all his bonds, and quite secretly, without the prior 
knowledge of his wife or of his friends Heine and Rothschild, and 
in anticipation of a rise, he speculated on the Bourse in—Turkish 
and Peruvian securities!—until the last farthing had gone down 
the drain. The poor woman was just in process of furnishing her 
newly rented hotel in Paris when, one fine day, without any 
warning at all, she heard that she was a pauper. 

Professor Friedberg (at Breslau University, medicine) tells me 
today that the great Lasker has brought out anonymously a 
semi-fictitious work entitled Experiences of a Man’s Heart. These 
exceedingly boastful experiences are preceded by a fulsome 

a (E. Lasker,] Erlebnisse einer Mannes-Seele 

foreword or introduction by Mr Berthold Auerbach. What Lasker 
experienced was this: that all women (including a daughter of 
Kinkel’s) fell in love with him, and he proceeds to explain, not 
only why he didn’t marry the whole lot at once, but why he didn’t 
even so much as clinch matters with a single one of them. It’s said 
to be a veritable odyssey of a milksop’s heart. Hot on its heels 
came a parody (likewise anonymous)* so Horrible that, at great loss 
to himself, Otto’s? big brother‘ bought up every copy of the 
Experiences he could lay hands on. ‘Duty’ calls me from my desk. 
So until next time, in so far as I am not prevented by the 
magically stupefying effect of the hot alkaline tipple from 
scrawling a line or two. 
My love to Madame Lizzy. 

Your 
Moor 

No Kovalevsky here. What I have got is a stout volume, sent me 
by Lavrov, about the functions of the ‘state’ in the future.* Anyway 
I am also putting off reading it till some future time. Just now 
everything’s future here after the drums of the music of the 
future’ at Bayreuth. 

Swarming with Russians here. 

Have just heard from my wife that you are still in Ramsgate. I 
am therefore sending the letter straight there.