SPLENDOUR OF OLD GERMANY ALONG THE RHINE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23139, 10 September 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

SPLENDOUR OF OLD GERMANY ALONG THE RHINE

By M. F. GRAHAM

A N exciting experience shared by many travellers is .the unexpected delight of rounding a corner in an art gallery to come face to face with a picture one has lived with all. one's life. If, for example, one has for years been watched over, sleeping and waking, by the tall pink lady of Albert Moore's "Blossoms," it is like meeting an old friend in a foreign land to find her life-size in the Tate Gallery in London, still gazing down with her eyes full of that aloof serenity which one has always envied and never attained. But how much more thrilling it was one balmy day in early spring, when «i little white steamer carried me round a bend of the winding Rhine and a picture I was brought up on, miraculously sprang into life. I always knew it was a castle on the Rhine, this golden-towered pile perched high above the river, but somehow had never credited it with a real stone-and-mortar existence. It always seemed so much more like an illustration of a fairytale, full of mystery and magic gold and make-believe.

„ Menacing Troop Trains Now I realised how faithfully the "gold picture." as wo called it, portrayed the likeness and tho spirit of tho Rhine. The workmanlike tugs which tow their fleet of barges up and down the stream, tho railway which sometimes blurs tho banks with smoke, tho menacing troop trains which startle the traveller as they wind along tho valley laden with soldiers and camouflaged machine guns, tho Nazi flags that flutter in the idyllic vintners' villages along the shores —these are not of the Rhine but of the other Germany. The Rhino itself is still the "Golden River," tho "Happy River," lauded in song, famed in ballad, immortalised in the hearts of its laughter-loving people. It used to bo Germany's greatest paradox that Cologne, where we boarded our Rhino steamer, gave the world its sweetest perfume and was in fact its most evil-smelling city, but today's voyager smells neither the "eau" nor tho odour. The only smell, if one were to stop and think about it, is tho tang of the Rhine, an invitation in itself to hurry to tho steamer, settle back in a deck chair, put on one's sunglasses and a big shady hat, - and wait for the history, tho romance and the beauty of old Germany to begin to flow past in pageant and procession as the b6at glides swiftly up tho middle of the stream, unfolding a new enchanting vista at every bend and twist of the river.

Students at Bonn A first stop at Bonn, where tho mer-maid-haunted part of tho .Rhino begins, has us on the look-out for those young lords of creation, the university students, with their sabre scars proud and deep across cheek and brow. Bonn is tho Oxford of Germany, just as Heidelburg, 1 suppose is its Cambridge. Now the banks of the river rise more steeply in a series of wooded peaks, each one capped by tho majestic and forbidding ruin of a castle that has played a Dravo and historic part in the stirring history of Germany. The Robber Barons, the Knights lemplars, the Emperors and Kings who visited there, the wicked Archbishops with whom these parts were ever afflicted, are no longer flesh and blood, but ghosts that haunt the creeper-grown' towers and parapets, peopling thej

An Aucklander's Impressions

legends and ballads which have carried the fame of the Rhine so far beyond its banks.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs lived here in the Rhine's Seven Hills before they went to Hollywood. Here too Siegfried stalked his fearsome dragon. There is a cavern i'n the Drachenfels which is said to be the lair where the hero finally overcame the dragon by digging a pit beneath it and stabbing upward at its heart. The wine of these hillsides is appropriately named "Dragon's Blood," after a goodly draught of which the huge and altogether too lifelike figures of Siegfried and the dragon in a near by village fill one with awful doubts. On to Bingen Onward from Coblcnz, noted for tho largest equestrian statue in the world, the deck chairs are abandoned, for the only way to see all the Rhino has to offer along this most famous stretch to Bingen is to rush from side to side of tho steamer as landmark after landmark towers into sight, and some friendly soul —perhaps a fellow passenger, or the head steward, or tho ship's barber —spins out the fantastic tales that have been woven about these ancient ruins.

There are many different versions of these stories. For instance, when we reach the twin ruins on neighbouring peaks known as the "Hostile Brothers," the steward comes up with a fine tale of two wretched men who conspired to cheat their blind sister out of her inheritance. The barber, evidently a more romantic person, brings us next a legend of two brothers who fought to the death for the love of a fair lady, and finally the passenger comes along

find spoils it all with the historical facts.

As we approach the Lorelei, the procession of castles continues, but everyone on board is straining eyes front in order not to miss the first possible glimpse of that great enchanted crag that towers above the Rhine where the water is deepest and narrowest. Every German heart beats faster at the sight, the children shout to hear the ten-fold echo (but for some reason we don't hear it), and a girl's sweet voice sings the words of Heine's poem to Silcher's delightful tune: "The fairest of maidens up yonder sits high aloft on the fell, and singeth a musical ditty that binds me as with a spell. The fisherman out on the river must hear that wondrous song. He listens, forgetting to paddle, and looks and looks full long." The Fabled Lorelei Well, the Germans have blasted away the rocks which in conjunction with the mermaid's song lured the poor fisherman to his watery grave; they have driven a tunnel through the mighty face of the Lorelei; and now Herr Hitler is bent on flattening the top of it for a meeting ground for loyal Nazis. The mermaid's task is harder than it used to be, indeed, but tlio traveller's task is harder still if ho tries to resist the spell of this loveliest corner of the Rhine.

After Bingen, with its terraced vineyards so typical of the Rhine valley, the dusk soon falls. We have been all day on the water and our eyes aro blind with beauty and sunshine, our heads dizzy with muddled history and legend. The moon conies up to glimmer on the evening scene. The reflections of tho poplars lengthen in the moonshadowed water. Tho lights of Weisbaden blazo up and are gone, and on the right bank tho glow of Mainz grows brighter and brighter until at last the white boat steals up to tho jetty and we alight. ■ And how better end a glorious day on tho Rhine than in tho cosy parlour of a quaint old inn, with a beefsteak such as only the Germans can set down before you, and a beaker of tho Rhino's own golden vintage?