political reflections force themselves on you in this subjugated but by no means pacified country. it is in vain you tell yourself that the constant factors of climate, soil, race, and religion are of greater importance for the true understanding of a country, city, or people than passing political incidents and systems. you cannot emancipate yourself from politics in poland. this is not a country like german alsace, where, according to moltke, a guard must be kept for fifty years, after which, like the german country it originally was, it will again become and remain german. poland is a country forcibly subjected and conquered, and you feel it when walking the streets and in the fashionable hotel, where the national sorrow is generously moistened with champagne at the tables of the aristocracy even at the early breakfast hour.
however, it is not necessary for us to be more passionately patriotic and political than these champagne counts, and we must attempt to secure something of the street scenes without becoming involved too deeply in political problems.
[pg 18]
whenever i come to a town i ask myself, why was it built here and not elsewhere? with the help of a little imagination one can understand even to-day how warsaw came into existence. it was at the head of a bridge. the word "warsaw" is believed to be derived from the word "warszain" (on the height). so the city lies at a height of about forty metres on the bank of the vistula, fully half a kilometre wide at this place. an elevation of forty metres on the immediate bank of a broad stream offered, at the time of its foundation in the twelfth century, a natural fortification, and the merchants who came up from the sea to sell their wares to the semi-barbarous inhabitants of the plain may have found perhaps on this height a frequent protection from the attacks of the plainsmen. later the fort became a city and culture and luxury made their appearance, offering to the tamed dwellers of the plains and to the landed proprietors from far and near the opportunity to squander the proceeds of their crops. the numerous churches did not fare badly in the days of penitence then.
to-day, warsaw is still a fine city of broad streets paved with wooden blocks, with rows of stores on both sides, prominent among which are the richly equipped jewelry establishments. carriage traffic is considerable, even though it cannot compare with that in st. petersburg. just now the main artery of the city, the vistula, is closed. the stream is frozen almost over its entire width and ravens croak[pg 19] on the snowy shoals. but within the city there pass unceasingly modestly neat cabriolets, fashionable cabs, and splendid private turnouts with russian harness and servants. the buildings are of little interest. a few attempts in the russian style, a few polish shadings of quite modern secession architecture strike the foreigner, but the deepest impression is created by the feverish life on the streets and not by its ornamental frame-work. from this should be excepted the pleasure villa lazienki and its quaint park situated at the end of the avenue. even snow and ice cannot banish the spirits that possess one in these gardens. it is a miniature versailles. here is a little castle within which is a picture-gallery of aristocratic beauties, statues, and portraits of king stanislas poniatowski represented mythologically as king solomon entering jerusalem; without are enchanting villas scattered throughout the park, in the centre of which is a little natural theatre built in the open of stone, and arranged like an amphitheatre, the stage separated from the rest by an arena of the wide lake, and constructed of corinthian columns and palisade of bushes. plays were given here in the times when the court and the "beauties" of the picture-gallery enjoyed nature and art together. the moon in the sky was one of the requisites, and fireworks were burned for the relaxation of the high and most high lords. meanwhile the kingdom hastened to its ruin; for a witty, pleasure-loving court and an immoral [pg 20]oligarchy together are beyond the endurance of one people, especially when it is surrounded by covetous neighbors. one hundred years of slavery and three ruthlessly suppressed revolutions are the historical penalty for the pleasures of castle lazienki. there and on the broad election plane the "pole elekcji krolow," in the southern part of the town, where the "schlachtzitz" (lordling) could deposit his "liberum veto" for a couple of rubles or thalers, the kingdom was destroyed, and its resurrection is a pious wish the fulfilment of which even our grandchildren will not live to see.
i have no faith in a polish kingdom. there may be a polish revolution to-morrow, perhaps, when the russians shall meet defeat in eastern asia, as the russian patriots hope, but a polish kingdom there will never be. it is quite apparent how the influence of the times is changing the entire social structure of the people. no nation can maintain itself without a middle class, and poland still has no middle class. the material for such a class, the strong jewish population, has been so ground down that a half-century would not be sufficient for its restoration and the russian régime of to-day is disposed to anything rather than to the uplifting and the education of the polish jewry. it is stated that there are in warsaw a quarter of a million jews, a few well-to-do people among them, who have hastened, for the most part, to transform themselves into "poles of the mosaic faith," without [pg 21]disarming thereby the clerical anti-semitism of the polish people, and innumerable beggars or half-beggars, who are designated in western europe as "schnorrer." and of these there are in warsaw an unknown number. it is hard to draw the line between the "schnorrer" and the "luftmensch" (a man without any certain source of income), who has not yet resigned himself to beggary, and yet cannot tell in the morning whence he is to draw his sustenance at noon. these include artisans, sweat-shop workers, agents, and go-betweens, a city proletariat of the very worst kind. i have seen no such shocking misery in the jewish quarters on the moldau as i encountered in the brilliant capital warsaw. the polish jew, everywhere despised and unwelcome, is the wandering poverty-witness of polish mismanagement. a system that succeeds in depraving the sober, pious, and sexually disciplined orthodox jew to the extent observed in a portion of the jewish polish proletariat should be accorded recognition as the most useless system on the face of the earth. in the last analysis it was the polish "schlachtzitz," and the polish clerical going hand-in-hand with him, that constituted the prime cause of all the miseries of the nineteenth century.
and yet, to be just, one should compare this cheerless polish-jewish proletariat with its immediate environment—the polish peasants and the common people. here one would still find a plus of virtues on the jewish side. the wretched polish peasant[pg 22] is not more cleanly than the jew. on the contrary, he lives in the same room with his pig, and no ritual requirement compels him to wash his body at least once a week. the jew, under his patched garment, is for the most part comparatively clean, only hopelessly stunted and emaciated. the jew does not drink, while his "master," the pole, has a kindly disposition towards all sorts of spirituous liquors. also, the modesty of the jewish women has yielded but lately to the pressure of endless misery or the temptations of the cities, while of the higher classes of polish and russian society but little of an exemplary character has been told. and finally:
"deutsche redlichkeit suchst du in allen winkeln vergebens."
goethe's verse applies not only to the italians, for whom it was intended; it applies also to poland and russia, where less faith is attached to statements than is customary with us, and it applies, above all, to the merchant classes of all nations who are wont to make their living by overreaching their neighbors. there is a wide gulf between the development of commercial ethics, as they are understood with us and in england, and the tricks and devices of petty trade no matter of what nation. but the jew in poland and in russia has been and still is being driven, in great measure, into a class of wretched petty traders; and the law of the land forces back into the pale of settlement by drastic[pg 23] regulations him who would escape from its cage and from an occupation of dubious ethics.
the jewish section is the "partie hortense" of the beautiful polish capital; the jewish misery is a shameful stain on polish rule and its nemesis. all the five continents must have their misery and toil, and they need a firm, all-embracing humanity to relieve them of this contagious wretchedness, this residue of centuries of depravity. but for poland and russia the humane solution of the jewish question is simply a life-question.
