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| Note: | This text includes only Germany, and those parts of Austria-Hungary noted in the table of contents. Volume VI is available as a separate text within Project Gutenberg] See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11179 |
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| BERLIN: PANORAMA FROM THE TOWER OF THE TOWN HALL |
SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS, ETC. BY
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Editor of "Great Epochs in American History,"Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations,"and of "The Best of the World's Classics" etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED
Vol. V
GERMANY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, AND SWITZERLAND
Part One
1914
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES V AND VI
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland
The tourist's direct route to Germany is byships that go to the two great German ports—Bremenand Hamburg, whence fast steamer trainsproceed to Berlin and other interior cities. Onemay also land at Antwerp or Rotterdam, and proceedthence by fast train into Germany. Eitherof these routes continued takes one to Austria.Ships by the Mediterranean route landing atGenoa or Trieste, provide another way for reachingeither country. In order to reach Switzerland,the tourist has many well-worn routes available.
As with England and France, so with Germany—ourearliest information comes from a Romanwriter, Julius Caesar; but in the case of Germany,this information has been greatly amplified by alater and noble treatise from the pen of Tacitus.Tacitus paints a splendid picture of the domesticvirtues and personal valor of these tribes, holdingthem up as examples that might well be useful tohis countrymen. Caesar found many Teutonictribes, not only in the Rhine Valley, but well establishedin lands further west and already Gallic.
By the third century, German tribes had formedthemselves into federations—the Franks, Alemanni,Frisians and Saxons. The Rhine Valley, afterlong subjection to the Romans, had acquiredhouses, temples, fortresses and roads such as theRomans always built. Caesar had found manyevidences of an advanced state of society. Antiquariansof our day, exploring German graves, discoversigns of it in splendid weapons of war anddomestic utensils buried with the dead. Monolithicsarcophagi have been found which give eloquenttestimony of the absorption by them of Roman culture.Western Germany, in fact, had become, inthe third century, a well-ordered and civilized land.Christianity was well established there. In generalthe country compared favorably with Roman England,but it was less advanced than Roman Gaul.Centers of that Romanized German civilization,that were destined ever afterward to remain importantcenters of German life, are Augsburg,Strasburg, Worms, Speyer, Bonn and Cologne.
It was after the formation of the tribal fe