Proximity to Potsdam, and above all the rapid growth of Berlin, favored the Caputher’s transformation from day laborer into boatman or boat-builder, perhaps even evoked it. Brickworks sprung up all along the Havel and Schwielow, and the millions of bricks baked year in and year out on the shores of these lakes and their inlets required hundreds of boats to ferry them to the Berlin market. For this the Caputhers lent a hand. An entire fleet arose, and at this very moment more than sixty vessels, all built at village wharves, are plying Schwielow, the Havel, and the Spree. The usual destination, as already implied, is the capital. A fraction, however, also sails down the Havel to the Elbe and ultimately does business in Hamburg.
However, Caputh — the Chicago of Lake Schwielow — is not merely the great trade emporium of this region, not merely a point of arrival and departure for the Zauche-Havelland brick districts, no, it is also a port that all Havel traffic must pass through. The detour through Schwielow is unavoidable; for the time being there is only this one navigable strait. A shortened route through the North Canal has been planned but not yet carried out. And so, Caputh, home to a fleet of boats made from its own resources, would fare perfectly well on its own if it ever needed to. At the same time it has become an all-around maritime and trading center, a harbor for ships from other regions, and, were disaster to strike or hurricanes to loom, the flotillas of Rathenow, Plaue, and Brandenburg could descend and drop anchor here. But the strait through Caputh is most exciting when there’s some big festival and custom dictates closing it to traffic. Pentecost is a particular highlight, when everything converges here; on either side of the strait lie a hundred ships or more, banners waving, and high atop the masts, a delightful sight: one hundred May bushes saluting the horizon.
This is the grand side of Caputh life, but there’s also a small side. The men possess the recklessness of the seafarer; their money acquired over months of work is spent in just a few hours, when it then falls to the women to bring the accounts into order through their industriousness and the earnings brought by their small labors.
As we already mentioned, they are gardeners; nurturing the soil requires meticulous care, and individual crops are so skillfully cultivated that the Caputhers can even compete with their neighbors in Werder. Chief among their crops is the strawberry, which also reaps benefits from the close proximity of the two capitals: there are small-scale gardeners who in three to four weeks, with a half-acre garden plot, take in 120 thalers for their pineapple-strawberries. However, these ventures remain small-scale, and even here in Caputh it is apparent that the more sophisticated crops don’t add up to much and that fifty acres of wheat is still the best and easiest option.7
It’s always nice when what’s in a book is not just what the title promises, but all sorts of wonderful things you never would have imagined when you picked it up. Such is the case with these Wanderings. Not only does Fontane talk about the Mark and its inhabitants in his day, he also tries to imagine what it looked like in earlier times. He is especially intent on discovering the peculiarities and quirks of the former inhabitants of the Mark. Among the strangest stories he happened upon concern the conspiracies circulating in this region before 1800, especially among the Potsdam aristocracy. These plots and secret alliances were not so much about people as about nature, from which they hoped to wrest the secret of gold. If you could synthesize gold, so people thought, you would know all of nature’s secrets. In those days only very fanciful people believed it was possible to make gold. Today, even great scholars no longer hold it to be impossible. But people no longer pride themselves on having nature in their grasp. We are continually working on an infinite number of technical problems whose solutions would be much more significant in a practical sense than making gold. In those days no one ever dared dream of such things as power generation, transportation systems, radio photography,8 the manufacture of synthetic medications, and so on, which is why people were so interested in making gold. Potsdam was home to several societies intent on the pursuit of the “philosopher’s stone,” the name for the magic that would materialize gold and whose possessor would become not only rich, but also wise and all-powerful.
Fontane tells us of one such society. From a letter found in an old book we learn of an order in whose ceremonies the harmonica plays an important role. The letter, from a harmonica virtuoso, reads as follows:
The address you gave me has provided me with a very interesting acquaintance in Herr N.… The harmonica meets with his utmost approval; and he speaks as well of various special attempts, which at first I did not properly grasp. Only yesterday did things become clear to me: —Yesterday evening we drove to his country estate, which leaves an extraordinarily handsome impression, especially the garden. Various temples, grottoes, waterfalls, labyrinthine pathways, and underground vaults, etc., treat the eye to such manifold diversity that the observer is left transfixed. Only the height of the all-encompassing wall would I do without; it robs the eye of a terrific view. — I had the harmonica and had to promise Herr N. that I would play it, on his cue, for just a few moments at a specific location. While waiting for this moment, he led me into a large room in the front part of the house and left me there, explaining that his presence was required to arrange the details and lighting for a ball. It was already late and just as sleep was upon me, I was roused by the arrival of several carriages. I opened the window but saw nothing conspicuous, understanding even less of the soft and mysterious whispering of the arriving guests. Shortly afterwards I once again succumbed to my weariness and fell sound asleep. I must have slept for an hour when I was awoken by a servant, who at once offered to carry my instrument and beseeched me to follow him. Because he was moving at a hurried pace, I could only follow at some distance, which allowed me the opportunity to indulge my curiosity and pursue the muffled sounds of several trombones that seemed to be coming from the depths of the cellar.
Imagine my astonishment when, halfway down the cellar steps, I spied a crypt in which, amid funeral music, a corpse was being laid into a coffin and a man, dressed in white but spattered all over with blood, was having the veins in his arm bandaged. But for the assistants, everyone was cloaked in black robes with unsheathed swords. At the entrance lay a heap of skeletons and the crypt was lit by torches whose flames appeared to emanate from burning wine-spirits, making the spectacle all the more gruesome. I hurried back so as not to lose my guide, who was just coming in from the garden as I arrived at the very same door. Impatiently, he grabbed me by the hand and dragged me away with him.
Entering the garden was like something from a fairy tale: everything lit by green fire; countless flaming lamps; the murmuring of distant waterfalls. Nightingales singing, the scent of blossoms, in short, everything seemed supernatural, as if nature had given way to magic. I was assigned my spot behind a garden house with a lavishly adorned interior. Moments later an unconscious man was carried in, presumably the same fellow who had had his veins opened in the crypt. But I don’t know for sure because now the color and cut of everyone’s garments were refined and glamorous, so they were all new to me. Then and there I received the sign to begin playing.
As I now needed to focus more on myself than on the others, I must admit that I missed a lot. This much I’m certain is true: the unconscious man revived after hardly a minute of my playing and asked in amazement: “Where am I? Whose voice am I hearing?”