At School in the Black Forest

by Algernon Blackwood

I

How vivid still in the memory are the sensations stirred in me years ago by the news that I was to go to a school⁠—in the Black Forest; for to the youthful imagination this was a mysterious region inhabited by charcoal-burners, fairies, robbers, and wild boars; a land of enchantment and story, truly, and not in the least a proper sort of place for a school where one would merely “learn German.”

For a long time it was very difficult to reconcile the two ideas, and quite impossible to solve the puzzle whether the robbers would molest the schoolboys out after dark for their pocket-money, or whether the charcoal-burners and pixies would send their offspring side by side with the ordinary pupils to learn the portentous difference between sein and haben. The chief difficulty seemed to be that no real forest could contain a school and be enchanted at the same time; and it was only after two years’ actual sojourn in just such a place that I learned in how true a sense this could really be the case.

And now, as if to prove this, it all comes back to one across the years as part and parcel of some childhood dream⁠—the journey over the Channel and through France to Strassbourg; the spring day in the quaint old town, picturesque and gabled; the odd-looking soldiers (how could any soldiers fight in such trousers!); the tales I heard of the war; the astonishing facility with which everybody, even the children, spoke the language; and above all the awe-inspiring Cathedral and the Twelve Apostles who came out above the old clock, just before the train started, to sound the hour of my approaching doom. And, as if to lend still further the colour of a dream, it seemed that nobody had ever heard of the place whither I was bound. Even the innkeeper knew it not⁠—and in those days I thought innkeepers knew every single thing in the world⁠—so that by the time I left Strasbourg it seemed more and more doubtful whether the place existed on the map or only in the imagination of the writers who had made the tales.

Even now I can see the train laboriously climbing up the steep winding railway, that crosses the Schwarzwald Range, doubling upon itself in a most puzzling fashion. The mountains were covered everywhere with sombre pine-woods, but opened up when least expected into sunny valleys that fairly took my breath away as I leaned out of the carriage window and wished the engine would not go so fast and make so much black smoke. Most plainly they said, “We are the haunted valleys and enchanted woods you have read about. There lies the pool where the pixie steals forth in the silvery moonlight, and yonder cleft in the mountains is the hole by which the gnomes pass up and down from the centre of the earth.”

And when the train, panting from its long climb, stopped at Peterzell station, three thousand feet above the sea, crowning the descent where the Danube rises a few miles beyond, I can still smell the odour of timber and sawn wood in the sweet air of the spring dusk as I got out with my corded tin box and drove in a springless hay-cart four miles into the interior of the forest. The trees pressed up closely, making a paling with a level top on both sides of the road, and only a narrow strip of starry sky was visible over our heads. We rattled on noisily, past occasional farmhouses with immense brown roofs, across humming little streams, and by glades that ran down mossy ways into depths no eye could pierce. The robbers and wild boars, to say nothing of the kobbolds, were no doubt watching us from the darkness under the branches; and, indeed, it was far more like reading one of the old tales again, and visualising it, than the very prosaic business of “going to school.”

From time to time the driver spoke to me in his uncouth dialect, and the small amount of nursery-governess German then at my disposal was so dismayed at this display of the real article, very much “made in Germany,” that my mind made itself up there and then that it could never in this world master any proper or useful quantity of such an appalling tongue. These impressions are as vivid as though they were of yesterday. I can still hear his words, though to this day I cannot understand them, as he pointed with his whip across the first large clearing we had come to, and showed me a little cluster of lights twinkling in the distance against a wall of purple forest⁠—the lights of the village of Königsfeld, and of the school where I was to dwell for two years with eighty boys of various European nationalities and master the language as best might be.

The driver cracked his whip and rattled needlessly fast down the hard white road; and when he drew up with a flourish in front of a gloomy building that towered up into the night, I felt exactly as if I were just about to serve a sentence in prison. The ominous sound of the bell he pulled so vigorously added to the impression, and the glimpse I caught through the glass door of severe walls, and a long stone corridor beyond poorly lit by a single oil lamp, completed it and sent my heart at once into my boots. The driver was my only friend in the world just then, and even he was in a hurry to be off. Then steps came slowly down the dim flagged hallway. I saw a figure in black, with spectacled eyes and a truly German visage, and heard some words in my native tongue.

But, when I turned to face this Ogre of the Enchanted Castle, and understood the sympathy of the words he addressed to me in the kindest possible tones, and using my Christian name, my fears were instantly dispelled; and I caught at once from this welcoming Herr Direktor the keynote of an establishment where a somewhat grim discipline went hand in hand with a genuine personal solicitude for the highest welfare of each and every pupil within its walls.

“Safe and sound after your long journey,” he said in excellent English, “and I hope you left your parents quite well at home. I have just received a letter from your honoured Herr Father. Come with me, and I will read to you what he says before seeing to your supper and bed, for I know you must be hungry as well as tired.”

To an English boy, with only the ideal of an English private school in his mind, the life of course seemed very strange in this Knaben-Anstalt of the Moravian Brotherhood. To begin with, he found himself expected to live in harmony with eighty boys of many nationalities, between whom and himself there was apparently but one common object⁠—the mutilation of the German language.

The loneliness of the school, too, touched him nearly, for its setting was unique: he was cut off from the world. Planted down, with its little village, in the centre of this ancient forest, the square “clearing” was not unlike the opening that the Canadian settler first makes for himself in the tangled wilderness of the North American backwoods. The forest closed in upon it from all sides, pierced only by roads that lead to picturesque villages, equally out of the world; or by glades that meandered among the trees till they stopped at a secluded farmhouse or sawmill droning away its life on some little turbulent mountain stream.

Everywhere one came across evidences that the fairy life of the deep woods mingled more or less freely with the peasant life of the village⁠—pools were haunted; certain pathways unsafe after dark; open knolls were used by the witches for their revels; and in some localities enchanted streams rose up, flitting, like the old man in Fouqué’s wondrous tale, through the lonely reaches, and splashing the faces of any who dared to follow and explore too boldly. All these things, however, were not ascertainable at first hand, because no boy was allowed to go out unattended. When he went abroad it was always in company with fifteen or twenty other boys, and in charge of at least one “Brother.” “Out of bounds” did not exist. The railing round the school building was “bounds,” and in the school uniform no boy could possibly have made his way far beyond it without having been detected and “returned empty.”

Yet side by side with all this old-world, dreamworld charm, there existed the vigorous modern, practical life of the finest missionary spirit the world perhaps has known. There was no display, no blowing of trumpets. There were no visible rewards to compensate the self-denial of these masters, well styled Brothers, who, with small pay and less comfort, devoted the best years of their lives to the bringing up of young lads under conditions that to many of them must have amounted to exile; and who often, later, went forth in the spirit of their great founder, Count Zinzendorf, to carry the tidings of their simple faith to those who dwell in the remote and outcast regions of the world.

I can remember one of them, even while I was there, coming to say goodbye to us all in the quietest possible manner, as though he were going away at most for a week’s holiday, when in reality he was going off to spend the remainder of his life among the Eskimo of Labrador, and might well never return to the comforts of civilised living again.

Little enough of this, no doubt, appealed to the boys in the school at the time though it must touch the imagination of many, I think, when they come to look back upon it in later years⁠—yet there reached us even then some inkling of the fact that we were in a school of a very unusual character, where⁠—though it was in no sense a school of religion⁠—the little group of devoted “brother-masters” cared almost more for the inner life and development of the pupil than for his mastery of dates in German history or the correct use of the mysterious genders. The teaching, be it said at once, lest I give a wrong impression, was thorough, painstaking, and of the best. I only wish to emphasise the fact that there was an unusually lofty standard of conduct always before the boys, and one felt that to sin against this was a greater fault than to murder the language, and that also it grieved the Brothers more.

II

Of the eighty boys in the school about a score were English, and the rest French, Swiss, Italian, Germans, and a few Russians. On arrival, a new boy was attached to a cicerone of his own persuasion, with whom he was permitted to talk his own language, and upon whose tender mercies he relied for all guidance as to the customs of the school and what was expected of him. This lasted for three days, after which nothing but German was allowed to pass his lips under severe penalty; and it is surprising how much of a foreign tongue one can pick up in a day or two when every single thought has to somehow or other find intelligent expression therein, and especially when the lightest penalty for using another language is halbes Frühstück⁠—half-rations at breakfast. By the end of the three days most boys were able to take their place in the classes and do at least part of the work, though of course, so far as accurate results were concerned, they received very lenient treatment for a long time to come.

For the purposes of both study and play, the boys were divided into four rooms erste Stube, zweite Stube, etc., where they lived together during the day under the constant eye of at least one Brother; and the medley of strange German slang that was sometimes heard in these rooms reminds me forcibly of that delightful youth in Punch not long ago who, when he wanted to tell a Frenchman to “shut up,” attacked him vigorously with “Fermez! Fermez!” and added “ Snay pas un morceau de bong,” when he wished him to understand that resistance was “not a bit of good.” For each boy did his level best to force the language into the slang of his own country, till the result must have tickled the patient ears of more than one of those kindhearted Brothers sitting behind the cloud of cigar smoke at the high desk in the corner. But the Sunday afternoons, when, for a brief hour, mother-tongues were permitted, must have been still funnier in results, for then on all sides were to be heard sentences in English, French, Italian, with German words thrust anyhow⁠—usually most uncomfortably⁠—into their midst. “Hurry up and hole mir die cricket-bat.” Schnell, or, “I’ll lick you,” is a sentence that rings in my ears to this day, and many another equally quaint with it.

The day began at half-past five in the morning, when a wicked bell rang in the great Schlafzimmer where we all slept⁠—a very large room on the top floor, with lofty ceiling and excellent ventilation⁠—and, seizing his dressing-gown, each boy raced at full speed downstairs after the Bruder and into the Waschkammer, where the boys of his particular Stube washed and dressed. If he did not reach the room before the door was closed, his reward was probably half-breakfast; and he had to be quick about it too, for most of the Brothers dashed down those long flights of stairs as if their very life depended upon it, instead of only a boy’s half-breakfast. The clothes were all found hanging up on the pegs, where they had been left the night before, and below them on the floor were the boots, neatly cleaned, and, in winter, oiled as well.

Half an hour was the time allotted for the processes of toilet⁠—not very elaborate⁠—and not a word was permitted to be uttered the whole time. Ugh! those icy tin basins and cold winter mornings in the silent, lamp-lit room, with the stars visible through the windows, and all those fuzzle-headed foreigners struggling, after as little washing as possible, into the school uniforms⁠—how tenaciously the memory of it all clings to one!

Everything went like clockwork, and there was never a minute to waste anywhere. The Brother⁠—he always managed to be ready first⁠—waited at the door till the exact second of the time was up, and then led the way briskly down the passage to his Stube. Those who were ready followed him; those who were not got half-breakfast.

An hour’s study followed, from six to seven o’clock, and then we all gathered in the big room on the ground-floor and listened to prayers. A hymn, Luther’s or Zinzendorf’s, was sung with great heartiness, a passage was read from the Bible, and the Herr Direktor followed with a lengthy and earnest prayer. Breakfast was next in order, and by the time it came we were usually quite ready for it. It consisted of two bowls apiece of steaming hot milk (poured out by a boy who was honoured with the title of Einschenker) and two very large slices of bread⁠—delicious white bread, full of “bubbles” and baked on the premises in enormous loaves. Little boys, who knew they could not manage all their share in the appointed time, would pass on to the bigger ones, and sometimes⁠—though of course this was against the rules⁠—to those unfortunates who were half-breakfasting with a portion of only a single slice apiece.

Breakfast over, the business of the day began in earnest; everything had its allotted time, and punctuality was master. At half past ten, after a period of uninterrupted study, “second breakfast” was in order for those who wanted it. English boys always wanted it, but the majority preferred the three-quarters of an hour in the playground to the seductions of a huge slice of bread and a wee pat of butter.

On either side of the playground were long covered galleries where the Englander might always be seen at tip-and-run, and, if fine, at rounders or a regular cricket-match in the open. Few of the foreigners could be induced to join. Most of them were far more exercised over the addition of some insect or flower to a collection that was under the special care and guidance of a particular Brother; and the interest in natural history was encouraged in every possible way. Football, which we played in the autumn in a big field outside the village, though nominally compulsory, was equally unpopular among the majority; for, with few exceptions, the English boys kept the ball to themselves while the others trailed after it in a languid sort of way that showed no real desire to come into contact either with the ball or with the boy behind it. Some of the Bruder, however, played exceedingly well, and there was one Russian master especially who ran like the wind and dribbled like an all-England forward.

This breathing-spell in a long morning’s work was not always given up to mere play, for on certain days it was given over to Turnen (gymnastics), and on others to drilling and manoeuvring of the miniature army which the authorities maintained with great thoroughness and discipline. The manoeuvres in the forest, however, we always considered delightful, and the boys one and all looked forward to them with unfeigned glee.

The chief meal of the day Mittagsessen⁠—was at noon. It invariably began with soup⁠—hot water and Nudels usually⁠—then a single helping of meat with two vegetables, one of which was always Sauerkraut, and by way of pudding there was a bit of fruit Kuchen, excellent and very filling. The Sauerkraut was genuinely sauer and not at all like the savoury dish provided with Frankfurter sausages in most German hotels; but as our appetites dealt more with quantity than with mere flavour, there was never any grumbling, and boys and Brüder alike did justice to all they got. Cases of sickness were exceedingly rare⁠—I hardly recall a single one⁠—and no doubt the excellent plain living did much to keep us all in such robust condition. Headaches, sleeplessness, and the like were unknown in the wonderful air of this bracing mountain village, and even colds were the exception rather than the rule.

The early part of the afternoon was spent in the open air. In winter, each Stube with its Bruder, we wandered through the lovely forest paths, skated, tobogganed, or plunged in high snow-boots through the great drifts in the woods. It was the real Black Forest then. No tourist was ever seen. No carriages, bicycles, or “visitors for health” ever crossed our path. Unmolested, we explored new glades, and found in every direction unknown little valleys hidden away among the dense trees and Strafe (punishment), when to the pain of carpeted with moss a foot thick.

In one direction was the Gallows Hill (Galgen Hügel), where two huge upright stones overlooked an immense stretch of forest, and where robbers and witches were said to have been executed in the past. They had a wonderful view for their last glimpse of this earth⁠—rolling hills and peaks in every direction covered with a velvet garment of deep, dark woods. Black Forest is seen to be the only possible name from a hill like the Galgen Hügel. In another direction was the bit of haunted road where the Red Mill formerly stood, and whose thrilling story a Bruder once told us as we wended homewards in the dusk of evening; and all round, wherever we went, there were sawmills, pools, waterfalls, and the like, that held for us an inexhaustible and ever new fascination. The little village of Koenigsfeld itself was a Protestant stronghold surrounded by Roman Catholic sections of the country; and a few miles in any direction brought us to giant crucifixes in the woods and at the crossroads, and to little shrines with wired enclosures at the entrance to the villages.

The magic of a great forest has never touched me more nearly than on these little daily excursions. We saw the trees in rain and sunshine; weighted down with snow, or with their fresh green points just visible in the spring; roaring in great gales of winter (and what a roar it was), or silent in those long summer days when everything seemed motionless and dreaming under a stainless sky. We came to know and love every mood of these enthralling deep woods, a sense of mystery and wonder, that was not wholly of this world, seemed to pervade them in all seasons and in all weathers. It was almost as though they were touched with a radiant spiritual beauty, borrowed, perhaps, from the lives of the good people who dwelt so serenely in their shade; and their majesty tempered by a gentleness that was reflected from the very human hearts of the simple brotherhood beneath their branches.

At four o’clock we came in to “vespers,” a light meal of weak tea and dry bread, and from then till seven was occupied with studies, music (the boys and masters made up between them a complete orchestra), reading, and writing. Supper of bread and stewed fruits was at half-past seven, and an hour later, after evening prayers and a short time of enforced quiet, the Bruder led his Stube of sleepy, tired boys into the Waschkammer, and thence, when they had disrobed, a flock of yawning youths in grey dressing-gowns, upstairs to bed. It was a full day, but a wholesome one. The punishments were characteristic. Flogging of any sort was unknown. Halbes Frühstück was the commonest penalty and was usually incurred for being late, talking during work-hours, or for using one’s own language.

Next to this came Aufstehen, when the offender was ordered to “stand up.” This was invariably inflicted during work-hours, and generally for inattention, or even nodding over books. German textbooks always seemed to induce a healthy slumber in the Ausländer, as all were styled who were not Germans. Oh, those hot summer afternoons, with bees humming through the open windows and the scents of field and forest wafted in across the table, when one looked up from dozes of a few seconds each and saw faces of many other countries all struggling between dreams of the homeland and the dull books under their noses, and then heard a gruff voice saying “Aufstehen!” The standing up, however, never lasted for more than the remainder of the hour, and was not much dreaded. It was often easier to stand up than to struggle with sleep. A more serious punishment was Strafe (punishment), when to the pain of standing up was added the ignominy of being in Strafe. Speech was forbidden then, and Strafe might last all day, even out of doors, when the victim had to pace the gallery or walk just ahead of the Bruder, if in the forest. It was an effective and boring punishment. But, worse than either, and exceedingly dreaded, was Aufbleiben. This was sitting up when the rest of the boys went to bed. It was meted out only to grave offenders, and was very trying. One had to sit in one of the little cell-like rooms that lined the corridors and were used for music-lessons or special tuition, and there copy out a page or two of German history in German characters. The upper half of the door was glass, and it was impossible to go to sleep, and yet almost impossible to prevent it. It was quite distressing, on the way upstairs to bed, to see some poor wretch sitting in his cell with the oil lamp, nodding over his book and paper. Aufbieiben lasted an hour usually. These, then, were the punishments in this Moravian school, and, according to English notions, they were not very severe; nor, I am free to say, was the necessity for their being inflicted very frequent.

III

There was nothing to correspond to the English system of monitors or prefects. The leaders among the boys were the natural leaders. The Engländer led in games and outdoor exercises, if not in study. No one attempted to dispute their authority there. Sometimes they took the law into their own hands, and the masters, if they knew of it, never interfered. A favourite form of punishment for those who merited their displeasure by not playing up at football, or by “sneaking” in some form or other, was waschen⁠—to wash them in the snow. I well remember this penalty being inflicted upon a big French boy whose face, if you please, we considered had not a sufficient acquaintance with soap and water.

He shirked the icy basins in the Waschkammer, and as he lived in our Stube we were obliged to take notice of it. Hints were of no avail. The opportunity came one day when we were out for a trudge in the forest. The snow was soft and very deep. Waiting till the victim was well in front, and there were as many trees as possible between us and the Bruder with the lynx eyes, we ran up and informed him bluntly enough⁠—I can even recall the slang German of it⁠—“Wir halten es für nötig Dich zu waschen”; and I can see now his white face as he dropped meekly into a great drift and underwent the punishment without a struggle. It had evidently been expected. Remorse, however, has always followed us in this particular instance, because, as one of our number observed the following Sunday when English was permissible, “I don’t believe it was dirt at all. I think it’s only his beastly complexion.” Certainly, so far as we could see, he never looked any cleaner for his washing.

On the whole, however, the different nations lived easily and good-temperedly together. There was not a single fight during the whole two years of my stay there, nor did history at that time bear record of any in the past. Among the Germans and English especially there were many friendships of a very genuine character.

Two very important events in the year⁠—at least in the minds of the boys⁠—were the Big and Little Journey. The Little Journey took place in the spring, when we went in parties of fifteen each for a ten-days walking tour through the forest. Each boy carried a knapsack, and a couple of Bruder acted as guides and leaders. The weather was always tolerably certain, and each boy was permitted to use his mother-tongue. These trips into the untrodden ways of the forest, sleeping in out-of-the-way villages and charming inns, climbing the hills and exploring the valleys, were a time of unalloyed delight and happiness. Roads were good, the air invigorating, and the simple food⁠—bread, beer, and sausages⁠—just suited our tremendous appetites. All the boys were strong walkers, and most of us, owing to the life we led, in the pink of condition.

The Big Journey took place in the summer holidays, and lasted for about three wecks. It was made up of those boys whose homes were too far away for them to leave, and we started by taking the train into Switzerland or the Tyrol, and then walking wherever it pleased us. Brief accounts of these delightful trips used to appear in the little school paper, Die Concordia, and were usually written by one of the more talented Ausländer.

The religious life of the school was strongly marked, and curious little observances and festivals were woven into the woof of the daily and weekly routine. Scarcely five days passed without a Feast of one sort or another, and we noted these well, because, for one thing, they always brought us Kuchen for vespers in addition to the usual bread and butter. It was never possible to forget that we were in the school of a religious brotherhood. The mode of addressing not only the masters, but the tradespeople of the village, bootmaker, butcher, confectioner, as Bruder, and the women⁠—there were only two, the Direktor’s wife and the kindly old housekeeper who mended our clothes⁠—as Schwester, was a constant reminder that our teachers and overseers stood in closer relations to us than mere ushers.

Then the journeys to the wooden church across the village square were pretty frequent. The men and boys sat on one side of the centre aisle, and the women and girls’-school on the other. We had no dealings with them, either out of church or in it. An English boy in our Stube had a sister in the Mädchen-Anstalt, but he rarely saw her, and then only by special arrangement. If we chanced to meet a portion of the girls’-school out for a walk, the Bruder switched us off immediately into the forest before we could catch the merest sight of their sweet faces.

The services held in the church were very simple. A little orchestra helped out the organ on special occasions, and the singing was always hearty, but slow and monotonous, and not unlike the chanting of the Psalms in a Scottish kirk. The sermons were abnormally long, but they at least taught one the language.

Among the Festivals, the Liebesmahl was as interesting as any, when we drank cups of weak tea, and invariably choked over them, and ate buns that were handed round to us in a large clothes-basket. But the New Year’s service was the most trying of any. In its way it was quite an ordeal, for, tired as we were after a day that had begun at half-past five in the morning, we had to troop off to church to see the old year out and the new year in. At half-past eleven the Prediger began his sermon, but on the stroke of twelve, no matter what he was saying, the organ and orchestra crashed out a terrific chord and all the congregation rose to their feet and sang a hymn. Of all the services, though, the Easter Festival was the most picturesque, when in the early morning starlight we marched silently out to the “God’s acre” and took part in a sort of watching service round an open grave, waiting for the light in the east to spread across the sky. It is a scene impossible to forget⁠—that group of schoolboys standing reverently with bared heads in the little burial-ground, waiting so quietly, until the first ray shot across the heavens, when, led by the deep voice of the Bruder, they turned eastwards in the shadow of those still woods and sang to the rising sun and the risen Saviour.

In the school life itself another simple little festival was observed among the boys. It was called Bescherfest, the Festival of Gifts, and the whole school paired off and presented each other with suitable presents⁠—books, fret-saw articles, and so forth. Each boy might choose with whom he wished to pair, and it was the custom also to ascertain beforehand what present would be most acceptable and useful.

One thing⁠—or, rather, the absence of it⁠—a new English boy noticed very soon. There was no “tuck shop” where he could waste his pocket-money and damage his interior. Occasionally on Sunday (it was only once a month, if I remember rightly) the indulgence in sweet-meats was permitted; but half of the pleasure⁠—choosing one’s own particular poison⁠—was of a vicarious nature. One boy was chosen from each Stube to go to the little Conditorei that lay on the farther side of the village square, close to the Home for Widows, and there to expend as judiciously as possible the various sums entrusted to his care by the other boys. Ten pfennigs each, about 2d., was allowed per head, and by careful selection one could buy a good deal for the amount. It was even possible to get a double quantity by inducing a boy who wanted none for himself to purchase for you, but this was considered a mean trick and was very little resorted to except by the exceptionally greedy. Some of the boys were too poor, however, even for this simple treat, and it is very pleasant to recall how often the more fortunate ones shared with them the results of their purchase. One lad, there was, however, a Strassbourger, who not only always bought two lots of cakes, but never passed on the least bit of them to anyone else, not even to the boy in whose name and by whose kindness he was able to get the extra allowance. He was in the second Stube when his ugly fame first got noised abroad among us. When he was promoted to the erste Stube he had his punishment, for the Purchaser of Cakes of that room made it a point as often as he could to forget altogether to buy for him, to report that the things he wanted were all gone, or to buy the wrong cakes and bring back sugarless morsels instead⁠—much to the disgust of the greedy Strassbourger.