The final volume of Gretsch's travel letters begins with a letter about Teplitz. Gretsch describes traveling through Bohemia to Prague and then onward through Regensburg, Munich, Vienna, Kiev, and other cities, before finally returning home to St. Petersburg. This third volume contains only eleven letters, partly because Gretsch needed the last third of the volume to print the extended excerpt of his report to the government called Survey of Technical Educational Institutions in France and Germany Compiled in 1837.

Gretsch's Attitudes toward Germany and Its People

Despite his complaints about the French and their culture, Gretsch certainly enjoyed many aspects of his time in France in 1837. However, the July Revolution of 1830 was still fresh in Gretsch's mind; evidence of Napoleon's influence surrounded him there; and the not-so-distant memory of the French Revolution of 1789 haunted many of the places he visited. Gretsch simply could not bring himself to trust the French fully, and traveling through their territory gave him a sense of anxiety. When he crosses into the German Confederation as recorded near the end of Volume 2, Gretsch breathes a sigh of relief. “Glory to God; I am free!” he says. He then explains that he views France as a chaotic country, while the Germans uphold centuries-old laws and governments. Gretsch acknowledges that he is stereotyping the French because many of them truly are good people, but he complains that the majority of them seethe with malignancy.

Gretsch's family originally was German, a fact that he always kept in mind and that he seemed proud to acknowledge. In his Notes on My Life, for example, he relates an instance when he was a child in which a police officer came to their home looking for French sympathizers. His mother proudly proclaimed the family to be of German, Bohemian, and Polish heritage with “not a single drop of French blood.” In fact, he acknowledges that German was the most commonly spoken language in the household and that his mother sometimes had him read German books aloud.

Vienna is the most original and most bustling city in Germany. In most streets of the city center, the lower levels of houses are occupied by flamboyant and gleaming shops. The signboards on some of them are of elegant design. They still follow the old tradition of distinguishing shops, not by number, but by some special feature. In Paris, this practice is disappearing, but in Vienna, it continues to be widely used. In the cloth and silk shop zum Primas von Ungarn, the sign-board depicts the Primate of Hungary in full regalia; the sign-board of the fashion shop zur Hofdame features a beautiful lady in a court ball dress; farther on are Hernnhuter, The Shepherd Girl, Cupid—and even the Roman Emperor!— The streets are paved quite sturdily, with natural, fine-grained stone, which is used also for tiles, snuff boxes, etc. The equipages for hire are very good: they consist of comfortable two-seater carriages drawn by one or two horses. In every carriage, there is a small mirror between the front glasses. The cabmen drive very fast. My lackey, trying to find a carriage for me one day on the Graben, was scrutinizing the numbers on them very carefully.— “Which number are you looking for?” I asked.— “Sir, I am trying to make sure I don't hire the carriage with number 308.”— “Why so?”— “The Russian emperor deigned to ride in it, and now the owner of the carriage asks riders to pay double the charge.”— “Find it for me,” I answered: “I will pay four times more.” The old man opened his eyes wide at me and then suddenly came to his senses. “Ach, ja! Sie sind ja, halt, ein Russe!” This carriage, however, was not available that day.

Vienna abounds in public promenades. Under the bastion, right in front of the imperial palace, there are two very beautiful gardens, the Hofgarten and the Volksgarten. One of the main features of the People's Garden is the Temple of Theseus, modelled on the Athenian temple, and it has the finest sculpture in it—Theseus taming the Minotaur, a work by Canova.

Now it would be appropriate to describe the way of life in Vienna, sketch the different levels of the local society, castigate the aristocracy, as is customary in travel accounts. But I do not have an opportunity to do so. I have not been introduced in Vienna society, do not know either its broad or narrow circles; I am familiar only with the exterior part of Vienna. During the very first day of my stay in the capital of Austria, I went to the opera and found myself among my countrymen. In the first rows of the stalls, I found the secretaries of our embassy, K. A. Zherve and A. P. Adelung, my old acquaintance Y. N. Tolstoy, I. L. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who came to Vienna as a diplomatic courier, A. A. Iskritsky, Prince Baryatinsky, and N. F. Remer, who are here to take the Austrian thermal waters. Plenty of acquaintances, plenty of guides: I was inseparable from them. Y. N. Tolstoy, on his way to Paris, was staying in apartments in the same corridor with me. I saw him in the mornings and spent evenings at tea in friendly conversation. We usually had dinner in one big, all-Russian company in the best hotel of the city, the White Swan (zum weissen Schwan) at the Neumarkt. Imagine a magnificent, tastefully decorated hall with up to twenty large and small round tables. At each table sits a special company. It is not difficult to distinguish the Russian table by the carefree, loud gaiety, by the exclusive use of the Russian language, which sounds inexpressibly dear in a foreign country, and by the abundant dessert. I will say here, to the point or not, that in Vienna, there are no common tables (tables d’hote), but people dine everywhere a la carte, choosing the dishes. This might not be exciting to someone who is not an inveterate gastronome. Moreover, in Austria, one is expected to be familiar with special restaurant terminology. Before my trip to Vienna, I thought that eingemachte Sachen meant jam from berries or fruit, but here, this expression refers to any dish served with a sauce. What is Uffieten? An appetizer served on platters (hors d’oeuvres): cheese, radishes, etc.

If I had to use hot baths, i.e., hot mineral baths, to cure cold, rheumatism, etc., I would choose Teplitz as my place of residence. The town is small, clean, nicelooking. The promenades are beautiful: the Castle Garden (Schloßgarten) and the garden of Count Clary. In the first one, the trees are of incredible height and beauty; in the latter—a beautiful covered gallery in which one can partake of all kinds of mineral waters. There is even a small theatre, but no gambling houses: neither a bank, nor roulette—establishments, offensive to humanity, in which time, property, health, and honor itself sometimes perish. The high season was already gone by the middle of August; there were not many visitors, but among them was one, a dear, noble, educated man, a lover and connoisseur of fine arts and—conditio sine qua non—a Russian, who delighted my stay in Teplitz, refreshed my soul, warmed my heart, and left an eternal memory. In the company of the gracious Baron Fircks, I had rejoiced that he was not a woman; with Modest Dmitrievich Rezvoy, I regretted, that I, myself, was not one—a beautiful, young woman: if he had fallen in love with me, I would have lost my mind!— The pleasantness of Teplitz owes much to its incomparable surroundings: Castle Hill (Schloßberg) and the Milleschauer's large and small peaks, and many other picturesque places, from which the view stretches in all directions across a splendid picture of living nature that cannot be captured by still art.— Teplitz has the main market for Bohemian glass products: mugs, glasses, bowls, cups, demitasses, plates, saucers—all of these are made with extraordinary skill from fine, multicolored glass. Glass garnets do not differ from real ones in appearance.

On Thursday, 12/ 24 August, at six o’clock in the morning, I departed from Teplitz in a bad diligence. Traveling with me were a merchant from Leipzig and an elderly lady and young girl of a poor rank, but with a pretty face—both Bohemians or Czechs. I amused myself during the journey by asking them the names of different objects, actions, etc.,

Initially, I intended to stay in Vienna without hiring a lackey as I had done in Paris and in some other cities. Impossible! Vienna is such a strange labyrinth that it is difficult to find one's way. I spent three weeks in Vienna, went out several times a day, and could not do without a guide. The streets are extremely narrow; the houses are tall; on the lower floors are the shops, distinguished only by signboards; the shops, incidentally, look very similar. Vienna has a very original layout. The city itself lies in the middle and is surrounded on all sides by bastions that, in the past, protected it from enemies, but now have become the most pleasant promenade. From the bastions, a glacis, or a green square, runs in all directions, intersected by beautiful alleys, and behind the glacis are the suburbs, thirty-four in number, circumscribed by the border line that I mentioned earlier. There are many magnificent churches, palaces, and public buildings in the environs, but Vienna itself is fashionable, commercial, industrial, and the focal point of the city is the ancient, venerable cathedral of St. Stephen. In no other German city is there such noise, such fast traffic, on the streets, as in Vienna. Cabmen's carriages (fiacres) drive at a fast trot along the narrow streets, yet it should be mentioned that accidents caused by fast driving happen rarely. People say that the wagons, or wheelbarrows, are much more dangerous. The driver shouts, “Look out,” after he already has knocked over a passerby.— In Vienna, apart from the churches, there are few large, monumental buildings—whose aesthetic effect is limited by the narrow streets anyway—but the residential houses are magnificent, beautiful, and cozy.

Shall I describe Vienna? Shall I enumerate its treasures of art, sciences, history, and antiquities?— Spare me from that. You, my readers, will have to be content with a brief account about the impressions produced in me by what I saw, heard, felt, thought, during the three weeks of my stay in this pleasant, interesting city.

Finally, I am in Kiev. In my mind and imagination, I have always longed to travel there, as to the Promised Land. This city, since my childhood years, has engaged my fancy—nourished me with thoughts of great deeds of valor and piety in centuries past and with the eternal beauty of nature on the red banks of the Dnieper. My dear mother, who was born in poetic Malorussia and grew up in Kiev, inflamed my soul with this spark of love and respect for southern Russia, for the ancient, sacred city of Kiev. Plaintive songs of Malorussia lulled me to sleep in the first days of my existence. Kiev, with all its beauties, legends, popular beliefs, was the fairytale land my childish imagination sought. And the very language of Malorussia was familiar and dear to me. Even in later years, I could only with difficulty give up using some Malorussian words—so emphatic and soulful—in writing …

I cannot express the pleasure, rapture, affection, with which I arrived in Kiev, a city beautiful in every respect! After traveling through dark towns with tall Gothic houses, with narrow streets, after seeing dirty settlements inhabited by slovenly Jews, I found myself in spacious, open heights, on wide, clean streets lined with small, pretty houses.

Shall I describe Kiev? For those who have been there, my description will be weak and lifeless; for those who have not, the passing glance of a traveler who spent three days in this city will not satisfy their curiosity. It is only in this place that I could share what excited my soul, what aroused the sacred awe of great recollections. Do you want to enjoy the truly beautiful? Go to Kiev. It is located on sloping hills from which the wonderful view changes continuously. The old Dnieper draws its streams amid wide sandbanks. Look from the porch of St. Andrew's Cathedral or from the triangular platform in the Palace Garden at Podil, the lower part of the town, as it appears gradually out of the grey-haired fog! … And I enjoyed these views in the middle of October! How beautiful it must be here in the spring and summer, when the Dnieper floods all these temporary little islands.

On the 21st of August, at six o’clock in the afternoon, I departed from Prague. My kind friend Hanka saw me off to the diligence, and when the equipage started out from the post yard, he went through the side-street to the main street and waved good-bye to me one more time from afar. I had arranged a seat in the cabriolet, or coupé, but when I got into the diligence, I saw my mistake. The cabriolets here are different from those in which I rode across France, Prussian domains, and other countries of Germany: These lack window glass, but have only leather flaps, which poorly shield from the rain and do not protect from cold at all. In Prague, on the advice of my friends, I provided myself with a warm cap, a warm camisole, etc.; but it was not enough, and I paid for my imprudence with the bad cold. The part of Bohemia we traveled through does not present any captivating or picturesque views: There are hillocks and mountains, but they are unattractive, prosaic. The Bohemian Forest (Böhmerwald), a large, quite high, but not steep mountain range, lies at the border. On the road between Pilsen and Beroun, the conductor pointed out the nearby village of Ratzau, which is famous for one of its inhabitants. A simple, illiterate peasant discovered the means to cure fractures of legs, arms, and so on. He rubs the fractured place with an ointment, which he composes himself from different herbs; then he bandages the wound in a special way, and the fracture very soon heals without leaving any trace. He not only cures recent fractures, but repairs poorly healed ones after breaking the bone again. The injured flock to him from afar.

The next day was Sunday. When we passed through a small town called Teinitz, the people were walking from church, and I could see the Sunday attire of the local villagers. The men were dressed in long, clumsy caftans, with high waists, embroidered on the backs with multicolored silk; each one had a staff in his hand.

The road from Munich to Vienna runs through beautiful locales. To the left of the road is a settlement called Hohenlinden, famous for the victory won on the 8th of December 1800 by General Moreau over the Austrians. This place looks very prosaic and does not excite any interest unless one consults a historical dictionary. The first town that is beautiful and original is Wasserburg: it lies in a deep ravine on the bank of the River Inn, which makes a sharp curve at this location. In general, the valley of the river, winding between high hills, is very picturesque. The Salzburg Mountains look blue in the distance. Occasionally, the ruins of knightly castles appear: the most notable of them is Werdenfels. But there are sites even more ancient: a small place called Partenkirchen was a glorious and rich town named Parthanum in the times of the Romans. The Roman troops bivouacked in it during the campaign from Italy to Germany. In later times, when trade routes from the East lay through Venice and Genoa, the town served as a center for storing merchandise. The proximity of Italy is becoming more noticeable: in a small place called Mittenwald, the men make violins, and their wives knit silk purses: both of these items are shipped to foreign lands in large quantities. Just past Teisendorf is the Austrian border. Here, I said goodbye to Bavaria, which I shall not forget as long as I live.— We arrived in Salzburg in the evening and stopped for the night. Our departure was set for ten o’clock in the morning, and I hoped to walk for two hours through the town and feast my eyes upon its charming surroundings. It was not meant to be. In the morning, we had to complete the customs procedures—wait for the customs officials, open suitcases, sign papers. The time slipped away. The hour set for departure arrived, but we still were not finished. It turned out that the next scheduled diligence conductor was sick, and there was no official replacement for him. One old man among the passengers took the duty of a conductor upon himself—collected travel vouchers, fees, etc., and we departed after eleven.

After I finished all my business in Vienna, after I surveyed the main parts of the famous capital of the Austrian monarchy, after I visited the most interesting places in its suburbs, I began preparing for my return trip. Until then, I had been traveling like a philosopher, in diligences, haphazardly without worries and without care. Now I had to think about how to travel to and through Russia, where diligences are not available yet, and traveling by post chaise, an unaccustomed traveler risks leaving all his bones behind by the fourth station. On the advice of my Vienna acquaintances, I went to the best local cartwright, Brantmeyer (in the suburb of Rossau), and immediately chose a pretty, good-looking little carriage, a two-seater, but with a top that transforms it, if necessary, into a four-seater. The cartwright asked 800 guilders in silver for it, i.e., approximately 2,000 rubles, and while I was sitting in it thinking about whether I should take it, a tall, very beautiful lady, accompanied by another woman and some fidgety cavalier, came to the carriage door, and she said to Brantmayer: “I think I will take this one!”— “No, madam!” I objected: “This carriage is mine. Brantmeyer! I will not get out of it, without having received your word. I did not bring any advance money but will pay you in full tomorrow. Even if you send for the police, I will not yield it.” Brantmeyer liked this determination, and he said to the lady, “I do not have the power to sell you this equipage, but why don't you choose a different carriage? That one over there is no worse than this one.”— “That carriage is blue, and I want to have one of a different color. In Stuttgart, where I am from, all the carriages are blue. And why did you, sir,” she asked me with some discontent, “choose this carriage in particular?” With these words, she looked at me like Medea.— “Precisely because it is green, and in Petersburg, where I am from, almost all carriages are green. I am not a lady and not a beauty and do not have the need to differ from the others.”

Another noteworthy temple of fine arts in Munich is the Pinakothek, or simply, the picture gallery (see Figure 3.7, The Pinakothek). The museum building, original and magnificent, is located not far from the Glyptothek. The design for this project was completed in the year 1823, under the late King Maximilian, but the construction works began under the present king on the 7th of April 1826, on the birthday of Raphael. The building is shaped as a parallelogram that runs from east to west. On the lower level are furnaces from which heat is dispersed through pipes. The rooms run in three parallel rows: in the middle are seven huge halls illuminated by skylights; along the northern side are twenty-three smaller rooms, or studies; along the southern side stretches a gallery divided into twenty-five sections. In addition, there are two separate halls on the western side, and one on the eastern; the latter is for the renovation (restoration) of paintings.

The entrance is magnificent. Portraits of the sovereigns who collected the treasures of fine art displayed in this museum adorn the huge antechamber: Here, we see Kurfürsts Johann Wilhelm, Maximilian Emanuel, Charles, Charles Theodore; Kings Maximilian and Ludwig. Next, one enters into the large halls decorated with sculptured, gilded ceilings and cornices. The walls are covered with red and green damask patterns. Skylights illuminate the space from above. The frames of the doors are made of grey marble. The paintings are exhibited on the walls with a proper observance of lighting. It seems to me, however, that in the Berlin Museum, where light falls on the paintings from the side, they are lighted better. Additionally, the Pinakothek's galleries are partitioned into several sections: This division interferes with the greatness of the whole but is convenient for a connoisseur.— The first two halls display paintings from the German School: Dürer, Cranach, Holbein, van Eyck, and others.

The environs of Munich are not attractive: the city lies on an elevated plain (1624 Par. feet above sea level) bound on the south by the Tyrol Alps, which shield it from the southern winds and thus cause considerably harsh temperatures. The soil is sandy, barren. Forests and groves are very rare. The Isar and other rivers that we crossed flow quickly down the slope to the north, and in the summer, they overflow from the melting snow at their sources. As we approached closer to the city, the royal summer residence of Schleissheim appeared in the distance to the right, and on the left—small country cottages separated from the road by wide meadows. A large park was visible behind them. At the entrance to the city from this side, there is neither any gate, nor guard post, nor bascule barrier: The houses of a wide street (Ludwigßtrase) begin abruptly along both sides of the road immediately at the end of the open fields—two rows of big, magnificent buildings, in part finished, in part under construction, some merely foundations and others being decorated inside. The first building on the right side is a university: a huge structure, already finished in the rough. Next is an institute for girls and a school for the blind; on the left side is the Church of St. Ludwig, with the house of the archbishop and a seminary; farther on is a public library and other large-scale buildings constructed with delicate taste. The whole town is clean, neat, respectable looking. There are fairly many people in the streets, but no beggars. The sidewalks are not made of slabs, but are paved with small stones, laid out in beautiful patterns. Soon, the street split into two: the left ran past the old royal palace; the right, past the magnificent Theatiner Kirche to the post house. On the advice and with the help of a friendly travel companion, Mr. Fickenscher (son of a famous manufacturer from Wunsiedel), I took a room in the oldest hotel in Munich—of the Black Eagle on Kaufingerstraße.