Viewing page 105 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[page number]] 103 [[/page number]]

sweater on.--The views from the little boat on the way to Potsdam were charming, I can see beauty in flat country, you know. Reaching Potsdam the little boat doubled back its smokestack on a hinge and passed under the most be-ornamented bridge I ever saw. Potsdam, especially Sans Souci, is appalling Rococo--amusement parks near our big cities are the only things approaching it, I imagine. The gardens, the buildings, and the numerous statues everywhere are all enough to drive one crazy. Since the late kaiser lived in such an environment I don't see how he could have had any sense--it is so pompous, ornate, artificial. It seemed as if the walks and rooms ought to be peopled with those caricatures of human beings of Queen Anne's time, in monstrous wigs and gorgeous flaring coats and overflowing with ruffles. That San Souci horror was built by the son of the man who built that severely plain, dignified palace on Unter den Linden. Thinking about it on the way home I wondered if this bad taste [[underlined]] is [[/underlined]] German, after all. It is the sort of thing I had expected Greman architecture to be--not quite so bad, my imagination isn't strong enough for that--but the old buildings and the new are not at all like that. I do not keep dates in mind, and my history is pretty weak, but I think Frederick the Great was a great admirer of everything French, and this awful residence and garden of his was very likely an imitation of the French Louis the whichth of his day. The new palace, the home of the once-royal family isn't so bad, but it is bad enough, not ornate, but it is [[underlined]] pink [[/underlined]], actually. Pink is a pretty color in some things, but certainly not for a building nearly as big as our Treasury. At a distance I thought it must be painted, but it isn't, it is pink stone, marble maybe, but if so it is not polished. There was a line of people waiting to enter--it did not appeal to me, so I did not see the inside. At San Souci we saw the art gallery, more Rubens, or copies of Rubens. Fraulein