Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-06-29
WESbADEN SEAT YANk ENGINEERS
0FPR0P0SED new BUILD BALKAN
Rhine PROVINCE RAILROAD LINES
City Of Legends and Ruins One
of Most Fashionable Re-
sorts of Germany Be-
fore War.

Washington, D. c., June 49,
Niesbaden, seat Of the provisional
government for the proposed Rhin.
republic, is described in the fol-
lowing bulletin from Washington
Headquarters of the National Geo
graphic society:
In her time Wiesbaden, nesting
in a mild nook of the Rhine Valley.
has played many parts. First she
was fortified outpost of the far
lung Roman empire, later a febrile
Monte Carlo until the government
suppressed her notorious games OF
chance. and then she bacame the
Aix-les-Bains of Germany.
With a normal population less
than that of Richmond, Va, the city
expanded to the size of Washington
d. T., when her season was at its
height in the late spring. She was
q. versatile hostess. Coquetting for
the visitors whose entertainment
was her principal industry, she al
lured those young and nimble
enough to explore the hooks and
crannies of the hills about her, and
played the old mans darling to the
rheumatic, the equity and the obese
who sought relief by her boiling
alkaline springs.
City of Legends.
"Her municipal dress was gay and
colorful. Its broad streets radiate
in fan-like plan. sumptuous villas
formed a jewelled half circlet about
her, and for plumage she had the
most thickly wooded district, ex-
cept that of Coblenz, in Germany.
OF her environs it was said almost
every mountain has a ruin and a
legend Least German-like, per-
haps, among German cities, visitors
were reminded that they were in
the land of 'verbotens' and taxes
by having to pay tax for staying
there after four days.
"Wiesbaden is five miles north of
Mayence (Mainz), and 20 miles east
of the tabled rock of the siren Lore
lei. 1t is three miles removed from
the Rhine, but near enough to have
participated in the history of that
region, to which Victor Hugo
ascribed 'providential Specification
in European destinies,, for it was
traversed by Caesar, Attila, Clovis,
Charlemagne and Napoleon, before
Foch and Pershing won places in its
lallery of heroes.
The city's churches attest its
cosmopolitan appeal. The Protest
mt Marktkirche is in Gothic style.
with five towers. There are two
syna gogues, Russian and Anglican
places of worship, and its Roman
Catholic church of St. Boniface
memoralizes the Saxon missionary
who, commissioned by Charles Mar
,el, went into Frisia in the early
Eighth century to overthrow the
dolls of the heather Germans,
Home of Authors.
"rwo men Of letters are identified
with Wiesbaden. Both lived and
lied there and are the subjects CT
CONSPICUOUS monuments. Gustav
Freytag was one of the scant COM
,anv Of German novelists known be-
yond the FORMER empires borders,
Tor Germany has had few fiction
writer's whose works are widely
read in other lands. After his fist
successful work, Soil and Haben:'
aad attracted attention in 1888,
Freytag wrote another UNFOLDING
Prussia's ambitions for German
domination and thus won a place on
The staff of the Prussian crown
prince. He saw the French disaster
It Sedan.
Bodenstedt, wrote q book OF orient,
Il poetry which has been compared
10 the Omar Knayam' Of Edward
Fitzgerald, and he also translated
5hakespeare's plays into German.
German scholars insisted that the
translation into the German tongue
greatly improved the bard's drama"