Chapter 9 Rasputin and letters

Just now, I was telling my friend Klepp and the orderly Bruno - who listened with only half his attention - the story of Oskar's first encounter with the schedule.I talked about: photographers take postcard-sized photos of six-year-olds carrying schoolbags and holding paper bags, and the blackboard that has always been used as the background reads: My first day of school. It goes without saying that this sentence can only be read by the mothers, who stand behind the photographer, more excited than their own children.The children standing in front of the blackboard with this short sentence will not recognize the meaning of these words until a year later, or on the day of the first graders after Easter the following year, or from the pictures left for themselves. I understand that those pictures, which are as beautiful as pictures, were taken on their first day of school.

This inscription, marking the beginning of a new phase in life, was written in chalk on a blackboard, that Zutlin script, angular and viciously crawling, with all the round strokes wrong and bulging. of.In fact, Zutlin is used for writing catchy, concise words, such as everyday slogans.There are also some certificates of paper, which I have never seen, but which, I suppose, are also written in Zutlin.I'm thinking of vaccinia cards, sports certificates, and death sentences written in hand.I can't read the Zutlin font, but I can guess it intuitively.The letter M at the beginning of the sentence on the blackboard, I thought it was like a double knot, smelling of hemp rope, reminding me maliciously of the gallows.I'd rather read letter by letter instead of guessing like that.Please don't think that I have already learned the alphabet, so as soon as I see Miss Sporlenhower, I rebel from the top, beat the drums and sing broken glass.No, no, I know that it is not enough to just guess the Zutlin font by intuition, I lack the most basic knowledge in school.Unfortunately, Oskar did not like Miss Sporenhower's method of instilling knowledge.

-------- ① Zutlin font, a round font designed by Ludwig Zutlin (1865-1917), later became the standard German font. From 1915 to 1945, this font was taught in German elementary schools. So when I left Pestalozzi, I didn't make up my mind that my first day would be my last at school.We can't go to school, let's go home!I have no such thoughts.At the moment when the photographer photographed me forever in the master plate, I was thinking: You stand in front of the blackboard, standing under this sentence that may be meaningful, but may be ominous.You can make guesses based on the font and style of the lettering, evoking many associations, such as solitary confinement, guardianship, warden, and hanging everyone with a rope, etc., but after all, you can't explain the meaning of this sentence.Because of your ignorance yelling at a sky half-obscured by clouds, you'll never set foot in a school with a timetable.Oscar!Where did you go, where did you learn uppercase and lowercase letters?

For me, lowercase letters are enough.But the fact that the existence of grown-ups who call themselves grown-ups cannot be conceived of, if not exhausted at a glance, leads me to deduce that as there are lowercase letters, there are also uppercase ones.They tirelessly used the "Catechism Booklet" in large and small print, and used the one-by-one ratio of large and small print to justify the existence of capital letters and small letters. The number of nobles present will determine the size of the station. In the next few months, neither Matzerath nor my mother worried about my education.They had already tried it once, and my mother was so embarrassed that she didn't want to try it a second time.They also imitated their cousin Yang. Whenever they looked down at me, they sighed repeatedly and brought up the old incident of my third birthday: "The trap door was left open! You did not close it, yes! You were in the kitchen Well, you went down to the cellar once before that, yes! You were the one to get the canned fruit mix for an after-dinner snack, yes! It was you who left the cellar trap door open, yes!"

Mama's accusation against Matzerath was either right or wrong; this has already been explained above.But he took the responsibility, and sometimes wept a little, because his heart softened under such circumstances.Then Mama and Jan Bronski comforted him, saying that I, Oskar, was a cross they had to bear, a fate that could not be changed, a test that had to be passed without knowing why. -------- ①It means to endure suffering. Therefore, I do not expect to be of any help to me by these few men who are sorely tested and destined to bear the cross.Although my cousin Hedwig Bronski often came to take me and her two-year-old daughter Marga to play in the sandbox in Steffen Park, she could not be my teacher.She is good-natured, but clumsy.Dr. Holatz's nurse, Inge, is not stupid and has a bad temper. I can't count on her, because she is smart. She is not an ordinary nurse on duty, but an assistant that no one can replace. I make time.

There are more than one hundred stairs in the five-story apartment. During the day, I have to go up and down several times, beating the drum, and asking step by step if there is any way to do it, smell it, and what the nineteen tenants have for lunch.But I don't knock on anyone's door, because neither old Highlander, the watchmaker Raubshad, the fat Mrs. Carter, nor Mrs. Truczynski - although I like her very much - can't Be my future teacher. The attic room is home to musician and trumpeter Mayne.Mr. Mayne has four cats and is a heavy drinker.He was a dancer at the "Zingler Roof Garden", and on Christmas Eve he wandered around the snow-covered streets with five other drunks, singing choruses and fighting against the severe cold.Once, I bumped into him in the attic.He was wearing black trousers and a white shirt, lying on his back with his bare feet fiddled with an empty gin bottle, playing the trumpet beautifully.He didn't put down his brass instrument, just rolled his eyes and slid towards me standing next to him.He admitted that I was the one who could play drums for him.His instrument is not so dear to him as my tin drum is to me.Our duo drove all four of his cats onto the roof and made the tiles vibrate slightly.

We finished the music, put down the instrument, and I pulled out an out-of-date "Latest News" from under my sweater, opened it, squatted next to the trumpeter Mayne, and handed the book to him, please He taught me uppercase and lowercase letters. But Mr. Mane fell asleep as soon as he put down the trumpet.Only three things are his spiritual sustenance: gin, trumpet and sleep.Although we often - to be exact, before he joined the SS cavalry band and gave up drinking for a few years - played duets in the attic room to chimneys, tiles, pigeons and cats without practice beforehand, but he Never be my teacher.

I also tried to find Greve, the greengrocer, and visited the cellar vegetable shop diagonally opposite many times, because he didn't like to hear the drum, so I didn't carry my drum on my back.The conditions for basic learning, it seems, are there: in two-room flats, in shops, up and down counters, even in the drier potato cellars, there are books everywhere, adventure books, songbooks, " The Angelic Wanderer, Walter Flex, Veichert's The Simple Life, Daphnis and Heloa, treatises on artists, stacks of Sports magazines, and photo albums, full of half-naked boys, mostly chasing a ball between the dunes for some reason, showing oiled, shiny muscles.

-------- ① "The Wanderer Like an Angel", a collection of epigrams by Angrus Silesius (Johannes Scheffber, 1624~1677). ②Walter Flex (1887～1917), German writer.His autobiographical novel A Wanderer Between Two Worlds (1917) glorifies war. ③ Ernst Weichert (1831~1902), German writer. ④ "Daphnis and Heloa", the work of the ancient Roman writer Longus (third century BC). At that time, Greve was already in a lot of trouble in business.The Bureau of Weights and Measures inspector found something wrong with his scales and oranges.People are talking about him engaging in fraudulent activities.Greve had to pay a fine and buy new weights.He was preoccupied and troubled, and the only pleasures he had were his books and evenings with the Boy Scouts or weekend excursions.

I walked into the store, but he didn't notice, and continued to write the price tag.I took advantage of his favorable opportunity to write the price tag, picked up three or four blank cards and a red pencil, put on an eager and studious look, and wanted to use the price tag he wrote as a copybook, learn to write in Zutlin, and To get Grave's attention. In his eyes, Oscar was obviously too small, his eyes were not big enough, and he didn't have that pale complexion.So I put down my red pencil and picked out an old book full of nude pictures of boys that caught Greve's eye.I'm pretty sure these flexing and stretching boys weren't optional for Greff.So I tilted the book so he could see the pictures too, drawing his attention to me again.Since the greengrocer was always engrossed in scribbling his price tag when no customers came to buy beets, I had to tap on the hard cover of the book, or flip the pages rapidly, to make some noise that made him lift his head. Heads buried in the pile of price cards, please take care of me, an illiterate.

In short, Greve doesn't understand me.If there were Boy Scouts in his store—he always had two or three Captains with him in the afternoon—he wouldn't even notice Oscar.If he was there alone, he would jump up nervously, annoyed at being interrupted, and order with a straight face: "Put the book down, Oskar! You can't read. You are too stupid and too small. You It'll ruin the book. It's worth more than six guilders! There's plenty of potatoes and cabbages here if you want to play!" As he spoke, he took the book from my hand and flipped through it, his face expressionless, leaving me alone among the savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, and cabbages, all alone, because Oscar had no Keep the drums with you. Mrs. Greve was there though, and I always went to the couple's bedroom after being rejected by the greengrocer, but by then Mrs. Lena Greve had been bedridden for weeks, like She looked sick, and she stinks of worn pajamas.She takes what she has, except books that can teach me something. For a period of time after that, when Oscar saw the schoolbags on the shoulders of children of his age, and the slate sponges and small rags dangling beside the schoolbags, he always felt a little jealous in his heart.Even so, he couldn't recall having any such thoughts at that time, for example: Oscar, this is the result of your own making!You should accept the school's way of doing things!You shouldn't have offended Miss Sporlenhower and made such a deadly enemy!The Wild Boys are ahead of you!They've learned uppercase and lowercase letters, and you?With the "Latest News" in hand, I don't know which end to rush to! There is a little bit of jealousy, as I said earlier, but that's all.The smell of the school, smelling it just once is enough to make me sick for the rest of my life.Have you ever smelled that half-gnawed sponge or rag that was used to wipe that yellow-framed slate with peeling paint?It stinks of copybooks in the cheapest schoolbags, of arithmetic books, of hand sweat from creaky, sometimes jammed, sometimes slippery, spit-stained stone pencils.Sometimes, when students come home from school and drop their schoolbags near me to play soccer or bocce, I'll bend over and sniff this sponge that's evaporating in the sun.I couldn't help thinking that if Satan the Devil existed, he must have such a sour smell under his armpits. So schools using slates and sponges are not at all to my taste.Oskar, however, does not want to say that Gretchen Scheffler, who will soon be responsible for my education, is the embodiment of my taste. Everything in the apartment behind Schaeffler's bakery in Kleinhammer Road makes me angry.Ornamental tablecloths, cushions embroidered with coats of arms, dolls designed by Kert-Kruse lurking in the corner of the sofa, plush animals abound, porcelain calling for elephants, everywhere. Souvenirs of travel yes, knitting in its infancy: crocheted, threaded, hand-knotted, knotted, embroidered, lace, trimmed like a rat's tooth, the whole variety.The place is sweet and elegant and lovable, but small and suffocating.In winter, the stove is too hot and the room temperature is too high. In summer, many flowers bloom, and the poisonous gas is suffocating.I thought about it, and there was only one explanation: Gretchen Scheffler had no children, how she wanted them to knit for them!God knows whether to blame Scheffler or herself.If she had had a child like that she would have wrapped him in a crocheted blanket with beads and lace and a little cross-stitched kiss. -------- ① Kurt Kruse once worked as an actress, and later opened a workshop, designing a beautiful dress doll. ② There is an idiom in German: "It's like an elephant breaking into a porcelain shop."This means that these porcelains are disgusting and should be smashed. I'm here to learn uppercase and lowercase letters.I have gone to great lengths to avoid damaging china and travel mementos.I left my broken glass throat at home.When Gretchen felt that I had played the drum enough, she smiled and took the drum from my lap with her horse teeth and big gold teeth, and put it among the toy bears, I just turned a blind eye , endured. I befriended two dolls designed by Kurt Kreuzer, held these two darlings in my arms, plucked the eyelashes of these two ladies who always looked surprised, and fell in love with them.My love for dolls is fake, but it seems real because of its fakeness, and I want to flatter Gretchen's two-stitch, two-back stitch heart. I have a good idea.On the second visit, Gretchen opened her heart, or rather, unraveled it, like a stocking, and gave me the entire length, curly thread, knotted in several places. Look.She opened all the cupboards, chests, and lockets, and showed me all the beaded junk, whole stacks of children's jackets, children's tunics, children's trousers, just big enough for a five-year-old, and she held them up. Putting it on and taking it off before my eyes.Then she showed me the sharpshooter medal that Scheffler won in the Military Association; after that she showed me the photos, some of which were exactly the same as ours; and finally she went to get the children's clothes, God knows what else to amuse the children Little thing, turned out a few books.Find the book from under the child's clothes, this is Oscar's plan.Oskar had heard her talk about books with his mother, and he knew how they both had been exchanging books, borrowing books from the circulation library next to the movie theater, before they got engaged and later when they were married at young ages almost at the same time, A plethora of readings at home graced the marriage of colonial goods store and bakery and opened the eyes of both couples. Gretchen didn't have many books to offer me.She hasn't read since she got down to knitting, and like my mother, who also, because of Jan Bronski, doesn't read anymore, puts members of the book club (which they've both been a part of for years) Many hardcover collections are given to people who are still reading, because those people neither knit nor Jan Bronski. Worn books are books after all, and are sacred because of their weariness.The books I found here were a mishmash of contents, no doubt mostly from Gretham's brother Theo's bookcase.Sailor Theo has died on board a Dutch fishing boat.Among his relics are seven or eight volumes of Koehler's Fleet Annals, with ships long since sunk, Imperial Navy Ranks, Paul Beinecke, Heroes of the Sea--all of which are clearly out of character. The food that Leixin's heart craves.Erich Kaiser's "History of Danzig" and the "Battle of Rome" - those battles were fought by a man named Felix Dahn, in Totila and Taiya, Bailey Typed with the help of Sa and Nases ③—in the hands of Theo, who often goes to sea, the book has lost its luster and lost its spine.As far as I can judge, what belonged to Gretchen's collection was a book on debits and credits,4 a book on affinity by Goethe,5, and the very large and richly illustrated Rasputine and the Women6. . -------- ① Paul Beinecke, Danzig pirates around 1470. ②Erich Kaiser (1893～1968), founder and curator of Danzig History Museum. ③This is a joke.Felix Dahn (1834-1912), a German writer, "The Battle of Rome" (1876) is his novel, which tells the story of the struggle between the Romans and the Ostrogoths for Rome.Totila was the king of the Ostrogoths. In 552 AD, he fought with the Byzantine commander Nases and was killed.Belisa was the Byzantine commander who set off for the East Gothic campaign in 544.Atayal was the last king of the Ostrogoths. ④ Refers to the novel "Debit and Credit" (1855) by German writer Gustav Freytag (1816-1845). ⑤ Refers to the novel "Affinity" (1809) by the German writer Goethe (1749~1832). ⑥ This book was first published in 1927, and the author was Philip Jacob Müller (1891～1968). There were too few books to choose from, and I couldn't make a quick decision. After hesitating for a long time, I first grabbed the one about Rasputin, and then the one about Goethe.I don't know what I'm grabbing, I just listen to the inner voice I'm familiar with. I picked these two at once, and it defined and affected my life, at least the life I lived when I presumptuously left my drums behind.To this day (Oscar has gradually browsed all the books in the sanitarium library because of his thirst for knowledge), I sneer at Schillers and others, and oscillate between Goethe and Rasputin, between the know-it-all and the prayer healer. Between the poetic princes of light, who delight in being bewitched by women, and the dark sorcerers, who charm them with their spells.The reason I sometimes see myself as part of Rasputin's party and fear Goethe's intolerance is that I have a slight suspicion that if you, Oskar, lived and beat the drum in Goethe's time, he might To think you are unnatural will condemn you to be the embodiment of unnatural.He would feed his nature—however "unnaturally" it is with its airs, you have been admiring and pursuing it—and his natural things with cloying candied fruit, and take His Faust, or take that thick volume of Colourology, and kill you poor fool. Back to Rasputin!With the help of Gretchen Scheffler, he taught me capital and small letters, taught me to be courteous to women, and comforted me whenever Goethe wronged me. It is not easy to pretend to be an ignorant fool while learning to read.I feel like it's a lot harder than imitating a child's bedwetting for years.Bed-wetting is nothing more than morning-by-morning evidence of a disorder in my physiology that I have absolutely no need for.To feign ignorance, that is, to hide my rapid progress, to constantly struggle with emerging intellectual ego.I could put up with grown-ups saying I was a bedwetter, and I didn't really care, but Oscar and his governess felt aggrieved by having to act like a fool in front of them year after year. Gretchen cheered with joy when I rescued the books from the children's clothes, and immediately realized that she had a calling to be a teacher.I succeeded in freeing this childless woman who was entangled in wool, and made her almost happy.She would have been happier if I had chosen Debits and Credits for my text; but I insisted on Rasputin.She bought a serious copy of "Introduction to Literacy" to teach me the second lesson, but I still want Rasputin.She kept bringing me such myths and fairy tales as "The Long-Nosed Dwarf" and "Thumbs Up," so that at last I had to make up my mind to speak aloud. "Lapupin!" I yelled, or "Lashuxing!" Sometimes I played very stupidly and let them hear Oskar babble, "Rasu! Rasu!" On the one hand, Gretchen knew which kind of textbook I liked, but on the other hand, she didn't realize that my genius for choosing letters had begun to sprout. -------- ① "The Dwarf with the Long Nose", a fairy tale by William Hauff (1802～1827). I learned quickly, step by step, and didn't think much about it.A year later it seemed to me that I was in Petersburg, living in the private apartment of the despot of all Russians, going in and out of the nursery of the weak and sickly crown prince, walking among conspirators and parish priests, especially Become a witness to Rasputin's mysterious ritual.This sentiment is quite to my liking.Because there is a character as the center here.The copper engravings scattered in the book and made by people at that time also illustrate this point.In the center of the painting is Rasputin, with whiskers and coal-black eyes, surrounded by ladies, wearing only black stockings and nothing else.Rasputin's death left a deep impression on me.They gave him poisoned cakes and poisoned wine, and he ate and asked for cakes, so they shot him, and the lead bullets in his chest made him An appetite for dancing arose, so they tied him up again and threw him into a hole in the ice of the Neva.It was all done by male officers.The ladies of the cosmopolitan St. Petersburg never fed poisoned cakes to their little father Rasputin, but responded to his requests.The women trusted him, and the officers had to get rid of him before they could trust themselves again. -------- ①Crown Prince Alexis suffered from hemophilia, and it was said that he was "treated" by Rasputin to stop the bleeding, so Rasputin gained the favor of the female czar. Is it not surprising that I am not the only one interested in the life and death of this robust and robust prayer healer?Gretchen was reliving the joy of reading in the early days of her marriage.She sometimes read aloud, when she would be weak; at the word "occult ceremony" she would tremble, and would utter the magic word with a strange sigh; " When she heard the word, she was almost ready to participate, but she still couldn't imagine what the mysterious ceremony was all about. Things took a turn for the worse when my mother came with me to the flat above the bakery on Little Hammer Road to sit in on my classes.Several times, the class turned into a mysterious ceremony, and she left the matter of teaching little Oscar out of the blue, as if she came here just to hold the ceremony for herself.Every time I read three sentences, there will be a giggle in two parts, and my lips will be dry from laughing.Driven by Rasputin's magic, the two married women got closer and closer, and they could no longer sit still on the sofa cushions, their legs pressed against their legs, and what started as a smirk turned into a sigh.Reading twelve pages of Rasputin's book may have an effect that they never wanted or expected before sunset, but they were willing to accept it at this time. would object, and he would even give it for free forever. At the end, the two women chanted "Lord, Lord" while they were in a state of embarrassment and combed their tousled hair.At this time, her mother expressed her worry: "Does little Oscar really know nothing?" If he doesn't learn, I think he will never learn to read." To demonstrate that my state of ignorance was irreversible, she added: "Just think, Agnes, he tore up our Rasputin page after page, crumpled it up, and then he didn't know Where did he get it. Sometimes I really want to give up teaching him. But when I see him so happy when he sees the book, I think, forget it, let him tear it up and destroy it! Alex said, let him send us a new copy of Rasputin on Christmas Eve." And so I—the reader will see—I succeeded—gradually, over three or four years Within—Gretchen Scheffler taught me to read a little longer than that—teared out more than half of Rasputin’s book, pretending to be capricious, but carefully The pages were crumpled up, hidden in a sweater, and taken home.When I got home, I took out the balls of paper in the corner where the drummer hid, flattened them, arranged them into a pile, and read them secretly without being disturbed by any women.I used a similar method with Goethe's book.Every third class, I yelled "Dort" and asked Gretchen to read it to me.I don't want to trust Rasputin alone, because I soon realized that in this world, every Rasputin has a Goethe as his opposite, and every Rasputin has a Goethe behind him, or worse. Say, every Goethe drags a Rasputin behind him, and, if necessary, even creates a Rasputin, so that he can then be condemned. -------- ①Alex, Alexander's nickname, that is, her husband Alexander Scheffler. Oskar crouched in the attic with his unbound book, or in old Mr. Hyland's shed behind the bicycle rack, shuffling the loose pages of Affinity and Rasputin Together, a new book was formed.He read, smiled, and was more and more amazed to see Ottilie walking demurely on Rasputin's arm in the gardens of Central Germany, and Goethe with some wanton man named Olga. The noblewoman sat on a sleigh, and in the cold winter of Petersburg, after participating in one mysterious ceremony, she drove off to participate in another. -------- ① Ottilie, a character in "Affinity". Well, let's go back to my classroom on Little Hammer Road.Gretchen took girlish pleasure in me, despite my apparent lack of progress.Beside me, under the hairy, blessing-gesturing hands invisible to the Russian praying healer, she rejuvenated, even sharing her newfound vitality with houseplants of linden and cacti.If Scheffler, in all these years, occasionally pulled his fingers out of the dough and switched the bakery buns for another type of bun, if Gretchen would be pinched, kneaded and smeared with egg whites by him , plus baking, God knows what comes out of the oven.Maybe a baby will be baked at the end.How nice it would be to give Gretchen such pleasure!Unfortunately not. Because of this, after reading "Rasputin" with great impulsiveness, with bright eyes and a little disheveled hair, she started the horse and gold teeth, but there was nothing to bite, and said "Lord, Lord," thinking of aged leavener.Since Mom has her Jan and can't do much for Gretchen, I'm afraid the few minutes after this part of my class would have broken up if Gretchen hadn't had such a jovial heart . She jumped up and went into the kitchen, and came back with the coffee grinder as if holding a lover, and ground the coffee into powder while singing.She sang "Black Eyes" or "Red Dress," melancholy and full of emotion, and my mother sang with her.She went into the kitchen with dark eyes, made water, and while the water was burning on the gas, she ran downstairs to the bakery, often in spite of Scheffler's objections, to bring fresh and baked goods. Put the painted cups, cream pots, sugar bowls and cakes on the small table again, with a few butterfly flowers scattered in the middle, then pour the coffee, sing the tune from "The Crown Prince", and serve Small cakes and round cakes, "A soldier on the banks of the Volga", Frankfurt round cake sprinkled with almonds, "How many little angels are with you", meringue with whipped cream, "So sweet, so sweet".As they chewed, they began to talk about Rasputin again, but now more seriously, keeping the necessary distance, and then, after eating their cakes, they went on to rant about how bad the Tsarist era was, how corrupt it was to the extreme, The indignation was genuine and unadulterated. -------- ① "Black Eyes" or "Red Clothes" is the chorus of the Don Cossacks in the light opera of Franz Lehar (1870-1948) in "The Crown Prince" mentioned below. During those years, I ate too much cake.It can be seen from the photo that although Oscar did not grow taller because of this, he has gained weight and his body is not well-proportioned.After class on Kleinhammer Road and tired of eating sweets, when I return to my shop on Rabes Road, I often have no other choice but to take Matzerath and sneak behind the counter and tie a piece of cake with a string. Dried bread, hung into a Norwegian keg for pickling herring, and hung out when the bread had soaked up the brine.You would never have guessed that such a piece of cake can act as an emetic after eating too much cake.Oscar often vomited cakes from Schaeffler's bakery into the toilet bowl of my house. To say the least, the cakes he vomited out were worth more than one Danzig guilder each time, which was really a lot of money at the time! I used another method to pay Gretchen for teaching.She loved sewing and knitting children's clothes so much that I made her a tailor's dummy, trying on little blouses, hats, trousers, and belts in all shapes, colors, and materials. A small coat with or without a hood. On my eighth birthday, I don't know whether it was my mother or Gretchen who dressed me up as the tsar's little dauphin who should be shot.At that time, the two women's admiration for Rasputin could not be increased.In a photo taken that day, a birthday cake with eight drip-free candles, I stand aside, wearing a knitted Russian blouse, a Cossack cap askew, two bullet belts crossed across my chest, and white knickerbockers , wearing low-cut leather boots.The first lucky thing was that my drum was in the picture.Another lucky thing is that Gretchen Scheffler—probably at my urging—cut and sewed me an outfit in very Biedermeier and accessible style.Today, in my photo album, this dress also summons the ghost of Goethe, proves that I have two souls, makes it possible for me to appear in Petersburg and Weimar at the same time with a drum on my back, mothers who came to earth In the middle, participate in the mysterious ceremony with the noble ladies. -------- ① Biedermeier, an artistic style popular in German painting, furniture, clothing and other arts and crafts from 1815 to 1848. It pays attention to small and exquisite, comfortable and practical, and caters to the tastes of honest, short-sighted petty citizens.