Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some BlanksWolff, Henry W. (Henry William)
History
Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some Blanks
Wolff, Henry W. (Henry William)
History -- Miscellanea
The quarters had been selected because the Duke of Saxe-Coburg wished his
sons to be lodged with a professor. There were not many such with
sufficiently large dwellings to select from, and possibly on that ground
the choice had fallen upon a Professor of Medicine, who could have been of
little service to the Princes in the prosecution of their studies. He was
popularly known as "Gamaschenbischof"--"Gaiter-Bishop"--to distinguish him
from the other Geheimrath Bischoff who became better known as a great
professor of chemistry, but who wore no gaiters. I quite forget whether
"Gamaschenbischof" was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. But his next-door
neighbour on the side of the old Neuthor--then still an old-fashioned
arched gateway with a substantial gate to keep out bad characters at
night--was the acknowledged head of the Lutheran congregation, then a
mere handful, the sparing growth of twenty years of Prussian rule. The
little community did not yet possess a church of their own as they do now.
Indeed, for many years after they had to content themselves with the use
of the bald but lofty University chapel, which for many decades they have
shared with their English fellow-Christians, often enough keeping the
latter waiting when their sermon happened to be long, and considerately
leaving a crucifix as a fixture for rigid Evangelicals to chafe at and
write letters about to successive chaplains. But the proper stronghold of
local Protestantism was to be found in that turreted little Château
Gaillard facing the Münster, in which Pusey's friend, Professor Sack,
Schleiermacher's least heterodox pupil, had at the Prince's time his
official residence. The Coburg Princes, who loyally upheld their own
Protestant church, were not infrequent visitors in the house of this
pastor, who was well-informed and sociable, and by no means an
unacceptable neighbour. Beyond the parsonage, directly abutting upon the
Neuthor, was another Protestant institution--the Lutheran school--which,
some years later, became a noted centre of attraction to males of all
creeds, by reason of the residence in it of "The Three Graces," the
_Küster's_--that is, the clerk and schoolmaster's--remarkably handsome
daughters. But in 1837 and 1838 those ladies were still too young to do
much mischief, even to so impressionable a cavalier as Prince Ernest. All
these buildings spoken of, which still stood at my time, have long since
been pulled down and made to give place to houses of a more modern type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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