Wednesday, January 15:
R. slept tolerably well, thank goodness. In the morning the military band of the Regiment of Grenadier Guards came and played the Overture to Rienzi, the “Bridal Procession” from Lohengrin, and the Kaisermarsch, all very beautifully. R. went downstairs to thank them, and since there was no door to the yard and he did not feel able to go into the street in his morning suit with beret and jacket, he had a ground-floor apartment unlocked and climbed through the window. Let us hope the poor people are not made to pay for their friendliness! The conductor did not have his commandant’s permission.
Left at 2:50 P.M., in splendid weather. Many childhood memories return to R. in the surroundings of Dresden; before our departure he took me on a search for the Stille Musik - it has vanished. He shows me the apartment near the Linkesche Baths where, as a boy, he invited some other boys to shoot, preparing a bird himself, for which the boys jeered at him.
In the train he began by remarking, “Just like physicians with their medicines, which they grow more and more to distrust and utilize less, so it was with Beethoven and melodies with cadences; the nearer he came to Nature and its simple motives, the more he avoided as much as he could the dominant (the most striking example of that is the trio of the scherzo in the Ninth Symphony, where he uses it only once); he hated all conventional endings.” Then, after quite a long silence, he says, “How magical it must have been when Goethe, as a handsome and bold young man, read his Got aloud and then in his bewitching eccentricity spoke those simple, heartfelt words, ‘To the man whom he loves, God gives a good wife’!”
At 9 o’clock in Berlin; Georg is there from Bayreuth and tells us that on his departure the children had besieged him, and all, even Fidi, had instructed him to convey greetings to Mama and Papa. Thoughts of the children move us deeply. Put up again in the Tiergarten Hotel, Marie Schleinitz comes and delights us once more with her friendliness and lively interest. To bed around 11 o’clock.