CHAPTER II. A Child of War Preface V
T
HE old city of Magdeburg, on the banks of the Elbe, has
been involved in many of the significant events that have
shaped the history of the German people through the
centuries. Developing from a little fishing village, it was officially
founded in 940 A.D. by Otto the Great. It became a vital center of
the Protestant Reformation and had to be almost entirely rebuilt
after the ravages of Tilly's armies during the Thirty Years' War.
The houses of its citizens stretched out along the one long street,
known as the Breite Strasse, which was intersected by many cross
streets. In the heart of the city was the famous Alte Markt.
Sandstone ornaments, arched doorways, and stately gables
decorated many of the homes of the city burghers, and in the
market place stood the statue of Otto the Great, where each year,
on the morning of the first of May, the fisherfolk placed bouquets
of flowers and glasses of liqueur, as though they were votive offer
ings to the city's patron saint. On the tenth of May, a panorama of
Tilly's destruction of Magdeburg was regularly presented in the
city's theater. On one of the several islands made of sand dunes in
the Elbe, stood the citadel which dominated the town. In the
center chapel of the cathedral, which was completed in 1363 and
was the city's only real survival of the Middle Ages, was the sar
cophagus of the English princess who had married Otto I. No less
a person than Goethe visited the old cathedral in 1805 to study its
graves and plastic monuments, walked around the walls of the
ancient city, and viewed the bronze monuments of Magdeburg's
three archbishops of the fifteenth century.