Art in Freiburg's Public Spaces

At the end of Red Baron's high school career, the Hamburg educational authorities found money to build a decent school building so I could move out of the "barracks" for his last two years. While the school building was under construction, I was told that 2% of the building costs must be earmarked for art.

During Prof. Martin Flashar's lecture Kunst im öffentlichen Raum in Freiburg, I learned that this law had already been passed in the Weimar Republic and was seamlessly incorporated into the legislation of the Federal Republic.

In Germany, culture is in the hands of the States. Given the ever-mounting construction costs, many States have reduced this obligatory contribution to 1%. 

Some works of "public" art in Freiburg are worth a visit. Prof. Flashar started his lecture with a photo of Olaf Metzel's Double Rolls. The construction reminds me of CERN's BEBC, the Big European Bubble Chamber.

One of the most spectacular objects is the Garden Hose by Claes Oldenburg and his wife Cossje van Bruggen at Eschholzpark:

Lacquered steel

Red Baron frequently passes Ulrich Rückriem's granite obelisk, which marks the intersection of Grünwälderstraße and Augustinerplatz.

New buildings, new art objects. Dennis Oppenheim's extraterrestrials enter Freiburg's Eleven Faculty Microtechnology Building near the airfield. Note that the stone field in the foreground is part of the installation.

Approaching ...

... and intruding ...

... into the building

The installation of Henry Moore's Reclining Figure on the lawn in front of the College Building II in 1961 provoked a controversy among Freiburg's citizens and caused a rejection from the Catholic clergy.

     

Lively discussions

Moore's sketches

The protests against the sculpture at the time, born of a mixture of prudery and dirty imagination, were completely unfounded. Moore's work was inspired by women who had sought shelter from German air raids by resting in London's Tube while their husbands were either at the front or working in air-raid protection.

  

In 1937, Adolf Riedlin painted his fresco with marching road construction workers in the canteen of the former Freiburg gasworks.

         

After the war, the painting was de-Nazified by painting over the arms greeting with the Hitler salute.

           

Horst Antes's Freiburg Picture, a wall installation, once decorated the back of the city's theater building. The artwork is composed of painted steel plates.

But when a cinema was built on the other side of the street, the viewing distance to appreciate the Cephalopod became too small. The individual panels were removed and stored in the municipal depot. 

Since then, the city has been looking for a suitable place in Freiburg to make the work of art visible again.

A simulation

Recently, the front of the newly constructed parking garage at the University Clinics has been proposed. However, the steel plates cannot simply be hung on the façade because of their weight. Money for an auxiliary construction costing millions is lacking. Hope now rests with the German Kulturfond and the generosity of the coming federal government. 

 Thank you, Prof. Flashar, for your illustrative lecture.

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Mox habebimus regnum novum

In the good old days, a coalition between the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) was called a GroKo because both parties together, supporting a black-red government, had majorities of up to 80% in the German Bundestag (parliament).

Coccinella septempunctata crawling (©Miltoncontact)

In the recent federal election, the voters reduced the CDU/CSU to 208 seats and the SPD to 120 seats. The formerly dominating parties agreed to form a coalition, but their so-called Ladybug Coalition merely holds 52% of the seats in the new Bundestag of 620.

 
The two coalition partners completed their 146-page contract in less than two months. They named the paper “Responsibility for Germany,” which should send “a very strong and clear signal to the citizens of our country and to our partners in the European Union.”

The problems to be dealt with in the next four years - provided the coalition lasts this long - are numerous:

1. Economic stability and competitiveness

- The German economy has been stagnating for over two years. Industry, particularly the automotive sector, has structural problems and is experiencing a decline. Causes include high energy prices, a shortage of skilled workers, and excessive bureaucracy. On top of this looms the potentially catastrophic impact of new US tariffs and a trade war.

- Inflation and cost of living: Inflation and the cost of living remain a dominant topic, although with the euro, it is a European problem watched by the European Central Bank.

2. Migration and integration

- Although the number of asylum applications has declined in the past year, the numbers are still high, burdening local authorities. The majority of Germans demand efficient action on migration policy.

- The integration of migrants into society and the job market is a long-term challenge, particularly regarding language and education. However, from a medium-term perspective, the stressed German labor market will profit.

3. Social policy and demographic change

- As the baby boomer generation enters retirement, the financial pressure on pension and care systems is increasing. Around 58,000 additional carers will be needed by 2025.

- As in most countries, the gap between rich and poor is growing. Reforms are needed to ensure a more balanced distribution of income and resources.

4. Housing market and infrastructure

- There is an estimated shortage of 700,000 homes in Germany. Affordable housing is particularly scarce in large cities.

- The investment backlog in infrastructure affects areas such as digitalization, transport, and energy.

5. Education and skilled workers

- The education system needs comprehensive reforms to ensure equal opportunities and meet the demands of a future labor market.

- Demographic change is leading to a decline in the potential workforce. Strategies to secure skilled workers, including targeted immigration, are necessary.

6. Climate protection and energy transition

- Despite international commitments, climate protection has lost priority in the public perception. Nevertheless, measures to reduce emissions and promote renewable energies must and will continue.

Securing an affordable and sustainable energy supply—nuclear and coal power are already or will be phased out—remains a key task, especially given geopolitical tensions.

7. Trust in state institutions

- 70% of citizens believe the state is overburdened, particularly regarding refugee policy, education, and internal security.

- Bureaucracy must be reduced, and administration modernization is a prerequisite for regaining trust in state institutions.

In Germany, like in many countries, the ladybug is associated with luck, love, and fertility.

Let it be so.

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A Black Wednesday for the World Trade

Bye-bye Toblerone

Day of Liberation, so called it Trump. The European translation reads Day of Despotism.

Trump's tulips are watching their master's ceremony

The tariffs announced in the Rose Garden of the White House will restrict exports to the US and make imported goods more expensive. The logical consequence iś that consumer prices will increase in the United States.

Most economists predict the new tariffs will lead to more bankruptcies and rising unemployment figures in many countries. The tariffs could plunge the world into a dangerous trade war in which there will be only losers.

This view is not shared by Ms. Miller Wellington, who sells candies in Delta, a village of around 3000 people less than 100 miles south of Detroit. She is unfazed by the possibility of price increases predicted by most economists. "Sometimes you have to walk through fire to get to the other side," she says, echoing the president's main argument: "If tariffs bring companies and business back to hard-working people like the ones who live here, then it's worth it."

The Washington Post writes," Wall Street worries Trump tariffs could wreck the souring economy." 

Let Stephen Colbert enlighten us: 

"And Trump's toadies are out there defending the tariffs. Here's Louisiana Senator John Kennedy on FOX Business arguing that ultimately nothing is knowable, 'The truth is that nobody knows. I've listened to economists for the last month. Some say this will cause a recession; his tariffs will cause a recession. Others say it will cause growth. In my eight years in Washington, I've learned that for every economist, there's an equal and opposite economist.'"

(Laughter from the audience) And Stephen continued, "Sounds crazy, but it is actually true. For example, Milton Friedman was always opposed by the equal and opposite economist Friedmil Manton."

"Most experts dispute the idea that these tariffs would lead to any growth at all. Instead, they say we could be looking at a prolonged recession, higher prices, and higher unemployment. Okay, a little more practice. Man, awww, damn, these grapes smell like wrath."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2,200, and the S&P 500 tumbled 6% as Wall Street's worst crisis since the COVID crash deepened after China matched President Donald Trump's big raise in tariffs announced earlier this week. 

Still, leaving Washington to watch a golf tournament at Mar-a-Largo, the "stable genius" claimed in one of his chopper talks:

Like this?

To be continued ...

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Freiburg and the Breisgau in the Peasants' War

Organization, execution, and consequences of peasant violence against castles, towns, and monasteries 1524/1525

Red Baron blogged about the Peasants' War before, and there is no end to it yet. This two-day conference was highly professional and too specialised for a physicist. Still, I found two lectures devoted to Freiburg.

The evening before the conference proper, aimed to present a history book: The Peasants' War in Freiburg and the Breisgau. A reader on the history of a crisis. This book, written by experts, formed the basis for the lectures of the following two days.

A lecture followed the book presentation: Punishing and Killing - Excessive Violence in the Peasants' War. There was looting, arson, rape and the occasional homicide on the part of the peasants, but the reaction of the authorities was excessive.

What held the authorities back from a general massacre of the peasants was that they were needed for food production.

A letter from the patrician and Nürnberg councillor Caspar Nützel to AlbrechtFriedrich of Prussia documents the authorities' overreaction, "... I do not think that anyone with any sense can deny how unjustly, unchristianly and even too excessively the authorities have torn the hair of their subjects, whom they are supposed to shepherd, provide for, govern and not oppress. Whether the punishment they inflict by disemboweling, burning, taking their possessions, driving them into misery making widows and orphans, and other cruel persecutions or even imposing penalties on the guilty and the innocent without any prior truthful inquiry and hearing of their answers and excuses is in proportionate to the ignorant acts of the subjects, Your Reverend Grace, as a praiseworthy and understanding prince, has to judge*."
*Mark Twain wrote in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, "Whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth."

Massacre of peasants in an open field

On the other hand, Thomas Müntzer referred to the Old Testament and called for open violence: Do not take pity on yourselves, even if Esau suggests good words to you (Genesis 33).

 
Do not look on the wretchedness of the wicked. So they will ask you kindly, weeping and pleading like children. Do not be pitied, as God commanded through Moses and has revealed to us (Deuteronomy 7).

Violence begets counter-violence. In the south of the Reich, the high-born prince, Margrave Casimirius of Ansbach, came with horsemen and several servants and attacked the new noble peasants from the Ries. A horseman drove a spear through the one who wore the chasuble, thus mocking it. The spear was left stuck until the third day, so God's punishment was revealed.

The next day, Red Baron listened to a lecture on Conquer Freiburg. Threatening, besieging, and liberating: a praxeology of the Peasants' War.

The people of Freiburg's greatest fear was that they would not know when the peasants would march against the city. The peasants played on their psychological warfare skillfully:

The Freiburg chronicler Huldrichus Zasius complained, "I would gladly write to Mr. Montaigne [...] if it were not for the unfortunate unrest that is shaking our city and indeed the entire province at the hands of the peasants; for all around us is so full of fear, sadness, danger and attack that hardly an hour goes by when we do not fear destruction."

To scout and find out where the enemies are.
Write to cites and neighbors and have a good correspondence with each other.

Still, the city council puzzles: 

Since Friday, we have received several messages from the forest and have truly learned that the peasants are gathering heavily against Bonndorf. Yesterday, 80 people from Löffingen came to gather against Bondorf. They let it be known that they want to go to Breisgau next. They know their way around here well and will take the region.

Freiburg prepares:

       

Furthermore, all guildsmen, young or old, physically able, when they hear the storm, shall really leave, with their armor, and hurry to the fish market under the banner.

A servant identified as a spy was captured and interrogated, but the rumors she had spread made Freiburg's citizens extremely nervous:

Peasants with heavy equipment are aiming at the Freiburg Minster church.

After I returned to the city from the peasants' camp, I spread the rumor among the community and publicly announced the power with which the peasants were equipped. They had everything at hand that was needed for a field camp and an assault: sound cannons, powder, fire, bullets, and even more provisions. They were so well equipped that it would be impossible to hold the city. 

 Eventually, the peasants who wanted to emancipate themselves in Lutherey, Ketzerey, and Uffrur went on the offensive. First, they diverted the Dreisam's water for the city's mills and cut off its drinking water supply. On May 23, 1525, the peasant bunch from the Black Forest occupied the Carthusian monastery and climbed up the Schlossberg. 

 "It was a beautiful May evening", recounts the eyewitness Huldrichus Zasius. "The lords were sitting, as usual, on the cathedral square in front of their guildhall 'Zum Ritter' when suddenly several hundred shots from arquebuses announced that the peasants had occupied the Schlossberg. Immediately, the citizens took up arms." 

 From the top of the Schlossberg, the leader Hans Müller, dressed in a red cloak and red beret, fired shots at the spire of the cathedral tower until it fell to the ground, to the great jubilation of the attackers: "We shall lay Freiburg's church tower, like that in Kirchzarten." 

 Müller called on the city to join the Christian Union so that the Gospel would be spread according to the wording and the peasants would be freed from illegitimate levies. Eventually, facing the city walls, the peasants made themselves big: 

So we want to live with our other brothers and relatives closer to you and break into your city. Therefore, we admonish you fraternally to stand by us today so that much bloodshed, great ruin, and evil, mainly the ruin of the vines, will be avoided. 

 Help from the Habsburg authorities for Freiburg did not come. The final decision to surrender was possibly due to the announcement that the vines would be uprooted: 

Dear friends, you see that we lost the Schlossberg, and for five days, we have had neither a well nor a cup. Moreover, they have shot into the spire of the cathedral. Although we have been assured that help has been sent to us, we see that no one has come to us. For the preservation of our lives, our honor, our property, and our lives, we are obliged to come to an agreement with the peasants. 

The peasants marched into Freiburg on May 24. They forced the city council to join the Christian Union in establishing a general peace and eradicating the unjust grievances of the gemeiner Mann (common man) against the word of God and the holy Gospel imposed on him by the spiritual and secular authorities.

When the authorities eventually gained the upper hand in the German territories, the peasants left Freiburg.

In June, a municipal delegation traveled to Innsbruck to the Austrian government. It declared that Feiburg had only joined the peasants' Christian Union to avert harm to the city and its citizens:

Furthermore, no one should become involved with the Lutheran sect. Still, everyone who wants to live in Freiburg should stick to the Christian statutes that have been commonly held for hundreds of years until the authorities and those allowed to do so order otherwise.

The Innsbruck authorities were not satisfied with this excuse.

But that is another story.

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Germany's First Democracy

Click all pictures to enlarge.

The Walther-Rathenau-Gewerbeschule (Vocational School) in Freiburg hosts an exhibition dedicated to the Weimar Republic.

It is quite natural that this school should shed light on this particular period of German history for its namesake, Walther Rathenau, a key figure of the Weimar Republic. As an entrepreneur, politician, and diplomat, he shaped the period immediately following the First World War. 

France's harsh position against loser Germany became particularly evident in 1922 at the economic conference in Genoa, where Germany and Communist Russia found themselves completely isolated. This led to the rapid signing of the Treaty of Rapallo between the two states, the preliminary draft of which had already been drawn up in lengthy negotiations. Chancellor Josef Wirth and his Foreign Minister Dr. Walther Rathenau had thus demonstrated to the world that Germany, which had been shaken to the core, was free to act, albeit to a limited extent. In response, France occupied the Ruhr region, as it now had to fear that Germany would no longer meet its obligations to pay reparations: "Germany only understands the language of violence, snorted the French right, while the communists raged: Poincaré - la guerre. 

In Germany, on the other hand, the right wing raged because the fact that a Jew, Rathenau, who had a doctorate in natural sciences, was now representing the Reich government's policy of fulfillment vis-à-vis the Allies as foreign minister was a provocation that could no longer be surpassed. So right-wing Freikorp fighters got serious with their threat: "Knallt ab den Walther Rathenau, die gottverdammte Judensau (Shoot-down Walther Rathenau, the goddamned Jew sow)."

When Rathenau was "executed" with a machine gun in his car on an open road on June 24, 1922, in despair, Chancellor Wirth exclaimed in a speech to the members of the Reichstag, turning to the right: “There stands the enemy, dripping his poison into the wounds of a people. - There stands the enemy - and there is no doubt about it: this enemy is on the right.”

The exhibition illustrates the political, economic, and social life of the Weimar Republic, from the founding of the first German democracy to the challenges that the young republic failed to face. As Red Baron showed in a previous blog, those years were not golden for most people. 

For this blog, I primarily selected pictures from the exhibition I had not seen before. For the entire history of the Weimar Republic, I refer you to my German website.

It all began with a defeat.

The war is lost and was followed by ...

... riots in Germany's capital, Berlin.

Following the Kaiser's abdication, Germany became a republic and needed a constitution.

The constituent assembly convened in Weimar at the German National Theater on February 6, 1919.

     

The key figure of the Weimar Republic, President Friedrich Ebert,
with the Mexican president on a state visit to Berlin

Vae victis. What Germany is supposed to lose

In his opening speech to the constituent assembly, Ebert reminded the assembled men and women of all that was left of defeated Germany: "Now the spirit of Weimar, the spirit of the great philosophers and poets, must once again fill our lives."

On February 11, 1919, before the delegates began deliberating the constitution's text, they elected Friedrich Ebert as the first President of the German Reich.

     

The Kaiser in exile in Holland was not amused about a harness maker being president.

Female members of the National Assembly from the Catholic Zentrum Party

As the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic created many foundations on which our societies are still based today.

    

It is done. Habemus constitution!

Inflation! In the fall of 1923, two employees of a company
pick up the daily paid wages in sacks at the Reichsbank.

Elections to the Reichstag.
Here, the poster men of various parties stand peacefully side by side.

SA marschiert and has those injured in Saalschlachten (brawls)
with the political opponent, march in front as martyrs.

Millions of unemployed gehen stempeln.
After the benefit has been paid out, an official stamps the unemployment cards.

Culture, the arts, and science flourish.
Max Liebermann paints President von Hindenburg.
From 1933 on, the Impressionist painter was ostracized as a Jew. 

Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of the Reich, the SA triumphantly marched through the Brandenburg Gate near his studio. At the sight of the brown hordes, the aged artist is said to have exclaimed, "Ick kann jar nich soville fressen, wie ick kotzen möchte (I can't eat as much as I want to throw up.)"

     

Bertolt Brecht, Lotte Lenya, and Kurt Weill celebrate the success
of their Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) in Berlin.

The Zeppelin over the Brandenburg Gate

Am Tag von Potsdam, Reich Chancellor Hitler, in a lively conversation
with the son of the last emperor and a Nazi from the very beginning:
Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia.

With Him. Will he save the republic? President von Hindenburg was impressed
by the Day of Potsdam and covered up the establishment
of the Nazi dictatorship until he died in 1934.

Burning of books all over Germany on May 10, 1933

The history of the Weimar Republic is a lesson that democracy cannot be taken for granted but must be fought for and defended repeatedly.

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