Ian McKellen

I must confess to my shame that I was not familiar with this 86-year-old legendary actor.

My loyal readers know that I regularly watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His monologues are hilarious. As a non-English speaker, I often have to think long and hard before I understand a pun.

After his solo performance, Stephen welcomes guests, and that's when I usually switch off.

But on February 5, a sonoric voice caught my attention. Sir Ian McKellen fascinated me with his fine British accent and humor. I stayed tuned until the end of the 26-minute interview. Towards the end, Ian talked about a literary find. Here is a partial transcript of the interview:

Ian: Shakespeare wrote many plays, 37 of them, by himself, but he also contributed to other people's shows. And one of the speeches he wrote for a play called Thomas More has been preserved. And it’s the only sample of his actual handwriting of some of the words of a play by him. And it’s not in the Fuller library. It’s in the British library you can see it. It’s on display there in London.


And hark. On December 23 last year, I published a blog post that drew only mediocre interest from my readers. The blog addressed the Thomas More manuscript by William Shakespeare that I read in 2015 and had since forgotten.


Ian McKellen continued: And it happened that the play was never performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime because it was thought to be a bit seditious.

It had its actual premiere on stage in 1964. It was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and I played Thomas More. So you are looking at a man who created a part by William Shakespeare.

Stephen: So this is handwritten. They know this is his handwriting of this monologue that you did ...

Ian: ... of a speech you probably don’t know but you ought to because it’s a wonderful speech.

Stephen: I don’t know that. Would you mind? Would you mind doing it for us?

Ian: No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t mind because you’ll enjoy it. All right. Live Theatre.

Stephen: What’s the setting?

Ian: It’s all happening 400 years ago and in London. There’s a riot happening, there’s a mob out in the streets, and they’re complaining about the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining, and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities sent out this young lawyer, Thomas More, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways, one by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So shut up, be quiet, and also being by Shakespeare with an appeal to their humanity. So, in order to set it up, we really need somebody to shout that the strangers should be removed. Could someone do that?

And the audience shouts: The strangers be removed!

Because of the present situation in the ICE age, Ian McKellen’s performance went viral online.  Here is a DEEP DIVE helping native speakers with Shakespeare’s English.

And finally, here is the whole 26-minute interview with Ian McKellen.

**

Doctor Atomic

The story of the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, is not necessarily a subject for an opera. And yet composer John Adams and librettist Peter Sellars dared to write and stage one about a scientific drama.

In fact, the opera has no dramatic plot; instead, it features many dialogues about scruples, ambition, fears about life, doubts, and the search for redemption. Doctor Atomic is the father of the atomic bomb, Robert J. Oppenheimer, who was not only a brilliant scientist but also well-educated in literature and philosophy.

Typical Oppenheimer with his hat and pipe (©SWF)

Robert earned his doctorate in theoretical physics at the age of 23 in Göttingen in 1923 under Max Born, who was full of praise for his student, who, in turn, recalls his time in Göttingen, “The work here is dizzying. You live in a state of constant mental excitement.” Indeed, “In those years, physics was not developed—it erupted, Born remembered.”

The opera begins in the style of a Greek tragedy with a choir dressed in black, which, however, does not sing darkly about fate, but informs the audience about some trivialities of physics.

We believed that
"Matter can be neither
created nor destroyed
but only altered in form.“

We believed that
”Energy can be neither
created nor destroyed
but only altered in form."

But now we know that
energy may become matter,
and now we know that
matter may become energy
and thus be altered in form.

Oppenheimer leans against a wooden frame
representing the temporary shanty town of Los Alamos (©Theater Freiburg).

The first aria, sung by the American Faust, reflects his unconscious confession, "I cannot stop this Trinity test. Someone or something must stop me."

"Batter my heart, three person'd God; For you
As yet, but knock, breathe, knock, breathe, knock, breathe
Shine, and seek to mend;
Batter my heart, three person'd God;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, break, blow, break, blow, burn, and make me new.*
*The text is borrowed from John Donne's “Holy Sonnet XIV.”

Robert, without his attributes, pipe, and hat, is grilling his steak (©Theater Freiburg)

There is no God in Doctor Atomic. Only mechanisms, deadlines, and momentum, and on-stage glowing grills with lots of meat and a pile of beercans.

With the help of beer cans, Edward Teller ponders
the most effective arrangement of uranium blocks to achieve a critical mass (©Theater Freiburg).

The countdown is imminent. Hope comes from Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, and her fictional Native American housemaid, Pasqualita. While Kitty invokes in vain her all-encompassing love as a counterforce, Pasqualita is stylized as a high priestess of reconciliation with divine nature.

The second act starts with a refrain sung by Pasqualita. The text is taken from a traditional Tewa lullaby song, and subsequent reiterations repeat the text with the direction changed to west, east, and south:

In the north, the cloud-flower blossoms
And now the lightning flashes
And now the thunder clashes
And now the rain comes down!
A-a-aha, a-a-aha, my little one.

Indeed, the rain threatens to delay the test explosion.

Even though the ignition and explosion of the atomic bomb would have made for a spectacular musical apotheosis of the opera, Adams deliberately refrains from this expected and thus trivial end. Instead, he composed an extended orchestral countdown with a multitude of ticking or striking clocks, unnaturally stretching time.

In the composer's own words: "When the countdown finally comes into view, time slows down on stage. The characters lose themselves in their own visions and fantasies. The closer the moment of detonation approaches, the more time and space begin to blur."

"I wrestled for months with the question of how to treat the explosion. I finally decided on an extended orchestral countdown, a palette of clock sounds, some ticking, others hammering like pile drivers, each at its own tempo. Underneath this clock polyphony lies a bloodcurdling roar from loudspeakers."

©Theater Freiburg

"I created this sound from a sampled drum roll, which I played in an endless loop and processed with heavy sound filtering. At the climax, I added a cluster of recorded baby cries that cuts through the theater space like a sound meter, tearing through the darkness. As the roar subsides, all that remains is a light shower of clock strike fragments played by harp, celesta, and tuned gongs."

"As they fade away quietly, we hear the voice of a Japanese woman. She repeats sentences from Hiroshima survivors that I found in John Hersey's famous report on the immediate aftermath: 'I can't find my husband,' and, speaking to her little boy, Kasuo, 'come here.' 'Mr. Tanimoto, please, help us.' 'Please, can we have some water?'"

©Theater Freiburg

The bones of the summoned dead later end up in a mill. Oppenheimer grinds them to dust and sprinkles them over the model of the skeleton house during the countdown.

The first atomic bomb detonated on July 16 in the Jornada del Muerto (The Path of the Dead) desert in the US state of New Mexico: “We knew the world would never be the same again. A few people laughed, others cried, but most were simply silent,” Oppenheimer later recalled. He, the father of the atomic bomb, quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, “If the brilliance of a thousand suns were to explode in the sky at once, it would be like the brilliance of the Almighty.” “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

©IMAGO/Pond5 Images

Contributors to the Manhattan Project, Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer in a white hat and General Leslie Groves, in uniform, at the detonation site of the Trinity atomic bomb test. On the right edge of the photo is Robert Wilson, later the director of Fermilab near Chicago, where Red Baron met him.

In his lifetime, Oppenheimer did not regret his leadership of the Manhattan Project, but rather said, “Our work has changed the conditions of human life, but what happens with these changes is the problem of governments, not scientists.”

And so Max Born rightly laments, “Science has given man tremendous power, but no guidance on how to use it.”

**

At the School of Seeing

In a previous lecture, Sandra Richter showed some of Rilke's sketches that he continued to make throughout his life. His drawings are restrained and more meditative than virtuosic. They often depict landscapes, architecture, gardens, or figures in tranquil poses; they seem like visual counterparts to his poetry: focused, simplified, directed toward the essential. 

Once again, Professor Frick gave us an extraordinary lecture, showing that Rilke viewed drawing as a distinct form of seeing and contemplation.

Auguste Rodin in his atelier

Rilke deepened this approach particularly during his time in Paris, in the circle of Auguste Rodin. Close observation, patient work, and engagement with the subject were to characterize both his drawing and his writing.

While rarely creating illustrations for his own texts, drawing was more important to him as a means of training his perception.  His drawings provide an intimate insight into Rilke's artistic self-image beyond language.

As a “learnt“ physicist, I was unable to even begin to grasp the depth into which Prof. Frick drew his audience. I have selected four poems from Neue Gedichte (1907) and Neue Gedichte anderer Teil (1908). But instead of trying to analyze them, I would like to make a few personal comments.

Given Rilke's eloquence and his powerful use of language, translating his poems into other languages proves problematic. Red Baron found translations of three of my selected poems on the Internet. I attempted to translate the fourth myself.

Rilke's poem Das Karussell (The Carousel) brings back memories of my late wife Elisabeth. As a child, she spent time in France in 1946, after the war, when her father, a high school teacher of German, French, and English (!), worked as a translator in Vernon.

After the Americans had already "recruited" Wernher von Braun, the French had to make do with the second choice of German rocket scientists, whom they gathered in Vernon. These physicists and engineers naturally did not speak French.

Elisabeth rode the carousel in the Jardin de Luxembourg during a trip to Paris at that time, and her father quoted Rilke. She remembered the line, "And now and then a white elephant," when we took a walk in the Jardin in 2002.

  

Das Karussel

The Carousel

Mit einem Dach und seinem Schatten dreht sich eine kleine Weile der Bestand von bunten Pferden, alle aus dem Land, das lange zögert, eh es untergeht. Zwar manche sind an Wagen angespannt, doch alle haben Mut in ihren Mienen; ein böser roter Löwe geht mit ihnen und dann und wann ein weißer Elefant. Sogar ein Hirsch ist da, ganz wie im Wald, nur dass er einen Sattel trägt und drüber ein kleines blaues Mädchen aufgeschnallt. Und auf dem Löwen reitet weiß ein Junge und hält sich mit der kleinen heißen Hand dieweil der Löwe Zähne zeigt und Zunge. Und dann und wann ein weißer Elefant. Und auf den Pferden kommen sie vorüber, auch Mädchen, helle, diesem Pferdesprunge fast schon entwachsen; mitten in dem Schwunge schauen sie auf, irgendwohin, herüber –. Und dann und wann ein weißer Elefant. Und das geht hin und eilt sich, dass es endet, und kreist und dreht sich nur und hat kein Ziel. Ein Rot, ein Grün, ein Grau vorbeigesendet, ein kleines kaum begonnenes Profil –. Und manchesmal ein Lächeln, hergewendet, ein seliges, das blendet und verschwendet an dieses atemlose blinde Spiel ... *

Beneath a roof and with its shadow spins for just a little while the stock of painted horses—all are from the land that lingers on before it vanishes. Though some are hitched to carriages, they all show fierceness in their faces; a frightening red lion walks among them and now and then there's a white elephant. Even a stag is there, like in the woods, except he bears a saddle and above it a little blue girl, firmly fastened. And on the lion rides a boy in white, who holds on with a small hot hand; meanwhile the lion shows his teeth and tongue. And now and then there's a white elephant. And on the horses they come passing by, girls also luminous, almost too grown up to join this horse ride; in mid-swing they look up, somewhere, this way -. And now and then there's a white elephant. And so it goes and hurries up to finish, and turns and circles only without aim. A red, a green, a gray sent gliding by, a little profile, barely seen and gone -. And every now and then a smile, turned hither, enchanted, ravishing, and lavishing upon this blind and breathless game ... Translated by Ulrich Fleming

When Prof. Frick cited Rilke's sonnet "Blaue Hortensie", an image vividly appeared in my memory.

Last fall, I was walking in Kirchzarten, a small town west of Freiburg, admiring the flowers in the front yards. Judge for yourself:

Blaue Hortensie

Blue Hortensia

So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rauh, hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln. Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau, als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren, und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau; Verwaschenes wie an einer Kinderschürze, Nichtmehrgetragenes, dem nichts mehr geschieht: wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze. Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.

Like the last green in paint pots these leaves, dry, dull, and rough, behind the flower clusters that do not bear a blue, only reflect it from afar. They reflect it tearfully and imprecisely, as if they wanted to lose it again, and as in old blue stationery there is yellow in them, violet, and gray; Washed out like on a child's apron, No longer worn, nothing happening to it anymore: how one feels the brevity of a small life. But suddenly the blue seems to renew itself in one of the umbels, and one sees a touching blue rejoicing before green.

I had my childhood experiences with wild animals in captivity in the Hamburg zoo.

At Hagenbecks Tierpark, animals did not vegetate behind bars, but "lived" in large outdoor enclosures. Still, I had the feeling that their situation was sad.

I remember how elephants stretched out their trunks across a large ditch to suck up treats visitors held out to them and then put them in their mouths.

And now and then, there was a gray elephant that swung its trunk toward a nearby keeper to give him the Groschen (penny) that a visitor had slipped under it instead of a treat.

25 years later, it was still the same scenario when I visited Hagenbeck Zoo with my children.

Painters at the Jardin des Plantes (1902)

DER PANTHER IM JARDIN DES PLANTES, PARIS

THE PANTHER AT THE PARIS BOTANICAL GARDEN

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf – Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille – und hört im Herzen auf zu sein. *

His gaze against the sweeping of the bars has grown so weary that it can hold no more. To him, there seems to be a thousand bars and behind those thousand bars, no world. The soft the supple step and sturdy pace, that in the smallest of all circles turns, moves like a dance of strength around a core in which a mighty will is standing stunned. Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides up soundlessly – An image enters then, goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs — and in the heart ceases to be. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum

Torso of Milet at the Louvre in Paris. Found in 1885.

Archaïscher Torso Apollos

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt, darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber, in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt, sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug. Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle; und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern. *

We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned too low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise, this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The torso looks at us, and we don't look at the torso? I couldn't help thinking of Brecht's alienation. But Rilke's thoughts go deeper. We should not leave it at a superficial glance at the torso, but ask ourselves, who are we in the face of what is looking at us.

Lettering at the Freiburg Theater

And as I am now, I am not yet adequate to my life. I must change it.

**

You Need Not Understand Life

... or Rilke and his environment in his work was the title of a lecture by Professor Sandra Richter, Director of the German Literature Archive at Marbach, in the framework of the Studium generale.

You need not understand life,

for then it will be like a party.

And let each day happen to you

like a child walking along, letting each breeze

give it many blossoms.

To gather them and save them

does not occur to a child.

It quietly removes them from its hair,

where they were so readily caught,

and in its dear young years

holds out its hands to new ones.

Rainer Maria Rilke gave poetry a new existential depth. He is therefore considered one of the most important poets of modern German-speaking literature. He combined linguistic precision with philosophical openness, making inner experience, loneliness, love, and death his central poetic themes. Rilke's poetry seeks to recreate the world in words and to open readers' eyes to an intensified view of his existence.

Red Baron studied physics, grappled with theology and existential questions, and is not done with that yet. Why can't I be a Rilke child and just live for the day? Even at 90, I reach out for new things, but the past won't let me go and keeps me brooding. And what haven't I accumulated in my life that weighs on me in my old age?

Next, spirited Sara gave the audience insight into remarkable Rilke documents held in the Marbach Archive.

Rilke's sketch of the Council Building in Konstanz,
where, in 1417 (not 1415), a conclave elected Pope Martin V.

Rilke sketched throughout his life. His drawings are restrained and more meditative than virtuosic. They often depict landscapes, architecture, gardens, or figures in tranquil poses; they seem like visual counterparts to his poetry: focused, simplified, directed toward the essential. Drawing was important to him as a means of training his perception.

Peacock Feather

Unmatched in your delicacy,
how I loved you even as a child.
I thought you were a sign of love,
which the elves pass around
on cool nights by silver-still ponds,
when all the children are asleep.

And because my dear grandmother
often read to me from wish sticks,
I dreamed, you delicate creature,
that your fine fibers were imbued
with the clever power of the riddle stick -
and I searched for you in the summer grass.

Here is a sample of Rilke's calligraphic handwriting.

The Song of Love and Death of Cornettist Christoph Rilke
(written in 1899 and published in 1904, 1906, and 1912)

The Flamingos. Jardin des Plantes.
Autumn 1907 or Spring 1908 in Paris

In Spiegelbildern wie von Fragonard ist doch von ihrem Weiß und ihrer Röte nicht mehr gegeben, als dir einer böte, wenn er von seiner Freundin sagt: sie war noch sanft von Schlaf. Denn steigen sie ins Grüne und stehn, auf rosa Stielen leicht gedreht, beisammen, blühend, wie in einem Beet, verführen sie verführender als Phryne sich selber; bis sie ihres Auges Bleiche hinhalsend bergen in der eignen Weiche, in welcher Schwarz und Fruchtrot sich versteckt. Auf einmal kreischt ein Neid durch die Volière; sie aber haben sich erstaunt gestreckt und schreiten einzeln ins Imaginäre.

In mirror images like those of Fragonard there is no more of their whiteness and redness than one would offer you when speaking of his girlfriend: she was still gentle from sleep. For when they rise into the greenery and stand, slightly twisted on pink stems, together, blooming, as if in a flowerbed, they seduce more seductively than Phryne herself; until they hide the pallor of their eyes in their own softness, in which black and fruit red are hidden. Suddenly, envy screeches through the aviary; but they have stretched themselves in amazement and stride individually into the imaginary.

Pain and death.

Sketch of an angel. Pencil on paper, 1922

From Rilke's last notebook, XII/1926:
Come, you last one, whom I acknowledge

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne, heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb: wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt, der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen, nun aber nähr' ich dich und brenn in dir. Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier. Ganz rein, ganz planlosfrei von Zukunft stieg ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen, so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg. Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt? Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein. O Leben, Leben: Draußensein. Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.

Come, you last one I acknowledge, hopeless pain in my flesh: as I burned in spirit, see, I burn in you; the wood has long resisted to consent to the flame that you blaze, but now I feed you and burn in you. My gentleness here becomes in your fury a fury of hell not from here. Completely pure, completely free of plans for the future, I climbed onto the confused pyre of suffering, so sure that there was no future to buy for this heart, in which the supply was silent. Is it still me who burns unrecognizable there? I do not bring in memories. O life, life: being outside. And I in flames. No one who knows me.

Rilke's gravestone in Raron in Valais

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire, to be no one's sleep beneath so many eyelids.

**

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Was bedeutet Menschsein? was the title of a musical reading about the exceptional Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla.

Solo artist Cordula Sauter from Freiburg presented this extraordinary man, who always remained true to himself despite enormous resistance, with his accordion solo pieces.

Piazzolla grew up in the Bronx, New York. His life was a constant series of ups and downs, which he drew on and expressed in his music. He developed his Tango Nuevo from the traditional Tango Argentino, incorporating elements of classical music, jazz, and klezmer. In doing so, he shook the foundations of his homeland's musical tradition and only gained recognition there late in life.

American composer John Adams said: "Astor Piazzolla wrote music about the flawed confusion of human beings—music that was steeped in sweat and smoke, as impure as our bodies with their food stains and shame. With its wrinkles, dreams, prophecies, its embellishments of love and hate, stupidity, political convictions, denials, doubts, and affirmations. Music as impure as old clothes that smell of lilies and urine."

Cordula Sauter enriched the one-hour program of Piazzolla's accordion solo pieces with thoughts on being human in literary prose at the time when the respective pieces were written. Food for thought was: "Forgetting," "Freedom/being free," "Heimat," "Dreams," "Aimlessness," "Liveliness," "Fear."

Red Baron has personal difficulties with two of these thought-provoking ideas, while Goethe had his challenges with freedom. In his drama Egmont, the title character asks the Spanish Governor of the occupied Netherlands, Duke Alba, "Who guarantees freedom to the Dutch?" The Duke answers, "Freedom is a beautiful word. Who understands it correctly?"

Rosa Luxemburg thought she understood the "word" when she gave the all-encompassing answer, "Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently."

For Red Baron, freedom is the ability to live my life while living with others.

Cordula's other thought-provoking idea that has always preoccupied Red Baron is "Heimat." The German term is inadequately translated by the English words "home" or "homeland." In German, Heimat means all of the following:

• Place (landscape, city, dialect)
• Time (childhood, memories)
• Relationship (familiarity, recognition)
• Identity ("I am not a stranger here").

Here are two testimonies about Heimat:

Philosopher Martin Heidegger had a deep connection to his Black Forest: "Heimat is the place where language brings the Being into appearance and Being dwells in man."

Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Augstein on their way to Todtnauberg (©Der Spiegel)

I remember that towards the end of his life, Heidegger is said to have remarked that all that remained of his philosophy was his rooted Being in his Heimat, his hut near Todtnauberg.

Martin at the entrance to his hut (©bpk/Digne Meller Marcovicz)

Last Sunday, Red Baron, as a member of the Association supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism, was invited to a pre-tour of the new temporary exhibition Ende der Zeitzeugenschaft (The end of contemporary witnessing).

    

Witnesses who still remember the horrific events of the Third Reich are dying out. This exhibition shows videos of interviews with contemporary eyewitnesses made in the 1990s. 

One of them is Lotte Paepke, who, as a Freiburg resident and Holocaust survivor, recounts her experiences during the Nazi era. When asked about her Heimat, she said that "coming home" to Israel felt good, but when the interviewer continued to cite the final sentence of Ernst Bloch's three-volume work, The Principle of Hope, where "he states that all people are searching for something - and I quote,' which shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: Heimat. 'Is there a Heimat at the end of your life?"

Thinking of her country of birth, Lotte answered:

As a child, Red Baron was displaced throughout Germany during the last war. Afterward, he attended school in Hamburg for 9 years, studied at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Munich, worked at CERN in Geneva for 32 years, and has been retired in Freiburg for 25 years. So, I never had a Heimat.

**

Altdorf

Last weekend, Red Baron attended a 90th birthday party in Postbauer-Heng near Nuremberg.

A son of the jubilee, Gernot Arp, professor of geology and paleontology at Göttingen University, offered to take those interested on a geological excursion to the former university town of Altdorf. Nearby, there is a unique geological formation.

Altdorf in the Topographia Frankoniae 1648.
The university buildings are on the upper left.

When I hear the word Altdorf, I automatically think of William Tell, but Old Village is a common name in "German" lands.

Students at Altdorf University listen to their lecturer

Hadn't Wallenstein once studied in Altdorf, not far from the site of one of his greatest triumphs?

In August 1632, Gustaf Adolf had made himself at home in Nuremberg. Wallenstein had fortifications built on the hills on the north bank of the Rednitz near the Alte Veste in Zirndorf and waited until the Swedish king was forced to leave Nuremberg due to a lack of provisions.

Finally, on September 3, Gustaf Adolf sought a military decision. Again and again, he sent his troops to attack the well-entrenched imperial forces, but in vain.

Wallenstein wrote to his emperor, Ferdinand II, "The king has suffered a tremendous blow in this enterprise ... and although Your Majesty had valor and courage to spare before, this occasion has confirmed them even more, seeing how the king, having brought all his power to bear, has been repulsed, and the title of invictissimi belongs not to him but to Your Majesty." Well, Wallenstein kisses the but of his commander.

Gustav Adolf not only lost his aura of invincibility but also a third of his troops. Many of his mercenaries deserted and seamlessly joined Wallenstein's forces.

The university building in Altdorf

Gustaf Adolf fell in the Battle of Lützen in November 1632, and the University of Altdorf closed its doors in 1809 during the Napoleonic era.

The campus in 2026. Note: the fountain is still in place.

The main building of Altdorf’s former university is now a social-diaconal facility focused on people with disabilities, named after Johann Heinrich Wichern.

If you want something, you have to want it completely; half-heartedness is the same as nothing.

Wichern is widely known as the inventor of the Advent wreath.

But I digress.

Before we visited the geological site, we went to the Museum in Atdorf, which houses impressive fossils found during the excavation of the Ludwigskanal.

The Ludwigskanal at the Dörlbach incision near Altdorf

At the beginning of the 19th century, Bavarian King Ludwig I ordered the construction of an artificial waterway to be built between Kelheim on the Danube and Bamberg on the Main. The project started in 1836 and took 10 years to complete.

The idea of building a navigable connection between the Rhine and Main rivers and the Danube was not new. Common theories assume that Charlemagne, then still King of the Franks, had the so-called Fossa Carolina (also known as Karl's Ditch) built in 793.

The Dörlbach incision for the Ludwigskanal in 1845, with the old road bridge

The Ludwigskanal was 173 km long and had 100 locks. However, the ships were too small for mass transport, and soon the powerful railroad entered the market.

      

In 1950, the canal was abandoned after many sections had already been destroyed during World War II. In 1992, a modern Main-Danube Canal was inaugurated, but it proved uneconomical too and is now used only for tourist boat trips and water sports.

At the museum, Prof. Arp gave an introduction to Earth's history before our group admired the exhibit.

Timeline of Earth's history

A map in the museum shows the geological formation through which the Ludwigskanal was built.

Pachycormus,
the thick-bodied fish, lived in the time period of 189-60 million years ago

Ammonites

Ichtyosaur (Stenoteropterygius quadriscissus)

Ichthyosaurs are land animals that returned to the sea and transformed their limbs back into flippers. The number of finger joints and finger rays increased, especially between 182 and 174 million years ago.

Altdorf black marble

Black marble from Altdorf with its fossil inclusions was à la mode and correspondingly expensive.

According to the museum director, this tobacco box made from black marble is the “most expensive” item of the exhibition.

Geological cross-section through the terraced slope of the Dörlbach incision for the Ludwigkanal. 

Using a display board, Prof. Arp explained the geological situation of the Dörlbach incision.

Climate change, ocean currents, and mass extinction

The rock sequence cut into Dörbach reflects a striking shift from a cold, glaciated period to a warm period. The cause is believed to be the simultaneous strong volcanic activity in the southern hemisphere of the Earth and the resulting increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. As temperatures rose, sea levels rose sharply, and ocean circulation decreased. This led to salt stratification in the water and ultimately to a lack of aeration of the sea floor. This was followed by species extinction and the formation of facies sludge in the Posidonia shale. 

Only the slow degradation of carbon dioxide over 2-3 million years and the further opening of the epicontinental sea to the Arctic led to gradual re-aeration and mixing with bottom-contacting ocean currents. Evidence of this can be found in so-called belemnite battlefields and a more species-rich bottom fauna in the Jurassic marl. (Gernot Arp, University of Göttingen).

(©James Albright)

The most impressive find during construction of the Ludwig Canal was a 1.5-meter-long ichthyosaur skull.

 

Tunnelling of the Ludwigskanal at Schwarzenbach (©Brunzerus/Wikipedia)

On our way back to Postbauer-Heng, we passed the tunnel at Schwarzenbach. What a technical achievement in the middle of the 19th century.

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