Association Supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism

The Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg held its annual meeting on November 18. Red Baron has previously reported on the Center.

The flyer

Having been a member of this supporting association for nine months, this was the first time I could meet fellow supporters of the Center in person. Indeed, the annual meeting was well attended.

The new logo

The association board gave its annual report and showed photos of the progress of the construction work at the former tourist office that will become the NS Documentation Center, which is due to open in March 2025.

Last year, donations to the Center amounted to almost 35,000 euros, and membership rose from 39 to 147.

The resurrection of the Old Synagogue, which was burnt down
on Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, in its present surroundings.

The Center will employ the latest technologies to make the past present.

During the slide show, Red Baron suddenly appeared in a photo, listening attentively to Prof. Bernd Martin, who gave a guided tour to members of the Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg in 2022 about the Nazi history of the Albert Ludwig University.

Here he talks about the Nazi eagle that used to hang on the façade of the Kollegiengebäude 1 above the university seal. It was removed after the war, but you can still see the traces all too clearly in the photo.

Prof. Martin, an expert on Martin Heidegger, naturally focused on the philosopher who joined the Nazi Party as early as 1933, became chancellor of the university, and worked to subordinate it to the Führerprinzip (leader principle). Here, he was supported by a right-wing student body where National Socialist ideas were most strongly within the medical faculty.

The renovation work at the former tourist office is on schedule. Red Baron is eagerly awaiting the opening of the Documentation Center.

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80 Jahre Kriegsende im Südwesten (1944/45)

This year is not only the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing but also the twilight of the Third Reich. This is why Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann is offering a seminar entitled "80 Years, End of the War in the Southwest" (1944/45).

Red Baron has long known and respected Dr. Schwendemann as the expert on Freiburg's Jewish and Nazi history.

Before I started writing blogs, Heinrich once led a group and explained how Freiburg had changed structurally during the Nazi era and would have changed after the final victory.

The name Joseph Schlippe recurred throughout the tour. As Freiburg's master builder under the Nazis, he retained this post after the war.

©Förderverein NS Dokumentationszentrum

One of Schlippe's preferred architectural elements was the installation of open arcades. The tourist information center on the corner of Rotteckring and Rathausgasse was already built during the Nazi era. Presently, Freiburg's National Socialism Documentation Center is moving into these premises.

Following the bombing raid of November 27, 1944, which destroyed the city center, Schlippe essentially implemented his idea of arcades after the war to expand the traffic area in Kaiser-Josef-Straße.

Before the coronavirus brought human contact to a virtual standstill, Dr. Schwendemann's last guided tour took place in March 2020. In freezing temperatures, he led us through Jewish Freiburg.

Due to his trip to Hamburg, Red Baron could not attend the seminar introduction and only joined the participants on the second evening. The event is scheduled every second week in a room on the upper floor of the Breisacher Tor.


On November 5, the session's topic was: Fall 1944 "People's War" at the Upper Rhine?

Dr. Schwendemann showed a map of the military situation in June 1944. The Russian central front had collapsed while the Allies, who had landed in Normandy on June 6, were advancing in France.

Territory lost by the German armed forces between April and December 1944

With the advance of the Allied forces in France, Baden suddenly became the front line in the fall of 1944.

    

The Military Situation on the Upper Rhine in early 1945

In Alsace, in a wide bridgehead around Colmar, fierce battles were fought between Wehrmacht units and American-French troops.

Old men and children are called into service to build ramps.

On the other side of the Rhine, the Baden Governor (Gauleiter) Robert Wagner called on the population to wage a "People's War."

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They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind

This verse 7 of Hosea 8 came to my mind during an ecumenical night prayer at the Freiburg Münster Church.

The Münster Church was packed. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Last night, we commemorated the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing by the Royal Air Force that nearly annihilated the city.

Four years before, on November 14, the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) had bombed Coventry.

From a distance, the writer Christoph Meckel described the fire that followed the bombing of Freiburg, "And where, a few kilometers away, the silhouette of the city could usually be seen, a single, mighty flame was burning. The mountain walls were flooded with a flickering firelight, the valleys on the sides were immersed in black shadows, and the fir trees on the slopes of the Roßkopf stood out clearly. Thick orange smoke billowed into the night, rolling voraciously over the mountaintops, engulfing everything in darkness."

The three mayors, Sallie Barker, Guildford*, Martin Horn, Freiburg, and Anne Vignot (with an interpreter) Besancon*, united in their addresses: They called for peace.

*Freiburg's English and French sister cities

Together, they lit a peace candle that will shine in the Freiburg town hall.

After the prayers of intercession and the Lord's Prayer, the cathedral parish priest and the Protestant dean jointly gave the appropriate ecumenical blessing, "Go and bring peace!"

Meanwhile, a peace demonstration took place in front of the cathedral's main portal.

May Freiburg bear the title of City of Peace.

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MOND

 is the German word for moon, but it stands here for Modified Newtonian Dynamics, a theory that gets rid of Dark Matter.

Remember, Dark Matter was introduced in astrophysics to save Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. 

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter, or ΛCDM model, is the accepted (standard) mathematical model of the Big Bang theory.

So far, nobody has observed CDM. So wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of it?

New data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) conflicts with predictions based on ΛCDM and instead confirms predictions made with MOND. 

The James Webb Space Telescope looked deep into space and detected inexplicably big and bright galaxies in the early universe, i.e., shortly after the Big Bang.

According to the ΛCDM standard model of galaxy formation, the JWST should only find signs of small, primitive galaxies there. Bigger galaxies should form slowly by merging with smaller ones. 

But the opposite is true - large and bright galaxies are repeatedly discovered. Dark matter fails on galaxies that are “too big” or “too old.” Here, MOND comes in.

Click to enlarge

In a paper that just appeared, a research team from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland gives an excellent summary of the present situation, and it doesn’t look good for dark matter at all. 

Sabine Hossenfelder was quick with her explanatory video about the recent paper and MOND.

The recent observations of galaxies.
They are on the blue lines, as predicted by MOND.

According to Newton and Einstein, forces decrease quadratically with distance, while the 1/r dependence in MOND speeds up the formation of galaxies. 

 At the end of their paper, the authors make some dazzling remarks:  

A number of puzzling observations in cosmology were anticipated by MOND, including the early formation of massive galaxies. 

Despite the predictive successes of MOND, we do not yet know how to construct a cosmology based on it. In contrast, ΛCDM provides a good fit to a wide range of cosmological observables but does not satisfactorily explain the many phenomena that were predicted by MOND. 

We find ourselves caught between two very different theories that seem irreconcilable despite applying to closely related yet incommensurate lines of evidence. The simple force law hypothesized by MOND has made enough successful prior predictions that it cannot be an accident; it must be telling us something. What that is remains as mysterious as the composition of dark matter. 

 As the Bavarians use to say, “Nichts Genaues weiß man nicht*.” 

*Nothing exact is known
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War Requiem

On Sunday, November 10, Red Baron listened to Benjamin Britton's War Requiem at the Konzerthaus Freiburg.

Freiburg in ruins (©Stadtarchiv Freiburg)

It was a commemorative concert on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Freiburg. On November 27, 1944, between 7:55 p.m. and 8:18 p.m., the Royal Air Force flew Operation Tigerfish and raided the city, catching the citizens almost unprepared, especially since the alert had only been given shortly before.

The death toll was 2797; in total, around 30% of all homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill walks with the Mayor of Coventry and a
Church of England clergy member through the ruined nave of Coventry Cathedral (Wikipedia).

The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) bombed Coventry on November 14, 1940, leaving 600 dead and more than 400 houses destroyed. The raid had the cynic codename Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata).

The world premiere of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem took place in 1962 to celebrate the reopening of Coventry Cathedral, which had been almost entirely destroyed and rebuilt (in a modern way).

The English poet Wilfred Owen wrote at the age of twenty-five in the spring of 1918 before he fell on the Western Front on November 4,

"My subject is War and the pity of War. 

The Poetry is in the pity ...
All a poet can do today is warn."

These lines serve as a preface to Britten's War Requiem, which combines the Latin text of the Missa pro Defunctis with texts of Wilfred Owen's war poems. The oratorio-like composition unfolds in three musical forces that alternate and interact with each other.

For the Freiburg performance, the large Freiburg University of Music Orchestra, an enlarged choir—the University of Music Choir and the Freiburg Bach Choir merged—and a solo soprano (Maria Bengtsson) were on stage in the concert hall. They played and sang in the oratorio style with Latin texts.

The Freiburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, divided into two parts and seated on the right-hand side gallery of the concert hall, sang, accompanied by the organ, the hopeful aspects of the requiem mass in the Introitus, Offertium, and "Libera me."

The third layer consists of the setting of Wilfried Owen's war poems, sung by a British and a German soldier* accompanied by a chamber orchestra.

*David Fischer, tenor, and Markus Eiche, baritone

More than 250 actors performed during the evening, making it challenging for conductor Frank Markowitsch to bring the three ensembles together.

The Requiem begins with a dissonance. The comforting tolling of the death knell and the Requiem aeterna donna eis, Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat eis* are answered by the soldier:

*Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them.

"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns,
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires."

Owen's protest against the war and its cruelties culminates in the scene in which, in contrast to the Old Testament, Abraham slaughters his son Isaac. 

"Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builder parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son."

"When lol an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not the hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him."

"But the old man would not so,
but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one."

The male soloists recount a conversation between two soldiers who have died on the same day ("Strange Meeting"). One of them laments,

"I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned

Yesterday, through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried, but my hands were loath and cold."

The two end in a common, "Let us sleep now."

In the end, the three musical groups fully combine while the boys' choirs, chorus, and soprano respond with the well-known In paradisum deducant te Angeli and Resquiescant in pace*.

*May angels lead you to paradise and rest in peace

Britten built his War Requiem upon the interval of the tritone "C-Fis," labeled as "the devil in music" during the Middle Ages for its dissonance. This interval opens the work and is sounded again at the very end before a final F-major chord brightens the Amen. This was unusual for the listener but comforting.

The visibly moved audience paused for a minute in silence, but then frenetic applause broke loose.

Conductor Frank Markowitsch and the ensemble applaud the Cathedral Boys' Choir.

The Cathedral Boys' Choir is sitting high in the gallery on the right side.

The three solo singers with their flowers.

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Ensisheim

What is written in Micah 5:2 in the Old Testament about Bethlehem could be said about Ensisheim:

"But you, Ensisheim in Alsace, though you are small among the cities of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, you will become the administrative capital of Further Austria (Vorderösterreich). Your origins are from of old, from ancient times."

Ensisheim around 1650

Ensisheim was first mentioned in a document in 768 under the name Engisehaim.

In Merian's Topographia Germania, Alsace 1663, it is written that after the death of the Landgraves of Ensisheim around the beginning of the 13th century, the town and castle, together with the landscape of Upper Alsace, came under the hegemony of the Counts of Habsburg.

The Habsburg or Habichtsburg (hawk castle) in Aargau

The Habsburgs took their name from a fortress built in the Aargau* in the 1020s. 

 *present-day Switzerland

Rudolf's monument on the square in front of the church by night

In the second half of the 13th century, King Rudolf I, previously Count Rudolf IV of Habsburg, built a "royal castle" in Ensisheim.

 
In 1510, the city became the seat of the administration of Further Austria (Vorlande), i.e., Alsace, Breisgau, Aargau, and Lake Constance.

On November 15 and 16, 2024, Ensisheim hosted a colloquium on the question, "Why did Ensisheim become a central place in the region?" In a future blog, Red Baron will attempt to answer this query.

The museum piece.
Note the meteorite's impact on a field outside Ensisheim in the background.
Click to enlarge.

One event has burned itself into people's memories. In Merians Topographia, we read, "1492 on November 7, a stone or dumpling weighing 280 pounds, a foot high, and the same color as iron ore fell from the clouds with a thunderclap."

Sebastian Brant wrote a poem: Since one counts fifteen hundred years on St. Florence's day, it was ninety and two at noon there was an enormous thunderclap a stone of three hundredweight fell in a field before Ensisheim.

King Maximilian ordered the "symbol of God" to be taken to the church and kept there. When he visited the site 14 days later, he did not know that he had inspected the first historically documented meteorite in Europe while it was still almost warm. Today, the meteorite is kept in the city museum in the historic Palais de la Régence.

Maximilian's press spokeswoman announces the King's visit.
He is surrounded by his bodyguards.

The children of the elementary school Jean Rasser at Ensisheim took Maximilian's visit to delight the colloquium participants with a performance, Retour au temps des Habsbourg.

The King is at the table with his attendants and looks graciously at his subjects.

They are entertaining the King performing ...

... and singing

Stay tuned for a blog about the colloquium proper.

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Bellissimo

Bellissimo! Outstanding Italian paintings from the Gothic period to the Renaissance are displayed at Freiburg's Augustinermuseum. On the occasion of the renovation of the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, the paintings are temporarily parked in Freiburg.

Freiburg's Minster Church, with the most beautiful tower in the world, did not want to be left behind. So the exhibition curator, Dr. Eva Maria Breisig, and the Münsterbaumeisterin (cathedral master builder), Dr. Anne-Christine Brehm, met for a joint lecture, "Bellissimo!" and "The Most Beautiful Tower," in which they compared the pictures in the exhibition to the contemporaneous developments at Freiburg Cathedral.

The "Bellissimo!" exhibition is dedicated to Italian painting from the 13th to the early 16th century. Over 100 paintings and altarpieces provide an overview of the developments of the time. These were style-defining and ground-breaking since, alongside Christian motifs, artists discovered secular motifs and strove for a greater closeness to reality than before. Over three centuries, a new artistic concept of movement, space, and the image of man emerged.

The architecture was also characterized by innovations in the 13th and 14th centuries, with statically bold constructions such as Freiburg's openwork spire, which gave the simple parish church "the most beautiful tower" on earth. The master builders of the Gothic period pushed what was feasible to the extreme and redefined boundaries. In the 16th century, the Minster was one of the few large medieval churches to be completed by closing the choir vault. However, the Renaissance also left its mark on the cathedral with the southern vestibule and a rood screen now folded into the sides of the transept.

I will present some of the highlights in the following, as a complete description of the exhibition would go beyond the scope of this blog. St. Mary and Child were the tenors of the exhibition.

Around 1478. Marco Soppo (Venice 1432-1478)
Madonna and Child

A sad mother holds her child, who is not dressed festively, tightly in her hands. This child looks at the world with big, questioning eyes.

Around 1549. Pellegrino Tibaldi (Milan 1527-1596)
Madonna del Silenzio Holy Family with St. John the Baptist

Thirty years before El Greco, Tibaldi paints clothes with unusual colors. The adolescent son trustingly lays his head in his mother's lap. The somewhat older John the Baptist looks thoughtfully at this scene. Does he already know what will happen to this sleeping youth?

Around 1495. Raffaello Carli, called Raffaellino del Garbo (1466-1524)
Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici receives the child's blessing before the Madonna.

About 50 years later, del Garbo painted the Madonna and Child, blessing a member of the Medici family. This was sorely needed because, during the Renaissance, the Medici family provided many of the mostly rather unholy cardinals and popes.

Around 1500. Sandro Botticelli (Florence 1445-1510)
Adoration of the Child.

This is a depiction of the Holy Family that is still common today. It shows the old man Joseph not yet understanding what has happened to him.  

Around 1370. Giovanni del Biondo (Florence 1356-1398)
St. Jerome.

Church Father St. Jerome presents a book. Without him, Erasmus of Rotterdam could not have produced his new translation of the Bible, the Novum Instrumentum.     

Around 1395. Agnolo Gaddi (Florence 1369-1396)
The Last Supper.

Due to the short length of the painting, the table is depicted here in the shape of a horseshoe. The favorite disciple's head seems to be growing out of the table while Judas has sat down quite provocatively on the other side opposite Jesus.

Around 1440. Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio (Siena 1409-1449)
St. Augustine.

Church Father St. Augustine invented the Original Sin, which means that unbaptized children will go to hell. In the interpretation of the faith, St. Augustine is still regarded by many Catholics as the second St. Paul.

Around 1500. Unknown artist in Naples
Coronation of the Virgin.

God the Father and the Holy Ghost watch Jesus, who graciously puts the crown on his mother's head. Compare this to Hans Baldung Grien's masterpiece in Freiburg's Münster (1520/30). 

©Pogo Engel/Wikipedia

The altarpiece shows Christ in a somewhat leisurely posture, holding the world in one hand while clumsily helping his father coronate his mother as celestial queen. Still, today, some pious viewers are shocked.

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