Merry Christmas

Many of you know that I keep my eyes open throughout the year, looking for some original depictions of the Christmas scene to be used at the end of the year. This season instead of one, I have chosen two, an old and a modern presentation of the birth of Christ.

The first is a photo I took during my "homage to Kleist trip" at St. Mary in Frankfurt on the river Oder, a church located near Heinrich's birthplace. The church windows remained under Russian custody until they returned in 2008. Three impressive strips of colored glass in Gothic arches show the story of salvation. In the middle window is the story of Christ, and on the left-hand side run in parallel, the usual precursor scenes taken from the Old Testament alluding to the coming Messiah. In contrast, on the right-hand side, medieval legends about the Antichrist are woven in a texture of images.

Middle window (Photo Wikipedia)

Jesus had announced the Antichrist according to St. Mark 13:

21 And then if anyone says to you, "Behold, here is the Christ" or "Behold, He is there" do not believe him; 22 for false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance.

In the Middle Ages, pious storytellers spread legends about the Antichrist, generally depicted as looking like a teaching Jesus guided by the devil.

The Antichrist guided by the devil (Photo Wikipedia)

Back to Christ's birth scenes. The following picture is an impossible freehand photo I took as close as I could get standing legs wide apart in the transept using the ten-power zoom of my Panasonic LUMIX DMC-TZ10. As it should be: newborn Jesus is in the center of the picture, closely watched by an ox and donkey, while Maria strangely turns her head away from the scene. Joseph, as usual in old illustrations, is a somewhat uninvolved bystander.

The following picture in the left church window, scanned from a poster, shows the birth of the Antichrist.

For Luther, the Antichrist was personified in the pope. According to the Apocalypse, the Antichrist on the See of St. Peter means the world's end is near. In fact, Luther, during the last years of his life, developed strong eschatology ideas and murmured on his death bed: Mundus ... mox mutandus, Amen (The world will soon vanish, Amen)

The pope is the Antichrist. Woodcut from the time of Luther

Enough of medieval theology. Let us go back to our times.

The second Christmas photo I took in Baden-Baden was when, following the Kiefer exhibition, I visited the local Weihnachtsmarkt. It was not just jingle bells and those booths selling Christmas decorations or seasonal food and drinks. Some lanes were lined with paintings by Baden-Baden school classes imagining the Christmas scene. One of those pictures in the form of a Gothic church window is in jolly contrast to what I saw in Frankfurt's St. Mary. While Joseph is sketched in the old tradition as the somewhat absent-minded old man, Mary hugs little Jesus. He likes it and thanks her with his most charming smile.

Keeping this comforting and touching scene in my mind, I wish you all a

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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Kiefer meets Kleist

On December 10, I visited an art exhibition at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden devoted to Anselm Kiefer. On December 13, the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) awarded the artist the Leo-Baeck-Medal, which honored his efforts in the reconciliation between Jews and Germans. Gay Guido, our foreign minister, handed the medal to Kiefer during a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The exhibition at Burda's is already impressive because of the sheer size of the paintings. In fact, painting is probably not the right word as the large canvases exhibited are mostly covered with thin lead sheets on which paint is distributed. One wonders how these monumental collages hold together.

Most impressive from the year 2010. is Kiefer's picture of the Tower of Babel, measuring 7.6 x 4.6 m, which he had named The Fertile Crescent since his interpretation of the tower in shambles differs from the classical bible story. Looking at Kiefer's picture, Pieter Breugel's painting came right to my mind showing the unfinished tower as a symbol of the hubris of mankind subsequently separated by their different languages. Kiefer, however, said, "forget about languages," for the tower's base is still intact such that Occident and Orient meet in fertile Mesopotamia and fructify their cultures mutually.

Walking up a staircase I read one of Kiefer's statements on the wall: Ich denke vertikal, und eine der Ebenen ist der Faschismus. Doch ich sehe alle diese Schichten. Ich erzähle in meinen Bildern Geschichten, um zu zeigen, was hinter der Geschichte ist. Ich mache ein Loch und gehe hindurch (I think vertically and one of the layers is fascism, but I see all those layers. I tell stories in my pictures to show what is behind history. I make a hole and walk through).

Although taking photos in the exhibition was not allowed, I took a shot at the wording, trying hard to digest its meaning on the spot. Advancing further, I discovered another monumental collage 7.2 x 4.35 m signed Wege der Weltweisheit, Die Hermannsschlacht, a theme perfectly fitting to this year's Kleist anniversary. Suddenly I had my light bulb moment: Kleist is a progenitor of fascism.

Kleist wrote his drama in five acts in 1808 when Napoleon occupied all German-speaking territories. Die Hermannschlacht (The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest) features battle-winning Arminius. The chief of the Germanic Cherusci tribe fights against the Romans invading Germania. No fantasy is needed to read in those fiery speeches hero Hermann appeals to an uprising against the French occupants. Napoleon had just defeated Prussia. 

Needless to say, the theater piece could not be staged then. During the subsequent restoration, the liberal ideas presented in the drama did not fit with the period of Biedermeier. 

Only after the Franco-Prussian War, as late as 1875, when the "Hermannsschlacht" against the Erbfeind (hereditary enemy) was won, did the theater piece see some performances on German stages.

Kiefer, in his collage, tells the story behind the story. He shows portraits of those Franzosenhasser (French haters) at the time of Napoleon I. The next layer of hate fixed to the reign of Napoleon III was transported during the Weimar Republic into the upper Nazi layer. The brown shirts never forgot the dishonor of the Versailles peace treaty, the French diktat.

Advancing timely in history, I have chosen some key persons from those 36 portraits I cannot show you because of copyright:

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) wrote his famous anti-Napoleonic Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die Deutsche Nation).

Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1776-1810), the Prussian queen regarded by many as the German Jeanne d'Arc because she stood up against Napoleon, calling him a monster.

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819) was somewhat late* at the Battle of Waterloo but is still considered in Germany as the co-winner.
*Wellington ought to have moaned: I want night or Blucher! (Ich wollte, es wäre Nacht, oder die Preußen kämen).

Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836) not only wrote a drama about Napoleon's last one hundred days but also a remake of the Herrmannsschlacht.

Georg Herwegh (1817-1875) implored the French to stop intervening in German affairs when he conducted his German Legion from Paris into Baden to help Friedrich Hecker in the 1848 uprising.

Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874), author of the Deutschlandlied with its pan-Germanic first stanza.

Albrecht von Roon (1803-1879) one of the key generals in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71.

Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) developed a military plan for a pre-emptive attack on France.

Walter Flex (1887-1917) was a nationalistic poet and soldier during the First World War.

Albert Leo Schlageter (1894-1923), the man from Wiesental near Freiburg sabotaging the French during their occupation of the Ruhr district, was shot for that.

 
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) perceived Schlageter as a martyr of the German cause.

Horst Wessel (1907-1930), the author of the Horst-Wessel-song, shot by the communists, was an early martyr for the Nazis.

Thank God that there was no further layer.

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Incense and Gunsmoke

When the building of the Badische Kommunale Landesbank (Bakola), constructed in 1954, was taken down in 2007 to make room for a modern shopping center, scientists started to search for traces of earlier settlements at the place that had always been within the inner city boundaries. 

Yesterday Dr. Jenisch, the director of the Bakola excavation, guided a group of the Breisgau Geschichtsverein (historical society) through an exhibition of charts documenting the archaeological findings and presented the artifacts he and his team had dug out at the former site of Freiburg's Dominican monastery.

The exhibition called Weihrauch und Pulverdampf (Incense and gun-smoke) is devoted to the former Dominican monastery and to the times when Freiburg was besieged in the 17th and 18th centuries by Swedish and French troops. The building within and close to the city walls was located near a vital access gate called Predigertor (preacher's gate). The monastery became famous when from 1236 to 1238, the great Albertus Magnus held the position of Lesemeister (lecturer).

Albertus Magnus' monument at the site of the Dominican monastery (Photo Wikipedia)

Hand grenades made from glass were among the most interesting artifacts found at the monastery site. The word grenade comes from pomegranate (Granatapfel) because the original grenades had such a form.

French hand grenades made from glass around 1740

For me, the term hand grenade bears some reminiscence of the 1970ies when we were building the Intersecting Storage Rings for protons at CERN. It became necessary to erect an old-fashioned water tower to ensure the pressure of water required in the magnet cooling circuits of the ISR. Soon my Anglo-American colleagues nicknamed the building the German hand grenade. For a long time, the stick hand grenade competed with the pineapple design called Eierhandgranate (egg hand grenade) in German.

Aerial view of the ISR ring structure with the German hand grenade in the back
close to the CERN fence (Photo CERN)

The glass hand grenades found in Freiburg are from 1745 and of French origin. They were used as explosives during the dismantling of Vauban's fortifications, but all did not detonate as planned. 

In battle, a grenadier (sic!), i.e., infantryman throwing a glass hand grenade, lived dangerously for the time between ignition and detonation was ill-defined, and many a man lost his life before he could fling the grenade at the enemy.

A "grenadier" - his shoulder bag full of hand grenades - ignites one.

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No Ticket For The Pope And Finis Kommando Rhino

On page 21 today, my favorite newspaper Badische Zeitung published two additional pieces of news about topics I dealt with in earlier blogs.

One informed the reader that Pope Benedict would not get a ticket in Freiburg for driving in his papamobile without a seat belt. The charge was dismissed because he had used the papamobile on a street closed for public traffic where the German road traffic act does not hold. Will the man from Dortmund be satisfied with the argument and give up? To be continued.

On the other hand, the Wagenburgler story is definitely over. The Kommando Rhino disbanded following internal quarrels about the question of violence against police actions in the past. Some group members moved together with other Wagenburglers to the point that the city officials counted more vehicles on the agreed site Eselwinkel than the authorized 45. Since the city is interested in de-escalating the situation, the police did not take any action so far.

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