Thursday, November 22, 2012

Local Saints And a Local Hero

Blessed Bernhard
Last August, I blogged about Edith Stein, who Freiburg claims as a local saint. Well, I know that in the Catholic Church, saints are regarded as universal, i.e., belonging to and venerated by the whole community. However, places where those selected people once dwelt are always special.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch and Bernhard in the background
Today I read in my favorite newspaper that Freiburg's archbishop Robert had started the final step to sanctify another "local person": Bernhard von Baden.

In February 2011, I already devoted a blog to Blessed Bernhard, considered the Freiburg archdiocese's patron. Now all supporting documents for his canonization, including the one about the miraculous healing of a nun from Baden in 1956, were placed in a sealed box and sent to the Vatican for further action and a final decision by the pope.

The name "Bernhard" has only sometimes had a good reputation in Freiburg. Bernhard von Weimar, yes Weimar again, pushed Freiburg in 1638 into misery when during the Thirty Years War, he besieged the city at Easter and took it after eleven days. Bernhard, born in 1604, was the eleventh son of Johann, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and had no chance to become heir to the throne. In these days, later-born children either became clergymen or warlords. 

Bernard chose to support King Gustav Adolf, the invader from Sweden, and became one of his most valuable generals. Following the King's death in the battle of Lützen, Bernhard continued serving the Swedes. He was successful and was granted the former bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg and the title Duke of Franconia. We read in Wikipedia: A stern Protestant, he exacted heavy contributions from the Catholic cities he took, and his repeated victories caused him to be regarded by German Protestants [with Gustav Adolf dead] as the savior of their religion. But in 1634, Bernard suffered a great defeat at Nördlingen, losing the best of the Swedish army and his duchy.

The other Bernhard approaching the city of Breisach 1638
One year later, still longing to become a German prince, Bernhard made a pact with Cardinal Richelieu, the man Protestant Germans considered as a twofold devil being both Catholic and French. The Cardinal gave money and troops to his German-speaking general to fight the Habsburgs on German territory. Soon Richelieu felt cheated as Bernhard rather used the French mercenaries to pursue his personal ambitions.

In 1638, he first captured the Habsburg cities on the High Rhine and then Freiburg in a blitz campaign. The following siege of Breisach, the imperial fortress, took him seven months. Conquered eventually, Bernard made the city the site of his Princely Saxon Government, unblushingly requesting Richelieu to make him Duke of the Alsace, the Breisgau, and the bishopric of Basel. Bernhard suddenly died in 1639, and rumors had it that he was poisoned. Already in these days, conspiracy theories circulated freely. Whatever the true story, the French took it all following Bernhard's death, i.e., his troops, money, and territories.

Indeed Bernhard is not Freiburg's local hero, but he suddenly became Weimar's hero in 1935 when he was talked up as the Führer's predecessor in an exhibition devoted to him. A Weimar newspaper wrote: Duke Bernhard, who came out of the people, lived with the people, and belonged to the people, deserves the honor the national-socialistic movement bestows on him. This is all so wrong. Like most of his contemporaries, nobleman Bernhard did not give a hoot in hell for his people. At best, he considered them cannon fodder when following his ambitious aspirations. In this respect, he was a true predecessor of the Führer.
*

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Weimar Literature

Böttiger looks with curiosity down at the glorious four
 with Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt standing in the back.
The first book dedicated to Weimar I read was Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen (Literary circumstances and contemporaries), written by Karl August Böttiger, a classicist. Böttiger collected gossip about tout Weimar during the time of the glorious four, Goethe, Herder, Schiller (not the Apple one), and Wieland, which his son Karl Wilhelm Böttiger edited and published in 1838.

Most interesting is Böttiger's description of Madame de Staël's visit to Weimar. This courageous and intelligent lady had defied Napoleon, been banned from France, and traveled the few parts of Europe still unoccupied by the French. Being an attractive woman, tout Weimar was at her feet. Fascinated by the patchwork of small independent territories making up Germany's wide cultural variety, she wrote her famous book De l'Allemagne. To a certain extent, its content is still shaping the French view of Germany nowadays.

 In his book, Böttiger even dares to unmask Goethe, who is rocking his illegitimate son on his lap while getting bald and fat, the latter thanks to Christiane's, his concubine's, good cooking.


Genius Goethe's unmasking continues in Sigrid Damm's book Christiane and Goethe. Damm tells the fascinating story of the scandalous relationship. Goethe, the Duke's State Minister, who had just returned to Weimar from his Italien journey (where a Roman girl, Faustina, had taken his virginity), made young Christiane Vulpius his mistress calling her his Bettschatz (bed darling). Goethe did not care that the Weimar society shunned him because of his concubinage as long as his friend Duke August became August's (Goethe's son) godfather. Goethe married Christiane only after she had courageously saved his life during an attack by some drunken French soldiers. They broke into the house following Weimar's take by the Napoleon army. The author tells us how Christiane suffered from the genius's ego during her lifelong relationship.


Das klassische Weimar (Classical Weimar) is a collection of texts written by contemporary witnesses. They describe Weimar's personalities, the town's social life, life at the ducal court, the theater where Goethe had been the director at times, Goethe's house at the Frauenplan and its inhabitants, the years of the French occupation, and people on a "pilgrimage" in Weimar.


Similarly, the book Treffpunkt Weimar-Literatur und Leben zur Zeit Goethes (Meeting point Weimar - literature and life during the time of Goethe) describes Weimar's Golden Age. Still, it is written in the style of a novel and, therefore, easy to read. The authors combine their text with citations from this classical period, mostly from letters. This is a technique I use on my historical website for Freiburg, too, because contemporary witnesses write spontaneously and make the whole story more lively. In general, only a few explanations are required to clarify the embedded original texts.


Star journalist Peter Merseburger's book Mythos Weimar zwischen Geist und Macht (The Weimar myth between mind and power) looks behind what is called the Weimar myth. Merseburger analyses the Golden Age of Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and Wieland, followed by Weimar's Silver Age with Franz Liszt. He continues with the Duke's abdication after the First World War, the adoption of the Weimar Constitution thwarted by the early rise of the Nazis in Thuringia, the rise and fall of the Bauhaus, the concentration camp Buchenwald, and the lost Second World War resulting in the communist takeover in the Eastern part of Germany including the continued use of Buchenwald.


The book Wege nach Weimar. Auf der Suche nach der Einheit von Kunst und Politik accompanied an exhibition of Weimar's history in 1999 in the Gauforum. This building was started in 1938, with Hitler himself posing the foundation stone. Since Nazis participated in the Thuringian government well before their Machtergreifung in Berlin in January 1933 made, Weimar, together with Bayreuth, Linz, and Nuremberg, was one of Hitler's favorite towns. On the other hand, he detested Vienna because of its many Jews and Berlin because he was a native Austrian.

Consequently, the exhibition and catalog dealt with Weimar's history between 1919 and 1945, but they did not stop there. Both continue documenting the seamless transition from a brown to a red dictatorship. The people did not have the ghost of a chance. While the Americans taught us democracy in the West, the Soviets imposed their communist regime in the East, forcing the Social Democrats into a union with the Communists Party becoming the SED (United German Socialist Party), and degrading the Christian Democrats and the Liberals to satellite parties. The catalog is a gold mine of pictures documenting Weimar's historical development during the last century.


Finally, a two-volume catalog of the Goethe National Museum Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759-1832 (Repeated reflections: Classical Weimar) was published on the occasion of the opening of the National Museum adjacent to the Goethehaus in 1999. The catalog is a collection of pictures and texts describing the exhibition pieces. The two volumes of 500 pages were heavy to carry home, but every gram was worth the effort.

After the old exhibition was closed in 2008, a remodeled display opened on August 23, 2012, called Lebensfluten, Tatensturm (Floods of life, storms of action). Few pieces are now exhibited in a more modern environment concentrating on Goethe's life. Consequently, the companion book is much thinner, with only 288 pages.


The books:

Karl August Böttiger: Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen. Begegnungen und Gespräche im klassischen Weimar. Hg. von Klaus Gerlach und René Sternke. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02829-6

Sigrid Damm: Christiane und Goethe. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-458-16912-1

Heinrich Pleticha: Das klassische Weimar, Komet Verlag GmbH, Köln 1983, ISBN 3-89836-517-4

Norbert Oellers und Robert Steegers: Treffpunkt Weimar - Literatur und Leben zur Zeit Goethes, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 4-15-010449-1

Peter Merseburger: Mythos Weimar. Zwischen Geist und Macht, DVA, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 978-3423307871

Michael Dorrmann und Hans Wilderotter (Hrsg.): Wege nach Weimar. Auf der Suche nach der Einheit von Kunst und Politik, Jovis Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-931321-18-5

Caroline Gille, Gerhard Schuster und Stiftung Weimarer Klassik (Hrsg.): Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759-1832. Ständige Ausstellung des Goethe-Nationalmuseums, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1999, ISBN 3-446-19499-1
*

Friday, November 9, 2012

Weimar in October 2012

Remember? I started the first blog of my Weimar quadrology, telling you about Elisabeth's and my recent visit to this cultural highlight, but then I was carried away digging into my past Weimar experience. That happened in my second blog about Weimar, too. I shall no longer go back in history but move forward to the present in a third attempt.

We took an early train at Freiburg but then suffered a one-hour delay. With our train being behind schedule, we missed our connection to Erfurt in Fulda. A one-hour delay on the Deutsche Bahn is not a big problem, for during daytime, direct train connections in Germany are served every hour. So you just wait for the next train, although seat reservations are lost. We filled the wait at Fulda's train station with a forced coffee and arrived in Weimar around 3 p.m.

Henry van der Velde advertising Weimar's onion market.
Instead of star architect Walter Gropius and femme fatale Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, this time the founder of the Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, the predecessor of the Bauhaus, Henry van der Velde, greeted us from the balcony of the Elephant Hotel.

View unto Weimar's marketplace from our room. In the background, the Herderkirche.
HE showed us the way to a souvenir shop. 
During an afternoon walk through the streets of Weimar, we passed the National Theater.

The well-known Goethe-Schiller monument in front of the Weimar National Theater, modified.
Thomas Mann, Goethe's lifelong venerator, stands in for Friedrich Schiller. 
However, we visited the Schiller- and not the Thomas-Mann-Haus:
  
Entrance to Schiller's house
Photos were not allowed, but I took one of the Loi du 25 Août 1792, l'an quatrième de la Liberté, signed by the great Danton himself, making le sieur Gilles, publiciste Allemand, a citizen of revolutionary France.

Schiller made a citizen of revolutionary France.
Le membre proposing the publiciste Allemand may have read Schiller's Die Räuber (The Robbers) but got his name completely wrong. Note, "called-up-late" Schiller is in the company of well-known temporaries like Thomas Payne (Thomas Paine, Anglo-American political activist), Joachim-Henry Campe (Joachim Heinrich Campe, German linguist), N. Pestalozzi (Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue), Georges Washington (George Washington, First President of the United States), Jean Hamilton (John Hamilton, Congressman from Pennsylvania), N. Maddisson (James Madison, Fourth President of the United States) and H. Klopstock (Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, German poet).

Elisabeth and I closed the day by having dinner at the ElephantenkellerThe round table from 1990 was still in place, but this time, it was empty. I chose a delicious Kohlroulade (stuffed cabbage leaf) from the menu and a Pilsner beer from nearby Apolda.

Delicious stuffed cabbage leaf
The following morning, a guide showed us around Weimar. We saw Goethe's summer house (Gartenhaus) from a distance.

Goethe's summer house from a distance.
For the afternoon, we had reserved a visitor's slot for the Goethehaus and the adjacent Goethe National Museum, where an exposition of artifacts documents the genius's curriculum vitae.

In the evening, we had dinner at Weimar's Ratskeller, where I had a Rindsroulade (beef olive) that I drowned in and downed with the usual Köstritzer Schwarzbier.

Rindsroulade mit Thüringer Klößen (Thuringian dumplings)
On Saturday morning, the Herder church was open to visitors.

The Herder church in October 2012, a building site.
Herder, in front of "his" church, initially called Stadtkirche.
November 1989: Prayers for peace not only in Leipzig: We are the people!
In- and outside the church were building sites. The Lutheran Church is preparing its historic places for the demi-millennium of the Reformation in 1517.

Famous altarpiece apotheosizing the Reformation. Lucas Cranach the Elder started the painting 1552 one year before his death. It was finished in 1555 by his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger.
The original painting was covered because of the building activities inside the church.
 I took this photo of a photo print on canvas displayed for the benefit of the visitors.
On the right, you recognize Martin Luther and left to him, the painter Lucas Cranach.
 John the Steadfast, who introduced the Reformation in Thuringia, and his wife sit on the other side.
Passing Weimars castle ...

The castle's medieval tower is crowned by a Baroque helmet.
... we took a stroll through the park at the Ilm River in the direction of Goethe's Gartenhaus. He had lived there from 1776 until 1782 when he moved into his townhouse at the Frauenplan.

Goethe's garden, where He grew his vegetables. 
Picking up a Thüringer Bratwurst on our way, we climbed to the Nietzsche Archive in the early afternoon.


The archive was empty, so it was not worth the entrance fee except for the building constructed in Art Nouveau. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the walk that took us to Weimar's old cemetery with Goethe's and Schiller's crypts. Recently, a DNA analysis revealed that Schiller's skull is not his.

Many people still consider Ernst von Wildenbruch's citation engraved into the monument:
Ich kämpfte nicht um anzugreifen, sondern um zu verteidigen (I did not fight to attack but to defend)
as proof that Germany was struck by the surrounding countries in 1914.
 The problem is that von Wildenbruch had already died in 1909. 
Later, on our way back to the center, Big Goethe was watching us from a banner:
 
Lebensfluten, Tatensturm (Floods of life, storms of action)

We had a beer at a small place opposite the Goethehaus, watching carriages drive by. For a moment, forget those iron poles and the cars and live your dreams.
*

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Weimar, the Second Time Around

Following the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989, and the opening of the border between West- and East Germany, my friend, and colleague working at the Nuclear Research Center near Karlsruhe invited Professor D. for Radiation Protection Physics at Dresden's Technical University.

She arrived for the usual semi-annual meeting of our West German working group, "On the measurement of ionizing radiation," at the beginning of December. We had long and good conversations feeling strange, for in previous years, when we met East German colleagues at international conferences, they were not allowed to talk to us. We all were overwhelmed by the new German-German togetherness.

So, in a follow-up, Professor D. invited three working group members to her annual International Symposium on Radiation Physics at Gaussig, a cozy castle east of Dresden used by the Technical University (TU) for meetings or on other occasions.

During the winter, I prepared my paper: Personal Neutron Monitoring in an Accelerator Environment and was eagerly looking forward to my visit to Germany's heartland. At the end of March, I called my host in Dresden and asked her whether she needed something I could take along: Well, the seminar participants organize at least one party, and any contribution would be welcome.

A Bocksbeutel, half full
(©Wikipedia/Mussklprozz)
An empty Bocksbeutel
 (©Wikipedia/Prince Grobhelm)
So I decided the best would be to furnish some wine they possibly had not tasted behind the iron curtain. The day before I crossed the now-open border into the still-existing German Democratic Republic (GDR), I stopped at Iphofen's winery. I loaded the trunk of my car with six boxes of Franconian wine bottled in Bocksbeuteln.

Then I took a night's rest at Bad Hersfeld and, heading east, reached the border in the gray of dawn. I approached a wooden shed lost in the middle of nowhere, bordering a tared strip as an ersatz for the non-existing road. Two sleepy border guards looking out of a window rounded up the surrealistic scene when they, utterly bored, nodded at me to pass. Border guards under the Ulbricht regime would have taken my car to pieces. Apparently shocked by the lift of the iron curtain, they even refused to ask for my passport.

I am on my way to my first stop: Eisenach, the place of a German myth, the Wartburg. The oncoming traffic was heavy, with one two-stroke engine Trabi after the other heading west, filling the air with the typical smell of burned oil. People suddenly were free and eager to travel to the capitalistic enemy territory buying goods that they did not find in the GDR.

Entering Eisenach, the smell changed to the typical taste of sulfur dioxide caused by the burning of lignite, the only energy source the GDR had plenty of. I parked my car near one of the ascents to Wartburg and climbed up the hill in beautiful sunshine. It still was early in the morning, but already streams of people flowed in both directions.

German History on Wartburg Stamps

Weimar Republic

1923: Inflation, a stamp of 5000 marks
1932: Great Depression,
a semipostal of 4+2 pfennigs
Nazi Germany

1933: Wagner's Tannhäuser or the Wartburg song contest
(Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg), a semipostal of 3+2 pfennigs

Divided Germany

1966: Agnostic GDR commemorating
the 900th anniversary of the Wartburg
1967: Religious FRG commemorating the
450th anniversary of the Reformation.
Luther concealed at the Wartburg
translated the Bible into German
I wanted to buy some picture postcards. The vendors only accepted western currency. How did they know that I am not a Bürger der DDR (citizen of the GDR)? I rushed through the historic site: Luther's study, the Kemenate (Cabinet room) of Elizabeth of Hungary, and the hall (19th century) of the Wartburg song contest overdecorated with mosaic.

At lunchtime, I tried to be in Weimar, but potholes slowed down my progress while Trabis ignoring them overtook me flying by. Eventually, at noon I parked my car near Weimar's central marketplace on an abandoned bomb site. I walked over to the Elephant Hotel to have lunch at its famous Elephantenkeller, the basement restaurant. Entering the place, a doorman stopped me: We are jam-packed. I asked for the second service: There is none. I handed him over a 10 DM bill. Becoming friendly, he told me to come back in twenty minutes.

Warmed by the April sun outside, I suddenly felt hungry for the smell of Thuringian bratwurst filled the marketplace. I could not describe my feeling of taking my first bite. Still overwhelmed by the first all-German food, I approached the entrance of the Elephant in time. The doorman guided me to a single seat on an otherwise fully packed round table.

When I sat down, all conversation stopped, for the men around the table smelled the westerner. I greeted them friendly, starting to talk about this year's early spring. Slowly they became confident, and suddenly I listened to an argument: who of them following the Wende (political turnaround) had first taken off his United Socialistic Party (SED) party badge. They took me into their political discussion, so I do not remember what I had for lunch.

In the evening, I reached Dresden, and the following morning Professor D. showed her three West German invitees around her TU institute. Two facts immediately were undeniable: too many people worked on research projects, of which half would never have been funded in the West. What followed over the following years was a dramatic reduction in staff doing useless or socialistic research. Now we know that one of the reasons for the fall of the Berlin wall was that the GDR was bankrupt.  No wonder, for no capitalist government would have paid relatively high salaries to so many "researchers."

The symposium in Gaussig developed into an extraordinary experience wet with tears and wine. I will spare you the scientific details but will mention two nostalgic moments:

1. For the first time, after more than twenty years of abstinence, I tasted salt potatoes (Salzkartoffeln). In contrast, Elisabeth always boils potatoes in the skin (Pellkartoffeln) to conserve their natural taste and nutrient.

Salzkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia)
Pellkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia)














The change in food culture was palpable. While in the East, potatoes were still regarded as Sättigungsbeilage (a staple food in GDR-German), potatoes in the West had transitioned to a vegetable bought at the grocery in selected varieties and small quantities daily.

My teacher, classmates, and me peeling staple food potatoes
during a fortnightly stay at a youth hostel in 1948.
Red Baron is just in the middle (the fifth from both left and right).
I still remember those men carrying potatoes in sacks of 50 kilograms (one Zentner, i.e., hundred German pounds) into our basement in the fall, filling up aired wooden boxes. Although these potatoes were stored in a cool dark environment, their quality in the following year had deteriorated so that they had to be peeled, taking off nearly half their mass in cutting deep.

2. In 1942, I spent the summer in a small place near the Elbsandsteingebirge (Elbe Sandstone Mountains) called Lichtenhain, famous for its artificial waterfall.

Lichtenhain's waterfall (Photo Wikipedia)
Bastei panorama in the Elbesandsteingebirge
Driving my host and colleagues to the Bastei on the International Symposium's free afternoon, we made a detour to the place of my youth. We found the house where I once stayed easily:

During the summer of 1942, my friend Dieter and I lived in the house located in the photo.
 in the lower right corner
In the photo from left to right, you see Dieter and me.
You recognize our house in the distance.
Dieter was stricken with mytrophy, therefore (?) a precocious child.
I drove my parents crazy, always talking back,
and putting their words into question:
But Dieter said ...  
Dieter's father, a lawyer, and highly decorated First World War veteran,
 looked with his white mustache  - my father being just 36 - like an old man to me.
He took the above photo and some more with a Leica, developed the films,
and made the prints himself. During the war, I lost track of Dieter and his family.
Entering the house where I had spent a couple of weeks of my early youth, everything, including the room where I once slept, seemed so small, but nothing had really changed. Even the water faucet halfway up the narrow staircase where I had my morning wash was still in place.

I knocked at a door, and from the inside, somebody said: Herein! I opened the door. There the whole family was sitting around a table manufacturing Easter decorations. I knew that people were already working on decorations for Christmas in the West. I bought some Easter bunnies, paid with Western currency, and handed the purchased souvenirs to my colleagues.

It's all history.
*