Freiburg Under Construction

At present, Freiburg is one big construction site. The Verkehrsbetriebe (VAG) are building a new streetcar line running in front of the new university library to the site where once the Siegesdenkmal (victory monument) stood. All the following impressive aerial photos are from a ©BZ photo gallery.

Presently bicycles are parked at the site of the already terminated track bed for the new line in front of the university library. A search for a future parking space is on.

More trees are actually planted at the Square of the Old Synagogue. The municipal theater is on the right, Kollegiengebäude 2 (KG2) is on the left, and the old university building (KG1) is on the left in the back of the building site.

A water basin marks the layout of the Old Synagogue shown below on an old postcard.

Building activities at the site of the Siegesdenkmal. Note the scaffolded steeple of the Münster church in the back.

Car traffic is significantly compromised with two lanes only.

Seventeen-century stonewalled arches of Vauban's fortifications near the Christoffel Gate are exposed.

The arches are located north of the plan showing Vauban's masterpiece.

How the area should look at the end of 2018. Note the new site for the Siegesdenkmal and the new streetcar tracks.

*

March 23, 1933

Eighty-four years ago today, the German Reichstag passed the Ermächtigungsgesetz (enabling act) with the necessary two-thirds majority that gave unlimited power to the National Socialists and their Führer Adolf Hitler. Only the deputies of the social democrats voted against it. The reasons were presented by Otto Wels, leader of the SPD:

©Wikipedia

Die Wahlen vom 5. März haben den Regierungsparteien die Mehrheit gebracht und damit die Möglichkeit gegeben, streng nach Wortlaut und Sinn der Verfassung zu regieren. Wo diese Möglichkeit besteht, besteht auch die Pflicht ...

Die Verfassung der Weimarer Republik ist keine sozialistische Verfassung. Aber wir stehen zu den Grundsätzen des Rechtsstaates und der Gleichberechtigung, des sozialen Rechtes. Wir deutschen Sozialdemokraten bekennen uns in dieser geschichtlichen Stunde feierlich zu den Grundsätzen der Menschlichkeit und der Gerechtigkeit, der Freiheit und des Sozialismus. Kein Ermächtigungsgesetz gibt Ihnen die Macht, Ideen, die ewig und unzerstörbar sind, zu vernichten ...

Das Sozialistengesetz hat die Sozialdemokratie nicht vernichtet. Auch aus neuen Verfolgungen kann die deutsche Sozialdemokratie neue Kraft schöpfen ...

 Here is the English translation:

The March 5, 1933 elections gave the governing parties the majority and hence the possibility to govern stringently according to our constitution. Where there is the possibility, there is the obligation too ...

The constitution of the Weimar Republic is no socialist constitution, but we stand for the principles of the constitutional state and the equality of social rights. We, German social democrats, declare the fundamental principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism in this historic moment. No enabling act will give you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible ...

[Bismark's] Anti-Socialist Law did not destroy social democracy. The German social democracy will again draw strength from new persecutions.

And then, still attached to nineteen-century thinking, Wels added: Freiheit und Leben kann man uns nehmen, die Ehre nicht! (You can take our freedom and lives, but you can't take our honor!)

Eventually, the Reichstag passed the law with 444 against 94 votes of the social democrats giving dictatorial power to the Nazis. The separation of power was wiped out. Detention of social democrats started already the day after, and Wels escaped to Prague. He was deprived of his German citizenship in August 1933. In 1938 when the Nazis threatened the Czech Republic, he fled to Paris, where he died in exile in September 1939.

Separation of power is the basis of democracy. Today Red Baron read in the NYT about @POTUS' ideas for Republicans not voting Trumpcare: Trump Warns House Republicans: Repeal Health Law or Lose Your Seats. Will @POTUS start bake his own deputies?

*

Gröber And No End

The proposed renaming of streets in Freiburg caused a flood of letters to the editor of our local newspaper Badische Zeitung. A name frequently mentioned and commented on was Conrad Gröber, archbishop of Freiburg during the Nazi era and continuing after the war. Red Baron had mentioned Gröber's name in the context of a renaming of streets already in 2012.

New documents found in a Paris archive became recently available and prove that Gröbner not only became a Fördermitglied (supporting member) of the SS in 1934 but had a Jewish mistress in the early 1930s called Irene Fuchs. At the beginning of the 1920s, as a parish priest at Messkirch (Where Martin Heidegger dwelt), he had known Irene as a 16-year-old girl. Her father had asked Gröber, a member of the advisory board of the Fürsorgeorganisation (caring organization) for endangered women, girls, and children, to look after his daughter.

Irene studied law in Freiburg, and there they met again when apparently, she became Gröber's mistress. Already in 1931, Gröber noted: Sie zerfiel mit mir (we fell apart), but in 1933 he let her down. The question is: Did he ditch her because she was a Jew, or had he started another affair? Apparently, in those years, a couple of ladies thought it to be Gröber's Auserwählte (chosen one), a situation that led to some tensions.

Suddenly the SS-supporting archbishop had a problem while the Gestapo (Secret State Police) saw a possibility of getting rid of him. They interrogated Irene Fuchs twice, proving that she and Gröber committed Rassenschande (racial defilement). But Irene held her tongue.

The Nazis convened with the Catholic church that the archbishop was to be questioned by his auxiliary bishop. Confronted during the interview with the facts, Gröber ought to have said: Was haben Wir da bloß wieder gemacht? (What simply did We do again?). Later Gröber noted: Es ist ein Gegenwartskuriosum, dass man die Jüdin als Kronzeugin gegen mich deutschstämmigen Mann … aufruft und vernimmt (It is an oddity in the present time that one calls on and interrogates the Jewish woman as a key witness against me, an ethnic German). Some historians think that it was Gröber himself who denunciated Irene to Gauleiter Robert Wagner.

Gröber did not leave the SS voluntarily. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler himself struck the archbishop from the membership list in 1938. When in the 1940s, the Nazis started to attack the Catholic Church, Gröber became a fierce adversary of the regime and was hailed as such after the war.

Archbishop Gröber in his sleeping and working room in 1946 (©Ezbischöfliches Archiv)

Irene Fuchs survived in her London exile, her father died before the war, and her mother was gassed in Auschwitz in 1944.

*

The End of a Bratwurst War

There is a German proverb: Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei (There is one end to everything; only a sausage has two). Finally, Freiburg's bratwurst war only had one, and I may say a lucky end too.

Remember: initially, there were eight places for vendors of grilled sausages on Münster market, but their number had been reduced to five, making room for a diversified offer with a veggie, a fish, and a regional product stand. When the bids for the remaining five bratwurst stands came in, two traditional vendors failed the conditions and had to leave.

The following rumors and internal quarrels spoiled the appetite of many a wurst eater so that the top contender bio (organic) butcher Hügle, aggressed by his contenders, eventually threw the towel. This created a slot for the initially disdained bratwurst vendor Uhl leaving the people at Hauber's Wurststand still weeping. Recently they announced going to court.

Suddenly yesterday, the situation turned dramatically. Twice the city had asked for bids for a stand selling regional products, but both chosen vendors eventually withdrew. In this situation, the town hall toing and froing decreed that the open slot would be attributed to Hauber.

From April 1 on (what a foolish date), we shall have peace again on Münster market with six vendors offering the Lange Rote in a bun or in half a baguette plus other types of bratwurst at the Meier's, Hassler's, Hauber's, Uhl's, Licht's, and Schuler's stands. In addition, and hopefully, with a correct German orthography, the already existing tofu stand, as well as Faths and not Fath's Fish Snacks, will fill the remaining two slots.

Before

After (©BZ/Ingo Schneider)

*

Protest Dancing

Freiburg's new university library remains in the news. End of last year, an entrance door to the cafeteria that wheelchair users could not pass was changed from architecturally inclined (following the glass surface of the building) to regular vertical, causing an outcry from the architect.

Flooding due to an intentionally clogged toilet on a Sunday earlier this year caused considerable damage to ceilings and floors. Presently rumors are circulating.

The situation concerning bicycle parking around the library has become dramatic. Although the area in front of the library is vast, Red Baron has to find its way around bicycles blocking the footpath during the daytime. When the new boulevard will open in 2018, the new "old" university campus will also take shape. Until then, the bicycle parking situation must be solved.

Just opposite the library at the corner of Werthmannstraße/Rempartstraße, a fountain has not seen water for years. Some years ago, due to financial reasons, the city of Freiburg reduced the number of fountains operated by the municipality. Following a public outcry, a couple of firms and institutions took over the patronage of many of those abandoned fountains sponsoring water supply and maintenance. However, the one between the university library and the university canteen remained dry, possibly due to the continuing building activity in the area.

In looking for an additional bicycle storage area, the city considers the waterless fountain's surface unofficially used by a self-organized dancing scene, for it takes two to tango. In protest against the city's plans, the dancers organized an around-the-clock dancing last Saturday. The protest dancing is documented in the following photo.

The university library and municipal theater are seen in the background (©Der Sonntag/Rothermel)

*

An Evening Stroll

This is the third part of a trilogy of blogs about my January 2017 visit to Hamburg. The other two were about my visits to Elphi and the Miniature Wunderland.

On my way to Hamburg, I became nervous about whether the train would be on time. Although our group was to meet at the hotel only at 4 p.m., I longed to eat a Finkenwerder Speckscholle for lunch. The plaice caught in the North Sea by fishermen at Finkenwerder, a fishing village on the other side of the Elbe river, is served fried with bacon at Alter Hamburger Aalspeicher (Old Hamburg Eel Storage), a restaurant located on Deichstraße (Dyke Street).

Note my trolley bag.

The train was on time, and I took a taxi to Deichstraße. I arrived at twenty past one at the restaurant and took a seat. When the waitress came, she told me all the tables were reserved. I started to cry, telling her that my only desire had been to eat a Finkenwerder Speckscholle at her place. She told me to sit and calm down when she noticed my despair, serving me the desired food twenty minutes later. She saved my day.

Served with Hamburger Kartoffelsalat (potato salad) but foreign beer: Jever Pils

The houses of Deichstraße are built on the dike, which tames the waters of the Alster River, which flows into the Elbe nearby.

The photo was taken from the waterfront.

On May 5, 1842, the great Hamburg fire started and destroyed most houses, including the old town hall, which was blasted to stop the fire from spreading.

The entrance porch of the house was reused.

On May 8, the fire eventually stopped at a place named Brandsende (blaze's end), now a street near Hamburg's central train station.

The fire started at Deichstraße in the left lower corner and spared the buildings in red,
particularly Hamburg's newly built Stock Exchange.
Black spots are blasted buildings (©Schleiden/Wikipedia)

Slowly, I walked to my hotel, looking at Hamburg's old landmark, the steeple of Sankt Michaelis (Saint Michael)...

... and had a distant view of Hamburg's new landmark, the Elbphilharmonie.

The TV set in my room reminded me that I was sleeping in a Weltkulturerbe (world heritage). The Amron Hotel is built into one of the old Schuppen (storage buildings). The breakfast room is located on the other side of the Fleet (canal) and accessible via a passageway.

The hotel is on the left, and breakfast is on the right.

When our guide arrived late in the afternoon, she invited us for an evening stroll in Hamburg's city. The first place to visit was the "new" town hall.

On our way, we passed a memorial for Heinrich Heine, one of the great German poets who was badly treated in the past because he was a leftist baptized German Jew. Banned from his fatherland, he died of a broken heart in Paris in 1856 and was buried there. Here is some information in German about the fate of Heine's Hamburg memorial.

Heine memorial on Rathausmarkt

I never attached great importance to my fame as a poet and
I could not care less whether the people praised or criticized my lieder,
but you shall place a sword on my coffin,
for I was a brave soldier in mankind's liberation war.

When entering the lobby of the Rathaus, I noticed for the first time that the columns were decorated with portraits of famous persons born in Hamburg. One example is Bertold Hinrich Brockes, a poet of Enlightenment.

Another example is Heinrich Hertz, the physicist commemorated by the SI unit for frequencies, e.g.,  kilohertz. In Germany, they used kilohelmholtz instead in honor of Hermann von Helmholtz, another famous German but Arian physicist. They even went so far as to destroy Hertz's relief in Hamburg's town hall. It was replaced in a different style after the war.

As I passed the outflow of the Alster Lake into the Alsterfleet, I noticed that the high waters of the Alster were evacuated.

All excursion boats wait for their next day while the lights of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten (Four Seasons) are reflected in the Binnenalster (Inner Alster Lake).

Before our group went for dinner, we visited Michaeliskirche (Saint Michel), where Martin Luther's statue guarded the entrance.

*

Gender Starlet

Last November, Germany's Green Party introduced a Gender-Sternchen as politically correct. So you would no longer address your dear citizens: Liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger but rather combine female and male forms into Liebe Bürger*innen.

Persiflage on the "Green "gender starlet seen on www.schindluder.net

Wait a moment. Haven't we already used the Binnen-I (a capital "I" within a word to mark a break between male and female gender) in writing BürgerInnen comprising female and male form? And what about the gender gap written in Bürger_innen?

The satirical television show extra 3 found out why there is a preference for the "starlet." It was the Greens who found the breakthrough in Germany's refugee policy. Refugees are now politically correctly called Migrant*innen.

@NDR

Subsequently, the Berlin Senate (Berlin's government) decided that all official documents submitted must be gender-neutral by March, preferring the Gender-Sternchen. They have already started correcting some traffic signs, but when will they finish the Willy-Brandt-Airport?

@dpa

*