Pumpernickel

Here comes the promised post about pumpernickel, the black bread from Westphalia with a unique baking process and a funny name so popular with anglophone people. Sporting his English accent on German radio, Chris Howland was a well-known disk jockey in the 1960s. He nicknamed himself, Heinrich Pumpernickel.

Some people still claim that Napoleon - being blamed for everything* - coined the word when he - on his way to Hamburg, capital of the then French Département de bouche de l'Elbe - stayed for lunch at a small Westphalian village. The local peasants offered him the local black bread. The emperor took it in his hands, took a smell, and is claimed to have said, "Bon pour Nickel," pointing to his horse named Nickel.
*According to the German playwright and filmmaker Curt Goetz: Napoleon ist an allem Schuld (Napoleon Is to Blame for Everything)

The peasants did not quite understand what Napoleon meant and would have been annoyed by his statement that their bread was only good for horses. However, the imperial words pleased them, so they called their dark bread pumpernickel from now on.

The story is a hoax. It was the papal nuncio Fabio Chigi who first mentioned pumpernickel. In 1644, on his way to Münster, when he attended the Westphalian Peace negotiations, he lunched at the Wittlerbaum Inn at Bocholt. Afterward, Chigi summarized his experience: "The people of Westphalia call their dark bread pompernickel, an almost inhumane food even for peasants and beggars."

In 1792, the Duke of Weimar ordered his prime minister Goethe to accompany him as an embedded reporter during the campaign of the Princes' Alliance against the French Revolutionary Army. In France, the poet felt captured in a bad dream zwischen Koth und Noth, Mangel und Sorge, Gefahr und Qual, zwischen Trümmern, Leichen, Äsern und Scheishaufen (between shit and misery, lack and sorrow, danger and anguish, between rubble, corpses, graves, and turds). Eventually, Goethe became depressed when the Alliance suffered a defeat against the French Republic at Valmy, and the troops had to retire. In his later years, describing his Campaign in France, he writes the following story about pumpernickel:

On his way home from the campaign, Goethe passed through Westphalia, where the streets were full of aristocratic French refugees. The local population did not like the foreigners who had kept their arrogance and immodesty despite their humiliation and threatening poverty.

While resting at a rural inn, Goethe noticed a modest young Frenchman obviously underway on foot eating his frugal meal and that, when he paid, the landlord cut his bill in half. When Goethe asked why, the landlord explained, "He is the first of these blasted people who has eaten pumpernickel. He had to benefit from it."

In southern Germany, pumpernickel is sold in supermarkets thinly sliced and packaged.

Does he prefer the dark pumpernickel to the blond girl?

Below is a typical pumpernickel dish. It is best sandwiched with half of a crusty roll, and in this case, the fillings are Serrano ham* on the right and pork lard refined with roasted onions and apples (f*ck cholesterol) on the left. Although Red Baron prefers flavorful craft beer, a mildly hopped Landbier (country-style beer) is the ideal accompanying beverage.
*Westphalian and Black Forest hams are too salty

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NS Documentation Center

Red Baron dedicates this blog to a friend who indefatigably digs into Freiburg's Nazi past. The city owes him several commemorative plaques - he partly financed himself - located at sites of shame. For example, a photo of the plaque put up on his persisting demand inside the Basler Hof, a historical building on Freiburg's Kaiser-Joseph-Straße.

Built in 1496 by Emperor Maximilian's treasurer Konrad Stürtzel, the building housed Basel's cathedral chapter from 1587 to 1678 when they fled their city due to the turmoils caused by the Reformation. Later the Habsburg governors of the Vorlande (forelands, i.e., far away from Vienna) resided in the Basler Hof until, in 1806, the administration of the Grand Duchy of Baden took over and moved into the premises. As its last resort, Baden's revolutionary government worked in the building from June 24 to July 7, 1849.

Stürtzel's city palace continued to accommodate governmental institutions. From 1933 to 1941, the Gestapo (Nazi Secret State Police) carried out inhumane acts of mistreatment and torture in the basement. While Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) remind passing people outside the building, the commemorative plaque informs the visitor inside about the Nazi past.

Basler Hof in the 1930s (©Stadtarchiv)

The Basler Hof following the disastrous air raid on November 27, 1944 (©Stadtarchiv)

The Basler Hof rebuilt

My friend has been struggling to create a Nazi documentation center in Freiburg for a long time. I will never forget when a couple of years ago, my friend approached Mayor Salomon at a New Year's reception for our part of town, asking him to support such a center. The mayor's answer was abrupt, "I have no money."

My friend never gives up. Constant dripping wears the stone, and the exhibition Nationalsozialismus (NS) in Freiburg became a tremendous popular success (Red Baron reported) and turned the tide. Following a lecture by my friend explaining his ideas for an NS documentation center, all parties presented at the municipal council eventually sent a letter to Mayor Salomon writing, "We know about the great challenge for a documentation center to be up to its mission, i.e., acquainting future generations with Freiburg's NS past." The mayor said, "The municipal council gave us a mandate, and we will start working on some ideas we had already developed. "

Note: The other "we," the citizens of Freiburg, shall elect a new mayor or re-elect the old one on April 22, 2018. Let's face it, Dr. Salomon is starting his election campaign early.

Money shall be earmarked for the center in the municipal budget of 2018/19. As for the future site, some people proposed the basement of the Basler Hof; others regard the former Gestapo basement used for torturing people as inappropriate for the future NS documentation center.

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Kieser Training

Say yes to a strong body (©Kieser Training)

Red Baron has blogged about Kieser Training before. This time I would like to present a photo showing me, among others listening to a lecture about better sleep.

©Kieser Training

Generally, people at Kieser Training are not listening to lectures. They instead come to Kiesers Therapieräume für Medizinische Kräftigungstherapie (Therapy rooms for medical strengthening therapy) to work out their muscles. Mind you, we, mostly elderly women and men, are no longer building our aging and aching bodies but are struggling hard, trying to maintain our muscular leftovers.

When I moved into a new apartment in the fall of 2007, I met a neighbor looking at my sorrowful countenance and said: Sie müssen zu Kieser (You must train at Kieser‘s).

I followed his advice while he - already straining his muscles at Kieser‘s - got a bounty for his successful proselytizing that we spent with our wives on a lunch. Since then, we have become friends and celebrated our four birthdays during the years with joint lunches. I am grateful to my friend for his advice. Sadly he passed away lately. In his memory, we, the remaining, are keeping up the lunches.

And I continue to do my 90 minutes twice a week at Kieser Training.

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Try Again in 136 Years

This is a rounded figure, for the original message was "Send quota exceeded, try again in 4294967295 seconds". It popped on my screen when I tried to send you the usual e-mail announcing two new blogs.

©Deutsche Telekom

In the past, Red Baron struggled with his Internet provider Deutsche Telekom. The present problem seemed to be a recurrent one. Three years ago, a similar message appeared, although the time-lapse then given was only 46800 seconds, so the following morning, I could send e-mails again. The reason was that the Magenta Giant had allowed me to send only 200 e-mails monthly. When I complained that being a member of various associations, I frequently had to send group e-mails, Telekom technicians flipped a switch on their server and solved the problem.

What had happened this time?

On November 14, Telekom changed my telephone from ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) to VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), so I was suspicious that the troublemaker was the switch on their server again.

When I called the Telekom hotline on November 19, the guy on the other end told me that the strange message was not their problem but a problem with Microsoft's Outlook mail program. I should instead call their specialists.

When I insisted, he gave me another particular Telekom number. On the other end of the line, a girl took note, writing down the above error message promising that a specialist would soon look into the matter and call me back.

Waiting for the telephone call during the evening vain, I called back Telekom the following morning. Same scenario: they will study the problem and call me back.

During the morning, I looked as silly as those few others carrying their mobile phones from machine to machine, waiting for telephone calls while working their muscles at Kieser Training*.
*A blog about Kieser Training is in the pipeline

Luckily nobody had called me during my training session, but the telephone rang when I was at home having lunch. I was not prepared and had to switch on my PC first, but the friendly lady on the other end told me not to hurry and worry. Thanks to SSD, my PC booting only required 25 seconds, and soon the lady and Red Baron were in business. She opened my eyes, guided me to a magenta-colored bar, and showed me (Honi soit qui mal y pense) that my e-mail storage on the Telekom server had reached one GByte so rien ne va plus.

There were amazement and disbelief on my side, but in a certain sense, the first guy was right, although he did not tell me how to cure an obvious MS Outlook bug. I regularly delete very old e-mails on my PC, but they still remain on the Telekom server despite an IMAP (Interactive Mail Access Protocol) account!

The Telekom lady online showed me how to squeeze their server so that deleted e-mails are gone forever. One can set time limits ranging from 3 to 90 days to keep mail elements on the server before they are automatically deleted.

However, it was not over yet, for the next attempt to send a group mail failed with the known error message. Since most of the Telekom service technicians kept harping on MS Outlook, I eventually transported the blog address list to the Telekom mail program sending my group e-mail to you from there last night.

Sending the group e-mail again failed, but now a different message informed me that I had exceeded the allowed quota of 100 e-mail addresses in a month within my current contract. At the same time, Telekom offered me an upgrade of space and the number of e-mails on their server that I will never need. I grudgingly accepted their proposal, although being sure that during the recent month, I did not send e-mails to more than 100 addresses.

This morning my group e-mail passed using MS Outlook ... hurrah, I am back in business again.

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Münsterpfleger

Red Baron has always admired and supported the Freiburg Minster church and its steeple,  according to Jacob Burckhardt, the most beautiful on earth (der schönste Turm auf Erden),

When I moved to Freiburg in 2001, I noticed that the Münsterbauverein (MBV, Minster Building Association) was not presented on the Internet. So, I built their first homepage, which was eventually replaced in 2012 by a more professional presentation by specialists.

As remuneration, the MBV presented me with a slice of an original medieval pinnacle, which I proudly displayed on my balcony. It is now integrated into Elisabet's and my tombstone.

Note the stonemason's mark.

Last year, the MBV invited its members to become more financially active by reviving the medieval Münsterpfleger (Minster caretake).

Eventually, I received a photo of my investiture as Münsterpfleger. Red Baron is wearing too small a cape that was only available for photo shooting. The picture was taken on the fringe of the opening of an exhibition of gargoyles from the Minster church.

©Daniel Schoenen/MBV

Here are some highlights of the gargoyle exhibition. Gargoyles on medieval cathedrals, like the woman with only one tooth, are supposed to deter evil spirits. During the early Reformation, nuns left their convents and frequently married runaway monks, so the gargoyle got a particular interpretation. The rumor spread that only nuns with teeth were allowed to marry. In this sense, the water-spouting nun presents her one remaining tooth: Look, I am still available for marriage.

One tooth only

Aufhockers (crouchers) are a popular motif for gargoyles in medieval churches. They depict people having nightmares, with humans or wild animals crouching on them, giving them bad dreams.

The oldest gargoyle at the Minster church dates from 1240

A billy goat crouching on a man symbolizes lust (wet dreams?)

The sow symbolizes gluttony

Blecken, i.e., showing the butt
was a well-known motif in the Middle Ages to deter evil spirits.
Nowadays, the word blacken is used only in the combination of Zähne blecken:
A dog bares its teeth.

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Luther and the German Language

Luther und die deutsche Sprache. In yesterday's lecture, Professor Lobenstein-Reichmann defended her three theses instead of Martin Luther's 95:

I. Although frequently claimed, Luther did not invent the German language

II. Luther did not foster the unification of the German language

III. Luther hat dem Volk nicht aufs Maul geschaut (did not look at the peoples‘ mouths). Therefore, he was neither a linguistic genius nor a ruffian.


1. Despite the many dialects, people in German territories understood each other in Frühneuhochdeutsch (Early New High German) well before Luther. The famous Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 saw Luther from Saxony discussing with Alsatian theologians speaking their Alemannic dialect because Philip, Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, their host, did not understand Latin, the lingua franca of the Middle Ages.

The Luther Triangle. The thick horizontal line represents the border between Low and High German dialects

2. Germany's linguistic atlas shows Luther was working in the middle of the German-speaking territory. His German was undoubtedly influenced by the many scholars from all regions sitting with Luther and his wife Käthe (Katharina) at the table for lunch and dinner where the reformer held his famous Tischgespräche (table talks). So he certainly did not write, as one often reads, in Meißen's Kanzleistil (office style). 

However, in Hamburg, somebody trying to "upgrade" his Low German elocution with High German words is said to talk missingsch, i. e., meißnerisch.

Luther's choice of words was not guided by the most extended distribution pattern. So he proposed the less frequent Lippe (lip) instead of the widespread Lefze (chaps), although the latter word is still known today as the lip of wild animals and jokingly used in the case of humans.

In Luther's German Bible, Geißel (scourge) was defeated by the Slavic Peitsche (whip). In modern language, Geißel is only religiously known or used figuratively.

In his translation of the Bible into German, Luther's driving force was instead: How do I best convey the verity of the Gospel? In his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (Epistle about Translation), he clearly states that translation means transmitting evangelical truth.

3. Luther used the German language he thought appropriate to the occasion in his concern for spreading the Gospel. He always wrote with an eye toward his potential readers. For him, language and theology were interlaced.

Here is a nice example: Lieber Bapst, man soll dich bescheissen und an die Sonne setzen und lassen wider trocken werden, dass ich mit gutem gewissen jnen für einen Fartzesel und Gottes feind halten mag. Mich kan er nicht für einen esel halten, denn er weiß, das ich von Gottes sonder gnaden gelerter bin in der Schrifft (Dear pope, one should shit on you, place you in the sun, and let you dry so that with a good conscience I may take you for a farting donkey and God‘s foe. He cannot take me for a donkey for he knows that I am knowledgeable in the Gospel thanks to God‘s special grace).

Luther's Bible was often the only book in a Protestant home in the olden days. During long winter evenings, somebody knowledgeable read some text to everyone in the household, establishing a common High German vocabulary during the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Reformation Jubilee

©ZDF

It is finished.

Yesterday, on Reformation Day, Germany lived through the climax of the Year of Luther, which started on October 31, 2016. The 500th anniversary of Luther posting 95 theses at Wittenberg against the abuse of indulgence by the Catholic Church gave the nation an extra holiday. Elisabeth and I used the sunny day to fill our pantry in neighboring France.

We did so not out of disrespect but knowing that the Reformation will continue beyond October 31, 2017, both spiritually and through a series of talks at Freiburg's university examining various consequences of Luther's feats.

Luther's personality is dazzling; he, who announced the Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (On the freedom of a Christian), i.e., the freedom of a person to find his individual way to God, was at the same time intolerant and brutal against the established Roman Church, Calvinists, Jews, and others who refused to follow his ideas. He admits in his own words: Ich bin dazu geboren, das ich mit den rotten und teuffeln mus kriegen und zu felde ligen, darumb meiner bücher viel stürmisch und kriegerisch sind. Ich mus die klötze und stemme ausrotten, dornen und hecken weg hawen, die pfützen ausfullen und bin der grobe waldrechter, der die ban brechen und zurichten muss (I am born to wage war and I am at war with with hordes and devils, therefore my books are pretty stormy and warlike. I have to destroy stumps and trunks, chop away thornbushes and hedges, fill in puddles. I am the coarse lumberman clearing and tilling fresh ground).

Red Baron, educated as a Catholic in his youth, shared Lutheran ideas as an adolescent, concluding that the Church can only guide one's faith. Everybody has to find his/her particular way to God. 

I thoroughly studied the Bible starting in my first school year with a book full of stories and wood carvings. Later I read the Luther Bible in its original version and loved Luther's powerful language. I am still proud that when discussing religion with a Mormon colleague, I was the guy with the more profound biblical knowledge. Was he fixated instead on the Book of Mormon?

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