Changes in Burial Culture

The trend of changing from casket burial (Erdbestattung) to cremation (Urnenbestattung) has dramatic consequences for the maintenance of cemeteries. Red Baron went to a presentation explaining the development in Freiburg.

The introductory talk by Freiburg's mayor of finances, Stefan Breiter, was followed by a long walk over the 27 ha (66 acres) main cemetery.

Hainbestattung

Mr. Martin Leser, the head of Freiburg's cemeteries (a total of 17 !), showed that less surface is needed for burials when nowadays 70% of the people opt for cremation or even have the ashes of their defuncts spread in a grove (Hainbestattung). Ten years ago, still, 70% preferred a casket burial.

It was Elisabeth's wish to be buried traditionally.

Pebble pond and letterbox

 We also passed by the fetus burial area. Parents had asked the municipal council for a possibility to express their mourning. Following existing examples, Freiburg's cemetery administration introduced a pond of pebbles. Parents may label the individual stones and write the last letter to their lost babies.

Within ten years, Freiburg's main cemetery has become greener.

The final discussion took place at the central consecration hall. We were informed that the cemetery administration is working on a new financing scheme due to less revenue but an increasing workload maintaining more and smaller lawn surfaces between existing and remaining burial sites*.
*At Freiburg, plots are" bought" for 15 years. If the burial lease is not renewed, the site is vacated.

Temporary use for unneeded surfaces: Gardening, pet cemetery, and bees.

Some participants proposed during the discussion that lawn mowing is stopped and wildflowers are allowed to grow to reduce costs.

Here Red Baron learned that meadows need Magerböden (poor soils) while the earth at the cemetery is fertile, as required for lawns. This is why in one case, peripherally located plots were liberated and alloted to private gardening (Schrebergärten).

In the end, Mr. Leser summarized his talk:

Cemeteries are central places of mourning and remembrance and should remain so!

Present-day societies require multicultural cemeteries to meet the burial needs of different ethnic and religious groups.

Cemeteries will change their appearance by choosing more and more easy-care burials.

Cemeteries must continue to fulfill their function as monofunctional green spaces.

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Splinters 2

Here comes the second issue of Splinters.


Bielefeld

Remember my blog about Bielefeld, a place that does not exist? Bielefeld gibt es nicht.

©Stadt Bielefeld

The city of Bielefeld would like to kill the conspiracy theory for good and is offering a reward of one million euros for the definite proof that Bielefeld does not exist.

With this gag, Bielefeld's marketing department wants to make the city more attractive to tourists.


Kieserlos

In his ballad Der Graf von Habsburg (The Count of Habsburg) Friedrich Schiller wrote the following lines in 1803: Denn geendigt nach langem verderblichen Streit, War die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit (So ended after long and depraving quarrels, The terrible time without an emperor).

Schiller referred to the so-called interregnum when the Holy Roman Empire was without an emperor from 1245 to 1273.

Mourning the dead king (©Wikipedia)

In fact, contemporaries had already mourned, "Also das Römische rich eine Wile one kieser stunt."

History repeats itself, for from August 24 to September 1, Kieser Training in Freiburg is closed for a total renovation of its premises. Depending on his muscle training, Red Baron thought, "This will be a kieserlose, schreckliche Zeit."


Yiddish

I still remember the golden eighties. When staying in New York on a Sunday morning, I hunted for electronics in Jewish shops on 34th Street. Listening to the sales personnel talking in Yiddish, I nearly felt at home. This came to my mind when I read the following invitation on the Internet:

Most of the words are not of German origin but are derived from Hebrew, so I had to look them up. Let me start enlarging my vocabulary:

chazer > a pig
ganef > a thief
ligner (Lügner) > a lier
mamser > a bastard
nebbish > a meek and timid person
nokhshleper (Nachschlepper) > a person hanging on becoming a burden
pisher > a pisser
putz (Putzlaputz) > a stupid and worthless person
schlub > a stupid, worthless, or unattractive person
schmegegge > bullshit
schmuck > a jerk, idiot (pejorative for the penis);
schnorrer (Schnorrer) > a person asking for small things (cigarettes, a drink) without offering anything in return
shande (Schande) > a disgrace
shleger (Schläger) > a brawler
shtarker (Starker) > a strong person
tsvuak > a hypocrite


Schwarze Null

Maybe you have already read about Germany's black zero. Our Ministers of Finance were stubbornly watching that the federal budget remained balanced during recent years.

©Der Spiegel

Admire the Schwarze Null formed by the staff in the courtyard of the Federal Ministry of Finances. They honor the parting of Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democrat), who is followed by Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat).

Presently, the pressure is on to behead the holy cow with the blade of new debts. Fresh money is needed for investments to moderate the effects of climate change.
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A German Legend

While in Berlin, Red Baron visited the Emil Nolde exhibition at the old Hamburg train station. Here is a copy of two pages of the flyer (©Nationalgalerie).

You are looking at the main entrance of the historic terminus for all trains arriving from Hamburg. Like all old cities, Berlin suffered because trains from various directions ended in railhead stations at the former city fortifications. So there were the Dresden, Stettin, Silesian, Görlitz, Lehrte (Hannover), Anhalt, and Potsdam termini. People who wanted to pass through Berlin had to change trains and stations as well, just what the many horse-drawn cabs were waiting for. 

Only since Germany's reunification Berlin has a Hauptbahnhof (central station) with an upper and lower level where trains run from west to east and from south to north cross and meet.

A look into the former platform hall.

The building is now called Museum für Gegenwart (contemporary art) and is part of the National Gallery.

On the staircase, a photo of the artist and his wife.
In the back, his atelier building at Niebüll near the Danish border.

The Nolde exhibition was on the upper floor. I took photos, but it is a pity that the copyright does not permit me to show you some of his colorful expressionist masterpieces.

Having understood the statement above about Nolde's degenerate art (Entartete Kunst), it is difficult to realize that he was a convinced Nazi and anti-Semite. Wikipedia writes, "Nolde supported the National Socialist German Workers' Party from the early 1920s, having become a member of its Danish section."

In his book, Years of Fighting* in 1934, Nolde wrote, "At the age of 18 I had seen the first Jew in Flensburg [...] Jews have much intelligence and spirituality, but only a little soul and little creative gift.
*Cf. to Hitler's book "Mein Kampf."

Later "he expressed anti-semitic, negative opinions about Jewish artists, and regarded expressionism as a distinctively Germanic style. This view was shared by some other members of the Nazi party, notably Joseph Goebbels."

But Hitler was against all degenerate art, "and the Nazi regime officially condemned Nolde's work. Until that time, he had been held in great esteem in Germany. A total of 1,052 of his works were removed from museums, more than those of any other artist (Wikipedia)."

©Bundesarchiv

Nolde protested vigorously, but some of his paintings were part of the exhibition Entartete Kunst in Munich in 1937. On Juli 2, 1938, Nolde wrote in a letter to Goebbels that he saw himself "as almost the only German artist in the open fight against the alienation of German art*."
*Cf. to Philipp Lenard's book "Deutsche Physik."

Goebbels visiting the exhibition Entartete Kunst.
To his left are two paintings of Nolde showing scenes from the Bible.
©Bundesarchiv

Here is a photo from a film shown at the Berlin exhibition.
Nolde's cycle, The Life of Christ, is prominently in the back.

Behind an art expert trying to disentangle Nolde's entanglement in the Nazi ideology,
the same paintings as above are shown.
So you may get a forefeeling of Nolde's richness in color.

On August 23, 1941, Nolde was expelled from the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (National Chamber of Fine Arts) because of a "lack of reliability."

Note Nolde's weakness in spelling: Tod instead of tot. Tod (noun) means death.

On May 6, 1945, Nolde wrote in his diary, "Hitler is dead. He was my enemy. His cultural dilettantism brought much suffering, persecution, and ostracism to my art and me. Now he is dead."

After the war, Nolde's exclusion from the National Chamber of Fine Arts was überhöht (exaggerated) as a "ban on the painting." However, it merely meant a ban on purchasing all artists' supplies, such as oil paints, canvas, and brushes, and the prohibition of the sale, exhibition, and reproduction of his works.

Nolde continued painting privately, mostly doing watercolors and flower paintings called the "Unpainted Pictures*" after the war when Nolde's role as a Nazi victim emerged. Siegfried Lenz's bestseller novel Deutschstunde emphasized Nolde's victimhood, substantially describing the fate of a fictitious painter Max Ludwig Nansen in the Nazi area.
*The watercolors frequently served Nolde as templates for oil paintings after the war

Nolde was ranked in group V as unencumbered.

Because of his Berufsverbot (occupational ban) of 1941 and his Absage gegen das Regime (rejection of the regime), Nolde received the note "unencumbered" in his process of denazification.

Nolde's Persilschein for a local farmer he signed with Dr. Emil Nolde.

As a prominent victim of the Nazi regime, he issued several Persilscheine* for friends. In 1946 the man who never studied became an honorary professor. There were no objections. Only one critic called the painter an entarteter Entarter (degenerated degenerator) on the occasion of Nolde's 80th birthday and an exhibition of his works in 1947. As one of the first persons, Nolde received the new German medal, Pour le Merite of Science and Art, in 1952.
*Certificates to bleach former Nazis for "Nothing bleaches whiter than Persil," a well-known German washing powder

As an artist undisputed, Emil Nolde remains a human being forever in the twilight.

President Obama in Merkel's office.
You may guess Nolde's colorful seaside painting of 1936, "Brecher"
(The Breaker), in the upper left corner.

P.S.: Until recently, two Emil Nolde paintings decorated Angela Merkel's office in the chancellery. Our chancellor had them removed, given the painter's past.
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Museumsinsel

Here is a model of the Berlin Museum Island. The two arms of the river Spree in black, forming the island, are clearly visible. The Hohenzollern City Castel in dark gray under reconstruction is in the back. It will be called the Humboldt Forum and is an exhibition and cultural exchange place. On the left, in light gray, rises the "new" Lutheran Berliner Dom (cathedral), compensating somehow - as I explained - for the Catholic Kölner Dom (Cologne cathedral).

The Museumsinsel proper is filled with the relatively small Altes Museum, followed by the Neues Museum, and to the left by the Alte Nationalgalerie. The massive building of the Pergamonmuseum dominates the scene, and last, but not least, the Bode-Museum is located at the island's end.

The James Simon Galerie. In the background is the still shabby facade of the Neues Museum.

As of late, the Berlin Museum Island has an extra attraction, the James Simon Galery.

The new central entrance facility giving access to all five museums on the island is named after the great "benefactor Henri James Simon, a German entrepreneur, art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts during the Wilhelmine period (Wikipedia)."

Here are some maps of Berlin's center showing the development of the Museumsinsel:

1696 baroque fortifications protected the City Castel
and the royal garden, later called Lustgarten.
Further to the north, the island is fallow land.

In 1804 the city had extended to the west with the Zeughaus, Prinz Heinrich Palais,
the opera, St. Hedwigskirche, and the Französische Kirche on Gendarmenmarkt.
Only small building activity is seen on the island in the north.

In fact, the Prussian King Frederik Wilhelm IV initiated the Berlin Museum Island on 8 March 1841, "Implementation of my plan to transform the entirety of the Spree Island behind the Museum into a sanctuary of the arts and sciences."

In 1841 the now-called Altes Museum already existed, and further north, the building of the
Neues Museum is finished. Note the old Berliner Dom on the right of the Lustgarten.
Prince Heinrich Palais has become the University.

In 1908 four museums were built. The Pergamonmuseum ist still missing.
Note the massive new Berliner Dom on the right of the Lustgarten.

When Red Baron was recently in Berlin, he visited the Neues Museum and the Alte Nationalgalerie on a Sunday morning. I was there early to avoid the crowds of tourists invading, particularly the Pergamonmuseum and the Neues Museum, where you find James Simon's most popular gift, the Nefertiti bust, Berlin's Mona Lisa.

Double Statue of the Princesses Luise and Friederike of Prussia
by Johann Gottfried Schadow

I concentrated on the Alte Nationalgalerie this time, where two charming sisters, Luise and Friederike, Johann Gottfried Schadow's masterpiece, greeted me at the entrance. Luise, Prussian queen by marriage to Frederick William III, resisted Napoleon more than her husband. Therefore, many of my countrymen venerate the beautiful patriot as Germany's Jeanne d'Arc.

Paintings with famous court scenes by Prussia's glorifier, Adolph Menzel, dominate the exhibition in the Old National Gallery.

Proclamation of Wilhelm I as Deutscher Kaiser at Versailles by Anton von Werner.
This painting is not in Berlin's National Gallery. I took the photo at Friedrichsruh
in the Sachsenwald forest, where retired Bismarck spent his remaining years.

But there are other paintings by Anton von Werner.

Anton von Werner 1895:
Crown Prince Frederick at the Court Ball in 1878

Von Werner also portrayed tout Berlin in the Second Reich. In the white uniform of a cuirassier, imposing Crown Prince Frederick Wilhelm is the undisputed star of Berlin society. On him are based all the hopes of a necessary liberalization of the Prussian state of authority. And the prince surrounds himself with liberals: Opposite stand two co-founders of the Progressive Party, Berlin's mayor and President of the Reichstag Max von Forckenbeck, and in the red robe of the dean of the medical faculty the physician Rudolf Virchow, whose political leitmotif is freedom paired with its daughters: education and prosperity.

Between the Crown Prince and Virchow stands the physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, President of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. Finally, von Werner pays respect to his famous colleague Adolph Menzel - also liberal-minded - showing the little man entering the White Hall at the City Castle through the door.

Back to Adolph Menzel.

Adolph Menzel by Reinhold Begas 1875

Adolph Menzel 1850/51: Flute concert by Frederick the Great at Sanssouci

Menzel's best-known painting of 1850/52 is the Flute Concert of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci. The venue is the concert hall in Sanssouci Castle. King Frederick II is in the center. On the left behind him, his sister, Margravine Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, sits on the sofa as the guest of honor. To her left is the other sister of the king, Princess Amalie, later becoming the Abbess of Quedlinburg.

The standing gentlemen from left to right are Baron Jakob Friedrich von Bielfeld, Opera Director Gustav Adolph von Gotter, President of the Academy of Sciences Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, mathematician, and physicist, as well as Kapellmeister Carl Heinrich Graun. Court lady Countess Sophie Caroline von Camas sits behind the king and Frederick's boyhood friend, Isaak Franz Egmont Chevalier de Chasôt.

The musicians are: On the harpsichord Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; standing right to him Concertmaster Franz Benda. On the right edge of the painting Johann Joachim Quantz, Frederick's flute teacher.

Adolph Menzel 1844: Rear building and backyard.

Nobody knew in 1844, when Menzel painted a precursor of the Berlin wall, that he would become the painter of Prussia's glory.

Adolph Menzel 1848: Round Table of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci

The Old National Gallery only has a colored sketch of another famous Menzel painting: Friedrichs Tischrunde in Sansouci.

In all those wars Frederick had waged, 180,000 Prussians had died. The Treaty of Hubertusburg in 1763 ended the Third Silesian War. It was called peace of exhaustion, confirmed by the king himself when he wrote, "Our fame in wars is magnificent to look at from afar; but whoever is a witness, in which misery this fame is acquired, under which physical deprivations and efforts in heat and cold, in hunger, dirt, and nakedness, he learns to judge celebrity quite differently."

This is a late insight after 16 bloody battles fought, but now Frederick started to act according to the maxims of his Political Testament, "It is the duty of every good citizen to serve his fatherland, to remember that he is not alone in the world for himself, but that he must work for the good of the society in which nature has placed him. According to my weak forces and insights, I have tried to fulfill this duty."

Adolph Menzel 1849: A petition Frederick's subjects dare to present during the king's morning ride.

Frederick took up his anti-machiavellian ideas that a ruling prince is the first servant of his state and has the task of making his people happy. He worked like a man possessed on the "retablissment" and on the improvement of the life of his subjects. He also indulged in magnificent buildings such as the New Palace in Potsdam. Its construction began in the year of the peace treaty of 1763 and was completed in 1769.

Adolph Menzel 1852: The Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Here is a strange painting. It looks as if Menzel had experimented with cubism.

Adolph Menzel 1857:
The encounter of Frederick II and Emperor Joseph II at Neisse in 1769 (Sketch)

Another famous Menzel painting shows the reconciliation between Prussia and Austria.

Adolph Menzel 1857:
The encounter of Frederick II and Emperor Joseph II at Neisse in 1769

There is a marked difference between the colored sketch and the final painting. The encounter between the young Kaiser Joseph II and the aging Frederick is warmer and more intimate in the finished work. In 1857 Menzel did not know that the two German dynasties would fight a fraternal war for supremacy nine years later.

Adolph Menzel 1857: Handshake between the Duke of Wellington and Blücher
after the battle of Belle-Alliance (Waterloo)

In the same year, Menzel also finished a painting of Prussian glory, as you saw already.

Adolph Menzel 1871:
The departure of King Wilhelm I from Berlin on 31 Juli 1870 to meet his army.

Finally, as an old man, Menzel adulated the victory over archenemy France in 1871.

At the terrasse of the James Simon Gallery.
People look down onto the left branch of the river Spree.
The restaurant is inside the building behind the windows.

So much history called for a meal and a drink. The restaurant personnel at the James Samuel Galery still needed to be run in. Although the waiting time was long, the food was not too bad.

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Walking in Berlin

On the last day of his recent visit to Berlin, Red Baron visited Kieser Training at Berlin-Mitte.

Nobel Prize winner Robert Koch

Their premises are near the Charité, the famous hospital where giants of medicine, including Rudolph Virchow, Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, and Ferdinand Sauerbruch, practiced.

The entrance to Kieser Training Berlin-Mitte is hidden.

The reception in the back has a corporate look.

The narrow lockers were a shock. Only two hangers! My jeans shorts already filled the whole width. What do they do during the winter?

There was little attendance for a Monday morning.

In Freiburg, the training machines are not as tightly positioned.

An exciting addition to machine B1 is the foot rollers we do not have in Freiburg.

For lunch, I went to Berlin's Disneyland. The German Democratic Republic constructed an old Berlin quarter around Nicolai Church to make East Berlin attractive to tourists.

Few tourists were there at noon, but many eateries invited me for lunch. I chose Bolte's Berliner Steakhaus, although I was annoyed by the Deppenapostroph in the name borrowed from Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz.

I did not choose a steak but a specialty of the House: Benser Blutwurst*. The black pudding produced by the famous manufacturer of blutwurst located in Berlin-Neukölln is roasted and served on a slice of apple with a mustard potato mash and onion melt. I downed the sausage with a Berliner Weiße mit Schuss (white beer with a shot of woodruff syrup).
*Note: This traditional dish is not offered on the English menu card.

Here is a painting of Witwe (widow) Bolte inside the Steakhaus.

Widow Bolte on her way to the cellar where she keeps her Sauerkraut

Wilhelm Busch rhymed in his comic Max und Moritz:

Daß sie von dem Sauerkohle Eine Portion sich hole, Wofür sie besonders schwärmt, Wenn er wieder aufgewärmt. -

Widow Bolte went for a sour Kraut, which she would devour Warmed a little on the fire With exceeding great desire.

Following lunch, I decided to walk along the Spree River toward Humboldt University.

Tourists are on boats. The scene looks like Venice. In the background are the Berlin Cathedral and the Hohenzollern Castle, the latter of which is under construction, as is the Humboldt Forum.

Note that the back facade of the city castle was not reconstructed in its original form.

Following the street, there is the building of our Foreign Ministry on the left and Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Bauakademie (Building Academy) on the right. The former "is considered one of the forerunners of modern architecture due to its hithertofore uncommon use of red brick and the relatively streamlined facade of the building" (Wikipedia). To demonstrate the beauty of the building, one corner was reerected in the original masonry. The rest is simulated by painted canvas.

The Schinkel square in front of the Academy is of rare beauty.

The statue of Schinkel is in the middle, while that to the left represents Christian Peter Wilhelm Friedrich Beuth, who is called the father of Prussian manufacturing. The one on the right shows Albrecht Conrad Thaer, the founder of the science of agriculture.

Looking to the right shows the cupola of the Humboldt Forum, which is still under construction.

Crossing the Spree River on the Schlossbrücke opens a good view of the Museumsinsel with its new Henri James Simon Forum. Stay tuned for my next blog.

The statue of Alexander von Humboldt is in front of Berlin's Humboldt Universität. In 1939, the University of Havana dedicated the sculpture to the second discoverer of Cuba.

There is yet another statue in the courtyard of the main university building. It represents the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz.

Driving on Unter den Linden with a view of Brandenburg Gate. 
In the back to the left is the building of the US embassy.

Being tired, I took the public double-decker bus 100, often "abused" by visitors for sightseeing. This famous line runs from Alexanderplatz to Bahnhof Zoo, touching most major Berlin sights on its route.

I arrived with the S-Bahn at the Hauptbahnhof (central train station), where I had a good view of the Reichstag building. To the right is the building of the Swiss embassy.

I will end my photostory with an evening view from my hotel with the river Spree in front and the Federal Chancellery (Germany's White House) in the back.
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