Ribbeck

Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck im Havelland, Ein Birnbaum in seinem Garten stand, Und kam die goldene Herbsteszeit Und die Birnen leuchteten weit und breit, Da stopfte, wenn's Mittag vom Turme scholl, Der von Ribbeck sich beide Taschen voll, Und kam in Pantinen ein Junge daher, So rief er: „Junge, wiste 'ne Beer?” Und kam ein Mädel, so rief er: „Lütt Dirn, Kumm man röwer, ick hebb 'ne Birn.”

Squire von Ribbeck at Ribbeck in Havelland, In his garden, there stood a pear tree grand, And when autumn came round, the golden tide, And pears were glowing far and wide, Squire von Ribbeck, when noon rang out, would first Fill both his pockets full to burst. And then, when a boy in his clogs came there, He called:" My lad, do you want a pear?" He would hail a girl that chanced to pass: "Come over; I have a pear, little lass!"

©Friedrich-Carl von Ribbeck

Read more of the ballad text on Friedrich-Carl von Ribbeck's international website.

 

©Friedrich-Carl von Ribbeck

Here Friedrich-Carl reads the complete ballad in German to children.

The poet and novelist Theodor Fontane wrote the popular ballad Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck im Havelland in 1889. Up to today, it has been published in German anthologies and learned in schools. Red Baron doesn't know whether it's still the case, but we learned Fontane's ballad by heart in school.

The text refers to a member of the Prussian lower nobility, Squire von Ribbeck. The family residing on Ribbeck Manor in the Havelland region has been attested since 1237, and the Ribbeck estates figure in the 1375 register of Emperor Charles IV.

The back of the Ribbeck Manor in 1893

The legend of kind-hearted Hans-Georg von Ribbeck (1689–1759) and his pear tree first appeared in a collection of fairy tales published in 1887. Fontane used this text as a base for his ballad, which he wrote in the summer of 1889.

Touring the site, it's pears everywhere. We opened our visit, typically German mit Kaffee und Kuchen - a pear (!) pie - and continued with a special guide in the park around the Ribbeck Manor, looking first at the German pear garden. 

In the park, our local guide stands under the pear tree from Lower Saxony.

In honor of Theodor Fontane, each of the 16 German states donated a pear tree planted in the park of the Ribbeck Manor.

The city-state of Hamburg's Conference Pear bears fruit a hundredfold.

The backside of the Ribbeck Manor. The East German regime expropriated the von Ribbeck family in 1946.

The pear tree of plenty stood in this place, made famous by Theodor Fontane. A storm broke it down on February 20, 1911, and a new tree was planted in 2000. Our excellent tour guide is looking for the text to recite the ballad. This recital was included in the travel service booked.

The new pear tree near the Ribbeck church in the background and the ceramic sculpture "Pear of Ribbeck" by Juliane E. Gansen.

Pears continue to fill the museum inside the Ribbeck Manor. 

A pear to climb into from the other side ...

… different pear varieties are on display ...

… and a weathered sandstone torso of King Frederick William I of Prussia. It's a classical pear shape.

Look at Friedrich Wilhelm I., the Soldier King, in a painting by Konstantin Cretius. Here he received Salzburg exiles in Berlin on April 30, 1732. The arm-lifting old man with hat and cane could have been my great-great-great...grandfather. Read more in German.

The Friedrich-Carl mentioned above von Ribbeck is the grandson of Hans-Georg Karl Anton von Ribbeck. He was a cavalry captain in the First World War and, during the Weimar Republic, a member of the "Stahlhelm," the association of front-line soldiers. After the Nazi seizure of power, Hans-Georg von Ribbeck resisted joining the SA. Although he did not belong to any resistance movement, his opposition led to his arrest in May 1944 as "an enemy of the people."

©Axel Auruszat/Wikipedia

Hans-Georg Karl Anton von Ribbeck was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the age of 64, where he was murdered in February 1945, as evidenced by a stumbling stone in front of the Ribbeck Manor.

*

Fontane

On Traces in the Garden of Poets in the Mark Brandenburg was the title of a trip organized by the Badische Zeitung.

 

Well, they meant one poet: Theodor Fontane and his book Walks through the March of Brandenburg.

And Ottmar Hörl did it once more: Theodor Fontane, Wanderer zwischen den Welten at the Neuruppin Museum.

Red Baron always wanted to explore Havelland, so the trip fitted perfectly into my plans.

The travel group, which included 22 people, was ideal for excursions and guided tours. Our lodging was the Hotel zur Insel am Markt in Werder, a small town on an island in the meandering Havel River.

Immediately upon arrival, I noticed two imposing and typically German trees, an oak and a linden, on the market square. Werder's citizens planted the oak in 1871 out of joy for German unity under Prussian rule.

In the background, the Hotel zur Insel

The Linden tree dates from 1920 and is dedicated to Queen Luise, the universally beloved wife of King Frederick William III. During the Napoleonic period, he came along as a weak ruler, but Luise courageously stood up to the usurper.

 

Queen Luise. Painting at Paretz Castle.

When, at a meeting in Berlin after the Prussian defeat at Jena and Auerstedt, the emperor wanted to steer the conversation to the innocuous topics of fashion and jewelry, "You've got a lovely robe on there! Where might it have been made?" the queen replied, "Shall we talk of such insignificant things at such an important moment? And later, "Sire, the fame of Frederick the Great has deceived us about our means." Thus, Luise received the honorary name Joan of Arc of Germany.

Here are some highlights photographed while walking through Werder:

We passed the Werder town hall on our way to the highest point on the island ...

 .

... that is crowned by a Bockwindmühle. The dictionary translates this word into post mill, the earliest type of European windmill.

Werder's Holy Ghost Church was built in 1858 in a neo-Gothic style. It is nothing spectacular, but inside, there is a treasure, but the door was locked.

©Bautsch/Wikipedia

I took the above picture from Wikipedia: Christ as a Pharmacist. According to Matthew 9: The strong don't need the doctor, but the sick do. Jesus mixes faith, hope, and love but adds resistance, help, and peace as a remedy.

No, this is not Fontane's pear tree but rather a 300-year-old crooked specimen of Red Bergamot. The sign reads: This natural monument reminds us of Werder's tradition of growing fruit.

Here are two other examples of fruits from the Havelland. 

The hotel greeted us for dinner with a glass of fruit wine (blackcurrant) on the right. But what is in the middle? It is a Müller-Thurgau from Wachtelberg, a wine from the quail hill on the mainland above Werder. It's climate change, stupid!

*

Art of Being...Delicious

The invitation of the Carl-Schurz-Haus to a conversation performance and dinner yesterday night was tempting:

Nuts rolling after hazelnuts. Amber, love sweat ... (Michel Serres) - Anyone who goes on like Michel Serres about a bottle of dessert wine belongs to the giants of taste, the titans at the plate. For these giants, questions such as those raised by Brillant-Savarin, namely, which partridge leg tastes better, are by no means petitessen. David Sedaris, on the other hand, is tempted by the sting of raw fish being served in chocolate puddles in New York. Similarly significant may be the problems of Yuri Rychëu's Siberian Chukchi on their first encounter with a melon. The hero of the Brazilian connoisseur João Ubaldo Ribeiro prefers to eat Dutchman. The international literary feast and gourmet will be served up by the authors Jürgen Reuß and Stephan Kuß, together with theater actors and native speakers of English and French. Gourmet chef José Lavor will spoil the literary performance with culinary delights, serving two antipasti creations from his street food truck to accompany the reading performance, as well as the subsequent summery dinner main course in the open air. In case of inclement weather, the dinner will take place indoors. There will be live music by John Schu and Karsten Kramer as well as background on the dishes.

In particular, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's wisdom found all my attention:

One often hears that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Still, Lichtenberg's remark* has a more dramatic dimension and caught my attention: Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of people. Who knows if we don't often have a well-cooked soup to thank for the air pump and a bad one for the war. 

*Below the banner in red

After eating Poutine, did Putin have an upset stomach and, therefore, subsequently invaded Ukraine? 

Red Baron went to the conversation performance and dinner and didn't regret it.

In the background, John Schu on base and Karsten Kramer
at the keys are playing Red Baron's kind of music.

When I arrived, I felt thirsty and had my first drink re-tasting Carl Schurz's Democratic beer.

The literary performer on stage. They read with great dedication … 

... and the applause was well deserved.

A reflective, cheerful conclusion with a Caribbean ragout in the cool of the twilight.

*

AKT NACKT KUSS

Yesterday, Red Baron was invited to a Midissage named Act Nude Kiss at Freiburg’s Museum für Neue Kunst.

Until The Place Is Buzzing. With this slogan, the friends association of the Museum für Neue Kunst celebrates its 30th anniversary from April 7 to September 10 with short exhibitions and workshops.
As part of a light, film, and space production by Christina Ohlmer, the performance and live nude drawing was called Midissage. The word is formed with French midi, i.e., high noon meaning here the middle of the exhibition period. Vernissage would have been inappropriate. Varnish the nude models?

Erotic curves 1 (©Christina Ohlmer)

Erotic curves 2 (©Christina Ohlmer)

Christiana was inspired by a video she made at the Rodin Museum in Paris, tracing the erotic curves of the sculpture The Kiss impressively in white marble. Try to do this with the bronze cast now on display at the Museum for Contemporary Art.

The performance proper started with a nude model entering the room, carrying a drawing pad, sitting down, and starting to sketch. A few minutes later, a young woman entered, equipped with painting utensils, sat down, and began to paint the model.

Another young woman joined, dressed in a cape. She and the nude posed in front of the artist, who was trying hard to get the moving scene on her drawing pad.

A young man also equipped with his drawing material entered sat down, and started to paint the two models too.

©female artist 1

©male artist 1

Then the other model dropped her cape, and the two nudes posed together such that the two painters still sitting on the floor could no longer follow the rapidly following postures.

©female artist 1

©male artist 1

Desperate, they started portraying each other as the only subjects at rest.

Eventually, the two nude models began to interfere with the efforts of the two artists putting their hands on or sitting on the half-finished paintings.

The two painters had enough. They stood up and, in turn, started to perform like the two models. In the end, all four were moving and raising their hands. Finally, they attached the half-finished paintings to the wall.

The end: Note the "fallen" cape

What I found most impressive was: The almost static scene initially evolved slowly but then more rapidly into a dynamic performance.

Artists and officials in the discussion

*

Hamburger Kunsthalle

When Red Baron visited Hamburg in April during Passion Week, our group had a guided tour of Hamburg's art gallery. In the meantime, I blogged about other topics but never forgot to finish my Hamburg trilogy.

When I was in Hamburg in the past, I visited the new sections on contemporary art housed in a newly constructed annex or saw special exhibitions at the Kunsthalle.

This time an art historian guided us through the original part of the Kunsthalle. I was impressed because the charming lady concentrated her explanations on a few objects instead of showing us as many paintings as possible.

We started with a giant painting (520 × 952 cm) from 1878, "Der Einzug Karls V. in Antwerpen im Jahre 1520" (Entry of Charles V into Antwerp in 1520) by Austrian painter Hans Makart. The painter drew his inspiration from real entries in the diary of Albrecht Dürer, who witnessed the event on his trip to the Netherlands. (Enlarge by clicking the picture and try to find Dürer.) The style is called Salon Painting, named after the Salon in Paris, where painters presented works of art that corresponded to the taste of the Parisian ruling class. With historic and literary-mythological themes, the artists adapted in content and style.

Following this Bing bang, we continued with more serious business. We saw Caspar David Friedrich's Romantic painting, "The Sea of Ice."

Critics see Friedrich's exploration of the theme of shipwrecks as an allegory of the failure of Germany's striving for unity in the political environment of the Restoration. A more concrete reference would be the North Pole expeditions, which came to public attention at the beginning of the 19th century. Some knowledgeable people interpret the painting of Das Eismeer against the background of the artist's personal setbacks. 

When the winters were colder in Europe, Friedrich sketched ice floes piled up near Dresden on the Elbe River, but here the eternal ice of the Arctic is meant, in which the failed ship signifies the powerlessness and transience of man.

Friedrich once said, "The painter should not merely paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within himself. But if he sees nothing in himself, he should also refrain from painting what he sees in front of him."

On the admission ticket: An alienated wanderer.

Why didn't the art historian present us with Friedrich's best-known Romantic masterpiece Wanderer above the Sea of Fog? The reason was simple:

Here is another wanderer watching Wind Turbines above the Sea of Fog:

As found on Facebook

Next was "The Hülsenbeck Children," painted in 1805–06 by the German Romantic painter  Philippe Otto Runge.

The painting presents three stages of childhood development where the siblings play in front of a fence in the open air. They are free and not confined or enclosed.

The youngest child blindly clutches a sunflower leaf while he opens his eyes in amazement. The older one has grasped the handle of the drawbar and energetically swings his whip, while the girl already shows herself responsible and gives a sign to the little one with her right hand.

And here comes one of my favorite impressionists, Max Liebermann, with a self-portrait.

Over almost forty years - until the outbreak of the First World War - Liebermann spent nearly every summer in the Netherlands. In his eyes, the simple life of the rural population and their close-to-nature, still unalienated existence left a lasting impression on the Berlin city dweller.

In addition, the impressive experience of the vast flat landscape speaks in all clarity from his large-format early main work, "The Net Mending Women," painted 1887/1889.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Riding in the Bois de Boulogne 1873

From 1890 on, Liebermann transited from Realism to Impressionism, a style practiced in France already 15 years earlier.

Under the Tents 1900

Like Renoir, for Liebermann, bourgeois leisure activities became the defining repertoire of his painting, although on a lower level, like the beer garden in Leyden.

Liebermann's artistic path was also shaped by his friendship with the first director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Alfred Lichtwark. In 1889 Lichtwark established the department "Collection of Pictures from Hamburg." He commissioned representatives of the avant-garde to paint motifs from Hamburg and its surroundings. 

Liebermann contributed to the Collection "Evening at the Ulenhorster Fährhaus" in 1910 following Lichtwark's idea using familiar motifs to sensitize the public to modern art, i.e., Impressionism.

In their homeland, the three giants of German Impressionism, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt, and Lovis Corinth, were known as Dreigestirn (triple star or officially translated triumvirate).

Here is a stamp commemorating Max Slevogt.

Charlotte Corinth at her Dressing Table 1911

The last painting we saw during our guided tour was Charlotte Berend-Corinth at her Dressing Table. She was a painter herself and Lovis Corinth's wife. Once again and spontaneously, Lovis paid homage to her beauty, this time in a bright room against the light of a large window producing subtle shades of turquoise, blue, and white.

This painting follows the general subject of "Woman at the Toilet," characterized by the depiction of a lightly dressed beauty in an interior, sitting in front of a mirror and devoting herself to her appearance.


We were at the end, but Red Baron continued to explore the adjacent rooms with German expressionists in droves.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Girl at Her Toilet, 1915

And here we go again with "Woman at the Toilet," although the earliest expressionistic painting in the Kunsthalle is from 1903.

While our Dreigestirn Liebermann, Slevogt, and Corinth still indulged in late Impressionism, Paula Modersohn-Becker painted Mother and Child in expressionistic style as early as 1903.

Max Pechstein, On the Banks of the Lake, 1910

Emil Nolde, Tugboat on the Elbe,1910

Max Beckmann, The Bearing of the Cross, 1911

August Macke, Mother, and Child in the Park, 1914

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Two Against the World, 1924

And here are two "geometrical" painters from the Bauhaus:

Lyonel Feininger, East Choir of Halle Cathedral, 1931

Oskar Schlemmer, Stairway Scene, 1932

With some time left, I returned to the room with historical scenes, for Red Baron likes historical paintings.

Friedrich Karl Hausmann, Galilei before the Council, 1861

Anton von Werner, Graf Moltke in His Study in Versailles, 1872

Anton von Werner, the famous painter of the Proclamation of the German Kaiser in Versailles,     observed Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke enjoying his stay in France.

Pasquale Migliorettti, The Sons of Edward IV, before 1867

Here is a piece of unsolved English history:

 
After the death of the English King Edward IV, his brother Richard had the king's sons, the two princes, Edward V, already crowned king at the age of twelve, and Richard of Shrewsbury, nine years old, locked up in the Tower of London. Without further ado, Richard had declared his nephews illegitimate and ascended the throne himself in June 1483 as Richard III. The two princes were last seen in the summer of 1483. Were they murdered? This keeps the British guessing to this day. Since then, Richard's reputation as a power-hungry, brutal villain precedes him, particularly when William Shakespeare added fuel to the legend. In his most popular drama "Richard III, " he called him a "hunchbacked poisonous toad." In the plot, Richard III becomes a ruthless, murderous uncle who commits all kinds of atrocities.

Were the princes murdered? Red Baron once saw a movie where the two brothers drowned in a barrel of red wine.

So far, the Church of England, with the support of Queen Elizabeth II, refused to grant permission to test the bones found in the Tower of London. Other reports refer to remains thought to be those of Princes Edward and Richard that are currently buried in Westminster Abbey. There are rumors that King Charles may authorize a forensic investigation being on the record as stating that he would be interested in solving the mystery.

*