My Cornish Diary 1

Two weeks ago, Red Baron spent a week in Devonshire and Cornwall in the south of England. One of my objectives was to have a conversation with a person from that region, remembering well Professor Higgins' complaint when he met Eliza selling flowers at the Covent Garden Opera:

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique ...
And he continued:
Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse,
Hear a Cornishman converse ...

The bus tour to England's southwest started from a hotel in Heathrow and took our group to historical Plymouth via Stonehenge.

We stopped at Winchester, where its famous cathedral was made known to the younger generation through a 1966 song by the New Vaudeville Band: "Winchester Cathedral, you're bringing me down." You stood, and you watched as my baby left town. 

While humming the tune, a stained glass window on one side of the transept caught my attention. The man on the lower left-hand side, I had seen before. It was King George VI with his wife, Elizabeth, who is opposite him, better known as Queen Mum. A guide confirmed my guess and added that King Henry IV, with his second wife, Joan of Navarre, is depicted in the two fields above. On February 7, 1403, Henry married Joanna de Navarre, the daughter of Charles d'Évreux, King of Navarre, at Winchester.

Plymouth, the city of Francis Drake, the Mayflower, 

and Christian Victor, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein

The famous Hoe above Plymouth harbor, with lots of people enjoying the sun

Text on the bronze plate: Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth on December 13, 1577, to begin the "famous voyage" during which he traversed the Strait of Magellan and discovered the Drake Passage south of Cape Horn. Drake then sailed the Golden Hinde north and in June 1579 landed in California. He took possession of that region for Queen Elizabeth, naming it Nova Albion. He returned to Plymouth on September 26, 1580, having circumnavigated the globe. Drake was knighted aboard the Golden Hinde at Deptford in the presence of Queen Elizabeth on April 4, 1581. Do Californians know that they belong to the Commonwealth of Nations?

Quitting the Hoe where Sir Francis finished his game of bowls before descending to the Plymouth harbor and attacking the Spanish Armada, our group passed a monument with a memorial plate:

This obelisk is erected by Alfred Mosely to the memory of Christian Victor, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, and to the officers, non-commissioned officers & men of the Gloucestershire, Somersetshire & Devonshire regiments who fell during the Boer War, 1899-1902. A German prince in Her Majesty's service against the Boers? 

Well, yes, or somewhat no. The father of Christian Victor, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, fell in love with Princess Helena, daughter of Queen Victoria. She permitted marriage with the proviso that the couple live in Great Britain. Their eldest son, Christian Victor, was educated in England and became known to a broader crowd as the Royal cricketer. His Highness, Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, served in the British Army in Africa. He did not fall in action but died of enteric fever in Pretoria, where he was buried on British soil.

A replica of the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor. A commemorative plate reads: On September 6, 1620, in the Mayoralty of Thomas Fownes, after being "kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower, in the Providence of God to settle in NEW PLYMOUTH, and to lay the foundation of the NEW ENGLAND STATES. The ancient Cawsey, where they embarked, was destroyed not many Years afterwards, but the Site of their Embarkation is marked by the Stone bearing the name of the MAYFLOWER in the pavement of the adjacent Pier. This Tablet was erected in the Mayoralty of I. T. Bond in 1891, to commemorate their Departure and the visit to Plymouth in July of that Year of several of their Descendants and Representatives.

One of the trip's highlights was visiting Lanhydrock, the most complete Victorian country house in Cornwall, with its beautiful park and gardens.

The National Trust made the house's interior most attractive for visitors by decorating it with artifacts from the good old days. Sitting around a decorated table ...

... and sipping French water:

Having already discussed the virtues of high beds, I was captivated by this really high one with a hot water bottle and those mysterious fir cones on the steps. I recalled a German myth that fir cones should help father heirs.

However, this will not work when his Lordship prefers to spend his time in the presence of his trophies from India:

The country house has the most impressive kitchen facilities ... 

... with fromage et dessert prepared on the same table:

Absolute plumbing on a WC with down-piping made from lead:

The decline of English plumbing. The nation that once invented the WC and gave it to the world, such that for sanitary equipment on the continent, the imperial 7/8th of an inch has still not been replaced by a metric thread, now imports faucets from Schiltach in the Black Forest.

It seems that the English adopted the binary system for fines. It is £250 for smoking in the hotel bed at Plymouth:

Increasing by a factor of two for boozing on the sands of St. Michael's Mount:

The fine doubles again for dog poop left behind in the streets of Polperro:

I asked His Lordship about his opinion, but he did not deign to look at me.

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New Drumming Authorized

Do you remember my blog about the Freiburg Gipfel in December 2010, which told the story of some drummers who had their 13 instruments confiscated by the police? The group called Sambastas was accused of disturbing with their noise the meeting between former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and our chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Sambastas in full action (©Badische Zeitung)

There had been a follow-up in June 2011 with the drummers asking for their instruments to be returned without paying the ransom. 

When the municipal authorities refused their request, the Sambastas forced a court decision. One year after their complaint, a Freiburg judge, after four hours of deliberation, decided that confiscating the drums had been illegal. Even the argument that noise measurements showed peaks of 104.9 decibels, with 100 decibels being the threshold at which noise can be harmful to your health (the Sambastas actually kept their ears plugged), did not influence the judge. Since the initial argument of the authorities to confiscate the drums had been the disturbance of the summit meeting and not the noise - the latter had only been mentioned in retrospect - the judge did not consider this argument. His verdict was a slap in the face of Freiburg's administration. Wise not to make further fools of themselves, the city officials abstained from an appeal. 

However, what followed was sickening brainwashing of the public when the winning advocates sold their triumph as a victory for the freedom of assembly that the police had stamped down. Disgusting!

Although I keep to the principle of Leben und leben lassen (Live and let live), I am intolerant as far as music is concerned. Here I agree with Wilhelm Busch, a German humorist. Many country fellows consider him (though incorrectly) the inventor of the comic strip. The following two pictures are copied from his strip cartoon The Mole:

Schnarräng! - Da tönt ihm in das Ohr, ein Bettelmusikantenchor
(Shing, bang bang, there rings in his ears a beggar musician band)

Musik wird oft nicht schön gefunden, weil sie stets mit Geräusch verbunden
(Music is often found not nice, since it's always linked with noise)

This latter rhyme, somewhat modified, has become a common saying in German. 

Do I really have to accept the noise of Ukrainian accordion players, South American choirs, and North American folk singers while quietly drinking my glass of wine at Freiburg's Münsterplatz? Good old Sten Fredberg was right when, in the Banana Boat Song parody, he complained, "It's too shrill, man. It's too piercing!" I continue to protest with him, "I don't dig dilettantish amateurs, man!"

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Germany's Route 66

Today I read an article in my favorite newspaper about the Bundesstraße (Federal road) 500 that runs along the heights of the Black Forest. The B 500 was planned eighty years ago as Schwarzwaldhochstraße to make the high villages accessible to tourists. It runs from Waldshut in the south to Baden-Baden in the north, although with a gap that has never been closed between Triberg and the Kniebis mountain. If you take this high road passing along the Titisee instead of Loch Lomond and I take the low road through the Rhine valley, I'll be in Baden-Baden before you.

Known well for its panoramic views and breathtaking scenery, the B 500 has earned a new denomination among British motorbike tourists. They call it Germany's Route 66. 

Since the days of Nat King Cole, who got his kicks on Route 66, it has always been a dream of mine and many others to drive on it from Chicago to LA. In England, motorbikers question their colleagues returning from the continent: Did you take the B 500?

The British love the Rhine valley taking home a bottle of that sweet wine we produce for export only called Liebfrauenmilch, and they love the Black Forest. However, they do not import the cake of the same name, but they bake it in the UK with typically somewhat more chocolate than we use in Freiburg.

Forêt Noire in Caffé Concerto on Regent Street in London during my recent trip to England.

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To bike or rather not to bike in Freiburg

Congratulations to Madison, the fifth most 'bikeable' city in the States behind Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., San Francisco (with all those hills), and Boston.

A bicyclist riding along Lake Mendota near the UW-Madison campus in Madison
(©Wisconsin State Journal)

Freiburg is known as a bicycle city too. So I scanned the internet to learn about its ranking. It was disappointing that Freiburg did not figure among Germany's first ten bicycle cities. These are: Münster, Kiel, Oberhausen, Hannover, Bremen, Leipzig, Bonn, Magdeburg, Bielefeld, and Karlsruhe.

I must admit that I am not a keen cyclist except for my yearly bicycle tour. Freiburg's city is within walking distance (20 minutes) from my apartment, so I feel no need to use a bicycle. Still, I am mainly concerned with cycling or cyclists in Freiburg because of their bad behavior towards pedestrians who live dangerously. 

The other day, a Kampfradler (fighting cyclist) ran over a friend of mine on a zebra crossing. The guy did not stop, and when the victim stood up, she luckily only had a broken finger. In fact, in Baden-Württemberg Freiburg has the sad reputation of having the highest bicycle accident rate.

Last year two people died, 83 were heavily injured, and 461 had 'only' light injuries. It does not help that Münster has a bad reputation, too, for cyclists ignoring red traffic lights, cycling on narrow walkways in the wrong direction, and slaloming at high speed through pedestrian zones. In addition, only children (this is an obligation) and old people like me (my brain is the only part of my body that still has some value) wear helmets.

To remedy the situation, Freiburg and Berlin started a two-year campaign called Rücksichtsvoll im Straßenverkehr (When participating in road traffic, be considerate).

The advertising for the campaign is strange. Green people look with disgust at the blue can. Cans had been banned in Germany for the sake of recyclable bottles and are now celebrating a merry resurrection. Will the campaign help to make life safer for Freiburg's pedestrians? I doubt. 

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How much Keynes we can still tolerate?

In their recent publication, the Club of Rome made an estimate of how the Earth will appear in 50 years. This, along with the results of two European elections, made me think about our future too, although I don't have much time left anymore, and I am an absolute layman in economics. For me, the world economy is running wild in an egoistic manner. Reciting the mantra that our grandchildren should not pay for our sins (debts, CO₂ emissions, climate change, and the strain on natural resources) has degenerated into lip service.

Recently, I watched Paul vs. Paul, i.e., Senator Ron Paul and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, on television, as they helplessly discussed how to remedy the economy. Their debate only confirmed my conviction that there is no cure for the economic situation the world is suffering from. The German economy, often regarded as a model that still works, primarily thrives on exports. This exacerbates the problem for the euro, as our European trade partners finance their trade deficits by incurring more debt. And what to think about my country that will loan 20 billion euros on the money market in these fat years of low unemployment and high tax revenues to keep this year's federal budget in balance?

That even Germany is not adhering to the strict norms of the European fiscal pact has given newly elected French President François Hollande the idea of asking for fresh, i.e., borrowed money to stimulate the European economy, just as Paul Krugman had suggested on television should be done in the United States. Printing euros is easy, but where does that fresh money go? We know that the euros Greece has received so far from the Eurozone bailout fund were used to keep the Greek banking system afloat. I suppose the money François is asking for has already been earmarked to finance the lowering of the retirement age in France from 62 to 60 years, as he has promised. 

In the United States, there is no mandatory retirement age. Contrary to me, who was forced to retire at the age of 65, many of my American friends continued working beyond that age. Let's hope that the financial stimulus Paul Krugman has requested in the United States will be used to create new jobs.

New jobs are also needed in Europe, particularly in Spain, where many young people are currently unemployed. Their 'no future' outlook is social dynamite! So again, with all the pressure building up, the end of Merkosysm is near, and public spending will heap more debts on the already unbelievable accumulated amount. 

Hastily, our finance minister declared, 'It is the wrong way to take money to stimulate economic growth. Instead, he requested additional savings and reforms, both at home and in Europe. With those differing viewpoints in France and Germany, will Merkollande replace Merkozy? We shall see when François visits Angela in Berlin on May 15.

François pouring his Hollandaise sauce over Merkel's fiscal piggy bank pact (©Haitzinger)

The apparent result of an increase in printed money is inflation, meaning that for the average person, the money they deposit in a savings bank will lose its value, accentuated by the currently low interest rates. What will be the best way not to lose? Do not save your money, but spend it and even incur debts.

I shall end my story with a personal anecdote. When I was young, I wanted to build a house and needed a mortgage, so I consulted several banks for offers. One was particularly advantageous. When I asked the guy why my monthly installments would be so low compared with the proposals of the other banks, he answered,  "Oh, you just pay the interest rate. There is no back-payment." I said, "But then my children will inherit my debts." 

At that time, such a situation was unacceptable to me, so I opted for the classical variant with another bank paying interest and amortization. Would I have acted the same in today's situation, knowing that inflation would erode my children's debts?

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Pirates! Prepare to Board

In Germany, state elections are coming up in Schleswig-Holstein on May 6, 2012, and in North Rhine-Westphalia one week later. For two reasons, these elections are called Schicksalswahlen (Does not any election determine the fate or future of politicians or governments?):

Will Red-Green* (for the color-coding of Germany's political parties, read my earlier blog) majorities seize power in those States and thereby secure a majority in the Bundesrat (Germany's Senate), delivering a decisive blow to Angela Merkel's Black-Yellow Federal Government?

Will the (Orange) Pirates replace the Free Democrats (Yellow) as the new liberal force in those state parliaments?

Cover of  Der Spiegel No 17

The Pirates are the result of a post-democratic movement where particularly young people are fed up with the aging caste of politicians and their entanglement in financial and/or sexual affairs. In fact, the traditional liberal topics of freedom of the press, voting rights for women, and free trade are no longer anything to write about, whereas freedom of the net with urgent questions like how much YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook people need polarizes the modern world. Still learning the political trade, the Pirates were already elected into the state parliaments of Berlin and the Saar. With the wind in their sails, they boom and thrive, Avanti Dilettanti, as Der Spiegel titled a week ago. They demand free internet and free public transport for everybody. With their request, the young Pirates honor some Ur-German heritage. 

Many old people over here still expect free services, while for citizens in the States, it is natural that all services used must be paid for. The Pirates' first demand may be financially feasible, and the second is utopian.

With intentions to vote Orange at up to 10%, the established political parties are irritated, notably the Green Party, which the younger generation had been in love with up to now. Desperately but somehow maladroitly, the established political parties try to climb on the bandwagon or, rather, board the pirate ship. 

A good example is Bavaria's Ministerpräsident (governor) Horst Seehofer, an avowed Christian politician who fathered an illegitimate child in Berlin while away from his family in Munich. He wants to beat the Pirates at their own game by inviting his friends on Facebook to a party at a noble disco in Munich. Somehow, Horst must have misunderstood the Pirates' quest for liquid democracy when he offered the first drink free. Will one drink be sufficient to convince the party-goers to vote for Bavaria's Christian party?

Practicing liquid democracy in Bavaria (Photo FAZ)

Marina Weisband (Photo Wikipedia)

Presently, the Pirates hold their party convention way up north in Neumünster, Schleswig-Holstein. The party's secretary, Marina Weisband, urged the assembled deputies: "Lasst uns einen geilen Vorstand wählen" ("Let us elect an awesome party committee" or do you think her demand should be translated differently?).

**

Bach Forever

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. Following his education and stays in Lüneburg, Weimar, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and again Weimar, he was offered the position of Konzertmeister at the court of the Duke of Saxony-Weimar in 1714. In Weimar, his sons Friedeman and Philipp Emanuel were born.

A memorial tablet with a grammatical mistake (wurde instead of wurden)
stands at the site of Bach's first home in Weimar.
Now, the tablet decorates the wall of the Elephant's parking lot.

Later, Bach was held in custody at the duke's court for a while before he was allowed to leave for Köthen in November 1717, taking up an assignment as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Köthen. Already in May of the same year, Bach had signed the contract without the consent of his previous ruler. 

Was Bach's "imprisonment" the reason it took such a long time before Weimar, the city of writers and thinkers, erected a monument in honor of the musical genius? Forget it; nowadays, any reason is a good reason to hold a Bach festival in Thuringia, the man known to many of us as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Saxony.

Bach's bust in Weimar was cast in 1950, but was posted at the present location
between the marketplace and Anna Amalia Bibliothek only in 1995

Three of the major opening events of the Thüringer Bachwochen concerned the Reformation and Music. Since they were scheduled in Eisenach, our group took a coach that drove us from Weimar through blooming landscapes (what former chancellor Kohl had promised in 1989 to East German voters) on newly built first-class roads - those you will only find in the east of Germany.

 We arrived at the Bachhaus in the midst of demonstrators demanding that the state government of Thuringia continue subsidizing the Eisenach theater and, in particular, spend an additional 2 million euros to fill this year's financial gap. The supporting words Luther had once said during one of his famous table talks were written on a banner: Fürsten und Herren müssen die Musik erhalten, denn großen Potentaten gebühren die guten freien Künste zu erhalten. Und da gleich einzelne Privat-Leute Lust dazu haben, können sie die nicht erhalten.

In school, my teachers taught me that when you use a citation, you must quote literally. So here we go again: Könige, Fürsten und Herrn müssen die Musicam erhalten; denn großen Potentaten und Regenten gebühret, uber guten freien Künsten und Gesetzen zu halten. Und da gleich einzelne, gemeine und Privat-Leute Lust dazu haben und sie lieben, und doch können sie die nicht erhalten.

Protest banner in front of Bach's monument in Eisenach

Only to translate its gist: Luther meant that the taxpayer should finance cultural activities since private subsidizing is not always guaranteed. Is Luther a socialist? One of Germany's richness is the variety of its cultural heritage, the legacy of those small territories formed after the Peace of Westphalia. All those wannabe rulers wanted to show off their own orchestra and theater. Nowadays, their heritage is a nightmare for all public coffers.

Kitsch as kitsch can:
Bach's head illuminated the discussion panel.

Before we were allowed to listen to music, we had to participate in a panel discussion and sing in an ecumenical service. The panel at the Bachhaus, with two specialized professors, the musical director of the Festival, and the Landesbischöfin of the Lutheran Church of Thuringia, discussed Luther's influence on Bach's music. The 500th anniversary of Luther's posting of the ninety-five theses loomed on the horizon. The region where the reformer dwelt is preparing for the 2017 commemoration: In the beginning, was the Word.

1517-2017: 500 years of Reformation: Im Anfang war das Wort

I must admit that many of the wise ideas about Luther and Bach presented in the expert discussion escaped my brain, for my mind was concentrated on an early remark the bishop had made in her introduction. 

She had claimed that the church's wheeling and dealing with the authorities had fortunately ended in 1919 with the toppling of the princes following the 2nd Reich's defeat in World War I. Sorry, but this was not just a makeshift. It had always been a two-fisted community of throne and altar wholly united in the formation of obedient subjects.

Later in the public discussion, my query concerning the bishop's remark was one of only two from the audience: I claimed that the pact between the throne and the altar did not end in 1919. It is sufficient to mention the formation of the Lutheran Reichskirche in 1932 and the Konkordat that the Reich signed with the Holy See in 1933 during the Nazi period. Even nowadays, the influence of the two Churches on German society is still significant, while the number of churchgoers is declining.

Later in the afternoon, our group participated in an ecumenical service at the St. Georgenkirche jointly celebrated by the already-known lady bishop and the Catholic (male, what else?) suffragan bishop of Erfurt. It was Palm Sunday, and I enjoyed singing old hymns familiar to both Catholics and Protestants. We also listened to Bach's Praeludium BWV 244 in h-minor, during the service to his cantata Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (Step on the path of faith) BWV 152, and to the Fugue BWV 244 in h-minor as a postlude.

St. Georgenkirche in Eisenach

The highlight of the day, or rather the evening, was Bach's Passion, according to St. Matthew BWV 244, performed by the Scottish Dunedin Consort under the direction of John Butt again at Eisenach's St. Georgenkirche.

The orchestra was assembled, and I waited for the choir to appear. Eventually, only a dozen soloists stood before the musicians, completing the whole setup. This small company sang solo and chorus parts, thus interpreting Bach's music with an unheard dynamic. The singers seamlessly continued without the usual pause between solo and chorus. We listened for three hours with only one short interruption. Although some of my body parts started to ache, Bach's wondrous music filled our hearts to the end: Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder (With tears of grief, dear Lord, we leave Thee).

Many regard this final chorus to be the apotheosis of Bach's work. Yet, my particular favorite is a weeping violin in concert with an alto: Erbarme Dich mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen! Schaue hier, Herz und Auge weint vor dir bitterlich. (Have mercy, Lord, on me, regard my bitter weeping, look at my heart and eyes both weep to Thee bitterly.)

Note: I found the pieces of music on YouTube where the final choir and the soprano aria are not interpreted by the Dunedin Consort.

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Thuringian Food

Those who read my blogs know I eat local food wherever I go. This, quite naturally, is lobster in Boston and Speckscholle or Labskaus in Hamburg.

Considering regional food and drink a cultural heritage, I stuck to the habit during my recent trip to Thuringia, where I attended the Thüringer Bachwochen. The evening before our group set out for Bach's birthplace, Eisenach, we had dinner at Zum Schwarzen Bären (the Black Bear), Weimar's oldest inn adjacent to the Elephant Hotel.

Our tour guide had chosen the traditional Thüringer Sauerbraten mit Rotkohl und Thüringer Kartoffelklößen (served with red cabbage and potato dumplings).

The quality of a Sauerbraten depends solely on the quality of the meat and the duration of marination. Sauerbraten is known throughout Germany, but important regional differences exist in the preparation. In the Rhineland, e.g., they add raisins to the gravy.

The next day in Eisenach, we had nearly no carnal but an overabundance of spiritual food. This meant that the following day, back in Weimar, I could tolerate a Thüringer Bratwurst on the market for lunch and a complete meal in the evening.

Traveler, whenever you come to Weimar. Do not forget to taste a Thüringer Bratwurst on Weimar's marketplace at Bianka's wurst stand. You will no longer eat a Thüringer in other parts of Germany.

The Thüringer in Weimar is prepared on a charcoal grill and

Bianka serves it on her hand in a bun: simply delicious!

In the evening, I went to the Scharfe Ecke (Sharp Corner) restaurant, where the Kloß-Marie (Dumpling-Mary) greets you at the entrance.

Two of the items on the menu caught my attention. So I opened with a local onion soup (quite different from the one they serve in France), garnished with Thuringian micro-dumplings and plum mustard ...

... and continued with a Thüringer Rostbrätel (a marinated cutlet of pig neck, grilled over charcoal) served with roasted onions and (what else?) a dumpling.

I downed the food with two glasses of Köstritzer Schwarzbier vom Fass. Köstritzer is a local lager running from the tap in most places in Weimar. You may have noticed that I stuck to it during my stay.

Above is the photo of what you get when you order a large beer in the north of Germany, i.e., above the Main river line. You can barely read on the pictured glass containing only 0.4 l of Schwarzbier: Nach dem deutschen Reinheitsgebot, Köstritzer Schwarzbier (According to the German Beer Purity Law - it was initially Bavarian – Dark [black] lager from Köstritz).

The beer of only 0.4 l served in northern Germany is what Southerners call a Preußenhalbe, for when you order a small beer in southern Germany, you already get eine Halbe, i.e., half a liter or 0.5 l.

A similar situation arises for wine. When you order a Viertele in the south, you logically get 0.25 l. However, when you order ein Viertel Wein in the north of Germany, you get only 0.2 l, a Preußen-Viertele as we call it in Baden.

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Weimar's Elephant Hotel

The Elephant Hotel on April 1, 2012.
The rose building in the back is the famous Anna-Amalia-Bibliothek

While attending the opening concerts of Thuringia's Bachwochen 2012, my group stayed in Weimar in the Hotel Elephant, a truly historic place.

Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxony issued a concession to Christian Andreas Barrtig.

In 1696, the duke's cupbearer, Christian Andreas Barrtig, got a concession for an inn bordering Weimar's market square that he named The Elephant. Later, it became a stagecoach station and was enlarged to house all the merchants and visitors. When somebody asked at the city gate for Wieland, Herder, or Goethe in those days, he was directed to the Elephant because people were sure they would be found there. 

In 1938, Thomas Mann made the hotel famous when it played a central role in his novel, "Lotte in Weimar." Charlotte Buff had been one of young Goethe's sweethearts. Still, she had married another guy. Deceived, and in a dark mood, Goethe wrote his bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther -- a (still) famous/infamous book that brought early renown to Goethe. Mann takes Lotte's visit to Weimar and her stay in the Elephant in 1816, where she met the aging Goethe, as the starting point for his novel.

An early photo of the Elephant around 1860.
On the right, Weimar's oldest inn: Zum schwarzen Bären from 1540.

In the 1920s, the Elephant became the headquarters of the local Nazi party that, as early as 1926, had two ministers in Thuringia's state government. The same year, the NSDAP held its first national party convention in Weimar when Hitler spoke from a window to the crowd in front of the hotel.

Peeping through a window of the Haus Elephant,
the NSDAP boss is greeting the crowd in the marketplace

During the coming years, the hotel looked rundown. With the pressure of the Nazis, who had governed the state of Thuringia since 1932 and had taken power in the Reich in 1933, the old, unattractive building was torn down and replaced by the present construction in 1938.

The newly built Haus Elephant is a national-socialist shrine

The most important addition to the new building was a balcony meant for der Führer to address the people in the marketplace. In the following years, self-proclaimed Nazi dignitaries used it more than he did.

New Year's Eve dinner 1943 at the Elephant.
Note: The courses have low and rounded prices but require precious food ration card coupons.

Today's interior still breathes Nazi architecture, a strange mixture of neo-realism and cold splendor, with marble door frames and metallic, luminous elements.

Entrance to a set of rooms

Following the Wende (the end of the German division), a new splendor
with illustrious guests and their interpreter

Nowadays, the balcony is crowned by Goethe's dictum: "Here I am, Man, here I may live up to it," the final line of the poem Osterspaziergang (Easter Walk), taken from his drama Faust. The Führer's balcony now serves as a place for cultural displays. During my last visit, Thomas Mann stood up there. Star architect Walter Gropius and femme fatale Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel decorate the balcony this year.

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Beer Tasting

During the past week, Toni's place on Freiburg's Münsterplatz celebrated its 10th anniversary. On the occasion, the Ganter brewery had revived a dark lager as the jubilee beer, and Ganter's beer sommelier organized a tasting. My loyal readers may remember my wine marathon last year. This time the stuff to be tasted and tested was beer.

We must face it: the variety of beers brewed in Germany does not correspond to the number of ways bread is baked and sold in my country. You may already have guessed why: the reason is the German Reinheitsgebot, the famous purity regulation first issued in Bavaria (where else?) in 1516, stipulating that only barley malt, hops, and water may be used in the production of beer. However, in olden times beer tasted different even when brewed at the same brewery, as the founding fathers had forgotten to codify the yeast. Only later, when beer fermentation had been fully understood, special yeasts for brewing were cultivated and added to subsequent charges assuring a similar taste. Although in Germany, adding cherry syrup or caramel as they do in Belgium is not allowed, there are still differences in the taste of beer depending on the type of yeast, the temperature, the length of fermentation, and the method and duration of storage before drinking.

The following photo shows the three beers we, as future experts, had first to describe and then identify. No, I am not, and I was not drunk: I counted four glasses too. The fourth glass, still full in the photo, was offered as a bonus after hard work and contains the jubilee dark lager beer.

Sommelier Bernd Ruth told us that beer tasting (also called beer sensory) is distinct from wine tasting. 80% of our impression of beer taste is determined by the sense of smell, whereas only 20% passes through the sense of taste. With wine, it is just the other way around. On a tasting form (Verkostungsbogen), we had to note the color, the clearness, the foam, and the smell of the brew. As for the taste when drinking, the connoisseur distinguishes between the beginning (Antrunk), the presence (Rezenz, whatever that means in German), and the past (Nachtrunk). This word in everyday German instead refers to the practice of some hit-and-run drivers. Following a collision, they rush home, open a bottle, and drink until the police arrive to prove that they had been sober when they caused the accident.

The first of the tasted beers was quickly identified as a Pils. For the second, I had difficulty recognizing it as a Weizenbier (white beer), for it had been served much too warm. The third one, showing the brown color, I got wrong, for I had marked it as the jubilee dark lager beer. It was, however, the Ganter Wodan strong beer that, contrary to Bavaria, where such a brew is served during the Lenten season, flows from the tap in Freiburg throughout the year.

The following beers were all on the house, but I did not stay on as the following morning, I had to catch an early train taking me to my next cultural event in Weimar.

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Mother Earth is Losing Water

The other day I found an article on the internet based on a scientific publication pointing out that Mother Earth has not just one but two water leaks. Over the last 3.8 trillion years, we have drained water at such a rate that a mass corresponding to the volume of the Atlantic Ocean has been lost. The same amount added today would increase the sea level by 800 m. Figure out what this would mean for the place you live.



Emily Pope of the University of Copenhagen and her coworkers base their findings on an analysis of Greenland's early-formed deep-lying serpentine rock layers. Those 3.8 Ga old silicates  (i.e., only slightly younger than the age of the earth of 4.5 Ga) show a remarkable difference in isotope composition compared with more recently formed minerals of the same kind.

As the article points out, one of the earth's water leaks is due to hydrogen diffusion into space. The chemical processes involved start with methane (CH₄) formed by a credible biogenic source for methanogenesis, with a concentration of this gas 60 times higher in the Archaean atmosphere than today. Methane undergoes photolysis in the upper atmosphere in a reaction CH₄ + 2O₂ → CO₂ + O₂ + 4H, where some of the hydrogen formed in the process will diffuse into space. This evaporated hydrogen is lost for the formation of water. There is also deuterium, the heavier hydrogen isotope, better known in its combination with oxygen as heavy water. Deuterium, however, reacts more poorly with oxygen than hydrogen and, in addition, diffuses at a much lower rate. The net effect is that compared with the water in the Archaean oceans, today's seawater is enriched in deuterium.

There are newly formed minerals that contain hydrogen-like serpentines. In those, the amount of deuterium is higher by 2.5% compared with Archaean minerals.

The second source of Mother Earth's water loss is the formation of minerals like serpentines incorporating hydrogen when magma reacts with water. When Pope and coworkers did the mathematics, they concluded that oceans 3.8 Ga ago were more voluminous and that Mother Earth has lost 26% of its "light" water since then. 

Nowadays, however, both water leaks are less important than a trillion years ago, for the chance of water reacting with magma is significantly reduced, and methane concentration in today's upper atmosphere is much smaller than in Archaean times. 

Still, we lose 100 000 tons of hydrogen yearly diffusing into space. Does this mean that the Dutch no longer have to worry about rising oceans due to melting glaciers?

In 2009 UAF researcher Sebastian H. Mernild and colleagues from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Denmark discovered that from 1995 to 2007, overall precipitation on the Greenland ice sheet decreased while surface ablation – the combination of evaporation, melting, and calving of the ice sheet – increased. According to Mernild's new data, since 1995, the ice sheet lost an average of 265 cubic kilometers per year, contributing to about 0.7 millimeters per year in global sea level rise. Last year this prediction became obsolete because Eric Rignot and coworkers jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, reported that Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1-foot sea level rise by 2050. The authors conclude that if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise the sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches).

Compare this prediction, i.e., more than 5 mm rise of the ocean level per year with the loss of water by leakage. It only amounts to a fraction of a millimeter per year.

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