Blogging in German?

Kein Endlager Gorleben (Photo BZ)

German friends sometimes ask me: Why don't you blog in German? Well, I gave some reasons for my choice of English in my very first blog. Let me repeat it here: My blogs are meant to inform my American friends about what is happening in Freiburg and surrounding Germany, for many of them the land of their ancestors. Blogging in English also helps me keep my knowledge of Shakespeare's idiom alive. Blogging in German I do too although not as frequently as in English in the form of letters to the editor of my favorite local journal, the Badische Zeitung (BZ).

Here comes a letter I lately sent dealing with one of my favorite topics: Endlagerung (the final disposal of highly active nuclear waste). I only mention it because, for the first time, the Badische Zeitung added a somewhat gruesome picture to my contribution. All those who read German click on the link above. They may stop here for in the following I shall just explain in English what I wrote to the BZ.

Germany's minister for the environment in Doha (dpa)

Our Federal Minister of Environment Peter Altmaier an unmarried workaholic - compensating his stress at hearth and home with some visible consequences but no myocardial infarction yet - proposed a moratorium on the search for a final depositary of nuclear waste from Germany's power reactors. This provisional stop shall last until next fall waiting for the outcome of our federal election. The proposal was hailed by all parties since nobody wants to load the political atmosphere with such an unpopular topic before the outcome of the election is known. Anyway, the explosiveness of this issue is only beaten by the discussions of how much it will cost the German taxpayer to keep Greece in the eurozone. As an alternative, we are told, throwing the Greeks out will lead to a euro collapse, i.e., doomsday.

Coming back to the moratorium. This is one of the tactics of politicians dulling the electorate's minds (das Stimmvolk verdummen). Nobody will gain in postponing the decision, but everybody will lose in particular our Ministerpräsident (governor). It seems that neither abandoned salt mines like so far proposed in Germany nor granite formations favored in the States are suited best for a "final disposal" of highly active nuclear waste. The choice tends towards Opalinus clay of which mighty deposits are found in Germany's south at the High Rhine along the border with Switzerland. Although building a depository in Baden-Württemberg will be a blow to our green Ländle it may open an opportunity to work with our neighbors. The Swiss too are considering burying their nuclear waste along the same border. Will there again be an outcry not in my backyard or is there a chance of a common effort?

Local Saints And a Local Hero

Last August, I blogged about Edith Stein, whom Freiburg claims as a local saint. Well, I know that in the Catholic Church, saints are regarded as universal, i.e., belonging to and venerated by the whole community. However, places where those selected people once dwelt are always unique.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch and Bernhard in the background

Today, I read in my favorite newspaper that Freiburg's archbishop Robert had started the final step in sanctifying another "local person": Bernhard von Baden.

Seliger Bernhard (©Reinhard Dietrich/Wikipedia)

In February 2011, I already devoted a blog to Blessed Bernhard, the patron of the Freiburg archdiocese. Now, all supporting documents for his canonization, including the one about the miraculous healing of a nun from Baden in 1956, were placed in a sealed box and sent to the Vatican for further action and a final decision by the pope.

The name "Bernhard" only sometimes had a good reputation in Freiburg. Bernhard von Weimar, yes, Weimar again, pushed Freiburg into misery in 1638 when, during the Thirty Years' War, he besieged the city at Easter and took it after eleven days. Bernhard, born in 1604, was the eleventh son of Johann, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and had no chance to become heir to the throne. In those days, later-born children either became clergymen or warlords.

Bernard chose to support King Gustav Adolf, the invader from Sweden, and became one of his most valuable generals. Following the King's death in the battle of Lützen, Bernhard continued serving the Swedes. He was successful, and Swedish Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna granted him the former bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg, which he took over as Duke of Franconia. 

We read in Wikipedia: A stern Protestant, he exacted heavy contributions from the Catholic cities he took, and his repeated victories caused him to be regarded by German Protestants [with Gustav Adolf dead] as the savior of their religion. But in 1634, Bernard suffered a great defeat at Nördlingen, losing the best of the Swedish army and his duchy.

One year later, still longing to become a German prince, Bernhard made a pact with Cardinal Richelieu, the man Protestant Germans considered a twofold devil, being Catholic and French. 

The Cardinal gave money and troops to his German-speaking general to fight the Habsburgs on German territory. Soon, Richelieu felt cheated as Bernhard used the French mercenaries to pursue his personal ambitions.

Bernard approaches the city of Breisach.

In 1638, he first captured the Habsburg cities on the High Rhine and then Freiburg in a blitz campaign. The following siege of Breisach, the imperial fortress, took him seven months. Conquered eventually, Bernard made the city the site of his Princely Saxon Government, unblushingly requesting Richelieu to make him Duke of Alsace, the Breisgau, and the bishopric of Basel. 

Bernhard suddenly died in 1639, and rumors had it that he was poisoned. Already in those days, conspiracy theories circulated freely. Whatever the true story, the French took it all following Bernhard's death, i.e., his troops, money, and territories.

Indeed, Bernhard is not Freiburg's local hero, but he suddenly became Weimar's hero in 1935 when he was talked up as the Führer's predecessor in an exhibition devoted to him. A Weimar newspaper wrote: Duke Bernhard, who came out of the people, lived with the people, and belonged to the people, deserves the honor the national-socialistic movement bestows on him. 

 This is all so wrong. Like most of his contemporaries, nobleman Bernhard did not give a hoot in hell for his people. At best, he considered them cannon fodder to further his ambitions. In this respect, he was a true predecessor of the Führer.

**

Weimar Literature

Böttiger looks with curiosity down at the glorious four
 , with Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt standing in the back.

The first book I read on Weimar was Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen (Literary circumstances and contemporaries), written by Karl August Böttiger, a classicist. Böttiger collected gossip about Weimar during the time of the Glorious Four, Goethe, Herder, Schiller (not the Apple one), and Wieland, which his son Karl Wilhelm Böttiger edited and published in 1838.

Most interesting is Böttiger's description of Madame de Staël's visit to Weimar. This courageous and intelligent lady had defied Napoleon, been banned from France, and traveled the few parts of Europe still unoccupied by the French. Being an attractive woman, tout Weimar was at her feet. Fascinated by the patchwork of small independent territories making up Germany's wide cultural variety, she wrote her famous book De l'Allemagne. To a certain extent, its content continues to shape the French view of Germany today.

 In his book, Böttiger even dares to unmask Goethe, who is rocking his illegitimate son on his lap while getting bald and fat, the latter thanks to Christiane, his concubine's, good cooking.

Genius Goethe's unmasking continues in Sigrid Damm's book Christiane and Goethe. Damm tells the fascinating story of the scandalous relationship. Goethe, the Duke's State Minister, who had just returned to Weimar from his Italian journey (where a Roman girl, Faustina, had taken his virginity), made young Christiane Vulpius his mistress, calling her his Bettschatz (bed darling). Goethe did not care that the Weimar society shunned him because of his concubinage as long as his friend, Duke August, became August's (Goethe's son) godfather. Goethe married Christiane only after she had courageously saved his life during an attack by some drunken French soldiers. They broke into the house following Weimar's takeover by the Napoleon army. The author tells us how Christiane suffered from the genius's ego during her lifelong relationship.

Das klassische Weimar (Classical Weimar) is a collection of texts written by contemporary witnesses. They describe Weimar's personalities, the town's social life, life at the ducal court, the theater where Goethe had been the director at times, Goethe's house at the Frauenplan and its inhabitants, the years of the French occupation, and people on a "pilgrimage" in Weimar.

Similarly, the book Treffpunkt Weimar-Literatur und Leben zur Zeit Goethes (Meeting Point Weimar - Literature and Life during the Time of Goethe) describes Weimar's Golden Age. Still, it is written in the style of a novel and, therefore, easy to read. The authors combine their text with citations from this classical period, mostly from letters. This is a technique I also use on my historical website for Freiburg, as contemporary witnesses often write spontaneously, making the whole story more lively. In general, only a few explanations are required to clarify the embedded original texts.

Star journalist Peter Merseburger's book Mythos Weimar zwischen Geist und Macht (The Weimar myth between mind and power) looks behind what is called the Weimar myth. Merseburger analyses the Golden Age of Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and Wieland, followed by Weimar's Silver Age with Franz Liszt. He continues with the Duke's abdication after the First World War, the adoption of the Weimar Constitution thwarted by the early rise of the Nazis in Thuringia, the rise and fall of the Bauhaus, the concentration camp Buchenwald, and the lost Second World War, resulting in the communist takeover in the Eastern part of Germany, including the continued use of Buchenwald.

The book Wege nach Weimar. Auf der Suche nach der Einheit von Kunst und Politik accompanied an exhibition of Weimar's history in 1999 in the Gauforum. This building was started in 1938, with Hitler himself laying the foundation stone. Since the Nazis participated in the Thuringian government well before their Machtergreifung in Berlin in January 1933 made Weimar, together with Bayreuth, Linz, and Nuremberg, one of Hitler's favorite towns. On the other hand, he detested Vienna because of its many Jews and Berlin because he was a native Austrian.

Consequently, the exhibition and catalog dealt with Weimar's history between 1919 and 1945, but they did not stop there. Both continue documenting the seamless transition from a brown to a red dictatorship. The people did not have the ghost of a chance. While the Americans taught us democracy in the West, the Soviets imposed their communist regime in the East, forcing the Social Democrats into a union with the Communist Party, becoming the SED (United German Socialist Party), and reducing the Christian Democrats and the Liberals to satellite parties. The catalog is a goldmine of pictures documenting Weimar's historical development over the last century.

Finally, a two-volume catalog of the Goethe National Museum, Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759-1832 (Repeated reflections: Classical Weimar) was published on the occasion of the opening of the National Museum adjacent to the Goethehaus in 1999. The catalog is a collection of images and text that describe the exhibition pieces. The two volumes of 500 pages were heavy to carry home, but every gram was worth the effort.

After the old exhibition closed in 2008, a remodeled display opened on August 23, 2012, titled "Lebensfluten, Tatensturm" (Floods of Life, Storms of Action). A few pieces are now exhibited in a more modern environment, concentrating on Goethe's life. Consequently, the companion book is much thinner, with only 288 pages.


The books:

Karl August Böttiger: Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen. Begegnungen und Gespräche im klassischen Weimar. Hg. von Klaus Gerlach und René Sternke. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02829-6

Sigrid Damm: Christiane und Goethe. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-458-16912-1

Heinrich Pleticha: Das klassische Weimar, Komet Verlag GmbH, Köln 1983, ISBN 3-89836-517-4

Norbert Oellers und Robert Steegers: Treffpunkt Weimar - Literatur und Leben zur Zeit Goethes, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 4-15-010449-1

Peter Merseburger: Mythos Weimar. Zwischen Geist und Macht, DVA, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 978-3423307871

Michael Dorrmann und Hans Wilderotter (Hrsg.): Wege nach Weimar. Auf der Suche nach der Einheit von Kunst und Politik, Jovis Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-931321-18-5

Caroline Gille, Gerhard Schuster und Stiftung Weimarer Klassik (Hrsg.): Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759-1832. Ständige Ausstellung des Goethe-Nationalmuseums, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1999, ISBN 3-446-19499-1

**

Weimar in October 2012

Remember? I started the first blog of my Weimar quadrology, telling you about Elisabeth's and my recent visit to this cultural highlight, but then I was carried away digging into my past Weimar experience. That happened in my second blog about Weimar, too. I shall no longer go back in history but move forward to the present in a third attempt.

We took an early train at Freiburg but then suffered a one-hour delay. With our train being behind schedule, we missed our connection to Erfurt in Fulda. A one-hour delay on the Deutsche Bahn is not a big problem, as direct train connections in Germany are served every hour during the daytime. So, you just wait for the next train, even though your seat reservations are lost. We filled the wait at Fulda's train station with a forced coffee and arrived in Weimar around 3 p.m.

Henry van der Velde advertising Weimar's onion market.

Instead of star architect Walter Gropius and femme fatale Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, this time the founder of the Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, the predecessor of the Bauhaus, Henry van der Velde, greeted us from the balcony of the Elephant Hotel.

View of Weimar's marketplace from our room. In the background, the Herderkirche.

HE showed us the way to a souvenir shop. 

During an afternoon walk through the streets of Weimar, we passed the National Theater.

The well-known Goethe-Schiller monument in front of the Weimar National Theater was modified.
Thomas Mann, Goethe's lifelong venerator, stands in for Friedrich Schiller. 

However, we visited the Schiller- and not the Thomas-Mann-Haus:

  

Entrance to Schiller's house

Photos were not allowed, but I took one of the Loi du 25 Août 1792, l'an quatrième de la Liberté, signed by the great Danton himself, making le sieur Gilles, publiciste Allemand, a citizen of revolutionary France.

Schiller became a citizen of revolutionary France.

Le membre proposing the publiciste Allemand may have read Schiller's Die Räuber (The Robbers), but got his name completely wrong. Note, "called-up-late" Schiller is in the company of well-known temporaries like Thomas Payne (Thomas Paine, Anglo-American political activist), Joachim-Henry Campe (Joachim Heinrich Campe, German linguist), N. Pestalozzi (Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue), Georges Washington (George Washington, First President of the United States), Jean Hamilton (John Hamilton, Congressman from Pennsylvania), N. Maddisson (James Madison, Fourth President of the United States) and H. Klopstock (Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, German poet).

Elisabeth and I closed the day by having dinner at the Elephantenkeller. The round table from 1990 was still in place, but this time, it was empty. I chose a delicious Kohlroulade (stuffed cabbage leaf) from the menu and a Pilsner beer from nearby Apolda.

Delicious stuffed cabbage leaf

The following morning, a guide showed us around Weimar. We saw Goethe's summer house (Gartenhaus) from a distance.

Goethe's summer house from a distance.

For the afternoon, we had reserved a visitor's slot for the Goethehaus and the adjacent Goethe National Museum, where an exposition of artifacts documents the genius's curriculum vitae.

In the evening, we had dinner at Weimar's Ratskeller, where I had a Rindsroulade (beef olive) that I drowned in and downed with the usual Köstritzer Schwarzbier.

Rindsroulade mit Thüringer Klößen (Thuringian dumplings)

On Saturday morning, the Herder church was open to visitors.

The Herder church in October 2012 was a building site.

Herder, in front of "his" church, initially called Stadtkirche.

November 1989: Prayers for peace not only in Leipzig: We are the people!

In and outside the church, there were building sites. The Lutheran Church is preparing its historic places for the demi-millennium of the Reformation in 1517.

The famous altarpiece apotheosizing the Reformation was started by Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1552, one year before his death. His son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, finished it in 1555. The original painting was covered due to ongoing building activities inside the church. 

I took this photo of a photo print on canvas displayed for the benefit of the visitors. On the right, you recognize Martin Luther, and to his left, the painter Lucas Cranach.  John the Steadfast, who introduced the Reformation in Thuringia, and his wife sit on the other side.

Passing Weimar's castle ...

The castle's medieval tower is crowned by a Baroque helmet.

... we took a stroll through the park at the Ilm River toward Goethe's Gartenhaus. He had lived there from 1776 until 1782, when he moved into his townhouse at the Frauenplan.

Goethe's garden, where He grew his vegetables. 

Picking up a Thüringer Bratwurst on our way, we climbed to the Nietzsche Archive in the early afternoon.

The archive was empty, making the entrance fee not worth it, except for the building's Art Nouveau construction. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the walk to Weimar's old cemetery with Goethe's and Schiller's crypts. Recently, a DNA analysis revealed that Schiller's skull is not his.

Many people still consider Ernst von Wildenbruch's citation engraved into the monument:
Ich kämpfte nicht um anzugreifen, sondern um zu verteidigen (I did not fight to attack but to defend)
as proof that Germany was attacked by the surrounding countries in 1914.
 The problem is that von Wildenbruch had already died in 1909. 

Later, on our way back to the center, Big Goethe was watching us from a banner:

 

Lebensfluten, Tatensturm (Floods of life, storms of action)

We had a beer at a small place opposite the Goethehaus, watching carriages drive by. For a moment, forget those iron poles and the cars and live your dreams.

**

Weimar, the Second Time Around

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the opening of the border between West and East Germany, my friend and colleague working at the Nuclear Research Center near Karlsruhe invited Professor D. for Radiation Protection Physics at Dresden's Technical University.

She arrived at the beginning of December for the usual semi-annual meeting of our West German working group, "On the measurement of ionizing radiation." We had long and good conversations, feeling strange, for in previous years, when we met East German colleagues at international conferences, they were not allowed to talk to us. We all were overwhelmed by the new German-German togetherness.

So, in a follow-up, Professor D. invited three working group members to her annual International Symposium on Radiation Physics at Gaussig, a cozy castle east of Dresden used by the Technical University (TU) for meetings or on other occasions.

During the winter, I prepared my paper, Personal Neutron Monitoring in an Accelerator Environment, and was eagerly looking forward to my visit to Germany's heartland. At the end of March, I called my host in Dresden and asked her whether she needed anything I could take along. Well, the seminar participants organize at least one party, and any contribution would be welcome.

A Bocksbeutel, half full (©Wikipedia/Mussklprozz)

An empty Bocksbeutel  (©Wikipedia/Prince Grobhelm)

So I decided the best would be to furnish some wine they possibly had not tasted behind the Iron Curtain. The day before I crossed the now-open border into the still-existing German Democratic Republic (GDR), I stopped at Iphofen's winery. I loaded the trunk of my car with six boxes of Franconian wine bottled in Bocksbeuteln.

Then I took a night's rest at Bad Hersfeld and, heading east, reached the border in the gray of dawn. I approached a wooden shed lost in the middle of nowhere, bordering a tarred strip as an ersatz for the nonexistent road. Two sleepy border guards looking out of a window rounded up the surrealistic scene when they, utterly bored, nodded at me to pass. Border guards under the Ulbricht regime would have taken my car to pieces. Apparently shocked by the lifting of the Iron Curtain, they even refused to ask for my passport.

I am going to my first stop: Eisenach, the place of a German myth, the Wartburg. The oncoming traffic was heavy, with one two-stroke engine Trabi after the other heading west, filling the air with the typical smell of burned oil. People were suddenly free and eager to travel to capitalist enemy territory, buying goods they did not find in the GDR.

Entering Eisenach, the smell changed to the typical taste of sulfur dioxide caused by the burning of lignite, the only energy source the GDR had plenty of. I parked my car near one of the ascents to Wartburg and climbed up the hill in beautiful sunshine. It was still early in the morning, but streams of people were already flowing in both directions.

German History on Wartburg Stamps

Weimar Republic

1923: Inflation, a stamp of 5000 marks

1932: Great Depression,
a semipostal of 4+2 pfennigs

Nazi Germany

1933: Wagner's Tannhäuser or the Wartburg song contest
(Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg), a semipostal of 3+2 pfennigs

Divided Germany

1966: Agnostic GDR commemorating
the 900th anniversary of the Wartburg

1967: Religious FRG commemorating the
450th anniversary of the Reformation.
Luther, concealed at the Wartburg,
translated the Bible into German

I wanted to buy some picture postcards. The vendors only accepted Western currency. How did they know I was not a Bürger der DDR (citizen of the GDR)? I rushed through the historic site: Luther's study, the Kemenate (Cabinet room) of Elizabeth of Hungary, and the hall (19th century) of the Wartburg song contest overdecorated with mosaic.

At lunchtime, I tried to be in Weimar, but potholes slowed my progress while Trabis*, ignoring them, overtook me flying by. Eventually, at noon, I parked my car near Weimar's central marketplace on an abandoned bomb site. I walked to the Elephant Hotel for lunch at its famous Elephantenkeller, the basement restaurant. Entering the place, a doorman stopped me: We are jam-packed. I asked for the second service. There is none. I handed him over a 10 DM bill. Becoming friendly, he told me to come back in twenty minutes.
*Small cars made in the GDR from plastic with two-stroke sting engines officially named Trabant

Warmed by the April sun outside, I suddenly felt hungry as the smell of Thuringian bratwurst filled the marketplace. I could not describe my feelings when I took my first bite. Still overwhelmed by the first all-German food, I approached the entrance of the Elephant in time. The doorman guided me to a single seat on an otherwise fully packed round table.

When I sat down, all conversation stopped, for the men around the table smelled the Westerner. I greeted them in a friendly manner, starting to talk about this year's early spring. Slowly, they became confident, and suddenly, I listened to an argument: who of them following the Wende (political turnaround) had first taken off his United Socialistic Party (SED) party badge? They took me into their political discussion, so I do not remember what I had for lunch.

In the evening, I reached Dresden, and the following morning, Professor D. showed her three West German invitees around her TU institute. Two facts were immediately undeniable: too many people worked on research projects, half of which would never have been funded in the West. What followed over the following years was a dramatic reduction in staff doing useless or socialistic research. Now we know that one of the reasons for the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the GDR was bankrupt. No wonder. No capitalist government would have paid relatively high salaries to so many "researchers."

The symposium in Gaussig developed into an extraordinary experience wet with tears and wine. I will spare you the scientific details but will mention two nostalgic moments:

1. For the first time, after more than twenty years of abstinence, I tasted salt potatoes (Salzkartoffeln). In contrast, Elisabeth always boils potatoes in their skins (Pellkartoffeln) to preserve their natural taste and nutrients.

Salzkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia)

Pellkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia)

   

The change in food culture was palpable. While in the East, potatoes were still regarded as Sättigungsbeilage (a staple food in GDR German), potatoes in the West had transitioned to a vegetable bought at the grocery in selected varieties and small quantities daily.

My teacher, classmates, and I peeling staple food potatoes
during a fortnightly stay at a youth hostel in 1948.
Red Baron is just in the middle (the fifth from both left and right).

I still remember those men carrying potatoes in sacks of 50 kilograms (one Zentner, i.e., hundred German pounds) into our basement in the fall, filling up aired wooden boxes. Although these potatoes were stored in a cool, dark environment, their quality deteriorated the following year, so they had to be peeled, taking off nearly half their mass in cutting deep.

2. In 1942, I spent the summer in a small place near the Elbsandsteingebirge (Elbe Sandstone Mountains) called Lichtenhain, famous for its artificial waterfall.

Lichtenhain's waterfall (Photo Wikipedia)

Bastei Panorama in the Elbsandsteingebirge

Driving my host and colleagues to the Bastei on the International Symposium's free afternoon, we made a detour to the place of my youth. We found the house where I once stayed easily:

During the summer of 1942, my friend Dieter and I lived in the house located in the photo.
 in the lower right corner

In the photo, you see Dieter and me from left to right.
You recognize our house in the distance.
Dieter was stricken with mytrophy, therefore (?) a precocious child.
I drove my parents crazy, always talking back and putting their words into question:
But Dieter said ...  

Dieter's father, a lawyer and highly decorated First World War veteran, looked like an old man to me with his white mustache - my father was just 36. He took the above photo and some more with a Leica, developed the films, and made the prints himself. During the war, I lost track of Dieter and his family. 

Entering the house where I had spent a couple of weeks of my early youth, everything seemed so small, including the room where I once slept, but nothing had changed. Even the water faucet halfway up the narrow staircase where I had my morning wash was still in place.

I knocked at a door, and from the inside, somebody said: Herein! I opened the door. There, the whole family was sitting around a table manufacturing Easter decorations. I knew people were already working on decorations for Christmas in the West. I bought some Easter bunnies, paid with Western currency, and handed the purchased souvenirs to my colleagues.

It's all history.

**

Linguae francae

Last weekend Elisabeth and I visited my son in Zürich. On our way, we had coffee at a rest stop. The guy serving was a Yugoslavian speaking a rudimentary High German, with a client trying Swiss German on him. Since no communication was possible, the Swiss guy eventually switched to a guttural-sounding High German. While meditating on the scene, an even better example came to my mind. The other day, I overheard two charming ladies living in our housing complex—one English and the other Spanish—conversing in German, their lingua franca.

In the Middle Ages, educated Christians used Latin as a common language, particularly useful for travel. As my neighbor, a former Latin professor, pointed out, this was not Cicero's language but Küchenlatein (dog Latin). Latin was not only the language of the Church but also the language for writing treaties. Not only one but two peace treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648. For the Protestants, it was the Instrumentum Pacis Caesareo-Suecicum Osnabrugense in Osnabrück; for the Catholics, it was the Instrumentum Pacis Caesareo-Gallicum Monasteriense in Münster.

This practice changed with the Rastatt Peace Treaty of 1714, which ended the Spanish Succession War, written in French. The politically dominant power in Europe, France, imposed its language and greatly influenced manners and culture in the 18th century. 

Frederic the Great spoke better French than German, though his written texts often passed Voltaire's scrutiny and required corrections. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, French was not only the diplomatic language but the lingua franca of Europe's educated circles. 

A mixture of Low German and French is the old consul's opening line in Thomas Mann's Nobel Prize-winning novel Die Buddenbrooks, set in the nineteenth century: "Je, den Düwel ook, c'est la question, ma très chére demoiselle!" Is this a reminder that the Hanseatic city of Lübeck was part of the French Empire from 1811 to 1813?

Born out of the resistance against the Napoleonic occupation, a strong aversion for the French developed in Germany that Turnvater (father of gymnastics) Jahn articulated as follows, "Deutsche, fühlt wieder mit männlichem Hochsinn den Wert eurer edlen, lebendigen Sprache, schöpft aus ihrem nie versiegenden Urborn, grabt die alten Quellen auf und lasset Lutetiens stehende Lache in Ruhe! (Germans, feel manly and high-mindedly the value of your noble, living language again, scoop from its primitive never drying up spring, dig up those old sources, and leave Lutetia's puddle alone!)."

The dominance of French in Europe gradually shifted after the First World War, when American English replaced Voltaire's idiom as the lingua franca. There was only one field in which German was a must at the time: physics. The geniuses of New Physics, like Hans Bethe, Max Born, Walther Bothe, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Pascual Jordan, young Werner Heisenberg, and even Niels Bohr, the Dane,  lectured in German. So the Americans coming to Göttingen to study quantum mechanics also trudged through Goethe's language.

In those days, transatlantic communication was by letter. A young American scientist had prepared a thick letter, but he wanted to know its weight to determine the required postage before posting it. So he went downtown Göttingen, entered a stationery shop, letter in hand, and addressed the attractive young lady on the other side of the counter, "Fraulein, haben sie eine Wiege, ich möchte etwas wagen (Young lady, do you have a cradle, I would like to dare something)." Even when she blushed, he did not notice that he had mixed up the vowels, "Fräulein, haben sie eine Waage, ich möchte etwas wiegen (Young lady, do you have a pair of scales I want to weigh something)."

Nowadays, English is the lingua franca of the world, although Professor Henry Higgins once claimed, "In America, they haven't used it for years." 

Luther saw, above all, language as a means of communication when he promoted die gemeine deutsche sprache, das mich beide, Ober- und Niderlender, verstehen mögen (the common German language such that those speaking High German and Low German may both understand me). But he also continued, "Die sprachen sind die scheyden darynn dis messer des geysts stickt (Languages are like sheaths in which stick the spiritual knives of understanding)." 

Luther's remark sometimes makes me feel sorry for the English language, used by so many for communication but spoken by so few. This is why I always admire those who master a language perfectly.

At CERN, where I worked, the two official languages were French and English, but we mainly used a mixture of the two, Franglais, for communication. During meetings, I read the lips of native speakers arguing in their mother tongues, sometimes paying more attention to their formulations than to what they actually said. 

Once, I was mistaken about one of my colleagues, let us call him Fred, whom I admired for his perfect English and his beautiful handwriting. Fred once went to England with another Englishman, Frank, and a German to discuss a delicate technical problem with a British firm. 

In the evening, after a few glasses of whiskey, the firm's boss pointed to the German and said, "You are German." Then he addressed Frank and declared, "You are British." Finally, he turned to Fred, saying, "And you nearly fooled me!" This was not gentlemanlike, for later, I learned that Fred had fled Nazi Germany as a young guy and made a particular effort to make English his mother tongue during his schooling in the UK.

Another colleague at CERN, I admired not only for his perfect French. Albert, a Grande Ecole graduate, was in charge of the authorization process for the LEP storage ring with the French authorities. The main document had been submitted, but the French administration requested clarifications, which my staff and I provided as Technical Memoranda (TMs) written in French. 

One morning, my telephone rang, "Albert here. Could you see me in my office? We should discuss your recent document." I asked, "Is something wrong technically?" He retorted, "No, it's the French." I replied, "But the French was polished by my French secretary, and I have other things to do." He became so angry that I had to give in. So I spent the whole morning going through the French text of the TM with Albert.

 

When he retired five years later, he threw a party. On that occasion, I thanked him, "Albert, avec toi j'ai bien appris le français (Albert, with you, I have learned French well)." He looked at me and sounded disappointed, "C'est tout ce que tu as appris de moi? (Is that all that you have learned from me?)."

Coming back to my original topic. Clearly, American English is today's lingua franca. Many English technical terms have been directly integrated into German. But resistance is building up. The Deutsche Bahn was particularly eager to replace German words with what they considered English terms. So they changed Fahrkartenschalter to Ticket Counter, Auskunft to Service Point, Kurzzeitparken to Kiss and Ride, and Mieträder to Call-a-Bike. Recently, Die Bahn started paddling back, applying a Teutonic face-lifting to their naming practice.

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Weimar, German History in a Small Thuringian Town

When my son was in Frankfurt on a business trip in May and was stranded there for a long and lost weekend, he likely had read my blog about Weimar when he spontaneously decided to visit the town. He came back full of fascinating experiences, telling us stories and impressing Elisabeth, so she wanted to see Weimar, too.

We went there for a long weekend, staying in (where else?) the Elephant Hotel three weeks ago.

I felt happy showing my wife the Weimar that I know so well. 

Before we went, it happened that a week earlier, in a small bookshop at Kirchzarten near Freiburg, Annette Seemann, who had previously published a Weimar travel guide, gave a presentation of her latest book: Weimar, eine Kulturgeschichte. Her reading was overbooked, and I was lucky to find a seat. 

In a panel discussion, the editor of the cultural section of the Badische Zeitung attempted to have the author cover the content of the entire book. That was a problem because the amount of information in the already thick book, resulting from laborious work, presented many detailed facts. 

Still, the text occasionally lacks a deeper analysis. Nevertheless, I learned quite a lot, for example, about the Reformation and that Luther visited Weimar several times. Anette Seemann's tome will complete my collection of books on Weimar, which I shall present in a future blog.

Red Baron, then a young scientific hopeful in Munich, still remembers his first visit to Weimar in 1959. In November 1958, Nikita Khrushchev issued the Berlin ultimatum that caused Hamburg's press baron Axel Springer in January 1959 to start a campaign in the Federal Republic with the slogan Macht das Tor auf (Open the Gate), selling* pins with the Brandenburg Gate. Later, in 1987, President Reagan visited the Berlin Wall and, looking at the Gate, modulated Springer's slogan, imploring the right person: Mr. Gorbachev, open this Gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!
* for 20 Pfennig a piece

In the fall of 1959, a left-wing Gesellschaft für fortschrittliche Politik (Society for progressive politics) in Munich posted an answer to Axel Springer: Wir machen das Tor auf (We open the Gate), offering a bus trip at a moderate price to Gera, a small industrial town in Thuringia, and as a lure,   a detour to Weimar. Together with a friend and a couple of other students, we seized this unique opportunity to visit Weimar, the hometown of Germany's literary quadruple stars: Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and Wieland. However, before that, our delegation had to suffer heated political discussions in Gera.

The political slogan in Gera's theater:
Germany's fate will be decided between the forces of peace and the military adventurers in the West.
Note: This and the following scanned slides are more than 50 years old.
Despite image processing, the quality is poor.

With my friend, we fought virtually back-to-back against devoted followers of the communist regime. Initially, we felt somewhat lost against their arguments, which were supported by "hard facts," until we noticed that the achievements presented were not as "hard" as they seemed. So, I started to invent "supporting numbers" myself. I became so successful in defending "Western values" that my East German counterpart, a trade union official, sought help. He frequently asked a journalist from the Neues Deutschland, the official government newspaper, "Antworte du dem doch mal" (You should answer him instead).

The following day, we were shipped to Weimar. It was in November. A pale sun illuminated the square in front of the Goethe-Haus, which was closed on Sunday morning. When we walked to the Goethe-Schiller monument, the sun disappeared. The two geniuses of German literature stood gray against the gray front of the Nationaltheater, which had been a symbol of hope in 1919 with the adoption of the democratic Weimar Constitution.

 
We soon had to leave the magical places to visit Weimar's other heritage, the concentration camp Buchenwald. Here, during the introduction, the East German propaganda machine went into high gear, asserting: In West Germany, new concentration camps are under construction. 

Luckily, we had some law students in our group who were much better at their words than the physicists. They branded the lies and cheap propaganda, resulting in an icy silence. Full of shame, our group eventually visited the horror place in silence, unmolested.

The classical suum cuique is here perverted at the entrance to the concentration camp.

Inside the camp.
Note the GDR flag and the Russian soldiers in the back on the left.

My second trip to Weimar took place 30 years later, in April 1990, but this is another story, as well as Elisabeth's and my most recent trip. Stuff for future blogs.

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