militärgeschichtliches denkmal (12. 592)

After doing the weekend shopping in Mellrichstadt (previously), we stopped in the in the Hainberg Arreal on the edge of town for a walk on the groups of the mothballed border garrison of the Cold War. By the old security gate there was a collection of the kind of tanks from the motor pool and the headquarters building preserved in its original condition, furnished as it was during its forty-four year history as home base to the 352nd Panzer Grenadier Battalion of the West German Bundeswehr. 

The museum and documentation centre was closed when we visited but I got immediate feelings of nostalgia for the former US army barracks in Würzburg, Kitzigen, Schweinfurt, Giebelstadt, etc, etc with the same general layout and style of the few representative structures—which of course were German-built and occupied by the Allies at the end of World War II—but learned it contains the command room with access to the bunker and fallout shelter (see also, worth going back for) as well as an arms room and information on the unit’s patrols and foreign missions up to Afghanistan in 2006 after which the brigade was disbanded and the base closed.

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany

taubertal: detwang (12. 426)

For the long Labour Day weekend (see also), H and I returned to the Tauber valley and stayed at a campground just outside of the Kirchdorf Detwang, just a leisurely twenty minute walk along the river from Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

After setting up camp, we discovered the little village on the crossroads of the Franconian Marienweg and the Jakobsweg (the pilgrimage trail of el Camino de Santiago de Compostela) to be quite a historic jewel itself. From the Old High German for someone’s field (=Det’s Wang), it was first mentioned in a lease contract in 1335 when the local chapter of the Teutonic Knights, bought later in the same century by the imperial city of Rothenburg. The Gothic parish church of Sts Peter and Paul was founded in the tenth century and features an altar retable hewn from wood by Tilman Riemenschneider (see previously).

 

The small neighbouring castle is from the end of the 1200s and was built for the hereditary office of Reichsküchenmeister (magister coquinae, Master of the Kitchen) held by the ennobled lords von Nordenberg, kept in the family through the end of the Holy Roman Empire. There was an ensemble of historic houses and mills, formerly the site of a working cloister.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Carl Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature (with synchronoptica), the BASIC programming language (1964) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: ancient debt-forgiveness, a roasting in the press, more links to enjoy plus Witchcraft through the Ages

eight years ago: no lapse in appropriations, five decades of IKEA catalogues, more Brexit omnishambles, an animated version of the Rex Factor plus Trump’s Diet Coke buzzer

nine years ago: film set crossovers, strategic cheese stockpiles, a weasel sabotages CERN, WiFi rustico, letter-carriers lend a helping hand in Finland plus a history of trademark applications

ten years ago: comment is free, a stationary bike for washing up plus universal

woggele stä (12. 408)

Wandering a bit through the neighbouring market town of Ostheim vor der Rhön and learned our area had a connection—and a celebrated one at that—with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, marking his visits to the town in 1780, accompanying Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, whom ennobled the writer and polymath, in his role as privy councillor and highway commissioner. 

 On one occasion, under the advisement of local economics chair, Goethe directed the construction of two ramparts bridging the river Streu, designed to straighten the flow of the waters and provide irrigation to the meadows, a system used by famers through 1985. Referred to in local dialect as the above (Wackeliege Stege) as the original wooden footbridges, replacing the stepping stones, became wobbly shortly after installation. 

 The master baker Hans Bickert was an avid researcher of local history and was particularly intrigued by the connection to Goethe and acquired in 1970 the old Saxe-Weimar Amtshaus (we have been to a Flöhmarkt inside this building) from the State of Bavaria (see above: Ostheim is historically tied to Thüringen but joined Bavaria in 1947)—restored and renovated the history structure next door and hung signs bearing important transitional dates in the ownership and allegiances of the town. 

The chronicle includes the second visit of Goethe in April of 1782, this time to recruit draftees for the American Revolutionary War, a task which Goethe detested as human thievery and resolved to keep his focus on his earlier project of improving the towns river shallows and apply new irrigation techniques, and adding a basin for wading and ablutions—see also. Not many men were conscripted for Prussia. This minor but lovingly attended to construction together with notable correspondence dispatched from here not only helped the amateur historian to commemorate Goethe’s time in Ostheim with several plaques but also inspired the baker to dress up as the poet laureate while giving guided tours of the town.

the man in black (12. 279)

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we learn that on this day in 1953, whilst stationed in West Germany Air Force staff sergeant Johnny Cash in Landsberg am Lech (which also hosted the detention facility where Hitler was incarcerated following the abortive Beer-Hall Putsch in 1921 and on the 1933 anniversary of the National Socialist party’s ascendancy in the Reichstag) was likely the among the first to learn about the death of revolutionary leader Joseph Stalin outside of the Soviet inner political circle. The General Secretary of the Communist Party had suffered a stroke a few days earlier and succumbed whilst recuperating in his dacha after extensive medical intervention (probably of a brain haemorrhage) and not announced to the public immediately and possibly disclosed due to this interception. Monitoring coded radio communiques, Cash broke the news through his chain of command to Eisenhower after the message was deciphered. Aside from this important intercept that penetrated the highest echelons of the regime, the balance of Cash’s three year tour was isolating and uneventful, leading to a formation of a band called the Landsberg Barbarians (a play on Bavarians) that played during off duty hours in local venues and saw the inspiration and development of such signature songs as “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Hey Porter.”

die osingverlosung (12. 011)

Inscribed on the UNESCO register of intangible cultural heritage in 2016, we had never heard of this five hundred year old custom, that takes place every decade (in years ending with four) on the arable plateau called the Osing near Bad Windsheim in Middle Frankonia after the harvest when lots are drawn by farmers of the four villages that share the land to determine who will work which parcel for the next ten years, until the next lottery. This unique system dates back to the late Middle Ages and ensures that fertile and less desirable fields are distributed equitably, this tradition surviving no where else in Germany has been upheld as the community appreciates the element of fairness—one farmer consigned to a poor allotment will have an equal chance to work more high-yielding patch of land next time, instead of selling off the commons to the highest bidder. Even taking place in 1944 when other long-standing traditions were put on hiatus, the custom is said to date back to around the year 1020 when Kaiserin Kunigunde von Luxemburg went on a hunting expedition in the then densely forested area of the Osing. Her party got lost but thanks to the pealing of church bells of the four villages surrounding the woods at the cardinal points, Herbolzheim, Humprechtsau, Krautostheim and Rüdisbronn, they were able to find their way, and in gratitude, the empress deeded the land to the people to share in perpetuity.

*    *    *    *   *

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: terraforming Mars (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: bioluminescence

eight years ago: majestic sandcastles, a particular aesthetic, the uncanny mantis shrimp, digitising archival photos plus a collapsing bike helmet

nine years ago: saving the bees  

ten years ago: linguistic redundancy plus high-fructose foods

sunday drive: fasanerie u deutsch-deutsch grenze (11. 792)

Taking advantage of the cooler weather, H and I went to the next village over (see previously here and here) of Hermannsfeld to see a classic car show held on the grounds of the Jagdschloss Fasanerie—a pheasant-hunting lodge built for Duke Georg I of Sachsen-Meiningen from an existing menagerie at the end of the eighteenth century and by turns a nature reserve, a refugee encampment, accommodations for the border police, a teacher training facility and then back to a park and place for excursions. 

Afterwards we took the long way home over Henneburg and stopped again at the sculpture park at the former Inner-German border. With an expanded and changing selection of artworks and installations on division, reunification and freedom, the Friedensweg lining the crossing from Thüringen and Bavaria was dedicated by Bundeskanzler Helmet Kohl in 1996 and began with the central construction of the Golden Bridge and features contributions from children and artists from both East and West coming together.