fungus among us

Inspired by the diversity of toadstools and mushrooms we came across recently on our walk in the woods, I was drawn to a special exhibit at Wiesbaden’s museum (previously here and here and probably in more spots) on the nutritive, toxic and social history aspects of fungi.
From classification and identification to application and preservation, the displays were engrossing and enlightening as they ranged from the culinary, pharmaceutical and their oversized role as pigments for dyes and warrior cosmetics and I especially liked the artistry of the dioramas with a section dedicated to the workshop that created these diverse, liminal (neither animal nor vegetable)  mushroom mannequins.
Actual specimens, like creatures of the deep, wouldn’t survive public scrutiny and many could potential offer hazard and models were made and placed in their native environments to illustrate their role in the ecologies of various biomes. The exhibits on the usage of fungi were supplemented by local anecdotal enterprises, like a crafty woman who coloured wool in many shades with mushroom sourced pigments and another who was a successful farmer and we’re thinking of cultivating our own in our root cellar and have embarked on a course of study to those ends.
It is strange to think how these elaborate and embellished fungal fruiting bodies are just vehicles, ultimately, to spread spores and propagate the species but I suppose that the same is true for ourselves, however we might consider ourselves the refined heirs of a long line of succession. 

carriage return

Serendipitously, coming across this article in Amusing Planet about the green cabmen’s shelters of London that date back to one particularly blustery morning in 1875 when no cabs could be hailed as all the drivers were hunkered down in a pub (absent any other place to go without leaving their horses unattended) and in no mood to brave the elements keyed us onto what this grey structure might be that we pass downtown on a regular basis.
To remedy the situation and to discourage drink-driving, a group of philanthropists commissioned the building of sheds scattered throughout the city that could house (rather trans-dimensionally, like another London street icon) a dozen drivers and was equipped with a full-kitchen with subsidised meals. Thirteen out of sixty-one original shelters remain and are still in operation and the exclusive reserve of taxi drivers. If Wiesbaden ever had such a hide-away for cabbies, it’s certainly no longer accommodating. See a gallery of the little buildings plus take a peek inside at the link up top.

wohnblockknacker

Seventy thousand residents of Frankfurt am Main—a tenth of the city’s population—will be evacuated on Sunday (EN/DE) out of an abundance of caution as an unexploded bomb (Blindgänger) discovered in the Westend district is defused. The UK-made munition was dubbed “blockbuster” for its capability to take out whole streets and was dropped during one of the seventy-five aerial attacks that took place, destroying some seventy percent of the city. This event marks the largest post-war mass-evacuation and the latest in a series of ordnance uncovered by construction projects in urbanised areas.

weiße haus

I’ve passed this villa in the Hessian capital numerous times and it always caused me to do a bit of a double-take but never realised until recently that the similarity to the US presidential mansion was intentional.
In 1903, sparkling white wine (Sekt) magnate Friedrich Wilhelm Söhnlein commissioned a Zürich architectural group to build a residence for him and his new wife and re-import Emma Pabst, heiress to the American brewing dynasty, specifically in the style of the White House. The design (an homage to Irish architect Jame Hoban) was also part of the motivation for the US military authorities to commandeer the compound from 1945 until 1990 and utilise it as a local head-quarters—just removed from the Kurpark by a few hundred metres. When the villa was returned to the state, it was considered for a time as a new home for the state government or alternately listing the property as a consulate—even though many countries were represented in nearby Frankfurt. Presently the building is in private hands but can be rented for special events.

litfaßsäule or post no bills

Recently, H and I learned that those purpose-built advertising columns like this one in my neighbourhood in Wiesbaden, known as Morris columns in English-speaking venues after the French printer Gabriel Morris who brought them to Paris, are called Litfaßsäule after the Berlin printer and publisher Ernst Litfass who first originated them. Repulsed by disordered pamphleting of walls, storefronts, fences and trees with random advertising and notices, Litfass received permission to erect Annoncier-Säulen in public places the city in 1855 and earned his title König der Reklame (King of Advertisements) by renting advertising space. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the columns also became lighting-rods and showcases for propaganda.  Litfass maintained his monopoly until his death, oddly enough, in Wiesbaden in 1874 and afterwards many municipalities undertook building their own pilasters.

sunday drive: die siebenschläfer

For a few weeks now there’s been a detour due to major roads construction on the way from home to my work-week apartment that necessitates that one drive straight up a mountain range to get to the Autobahn, and there’s been some new vistas to enjoy despite the dodgy weather. I made it a point to visit a little wayside, hilltop chapel near Ebersburg dedicated to the Seven Sleepers.
Click on the images to enlarge them.  Both Islamic and Christian traditions share the story of seven young men who flee persecution in Ephesus around the year 250 AD by hiding in a cave to emerge from a long slumber three centuries later, at a point in history when the Roman Empire had a more favourable view of Abrahamic religions.
Indeed under Emperor Decius, such religious practises were outlawed as antisocial and subversive but the Empire turned to adopting Christianity as a state religion.  One story names the youths as Achilledes, Diomedes, Stephanus, Eugenius, Probatius, Sabbatius and Quiriacus plus their loyal dog who stands watch the whole time.  According to other accounts, the seven are still sleeping and there is also a bit of conflation and cross-over with stories of Joseph of Arimathea as the keeper of the Holy Grail, identifying the Chalice Well in Glastonbury as the cave of the Seven Sleepers. 

operation vittles

When in late June of 1948 Soviet forces tried to starve West Berlin into surrender during the blockade the American forces—headquartered in Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden—responded by dispatching some two-hundred thousand re-supply flights that brought food and materiel to the isolated enclave—nearly one flight every half-minute for the following fifteen months until rail-access was restored. One response of the dependents, one thousand wives and children, of US soldiers stationed there was to create a cheerful little austerity cookbook made up of improvised and not so bleak recipes (maybe some indulgence and exotic tastes is the answer to a geopolitical crisis) to tide their families and their Germany hosts through rationing and power-cuts and general uncertainty. Within this gesture too is the stance of solidarity as the families could have been evacuated, rather than choosing to remain and tough it out.

frau holle/mother hulda

Fancy Notions presents a wonderful vintage, stop-motion adaptation of the Brothers Grimm morality-, work-ethic tale Frau Holle—or as it’s sometimes rendered in English, Mother Hulda from Cornet studios (1976—purveyors of many fine instructional films as well, as featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000) called The Magic Well. With elements of the Cinderella story (Briar Rose), a studious, hardworking young girl is abused by her step-mother and expected to do all the household chores (whilst her biological daughter is pampered) and spin wool into yarn the rest of her hours until her fingers bled from the effort.

The story was told to Wilhelm Grimm by one interview subject named Henriette Dorothea Wild who lived near Kassel but came from Huguenot roots (famously members of the family accounted for other fairy tales like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, Rumpelstiltskin, the Cat and Mouse in Partnership, etc.) whom the collector of fables later married. One day, spinning as was her custom outdoors near the well—she pricked her fingers and dropped the spindle while trying to dab the blood away. Fearful of the punishment that would ensue for having lost their chief means of livelihood down the well, the girl launched herself after it. The girl awoke to find herself in an enchanted land and did small kindnesses to some nearly over-baked breads and an over-burdened apple tree she encountered along her way to meet Frau Holle—a kindly old woman she served loyally without stint, cooking for her and making her bed—shaking her bedclothes caused the snows to come in Hesse—central Germany. Frau Holle ist für die Schneemenge im Winter verantwortlich, denn je gründlicher sie ihre Betten ausschüttelt, desto mehr schneit es auf der Erde. The girl leads a charmed life but does eventually grow homesick—to which Frau Holle gladly releases her and restores her to the cottage in the woods with the spindle and an abdundance of gold as if no time had passed at all. Seeing her step daughter so arrayed with gold, the conviving widow tosses the spindle back down the well, pricks her favourite daughter’s finger on a rose thorn and throws her down, rather fearlessly after. To learn more about etiquette, superstition and ephemera and how the other daughter fares, please visit Fancy Notions at the link above.

fronleichnam

Though this moveable feast of Corpus Christi is not technically a national holiday observed in every German state, on this ecumenical jubilee year (DE/EN) that marks the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting the ninety-five theses on the door of the royal chapel of Wittenburg, all Germans are accorded all the observances. Bavaria (where we live) has the most liberal public holiday schedule with thirteen, minus Reformation day, and other states granting fewer ranging from nine to twelve (like Hessen, where I work). Affording all holidays to everyone is a symbolic way to counter sectarianism as a few observances are markedly celebrated or disdained to the envy of neighbours clearly along historical Catholic or Evangelical majority territories.

einladung

Clearing out a storage container at work, we chanced upon—among a lot of miscellaneous garbage—this nifty artefact from when the US President and the Chancellor of West Germany met one another and held a general audience with all the soldiers and airmen stationed in Wiesbaden.
Someone back then framed their invitation, which reads (should you be encoding the text with your biological sight): “You are invited to see President Jimmy Carter and Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Helmut Schmidt Saturday, 15. July 1978 – 0845 Hours Wiesbaden Air Base – German-American Military Family Day (0845 until 1500 Hours).” Guests will be entertained with a Broadway musical revue by the 12th Panzer Division Band plus a parachute and military working dog demonstration. Carter would be visiting Wiesbaden on another occasion a few years later to welcome the freed captives of the US-Iran Hostage Crisis who were evacuated to the air field.

xylotheque

The intrepid explorers of Amusing Planet introduce us to a very special sort of “book” depository curated in locations across Europe and beyond that began with the advent of modern forestry in the eighteenth century.
Botanists began forming libraries whose stacks contained wooden books that were compartments that held the twigs, fruit, root and bark samples of different sorts of trees—ξύλον being Greek for wood and θήκη a library. The word book in English itself is a cognate of the Germanic word for the beech tree, with early writing carved on blocks of wood. The pictured shelf is part of the Schildback Xylotheque located in the city of Kassel and there’s much more to be found at the link up top.

location scout

Daily I pass this office tower that really dominates the Wiesbaden skyline that I formally found oddly satisfying as representative of a cliché corporate headquarters that one might find in a 1980s movie where corruption is uncovered in ill-explained, cartoonish method. Since the accession of Dear Leader, however, the sight of it has grown a little less welcoming and reminds me of his property empire and personal ensemble of consulates. We’ll gladly accept our finders’ fee in any form of fiat tender.

stay bronze pony boy or the telescreens have no off switch

Originally the missions of consulates and embassies were distinct—the consuls not simply being an outpost of the chief ambassador, but while the embassy represented the foreign-relations interests of the sending and the host nations, consulates were established in order to champion the business and economic interest of their credentialing nation-state.
Arguably there’s been quite a bit of mission-creep and the institutions have taken on overlapping roles—and fighting for the interest of domestic businesses abroad might ought not to be held to the same standards which govern diplomacy. I’ve only chanced to be in depths of the compound in Frankfurt once and could well imagine what activities might be carried-out in those labyrinthine, subterranean corridors. According to the latest tranche of documents released by Wikileaks, the US Central Intelligence Agency used the facility as a base of operations for surveillance and subterfuge for all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (DE/EN). It’s not as if we hadn’t been warned multiple times before, and these revelations about the spy-base plus the UK’s collusion were among the few concrete details (also demonstrating that Russian hackers didn’t have a monopoly on silly code-names with Brutal Kangaroo, malware hiding in digital images, or Weeping Angel, fake off buttons on snooping gadgets) in page after page of tools for prising vulnerabilities and making sure those wounds are kept open once on the open market and certainly would confer economic advantages.

rosinenbomber

Naturally, one associates the year-long blockade and subsequent airlift (Luftbrücke) in the immediate aftermath of World War II with Berlin and the Tempelhof airfield of the American Sector, and while there were serious geopolitical intrigues involved, including the Western powers propping up of the new Deutsche Mark (to make sure that a recovering West Germany was not able to completely renege on its debts, in part) that led the Soviets’ attempt to isolate West Berlin and starve the exclave into submission, in my mind it remains as a goodwill mission and those flights had to have originated from somewhere.
Two hundred thousand flights from the from the summer of 1948 until the following June formed a bucket-brigade that continuously brought food and supplies to the divided city—and I’ve never been able to quite reconcile that popular image (nothing trivial, no, but also not the stuff of a hot war either) of the airlift with the rather grim fact that all the streets on the military installation (recently named in honour of the general and deputy military governor of Germany who orchestrated the so-called Operation Vittles) are in turn named after service members who died during the operation, a moving tribute and considering the scope and complexity of the continuous runs, it is surprising how few casualties there were. Command and control for the entire mission—which was distributed over three air-corridors, in British occupied Lübeck and Celle as well as the main thrust coming from Rhein-Main airbase and Wiesbaden’s airfield—was headquartered in a townhouse at the head of Taunusstraße just off the Kurpark and Casino of Wiesbaden, since converted to apartments and a florist shop. The Soviets tolerated the stream of flights, not wanting to be accused of stoking more conflict, and supposed that the British and Americans would eventually grow weary and either surrender West Berlin or concede to Soviet demands that they stay out of German economic policy. Though the contrast of humanitarian mission so embargoed with the victory of the Allied Forces (East and West) is nonetheless still a little jarring, it’s probably far more noble and civilised for preserving the peace—mutually—in the face of frustrations that could have just as easily descended into renewed violence.

landtag

A week ahead of the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Hessen—the first German constituency at that level to be formally reconstituted after World War II as the chief staging-grounds of the American-occupied sector—I was able to arrange (or rather happened upon) a tour of the formal ducal residence that hosts the state parliament (Hessischer Landtag), just removed from the Rathaus and main market square of Wiesbaden, the capital.

Click on any image to enlarge it.
The city will commemorate the occasion by opening all of its ministries on 24 September to the public but it was a privilege to have a guided tour that rather tidily tied together the idea of accessibility, image and engagement on the part of the represented. The entrance, facing the people’s Rathaus, is very much in keeping with the Baroque style of the city’s other royal structures—and was the duke’s (later created grand duke of Nassau-Orange) winter-quarters, the summer palace being a few kilometres down a grand avenue on the bank of the Rhein in Schloss Biebrich.

Just off the central stairwell (Treppenhaus), there was a greenhouse of sorts whose walls were still decorated with a lush jungle motif—distinct from the icy snow-flake theme that subtly adorned the rest of the palace in the ceilings and in the parquet of the floors (I am thinking that people were just beginning to study wintery precipitation under the loop) that once held exotic plants. Now the space only held busts of past Hessian minister-presidents, but having been elevated, the grand-duke took up new addresses and his botanical collection went to Frankfurt am Main to seed the area that’s now known as the Palmengarten.

Another legacy of the royal family was the unexpected premature death of the Duchess Katharina, his Russian wife, caused the grieving Duke to build the Orthodox chapel on the Neroberg as tribute (more on this place to come). This routine of upstairs and downstairs and quite a few of strategically-placed mirrors were designed to make this rather modestly-sized castle appear as large as other great houses in Europe for visiting dignitaries, and we were participants in another carefully arranged diplomatic nudge by being invited, unusually for any historic tour, to sit on the furniture.

In these representational chambers, the love-seats (so called Causeusen) were angled to make opponents to face each other askance and so more relaxed—other sofas had extra wings for advisors. I felt out of my class as a political boffin as others in the group recognised the dance-hall and balconies as places or receiving honours and momentous addresses.

The great hall hosted the first sessions of the state parliament in 1946 and marked the point of transition into the modern addition, refurbished in 2008 in order to make the work of government more transparent and rather a fish-bowl with passers-by able to catch a glimpse or more of the proceedings with windows ringing the gallery of the plenary chamber. The ceiling and seating layout reminded me of the convention held at the Paulus Kirche of Frankfurt (see link above) held in Frankfurt that established the Weimar Republic. I wonder what more insider-secrets await with the open-house event next week.

churfrankenland

We had heard of the Kurhesse region or even Churmainz previously (referring to the principalities’ electoral passing influence) but never before the term Churfranken, which was adopted not too long ago by a consortium of towns, villages and singular destinations along the River Main between the Spessart and Odenwald mountain ranges to promote themselves. We took advantage of the extended weekend to take a drive through this area and saw a few of the sites.
First, we toured the grounds of Schloss Mespelbrunn, an early Renaissance moated castle and keep still owned by the same noble family, governor of the Archbishop of Mainz six centuries on. We had the briefest of tours before being inundated with the crowds from a tour bus that had just arrived, but we were able to navigate through the trophy room ourselves and marvel at the authentic state of the elements and embellishments.
We clung to the river’s banks, crisscrossing several bridges and saw quite a lot along the way before stopping in historic Miltenberg. Here too, we unexpectedly found ourselves overwhelmed with crowds—there was a huge festival going on, but had a nice walk through the town nonetheless. Established as Roman fortress because of its strategic and defensible location, the town prospered throughout the Middle Ages because of its deposits of red sandstone, a distinctive building material much valued all over Europe.
The market, town gates and scores of half-timbered (Fachwerk) houses were absolutely charming and well-preserved. Among the main sites is the inn Zum Riesen (the Giant), whose registration documents dating back to the early 1400s make it one of the oldest, continuously running hotels in the world, with its guests including Holy Roman emperors, kings, generals, Napoléon, chancellors and Elvis Presley. We’ll have to return here soon and explore more.

gruen transfer oder ghost malls

Going home every week, I pass by signs of the future local of “Barbarossa City” shopping centre, that I am supposing will be erected outside of the industrial park of the ancient town of Gelnhausen—home to one of the emperor’s palatial estates, and it makes me moan a little to think about the state of property development in Germany. There perhaps was a legitimate pitch to be made at one point but once there comes a saturation point when we only have ourselves to blame for siphoning off business from the Altstadt and Marktplatz, which still retain their charms, making online shopping commitment-free—delivered to your door via drone, and there quickly comes a point where the appeal and utility of galleries “anchored” by ample parking and a super-market diminishes to the point it’s no longer tenable.
Every other purchase made in the client stores is really just an impulse-buy and the domain who those who couldn’t be bothered to comparison- shop beforehand. There are several ghost malls—completely vacant or nearly so, that are one the periphery of Wiesbaden’s city centre and while the former has been kept because of it auto-garage for as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the rather sharp decline of the latter, whose retail spaces are ninety-percent empty and random (by not a rotation) of car rental outlets, a stationary shop, a t-shirt screen-printing business and a ubiquitous electronic store are all that are left. Even outside city limits, these projects seem designed for ruin after the developers, the barons have made their profit and saddled yet another middling-sized town with reticulated grocery store that steals commerce away from downtown and denying people the ability to shop—or at least the impression thereof, and leaving a landscape of struggling restaurants and shuttered corner shops, boutiques and antique shops to be replaced by mobile telephone and fast-food outlets. What do you think? I don’t care for this zombification, and given the parallel crisis in affordable housing, maybe such flagships of the retail sector might (or rather do) work if (when) they offered accommodation for living as well.

biotop oder flyover

With nice weather and reckoned sufficient time, I (possibly impulsively) decided to meet a couple of colleagues for dinner in Mainz under my own power and set out crossing the Rhein on foot from the Hessen capital of Wiesbaden to the adjacent capital of Rheinland-Pfalz. It’s a funny and persistent syndrome that’s mostly not been a disservice, but trying to imagine distances in my head are without fail translated to something much smaller, a sandbox that one can just dart from one corner to another without any investment of time and energy.

It always ends well, in any case, and I was treated to vistas that one could not appreciate at higher speeds, certainly not from the passenger seat of a car, and the islands of industry and the contemplative lagoons at rest and the green verge that buffered the city from the shore. I knew the general direction but away from the clearly marked path, I had a clever application in my pocket that gave me a nudge if I was marching in the opposite directly but did not reign in my exploration overmuch. Truly away from the roads and taking the most direct routes, given my mode of transportation, I was astounded to find myself hiking through a really amazing and unexpected nature reserve just above the river’s floodplain—unseen but infinitely more interesting than some fallow-field of highway median.
I found myself in a landscape of sand dunes (der Mainzer Großer Sand), whose pronounced topography did not present a struggle but was distinctly not flat, the sort of geometry one grows unaccustomed to along more manicured trails.
This ancient environment was host to tall cypress trees and other flora that belonged in more Mediterranean climes, owing to the fact that although nutrient poor, sand was far better at holding heat.  Approaching the boroughs of Mombach and Gonsenheim, the dunes made the transition into a great forest, only gently interrupted with a few paths, that is the largest contiguous one in the region at seven square-kilometers, a wood of some eighteen-hundred acres. Despite being often turned around and stopping to marvel at the landscape, I still made it on time but with none to spare.

veranstaltungsraum oder moments at the museum

Last week, I chanced upon the Heimat- (homeland is not really an equivalent phrase—attachment or identity, perhaps) and Industrial-Historical Museum of the Wiesbadner borough of Biebrich and went in for a look.

The formerly independent town on the shores of the Rhein is still an important manufacturing centre in the region, but the focus of the permanent collection mostly had the focus and reach back to the eighteenth century and the creation of the Duchy of Orange-Nassau with a lot of interesting ephemera of the age and spiky hats. One of the more interesting pieces on display was a chest (eine Truhe) with its complicated, artful locking mechanism revealed.

There was also a special exhibit of the works of native painter and relative unknown Friedrich Carl Scheidemantel with many pictures in the Rheinromanik genre, contemplative idylls and castle ruins cast against dramatic skies, and also many, like the ensemble here pictured, of the cartoon-medieval that depicted the expedition (again with a healthy dose of license and anachronism) of Otto the Great to the fields of Lombardy, which helped him consolidate power and assert himself Holy and Roman Emperor of the Germans.

tatort oder der kommissar’s in town

Though truthfully I cannot say I consider myself a dedicated fan of the series—though I usually have it on in the background and make it a point to gyrate to the funky opening soundtrack—I think that I must give it another go after reading Dangerous Minds’ appreciation of Tatort, a crime-scene investigatory franchise that has regular parallel plot-lines in a dozen different cities within the German Sprachraum. The series has aired for four decades presently and its thousandth instalment is coming up soon. The tribute highlights some of the best episodes and offers a lucid explanation to the nonpareil format to outside audiences—however much we might already fancy ourselves forensics experts thanks to CSI and Law & Order. I have caught glimpses of familiar sights in the show’s extensive venues, especially Leipzig, beforehand—and although a recent chapter was filmed between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, I was a little let down that Wiesbaden’s screen-presence was severely limited and confined to an underground carpark—though I could be reasonably certain I recognised it.