wysiwyg

Collectors' Weekly features an interesting glimpse on vintage examples and the movement to revive the art of artisan sign-makers. In the face of ever-advancing graphics programmes—irrespective of nuance like kerning and other foundry-disciplines—everyone can fancy themselves a professional, and not without some amazing achievements, but also with a lot of lack-lustre, derivative and overly-polished banners. Most modern examples stand in pale contrast to the ghost signage, old privilege marketing preserved on the sides of buildings, either out of indifference or nostalgia, and interesting that graffiti artists kept the art viable and devolving.

genossenschaft oder working-class hero

H and I took a weekend trip to the town of Delitzsch, not far from Leipzig, and while it was a very casual, relaxing trip and we even stayed indoors, rather than caravaning (it was a curious feeling to be in a hotel) , and took in some of the sites (the Altstadt was well preserved and dominated in close-quarters, the entire town surrounded by a moat with this high defensive tower and Baroque palace built as a retirement home for dowager-princesses and later used as a women’s correctional facility), there are certain quirks of history that have shaped this region, which are not always apparent by what has been curated.
Though always rich in natural resources, arable land and industrious people, it was not until the Saxon province was ceded to the Prussian empire by a mandate of the Congress of Vienna that administratively recreated Europe after the defeat of the armies of Napoleon.
Production, which formerly had not risen above the levels of cottage-industries, were suddenly objects of interest for Prussian robber-barons (the entrepreneurial geniuses who ended the Chinese monopoly on china through sheer determination and alchemy and the manufacture of textile and the growing of tobacco and sundry became more and more organised. Of course, wage, life-style and handicraft itself became diluted in the process. In response, a generation, some forty years into this new relationship native son Hermann Schultze (nee Schultze-Delitzch) founded many charitable organisations to look after the families who found themselves conscripted into this corporate entity, including hospitals and survivors' pensions—however, his most enduring and helpful establishment was a concept now known as the credit-union, a financial institution by and for its members. Such organic means were invaluable ways for workers to better understand the environment that they had become part of, and I wonder if going forward, similar community institutions by trial and error might prove instructive.

shutter-bug

Der Spiegel's international desk reports through a narrative of the scavenger- hunt (die Schnitzeljagd) and a collection of the discoveries on the City of Leipzig being the latest entry among German metropolises in a new form of tourism that aims to capture urban landscapes in new ways through sponsored Photo Marathons. I really like this idea, although when exploring someplace new I have not assigned myself a certain theme, especially such esoteric ones subject to abstract license—except maybe manholes and graffiti.

dynamic duo: parish church of saint cecilia

Taking a leisurely but unwanted drive to start the work-week, and having learnt about the further collaborations of master architect Johann Bathasar Neumann and fresco artist Christoph Thomas Scheffler, I stopped in the town of Heusenstamm by Offenbach. On my way to see the baroque church, among their , I first passed under a very fancy (prunkvolle) gate, which the German Emperor Franz I had built in honour of his son's, Josef, being crowned the king of the Romans in Frankfurt am Main.

This post is  a precursor to becoming ruling the parallel Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans, and keeping control in the Hapsburg family.
Franz was residing at the Palace of Heusenstamm for the event—the Schloss is today used as the town's city hall and holds other administrative offices, surrounded by a palatial garden.
The town itself, after the extinction of earlier, founding dynasties, was firmly under the control of the dukes of the Schönborn family, prince-bishops and electors of Würzburg and Bamberg.

Family members, I learnt, were buried in the crypt of this church, which with the support of her famous relations Duchess Maria Theresa had commissioned. I marveled at the ceiling, depicting among other things the resurrection of Lazarus, and discovered that the patroness, a Roman maiden that got cold-feet before marriage for pious reasons (quite a common reason for beatification back then, it seems) became, for singing at her wedding, in a round about way the muse of church music and someone for composers to look to for inspiration. In fact, the Cecilia that Paul Simon extols in the famous song is a little prayer for frustrated song-writers, lamenting the distractions that come with the lifestyle.

survival and revival

Finally I had the chance to see the interior of the Ringkirche in the Rheingauvierteil. Like the Lutherkirche, this Gründerzeit (Founding Epoch) structure was built as part of the Wiesbadener Programme, to introduce anchor-protestant churches in communities of the newly annexed Duchy of Nassau by the kings and later emperors of Prussia, of the evangelic persuasion. The church was a favourite of Kaiser Wilhelm II. 
I did not want to take many pictures of the interior, as I was being given a tour by another very house-proud church-lady, but there were some very fine, art nouveau elements and murals. Pausing for a few moments in that big space was also very serene.
The church's architect, Johannes Otzen, designed many impressive and keystone monuments, like this church in the Leipzig neighbourhood of Plagwitz that we visited earlier in the year.  The factory-community itself, on the banks of the White Elster, is a product of the Founding Epoch, characterised by a boom in manufacturing that grew municipalities to meet the demands of the Industrial Revolution and shift to urban and urbane living.

iconostasis

Over the weekend, we had a chance to see the interior of the Memorial Church of Saint Alexy of Moscow that Kaiser Wilhelm II commissioned to honour some twenty-two thousand Russian soldiers who perished fighting Napoleon’s armies during the decisive “Battle of the Nations,” that stopped the French advance. The living monument, center of the Russian orthodox community of Leipzig, was dedicated in 1913, a century after the fighting ended, and the exterior is undergoing reconstruction—along with the Volkerschlacht Denkmal, in recognition of this year’s anniversary.
The inside of the church, which is duplicated on an upper and lower storey, symbolic of Heaven and Hell, has an impressive array of icons covering the back wall (an iconostasis) and donated fixtures, including one faithful reproduction of the Hodegetria (the iconic canting of “she [the Virgin Mary] showing the way”) of the Mother of God of Smolensk, that tradition holds was painted by Saint Luke and made its way from Constantinople to Russia via a very circuitous route.
According to different sources, the revered icon was destroyed either during the Russian Revolution that followed just a few years later or during the German occupation in 1941. The relic, however, could have been hidden for safe-keeping as its own copy, like some of the other treasures originally plundered from Byzantium.

gentrification or trade-fair, fair-trade

I had the opportunity to pour over, in depth a few city blocks in Leipzig. I would not exactly call it a photo-essay since I didn’t
attempt any interviews to try to further limn the character of the area but I did notice a few fellow casual documentarians also snapping pictures, but the exploration was book-ended between two examples of a sort of decay and renewal with a lot of graffiti in between, and I felt that I did not have the chance beforehand to properly capture some of the beauty I found around me in this place.


I wondered to an abandoned factory yard, expansive along the banks of the river whose influence was far from a typical brownfield, historic and dignified with decoration and as likely to abut a block of well-kept dwellings and parks as another spot of neglect.

 These modern ruins are important reminders, I think, of transformation—and not the same as the Schadenfreude, the leering and the ogling that places, truly abandoned communities like Detroit, are subject to.
Leipzig is yet a centre of trade and industry but with some important changes, which repurposing and reinvention that is sometimes too revealing.  It is sort of like an urban Dream-Time.

Later, on one of the fly-a-ways that crosses the outskirts of the city, we passed over the massive, intact yet redundant, locomotive switch yard and repair station. I want to have the chance to descend down to that stratum as well one of these days.

My wanderings eventually took me to another former industrial site, a textile mill, ein Spinnerei, restored faithfully to the original shell but as luxury apartments.

Many other similar venues have been created in the past few years, and I just hope that people are not convinced that wreck and ruin is only held at bay by inviting in the so-called angel investors and at the expense of character and expression.

I wonder how a neighbourhood, told that it is blighted, responds to such accusations and perhaps unwelcome assistance.

castle week: saxony or hogan’s heroes

The German mint has been issuing commemorate two-euro coins that feature the iconic architecture associated with each of the 19 states (Länder).

Each time I get one of these coins in the set as change, I think about the repre- sentatives. I don’t disagree with the selections of the continuing series, by any means, but there are certainly some other fine candidates out there that I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. One recent trip took us to medieval Burg Kriebstein by the town of Waldheim in the mid-west part of the state. This stronghold, dating from the 14th century, is remarkably well-preserved and has an equally noteworthy way of presenting a fairy-tale unified front, though closer study of the façade reveals different design elements and modifications through the ensuing ages.

This and other strategically located castes commanded the waterways of this region. Another alternative is the Renaissance fortification anchoring, dominating the village of Colditz, not far away by Leipzig. This building too has seen many different incarnations through the years from a residence of prince-electors and king-makers, to a premier zoo, to a debtors’ prison and workhouse, to a mental institution and perhaps most infamously as a prisoner of war camp for problematic Allied captives. There, SGT Kinchloe did not, however, have a radio in the coffee kettle—that Stalag was set in the Bavarian town of Hammelburg.

portal or long night of the museum

Over the weekend, we took advantage of the extended operating hours of Saxony’s cultural attractions and visited a few neat exhibits. One monu- mentally huge gallery housed in a gasometer, a gas bell, formerly used for the urban storage of natural case, was dizzying in scale and gawking up at the lattice ceiling high overhead reminded me of that V’Ger machine entity from Star Trek: The Motion Picture—who kept a holographic menagerie of the sights it encountered, projecting down a whole virtual reality cascade.

The immersive experience of the visual panorama was of course the chief draw, but being inside industrially giant and industrially unfamiliar, unreachable architecture was extra-ordinary as well. Sometimes the installation, the frame can be nearly as dazzling as the contents.

built this city on rock-and-roll

Some clever software engineers several months back produced a faithful three-dimensional model, extruded with a homemade 3-D printer, of the Coliseum in Rome from an aggregate of holiday snap-shots found on a photo-sharing site from all sides and all angles. The computer processed and analyzed all this data autonomously, and I thought about this feat during our recent trip to Dresden. This tidy and automated routine can no way compare, however, to the rebuilding of the city's landmark Frauenkirche essentially from collective memories. Although putting the church back together again was not completed until 2006, it was symbolic and important for many as a gesture of reconciliation for divided Germany, like the peaceful rallies, Montagsdemonstrationen, at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.

The church was not actually hit by a bomb, experts surmise, but rather imploded during the ensuing firestorm that heated the porous sandstone building material to a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. Only the darker stones on the Frauenkirche are original, puzzled together from a pile of rubble that sat in place in the square for some six decades--the lighter-coloured material is new restoration.

Making whole all the baroque indulgences of Dresden, the Semper Opera House included, was a labour of love, remembering and piecing back together.  We passed by a memorial (Communist-style sculpture) to the Trümmerfrauen, teams that dug through the debris of war, salvaging what could be saved and unriddling remnants of a city that's once again glorious. I thought that this one had built this city on rock-and-roll.

silhouette of saxon

We're taking a long weekend to visit the phoenix of Dresden. I am sure it will be a nice refrain to sustain the feeling of last weeks' travels, and there will be a lot to see and do. I am hoping also to have the chance to explore the surrounding countryside known as the Sächsische Schweiz with its gorges and colossal rock-formations. No bureaucracy or committee ever diminished or contributed to the aesthetic value of anything, however, with Dresden's Elbe Valley being only one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Weltkulturerbe und Weltnaturerbe) to be defrocked because of the muncipality's decision to build an Autobahn bridge to close to the Altstadt, it seems obligatory to celebrate what's original and authentic about a place--any place. Though it was a committee which too made that choice that's turned more and more unpopular, that move also ensured that the entire area tries to make amends in terms of preservation and conservation. Character and charm can be restored while they are not something easily displaced with either awesome enmity or mundane zoning.

möbiusband

For Easter Sunday, H and I took a leisurely stroll up the Fockeberg in South Leipzig.  This hill with winding trails up to the summit, which affords a picture postcard views of the city at the top, is actually a bit of manmade landscaping, a Schuttberg or a Trümmerberg that was built up out of the rubble from WWII.  H told me there was also a downhill race, with all types of vehicles with four wheels allowed--just so long as they are powered by gravity.

The vistas were a nice way to take in the sweep of the place, that we had visited many times before but had not really seen from this map-maker's perspective, with the whole of the skyline visible. 

This park would have also been a perfect spot for an Easter egg hunt.  Earlier, and not in the same part of town, I noticed that we passed a street called Möbiusstraße--which amused me immensely.  While climbing the hill, I was still wondering how that might work and what it would be like to live on that street.

tagesblatt

H and I made a short trip to Leipzig and there were a few fun and out of the ordinary items on the agenda.  We attended an organ concert performed at the Nikolaikirche, played incidentally on the largest instrument in Saxony.  The ancient church itself is famous for hosting more recently popular demonstrations against the East German regime and helped spur on the reunification.  It was relaxing and meditative to listen there sitting in the pews, focused on the music but with one's back to the performer, up in the rafters.  These two singular cherubs were the only figural decoration on the ceiling, and reminded me of that pop-culture, meme of the two angels that was remixed as those two grumpy old men, Statler and Waldorf, who heckled the Muppet Show from the theater box. 

Later, we went to a restaurant hewn out of a functioning brewry hewn out of the cavernous arrivals' hall of the old Bavarian Train Station.  The kettles and plumbing were expert equipment from Bamberg brewers, and apparently one could a take a workshop to learn about beer-making and make a few liters of one's own.

While we did not try that, we did take a souvenir bottle, packaged the traditional way, similar to a Bocksbeutel for wine from Franconia that my parents gave us. 

Later in the evening, we looked at the imposing Völkerschlachtdenkmal by twilight.  This monument is the tallest in Europe, out-doing Big Ben or the Eifel Tower, and is an absolutely massive remembrance of the defeat of Napoleon's armies in Leipzig, and honoring those who fought on both sides to bring a decisive, if temporary, peace to the warring nations.

hogan's heroes

Over the weekend, H and I visited the village of Colditz with its imposing castle.  During the war, it was used to house incorigible allied prisoners of war, since thinking the fortess impenetrable, those who had successfully escaped from other prisons could be kept secure and isolated.  Due to the nature of the prisoners with their established histories of escape, this place had one of the highest records of flight of any jail.  H told me a lot of the history about the village, but it's strange to think of such a monolithic place as this not really being known in its own right.  With tourism, the castle and the camp became sort of a parody of itself, a mash-up of a dozen different mythical places and intrigues.  Sometimes these places need to be rediscovered, and then can be awe-inspiring in their own rights.