Sunday 17 March 2024

wรผstungsperioden (11. 432)


Travelling a few villages over towards the former border, driving past some abandoned settlements, vacated owing to they’re being a liability too close to the boundary, we took another nice hike with the dog up to the ruins of Hutsburg on the summit of the Hutsberg, which also was a victim of its formerly strategic location and shifting allegiances.



On the way back, we stopped in Filke to revisit the so called Mauerschรคdel, another ruined remains, this time of early abandonment and then rendered inaccessible, like the above stronghold, during DDR times and its nave acting as the line of demarcation. 

 

Saturday 21 October 2023

das land der ein tausend teiche (11. 069)






Taking out the trailer for a quick trip, we traveled to Plothen not far from the Bleilochtal reservoir but got to explore a quite different geography and landscape in the local pond region. One of the primary examples of aquaculture and intensive geo-engineering predating the industrial age, the first ponds and fisheries were established by monks in the eighth century in order to provide a meat-substitute for Lent and numerous holidays and commemorations that called for fasting and abstention. Within a radius of just a few kilometers, some six hundred of these artificial ponds remain of sixteen hundred, lost over the generations through mergers and drainage to harvest fertile sediment. Fish farming was managed from so called Pfahlhรคuser—pile houses—one three hundred year old example remaining on Hausteich near the campgrounds hosting a museum dedicated to the place’s history. 


Owing to the rich soil, during East German times, the area was given over to raising pigs, but has since been rehabilitated (rather a remarkably quick turn around given it was not that long ago) and reclaimed as a tourist destination and an important rest stop for migratory birds and other wildlife.




Afterwards we went to nearby Ranis to visit the Burg, a hilltop fortification for the administration of the Saalfeld area articulated and expanded since the eleventh century.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit,  Livre de Thot plus a feline opera

two years ago: St Ursula, the first Vikings in North America plus more vocabulary building

three years ago: the origins of Op-Ed, the Dutch art of doing nothingNYC’s digital subway map, app, the sentล culture of Japan, the Royal Meteorological Society’s PoTY plus coppicing and pollarding

four years ago: IKEA tarot 

five years ago: artist Barbara Kruger plus leaf-peeping in the Rhรถn

 

Sunday 13 August 2023

sunday drive: talsperre lรผtsche (10. 941)

On the way back from some window-shopping, we took a detour through the Geratal to Frankenhain for a stroll around the second biggest artificial lake in the region (previously). Dammed in 1935 by the Deutschen Reichsbahn in order to provide a source of water for stations in Erfurt and Arnstadt, by the time the reservoir (Stausee) was completed steam-powered locomotion was being superseded and it was converted to hydropower—and today the same supply-system to cool data centres in Neudietendorf and for brewery operations connected to the train stations that have repurposed the cisterns. The tributary rivers have their source near the winter sports destination Oberhof, whose ancient volcanic composition of quartz porphyry were also the quarry for the retaining walls. Used primarily for recreational activities currently, it was certainly a nice walk down to the beach and good to visit the area again.

Tuesday 16 May 2023

bachstadt arnstadt (10. 746)

While waiting for our dog to recover after surgery at the veterinarian clinic there, H and I took a quick tour of Arnstadt, an old and storied town also known as the Gateway to the Thรผringer Wald due to its location on the northeast corner of the forest, the oldest settlement once in East Germany due to its first documented mention in 704, a candidate for the origin of Bratwurst and Weizen beer outside of Bavaria thanks to a fourteenth century mention, and mostly famously for its native son Johann Sebastian Bach (see previously), who had his first posting in the New Church—now known as the Bachkirche—as organist. 

Granted a charter as a city by Hersfeld Abbey, heavy sanctions were levied against the town for aiding fugitives during the Peasants’ War in the thirteenth century and nearly a hundred rebels were burnt in the market square. 

The main landmark is the remaining tower of the ruin of the Neideck palace, already in disrepair by the end of the reign of the dukes of Schwarzburg by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rest was bombed into rubble during World War II. The church’s Baroque pipe organ has been restored to its condition and appearance in 1703 when the eighteen year old prodigy first played it.  The monument is pure speculation as no portraits or physical descriptions of Bach and locals refer to the bronze as the ‘Marktflรคtz’—one whose sprawled out in the square—cf, Marktplatz.

Thursday 20 October 2022

gerรผste der republik (10. 239)

Via Present /&/ Correct, we directed towards a project curating all the varied playground climbing frame configurations from the former East Germany, der GDR—see also. The website not only maps the location of each structure, it also features pictures and schematics of each taxonomically and gives their fantastic names—Rubiks Wรผrfel, Alcatraz and Dromedar plus a litany of rocketship and space-themed jungle gyms and playground equipment. Much more to explore at the links above.

Sunday 4 September 2022

pegelstand oder die grรผne herz deutschland (10. 108)

 

Afterwards we embarked on a circuit of the series of five progressively higher reservoirs (Stauseen) built from 1935 over the next decade to harness hydroelectric power by damming and flooding river valleys. 

Though a sparsely populated area, villages had to be abandoned and resettled when constructing the Hohenwarte and its gravitation cascade that turns potential energy kinetic were constructed and owing to the low water levels because of the global drought (and floods) we thought we might witness PreรŸwitz or others rise from the waters but we’ve been spared the worst so far. The forests were dry and the pines especially dying but an evening of steady rain was some reprieve. 


We saw various gradients and differentials from high vistas before choosing a campsite near Ziegenrรผck, heir to some more patrimony now underwater. 


Packing up the following day, we completed our tour with the reservoir at Burgk and its eponymous castle and keep, a quite well preserved residence dating from the Middle Ages and seat of the House of ReuรŸ, a princely line who named all male children Heinrich, in honour of Barbarossa’s son, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. 

The engineering and the attendant landscaping was impressive and inchoate. On the way back, we visited the town of Saalburg on the Bleiloch reservoir that had the atmophere of beach resorts along the Baltic Sea.








 

Saturday 3 September 2022

ausflug thรผringenersee (10. 107)

H and took a summer’s end quick excursion to the dammed Saale river valley to tour the landscape that developed around the reservoirs (Stauseen) and how the natural intersects the artificial.


First we stopped to take a guided tour of the Saalfeld Fairy Grottos (die Feengrotten), a set of caverns in a former mine for alum shale (see previously) remarkable for their colourful mineral veins, called speleothems, owing to the porous soil.

Commercial operations halted in 1850 (the use of potassium aluminate as a preservative was antiquated) and was opened to tourist as early as 1914 due to the reputedly curative properties of the ambient radiation present, after the discovery of the third chamber, the Mรคrchendom—the Fairy Tale Kingdom and the Grail Castle after various interpretations of the sedimentary creations.

Seeing this tableau inspired Siegfried Wagner to pattern the set design for his father’s opera Tannhรคuser for the Bayreuth Festspiele in the 1920s.

Saturday 20 August 2022

erlebnis bergwerk (10. 073)

Decommissioned since 1993 but revitalised since as a living museum and working mine and venue, I had a chance to visit with H’s father the salt and potash (Kalisalz, used as an important agricultural fertiliser) extraction operation near the village of Merkers on the Werra river not far from Bad Salzungen.  

 Aside from the long history of mining and a comprehensive lesson on the enterprise and geology that bores under the Rhรถn mountains, the location is also the hiding spot for hundreds of tonnes of gold, silver and paper currency (amounting to around eighty percent of the holdings of the Reichsbank at the end of the war) and many priceless works of art looted by the Nazis, discovered per chance by the advancing United States army (tipped off by slave labour transporting treasures to the mine) who then worked quickly to clear it out of Soviet occupied territory before the borders were demarcated.

After being lowered in safety gear—like actual miners beginning their shift—in a hoisting cage that descended into the dark, and driven in flatbed transports from five to eight hundred metres below the surface through a network of tunnels that covers an area the size of Munich. 








Though the vehicles were only taking the dips, curves and ascents at under twenty kilometres an hour, the darkness, wind and narrowness of the shaft made it seem much faster, like a roller coaster ride stretched out for some two hours, with intermissions, lastly in the above Goldraum, a pair of excavated former bunkers that now serve as a machine exhibit, theatre and a concert hall with uncommonly good acoustics and unique crystal grotto with accompanying bar for refreshments—the deepest in the world.  

It was definitely worth the visit and would drag H along next time.