sturm und drang oder elective affinities

Though mostly doing the responsible thing and honouring his father’s wishes for him to study law, Johann von Goethe really of course wanted to pursue Oriental studies (Islam and the Arabic language being two subjects that fascinated him throughout his life) but grudgingly left his patrician home in the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt am Main to go to the University of Leipzig. There, Goethe fell in with some influential Bohemian types and while his grades suffered, he was did find inspiration in one students’ pub for his re-telling of Faust that would take torturing decades more to realise. These first few semesters were quite productive for Goethe, having gotten into the practise of churning out experimental short plays and poetry on a regular basis.  Either because Goethe himself was too harsh a critic, however, or because they really were sophomoric works, few survived from that early period. Waxing dissolute and not doing so well in school, Goethe returned home to Frankfurt and eventually remarshaled his resolve to again take up his studies, but this time in Strasbourg.
Although the land of Alsace had been in possession of the French Empire, annexed from the Holy Roman Empire, for more than a century in this most recent in a long chain of redrawing borders, there still was a large German student population at the illustrious university and the city’s architecture and high spires of its cathedral—though somewhat mistakenly—struck Goethe as quintessentially German but not in the nationalistic sense (there was no Germany, just a loose confederation of city-states, petty kingdoms and imperial monasteries with varying degrees of allegiance to the Emperor) but rather as a community united in language, in the artistic sense as well as the spoken word. Goethe became particularly keen on this notion, drawing from his own childhood experiences being educated with a very liberal curriculum that included the classics and world literature, and finding more and more frustration and dissatisfaction with his own writing projects—as meaning and passion seemed to retreat from his poems (overtures to one young mistress especially) the more he applied himself.

In Strasbourg, Goethe saw his horizons broaden and the literary world unfurled before him when he was introduced to the plays and sonnets of one bard called William Shakespeare, and found in Shakespeare’s free-wheeling and bold manner the conventions that he sought for own prose. Back at the family home, the prodigal son celebrated his first love fest to the Bard and his muse with a “Shakespeare Day” on 14 October with some of his classmates. Goethe’s family saw no harm in their son’s renewed interest in writing, as his marks had improved and would be allowed to open a small practise in first in Frankfurt then in Wetzlar. His career as a lawyer, however, was destined to be a short one—Goethe often courting contempt by demanding clemency for clients and more enlightened, progressive laws. Perhaps sensing that this was the wrong vocation or perhaps because of his moonlighting, Goethe worked extensively on his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers)—a semi-autobiographical account of a failed love affair told in correspondence and climaxing in the anti-hero’s suicide. The novel was an instant sensation and helped to propel, just as Shakespeare had done for English, German into the pantheon of literary and scholarly languages. Though not the stylings of emo or goth, young men were dressing as Werther (Werther-Fieber it was called) and tragically, there were some urged to the same ending after reading the book—and not just in Germany but all over. Fearing the dangerous influence that this potentially subversive work might have if the international celebrity might be allowed to spread unabated, a writer and publisher called Christoph Friedrich Nikolai from Frankfurt an der Oder, in central Prussia, went so far as to give the story a Hollywood ending, under the title “The Joys of Young Werther.”
Napoleon was a committed fan as were many others. The political discontinuity that charaterised the Holy Roman Empire was a grave subject of consternation to outsiders, who lived under more centralised governments, but as the city-states of an equally fractious Italy during the Renaissance encouraged the arts through patronage—every little lord wanting to retain pet talent, the same sort of arrangement could be fostered in Germany, and Goethe’s book caught the attention of one young heir-apparent to the small but grand duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. This enlightened ruler ennobled Goethe—putting the von in his name—and kept him on in Weimar for the rest of his life.
The young duke was of the same line who had two-hundred fifty years earlier had the courage and the wherewithal to provide sanctuary in the Wartburg by Eisenach to another controversial figure, Martin Luther—whereas in a more unified society with no place to seek refuge, like France or England, the Reformer would have been burnt at the stake for heresy. Goethe held a number of royal offices through his career, which afforded him travel on diplomatic missions throughout Europe and experiences Goethe could not have otherwise obtained, meeting many other contemporary luminaries—while not infringing on his writing and scientific studies. Goethe was deeply interested in all facets of existence and was absolutely prodigious in many fields, having amassed the largest mineral collections in Europe, published several seminal treatises on botany, optics and anatomy (which included some inspiring observations that Charles Darwin took to heart), and meteorology (researching the forecasting nature of barometric pressure) among others.

broadsheet

This past year was certainly a banner one for anniversaries and centenaries marked the world over, and it seems as if the trend is hardly escapable since we’re survivors of history’s dreadful-excellent heap of memory.
It is a good thing surely not to forget to celebrate what we’ve achieved and overcome but this whole movement to propagrandise and make, especially a century’s passing, a moment of national pride and a rallying-cause happened in 1617—one hundred years after reformer Martin Luther famously nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberger Dom and sparked the era of Protestantism, masterfully captured in this poster with quite a bit of allegory to study, like a political cartoon. Of course, this stand is celebrated every year—peacefully and surely Luther does not endorse the use of his likeness for this campaign message, on 1 November, but apolitically. Mass distribution of this broadsheet—and Luther’s Bible, were made possible by newly introduced printing technologies and the Princes of Prussia certainly were not going to let the date go by without some manipulative media. Clashing forces of the Lutherans and the counter-Reformist Catholic lands in a fractured Holy Roman Empire quickly escalated—especially with sentiments fueled on both sides by caricature and fear-mongering, and led to the Thirty Years War, which was one of the darkest and bloodiest wars of European history Christian sectarianism. I hope that we don’t need our memory jarred with new violence for old.

like a picture print from currier and ives

As the fourth Advent comes rolling in, here are a few scenes from Christmas markets in Wiesbaden, Leipzig and Erfurt to celebrate the season. PfRC wishes you all good cheer, be kind to one another, and thanks for visiting.

perfidy

Patterned after the Monday Demonstrations that brought down the regime of East Germany, the PEGIDA (Patriotsche Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident, the West) marches are growing in numbers and frequency but are still rivaled by counter demonstrations. The German government, rightly, condemns the movement as racist and xenophobic. Trying to lend a legitimising air to thuggish and insular attitudes that were first championed by football hooligans (at least in costume, one has a better idea of what one is up against), these marches are hardly proving to be a civil way to channel frustrations or fears, what with public opinion splintered, calls that immigrants refrain from conversing in their native language at home and arson-attacks on refugee housing. I believe there are two very different things occurring here and bigots always capitalize on this confusion: immigration politics are not threatening to displace one’s culture and the level of interaction that all of these marchers have had with any form of Islam is limited to seeing families out in public and making assumptions, which does not exactly equate to an agenda of systematically imposing one’s way of life and values. Petitioning one’s government over real concerns for reform is one thing and resorting to violence and fear-mongering is quite another. Ideology and identity are not the same thing—but both run both ways.

it happened on the way to the forum: rump state or asterix & obelix

The Western Empire did indeed hold out long enough to suffer the wrath of the Huns, but just barely so. The Empire had devolved into a collection of loosely aligned barbarian kingdoms, which were politically and culturally independent and could hardly be called upon for mutual defense unless their own interests were immediately under threat.
Rome had abandoned Britain and the lands of North Africa that were the conquests of a young Republic during the Punic Wars, including Carthage, were now seized by Vandal pirates. Rome, had been ransacked by the Goths and had not been the Empire's capital for centuries, inconveniently located midway down the Italian peninsula and considered too far away for political or military expediency, and was given over to Milan, which was more strategically placed in the north with quicker access to the Alps and the provinces of Gaul and Germania. At this point in history, however, even Milan had been abandoned in favour of Ravenna, considered more easily defended in the marshlands boarding the Adriatic, and the imperial court ruled over the lands, nominally, from this hideout in the swamps.
Although the Huns had already plagued the Empire indirectly for some time, displacing other tribes that caused chaos and instability in the European provinces, a direct confrontation was yet years in the making. The Huns had a good public-relations machine in the reputation that preceded them that was talked up by fleeing refugees, and when Rome, nervous over this looming threat, offered to pay a tribute of a sizable amount of gold to the Huns in exchange for peace, they gladly accepted.  Despite their attested prowess in battle and their later depictions, the Huns under the leadership of Attila were not mindless brutes intent on destroying civilisation but were rather content to keep to the periphery and collect their annual allowance. Like the Gothic, Vandals, Alans and the Franks, whom were soon to rebrand Gaul as France after their tribe, many Huns rose to prominence in the Roman ranks and fought for the Empire as mercenaries.

In fact, it was not really until Rome reneged on the conditions of the treaty that Attila turned towards plunder and hoped to cow the obstinate Romans into submission. On the far eastern shores of the Danube in the Balkans, the Hun armies first made incursions into Roman territory after having attacks on the Persian frontier summarily rebuffed. The Huns ravaged the countryside of Illyria and advanced on Constantinople. Unlike the Goths of a generation before, the Huns were able to penetrate walled cities and were plying a path of destruction on their way to New Rome. Due to the immense fortifications encircling the city, the Huns met their match at this terminius in the east. Attila was reportedly so disheartened by this set-back that he contemplated suicide, but the Hun ruler could take solace in the fact that it took nearly another fourteen hundred years, the discovery of gunpowder in the West and the construction of the biggest cannon in the world to breach the walls, completed during the reign of Eastern Emperor Theodosius II. Perhaps Attila needed to be cheered up and perhaps this elevation came in the form of a missive from a certain damsel in distress.

Meanwhile, back in the swamp, the sister of the Western Emperor Valentinian III, Justa Grata Honoria, was being strongly coerced into giving up her bon-vivant lifestyle and settle down and marry in a manner more becoming to an Augusta. Faced with the prospect of being wed to a perfectly boring, unambitious senator and remaining in Ravenna, Honoria penned a letter to Attila the Hun asking him to save her from this fate and enclosed a ring—at least, that is how the story goes. Whether it really happened, whether it was meant as a proposal or whether the ring was just a token of authenticity, is debatable and though some belief that this was Attila's impetus to invade the West, the Huns first skirted Italy, despite pledges of half the Empire as dowry, and invaded Gaul and never overran Ravenna. As Honoria gets no further mention, it looks like she received her lot with a boring, domestic existence as punishment for her act of treason. Perhaps realising that Rome was weak and the obvious choice for expanding his tribe's holdings, Attila led his armies through Germania and crossed the Rhine into Gaul.

Conveniently, there was a crisis of succession happening at the time for the Salian Franks. The Merovingian king had passed away and Rome and the Huns championed the younger and elder sons, Childeric at the court in Orléans (Aurelianum) and Chlodio having teamed up with the Huns on their march through Thurginen, respectively—the Huns again plying their P-R apparatus by forging alliances and sowing discord and confusion among the status quo. Repulsed by a coalition of fighters under the leadership of Roman general Flavius Aëtius at Châlons on the stoop of Orléans, the Huns retreated, bidding a destructive exit back east by way of the northern Italian plain, and Chlodio—usurper or rightful heir was killed in the battle. Maybe the lore behind this proxy-coup is a little like the pseudo-history of one spoiled Roman princess' overture to the Hunnic chieftain, but I think the outcome of this intrigue bares mentioning:

Childeric, the homebody, inherited the Merovingian throne and founded a dynasty that ruled the expanding, united Kingdom of the Franks that filled the power vacuum after Rome fell for three centuries until the papacy anointed the Carolingian branch, leading to the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans, depriving the Merovingians of the right to rule. I am not the scholar to investigate all the reasons and motivations and the far easier course of action is to rehash the ancient patriarchal conspiracies that have some popular currency and persuasion: the Merovingian line was descended directly from the offspring of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and rightful heirs to Church and State—whereas the Carolingians and other royal houses were descendants of Jesus' marginalised brothers and sisters or just plain self-made aristocrats that could claim no divine lineage. The Church feared the legitimacy of the Merovingians and wanted to install a more pliable set as heads of state.

grenzübergangsstelle

H and I had the chance to revisit a preserved border control installation in between Thuringian Meiningen and Bavarian Mellrichstadt that we had last stopped at on one icy day almost seven years ago.
It was interesting to inspect the quiet grounds and reflect on how a highly militarised boundary had separated East and West Germany for forty-five years until just twenty-five years ago, and we are throttling towards that anniversary without an abundance of circumspection.
It seems so radically different but not in the escaping and forgotten past, either. Just beyond the patrol bunkers and the vehicle battering-ram and the layers of obstacles and hindrances, in the open plain there was a sculpture park dedicated to a message of unity and sacrifice and the insistent promise to never allow such a wedge to divide the country again.
The entire display, with aggrieved cast iron giants and stained-glass gates and figures amid a field of steel flags and banners was quite moving and powerful under the dramatic skies of a passing afternoon storm, which provided a vibrant backdrop. I am glad that we took the time to come back and explore this memorial that is really just around the corner and yet something distant.

salient factor

A little while ago, we had the chance to visit the spa town with ancient roots known as Bad Salzungen on the Werra river and not far from Wartburg. The settlement, which was founded originally over two millennia hence by Celtic tribes grew around a salty marsh, which contained the prized substance in high enough concentrations to yield commercial amounts through simple evaporation in shallow pools, salterns and saltpans, which at the time of its discover were mostly relegated to far off lands, like the coastal estuaries of Bordeaux or the northern reaches of Germany, die Salzmannstraße was a trade route from here to Erfurt and Halle (named not for a hall but rather the Latin term for salt) and on a wider scale connected Frankfurt am Main with Leipzig and beyond.
Throughout medieval times, this proved a huge boon to local royalty and led to the building of many structures and offices (also halophiles) who sought to tax the exchange, but there was not quite a bust once salt became a less valuable commodity and more of a condiment to be given away freely. In the modern era, the place quickly reinvented itself as a wellness destination with a lavish resort and galleries of graduation lanes (degrees of salinity in the air, Gradierwerke, where one can stroll and breath it in) whose inland theatres look like they're based on locales on the sea.

i'm okeh—thanks, and you?

Although brief and near instantaneous correspondence is nothing new and certainly is not solely a legacy of today's generations, this multiple-choice example from the so-called series of correspondence cards from the Dizzy line of the Curt Teich Publishing House from 1921 are a pretty interesting phenomenon, especially in their original form.

Teich, who immigrated from Thüringen to Chicago at the turn of the century to found his company, was one of the architects of the post card industry, aligned with the growing mobility of the masses and the chance to take holiday in ports-of-call further a-field, and introduced picture postcards emblazoned with bold lettering, announcing “Greetings from ________.” Though it was not a fill-in-the-blank job, unlike with these correspondence cards that let one check off any vacation contingency. I suppose back then, however, there was always an invitation to friends and neighbour to come over for a slide-show presentation detailing one's adventures in full to follow-up on this short-shrift. What other forms of communication might be formula-writing—or at least begging a calculated response?

castle week: thuringia, morning constitutional or i got 95 problems and...

All over Germany and throughout Europe, there is an over-abundance of spectacular castles, palaces and fortification that are nearly impossible to fully catalogue or visit at a full-modern pace.

The ground that a person can cover on foot, burdened and at a reasonable tempo, in a day’s walk is about six kilometers, and notwithstanding important geological features like the confluence of rivers or a mountain perch, villages, with their associated dominating houses, were measured out at these intervals. Necessarily, one would expect an equal number of administrative buildings—churches and castles. Three examples in neighbouring Thuringia (Thüringen) come in quick succession, though not quite within a six kilometer radius. The Wartburg is certainly one regional—and national, landmark, rising out of the dense wood and overlooking the environs of Eisenach. Since its founding, the castle complex has seen many seminal movements, and a few of the most defining are: the annual contest of minstrels (das Sängerkrieg) that shaped our ideas of courtly life with jesters and a house-bands performing, the confinement of Saint Elizabeth of Thüringen and Hungary, the asylum of Martin Luther after excommunication where he remained steadfast and completed the translation of the Bible into German (after the English, version, only the second translation into a modern language). The histories framed by this building are quite impressive.
Just up the road is the town of Bad Liebenstein, named for an impressive castle ruin perched above the spa community, and nestled in the valley below among other villas and summer homes of the cadet branches of the former ruling families is Schloss Altenstein. This noble idyll also hosted Luther when he initially fled the Diet of Worms before taking refuge in the Wartburg and saw some of the first and significant mingling of the royal houses of Germany and England. Princess Adelheid of Saxony-Meiningen and later Queen of Great Britain (namesake of Adelaide Australia) spent her childhood here.

Still back- tracking with Martin Luther, we come to the great citadel of the city of Erfurt. This fortification with its expansive and intact bastions and ravelins forms one of the largest inland garrisons in Europe. Not hugging a coast and surrounded by the city (though inspired by the megalithic works of the French fort architect and engineer Marquis de Vauban), it is hard to appreciate the scale of this structure. Of course, Erfurt, among many other things, is connected with Luther as his theological alma mater and in whose cathedral he was ordained after seminary. The Benedictine cloister that originally occupied the grounds of Petersburg became, before the defensive bulwarks were built, an important centre of the counter-reformation.

pontifex and bauhaus

This past weekend was a busy and a bittersweet one for H and I. First, very early on Saturday, we joined some thirty-thousand pilgrims, winding our ways through dark and circuitous alleys policed by a huge security force to the Cathedral Square of the old city of Erfurt, where incidentally Martin Luther reformer and architect of the Protestant schism was educated in the priesthood and was first ordained, to celebrate the Eucharist with the Pope.

It was a very moving experience to share with all those thousands, focused on one individual. Having recovered from that adventure, we crossed to the antipode of Germany to the city of Darmstadt--beautiful and enjoyable but sad as we bid my parents farewell as they were getting ready to return to the States. We met them at their temporary vacation cottage, nearer the airport, and went into town to first see the apartment complex, the Waldspirale, designed by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser, with onion-topped domes and a strange non-Euclidean geometry that was like something out of the blended imaginations of the Flintstones and Dr. Seuss.

Darmstadt is replete, as well with, examples from many styles and movements and we passed through blocks of Jungstil (Art Nouveau) townhouses on our approach to the artist colony and architectural workshop and laboratory in the Mathildenhöhe neighborhood. The park is a cascading ensemble of early 1900s design.

The Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower) is a quintessential Jungstil skyscraper though draped for renovation in the background (here's a little version made for blind visitors) in the background, behind the Russian Orthodox Chapel and water elements.  Spending an afternoon at a café on the grounds was a very nice way of saying to my Mom and Dad that we will see them real soon and wishing them best of luck for their continued adventures.

sola fide

Schiller, Bach, Mozart and Luther, among others, are claimed by many, many towns and villages—to know Marx peered at that cliff from this observation platform or Brahms performed in that church—to the extent that it is always interesting and more than just trivia to have one’s biography filled in with disparate and renowned details, but sometimes too many places asserting their historical personage privileges can make one lose sight of the pinnacle moments. I have seen Luther in captivity in the Wartburg, his academic career in Eisenach and Erfurt, the nunnery where his future wife grew up in Brehna by Leipzig, the trials in Augsburg and Worms. All of these places are interesting and definitely not self-promoting tourists’ traps with specious connections to fame, but I often have forgotten it is in Wittenberg where Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door. While the antique Luther monuments are being cleaned for later anniversary celebrations, meanwhile the city of Wittenberg has set up this ersatz collection of garden gnomes on the market square, perhaps in a bid to regain exclusive Luther privileges. Some people are critical of this display, saying it is frivolous or unbecoming, but I think these colorful statues are more accessible to the people than some frightfully stern old bronze monolith and needs no justification.