day two hundred nineteen (13. 882)

As Trump issues apologetics for China and Russia over helping Iran, Kyiv sustains blows from Moscow without the usual pre-warnings from NATO. Houthi rebels report attacks in Sanaa on Yemeni petroleum infrastructure from Saudi-led forces—more airports and oil installations came under fire as the US leans on Ankara for protection. After a Bulgarian tanker was sunk in the Black Sea by a Russian submarine drone, Sophia recalls its ambassador.

sonnenobservatorium goseck und naumburg (13. 881)

Discovered through aerial photography of a wheat field whose cropmarks were particularly visible due to recent drought conditions in the 1990s and not disclosed to the public until archeological excavations were completed—having drawn the lesson from the nearby artefact, the Nebra Skydisk—in 2003, the Goseck Circle is a Neolithic enclosure, approaching seven thousand years in age and the oldest such solar observatory known in Europe. The reconstructed alignment just a few kilometres north of Naumburg near the confluence of the Unstrut and the Saale consists of wooden posts following the concentric rings of the structure’s foundations and has openings that mark sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstices. A tourism route, Himmelswege, links the circle to the Himmelsscheibe von Nebra and other astronomical archeological sites in Saxon-Anhalt.

The village also has an impressive eleventh century palace, built on the grounds of a secularised (previously here and here) Benedictine monastery, with the castle church dating back to its original founding.

On the way back to the campsite, we stopped at the main city of the region, Naumburg (previously), established in 1012 by the Margrave of Meissen at the crossroads of two important trade-routes, the Via Regia and the Regensburg Road and took in some more impressions of the Naumburger Dom Sts Peter und Paul and market square. The tenth century Late-Romanesque cathedral became the first see of a German Protestant bishop, remaining an evangelical parish to the present, in the course of the Reformation in 1542, whose later Gothic embellishments, including architectural and figural elements by an anonymous mason known only as the Master of Naumburg, have earned it a place on the UNESCO’s register of World Heritage.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  reprogramming government funding to dull the public pain of the US government shutdown (with synchronoptica), penmanship instruction plus more oblique strategies 

two years ago: university commas, Peabody visual aides, an out-of-season bloom plus Dungeons & Dragons as group therapy 

three years ago: assorted links to revisit plus unlucky thirteen  

four years ago: another MST3K classic,  the world’s first personal data protection law plus assorted links to revisit

five years ago: your daily demon: Focalor, The Style Council plus a psychedelic design collective

six years ago: a fashion show with puppets plus Witchtok community doing the Lord’s Work

seven years ago: the introduction of the Ampelmännchen (1961), more links to enjoy plus more mushroom finds

eight years ago: democracy by lottery, vintage Sainsbury’s packaging plus a music video from Bob Sinclar

 

day two hundred eighteen (18. 880)

Ignoring Trump“s unilateral truce (which the American president admits to fabricating) on energy infrastructure, Russian immediately strikes nuclear facilities at Kharkiv and Ukraine continues to lob missiles and drones at Russian oil fields and refineries. Kyiv also targets Yandex data centres, reportedly blunting disinformation bots’ activity with noticeably less campaign engineering than usual. Houthi rebels shut down Saudi airspace again and Iran, reputedly, disables Qatari natural gas exports. Ship-spotting suggests that Moscow is buying diesel from Tehran and selling it to America.

bad kösen, schulpforte, freyburg (unstrut), an der poststraße (13. 879)

 We went into Bad Kösen to explore the massive Gradierwerk (see previously here and here, a graduation tower—sometimes referred to as a thorn house that produces salt through evaporation, a tall wood frame structure that contains bundles of brushwood, blackthorn, encrusting the twigs with mineral deposits over time. The three hundred twenty five metre installation in a park on a hill at the top of the town dominates the skyline and is a nice promenade to stroll, the sea air having health benefits, saline continuously pumped in from a well station via an additional one hundred eighty metre Stangenkunst (a flatrod system driven by a water wheel). When the extraction of salt became no longer profitable, Bad Kösen, as many other spa locations, marketed itself as a health resort, aided by the rail line that runs through the town on the Leipzig to Erfurt route.

Next we went just a few kilometres further to see the campus of Schulpforte on the grounds of a former Cistercian abbey, named for its impressive Torhaus, gatehouse facing the road between Bad Kösen and Naumburg—secularised with the Dissolution of the Cloisters in 1543 and becoming the personal property of Duke Moritz of Saxony, an institute of higher learning was founded there, eventually as an agricultural school with the vast tracks of farmland enclosed. The religious buildings are still intact, it made of think of Hogwart’s from the Harry Potter franchise with students rushing to classes. 

 

Afterwards, we took a nice stroll across through the fields and pastures up to the foothills of the vineyards. The community of Roßbach has several wineries (Weingutter) with tasting and direct sales, but it being a Monday at the end of the season, most had closed up shop, even the automats empty, so we decided to drive a bit further to visit Freyburg on the Unstrut, a tributary of the Saale.

Overlooking the town from its high promontory is the fortress Neuenburg, constructed from the ninth through eleventh centuries, which remains mostly in its original condition. We parked on another high hill of Freyburg opposite with a view, next to the old photography studio since converted into a luxury hotel and wandered the streets of the Altstadt until we came to the headquarters and main manufacturing and distribution site of one of the world’s largest sparkling white wine producers, Rotkäppchen—now merged with Mumm’s since its acquisition by Canadian beverage giant Seagram’s. We had a drink and checked out the vistas of the Neuenburg and Unstrut valley below. On the way back, we passed the first fitness studio and mauseleum of the founder of the German gymnastics movement, Turnvater Jahn.

On the way back through Naumburg, we hit an unsuspected traffic snarl, discovering that the safety gate blocking the railroad crossing had not lifted in over an hour, and turned around for a lengthy detour back towards Bad Berka, taking us through the county, municipality called An der Poststraße (Along the Mail Route, the old post road between Leipzig and Kassel) for a nice drive through the countryside in during the autumnal Golden Hour, touring a string of villages along the road (see also), including Burgheßler with it 1493 Gothic Haus, a manor successor likely to a medieval castle for the local gentry—later used as a granary and warehouse by the locals.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a never-ending, generative Wikipedia (with synchronoptica) plus Edwardian scrapbooking

two years ago: assorted links worth the revisit 

three years ago: macroscopic seeds plus first kindergarten in the United States and its pedagogical method

four years ago: the lingua cosma of SETI, assorted links to revisit plus building the fake, composite bridges shown on euro bill

five years ago: typographical ornament, a plan for Italy to be annexed by the US plus Jesus Christ Superstar

six years ago: an AI makes memes, Free-Thought Day and other celebrations, a Khrushchev colouring book plus foliage studies

seven years ago: Étienne de Silhouette,  the founding of Iran plus social media’s sins of omission 

eight years ago: more links to enjoy, mapping returns on solar panels plus the miniature world Tatsuya Takana

 

day two hundred seventeen (13. 878)

Shrugging off resounding criticism over his diesel deal with Russia—which is only for about two days worth of consumption—by allies and even members of his own party, Trump elevates his stab in the back for Zelenskyy, threatening to stop intelligence sharing with Ukraine if they don’t stop destroying Russian refineries and suggesting that the country needs a leadership change. At a campaign rally in Tennessee—in what should be a GOP stronghold but has come into play with the disastrous administration—the American president tells the crowd, ”I could say the dumbest thing and you would still clap,“ to thunderous applause. The original MoU having expired on Monday, negotiations between Washington and Tehran remain deadlocked, Trump falsely claiming that direct talks are occurring with the Revolutionary Guards regarding surrender. Hurricane Isaias batters the US gulf coast, leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity and threatening to severely disrupt US petroleum production in the corridor corresponding to the cone of predictably.

rudelsburg und berg saaleck (13. 877)

The landscape reminding me a lot of the Rhein and the its valleys, particularly for its castles and viniculture, we arrived at our base camp to the explore the Saale-Unstrut region, a part of Germany we’ve regularly passed through but hadn’t devoted much time or attention to previously, finding a spot along the river, behind the limestone escarpments between Bad Kösen and the ruins of the Rudelsburg. Fortified around the mid-ninth century at the commission of a local bishop to secure trade and for border control, like its Hessian counterparts, archeological studies suggest it was the expansion of a defensive settlement occupied since the Bronze Age, the castle was first besieged in 1348 during a territorial dispute in the first documented case of gunpowder in Germany. 

 

No longer regarded as impenetrable, as was the fate with castles in general, it was rebuilt several times over the centuries as a symbol of power, though one expensive to maintain and eventually allowed to fall into disrepair. The masonry of the keep were ordered to be torn down and used for reinforcement elsewhere but a debilitating accident befell the owner, who took his ordered demolition as a bad omen, currying disfavour and decided to the ruins stand, the profile from the sixteenth century more or less remaining to this day, preserved by romantically-minded fraternities from the nearby university cities of Leipzig, Jena and Halle. An enterprising caretaker of the desolate grounds in the 1830s revitalised popular interest after offering food and drink for passing hikers, prompting citizens of the Naumburg to petition the barons von Schönberg to turn it into a official gastronomic destination and venue for visitors. A repast at the Rudelburg by the King Of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, during a large-scale military exercise solidified the locale’s prominence and as a meeting place for students’ corps, a society for tolerance and pacifism that rejected parallel movements during the lead ups to the first and second World Wars. A series of monuments were installed in the mid 1870s, taking a cue of public sentiment following the restoration of the Wartburg, including an obelisk honouring Wilhelm I, the Löwendenkmal in memory of fraternity brothers killed in the wars and young Otto von Bismarck seated with his dog, a early pledge to the society. With many of these memorials facing destruction during the East German era, the group relocated from Bad Kösen and the Rudelberg to Würzburg and the Marienburg.

We took a short hike around the river’s bend to the twin Turme, architecturally related to Schloss Thurant, of Burg Saaleck—erected as a counter-foundation to the neighbouring episcopal, elevated to a knight’s estate before becoming quarry for the farmers of surrounding villages. Ultimately saved by the romanticisation of its neighbour and former foe, Burg Saaleck took a quite different trajectory in modern times after a tower served as the final refugee of the murders of Walther Rathenau, minister of reconstruction of the Weimar Republic and a signatory of the Treaty of Rapallo, in an attempt to overthrow the government—which eventually succeeded—the site became a sort of pilgrimage destination for Nazi-sympathisers but the memorial was removed in 2000 by the local pastor with the help of the Bundeswehr. Hiking trails from the campsite also led to a half-completed bridge over the Saale, a stone marking a ghost birch (no longer there) and the Johannisquelle, the pump-house and mill spring for the baths of Bad Kösen, first discovered in 1725 and covered in an Art Nouveau style pavilion in 1909.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Je t’aime... moi non plus (with synchronoptica), slowing light speed,  more esoteric programming languages, artistic idioms, assorted links to revisit plus the many anniversaries of SNL

two years ago: Texas Chainsaw Massacre plus a last day on the Havel 

three years ago: the death of Pope Pius XII plus more links to enjoy

four years ago: Barbarella (1968), ancient animation, a Coming Out simulator plus a declassified map of nuclear targets

five years ago: the micronation of Rose Island

six years ago: an appreciation of the Smiley Face, a system for coding emotional facial reactions,  St Gummarus plus the debut of Saturday Night Live (1975)

seven years ago: more on the moons of Jupiter plus the better letterer’s corner

eight years ago: päntsdrunk,  more on Coming Out Day, the technical mastery of chindōgu, a moon moon plus The Secret Life of Plants