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August/September 1999
The Ruhr: Germany's Rustbelt Bounces Back With High Technology and Tourism
By John Dornberg
"There's a 'can do' mentality here—an attitude that we'll make it, and that we'll make it on our own." Thus Bodo Hombach, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's chief-of-staff, once described his
native Ruhr Basin. That was when the Ruhr was being called "the sick man of Germany." A decade later there's excitement in the air in the Ruhr, a sense of something happening as new high-tech
industries have created tens of thousands of jobs, the environmentally ruined landscape is being reclaimed, and tourists are converging on the region.
Geographically the Ruhr is just a river that rises in the verdant rolling hill country of Westphalia and meanders westward for 144 miles, spilling into the Rhine at Duisburg. But historically,
politically, economically, and sociologically the region—also traversed by the Emscher and Lippe Rivers—embodies and symbolizes much of what Germany has been about since the middle of the 19th century.
It is only 1,700 square miles in area, smaller than Delaware. But what a powerful little turf! It is Europe's largest single industrial region and the key to German economic prowess—the source of
more than 8 percent of its gross domestic product and headquarters for 30 of the country's 100 biggest companies. This is where the dynasties of the Industrial Revolution—the Haniels, Krupps, Mannesmanns,
Stinneses, and Thyssens—originated and built their empires. It is also Europe's densest conurbation: 5.6 million inhabitants and a dozen separate cities of 100,000 to 650,000 population so close to each other
that you cannot tell when you leave one and enter the next.
Coal and steel were the sources of the region's wealth. For nearly 150 years collieries, blast furnaces, iron foundries, steel mills, and factories dotted its landscape. The Ruhr's rich deposits
of anthracite provided the primary energy supply and resource that turned the wheels of German industry; the smelters and rolling mills produced the iron and steel with which German cars and machines made their
mark around the world. The Ruhr's miners and steelworkers, with their blackened faces and sweat-glistening bodies, were heroes—knights of labor who drew the country's highest wages.
In the process the Ruhr also became Germany's biggest environmental mess: a land of slag heaps, raped earth, poisoned streams, and soot-blackened cities in keeping with the adage that "where
there's muck there's money."
Muck and money were what the Ruhr was all about. But then the money ran out, leaving only the muck, because coal and steel, once the region's boon, became its bane.
The coal sector was hit first. Ruhr coal deposits are the deepest in the world, sometimes 3,000 feet down, making it increasingly expensive to mine. Today Ruhr coal is three to four times more
expensive than imported coal from the United States, Canada, or Australia, shipping costs included. Production has been cut from 111 million tons in 1965 to 47 million tons in 1997. Of the 141 collieries whose
pithead towers once marked the countryside only 12, all owned by Ruhrkohle A.G. (RAG), remain in operation. Coal mining jobs have declined from 600,000 in the early 1960s to a mere 78,000 in 1997. By 2005, the
number of mines, and jobs will again be cut by more than half.
The steel industry's problems began 10 to 15 years later and were due to less expensive foreign production and the use of alternative materials—plastics and aluminum alloys—in many industrial
products. Since 1970 dozens of plants have been shut and jobs have declined from 265,000 to about 100,000.
Small wonder that by the late-1980s the Ruhr was Germany's most depressed area with joblessness twice the national average.
But today, a decade later, the region has found a new lease on life. Though the Ruhr still accounts for more than 25 percent of the European Union's coal output and 16 percent of its crude steel
production, and the unemployment rate is still 14 to 16 percent in some cities, coal and steel make up only 8.6 percent of the region's GDP, whereas 63.5 percent of its jobs are in service industries. When I
traveled in the area recently I found cities such as Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, and Oberhausen transformed compared to a previous trip in 1988. Not only are new industries, such
as environmental technology enterprises, replacing the old, but the coal and steel giants are diversifying.
"There has been pronounced structural change so that the Ruhr today is a modern industrial landscape," says Gerhard Neipp, the chairman of Ruhrkohle AG.
His company, the region's fourth biggest employer with a 1997 sales volume of DM 25 billion ($13.8 billion) and a payroll of 96,000, is an example of the changes. Two decades ago 98 percent of its
revenues came from coal mining; last year more than half of the business volume was in environmental technology, power generation, engineering, construction, chemicals, plastics, wholesale and retail trade, and
property development.
Another change has been in higher education and academic research. As recently as 35 years ago there were only two colleges and about 3,000 students in the Ruhr—a consequence of
the 19th-century policy of the kaisers who feared that institutions of higher learning might "foment unrest and rebellion." Not until 1965 was there a university—Bochum's. Today there are
five, plus nine polytechnical colleges, nearly all started during the past 15 years, with an enrollment of 160,000 students. They provide employment for 25,000 people. In addition there are six Max-Planck and
five Fraunhofer Institutes doing fundamental research. The network of nearly 70 other research institutes and technology centers is the densest and most extensive in Germany. These, too, have provided thousands
of new jobs.
"We have more universities and colleges than steel mills and more students and professors than coalminers or steelworkers," says a spokesman for the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr Initiative Circle) a group of 49 major companies and banks, each contributing DM 100,000 to DM 300,000 ($55,000 to $166,000) a year, that was started in 1989 to improve the region's cultural infrastructure and enhance its image.
"The Ruhr is changing from rustbelt to a think-tank," says Bodo Hombach. "In fact, we practice what others in Germany still preach: transferring academic scientific research and
technological development to the business and industrial world. Nowhere else in Germany will you find as many technology centers and research parks with spinoff and startup companies arrayed around universities
and colleges."
One result is that it has become Germany's leader in development of environmental protection technology and equipment. Some 150,000 jobs have been created in this field during the past decade and
more than 1,500 environmental technology firms—one-sixth of the total in Germany—are located in the Ruhr.
The area has become a cultural and entertainment center: five opera houses, six ballet companies, seven repertory theaters, eight symphony orchestras, 150 museums and art galleries, and 150 stages
for smaller professional and amateur theater
groups, most of which are a mere 20-minute interurban train-ride of each other. It also claims Germany's biggest—150-acre—theme park: Warner Brothers' "Movie World," at Bottrop-Kirchellen, in which Time-Warner Co. invested DM 390 million ($216 million), creating 1,200 full and part-time jobs.
Another phenomenon is conversion of abandoned coal mines, steel mills, and other industrial facilities into museums and cultural centers. These, in turn, are drawing organized tourism.
The biggest and most symbolic is Oberhausen's Gasometer, more than 385 feet high and 225 feet in diameter. When built in 1929 it was Europe's largest gas holder and provided the
fuel for Thyssen Steel's nearby Gutehoffnungshütte plant, which was closed in 1989.
At first opinions about what to do with the gas container were divided. Many Oberhauseners considered it a symbol of lost jobs—dirty, back-breaking jobs—and wanted it torn down. But the city
decided to renovate the structure and turn it into an exhibition and performance space. "Fire and Flame," a multimedia show about the history of the Ruhr, opened in 1993 and ran for two years, drawing
more than 500,000 visitors who paid an admission price of DM 10 (about $5.50) each. Since then there have been several other long-term exhibitions and many concerts. The most recent art event was an installation
by wrapping masters christo and Jeanne-Claude: 10,000 brightly painted oil barrels stacked on top of each other and called “The Wall.” Some 220 feet long and 86 feet high, it opened in April.
Another remarkable conversion is Pit XII of the Zollverein coal mine in Essen. When it began operations in 1932 it was the largest colliery in Germany—a daily output of 12,000 tons and 8,000
miners—and the height of industrial efficiency and architecture: 20 huge buildings, all in the cubic steel-glass-brick style of the time. It has been called "Germany's architecturally most important 20th
century industrial complex" and the "Ruhr's Cologne Cathedral."
When Ruhrkohle shut down the pit in 1986, the city of Essen and state of Northrhine-Westphalia bought the whole complex and founded a company to renovate and redevelop the site.
Today the Zollverein pit is thriving.
Essen's opera and philharmonic orchestra have rented the 10,000-square-foot sorting-belt building as a rehearsal hall; commercial art galleries have moved into the machinery-repair
shops; the turbo-compressor house, with its equipment still in place, is a gourmet restaurant, bar, and musical theater; Essen University, a media design institute, advertising agencies, and an interior
decorator rent space in other buildings; British architect Sir Norman Foster, who rebuilt the Reichstag in Berlin, converted the boiler house into a new home for Northrhine-Westphalia's Design Center, an
association of industrial design companies. The coal-sorting and washing complex has been preserved unchanged as a walk-through industrial museum with guided tours by retired Zollverein miners.
When Thyssen Steel closed Duisburg's Hüttenwerk Meiderich in 1985, the 90-year-old plant was sold for a symbolic DM 1 to the state, which turned it into an industrial theme and amusement park leaving its blast furnaces, cooling towers, ore bunkers, and machinery halls virtually unchanged since the last shift stopped working. The German Alpine Club has rented the ore bunkers, renamed "Monte Thysso," for climbing practice and any day you can see alpinists driving pitons into and rapelling off the sheer walls; scuba divers practice in the old water reservoir; super slides have been installed for kids in the former coke bunkers; a discotheque has opened in an old blast furnace; a restaurant occupies the equipment warehouse; there are art exhibitions, concerts, flea markets, circuses and guided tours on the grounds. Movie companies also rent it as a backdrop for films with industrial settings.
The newest conversion project is Meteorit, a DM 35 million ($19 million) subterranean multimedia, sound-and-light "museum of the senses" that
Rheinisch-Westfälische-Elektrizitätswerke (RWE A.G.), Europe's largest privately owned utilities company, opened in an old Essen coal mine in June 1998 to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The complex, a "world of future wonders," was created by André Heller, the Austrian poet, circus impressario, and showmaster of surrealistic theatrical experiences who has staged successful shows in New York, Moscow, Paris, Hong Kong, and elsewhere around the world. "It was our way of saying thanks to Essen and the Ruhr on our company's anniversary," says Dietmar Kuhnt, RWE's CEO.
Projects and sites like these have generated a new kind of tourism. This year numerous German and Swiss tour operators are offering organized and guided three- to eight-day trips to the Ruhr at
prices ranging from $300 to $1,750. "By March we had 600 bookings for this season," says Johann Rosskopf, an executive of Hanover's Dr. Tigges Reisen GmbH.
Although "Restructuring the Ruhr" has been a slogan for several decades, dusted off whenever there was a crisis of some sort in the region, nothing really happened until 1989. Then there
were three important initiatives.
One was the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet, launched by the CEOs of VEBA A.G., Germany's biggest industrial holding company, and Deutsche Bank, who persuaded the heads of other companies to join. The
aim is to promote the Ruhr without government aid and give it a new image of science, culture, sports, and high technology. Each member company pays dues, giving the group an annual budget of DM 10 million ($5.5
million).
Concurrently the state of Northrhine-Westphalia introduced a six-year program of subsidies and tax incentives to attract startup companies in the high-tech and service sectors and to retrain
laid-off steelworkers and coal miners. This was a major policy change from trying to preserve the Ruhr's traditional heavy-industrial structure with transfusions of government aid.
The third and most important effort was the state, European Union, and privately financed Emscher Park International Building Exhibition Corp. better known as "IBA." This ten-year program, which ended in April 1999, entailed nearly 100 different projects in 17 cities and towns. "The name is a bit confusing," says a spokeswoman for IBA, headquartered on the grounds of a former coal mine in Gelsenkirchen. "People came here asking to see the exhibition. Actually it was located on dozens of sites. These are walk-in, live-in, work-in 'shows' of building technology, architecture, town planning, and urban renewal." By April of this year DM 5 billion ($2.77 billion) in private and public investments had been poured into various IBA projects.
One of these is the Emscher Landscape Park, a string of 115 square miles of green spaces on the sites of old collieries, slag heaps, and steel plants between Duisburg and Bergkamen.
Another is the ecological renewal and redevelopment of the Emscher River, which had been the Ruhr's open sewer for industrial and household wastes since the 1800s.
A third part of the program entailed converting 22 former coal mines, steel plants, and other industrial installations, such as Duisburg's Inner Harbor, into sites for high-tech and service
industries, business centers, and housing estates, while preserving their landmark industrial buildings.
In addition, miners' housing estates have been renovated and new housing built on the grounds of former collieries and steelworks. This project created 3,000 new apartments and modernization of
3,000 coal miners' single-family houses.
A good place to start seeing some of these projects is in Gelsenkirchen, home not only of the Ruhr's newest polytechnical college, which opened in 1992, but also of the 1997 Federal
Horticultural Show (Bundesgartenschau), which covered some 250 acres of a former coal mine. The city of 290,000 has lost 19,000 coal and steel jobs since 1980, but is changing fast.
Spectacular changes have also taken place in Duisburg, still Europe's biggest steel-producing center. Norman Foster drew up the master plan which includes an industrial park with a "Business
Promotion Center," "Telematic Center," and "Micro-electronic Center," and converting Duisburg's Inner Harbor into a business, residential, and recreational area.
The Inner Harbor, a few minutes walk from Duisburg's Altstadt (Old Quarter), was once the largest grain-trading center in Europe. Its docks are lined by landmark-protected turn-of-the-century silos, elevators, mills, and warehouses. These have been turned into office buildings. In addition, apartment houses with 450 units have been built on the 220-acre site; a park connecting the harbor area to Königstrasse, Duisburg's main shopping street, has been laid out; a senior citizens' center and Jewish community center have been built; the Küppersmühle,
an old grain mill, has been converted into a permanent museum for Duisburg-born investor Hans Grothe's vast collection of contemporary German art at a cost of DM 35 million ($19.4 million).
"More than 6,500 people work in the old silos, elevators, and mills that have been turned into office buildings, and high quality living space has been built for nearly 2,000 residents,"
says Dieter Steffen, manager of Inner Harbor Development Corp.
Oberhausen has undergone the most radical change as part of the IBA program. The city of 224,000 was the cradle of the Ruhr: site of the region's first ironworks, St. Antony Hütte, which began
operations in 1758. Until a decade ago blast furnaces and colliery towers were omnipresent. Today they are all gone and Oberhausen has become the Ruhr's commercial and service center. This is most visible at
"CentrO," Europe's biggest shopping, entertainment, and business complex.
Situated on the 200 acres of a former Thyssen steel mill, "CentrO" is a DM 2 billion ($1.1 billion) investment by British property developer Eddie Healey. On the grounds there are now
more than 200 stores; an 11,500-seat auditorium and concert hall; a cinema complex with nine movie theaters; 30 restaurants, cafés, and pubs; an amusement park, and six office buildings with 800,000 square feet
of floor space. When the steel plant closed in 1985, 10,000 jobs were lost. Since "CentrO" opened in the fall of 1996, nearly that many people have found work there. No wonder that Eddie Healy calls it
"a symbol of the Ruhr's revival."
The revival also entails a different perception of the Ruhr among Germans elsewhere. According to a survey a decade ago, 60 percent of Germans said they would never move there, no matter what the
incentives. Some companies had so much difficulty recruiting top management from other areas that they flew prospective executives and their spouses around the region by helicopter to show them that there is
lush green countryside around the cities and that the Ruhr is not as grimy as its reputation.
Today, according to a recent survey by the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet, the Ruhr ranks among top German areas for investments, setting up subsidiaries, and starting branch
operations. When the "hard" factors, such as infrastructure, property costs, and local investment incentives were virtually identical, the Ruhr usually beat out other areas because of its
"soft-factor" advantages such as educational possibilities, cultural activities, entertainment, and recreation possibilities, and high quality of life.
"People who have an aversion to the Ruhr don't know it and still believe the old negative clichés about it," says Hans-Jürgen Laufer, an executive at Ruhrkohle who was born in Bavaria
but has spent most of his professional life in and around Essen. "Once they come here and see what we have to offer, they want to stay. That's one reason why, after hitting a low of 5.2 million in the
1980s, the population has been climbing steadily again and we expect to reach 5.7 million by the end of 2000."
Contributing editor John Dornberg writes from Munich.
For more information about touring new routes in the Ruhr River region and on current exhibitions, contact:
Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park (IBA)
45886 Gelsenkirchen
Tel.: 011.49.209.17030
Fax: 011.49.209.1703298
Turkish Delight
Forget Bratwurst and Big Macs—
Döner Kebab is Germany's Fast Food
By Robert Thornhill
Here's one for quiz game fans. Name Germany's biggest selling fast food. Bratwurst? Bockwurst? Big Macs? Wienerwald fried chicken? Or maybe even pizza, which has become as Germanic as it is
Italo-American? All wrong.
The right answer is Döner Kebab, an overstuffed Turkish sandwich, more a meal than a snack, which has become Germany's new national dish and a thriving industry that provides
50,000 to 60,000 jobs.
Döner Kebab translates into German as drehender Braten and into English as a "turning roast" or "turned meat." A "döner," as most people call it,
leaving out the "kebab," is a first cousin (if not even a twin) of the Greek gyros. But you'd better not say so aloud, given the tense relations between Turkey and Greece, the fact that Turks outnumber
Greeks living in Germany 2.2 million to 360,000, and that, as Yusuf Dalkeran, owner of a Döner stand in Frankfurt-am-Main puts it, "the meat in gyros is usually sliced thicker and is often pork," an
absolute no-no for döner. Though Dalkeran advertises gyros in his downtown "döner Hütte" on Schäfergasse "for the benefit of my American customers because that's all they know," döner kebab
is what they get.
Be all that as it may, the facts and figures of the döner boom are mindboggling.
There are an estimated 10,000 stands and Türkish delis in Germany that make and sell it: 1,300 in Berlin, where the döner wave started; around 400 in Hamburg, about 200 in Munich.
Each day some 250 tons of döner are consumed, three-fourths by Germans, which adds up to around 900 million portions of döner stuffed into a sandwich of pita bread with tomatoes, lettuce, onions,
garlic, and other sauces, and a variety of spices. On average every German eats 10 döners a year, paying about DM 6 ($3.30) for each.
Although many döner stands still make their own, there are also some 100 döner factories, 30 of them in Berlin, whose butchers prepare, spice, and marinate the slices of meat, skew them on spits,
shape, and deep-freeze the cones and then ship them not only all around the country but to customers elsewhere in Europe and—hard to believe—even to Turkish coastal resorts such as Antalya, popular with German
tourists.
Döner has become an estimated DM 5 billion ($2.7 billion) business in Germany, and is far from cresting. Döner vendors take in more than all the country's other popular fast-food outlets
combined—McDonald's (26 in Munich), Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Wienerwalds, and countless wurst stalls.
Moreover, says Ali Bülbül, an executive of "Berlin Döner" and "Berimpex," one of the biggest factories and wholesale businesses with over 100 employees and a DM 70 million ($39
million) sales volume, "the döner has contributed to better relations between Germans, Turks, and other foreigners."
As proof he points to East Germany and the town of Hoyerswerda in Saxony, scene of vicious anti-foreigner riots in 1991. Today there are more than a dozen döner stands there, and all is reasonably
quiet on the xenophobia front.
Though new to Germany, döner kebab dates back to the 19th century in Turkey. According to legend, around 150 years ago a chef named Iskender in the city of Bursa hit upon the idea of stripping
cuts of mutton of all bones and sinews, slicing and spicing them, spearing, stacking, and compacting them on a long vertical spit, and then roasting and turning the resulting cone of tightly packed meat at a
charcoal grill. Small chunks of meat are cut off the cone with a two-foot, razor-sharp knife.
For a long time it was a Turkish restaurant dish. Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) brought it with them to West Germany in the 1960s. But it was not until Germany's first recession in the 1970s, when thousands of foreign laborers were among the first to lose their jobs, that döner kebab started its conquest of German palates and stomachs.
As a means of income Turks, the biggest contingent of Gastarbeiter, began making, roasting, and selling döner kebab at street-corner stands. It was semi-legal of course, because German laws
prohibited foreigners from operating their own businesses. But all one had to do was find a German to front as owner of the company.
The beginnings were in West Berlin's Kreuzberg borough where Turks account for three-fourths of the 130,000 population. According to one story it was a blind man named Bilal who, together with his
family, opened the first döner booth at the corner of Oranien and Adalbert streets, calling it "Asma Alti," which translates roughly as "beneath the grapes."
Döner stalls and street stands, many of them converted camping trailers or low-rent stores, soon began popping up in Berlin and other cities.
The first in Frankfurt, where there are now some 300, is said to have been "Ali Baba" on Liebfrauenberg in the Altstadt (Old Quarter), which was opened in 1976 by Ahmet
Gerdjikow, an escapee from the anti-Turkish "Bulgarianization" campaign then raging in Communist Bulgaria. The stall still exists and was renovated three years ago with fancy Oriental tiles and other
imported decorations at a cost of DM 300,000 ($166,000). Dünya Sahan, 36, who is now the owner, started there as a 14-year-old apprentice. "Customers came in droves and we worked until we dropped," he
recalls. "The spits were so heavy—100 to 150 pounds—that it took two of us to carry one from the kitchen to the broiler."
Many Turkish produce and delicatessen shops soon followed the döner booths by installing a rotating vertical grill to sell döner kebab. By the mid-1980s döner sandwiches were a bigger fast food
hit in Germany than American-style hamburgers or pizza, and began nosing out broiled chicken and the many kinds of wurst.
When "second-generation" Turks, those born and educated in Germany, became adults, the ma-and-pa cottage industry began turning into big business with factories producing and shipping
hundreds of deep-frozen assembly-line döner cones in sizes and weights ranging from 10 to 150 pounds to wholesalers and vendors around the country. Again Berlin was the launch pad.
One mass-production pioneer was "Berlin Döner - Berimpex" whose founder Ahmed Basbug parlayed a one-man stand into the present plant which imports veal and beef from Ireland and The
Netherlands and produces 20 tons of döner daily.
Another big player is Frankfurt's "Kar-Mez," owned and run by the seven Tütüncübasi brothers, the eldest of whom started as a producer and wholesale purveyor of döner kebab in an
1,800-square-foot backyard plant in 1989. "Today," says Enfil Tütüncü-basi, 33, the youngest, "we have a modern 35,000-square-foot factory that employs 80 people and produces 15 tons of döner
every day."
But this "industrial revolution" has also caused a schism in the German döner world. Connoisseurs and purists argue that the shock-frozen factory cones consist of inferior ingredients,
including turkey, chicken and ground meat, innards, commercial spices, and thickeners.
Even a mass producer like Basbug says "there are enormous differences in quality and taste, and some döners are not worthy of the name."
A proper döner should be made fresh each day on the shop's premises by a trained butcher-chef using cuts of lean, tender veal, and beef that are marinated for 24 hours. The spice mixtures for the
meat and marinade, and for the garlic sauces poured over it, are each vendor's secret. Perfectionists even bake their own pita bread, grind the paprika sprinkled on the sandwich, and insist it should be
garnished with biologically grown tomatoes and raw red cabbage instead of lettuce.
Needless to say, most döner vendors claim that they do make their own kebabs. The ultimate proof is in the eating.
But such distinctions aside, as Enfil Tütüncübasi puts it, döner kebab's rise to Germany's most popular fast food "is the best evidence of improving relations between Germans and Turks."
Robert Thornhill writes from Munich.
The Prince and the Pauper:
Christian von Zweibrücken and Lucy Randolph
By Robert A. Selig
They met in Williamsburg during one of the balls following the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781 and fell in love.
He was a member of the highest European nobility, the eldest son of Christian IV, Herzog von Zweibrücken, and Marie Anne Camasse, a dancer at Christian's court in Mannheim
with whom the 28-year-old duke had fallen in love in 1750. The 16-year-old beauty had shrewdly held out for marriage, which occurred in great secrecy in Zweibrücken in 1751. Raised at the courts of Mannheim,
Zweibrücken, and Versailles, he became colonel of the Infantry Regiment Royal Deux-Ponts (=Zweibrücken), which his father had established for him in 1755, shortly after his 23rd birthday in 1775. In 1806 his cousin Max I Joseph would become the first King of Bavaria. He was young, handsome, and wealthy.
His name: Christian von Zweibrücken
She was a member of the Randolph clan of Virginia, colonial American aristocracy if ever there was one. Born ca. 1750 in London to Edward Randolph and Lucy Harrison, one of Robert “King” Carter's
grand-daughters, she was sent by her widowed mother to Virginia in the early 1760s, where wealthy relatives abounded. Lucy Harrison Randolph's sister Elizabeth was married to Peyton Randolph, president of the
First Continental Congress, a cousin of her late husband. Her brother Carter Harrison was married to Susannah Randolph, a younger sister to Jane Randolph, the mother of Thomas Jefferson. Virginia Governor
Benjamin Harrison, whose youngest son William Henry would become president in 1840, was an uncle as well. The big mansions of Virginia—Westover, Berkeley, Tuckahoe—she knew them all. She was young, homely, and
poor.
Her name: Lucy Randolph.
Six wonderful months, from December 1781 until June 1782, was all they had together. Come summer, they went their separate ways. There was no happy ending to their romance: custom, culture, and
propriety all stood in the way of marriage. But their mutual affection remained, and for the next few years, dozens of letters crossed the Atlantic in which they kept each other informed of their lives.
Christian's letters have been lost, but 13 of Lucy's letters dating from June 20, 1782, to October 23, 1785, have survived.
By the time Christian, who had come to America as part of the French expeditionary corps of the Comte de Rochambeau in July 1780, met Lucy, she had lived most of her life dependent upon the
generosity of wealthy Virginia relatives. In her letters she laid open her fears, emotions, and dreams to the only man she ever loved. We see the pain of a woman still living as she had when she arrived as a
child 20 years earlier and who knows that she has outstayed her welcome. We feel the hurt of a woman of over 30 who sees her last chance of marriage drift away. And we see a man who cares deeply enough about a
woman to maintain a correspondence with her for years, who sends her books and presents, but who is unable to cross boundaries drawn by birth, rank, and status. More than 200 years after they were written, these
missives provide a rare glimpse into the private lives, hopes, and disappointments of two people separated not only by the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean but also by societal expectations and cultural
differences that Christian in particular found impossible to overcome.
It must have been her "sparkling…wit" that attracted Christian to Lucy during that ball of December 5, 1781, which opened the Williamsburg season, because her looks would not have turned
any heads. Fellow Bavarian Ludwig von Closen found her "anything but pretty." But she was "very gay and lively company, …and charming in manner…. She played the piano perfectly, had a very
pleasant voice…. We spent a very happy evening…with our charming companions, above all Lucy!!! was amusing and animated." No wonder Christian fell in love.
For the next six months he was "obstinately anxious to keep my affection," as she wrote to him in the summer of 1782. But it did not, could not, last. On June 20, 1782, the French forces
broke camp and began their march to Boston. "Alas! the hour of parting" had come, as Lucy wrote to Christian that day.
"Fate has, I suppose, ordaine'd it, & we ought to submit without a murmur. I am tempted to rail at Fortune, but think it necessary, by such exertions as Prudence dictates, to prove myself
a rational being."
"Let me entreat You, my dear friend, to be satisfied at our separation—Life is short: & shou'd we never meet on Earth again, we must indulge ourselves in the pleasing hope that Providence
will be propitious to us, & give us that happiness together, in the blessed mansions of peace, that combined and cruel circumstances deny us here.
"Adieu—may every blessing this wayward world can give be yours. May your passage thro' life be smooth, & ever free from the storm of adversity, & in the evening of your days, may you
safely arrive, at that Port, where all affliction ceases; lamented on Earth, & joyfully welcom'd in a peaceful Haven is the ardent wish of
Your unalterable friend
Lucy Randolph
Poor Lucy. Despair filled her heart: "Great God to what purpose did we form an acquaintance & why oh too selfish friend have you been instrumental in robing of her peace one that will
ever be the ofspring of Misfortune? …Why have you indulged a growing partiality for a Girl you well knew" you would leave behind? She pleaded with him to stay: "Ask yourself if the applause of a world
or the arms of an Heiress can compensate for the loss of an unfortunate wretch, that wou'd gladly resign life to make you happy? Impossible…if your professions are as sincere, & your love as violent as I
have reason to believe it, you bid Adieu to happiness the moment that tears you eternally from me."
Lucy found it hard to accept that Christian could place societal norms and expectations above their happiness: "Good God! what a riddle hast thou made man, & what a still greater mystery
is woman that she shou'd lavish such unbounded fondness on one that suffers the opinion of an unnatural world to guide Him entirely & condemn a Girl (that wou'd gladly prefer obscurity with Him to splendor
and affluence without Him) to perpetual uneasiness, because the establish'd maxims of a cruel country have made such horrid laws: was it not for this only fault I discover in you, I do not think I could ever be
reconciled to even a temporary separation.… What ray of comfort is there for my tortured brain? Torn in the early part of life from the arms of a doating parent [and] placed in a country where I seem to be the
property on which every malicious tongue seems to be at liberty to exercise their talent on the unprotected, acquainted at last with a man whose delicacy of sentiment, whose principles of honor, whose ardent
love, nay adoration of me I fatally found so every way calculated to give me perfect felicity."
As a sign of his "Promises of eternal affection…so often repeated," Christian sent her his portrait, which she received in April 1783. It "met with a most welcome
reception & will ever be greatly valued. I think the likeness very good." By then he was on his way to France, where, as she wrote on April 25, 1783, she was "anxious to know you are looking out
for an agreeable partner to pass your days with: there are innumerable reasons that ought to convince you you should be fetter'd by Hymen." Lucy need not have worried: one of the reasons why Christian was
so reluctant to remain in Virginia was because his mother had arranged a marriage for him. Four weeks after his return to Versailles, on July 29, 1783, Christian, Marquis de Deux-Ponts since late 1781, married
Adelaide Françoise Leontine, Comtesse Bethune-Pologne. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were present for the soirée du contrat.
Christian's bride was the wealthy heiress of the high nobility his mother had been looking for to erase the stigma surrounding her own low birth. Christian informed Lucy of his marriage and of his
wife's pregnancy. The child, a girl, died shortly after birth in late 1784.
Lucy herself was "still free from the shackles of Matrimony: my (perhaps unfortunate) ideas are repugnant to sharing the fortune of any Man but from motives of disinterested affection, &
as I have neither striking beauty nor tempting Gold, I do not expect the offer of such a partner as my fond heart aspires to."
In
late 1785 she penned her last (surviving) letter, thanking Christian for his letter and the "polite and friendly" note from Marquise Leontine and expressed her joy "that fate has united you to so sensible a Partner: matrimony is a lottery; those who draw prizes have innumerable reasons to think them invaluable."
Within a year and a half, on March 20, 1787, now 37-year-old Lucy had drawn a prize in that lottery as well. Her groom Joseph Latil was a French agent sent to the United
States to collect debts owed his government from the Revolutionary War. We do not know what made Lucy tie the knot at this point in her life. Did she think that Latil would return to France after his mission was
completed? In one of her letters she had hinted at such a possibility: "Was I but destined to be an inhabitant of the same country I cou'd very well I am certain reconcile myself to seeing you the partner
of some happy female."
But Latil had no intention of returning to France. Instead, the couple made their home in Richmond. Latil began to practice law and settled down. Their marriage did not last long. Lucy died in
Richmond on January 28, 1790.
By that time Christian's life was falling apart as well. When Adelaide failed to produce the desired heir, the marriage with the wealthy countess went from bad to worse. Events following the
revolution of July 1789 forced Christian and his wife to flee Paris in early 1791. His uncle Duke Charles II August of Bavaria made Christian a Freiherr von Zweibrücken in January 1792 and employed him in the
Bavarian army.
But his wife longed for France and returned after the fall of Robespierre in 1794, leaving their two daughters with Christian. By the summer of 1797 Adelaide demanded a divorce, which was granted
in 1803. That year his military career ended as well. Following the divorce, he resigned his commission in October and bought a house in Munich where he died on October 25, 1817.
He had lost his wife, his regiment, and his title—everything that had called him back to France. Would he had married his Lucy! There can be no doubt that she loved Christian and that he loved
her. On at least three occasions he sent her books, he mailed her his portrait, even had his wife write to her. Though she had sent him at least 12 letters, she admitted in her note of March 2, 1785, that
"I am still in arrears in the number of letters."
"Farewell my better half," she had written in July 1782, "if my ardent prayers are heard you will be attended…whilst you are an inhabitant of this Globe with every earthly felicity,
& and the next with the endless happiness that I imagine will reward the virtuous."
The "earthly felicity" was neither to be his, nor hers.
Robert A. Selig writes from Holland, Michigan.
Dr. Selig thanks Freiherr Marian von Gravenreuth for his kind permission to use Lucy's letters and to reproduce the portraits of Christian de Deux-Ponts in his possession.
YESTERYEARS
Germanna: First German Settlement in Virginia
In early 1713 Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia asked Swiss nobleman Christoph von Graffenried to send him some miners to search for iron ore on his estates along the
Rappahannock River. Upon arrival in London Graffenried suggested this destination to 42 persons from Nassau-Siegen he had recruited for New Berne, North Carolina. Since Graffenried had no funds, the settlers
offered to indenture themselves to Spotswood for four years to pay off the freight.
Upon the immigrants’ arrival in April 1714 the Virginia Council ordered that a fort be built, two cannons and some ammunition be furnished, and a road cleared to the German settlement, which
"shall be free from the payment of all public and county levies for seven years…always providing, however, that they did not leave Germanna and settle elsewhere." Concurrently, the legislature
granted Rev. John Henry Hager permission to establish St. George's Parish, the first German Reformed Church in America.
By early fall 1718 the settlers had spent some time searching for iron ore, and maybe even had found some, but their indenture was up. Unwilling to continue to work for Spotswood, they moved
to new homes in the Northern Neck (probably in January 1719), without having built any of Spotswood's furnaces.
The Real Maytag Man
Frederick Louis Maytag was born near Elgin, Illinois, on July 14, 1857, the son of German immigrants from Lenzen near Berlin. Raised on his father's farm, he became a clerk in a hardware store
in Newton, Iowa, in 1880. In 1893 he bought a partnership in a company manufacturing self-feeder attachments for threshing machines, which by 1902 had become the world's largest manufacturer of such
implements. In an effort to offset seasonal slumps in the business, he introduced a wooden-tub washing machine in 1907. Two years later he bought out his partners and founded Maytag Corporation. The machines
proved so popular that Maytag soon devoted himself full-time to manufacturing washing machines. In 1911 Maytag produced its first washer powered by electric motor and in 1915 introduced a gasoline
engine-powered washer for homes without electricity. By 1923 all products except washing machines were discontinued; the following year one out of every five American washers purchased was a Maytag.
Maytag died on March 26, 1937; his company, still headquartered in Newton, is the 3rd largest manufacturer of home appliances in the United States, with over $4 billion in sales and some 20,000 employees in the United States and thousands more abroad, including over 4,000 in China.
The Child is Not for Sale
On June 22, 1781, the Royal Deux-Ponts, one of Rochambeau's regiments marching from Newport to White Plains, camped on the farm of the Rev. George Colton in Bolton, Connecticut. Among them was
Grenadier Adam Gabel from Reichenbach in the Palatinate. Born in 1751, Gabel had enlisted on November 15, 1770.
Gabel was one of the very few married men in Rochambeau's corps: Only 15 women and nine children are known to have accompanied the more than 6,000 officers and men across the ocean.
Two of the nine children, including a girl of about 4, were Gabel's. Baron Closen, a captain in Royal Deux-Ponts, described how Rev. Colton, "the Presbyterian minister…a large, fleshy man, very
prosperous, married, but childless, suggested to the wife of the grenadier…that she leave him one of her daughters. He would adopt the four-year-old as his own child, in return for some 30 louis d'or….
The grenadier and his wife, who were very much attached to the child," refused the offer "and thus proved their fine character and disinterest."
Gabel was discharged in Landau in December 1783; Rev. Colton died in 1817. His home and the campsite, though endangered by development, are still standing in Bolton.
Karl Theodor Christian Follen: A German-American Educator
Follen was born on September 4, 1796, in Romröd in the principality of Hesse-Darmstadt and was educated in law at the University of Giessen. After receiving his doctorate in March 1818, Follen
became legal adviser to the municipal assemblies of Hesse-Darmstadt in their struggle for constitutional reforms. Within six months he had to flee to Jena where he was arrested on the charge of complicity in
the murder of August von Kotzebue in March 1819.
During the next five years, Follen moved from Jena to Paris to Basel, where he became a professor of law. When the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian governments demanded his extradition in 1824,
Follen fled to the United States. Assisted by the Marquis de Lafayette, whom he had met in Paris in 1820 (and who was in the United States at the time), Follen became a teacher of German at Harvard
University. In 1830 he was appointed Professor of German, making him the first German to be given an academic chair at Harvard.
By then he had become deeply involved in the abolitionist movement and lost his chair in 1834. Ordained an Unitarian minister in 1836, he settled in East Lexington, Massachusetts.
Follen died in January 1840 when the steamboat Lexington, on which he was travelling, burned on Long Island Sound.
In the Name of Johann Friedrich Oberlin
In 1833 the Reverend John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart set out to found a college on the Ohio frontier "to train teachers and other Christian leaders for the boundless most desolate
fields in the West." Hoping that their graduates might continue the moral and ethical principles of their own model Johann Friedrich Oberlin, they named it "Oberlin Collegiate Institute."
Born on August 31, 1740, in Strasbourg, Oberlin studied theology and became a Lutheran minister in Steintal (Ban-de-la-Roche/Alsace) in April 1767. Deeply influenced by the ideals
of the Church of the Brethren, Oberlin strove to improve the ethical and spiritual life of his flock through education: In 1769 he opened the first Kleinkinderschule to educate pre-school-age children and to
provide employment for women as teachers. Persecuted during the French Revolution, Oberlin died on June 5, 1826. Nine years later, Oberlin College in Ohio gained national attention.
Women had studied in the "Ladies Department" from the beginning, but in 1837 four women entered the regular college course. Three of them graduated in 1841, becoming the first women
in America to receive Bachelor's degrees. In 1835 Arthur and Lewis Tappan offered to save the financially strapped institute on one condition: Oberlin must admit students regardless of color. The college
agreed and by 1900 nearly half of all African-American college graduates nationwide—128—had graduated from Oberlin.
A German’s Best Friend
Walk into any German restaurant, pub, bank, or hairdresser, and you could easily find a dog snoozing gently under a chair, waiting patiently while his owner takes care of business. It’s a matter
of course that dogs are welcome in many public places because they are particularly beloved.
This kind of love for animals means Germans tolerate other things we Americans can and/or will not. For example, they do not clean up after their pets in public. Woe is the person who does not
take care while walking down the sidewalk in a German city. It’s a remarkable fact about a society otherwise known for its cleanliness.
Whereas it’s commonplace in the United States to find signs reminding dog-walkers to clean up after their pooches, in Germany there are no such regulations. Yet, rules do exist regarding how much
time and attention a dog-owner must devote to his or her pet every day.
Moreover, to own a dog one must be willing to pay for it, literally. Dogs need to be officially registered, and owners pay regular taxes on them, a tradition that harkens back to the 16th century.
Part of today’s reason for levying taxes is to limit the number of dogs around. Indeed, given the popularity of the four-legged friend in Germany, it’s perhaps not too surprising that a shop would
exist offering canine eye glasses. This issue’s profile introduces Munich optician Tomi Suchy, who has been designing glasses for dogs for 14 years.
Suchy’s work is not done just for fancy but also serves dogs in need. My already sensitive German shepherd Hannah is apparently one of those breeds that is extrasensitive to ultra-violet rays, and
a pair of Suchy’s sunglasses would help her out nicely. (In addition to suffering from separation anxiety, she’s prone to obsessive-compulsive disorder, but that’s a different story.)
Having been trained in the art of scooping, cleaning up after dear old Hannah is a habit I wouldn’t want to lose. But I would welcome the chance to bring her along while out for the evening in a
restaurant.
The way a society treats its pets says a lot about its people. It’s knowing the nuances to something like dog ownership that can provide surprising insight into the German character and lead to a
fuller appreciation of German society. Yet many Germans remain unaware that numerous habits of theirs are characteristically their own. I say next time you’re in Germany, pay special attention to what they take
for granted. Just watch where you step.
Letters to the Editor
Texan Thanks
I would like to thank you for the nice article on New Braunfels, Texas (June/July ’99). I belong to the Polka Band Leaders of New Braunfels, Inc. The specific dates for the 5th Annual Polka Fest you listed are February 19–20, 2000. We are now putting the finishing touches on our second Polka Fest tape and CD, which has an hour of polka music and features the nine polka bands of New Braunfels. We also have a Website: www.nbtx.com/pblofnb My group, The Happy Travelers, plays at all of the festivals in New Braunfels as well as at the Oktoberfest in Fredericksburg.
Rennie Guenther
New Braunfels, TX
Getting Goethe Right
On the meaning of Goethe’s title for his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit, contrary to the two translations which were offered in one of your articles (“In Goethe’s Footsteps:
Leipzig, Wetzlar, Weimar—April/May ’99) and in a letter from one of your readers (June/July ’99), Dichtung does not mean Poetry, nor does it mean Fiction.
Goethe himself explained the title in one of his conversations with Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer when he stated ”Wahrheit [ist] der Stoff, und die Form nur Dichtung.” This means,
of course, that the materials of his autobiography are the truth of the title, and the form in which it is presented is the “Dichtung,” or the artistic arrangement and structuring of the work.
I believe your readers deserve to know the absolutely correct meaning of Goethe’s title.
Lieselotte E. Kurth
Professor of German
Baltimore, MD
Culinary Charm
My wife is not too fond of German cuisine, but she does make and decorate cakes professionally. When she had her eye on a lamb cake mold sometime before Easter, I told her that I had a recipe
for one of those in my April/May ’99 issue of German Life (At Home department). She decided to give it a try. It tasted as good as it looks.
Larry Noder
New Port Richey, FL
Building Memories
My mother is an avid reader of your magazine. After reading the Gallery article, “The Blocks are Back: Richter’s Anchor Stone Building Sets,” in the June/July ’99 issue, she asked me to write
to you.
Her grandfather, Bernhard Keilich, owned a store billed as the largest toy store in Berlin on the corner of Grosse Hamburger and Oranienburger Strassen. This corner building housed two, then
later three, stories of toys. Each year her grandfather attended the Leipziger Messe where on one occasion he got acquainted with a man who displayed Stone Building Sets. Her grandfather bought a few sets,
which sold so well that he ordered a large quantity the following year. They became one of the main toys he sold.
My mother’s sets were left in Woltersdorf (near Berlin) when she became a refugee in 1945. However, through the generosity of a friend my brother was given several sets, and I have vivid
memories of building elaborate churches and castles.
Hilda Mannato for
Maya Hobday
Via Email
Brewery Blunder
We are fortunate to receive German Life in our home and enjoy reading it from cover to cover. It carries a nice range of interesting material.
We noticed a slight error in the June/July ’99 issue covering our city New Ulm. The photo of the mansion is misidentified; the mansion is not the John Lind house but the August Schell home,
which stands gracefully among the gardens at Schell’s Brewery.
Schell’s Brewery is another historic spot in New Ulm. It began operations in 1860. Today it remains the second oldest family owned and managed brewery in the United States, brewing nearly
60,000 barrels annually. Visitors enjoy the European charm of the grounds, museum, gift shop, tours, and seasonal festivals.
Calverna B. Wilfahrt
New Ulm, MN
In Appreciation
Lisa Fitzpatrick certainly deserves kudos for the excellent German Life. I got a dry chuckle from her account of the magazine’s founding (And Finally, June/July ’99). I once
participated in a start-up as a sales manager, and in the late 1980s took it upon myself to do some public speaking about Germany. It was a bracing and profoundly lonely experience. Ever after, I wrote off
Germanness in America as an empty cup. GL does a good job of refreshing it.
Jack Labusch
Niles, OH
My first thought about hearing of German Life was that beginning such a magazine was a stroke of brilliance. I was aware that some Germans thought the idea of a magazine in English about Germany to be crazy, while some teachers only wanted material in German. However, as a former teacher of German myself, I also knew that people can get hooked on learning a language when they know more about a place, its culture, people, and history.
Founding publisher Lisa Fitzpatrick deserves a large thank you and congratulations on coming up with such an idea and having the wherewithal to see the idea through to immense
success. Part of her personality will certainly live on in the pages of German Life. I remember meeting her at an ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) convention in
Philadelphia, where she stood at the GL booth handing out the magazine and telling everyone its merits. She also exercised a great deal of humility by never stating what a great idea it was and how she worked hard to realize it.
Ms. Fitzpatrick has an obviously keen business sense, since magazines fold as often as restaurants. She found a niche, a quality group of people, raised the necessary amount of money to begin
publishing, and built a loyal readership.
All those interested in Germany, past and present, should tip their (Rhein or Mosel) wine glass to Lisa and wish her well.
Stephen V. Hoyt
Cary, NC
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