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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2005
For the Love of Art: Winterthur, Switzerland
by Phyllis Meras
In the fifteenth century, Winterthur, fifteen miles northeast of Zurich, was simply a market town. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, seeking to compete with its grander neighbor,
Zurich, it began producing elegant faience stoves. Then, in the nineteenth century, it gained renown for its textiles and locomotives. And today, thanks to the generosity of devoted citizens who prospered in its
industries, Winterthur is one of Switzerland’s richest repositories of art.
Foremost among its art patrons was Oskar Reinhart, who, in 1951, gave a collection of his art of the German-speaking world to the city. Seven years later, he announced that, on his death, the
Swiss Confederation would be the recipient of the rest of the paintings and sculpture he owned, and of his garden and villa.
The idea of sharing artistic possessions with those who did not have them came from his father, Theodor Reinhart, head of the prosperous Winterthur cotton and coffee-trading firm Gebrüder Volkart.
It had been founded in 1851 by Oskar’s maternal forebears and had offices in London and India. A patron of, among others, Ferdinand Hodler, Switzerland’s most famous painter of the 1890s, Theodor Reinhart
instilled in his four sons the idea that a small country like Switzerland could only fulfill its cultural obligations with the aid of its well-to-do citizenry.
Theodor Reinhart believed that those who owned art, owed it to those whose work they possessed, to raise the level of community interest in art by letting those who did not own any, see and enjoy
it. With an eye to that, he was a member of the Kuntsverein – the art association responsible for the creation of the Winterthur Kuntsmuseum – and was a great beneficiary of it.
As a result of his father’s enthusiasm for the arts, the oldest Reinhart son, Georg, became a collector of European and Asian art and the president of the Winterthur Art Club. The second son,
Hans, was a poet and promoter of theater and literature; the third, whose interests were musical, gave financial assistance to Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schonberg, Paul Hindemith, and Arthur Honegger, among
others, and offered a home he owned to the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, for the poet’s last years.
Oskar was the youngest of the sons. Although he had little interest in the family business, while his father was alive, he remained with the company. Traveling abroad for it as he did, he was
able, while still very young, to begin his own art collecting – as long as his father was willing to provide occasional “art loans” and time off for art study. Because of his family and business connections, he
had ready access to the best of private collections.
At the age of twenty-four, after working for the family firm in London and spending his spare time viewing English art, he asked his father for an educational break in Berlin. “Perhaps,” he wrote
to him, “you will understand that having to swallow all this pampered English art, coupled with the deadly one-sidedness of my business training, demands compensation in the form of a few months of intellectual
refreshment.”
Thedor Reinhart gave in to his son’s request and Oskar, for a few months, happily visited museums and artists’ studios in the German capital. Even before France had recognized its Impressionist
artists, they were popular in Germany and young Oskar found himself enthralled by them. However, it was not only Impressionism that interested him. Among the studios he saw was that of the brooding Expressionist
Emil Nolde. Oskar found Nolde’s art “rather foreign to me,” he wrote to his parents, but there was something about it, nonetheless, that appealed to his collector’s eye…
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In Hot Water – Wiesbaden GTM 2005
by Mark Slider
Spas, spätzle, and sunshine add to the fun during an eight-city, six day, tour of Germany on fast-forward.
It hardly seems as if an entire year has passed since my first chance to wander through parts of Germany courtesy of the German National Tourist Office. Armed with lessons learned from my previous
experience (pack light, wear comfortable black shoes that go with everything, and a compact umbrella that fits in your pocket can save the day), I was in the air again. This time, my destination was Wiesbaden
for German Travel Mart 2005.
Luckily this year, the weather was a bit more on my side and I finally got to see the sun shine while on German soil. Wiesbaden, with its eight hundred Historism mansions (combining
influences from Classical, Baroque and Renaissance styles) decorating the hillsides and twenty-six hot springs, was an interesting contrast to the northern cities I experienced last year. The pollard (trees
pruned back to the trunk to encourage a dense display of greenery) lining the streets were just starting to bud and I am sure the green canopy that would be overhead in a few weeks would be a welcome addition in
the summer sun.
A day tour of Wiesbaden offered us enticing glimpses of what this city at the foothills of the Taunus Mountains has to offer visitors. From the decadent foyer of Wiesbaden Theatre Opera House to
the unique water ballast powered Neroburgbahn (a cable car that transports visitors to a wonderful overlook using the weight of seven-thousand liters of water as ballast), Wiesbaden proved to be a unique
offering. Another high point included a tour of the Russische Kapelle, a beautifully touching nineteenth-century Russian-style hillside chapel built as a final resting spot for Russian-born Princess Elisabeth of
Nassau (who died during childbirth at nineteen) and her daughter (who died one year later).
In Wiesbaden proper, we each had a taste of the hot, salty (eight grams of salt per liter – an acquired taste) therapeutic waters that rise from the city’s twenty-six thermal springs.
Although the opportunity to partake in the spa experience was offered, I had doubts that I could look any of my newfound journalist friends in the face if, by chance, we bumped into each other with our “nether
regions” exposed during a Kur. The memory I will retain, however, is that of sitting in the imposing Gothic structure of the Marktkirche (the largest Protestant church in Hessen) and being treated to a recital
on the church organ. Few things compare to having the sounds of Bach reverberate throughout your body while in this beautiful sanctuary.
During my time in Wiesbaden, I dined in the halls of the beautifully restored Schloss Biebricher situated on the banks of the Rhine and in Wiesbaden’s glorious Kurhaus, built between 1807-10
to house a casino for Wiesbaden’s growing clientele of spa-elite. Rich mahogany wood combined with marble columns and floors to give this casino an air of sophistication you won’t find in Las Vegas.
Brief sidetrips on our second journalist’s tour took us to nearby Frankfurt and Mainz. While in Frankfurt, we first toured Paulskirche where the first German Democratic parliament gathered
in 1848 and then Goethe Haus. The Goethe museum is one of the few remaining Baroque buildings from the 1750s and is furnished to reflect Goethe’s home life including a few personal artifacts that survived the
bombings and fire that nearly destroyed the building during WWII. Our final stop in Frankfurt took us to St. Bartholomäus, a red sandstone church in the Altstadt. The church houses some amazing original altars
and sculptural pieces including a depiction of the Crucifixion by Mainz sculptor Hans Backoffen.
Mainz was a delightful surprise to our group. The city, founded in 13 B.C., was built upon a wooden pavement. During the bombings of WWII, the pavement caught fire and burned for two weeks.
All tolled, eighty-five percent of the city was destroyed. Our short jaunt introduced us to the whimsical Carnival Fountain, with its symbolic upside-down cathedral shape and the Gothic church of St. Stephan
with its truly amazing stained glass windows by artist Marc Chagall. The sixteen windows (nine by Chagall, seven by his companion) were completed in November 1984 shortly before Chagall’s death at the age of
ninety-eight and bathe the interior of the church in an azure blue light that is otherworldly…
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Jena…Seeing is Believing
by Jörg M. Unger
Home to a prestigious university and the evolution of precision optics, Jena proves to be more than meets the eye.
The town of Jena owes its reputation to the philosophers who lectured at the university there as well as the scientists who made it the birthplace of German precision engineering and the optics
industry. Two persons rendered outstanding service and assistance to the university at the beginning. The first was the electoral Prince Johann Friedrich I of Saxony, also called “the Magnanimous,” who decided
(after having lost the region of Wittenberg in the battle of 1547) to move his university to the banks of the river Saale. The second was Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who later brought distinguished poets,
philosophers, and scientists to lecture at this educational establishment, which became an imperial university in 1558. Goethe systematically laid the foundation for the professors’ work by promoting libraries,
archives, and laboratories and he also set-up a botanical garden and an observatory in the vicinity of the university.
By the end of the seventeenth century, the university had grown to be the largest in Germany. Great thinkers such as Friedrich Schiller, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and
the brothers August and Friedrich W. Schlegel taught at the university and influenced the mental culture in Jena, which became the birthplace of German Romanticism about one hundred years later. In the students’
pub “Grüne Tanne” (green fir), the first student fraternity was formed in 1815, whose black-red-and-gold colors signaled the call for unity, justice, and liberty in those days. Those colors have been the symbol
of German democracy since the students’ meeting at Castle Wartburg in 1817.
About seventy years later, the fortunate grouping of Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe, and Otto Schott laid the foundations of the town’s economical prosperity at the university. Carl Zeiss, who had
acquired his professional skills and gained experiences in the engineering factories of Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Vienna, and Berlin during his travels from 1838 to 1845, became the university mechanic and set up
his precision engineering and optical workshops in 1846. By 1872, his small model factory was the leading producer of microscopes. Four years later, while working as Carl Zeiss’ research director, the young
professor of physics, Ernst Abbe, created the theory of optical imaging and developed instruments that enabled scientists to see tiny details of slide preparations. In 1875, at the age of thirty-five, Ernst Abbe
became Carl Zeiss’ partner and, later, a member of the company board where he was involved in the modernization of production as well as international business contacts.
In 1879, chemistry and mineralogy student (and son of a window-glass maker) Otto Schott, carried out fundamental research into the glass-forming behavior of a wide range of chemical elements in
his hometown of Witten, Westphalia. When he sent some of his first samples to the university in Jena, Ernst Abbe and Carl Zeiss recognized Schott would be a perfect partner – a glass chemist who would be able to
improve the quality of the glass they urgently needed for their optical instruments. Abbe asked Schott to come to Jena and, in 1884, the two founded – together with Carl Zeiss and his son, Roderich – the company
Schott & Associates Glass Technology Laboratory that later became the Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Genossen. Within two years, Schott developed forty-four new optical and technical types of glass, which made
it possible to produce even better lenses and led to new applications.
The success of both factories drew many well-qualified scientists and skilled workers into the town and Jena’s population rose from sixteen thousand inhabitants in 1870 to twenty-five
thousand until the turn of the century. In 1889, Ernst Abbe established the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, a foundation to share the prosperity of the Zeiss company with its employees. The foundation statute was quite
unique at that time and ensured the employees social benefits and long-term economic security, such as an eight-hour day, sick pay, paid leave, profit sharing, and pension schemes. The foundation also supported
the construction of Jena’s Volkshaus (people’s house) from 1901 to 1903, financed the new university building that was opened in 1908, and sponsored a public swimming pool in 1909…
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Worth Climbing a Mountain
by Barb Taylor
The views and vistas of Germany’s Middle Rhine are all the more appealing when traveling on a budget of 60€ ($80) a day.
“Beneath me flows the Rhine, and like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of the Past.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1882
It is one of life’s perfect moments. I lean against the wrought iron railing atop the stone walls of the eleventh century castle – Burg Stahleck. The evening air is warm and still. Below me, a
golden haze envelops the white conical steeples of St. Peter’s church in the center of the wine-growing town of Bacharach. My gaze ambles over adjacent mountains covered with ancient forests and vineyards combed
into neat green rows. In the distance a succession of flat barges snake through sparkling waters on this twisting section of the middle Rhine. Beside me a couple, tucked in each other’s arms, pause to catch the
view while, on a patio, steps up from us, a woman scribbles furiously in her journal. The silence is broken with a crash of wooden swords. I turn to watch a couple of ten-year-old lads in mock battle. I am a
queen on a pauper’s budget, and loving every penny-pinching moment.
Call it the “luck of the Irish.” Two months earlier, while planning a working vacation in Scotland, my husband and I discovered Ryanair, Ireland’s budget airline, offering a round-trip fare of
40€ from Prestwick, Scotland, to Frankfurt, Hahn. We could not resist. Frankfurt Hahn airport is just minutes from Germany’s Middle Rhine, an area we had dreamed of visiting when we could “afford to.” We
had just seen a Rick Steve’s television documentary on the Rhine and I had written down the name of the youth hostel he had recommended – Burg Stahleck in Bacharach. We cut five days from our Scottish sojourn
and booked private rooms at both Oberwesel and Burg Stahleck Hostels (try to book well in advance). We are fifty years old, not exactly youth hostel material, but we take our chances at looking like den leaders
during our five-day, on-the-cheap, trip to Germany’s land of wine and castles.
We had heard mixed reviews about flying on budget airline but Ryanair provided a punctual, no-frills flight. Just outside Hahn terminal, a string of busses connect arriving passengers to local
train stations. Our driver wipes his dripping forehead while bemoaning that his “better bus” with air conditioning has broken down. We commiserate on a very warm thirty-minute ride to Koblenz where we board our
train to the “town of towers and wine,” Oberwesel. Perched on a steep cliff one thousand and fifty feet above Oberwesel is the massive twelfth century fortress, Burg Schoenburg. Signs lead us to a footpath that
snakes through a quiet dark forest on the twenty-minute climb to the youth hostel immediately adjacent to the castle. As we meander in and out of the forest we catch glimpses of the Rhine as it flows past this
medieval town dominated by the ochre-red, high-gothic Liebfrauenkirche, Church of the Blessed Virgin.
Oberwesel Youth Hostel, a modern three-story inn, could easily pass as a family resort. Our large room is simply furnished with twin beds, desks, and an in-suite bathroom. Families splash about in
the indoor swimming pool, and the chorus of a familiar hymn drifts from the nearby conference room where a church choir is practicing. Our accommodations, at 27€ a night including meals, cannot be beat.
After tucking into a generous buffet in the dining room, we take a relaxing after-dinner stroll from the hostel, over a wooden footbridge to the neighboring Schoenburg Castle…
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Innovative Education in Germany: International University Bremen
by Sharon Hudgins
A German university takes a fresh look at education and creates a melting pot of cultural and educational opportunities.
I felt a sense of déjà vu as I drove through the entrance to International University Bremen, ten miles from the center of the German city of Bremen. Having taught for fifteen years with a
university program at United States military installations in Germany, I know an Army post when I see one. Over there is the headquarters building, in another direction you'll find the mess hall, and beyond
that, the motor pool.
But wait: I also felt like I was on the campus of a small liberal arts college in the United States, with tidy red-brick buildings surrounding quadrangles of manicured green lawns.
Located on a military Kaserne built by the German army in the 1930s and used as a base by British forces after World War II, International University Bremen (IUB) is a unique institution of
higher education in Germany. The student body comprises approximately six hundred undergraduates and two hundred graduate students from eighty nations. All the undergraduates live on campus. The average
faculty-to-student ratio in the classroom is one-to-nine. And the language of instruction is English.
IUB is definitely not a typical German university.
Founded in 1999, this private, independent, fully accredited university is a new kind of "education joint venture" by the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen in partnership with the
University of Bremen in Germany and Rice University in Houston, Texas. IUB offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. The
university commenced classes in September 2001 and graduated its first cohort of students – one hundred and four baccalaureates, three masters and one Ph.D. – in 2004.
IUB was established to educate talented students for leadership roles in business, industry, research, and international organizations. The university recruits students from around the
world, because cultural diversity is both a goal and the philosophy of the university's program. Approximately one-fourth of the students are from Germany, with the remainder coming from other countries around
the globe.
"The clear vision of this university is to build a truly international university," said Beate Wolff, who was Director of Corporate Communications and Media Relations when I
visited IUB in 2004. "The idea is to educate people who are willing to go into international enterprises," she added. "Employers want people who have an international outlook and multicultural
experience."
Admission to the university is highly selective, based on merit and determined by a student's academic achievements, personal references (including awards and volunteer service activities),
self-presentation (written application, essay, interview), and performance on a required standardized test, the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) or ACT (American College Testing Assessment). The top quarter of
students enrolled at IUB in 2004 scored 1350 points, or higher, out of a maximum of 1600 points on the SAT. Many of them also ranked near the top of their own country's students in natural science, mathematics,
and social science competitions.
Tuition is 15,000 € a year for undergraduates and 20,000 € a year for graduate students, plus 450 € a month for room, board, and utilities. However, ability to pay is not a
factor in the selection of students for IUB. Only after a student is accepted, on the basis of merit, is his or her financial status considered. All students admitted to the program are provided financial aid
based on need; none are rejected because they cannot afford the tuition and fees. Financial aid is available in the form of full and partial stipends, as well as student jobs on campus…
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A Phoenix Rises
by Ben Henkey
On the eve of its rededication, we look back at the original glory, tragic destruction, and amazing rebirth of Dresden’s famed Frauenkirche.
”Kings are rendered immortal by their buildings.”
Motto of Augustus II (August the Strong, 1670 to 1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland, who approved construction of the Frauenkirche in 1726.
The only memory Günter Blobel has of Dresden’s original Frauenkirche is a fleeting glimpse from the window of a crowded automobile being driven through the streets of the city by an older brother
in late January 1945.
The Blobel family – six of the eight children and their mother in this case – was fleeing westward from their home in Silesia in the face of the advancing Russian army. Their father, a
veterinarian, had remained behind in the village of Waltersdorf, then in eastern Germany and now in Poland, to attend to last-minute business.
Young Günter, not yet nine, remembered later how impressed he was with Dresden’s skyline – its towers and spires and domes and ornate architecture – as the family sedan moved slowly through
streets crowded with other refugees. The Blobels stopped briefly to admire the panther quadriga atop the Semper Opera House, then drove on westward, about thirty miles, to a farm owned by relatives.
They did not realize how fortunate they were.
The image of die Steinerne Glocke (the Stone Bell), as Dresdeners fondly referred to the Frauenkirche, was still in Blobel’s mind two weeks later as he stood with his family and relatives, looking
eastward into a night sky so bright “you could read a newspaper by the light.”
Dresden was burning – following the first of three massive Allied air raids, reprisals, it was claimed, for the Nazi V-2 attacks on London, and to placate and impress Josef Stalin, who had
complained that America and England were not doing enough to support Soviet efforts on the Eastern Front.
What two separate waves of eight hundred British Lancaster bombers had begun on the night of February 13, three hundred fifty B-17G’s would finish the next day. More than a million incendiaries
and thousands of tons of high explosive bombs, some blockbusters weighing eight thousand pounds included, were dropped on the city in the space of eighteen hours.
The Blobel family learned of the first raid because they were listening to the ten o’clock news on Dresden radio. There was no anti-aircraft fire because the city’s flak batteries had been moved
eastward to face the oncoming Russians.
Somewhere between thirty-five thousand and one hundred thirty-five thousand people perished in the three attacks; no accurate accounting was ever made because of the thousands of undocumented
refugee victims and the fact that thousands more were burned beyond recognition in a firestorm that raised temperatures to the point that asphalt pavement melted in Dresden’s streets.
The toll on the city’s physical features was equally shocking. Gone was the Zwinger Palace, built for August the Strong in the early eighteenth century as a showplace for his princely art and
porcelain collections. Gottfried Semper’s magnificent opera house was in ruins. The high lacy tower of the former Catholic Court Church was a scorched skeleton standing in a graveyard of burned-out historical
structures.
In fact, everything within a sixteen thousand-square-acre area centering on the Bruhl Terrace along the riverfront, the Rococo and Italian Renaissance-inspired buildings that gave Dresden its
title – “Florence on the Elbe” – was destroyed or damaged beyond recognition. The Frauenkirche had stood up to the raids a bit longer than its neighbors. However, the intense heat from the nearby blazing
buildings eventually ignited the church’s wooden furnishings. And there was a cache of photographic negatives stored in the crypt, said to have been placed there by the Luftwaffe. Stoked by this highly
inflammable celluloid, the church burned for two days, then collapsed upon itself February 15.
Over the next two decades, the Zwinger, Hofkirche, Semper Opera, and other historic buildings slowly rose from the rubble as the East German government found time and funds to begin
reconstruction. The Frauenkirche, however, grew only weeds and scrawny saplings atop its crumpled stones. There was no inclination or incentive in the communist state to reconstruct what two-and-a-half centuries
earlier had been the largest Protestant church in the German Empire.
The Frauenkirche had its beginnings in the minds of Dresden’s city councilmen in the early days of the eighteenth century, as a replacement for an outgrown sixteenth century Gothic church by the
same name that had stood at the edge of the Neumarkt Square.
Several plans were considered before local builder Georg Bähr’s modified design for a square, dome-capped structure with a stair tower at each corner was adopted. Bähr convinced a skeptical
council that he could build a dome over three hundred feet high with no overhead support other that the weight of its sandstone blocks. The church would be Lutheran to serve the largely Protestant population of
the city. That decision might have presented a problem, since Saxon elector August the Strong recently had converted to Catholicism so that he might assume the vacant throne of Poland. However, the king eased
any tensions by giving his blessing to the undertaking.
He could well afford to. If Bähr’s plan were realized, the church would be the crowning achievement in the ruler’s efforts to develop the area along the Dresden waterfront into an architectural
showplace that would reflect his own importance.
Construction began in 1726, and as the massive pillars rose to support a three hundred fourteen-foot-high dome weighing twelve thousand tons, it became evident that the project was without equal
in Saxony, or in all of Germany, for that matter.
The Frauenkirche interior was to be like no other church. It reminded many of an opera house, with its five tiers seating three thousand five hundred for worship, lectures, or musical concerts,
all of which Bähr had in mind when he drew up the plans. The Baroque ornamentation reached new heights in the galleries, pulpit, and altar, most of which were constructed of elaborately hand-carved wood.
Unfortunately, neither approving prince nor bold architect lived to witness the completion of the church. August died in 1733, Bähr in 1738. The latter, however, witnessed a dedicatory concert on
the magnificent Silbermann organ by no less a celebrity than J.S. Bach, on December 2, 1736. Playing for two hours in the still-unfinished sanctuary, Bach pronounced both instrument and hall to be near perfect
acoustically.
In 1741, three years after Bähr’s death, an orb and twenty eight-foot gold-plated cross were hoisted to the top of the dome, signifying official completion of the church. The Frauenkirche got
directly involved in the Seven Years’ War (1756 to 1763) in 1760 when Frederick the Great’s army invaded Saxony and briefly occupied Dresden. Considerable damage was done to the town by the Prussian artillery,
but over one hundred cannon balls bounced harmlessly off the Frauenkirche dome, inflicting no damage and leaving the Prussian king properly impressed.
The church had just observed its centenary when Richard Wagner premiered his oratorio The Love Feast of the Apostles in the sanctuary July 6, 1843. The combined male choruses numbered one thousand
two hundred voices, and they and a one hundred-piece orchestra were directed by the composer. Wagner was Kapellmeister here from 1842 to 1849 when he and Semper were forced to flee because of their revolutionary
political beliefs.
The Stone Bell proved very durable, but was not immune to wear and tear. It was almost two hundred years old when the decision to renovate the building and the organ was made early during World
War II. Architects made thousands of drawings and took hundreds of photographs during the1941 to 1943 effort, and had the foresight to place their research in a secure archive. The Frauenkirche seemed well
prepared for another century of service. In less than two years it was a smoking pile of collapsed stonework…
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A Village of Peace
by Bette McDevitt
The innocent victims of war and natural disaster around the world find refuge and hope through Germany’s Peace Village.
Friedensdorf, the Peace Village, as it translates into English, looks like a summer camp, nestled on a hilltop above Oberhausen, near Düsseldorf. Since my first visit, in 2000, cramped living
quarters and the dining area have been replaced with spacious new buildings. Children gather outside in small groups, laughing and talking. Different languages mix with the music coming through open windows.
Skin colors run from deep chocolate to vanilla cream.
However, there are harsh reminders that these children are not campers; rather they are victims of war. A medical assistant hurries by carrying an armful of artificial limbs. The children use
canes or crutches or scoot about in wheelchairs.
Mohamad, whose arms end at his elbows, is one of these children. He came to Friedensdorf from Afghanistan four years ago, at the age of ten, the victim of an all-too-common mishap. He picked up a
shiny piece of metal, a land mine that blew off his upper limbs. He has gone through hundreds of surgeries, to convert the stumps on his arms to pieces of ligament that he can use as hands. He chose that option,
rather than high tech prostheses, which are impossible to maintain in his home country.
“He is one of the lucky ones,” said Wolfgang Mertens, a staff member at the Peace Village. “He is one who could be helped.”
Healing the broken bodies of these children has been the work of Friedensdorf, a German non-profit organization, for almost forty years, since Fritz Berghaus, a Lutheran minister, talked with
Luise Albertz, the former mayor of Oberhausen. In 1967, the two of them decided praying was not enough. “At that time, the Vietnam War had stepped into our living rooms. It changed the world, “ Mertens said. “We
Germans had to face our responsibility for what happened to the Jews and others during World War II.”
The first one hundred children at Friedensdorf were Vietnamese. Based on this early experience, the Peace Village set up some criteria for the selection process. First, adequate medical care,
unavailable in the child’s own country, could be available in Europe. Second, there must be a written agreement with the child’s family that he or she will return home. “The children from Vietnam became German
citizens. We were hesitant to return them to the government in power after the war. We didn’t know if there would be a bloody revolution or not. Some of these people, now adults, are my best friends, and they do
not know what they are, German or Vietnamese. They are very unfortunate human beings."
The final criteria state that the care is given to the poorest of the poor, with no preferential treatment for children of the government officials. The Peace Village has established sixteen Peace
Villages in other countries, in partnership with non-government organizations, allowing more children to be treated at home. When the Peace Village began, there were twenty-eight areas of the world “in crisis.”
Now, there are sixty such areas, in countries whose names are no longer in the headlines.
The existing partnership with Sri Lanka allowed the Peace Village to respond very quickly to the December 2004 tsunami. Within forty-eight hours, the first cargo, forty tons of medical aid and
clothing, was ready to depart from Frankfurt. Since then, three other planeloads have carried a total of two hundred and ten tons of medical supplies and clothing. German school children who wanted to help are
donating money to buy school supplies, and there is a campaign to build a new school in Mullaitivu, in the northeastern coastal region of Sri Lanka…
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Zermatt and the Mighty Matterhorn
by Leah Larkin
Those who climb it, risk losing their lives while those who bask in its beauty, risk losing their hearts.
“Here we lost our lives, but we’ll find it again on the holy mountain of God.”
So reads an inscription on one of the many tombstones of mountain climbers buried in the cemetery at Zermatt, the town at the foot of the mighty Matterhorn.
Zermatt is a real mountain climber’s town. When the weather is good, between one hundred and two hundred climbers try to ascend the Matterhorn every day. Every year, some ten meet their death on
the mountain.
“Everyone thinks it’s easy, but it’s a climbing mountain, not a walking mountain,” says Maya Brunner, a guide in the town’s Alpine Center.
In the summer, in addition to climbers, Zermatt attracts hikers and sightseers – all hoping for a photograph of the famous mountain. The resort offers skiing year round on its glacier, but most
skiers prefer to visit in winter months. It is also popular with train riders. Those who ride the Glacier Express train (see August/September 2003 German Life) through Switzerland can start or end their journey
in Zermatt.
As soon as you arrive in Zermatt, you know it is special. There are no cars – that is no cars with gasoline engines. Traffic is limited to electric cars and horse-drawn carriages, which deliver
guests to the hotels scattered around the town. Autos, tour buses, vans, and campers are parked down the mountain in the town of Taesch where visitors board a train for a fifteen-minute ride to Zermatt.
The Matterhorn is the magnet drawing visitors to Zermatt. The pyramid-shaped, 14,690-foot (4,478 meter) tall mountain stands solitary. No lesser peaks crowd around and detract from its majesty.
Often clouds cling to the summit, almost like tufts of cotton candy stuck to its steep and rocky surface. It is a mountain of mystery, legend, and danger.
There are taller mountains in the region, but man was able to conquer them. The Matterhorn remained aloof, unattainable, one of the last Alpine peaks to be climbed. Superstitious villagers feared
the mountain and called it "the killer Alp."
After eight unsuccessful attempts to scale Zermatt's mountain, Edward Whymper, an Englishman, led a party of seven to the top in 1865. The victory was scarred with tragedy. On the way down, ropes
broke and four of his group plunged to their deaths. Their graves are among those in the town cemetery.
The cemetery has become a sort of morbid tourist attraction in Zermatt. "Every day there are about one hundred visitors to the cemetery," said a librarian in Zermatt. "There are bus
loads in the summer. People are fascinated with death.”
Those from all over the world are buried in the cemetery. Prior to World War II, when people died on the mountain, they were buried in the mountain as it was too difficult to return their bodies
to their home country. These days, however, most of those who die on the Matterhorn are buried in their native land. Some, however, continue to find a resting place under the peaks that claimed their lives.
Previously there was one cemetery for both climbers and non-climbers. As it was becoming crowded, the graves of climbers were recently moved to a special cemetery just for those who died scaling the mountain
peaks.
No need to dwell on death, however, in this a busy, pretty town. Zermatt’s main street, Bahnhof Strasse, is jammed with people peering into classy boutiques and souvenir shops. Its hotels, houses,
and chalets with blossoms tumbling from their window boxes look just like those pictured on many a box of Swiss chocolates. Wander off the main street into the town’s old quarter where two hundred fifty-year-old
houses stand on a type of stilt. Between the post supporting the house and the building are large stone slabs. Meat was dried in the houses, and this stilt-stone design was meant to keep the mice away…
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“cuius regio, eius religio”
Remembering the Religious Peace of Augsburg, 450 Years Later
by Robert A. Selig
Martin Luther’s theses led to forty years of strife between Catholics and Protestants — a division the Religious Peace of Augsburg attempted to remedy.
"… und damit sölcher fried auch der spaltigen religion halben … desto bestendiger zwischen der Röm.(ischen) Kei.(serlichen) Mai.(estät), uns, auch churfürsten, fürsten und stenden des
heil.(igen) Röm. (ischen) reichs Teutscher nation angestellt … in order to bring peace to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation between the Roman Imperial Majesty and the Electors, Princes and Estates, let
neither his Imperial Majesty nor the Electors, Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate of the empire on the account of the Augsburg Confession, but let them enjoy their religious belief, liturgy and
ceremonies as well as their estates and other rights and privileges in peace; and complete religious peace shall be obtained only by Christian means of amity, or under threat of punishment of the Imperial ban.
“Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession shall let all the Estates and Princes who cling to the old (i.e., the Catholic) religion live in absolute peace and in the enjoyment of all
their estates, rights, and privileges." However, "all such as do not belong to the two above named religions," primarily Calvinists and Zwinglians but Anabaptists and other Schwärmer, i.e.,
‘dreamers’ as well, "shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it."
These famous lines of the Reichsabschied, the conclusions agreed upon by the Reichstag or Imperial Diet, the general meeting of the Estates of the Empire, on 25 September 1555, constitute the core
of what is known as the Religious Peace of Augsburg. Passed four hundred and fifty years ago this fall, the agreement, meant to put an end to the religious strife and turmoil between Catholics and Protestants
that had broken out forty years earlier with the publication of Martin Luther's 95 Theses on 31 October 1517, constitutes one of the most important pieces of legislation in German history.
When Luther nailed his theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, his intention had been to "reform" the Catholic Church. However, in a society where the Church was as much a
religious institution as an economic power and a governing tool, and where religious considerations permeated every aspect of life and influenced all doings of the faithful, his call for reform of the church
invariably assumed a political component. Luther himself drew the battle lines on 18 April 1521 at the Diet of Worms, when he placed obedience to God's commands above obedience to Emperor Charles V. "I
cannot and will not recant, since it is neither safe nor right to go against one's conscience."
Though Luther was outlawed, his teachings survived. At the Diet of Speyer in 1529, the Emperor made a second attempt to restore Catholicism within the Empire. Taking up Luther’s argumentation that
one’s conscience in religious affairs was not bound to human decisions, a group of princes as well as fourteen Imperial Cities, however, submitted a formal protest against the decisions of the Catholic majority,
forcing Charles to convoke another Diet at Augsburg in 1530 to hear the complaints of the "Protesting Estates."
On 25 June 1530, Lutheran attempts to prove that their views were Biblical, codified by a group around Philipp Melanchthon in the "Augsburg Confession," were submitted to Charles V, who
had just received papal coronation as Emperor, in German by seven Lutheran princes led by Philip of Hesse and Elector John of Saxony and the two imperial free cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen. Again, they
failed to convince the Emperor and the Catholic Estates, who, in the Reichsabschied of 22 September 1530, ordered Lutherans to reunite with the Catholic Church by 15 April 1531 under threat of prosecution at the
Imperial Cameral Court. In February 1531, Protestant princes responded with a military alliance known as the Schmalkaldic League, after the town of Schmalkalden in Saxony. Needing military assistance against the
Turks in the East and France in the West, Charles, in the Peace of Nuremberg of 1532, suspended the 15 April deadline until the convening of a general church council, and this, from a legal point of view
treasonous, coalition against the Emperor survived. When Charles’ forces finally crushed the League militarily in June 1546, the year of Luther's death, more than half of the population of the Empire and four of
the seven electoral princes of the Empire were Lutheran. Charles’ victory was short-lived, however. German estates were united in their hostility toward a strong, centralized, and hereditary monarchy in the
House of Habsburg. In 1552, Elector Maurice of Saxony, who had just helped crush the Schmalkaldic League in return for the Electoral dignity of his cousin John Frederick, led a revolt against Charles. In the
Treaty of Passau of 2 August 1552, Charles was forced, partly by Catholic Estates anxious to end the religious turmoil, to grant a temporary peace so that the strife could be settled by a Diet…
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Bernburg an der Saale: A City in Transition
by Zac Steger
Seeds of hope have grown and are beginning to blossom in this environmentally ravaged region of the former Communist Bloc.
The town of Bernburg lies along the Saale River in Saxony-Anhalt. Like many towns that were once part of the German Democratic Republic, Bernburg has had many obstacles to overcome economically
and socially since reunification. East Germany, as a whole, faced issues such as unemployment and environmental problems beyond what anyone had imagined. The people of Bernburg have worked to improve the quality
of their city more than many in the region and it appears to be working.
Bernburg dates back to 961 when it was first mentioned in a deed by Emperor Otto I. It served as residence for the House of Anhalt-Bernburg for many years up until the death of Alexander
Carl, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg in 1863, which ended the line of the Bernburg royal house. This was followed by the death of Friedrike, the last Duchess of Anhalt-Bernburg, in 1902. It was after the
unification of Germany in the nineteenth century that Bernburg began to industrialize with salt mining and the opening of the Solvay plant for soda production in 1883. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
the city opened a health spa using its salt reserves, though it did not prove as successful as officials had hoped.
Bernburg also became home to an army garrison in the mid 1800s, a history that would eventually last most of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Though the city remained without a
garrison following World War I, it only lasted until October 1935. The city suffered little major damage during World War II and, in April 1945, American troops entered the city with little resistance. On July
4th, the Americans left as the Red Army marched in. They would remain there for over forty years until their departure in November 1990.
When Germany reunited in 1990, Bernburg faced the same problems as any other place in the Communist Bloc. Jobs which once existed were now gone. Educators had to be replaced or retrained to
teach western ideas. The environmental damage caused by the industry of the region (Bernburg lies just northwest of one of the worst regions of environmental damage in Europe) was beyond what most had expected.
The Saale River was covered with foam for many years and the effects of acid rain were evident throughout the city. It was the social conditions, however, that were perhaps the most difficult for many. Shortly
after reunification, many people of the eastern Länder failed to see the “Prosperous Landscapes” Helmut Kohl had promised them. Unemployment was at over twenty percent in the early 1990s and many longed for the
days of the GDR where everyone had a job and place to live. Today, conditions in the town of over forty-five thousand are much better. Still supported by industry along with a strong campaign to win tourists
(and some western investment), the city has spent the last decade repairing and restoring itself into one of the most beautiful cities in the former East Germany.
On the north side of the Saale is the Talstadt, the old settlement of Bernburg. Although one immediately notices the typical Soviet-era gray apartment buildings at Vor Dem Nienburger Tor,
the area actually features many interesting sights. The Bear Fountain stands in front of Old Town Hall Am Markt, the main shopping area in this part of the city. Further into the town are the beautiful façades
at Breite Straße and Krumbholz Straße, mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Historic buildings here include the Grüne Apotheke (Green Pharmacy) and the Marienkirche. Portions of the old city
walls are visible near the Ilberstedter Friedhof (cemetery), where one can also view the Glacier Garden. The former Soviet Army barracks were once located nearby, but have now been replaced with a new
residential area. Directly along the Saale to the south are the Old Mill and the Kesslerturm. There are also more recent additions to the town such as the Sportforum, located not far from the Tiergarten. Though
relatively small, the zoo has a wide variety of animals, including the brown bears for which the city is known. Of course, any visit is incomplete without having your picture taken on top of the bear statue just
outside the entrance. On the way out of town is the “Paradis” restaurant, as much noted for the fairy tale garden as the excellent food…
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At Home:
Savoring Senf - German mustards – from mild to hot
by Sharon Hudgins
Mustard has been around for a long time. Archeologists have uncovered evidence of its use as a seasoning in ancient Asia, and mustard seeds are mentioned several times in the Bible. The
Romans are credited with introducing mustard to Gaul (later known as France) and to the British Isles – both of which eventually became producers of the pungent seeds. And inhabitants of the Germanic lands have
had a taste for mustard since at least the Middle Ages, when mustard was valued for both its medicinal and culinary properties.
In the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great of Prussia, feeling that his virility needed a boost, supposedly concocted an aphrodisiac drink made of mustard powder, champagne, and coffee.
History doesn't record how this liquid affected specific parts of his anatomy, but it couldn't have done his stomach much good.
In Germany today, mustard is available in three forms: (1) whole seeds (Senfkörner), which are used in cooking and canning, for flavoring pickled vegetables and sweet-sour fruit condiments; (2)
dry mustard powder (Senfpulver) made from crushed and ground mustard seeds, which is used as a cooking ingredient or mixed with liquids to form a smooth paste; and (3) pre-mixed mustard paste (Senf), a condiment
made from crushed or ground seeds combined with ingredients such as salt, sweeteners, herbs, spices, and liquids (water, wine, vinegar, beer). Germans use pre-mixed or "prepared" mustard as both a
cooking ingredient and a garnish for hot and cold foods.
The flavors of German mustards range from strong, extra-hot (Extra-Scharf) mustards guaranteed to clean out your sinuses, to very mild, sweet (Süss) versions. Düsseldorf in northern Germany is the
major center for the production of hot-spicy, yellow-colored mustards (as well as less pungent, yellow types, too), whereas Bavaria, in the south, is well known for its distinctive sweet, mild, brown-colored
mustards, some of which have a grainy texture from the coarsely ground seeds in them…
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Family Research: Written in Stone
by James M. Beidler
It was not long after I began researching my personal genealogy some two decades ago that I realized one of the greatest advantages of being a descendant of Pennsylvania Germans (at least as
far as family history was concerned) was the fact that many of their tombstones were chock-full of the details that a genealogist craves.
Not just birth-and-death-years-only memorials devoid of details, these eighteenth and nineteenth century markers were written in German but many followed a template that made them easy to
translate.
The typical Pennsylvania German tombstone of the late eighteenth century contained as much or more information than Pennsylvania’s first state death certificates – from the early twentieth
century.
Among the items typically inscribed on these stones were the following: full name; parents’ names; birth date; marriage date and spouse’s name; number of sons and daughters; death date; age
in years, months and days; and funeral text.
For those who have remarked about the Teutonic thoroughness of the Germans – tombstones are clearly the apex of their anal retentiveness!
The availability of generation-connecting information in some cases meant that visiting a single cemetery could propel the pedigree chart back several generations. I found some three-dozen
direct-line ancestors of my mother at one cemetery – and about two dozen of my father's at another.
It was interesting to see the evolution of the German names from spellings used in the Old World to ones that were commonplace today – such as Kirschner to Kerschner to Kershner.
Of course, two centuries of weathering (worsened by the acid rain of recent decades) made some of the stones difficult to read – even after adjusting for the Gothic script used on most
markers!…
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CALENDAR
Please contact events directly to confirm dates, times, locations, and admission fees.
August
Evansville, IN
August 4-6: Volksfest. Call 812-477-1366.
Milwaukee, WI
August 4-6: Bratwurst Day at Kiwanis Park. Call 920-208-0852.
Frederick, MD
August 5: Der Stammtisch social gathering at Brewer’s Alley, 124 N. Market Street at 7:00 p.m. Call 301-631-0127.
St. Louis, MO
August 5-7: Strassenfest at Tucker and Market Streets. Call 636-225-1730
Bethlehem, PA
August 5-14: Musikfest. Call 610-332-FEST (3378) or visit www.fest.org
Zoar, OH
August 6-7: Harvest Festival. Call 330-874-2646 or visit www.zca.org
Liverpool, NY
August 7: BavarianFest. Call 315-447-3268 or 315-439-8405 or visit www.bavarianclubalmenrausch.org
Dayton, OH
August 12-14: 22nd Annual German Picnic at Carillon Park. Call 937-278-4606 or visit www.daytongermanclub.org
Rochester, NY
August 12-14: German Fest at the German Cultural Center in Gates Memorial Park. Call 585-426-7835.
Hagerstown, MD
August 13-14: Augustoberfest. Call 301-739-8577 or visit www.augustoberfest.org
Baltimore, MD
August 19-21: 105th Annual German Festival at Carroll Park. Call 410-522-4144 or visit www.md-germans.org.
West Haven, CT
August 21: Bierfest II/ Pig Roast. Call. 203-933-9930 or visit www.harugari.org
Bethlehem, PA
August 21: Family Day on the Farm at Burnside Plantation, a restored Moravian farm. Call 610-868-5044.
Cincinnati, OH
August 26-28: 35th Annual Oktoberfest. Call 513-742-0060 or visit www.germaniasociety.com
Columbus, OH
August 26-28: 46th Annual Bavarian Festival. Visit www.germania-oh.org
Walcott, IA
August 26-28: 10th Annual Low German (Platt) Konferenze sponsored by the American/Schleswig-Holstein Heritage Society. Call 563-284-6640; email: leemarmul@aol.com ; or visit www.ashhs.org
September
Frederick, MD
September 2: Der Stammtisch social gathering at Brewer’s Alley, 124 N. Market Street at 7:00 pm. For information, call 301-631-0127.
Berea, OH
September 2-5: Oktoberfest. Visit www.bereaoktoberfest.com
Philadelphia, PA
September 3-5: Cannstatter Volksfest Verein. Call 215-332-0121 or visit www.cvvphilly.com
Penngrove, CA
September 4: German-American Labor Day Picnic in Penngrove Community Park. Call 707-665-9933
Covington, KY
September 9-11: 27th Annual MainStrasse Village Oktoberfest. Call 859-491-0458 or visit www.mainstrasse.org
Milwaukee, WI
September 9-11, 16-18, 23-25: Bavarian Oktoberfest. Call 414-462-9147 or visit www.bavarianinnmilw.com
Waupun, WI
September 9-11: Volksfest. Call 920-324-2531.
Agawam, MA
September 10: Springfield Turnverein’s Oktoberfest. Call 413-786-0924.
Walpole, MA
September 10-11: Oktoberfest. Call 508-660-2018 or visit www.germanclub.org
Annapolis, MD
September 15: Baltimore Edelweiss Club’s Annual Crab Fest at Fisherman’s Crab Deck. Reservations by September 9. Call 410-465-6846
Frankenmuth, MI
September 15-18: 16th Annual Frankenmuth Oktoberfest in Heritage Park. Call 1-800-FUN-FEST or visit www.frankenmuthfestivals.com
Mount Angel, OR
September 15-18: 40th Annual Mount Angel Oktoberfest. Call 503-845-9440 or visit www.oktoberfest.org
Helen, GA
September 15-November 5: Oktoberfest. Call 706-878-1619 or visit www.helenchamber.com
San Antonio, TX
September 16: Gartenkonzert at the Beethoven Hall and Garden. Call 210-222-1521.
Plymouth, WI
September 16-17: Plymouth Oktoberfest at The Plymouth Center. Call 920-892-8409.
Chippewa Falls, WI
September 16-18: Oktoberfest. Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. Call 866-723-0340; email: info@chippewachamber.org or visit www.chippewachamber.org
Lancaster, PA
September 16-18: Oktoberfest. Call 717-898-8451 or visit www.lancasterliederkranz.com
Rochester, NY
September 16-18 & 23-25: 18th Annual Oktoberfest in Irondequoit, NY. Call 585-336-6070 or visit www.irondequoit.org/events/oktober.htm
Omaha, NE
September 17: Oktoberfest. Call 402-333-6615 or visit www.germanamericansociety.org
Hays, KS
September 17-18; 4th Annual Midwest Deutsche Oktoberfest. Call 785-625-5394 or 785-259-4449 or visit www.midwestdeutschefest.com
Hayward, CA
September 18: German Fest at Centennial Hall. All 510-836-0735 or 510-483-2573 or email: junginger@istep.com
Shepherdstown, WV
September 18: Oktoberfest. Call 304-876-2551 or visit www.bavarianinnwv.com
Syracuse, NY
September 23-25: 45th Annual Great Syracuse Oktoberfest. Call 315-682-2584 or visit www.syracuseoktoberfest.com
Serbin, TX
September 25: 17th Annual Wendish Fest. Grounds of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society Museum and St. Paul Lutheran Church. Call 979-366-2441 or email: wendish@bluebon.net
West Haven, CT
September 25: Oktoberfest. Call 203-933-9930 or visit www.harugari.org
Reading, PA
September 29-October 2: Oktoberfest. Call 610-373-3982 or visit www.readingliederkranz.com
Fredericksburg, TX
September 30-October 1 & 2: Oktoberfest. Call 830-997-4810 or visit www.oktoberfestinfbg.com
LaCrosse, WI
September 30-October 8: Oktoberfest. Call 608-784-FEST (3378) or visit www.oktoberfestusa.com
Leavenworth, WA
September 30-October 1 & 7-8: Oktoberfest. Call 509 548-5807 or visit www.leavenworth.org
San Antonio, TX
September 30 & October 1: Oktoberfest at the Beethoven Hall and Garden. Call 210-222-1521.
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