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February/March 2005
Profile:
Katarina Witt – The Fire Still Burns
by Lois Elfman
“Americans really respect you when they see that you work hard for something,” says figure skater Katarina Witt, two-time Olympic gold medalist (1984 and 1988) and four-time World
Champion (1984 to 1985 and 1987 to 1988) from the former German Democratic Republic. “They saw that I never settled or sat back on my success from the past. I always kept going.”
Witt burst onto the figure skating scene at the 1981 World Championships in Hartford, Connecticut. At the time, she was a giddy teenager, skating one of her programs to “Rainbow
Connection” from The Muppet Movie. By the following year, she had matured into a beautiful young woman. Throughout her amateur skating career, her beauty and sex appeal were often incorporated into her
programs – none more so than her seductive interpretation of Carmen at the 1988 Calgary Olympics that won “The Battle of the Carmens” against United States Champion Debi Thomas.
Despite the fact that Witt consistently beat America’s best, her popularity transcended international boundaries.
“I represented sort of a darker side of the world, the socialist countries,” says Witt. “Still, I was very sympathetic to the audience. They embraced me. My biggest competitors
were always Americans. So, of course, Americans always would watch the competitions. Then they saw me, my personality. In the last few years I was able to express my personality even more than before. With this,
I was able to have time to establish myself and build a career on longevity.”
That longevity is now being celebrated in a new book, Only With Passion (from Public Affairs Books) co-written with E.M. Swift. The premise is that a sixteen-year-old American
figure skater named Jasmine comes to visit Witt at her home in Berlin. At a bit of a crossroads in her life and skating career, Jasmine is filled with questions about Witt’s path to success. As they sit and
review Witt’s scrapbooks and discuss her life, Jasmine finds out about championship determination.
“The information is completely real. Only Jasmine is invented, but she could be real,” says Witt, noting that many of Jasmine’s questions reflect questions she has received from
young athletes over the years.
“I really liked having a dialogue,” she continues. “To have Jasmine ask me those questions can sometimes be quite a challenge. Me talking to her instead of just speaking about
myself. With this, I think, it turned out to be a little warmer.”
Witt says she avoids talking politics, but does acknowledge her East German past and its differences in schools and sports training. However, her overriding message is that, no
matter where you are from, championship athletes share a similar attribute – dedication…
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Season of the Witch
by Iyna Bort Caruso
Oberwesel’s Weinfest helps say “good-bye” to winter and “hello” to a new season in the vineyard in the Middle Rhine’s beautiful Oberwesel.
In the German Rhine town of Oberwesel, there are only good witches. Here they are called weinhexes – wine witches – and they are secretly selected by local winegrowers in a vintner
version of a small town beauty pageant. However, instead of a tiara, the winner wears a medieval headdress. And instead of sauntering down a runway, she pops out of giant wine barrel. College scholarships?
Forget it. However, she does get to keep her costume.
Every year, the Oberwesel Wine Witch Festival celebrates the reign of the weinhex whose job is to protect the vineyards of this two thousand-year-old town. It is a river valley
rite devoted to the great white grape of Germany.
Some six thousand five hundred wineries line the banks of the eight hundred twenty-mile-long Rhine, making the centuries-old wine industry as integral to the character of the region as
it is to the economy. Protocol runs high. Rhine Riesling always comes in brown bottles, for instance. There is also loyalty. In these parts, do not even think of asking for Chardonnay. And there is reverence of
the past, which plays itself out in enough festivals and parades to rival the Magic Kingdom.
Oberwesel is located in the central stretch of the river called the Mittelrhein (Middle Rhine). The Germans call this easy-to-reach section the “Romantic Rhine.” It may be a marketing
gimmick, but it is hard to argue the point. Oberwesel is known as the “town of towers” for its sixteen Rapunzel-like fortresses that give it its medieval skyline. However, for all its snapshot-pretty scenery –
historic monastery ruins, a gothic church and a thousand-year-old castle – Oberwesel’s greatest source of pride is its cold-hardy vines.
Other German towns crown wine queens and water nymphs to mind the vines. Not in Oberwesel. Here growers count on the good witch to protect their vineyards from natural curses like
fiendish weather and predatory vineyard demons. The wine witch also serves more practical duties. She is the face of the Oberwesel vintners, showing up at fifty to sixty public events a year to hype the grape.
However, media savvy is not a requisite for the job, at least not in a village so small local news originates from the main square. In fact, requisites are few. Candidates must be over drinking age. In Germany,
that is sixteen for beer and wine, eighteen for the hard stuff. And as tradition mandates, they must be of the fairer sex. No warlocks need apply. Daughters of vintners are perpetual favorites, though there is
not actually a runoff. The winner is selected by secret committee, which makes for anticipatory street buzz in the days leading up to the festival.
“Maybe it'll be Katherine.”
“No, I’m hoping for Gretchen.”
This year, it is anyone’s guess who will replace Sabrina, the soon-to-be ex-hex.
Twenty local wine producers participate; virtually the entire town turns out. The event is as much an “Auf Wiedersehen” to winter as it is a “Willkommen” to another open-air festival
season.
It is easy to recognize the festival site. A giant broom-riding straw witch dangles above a makeshift stage in Market Square. Her nose is bulbous, not pointy. She is wart-free and
sports a red neckerchief and a lazy smile. No wicked witches here. By dusk she is watching over the crowds squeezing onto long benches in the square and into the cafes that line its perimeters. The crowds,
though, have their eyes on stage. A stream of entertainers ushers in nightfall: Singing firemen; an all-brass band of hunters; a teenage dance troupe in gold lamé costumes whose choreography is part Cleopatra
Egyptian, part Lion King. Everyone is out tonight. Everyone knows each other and everyone knows the words to the songs that alternate between good old drinking ditties and odes to Father Rhineland…
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Flair and Flavor on the German-American Menu
by Joe Zentner and Mary Syrett
For a taste of Germany, sometimes all you have to do is look down the street.
Think "Germany" and what comes to mind? For many people, it is BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Braun kitchen appliances, Leica cameras, and Kaiser cake pans. It is also a land
of northern lowlands, northeastern lakes, eastern coal fields, winding rivers in the west flanked by steep-sided valleys, many of which are lined with vineyards, and a southern region famous for castles and
Oktoberfest. Germany is, to be sure, all those things.
However, Germans, at least as importantly, are a people noted for their joviality, a hearty cuisine that has, in recent years, adapted well to healthy trends and tastes of recent
immigrants, their dairy products and sausage industry, and cheerful spirits, which, over time, have given impetus to a flourishing industry of beers, wines, and distilled spirits.
German Regional Cuisine. At one time, "Germany" consisted of the countries that surround it today: France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Switzerland, Denmark, and Austria. As such, the culinary attributes of each country are mutually shared, and close to, adjoining borders. Today, an influx of Turks and Italians is contributing to the mix of
tastes and culinary techniques as well.
Since reunification, North, Central, and South more easily define Germany’s distinctive cuisine. In the north, food preferences reflect the influences of the Scandinavian countries and
the sea; in the central region, the cuisine is heavier; while in the south, one finds lighter food, with strong influences from neighboring Italy and Austria.
With a terrain that is fertile, containing ample water sources, Germany finds itself rich in beef and dairy cattle, as well as sheep and pigs. Pork is a national food favorite, used in
more dishes than any other livestock. Meat is a precious commodity in many countries – in Germany, it is abundant. This fortunate situation leads to a problem involving the storage of meat. Smoking, marinating,
and salting procedures were developed to preserve meat, resulting in an emphasis on sausages and preserved foods.
A typical German meal includes from two to seven courses. It is normally made up of an appetizer, soup, and a main course, with raw or cooked vegetables. With their meals, Germans drink
beer, wine, or "Sekt" – a champagne-type sparkling wine. Germans also like to drink soft drinks that have interesting names, such as "Radler" (literally translated as "bike rider")
– a light beer mixed with lemonade or apple juice.
Germans in America. The first German immigrants to arrive in this country founded their own ethnic community – Germantown, Pennsylvania – thereby setting a pattern for Germans who followed. German Americans preserved their culture by settling with others who shared a common heritage.
Preservation of the German language was key to maintaining the cultural traditions that united German-American communities. Not only were church services in German, but so too were
lessons taught in the public schools of such cities as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.
Wherever they settled, German Americans organized their own social clubs. One of the first, the Sons of Hermann, was founded in New York City in 1840 to foster Old World customs.
Countless clubs, known as Vereine, were formed in communities large and small. Many Vereine met in neighborhood German beer halls, which were not at all the same as what we today call bars. Gemutlichkeit, or
"good fellowship," was the prevailing spirit in beer halls. Families came to enjoy food, singing, and socializing. Many different kinds of German Wurst, schnitzel, and sauerkraut appeared on menus…
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Goetta
A German-American Specialty!
by Don Heinrich Tolzmann
What is it about the mixture of pork, beef, oatmeal, and spices that claims a place in the hearts of Cincinnati’s German-American population?
“Vas you effer in Zinnnati?” is the name of a song that was popular in the early 1900s, and if you ever were in the Greater Cincinnati area, you might have possibly sampled the local
German delicacy known as “Goetta.” You might have also asked what it is, and where it comes from. The answers tell a lot about the German heritage of the area. Goetta is derived from the Low German word Götta,
or Grütze in High German, and groats in English. The Low German term Göttwurst (Grützwurst in High German) refers to a sausage consisting of pork, beef, oatmeal (pinhead or steel cut), and spicing.
German immigrants from northwestern Germany, especially Oldenburg, Westphalia, and Hanover, brought the recipe and term to the area, as well as to German-American communities in the
Ohio Valley. Goetta also represents a direct German loan word into the German-American English spoken in the area. It also reflects specific regional origins in northwestern Germany and the process of chain
migration to the Ohio Valley.
Regional variations of goetta are produced across Germany, but known by other terms, especially by the High German term Grützwurst. An obvious example is Pennsylvania German scrapple,
which consists of similar ingredients, but uses cornmeal, rather than oatmeal. Goetta is usually prepared in loaves – sliced and fried – but is also available in sausage links. Some also prepare goetta by
breaking it up and frying it as ground meat. Family recipes and preparation also may vary, reflecting local preference and tradition. Originally, goetta, like scrapple, was also prepared as a loose porridge that
was scooped up with bread from a bowl, thus indicating its probable medieval origins as a farmhouse food item. By the nineteenth century, however, the recipe in northwestern Germany had developed into the firmer
loaf-like texture that was brought to this area.
Traditionally eaten as a breakfast food, goetta is now served at all mealtimes, and also as a snack food. Recent innovations include the development of goetta links and goetta pizza,
thereby demonstrating its popularity in the area. Goetta is also featured at local restaurants, church events, and German-American functions. Moreover, Goettafest is now celebrated during the summer in both
Covington and Newport…
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From Germany to Germantown
by Tom Bross
For tens of millions of Americans, the roots of their heritage are firmly planted in German soil and “heritage tours” are a great option for uncovering family history.
Amidst central and western Franconia’s forested highlands, unpretentious riverside wine villages date from medieval times. This north-Bavarian region’s notably populous cities –
Nürnberg, Bamberg, Würzburg, Bayreuth – have always tended to be travelers’ primary destinations. It would be a mistake, however, to bypass the picturesque little places with their vineyard surroundings,
especially if you would like to learn about starting points of the German-American emigration experience.
Sommerhausen, on the east bank of the River Main and a short distance south of Würzburg, belongs on any such heritage itinerary. Following Pastoriusgasse off the unhurried,
cobblestone-surfaced Hauptstrasse gets you to Artur Steinmann’s residence and winery, where grapevines creep up the half-timbered Fachwerk walls. Visitors have a good opportunity to try samplings of connoisseur-acclaimed Silvaner wines, poured from Bocksbeutel bottles – bulbous-shaped and therefore distinctively Franconian.
However, do not let taste-tempting pleasures distract you from the Steinmann property’s historic importance. Note the iron plaque at the doorway, signifying Artur and wife Elfriede’s
charmingly decorated Winzerhaus (which doubles as a gemütlich eight-room inn) and Franz Daniel Pastorius’s birthplace. That was in 1651. Thirty-two years later, lawyer Franz’s “Holy Experiment” culminated in the establishment of America’s first stable, sizeable German settlement. Keeping nostalgic homeland connections in mind, he named it Germantown, now a neighborhood located six miles northwest of present-day downtown Philadelphia.
A quest for religious freedom motivated the transatlantic move. During a Rhineland journey in 1671, repeated six years later, William Penn told churchgoers about his adherence to Quaker
respect for “brotherly love.” He published German-language broadsides, seeking to recruit pious settlers for eastern Pennsylvania’s wide-open spaces. His message had particular impact on the citizens of Krefeld,
a Lower Rhine silk- and linen-producing town known throughout Europe’s Holy Roman Empire as a seventeenth-century haven of tolerance. Penn’s beliefs also influenced Pastorius, a devout Protestant Pietist who, by
then, was actively involved as general manager and promoter for a land-purchasing company based in Frankfurt-am-Main.
Attracted by a twenty-five thousand-acre land grant that had been secured by Penn from England’s King Charles II, thirteen Mennonite Krefelder families embarked on a seventy-five day
ocean crossing aboard the Concord, an English schooner, subsequently nicknamed “the German Mayflower,” arriving at Philadelphia’s Delaware River docks on October 6th, 1683. To commemorate the event’s
tri-centennial, the United States Postal Service pictured the schooner on a twenty-cent stamp issued in 1983. The Steinmann winery’s plaque was installed that same year, as a lasting three hundredth anniversary
tribute. Additionally, the tri-centennial date coincides with the first annual German-American Day, proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan.
Pastorius led the way to America. Fervent and well educated (having studied at universities in Altdorf, Strasbourg, Nürnberg, and Jena), he became the settlement’s earliest citizen,
Bürgermeister, jurist, and schoolmaster. Under his guidance, the newcomers succeeded in establishing a prosperous community – initially covering two thousand seven hundred fifty acres of virgin terrain – soon
enlarged to five thousand seven hundred acres. Adhering to Quaker-Mennonite ideals of harmonious “Heavenly order,” they laid out crisscrossing lanes in a neat grid pattern, setting their log and stone houses and
gardens on evenly spaced three-acre plots, grouped around a central marketplace. Peach trees lined the main street…
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German Chocolate – Cologne’s Imhoff-Stollwerck Chocolate Museum
by Lucy Gordan
Chocolate’s origins may lie with the Aztecs but for the history of the world’s favorite indulgence, you must turn to Cologne.
Chocoholics take note. In just over an hour at Cologne's Imhoff-Stollwerck Museum, you can learn all there is to know about chocolate and eat it too.
Your tour begins in the "homeland of cocoa." Here, giant color photographs, with captions in German and English, illustrate its farming and harvesting in West Africa,
the main producer. Seventy percent of the world's cocoa, or approximately 1.36 million tons annually, comes from Ghana (the largest producer), Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon. Other members of the "cocoa
belt" are Brazil, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Trinidad, and Venezuela.
Speaking of Central America, the tour's next stop is a walk through a typical tropical rain forest. Here, you will learn the cocoa tree can live one hundred years and its flowers
grow directly on its trunk.
The displays in the "treasure room" follow chocolate's cultural history and industrialization. First classified by the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus as Theobroma
cocoa or "Food of the Gods," cocoa trees grew wild in the deltas of the Aaronic and Amazon Rivers as long ago as 4000 B.C. The Mayans, probably their first cultivators, transplanted these evergreens to
the Yucatan around 600 A.D. There, about one thousand years later, the Aztecs believed them a gift from the feathered serpent god of light, Quetzalcóatl, to relieve fatigue, increase intelligence, induce sound
sleep, and provide nourishment after death. So valuable became their beans that the Indians used them for tributes and money. A hundred were worth the price of a slave, ten a rabbit, and twelve the services of a
courtesan!…
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Light From a Distant Shore
by Pete Henault
Although their use is now antiquated, the romance and nostalgia associated with these candles of the shore endear Germany’s lighthouses to anyone captured by their magic.
On Cape Cod in my youth, it was easy to fall in love with the proud, stalwart lighthouses that embellished the sandy shores and bluffs. Their beauty was a marvel and a mystery. Was it
intrinsic, like the graceful beauty of a bird or sailing ship? Or had it come from the stories I had heard? Stories of saving lives, withstanding hurricanes, guiding loved ones back to port. The patient flashing
lights after dark were also a mystery. What was the code? Who read them? Later, in Sea Scouts, I learned they were simply announcing where they were – Gay Head, Nauset Beach, Race Point, Nantucket. Lighthouses
were the way to go home.
My love affair continued in the Navy and still later, in Seattle, when I bought an ocean cruising sailboat and moved aboard. My new friends became Alki Point, Mukilteo, Admiralty Head,
and others. As soon the mortgage was paid off, I planned to sail for Tahiti. Then Shirlene came into my life. Living on a cramped sailboat, she said, was not in her future. She took me to Bavaria instead.
Bavaria had a lot to boast about but not lighthouses. The sea was five hundred miles away. However, it did have one – a real gem – at Lindau on the Bodensee – Lake Constance. It guards
one side of the harbor entrance while a great stone Lion of Bavaria guards the other side. Between the lion and the light, across the lake, is a wonderful view of the Alps. And as for stories, this lighthouse
could tell of guiding the first Zeppelins home to Friedrichshafen six miles away.
When German Life asked if I could do an article on lighthouses, I jumped at the chance to discover new friends. A little research revealed that Germany claims the best-lit coast in
Europe. It has fifty calendar-class lighthouses – about half on the North Sea and half on the Baltic. They are called Leuchttürme – light-towers – rather then lighthouses. And tower they do, usually on lonely
reaches of flat coastline but sometimes off shore and sometimes in the centers of communities that have grown up around them. They are taller, on average, than American lighthouses and all have unique color
schemes and silhouettes. Many are round, some are octagonal and a couple are massive, multi-story rectangular structures. There are also a good number of modern Leuchttürme, built in the latter 1900s and
seemingly designed by grade-school children. Some look like dumbbells on end, a couple could pass for Nebraska water towers and at least one appears to be a gigantic tin can sitting on a dike. They hardly seem
related to the fifty elegant light towers built in the 1800s and early 1900s. These were Germany's years of seafaring power and pride. Architecture was art and money was available to hire the best architects and
engineers to design and build Leuchttürme. The results have been an esthetic joy to Germans ever since.
Sadly, time and technology are turning these towers into relics. Most were automated over the past twenty years and staffs turned out to pasture. Now there is talk of extinguishing
their lights as mariners increasingly depend on global positioning systems to tell where they are within a meter or two.
The good news is that many Leuchttürme have been recognized as national treasures and are being protected. Leuchtturm societies have sprung up to preserve and maintain the old beacons.
Most are now open to the public and maintained by volunteers and visitor donations. Some have museums, several are popular places to marry and a couple have overnight accommodations. "Field research"
obviously required a visit to Germany's seacoast. Shirlene and I had been to the North Sea but never to the Baltic Coast, which had long been off-limits behind the Iron Curtain. The tourist office for the State
of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern generously agreed to arrange visits and provide guides. From Heidelberg, we headed five hundred miles north to visit the Leuchttürme between Rostock and the Polish border.
Our fascinating experiences over the next few days could fill volumes. We discovered a part of Germany that had been frozen in time with the outbreak of World War I. Two wars, the Great
Depression, and forty-five years of Communism had moved progress to the back burner. By 1990, things looked run down and depressing, but resorts still displayed their elegance and architecture of the 1880s. With
reunification, the government stepped in to protect what was important and still intact and began pouring in a phenomenal amount of money to restore and preserve. Tourism, it was thought, would pay back the
investment and provide a lasting boost to regional economies. Ironically, the former East German government had helped on the very last day of its existence when it passed legislation creating five new national
parks, which now protect some of the most beautiful stretches of the Baltic Coast. Not surprisingly, a number of Leuchttürme are in the new parks.
Our first visit was to Warnemünde at the entrance to Rostock harbor. Warnemünde is a one-time fishing village at the mouth of the Warnow River. Rostock bought it from a cash-strapped
Prince of Mecklenburg in 1353 and, for five centuries, its residents quietly fished and watched tall ships sail past. Things changed in the early 1800s when vacationing Berliners discovered the beach's warm sand
and healthy air. Warnemünde became a seacoast spa for those in the know. And then, in 1850, a train link to Rostock opened the village to the world. Warnemünde has been a popular resort ever since and today is
visited by a hundred or so cruise ships each season, many of them from the United States. All of them sail past Warnemünde's famous Leuchtturm…
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Milk – For All It's Worth:
German Dairy Products
by Kay Lawrence
One taste is all it takes. Learn some of the secrets behind the goodness found in German dairy products.
Germany is well known for the wide variety and high quality of its dairy products. Germans love their cheese, butter, yogurt, and other foods made from milk. However, the many
types of German dairy products (and their names) can be confusing to outsiders who are not familiar with them.
Germany is Europe's largest producer and exporter of cheese (Käse). More than one hundred fifty varieties are made in Germany, from aged, hard cheeses (Hartkäse), such as
Emmentaler, to semi-soft and soft cheeses (blue cheese, Münster, Tilsiter), as well as processed cheeses (Schmelzkäse, often flavored with mushrooms, ham, herbs, or spices). Some types of German cheeses are
native to Germany; others are copied from styles of cheeses that originated elsewhere (French Brie and Camembert, Dutch Gouda, and Edam). And more than thirty companies in Germany now also make various organic
cheeses (Bio-Käse) from the milk of animals living on government-certified "organic" dairy farms where they feed on grains and grasses that have not been treated with chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
Germans like cheese so much that they eat an average of fifty-five pounds of Käse, per person, every year – far more than the average for Europe as a whole. Cheese is consumed at
breakfast, lunch, and dinner; eaten as a snack; and used as an ingredient in many recipes, from soups and sauces to main dishes and desserts. However, the cheese that Germans like best is Quark, a type of mild,
soft, white, fresh cheese that accounts for half of all the cheese produced in Germany.
Quark is often called "quark cheese" in English (to distinguish it from those subatomic particles named "quarks" that nuclear physicists like to play around with).
In Austria and southern Germany you will find the same dairy product under the name of Topfen, and in Slavic countries it is called tvorog. Along with its cousins, cream cheese (Rahmkäse, Rahmfrischkäse,
Doppelrahmfrischkäse) and cottage cheese (Hüttenkäse), Quark belongs to the general category of fresh cheeses (Frischkäse), which are soft, unmatured cheeses that are eaten soon after being made.
Quark is made from skimmed, low-fat, or full-fat milk to which a type of lactic acid culture is added to sour and coagulate the milk, after which the liquid whey is drained off. (Unlike
cottage cheese, which is made by a similar process, the thickened mass is not cut into smaller curds.) The resulting white cheese is smooth, soft, and very nutritious: high in protein, vitamins, and minerals,
low in calories and fat (depending on the fat content, of course). In Germany, Quark is sold in both natural (unflavored) and flavored versions (with fruits or herbs added), with a butterfat content of
three-tenths percent, one percent, five percent, or ten percent to twelve percent. Some Quarks even contain up to twenty percent or forty percent butterfat (from added cream), making them similar to American
cream cheeses.
Quark can be used in many ways. Seasoned with onions, herbs, and spices, it is a tasty spread for bread, a dip for raw vegetables, and a filling for baked potatoes. It shows up in
soups, savory tarts, dumplings, and pasta dishes. Spiked with horseradish, it makes a pungent sauce for meats. Combined with mayonnaise, it becomes a reduced-fat salad dressing. Quark is often mixed with
fresh fruit, honey, or nuts for a healthy dessert – and it is a main ingredient in many German cheesecakes and strudels…
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Switzerland’s Terrible Tschäggättä
by Leah Larkin
Frightful Carnival figures roam the streets but they draw more tourists than they scare away.
Carnival, those crazy days of revelry before the beginning of Lent, takes many forms. In Germany’s Catholic regions, there are huge, lusty parades in the big cities of Mainz,
Düsseldorf, and Cologne. Festivities in the Black Forest border on the bizarre with parade figures wearing strange, even frightful, masks. Basel, Switzerland, puts on a wonderfully weird celebration that begins
at 4:00 a.m. when the city lights go out and costumed, marching musicians play haunting sounds and wander through the streets. In Switzerland’s Lötschental, a valley in the southern canton of Wallis, there are
more peculiar celebrations personified in the “Tschäggättä,” costumed figures sporting dreadful hand-carved wooden masks.
In the old days, during the Carnival season the unmarried young men of the Lötschental villages would put their clothes on inside out, cover up their shoes with sacks, wrap themselves
in a blanket of sheep or goat fur, then don a scary mask that they had carved themselves. They also wore soot-covered mittens and a cowbell attached to a fat leather belt. They would run through the villages at
night, clinging and clanging, in search of victims to scare and whose faces they would smear with soot.
Back then, the men had only two pair of shoes, one for work and one for Sunday and dressy occasions. Shoes were covered and clothes turned around lest they be recognized.
The Tschäggättä still march on during Carnival season, but now even children and older men are known to wear the grisly masks, and the event has become a tourist attraction. Many wear
old masks handed down from their ancestors, while others may purchase a mask hand-carved by artisans in the area.
Parade watcher Jonaz Bellwald said he was a Tschäggättä once, but that was enough. “A man changes when he wears a mask, especially a wooden mask,” he said. “I always go to the parade,
but it’s not in my nature to wear a mask.”
At last year’s parade in Wiler, marching bands of Tschäggättä as well as isolated figures paraded through the town. Most wore numbers as they are judged for their mask and costume.
There were also a few non-Tschäggättä floats featuring, among others, political figures. There is plenty of interaction between the Tschäggättä and the crowd as the mean, furry beasts run up and try to scare or
smooch the on-lookers. Fortunately, these days they do not have soot on their mittens. It is fun, a great photo opportunity, and you can sip a Glühwein to keep warm while watching it all.
Many of the masks covering the faces of the marchers are carved by Agnes Rieder, who has been creating the masks of pine for some thirty-eight years. Her husband, Ernst, has been taking
a pick to wood even longer. Her children (five sons and one daughter) and grandchildren all carve. So did her parents. “Wood is in my blood,” she says…
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Making Music With Mozart
By Sharon Hudgins
From Salzburg to Vienna, Austria celebrates the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of music’s original child prodigy.
This year is the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart – known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – in Salzburg, Austria. And
the Austrians are pulling out all the stops to celebrate this milestone in music history.
Born on January 27, 1756, Mozart was the son of Leopold Mozart, an accomplished musician in the service of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. His father soon recognized that the
young Mozart was a musical prodigy. Leopold spent the next several years traveling around Europe promoting his son's career as a performer on the harpsichord, organ, and violin. By the age of six, the boy-genius
was already well known in the musical circles of Bavaria and Austria.
Music-lovers who want to follow in Mozart's footsteps will soon find themselves with sore feet. Working as a performer, composer, and conductor, Mozart traveled beyond his native
Austria to Paris, London, Brussels, Rome, Milan, Munich, Augsburg, Amsterdam, Prague, and many other cities in Europe during his relatively short lifetime. However, with all the special events scheduled in
Austria for "Mozart Year 2006," Mozart fans will find more than enough attractions to keep them busy in the two cities most closely associated with the great musician – Salzburg and Vienna.
Salzburg
Mozart spent two-thirds of his life in Salzburg, from his birth in 1756 until 1781 when he moved to Vienna. During that time, he composed more than three hundred fifty works,
beginning with his first composition, a minuet, written at the age of five. Salzburg was the city where he wrote almost all of his symphonies, masses, divertimenti, and serenades, as well as his first
musical-theater works and much of his chamber music.
So Salzburg is the best place to begin a tour of major Mozart sites.
Start at Mozart's birthplace on Getreidegasse, where his family lived from 1747 to 1773. Mozart grew up in this house, which has been converted to a museum of Mozart memorabilia,
including folios of his sheet music and some of the musical instruments he played as a child. On the Makartplatz across the Salzach River is Mozart's other residence in Salzburg, where he lived from 1773 to
1780. The building is now a museum dedicated to his life and works. Salzburg has many other sites for Mozart-lovers to visit, too, including the churches where some of his masses were first sung and the
auditorium where his first musical-theater piece was originally staged.
During this anniversary year, there are special Mozart exhibitions throughout the city, including an innovative "Viva! Mozart" exhibition in the New Residenz, a former
palace of the Salzburg nobility, built in 1588. "Viva! Mozart" celebrates the composer's birthday with ten rooms of interactive exhibits and historical displays, including the original sheet music of
Mozart's first composition. In one room, you can play the same kind of games that amused and entertained Mozart. In another room, a costumed dancing master will teach you the steps to the minuet. And the
Exhibition Cafe serves pastries and other delicacies that were popular during Mozart's time.
What better place to hear Mozart's music than in his hometown? Throughout 2006 Salzburg will host musical performances in all of the city's concert halls and in public
places such as courtyards and squares. And the world-renowned Salzburg Festival will feature performances of all twenty-two of Mozart's operas, from July 21 to August 31, 2006.
You can work up an appetite wandering through the cobblestone streets of Salzburg, visiting all those palaces, museums, and concert halls. Late-morning or mid-afternoon, stop for
coffee-with-whipped-cream and a slice of rich cake at one of Salzburg's elegant pastry shops. Buy a box of Mozart Kugel candies to nibble in your hotel room. Relax with a mug of fresh beer in the pleasant
Augustiner beer garden at the Mülln Monastery. And spend one evening at a Mozart Dinner Concert in the beautiful baroque hall of the Stifstkeller St. Peter restaurant, where the three-course meal is accompanied
by a performance of The Amadeus Consort, a group of talented musicians and singers in Mozart-era costumes, who play on period instruments and sing popular arias and duets from Mozart's operas…
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Görlitz – Expanding the Cultural Borders
by Phyllis Meras
Explore this amazing border town where German and Polish cultures combine.
In 2010, Görlitz (Germany’s easternmost city) and Zgorzelec (across the River Neisse in Poland) are hoping to be jointly named the Cultural Capital of Europe. Residents proudly point
out that, between them, they have more than four thousand national monuments – of late Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau periods, surrounding town squares and edging narrow, winding streets. They
include churches, watchtowers and fortifications, a renovated Renaissance town hall, a house where Napoleon stayed, and a fifteenth-century copy of Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre.
The cities are entering the competition as one because, until 1945, they were one. The eastern suburbs of Görlitz were across the river in today’s Zgorzelec. At the end of World War II,
the River Neisse was declared the border with Poland. Since Germans had inhabited the area since the thirteenth century, they were moved to refugee camps in the West and a third of the original Görlitz became
Polish. Even though both Poland and East Germany were under Communist rule, there was little contact between the two parts of the city until 1989.
Once, seven bridges had linked the two sides of town, but all had been blown up in the war. Two were rebuilt in 1957, but not until the 1970s was any regular traffic allowed between the
two cities. Then, in the 1980s, labor strikes in Poland made the East German Communists nervous, and, once again, crossing into Poland was ended, for all but a select few.
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, curious Poles crossed the river to shop in German Görlitz where goods were of higher quality than in Polish Zgorzelec. A few nostalgic Germans
went into Poland to see what had become of their old homes. Some Poles came to work in Görlitz, but were not always welcomed.
Now, relations are warmer. Local buses go between the two parts of the city. Weekend evenings, there is a steady stream of Germans
(and other residents of European Union countries) crossing the footbridge over the Neisse to dine out in Poland at the Three Wheel Mill (Drei Rahd Muehle) near the river. Americans who try to cross the footbridge, however, are turned back since they are not European Union members. They are directed, instead, to the vehicle bridge half a mile away.
Today, life is looking up in Görlitz-Zgorzelec. Happily, World War II did little damage to the cities’ buildings. Although the East German government recognized the quality of the
architecture in its Old Town (two-thirds of the original city is in Germany) and protected it, there was no money for restoration. After the fall of the Wall, many of the town’s residents – free at last to
travel to more prosperous western Germany – moved away. For a time, Görlitz seemed almost an abandoned city.
Then, in the same way that former East Germans went west, so former West Germans came exploring the old East. It did not take long before they recognized the potential of Görlitz as a
tourist destination and a site for second homes. They invested in sprucing it up. Because UNESCO had also recognized its architectural importance, Görlitz began to receive federal funding, too. Now, two-thirds
of its historic structures have been painstakingly reconstructed and repainted. It has a population of sixty thousand, and although its principal income is from turbine, rail coach, and beer production, the Old
Town is filled with sightseers on weekends, and tourism, officials say, is rising seven to nine percent a year. Tourists come to the Görlitz Jazz Festival in May, the Silesian (Görlitz is in the province of
Silesia) Tippelmarkt – pottery sale – in July, and to the medieval Old Town Festival in August…
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Foolsplay?
A Brief History of Fasching, Lent, and Ash Wednesday
By Robert A. Selig
Germany has, so the saying goes, five seasons – Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter – and another season sandwiched between Winter and Spring alternately called Fasting, Fasenacht, or
Karneval. This season begins some time after 11 November and culminates and ends on Faschingsdienstag, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. This year, Faschingsdienstag, the highpoint of the season will be Tuesday,
28 February 2006, a holiday for many Germans. Especially in the predominantly Catholic areas of Germany, in the towns and cities along the Rhine, in much of Bavaria, and in parts of Austria, schools, banks, and
most businesses will be closed, a Faschingsprinz takes over the reigns of government, and all “normal” activity comes to a standstill. Between Sunday and Tuesday, parades with floats mocking everyone and
everything will wind their way through the streets of the cities, children and grown-ups will dress up in fancy costumes and the guesthouses and dancehalls will be filled with revelers. In all this revelry,
dancing and merrymaking leading up to Faschingsdienstag, the origins of this merrymaking are easily forgotten.
Let us begin by looking at the terms used to denote this season – where do they come from and what do they mean? Fasching – a term used mostly in Austria, Bavaria, and Thuringia – is
derived from the Middle High German term Vaschanc, or vastschang, from the German fasten and (aus-)schencken, to dispense alcoholic drink. Here it denotes the last drink served before the beginning of the Lenten
Fast. The term Fastnacht and its regional variations of Fasnacht, Fasnet, Fassenacht, Fosnet, or Faasend are primarily used in Hesse and along the Rhine, in the Palatinate, Baden, Swabia, and Switzerland. It is
derived from Old High German fasta, the time of fasting, and naht, meaning "night" or "the evening before." Initially, Fastnacht therefore denoted only the day before the beginning of Lent.
Fasching or Fastnacht, as is apparent from the etymology of the terms, has one of its roots in the church year and its timing is tied to the Easter date, the Sunday after the first full
moon following the vernal equinox. However, the cultural origins of Fasching – and the need to end it somehow – go much deeper. Fasching is a prime example of the conscious appropriation of pre-Christian
traditions and their integration into the Christian calendar. The Romans had taken advantage of the fact that the New Year began on 1 March to make the weeks between the middle of December, the date of the
Saturnalia in honor of Saturnus, and the Bacchanalia in honor of their god Bacchus, to early March a period of celebration. Just like the date of the Saturnalia around 25 December, as part of the celebration of
the Winter solstice became our date for Christmas, the fertility rites connected with the driving out of winter and the re-birth of the sun on the solstice stand at the root of the revelry of carnival.
Dancing, processions, and the wearing of masks either because of the need to scare evil spirits away or driven by the desire to be someone else, to assume the role of some entity or a
person more powerful than oneself, is a desire as old as mankind itself. As such, Fasching stands at the root of the Saturnalia, when the relationship between rulers and ruled, masters and slaves, men and women,
was reversed. The usual order of society was temporarily suspended as men dressed as women and masters waited on their slaves. As the commonwealth was ruled by an elected regent, the forerunner of Prince
Carnival, the Faschingsprinz, communities seemed full of fools. This is why some etymologists derive the term Karneval from the Latin carrus navalis, the ship of fools. As such, Fastnacht and its pre-cursors
served as a safety valve to help defuse real or potential tensions in society. Others put forth an alternative explanation for the term Karneval, which is popular especially in the cities along the Rhine such as
Cologne or Düsseldorf. This explanation places the origins of Karneval in the Medieval Latin carnelevale or carnelevare, meaning the "taking away of meat," integrating it into the cultural
context of Fastnacht or Fasching. Along the same lines goes the explanation of the term from Latin carne vale – Farewell Meat! Either way, the term Karneval as such is first known to have been used in German-speaking Europe in 1699, centuries after Fasnacht, the time before the Forty-day Fast before Easter. However, there are more than forty days before Easter…
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At Home:
Have A Ball With Mozart Kugeln
by Sharon Hudgins
How many sweet variations on a theme can a creative confectioner compose? Give a talented culinary artisan a bowl of melted chocolate, some rich hazelnut nougat, a pile of pistachios,
and a mound of marzipan – and suddenly you have Mozart Kugeln (Mozart Balls) rolling out of the candy stores.
Mozart Kugeln were invented in Salzburg, Austria, Mozart's birthplace, nearly a century after his death. So don't let anyone convince you that these were his favorite bonbons,
even if it's true that he had a sweet tooth.
In 1890, an Austrian confectioner named Paul Fürst created the first candy to be called "Mozart Kugeln." Initially sold at Fürst's pastry shop-cafe in Salzburg, this
popular handmade confection gained international recognition when it won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1905. And to this day, the Fürst family continues to make their signature candies by hand,
wrapping each chocolate ball in distinctive silver-and-blue foil with a portrait of young Mozart on the top.
However, any successful product is bound to inspire imitators. Other candy companies got into the Mozart ball game, too, making their own versions, each with a slightly different
variation on the original confection. Today, companies ranging from multinational conglomerates to small, family-run pastry-and-confection shops produce several kinds of Mozart Kugeln in Austria and Germany.
By law, only the Fürst Company has the right to call its handmade culinary creation "Original Salzburger Mozartkugel." Fürst's Mozart Balls have a round center of
sweetened green pistachio paste surrounded by a layer of hazelnut nougat, dipped in dark chocolate to coat the outside. Like all Mozart Kugeln, they're about the size of a small walnut. These upscale candies by
Fürst are sold in only three locations in Salzburg (although they can now be ordered on the Internet, too, for delivery in Europe).
In St. Gilgen – a pleasant little town by the Wolfgangsee, where Mozart's mother was born – the family-run Konditorei Dallmann makes Mozart Balls in the same fashion as Fürst's.
Recently, I saw a demonstration of how these confections are constructed in the basement of Dallmann's shop. The round center of the candy is a mixture of marzipan with green pistachio paste, surrounded by
hazelnut nougat and dark chocolate. The process of forming, drying, and chocolate-dipping the Mozart Kugeln extends over three days, with a maximum of only three hundred fifty of these sinful sweets produced
daily.
"Echte Salzburger Mozartkugeln" are mass-produced by Mirabell, a large chocolate factory in Salzburg. Perfectly round, their pistachio-paste centers are wrapped in a
layer of dark hazelnut nougat, then a layer of light nougat, and ultimately dipped in dark chocolate. Mirabell's Mozart Kugeln are the only ones ever taken into space, by Austria's first astronaut when he worked
aboard the Mir space station…
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Yesteryears
Walter Jakob Kohler (1875 - 1940)
Walter J. Kohler was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin to John Michael Kohler Jr. and Lillie Vollrath. His father had come to the United States from Austria when he was 10 years old
and in 1873, at the age of 29, had purchased Sheboygan Union Iron and Steel Foundry. At first he manufactured cast iron farm implements, but in 1883 he refined a process which applied a baked enamel coating to a
horse trough/hog scalder.
Once he added four legs these scalders became bathtubs and the Kohlers were in the bathroom appliance business. Walter went to work as a laborer in his father’s company at the age of 15. Within three years he was a foreman. He married Charlotte H. Schroeder in 1900 and they had four children. His older brother Robert, who had assumed the presidency of the company upon their father’s death in 1900, himself died unexpectedly in 1905 leaving Walter, who had never gone to college, to become president. He remained president until 1937, when his younger brother Herbert V. Kohler took his place…
Adolf Meyer (1866-1950)
Known as the Dean of American Psychiatry, this Swiss immigrant was born in Niederweningen to Rudolf Meyer, a minister, and his wife Anna Walder.
Young Meyer studied medicine at the University of Zurich where he received his M.D. in 1892. That same year found him immigrating to the United States where he first took a position as a pathologist at the Illinois
Eastern Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee. There he performed autopsies on deceased patients to try and discover brain lesions, which had led to mental illness.
He soon found, however, that his true gifts lay in organization, teaching and working with the patients themselves. One of his important contributions to psychiatry was in the field of record keeping, which until then had been disorganized at best. He trained many to keep standardized records, including the patient’s case history. While in Illinois he had contacts with Jane Addams’ Hull House and with John Dewey, a pioneer psychologist, philosopher and educator of his time. From Illinois he went to the Massachusetts State Lunatic Hospital in Worcester and in 1901 began work at the New
York State Hospital Service Pathological Institute where he began training psychiatrists. He also later taught at the Cornell Medical College in New York City as a professor of psychiatry. He married Mary Potter Brooks, a psychiatric social worker, in 1902, and they had one daughter. Meyer believed in treating the whole patient, what we would now call a holistic approach, by looking at their medical, biographical, educational and artistic backgrounds…
Gustave Philipp Koerner (1809-1896)
Gustave Koerner would serve his adopted country as a lawyer, judge, diplomat, political strategist and politician. Born in Frankfort on the Main to Bernhard Koerner, a book dealer
and Maria Magdalene Kaempfe, he studied at the University of Jena where he became immersed in the liberal student movement.
After moving to Munich in 1830 to study law, he was put in prison for 4 months due to his participation in a student disturbance. When the University of Munich was closed because of the radical student movement there, Koerner moved to Heidelberg, where he received his law degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1832. His continued revolutionary activity led to him fleeing Germany for France in 1833. Along with other friends he planned to move to St. Louis, where they hoped to live in an utopian-style community. However, Koerner ended up staying in St. Clair County Illinois, where other well-educated Germans had emigrated. Koerner was determined to succeed and contribute to his new home and he worked hard to learn English and studied law at Transylvania University in Kentucky. In 1836, he married Sophie Engelmann, the sister of Theodore Engelmann, one of his university friends who had also come to America. Together they had eight children. Koerner was able to begin practicing law in Illinois in 1835, and opened a law office in Belleville. He became a U.S. citizen in 1838, and he encouraged his fellow Germans to become involved politically in this country. Initially a Democrat, he became disillusioned with their stand on slavery. He served his home state of Illinois in several capacities including as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, on the Illinois Supreme Court, and as their Lieutenant Governor from 1853 to 1857…
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Family Research:
Georgia’s German Connection
by James M. Beidler
It has been said that there are few stereotypes that are cut from whole cloth. And despite the fact that the stereotypes are frequently the “exceptions to the rules” rather than the
rules themselves, we often buy into them because they fit our preconceived notions, some of which conveniently romanticize our ancestors.
Take, for instance, the stereotype that Germans came to America to escape religious persecution. On the whole, historians estimate that perhaps six thousand of the estimated
eighty thousand colonial German immigrants came for religious reasons – fewer than ten percent. Overwhelmingly, these immigrants came for economic opportunity, especially the opportunity to buy land.
However, some of the most compelling immigrant group experiences involve that minority that did come seeking religious freedom. A wonderful example of this is the experience of
the Georgia Salzburgers.
Beginning in 1731, some twenty thousand Protestants were exiled from the Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Salzburg, which today is part of German-speaking Austria but then was one
of the many un-unified German states. Most of these Salzburgers took refuge in Prussia, but a tiny group ended up in England, where they were persuaded to become part of the beginnings of the last American
colony to be founded by the English – Georgia.
About sixty Salzburgers arrived in Georgia on March 12, 1734. The German presence grew to three hundred people by 1741, and this group founded Ebenezer, Georgia’s second community
after Savannah. The Lutheran congregation founded by the Salzburgers is still in use, officially called Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church. The brick church, construction of which was begun in 1767 and
completed in 1769, is Georgia’s oldest church building – and sometimes is called the oldest public building in the state.
The Salzburger enclave thrived and people from other German-speaking states – such as Swiss, Palatines, and Swabians – joined the Salzburgers; however, the name “Salzburger” stuck
to them all. (Interestingly, this is another example of stereotyping – in Pennsylvania, so many of the German-speaking people who came were from the Palatinate that they were all typically referred to as
“Palatines” even though the immigrants truthfully came from quite a few southwestern German states.)
The German element in Georgia produced the state’s first governor under its Revolutionary constitution, Johann Adam Treutlen (see June/July 2005 German Life), who had arrived
in Georgia in 1746 as a teenager. Researchers have found that Treutlen was born in a town in Württemberg. They also confirmed the tradition of Treutlen’s death at the hands of the British by finding a letter in
German archives that was written by the Ebenezer Lutheran church’s pastor. The letter confirmed the governor’s violent death, saying that he “was cut to pieces 80 English miles from his plantation in South
Carolina by the British.”…
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Calendar
January:
Cincinnati, OH
January 28: Grosser Preis Maskenball (Great Prize Masquerade Ball): Visit www.germaniasociety.com or call 513-831-8817.
February:
Frederick, MD
First Friday of Every Month: Der Stammtisch: Call 301-631-0127 and ask for Fritz or Stammtisch.
Sheboygan, WI
February 4-5, 11-12, 18-19: Fasching: Call 920-893-3054.
Frederick, MD
February 6: 5th Annual FSCA Chocolate Gala: Call 301-898-7647 or email cdmusser@aol.com
Fairfax, VA
February 11: Fasching – Mardi Gras – Karneval: Call 703-280-1772 or visit www.saengerbund.org
Covington, KY
February 24-25: Mardi Gras 2006: Call 859-491-0458, email jbamberger@mainstrasse.org or dkremer@mainstrasse.org, or visit www.mainstrasse.org
March:
Frederick, MD
First Friday of Every Month: Der Stammtisch: Call 301-631-0127 and ask for Fritz or Stammtisch.
Yoakum, TX
March 10-11: Texas German Society Annual State Convention: Call 361-575-0560, 361-578-6658, or 281-288-1944 or email Paul_5@Pdg.net
Lebanon, PA
March 18: Pennsylvania German Heritage Festival: Call 717-270-4222
St. Paul, MN
March 19: Pork Roast and Sauerkraut Dinner: Call 651-298-9711 or visit www.gai-mn.org
Tomball, TX
March 25-26: 6th Annual Tomball German Heritage Festival: Call 281-379-6844, email gradsand@yahoo.com, or visit www.tomballsistercity.org
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