A Week in Germany: Tuesday

24. 01. 2012

If Monday is Men’s Night Out in Cologne, then Tuesday morning is inexplicably when middle-aged women put on Halloween costumes, wander around  the city in large groups, and light votives in the Cathedral. Ah, it turns out Cologne has Carnival, and this is the beginning of the celebration, which explains the dissonance of witches lighting votive candles.

Cologne is a very Catholic city. Germany may be the home of the Reformation, but the Counter-Reformation also took hold, and the opposing forces have always held a fragile balance. A few years ago we went to a talk by a historian who had just written a book on how churches maintained a balance within cities and towns when both sides wanted the nice old local church or cathedral in the Post-Reformation era. Church sharing was not uncommon.

Cologne was a very powerful Catholic city during the Middle Ages, and a great place to visit very old churches today. When we were here several years ago I found a book, with English text, that included a walking trail of a dozen Romanesque churches. It was a spectacular way to spend a day. I am not a big fan of gold embellished, over-ornamented Baroque churches, and in Germany, most old churches have been Baroqu-ed to remain fashionable with the Counter-Reformation crowd. Thankfully, Cologne’s oldest churches seem to have resisted that trend.

Last time I was here I spent all day on the Romanesque churches, and had little time left over for  Cologne's Cathedral. So this time I began my day with the Cathedral. A tour in English begins at 10:30 every weekday morning, and because this is not a busy season, I was the only punter on hand. The guide said, since we were both there, he may as well give me a private tour. I’m so glad he did because there are so many small treasures in the building, I might not have recognised their significance.

Most cathedrals are built in sections over extended periods of time, but Cologne took 632 years and two months according to the official guidebook. There was a 300 year break between the 16th and the 19th centuries when the north tower, the nave and the transepts were left unfinished. During Napoleon's occupation of the city, grain and forage was stored in the structure. In 1815, Cologne became part of Prussia and repairs and building works began again. The last stone was laid in 1880.

The first important thing about the Dom is how much light filters in because the curtain walls are nearly all glass, and I was lucky to be visiting on a sunny day.

My guide said there is evidence that the master mason of Amiens Cathedral in France is responsible for the design, and his remit was to make the Dom taller and brighter than Amiens.

There is still some medieval glass with the superb colours achieved by glassmakers whose secrets have been lost. This glass was removed and stored before the bombing raid that shattered windows and vaults. There are some brighter than bright 19th century windows donated by King Ludwig I of Bavaria that knock your socks off as the sun streams through reds and yellows, but the most interesting window is as contemporary as you can get, a window designed by Gerhard Richter for the south transept. Small squares of beautiful colours with a pattern designed digitally. In a new technique, the squares were bonded to a sheet of plain glass, so it is high-tech artistic double glazing.

And because it was a sunny day, I could just capture the wonderful colours of light reflected on the stone work from the window.

Reliquaries were the secret to success for medieval foundations. Cologne latched on to one of the most sought after: the Three Kings, yes The Magi themselves. Constantine’s mother was a very busy archaeological detective. I knew that she had found The True Cross, but I didn’t know that she went on to find the Magi. They were first sent to Milan, but when Barbarossa captured Milan, with aid from the bishopric of Cologne, the relics were translated—which is the proper term I learned in the class on reliquaries I joined last autumn—to Cologne. The city became an important stop on the pilgrimage route to Compostela  to pick up a blessing from the Three Kings who were housed in a three coffin size reliquary of beaten silver coated with a fine layer of gold in the earlier Romanesque cathedral.

The reliquary is still in place behind the high altar, but surrounded by a strong metal grille screen. On this day there were repairs underway in the choir, so that area was completely closed off. My guide told me that the last time the reliquary was opened, in the late 19th century, the remains of three people were found wrapped in cloth that was determined to be from Palmyra in Syria and dated to the 1st century. The pilgrimage income was the also the pot of gold used to begin construction of the new style Gothic Cathedral to replace the old Cathedral on the site.

In this 19th century mosaic floor by the pottery firm Villeroy & Boch,  Hildebold, who was Archbishop from 787 to 818 is holding a model of the old cathedral.

Other important treasures include the 14th century altarpiece of St.Clare.

The Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Kings painted in the 1440s by Stephan Lochner for the city's Rathaus Chapel. The attribution is known because Albrecht Dürer made a note in his diary when he visited Cologne and saw the altarpiece. Cologne's oldest patron saints are depicted on the wings, Ursula on the left and Gereon to the right.

And the remarkable Gero Crucifix, named for the bishop who held office from 969 to 976, and commissioned this sculpture for the earlier church. The Christ figure is six and a half feet tall, and probably was displayed in the centre of the chancel arch of the nave. The marble base and gilded sun are Baroque embellishments. A singular crucifix, and one with a dead Christ, were the equivalent of contemporary "shock art" in the 10th century, and had a profound influence on subsequent religious sculpture. It is a very compelling work with it's stretched and strained muscles and slumping belly of a man suffering a tortuous death.  

Cologne's Krippen is also still in place in the entrance hall, and I read local custom is to leave them on display until Candlemas, February 2, the celebration of Jesus being presented to the Temple elders. So now I know the deadline for putting away my last Christmas decorations next week.

Cologne's Krippen is large and local and funny.

A Cologne setting

With a lazy farmer waiting to rent out his empty stable

In a Roman city

Where an elephant takes the Magi

To Cologne Cathedral

To be met by public servants in reflective gear

Cologne was settled by the Romans in the 1st century and became an important capital city of the Empire with its vital bridge across the Rhine. There are Roman remains everywhere dotting the city.

Random stones outside the Roman Museum

The North Portal to the Roman City

Since I still had a few hours left in Cologne, I decided to pay homage to the traditional patron saints of the city by dropping in at their churches.

A lovely modern window in the porch at St. Ursula's

 My favourite is Ursula, a 4th century Romano-British princess who set off across the English Channel with 11,000 Virgin handmaidens for her arranged marriage to a pagan prince of Brittany. A storm at sea made her decide to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome to see the Pope, who then joined her, and they all set off for Cologne which was under attack by the Huns. Ursula was martyred and her 11,000 Virgins were beheaded according to a 5th century inscription.  I stopped off at St. Ursula’s church, the site of the massacre according to the inscription, but it was the early afternoon closure time, so I could just peek into the sanctuary. The last time I was in Cologne I saw the church’s special treasure room with the relics of the 11,000 housed in golden Baroque splendour. It is overwhelming, but not in a good way. My favourite depiction of the Ursula legend is Hans Memling's painted shrine in Bruges.

This is the Gothic apse end of St. Gereon's, not the Roman Dome.

Then I popped over to nearby St. Gereon's, the other traditional patron saint depicted on Lochner's altarpiece. Gereon does not have much of a story. He was said to be a soldier of the Theban Legion, ordered to Gaul to put down a revolt in Burgundy. The legion had been converted to Christianity in Egypt and were martyred in Switzerland en masse by the emperor for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods before a battle. An interesting strategy if the idea is to win the battle. Somehow Gereon and his attachment made it to Cologne and were beheaded there c.304.  Gereon may not be very interesting, but his church makes up for that with a domed nave built on Roman walls under the direction of Constantine's mother, the busy Helen, to commemorate the Cologne soldiers martyred shortly before her son converted the empire.

On the way between the two churches, in the heart of Cologne's financial district, I passed a small Holocaust monument by the side of the pavement. I haven't been able to find any information about the piece.

My personal interpretation runs along the lines of a religious figure, a nun,
turning her back on the evidence of anti-semitic genocide

And turning her Christian principles into a piece of old leather

to be tossed on a pile of shoes, which have become an evocative
 symbol used in so many memorials to the Holocaust.

The day was winding down, but I still had time for one more stop before I needed to catch the train back to Frankfurt. St. Andreas is a fantastic treasure house of the late Romanesque. In the crypt a Roman sarcophagus holds the remains of the scholar priest Albertus Magnus who died in 1280.

Scientist, Philosopher, Theologian

Watched over by a medieval scribe

The crypt also has a Stations of the Cross sculpted in stone is low relief that I find beautiful.

The sanctuary is said to be perfectly proportioned

with superb stiff-leafed Romanesque carving around the capitals and cornice

 and wall paintings in the nave chapels.

Finally, there is the golden Shrine of the Holy Maccabees, from the early 16th century, that commemorates the remains of the Jewish mother who watched her seven sons martyred for refusing to eat pork, a tale told with variations in detail, in the Talmud and in the Christian Apocrypha's 2nd and 4th Books of the Maccabees.

A Week In Germany: Monday

23. 01. 2012


A day totally without interest.

Up early in response to Bob’s wake up calls, the ringing phone and the wall hung jumbo screen TV springing to life at the same time. He is now on his meeting packed business trip. Surfed the internet to run out the 19 euros we paid for 24 hours of internet access so we didn’t miss Sunday with the grandchildren. Worth every cent.

This morning’s news is mostly of the What Will We Do With the Problem Called Newt variety.  Bob tells me he is surging in Florida now. Not very surprising as he is a good old Southern boy who would have great appeal for Floridians who vote Republican. In other words not the grandmothers from New York.

A giant breakfast to hold me through the day. Had a nice chat with the friendly Texan who fries up the eggs at the breakfast buffet. He came to Germany in the mid-1980s as a GI, and never wanted to leave. We agreed on the joys of ex-patriation. He said his problem is remembering to speak English when he visits Texas. At least I don’t have that problem. I just have to modify idiomatic usage, like the time I insulted Megan by saying a day was very dull, meaning the weather was grey and looked to remain colourless all day. Of course she thought I was whinging about her efforts to keep me entertained. And then there is whinging, a great word, far better than whining. I did see twee used by an American writer recently. Maybe it was in a review of Downton Abbey.

And those were the interesting parts of the day. After that I went to the train station in Frankfurt, met Bob, took a train to Düsseldorf, waited in the Düsseldorf station for Bob to return from a meeting, and then we took a train to Cologne where we are spending the night. Frankfurt’s train station has a terrific magazine shop and a nice waiting area to sit. Düsseldorf has an okay magazine shop, but does not have a single chair or bench in the whole station. They do have a Dunkin Donuts however, but Dunkies also has no place to sit, so I had to go to Starbucks with my concealed donut. I went with a traditional glazed because most of the varieties on offer were heavily iced, many in garish colours.

I can’t say much about the Cologne train station other than it was very crowded because it was rush hour, so we were in and out. I can say that Cologne’s gigantic wedding cake of a Gothic cathedral knocks your socks off when you step outside because it is right there.

A question could be posed as to who thought it would be a good idea to put a train station, now a very large and busy train station, on the front steps of a Gothic masterpiece?

We had dinner at a Brauerei —a brewery restaurant—recommended by the hotel’s desk clerk. The restaurant was inexplicably filled with groups of men having dinner together. Maybe Monday is Men’s Night Out in Cologne.

And now it is time to end this wholly unremarkable day.

A Week in Germany: Sunday

22. 01. 1012


A day of mixed results. . .
Grey and blustery with a bit of rain thrown in . . .

Newt Gingrich, the new Saviour, or at least this week’s version of a Saviour desperately sought in all the wrong places . . . is all over the news with his resounding victory over the eminently unlikeable Mitt Romney in South Carolina of all places, but maybe not too surprising since the tendency to follow the heart and embrace free love has a recent history in the state.

And through a stupid trip down a single step, I managed to crunch my knee on a very hard marble floor.  So far just a bit bruised and swollen, but not conducive to the start of a week traveling through Germany.

The better side of the day’s spectrum was enough to compensate for the gloomy weather, politics, and knee. To begin at the day’s beginning, in Germany you can always eat liverwurst at breakfast, and the yogurt is thick and sour, and heavenly when sweetened with a little honey and some dried fruit. I just read an article in today’s New York Times saying that Americans are finally tiring of the sweet, chalky ooze available in supermarkets as yogurt and sold with specious health claims that are contravened by one look at the ingredients list on the container. Instead they are turning to thick Greek/Turkish-style yogurt creating an employment boom in upstate New York in both dairy farming and yogurt manufacture.  Win-Win all around.

Next we grabbed our Frankfurt MuseumTicket, 2-days of free entry into 34 museums in the city. The best bargain pass I have ever seen, especially since the helpful young man in the tourist bureau suggested we buy the 23 euro family pass instead of the two single adult passes that would add up to 30 euros. I rather think they might want to work on their pricing structure if they wish to make an equitable donation to the member museums. The 23 euros didn’t even cover our two admissions to the Städel, Frankfurt’s art museum.

Our hotel was conveniently located near the Main where there is a pleasant walkway that passes through the city along the banks of the river.

The Main as in Frankfurt-am-Main

The Pedestrian Bridge leading to the Museum Quarter
 on the South Bank of the river. The Kaiserdom Tower
in the background

And the Städel was our first stop today, and the scene of where my knee hit the marble. The museum has just reopened after a refurb and a rehang of their Old Masters and their Modern Collections. The Contemporary Collection reopens next month. The museum overall does not have a top tier collection, but some of its treasures are top tier, especially in the early Flemish collection that fills the first room. A bit from everyone important: van Eyck, Campin, van der Weyden, Bosch, Memling, van der Goes. A truly astounding room to begin the walk around.

And there is a Vermeer which I have never seen, and appropriately it is The Geographer.

The real reason for this trip to Frankfurt is because the last time I was here, many years ago, I was on a mission to see all the Vermeers, and Frankfurt’s Vermeer was one of the last on the short list of Vermeers. But it was a Monday, and the Städel is closed on Mondays. Ever since, I have been saying, “I have to go back to Frankfurt to see that Vermeer.” And now I have. I hadn’t even remembered that it was The Geographer. There have been so many Vermeer shows in recent years with paintings borrowed from all over, I think my mission has been completed. I will have to check the very thin volume that contains all of Vermeer’s output when I get home.

Next we came upon a surprise treat at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Museum. I have long been a fan of medieval German wood sculpture, notably the work of Veit Stoss and Tilman Riemenschneider. But it turns out there is an even more legendary sculptor, Niclaus Gerhaert who taught the others their craft.

St George slaying the dragon.

The exhibition was amazing with dozens of pieces collected from all over the world. There are only a handful of fully documented attributions to Gerhaert, and some are site specific such as a tomb cover in Strasbourg, but his workshop was highly prolific, so most of the works were ones he at the least had a hand in carving. The Liebieghaus website contains some of the pieces from the exhibition if you click on the photos in their link.

After a full day of art, the sun was setting and the rain was spattering, so we headed back to the hotel for another dinner, and a busy evening with the weekly video chat with the grandchildren. Lavinia is a full day Montessori student, doing the Kindergarten curriculum; Eloise is walking; and poor Christian has been sick with a tummy bug, but he could still smile for the camera.

And finally the Patriots game was televised on ESPN North America, so Bob could see them barely pull out a victory. Another all-nighter for the Super Bowl in a few weeks, I guess.

A Week in Germany: Saturday

21. 01. 2012

Up early. Off to Heathrow's Terminal 1. Been a long time since I’ve been to the old Terminals 1 and 2-3. Flights to the States leave from the new Terminals 4 and 5. Since Bibs was born 4.5 years ago — Yes it was just her half-birthday which Montessori celebrates for children whose birthdays fall in the summer holiday. Sadly she celebrated the day not in school, but home with a nasty flu caught from her brother, and then passed on to her mother. The family flu.

Anyway, since Bibs was born 4.5 years ago nearly all our travel has been to Boston to welcome or to visit grandchildren. Today we are off to Germany for a week. When Bob worked at Citibank he travelled in Europe a lot for meetings. Often I would meet up with him for a long weekend wherever he was. That’s how I saw the highpoints of many European capitals during the early years of living in London. He has convinced his new bosses that visiting clients in Germany may be a worthwhile expense even in these straitened times. And bank travel is now in the back of the plane where I always sat, but for one or two hour flights to Europe, even once cosseted bankers can cope.

Frankfurt is a one hour flight, but a bit bumpy through the cloudy stormy weather system sitting over northern Europe since the planes don’t have enough time in the air to fly high above the continental weather. Easy trip into the city to our hotel, near the train station, filled with tour groups from the States and from Japan.

Losing an hour in the London to Europe time difference always makes it imperative to hit the ground running on arrival or what was the point of getting up so early in the first place. So we headed out immediately for lunch and the itinerary chosen by me, always acknowledged as the family tour leader. In the half hour walk to the Domplatz, we passed in the train station a small group of people demonstrating their wish to bring back “Glass-Steagall,” holding up posters with FDR’s face.  In the mall across the street from the train station, we passed a larger demonstration of people demanding the release of Bradley Manning. A few blocks further, and we passed by the “Occupy Frankfurt” encampment under the giant Euro sign at the ECB. America truly belongs to the world.

An excellent lunch at  Paulaner am Dom, chosen from a TripAdvisor list of Frankfurt favourites, a schnitzel  for Bob and a bowl of pea soup with a pretzel on the side for me. And a large stein of the excellent Paulaner dunkel bier from Munich. The restaurant was once in a medieval hostelry facing the back of the Dom, but a bombing raid wiped out most of the historic heart of Frankfurt in 1944. So everything has been carefully and authentically rebuilt, but the aura of medievalism can never be quite recreated.

The red sandstone Dom dedicated to St Bartholomew was built in 1877, ten years after the previous church was destroyed in a fire. This building was reconstructed after the 1944 bomb damage gutted the interior and reduced the building to a shell. Nevertheless it is  filled with a treasure load of medieval altarpieces and tomb monuments, because it is the fifth church on the site, and a previous incarnation was the site of the election and coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors, hence the name Kaiserdom.

The tower dominates the old city's skyline

A tomb monument

A jolly Germanic Last Supper

Even better, it may be closer to February than it is to Christmas, but the lighted Christmas trees still flank the high altar and the stunning Krippen tableau—the crèche scenes beloved in Germany—is still in place at the back of the nave.

Christmas trees lighting the dark afternoon

The Krippen is so large, one view was not enough to see both the stable
and the Three Kings approaching

Now I don’t feel so bad about the snowmen who are still  settled on our mantel in London, nor have I had the heart to remove the Santa hats from our welcome bears. A local toy store is also not in a rush to move past Christmas.

Outside the Dom is a fenced area that is called the Archaeological Garden that is an active dig site, and at the moment mostly covered with white tents, but around the edges some excavated foundations are visible.

The 12^th century Nikolaikirche in the Römerplatz, the historic heart of the city, has a simple plaster and red sandstone interior that is very beautiful. Some of the medieval tomb covers and sculptures were saved after the bombing and have been installed on the walls of the nave.

St Nikolai has a huge carillon, and here is a You Tube link

A carved pediment over the entrance

Mayor Siegfried zum Paradies and his wife Katharina Netheha zum Wedel.
Both were created by Madern Gerthener (1410/1420).

By mid-afternoon, we at last reached the Archaeological Museum in the Carmelite Monastery built in the late 15th century. What an amazing place. The monastery has been refitted to house the museum without destroying the integrity of the original religious foundation. The museum’s collection is displayed in the church nave under a ceiling that still retains bits of the painted decoration. The collection is a combination of local finds and an extensive collection of Classical and Oriental pieces. The local finds are the most interesting although textual commentary on the artefacts only in German does limit the appreciation for those of us who studied German in high school and currently remember only about one in four vocabulary words. However a short video with a choice of written captions including English was a wonderful virtual reconstruction of the buildings being excavated in the Archaeological Garden outside the Dom. The building is a Carolingian-Ottonian Palace begun in the 9th century by Ludwig the Pious and various chapels and churches that eventually became the Dom.

The star attraction at the Museum is the monastic cloister whose walls are adorned with a 15^th century cycle of wall paintings recounting the life of Christ. 

The cloister is lovely, but the glass enclosure kept catching
the light in my camera lens.

By the time we walked around the cloister, the daylight was waning, and the skies were dark with rain clouds, so we will have to return another day when the light is on our side to see these amazing paintings done by Jörg Rathgeb between 1480 and 1526 on two sides of the cloister. The paintings are done as connected vertical panels beginning with the Nativity.

The weather was deteriorating by the time we returned to the hotel for a late afternoon rest, and a long nap in my case, and when we heard the rain and wind pattering on the windows, we opted for an easy supper in the hotel restaurant.

  

2012

We've been talking about you, 2012, for so long, I feel I know you already.  As someone who puts little faith in pre-planning life, most years are a blank slate—perhaps blank notebook fits the metaphor a bit better—when the cover opens in January.  Here's 2012 with full pages for two-thirds of the year already. Wedding planning will fill the early months for Susan's wedding in May. Before that, there is a wedding in California in April; the Queen's Diamond Jubilee gives the nation a special holiday in June; the grandchildren will be visiting for July; and the Olympics and Para-Olympics will cap off the summer.

Blessedly, the final third of the year's pages remain blank at the moment, but events, anticipated and unexpected, welcome and dreaded, will always be hovering, ready to change the script or to add a paragraph or page that will alter the plan, sometimes for the good, sometimes not. I am balanced at the tip of a pyramid, never quite sure if, or when, I will slide down a side and need to rebalance the equilibrium. Pre-planning of the serious kind just makes the balance feel more tenuous, adding unnecessary stress to the mechanics. So far, so good, not too many complaints or mishaps, slides mostly rebalanced, but that doesn't stop the events, if and when, anticipated and unexpected, welcome and dreaded from hovering.

Meanwhile, 2011 ended with two weeks in Hingham for a New England Christmas with the grandchildren.

Getting the tree ready

To be transformed by Santa

For three happy children

10 a.m. Downshire Hill

Not sure how this happened. I just heard the smash and the breaking glass!

The woman talking to the policeman is the driver.

She opened the door and got out of the car immediately.

Very little damage to her car.

Police and fire on the scene, but no danger appears.

They smashed open the window to check the place.

Not just another day!