UMGEBUNGSENTDECKER
TRAVEL IMPRESSIONS OF AN ART AND HISTORY LOVER
and my experiences as a teacher in China
Brothers Grimm Country
contents
- Marburg, the beautiful city of stairs
- Kassel and its princely art collections
- The Brothers Grimm in Kassel
- Who was actually Frau Holle? The Holle pond on the Hoher Meissner
- Hannoversch Münden, where Werra and Fulda kiss
- Helmarshausen, the monastery and its two brilliant monks
- Bad Karlshafen, small, neat, baroque port town
- From the Chinese scholar Ji Xianlin who became famous
- Barbara and "Les Roses de Göttingen"
- Fritzlar, beautiful market square and cathedral with Ottonian treasures
- Warburg, from one famous Art historian named Abi Warburg
- Bad Arolsen, baroque palace and birthplace of the dutch queen
The Brothers Grimm come from Hanau and accordingly the German fairy tale route , which was developed by the tourism industry as early as 1975. There are some places where the brothers worked, but also places where the fairy tales could have taken place.
On our short trip, we didn't want to drive the whole fairy tale route - it is long and leads from Hanau to Bremen - but we limited ourselves to the manageable area in northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony. The region surprised us because we had no idea what to expect.
Our short trip was supposed to be a tour in the footsteps of the Grimms, but we discovered so many interesting and beautiful things on the edge of the route that we just had to see them. Ultimately, the common thread of our journey changed, so that one could no longer speak exclusively of the search for the traces of the Grimms.
Often rivers such as the Diemel or the Fulda became further red threads, as they connect places that we found interesting. Warburg, Helmarshausen, Bad Karlshafen are beautiful little towns and even if they have nothing to do with the Grimms, they enriched our trip and we were able to relate some of what we encountered to things that we know from previous trips.
But not only the culture was impressive, but also the untouched nature, especially in the Reinhardswald, in which we experienced a silence that you cannot even imagine when you come from the North Rhine-Westphalian metropolitan areas. Sometimes we felt like we were in Scandinavia.
Marburg
Marburg
Marburg was our southernmost destination, although it is a little further away from northern Hesse, we didn't want to miss the city because it is beautiful. The Brothers Grimm also studied law there. Jacob lived in the house at Barfüßerstraße 35, where a sign draws attention to his house. Later, when Wilhelm also came to Marburg, they moved to today's Wendelgassse 4.
Marburg University was founded as a Protestant university by Landgrave Phillip in 1527, making it the oldest Protestant university in Germany. The old university building, which with its cloister is reminiscent of a monastery, is located on the mountain on which Marburg's old town rises steeply. Today - how else should it be - the Protestant theological faculty is housed in this building.
The Brothers Grimm were of Protestant faith as well.
You are in Hesse - traditionally a country with a clear Protestant majority, even if the situation has gradually changed in recent decades due to demographics, leaving the church, etc. But the denominational orientation always had an influence on the history, as we found again and again in many details during our trip.
Grimm House, Marburg, Wendelgasse 4 (ground floor). In this house lived Jacob and William Grimm as students from 1803 to 1805. View from the north.
Marburg University was founded as a Protestant university by Landgrave Phillip in 1527, making it the oldest Protestant university in Germany. The historic university building, which is reminiscent of a monastery with its cloister, is located at the foot of Marburg's old town, which rises steeply up the mountain. Today, the Protestant theological faculty is housed in this building.
The old university buildings, which can be seen from the Lahn today, were built in the 19th century in a neo-Gothic style after Electoral Hesse fell to Prussia.
The two Grimm brothers were of the Reformed faith.
We are in Hesse - traditionally a state with a clear Protestant majority, even if the situation has gradually changed in recent decades due to demographics, people leaving the church, etc. But the denominational orientation always had an influence on the story, as we found out again and again in many details during our trip.
Kassel and its princely art collections
Kassel is a top-class cultural city. Everyone knows the Documenta, of course, but that's not all. The Landgraves of Hesse, later Hesse-Kassel, built it into an impressive residential city and it has a lot to offer that you overlook when you drive around the city on the motorways these days. With this rough view from a distance, one sees very small, in the far distance on a mountain ridge of the Habichtswald above the city tower Hercules. Otherwise there are many industrial areas on the highways; Kassel lies in between in a kind of depression.
Of course, this superficial perception does not do justice to the city. However, World War II and the subsequent one did, in part
unsuccessful reconstruction will not make the city a highlight. Kassel was and is fairly central to the connection from Hamburg to southern Germany and the connection to the Ruhr area and to eastern Germany, i.e. at a crossroads, so to speak, and thus it became an important target for bombing during World War II.
Nevertheless, Kassel is worth seeing, because there is a museum landscape that stems from the spirit of the Renaissance and the Baroque and obviously the landgraves had money to properly represent as Baroque princes.
Hesse
A brief overview of Hesse's history:
Hesse is originally the name for a tribe from which the Princely House of Hesse later developed. The Hessians have always been settled where the state of Hesse is today. Hesse was initially connected with Thuringia, but how often there was a dispute about succession in the 13th century to divide the territory.
Hesse was ruled by its first Landgrave Wilhelm I from 1247. Kassel became a residential city from 1277 and the principality was founded.
In 1292 the Landgraviate of Hesse was confirmed as an imperial principality for Heinrich I by Adolf von Nassau.
"Landgraf" sounds provincial; Counts are usually hierarchically under the dukes. The word "Land" in the combination "Landgraf" also has a provincial effect. Both assumptions are wrong. The Landgraves of Hesse are hierarchically equal with dukes, so they are under the king. The Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel were among the glamorous Baroque princes of their time and were involved in all of Europe's high-ranking Protestant dynasties.
But before that came about, Hesse first disintegrated through the division of inheritance:
In 1567 Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, bequeathed it to his four sons.
Since then, the history of the country has been marked by fragmentation. First there were the four lines that arose through the inheritance of the sons: Hessen-Kassel, Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Marbug and Hessen-Rheinfels, of which Marburg and Rheinfels were not continued without descendants, so that the Darmstadt and Kassel lines prevailed . Both main lines in turn each have a number of sub-lines.
This division weakened Hesse's weight in the empire and its role as a major Protestant supremacy.
Actually, this division was only overcome in the 20th century, when Darmstadt and Kassel were reunited in the federal state of Hesse, of course within the framework of a parliamentary democracy.
Hessen-Kassel
When Hesse was divided among Philip's sons in 1567, his eldest son Wilhelm IV received half of the entire territory to be inherited, including the capital Kassel.
During the Thirty Years' War, Protestant Hesse came under considerable imperial, i.e. Catholic, pressure and then allied itself with the Swedes. The plague and war ravaged the country.
After the Thirty Years' War, Hessen-Kassel flourished under the Landgrave Karl (ruled 1677-1730), who among other things suffered the population losses caused by the plague and War, compensated by the settlement of French Huguenots, which led to the formation of the city of Karlshafen. He built the Hercules, the orangery, the marble bath and more in the royal seat of Kassel, thereby creating the basis for the later construction of the Wilhelmshöhe mountain park, which is now a World Heritage Site. His sister Charlotte Amalie married the future King of Denmark Christian V and he married his son Friedrich to the sister of the Swedish king, Ulrike Eleonore, which led to Friedrich later becoming King of Sweden.
While Frederick was king in Sweden, his brother Wilhelm VIII took over the business in Hessen-Kassel, which he was able to run without restriction (he ruled from 1730-1760).
Wilhelm VIII was an enthusiastic art collector and the picture gallery goes back to his passion for collecting. Since he was active in the military in the Netherlands for a long time, he was particularly enthusiastic about Dutch painting.
The landgraves received money for absolutist, monarchical rule projects by loaning out soldiers. Hessian mercenaries fought, for example, on the British side in the American War of Independence (1776-1783), which resulted in all German mercenaries in this war being referred to as "Hesse" in the USA. This money was used to build Wilhelmsthal Castle north of Kassel under Wilhelm VIII and under Wilhelm IX. Wilhelmshöhe Palace, Wilhelmshöhe Park etc. were laid out in Kassel.
The Protestant orientation of the House of Hesse-Kassel is striking, which it closely linked with all Protestant rulers in Europe: England, the Netherlands (among other things, the governor Wilhelm von Orange-Nassau was the godfather of Wilhelm VIII.) Brandenburg (Wilhelm VIII was with Friedrich II . befriended by Prussia), Sweden and Denmark were connected to Hesse by marriage.
The Old Masters Picture Gallery
During the Thirty Years' War, Protestant Hesse came under considerable imperial, i.e. Catholic, pressure and then allied itself with the Swedes. The plague and war ravaged the country.
After the Thirty Years' War, Hessen-Kassel flourished under the Landgrave Karl (ruled 1677-1730), who among other things suffered the population losses caused by the plague and War, compensated by the settlement of French Huguenots, which led to the formation of the city of Karlshafen. He built the Hercules, the orangery, the marble bath and more in the royal seat of Kassel, thereby creating the basis for the later construction of the Wilhelmshöhe mountain park, which is now a World Heritage Site. His sister Charlotte Amalie married the future King of Denmark Christian V and he married his son Friedrich to the sister of the Swedish king, Ulrike Eleonore, which led to Friedrich later becoming King of Sweden.
While Frederick was king in Sweden, his brother Wilhelm VIII took over the business in Hessen-Kassel, which he was able to run without restriction (he ruled from 1730-1760).
Wilhelm VIII was an enthusiastic art collector and the picture gallery goes back to his passion for collecting. Since he was active in the military in the Netherlands for a long time, he was particularly enthusiastic about Dutch painting.
The landgraves received money for absolutist, monarchical rule projects by loaning out soldiers. Hessian mercenaries fought, for example, on the British side in the American War of Independence (1776-1783), which resulted in all German mercenaries in this war being referred to as "Hesse" in the USA. This money was used to build Wilhelmsthal Castle north of Kassel under Wilhelm VIII and under Wilhelm IX. Wilhelmshöhe Palace, Wilhelmshöhe Park etc. were laid out in Kassel.
The Protestant orientation of the House of Hesse-Kassel is striking, which it closely linked with all Protestant rulers in Europe: England, the Netherlands (among other things, the governor Wilhelm von Orange-Nassau was the godfather of Wilhelm VIII.) Brandenburg (Wilhelm VIII was with Friedrich II . befriended by Prussia), Sweden and Denmark were connected to Hesse by marriage.
The Old Masters Picture Gallery
Kassel as a museum city
Kassel is a top-class cultural city. Everyone knows the Documenta but that's not all. The Landgraves of Hesse, later Hesse-Kassel, built it into an impressive residential city and it has a lot to offer that you overlook when you drive around the city on the motorways these days. With this superficial view from the distance, one perceives Hercules, who towers on a ridge of the Habichtswald above the city and otherwise industrial areas near the highways; Kassel lies in between in a kind of depression. Of course, this superficial perception does not do justice to the city. Although the air raids of World War II and the reconstruction unfortunately left their mark, Kassel has a museum landscape that stems from the spirit of the Renaissance and the Baroque and obviously the landgraves had money to properly represent as Baroque princes.
Hesse
A brief overview of Hesse's history:
Hesse is the name for a Germanic tribe from which the Princely House of Hesse later developed. Interestingly, the Hessians have always been settled where the state of Hesse is today. Hesse was initially connected to Thuringia, but how often there was a dispute over succession in the 13th century
to divide the territory into what is now Thuringia and Hesse.
The independent territory was ruled by its first Landgrave Wilhelm I from 1247. Kassel became a residential city from 1277 and the principality of Hesse was founded.
In 1292 the Landgraviate of Hesse was confirmed as an imperial principality for Heinrich I by Adolf von Nassau.
The title "Landgraf" (Landgrave). ("Graf" means "Count" in English) sounds a bit provincial. Counts are hierarchically under the dukes. In addition, the word "land" in the combination of "Landgraf" also suggests something provincial from today's perspective. One is wrong with that. The office of "Landgrave" is on a par with a "Duke", so it was a title that is below the King in the hierarchy. The Landgraves of Hessen-Kassel were among the glamorous Baroque princes of their time and were involved in all of Europe's high-ranking Protestant families.
But before that came about, Hesse first disintegrated through the division of inheritance:
In 1567 Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, bequeathed it to his four sons.
Since then, the country's history has been marked by fragmentation. First there were the four lines that arose through the inheritance of the sons: Hessen-Kassel, Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Marbug and Hessen-Rheinfels, of which Marburg and Rheinfels were not continued without descendants, so that the Darmstadt and Kassel lines prevailed . Both main lines in turn each have a number of sub-lines.
This division weakened Hesse's weight in the empire and its role as a major Protestant supremacy.
Actually, this division was only overcome in the 20th century when Darmstadt and Kassel were reunited in the federal state of Hesse, of course within the framework of a parliamentary democracy.
Hessen-Kassel
When Hesse was divided among Philip's sons in 1567, his eldest son Wilhelm IV received half of the entire territory to be inherited, including the capital Kassel.
During the Thirty Years' War, Protestant Hesse came under considerable imperial, i.e. Catholic, pressure and then allied itself with the Swedes. The plague and war ravaged the country.
After the Thirty Years' War, Hessen-Kassel flourished under Landgrave Karl (ruled 1677-1730), who among other things compensated for the population losses caused by the plague and war by settling French Huguenots, which led to the formation of the city of Karlshafen. Among other things, he built the Hercules, the orangery, the marble bath and other things and thus created the basis for the later construction of the Wilhelmshöhe mountain park, which is now a World Heritage Site. Karl's sister Charlotte Amalie married the future King of Denmark Christian V and his son Friedrich married the sister of the Swedish king, Ulrike Eleonore, which led to Friedrich later becoming King of Sweden.
While Frederick was king of Sweden, his brother Wilhelm VIII took over the business in Hessen-Kassel, which he was able to run without restriction (he ruled from 1730-1760).
Wilhelm VIII was an enthusiastic art collector and the Gallery of the Old Masters goes back to his passion for collecting. Since he was active in the military in the Netherlands for a long time, he was particularly enthusiastic about Dutch painting.
The landgraves received money for absolutist, monarchical rule projects by loaning out soldiers. Hessian mercenaries fought, for example, on the British side in the American War of Independence (1776-1783), which led to the fact that all German mercenaries in this war are referred to as "Hessen" in the USA. This money was used to build Wilhelmsthal Castle north of Kassel under Wilhelm VIII and under Wilhelm IX. Wilhelmshöhe Palace, Wilhelmshöhe Park etc. were laid out in Kassel.
The Protestant orientation of the House of Hessen-Kassel is striking and it is closely linked with all Protestant rulers in Europe: England, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, the governor Wilhelm von Orange-Nassau was the godfather of Wilhelm VIII of Brandenburg etc.
The Gallery of Old Masters
Wilhelmshöhe Palace is certainly the most prestigious part of the Kassel museum institutions, the "Gallery of Old Masters ", which was expanded by Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hessen-Kassel in the mid-18th century to what is largely today's collection. The collection focuses on Dutch and Flemish painting. Wilhelm VIII spent his youth in the Netherlands and later served there in the war. Probably during his stays in the Netherlands his love for Dutch painting developed. The collection was originally housed in the Palais des Landgraves on Frankfurter Strasse, until a gallery was built by Francois de Cuvilliés in the years 1749-1752 due to a lack of space. It was to be a building with two gallery wings, one for Dutch paintings and one for Italians. It became a pioneering museum building with skylights and thus corresponded to the latest status of lighting and hanging options of its time. Ultimately, only the wing was realized for Dutch painting, the building was later converted into a residence for Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte, who was appointed King of Westphalia by Napoleon. For the painting collection and the antique collection, a New Gallery building was built on the Schöne Aussicht with a view over the Karlsaue. The buildings were destroyed in World War II. There are no plans, no drawings, no photos of the Cuvilliés building, so you no longer know what it looked like. The works of art were of course not destroyed because they had been relocated during the war. The New Gallery on the Schöne Aussicht was rebuilt after the war and now shows modern art. The paintings and the antique collection as well as the graphic cabinet came to Wilhelmshöhe Palace, which was also rebuilt, where they have been housed since then.
Napoleon added to the collection by bringing 48 high-quality pictures into the possession of the Empress Josephine, who used them to furnish her private palace in Rueil-Malmaison near Paris. These paintings were later sold by their heirs to Russia, where they can be seen today in the Hermitage in Petersburg. Despite these losses, Kassel still has its impressive collection, which as a foreigner you would not expect in a city with 200,000 inhabitants - or you simply have to rethink your image of Kassel.
The origin of the Kassel museum landscape:
Chamber of miracles and natural objects
Wilhelm IV the Wise (1532–1592) had already started to put together a collection of miracles and natural objects. The Landgraves of Hesse join the ranks of the Renaissance princes who set up such chambers of curiosities, as well as collections of antiquities and painting galleries. The interest in curiosities and natural sciences with which the princes of the Renaissance adorned themselves led to Kassel getting the first permanently established observatory in 1560, about 100 years before Paris and Greenwich. The natural history collection was one of the first to be opened to the general public when Landgrave Karl made it possible for the students of the Collegium Carolinum, which he founded, to study in the collection.
The Fridericianum
In 1779, Landgrave Friedrich II relocated the collection to the Fridericianum museum building he had built, in which the collection was accessible to the public, making the Fridericianum one of the very first public museums.
This collection later became the nucleus of today's Kassel collections, as the individual museums developed from it. In Kassel these are the picture gallery, the antique collection, the Ottoneum with the natural objects and the astronomical-physical cabinet in the orangery in the Karlsaue.
The Brothers Grimm in Kassel
The Brothers Grimm also lived in Kassel. You can see the Hütt brewery at the gates of Kassel in Baunatal, in this house Dorothea Viehmann was born and she lived there for a long time. She is the woman who told the Grimm brothers several fairy tales, which were then processed into the folk fairy tale collection of the two. The Viehmann was of Huguenot origin, as Hessen granted the French Protestants a new home.
The Grimms in Kassel
The Brothers Grimm also lived in Kassel. You can visit the Hütt brewery in Baunatal on the outskirts of Kassel, because Dorothea Viehmann was born in this house and she lived there for a long time, the very woman who told the Grimm brothers a number of fairy tales, which were then processed into the folk tales collection of the two. Incidentally, Viehmann was of Huguenot origin, since Hesse granted the French Protestants a new home. Viehmann also has a house in Kassel.
Unfortunately, we did not see the brewery or residential building, the brewery is currently closed due to Corona.
In 2014 the Grimm World was opened, the city's new Grimm Museum, which was voted one of the world's ten best newly opened museums by Guardian magazine. That is promising, but something like that also makes me skeptical and I was expecting the usual annoying interactive gadgets where children romp around and no one takes anything worth mentioning for themselves, except that you could turn and press a lot of buttons. There were some, but the exhibition was really well done. We had a lot of fun. It's a bit surreal, you can get lost and discover new things over and over again, just like in a forest owned by the Brothers Grimm. For example, there is actually a small, stylized, dark forest in which there is mysterious whispering from everywhere, the woodpecker knocks and the cuckoo calls, you move carefully between the trunks in the dark, now and then between the trees you can see the exhibition rooms and listen to the noises of the woods. Brilliant.
I am not surprised that opinions on this museum are polarizing. Fairy tales are an emotionally charged topic that many people associate with something intimate, similar to Christmas. The exhibition is not romantic like an old fairy tale book, but rather associative, but precisely because of this it is committed to the spirit of romanticism. Clarity, order - these are not the categories of romance. The exhibition itself is more like a piece of art.
The Hohe Meißner and the Frau-Holle-Pond
In the above picture of Frau Holle, which I photographed on an information board at the Holle pond on the Hohe Meißner, you can see her with canine teeth - like a predator. This is how this ambivalent figure is meant: Big nose, almost masculine features, it is a figure that inspires respect, of who one is afraid, but she is not evil. You have to consider that it is related to the Knecht Ruprecht or the southern German Rauen Percht. All of these figures reward OR punish - gold or pitch - apples or rod.
Nowadays one imagines a good-natured grandmother as Mrs. Holle, but the current picture has been falsified by fairy tale films. Whether or not it was depending entirely on the behavior of those who met her. Ultimately, the origin of Frau Holle lies in pagan natural religions and the Germanic world of gods.
Frau Holle's relative, the southern German Raue Percht, is an old, crooked, female figure who suddenly appears out of nowhere at the end of the Raunächte (Rough Nights), i.e. the days and nights between Christmas and Epiphany (Twelfth Night) and inspects the houses. It used to be the custom that in the time between the years, the so-called Rough Nights, the houses were scrubbed and cleaned and the ghosts of the old year were driven away by smoke. This is exactly what Raue Percht wanted to check when she suddenly knocks at the door around Epiphany and, after being admitted, crept through the rooms, sniffing and looking everywhere. If everything was in order, she made three crosses with her stick on the threshold and quickly disappeared again into the darkness of the twilight, snow-covered landscape. You could breathe a sigh of relief and later you found apples, nuts and dried fruit on the bench in front of the house. But if you haven't done your thing properly - so the children were told - the Percht comes and cuts the children's stomachs, into which she fills all the rubbish from the previous year, and then sews it up again.
If the Percht was satisfied, it promised a good harvest for the next year and full stalls. The Percht is something like Demeter, the Greek goddess of wheat, the goddess of the fertile fields. Presumably the figure of Frau Holle goes back to the Germanic goddess Frigg, the patron goddess of life, motherhood, the hearth fire and the household.
Much of it cannot be scientifically proven with sources. Customs develop without written evidence and are passed on from generation to generation without being written down.
But somehow a lot of the folkloristic things that can be found in the fairy tale fit well to the tradition: snowfall and the end of the year, keeping the household tidy, benevolence or punishment, etc.
The Knecht Ruprecht is also related to the Rauen Percht, you just have to look at the spelling - a bit of dialectal sound shift, a bit of phonograph and "rau" becomes "ru" and "Percht" becomes "Precht", which then becomes the Ru-Precht, which is more at home in North German and the dialectal shifts also correspond to Low German ("au" becomes "u" like "mein Haus" (my house), which in the north becomes "min Hus"). The figure is slowly disappearing from cultural awareness, presumably for educational reasons, as he has scared many children with his dark, black, shaggy charisma. Whether Ruprecht, Swarte Piet or trolls in the far north, who have to be appeased in Scandinavian houses at the turn of the year, so that they are kind to the residents or otherwise cause them damage throughout the coming year - somehow they are all fellows and figures who punish or reward.
Back to the Holle pond on the Hoher Meißner - it is shrouded in legend, it should be deep (which it is not) and the children should come out of it and the souls of the deceased should return to its depths. Perhaps there is an analogy here to the well in Grimm's fairy tale, into which the girls fall to land in Frau Holle's world.
Hannoversch Münden
Reinhardswald
If you drive from Hannoversch Münden to Bad Karlshafen, you shouldn't miss the Reinhardswald. First, the journey from Münden goes north on the B 80 to Reinhardshagen, then it goes left on the L 3229 directly into the forest. In the further course it goes towards Sababurg, where you can visit the primeval forest in the Reinhardswald, which emerged from a Hutewald and has not been cultivated for a hundred years and is therefore left to its own devices. The special feature are the many ancient trees, some of which are thousands of years old, which, taken individually, are natural monuments. The forest looks like a primeval forest due to the high proportion of dead wood.
I had expected more from the jungle, but found the rest of the Reinhardswald overwhelming as I drove through. At some point we just stopped in the middle of the street to get out and take photos. It was so lonely and quiet that we just left the car doors open and went away to take pictures. After minutes, we heard a motorcycle approaching in the far distance and went back to the car to close the doors. The motorcycle drove by, followed by a long silence - nothing but silence.
The journey continued via Gottsbüren to Helmarshausen.
At this point it should be mentioned that 100 wind turbines are to be built in Reinhardswald.
Ironic: Environment shall be preserved, but therefore it is being destroyed.
Helmarshausen
In the heyday of the Benedictine monastery in Helmarshausen in the 12th century, the two monks Roger as a goldsmith and Heriman as a scribe worked here. The Gospel of Heinrich the Lion comes from Heriman's pen, which is now kept in the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel and is permanently exhibited as a facsimile. (The library in Wolfenbüttel is worth mentioning, because it is something of a national cultural heritage, but more on that later when the chapter 'Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel' will appear on the website.) Roger, the right monk in the sculpture group, made verifiably on two support altars, one can be seen here as a bronze sculpture. The altar shown here can be seen in the Diocesan Museum in Paderborn, the other one is in the Franciscan Church in Paderborn.
Sculpture artist: Karin Bohrmann-Roth
Das Buch hat eine spannende Geschichte und es war lange Zeit das kostbarste Buch der Welt (Willst du mehr darüber wissen? Beim Post über "Braunschweig und Wolfenbüttel" erfährst du es genauer. Klick hier.)
Künstlerin der Plastik: Karin Bohrmann-Roth
Herimann ist in der bronzenen Figurengruppe links dargestellt, wie er gerade das Evangeliar erschafft. Roger, der rechte Mönch, fertigte nachweisbar zwei Tragaltäre an, einen davon trägt er hier in dieser Darstellung. Den hier dargestellten Altar kann man im Diözesanmuseum in Paderborn sehen, der andere befindet sich in der Franziskanerkirche in Paderborn.
Bad Karlshafen
Bad Karlshafen was founded by Landgrave Carl von Hessen-Kassel in 1699 and was intended as a settlement for Huguenots. The small town is located at the mouth of the Diemel in the Weser and is designed according to plan, in the spirit of the Baroque, with a square harbor basin in the center, which is surrounded by white houses that continue in a few side streets. The city was not completed as it was planned, but we liked the baroque ensemble that exists today. The two-storey houses form closed rows, which are regularly divided by doors and semi-detached houses in the roof region. At the southern side of the harbor basin the former packing house protrudes from the row of houses which today houses the city administration. The Huguenot Museum is located on the north side in one of the baroque houses. The port is connected to the Weser by a lock. At the harbor entrance is the level house and next door is the beautiful restaurant "Zum Weserdampfschiff" with a beer garden from which you have a direct view of the Weser. It's just nice to look at the river in the late afternoon sun, sit in the shade under old trees and enjoy your wheat beer or shandy.
Karlshafen was built to realize a rather ambitious project: From there a water connection was to lead to Kassel and even further to the Lahn, which would have meant a connection to the Rhine - the Landgraf-Carl Canal.
What was the reason for this project?
If you want to get to Kassel by water from the North Sea, you have to drive on the Weser to Hannoversch Münden, from there the Fulda leads directly to Kassel. That would actually be pretty easy, but unfortunately the Weser and Fulda flow a short distance through the then Principality of Hanover (today Lower Saxony) where they demanded a lot of customs. In addition, Hannoversch Münden had stacking rights - in short: Hesse was dependent on Hanover and it was expensive. So you needed another waterway to Kassel that led past the Principality of Hanover - a kind of diversion. This seemed possible if you turn off the Weser before it becomes a Hanoverian river, into the Diemel, which flows into the Weser about ten kilometers from the border. You would then drive a few kilometers up the Diemel, then drive a good distance on the river Esse and then to get to Kassel, you would have to build the canal, which, by the way, would be reconnected to the Fulda in Kassel.
As I said - an ambitious project - it was never completed. But the beginnings and first kilometers of the canal can still be seen today, e.g. in
form of old locks, dams and of course a wider waterway bed, etc.
On the map ( source here ) you can see the geographic situation. As you can see here, the canal would have gone even further, first from the Fulda into the Eder, then into the Schwalm and then via another canal into the Lahn, which flows into the Rhine.
Goettingen
The Georg August University in Göttingen was founded in 1732 by the Elector of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and Duke of Lüneburg and Braunschweig Georg August. It is essential that the university was founded as a university of the Enlightenment based on the model of University of Halle, but still more secular, so that the faculties were no longer under the supervision of the church. Research results were consequently no longer subject to the censorship of the church.
In 1829 the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were appointed to Göttingen as librarians and professors.
But a completely different story moved us more in Göttingen.
1935-1945 - During this difficult time, the Chinese student Ji Xianlin studied the languages Sanskrit and Tochar at Georg University.
During his studies he lived with a couple whose son had died in the war. To this couple he was like a second son. When he wanted to write his doctorate, he was missing a typewriter. The young woman in the photo, Irmgard, offered to type the work on her typewriter. So it happened that he dictated his doctoral thesis to her for half an hour a day. Ji returned to China after the war, where he set up the first institute for Asian linguistics at Beijing University. He became a very famous scholar in China. Irmgard never married, she never saw Ji again, and she never threw the typewriter away, as a Hong Kong documentary made about Ji in the late 1990s showed. It was a platonic love. Ji wrote the book "Ten Years in Germany" about his time in Göttingen.
From the famous Chinese scholar Ji Xianlin
But a completely different story moved us more in Göttingen.
1935-1945 - During this difficult time, the Chinese student Ji Xianlin studied the languages Sanskrit and Tochar at Georg University.
During his studies he lived with a couple whose son had died in the war. To this couple, Ji was like a second son. When he wanted to write his doctorate, he lacked a typewriter. The young woman in the photo below, Irmgard, offered to type the work on her typewriter. So it happened that he dictated his doctoral thesis to her for half an hour every day. After the war, Ji went back to China and established the first institute for Asian linguistics at Beijing University. He became a very famous scholar in China. Irmgard never married, she never saw Ji again, and she never threw the typewriter away, as a Hong Kong documentary made about Ji in the late 1990s showed. It was a platonic love. Ji wrote the book "Ten Years in Germany" about his time in Göttingen.
Barbara and "Les Roses de Göttingen"
A touching story that the city of Göttingen burned into the collective consciousness of the French is a legendary concert by the French chansonnière Barbara, who came to Germany in the 1960s despite her internal resistance because of the memories of the war, to give a concert here at the invitation of the theater maker Hans- To give Gunther Klein.
Barbara insisted on playing a grand piano, but there was only one piano on the stage in Göttingen. She wanted to cancel the concert and what almost ended badly turned into an astonishing experience: the audience absolutely wanted to experience the concert, a grand piano was needed and ten students managed to get a grand piano from an elderly lady by carrying it through the city.
The concert started two hours late and was a complete success. Barbara stayed for several days, gave several concerts and got to know Göttingen, although she didn't really want to see anything of Germany.
S inally she wrote in the garden behind the theater the "Göttingen" song in which they had contributed their thoughts and sang this song during their last concert.
But the appearance of this The Arte show Karambolage portrays events much more beautifully; just go to Barbaras Click photo :
.jpg)
Photo: https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/fotocollectie/aac7ad6e-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84; cc: CC0
Fritzlar
Warburg
Aby Warburg was a famous art historian, came from an important bourgeois family that included many scientists, bankers, etc. They came to Hesse from Venice in the 16th century, where they would have had to move to the ghetto as Jews, named themselves after the city of Warburg after the family name “de Banco” had already become “von Kassel”. Later the family moved to Hamburg.
The Third Reich forced the family to emigrate, which brought Aby Warburg's library with 40,000 books to London.
Warburg spent his life looking for traces of antiquity in the Italian Renaissance of the Quattrocento. He was the first art scholar to begin to include information outside of art studies in his research, e.g. invoices, church records, etc., whereby he viewed art as a symptom and expression of social, religious, political, etc. conditions.
Bad Arolsen
