A Ph.D. Tramp Abroad
Gary Keith (Heidelberg, Germany 2013)
I’ve always liked
Mark Twain, the most famous author from my home state of Missouri (back in the
United States). I spent five weeks traipsing the streets of Heidelberg and
venturing out to parts of Germany, far and wide. Somewhere in the nooks and
crannies I learned that Mark Twain’s 1878 journey through Germany, and the
resulting book A Tramp Abroad,
included numerous observations on Heidelberg—including its castle, the student
prison, the Neckar River, and student life. So in the spirit of Twain, I offer
my reflections on modern Deutschland, beginning with Heidelberg observations,
then out and about around the country and its glorious cities, and finally my
take on modern German culture.
Heidelberg
Meine Frau und
mein Sohn, Jackie and Gabe, arrived with me in Heidelberg in late June, as I
was to spend a summer term teaching at the UIW-European Study Center (ESC). It
seems like every building in Germany has a colorful story. Here in Heidelberg,
our university is in a “house.” But in Germany, many houses are huge,
multi-function buildings. The old Krehl haus at 106 Bergstrasse was built as a
family home just over a century ago. What that means, though, is that Frau Krehl
wanted a home that her extended German-Russian family could comfortably visit
for long stays with their entourage and luggage. Since money was no object in
the old patrician family, the grand stone home was built, in a walled compound.
Walking by the 12-foot stone wall, you come into the entrance foyer and climb
45 steps up a spiral stone staircase to the first floor. In the beginning of
our stay, those 45 steps were exhausting, but after an experience in Köln (see
below), those 45 became a light skipping exercise.
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Today, the building
can house about 40 students on the second and third floors, where there are
kitchens, bathrooms, and showers in addition to the small dorm rooms. The main
floor is now offices and classrooms (for the ESC and the language school housed
here), but in the beginning was dining
rooms, living rooms, kitchen, library rooms—and Dr. Krehl’s medical clinic! There
is a basement/ground floor with laundry, kitchen, storerooms, old servant
apartments. And, of course, courtyards and a stone barn/garage. The home had a chaotic
time with the two world wars, being used as a hospital in WWI, being
confiscated by first one side then the other in WWII, being used for
de-nazification interviews of local officials after the war, and even being
considered for the seat of government. It was some time before the building was
returned to its owners. When Charles DeGaulle kicked NATO out of France in the
mid-60s, some of its offices got relocated to the Krehl house. Pieces of
furniture in the offices and library still have US Army and US State Dept.
plates on them (shhh…don’t tell them)! By the way, old European buildings are
built on top of older buildings or ruins or graves. A plaque on the Krehl house
notes that excavation for the building revealed about 55 graves from around
450-650 A.D.
The most famous
structure in Heidelberg is the castle—Schloss Heidelberg. The story with most
castles is similar: it’s hard to nail down when it was first started. More than
a thousand years ago. Probably. It has been smashed, burned, rebuilt, expanded
so many times it’s a hodgepodge. But a
fascinating
hodgepodge! Most of it is ruins, but some is in use today (tourism). It houses
the largest wine cask in the world, and summer theater productions are held at
the Schloss. You can walk up the steep hill to the castle or you can take the
amazing short train ride up the steep slope. If you stay on the train beyond
the castle, it continues up the mountain to Königstuhl, where you look out over
Heidelberg and the surrounding Neckar river valley for miles and miles, seeing
almost to France. On the top and other side of the mountain is a web of trails,
nature areas, and parks.
There’s also
another castle in Heidelberg, within easy walking distance of the Krehl house—the
Tiefberg. It is much smaller, also is in ruins but has had parts restored, and
comes with the obligatory set of tombstones so old you can’t make out the years.
Castles, of course, also came with surrounding land and protecting walls—even
moats. It’s interesting to be walking a block or two from the Tiefberg (or
other castles), in the midst of today’s city, and realize that the stone wall
running between houses or along streets is the original castle grounds wall
from centuries ago—still there!
Aside from the
castles, the historic structures of note in Heidelberg are at the University of
Heidelberg—the oldest university in Germany (1386). There’s not actually one
campus—the University seems to be spread all over the city! But its roots are
in Altstadt (the old city), just below the Schloss. What used to be the royal horse
and hay barn is today a university classroom and office building. The royalty
needed lots of horses and hay, so built gigantic stone barns. This one looks
ancient—but also absolutely solid and sturdy. The adjacent Marstall—the troop
garrisons—with its four corner towers, is now a university student union and
cafeteria. Then there is the Student Prison. Yes, prison. In the 18th
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and 19th
centuries, miscreant students were locked up for a day or two or three for
minor (?) trespasses. They spent their time drawing and painting the walls, so
the cell rooms are completely covered—walls and ceilings—with names and
colorful caricatures. Today, it’s a museum.
Much of the old university programs (and the great library) remain in
Altstadt. The newer part of the university is… well, it’s a new modern campus
across town, with world class science and medical programs.
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In the heart of
Altstadt and the old university is a stone-covered empty lot where the old
synagogue used to be, ‘til Kristallnacht 1938. Heidelberg’s Jews were rousted
and deported, its synagogue burned. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps.
While some made it to the west, most died or were killed. As you walk the
sidewalks of Heidelberg—indeed of Berlin, Münich, many cities—your foot scrapes
across “stumble stones”—brass stones, in the same shape and size as pavement stones, stating the
names of the Jewish citizens who lived in the house there where you stand and
what happened to them in the Holocaust. Just on our street, Bergstrasse, in the
15-minute walk down to the river you pass two sets of stumble stones. One notes
six in the Liebhold family who were taken, most of whom were killed. A couple
of blocks down, two were taken from the Blum and Blumenthal house and were also
killed (at Dachau).
One day, Jackie
and I trekked for an hour or two up behind the Krehl house, up, up, up a
mountainside, zigzagging with the switchbacks, to finally find ourselves at the
astonishing Thingstätte. Built by students in the Hitler era, it was a giant
ampitheater for Nazi gatherings. 8,000
can sit on the terraces with room for 5,000 standing, facing the grand stone
stages. Atop and beyond the terraced seating of the Thingstätte , hidden back
in the woods a quarter mile, are Roman ruins and the ruins of St. Michael’s
monastery. The sole grave marker has the inscription “1070”.
Not far out of
Heidelberg is the Schwetzingen castle. For some in royalty, one castle wasn’t enough. So, Karl III Philip and Charles Theodore had this castle as well as the Heidelberg castle (and
another spare). It is the Schwetzingen grounds, though, that are striking. The
sculpted gardens go on for acre after acre and are still kept up today. Hidden
in the middle is a bathhouse, with a stone and marble sunken bath that any spa
today would love to have!
Thomas Leibrecht
and Ute Gleich hosted us at their castle home in Kleiningersheim (not to be
confused with Grossingersheim), near Bietigheim-Bissingen, and Harald and Uli
Leibrecht joined us for cake and coffee. The castle dates to at least 1313,
when it was first mentioned in writing, and has housed various nobility over
the centuries. Dr. Walter Leibrecht bought it in the 1960s and began Schiller
College (named after famed poet Friedrich Schiller). For decades, students
lived and studied there. Today, Schiller International University has several
campuses, and the Heidelberg campus has become the European Study Center,
associated with the University of the Incarnate Word (in San Antonio), where I
teach. The Ingersheim Castle is now the headquarters of Schiller’s travel programs,
as well as being the Leibrecht home. You look out over vineyards, the Neckar,
and farmfields. Idyllic!
Berlin and Münich
We bought a Deutschland Pass, since
we had failed to make the time to buy the Eurail Pass before we left. We found
the Deutschebahn (DB) to be very comfortable, and only realized after a couple
of hours that we were sitting in first class (with our second class tickets).
So that’s what that “1” and “2” are painted on the cars for! But with our
month-long passes, we never had to stop at a ticket counter again before
heading from one city to another via train.
Berlin was
awe-inspiring and haunting. We started on a rainy day, spending five hours in
the well-kept, spacious Berlin Zoo. I like the German name for zoo: Tiergarten.
Next day, the “Story of Berlin Museum” laid it all out—the glory of a vibrant
city over the centuries, the take-over by Hitler, the Nazification of life, the
horrors, then the war and bombs. Hitler held Berlin—indeed all of Germany—as
shields for himself and his henchmen, and beautiful cities like Berlin, steeped
in rich history, paid the price. The black and white pictures of bombed-out Berlin
in May 1945 are shocking, sobering, distressing. Berlin’s surviving women picked
up the rubble, brick by brick, and began the restoration.
Before the restoration
could be completed, the frost of the Cold War blew through the city, and the Soviet/East
German party apparatchik built the Berlin Wall to imprison the residents from
the western world. West Berlin flourished and modernized while East Berlin
rebuilt some, but not nearly as much. Out in the modern and re-united Berlin today
you see the restored Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag (Bundestag), the pieces of
the Berlin Wall with tributes to the murdered, and the campy Checkpoint
Charlie; you hear the echoes of SS bootsteps as you walk through the blocks of
concrete marking the Holocaust.
Wherever we went,
I was struck by the multi-cultural nature of today’s Germany. This began with
our Berlin visit with our Iraqi/Palestinian friend Bashar who is now a British
citizen and travels Europe freely. One evening, Bashar took us out to Potsdam
where we spent a nice evening and had a Palestinian meal in a friend’s
home/studio. The nine of us at the table were American, German, Palestinian,
Iraqi, Japanese, Indian, Polish—and various mixes of those nationalities. All
over Germany, it seems, you see Asian, African, Middle East, European tourists,
residents, travelers. Even occasionally a western hemisphere being.
Back on the DB,
through the countryside. On the train, we sat across from a woman who teaches
field biology at the University of Leipzig and was on the way home. I asked her
about all the windmills and solar panels that we saw as we sped through the
countryside, and she said that when the Green Party was in the government they
got renewable energy policies adopted, but the subsidies were now being
withdrawn, so there wouldn’t likely be more new ones. There sure are a lot of
old, old churches! They dominate the skylines in village after village. I am
surprised that Germany is not just one big dug-out quarry—so many castles,
churches, cathedrals, walls, streets and homes are built of stone. How did they
cut and transport all that stone centuries ago?
Our next trainstop
was Münich, where we viewed the glorious Residence of the Bavarian monarchs,
built and maintained over the centuries in grand style. I can only imagine what
life for their overworked serfs must have been like! For Gabe, I think this was
the most remarkable place in his
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journeys, with its
stonework, woodwork, portraits, gold, china and silver, statues, draperies. I
met up with old friend Charles from my university days at Baylor, and we had
German beers and meals and caught up on days past. Charles likes Germany so
much that he has become a citizen and has not been back to the U.S. in years. Our
trip out to Dachau brought us soberly back to the darker side of Germany’s
legacy. Even with most of the buildings gone from the concentration camp, its
ghosts are ever-present. The museum tells the stories and shows the pictures of
the Nazis and their slaughters. And then there were those showers and ovens…
One of the most
interesting spires and facades in Münich is the Rathaus. It’s just about a
century and a half old (young by European standards), but is built in Gothic
style. I got some nice color photos of the tower from the surrounding platz and
down the streets. I was startled then to find, in the Dachau museum, a black
and white photo of that same tower with a huge swastika banner draped over it.
I’ve got to print a side-by-side of those photos.
Köln (Cologne) and the Rhein (Rhine) River
Jackie and I had a
memorable trip up north to Köln. We took the train to Rudesheim on the Rhein
River, then got on a cruiseship and had a 4-hour trip up the river to Koblenz,
which is situated at the confluence of the Mosel and Rhein rivers. From there,
after repast and a night’s sleep, we took the train on into Köln. For over four
hours on the river, we kept seeing castle after castle. There’s a road east out
of Heidelberg known as Castle Road, but this river cruise has got to be even
more stunning. We must
have seen two dozen castles. A castle around
every bend. And, of course, an old church in the village below every castle.
Some castles were ruins, some were in use. (You, too, apparently can buy a
castle—all it takes is an iron-clad pledge to put money into restoring it and
keeping it up!)
Jackie’s research
had told us that something like 90% of Köln was destroyed in the WWII bombing.
But, coming up out of the Hauptbahnhof onto the plaza, you look up into the
grandeur of the Cologne Cathedral. Begun in 1248, the towers were added in the
19th century, making it the largest cathedral in Germany. While it
was damaged in WWII, it remained largely intact. Its main sanctuary is
awe-inspiring—then
there are four or five side chapels. One of the priests, dressed in red robe,
came scowling up to me when we entered and told me to remove my hat. Oops. On
our second day, we went back to the cathedral and decided to pay the fee to
climb the spire. Little did we know. It is a tight, tight stone spiral
staircase up the inside of the tower—and the traffic is two-way (and heavy).
After a hundred steps, you think you’re surely about there. After 200, you
start questioning. After 300, you begin having serious regrets. After 400 you
begin despairing (and huffing and puffing). After 500, you think you’re there.
But No! It’s just a break in the construction, with an open space, then the
steps continue on up. I took the wager and continued. Finally, after 565 steps,
I made it to the top. (Then you have no choice but to fight the foot traffic as
you go back down those same 565 steps.)
Behind the
cathedral is the museum of Roman ruins. When the city started digging to put in
the subway system, they kept unearthing Roman ruins. So, they stopped the
construction and turned it into an archaeological excavation, then resumed the
subway tunnels. And, oh, the ruins they discovered! The museum building houses
those ruins and others they have brought in to depict life in the Roman era. I
remember when we were in a Roman ruins museum in Portugal last summer (which
also contained even earlier Moorish ruins). Both were experiences I’ll never
forget.
We had heard that
Cologne has the biggest Gay Pride festival in all of Germany, and we wondered
when it was. Lo and behold, we turned a corner Saturday morning and found
ourselves in the midst of the parade. Block after block after block of booths,
musicians, costumed revelers. ‘Twas truly a gay scene! Old and young alike.
From there, we drifted over to a huge open park (we later found it is called
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Park). We found hundreds of people—singles, couples,
groups, families—lounging in the grass with blankets and picnics, many with
miniature grills. Bicycles, Frisbees, beer, wine. It was the kind of park scene
that we used to see in the U.S. but don’t so much anymore, except on special
occasions (but no beer in American parks!). We got the feeling this was an
every-weekend-occurrence.
Much of Cologne
has been rebuilt. So, the buildings are 50, 60 years old. Just like in the U.S.
Which is to say, not many were rebuilt in the old style, at least not as much
as in many German cities. A stark scene, though was the old St. Alban’s church.
It was bombed nearly to the ground, as so much of Cologne was. But rather than
rebuilding, it has been left in ruins. It is haunting to look at the stone
arches, knowing that there used to be a roof. Knowing that there used to be a
colorful sanctuary. In the midst of the sun-drenched ruins now sit two
statues—of weeping parents—and a plea for no more war.
Baden-Württemberg
An early outing,
before Gabe headed back to Texas, was to Karlsruhe, where Jackie had lived for
three years in the ‘60s, as her dad was in the U.S. military and stationed
there. Jackie was thrilled to find her old apartment and the church and school
just across the lawn. We took lots of pictures, and now she has to dig through
old records at home to find black and white’s from 50 years ago to compare them
with. Later in the month, the whole group from the European Study Center went
to Karlsruhe as well. Our second outing was hosted by a very engaging local tour
guide. We came away convinced that Karlsruhe was, indeed, the center of all
things good about Germany: a benevolent, if randy, king; the first true
parliament; and a center for democratic uprising against the nobility in 1848.
After that second
Karlsruhe visit, Jackie and I took the DB on into the Schwarzwald (Black
Forest) for a very full and interesting weekend. Her great-great grandmother
was born in Kappelrodeck, then emigrated to the U.S. Jackie knew from the family genealogical
history that the old family names were Eckerle, Bäurle, Faisst, Hodapp, and
Siefermann. We found all those names in the cemetery. We were puzzled, though,
that we did not find graves older than about 150 years or so. Then we learned
that, once your family stops visiting your grave and stops paying for it, it’s
simply re-used by a later family. So much for thinking that folks would be
reading my epitaph a thousand years from now! (“Here lies Professor Keith. How
much longer will his family pay his grave rent?”) We headed to Freiberg, then
up into the forest and mountains to Lake Titisee, a vacation/tourist resort.
Just beyond Baden
Württemburg to the east is the quaint medieval town of Rothenberg ob der Tauber.
Built more than 1,000 years ago, the town and its guard towers is ringed by walls
from various eras in concentric circles. It was well fortified! Many of the
buildings have been preserved in states similar to what they were centuries ago.
Rothenberg is the backdrop for some movie scenes (even Harry Potter!). The
abbey has the oldest preserved kitchen in Europe, dating back more than 1,200
years. Our hotel sent us up the street to their second building. Immediately by
the door as you go in is a well dating
to the
14th century. We climbed to the 6th (attic) floor for our
room. Sticking my head out the narrow window, I looked up to see the
medieval-era pulley that was placed at the apex of roofs, with a rope and
bucket to raise and lower items for the residents.
Unfortunately, we
didn’t get to see one of the sights in Rothenberg ob der Tauber that we had hoped
to see—the mechanical re-enactment of a 14th century mayor drinking a
huge tankard of beer on a bet to save the town. One thing we did get to see,
that I was repulsed at, was the criminal museum. It really was a museum of
torture. Every device made and used by humans, on behalf of church, state, and
community, to torture, cause excruciating pain, and kill people, is there. I
refused to take pictures.
Keith’s Observations on 21st Century Germany
During my sojourn
here, I have jotted down things that I like about Germany, things I don’t like,
and things I found particularly interesting or amusing, whether good or bad. So,
I end this reflection by sharing the lists (with a few comments where
appropriate). The lists of things I like and things I find interesting are much
longer than the list of things I didn’t like. So, yes, I want to come back!
The Good
·
Beer and wine drunk openly
·
Dogs accepted anywhere—restaurants, parks, buses
·
Trains everywhere!
·
Bicycles everywhere—and people take bicycles
right up on the bus or train. Many bicycle riders are elderly—they’re not just
for the young.
·
Streetcars and buses everywhere
·
Bookstores are still open—small ones—in various
parts of the cities
·
Hand dryers in the restrooms are so much more
powerful than those wimpy ones that American restrooms have. These actually dry
your hands so that you don’t have to wipe them on your clothes!
·
Castle and historic preservation
·
A modern multi-lingual multi-cultural society
·
Local breweries and wineries
·
Wind and solar farms across the countryside
·
Solar panels on rooftops of homes and businesses
·
Wasser mit oder ohne Gas
The Bad
·
Germany still has a smoking culture! It’s hard
to eat at a sidewalk café because you’ll be engulfed by your neighbor’s
cigarette smoke
·
Loud cell phone conversations on trains, buses, and
platforms
·
People wear clothes with English writing on them
·
Pay toilets
·
No water fountains
·
No AC
·
No ice (or hard to get)
The
Interesting, Different, Quirky, or Amusing
·
On streetcars and buses, you are rarely asked
for your ticket (but if you are caught without one, there’s a big fine)
·
Many streets are so narrow that trucks just stop
in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, while they unload their goods.
People wait.
·
Streets are so narrow that cars park with one
set of tires up on the sidewalks
·
Sidewalks sometimes narrow down to nothing and
disappear, squeezed by the building on one side and the street on the other,
forcing you to hop out into the street, with feverish glances over your
shoulder.
·
Transportation is truly multi-modal, with 3 or 4
kinds of lanes. There’s the rail running down the middle of the street. There’s
a bike lane (either in the street or on the sidewalk). There’s a sidewalk
(sometimes). You can see a pedestrian, a bicyclist, a car, and a train all
going alongside each other and (usually) managing the twists, turns, change of
lanes, blending of lanes, without wrecks or confrontations.
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