In Spalt, hops is like gold

October 2014
Kathy and I went with my colleague Lisa Keim to the town of Spalt, in Franken, on Sunday.  The weather was beautiful, and the normally sleepy town was full of people for the harvest festival.  The first thing you notice about Spalt is all the tall gable ends on the buildings.

5-story roof above a beautiful garden.

The multiple floors under the roofs are living quarters today, but once they were full of hops. Back then, there were slats running the length of the roof in order to let air circulate through the hops, as seen in the photo below.

Hops barn with horizontal ventilation slats still visible

Home, hops barn, and animal barn (all in one)

Today, the ventilation slats are usually filled in.  But we found an interesting exception, shown in the photo below, where a single horizontal slat is still visible. This hops barn was part of a complex including a regular animal barn butted up against the right side (see the large barn door and the hay-mow window above it), and the living quarters butted up against the left. The orange color is typical in town.

Diebsturm

Hops was a very valuable crop in the middle ages. Growing them was allowed only by special permit, and only in designated plots. (This made sense, because the plants take so many nutrients out of the soil, that you could ruin a field by resituating the plot in it.) There was a special prison, called the Diebsturm (thief's tower) where workers were sent who pocketed any of the precious flowers.

Oberer Torturm

The high value of the hops drying in the buildings in town made it necessary to build a fortress wall. Much of the medieval wall still exists, like at the Upper Gate Tower (Oberer Torturm).

The city wall has houses built up against it, of course. What is unusual in Spalt is that the tall, thin construction was applied to houses on the walls as well. The result is a house that hangs out over the wall, and continues upward, as seen at the Schlenzger Haus.

Schlenzger-Haus

The Little Customs House (Zollhäuschen) was needed for the trade, and the building still stands at the northern gate to the town.













The wealth of the citizens made it worthwhile to build a large granary (Kornhaus) to collect the taxes: a 10% tithe. Farmers brought ten percent of their harvest to the town's granary.

Zollhäusche

Kornhaus for farmers' tithes

St. Emmeram

There is no sense in growing hops if you don't brew beer, and beer-making goes way back in Spalt. In the 800s there was once a Benedictine monastery called St. Salvator, with a church built in the Carolingian style on the site of today's church in Spalt. Undoubtedly, the monks brewed
beer. In the 1100s, a romanesque church called St. Emmeram was built on the site. Parts of that architecture are still visible in the church today, although the interior is largely baroque.

The brewery makes Spalter Bier, and we tried two kinds. One was a helles (light in color), which has a very nice hopsy flavor. The other is called "Saumarkt Bier", and it is a really good darker beer that Kathy is drinking at lunch as seen in the photo. Saumarkt is a funny name which means "Sow market", and Lisa says it refers to the day when the pigs are butchered. On that day, there is a big feast with a lot of food that could not be preserved and had to be eaten fresh, such as liver, blood sausage, other internal organs and parts like the snout and cheeks. Such rich food required a more robust beer and is the inspiration for "Saumarkt Bier".

Richard and Kathy in Spalt

Below are photos of more of the towers on the old city wall.

Oberer Torturm

Drechslerturm

Below are some more photos of converted hops barns in town.

Mühlreisighaus

open  artist's studio

Volunteers at a Carolingian Cloister, Part 2

This is the second part of our blog about our volunteer week at the construction site Campus Galli, where an archaeological experiment is being carried out. A 9th-century plan for a monastery complex is being built near Messkirch, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, using only the tools and methods available in the 9th century. It is open to visitors as a living-history museum in progress.

(This part was written by Kathy)
The people

Lunch time, beer time
When the tabula strikes, employees and volunteers gather for lunch from 1 to 2 pm under tarps near the kitchen on the central Marktplatz, the market place. Along with gulping down the food before it cools, there is much laughter and joke-telling among the regular employees. One of the loudest laughs came from Ute, the woman stone mason. You can see her at 4:26 in this video (rk-film). Andy, the potter, provided beer on a couple of days during the week. He claimed to have been put in charge of morale during the cold, rainy week. The beer included some brewed especially for the site.
It was a wonderfully informal atmosphere, as you can tell. There are less than 25 permanent employees, and all except for the two "bosses", Herr Geurten and Frau Scondo, were on a first-name basis with each other and with us, too. It was a totally different experience from working in an office in Germany, where we address everybody formally using last names (and the formal you, "Sie") until a colleague (after some years) invites us to use their first names and "Du" (the informal you).

Other volunteers, who live locally, come regularly a couple days a week. This year, the smith station is manned by volunteers with experience. Apparently, a smith can make a lot more money in the "modern" world than by working full time at Campus Galli.

At 6 pm, the tabula strikes to signal that the work day is over: Feierabend! in German. Feierabend translates roughly to "celebratory evening." (Link for language geeks here. ) And it was a kind of celebratory feeling when the work day was over, because we had produced, or helped produce, a physical product during the day. It wasn't the feeling of coming home from the office, mentally exhausted and frustrated.

At the end of the day on Wednesday, Andy, the potter, asked if anyone was up for a beer. Richard was dead tired and had already said no, but because of the chatter in the common room, Kathy hadn't heard his response, so she said yes. And so both of us agreed to meet Andy in town around 7. We were cautioned that Andy didn't just mean one beer (Andy is featured in this video (Journalistenakademie) at 0:58 - he's obviously a big guy). So we met Andy (who showed up in his work clothes, as you see them in the video) and Erik, the historian (seen in this video (rk-film) at 6:11), in town in front of the town hall. It was April 30, the day before the Maypole was to be erected in the center of town (a tradition common to southern Germany), so the  Rathausplatz, surrounded by half-timbered houses, was full of people celebrating at a bar on the square, among them the journeyman carpenters in their traditional black corduroy vests and pants (image here). Many uniquely German traditions in one place!

We ended up at the Grüner Baum (the green tree) for some hearty local food. Andy sent the word around with his mobile phone and a couple other people joined us: Hans the Drechsler (wood turner with dreadlocks, seen in this video (Mslbelin) at 7:15),  and Florian, the Drechsler's young helper. We six had a merry discussion. Andy speaks very good English, and Hans could, too, so the English and German were flying. At least two conversations were going on at the table, and Kathy tried to concentrate on what Erik was saying  in German about the Carolingian renaissance and the research he'd done on trade during the Roman empire.

Labor Day, Family Day
The next day (Thursday), at lunch, a woman with short purple hair and 9th-century dress who was serving the food said to us, "So you're the reason my husband came home late last night!" She looked amused as she said it, but it was the first time we'd seen her - we found out she is Hans's wife. That day, the first of May, was Labor Day in Germany, so kids had the day off from school. Michael, the carpenter, brought his wife, Claudi, and his 2 young daughters. They all were dressed in 9th-century garb. Claudi spent the next two days doing leather work, and one of the craftsman asked her to make a sheath for a knife. Michael is pictured in the this video (mslbelin) along with Andreas at 0:58 at the carpenter's station.

All the lovely people
We are sending this blog to Herr Geurten, whose idea it was to build Campus Galli. You can see him in the Journalistenakademie video at 0:06, and in other videos if you search youtube using the term "Campus Galli". In case he shares this with everybody on site, we want to be sure to mention the other people with whom we didn't spend as much time, but who were friendly and welcoming, such as Karin (the dyer), Mareike (responsible for agriculture), Thomas the "Quartermaster" (architect in charge of construction),  Juergen the shingle maker, Nikolai the Schreiner (cabinet maker), the broom maker, and Maja the basket weaver. Stephan, who is the beggar, added a medieval flavor to the site. He went around the site barefoot in worn clothes, presumably collecting donations to the site. Richard saw him go by the smith's station quite often. However, Kathy never saw him in action. That aside, he is a very interesting person! He has a philosophical approach to life and always had something interesting to say. He has gone without shoes, except in winter time, since 1985, and lived in a tent in the forest on the grounds. He apparently has chosen to live life very simply. Other volunteers included the blacksmiths, Swen and Tino.

In the video mentioned above, Herr Geurten explains that at Campus Galli, they have found employment for people who have been unemployed for a long time. Antonia, who is responsible for the program that brings in people who have been unemployed for a long time, is pictured in the Journalistenakademie video at 2:52, talking about how people are hired into positions doing work that interests them. She worked off and on at the wool worker's station on the days that Kathy was working at the rope maker's station.

Apologies to anyone we unintentionally left out!

Working conditions
A great break from the daily office grind
The site is laid out to accommodate the monastery buildings that are going to be built in the center. A gravel road goes around the site linking all the craftspeople's stations. The Marktplatz and church construction site are in the middle. Walking on the gravel path in the wooden shoes was an invitation to the stones to sneak into the low heels
of the shoes. The huts are spread out to provide a nice walk through the woods for the visitors. It was a very peaceful work place: birds twittered in the forest surrounding each station; the brown hens would wander by with their beautiful brown and black rooster in the afternoons. Heard the rooster all day long. At the rope maker's station at 7 o'clock position on the circuit, we could hear the clang of the stone mason working near the church construction site in the center, but we could not hear the blacksmith on the other side of the site at the 3 o'clock position.
Also heard planes and helicopters going overhead - an amusing contrast to the atmosphere we were working in and the clothes we were wearing.
We had to be careful to keep modern things out of site at the stations. Inge, the rope maker, was one of the lucky ones to have a knife made by the smith. Once, a volunteer who was working with me at the rope maker's station left a modern plastic-handled knife lying on the stump next to me. When the site architect walked by, he noticed it and asked me to put it out of sight. My purse and plastic water bottle found a hiding place in a basket borrowed from the weavers. Richard's water bottle just barely fit into the pouch he wore on his belt. The only exceptions were the bright red pump-type fire extinguishers at every hut, a modern safety requirement that could not be hidden.

In the 9th century, the ox cart was a predominant means of transporting heavy loads. Accordingly, the site had its own ox, who drew the ox cart you see in the Mslbelin video at 1:58. There were at least 3 people required to load the cart and get the ox to cooperate; apparently, the ox wasn't familiar with the surroundings because he didn't live at the site. The next ox will probably have his own stall on site to avoid this problem. A few times, Kathy saw the ox going by with a load of short lengths of large diameter logs that were deposited at the shingle-maker's station. Sometimes the cart hauled rocks for use in building the church foundations. A team of oxen were hitched to the plow to plow the fields in the spring.

The pace of work was leisurely. Sure, there were people who needed tools from the blacksmith or rope from the rope maker. Shingles for the wooden church were being split all the time; the Schindler (shingle maker) estimated he had made about 700 that week, and that about 10,000 would be needed for the church roof. But there was no hectic rush as there is in a 21st century office, where you always feels as if you are falling behind.

An exotic species
Our status as Americans prompted many interested questions from visitors. Once they heard our accents, they tried to guess where we were from. One important tour group was the state council, the Landsrat. It was important to convince them that this project was worthwhile, because in the years leading up to the actual permits for the site, there had been some opposition from this legislative body.  Herr Geurten led them to the rope maker's station where Kathy was working alone and described the rope making process and mentioned that Kathy was an American volunteer. One man asked her: Do you speak German? Another asked: do you know about these handcrafts because of contact with the Amish? (he pronounced it Ay-mish) Kathy hopes she was able to satisfy his curiosity by telling him about the Amish living in northern New York and what she knows about their crafts and culture.
People were pleased to have their suspicions confirmed that the person with the funny accent at the smith's station and the one at the rope-making station were related.
On another day:  K: "My German ancestors come from Bühl in the Black Forest" (about an hour north of the Campus Galli site). German couple: "Really? We live 10 km away from there! You should get in contact with the city record keepers to research your ancestors and check the emigration museum in Bremerhafen for records of their departure." They thought they recognized the name Schemel (Kathy's great-great grandmother married a Schemel who came to the US in 1830). Kathy also put in a plug for New York State wine country in the Finger Lakes to a couple who were going to travel from Detroit to Toronto to Boston and DC.

A warm send-off on Saturday evening
On Saturday evening, Herr Geurten thanked us for our volunteer time. He had taken the trouble to find out the Iowa State Motto and spoke it in German, then he asked Kathy to translate it from German into English. Along with two solid chocolate keys, modeled after the logo of the site (see the Campus Galli website), he made a gift of a poster of the plan, which we asked all the craftsmen to sign.  He also presented us with a video made of Guédelon, the site in France where a 14th-century castle is being built with the tools of that time.  Kathy assumes we received special treatment as English-speaking Americans. There was one American volunteer last year. Herr Geurten suggested that he might send some translation work to Kathy, having received her business card with info about Rick Steeves written on the back.

After effects
We have good memories of the people we worked with and the work we did. It is a good feeling to have made a contribution to progress on the site. We have 39 more years to participate and visit!
The realization that everything had to be made by hand back then, without any mechanical help such as spinning wheels and rope twisting devices was enlightening. Every shingle had to be split by hand, every foot of foundation dug out of the clay with hard labor, every yarn used for weaving had to be hand spun. The orientation of the church toward the sunrise on August 1 was also performed with medieval methods. For peasants and craftsmen, it was a different lifestyle back then, mostly composed of hard, physical work. It gave us an appreciation for the value of the physical work that built the buildings of the time.

A challenge to generate more publicity
Herr Geurten was particularly excited that we Americans were there. He has ambitions for the site to become a tourist attraction for Americans - to bring the tour buses in and divert them from Heidelberg. He asked us if knew who would be a good contact to make the Campus Galli site known among agencies that promote American tourism in Germany. We could only think of  contacting the German Embassies and of Rick Steeves. Hope he can be successful. Do any of you readers have any suggestions? Obviously, because the effort just got started last year, there is a lot to do in generating publicity and information on the web in English. The German website is at this address. There is as yet no English site. The Facebook page is updated more frequently than the website; you can see it here. Some visitors Kathy talked to at the site, who identified themselves as a historian and 2 art historians, complained that they did not want to have to be on Facebook to see the most current info about the site. (Kathy can sympathize. She has no ambition to maintain a Facebook page.) Richard recently created a Wikipedia article in English for Campus Galli.
A website in English that describes the plan of St. Gallen is found at this link to stgallplan.org.

Questions and comments welcome
If we forgot to explain something, please enter your questions in the comments. We receive an e-mail each time someone enters a comment, so we will respond when it's appropriate.

Expressionist weekend

Statue of a black smith

We were in the small town of Kochel am See over the four-day Easter weekend.  The main goal was to visit the Franz Marc museum in town.  We were not expecting much, maybe some of Marc's studio equipment, a sketch book and maybe a diary. But the museum was great. It had some of Marc's best works. I settled on a poster of "Deer in a Flower Garden" for my souvenir.

Link to Wikipedia article on Franz Marc here

Deer in a flower garden

The town is on a lake at the foot of the Alps, and the museum overlooks the lake.  We took a walk along the shore on our second day.  The cherry trees were in blossom, and very few people were to be seen.

Kochelsee

Cherry blossoms at Kochelsee

On the walk from the center of town to the lake we passed through a woods that borders a marsh land.  The bogs there produce a type of reed that the farmers use for bedding for the livestock (mainly cattle and sheep). The reeds are harvested in the winter, when the bogs are frozen over, and then the reeds are piled in stacks around a central pole. The sign in the photo has a picture of three straw stacks as painted by Marc.  In the distance are the dry, brown reeds. After seeing this we understood the painting we had seen in the museum called Reedstacks in Snow by Marc.  I thought they were pears.

Reedstacks in snow

Also on the walk to the lake we came upon a patch of what looked like Lilies of the Valley. But these are nothing like the extremely poisonous plant. These are Bärlauch (translates as bear leeks), an edible plant that has leaves that taste like onion and garlic and a flower that tastes like cabbage. We had seen Bärlauch on all the restaurant menus: Bälauch cream soup, Bärlauch omelette, Bärlauch pesto on fish, etc. Bärlauch is notorious because it is delicious but there are always a couple of deaths each year from people who mistake Lilies of the Valley for Bärlauch.

Münterhaus

We made a day trip to Murnau, where a couple other expressionist artists lived and worked. Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky lived in a little house overlooking the town. Along with Marc and another painter named August Macke, they formed the core of the group of expressionist painters called the Der blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider). The two artists painted many scenes of the town from their house and of the house itself. Just behind the house is a path through the woods that leads back to the center of town.

Murnau near Münterhaus

There is an old Schloss (palace) in town built around 1233 that houses a museum today, and we visited it to see some paintings by Marc in addition to quite a few by Münter and Kandinsky. These were the best years for Kandinsky.  When he returned to Russia after the outbreak of the first World War, he suffered depression and his art became more abstract. Münter continued to live and paint, off and on, in the little house, but she also suffered from depression after Kandinsky left her.  As for their friends Marc and Macke, they were killed in the war at a young age.

Münter eventually gained a new companion, a gallery owner, with whom she lived from the 1920s until her death in 1962.

Terrace in front of Schlossmuseum

Article about Münter and Expressionism on Wikipedia here

Volunteers at a Carolingian Cloister, Part 1

This is the first part of our blog about our volunteer week at the construction site Campus Galli, where an archaeological experiment is being carried out. A 9th-century plan for a monastery complex is being built near Messkirch, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, using only the tools and methods available in the 9th century.  It is open to visitors as a living history museum in progress.

Background: If you build it, they will come...
Last year we took a trip to St. Gallen in Switzerland to visit the library there.  We saw the Plan of St. Gall, which is an architectural plan of an ideal monastery, drawn up around the year 830.

Plan of St. Gall

The Plan depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound including churches, houses, guest quarters for distinguished visitors, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and even a special house for bloodletting.  The compound was never built in its entirety... until today.

Today, a monastery complex built exactly to the Plan of St. Gall is being constructed in Meßkirch, Germany, using the tools and techniques of the early middle-ages (9th century). The project is called Campus Galli, and the purpose is to carry out experimental archaeology, which means that the project is supported by a board of 18 academic advisers, consisting not only of archaeologists and historians but also experts in theology, veterinary medicine, media studies and others. The project offers scholars and researchers the possibility to work on the site and to conduct archaeological experiments with the carpenters and workers of Campus Galli. The site was opened in April last year (2013), after 8 years of planning, finding support and dealing with local and state bureaucracy.

Sketch of Plan, by Rudolf Rahn.

In about 40 years, it should look something like this sketch made in 1876. Volunteers are welcome to help build the complex, and Kathy and I volunteered to help from April 27 until May 3.


In the text below, there are references to several youtube videos. They are all in German, but one has only a musical soundtrack. They are referred to according to the youtube user name (Mslbelin, Karl Heinz, Journalistenakademie, rk-film). Each link will open in a separate tab (at least it does on our computer).We suggest that as you read, you open the links to the videos and leave the youtube tabs to each video open so you can go back and watch at the time points mentioned.

We Go Back to the Middle Ages
Fashionably dressed
On the first day, Sunday, April 27, we arrived in time for 9:30 am orientation at the "backstage" area. We were issued clothes and shoes. Richard received a tunic, a braided wool belt, pants, a wool "cape" hand woven out of wool (see pics below) and wooden shoes. He lucked out and found a fabric bag that attached to his belt that was large enough to hide his plastic water bottle. Kathy received a long dress, a belt and a woolen "cape", and decided to go with her own shoes until she found out what the day's duties involved.
The woolen "capes" shed water well, which turn out useful. Hiking them up so they covered the back of our necks kept the rain from dripping down our backs as we walked from hut to hut.
All the clothes were made from unbleached, natural colored cloth, probably linen. They are made during the winter in a hotel conference room in town called the "winter camp".
The clothing was voluminous enough that we could wear as many layers underneath as we needed. It was important not to let the modern colors peek out from under the neckline, though. Scarves were in short supply as they tended to disappear and the people making clothing couldn't keep up. One very cold day, Kathy had to borrow a wooden pin to keep her cape closed at the neck so her bright red sweater wouldn't be seen. She was lucky enough to find a cap that fit her. 

A day at a monastery stars with a prayer, and a knock on wood
We started the day by walking to the site of the future wooden church, where there is a large cross. The man in the role of the monk said a short prayer in Latin, and although I doubt there were any believers among us, it was good to observe the medieval custom.
Then the monk struck a large wooden plank suspended by ropes, the tabula (Latin, of course),  nine times, indicating the start of the work day. The striking of the plank could be heard throughout the construction area, and the "ringing" was used to indicate the time for lunch and the end of the work day as well. We relied on the sound of the wood being struck, because we wore no watches and we had no cell phones to tell us the time. This had a bigger-than-expected impact on experiencing the rhythms of day.

In the picture above, you can see the foundation excavation for the wooden church. It will have a stone foundation. Later, a much bigger stone church will be built around it. The monks had to have somewhere to pray while they built their monastery. The cross in the background designates the place where the altar of the stone church will be.

Gimme shelter
All the "stations", or huts, were outdoors. Each had its own, more or less water-tight roof  and an unbleached canvas tarp. There was always a fire place in or near the hut. The wool hut is pictured below. It was cool and rainy all week, so the people with leaky roofs (most of us) had to take shelter under the tarp or the part of the roof covered by the tarp. Every hut was built differently, because there are not many written sources left over from the 800s about how they built shelters for the workmen at a construction site. It's all an experiment, after all!

Kathy, Sunday: 
Wool gathering
Because Kathy was interested in weaving and sewing, Natasha, the woman who helped us pick out our clothes, asked for her help in the wool hut. 

First, we brought a huge basket to the shingle-maker's hut to load up with firewood that he had split and piled. This wood is the leftovers from making shingles. We filled the basket and brought it back to our hut.
The wool shed (see pic to the right) had a sunken floor; if linen is being processed, the moisture coming up from the dirt floor is important. The walls and a lean-to roof were made of slender logs. The bark had been left on. The chinks inside were stuffed with moss and scrap wool. The shed roof, unfortunately, was not water-tight (had no tarp cover), and rain dripped down the logs on the inside and dropped onto the benches and the baskets of wool. Lest you say, "well why didn't they know about this before?", this hut was built only last year for the wool workers, and the first rain ever of the season had come the night before. It has been a dry spring in southern Germany!

Sonja, the rope maker for the day, appeared and asked if I would bring some raw wool to the smithy, where Richard was assigned. The wool was to put in his wooden shoes. I thought, OK, maybe the shoes are too big, but I was wrong; but more on this later. On the way back, I helped Sonja carry a basket of firewood to her rope maker's station, which was down the path from the wool hut.

When I got back to weaver's hut, there was a fire going. Almost all the wool had gotten wet, so most of it couldn't be worked. But Natasha showed me how to pull the dirt out of raw, washed wool so that it was ready to be combed. Spent the morning sitting by the fire trying to keep the baskets of wool away from the drips coming through the roof and pulling at the clumps to get dirt and knots out. This work was a bit hypnotic, because I had to focus on seeing the dirt in the wool and on what my hands were doing. At the same time, though, my mind wandered and I wondered if I was slowing down.
For a while, Natasha and I were the only ones in the hut. Then, a woman named Andrea showed up and started hand spinning. In the 9th century, Europe had no spinning wheels; they showed up in the 12th century. Video of Andrea spinning at 6:26 here (Mslbelin).
In this video (Karl Heinz) at 3:40, you can see women working at the wool hut, spinning and sewing. This video was made last summer. You can tell, because everyone is wearing their simple linen dresses with no wool layers on top.
My long dress and cape were constantly knocking over baskets of clean wool onto the ground. Had to learn to be careful when I got up from the bench. Later, the cape turned out to be handy for covering the baskets of wool next to me while I was working to protect them from the drips coming from the log ceiling.

At 1 pm, the gong rang for lunch. Lunch was a piece of roast pork in a broth with onions and a bean stew with crunchy parsley. Warm, tasty and filling. There was also bread baked on site. It was in high demand among the craftsmen.
That afternoon I tried combing the wool that I had picked clean. It involves combing the knots out and pulling the wool through the combs so that bunches of long fibers are formed. Only long fibers are good for spinning. It is harder than it looks. We used combs made out of wooden paddles with only one row of wooden teeth, as it would have been in the 9th century.  The combs are visible on the table in the video link above (Karl Heinz) at 3:57.
In between spinning and combing, Natasha was weaving on an upright loom. It was new to her and had been set up by an expert. On it was a undyed wool rug destined for the wooden church. It was cool to finally see a real vertical loom with clay loom weights on the warp threads, after having seen so many pictures from antiquity and from the Navajo Indians. Archaeology come to life!
Under our tarp was a big basket of wool sheared from the 3 sheep onsite. The wool was waiting to be washed so it could be plucked, combed and spun. (The sheep breed is "Skudde", for the wool specialists out there to whom that matters.)

Richard at the bellows in the smithy

Richard, Sunday:
A new appreciation for metallurgy
The blacksmith's hut is an A-frame roof with openings in the peak of the gables to let the smoke from the fire out. The floor was dug into the ground, which made short walls dug into in the dirt. At the top of the wall, at ground level, was a narrow space underneath the roof. This area served as bedroom for the family and kitchen for the blacksmith's wife.
The fire pit was wood lined with clay and lime. The bellows were an approximation of those used at the time because apparently no precise drawings exist from the 9th century. See more of the blacksmith's station in this video from mslbelin at 2:46.

Richard spent most of the day working the bellows and watching the blacksmith, Sven, perform his trade. The first part of the day was spent repairing chisels for the stone mason. After forging a new tip, it had to be heat treated to make it hard. This involved watching the color change, and when the blue area moved sufficiently close to the tip, the end of the chisel was quenched by dunking it in water. The rest of the chisel was still hot, so the blacksmith stood the chisel in a small stone trough with a shallow pool of water in it. With the tip of the chisel in the cool water, the rest of the chisel in the air could cool slowly to keep its strength (strength and hardness being mutually exclusive).

Near the end of the day, the blacksmith turned a steel rod into a knife for the Schindler (roofer and shingle maker). I had to hold the hot knife with tongs while the blacksmith punched holes in the handle used for attaching a wooden grip. The last thing the blacksmith made was a metal tip for the monk's walking stick, which was also a measuring rod. He made the tip from a thick steel rod. The thick tip was hammered down to a thin long spike to be inserted into the end of the walking stick. The process of hammering out the spike took a lot of strength to strike the blows with a heavy hammer as quickly as possible before the steel cooled. By the time he finished, the blacksmith's arm was fatigued and sore, and although he is quite muscular, he could only lift the smaller hammers used for the finishing work.

Many of the other trades depend on the blacksmith to make and repair their tools. The potter needs a metal edge for the wooden shovel he uses to dig clay out of the ground. (Only the edge of the shovel is metal, because metal is so valuable.) The wheelwright needs metal bands for the cart wheels. The wood turner and carpenter need axes. And so on.
The blacksmith also needs to make his own coal for the furnace. The part of the process l did not see is turning the local iron ore into steel.
By the end of the day l was tired and a bit sore, but also somehow mentally relaxed, and at the same time stimulated by the new experience. And working outdoors all day in the light rain brought back old memories of being on the farm.

We had very few visitors on Sunday because it was cold and rainy. The site was closed on Monday, as are most museums.

Richard making brooms

Richard, Tuesday:
Sweeping the clouds away
After a cool morning, the sun came out, and it became a beautiful day. Richard spent the day making brooms. The only tricky part is getting the right amount of compression on the binding of the twigs so that the handle won't fall out but you can still get the handle in. Because the master broom maker was out, l also gave demonstrations to the visitors as they came by.

Visitors could buy a broom at the broom maker's station. In one tour group whose members it was very important to impress, one guy bought a broom. We took it as a good sign. 

The pig pen. Note the two rows of fencing.

Not a petting zoo
The broom maker's hut is not far from the pig pen, so I could hear the pigs grunting all day. It was nice to spend the breaks at the fence watching them as they watched me. As Andy, the potter, says, a cat looks down at you, a dog looks up at you, but a pig looks at you at eye level. The pigs are Wollschweine (wooly pigs) (Mangalitsa?), a breed that dates back to the early 1800s in Hungary when domestic pigs were crossed with Wild Boar. They are as close to the breed of pigs in the ninth century as still exists. They are as curious as any of our modern pigs. And, true to their nature, it was reported on Saturday morning (the last day of our stay) that on Friday night, "the damn pigs got out".  Luckily, there is a double fence, and the pig only broke out of the inner fence. The outer fence is required by law in Germany to prevent the wild boars from breaking into the pen and passing viruses to and cross-breeding with the domestic pigs (Wollschweine).

Curious woolly pigs

The goat pen is on the far side of the pig pen, so I did not see them often, but the small kid goat is really cute. To the amusement and concern of the visitors, it would jump onto the shed roof and get out of the pen every day, but would somehow find its way back in every night. There are also three sheep in the pen, but they keep to themselves at the back. Because they were recently shorn, they looked like goats to the untrained observer.

Kathy and Inge at the rope maker's station.
Note the linden bast tied to the post in the background.

Kathy, Tuesday:
These shoes are killing me!
Tuesday I was going to try the wooden shoes. Richard says it's a weird feeling to walk in them. I thought it might be like wearing clogs. Not so bad - I had a pair in high school. We'll see.
Well, those wooden shoes hurt! They covered my instep and come all the way to my ankle on top and the wood didn't give, so when I bent my foot to take a step forward, it cut right into my leg. After several steps, I had bruises! Now I know why Richard needed the wool!
Richard finally got the wool I brought him onto the right place in his wooden shoes, so they are no problem any longer. It was a trick to get it to stay in the right place while we walked, because it kept working its way out. Along with wearing 3 pairs of socks, we had to take smaller steps to keep the wool and the shoes in the right place. It was similar to the way you see geishas walking in the movies! They are comfortable to stand in and provide good insulation on cold days. They were warmer than my modern Goretex shoes were on the coldest day. The people who wear them every day get the cabinet maker to grind out the instep a little, or customize them by getting the instep carved out and putting a piece of leather over the instep.
(A side note for the sticklers, who know that medieval shoes were no more than "leather gloves for the feet": the wooden shoes were a safety requirement for the site. The smith actually wore modern safety shoes because his job involved constant exposure to heavy pieces of metal, and the stone mason wears safety glasses.)

Rope making to sooth the soul
Today, after spending the morning hours with Natasha in the wool hut for company, I joined Inge in the afternoon at the rope maker's hut to learn to make rope. The picture above is of me and Inge. (Turns out that Andrea and Inge are sisters.) A video of Inge making rope is at 2:41 on youtube at this link (Journalistenakademie). The repetitive twisting and overlaying was very meditative, and a good rope maker could make 4 meters (more than 4 yards) in an hour. I don't know how much I made, but on Saturday, our last day, I wound what I had made during the past 5 days off the "spool" onto my arm between hand and elbow, and my hand was full. I delivered it proudly to the pig enclosure (see the picture above), where the basket maker was weaving willow twigs between the posts to make the outer fence stronger. My rope was to be used to tie the posts together at the top. The rope I made probably was enough for at most 20 to 30 posts; there are probably hundreds in the outer fence. The huge time investment makes the simplest things, like rope, so valuable.

The rope is made from linden bast, the inner layers of the bark of the linden tree. In the above photo, you can see the fibers bundled together around the hut's central post behind us. As we would explain to visitors, the trees for use in building are felled in the winter between November and February when the sap is not running. Then the bark is stripped and soaked for 6 to 8 weeks in standing water. Tiny bubbles form in between the fibers inside the bark and it can be stripped off and washed. The washing is to free it of a gelatinous layer. The fibers gained are smooth and soft; they didn't rough up my fingers. They are best worked when they are wet, so we always had a bucket of water between us to wet our hands with. On cold days, that could get uncomfortable.
At the rope maker's hut were ropes made in various thicknesses for various uses, from very fine fishing line to the 1/8 to 1/4 inch size for hanging bundles of herbs, to the right diameter for tying down the components of a roof (about a half-inch diameter), to almost an inch in diameter for agricultural uses such as attaching the plow to the harness that the oxen wear.
Bast rope tends to wear quickly when it is drawn over a sharp edge. Hemp rope is better. The site has a permit to start growing a very low-THC variety of hemp next year to use for making rope. Eventually it will be used for lifting stones to build the stone church. 

I worked at the rope maker's station for the rest of the week because there were enough people (employees and volunteers) at the wool hut, but there was nobody to man the rope-maker's station most of the day. Inge was the paid employee who usually manned the station, but she was also paid to clean the bathrooms and common areas in the mornings. On rainy days, she had to spend the whole day cleaning again and again, as mud was tracked into the trailers that housed the restroom facilities and the employees' common room backstage.  And you know how Germans like cleanliness!

The foundation trench for the church
after the heavy rains on Wed. and
before the drainage ditch was dug.

Richard, Wednesday:
You'll never get rich by digging a ditch
First half of the day was spent helping Andreas, the Zimmerman (carpenter), who is working on the wooden church. At this early stage, trenches for the foundation are being dug, so Richard became an Irish ditch digger for a day. In the ninth century, a ditch digger could dig 0.3m³ per hour. We managed 0.5m³ before noon. The dirt was wet from the rain and heavy. And the ninth-century shovel was heavy even when empty. (see (Karl Heinz) at 4:01)
I learned a lot from Andreas. He is making a Kratztafel (scratchboard), which in the 9th century was used to draw plans for a building. It consists of a layer of charcoal on top of a bed of white lime. The "scratches" in the charcoal expose the white background and the plans become visible. The stone church will have a crypt, so perhaps the foundation for the wooden church can be reused.
See Andreas, the carpenter, with the long black beard at 0:58 and 5:21 in the youtube video by Mslbelin.

During the noon meal, rain water had accumulated in the foundation trench to that we couldn't dig any longer. Instead, we went to the capenter's shed, where I carved wooden nails for shingles.  Boy, do we need shingles.  It will take about 8,000 to 10,000 shingles for the stone church. But before that, each of the craftmen's sheds need to be shingled.

Kathy, Wednesday:
Raindrops keep falling on my head
On Wednesday, it rained all day long and water started dripping through the tarp, despite (or maybe because of) my best attempts to keep it from pooling at the low spot. The only dry spot at the rope maker's station was reduced to approximately 1 square meter. Alone at my station, I tried to arrange my seat and the spool within this dry spot under the tarp. It rained so much that the site closed one hour early at 5 pm. Boy, were we grateful!


Richard, Thursday:
Generating more hot air
Worked with Tino, the Schmied (smith), again today.

Richard, Saturday:
During the last minutes of the lunch break, I managed to put in some time at the wood-turner's station, see pic below. The employees at the site ate their lunch from wooden bowls with wooden spoons. I decided to make a couple of spoons for future use.

Richard in his element, turning some wood for spoons

Please see Part 2, posted in May, for a description of the people we worked with, the working conditions, our reception as Americans, and the send off on Saturday evening.

Questions and comments welcome
If we forgot to explain something, please enter your questions in the comments. We receive an e-mail each time someone enters a comment, so we will respond when it's appropriate.

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Wilhelmshöhe near Kassel

Near the city of Kassel is a landscape park called Wilhelmshöhe. It is a series of water displays built on a mountain slope.  Its construction started in 1696, only 50 years after the end of the Thirty-years war, which was the most destructive war in German history. I think it is amazing that Landgrave Wilhelm VI could bring enough resources together for such an undertaking.
It was designed during the baroque period in the English garden style. The water displays begin at the top of the mountain. It does not operate continuously; water flows down the slope in batches of 92,000 gallons.

At the very top is a bronze statue of Hercules on a stone pedestal. Water sprouts from fountains at the base of the pedestal and flows down the first of the water displays, which is a cascading water fall. (See photo.) The water then flows to the Steinhöfer Waterfall, the Devils Bridge, the Aqueduct, and the Fountain Pond.





The statue of Hercules at the top is the mascot of Kassel. It was the first colossal statue of modern times north of the Alps, constructed between 1701 and 1717 shortly before the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Hermann Monument in northern Germany. It was inspired by an ancient sculpture, a copy of which is in the museum at the base of the park. The bronze statue at Wilhelmshöhe is 8.25 meters in height, and can be identified by the club and lion's skin from Hercules's legendary trials.

The statue stands on a pyramid 29.60 meters in height, which is built on an octagon that is 32.65 meters tall, making the entire monument 70.5 meters high.

I was able to walk inside the base and up the pyramid. There is a beautiful view of Kassel from the top.



The cascades start at the octagon.  They are 210 meters long, and visitors can walk along side the cascades.  Occasionally water came spilling over the side, but we were prepared for rainy weather, so we didn't mind the spray.





















After we walked down the side of the cascades, we hiked a few minutes to the Steinhöfer Waterfall.  The architect, Karl Steinhöfer, created the impression of an old stone quarry overtaken by nature.









Heinrich Christoph Jussow designed the Devil's Bridge. The bridge spans the flow into the Höllenteich (hell's pond). The names for both the bridge and the pond come from the nearby Plutogrotte (Pluto's grotto).  I don't know where the grotto got its name.

The Aqueduct was inspired by German romanticism. Previously, the accomplishments of the classical period, such as aqueducts, were an example for perfection.  But during the romantic period, nature was superior to anything man-made. The photo shows the 14th arch of the aqueduct, which is broken and allows the water to fall 30 meters into a small pond.












From the Aqueduct, the water flows down to the Fountain Pond.  On the edge of the pond is a small gazebo next to the stream.

The fountain is fed by a pipe that starts up above the Devil's Bridge. The pipe is closed down at the pond and is filled with water so that pressure at the pond was extremely high for the technology of 1708. The large-diameter pipe of cast-metal  was difficult to produce. But when the system was built sometime before 1767, the water pressure was sufficient to cause a jet of water to shoot 50 meters into the air, using nothing but gravity.

The whole park is certainly deserving of its UNESCO designation as a World Heritage Site.