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
(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.
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.
