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

St. Gallen

Kathy planned a great birthday trip for me to St. Gallen in Switzerland. The origin of the town has to do with an Irish hermit by the name of Gallus. According to legend, he built a hermitage on the site of the current city, and he had the help of a bear to build it.  In return, Gallus gave the bear a loaf of bread.  Today, the icon of the city is a bear.
Sometime around the year 720, an Alemannian (Germanic) priest by the name of Othmar built an abbey on the site. Since the Frankish king, Charles the Hammer, made Othmar the custodian of the relics of Gallus, the abbey became a pilgrimage site, and the abbey grew rich. An important library was established where monks from England and Ireland came to copy manuscripts.

The Frankish king, Pippin the Short, imposed Benedictine rule on the monastery. When Pippin's grandson, Ludwig the Pious, became king, he held two synods in Aachen in 816 and 817 for establishing monasteries, and one result was an plan for an ideal monastery. This plan still exists in the library at St. Gallen, and it is the oldest existing architectural plan of the Middle Ages. (It has become known as the "Plan of St. Gall".) 


The highlight for me was the World Heritage Site made up of the abbey church and library. The last reconstruction occurred between 1755 and 1768,  when both were rebuilt in the baroque style. It was completed just before the Napoleonic wars resulted in the secularization of church property in 1798, when the monks were driven out.  In 1846 the church and some of the monastery were made into a cathedral for the bishop of St. Gallen, but attempts to restore the monastery where abandoned in 1823 by Pope Pious VII.
Although the abbey was not entirely built on the Plan of St. Gall, there are enough similarities that UNESCO added it to its list of World Heritage Sites because it is "a perfect example of a great Carolingian monastery". Today, a monastery built exactly to the Plan of St. Gall is being constructed in  Meßkirch using the tools and techniques of the middle-ages. (Volunteers are welcome, and I'm sorely tempted to help.)




 

I will always associate St. Gallen with beautiful woodwork. This view, taken from Wikipedia, is the view as you come into the library, where the beautiful woodwork was the first thing to catch my eye. The details are hard to make out from this photo, but there are wonderful carvings and sculptures in the woodwork. The second thing I noticed was that it is a working library, and the shelves are full of old books. In fact, the library contains many famous and important books and documents. The oldest Vulgate (all Latin) bible in the world is on display there.  The oldest text in the Germanic dialect of Alemannic is preserved in a translation of the bible used to instruct the novices. Also, manuscript B of the Nibelungenlied is kept here.
Then I noticed the frescoes on the ceiling of the four great councils: The Council of Nicea in 325 (when it was agreed that Jesus was divine), the Council of Constantinople in 381 (when it was agreed that the Holy Spirit was divine), the Council of Ephesus in 431 (when it was agreed that Mary was the mother of God), and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (when it was agreed that Jesus was truly human and not only divine).

The beautiful woodwork was also used in the church. This photo is an example of the craftsmanship in the monks' seats in the choir of the church. Each of the figures carved in the arms of the seats is unique.










The great woodwork was on display outdoors as well. There are many beautiful bay windows in the old part of town, and this picture is an example. The detail in the next picture is from another window.


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There were other great memories, such as the brewery and its restaurant, where we had a great meal. The textile industry played a very important role in the history of the city, and there is an impressive museum that we visited. It was a very relaxing way to spend my birthday.

Wolfram's Eschenbach and Abenberg

By Richard

Back on the second weekend in August I went with some friends on a day-trip to the little towns south-west of Nuremberg.  We visited several beautiful little towns with their medieval walls still intact and lots of half-timbered houses. A couple of the towns have connections to my favorite medieval troubadour, Wolfram von Eschenbach, who wrote the Arthurian romance "Parzival" sometime between the year 1200 and 1210. One town, called Abenberg, has a statue of him that I had to have a picture of.


 That's me with Wolfram, who is playing his lute while reciting the 25,000 rhyming couplets that make up "Parzival". The story is of a
boy, Parzival, who is secluded in a forest dwelling by his mother in order to prevent him from learning the ways of knighthood and to keep him entirely ignorant of chivalry and the ways of men. His seclusion is shattered by three knights passing who tell him of King Arthur's court at Camelot. His inner nature drives him to go join Arthur's court. His mother is heartbroken at the news of his decision but allows him to depart, dressing him in fool's garments in the hopes that the knights will refuse to take him in. Soon after his departure she dies, utterly heart-broken.
At court, Parzival fights and kills Ither, the Red Knight. Putting on the knight's red armor, he rides away from the court and meets Gurnemanz, who teaches him the duties of  knighthood, especially self-control and moderation and to avoid asking unnecessary questions.
Parzival rides out to seek adventure, and he eventually arrives at the castle of the Holy Grail. His host, Anfortas, the Fisher King, is terribly wounded, but Parzival remembers Gurnemanz's training and does not ask about the mysterious wound. His failure to show compassion results in his failure to obtain the Grail and relieve the Fisher King's misery. The Grail and the Fisher King and everyone in the castle disappear.  The rest of the story is about Parzival's struggle to find the castle again so that he can ask the important question.


We went to the town of Wolframs-Eschenbach. There is no direct evidence that this is the birthplace of Wolfram, because there are no historical documents which mention him. But his works provide evidence for the town's claim, such as the dialect of his works (which is East Franconian) and a number of geographical references.

We came into town through the western city gate, and were met by the view in the photo. A lot of the half-timbered buildings are almost as old as Wolfram, but only a few date back to Wolfram's day. Still, the layout of the town and the atmosphere must be close to what Wolfram knew.  There is a nice little museum at the very center of town, across from the central fountain. The museum has information on Wolfram's poetry, especially the symbols in Parzival and his other Arthurian romances such as Titurel and Willehalm, and on aspects of the Medieval Ages such as the roles of men and women and the life of knights.







After we left Wolframs-Eschenbach, we visited a couple more little towns. The last town that we visited was Abenberg. The town is mentioned in the Parzival story in connection with a jousting tournament. The tournament field is still there just outside of the walls of Abenberg Castle, and a bit of it can be seen in the extreme lower-right corner of the photo. Inside the castle is the House of Frankish History, which has a permanent collection called "Travel through Time in Frankonia" which describes life in a medieval castle, explains why Frankonia territories were split up the way they are, and how the Reformation, the Farmer's War, and the 30-Year War affected Frankonia and its people.

Also in the castle is the School of Bobbin Lace. (Here is a picture from Wikipedia of bobbin lace being made) When we were in Brugge, Belgium, we visited the school there, and we saw some beautiful lace. Afterwards I wondered where you could learn the craft in Germany. I never guessed it would be so close.  But then again, I never guessed that the hometown of my favorite medieval poet would be so close either.